2 - ‘Unshap'd Monsters of a Wanton Brain!’: 1728–1731

Summary

Little is known of Fielding's activities between his ill-fated attempt to elope with Sarah Andrew from Lyme Regis in November 1725 and the publication early in 1728 of both his satirical poem, The Masquerade, and his first play, Love in Several Masques. The timing of Fielding's entrance into London life was, however, hugely significant on several counts. ‘The new plays of the early and mid-1720s largely continue the modes established around the turn of the century’, Robert D. Hume wittily remarks. ‘A Rip Van Winkle who saw The Beaux Stratagem and fell asleep in 1707 would not have found great changes had he awakened in 1727’. The première of Love in Several Masques on 16 February 1728 followed on immediately from the brilliant run in January of Vanbrugh and Cibber's The Provok'd Husband at the theatre in Drury Lane. Perhaps of even more significance to Fielding's subsequent career as a dramatist, it actually coincided with the beginning of The Beggar's Opera's record-breaking run at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. That Fielding's first play lasted four nights should perhaps in the circumstances be viewed as a minor triumph. However briefly, the series of events triggered by the unprecedented success of The Provok'd Husband and The Beggar's Opera transformed the theatrical world. ‘The success of The Beggar's Opera demonstrated conclusively that London had a large, hitherto almost untapped audience’, Hume explains. ‘The play pulled into the theatre not only a multitude of repeat attenders but also a large group of potential and occasional theatre-goers who could perhaps be persuaded to attend regularly’. Moreover, Gay's burlesque opera encouraged theatrical managers to risk staging more experimental drama, rather than the tried-and-tested old favourites with which they had persevered prior to 1728.

Of equal importance to Fielding's subsequent career as a playwright, The Beggar's Opera was immediately talked up by the opposition press as ‘the most venomous allegorical Libel against the G[overnmen]t that hath appear'd for many Years past’ in which ‘satirical Strokes upon Ministers, Courtiers and Great Men, in general, abound in every Part of this most insolent Performance’.