Plot
In The Welsh Opera, Fielding incorporated his editorial persona, Scriblerus Secundus, as a figure to connect the play with its companion piece, The Tragedy of Tragedies. However, in The Grub-Street Opera Fielding drops all connections with The Tragedy of Tragedies. Scriblerus does introduce the play, as in the original, but he describes the moral purpose that motivates the play instead of being a comical connection with another work. After revealing Fielding's design in the play, Scriblerus leaves the stage.
The play describes the Apshinken family and the pursuits in love of Owen and his butler, Robin. Owen pursues four women and Robin pursues only one. However, Robin is pursuing Sweetissa, whom Owen wishes to have for himself. To separate the two, Owen forges a letter which works until Robin's virtue proves his own devotion to Sweetissa. Although Robin lacks virtue in most regards, such as his stealing from his master, he is able to marry Sweetissa and, at the end of the play, Fielding breaks from his own tradition of comedic marriages by having Owen and Molly marry.
Read more about this topic: The Grub Street Opera
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“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
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