ABSTRACT
It was in the realm of song, not that of the symphony, that a composer could make a living in 1860s Britain. Catering for the domestic demand for ballads could become a lucrative business for a musician. And before the collaboration with W. S. Gilbert established itself in 1870s, allowing him an enviable financial freedom, it was in the parlour, alongside the church in his roles as organist and hymn-tune arranger, that Sullivan made a living for himself. Although he had started off enthusiastically, Tennyson came to look down upon his cycle of twelve poems, so much so that he tried strenuously to avoid their public appearance. The reasons for Tennyson's doubts are not hard to fathom: despite his unfailing technique and the incorporation of various methods of poetic artifice, simply put much of his verse is not especially distinguished. The story of The Window proceeds in a discontinuous though coherent narrative largely through a series of lyric scene pictures.
