Henry Fielding's Author's Farce, performed forty-one times in the spring and summer of 1730, was the hit of London's theatrical season. In this, his third play, Fielding turned away from the stylized realism of his Love in Several Masques (1728) and The Temple Beau (1730). In the earlier plays, and indeed throughout his career, he perceived and judged social behavior by comparing people who play roles in daily life to actors who assume roles on stage; in particular, he scrutinized the theatrical rituals and fashionable deceit of courting couples. By adopting the techniques of burlesque in The Author's Farce, he exposes simultaneously the false roles of courtship in daily life and the way that the theatre itself portrays such love-making. Understanding the technique by which Fielding criticizes courtship clearly reveals his larger purpose — to criticize the deceptive behavior and mercenary values, implicit in the stage's conventions, which the theatre fosters and endorses in real life.