1 Donald Burrows, ‘The Transitional Decade I: Competition, 1732–7’ and ‘The Transitional Decade II: Confusion, 1737–41’, Handel, The Master Musicians (Oxford, 1994), 165–214. See also Suzanne Aspden, ‘“Fam'd Handel Breathing, tho’ transformed to Stone”: The Composer as Monument’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 55 (2002), 39–90.Google Scholar

2 The Beggar's Opera broke all records for theatrical success; Fiske labels the piece ‘the greatest theatrical success of the century’. Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (2nd edn, London and New York, 1986), 94.Google Scholar

3 Some of the most popular tunes, such as ‘Lillibullero’, resurfaced in as many as a dozen ballad operas. The recycling of London's most popular ballads on the London stage is chronicled under each song title in Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music (New Brunswick, 1966).Google Scholar

4 Morrissey, L. J., ‘Henry Fielding and the Ballad Opera’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 4 (1971), 382–402. Edgar Roberts observes that of 97 ballad-opera editions, 35 included music, but only five used copper plates. Appendix to Henry Fielding, The Grub Street Opera, ed. Edgar V. Roberts (Lincoln, NE, 1968).Google Scholar

5 Pedicord, Harry W., The Theatrical Public in the Time of Garrick (New York, 1954), 26–30. David Garrick's attempt in 1763 to abandon ticket discounts for afterpieces resulted in riots, and he was forced to revert to half-price tickets.Google Scholar

6 Besides his opera arias, early editions of Handel's minuets provided ballad opera producers with the most important source of Handel melodies; these are listed in Table 1.Google Scholar

7 Roberts, Edgar V., ‘Eighteenth-Century Ballad Opera: The Contribution of Henry Fielding’, Drama Survey, 1 (1961–2), 77–85 (p. 83).Google Scholar

8 Roberts, Edgar V., ‘The Songs and Tunes in Henry Fielding's Ballad Operas’, Essays on the Eighteenth-Century English Stage: Proceedings of the 1971 Symposium of the Manchester University Department of Drama, ed. Kenneth Richards and Peter Thomson (Manchester, 1972), 29–49.Google Scholar

9 The title of each ballad-opera air based on Handel's music and the earliest published attribution of this air to Handel are given in Table 1.Google Scholar

10 Only five non-Handelian arias surfaced in the roughly 130 ballad farces surveyed for Table 1; of these, only ‘T'amo tanto’ (from Artaserse by Attilio Ariosti) was reused.Google Scholar

11 Modern attribution of English airs to Handel is based exclusively on early editions.Google Scholar

12 This issue is central to my current research for the monograph Staging the Street Ballad: The Eighteenth-Century Origins of Mass Popular Music.Google Scholar

13 Of 74 published ballad operas performed in London, Drury Lane produced 31 and Covent Garden ten. The remaining productions were divided among other London theatres. Edmond M. Gagey, ‘Bibliography of Ballad Operas’, Ballad Opera (New York, 1937), 237–44.Google Scholar

14 Prologue to Colley Cibber, Love in a Riddle: A Pastoral (London, 1729).Google Scholar

15 Prolegomena in ballad opera typically discussed the reasons for, and problems with, a specific production, and argued for the presentation's moral instruction. Spoken introductions occasionally flagged how a production reflected native characteristics, as in Theophilus Cibber, Patie and Peggy, or The Fair Foundling (London, 1730), and Joseph Mitchell, The Highland Fair, or The Union of the Clans (London, 1731).Google Scholar

16 Thomas Cooke, The Triumphs of Love and Honour: A Play … to Which are Added Considerations on the Stage (London, 1731), 65. With this passage Cooke outlined the criteria for choosing airs not only in ballad operas but also in ‘grander sort of Operas’ that he hoped would replace the ‘Rubbish as has followed the Beggar's Opera’.Google Scholar

17 Enquiry into the conditions and dynamics of stardom has spawned the sub-discipline of star studies in cinema and theatre research. Stardom, according to scholarly usage of this term, requires a mass market, mass communications, centralized production generating surplus revenue, a division of labour within the theatre, the ascendance of mass over local culture and the de-institutionalization of opinion-makers. Francesco Alberoni, ‘The Powerless Elite: Theory and Sociological Research on the Phenomena of Stars’, Sociology of Mass Communications, ed. Denis McQuail (London, 1972), 75–98. See also Barry King, ‘Articulating Stardom’, Screen, 26/5 (1985), 27–50; ‘Stardom as an Occupation’, The Hollywood Film Industry, ed. Paul Kerr (London, 1986), 154–84; and ‘The Star and the Commodity: Notes towards a Performance Theory of Stardom’, Cultural Studies, 1/2 (1987), 145–61. For a summary of approaches and findings in star scholarship, see Jeremy G. Butler, ‘The Star System and Hollywood’, The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, ed. John Hill et al. (Oxford, 1998), 342–53, and Richard Dyer, Stars (London, 1998). Modern studies on period London stage celebrities shed light on how players' personalities, particularly their gender, are constructed within the plays, reports and biographies featuring them. Although illuminating, these writings consider neither the process of star production nor the exchange between the star persona and the performed work. See Straub, Kristina, Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology (Princeton, 1992), and Cheryl Wanko, Roles of Authority: Thespian Biography and Celebrity in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Lubbock, 2003). See also Judith Milhous, ‘Vestris-Mania and the Construction of Celebrity: Auguste Vestris in London, 1780–81‘, Harvard Library Bulletin, new ser., 54 (1994–5), 30–64.Google Scholar

18 ‘Her first Appearance was in … a Song proper to the Circumstances of the Scene … which she performed with extraordinary Applause. But after this, like a Bullet in the Air, there was no distinguishing the Track, till it came to its utmost Execution.’ William R. Chetwood, A General History of the Stage (London, 1749), 127. Edmond Gagey (Ballad Opera, 163) calls Kitty Clive the ‘high priestess’ of ballad opera.Google Scholar

19 The mainpiece started in the late afternoon, the afterpiece in the early evening. The afterpiece, while appearing occasionally before 1700, became a fixture of the London stage after competition between theatres was re-established in 1714. Kevin Pry, ‘Theatrical Competition and the Rise of the Afterpiece Tradition, 1700–24’, Theatre Notebook, 36 (1982), 21–7, and Denise Elliott Shane, ‘John Rich and the Reopening of Lincoln's Inn Fields’, Theatre Notebook, 42 (1988), 23–31. With his pantomime performances, John Rich became a key innovator in such entertainments during the early 1720s. Leo Hughes, ‘Afterpieces: Or, That's Entertainment’, The Stage and the Page: London's ‘Whole Show’ in the Eighteenth-Century Theatre, ed. George Winchester Stone (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981), 55–70.Google Scholar

20 Joseph Garncarz considers this essential to star construction: ‘Zum Star kann eine einzelne Person werden, die sich derart markant von anderen unterscheidet, dass sie in ihrer Einzigartigkeit auffällt’ ('That person may become a star whose difference from others renders their uniqueness noticeable'). Joseph Garncarz, ‘Die Schauspielerin wird Star: Ingrid Bergman – eine öffentliche Kunstfigur’, Die Schauspielerin: Zur Kulturgeschichte der weiblichen Bühnenkunst, ed. Renate Möhrmann (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), 321–44 (p. 321). In the same article, Garncarz emphasizes that ‘difference’ must not transgress boundaries of social acceptability.Google Scholar

21 This stage tradition is the focus of Peter Holland, The Ornament of Action: Text and Performance in Restoration Comedy (Cambridge, 1979). Holland claims that the line or ‘cast’ was an essential element in the formation of comic stereotypes on the London stage, and transmits Restoration dramatists' commentary about their strategy when writing in this vein. Holland maintains that ‘the rule must be to start with the actor and consider the development of the line as an historical process in relation to that actor. The actor precedes the role.‘ On the co-dependence between the emerging star system in post-Restoration London theatre and the tradition of line, see Stern, Tiffany, The Rehearsal from Shakespeare to Sheridan (Oxford, 2000), 15, 149–52, 211–15.Google Scholar

22 Advising her protégée in 1769, Clive described how she used onstage delivery to override authorial intent and project her personality: ‘Let it [the comedy] be never so bad, I have often done so myself therefore I know it is to be done[:] turn it & wind it & play it in a different manner to his intention and as hundred to one but you succeed.’ Catherine Clive, ‘Collection of Letters to Jane Pope’, Washington, DC, Folger Shakespeare Library, W.b.73. Period commentators – John Hill, Samuel Foote and Thomas Davies, among others – deplored this practice, but acknowledged the popularity she thereby obtained.Google Scholar

23 Watts was the first publisher to attribute this air to Handel. In the second volume of The Musical Miscellany (1729), the bookseller issued the song as ‘The Faithful Maid. Set by Mr. Handel. Twas when the Seas were roaring’. William C. Smith, Handel: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Early Editions (2nd edn, Oxford, 1970), 202.Google Scholar

24 Raftor was Clive's maiden name. As ‘Susan’, Clive performed Handel's tune on 10, 12 and 22 April, on 1 and 3 May 1729, and again on 15 March 1731. As ‘Kitty’ she appeared ‘with the usual song’ five times that season from 11 August 1731, and ten more times until 1739.Google Scholar

25 Before her appearances in The London Merchant, Clive performed ‘the Merigghi Song’ on 26 and 27 April and on 6 and 19 May 1731 (and perhaps on 22 April 1731, when she sang in ‘Italian and English'). The London Stage lists a performance of The London Merchant thus: ‘Music: in Mainpiece: Signor Merigghi's Favourite Song in Porus by Miss Raftor’ on 27 July 1731. See under this date in The London Stage, 1660–1800: A Calendar of Plays, Part 3: 1729–1747, ed. Arthur H. Scouten (Carbondale, IL, 1961). The Merchant was advertised with ‘singing by Miss Raftor’ on 25 and 30 June, 6 and 20 July and 3, 11, 16 and 20 August 1731. Bills with the same announcement appeared on 16 October, 11 November and 27 December 1731, and on 17 and 29 May, 21 August and 26 October 1732.Google Scholar

26 The comment was printed directly under the dramatis personae in Robert Drury, The Devil of a Duke, or Trapolin's Vagaries (London, 1732).Google Scholar

27 Songs in the Farce call'd the Mock Doctor … to which is added ye Aires for … The Devil of a Duke (London, [1732]). Details on the Handel air are listed in Table 1.Google Scholar

28 Hume, Robert D., Henry Fielding and the London Theatre 1728–1737 (Oxford, 1988), 151.Google Scholar

29 ‘Miss Raftor having acquitted herself so much to the Satisfaction of the Town … [received] ten Guineas extraordinary and a Promise of Advance of Salary, next Winter; and … took the Play of the Miser for her Benefit in the height of its Success, tho’ it had not been usual to give a Performer a new Play for their Benefit in its first Run.’ Theophilus Cibber, A Letter from Theophilus Cibber, Comedian, to John Highmore, Esq. (London, [1733]). See also Matthew J. Kinservik, ‘Benefit Play Selection at Drury Lane 1729–1769: The Cases of Mrs Cibber, Mrs Clive, and Mrs Pritchard’, Theatre Notebook, 50/1 (1996), 15–28 (p. 21).Google Scholar

30 Hume, Henry Fielding and the London Theatre, 155. Attacks on Handel, which appeared in the Craftsman, are reprinted in Otto E. Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography (London, 1955), 308–13.Google Scholar

31 For principal actresses such as Clive, benefits were a ‘time for experimentation with and expansion of one's repertory of roles’, rather than a means of simply attracting audiences. Kinservik, ‘Benefit Play Selection at Drury Lane’, 20.Google Scholar

32 The librettist Samuel Humphreys dedicated the text to Queen Caroline, and Handel used two anthems from her coronation in the oratorio. Ruth Smith, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge, 1995), 204. The probable plot of Fielding's Deborah is sketched in Edgar V. Roberts, ‘Henry Fielding's Lost Play Deborah, or A Wife for You All (1733)‘, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 66 (1962), 567–88.Google Scholar

33 Battestin, Martin C., Henry Fielding: A Life (London, 1989), 164–5.Google Scholar

34 From 1730 to 1733, the toll of death and injuries among principal players was inordinate: Anne Oldfield (died 23 October 1730); Charles Williams (died around 1 February 1731); Henry Norris or ‘Jubilee Dicky’ (died 10 February 1731); Mrs Porter (maimed for life, reported in the Daily Journal 28 September 1731); Robert Wilks (died 27 September 1732); Jenny Cibber (died 25 January 1733); and Barton Booth Barton (died 10 May 1733). Losses to the theatre were summarized in ‘On the Death of Mr. Wilks’, Daily Journal (30 September 1732), cited in Patrick J. Crean, ‘The Life and Times of Kitty Clive’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1933), 100–2.Google Scholar

35 The destabilization of theatre management arose after Richard Steele's death in 1729 from the devolution of the patent from the legal triumvirs Colley Cibber, Barton Booth and Robert Wilks to the gentleman amateur actor John Highmore. Hume supplies the most reliable modern account of this episode, which encompasses a complex web of patent sales, legal battles, press reports and government orders. Hume, Henry Fielding and the London Theatre, 155–65.Google Scholar

36 The history of the Opera of Operas is confusing. First, the regular players at the Haymarket Theatre (i.e. not the rebel troupe) premièred Lampe's three-act burlesque in May 1733 with moderate success (11 performances in four weeks). Once installed at the Haymarket the following season, Cibber commissioned an afterpiece version from Arne, and Drury Lane ran Lampe's three-act work in November. The initial success of the May 1733 run may have been helped by the early closure that season of Drury Lane. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘J. F. Lampe and English Opera at the Little Haymarket in 1732–3‘, Music and Letters, 88 (1997), 502–31. In the past, scholars had supposed that Arne composed the first three-act version of The Opera of Operas, which he then reduced to one act, and that Drury Lane had commissioned Lampe to compose a new three-action production.Google Scholar

37 The revised Author's Farce of 1734 was not published until 1750. The epilogue appeared in Henry Fielding, The Intriguing Chambermaid: A Comedy … Taken from the French of Regnard (London, 1734). When altering The Author's Farce for Clive in 1734, Fielding expanded her role to showcase her singing: ‘In the first version, Harriet [sic] had been a colourless sentimentally-conceived romantic heroine … in the revision, by contrast, she had the same scenes as before, but also had prominent parts in Act 2, scenes, ix, x and xi … sang six solos and participated in five duets, a greater task than … Fielding had [originally] assigned to two actresses.’ Roberts, ‘The Songs and Tunes in Henry Fielding's Ballad Operas’, 31. Roberts also stresses that ‘Clive was in a class by herself as a singing actress and as an influence on Fielding's ballad operas’.Google Scholar

38 Fielding's claim (accepted by his early biographers) that the Italian opera in London imperilled the success of rival entertainments is debunked in Robert D. Hume, ‘Handel and Opera Management in London in the 1730s’, Music and Letters, 67 (1986), 347–62.Google Scholar

39 Fielding, ‘Epistle to Mrs. Clive’, The Intriguing Chambermaid, [2].Google Scholar

40 The bills and publications of both farces made clear that they were conceived as ‘Lucy’ sequels. The first, written in 1737 but not performed until 1742, carried the title of the source play: Henry Fielding, Miss Lucy in Town: A Sequel to the Virgin Unmask'd. A Farce with Songs (London, 1742). Bills repeated this formulation. Garrick's comedy included a note under the dramatis personae, ‘The part of Miss Lucy is called A Sequel to the Virgin unmasked.’ David Garrick, Lethe, or Esop in the Shades (London, 1745). Into the first Lethe production Clive interpolated a feminized version ('Life of a Belle') of her hit song ‘Life of Beau'. The scene was advertised as ‘being a Sequel to The Virgin Unmask'd’. See under 15 April 1740 and 27 November 1741 in The London Stage, 1660–1800, Part 3, ed. Scouten. The added song would not have been seen as out of place because it was a core component of Clive's line at the time, having been imported from her in propria persona role in The Coffee House (1738).Google Scholar

41 Henry Fielding, An Old Man Taught Wisdom, or The Virgin Unmask'd: A Farce (London, 1735), 28.Google Scholar

42 The ramifications of the in propria persona role for an actor have not yet been adequately explored; in discussions of works based on this device, the player's personality is rarely mentioned. See, for example, Dane Farnsworth Smith and M. L. Lawhon, ‘Portraits of the Actor’, Plays about the Theatre in England, 1737–1800, or The Self-Conscious Stage from Foote to Sheridan (Lewisburg, PA, 1979), 132–57.Google Scholar

43 She introduced the air into The Man of Taste (13 May 1738); The Miser (15 September 1739); Lethe (as ‘The Life of a Belle’, 15 April 1740); and The City Wives' Confederacy (‘The Life of a Belle’, 10 December 1744). The London Stage records two performances of ‘The Life of a Beau’ as an interlude song on 14 and 29 May 1740. The multiple period editions almost always included her name in the title (‘sung by Mrs. Clive‘). The British Library alone owns six singlesheet copies of Carey's song, not all of which are listed in RISM. The song was twice issued with an engraved picture of a fop, in The Agreeable Amusement, a Collection of Ancient & Modern Songs (London, [1743–4]), 46–7, and Bickham's Musical Entertainer (London, [1738]), ii, 50.Google Scholar

44 In Miller's Man of Taste, Clive played Maria, whose dotage on Farinelli reveals her social pretensions: ‘Oh Ravishing [Farinelli]! Transporting! Killing … Dying is too little. He does more than kill one … ‘. James Miller, The Man of Taste: A Comedy (London, 1735), 60. In The Universal Passion, her epilogue targeted ‘squeaking Italians’ and their followers: ‘I wanted to be wanton, pert and witty, / Sneer at the Beaux, and Joke upon the City … / Then with this Standard boldly thus advance, / And rout the squeaking, tripping Troops of Italy and France … ‘. James Miller, The Universal Passion: A Comedy (London, 1737).Google Scholar

45 Hunter has established that Handel's operas and oratorios drew from the same audiences. He quotes Margaret Hunt's assertion that oratorio's aesthetic system ‘symbolized [for its audiences] both their membership in a highly select group and their transcendent claim to social and political leadership’. Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley and London, 1996), 208; cited in David Hunter, ‘Patronizing Handel, Inventing Audiences’, Early Music, 28 (2000), 33–49 (p. 40).Google Scholar

46 Carey applied ‘sometime in 1734’ to have The Dragon of Wantley produced at Drury Lane, where productions of his works had until that time all been written for his celebrated pupil. See the preface to Henry Carey, The Dragon of Wantley (London, 1738). The Dragon of Wantley, originally two acts only, was initially advertised as ‘The Dragon of Wantley (by a Company of Singers just imported). A new Musical Burlesque of two Acts in a Grand Oratorio’ in the Daily Advertiser, 16 May 1737. Norman Gillespie notes that almost half of the original music in The Dragon of Wantley was devoted to mock-Handel choruses, ‘with their fugal expositions and repetitions of text’. This version failed, and the following summer Carey and John F. Lampe expanded the work into a three-act opera burlesque, highlighting their jokes on dramma per musica by ending Acts 2 and 3 with a duet and trio respectively, and adding solo arias. Norman Gillespie, ‘The Life and Works of Henry Carey, 1687–1743‘ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1982), 132–5.Google Scholar

47 The duet was added to the initial one-act afterpiece (issued as the second edition of the ballad farce), and retained in all subsequent period editions. See Coffey, Charles, The Devil to Pay, or the Wives Metamorphos'd: An Opera (2nd edn, London, 1731), 25–6.Google Scholar

48 Burrows, Handel, 201.Google Scholar

49 The Club published its aims after 1737: in a ‘manifesto’ by Mary Cowper, ‘On the Revival of Shakespear's Plays by the Ladies’ in 1738; in Elizabeth Boyd's Don Sancho, or the Students of Whim (1739); in Thomas Cooke's An Epistle to the Right Honourable the Countess of Shaftesbury (1755); and in Eliza Haywood's writings in The Female Spectator (1755). The Club adumbrated motifs later used by Garrick in his construction of Shakespeare as an icon of the British literary heritage. See Dobson, Michael, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship 1660–1769 (Oxford, 1992), 146–58.Google Scholar

50 Dobson identifies for the first time the club members listed above, pointing out that Thomas Cooke, in his Epistle (1755), named Susanna Ashley-Cooper the Club leader. Dobson also notes that the author of the first study on the Club omitted to investigate the names and contributions of the Club members. Ibid., 148, and Emmett L. Avery, ‘The Shakespeare Ladies Club’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 9/1 (1958), 153–8.Google Scholar

51 See above, note 44.Google Scholar

52 Handel, George F., ‘Sung by Mrs. Clive in the Comedy call'd The Universal Passion. Set by Mr. Handel’, The British Orpheus: A Collection of Favourite English Songs (London, [1741–3]), i, 2. The air, ‘I like the am'rous youth that's free’, was also issued as a song sheet, seemingly from the same plate as the one used in the collection.Google Scholar

53 Miller borrowed from Molière (La Princesse d'Elide) and inserted six airs for Clive, resulting in a mix which was ‘15% from Molière, 45% from Shakespeare, and 40% from Miller’. Powell Stewart, ‘An Eighteenth-Century Adaptation of Shakespeare’, Texas University Studies in English, 12 (1932), 98–117, cited in Paula O'Brien, ‘The Life and Works of James Miller, 1704–1744’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1979), 41. Irena Cholij claims that Miller's songs in Liberia ‘reveal not just a merry but indeed spiteful nature’, an assessment that fits Clive's renowned barbed wit. Irena Cholij, ‘Music in Eighteenth-Century London Shakespeare Productions’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1996), 61. O'Brien asserts that Miller voiced Patriot rebukes of the Walpole administration through the added character of Joculo (based on the jester Maron from La Princesse d'Elide). O'Brien, ‘The Life and Works of James Miller’, 221. This would accord with the political sympathies later espoused by many Club members. Following the Shaftesburys' leanings, the Ladies Club supported the Patriot call from 1739 for Walpole to declare war against Spain and defend British shipping. Dobson, The Making of the National Poet, 146–61.Google Scholar

54 Miller stressed that despite ‘strong Opposition industriously fomented by some who were strenuous Enemies … the unprejudiced Part of the Audience were so well pleased … that the Play was carried on with great Success’. Preface to James Miller, Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose (London, 1741). The comedy ran to ten performances.Google Scholar

55 The Pigeon-Pye, or A King's Coronation (London, 1738). The Pigeon-Pye contains roughly 60 musical references to many composers active in London, including Giovanni Battista Pescetti, Maurice Greene and Giovanni Bononcini.Google Scholar

56 Miller had earned the enmity of his former Oxford colleagues by lampooning them in his farce The Humours of Oxford (1729). This was an Oldfield vehicle, with Clive (then Miss Raftor) in her first spoken role. She played ‘Miss Kitty, the Laundress’, which changed to ‘Jenny, the Laundress’ in The Pigeon-Pye. O'Brien shows that the plot was probably based on a real incident during Miller's residency at Wadham College, Oxford. O'Brien, ‘The Life and Works of James Miller’, 18–23.Google Scholar

57 The Pigeon-Pye, or A King's Coronation, 35–7.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., 49–50.Google Scholar

59 James Miller, An Hospital for Fools: A Dramatic Fable (London, 1739), 14–15. The Dead March in Saul, composed for an ensemble of trombones, was considered a novelty at the time. Donald Burrows, ‘Handel, the Dead March and a Newly Identified Trombone Movement’, Early Music, 18 (1990), 408–16.Google Scholar

60 Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography, 452. The benefit was for Master Ferg, an apprentice at Drury Lane, whose father (a painter) had died, leaving the family bereft.Google Scholar

61 In an ink of 1740, Handel added Clive's name to the principal autograph score (London, British Library, R.M.20.d.5) next to the aria 38 ('Each action will derive'), originally composed for the tenor John Beard. The soprano version of this aria (Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky, Musiksammlung, MS 190), which Handel prepared that same year, may have been the one she performed. She may also have sung the air no. 10 ('Mirth admit of thy crew') and no. 16 ('If I give the honour due / Let me wander') found in British Library R.M.20.d.5. James S. Hall and Martin V. Hall, L'allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato: Kritischer Bericht, Hallische Händel-Ausgabe Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ser. 1 (Kassel, 1969), xvi, 61, 72–3. L'allegro first ran during a bitter winter (27 February, 6, 10 and 14 March, 23 April 1740), and at least two of Handel's soloists fell ill. Burrows, Handel, 209–10.Google Scholar

62 Berta Joncus, ‘“His Spirit is in Action Seen”: Milton, Mrs Clive, and the Simulacra of the Pastoral in Comus’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 2 (2005), 15–26. As Don-John Dugas points out, the work's success was due to its happy combination of current reverence for Milton with vogues in popular theatre. Dugas asserts that the production made Miltonic texts more accessible to audiences, and helped establish Milton's reputation for writing drama as well as poetry. Don-John Dugas, ‘“Such Heav'n-taught Numbers should be more than Read”: Comus and Milton's Reputation in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England’, Milton Studies, 34 (1997), 137–57.Google Scholar

63 ‘But Mrs. Oldfield's Voice, Figure and Manner of Playing soon made her shine out, even here, the brightest Star.’ [William Egerton], Faithful Memoirs … of the Justly Celebrated and Most Eminent Actress of her Time, Mrs Anne Oldfield (London, 1731), 20. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest example of using the word ‘star’ to signify a celebrity dates from 1824; theatrical biographers from the 1720s, however, used the term ‘brightest Star’ to describe principal players.Google Scholar

64 During the course of the 1730s, Clive took possession of her predecessor's key roles: Elvira in The Spanish Fryar, 1733; Estifania in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, 1733; Aurelia in The Twin Rivals, 1734; and Biddy in The Tender Husband, 1736 – to name but a few. The trend continued until 1741, by which time Clive had co-opted most of Oldfield's celebrated comic roles: Mrs Brittle in The Amorous Widow, 1736; Laetitia in The Old Batchelor, 1737; Narcissa in Love's Last Shift, 1738; Mrs Lovett in Man of Mode, 1738; Lady Lurewell in The Constant Couple, 1741; Lady Townley in The Provok'd Husband, 1740; and Millamant in The Way of the World, 1740. Compare this list with Oldfield's repertory (Appendix 2) in Joanne Lafler, The Celebrated Mrs Oldfield: The Life and Art of an Actress (Carbondale, IL, 1989). A 1734 pamphlet claimed Clive superior to her predecessor: ‘Scorning to copy meanly, she's out-done, / Where Oldfield late in greatest splendor shone.’ The Theatre turned upside down, or The Mutineers: A Dialogue: Occasioned by a Pamphlet, called The Theatric Squabble (London, 1733), 7–8. A later pamphlet protested against the Clive-as-Oldfield campaign, claiming that Clive's talent in ‘low’ roles, and her assertive offstage character, were alien to Oldfield: ‘Tell me, what Figure the Cobler's Wife [Nell in The Devil to Pay] would make in an Indiana … or any other of those great Parts, in which an Oldfield once shined? … Did she [Oldfield] ever betray the least Vanity?‘ Theatrical Correspondence in Death: An Epistle from Mrs Oldfield, in the Shades, to Mrs Br–ceg–dle (London, 1743), 3–4.Google Scholar

65 Jonathan Richardson, Oldfield's portraitist, probably painted the actress around 1725, when she enjoyed great popularity. Between 1710 and 1730 Richardson produced the majority of his portraits of London's high society. The c.1760 mezzotint after his Oldfield portrait stemmed perhaps from plates produced during her lifetime. Richardson's biographer notes that ‘often such portraits were engraved soon after they were painted’. Carol Gibson-Wood, Jonathan Richardson: Art Theorist of the English Enlightenment (New Haven and London, 2000), 67–8.Google Scholar

66 In the original music by John Eccles, the singer was noted as Mrs Hodgson, not Mrs Bracegirdle. The stage directions are clearly for the maid to sing. Stoddard Lincoln, ‘Eccles and Congreve: Music and Drama on the Restoration Stage’, Theatre Notebook, 18 (1963), 7–18 (pp. 11–12). Deutsch alleged that Eccles wrote this song for Bracegirdle, who played Millamant in the comedy's initial run; this error arose perhaps because Eccles was closely associated with that actress. Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography, 470.Google Scholar

67 ‘Miss Raftor had a facetious Turn of Humour, and infinite Spirits.’ Chetwood, A General History of the Stage, 127. Describing her acting technique, John Hill praised above all her ‘volubility of tongue’ which, when combined with physical gesture, eye movements and declamatory nuances, generated a variety of extra-authorial meanings. John Hill, The Actor: A Treatise … with Theatrical Anecdotes (London, 1750), 150, 269. From 1750, burlesque performances, particularly the ‘taking off’ or mimicry of prime donne, became a fixture of her line.Google Scholar

68 St Vincent Troubridge, The Benefit System in the British Theatre (London, 1967), 112. Benefits contained a host of subtexts for audiences. The more important the player, the earlier the benefit – the benefit season ran from February to May – and bitter quarrels therefore broke out among principal players over the order of the benefits. The dramatic character, those who lent their services (playwrights, fellow actors, epilogue writers) and the ‘Persons of Quality’ attending, to whom the players often sold tickets personally, collectively helped represent the actor's persona to the wider public. Troubridge's anecdotal survey of the benefit is the only published monograph on this subject. In his research on Clive's selection of benefit plays, Kinservik notes that for her mainpiece Clive usually chose current repertory items, rather than a revival. The main motivation for a principal actress to revive a play was ‘to highlight a performer's particular strengths’. Kinservik, ‘Benefit Play Selection at Drury Lane’, 22.Google Scholar

69 ‘Last New Song by Mrs. Clive, set to Music by Handel’ was an entr'acte performance on 20 March 1740.Google Scholar

70 Richard Leppert, ‘Music, Sexism and Female Domesticity’, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1988), 31–2.Google Scholar

71 Geoffrey Ashton, Pictures in the Garrick Club: A Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings, Watercolours and Sculpture (London, 1997).Google Scholar

72 The cast for Congreve's masque was John Beard, Thomas Lowe, Mrs Cecilia Arne, Mrs Clive and her protégée, Miss Edwards. One of the highlights of Arne's masque was Pallas's aria ‘Hark, the glorious voice of war’ with trumpet accompaniment. Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, 196–7.Google Scholar

73 Burrows, Handel, 261, 68. As is well known, in his initial autograph score composed from 29 September to 9 October 1741 Handel uncharacteristically set Samson (like Messiah) for four solo voices (SATB). Burrows points out that this ‘matches no known cast’ Handel worked with and claims therefore that the composer was ‘unclear’ about whom he would engage for the première. Elsewhere, however, Burrows cautions that in Samson the ‘voices and characters of particular London singers’ might have influenced Handel's musical thinking, citing John Beard as a likely candidate. Dean believes that John Beard may have inspired Handel's ‘revolutionary notion of a tenor Samson’. Donald Burrows, Handel: Messiah, Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge, 1991), 13, and Winton Dean, Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (London, New York and Toronto, 1959), 333. Beard was Clive's most frequent singing partner at Drury Lane after 1734.Google Scholar

74 Catherine Clive, The Case of Mrs Clive (London, 1744; facs. repr. Los Angeles, 1973), 11.Google Scholar

75 Charles Jennens, in a letter of 21 February 1743, expressed his irritation with Handel's decision to lay aside Messiah and mount only Samson during the 1743 oratorio season. This letter is reprinted in Burrows, Handel: Messiah, 24–5.Google Scholar

76 Handel revised his initial autograph score largely to provide numbers for the cast members added to the original SATB setting (two more sopranos, Miss Edwards, Christina Avolio; the second tenor, Thomas Lowe). Dean, Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques, 346. Handel also filled out the accompaniments to arias and choruses and enlarged the finale after returning from Dublin. No major revisions to Dalila's music appear in the conducting scores of Samson, although the duet section of ‘My faith and truth’ may have been inserted earlier than Dean has assumed. Hans Dieter Clausen, Handels Direktionspartituren ('Handexemplare') (Hamburg, 1972), 213. Changes to Dalila's music were as follows: (1) ‘Ye men of Gaza’, probably composed for Dalila, was given to Miss Edwards in 1742; (2) the order of the air ‘With plaintive notes’ and the recitative ‘Alas! the event was worse than I foresaw’ was reversed (originally the recitative preceded the aria), the aria being reassigned from Dalila to her Attendant; (3) the short duet ‘My faith and truth’ was inserted during the 1742 revision; and (4) the short B section and da capo in the Samson/Dalila duet finale ('Traitor to love') was deleted. Dean, Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques, 346–64, Appendix H, and Mark Stahura, ‘The Publishing Copy Text of Handel's Samson’, Journal of Musicology, 4 (1985–6), 207–16.Google Scholar

77 Milton, Samson Agonistes, ed. Frank Templeton Prince (Oxford, 1957), 50–9. Mary Ann Radzinowicz notes that ‘the rhetorical debate in which they engage concludes with the intellectual integration of the hero’. She traces how, through the complex Samson–Dalila exchange, Milton laid out his notions on marriage and on freedom won by accepting responsibility. Mary A. Radzinowicz, Towards Samson Agonistes: The Growth of Milton's Mind (Princeton, 1978), 36–50.Google Scholar

78 In the autumn of 1738, the story circulated of Spanish officials severing the ear of one Captain Jenkins, who was caught trespassing into Spanish trade routes. This inflamed the hostility engendered by earlier claims that English sailors had suffered ‘depredations’ by Spanish costas guardas while the English government had sat idly by. In January 1739, Walpole's trade negotiations with Spain broke down, and war was declared shortly thereafter. An extensive bibliography on the so-called War of Jenkins' Ear is provided in Smith, Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought, 394, note 6.Google Scholar

79 Thomas McGeary quotes the fops' duet (which Miss Kitty rebuts with ‘Life of a beau') as an example of a stage scene paralleling earlier Patriot comparisons in the press between Farinelli's detention in Spain and Spanish abuse of British sailors and their trading rights in the Americas. Thomas McGeary, ‘Farinelli in Madrid: Opera, Politics and the War of Jenkins’ Ear’, Musical Quarterly, 82 (1998), 383–421 (pp. 402–3).Google Scholar

80 McGeary describes how this play projected ‘the power of native English song … [to] redeem British honour’. Ibid., 406–7. For Clive's comment, see Phillips, Edward, Britons Strike Home, or The Sailor's Rehearsal (London, 1739), 6.Google Scholar

81 After the declaration of war on Spain, on 27 October 1739 the king was greeted at Covent Garden with ‘Britons strike home’ to rousing applause. Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography, 487, and William Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual and Ideology (Oxford, 1992), 93–4. In Stratford, Essex, townspeople sang Purcell's song while burning an effigy of the Spanish admiral in a bonfire some time during March 1740. Kathleen Wilson, ‘Empire, Trade and Popular Politics in Mid-Hanoverian Britain: The Case of Admiral Vernon’, Past and Present, 121 (1988), 74–109 (p. 81). See also McGeary, ‘Farinelli in Madrid’, 406–7.Google Scholar

82 See under these dates in The London Stage, 1660–1800, Part 3, ed. Scouten.Google Scholar

83 Arne set Euphrosyne's airs as follows: ‘By dimpl'd brook’ (gavotte); ‘Fame's an eccho’ (siciliano); ‘Come, come bid adieu to fear’ (gavotte); ‘Ye fawns and ye dryads’ (minuet). Comus: [a Masque by] Milton … [with Music by Thomas] Arne, ed. Julian Herbage, Musica Britannica, 3 (London, 1951).Google Scholar

84 Radzinowicz characterizes Dalila as ‘masterful, relativistic [and] sensually aggressive’. Radzinowicz, Towards Samson Agonistes, 47–8. Although the air was originally intended for Dalila, Handel eventually assigned it to the Attendant; see Dean, Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques, 348, and Clausen, Handels Direktionspartituren, 213.Google Scholar

85 The characters of the bourrée and the minuet are described in Meredith Little and Natalie Jenne, Dance and the Music of J. S. Bach (Bloomington, 1991), 35–42, 62–72.Google Scholar

86 Note that the music of this section was omitted from the first edition of Comus (1740). The direction for the dancers to respond to Euphrosyne's command does not appear in the Musica Britannica edition of Comus.Google Scholar

87 John Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (London, 1760; facs. repr. Amsterdam, 1964), 134. There is some disagreement over the truth of Mainwaring's statement. Lack of evidence about income Handel must have received during the 1730s, particularly for the years 1739–43, makes a precise grasp of his financial position impossible. Extant records, however, do show Handel's resources dwindling in 1728–43, and Ellen T. Harris dates his most active period of investment from 1743. Ellen T. Harris, ‘Handel the Investor’, Music and Letters, 85 (2004), 521–75 (p. 531). The éclat of the oratorio's success supports Mainwaring's interpretation. It received six performances from 18 February until 31 March 1743 and was hailed as ‘the finest piece of music [Handel] ever composed’. News of Samson's success reached Dublin, and Walsh published the oratorio ‘Songs’ before the first run had ended. Ironically, modern underestimation of Clive's talents has been nourished by Horace Walpole's oft-repeated quip about Handel employing ‘goddesses from farces’ in Samson. She and Walpole became intimate friends after 1755. For contemporary commentary on Samson's reception, see Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography, 560–3.Google Scholar

88 Fol. 39v of London, British Library, R.M.20.d.5 contains the instruction ‘Org ad libit il soggeto della fuga seguente’, and under the staves which follow is written ‘Segue straight mine Eye Mrs. Clive & accomp. Da capo’. Hall and Hall, L'allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato: Kritischer Bericht, 10. ‘Straight Mine Eye’ (an additional song) was first introduced at Dublin performances in December 1741.Google Scholar

89 For his second subscription that season, Handel revised L'allegro ed il penseroso for one performance on 18 March 1743, omitting the third section ('Il moderato'). Clive sang airs no. 10 ('Mirth admit me of thy crew'), no. 16 ('If I give thee honour due / Let me wander') and no. 17 ('Straight mine eye'). See ibid., 61–2.Google Scholar

90 Larsen, in his painstaking reconstruction of the different Messiah versions (1741–60), stresses that Clive sang only the arioso. Jens P. Larsen, Handel's Messiah: Origins, Composition, Sources (London, 1957), 194, 235. Despite the slimness of her part, she was advertised in the bills for 23 March 1743, together with Signora Avolio (or Miss Edwards) and The Boy. Deutsch, Handel: A Documentary Biography, 565.Google Scholar

91 Unlike Burrows, Larsen believes Francesina sang it once more in 1745. Compare Burrows, Handel: Messiah, 31 and Larsen, Handel's Messiah, 219.Google Scholar

92 The manuscripts and editions containing the arioso are listed in Appendix A, ‘Table of Manuscript Sources and their Contents’ and ‘Table of Contents of the Principal Editions from 1749 to 1854‘ in John Tobin, Handel's Messiah: A Critical Account of the Manuscript Sources and Printed Editions (London, 1969), 168–70. Many of these sources contain both versions of this section in Messiah.Google Scholar