 The German Reeds presented respectable, family-friendly musical entertainments 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 consisted of poorly translated French operettas, risqué Victorian burlesques and incomprehensible broad farces.Gilbert took his title from a children's story, "Eyes and No Eyes; or, The Art of Seeing", in a 1799 collection of early children's literature, "Evenings at Home".