“A comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable.
But life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.“
(Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews)
Above: English writer Henry Fielding
Eskişehir, Türkiye
Monday 21 April 2024
Henry Fielding is one of the most well-known authors from the Enlightenment period (17th – 18th century).
He was renowned for his captivating storytelling, sharp wit and fantastic social commentaries, but a lot of people nowadays don’t know him as he has been overshadowed by better known novelists such as Mary Shelley (1797 – 1851) and Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870).
Above: English writer Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 – 1851)
Above: English writer Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870)
Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 – 1754) was an English writer and magistrate known for the use of humour and satire in his works.
His 1749 comic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling was a seminal work in the genre.
Along with Samuel Richardson, Fielding is seen as the founder of the traditional English novel.
Above: English writer Samuel Richardson (1689 – 1761)
He also played an important role in the history of law enforcement in the United Kingdom, using his authority as a magistrate to found the Bow Street Runners, London’s first professional police force.
Above: A photograph of an engraving in The Writings of Charles Dickens, Volume 4, Oliver Twist – “Oliver waits for the Bow Street Runners“.
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book.
The English word to describe such a work derives from the Italian: novella for “new“, “news“, or “short story (of something new)“, itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning “new“.
The novel has a continuous and comprehensive history of about 2,000 years, with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella.
The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel.
Above: Scottish writer Walter Scott (1771 – 1832)
Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term “romance“.
Above: American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864)
Above: American writer Herman Melville (1819 – 1891)
Above: English writer Ann Radcliffe (1762 – 1823)
Above: English writer John Cowper Powys (1872 – 1963)
A novel is a fictional narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, while the romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents.
Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also novels, including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
Such “romances” should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love.
Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as the world’s first novel, because of its early use of the experience of intimacy in a narrative form.
There is considerable debate over this, however, as there were certainly long fictional prose works that preceded it.
The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of classical Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644), and Qing dynasty (1616 – 1911).
An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain.
Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era.
Literary historian Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century.
Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes audio books, web novels, and ebooks.
Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in graphic novels.
While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in the 19th century, they have only become popular recently.
A novel is a long, fictional narrative.
The novel in the modern era usually makes use of a literary prose style.
The development of the prose novel at this time was encouraged by innovations in printing, and the introduction of cheap paper in the 15th century.
Several characteristics of a novel might include:
- Fictional narrative:
Fictionality is most commonly cited as distinguishing novels from historiography.
However this can be a problematic criterion.
Throughout the early modern period authors of historical narratives would often include inventions rooted in traditional beliefs in order to embellish a passage of text or add credibility to an opinion.
Historians would also invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes.
Novels can, on the other hand, depict the social, political and personal realities of a place and period with clarity and detail not found in works of history.
Several novels, for example Ông cố vấn written by Hữu Mai, were designed to be and defined as a “non-fiction” novel which purposefully recorded historical facts in the form of a novel.
- Literary prose:
While prose rather than verse became the standard of the modern novel, the ancestors of the modern European novel include verse epics in the Romance language of southern France, especially those by Chrétien de Troyes (1160 – 1191), and in Middle English (Geoffrey Chaucer’s (1343 – 1400) The Canterbury Tales).
Above: Chrétien de Troyes in his work studio
Even in the 19th century, fictional narratives in verse, such as Lord Byron’s (1788 – 1824) Don Juan (1824), Alexander Pushkin’s (1799 -1837) Yevgeniy Onegin (1833), and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s (1806 – 1861) Aurora Leigh (1856), competed with prose novels.
Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate (1986), composed of 590 Onegin stanzas, is a more recent example of the verse novel.
- Experience of intimacy:
Both in 11th-century Japan and 15th-century Europe, prose fiction created intimate reading situations.
Lady Murasaki’s use of intimacy and irony in The Tale of Genji as “anticipated Cervantes as the first novelist“.
On the other hand, verse epics, including the Odyssey and Aeneid, had been recited to select audiences, though this was a more intimate experience than the performance of plays in theaters.
A new world of individualistic fashion, personal views, intimate feelings, secret anxieties, “conduct“, and “gallantry” spread with novels and the associated prose-romance.
- Length:
The novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the novella.
However, in the 17th century, critics saw the romance as of epic length and the novel as its short rival.
A precise definition of the differences in length between these types of fiction, is, however, not possible.
The philosopher and literary critic György Lukács argued that the requirement of length is connected with the notion that a novel should encompass the totality of life.
Above: Hungarian literary critic Lukacs György (1885 – 1971)
However, according to the English novelist E. M. Forster, a novel should be composed with at least 50,000 words.
Above: English author Edward Morgan Forster (1879 – 1970)
A novel should encompass the totality of life.
There is so much emphasis these days on young and attractive writers that I sometimes fear that I am not the right type for today’s publishing scene.
Truth be told, publishers do rejoice when they find an author who can look sexy on the back cover and be promoted as the next young discovery.
However, there are always exceptions.
In 2003, the winner of the Whitbread Award was Norman Lebrecht, age 54, for his novel The Song of Names.
In the Guardian newspaper he said:
“Here there are agents who are prepared to put their faith in someone who is on the wrong side of 50.“
Above: British writer Norman Lebrecht
Others who started late and thrived include Annie Proulx, Penelope Fitzgerald and Mary Wesley.
Above: American writer Annie Proulx
Above: English writer Penelope Fitzgerald (1916 – 2000)
Above: English novelist Mary Wesley (1912 – 2002)
Lebrecht makes the case for mature writers:
“When I read a novel, I like to hear the voice of someone who has experience.
There are many art forms that are particularly suited to young people, in which young people can have their say – there is pop music, there is theatre – much better suited to the very young than to the middle-aged, but the novel and the symphony are contemplative forms, into which you try to pack as much of what you know about life as possible, as much as you never even knew you knew.“
Henry “Harry” Fielding was born on 22 April 1707 at Sharpham Park, the seat of his mother’s family in Sharpham, Somerset, England.
Above: Abbots Sharpham, England
He was the son of Lt.-Gen. Edmund Fielding and Sarah Gould, daughter of Sir Henry Gould – an aristocratic family which allowed him to make important connections very early on in his life.
A scion of the Earl of Denbigh, his father was nephew of William Fielding, 3rd Earl of Denbigh.
Harry early on showed an aptitude for literature and language, but tragedy sadly struck Harry’s family when he was very young.
His mother died when he was 11.
He was soon stuck in a custody battle brought by his grandmother against his charming but irresponsible father, Lt Gen. Edmund Fielding.
She believed that Edmund wouldn’t raise his son with the care and attention that the boy needed.
The settlement placed Henry in his grandmother’s care, but he continued to see his father in London.
Edmund couldn’t be bothered with Harry’s care so he sent him away to boarding school, the most well-known boarding school in England, Eton College.
Above: Eton College, Eton, Berkshire, England
Eton is known for its history, wealth, and notable alumni – out of 57 Prime Ministers, 20 went to Eton College.
The school is seen as a breeding ground for the Tory Party.
Fielding was considered a gentleman because he was related to nobility, but it was a title only because he had no inheritance.
At Eton, Harry honed his literary skills and developed a deep appreciation for classical literature and drama, sparking a passion for writing and acting.
It was at Eton that Harry made lifelong friends with one of the most influential Prime Ministers in English history, William Pitt the Elder.
Above: British Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder (1708 – 1778)
“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.“
John Rushkin
Above: English writer John Rushkin (1819 – 1900)
What set Harry apart though was his sense of humour and his talent to communicate that humour in writing.
Humour is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement.
People of all ages and cultures respond to humour.
Most people are able to experience humour — be amused, smile or laugh at something funny (such as a pun or joke)—and thus are considered to have a sense of humour.
The hypothetical person lacking a sense of humour would likely find the behaviour to be inexplicable, strange, or even irrational.
Though ultimately decided by subjective personal taste, the extent to which a person finds something humorous depends on a host of variables, including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, intelligence and context.
For example, young children may favour slapstick such as Punch and Judy puppet shows or cartoons such as Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes, whose physical nature makes it accessible to them.
Above: Traditional Punch and Judy booth, Swanage, Dorset, England
By contrast, more sophisticated forms of humour, such as satire, require an understanding of its social meaning and context, and thus tend to appeal to a more mature audience.
Perhaps Fielding has lost society’s favour because it is easier to understand social context closer to our own?
Dickens lived in the 19th century, Fielding in the 18th, so Dickens being closer to 21st century society may seem more relevant to modern sensibilities.
Above: A young Charles Dickens
So the young who want to write a novel, a screenplay, a play or a short story look in all the wrong places when seeking to structure plot or make their characters come alive.
Aspiring screenwriters take their cue from the top-grossing film of the moment or the hottest TV show of the day.
Aspiring novelists look to the latest bookseller lists.
Sometimes, but not always, there are excellent novels on the bestseller lists
Some, but not all, superb movies make a lot of money at the box office.
But often the result of emulating the hit of the moment is merely a watered-down version of the original.
There is a better place to look:
The great classic novels of the past.
While most Eton graduates went on to Oxford or Cambridge, Fielding did not.
In 1725, young Henry had recently completed his studies at Eton.
Above: Coat of arms of Eton College
By all reports, he was tall (“rising above six feet“) and powerfully built, possessed of a quick wit and quicker temper, and a face most kindly described as “not handsome“.
What he definitely did not possess, however, was a respectable fortune.
Henry’s father was a fast-living and impecunious army officer who had already married twice and sired nearly a dozen children to feed, clothe, and house with some degree of respectability.
Edmund eventually died in a debtor’s prison, leaving behind an estate valued at £5.
Though related to the aristocracy and raised as a gentleman, young Henry found himself heir to nothing.
So he decided on the most popular 18th century course of action for improving one’s fortunes:
Marrying an heiress.
Above: Henry Fielding
Residing in Lyme Regis, Dorset in the summer of 1725, 18-year-old Henry’s affections soon latched onto 15-year-old Sarah Andrew and her sizable inheritance.
Above: Lyme Regis, Dorset, England
(Sara at the age of 15 had just become a rich heiress on the early death of her father.)
But Sarah (and her fortune) were closely guarded by her uncle, Andrew Tucker, who hoped to see Sarah married to his own son and viewed Henry as an unsavory rival.
Undaunted, Henry persevered throughout the fall, and one wonders if the adolescent Sarah was as encouraging as her guardian was not.
Above: Sarah Andrews
Henry, accompanied by several friends and a servant named James Lewis was soon involved in a drunken brawl.
On 2 September 1725, he was brought before the town’s magistrates on a charge of assault against Joseph Channon a servant of the town miller.
Although the outcome is not known it is thought that the attack may have been at the instigation of Sara’s guardian Andrew Miller who had hopes that Sara would marry his own son John.
It seems that Henry was having some success in his pursuit of Sara, since he was still in Lyme two months later.
On Sunday 11 November 1725, matters came to a head when Henry assisted by his servant attempted to abduct Sara as she was walking to church with Andrew Tucker and his family.
The attempt failed and the same day Tucker laid a charge before the magistrates against Fielding and his servant for an attack on his person.
Records in Lyme Regis show Tucker had Henry and his servant “bound over to keep the peace, as Tucker was in fear of his life or some bodily hurt to be done or to be procured to be done to him by Fielding and his man.
Tucker feared that Fielding would beat, maim or kill him.“
His servant was soon captured, but Henry eluded capture by the constables and left the town the following day, but not before putting up a hand written poster ridiculing the Tuckers, now on display in Lyme Regis Museum:
This is to give notice to the world that Andrew Tucker and his son, John Tucker, are clowns and cowards.
Witness my hand
Henry Fielding
Above: Public notice on display in Lyme Regis Museum
Miss Andrews was swiftly hustled from Lyme Regis to Modbury, where she was soon married to a more suitable gentleman.
After this unsuccessful attempt at marrying money, Fielding decided he would do better by earning it.
As he wrote later, his choice was to be “a Hackney writer or a Hackney coachman“.
Fortunately for us, he chose the former.
Henry Fielding, in his first writings used two forms of “rhetorical poses” that were popular during the 18th century.
In 1728, his first comedy, ‘Love in Several Masques‘, was staged.
Love in Several Masques was advertised on 15 January 1728 in the London Evening Post and first ran on 16 February 1728 at the Theatre Royal.
Performances were held on 17, 19 and 20 February, with the 3rd night being the author’s benefit.
The play was never revived.
The cast included four members among some of the most talented of the Theatre Royal actors.
Although it only ran for four nights, this was a great feat because John Gay’s (1685 – 1732) popular The Beggar’s Opera was performed during the same time and dominated the theatrical community during its run.
Above: Painting based on scene 11, act 3 of The Beggar’s Opera by William Hogarth (1728) in the Tate Britain
Love in Several Masques was first printed on 23 February 1728 by John Watts.
A Dublin edition appeared in 1728.
The play was later collected by John Watts in the 1742 and 1745 Dramatick Works and by Andrew Millar in the 1755 edition of Fielding’s works.
It was later translated and printed in German as Lieb unter verschiedenen Larven in 1759.
Most of the information on the play and its run is known because of Fielding’s preface in the printed edition of the play.
The printed Love in Several Masques is dedicated “To the Right Honourable the Lady Mary Wortley Montague“, his cousin.
It is probable that she read the original draft of the play, which is alluded to in the dedication.
Information on her reading the draft comes from a letter written in approximately September 1727.
In the letter, Fielding writes:
“I have presumed to send your Ladyship a copy of the play which you did me the honour of reading three acts of last spring.
I hope it may meet as light a censure from your Ladyship’s judgment as then.
For while your goodness permits me (what I esteem the greatest and indeed only happiness of my life) to offer my unworthy performances to your perusal, it will be entirely from your sentence that they will be regarded or disesteemed by me.“
The play was completed during September 1727.
It was listed in the British Journal of 23 September 1727 as being scheduled.
There is little information on Fielding’s editing of the work, and none to support that anyone suggested corrections, except Anne Oldfield, whom he thanked in the preface for supplying corrections.
The prologue, dedication and preface were probably composed during January or February 1728, with the dedication and preface most likely composed between the last nights of the show, 20 and 21 February, and its publication, 23 February.
The play was not a great success.
“A lover, when he is admitted to cards, ought to be solemnly silent, and observe the motions of his mistress.
He must laugh when she laughs, sigh when she sighs.
In short, he should be the shadow of her mind.
A lady, in the presence of her lover, should never want a looking-glass.
As a beau, in the presence of his looking-glass, never wants a mistress.“
(Henry Fielding, Love in Several Masques)
The fear of rejection is by far the most common fear of writers and artists of all kinds – in fact, of all human beings.
Generally, when you stop yourself from doing anything, at the heart of that self-sabotage is the fear that you (or what you create) will be rejected.
When you were young, maybe your parents encouraged you to take a chance on doing something by saying:
“The worst that can happen is that they can say No.”
What they didn’t realize was that this IS the worst that can happen.
If you have a memory of asking someone out when you were a teenager and that person said No, you will probably still be able to call up that feeling of “I wish I could just sink into the earth” humiliation.
Unfortunately, children quickly become expert at ridiculing others who are different – too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too geeky, too anything.
You learn to fit in, to do what everybody else is doing, desperate not to stand out.
The irony is that every breakthrough in writing or in any other field of endeavour comes from doing something different from what the average person is doing.
The hard truth about rejection is that you cannot avoid it.
There is not a single successful writer who has not had work rejected at one point or another.
Most of them had many, many rejections before they had their first success.
- It took J. K. Rowling a year to find a publisher for the first Harry Potter book.
There was only one offer, from Bloomsbury, for £2,500 ($4,900).
At the end of their meeting her publisher’s parting words were:
“You will never make any money out of children’s books, Jo.“
Above: British writer Joanne Rowling
- Melody Beattie’s non-fiction book Co-Dependent No More was turned down by 20 publishers.
It went on to sell 5 million copies.
- Joanne Harris wrote three books that failed to find a publisher.
Her 4th book, the novel Chocolat, became an international bestseller and spawned an equally successful film.
Above: English – French writer Joanne Harris
- John Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was rejected by 15 agents and 26 publishers before Wynwood Press agreed to publish it – in an edition of 5,000 copies.
The book didn’t become a bestseller until Grisham’s next three were hugely successful.
Above: American writer John Grisham
- Wilbur Smith’s first novel found no publisher and so he decided that writing wasn’t for him.
Eighteen months later, his agent convinced him to have another try.
That book, When the Lion Feeds, was accepted.
Since then his novels have sold 84 million copies.
Above: South African writer Wilbur Smith (1933 – 2021)
You have the impulse to write, but maybe you are not sure yet exactly what you want to write.
It is not unusual for creative people, like Henry Fielding, to try to do everything, but if you aim to be a professional writer, it makes sense to focus on one type of writing and work hard to gain expertise and success in that arena.
The easiest way to figure out what you should write is to answer this question:
What do you love to read?
Write what you are passionate about, not what you think will sell.
Be guided by what you love to read.
Be forewarned.
If you decide you want to write a novel, it is a long term commitment.
At the age of 21, Fielding left to study at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands where it was much cheaper than any of the London schools.
Eventually, even Leiden was more than he could afford.
Above: Seal of Leiden University, Netherlands
A university city since 1575, Leiden has been one of Europe’s most prominent scientific centres for more than four centuries.
Leiden is a typical university city, university buildings are scattered throughout the city and the many students from all over the world give the city a bustling, vivid and international atmosphere.
Above: Leiden, Netherlands
Many important scientific discoveries have been made here, giving rise to Leiden’s motto:
‘City of Discoveries‘.
The city houses Leiden University, the oldest university of the Netherlands, and Leiden University Medical Center.
Leiden University is one of Europe’s top universities, with 13 Nobel Prize winners.
It is a member of the League of European Research Universities and positioned highly in all international academic rankings.
It is twinned with Oxford, the UK’s oldest university.
Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences (Leidse Hogeschool) together have around 35,000 students.
Modern scientific medical research and teaching started in the early 18th century in Leiden with Boerhaave.
Leiden is a city with a rich cultural heritage, not only in science, but also in the arts.
One of the world’s most famous painters, Rembrandt, was born and educated in Leiden.
Above: Self portrait, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 – 1669)
Since nothing by Fielding himself has come down to us to illustrate his stay at Leiden, his biographers turned to every little thing he ever said about the Netherlands and the Dutch, supplementing with local colour of their own making.
Biographer Donald Thomas (1934 – 2022) very pıcturesquely places “the Castle of Antwerp“, Fielding’s first Leiden address, “near the wharf of the little harbour where the Old Rhine and the New Rhine joın“.
Above: Leiden Castle
Biographers Martin and Ruthe Battestin mention “the famous printing house of the Elzevirs“, but could have added that it hardly published anything of importance in the three decades before it was sold in 1713.
They also refer to Grotius as one of his professors, which may lead biographer Paulson to assume that this was “Hugo Grotius, the noted Biblical scholar“.
Above: Dutch lawyer-statesman Hugo Grotius (1583 – 1645)
A year later Fielding returned to England with all kinds of unpaid debts behind him.
Henry began writing plays again, many of them ridiculing the society and politics of the time.
Some of his work savagely criticised the government of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole.
Above: British Prime Minister Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford (1676 – 1745), known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman and Whig politician who, as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons, is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Although the exact dates of Walpole’s dominance, dubbed the “Robinocracy“, are a matter of scholarly debate, the period 1721–1742 is often used.
He dominated the Walpole–Townshend ministry, as well as the subsequent Walpole ministry, and holds the record as the longest-serving British Prime Minister.
Walpole’s uninterrupted run of 20 years as Prime Minister is rightly regarded as one of the major feats of British political history.
Explanations are usually offered in terms of his expert handling of the political system after 1720, and his unique blending of the surviving powers of the Crown with the increasing influence of the Commons“.
Walpole was a Whig from the gentry class who was first elected to Parliament in 1701 and held many senior positions.
He was a country squire and looked to country gentlemen for his political base.
His leadership in Parliament reflected his reasonable and persuasive oratory, his ability to move both the emotions as well as the minds of men, and, above all, his extraordinary self-confidence.
Walpole’s policies sought moderation.
He worked for peace, lower taxes and growing exports and allowed a little more tolerance for Protestant Dissenters.
He mostly avoided controversy and high-intensity disputes as his middle way attracted moderates from both the Whig and Tory camps, but his appointment to Chancellor of the Exchequer after the South Sea Bubble stock-market crisis drew attention to perceived protection of political allies by Walpole.
Above: Robert Walpole
(The South Sea Company (officially: The Governor and Company of the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the South Seas and other parts of America and for the encouragement of the Fishery) was a British joint-stock company founded in January 1711, created as a public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of the national debt.
To generate income, in 1713 the company was granted a monopoly (the Asiento de Negros) to supply African slaves to the islands in the “South Seas” and South America.
When the company was created, Britain was involved in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 – 1714) and Spain and Portugal controlled most of South America.
There was thus no realistic prospect that trade would take place, and as it turned out, the Company never realised any significant profit from its monopoly.
However, Company stock rose greatly in value as it expanded its operations dealing in government debt, and peaked in 1720 before suddenly collapsing to little above its original flotation price.
The notorious economic bubble thus created, which ruined thousands of investors, became known as the South Sea Bubble.)
Above: Coat of arms of the South Sea Company (1711 – 1853)
Walpole was one of the greatest politicians in British history.
He played a significant role in sustaining the Whig party, safeguarding the Hanoverian succession, and defending the principles of the Glorious Revolution (1688).
He established stable political supremacy for the Whig party and taught succeeding ministers how best to establish an effective working relationship between Crown and Parliament.
Walpole, a polarising figure, had many opponents, the most important of whom were in the Country Party, such as Lord Bolingbroke (who had been his political enemy since the days of Queen Anne) and William Pulteney (a capable Whig statesman who felt snubbed when Walpole failed to include him in the Cabinet).
Above: Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678 – 1751)
Above: William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath (1684 – 1764)
Bolingbroke and Pulteney ran a periodical called The Craftsman in which they incessantly denounced the Prime Minister’s policies.
Walpole was also satirized and parodied extensively.
He was often compared to the criminal Jonathan Wild as, for example, John Gay did in his farcical Beggar’s Opera.
Above: Book illustration of London underworld figure Jonathan Wild (1682 – 1725)
Walpole’s other enemies included Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson.
Above: Irish writer Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745)
Above: English writer Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)
Above: English writer Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)
Walpole’s political career began in January 1701 when he won a seat in the English general election at Castle Rising in Norfolk.
He left Castle Rising in 1702 so that he could represent the neighbouring borough of King’s Lynn, a pocket borough that would re-elect him for the remainder of his political career.
Voters and politicians nicknamed him “Robin“.
(Pocket boroughs were boroughs which could effectively be controlled by a single person who owned at least half of the “burgage tenements“, the occupants of which had the right to vote in the borough’s parliamentary elections.
A wealthy patron therefore had merely to buy up these specially qualified houses and install in them his own tenants, selected for their willingness to do their landlord’s bidding, or given such precarious forms of tenure that they dared not displease him.
As there was no secret ballot until 1872, the landowner could evict electors who did not vote for the two men he wanted.
A common expression referring to such a situation was that “Mr A had been elected on Lord B’s interest“.)
Walpole secured the support of the people and of the House of Commons with a policy of avoiding war.
He used his influence to prevent King George II from entering the War of the Polish Succession in 1733, because it was a dispute between the Bourbons and the Habsburgs.
Above: British King George II (1683 – 1760)
Walpole boasted:
“There are 50,000 men slain in Europe this year, and not one Englishman.”
By avoiding wars, Walpole could lower taxes.
He reduced the national debt with a sinking fund and by negotiating lower interest rates.
He reduced the land tax.
His long-term goal was to replace the land tax, which was paid by the local gentry, with excise and customs taxes, which were paid by merchants and ultimately by consumers.
Walpole joked that the landed gentry resembled hogs, which squealed loudly whenever anyone laid hands on them.
By contrast, he said, merchants were like sheep and yielded their wool without complaint.
The joke backfired in 1733 when he was defeated in a major battle to impose excise taxes on wine and tobacco.
To reduce the threat of smuggling, the tax was to be collected not at ports but at warehouses.
This new proposal, however, was extremely unpopular and aroused the opposition of the nation’s merchants.
Walpole agreed to withdraw the bill before Parliament voted on it, but he dismissed the politicians who had dared to oppose it in the first place.
Thus, Walpole lost a considerable element of his Whig Party to the Opposition.
After the general elections of 1734, Walpole’s supporters still formed a majority in the House of Commons although they were less numerous than before.
However, Walpole’s broader popularity had begun to wane.
In 1736, an increase in the tax on gin inspired riots in London.
The even more serious Porteous Riots (April 1736) broke out in Edinburgh after the King pardoned a captain of the guard (John Porteous) who had commanded his troops to shoot a group of protesters.
Above: The Porteous Mob, James Drummond (1855)
Though these events diminished Walpole’s popularity, they failed to shake his majority in Parliament.
Walpole’s domination over the House of Commons was highlighted by the ease with which he secured the rejection of Sir John Barnard’s plan to reduce the interest on the national debt.
Walpole was also able to persuade Parliament to pass the Licensing Act of 1737 under which London theatres were regulated.
The Act revealed a disdain for Swift, Pope, Fielding, and other literary figures who had attacked his government in their works.
Above: Speaker Arthur Onslow calling upon Sir Robert Walpole to speak in the House of Commons
The year 1737 saw the death of Walpole’s close friend Queen Caroline.
Though her death did not end his personal influence with George II, who had grown loyal to the Prime Minister during the preceding years, Walpole’s domination of government continued to decline.
Above: British Queen Caroline (1683 – 1737)
His opponents acquired a vocal leader in the Prince of Wales who was estranged from his father, the King.
Several young politicians including William Pitt the Elder and George Grenville formed a faction known as the “Patriot Boys” and joined the Prince of Wales in opposition.
Above: Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707 – 1751)
Walpole’s failure to maintain a policy of avoiding military conflict eventually led to his fall from power.
Under the Treaty of Seville (1729), Great Britain agreed not to trade with the Spanish colonies in North America.
Spain claimed the right to board and search British vessels to ensure compliance with this provision.
Disputes, however, broke out over trade with the West Indies.
Walpole attempted to prevent war but was opposed by the King, the House of Commons, and by a faction in his own Cabinet.
In 1739 Walpole abandoned all efforts to stop the conflict and commenced the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739 – 1748) (so called because Robert Jenkins, a Welsh mariner, claimed that a Spaniard inspecting his vessel had severed his ear).
Above: Trade map of the West Indies and North America during the war, 1741
Walpole’s influence continued to dramatically decline even after the war began.
Walpole was alleged to have presided over an immense increase in corruption and to have enriched himself enormously whilst in office.
Parliamentary committees were formed to investigate these charges.
In 1742 when the House of Commons was prepared to determine the validity of a by-election in Chippenham, Walpole and others agreed to treat the issue as a motion of no confidence.
As Walpole was defeated on the vote, he agreed to resign from the Government.
The nursery rhyme “Who Killed Cock Robin?” may allude to the fall of Walpole, who carried the popular nickname “Cock Robin“.
(Contemporaries satirised the Walpole regime as the “Robinocracy” or as the “Robinarchy“.)
The earliest record of the rhyme is in Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, published in 1744, which noted only the first four verses.
The extended version given below was not printed until 1770.
Who killed Cock Robin?
“I“, said the Sparrow,
“With my bow and arrow“,
“I killed Cock Robin.“
Who saw him die?
“I“, said the Fly, “with my little teeny eye“,
“I saw him die.“
Who caught his blood?
“I“, said the Fish,
“With my little dish“
“I caught his blood.“
Who’ll make the shroud?
“I“, said the Beetle,
“With my thread and needle“,
“I’ll make the shroud.“
Who’ll dig his grave?
“I“, said the Owl,
“With my pick and trowel“,
“I’ll dig his grave.“
Who’ll be the parson?
“I“, said the Rook,
“With my little book“,
“I’ll be the parson.“
Who’ll be the clerk?
“I“, said the Lark,
“If it’s not in the dark“,
“I’ll be the clerk.“
Who’ll carry the link?
“I”, said the Linnet,
“I’ll fetch it in a minute“,
“I’ll carry the link.“
Who’ll be chief mourner?
“I“, said the Dove,
“I mourn for my love“,
“I’ll be chief mourner.”
Who’ll carry the coffin?
“I“, said the Kite,
“If it’s not through the night“,
“I’ll carry the coffin“.
Who’ll bear the pall?
“We“, said the Wren,
“Both the cock and the hen“,
“We’ll bear the pall.“
Who’ll sing a psalm?
“I“, said the Thrush,
As she sat on a bush,
“I’ll sing a psalm.“
Who’ll toll the bell?
“I“, said the Bull,
“Because I can pull“,
“I’ll toll the bell.“
All the birds of the air
Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,
When they heard the bell toll
For poor Cock Robin.
The rhyme is connected with the fall of Robert Walpole’s government in 1742, since Robin is a diminutive form of Robert and the first printing is close to the time of the events mentioned.
Above: Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford with his secretary Henry Bilson-Legge
The news of the naval disaster against Spain in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias also prompted the end of his political career.
Above: The Battle of Cartagena de Indias (13 March – 20 May 1741)
King George II wept on his resignation and begged to see him frequently.
As part of his resignation the King agreed to elevate him to the House of Lords as the Earl of Orford, Viscount Walpole and Baron Walpole of Houghton in the County of Norfolk, on 6 February 1742.
Five days later he formally relinquished the seals of office.
Although no longer First Lord of the Treasury, Walpole remained politically involved as an advisor.
His former colleagues were still pleased to see him, perhaps in part because he retained the King’s favour.
After his resignation, his main political roles were to support the government by means of advice, to dole out some patronage and to speak on the Ministry’s behalf in the Lords.
A committee was created to inquire into Walpole’s Ministry but no substantial evidence of wrongdoing or corruption was discovered.
Above: Satire on Nicholas Paxton, solicitor to the Treasury, and his refusal to answer questions from the Committee of Secrecy enquiring into the conduct of Robert Walpole.
Though no longer a member of the Cabinet, Orford continued to maintain personal influence with George II and was often dubbed the “Minister behind the Curtain” for this advice and influence.
His health, never good, deteriorated rapidly toward the end of 1744.
Walpole died in London on 18 March 1745 from a bladder stone, aged 68 years.
Above: St Martin of Tours, Houghton – Final resting place of Robert Walpole
Fielding’s play Rape upon Rape (1730) begins with a prologue that describes the origins of the heroic Muse who uses satire to deal with those who are villains.
However, she is not limited to satire, and the heroic Muse is said to provoke individuals towards the destruction of evil in general.
After this set up, Fielding introduces a traditional comedic love plot in which Hilaret contemplates running off and marrying Constant.
Her father, Politic, stops her from running off with Constant to argue about the role of private and public concerns in regards to love.
Their discussion serves as a model for the actions surrounding Justice Squeezum and Justice Worthy, particularly Justice Squeezum’s corruption when it comes to the judicial system, and the play promotes the need for virtue within public and private settings.
As the plot progresses, Hilaret is set upon by Ramble, which provokes her to cry out “rape“.
During this time, Constant, in an attempt to help a woman, is also accused of rape.
They are taken before Justice Squeezum, who reveals his abuses of the judicial system.
Hilaret comically forms a plot to catch the corrupt Justice Squeezum.
He is able to overcome it because Fielding promotes dealing with corruption only through legal means, which Hilaret fails to do when she resorts to relying on falsified evidence.
Although Justice Squeezum and his corrupt nature almost overcomes the other characters, the manner in which this happens is done in a farcical way to provoke laughter.
Also in 1730, Fielding wrote Tom Thumb the Great: A Burlesque Tragedy.
“Petition me no petitions, Sir, today;
Let other hours be set apart for business.
Today it is our pleasure to be drunk;
And this our queen shall be as drunk as we.”
(Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb the Great)
In The Temple Beau (1730), Wilding is a young law student who gives up his studies to seek pleasure.
He is a rake who uses people and wishes to marry Bellaria simply for money.
Unlike Love in Several Masques, Fielding cares more about revealing hypocrisy than with a discussion of love and lovers, but he portrays the hypocrites in a manner that emphasises a comedic response instead of censure.
Other characters want to have Bellaria, including the virtuous man Veromil and his foil Valentine who is unable to control his desires for Bellaria.
Valentine eventually pairs with Clarissa, a character of little substance within the play, Veromil marries Bellaria, and Wilding does not marry.
Most of Fielding’s plays were written in five acts, but The Author’s Farce (1730) was written in three.
The opening introduces the main character, Harry Luckless, and his attempts to woo Harriot, the daughter of his landlady Mrs. Moneywood.
The play begins in much the same way as Fielding’s earlier romance-themed comedies, but quickly becomes a different type of play, mocking the literary and theatrical establishment.
Luckless is trying to become a successful writer, but lacks the income that would allow him to concentrate on his writing.
Although others try to support him financially, Luckless refuses their help.
When his friend, Witmore, pays his rent behind his back, Luckless steals the money from Mrs. Moneywood.
In the second act, Luckless seeks assistance to help finish his play, The Pleasures of the Town, but is poorly advised, and the work is rejected by his local theatre.
Luckless revises his play and succeeds in finding an alternative venue, leading to the third act, in which the work is performed as a puppet show, with actors taking the place of the puppets.
The third act is dominated by the puppet show, a play within the play.
It begins when the Goddess of Nonsense chooses a mate from a series of suitors along the River Styx.
All dunces, the suitors include Dr. Orator, Sir Farcical Comic, Mrs. Novel, Bookseller, Poet, Monsieur Pantomime, Don Tragedio and Signior Opera.
The goddess eventually chooses a foreign castrato opera singer as her favourite — Signior Opera — after he sings an aria about money.
Mrs. Novel then claims that she loved Signior Opera, and died giving birth to his child.
At this revelation, the goddess becomes upset, but is quick to forgive.
The play within the play is interrupted by Constable and Murdertext, who arrive to arrest Luckless “for abusing Nonsense“, but Mrs. Novel persuades Murdertext to let the play finish.
Someone from the land of Bantam then arrives to tell Luckless that he is the prince of Bantam.
News follows that the King of Bantam has died, and that Luckless is to be made the new King.
The play concludes with the revelation that Luckless’s landlady is in reality the Queen of “Old Brentford” and that her daughter, Harriot, is now royalty.
An epilogue in which four poets discuss how the play should end is brought to a conclusion by a cat, in the form of a woman.
The play The Letter Writers (1731) revolves around two old merchants named Mr Wisdom and Mr Softly.
Each has a young wife and the two men are afraid that their wives will run off with other men.
They determine to send a threatening letter to the other’s wife to scare them into staying.
The letters do not work.
Mrs Softly spends her time pursuing men about town while Mrs Wisdom stays at home with Rakel, an officer.
While with Rakel, Mrs Wisdom is almost caught by Mr Wisdom but she is able to sneak him into a closet.
Mrs Softly does not have a closet and she is caught with Rakel by her husband.
After great lengths, she is able to convince him that she was not intimate with Rakel.
Rakel pretends to be a criminal and Risque helps reinforce the lie.
However, she is later discovered with Rakel by Mrs Wisdom after Commons, a friend of Rakel’s, comes in drunk and reveals where Rakel was hiding.
Probably his best play, completed in 1731, was The Tragedy of Tragedies or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great.
It was a spoof of heroic stage plays that took themselves too seriously.
In The Tragedy of Tragedies, Fielding, writing as Scriblerus Secondus, prefaces the play by explaining his choice of Tom Thumb as his subject:
“It is with great concern that I have observed several of our (the Grub Street) tragical writers, to celebrate in their immortal lines the actions of heroes recorded by historians and poets, such as Homer or Virgil, Livy or Plutarch, the propagation of whose works is so apparently against the interest of our society, when the romances, novels and histories vulgo called story books, of our own people, furnish such abundance and proper themes for their pens.”
Above: Bust of Greek storyteller Homer (8th century BC), British Museum, London
Above: Bust of Roman poet Virgil (70 – 19 BC) by Tito Angelini (2010), Parco della Grotta di Posillipo, Napoli, Italia
Above: Roman historian Titus Livius (English: Livy) (59 BC – AD 17) statue at the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna, Austria
Above: Bust of Greek philosopher Plutarch (46 – 119), Chaeronea, Greece
Fielding reverses the tragic plot by focusing on a character who is small in both size and status.
The play is a low tragedy that describes Tom Thumb arriving at King Arthur’s court showing off giants that he defeated.
As a reward, Arthur grants Tom the hand of Princess Huncamunca, which upsets both his wife, Dollalolla, and a member of the court, Grizzle.
The two plot together to ruin the marriage, which begins the tragedy.
Part way through the play, two doctors begin to discuss the death of Tom Thumb and resort to using fanciful medical terminology and quoting ancient medical works with which they are not familiar.
However, it becomes apparent that it was not Tom who died, but a monkey.
The tragedy becomes farcical when Tom is devoured by a cow.
This is not the end of Tom, because his ghost later suffers a second death at the hands of Grizzle.
Then, one by one, the other characters farcically kill each other, leaving only the King at the end to kill himself.
The Tragedy of Tragedies (for which Hogarth designed the frontispiece) was, for example, quite successful as a printed play.
There is little difference between the general plot outline of Tom Thumb and The Tragedy of Tragedies, but Fielding does make significant changes.
He completely removed a scene in which two doctors discuss Tom Thumb’s death, and in doing so unified the type of satire that he was working on.
He narrowed his critique to abuses of language produced only by individuals subconsciously, and not by frauds like the doctors.
As for the rest of the play, Fielding expanded scenes, added characters, and turned the work into a three-act play.
Merlin is added to the plot to prophesize Tom’s end.
In addition, Grizzle becomes Tom’s rival for Huncamunca’s heart, and a giantess named Glumdalca is added as a second love interest for both King Arthur and Tom.
As the play progresses, Tom is not killed by Grizzle, but instead defeats him.
However, Tom is killed by a giant, murderous cow offstage, the news of which prompts a killing spree, leaving seven dead bodies littered on stage and the King alone, left to boast that he is the last to fall, right before stabbing himself.
The ghost of Tom in Tom Thumb is replaced by the ghost of Gaffar Thumb, Tom’s father.
Based on his earlier Tom Thumb, this was another of Fielding’s irregular plays published under the name of H. Scriblerus Secundus, a pseudonym intended to link himself ideally with the Scriblerus Club of literary satirists founded by Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Gay.
Rape upon Rape was a five-act comedic play that was written early 1730.
It was advertised to start on 15 June 1730, but, after a delay, it first ran on 23 June 1730 at the Little Theatre for eight nights until 21 July 1730.
It was originally shown at the Haymarket theatre without a companion play.
However, it was later shown with The Tragedy of Tragedies on 1 July 1730 and with Jack the Giant Killer on 10 July 1730.
The play was shown four more times at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre during that December under a new title, The Coffee House Politician.
The first printing of the play coincided with its opening night, 23 June 1730.
It was later altered, retitled The Coffee House Politician, and featured at Lincoln’s Inn Fields during the autumn.
There is little information known as to why Fielding retitled the play, although Cross and Dudden both speculate that it was based on objections to the title.
The play was advertised on 3 and 4 December 1730 in the Daily Post as a revised version, but there are no surviving manuscripts reflecting any major revisions to the play.
If the play was altered by Fielding, then the changes would exist within the humour that would have become outdated.
It is known that another act was added to the play, titled The Battle of the Poets, on 30 November 1730, but its author is unknown.
Fielding did not like the addition and made it clear in an announcement about the play’s production in the 30 November 1730 Daily Journal.
During the 20th century, the play was turned into a musical titled Lock Up Your Daughters (1959), enjoying success.
The original play was later performed for 20 nights at the Soho Rep Theatre during 1983.
Fielding’s original title may well allude to the vogue for ‘she tragedies‘ popular from the late 17th into the 18th century which focus upon the exploitation of female suffering.
Although the retitled play deals with political themes, politics is not the play’s purpose nor is it a critique of politics.
The play has obvious political connections as title refers to the rape case of Colonel Francis Charteris, dubbed “Rapemaster General of Great Britain“.
However, the play is more focused on morality.
There is no direct correlation between any of the characters and Charteris.
Of course, the contemporary audiences would have known that there was a connection:
There can be little doubt that the audiences at the Haymarket in June would have immediately connected Fielding’s Rape upon Rape with the Charteris affair.
Above: Portrait of ‘Colonel’ Francis Charteris, notorious rake
Colonel Francis Charteris (1675 – 1732), nicknamed “The Rape-Master General“, was a Scottish soldier and adventurer who earned a substantial sum of money through gambling and the South Sea Bubble.
He was convicted of raping a servant in 1730 and sentenced to death, but was subsequently pardoned, before dying of natural causes shortly afterwards.
Charteris was born at Edinburgh, the son of John Charteris , a magistrate, and his wife, Mary.
His family were land-holders and owned property in Amisfield, near Dumfries.
Even before his conviction, he was notorious and despised by many in London as an archetypal rake.
Above: William Hogarth – A Rake’s Progress – Tavern Scene
(In a historical context, a rake (short for rakehell, analogous to “hellraiser“) was a man who was habituated to immoral conduct, particularly womanizing.
Often, a rake was also prodigal, wasting his (usually inherited) fortune on gambling, wine, women, and song, and incurring lavish debts in the process.)
Above: A Rake’s Progress, the prison scene
He had a serial military career, being dismissed from service four times: the 3rd time in the Southern Netherlands by the Duke of Marlborough, for cheating at cards, and the 4th time by Parliament for accepting bribes.
Despite his military dismissals, he amassed a considerable fortune.
Above: John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650 – 1722)
Charteris would send his servants out through the countryside to recruit women for him to have sex with.
The methods and enticements he used made him disliked by the poor in some parts of England.
His reputation preceded his trial for raping a servant named Anne Bond.
When Bond was hired, on 24 October 1729, she was informed that her employer was “Colonel Harvey” for fear that his reputation would put off his prospective employee.
Charteris had a number of contacts who regularly hired women to work as servants, who would then be trapped in the house and repeatedly “urged” to have sex with him.
Above: William Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress, plate 1, showing Molly’s arrival in London, with Colonel Francis Charteris and “Handy Jack” leering in the background, while a syphilitic madame Elizabeth Needham in the foreground procures her first.
When Bond began to work, she was immediately besieged by “Harvey’s” advances, along with offers of money; but she refused.
On her 3rd day of employment, Anne realised that Harvey was in fact Colonel Francis Charteris and requested to leave.
This request was refused.
Staff were positioned to prevent her from escaping.
The next morning, 10 November, Charteris attacked and raped Bond.
There were no witnesses.
Charteris’ servants in the next room later testified that they heard nothing.
When Bond told Charteris she was going to the authorities over the crime, he ordered servants to whip her and take her belongings and throw her out the door, telling them that she had stolen money from him.
With assistance from Mary Parsons, perhaps a former employer, Bond brought a complaint for the misdemeanour of “assault with intent to commit rape“.
The Middlesex grand jury originally found grounds to proceed with this charge but later upgraded the charge to the capital felony of rape.
On 27 February 1730, Charteris was tried for rape at the Old Bailey.
The trial was a media sensation.
The defence attacked the virtue and motives of the complainant, accusing her of compliance, prostitution, theft and extortion.
Many of Charteris’ witnesses and documents were shown to be false.
The jury quickly found him guilty.
Above: The Old Bailey, London, England
On 2 March, he was sentenced to death and held in Newgate Prison.
The Earl of Egmont wrote in his diary:
‘All the world agree he deserved to be hanged long ago, but they differ whether on this occasion‘.
Fog’s Weekly Journal of 14 March 1730 reported:
‘We hear no rapes have been committed for three weeks past.
Colonel Francis Charteris is still in Newgate.‘
Above: Newgate Prison (1188 – 1902), London, England
On 10 April 1730, George II granted him a royal pardon after a campaign that included the Scottish Lord Advocate Duncan Forbes, who rented a house from Charteris in Edinburgh, and Anne Bond herself, possibly prompted by the promise of an annuity.
As a convicted felon, his property should have been forfeit under the doctrine of attainder, but he petitioned the King for its return.
In composition for his offence, he paid substantial sums to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex.
He was also suspected of having given substantial gifts to various important individuals.
Jonathan Swift commented on Charteris in several poems.
In Lines on the Death of Dr. Swift (1731), he explains “Chartres” as, “a most infamous, vile scoundrel, grown from a foot-boy, or worse, to a prodigious fortune both in England and Scotland.
He had a way of insinuating himself into all Ministers under every change, either as pimp, flatterer, or informer.
He was tried at 70 for a rape and came off by sacrificing a great part of his fortune.”
Above: Francis Charteris
In 1732, Chateris died from natural causes in Edinburgh, possibly from a condition caused by his stay in Newgate Prison.
Shortly before he died, he was said to have stated that he would pay £150,000 to anybody who could prove to him that there was no Hell.
He was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard.
His coffin was attacked on its way to the graveyard.
It is said that dead cats were thrown into his grave.
Above: Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh, Scotland
Charteris was the inspiration for characters in William Hogarth’s paintings A Rake’s Progress and A Harlot’s Progress (where he is represented as the fat lecher in the first plate), and in Fanny Hill.
He was condemned by Alexander Pope in his Moral Essay III, written in 1733.
Parallels were drawn between Charteris’ sexual excesses and the greed of politicians, such as Robert Walpole.
Charteris may also have been the source of Leslie Charteris’ adopted surname.
Above: British writer Leslie Charteris (né Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin) (1907 – 1993)
The use of “rape” in Fielding’s play is more than just forced sexual intercourse.
It is used to describe all abuses of freedom and the corruption of power.
The title, without needing to actually include Charteris, allows for the play to serve as a critique of abuses of power and immorality.
Justice Squeezum represents the flaws of society, while Justice Worthy represents England as it tries to deal with the various problems.
The play serves as a way for Fielding to express his own views about society in his comedy.
Fielding furthered this end by using Aristophanes as a model.
The theatre became his means to encouraging social change.
However, the play is still a comedy, so the social agenda stands besides romantic intrigue and traditional comedic situations.
There is an emphasis on legal matters.
The final words deal with crime.
As such, the theatre serves as a kind of courtroom.
The characters are judged throughout the play with Fielding serving as a sort of prosecutor.
The character of Politick is connected to a tradition of politically involved individuals that frequent coffee houses.
These include the character Upholsterer featured in the Tatler and Beaver the Haberdasher from the Spectator.
The type of character also appeared in multiple plays that Fielding would have known, including: Toby Clincher in Sir Harry Wildair (1701) and Postscript in The Generous Husband or The Coffee House Politician (1711).
The general idea behind Politick are an incarnation of the news of the day and his discussions involve many events that were contemporaneous with the play.
Real newspapers and their reports are mocked throughout.
Above: American comedian Jon Stewart, a modern successor to Henry Fielding
Fielding’s own works, including The Author’s Farce, The Old Debauchees and The Covent Garden Tragedy includes this character type.
The original edition did not experience the same draw as Fielding’s The Tragedy of Tragedies.
However, none of the other plays at the Little Theatre were able to compete with The Tragedy of Tragedies‘ success.
The revised edition was not a success and made very little money.
There are few surviving mentions of the play which include Arthur Murphy’s comment in the Gray’s Inn Journal (1754) that scenes can be stolen from Rape upon Rape because no one would notice the similarity since the play was no longer performed.
In Murphy’s 1762 edition of Fielding’s Works, he praises the play.
However, he is the only one to talk about the play until the 19th century.
Above: Irish writer-barrister Arthur Murphy (1727 – 1805)
In The Old Debauchees (1732), young Laroon plans to marry Isabel, but Father Martin manipulates Isabel’s father, Jourdain, to seduce Isabel.
However, other characters, including both of the Laroons, try to manipulate Jourdain for their own ends.
They accomplish it through disguising themselves as priests and using his guilt to convince him of what they say.
As Father Martin pursues Isabel, she is clever enough to realise what is happening and plans her own trap.
After catching him and exposing his lust, Father Martin is set to be punished.
Like Rape upon Rape, the title The Old Debauchees is an allusion to a real individual and his corrupt actions.
The obvious source of the play is the Father Girard’s trial for seducing Marie Catharine Cadière.
This was a popular subject and other plays, including Father Girard the Sorcerer and The Wanton Jesuit, portrayed the events for which Girard was put on trial.
He was a Jesuit tried for using magic on Cadière.
Fielding differs from other accounts by reducing Cadiere as a victim and instead makes her intelligent enough to see through Girard’s plot.
Above: Illustration of Father John Gerard
John Gerard (1564 – 1637) was a priest of the Society of Jesus who operated a secret ministry of the underground Catholic Church in England during the Elizabethan era.
Above: Emblem of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits)
He was born into the English nobility as the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard at Old Bryn Hall, near Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire.
Above: Bryn Hall
After attending seminary and being ordained abroad, Gerard returned to England covertly shortly after the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada.
Above: Route of the Spanish Armada – attempted invasion of Britain (July – August 1588)
Father Gerard not only successfully hid from the English authorities for eight years before his capture but also endured extensive torture, escaped from the Tower of London, recovered and continued with his covert mission until the exposure of the Gunpowder Plot made it impossible to continue.
Above: The Tower of London
After his escape to Catholic Europe, Father Gerard was instructed by his Jesuit superiors to write a book about his life in Latin.
An English translation by Fr. Philip Caraman was published in 1951 as John Gerard: Autobiography of an Elizabethan and is a rare first-hand account of the dangerous cloak-and-dagger world of a Catholic priest in Elizabethan England.
Ignatius Press published a second edition in 2012 under the title “The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest: John Gerard, S.J.”.
John Gerard was born the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn Hall, and Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Port of Derbyshire.
In 1569, when John Gerard was five years old, his father was imprisoned for plotting the rescue of Mary, Queen of Scots, from Tutbury Castle.
Above: Mary, Queen of Scots (1542 – 1587)
Above: Tutbury Castle, Staffordshire, England
His release in 1571 may have been influenced by his cousin Sir Gilbert Gerard who was Attorney General at that time.
During that time John and his brother were placed with Protestant relatives, but his father obtained for them a Catholic tutor.
In August 1577, at age 12, he was sent to the English College at Douai, which relocated the following March to Rheims.
Above: Illustration of the three colleges in the city of Douai, France
At the age of 15 he spent a year at Exeter College, Oxford, which was followed by about a year of home-study of Koine Greek and Ecclesiastical Latin under a tutor.
Above: Exter College, Oxford, England
He then went to the Jesuit Clermont College in Paris.
Above: Lycée Louis le Grand (formerly Collège de Clermont), Paris
After some months there, followed by an illness and convalescence, in the latter part of 1581 he went to Rouen to see Jesuit priest Father Robert Persons.
Above: Father Robert Persons (1546 – 1610)
As Gerard had left for Clermont without the requisite travel permit, upon his return to England, he was arrested by customs officials upon landing at Dover.
While his companions were sent to London, he was released in the custody of a Protestant in-law.
But after three months, having still not attended Anglican services, he was remanded to Marshalsea Prison.
He spent a little over a year there.
Above: Marshalsea Prison (1373 – 1842)
In the spring of 1585, Anthony Babington, who was later executed for treason for his involvement in a plot to free the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, posted bond to secure Gerard’s release.
Above: English gentleman Anthony Babington (1561 – 1586)
Gerard then went to Rome and was given another mission on behalf of the Jesuits to England.
In November 1588, three months after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Gerard and Edward Oldcorne landed in Norfolk to begin their task of sustaining Catholics among the English people.
Having made his way to Norwich he met there the Lord of the Manor of Grimston, a Recusant (those who remained loyally Catholic) called Edward Yelverton.
Above: Images of Norwich, Norfolk, England
After a two days’ journey on horseback, Gerard — now Mr. Thompson — settled down quietly in the Manor House at Grimston, 8 miles east of King’s Lynn, as an honoured guest.
He was in great danger, but his retreat was believed as safe as any south of the Humber.
Above: Images of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England
Gerard was no ordinary man.
He had indeed strange powers of attraction and fascination.
He was introduced to the chief families of the neighbourhood, Walpoles and Woodhouses among others, and though only 24 he had extraordinary influence among them.
His stay in Grimston lasted seven months.
After that he lived for some time at Lawshall, near Bury St. Edmunds.
Above: All Saints Church, Lawshall, Suffolk, England
Eventually, Gerard was taken to the leader of the English Jesuits, Father Henry Garnet.
Above: Father Henry Garnett (1555 – 1606)
Gerard soon became a very popular figure in the Catholic underground.
To stay above suspicion, Gerard cultivated a respectable public image.
By way of disguises, he appeared very secular, being versed in gambling and wearing fashionable clothes. Gerard wrote of many escapes from the law and of occasions when he hid in priest holes, which could often be as small as one meter tall and half a meter wide.
(A priest hole is a hiding place for a priest built in England or Wales during the period when Catholics were persecuted by law.
Following the accession of Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603) to the throne in 1558, there were several Catholic plots designed to remove her.
Severe measures, including torture and execution, were taken against Catholic priests.
From the mid-1570s, hides were built into houses to conceal priests from priest hunters.
Most of the hides that survive today are in country manor houses, but there is much documentary evidence, for example in the Autobiography and Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot of John Gerard, of hides in towns and cities, especially in London.)
Above: Priest hole, Harvington Hall, Worchestershire, England
In 1591 Gerard became the chaplain to the Wiseman household, Braddocks, led by William and Jane Wiseman.
The household included Jane Wiseman who was William’s widowed mother.
Gerard persuaded her to create a new home for herself and a chaplain name Bullocks which would become as additional centre for Catholicism and priest harbouring.
Gerard was finally captured in London on 23 April 1594.
He was tried, found guilty and sent to the Compter (a small prison) in the Poultry (part of Cheapside, London).
Later he was moved to Clink Prison (860 – 1780) where he was able to meet regularly with other imprisoned English Catholics.
Above: Clink Prison Museum, London
Due to his continuation of this work, he was sent to the Salt Tower in the Tower of London, where he was further questioned and tortured by being repeatedly suspended from chains on the dungeon wall.
The main aim of Gerard’s torturers was to find out the London lodgings of Father Henry Garnet, so that they could arrest him.
However, Gerard refused to answer any questions that involved others, or to name them.
He later insisted that he never broke down, a fact borne out by the files of the Tower.
Henry Garnet wrote about Gerard:
“Twice he has been hung up by the hands with great cruelty on the part of others and no less patience on his own.
The examiners say he is exceedingly obstinate and a great friend either of God or of the Devil, for they say they cannot extract a word from his lips, save that, amidst his torments, he speaks the word, “Jesus“.
Recently they took him to the rack, where the torturers and examiners stood ready for work.
But when he entered the place, he at once threw himself on his knees and with a loud voice prayed to God that He would give him strength and courage to be rent to pieces before he might speak a word that would be injurious to any person or to the divine glory.
And seeing him so resolved, they did not torture him.”
Above: Salt Tower, Waterloo Block, Tower of London
Gerard’s most famous exploit is believed to have been masterminded by Nicholas Owen.
Above: The torture of Nicholas Owen (1562 – 1606), Tower of London (1606)
With help from other members of the Catholic underground, Gerard, along with John Arden, escaped on a rope strung across the Tower moat during the night of 4 October 1597.
Despite the fact that his hands were still mangled from the tortures he had undergone, he succeeded in climbing down.
He even arranged for the escape of his gaoler (jailer), with whom he had become friendly, and who he knew would be held responsible for the jailbreak.
It is speculated that he befriended the jailer so that if circumstance favoured an escape, it could be turned to his advantage.
Immediately following his escape, he joined Henry Garnet and Robert Catesby in Uxbridge.
Above: English Catholic Robert Catesby (1572 – 1605)
Above: St. Margaret of Antioch Church, Windsor Street, Uxbridge, West London
Later, Gerard moved to the house of Dowager Elizabeth Vaux at Harrowden, near Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.
Above: All Saints’ Parish Church, Great Harrowden, Northamptonshire, England
From this base of operations, Gerard continued his priestly ministry, and reconciled many to the Catholic Church, including Sir Everard Digby (one of the future conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot).
Above: English Catholic Everard Digby (1578 – 1606)
For the next eight years Gerard continued his ministry among the English people before he was recalled to the Continent to train Jesuits for the English Mission.
He was accused by Robert Catesby’s servant Thomas Bates of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot.
Above: English Catholic Thomas Bates (1567 – 1606)
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was an unsuccessful attempted regicide against King James I by a group of English Catholics led by Robert Catesby who considered their actions attempted tyrannicide and who sought regime change in England after decades of religious persecution.
The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, as the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands.
Catesby is suspected by historians to have embarked on the scheme after hopes of greater religious tolerance under King James I had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed.
His fellow conspirators were John and Christopher Wright, Robert and Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham.
Fawkes, who had 10 years of military experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in the failed suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives.
Owing to concerns about collateral damage, an anonymous letter of warning was sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, on 26 October 1605, who immediately showed it to the authorities.
During a search of the House of Lords in the evening on 4 November 1605, Fawkes was discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder —enough to reduce the House of Lords to rubble — and arrested.
Above: English Catholic Guy Fawkes (1570 – 1606)
Most of the conspirators fled from London as they learned that the plot had been discovered, trying to enlist support along the way.
Several made a last stand against the pursuing Sheriff of Worcester and a posse of his men at Holbeche House.
In the ensuing gunfight Catesby was one of those shot and killed.
At their trial on 27 January 1606, eight of the surviving conspirators, including Fawkes, were convicted and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
The thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot was commemorated for many years afterwards by special sermons and other public events such as the ringing of church bells, which evolved into the British variant of Bonfire Night of today.
Remember, remember,
The Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot;
For I see no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
While on the run, Father Gerard stayed at Harrowden again.
While hiding in a priest hole during a nine-day search of the house, he wrote a refutation of Bates’ charges, and arranged to have it printed and scattered about the streets in London.
He eventually escaped from there to London.
He left the country with financial aid from Elizabeth Vaux, slipping away disguised as a footman in the retinue of the Spanish Ambassador, on the very day of Henry Garnet’s execution.
Father Gerard went on to continue the work of the Jesuits in Europe, where he wrote his autobiography on the orders of his superiors.
He died in 1637, aged 73, at the English College, Rome, a seminary.
Above: The Venerable English College, Rome, Italy
Part of the plot of The Old Debauchees incorporates Fielding’s own anti-Catholic bias, but he does so in a way that is traditional to English theatre during his time.
However, his placement of anti-Catholic rhetoric in Old Laroon’s speeches undermines the comedic nature of the words and caused the sentiment to fall flat among audiences.
Also, Fielding relies on the play to talk about morality and how society views morality.
He discusses doubt and faith along with politics when he takes on most aspects of society.
It is possible that there are connections within the play’s commentary to George II’s mistresses or Robert Walpole’s relationship with Maria Skerritt and his wife’s relationship with Lord Hervey.
(George’s wife Caroline died on 20 November 1737.
He was deeply affected by her death, and to the surprise of many displayed “a tenderness of which the world thought him before utterly incapable“.
On her deathbed she told her sobbing husband to remarry, to which he replied, “Non, j’aurai des maîtresses!”
(French: “No, I shall have mistresses!“).
It was common knowledge that George had already had mistresses during his marriage, and he had kept Caroline informed about them.
Henrietta Howard, later Countess of Suffolk, had moved to Hanover with her husband during the reign of Queen Anne and had been one of Caroline’s women of the bedchamber.
She was his mistress from before the accession of George I until November 1734.
Above: English courtier Henrietta Howard (1689 – 1767)
She was followed by Amalie von Wallmoden, later Countess of Yarmouth, whose son, Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden, may have been fathered by George.
Johann Ludwig was born while Amalie was still married to her husband.
George did not acknowledge him publicly as his own son.)
Above: Amalie Sophie von Wallmoden (1704 – 1765)
(Prior to the death of his first wife Walpole took on a mistress, Maria Skeritt, a fashionable socialite of wit and beauty, with an independent fortune of £30,000, the daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Skeritt, a wealthy Irish merchant living in Dover Street, Mayfair, London.
They had been living together openly in Richmond Park and Houghton Hall since before 1728 and married at some time before March 1738.
She died on 4 June 1739 following a miscarriage.
Walpole considered her “indispensable to his happiness“, and her loss plunged him into a “deplorable and comfortless condition“, which led to a severe illness.)
Above: Maria Skerrett (1702 – 1738)
In 1700, Catherine Shorter married Sir Robert Walpole, the first British Prime Minister, to whom she brought a dowry of £20,000.
She was renowned for her extravagant lifestyle, frequently attending the opera and buying expensive clothes and jewellery.
The couple became estranged during his premiership and he had a succession of mistresses.
She aroused controversy when it was noted that her youngest son Horace Walpole, born 10 years after his siblings, did not resemble in looks any of his siblings or his supposed father.
Lady Walpole’s lover at that time was reported to be Carr Hervey, Lord Hervey (1691–1723), the son of John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol.)
Above: Catherine Walpole (née Catherine Shorter) (1682 – 1737)
According to Robert Hume, “The Old Debauchees is an unusual combination of farcical buffoonery and harsh invective, and not an effective one.“
Tiffany Potter sees the commentary as representing that “The Old Debauchees is equally the voice of a libertine mocking those who thoughtlessly accept the constraints of social decorum, gender roles, and sexual repression.
This understanding of the play, combined with Fielding’s own unorthodox behavior and frequent questioning of social doctrines at this time in his life, marks him to some degree as an advocate of the libertine tradition.“
Likewise, Potter points out that “The Old Debauchees has been critically dismissed since its initial appearance.
Nonetheless, the drama is successful as a piece of social commentary that is both entertaining and enlightening.“
Biographers Battesins characterized the play as a “tasteless attempt to capitalize on the sensational case of Father Girard” but that “Fielding was merely doing for his own theatre what others had already done“.
Biographer Harold Pagliaro pointed out that:
“For all its vitality, especially in its celebration of sexuality, in and out of marriage, and its farcical management of Father Martin, The Old Debauchees includes a dark element which its comic force controls only fleetingly.“
The play The Covent Garden Tragedy (1732) deals with a love triangle in a brothel between two prostitutes, Kissinda and Stormandra, and Lovegirlo.
Although the characters are portrayed satirically, they are imbued with sympathy as their relationship is developed.
The plot is complicated when Captain Bilkum pursues Stormanda.
Eventually, Bilkum is killed during a duel and Stormandra supposedly commits suicide, although this is later revealed not to be the case.
Part of the plot is related to Ambrose Philips’s (1674 – 1749) The Distressed Mother but serves to mock tragedy in general.
The characters are all related to prostitution and contain realistic qualities which separate the characters from others within Fielding’s plays.
Combined with real details, it is hard for the comedic nature of the play to take over.
Even the written prolegomenon (introduction) added to the published version is a biting satire.
The character Mother Punchbowl plays with the image of motherhood in general, especially by having her be seen as a mother figure to prostitutes and those who frequent brothels.
During the play, Fielding emphasises the importance of William Hogarth’s satire and makes references to them through his plays, especially to A Harlot’s Progress.
Many of Fielding’s characters are modelled after Hogarth’s:
His Mother Punchbowl, the brothel mistress, is modelled on Mother Needham (an English procuress and brothel-keeper of 18th-century London).
Above: Elizabeth Needham (d. 1731)(right foreground) as portrayed in William Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress
Kissinda and Stormandra are modelled on the Harlot.
One of the characters, Leathersides, was a representation of a writer for The Grub Street Journal (1730 – 1738).
This allowed Fielding to mock one of his greatest contemporary critics.
This was followed by Fielding’s writing of “A Criticism on the Covent-Garden Tragedy, originally intended for the Grub Street Journal“.
The piece mocks the bias of The Grub Street Journal, portrays its critics as having no understanding of theatre, and characterises them as being jealous of Fielding’s success.
The play is a mockery of tragedy in general, but the characters contain realistic qualities separating them from other characters within Fielding’s plays.
This realism conflicts with the comedic nature.
The play was a failure and ended its run after its first night, in part because it was set in a brothel.
Contemporary critics noted the complete failure of the play and one implied that Fielding was acquainted with brothels.
However, modern critics pointed out that the play was very good if not for its setting.
The Covent Garden Tragedy appeared with The Old Debauchees on 1 June 1732.
It was reported on 2 June by the Daily Post that both were well-received, but they retracted that claim on 5 June to say that only The Old Debauchees was well received.
The Daily Post wrote on 5 June 1732:
“We are assured the comedy called The Old Debauchees, did meet with universal applause, but the Covent Garden Tragedy will be acted no more, both the author and the actors being unwilling to continue any piece contrary to the opinion of the town.“
The Grub Street Journal reprinted this on 8 June with the addition “unwilling” read as “unable“.
It later declared on 15 June that:
“It would be ridiculous to aim any sort of criticism upon so shameful a piece.”
The piece continued to insinuate that Fielding had experience with brothels.
This sparked a battle between Fielding and The Grub Street Journal.
George Speaight believed that the play was “an amusing but coarse burlesque of the old-fashioned heroic drama“.
Thomas Clearly characterised the play as “a lukewarm burlesque of Ambrose Phillips’ Distressed Mother“.
Robert Hume believed that:
“The travesty is genuinely brilliant in both conception and details, and there is much to relish here if one is not automatically disgusted by a play whose characters are a madam, her porter, her whores, and their customers.”
The Battestins declared that:
“Funny as it was, The Covent Garden Tragedy was too ribald for the tastes of an audience accustomed to genteel comedies or more refined merriment.”
The Covent Garden Tragedy was immediately ended after its first night because, according to Fielding, of the play’s use of a brothel as a setting.
Both plays were finished by 4 April 1732 when Fielding signed an agreement with John Watts to publish the plays for a sum of only 30 guineas.
It was finally published on 24 June 1732.
Even though the first night fell apart, the play was performed again later.
It eventually appeared again for four nights with Don Quixote in England and once separately in 1734 at the Little Haymarket.
On 21 March 1735, it was performed at the York Building and again at the Little Haymarket on 28 December 1778.
Although it was not successful, it was not truly unpopular.
Its plot did not scare others away.
It was adapted by William Holcroft as The Rival Queens, which was performed in 1794.
Also, it succeeded when it was adapted into a puppet show.
It was later reproduced by the National Theatre in 1968.
The basis of the plot of The Mock Doctor (1732) is the story of Gregory’s pretending to be a doctor.
Gregory starts off as a simple woodcutter by trade, but his wife forces him to take on the role of doctor.
He disguises himself as Dr Ragou, a Frenchman, and goes to treat Sir Jasper’s daughter, Charlotte, who pretends to be unable to speak.
Charlotte pretends to be mute because she feels that it is the only way for her to avoid marrying who her father wants her to marry.
Instead, she wants to marry a man named Leander.
While treating Charlotte, Gregory’s disguise is able to fool his wife and he begins to pursue her as the Frenchman.
However, Dorcas is able to figure it out that it is her husband in the disguise.
The play is an adaptation of Molière’s Le Médecin malgré lui, though it has an emphasis on theatrics over a faithful translation.
It is a pure comedy and, unlike other plays by Fielding, has no serious moral lesson or purpose.
Above: Front page of Le Médecin malgré lui (“The Doctor in Spite of Himself“)(1666)
The Mock Doctor or The Dumb Lady Cured was the replacement for The Covent Garden Tragedy as the companion play to The Old Debauchees.
The play is an Anglicised adaptation of Molière’s Le Medecin malgre Lui and is contemporary to the translation by John Watts in the Select Comedies of Molière, even though there is no direct connection between Fielding and the translation.
Although Fielding is in debt to Molière, he made the play his own.
Above: French writer Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (aka Molière) (1622 – 1673)
In terms of characters, the power of the husband figure is shifted to the wife figure.
There is a connection between Gregory and the real life John Misaubin, of whom Fielding dedicates The Mock Doctor.
However, the wife and husband also resemble Fielding’s previous characters, the Moderns.
Fielding added nine songs to Molière’s version and changed a few scenes around, including substituting unmarried characters for married characters during a sex scene.
The original adaptation filled only one act but the revised version added distinct scene changes.
The revised play also replaced four songs.
The play was first advertised in the 16 June 1732 Daily Post as being in rehearsal and first ran on 23 June 1732.
It was later revised by 16 November 1732.
Both versions were successful.
The play ran for a total of 24 nights that year and was revived even until the 19th century.
The revised version was shown on 16 November 1732 as an author’s benefit and shown on 30 November at the request of the King.
It was published by John Watts on 11 July 1732 with a second edition published on 30 November 1732.
The play was far more successful than The Covent Garden Tragedy.
Contemporary critics disagreed over whether the play was inferior to the original, but modern critics believed Fielding’s version was equally impressive.
The 26 June 1732 Daily Post reported that the play was shown to “a full house, with great applause” and that:
“Le Medecin Malgre Lui, of Molière, from whence the Mock Doctor is taken, bears the greatest reputation of any petite piece in the French language.
Many good judges allow the English farce is no way inferior to the original.”
The Grub Street Journal disagreed with the reporting and printed on 29 June and 20 July 1772 that Fielding performed a disservice to the original.
The 24 August 1732 Grub Street Journal stated that the play was favoured by audiences, but gave all credit to Molière and the actors instead of to Fielding.
Later, John Hill, a rival to Fielding, admitted in the 13 January 1752 London Daily Advertiser that the play defined the English farce.
Harold Pagliaro connects The Mock Doctor with The Covent Garden Opera and says that they are able to make “its nominal subject subordinate to a different purpose: writing a funny play about something else“.
Robert Hume believes that:
“Fielding benefited greatly from taking over the well-crafted frame of Molière’s play, but what he provided by way of adaptation and additions he handled with great skill.“
The Battestins argue that the play “in time became the standard of its kind, the light farce“.
Ronald Paulson attributes the success of this adaptation to Fielding’s later adaptation of Molière’s The Miser.
The play The Welsh Opera (1731) introduces Scriblerus Secundus as a character and no longer simply a commentary to the print editions of Fielding’s plays.
In a speech, he mentions his role in working on The Tragedy of Tragedies and mentions that he would serve as an editor and commentary to The Welsh Opera within the play itself.
However, Scriblerus storms off stage after he is informed that one of his actresses requires a drink before performing in The Welsh Opera that evening.
The story of the play revolves around a country household and various disputes between the members of the family and the staff.
In The Welsh Opera, Fielding incorporated his editorial persona, Scriblerus Secundus.
Scriblerus does introduce the play, as in the original, but he describes the moral purpose that motivates the play instead of being a comical connection with another work.
After revealing Fielding’s design in the play, Scriblerus leaves the stage.
(The Scriblerus Club was an informal association of authors, based in London, that came together in the early 18th century.
They were prominent figures of English letters.
The nucleus of the club included the satirists Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.
Other members were John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Henry St. John and Thomas Parnell.
The group was founded in 1714 and lasted until the death of the founders, finally ending in 1745.
Pope and Swift are the two members whose reputations and work have the most long-lasting influence.
Working collaboratively, the group created the persona of Martinus Scriblerus, through whose writings they accomplished their satirical aims.
Very little of this material, however, was published until the 1740s.
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer occasionally joined the club for meetings, though he is not known to have contributed to their literary output.
He, along with Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, contributed to the literary productions of the club.
The club began as an effort to satirize the abuses of learning wherever they might be found, which led to The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.
The second edition of Pope’s The Dunciad also contains work attributed to Martinus Scriblerus.
Richard Owen Cambridge wrote a mock epic poem, the Scribleriad, where the hero is Martinus Scriblerus.
Henry Fielding’s play The Welsh Opera is presented as a tribute to the “Scriblerians“.
Fielding’s pen name was “Scriblerus Secundus“.
Above: St James’s Palace, where the Scriblerus Club gathered
The play describes the Apshinken family and the pursuits in love of Owen and his butler, Robin.
Owen pursues four women and Robin pursues only one.
However, Robin is pursuing Sweetissa, whom Owen wishes to have for himself.
To separate the two, Owen forges a letter which works until Robin’s virtue proves his own devotion to Sweetissa.
Although Robin lacks virtue in most regards, such as his stealing from his master, he is able to marry Sweetissa and, at the end of the play, Fielding breaks from his own tradition of comedic marriages by having Owen and Molly marry.
The Welsh Opera was a tribute to the Scriblerians, especially to John Gay and to his most famous work The Beggar’s Opera.
This served as a means to put forth a general political view and deal with politics in a more critical way unlike any of Fielding’s previous plays.
The play is a political allegory that satirises Robert Walpole’s government and the British monarchy.
Fielding also used Gay’s technique of swapping London for a pastoral environment.
Above: English poet John Gay (1685 – 1732)
Within the play, a country household represents England and the people represent various leaders and political figures.
Fielding also adds many praises of the pastoral life along with favourably portraying roast beef and tobacco while mocking anything foreign.
The play was attacked for its political implications, which later resulted in a ban on the play and its sequel from being performed.
However, Fielding does not favour any political party.
Instead, he attacks both parties while recognising their importance to the nation as a whole.
His attacks are personal, especially in alluding to rumours that the Prince of Wales was impotent.
Above: Frederick, Prince of Wales
The play did run with The Fall of Mortimer, which made fun of Walpole.
The revisions to the play form The Grub Street Opera.
Part of the satire originates from the events surrounding the feud between Walpole and William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath that gained intensity during the creation of the Treaty of Seville and during the Civil List debate.
(The Treaty of Seville was signed on 9 November 1729 between Britain, France and Spain, formally ending the 1727–1729 Anglo-Spanish War.
The Dutch Republic joined the Treaty on 29 November.
However, the Treaty failed to resolve underlying tensions that led first to the War of Jenkins’ Ear in 1739, then the wider War of the Austrian Succession in 1740.)
Above: The 1727 Gibraltar Siege
Later in January 1731, Sir William Yonge, 4th Baronet produced Sedition and Defamation Displayed, a pamphlet that mocked Pulteney and defended Yonge’s friend, Walpole.
Above: English politician William Yonge (1693–1755)
Pulteney, in return, dueled with John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, another Walpole friend, after mistaking that it was Hervey who wrote Sedition and Defamation Displayed.
Although no one was hurt, the fighting continued in the form of pamphlet attacks until 1 July 1731 when King George II removed Pulteney from the Privy Council.
Above: English political writer John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey (1696 – 1743)
Many works began to satirize elements of the battle between Pulteney and Walpole, including the poems The Devil Knows What and The Compromise (March 1731).
These poems depict both Pulteney and Walpole as equivalent complicit in the unfolding events, which is later picked up by Fielding.
The contemporary view of The Welsh Opera was split:
The common people enjoyed the show, but the members of the government did not.
However, there was no prohibition of the play by the government.
This, according to F. Homes Dudden, encouraged Fielding to expand the play into The Grub Street Opera.
John Loftis focused on the blatant politics of Fielding’s piece and declared:
“If the political meaning of The Tragedy of Tragedies is mild and ambiguous, that of Fielding’s The Welsh Opera is audacious and absolutely clear“.
Thomas Cleary wrote that the revised version “is a much better play“.
Robert Hume believes that, in The Welsh Opera:
“Fielding daringly vented his penchant for burlesque.
Its politicality has often been overestimated, but its audacity is beyond question.”
Likewise, the Battestins point out that:
“The play cannot have been acceptable to the authorities.
It is too impudent in making a public spectacle of the foibles of the Royal Family“.
Harold Pagliaro characterised the play as “often droll and always merry“.
Thomas Lockwood declares that the plays The Welsh Opera and The Grub Street Opera are characterised by a “spirit of fun” but are complicated by the 18th-century politics that gave them birth.
In The Modern Husband (1732), to make money, Mr Modern decides to trade his wife for money from Captain Bellamant.
The money was not enough to satisfy Mr Modern, so he sues Lord Richly for damages by adultery.
A witness is found to reveal that Mr Modern originally sold his wife to Lord Richly, which undermines his case and he is unable to gain the extra money.
During this time, another couple, the Bellamants, are paralleled to the Moderns.
Mr Bellamant is involved in an affair with Mrs Modern until Mr Modern catches them.
Mrs Bellamant forgives Mr Bellamant for his actions.
Other characters through the play are involved with their own romantic pursuits, including the Bellamants’ son, Captain Bellamant, who pursues and marries Lady Charlotte Gaywit, and their daughter, Emilia, who marries Mr Gaywit, another of Mrs Modern’s lovers.
The play criticises vice and society, but also criticised the law allowing a husband to sue for damages when his wife committed adultery.
This view of marriage later served as the theme for Fielding’s novel Amelia.
The play was well-met when it first ran, though there were some imperfections.
Later critics found the characters lacking and the plot faulty, and believed that 18th century spectators would agree.
They also believed The Modern Husband to be one of the most serious of the plays written by Fielding.
The Modern Husband first ran on 14 February 1732.
Fielding put a lot of effort into crafting The Modern Husband and, as he admits in the prologue, sought to come up with something new.
He first drafted the play in September 1730 and sent it to Lady Mary Montagu for her opinion.
The play was produced on stage for 13 nights, which only Colley Cibber’s The Provoked Husband and Zara ran for as long during that time at Drury Lane.
Although early 20th century critics believed that the play could not be popular, it did make money and even put on a benefit show in March 1732.
The play was not revived later, possibly because the principal actors of the play died soon after and that the plot of the play discouraged new actors from wanting to play the parts.
The Daily Post on 3 March 1732 described a benefit run of the play:
“Last night their Majesties, his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, their Highnesses the Princesses, and the whole Royal Family, were to see the new comedy, called the Modern Husband, acted to a splendid crowded audience, for the benefit of Mrs. Porter.
This play has been performed 13 nights with applause, to very good audiences, but is now discontinued, on account of the indisposition of a principal actress.”
Not every response was as kind.
The Grub Street Journal on 30 March 1732 criticized the play, the plot, and attacked the character of Lady Charlotte as unrealistic.
However, Fielding alludes that Lady Mary Montagu believed that the character of Lady Charlotte was true to life.
Furthermore, even the 30 March 1732 Grub Street Journal stated that the play was viewed favourably by audiences.
A 29 June 1731 piece in the Journal says that the play was met with encouragement.
In June 1732, Thomas Cooke, in his play The Comedian, supported his friend against the critique on 30 March saying that:
“There is great wit and comedy within the play even if there were some imperfections caused by hasty writing.“
Later critics, Wilbur Cross and F. H. Dudden, believed that the characters were lacking and the plot was faulty.
It is uncertain as to if 18th century spectators agree, but Cross and Dudden believed that the audiences would have agreed with their assessment, with Cross claiming that the audience hissed during the first night.
Likewise, H. K. Banerji believed that the play was “a complete failure“.
Robert Hume characterized the play as a “genuine satire (a rarity in English comedy).
It offers one of the darkest comic visions of society since Thomas Otway’s bitter Friendship in Fashion (1678).”
Above: English dramatist Thomas Otway (1652 – 1685)
However, he later stated that “the play itself is badly flawed“.
Hume attributed the popularity of the play to Fielding himself, and that the passing of its main actors and the problems with plot discouraged it from being produced again.
Like other critics, Hume believed that most critics support the March 1732 criticism that reveals many of the problems within the play.
However, the play was dedicated to Walpole and Fielding was working with Colley Cibber, two aspects that encouraged some early criticism of the play by those like the Grub Street Journal.
Above: English poet Colley Cibber (1671 – 1757)
Regardless of the draw backs, Tiffany Potter declared The Modern Husband as “Fielding’s most serious attempt at social commentary within the five-act comedic form, with situations, characters, and social states resembling those to come in Amelia.”
Fielding’s prologue in The Lottery (1732) begins with his definition of various genres and his understanding of “Farce“, even though many of his works are more ballad opera than actual farce:
As Tragedy prescribes to passion rules,
So Comedy delights to punish Fools.
And while at nobler game she boldly flies,
Farce challenges the vulgar as her prize.
Some follies scarce perceptible appear
In that just glass, which shows you as you are.
But Farce still claims a magnifying right,
To raise the object larger to the sight,
And show her insect fools in stronger light.
Lovemore loves a girl named Chloe.
Instead of accepting him as a suitor, Chloe travels into London with the hope that she will win a 10,000 pound lottery prize.
She convinces herself so much of this fate that she begins to boast of having a fortune already.
Jack Stocks, a man wanting that fortune, takes on the identity of Lord Lace and seeks her in marriage.
It is revealed that the ticket was not a winner.
Lovemore, a man who has romantically pursued her through the play, offers Stocks 1,000 pounds for Chloe’s hand, and the deal is made.
In the revised edition of the play, more characters are added who desire to win the lottery and there is a stronger connection made between Chloe and Lovemore.
The revised version ends with Jack, her husband at the time, being paid off to no longer have claim to Chloe as his wife even though everyone knows that she did not win.
After Fielding returned to work for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, he wrote The Lottery.
It was a companion piece, in the form of ballad opera, that first ran on 1 January 1732 alongside of Joseph Addison’s (1672 – 1719) Cato.
The piece contained 19 songs and was a collaboration with “Mr Seedo“, a musician.
It is uncertain as to when Seedo first started working with Fielding, but he may have started with Fielding during 1730 at the Little Haymarket Theatre.
The play was successful and was performed 15 times during January.
Fielding altered the play on 1 February 1732 by removing four songs and adding seven midway through the play.
The revised form ran for 14 more nights during that season and was put on each year until 1740 and occasionally thereafter until 1783.
The play was published 7 January 1732.
The Lottery pokes fun at the excitement surrounding the lottery held during the fall of 1731.
In particular, Fielding mocks both those who sell or rent tickets and those who purchase the tickets.
The portrayal of the ticket vendors emphasised the potential for deceit and the amount of scams that were possible.
It also attacked how the vendors interacted with each other in a competitive spirit.
Fielding expects that his audience understands how the lottery operated and focused on how gambling cannot benefit gamblers.
Others, such as Hogarth in The Lottery (1724), rely on similar images of Fortune as in Fielding’s plays.
However, Fielding differs from Hogarth by adding a happy ending to the portrayal of the lottery system.
This was not the only time Fielding relies on the lottery system.
He also includes ticket vendors in his play Miss Lucy in Town and in his novel Tom Jones.
The lottery that the play is directly connected took place during November – December 1731.
It was part of the State Lottery that had been in place since 1694.
The system continued to be lucrative for the British Parliament over the 18th century.
The system in place during 1731 consisted of 80,000 tickets sold with only 8,000 connected to prizes.
The top prize, of which there were two available, was £10,000.
The drawing of the numbers lasted for 40 days and consisted of numbers being picked from a large container that are then determined as either a winner or a “blank“, which means that no prize would be received.
This lottery system came under fire because, it was argued, they promoted gambling and took advantage of people.
Problems grew worse when second hand vendors began to sell the tickets at high prices.
Above: The Lottery, William Hogarth (1724)
The play was a success and earned Fielding a great deal of money.
F. Homes Dudden believed that:
“The Lottery, with its well-drawn leading character, its clever little songs, and its humorous yet biting criticism of lottery abuses, scored an immediate success, and, indeed, for many years continued to be a favourite with the public.”
Edgar Roberts emphasized the importance of The Lottery as the play that “set the pattern for his ballad operas during the next three years at Drury Lane:
Happy, lightly satirical, and, for the most part, non-political.”
Robert Hume believed that the play was a “rollicking little ballad” and that the revised version “is a major improvement“.
(I find myself thinking of İstanbul, the movie Bruce Almighty and a song from the Canadian group Barenaked Ladies:
Who hasn’t seen them, the usually elderly men and women hawking lottery tickets on İstanbul’s street corners?
Their caps sport the “Milli Piyango” logo, the name of the national lottery.
Piyango is derived from the Italian word “bianco” (white).
Some say a Signore Bianco introduced gambling to Turkey.
Others reckon that the reference to white has something to do with the ancient method for determining the truth.
If you drew a black stone you were unlucky and condemned, whereas drawing a white one meant good luck and salvation.
Whatever the case may be İstanbul’s lottery ticket sellers don’t look very happy – their lucky numbers have, most certainly, never been drawn.
Born in 1899, Melek Nimet Özden, who entered the annals of Turkish lottery history as “Nimet Abla” (Sister Nimet), didn’t wait for her lucky number to be drawn – preferring to take fate into her own hands.
She started out as a ticket seller in 1928.
By 1970, she had made enough money to found her own mosque.
The famous lady died in 1978.
Her success rested on a simple calculation:
The more tickets she sold, the better the odds were of winning.
While this calculation might not work in relative terms, in absolute termss it does actually.
Nimet Abla bought and sold more and more lottery tickets – and so more and more people exclaimed: “It’s that Nimet Abla again!” when someone hit the jackpot.
Even more fortune seekers would then come running to Nimet, who would then buy and sell even more tickets, all the while benefiting from the strange economic dynamic.
Today, in among the human hustle and bustle of Eminönü, Nimet Abşa’s heirs sell their tickets – not as sad individual vendors by the side of the street, but in a kiosk with six counters, each equipped with a computer and adorned with photos and medallions with the iimage of the legendary lottery queen.
One tip for would-be fortune seekers:
The big payouts always occur just before public holidays, that is when the queue gets particularly long.
In Bruce Almighty, Bruce Nolan is a television field reporter for Eyewitness News on WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York, who usually covers mundane news stories, but desires to be the station’s anchorman.
When Bruce’s coveted job is taken by his rival, Evan Baxter, a vulgar on-camera outburst leads to his dismissal from the station.
After a series of misfortunes, Bruce complains to God that “He’s the one that should be fired“.
Bruce receives a message on his pager, which takes him to an empty warehouse where he meets God.
God offers to give Bruce His powers (in a limited section of Buffalo), under two conditions — Bruce cannot tell others he is God, nor can he use the powers to alter free will.
Bruce at first uses his powers for personal gains, such as getting his job back, exacting revenge on a street gang that bullied him earlier, and impressing his girlfriend, Grace Connelly.
He also causes miraculous events to occur at otherwise mundane events that he covers, such as discovering Jimmy Hoffa’s body during a segment on police training, or causing a meteor to harmlessly land near a cook-off, earning him the nickname “Mr. Exclusive“.
Above: American labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa (1913 – 1975)
Bruce also causes Evan to embarrass himself on-air, consequently getting Evan fired, and Bruce becomes the new anchor.
Above: Steve Carell / “Evan Baxter“, Bruce Almighty
However, Bruce also starts hearing voices in his head and re-encounters God, who explains the voices are prayers that Bruce must deal with.
Bruce creates a computerized email-like system to handle the prayers but finds that the influx is far too many for him to handle, and thus sets the program to answer every prayer ‘Yes‘ automatically.
During a party celebrating his promotion, Grace discovers Bruce being kissed by his co-anchor, Susan Ortega, and quickly leaves.
Above: Catherine Bell / “Susan Ortega“, Bruce Almighty
Bruce follows her and tries to use his powers to convince her to stay, but cannot influence her free will.
Bruce later discovers that Buffalo has fallen into chaos due to his actions:
Parts of the city believe the Apocalypse is nearly upon Earth due to the meteor strikes, while a large number of people, all having prayed to win the multi-million dollar lottery and received only $17 in return, have started rioting in the streets.
Above: The lottery riots, Bruce Almighty
Bruce returns to God, learning he cannot solve all the problems and so must figure a way out on his own.
Bruce thus starts helping others without divine powers, including giving Evan his job back.
As he returns to his computer at home and goes about answering prayers, he finds one from Grace, wishing for his success and well-being.
Another prayer from Grace immediately arrives, this one wishing not to be in love with Bruce anymore, to avoid further pain.
Above: Jennifer Anniston / “Grace Connelly“, Bruce Almighty
Realizing his selfishness, Bruce walks alone on a highway, asking God to take back his powers and leaving his fate in his hands.
Bruce is suddenly hit by a truck and meets God in the afterlife.
When God asks him what he really wants, Bruce admits that he only wants to make sure Grace finds a man that would make her happy.
God agrees.
Bruce is finally resurrected from the dead and taken to the hospital, where his doctors help him recover.
Grace arrives at the hospital and rekindles her relationship with Bruce.
Following his recovery, Bruce returns to his field reporting job and decides to take more pleasure in the simple stories.
“Parting your soup is not a miracle, Bruce, it’s a magic trick.
A single mom who’s working two jobs, and still finds time to take her kid to soccer practice:
That’s a miracle.
A teenager who says “no” to drugs and “yes” to an education:
That’s a miracle.
People want Me to do everything for them, but what they don’t realize is:
They have the power.
You want to see a miracle, son?
Be the miracle.“
Above: Morgan Freeman /”God“, Bruce Almighty
Above: Morgan Freeman
If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I’d buy you a house
I would buy you a house
And if I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
I’d buy you furniture for your house
Maybe a nice chesterfield or an ottoman
And if I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I’d buy you a K-Car
A nice reliant automobile
And if I had a million dollars
I’d buy your love
If I had a million dollars
I’d build a tree fort in our yard
If I had a million dollars
You could help, it wouldn’t be that hard
If I had a million dollars
Maybe we can put like a little tiny fridge in there somewhere
You know, we could just go up there and hang
Like open the fridge and stuff
And there would already be foods laid out for us
Like little pre-wrapped sausages and things, mm
They have pre-wrapped sausages, but they don’t have pre-wrapped bacon
Well, can you blame them?
Uh, yeah?
If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I’d buy you a fur coat
But not a real fur coat, that’s cruel
And if I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I’d buy you an exotic pet
Yep, like a llama or an emu
And if I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I’d buy you John Merrick’s remains
Ooh, all them crazy elephant bones
And if I had a million dollars
I’d buy your love
If I had a million dollars
We wouldn’t have to walk to the store
If I had a million dollars
Now, we’d take a limousine ’cause it costs more
If I had a million dollars
We wouldn’t have to eat Kraft Dinner
But we would eat Kraft Dinner
Of course we would, we’d just eat more
And buy really expensive ketchups with it
That’s right, all the fanciest-, Dijon ketchup, mm, mm
If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I’d buy you a green dress
But not a real green dress, that’s cruel
And if I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I’d buy you some art
A Picasso or a Garfunkel
If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
Well, I’d buy you a monkey
Haven’t you always wanted a monkey?
If I had a million dollars
I’d buy your love
If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
If I had a million dollars
I’d be rich
The Miser is a 1733 comedy play, an English-language adaptation of Molière’s The Miser.
It was a success, running for 25 performances by May 1733.
“Sir, money, money, the most charming of all things.
Money, which will say more in one moment than the most elegant lover can in years.
Perhaps you will say a man is not young.
I answer he is rich.
He is not genteel, handsome, witty, brave, good-humoured, but he is rich, rich, rich, rich, rich — that one word contradicts everything you can say against him.”
(Henry Fielding, The Miser)
The Miser (L’Avare) (also known by the longer name L’Avare ou L’École du Mensonge, meaning The Miser, or the School for Lies) is a five-act comedy in prose by the French playwright Molière.
It was first performed on 9 September 1668, in the theatre of the Palais-Royal in Paris.
Above: Harpagon de l’Avare de Molière
The play was first produced when Molière’s company was under the protection of Louis XIV.
Above: French King Louis XIV (1638 – 1715)
It was loosely based on the Latin comedy Aulularia by Plautus, from which many incidents and scraps of dialogue are borrowed, as well as from contemporary Italian farces.
Above: Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus (254 – 184 BC)
The miser of the title is called Harpagon, a name adapted from the Greek, meaning a hook or grappling iron.
He is obsessed with the wealth he has amassed and always ready to save expenses.
Now a widower, he has a son, Cléante, and a daughter, Élise.
Although he is over 60, he is attempting to arrange a marriage between himself and an attractive young woman, Mariane.
Mariane and Cléante are already devoted to each other.
The son attempts to procure a loan to help her and her sick mother, who are impoverished.
Élise, Harpagon’s daughter, is the beloved of Valère, but her father hopes to marry her to a wealthy man of his choosing, Seigneur Anselme.
Meanwhile, Valère has taken a job as steward in Harpagon’s household so as to be close to Élise.
The complications are only resolved at the end by the rather conventional discovery that some of the principal characters are long lost relatives.
Above: Molière
Satire and farce blend in the fast-moving plot, as when the miser’s hoard is stolen.
Asked by the police magistrate whom he suspects, Harpagon replies, “Everybody! I wish you to take into custody the whole town and suburbs.” and indicates the theatre audience while doing so.
The play also makes fun of certain theatrical conventions, such as the spoken aside addressed to the audience, hitherto ignored by the characters onstage.
The characters of L’Avare, however, generally demand to know who exactly is being spoken to.
Above: Harpagon and La Flèche in a German production of The Miser, 1810
Aside from the example of contemporary misers, Molière drew from a number of ancient and contemporary sources for elements in his The Miser.
The character of Harpagon draws from the Latin play Aulularia by Plautus in which the miser Euclio incessantly changes the hiding place of his pot of gold out of fear of having it stolen, and the miser’s 4th act monologue exaggerating the loss of his pot was the basis for Harpagon’s.
Also from Aulularia Molière appropriated the love affair between Élise and Valère, Harpagon’s inspection of the hands of La Flèche, and Valère’s avowals of love for Élise that Harpagon takes as his confession to theft.
La Belle Plaideuse (1655) of François le Métel de Boisrobert furnished Molière with the father-as-usurer, and the scene in which a lender lends the borrower 15,000 francs, of which 3,000 is in goods.
Several of these items appear in the list in The Miser.
Above: Bas-relief of French writer François le Métel de Boisrobert (1592 – 1662) on the facade of the Malherbe Hotel in Caen, France
Jean Donneau de Visé’s la Mère coquette (1665) gave Molière a father and son in love with the same young woman.
Above: French writer Jean Donneau de Visé (1638 – 1710)
Very soon after the play’s first production in 1668, versions began to appear elsewhere in Europe.
A German translation, Der Geizige, appeared in Frankfurt in 1670.
In England, Thomas Shadwell adapted Molière’s work under the title “The Miser” in 1672 and added eight new characters.
Above: English poet Thomas Shadwell (1642 – 1692)
An even more popular version based on both Plautus and Molière was produced by Henry Fielding in 1732.
In Italian commedia dell’arte there was already a tradition of depicting misers as the Pantaleone figure, who was represented as a rich and avaricious Venetian merchant.
Above: A commedia dell’arte street play during the Carnival of Venice
However, Molière’s play was eventually adapted to opera.
Giovanni Bertati’s (1735 – 1815) libretto based on the play was set by Pasquale Anfossi (1727 – 1797) as L’avaro in 1775 and in 1776 it was set again by Gennaro Astarita (1745 – 1805).
Giuseppe Palomba also wrote a libretto based on the work which was set by Giacomo Cordella (1786 – 1847) in 1814.
In Russia, too, Vasily Pashkevich (1742 – 1797) based his 18th century comic opera The Miser on Molière’s play.
Above: Russian composer Vasily Pashkevich
Another musical adaptation in Arabic was pioneered by the Lebanese Marun Al Naqqash (1817 – 1855) as al-Bakhil.
This was performed in Beirut in 1847.
Above: Modern Beirut, Lebanon
Jovan Sterija Popović, the founding father of Serbian theatre, based his Tvrdica (The Miser)(1837) on Molière’s play.
In this work, the Harpagon figure is represented as a small town Greek merchant.
Above: Serbian writer Jovan Sterija Popovic (1806 – 1856)
One reason for so many versions must be the acknowledged fact that Molière’s humour does not translate well and requires more or less free adaptation to succeed.
The history of De Vrek, Taco de Beer’s 1863 translation into Dutch provides another notable example.
In 1878 he adapted this to Dutch contemporary life and an edition of that version found its way to Indonesia.
There it was further adapted into Malay as Si Bachil and given a contemporary Indonesian background.
In 1941 this production in turn served as basis for Tamar Djaja’s novel of the same title, by which time the story had become all but unrecognisable.
Above: Flag of Indonesia
The earliest American production of a play titled The Miser was of Fielding’s version in the years following 1766.
A Broadway production of a translation of Molière’s play ran for only three nights at the Experimental Theatre in 1936.
There have been several revivals since in one version or another.
In 1954, The Laird o’ Grippy, a free translation into Scots by Robert Kemp (1908 – 1967), was staged by the Edinburgh Gateway Company, with John Laurie in the leading role.
An audio recording of the 1969 Lincoln Center production produced by Jules Irving (1925 – 1979) and directed by Carl Weber (1925 – 2016) was released by Caedmon Records.
Above: David H. Koch Theater on the left, Metropolitan Opera House in front, and David Geffen Hall on the right. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City
This recording of the adaptation by Ranjit Bolt is available at the Internet Archive.
The play itself ran at the Vivian Beaumont Theater for 52 performances.
Above: Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, New York City
An Australian musical theatre adaptation with the name Mistress Money premiered in Sydney in 1960.
It had a book and lyrics by Eleanor Witcombe and John McKellar and music by Dot Mendoza.
Above: Flag of Australia
More recently in Britain, John Coutts’ English-Scots version of The Miser was performed in 2009 under the title The Auld Skinflint.
Above: Scottish poet John Coutts
In 2012, the play was made into a Bollywood musical titled Kanjoos The Miser by Hardeep Singh Kohli and Jatinder Verma and toured the UK.
Above: British writer / performer Hardeep Singh Kohli
(Why isn’t there a Turkish version of The Miser?)
Above: Flag of the Republic of Türkiye
Henry still couldn’t manage his money and was never well off.
In 1734, aged 27, he married Charlotte Cradock of Salisbury, one of the beauties of the city, at the Church of St Mary in Charlcombe, Somerset.
Above: Parish Church of the Blesséd Virgin Mary, Charlcombe, Somerset, England
Charlotte brought a settlement of £1,500 to the marriage and with the money they planned to live in Dorset as ‘County’ folk.
Thus, in 1735, the newly married couple took up residence in a small manor house at East Stour, settled into their comfortable lifestyle and produced a daughter Amelia.
In the process they were becoming extremely popular with their neighbours.
Above: East Stour, Dorset, England
In 1736, due to a combination of Henry’s spendthrift ways and poor budgeting the Fieldings were stone broke, the estate sold, and the penniless young couple left Dorset to return to London, taking with them Charlotte’s maid Mary Macdaniel.
In London, Fielding became the manager and chief playwright of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket.
Above: Haymarket Theatre, London
Even though he was rumored to be a terrible drunkard and something of a womanizer, Henry was a hard worker.
From 1734 to 1739, Fielding wrote anonymously for the leading Tory periodical, The Craftsman, against the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole.
His patron was the opposition Whig MP George Lyttelton, a boyhood friend from Eton to whom he later dedicated Tom Jones.
Above: British statesman George Lyttelton (1709 – 1773)
Lyttelton followed his leader Lord Cobham in forming a Whig opposition to Walpole’s government called the Cobhamites, which included another of Fielding’s Eton friends, William Pitt.
Above: Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham (1675 – 1749)
In The Craftsman, Fielding voiced an opposition attack on bribery and corruption in British politics.
Despite writing for the opposition to Walpole, which included Tories as well as Whigs, Fielding was “unshakably a Whig” and often praised Whig heroes such as the Duke of Marlborough and Gilbert Burnet.
Above: Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury (1643 – 1715)
The other prominent opposition paper, Common Sense, founded by Chesterfield and Lyttelton, was named after a character in Fielding’s Pasquin (1736).
Fielding wrote at least two articles for it in 1737 and 1738.
Fielding wrote several new plays a year….
- The Intriguing Chambermaid (1734), after Jean-François Regnard
Above: French poet Jean-François Regnard (1655 – 1709)
(Jean-François Regnard, “the most distinguished, after Molière, of the comic poets of the 17th century“, was a dramatist, born in Paris, who is equally famous now for the travel diary he kept of a voyage in 1681.
Regnard inherited a fortune from his father, a successful merchant who had given him an excellent classical education.
He then increased it, he affirms, by gambling.
He took to travelling.
On a return voyage from Italy in 1678 was at the age of 22 captured by an Algerian pirate, sold as a slave in Algiers and taken to Constantinople (İstanbul), where the French Consul paid ransom for his release.
He went on travelling, undaunted.
His Voyage de Flandre et de Hollande, commencé le 26 avril 1681, reporting his trip through the Low Countries, Denmark and Sweden, where he dallied at the courts of Christian V (1646 – 1699) and Charles XI (1655 – 1697) and then north to Lapland, returning through Poland, Hungary and Germany to France, is mined by social historians.
The section often published on its own, his Voyage de Laponie, largely inspired by Johannes Schefferus (1621 – 1679), describes the way of life of the Sami of Lapland.
It was not published until 1731, when its description of the backwardness and simplicity of the Sami people, their curious pagan customs, alcohol addiction and untidy lifestyle, introduced these strangers to cultured Europe.
After his return to Paris, Regnard purchased a sinecure in the Treasury that required no attention, and wrote farces and skits for the Théâtre des Italiens (1688 – 1696).
After inheriting his mother’s considerable fortune in 1693, he devoted the time divided between his Hôtel in Paris and his country house, the Château of Grillon, near Dourdan, to writing comedies in verse for the Comédie Française, 23 in total, the best of them being Le Joueur (“The Gamester“)(1696), Le Distrait (1697), Les Ménechmes (1705), and his masterwork, Le Légataire universel (“The residuary legatee“)(1706), following closely in the steps of Molière.
He died at his Château of Grillon in 1709.)
Above: Hôtel de Ville (Town Hall), Dourdan, France
- An Old Man Taught Wisdom, or The Virgin Unmasked, A Farce (1734), ballad opera
- Don Quixote in England (1734), ballad opera
Fielding dedicated this play to the opposition Whig leader Lord Chesterfield.
It appeared on 17 April 1734, the same day writs were issued for the general election.
Above: Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773)
- The Miser (1735), incidental music by Thomas Arne, based on the Moliere and Plautus plays
- The Universal Gallant, or The Different Husbands (1735)
It was not a success and met a hostile reception its opening night, and lasted for only three performances.
Pasquin (1736) is a satire on both politics and the theatre, with a play within a play plot about a group of actors attempting to put on a production about a local election.
It takes its name from Pasquin, a historic statue in Rome.
It was the success of the season with an estimated 25,000 people seeing its original run of 40 performances.
Above: Pasquino or Pasquin is the name used by Romans since the early modern period to describe this battered Hellenistic-style statue perhaps dating to the 3rd century BC, which was unearthed in the Parione district of Rome in the 15th century.
It is located in a piazza of the same name on the northwest corner of the Palazzo Braschi (Museo di Roma), near the site where it was unearthed.
The statue is known as the first of the talking statues of Rome, because of the tradition of attaching anonymous criticisms to its base.
The satirical literary form pasquinade (or “pasquil”) takes its name from this tradition.
The statue’s fame dates to the early 16th century, when Cardinal Oliviero Carafa (1430 – 1511) draped the marble torso of the statue in a toga and decorated it with Latin epigrams on the occasion of the Feast of Saint Mark (25 April).
The Cardinal’s actions led to a custom of criticizing the pope or his government by the writing of satirical poems in broad Roman dialect— called “pasquinades“, from the Italian pasquinate — and attaching them to the Pasquino.
Thus Pasquino became the first “talking statue” of Rome.
He spoke out about the people’s dissatisfaction, denounced injustice, and assaulted misgovernment by members of the Church.
From this tradition are derived the English-language terms pasquinade and pasquil, which refer to an anonymous lampoon in verse or prose.
Above: Modern pasquinades in Italian on the base of the statue (2007)
- Eurydice, A Farce (1737)
- Eurydice Hissed, or A Word to the Wise (1737)
…. until the Theatre was forced to close by the stage Licensing Act of 1737 which provided that only plays licensed by the government could be performed.
The Act having been introduced largely as a result of Fielding’s plays ridiculing the politics of the day.
Above: Coat of Arms of Great Britain from 1714 to 1801
The Historical Register for the Year 1736 and Eurydice Hissed (both were published together in 1737) are two of Henry Fielding’s satirical dramas.
A mixture of several plots, each play extensively satirizes British politicians.
In form, the play The Historical Register is a series of unrelated episodes, given a coherence by a rehearsal framework:
An author, Medley, presents his play to the “critic“, Sourwit and Lord Dapper, two characteristic figures of London high society.
Medley, who can be regarded as Fielding’s spokesman, explains:
“My design is to ridicule the vicious and foolish customs of the age, and that in a fair manner, without fear, favour or ill nature, and without scurrility, ill manners or commonplace.
I hope to expose the reigning follies in such a manner that men shall laugh themselves out of them before they feel that they are touched.“
The original text involves “a humming deal of satire” and farce, referring exclusively to the year 1736.
Henry Fielding would construct the non-ironic pseudonym such as Addison and Steele used in the Spectator, and the ironic mask or Persona, such as Swift used in A Modest Proposal.
The Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 is said to be a direct response to his activities in writing for the theatre.
Although the play that triggered the act was the unproduced, anonymously authored The Golden Rump, Fielding’s dramatic satires had set the tone.
Plays, prints, pamphlets and journal articles attacking the King, Walpole and the extended Whig faction were not an uncommon feature of early 18th century London.
Plays were subjected to the greatest displeasure from royal authority, and individual works like John Gay’s Polly (1729) and Fielding’s own Grub Street Opera (1731) had earlier been prevented from reaching the stage.
However the trend itself survived through the 1720s and 1730s.
A number of these satirical works used the devices of physical, sexual and scatological humour to mock the persons of Prime Minister Robert Walpole and King George II.
Both the King and the Prime Minister were men of short, corpulent build.
George II being the unfortunate possessor of a disproportionately large posterior and an affliction of piles, to which he had acquired a fistula by early 1737.
All these personal deficiencies were mercilessly lampooned by Opposition satirists of the period.
The Golden Rump is a farcical play of unknown authorship said to have been written in 1737.
It acted as the chief trigger for the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737.
The play has never been performed on stage or published in print.
No manuscript of the play survives, casting some doubt over whether it ever existed in full at all.
The authorship of the play has often been ascribed to Henry Fielding, at that time a popular and prolific playwright who often turned his incisive satire against the monarch, George II, and particularly the Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole.
Modern literary historians, however, increasingly embrace the opinion that The Golden Rump may have been secretly commissioned by Walpole himself in a successful bid to get his Bill for theatrical licensing passed before the legislature.
The controversy of The Golden Rump dates back to an anonymous allegory published in two parts in the Opposition journal Common Sense on 19 and 26 March 1737.
Titled A Vision of the Golden Rump, this work has later been attributed to Dr. William King of Oxford, a staunch Jacobite propagandist.
Above: English writer William King (1685 – 1763)
In this satire, the “visionary” in his dream lands up in a pleasant meadow not unlike Greenwich Park, where he encounters “the Noblesse of the Kingdom” on their way to celebrate the Festival of the Golden Rump.
The Pagod of the Golden Rump is easily identifiable as George II.
The Chief Magician (whose “belly” is “as prominent as the Pagod’s Rump”) is without doubt Robert Walpole.
The figure of Queen Caroline is presented as injecting a solution of aurum potabile from time to time from a contrivance that is “a golden tube with a large bladder at the end, resembling a common clyster pipe” into the Pagod’s rump, “to comfort his bowels, and to appease the idol, when he lifted up his cloven foot to correct his domesticks.”
An extract of this raucous piece is published in The Gentleman’s Magazine during the same month; and its picturesque description is soon turned into a satiric print called ‘The Festival of the Golden Rump’ and published in The Craftsman on 7 May.
The subtitle of the print reads “Rumpatur, quisquis Rumpitur invidia“, dog Latin for what The Common Sense translated as “Whoever envies me, let him be RUMPED.”
The reference clearly draws attention to the self-titled Rumpsteak Club that gathered at that time around the figure of Frederick Louis, the disenchanted son of George II and heir apparent to the English crown.
On reading the manuscript of The Golden Rump, Walpole immediately put a stop to any attempt of the public performance of the play.
The manuscript was also used as his chief argument before the King and the House of Commons for demanding an amendment of the original Theatrical Licensing Act of 1713.
Once it was passed, political satire on stage became all but impossible.
Fielding retired from the theatre and resumed his legal career to support his wife Charlotte Craddock and two children by becoming a barrister, joining the Middle Temple in 1737 and being called to the Bar there in 1740.
Above: Middle Temple Hall, London, England
Fielding’s lack of financial acumen meant the family often endured periods of poverty, but were helped by Ralph Allen, a wealthy benefactor, on whom Squire Allworthy in Tom Jones would be based.
Allen went on to provide for the education and support of Fielding’s children after the writer’s death.
Above: British entrepreneur Ralph Allen (1694 – 1763)
Fielding continued to air political views in satirical articles and newspapers in the late 1730s and early 1740s.
He was the main writer and editor from 1739 to 1740 for the satirical paper The Champion, which was sharply critical of Walpole’s government and of pro-government literary and political writers.
He sought to evade libel charges by making its political attacks so funny or embarrassing to the victim that a publicized court case would seem even worse.
He later became chief writer for the Whig government of Henry Pelham.
Above: British statesman Henry Pelham (1694 – 1754)
Fielding took to novel writing in 1741, angered by Samuel Richardson’s success with Pamela.
Pamela or Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel first published in 1740 by the English writer Samuel Richardson.
Considered one of the first true English novels, it serves as Richardson’s version of conduct literature about marriage.
Above: English writer Samuel Richardson (1689 – 1761)
Pamela tells the story of a 15-year-old maidservant named Pamela Andrews, whose employer, Mr. B, a wealthy landowner, makes unwanted and inappropriate advances towards her after the death of his mother.
Pamela strives to reconcile her strong religious training with her desire for the approval of her employer in a series of letters and, later in the novel, journal entries all addressed to her impoverished parents.
After various unsuccessful attempts at seduction, a series of sexual assaults and an extended period of kidnapping, the rakish Mr. B eventually reforms and makes Pamela a sincere proposal of marriage.
In the novel’s second part, Pamela marries Mr. B and tries to acclimatise to her new position in upper-class society.
The full title, Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, makes plain Richardson’s moral purpose.
A best-seller of its time, Pamela was widely read but was also criticised for its perceived licentiousness and disregard for class barriers.
Furthermore, Pamela was an early commentary on domestic violence and brought into question the dynamic line between male aggression and a contemporary view of love.
Moreover, Pamela, despite the controversies, shed light on social issues that transcended the novel for the time such as gender roles, early false-imprisonment, and class barriers present in the eighteenth century.
The action of the novel is told through letters and journal entries from Pamela to her parents.
Richardson highlights a theme of naivety, illustrated through the eyes of Pamela.
Richardson paints Pamela herself as innocent and meek and further contributes to the theme of her being short-sighted to emphasize the ideas of childhood innocence and naivety.
Two years after the publication of Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, Richardson published a sequel, Pamela in her Exalted Condition (1742).
He revisited the theme of the rake in his Clarissa (1748), and sought to create a “male Pamela” in Sir Charles Grandison (1753).
Since Ian Watt discussed it in The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding in 1957, literary critics and historians have generally agreed that Pamela played a critical role in the development of the novel in English.
His first success was an anonymous parody of that novel, called Shamela.
Shamela is written as a shocking revelation of the true events which took place in the life of Pamela Andrews, the main heroine of Pamela.
Shamela starts with a letter from a Parson Thomas Tickletext to his friend, Parson J. Oliver, in which Tickletext is completely smitten by Pamela, and insists Oliver gives the book a read.
In response, however, Oliver reveals her true nature is not so virtuous.
He has letters to prove her real character.
The rest of the story is told in letters between the major characters, such as Shamela, her mother, Henrietta Maria Honora Andrews —who is unwed in this version — Master Booby, Mrs. Jeweks, Mrs. Jervis, and Rev. Arthur Williams, much like in Pamela.
In this version, however, her father is not present at all.
In Shamela we also learn that, instead of being a kind, humble and chaste servant-girl, Pamela (whose true name turns out to be Shamela) is in fact a wicked and lascivious creature — daughter to a London prostitute — who schemes to entrap her master, Squire Booby, into marriage.
Later, however, it was discovered Shamela was having an affair with the Reverend.
The verbal and physical violence of Richardson’s “Mr. B” (whose name is revealed to be Booby) to his servant maid are hyperbolized, rendering their supposed love-match contemptible and absurd.
This follows the model of Tory satirists of the previous generation, notably Swift and Gay.
Fielding followed this with Joseph Andrews (1742), an original work supposedly dealing with Pamela’s brother, Joseph.
His purpose, however, was more than parody, for as stated in the preface, he intended a “kind of writing which I do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our language“.
In what Fielding called a “comic epic poem in prose“, he blended two classical traditions: that of the epic, which had been poetic, and that of the drama, but emphasizing the comic rather than the tragic.
Another distinction of Joseph Andrews and the novels to come was use of everyday reality of character and action, as opposed to the fables of the past.
While begun as a parody, it developed into an accomplished novel in its own right and is seen as Fielding’s debut as a serious novelist.
The novel begins with the affable, intrusive narrator outlining the nature of our hero.
Joseph Andrews is the brother of Richardson’s Pamela and is of the same rustic parentage and patchy ancestry.
At the age of 10, he found himself tending animals as an apprentice to Sir Thomas Booby.
In proving his worth as a horseman, he caught the eye of Sir Thomas’s wife, Lady Booby, who now employs him (age 17) as her footman.
After Sir Thomas’s death, Joseph finds his Lady’s affections redoubled as she offers herself to him in her chamber while on a trip to London.
In a scene analogous to many of Pamela‘s refusals of Mr. B in Richardson’s novel, Lady Booby finds Joseph’s Christian commitment to pre-marital chastity unwavering.
After suffering the Lady’s fury, Joseph sends a letter to his sister much like Pamela’s anguished missives in her own novel.
The Lady makes one last attempt at seduction before dismissing him from both his job and his lodgings.
As Joseph sets out from London by moonlight, the narrator introduces the novel’s heroine, Fanny Goodwill, Joseph’s true love.
A poor, illiterate girl of ‘extraordinary beauty‘, now living with a farmer close to Lady Booby’s parish, she and Joseph had grown ever closer since their childhood, before their local parson and mentor Abraham Adams recommended that they postpone marriage until they have the means to live comfortably.
On his way to see Fanny, Joseph is mugged and laid up in a nearby inn where, by coincidence, he is reunited with Parson Adams, who is on his way to London to sell three volumes of his sermons.
The thief is found and brought to the inn (only to escape later that night).
Joseph is reunited with his possessions.
Adams and Joseph catch up with each other.
The Parson, in spite of his own poverty, offers his last 9s 3½d to Joseph’s disposal.
Joseph and Adams’s stay in the inn is capped by one of many burlesque, slapstick digressions in the novel.
Betty, the inn’s 21-year-old chambermaid, had taken a liking to Joseph, but is doomed to disappointment by Joseph’s constancy to Fanny.
The landlord, Mr. Towouse, who had always admired Betty, saw this disappointment as an opportunity to take advantage.
Locked in an embrace, they are discovered by the choleric Mrs. Towouse, who chases the maid through the house until Adams restrains her.
With the landlord promising not to transgress again, his lady allows him to make his peace at the cost of “quietly and contentedly bearing to be reminded of his transgressions, as a kind of penance, once or twice a day, during the residue of his life“.
During his stay in the inn, Adams’s hopes for his sermons are mocked in a discussion with a travelling bookseller and another parson.
Nevertheless, Adams remains resolved to continue his journey to London until it is revealed that his wife, deciding that he would be more in need of shirts than sermons on his journey, has neglected to pack them.
The pair thus decide to return to the Parson’s parish:
Joseph in search of Fanny and Adams in search of his sermons.
With Joseph following on horseback, Adams finds himself sharing a stage coach with an anonymous lady and Madam Slipslop, an admirer of Joseph’s and a servant of Lady Booby.
When they pass the house of a teenage girl named Leonora, the anonymous lady is reminded of a story and begins one of the novel’s three interpolated tales, “The History of Leonora, or the Unfortunate Jilt“.
This continues for a number of chapters, punctuated by the questions and interruptions of the other passengers.
After stopping at an inn, Adams relinquishes his seat to Joseph, and forgetting his horse, sets out ahead on foot.
Finding himself some time ahead of his friend, Adams rests by the side of the road where he becomes so engaged in conversation with a fellow traveller that he misses the stage coach as it passes.
As the night falls and Adams and the stranger discourse on courage and duty, a shriek is heard.
The stranger, having seconds earlier lauded the virtues of bravery and chivalry, makes his excuses and flees the scene without turning back.
Adams, however, rushes to the girl’s aid and after a mock-epic struggle knocks her attacker unconscious.
In spite of Adams’s good intentions, he and the girl, who reveals herself to be none other than Fanny Goodwill (in search of Joseph after hearing of his mugging), find themselves accused of assault and robbery.
After some comic litigious wrangling before the local magistrate, the pair are eventually released and depart shortly after midnight in search of Joseph.
They do not have to walk far before a storm forces them into the same inn that Joseph and Slipslop have chosen for the night.
Slipslop, her jealousy ignited by seeing the two lovers reunited, departs angrily.
When Adams, Joseph and Fanny come to leave the following morning, they find their departure delayed by an inability to settle the bill, and, with Adams’s solicitations of a loan from the local parson and his wealthy parishioners failing, it falls on a local peddler to rescue the trio by loaning them his last 6s 6d.
The solicitations of charity that Adams is forced to make, and the complications which surround their stay in the parish, bring him into contact with many local squires, gentlemen and parsons.
Much of the latter part of Book II is taken up by discussions of literature, religion, philosophy and trade that result.
The three depart the inn by night.
It is not long before Fanny needs to rest.
With the party silent, they overhear approaching voices agree on “the murder of any one they meet” and flee to a local house.
Inviting them in, the owner, Mr. Wilson, informs them that the gang of supposed murderers were in fact sheep-stealers, intent more on the killing of livestock than of Adams and his friends.
The party being settled, Wilson begins the novel’s most lengthy interpolated tale by recounting his life story:
A story which bears a notable resemblance to Fielding’s own youth.
At the age of 16, Wilson’s father died and left him a modest fortune.
Finding himself the master of his destiny, he left school and travelled to London where he soon acquainted himself with the dress, manners and reputation for womanising necessary to consider himself a “beau“.
Wilson’s life in the town is a façade:
He writes love letters to himself, obtains his fine clothes on credit, and is concerned more to be seen at the theatre than to watch the play.
After two bad experiences with women, he is financially crippled, and much like Fielding, falls into the company of a group of Deists, freethinkers and gamblers.
Finding himself in debt, he, like Fielding, turns to the writing of plays and hack journalism to alleviate his financial problems.
He spends his last few pence on a lottery ticket, but with no reliable income, is soon forced to exchange it for food.
While in jail for his debts, news reaches him that the ticket he gave away has won a £3,000 prize.
His disappointment is short-lived, however, as the daughter of the winner hears of his plight, pays off his debts, and, after a brief courtship, agrees to marry him.
Wilson found himself at the mercy of many of the social ills that Fielding had written about in his journalism:
The oversaturated and abused literary market, the exploitative state lottery, and regressive laws which sanctioned imprisonment for small debts.
Having seen the corrupting influence of wealth and the town, he retires with his new wife to the rural solitude in which Adams, Fanny and Joseph find them.
The only break in his contentment, and one which turns out to be significant to the plot, was the kidnapping of his eldest son, whom he has not seen since.
Wilson promises to visit Adams when he passes through his parish, and after another mock-epic battle on the road, this time with a party of hunting dogs, the trio proceed to the house of a local squire, where Fielding illustrates another contemporary social ill by having Adams subjected to a humiliating roasting.
Enraged, the three depart to the nearest inn to find that, while at the squire’s house, they had been robbed of their last half-guinea.
To compound their misery, the squire has Adams and Joseph accused of kidnapping Fanny, to have them detained while he orders the abduction of the girl himself.
She is rescued in transit, however, by Lady Booby’s steward, Peter Pounce, and all four of them complete the remainder of the journey to Booby Hall together.
On seeing Joseph arrive back in the parish, a jealous Lady Booby meanders through emotions as diverse as rage, pity, hatred, pride and love.
The next morning Joseph and Fanny’s bans are published and the Lady turns her anger onto Parson Adams, who is accommodating Fanny at his house.
Finding herself powerless either to stop the marriage or to expel them from the parish, she enlists the help of Lawyer Scout, who brings a spurious charge of larceny against Joseph and Fanny to prevent, or at least postpone the wedding.
Three days later, the Lady’s plans are foiled by the visit of her nephew, Mr Booby, and a surprise guest:
Booby has married Pamela, granting Joseph a powerful new ally and brother-in-law.
What is more, Booby is an acquaintance of the justice presiding over Joseph and Fanny’s trial, and instead of Bridewell, has them committed to his own custody.
Knowing of his sister’s antipathy to the two lovers, Booby offers to reunite Joseph with his sister and take him and Fanny into his own parish and his own family.
In a discourse with Joseph on stoicism and fatalism, Adams instructs his friend to submit to the will of God and control his passions, even in the face of overwhelming tragedy.
In the kind of cruel juxtaposition usually reserved for Fielding’s less savoury characters, Adams is informed that his youngest son, Jacky, has drowned.
After indulging his grief in a manner contrary to his lecture a few minutes previously, Adams is informed that the report was premature, and that his son has in fact been rescued by the same peddler that loaned him his last few shillings in Book II.
Lady Booby, in a last-ditch attempt to sabotage the marriage, brings a young beau named Didapper to Adams’s house to seduce Fanny.
Fanny is unmoved by his bold attempts at courtship.
Didapper is too bold in his approach and provokes Joseph into a fight.
The Lady and the beau depart in disgust, but the peddler, having seen the Lady, is compelled to relate a tale.
The peddler had met his wife while in the army.
She died young.
While on her death bed, she confessed that she once stole an exquisitely beautiful baby girl from a family named Andrews, and sold her on to Sir Thomas Booby, thus raising the possibility that Fanny may in fact be Joseph’s sister.
The company is shocked, but there is general relief that the crime of incest may have been narrowly averted.
The following morning, Joseph and Pamela’s parents arrive, and together with the peddler and Adams, they piece together the question of Fanny’s parentage.
The Andrews identify her as their lost daughter, but have a twist to add to the tale.
When Fanny was an infant, she was indeed stolen from her parents, but the thieves left behind a sickly infant Joseph in return, who was raised as their own.
It is immediately apparent that Joseph is the above-mentioned kidnapped son of Wilson.
When Wilson arrives on his promised visit, he identifies Joseph by a birthmark on his chest.
Joseph is now the son of a respected gentleman, Fanny an in-law of the Booby family, and the couple no longer suspected of being siblings.
Two days later they are married by Adams in a humble ceremony, and the narrator, after bringing the story to a close, and in a disparaging allusion to Richardson, reassures readers that there will be no sequel.
Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.
(Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews)
In 1743, he published a novel in the Miscellanies volume III (which was the first volume of the Miscellanies):
The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild the Great, which is sometimes counted as his first, as he almost certainly began it before he wrote Shamela and Joseph Andrews.
It is a satire of Walpole equating him and Jonathan Wild, the gang leader and highwayman.
He implicitly compares the Whig party in Parliament with a gang of thieves run by Walpole, whose constant desire to be a “Great Man” (a common epithet with Walpole) ought to culminate in the antithesis of greatness:
Hanging.
The book tells the satiric biographical story of an early 18th-century underworld boss, Jonathan Wild, from his birth in 1682 until his execution in 1725.
As a thief-taker, Wild’s job was to capture criminals and take them to the authorities in order to collect a reward, but he made notorious profit from managing an underground network of malefactors who paid him to avoid being denounced.
Fielding’s biography of Jonathan Wild allows him to satirize various aspects of English society at the time.
It features an interpolated romantic story that is nowhere to be found in other accounts of the historical Wild.
It has been argued that this was Fielding’s way of rendering the criminal biography of Wild into a novel of the kind that was becoming increasingly popular in his time.
The death of his wife in 1744 was a great blow, exasperating his already bad health.
He took comfort largely in the company of his daughter Harriet, his sister Sarah, and his wife’s maid, Mary Daniel.
Sarah had followed in her father’s literary footsteps and did some writing but none of it was very memorable.
However, her book for educating girls, ‘The Governess or Little Female Academy‘, was used well into the next century.
It was about a year before Fielding went back to newspaper writing, where he continued to work on various politically oriented newspapers and publish many political and satirical pamphlets, some of which the government actually approved of, and even distributed.
These were often published anonymously, which unfortunately led to Henry being blamed for some atrociously mean pamphlets that he had nothing to do with.
Fielding’s anonymous The Female Husband (1746) fictionalizes a case in which a female transvestite was tried for duping another woman into marriage; this was one of several small pamphlets costing sixpence.
Though a minor piece in his life’s work, it reflects his preoccupation with fraud, shamming and masks.
Charles Hamilton (née Mary Hamilton) was an English 18th-century female husband.
In 1746, Hamilton – while living as a man – married Mary Price.
After Price reported she was suspicious of Hamilton’s manhood to local authorities, Hamilton was prosecuted for vagrancy, and sentenced in 1746 to a public whipping in four towns and to six months imprisonment with hard labour.
While the surviving records of the case indicate that Hamilton was actually prosecuted for vagrancy, the fact that she had penetrative sex and sexual intimacy with Mary Price prompted public opinion to ask for a severe punishment of what was considered as deceitful sexuality.
Newspaper reports at the time claimed that there had been 14 marriages in all.
A 1746 account in the Newgate calendar gives other details.
(The Newgate Calendar, subtitled The Malefactors’ Bloody Register, was a popular collection of moralising stories about sin, crime and criminals who commit them in England in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Originally a monthly bulletin of executions, produced by the Keeper of Newgate Prison in London, the Calendar‘s title was appropriated by other publishers, who put out biographical chapbooks about notorious criminals.)
Above: Newgate, the old city gate and prison
In the same year, Henry Fielding published a fictionalised account of the case under the title The Female Husband.
The term Female Husband became common in the US and British press to document behaviour which would later be stigmatised by sexologists.
Hamilton was not the first documented female husband, but it was the first use of the term to describe a woman who had married another woman whilst purporting to be male.
Hamilton was born in Somerset and grew up in Scotland, the child of William and Mary Hamilton.
At the age of 14, Hamilton began wearing male clothes borrowed from her brother.
Hamilton studied with two doctors during her apprenticeship.
One of them was Dr. Edward Green, who presented as an “operator and occulist” but was known as a mountebank.
Hamilton helped Green to produce the medical compounds, collect the needed supplies and sell the cures for various illnesses ranging from cancer, leprosy, fistulas and scurvy.
At this time, quack itinerant doctors were sometimes well considered, and Dr Green even offered his services as poor relief to cure various illnesses and disorders, including fistula, being paid two guineas.
After serving Dr Edward Green two to three years, Hamilton was employed by Dr Finley Green for the last year of apprenticeship.
Hamilton then worked independently as a quack doctor, travelling and selling medicine and medical advice in southwest England, dressed in “man’s apparel“:
Ruffles, breeches, and a periwig.
Above: The Charlatan, Pietro Longhi (1757)
During this period, the Jacobite rising of 1745 against the House of Hanover had occurred.
In response, Parliament passed the Dress Act 1746, which forbade the wearing of Highland dress in Scotland.
Above: The Battle of Culloden, 16 April 1746
Hamilton’s clothes were viewed as European in contrast to Highland styles, which could also be seen as a cultural conscious choice.
Travelling meant that Hamilton could easily change location in case of suspicion, and the work provided a decent living.
At one point, Hamilton rented a room to a widow named Mary Creed.
Hamilton became involved with her niece Mary Price.
On 16 July 1746, Charles Hamilton married Mary Price in Wells, Somerset.
Above: Wells, Somerset, England
The couple travelled together for two months, before Mary Price decided she had been cheated upon into believing Hamilton was a man, and she reported her husband to the authorities in Glastonbury.
Above: Glastonbury, Somerset, England
Hamilton was arrested and tried for fraud.
Before that, the couple are reported to have had sexual intercourse several times involving penetration.
Historians have questioned how that could be possible.
Explanations range from stating that Price was a virgin ignorant of sexual matters, and that Hamilton may have used dildos or their hands during the intercourse to penetrate her, the practice leaving Price satisfied for months before she began questioning her husband’s manhood.
In 1746, Hamilton was brought before the summer Quarter Sessions in Taunton, Somerset.
According to the local newspaper report:
“There was a great debate for some time in Court about the nature of her crime, and what to call it, but at last it was agreed that she should be charged with fraud.”
At the time of the trial, there was no clear legal procedure to prosecute such cases.
Above: Session House, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, England
The records show that it was not so much the fact that Hamilton dressed and worked as a man that was a problem, but rather the fact of having deceitfully contrived penetrative sex.
Hamilton was charged under the Vagrancy Act of 1744.
This Act was meant to prosecute lack of employment or deceitful attitudes, mostly related to deceitful ways of acquiring money.
However, the charges retained against people prosecuted for vagrancy were vague and diverse, they were seen as a way to maintain order by restricting mobility and consolidating gender and sexual norms that were not precisely named.
In fact Hamilton was detained with men charged with crimes of bastardy or concerning settlement under the custody of William Hodges.
The authorities were concerned about ruling over the mobility and sexual lives of strangers to the community, concerned about them taking their responsibilities with the women and children that these men had.
Hamilton’s case was the only one not involving paternity, money or bastardy.
During the trial, members of Hamilton’s community wrote a letter to the clerk asking for severe punishment.
They wanted public humiliation and to ensure that Hamilton would never again be able to live as a man.
According to Hamilton’s own deposition, she was born in Somerset, the daughter of Mary and William Hamilton.
Her family later moved to Scotland.
When she was 14, she used her brother’s clothes to pose as a boy, travelled to Northumberland and entered the service of a Dr. Edward Green (described in the deposition as a “mountebank“) and later of a Dr. Finey Green.
She studied to become a “quack doctor” as an apprentice of the two unlicensed practitioners.
In 1746, she moved to Wells, and set up a medical practice of her own under the name Charles Hamilton.
She met Mary Price, a relative of her landlady, whom she married in July 1746.
The marriage lasted for two months before Hamilton’s so called «true sex» was discovered.
Hamilton was arrested.
A deposition from Mary Price says that after the marriage she and Hamilton travelled selling medicines.
During the marriage Hamilton “entered her body several times, which made this examinant believe, at first, that the said Hamilton was a real man, but soon had reason to judge that the said Hamilton was not a man, but a woman.”
When they were in Glastonbury, Price confronted her.
Hamilton admitted the truth to Price, at which point she reported the matter and Hamilton was arrested.
The justices delivered their verdict that:
“The he or she prisoner at the bar is an uncommon, notorious cheat, and we, the Court, do sentence her, or him, whichever he or she may be, to be imprisoned six months, and during that time to be whipped in the towns of Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells and Shepton Mallet.”
The report in the Newgate Calendar concludes:
“And Mary, the monopoliser of her own sex, was imprisoned and whipped accordingly, in the severity of the winter of the year 1746.”
According to Jen Manion, the court case is representative of the pressure exercised by community to trigger a legal response by the courts to punish sexual intimacy outside of marriage and to stabilize sexual differences in a context where there were no clear legal offences defined by existing laws for cases of female husbands.
Hamilton became the first known case of a woman imposter cheating another woman in a fraudulent marriage.
In addition to Hamilton’s and Price’s own depositions, there are several reports of the case in the local newspaper, the Bath Journal.
The first of these says that after news of the arrest got out many people visited the prison to get a look at Hamilton, who was very “bold and impudent“.
It added that:
“It is publicly talked that she has deceived several of the fair sex by marrying them.”
The author promises to “make a further enquiry” into these allegations for a later report.
A subsequent report states that Hamilton was born in Yeovil.
Another report says that at the trial the prosecuting attorney, Mr. Gold, had alleged in his opening statement that Hamilton had been married 14 times.
The final report was repeated in the Daily Advertiser on 12 November, where it was probably seen by Henry Fielding.
A few months later the affair was picked up by the US press.
The Boston Weekly Post published the story in February 1747 stating the court’s difficulty in naming and defining the crime:
“Mary Hamilton was tried for pretending herself a man, and marrying 14 wives, the last of which, Mary Price, deposed in court that she was married to the prisoner and bedded and lived as man and wife for a quarter of a year, during which time she thought the prisoner a man, owing to the prisoner’s vile and deceitful practices.
After a debate of the nature of the crime and what to call it, it was agreed that she was an uncommon notorious cheat, and sentenced to be publicly whipped.”
Hamilton’s story became a sensation with the stated fact of having 14 wives, which made the story very visible.
Readers were left to imagine what the “vile and deceitful practices” could be, as they were not defined precisely.
Above: Portrait of the female husband who, under the assumed name of ‘James Allen’ was married for 21 years without once disclosing her sex.
She resided and earned her living as a sawyer, at Redriffe, where she was killed, 13 January 1829.
In 1746, Fielding anonymously published a sensational pamphlet, The Female Husband, that gives a different account of Hamilton’s life.
Fielding was himself the son of a judge and had trained and worked in law, contributing to the establishment of the London police force.
The author claims that he had his information “from the mouth” of Hamilton herself.
However, it is likely that he never met the woman he satirized in his work.
He says that she was born in 1721 on the Isle of Man, the daughter of a former army sergeant who had married a woman of property on the island.
She had been brought up in the strictest principles of virtue and religion, but was seduced into “vile amours” by her friend Anne Johnson, an enthusiastic Methodist, and “transactions not fit to be mentioned passed between them“.
When Anne leaves her for a man, Hamilton seeks another female lover.
She dresses as a man and pretends to be a Methodist preacher.
She meets Mrs. Rushford, a wealthy 68-year-old widow who takes her to be a lad of about 18.
Tempted by the money she will get as a “husband“, Hamilton marries Mrs. Rushford.
According to Fielding, she was able to deceive her bride by means “which decency forbids me even to mention“.
However, the bride eventually discovers Hamilton’s sex.
Hamilton is forced to flee.
Hamilton uses various other aliases to marry other women, but is repeatedly forced to flee when the ruse is discovered.
In at least three instances she lived for some time unnoticed by her married spouse.
Finally, posing as a doctor, she marries Mary Price, a beautiful 18-year-old girl.
The marriage is apparently happy until, while Hamilton is visiting Glastonbury, she is recognised by someone from a previous “marriage“.
Mary cannot believe it, but her mother ensures that Hamilton is arrested and prosecuted.
She is sentenced to imprisonment and to four public whippings in the market towns of Somerset.
Fielding claims that:
“On the very evening she had suffered the first whipping, she offered the gaoler money, to procure her a young girl to satisfy her most monstrous and unnatural desires.”
Above: An 1813 fanciful illustration of Hamilton being whipped, wearing male boots and breeches, but naked from the waist up
Fielding’s text was re-published with alterations in 1813, again anonymously, as:
The surprising adventures of a female husband!
Containing the whimsical amours, curious incidents, and diabolical tricks of Miss M. Hamilton, alias Mr. G. Hamilton, alias Minister Bentley, Mr. O’Keefe, alias Mrs. Knight, the Midwife, &c.
This lesser-known version has many alterations including a more sensationalized title and changes to the historical and cultural context.
The pamphlet was inexpensive and more than likely purchased by both men and women of different social statuses.
Fielding exaggerated and fictionalized parts of the story in order to keep the audience interested and to entice people to read who might not be interested in erotic fiction.
Something interesting about Fielding’s version of The Female Husband was his use of pronouns.
When Hamilton is passing as a male, Fielding uses ‘he/him‘, a tactic which might seem to cast the author as complicit in the deception.
In Fielding’s version the reader can be confused by the use of gender:
“She had not been long in this city, before she became acquainted with one Mary Price, a girl of about eighteen years of age, and of extraordinary beauty.
With this girl, hath this wicked woman since her confinement declared, she was really as much in love, as it was possible for a man ever to be with one of her own sex.“
Fielding’s use grammar here confuses the gender issue.
Both ‘man‘ and ‘her‘ refer back to Hamilton, or the ‘wicked woman‘ speaking to Fielding from her jail cell.
However, in the pamphlet published in the 19th century, the author makes a point of correcting this ambiguity, often adding italics to emphasize the pronoun choice.
Not only does the 19th century pamphlet consistently refer to Hamilton with a female pronoun, the author draws attention to the choice by using italics which are only used when a masculine pronoun would be indicated by Hamilton’s masculine persona.
While in earlier text Fielding does play with the idea that women might find Hamilton attractive because of her femininity, whenever her ‘sex‘ is discovered in his pamphlet, the relationship abruptly ends and unlike the 19th century author, Fielding more subtly exploits the possibilities of suggestion, and manages at the same time to maintain a tone of moral reprimand.
It has been argued that Fielding merged the conventions of the criminal biographies that were so popular in his time, with those of the comic marriage plot (a staple of drama that was slowly gaining ground in fiction as well).
In 1747, defying convention Fielding married Mary Macdaniel, who was around six months pregnant with their son William at the time.
The following year, Henry was appointed a judge at Middlesex.
Over the next few years, Henry’s wife had four more children and Henry himself became increasingly angry with the state of the law and law enforcement.
Above: Henry Fielding
His greatest work is The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), a meticulous comic novel with elements of the picaresque and the Bildungsroman, telling a convoluted tale of how a foundling came into a fortune.
The novel tells of Tom’s alienation from his foster father, Squire Allworthy, and his sweetheart, Sophia Western, and his reconciliation with them after lively and dangerous adventures on the road and in London.
It triumphs as a presentation of English life and character in the mid-18th century.
Every social type is represented and through them every shade of moral behaviour.
Fielding’s varied style tempers the basic seriousness of the novel and his authorial comment before each chapter adds a dimension to a conventional, straightforward narrative.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding.
It is a Bildungsroman (a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is important) and a picaresque novel (a genre of prose fiction, which depicts the adventures of a roguish but “appealing hero“, usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society).
It was first published on 28 February 1749 in London and is among the earliest English works to be classified as a novel.
It is the earliest novel mentioned by W. Somerset Maugham in his 1948 book Great Novelists and Their Novels among the ten best novels of the world.
The novel is highly organized despite its length.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that it has one of the “three most perfect plots ever planned” alongside Oedipus Tyrannus by Sophocles and The Alchemist by Ben Jonson.
Above: English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834)
It became a best seller with four editions published in its first year alone.
It is generally regarded as Fielding’s greatest book and as an influential English novel.
The novel’s events occupy 18 books.
It opens with the narrator stating that the purpose of the novel will be to explore “human nature“.
The kindly and wealthy Squire Allworthy and his sister Bridget are introduced in their estate in Somerset.
Allworthy returns from London after an extended business trip and finds an abandoned baby sleeping in his bed.
He summons his housekeeper, Mrs Deborah Wilkins, to take care of the child.
After searching the nearby village Mrs Wilkins is told about a young woman called Jenny Jones, a servant of a schoolmaster and his wife, as the most likely person to have committed the deed.
Jenny is brought before the Allworthys and admits being the one who put the baby in the bed, but she refuses to reveal the father’s identity.
Mr Allworthy mercifully removes Jenny to a place where her reputation will be unknown and tells his sister to raise the boy, whom he names Thomas, in his household.
Two brothers, Dr Blifil and Captain Blifil, regularly visit the Allworthy estate.
The doctor introduces the captain to Bridget in the hope of marrying into Allworthy’s wealth.
The couple soon marries.
After the marriage, Captain Blifil begins to show a coldness to his brother, who eventually feels obliged to leave the house for London.
He does, and, soon after, he dies “of a broken heart“.
Captain Blifil and his wife start to grow cool towards one another, and the former is found dead from apoplexy one evening after taking his customary evening stroll before dinner.
By then, he has fathered a boy who grows up with the bastard Tom.
Captain Blifil’s son, known as Master Blifil, is a miserable and jealous boy who conspires against Tom.
Tom grows into a vigorous and lusty yet honest and kind-hearted youth.
He tends to be closer friends with the servants and gamekeepers than with members of the gentry.
He is close friends with Black George, who is the gamekeeper.
His first love is Molly, Black George’s second daughter and a local beauty.
She throws herself at Tom, who then feels obliged to offer her his protection when he learns she is pregnant.
After some time, however, Tom finds out that Molly is somewhat promiscuous.
He then falls in love with a neighbouring squire’s lovely daughter, Sophia Western.
Tom and Sophia confess their love for each other after Tom breaks his arm rescuing Sophia.
Tom’s status as a bastard causes Sophia’s father and Allworthy to disapprove their love.
This class friction gives Fielding an opportunity for biting social commentary.
The inclusion of prostitution and sexual promiscuity in the plot was also novel for its time.
It was the foundation for criticism of the book’s “lowness“.
Squire Allworthy falls ill and is convinced that he is dying.
His family and servants gather around his bed as he disposes of his wealth.
He gives a favourable amount of his wealth to Tom Jones, which displeases Master Blifil.
Tom doesn’t care about what he has been given, since his only concern is Allworthy’s health.
Allworthy’s health improves and he learns that he will live.
Tom Jones is so excited that he begins to get drunk and gets into a fight with Master Blifil.
At the same time, Bridget Allworthy dies in London.
Sophia wants to conceal her love for Tom, so she gives a majority of her attention to Blifil when the three of them are together.
This leads to Sophia’s aunt, Mrs Western, believing that Sophia and Blifil are in love.
Squire Western wants Sophia to marry Blifil in order to gain property from the Allworthy estate.
Blifil learns of Sophia’s true affection for Tom Jones and is angry.
Blifil tells Allworthy that, on the day he almost died, Tom was out drinking and singing and celebrating his coming death.
This leads Tom to be banished.
Tom’s banishment seems to ensure that Sophia will be forced to marry Blifil, whom she finds odious, so she flees to avoid that fate.
After Tom is expelled from Allworthy’s estate he begins his adventures across Britain, eventually ending up in London.
On the way, he meets a barber, Partridge, who was banished from town because he was thought to be Tom’s father.
He becomes Tom’s faithful companion in the hope of restoring his reputation.
During their journey, they end up at an inn.
While they are there, a lady and her maid arrive.
An angry man arrives, and the chambermaid points him in the direction she thinks he needs to go.
He bursts in on Tom and Mrs Waters, a woman whom Tom rescued, in bed together.
The man, however, was looking for Mrs Fitzpatrick and leaves.
Sophia and her maid arrive at the same inn.
Partridge unknowingly reveals the relationship between Tom and Mrs Waters.
Sophia leaves with Mrs Fitzpatrick, who is her cousin, and heads for London.
They arrive at the home of Lady Bellaston, followed by Tom and Partridge.
Eventually, Tom tells Sophia that his true love is for her and no one else.
Tom ends up getting into a duel with Mr Fitzpatrick, which leads to his imprisonment.
Eventually, the secret of Tom’s birth is revealed after a brief scare involving Mrs Waters.
Mrs Waters is really Jenny Jones, Tom’s supposed mother.
Tom fears that he has committed incest.
This, however, is not the case, as Tom’s mother is in fact Bridget Allworthy, who conceived him with a man who died before he was born.
Tom is thus Squire Allworthy’s nephew.
After finding out about the intrigues of Blifil, who is Tom’s half-brother, Allworthy decides to bestow most of his inheritance on Tom.
After Tom’s true parentage is revealed, he and Sophia marry, as Squire Western no longer harbours any misgivings about Tom marrying his daughter.
Sophia bears Tom a son and a daughter, and the couple live on happily with the blessings of Squire Western and Squire Allworthy.
Fielding’s younger sister, Sarah, also became a successful writer.
Her novel The Governess, or The Little Female Academy (1749) is thought to be the first in English aimed expressly at children.
Despite the scandal of marrying his maid, Fielding’s consistent anti-Jacobitism and support for the Church of England led to his appointment a year later as Westminster’s chief magistrate, while his literary career went from strength to strength.
Most of his work concerned London’s criminal population of thieves, informers, gamblers and prostitutes.
Though living in a corrupt and callous society, he became noted for impartial judgements, incorruptibility and compassion for those whom social inequities led into crime.
The income from his office (“the dirtiest money upon earth“) dwindled as he refused to take money from the very poor.
Joined by his younger half-brother John, he helped found what some call London’s first police force, the Bow Street Runners, in 1749.
According to the historian G. M. Trevelyan, the Fieldings were two of the best magistrates in 18th-century London, who did much to enhance judicial reform and improve prison conditions.
Fielding’s influential pamphlets and enquiries included a proposal for abolishing public hangings.
This did not, however, imply opposition to capital punishment as such – as is evident, for example, in his presiding in 1751 over the trial of the notorious criminal James Field (1714 – 1751), finding him guilty in a robbery and sentencing him to hang.
Above: The Reward of Cruelty
James Field (1714 – 1751) was a sailor and boxer in England in the 18th century who was hanged for robbery.
He was born in Dublin, and spent most of his early life involved in petty crime.
His criminal record meant that in Ireland he spent most of his time on the run, so he moved to London.
There he continued his life of crime, becoming well known in the underworld.
Wanted for various robberies, he avoided capture by going to sea, working as a sailor on merchantmen and as a privateer.
When he returned in London, he became renowned as a boxer.
He lived and worked at a pub called The Fox in Drury Lane.
He returned to Ireland briefly when things became too hot for him in London, but returned soon afterwards.
Although there were several warrants for his arrest, the constables were afraid of him, and rather than acting on the warrants when they saw him, they would pretend not to recognize him and pass by.
He was eventually surprised at The Fox, overwhelmed, and arrested for theft with violence and highway robbery.
He was tried before Henry Fielding on 16 January 1751.
He and three other men were accused of beating and robbing a man and his wife on 24 May 1750 and, despite a number of witnesses supplying Field with various alibis, he was recognized by his size and bulk.
James Eklin, who had been a member of the group who had committed the crime, gave evidence against Field.
Field was found guilty and Fielding sentenced him to death.
He was hanged at Tyburn on 11 February 1751, aged 37.
His skeleton features in the dissection theatre in William Hogarth’s Reward of Cruelty, one of the series The Four Stages of Cruelty.
Field’s name makes an earlier appearance in the series of prints, in Second Stage of Cruelty a poster announcing a boxing match features his name.
John Fielding, despite being blind by then, succeeded his older brother as chief magistrate, becoming known as the “Blind Beak of Bow Street” for his ability to recognise criminals by their voices alone.
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Above: English magistrate John Fielding (1721 – 1780)
Amelia is a domestic novel taking place largely in London during 1733.
It describes the hardships suffered by a young couple newly married.
Against her mother’s wishes, Amelia marries Captain William Booth, a dashing young army officer.
The couple run away to London.
In Book II, William is unjustly imprisoned in Newgate.
He is subsequently seduced by Miss Matthews.
During this time, it is revealed that Amelia was in a carriage accident and that her nose was ruined.
Although this brings about jokes at Amelia’s expense, Booth refuses to regard her as anything but beautiful.
Amelia, by contrast, resists the attentions paid to her by several men in William’s absence and stays faithful to him.
She forgives his transgression, but William soon draws them into trouble again as he accrues gambling debts trying to lift the couple out of poverty.
He soon finds himself in debtors’ prison.
Amelia then discovers that she is her mother’s heiress and, the debt being settled, William is released and the couple retires to the country.
Life may as properly be called an art as any other.
(Henry Fielding, Amelia)
In January 1752, Fielding started a fortnightly, The Covent Garden Journal, published under the pseudonym “Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knt., Censor of Great Britain” until November of that year.
Here Fielding challenged the “armies of Grub Street” and periodical writers of the day in a conflict that became the Paper War of 1752 –1753.
The Covent-Garden Journal (modernised as The Covent Garden Journal) was an English literary periodical published twice a week for most of 1752.
It was edited and almost entirely funded by novelist, playwright, and essayist Henry Fielding.
It was Fielding’s fourth and final periodical, and one of his last written works.
At the time of the publication of the journal, Covent Garden, although formally associated with the theatre industry, was more widely known as London’s red light district.
Fielding had earlier written The Covent Garden Tragedy, a mock-tragic play concerning the tale of two prostitutes.
The Journal incited the “Paper War“, a conflict among a number of contemporary literary critics and writers, which began after Fielding declared war on the “armies of Grub Street” in the first issue.
His proclamation attracted multiple aggressors and instigated a long-lasting debate argued in the pages of their respective publications.
Initially waged for the sake of increasing sales, the Paper War ultimately became much larger than Fielding had expected and generated a huge volume of secondary commentary and literature.
In 1752, Henry Fielding started a “paper war“, a long-term dispute with constant publication of pamphlets attacking other writers, between the various authors on London’s Grub Street.
Although it began as a dispute between Fielding and John Hill, other authors, such as Christopher Smart, Bonnell Thornton, William Kenrick, Arthur Murphy and Tobias Smollett, were soon dedicating their works to aid various sides of the conflict.
The dispute lasted until 1753 and involved many of London’s periodicals.
It eventually resulted in countless essays, poems, and even a series of mock epic poems starting with Christopher Smart’s (1722 – 1771) The Hilliad.
Although it is unknown what actually started the dispute, it resulted in a divide of authors who either supported Fielding or supported Hill, and few in between.
Above: The Conjurers (1753) By Lady Fanny Killigrew.
Depicting (from left to right) Elizabeth Canning, Henry Fielding, Sir Crisp Gascoyne, John Hill, and Mary Squire.
Further controversy erupted in June, when Fielding expressed support for a letter decrying the government’s 1751 Disorderly Houses Act 1751 in the Journal.
His remarks were viewed by the public as an endorsement of the legality of prostitution.
It soon became common opinion that the letter, initially attributed to a “Humphrey Meanwell“, was in fact written by Fielding.
Fielding refuted this assertion in the 1 August issue of the Journal, while labelling prostitutes a source of social evils.
The final issue of the Journal was released on 25 November 1752.
In its last months, poor sales had resulted in a transition from semi-weekly to weekly release.
Ill health and a disinclination to continue led Fielding to end its run after the Number 72 issue.
Fielding then published Examples of the Interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of Murder (1752), a treatise rejecting deistic and materialistic visions of the world in favour of belief in God’s presence and divine judgement, arguing that the murder rate was rising due to neglect of the Christian religion.
In 1753 he wrote Proposals for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor.
Fielding’s humanitarian commitment to justice in the 1750s (for instance in support of Elizabeth Canning) coincided with rapid deterioration in his health.
(Elizabeth Canning was an English maidservant who claimed to have been kidnapped and held against her will in a hayloft for almost a month.
She ultimately became central to one of the most famous English criminal mysteries of the 18th century.
She disappeared on 1 January 1753 and returned almost a month later to her mother’s home in Aldermanbury in the City of London, emaciated and in a “deplorable condition“.
After being questioned by concerned friends and neighbours, she was interviewed by the local alderman, who then issued an arrest warrant for Susannah Wells, the woman who occupied the house in which Canning was supposed to have been held.
At Wells’ house in Enfield Wash, Canning identified Mary Squires as another of her captors, prompting the arrest and detention of both Wells and Squires.
London magistrate Henry Fielding became involved in the case, taking Canning’s side.
Further arrests were made and several witness statements were taken.
Wells and Squires were ultimately tried and found guilty — Squires of the more serious and potentially capital charge of theft.
However, Crisp Gascoyne, trial judge and Lord Mayor of London, was unhappy with the verdict and began his own investigation.
He spoke with witnesses whose testimony implied that Squires and her family could not have abducted Canning.
He interviewed several of the prosecution’s witnesses, some of whom recanted their earlier testimony.
He ordered Canning’s arrest, following which she was tried and found guilty of perjury.
Squires was pardoned.
Canning was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment and seven years of transportation (the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term).
Canning’s case pitted two groups of believers against one another: the pro-Canning “Canningites“, and the pro-Squires “Egyptians“.
Gascoyne was openly abused and attacked in the street, while interested authors waged a fierce war of words over the fate of the young, often implacable maid.
She died in Wethersfield, Connecticut in 1773, but the mystery surrounding her disappearance remains unsolved.)
Above: English manservant Elizabeth Canning (1734 – 1773)
Gout, asthma and cirrhosis of the liver left him on crutches, and with other afflictions sent him to Portugal in 1754 to seek a cure, only to die two months later in Lisbon, reportedly in pain and mental distress.
Above: Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal
The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (Journal d’un voyage de Londres à Lisbonne) is the last book written by Henry Fielding (1707 – 1754) when, ill and at the end of his tether, accompanied by his second wife Mary Daniel (Mary Fielding), one of his daughters Eleanor Harriot, the latter’s friend Margaret Collier and two servants, the chambermaid Isabella Ash and the footman William, he set sail for Lisbon in the summer of 1754 aboard the Queen of Portugal.
Subject to the whims of the commander and the vagaries of the weather, the ship, long deprived of wind, drifted up the Thames, then along the south coast.
It’s only in the very last pages of the book that the sails swell and the real voyage begins.
So, in many ways, Fielding’s Diary is more about English shores and shores than about crossing the Bay of Biscay and arriving in Portugal.
This brief collection takes the form of a chronicle of day-to-day life, blending everyday anecdotes with a number of political and moral considerations about society and humanity in general.
The tone is generally humorous, but there is a discreet stoicism in the face of suffering.
Also included are numerous discussions about maritime law and, most importantly, Fielding’s last action as a magistrate, a profession he has recently left by force of circumstance.
The story is punctuated by a few witty portraits, some of which are not devoid of insular prejudice, but as in the novels, the picturesque is absent from the descriptions, which, with rare exceptions, follow the obligatory poetic language of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Irony flows through the book from page to page, directed against certain characters, but above all against the narrator, more parodic than frankly satirical, always comic.
It draws on several English travelogues, but essentially on the epics of Homer and Virgil, whose heroes, to varying degrees, represent the suffering passenger tossed about on the waves in search of a new homeland.
The diary of this crossing was published posthumously in January 1755, three months after the author’s death and, ironically, ten months before the earthquake that prompted Voltaire to concern himself with Divine Providence.
Portugal has long been a favorite destination for Englishmen, and many of them wrote about their travel impressions:
For example, Richard Twiss sailed safely for five days from Falmouth to Lisbon in 1772.
Above: English travel writer Richard Twiss (1747 – 1821), the son of an English merchant living in the Netherlands, with an ample fortune, he travelled and visited Scotland.
He then journeyed through Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Bohemia till 1770, when he returned to England.
In 1772, he went to Spain and Portugal, returning the following year.
In 1775, he visited Ireland.
Joseph Baretti made the crossing in a week in 1760.
(Giuseppe Marc’Antonio Baretti (1719 – 1789) was an Italian literary critic, poet, writer, translator, linguist and author of two influential language-translation dictionaries.
During his years in England he was often known as Joseph Baretti.
Baretti’s life was marked by controversies, to the point that he had to leave Italy, for England, where he remained for the rest of his life.
For many years he led a wandering life, supporting himself chiefly by his writings.
At length he arrived in London, where he remained for the remainder of his life (when not travelling).
The Lettere famigliari, giving an account of his travels through England, Portugal, Spain, and France during the years 1761 – 1765, were well received.)
Above: Italian writer Joseph Baretti
In 1787, it took William Beckford nine days to reach his destination.
Beckford journeyed in Italy in 1782 and wrote a book about his travels: Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents (1783).
Letters from Italy with Sketches of Spain and Portugal (1834) show brilliant descriptions of scenes and manners.
In 1793 he visited Portugal, where he settled for a while.
Above: English writer William Thomas Beckford (1760 – 1844)
Fielding, for his part, took six weeks, so his Diary is more a chronicle of Ryde, Torbay and Rotherhithe than of Lisbon.
His account gives the impression that a superior intelligence is working against him, his wife, the ship and its captain, while offering occasional flashes of hope that are quickly extinguished.
Comic gems are thrown in for good measure, as when the sea spray (“tireless“) rushes into the cabin, pinning him and the captain to the floor as they struggle to swallow a bowl of soup.
On the whole, however, the tone remains solemn and somber, without lapsing into the morbid.
“I could not help reflecting how often the greatest abilities lie wind-bound as it were in life, or if they venture out, and attempt to beat the seas, they struggle in vain against wind and tide, and if they have not sufficient prudence to put back, are most probably cast away on the rocks and quicksands, which are every day ready to devour them.”
Fielding declares in his own Diary, in an image of circumstance, that he wishes to avoid such a course (to steer clear) seems to show that he is making a mockery of travel writing.
Yet he often falls into the same trap as Tickletext, blind as he is to the splendors of a capital which, before the catastrophe of 1755, was considered one of the jewels of Europe.
Boasting as he does that the comparison with England can only fill him with pride, proclaiming as he does that his work will be of “public utility“:
In short, the reader is left with the impression that, paradoxically, the reference to Aphra Behn’s play openly states what his book should not be, but in fact proves to be a life-size example of the genre he intends to ridicule.
He gently mocks the fastidious accuracy of the most famous travel book of the time, Voyage around the world, published in 1748, and is quick to describe the rest as “heaps of dullness“.
In 1753, Henry Fielding was riddled with disease.
His large, asthmatic body was so riddled with gout and swollen with edema that surgeons had to operate several times a week.
Now, enormous but emaciated, almost impotent, he can only get around with great difficulty, supported by crutches.
He took tar water and a milk diet, but nothing helped.
In desperation, his doctors, John Ranby and in particular a newcomer, Dr. Joshua Ward, recommended a warmer climate than England.
After some hesitation, he decided to emigrate south.
It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying which is terrible.
(Henry Fielding, Amelia)
His first choice was Aix-en-Provence, but the long crossing of France seemed insurmountable, too tiring and very expensive.
Above: Cours Mirabeau Fountain, Aix-en-Provence, France
In the end, a sea route seemed best suited to his condition, but as there were no shipping lines between England and Marseille at the time, Portugal was finally chosen as the destination.
Above: Flag of Portugal
On 26 June 1754, after bidding farewell, Fielding left his London home and, after a bumpy two-hour journey, arrived at the port of Rotherhithe on the River Thames south of the capital.
Above: Blenheim Court, Rotherhithe, London, England
Almost immediately, he was winched aboard the Queen of Portugal, recommended by one of his brother John’s neighbors, a certain Peter Taylor.
The yacht is under the command of a 70-year-old officer, whose name Fielding does not give, preserving the anonymity of this wolf of the sea who has had many adventures, which he will reveal to him in the form of confidences during the crossing.
He is Commander Richard Veal, who has just lost his young wife and remains inconsolable.
His sensitivity is so exacerbated that when one of the kittens on board with him falls overboard, despite all the efforts made to recover it – the entire crew mobilized, the ship tacking from side to side – he cries out in heart-rending grief.
The kitten is eventually rescued, but Fielding adds no comment, merely juxtaposing this exclusive love for a little beast with the officer’s complete lack of empathy for his sailors.
The crew, meanwhile, as they hoist the impotent passenger onto the deck, openly mock and jeer him, while spectators look away.
“In my condition,” Fielding writes with resigned bitterness, “I had to brave (I think I use the appropriate word) rows of sailors and bargemen, very few of whom spared me the compliment of their insults and jokes about my infirmity.
No one who knows me could have thought for a moment that I blamed them, but it was a demonstration by example of the cruelty and inhumanity of human nature, which I have often witnessed with concern, and which makes the mind uneasy and leads it to entertain melancholy and disturbing thoughts”.
Fielding has already started jotting down his impressions in a small notebook, which he keeps secret.
The ship is moored at the quayside, reluctant to set sail, as the captain is looking for more passengers and freight to make the trip more profitable.
After a long wait, he finally decides to sail slowly down the Thames, where, shortly after departure, he is involved in a collision with two other ships.
As the damage was not serious and was repaired fairly quickly (a few days were enough), the route continued at the mercy of the winds, which remained desperately weak.
The yacht drifted along the River, aided by the ebbing tides, then skirted the coast as far as the Isle of Wight and Cornwall, without being able to turn towards the ocean.
Above: Isle of Wight – “There may never be a clearer picture of the Isle of Wight from space.” Photo taken by astronaut Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station.
Stops are numerous, allowing passengers to go ashore, eat in inns and sometimes spend the night.
Fielding complains about the rudeness of some of the innkeepers, in particular a Mrs Francis to whom he went at Ryde and who served spartan and unappetizing food at exorbitant prices.
Above: Ryde, Isle of Wight, England
Most of the time he is obliged to stay on board, where he shares a cabin with the captain, whose snoring keeps him awake:
Next door is a seasick passenger who moans incessantly.
He’s not feeling well and can’t stand the swell when the ship finally sets sail for the Bay of Biscay.
There, the wind drops and once again holds back the travellers.
The lull, which is altogether restful, allows Fielding to reflect on the confrontation between man and the elements:
To the commander who claims to be “bewitched“, he remarks that his “absolute power on board arouses only the indifference of the wind“.
It also gives the crew the opportunity to capture a shark, a delightful addition to the ordinary.
One evening, almost at the end of the voyage, Fielding and his family rest on deck as the blazing sun sets and a silver moon rises.
“A magical moment“, writes the traveller in one of his few evocative comments, “enough to make us forget all the suffering we had endured up to that point.”
The book is full of anecdotes, says Fielding:
“Some of the most amusing pages, if, indeed, there be any that deserve that name, were possibly the production of the most disagreeable hours that ever haunted the author.”
The boat arrived in Lisbon on 7 August.
Fielding, at first dazzled by its whiteness (at a distance, “de loin“), found the city he crossed in his cabriolet “the most unpleasant in the world” (nastiest in the world), without the slightest beauty, decrepit and dirty, with buildings that seem to be piled jumbled one on top of the other, as if they all seemed to have but one foundation.
Above: Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal
Immediately, but this only appears in his letters, he feels nostalgia for England, writing movingly to his brother John that he dreams of a bunch of turnips, accompanied by good Cheshire and Stilton cheeses.
Above: Cheshire cheese
Above: Stilton blue cheese
Prices, he explains to his publisher, are three times higher than in England.
In the same letter, he announces that he has almost finished the story of his voyage, and that it is the best of all his works.
Two months later, on 8 October 1754, he died.
His tomb is in the British Cemetery (Cemitério Inglês), the graveyard of St. George’s Church, Lisbon.
Above: Henry Fielding’s grave, English Cemetery, Lisbon, Portugal
Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any farther together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic.
(Henry Fielding, Tom Jones)
I have been studying the works of other writers so that I may learn from them, so that I may emulate their styles of writing until I find my own style, my own voice.
Writing this blog is for me a kind of online diary.
By writing about writers, I seek to give them the dignity of history and create within these posts a republic of letters for them to inhabit.
Though the blogpost datelines do not correspond with the date that I toss the post out into the world, the progression of writers read matches the progression of writers written about.
The excellence of the mental entertainment consists less in the subject than in the author’s skill in well dressing it up.
(Henry Fielding, Tom Jones)
I write this blog, because it gets me into the writing habit.
I write this blog to establish that, to paraphrase Descartes:
I blog, therefore I am.
Above: French philosopher René Descartes (1596 – 1650)
I write this blog to show you how what I read inspires and shapes my own writing.
From time to time I will share rough drafts of the novel (The Donkey Trail) I am slowly (painfully procrastinatingly slow) working on, in the hope that I can generate both interest and commentary to produce the best work that I can.
I am aware that we live in an attention deficient time where many of the younger generations simply don’t like to read at length, but my writing isn’t for them, despite my use of this electronic medium to reflect my research and thoughts.
I write for those who like to read and it is my hope that they enjoy reading what I write.
In researching and reading Henry Fielding I am left with a number of impressions:
Of his works, I favour his novels and travel writing more than his plays, not because the latter lacks the former’s quality, but merely because the former is more to my liking.
My personal history is a distinction without a difference to that of Tom Jones and the gout Fielding had is an increasing health problem for me.
While I can, I want to walk and write and travel.
Fielding lived in violent times and through his writing and legal work he sought to improve his society.
Albert Camus said it best:
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.“
Above: French writer Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)
The events Fielding spoke of and often parodied could be taken from the headlines of today: corruption, murder, prostitution, transgender issues, broken families, infidelity….
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
And this is the point of this post:
All that Fielding knew, all that Fielding wrote, still bears a relevance to today.
I dream of the day when I will write like Henry Fielding.
To have words matter beyond my mortal coil.
Sources
- Wikipedia
- Wikiquote
- Google Photos
- Barenaked Ladies, “If I Had a Million Dollars“
- Loretta Chase / Susan Holloway Scott, “Young Henry Fielding’s Thwarted Abduction of an Heiress (1725)“, https://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com
- Henry Fielding, Amelia
- Henry Fielding, The Author’s Farce
- Henry Fielding, The Coffee House Politician
- Henry Fielding, The Covent Garden Tragedy
- Henry Fielding, The Female Husband
- Henry Fielding, The Grub Street Opera
- Henry Fielding, The Historical Register for the Year 1736
- Henry Fielding, Jonathan Wild the Great
- Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews
- Henry Fielding, The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon
- Henry Fielding, The Letter Writers
- Henry Fielding, The Lottery
- Henry Fielding, Love in Several Masques
- Henry Fielding, The Mock Doctor
- Henry Fielding, The Modern Husband
- Henry Fielding, The Old Debauchees
- Henry Fielding, Pasquin
- Henry Fielding, Rape Upon Rape
- Henry Fielding, Shamela
- Henry Fielding, The Temple Beau
- Henry Fielding, The Tragedy of Tragedies
- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
- Henry Fielding, Tom Thumb the Great
- Henry Fielding, The Welsh Opera
- Steve Koren, Mark O’Keefe, and Steve Oedekerk, Bruce Almighty
- Stephen May, Get Started in Creative Writing
- Molière, L’Avare
- Marcus X. Schmid, 111 Places in Istanbul That You Must Not Miss
- Kees van Strien, “Henry Fielding in Holland“, 9 January 2007, https://tandfonline.com
- Jurgen Wolff, Your Creative Writing Masterclass
- Jurgen Wolff, Your Writing Coach
