No Cards

It was first produced at the Royal Gallery of Illustration, Lower Regent Street, London, under the management of German Reed, opening on 29 March 1869 and closing on 21 November 1869.

The work is a domestic farce of mistaken identities and inept disguises, as two men desperately compete to marry a wealthy young lady.

[3] Music publisher Joseph Williams & Co. reissued "No Cards" in 1895 with a score by "Lionel Elliott", which appears to be a pseudonym.

[5] The Royal Victorian Opera Company of Boston, Massachusetts made a video of the piece in 1996 using the Elliott score.

[1] At the time that W. S. Gilbert began writing plays: The stage was at a low ebb, Elizabethan glories and Georgian artificialities had alike faded into the past, stilted tragedy and vulgar farce were all the would-be playgoer had to choose from, and the theatre had become a place of evil repute to the righteous British householder.

Oratorio was then at the height of its vogue, and Shakespearean drama as interpreted by the Kean, Macready, and Kendal school still held its public; but at the other extreme there were only farces or the transplanted operettas of Offenbach, Lecocq and other French composers, which were as a rule very indifferently rendered, and their librettos so badly translated that any wit or point the dialogue might have possessed was entirely lost.To fill this gap, Thomas German Reed opened his German Reed Entertainments at the Gallery of Illustration.

[2] The Gallery of Illustration was a 500-seat theatre with a small stage that only allowed for four or five characters with accompaniment by a piano, harmonium and sometimes a harp.

Compare these lyrics from No Cards: with these from Utopia, Limited: There is also a verse on the subject of disguises, with reference to Paddington Pollaky, who was later mentioned in Patience.

The young Mr. Churchmouse, on the other hand, is painfully shy (as Robin Oakapple would be in Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore almost two decades later), except when he is portraying a role on stage.