reigned supreme; and it urged the rich London merchants to support the efforts of young authors. The public gave The Temple Beau a fairly good reception. Two months later Fielding presented a new play at the Little Theatre, Haymarket. The Author's Farce, and the Pleasures of the Town, (March 30th, 1730) was made up of two parts. The first gave an amusing picture of the literary Bohemians of the time, in the person of a young author, reading his play to the critics and theatrical managers. The second contained a humorous satire on the chief absurdities of the day and was spiced with a number of personal allusions, which have now lost much of their savour. This farce was far more successful than the play which had preceded it. Naturally enough, Fielding who was writing plays in order to earn his living, was induced to cater for the general public and produce other works of the same nature. Less than a month after the Author's Farce (April 24th), Tom Thumb, a tragedy was performed. It was a spirited and sometimes truculent parody of the pomposity of heroic drama. After manifold absurd adventures, from which the hero, Tom Thumb the Great 1, always emerges with honour, all the nine characters in the play either commit suicide or are murdered in the course of the last scene. In his preface, Fielding pretends he has discovered an Elizabethan tragedy, and asserts that the verses from contemporary plays with which his farce is crammed, were borrowed by modern authors from this ancient work. Tom Thumb the Great gives the first signs of Fielding's marvellous gift of parody. Finally, on June 23rd of this same year, 1730, Rape upon Rape was performed. The name of this play was then altered to The Justice caught in his own trap, or The Coffee-House Politician. It has in common with all Fielding's plays, the elements of a modern Vaudeville with just the right touch of satire on contemporary manners to give reality to the plot. 1 This may be the first allusion to Walpole, the "great man ". Some of the characters, although rather vaguely drawn, are amusing. Among them is Mr Politic, a monomaniac, who thinks of nothing but the Eastern question and foreign politics as seen through the eyes of his coffee-house friends, and whose mind is deep in the fate of Budapest, while his daughter is being abducted under his very nose 1. But above all here is one Judge Squeezum, Fielding's first sketch, rather mechanically drawn as yet, of a type which we shall find later in his novels, the finest example being Judge Thrasher in Amelia 2. Four plays in six months! Fielding's first season had been busy and fruitful. His second was less of a success. On March 20th, 1731, a new version of Tom Thumb appeared. It was longer and accompanied by a comedy called The Letter-Writers or A New Way to Keep a Wife at Home. The play concerns the useless precautions taken by two husbands, who try to keep their wives at home by writing them threaten ing letters. The subject was thin. After a month, Fielding had to replace this little piece by The Welsh Opera (April 2nd, 1731). Still running after fortune, he had taken for his 1 This character is developed and enriched in Aunt Western (Tom Jones). 2 Already here and there, the dialogue discusses everything with open-eyed frankness : Cloris I had a rogue of a husband that robbed me of all I had, and kept a mistress under my nose, but I was even with him; for it has ever been my opinion, that a husband like a courtier, who is above doing the duties of his office, should keep a deputy. Hilaret But suppose you had been in love with your husband? Cloris Why so I was, Madam, so long as he deserved it; but love like fire, naturally goes out when it has nothing to feed on. (I, i) The following are some of Judge Squeezum's tirades-amusing in themselves, but are they in character ? Squeezum: The laws are turnpikes, only made to stop people who walk on foot, and not to interrupt those who drive through them in their coaches. The laws are like a game at loo, where a blaze of court cards is always secure, and the knaves are the safest cards in the pack. (II, ii) "Come, come child, you had better take the oath, though you are not altogether so sure. Justice should be rigorous. It is better for the public that ten innocent people should suffer, than that one guilty should escape." (II v,) His irony is obviously still a little heavy and untrained. model The Beggar's Opera, which was perhaps the greatest success of the century. The Welsh Opera was composed of dialogue interspersed with songs, one of which 'The Roast Beef of Old England' still retains its popularity. It was supposed to portray a family of Welsh rustics, but its interest lay in the many satirical allusions to Walpole and even to the royal family. These allusions became still more pointed and definite in a new version of the play called The Grub-Street Opera, which may never have been performed in public. The attacks from the Little Theatre in the Haymarket at last wore out the patience of the Government1. Mr Cross conjectures, with much probability, that some sort of intervention, more or less discreet, put an end to them; and the Little Theatre once more returned to innocuous entertainments made up of dancing, music, and acrobatic feats. So Fielding came back to Drury Lane, and in January, 1732, presented The Lottery, a mild satire on lotteries. The Modern Husband which followed on February 14th, is one of his most interesting dramatic efforts. It is a biting indictment of fashionable corruption. The central point of the situation is a husband who is prepared to sell his wife to a dissolute lord. Our author portrays this without evasion or attenuation of any kind. We have here the first clear example of that daring and sometimes brutal realism which was 1 The following is a song by Robin, the head servant, and it is a good example of the satirical tone in Fielding's play: W Great courtiers palaces contain, While small ones fear the gaol, Smaller misses For their kisses Are in Bridewell bang'd: While in vogue Lives the great rogue, Small rogues are by the dozen hang'd." The play centres in the marriage of a young lord with a girl, whom he supposes the possessor of a fortune of £10,000. All her wealth, however, lies in the golden hopes of a lottery ticket, and when she loses he abandons her. Her faithful lover then returns and marries her. always so dear to his soul. Not that his interest therein was unhealthy, but he had already made up his mind that no good could come of hiding or covering a social evil, and that it was necessary first to open up the wound before seeking to cure it. This was the first vibration of a note which sounded, time and again, in Fielding's novels. Side by side with Mr and Mrs Modern, another couple is portrayed, and in these Bellamants, of whom the husband is very much in love with his wife and yet deceives her through pure sensual weakness, are foreshadowed the conjugal relations which will be described in Amelia. Fielding worked and re-worked at his Modern Husband. As early as September, 1730, it had been announced under that title by The Craftsman 1. The prologue gives one the impression that he wanted to try a new type of comedy, and at all events to abandon farce in which the taste of the public had imprisoned him. He considered his talent to lie rather in a drama of moral and social criticism. But for this new kind of comedy the stage offered no scope. The traditions of the English stage hampered him, and he was destined to escape them only in the novel. 1cf. Cross, op. cit. I, p.95: "We hear that the town will shortly be diverted by a comedy of Mr. Fielding's, call'd the Modern Husband, which is said to bear a great reputation." 2 The play, in book-form, was dedicated to Walpole. This seems a little strange unless one of the two following explanations be accepted; either the compliments paid to Walpole were ironical (which is quite possible); or, if they were sincere or supposed to be so, Fielding was attempting a reconciliation. The following are some interesting verses from the prologue : "In early youth our author first begun To combat with the follies of the town: His want of art his unskilled muse bewailed, And where his fancy pleas'd, his judgment fail'd . . . At length, repenting frolic flights of youth, Once more he flies to nature and to truth: In virtue's just defence aspires to fame, And courts applause without the applauder's shame." He finally asks his audience to help him to: Restore the sinking honour of the stage, The stage which was not for low farce designed The public received The Modern Husband coldly not to say inimicably, and Fielding's enemies, who were already numerous and noisy, made merry at his expense in the GrubStreet Journal. Their hostility was soon destined to find a further outlet. In The Old Debauchees, or the Jesuit Caught, Fielding put upon the stage an episode which had actually taken place, the year before, in France at Aix, where Father Girard, a Jesuit, had seduced one of his penitents, Mlle Cadière. The affair had caused a terrible scandal1. Fielding worked the whole incident into a rather gross and virulently anti-papist drama 2. He followed it by a burlesque-tragedy in which the scene of action was a well-known house of illfame, the proprietress of which appeared as one of the characters in the play. This Covent Garden Tragedy was in many places extremely amusing. But the subject was altogether too coarse and the public could hardly sit through the first performance of June 1st, 1732. Fielding, taken aback, hastened to replace his farce by an adaptation of Le Médecin malgré lui called The MockDoctor or The Dumb Lady Cured, a translation of Molière's work, turned into a sort of English musical comedy, and filled with allusions to Dr Misaubin, a contemporary physician. 1 For particulars of this scandal, cf. Michelet, Histoire de France, vol. 18, p.105, seqq. A Jesuit attempts to seduce a young girl and is helped by her father who trusts him blindly. The girl pretends not to understand what the Jesuit wants, meets him at the appointed place, and outwits him. Here the influence of Molière's Tartuffe is obvious. As an example of burlesque (used again in Joseph Andrews) one may quote the form of exorcism pronounced by the Jesuit: "Exorciso te, exorciso te, Satan, ton dapamibominos prosephe podas ocus Achilleus.” (II, 5). " Quoted at the beginning of the volume are Prolegomena, which contain the following definition of tragedy: Tragedy is a thing of five acts written dialogue-wise, consisting of several fine similes, metaphors, and moral phrases, with here and there a speech upon liberty.” The following is an example of parody: 'Oh, if you love Stormandra, come with me, |