by John Welford

Created on: October 17, 2009

Trial by Jury (1875) was the first comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan (if we exclude the unpublished and largely lost "Thespis") and it marks the beginning of a hugely successful partnership that produced a string of works that are still performed to the present day.

It is unusual in being the only one of the series that contains no spoken dialog, and it is also much shorter than the later operas, being all over in around half an hour. However, some of its features re-appear throughout the series, such as the "patter song", the "part song", and the use of logical absurdities to drive the plot. It satirises the legal profession, of which Gilbert had some knowledge from his earlier unsuccessful career as a barrister. Poking fun at the law was to prove far more profitable than practicing it, and he was to have another highly successful "dig" in "Iolanthe" some seven years later.

The action takes place in a courtroom, where an action is being brought for "breach of promise of marriage". Such trials were relatively common in late Victorian England, and they also had elements of the comic and the salacious about them, so were notorious for their popularity with the public gallery and the Press. Such trials, which were civil rather than criminal cases, became less common in the 20th century although it was not until 1970 that the offence was taken off the statute book in England.

This particular trial opens with the characters being introduced, courtesy of the court Usher. He prepares to swear in the Jury, having made clear that this trial must be free of bias of every kind. Or rather, he does precisely the opposite by telling the jurymen that Angelina, the plaintiff, deserves all their sympathy, whereas in the case of Edwin, the defendant, "what he may say you need not mind"!

The defendant now appears and puts forward his side of the case, namely that he got bored with his intended and found love elsewhere. The jurymen recall their own past youths, and similar misdeeds, but then declare that they are now highly respectable and therefore "haven't a scrap of sympathy with the defendant".

The Learned Judge now takes his place and begins by explaining, via a patter song, how he rose to become a judge, starting from a lowly position as a junior barrister who could never get a "brief". His route to the top is by falling in love with the "elderly, ugly daughter" of a rich attorney, after which all doors are opened to him. Gilbert's satire of people who reach the top

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