HOMESPUN DRAMA
"Virtue distrest in humble state support."
Prologue to _Fatal Curiosity_.
The Licensing Act of June 1737 thus brought Henry Fielding's career as
political dramatist to a hasty conclusion; a conclusion quite unforeseen
by the luckless author, as appears from his _Dedication_ to the
_Historical Register_, published almost at the moment when the Act became
law: "The very great indulgence you have shown my performances at the
little theatre these two last years," he says, addressing his public,
"have encouraged me to the proposal of a subscription for carrying on that
theatre, for beautifying and enlarging it, and procuring a better company
of actors."
Before finally losing sight of the stage on which _Pasquin_ and the
_Register_ had scored such signal success, we may notice some minor
incidents of these two years of Fielding's administration. His company
does not seem to have included either Macklin, Quin, or Kitty Clive; but
that distinguished actress Mrs Pritchard, the central figure of Hogarth's
charming group called "The Green Room, Drury Lane," is said to have made
her first appearance on his boards, [1] and his players also included that
man of many parts Tom Davies. Davies was a student of Edinburgh
University; an actor at Drury Lane and elsewhere; a bookseller of whom the
elder D'Israeli said 'all his publications were of the best kind'; the
writer of various works including a _Life of Garrick_; and a particular
friend of Dr Johnson. In the first year of Fielding's management in the
Haymarket, Davies was cast for a principal part in George Lillo's tragedy
_Fatal Curiosity_; and it is to his pen that we owe the only known
contemporary reference to the active part taken by Fielding himself in the
affairs of his theatre.
Lillo, a jeweller of Moorfields, had captured the town, a few years
previously, by his tragedy of common life, _George Barnwell_; and among
the dramatists selected by Fielding for representation on his stage the
most interesting is undoubtedly this pioneer of the coming revolution in
English literature. For, incredible as it may seem, until that first
performance of _Barnwell_, no writer, to quote Tom Davies' own words "had
ventured to descend so low as to introduce the character of a merchant or
his apprentice into a tragedy." Certain "witty and facetious persons who
call themselves the town," continues Davies, brought to the first night
copies of the old ballad on which the jeweller's play was based, meaning
to mock the new tragedy with the old song; but so forcible and pathetic
were Lillo's scenes that these merry gentlemen were obliged "to throw away
their ballads, and take out their handkerchiefs." More tears, we learn,
were shed over this 'homespun drama' than at all the imitations of ancient
fables by learned moderns. To Fielding this revolution, from the buskin'd
heroics of the Alexanders and Clelias to the living and natural pathos of
the tragedy of a poor London apprentice, must have appealed with
extraordinary force; for it is the especial glory of his own genius that,
throwing aside all the traditions of his age, and 'adventuring on one of
the most original expeditions that ever a writer undertook,' [2] he was to
discover a new world for English fiction, the world of simple human
nature. That expedition must have been already forming in his mind when,
night after night, in the hottest part of the year, _George Barnwell_ was
playing to crowded houses, and convincing the astonished audiences of 1731
that even so low a creature as a London apprentice was possessed of
passions extremely like their own. Some ten years later, when Fielding
revealed the first true sign of his own surpassing genius in the _History
of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews_, he chose for his hero a country
footman. The worthy City jeweller was, in his own limited measure, the
forerunner, on the stage, of that new era in English literature created by
honest Andrews and Parson Adams, Partridge and Mrs Slipslop, Fanny and
Sergeant Atkinson, Tow-wouse and Mrs Miller, to name but a few of
Fielding's immortal portraits, drawn from the 'vast authentic book of
Nature.'
It is no wonder then, to return to Tom Davies, that a play by Lillo was
announced on the bills of Fielding's theatre within a few months of the
opening of his management. On May 27, 1736, the following advertisement
appeared:
"Guilt its Own Punishment. Never Acted before. By Pasquin's
Company of Comedians. Being a True Story in Common Life and the
Incidents extremely affecting." By the Author of George Barnwell.
Davies' part in the play was a chief one, that of young Wilmot, and the
story of the performance may be given in his own words. "Mr Fielding, who
had a just sense of our author's merit, and who had often in his humourous
pieces laughed at those ridiculous and absurd criticks who could not
possibly understand the merit of Barnwell, because the subject was low,
treated Lillo with great politeness and friendship. He took upon himself
the management of the play and the instruction of the actors. It was
during the rehearsal of the _Fatal Curiosity_ that I had an opportunity to
see and to converse with Mr Lillo. Plain and simple as he was in his
address, his manner of conversing was modest affable and engaging. When
invited to give his opinion how a particular sentiment should be uttered
by the actor he expresst himself in the gentlest and most obliging terms,
and conveyed instruction and conviction with good nature and good
manners.... Fielding was not content merely to revise the 'Fatal
Curiosity,' and to instruct the actors how to do justice to their parts.
He warmly recommended the play to his friends and to the public. Besides
all this he presented the author with a well written prologue."
This _Prologue_, which has apparently hitherto escaped the collectors of
Fielding's _Works_, seems worthy of a reprint here, if only for its
characteristic sympathy with virtue and distress 'in humble state,' and
for the opening tribute to 'Shakespeare's nature' and to 'Fletcher's
ease.'
PROLOGUE TO THE FATAL CURIOSITY
"The Tragic Muse has long forgot to please
With Shakespeare's nature or with Fletcher's ease:
No passion mov'd, thro' five long acts you sit,
Charm'd with the poet's language or his wit.
Fine things are said, no matter whence they fall;
Each single character must speak them all.
"But from this modern fashionable way
To-night our author begs your leave to stray.
No fustian hero rages here to-night,
No armies fall to fix a tyrant's right:
From lower life we draw our scenes' distress:
--Let not your equals move your pity less!
Virtue distrest in humble state support;
Nor think she never lives without the court.
"Tho' to our scenes no royal robes belong
And tho' our little stage as yet be young
Throw both your scorn and prejudice aside;
Let us with favour not contempt be try'd,
Thro' the first act a kind attention lend
The growing scene shall force you to attend:
Shall catch the eyes of every tender fair,
And make them charm their lovers with a tear.
The lover too by pity shall impart
His tender passion to his fair one's heart:
The breast which others' anguish cannot move
Was ne'er the seat of friendship or of love."
Notwithstanding all the manager's friendly efforts, the play met at first
with very little success, a failure in Davies' opinion "owing in all
probability to its being brought on in the latter part of the season, when
the public had been satiated with a long run of _Pasquin_," but, he adds,
"it is with pleasure I observe that Fielding generously persisted to serve
the man whom he had once espoused; he tacked the 'Fatal Curiosity' to his
Historical Register which was played with great success in the ensuing
winter." [3] We owe no inconsiderable debt to Tom Davies in that he has
preserved for us this picture of Fielding, actively engaged in the
stage-management of his little theatre; a picture, moreover, that does
equal honour to the brilliant wit, the successful political satirist, and
to that modest, gentle Nonconformist poet, the man of whom it was said
that he "had the spirit of an old Roman joined to the innocence of a
Primitive Christian," George Lillo.
A few weeks before the production of Lillo's tragedy, and while _Pasquin_
was still in the full tide of political success, an event occurred of
closer import to Fielding's affectionate nature than all the applause of
the Opposition and the town. This was the birth, in April, 1736, of his
daughter Charlotte. No English writer has left more charming pictures of
mother and child than those we owe to the tenderness and simplicity of
Fielding's pen. When we find Squire Western turning, in his latter days,
to Sophia's nursery, and hear him declaring that the prattling of his
granddaughter is "sweeter Music than the finest Cry of Dogs in _England_"
when we see Captain Booth stretched at full length on the floor of his
poor lodgings, with his "little innocents" jumping over him, we are almost
inclined to forgive alike the brutalities of the old foxhunter, and the
weaknesses of the young soldier. Fielding's affection for his children,
his apprehensions for their ultimate provision, his anxiety in their
sickness, his grief at the loss of a little daughter, are manifest in his
pages. If anything could exceed the satisfaction which the brilliant
success of _Pasquin_ must have given to his buoyant nature, it would be
the birth of this, the first child apparently, of his marriage with the
beautiful Charlotte Cradock. The entry in the registers of St Martin's in
the Fields runs as follows: Baptized May 19th, 1736 Charlotte Fielding, of
Henry and Charlotte, Born April 27th.
The dates of _Pasquin_, of Lillo's tragedy, and of the _Historical
Register_, cover a considerable portion of the years 1736, 1737, and their
production in a theatre under Fielding's own management practically
presupposes his presence in London at that time. This by no means fits in
with Murphy's implication that Fielding retired to Stour on his marriage,
and that, remaining there, he ran through his "little patrimony," in "less
than three years." A complete country retirement cannot be assigned to
those busy years in the Haymarket; and in 1736 the journey from London to
Dorsetshire was no trifling undertaking. But it seems quite possible that
Fielding and his wife went down to their small estate in Dorsetshire for
part or all of the summer, autumn and winter of both 1736 and 1737. This
would cover the hunting months, and "hounds and horses," according to
Murphy, filled a large part in Fielding's country life at Stour; the time
would be that of the comparatively dull season for the theatre in the
Haymarket; and, with the year immediately preceding _Pasquin_, we should
thus, perhaps, account sufficiently for Murphy's "three years". Certain
passages in the _Miscellanies_, published long after the pleasant meadows
and the modest house at Stour--no less than the turmoil of the green-room
and the crowded political audiences in the Haymarket--were things of the
past, have a personal ring, reminiscent perhaps of such months of "sweet
Retirement" in Dorsetshire. Thus one of the characters in the _Journey
from this World to the next_ recalls the change, from a life of "restless
Anxieties," to a "little pleasant Country House, where there was nothing
grand or superfluous, but everything neat and agreeable"; and how, after a
little time, "I began to share the Tranquillity that visibly appeared in
everything round me. I set myself to do Works of Fancy and to raise little
Flower-Gardens, with many such innocent rural Amusements; which altho'
they are not capable of affording any great Pleasure, yet they give that
serene Turn of the Mind, which I think much preferable to anything else
Human Nature is made susceptible of." To this pleasant picture of "rural
Amusements," and tranquillity, it is surely not impertinent to add this
further passage, as a possible echo of Charlotte Fielding's thought, well
acquainted as she must have been both with the "sweetly winding banks of
Stour" and with the clamorous successes of political drama: "in all these
various Changes I never enjoyed any real Satisfaction, unless in the
little time I lived retired in the Country free from all Noise and Hurry."
In the summer or autumn of 1737 the curtain was finally rung down on all
the 'noise and hurry,' the achievements and audacities of Fielding's
"little stage"; a few months later, and the country retirement at Stour
had also become but a memory of that short life into which he managed to
compress "more variety of Scenes than many People who live to be very
old."
[1] _Life of Garrick_. T. Davies, vol. ii.
[2] _Works of Henry Fielding_, edited by Edmund Gosse. Introduction, p.
xxix.
[3] _The Works of Mr George Lillo, with some Account of his Life_, T.
Davies.