The Temple Beau - Critical Response

Critical Response

The Temple Beau was one of the best received new plays at Goodman's Fields, with only the Fashionable Lady as a rival. Its initial run lasted for an equal amount of time during April 1730. The Daily Journal reported that the play was well received. On the author's benefit nights, Fielding was able to raise about 100 pounds. There are no direct contemporary reviews on The Temple Beau that have survived. A few plays may have been influenced by The Temple Beau, including Theophilus Cibber's The Lovers (1730) or Benjamin Hoadly's The Suspicious Husband (1747). The play was mostly ignored until John Genest, in Some Account of the English Stage, from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830 (1832), declared the play as better than Fielding's other plays with little explanation as to why. In 1911, Austin Dobson wrote, "The Temple Beau certainly shows an advance upon its predecessor; but it is an advance in the same direction, imitation of Congreve." Leslie Stephen backs this up by saying that the play is "much in the vein of the first, with less smartness in dialogue".

F. Homes Dudden declared The Temple Beau as "a fairly good comedy of intrigue" and says that "The plot of the comedy, though rather too complicated, is more skilfully constructed than that of Love in Several Masques, and some of the situations are diverting. One of the best things in the piece is the interview between the deluded Sir Harry young Wilding and Pincet". Robert Hume believed that "Fielding had begun to master the mechanics of intrigue comedy. The results are not wonderful, but they show distinctly more technical competence. Fielding still employs more characters than he can comfortably control but at least he involves them in related complications." Albert Rivero believed that "The initial rejection of The Temple Beau, however, convinced Fielding that his future success would depend on his ability to satisfy the town's taste for less conventional entertainments." Harold Pagliaro describes the play by saying, "Though the dramatic structure of The Temple Beau is improved over that of Fielding's first play, it has some obvious weaknesses. The lovers are too nearly perfect to engage us in what is or ought to be their burdensome complication of distress. They are so sure of each other and of themselves that they are unassailable, however threatened by the loss of love, freedom and financial self-sufficiency."