Chapter V: Homespun Drama

"Virtue distrest in humble state support."
Prologue to _Fatal Curiosity_.

The Licensing Act of June 1737 thus brought Henry Fielding's career as political dramatist to a hasty conclusion; a conclusion quite unforeseen by the luckless author, as appears from his _Dedication_ to the _Historical Register_, published almost at the moment when the Act became law: "The very great indulgence you have shown my performances at the little theatre these two last years," he says, addressing his public, "have encouraged me to the proposal of a subscription for carrying on that theatre, for beautifying and enlarging it, and procuring a better company of actors."

Before finally losing sight of the stage on which _Pasquin_ and the _Register_ had scored such signal success, we may notice some minor incidents of these two years of Fielding's administration. His company does not seem to have included either Macklin, Quin, or Kitty Clive; but that distinguished actress Mrs Pritchard, the central figure of Hogarth's charming group called "The Green Room, Drury Lane," is said to have made her first appearance on his boards, [1] and his players also included that man of many parts Tom Davies. Davies was a student of Edinburgh University; an actor at Drury Lane and elsewhere; a bookseller of whom the elder D'Israeli said 'all his publications were of the best kind'; the writer of various works including a _Life of Garrick_; and a particular friend of Dr Johnson. In the first year of Fielding's management in the Haymarket, Davies was cast for a principal part in George Lillo's tragedy _Fatal Curiosity_; and it is to his pen that we owe the only known contemporary reference to the active part taken by Fielding himself in the affairs of his theatre.

Lillo, a jeweller of Moorfields, had captured the town, a few years previously, by his tragedy of common life, _George Barnwell_; and among the dramatists selected by Fielding for representation on his stage the most interesting is undoubtedly this pioneer of the coming revolution in English literature. For, incredible as it may seem, until that first performance of _Barnwell_, no writer, to quote Tom Davies' own words "had ventured to descend so low as to introduce the character of a merchant or his apprentice into a tragedy." Certain "witty and facetious persons who call themselves the town," continues Davies, brought to the first night copies of the old ballad on which the jeweller's play was based, meaning to mock the new tragedy with the old song; but so forcible and pathetic were Lillo's scenes that these merry gentlemen were obliged "to throw away their ballads, and take out their handkerchiefs." More tears, we learn, were shed over this 'homespun drama' than at all the imitations of ancient fables by learned moderns. To Fielding this revolution, from the buskin'd heroics of the Alexanders and Clelias to the living and natural pathos of the tragedy of a poor London apprentice, must have appealed with extraordinary force; for it is the especial glory of his own genius that, throwing aside all the traditions of his age, and 'adventuring on one of the most original expeditions that ever a writer undertook,' [2] he was to discover a new world for English fiction, the world of simple human nature. That expedition must have been already forming in his mind when, night after night, in the hottest part of the year, _George Barnwell_ was playing to crowded houses, and convincing the astonished audiences of 1731 that even so low a creature as a London apprentice was possessed of passions extremely like their own. Some ten years later, when Fielding revealed the first true sign of his own surpassing genius in the _History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews_, he chose for his hero a country footman. The worthy City jeweller was, in his own limited measure, the forerunner, on the stage, of that new era in English literature created by honest Andrews and Parson Adams, Partridge and Mrs Slipslop, Fanny and Sergeant Atkinson, Tow-wouse and Mrs Miller, to name but a few of Fielding's immortal portraits, drawn from the 'vast authentic book of Nature.'

It is no wonder then, to return to Tom Davies, that a play by Lillo was announced on the bills of Fielding's theatre within a few months of the opening of his management. On May 27, 1736, the following advertisement appeared:

"Guilt its Own Punishment. Never Acted before. By Pasquin's
Company of Comedians. Being a True Story in Common Life and the
Incidents extremely affecting." By the Author of George Barnwell.

Davies' part in the play was a chief one, that of young Wilmot, and the story of the performance may be given in his own words. "Mr Fielding, who had a just sense of our author's merit, and who had often in his humourous pieces laughed at those ridiculous and absurd criticks who could not possibly understand the merit of Barnwell, because the subject was low, treated Lillo with great politeness and friendship. He took upon himself the management of the play and the instruction of the actors. It was during the rehearsal of the _Fatal Curiosity_ that I had an opportunity to see and to converse with Mr Lillo. Plain and simple as he was in his address, his manner of conversing was modest affable and engaging. When invited to give his opinion how a particular sentiment should be uttered by the actor he expresst himself in the gentlest and most obliging terms, and conveyed instruction and conviction with good nature and good manners.... Fielding was not content merely to revise the 'Fatal Curiosity,' and to instruct the actors how to do justice to their parts. He warmly recommended the play to his friends and to the public. Besides all this he presented the author with a well written prologue."

This _Prologue_, which has apparently hitherto escaped the collectors of Fielding's _Works_, seems worthy of a reprint here, if only for its characteristic sympathy with virtue and distress 'in humble state,' and for the opening tribute to 'Shakespeare's nature' and to 'Fletcher's ease.'