Henry Fielding's Early Plays - Structure and Concern

Structure and Concern

In 1728, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera was extremely successful and ran for 62 times during the season, an unprecedented length of time. The play began to change London theatre through the introduction of political themes and experimentation in form. Following this trend, Fielding pushed politics into the forefront of his plays. This provoked criticism from all sides, including from the playwright Colley Cibber. However, The Beggar's Opera is not Fielding's only influence; Fielding is part of the theatrical tradition surrounding him, and, as Harold Pagliaro points out, "Fielding's first play, like all those to follow, is among other things an accommodation to the world of theatre in which he worked."

Fielding was concerned with the audience's reaction to his various scenes. This is internally reflected in the actions of the character Merital in Love in Several Masques in controlling the behavior of Helen and that many of his characters believe that they are either actors or are performing on a stage. Also, this is a primary concern of Fielding's when he crafted his Scriblerian plays.

Reading and how reading defines characters is a focus within many plays and in Fielding's later works. In Love in Several Masques, the character Wisemore focuses on classics but ignores contemporary society. Similarly, the character Wilding, in The Temple Beau, practices law but doesn't read at all. Reading is an outlet to understanding humanity, and Fielding uses his plays to inform an audience how to better understand humanity.

Morality and moral characters was an important concern within Fielding's works, and his first play serves as a representation for Fielding's believes surrounding the relationship between morality and libertine beliefs that is found throughout his work. The plays also introduces most of the character types that Fielding would reuse throughout his plays and novels. However, his use of libertine themes and characters served as a way for those like Pat Rogers to believe that Fielding lacked an orthodox understanding of Christianity; he believes that Fielding was harsh towards hypocrisy but not against other actions. In particular, Rogers claims, "Fielding was generous enough in that sphere of morality, however implacable he might be in his larger political and religious attachment. Provided that soldiers were brave and loyal he did not require their lives to be models of absolute purity." Tiffany Potter follows this idea by claiming, "Eliminating a moral imperative to drama (and to life in general) gives Fielding the liberty to create unconventional characters and to set plays anywhere from ballrooms to brothels without having to defend anything more than his own stance on issues. The necessity of even that defense, however, is usually negated by his libertine belief in privilege.