"EURYDICE HISS'D: or, a Word to the Wise, giving an Account of the Rise, Progress, Greatness, and Downfal of Mr Pillage, ... with the dreadful Consequence and Catastrophe of the [whole]." [9]
We have the authority of Tom Davies, at this time a member of Fielding's company, for the statement that "Fielding in his Eurydice Hiss'd had brought on the Minister [Walpole] in a levée [scene]" [10]; and as Pillage is the "very great man" who holds the levée in the fragment, the above allusion to an expected downfall of Walpole's Ministry seems obvious. Passages of similar import to the advertisement occur in the piece itself. Thus the play is declared to convey a "beautiful image of the instability of human greatness"; and the spectacle is promised of the 'author of a mighty farce' at the pinnacle of human greatness and adored by a crowd of dependants, become by a sudden turn of fortune, scorned, "deserted and abandon'd."
The single scene of the play opens when Pillage is at the zenith of his power; a stage direction orders that "The Lèvee enters, and range themselves to a ridiculous tune"; a partition of places ensues under the allegory of the business arrangements of a theatrical manager; and the author explains that by this levée scene he hopes that persons greater than author-managers may learn to despise sycophants. Close on the heels of the levée comes the catastrophe. Not one honest man, Pillage sadly admits, is on his side; as his 'shallow plot' opens out the first applause changes to hisses; his farce is damn'd; and he himself is left consoling the solitude of his downfall by getting exceedingly drunk on a third bottle.
The figure of a fallen Minister boozing away his own intolerable reflections, was not calculated to pacify that notoriously hard drinker, Sir Robert, already soundly pilloried in the Register, and severely indited by Pasquin. By the end of April the Register had reached its thirty-first performance, a good run at that date; and according to an advertisement in the Craftsman the satire was still being played on the 7th of May. In little more than four weeks, and after the alleged perpetration of a treasonable and profane farce called The Golden Rump, a Bill for stifling the liberty of the stage under a censorship was introduced, had passed through both Houses, and received the royal assent. Well might Lord Chesterfield exclaim in the brilliant speech which, in Smollet's words, "will ever endear his character to all the friends of genius and literature, to all those who are warmed with zeal for the liberties of their country," that the Bill was not only "of a very extraordinary nature, but has been brought in at a very extraordinary season and pushed with very extraordinary despatch." Concerning the nature of the measure Chesterfield had no doubt. He saw its tendency towards restraining the "liberty of the Press which will be a long stride towards the destruction of Liberty itself"; he pointed out that a Minister who has merited the esteem of the people will neither fear the wit nor feel the satire of the theatre; he denounced the subjugation of the stage under "an arbitrary Court license" which would convert it into a canal for conveying the vices and follies of "great men and Courtiers" through the whole kingdom; he protested against the Bill as an encroachment not only on liberty but also on property, for "Wit, my Lords, is a sort of property; it is the property of those that have it, and too often the only property that they have to depend on."
As a manager of the intrepid little theatre in the Haymarket, as well as the author of the most successful of the offending plays, the Licensing Act fell with double weight on Fielding. "When I speak against the Bill," cried Chesterfield, "I must think I plead the cause of Wit, I plead the cause of Humour, I plead the cause of the British Stage, and of every gentleman of taste in the Kingdom." Looking back over two centuries, we honour Chesterfield in that, unknown to himself, he also pleaded the cause of the greatest of English humourists. But appeals on behalf of genius and freedom were thrown away upon Walpole; the Act received the royal assent on June 21 1737; and, in the honourable company of Wit, Humour, and Taste, Fielding was forced to retire from the theatre, on the boards of which he had for two years so vigorously assailed Ministerial corruption and autocracy.
[CHAPTER V]
HOMESPUN DRAMA
"Virtue distrest in humble state support."
Prologue to Fatal Curiosity.
The Licensing Act of June 1737 thus brought Henry Fielding's career as political dramatist to a hasty conclusion; a conclusion quite unforeseen by the luckless author, as appears from his Dedication to the Historical Register, published almost at the moment when the Act became law: "The very great indulgence you have shown my performances at the little theatre these two last years," he says, addressing his public, "have encouraged me to the proposal of a subscription for carrying on that theatre, for beautifying and enlarging it, and procuring a better company of actors."
Before finally losing sight of the stage on which Pasquin and the Register had scored such signal success, we may notice some minor incidents of these two years of Fielding's administration. His company does not seem to have included either Macklin, Quin, or Kitty Clive; but that distinguished actress Mrs Pritchard, the central figure of Hogarth's charming group called "The Green Room, Drury Lane," is said to have made her first appearance on his [boards], [1] and his players also included that man of many parts Tom Davies. Davies was a student of Edinburgh University; an actor at Drury Lane and elsewhere; a bookseller of whom the elder D'Israeli said 'all his publications were of the best kind'; the writer of various works including a Life of Garrick; and a particular friend of Dr Johnson. In the first year of Fielding's management in the Haymarket, Davies was cast for a principal part in George Lillo's tragedy Fatal Curiosity; and it is to his pen that we owe the only known contemporary reference to the active part taken by Fielding himself in the affairs of his theatre.