A Sensation Novel

A Sensation Novel is the fourth in a series of six short musical entertainments written by Gilbert for Thomas German Reed and his wife Priscilla between 1869 and 1875.

The German Reeds presented respectable, family-friendly musical entertainments at their Gallery of Illustration beginning in 1855, at a time when the theatre in Britain had gained a poor reputation as an unsavoury institution and was not attended by much of the middle class.

Shakespeare was played, but most of the entertainments available in theatres consisted of poorly translated French operettas, risqué burlesques and incomprehensible broad farces.

As scholar Jane W. Stedman observes in her book Gilbert Before Sullivan, this play anticipates Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author.

[4] Like some of Gilbert's other pieces for German Reed, most of the original score of A Sensation Novel is lost – four songs survive – although there have been re-settings by other composers.

He explains, however, that it is part of his job to be forever late – if he caught villains and stopped evil plots in a timely manner, no sensation novel would advance past the first volume.

The characters realise that if Gripper were ever to be on time, their novel would be forced into its "happy" conclusion, with Alice and Herbert's marriage, a prospect that horrifies them all.

The convoluted plot that they are enmeshed in seems to indicate that Alice is the rightful daughter of a Duke, whose place was deviously stolen by Rockalda, but Ruthven thinks she may actually be his long-lost granddaughter – which would be quite disappointing, as it would end any hope of their marriage.

At the start of Act III, which takes place just before the final chapter of the third volume, Herbert and Alice both enter, both in wedding dress and both depressed about what seems to be their inevitable end.

They angrily call the author and inform him that they will rebel until he brings Ruthven back, and for good measure demand that he marry them to the characters they actually love.