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Fielding's Dramatic Comedies: the Influence of Congreve and Moliere. William Arnett Uls Livan Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

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Fielding's Dramatic Comedies: the Influence of Congreve and Moliere. William Arnett Uls Livan Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1971 Fielding's Dramatic Comedies: the Influence of Congreve and Moliere. William Arnett ulS livan Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Sullivan, William Arnett rJ , "Fielding's Dramatic Comedies: the Influence of Congreve and Moliere." (1971). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 2092. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/2092 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. | SULLIVAN) Jr., William Arnett, 19^2- FIELDING'S DRAMATIC COMEDIES: THE INFLUENCE OF CONGREVE AND MOLIERE. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, I Ph.D., 1971 I Language and Literature, general i [ University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan _ ____ _ .... _ ... ^ © 1971 WILLIAM ARNETT SULLIVAN, Jr. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED \v \ THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED Fielding's Dramatic Comedies: The Influence of Congreve and Moliere A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by William Arnett Sullivan, Jr. B.A., Delta State College, 1965 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1963 August, 1971 EXAMINATION AND THESIS REPORT Candidate: William Arnett Sullivan, Jr. Major Field: English Title of Thesis: Fielding's Dramatic Comedies: The Influence of Congreve and Moliere Approved: . Q . ________ Major Professor and Chairman --------- Dean of the Graduate School EXAMINING COMMITTEE: r Date of Examination: July 21. 1971 PLEASE NOTE: Some Pages have indistinct print. Filmed as received. UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS ACKNOWLEDGMENT I am grateful to Professor Percy G. Adams for directing the early phases of this paper, reading and criticizing the first four chapters. When geographical separation made his further guidance impracticable, Professor William J. Olive kindly consented to direct the remainder of this study. I thank Professor Olive for giving so generously of his time and for making accessible his vast knowledge of English dramatic comedy. I am also indebted to Professors James T. Nardin and John H. Wildman for careful, perceptive reading of my paper and for numerous suggestions for its stylistic and argumentative improvement. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENT................................. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS................................. iii ABSTRACT.................................. iv CHAPTER I. The Critical Perspective............... 1 II. Relations Between Moliere and Congreve. • 23 III. The Early Comedies. .............. 46 IV. The Influence of Congreve......... 64 V. The Later Comedies. ••••••••••• 124 VI. The Influence of Moliere........ •••• 166 VII. Conclusion. ...................... 196 LIST OF WORKS CITED . 210 VITA ............................................. 216 iii ABSTRACT This study traces the influence of Congreve and Moliere on Fielding's regular, full-length dramatic comedies. Fielding's comedies are, in order of compo­ sition, Love in Several Masques. The Temple Beau. Rape Upon Rape. The Wedding-Day. The Modern Husband. The Miser. The Universal Gallant. and The Fathers. The method used to determine the nature and extent of influence is that developed by John Wilcox in The Rela­ tion of Moliere to the Restoration Stage. Wilcox divided transferred elements into categories of thought (spirit) and embodiment (matter and form). After Wilcox identified the transferred elements in each category, he determined the nature and extent of influence on the bases of the frequency of the borrowings and their relative importance or centrality in the complete works of the source and of the borrower. The most important and imperishable influence is a transfer of spirit. In this category belongs any aspect of an artist's thought as a whole, any reflec­ tion of his view of man's nature and condition. The category of matter includes any particular objectivity of an artist's spirit— actions, characters, situations, or settings— that compose visible or audible mediums. Elements contributing to the manner or method of iv presentation belong in the category of form. Among these elements are style of language, type of dialogue, manipulation of scenes, and plan of exposition. In the first four comedies, Fielding draws heavily upon the thought and embodiment of Congreve’s The Old Batchelor. The Double-Dealer. Love for Love, and The Way of the World. The earlier the play the more Fielding relies upon Congreve. He borrows slightly less from The Way of the World than from the. other come­ dies, and for vital or central elements— heroes, hero­ ines, or highly significant incidents or situations— Fielding turns most often to Love for Love. The comedies of Congreve and the early comedies of Fielding depict ideal worlds, in which the evil that exists is always subdued by prevalent virtue. Both comedians write drama in the tradition of Ben Jonson’s comedy of behavior. Behavior portraying vice and folly is presented more for diversion than for instruction df readers or audi­ ences. The influence of Congreve is displaced by that of Moli'fere in Fielding’s later comedies. Moliere’s L ’Avare. L ’ljfcole des Maris, and L ’Ecole des Femmes are important models and sources for Fielding’s The Miser. The Univer­ sal Gallant. and The Fathers. Fielding uses almost every character, scene, incident, and line from Moliere’s v L'Avare in his The Miser, although his adaptation is different enough from its source to be called an original play. There are few borrowings from Moliere in The Universal Gallant and The Fathers, but Fielding uses ideas and techniques for which Moliere is the probable source. Moliere*s comedies and Fielding's later comedies portray a world marred by man's unhappiness and inability to live with other men. Happiness and social harmony are thwarted by delusions and passions which dominate principal characters in the plays. The block­ ing characters in Moliere*s comedies deviate from the norm of the raissoneur reflected in collective society. In Fielding's comedies, on the contrary, the norm is found outside collective society. In fact, Fielding's heroes deviate from whereas his blocking figures con­ form to the social norm. Perhaps the most important discoveries made in influence studies are ways in which artists are inde­ pendent of models. Fielding's originality is his representation of character in the,.later comedies. He provides a sort of exercise in attaining a knowledge of character by representing characters' actions and motives with an ambiguity from which the reader or audience must make final judgments and evaluations. vi CHAPTER I THE CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE Nearly half the forty-nine pages which make up the first biography of Fielding (1762) are devoted to either explanation of or apology for the artist’s failure in the province of drama. Hasty and careless writing, immaturity, the unfortunate imitation of Wycherley and Congreve, and Fielding’s letting his wit run away with his judgment are cited by Arthur Murphy as main causes for Fielding’s failure as a dramatist. Nevertheless, Murphy concedes that ’’the reader who peruses them [the dramatic works] attentively, will not only carry away with him many useful discoveries of the foibles, affectations, and humours of mankind, but will also agree with me that inferior productions 1 are now successful on stage.” Later critics have usually given proportionately less attention to the dramatic works, directing their attention to the faults instead of the virtues mentioned by Murphy. •^The Lives of Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson Together with Assays from "The ~5rav1 s-vLnn Journal” (Gainesville, Fla.s Scholars* Facsimiles & Reprints, 1968), p. 251. Murphy’s biography of Fielding was first printed in his edition of The Works of Henry Fielding. Esq.. 1762. 1 Murphy began his dramatic career as a writer of farce and tragedy, but in 1760 he wrote his own first comedy, The Way to Keep Him. Allardyce Nicoll consid­ ered him one of the most important of several dramatists who kept alive the style and themes of the Restoration comedy of manners. Unquestionably sentimental in the conduct of plot and in the dialogue, Murphy's own comedy of manners had been cleansed of Fielding's harsh features and "the indelicacy, and sometimes downright obscenity of his raillery."2 In Nicoll's judgment "the finest plays of the later years of the period [1700-1750] which show the influence of the manners style are those of Fielding."^ Nicoll asserted, however, that during the same period "the influence of Jeremy Collier, along with the influence of the sentimental comedy, created a certain spirit antagonistic to the production of the fine comedy of the previous age. The comedy of manners, there­ fore, slowly died away as a creative element in dramatic productivity, even at the very time when Congreve and Wycherley were most popular in the theatre."**’ The 2Ibid.. p. 249. History of English Drama: 1660-1900. 3rd ed. (Cambridge: TneUniversity Press, 1961), TT, 156. 4Ibid.. II,
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