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Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist librettist poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan of which the most famous include HMS Pinafore The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre The Mikado These as well as most of their other Savoy operas continue to be performed regularly throughout the English-speaking world and beyond by opera companies repertory companies schools and community theatre groups Lines from these works have become part of the English language such as short sharp shock What never Well hardly ever and Let the punishment fit the crime Gilbert also wrote the Bab Ballads an extensive collection of light verse accompanied by his own comical drawings His creative output included over 75 plays and libretti numerous stories poems lyrics and various other comic and serious pieces His plays and realistic style of stage direction inspired other dramatists including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw According to The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Gilberts lyrical facility and his mastery of metre raised the poetical quality of comic opera to a position that it had never reached before and has not reached since Source - Wikipedia

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List of poems by William Schwenck Gilbert 169 total

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The Sorcerer: Act I
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To a Little Maid - by a Politician
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To the Terrestrial Globe
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The Captain and the Mermaids
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The Ghost, the Gallant, the Gael, and the Goblin
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King Goodheart
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The Disconcerted Tenor
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He and She
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The Ape and the Lady
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The Family Fool
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The Susceptible Chancellor
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The Englishman
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The Ghosts' High Noon
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The Independent Bee
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The Coming By-and-By
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The Duke and the Duchess
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The Martinet
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At a Pantomime. By a Bilious One
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General John
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When I First Put This Uniform On
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Emily, John, James, and I
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Phrenology
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Speculation
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The Reverend Micah Sowls
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The Reward of Merit
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