In the following month the Opposition was busy over the marriage of their chief supporter, the Prince of Wales; and Mr Pasquin duly chronicles the event in his advertisements of the 28th of April, observing that his company "by reason of the Royal Wedding expecting no Company but themselves, are obliged to defer Playing till tomorrow." A few days later, on the 12th of May, Sir Robert Walpole celebrated the royal marriage by a grand evening entertainment given at his house in St James Park; and on the same night 'Pasquin' had the audacity to advertise a special performance, in the following terms (the "country party," it should be understood, was a usual name for Walpole's opponents):--
"For the Benefit of Miss Burgess, who has so zealously espoused the Country Interest.... Miss Burgess hopes all Patriots and Lovers of their Country will appear in her favour and give all encouragement to one who has so early distinguished herself on the side of Liberty." In Pasquin's Election scenes, this lady played the part of Miss Stitch, a political damsel, opposed to Walpole's candidate. Next day appeared an ironic counter-advertisement of a performance for "the Benefit of Miss Jones (the Mayor's daughter who hath so furiously espoused the Court [i.e. Walpole's] Interest....) N.B.--Miss Jones does not doubt that all true loyal People will give her all Encouragement in their Power, as she has engaged in so unpopular a Side and even given away her FAN (which very few young ladies would) for the service of the Country: she hopes the Courtiers will not let her be out of pocket by the Bargain." Here, again, is doubtless a hit at Lord 'Fanny' Hervey; as well as a plain hint that those who espoused Walpole's cause might expect ample payment for their trouble.
Is there any wonder that a wrathful and uneasy Minister, not yet overthrown, shortly took stringent measures against the 'liberty' of the stage; measures by which a political stage censorship was formally established, and the topical gaiety of our theatre, and the pungency of our theatrical announcements, henceforth immeasurably dulled.
A few further points of minor interest remain to be noted concerning that popular and scathing personage Mr Pasquin. By May the company styled themselves "Pasquin's Company of Comedians"; a fresh indication of the credit attaching to the performance. In the previous month a contributor to The Grub Street Journal tells "Dear Grub" that he has seen Pope applauding the piece; and, although the statement was promptly denied, a rare print by Hogarth lends some colour to a very likely story; for the great Mr Pope, the terror of his enemies, the autocrat of literature, was warmly on the side of the Opposition. Hogarth depicts the stage of Fielding's theatre, and thereon a scene in the fifth act of Pasquin, in which the foes of Queen Common Sense are for the moment triumphant. The side boxes are well filled; and in one of them Mr Pope's deformed figure, apparently, turns away, declaring: "There is no whitewashing this stuff." The curious may find another plate by Hogarth in which Pope is busy whitewashing Lord Burlington; but the drift of the remark for the Opposition drama of Pasquin seems obscure. The gains that accrued to Fielding from the success of Pasquin are indicated by another rare print, that entitled the Judgement of the Queen o' Common Sense. Addressed to Henry Fielding Esqre. Here, again, it is Pasquin's satire on the prevailing furore for pantomime that is chiefly illustrated; as Common Sense gives to Rich, the harlequin, a halter, while to Fielding she accords an overflowing purse. Supporting Fielding are a long lean Shakespeare, and two figures, possibly the distinguished players Kitty Clive and Quin; on the opposite side, behind Harlequin, are figures representing the bad clergy, lawyers, and doctors satirised in the Tragedy; and the whole is balanced by the emergence of the ghost in Hamlet, from a trap door in the foreground. Doggerel verses, at the foot of the print, celebrate the arrival of a bard, "from ye Great Mogul," bringing with him Wit, Humour, and Satyr, and receiving the Queen's "honest favour," in "show'rs of gold."
Under those golden showers, and with the applause of 'all the fashionable Squares' ringing in his ears, we may leave Mr Pasquin. Fielding's first venture as political dramatist and theatrical manager had proved brilliantly successful; his little theatre, like his own Tom Thumb, had assailed a dozen giant abuses, an all-powerful Minister among them, and the town had applauded the courage and wit of the performance. In the following season, those same boards were to witness the author of Pasquin "laying about him" with an even greater political audacity.
Content, doubtless, with the success of Pasquin, Fielding does not seem to have launched any further political attacks during the remaining months of 1736. A newspaper advertisement of June announces the intention of the 'Great Mogul's Company of Comedians' to continue "playing twice a week during the summer season," and Pasquin remained occasionally in the bills as late as the 2nd of July. The public were advised that "This is much the coolest House in Town"; and audiences must have been drawn even in August, for in that month one small and presumably party play was performed, the New Comi-Tragical Interlude call'd the Deposing and Death of Queen Gin. This little piece consisted of only two scenes, and was probably a skit on a Bill "against spirituous liquors" which Walpole had supported earlier in the year. The measure met with violent opposition, including petitions from the Liverpool and Bristol merchants; and in view of Sir Robert's own notorious excesses with the bottle a temperance Bill from his hands may well have roused Fielding's ironic laughter. The authorship of the satire is unknown; but the moral appears to have been unexceptionable, as Queen Gin, in the final scene, "drinks a great quantity of liquor and at last dies." Fielding clearly began his second year at the 'little theatre' with some social or political exhortation, as the following bill appears for January:--"By a Company of Comedians, At the New Theatre in the Haymarket, this Day, January 26, will be presented a Dramatick Satire on the Times (never performed before) call'd The Mirrour." By February "the Original Company who perform'd Pasquin" are notified on the bills; and on the 2nd of March a performance is announced of a Dramatick Tale of the King and the Miller of Mansfield, presumably the same Miller of Mansfield openly declared by one of Walpole's "hired scribblers" to be aimed at the overthrow of the [Ministry]. [6] All such preliminary skirmishes, however, served but to introduce the grand attack of the Historical Register for the Tear 1736, the first performance of which may be assigned to the end of March [1737]. [7]
In the Register we have the most complete display of Fielding's vigour as a fighting politician. Here, to recur to Mr Pasquin's characteristic phrase, he "lays about him" with a gusto and honest frankness quite lost among our own tepid conventions. But however hard the hitting, however boisterous the broad humour, however biting the irony, it is noteworthy that in this his chief political satire, written moreover for a yet unregulated stage, Fielding never stoops to the shameless personalities of his day. The fashion of the eighteenth-century permitted even the great and classical genius of Pope to hurl lines at the persons of his opponents that, to modern ears, scarcely bear quotation. Fielding, as we know, constantly asserted his intention of throwing not at the vicious but at vice; and accordingly, even in this party play, flung openly in the face of the Minister, there is but one reference (and that only a fling at his "lack of any the least taste in polite literature") to the notorious personal failings of Sir Robert. It is against the Minister, and not the man, that the hot-blooded Opposition dramatist directs his humour and his irony. Fielding's manly and generous nature here permitted no virulent personalities to blacken his [pages]. [8]
The irony of the Register is chiefly reserved for the Dedication to the Public, designed for the reader at leisure; though here Walpole is indicated broadly enough, first in the figure of an ass hung out on a signpost, and again as "Old Nick," for "who but the devil could act such a part." Here the attacks of the Ministerial papers are parried by ironic explanations that "The Register is a ministerial pamphlet calculated to infuse into the minds of the people a great opinion of their ministry," explanations full of admirable fencing and excellent hits. And in these dedicatory pages Fielding utters a sonorous warning to his countrymen concerning the insidious policy that was undermining their very constitution: "... Here is the danger, here is the rock on which our constitution must, if it ever does split. The liberties of a people have been subdued by conquests of valour and force, and have been betrayed by the subtle and dexterous arts of refined policy, but these are rare instances; for geniuses of this kind are not the growth of every age, whereas if a general corruption be once introduced, and those, who should be the guardians and bulwarks of our liberty, once find or think they find an interest in giving it up, no great capacity will be required to destroy it. On the contrary the meanest, lowest, dirtiest fellow, if such an one should ever have the assurance in future ages to mimick power, and browbeat his betters, will be as able as Machiavel himself could have been, to root out the liberties of the bravest people." From the solemnities of the Dedication we come to the "humming deal of satire," and the boisterous action, of the play itself. As in the case of Pasquin the form of the drama is that of a rehearsal, a form which affords excellent opportunities for such explanatory asides as that addressed to the critic who complains of the attempt to review a year's events in a single play: "Sir," says the author, "if I comprise the whole actions of a year in half an hour, will you blame me, or those who have done so little in that time?" The long years of Walpole's power were admittedly "years without parallel in our history, for political stagnation." Scene one discovers five 'blundering blockheads' of politicians, in counsel with one silent "little gentleman yonder in the chair;" who knows all and says nothing, and whose politics lie so deep that "nothing but an inspir'd understanding can come at 'em." The blockheads, however, have capacity enough to snatch hastily at the money lying on their council table. Walpole's jealousy of power, it may be remembered, had driven almost every man of ability out of his ministry. Then comes a vivacious parody on the fashionable auctions of the day. Lots comprising "a most curious remnant of Political Honesty," a "delicate piece of Patriotism," and a "very clear Conscience which has been worn by a judge and a bishop" and on which no dirt will stick, go for little or nothing, while Lot 8, "a very considerable quantity of Interest at Court," excites brisk bidding, and is finally knocked down for one thousand pounds. From the excellent fooling of the auction, the action suddenly changes to combined satire on the Ministry and on the two Cibbers, father and son. The Ministry are ingeniously implied to have been damn'd by the public; to give places with no attention to the capacity of the recipient; and to laugh at the dupes by whose money they live. A like weakness for putting blockheads in office and for giving places to rogues, and a like contempt of the public, is allegorically conveyed in the third act, in which 'Apollo' casts the parts for a performance among sundry unworthy actors, and declares that the people may grumble 'as much as they please, as long as we get their money.' "There sir," cries the author to the critic of the rehearsal, "is the sentiment of a great man." The Great Man was a phrase, to use Pope's words, "by common use appropriated to the first minister"--that is, to Walpole. In the next scene the effrontery of the piece culminates in a ballet where the Prime Minister appears, leading a chorus of false patriots, who, to use Fielding's own words, are set in the 'odious and contemptible light' of a set of "cunning self-interested fellows who for a little paltry bribe would give up the liberties and properties of their country." These worthy patriots are of four types, the noisy, the cautious, the self-interested (he whose shop is his country) and the indolent ("who acts as I have seen a prudent man in company, fall asleep at the beginning of a fray and never wake 'till the end o't"). To them enters Quidam, unblushingly announced in the play bill as "Quidam, Anglice a Certain Person," in other words Walpole himself. Quidam pours gold into the pockets of the four patriots, drinks with them, and then, when the 'bottle is out' (a too frequent occurrence at Sir Robert's table) takes up his fiddle, strikes up a tune and dances off, the patriots dancing after him. But even this is not all. "Sir," says the author, "every one of these patriots have a hole in their pockets as Mr Quidam the fiddler there knows; so that he intends to make them dance 'till all the money is fall'n through, which he will pick up again and so not lose one halfpenny by his generosity...." We may suppose that the final scene lost nothing in breadth by the acting of Quidam; and it is not surprising that the immediate result was the subjugation not, alas! of the Ministry, but of the liberty of the stage. Walpole's fall was delayed for three years; the destruction of the political stage was accomplished in three months.
It is difficult to imagine that any party, in those days of comparatively arbitrary power, would venture a public satire so unveiled and so menacing as that of the Register, unless supported by some confidence in the immediate fall of their opponents. Without such confidence the political tactics of such an onslaught would be simple foolhardiness. Signs of these false hopes are not wanting in the slight, but equally bold, satire on the sycophants represented as composing Walpole's levée, which was shortly added to the Register. This little sketch, in which a protest concerning the damning, early in the year, of Fielding's ballad farce Eurydice is combined with the political satire, was advertised as follows:--