I

M. V/2-

ASPECTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BRITISH :

A STUDY IN POPULAR

Timothy E. Scheurer

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillmènt of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

December 1976

Approved by Doctoral Committee KlAo-

ABSTRACT C-0 ?<*X The purpose of this study was to examine in depth a specific genre

of popular theatre: the . In 1728 the success of John

Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera spurred other playwrights to attempt this form

of drama; as a result, a new dramatic genre developed and flourished

for over twenty years.

To understand the success of the ballad opera an investigation was

made into the cultural and artistic climate during the early eighteenth

century. Managers and playwrights at this time attempted different

forms of drama and entertainment to accommodate the heterogeneous tastes

of their audiences. The ballad opera proved to be the most popular of

all these forms.

The ballad opera's formula for success was based on its being a

hybrid genre which drew heavily on farcical plots and devices, ,

and music for its basic structure. Ballad opera authors followed the

tenets of Whig satire to ’’good-naturedly" attack two social vices: marriages arranged between people of differing ages or intellectual capabilities, and the "art of Thriving," which dealt with professional people or greedy parents seeking monetary interest or social preferment to the exclusion of virtue or benevolence. The folk and popu­ lar songs used in the ballad opera reinforced the structure of the plays and provided a familiar musical idiom loved by the audience.

The Licensing Act of 1737 helped curtail future work in the ballad opera and opened the doors for the sentimental comic of the late eighteenth century. relied on the same -dramatic form as ballad opera, but it obviated the role of satire; it also Ill

adopted the new galante style of music; and it placed more emphasis on

morality in its themes.

The ballad opera and the comic opera provide the modern critic

with a barometer to judge the artistic temper of the eighteenth century;

moreover, they are important to the because they reveal the roots of modern musical . Acknowledgments

This study of the eighteenth-century British ballad opera is at

once the end product and the beginning of a long standing interest in

and love for popular . I hope in the process of

writing this study I have provided some worthwhile conclusions about

the nature of musical comedy and eighteenth-century drama, and, at

the same time, I hope I have provided future critics with a tenable

critical framework and methodology which can be implemented in scholar­

ship devoted to musical theatre.

There are a great -many people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude

for their guidance and encouragement while I was writing this disserta­

tion. I am grateful to my advisor Dr. Paul E. Parnell whose knowledge

of Restoration and eighteenth-century drama was the single most im­ portant factor in aiding my research and helping keep the major thesis

of this work in focus. I am grateful also to Dr. Donna G. Fricke who helped extensively in my research of Augustan satire and who provided me with many valuable editorial suggestions. To Dr. Ray B. Browne I owe thanks for opening up the field of Popular Culture which played an important role in the formulation of my critical methodology. I am also obliged to Mr. Rex Eikum of the Bowling Green State University

College of Musical Arts for his valuable assistance in helping me research the field of eighteenth-century opera and for giving of his time to serve on my committee. I owe an especial thanks to Dr. Wallace

DePue of the Bowling Green State University College of Musical Arts for guiding my musical training in theory and composition for the past two years. I am also grateful to two good friends, Ms. Barbara Ann Smith V

and Ms. Barbara Sue German, who gave their valuable time to help read

this manuscript. Special thanks go to Mrs. Dorothy Betts who was not

only my typist but also one of my best editors. I am, however, especi ally grateful and obliged to my wife Pamela who made the most valuable

contribution through her love, understanding, and interest in this dissertation and my career; there is no way I can fully repay her for the time spent typing, reading, and offering sorely needed encourage­ ment when my enthusiasm or confidence was flagging. . vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page 1. BACKGROUNDS: CULTURAL CLIMATE FOR A POPULAR PHENOMENON. ... 1

2. THE DRAMATIC CONVENTIONS OF CHARACTER, PLOT, AND THEME IN THE BALLAD OPERA...... 24

3. SATIRE AND THE BALLAD OPERA...... 55

4. THE CONVENTIONS OF SONG IN THE BALLAD OPERA...... 89

5. IN THE WAKE OF THE BALLAD OPERA: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH COMIC OPERA...... 133

6. NOTES ON THE MUSIC OF THE BALLAD OPERA AND THE COMIC OPERA . .172

7. CONCLUSION...... 191

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 198

APPENDIX 215 vii

List of Figures

1. "Over the Hills and Far Away" from The Beggar1s Opera. . . .216-17

2. "Thomas, I Cannot" from The Beggar’s Opera ...... 218

3. "Le Printemps Rappelle aux Armes" from The Beggar’s Opera. . . 219

4. "Around the Plains" from The Generous Free-Mason...... 220

5. "Muir land Willy" from The Generous Free-Mason...... 221

6. "One Evening Having Lost My Way" from The Beggar’s Opera ... 222

7. "Ye Nymphs and Sylvan Gods" from The Mock Doctor...... 223

8. "Diogenes surly and proud" from The Lovers Opera ...... 224

9. "Red House" from The Lovers Opera...... - • 225

10. "Buff-Coat" from The Lovers Opera...... 226

11. "When the Kine had giv’n a Pailful" from The Lovers Opera. . . 227

12. "From Aberdeen to Edenborough" from The Lovers Opera...... 228

13. "Dee’l take the Wars" from The Lovers Opera...... 228

14. "Sweet Nelly, my Heart’s Delight" from The Lovers Opera. ... 229

15. "Make your Honours, Miss" from The Lovers Opera...... 229

16. Music from The Beggar’s Wedding...... 230

17. "Come hither, good People" from The Generous Free-Mason. ... 231

18. "White Joak" from The Generous Free-Mason...... 232

19» "Vain Belinda" from The Female Parson: or. Beau in the Sudds . 233

20. "The Bonny Gray-Eyed Morn" from The Beggar's Opera...... 234

21. Original music and lyrics to "Cold and Raw" from Chappell's

Popular Music of the Olden Time...... 235

22. "Oh, the Broom" from The Beggar's Opera...... 236

23« "Fond Echo" from Silvia; or, the Country Burial...... 237 vili

24. "Ah how sweet’s the cooling Breeze" from Silvia; or. The

Country Burial...... 238

25. "Under the Greenwood Tree" from The Jovial Crew...... «239

26. "Hey Boys up go we" from The Devil to Pay ...... 240

27. Air 22 (Finale) from The Lottery...... 24-1

28. "Irish Trot" from The Beggar's Opera...... -...... 242

29. "An Old Woman Cloathed in Gray" from The Beggar's Opera ... .243

30. Air 5 "Set by Mr. Seedo" from The Mock Doctor...... 244

31. "Abbot of Canterbury" from The Lover His Own Rival...... 245

32. Air 7 "Set by Mr. Seedo" from The Mock Doctor ...... 246

33- "Still in Hopes to get the better" by from

Love in a Village...... 247-48

34. "Gentle Youth, ah! tell me why" by Thomas Arne from

Love in a Village ...... 249-50

35. "I Lock'd Up All My Treasure" by from The

Quaker...... 251

36. "The Lads of the Village" by Charles Dibdin from

The Quaker...... 253-54

37- Thomas Morley's madrigal (original version) "Now is the

month of Maying" from Richard Sheridan's .... 256-57 CHAPTER ONE

Backgrounds: Cultural Climate for a Popular Phenomenon

Emmett L. Avery has suggested that the various entertainments

offered theatre-goers in the early eighteenth century bear a 1 strong kinship with . What gave vaudeville its distinctive

character was that it was defined in part by the type of entertainments

it offered and in part by the audience which attended the theatre.

American vaudeville, for instance, experienced great growth during the

halcyon days when the United States was known as the "melting pot" of

the world. The American-vaudeville bill reflected this feeling; seem­

ingly everyone from J. P. Morgan to the latest Irish or Jewish immi- A grant fresh off the boat could find something to his liking within the

vaudeville palaces. For example, Brooks Atkinson, in his Broadway

(New York: Macmillan, 1974), p. 120, states that the opening of the

great Palace Theater in New York featured the following playbill on

March 24, 1913:

The Palace Girls, dance ensemble; Ota Gygi, Spanish court violinist; La Napierkowska, pantomimist and dancer; "Speaking to Father," comedy skit by George Ade, with Milton Pollack; "The Eternal Waltz," flash act based on , with thirty people, including Mabel Berra and Cyril Chadwick; McIntyre and Harty, who were replaced by Taylor Holmes, monologist, after the matinee performance; Four Vanis, wire act; Hy Mayer, cartoonist; Ed Wynn, .

A similar situation occurred in , and specifically, in London

during the years 1700-1750, and as we view the playbills of the day we

see an increasing drive for variety on the stage; here are two rather representative playbills:

1 2

The Miser. Timothy Squeeze—Bullock. Will Pinkeman /sic7 speaks a comical joking Epilogue on an Ass. DANCING. By du Ruel. Miller's Dance by Pinkeman. ENTERTAINMENTS. And Mr. Clinch of Barnet will perform these several Performances, first an Organ with three Voices, then the Double Curtel, the Flute, the Bells, the Huntsman, the Hom, and Pack of Dogs, all with his Mouth; and an old Woman of Fourscore Years of Age nursing her Grand-Child; all which he does open on the Stage. Next a Gentleman will per­ form several Mimick Entertainments on the ladder, first he stands on the top-round with a Bottle in one hand, and a Glass in the other, and Drinks a Health; then plays several Tunes on the Violin, with fifteen other surprizing Perfor­ mances which no man but himself can do.^

Love * s last Shift. As 22 Nov. 1725, but Hillaria—Mrs. Horton. DANCING; End I: A new Harlequin by Young Rainton. II: Pastoral by Miss Robinson. Ill: La Pierrete by Roger and Mrs. Brett. IV: Mumette by Young Rainton and Hiss Robinson. V: A Grand Turkish Dance by Thurmond, Boval, Lally, Haughton, Duplessis. MUSIC. In III: A Trumpet Sonata compos'd byMons. Dieupart. In IV: A Sonata compos'd by Signor Corelli. End IV: The First Concerto (by Desire) of Signor Arcangello Corelli (LS, pt. 2, II, 868).

This drive for variety indicates a strong awareness on the part of the

creative element in the theatre of the changing features of the audi­

ence. Just as the theatre entrepreneurs in New York sought to assimi­ late the multi-faceted character of the people within the contexts of an evening's theatrical offering, so it was with the playwrights and theatre managers of the eighteenth-century London Stage. Furthermore, the attempt to maintain a diversified playbill created an exceedingly fertile ground for anything novel, which The Beggar's Opera provided.

Thus, to better understand the popular phenomenon of the ballad opera it may be wise to examine briefly some of the causes and consequences of the drive for novelty and variety.

With the controversy surrounding Jeremy Collier's A Short View of 5

the Immorality and Prophaneness of the English Stage (1698) and the

changes in government, particularly the ascent to the throne of

William and Many in 1689, there were corresponding shifts in the audi­

ence and in the drama. Both the above events and their effects have

been discussed in great detail by critics and historians,but a

couple of points germane to the growth of ballad opera should be men­

tioned here. Thomas Fujimura, Joseph Wood Krutch, and John Loftis all

agree essentially that Collier’s Short View stunted the growth of the

Restoration ; Collier’s tract was effective at this

time because the court of-William and Mary and later that of Anne

(1702-14) were considerably more concerned with morality than Charles II

had been. This concern with morals was in part inspired by the person­

alities of the monarchs themselves and, in part, by the obligation they

felt to the rising middle class. It should be remembered that on the whole the Restoration playwright "cared little" as John Loftis notes

(Comedy and Society, p. 18), "for the footman in the upper gallery and perhaps not much more for the shopkeepers and artisans in the middle gallery." Moreover, the merchant class or "citizens" as they were known, were continually made cuckolds and objects of satire in comedy.

Restoration comedy essentially presented ideals of and manners which could first and foremost be appreciated by the gentry and the court, which were, after all, the most remunerative part of the audience. This was to change however in the years after Charles’s reign.

A number of wars particularly the War of the League of Augsburg

(1689-97) and the War of Spanish Succession (1701-13) made the merchant class considerably wealthier. Generally speaking, their wealth was 4

acquired, like that of American industrialists in the Civil War, by the

manufacture and sale of war provisions. Thus this class of people from

steel and munition makers, and ship builders down to the local shop­

keepers, booksellers, and brewers found themselves in a more powerful

position by 1713 than they had known a few decades before. In addition

to their wealth the middle class citizen was imbued with what Joseph

Wood Krutch (Comedy and Conscience, p. 131-32) has called a "narrow but

genuine piety." As a result, monarchs increasingly felt they had to

respect the wishes of the middle class in matters of morality because

of the-services they had-rendered the crown through the many wars.

Moreover, beginning with Collier and continuing up until Richardson’s

time and beyond the middle class garnered more and more support from

men in the media who were concerned with morality on the stage and with

this class who, as they saw it, were instrumental in the-support-of the 4 nation. Defoe, for instance;-in his newspaper A Review of the State

of the British Nation, No. 64 (Tuesday, 30 August, 1709)> ed. A. W.

Secord (New York: Facsimile Text Society, No. 44; Columbia Univ. Press,

1938), VI, 255, places the blame for declining morals on the gentry:

As in the common Vices of the Nation, ’tis not so much the Common-People, as the Gentry, Clergy, and Magistrates, that are the Authors of our general Debaucheries, by their encouraging the Crimes of the meaner Sort in their Example, so really and honestly, (tho’ perhaps you will think it a little too plainly speaking) it is not so much the vicious Inclination of the Poets that compose;, or the Actors that represent a Comedy, which leads them to the abhorr’d Scenes of Lewdness, to the prophane , the lewd Jests, and the long Roll of their bantering Religion, exposing naked Virtue, and debauching by these Things that very Language they pretend to refine.

Further testimony to the obligation the country owed the middle class was provided by Richard Steele. In his periodical The Theatre, 1720 5

ed. John Loftis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), p. 10, he proposed a con­

cept called "Auditors of the Drama" which would monitor the morals and

merits of stage plays; in this august body Steele proposed to include

two actors, one "Dramatick Poet," "Three of the Fair sex," two "Gentle­

men of Wit and Pleasure," a lawyer’s clerk, a journeyman-baker, a foot­

man, and a valet de chambre, but the single largest group represented

would be "Three Substantial Citizens for the Pit." Why three members

from the "middling sort"? Steele explains in the same paper (Theatre,

1720, p. 12):

I am in great Hopes he /the fictional Mr.. Sealand7 will carry his Election /to the Auditors of the Drama/, for his Thoughts and Sentiments against the-unworthy Representations of Citizens on the Stage, may highly contribute to the Abolition of such ridiculous Images for the future: His knowledge and Experience, by living in mix’d Company, as well as in the busy World here, ballanc’d him against approving what is either too frivolous, or too abstracted for publick Entertain­ ments. He is a true Pattern of that kind of third Gentry, which has arose in the World this last Century: I mean the great, and rich Families of Merchants, and eminent Traders, who in their Furniture, their Equipage, their Manner of Living, and especially their Oeconomy, are so far from being below the Gentry, that many of them are now the best Representatives of the ancient ones, and deserve the Imitation of the modern Nobility.

These are but two examples of the growing support for the middle class.

It should not be assumed that the city of London whole-heartedly adopted the Puritan commercial virtues of honesty, industry, and frugality, but enough inroads had been made by the 1720's that authors found they would have to tread "the Stage/ With just Regard to a reforming Age," as the prologue to Steele’s The Lying Lover (1703) states.

What the rise in the middle and lower classes both in wealth and literacy"? basically engendered was a.problem of finding entertainment 6

which had a broad base of appeal. This problem, which would plague

manager and playwright alike throughout the century, was outlined early

in the decade by George Farquhar in his A Discourse Upon Comedy (1702)

in The Complete Works of George Farquhar, ed. Charles Stonehill (London:

The Nonesuch Press, 1930; rpt. New York: Gordian Press, 19^7), II, 238:

Then what sort of a Dulce, (which I take for the Pleasantly of the Tale; or the Plot of the ) must a Man make use of to engage the Attention of so many different and Inclinations: Will a single Plot satisfie every body? Will the Turns and Surprizes that may result naturally from the ancient Limits of Time, be sufficient to rip open the Spleen of some, and Physick the Melancholy of others, screw up the Attention of a Rover, and fix him to the Stage, in spight of his Volatile Temper, and the Temptation of a Mask? To make the Moral Instructive, you must make the Story diverting; the Spleenatick Wit, the Beau Courtier, the heavy Citizen, the fine Lady, and her fine Footman, come all to be instructed, and therefore must all be diverted; and he that can do this best, and with most Applause, writes the best Comedy, let him do it by what Rules he pleases, so they be not offensive to Religion and good Manners. But hie labor, hoc opus, How must this Secret of pleas­ ing so many different Tastes be discovered? Not by tumbling over Volumes of the Ancients, but by studying the of the Moderns: The Rules of English Comedy don’t lie in the Compass of Aristotle, or his Followers, but in the Pit, Box, and Galleries.

This lengthy quote enunciates clearly the concern of the playwright:

what can one possibly stage which will satisfy the diverse tastes of

such an audience? If we look ahead to the ballad opera’s era of great­

est popularity (1728-1750) we find playwrights echoing Farquhar*s sentiments. The prologue to Gabriel Odingsells*s Bays’s Opera London:

1730; Garland, 9) a bit anxiously asks the question:

With what vast Pains and Hazards we engage, To furnish the Diversions of the Stage! What Scheme can we invent to sooth all Hearts, But consists of disagreeing Parts?

The prologue to Edward Phillips’s The Stage Mutineers: or, A Playhouse 7

to be Lett (London: 1733; Garland, 13), on the other hand, rather

flippantly provides a solution to the problem: ’’Lest one dull, tedious

Style your Tastes should pall, / By various Styles he hopes to please

you all.” If one examines the playbills reproduced earlier and these

two foregoing prologues he will see that the managers found a solution

of sorts which was inevitable and, perhaps, a bit expeditious: the

theatre supplied a diversity of new and, sometimes, familiar entertain­

ments to satisfy the heterogeneous taste of its audience. This striv­

ing for novelty and variety on the stage forced managers and play­

wrights to turn more and -more from entertainments where ideas carried

the weight of the dramatic action to entertainments which reflected,

as Pope described it, a taste "which flies / From heads, to ears, and now from ears to eyes."^

Pope's lines on the fluctuating taste of the age are essentially 7 an echo of what was being expressed since the turn of the century.

The changes in drama itself and in the composition of the audience forced managers into experimenting with different forms of entertain­ ment. John Dennis in three different essays devoted to the "degeneracy of taste" offered reasons for the diversity of entertainments and why they arose at this time; in his "A Large Account of the Taste in Poetry"

(1702) The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. E. N. Hooker (Baltimore:

The Johns Hopkins Press, 1939-43), I, 293, he states:

... there are three sorts of People now in our Audiences, who have had no education at all; and who were unheard of in the Reign of King Charles the Second. A great many younger Brothers, Gentlemen bom, who have been kept at home, by reason of the pressure of the Taxes. Several People, who made their Fortunes in the late War; and who from a state of obscurity, and perhaps of misery, have 8

risen to a condition of distinction and plenty. I believe that no man will wonder, if these People, who in their original obscurity, could never attain to any higher enter­ tainment than Tumbling and Vaulting and Ladder Dancing, and the delightful diversions of Jack Pudding, should still be in Love with their old sports, and encourage these noble Pastimes still upon the Stage.

In a later essay, ’’The Stage Defended from Scripture, Reason, Experi­

ence, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years" (1726),

Critical Works, II, 304, which was a response to Law’s Absolute

Unlawfulness of the same year, Dennis echoes and reaffirms his earlier

stand and anticipates Pope's famous line:

■ Several- Gauses may be-assigned of the Decay of Dramatick Poetry, as.the , which never was established in any Country, but it immediately debased the Poetry of that Nation: - The Strangers who have been introduced among us, by several great Events, as the Revolution /Dutch/, the Union /Scots7, the Hanover Succession /Germans/, who not under­ standing our Language have been very instrumental in intro­ ducing Sound and Show; the new Gentry that has started up among us, some by the Fortune of War, and some by the Fortune of Exchange-Alley, who are fond of their old Entertainments of Jack-Pudding; but yet none of these has done half the Harm that has been done by Cabal.

Beyond placing the blame here Dennis nicely delineates the major forms

of entertainment which, because of their immense popularity, were

viewed as being particularly harmful to the state of dramatic art.

First, there was music, the introduction of which was blamed on foreign­ ers because of forms like the Italian Opera. Second, there was panto­ mime and dancing in almost every variety. Third, there were the miscellaneous entertainments like tumbling, vaulting, and puppet-shows, which were transferred from local fairs. Managers relied on these three categories of entertainments to supply the needed novelty and variety sought by the audiences, and this can be attested to by the fact that 9

each was at some time or another incorporated into the ballad opera or

else satirized by it.

Music enjoyed considerable popularity in the Restoration theatre:

Purcell's operas were applauded by critics and audiences, straight

dramatic plays contained occasional songs, and entr'acte music as well

as overtures were very common. However, it must be remembered that a

vast majority of the music used in Restoration was of foreign

origins. H. James Jensen, in his article "English Restoration Attitudes

Toward Music," The Musical Quarterly, 55 (April, 1969), 206, notes "that

Continental-composers and-performers usually found more lucrative

employment in-eighteenth century England than did native artists." In

addition to this, Jensen discusses at length how native English song

was disparaged in the.drama itself; he notes that in Shadwell's plays

as well as others "characters who like English songs are either ill-

bred or stupid, or both" (209). What this attitude created was a

climate where "nothing would go down" except foreign importations. And

it is for this reason that managers came to rely on Italian opera in

hopes of satisfying the audience. At a time when comedy was being torn between the wit of the comedy of manners and the tears of the Italian opera entered and provided a respite from troubling moral questions. The premiere of Arsinoe in 1706 initiated the trend to Italian opera; but what was the appeal of this entertainment? Repre­ sentative of the Italian opera composers of the early eighteenth century is who, along with Bononcini, enjoyed the great­ est popularity on the London stage. Donald J. Grout, in his A History 8 of Western Music, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), p. 440, 10

describes the formula for Handel’s operas as follows:

The subjects of these operas are the usual ones of the time: tales of magic and marvelous adventure, or, more often, episodes from the lives of heroes of antiquity, freely adopted to get the maximum number of intense dramatic situations. The musical scheme is likewise that of the early eighteenth century: development of the action in recitativo secco, interrupted periodically by solo da capo . Each is intended to give musical expression to a single specific mood or effect, so that the opera as a whole consists of a series of arias strung like pearls on the thread of the plot.

Italian opera solidified the movement from head to ears; on the whole

it appealed more to the senses than to reason: it relied on spectac­

ular sets and machines; moreover, it had beautiful music and featured

the singing phenomenon of the castrati. These men were at-once oddities

and brilliant vocal technicians; they had powerful voices and were able

to negotiate the most devilish melismatic passages with ample volume 9 and consummate skill. Moreover, operas of this type flourished well

into the 1720’s because of the patronage they received from the court

and the gentry who had been and would continue to be the mainstay of

operatic patronage. When George I ascended the throne in 1714 he

imported his fellow German, Handel, and also made it possible for the

Queen’s Haymarket theatre to be transformed into the King’s ; in the 1720’s the Royal Academy of Music would assume control of the

King’s Haymarket for the sole purpose of opera production. Under this complex and wealthy system the Italian opera was able to survive up until 1728. Why, then, was it not able to survive longer?

As soon as the opera caught hold of the public’s fancy it simi­ larly began to draw critical attacks. The criticism of the Italian opera basically reaffirms Pope’s sentiments that taste was flying from 11

an appeal to the "head” (i.e., Reason) to an appeal to the senses;

Dennis offers this typical view of the opera in his "Essay on the

Operas," Critical Works, ed. Hooker, I, 387J

Thus Musick has caus’d so great a Change in our Writers, because it has wrought so great a one in our Audiences, and..it will certainly work a greater in both, if it goes on trium­ phantly; for the Generality of our Audiences are far more capable of a Pleasure of Sense, than of a Delight of Reason. Now Musick, that is not subservient to Reason, especially if it be soft and effeminate, is a mere Delight of Sense. ...

The basic issue in Dennis’ attack as well as those of Steele in The

Tatler, of Addison in The Spectator (Nos. 5 and 29 in particular), and,

later, those of Aaron Hill in The , ed. William K. Appleton

and Kalman A. Burnim (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966), pp. 9-12, was

that Italian opera could hardly be intellectually edifying because,

basically, no one could understand it. Winton Dean, Handel's Dramatic

Oratorios and (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959), p. 27, in

surveying the decline of the Italian opera concludes that the limita­

tions of the opera

spring from a single source: the audience for , whether in England, Italy, or anywhere else, was wholly indifferent towards consistent characterization or dramatic propriety of opera as an art. They wanted virtuoso singing, first, last, and all the time. Hence their operas had to consist of set pieces allowing the greatest scope for vocal display, while the action, in which no one took any interest, was hustled through as quickly as possible in secco which few Englishmen could understand.

This is precisely what critics of Handel and the opera were responding to. Franz Montgomery, in his "Early Criticism of Italian Opera in

England," The Musical Quarterly, 15 (July, 1929), 4-17-18, discovered that the criticism of the opera was partly a response to the conventions of the genre: 12

Rockstro, in his "History of Music," tells of the ridiculous laws to which the early operatic composers were compelled to submit. The custom of the time demanded the employment of six characters only—three women and three men. Each princi­ pal character claimed the right to sing an air in each of the three acts of the opera. The hero and the heroine each demanded one grand scene preceded by an accompanied recitative. The temperamental singers of the day were extremely jealous of the apportionment of the parts. This stilted form was made even more amusing by the use of both English and Italian words in the libretti. It was not infrequent to have a question asked in Italian and answered in English. It is not strange then that' these early operas gave rise to much adverse criti­ cism.

The fact that Gay satirized the temperamental singer issue in The

Beggar's Opera through the Polly and Lucy quarrels as well as other con­

ventions of Italian opera remains the single and most devastating criti­

cism leveled at this genre; as -Donald J. Grout has noted in his A Short

History of Opera (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1965)» p. 158, "A

blow to the prosperity of Italian Opera in London was the fabulous

success of the Beggar's Opera (1728) and its numerous offspring, with

their satirical tendencies, evidencing a reaction in England against

the 'foreign growth* of which Addison had complained twenty years

earlier."

The significance of all this is that almost from the outset the

Italian opera was undermined, and with the premiere of The Beggar's

Opera the entire species was subverted though not entirely extinguished.

The ballad opera had one very special ingredient which not only ensured its popularity but also allowed it to reign over the Italian opera:

English song. English song, as was noted earlier, had been disparaged during the Restoration fad for continental importations and remained underground as long as foreign products were given precedence. When, 13

however, Gay featured the familiar ballad airs in his topical comedy

the people were given a musical form which appealed to lord and laborer

alike. English song knew no class distinctions and it also had some

auspicious critical backing. Joseph Addison in his Spectator No. 70

(21 May, 1711) approved of the ballad "Chevy Chase" and at one point

in the essay stated: "an ordinary Song or Ballad that is the delight

of the common People, cannot fail to please all such Readers as are not

unqualified for the Entertainment by their Affectation or Ignorance."

Addison must have drawn cheers from all those who were tired of, if not

apprehensive about, the "effeminate" strains of the Italian Opera.

Addison’s commentary on "Chevy Chase" also provided the contemporary

critic with an insight into the pleasure which the Londoner must have

derived from the ballad opera which almost exclusively used those airs

which could not "fail to please." More will be said about the ballad

air and the use of song in a future chapter and in the appendix on

music, but for now it can be said that even though Italian opera did provide the manager with some relief from the problem of what to give his changing audience it did not sufficiently assuage the tension which existed between critic and artist and artist and audience.

The second category of popular entertainments, and dancing, represent the flight of taste from ears to eyes. These two forms enjoyed the longest and most consistent popularity, and they also 11 incurred the strongest attacks from the critics of the theatre. Most critics were of Steele’s opinion, which he voiced in The Theater, 1720, ed. Loftis, p. 90, that all dancing and pantomime would do would be to create a theatre where "Sensation is to banish Reflection, as Sound is 14

to beat down Sense.” Even ballad opera writers looked upon these forms

somewhat disparagingly as is seen in these lines from the prologue to

Gabriel Odingsells* Bays's Opera (London: 1730; Garland, 9):

Musick and Ballad must together meet, With Sense, gay Shew, Buffoonery and Wit. In vain with Sense, or Musick, we begin; Crowds will be ready to explode the Scene, Unless it ends with Jig and Harlequin.

The popularity of dancing and pantomime, as well as music, can be

attributed in part to the fact that they appealed to the senses and

therefore evaded troubling moral and intellectual questions. Dennis

..stated early in the century that to judge of music "requires.only Use

and a fine Ear, which the Footman has a great deal finer than his

Master," ("Essay on the Operas," Critical Works, ed. Hooker, I, 387);

similar negative judgments were laid at the doorstep of dancing and

pantomime. Steele, in his prologue to The Funeral; or, Grief-A-la-

Mode (1701), for instance, offered this reason for the popularity of

the forms, especially the "ladder dance" (a type of acrobatic routine

performed on a simple ladder) which enjoyed considerable popularity

early in the century:

Nature's Deserted, and Dramatick Art, To Dazzle now the Eye, has left the Heart; Gay Lights, and Dresses, long extended Scenes, Daemons and Angels moving in Machines, All that can now or please or fright the Fair May be perform'd without a writer's Care, And is the Skill of Carpenter, not Player; Old Shakespear’s Days could not thus far Advance, But what's his Buskin to our Ladder Dance? * * ♦ Gorg'd with intemp'rate Meal's while here you sit, Well may you take Activity for Wit: Fie, Let confusion on such Dulness seize.

This belief that scenic display and movement was what appealed to the audience is reaffirmed by Leo Hughes, The Drama's Patrons: A Study of

the Eighteenth Century London Audience (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press,

1971), p. 101, in his discussion of John Rich's preface to Lewis

Theobald's popular pantomime The Rape of Proserpine (1726); in this

preface Rich suggests that pantomime came along at the right time to

pick up the slack in Italian Opera. Pantomime, according to Rich,

offered a "more balanced diet of drama, music, and scenery." Appar­

ently he was right, for in time all the major playhouses would be com- 12 peting for the audience by offering pantomime.

Pantomime managed to remain popular during the era of the ballad

opera and we find the two-forms 'converging at times. Walter Rubsamen

in assembling the many ballad operas, for the Garland series, categor­

izes one whole group under the title "The Influence of Pantomime and

Harlequinade." If one looks over this group he will find that most of

these operas satirize pantomime. James Ralph's The Fashionable Lady;

or. Harlequin's Opera (London: 1730; Garland, 9) uses the format of the "rehearsal" in which Mr. Drama, the author/persona of the play, is forced, as Edmond Gagey, Ballad Opera (New York: Blom, 1968), p. 154, notes, "against his better judgement to include much pantomime and . many songs—sixty-eight in fact—within his opus." The ballad opera handled pantomime generally through the "play within a play" concept of the rehearsal: Odingsells's Bays * s Opera (1730), and Fielding's

Tumble-Down Dick; or, Phaeton in the Suds (1736) are the two most suc­ cessful pantomime-oriented ballad operas, and they are both rehearsals.

Similarly, in The Beggar's Opera Gay capitalized on the dance/pantomime phenomenon by including among other things "A dance of prisoners in 16

chains, etc." and also a dance before the concluding chorus of the work.

His intention in the prisoner’s dance was obviously satiric, but we find

that many ballad operas after Gay's work contain a dance of some sort.

In general, dance as it was employed in the ballad opera was the conven­

tional type symbolizing the komus or marriage of the lovers or, at

least, reasserting the integration of the community. Functioning as

such, it follows the conventional pattern of many non-musical plays of

the Restoration and early eighteenth century: Congreve's Love for Love

(1695) and his The Way of the World (1700) both include dgnces at the

end of the plays, and Wycherley's The Country Wife (1675) contains "A

Lance of Cuckolds." So we see that dance underwent a satiric handling

early in the age of the ballad opera, but after Gay and a couple of

other works (some of them ) the ballad opera took the dance and settled into a conservative handling of it.

The last stages of the flight of taste from head to ears and then from ears to eyes is evident in the popularity of the third category of stage offerings: miscellaneous entertainments. Steele in The Tatler,

No. 12 (7 May, 1709), ed. Aitken, I, 110-11, in the form of a dialogue between Mr. Friendly and Mr. Acorn, details some of the entertainments brought to the London stage by Christopher Rich, manager of Drury Lane:

This Divito /Rich/ is the most skillful of all politicians: he has a perfect~art in being unintelligible in discourse, an uncomeatable in business. But he having no understanding in this polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money, ladder-dancers, rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakespeare's heroes, and Jonson's . When the seat of wit was thus mortgaged, without equity of redemption, an architect /Vanbrugh/ arose, who has built the muse a new palace /the Haymarket in 1705/, tut secured her no retinue; so tEat instead of action’there, we have been put off by song and dance. 17

These vaudeville-type entertainments were, in part, an attempt to

appeal to the middle-class. Critics like Steele who had supported the

middle class felt free to criticize the miscellaneous entertainments in

their journalistic offerings but were not so quick to place the blame

on any one class; other critics, however, like John Dennis were not so

reticent in placing the blame—and the burden of guilt fell to the

middle-class. Dennis, in his "The Causes of the Decay and Defects of

Dramatick Poetry, and of the Degeneracy of the Publick Taste" (1725?)»

Works, ed. Hooker, II, 276, says:

We had then /In the reign of Charles Il7 none of those upstarts, who had-been meanly born, and more meanly educated, and who had beyond their expectation acquird pelf enough, some in the Army's, some in the Fleets, and some in the wrecks of the fraudulent Pacifique Ocean, to make an awkward Figure at our publick spectacles, and to asist in Bringing the Diver­ sions of Smithfield to which They had been usd from their Infancy to be Theatricall entertainments.

Later in the century Pope, on the other hand, distributes the blame a

bit more evenly in his "The First Epistle of the Second Book of

Horace":

There still remains to mortify a Wit, The many-headed Monster of the Pit: A sense-less, worth-less, and unhonour'd crowd; Who to disturb their betters mighty proud, Clatt'ring their sticks, before ten lines are spoke, Call for the , the Bear, or the Black-. What dear delight to Britons Farce affords! (Twickenham ed., 11.30^4-10)

Both Dennis and Pope are quite right in their assessment of the situa­

tion. The vaudeville style entertainments were popular with the middle . class before this class became a major segment of the theatrical audi­ ence. Entertainments like,

A Young Gentlewoman, who never appear'd on a Publick Stage, 18

turns round upon one foot J00 times, and as she is turning fixes 12 Sword points about her, 2 to the Eyes, 2 to her Eyelashes, 2 to her Eye-brows, 2 to her Nose, 2 to her Lips, and 2 to her Breasts, etc.

were quite common at the Fairs. The middle-class citizen's taste in \ entertainment was in large part created and nurtured at the Fairs;

Samuel Richardson makes this quite clear in his The Apprentice's Vade

Mecum; or. Young Man's Pocket-Companion, ed. A. D. McKillop (London:

1734; rpt. Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, Nos. 169-70, 1975),

p. 14, while at the same time delivering a strong injunction against

attending the playhouse because of the entertainments offered there:

The Increase of Play-houses, and the Encouragement they meet with, are sad Instances among others, and perhaps worse, of the Luxury of the present Age. There was a Time when publick Spectacles, and Shews, Drolls, and (and most of our present Theatrical Performances are no better) were exhibited once a Year to very good Purpose. Every Trading Town or populous City had its annual Fair, which brought to it from the adjacent Villages a great Resort of People who had been labouring for Months before harder than usual, in order to save something to spend at that Time, and to purchase Fairings for those they best affected. These annual Fairs were by this Means productive of Trade, and vast Quantities of all Sorts of Manufactures were dis­ posed of at them, and still are at some of 'em in the Country.

This statement is quite typical of the middle-class spokesman who at one time would castigate the creative element of the theatre for the level they had stooped to in their theatrical fare while at the same time forgetting from where the impetus for much of the scenic, sensa­ tional, or bawdy entertainments generated.

The middle class, then, helped shape the diversity of the theatre's nightly offerings, but this does not, however, relieve the gentry from any complicity in the changes that took place in drama. They also 19

frequented the fairs, cock-fights, and other lower and middle class

entertainments, and they appear to have been amused and delighted by

the quaint and curious entertainments as much as the middle class

citizen. Perhaps it was the vicarious enjoyment of that which, accord­

ing to right manners, they should despise, or, perhaps, it was as John

Dennis suggested (Works, I, 385):

But that so many People of great Quality, and of greater Parts, Lovers of their Country, and Encouragers of Art, and of Poetry more particularly, should prove so zealous in the encouraging and promoting Entertainments, which tend so directly to the Detriment of the Publick, to the Detriment of the Arts, and especially of expiring Poetry; Entertainments which are so directly contrary to their Nobler Pleasures, and their real Interests; can pro­ ceed from nothing but from that Weight of Affairs which oppresses them, and deprives them of Time and Leisure to consider deliberately of these things.

The "Nobler Pleasures" and "real Interests" Dennis speaks of here have to do with responsibility to the advancement of the arts and the quality of life in England, but we have seen that these "real Interests" were becoming harder to define because of troubling questions like: what is more important, birth and breeding or money; and, where does the value in drama lie—in the aesthetics of style and wit, or in morality? What­ ever the problem, the entertainments of Mr. Clinch of Barnet, of Harle­ quin, and of Macheath offered a respite from the "Problems" and an escape into forms which asked nothing more than the patron be amused or even awe-struck. The only clearly defined interest of the theatre­ goer in early eighteenth-century London was a need for novelty; in attempting to fulfill the needs of their heterogeneous audience the managers experimented with many different types of entertainments, and this experimentation, rather than establishing any one form, merely 20

entrenched more firmly the need for diversified types of theatrical

fare.

The popularity of the ballad opera is attributable, in part, to

the fact that it drew on all of the popular entertainments and popular

dramatic trends of the day. One need only look over the categories

that Edmond Gagey and Walter Rubsamen have assigned the different

ballad operas to recognize this: there are burlesques, country operas,

pantomime ballad operas, farces, etc. In addition to this the topical­

ity of the form also contributed greatly to its popularity. We find

the ballad opera picking up the issues foremost in the minds of con­

temporary Londoners: there are ballad operas devoted to the excise,

to theatre disputes like the renowned Faustina and Cuzzoni affair which

Gay and others used to great advantage; Edward Phillips’ The Stage

Mutineers (1733) satirized the mutiny of actors led by

who, dissatisfied with the management of John Highmore at Drury Lane,

moved to the Haymarket; the ballad opera writer, almost as a matter of

form, took critical shots at Walpole’s administration; and throughout we find criticisms devoted to Jews and other foreigners. In short, the ballad opera was a "new wine in old bottles" type of entertainment: it

espoused a rigid set of conventions, mostly formal, familiar to and popular with theatre patrons and, at the same time, new ideas, tunes, or bits of business could be added without destroying the formal con­ sistency of the genre. The ballad opera, quite simply, satisfied the need for novelty. Where dancing and pantomime demanded addition of either more female accoutrements or more scenic display to enhance and perpetuate their popularity, the ballad opera had only to go to the 21

nearest paper for a story or incident and, in turn, integrate that story

into the pattern of its conventions.

It cannot he argued that the ballad opera marks any apotheosis or

final stage of popular theatrical entertainment in eighteenth-century

England, but it does mark an important juncture in the history of the

stage. The ballad opera is a popular phenomenon; it rivals other forms

of musical theatre like Florodora (1900) which launched the operetta

explosion in the United States, Forty-Second Street (1933) which revital­

ized and gave new direction and perspective to the film musical, and

Oklahoma! (194-3) the precursor of the contemporary concept-musical.

What all these musicals, The Beggar's Opera included, were able to achieve was widespread appeal to an extremely diversified audience with­

out addressing itself exclusively to any one segment of the audience— at least initially. The ballad opera can be viewed as something of a core sample of the age, for within its perimeters lies the key to under­ standing the popular theatrical taste of the eighteenth century. In retrospect we can, by looking at all the examples mentioned, make some conclusions about the age. Over and above the complex socio-cultural atmosphere which fostered the ballad opera's success and popularity, however, there was something in the genre itself, in its themes, con­ ventions, and its traditions which enabled it to capture the public's interest and enthusiasm. What the plays were able to achieve as a specific genre will be the subject of the following chapters. 22

NOTES

^Emmett L. Avery, "Vaudeville on the London Stage, 1700-1737 Research Studies of the State College of Washington, 5 (1937), ¿5-77. See also his "Dancing and Pantomime on the English Stage," Studies in Philology, 31 (1934), 4-17-52.

^Emmett L. Avery, ed., The London Stage, 1660-1800 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1965), I, 68; hereafter all references to this book will be cited in the text as LS with the appropriate volume and page numbers. ^The Collier controversy has been discussed in depth in Joseph Wood Krutch, Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1924; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1967); Sister Rose Anthony, The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy, 1698-1726 (Milwaukee: Marquette Univ. Press, 1937); Maximillian Novak, "The Artist and the Clergyman: Congreve, Collier, and the World of the Play," College English, 50 (1969), 555-61; Aubrey Williams, "No Clois­ tered Virtue: Or, Playwright versus Priest in 1698," PMLA, 90 (March, 1975), 234-46.

The middle class not only received the support of journalists like Steele, Addison, and Defoe, but also moral warnings from divines and followers of Collier like Arthur Bedford, The Evil and Danger of Stage-Plays: Shewing their Natural Tendency to Destroy Religion, and introduce a General Corruption of Manners (London: 1706; rpt. New York: Garland, 1974); and William Law, The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage-Entertainment Fully Demonstrated (London: 1726; rpt. New York: Garland, 1974). 5 See Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richard­ son and Fielding (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1957), PP- 35- 59 for a good short discussion of the reading public in the eighteenth century; he also gives some other good references in footnotes to studies of reading and literacy in the age. Dorothy Marshall’s English People in the Eighteenth Century (London: Longmans, 1956), has refer­ ences scattered throughout to the rise of circulating libraries and literacy and how they affected the quality of life in the eighteenth century. ^"The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace" in Imitations of Horace with "An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" and "The Epilogues to the ," The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of , ed. John Butt (London: Methuen, 193977 IV, 11. 312-13; 221; hereafter all references to Pope’s poems will be cited in the text as Twickenham, ed. Butt. 7 See Leo Hughes, The Drama's Patrons: A Study of the Eighteenth Century London Audience (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1971) for a good general overview of the criticism revolving around this issue. 23

Cibber also echoes Pope’s sentiments in his Apology; he is referring to the theatre scene circa 1695 but he is clearly reflecting an attitude of the eighteenth century when he says, "This sensual Supply of Sight and Sound coming in to the Assistance of the weaker Party, it was no Wonder they should grow too hard for Sense and simple Nature, when it is consider’d how many more People there are, that can see and hear, than think and judge;”.from An Apology for the Life of Mr. , ed. R. W. Lowe (London: John C. Nimmo, l8§977 II» 9^- As a point of comparison note these lines of Steele’s from The Tatler, No. 99 (26, November, 1709): "For when an excellent tragedy was to be acted in one house, the ladder-dancer carried the whole town to the other /theatre/: and indeed such an evil as this must be the natural consequence o? two theatres, as certainly as that there are more who can see than can think." 8 For a more complete discussion of the elements of Italian opera and opera seria including analyses of the music see Donald J. Grout, A Short History of Opera (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1965), PP* 151-225; and the introductory chapters to Winton Dean’s Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959)• 9 For more on court patronage of the opera see Donald J. Grout, A Short History of Opera, pp. 157-58; and Michael F. Robinson’s Opera Before Mozart (New York: William Morrow, 1966). 10 Henry Pleasants’ The Great Singers: From the Dawn of Opera to Our Own Time (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), pp. 37-51, contains a fine discussion and analysis of the singing style of the castrati; he also has a rather extensive section on the phenomenal Farinelli on pp. 68-78.

11 See Emmett L. Avery’s article "Dancing and Pantomime on the English Stage, 1700-1737," Studies in Philology, 31 (1934), 417-52; Paul Sawyer’s article "The Popularity of Various Types of Entertainment at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Theatres, 1720-1733," Theatre Notebook, 24 (1970), 154-63, illustrates very nicely how important pantomime and ballad opera were in drawing audiences to these theatres. 12 A good example of the pantomime rivalry is illustrated in the playbills in The London Stage, 1708-1729, II, for Friday, 14 January, 1726. Lincoln’s Inn Fields lists a new entertainment, Apollo and Daphne by Lewis Theobald, "With new Scenes, Machines, Cloaths, and other Decorations"; then on Friday, 11 February 1726, Drury lane lists a new Apollo and Daphne by John Thurmond, "With a variety of Scenes, Machines, and other Decorations." CHAPTER TWO

The Dramatic Conventions of Character, Plot, and Theme in the Ballad Opera

This chapter will attempt to offer some reasons for the success

of the ballad opera. Emphasis will be given to those elements which

comprise the dramatic fabric of the plays, or what is known in twentieth

century criticism as the book element of the musical; music will be dis­

cussed in a future chapter. Our object here is to analyze the literary

conventions prevalent in this genre, and before doing this it may be

wise to stake out some critical boundaries.

In the popular arts, conventions contribute greatly to the form

inherent in a genre; for this reason they provide with a

focal point at which he can look to evaluate the appeal, and effective­

ness, both intrinsically and extrinsically, of a work. Literary con­

ventions not only point up certain intra-textual demands of a work, but

also through repetition of conventional plot types, motifs, and stock

characters, point up certain extra-textual concerns, i.e., a country

setting in a ballad opera or a comic opera immediately suggests

romance, simple, kind-hearted country folk, and, perhaps, a conflict

between a garrulous city-man and a kindly country squire. This is a

generalized example, no doubt, but it does coincide with what Kenneth

Burke says about "conventional form" in his "Lexicon Rhetoricae,"

Counter-Statement (Los Altos, California: Hermes Publications, 1931,

1953), PP» 126-27: "We might note, in conventional form, the element of ’categorical expectancy.* That is, whereas the anticipation and gratification of progressive and repetitive form arise during the process

24 25

of reading, the expectations of conventional form may he anterior to

the reading.” Burke’s theory reasserts the notion that an audience’s

needs and their prior knowledge and awareness of things play an impor­

tant role in the shaping of popular literature. Harry Levin further

elaborates this concept in his ’’Notes on Conventions” when he states:

... just as genuine myths presuppose beliefs, so conven­ tions rely on prior awareness and widespread acceptance. The former are warranted by a body of ideological assump­ tions, the latter shaped by a series of material conditions; and tradition is another name for the mechanism by which both are assimilated, organized, transmitted.*’

A study of literary conventions reveals a circular pattern of

growth in a genre: the body of shared attitudes and beliefs give rise

to conventions; the conventions amend and, sometimes, create the form

of the genre; the genre, then, in almost circular fashion, reveals

certain cultural patterns. In the ballad opera Sancho at Court: or.

The Mock-Governor (London: 174-2; Garland, 6), James Ayres makes Lon

Quixote’s famous servant a governor; in this situation we expect him

to deal with his subjects, from highest to lowest, in his customary

unaffected and honest manner. His practicality in all matters enables

him to highlight the follies of government in much the same fashion, but without the artistry, that Gay did with his The Beggar's Opera.

Ayres, then, has molded a conventional character to a new type of drama in an effort to appeal to the audience’s expectation that they will get satire in the ballad opera. Because the ballad opera is a hybrid form of drama many of its conventions are rooted in established tradition; however, there are also new elements brought to bear on these traditions which in turn, help to create new sets of conventions. 26

Moreover, literary conventions of any period affect or call attention

to certain ideological and emotional needs; in Sancho at Court the

little hero metes out justice and plain dealing equally, exposing in

the process the hypocrisies of priests, politicians, and patriots.

As an extension of this concept we should view conventions as meeting

points where the shared values of audience and author converge.

In order to please the Augustan theatre-goer the ballad opera,

broadly speaking, had to select conventions and concepts which re­

flected the "material conditions" of the culture. One of our first

considerations, then, should be the topics the plays deal with; ballad

opera is ..ballad opera, after all,-primarily because of the topics and

characters it features. Samuel Richardson stated in his The Appren­

tice's Vade Maecum: or, Young Man's Pocket-Companion (1734), p. 12,

that "Genteel Comedy (even in which sound Morals were seldom enough

consider'd) has long left the Stage, as. well-as the nobler - Tragic Muse:

And all our late Heroes and Heroines of the Drama, have been fetch’d

from Newgate and Bridewell." Richardson, for his own moral purposes,

perhaps overstates the case, but he is nonetheless right about the

change in drama. When Gay's The Beggar's Opera premiered, a whole new

area for dramatic endeavor was opened up: the manners, morals, and

follies of the gentry were replaced by the exploits of beggars, thieves,

cobblers, vintners, whores, and other low-life types. This is not to say that the gentry or citizenry was totally excluded but they had to share the footlights with the low-life characters. In a sense the reliance on broad farce both as standard plays and as was a return to an older dramatic tradition. Dryden, during the Restoration, 27

stated in his "Defence of the Epilogue: Or, an Essay on the Dramatick

Poetry of the last Age" (1672):

And for humour itself, the poets of this age will he more wary than to imitate the meanness of his /Jonson*s7 persons. Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other: and though they allow Cob and Tib to speak properly, yet they are not much pleased with their tankard or with their rags: and surely, their conversation can be no jest to them on the theatre, when they would avoid it in the streets.

The ballad opera, however, did exploit the activities of "Cob and Tib"

and in doing so rekindled the philosophy of drama which influenced

Renaissance dramatists and which Dryden decried in his "Defence."

Madeleine Doran nicely sums up this philosophy in a discussion of

Jonsonian realistic comedy in her Endeavors of Art: A Study of Form

in Elizabethan Drama (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1954),

p. 107:

Its sphere of observation is the real life of ordinary men and women, its attitude critical, its means pleasurable, its aim at least partially corrective. The realism in such comedy is apt to be, apart from motivation in human weak­ nesses, mainly realism of detail, or local color.

In the eighteenth century, as Leo Hughes cites in his A Century of

English Farce (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1956), p.10, the

author of The City Farce (1737) says basically the same thing about the

comedy of his times when he wonders,

Whether it would be blameable to make a new Essay toward re­ viving the Spirit of our English Farce, which was designed to yield some Benefit as well as Diversion, by exposing those Follies which affect chiefly the Middle Station of Life, and are therefore beneath the Province of Comedy, which is principally confined to the Genteel Part of Mankind.

This statement seems a bit after the fact considering that since the advent of ballad opera (nine years prior to this statement) farce was 28

one of the most widely implemented dramatic forms; moreover, ballad

opera used farce in exactly the fashion the author of the above has

suggested. More will be said later about the nature of farce in the

ballad opera. For now, it should be noted that the reason that the

ballad opera stressed the affairs of the common people, though possibly

influenced by Renaissance theory, owes less to this than it does to the

fact that it.had to appeal to an audience which, as has been pointed out, found pleasure in mixed types of literature and entertainment.^

The movement in ballad opera, then, is away from the gentry and

toward the activities and adventures of professional people, merchant

types, and, of course, the panoply of low-life characters some of whom

take the dramatic spotlight. Ballad opera authors, on the whole,

appear to have extrapolated the major components of Gay’s model and

particularized them in individual presentations. Coffey’s The Beggar's

Wedding (London: 1729; Garland, 22) features a conflict between beg­

gars and a quarrelsome old Alderman named Quorum; while Henry Potter's

The Decoy (London: 1733; Garland, 3) features two country girls, Jenny

Ogle and Mary Licklips, coming to the city and, in almost a mirror

image of Hogarth's Moll Hackabout, are taken under the wing of an old

bawd named Mrs. Clarkwell. The characters and story resemble not only

Hogarth but also draw on Gay's portraits of Mrs. Coaxer, Jenny Diver, and Mrs. Vixen, the whores in his Beggar's Opera. Other plays are devoted to the medical and legal professions like Fielding’s The Mock

Doctor: or The Dumb Lady Cur'd (London: 1732; Gariand, 4) and Edward

Phillips' The Mock Lawyer (London: 1733; Garland, 4). The Mad Cap­ tain (London: 1733; Garland, 12) by Robert Drury, on the other hand, 29

combines the romantic exploits of the sea captain, Atall, with a sub­

plot dealing with the servant's duping two silly merchants, Snip and

Pinch. The portrait of Captain Atall almost foreshadows Smollett’s

blustering or daring naval figures and lies well within the mainstream

of the popular narratives dealing with seagoing characters like Defoe’s

Robinson Crusoe and Colonel Jack and "The Diverting Humors of Captain

Fustian" in The Jamaica Lady; or, The Life of Bavia (1720) by V. P.

Other plays, like Gay's which draw their characters and incidents from

the low-life exclusively, are The Cobler's Opera (London: 1729; Gar­

land, 14) by Lacy Ryan which is a direct borrowing from Gay down to

the quarreling women, Peg and Jenny, who are modelled after Lucy and

Polly, and the frequent references to the loose morals among those who

live "t* other-End-of-the-Town" (i.e., the West end). The Footman (Lon­

don: 1732; Garland, 5) and Edward Phillips' The Livery Rake, and Coun­

try lass (London: 1733; Garland, 16) feature characters from these

respective employments aping the manners of their "betters" to humor­

ous effect. Love and Revenge; or, The Vintner Outwitted (London: 1729;

Garland, 3) "by is an extremely cynical play bringing to

the forefront such low-life types as the whore, Mother Pearce, and

Brainworn, "a Cheat," who eventually, disguised as a Presbyterian preacher, outwits Mulligrub the Vintner by picking his pocket while the latter is in jail. One final example is Cooke and John Mottley's

Penelope (London: 1728; Garland, 7), a which transforms

Ulysses and his faithful spouse into a "Serjeant of the Grenadiers" and a "landlady of an alehouse" respectively.

Not all the plays, however, deal exclusively with low-life topics 30

and types; in fact, many of the most popular plays deal with the inter­

action between classes. Some have been mentioned already like The Mock

Doctor, The Mock Lawyer, and The Beggar's Wedding. Charles Coffey's

The Devil to Pay; or. The Wives Metamorphos*d (London: 1731; Garland,

10), which we shall discuss in more detail later, balances two plots,

one high (Sir John and Lady Loverule) and one low (Jobson and Nell),

very handily. Chetwood's The Lovers Opera (London: 1730; Garland,

12) features the typical romance intrigue plot with Dalton, a Justice,

trying to make a profit by marrying off his daughters; the servant,

Lucy, comes to the aid of the hero (Edgar) and the heroine (Flora) and

is able to spoil the Justice's avaricious intentions. On the whole,

the pastoral ballad operas like 's The Village Opera

(London: 1729; Garland, 15), John Hippisley's Flora (London: 1729;

Garland, 16), and Lillo's Silvia; or, the Country Burial (London:

1731; Garland, 17), and Cibber's Love in a Riddle (London: 1729; Gar­

land, 8) feature interaction and intrigue between city folk, country

squires, and rustics plus generous helpings of sentimentality and

characters with "mighty good hearts." Curiously enough, the only pas­

toral from the above which enjoyed any real success was Flora; Cibber's play had to be shortened to an (Damon and Phillida) before it experienced its long run. This is an interesting point because it serves to illustrate a principle concerning the ballad opera: the vast majority of successful plays have as their setting the city and its environs, and they feature characters drawn from the highest as well as the lowest spheres commanding equal attention on the stage. In essence, the city stands as the conventional setting for the plays, and 31

along with this setting the playwrights initiated a trend toward more

realism in incident, character, and language; Edmond Gagey (Ballad

Opera, pp. 3-10) mentions the importance of realism to the genre in

the introduction to his study. Realism in the genre no doubt proved

interesting to the Londoner because it offered him glimpses of his immediate cultural milieu as did Jonsonian realistic comedy^ in an age

considerably before his own.

In the context of these various topics authors assembled a blend

of interesting stock characters and new or different character types,

with the latter type being mostly drawn from the low-life segment.

Broadly speaking four major character types predominate: the heroine,

the hero, the blocking character, and the servant or valet who could

also be called the intriguer. These character types refer mostly to

the popular ballad opera farces featuring an interaction between classes, although one can find the types emerging in purely low-life operas.

There are, as we shall see, few character ambiguities here; their per­ sonalities and motives are as fixed as the stars in their constellations.

Even though some of the characters, like the hero and heroine, were based on older romantic types they, nonetheless, revealed ties to the present age and material culture, and for this reason they became very familiar types to the Augustan audience. Let us take a look at each of these types in more detail.

The plots of most ballad operas revolve around the romance of the young hero and heroine who are usually members of the upper or profes­ sional class. To find eternal bliss the lovers must overcome the oppo­ sition of the blocking character (a parent, uncle, or guardian of some 32

sort). These two are not cast in the same mold as the Restoration lovers

who engage in witty repartee; on the other hand, the ballad opera lovers

are limited in dimension with well-defined limits and ambitions. The

heroine is oftentimes the most interesting character, but too often she

plays the victim of circumstance and, on the whole, arouses more of a

sentimental response than intellectual delight. Flora in Chetwood's

The Lovers Opera (1730) mixes spirit with sentimental overture in this

brief address to her father Justice Dalton: "Sir, you’re a Tyrant and

not a Father; and tho' you Cage us like silly Birds, we can be free by

dying" (23); later in the play, after she has been informed (falsely)

that her lover, Edgar, has been wounded in a duel and she must now fol­

low her father’s wishes, she says, "I can have no Remedy but Death"

(28). Such outbursts are common among heroines; in fact one heroine,

Jenny in The Cobler’s Opera, offers to stab herself after her lover,

Harry Pyefleet, has been taken off to jail. The heroine's dilemma is

one of duty in the ballad opera: does she honor her father's wishes

or does she flaunt domestic, familial, or social propriety by following

the tendencies of her heart? The turmoil created by such divided

allegiances leaves plenty of room for pathetic airs and scenes. In

Hippisley's Flora (1720) the heroine sings an air describing how she

has been made a "wretched" Orphan and "by dying Parents Wills betray'd/

To Guardian Powers, who oft invade/ Our Freedom, to our Cost" (3). In

general the heroines of ballad opera uphold virtue, constancy and

passion ruled by love as the highest principles of living. Lillo's

Silvia says at one point in the play "She who parts with her Virtue, parts with the only Charm, that makes a Woman truly lovely" (Silvia, 33

4-9) - Charles Coffey, on the other hand, presents a heroine closer to

Restoration models or at least closer to Steele and Cibber's models in

his The Female Parson: or. Beau in the Sudds (London: 1730; Garland,

3), who nonetheless, upholds the same values. Lady Quibus is an

abused wife who has been more or less locked up by her husband; at the

same time she is being wooed by a certain Captain Noble. At one point

in the play she tells him, after an attempted seduction, that he should

not "stain" his "Honour," whereupon he promises to abandon "every

vitious Thought to wrong what, next to Heaven, he adores" (26). The

heroine of this play has obvious precedents in earlier drama but in her

philosophy is closer to the Augustan concept of the sentimental heroine;

in fact in the ballad opera the heroine carries the burden of senti­

mental philosophy as opposed to the later comic opera where one could,

or was forced to, shed generous tears for both the heroine and the hero.

Oddly enough, the least interesting character in the ballad opera

is oftentimes the hero. There are not many who have the dash, vigour,

and questionable "honor" of Captain Macheath. The hero, from the out­

set, is presented as a well-integrated and somewhat resourceful charac­

ter who is clearly without moral turpitude. We need never discover if

he will, like his Restoration forbears Mirabell, Horner, and Dorimant,

come to the recognition of his "true" nature; seldom, if ever, will he

need to experience a "conversion" because of his false heart and morals

as is the case with many heroes in sentimental comedy. In some of the heroes like Harry Hunter from The Beggar's‘Wedding and Charles from The

Footman we can detect a bit of rakishness, but it appears fleetingly and is usually counterbalanced by a declaration of real feelings and fidelity. Hunter, for instance, tells his mother, "You wou’d not have

me be so unfashionable, Madam, to go to Bed with the Sun and rise with

the Lark" (19), but a few pages later he sings:

Since Phebe’s my Guide, And Love does preside, Each Monarch tho' great, Wou’d envy my State, For she, she alone has the Power to charm (21).

The hero forms a sort of dramatic pivot around which the characters

and actions revolve. His fidelity to the heroine not only shows him

as a defender of virtue but also reinforces her virtues and principles.

The hero and the heroine are essentially the pillars upon which the

happy society at the play's end will be founded. The hero defends mar­

riage based on the natural inclinations of the heart, and he is usually

the one to deliver the message of the play. In The Mock Lawyer Valen­

tine delivers the following maxim to Justice Lovelace: "You see, Sir,

Parents may err in their Judgements; but a mutual Love will produce a

mutual happiness" (31). Valentine's sentiments reveal an attitude not

only toward love here but also, because he is addressing a member of

the legal profession, toward common justice. The new society formed at the end of the ballad opera is founded on the dispositions of the heart. Leander in The Mock Doctor by Fielding, for instance, has won

Charlotte but nonetheless returns out of a sense of duty and kindness to ask for her hand from her father. In Joseph Dorman's The Female

Rake: or, Modern Fine Lady (London: 1736; Garland, 6), Clerimont who is initially attracted to Celia because she has "a Soul, adorn'd with

Innocence, and the strictest Virtue" (45) finally ends up offering mar­ riage to the female rake, Libertina, who is on the verge of becoming a 35

social . His offer effects her conversion and in an air she re­

veals how she has been brought into conformity with his unaffected

principles:

To Youth’s gay Frolicks now I bid Adieu, Strict Virtue's Paths determin’d to pursue; My future Time, I’ll studiously improve, My Duty shew, and manifest my Love (47).

If the characters in the plays are not in accordance with the princi­

ples of the hero and heroine at the play's end they are usually viewed

as ill-natured and, therefore, still ruled by interests other than those

of the heart. The appeal in such character portrayals is to the emo­

tions, and this becomes more evident as we view the activities of the

blocking character.

The plots of ballad opera in their presentation of 'villains or

blocking characters are close in form to Greek New Comedy or Roman

comedy. Northrop Frye states, in his Anatomy of Criticism: Four

Essays (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957), p. 1&3, that "the movement of comedy is usually a movement from one kind of society to another. At the beginning of the play the obstructing characters are in charge of the play's society, and the audience recognizes that they are usurpers." The obstructing, or blocking characters in ballad opera are a mixed sort dominated mostly by professional people of the times.

The impediments they create to the lovers' happiness are often a result of the ethics of the professions they are part of. In The Mock Lawyer, for instance, Justice Lovelaw wishes his daughter to marry an older and, naturally, wealthier lawyer. Beyond kindred professional inter­ ests, however, the primary motivation for the blocking character is 36

monetary. Lovelaw tells Laetitia that her heart should not rule but

"A woman should always make her Love consonant with Reason” (21), and

to force his will in this case he, as many others of this type, uses

the most specious kind of reasoning. Generally, the blocking character

as the guardian of the heroine states he has his ward’s interest at

heart when, in essence, he really has his own personal and selfish

interests in mind. Authors attempt to make the blocking characters as

odious as possible; in Carey’s The Honest Yorkshire-Man Penurious

Muckworm, Arabella's uncle, has arranged a marriage between her and a

dunce of a country squire named Sapscull; in Chetwood's The Lovers

Opera Justice Dalton attempts to marry his daughter, FLora, either to

a wealthy Quaker, Aminadab Prim, or a typical, almost Smollettian, sea

captain named Clotpole. In each case the match made by the blocking

character is obviously wrong and is diametrically opposed to the natural

and proper order of things. He bases his decisions on artificial con­

ventions and completely denies the wills of the individuals involved.

One could say, then, in reference to Frye's thoughts on comedy that

the society which the hero and 'heroine move away from is one wherein the natural inclinations of the heart and the individual's will are abrogated by decisions based on monetary expediency and artificial con­ vention. In order for the audience to recognize the improbity of these

"usurpers" the playwrights introduce low-life characters like servants, criminals, and beggars.

The task of reinforcing the principles upheld by the young lovers and, concurrently, reversing the potential dangers offered by the block­ ing character is pretty well entrusted to the servants. The ballad 37

opera, in an echo of Roman comedy, returns the servant to his proper

role as intriguer in farce. Madeleine Doran (Endeavors of Art, p. 155)

points out in her discussion of Renaissance comedy that

The intriguer in English comedy is not often a servant; he is more likely to he one of the principals. ... If the intrigue is the fleecing of fools, the rogue of course handles the trap: e.g., Volpone and Mosca in Volpone, Quomodo the draper in Michaelmas Term.

Such, however, is not the case with the Bettys, Slangos, and Feignwells

in hall ad opera. They are active participants in the intrigue to dupe

the blocking characters, and in this role they may oftentimes be the

author of the intrigue. In Carey's The Honest Yorkshire-Man (1736)

Gaylove asks his valet, Slango, if there is any way to prevent the match

made by Arabella's father; the valet muses for a moment and then conjures

the following plot: "I must personate Arabella (with this sweet Face)

and you her Uncle, under which Disguises we may intercept the -Country

Squire, and get his Credentials; equipt with which,—I leave you to guess

the rest" (5). Similarily, in Fielding's The Intriguing Chambermaid

(1734) Valentine's maid, Lettice, works pretty well on her own to upset

Mrs. Highman's plans to marry Valentine's beloved, Charlotte, to another

wealthier man. There are instances also where the hero or heroine may

direct the plot but where the servant is instrumental in bringing about

its conclusion. In The Female Parson, for instance, lady Quibus arranges for her maid to dress as a parson so she can extricate herself

from her unsatisfactory marriage to Squire Quibus; the here is that she was originally married by a mock parson. In The Beggar's Wed­ ding Hunter and Grig conspire together, with Grig carrying the burden of the action, to unite Hunter and Phebe. Grig, moreover, has his sights 38

and fancy set on Phebe's maid, Tib, so this involves him deeply. This

last point is an interesting one because it raises the issue of why the

servants become involved in the intrigues. One senses in most of these

characters that they become involved for one of three basic reasons:

first they have the interest of their master/mistress at heart; in The

Lovers Opera, for instance, Lucy, Flora’s servant, while keeping her­

self parti ally concealed overhears Dalton soliloquizing on the wealthy

marriages he will arrange for his daughters; as he finally discovers

Lucy he asks her, "How now Saucebox! What business have you here?" To

which she responds, "What Business have I any where else? Am I not

serving my Mistress? Doing my Duty? While you are plotting to sacri­

fice ’em to your rapacious Avarice" (2).

This concern on the part of the servant may issue from feelings of

devotion, duty, and, probably, genuine affection for the master. Lucy,

however, gleefully offers pure self interest as a second reason later

in the play for becoming involved when she says after an exchange with

Dalton,

I cannot find one Scruple of Conscience in over-reaching this old Curmudgeon—besides, I find it in my Interest—my young Lovers are too generous not to reward me, if I succeed; and that Reward may help me to a Husband—for few Men, now-a-days, care to take a Woman with nothing (8).

Not only do the characters oppose the ethics of the blocking character but they also function out of personal interest. However, their inter­ est, in contrast to the blocking character's is motivated by good intentions (Grig wishes to legitimately marry Tib) or by necessity as is seen in Lucy. It reminds one of Defoe’s characters who chose way­ ward paths to obtain the means to keep them from "want." A third 39

reason for the servant’s involvement in the intrigue to foil the block­

ing character generates out of the mere joy of participation in the

game. Feignwell in The Mock lawyer takes the job of playing the mock

lawyer because, as he says, ”1 was born a Lawyer” adding, ’’for my

Mother was Laundress at an Inn of Court, her Gallant an Attorney, and

my reputed Father a Bailiff’s Follower" (13). He, as it turns out,

succeeds well in his ruse that leads to the humiliation of Justice

Lovelaw. In Fielding’s The Mock Doctor Gregory quite unwittingly gets

involved in his mock doctor’s role and effects such "miracles" that he

gives himself over to his delusion. The point here is an obviously

satiric one as we see low-life types quite handily assuming all the

trappings of the professions and fooling the blocking characters. In

all three cases the servants invest the role of intriguer with qualities

of naive but realistic wisdom, cleverness, energy; furthermore by the

mere dint of being aligned with the hero or heroine their motives may be equivocal but never wholly wrong. In fact, the point is quite clear

through the action of the play that their motives and actions are com­ pletely legitimized because they function in the establishment of the new order of things represented in the principles of the hero and hero­ ine.

Moving from these particulars of character to the broader consider­ ation of the dramatic vehicle employed in ballad opera we find that the authors relied on standard farce to emphasize the conflict of the dif­ ferent ethical systems proposed through the characters. Farce was standard fare during the Renaissance but fell into disrepute and rela­ tive obscurity during the Restoration when playwrights sought to appeal Uo

to the manners of the upper classes. The early eighteenth century saw

a rise in the popularity of farce, but the ballad opera made it viable

for mainpieces as well as afterpieces. The reason for its success can ♦ be attributed broadly to the very reason for the existence of farce:

it is a type of drama intended almost solely to arouse laughter.

Thomas Wilks offers about the best contemporary critical definition of

farce in his General View of the Stage (1759):

Farce is founded on chimera and improbability; the events are unnatural, the humour forced, and it is, in the opinion of Dryden, a compound of extravagancies, fit only to enter­ tain such people as are judges of neither men nor manners, it appeals entirely to the fancy; delights with oddity, and unexpected turns: it has in one thing indeed the same effect as Comedy, viz., it produces laughter; but it is not a laughter founded upon reason, excited by the check given to folly, the reproof to ignorance, or the lash to corruption.5

Farce provided the perfect proportion of sensation and emotion so

anxiously sought by the London theatre-goer. Furthermore, farce seem­

ingly was well-received by the population as a whole, and the reason for this acceptance can, perhaps, be linked to the concept of genre in the eighteenth century: the audience accepted.farce, and its conven­ tions for what it was and for what it intended to do, and no more was asked of it. Critics also proved to be tolerant of the genre especi­ ally when it was allied to the ballad opera; Aaron Hill, in The

Prompter (Tuesday, 22 April, 1755), P- 57, offers this proposition in his hypothetical treaty between and the Poet:

Whereas farces intermixed with songs have nothing in them contrary to good sense, it is hereby stipulated that Poets whose talents will not reach Tragedy or Comedy shall be employed this way, provided they neither exceed the bounds of probability nor decency, but restrain themselves to low humour and inoffensive mirth. 4i

Ballad opera adopted many of the standard devices of traditional

farce. Leo Hughes in his A Century of English Farce, pp. 33-52, lists

among the major conventions of farce the devices of repetition, "con­

sisting of the mere repetition of a gesture, a movement, an episode

which has earned a laugh" (33); disguise; simulating an inanimate or non

human figure, a device popular in commedia dell 'arte but used spar­

ingly in the ballad opera; places of concealment, a standard feature

in farce and used occasionally in ballad operas; and, finally, beatings

and drubbings, intended to give discomfort and/or embarrassment to

some character. Hughes notes, concerning these devices and the last in

particular: "Divergent as they may be in the use of costume and props

the farceurs of various theatrical traditions are in substantial agree­

ment upon one point: the emphasis upon the grossly physical" (English

Farce, p. 49). John Arthur's The Lucky Discovery: or, The Tanner of

York (1737); Garland, 27) employs a couple of these devices to accentu­

ate the "grossly physical": early in the play Bark, the tanner, puts

on a hide and scares Modish, who is trying to seduce Mrs. Bark; later,

Simon (Bark's man) puts on the hide and is met and beaten by Modish who is trying to find out who is under the disguise. Edmond Gagey's

(Ballad Opera, p. 102) assessment of the ballad farce plot also re­ affirms the concepts discussed by Hughes:

A composite picture of the ballad farce of intrigue reveals that little originality was demanded in plot. The formula unfolds with monotonous regularity. At its simplest the ingredients were as follows: an heiress of sixteen; a gallant; an aged or foppish or boorish rival; an opinionated father or. avaricious guardian; a clever valet; an intriguing chambermaid; a stratagem; a marriage. While variations naturally occur, the basic pattern remains the same. Suspense arises from the discovery of the heiress, to the discomfiture of the parent or . 42

We, thus far, have discussed the element of character and should then

turn to two elements which truly distinguish the ballad opera farce:

intrigue and disguise; because the two are so often used in tandem we

will call this the intrigue-disguise motif.

The importance of the intrigue-disguise motif to the ballad opera

resides in the fact that it brings the low-life characters to the fore­

front of the action. It is, in essence, a low-life intrigue, and this

concept pulls the ballad opera away from the traditions of Restoration

and sentimental comedy. In those plays, it should be remembered, the

authors as well as performers of the intrigues were usually members of

the upper classes. In ballad opera, on the other hand, the reader feels

there must be a necessary alliance between the hero and servant if the

intrigue is to succeed. The Honest Yorkshire-Man, mentioned earlier,

requires both the hero Gaylove and his man Slango. First of all it

would be inappropriate for Gaylove to dress up as a woman, as Slango

does, but he still can impersonate Arabella’s father, Muckworm.

Secondly, the. sight-gag element of Sapscull -courting Slango provides

more potential for laughs. Another important factor in the intrigue-

disguise motif here is that with the servants assuming the trappings

of professional men the element of incongruity is heightened. For

instance Justice Lovelaw, in The Mock Lawyer, loves to hear legal talk and is clearly impressed by all litigious activity. This is presented as his blind spot and the intrigue and disguise devised by Valentine and Feignwell exposes this flaw. When Feignwell comes, disguised as a lawyer and mock-suitor, the Justice believes he is the wealthy match he had devised for his daughter; instead, Feignwell is there to inform Laetitia that Valentine is waiting for her outside. All the valet has

to do is issue some legal gibberish and the game is his:

Feignwell. /to Iaetitia/ On thee, fair Paragon, fair Rose of Roses, A lawful Poet chaunts his lawful Poesies: Tho’ 'gainst the Rule of Court, yet do not blame us; We pray and Oyer, but pray as Ignoramous: For ah! on Thee, on Love my Mind so bent is, Quod sum Inventus, non sum Compos Mentis,

Justice Lovelaw. Quaint, quaint Verses; better than your Damons, and Chloes, and Phillis's.

Laetitia. Sure, Sir you'll not persist in your Resolution.

Justice. 'Tis my utmost Wish to marry thee to the Law.

Laet. I hate the law.

Feignwell. With humble Submission, what Law do you hate? The Crown-law, the State-Law, the Martial-Law, the Canon-law, the Ecclesiastical-Law, the Civil-Law, or the Forest-Law, or—or the Law of Nature?

Justice. Marry, marry him, Girl; I thought before there had been but one Law; but since there are so many, there are so many more the Charms (pp. 25-26).

After this bit of nonsense he asks to see Laetitia alone and then in­

forms her of the plot. When Lovelaw returns she is all sweetness and

light and he believes he has found the perfect match. Yet another

example of this can be seen in The Beggar's Wedding where Grig gains

admittance to Alderman Quorum's house by posing as an antiquarian and

traveler who has as a companion Aboubiker Cracomonopow, a petty Prince

of the empire of Tartary (who is Hunter in disguise). To facilitate t the escape of the lovers Grig engages Quorum in a discussion of such rarities as the ashes of Phoenix and the "Corpse of a noble Tartar." 44

From this it is apparent that most ballad operas rely on disguise in

executing the intrigue, and the reason for this is that in the context

of farce the disguise is the most accessible and tangible means of

executing the action.

Some of the most popular and complex, or at least ingenious,

ballad operas employ the intrigue to give consistency and unity to two

somewhat independent plot lines. The intrigue, as we have seen, most

often features interaction between individuals from the upper and lower

classes. Two plays which feature this plot type, Fielding’s The Mock

Doctor and Charles Coffey’s The Devil to Pay; or. The Wives Meta-

morphos* d (1731), deserve some attention here because the authors work

the parallel plot lines to some interesting conclusions. The plays prove to be exceedingly clever in not only the plotting but also in the themes they convey to the reader/audience.

As was suggested, the ballad opera tends to rely on the basic archetypal comedic plot in which "The tendency is," as Northrop Frye notes (Anatomy, p. 157), "to include as many people as possible in its final society: the blocking characters are more often reconciled or converted than simply rejected." In many of the plays discussed thus far a new, well-integrated community or social order is presented as the final curtain rings down; in each case the intrigue plot not only has united the lovers and established or prepared the way for the ritual Komus motif which is implied in the last act, but it has also forced the blocking character into recognition of his flaw and accept­ ance of the new order signalled by the imminent marriage of the lovers.

In the case of The Mock Doctor Sir Jasper's conversion and reintegration into the new society is brought about by the intrigue of Gregory (the

mock doctor) and by a characteristically noble act of Leander, the hero.

Gregory, posing as a doctor, asks Sir Jasper to leave him alone with

Charlotte so he may cure her. (She has been playing dumb so as to avoid

the match made by her father.) In the interim Gregory is able to get

Sir Jasper to make Charlotte take a walk in the garden which is his

"Remedy Specifick" combining "a Dose of Purgative Running-away, mixt

with two Drachms of Pills Matrimoniac and three large Handfuls of the

Arbor Vitae" (p. 30). This constitutional in the garden allows Chariot

to escape with Leander; he, however, soon returns and in a noble

gesture says the following to Sir Jasper:

Leander. Behold, Sir, that Leander whom you had forbid your House, restores your Daughter to your Power, even when he had her in his own. I will receive her, Sir, only at your hands. —I have receiv’d Letters by which I’ve learnt the Death of an Uncle, whose Estate far exceeds that of your intended Son-in-law.

Sir Jasper. Sir your Virtue is beyond all Estates, and I give you my Daughter with all the Pleasure in the World (p. 32).

This may strike the reader as a profoundly equivocal act on Sir Jasper’s • part, but the author here is merely following convention: invariably the blocking character must recognize his moral side first because that is the side which was exposed by the intrigue; thus, once the state­ ment about the hero’s virtue, noble heart, or character is made we can, the playwright hopes, accept the status quo of rank and station.

Fielding, like any clever dramatist, is careful to maintain the status quo or social equilibrium held by the society he hopes to entertain.

The letter Leander receives, the pseudo-deus ex machina common to farce 46

and comedy, guarantees the happy outcome, but over and above this he

makes the point that it is the hero’s virtue which the father respects.

Had Sir Jasper accepted Leander’s estate as the only criterion, the old

society based on materialistic convention, the society presented at the

outset and exposed by Gregory’s intrigue as mean and hypocritical,

would still be viable and intact. No one in this play is offered as a

sacrificial scapegoat at the conclusion, and it strikes one as

thoroughly appropriate that in this age of growing democratization of

the stage all the strands and extremes of the social order of the play

should be brought into the new society at the end.

In The Devil to Pay we encounter a somewhat different situation.

This is probably one of the finest ballad operas written during this

period, and much of its success is due to the perfect synthesis of

traditions, conventions, and contemporary interests that Coffey was

able to blend into his plot and characters. The plot revolves around

two couples: Jobson, a cobler, and his wife Nell, and Sir John, ”an

honest Country Gentleman, belov’d for his hospitality," and his wife

Lady Loverule, "a proud, canting, brawling, fanatical Shrew." The sub­

title of the play is The Wives Metamorphos'd and it is this concept

which governs the plot action. Jobson mistreats Nell miserably; he is

constantly out drinking with the boys and if she protests he literally

beats her. Her protests, however, are not the scolding type but more

often mere requests that he stay with her "and for once make merry at

home" (1). Sir John, on the other hand, has a different sort of prob­

lem: his wife and her counselor, a hypocritical and fanatical parson,

Ananias. Ananias has so infected Lady Loverule with his "new Light" 47

theology that she objects to any conviviality displayed by Sir John and

his friends. In short, Coffey has constructed parallel plots which,

the audience anticipates, must at some juncture come together. This

opportunity presents itself in act two.

Sir John’s servants, quite fed up with Ananias' fanatical asceti­

cism, plan to scare the parson out of his . They, however, are

saved the effort by the magical transformation. In act one a Doctor,

who "practices Physick, and is an Astrologer," while traveling through

the village sought some hospitality from Sir John's house; there he was

met by Lady Loverule who commanded "Out of my House, you lewd Conjurer,

you Magician" (16). He then moved on and stopped at Jobson's cottage

where he was greeted and treated with great kindness and hospitality by

Nell. Jobson, who is obsessed with the fear of cuckoldry, came home

and drove the Doctor out and then proceeded to beat Nell. The Doctor,

in a ballad air, works his spell, and in act two the spirits of Nell

and Lady are exchanged so Lady Loverule, now in Nell's body, resides with Jobson, and Nell is inhabiting Lady Loverule's body and house.

The outcome of all this is quite advantageous as Lady Loverule has her shrewishness snapped by Jobson's whip, and Sir John and his servants are given, as a reward for their innate good hearts, a sweet lady of the house. At one point in act three all the principals are gathered at Sir John's house and the Doctor apologizes for his mischief and reverses his spell. By now, however, Jobson and Lady Loverule have learned their lesson and all parties are amicably reconciled with

Ananias being cast out in the bargain.

The Devil to Pay was immensely successful on the stage and it is 48

not hard to see why. Coffey has drawn some wonderful characters and

the inclusion of the supernatural intrigue must have been exciting.

In regard to his characters, Nell could have been a page torn from the

canon of sentimental heroines created by Steele and Cibber. She accepts

her husband totally and at worst refers to him as "somewhat rugged, and

in his Cups will beat me, but it is not much."; then she adds "he’s an

honest Painstaking Man, and I let him have his way" (20). The spectres

of Amanda, Lady Easy, and Indiana flit before one’s eyes at the utter­

ance of such lines. Sir John, by the same token, is the norm for good

behavior; the perfect country gentleman, he is possessed of a good

heart, generous personality, and he speaks common sense at all times.

The most interesting character, however, is Ananias. He is, in a

throwback to the conventions of , ostracized from the

community at the end of the play. He is too extreme to remain part of

the new order; his character, however, is a reminder to us that the popular dramatist seeks to maintain the status quo of the society and its mores. Pat Rogers in The Augustan Vision (New York: Barnes and

Noble, 1974), p. 33, states:

It is perhaps true that eccentricity comes off the worse in this age than in any other. Augustan are about the only plays where a serious dialectic goes on between well- bred and ill-bred characters, with social mores rather than ethics in the narrow sense the crucial test.

Ananias’ presence has infected the standards of Sir John’s house and, therefore, his class; this is seen in Lady Loverule’s adoption of religious ideas usually associated with the fanatical extremes of the lower classes. What Coffey cleverly does is have Nell, as the trans­ formed Lady, serve as the model for the gentlewoman, and this, taken in 49

conjunction with the simultaneous plot by the servants and appearance

of the devil, reduces the cant and the overbearing character of the

parson. In his use of this motif of the lower classes showing the

errors of the upper classes, Coffey is true to the spirit of the ballad

opera, and with his portrait of Lady Loverule throwing off her reli­

gious fanaticism he is true to the tradition of class rank and the

responsibility attending that rank.

The clever handling of the stock characters in conjunction with

the supernatural intrigue implies a message of universal benevolence,

that the good heart and generous feelings borne within us all are the

mainspring of all proper action and thought. Coffey plays to the heart

and emotions of his audience: he reminds them that there is a class

system to be adhered to, but, at the same time, he disenchants no one

because he demonstrates that everyone, except the fanatic, has the

capacity for generosity and kindness. Furthermore, his use of the

supernatural intrigue reinforces this concept. The supernatural was a popular topic in papers and had long been in broadsides and chapbooks; it was never viewed as alternative religious experience by any means, but it must have offered the Londoner a sensational and very tangible show of mystery. The fact that the Doctor comes back, apologizes, and reverses the curse is perhaps also a sign that this extreme—which would be the polar opposite of Ananias’ moral prating—is equally bad;

Sir John, the norm of consensus attitudes and beliefs, helps us to recognize these extremes when he says at one point to Ananias: ". . -go to your Book, you ignorant Sot, and read, learn to rely more upon good

Sense, and less upon your new Light, Blockhead" (14), and later, when 50

the Doctor offers to continue the charm if Sir John wishes, he offers

this dictum: "No, I’ll have no Happiness from Hell. Let all my Bless­

ings come from Heaven" (61). The resolution of the problems created

by the religious poles presented and the message derived from the out­

come is that the common faith of man and the belief in benevolence are

the proper paths to follow. Lois Whitney in a discussion of the rise

of sentimentalism and benevolence from her book Primitivism and the

Idea of Progress in English Popular Literature of the Eighteenth t Century (Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1934), pp. 84-85, sub­

stantiates this idea:

But the layman of the eighteenth century had more to contend with than the aggressive evangelical pronouncement that his heart was desperately wicked. If he turned indignantly from that, feeling no such corruption, he was likely to encounter either a frigid rationalism which, while it did not arouse his anger, satisfied him even less, or the survival of seventeenth-century Puritanism, which taught him the unpal­ atable doctrine of self-suppression. No wonder that he turned in relief to an ethics that let him believe that his natural feelings were right and good, and even more to the corollary that if he followed his natural instincts he could not go wrong.

In short, Coffey appeals in this play to the emotions of his audience

by demonstrating that a kind heart and common sense are exclusive of

but not necessarily more important than class status; secondly, he

appeals to the senses with the fireworks provided by the supernatural

intrigue devised by the Doctor. This play is a good example of the ballad opera at its best; in drawing his characters and creat­

ing the ethical ideals which are the foundation of the conflicts, Coffey has created what could be a quintessential popular play- Ronald

Paulson, in a discussion of Hogarth’s popular prints, says: "One 51

might almost define the popular prints ... as designs in which the

choice /between good and evil7 is obvious.Coffey, as well as other

good ballad opera authors, as we have seen, adhere to this principle

by making the ethical choices clear cut.

We can see from the foregoing that the ballad opera illuminated

in fairly clear cut terms the immediate concerns of the culture by

dealing with basic problems and situations. Furthermore, these prob­

lems are of a type which the audience apprehends on an emotional or,

possibly, a sensate level. The playwright asks the audience to affirm

the emotional plight of the lovers; because we know they are right in

their interests we need not intellectualize the problem or its con­

sequences but, on the other hand, merely feel it. Lehman Engel in

Words with Music (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 172, in reference to

contemporary musical theatre, states: "This is one of the most impor­

tant achievements of the best musical theater: the ability to involve

all people, the astute and nonastute, because what all people have in

common is the capacity to feel.” This assessment could be also applied

to the ballad opera. In the plays mentioned thus far the conventions

of form are designed to delineate the conflict between the blocking

character whose adherence to an older order is based on specious reason­

ing, and the young lovers who abide by the rules of the heart. The playwright manipulates the audience into a position where the issues presented demand more of an emotional response than an intellectual one.

The concepts of love and common justice (i.e., the golden rule) are hard topics to make intellectually palatable to a mass audience; the safest route is to apprehend the audience’s emotions by presenting 52

generalized concepts about love and justice. Some intellectual curi­

osity may be provoked in the playwright's slightly cynical portraits,

of ill-natured men and women who, enjoying the benefit of parental or

social power, are potentially capable of preying on those of lesser

or even intellectual attainment. Farce, however, eliminates, on the

surface at any rate, this problem by exaggerating the wrongheadedness

of these types through the low-life intrigue. Ultimately, we feel in

our heart of hearts that the young lovers and other hero types are

right and the playwright reinforces this belief by duping the blocking

characters. The conventions of the ballad opera all basically uphold

a benevolent concept of justice forwarded by George Stephens in his

The Amiable Quality of Goodness as Compared with Righteousness,

Consider'd (1731): "Will not he, that is only guided by Justice, be led

to many hard and cruel Things? And is not Extremity of Justice call'd 7 the utmost injury?" The ballad opera, similarly, attempts to demon­ strate that life cannot be lived according to pure precept but must include a strong degree of human feeling.

The value of the ballad opera in the history of drama and eight­ eenth century literature must be judged on four contributions. First, it brought farce back to the boards, a distinctive English style of farce bustling with topical humour, fads, and people. It brought the interests of the mass audience to life on the stage; highwaymen, young lovers, historical topics, diabolical and supernatural.occurrences; tales, like those of Defoe's, about aspiring young men and repentant older ones were all employed at some time by the genre. Second, the ballad opera kept alive the spark of sentimental comedy, and did it 53

without becoming embroiled in turgid or lurid tragedies. Between

Steele's plays and Richardson's novels the ballad opera was the major

exponent of the sentimental tradition in literature. Third, the ballad

opera took up on a lesser scale the banner of satire which was so ably-

displayed by Swift, Pope, and Gay; this will supply matter for a later

chapter. Finally, and, maybe most important, the ballad opera not only kept alive the enjoyable interaction of music and drama applauded by audiences of past eras, but it also helped create and advance what is basically a new genre: musical comedy. 5k

NOTES -1 Refractions: Essays in Comparative Literature (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 36-7; see also John Cawelti, ’’The Concept of Formula in the Study of Popular Literature,” Journal of Popular Culture, 5 (Winter, 1969), 385. 2 Of Dramatic Poesy and Other ‘Critical Essays, ed. George Watson (London: Dent, Everyman's Library, 1962), I, 182; see also Leo Hughes, A Century of English Farce (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1956) for a complete discussion of farce in the eighteenth century.

^Ian Watt, in his The Rise of the Novel, p. 42, makes these general observations about reading tastes of the London audiences:

The Novel in the eighteenth century was closer to the eco­ nomic capacity of the middle-class additions to the reading public than were many of the established and respectable forms of literature and scholarship, but it was not, strictly speak­ ing, a popular literary form. For those on the lower economic fringes of the book- buying public there were, of course, many cheaper forms of printed entertainment; ballads at a halfpenny or a penny; chapbooks containing abbreviated chivalric romances, new stories of criminals, or accounts of extraordinary events, at prices ranging from a penny to sixpence; pamphlets at three­ pence to a shilling; and, above all, newspapers at the price of one penny until a tax was imposed in 1712, rising to three-half-pence or two pence until 1757, and eventually to threepence after 1776. 4 In Four Before Richardson: Selected English Novels, 1720-1727, ed. William H. McBurney (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1963)•

^5Madeleine Doran, in her Endeavors of Art, p. 148, defines real­ istic comedy as follows: "Its sphere of observation is the real life of ordinary men and women, its attitude critical, its means pleasur­ able, its aim at least partially corrective." One can see the affinity to ballad opera from this brief definition. ^Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times, abridged ed. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965, 197^), P- 252. 7 Quoted in R. S. Crane, "Suggestions Toward a Genealogy of the ’Man of Feeling,'" ELH, 1 (1934), 213- CHAPTER THREE

Satire and the Ballad Opera

As we turn to our examination of the role of satire in ballad opera

we see that it shares none of the formal designs or even excellencies of

the type of formal verse satire practiced by Pope, Swift, Dryden, and

Gay. At best it is reminiscent of the satiric style one sometimes finds

in the Elizabethan city satires of Jonson and, on occasion, Marston.

Like Elizabethan drama, satire is incidental oftentimes to the primary

romance plot, and as in Elizabethan drama, the authors borrowed what devices they deemed necessary to achieve the basic comic effect desired by the audience. Pat Rogers in The Augustan Vision (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974), pp. 77-78, makes an interesting observation about the relationship of the Augustan satirist to his audience which can also be applied to the ballad opera author and his audience:

But the real creative spirits did not want to be part of the Walpole machine anyway. What they required was some­ thing much more fundamental, and largely they got it. They needed a decent-sized audience, an acceptable idiom (i.e. a shared body of language along with a recognized tone of address), a general disposition on the part of society to' be addressed and persuaded and amused.

Proof of the satirist’s ambition to establish this rapport is evident in Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and beyond this, as we shall see, especi­ ally in the future ballad opera productions, the playwright's attempt to sustain this "acceptable idiom" of satire in their comedies.

As we survey many of the contemporary theorists of drama and the prologues of many of the ballad operas we find that the satiric impulse was viewed as intrinsic to the designs of comedy. J. W. Draper, in his

"The Theory of the Comic in Eighteenth Century England," JEGP, 37 (1938),

55 %

207-23, Ronald Paulson, in his Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth

Century England (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 52-77, and

P. K. Elkin, throughout his The Augustan Defence of Satire (Oxford:

Clarendon, 1973), repeatedly raise the point that contemporary critics

and playwrights very seldom made cold hard distinctions between comedy

and satire. Critics and playwrights alike believed that the first duty

of comedy and farce was to draw laughter and entertain, and in my dis­

cussion of farce in the ballad opera libretti I cited critics who

argued that the sole objective of farce was to arouse laughter. The

critics, however, also saw in the two vital operative principles of

comedy, incongruity and realism, the basis for much good satire.

Francis Hutcheson, in one of his essays sent to the Dublin Journal (Sat­

urday, June 12, 1725), developed the following theory based on his

reading of Addison’s Spectator essays on wit:

That then which seems generally the Cause of laughter, is ’The bringing together of Images which have contrary addi­ tional ideas, as well as some Resemblance in the principal Idea: This Contrast between Ideas of Grandeur, Dignity, Sanctity, Perfection, and Ideas of Meaness, Baseness, Pro­ fanity, seems to be the very Spirit of Burlesque; and the greatest Part of our Raillery and Jest are founded upon it.’

Throughout this essay, as in the excerpt above, Hutcheson devoted his

attention to the concept of incongruity and, as we have seen, terms usually ascribed to the satiric mode are mentioned in his discussion.

Hugh Blair, on the other hand, is considerably more straightforward in his discussion of the comedic-satiric relationship in his Lecture XLVII

of Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), ed. Harold F.

Harding (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1965), II, 528-29:

Comedy proposes for its object, neither the great suffer­ ings nor the great crimes of men; but their follies and 57

slighter vices, those parts of their character, which raise in beholders a sense of impropriety, which expose them to be censured, and laughed at by others, or which render them troublesome in civil society. This general idea of Comedy, as a satyrical exhibition of the improprieties and follies of mankind, is an idea very moral and useful. ... To polish the manners of men, to promote attention to the proper decorums of social be­ haviour, and above all, to render vice ridiculous, is doing a real service to the world.

Embodied in this definition are the two elements, incongruity and real­

ism, which critics and playwrights seem to think affirm the comedic-

satiric spirit. In Blair’s case we would have to read "impropriety" as

incongruity and could easily associate the term "civil society" and

"social behaviour" with the concepts of realism. P. K. Elkin further

illuminates the correspondence Blair suggests in his Augustan Defence,

p. 81:

To instruct successfully, to achieve the maximum impact, critics from Dryden and Wycherly to Fielding and Goldsmith believed that satire (like comedy In this context, no dis­ tinction was made between the two) must be realistic. Indeed they regarded its realism as the basis of its moral value. The function of the satirist was to show people as they were and the age what it was like.

Turning from the theorists of the day to the actual practitioners

we find them not only defending the comedic-satiric tradition but

arguing with equal force for a farcical-satiric mode of drama. The

defense of satire in ballad opera was usually carried on in the pro­

logues to the plays themselves. On the whole, the defense is con­

structed on traditional theatrical principles with the speaker citing

the classics or past dramatic masters as the source of the play's satiric inspiration. They also raise the issue of whether satire should name specific targets or confine itself to general criticism. The 58

following prologue from Charles Coffey's The Devil to Pay is a good

example of this type of general argument:

In ancient Greece the Comic Muse appear'd, Sworn Foe to Vice, by Virtue's Friends rever'd; Impartial she indulg'd her noble Eage, And Satire was the Business of the Stage: No reigning Ill was from her Censure free, No Sex, no Age of Man, and no Degree; Whoe'er by Passion was, or Folly, led, The laurel'd Chief, or sacerdotal Head, The pedant Sophist, or imperious Dame, She lash'd the Evil, nor conceal'd the Name.

How hard the Fate of Wives in those sad Times, When saucy Poets wou'd chastise their Crimes! When each cornuting Mate, each rampant Jilt, Had her Name branded on the Stage with Guilt! Each Fair may now the Comic Muse endure, And join the Laugh, tho1 at her Self, secure.

Link'd to a patient Lord, this Night behold A wilful, headstrong, Termagant and Scold; Whom, tho' her Husband did what Man cou'd do, The Devil only cou'd reclaim like you; Like you, whose Virtues bright embellish Life, And add a Blessing to the Name of Wife.

A merry Wag, to mend vexatious Brides, These Scenes begun, which shak'd your Fathers Sides; And we, obsequious to your Taste, prolong Your Mirth, by courting the Supplies of Song; If you approve, we our Desires obtain, And by your Pleasure shall compute our Gain.^

Some prologues discuss the decline of drama and then reassert how this night's offering is a return to the time spirit of comedy and satire:

The Great, the Good, the Wise in every Age Have made a moral Mirrour of the Stage; ... But now the Drama fears a sad Decline, And peevish Hypocrites its fall combine From Stage to Stage, behold our Author toss'd, And, but for you, his Genious crush'd and lost. No Wilks, no Booth! his Labours to requite, He here takes shelter, studious to delight. But to our FARCE—It has a double Aim To honour Wedlock, and put Fools to Shame; Folly and Prejudice, too near a Kin, 59

Supply pert Coxcombs with Eternal Grin, So infinitely stupid is whose Mirth, They’ll ridicule one’s very Place of Birth, And cry, An Honest Yorkshire-Man! a Wonder!

This prologue, from ’s The Honest Yorkshire-Man (1756),

alludes to two prevalent concepts associated with satire: the first is

the mirror image used by every satirist from Dryden and Wycherly in the

Restoration to Pope and Swift in the Augustan era; the second is the

stated intention of the drama, ”It has a double Aim/ To honour Wedlock,

and put Fools to Shame," which, of course, upholds the raison d'etre for

satire: not only will the play ridicule the follies of the age but will

also reinforce the morals of the society. A third prologue, this one

from ’s The Lottery (London: 1732), presents most cogently

the concept behind the farcical-satiric element in ballad opera:

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 shews you as you are. But Farce still claims a magnifying Right, To raise the Object larger to the Sight, And shew her Insect Fools in stronger Light.

Fielding supports, characteristically, the division of the dramatic genres here, but makes a strong defense for farcical satire. Because the concept of exaggeration is so indigenous to farce, Fielding, as well as other ballad opera authors, perhaps saw the capabilities of farce in communicating satiric types and ideas; furthermore, one of the basic elements both farce and satire have in common is that they stress real­ ism in character, settings, and language and as Rose A. Zimbardo states:

Satire is of necessity the most realistic of the literary genres because its subject is real social ill; its declared 60

function is to cure social distemper. Its themes are per­ force vulgarized because its method is to exaggerate human nature downward, that the audience may be shocked, indeed revolted, by the corruption to which, in their lives they contribute.-'

Farce with its beatings, dumped chamber pots, cuckoldings, gross lan­

guage, and general earthy characters similarly exaggerates human nature

and folly downward; its tone and its devices are all directed toward

obtaining laughs, and if satiric elements are woven into this form one

can see the potential for extra laughs and, as a result, greater popular­

ity. In short, then, the playwrights have used the same arguments as

comic-satiric writers did before them. One could, perhaps, be very

cynical and say that these prologues present rather typical disclaimers

or apologies for the crudity the playwright indulges in and perhaps this

is partially true; however, there appears among the better playwrights

working in the genre a rather firm conviction that farce and satire are

perfectly compatible. Ronald Paulson (Satire and the Novel, pp. 85-86)

notes that in Fielding’s works farce and satire are regarded as an

excellent combination:

Farce then is a general metaphor for contemporary life, and the analogy between living and acting is a natural one , in which to express a concern with either fashion or hypocrisy, the attempt to mask as what one is not. ... But, as some of the greatest dramatists have shown, farce is a two-sided instrument: it can be sheer nonsense, or its meaning can proceed through the logic of allegory or analogy. Fielding utilizes both possibilities. ...

Fielding, Carey, Coffey, and Phillips strike a middle ground in most of their farce satires and in their rationales for using farce. It is Gay, however, the man who began it all, who, in one of his most character­ istically dry moments (his epitaph), gives us the best contemporary 61

rationale for the union of farce and satire:

Life is a.jest; and all things show it, I thought so once; but now I know it.

Oddly enough the rough and tumble world of farce and the acerbic

world of satire produce, in the ballad opera, a different type of

satire than one would reasonably expect. As we have noted, the key

phrases in the arguments for farce-satire are: to laugh men out of their

follies, to put Fools to shame or "shame the extravagant Follies of the

age." Seldom does the word "attack" surface, and terms like evil, ugly,

and vice are also conspicuously absent. In short, the rhetorical battery

we commonly associate with Tory satirists has been considerably amended.

Instead we are viewing the first full-scale representation of what has

variously been termed "good-natured" or "Whig" satire. Ronald Paulson

(Satire and the Novel, p. 58) describes Whig satire, the type practiced by Addison and Steele : . . "The obverse of the Tory fiction, their satire was written from the point of view of the normative honnOte homme and his friends, with the evil agent peripheral and often absorbed, even without being reformed, into the good society." The ballad opera author, similarly, approached his satire with a certain degree of caution; he wished to laugh men out of their follies, but he had to tread carefully so as not to "laugh Men out of Virtue and good Sense" which was a major concern of critics like Addison (Spectator, No. 24-9), Francis Hutcheson 4 in his Reflections Upon Laughter (Glasgow: 1750), and Corbyn Morris.

In essence, the eighteenth-century playwright in designing plays for his popular culture was forced to turn his back on many of the traditions fostered and refined by satirists of previous eras. Rose A. Zimbardo, in 62

her study Wycherly*s Drama: A Link in the Development of English Satire

(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965), PP- 100-2?, and others have

traced the development of English satire through Renaissance poets and

playwrights up to Dryden and Wycherly, so little need be said here of

the genesis of dramatic satire. The important point to be remembered,

however, is that Wycherly’s drama is the dramatic counterpart of the

formal Augustan verse satire in both its intention and basic structure.

Professor Zimbardo says of Augustan-Restoration satire:

Satire, because its function is to expose universal and timeless corruption, must be open-ended. It must expose human vice, and though it may offer, by demonstration or implication, an alternative virtue, it must leave the reso­ lution of the conflict to the reader or the audience. Generally satire is destructive—it exposes evil—but not constructive—it does not present the triumph of good.

This theory, of course, is at considerable variance with the general intent of comedy which is to reconcile the characters both good and bad in the last scene. This does not mean, however, that the modes cannot coexist; it should be emphasized here that ballad opera implements satiric devices to achieve its ends and does not make satire its sole end. The objective that the ballad opera author apparently wished to achieve was both to attack, in his own "good-natured" way, the follies or vices of his age and, at the same time, adhere to the basic arche­ typal comedic structure and form. Francis Hutcheson, who was influenced by Addison, suggested in one of his "letter-essays" to the Dublin

Journal, No. 12 (Saturday, June 19, 1725; Works, ed. Fabian, VII, 104-

05) that comedy employing ridicule should subscribe to the following rules:

First, Either never to attempt Ridicule upon what is every 6>3

way great, whether it be any great Being; Character, or Sentiments: Or, if our Wit must sometimes run into Allusions, on/low occasions, to the Expressions of great Sentiments, Let it not be in weak Company, who have not a just discernment of true Grandeur. ... This then is another necessary Rule, That along with our ridicule of smaller faults we should always join Evidences of good Nature, and Esteem.

This sums up quite accurately the spirit of the farce-satire which per­

meates the ballad opera.

The reasons for the modification of the basic satiric structure and

intent can generally be ascribed to changes taking place in the physical

and philosophical makeup of the culture. As Martin Price in his To the

Palace of Wisdom: Studies in Order and Energy From Dryden to Blake

(Garden City: Doubleday, 1964), p. 233, has observed, "In making satire

a more profound and inclusive form than it had ever been before, ...

/the Augustan satirist/ could express through it as much of the tragic

view of life as could survive its distrust of cant and hollow gesture."

The people frequenting the theatre, however, were not interested in the

tragic vision of the Tory satirist; moreover, there was a movement

toward an optimism, a conciliation not only with the past but also with

the present. P. K. Elkin in The Augustan Defence of Satire, p. 64, sug­

gests that,

As society and government became more settled and secure, and the tensions of the Civil War and post-Civil War period were relaxed, the need grew for a kindlier, more tolerant kind of humour. People no longer wanted comic characters who were so vicious as to demand the lash of satire, but those they could laugh at and enjoy. They wanted comic char­ acters whom they might conceivably welcome into their homes, - not those (like, let us say, Volpone and Mosca) whom they wished to see reduced to penury or sent to the galleys.

This kindlier and more tolerant type of humor Elkin speaks of was in 64

large part inspired by the popularity of sentimental comedy and the con­

current rise of the philosophy of benevolence. The ethos of benevo­

lence had been fostered by among others, Chesterfield, Addison, Steele,

and, more pertinent to our study Henry Fielding, and as Andrew M.

Wilkinson has noted in his "The Decline of English Verse Satire," RES,

N. S. 3 (1952), 223, "The decline of Satire was ... the result of

that revised estimate of human nature which is at the root of what we

cumstomarily term 'sentimentalism.’" Wilkinson's basic thesis, and one

that is applicable here, is that the "sentimentist's" reliance on the

philosophy of benevolence negated the need for a defender of virtue

because virtue was inherent in each and everyone of us. Professor

Wilkinson also points out that, "The rise of sentimentism was closely

associated with the rise of the middle class" (228), and, as was pointed

out in chapter one, the middle class was becoming a dominant factor in

the theatre audience; as the century progressed audiences and writers

alike saw less and less the need to lash vice, and as a result by 1750»

they turned their attention to writing which would foster moral uplift,

a writing which concentrated on the sense of virtue inherent in every

man. For the time being we find the ballad opera author implementing

satiric conventions to reinforce benevolent themes; the reformation and

conversion of such garrulous types as Alderman Quorum in The Beggar's

Wedding—along with his beneficent offer to allow the king of the beg­ gars, Chaunter, to share his house—are indicative of the pervasive influence of this new "feeling" in the culture. Wilkinson states that

"Satire was killed with kindness" (228); perhaps it would be better to say that the playwright's reliance on Whig satire was partially an 65

attempt to dispell some of the gloom of the Tory satirist and partially

an attempt to satisfy his audience of "disagreeing parts."

The ballad opera, then, essentially adopted the mode of "good-

natured" satire, but this should not be meant to imply that the element

of "attack" was forfeited; far from it. The basic difference, however,

between the element of attack in formal verse satire and ballad opera

satire is that the formal satire oftentimes focuses its barbs on par­

ticular subjects, whereas ballad opera picks topics which would rightly

come under the heading of general vice or folly. It is easy to recog­

nize Sporus, and Cibber in Pope’s works, but, excluding occasional

references to Walpole in many of the ballad operas it is hard to find

specific cultural referents for ballad opera characters. Occasionally

one can identify some contemporary personage in one of the ballad opera burlesques. In Fielding’s The Author’s Farce, for instance, Colley

Cibber is referred to as the German Keyber, and the reference to Edmund

Curll, the bookseller, is made obvious by Fielding’s elision of the characters of the unscrupulous Bookweight and Curry, the bookseller.

Such topical references, however, are the exception rather than the norm.

Ballad opera, instead, concentrates on those general characteris­ tics of man and society which produce social ills. The ballad opera authors who employed satire, particularly Fielding, are closer in spirit to , who was more concerned with reaching the "public in general" from servants to lords with his satire, than they are to Dean

Swift and Pope, and, as Ronald Paulson has astutely observed about

Hogarth in his Hogarth: His Life, Art, and Times abridged ed. (New 66

Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965, 1974), p. 43: "the Spectator, that

great storehouse of socially shared Augustan attitudes, was the source,

or at least the shaping influence, of many of Hogarth's satiric and

aesthetic assumptions." The Spectator, Hogarth, and the ballad opera

deal with broad social types in their satires; there is in fact a

ballad opera entitled The Jew Decoy'd or, the Progress of a Harlot

(1735) inspired by Hogarth's series of prints, The Harlot's Progress.

There is in Hogarth, however, a considerably stronger degree of force­

fulness in many of his attacks than there is in thè Whig satire of The

Spectator and the ballad opera. Nonetheless, many of the same topics

are treated by these three avatars of Whig satire. One, in particular,

is the attack on social climbing, or the desire to rise above a person's

allotted station in life. Fielding's The Lottery deals with this prob­

lem in the aspirations of the country squire's daughter, Chloe, who

comes to the city with a head full of delusions and illusions summed up

nicely in this exchange with her servant: "Oh Jenny! mention not the

Country, I faint at the Sound of it--- there is more pleasure in the

Rattling of one Hackney-Coach, than in all the Musick that Romances tell us, of singing Birds, and falling Water” (9-10). She then sings an air comparing City and Country which contains the line: "What are Roses to a Garter?/ What Lillies to a Beau?" (10). She is reminiscent of Moll

Hackabout, who similarly has constructed a mask out of her illusions about herself and about London life which does not allow her to see poten­ tial and real evil around her. Of course the outcome for Chloe is pre­ eminently more satisfying than that which attends Moll's progress: her lover from the Country, Squire Lovemore, has pursued her to the city, 67

and it is his love for her which is ultimately, her redemption. His

saving her from a marriage to a penniless rake, who believes the match

will be a lucrative one, forces her to see that the thing she was

initially fleeing was this good impulse of her heart; she admitted

earlier in the play rather offhandedly that had she stayed in the coun­

try she would have fallen in love with the Squire. Ronald Paulson, in

his Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England, p. 80, says,

"Love stands as a norm of ordinary human activity; indeed, throughout

Fielding’s novels it signifies goodness.’1 This theme, similarly, helps

reinforce Fielding's attack on social climbing in The Lottery.

Another play which attacks people striving to live above their

station is The Footman (London: 1732; Garland, 5) in which the hero,

Charles, apes and echoes throughout the actions and sentiments of his master. By doing this he clearly demonstrates, as Gay did in The

Beggar's Opera, that matters of fashion and custom are hollow. In the play Charles attempts to win the heart of Jenny, who is the norm for real love; at one point she questions his true feelings, saying, "you give me too much reason to imagine your Love, like that of the rest of the fine Gentlemen, to be nothing but secret design. A real Love never appears in such a maimer" (27), to which he responds:

I don't know what romantick Notions you have of Love; but I'm sure mine is of the stamp it bears all over Town, the same that all the finest Gentlemen profess, and the finest Ladies encourage: but you, my Dear, are courting a Shadow, while I am offering you a Substance. Why Child, was I to make love in your Stile, I shou'd lose my Reputation among the Beau-Monde, and be ridicul'd out of my Senses by all the Women that know any thing of the World: no, really Jenny, in all appearance I think I have most reason to question your Love (27-28). 68

This speech reaffirms Charles's philosophy of his station and his life­

style expressed early in the play: "Why should we Gentlemen of the

Coat differ from all Mankind? Why mayn't we act above our Fortunes as

well as our Masters?" (7), and it also anticipates the outcome of the

play where Charles must drop his mask of the beau monde and his betters

if he is to hold on to Jenny. Before this, however, the author has had

his fun exposing the extravagant follies of the gentry by showing them

in the character of a footman.

The theme of social climbing along with the usual burlesques and

rehearsals (a form of burlesque in which a play which travesties a cur­

rent style of popular drama is rehearsed) of the town's bad taste com­

prise two minor but relatively popular subjects for satiric attack in

the ballad opera. Much has been written on rehearsals and burlesques, g so further discussion here would be superfluous. There are, however,

three larger and more comprehensive areas of attack, which by and large,

run throughout most of the popular ballad operas. They are: money

and materialism, courtship and marriage, and the professions. Taken

individually or collectively they comprise the single largest area for

satiric attack in the genre. Before turning to these themes, however,

it would be wise to devote some time to the character and nature of the

satiric spokesman one encounters in these plays. Having done this we can engage in a fuller contextual analysis of the satiric themes in some

of the individual plays.

Ballad opera, generally speaking, adheres loosely to the bipartite structure of most formal satire. Ronald Paulson, echoing much of Mary 7 Claire Randolph's "The Structural Design of Formal Verse Satire," 69

defines this thesis-antithesis concept as follows in his The Fictions of

Satire (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967)» p. 20:

The evil represented, then, is either an excessively dis­ ordered or an excessively ordered society, with its oppo­ site used as a foil or sometimes as a complement (both of them wrong). The contrast can extend to illusion and reality, affectation and plain-speaking, rebellion and complaisance—any set of extremes between which the satirist takes one or neither side. The extremes are the areas initiated by the satirist. They are ordinarly represented, however, with one doing something to the other, or to itself. The action, reaction, interaction is finally the object represented.

This structure applied to ballad opera reveals the blocking character,

as we have suggested in chapter two, as the representative of, most

often, the old society or the vice. Diametrically opposed to the block­

ing character are the low-life characters who are instrumental in expos­

ing the vices of the blocking character. In Fielding's The Intriguing

Chambermaid (London: 1734; Garland, 12), for instance, the hero's maid,

Lettice, tells Mrs. Highman, the heroine's mother, that her master "is

heartily in love" with the daughter and the feelings are reciprocal,

whereupon Mrs. Highman responds,

Rare Impudence! Hussy, I have another Match for her, she shall marry Mr. Oldcastle.

Lettice. Oh then! I find it is you that have a dishonour­ able Design on your Niece! (2)

The lines of battle are now drawn: we are first given a glimpse of the

guardian's potentially destructive flaw and then are introduced to the

central satiric consciousness of the play who will, through demonstra­

tion or language, expose and correct the vice. As in the case with most

satire we have Lettice representing the antithesis to the blocking char­ acter's motives and philosophy. But why have the low-life character 70

serve as satiric spokesman?

The inspiration for utilizing servants, valets, and beggars for

satiric spokesmen probably came from Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. In the

play the audience understood that the Beggar, who appears in the intro­

duction, is the author of the drama which is to ensue. Hence it is

from his point of view that we are to understand that the nature of man

to "abuse his brother" is not confined to those of lesser means, nor

are the pretensions of self-love, pride, and flattery solely the folly

of the gentry. The technique of employing a low-life character as a

persona was not used extensively in ballad operas after The Beggar's

Opera, but playwrights continued to apply the satiric principle which

informed the technique: characters drawn from the lower ranks are used

to expose the follies of society. One may be reminded here of the

orig-jnal function of the satyr in Greek comedy when viewing the activi­

ties of the satiric spokesman in ballad opera. 0. J. Campbell explains

the nature of the satyr, as it was understood by Renaissance theorists like Aelius Donatus and applied to verse satire, in his study Comicall

Satyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (San Marino: Henry E.

Huntington Library, 1938), pp. 24-25■

Donatus, like Scaliger, believes satyra to be the legiti­ mate heir of vetus commoedia. He assumes that the writers of the old Greek comedy abused their freedom so scandalously that they had to be restrained. ... But unlike Scaliger, Donatus accepts without reservation the theory that satyra was, in both a literal and an imaginative sense, the utter­ ance of satyrs. And he and all the world knew that they were dirty and lascivious woodland deities. Partly because the satirist assumed that he was the heir to nature and functions of the satyr, he was allowed to attack the faults of the citizens in whatever harsh and savage manner he chose to adopt. 71

In ballad opera we do not view the satiric spokesman as necessarily-

being ’’dirty and lascivious"; nor do we expect, owing to the nature of

Whig satire, their attacks to be of a "savage and harsh" nature. What

is still viable here is the concept of inversion implicit in the role

of the satyr: the playwright in making the low-life character a

satiric spokesman inverts the normal order of things where we expect

the upper classes, professions, and intelligentsia to be the standard

bearers of proper action and thought. Instead, we find that these

leaders need correction from the lower ranks thus emphasizing the true baseness of their vices and the absurdity of their follies. Returning

to our previous example from The Intriguing Chambermaid, if Valentine

or Charlotte had told .Mrs. Highman that her plan was wrong it would have been ruled as an emotional plea based on typical child/parent conflicts, but when Lettice sees through Mrs. Highman’s plan and, so to speak, holds the mirror up to her the plan emerges as being true folly and also somewhat base.

The satiric spokesman’s primary function is to attack the faults of the society and to somehow waylay those vices which obstruct the workings of virtue. In order for the satiric spokesman to expose and, ultimately, for the blocking character to recognize his vice, the satiric spokesman must use the devices of intrigue and disguise to exaggerate downward the folly. This is usually achieved by having the satiric spokesman assume the trappings of the folly himself as do the parasite-satirists like Volpone or Wycherly’s Horner, or Luckless in

Fielding’s The Author's Farce. In this play Luckless, unable to get one of his serious plays staged, becomes the thing he despises most— 72

a hack dramatist; he writes a play entitled "The Pleasures of the Town"

which is staged as a rehearsal and in which he pokes fun at the extrava­

gancies of the prevailing popular entertainments like pantomime, opera,

novels, farce, and tragedy. In The Mock Lawyer, Edward Phillips has

Valentine’s valet, Feignwell, pose as the lawyer Pleadwell to

dupe Justice Lovelaw who is determined on marrying his daughter to a

wealthy lawyer. Lovelaw, who is impressed with Feignwell's legal gib­

berish and manner, admits him long enough so the valet can tell

Laetitia of Valentine's plan to escape with her. The vices of the

blocking character can also be exposed by having the satiric spokesman

remain detached like an outsider or a malcontent and from this position

initiate the intrigue. Lettice, in The Intriguing Chambermaid, is

something of an outsider because she acts independently of Valentine;

her primary function, however, is to dupe Mrs. Highman and Oldcastle.

She sets one against the other by creating false impressions of each; and in the last act she sets Mrs. Highman against Mr. Goodall in order to give Valentine a chance to escape the wrath of his father—which he is not able to do. There are other types of satiric spokesmen like the naif—we shall see an example of the naif in Lucy from Fielding's An

Old Man Taught Wisdom (1735) later—but they were not as popular as the low-life characters who in intrigue to dupe the blocking charac­ ter.

Once the blocking character accepts or embraces the low-life char­ acter's disguise (dissembling) he has initiated his downward movement, and when the disguise is discovered the blocking character is in full cognition of his flaw. The exposure of the emblematic disguise and 75

intrigue reveals to the blocking character that he has been reduced by

his blinding folly to a level lower than the servants; one could say

there is an ironic role reversal in the servant becoming master, if only

for the moment, of the blocking character. Once the blocking character

has been forced into confronting his folly or vice the corrective aims

of ballad opera satire have been achieved. The satiric spokesman has

held up the mirror to the victim and, as opposed to Restoration satire,

there is no need for the satirist to turn it back on himself. Rose A.

Zimbardo (Wycherly's Drama, p. 16) states:

Horner, for instance, clearly sees lust leering beneath the carefully maintained facade of the honorable ladies, Fidget, Squeamish, and company. He exposes their lust and their hypocrisy to the audience, and in the tradition of the parasite-satirist, he exploits it. But he himself is the most outrageous example of vice masquerading as inno­ cence that the play affords. He stands out in the play not as a hero but as an exaggeration, an emblem of the vice in question.

The ballad opera avoids such complexity of unmasking; the satirist

attacks the vice directly and seldom, if ever, is drawn into an examina­

tion of his or her own complicity in the vice being attacked. The role

of the low-life satirist is partially emblematic because their motiva­

tion for action is based on the desire to see the right thing done, i.e., to see the young lovers joined in rightful marriage, which is generally the controlling virtue of most ballad opera farces. As has been noted previously the satiric spokesman also has some personal interest like necessity or loyalty motivating him to become involved; whatever the reason, the playwright is careful to make it more respectable than the wholly selfish interest of the blocking character. With this in mind let us return to our discussion of the other major themes of attack. 74

It has been mentioned that love and marriage are two highly re­

spected virtues upheld in the ballad opera. The corresponding vice

which is most often attacked is the practice of parents making matches

and forcing marriages on their progeny. Fielding utilizes this theme

in his An Old Man Taught Wisdom (London: 1735; Garland, 11) and in

The Intriguing Chambermaid. The question of whether or not the

Augustan playwright would consider forced marriages a vice is answered, on

the whole, quite well by Joseph Addison in The Spectator No. 181 (Thurs­

day, September 27, 1711), in his response to "letter" from a young lady

who "took the Liberty to chuse" a mate for herself and had "ever since

languished under the Displeasure of an inexorable Father, who ... can

never be prevailed upon to forgive me." (ed. Bond, II, 212-13) The

tone of his reply is harsh and exudes a contempt for the father’s

actions:

Of all Hardnesses of Heart, there is none so inex­ cusable as that of Parents towards their Children. An obstinate, inflexible, unforgiving Temper, is odious upon all Occasions, but here it is unnatural. The Love, Tender­ ness and Compassion, which are apt to arise in us towards those who depend upon us, is that by which the whole World of Life is upheld (ed. Bond, II, 213).

To further illustrate the contemporary attitude toward this vice we find

Addison in The Spectator, No. 437 (Tuesday, July 22, 1712) commenting on the unfortunate marriage of a certain "Sempronia" who was forced into an "unnatural" marriage:

A Parent who forces a Child of a liberal and ingen­ ious Spirit into the Arms of a or a Blockhead, obliges her to a Crime too odious for a Name. It is in a Degree the unnatural Conjunction of rational and brutal Beings. Yet what is there so common, as the bestowing an accomplished Woman with such a Disparity. And I could name Crowds who lead miserable Lives, for want of Knowledge 75

in their Parents, of this Maxim, that good Sense and good Nature always go together. That which is attributed to Fools, and call'd good Nature, is only an Inability of observing what is faulty, which turns in Marriage, into a Suspicion of every thing as such, from a Consciousness of that Inability (ed. Bond, VI, 37)-

It is clear from these examples, and if we look ahead to Richardson's

portrait of the Harlowe family in Clarissa, that this practice of forced

marriage was often given the stature of vice.

Fielding approaches the subject of forced marriages from two dif­

ferent angles in his ballad operas. His first method of exploration of

the theme is complex in use of satiric personae and also in thematic

direction. The Intriguing Chambermaid is a good representative example

of this way. Valentine, the rakish son of a citizen, Mr. Goodall, has

slowly depleted his father's monetary and household resources to pay

bills incurred by his revels in the Town. He has placed himself in a

somewhat precarious position because he has also finally settled his

affections on a young lady, Charlotte. Charlotte, similarly, is in dire

straits because her mother, Mrs. Highman, desires to marry the daughter

off to a wealthy old gentleman. Lettice, Valentine's "intriguing cham­ bermaid," after an initial encounter with Mrs. Highman begins her plot to unite the two lovers. Lettice is the first of the satiric spokesmen

Fielding introduces in the play. Her function is combination satirist and plain old trickster; and she relies on both roles to misdirect the wrongheadedness of the characters blocking the lovers. In the spirit of a true trickster she tells Charlotte that Mrs. Highman has recommended that she visit Valentine's house more often. Next, in the role of satir­ ist, she confronts Mr. Oldcastle, Mrs. Highman's intended match for

Charlotte, and heartily rails at him; she begins by saying Charlotte 76

hates him and wishes never to see him and ends with this sally which, by

the way, reasserts Fielding's basic attack on matching and mating the

old to the young: after telling him he is totally disagreeable she then

says:

... and to let you see I think you fit for a Husband, I'll have you my self! Who can be more proper for a Husband, than a Man of your Age and Taste? for I think you cou’d not have the Conscience to live above a Year or a Year and half at most: And I think a good plentiful Jointure wou'd make amends for ones enduring you as long as that (10).

Her final act, this one more in the trickster vein, is to set Mrs.

Highman and Mr. Goodall against one another by separately telling each

that the other is addled. This deters Mrs. Highman from discovering

Charlotte with Valentine and Mr. Goodall from discovering that his house

has been plundered by his son to pay off debts. After she arranges this

she slips off saying, "I have defended my Pass as long as I can, and now

I think it is no Cowardice to steal off" (32). Thus, Fielding rounds

off the trickster motif.

With Lettice having blown the Highman-Oldcastle marriage plan into dust Fielding next introduces the second satiric spokesman: Mr. Goodall himself. His stance, because he is a "citizen," is one of the outsider- satirist. He enters the house finally and encounters his son serving up one last entertainment for his foppish and modish friends. Like a public defender of morals and manners he begins his attack in spite of the objections of his son who says, "I have a great deal of Company within, of the first fashion, and beg you wou'd not expose me before them" (35). In the manner of a plain-dealer, minus the acerbity of, let us say, a Manly, Mr. Goodall tells the "guests," "I am very glad that my

Son hath ruin’d himself in so good a Company; that when I disinherit him, 77

he can’t fail of being provided for" (36). When Valentine's guests hear

that they may have to support Valentine they quickly find excuses to

abandon the youth. Lord Pride, for instance, informs Goodall that his

"Son is a very extravagant fellow." When Goodall, in response, tells

Lord Pride that Valentine "owes his Ruin to entertaining such fine

Gentlemen as your self," his lordship exclaims, "I see, if a Man hath

not good Blood in his Veins, Riches won't teach him to behave like a

Gentleman" (36-37); this affords him a perfect opportunity to exit in a

huff. By now, however, Valentine and the audience have seen, thanks to

Goodall, the superficial nature of the friendship one may expect from

company "of the first fashion." Charlotte is the only one who is will­

ing to share Valentine's misfortune, and in the end Goodall, seeing that

Charlotte's "generous Passion" for Valentine is genuine, realizes the lad has some good qualities and relents of his earlier threat to dis­

inherit him.

The double action of the satiric spokesmen, Lettice and Goodall, affirm Fielding's stand on a proper marriage and a good heart, and being one not to create open-ended satire he has Valentine state: "Sir, was my Gratitude to your great Goodness insufficient to reclaim me, I am in no danger of engaging in any Vice, whereby this Lady might be a Suf­ ferer" (40). Nonetheless, Fielding has still had the opportunity to attack two contemporary vices: the disastrous results of a marriage arranged according to the interests of the parents, and the extrava­ gancies of the town which are the nadir of the generous hearted man who succumbs to them.

In An Old Man Taught Wisdom on the other hand, Fielding relies on 78

another type of satiric spokesman to ridicule the same topics he attacked

in The Intriguing Chambermaid. We are first introduced to a country

squire, Goodwill, who has a daughter, Lucy, and an estate of L10,000

which he will settle on whoever of his "poor relations” Lucy decides to

marry. He has limited the choices for her mate to these relations and

feels he can make her marry one of these men because he has kept her

confined, like Pinchwife with Margery, "and has consequently no Will but

his." In her utter simplicity she has voiced at the outset a fondness

for coaches and for a footman, and this naivete is what will generate

most of the satire of the play.

Lucy is, as you have probably deduced, a naif satirist. Fielding

places her directly in the center of the poor relation suitors, and her

innocence and ignorance provide the perfect satiric foil for the follies

of the father and the suitors. This play is structurally much tighter,

even though there is less overt action, than The Intriguing Chamber-

maid, primarily because the relationship between the satirist and her

objects is clearly drawn. As in Renaissance verse satire she is allowed,

in her own naive manner, to make comments on the passing follies of the

world about her, and as they pass in review for her and us their singular

absurdities are exposed through the controlling consciousness of her point of view. An example of how this satiric interplay is executed

comes when the first suitor, an apothecary named Blister, has told Lucy, who is confused about his calling her "my Dear" all the time, that "all marry’d People call one another, my Dear, let ’em hate one another as much as they will" (13)• To this Lucy responds:

Do they? Well then my Dear—hum, I think there is 79

not any great matter in the Word neither.

Blister. Why amongst your fine Gentry, there is scarce any meaning in any thing they say (14).

This opens up the way for a jab at the next suitor, Coupee the dancing

master, in the first exchange after his entrance:

Coupee. Cousin, your most obedient, and devoted humble servant.

Lucy. I find this one of your fine Gentry, by his not having any Meaning in his Words (l4).

Interestingly enough, Fielding allows Coupee to more or less sweep Lucy

off her feet with his "fine" manners. In the midst of his cavalier court­

ing, her ignorance is yet able to draw out his folly, for when he learns

she cannot dance because all her education has been gleaned from books

he exclaims: "Ay, there it is; all Parents take care to instruct their

Children in low mechanical things, while the genteel Sciences are neglected" (15). Lucy's fascination with this assemblage forces her to ask more questions of each, forcing them in turn, to reveal more and more the hollowness of their affectations; she, of course, does not really understand any of their cant, and so she is forced to return to her original intention of marrying Thomas, the footman, setting up the action of the final scene.

Fielding ties the strands of his satire together in the final scenes by introducing a character who represents the norm of behavior and action he believes is proper. In the last scene the father and the suitors are arguing about whether or not they would be willing to take his daughter and the estate and retire to the country; they, of course, oppose this and, to make matters worse, Lucy has said she will marry both Blister and Coupee. Blister had assured her earlier that they 8o

would only have to lie together for a fortnight and after that, he added

"you may have any one else" (9), whereupon she said she would take

Thomas. Thomas, it should be mentioned here, is an honest fellow who

has gained a sense of integrity and proper manners from observing the

bad manners of those who affect fashion and breeding. Furthermore,

Goodwill sees now (as the audience has) that it was folly to try to

arrange a marriage with one of these rather hollow suitors. At any

rate, as the argument ensues Lucy slips out and marries her beloved

Thomas; upon their return the father is quite put off, but his fears and

anger are allayed by Thomas' speech:

Your daughter has marry'd a Man of some Learning, and one who has seen a little of the World, and who by his Love to her, and.Obedience to you, will try to deserve your Favours. As for my having worn a Livery, let not that grieve you; as I have liv'd in a great Family, I have seen that no one is respected for what he is, but for what he has, the World pays no regard at present to any thing but Money, and if my own Industry shou'd add to your Fortune, so as to entitle any of my Posterity to Grandeur, it will be no reason against making my Son or Grandson a Lord, that his Father or Grandfather was a footman (33).

This speech, of course, reconciles the father who says he will suspend judgment on the man until the marriage has had some time. Thomas' speech is the theme the whole ballad opera has been directed toward; it nicely puts down the forced marriage based on money and position and also rein­ forces the theme of how hollow the fashion of judging on appearances is.

In short, Fielding in good-natured fashion seals off any possible open- endedness which the satire may have created.

Thomas' speech in the foregoing also raises the question of money which is perhaps the most pervasive, if not most popular topic, in the genre. Money, it should be pointed out, is merely the symbol for a 81

larger theme: Fielding called it the "Art of thriving," and is un­ equivocal in his belief that it is one of the major vices of his day.

In "An Essay on Knowledge of Characters of Men," in Miscellanies,. Volume

One, ed. Henry Knight Miller (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), pp. 134-35»

Fielding discusses the Art of thriving, and it is so important to the satire of ballad opera that I believe it should be presented in its entirety:

Thus, without asserting in general, that Man is a deceitful Animal; we may, I believe, appeal for Instances of Deceit to the Behaviour of some Children and Savages. When this Quality therefore is nourished and improved by Education, in which we are taught rather to conceal Vices, than to cultivate Virtues; when it hath sucked in the In­ struction of Politicians, and is instituted in the Art of thriving, it will be no Wonder that it should grow to the monstrous Height to which we sometimes see it arrive. This Art of thriving being the very Reverse of the Doctrine of the Stoics; by which Men were taught to consider themselves as Fellow-Citizens of the World, and to labour jointly for the common Good, without any private Distinction of their own: Whereas This, on the contrary, points out to every Individual his own particular and separate Advantage, to which he is to sacrifice the Interest of all others; which he is to consider as his Summum Bonum, to pursue with his utmost Diligence and Industry, and to acquire by all Means whatever. Now when this noble End is once established, Deceit must immediately suggest itself as the necessary Means: • for as it is impossible that any Man endowed with rational Faculties, and being in a State of Freedom, should willingly agree, without some Motive of Love or Friendship, absolutely to sacrifice his own Interest to that of another; it becomes necessary to impose upon him, to persuade him, that his own Good is designed, and that he will be a Gainer by coming into those Schemes, which are, in Reality, cal­ culated for his Destruction. And this," if I mistake not, is the very Essence of that excellent Art, called The Art of Politics. Thus while the crafty and designing Part of Mankind, consulting only their own separate Advantage, endeavour to maintain one constant Imposition on others, the whole World becomes a vast Masquerade, where the greatest Part appear disguised under false Visors and Habits; a very few only shewing their own Faces, who become, by so doing, the Astonishment and Ridicule of all the rest. 82

One can hear Gay’s Beggar's Opera ringing in the lines about politics,

but the tone of the whole buttresses the concern of playwrights that

interest too often rules at the expense of the heart and good nature.

Fielding too is setting up an argument for benevolence as, again, one g of the major doctrines proposed in ballad operas. It usually emerges

at the end of the play when the blocking character embraces the young

lovers and offers them any means which may expedite their happiness.

It should also be noted here that the relationship between the forced

marriage theme and thriving are often presented in tandem. Alderman

Quorum, in The Beggar's Wedding,

she must break off her relationship with Hunter because "I find him not

fit for our Purpose, having a Match propos'd me, much more to our Advan­

tage; And in Cases of this Nature, Int'rest ought always to be first

consider'd,” (19). In Henry Carey's The Honest Yorkshire-Man (London:

1736; Garland, 27), Penurious Muckworm's sole motivation for marrying

his daughter to the dullard country squire, Sapscull, is to make "L1000

by the Bargain" (14). So crass is-this principle that Carey, uncharac­

teristically, does not reintegrate Muckworm into the final society.

Using the "art of thriving" motif concomitantly with the marriage theme

adds an extra incentive for the exposing and gulling of the blocking

character.

This art of thriving, the pursuit of interest to one's own selfish advantage, generally offered the low-life satirist an ample opportunity to shine in the plays because it gave playwrights a chance to use ironic inversion for satiric effect. The concept is made increasingly apparent that to thrive and seek one's interest is a form of begging or making 83

9 oneself subservient to something which is below human nature. This

correlation is often made in the plays between begging and the profes­

sions; the following sententia air, sung by Chaunter King of the beggars,

in The Beggar's Wedding may serve to illustrate this:

The Beggars King, tho' thus in State, Supports it all by Begging; My subsidies still make me great, Collected too by Begging: And thro' the World we daily see, Priests, Courtiers; Lawyers—all agree, To live and act as well as we, In the noble State of Begging (17) •

In the context of the play this is the satiric answer to Quorum's first

air in which he says

Tis Int'rest that governs Mankind, In every State and Degree; For Justice itself waxes blind, When brib'd with a competent Fee: However the Truth we disguise. In order to make ourselves great; Yet he that will open his Eyes May see the whole World's but a Che-- at (8).

Of course as Quorum sings of this he himself is also its victim saying,

"tis the way of the World—we must submit to this custom." He is even­ tually duped by Harry Hunter's servant in a typical disguise-intrigue, and in his pursuit of Harry he is finally led to the beggar's camp where he is informed that his "Commission of Peace, will not avail you here a

Rag. You are now in the King of the Beggars Jurisdiction, and be assur'd we'll assert our Power" (56). He has, in short, been brought down to the level of the beggars, or below it, in his headlong pursuit of his interest.

The effectiveness of the attack on this vice in this play and in others is dependent upon how well the author constructs his dialectic of 84

ethics between upper and lower classes. The art of thriving often

serves as the synthesis of this dialectic; the desire for self-

aggrandizement and the pursuit of money proves to be the great equal­

izer: it is the lowest common denominator for men’s actions and

motives. Charles, in The Footman (1732), sings:

’Tis Gold is the cause of all our Woes, And breeds eternal Strife Twixt Politicians, Bawds and Beaux, Whore, Cully, Man and Wife: The D-- 1 take him who its use first profess’d, Had it ne'er been known, I had now been bless'd: With a fal la, etc. And as noble and great as the best (28).

Similarly, Fielding keeps money and the personal interest accrued from

its possession as the informing vice in The Lottery (London: 1730; Gar­

land, 11). Here the whole of society is subject to the whim of the

lottery wheel, a wheel which, as the play says in the final chorus,

produces "more than ten Blanks to a Prize" (3l)• Even Stocks, the satiric

spokesman, finds himself victimized by the lottery. He is one of the

men in charge of selling tickets for it and he comments on all the buyers

and how they wish to get rich quick, and in his attempt to work a profit

out of Chloe's supposed L10,000 estate, which is in essence merely a

lottery ticket that she hopes will yield L1O,OOO, he finds that not only

she but he also has drawn a blank. His only comment is, "I have been

trying to bring that to Nothing, which was Nothing before" (29).

Stocks, as long as he remained uninvolved in the game aspect of the lot­ tery and merely sold his tickets was able to survive; the only other person who does not suffer at the hands of the lottery wheel is Chloe and only because she is redeemed by Lovemore’s devotion to her. Thus

Fielding reveals that those who would attempt to thrive, like Chloe, 85

to the exclusion of love can only be happy with love. He shows that

those who, in pursuit of thriving, strive for everything nine times out

of ten gain nothing; this ballad opera is representative of what the

entire genre communicates in its satire on thriving and interest: vice

will always turn up a blank on the wheel of fortune; only love, benefi­

cence, and virtue will render something to those who pursue them.

It is evident that there are some fine satiric moments in ballad

opera, but, at the same time, we have to admit that most of the satire

lacks the biting tone and intellectual excitement of its Augustan

counterpart. The reason for this lies, aside from social factors and

new theories of comedy, in its use of the tripartite as opposed to the

bipartite structure. This structure featuring a satiric spokesman, the

corresponding blocking character emblematic of the vice, and some char- ! acter or characters like the young lovers or like Fielding’s Mr. Goodall

representative of normative virtue, presupposes the inevitable conclu­

sion. When we read Swift's Gulliver's Travels no such sense of predict­ ability is fostered, and as one reads the last lines of he must be struck with something of a surprise in the totally nihilistic

"ebon" vision Pope leaves the reader. The ballad opera, true to its nature as popular theatre, asks that we be amused and laugh a little at ourselves. While it does present problems, it also insists they can be solved. This is not to say that the satire fails to communicate some moral standard; on the contrary, ballad opera uses satiric devices cor- relatively to communicate the concepts of love and benevolence. These themes, granted, lack the abstract philosophical potentials that are provided in satires dealing with man trying to reconcile his animal 86

nature with his propensities to rationalism. The difference, however,

is one of degree as the ballad opera’s concern is with what could be

termed social virtue. It does not attempt to reconcile the psycho­

logical complexities of our own human nature, but instead attempts to

reconcile those characteristics which make us either a good or bad

social being. The very fact that the satiric spokesman endeavors to bring the blocking character down to his level, i.e., that we actually

see a lawyer being duped by a servant, or, conversely, that folly is raised to a position greater than it actually warrants, says more about the modes of conduct and thought on a social level than, perhaps, on an individual or abstract level. To communicate these ends ballad opera relied as often as possible on the devices of satire; at times the genre employed the simplest ironic inversions as in Charles Johnson's

The Village Opera (London: 1729; Garland, 15) where the rich and avaricious Squire Wiseacre asks the servants, "How came you both thus accomplished in Impudence?" to which they respond, "We never copy'd our

Inferiors" (p. 70); or satire, at its best, may be the controlling mode as in'many of Fielding's plays and in some of Charles Coffey's farces.

The important point is that ballad opera kept satire alive and kept issues of concern for contemporary Londoners in the forefront of the action. 87

NOTES 1 Letter to the Dublin Journal, Saturday, June 12, 1725, from "A Collection of Letters and Essays on Several Subjects," in Collected Works of Francis Hutcheson, ed. Bernhard Fabian (Hildesheim: Georg 01ms, 1971), VII, 90. 2 In most original editions of the ballad operas the prologues and the airs are completely italicized; however, to underline each word in such extended passages would do little good in terms of clarifying meaning or emulating eighteenth century typography. Therefore, such italicized passages have been rendered in accordance with more modern typographical procedures. ^Wycherly's Drama: A Link in the Development of English Satire (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1955), PP- 97-98; see also Alvin P. Kernan’s The Cankered Muse: Satire of the English Renaissance (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1959), PP* 1-36; 84-87• 4 For a more comprehensive discussion of the theories of these authors see P. K. Elkin, The Augustan Defence of Satire, pp. 44-70, and also Ronald Paulson, Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth Century England, pp. 58-70. 5 For more detailed analyses of satire in different periods see Gilbert Highet,- The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1962), and Ronald Paulson has edited an anthology, Satire: Modern Essays in Criticism (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), which has essays by major critics on different periods, styles, and forms of satire. ^See especially Dane Farnsworth Smith, Plays About the Theatre in England from The Rehearsal in 1671 to the Licensing Act in 1737 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1937); V. C. Clinton-Baddeley, The Burlesque Tradi­ tion in the English Theatre after 1660 (London: Methuen, 1952); Edgar V. Roberts, "Eighteenth Century Ballad Opera: The Contribution of Henry Fielding," Drama Survey, I (1961), 77-85; and Charles B. Woods’s "Introduction" to The Author's Farce by Henry Fielding (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press; Regents Restoration Drama, 1966), pp. xi-xiv.

^Philological Quarterly, 21 (1942), 368-84; see also Rose A. Zimbardo's Wycherly's Drama, pp. 125-27. g Fielding's feelings and theories about benevolence are best seen in three essays from his Covent Garden Journal, ed. Gerard Edward Jensen (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1915), I, No. 29, Saturday, April 11, 1752 , 305-309; I, No. 39, Saturday, May 16, 1752, 354-58; II, No. 44, Tuesday, June 2, 1752, 9-13- See also his poem, "Of Good Nature," in Miscellanies, Volume One, ed. Miller, pp. 30-35, and for a discussion of the ill-natured man and this character's relationship to riches and benevolence see "An Essay on Conversation," Miscellanies, ed. Miller, pp. 133-40. 88

g Fielding supports this concept in his "Essay on Conversation," Miscellanies, ed. Miller, p. 133, where he states: "Mankind never appear to me in a more despicable Light, than when I see them, by a simple as well as mean Servility, Voluntarily concurring in the Adoration of Riches, without the least Benefit or Prospect from them." CHAPTER FOUR

The Conventions of Song in Ballad Opera

Of all the elements discussed thus far none, perhaps, helps define

the ballad opera more than its music. Music, and more particularly

song, had conventionally performed important functions in drama since

the time of Shakespeare; ballad opera, however, relied much more on

its music and, on the whole, used it more integrally than its prede­

cessors. It also used music more self-consciously to achieve popular

success by merit of its dependence on well-known popular ballads and

songs. In the following discussion, then, we will examine some aspects

of music in the ballad opera. Much has been written on the cultural 2 backgrounds of the popular music employed in the ballad opera, thus,

it might be wise to discuss briefly the ballad per se; the bulk of the

chapter, however, will be devoted to the actual function of music in the dramatic context of the plays. In this chapter we will see. how the genre integrated its music to produce not only novel musical entertain­ ment but also effective musical drama. Before examining the use of ballad airs in the context of the plays themselves let us look at a couple of reasons why the ballad itself was chosen for the genre and why it proved so successful with London audiences.

When decided to set his "Newgate pastoral" to music he very ingeniously selected popular ballads for his assembly of pick­ pockets, highwaymen, and whores to sing. The Beggar's Opera remains one of the great satires primarily because of Gay's ironic inversion of the operatic formula; it would have been funny enough to have Captain

89 90

Macheath and his cronies ape the "honorable’1 ways of the great, but to

have them sing in the manner (but not the musical style) of Italian

opera heroes and heroines about their joys (Air 16, "Over the Hills and

Far Away") and torments (the whole of Macheath's prison soliloquy, Airs

53 to 67) further aided the humor and the satire. Couching the "noble"

sentiments of Macheath in the strains of ballad airs added the perfect

touch of ironic inversion he sought to achieve; it not only enunciated

the irony of the dramatic situations themselves but also made a deft

stab at the conventions of Italian opera.Over and above this appeal

to the audience's love of satire, Gay trod on safe ground by selecting

the ballad air and current popular tunes for his play.

The effectiveness of ballad opera was due in large part to the

audience's familiarity with the music prior to hearing it in the play.

Much in the tradition of the broadside ballad author, the playwright

selected well-known tunes and set new lyrics to them. Therefore, the

theatregoer could almost be assured that when he went to a ballad opera

he would hear one of his favorite tunes. Among the primary sources of

popular ballads and songs which the ballad opera author could be assured

most people knew was John Playford's The English Dancing Master (eight­

een editions between 1651 and 1728). Playford's collection includes

songs from the street as well as the court. The major repository of ballad opera tunes, however, was Thomas D'Urfey's collection Wit and

Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (six-volume edition, 1719-1920) which included most major broadsides as well as the melodies for them.

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians also lists Allan Ramsay's

(himself a ballad opera writer) Tea-Table Miscellany, William Thomson's 91

Orpheus Caledonius, and Isaac Watts’s Musical Miscellany as other sources,

and, finally, judging from the reaction by the clergy, another source

could have been the various "Monthly Collections," as Arthur Bedford 5 called them, of current popular songs.

Gay could not, perhaps, have foreseen the results of his endeavor

when he planned and staged it, but it must be reckoned that future bal­

lad opera authors saw the ballad air as a sure means of achieving popu­

lar acclaim. The prologues to many of the plays attest to the fact that

music was the thing which the audience responded to; the prologue to

Cibber’s Love in a Riddle states: "Good song will always Candid Hearers

bring;/ Provided—we find Airs, which they themselves may sing." Some

prologues attack Italian opera and stress good old English song while

others view the whole situation rather pragmatically like Phillips’ The

Mock Lawyer where the prologue states:

If then to write, Sirs, only is to chime Some tuneful Musick to some tuneless Rhyme; Fir’d by Example—Fame—and the Third Night, *Tom, who can scrape the Fiddle—Tom—will write. /♦Pointing to the Footman’s Gallery./

In short, necessity demanded the playwright adhere to the ballad opera

formula if he wanted a profitable run. Reliance on familiar music, how­

ever, is a weak criterion for judging the popularity of this genre; the

practitioners of ballad opera were well aware that using popular airs

was effective but also that they had to be implemented effectively.

The ballad opera is the first really successful attempt at creating an integrated domestic musical drama. By this is implied that the genre employed music as a dramatic factor in rendering its stories about everyday London life. Stuart and Restoration drama, it should be 92

remembered, used song sparingly; there is nothing in their repertoires

of standard dialogue plays with music that can match the 69 airs used in

The Beggar1 s Opera. The nearest relative in terms of form to the ballad

opera is the Dramatic Opera so often featured during the Restoration,

but, as Edmond Gagey (Ballad Opera, pp. 17-18) notes:

The dramatic opera—whether it used recitative or not, and it scarcely ever did—was normally a romantic play in verse, five acts in length, with specially written music and songs by known composers, the most famous of these being Purcell. The songs were not usually assigned to ordinary human char­ acters, but to spirits, fairies, and other supernatural beings, or to shepherds and shepherdesses. While similar features might occasionally be discoverable in ballad opera, they were in no way typical.

The ballad opera adopted the dialogue-song format of dramatic opera but, as we have seen in our discussions of the dramatic and satiric conven­ tions, the genre had entirely different emphases. The use of music it­ self in the genre supports this shift in emphases in that it distributes its songs fairly equally among the dramatis personae; in Edward Phillips’

The Mock Lawyer, for instance, we find that the maid Betty has four airs, the valet Dash has three, Justice Lovelaw has four, the heroine

Laetitia has five airs as does the hero Valentine, and this type of dis­ tribution is not uncommon. What becomes apparent as we view the imple­ mentation of song in the genre is that the reliance of the ballad opera on farce-romance and satire created two very broad dramatic require­ ments for the use of song. First, song was used to reinforce and heighten points of emotional intensity in the romance and intrigue of the young lovers. Second, songs are used as a commentary on the action of the play and often include extra-dramatic cultural references; these commentary airs, whether they are sung by low-life characters or the 93

lovers, are linked, as we shall see, to the tripartite satiric structure

found in the ballad opera. Let us now take a look at these areas in

more depth.

1

The most universally accepted convention in musical theatre is that 6 song and music are reserved for the expression of some emotional state.

This is as true for musical comedy and ballad opera as it is for grand

opera. In essence what music or song does is bring us into closer con­

tact with the emotions and feelings of the characters; this heightened

expression of psychological and emotional states in turn helps delineate

the structure of the conflict. In Dido and Aeneas (1689) Purcell brings

the turmoil and passions aroused by Dido's unrequited love together in

the famous last act "Lament"; similarly Gay has Polly try to explain her

feelings about Macheath to her obstinate parents via song:

I, like a ship in storms, was tossed; Yet afraid to put in to land; ... The waves are laid, My duty's paid. Oh joy beyond expression.' Thus safe ashore, I ask no more, My all is in my possession (21).

This easy flowing air in D major (see Fig. 2)* communicates perfectly

Polly's joy in her marriage and, because of the conventions of the musi­ cal, is thoroughly appropriate. We expect songs like the above to be sung at necessary junctures in the action; the author, if he is ingen­ ious, will create an atmosphere where it is expected one has to sing In order for us.to know how they feel. The prologue to Lillo's Silvia

*A11 musical illustrations can be found in Appendix A of this study; I have included only those airs which I analyze musically. 94

(London: 1731; Garland, 17) best states the rationale for the implemen­

tation of song in the ballad opera:

But sure the present Age, and past, he wrongs, Who grants not English Sense, in English Songs; In Times remote, when blooming, gay and young, With gentlest Manners, and harmonious Tongue, Some reigning Toast grac’d our great Grandsire’s Song, Whether with jocund Strains, or graver Airs, She Mirth excites, or sooths her Lovers Cares; Whether with decent Pride she does relate Her Country’s Glory, or some Virgin's Fate; The various Passions, at her Call arise, Glow in the Breast, or trickle from the Eyes. With sweet, but simple Notes, good sense convey’d, Loses no Force, but is stronger made.

Thus we see here that song in drama is a convention based as much on

dramatic exigency as it is on audience predispositions.

The ballad opera integrates song extremely well considering the

number of airs used. The Beggar's Opera, as was mentioned, employed

sixty-nine airs, The Devil to Pay features forty-two airs apportioned

over its three acts, and The Beggar's Wedding employs fifty-five airs;

among the afterpieces one will find between twenty and thirty-five airs

distributed over the action. After seeing this one may be inclined to

agree with Edmond Gagey (Ballad Opera, p. 100) that,

While a plethora of music might be expected of a musical piece, it should not be overlooked that—unlike later comic opera—ballad opera employed the songs as decor and not as the main concern. The music was always secondary; too much of it would obscure and retard the action of the play.

If, however, we look closely at the song types and their implementation

in the farce plot (including the romance and intrigue elements) we find

that the airs are used to good purpose to heighten the conflicts between characters. The text of the ballad opera stresses simplicity in form; as we have seen it relies on convention in character and action to allow 95

the most important aspect, music, room to breathe. The patron in attend

ance at a ballad opera is there to view a particular form of drama: he

expects to see a play featuring music; he can get normal farce or comedy

at any time, the ballad opera by reason of its use of music should offer

him something distinctive.

What music does for the ballad opera is give the action of the

farce plot some emotional and motivational body. Different types of

song are used specifically to acquaint us with the feelings, and the

motivations produced by those feelings. The most easily recognizable

song types and those with the strongest roots in tradition are those 7 sung by the lovers. The most common type of love song one encounters

is the complaint in which the character expresses anxiety, grief, or unhappiness. A good example of the complaint is in The Beggar's Opera where Polly, after she is told she must see Macheath hang, says, "I

cannot survive him" and sings the following air (Fig. 3)

Air XIII. Le Printemps Eappelle aux Armes

The turtle thus with plaintive crying, Her lover dying, The turtle thus with plaintive crying Laments her dove. Down she drops quite spent with sighing Paired in death, as paired in love (p. 25)•

The above air has a nice long melodic line and enunciates Polly’s plight at this moment. The popularity of this type of air is directly attributable to the nature of the farce-intrigue plot: most of our emotional energy is directed towards the plight of the lovers and the consummation of their romance which so precariously hangs on the suc­ cessful execution of the intrigue. It should be mentioned here that complaints are not always solo numbers but oftentimes are duets. The 96

following example from The Beggar's Wedding is a good example of the

complaint duet; it is used to end Act I, and we can see here how Coffey-

tried to integrate the song to keep the action moving smoothly:

Hunter. One dear—one soft Embrace—and now—

Air XX. Peggy grieves me.

Since we must part, —my Love, adieu, But oh! I die to leave thee;

Phebe. Your Absence will my Eears renew, And of all Joys bereave me:

Hunter. We part, my Life, to meet again, Tho' now we must retire:

Phebe. Then haste! oh!—haste to ease my Pain; Lest I with Grief expire (p. 25)•

This complaint is a bit more characteristic of the type than Polly's because it is in common time (4/4) which is a very slow tempo designa- g tion. One finds also that most complaints are in a minor key like

Clerimont's air (Fig. 4) in William Chetwoods's The Generous Free-Mason: or, the Constant Lady (London: 1731; Garland, 11) in which he states that if Caelia is not true "Death alone must set me free" (7); his air is in D minor with a bridge in A minor, and the answer Caelia gives him

("My heart is truly yours alone") immediately after is also in D minor

(Fig. 5). The minor key on the whole proves more effective in communi­ cating the sadness felt by a lover.

There are other types of airs intended to give expression to specific emotions such as songs of fidelity, commitment, and celebratory songs like the drinking song, but I would like to reserve comment on these for the discussion of how song reinforces structure. There are two types of airs, however, which should be mentioned here because of 97

their great popularity. One means of expressing intense emotion was the

. simile air. The simile was one of Gay’s favorite types, and he borrowed

the device directly from the simile aria found so often in Italian 9 opera. The simile aria and the simile air consists of the character

using an extended simile (sometimes achieving Homeric length) to de­

scribe a current situation, feeling, or psychological state. The fol­

lowing air (Fig. 6), sung by Lucy, from The Beggar*s Opera is typical:

Air XLVII. One Evening Having Lost My Way, etc.

I'm like a skiff on the ocean tossed, Now high, now low, with each billow borne, With her rudder broke, and her anchor lost, Deserted and all forlorn. While thus I lie -rolling and tossing all night, That Polly lies sporting on seas of delight! Revenge, revenge, revenge, Shall appease my restless sprite (p. 70-71)•

It should be noted here that the simile air never serves a strict dra­

matic purpose in and of itself as do some other song types, but at the

same time they are not just gratuitous numbers thrown in for the audi­

ence's delectation. More often the simile air serves as a form or means

of expression by which the character renders a complaint, song of com­ mitment, or sententia; for instance in Fielding's The Mock Doctor Dorcas sings a simile air (VIII to the tune of "Ye Nymphs and Sylvan Gods")

(Fig. 7) comparing "The Soldier, who bravely goes/ In Battle against his

Foes;" to "the Husband who/ To Duty is true" (24). As we shall see later the simile air is particularly effective in buttressing the satiric aims of ballad opera. For now, however, suffice it to say that the simile air was so well established in musical drama that the implementa­ tion of its form in ballad opera was in and of itself a convention. 98

The second type of air which, like the simile air, has no specific

dramatic raison d'etre but is used fairly consistently in the ballad

opera is the emblem air. The term emblem is derived from Jacobean court

masques where it consisted of a motto expressing some moral idea and was

accompanied by a picture and a short poem illustrating the idea. The

picture, which was originally the emblem, was symbolic. Emblems were

common in Renaissance pastoral poetry like Spenser's The Shepheardes

Calendar and continued to be popular for pastoral subjects. Eugene

Haun in his discussion of court masques in But Hark! More Harmony: The

Libretti of Restoration Opera in England (Ypsilanti: Eastern Michigan

Univ. Press, 1971), P« 71, defines the function of emblem as follows:

"The appearance on stage of characters called Diogenes the Cynic and

Aristophanes the Poet would have immediately indicated to the Common­ wealth audience more than the printed text might suggest." Similarly in ballad operas authors occasionally use mythological figures or char­ acter names like Celia, Chloe, or Delia and so on as unifying factors in the airs. The emblem air draws heavily on the pastoral tradition and in doing this it is obviously trying to appeal to the audience's fondness for pastoral conventions. Edward Phillips used the emblem air to good purpose in this air from The Mock Lawyer (1733):

Air IX. Yellow hair'd Laddie.

How bless'd was the Nymph, and how happy the Swain, When Love gave the Wound, and Love eas'd their Pain! By Fathers uncurb'd, each their Wish did pursue, The Lover was fond, and the Maiden was true.

Love, how to give Joy, vain thy Arrow wou'd prove; We wed where we scorn, hate where we shou'd love: Can Man without thee roving Passions controul, Or can Woman be true without Love in her Soul? (p. 12) 99

The air is sung by the heroine, Laetitia, in response to her father’s

unreasonable attempts to thwart her love for Valentine. The characters

of nymph and swain are used to make a moral statement about the relation­

ship of fathers and lovers. The emblem air does serve the dramatic ends

of the play, but at the same time one would have to conclude that their

inclusion in ballad operas was based as much on popular taste as it was

on dramatic exigency.

Moving away from this discussion of song types to a closer examina­

tion of how song actually reinforces structure we find the playwrights

most often use song to isolate and heighten the feelings of the charac­

ters as well as to acquaint us with their ethical stands. Basically

most ballad operas use a battery of songs early in the play to delineate

the conflict between the selfish interest of the blocking characters and

the romantic interest of the lovers; there are, of course, variants

within this scheme. The first such variant features the blocking char­

acter singing the first air as in Chetwood’s The Lovers Opera (London:

1730; Garland, 12). The play opens with a bit of dialogue and then

Justice Dalton sings an air in D minor (Fig. 8) (lending a sinister

note to his message) and in alia breve time wherein he argues that

children are not a blessing because "In their Teens they our Projects destroy" (2). The project which faces disaster here is Dalton’s plan to marry his daughters to wealthy but despicable men. This air sets the tone of the play and gives us a good picture of the blocking character.

The interests of the lovers are presented almost immediately by Clara’s servant, Lucy, who has been privy, via concealment, to Dalton’s solilo­ quizing. She informs the Justice in Air 2 (Fig- 9) that "Youth and 100

Age will never/ Well agree together” (4) revealing to us which side she

is on and also revealing, in keeping with her character type, that she

is clever and has a certain amount of useful common sense. A few pages

later, after Lucy expresses an interest in "over-reaching this old

Curmudgeon," she states why: she knows her "young lovers are too gen­

erous" not to reward her if she is successful in her intrigue, and,

besides, she needs the money if she is ever to marry. She then sings

an air (Fig. 10) combining commentary on social convention and a state­

ment concerning her own anxiety over marriage prospects; in this air

we can also see how the playwright employs song to establish an emo­

tional basis for a character's motives and actions:

Air V. Buff-Coat

Poor Marriage of Late, Like Places of State, Without Money will find no Favour. Is there Money? you cry: If no; they reply, The Devil himself may have her (9).

In scene two we are immediately introduced to the heroine Clara who says "How unjust it is in Parents to be ever indulging their own Passions and Desires, and never once consult their Childrens Happiness" (9); she then sings a complaint in A minor which musically and lyrically reveals some of her dolor (Fig. 11):

Air VI. When the Kine had giv’n a Pailful.

If we feel a tender Passion, Parents cry we’re much to blame. Loving now is out of Fashion, Interest is their only Aim (10).

This neatly ties the strands and rounds off the conflict established in scene one because it suggests that she sees herself as a victim of the 101

avarice of her father and also in need of the ministrations of the more

pragmatic Lucy. When her lover Edgar finally appears they sing a series

of four airs (Figs. 12-15) in which they pledge their love. It is

interesting to note that three of the songs in which they pledge fidel­

ity and eternal love are in major keys; in fact the first two (Airs 8

and 9) are in C major and the third (Air 10) is in G major, the domi­ nant in the key of C. Not only do these related major key airs suggest a more optimistic mood but also they lend a pleasing and complementary tonal continuity to the scene. In addition to this when Dalton re­ enters and finds them he sings the following ditty which is in A minor, the relative minor in the key of C (Fig. 15):

Will you be gone, tol, lol, lol /to Edgar7 I'll swinge /sic/ you anon, tol, lol, lol /to Clara/ (15)-

The use of music in this scene is architectonically sound: the airs flow easily from one to the next, complementing in tempi and key sig­ nature the shift in mood and development of the conflict.

What is interesting here is that The Lovers Opera is not-an exceptional case, since many of the plays feature music which comple­ ments the exposition of the conflicts. The Beggar1s Wedding, for instance, employs a similar musico-dramatic structure to that in The

Lovers Opera. The play opens with Quorum singing an air (Fig. 16) in

B minor about how "interest" governs all mankind, revealing what his role will be in the ensuing drama; he, then, is answered a few lines later, after his exit, by the servant Dash who sings,

Air II. Since all the World is distracted in Wars

If Equity is but a specious Pretence To colour a Villain’s Ambition; 102

Mankind must be void of all Justice and Sense, When Vice mends alone our Condition (17)-

This air (Fig. 16) in F major balances the view of Quorum and empha­

sizes that favorite theme, discussed in Chapter Two, of common justice;

the air also ends scene one and opens the way for Phebe’s entrance and

declaration of love early in scene two which is also in F major (Fig.

16). Phebe’s air is full of passion (’’Love's fatal Dart, enflames my

Heart,/ And sets me all on Fire") and reaffirms her faith in Hunter’s

love (’’when her Mate arrives tho'late,/ Joy triumphs in her Breast").

This, taken in contrast to Quorum's revealed intentions, creates the,

necessary uneasy equilibrium to spur the conflict onward. Phebe, how­

ever, is warned by her maid, Tippet, in a simile air (Fig. 16):

Air IV. As Chloe full of harmless Thought

The Fish in innocence secure, Once tempted by the Bait; ... Pursues and snaps the treacherous Lure, And meets her certain Fate: So Virgins when to Love betray'd, Indulge the pleasing Pain; The Passions“ d.oes .each Sense invade, They, ne'er are free again (10).

This air in a minor key offers a sobering balance to Phebe’s effusive­

ness and also prepares the way for Quorum's reentrance which follows

immediately.

A similar technique is used in another play, The Generous Free-

Mason (1731; Garland, 11), but is varied slightly. First of all this

play is reminiscent of D'Urfey's Wonders of the Sun featuring a high

plot rendered in blank verse centering around an exotic romance between

Maria and Sebastian who are captured at sea by Moors and a low plot more like standard ballad opera; it is this second plot we are concerned with 105

here. In the play the blocking character, Sir Jasper Moody, does not

sing the usual opening air but instead in dialogue reveals his intention

to marry Caelia to Sir Noodle. Lettice, Caelia's maid, 'is the first to

sing and does so after Moody has offered to "run her through” for her

impertinence in defending poor Caelia’s affection for Clerimont. Her

air (Fig. 17) in G major and a lilting 6/4 time is a good natured put-

down' of Moody's abilities with a sword and, consequently, his standing

as a gallant. She is next forced to sing when Caelia reveals she is

trapped; in Air 5 she states, "But Lovers now are grown such Fools,/

They go to work without their Tools,/ And only whine their Time away"

(6). This air (Fig. 18),.like her first, is an up tempo number (6/8) and

in D major revealing her buoyant spirits.

The best use of music integrated with dialogue in this play comes

immediately after Lettice's airs when Clerimont enters. He and Caelia

then sit down and each sings a lachrymose complaint (Figs. 4 and 5);

both airs are in D minor with Clerimont’s in a slow triple meter and

Caelia’s in a slightly quicker 6/4. The reason for this is that Cleri­

mont implores Caelia to be true to him or he'll die, and Caelia responds a little more optimistically: "Cease thy Fears, and sigh no more,/ My heart is truly yours alone" (8). What is particularly effective here 10 is that Clerimont*s air, which tends towards pandiatonic tonal ambi­ guity, further heightens his own uncertainty. However, these sobbing airs are too much for Lettice who says to Clerimont, "I believe your

Rogue Davy and I must lay our heads together to assist you, for two such helpless Creatures did I never meet with in my Life" (9)« Here is clearly a case where the servants feel they must initiate the intrigue 104

and it is interesting to see how Chetwood uses the lover’s airs to

excite their involvement in the conflict.

There are, of course, other variants on this pattern of plot expo­

sition. Some plays introduce the hero or heroine first, as in Coffey’s

The Female Parson (London: 1730; Garland, 3) where Captain Noble sings

an air (Fig. 19) in F major and a quick 2/4 time asking "Cupid, gentle

God of Love,/ To my Hopes propitious prove" (1); his hopes are set on

Lady Quibus who is already married. In the course of the action she is

able to convert the somewhat rakish Captain to virtue while at the same

time extricating herself from the mock marriage. In another play,

Henry Ward’s The Happy Lovers, the hero, Constant, sings "Oh! my Heart

is all on fire,/ I burn with fond desire,/ In hopes to gain my Love"

(10) to open the play; a few pages later he sings

Air III. The bonny grey-ey’d Morn.

I shall be so transported with Joy, If she I love rewards my Fire; But should she ever once prove coy, With too much Grief I shall expire:

The above is scored in B flat major (see Fig. 20) but the introduction of the unrelated chords of C major and D major lend a tonal ambiguity to the air, complementing the anxiety of the lyrics. The second part of the air goes as follows:

No way the Fates afford to shun The cruel torments I endure, If I am doom’d to be undone By the Disease, or by the Cure (14).

On the second line here the melody briefly modulates to G minor casting a darker hue over the word "torments" and then it returns to its origi­ nal key of B flat. But what has transpired between the opening 105

self-assured declaration of love and this last expression of anxiety?

In the interim Constant’s companion, Friendly, came to call and sang f an air to the tune of ’’Cold and raw” (Fig. 21) which pessimistically

presented Friendly’s feeling about women.

Women are like the Wind, That is always a changing, Some to Lewdness are inclined, Some to Roving and Ranging (11).

The air is in E minor which all the more accentuates the cynicism of the

lines; coupled with this, Friendly informs Constant that Celia’s father

has promised her "to that apish Coxcomb, Modish; who indeed has a very / large Income" (11). Thus, we see the playwright once again deftly

arranging and juxtaposing his airs to achieve the best effect.

In all the cases reviewed up to this point it is evident that the

authors are using their airs to acquaint the audience with the level of

commitment each character feels to his/her particular interest. After

the first scene or act exposition most of the airs are given to the

lovers. This is to be expected seeing that as complications arise it is

lovers who will have the more intense moments calling for song. The low­

life characters as well as the rival lovers will also be given airs, but

their songs are reserved, for the former, to satiric sententiae and, for

the latter, to ironic views of the characters themselves. For instance,

in The Generous Free-Mason, Noodle, whom Moody has promised Celia to, is worried whether or not Celia will love him; he, however, is reminded of an old song of his Father’s which he then sings:

A Man tho’ hated much at first, Tho' by his spouse is often curst: Yet when at Night his Rib he meets, They're reconciled between the Sheets (38). 106

The humor of this is occasioned by the fact that he is such a fool and is

so heartily despised by Celia that a thousand nights will never reverse

her feelings; furthermore, the song reveals how Noodle feels about his

powers to win when in fact the action of the play up to this point has

shown him to be little more than an ineffectual bungler. One notices

also that as the action of the ballad opera progresses the blocking char­

acters seldom sing at all; the reason for this is attributable to their

more animated involvement in the intrigue plot. Therefore, the author

is left with few opportunities which call for songs to reinforce

moments of emotional intensity. What remain, essentially, are the

moments of joy, those points in the action which unite the strands

created by the rifts between the conflicting parties. Consequently, we

are presented with three rather standard situations where song is

needed: first, when the lovers are reunited after the successful in­

trigue; second, and this is often an alternative to the above, where

the hero or perhaps blocking character is converted; third, the final

chorus which presents the members of the happy new community, with all

differences reconciled, rejoicing through song.

The lovers, as was mentioned previously, usually have reason at some point to sing a complaint expressing their grief at parting and their anxiety about their future' together. The following air from The

Beggar's Opera is rather typical (Fig. 22):

Polly. Oh how I fear! How I tremble! Go, but when safety will give you leave, you will be sure to see me again; for till then Polly is wretched.

/During the following song, Polly and Macheath are/ parting, and looking back at each other with fondness; he at one door, she at another. 10?

Air XVIII. Oh, the Broom.

Macheath. The miser thus a shilling sees, Which he’s obliged to pay, With sighs resigns it by degrees, And fears ’tis gone for aye.

Polly. The boy thus, when his sparrow’s flown, The bird in silence eyes; But soon as out of sight ’tis gone, Whines, whimpers, sobs, and cries (30).

Gay here is obviously combining satire and convention, but, nonetheless,

this song type was a'standard feature in the ballad opera. It is used

to create an effective link between plans for the intrigue and the Komus

or triumph of love air which comes later in the action. Earlier in my discussion of the complaint I cited the parting duet from The Beggar’s

Wedding; here then is the Komus air sung by Hunter and Phebe after the successful execution of Hunter and Grig’s intrigue against Quorum:

Air XIX. Bonny Lad, come lay thy Pipe down.

Hunter. Now, my dear Charmer, our Troubles are o’er, At last Love triumphant ill Fortune controuls; Thus happy ten Thousand new Joys we’ll explore, And with mutual Constancy solace our Souls. .No more shall false Pleasure enervate my Mind, I here bid adieu to all Bus’ness and Strife; By Woman alone all our Bliss is refin'd, For Phebe’s the Joy of my Life.

Air XX. An Irish Tune.

Phebe. Thus with thee delighted, All my Love’s requited, For thine my Heart shall never part, Till both in one united: Now our Hopes possessing, We’ll enjoy the Blessing All our Days crown'd with ease, Whilst in Love caressing (p. 63).

This type of song is in terms of the conventions of musical comedy a necessity because the entire movement of the play has been directed to 108

this moment. The conventions of comedy demand a ritual promise of mar­

riage and the ballad opera fulfills the ritual through song. R. Fabian’s

Trick for Trick (London: 1735; Garland, 12) breaks slightly from ballad

opera convention but fulfills the requirements of comedy by making the

Komus air his final number.

Air X. Mio Caro Ben.

Fernand. Love’s gentle Reign Shall sooth each Pain That rack’d my Breast before.

Elvira. Still let me be Thus Blest in thee: Kind Heaven! I ask no more.

No Time shall impair, Or cloud with a Care Our Days of endearing Bliss. Ah, who'd complain, Of Years of Pain, Repaid with an Hour like this! (35-36)

The Komus air, in short, reemphasizes the feelings and ideas about love

and marriage expressed by the lovers earlier in the play; it also re­

affirms the heroine’s virtue and constancy and the concept that the best matches are those made because of mutual affection.

Closely related to the Komus motif discussed above is the conver­ sion motif. The conversion motif was not as widely used in ballad opera as it was to be in comic opera but it, nonetheless, was used occasionally to good effect. In Drury's The Mad Captain, for instance, Captain Atall declares early in the play, "The frequent Repetitions of those Pleasures

I once found in Gallantry have made them a Fatigue" (2) and now he wishes to settle down and marry Hillarett. His sergeant, Sly, counsels him on marriage and reminds him in song: 109

Air I. Winchester Wedding

... the Man who is single and free, Can Carouse with a Friend o’er Glass; With Claret and Sherry, make merry And tumble each Frolicksome Lass (2).

The Captain responds soon after in song: ”Be Love alone my Duty;/ For

Pride and Honour, Gain and Sport,/ Must all submit to Beauty" (3) • We

find, however, that he has his eyes set on "a stronger Motive than any

thing in her Person: which is her Purse" (3)• This state of affairs

obviously cannot exist, and Drury effects a more idealistic outcome for

the lovers. First he shifts the action to the intrigue against Sir

Marvin Maugre who has kept Hillarett confined and away from Atall. Once

the intrigue succeeds he has Atall declare to Sir Marvin, "Sir, I re­

ceive her now from your Hands as an Earnest of future Love—when my

want of Duty cancels your Tie of Fatherly Affection—may my Commission

be worthless—than I wish it" (38). This sets up the final chorus where

Atall sings "Cupid first claims our Duty;/ Honour then be our care" (4-0),

drawing to a conclusion Atall's progress from rake to dutiful husband.

The use of the song to reinforce the conversion of a rakish char­

acter occurs more often in the pastoral ballad operas. Lillo's Silvia

(London: 1731; Garland, 17), although not the most successful ballad

opera, features an impressive ending complete with the reclamation of

the rakish Sir John. In the play Sir John has pursued Silvia, a virtu­

ous country lass; he says he loves her but does not believe in marriage,

and as a result he continues "attempts" on her innocence and virtue.

Lillo uses the conflict as he did in The London Merchant to show how

the upper classes subvert the morals of the plain and virtuous folk. In

Air 29 (see Fig. 23) Silvia sings, 110

As wretched and mean, we despise The vicious, their Wealth, and high State; The lowest, in Virtue may rise, ’Tis Virtue alone makes us great.

The hoarse Peacock, tho' gaudy and gay, Sweeps the Earth with his Train, the so bright; While the Lark, in his humble Array, Soars warbling to Regions of Light (33).

The melody, even though in G major, is in a slow three meter and accen­

tuates the message of the lyrics. In time Sir John realizes his fool­

hardiness and falseness, and in an air early in act three he sings,

In vain, in vain I rove, Wine, Wit, and Women prove; My anguish to remove, I'm still a Lover (62).

He is beginning to see himself for what he really is and when he sees how his seduction of the country maid Lettice has disturbed her parents

—who, by the way, reveal their sorrow in Air 59—he realizes he must not ruin Silvia. The reconciliation of the lovers (the Komus motif) and

Sir John's conversion are integrated into Air 62 (Fig. 24). The opening lines reveal Sir John's conversion:

Sir John. Oh how sweet, All over Charms, To bless my Arms, Thy generous Virtue all Vice defeating.

Silvia. All complete and pure's my Joy, Without Alloy; With Transport unusual my Bosom is beating.

And the Komus motif is realized in the final stanza:

Both. Oh Dearest! All compleat and pure's my Joy, Without Alloy; White Hours approach, and the black are retreating (74)

This air is in G minor which adds just the right touch of poignancy to 111

the scene and actions of the lovers. The playwrights, like Lillo,

Cibber, and Charles Johnson (The Village Opera), who relied on senti­

mentality in their ballad operas found in the emotional nature of their

conflicts fine opportunities for emotional release through song.

The final situation where song works well in the structure is the

ending. This is the consummate moment for joyful expression of emo­

tion, and the playwrights usually supplied songs which conveyed exuber­

ance and a pleasing final impression. It should be noted that of all

song situations the final chorus is the most conventional; a rousing

chorus of joyous or inspirational proportions was common to opera prior

to the ballad opera and care has been taken ever since in musical

comedy to reprise a show stopper ("There’s No Business Like Show Busi­

ness" from Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun) or create a big closing

number ("Oklahoma!" from the Rodgers and Hammerstein play or, a few

years earlier, "Oh Lord, I’m On My Way" from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess).

In the ballad opera the final chorus serves two purposes: it summar­

izes the theme of the play much like the standard rhyming couplet

encountered so often in standard drama, and it also announces the end

of the older order and opens the way for the new society centering around the young lovers. This finale from The Jovial Crew (London:

1731; Garland, 17) is a perfect example; it is set to one of the most popular of all ballad airs, "Under the Greenwood Tree" (Fig. 25), and is in G major with a quick 6/4 time:

Air LUI. Under the Greenwood Tree.

Oldrents. To all a Parent's Doubts and Fears, For ever now adieu; 112

Hearty. Away, at once with anxious Cares, Let's only Mirth pursue.

Vincent. Our Joys at last, Pay all that's past, Nor wou'd we again be free; Now, now let us whisk it, Frolick, and frisk it, Under the Greenwood Tree.

Chorus. Now, now, &c.

Rachel. Our dancing Days, I doubt, are done, For now we must obey;

Hilliard. Our Joys of Life are just begun, For Each, by Turns, shall sway.

Meriel. Be you but kind, Your heart shall find, A constant Mate in me. Then, then we will chaunt it, Revel, and rant it, Under the Greenwood Tree.

Chorus. Then, then, &c.

Heart. No more shall Springlove range the Fields, To rove from Amie1s Charms.

Amie. Nor Amie form a Wish that yields Not Amie to his Arms. Be You but true, As I to you, Our Joys no End shall see. 0 how we will firk it, Caper, and jerk it, Under the Greenwood Tree.

Chorus. 0 how, &c.

As one can see all the elements in character and the plot are brought together to celebrate the union of the hero and heroine, Springlove and

Amie. Similarly in The Devil to Pay we find Sir John Loverule singing

(Fig. 26): 113

May no Remembrance of past Time, Our present Pleasures soil, Be ought but Mirth and Joy a Crime, And Sporting all our Toil (68).

Typical of the more satirically oriented ballad operas we find Fielding

concluding his The Lottery with this final song (Fig. 27) which not

only comments on the theme of the play but also refers outside the

action to the society at large:

Lovemore. That the World is a Lottery, what Man can doubt? When born, we're put in, when dead, we're drawn out; And tho1 Tickets are bought by the Fool, and the Wise, Yet 'tis plain there are more than ten Blanks to a Prize Sing Tantararara, Fools all, Fools all (3l7-

As the song is strophic in structure Stocks and Lovemore sing similar verses: Stocks says ,"The Court has it self a bad Lottery's Face," and

Lovemore then singsMongst Doctors and Lawyers some good ones are found;/ But, alas! they are as rare as the Ten thousand Pound," and, finally, Stocks completes the chorus with "That the Stage is a Lottery, by all 'tis agreed." As I stated above this type of extra-dramatic reference is more indigenous to the satiric ballad operas.

One can see from the foregoing analysis of the music in the farce- intrigue ballad operas that the setting of lyrics and selection of songs was not a haphazard matter. The playwrights, on the whole, reserve their songs for those moments when the characters because of some emo­ tional reason would be expected to sing. Acceptance of this convention is not hard to understand once we realize that the outpouring of song is a variation on the standard soliloquy. It affords the audience a chance to view the character in isolation and enables us to understand them a little better. We must allow, however, that, let us say, sixty 11k

odd airs cannot possibly be channeled solely into the expression of

emotion. The result would border on a phantasmagoria of tears, shrieks,

and laughs suitable only for absurdist drama. The playwright does x

allow for these other airs by implementing them in the satiric struc­

ture which, like romance, is integral to the genre’s form.

2

The use of ballad airs and popular songs to reinforce the satire so indigenous to ballad opera seems partly inspired by Gay's example in The Beggar's Opera and partly by the great tradition of the British broadside ballad. Gay found in the simple English ballad the perfect vehicle not only to mock the conventions of Italian opera but also to put in the mouths of his low-life characters. In Italian Opera we are usually given a scene of reckless passion like those in Handel's opera

Orlando where the character is on the verge of insanity and the music, with its wildly ascending and descending chromatic runs, paints the

"affection." In The Beggar* s Opera the closest we come to this type of scene is Polly and Lucy's duet which they sing upon discovery of

Macheath's falseness to each (Fig. 28):

Air XXXVI. Irish Trot

P oily. I'm bubbled.

Lucy. I'm bubbled.

Polly. Oh how I am troubled!

Lucy. Bamboozled, and bit!

Polly. - My distresses are doubled.

Lucy. When you come to the tree, should the hangman refuse, These fingers, with pleasure, could fasten the noose. 115

Polly. I'm bubbled, etc. (54).

In all the effect must have been quite humorous considering the audi­

ence’s acquaintance with the conventions of Italian opera; much, how-

11 ever, has been written on Gay’s satire of Italian opera, but little

has been done on the relationship between ballad opera music and the

broadside ballad.

The ballad opera' authór who employed his airs for satiric pur­

poses was essentially working in the tradition of the broadside ballad.

The author of the broadside, like the playwright, took an existing 12 popular song or ballad and set new words to it to fit the occasion he

wished to comment on. The broadside was not only a pleasant diversion

but, as Claude M. Simpson notes in his The British Broadside Ballad and

Its Music (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1966), p. x, it was

also a useful medium of topical information:

It reported such historical events as the coronation of William and Mary or Charles I’s escape after the battle of Worcester. It proved invaluable in partisan political propaganda, rising to heights of effectiveness—accompanied often by depths of scurrility—when public interest was focused on the Rump Parliament, the Popish Plot, or the bloodless revolution of 1688. But concern with current events was not limited to affairs of state. Scarcely a criminal of any notoriety was executed without the issuance of a versified account of his crime, his trial, and his good-night to the world. Sensationalism of other sorts abounded, too, as in the Sunday supplements of today’s news­ papers. Prodigies of nature—monstrous births, rains of frogs, stranded whales—were served up to the credulous, along with warnings of God’s judgment to be read into human calamities, whether the subject were a woman swallowed up by a sudden crack in the earth or Dr. Faustus being claimed by the devil. The ballad of "Greensleeves" inspired more than one moral parody, and the way to virtue was literally spelled out, hornbook fashion, in such an acrostic broad­ side as "The Virgin’s A.B.C."

Similarly the ballad opera used its ballad airs not only to comment on 116

the action of the play hut also to make statements about certain social

concerns. 'In Fielding’s The Author's Farce, for instance, Luckless has

been luckless in getting his play- performed so he writes a play called

"The Pleasures of the Town" in which he attacks all those forces which

have impeded the course of his art; Air 14, set to the tune of "There was a Jovial Beggar," provides a stunning tableau of the varying ele­ ments of his cultural milieu:

Air XLV. There Was a Jovial Beggar

The stone that all things turns at will To gold, the chemist craves; But gold, without the chemist’s skill, Turns all men into knaves. For a-cheating they will go, etc.

The merchant would the courtier cheat When on his goods he lays Too high a price, but faith he's bit, For a courtier never pays. For a-cheating they will go, etc.

The lawyer, with a face demure, Hangs him who steals your pelf, Because the good man can endure No robber but himself. For a-cheating, etc.

Betwixt the quack and highwayman What difference can there be? Though this with pistol, that with pen, Both kill you for a fee. For a-cheating, etc.

The husband cheats his loving wife, And to a mistress goes, While she at home, to ease her life, Carouses with the beaus. For a-cheating, etc.

The'tenant doth the steward nick (So low this art we find), The steward doth his lordship trick, My lord tricks all mankind. For a-cheating, etc. 117

One sect there are to whose fair lot No cheating arts do fall, And those are parsons called, God wot: And so I cheat you all. For a-cheating, etc. (62-63).

The audience's acquaintance with the broadside ballad would probably

have made the above air very successful. This air, like some broad­

sides, treats a wide range of topical matters, and it implements a

strophic structure to make it easy to remember and also to emphasize the

continuity between subjects. The topicality of the broadside form made

it a perfect vehicle for ballad opera and probably influenced the type

of satire used in the genre. There may have been-some in the audience,

particularly from the lower classes or even the middle, who were not

familiar with all the conventions of Italian opera, but there were many

who had read and perhaps even hawked broadsides who could appreciate airs

like the one above. It should be remembered that in addition to news­

papers the black letter ballad was a major information medium for the

middle and lower classes during the Restoration and early years of the

eighteenth century, and these classes were also frequenting the theatres

more and more as the century progressed. This reliance on the broadside

tradition is perhaps the classic case of a social convention being

adapted and forged into a dramatic convention.

In order for the author to communicate his topical comments he re­ lied on a particular type of air. This song type can be termed a sen­ tentia air derived from a satiric device commonly used by Augustan satir- 13 ists, and often used in mock-heroic poetry; the sententia air, like satire sententiae, basically expresses a point of general truth in a short pithy statement. The following air from The Beggar's Opera sung 118

by Peachum is one of the best (Fig. 29):

Air I. An Old Woman Clothed in Gray.

Through all the employments of life Each neighbor abuses his brother; Whore and rogue they call husband and wife; All professions be-rogue one another. The priest calls the lawyer a cheat; The lawyer be-knaves the divine; And the statesman, because he’s so great, Thinks his trade as honest as mine (p. 6).

This air not only attacks effectively the professions but also estab­

lishes Gay’s mode of mock-heroic satire by having Peachum, who is a

keeper of stolen goods, compare himself to a statesman. In general, the

sententia air evolves out of the action as follows: an incident occurs

which some character (most often the satiric spokesman) feels compelled

to comment on; as he comments on the present situation he finds, as

Pope did, that "A Knave’s a Knave, to me, in ev’ry State,/ Alike my

scorn, if he succeed or fail.” The result is that "Who-e’er offends,

at some unlucky Time,/ Slides into Verse, and hitches in a Rhyme." In

the following, from The Mock Lawyer, Valentine has enlisted the aid of

Cheatly, a lawyer, to help him and Feignwell dupe Justice Lovelaw (for music see Fig. 20):

Valentine. I am obliged to you, Mr. Cheatly, for this unexpected Favour, and shall endeavor to return it. There is somewhat for the present. /Gives Money/ I know you love to have your Friendship strengthen'd by Interest.

Cheatly. Why, really, Sir, if it is a Vice, it is a very epidemical one.

Val. And who wou’d blame you for pursuing so successful a Maxim. 119

Air X. ’Tis Woman, that seduces, &c.

'Tis Interest that governs all Mankind, 'Tis that's the pleasing Bait allures our Eyes. He will alone succeed by Arts refin'd, Who studies Great Mens Maxims to be Wise. For Int'rest o'er the Seas the Merchants range, And plotting Statesmen toil for that alone; By that the Patriot won, can wisely change, And drop his Country's Profit for his own (pp. 12-13).

Here is a good case of multiple reference: first, Valentine is moti­

vated to sing this air because his romance with Laetitia is being

jeopardized by the avaricious interest of Lovelaw; this is of course

one of the favorite topics of attack;for the ballad opera author. Sec­

ondly, there is the rather blatant reference to Walpole and the whole predicament occasioned by the South Sea Bubble. In general, when one encounters the phrase "Great Man" in any ballad opera it is more than likely a jab at the much maligned prime minister. Thus, we can see that the sententia air is employed to illuminate the vice of the blocking character and, hence, establish the norm of proper action and thought.

At the same time, it directs itself to the culture at large to point up some folly. We are reminded in these airs that the vice being exposed is not confined to this or that character on the stage on this particu­ lar evening, but that he reflects a portion of the social order which lies beyond the footlights.

All ballad operas feature some sententiae airs, but some make the sententia air their primary vehicle of musical expression. These operas are the type which have satire as a specific purpose and are most often the low-life operas like The Beggar's Opera, The Cobler* s Opera, The

Footman, The Jew Decoy'd, or, the Progress of a Harlot (London: 1733;

Garland, 3), and The Jovial Crew. In these plays the low-life characters 120

are used to point up the vices and follies of their "betters." However,

because the emphasis in these plays is on farcical action most of the

satiric statements are confined to airs; the airs, on the whole, con­

tribute to the total satiric picture by fleshing out the universal

truths which the characters are concretizing through their specific

actions. In The Footman, for instance, Charles, who is a footman aping

the ways of the beau monde, wants to establish a "fashionable" mistress

relationship with a maid, Jenny; she, in spite of the fact she loves

him, will have nothing to do with him. The knowledge of her love (com­

municated to him via Air 21) however bolsters his resolve to seduce her

and he sings:

Air XXIII.

With Fawning and Lyes, With Bribes and Disguise, The Courtier and Statesman our Consciences seize on: So the Spider her Nets, With Artifice sets; And the Lover, the Lover, brings his Mistress to Reason (29).

This combination simile^-sententia- air draws -correspondences between the specific action in the play and the general vice in society. Notice in the above air also the reference to reason; this recalls the problem of the blocking character who subverts reason for his own purposes. One could view this as an auxiliary vice: the vice of specious reasoning.

A further example of this concept of dual satiric reference can be seen in Gay’s The Beggar's Opera which provided the model for all ballad operas of this type. Seldom does a character sing in this play but he or she delivers some comment on the current cultural scene. In Act One as Peachum and his wife are discussing how to rid Polly of Macheath without jeopardizing her dowry, they realize that "if he should die in 121

a session, or two, Polly's dower would come into dispute" (22), occasion­

ing the following musical comment from Peachum:

Air XI. A Soldier and a Sailor

A fox may steal your hens, sir, A Whore your health and pence, sir, Your daughter rob your chest, sir, Your wife may steal your rest, sir, A thief your goods and plate. But this is all but picking, With rest, pence, chest, and chicken; It ever was decreed, sir, If lawyer's hand is fee'd, sir, He steals your whole estate (23).

Gay often attacks the professions .in his play and this was to prove one

of the favorite lines of attack for future ballad opera authors. The

reason for this is that lawyers, doctors, and priests provided the

readiest examples of the "art of thriving" which Fielding railed at in

his plays and essays. In The Mock Doctor, for instance, he devotes the

low plot, featuring Gregory as the mock doctor, to exposing the vices

of the medical profession. In the play when Harry and James are seek­

ing out a Doctor to cure Charlotte's dumbness-(feigned of course),

Gregory's wife, who is seeking revenge against her abusive husband, sets

them on Gregory. She tells them Gregory has effected many "miracles"

to which James responds, "Sure this Quack understands as much as the whole College of Physicians" (9)- This prompts Dorcas to sing the fol­ lowing air set by Mr. Seedo (Fig. 30):

Air V.

In formal dull Schools, By Forefathers Rules, The Doctor's equipp'd out for Slaughter; If according to Art, The Patient depart, He never is blam'd for it after. 122

The Quack still succeeds, Or falls by his Deeds, If he kills you, he gets not a Shilling; But who denies Fees To the Quack, whose Degrees Once give him a Licence for Killing? (10).

The air is written-in G minor adding just the right cynical tone to

Dorcas’ sententia on the whole of the medical profession. In general,

the sententiae airs used in the low-life ballad operas all complement

the mode of ironic inversion which is the mainstay of the type. By

putting the criticism of the professions and "the modes of court” into

the mouths of beggars, milliners, maids, or thieves the ironic message

of the attack is heightened. Moreover, the reliance on song for satiric

commentary is particularly effective because, as was the case with ex­ pressing emotion, song isolates and, in a sense, freezes in time the action so we may get a closer look at what is being felt and said. If the playwright wished to make some comment on vice his best means was the air because it heightened as well as suspended clearly before our eyes and ears the evil in question.

In the plays which placed romance and intrigue to the forefront of the action playwrights also relied on sententiae airs, They are inte­ grated in a similar fashion to those in the low-life operas, that is, they begin as ostensible intra-dramatic references to the major vice represented in the blocking character impeding the course of true love; they also, through topical reference, force the audience to reflect on the vice as it exists in the culture. In the chapter on satire in the ballad opera the major vices of "unnatural marriages" and the "art of thriving" were discussed; therefore, it may be useful here to discuss how the playwrights used music to attack these vices. 123

The playwrights use sententiae airs as commentary on the action and,

as a result, the low-life characters, who oftentimes function as satiric

spokesmen, take on the role of chorus. There is not as much reliance on

the song for satire in the intrigue-farce operas as there is in the

purely low-life operas, primarily because most of the satire is chan­

neled into the exposing of blocking characters through intrigue. Song

is used to present the thesis element in the tripartite satiric struc­

ture in ballad opera. Usually the sententia airs are sung by the low­ life characters but at times we find the hero or heroine also commenting through song as was the case with Valentine’s air on interest from The

Mock Lawyer discussed on p. 114. In terms of most ballad operas the weighty matter of correcting the imbalance in society is entrusted to the servants so we look to them for the satiric statements; the lovers are then left to sing about matters of the heart as was discussed earlier in this chapter. In the following two examples we see how the playwright uses song as commentary on the vice of unnatural marriages.

In The Lovers Opera, we find Clara and Flora’s maid, Lucy warning

Justice Dalton that his plans to marry the girls to older men is wrong:

Air II. Red House.

Youth and Age will never Well agree together, But with stormy Weather Pass the long and tedious Day. Age with Clouds will cover, Damp, and kill the Lover; ’Tis the Youthful Rover Proves our lively shining Ray. This Age and Youth Are Lies and Truth, They differ more than Peace and War. They’re Heat and Cold, They're Lead and Gold, They're Debtors that have nought to pay (4). 124

The air (see Fig. 9) is set in a minor key;1 (G minor) which lends a good

deal of seriousness to what Lucy is saying. Her statement, moreover,

presents the proper course of action to Dalton who is too blind to see

the truth of it at this time and so he continues his scheming; in the

end he is eventually undone through the combined efforts of Lucy and

the hero Edgar. Lucy's song, however, supports the ethos of the lovers

and reaffirms the audience's belief in the lovers' course of action.

Fielding uses a similar technique in The Intriguing Chambermaid when he has Lettice warn Charlotte's mother, Mrs. Highman, that the match she has made between her daughter and Oldcastle is doomed for disaster:

Yes, Madam, marrying a young Lady, who is in. Love with a . young Fellow, to an old one whom she hates, is the surest way to bring about I know what, that can possibly be taken.

Air I. Soldier Laddy

When a Virgin in Love with a brisk jolly Lad, You match to a Spark more fit for her Dad, 'Tis as pure, and as sure, and secure as a Gun, 'The young Lover's Business is happily done: Tho' it seems to her Arms he takes the wrong Rout, Yet my Life for a Farthing, Pursuing His Wooing, The young Fellow finds, tho' he go round about, It's only to come The nearest way home.

Once again the blocking character is forewarned of her wrong-headed actions, but it will take the intrigue plot, which-Lettice undertakes immediately, to reverse the fortunes of the young lovers. In both of the foregoing examples the servant is responding to the antithetical motives of the blocking character which have been previously stated either in song as is the case in The Lovers Opera or in the course of the opening dialogue as is the case in The Intriguing Chambermaid. 125

The second major area of attack in the ballad opera is the "art of

thriving" and it is usually treated as an adjunct to the concept of

poorly arranged marriages. In fact, the marriages arranged by the

blocking characters are usually based on personal interest. To point

up the vice of interest and thriving the playwrights would include a

statement somewhere about how wealth is no sure elixir for love. The

airs stress that money sullies almost every thing it comes in contact

with, and the most common point of reference to show money's deleteri­

ous effect is the state of the professions who, as most playwrights

paint it, function only for interest. The following scene from-The

Lover his own Rival reveals the basic attitude toward marriages arranged according to interest: Harriot informs her maid Lucy that her father has promised her to a wealthy old man to which Lucy responds:

He's in Love with nothing but Money, and starves himself to save it. An excellent Match, o’ my Conscience! Who wou'd not be ready to split their Sides to hear a couple of old Fools, both of one Age, call one another Father and Son?

Harriot. Don’t talk of it, dear Lucy! I can't bear to hear it.

Lucy. I don't know how you should; why, he puts you up to Auction, Madam, and the highest Bidder has you. 0, this Money! 'tis the devilishest thing in the World! —If your Estate is in danger, will the Lawyer advise you? If your Life is in danger, will the Physician attend you? No, the Devil a bit will they do any thing, without you cram their Fists full.

Air VII. Abbot of Canterbury.

The Priests, like the Lawyers, are all of a Gang, And the Doctors, like Bees, together do hang; The former won't pray, not the latter prescribe, Unless you induce 'em thereto by a Bribe. Derry down, down, hey derry down. 126

The Religion of both is in Int'rest compris'd; The poor Man is seldom by either advis'd: But if they're well fee'd—they'll be sure to attend, And pray, and prescribe, till your Stock's at an end. Derry down, down, &c. (10).

Once again the air (Fig. 31) is in a minor key (G minor) lending a

serious tone to the attack. On the whole, most of the attacks on thriv­

ing draw this reference to the professions or the "rich and great" who,

we are led to believe, live only to be wealthy. Perhaps, the strongest

emotional sententia air directed against interest is found in Fielding's

The Mock Doctor where Leander, fearing that Charlotte's father will force

her into a wealthy marriage, sings this impassioned air (Fig. 32):

Air VII.

0 cursed Power of Gold, For which all Honour's sold, And Honesty's no more! For thee we often find The Great in Leagues combin'd To trick and rob the Poor.

By thee the Fool and Knave, Transcend the Wise and Brave, So absolute thy Reign: Without some help of Thine, The greatest Beauties shine, And Lovers plead in vain (20).

This air is particularly effective because it is in common time, indi­

cating a very slow tempo, and is scored in A minor which heightens the

pathos of Leander's plight. It is for these reasons that this is one of

the strongest emotional attacks on the vice, and at the same time it is

effective as a sententia air because it forces the reader to look out­ side the play and reflect on his immediate social milieu. One further example, here shows a playwright not only attacking the evils of wealth but also offering the thesis by which the vice can be cured; it is a 127

duet from The Footman sung hy Charles and Jenny:

Air XLTV. Sally.

Charles. The Rich and Great, Tho' drawn in State, In Coaches all and Sixes

Jenny. Can ne'er agree, To love as we, Since Love, not Wealth, cou'd fix us.

Cha. A Maid like you,

Jen. A Lad so true,

Cha. A Heart sincere as Jenny's,

Jen. Is hardly known

Cha. In all the Town,

Jen. And can't he bought for Guineas (53)•

From this we can see that airs used as commentary are also well moti­

vated within the dramatic context so the action is not completely halted

while the characters deliver their satiric barbs. As was the case with

the complaints and love songs of the lovers we see in the sententia air

a similar attempt to portray an emotional commitment. In all the above

examples the servants or lovers are upset or irritated enough to warrant

some sort of emotional outburst. And because the musical mode has been established from the outset there is nothing terribly jarring in having

them sing about the situation. Over and above this, however, the true conventional basis for the sententia air lies in the use of song to isolate the vice, to place the evil clearly on stage, surround it with the strains of music, and, as a result, ask the audience to take a closer look at it and themselves.

On the whole, it is safe to say that music complemented the Whig 128

satire employed in most ballad operas. It should be admitted also that

it served the goals of Gay's darker Tory vision adequately, but when we

look at Gay's imitators like The Footman, The Coblers Opera, and others

of the low-life category we find-they did not fare as well. Much of

their failure is attributable to their inferior writing, but then too

it can be argued that the farce-intrigue operas generally present greater

opportunity for pleasant integration of song and text. If one examines

the contemporary musical comedy he finds a balance of ballads and other

love songs and "joke" songs like "You Cain't Get A Man With A Gun" from

Annie Get Your Gun or, more recently, "Another Hundred People" from

Sondheim's Company. Ballad opera, as we noted earlier, features this

same balance of passion, emotion, and humor in its music to highlight

the general follies and vices of mankind.

The ballad opera, then, can be judged as good musical theatre. It

maintains a fair consistency between dialogue and song, and in its use

of the farce form it enunciates the necessity for song. The farce plot

is effective because it relies on action; it implements the disguise- intrigue motif to keep the conflict visible and apprehendable. In char­ acter there are no contests of wit to be played out to test the audi­ ence's sophistication; on the other hand, farce presents clearly de­ fined characters, characters about which we have no vague feelings and whom we feel we know already. Lehman Engel, in Words with Music, p.

177, notes that,

In Shakespeare's plays there are no character ambiguities. ... Characters are always (to the audience) precisely who and what they seem to be. In musicals again, it is essential that this same order of things be observed, that there be no tricky character sur­ prises to confuse, no complexities to be unraveled. 129

And so it is with the ballad opera. In a way this is as it should be for, as we have seen, music makes certain dramatic demands which must be held in perspective of the entire drama. Simplicity and straight­ forwardness in plot is an admirable characteristic in popular musical drama for it allows the music to be used to heighten emotional moments, to delineate character, and to provide an extra touch of humor when it was needed. This integrated balance of music and drama was effective in the eighteenth century and it has been equally effective in musical comedy and operetta ever since, at times producing drama of the highest quality. 130

NOTES

For complete studies of the role of music in drama from the time of Shakespeare to the era of the ballad opera see: J. S. Manifold, Music in : From Shakespeare to Purcell (London: Rock- cliff, 1956); William R. Bowden, The English Dramatic Lyric, l603-42: A Study in Stuart Dramatic Technique (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1951); Ian Spink, English Song: Dowland to Purcell (London: B. T. Batsford, 1974); Robert Etheridge Moore, and the Restoration Theatre (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1961); Robert Gale Noyes, "The Conventions of Song in Restoration Tragedy," PMLA, 53 (1938), 162-88; and Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973), particularly pp. 1-200. 2 See Edmond Gagey, Ballad Opera, pp. 11-52; Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 94-126; William Eben Schultz, Gay's Beggar's Opera: Its Content, History, and Influence (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1923); Bertrand Bronson, "The Beggar's Opera," Studies in the Comic, Univ. of California Publications in English, 8 (19^177 197-231, and rpt. in John Loftis, ed., Restoration Drama: Modern Essays in Criticism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 298-327.

'’The satire on Italian opera has been covered quite fully by Bertrand Bronson, "The Beggar's Opera," Studies in the Comic, 197-231; William Eben Schultz, Gay's Beggar's Opera, pp. 133-53; Gagey, Ballad Opera, pp. 16-24 and pp. 44-45. 4 Ian Spink, English Song, p. 131, makes this observation in his discussion of Playford's Dancing Master: The shift, then, /during the Cromwell interregnum/ was towards the middle class. Professional men, merchants and shopkeepers paid the piper and they called the tune. It would be rash to generalize about their taste, but Playford seems to have sized it up thoroughly. 5 Arthur Bedford, always the guardian of public virtue especially where public entertainment was concerned, leveled strong attacks against both D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth and Playford's The Musical Companion (1673) in his The Great Abuse of Musick (1711), pp. 66-67; and concern­ ing the use of the monthly musical magazines and the drama which used selections from them he was equally vehement. In his The Evil and Danger of Stage-Plays (1706), pp. 132-33, he addresses himself to what men are being taught by viewing certain plays (like The Careless Husband and Love at First Sight) which also contain music: Here are Contrivances for Whoring represented, with Evasions to avoid Suspicion, and a dreadful Tincture of Smut, sometimes in Common Discourse, and sometimes 131

in Verse; were /sic7 the Force of the Musick doubles the Mischief, and from whence our Monthly Collections furnish the Singing Masters with Songs, to teach the Ladies for their better Breeding, and sometimes for their utter Ruin. ^The concept of the psychological-emotional motivation for the

integration of song into drama has been discussed in a variety of places and in reference to the drama of many eras; William R. Bowden says of the Stuart dramatic lyric, English Dramatic Lyric, p. 35, that it is not a haphazardly used thing but is motivated by and is "subject to a psychological principle understood by dramatist and audience alike ... that song is normally either the spontaneous expression of one of several emotional states or an attempt to induce one of those states." Similarly, Donald J. Grout notes about the Italian opera in his A History of Western Music, p. 440, that "Each aria is intended to give musical expression to a single specific mood or effect, so that the opera as a whole consists of a series of arias strung like pearls on the thread of the plot." The universality and persistence of this theory can be seen in range of critical commentary devoted to the concept; see Spink, English Song, pp. 186-93» for more on Restora­ tion music see also Eugene Haun, But Hark! More Harmony!: The Libretti of Restoration (Ypsilanti: Eastern Michigan Univ. Press, 1971), p. ix; for more recent criticism on contemporary musical theatre and film see Lehman Engel, Words With Music, p. 138, and Timothy E. Scheurer, "The Aesthetics of Form and Convention in the Movie Musical," Journal of Popular Film, 3 (Winter, 1974), 306-24. 7 The convention was established in Stuart drama that lovers were expected to sing about their feelings; Bowden, English Dramatic Lyric, p. 12, notes that "Since the data compiled by Burton /Anatomy of Melancholy/ were part of the heritage of all contemporary thought, his opinions, albeit they are those of a philosopher and scientists, are also indicative of those held by the dramatists and the enlightened public. In general, then, music or song was considered to be the natural language of a lover; it was at the same time, under a consider­ ate arrangement by Providence, a stimulus to love." g To determine the relative speed of tempo designations and pos­ sible performance practices I have relied on three basic studies: Arnold Dolmetsch, The Interpretation of the Music of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Novello and Co., 1915; rpt. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1969); Thurston Dart, The Interpretation of Music (London: Hutchinson Univ. Library, 1954, 19^7); Robert Donington, The Interpretation of Early Music (London: Faber and Faber, 1963)• 9 See the discussion of opera seria and the simile aria in Grout, A Short History of Opera, pp. 188-89. 10 I have used the term pandiatonic here to describe the bimodal tendencies of this air which gives the appearance and at times sounds 132

like it alternates between the keys of D minor and F major. Pandia­ tonicism is actually a phenomenon of twentieth century harmony, but its usage is based on the revived interest by composers in church modes. As many of the ballad airs are similarly based on modes they at times tend to give the impression that they freely use all the notes of the diatonic scale in melodic, contrapuntal and harmonic combinations /from Nicolas Slonimsky, Music Since 1900 (New York: Coleman-Ross, 19497, p. xxiv7; this free use of chords built on any tone of the scale gives the song an aura of ambiguity in terms of tone center. 11 See Bertrand Bronson’s article "The Beggar's Opera," Studies in the Comic; Gagey, Ballad Opera, 35-52; Arthur V. Berger, "The Beggar's Opera, the Burlesque, and Italian Opera," Music and Letters, 17 (1936), 93-105; and Irving Lowens, "The Touch-Stone (1728): A Neglected View of London Opera," The Musical Quarterly, 45 (1955), 325-42.

12 Roy Lamson, in his "Henry Purcell's Dramatic Songs and the English Broadside Ballad," PMLA, 53 (1938), 148-61, discusses how many of Purcell's operatic and dramatic songs were used for broadside ballads, a practice which continued into the eighteenth century. 13 See Ian Jack, Augustan Satire: Intention and Idiom in English Poetry, 1660-1750 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1952). 133

CHAPTER FIVE

In the Wake of the Ballad Opera: Eighteenth Century Comic Opera

The Licensing Act of 1737 dealt a levelling blow to the ballad

opera. It had engaged in a certain amount of abusiveness and stepped

on too many toes for governmental comfort. Fielding had his The Grub-

Street Opera suppressed early in the 1730’s, and Gay’s Polly was hard to stage during the Walpole administration (the prime minister felt

The Beggar's Opera was enough of Mr. Gay for a while) and, finally,

Fielding's non-musical The Historical Register for the Year 1736, as

William W. Appleton notes in his introduction to the play (Lincoln:

Univ. of Nebraska Press; Regents Restoration Drama), p. x, ". . . gets passing mention as a play which proved a major factor in bringing about the Licensing Act of 1737«" Fielding, similarly, had written some of the finest ballad operas of the period and his work held much promise; as a result of the Licensing Act however he virtually ceased work in the theatre. The genre, as a whole, was able to survive a few years more as a dominant factor in theatrical programs, but with the denigration of satire much of the fun and excitement was gone from the genre. With some York, Scottish, and Irish ballad operas like Carey's plays, Joseph Yarrow's Love at First Sight: or, the Wit of a Woman

(York: 17^2; Garland, 27), John McLaurin's The Philosopher's Opera

(Edinburgh: 1757; Garland, 26), James Wilder's The Gentleman Gardiner; a Ballad Opera (Dublin: 1751; Garland, 15), and revivals of The

Beggar's Opera, The Devil to Pay (as an afterpiece), and Richard Brome's

The Jovial Crew (second edition, 1760) the genre enjoyed a modicum of 15k

success, but it was nothing to equal the halcyon years between 1728 and

1737.

Although the ballad opera’s star was in descent the traditions of

musical theatre were not totally in eclipse. The ballad opera had

struck a responsive chord in the theatregoer and it was not long before another form of musical theatre won the hearts and ears of the audience.

It too was something of a hybrid with strong formal roots planted by the ballad opera; although it assumed mildly differing shapes as the second half of the century progressed it was generally known as comic opera and like ballad opera it enjoyed a period of great activity and popularity. In this chapter an attempt will be made ..to analyze the

English comic opera; there will be no need here to survey the field of 2 comic opera as this has been capably handled by others; instead this discussion concentrates on what influence the ballad opera may have had on the evolution of musical theatre, and, more importantly, the basic elements of conflict and theme in comic opera so we may better under­ stand what role the popular theatre assumed in this period of changing aesthetics and the rise of the novel.

The first problem which should be addressed in discussing the comic opera is the term itself. The problem here is not one of generic quali­ ties but simply a question of terminology. In the latter half of the eighteenth century we can locate five basic types of comic musical drama the comic opera, the , the ballad opera, the musical comedy, and the pastiche, or "," opera. All of these types, excluding the ballad opera, were at some time or another referred to as comic opera in criticism, prefaces, or title pages to the plays themselves. Of the 135

four remaining types three of them, the comic opera, the musical comedy,

and the pastiche opera, implemented the basic musico-dramatic structure

made popular by the ballad opera, i.e., a balance of spoken dialogue

and songs. The burletta is the only form which was all sung; George

Colman, as quoted by R. B. Peake in Memoirs of the Colman Family (Lon­

don, 1841: Rpt. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1971), II, 398, states,

’"For my own part the rooted notions of an old theatrical stager make

it difficult for me to consider a burletta otherwise than as a drama in

rhyme, and which is entirely musical; a short comic piece, consisting

of recitative and singing, wholly accompanied, more or less, by the

Orchestra.'" The only qualification that need be added to Colman's definition is the one Allardyce Nicoll provides in his Late Eighteenth

Century Drama, 1750-l800 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1927, 1952), p. 192, that "the term burletta ought to be confined to burlesque comic operas ... which deal in a ludicrous way with classic legend or his­ tory," and even here Nicoll refers to it as a comic opera.In short the burletta is the only form of comic opera in England which shares any affinities with all-sung comic operas like the and the comedie lyrique.

Although foreign comic operas like (1733) helped initiate the trend to comic opera in England few playwrights adopted the all-sung format of the foreign models. When playwrights and critics discuss the comic opera, the musical comedy, and the pasticcio they are referring to a type of play featuring dialogue and song. The pasticcio was a standard comedy employing for the most part previously composed airs and a few ballads with new lyrics set to them. John Burgoyne in 136

his preface to The Lord of the Manor tries to distinguish between "Comic

Opera" which is "elaborate trifles made secondary to music" and "Musical 4 Comedy" which features "sense and spirit inculcated by it /i.e., music/,"

but the distinction here is very fine and as one reads the many comic

operas from 1760 to 18OO he will find it hard to distinguish between

the two. All three of these forms support one basic concept of comic

opera: in general the term was meant to imply a type of drama which

relied upon spoken dialogue to carry the action, and songs which were

"confined to express feelings of the passions, but never to express the

exercise of them" (Burgoyne, Preface to The Lord of the Manor). The

basic element that all playwrights agreed on was that the song-dialogue

form was perfectly adaptable to the English language. Burgoyne, once

again in his preface to The Lord of the Manor, stated the case for this

type of comic opera being indigenously English:

I cannot easily bring myself to allow the higher branch of our Comic Opera to be of foreign extraction. From the time the Beggar's Opera appeared, we find pieces in prose, with songs interspersed, so approaching to regular Comedy in plot, incident, and preservation of character, as to make them a distinct species from any thing we find abroad—and is it too much to add that the sense, wit, and humour to be found in some of them are sterling English marks by which we may claim the species as our own?

British playwrights on the whole accepted the conventional musico- dramatic structure which the ballad opera used so successfully; they recognized, as ballad opera authors did before them, that recitative was not, as Addison argued over fifty years before, pleasingly adaptable to the English language or the English ear. The popularity of this musico-dramatic structure is evident from the success late in the century of such comic operas as Stephen Storace's No Song No Supper and Charles 137

Stuart’s What News from Bantry Bay (1798); both of these feature the

mixture of dialogue and song.

In spite of the fact that the English comic opera borrowed suc­

cessfully the musico-dramatic structure made popular by the ballad

opera there are some very real and very interesting differences be­

tween the two genres. W. J. Lawrence, in his article "Early Irish

Ballad Opera and Comic Opera," The Musical Quarterly, 8 (July, 1922),

399, distinguishes between the two as follows:

Though the prime differentiation of the early comic opera lay in the use of concerted music to carry on the business of the scene, the distinction between it and ballad opera was not so much one of form as of method. Ballad opera was designed for the player who would sing, comic opera for the singer who would make some attempt at acting. The latter demanded for its adequate representation some exten­ sion of the personnel of the theatre, practically an extra vocal staff. Outside London this proved a check to its immediate popularity and tended to prolong the life of ballad opera.

Professor Lawrence’s assessment is adequate but is also an unfortunate 5 oversimplification. There are differences between the two which

transcend mere formal qualities. As you will recall, we have seen

that ballad opera is basically realistic drama by reason of its use of

satire, topical reference, and its use of the city as a setting, and

its reliance on the broadside ballad tradition of music and lyric writing further attests to its concern for immediacy and contemporaneity

The ballad opera in the spectrum of the eighteenth century vision re­

flects the world of street literature and, to a certain extent, the world of Defoe’s novels. The world of the comic opera presents a dif­ ferent vision entirely, and this vision which the comic opera projects is the result of what James J. Lynch has termed "a considerable moral 138

reformation of the theatre.”

Two factors contributed to this moral reformation of the theatre:

first there was the demand for stronger morality in the stage plays;

second, there was the growing popularity of sensibility and the reli­ ance on feelings. James J. Lynch, in Box, Pit and Gallery, pp. 270-71, notes that "An examination of the repertory indicates, indeed, that the year 17^0 marks the approximate date of a considerable reformation of the theatre." Interestingly enough, this is the same year as

Bickerstaffe’s first major comic opera Thomas and Bally. What we find is that playwrights more than ever had to contend with the moral- minded middle class citizen. Ever since Steele referred to them as the

"new species" of the gentry in his The Conscious Lovers (1722) the middle class had steadily grown in power. Lynch (Box, Pit, and Gallery, p. 275) notes in reference to the watershed year of 176O:

The period of uncertainty in drama, /i720's-50's/ when the coarsest of Restoration plays were competing with the newer dramatized sermons, coincided with the period of un­ certainty in the audience; the middle-class'critics in the pit, finding themselves increasingly in a position of authority, little knew how best to exert their newly found powers, and were content for a time with merely flex­ ing their muscles. But once a social code for the new 'gentry* was established, apart from such occasional (and uniquely vital) exceptions as the plays of Goldsmith and Sheridan, the new drama was expected to reflect the code, and of course there was no longer a place for cuckoldry and erotic situation.

This growing concern for morality is likewise reflected in the popular­ ity of sentimental comedy and tragedy which stressed high moral tone.

The plays of Cibber and Steele had a resurgence of popularity and new playwrights like Cumberland (The West Indian) maintained the senti­ mental tradition. Allardyce Nicoll, Late Eighteenth Century Drama, 139

pp. 108-09, notes:

Early eighteenth century sentimental comedy flourished, as, of course, did the sentimental comedies newly produced in the later years of the century. From these repertoire lists we see clearly that the older types of comedy no longer held the position accorded to them for 1700-1750- Wycherly and Congreve are not merely cut but entirely altered; everything becomes decorously moral and genteel. The hey-day of the Sentimental Muse has arrived.

In Nicolls' comments there is an implied criticism of the new moral feel

ing which was pervading drama, and James Lynch has similarly criticized

the hue and cry over morality. The issue both these men and other 7 critics have raised is that the cry for morality was just that—a cry.

If one tries to pin down the degree of commitment to the moral stance

the audience demanded he will encounter a large degree of superficial­

ity. The superficial nature of the audience’s concern for moral uplift was largely incumbent on what it "found conducive to its own material 8 success." Thus the commercial virtues of honesty, frugality, domestic

fidelity (i.e., the family business) gained force as the middle class more and more let their voices be heard from the pit. Basically, what the audience of Johnson's London was concerned about was the ideal of moral uplift; as a result the playwright, caring little if the audience was libertine at heart, reasoned they had to reinforce the stated and desired virtues and relegate vice clearly to the background.

Coinciding with the upheaval in moral standards was the rise of the cult of sensibility and its concept of the "man of feeling." The whole of the cult of sensibility was in fact founded on feelings, on man's capacity to emphathize with the fortunes or misfortunes of an­ other man or, at its most extreme, with simple animals. Sensibility

A 140

moreover demanded refinement of these genteel feelings, and to refine

one's feelings certain goals were seen as natural ends to the exercise

of one's sensibility. It is at this juncture where morality on the

stage enters. James Lynch, Box, Pit, and Gallery, has observed that

sensibility "Applied to the theater audience, is therefore synonymous

with 'emotionalism,' the tendency to respond to dramatic or histrionic

stimuli with the feelings rather than with reason or the aesthetic

faculty." Playwrights from the time of Cibber up to Cumberland found

the most potent dramatic problem to elicit emotion was the moral plight

of a virtuous man or woman. Emotionally charged qualities like love,

virtue, or benevolence when placed in jeopardizing situations proved

most effective in eliciting "generous tears." Because the cult of

sensibility was as popular with the upper classes as it was with the

middling sort the comic opera playwright sought a congenial territory

where the morals of the middle class and the refined sensibilities of

the genteel could meet. From the earliest efforts of Bickerstaffe up

to the works of the Colmans one basic theme emerges in the comic opera:

if love and virtue are to triumph benevolence is needed. Benevolence

as was noted in the chapters on the conventions of ballad opera and

satire was also popular in that genre, but as we shall see, the comic

opera author handled the theme in more overtly moral and sentimental

ways.

The first aspect of the comic opera to be considered is its setting.

If one were to turn from any ballad opera with a city setting to the

comic operas of the 1760's and 1770's he might get the feeling that some­ where he got ensnared in a time warp transporting him to a different 141

time and a different place and not necessarily forward chronologically.

All we really know is that we are in the country, preferably in some

garden; there are no other visible signposts to indicate that this is

eighteenth century England. Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village (1762),

for instance, is set entirely in a country village; meanwhile his

Thomas and Sally (1760) opens with the squire singing an air about fox

hunting and other country pleasures, and the first scene in his The

Padlock (1768) begins in "A Garden belonging to Don Diego's House.”

Less than a decade later we find Charles Dibdin's short comic opera The

Quaker (1777) providing the following description of the setting for

Act I: "An irregular Hill carried quite to the back of the Stage, so

situated that Lubin, who comes from it during the Symphony of the Duet,

is sometimes seen and sometimes concealed by the Trees. A Cottage on

one side, near the front." The comic operas of the 178O's and 1790’s

similarly feature country settings but in such distant places as the

Irish, Scottish, or Cornish countrysides. O'Keefe’s The Poor Soldier

(1783) is set in an Irish country village and his The Highland Reel

(1788) is set, as the title implies, in Scotland; Stephen Storace chose

"the coast of Cornwall" and "a farmhouse" for his 1790 production of

No Song No Supper. Finally, James Cobb chose, almost in anticipation of the exoticism of later operetta, India for his rambunctious Ramah

Droog (1798). In short we are in a pastoral world which was seldom en­ countered in ballad opera; there were of course some pastoral ballad Q operas like John Hippisley's Flora; an Opera (1729a but they were few and not very successful. In general they were sentimental comedies and in this regard bear a strong kinship with comic opera, but they also had 142

different emphases. In Hippisley’s Flora (1729) the country bumpkin

Hob is allowed to ’’break" Sir Thomas’ head in a cudgel fight; such

"low" actions are not allowed in the world of the comic opera. The f closest one can come to finding a possible inspiration for the comic

opera is Lillo's ballad opera Silvia (1731) which features virtuous

country folk and a heroine who converts a rakish lover with her virtue;

this play, however, enjoyed no success during the ballad opera’s years

of dominance and popularity. Why then should the comic opera which

features the country setting be more popular than its relative the

pastoral ballad opera? The answer to this can be found in the changing

attitude toward nature and the playwright’s use of the natural setting.

The country setting in comic opera is on the whole much more con­

genial with attitudes toward nature typical of the late eighteenth cen­

tury. The idea of "nature" and "country" had different meanings and

suggested different associations than it had in the first half-century.

Basil Willey quite accurately describes the change in attitude in his

The Eighteenth Century Background: Studies on the Idea of Nature in

the Thought of the Period (London: Chatto and Windus, 1940), pp. 207-

208:

Another broad distinction may perhaps be made at this point: ’Nature’ may be conceived rationally or emotionally. Indeed the history of the idea in the eighteenth century can be described in the most general terms as its development from a rational into an emotional principle. Nature and Reason are normally associated in the earlier part of the century, Nature and Feeling in the later. This change is associated with the growth of the cult of sensibility, the substitution of ’je sens, done je suis’ for ’cogito ergo sum’ the increasing value attributed to impulse and spontaneity, and the decreasing importance attached, to pure reason.

The change in the concept of nature coincides with the rise of the cult 143

of sensibility. Nature was seen now not as a manifestation of reason

or part of a clockwork mechanism designed by God but as something

entirely different. Northrop Frye, in his article "Towards Defining

an Age of Sensibility," ELH, 23 (June, 1956), 149-50, describes why

poets turned to nature in their writing: "The appropriate natural

setting for much of the poetry of sensibility is nature at one of the

two poles of process, creation and decay. The poet is attracted by

the ruinous and the mephitic, or by the primeval and 'unspoiled*. . . ."

The comic opera author was attracted to the last two qualities, the primeval and the unspoiled. In their operas they presented characters who were seeking an ideal love founded on innocence, virtue, and natural beauty. The simple pleasures of nature are referred to metaphorically by the young lovers when describing their feelings about love. , in Cumberland's The Summer's Tale (1765) for instance, has fled the city and her parents who arranged an odious marriage for her, and in the following speech and air she states her feelings using nature as a reference point:

Amelia. 0 Madam, with the Man of my Heart there is no Condition in Life can be so humble, which I should not infinitely prefer to all that Wealth and Greatness can bestow without him.

Air XXX.

Thro' these Wilds securely ranging, Grandeur for Content exchanging, Freely I absolve my Fate: Here my Soul without repining Each ambitious Thought resigning, Looks with Pity on the Great (52).

The country setting serves as an Edenic backdrop for the young lovers; it suggests a place where they can experience the flowering of 144

romance and where the "natural" inclinations of the heart can find

fruition. In this setting a person’s true worth can shine and this is

extremely important in reinforcing the ideals the audience was seeking

in drama. To make this point playwrights use the "common people"

almost metaphorically. The idea, hinted at above in Amelia’s speech,

is that the common people, the simple country folk, untouched by the

contrivances and affectations of fashionable society, are models of

the primeval and unspoiled qualities of beauty, innocence, and virtue.

Allardyce Nicoll, Late Eighteenth Century Drama, p. 109, believes this

was inspired by "The, spirit of Richardson's Pamela, essentially lower

middle class and vulgarly moral. . . ." However, as we examine the use

of this motif we can see other motives and ideas being implied. A

couple of examples may help illustrate this.

In Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village (1762) Rosetta has run away

from her parents to avoid a marriage they have arranged; to further aid

her escape she poses as a chambermaid to Lucinda, the daughter of

Justice Woodcock. She notices during her stay that the gardener seems

attracted to her; this, of course, presents a problem as she cannot

encourage the affections of one below her station. Ironically, the

gardener (Young Meadows) is similarly a refugee from society "because I

would let my father see I chose to run any lengths rather than submit

to what his obstinacy would have forced me, a marriage against my incli­ nation, with a woman I never saw" (I; ii). Thus, the game of mistaken notions runs until each character admits that it is love which would ultimately determine happiness and marriage. This concept is expounded by Rosetta when she tells the elder Meadows, ". . . in my opinion, I 145

should prefer a gardener, with your son’s good qualities to a knight 'of

the shire without them” (III; i); she then sings an air drawing the

correspondences between nature and love:

'Tis not wealth, it is not birth, Can value to the soul convey; ... Like the sun, true merit shows, By nature warm, by nature bright; With inbred flames, he nobly glows Nor heeds the aid of borrow'd light.

Bickerstaffe uses a similar device in another play The Maid of the Mill

(1765), which is loosely based on Pamela. In the play Patty, a young country girl (i.e., Pamela), is in love with Aimworth (Mr. B.) but feels she aspires too highly; when Aimworth learns of Patty's feelings and fears he tells her: "Perhaps, Patty, you are afraid to own it—If so, be his rank what it will, he is to be envied: for the love of a woman of virtue, beauty, and sentiment, does honour to a monarch." In both the above examples the characters praise the primeval qualities associ­ ated with the country. This is exactly the point: the playwright does not say that because a gardener or simple girl has these virtues that they are better than a person from the upper class. The fact that Aim- worth loves Patty for her virtue and innocence does not suggest that the lower middle class is necessarily better; moreover, it shows Aim- worth to be truly exemplary because he admires these things. It is the qualities of virtue, beauty, and innocence which do "honour to a mon­ arch" and make Young Meadows' "true merit show." John O'Keeffe's The

Highland Reel (1788) is a perfect example of this case in point: the hero of the play, Sandy has settled his heart on the country lass Jenny.

In Act three we find out that Sandy is actually the son of the Laird of 146

Col; we also find out, soon after the identity of Sandy is revealed,

that Jenny is the daughter of the Laird of Kasey’s dead sister. In

spite of this and hints throughout the play like Jenny "must come of

good people, from her refined sentiments and elegant manners" (165) we

are nonetheless left with the impression that Sandy (Robert Donald) has

chosen a girl for her virtue and because of his natural affection for 10 her. Here we see the playwright harkening to the ideal of moral up­

lift: love and virtue are held up as being equally admirable to lord

and laborer. If there is one basic concept the playwright wishes to

communicate in the romance of the young lovers in comic opera it is

what Frederick tells Louisa in Storace's No Song No Supper (1790):

". . . thank Heaven, we live in a country that knows no distinction of 11 persons, but in Virtue."

The major obstacle impeding the progress of true love and virtue

is the blocking character. There are a variety of blocking characters

in comic opera drawn from all ranks and stations but they share a com­

mon vice: all in some way have been touched by and, as a result follow

the ways of the city and the conventions of fashionable society; at the

heart of their vice is affectation. We have seen how the playwright

draws relationships between the lovers and their natural environment;

opposite this he places people who have been spoiled by society. Comic

opera corresponds closely to Northrop Frye’s "fourth phase of comedy" which is ". . . the drama of the green world, its plots being assimi­ lated to the ritual theme of the triumph of life and love over the waste land” (Anatomy, p. 182). In the case of the comic opera we find the city providing the waste land motif because.it is diametrically 14-7

opposite the green world of the country setting. The waste land motif

is much in evidence as we view the blocking characters. They are not

motivated by the natural inclinations of the heart and, as a matter of

fact, they do all in their power to subvert the virtues of the lovers.

In Storace’s No Song No Supper the lawyer Endless has come to Cornwall

in an attempt to swindle Dorothy, whom he is "wooing," and her husband

Crop; if he is successful in his design it will probably ruin the

chances of reconciliation between the two lovers, Louisa, the daughter

of Crop, and Frederick. Prior to this Endless has ruined Robin, and,

as a result Robin was forced to quit his suit of Margery; similarly, if

Crop is made bankrupt Louisa loses her dowry. Margery, however, has

been fortunate enough to be privy to Endless’s plot and she exposes him

in the final scene. As Endless blusters off he admonishes the company

saying, "... but take care how you insult a limb of the law, or you \ may chance to bring down the vengeance of the whole body" (99), prompt­

ing Robin to say, "If such limbs were lopp’d off, it would do the con­

stitution good" (99). Another character in this vein is the Mayor in

O’Keeffe’s Peeping Tom, of Coventry (London: 1784; Garland, 23) who

uses his station to seduce the young women of the village. The focal

point of this play is the Mayor’s attempt to seduce Maud, wife of Peep­

ing Tom, and he appears ready to run any lengths to achieve this end.

Maud sums up the message implied in the Mayor’s intentions when she

says, ". . . when people get up a little in the world—Lord, they think

there’s nothing but to use poor folks as they please" (11). In the

cases of these two blocking characters the vice is their misuse of power or the use of their station to injure others. The issue that it 148

raises is that they are not receptive to the feelings of others nor do

they respect the virtues of the lovers or the common folk. This samé

criticism could be applied to the parents and guardians of the young

lovers who, unsympathetic to the feelings of their offspring, arrange

socially convenient marriages to enhance their own ends. We do not

often see these characters because they are in the city and are only

mentioned by the lovers who have fled from them. In some cases, like

the elder Meadows in Love in a Village or the Earl of Mercia in O’Keeffe’s

Peeping Tom, the character comes to the country to find his progeny and, usually with the guidance of the benevolent spokesman, to forgive them.

More will be said about the benevolent spokesman and the forgiveness

scene later.

A more common blocking character type is the person, as suggested earlier, who affects the conventions of the city and fashionable society.

These characters embody the waste land concept suggested by Erye because their actions are based on artificiality; they are themselves devoid of feeling and as a result cannot empathize with the honorable qualities of nobleness of mind, virtue, innocence, and beauty shared by those who are part of the country. In short they have been "spoiled" by society.

This conflict of ethical poles is summarized nicely by Sophia in

Burgoyne's The Lord of the Manor when she tells her step-sister Annette during a discussion about attitudes towards love in France that "insin­ cerity and artifice" are fine for the city and court, "but in the rural scenes, where you as well as myself, have been bred, I am persuaded the tongue and the heart go together in all countries" (18O). A blocking character who may serve as a good example of the view mentioned above is 14-9

Young Contrast in. Burgoyne's The Lord .of the Manor. Contrast is the

son of Sir John Contrast a wealthy country squire, but he has been

reared in the city and sees himself as a rake. Throughout the play he

attempts to use his class rank as a lever to get his way, and after an

attempted seduction of the heroine Sophia where she repulses him by

maintaining her virtue he remarks, "Clarissa Harlowe in her attitudes!

—what circulating library has supplied you with language and action

upon this occasion?" (II). In this attack there is a solid jab at

middle class morals and virtue and also an implied insult to her class

(her father is a tenant of the elder John Contrast) by way of the con­

descending jibe at circulating libraries. During this attempted seduc­

tion the hero, Truemore, enters and delivers the following speech which

reiterates the basic conflict and also contains a strong moral message:

... could I suppose you a real sample of our fashionable youth, I should think my country indeed degraded—but it cannot be—away! and tell your few fellows, if even few exist, that there is still spirit enough among common people to defend beauty and innocence; and when such as you dare affronts like these, it is not rank nor estate, nor even effeminacy, that shall save them (186).

We see Truemore hearkening to the virtue of the "common people" to accen­ tuate the corrupt character of Contrast; he also reminds Contrast of the moral responsibility which accompanies his rank and how his actions do no honour to his rank. Later in the action Contrast and his Gallicized fop of a valet, La Nippe (whose real name is Homestall), plot to have

Sophia's father, Rashly, committed to jail for poaching; with the help of a chambermaid and the benevolent Rental, steward of Sir John, their plot is stymied. It is interesting here that the one character, La

Nippe, affects manners which are clearly above his station and are false, 150

while the other, Contrast, debases the station he holds through his low

actions. Brief mention should be made here of another blocking charac­

ter who is used to show the hollowness of affectation. Jessamy in

Bickerstaffe’s Lionel and Clarissa is the son of the garrulous Colonel

Oldboy; he had been on the grand tour and has returned to the bosom of

the country foppishly altered beyond recognition—his father no longer

even likes him. Throughout Jessamy is used to show the hollowness of

affected manners and the ultimate coup de grace is delivered by the

country born Clarissa when she tells him she finds him unacceptable for marriage. What is interesting to observe here is that the audience is given the impression that these characters probably fare very well in the "ton,” but when they are transplanted to the country the dearth of feeling which informs their actions becomes glaringly apparent. In the country they are clearly out of their element.

Two final blocking characters who merit some attention are Isaac 12 Mendoza and Don Jerome in Sheridan's The Duenna (1775)- Sheridan’s opera is a pastiche but is a bit uncharacteristic of the genre in that it does not take place in the country. Nonetheless, Sheridan employs a pattern of conflict similar to the others of the type. Mendoza has a distinct image of himself: he sees himself as a great intriguer and as being very cunning: „ "I'm a Machiavel," he says as he plans his intrigue to whisk Don Jerome's daughter, Louisa, away so he will not pay a settle­ ment to the girl's father. Of course, he is so blinded by his clever­ ness that all his craftiness nets him is the old Duenna, Margaret. In the final scene Louisa's intended, Antonio, sums up the meaning of

Mendoza's failure: 151

Hark'ee, Isaac, do you dare to complain of tricking—Don Jerome, I give you my word, this cunning Portugueze has brought all this upon himself, by endeavoring to over­ reach you by getting your daughter’s fortune, without making any settlement in return (I, 280).

I have underscored ’’over-reach” in the above because it is important also for the character of Don Jerome who offers a parallel to the char­ acter of Mendoza. Don Jerome has attempted to wed Louisa to Mendoza in the first place, and in the process he himself is guilty of hypocrisy.

Fielding saw hypocrisy as an adjunct to affectation and Sheridan employs the vice as such here. In Act II Don Jerome and his son Ferdinand are discussing the object of Louisa's affections, Antonio; Don Jerome be­ lieves Antonio to be a rake "who has squander'd his patrimony," and he believes the young man to have no honor ("nobility without an estate is as ridiculous as gold-lace on a frize-coat"), to which his son responds:

This language, Sir, wou'd better become a Dutch or English trader, than a Spaniard.

Jerome. Yes; and those Dutch and English traders, as you call them, are the wiser people. Why, booby, in England they were formerly as nice to birth and family as we are—but they have long discover'd what a wonderful purifier gold is—and now no one there regards pedigree in anything but a horse (255)-

Don Jerome, quite unwittingly does not see himself falling into the same pattern as the English; his action, by marrying his daughter for a com­ fortable preferment, is his way of subverting the standards of those who are "nice to birth and family."

One can see in these portraits of different blocking characters that playwrights at times came perilously close to attacking the upper classes by consistently throwing the problem of the responsibility'of rank in their faces. A variant on the blocking character roles described

« 152

above is the old device of having lower class characters posing in roles

usually reserved for those of better breeding. Two plays, O’Keeffe's

The Poor Soldier (1783; Garland, 23) and Charles Stuart's Gretna Green

(Dublin: 1783; Garland, 26), may serve to illustrate this practice. In

O'Keeffe's play a valet assumes the name Bagatelle and attempts in the

finest foppery to woo the heroine Norah and challenge anyone to a duel; he, quite humorously, succeeds in impressing all those but the most virtuous. In Gretna Green Stuart created Capt. Tipperary who incorpo­ rates the worst qualities of the role and class that he is assuming: he is a rover willing to marry anything which will provide him wealth, and eventually he is able to fool Lady Pedigree. Lady Pedigree more or less deserves this insult as she.is unsympathetic to the feelings of her daughter Maria who wishes to marry Gorget. In the end, however, Tip­ perary is discovered to be one Archy McNab who had earlier robbed the hero Gorget, and in this discovery of his identity by Gorget Lady Pedi­ gree has been saved from a possible disastrous marriage. As a result she blesses the union of her daughter, Maria, with Gorget. By present­ ing characters who displayed the worst principles of the upper classes in their every action the playwright ran the risk of alienating this class. Even though the playwrights recognized the influence that middle-class money and morals could bring to bear on the drama they, as was noted earlier, still could not afford to insult such a wealthy and substantial segment as the gentry.

The resolution to (a) the basic conflict of love and virtue versus corruption and affectation and to (b) this more socially colored problem of the responsibility of rank was handled very expeditiously by the 153

playwrights through two related devices: the character of the benevo­

lent spokesman, and the conversion motif. One of the first things one

notices in reading through the many comic operas is that there is gen­

erally a spokesman for benevolence. The playwright's ostensible inten­

tion in crafting his plot was to create a central norm of thought and

action, and in the majority of comic operas these normative characters will be the benevolent spokesman and, of course, the lovers. The drama­

tist usually presents the young lovers as the embodiment of the benevo­ lent principle that "’good Affections' are the natural and spontaneous 13 growth of the heart of man uncorrupted by the habits of vice;" they, however, are usually portrayed as the victims of the artificial conven­ tions of society, and, as a result, the natural inclinations of their hearts are placed in jeopardy. To aid the lovers in their quest for true love the playwright introduces a benevolent spokesman who adds an extra moral dimension to the drama by his support of the natural virtues of the lovers. In ballad opera we saw something similar in the satiric spokesman who through disguise and intrigue helped the young lovers; in comic opera the character of this intermediary, reflecting changes in philosophy, underwent some revision. The benevolent«-spokesman does not rely upon intrigue but instead upon words and sentiments expressing goodwill and respect for the feelings of others; he is a counselor, not an intriguer. Let us take a look at the character of the benevolent spokesman in more detail.

The majority of the benevolent spokesmen, at least in the 176o's and 177O’s, are part of the country setting. In Bickerstaffe’s (1760) the heroine, a simple country lass named Sally, is 154

the spokesman for the honest country virtues of the country people; she

is constantly thwarting the advances of the rakish squire, reminding

him that the "grandeur” of riches he promises will only "lead to vice"

and, furthermore, the only real riches any one owns is their virtue.

For her, riches and the license they give the squire to "toy" and kiss

will only make her a whore, which the audience should associate with

the ways of the city and fashionable society. Cumberland, in his The

Summer1s Tale, makes Olivia, an old maid living in the country, the

repository for his benevolent concepts and sympathies. She is the only

character who truly has the interests of the lovers, Maria and Bella-

font, at heart, while the parents, naturally, are making unnatural and disagreeable matches for their children. At one point she counsels and comforts Maria telling her:

Well, Maria, you are not the first Daughter who has ven­ tured to dissent from her Father in the Choice of a Lover. And why not dissent?—I am persuaded Nature means our Inclinations to be free, tho’ Law enslaves them (15-16).

When Maria protests her affection for Bellafont Olivia cautions her and then tells her why she is concerned for the girl's happiness:

Come, come, you are too honest to be a Coquette: Friend­ ship and Affinity give me a Right to know your Heart, and make your Concerns and those of your Family in a Manner my own. You know I have no Cares in this Life, but for your Brother and you . . . (16).

The audience will no doubt recognize the wisdom of Olivia's words be­ cause they come from the heart, totally unaffected, and motivated only by her natural goodwill. Olivia also plays to the refined sensibilities of the audience because through her the audience can feel for the young lovers. Another spokesman and exemplar of benevolence is the character 155

of the Quaker, Steady, in Charles Dibdin’s The Quaker (1777)- The

action of the play centers around the romance of Gillian and Lubin.

Lubin has returned to the village to marry Gillian; he has prior to

the action established his own farm so he feels now he can ask for her

hand. Upon arriving in the village he learns that Gillian's mother has promised the girl to the village elder, the Quaker Steady. Lubin then sets out to plan something which will foil the imminent marriage; he decides to use the approaching May-day festival to win his intended back. He goes to Steady (whom he believes does not know him) and in an ironical little diatribe explains his case to Steady: "Why, there’s a covetous old hunks, and like your worship, that, because he is rich, would fain take away a young woman that I was to be married, without her consent or mine" (249). Steady, who recognizes Lubin’s game, tells him that if he wins the riddle contest at the festival he can declare his injustice to the whole village as well as win the dower given to the winner. Steady writes something for Lubin to read to the village. When it comes time for the riddle contest Lubin wins it and instead of in­ sulting Steady he gives the Quaker his decree back and asks humbly for what is rightly his: the hand of Gillian; he tells Steady in an aside that he has done this so as not to make Steady a laughing stock in front of his neighbors. The Quaker feigns outrage and hands down his decis­ ion: "This is my revenge. By this ingenuity /answering the riddle/ thou hast won the dower; and by thy truth and integrity, my friendship"

(255). When he sees the joy he has brought the lovers he makes the following concluding moral statement:

Verily, my heart warmeth unto you both; your innocency and 156

love are equally respectable. And would the voluptuous man taste a more exquisite sensation than the gratifying his passions, let him prevail upon himself to do a benevo­ lent action (255)«

Steady’s actions and his speech support the basic theme of comic opera

that if love and its attendant virtues are to survive it is necessary

to have benevolence. Steady, as well as Olivia, show that the person

who is close to nature is more prone than someone from the city to lend

the goodwill of his feelings to the cause of love, "innocency," beauty,

and virtue. It might be appropriate here to discuss briefly the inspira­

tion for this concept.

We have seen that in the case of romance the country setting serves as an external symbol for the more internalized qualities of beauty and

innocence possessed by the lovers; similarly the country provides the playwright with a tableau against which love, benevolence, and virtue, and, as R. S. Crane puts it, "the feelings of universal goodwill which inspire and accompany these acts" ("Man of Feeling," 205) can be played out. The inspiration for this correlation between nature and the pre­ cepts of benevolence appears to have been Shaftesbury. The concept which Shaftesbury forwards and which the comic opera suggests through its action is that nature and those touched by their natural surround­ ings reflect the harmonious order of things. In his "The Moralists,"

Treatise V of Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc.,

(1711) ed. John M. Robertson (London: 1900; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.:

Peter Smith, 1963), he has his persona Theocles deliver this raptured panegyric to nature and the creator:

Blessed be ye chaste abodes of happiest mortals, who here in peaceful innocence enjoy a life unenvied, though divine; 157

whilst with its blessed tranquillity it affords a happy leisure and retreat for man, who, made for contemplation, and to search his own and other natures, may here best meditate the cause of things, and, placed amidst the various scenes of Nature, may nearer view her works .... 0 mighty Nature! wise substitute of Providence! impowered! Or thou impowering Deity, supreme creator! Thee I invoke and thee alone adore. To thee this solitude, this place, these rural meditations are sacred; whilst thus inspired with harmony of thought, though unconfined by words, and in loose numbers, I sing of Nature’s order in created beings, and celebrate the beauties which resolve in thee, the source and principle of all beauty and perfection (II, 97-8).

For one to contemplate nature was to be in closer touch with one’s self and God, and nature also brings us to an understanding of the "order in created beings." Furthermore, the things which help support this order are those things which also promote goodwill among men: love, virtue, and benevolence. Shaftesbury in Treatise IV: "An Inquiry Concerning

Virtue or Merit" (Characteristics, Robertson, I, 243-44) in a discussion of interest and the concept of good states:

Now, if by the natural constitution of any rational creature, the same irregularities of appetite which make him ill to others, make him ill also to himself, and if the same regu­ larity of affections which causes him to be good in one sense, causes him to be good also in the other, then is that good­ ness by which he is thus useful to others a real good and advantage to himself. And thus virtue and interest may be found at last to agree.

In short, he assumes that the Golden Rule is universal, and any man who does harm to the good of the system, Shaftesbury contends, cannot be good, nor can he be considered one with the system of nature. As an interesting parallel we find in this final scene from Richard Cumberland’s

The Summer's Tale (London: 1765) characters echoing, at times almost verbatim, Shaftesbury’s sentiments concerning nature, virtue, and good­ ness : 158

Amelia. Sir Antony, as I crost your Lawn I found your Harvest Folks assembled at their Sports; the Serenity of the Evening, and the Cheerfulness of the Scene, compose the most agreeable Sight in Nature.

Maria. Oh! by all Means, Sir, let us go thither; Joy is so pleasing in whatsoever Shape it appears.

Sir Antony. Let this then be a Day of general Happiness!

Lord Lovington. For my own Part I contemplate all rural pastimes with Reverence and Delight. The natural Expressions of an innocent Joy in a free and happy People are, in my Sense, the most grateful Oblation that can be offered in return for such Blessings (71-72).

After this the final chorus is sung featuring this repeated chorus:

Happy Nation! who possessing Nature’s Gifts in full Increase, Sees around thee every Blessing, Scenes of Plenty, Scenes of Peace.

The verses of the song all deal with various bucolic joys: "Fields where

golden Ceres waving," "Meads where Flocks and Herds disporting," and,

probably the best and most significant, "Vartuous Nymphs and valiant

Swains" (72). Cumberland is striving hard to show the concatenation that

exists between the natural setting and the nation as a whole and how the

blessings of nature reinforce the goodness of the nation as a whole.

Generally speaking, the benevolent spokesman's intimate association with

nature predisposes him to feel for the young lovers and, subsequently,

support their actions because he sees that they are good for all of

society.

We see the above concept at work particularly in Bickerstaffe’s plays which were vital in establishing the formula of comic opera. One

of Bickerstaffe’s favorite devices was to set alongside one another two 159

friends, usually older men, one who represents the good natured benevo­

lence associated with the country and the other a man who has not given

over his city ways. Squire Hawthorn in Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village,

for instance, is constantly used as a foil for the surly and garrulous

Justice Woodcock who opposes his daughter Lucinda’s relationship with

Mr. Eustice. Hawthorn is cast in the same mold as the archetypal country

squire who loves his hunting and healthy diversions. He reminds Wood­

cock, when the latter blusters against Young Meadows falling in love

with some ’’minx," that "we should remember we were young ourselves."

He, like Olivia in Cumberland’s play, is instrumental in conciliating

the lovers to the father and in delivering little good-natured dicta like

"health, good humour, and competence is my.motto." He also sings an air

in Act one which reinforces the concept that virtue and good heartedness

are intrinsic to country life because it is free of the city’s vices:

The honest heart, whose thoughts are clear From fraud, disguise, and guile, Need neither Fortune’s frowning fear, Nor court the harlot's smile.

Bickerstaffe employs the same relationship in his Lionel and Clarissa

where he has Jenkins, the steward, checking the bull-headed tendencies

of his master Sir John Flowerdale. When Flowerdale is angered by the

"unfaithfulness" of Lionel (he has hired him as tutor for Clarissa) in

loving his daughter Clarissa, Jenkins remonstrates with him, saying he

should exercise "that character of worth and gentleness, which the world have given you" (III). Later when they go into hiding so they may overhear Lionel and Clarissa, Jenkins, in his role as good natured conciliator says to Flowerdale, echoing a line quoted above from Love 160

in a Village: "Let us only consider that we were once young like them;

subject to the same passions, the same indiscretions; and it is the duty

X of every man to pardon errors incident to his kind" (III). Bickerstaffe,

as we can see, was fond of the benevolent interlocutor and used him, as

did other playwrights, to emphasize the point that, for the natural

inclinations which accompany mutual affection and love to succeed, a

good heart and an understanding of the feelings of others is necessary.

And the ancillary idea seemingly being suggested in these plays is that

those bred in the country can, in a paraphrase of Pope, promote the good

of all by helping the cause of love and virtue because he can "feel ’em

most."

The benevolent spokesmen of these different plays, as the above

examples indicate, are drawn from different stations in life. Olivia,

in Cumberland’s The Summer's Tale, as well as Squire Hawthorn in Love in

a Village are members of gentry. Another good example where a person of

distinction functions as a benevolent interlocutor is in O'Keeffe's The

Poor Soldier. In this.play the heroine Norah has been promised to a certain Captain Fitzroy; Norah, however, is in love with the humble but courageous "poor soldier" Pat, and when Fitzroy learns that it was Pat who saved his life during the battle of Johnson's Ford in Carolina he, moved by Pat's honor, encourages Pat to pursue Norah adding:

What a noble spirit! Let the embroider'd epaulet dis­ tinguish the officer: Let him take a lesson from this man. There is more merit to be found, perhaps, under this worsted lace, than under gold or silver tassels (19).

In the end Pat wins Norah's hand in marriage and Fitzroy invests Pat with a commission because of his "superior merit" demonstrating that 161

even though good hearts and good will are common among the simple country

folk they are not necessarily indigenous to that class. In other plays

we have seen stewards (Lionel and Clarissa) and members from the lower

ranks (Sally in Thomas and Sally) also acting as benevolent spokesmen,

but the majority of benevolent spokesmen are persons of rank. In the

case of Jenny from The Highland Reel she is portrayed first as a simple

country lass but her manners, breeding, and benevolent tendencies sug­

gest to other characters in the play and to the audience that she must

come from better people; this belief is borne out in the discovery that

she is the daughter of a lord. The benevolent spokesman, then, provides

an antidote to the misguided ways of those persons of rank who follow

too closely the ways of the town.

The importance of the benevolent spokesman in resolving the con­

flicts presented in the plays becomes even more apparent in the play­

wright’s use of the conversion motif. The conversion motif is a device

common to most sentimental drama; if we wish to view it flippantly it

represents the phenomenon of a character being a rake for four acts and

a saint in the fifth. Viewed a bit more seriously, it represents the

eighteenth century dramatist’s attempt to present the concept of moral­

ity in action by having a character of wavering morals come to a recog­ nition of his vice through the efforts of the pious and virtuous hero­

ine, who may be a lover or a wife. At some point in the play he must realize with some horror how potentially destructive his vice is to the virtue of the one he loves; once he recognizes the value of virtue he,

in turn, supports it and he exudes good will and beneficence from every pore. Bickerstaffe uses the conversion motif in chain reaction or 162

domino theory fashion in his Lionel and Clarissa: Sir John ilowerdale

desires his daughter, Clarissa to marry Colonel Oldboy's foppish son

Jessamy, but she is opposed to this and Jenkins, Sir John’s steward, is

in sympathy with her plight. Jenkins, however, is able to convince Sir 15 John he should let his ’’character of worth and gentleness” prevail,

and he is able to conceal John so he may overhear the moving tale

Lionel tells Clarissa of how he has wronged the father by loving Clar­

issa. When the father emerges from the closet he upbraids Lionel

mildly and then confers the hand of his daughter on the young man.

Lionel is struck and says, "To me, sir!—your daughter—do you give her

to me?—Without fortune—without friends—without . . ."; to this Sir

John, now converted, responds: "You have them all in your heart; him,

whom virtue raises fortune cannot abase." Later on in the play, main­

taining the spirit of the benevolent movement already initiated, Sir

John is called upon to pacify Oldboy. More will be said about this play

later. One can see in this incident a real variance from the handling

of blocking characters in the ballad opera: in those plays the idea is

to exaggerate the faults of the blocking character downward’ and, in

essence, to ridicule him. The comic opera offers little ridicule of the

blocking character. Perhaps, at best, the garrulous old guardian like

Oldboy or Sir Harry in The Maid of the Mill will unwittingly help some young man escape with a young lass, who ironically is the character's

own daughter. On the whole, however, the movement is to elevate the person upward to a recognition of his own benevolence, to get him to admit that a good disposition and the kindness emanating from that dis­ position is the only reward one needs. The sergeant in O'Keeffe’s The 163

Highland Reel is a perfect example: he has come to Scotland with a

certain Captain Dash, who is no more than a hoot soldier, to falsely

enlist men so they can make a profit. In the course of the action the

sergeant has won Jenny’s lottery ticket from Sandy, but seeing her sor­

row at the chances for their marriage now dashed the Sergeant returns

the ticket, adding, "... this is the first time I ever had it in my

power to do a generous action, and I've a strange curiosity to know how

a man feels after one." He is pleased with his action and all turns

out for the good when we finally discover Sandy is actually the son of

the Laird of Col.

The conversion motif, to both work effectively and gain the general

approbation of-the London audience, relied on sentimentalism to reinforce

its message. The plots of comic opera inevitably lead to, first, the happy union of the lovers and, next, to the conversion or expulsion of

the blocking characters. Expulsion is confined, as we have seen, mostly

to the too "citified" characters, while conversion is reserved for those, like the fathers, mothers or guardians, who are wavering between their natural inclinations and affectations. Most of these characters are well bred, and to show that benevolence is a universal concept the play­ wrights created a finale which would at once satisfy the demands of the plot and also appeal to the sensibilities of the audience. Most comic operas feature two pairs of lovers; inevitably, one pair will follow, perhaps too ardently, their natural inclinations and decide to elope.

Among the elopers we find Eustace and Lucinda (Justice Woodcock's daughter) in Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village, Mervin and Theodosia in

The Maid of the Mill, Antonio and Louisa in Sheridan's The Duenna, and 164

Harold and Emma in O’Keeffe’s Peeping Tom. Without exception the lovers

make their getaway, ironically, with the help of the girl’s father, and

without exception each of these lovers return in the final scene to ask

forgiveness of the wronged parents. Their first act is to enter and

kneel, and then they proceed to ask forgiveness for their wrong-headed

actions. The following passage from Sheridan’s The Duenna will serve

as a good representative example of the tenor of this action:

Jerome. But Louisa are you really married to this modest gentleman?

Louisa. Sir, in obedience to your commands I gave him my hand within this hour.

Jerome. My commands! /He believed she had eloped with Isaac Mendoza, Jerome's choice, and sent her a letter telling her she had his blessings/.

Antonio. Yes, Sir, here is your consent under your own hand.

Jerome. How? wou'd you rob me of my child by a trick, a false pretence, and do you think to get her fortune by the same means? why s'life, you are as great a rogue as Isaac.

Antonio. No, Don Jerome, tho' I have profited by this paper in gaining your daughter's hand, I scorn to obtain her fortune by deceit, there Sir, /Gives a letter/ now give her your blessing for a dower, and all the little I possess, shall be settled on her in return. Had you wedded her to a prince, he could do no more.

Jerome. Why, ga.d take me, but you are a very extraordinary fellow, but have you the impudence to suppose no one can do a generous action but yourself? Here Louisa, tell this proud fool of yours, that he's the only man I know that wou'd renounce your fortune; and by my soul, he's the only man in Spain that’s worthy of it—there, bless you both, I’m an obstinate old fellow when I am in the wrong; but you shall now find me as steady in the right (281-82).

The children return and even though they have proved from the outset to 165

the audience that they are right in the expression of their feelings

they, nonetheless, courteously abase themselves in their parent’s pres­

ence. This moves not only the audience but also the stubborn parent

and he forgives them and bestows his blessing either of his own volition

as is the case with Don Jerome, or with some gentle counsel from the

benevolent spokesman as is the case in Lionel and Clarissa when ilower­

dale urges Oldboy to bless Diana and Harman. This action in the play

not only shows the goodness of the lovers (reaffirming the position of

the benevolent spokesman and the audience) but it also demonstrates the

implicit faith the lovers put in the inherent good nature of the parent.

In this case we see again the operative principle of the conversion

motif in the comic opera: elevate the person no matter how incorrigible

he or she may be to a recognition of his own goodwill and do not gull

him into assuming a station below his nature or social rank.

Even though love, virtue, and benevolence emerge as the reigning

principles or themes of comic opera they also raise some rather ambigu­

ous issues. In spite of the fact that everyone attests to the fact

that a good heart, noble mind, natural feeling, or whatever should be

the sole determinant in judging a person’s worth, the playwrights seldom cross class boundaries in uniting the lovers. If the rich are on the verge of marrying into the lower class we are usually given a surprise revelation, wherein we discover that the poor lass or lad is in effect the son or daughter of a Lord (i.e., The Highland Reel). Only in one play, The Maid of the Mill, does the upper class marry into the lower class (i.e., Patty and Lord Aimworth), and this is probably due to the fact that, first, the story is borrowed from Richardson’s Pamela and, 166

second, that a woman gains rank by marrying but a man doesn't. Money,

and rank on the whole, are played down until, of course, the final act

when the hero or heroine gets her inheritance, dowry, or parent’s bless­

ing making the marriage possible. One would, perhaps, in some cases be

persuaded that money or rank is the natural endowment following neces­

sarily as a reward for a character's goodness and virtue. The play­

wrights, in fact, would probably like us to believe this.

There appears to have been a real effort on the dramatist's part

to make benevolence an operative dramatic principle. They were undoubt­

edly aware of the popularity of the philosophy and one can see that it

offers the clearest dramatic principle which would or could be applauded

by all classes. The playwrights implement the basic tenets of benevo­

lence in such a way that they obviate distinctions. We, as audience,

are given some opportunity to feel for everyone at some point in the

play; even Fielding realized that people in high stations were worthy of 16 our good will and sympathy. Comic opera, maybe even more so than

ballad opera, demands a person's involvement in the action by playing to

the feelings. The playwright's reliance on the country setting likewise

attests to the concern for feelings because as was discussed earlier, it

reflects the changing attitude toward nature. Feeling then is a point

of confluence for differing classes and dispositions; of all the themes

presented in the comic opera the belief that each man is innately pos­

sessed of a good heart is the most pervasive. Nature in the plays casts

a symbolic hue over the plays and their characters; it reminds us that we are, each of us, but a microcosm of that larger macrocosmic order which God fashioned in the natural environment. In essence the comic 16?

opera offers a hope for an order which will maintain rank and station but, be founded on the principles of love and benevolence.

The comic opera crosses the eighteenth century stage as merely a

shadow of the ballad opera. By 1760 the stage had eschewed the low, realistic qualities both in dramatic action and in music which infused life into the ballad opera. Bickerstaffe wrote one play, Love in the

City (London: 1767), dealing with a city setting and characters akin to those we encounter in ballad opera; it, however, met with something less than enthusiasm and suffered a disastrous run. In the preface to the play he accounts for its failure, and he attempts to explain why he chose this particular topic. He says some may

quarrel with it for being Low; but my endeavor has been, thro’ the whole, to make my audience laugh; and however respectfully we may consider illustrious personages, I will venture to say they are the last company into which any one would think of going in order to be merry (ii).

Such defenses, however, generally fell on deaf ears; ’’Low" elements were clearly passe: the ballad tradition was replaced by the new galante styles borrowed from Italian and French composers (see Appendix); the tripartite conflict of lovers, villains, and low-life chahacters with the emphasis being given to satire to reinforce the message was sup­ planted by a simpler pattern of conflict with the emphasis being shifted to a wholesale adoption of benevolence as the ruling principle. In short, the choices for the audience are even more clear cut, and the glimmering optimism of the ballad opera is transfigured into a shining standard of virtue reflecting the sun’s diffusive and warming rays. The ballad opera may have provided a skeleton structure in the integration of song and dialogue, but, on the whole, the comic opera is quite a 168

distinct genre: it has its own plot, themes, and style of music which reflect changes in the changing tastes and ethos of the culture. 169

NOTES 1 Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 343-44, notes that "At Covent Garden during the Garrick period (1747-76) the following were the most frequently performed mainpieces: The Beggar’s Opera 253 188 Love in a Village 183 Richard III 113 The Provok'd Husband . 102 94 The Maid of the Mill 94

Cecil Price, Theatre in the Age of Garrick (Totowa, N. J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973), p. 112, lists the following as the most performed mainpieces in Garrick’s time: 1) School for Scandal; 2) The Beggar’s Opera; 3) Love in a Village; 4) The Duenna; 5) Hamlet. In both of the lists we find three comic operas: Love in a Village, The Maid of the Mill, and The Duenna; two other types of musical entertainment: The Beggar's Opera and Arne’s Comus, a . Harry William Pedicord in his The Theatrical Public in the Time of Garrick (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press; Arcturus Books, 195^), P« 136, shows that of thirty eight new musical productions staged from 1747-76, twenty-six were suc­ cessful which is good compared to the twenty-three of sixty-six farces and the twenty-six of forty comedies which succeeded. 2 General literary surveys of the English comic opera have been done by Allardyce Nicoll, Late Eighteenth Century Drama, 1750-l800, pp. 191- 208; Cecil Price, Theatre in the Age of Garrick, pp. 108-18; surveys of the comic opera including analyses of the music and more general informa­ tion as to staging and production are Donald J. Grout, Short History of Opera, pp. 246-73 (see also his chapter on Mozart, pp. 274-95); and the second half of Roger Fiske’s English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century deals in depth with the music and production of comic opera. ^A good modern evaluation of the burletta is P. T. Dirck’s intro­ duction to Kane O’Hara's Midas: An English Burletta (1766) (Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, No. 167, 1974), pp. i-xi. ^The Dramatic Works of John Burgoyne (London: 1808), I, 136; this quotation and all subsequent references to Burgoyne’s works are taken from this edition and will hereafter be cited in the text. 5 Literary critics, on the whole, have had a tendency to oversimplify the differences between the two genres (see Nicoll's assessment in Late Eighteenth Century Drama, pp. 191-208), but music historian Donald J. Grout, in his Short History of Opera, p. 262, offers this fine summary of the evolution of comic opera: /Comic opera/ underwent an evolution similar to that of the vaudeville comedy in France: people tiring of the same old 170

tunes, composers turned to other sources or began to intro­ duce their own songs into the scores, though in keeping in general to the ballad style. Indeed, the typical English comic opera of the later eighteenth century is such a hodge­ podge of popular tunes, songs from favorite operas, and original music that the elements are hard to disentangle, though the genuine folk ballads of the early days gradually disappeared. The influence of the opera buffa and opera comique is increasingly apparent after the middle of the century, not only in the outright appropriation of both and music but also in the whole trend from broad comedy and burlesque toward a semiserious, sentimental type of plot with simple half-Italian, half-English music—a singularly innocent, naive kind of entertainment which was tremendously popular in its day and is still not without a certain appeal. ^Box, Pit, and Gallery: Stage and Society in Johnson*s London (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1953)» pp. 2?0-71; hereafter all references to this book will be cited in the text as Box, Pit and Gallery. 7 For discussions of the paradoxical nature of morality, sentimen­ talism, and the middle class see Lynch, Box, Pit, and Gallery, pp. 267- 77». Nicoll, late Eighteenth Century Drama, pp. 5-22 and 124-54; Andrew M. Wilkinson, "The Decline of English Verse Satire in the Middle Years of the Eighteenth Century,” RES, N.S. 3 (1952), 222-33. For an examination of this problem from an historical perspective see Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Angel Makers: A Study in the Psychological Origins of Historical Change, 1750-1850 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 197^)• Good examinations of the problem in antecedent English comedy are Paul E. Parnell, "Equivocation in Cibber’s Love's Last Shift," SP, 52 (1960), 519-34, and his "The Sentimental Mask," PMLA, 78 (1963), 529-35; and also Joseph Wood Krutch, Comedy and Conscience After the Restoration. g Lynch, Box, Pit, and Gallery, p. 272; see also Taylor, The Angel Makers for a complete examination of the historical implications of the commercial virtues. 9 Some of the other pastoral ballad operas are Charles Coffey's Southwark Fair: or, the Sheep Shearing (London: 1729; Garland, 15); Allan Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd (London: 1729; Garland, 24); Essex Hawker's The Country Wedding, and Skimington: a Tragi-Comi-Pastoral- Farcical Opera (London: 1731; Garland, 16); Colley Cibber's Love in a Riddle; a Pastoral (London: 1729; Garland, 8) which was later shortened to an afterpiece and enjoyed some success on the stage; and Charles Johnson's The Village Opera (London: 1729; Garland, ,15), which, like Silvia by Lillo, comes the closest to the comic opera in that it, as Edmond Gagey notes (Ballad Opera, p. 85), eschews "entirely the grimmer realism and the destructive satire of Gay." 171

10 All references to this play are from The Dramatic Works of John O'Keeffe (London: 1798), IV.

11All references are from No Song No Supper, ed. Roger Fiske (Lon­ don: Stainer and Bell, Ltd.; The Musica Britannica: A National Collec­ tion of Music, Vol. 16, 1959), and hereafter will be cited in the text. 12 All references to The Duenna are from The Dramatic Works of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ed. Cecil Price (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), I, and hereafter will be cited in the text.

13 "Suggestions toward a Genealogy of a ’Man of Feeling,’" ELH, 1 (1934), 205; hereafter referred to as "Man of Feeling" in the text. 14 The edition of The Quaker I have used is one I believe to be most readily accessible to scholars and is included in A Collection of Farces and Other Afterpieces, selected by Mrs. Inchbald (London: 1815), 15. All future references to this play are from this edition and will be cited in the text. 15 This is akin to what Paul E. Parnell terms "the device of alter­ nation" in his article "Equivocation in Cibber’s Love's Last Shift"; in the device of alternation "one scene features a rakish character who gets most of the good lines and the last word, and the next scene dis­ plays in an equally favorable light a character with sentimental appeal" (520). In comic opera the first character in question is usually not a rake but, more often, the stubborn parent or guardian. The psychologi­ cal factor here is definite as it gives the benevolent spokesman the last word and reinforces the audience’s sympathies for the young lovers. 16 George Sherburn, in "Fielding's Social Outlook," in Eighteenth Century : Modern Essays in Criticism (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1959), p- 25^, discusses Fielding's rationale for showing sympathy to certain types of people; one such group is devoted to "unfortunates" who have seen better days. Professor Sherburn notes, "The five groups in order of rising importance are: 1. Gentlefolks reduced in circumstances through ill luck or extravagance. (One thinks of the Fielding family and of Billy Booth and his wife Amelia). 2. Relatives of persons discredited because they opposed ministers of state in the cause of liberty. 3. Persons in 'professions and occupations, who have, by misfortune and unavoidable accidents, been reduced from an affluence to want.' 4. Able followers of art or science who through envy or ill judgement of mankind suffer undeserved ill fortune and neglect. 5. ’Lastly, and perhaps chiefly,' those imprisoned for debt. One can see from this that the emphasis in comic opera is different from that of ballad opera where we often saw that one of these above situations would have provided a fitting reward for some of the blocking characters. CHAPTER SIX

Notes on the Music of the Ballad Opera and Comic Opera

1

In chapters one and four of this study we discussed some of the

sociological-historical and literary factors which contributed to the

success of English song and the ballad in ballad opera. In this chapter attention will be given almost exclusively to the musical aspects of

English song. There will be no need to discuss the actual performance

of the music in ballad opera as this has been treated fully by Roger

Fiske in his English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 94-

126 (particularly pp. 114-26). Also included in this chapter is a more detailed discussion of the important aspects of song in English comic opera. All musical examples cited can be found in the Appendix.

The ballad airs and many of the songs by composers like Purcell and which were employed in the ballad opera embody qualities which give the music a distinctly British character, and with audiences steadily tiring of what Cibber called "learned Warblers" and

"the Foreign Chains" of music in his prologue to Love in a Riddle (1729) songs of native British origins experienced something of a renaissance.

Most of the songs used in ballad opera were drawn from D’Urfey’s and

Playford’s collections, and a great number of these airs have folk origins. In the case of British popular song the folk element is im­ portant in understanding the "Englishness" and the appeal of the airs.

Cecil Sharp in his English Folk Song: Some Conclusions, fourth ed. rev. by Maud Karpeles (London: 1907; rpt. Los Angeles: Wadsworth, 1965),

172 173

101-102, states that English folk melodies "are remarkable for their

large compass, the unexpectedness and width of their intervals, and the

boldness of their melodic curves." This large compass in intervallic

leaps and melodic lines is what gives the airs their vigorous and forth­

right character. Yet one finds the airs fairly easy to sing and remem­

ber; the reason for this is that the harmonic progressions and rhythms

for the songs are very simple. In general, the folk airs and popular

songs of most Western countries employ a basic tonic (I)—dominant (V) —

tonic (I) harmonic progression; there are variants on this progression, usually implementing the subdominant (IV) chord like Air 10 from The

Beggar's Opera, "Thomas I Cannot" (Fig. 2), whose harmonic progression

in the first phrase ("I like a ship in storms, was tossed,/ Yet afraid

to put into land") is I—IV 6/4—I—IV 6/4—IV—V—I. The reliance on

this basic progression is the result of musicians wishing to have the message of their lyrics stand out and not be clouded by any harmonic or melodic complexities; for this reason also the ballad air was effective in broadsides and, subsequently, in the sententia airs in ballad opera.

An air which might illustrate the ideas discussed above would be the popular "Over the Hills and Far Away" (Fig. 1) which, according to

Claude M. Simpson in The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music, p. 5&3, was used in a total of ten ballad operas, most notably The Beggar's

Opera (from which the music of Fig. 1 has been taken) and The Devil to

Pay. Like most folk and popular airs of the day the form of the song is binary with an A theme and a contrasting B theme, and it is in the key of B flat major. The melody begins by outlinging an interval of a major third which makes it lie nicely in the voice range and also makes 17k I

it easy to remember. Think of some nursery rhyme songs and see if many

do not exploit the third—"Three Blind Mice" is a good example as the

first three tones are mi, re, do, in a descending line. Returning to

our analysis of "Over the Hills and Far Away," when one gets to the

phrase "eternal frost,/ Too soon the half year’s night would pass," the

angularity of the steady descent followed immediately by the leap of a

sixth in the melodic line offers a pleasant surprise; this leap and the

one in the sixth measure preceding it continue to outline the basic

chords in the harmonic progression but nonetheless add a vigorous ele­

ment to the melody. In the B section we find the predominant factor to

be a rhythmic device: the major phrases, beginning with, "And I would

love you all the day," feature the J. JJ rhythmic pattern which J. A.

Westrup says was extremely popular with Restoration composers working 1 in the domain of popular song writing. The B section also features

some striking melodic leaps especially in the last three measures, and

its entire range encompasses a ninth, unusual in folk songs but well

within the range of a good popular song. This song could easily be

remembered because of its construction and its logic in melody; hence,

it would have been a perfect song to set new words to for the ballad

opera writer. It easily fulfills Bertrand Bronson's criteria, in "Tra­

ditional Ballads Musically Considered," Critical Inquiry, 2 (Autumn,

1975), 36, that, "A folk tune is brief enough to be readily grasped and remembered as a whole; it has an inner unity that makes it shapely to

the ear and mind." If one looks over the range of ballad opera airs he will find many of these same characteristics emerging; moreover, in considering the characteristics of the ballad air one can see why the V5

London audience had such a firm grasp of the musical idiom, and as a

result, appreciated the music in the ballad opera.

The only thing about this air which makes it unshapely and which

could in any way be considered uncharacteristic of the type is that

even though it is scored in a major mode its basic harmonic progression

is based on the I (B flat), ii (C minor), and IV (E flat) chords. Such

a progression would suggest one of the early church modes, specifically

in this case the Dorian mode in C, but it appears an attempt was made

to score the air in a major key. Both Cecil Sharp and Bertrand Bronson

have stated that the majority of British ballads and folk songs are

scored in the major mode (sometimes called the Ionian); furthermore,

for use in the ballad operas most native folk songs had to undergo some

emendation at the hands of trained musicians like John Pepusch and Mr.

Seedo to bring the normal modal tendencies of certain airs into the more modern realm of diatonic harmony employing major and minor keys.^

One can sense the old mode in this air when he reaches the final meas­ ure where the song ends on the chord of C minor (ii) giving the melody a feeling of unrest and not being concluded. To give the air a more pleasing conclusion the ending could have been doctored'so the final chord functioned as the supertonic in the key of B flat and then pro­ gressed to an F major chord (the dominant in the key of B flat), the C in the vocal line then would function as a suspension'from the ii to the V chord, and once this shift was made the accompaniment could easily have progressed to the tonic B flat. In this way the song would have a standard full cadence employing a ii—V—I progression. Modern per­ formance practice suggests that such a device would have been used in 176

bringing this air to a close.

The ballad air, then, offered a needed dramatic compromise: the

simplicity and straightforwardness of its melodies complemented the

farcical and satiric ends of the drama in that it maintained a con­

sistency between dialogue and song. The ballad air was the perfect

vehicle for the realistic dialogue and speech patterns which are char­

acteristic of ballad opera. Popular song in the eighteenth century as

well as in the twentieth century has stressed the vernacular of the

mass audience; there may be lyric attempts as simile, metaphor and

other poetic devices or transposition of syntax but in essence most of

the great lyricists have relied on everyday speech patterns in their

lyrics. Great lyricists from Gay and Fielding through W. S. Gilbert up

to Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Stephen Sondheim have worked in language that was conversational; we appreciate Oscar Hammer-

stein's deft fitting of words to the character of Curly in Oklahoma! when he sings a song like "Surrey With the Fringe on Top," but we have a tendency to forget how well Gay's lines of Air 7 from The Beggar's

Opera, "Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds what we have taught her," fit the character of Mrs. Peachum. Like the French comedie en Vaude­ villes (which used popular songs exclusively) and comedies melees 4 d'ariettes the ballad opera writer found an unbeatable combination in the traditional native melodies and vernacular speech patterns in lyrics; they were universally apprehended and applauded because they reinstated the English spirit in drama and music which up to the time of the late 1720's was slowly being sapped by foreign influences. 177

2

Accompanying the changes in drama in the second half of the eight­

eenth century was a corresponding change in the music used in musico-

dramatic genres like the comic opera. The new music was called the

galante style and had been growing in popularity since the late 1720's;

it however did not enjoy wholesale approval and success until the

1750's and 176O's when it was used in English comic operas. Prior to

this we find the "old" music inspired by the ballad opera holding its

own but slowly losing ground to the new foreign music. One ,of the last

good examples of the old music is in Henry Carey's Nancy, later known as True Blue, or the Press Gang, which was staged in 1739- Although

Carey was imitating the Italian (like La Serva Padrona) his music still retains the charm and foursquare qualities of the bal­ lad opera. Carey's work deals with simple folk and is sentimental in tone; briefly, True Blue is being pressed into the navy and his sweet­ heart Nancy is grieving; the girl's father comforts her as True Blue goes resolutely to serve his time in the armed forces. After Carey's work there was little interest in comic opera until the 1750's when

Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona (: 1733; London: 1750), after an initial luke-warm reception, was given a second chance in 1758 and proved to be much more successful. Roger Eiske, English Theatre- Music in the Eighteenth Century, p. 315, notes that "the historical import­ ance of La Serva Padrona was immense. It was the Italian intermezzo that Europe knew best, and more than any other work it influenced the switch to the galante style."

The works however which firmly established the comic opera and 178

galante style in England were II filosofa di campagna (Venice: 1754;

London: 1761), with a libretto by and music by Baldassare

Galuppi, and Arne and Bickerstaffe’s two early efforts Thomas and

Sally (1760) and Love in a Village. The Goldoni-Galuppi play not only

featured delightful galante arias but also established the captivating

ensembles used primarily to end the different acts. The Arne and

Bickerstaffe productions, on the other hand, established the country settings, and with the inclusion of galante airs in the pastiche Love in a Village, the galante style was the accepted musical idiom for these sentimental plays. As we look at the songs used in Love in a

Village we find the majority-of borrowed songs come from Italian sources: there are four airs from Italian opera including two from Galuppi’s II filosofa di campagna, there are two songs by Giardini, twelve by Dr.

Arne in the new style, and there are only seven traditional ballads used. As a result the ballad and the British popular song fell on hard times; Roger Fiske, (English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, p. 174) has noted that

... by 1762 the typical ballad opera song sounded very old fashioned. In Love in a Village, produced that very year, the only ballads are sung either by servants or by an old gentleman whose views are represented as ante­ diluvian. No ballads at all are to be found in most pastiche operas of the next thirteen years; for instance The Maid of the Mill and Lionel and Clarissa. It looked as though their day was over.

Moreover, if old English songs were used they were scored in the galante style as was the case with Sheridan's pastiche The Duenna (1775) arranged and scored by Thomas Linley, Jr. This rescoring of airs in the galante style is much in keeping with the social trend associated with the word; 179

as Donald J. Grout, A History of Western Music, pp. 453-54, notes:

11 gal ant was a catch word ... applied to everything that was thought to be modern, smart, chic, smooth, easy, and sophisticated." The popularity of the galante style however transcends mere social fad, and in order to understand 'this it will be necessary to examine the musi­ cal style itself; illustrations of the airs being discussed can be found in the Appendix.

The galante style as it was performed in the second half of the eighteenth century is actually the outgrowth of two general styles: the rococo and the expressive. Donald J. Grout's fine summary of both styles (History of Western Music, pp. 453-54) is worth citing here almost in its entirety:

Two general styles or manners can be distinguished within the so-called pre-Classical period beginning around 1720: the rococo and the expressive. The former was culti­ vated especially in France, and the French term style galant (gallant style) is often used as a synonym for rococo. The expressive style, which arose somewhat later and was chiefly associated with German composers, is often desig­ nated by the equivalent German phrase empfindsamer Stil (literally, sensitive style). Both may be regarded as outgrowths of the Baroque tendency to concentrate all musical interest in the 'two outer voices; but in these newer styles the bass loses all vestiges of leadership and contrapuntal independence, and becomes simply an under­ pinning for the melody, while the inner voices are mere harmonic fillers. The rococo or galant style arose in courtly, aristo­ cratic circles; it was elegant playful, easy, witty, polished, and ornate. ... The rococo is Baroque decora­ tiveness without grandeur. The expressive style, on the other hand, was an affair of the middle class; it was the style bourgeois.' Instead of being ornate, it is sometimes ostentatiously plain. It domesticates the Baroque affec­ tions, turning them into sentiments of the individual soul. The ease and elegance of the rococo, as well as some of its decorative charm, were combined with the expressive quality of the style bourgeois in most compositions by the middle of the eighteenth century, and both styles are completely absorbed into the music of the Classical period. 180

The music of English comic opera combine both these styles, a merger

which as Grout noted in the above was fairly common by the middle of

the eighteenth century in most countries. As a result the term galante

generally takes in both rococo and expressive styles. A couple of

comic opera airs may help illustrate the foregoing concepts.

"Still in Hopes to get the better" by Dr. Arne from Love in a

Village (Fig. 33) reflects the galante style in comic opera. The first

thing one notices is the role of the bass: gone is the concern for

counterpoint; in keeping with the homophonic texture of the music this

air employs the Alberti bass (which consists of breaking each of the

underlying chords into a simple pattern of short notes continuously

repeated) which in turn sets off the vocal line to good advantage. The

movement between the voices features as much similar motion as contrary

motion, once again evidence of the bass, as Grout noted, losing "all

vestiges of leadership." Turning to the vocal line we find the com­

poser taking more care in indicating expression and ornamentation. The little grace notes written in for mordents in the second beat of meas­ ure fifteen and in measures nineteen, twenty-one, and twenty-two, and the trill prefacing the half cadence at measures twenty-seven and twenty-eight are all indications of the growing interest in expression and decorative charm. Another thing one may notice in hearing this air is the subtler harmony than we hear in the ballad air; the ballad air’s harmonic progression is a pretty foursquare proposition seldom going beyond a tonic-subdominant-dominant-tonic (I-IV-V-I) harmonic configura­ tion. In Arne's melody we catch implied harmonies of short duration but which are still noticeable. In measure fifteen, for example, there 181

is a great deal of harmonic activity in the cadence: we have a I chord

(F in first inversion) going to a vi (D minor) then to a ii (G minor),

to the dominant (V, G major) and hack to the tonic to close off the

phrase. Another interesting passage very typical of the galante style

is the extended cadence beginning on the second beat of measure twenty-

three ("And the next my oath deny") and coming to rest in measure

twenty-eight. In order to suspend and heighten the emotional content

of the lyrics Arne relies on a harmonic device designed to sustain the half cadence. On the word "deny" in the successive measures he changes the G minor (ii) chord to a major chord thus having it function as a secondary dominant (V of V) of the C major chord. What this does is create a tension by sustaining the harmony and at the same time im­ pelling the melodic phrase forward (via the leap of a sixth from C to A) to a conclusion. In regards to such passages Thurston Dart, The Inter­ pretation of Music (London: Hutchinson Univ. Library, 1954, 1967), p. 95, has said:

The strongest influence in galant music is probably Italian opera, and most of the characteristic features of its interpretation have to do with 'expression*, in the widest sense of the word. Galant music must point, phrase by phrase, towards those sighing cadences which are so import­ ant a feature of the style; they are not mere cliches, but the emotional climaxes of the melodic line. The tune, its direction and its punctuation are all that matter. The gentler Allegros and Allegrettos must float, not scurry; the Graves and Adagios must be urbanely yet unashamedly emotional; and the finales must run, not scramble in a suffocating rush for the exit.

In short such cadences were used as much for emotional effect as they were for vocal display, and this is essentially what the galante style sought to achieve: a feeling of elegance tinged with sentiment.

This last point opens up an important aspect of the music in comic 182

opera: it was an almost perfect medium for the new drama of sensibil­

ity. Robert Donington, The Interpretation of Early’Music (London:

Faber and Faber, 1963), PP» 46-47, essentially echoes Grout’s state­

ment about the confluence of the rococo and the expressive but makes

a stronger case for the galante style’s correlation to idea of sensi­

bility:

Like all antipathies, the musical antipathy of Italy and France had its undercurrent of sympathy, from which presently a new synthesis arose. This took the form of what became known, loosely enough, as the 'galant style'. The word ’galant’ here really means ’polite’, in the sense of ’polite conversation’, and for much of the music this description could not be bettered. In polite conversation, the deeper emotions, when they are mentioned at all, are brought in with a light touch. The best of such music glows with a genuine radiance; but it is the radiance of sensibility and not of passion (Fr. sensibilite; Ger. Empfindsamkeit—recurrent terms in this connection). Sensibility is feeling rendered elegant. Yet it is still feeling, and potentially capable of burning through its polite conventions.

This corresponds very well with the concepts discussed in chapter five of this study. As we look at yet another song of Dr. Arne's from Love in a Village, "Gentle Youth, ah! tell me why" (Fig. 34), we can see clearly the appeal to the emotions and sensibilities of the audience.

This air marked "Largo" and in E major has an exquisite melody line which at the same time heightens the sentimentality of the lyrics.

Throughout, the vocal ornamentation is used to prolong the emotional potential of the melody; this is particularly evident in measure six­ teen ("ease restore") where the string of grace notes forming appog- giaturas give the impression that the singer is weeping as she descends the scale. This air is even more poignant when viewed in the context of Love in a Village; it is sung by Rosetta who finds she loves the 183

gardener (who is actually Young Meadows) but she cannot reveal this be­

cause she is high born. Prior to this Young Meadows has expressed

similar sentiments in an air where he wishes he was not high born so

he could marry the chambermaid (i.e., Rosetta); the irony of the situ­

ation heightens the emotions revealed in the air and certainly must

have helped the audience "feel" more for the plight of these two lovers.

Another good example of an air being used to appeal to the sensibilities

of the audience is "I Lock’d Up All My Treasure" (Fig. 35) from Dibdin’s

The Quaker (1777); this moving and lovely air is sung by Lubin after he

has found out that the girl he loves (Gillian) has been promised to the

Quaker, Steady. The whole of scene two in Act one amounts to the air preceded by the following bit of dialogue: "A very pretty spot of work

this! and so I have come a hundred miles to make a fool of myself, and

to be laughed at by the whole village" (233). This is a fine example

of how the comic opera librettist and composer constructed a scene to achieve the optimum emotional effect. Lubin’s air features the sus­ tained "sighing cadence" we saw in the Arne airs; it begins in measure sixteen on the phrase "And by my grief did measure." Notice in meas­ ure seventeen the striking leap of a sixth to the word "grief" follow­ ing immediately after the leap downward of an octave; with the harmony sustaining the tonic F major chord in first inversion the force of -the word is heightened as the D in the melody is sung against the subdomi­ nant B flat chord in the accompaniment. Placing the word on the apex of the leap almost makes it a cry which, in this situation, is probably the effect Dibdin was seeking. This air, almost more so than Arne's "Gentle youth," represents the style bourgeois because of its unostentatious 184

plainness. There is little decoration and even less melisma than in

"Still in hopes" and "Gentle Youth." In short, it is perfectly suited

to the character of the simple country lad Lubin.

Having said something about the adaptability of the style galante

to comic opera a few words should be said about theory and criticism

of musical drama as it applied to the comic opera. We saw in the exami­

nation of the term comic opera earlier in chapter five that the basic

principle that music should be "confined to express the feelings of the

passions" was still being adhered to. John Burgoyne, who made the above

statement, offered about the only thoroughgoing assessment and rationale

for comic opera in his preface to The Lord of the Manor (1780) (Dramatic

Works, 140-144). His preface offers "a few words upon what I conceive would be the plan were men of genius and taste to try a specimen of correct Musical Comedy." In addition to his statement about the use of vocal music he adds that care should be taken so the music

does not interrupt or delay events for the issue of which the mind is become eager. It should always be the accesory and not the principal subject of the drama; but at the same time spring out of it in such a manner, that the difference can hardly be discerned, and that it should seem neither one or the other could be spared (142-143).

Modern critics of musical theatre may be startled by this statement be­ cause it almost echoes verbatim the concept which motivated the work of

Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hammerstein, 5 all the way up to the concept-musicals of Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim.

Essentially Burgoyne is calling for an integrated musical comedy, a

"phenomenon" which would not be truly realized until the premiere of

Oklahoma! in 1943. Why it took so long for Burgoyne's concepts to

"sink in" will be discussed shortly. In this preface we also see the 185

changes in drama reflected. Ballad opera often used song for satiric

effect and for low expressions by the low-life characters, but such is

not the case with comic opera as we see in this passage:

... vocal music judiciously managed would have many occa­ sions to distinguish its own specific charms, at the same time that it embellished, enriched, and elevated regular dramatic compositions. ... In the humbler, but not less instructive line of Comedy, its office would be to convey through the sweetest channel, and to establish by the most powerful impressions upon the mind, maxim, admonition, sentiment, virtue (14-3).

As we examine different comic operas we find song generally expressing the last two qualities Burgoyne mentions: sentiment and virtue. Airs are no longer evenly apportioned among characters but, on the other hand, are mostly reserved for the hero, heroine, and sometimes, the benevolent spokesman. The low-life characters are given occasional airs but these are flippant things with no real dramatic purpose. Instead of the insightful social commentary we experienced in the sententia airs we must now be satisfied with little harmless patter songs like this one from Bickerstaffe’s Lionel and Clarissa (1768):

Air

Zounds, sir! then I’ll tell you, without any jest, The thing of all things, which I hate and detest; A coxcomb, a fop, A dainty milk-sop; Who, essenced and dizen'd from bottom to top, Looks just like a doll for a milliner's shop. A thing full of prate, ' And pride and conceit; All fashion, no weight; Who shrugs, and takes snuff, And carries a muff; A minikin, Finikin, French powder-puff: And, now, sir, I fancy, I've told you enough. 186

There is some social criticism here hut nothing to equal the best sen­

tentia airs in ballad opera. More often the airs sung by characters

other than the hero and heroine are incorporated merely to offer an

up-tempo number and have some fun with words; the following air sung

by La Nippe in The Lord of the Manor describes a post chaise ride:

Cracking, smacking, Backing, tacking, Brats here bawling, sir, Dogs here sprawling, sir.

With the rise in popularity of sensibility and galante music one

can see why the songs not dealing with rarified feelings were handled so casually- In addition to this there was a running critical debate throughout the second half-century as to what the real end of comic

opera should be. Many critics of the day, who were more concerned with the literary aspects of the theatre, saw in the. comic opera a trend, as

Michael Winesanker points out in his article "Musico-dramatic Criticism of English Comic Opera," JAMS, II, (1949), p. 90, "that the drama of the age was swiftly degenerating into an insipid singsong in which sense was constantly sacrificed to sound and even prologue and epilogues had to be seasoned with their requisite number of airs." In reference to this Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, p. 262, has noted: "Because most operas after 1762 had spoken dia­ logue, the librettist usually felt that the music was no more than a decoration, and that the success or failure of the evening depended on the words." At the same time, there were music critics who found fault with the librettos and felt music should be given more precedence. And so the battle raged for fifty years with neither side winning out and 187

with the comic opera, in fear of being impaled on the horns of this

critical dilemma, running a middle ground of mediocrity.

Beyond critical attacks the strongest impediment to the growth of

comic opera and the theories forwarded by Burgoyne was the attitude of

the playwrights themselves toward the genre. One attitude could be termed the equivocal attitude; its basic thesis runs something like this: "I know that comic opera is basically tripe but it is what people want so why should I try to improve on it?" Isaac Bickerstaffe affirms this attitude while responding to critics in his preface to

Love in the City (1767):

To those who find fault with an Opera, merely for being such, it will be in vain to say anything in defence of this; indeed the absurdity attach’d to the musical Drama is so glaring, that there seems no great penetration necessary to discover it; and consequently, any one who will cry out sing-song or tweedle-dee, is capable of turn­ ing it into ridicule. Yet it should be considered, that its absurdity, gross as it is, constitutes, in a great measure, its power of pleasing, and however preposterous it may appear for people to carry on their most serious affairs in a song, we find the mind accomodate /sic/ itself to those sort of illusions on the Theatre, with so much ease, that it is little better than impertinence and pedantry to enquire into their propriety (i-ii).

Bickerstaffe is, one would believe, trying to make a forceful ration­ ale for comic opera in the above; he remonstrates with those who cannot or will not allow for the conventions of musical drama, but underneath it all lurks a lack of conviction and belief in what he is doing.

Richard Cumberland also betrays his lack of conviction in writing comic opera in his Memoirs (London: *l8O7), I, 248-49, where he describes the genesis of his The Summer1s Tale (1765):

Bickerstaffe having at this time brought out his operas of Love in a Village and The Maid of the Mill with great 188

success, some friends persuaded me to attempt a drama of that sort, and engaged Simpson, conductor of the band at Covent Garden and a performer on the hautboy, to compile the airs and adapt them to the stage. With very little knowledge of stage-effect, and as little forethought about plot, incident, or character, I sat down to write, and soon produced a thing in three acts, which I named the Summer's Tale, though it was a tale about nothing and very indifferently told; however, being a vehicle for some songs, not despicably written, and some of these very well set, it was carried by my friends to Beard, then manager of the theatre, and accepted for representation. My friends, who were critics merely in music, took as little concern about revising the drama, as I took pains in writing it: they brought me the music of old songs, and I adapted words to it, and wove them into the piece as I c ould.

Shortly after the opening Cumberland states that a Mr. Smith, currently engaged at Covent Garden,

... had the kindness to remonstrate with me upon the business I was engaged in, politely saying, that I ought to turn my talents to compositions of a more independent and a higher character; predicting to me, that I should reap neither fame nor satisfaction in the operatic depart­ ment, and demanding of me, in a tone of encouragement, why I would not rather aim at writing a good comedy, than dabbling in these sing-song pieces (Memoirs, I, 253-54).

The attitude emerging here is that comic opera is a metaphor for the lowest common denominator in dramatic composition and, therefore, is something for one to transcend in writing. In such an atmosphere it was hard for the genre to develop its potential.

In summary one would have to say that the comic operas were under­ mined as much by internal factors as they were by external factors like critics and avaricious theatre managers. The potential for comic opera to become first rate musical theatre was clearly in evidence: a whole new breed of talented composers and theatre musicians were waiting in the wings and the audience was, on the whole, receptive to the new 189

gal ante style in music. The drama however could not transcend the artificialities of convention created hy the cult of sensibility;

Allardyce Nicoll has stated in his Late Eighteenth Century Drama that sensibility "kept the playwrights within one narrow circle; it pre­ vented them from dealing with events natural and striking; it led towards artificiality in characterization and in denouement." In addition to this, the confusion over which was more important, drama or music, had an equally devastating effect on the operas produced. 190

NOTES *] Purcell (London: J. M. Dent, 1947; New York: Collier Books, i960), p. 186; Donald J. Grout makes a similar observation about Purcell’s music in his A Short History of Opera, p. 142: "When we examine Purcell's music, we are impressed first of all by the fresh engaging quality of his melodies, so like in feeling to English folk songs. ..." 2 Sharp, in English Folk Song, p. 69, states: "The majority of our folk tunes, say two-thirds, are in the major or ionian mode. The remaining third is fairly evenly divided between the mixolydian, dorian and aeolian modes, with perhaps, a preponderance in favour of the mixolydian." Bertrand Bronson, likewise, notes in his "Tradi­ tional Ballads Musically Considered," 40, that in the whole mass of British-American folk tunes there is "a greater liking for the major side of the modal spectrum; a strong compulsion to end on, not off, the tonic center. . . ." ^Cecil Sharp, in English Folk Songs, pp. 142-43, observes that even though many of the airs in the ballad operas are derived folk tunes "it needs but a cursory examination of this opera /The Beggar's Opera/ to see that the airs are anything but faithful transcriptions of genuine peasant tunes." He further notes that it is probable that Gay made most of the changes musically as he "was a townsman and there­ fore steeped in the music of his day" and, as a result, "would uncon­ sciously modernize the tunes which he sang to his collaborator." Technically we would have to believe that it was John Pepusch who was responsible for most of the musical changes. 4 Patrick J. Smith, in The Tenth Muse: A Historical Study of the Opera Libretto (New York: A. Knopf, 1970), p. 120, describes how popular songs were worked into the French : In the early 1700's with French companies at the fairs having been banned by and the Comedie-Francaise, "The resilient replied by adapting and evading: if the ban forbade singing, a in the audience began the song (always a popular tune), which would then be taken up by the rest of the audience."

^Lehman Engel, Words With Music, pp. 115-16, in a discussion of the concept of the- integrated musical echoes Burgoyne's basic theory about the smoothe continuity between dialogue and song when he de­ scribes an incident that occured after he saw Fiddler on the Roof: when a friend approached him and asked what he thought of the score, Engel states, he "could only reply that /he/ had been totally unaware of it" because he was "completely absorbed in the total experience." This, to Engel, was what he considered to be the ideal musical comedy experience. CHAPTER SEVEN

Conclusion

In this study an attempt has been made to isolate some of the fac­

tors which contributed to the popularity of the ballad opera. The

ballad opera was a type of drama created and nurtured by people who

believed they had to serve the interests of the mass audience. The

playwrights themselves knew they must create popular drama, and, for

the most part, they succeeded. All the conventions of form, all the

innovations, and all the traditions were directed to that mass audi­

ence. The most popular ballad operas, and these were often the finest,

display a deft handling of the diverse elements that comprise the

genre. The plots, as we have seen, are straightforward, they appeal to

the emotions, and they present an optimistic view of life and love.

Satire and song are used integrally to reinforce the emotionally oriented

themes and they also provide the theatregoer with a bridge which he

could use to span the everyday world of his cultural milieu and the

world on the stage. The conventions, then, of the ballad opera are

based partially on theatrical traditions, partially on popular beliefs and philosophies, and partially on the experiences integral to a Lon­ doner's life. The genre as a whole was able to avoid total artifici­ ality because it made a basic appeal to the sensibilities of the audi­ ence while at the same time offering them something innovative. With such a strong basis one must wonder why the genre did not survive longer.

The Licensing Act of .1737, as was discussed, had a deleterious effect on the future of ballad opera, but beyond this there are factors

191 192

intrinsic to the genre itself which were instrumental in its demise.

Only a few talented ballad opera authors were able to sustain excite­

ment and interest over one or two acts, and it is for this reason that

we find the majority of the playwrights after about 1730 turning their

attention to writing shorter ballad opera afterpieces. The shorter

form was easier to compose for the new playwrights who wished to ride

the wave of popularity ushered in by Gay's work, but at the same time,

the afterpiece limited the possibilities of the form because it allowed almost anyone to attempt the form. A second factor which contributed

to the downfall of the genre was the tendency of composers to dip time and time again into the same well for ballad airs until it reached a point where "Over the Hills and Far Away" was no longer striking (a current parallel to this is modern "top-forty" radio where songs are literally played to death). In short, the genre never really fulfilled its potential. Behind this was the London audience of the eighteenth century which demanded satisfaction. This was an audience which was constantly changing in physical and psychological makeup; Janus faced, it demanded novelty and at the same time needed the security of tradi­ tion and familiarity. The playwrights either played to the lowest com­ mon denominator of their understanding or tried to raise the level of their taste. In choosing the former and opting for the status quo the musical theatre achieved stasis; by seeking the latter the playwrights at times achieved art. If, perhaps, more playwrights had committed themselves as Fielding did to the idea of ballad opera by bringing in new composers to write original songs and maintaining the traditions of satire initiated by John Gay the genre could have reigned for another 193

twenty-five or more years. The years following the decline of ballad

opera, however, produced something quite different.

The comic opera, technically, should have carried on the tradi­

tions of musical comedy initiated by the ballad opera but such was not

the case. Granted, the comic opera produced more original music but

this was really a minor accomplishment. Something was lost in musical

comedy during the second half of the eighteenth century; that something

centers around the qualities of realism and contemporaneity that marked the finest ballad operas, and which have since marked some of the best modern musical comedies. The ballad opera presented a type of drama which featured characters, a mode of satire, and a style of music all drawn from the bustling world of Augustan England. It was the product of a culture interested in the multiplicity of experiences which made up contemporary living, a culture which was not afraid to satirize its follies and vices or wax sentimental over what it felt was good and right. The comic opera, on the other hand, presented a prefabricated world founded on abstraction and foreign influences: the setting of the comic opera is more symbolic and atmospheric than it is real; its char­ acters strike one as being iconic models of behavior and morality rather than flesh and blood people drawn from the immediate culture; and, finally, its music was borrowed or derived from French and Italian models and was more likely to be heard in an artificial salon setting rather than spontaneously on the streets or in a public house. The comic opera, in short, was a genre which could not transcend the arti­ ficialities of its conventions; there was nothing like the Licensing

Act to thwart its progress but only a lack of commitment to the concept 194

2 of musical comedy. The fact that The Beggar's Opera has been revived

continuously since its premiere, while the works of Bickerstaffe,

O'Keeffe, and Burgoyne have slipped into obscurity, is a good indica­

tion of the basic vitality of the ballad opera form.

As one reviews the best efforts of the- ballad opera authors like

Fielding, Charles Coffey, Henry Ward, James Ralph, and Robert Drury he

will find that they are not without humor, charm, ingenuity, and, as a

result they could easily be revived today probably for successful runs.

The idea that many of these plays could be successfully staged today

presents what is the most important conclusion which can be drawn from

this study of the ballad opera: in its careful balance of the con­

stituent elements of its structure the ballad opera presents the critic

with what is probably the model for musical comedy. The ballad opera

consists of different conventions which not only have meaning in and

of themselves but which also reinforce one another. We have seen that

playwrights used satire to reinforce the farce-intrigue plot and that

the character conflicts of the farce-intrigue plot serve very well the

structure and ends of Whig satire. It is, in fact, quite hard to con­

ceive of a ballad opera which does not feature some conflict between

the upper class and the lower class, and which does not use that con­

flict to make some satiric point. To these concerns must be added the musical element which is the most important of all the aspects of the genre, and to properly assess the effectiveness and value of these plays

one must determine how well the music supports and delineates the other aspects 'in the drama. The ballad opera has suffered critical neglect for too long because few critics have been willing to view the music as 195

part of the literature and the literature as part of the music. If we

extrapolate the musical and literary elements in ballad opera and view

them as autonomous subjects the genre as a whole will appear to be little better than vaudeville or . In a , for instance,

there may be a suggestion of a theme which provides a skeletal frame­ work around which sketches, mini-dramas, bits-of-business, and songs can be molded. In vaudeville and the revue songs could justly be viewed as decoration; the fact that as many as ten composers contributed songs at times to revues in England and America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries suggests that formal consistency was not a high priority. Such is not the case with ballad opera. Music at once con­ trols the movement and development of the plot while at the same time adding substance to the basic farce-satire structure. Song can be used to build up to some dramatic scenes and, conversely, dramatic action might be used to establish a setting for a musical scene. It is this balanced coordination between dialogue and song which marks many of the finest ballad operas and many of the finest modern musical comedies. What is a bit amusing here is that it took over 200 years and the 19^3 production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's’ Oklahoma! to tap the secret of the integrated musical, a secret locked up in the store­ house of eighteenth century popular drama.

The most difficult part in analyzing the ballad opera has been isolating the aspects of farce, satire, and song for specific discussion.

The difficulty arises because one must view at once the totality and interdependency of the constituent elements of the plays. Strangely enough, audiences seemed to have grasped, and still do, this totality 196

almost immediately; they understand the basic conventions of the musical drama, and they are prepared as they enter the theatre to view and accept some representation of life where song is the natural outgrowth of the action. Hopefully this study has presented a methodology that may be implemented in future analyses of how musical drama functions both intrinsically and extrinsically; it is also hoped that it has offered the reader some insights into the eighteenth century ballad opera, "a mode of comedy," as Dr. Johnson described it, "so well accom­ modated to the disposition of a popular audience. ..." 197

NOTES

Harold Gene Moss, in his article "Popular Music and the Ballad Opera," JAMS, 26, No. 3 (1973), 381, believes that the decline of the ballad opera was directly attributable to the fact that "With a limited supply of music and a large number of operas written in less than three years, the authors were not able to vary the effects their songs could achieve." 2 There is one solid exception to this "lack of commitment" one finds in so many of the comic operas, and the play is Richard Sheridan’s The Duenna. This comic opera was not, like so many of the genre, a hastily assembled entertainment; on the contrary, as one reads Sheri­ dan's correspondence with Thomas Linley, who arranged and scored the airs, he sees Sheridan relying on Linely's judgement in compiling the music and arranging it according to the singers' specialities and the dramatic needs of the action itself. See The Letters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, ed. Cecil Price (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), I, 86-95. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Plumb, J. H. England in the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: Penguin Books; The Pelican History of England, 7, 1950.

Price, Cecil. Theatre in the Age of Garrick. Totowa, N. J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1973.

Price, Martin. To the Palace of Wisdom: Studies in Order and Energy from Dryden to Blake. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1964. -

Richards, Kenneth and Peter Thomson, eds. Essays on the Eighteenth- Century British Stage. London: Methuen, 1972.

Robinson, Michael F. Opera Before Mozart. New York: William Morrow, 1966. 211

Rogers, Pat. The Augustan Vision. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974.

_____ . Grub-Street: Studies in a Subculture. London: Methuen, 1972.

Schultz, William Eben. Gay's Beggar's Opera: Its Content, History, and Influence. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1923.

Sharp, Cecil J. English Folk Song: Some Conclusions. Fourth (revised) edition prepared by Maud Karpeles. London: 1907; Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1965.

Sherbo, Arthur. English Sentimental Drama. East Lansing:- The Michi­ gan State Univ. Press, 1957.

Shesgreen, Sean, ed. Engravings by Hogarth. New York: Dover, 1973-

Simpson, Claude M. The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1966.

Smith, Dane Farnsworth. The Critics in the Audience of the London Theatres from Buckingham to Sheridan: A Study of Neoclassicism in the Playhouse. Albuquerque: The Univ. of New Mexico Press; Univ. of New Mexico Pubs, in Language and Literature, 12, 1953•

_____ . Plays About the Theatre in England from The Rehearsal in 1671 to the Licensing Act in 1737« London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1936.

Smith, Patrick J. The Tenth Muse: A Historical Study of the Opera Libretto. New York: Knopf, 1970.

Spink, Ian. English Song: Dowland to Purcell. London: B. T. Bats- ford, 19747

Swedenberg, H. T., ed. England in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century: Essays on Culture and Society. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1972.

Tasch, Peter. The Life and Work of Isaac Bickerstaffe. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell Univ. Press, 1971.

Taylor, Gordon- Rattray. The Angel Makers: A Study in the Psychological Origins of Historical Change, 1750-1850. New York: E. P. Dutton,

Wain, John. Samuel Johnson: A Biography. New York: Viking Press, 1974.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1957-

Westrup, Jack. Purcell. London: J. M. Dent, 194?, 1960. 212

White, Eric Walter. The Rise of English Opera. London: John Lehman, 1951.

Whitney, Lois. Primitivism and the Idea of Progress in English Popular Literature of the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1934.

Willey, Basil. The Eighteenth Century Background: Studies in the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the Period. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1940.

______. The Seventeenth Century Background : The Thought of the Age in Relation to Religion and Poetry. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1935-

Zimbardo, Rose A. Wycherly's Drama: A Link in the Development of English Satire. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965.

B. Articles

Avery, Emmett L. "Dancing and Pantomime on the English Stage, 1700- 1737." Studies in Philology, 31 (1934), 417-52.

_____ . "Vaudeville on the London Stage, 1700-1737." Research Studies of the State College of Washington, 5, No. 2, (1937), 65-77»

Boyd, Malcolm. "John Hughes on Opera." Music and Letters, 52 (October, 1971), 383-86.

Bronson, Bertrand. "The Beggar's Opera." Studies in the Comic, Univ. of California Publications in English, 8 (l94l77 197-231.

_____ . "Traditional Ballads Musically Considered." Critical Enquiry, 2 (Autumn, 1975), 29-42.

Burgess, C. F. "Political Satire: John Gay's The Beggar's Opera." Midwest Quarterly, 6 (1965), 265-76.

Crane, Ronald S. "Suggestions toward a Genealogy of the 'Man of Feel­ ing.'" English Literary History, 1 (1934), 205-30.

Draper, John W. "The Theory of the Comic in Eighteenth Century England." J ournal of English and Germanic Philology, 37 (1938), 207-23.

Fiske, Roger. "A Score for 'The Duenna.'" Music and Letters, 42, No. 2 (April, 1961), 132-41.

Frye, Northrop. "Towards Defining an Age of Sensibility." English Literary History, 23 (1956), 144-52. 213

George, Graham. "The Structure of Dramatic Music, 1607-1909." The Musical Quarterly, 52 (October, 1966), 465-82.

Gladding, Bessie A. "Music as a Social Force During the English Com­ monwealth and Restoration (1649-1700)." The Musical Quarterly, 15 (1929), 506-21.

Hart, Eric Ford. "The Restoration Catch.” Music and Letters, 54, No. 4 (October, 1953), 288-305.

Heisch, Elisabeth. "A Selected List of Musical Dramas and Dramas with Music from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." Restora- tion and Eighteenth Century Theatre Research, 11, Nos. 1 and 2 1197277'33-58; 37-59.

Hume, Robert D. "Some Problems in the Theory of Comedy." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 31 (1972), 87-100.

Jensen, H. James. "English Restoration Attitudes toward Music." The Musical Quarterly, 55 (April, 1969), 206-14.

Kidson, Frank. "A Study of Old English Song and Popular Melody Prior to the Nineteenth Century." The Musical Quarterly, 1 (October, 1915), 569-82.

Klinger, Mary F. "Music and Theater in Hogarth," The Musical Quarterly, 57 (July, 1971), 409-26.

Knapp, J. Merrill. "A Forgotten Chapter in English Eighteenth-Century Opera." Music and Letters, 42, No. 1 (January, 1961), 4-16.

Lamson, Roy. "Henry Purcell's Dramatic Songs and the English Broadside Ballad." PMLA, 53 (1938), 148-61.

Lawrence, W.. J. "Early Irish Ballad Opera and Comic ’Opera." The Musical Quarterly, 8 (1922), 397-412.

Lowens, Irving. "The Touch-Stone (1728): A Neglected View of London Opera." The Musical Quarterly, 45 (1955), 325-42.

Mark, Jeffrey. "Ballad Opera and Its Significance in the History of English Stage-Music." The London Mercury, 8 (1923), 256-78.

Montgomery, -Franz. "Early Criticism of Italian Opera in England." The Musical Quarterly, 15 (July, 1929), 415-25.

Morrissey, LeRoy J. "Henry Fielding and the Ballad Opera." Eighteenth Century Studies, 4 (1971), 386-402.

Moss, Harold Gene. "Popular Music and the Ballad Opera." Journal of the American Musicological Society, 26, No. 3 (1973), 365-82. 214

Noyes, Robert Gale. "Conventions of Song in Restoration Tragedy." PMLA, 53 (1938), 162-88.

Parnell, Paul E. "Equivocation in Cibber’s Love * s Last Shift." Studies in Philology, 52 (1960), 519-34.

_____ . "The Sentimental Mask." PMLA, 78 (1963), 529-35-

Preston, John. "The Ironic Mode: A Comparison of Jonathan Wild and The Beggar’s Opera." Essays in Criticism, 16 (July, 1966), 26£-8oT

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Rogers, Pat. "The Critique of Opera in Pope's Dunciad." The Musical Quarterly, 59 (January, 1973), 15-30.

Rubsamen, Walter. "Mr. Seedo, Ballad Opera, and the ." Miscelánea en Homenaje A Monseñor Higinio Angles. Barcelona: Consejo Superior De Investigaciones Científicas, 1958-61, 2, pp. 775-809.

Sawyer, Paul. "The Popularity of Various Types of Entertainment at Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden Theatres." Theatre Notebook, 24 (1970), 154-63.

Smith, John Harrington. "Tony Lumpkin and the Country Booby Type in Antecedent English Comedy." PMLA, 58 (1943), 1038-49-

Stewart, Keith. "The Ballad and the Genres in the Eighteenth Century." English Literary History, 24 (1957), 120-37-

Wilkinson, Andrew M. "The Decline of English Verse Satire in the Middle Years of the Eighteenth Century." Review of English Studies, N. S. 3 (1952), 222-33-

Williams, Aubrey. "No Cloistered Virtue; Or, Playwright versus Priest in 1698." PMLA, 90 (1975), 234-46.

Winesanker, Michael. "Musico-Dramatic Criticism of English Comic Opera, I75O-I8OO." J ournal of the American Musicological Society, 2 (1949), 87-967

Yearling, Elizabeth M. "The Good-Natured Heroes of Cumberland, Gold­ smith, and Sheridan." Modern Language Review, 67 (1972), 490-500. APPENDIX

The source for the majority of ballad opera airs included here is

the Garland series of ballad operas edited by Walter Rubsamen; the airs used are taken from the editions used in the body of this study.

All songs from The Beggar's Opera are from the Regents Restoration

Drama edition published by The University of Nebraska Press; this also is the edition of the play used in this study.

The melody for "Cold and Raw" (Fig. 21) is from William Chappell's

Popular Music of the Olden Time (London: 1855-57), I, 308.

The sources for the songs from comic opera included here are as follows: Thomas Arne's "Still in Hopes to get the better" and "Gentle

Youth, ah! tell me why" are from The Beauties of Melody: A Collection of the Most Popular Airs, ed. W. H. Plumstead (London: ?1827)-

Charles Dibdin's songs from The Quaker, "I Locked Up All My

Treasure" and "The Lads of the Village," are from The Songs of Charles

Dibdin, 2 vols. in 1, with "A Memoir of the Author" by George Hogarth

(London: 1844).

The Madrigal finale from The Duenna is from Amusement for the

Ladies: Being a Selection of Favorite Catches, Glees, and Madrigals,

3 vols. in 1 (London: c. 1785-89)*

215 j h \ C t

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Cler. Pr’ythce don’t diftraic me! if my dear Colia proves but con&anr, I dare theutrqoilMalicc ofm y Fate. Lett. There was a -Whine!

Clcr. Jf e’er my Fair proves fetlje Io w*j Or weds that IFrcicb for fordid Gain, *Tis Death alor.e muf fit me free, j$nd rid n.e of wy Pain. O kindly then my Fears defray, Swear you ever will he true, Til ev'ry Flour of Life employ, So faow my Lome to you.

Figure 4 221

A I R V. Mutrland ITUly.

Cxi. Cfj/i tby Fears, and fgb no more, My Heart is truly yours atone5 a I'd father beg from Door to Door, Than med toitb fttcb a Clsasnt .A-Wretch mbom Hal are made for Mirth, As Apes the vulgar Crorad mill plcafe^ A fordid Sot, a. Clod of Eaftb, I lost b as a Difeefe.

Lett. What Work’s Here! I believe your Rogue Davy an J I mult lay our Heads together to aflilt J0«?

Figure 5 222 ' a r e p O

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Ì (f Mock Doctors Ór> I. ! AIR VIIL. Ye Nymphx sod Sylvan Godi. Ì f

Figure 7 224

a Tai L o V £ R s Opera.

AIR I. Diogenes furiy and proud.

Uur Unldrenfor BleJJings toere meant, Tet Jeldom a Bleffing they proven Ihey poifon a Parent's Content, With Plagues in their obfiinate Lome. In Nonage they whimper and cry, And teize us all Day -with their Noife 5 In their Gleens they eur Profetis defiroy, And, Jighing for Man, kill our Joys.

Figure 8 225

4 & Covers Optra.

AIR IT. Red Houic.

Touth and Aore.will never ¡Fell agree together, Bui with fiormy ¡Feather Paß the long and tedious Day. jig: with Clouds will cover, Damp, and kill the Lover y 'Tis the Touthful Rover Proves our lively Jbining Ray. ; This Jlge and Toutb jire Lies and Truth, They differ more than Peace and ¡Far. They're Heat and Cold, ; They're Lead and Gold, i They're Debtors that have nought to pay. i

Figure 9 226

Tns Loysrs Optra. . AIR V. Buff-Coar.

I i Ì 1

\ Poor Marriage of late, Like Places of State, Without Money mill find no Favour. Is there Money? you cry: If noy they reply, The Devil bimfelf may have her. If you have a good Pttrfe', For better for morfe The Men mill all firive to take you. But of that if youfail, To till never prevail, For the Wretches mill allf orfakeyott. JHExat.

Figure 10 227

xo Ifo Lovers Optra.

AIR VI. When the Kine had giv*n a Pailful.

Jf we feel a Under Poff on, Parents cry we're much to Matne^ Loving now is out of Fafoinn? Inter:ft is their only jiitit. fPretcha! Creatures I 'Tis their Natures: JFhen with jfge the' Bloodrafts cold, Love's caUd Polly, ■ - - Melancholy: jfll their Longings are for Gold. .dll their, Sec.

What ihould make Edgar ftay id long? I hope my hated Lover Moody has not met with him------No, he is here. Enter Edgar. Clsr. My Level Edg. My Clara! Cail off this Melancholy, thy Fa­ ther's Temper yet may change, and we be happy. Clar. Alas! the Avarice of Parents is a Difeaie that fhrengthens with Age, and knows no Cure.

AIR

Figure 11 »

h flit L o y b r $ Optra, ïhe Loÿers Opera,' xj AIR IX. Dee’l take the Wav».

F EHg. 'fit Hope that fweetent Want anil Wot» i g dud fileni ev'ry Pain, u STiiif flackledSlavi rati Grief forego, r

e fiope flit bini frti again.

¡Die tbetrint Sun flail teaft bit flining, Ilipt it the 1 Curt of black Definir, Jf Clara e'er provtt falft to tbtti 2 "Pit that forbiat to grieve j Do flighted Lover know repining, Wt Jighing hope It ¡ain the Fair, Or Pcmpefl ever flake the Sea. in Dope ’alone we live, in Hope, C(c, No Mortal e'er flail move tut > LU flint all (but tbee) that love me y Clar. I'll be a» cheerful ai I can j but let wliatwlll dll Slighting, all Scorning, for tbee, my Swaltt", ^omc,. be aijur'd, I'll t^ycr change iny Love. dît Perturet I will bear I'or tbee, my only Dean Do tbon prove true, dt I will be to you, did Clara e'tr will fid a Joy In Pain,

ro ro oo 229

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AIR II. Come hither, good People^

Tour Weapon, good Sir, to your Scabbard’s confa d, jind tho' now to draw it, you may be inclin'd ; With ^ige and with Ruf it is fiubbom yeull fad, With a down, down, down, down, down, down, awry, derry derry up and down ftp and down a, 2 on only now wear it for Fafiion, 'tis true, jls a Mark of a Gentleman that once cou'd do, Rut 1 think there's no Danger, you e'er fiats'd run thro*, With a down, Sec.

Figure 17 232

C^l. Why, what.wou’d yourWiidoxn have done, pray ? . ( . Lett. I’ll roll yon, Madas.

AIR III. 'White Joak.

T¿merk, the Goods with Hand end Seal, Fbat fhou d in Fime your Cafe reveal, And drive all Parebafers essay. But Lovers new are grown fucb Fools, Fhey go to work without their Fools, '' And only whine their Finte away. *Fis heft to come at---- Pifa! nay Fie! I vow. and fwtar, Pll fooner die! O Lord! good Sir! what is1/ you mean ? O Dear, I fear we faall be feen, Ab!—what will all my Kindred fay!

Figure 18 .. - - THE ■ • / ; FEMALE PARSON:

BEAU in the SUDDS.

ACT I. SCENE L The Captains Lodgings near St. James's.. Enter Noble drefling, and Comtek combing his lTig£r AIR I. Vain Belinda.

Ca? t. U PID, gentle God cf Love, To my Hopes propitious prove ; Lead me kindly to her Arms, ¡There ref ide immortal Charms : Then with moft exfaiick Blifs, Mingling Sort Is in ev’ry kifs. In Embrace intranc'd I’ll he, Till the Gods with Envy die B Cast.

Figure 19 4 o > r k ! * * a r e p O

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Figure 20 235

308 raoLTSH sosa asto saxus music.

■i

Figure 21 Appendix A

Oh, the Broom AIR XVIII man.

i. macjixath; 7. roixr

I. The mi» - tt thu» a »hit • tin£_ vxs. Which ». The boy, thui, when hit »par • row’»— flown, the

-128-

Figure 22 Öf-COVHTRT B-UXÎAl. n AIR XXIX Fond Scho.

aÎx wstched osi meme, me dejpijê The Vicious, their Wealth, and high State $ The loweft, in Virtue, sxnyrfe, ,Tis Virtue alane noies ut great. The boarje Peacock, th? gaudy auigtp'f. Sweeps the Earth mito bis Tirane, tòt J» hrtghf^ While the Lari, tu ois. bxmhle Array, Soars maràlt ag sa Regtrus of Eight.

Figure 23 238

74 SILVI A; Or,

AIR LXII. Ah howfvr«t’s thecoolingBrcexe.

Sir John. Oh bora Jsstet, All over Charms, To bleji say Amtsx Thy generous Firtae all ¡Gee dfeatiag. Sil. AU compleas and pan's aty Joy, Wtihoat Alley', ' TJGtb Traafport anafael jay Bojcm is heatings Sir John. Dearef Treafere I Sil. O foy beyond uttafarei Sir John. Tats truly ss.Pleafare. Te FolCes adieu. Both. 0 DeoJejil Allcomplex* asjHpares ary fayy HGtheat Alloy ; ¡Pith Tranfpart aaafaal my Bejbm is beating. Sil. Lave gently firing, And ¡fitly ifipiring, Sir John. Panting, definng, I'll fGrtxe purfxe. Both. Ob DeareJH AH compleai and p are's myfioy^ Without Alloy ; Waite Hoars approach, and the blaci are ret reat try,

~7 G Bfig.

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Figure 25 *Ibe ffivss Metamorfico?d. 3* AIR XVIII. Hey Boyj np go wr.

Lady. Let ev'ry Fact with Smiles appear, Be foy in ev'ry Breaß, Sincef rom a Life of Pais and Carr, IFe now are truly bleß.

Sfc John. '»Jay no Remembrance ofpajl Time, Our prefent Pltafuret foil, Be nought but Mirth and foy a Crime, And Spurting all our Toil.

J hope you'!! grot mt leave to fpiae, If I may be fo bold' . , There’s nought but the Devil, and tins good Strap, Could ever tame a Scold.

FINI X

Figure 26 241

Lnm. Come, iny dear Cbloe, don’t let yoo'r Lack griere you------yon 'are not the onlyPeibn'Ki't teen deeeir’d in a Lottery. AIR XXII

Fbat tit World it e Lottery, robot Mojo ten doebt ? Worn tom, tee're put in, vibeie dead, vie re drawn oat; Jedthe' Tickets ere bought by tbt Fool, and tbe Wife, Tet 'titplain there are mere then tm Blanks to a Prize. Sing Tantararara, Fools all, Fools slL

Stocks. 23/ Court hat it felf a bed Lottery’/ rate-, Where tea ¿rate a Blank, before one eiratnt a Place; For a Ticket h> Levi vibe rooe'd grot yen Thenbt ? For that Wheel containr fearer any bet Blanks. Sing Tantararara, keep out, keep out.

Lorena. ’JHa*»/? DoSort and Latuyert fame good oner ere fosnd’; Bet, elat! they ere rare at tbe'Ten thoufand Pound; Hovifcarce it a Prize, if vritb Women yon deal, "Foie cere best yon marry—for Ob! in that Wheel; | (Sing Tantarara,) Blanks all, Blanks all; ' •

Stocks. Fbat tbt Stage it a Lottery, .by ell’tit agreed, Where ten Playt ere damn'd, ere one eon fneeeedj ; Fit Blanks are fo many, tie Prizes fofera, ! ffe c!l are undone, unlcft badly yen. (Sing Tantarara.) Clap all, Clap all;

FINIS;

Figure 27 I

Tur. Munn or “TiibJJbooar'i Opf.ra" Appendix A

Iridi Trot AIRXXXVL «non.

i

ro -P- ro Appendix A The Music 0» "The Deooaii's Opera' An Olii Woman Clothed in Gray AIR I anoit.

PKACHVU F i g u r e

2 9

I

ro so 7^ Mocx DofcToit:

AIR V. SetbyMr.SEEDO.

Informal dull Schools, By Forefathers Rules, The DoS or't equipp'd out for Slaughter j If according to Are, The Patient depart, He never it blamdfor it after.

The Quad fill fucceedt, Orfaiit by his Deeds, If be atilt you, he gets not a Shilling} But who denitt Feet To the Quad, wife Degreet Once give hit» a Lif encefor Killing ?

Harry. This muil be the very Man we were folt after. Dore. Yonder is the very Man I fpeak of. garnet. "Wbsx, that he yonder? Dore. The very fame.—He has fpy’d os, and taken op hts Bill. Jamet. Come, Harry, don’t let ns lofe one Moment.—— Miflrefs, your Servant; we give you ten thonfand Thanks for this Fayoar. Dore. Be fare, and make good Uie of yoor Sticks. f amtt. He fhan’t want that-. [Exeunt. Rr-tnier

Figure JO AIR VII. Abbot of Gaxtethxry.

*The Priejlt, Hit toe "La-ayers, are all ef a Gaag, jiadthe DoSert, like Bees, together da haagg Fieformer tuoa'i pray, »or the latter prefciihe, (Jzlefs ye» tsdace 'em thereto hy a Brihe. Dmj ¿wn, down, bey iarj down.

The Relighg of both it j> IaPrtji nrssprij’Jf *Tbe peer Ma» it feUo/n hy either advis'd ; But if they're veel! fee'd—they' 11 he fare to attevd, Bad pray, o»d preferihe, till year StaePt at a» ead. Darj down, down,

Figure 31 20 Tie Mock Doctor: 0r3

SCENE The Street,

. Leander folas.'

- Ah,.Chariot! thoo haft no reafon to apprehend my Ignorsaca of what thon endnreft, fince I can fo eafily goeij thy Tor- jneas by my own. *— ’Oh how much morejuftifiable are my Fears, when yon hare not only the Command of a Parent* pat the Temptation of Fortune to allure you!

AIR VIL SetbyMr. SE EDO.

0 turfed Power of Gold, For winch all Honour'j fold, And Hontjift no more ! ’for thee we often find The Great in Leaguej combin'd] To trìti and rob the Poor.

By thee the Fool and Knave, Tranfeend the Wife and prove, So abflnte thy Reign: Without fonte Help tf thine. Tie greatefi Beauties Jhine, And Lovers plead in vain. Enter

Figure 32 ro 0 4 ■

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a p o H

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Figure 33 o ¿ 1 6 . © 0 6

Figure 33 (continued) an

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V4 -P- : J • ' > . « . i Gentle Youth, ahi tell me,why.. < ' : ' > •") tUNO ir.VH’ ITBFIIBNS IN 10TB IN A VILLAOI. ' '

A»»«.

I I

no 4=* VD o r 7 4

Figure 34 (continued) » r i

Figure 35 252

Figure 36

The following air, "The Lads of the Village," is sung by Steady in The Quaker, and functions as the finale for scene six of Act one; it is another good example of the galante style combined with the charm of the English popular or folk song. P- 4 ft) cr\

ro VJl V) - 1 > F J \ - l V

Tlgure \uunuiuucu; 255

Figure 37

The following is the original music that was used as the finale for Sheridan's The Duenna. This air probably would have been scored in the new galante style by Thomas Linley. Roger Fiske, in his "A Score for 'The Duenna,"' Music and Letters, 42, No. 2 (April, 1961), notes that the only remaining music for this number is the vocal score which omits the refrains and has a different bass than that of Morley's original; this, of course, would be in keeping with the tendency of galante airs to diminish the contrapuntal texture of such early airs in favor of a more homophonic texture. All five voices would have been retained in keeping with the trend to make elaborate ensemble finishes. A o n O r <

Figure 37 > n v r v

Figure 37 (continued)