The Grub Street Opera
The Grub-Street Opera is a play by Henry Fielding that originated as an expanded version of his play, The Welsh Opera. It was never put on for an audience and is Fielding's single print-only play. As in The Welsh Opera, the author of the play is identified as Scriblerus Secundus. Secundus also appears in the play and speaks of his role in composing the plays. In the The Grub-Street Opera the main storyline involves two men and their rival pursuit of women.
The play is Fielding's first truly political play and first ballad opera. Unlike The Welsh Opera, the play deals with morality from the beginning. Additionally, it linked to Fielding's previous attacks on the London theatre and inept writers. Fielding also used the virtue of female servants as a point of humor and to discuss morality, while using the effeminacy and dominance by women to mock various characters and discuss the issue of gender roles. Critics viewed The Grub-Street Opera positively, noting it to be a definite improvement on The Welsh Opera.
Read more about The Grub Street Opera: Background, Cast, Plot, Themes, Sources, Response, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words grub, street and/or opera:
“I have tasted but little bread in my life. It has been mere grub and provender for the most part. Of bread that nourished the brain and the heart, scarcely any. There is absolutely none on the tables even of the rich.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street offers itself to man.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“The opera isn’t over till the fat lady sings.”
—Anonymous.
A modern proverb along the lines of “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” This form of words has no precise origin, though both Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (16th ed., 1992)