ABSTRACT
Any assessment of a libretto which forms part of an attempt to understand the resulting composition as it would have been understood in its own time should include a study of the librettist-of his circumstances, associations, character and beliefs. Winton Dean's work showed that, of all George Frideric Handel's literary collaborators, Charles Jennens, librettist of Saul, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Messiah and Belshazzar (and possibly Israel in Egypt), was the most interesting. The chapter provides a preliminary survey of Jennens's involvement and achievement in all his many spheres of activity and interest, and points to connections between his beliefs and his work with Handel. Conversely, one of the most provocative deistical writers, Anthony Collins, in The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered, devoted several pages to deriding the Church's attempt to read Messianic expectations into Greek and Roman literature, specifically Virgil's Fourth Eclogue-the text from which Jennens took one of his epigraphs.
