ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Fielding's first incursion into literature, that is, his nine-year career as a dramatist, investigating it as a departing point for what became a lifelong fascination with marriage plots and domestic themes. Before proceeding to a textual analysis of Fielding's dramatic production, it is useful to have a broad panorama of what the London stage offered to playwrights and audiences in the late 1720s to have a better sense of the author's cultural context. As depicted in William Hogarth's The Laughing Audience, the theatres housed a diverse crowd. Hogarth's A Just View of the British Stage provides an illuminating visual summary of theatrical perceptions. Criticism of the putative decadence of early eighteenth-century theatre also came directly from within. The promise of one or more happy marriages was the expected ending of stage comedies in Fielding's time. Fielding's next play, The Author's Farce, marks a turning point in his dramatic career.
