The Historical Register For The Year 1736 - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

The Historical Register for the Year 1736 and Eurydice Hissed (both were published together in 1737) are two of Henry Fielding's satirical dramas. A mixture of several plots, each play extensively satirizes British politicians.

In form, the play is a series of unrelated episodes, given a coherence by a rehearsal framework: An author, Medley, presents his play to the "critic", Sourwit and Lord Dapper, two characteristic figures of London high society. Medley, who can be regarded as Fieldings spokesman, explains: "... my design is to ridicule the vicious and foolish customs of the age, and that in a fair manner, without fear, favour or ill nature, and without scurrility, ill manners, or commonplace. I hope to expose the reigning follies in such a manner that men shall laugh themselves out of them before they feel that they are touched."

The original text involves "a humming deal of satire" and farce, referring exclusively to the year 1736.

Read more about this topic:  The Historical Register For The Year 1736

Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:

    There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
    And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
    And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.
    Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)

    Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.
    Walter Pater (1839–1894)