Henry Carey (writer) - Namby Pamby and Anti-Walpolean Satire

Namby Pamby and Anti-Walpolean Satire

His poem, Namby Pamby (1725), satirized Ambrose Philips who was a frequent and famous target of Alexander Pope's wrath. Philips had written a series of odes to "all persons", from Robert Walpole to the mother in the nursery, and the latter provided the occasion for Carey to exaggerate. Philips had employed a 2.5' iambic line, and Carey devastatingly claimed that the half-line matched Philips's halfwitted conception. The poem was so successful that Carey himself began to be known as "Namby Pamby Carey" (while Philips became known as "Namby Pamby"), and the poem even came to be used as children's literature. Furthermore, the term "namby pamby" came into widespread usage to describe any nonsensical frippery. "Sally in Our Alley", one of Carey's songs, was also exceptionally successful, and it has been performed by many singers through to the modern era.

Carey was, after Namby Pamby, a well-known figure among those opposed to Robert Walpole, and the poem had been praised by Alexander Pope (as "Sally in our Alley" had been by Joseph Addison). Carey was an admirer and subscriber to the operas of Handel, but he, like John Gay and Alexander Pope, thought that the operatic stars were absurd. Therefore, he began to satirize opera in 1726 and in that year he produced Faustina, or, the Roman Songstress, a satire of Faustina Bordoni. Faustina was at that time in a hissing fight with Francesca Cuzzoni and actually came to blows the next year during a performance of Handel. In the next year, he wrote Mocking is Catching to satirize Senesino, the Italian castrati opera star.

In 1730, Carey may have been the first to sing "God Save the King" at a Patriot Whig meeting, and there is some reason to attribute the song to him. Also that year, he added music and introduced ballads for his previous play, Hanging and Marriage, and put the play on as The Clown's Stratagem. He used the basic text of the play again, with new music, for Betty, or, The Country Bumpkins in 1732. These two characteristics—a love of opera and frustration at its abuses and a love of patriotism and frustration at Walpole's policies—would show up in all of Carey's professional works.