Henry Fielding's Early Plays - Background

Background

Fielding first produced a play in February 1728. Although his first production, Love in Several Masques, lasted only a few nights, it was the start of his career in theatre. On 16 March 1728, Fielding enrolled at the University of Leyden, but he did not abandon the theatre. His early plays were those of an amateur hobby, but he later returned to London to earn a living. Arthur Murphy, in his 1762 biographical introduction to Fielding's works, believed that Fielding returned to London and treated the theatre as a career because his father stopped an allowance of 200 pounds a year.

However, there is little evidence that Fielding lacked funds, or that such a lack of funds would cause him to leave Leyden to return to writing plays; Fielding eventually returned to Leyden on 22 February 1729. It is not know when or why Fielding left the school, but he produced The Temple Beau on 26 January 1730, which suggests that he returned to London by November 1729. By the time of his return, he had three plays, either still in draft form or complete: Don Quixote in England, The Wedding-Day and The Temple Beau. Of these, only The Temple Beau was accepted for the stage.

When Fielding returned to working with the Royal Theatre, his piece The Lottery became an immediate success and lasted for decades after. Combined with The Modern Husband, Fielding could have received up to 1,000 pounds from the plays' first run. This placed Fielding at the position of being the main contributor of plays to the Royal Theatre. Currently, Fielding is primarily viewed as a novelist, but his plays suggest that he wished to be a playwright and that his career would be in theatre. Although Fielding wrote twenty-six plays, only a handful of them were ever published in critical editions before 1990.