HENRY FIELDING'S ARISTOPHANIC COMEDY

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University Microfilms International 300 N. ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106 18 BEDFORD ROW, LONDON WC1R 4EJ, ENGLAND 7918258

LOVEDAY, THOMAS ELLIOT HENRY FIELDING'S ARISTOPHANIC COMEDY.

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, PH.D., 1979

University Microfilms International 300 N. ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, MI 48IOE HENRY FIELDING'S ARISTOPHANIC COMEDY

by

Thomas Elliot Loveday

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

19 7 9 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE

I hereby recommend that this dissertation prepared under my direction by Thomas Elliot Loveday

entitled Henry Fielding's Aristophanic Comedy

be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree

of Doctor of Philosophy

c 6 ; X / / 'J 77 Dissertation ipirector Date

As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have

read this dissertation and agree that it may be presented for final

defense.

tj.]?i £ Pvl'CS)'> 1 0 Date i ,/<- 1- C-,^4 A r- r- K , <7 's K //)-'( /] i J f Date i j / t ^«•j v. <<•' '/--y (. (' Cti' -Pi £ /JU ic ,v /1 7( f}/7, / |. / - Date tlU U/sc't MA ,T/i /9y? Date

Date

Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent on the candidate's adequate performance and defense thereof at the final oral examination.

11/78 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.

SIGNED: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my patient and loving family

for their support and encouragement during the many years of this project. Several professors have helped me, especially Dr. J. Douglas Canfield, who diligently corrected my writing and offered many helpful suggestions; and Dr. Gerald M. McNiece, whose enthusiasm and devotion to litera­ ture are irresistibly contagious. I never would have finished without these fine people. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT V

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1

2. DRAMATIC SATIRE 24 3. CHARACTERIZATION 74 4. PLOT STRUCTURE 104

5. ABUSE OF LANGUAGE 136 6. CONCLUSION . . . 155

REFERENCES 168

iv ABSTRACT

Henry Fielding's dramatic satires show strong similarity to the comedies of Aristophanes. Both play­ wrights believe that the universe is ordered and that man should order his society to reflect that ultimate order.

They believe that personal greed and ambition fragment society, and their plays reaffirm social unity and common interest. They write dramatic satire to chastise those

people who subvert society's welfare and to correct those

who misuse society's institutions.

Eight of Fielding's best plays--The Author's Farce,

Tom Thumb, The Tragedy of Tragedies, Don Quixote, Pasquin, The Historical Register for the Year 1736, Eurydice, and

Eurydice Hissed—span his dramatic career and can be called "Aristophanic"; they ignore the romantic interest and the consequent circumvention of blocking characters by young lovers or their witty servants so typical of the New Comedy of Plautus, Terence, Shakespeare, and the Restoration. They are dramatic satire, with the emphasis on satire. Several times during his career, Fielding mentions his admiration of Aristophanes, and, in 1742, he translated and edited

Aristophanes' Plutus.

The main purpose of Old Comedy is social improve­ ment, not entertainment. The satire attacks popular

v literary and political figures, ridiculing wrong action and

recommending right. As Aristophanes criticizes Euripides and Cleon, so Fielding criticizes Colley Cibber and Robert Walpole for their abuses of public trust in the theater and in government. Both playwrights create single-trait characters, sometimes caricatures of real people, and both use per­ sonified abstractions to develop the satire rather than develop believable personalities. Both concentrate on correcting the relationships of individuals to public institutions, for these institutions—literature, politics, law, medicine, and religion--should hold society together. Personal and general welfare depend upon them.

Fielding and Aristophanes use onstage choruses to guide the audience response to the stage action, and these onstage auditors often interrupt the flow of action for the sake of clarifying and sharpening the satire. The episodic plots of the plays allegorically present people and situa­ tions, humorously exaggerated, which the audience recog­ nizes as serious topical allusions. A prime target of their satire is the abuse of language by politicians, literary figures, and professional men. Both playwrights attack those who use language to achieve interests which neither reflect the truth nor promote social harmony. For both, language should reflect factual truth and the profound reality of universal order. vii

Both use a stage-equals-state metaphor to impress the audience that the stage presentation relates directly to their real life experience; the audience is jarred from the passive acceptance of amusement to the active role of social criticism. Seeing Fielding's plays in the Aristophanic tradi­ tion helps us to appreciate the deep belief in Providence which his plays and novels reveal. Fielding's narrative voices in the novels are related to the choral voices of

Aristophanes. Although in his later years Fielding criti­ cized Aristophanes' bawdry, his dramatic satire of the

1730's and his edition of Aristophanes' Plutus demonstrate his admiration of and indebtedness to the Greek master. CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Students of English literature occasionally note in

their books about Henry Fielding that he has qualities reminiscent of Aristophanes, and classical scholars mention

Henry Fielding in their books about Aristophanes. 2 Yet no one demonstrates the direct influence of Aristophanes upon

Henry Fielding's play. Fielding acknowledged his indebted­ ness to the Greek master of comedy and expressed his admira- tion for him at the same time that he was writing his plays. 3

1. Arther Murphy, "An Essay on the Life of Henry Fielding," The Works of Henry Fielding, Esq. (London: A. Millar, 1762), rpt. in The Lives of Henry Fielding and Samuel Johnson, ed. Matthew Grace (Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1968), p. 12. See also Wilbur Cross, The History of Henry Fielding, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918), I, 83, 85, 225; Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (Berkeley: University of Cali­ fornia Press, 1957), p. 284; and Henry Fielding, The Historical Register for the Year 1736 and Eurydice Hissed, ed. William W. Appleton, Regents Restoration Drama Series (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), p. xi. 2. K. J. Dover, Aristophanic Comedy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), p. 73; and Alexis Solomos, The Living Aristophanes, trans. Alexis Solomos and Marvin Felheim (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), p. 262. The former is hereafter cited in the text as "Dover."

3. In the Prologue to The Coffee-House Politician and in the Dedication to Don Quixote in England, Henry Fielding, The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, ed. William Ernest Henley, 16 vols.- (1902; rpt. New York: Barnes & Noble Inc., 1967), IX, 75 and XI, 7.

1 2 4 Fielding owned texts of Aristophanes in Greek and Latin,

and he noticed the influence of Aristophanes on Ben Jonson's plays, plays which he admired. It is not sur­ prising, then, that a well-read playwright like Fielding would try, in the 1730's, some of the techniques he admired in his predecessors. Later, in 1742, Fielding, with the aid of the Rev. William Young, published a translation of Aristophanes' Plutus, adding voluminous appreciative notes. In Tom Jones (XIII, i), he again expressed his admiration for Aristophanes' ability to "strip off the thin disguise of wisdom from self-conceit." This dissertation examines the influence of Aristophanes on eight of Henry Fielding's most successful plays, from the beginning of his career to the Licensing Act of 1737. My argument rests not on any new historical evidence nor on a few literary coincidences, but „ on a preponderance of evidence which reveals remarkable similarity in the works of the two men. Several problems arise: What is "Aristophanic Comedy?" What did Fielding think it was? Where can we see

4. Cross, I, 365; III, 78; Fielding's library was the largest of his contemporaries, even larger than Dr. Johnson's.

5. In Aristophanes, Plutus, The God of Riches, trans. H. Fielding and Rev. Mr. Young (London: 1742), rpt. in Comedies of Aristophanes: The Clouds, Plutus, The Frogs, The Birds, trans R. Cumberland, H. Fielding, Rev. Mr. Young, C. Dunster, and William Gifford (London: Lackington, Allen & Co., 1812), pp. 124, 134-35, 158; hereafter cited in the text as "Plutus." 3 in Fielding's plays clear similarities to his classical source? And how does this point of view help us to appre­ ciate Fielding's plays and novels? These questions explore

Fielding's concept of Aristophanic dramatic satire as a genre, and lead to the examination of eight of Fielding's plays. These plays have often been unfairly treated as poor examples of regular comedy and as immature products, but they are good examples of successful dramatic satire in the

Aristophanic tradition. Each chapter in this dissertation takes the first three questions above in order, with the final question reserved for the conclusion.

The first question is, of course, a much-debated topic, and new evidence trickles in to clarify the defini­ tion. Manuscripts, papyri, vases, sculpture, and buried objects help to identify meanings and suggest visual and auditory images. One must keep in mind that Aristophanes wrote for the stage: for singers, dancers, and actors, and not primarily for readers.

The only Greek comedies that exist in complete manu­ script from the Greek fifth and fourth centuries B.C are the eleven plays of Aristophanes. We know there were many other writers of comedy in the period, but they now exist only in fragments, not even enough to be sure of a plot outline.

The extant plays of Aristophanes range from 425 B.C. to 388 B.C. in composition. The manuscripts were preserved, like most classical Greek manuscripts, in Byzantium, where they 4

were studied and copied from time to time. "The earliest

manuscript of all, the Ravennas (now in the library at Classe, near Ravenna), probably written about 1000 A.D.,

contains all eleven; one of these, Women at Thesmophoria, occurs in no other manuscript except a copy made from the Ravennas itself in the fifteenth century." £ In 1515, the first complete edition of Aristophanes was printed in Florence and from then on, Aristophanes

became widely known in the western world. Aristophanes was part of the normal reading for boys at Eton while Henry Fielding went to school there; in fact, a school edition of

Clouds and Plutus was published in 1695 and used for some time. 7 Because the plays of Aristophanes are so different from later plays, they have been named "Old Comedy." The plays of Menander, Plautus, and Terence and most of the comedies of romance and intrigue since them are "New

Comedy." Old Comedy does not utilize romantic love nor the

6. Dover, pp. 4-7, describes the vicissitudes of the manuscripts.

7. M. L. Clarke, Greek Studies in England 1700-1830 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1945), p. 17n. Arthur Murphy, cited above, says that Fielding was said to be "un­ commonly versed in the Greek authors, and an early master of the Latin classics; for both which he retained a strong admiration in all the subsequent passages of his life" (p. 8). When Fielding registered in the University of Leyden in 1728, he enrolled as a student of letters, which "meant.at that time Latin and Greek literature" (Cross, I, 66-67). 5 intrigues involved in outwitting someone of his daughter or money. Aristophanes' plays are usually based on a fanciful

"What if.. . ." hypothesis, the results of which are shown in several concluding episodes. In Acharnians, Aristophanes proposes: "What if one man could make a peace treaty with the Spartans?" Peace proposes: "What if all of the Greeks worked together to end the war?" Birds proposes: "What if a Cloud-Cuckoo-Land could be established between earth and the Olympian gods?" Lysistrata proposes: "What if the women went on a sex strike to stop the war?" Ecclesiazusae proposes: "What if the women took over the government?"

And Plutus proposes: "What if the god of wealth distributed wealth according to merit?"

The fanciful plots and zany characters are united with much serious discussion of contemporary politics and personalities. Every play has personal satire, and most of them discuss the most important political event in

Aristophanes' lifetime, the Peloponnesian War. Trade agree­ ments, treaties, battles, generals, decisions of the courts, and most of the newsworthy and controversial Athenians appear in the plays. When Dionysius of Syracuse asked Plato for information about Athens and the Athenians, it is said that Plato suggested he read the plays of Aristophanes. He is still our best historical source for knowing how the people lived--their habits, their food, their clothes, their topics of conversation, and so on. However, his plays 6 constantly exaggerate, and Aristophanes would go far from reality for a joke; though his plays give a sense of daily life, they are far from "realistic." All of Aristophanes' plays satirize contemporary ideas, people, and institutions. His attacks on Cleon, a leading magistrate and general, continue from his first play until after the general died. So personal and virulent is his attack, that Cleon "indicted the poet for injury to the community, since the play [Babylonians] had ridiculed holders of Athenian magistracies before an audience con­ taining (as normally at the City Dionysia) many representa­ tives from the subject-allies" (Dover, p. 100). Aristophanes was apparently not convicted of the charge in 426 B.C., because he continues the attack in his next play.

A very frequent target for literary satire is

Euripides. Again, scholars have argued over Aristophanes' fondness for or aversion to Euripides. Perhaps they both enjoyed the feud. For more than 20 years both men wrote plays for the Dionysian Festivals, Euripides seldom winning with his special kind of tragedy, and Aristophanes ridicul­ ing him and his plays. Some of Aristophanes' attacks are personal, such as claiming that Euripides' mother was a vegetable vendor, but the bulk of the satire is literary parody. He ridicules Euripides' characters who are lame and wear rags as a ploy to gain sympathy from the audience. He ridicules the use of sobbing women and children and the use 7

of clever verbal tricks which get attention, but are really

nonsense. Arisophanes' own diction and imagery are re­ markably pure and lucid. of course, he ridicules other

comic poets who are competing with him for the first prize at the Dionysia, and all the unusual "characters" around town: the lecherous, the greedy, the dirty, the homosexual, the

affected, the cowardly, to mention a few. The form of Aristophanic Comedy is recognizably different from New Comedy, although Arisophanes varied his form so much that it is hard to define. Though he molded the form to his particular needs in each play, some gener­ alities may be made. The exposition is dramatic, although the actors may step out of character momentarily to speak a

prologue, as in Knights, when the two servants interrupt

their dialogue to explain to the audience why they are mad at Cleon. None of the plays uses a formal prologue. After the exposition, the protagonist sets out to achieve his "What if . . ." hypothesis and is opposed, often by the chorus, in the debate or contest called the "agon." In some of the plays the agon is rather formal and balanced, with each side using the same metre and each argument receiving choral comment (Acharnians, Wasps, Birds, Ecclesiazusae).

Clouds has two agons. In other plays the debate breaks down into shouting matches and quarreling, with the chorus on one side (Knights), on both sides (Lysistrata, split male-female 8

g chorus), or not involved (Frogs, Plutus). In most of the

plays the agon is resolved in the first half of the play, and in most of these (Acharnians, Peace, Birds, Ecclesiazu-

sae, Plutus) the antagonist does not return in the second

half of the play. Dividing plays near the middle, the parabasis is a break in the dramatic structure", as the chorus addresses the 9 audience directly. Most authorities agree that the para­ basis was meant to come between the agon and the succeeding episodes, but there is much debate about the definition of

"parabasis," how it became part of comedy, its function in the comedies, and why it disappears from Aristophanes' last

two plays. A typical parabasis may be divided into six (or seven) parts: (1) a farewell to the actors; (2) a direct address to the audience in anapaestic verse, often personal

(sometimes employing the first person simgular), ending in a macron (a long, one-breath sentence, sometimes considered as

8. For a discussion of the role of the chorus in the agon, see Dover, pp. 66-68; see also Cedric Whitman, Aristophanes and the Comic Hero (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 10-12. 9. G. M. Sifakis argues in his first chapter of Parabasis and Animal Choruses (London: University of London Press, 1971) (hereafter cited in the text as "Sifakis") that since no dramatic illusion was ever established in the early part of an Aristophanic play, the parabasis does not "break" it. Dover's chapter, "Illusion, Instruction, and Entertain­ ment," argues the reverse. See also David Bain, Actors and Audience: A Study of Asides and Related Conventions in Greek Drama (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), who agrees with Dover. The following discussion of parabasis is de­ pendent on Dover, Chapter 4, and Sifakis, Chapter 4. 9 a separate part of the parabasis); (3) an ode to a god or gods; (4) comments or advice uttered from the dramatic view­ point of the chorus in the particular play; (5) an answer or continuation of part 3; and (6) a continuation of the didactic message of part 4 (Dover, pp. 49-51). Part 2 is the most non-dramatic and personal section of an

Aristophanic parabasis:

The poet most commonly uses the anapaests to praise his own work and denigrate his rivals in a vigorous but essentially playful way, and in a style full of images and conceits. Thus in Acharnians the theme of the anapaests (626-664) is: It's a shame to slander our poet by saying that he insults the Athenian people; he speaks his mind and saves you from being cheated; when the king of Persia was approached for help by the Spartans, he wanted to know which side in the war has a poet who'll lambast them and turn them into better men, for that's the side that will win; and when the Spartans demand Aigina back, it's because our poet lives there; but don't you let him go, because he'll never give up telling you what you should be told; so to hell with Kleon! In Clouds Aristophanes uses the first person singular with reference to himself throughout the anapaests, so that the chorus be­ comes no more than a mouthpiece for his direct personal communication with the audience (Dover, p. 50).

The parabasis is not the only time in an Aristophanic play that the dramatic illusion is interrupted. At any time, beginning, middle, or end, Aristophanes may break the plot progression or the dramatic characterization. According to G. M. Sifakis,

The performers, who have the initiative, turn to the audience in order to introduce the main idea on which the plot hinges and explain the merits of the performance. They flatter the public, ask 10

for victory, throw small gifts to the spectators, invite them to dinner (on or off stage), or ask for their help with relation to the dramatic action; but above all they turn to the audience to censure or mock the public or individuals by name.10

The breaks clarify and intensify the subjects, as

well as bring the audience to the point of view of the

author. The audience sees that the play is not divorced from their daily reality, but a communal experience in which they look, with the author, at themselves. The personal in­ vective is not directed straight to the satiric target, but directed through the communal spirit, ridiculing but not

alienating the target:

In fact, this playing down of the special charac­ teristics of the role of the chorus is the key to understanding the function of the chorus in the scenes after the parabasis. For, as its special and well-defined dramatic personality in the first part of the play is necessary in order to account for its unreserved and even passionate attitude towards the opponents, so the weakening of its dramatic character (and, in consequence, its identification with the average Athenian citizen- spectator) justifies its presence in the last part of the play, and makes it an ideal means both of transmitting the message of the poet to the audience and expressing the "ideal" reaction of the latter to this message (Sifakis, p. 29).

The chorus is a "straw man" antagonist, which, being con­ vinced of the message of the play, leads the audience re­ sponse toward acceptance of the message. The chorus shifts from antagonist to an example of an ideal audience.

10. Sifakis, p. 12. He cites 34 passages in which these "breaks" occur. Fielding notes such a "break" in Plutus, pp. 145-46. 11

The latter half of the Aristophanic play illustrates the results of the hypothesis. After Dicaeopolis has achieved his peace with the Spartans in Acharnians, he can trade with Megarians and Boeotians, sympathize with his fellow farmers who still suffer under the war embargo, laugh at the Athenian generals, and prosper in his commerce.

After Cleon is defeated in Knights, Demos learns all the harm that Cleon has done, is rejuvenated, and gets a truce. After Trygaeus has achieved the retrieval of Peace, both gods and men benefit from the renewal of sacred ceremonies, from abundant crops, and from the cessation of military expenses. After Plutus has been cured of his blindness, worthless priests, immoral women, and treacherous men lose his favor, and honest men are rewarded. The episodic denouement is present in the majority of the plays and is a striking difference from New Comedy. The shape of the play, then is (1) dramatic exposi­ tion; (2) the hypothesis, (3) the agon, or contest between the protagonist and an opponent; (4) the parabasis (near the middle); and (5) several episodes which illustrate the results of the new system. Aristophanes offers many excep­ tions to this general scheme, but it persists from his first extant play to his last.

All of the plays ignore dramatic unities and make sudden jumps with abandon. Aristophanes has been criticized for his departures from rules which he obviously never had a 12

thought about. The plays display exuberant wit, slapstick,

delicate lyrics, onomatopoeia, neologisms, realism, patrio­ tism, obscenity, fantasy, and a freedom of imagination that has always inspired admiration. His poetry has been called grand, eloquent, <^ha-2=iai-R-g--, free and powerful, absurd and

obscene. Aristophanic characterization is not realistic. Many of the minor characters are simple personifications of abstractions: "War is a huge, blustering giant, living in a cave with his only servant, Uproar. Peace is a silent, beautiful woman, Wealth is a god, but blind." 11 Poverty, Cleon-hater, People, Just Citizen, Debtor, are generaliza­ tions or ideas which other characters manipulate or react to. It would be short-sighted to see the characters as only

vehicles for didacticism, since the experience of drama, even the reading of these plays, is a richer experience than that. The relationships of the characters to each other is dramatic, not mechanical, but the interest is in the way the characters react to one another, and not in their develop­ ment.

As one would expect with a large number of personi­ fied abstractions, much of our message from the play comes through interpreting the characters and their actions

11. Katherine Lever, The Art of Greek Comedy (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1956), p. 113 13

allegorically. That "Demos" ("People") chooses "Agoracritus"

("Choice of the Marketplace") is clearly an allegory of the democratic process, and because Demos is, for most of the play, a foggy-headed, selfish sluggard, and Agoracritus is an ignorant, coarse, lying, scheming demagogue, the rela­ tionship between Athens and her leaders is satirized. Knights, like all of the plays, criticizes the Athenian leaders in obscene language, exposing their covert greed and fraud, as, linguistically, obscene words expose sexual or excremental acts which are customarily covert.

Aristophanes uses a great deal of obscenity because its use is a metaphor of satiric unmasking. "The pleasure afforded by obscenity lies in our enjoyment at exposing someone else exposed without having to effect the exposure physically." 12

Obscenity in Old Comedy breaks through social sexual taboos; it upsets, unmasks, and defeats the inhibitions of regular daily life; and the humor and pleasure of witty obscenity remove the appearance of malicious detraction. Thus, it is perfectly appropriate for political satire, which hopes to upset, unmask, and defeat the repressive power of the currently ruling office-holders, without being cynical or arousing sympathetic backlash.

12. Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975) , pp. 6-7. 14

Aristophanes' Athenians are subject to verbal dream castles. Demos loves to be flattered, to hear oracles pre­ dicting his success, to be told comforting lies, so that he can attend to his pleasures and not have to deal with prob­ lems. Cleon and Agoracritus vie to feed his ego and in­ sulate him from realities in order to hold the office of "first servant," a position of authority and wealth. Demos mistakes flattery for true esteem and the candidates un­ scrupulously lie, promise, praise, and predict, without a thought of truth or honor. Knights satirizes the essential corruption of language, which appears time and again in the subsequent plays. Ignorant parties mistake language for reality, and scurrilous word mongers profit on their gullibility.

The parody of Euripides1 plays and the burlesque of Socrates expose a more subtle abuse of language.

Aristophanes attacks the lack of "common sense" and social moral purpose in Euripides' plays, by quoting selected passages which quibble over words or which argue against traditional values in sexual, political, and religious be­ havior. His plays include incest and adultery, betrayal and scheming, heresy and sacrilege. He titillates and shocks the audience; instead of using his plays to affirm social and divine coherence, he challenges tradition with indi­ vidualistic free thinking. Euripides' words spread doubt; like Socrates, he knows nothing, and he threatens the 15

collective sense of knowledge and morality. His words tear society apart by appealing to individualism, emotions, and anxiety; opposed to this, Aristophanes assumes language should build communion, reason, and trust. Eighteenth century England generally agreed with

Aristophanes' concern for the social uses of language.

Fielding is very sympathetic to Aristophanes' point of view, and he makes his interpretation of Aristophanes available to

us in his notes to his translation of Plutus. He says that he is familiar with the other plays and he uses them for 13 parallel passages and comparisons. The first praise that Fielding has for Aristophanes in this edition is mentioned in the dedication to Lord Talbot: he praises Aristophanes' patriotism and temerity. When Blepsidemus mentions the

Heraclidae (Plutus, p. 177), Fielding notes that

Aristophanes "could use no more ingenious artifice to

13. Plutus, pp. 171, 180. Fielding's notes also display a wide variety of secondary materials, as he cites 57 authors and works. His working Greek text was that of Kuster (Amsterdam: 1710). The only careful study of Fielding's translation of Plutus is Samuel P. Hines, Jr., "English Translations of Aristophanes' Comedies," Diss. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1967. Cross suspects that Young did most of the Greek scholarship, but that "Fielding went over it carefully, for the humorist's hand is visible everywhere in light and facetious touches" (I, 364). Hines agrees, but also points to a considerable degree of knowledge on Fielding's part: his education at Eton and Leyden and his good reputation as fluent in Greek. However, Kuster's edition, like most, has facing Latin- Greek, and, for the argument of this dissertation, the in­ fluence of Aristophanes could just as well have come through the Latin translations which were available to Fielding. 16

ingratiate himself with his audience, than by alluding to a

story, which reflected so much honor on the Athenians, and

of which they were so vain." Later (Plutus, p. 225)

Aristophanes again flatters the Athenians by having Plutus

"salute the illustrious soil of the venerable Pallas" of

whose protection, says Fielding, "they were most vain." Fielding considered this technique of winning the audience's

friendship noteworthy, but for both men patriotism was more

than recounting past glories. Social criticism is the function of the patriotic satirist. No less than eighteen times Fielding notes that Aristophanes satirizes mankind in general and the Athenians in particular. In distinguishing between poverty and beggary, Poverty remarks that if Chremylus does not see the difference between the two, then he would not see the dif­ ference between "the tyrant Dionysius and the patriot

Thrasybulus" (Plutus, p. 196). Fielding assumes that Chremylus represents the Athenians: "It is impossible to imagine a more severe satire on the Athenians than this," and he explains the contrasting natures of Dionysius and Thrasybulus. The dethroning of Zeus in favor of Plutus at the end of the play is also, Fielding notes, "a very bitter invective on the avarice of the Athenians" (Plutus, p. 265).

When the sycophant admits that he is a "draft dodger" by claiming occupational exemption, Fielding notes: 17

This method of perverting the privileges which the laws of a country indulge to some particular members or bodies in it, hath not been confined to Athens. Such instances, when they happen, fall very justly under the lash of a comic poet. And it is by exposing such persons and things, that unlicensed comedy will be found of great use in a society; and a free stage and a free people will always agree very well together (Plutus, p. 237).

Here Fielding sees not only the Aristophanic method, but also the application to his contemporary England. Hines says of Fielding's notes: "They are more original and more comprehensive than any other English translator's during 1655-174.2; they show that he is the most eager of the trans­ lators to use Aristophanes' play to describe recent and contemporary events in England" (Plutus, p. 194). The

"free stage" comment apparently refers to the Licensing Act

of 1737, Robert Walpole's response to political satire on

the stage.

Fielding recognizes more specific satire in 29 other notes. Aristophanes' personal satire on Patroclus (a rich Athenian), Pamphilus, Belonopoles, Argyrius, Philepsius,

Chabrias, Philonides, Timotheus, Aristyllus, and many others is direct, harsh, obvious, and sometimes disgusting.

Fielding also takes ample notice of the "low" satire on farm life, court procedures, hospitality manners, and religious practices (Plutus, pp. 131, 161, 189, 215, 216, 222, 226).

14. For a description of Walpole's maneuvers, see Cross's chapter, "The Licensing Act." 18

Because the people and scenes are topical, the

audience must have been aware that "Demos" was not just

"people" in general, but themselves. Aristophanes wrote the plays for one performance, in a specific place, on a specific day, for an audience of somewhat predictable com­ position,and mood. This closeness to the audience allows

for successful direct address. Fielding knows that direct address is common in Old Comedy and that it had been done on his stage:

Aristophanes here very pleasantly includes all the spectators in the number of followers of Plutus; a liberty frequently taken by the comic poets. The latter part of this speech is a just ridicule on the many absurd methods, which the poets have taken to ingratiate themselves with their audience. The Duke of Buckingham, in his "Rehearsal," hath like­ wise very excellently ridiculed this artifice; where Mr. Bays [sic] attempts to move the compassion, and next to frighten the spectators into applauding him (Plutus, pp. 226-27).

Fielding agrees with a note by Madame Dacier (in her French translation of Plutus) that Chremylus "points with his

finger at certain persons among the spectators, whom he taxes with theft, and whom he accuses of being caught in adultery, and suffering a very severe penance for it"

(Plutus, pp. 145-46). This direct address to the audience interrupts the continuity of stage action for the sake of making the audience feel involved in the play. The audience as a whole participates in the censure, rather than simply observing a personal attack. 19

Plutus has a much smaller role in the manuscript for the Chorus than most of Aristophanes' plays. It may well be a scribal error, since there are five places where the manuscript says "Chorus" but omits any speech."^ The bulk of Aristophanic direct addresses to the audience are spoken by the choruses, so Plutus is atypical in having no choral songs, no parabasis, and few interruptions of dramatic illu­ sion. The Chorus does respond to the action of the play, however, and Fielding does note their involvement (Plutus, pp. 160, 170, 190). Aristophanes often uses his chorus ironically, having it respond prematurely or in an in­ adequate way, so that the audience cannot rely on the re­ sponse of the chorus to be the finally appropriate response. Fielding knows that the chorus may be as foolish as the actors (Plutus, pp. 160, 170).

The static second half of Plutus, the series of episodes, is typical, since most of the Aristophanic plays, after the parabasis, continue "in a series of scenes that unfold in a humorous way the consequences arising from the situation reached at the end of the first part. These scenes were not so much integrated as simply juxtaposed, the total effect being not unlike a modern revue.

15. E. W. Handley, "XOPOY in Plutus," Classical Quarterly, NS 3 (1953), 55-61.

16. Robert Flacelifere; A Literary History of Greece, trans. Douglas Garman (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1964), p. 232. 20

Many of Fielding's notes refer to characterization, such as his note on Blepsidemus' comic fear of Poverty (Plutus, pp. 184-85). He likes Cario: "a character of impertinence and sauciness, and as well at least supported through the whole play, as any such character in any modern comedy" (Plutus, p. 130); "This is truly in the character of Cario: he [Cario] insinuates, the only difference be­ tween him and his master lies in their purses" (Plutus, p.

144); "The scholiast remarks that contrast which the poet hath here introduced between the tasts of the master and slave, for while the one contemplates love, honor, etc. the slave hath no regard but to his belly" (Plutus, p. 153). Based on his interpretation of Cario, Fielding decides that the usual reading of a line is wrong--"inconsistent with the character of that slave"--and adds a reading more appro­ priate (Plutus, pp. 257-58). Fielding's understanding of the character of Chremylus is very important and revealing. He sees Chremylus as a hypocrite, a greedy man who puts wealth above all. This is warranted by the text, and it shows that Fielding saw this play as having no moral hero. In the exposure of Chremylus1 avarice, Fielding sees similarity in the works of Aristophanes and Jonson (Plutus, pp. 134-35,

158): both men satirize the miser's attempt to disguise his avarice as charity. Fielding also notes the vanity of the

Old Woman, the superstition of the Wife, the treachery of 21

Mercury, and so on. Several of the characters, Fielding notes, are simply the personifications of abstractions or

class representatives (Plutus, pp. 228, 248).

The comedy of Plutus is in the unmasking of hypoc­

risy. We see that Chremylus, who claims that he is a good

man, is willing to do anything to get money. All of the characters in the play react to Wealth or Poverty, thus

revealing that what they say of themselves or wish others to

think of them is not at all what they are. Gold is the touchstone. Fielding sees allegorical statement in the effects of Wealth and Poverty on the characters and in their re­ marks. When Chremylus says that Wealth is a "timorous animal," Fielding is rather apt to understand this allegorically of the timidity of rich men, who are under eternal fears of designs against themselves and their money; and this allegory is extremely just and beautiful, which is well supported in the answer of Plutus (Plutus, p. 154).

Fielding tells us the allegorical meaning of the scene between Chremylus and the Old Woman (Plutus, p. 247), and he sees allegory running through the whole play (Plutus, pp. 127, 151, 186, 197).

There are many examples in Plutus of what Fielding calls simple, elegant, pure, and copious language (Plutus, pp.. 142-43, 168, 185, 194, 198, 202, 224, 244). Fielding stresses the purity in contrast to modern diction, which is "pretty, dapper, brisk, smart, [and] pert." Aristophanes'

precise use of grammatical inflections, "his elegant use of those particles," and his clear diction, indicate his clear and distinct thinking. 17 Fielding praises Aristophanes for using his genius to attack and expose his country's enemies, thus promoting social integration (Plutus, pp. 116-124).

Orators may or may not have the best interests of the country in mind (Plutus, p. 133). Aristophanes' correct use of his genius and words and his criticism of those who abuse them are a lesson to all subsequent authors. Thus, Fielding's edition of Plutus demonstrates that Fielding understood Aristophanic comedy as primarily satire against people and practices which threaten political unity and harmony, employing type characters, often personifica­ tions, in actions which allegorically illustrate a didactic message. Pervasive satire on the abuse of language mani­ fests itself in parody, and sometimes the characters or chorus interrupt the illusion of a stage world in order to remind the audience that the message is real, topical, and perhaps urgent. The succeeding chapters of this disserta­ tion divide these topics and relate each, in detail, to eight of Henry Fielding's plays of 1730-37: The Author's

17. The emphasis on "clear and distinct" thinking reminds one of Descartes' Discourse on Method, and relates thought, language, and reality to the proper use of words. 23

Farce (1730), Tom Thumb and its revision The Tragedy of Tragedies (1730, 1731), The Grub-Street Opera (1731), Don

Quixote (1734), Pasquin (1736), The Historical Register for the Year 1736 (1737) , Eurydice (1737) , Eurydice Hissed 18 (1737). The concluding chapter relates the Aristophanic techniques to Fielding's novels, suggesting that Fielding continued to utilize what he had learned in his life-long study of the Greek master.

18. In the absence of an authoritative collection of Fielding's works, the following editions will be used throughout this dissertation and will be cited in the text by the short titles or abbreviations: The Author's Farce, ed. Charles B. Woods, Regents Restoration Drama Series (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), hereafter AF; Tom Thumb and The Tragedy of Tragedies, ed. L. J. Morrissey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), hereafter TT; The Grub-Street Opera, ed. L. J. Morrissey (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1973), hereafter GSO; Don Quixote in England, The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, hereafter DQ; Pasquin, The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, hereafter Pasquin; The Historical Register for the Year 1736 and Eurydice Hissed, hereafter HR and E. Hissed; Eurydice, The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, hereafter Eurydice. The primary text of Aristophanes' plays, except for Fielding's translation of Plutus, is The Eleven Comedies, trans, for The Athenian Society, 2 vols, bound as one, London, 1912 (rpt. New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1931), hereafter cited in the text by volume and page number. CHAPTER 2

DRAMATIC SATIRE

This chapter and each subsequent chapter will

examine plays of Aristophanes and Fielding and point out the similarities. First I will identify the quality to be compared, then illustrate its presence in the plays of Aristophanes. In most cases, before illustrating the cor­ responding trait in Fielding's plays, I will argue that

Fielding was aware and appreciative of the Aristophanic

trait as evidenced in the notes to his translation of

Plutus. My intent is to prove that Fielding consciously imitated and learned from Aristophanes; the similarities are not mere coincidence.

i Morris Golden states a truism in Fielding criticism: "Fielding was insatiably concerned with social relations"; he was "always concerned with showing humanity how to act rightly.""'' Fielding told his public that the scenes of The Historical Register for the Year 1736 were serious: "your diversion is not merely intended by them, their design being

1. Morris Golden, Fielding's Moral Psychology (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1966), pp. viii, 1.

24 to convey some hints which may, if you please, be of in­ finite service in the present state of that theatrical world whereof they treat" (HR and E. Hissed, p. 4). What Fielding learns from Aristophanes is how to attack and expose the evil and ignorant aspects of human nature. Both dramatists claim that their purpose is not malicious, but instructive and salutary. Both aim their satire at prominent indi­ viduals, at the professions, and at the apathetic public. They employ a number of techniques to achieve a caustic, yet risible satire, using established ideals of social be­ havior to measure the erring behavior of their satiric targets. Aristophanes' goal in writing satire is most clearly enunciated in Frogs, when Dionysus, the god in charge of the dramatic festivals, discusses the purpose of all Greek drama. Euripides defends his innovative plays by saying that he wrote them "to please the people," and Dionysus states unequivocally that pleasing the people is not the finest criterion for drama. Neither is it worthy to teach people to connive, to quibble, to deceive, to suspect, to love, or to laugh. The proper goal of all poets is to expound "Wise counsels, which make the citizens better," and the punishment for failing in this duty, for making people worse citizens, is "Death" (II, 241).

In Frogs, Dionysus admits an ecstatic love of

Euripidean verse, but Aeschylus deserves to return to Athens 26

because he is a pillar of morality, representing the age of

the heroes of Marathon. Aristophanes is universally recog­ nized for his mastery of the language, and his choric songs (in Birds, for example) are unsurpassed for metrical preci­ sion, vocabulary, and lyric beauty. But apparently

morality, the didactic service of his poetry, was more important to him. All of his plays are satires; all expose

vice, ridicule the vicious, and denounce the corrupt. They

all have argument (agon) and most of them present argument in a very direct way, the non-dramatic parabasis. It is primarily Aristophanes' morality, specifically

his patriotism, that Fielding praises in his Preface to

Plutus: "He exerted that genius in the service of his country. He attacked and exposed its enemies and betrayers with a boldness and integrity, which must endear his memory to every true and sincere patriot" (Plutus, p. 116). For Fielding, Plutus is a salutary reminder to Athens not to ignore honor and religion. Although this play allegorically portrays the overthrow of the unjust, the replacement of Zeus by Plutus is not complimentary to the nature of man. Chremylus wants money by any means, "justly and unjustly"

(Plutus, pp. 156-57). His selfish motivation makes him no better than the despicable informer, who wants money on the same terms. The materialistic world order of Plutus, which replaces the divine order of Zeus, assumes that man is only 27

an animal and has no needs beyond the body's. 2 Aristophanes thus exposes and ridicules greed by exaggerating it to absurdity. Fielding's purpose for writing, expressed not only

in his plays, but also in his periodical articles and in his

novels, is consistently moral and patriotic. His first

play's Prologue (1728) claims that he exposes vice and not the vicious, and his second play's epilogue argues "that the 3 stage / Was meant t'improve, and not debauch the age." His Dedication of Don Quixote in England (1734) continues to

argue for freedom of the stage to use wit and humor to attack "the powerful sons of dullness," since Aristophanes has proven how powerful such dramatic satire is (DQ, pp.

7-8). In his last major play, Fielding speaks his purpose through the play's author, Medley: Why, sir, my design is to ridicule the vicious and foolish customs of the age, and that in a fair manner, without fear, favor, or ill-nature, and without scurrility, ill manners, or commonplace. I hope to expose the reigning follies in such a manner that men shall laugh themselves out of them before they feel that they are touched (HR and E. Hissed, p. 15).

Like Aristophanes, Fielding uses some non-dramatic means for his satire, and this will be the subject of part two of

2. The downfall of the Olympic pantheon is as apocalyptic, at least morally, as the death of Queen Common- Sense is in Pasquin.

3. Love in Several Masques and The Temple Beau, Works, VIII, 11, 188. 28

this chapter, followed by (3) satires on politicians, (4)

satire on literary figures, (5) satire on the professions,

and (6) satire on the general audience.

ii

Both Aristophanes and Fielding assume a didactic

function, an instructor's pose, and their efforts to

manipulate the audience with admonitions and advice take

dramatic form, non-dramatic form, and partially dramatic

form in their plays. They were accepted by their audiences

as political forces, and both were increasingly censored

through their careers.

In Frogs, Aristophanes exhorts poets to consider the

moral function of their work. In this dramatic passage, the

major characters present the message:

Aeschylus. So, answer me! what is it in a poet one admires?

Euripides. Wise counsels, which make the citizens better.

Aeschylus. And if you have failed in this duty, if out of honest and pure-minded men you have made rogues, what punishment do you think is your meet?

Dionysius. Death. I will reply for him. (II, 241)

Most of Aristophanes' work explicitly offers "Wise counsels"; the only competing motive is "to please the people," but Dionysius clearly prefers the poet who "is pre­ pared to give good advice to the citizens" (II, 239, 263). In many of Aristophanes' plays a moral statement is

delivered outside of the dramatic context, often by the chorus. Usually the chorus is a dramatic character in the

early part of the play (Wasps, Knights, Peace, Lysistrata,

and Ecclesiazusae) and is involved in the agon. At the end

of the agon, the chorus has taken the side which the audience is expected to agree with, and then it speaks the parabasis directly to the audience. Sometimes Aristophanes uses a partially dramatic context for the delivery of the message. Dicaeopolis tells the chorus in Acharnians that Cleon shall not be able to accuse "me." Apparently Aristophanes is speaking directly

through Dicaeopolis about Cleon's suit against Aristophanes

Dicaeopolis is talking to the chorus dramatically, but he is talking about an event outside of the context of the play (I, 111-12).

Cleon's suit indicates his respect for Aristophanes power on stage; Aristophanes had some respect for Cleon's power too, for he later referred to Cleon as "tanner" or "Paphlagonian," rather than using his name so freely.

Aristophanes must have had some political impact, for there was some censorship of the Athenian stage, legislated from time to time and occasionally enforced by the government.

Peter Arnott details what we know about this censorship, which is not a great deal, and argues convincingly that

Aristophanes was very conscious of it, skirting around the 4 aporreta, "things not permitted to say." While considering

that Cleon and others may have feared Aristophanes, it must

be kept in mind that the caustic Knights was not the death

•blow to Cleon's career: "The judges liked it and gave it

first prize. A few weeks later the Athenian people elected

Kleon one of the ten generals for the year 424/423." 5 In most histories of drama, Fielding is credited with having irritated the government of Robert Walpole into

the Licensing Act of 1737, a strong censorship law. Cer­

tainly Fielding's satire on Walpole and his brand of

politics was partly responsible for the Act, and for much the same reasons that Aristophanes had been censored. Fielding's London audience liked his attacks on the govern­ ment, even though the country continued to elect Walpole and the Whigs to power.

Riding on the popularity of the plays, Fielding defends his satire by referring to Aristophanes as a prece­ dent in political drama. Answering an attack on Pasquin, Fielding says that he is revealing no state secrets in his expose, and as for exposing corrupt government in general, "I cannot think such Politics too sacred to be exposed. But

Pasquin was not (as you insinuate) the first Introducer of

Things of this Kind; we have several Political Plays now

4. Peter Arnott, "Greek Drama as Education," Edu­ cational Theatre Journal, 22 (1970), 37-39.

5. Dover, Aristophanic Comedy, p. 100. 31

extant: and had you ever read Aristophanes, you would know

that the gravest Matters have been try'd this Way."^ Like Aristophanes, Fielding uses a variety of ways to deliver his message. In his last play before the Licensing Act, Fielding introduces Honestus, an honest man who criticizes Pillage for packing the house with his

friends. Honestus dramatically states Fielding's complaint:

Honestus. Curse on this way of carrying things by friends, This bar to merit; by such unjust means, A play's success, or ill success is known, And fixed before it has been tried i' th' house; Yet grant it should succeed, grant that by chance, Or by the whim and madness of the town, A farce without contrivance, without sense, Should run to the astonishment of mankind; Think how you will be read in after-times, When friends are not, and the impartial judge Shall with the meanest scribbler rank your name; Who would not rather wish a Butler's fame, Distressed and poor in everything but merit, Than be the blundering laureat to a court? Pillage. Not I--On me, ye gods, bestow the pence, And give your fame to any fool you please. Honestus. Your love of pence sufficiently you show, By raising still your prices on the town. . . . Pillage. What is a manager whom the public rule?

Honestus. The servant of the public, and no more; For though indeed you see the actors paid, Yet from the people's pockets come the pence; They therefore should decide what they will pay for. Pillage. If you assist me on this trial day, You may assure yourself a dedication.

6. Henry Fielding, letter, Common Sense, No. 15, May 21, 1737; reprinted in London Magazine, May 1737, p. 262. 32

Honestus. No bribe—I go impartial to your cause, Like a just critic, to give worth applause, But damn you if you write against our laws (E. Hissed, pp. 60-62).

The passage allegorically criticizes Walpole's Excise Bill,

Colley Cibber's playhouse management, and all corrupt

schemers. Though Cibber no longer ran Drury Lane, he was a handy symbol for tyrannical management, and Walpole was still, in 1737, the prime "servant of the public." Although Fielding could not use real names, he indicates his men by "laureat" and "servant," and by their reputations for greed

and bribery. 7 The admonition and advice to the audience is

clear, forceful, and dramatic.

Fielding utilizes rehearsal characters to speak his part in semi-dramatic contexts. In The Historical Register, Medley tells Sourwit that "as Shakespeare is already good enough for people of taste, he must be altered to the palates of those who have none" (HR, p. 44). Medley in­ structs the audience to oppose the presumptuous adaptors of Shakespeare, who sometimes cut out whole acts from a per­ formance, in order to make room for a farce afterpiece.

Prefaces, footnotes, dedications, prologues, and epilogues provide Fielding with numerous non-dramatic opportunities to express his opinions. The Dedication of

The Historical Register affirms, by ironically denying, that

7. G. A. Cranfield, The Development of the Provin­ cial Newspaper 1700-1760 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918), pp. 123-24. 33 the corrupt politicians of the play are representations of

Walpole, thus directing our attention to the portraits and adding fun to the recognition of them. Fielding disclaims the very thing that he is ensuring we see. His diction,

"the meanest, lowest, dirtiest fellow," intensifies the satire on Walpole, while at the same time condemning the audience for being so naive as to be duped by such an arrant villain. The Epilogue to Pasquin is a direct, non-dramatic address to the audience in unambiguous terms; Fielding

"begs a serious word or two to say, / Banish all childish entertainment hence; / Let all that boast your favor have pretence, / If not to sparkling wit, at least to sense" (Pasquin, p. 228). His induction scenes, using players, manager, critic, authors, friends, and prompter are all only a slight modification of the prologue, and serve the same function: to introduce the play, criticize the modern stage productions, and direct the audience in its response to the following play. Pasquin has an induction and prologue to each rehearsal, a parodic dedication, and an epilogue, giving Fielding a plethora of non-dramatic, direct-address opportunities. For example, references to the election of 1734 are not left only to the plot of the play, but also stand out boldly in these direct addresses. This play had the longest run of all his plays, suggesting that Fielding's audience shared his appreciation of the technique. Perhaps 34

it was a thrill to see the powerful administration of

Walpole attacked publicly; certainly that topic sold a lot

of newspapers. There was the excitement of danger, as

Fielding knew, from the censorship of his revised Grub- Street Opera (1731). 8 Jean B. Kern suggests:

Fear of political reprisal against the theatres may also explain his continuous experimentation. As Walpole1s popularity waned in the 1730's, direct attacks on his ministry became more dangerous. . . .

In the absence of critical theory about satire as an artistic construct other than poetry, he was compelled to try a variety of structures to put his satire on the stage.^

Fielding was aware that his stage could be shut down and that open satire might lead to it (HR, p. 10). It is re­ markable that he is as bold with direct satire as he is, in an age which banned some newspapers and severely punished offending editors and publishers.

1X1

Fielding and Aristophanes both attack selected leaders of their governments; they do not attack government itself. They focus on just a few men and concentrate on their public vices, though the satire of the vices

8. GSO, pp. 4 88; and Henry Fielding, The Grub- Street Opera, E. V. Roberts, ed., Regents Restoration Drama Series (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), pp. xx-xxii.

9. Jean B. Kern, "Fielding's Dramatic Satire," PQ 54 (1975), 254.

10. Cranfield, pp. 141-67. 35 occasionally spills over into personal satire. Aristophanes is merciless to Cleon, the demagogue who ruled Athens from the death of Pericles (429) to his own death (422 B.C.).

Scathing personal satire on Cleon fills Acharnians and

Knights, and these are probably toned down from the satire in Babylonians, the lost play which incited Cleon to sue

Aristophanes. The satire in Knights is so caustic that Aristophanes refrains from using the name "Cleon," but even so, he had to play the part himself, since no actor would risk the possible consequences. Aristophanes uses the names

"Tanner" and "Paphlagonian" for Cleon in this play and else­ where, since everyone knew that Cleon1s father was a tanner and that he was a "blusterer.""''"'" The chorus attacks Cleon:

Strike, strike the villain, who has spread confu­ sion amongst the ranks of the knights, this public robber, this yawning gulf of plunder, this de­ vouring Charybdis, this villain, this villain, this villain! I cannot say the word too often, for he is a villain a thousand times a day. Come, strike, drive, hurl him over and crush him to pieces; hate him as we hate him; stun him with your blows and your shouts. . . . and 'tis justice; you devour the public funds that all should share in; you treat the officers answerable for the revenues like the fruit of the fig tree, squeezing them to find which are still green or more or less ripe; and when you find one simple and timid, you force him to come from the Chersonese, then you seize him by the middle, throttle him by the neck, while you twist his shoulder back; he falls and you devour him. Besides, you know very well how to select from among the citizens those who are as meek as lambs, rich without guile and loathers of lawsuits (I, 23-24).

11. Dover, Aristophanic Comedy, p. 89. Cleon threatens to sue anyone who resists his rapacious

greed, since he dominates the court by bribery and rhetorical

skill. Aristophanes attacks his greed, his strongarm

extortion, and then his hypocrisy: "See! he treats us like old dotards and crawls at our feet to deceive us; but the

cunning wherein lies his power shall this time recoil on himself: he trips up himself by resorting to such arti­ fices" (I, 24). Cleon himself confesses: "Oh! you shall not outdo me in flattery" (I, 52); "To my aid, my beloved lies!" (I, 42). He admits he is a thief and a perjurer, while the Chorus condemns him for a clever, cunning trickster of blatant impudence. As the disburser of funds, he directly and indirectly bribes the jurors. In Wasps,

Aristophanes reveals that the three obols per day which Cleon doles out to the jurors is a pittance compared to the massive income he embezzles (II, 36). Not only are his public crimes enumerated, but also his private: "When I have devoured a good tunny-fish and drunk on top of it a great jar of unmixed wine, I hold up the generals of Pylos to public scorn" (I, 2 8). His rump gapes, his hands beg, and his mind connives. 12 He is a glutton and a drunk (I, 13-14); he stinks of leather (I, 52).

12. See Henderson, pp. 214 and 218 for explicit references in Aristophanes to Cleon as a pathic. 37

You also know what a pig's education he has had; his school-fellows can recall that he only liked the Dorian style and would study no other; his music- master in displeasure sent him away, saying: "This youth, in matters of harmony, will only learn the Dorian style because 'tis akin to bribery" (I, 57).

"Doron" ("gift") means "bribe" here. His personal faults are akin to and aid his public ones. By striking at the deceit and greed of Cleon,

Aristophanes strikes at all demagogues who would stop at nothing to attain personal wealth and power. The naming of such individuals gives Aristophanes' satire point and illustration, the just pain inflicted on the victim being part of the satisfaction for the rest of the audience. Even though we have the anecdote that Socrates stood up and accepted the masked, stage Socrates as himself, we also have anecdotes that people were terribly shamed by public satire.13

Another target of personal satire for Aristophanes is General Lamachus, who, in Acharnians, is a bellicose foil to Dicaeopolis, the peace-monger. He enters, plumed, with the hyperboles of the miles gloriosus: "Whence comes this cry of battle? where must I bring my aid? where must I sow dread? who wants me to uncase my dreadful Gorgon's head?"

(I, 113). Later he exchanges with Dicaeopolis in a

13. Lever, p. 4; some trials resulted from these satires, p. 71. See also Brander Matthews, Playwrights on Playmaking (1923; rpt. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, Inc., 1967), pp. 221-24. stichomythia, while he prepares to fight and Dicaeopolis prepares to feast. Lamachus returns very quickly from his "battle"—a quixotic duel with a rock and a watery ditch-- complaining with tragic diction, "Oh! heavens! oh! heavens!

What cruel pain! I faint, I tremble! Alas! I die!" We know from Thucydides and Plutarch that Lamachus was a brave and busy general, but Aristophanes has chosen to dramatize his faults of bragging and complaining. Lamachus is well paid for his military adventures, because he is an elected official, but Dicaeopolis implies that there was something phony about the election (I, 115),.

In Fielding's edition of Plutus, he footnotes most of the political satire, because few of the targets are known to the average reader. Pamphilus "had been in public office, and robbed the treasury," and Neoclides, a bleary- eyed Athenian orator who embezzles public money, "is indeed blind, but in thieving hath always out-shot those who can see" (Plutus, pp. 147, 213-14). But Plutus is Aristophanes' tamest play in political satire.

Political satire in Fielding's dramatic satire is thinly veiled. The subjects of Fielding's satire were very well known people, and he could rely on some special phrases to have current significance. "Great man" always refers to

Robert Walpole, as did "Old Bob" and "Robber." Any refer­ ence to "fiddler," cuckold, "director," "conniver,"

"servant," excessive drinking, secrecy. Excise Tax, or 39 14 the South Sea Bubble sufficed to identify Walpole.

Walpole was current news with all the media, and not hard to identify. Nathaniel Mist's Weekly Journal never allowed the public to forget that Walpole had served time in the

Tower in 1712 on charges of embezzlement of government funds. By the time Fielding began to attack Walpole, The Beggar's Opera had made the audience very acute to innuendoes of the slightest sort. Peachum's politics of bribery and 15 doublecross and Macheath's robberies all satirized Walpole. In addition to their sensitivity to Walpole allu­ sions, the audience was being taught to recognize a parallel between the stage and the government, so that a criticism of one had to be considered a possible criticism of the other. It was Mist again, who promoted this parallel, as Colley Cibber says in his Apology. This means that references to Cibber in The Author's Farce may very well have meaning

14. Sheridan Baker, "Political Allusion in Fielding's Author's Farce, Mock Doctor, and Tumble-Down Dick," PMLA 77 (1962), 221. See also Cranfield, p. 127; and HR and E. Hissed, p. xv. 15. Jean B. Kern, Dramatic Satire in the Age of Walpole 1720-1750 (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1976), pp. 42-43. 16. Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, ed. Edmund Bellchambers (London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshal, 1822), pp. 361, 442. J. Paul Hunter has much to say about the parallel in Occasional Form: Fielding and the Chains of Circumstance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), pp. 61-67. 40

extended to Walpole. Sheridan Baker argues that they do.17

If Marplay is Walpole as well as Cibber, then Sparkish's remark about "that extraordinary demand of yours upon the

office" probably makes reference to Walpole's embezzlement.

Bookweight may be referring to Walpole in his exchange with

Scarecrow, who admits that he has cheated in a translation. Bookweight admires the cheat: "Not qualified! If I was an emperor thou shouldst be my prime minister. . . . The study of bookselling is as difficult as the law, and there are as many tricks in the one as the other" (AF, p. 32). Orator sings about cheating and calls it "More Chimes to the Times, to the tune of Rogues, Rogues, Rogues." "Rogues" recalls Walpole, since The Beggar's Opera gave him the label, and the song implies bribery: "But gold, without the chemist's skill, / Turns all men into knaves. / For a-cheating they will go, etc." (AF, p. 62). The Goddess of Nonsense repeats in an ecstasy Opera's refrain, which certainly refers to

Walpole, "'When you cry he is rich, / you cry a great man.1 Bravissimo! I long to be your wife" (AF, p. 57).

17. Baker, pp. 221-26. Charles B. Woods thinks that the argument for political satire in AF (1730), ex­ pressed by Baker, is "far fetched," and that the Walpole satire is only in the revision (1734). Woods' argument is in his edition of AF, p. 30; Bertrand A. Goldgar, Walpole and the Wits (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), pp. 102-104, agrees with Woods that the first edition is apolitical. I agree with Baker, whose argument is followed in the text. 41

The 1734 revision of The Author's Farce reinforces

the satire on Walpole, stressing stealing, bribing, and

ignorance (AF, p. 90). Punch wishes to be a judge "for then

I can make anything I say to be law." Or he will be a parliament man, but for that one needs interest and quali­ fication, the latter being an estate. "Aye, why then I'll turn great man; that requires no qualification whatsoever" (AF, pp. 97-98). Since 1734 was an election year, it is not surprising to find satire on election bribery. The Bantomite, a "great man," "has given away so much money among the chairmen that some folks believe he intends to stand member of parliament for Westminster" (AF, p. 93). Charon's sailor tells him that "a wagonload of ghosts arrived from England that were knocked on the head at a late election," and Charon tells him to search their pockets. Charon says, "I found a bank bill of fifty pound t'other day in the pocket of a cobbler's ghost who came hither on the same account" (AF, p. 96). "Parliament man," "great man," and the recent election bribery combine to make the satire on Walpole clear to Fielding's contemporaries, though it is necessary now to piece the clues together. Fielding knows that his satire must be covert to avoid prosecution, but he wants to "convey some hints" to the public. He needs public support "to defend me from the iniquitous surmises of a certain anonymous dialogous author" who sees Historical Register as anti-ministerial (HR and E. 42

Hissed, p. 32). The irony in his "Dedication to the Public" makes his anti-Walpole satire more pungent, while dis­ claiming it. He says that the ministry hacks, in their effort to see his play as anti-ministry, remind him of a joke: As two gentlemen were walking the street together, the one said to the other, upon spying the figure of an ass hung out, "Bob! Bob! Look yonder! Some impudent rascal has hung out your picture on a signpost (HR and E. Hissed, p. 7). In the joke, "Bob" (Walpole, of course) rages until dis­ abused. Fielding, aware of the danger, treads a thin line between satire and libel; he is as explicit as the laws allow. Some of Fielding's strongest satire comes in the para-dramatic devices of dedications, prologues, and epi­ logues. Of the first scene of The Historical Register

Fielding says, "I hope, too, it will be remarked that the politicians are represented as a set of blundering block­ heads rather deserving pity than abhorrence." Of the last scene, he ironically says, But I am aware I shall be asked who is this Quidam that turns patriots into ridicule and bribes them out of their honesty? Who but the Devil could act such a part? Is not this the light wherein he is everywhere described in scripture and the writings of our best divines? Gold hath always been his favorite bait, wherewith he fisheth for sinners, and his laughing at the poor wretches he seduceth is as diabolical an attribute as any. Indeed it is so plain who is meant by this Quidam that he who maketh any wrong application thereof might as well mistake the name of Thomas for John, or Old Nick for Old Bob (HR, p. 8). 43

Thomas Pelham-Holles, the Duke of Newcastle, and John, Lord

Hervey, were now two of Walpole's "yes" men. Old Nick is,

of course, the Devil; Old Bob, Walpole. If you think Quidam

is Walpole, then you cannot see the difference between the

Devil and Walpole, Fielding implies.

In the first scene, Walpole's secrecy is satirized

and there is a sense of his intelligent undermining and scheming even though he has no lines to speak. Medley explains his silence: "Sir, my first and greatest poli­ tician never speaks at all. He's a very deep man, by which you will observe, I convey this moral, that the chief art of a politician is to keep a secret." Sourwit responds, "To keep his politics a secret, I suppose you mean" (HR and

E. Hissed, p. 18). The scene ends with the politicans de­ ciding to levy a new tax; the implication is that taxing and collecting have been the "main business of the Walpole 18 Government. "

Of the last scene, Wilbur Cross says, "There was no mistaking the satire of this farce. Under the disguise of Quidam, Fielding here represented Walpole engaged in -J open bribery." "Nothing so daring had ever been seen on the English stage" (Cross, I, 214-16). Our first glimpse of Quidam shows him laughing in the wings of the stage as the "Patriots" shout the slogan used against Walpole's

18. Cross, I, 215. 44 Excise Bill in 1733: "Liberty, Prosperity, and no Excise."

Medley says of him, "He's a pure impudent fellow and can stand the hisses of them all." Then Quidam bribes all of the "Patriots" to dance to his tune while he fiddles, a common motif to satirize Walpole's machinations. Medley explains to Sourwit that Quidam loses nothing by his bribery, since the dancers all have holes in their pockets and the money falls through (HR and E. Hissed, pp. 46-49). Fielding's most biting personal satire is The Grub-

Street Opera, directed against the follies of the House of

Hanover and its public servants, the Walpole Whigs. The entire play is a burlesque on the royal household and the government. Sir Owen Apshinken represents King George II, and his very name suggests the connection of the House of

Hanover to Owen Tudor, the Welsh grandfather of Henry VII. Lady Apshinken is Queen Caroline; Master Owen is Prince Frederick; Puzzletext is the Queen's close friend, Bishop

Hoadly; Robin is Robert Walpole; William is William

Pulteney, the leader of the Whig opposition to Walpole; John is Lord Hervey. The other characters are not defi­ nitely identifiable now; Susan and Margery, for example, probably represent Queen Caroline's maids of honor, whom

Prince Frederick pursued rather scandalously. 19

19. GSO, pp. 103-105; see also E. V. Roberts' edition of this play, pp. xvii-xxv. The Morrissey edition is cited in the text. 45

The Grub-Street Opera is an amazingly bold and delightfully comic satire. George II is portrayed as a lazy sensualist, content to allcw his wife the rule of the house, even though she restricts his drinking a little. Puzzletext sympathizes with him, "Petticoat-government is a very lamentable thing indeed," using the same phrase that was often levelled at the Hanovers because Queen Caroline dominated the court. There is no question that the court is ridiculed here, in the first lines of the play, and the satire continues with recognizable hits throughout. Lady

Apshinken, Caroline, is shrewish, pretentious, bossy, niggardly, and hostile to English customs; she remains ill- tempered throughout the play, scolding the others to the end (GSO, pp. 81-84). George II as Sir Owen makes_no progress intellectually, morally, or politically in the play, remaining foolish, indulgent, and retired.

Young Master Owen marries out of frustration, for no woman will have him out of wedlock and only Molly will marry him. Prince Frederick's virility was a great concern to Queen Caroline, for he was known to be maladroit, if not impotent (GSO, p. 107). 20 Master Owen doubts his own prowess: "Sure no man was so put to it in his amours—for I do not care to venture on a woman after another, nor does any woman care for me twice" (GSO, p. 32). Susan sums up

20. See also Roberts' edition; pp. xx-xxi. the typical female response to Master Owen: "A kiss!--a fart" (GSO, p. 77). It is probably this rough satire on the royal family that led to the censorship of the play, which, in its final form, was never acted. Walpole's manipula­ tions of Queen Caroline, of William Pulteney, and of the public funds are mocked unmistakably. Walpole and Queen

Caroline ran the government as congenially as Robin and Lady Apshinken. When Robin hears that he is to be dismissed, he is confident that Lady Apshinken will come to his rescue, because he has been sharing his stolen goods with her (GSO, p. 58). Even though Robin quarrels with Parson Puzzletext and confesses stealing in a variety of ways, he is still kept on as the first servant of the house.

Walpole's quarrel with Pulteney over the leadership of the

Whig party becomes the fight over Sweetissa, instigated by the prankish letterwriting of the amorous and mischievous Master Owen. The conversation in the Introduction between Scriblerus (the alleged author) and a player refers to the fight between Robin and William as a display of fine wit: "With what spirit do Robin and Will rap out the lie at one another for half a page together--you lie, and you lie--ah! the whole wit of Grub-Street consists in these two little words--you lie." They say that this sort of wit is new to the stage, "but it hath flourished among our political members a long while. Nay, in short, it is the only wit that flourishes among them" (GSO, pp. 27-28). 47

The imitation of Walpole's brand of politics is trenchant at the scene of the fight. William opens the can of worms, and all the servants are implicated: "I will tell master of two silver spoons you stole—I'll discover your tricks." Susan responds, "Let me tell you, if matters were to be too nicely examin1d into, I am afraid it would go hard with us all—wise servants always stick close to one another" (GSO, p. 55). Finally the dam breaks. William accuses Robin of stealing; Sweetissa accuses William; Susan accuses Sweetissa; John accuses Susan; William accuses John; Margery accuses William and Susan. Parson Puzzletext intervenes and excuses Robin and all of them by a most cynical remark about local politics: "If Robin the butler hath cheated more than other people, I see no reason for it, but because he hath had more opportunity to cheat" (GSO, p.

80).

Robin's remarks near the end of the play sum up the moral system that everyone in the government seems to accept:

How happy are men of quality, who cannot lose their honour, do what they will?--Right honour is tried in roguery, as gold is in fire, and comes out still the same.

Nice honour by a private man With zeal must be maintained; For soon 'tis lost, and never can By any be regained. But once right honourable grown, He's then its rightful owner; For tho' the worst of rogues he's known, He still is a man of honour (GSO, p. 72). 48

This cynicism is allowed to stand without correction; the conclusion of the play confirms its.accuracy, the absence of punishment reminiscent of The Beggar's Opera. "What is this 'honour1? A word," said Falstaff.

The personal burlesques in this play also include the burlesque of a clergyman, Bishop Hoadly. He is most clearly identified by his mock-theological discussions with

Lady Apshinken (Queen Caroline). Parson Puzzletext quibbles over the definition of "charity," but manages to come out with one that will support Lady Apshinken's miserliness: "Now the religious charity teaches us rather to starve the belly of our friend, than feed it. Verily, starving is voluptuous food for a sinful constitution"

(GSO, pp. 69-70). His theology is the more deft for knowing exactly what conclusions he must reach before he begins to argue. He and Lady Apshinken pretend to be concerned for the welfare of the tenants--"Ah, doctor! I long as much as misers for pelf, / To see the whole parish as good as myself"—and they often retire to the wine cellar, "where she and the parson sit and drink, and meditate ways to propagate religion in the parish" (GSO, pp. 58, 70).

Bishop Hoadly had a reputation for his close relationship with Caroline, his quibbling, his neglect of his duties, and his pretentions to theology. 49

iiii As Aristophanes boldly attacks the leading political figures, so he also attacks the leading literary figures of his day. He usually satirizes Euripides indirectly through parody of his plays, but occasionally he satirizes his person. Early in Knights, Demosthenes pleads, "Do not pelt me with those vegetables," when Nicias refers to Euripides

(I, 10). The reference to vegetables is an allusion to a widely held belief that Euripides' mother was a vendor of vegetables, and hence, "low." Frogs satirizes many poets, comic and tragic, but Euripides gets the most complete attention. Aeacus says,

When Euripides descended here, he started reciting his verses to the cheats, cut-purses, patricides, and brigands, who abound in Hades; his supple and tortuous reasonings filled them with enthusiasm, and they pronounced him the cleverest by far. So Euripides, elated with pride, took possession of the throne on which Aeschylus was installed (II, 230). Aeschylus has his friends too, but "Good people are very scarce here, just the same as on earth." Aeschylus attacks Euripides' use of ragged beggars and vagabonds as characters in tragedy, and mocks his use of lame men for heroes. These characters show his perverse interest in the unhealthy and the bizarre. Euripides is portrayed as a heretic: "Thanks, but I sacrifice to other gods" (II, 235). His gods are the specious gods of sophistry: Speech, Craftiness, Subtlety. He steals from 50

other writers; he introduces common habits and private life

on stage; his admirers become effeminate sophisticates. He

even allows his friend Cephisophon to seduce his wife (II,

243n). He portrays adulterous, incestuous women, corrupting

the morals of Athens.

Moreover, you have taught boasting and quibbling; the wrestling schools are deserted and the young fellows have submitted themselves to outrage [as pathics], in order that they might learnt to reel off idle chatter, and the sailors have dared to bandy words with their officers (II, 245).

Of what crimes is he not the author? Has he not shown us procurers, women who get delivered in the temples, have traffic with their brothers, and say that life is not life? 1Tis thanks to him that our city is full of scribes and buffoons (II, 246).

"That life is not life" refers to Aristophanes' criticism

that Euripides teaches sophistic quibbles. Euripides abuses

language in order to be popular with the ignorant, the

salacious, and the sentimental. Aristophanes fears the

chaos that results if words do not reflect reality; "scribes and buffoons" suggests the vaporous sterility of words without substance, such as Aeschylus' occasional lapses into

ponderous bombast.

Aristophanes only glances at the follies of lesser playwrights, sometimes using them as specific examples of lewdness or idiocy. Phrynicus, Lycis, and Amipsias (the same as in Plato's Apology) are accused of using hackneyed, vulgar jokes. The poet Agathon is frequently pilloried as an effeminate homosexual, most thoroughly in Thesmophoriazusae. Many of these minor poets—"They are

little sapless twigs, chatterboxes"—are unknown today (II,

193).

Aristophanes handles Socrates harshly; the burlesque

is hilarious, and less fair than the others. Socrates was

a thinker, which made him a non-conformist; a speaker on

streetcorners, which made him a public figure; a teacher,

which classed him with the sophists; and a mystic, which

made him a religious heretic. For these qualities,

Aristophanes burlesques him in Clouds. His faults are similar to Euripides': subtle thinking, public display of immoral use of language, and religious heresy. 21 Aristophanes is always a public poet first, putting public

virtues and needs before those of the individual.

Perhaps Aristophanes is unappreciative of philosophy, one of thos~ "to whom all philosophical and scientific speculation, all disinterested intellectual curiosity, is boring and silly." 22 Like Swift's projectors of A Tale of

21. In his Socrates and Aristophanes (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1966), p. 8, Leo Strauss says, "The profound kinship between Socrates and Euripides--as dis­ tinguished from Sophocles and especially Aeschylus--was sensed clearly by Aristophanes, who justly presented Socrates as 'the first and foremost sophist' by looking at him in the light of 'the good old time' of the Marathon fighters, or as one of the symptoms of 'a degenerate culture.'"

22. K. J. Dover, ed., Clouds, by Aristophanes (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. lii. 52 a Tub, Socrates has fumes in his head, he is guided by "clouds" to fantastic, irrelevant, and vague schemes. Aristophanes has no use for such dreamers, but Socrates is worse than useless because he teaches students to manipulate words so that the wrong becomes the right. Aristophanes •fears and resents the corrupt use of words, and this teacher of forensic rhetoric threatens to make a mockery of political justice and tradition. Socrates' false gods are the same as

Euripides': "You will recognize no other gods but Chaos, the Clouds, and the Tongue, these three alone" (I, 322).

As usual, Aristophanes makes his burlesque figure confess to his crimes. Literary satire in Plutus undercuts much of the play, occurring as parody of the tragic style, which has some special words connotating dignity and sacred relations. Aristophanes parodies a line from Euripides' Medea, one from Sophocles, several from Philoxenus (author unknown), pathetic exclamations, and so on (Plutus, pp. 135, 210, 164, 256). When Poverty enters as an old hag, Blepsidemus sug­ gests that she is probably "a tragical fury belonging to the play-house: for she hath a wild and tragical aspect." Fielding notes,

Aristophanes here rallies the absurd methods, which the tragic poets of his time took to inspire terror, or rather horror, in to their audience. He partic­ ularly points here at Aeschylus, who introduced these dreadful deities into many of his plays. . . . Our own [poets], for want of those, are obliged 53

to have recourse to the poor assistance of thunder and lightning, and now and then a ghost; which last hath seldom appeared of late years on our stage, without more reason to be afraid of the audience, than they of him (Plutus, pp. 182-83).

(One thinks immediately of Fielding's mockery of ghosts in Tom Thumb and Pasquin, and the settings of Hell for The

Author's Farce and Eurydice.) While Fielding worked for Drury Lane, or hoped to have his work produced there, he refrained from trenchant personal satires. But in the Little Theater in the Haymarket, he aimed personal satire at several of London's well-known entertainment figures, especially Colley Cibber.

As with his political satire, Fielding chose the most prominent people to ridicule. Charles W. Nichols says, It is easy to prove by means of the newspapers and periodicals of the time, that Fielding, in all this satire, was exceedingly timely, and that in most cases (certainly in all theatrical and literary cases except satire against pantomime, in which he ran counter to the public taste) he was dealing with standing jokes of the day, and was therefore sure of the response of laughter from his audiences. In no cases are these facts more certain than in the cases of Theophilus Cibber, and his father Colley, who were the targets of many satirists in Fielding's time.2 3

Colley Cibber had decades of public exposure and could thus be identified with any reference to his role as poet laureate, which included the writing of his execrable

New Year Odes; to his role as inept editor, which included

23. Charles W. Nichols, "Fielding and the Cibbers," PQ, 1 (1922), 278. his publishing a forward to his play The Provok'd Husband

with the word "paraphonalia" for "paraphernalia"; or to his

role as the imperious manager of Drury Lane theater, which

included selecting plays to be performed and revising them

to suit his personal—and fallible--taste. The Germanic

mispronunciation of his name (perhaps as pronounced by

George I), "Keyber," not only identified Cibber, but also

betrayed his political affiliation with the government.

Whenever a character in a Fielding play is a dictatorial and prejudiced state manager, he represents Colley Cibber. It is true in The Author's Farce and remains true seven years later in The Historical Register and Eurydice Hissed. The character of the stage manager changes

little over the course of the years, and it does not matter

at all that Cibber himself gave up his interest in Drury

Lane in 1733. Everyone knew the type that Cibber's image represented, so any reference to a Cibberian quality carried

the weight of all the associations of the Cibberian image. Cibber was so conscious of himself as a public image that he wrote his autobiography as an "apology," a defense.

Direct satire on Cibber in The Author's Farce sug­ gests that he is too haughty to read Luckless' play.and (in the 1734 revision) that as poet laureat he is a great advocate of Nonsense (AF, pp. 14, 99). In The Historical Register Medley says of Cibberian "Odes to the New Year,"

"the devil of any wit did I ever see in any of them" (HR, 55

p. 17). Theophilus Cibber is satirized in the same play as

"Pistol," a Shakespearean part which had brought him some measure of fame. "Pistol is run mad and thinks himself a Great Man," says Medley; "Pistol is every insignificant fellow in town who fancies himself of great consequence and is of none" (HR, pp. 35, 44).

In The Author's Farce, Fielding hits many indi­ viduals, most of whom can be identified by the traits he gives them. The most obvious references are to Colley and Theophilus Cibber ("Marplay Sr. and Jr."), Edmund Curll

("Curry, a Bookseller"), Eliza Haywood ("Mrs. Novel"), John Heidegger ("Count Ugly"), John Henley ("Dr. Orator"), and

John Rich ("Monsieur Pantomime"). Many others can be guessed.* 24

The Tragedy of Tragedies (the revised version of

Tom Thumb) uses the first initials and latinate forms of names to attack Richard Bentley, Pieter Burmann, John 25 Dennis, and Edward Midwinter. Dozens of playwrights are attacked through the parodies of their plays and in Fielding's mock footnotes to the parodies. This play and those parodied in it will be discussed in Chapter 5, which

24. AF, Appendix B.

25. Henry Fielding, The Tragedy of Tragedies or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great with Annotations of H. Scriblerus Secundus, James T. Hillhouse, Ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918), pp. 79-80, 150-51. 56 concentrates on Fielding's criticism of those who abuse

language. Fielding attacks Lewis Theobald for several reasons.

As Don Tragedio in The Author's Farce, Theobald abuses language and the stage, writing nonsense and filling out the play with thunder and lightning. In writing Shakespeare Restored, Theobald corrected Pope's edition of Shakespeare, making several valuable emendations, but also restoring some useless repetitions and nonsensical passages. Fielding apparently viewed Theobald's corrections of Pope as quibbling, just as he viewed the painstaking scholarship of Bentley and Burmann, at least as he ridicules them in The

Tragedy of Tragedies. Fielding satirizes Theobald throughout his edition of Plutus, proving repeatedly that Theobald's edition of

Plutus (1715) pays more attention to Mme. Dacier's French edition than to the Greek original. 2 6 And Theobald is probably the target in The Author's Farce (Act II, sc. vi) when Scarecrow admits that he "translated" Virgil out of Dryden. The fact that Theobald's poverty and his desire for fame and fortune led him to unethical and nearly illegal

26. Fielding notes literally dozens of passages in which Theobald is apparently translating the French edition. See Hines, pp. 80-91, for confirmation of Fielding's charge. For a defense of Theobald, see Richard Foster Jones, Lewis Theobald (New York: Columbia University Press, 1919), pp. 9-11. 57

plagiarism and prompted him to write a few bad tragedies

makes him a prime target for Fielding's attack, which of

course follows Pope's line of attack on Theobald in The

Dunciad. Fielding attacks Theobald, as he does John Rich,

not so much for his ineptness as for his presumption and

ambition. Theobald was not really so bad a scholar as so bad a man, trying to profit by someone else's work and 27 skimping on his own labor. Rich profiteered on spectacle,

pandering to the popular taste for circus acts and romantic,

mythological pantomimes, which Theobald often wrote. Rich's "entertainments" included tumblers, freaks, dancers, animal acts, songs, skits, and pantomime, all of

which Fielding satirizes on the basis of their irrational

and occasionally licentious nature. "Monsieur" Pantomime suggests that Rich's degrading performances come from France

(which was often true), and Harlequin in Pasquin portrays

Rich as a traitor to the English playhouses (Pasquin, p. 226). Thus Fielding characterizes the irrational as un- English and unpatriotic, just as he castigates the opera for its Italian origins and performers. He also silently affirms his own patriotism, which, since he is such a severe critic of the government, could be vulnerable to attack.

27. Jones, though defending Theobald on most counts, admits Theobald's questionable ethics, pp. 21-22; see also John Churton Collins, "Theobald, Lewis," DNB, (1917). 58 v

Aristophanes boldly exhorts the audience to improve society by no longer accepting the self-interested behavior of professional men, especially politicians, who abuse the public trust. "This rapacious gull named Cleon" is first on the list, but there are whole groups who need chastizing. In Peace, he blames the Prytanes for taking bribes (I, 197), and in Acharnians he blames them for the expense of sup­ porting ambassadors (I, 94). Even Pericles, long since a victim of the plague, is criticized as an instigator of the

Peloponnesian War (I, 112, 183). Lamachus gets rich off the war because his friends got him elected general, while the poor citizens fight in it.

Democratic legislation and elections are satirized in the particular, such as the election of Lamachus and the

Pnyx assembly in Ecclesiazusae (II, 360-64), but the demo- cractic institutions themselves are never ridiculed in favor of tyranny, oligarchy, or communism. "The lordly Poseidon, horrified at the way in which the Triballion god wears his coat, laments: 'O democracy, where do you lead us in the end, if the gods have elected such a dolt!' The satire is aimed at the aristocratic opponent of democracy as much as at democracy itself and its methods of election." 2 8 The communism of Ecclesiazusae is certainly not recommended as

28. Victor Ehrenberg, The People of Aristophanes (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1974), p. 341. 59 a better form of government. The targets are the current office-holders, who are no good; it is the nature of Old

Comedy to criticize the government, to take the side of the 29 subordinated population in opposition to the authorities.

But it is neither revolutionary nor nihilist. Aristophanes also attacked priests, jurors, and physicians. Hierocles, in Peace, wants to gorge himself on the animal sacrifices that Trygaeus is making to Peace (I,

205). Dover sees religious satire in Thesmophoriazusae: "It is clear from what Mika says that the priestess arrives just in time to hear the old man's words—and at once pricks up her ears at the prospect of personal gain, as we would expect of a religious official in Aristophanic comedy. Satire on the judicial system and the jurors pervades

Aristophanic comedy, the Wasps being entirely devoted to it. Strepsiades (Clouds) employs Socrates to teach him to win because of the constant litigation; Cleon (Knights) bribes the jurors; and sycophants appear in every play eager to prosecute anyone. Philocleon (Wasps) reveals every vice in describing the joy and satisfaction he derives from being a corrupt juror (II, 32-35). The medical profession also

29. Ehrenberg, p. 340. Also K. J. Dover, "Greek Comedy," Fifty Years (and Twelve) of Classical Scholarship, ed. Maurice Platnauer (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), p. 130; and Solomos, p. 61. Whitman, pp. 53, 57, 117, sees the comic hero as one who opposes the establishment.

30. Dover, Aristophanic Comedy, p. 168. 60 takes a few blows: Socrates says the Clouds support "a crowd of quacks, both the diviners, who were sent to Thurium, the notorious physicians," and other useless malingerers (I, 316). The strongest anti-physician satire is in Plutus.

Plutus hits all the professions: literary, politi­ cal, religious, judicial, and medical, and Fielding notices 31 parallels between Athens and London. Aristophanes paro­ dies cheap tricks of tragedy writers when Poverty comes on stage and horrifies the actors. Fielding sees a parallel with the Duke of Buckingham (The Rehearsal) in his ridicule of the "many absurd methods, which the poets have taken to ingratiate themselves with their audience" (Plutus, p. 226).

In response to Poverty's denigration of the char­ acter of Athenian orators, Fielding explains their function in the political life of Athens: In all the little cities of Greece there were certain men, who undertook, on public occasions, to harangue and advise the people, sometimes honestly, and for their own good; but more fre­ quently they stirred up the people to pursue their disadvantage, in order to effect their own private interests. There were many of these at Athens, against whom our poet is very liberal of in­ vectives; in which he is surely worthy of commenda­ tion, since TO MAKE USE OF POPULAR INTEREST, AND THE CHARACTER OF PATRIOTISM, IN ORDER TO BETRAY ONE'S COUNTRY, is perhaps the most flagitious of all crimes (Plutus, p. 200).

His use of capitals suggests that here, again, Fielding sees parallels between Athens and London. Actually, Plutus is

31. Hines, p. 214. 61

only a mild political satire. Fielding is either thinking

more of Knights or Acharnians, or he is taking an oppor­ tunity to strike his London foes. "In using a literary form against the evils which he saw in the government of his state, a tactic that he employed very often in his

farces, Fielding is of course doing exactly as Aristophanes

did during most of his career." 32

Fielding may still be smarting under the Licensing Act of 1737 when he writes about the corrupt politics of Athens, which allowed influential people, for a small bribe, to avoid military duty:

This method of perverting the privileges which the laws of a country indulge to some particular members or bodies in it, hath not been confined to Athens. Such instances, when they happen, fall very justly under the lash of the comic poet. And it is by exposing such persons and things, that unlicensed comedy will be found of great use in a society; and a free stage and a free people will always agree very well together (Plutus, pp. 236-37). In these notes, it is apparent that Fielding sees his own role in London as similar to the role Aristophanes took in Athens, as the exposer and opponent of political corrup-

The satire on the religious community in Plutus is devastating and heretical in the extreme. Cario's tale of

32. Hines, p. 215.

33. See Fielding's letter to Common Sense, no. 15, May 21, 1737, signed "Pasquin," for corroboration of Fielding's comparing himself to Aristophanes. the doings in the temple of Aesculapius exposes not only the hypocrisy and greed of the priests there, but also the low repute into which the god of healing has fallen. Fielding says that the greed of the priests, who eat all of the sacrificial food, would force the god to eat the food which the people had brought there for their own meals. The entire scene, including the mention of the courtesans of the priests, debases the sacrificial ritual to farce. The play ends with Mercury submitting to kitchen duty under

Cario, a scene which Fielding says "is indeed as delicate, and at the same time as severe a ridicule on the religion of the Greeks, as is possible to be invented" (Plutus, p. 253). Cario even implies that Jupiter himself has enrolled among the devotees of Plutus; the satire extends to the entire spiritual world, making the gods completely materialistic, worried about where their next meal is coming from. The court and its processes are treated the same in Plutus as in the rest of Aristophanes: jurors are old men on their last legs (p. 161); lawyers can be bought (p. 176); sycophants pursue the innocent (p. 234); and the judges cheat in order to keep their positions in court (p. 262).

The same is true for the medical profession: they serve only for money. Chremylus says that when there are no fees, there are no doctors (p. 180), and Cario relates the sadistic misuse of medicine in Neoclides* eyes (pp. 63

218-18); Fielding says the medical attention given in

Plutus is a ridiculous ceremony (p. 221). Fielding's satires on professions got him into some trouble, but not much. Appleton says of Eurydice, "On the

evening of its performance, Feb. 19, 1737, a riot took place in the gallery and the audience took exception to the

character of a ghost of a military beau" (HR, p. 54n).

Appleton avoids cause-effect language because no one is

sure that Fielding's presentation of the military beau was 34 the cause of the play's failure. There is some reason to

believe that Fielding could have upset some soldiers with such lines as these: Author. What soldierl Have you mistaken my army-beau for a soldier! ... to distinguish the character of my army-beau from my court beau, I clap a cockade into his hat, and that is all the distinction I can make between them (Eurydice, pp. 276-77). The politicians get much harsher treatment in

Fielding's plays. In Pasquin, the direct satire comes in

the comments about "The Election" as it is rehearsed. The

prologue sets the tone: as all other professions use

various devices to please the public, so the Author "shows you here at once both Whig and Tory: / Or court and country

party you may call 'em: / But without fear or favour he will

34. Cross, I, 206-207; Cross apparently gets his information from Fielding's Eurydice Hissed; see HR and Eurydice Hissed, p. 66. 64 maul 'em" (Pasquin, p. 170). The theme is bribery: "Bribe a little more openly, if you please, or the audience will lose that joke. . . . Come to one end and bribe away with right and left" (p. 173). The Historical Register satirizes the state and stage at once: "When my politics come to a farce, they very naturally lead to a playhouse where, let me tell you, there are some politicians too, where there is lying, flattering, dissembling, promising, deceiving, and undermining, as well as in any court in Christendom" (HR and E. Hissed, p. 16). Politicians exist only to collect taxes (p. 21). At the auction, a "remnant of political honesty" is offered, and Lord Both-Sides buys it because it can be turned inside-out

"as often as you will" (p. 30).

Fielding satirizes the entertainment profession in

Pasquin, where Fustian complains that the plays of reputable dramatists are cut short for the sake of pantomimes, dancers, and jugglers (Pasquin, p. 222), which is only right, claims one of the dancers: "Hang this play, and all plays; the dancers are the only people that support the house." She is the best dancer because "I show more to the audience than any lady upon the stage" (p. 204). In the Epilogue, the Ghost of Commonsense pleads with the audience, "Banish all childish entertainments hence," "all the tumbling-scum of every nation" (Pasquin, p. 228). For the "English people 65

to support an extravagant Italian opera is like a eunuch's

keeping a mistress" (p. 290). Pasquin also attacks priests, lawyers, and doctors.

Common-sense says to Firebrand, "I will never adore a

priest, / Who wears pride's face beneath religion's mask, /

and makes a pick-lock of his piety / To steal away the liberty of mankind" (p. 215). When Law says that some people are paupered by legal costs, Common-sense replies that it would then be better if we had no law (p. 208). Fielding criticizes lawyers for sophistry: "As crafty lawyers, to acquire applause, / Try various arts to get a

doubtful cause" (p. 169). The third villain of "The Life and Death of Common-sense" (in Pasquin) is Physic, the doctor who wants to poison Common-sense for interfering in his trade. It is such a doctor who, in Fielding's Eurydice, helps Spindle find his way to Hell: Spindle dies, "thanks

to a little fever and a great doctor" (Eurydice, p. 273).

vi Aristophanes criticizes society at large, the whole audience, for its behavior in the assemblies, elections, courts, and religious rituals. Acharnians opens with Dicaeopolis complaining that no one comes to the assembly on time, not even the Prytanes who preside. When they do come, the discussion is not of peace and prosperity, but of ambassadors and their trips and feasts. The people do not 66

ask for peace; when Amphitheus brings truces, they chase him

out and threaten to kill Dicaeopolis for making a separate

peace. They are a belligerent mob, unwilling to hear

Dicaeopolis1 reasons. Clouds concludes the debate between Right and Wrong

Discourse with the condemnation of the entire audience as 35 "wide-arsed pederasts." The people repeatedly allow the rich and powerful to trick them, to take advantage of them in every way for paltry payoffs. Peace is also disgusted

with the Athenians for letting themselves be bribed by demagogues into a war policy, for believing informers and

orators like Cleon and Hyperbolus (I, 186). Athenians do not make an effort to understand the issues, but prefer to

indulge themselves in wine and women (or men, in Lysistrata).

They display poor taste in plays when they choose Kratinus or Amipsias over Aristophanes (I, 326-30).

Knights is a play about elections and how they are conducted and won. Agoracritus and Cleon campaign for the post of first servant to Demos ("People"), and it is a campaign of bribes, flattery, and promises, with no serious issue in the debate. Demos, like the choruses of Acharnians, Wasps, and Birds, is very easily swayed by slogans and flattery, for he really has no convictions of his own. He likes to be told oracles which predict "that I

35. This is the literal translation, by Henderson, p. 218. 67

shall become an eagle and soar among the clouds" (I, 59).

The Chorus speaks for Aristophanes: "Demos, you are our all-powerful sovereign lord; all tremble before you, yet you are led by the nose. You love to be flattered and fooled; you listen to the orators with gaping mouth and your mind

is led astray" (I, 65). That Demos suddenly does an about-

face and claims that he knew Cleon's treachery from the beginning is not a withdrawal of Aristophanes' satire, but rather his wildly optimistic prophecy. Ironically, the

judges awarded first prize to Knights, and then Athens re­ elected Cleon general:

Aristophanes might have depicted a defeat for the noisy, vulgar, uneducated, upstart "Paphlagonian" by a dignified, cultured representative of an aristocratic house, but he chose instead to make the victor a sausage-seller, of "bad" parentage, almost illiterate, trained in the "school of life" to steal and lie and accustomed to earn a bit on the side as a male prostitute. The displacement of the Paphlagonian by the Sausage-seller, who can shout louder, insult more promptly, lie harder and flatter more grossly, is represented as the bottom of the slope down which political leadership at Athens has rolled with increasing momentum.^ Knights is an admission that democracy can fail, and Clouds is an attack on the sophistic language responsible for the failure. The blame is placed at every level: foolish people, aspiring orators, and greedy demagogues. Satire on the lust and greed of the population of

Athens is common. The licentiousness of women provides many

36. Dover, Aristophanic Comedy, pp. 97-98. of the jokes in Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae, and

Ecclesiazusae, plays mostly about women. In the first two,

women admit their love of the bottle, and in the first and

last, women are sexually aggressive. Philocleon's lust

(Wasps) is not matched in the other men, but Aristophanes

satirizes all men when Right Discourse admits that the

entire audience is guilty of pederasty. Aristophanes does

not satirize normal desire, just preoccupation with sex.

Fielding sees a little indirect flattery of the

Athenians in Plutus (pp. 177, 225), and a great deal of

satire on their greed and ignorance. In reference to the jurors, Fielding says, "The greediness of the Athenians for

these offices, for the sake of this small fee, is inveighed against in no less than three places in this play, and again

in his 'Frogs,1 in his 'Birds,' in his 'Wasps,1 and in almost every one of the rest" (p. 171).

Fielding notes satire on Athenian greediness even where the implication is vague. When Aristophanes says, in the voice of Plutus, that he will not throw figs to the crowd, Fielding sees the passage as intimating that the "Athenians were so very avaricious and corrupt, that their voices were to be purchased even by figs .and sweetmeats" (p. 227). Mercury says that Chremylus is wealthier than the gods and that he, Mercury, is ready to desert the gods in favor of Plutus. Fielding: "The greediness of the

Athenians for riches, and their vast estimation of them, is 69 finely satirized in this instance" (p. 260). The dethroning of Jupiter is "a very bitter invective on the avarice of the Athenians" (p. 265).

Plutus presents a scathing burlesque of the reli­ gious practices of the Athenians--laymen, priests, and even gods exhibiting ignorance and greed. Chremylus would deny truth for money (p. 204); the priest of Jupiter abandons him (pp. 264-65); the entire population deserts the spiri­ tual world in favor of the material. Their only true god has always been money. Political ignorance, laziness, vanity, lust, and greed coagulate the Athenian society, as every man grasps for his own advantage. Fielding has a similar view of public avarice in London and attacks his own audience in similar terms. It is an age in which "party and prejudice carry all before them, when learning is decried, wit not understood, when the theaters are puppet shows and the comedians ballad singers, when fools lead the town" (AF, p. 16). The Prologue to The Author's Farce mocks the audience for being tame animals, taught when and what to applaud (AF, p. 3).

According to Trapwit and Fustian, in Pasquin, the audience either does not care about the play anyway, or is mali­ ciously hostile (Pasquin, pp. 188, 205).

The Grub-Street Opera implies that everyone is to blame for allowing corrupt government. Puzzletext's remark,

"If Robin the butler hath cheated more than other people, I 70 see no other reason for it, but because he hath had more opportunity to cheat," accuses everyone of being basically dishonest and corrupt (GSO, p. 80). This remark challenges the public. Are they all Lord Dappers who overlook reality and the representation of reality on stage, because they are preoccupied with self-adoration and immediate gratifi­ cation of the senses? Lord Dapper epitomizes the egoistic tendency and proves that fools lead the town:

Sourwit. Well, my lord, what does your lordship think of what you have seen?

Lord Dapper. Faith, sir, I did not observe it, but it's damned stuff, I am sure. Sourwit. I think so, and I hope your lordship will not encourage it. They are such men as your lordship who must reform the age. If persons of your exquisite and refined taste will give a sanction to politer entertainments, the town will soon be ashamed of laughing at what they do now.

Lord Dapper [gazing around the theater]. Really, this is a very bad house.

Sourwit. It is not indeed so large as the others, but I think one hears better in it.

Lord Dapper. Pox of hearing--one can't see! One's self, I mean. Here are no looking glasses. I love Lincoln's Inn Fields, for that reason, better than any house in town. If this is not a clear enough condemnation of who rules the public opinion and how unfair it is, Fielding adds:

Lord Dapper. Mr. Sourwit, I am always ready to give my countenance to anything of that kind which might bring the best company together, for as one does not go to see the play, but the company, I think that's chiefly to be considered, and therefore I am always ready to countenance good plays. 71

Sourwit. No one is a better judge what is so than your lordship.

Lord Dapper. Not I indeed, Mr. Sourwit, but as I am one half of the play in the Green Room, talking to the actresses, and the other half in the boxes, talking to the women of quality, I have an oppor­ tunity of seeing something of the play, and perhaps may be as qood a judge as another (HR and E. Hissed, pp. 22-23).

Fielding must have been frustrated. If he felt the

aristocracy, the supposed arbiters of taste, could be so

negligent and ignorant, what could he expect of the com­

moners? Medley says, in The Historical Register, that the people really are like Lord Dapper, interested only in "luxury, effeminacy, and debauchery." Act II burlesques the kind of audience members that Fielding must have abhorred. The ladies delight in the opera, and they gossip in sexual

innuendoes about the Italian castrati:

Fourth Lady. He's everything in the world one could wish!

First Lady. Almost everything one could wish! Second Lady. They say there's a lady in the city has a child by him (HR and E. Hissed, p. 24). These women are not so much interested in sex as they are in clever intimations about sex. Dapper approves of the ladies, seeing their lubricious titillations as "politeness, good sense, and philosophy" (p. 26). Aggressive and honest desire is sublimated in these "fine" ladies to dilettant­ ism; but their prurience is no less vicious for being 72 effete. Like Fielding's ghosts of The Author's Farce and

Eurydice, these women are devitalized by their slavish conformity to the beau monde. Society as a whole is mistaken in accepting affec­ tation as politeness and good sense. Eurydice, in the play that bears her name, attempts to appear modish, but succeeds only to expose her vacuity. As Fielding says through the voice of "Author," a beau is simply his dress, and an army- beau is distinguishable from a court beau only by a cockade in his hat. Eurydice is a female beau, buried in layers of fashionable hypocrisy; hence, she is really dead. Conformity to the fashions has killed Mr. Spindle, too. He says of Eurydice, "Faith! she is handsome; and if she had been any­ body's wife but my own, I would have come hither for her with all my heart" (Eurydice, p. 275). It is very important to follow the leader, and Sourwit's remark about Dapper's power to reform the stage by countenancing only superior plays makes a great deal of sense. Fielding condemns the audience for being sheep, but since they are, he tries to lead them toward more instructive entertainment. All of these are quite conventional themes, as prologues and epilogues of the time show, but there is a special earnestness, a patriotic sincerity in Fielding that intensifies his appeal to the public; England might possibly be conquered or betrayed, he says in his Dedication to the

Public, but moral decay is more likely and more dangerous: 73

If a general corruption be once introduced and those who should be the guardians and bulwarks of our liberty once find, or think they find, an interest in giving it up, no great capacity will be required to destroy it; on the contrary, the meanest, lowest, dirtiest fellow, if such a one should ever have the assurance, in future ages, to mimic power and brow­ beat his betters, will be as able as Machiavel him­ self could have been, to root out the liberties of the bravest people (HR and E. Hissed, p. 8).

These remarks reflect the spirit of Fielding's satires. The punishment of individuals, of professional men, and of the audience, is clearly intended to be re­ storative and salutary. Both Aristophanes and Fielding attack abuses as a gardener attacks a neglected and over­ grown garden, but only the people can reform themselves and their government. Although the methods of satire are destructive and painful, these satirists share a deep trust in man's capabilities to improve. CHAPTER 3

CHARACTERIZATION

Fielding's characterizations also seem influenced by Aristophanes. Both dramatists satirize specific people, specific behavior, and specific ideas, both generalizing the specific targets into types, even personified abstractions. These personifications are "situation characters," and the situations are arranged in order to expose improper atti­ tudes and relationships. The impact of this kind of characterization is that the audience is directed to the social relationships of the characters rather than to their individual psychology. This chapter deals with (1) the use of type characters, (2) the use of personified abstrac­ tions, and (3) the methods of dramatizing improper social relationships.

i Many of Aristophanes' characters carry the names of historical people, and there can be little confusion about the referents. Fielding cannot use real names, but he has a number of devices to identify his targets. However, per­ sonal lampoon is not the ultimate goal of either dramatist, and the personal satire always extends from the individual to condemn the traits or actions that the satirist con­ siders malignant. The personal satire is trenchant and 74 75

caustic, but the final thrust is always public reformation

rather than personal punishment."*" Aristophanes uses the names of Cleon, Socrates, Lamachus, Euripides, Nicias, Demosthenes, and others, but the characters with those names are barely recognizable as

the historical figures. In Clouds and Knights, Socrates and Cleon are exaggerated, with a narrowness of character

that makes them caricatures and thus types. Clearly,

Aristophanes first categorized his logical orders and relationships, working out the thematic conflict of ideas,

before he selected his characters. The characters are named

for the same reason that they wore masks: for a quick

identification of a single trait or idea. Cleon, Socrates, and Euripides are thus abstract encounters for the pro­

tagonist, who usually, like Agoracritus, Strepsiades,

Dicaeopolis, Trygaeus, Philocleon, Peisthetaerus, or Chremylus, is a plain man-in-the-street citizen, a farmer, like one of the audience. Because Aristophanes uses characters as easily recognized traits, and not as real people, he goes right on using "Cleon" and "Euripides" after the historical persons are dead. Many of the people and

1. As Gilbert Highet points out in The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton, 1962, p. 26), "The lampoon wishes merely to wound and destroy an individual or group. Satire wounds and destroys individuals and groups in order to benefit society as a whole." events mentioned in the plays are from past history, from myth, or simply from Aristophanes' imagination. Aristophanes uses type names for major and minor characters: Dicaeopolis means "Just Citizen"; Philocleon means "Cleon Lover"; Strepsiades means "Twister"; Lysistrata means "War Dissolver"; and so on. The names tell us what to expect from the characters, and the characters carry out their tasks in accord with their dominant characteristic.

Charles Murphy long ago recognized that the Aristophanic comedy "is primarily a drama of ideas, a dramatized battle of conflicting principles; the poet is in part a propa- gandist." 2 Robert Speckhard compares Aristophanes' use of characters to G. B. Shaw's: "The Aristophanic and Shavian comedy of ideas is not a debate or discussion, but a con­ frontation of two different types of personalities in which ideas are weapons." 3 Katherine Lever agrees that "in almost every play by Aristophanes, a clash of ideas is 4 dramatized into a conflict of characters." Aristophanes apparently worked out the intellectual conflict, or agon, assigned the proposition and opposition

2. Charles T. Murphy, "Aristophanes and the Art of Rhetoric," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 49 (1938), 79.

3. Robert Speckhard, "Shaw and Aristophanes: How the Comedy of Ideas Works," The Shaw Review, 8, No. 3 (1965), 92.

4. Lever, p. 120. 77

to characters, then sought means to make the protagonist

appealing to the audience. Speckhard analyzes how Aristophanes creates a character, like Dicaeopolis, makes him the protagonist of a specific argument, and builds audience sympathy for him and antipathy for the antagonist.

The audience wants "to see the ideas of the complacent

Alazones punctured and those of the ironical heroes

victorious" (Speckhard, p. 91). The protagonist wins because he is an energetic representative of the populace, and not only because his ideas are, in themselves, more persuasive. In all of the plays, the protagonist is a

person resembling the average audience member, that is, a person without money or influence opposing the established power and authority. Aristophanes does not want the audience to consider the protagonist as an individual, but to relate to the protagonist as one of them. The pro­ tagonist has so few individuating characteristics that Gilbert Norwood called him static and asserted that Aristophanes creates no characters at all. 5

Minor characters are introduced, frequently for only a single scene, to further the allegorical development of the ideas. Their names are also typical, such as "Syco­ phant," "Old Woman," "Sexy Woman," and "Neighbor." In

Acharnians, the Megarian, Husbandman, Informer, and

5. Gilbert Norwood, Greek Comedy (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1931), p. 298. Boeotian all support the theme that peace brings prosperity

they have no other function, nor do they develop rounded

personalities in the single scenes in which they appear. In Peace, Sicklemaker, Crestmaker, Trumpetmaker, Helmet-

maker, and Spearmaker; and in Birds, the Heralds, Priest,

Poet, Prophet, Commissioner, Decree Dealer, and Informer simply illustrate the effect of the major action on their

professions. We never meet an Informer or Poet except in

his named capacity. Fielding sees Aristophanes as a creator of typed personalities in Plutus in his note to the first speech of the play. Speaking of Cario (whose name means "Wit"), Fielding says that a phrase which would be commonplace to another is "truly humorous in this servant, which is a character of impertinence and sauciness, and as well at least supported through the whole play, as any such character in any modern comedy" (Plutus, p. 130). Carlo's mock dignity is "highly suitable to the person who delivers it, and would not fail of pleasing from the mouth of a sensible actor." Fielding interprets Cario's speeches on the basis that his lines must be consistent "with the character of that slave, who would have more naturally drank [sic] off the wine himself" (Plutus, p. 256).

Fielding sees CArio as rigidly consistent, "always with great forwardness thrusting himself in as a person of con­ sequence on every occasion" (p. 163). 79

Fielding sees Chremylus ("Debtor") as droll, though

hypocritical and greedy. At the beginning of the play, he

declares himself virtuous and religious, but when he meets

Plutus ("Wealth") he discards all morality and asks Plutus to fill his house with riches "by all methods whatsoever."

Mme. Dacier says that Chremylus1 speech is a little out of character or that the speech is a "common formulary of

prayers"; she seeks to excuse Chremylus1 venality. For Fielding, Chremylus is clearly a greedy hypocrite. There is infinitely more humor in suspecting the veracity of Chremulus in his former declaration, than here. But admitting that he had hitherto preserved an honest character, there is nothing more natural than his abandoning it at this near and sudden approach of riches: to which we may add that it is on his first being left alone with Plutus, and in the rapture of his devotion to him, that he throws off the mask, and expresses his unbridled eagerness to come at wealth "by all methods whatsoever" (p. 157).

Chremylus1 next speech shows him in the confusion of trying

to maintain his mask of conventional morality, yet convince Plutus to reward him: Chrem. But you have never lighted on a moderate man before: for my part, this was ever my way. I rejoice" in frugality more than any man alive; and so I do in expense, whenever it is necessary to be expensive. But let us go in: for I am desirous that you should see my wife, and my only son, whom I love dearer than any thing--I mean, after you. Fielding's translation of the passage indicates that he sees

Aristophanes' character as clearly defined, not vague.

Clarity of characterization simplifies and intensi­

fies the moral statements in the plays of both Aristophanes 80 and Fielding. The significance of the character does not lie in his motivation nor in his personality, but in his outward, observable acts, which Fielding does not excuse as peccadilloes or as errors of judgment. Just as Fielding sees Chremylus as clearly responsible for his moral faults, so he makes his own characters clearly responsible. Dr.

Johnson's remarks about characterization in Fielding's novels are even more applicable to the characterization in

Fielding's plays:

There is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners, and there is the difference between the charac­ ters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood by a more super­ ficial observation than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human heart.

This shallowness of character has been noted by other critics. Martin Battestin, speaking of Tom Jones, called it the result of Fielding's "iconomatic impulse";

Mary Poovey says it "suggests a vision of human nature as static and definable." 7 Poovey's charge is based on the un­ warranted presumption that Fielding pursues verisimilitude in his work. Battestin understands Fielding's technique of

6. James Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill and L. F. Powell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), II, 48-49 (Spring, 1768).

7. Martin C. Battestin, "Fielding's Definition of Wisdom: Some Functions of Ambiguity and Emblem in Tom Jones," ELH, 35 (1968 ), 205; Mary Poovey, "Journeys from this World to the Next," ELH, 43 (1976), 308. 81

using characters for aspects of personality, for presenta­

tions of specific traits. Fielding's conscious use of such

characters implies nothing shallow about Fielding's vision

of human nature. The static characterization in the plays

may be related to Fielding's distaste for the sentimental

drama which allowed, even depended on, radical and often

unaccountable changes in the hero. In any case, Fielding's

characters are rigid, almost totally typed.

There are numerous examples of such characters in

Don Quixote in England, Eurydice, and Eurydice Hissed as

well as in The Author's Farce, Pasquin, and The Historical

Register. Personified abstractions, the extreme of type

characters, will be discussed separately below. Marplay, in

The Author's Farce, is a typed character, brought on stage

for a single scene and for a definite satirical function.

Witmore is typically intelligent; Scarecrow, Dash, Quibble,

and Blotpage are respectively poor, hasty, argumentative,

and careless; Constable arrests people; and Murdertext rushes to defend Nonsense. The last is given a second

trait, lust, in order to keep the players on stage.

Bookweight is a good example of how Fielding satir­

izes a living person, yet keeps his eye on the traits in­

volved, resisting the temptation to lampoon a notorious scoundrel. Edmund Curll is recognizable,

but much of this satire is applicable to more than one publisher. Bookweight's forged title pages, 82

his translations from non-existent foreign originals, and his hiding behind pamphlet pub­ lishers like Moore and Smith all suggest Curll; there are references to the pillory and to the Crown Office, with both of which Curll was acquainted. But it is noteworthy that not one word is said of the sensational handling of sexual topics with which Curll's name was often associated, nor of his eagerness to publish biographies, wills, and private papers.^

Fielding did not use all of the material available to him, but preferred to hit only the outstanding professional breaches of ethics among many unscrupulous publishers.

There is thus some truth to Fielding's claims that he tried to attack the vices and not the vicious. 9 Likewise, Marplay and Sparkish are not only Cibber and Wilks, but all high­ handed, egotistic autocrats. Their types appear again in

The Historical Register as Apollo's Bastard Son and Ground-

Ivy, and in Eurydice Hissed as Pillage.

The fictional authors of Pasquin, The Historical

Register, Eurydice, and Eurydice Hissed reveal nothing beyond their professional faults. For the most part,

Fustian excepted, they feel that their plays are good enough for the degraded taste of the town, but they are not really proud of them. As Author in Eurydice says, "I think we do come up to the ridiculous in our farce, and that is what a farce ought to be, and all it ought to be . . . (Eurydice,

8. AF, p. 102n.

9. Prologue to Love in Several Masques, in Works, VIII, 11; and Dedication of HR and E. Hissed, pp. 3-10. See also Nichols, pp. 280, 289. 83

p. 272). All of the authors are put on the defensive by interlocutors, and they have ready tongues for finding precedents or plausible excuses for their inanities. Spatter, author of Eurydice Hissed, cites Horace for per­

mission not to show too horrible a thing on stage (E.

Hissed, p. 66); Medley excuses his play as "avowedly ir­

regular," and says "if I say little or nothing, you may

thank those who have done little or nothing" (HR, pp. 14- 15). Trapwit praises his play as "an exact representation of nature," but he is ready to bet against its success

(Pasquin, pp. 173, 201).

Fustian varies slightly from the type that Fielding

uses for his fictional authors, but not far from the

pattern. He is the only character that acts as the critic of one play and author of another. He seems a clear minded critic and his speeches on the vicissitudes of theatrical production and the popularity of pantomime stand out as succinct and serious statements (Pasquin, pp. 204-205, 222). His defense of his satire is the same that Fielding uses

(satirizing the vices and not the vicious) , but lie sounds very like the others when defending his play: Very likely, but you do not understand the practical rules of writing as well as I do; the first and greatest of which is protraction, the art of spinning, without which the matter of a play would lose the chief property of all other matter, namely, extension; and no play, sir, could possibly last longer than half an hour. . . . But the business of the play, as I take it, 84

is to divert, and therefore every character that diverts is necessary to the business of the play (Pasquin, p. 211).

All of the authors have their eye on pleasing the audience

and making money; they are Fielding's idea of the contem­

porary playwright who cares neither for art, nor for moral

theme. As for characterization, the authors make no serious

pretence at creating believable people. Luckless' show is a puppet show and the characters are named as abstractions or are stock characters like Punch and Joan, whose behavior is predictable. Trapwit's characters of Col. Promise and Squire Tankard are simply stand-ins, supporting the parallel characters Lord Place and Sir Harry, who both bribe the electorate, differing only in bribing directly or indirectly. Trapwit defends his non-speakers: "Why, you would not have every man a speaker, would you? One of a side is suffi­ cient; and let me tell you, sir, one is full enough to utter all that a party has to say for itself" (Pasquin, p. 177). The very lack of character individuation is part of the satirical implication that all politicians are alike, and, in addition, the shallowness prevents oor becoming inter­ ested in the character for its own sake. Fielding has fun with Trapwit's haphazard charac­ terization of the Mayoress in Pasquin. Trapwit gives her a

"town education" but then requires Lord Place to tell her how to market her daughter. Fustian points out the 85

oversight and Trapwit is confused: "Then she has not lived

amongst people of quality, she has lived where I please, but

suppose we should suppose she had been a woman to a lady of

quality, may we not also suppose ..." (Pasquin, pp. 180- 81). Trapwit finds it difficult to keep even the simplest

of characters straight. Fustian, for his part, never intends anything but single-trait characterization; his characters are, as

Sneer-well observes, "emblematical." Medley's play, The Historical Register, is a medley, and none of his charac­ ters have time to develop in their one short scene. Sour- wit's role of critic serves only to allow Medley to point out the satire to the audience; he has no real personality. Dapper is a beau in Fielding's most stereotyped form,

attending plays only to admire himself in the mirrors and to flirt. He is indistinguishable from Dangle in this play or from Captain Weazel in Eurydice, the beau whose only distinguishing characteristic is his cockade. Eurydice herself is the female equivalent of the

beau, and she resembles the "Ladies" of The Historical Register, whom Medley described as a "light, trifling, giddy-headed crew." She says she desires to return to earth with Orpheus because "In desiring to go I discharge the duty of a wife" (Eurydice, p. 275), but she does not want to go. She is perfectly hypocritical in wishing to appear a good wife, while she prefers to be fashionable, scorning her 86 husband's desires. Like Chremylus' confusion, her embar­ rassment arises from her "contention and opposition of the passions," which Fielding calls the source of true humor

(Plutus, p. 158). Her excuses and maneuvers are predict­ able, yet she displays the coquette so well that she almost rises above her stereotype. The Author tells us that he intends for her to behave "like a very polite and well-bred lady," behavior which includes her selfishness, her hypocrisy, and her tricking Orpheus into looking back

(Eurydice, p. 279). Eurydice Hissed is a slight afterpiece for Pasguin which continues the characters of Sourwit and Dapper, but they do nothing interesting. The center of the play is the author of Eurydice, Pillage, who steals more as a playhouse manager than as a playwright. Pillage is the usual im­ perious manager, but in this play he represents not only Cibber and Walpole, "Great" men, but Fielding himself in his role as the "Great Mogul" of the Haymarket."^ Pillage is thus a type, satirizing all administrators who project a "great" self image and dupe the public through bribery and deceit. This was Fielding's last play as an active play­ wright, or perhaps he would have extended the rich possi­ bilities of multiple satire and self-parody inherent in the character of Pillage.

10. Cross, I, 178. 87

Don Quixote in England (written for Drury Lane but

produced at the Haymarket in 1734) is a more regular comedy than the above dramatized satires, but is included here

because its characterization is similar, making a good comparison, while its plot is conventional New Comedy,

making a good contrast. Fielding intended the play

for the pro-ministry stage of Drury Lane, but upon refusal

from that company, produced it at his own Haymarket

Theater. 11 This may explain its hybrid nature. The play

takes place at an inn and provides a gallery of type charac­

ters who exhibit their particular traits in response to Don

Quixote, who acts as a touchstone for them: Guzzle, the

innkeeper, whose honesty is suspect, suspects Don Quixote's

honesty; the Mayor, who encourages the flow of election

bribery, sees the Don as a possible source of bribe money;

Squire Badger, a suitor, sees Don Quixote as a rival suitor; Dorothea, who sees herself as her lover's toy,

treats the Don as a toy; Dr. Drench sees him as a sick man; and lawyer Brief sees him as a criminal. 12

Of all the characters, only Loveland shows more than one side of a personality; his greed for a marital alliance

11. For the history of this production, see Cross, I, 206-207, and Fielding's Dedication to the play.

12. Ronald Paulson, Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 90. 88

with Badger's estate yields to his sense of decency, giving

this play a sentimental quality absent in all of the other plays discussed. The greed, pride, self-righteousness,

trickery, gluttony, and drunkenness which respectively characterize Loveland, Drench, Brief, John (a footman, and stock "clever servant"), Sancho, and Badger are called

"madnesses" at the end of the play. Says the reformed

Loveland, "I don't know whether this knight, by and by, may

not prove us all to be more mad than himself" (DQ, p. 70). Don Quixote's madness provides a foil for the numerous

madnesses of the others,

The characters are similar to the characters of the

dramatic satires, and they are satirized in the play, but

there are strong elements of New Comedy. The plot revolves

around the romantic couple who face blocking characters in

Loveland and Badger, but who, through the services of a

clever servant (John) and a voice of moderation (the Don),

expose the rival as boorish, and convince the father of the

unfairness of his purely economic motives. True to the

form, the plot provides money to the young hero, after merit

has won its way, to ensure the happiness of the couple.

The romantic interest directs the plot, but to the extent

that the rigid characters increase our scorn and reduce our sympathetic involvement, the play resembles satire. 89

ii

The simplest and least flexible of characters are personified abstractions, and few dramatists have success­ fully made them lively and integral to plays. In the first place, there is a non-human fixity about personifications which inhibits their use and reduces their appeal. However, it is not so much what they are, as what they cannot be, that makes abstractions difficult to dramatize. The use of personified abstractions omits human detail, reducing audience involvement in the mimetic aspect of the play and creating emotional distance between the characters and the audience. The distancing by characterization supports and enforces the distancing achieved by non-realistic plot devices, like the use of fantasy. Distance is essential for comedy, at least for non-sentimental comedy. Deep feelings may destroy comic atmosphere. Horace Walpole's famous remark applies: "Life is a comedy for a thinking man, and a tragedy for a feeling man." The playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt sees that a comedy dealing very explicitly with topical matter must have strong distancing devices in order to avoid sentimentality. He says of Aristophanes:

As his comedies take place in the present, he creates distance, and I believe that that is essential for a comedy. It could be deduced from this that a topical play can only be a comedy in the sense of Aristophanes ....

It is not a matter of chance that Aristophanes, Rabelais, and Swift, by virtue of the grotesque, caused the actions of their work to take place in 90

their time and wrote topical plays, with their own time in mind. The grotesque is an uttermost element in stylization, a way of making something suddenly vivid, and for that reason capable of assimilating questions of the time and even more the present itself, without being propaganda or journalism. . . . The grotesque is one of the great possibilities of being precise. It cannot be denied that this art possesses the cruelty of objectivity, yet it is not the art of the nihilists, but much more that of the moralists, not the art of decay, but of salt. It is an affair of wit and sharp discernment (that is why the Enlightenment was at home with it), not of what the public understands by humor, which is a cosiness that is now senti­ mental and now frivolous.^ Thus, Aristophanes, Rabelais, and Swift—and, I will argue,

Fielding—use personified abstractions to create the grotesque, a distortion of the natural into absurdity, ugliness, or caricature. Aristophanes uses personifications in Peace for the sudden, visual effect. War vividly demonstrates the waste and chaos of war by throwing symbols of various towns into his mortar, and threatening to grind them up as soon as Tumult will bring him a pestle, that is, a belligerent leader like Cleon or Brasidas.14 He has buried Peace deep in a cave, from which all the best Greeks must save her. It takes a concerted effort from them all to get Peace out

13. Friedrich Durrenmatt, Writings on Theatre and Drama, trans. H. M. Waidson (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972) , pp. 57-58. See also Elder Olson, The Theory of Comedy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), p. 78 for a discussion of Bertold Brecht's "Verfremdungsaffekt" theory.

14. For a discussion of this personification, see Olson, p. 71. of her hole. When Peace is restored, she upbraids the

Athenians for mistreating her and for electing a fool for

an archon. Then Hermes gives Trygaeus ("Vineyard Worker")

Opora ("Fruitfulness") for a wife and Theoria ("Public

Festivals") for the senate. Both of these unions provide

material for playful and obscene sexual jokes, as well as

making a serious topical statement about the dependence of

national and domestic tranquility upon peace. The use of

personifications lightens the mood of the otherwise very

serious didactic nature of the play; it changes a diatribe

into an editorial cartoon, avoiding the extremes of

propaganda on the one hand and irresponsible frivolity on

the other.

These personifications are on stage to be the

tangible expression of ideas and to interact with other

ideas or aspects of people, as "Vineyard Worker" reacts to

the son of Lamachus in Peace. "Worker" refuses to allow

him into the peace rites, because the offspring of a

general is belligerence, not peace. Right and Wrong Dis­

course, in Clouds, are examples of personifications which

have large parts and are important to the moral theme of

the play. Right Discourse reveals his sexual interest in

boys more explicitly than he intends, and although the

argument is supposedly about education, it quickly becomes

one of sexual morality. Since the unspoken criterion for morality is social conformity, and not reason or tradition, 92

Right Discourse willingly admits defeat when he sees that

sexual perversion is universal in the audience. This is, of

course, the point of Aristophanes' satire, that morality is

degraded to popular practice and the traditional values of

the heroes of Marathon are ignored, even by their official

defender, Right Discourse.

In Plutus, Wealth and Poverty are straightforward

personifications, and Fielding understands their use in the moral allegory of the play. When Wealth says he has been buried by misers and thrown out of doors by profligates, Fielding says "Nothing can be more just and fine than this allegory" (Plutus, p. 157). Wealth and povery are touch­ stones to expose the other characters, as when Blepsidemus flees Poverty, and when Chremylus tells her, "Though you persuade us of the truth, you shall not persuade us to believe you" (p. 204). Fielding does not call them "per­ sonified abstractions," but he notes that "Plutus" means

"riches, and the god of riches" (p. 178), and he has a high regard for the theatricality of staging Poverty as an old hag.

There are few scenes in any play, either ancient or modern, which contain more exquisite humor than this. Those descriptions by which the figure and dress of this character of Poverty are as visible to the reader as they could be made to the specta­ tor, are instances of quick invention and great art. The dreadful apprehension which Blepsidemus here expresses of Poverty, the moment she declares herself, if well represented by a skilful actor, would delight a very indifferent and cold spectator; 93

nor can the reason why Chremylus expresses so much greater boldness escape the most ordinary reader, who will only reflect that he hath Plutus in his house (pp. 184-85). In his own plays, Fielding makes his ideas dramatic­

ally visible by personifying vapid diction and salacious novels in the characters of Don Tragedio and Mrs. Novel.

It is far more vivid to put Opera, Sir Farcical, Pantomime,

and the others on stage, than simply to have Witmore and Luckless talk about them. . In Pasquin, Law, Physic, and

Firebrand are "emblematical" (Sneerwell observes), or ab­ stractions, of the charlatans in the legal, medical, and clerical professions. Fielding satirizes the abusive practitioners, but clearly respects the institutions them­ selves. All three expose their greed and selfishness and malign Queen Common-sense for wanting them to be reasonable and honest. But while Fielding attacks the abusers of the

professions, he has Queen Common-sense declare:

Religion, law and physic, were designed By Heaven the greatest blessings on mankind; But priests and lawyers and physicians made These general goods to each a private trade; With each they rob, with each they fill their purses; And turn our benefits into our curses (p. 215). Probably the most dramatic use of the abstractions occurs when Firebrand stabs Queen Common-sense and prepares to feign tears over her death. His total depravity is almost appalling; Fielding immediately breaks the dramatic tension by having the rehearsal characters intrude and by intro­ ducing Harlequin, who complains about his lines. Even 94 though human detail is minimized by the use of personified abstractions, the murder of Common-sense almost breaks comic bounds. Firebrand's acts are so despicable that comic distance must be restored by stopping the play momen­ tarily to blunt our revulsion to the grotesqueness. As

Durrenmatt says, "This art possesses the cruelty of ob­ jectivity, yet it is not the art of the nihilists, but much more that of the moralists." Fielding presses his didactic satire but remains this side of dogmatic fanaticism.

iii

Aristophanes and Fielding are both moralists, objective and sometimes cruel, employing distancing tech­ niques which resist and obstruct the flow of human sentiment for the characters on stage. The emotions of the characters are not allowed to dominate the intellectual import of their behavior. Both playwrights are "public," that is, they are more interested in the overt behavior, in the "manners" which Dr. Johnson referred to, than in psychological exposition. One is reminded that Aristotle called tragedy an imitation not of humans, but of action. Greek comedy, too, is extroverted and concentrates on satirizing improper social relationships.

Type figures and personified abstractions are appropriate to the sociological orientation of Aristophanic satire. The features of all characters, physically and 95

emotionally, are ludicrously exaggerated and cursorily

treated in order to maintain focus on the moral ideas of

the play and the abstract relationships. In Acharnians, the traders from Megara and Boeotia illustrate the thesis that peace aids commerce, and hence, prosperity. The proper

relationship with these countries brings Dicaeopolis wealth

and joy, but the belligerent relationship with these countries brings Lamachus pain. The scenes do not imply that there is something wrong with Lamachus, that he cannot, enjoy wealth, but there is something wrong with his rela­ tionship, which, of course, represents the belligerent

relationship between Athens and her neighbors. Peace,

based on the same issue, shows the Athenians the proper way to relate to the other Greek-speaking people. Trygaeus, from Athens, leads the way for a kind of disarmament con­

ference, in which all the countries can save Peace, if they work together when War is not looking (an armistice ). In

spite of the fact that the message of the play is deeply humane, Aristophanes avoids any hint of the sentimental by dramatizing no personal, human sympathy of one character for another, thus keeping the tone "public." Aristophanes attacks internal affairs with the same methods. Wasps illustrates the improper relationship of

Athenians to the court system, as Philocleon thinks only of his personal and immediate welfare, not looking to the good of his country. His greed and short-sightedness prevent him 96

from seeing that he is cheating himself in the long run when

he cheats others. The moral is not based on a "brotherhood"

ideal nor even on patriotism, but on the hard economics of supporting an embezzling tyrant like Cleon. When Philocleon reforms his views about the court, he is not a "good" or

even "improved" person; he runs around after flute girls and

disrupts the neighborhood with his partying. He is not less

greedy or licentious, but his relationship to the country is set right. Aristophanes is always concerned with public issues:

how to supplant Cleon as archon, how to obtain peace, how to

educate people correctly in rhetoric and morals, how to run a government, how to choose government advisors, and so on. Many of the relationships are citizen-institution: how should a person relate to the court system, to the electoral system, to the military, to the schools, to religious insti­

tutions, to the dramatic festivals, to the agricultural

system, or to the import-export laws? Aristophanes does not address personal questions such as how to choose a mate, how to be a good son, parent, or spouse. Society is the organism for whose health and unity Aristophanes prescribes. Fielding understands this use of the stage as a platform for promoting political issues. After pointing out that "examples work quicker and stronger on the minds of men than precepts," he says in the Dedication to Don Quixote in England (1734), 97

This will, I believe, my Lord, be found truer with regard to politics than to ethics: the most ridiculous exhibitions of luxury or avarice may likewise have little effect on the sensualist or the miser; but I fancy a lively representation of the calamities brought on a country by general corruption might have a very sensible and useful effect on the spectators (DQ, p. 7).

Even though Plutus does not present calamities brought on by Chremylus' greed, heresy, and hypocrisy, I think Fielding assumes that Ax'istophanes intended the whole play as a satire. Plutus examines the relationships of man to his work, to his health, to his family, and to his gods in the agon between Poverty and Chremylus. Poverty argues that wealth will corrupt Chremylus: he will stop working, become dishonest, plot against people, shun his father, and suffer ill health. The need to earn gives man good manners, health, strength, crafts, and patriotism. If man's rela­ tionships to the gods are reduced to material welfare, then one will become, as Chremylus suggested, "crafty, unjust, entirely corrupt" (p. 135). There is, however, a moral ambiguity in Plutus, since we do not see Chremylus suffering any injury from his new wealth; indeed, he helps the people around him with his new power.

Fielding does not recognize this moral ambiguity in Plutus, and perhaps he saw none, interpreting all of the materialism as a satirical exposition. In his Essay on the

Knowledge of the Characters of Men (1943), published a year after his Plutus (1742), Fielding unequivocally condemns 98 people who, like Chremylus, are preoccupied with getting rich. He calls greed the "Art of thriving," practiced by people who "acquire by all means whatever" their "own particular and separate advantage" (Henley, ed., Works, XIV, 282). This "Art" leads to deceit, because no one will willingly give up what is considered his "separate advan­ tage," even though it. implies the disintegration of society. So far as Plutus is about Chremylus' separate pursuit of wealth and his defection from traditional reli­ gion, it exhibits this "Art of thriving" and implies dis­ integration. As I have noted earlier, Fielding's notes to Plutus stress Chremylus' hypocrisy, his personal eagerness for riches, and the extreme satire on religion; for this reason, and because the phrase "by all means whatever" is almost identical with "by all methods whatsoever" (Plutus, p. 157), I believe that Fielding ignores the benefits that accrue to Chremylus and assumes that Aristophanes intended the play as a satire on selfish "thriving," and religious hypocrisy. Fielding's view of Plutus makes it more consonant with the typical Aristophanic comedy, which stresses social unity and political harmony as prerequisite to material prosperity. Fielding's plays also suggest that the selfish pursuit of wealth is immoral and unpatriotic, since it leads to social disintegration.

Fielding's interest in the social relationships has been noticed before in the quotation above from Dr. Johnson, 99

about "characters of manners" requiring only "superficial

observation." Sheldon Sacks recognizes, in discussing the "situation" characters of the stagecoach scene in Joseph

Andrews, that the characters may seem oversimplified and shallow, but in swift comic interaction they appear vivid, animated, and convincing vehicles for their artistic purpose; if they are "flat characters" this does not derogate from Fielding's artistry, since it is by simplifying them, reducing them to a single function, yet pre­ senting them in an animated, witty fashion that he is able to present a world in which value judgments are complicated indeed, where morality is never reduced to an aphorism. Each of them is simplified; what their interaction reveals is highly complex.15

This may be argued as well for the plays, though the plays are not as developed as the novels. The "single function"

characters are what I have been calling type characters. Fielding's dramatic satires do not involve the

audience in the fortunes of the characters. The series of

type characters and the scant, episodic plot of The Author's Farce make it a pageant of satirical scenes. Bookweight, Constable, Scarecrow, Dash, Quibble, Blotpage, Marplay, Sparkish, Murdertext, and Curry, all arive on stage for their momentary scene to add one facet to the overall moral

scheme of the play. Likewise, the foolish game of quadrille has nothing to do with the courtship of the Goddess of

Nonsense which forms the skimpy semblance of plot for the

15. Sheldon Sacks, Fiction and the Shape of Belief: A Study of Henry Fielding (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), p. 99. 100 puppet show, but is simply an illustration of the meaning­ less and contentious entertainments of idle women. Joan, Lady Kingcall, Mrs. Cheat'em, and Mrs. Glassring are examples of hollow ladies of the beau monde, whose rela­ tionships break down from cordial cooperation into verbal and finally into physical chaos and violence. The fight at the end of the scene, as a social relationship, is far more important to the satire than any of the combatants. Like the interposed dances, poems, and songs, the fight serves as an image of the disintegration and degeneration of relationships, which is appropriately taking place in Hell. "The Election" in Pasquin focuses on the disinte­ gration of political relationships, as each character seeks to use the others to achieve "his own particular and separate advantage." The politicians bribe the Mayor and the Voters, who are eager to sell their vote; and the ladies selfishly manipulate each other and the Mayor. Everyone is concerned only with himself, separating his personal ad­ vantage from society's. This is explicit when Miss Stitch says to Miss Mayoress: "And can I sell my country for a fan?—What's my country to me? I shall never get a fan by it" (Pasquin, p. 191). She, too, sells her country. On stage only once, Miss Stitch is not an important character, but her vignette with Miss Mayoress is of central importance as a corrupt political relationship. 101

"The Life and Death of Common-Sense," the second

play in Pasquin, displays the type characters Firebrand,

Law, and Physic. They all want to run their professions and the public for their own separate advantage, deserting

Common-sense as a guide and public welfare as a goal. Since

Common-sense requires them to consider themselves as

members of the community and to work for society as a whole,

they kill her. Their seeking "separate advantage" leads to cultural suicide. The Historical Register is darker than the other

plays, because Quidam consciously goes about the exploita­ tion of others with a malevolent intelligence. In the first scene he simply observes, and in the last scene we see him observing and laughing before he deceives the patriots. The politicians in the first scene and Quidam in the last

exploit the ignorant country coldly, with full knowledge of their parasitism.

In contrast, the improper relationship satirized in

Eurydice is marriage, which is personal rather than public, and does not conform to the public tone of the rest of the plays discussed here. Fielding may have intended to show that personal morals are corrupted through obedience to the fashions of the beau monde, but Eurydice is too devoted to fashion already, to show any real struggle between domestic morality and social fashion. That struggle would call for depth in her character. The repugnance and infidelity the 102

wives in this play feel toward their husbands conforms

strictly to the mode. That slavish obedience to fashion is

an improper relationship never clearly develops.

Eurydice Hissed, very short but nonetheless success­

ful, recovers Fielding's public voice, and faulty public

relationships are once again the center of the play. Pillage does not see himself as a servant to the public, but its dictator, a typical corrupt relationship, reminis­ cent of the perverted professionals who murder Common-sense. Pillage suborns several actors and printers to applaud his play and admits to his muse that Eurydice was born "The trifling offspring of an idle hour, / When you were absent, far below your care" (E. Hissed, p. 63). Fielding recog­ nizes that Eurydice, written for Drury Lane, is essentially a domestic comedy, and is not in his best mode, dramatic

satire like Pasquin. The internal evidence of Eurydice Hissed assures the reader that Fielding regrets his slip

and that he determines to return to his true muse: "The subject which has once delighted me, / Shall still delight, shall ever be my choice" (p. 64). (This conclusion rests, of course, on the identification of Pillage with Fielding, which is warranted by the speech of Honestus: "When

Pasquin ran, and the town liked you best" [p. 67]).

Fielding repudiates domestic farce such as Eurydice, and promises with this play to write dramatic satire from now on. 103

The riot and the unpopularity of Eurydice suggest that the audience did not care to see themselves satirized so accurately. When Fielding satirizes playhouse managers and prime ministers, he need not fear a box office loss because the audience was not composed of such men, but attacks on army beaus and court beaus and coquettes must have struck a large proportion of his audience, men and women unprepared by tradition to accept themselves as targets of satire. To succeed financially, Fielding would have to return to characters more remote from the audience by type or degree, to the government, perhaps. But, with the passage of the Licensing Act of 1737, Fielding lost that target too, and quit the stage. CHAPTER 4

PLOT STRUCTURE

This chapter discusses plot similarities in the

plays of Aristophanes and Fielding, defining "plot" as the

sequence of actions which render a story in a convincing,

imitative fashion.1 These plays differ markedly from New Comedy, because they do not depend on the imitative prin­

ciple, verisimilitude, and probable sequence of action. Instead, they break up the action into episodes and inter­ rupt these with characters and actions outside of the dramatic context. The non-participating observers comment to each other, and are in turn interrupted or supplemented

by direct address to the audience. The dramatists thus reduce or prevent the emotional involvement of the audiences, with the apparent intent to clarify and inten­ sify intellectual involvement in the satiric content. The comic distance and stimulation of intellect are achieved by:

(1) episodic plot structure, (2) allegorical action, (3) the use of a chorus, and (4) interruption of dramatic illusion.

1. For a simple definition of "plot," refer to J. L. Styan, The Dramatic Experience (London: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 71. I also refer to R. S. Crane, "The Plot of Tom Jones," rpt. in Martin C. Battestin, ed., 20th Century Interpretations of Tom Jones (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968), pp. 68-93.

104 105

i

Episodic plot structure occurs frequently enough in

the plays of Aristophanes to be considered a trait which

distinguishes Old Comedy from New Comedy. Robert

Flaceliere says that Aristophanic scenes "were not so much integrated as simply juxtaposed, the total effect being not

unlike a modern revue." 2 Dover says about the same thing of Acharnlans, Peace, Birds, Ecclesiazusae, and Plutus: "The latter half of the play illustrates, with the help of new characters in self-contained scenes, the consequences of the resolution of crisis to which the earlier part builds up."^

The Aristophanic plot is single and simple. Instead

of having manifold complications of strife, the Aristophanic play has manifold and parallel scenes of consequences after

the resolution of the agon; these consequences relate them-

atically, but not by character nor action. For example, after Peisthetaerus convinces the birds to build Cloud-

Cuckoo-Land, a series of applicants for citizenship arrive, and Peisthetaerus' behavior to each is not incremental but parallel. The plot is static; the sequences of the short scenes could be shuffled with no confusion.

2. Flacelifere, p. 232.

3. Dover, Aristophanic Comedy, p. 66. 106

The plays are didactic, and the scenes are balanced

and patterned to present parallel conflicts or contrasting

opinions, as Katherine Lever shows with the Acharnians. While Dicaeopolis is trying to trade with the Megarian, a

sycophant interrupts them; this is repeated in the next scene when a market inspector interrupts Dicaeopolis and the Boeotian. Three scenes in a row show Dicaeopolis interrupted in his sacrifices. Then there is the contrast

of war and peace: Lamachus is called off to war just as Dicaeopolis is called off to a party. Lamachus gathers his

accouterments of battle as Dicaeopolis gathers his for

dining and drinking. This contrast is delightfully con­ cluded when they each return, Lamachus howling from his 4 wounds and Dicaeopolis joyously singing. Several other plays compare in structure. In Frogs,

Dionysus and Xanthius meet a series of people and adventures that digress from the primary action. In Ecclesiazusae, two long scenes are devoted to showing the outcome of the revolution; the scene with First and Second Citizen shows a fault of the system: it expects everyone to trust each other. The second scene shows that the sexual politics are

equally unrealistic. Clouds balances two scenes of Strepsiades' trying to learn from Socrates; the lessons are separated by a parabasis. The debate scene of Right

4. Lever, p. 120. 107 Discourse and Wrong Discourse is balanced by the following

quarrel scene between Strepsiades and his son. The two scenes of the creditors are also parallel. Peace ends with a series of parallel scenes, as various arms makers complain about the loss of business, and the priest insists, with many burlesque oracles, that

the gods do not want the war to end. These scenes are

contrasted with the brief scene of the Sicklemaker, who is

invited to stay for the feast. The sons of Cleonymus the

coward and Lamachus the general are contrasted also, the

former being accepted and the latter rejected. The plot effectively ends when Trygaeus rescues Peace; the ensuing scenes are the parallel results of the action. Fielding's notes to Plutus do not mention the plot structure, but the episodes at the end of Plutus are a very clear example of Aristophanes' practice.. Fielding does quote Addison, who recognizes the episodic ending: "This [the healing of Plutus] produces several merry incidents.""* Six characters appear at the end of the play, and Chremylus and Cario deal with them, one at a time, much as Peisthetaerus deals with his applicants and Trygaeus with the arms makers.

5. In the Preface to Plutus, Fielding quotes from Joseph Addison's 4 64th Spectator, which summarizes Plutus and makes a few critical remarks. 108

The plot of Plutus is rather fixed and rigid from the agon with Poverty to the end. As Kernan points out, when satire is the dominant element, there will be no change in the situation.^ Chremylus, Cario, Blepsidemus, the Chorus, all react to the abstractions Poverty and Plutus, but they do not develop. Chremylus epitomizes the static condition when he says to Poverty: "though you should persuade us of the truth, you shall not persuade us to believe you" (p. 204). Fielding footnotes the passage and understands it as an absolute rejection. The allegory, then, does not "run" anywhere, but stands as a mirror, the qualities of the characters being reflected in Poverty and

Plutus. The "plot" of the play is the showing of a pageant: characters are brought into contact with Poverty and Plutus, sometimes indirectly, and they reveal their natures. In his own plays, Fielding is very conscious of plot; in dramatic satires, the rehearsal characters ask about it. In Act III of The Author's Farce, also known as "The Pleasures of the Town," a "Player" asks: "But what is the design or plot? For I could make neither head or tail of it, for my part." Luckless answers, "Why sir, the

Goddess of Nonsense is to fall in love with the ghost of Signior Opera." Medley, the stage author of The Historical

Register for the Year 1736, says that his play has several

6. Alvin Kernan, The Cankered Muse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 33. 109 plots, "some pretty deep and some but shallow." When pressed by the critic Sourwit to show how all these plots relate to the main design, Medley says that the main design is to "ridicule the vicious and foolish customs of the age . . . , to expose the reigning follies" (HR and E.

Hissed, p. 15). In Pasguin, Trapwit understands the "plot" as the marriage of two characters, even if they are minor ones: "I hope you think I understand the laws of comedy better than to write without marrying somebody" (Pasguin, p. 177). Obviously all of these answers are facetious, and

Fielding wants us to notice the flimsiness of his plots or their simplicity. Part of his literary satire depends on our recognizing that he is mocking shoddy comedies which have ridiculously simple or contrived plots. Fielding calls these plays of his "dramatic satires," and they are plotless, or nearly so, to prevent the audience from settling into a passive spectator role. William W. Appleton, in the Introduction to his edition of The Historical Register for the Year 1736, mentions that the three plays above are different from Buckingham's Rehearsal, although they do use the play- within-a-play pattern. After pointing out that Fielding's plays are in "the Aristophanic tradition," and noting the

"looseness of their structure," he adds, "His entertainments were, in short, the predecessors of the intimate satirical 110

revue—topical, iconoclastic, and witty" (p. xi), echoing

Flaceliere's comment on Aristophanes, quoted earlier.

Fielding's dramatic satires, like Aristophanes',

develop his ideas in parallel and contrasting scenes, many of which are self-contained. Act III of The Author's Farce,

"The Pleasures of the Town," is a puppet show with live puppets, which could be, and occasionally was, played alone. Pasquin is the rehearsal of two separate plays which could be played separately. The Historical Register has five almost disparate scenes. The Author's Farce begins and ends with the romance of Luckless and Harriot, which is a parody of stock romantic

comedy. The blocking action of Mrs. Moneywood is static and there is no intrigue on the part of the lovers or their friends to circumvent her. The skimpy plot ends, as Woods comments, with a "denouement as incredible as possible, and a more fantastic series of unmotivated discoveries which reveal unsuspected relationships in ludicrous scenes of recognition would be hard to imagine" (p. 72n).

Act II satirizes the theater politics of Marplay and

Sparkish, managers of Drury Lane, and ridicules Grub Street. The delightful scene inside Bookweight's publishing house exposes the poverty and deceit of the scribblers Blotpage,

Dash, and Quibble; they hustle and complain their way through a day's work, in several short scenes. The struc­ ture of this act, and the structure of the whole play, is Ill the presentation of parallel instances of ignorance, greed,

and tyranny in the literary world of London. "The Pleasures of the Town" continues the series of

parallel satiric attacks on London's entertainment world,

expanding from literary entertainment to the opera, to the pantomime, and even to card playing. Act III is about half the play and balances scenes from the earlier half. Both halves open with scolding scenes: Punch and Judy quarreling in Act III, Moneywood demanding money in Act I. The bawdy wooing of the Goddess of Nonsense mocks the earlier court­ ship scenes of Luckless and Harriot; the card game quarrel ends in a physical ejection, as Luckless had earlier ejected Bookweight; the greed of Orator, Opera, Nonsense, and others repeats the satire in Bookweight's shop; the puppets' reiteration of "cheating" and "tricking" echoes the scene with Marplay and Sparkish; Murdertext's lechery repeats Moneywood's; and finally, Luckless is saved in both halves of the play by fortuitous money. The event that cannot be balanced—did Fielding imply irony?--'.s the generosity of Witmore's paying Luckless' rent (AF, p. 21). Throughout, the play maintains comic distance, caustic satire, and identifiable parody.

Pasquin contains the rehearsals of two plays: a comedy, "The Election"; and a tragedy, "The Life and Death of Commonsense." The plot of the former is very loose, and 112

Fielding brings the lack of plot organization to our

attention: Fustian. Oh! your humble servant, I am answered; but pray, sir, what is the action of this play? Trapwit. The action, sir? Fustian. Yes, sir, the fable, the design. Trapwit. Oh! You ask who is to be married! Why, sir, I have a marriage; I hope you think I understand the laws of comedy better than to write without marrying somebody.

Fustian. But is that the main design to which everything conduces?

Trapwit. Yes, sir. Fustian. Faith, sir, I can't for the soul of me see how what has hitherto passed can conduce at all to that end. Trapwit. You can't; indeed, I believe you can't! for that is the whole plot of my play: and do you think I am like your shallow writers of comedy, who publish the banns of marriage between all the couples in their play in the first act? No, sir, I defy you to guess my couple till the thing is done, slap, all at once; and that too by an incident arising from the main business of the play, and to which everything conduces. Fustian. That will, indeed, surprise me (Pasquin, pp. 177-78). At the end of the rehearsal Colonel Promise and Miss Mayoress announce their engagement, which is a complete surprise, since all of the courtship, we are assured by

Trapwit, took place offstage (p. 197). The title of the play actually comes closer to describing the action, since all the action has something to do with an election, but 113 the scenes depend so little on development of character or on probable cause-effect sequence that the play seems to be a series of self-contained scenes of election bribery. What takes place on stage is the bribing and counter-bribing of the electorate by the candidates. (This play was produced in 1736, after Walpole and the Whigs managed to win the 17 34 election, extending their dominance from 1721 to 1742.) After Fielding illustrates the "bribe direct" and the "bribe indirect," interrupted occasionally by Fustian and Trapwit, the play extends its satirical thrust to the corrupt beau monde. Part of that corruption is the preference for childish entertainments: "And then we shall see Faribelly, the strange man-woman that they say is with child; and the fine pictures of Merlin's cave at the playhouse; and the rope-dancing and tumbling" (p. 179).

The corruption of the upper classes is epitomized in the logic of Mrs. Mayoress1 admonition to her daughter:

But must I go into keeping, Mama? Mrs. Mayoress Child, you must do what's in fashion. Miss Mayoress naughty thing. Mrs. Mayoress That can't be, if your betters do it; people are punished for doing naughty things; but people of quality are never punished; therefore they never do any naughty things (p. 181). 114

Frequent and pungent satirical digressions from the main

action of the election help to turn the structure of the play toward that of a general satirical revue.

The second rehearsal in Pasquin, "The Life and Death of Common-sense," is a tighter play and limits the digres­ sions to the comments of the play's observers. These comments do interrupt the play a great deal, however, for

they comprise about one-third of the lines.

The most episodic of the three dramatic satires is

The Historical Register for the Year 1736, which makes no effort at continuity of plot in its five scenes. The "re­

hearsal" characters are like Masters of Ceremonies, com­ menting on the scene just performed and recommending the next scene. Their presence provides some continuity, but

the artistic unity comes from the thematic unity of the five scenes: all five satirize politicians and gullible, foolish victims. Fielding contrasts the heavy, ponderous speech of greedy politicians with the vacuous gossip of fashionable ladies. This balancing of gross, masculine greed with frivolous, feminine follies repeats the structure of the

first two acts of Pasquin, where Trapwit drew attention- to

the contrast: "I am afraid, Mr., Fustian, you have hitherto suspected that I was a dabbler in low comedy; now, sir, you shall see some scenes of politeness and fine conversation amongst the ladies" (p. 178). The center of The Historical

Register and the most general indictment of society is the 115

auction scene, which is so mechanically didactic that its success on the stage must have been due more to the bustle of the crowd and the "show" of a fast-rambling auctioneer, than to the dramatic content. The fourth scene originally included a battle

between two contenders for the role of Polly Peachum in the

upcoming production of The Beggar's Opera at Drury Lane, which role Theophilus Cibber wanted for his new bride, Miss

Susannah Arne, instead of for Kitty Clive, whose reputation

and tenure with the company far exceeded the newcomer's qualifications. Young Cibber's public attacks on the popular Kitty Clive were rude, and Fielding christened him

"Pistol" for his rash, extortionate attempts to recruit the

audience on his wife's behalf. Apparently Fielding's audience had had enough of this quarrel, for the scene did not survive as part of The Historical Register. It would have made, as Fielding perhaps intended, a symmetrical balance to the earlier scene of feminine vanity. The fourth scene is the familiar satire on the tyranny and vanity of the playhouse managers as Apollo ':s Bastard Son casts King

John, and Ground-Ivy rewrites it. The fifth and final scene reiterates the satire of

the first scene on politics, greed, corruption, and "the

fiddler." Because it parallels scene one, this closing

scene gives a sense of completeness; we are back to where we started, and the players go off with a dance, leaving 116 Medley to summarize the action and address the rehearsal characters and the audience in a kind of epilogue. Of all

Fielding's plays, this one is closest to the modern satirical revue.

ii Old Comedy is overtly and allegorically didactic, and the devices of spectacle—dramatic action, costumes, song, and dance—are subordinate to the teaching. Old Comedy unhesitatingly breaks the illusion that the staged play is a real time, place, and action, with real people, in order to point directly at social or political problems, which are prominently manipulated so that recognizable moral and political allegory may emerge from the pattern of the characters and their actions. Because this didactic purpose is prominent, people have often felt it necessary to describe Old Comedy with non-dramatic comparisons.

William Lucas Collins said that Aristophanic plays "supplied the place of the political journal, the literary review, the popular caricature, and the party pamphlet of our own times." 7 This section discusses the use of allegory as a vehicle for satire.

Chapter 3 discussed personified abstractions used allegorically; there is allegory in the actions of the plays,

7. William Lucas Collins, Aristophanes (London, 1872), pp. 2-3. 117

too. When Strepsiades burns Socrates' school, it is clear

that Aristophanes is allegorically destroying the sophists.

Dicaeopolis chooses thirty-year wine, representing a thirty-

year peace treaty, because of its fine bouquet, freedom

(Acharnians). Trygaeus flies to heaven in Peace to rescue

Peace from the cave where she had been buried by War and Uproar. Her rescue (involving a chorus which changes from all Greeks to Greek farmers and finally to just Athenians,

depending on the allegorical demands) is the dramatization of Aristophanes' hopes for a united and peaceful Greece. Cloud-Cuckoo-Land (Birds) is, of course, a political alle­

gory of a reformed state, and the journey to Hades by Xanthius and Dionysus (Frogs) may be seen allegorically as

an intellectual quest for political spirit and patriotism. Occasionally an event or character on stage seems

to represent more than a single allegorical significance.

The marriage at the end of Peace is a political allegory for

the uniting of Greece, but it is also a symbol of moral harmony and concord of all kinds. The cloud Chorus of Clouds starts out as allegorical light-headedness, but

shifts through the course of the play, becoming ambiguous. The blockade of the propylaea of the Acropolis in Lysistrata is symbolic of the sexual, financial, moral, and religious rupture which results from masculine belligerence.

When Fielding uses the word "allegory" in his notes to Plutus, he uses it just the way we would today. He does not trust that his reader will understand the analogies implied in Aristophanes, so he explains passages. Plutus says that when he locks up money, a frustrated robber may call his prudence timidity, but that he is not really timid.

Fielding understands this to mean, allegorically, that rich men suffer constant fears of loss (p. 154). Fielding recognizes the scene with Poverty to be allegorical; for example, only Plutus (wealth) can triumph over "this woman" (Poverty), says Chremylus (Plutus, p. 186). Fielding does not hesitate to interpret the allegorical meaning and its greater significance than the literal meaning. He sees allegory running through the whole play (pp. 151, 157, 186,

19 7) and quotes Addison's summary: This allegory instructed the Athenians in two points, first, as it vindicated the conduct of providence in its ordinary distributions of wealth; and in the next place, as it showed the great tendency of riches to corrupt the morals of those, who possessed them (Spectator 464, quoted by Fielding in Plutus, p. 127). Act III of The Author's Farce would be foolish if Fielding's audience did not see the allegorical meanings in it. The strong attraction between the Goddess of Nonsense and Signior Opera would be nonsense itself. Signior Opera represents a major figure in Handel's opera theater (per­ haps Francesco Senesino) and opera in general. The other characters of "The Pleasures of the Town" likewise represent people and professions that Fielding wished to satirize:

(1) Don Tragedio (Theobald and all poor tragedy writers), 119

(2) Sir Farcical Comic (Cibber and all illiterate playhouse

managers with their "paraphonalia"), (3) Dr. Orator (John Henley and all scurrilous, inane exhibitionists), and so on.

All vie for the hand of the Goddess of Nonsense; hence, we see the obvious allegory on the incompetence of the enter­ tainments, the mere spectacle they create. Fielding

silently applies the standard of "reason" to all of the entertainments, and these allegorical figures fail, of

course, because they are pursuing Nonsense. The characters in the second rehearsal of Pasquin also fail to reason; they plot against Common-sense in favor of her opponent, Queen Ignorance. This tragedy, "The Life

and Death of Common-sense," is totally allegorical, or, as

Sneerwell says, "emblematic." Law, Physic, and Firebrand (representing the clergy), all betray Common-sense in favor of their greed and vanity. Harlequin welcomes Queen Ignorance into the theater, offering irrational entertain­

ments of freaks, animals, tumblers, and dancers. Poet, who tried to embrace Common-sense but failed, deserts her now for Ignorance. In the battle between Ignorance and Common- sense, Fustian must order some of Ignorance's soldiers to change sides because there is no one on the side of Common- sense. Of course, all the superficial fooling makes good sense allegorically, in much the same way that MacFlecnoe and The Dunciad make profound good sense. With the fall of reason and art, all culture must fall, leaving the rascals 120 free to prey upon the people in a savage primitive world, g such as Hobbes had envisioned. The other rehearsal in Pasquin, "The Election," uses allegorical names for characters—Trapwit, Fustian, Sneer- well, Lord Place, Colonel Promise—but has only one scene which can definitely be called political allegory. The bribing of Miss Stitch by Miss Mayoress represents the bribing of Lord Hervey by Queen Caroline. 9 The other bribery scenes are very realistic and probably are meant literally. Several of the scenes in The Historical Register are at least partly allegorical. The foolish politicians in the first scene, taxing ignorance, are probably meant to mock Walpole's unsuccessful Excise Tax of 1733; the patriots who sell themselves in the fifth scene undoubtedly represent those people who have allowed themselves, to be bribed by Walpole into supporting his government. The third scene, the auction, "is writ in allegory," Medley tells Sourwit, and "all allegory will require a strict attention to be understood, sir" (p. 27). The sluggish bidding for political honesty, patriotism, modesty, courage,

8. Consider Aubrey L. Williams' "The Anti-Christ of Wit," in Pope's Dunciad: A Study of its Meaning (London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1955), pp. 131-158, for an excellent discussion of the apocalyptic vision of The Dunciad. 9. Cross, I, 182. 121 conscience, cardinal virtues, and common sense contrasts with the active bidding for interest at court (p. 34). All of this is, of course, moral allegory, and Fielding points to the simplemindedness of Lord Dapper by having him mis­ understand the scene to be a real auction.

In the second scene, several ladies praise Farinelli and the little wax images of him, which are his "offspring."

Since Farinelli is one of the famous Italian castrati of the

London opera, Fielding implies that opera is sterile or sham. In the fourth scene, Medley explains to Lord Dapper that Pistol, a foolish bravado, stands for any man "who fancies himself of great consequence and is of none" (p.

44), thus clarifying his allegorical significations, just as Fielding does the allegorical meanings in Plutus.

iii The instruments whereby Fielding clarifies the allegorical significance of his plays function like the Aristophanic chorus. In both cases, an onstage audience registers the possible responses of the real, offstage audience, and guides it to the appropriate response. In Fielding, these characters are the authors, critics, and an occasional bystander. Sometimes he even employs an actor of the theater company to comment on the play or to ask questions about his part. In Aristophanes, these 122 onstage observers comment on the action and sometimes take sides on an issue. In all of Aristophanes' plays, the chorus questions the action and clarifies it. The Acharnians respond to

Dicaeopolis, challenging his motivation for obtaining a separate peace; he then explains his case, defending his behavior. The Chorus is angry and their challenge is dramatic, but essentially they provide Aristophanes the opportunity to lecture. The same is true for the Wasp Chorus, the Bird Chorus, and the farmers in Plutus. In all of these, the Chorus is a "stand-in" for the audience.

The reactions of the chorus to the ideas of the play are possible audience reactions; therefore, the implication is that we are looking at ourselves when we look at the chorus. When the protagonist convinces the chorus that the peace treaty is a good idea or that Philocleon is better off at home than in the law courts, we are being persuaded too. The resistance of the Acharnians or the Wasps is "straw-man" resistance, easily overcome with tricks—using Euripides' rags to promote sympathy--or logic--comparing how much money Athens takes in (two thousand talents of silver) to how much Cleon doles out to the citizens (one hundred fifty talents).

In every Aristophanic play there is an agon, and that agon, resolved, is instruction, sometimes overt political propaganda. In Knights, the slaves Demosthenes 123 and Nicias explain the present situation to Agoracritus and thrust him into the agon; the Chorus of Knights is on Agoracritus' side from the beginning. Lysistrata has a split chorus, and the Magistrate is the one who gets the lecture from Lysistrata about how to bring peace and unity to the Greek states. In Peace, Trygaeus and the Chorus work together to convince Hermes of the advantages of peace. The chorus is always involved, as teacher or student, in a lesson. However, it is not always clear at the beginning whether the chorus is on the right or wrong side of an argument. The audience must watch for absurdities and lies, must think and judge, in order to know when to believe and trust the chorus or a character. No set pattern allows the audience to relax and rely on one point of view to be the

"real" truth. In Acharnians, Wasps, Clouds, and Birds, the Chorus is the antagonist and changes its mind in the agon of the play. Since the arguments on stage involve real Athenian politics and politicians, deciding which side is absurd is a political decision which affects one's life, and not simply the appreciation of a play. Reality becomes reciprocal: the play views Athens and Athens views the play. Is the chorus right in trusting Cleon? Or is Cleon cheating? Is peace more profitable, war more honorable?

To remind the audience that the play refers to real people and real issues, Aristophanes breaks the dramatic illusion 124 from time to time, pointing to people in the audience, addressing them, asking for the prize, and so on. Of course,

Aristophanes does not leave the audience in doubt for long as to what condition or people are preferred. Lamachus is wounded and Dicaeopolis is rich and happy; Peisthetaerus marries Sovereignty; Peace is rescued; the sophists are routed.

The method of the didactic scheme varies little throughout the plays. The chorus is usually the antagonist, and the protagonist sways the chorus to agreement as, analogically, Aristophanes sways the offstage audience. The chorus always provides a point of view; it is an audience to the actors, and although the offstage audience may not agree with it, they must consider the chorus1 response as one possible response and then consider their own response as equally subjective and arguable. Although Plutus has a chorus, its role is signifi­ cantly attenuated from the earlier comedies; this chorus never breaks the dramatic illusion, delivers no parabasis, but remains in character, a group of farmers. This may well be scribal neglect, since there are five places where the manuscript says "Chorus" but the speeches are missing. Although Plutus is atypical in having neither choral songs nor a parabasis, Fielding does note their involvement in the action of the play (pp. 160, 170, 190). He must also have been familiar with the role of the chorus in the other 125

Aristophanic plays; he cites six and claims to know them all (p. 171). His critical acumen seems ^ery reasonable and moderate; there is no reason to suspect that he would be misinformed or aberrant in his view of the chorus. He probably saw that the chorus provides an erring onstage audience, creates a mediating point of view, and comments on the action. Fielding's "choral voice" is also unreliable, multiplying responses and arousing the audience from a passive acceptance to a critical tension. In Act III of The Author's Farce, Fielding uses realistic characters, like Luckless, Witmore, and the Player, to discuss the play as it proceeds, while most of the characters are very unrealistic, many even puppets played by people. This unconventional mixture is effective, as Woods notes: . . . non-realistic elements are juxtaposed or mingled with realistic elements in such a way that a peculiar satiric effect is gained, as in the hilarious ending of The Author's Farce when the symbolic or allegorical figures and the flesh-and- blood characters are shown to have family ties (p. xvi). Of the realistic choral characters, Witmore's status is achieved in Act I, in which he establishes that he is not part of the literary world, but a part of the outside social world which deplores the events in the entertainment circles. He delivers four lengthy speeches in his first scene (I, v) which define him as a sympathetic observer of

Luckless' attempts at legitimate drama. 126

Luckless, driven by his poverty to become part of

the degraded entertainment world, has one foot in each

world, striving to succeed with legitimate drama, yet forced

to pander to the inane tastes of the purveyors of public

amusement. Luckless does not apologize for the apparent contradiction in his behavior, and manages to keep our

respect by being completely honest: "Who would not then rather eat by his non-sense than starve by his wit?" (p. 34). This character of Luckless, established in the first two acts, is thus outside the action of the puppet show,

disapproving of it, even though he is the creator of it.

The distance between him and the show allows him to

satirize it. Trapwit and Fustian, of Pasquin; and Medley, of The Historical Register, are also playwrights who comment from

an outside point of view. Their sporadic conversations with each other and with critics are not dramatic action but a choral voice. Their questions, answers, comments, and defenses are not a part of the play proper; they show no character development, resolve no conflict, and make no decisions. The unity that the rehearsal characters afford is thematic, not dramatic.

This onstage audience creates multiple points of view and forces the offstage audience to examine the various points of view scrupulously. Is any point of view reliable?

In Pasquin, Trapwit, Fustian, and Sneerwell each have their 127 individual bias and short sightedness. The players, too, are fallible: getting ill, missing cues, aspiring for parts, and quarreling with authors about their lines. Therefore, the audience must compare its response with the onstage responses; Fielding forces the audience tc think, to choose, to judge the issues involved in the play. Then, because the play is about contemporary politics, the audience finds that its response to the play is parallel to or dictated by its response to the real events outside the theater. To clinch that connection, the metaphor of "theater equals politics" insists that they are not enjoying "escape" enter­ tainment. In fact, the theme of the theatrical satire points out clearly that the non-rational entertainments discourage one from thinking, just as the politicians prefer to have the electorate concerned only about money and pleasure. The circus promoters and the demagogues both want a complacent, illiterate, unthinking public. Thus, the political scene and the theater of the circus fuse. The dullness of Trapwit and Fustian and most of the onstage audience is analogous to the dullness of the offstage audience, and, indeed, a criticism of the entire population which allows a government like this one to survive.

To be specific, Trapwit says, "this play ["The

Election"] is an exact representation of nature" (Pasquin, p. 173). The rehearsal technique forces us to analyze the statement, because Trapwit is not a reliable authority. We 128 can see Fustian's point of view—"such stuff, such damned, incoherent, senseless stuff"—and a player's point of view— "Sir, I liked the part so well, that I have studied it in hope of some time playing it" (pp. 168, 174). All three of these viewpoints occur very early in the play, and the continual rehearsal comments alert the audience to evaluate those responses. Obviously, we must come to some conclusion of our own if we wish to make any sense of the play; we must watch and think. The dramatic illusion is not allowed to sweep us into a leisurely enjoyment; Fielding does not allow us to become passive, to be "entertained" by the artifice of art.

Not content with a demonstration of corruption in

The Historical Register, Fielding uses his rehearsal char­ acters to clarify it and to guide the audience to the proper response. The moral allegory of the auction scene, for example, is lost on the dull wits of Lord Dapper, who has become so involved in the sale of "interest at court" that he forgets it is a play. He is unbelievably obtuse: after the second scene, in which the ladies praise Farinelli and the little wax images of him, Dapper admires their "polite­ ness, good sense, and philosophy" (p. 26). Sourwit sees how empty and vain the women are, and Medley defends the characters as a true imitation of the vapid beau monde;

Medley sees this "luxury, effeminacy and debauchery" as an

"ominous" sign of social decay. Lord Dapper is a patent 129

fool, but Fielding insinuates that such foolishness is not unique to him; if it were, then such foolish events would

not have been "registered" for the year 1736. Fielding calls the play a "history," and teaches the audience to

share Medley's view of that history, by contrasting Medley

with an obvious fool. The choral voice in this play is thus

both negative (Dapper) and positive (Medley), making Fielding's position extremely clear. Fielding's work in all genres clearly shows his penchant to moralize; in the plays, no less than in the

novels, "Fielding will not efface himself; he is always present as chorus; he tells us what moral we ought to

draw.1'"*"^ In the plays, his choral voice is the rehearsal characters. Sometimes the voice is the voice of reason, sometimes the voice of patent absurdity, but either way, the voice directs the audience to the appropriate moral response.

iiii The Aristophanic chorus breaks the dramatic illusion in every parabasis and elsewhere in order to clarify moral and political messages. In Knights, Nicias and Demosthenes speak directly to the audience, explaining the background of the play, and mentioning events in which the real Nicias

10. Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library (London: John Murray, 1928), II, 169. and Demosthenes actually took part (I, 11-12)• In Clouds,

Right and Wrong Discourse look out to the audience to see if there are any undebauched people (I, 357). In Peace, two servants of Trygaeus explain his strange behavior directly to the audience in a kind of dramatic prologue (I, 155). Plutus does not have a parabasis and the part of the chorus is small, but Fielding does notice the break in the dramatic illusion when Plutus, the character, remarks, "It becomes not our poet to throw figs and sweetmeats among the spectators, in order to bribe their applause" (Plutus, p.

226). Fielding notes that this remark, outside of the context of the play, is similar to Bayes1 attempts, in

Buckingham's Rehearsal, to "frighten the spectators into applauding him." It is significant that Fielding notices the remark as outside of the play and compares it to The

Rehearsal. Fielding agrees with a note by Mme. Dacier that Chremylus "points with his finger at certain persons among the spectators, whom he taxes with theft, and whom he accuses of being caught in adultery, and suffering a very severe penance for it" (pp. 145-46). This kind of audience involvement is common in Aristophanes, and it gives a communal feeling to the satire as well as immediacy.

11. For a full discussion of the breaking of dramatic illusion in Aristophanes, see Sifakis, pp. 1-14; also Bain, pp. 1-12. 131

In Act III of The Author's Farce, Luckless is a choral voice, explaining to the Player and to all of the actors the significance of the piece and how it should be acted and understood. His every speech breaks the illusion of the play, constantly reminding us that it is a play, and that even the author does not consider it a very good one.

The occasion of writing it is rather casual: "I took the hint of this thing from the old house, who observing that everyone could not see the real coronation brought a repre­ sentation of it upon their stage. So, sir, since everyone has not time or opportunity to visit all the diversions of the town, I have brought most of them together in one" (p. 41). The Author's Farce is intended to be an epitome of foolish diversions, and Fielding breaks the stream of dramatic illusion in order to denounce each in its turn.

Sometimes Luckless masks his criticism in ironic hyperbole, announcing the scenes as a circus ringmaster would announce human freaks, tumblers, and dancing dogs, acts which John Rich used in his "entertainments." He constantly reminds us that the stuff he is imitating is intellectually vacant, that it puts everyone to sleep

(Monsieur Pantomime), or merely makes a great noise (Don

Tragedio): "By jay'd! Aye, that's another excellence of the

Don's; he does not only glean up all the bad words'of other authors but makes new bad words of his own" (p. 54). Since each of these characters represents some popular area of 132 entertainment, Fielding's frequent interruptions via Luckless criticize the London audience for supporting this kind of nonsense. In Pasquin, Trapwit reminds us that his play is based on reality.

Colonel Promise. Depend upon it sir; I'll serve you. Fustian. Upon my word the colonel begins very well; but has not that been said already?

Trapwit. Ay, and if I was to bring a hundred courtiers into my play, they should all say it— none of them do it (Pasquin, p. 184). He seems unaware of the caustic nature of his observations:

"Ay, interest, or conscience, they are words of the same meaning; but I think conscience rather the politer of the two, and most used at court" (p. 194). He constantly interrupts, relating his play to real life, making the audience consider the truth of his accusations: are all courtiers only words and no action? Is the court so corrupt that "conscience" is a sham word really meaning "interest"?

In The Historical Register, Medley breaks the dramatic illusion to explain the scenes to Dapper or to defend them from Sourwit. Medley is obviously reasonable and has acceptable responses to the play at every point; the audience may depend on his judgment. He clarifies the satirical targets: "Sir, my first and greatest politician never speaks at all. He's a very deep man, by which, you will observe, I convey this moral, that the chief art of a 133

politician is to keep a secret" (p. 18). (Sir Robert

Walpole was noted for his secrecy.)

In The Author's Farce and Pasquin, the rehearsal

characters interrupt and mediate the play for the offstage

audience, but because their reactions are complex, in dis­

agreement, silly, or ironic, the offstage audience cannot

accept them at face value. The validity of the stage action and the onstage responses to that action can only be veri­ fied by reference to real life actions and the real life responses to them. The stage-equals-world metaphor is extended to include onstage audience equals offstage audience. The audience thus sees an image of itself responding to images of real life; J. Paul Hunter calls this "theatrical reflexiveness": Ultimately, Fielding's theatrical reflexiveness is more about response than about creation, for even its creative aspects emphasize the artist's rhet­ oric and his need to know what will, in fact, pro­ duce the response he intends. Watching onstage audiences respond to a play-within adumbrates implicit comparisons in responses, pressing the offstage audience toward awareness of their own responses. And the continual breaking of illusion in Fielding's rehearsal plays constantly asserts a connection between a world of art and a world of politics which art begins by imitating and ends by fusing with itself, both by symbolic means and by invasion. And so, as the audience watches itself at play, it watches itself at another kind of play, too, and the theater, rather than being another world where one can contemplate in tranquility the symbols of the active life, becomes a creative, live experience without the leisure—or perspective—of Arden. Themselves part of the action, viewers must 134

at once respond, and distinguish various responses, involving themselves in whatever evaluations they arrive at.^-2

As Hunter suggests, Fielding is very audience- oriented in these dramatic satires. He could write and did

write plays with conventional plots—The Modern Husband,

The Universal Gallant--but sometimes he preferred to write the loosely constructed plots of the plays discussed here. He could not have interrupted conventionally plotted plays in order to speak directly to the audience, or to arouse the audience to compare its responses to the responses of an overt onstage audience. He chose to exploit the techniques of Old Comedy. Fielding's dramatic satires make the audience very self-aware; they must have felt flattered in their superiority to the bumbling onstage audience of Trapwits and Lord Dappers, yet ashamed that their responses to the real world were equally inadequate.

Like those of Aristophanes, these three dramatic satires maintain distance from the audience by never allowing it to become emotionally concerned with the outcome of the characters. We do not even care that Miss Mayoress is going to become someone's mistress. She and the loose plot she is involved in are never real, though the charac­ ters' counterparts in the outside world may be disgustingly real. Fielding's onstage audience keeps us reminded of the

12. Hunter, pp. 65-66. 135 artifice of the stage. He keeps the focus on the satire, using scenes and characters to launch attacks, constantly breaking dramatic illusion so that the audience must return its attention to the correspondence between events on stage and events in the outside world. The play is in an unusual position: it must deny itself in order to turn the audience back to its proper study, the malignance of the real world. CHAPTER 5

ABUSE OF LANGUAGE

Fielding and Aristophanes, as literary artists, object to the abuse of words by lesser artists, and self- serving professionals. They both see and ridicule writers whose performance is inept, yet the real danger comes not from the literary buffoons, but from the proficient manipu­ lators who exert immoral force on people by means of language. Chapter 2 showed that Aristophanes connected the abuse of language by Euripides and Socrates to religious heresy, because, for him, the study of subtle and intricate argument—forensic, literary, or philosophical--should be confined to and limited by traditional moral purpose. For

Fielding and Aristophanes, argument that lacks reference to the tangible world leads to social disintegration.

Words are the binding force for society; Fielding sees the Word as also the binding force between man and God. The parodies by both dramatists are fun in their ludicrous exaggerations, yet profoundly serious in their condemnation of language which appeals to subjective identification of interest and value. Interest and value are objective and general to Fielding, as demonstrated in Martin C.

Battestin's Moral Basis of Fielding's Art; a sentimental fool may injure society as a whole by the misapplication 136 137

of charity (pp. 72-75).1 For Aristophanes, too, good action is based on the practical social benefit; good poetry must

"make the citizens better." Aristophanes apparently knew almost all the extant

Greek literature and a good deal that is now lost. He

parodies the plays of Euripides, Phrynicus, Agathon, Aeschylus, Theognis, Morsimus, Cratinus, Eupolis, and

probably many others whom he does not name. 2 Acharnians parodies Euripides' use of ragged beggars and of stage props; the character Euripides admits to Dicaeopolis that

his entire plays rest on the use of such "stuffing" instead

of on sense (II, 214, 266). Frogs satirizes his casuistic

arguing and his sophistic "use of the straight lines and of the corners of language, the science of thinking, of reading, of understanding, plotting, loving, deceit, of suspecting evil, of thinking of everything." Euripides brags, "I introduced our private life upon the stage" (II, 239). Dionysus mocks Euripides' paradoxes and strained puns:

1. Martin C. Battestin, The Moral Basis of Fielding's Art: A Study of Joseph Andrews (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1959), p. 74, quotes from Fielding's Champion (March 27, 1740) that "good nature" sometimes "must give up the particular, to the good of the general." Because moral value is measured by the good of the community, the hangman's office, "if properly employed, may be in truth the best natured, as well as the highest post of honour in the kingdom." 2. Lever, p. 154. 138

"'Who know if living be not dying, and breathing be not feasting, if sleep be not a fleece?'"(II, 267). According to Aristophanes, the function of Euripides' tear-jerking tricks, quibbling arguments, and tortuous reasonings is simply to gain the admiration of those in the audience who mistake verbal manipulation for deep feelings or complex thought. The sophisms are puzzles, not ideas.

In Frogs, Aristophanes parodies a famous example in which Euripides' hero, Hippolytos, consciously separates words from the actual world : he angrily threatens Phaedra that he will tell Theseus of her love despite a vow he has taken:

"My tongue has taken an oath, but my mind is unsworn" (II, 266). 3 Euripides' hero is not very heroic here; he is, in fact, an immoral example to the Athenian audience. Per­ haps Euripides is just looking for a simple way to motivate Phaedra to tell her tragic lie to Theseus; if so, then Euripides is depending upon the insertion of irrational and unexplainable words in order to manipulate his plot. Aristophanes implies that Euripides does not present in­ evitable and coherent sequences of action. The character

Aeschylus adds "lost his little bottle" to each of Euripides' lines to show that the language can be forced

3. Euripides, Hippolytos, ed. W. S. Barrett (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 274. 139

into any foolish purpose, to show that it lacks logical and

meaningful integrity. Aristophanes criticizes Euripides for evoking pity

by showing beautiful women and children in hopeless circum­

stances, often crying out for help (as in Trojan Women).

Thesmophoriazusae parodies several scenes from Euripides,

as Mnesilochus tries to escape from his captors. He quotes from Helen: "Ah! how life weighs upon me! Ohi ye cruel

crows, who have not devoured my body!" "Shout! load me

with your cruel insults, for little care I" (II, 318-20). This bathos continues for many pages. Euripides is himself a character, quoting sentimental lines from some of his heroic rescuers (Menelaus and Perseus).

The use of ragged beggars, lame heroes, wailing widows, children torn from their mother's breast are shoddy devices to gain audience sympathy, Aristophanes implies. The presentation of lying, hypocritical, or vicious heroes is immoral, because their use of sophistic arguing obscures

reality instead of clarifying it.

Fielding notes Aristophanes' use of irony in Plutus. He uses the simple irony of saying something in an exaggerated manner in order to be understood as the oppo­ site (Plutus, pp. 170, 199), and he turns a person's exact words against him. Three times Cario repeats the words of another, and each time he "puts down" his interlocutor.

Fielding notes every one of these and says "there is great 140

humor in the repetition of the word" (Plutus, pp. 161, 238,

257). Strangely, this kind of verbal wit, the same word in

new context, approaches the verbal wit that he criticizes

in the Preface when he quotes from Cibber's Provok'd Husband. Cibber's lines are just pleasantries which do not

advance the action or reveal character; the repetition in Plutus that Fielding admires is simply raillery of the same

nature. There are many examples in Plutus of what Fielding calls simple, elegant, pure, and copious language. In­ flected language has conciseness (p. 142). Poverty's speech is "most noble" and her diction "sublime" (p. 194). The Greek verb tenses can indicate meaning elegantly (p. 185) , and the use of the third person for "you" adds a politeness that cannot "be imitated, nor even explained to those that

do not understand it" (p. 202).4 Fielding points out the use of proverbs and translates rustic colloquialisms of the

Greek into English idioms, noting the literal translation

as well as seeking the equivalent English mood and tone (pp. 143, 168, 198, 224, 244). He praises especially apt

metaphors (pp. 134, 164, 173, 258).

4. One wonders if Fielding knew Greek well enough prior to his dramatic career to pick out these subtle beauties, which are explicated in this text probably by Rev. William Young, Fielding's capable co-translator. However, even if these subtleties were beyond the young Fielding, Greek editions at Eton, and Kuster's (Amsterdam: 1710) had facing Latin translations, and Fielding was fluent in Latin. 141

In noting several parodies, Fielding shows a concern for the precise use of language that unites him with Locke,

Swift, and Pope: "The deficiency and corruption of our language, by the confusion introduced into it from our applying improper and inconsistent ideas to words, of which

Mr. Locke so justly complains" makes it difficult to trans­ late the exact Greek into the coarse English (Plutus, p.

198).5 Fielding notes short parodies of Euripides: Cario speaks tragic lines (p. 135); Lady Poverty simulates the use of furies on stage (pp. 182-83); and Cario mocks tragic sentiment in sympathizing with Mercury (p. 256). The bathos and mock heroics not only add humor, but also reinforce the mock heroic plot, which moves the gods to satisfy the greed of a lowly farmer and his slave. The divine and the human worlds undergo parallel degradation as the pretentious, bombastic dignity of tragedy is mocked by the grossly materialistic farce.

5. One passage parodied from Euripides (Medea, 1. 678) was, "What, from his garlands, chatter'd forth the God?" (Plutus, p. 135). ijhg word "chatter'd" is meant to indicate the frenzy of the oracle at Delphi while she sat on a sacred tripod which bridged a crack, through which came the in­ spiration from Apollo. In Greek, Euripides' word meant sound from an inanimate object, but Euripides slurs and generalizes the meaning of the word by using it for the combined sound of the oracle and the tripod. It is a rememberable usage, but inaccurate, for it tends to make Apollo, or his oracle, inanimate at just the moment when she is most animated. Fielding tries to translate the Greek with its original and corrupted meanings. 142

Tom Thumb (1730), later revised as The Tragedy of Tragedies (1731), also punctures inflated language of

dramatists and pedants. The Preface parodies Cibber's

Preface to The Provok'd Husband, imitating Cibber's ridicu­ lous remarks about "when the people of this age shall be ancestors," his use of the word "paraphonalia," and his throwing the play at "the feet of Your Majesty."^ Fielding is aiming at the awkward and contrived use of language not only in Cibber's Preface, but in heroic dramas and tragedies of the past 70 years, which were still being produced and

drawing good audiences.' In The Tragedy of Tragedies, Fielding mocks heroic

bombast in drama, whether he finds it in Dryden's Conquest of Granada (1672) or Thomson's Sophonisba (1730). Many of the restoration tragedies and tragedies contemporary with Fielding used the heroic motifs made popular by Dryden, but much of the diction, the sentiments, the plots, and the characters had dried up through endless repetition and become cliches through the abuses of lesser playwrights. These heroic speeches seemed to Fielding to lack conviction; the heroic pose did not always reveal a hero, nor did the

6. Cross, I, 89. 7. Fielding, The Tragedy of Tragedies, pp. 28-29; see also pp. 24-38 for a discussion of the play parodied. 143

language express the true heroism of the Christian-feudal

ideals. g Fielding parodies the unwarranted heroics, the

extravagcint diction and characters, and satirizes the audiences that admire the senseless bombast. The removal or loss of heroic thought and feeling from the plays is the "tragedy" of tragedies. The retention of heroic language and actions in tragedies is the laughable affectation that

Fielding exposes. The miniscule Tom Thumb epitomizes the mundane and

unheroic figure who masquerades as a hero in the extrava­ gant plays. He is completely incongruous with the killing

of giants and with the passionate love affairs he pursues. Tom Thumb's assumed superhuman passions and violence are

displayed when he kills the bailiff and his follower simply because they have dared to attempt to arrest Noodle in Tom's presence. His "great soul" and excessive passions cannot stand idly by: "Think you Tom Thumb will suffer this disgrace!"(TT, p. 66). Sometimes Fielding parodies by using exactly the same words as his source, changing the context so that the

8. I use "heroic" in the sense that Eugene M. Waith defined it in the first chapter of Ideas of Greatness: Heroic Drama in England (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1971). I concur with Henry Knight Miller's Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and The Romance Tradition (Victoria, B.C.: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 1976) that Fielding champions the heroic Christian-feudal ideals in Tom Jones and elsewhere. It is the abuse of heroic idealism which is parodied in The Tragedy of Tragedies. 144

line is now ludicrous; sometimes he parodies the whole genre of heroic drama by having the royalty utter the most absurd

or obscene language. In quoting or misquoting forty-two

plays, he parodies mostly Dryden, Lee, and Banks. Heroic drama was still common on the London stage, so Fielding's

hits had the air of the present even if some of the plays

were sixty years old.9 Fielding parodies one of Dryden1s

deviations from sense in his Conquest of Granada: "So art thou gone? Thou canst no Conquest boast, / I thought what was the Courage of a Ghost," an awkward mouthful, and quite indigestible. Such lines, out of context, argue that the

author (Dryden here) was concerned only for the words, and not for their reference to the world of ideas or real people.

The characters of The Tragedy of Tragedies attempt similes in their affectation, but cannot conceive of imagery above the sewer. As the Queen cries with happiness, the King asks her, "Whence flow those Tears fast down thy blubber'd Cheeks, / Like a swoln Gutter, gushing through the Streets?" (TT, p. 53). Lord Grizzle woos Huncamunca, Oh! Huncamunca, Huncamunca, oh! Thy pouting Breasts, like Kettle-Drums of Brass, Beat everlasting loud Alarms of Joy; As bright as Brass they are, and oh, as hard; Oh! Huncamunca, Huncamunca, oh! (TT, pp. 70-71).

9. See The London Stage, Parts 2 and 3, ed. Emmett L. Avery and Arthur H. Scouten, respectively (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960-61). 145

The royalty are debased to the commonest of people; their

passions for food, drink, and sex are expressed in very

gross, material terms. Fielding accentuates the qualities which the royalty have in common with beasts. Huncamunca

and her mother are both hard drinkers who long, indelicately

and adulterouslyfor Tom's embraces: "For him I've

sigh'd, I've wept, I've gnaw'd my sheets" (TT, p. 69).

These crowned heads are conspicuously vacant of royal sub­

stance. Fielding here is not attacking the political

station of royalty, but the aesthetic, or rather, critical,

tradition of decorum which demanded a characterization of

royalty which falsified human experience.

Carrying out his attack on this hollow aspect of

the tradition of decorum, Fielding fills his imagery with

things, a welter of things as from the shelves of stores.

Huncamunca and Glumdalca seem more like shop girls than

princesses in the exchange: Glumdalca. Your Sweetheart? do'st thou think the man who once Hath worn my easy Chains, will e'er wear thine?

Huncamunca. Well may your Chains be easy, since if Fame Says True, they have been try'd on twenty Husbands. The Glove or Boot, so many times pull'd on, May well sit easy on the Hand or Foot. . . .

Glumdalca. You'd give the best of Shoes within your Shop, To be but half so handsome (TT, pp. 74-75).

Since the heroic assumption is that the fine characters live in an ideal world, Fielding mocks them by placing them 146 squarely in the mundane life, fettered by chains, shoes, and shops. No pretence is made to suggest that dignity or

ability fills the robes of royalty; they swell with earthy

lusts. As Alvin Kernan says of most satire, the scene is choked with things, ostentatiously stuffed into every corner. 10 Lofty language of heroic idealism in a world in­ sistently low and pervasively bestial is affectation, and an abuse of language. Language which has no touch with the world, such as "Stab my very Soul" is an abuse. Unaccount­ able actions — like Tom Thumb's killing the bailiff--are affronts to reason, and simply provide cheap thrills to unthinking audiences. For heroes to deny their reason in favor of a foolish infatuation is immoral (TT, p. 58).

The burlesque of medical jargon in this play is hilarious, though of course one thinks immediately of

Fielding's translation of Moliere's The Mock Doctor for a complete treatment of the theme. Fielding echoes the pre­ vailing concern with language as Dr. Church-yard and Dr. Fillgrave, mistaking the corpse of a monkey for Tom Thumb, argue about what killed him: "He died, may it please your Majesty, of a Distemper which Paracelsus calls the

Diaphormane, Hippocrates the Catecumen, Galen the Regon--He was taken with a Dizziness in his Head for which I bled him,

10. Kernan, p. 8. 147

and put on Four Blisters," and so on (TT, pp. 33-34). The

doctors cannot even understand each other: Church-yard does

not know what Diaphormane is and Fillgrave does not know

what Peripilusis is, implying that neither doctor knows

anything and both are creating words for the function of deceiving the King. Once again, language deceives instead of enlightening people. The doctors do not aim at healing: "I must hasten to Lord Weekleys, for he'll be dead before Eleven, and so I shall lose my fee." Obfuscation serves greed, obscures reality, and confuses right reason.

As in the satires of Swift's A Tale of a Tub and

Pope's The Dunciad, the editorial apparatus which Fielding

addends to the text of The Tragedy of Tragedies mocks the

editorial and critical efforts of contemporary scholars, implying that much of their work is pedantry. Instead of clarifying a work, their pedantry clutters the page and the

mind, confusing the reader with the scholar's pretentious intrusions. H. Scriblerus Secundus introduces this "deep Tragedy," "as knowing my self more capable of doing Justice to our Author, than any other Man," having studied nothing else for ten years (TT, p. 42). After examining the play, he concludes "That Bombast is the proper Language for Joy, and Doggerel for Grief." "What can be so proper for Tragedy

as a Set of big sounding Words, so contrived together, as

to convey no Meaning; which I shall one Day or other prove to be the Sublime of Longinus" (TT, p. 45). 148

The footnotes, which are almost as bulky as the text, ascribe ridiculous mock-scholarly statements to famous scholars, such as Richard Bentley and Andre Dacier, asserting that learned men spend years exploring the com­ plexities of such child's play as Tom Thumb. The annota­ tions allude to numerous classical sources, quote in Latin and Greek (e.g., p. 83), refer to classical and contemporary critical works, and cite over a hundred passages from

English drama, to prove that Tom Thumb is the source of most recent tragedy. Fielding employs exaggerated critical apparatus to prove the most absurd theories, thereby mocking the scholars and the dramatists who prefixed long arguments to their plays. Fielding's "procedure apes closely the usual method of the dramatists, who anxiously defended in their prefaces the high dignity of their plots and charac- 11 ters, and the nobility of their sentiments and dxctaon."

He especially mocks the mechanical "Rules" to tragedy as devised by such critics as Rymer and Dennis, and the endless appeals to the classics for precedents as a substitute for appeals to reason. Beneath the burlesque is a serious plea for the clear and honest use of language for the purpose of communication instead of self-glorification.

Fielding recognizes verbal misuse in a number of ways. In The Author's Farce, Luckless tells the Goddess of

11. Fielding, The Tragedy of Tragedies, p. 37. 149

Nonsense that Pantomime has been a great service to her, putting people to sleep; so has Don Tragedio, who wakes them up with his ranting and thunder. Tragedio admits his de­ pendence on stage machinery and the special effects of lightning and thunder. In trying to be new in all things, Tragedio uses neologisms full of sound but empty of sense:

"He does not only glean up all the bad words of other authors but makes new bad words of his own" (AF, p. 54).

The satire is similar to Tom Thumb, written the same year,

1730. Sir Farcical confesses, "Nay, egad, I have made new words, and spoiled old ones too, if you talk of that. I have made foreigners break English and Englishmen break Latin. I have as great a confusion of languages in my play as was at the building of Babel." Dr. Orator also mis­ handles words outrageously, depending on puns and chopped logic for his humor. As a stand-up comedian he is poor. "A fiddle is a statesman; why? because it's hollow. A fiddlestick is a drunkard: why? because it loves rosening"

(AF, p. 60). Fielding unifies all this satire through the theme of language, which is not meant to be ignored (Mime), inflated (tragic bombast), idiosyncratic (neologisms), macaronic (Farcical's use of babble), distorted in puns

(Dr. Orator), nor to be a vehicle to show off the virtuosity of voices (Signior Opera). This is the satiric theme that

Fielding addressed ironically in his Preface to Tom Thumb: 150

"so should no Word by any means enter into a Preface till stripped of all its Ideas. Mr. Lock complains of confused

Ideas in Words, which is entirely amended by suffering them

to give none at all" (TT, p. 17). Although the theme is

never explicitly stated, The Author's Farce is also a satire

on the breakdown of careful and meaningful use of language,

represented and accelerated by the abuse of language in

public entertainments. In Act Five of Pasquin, Sneerwell says that his imagination could picture a battle scene better if a

talented actor described the battle, rather than having the presentation on stage of a dozen or so fighting men. Fustian's only defense is that most of the audience prefer to see some fighting (p. 221). The satire seems to be saying, as Fielding says in his prologues and epilogues, that the depraved taste of the town is due to a lack of

mental facility, a dependence on visual representation

rather than on an active imagination. This reasoning links

the question of the propriety of showing violence on stage

to the intellectual lassitude of the audience, a recurring topic in Fielding.

Fielding's satire on the abuse of language in "The

Election" is clear. When Col. Promise promises that he

will serve the people well, Fustian objects that that is not saying much. Trapwit responds with the satire on political

hypocrisy: "Ay, and if I was to bring a hundred courtiers 151 into my play, they should all say it—none of them do it" (Pasquin, p. 184). Trapwit has the same carelessness about language that his characters do. Mayor. My conscience boggles at this thing-- but yet it is impossible I should ever get any thing by the other side. Mayoress. Ay, let that satisfy your conscience, that is the only way to get any thing.

Mayor. Truly, I think it has.

Sneerwell. I think, Mr. Trapwit, interest would be a better word here than conscience. Trapwit. Ay, interest, or conscience, they are words of the same meaning; but I think conscience rather the politer of the two, and most used at court (Pasquin, p. 194). Fustian's Dedication for his play shows that when it comes to interest, he is as purblind as Trapwit about the correct language. After claiming that he abhors flattery, he grandiloquently flatters himself, his play, and his patron. Trapwit not only knows that flattery is a salable item, but also that he should get a good price for it.

Recent returns have been disappointing.

Trapwit. 1111 let no more flattery go out of my shop without being paid beforehand. Fustian. Sir, flattery is so cheap, and every man of quality keeps so many flatterers about him, that egad, our trade is quite spoiled, but if I am not paid for this dedication, the next I write will be a satirical one; if they won't pay me for opening my mouth, I'll make them pay me for shutting it (Pasquin, pp. 201-202). 152

In the plays prior to Pasquin, the abusers of language are foolish buffoons. 12 With Pasquin, the satire on politicians comes foremost, and subsequently, the mood darkens as cunning men abuse language to the detriment or disadvantage of other individuals. Conscience and interest are blurred in the above quotation, then the authors discuss the sale of their flattery. In the second rehearsal in

Pasquin, Law uses Latin in order to obfuscate his language as much as possible. Physic says, "Reason is said / T'have been the mighty founder of your house." Law answers, "Perhaps so; but we have raised ourselves so high / And shook this founder from us off so far, / We hardly deign to own from whence we came" (Pasquin, p. 207). In Eurydice, Captain Weasel remarks, "Nothing pleases him [the devil] so much as lying: for which reason he is so fond of . . . lawyers" (Eurydice, p. 274). The satire is less funny than in the early plays, more directly angry. And yet Fielding's anger is not directed at the institutions, the foundations of law, as at the corrupt people who misuse a noble pro­ fession, which Fielding respected enough to join.

12. For a comparison of Fielding's satire on Colley Cibber's "murder of the English language" to the calculated obfuscation of language by Robert Walpole's publicity men and by professional men, see Glenn W. Hatfield's Henry Fielding and the Language of Irony (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 69-72, 98-108, 127-151. 153

In The Historical Register, Quidam is malevolent, menacingly lurking in the wings. In the last scene, he tells the patriots that they are now rich and he hands them money, but the only real change in their status is that they now think they are rich. They dance to the tune of the man who has tricked them, and the money falls out of their pockets. They trusted that gold was behind Quidam's words and in their pockets, when, in fact, his words and the money are slippery, unsupported by reality.

Fielding says in his Preface to Joseph Andrews that vanity and hypocrisy are his targets and the source of humor. Both are forms of deceit, presenting an appearance that does not accurately reflect the facts. The greatest part of the satire in Aristophanes and Fielding is aimed at this misrepresentation. Euripides and the writers of stale heroic tragedy mistake the sophistication or wildness of words for the sophistication of thought and the urgency of emotions. Cleon and Walpole, knowing the difference between the appearance and reality, exploit those who do not know the difference. The efforts of Aristophanes and Fielding unmask both the ignorant and the malevolent, exposing them through burlesques in which the character confesses to his crimes or practices them so transparently that they cannot be misunderstood by the simplest mind in the audience. The tools of creating appearances are several: clothes, gait, gestures, cosmetics, and misleading acts, but the main tool 154 for misrepresentation is the same tool that Aristophanes and Fielding are masters of, the word. CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

"And you, Mr. Sourwit, I hope will serve me among

the critics, that I may have no elaborate treatise writ to

prove that a farce of three acts is not a regular play of five" (HR and E. Hissed, p. 50). Although Medley's request at the end of The Historical Register seems so modest and simple that one suspects Fielding of ironic satire on his critics, yet Fielding's dramatic satires have seldom been appreciated beyond their immense popularity in the 1730s. Rather than praising them for what the are, critics generally remark on their "irregularity" or see them merely as an apprenticeship. They are not "regular" in the New Comedy style of Menander, Terence, and Congreve; they belong to the less popular tradition which includes Aristophanes and some of the works of Ben Jonson and Molifere."'' New

Comedy may employ satire, but in Old Comedy, satire

1. I am thinking here of Jonson's dramatic satires: Every Man in His Humour, Every Man out of His Humour, Cynthia's Revels, and Poetaster, plays which certainly stress the satiric import over the artistic illusion. Ben Jonson, Ben Jonson, eds. C. H. Herford and Percy and E. M. Simpson, 9 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925- 52), I, 389-441, mentions Jonson's sacrifice of drama for satire, his use of allegory, personifications, "Attic horseplay," and his debt to Aristophanes. Molifere's The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and perhaps a few others, may be seen as primarily satire. Buckingham's Rehearsal fits into the tradition and so do many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. 155 156

dominates. For example, the satiric burlesque of London

notables in The Historical Register is the structural center

of the play and responsible for the play's resounding

success. Fielding's intent to satirize living people in his

plays, and generally to recommend goodness and punish vice, suggests a number of complex critical problems about authorial intent versus artistic accomplishment. Sacks' arguments at the end of Fiction and the Shape of Belief are careful, convincing, and correlative to fay own re­ sponses. Fielding's moral intent does shape his art and cannot be separated from the structure of his plays and novels. His beliefs and value judgments are on every page,

and the typical intelligent response to the work is moral

(pp. 248-49), whether we read the dramatic satires, Joseph

Andrews, or Tom Jones. Of course Fielding knew that his moral purpose was best achieved when the artistic accom­ plishment was best, and although we lack the evidence in Aristophanes' case, both men must have been conscious that the "beauties" people admire are not always morally good. Sacks says a good novelist must reveal his ethics "if he is to write a novel of any value" (pp. 271-72), and this is intensely true of the dramatic satires of Fielding and

Aristophanes, whose moral opinions are expressed in personal, as well as in abstract terms. Their attitudes about Cleon and Walpole are integrated into the very structure of the plays, making them less comprehensible and enjoyable to the uninitiated, but more so to the informed. The stage/state metaphor implicit in both men's plays re­ quires knowledge of both state and stage to be fully appreciated. To understand the play one must understand the moral, and to understand the moral one must understand the topical references. This will always severely limit the popularity of dramatic satire.

Understanding the genre of Fielding's plays, their provenance and their structure, is the first step toward full appreciation of them. Fielding suffered from critics who judged his satires as comedies, and perhaps he still suffers from critics who misunderstand his intent and accomplishment in drama, prose parody, and romance. 2 His debts to Jonson, to Restoration drama, to Molifere, to Congreve, Farquhar, and Gay have been recognized, but the plays of Aristophanes better help us to understand

Fielding's dramatic satires.

Both dramatists use episodic plots, self-contained scenes, whose allegorical significance, if not perfectly

2. Recent criticism, like Miller's Henry Fielding's Tom Jones and the Romance Tradition, continues to indicate new approaches to Fielding's work, perhaps not correcting, but certainly supplementing, our understanding of the plays and novels. 158 3 clear, is explained and interpreted by the chorus.

Fielding's constant interruptions of dramatic illusion must

be seen as a useful device of Old Comedy, rather than an

awkward corruption of New Comedy. The unities are ostenta­

tiously broken. Therefore, to complain that Fielding's

dramatic satires have loose plots or type characters is to

miss the point of Fielding's plays, which create distance by such means in order to alert the audience to the satire and to guide its response. 4

Fielding's dramatic satires may be dramatic--as in

Pasquin--but they are more importantly satiric. For the

reader or auditor who knows that "fiddler" refers to Robert

Walpole, and what Walpole stands for, the plays become

universal, rising out of their milieu and commenting on the

nature of man and society in general. When Fielding sug­

gests, in his Preface to Plutus, that one read Jonson as a

preparation for Aristophanes, he is recognizing that they

have something in common: an Aristophanic tradition, evi­

dent in the plays of Jonson, Molifere, and even in the prose works of Lucian, Rabelais, and Swift, all harsh satirists.

3. See Hatfield, pp. 206-17, for a survey of choruses and narrators in Fielding's plays and novels. 4. Michael Irwin, Henry Fielding: The Tentative Realist (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 2, defends Fielding from such critics. 159 5 These writers, Fielding's favorites in 1749, were unpopular by the end of Fielding's life, and he himself had come to denounce Aristophanes and Rabelais for their licentious use

of bawdry.^ But never does Fielding deny the goal of these

authors, to correct society by chastising its faults.

The final question is whether Aristophanes in­

fluenced Henry Fielding's great novels, and if so, how? Is

there an obvious attempt to correct society by satire? Do

the novels employ episodic plot structure, allegory, a

choral voice, interruptions of dramatic illusion? Do they

parody and burlesque recognizable literary works and

people? Do they repeatedly expose the abuses of language

by politicians, the various professions, the beau monde,

the general public, and the writers? The answer to each question is definitely affirmative, though by no means do

these qualities exhaust the description of the novels.

The wealth of criticism available on Fielding's

novels precludes rehearsing all the arguments; there are

many generally accepted descriptions and interpretations.

5. Fielding invokes these authors to bring humor to his pages in Tom Jones, XIII, i. 6. Stuart Tave, The Amiable Humorist: A Study in the Comic Theory and Criticism of the 18th and Early 19th Centuries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, I960), pp. 23, 31-32, 37-38, says that the popularity of the harsh satirists declined throughout the 18th century. Fielding denounced Aristophanes and Rabelais in the Covent Garden Journal, No. 10, Feb. 4, 1752; rpt. in Works, XIV, 112-113. 160

One of the commonest remarks is that Fielding is a Christian apologist, whose "pious intentions" find their most effec- tive mode in satire. 7 In all the novels there is moral temptation, and the consequences of moral failure become darker and more serious from the blatant country cupidity and sexuality of Shamela to the sinister threats of jail and death in Tom Jones and Amelia. However, human frailty in the heroes and malevolence in society are under the control of a divine providence in the person of a congenial narrator, who keeps the possibility of tragedy at a dis- g tance. People do die, but neither tragically nor even pathetically- Jonathan Wild's hanging, ior instance, is not only the proper administration of justice, but is also an appropriately "great" end to his "great" career (Jonathan Wild, IV, xiv). Fielding's novels are not only moral, but also reflect an ontological order, the Christian world of order and eventual justice, which resembles, in its assertion of a harmonious universe, the classical Greek concept of "cosmos."

7. Ronald Paulson, ed., Fielding: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1962), pp. 1-2. See also Battestin, The Moral Basis of Fielding's Art, pp. 2-3; and Sacks, pp. 246-51.

8. Robert Alter, Fielding and the Nature of the Novel (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 16-22; see also Miller, pp. 11, 22-23; and Sacks, pp. 260-62. 161

The aggressive Aristophanic satire of Fielding's

plays continues in the novels, ridiculing the targets by

unmasking their vanity—Didapper, Lady Booby, Square—or

their hypocrisy--Trulliber, Blifil, the "noble lord."

Fielding heightens the satiric effect by ironically ex­

plaining at length any decent action, while the grossest

selfishness and corruption are passed over in casual under-

statement. 9 Sentencing Joseph and Fanny to Bridewell, the

justice adds, "I believe I must order them a little cor­

rection too, a little stripping and whipping." Although

Squire Booby interrupts this obvious miscarriage of justice,

he apparently sees nothing unusual in it, as he and the

justice discourse on horse racing while Joseph dresses

(Joseph Andrews, IV, v). Fielding's dark irony glows in

Jonathan Wild, when he says that good people, like small fish in a pike pond, are intended to be devoured (Jonathan

Wild, II, i). In the Preface to Joseph Andrews and in the introductory chapter to Book III, Fielding claims that he is a satirist, and in Book I, i, he satirizes Colley Cibber

and the author of Pamela, while in the body of the novel he satirizes nearly all groups and levels of English society.

Fielding's narrator sometimes burlesques his own role as a

"true historian," affecting authorial delicacy and false erudition (Tom Jones, I, v). Even the descriptions of his

9. Hamilton Macallister, Fielding (London: 1967), pp. 78-81. 162 heroines are conventional and idealized enough to be suspect

of parody. If we really cared about Fielding's characters, the

attack on them would probably make us want to defend them,

to seek explanations of why they behave reprehensibly. In

order to keep the bite in his satire of Lady Booby, Jonathan Wild, or Squire Western, Fielding never examines their motives, never shows the world from their point of view; the narrator instead tells us their attitudes and reveals

their vices. They remain objects of understanding rather than subjects with feelings; they are simple (Joseph Andrews, I, v; Jonathan Wild, I, i; Tom Jones, VI, ii). Henry Knight Miller says of Tom Jones that it is aimed at the reader, not overheard by the reader. The narrator talks to us, not to himself; hence, there is a public quality to

the book. Tom Jones himself is a type, and hence, knowable

in a public, objective way (p. 63). Whereas earlier critics scorned Fielding's episodic plot structure, recent criticism seeks to justify his use of

it. Maynard Mack suggests that Fielding juxtaposes episodes "as in drama, so that they comment on each other.""'"''' Sacks

10. Martin C. Battestin, ed., Joseph Andrews and Shamela, by Henry Fielding (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1965), pp. xviii-xix.

11. Maynard .-jack, ed. , Joseph Andrews, by Henry Fielding (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1948), pp- ii-xxiv; rpt. "Joseph Andrews and Pamela," in Paulson, Fielding: A Collection, p~I 55. calls the digressive episodes of Joseph Andrews and Tom

Jones "apologues," or prose fiction allegories (pp. 208- 213); moral allegory not only interrupts the narrative of

action, but also participates in the "whole plot" of Tom

Jones, expressing Fielding's moral beliefs (pp. 252-62).

Battestin too sees moral allegory and parables (Moral Basis, p. 78). Many names are suggestive of allegory: Abraham Adams, Booby, Pounce, Jonathan Wild, Fireblood, Heartfree, Allworthy, Paradise Hall, Sophia, Suckbride, Amelia. Particular instances of allegory include Adams'

throwing his book into the fire to rush to Fanny's aid (Joseph Andrews, II, xii), and the Man of the Hill's refusal to rush to Jenny's aid (Tom Jones, IX, ii). Miller sees the plot of Tom Jones as a mythic sequence of "De­ parture (or Exile), Initiation, and Return," opening the entire book to speculation of the analogues between the fictive world and "an intellectually (or mythically) con­ ceived larger structure, which mirrors certain a priori truths or assumptions about the cosmos" (p. 22). Thus, allegory expands from the moral to the metaphysical in its assertions of ultimate reality. Winfield Rogers, after defining four different allegorical techniques that Fielding uses in the plays and novels, and after asserting that "Fielding was fully conscious of his allegorical 164

tendencies," says that the main contribution of Fielding's 12 dramatic career was the allegorical and analogical method. Fielding's narrator's voice in the novels, com­

menting on everything in and about the novel, impresses all readers and makes Fielding's novels inimitable. Because the narrator is often ironic, the reader must evaluate all

levels of interactions to come to a clear moral under­ standing which, the reader is more and more aware, evades naive schemata. The narrator's choral voice directs,

shapes the reader's response, reveals the complexity of the situation, suggests a point of view, promises ensuing development, suspends judgment, approves, and condemns. Hatfield recognizes the continuity of the technique from

the rehearsal plays in which the choral voice is spoken by the actors, critics, and playwrights (Hatfield, pp. 206-

207), and George R. Levine sees the authorial persona in Tom 13 Thumb and The Champion as well. The narrator himself often looks at his scenes as plays on a stage (Joseph Andrews, III, x; IV, i; Jonathan Wild, IV, xiv; and Tom Jones, VII, i; XVI, i). Homer Goldberg's insights into

Fielding's comic stumbling and manipulation of narrative

12. "Fielding's Early Aesthetic and Technique," Studies in Philology 40 (1943), 529-551; rpt.iin Paulson, Fielding: A Collection, p. 43.

13. George R. Levine, Henry Fielding and the Dry Mock: A Study of the Techniques of Irony in His Early Works (The Hague: Mouton, 1966), p. 32. 165

suggest that Fielding's mock innocence and naivete draw the

reader into a more eager search for moral corruption, a more

judgmental attitude toward the guilty. The interruptions

by the choral voice remind the reader that the book is an 14 artifice, but that its moral relevance is real. Fielding's interest in the abuse of words, an in­ heritance from Aristophanes and a popular topic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, continued and expanded in the novels and periodicals. His "Modern Glossary" in The Covent Garden Journal (Jan. 14, 1752) epitomizes and culminates most of his concerns. Hatfield's Henry Fielding

and the Language of Irony, the present authority on this

topic, traces Fielding's concern about the "Deficiency and

Corruption of our Language" (Plutus, p. 198) in the Preface

to Tom Thumb (1730), Champion essays (1739, 1740), Plutus (1742), and in The Covent Garden Journal (1752). Hatfield

stresses the perversion of language in society, where language is meant to bind and communicate, but is perverted

to selfish ends. "Where Locke saw reasonable men eager to cultivate an effective medium of discourse, Fielding, like Mandeville, saw mostly self-seeking opportunists willing to exploit the powers of language for their own gain" (p. 55). Slang and hyperbole, empty formulas and polite mockeries are stripped of meaning by overuse and misapplication; but

14. Homer Goldberg, The Art of Joseph Andrews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 282-83. 166

the abuse is far worse when the verbal forms of social

intercourse are not understood to be empty, but are mis­ understood to be meaningful. Then fashion turns to fraud. Fielding's scorn for the political abuse of language by

Walpole's men in the 1730's becomes in the 1740's his scorn for the Jacobite press. In The Jacobite Journal and scattered through Tom Jones, Fielding ridicules the Jacobite propaganda and seriously fears that most readers of news­ papers "give almost an implicit Faith to what they read"

(The Jacobite Journal, Sept. 24, 1748). And the profes­

sional men--the surgeons, the clergymen, and the lawyers—

of Fielding's novels try to camouflage their ignorance and

dishonesty behind cant and jargon, just as they do in his and Aristophanes' plays.

Thus, Fielding's novels as well as his plays have many elements in common with the Aristophanic tradition of dramatic satire. The informing guide is to give "Wise counsels, which make the citizens better," where "better" is defined in social terms. A good man provides practical benefit to his society and avoids pure speculation, radical innovation, and introspection. Plot continuity, character study, spectacle, and sentiment are subordinate to this message. Miller says of romance writers that they assume

"that the structure of the full cosmos itself makes ultimate sense, even if the stage of the human world exhibits a dismaying

(or amusing) pattern of misadventure and confusion bordering on chaos" (p. 22). The Aristophanic tradition shares that faith with the romance tradition, but instead of portraying the successful heroes of romance, Aristophanes and Fielding set out to purify, to purge the romantic tradition of the easy sentimentality and sham heroism that inevitably creep into literature to flatter people that they are, as their vanity urges, heroic. REFERENCES

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