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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In the first half of the eighteenth century, for almost a decade, young Henry Fielding was the most prominent and the most productive playwright in England. Between 1728 and 1737 he staged at least twenty-five plays, six of them full-length comedies, the others short farces, burlesques, and ballad-operas. In 1737 his theatrical career was stopped by the Licensing Act, which was aimed by the Walpole government at Fielding personally. In later years appeared two more five-act comedies which he had written during this early period.
1 “Scott on Fielding” (1820) in Fielding Selections, ed. Leonard Rice-Oxley (Oxford, 1923), pp. 5-9.
2 English Comic Drama, 1700-1750 (Oxford, 1929), pp. 116-117.
3 A Literary History of England, ed. Albert C. Baugh (New York, 1948), p. 889.
4 Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (New York, 1905), i, xiii.
5 All of the material facts of Fielding's career which are mentioned here are based upon Wilbur L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding, 3 vols. (New Haven, 1918), unless another source is indicated.
6 This and other scraps of quotation from the preface to the Miscellanies are from the 2nd ed. (London, 1743).
7 Emmett L. Avery, “Fielding's Universal Gallant,” Research Stud. of the State Coll. of Washington, vi (1938), 46.
8 Much of the technique of The Miser, especially on this point, is Molière's. Changes of technique introduced by Fielding will be considered where they are pertinent.
9 The Works of Henry Fielding, ed. Arthur Murphy (London, 1762), i, 63. Quotations from all other plays are from the first editions of the plays.
10 Ibid., i, 24.
11 The idea of the scene is borrowed from Molière, Le Misanthrope (iii.v). The purpose, the details, and the wit are Fielding's.