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Satire and Travesty in Fielding's The Grub-Street Opera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Harold Gene Moss
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Extract

When Henry Fielding enlarged his one-act afterpiece, The Welsh Opera (1731), he named the new version The Grub-Street Opera to point to the extensive travesty it contains. The title also makes a target of hack-writers of the day and implies a connection with The Grub-Street Journal, whose authors maintained a policy of non-partisan satire on hack-writing. The amount of imitation it contains makes it resemble the literary travesty of The Author's Farce (1730) and Tom Thumb (1730), likewise written by Scriblerus Secundus, Fielding's pseudonym which alluded to the “Scriblerus” of his illustrious contemporaries, most obviously to Pope in the Dunciad notes and “Peri Bathous” (1728). The Grub-Street Opera has remained a puzzle to scholars of Fielding's plays, perhaps because its relationship to contemporary drama, politics, and journalism has been neglected.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , May 1974 , pp. 38 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1974

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References

Notes

1 The authors of The Grub-Street Journal repeatedly asserted their non-partisan stand on politics. See, for example, No. 1 (8 January 1730), cited by Hillhouse, James T., The Grub-Street Journal (Durham, N.C., 1928), p. 298 and No. 104 (30 December 1731)Google Scholar, reported in The Gentleman's Magazine (December 1731), p. 533. H. K. Banerji's claim that Fielding was attacking the authors of this journal, based on the history of hostilities between them and the dramatist, is unlikely since Fielding's animosity dated from July of the following year with their review of his The Covent Garden Tragedy. Cf. Hillhouse, p. 173 and Banerji, , Henry Fielding: Playwright, Journalist and Master of the Art of Fiction (1929; rpt. New York, 1962), p. 29Google Scholar. “Scriblerus Secundus” or “H. Scriblerus Secundus” seems to have been identified with Fielding and with travesty. After Fielding's first use of the pseudonym, Thomas Cooke produced two works, the first written by “Scriblerus Tertius” and the second by “Scriblerus Quartus”: The Battle of the Poets; or, the Contention for the Laurel (London, 1730) and The Bays Miscellany, or Colley Triumphant (London, n. d.)Google Scholar.

2 “Dramatic” operas are: The Lottery (1732) with thirteen of twenty-two tunes (60%) newly composed by Mr. Seedo (see Roberts, Edgar V., “Mr. Seedo's London Career and His Work with Henry Fielding,” PQ, 45 [1966], 179–190)Google Scholar; and The Mock Doctor (1732) with three new tunes of nine total (33%). His other early travesty in ballad-opera form is The Author's Farce (1730) with only one new tune of twenty-seven total (4%). Five of the sixty-five tunes in The Grub-Street Opera (7%) are new or impossible to identify. Since The Grub-Street Opera was not printed with music in the eighteenth century, we cannot be sure what tunes Fielding intended for these five songs, the only ones lacking verbal tune directions. The refrain for Song 56, one of the five, suggests he may have intended “Have you heard of a frolicksome ditty,” music Gay used for Song 35 of The Beggar's Opera with an identical refrain. Edgar V. Roberts speculates on several other identifications, p. 89 of his edition of the Opera (Lincoln, 1968)Google Scholar. All citation of the Opera is to this edition. Morrissey, L. G., “Henry Fielding and Ballad Opera,” ECS, 4 (1971), 386–402Google Scholar, observes Fielding's extensive use of popular music in The Grub-Street Opera and interprets it as an effort to entice John Watts to publish the work

3 Freedom of the Press in England (Urbana, Illinois, 1952), p. 318Google Scholar.

4 Hanson, Laurence, Government and the Press, 1695–1763 (London, 1936), pp. 116 ffGoogle Scholar.

5 “Dramatic Censorship,” The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, ed. Hartnoll, Phyllis, 3rd. ed., (New York, 1967), p. 248Google Scholar.

6 Some Materials towards Memoirs of the Reign of King George II, ed. Sedgwick, Romney, in three consecutively paged volumes (London, 1931), I, 98. Italics are mineGoogle Scholar.

7 Gaye, Poebe Fenwick, John Gay, His Place in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1938), p. 380Google Scholar.

8 Laprade, William Thomas, Public Opinion and Politics in Eighteenth Century England to the Fall of Walpole (New York, 1936), chs. 10 and 11Google Scholar.

9 Printed in The Gentleman's Magazine, 7 (July 1737), 410Google Scholar, and reprinted in part in Ralph, James, A Critical History of the Administration of Sir Robert Walpole (London, 1743), pp. 315–316Google Scholar.

10 Quoted in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1 (June 1731), 244Google Scholar.

11 See Schonhorn, Manuel, “The Audacious Contemporaneity of Pope's Epistle to Augustus,” SEL, 8 (1968), 431–443, for a discussion of Pope's later use of similarly disguised satire on George IIGoogle Scholar.

12 Fielding glances at Lord Bolingbroke's famous attempt to discredit Walpole in an interview with George II, described by Hervey, Memoirs, pp. 14–15.

13 Smith, Dane Farnsworth, Plays about the Theatre in England (New York, 1936)Google Scholar, ch. 8, relates Fielding's work to Odingsells' and Ralph's by pointing to the self-conscious travesty of contemporary theatre in each. Sheridan Baker, W., “Political Allusion in Fielding's Author's Farce, Mock Doctor and Tumble-Down Dick,” PMLA, 77 (1962), 221–231, outlines the subtle satiric elements in Fielding's early dramaCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Bernbaum, , The Drama of Sensibility (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), p. 144Google Scholar, and Konigsberg, , “The Dramatic Background of Richardson's Plots and Characters,” PMLA, 83 (1968), 42–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 The London Stage: A Calendar of Performances, pt. 3, ed. Avery, Emmet L. (Carbondale, Illinois, 1960), I, 92. Fielding used Lillo's music for the following songs: 3, 7, 20, 31, 42, 50, 52, and 62Google Scholar.

16 Some Versions of the Pastoral (1935; rpt. Norfolk, Va., [1950]), p. 210Google Scholar.

17 Also compare Lillo's lyrics with Fielding's Song 37 (set to an unrelated piece of music) in which the verbal similarity is obvious: What the devil mean you thus Scandal scattering Me bespattering Dirty slut, and ugly puss.

18 The Beggar's Opera, ed. Roberts, Edgar V. (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1969)Google Scholar.

19 The following airs in The Grub-Street Opera appeared earlier in The Beggar's Opera: 5, 6, 8, 12, 29, 34, 57, and 63. Air 26 of The Welsh Opera, dropped in revision, should be included as well. The following appeared earlier in Polly: 4, 9, 11, 13, 14, 20, 31, 32, 50, 52, and 59.

20 Professor Cross discusses Fielding's friendships with Ralph, James in The History of Henry Fielding (1918; rpt. New York, 1963), I, 74 ffGoogle Scholar. and Ralph's influence on some of Fielding's other work is proven by Hughes, Helen Sard, “Fielding's Indebtedness to James Ralph,” MP, 20 (1922), 19–34. Fielding used tunes that appeared earlier in The Fashionable Lady for the following songs: 7, 14, 15, 23, 26, 31, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, and 59. Note the frequency with which both Fielding and Ralph used Gay's musicGoogle Scholar.

21 A list of some of his other songs and the sources from which he worked will suggest the extent of his borrowing: Song 5 relates to lyrics set to its tune in Chetwood's, WilliamThe Generous Freemason (1730); Song 44Google Scholar, Coffey's, CharlesThe Beggar's Wedding (1729)Google Scholar; Song 16, Momus Turn'd Fabulist (anonymous, 1729); Song 53, Gataker's, ThomasThe Jealous Clown (1730); Song 61, The Jovial Crew (anonymous, 1731)Google Scholar; Song 15, the original “I'll range around” (BM H. 1601. [225.]); Songs 31 and 50, both follow D'Urfey's, Thomas “Dame of Honour” in Wit and Mirth: or. Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719–20; rpt. New York, 1959), I, 213Google Scholar; Song 32, the original “We have Cheated the Parson” in Pills, V, 141Google Scholar; and Song 60, the original “Ye Madcaps of England” in Pills, III, 281Google Scholar.

The writing of his essay was supported by grants from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the American Philosophical Society, and the University of Florida.