VALENTINE. Oh! say no more, lest I am lost in too excessive joy.
LADY LUCY PEDANT. Indeed, I think she need not.
LADY GRAVELY. [To Wilding.] Your excuses to me are vain. We have both discovered you to be a villain. I have seen the assignation you made my sister, and she has seen mine: so you may be assured we will neither of us speak to you more.
WILDING. I hope to give you substantial reasons for my conduct: at least my secrecy you may be assured of.
SIR AVARICE PEDANT. Come, gentlemen and ladies, we will now adjourn, if you please, to my house; where sir, [to Veromil,] if my brother and you agree (as certainly you will, if you prove your title to your father’s estate,) I have nothing to say against your match.
YOUNG PEDANT. Nor against my returning to the university, I hope.
VEROIIIL. Sir Avarice, I wait on you; and, before the conclusion of this evening, I hope you will not have a discontented mind in your house. Come, my dear Bellaria; after so many tempests, our fortune once more puts on a serene aspect; once more we have that happiness in view which crowns the success of virtue, constancy, and love.
All love, as folly, libertines disclaim;
And children call their folly by its name.
Those joys which from its purest fountains flow,
No boy, no fool, no libertine can know:
Heaven meant so blest, so exquisite a fate,
But to reward the virtuous and the great.
EPILOGUE
WRITTEN BY A FRIEND AND SPOKEN BY MRS. GIFFARD.
CRITICS, no doubt you think I come to pray
Your pardon for this foolish, virtuous play.
As Papists, by a saint; so authors practise
To get their crimes atoned for by an actress.
Our author too would fain have brought me to it;
But, faith! I come to beg you’d damn the poet.
What did the dullard mean by stopping short,
And bringing in a husband to spoil sport?
No sooner am I in my lover’s arms,
But — pop — my husband all our joys alarms!
Madam, to save your virtue, cries Sir Bard,
I was obliged. To save my virtue! Lard!
A woman is her own sufficient guard.
For, spite of all the strength which men rely in.
We very rarely fall —— without complying.
Some modern bards, to please you better skilled,
Had, without scruple, the whole thing fulfilled;
Had sent us off together, and left you in
A sad suspense, to guess what we were doing;
Then fans had hid the virtuous ladies’ faces,
And cuckolds’ hats had sheltered their grimaces.
But ours, forsooth, will argue that the stage
Was meant t ‘improve, and not debauch the age.
Pshaw! to improve! — the stage was first designed,
Such as they are, to represent mankind.
And since a poet ought to copy nature,
A cuckold sure, were not so strange a creature.
Well, though our poet’s very modest muse
Could, to my wish, so small a thing refuse,
Critics, to damn him, sure, will be so civil —
That’s ne’er refused by critics — or the devil.
But should we both act parts so very strange,
And, though I ask, should you refuse revenge;
Oh! may this curse alone attend your lives!
May ye have all Bellarias to your wives!
SUNG BY MISS THORNOWETS IN THE SECOND ACT
I.
LIKE the whig and the tory
Are prude and coquette;
From love these seek glory,
As those do from state.
No prude or coquette
My vows shall attend,
No tory I’ll get,
No whig for a friend.
II.
The man who by reason
His life doth support,
Ne’er rises to treason,
Ne’er sinks to a court.
By virtue, not party,
Does actions commend;
My soul shall be hearty
Towards such a friend.
III.
The woman who prizes
No fool’s empty praise;
Who censure despises,
Yet virtue obeys;
EPILOGUE
With innocence airy,
With gaiety wise,
In everything wary,
In nothing precise:
IV.
When truth she discoyers,
She ceases disdain;
Nor hunts after lovers
To give only pain.
So lovely a creature
To worlds I’d prefer;
Of bountiful Nature
Ask nothing but her.
SUNG IN THE THIRD ACT, BY THE SAME PERSON
I.
VAIN, Belinda, are your wiles,
Vain are all your artful smiles,
While, like a bully, you invite,
And then decline th’ approaching fight.
II.
Various are the little arts,
Which you use to conquer hearts;
By empty threats he would affright,
And you, by empty hopes, delight.
III.
Cowards may by him be braved;
Fops may be by you enslaved;
Men would he vanquish, or you bind,
He must be brave, and you be kind.
THE AUTHOR’S FARCE; AND THE PLEASURES OF THE TOW N
First performed on 30 March 1730 at the Little Theatre, Haymarket, this play was written in response to the Theatre Royal’s rejection of Fielding’s earlier plays and became the playwright’s first theatrical significant success. The Little Theatre allowed Fielding the freedom to experiment, and to alter the traditional conventions of the comedy genre. The first and second acts deal with the attempts of the central character, Harry Luckless, to woo his landlady’s daughter, and his efforts to make money by writing plays. In the second act, he finishes a puppet theatre play titled The Pleasures of the Town, about the Goddess Nonsense’s choice of a husband from allegorical representatives of theatre and other literary genres. After its rejection by one theatre, Luckless’ play is staged at another. The third act becomes a play within a play, in which the characters in the puppet play are portrayed by humans. The Author’s Farce ends with a merging of the play’s and the puppet show’s realities.
The play established Fielding as a popular London playwright and the press reported that seats were in great demand. It is now believed that the play is primarily a commentary on events in Fielding’s life, signalling his transition from older forms of comedy to the new satire of his contemporaries. Fielding’s play within a play satirises the way in which the London theatre scene abused the literary public by offering new and inferior genres.
The original title page for the drama
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE.
PERSONS IN THE FARCE.
ACT I.
ACT II.
SONG.
The Little Theatre, Haymarket, where this play was first performed
Inside the theatre, c. 1850
THE AUTHOR’S FARCE;
[WITH A PUPPET-SHOW CALLED THE PLEASURES OF THE TOWN.]
FIRST ACTED AT THE HAY-MARKET IN 1729, AND REVIVED SOME YEARS AFTER AT DRURY-LANE, WHEN IT WAS REVISED AND GREATLY ALTERED BY THE AUTHOR, AS NOW PRINTED.
Quis iniquae Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus, ut teneat se? — JUV. Sat. I.
PROLOGUE.
SPOKEN BY MR JONES
Too long the Tragick Muse hath aw’d the stage,
And frighten’d wives and children with her rage,
Too long Drawcansir roars, Parthenope weeps,
While ev’ry lady cries, and critick sleeps
With ghosts, rapes, murders, tender hearts they wound,
Or else, like thun
der, terrify with sound
When the skill’d actress to her weeping eyes,
With artful sigh, the handkerchief applies,
How griev’d each sympathizing nymph appears!
And box and gallery both melt in tears
Or when, in armour of Corinthian brass,
Heroick actor stares you in the face,
And cries aloud, with emphasis that’s fit, on
Liberty, freedom, liberty and Briton!
While frowning, gaping for applause he stands,
What generous Briton can refuse his hands?
Like the tame animals design’d for show,
You have your cues to clap, as they to bow,
Taught to commend, your judgments have no share,
By chance you guess aright, by chance you err.
But, handkerchiefs and Britain laid aside,
To-night we mean to laugh, and not to chide.
In days of yore, when fools were held in fashion,
Tho’ now, alas! all banish’d from the nation,
A merry jester had reform’d his lord,
Who would have scorn’d the sterner Stoick’s word
Bred in Democritus his laughing schools,
Our author flies sad Heraclitus rules,
No tears, no terror plead in his behalf,
The aim of Farce is but to make you laugh
Beneath the tragick or the comick name,
Farces and puppet shows ne’er miss of fame
Since then, in borrow’d dress, they’ve pleas’d the town,
Condemn them not, appearing in their own
Smiles we expect from the good-natur’d few,
As ye are done by, ye malicious, do,
And kindly laugh at him who laughs at you.
PERSONS IN THE FARCE.
MEN.
Luckless, the Author and Master of the Show, … Mr MULLART
Witmore, his friend … Mr LACY
Marplay, sen., Comedian … Mr REYNOLDS
Marplay, jun., Comedian … Mr STOPLER
Bookweight, a Bookseller … Mr JONES
Scarecrow, Scribbler … Mr MARSHAL
Dash… Mr HALLAM
Quibble… Mr DOVE
Blotpage… Mr WELLS, jun.
Jack, servant to Luckless … Mr ACHURCH
Jack-Pudding … Mr REYNOLDS
Bantomite … Mr MARSHAL
WOMEN.
Mrs Moneywood, the Author’s Landlady … Mrs MULLART
Harriot, her daughter. … Miss PALMS
ACT I.
SCENE I. — LUCKLESS’s Room in Mrs MONEYWOOD’S House. — Mrs MONEYWOOD, HARRIOT, LUCKLESS.
Moneywood. Never tell me, Mr Luckless, of your play, and your play. I tell you I must be paid. I would no more depend on a benefit-night of an unacted play than I would on a benefit-ticket in an undrawn lottery. Could I have guessed that I had a poet in my house! Could I have looked for a poet under laced clothes!
Luck. Why not? since you may often find poverty under them: nay, they are commonly the signs of it. And, therefore, why may not a poet be seen in them as well as a courtier?
Money. Do you make a jest of my misfortune, sir?
Luck. Rather my misfortune. I am sure I have a better title to poverty than you; for, notwithstanding the handsome figure I make, unless you are so good to invite me, I am afraid I shall scarce prevail on my stomach to dine to-day.
Money. Oh, never fear that — you will never want a dinner till you have dined at all the eating-houses round. — No one shuts their doors against you the first time; and I think you are so kind, seldom to trouble them a second.
Luck. No. — And if you will give me leave to walk out of your doors, the devil take me if ever I come into ‘em again,
Money. Pay me, sir, what you owe me, and walk away whenever you please.
Luck. With all my heart, madam; get me a pen and ink, and I’ll give you my note for it immediately.
Money. Your note! who will discount it? Not your bookseller; for he has as many of your notes as he has of your works; both good lasting ware, and which are never likely to go out of his shop and his scrutore.
Har. Nay, but, madam, ‘tis barbarous to insult him in this manner.
Money. No doubt you’ll take his part. Pray get you about your business. I suppose he intends to pay me by ruining you. Get you in this instant: and remember, if ever I see you with him again I’ll turn you out of doors.
SCENE II — LUCKLESS, Mrs MONEYWOOD
Luck. Discharge all your ill-nature on me, madam, but spare poor Miss Harriot.
Money. Oh! then it is plain. I have suspected your familiarity a long while. You are a base man. Is it not enough to stay three months in my house without paying me a farthing, but you must ruin my child?
Luck. I love her as my soul. Had I the world I’d give it her all.
Money. But, as you happen to have nothing in the world, I desire you would have nothing to say to her. I suppose you would have settled all your castles in the air. Oh! I wish you had lived in one of them, instead of my house. Well, I am resolved, when you have gone away (which I heartily hope will be very soon) I’ll hang over my door in great red letters, “No lodgings for poets.” Sure never was such a guest as you have been. My floor is all spoiled with ink, my windows with verses, and my door has been almost beat down with duns.
Luck. Would your house had been beaten down, and everything but my dear Harriot crushed under it!
Money. Sir, sir ——
Luck. Madam, madam! I will attack you at your own weapons; I will pay you in your own coin.
Money. I wish you’d pay me in any coin, sir.
Luck. Look ye, madam, I’ll do as much as a reasonable woman can require; I’ll shew you all I have; and give you all I have too, if you please to accept it. [Turns his pockets Inside out.
Money. I will not be used in this manner. No, sir, I will be paid, if there be any such thing as law.
Luck. By what law you will put money into my pocket I know not; for I never heard of any one who got money by the law but the lawyers. I have told you already, and I tell you again, that the first money I get shall be yours; and I have great expectations from my play. In the mean time your staying here can be of no service, and you may possibly drive some line thoughts out of my head. I would write a love scene, and your daughter would be more proper company, on that occasion, than you.
Money. You would act a love-scene, I believe; but I shall prevent you; for I intend to dispose of myself before my daughter.
Luck. Dispose of yourself!
Money. Yes, sir, dispose of myself. ‘Tis very well known that I have had very good offers since my last dear husband died. I might have had an attorney of New Inn, or Mr Fillpot, the exciseman; yes, I had my choice of two parsons, or a doctor of physick; and yet I slighted them all; yes, I slighted them for — for — for you.
Luck. For me?
Money. Yes, you have seen too visible marks of my passion; too visible for my reputation. [Sobbing.
Luck. I have heard very loud tokens of your passion; but I rather took it for the passion of anger than of love.
Money. Oh! it was love, indeed. Nothing but love, upon my soul!
Luck. The devil! This way of dunning is worse than the other.
Money. If thou can’st not pay me in money, let me have it in love. If I break through the modesty of my sex let my passion excuse it. I know the world will call it an impudent action; but if you will let me reserve all I have to myself, I will make myself yours for ever.
Luck. Toll, loll, loll!
Money. And is this the manner you receive my declaration, you poor beggarly fellow? You shall repent this; remember, you shall repent it; remember that. I’ll shew you the revenge of an injured woman.
Luck. I shall never repent anything that rids me of you, I am sure.
SCENE III. — LUCKLESS, HARRIOT.
Luck. Dear Harriot!
Har. I have waited an opportunity to return to you.
Har. What’s the matter?
Luck. Oh! your mother! your mother!
Har. What, has she been scolding ever since?
Luck. Worse, worse!
Har. Heaven forbid she should threaten to go to law with you.
Luck. Oh, worse! worse! she threatens to go to church with me. She has made me a generous offer, that if I will but marry her she will suffer me to settle all she has upon her.
Har. Generous creature! Sure you will not resist the proposal?
Luck. Hum! what would you advise me to?
Har. Oh, take her, take her, by all means; you will be the prettiest, finest, loveliest, sweetest couple. Augh! what a delicate dish of matrimony you will make! Her age with your youth, her avarice with your extravagance, and her scolding with your poetry.
Luck. Nay, but I am serious, and I desire you would be so. You know my unhappy circumstances, and your mother’s wealth. It would be at least a prudent match.
Complete Fictional Works of Henry Fielding Page 248
