Ronald N. Bukoff

Images of libraries and librarians abound in popular culture from literature, cinema, television, and the stage.1 These images are as varied as today’s society, ranging from the spectral public librarian obsessed with silence in the film Ghostbusters (1994) to the vampire-slaying high school librarian Rupert Giles in television’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.2 On the musical stage, one immediately thinks of The Music Man’s Marian "The Librarian" Perdoo and the Madison Public Library of River City, Iowa. Beyond Marian, though, audience-goers are hard-pressed to identify additional depictions of libraries and librarians on the musical stage, from Broadway-style musical theater to opera.3

Everyone has an image of what constitutes a library; rarely is this view accurate. The commonly-held misconception portrays the library as a haven of quiet far from the intrigues of the daily world. This thought is pervasive throughout Western culture. However, librarians and a few privileged insiders know that the day-to-day reality of the library belies this belief. To the uninitiated, libraries are considered to be mysterious and arcane, emphasizing antiquity, solemnity, and silence. One only has to recall the library scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989),the final film of the Indiana Jones trilogy by director Stephen Spielberg, to produce the image society typically expects from cinematic depictions of libraries and librarians. In a Venetian library, the action hero Indiana Jones rudely interrupts the traditional tomb-like stillness of the library as he pursues his father’s Nazi kidnappers. The bewildered librarian, whose book stamping activity coincidentally matches Indy’s destructive hammering, is a mild-mannered, milquetoast figure of a man. He is the stereotypical male librarian laboring away in his personal monastic-like library. This is a standard depiction of the celluloid librarian. Nonetheless, librarians have provided a wealth of inspiration for film-makers, and there is no dearth of librarians on the screen: serious, comic, friendly, and deadly.4

It appears most probable that the strength of these stereotypes has severely limited the appearance of libraries and librarians on the musical stage. How can one explain the near-absence of libraries and librarians in opera, operetta, and musical theater? Other professional fields have had numerous appearances on the musical stage. From the beginnings of comic opera in the early eighteenth century, including the related genres of opera buffa and ballad opera, representations of bumbling doctors and scheming lawyers have been legion. These early comic operas, and the subsequent nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Victorian operettas, all were replete with medical and legal buffoons, but no librarians. To be fair, serious representations of the medical and legal professions also appear in non-comic operas, although to a much-lesser degree. For example, doctors as serious or evil characters are found in: Verdi’s Macbeth (1847), La Traviata (1853), and La Forza del Destino (1862); Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (1881); Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (1902); and Berg’s Wozzeck (1925).5 However, when one turns to the library profession, we must consider: what composer or librettist is going to consider staging a musical scene in a library when that setting is the standard embodiment of quiet and decorum? The same argument can be applied towards the creation of the character of a singing and dancing librarian.

The question arises: where are the librarians? The answer may be simple. Prior to the late nineteenth century, librarians existed in such few numbers that their professional presence had no impact on the daily lives of regular citizens. Why would the creators of an opera or operetta include a library or a librarian in a musical drama? The audience would have no standard by which to measure the accuracy of the depiction, either as truth or satire. If librarians were unfamiliar to the general populace prior to the late nineteenth century, then, we may ask, when did members of this profession become a recognizable element in society’s consciousness?

University libraries, in some form or another, have been around since the Library of the Sorbonne was established in 1289 in Paris; although this library did not become a centralized university library until 1762.6 Public libraries, as we recognize them today, have been with us since the Boston Public Library was chartered in 1842.7 School libraries in the United States are an early twentieth-century creation, although they had antecedents in the mid-nineteenth century.8 It is apparent that libraries serving the general opera-going public were unknown to all but a select number of patrons. And most of this latter group were only familiar with private estate libraries belonging to the wealthy and privileged. The creative dearth of library scenes on the pre-twentieth-century musical stage was likely due to society’s limited experience with libraries and librarians.

Since libraries became much more prevalent and prominent in the twentieth century, let us explore a second theory, the "shush factor," which might explain the general absence of libraries and librarians on the musical stage for the first half of the twentieth century. Two common misconceptions among non-librarians are: the library is a place of overwhelming silence, and librarians are obsessed with quiet. Shush and its variants sh! or shhh are words that have become synonymous with librarians and libraries.9 No wonder the idea of staging musical scenes in libraries, particularly public or academic libraries, is anathema to composers. The shush factor overwhelms. Not surprisingly, the word shhh is heard on the musical stage, appearing in Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. In the dialogue preceding the quintessential tribute to a spinster-librarian, "Marian the Librarian," it is Professor Harold Hill who, unexpectedly and pointedly, utters "shhh" to a vexed Marian Perdoo.10

Librarians have been a part of life in Western civilization since the late nineteenth century; yet, almost all of the examples of librarians and libraries on the musical stage are post-1950. One might wish that Sigmund Romberg’s popular operetta The Student Prince from 1924 would have had a scene in the library of Heidelberg University. However, we never see these students darkening the doors of their university, let alone the university library. Evidently, the assumed intellectual atmosphere of the library was too rarefied for operetta composers and librettists.

Before turning to those musical stage works that feature libraries and librarians, let us examine three corollary topics of inquiry: 1. the mention of libraries during the course of a show; 2. books and reading; and, 3. libraries as stage settings, although their actual presence is not integral to the plot. There are two examples from the first category: the music drama The Cradle Will Rock (1939) by Marc Blitzstein; and the Off-Broadway musical Showing Off (1989) by Douglas Bernstein and Denis Markell. In The Cradle Will Rock, the final, confrontational scene is between Mr. Mister, a wealthy industrialist, and Larry, a union organizer. In an attempt to break the workers’ solidarity, Mr. Mister adds a library for the workers to a list of union-busting bribes.11 The gift of a public library would have made Mr. Mister into a pint-size Andrew Carnegie, but the gift is rejected by Larry and the union.12 Far removed from labor-management issues of the 1930s is the song "Joshua Noveck" from Showing Off in which a young girl describes a budding adolescent crush: "Joshua Noveck kissed me today in a cubicle of the middle school library." For both The Cradle Will Rock and Showing Off, the library is only mentioned once; yet, this single reference makes both shows unique in the history of the musical stage.

There have been many songs in musical theater about books and reading. The Victorian Era Gilbert and Sullivan shows have always acknowledged the importance of education: there are members of the legal profession in Trial by Jury (1875), Patience (1881), and Utopia Limited (1893); Reginald Bunthorne, a poet, composes in his personal book of poetry in Patience; while the leading lady of Ruddigore (1887), Rose Maybud, is always reading from her book of etiquette. However, these characters are the exception, not the rule, for Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Besides Reginald and Rose, a few other characters on the musical stage have been captured book-in-hand. Musical bibliophiles include: the matrimonially-deprived and hypochondriacally-inclined Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls (1950); the anonymous librarian in New Faces of 1952 who laments Boston’s Blue Laws; the success-oriented J. Pierrepont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961); the book-loving young lovers Hodel and Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof (1964); the homework-laden Peanuts gang in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1967); and the sickly spinster Clara in Passion (1994). Books as a subject, but only remotely related to the topic of libraries and librarians on the musical stage also appear in the song "I Could Write a Book" from Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey (1940), and "Close as the Pages in a Book" from Romberg and Fields’s Up in Central Park. (1945).

Libraries as settings on the musical stage have traditionally been private libraries: those collections found in private homes and estates. The setting of the private library implies wealth and prestige, and only inadvertently a passing interest in education. One can assume that stage settings of the private studies of wealthy characters imply the presence of a library. However, these hypothetical libraries are not our concern. Therefore, eliminated from consideration for sanity’s sake are the libraries of Dr. Faust, in his many operatic incarnations, and Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady (1956) by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Of interest are only those stage works that utilize a library, according to the stage instructions, as the setting for a scene or musical number.

The following works employ private library settings, but in each case, the library is less important as a physical object and more important as a status symbol. With that thought in mind, we see these libraries as symbols of power, not of education. The absence of the library from these works would not affect the stage production in any manner. Nonetheless, private libraries as settings occur in one opera, Dialogues des Carmelites (1957) by Francis Poulenc, and two musicals, Me and My Girl (1937) by Noel Gay, L. Arthur Rose, and Douglas Furber, and The Secret Garden (1991) by Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman. Poulenc’s opera uses the private library of the Marquis de la Force for two scenes, including the opening of the opera. In Me and My Girl, the historical "Song of Hareford," which includes ancestral spirits and the promotion of the gentry’s noblesse oblige, is sung in the Hareford estate library. And several scenes are set in the library at Misselthwaite Manor in The Secret Garden. The removal of the private library as a setting in each of these productions would not significantly alter the shows in any fashion. The library is a useful and symbolic setting, nothing more.

Our attention shifts to musical stage works that depict libraries and librarians: the German opera Boulevard Solitude (1952) by Hanz Werner Henze; Meredith Willson’s The Music Man (1957); She Loves Me (1963), the musical by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joe Masteroff; the 1994 stage adaptation by Alan Mencken, Howard Ashman, and Tim Rice of Disney’s animated film Beauty and the Beast; and the upstate New York regional production of Jennie’s Will (1997) by Mark G. Simon and Pamela Monk.

The only opera with an important library scene is Boulevard Solitude by Henze. Boulevard Solitude is a resetting of the novel L’histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by Antoine-François Prévost (1731). There have been at least six operatic settings between 1856 and 1954 of the Manon story by the composers: Auber, Massenet (who wrote two Manon operas!), Kleinmichel, Puccini, and Henze.13 In Henze’s version, the fourth scene takes place in a Universitätsbibliothek. The students Armand des Grieux and his friend Francis are seated at a library table discussing life and the lovely Manon Lescaut. While Armand dreams of his beloved Manon, Francis declares his love for the library: "These peaceful hours we spend with books in silence are full of wonder and delight in learning. Nowhere have I experienced greater pleasure. Here is a world of trembling intimations of some great truth and wisdom which still stands and always stands there through all the generations."14 Even on the opera stage, one cannot escape the reference to silence, the concept apparently synonymous with all libraries.

In the musical background of the fourth scene from Boulevard Solitude, a chorus of students of both sexes are studying Latin by repeating phrases penned by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus.15 Midway through the scene, Francis steps back to join his singing classmates, i.e. the chorus, at their studies while Manon enters and comments: "Every word Catullus speaks tortures me and breaks the silence."16 The library stereotype of silence, the proverbial "shush factor," makes a repeat appearance in Boulevard Solitude: Manon is referring to the studious chanting from the student chorus. The action concludes with a passionate love duet between Armand and Manon. This scene is without parallel on the musical stage: not only is there a love duet in a setting that traditionally inspires silence, but as the characters Francis and Manon have reminded us, the students are studying in the university library. All that is lacking is a librarian, and stagings of the opera could possibly include a librarian as a supernumerary.17 As a physical embodiment of the university, the library in Boulevard Solitude is a symbol of education and power dividing the intellectual and financial haves from the have-nots. This concept parallels one of the major themes of the opera.

The German-English piano-vocal score to Henze’s Boulevard Solitude does not provide a translation of the Latin poetry by Catullus.18 Henze and Grete Weil, the opera’s librettist, chose two separate poems identified as numbers 92 (XCII) and 109 (CIX) in the collected works of Catullus. In the opera, each poem is sung in its entirety: number 92 accompanies the discussion between Armand and Francis; while number 109 supports the encounter, with love duet, between Armand and Manon. Catullus’s words provide wry commentary on Weil’s text featured in the musical foreground. As Armand frets about Manon’s fidelity, the chorus supplies a similar observation: "Lesbia’s always abusing me and can’t keep quiet about me. I’m damned if Lesbia doesn’t love me."19 After Manon appears on stage, Armand vocally identifies himself with Catullus, while Manon allies herself with Lesbia, Catullus’s pseudonymous beloved.20 Eventually, Armand and Manon lock eyes and in the ensuing duet reaffirm their love. Throughout this sequence, the chorus provides an analogous commentary on the theme of eternal love: "Great Gods, enable her to promise truly, to say it honestly and from the heart, that we may be allowed to keep lifelong this lasting pact of sacred friendship."21 The combination of the background Latin poetry and the foreground German libretto provides a richly-layered musical tapestry, too complex for the average audience member to comprehend without studying the score and text outside the opera house or concert hall.

Although Henze’s Boulevard Solitude provides the most vivid image of students using an academic library, Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man is exemplary for its portrayal of a librarian and her library. The Madison Public Library is an Iowa version of a Carnegie library. In the song "Pick-a-little, Talk-a-little," one discovers the library building was a local philanthropic donation to the town, but it is the librarian who owns the books.22 This is a most unusual situation. However, the actual reading of books is of little importance to the plot of The Music Man. At no point does one character exhort another to read, although Marian has apparently tried in the past without success: "Now, Mama, as long as the Madison Public Library was entrusted to me for the purpose of improving River City’s cultural level, I can’t help my concern that the Ladies of River City keep ignoring all my counsel and advice."23 The books and the library are not symbols of power, status, or education; instead, it is the librarian who commands attention.

Marian Perdoo, the librarian in The Music Man, is unique on the musical stage. She is the only librarian who appears as a leading character in a published musical or opera.24 Marian not only sets the standard for subsequent depictions of musical librarians, she remains peerless. And this is the "curse" of Marian the librarian: her characterization is overpowering. What creative team can hope to match Willson’s extraordinary female protagonist? The character of Marian is an interesting mélange of two conflicting worlds. Even though she physically embodies the stereotypical image of the spinster librarian with her prim and proper appearance and attitude, she is also a proto-feminist defending her beliefs and her books in the face of a town’s conservative stance. To create his musical masterwork, Willson needed a powerful female lead who could stand on equal footing with Professor Harold Hill, the "Music Man."25 Willson is successful, and so is Marian: it is Professor Hill who agrees to change his lifestyle to conform to Marian’s life. There is no indication at the ending of the show that Marian Perdoo will end her career as the town librarian to become a home-bound Mrs. Hill. Marian is a modern woman: she gets her man and keeps her job.

As mentioned above, Marian is the only librian appearing on the published musical stage; however, a male librarian, Willard Fisk, is the romantic lead in an unpublished musical, Jennie’s Will. Jennie’s Will is the story of the romance and marriage between Jennie McGraw, heiress and benefactor of Cornell University (Ithaca, New York), and Willard Fisk, Cornell’s first librarian. Jennie and Willard meet when she enters the university library and requests information on Dante’s Divine Comedy. Although they only converse in the library, after Jennie’s departure, Willard sings "Dante and Petrarch." In this song, he declares that his love for Jennie will provide personal poetical inspiration equal to Dante’s and Petrarch’s immortal loves for Beatrice and Laura, respectively. Jennie’s Will, one of two musicals to feature a librarian at work, is the only one to demonstrate the librarian’s stock-in-trade: the reference interview.26

A different spin on a public library from The Music Man is presented in She Loves Me by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joe Masteroff, a show set in Budapest during the last halcyon days prior to World War II. The library in this show provides an off-stage setting in the narrative song "A Trip to the Library" for a blossoming love affair between a heretofore overly-friendly perfumery clerk, Ilona Ritter, and her new beau, Paul the optometrist. Although "A Trip to the Library" breaks stereotypical conventions by suggesting the library as a setting for potential romance, it commences with a standard view of the library: "You’ve never seen such a place. So many books, so much marble, so quiet." Fortunately for Ilona and Paul, they overcome the "shush factor" and together begin a new chapter in their lives. The song continues with a happy Ilona declaring, "A trip to the library has made a new girl of me for suddenly I can see the magic of books."27 The idea of the "magic of books" may have been a new concept for Ilona, but is no stranger to librarians or bibliophiles.

Besides a personal trip to the library, which results in her never having to read a book again, She Loves Me also includes another narrative song "Tango Tragique," involving a solitary book as a crucial plot element. "Tango" revolves around a blind date from hell that concludes with the haunting image of a lost book.28 Haunting, at least, to librarians and book lovers. To its credit, She Loves Me appears to be the only musical stage work that includes the mention of a library card. In the duet "I Don’t Know His Name," Ilona laments her bad luck with men and declares, "Maybe I’d do much better myself with a library card. . . ."29 Ilona was romantically successful in her trip to the library, and, apparently without the advantage of a library card.

Although the library in She Loves Me is presented to the audience indirectly, through descriptive means, the show stresses the importance of literature and reading. This concept is demonstrated in the blossoming love affair between the romantic leads, Amalia Balash and George Nowack. It is their mutual love of books that ultimately draws these two kindred souls together. As an interesting aside, in Bock and Harnick’s next show Fiddler on the Roof (1964), another pair of young lovers meet and fall in love through a shared interest in reading. Unfortunately, the intellectual pursuits of the Russian student activist Perchik and the Jewish maiden Hodel result in their exile to Siberia before the curtain descends.

Earlier, the "magic of books" was mentioned. Sustaining this thought, one must consider the "magic of the library" as it occurs in the one fantasy musical on the list, Beauty and the Beast. In the stage version of the Academy Award winning film,30 we first see the beauteous Belle in the opening number absent-mindedly walking through the streets of her village while reading a romance novel. She enters a bookshop and has a successful interaction with the local bookseller, an ersatz librarian: "‘I’ll borrow this one’. ‘That one? But you’ve read it twice.’ ‘Well it’s my favorite . . . far-off places, daring sword fights, magic spells, and a prince in disguise.’"31 In a few, well-chosen words, Belle has provided a plot synopsis for the musical. Although there is a bookseller in the village, it seems that Belle is his only regular customer/patron. After leaving the bookseller’s shop, Belle continues to explain the joys of her favorite novel to a group of baffled townsfolk who have no concept of the "magic of books": "Look, there she goes the girl is so peculiar. I wonder if she’s feeling well. With a dreamy, far-off look and her nose stuck in a book, what a puzzle to the rest of us is Belle."32

As the story of Beauty and the Beast progresses, Belle trades her freedom for her father’s safety and is imprisoned in the Beast’s magical castle. To induce her cooperation, the Beast presents Belle with the castle library. In effect, Belle becomes the castle librarian and the audience knows the library will be treated with care and respect. In a show about magic and its consequences, the library is the least magical place in the Beast’s castle, and yet it transcends the mundane and becomes one of the most magical concepts in the show. It is through the power of the library and its books that the Beast first captures Belle’s heart, and when she teaches him to read, she wins his love. After this, a happy ending is ensured. It is Belle’s love of books and reading, the gift of the library, and the gift of reading that propels this modern musical retelling of an ancient French fairy tale.

In this survey, we have encountered interesting representations of libraries and librarians on the musical stage, with detours through the subjects of books and reading. Though the number of operas and musicals in this very specialized category are few, they provide a fascinating view of the diverse images of the library on the musical stage. Images that include the concepts of wealth, power, aristocracy, education, self-improvement, and romance. Indeed, we have seen that romantic encounters occur in all categories of libraries—public, private, school, academic—and are the norm for characters on the musical stage. This is not the standard image the general public perceives as representing the library, but, as librarians have always known, the "magic of the library" transcends societal stereotypes.

Ronald N. Bukoff

Hurley School of Music

Centenary College of Louisiana

Shreveport, LA 71134-1188
 
 

1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the joint Annual Conference of the Popular Cultural Association and the American Culture Association, San Diego, California, April 1, 1999.

2 Although Rupert Giles may be able to physically dispatch an assortment of vampires, demons, and monsters, his appearance and manner conform to the traditional view of the male librarian: conservative dress, soft-spoken, bookish, and bespectacled. Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuted on the United Paramount Network (UPN) March 10, 1997.

3 In April 1998, several electronic listservs were queried for suggestions concerning the topic of libraries and librarians on the musical stage. Members of the lists for the Music Library Association (MLA-L), opera (Opera-L), operetta (Operetta-L), and musical theater cast recordings (CASTREC-L) were both helpful and supportive.

4 Stephen V. Walker and Lonnie Lawson, "The Librarian Stereotype and the Movies," MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship 1.1 (1993): 16-28. Martin Raish, Librarians in the Movies: An Annotated Filmography. Available at http://library.lib.binghamton.edu/subjects/liblit/ introduction.html. Accessed March 18, 1999.

5 J. Worth Estes, "The Changing Role of the Physician in Opera," The Opera Quarterly 10. 2 (Winter 1993/94): 142-155.

6 Besides the Sorbonne Library, the university library at Oxford was created as a non-circulating library in 1327, but it did not play a major role in the English educational system until 1602 when it opened its doors as the Bodleian Library. Other major university libraries: Cambridge University Library established itself as the oldest circulating public library circa 1425; while the Harvard University Library was founded, with 302 volumes, in 1638. Raymond H. Shove, A Chronology of Librarianship from Ancient to Modern Times: An Outline and Reading Guide (Minneapolis: Library School, University of Minnesota, unpublished manuscript, 1970): 10, 13, 17, 18.

7 The Boston Public Library established professional standards for library service and opened the first branch library in 1870. The first English municipal library opened in Manchester in 1852. Shove: 26, 27.

8 In 1835, New York State passed a school district tax law permitting school districts to tax themselves in order to create a local public library, but these libraries were open to all citizens within the school district, not just the students. School libraries, as we know them, began to appear in the United States in 1905, although the great flourishing of school libraries did not begin until 1920. Shove: 34.

9 The word shush is a recently coined term dating from the 1920s. Its first literary appearances had nothing to do with any type of library setting; nonetheless, it soon became indelibly linked with librarians. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., XV, s.v. "shush."

10 Harold Hill threatens to drop a bag of marbles in the library, and when Marian cries: "No!," he replies with a resounding: "Shhh!" Meredith Willson, The Music Man (NY: Frank Music/ Meredith Willson Music, 1986): 84.

11 Mr. Mister’s list also includes a swimming pool and a private park for the children. Marc Blizstein, The Cradle Will Rock (New York: Random House, 1938): 144.

12 Between 1881 and 1907, Carnegie donated $60 million towards the construction of 2,507 public libraries (1,681 in the United States). Shove: 25.

13 The five operas based on Prévost’s novel are: Daniel-François-Esprit Auber’s Manon Lescaut (1856); Jules Massenet’s Manon (1884) and Le Portrait de Manon (1894); Richard Kleinmichel’s Schloss de l’Orme (1883); Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (1893); and Hans Werner Henze’s Boulevard Solitude (1952). Warrack: 438.

14 "Von vielen Wundern voll sind diese Stunden die mir die Bücher und die Künste schenken. Nie habe ich ein höh’res Glück empfunden. Die Welt der Wissenschaft lässt mich erschauernd die grosse Warheit ahnen die besteht und immer sein wird alles überdauernd." Hans Werner Henze, Boulevard Solitude. Text by Grete Weil, English translation by Norman Platt. (New York: Schott, 1976): 51-53.

15 Catullus (c. 84 B.C.-c. 54 B.C.) was an aristocratic Roman poet whose family was intimate with Julius Caesar. Two-thirds of Catullus’s poems are concerned with events from his life, including the two poems Hans Werner Henze chose for Boulevard Solitude. Guy Lee (editor and translator), The Poems of Catullus. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990): xviii-xix.

16 "Immer spricht Catullus schlecht über mich und kann garnicht schweigen." Henze: 61-62.

17 A supernumerary is a non-singing member of an opera cast. The cast members playing these roles often are called "spear carriers" in reference to the type of role required of supernumeraries in many historical and mythological operas.

18 An examination of Catullus’s poetry as it appears in the collected works reveals the Henze score has several typographical errors and one word ommission.

19 The original Latin text from poem number 92 (XCII): "Lesbia mi dicit semper male nec tacet umquam de me. Lesbia me dispeream nisi amat." Lee: 134-135.

20 Lesbia is a pseudonym for Catullus’s beloved, Clodia, who is the subject of many of Catullus’s autobiographical poems. Lee: xix.

21 Poem number 109 (CIX): "Di magni, facite ut uere promittere possit atque id sincere dicat et ex animo, ut liceat nobis tota perducere uita aeternum [hoc] sanctae foedus amicitiae." Lee: 142-143.

22 As the Ladies of River City tell Professor Harold Hill: "He left River City the library building, but he left all the books to her!" Meredith Willson, "Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little," The Music Man: 78-79.

23 Willson, "The Piano Lesson," The Music Man: 41-42.

24 There is a brief appearance of a librarian singing "Boston Beguine" in the New Faces of 1952 revue, but this librarian is a sketch character and onstage only for the duration of the song.

25 The position of librarian was one of the few respectable professional careers permitted to a single woman at the turn-of-the-twentieth century.

26 Jennie’s Will was commissioned for the bicentennial celebration of Dryden, New York. It received its first performance on January 24, 1997, at the Forum Theater of Tompkins-Cortland Community College, Dryden. Information on Jennie’s Will was supplied by Mark G. Simon in an electronic communication dated April 27, 1999.

27 Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joe Masteroff, She Loves Me (Garden City, NY: Fireside Theatre, 1993): 111-112.

28 "Only a trace was found: her left leg floating in a local brook. We never could find the rest of her, or the book!" "Tango Tragique" appears on the original Broadway cast album (Polydor 831 968-2, compact disc, 1987/1963), but does not appear in the published version of the musical nor in the Broadway revival cast album (Varèse Sarabande VSD 5464, compact disc, 1993).

29 Bock: 43.

30 Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to receive an Academy Award Best Picture nomination (1991). It won two Oscars for Best Score (Alan Mencken) and Best Song ("Beauty and the Beast," Howard Ashman and Alan Mencken).

31 Alan Mencken, Howard Ashman, and Tim Rice, The Beauty and the Beast. Original Broadway cast. Walt Disney Records 60861-7, compact disc, 1994.32 Beauty and the Beast. Original Broadway cast.