There can be no author of the eighteenth century whose presence as author was more determined by the changing fortunes of the theatre than Henry Fielding. Nor one more instrumental in translating, indeed transposing, the conventions of theatre to the new fictional vehicle of the novel. In the late 1730s and when Fielding himself was less than thirty years old – partly due to his own actions – the career he had made for himself writing for and managing theatre companies became too hot to handle. Henry Fielding turned to producing more of the partisan periodical writing he had already engaged in, alongside committing to two new professions in which his talent for fiction might thrive: the law and prose fiction.

Henry Fielding may be held partially responsible for the Licensing Act passed on 21 June 1737 which curtailed his career as manager of an acting company and prolific playwright. His modern biographers, Martin and Ruthe Batttestin, observe that in his stage career he ‘broke too many windows and pulled down too many idols’. He seems positively to have sought the intervention that meant, according to his contemporary Arthur Murphy, he ‘left off writing for the stage when he ought to have begun’. Rival playwright Colley Cibber, the target of so much of Fielding's satire, compared him to the ancient arsonist Herostratus who set fire to the second Temple of Artemis in Ephesus to establish his eternal fame, one ‘who to make his poetical Fame immortal, like another Erostratus, set Fire to his Stage by writing up to an Act of Parliament to demolish it’. On Monday 30 May 1737, the ‘Little’ theatre rented by the brilliant Henry Fielding at the Haymarket failed to open for its first night of two short farces that continued his satirical campaign against the government led by the prime minister, Robert Walpole. The landlord, John Potter, took down the scenery and filled the house with various forms of building material in order to prevent a performance he knew the government would disapprove.