Rape Upon Rape - Critical Response

Critical Response

The original edition did not experience the same draw as Fielding's Tom Thumb. However, none of the other plays at the Little Theatre were able to compete with its success. The revised edition was not a success and made very little. There are few surviving mentions of the play which include Arthur Murphy's comment in the Gray's-Inn Journall (1754) that scenes can be stolen from Rape upon Rape because no one would notice the similarity since the play was no longer performed. In Murphy's 1762 edition of Fielding's Works, he praises the play. However, he is the only one to talk about the play until the 19th century. John Genest praised it but adds, "the humour is low and not very decent". Lawrence also praised aspects of the play but believed that no one could have liked the play because it was "too gross and too indelicate for the audiences even of that tolerant age". E. P. Whipple, in an 1849 review of Roscoe's biography of Fielding, declared that Murphy would have to be drunk to have actually appreciated the play. During the 20th-century, Dobson found little to praise within the play and Cross followed in suit. F. Homes Dudden characterized the play as "a coarse play, modelled on the lines of the Jonsonian 'comedy of humours'. Its chief interest lies in the portrayal of two characters, both rather heavily exaggerated.