Complete Fictional Works of Henry Fielding

by Henry Fielding

  AIR XVIII. Now ponder well, ye parents dear.

  1 PROCL. Number one hundred thirty-two!

  2 PROCL. That number is a blank.

  1 PROCL. Number one hundred ninety-nine!

  2 PROCL. And that’s another blank.

  1 PROCL. Number six thousand seventy-one!

  2 PROCL. That number blank is found.

  1 PROCL. Number six thousand eighty-two;

  2 PROCL. Oh! that is twenty pound.

  1 MOB. Oh! oh! are you come? I am glad to find there are some prizes here.

  AIR XIX. Dutch shipper. Second part.

  1 PROCL. Number six thousand eighty-two,

  2 PROCL. IS twenty pound, is twenty pound.

  1 PROCL. Number six thousand eighty-two!

  2 PROCL. Oh! that is twenty pound.

  You see ‘tis all fair,

  See nothing is there.

  [Pointing to the boys, who hold up their hands.

  The hammer goes down,

  Hey Presto! be gone!

  And up comes the twenty pound.

  CHORUS. You see ‘tis all fair, &c.

  1 PROCL. Forty-five thousand three hundred and ten.

  2 PROCL. Blank.

  1 PROCL. Sixty-one thousand ninety-seven.

  4 MOB. Stand clear! stand clear! that’s my ticket.

  2 PROCL. Blank.

  4 MOB. Oh Lud! oh Lud! — [Exit, crying.

  1 PROCL. Number four thousand nine hundred sixty.

  2 PROCL. Blank. [Chloe faints.

  JACK STOCKS. Help! help!

  MRS. SUGARSOPS. Here, here are some hartshorn and salvolatile drops.

  1 MOB. Poor lady! I suppose her ticket is come up blank.

  2 MOB. May be, her horse has thrown her, neighbour.

  [The lottery continues drawing in dumb show.

  Enter LOVEMORE and JENNY.

  JACK STOCKS. What’s the matter, my angel?

  CHLOE. Oh! — that last blank was my ticket.

  JACK STOCKS. Ha, ha! and could that give you any pain?

  CHLOE. Does it not you?

  JACK STOCKS. Not a moment’s, my dear, indeed.

  CHLOE. And can you bear the disappointment, without upbraiding me?

  JACK STOCKS. Upbraiding you! Ha, ha, ha! With what?

  CHLOE. Why, did you not marry me for my fortune?

  JACK STOCKS. No, no, my dear — I married you for your person; I was in love with that only, my angel.

  CHLOE. Then the loss of my fortune shall give me no longer uneasiness.

  JACK STOCKS. Loss of your fortune? Ha! How! What! What!

  CHLOE. O my dear! I had no fortune, but what I promised myself from the lottery.

  JACK STOCKS. Ha!

  CHLOE. So, the devil take all lotteries, dreams, and conjurors.

  JACK STOCKS. The devil take them, indeed — and am I married to a lottery-ticket, to an imaginary ten thousand pound? Death! hell! and furies! blood! blunders! blanks!

  CHLOE. IS this your love for me, my lord?

  JACK STOCKS. Love for you! Dem you, fool, idiot!

  JENNY. This it is to marry a lord — he can’t be civil to his wife the first day.

  Enter MR. STOCKS.

  MR. STOCKS. Madam, the subscriptions are ready — and if my lord —

  JACK STOCKS. Brother, this is a trick of yours to ruin me.

  MR. STOCKS. Heyday! what’s the matter now?

  JACK STOCKS. Matter! why, I have had a Levant thrown upon me.

  LOVEMORE. The ten thousand pound is come up a blank, that’s all.

  MR. STOCKS. A blank!

  JACK STOCKS. Ay, a blank! do you pretend to be ignorant of it? However, madam, you are bit as well as I am; for I am no more a lord than you are a fortune.

  CHLOE. NOW I’m undone, indeed.

  AIR XX. Virgins, beware.

  LOVEM. Now, my dear Chloe, behold a true lover,

  Whom, though your cruelty seemed to disdain,

  Now your doubts and fears may discover,

  One kind look’s a reward for his pain.

  Thus to fold thee,

  How blest is life!

  Love shall hold thee

  Dearer than wife.

  What joys in chains of dull marriage can be,

  Love’s only happy, when liking is free.

  As you seem, sir, to have no overbearing fondness for your wife, I’ll take her off your hands. — As you have missed a fortune with her, what say you to a fortune without her? — Resign over all pretensions in her to me, and I’ll give you a thousand pounds this instant.

  JACK STOCKS. Ha! pox! I suppose they are a thousand pounds you are to get in the lottery.

  LOVEMORE. Sir, you shall receive ‘em this moment.

  JACK STOCKS. Shall I? Then, sir, to show you I’ll be beforehand with you, here she is — take her — and if ever I ask her back of you again, may I lose the whole thousand at the first sitting.

  CHLOE. And can you part with me so easily?

  JACK STOCKS. Part with you? If I was married to the whole sex, I’d part with ‘em all for half the money.

  LOVEMORE. Come, my dear Chloe, had you been married, as you imagined, you should have lost nothing by the change.

  CHLOE. A lord! faugh! I begin to despise the name now as heartily as I liked it before.

  [Commissioners, &c., close the wheels and come forward.

  AIR XXI.

  Since you whom I loved,

  So cruel have proved;

  And you whom I slighted so true;

  From my delicate fine powdered spouse,

  I retract all my thrown-away vows,

  And give them with a pleasure to you.

  Hence all women learn,

  When your husbands grow stern,

  And leave you in conjugal want;

  Ne’er whimper and weep out your eyes,

  While what the dull husband denies

  Is better supplied by gallant.

  MR. STOCKS. Well, Jack, I hope you’ll forgive me; or if I intended you any harm, may tickets fall, and all the horses I have let to-day be drawn blanks to-morrow.

  JACK STOCKS. Brother, I believe you; for as I do not apprehend you could have got a shilling by being a rogue, it is possible you may have been honest.

  LOVEMORE. Come, my dear Chloe, don’t let your luck grieve you — you are not the only person who has been deceived in a lottery.

  AIR XXII.

  That the world is a lottery, what man can doubt?

  When born, we’re put in, when dead, we’re drawn out;

  And though tickets are bought by the fool and the wise,

  Yet ‘tis plain there are more than ten blanks to a prize.

  Sing tantararara, fools all, fools all.

  STOCKS. The court has itself a bad lottery’s face,

  Where ten draw a blank, before one draws a place;

  For a ticket in law who would give you thanks?

  For that wheel contains scarce any but blanks.

  Sing tantararara, keep out, keep out.

  LOVEM. ‘Mongst doctors and lawyers some good ones are found;

  But, alas! they are rare as the ten thousand pound.

  How scarce is a prize, if with women you deal,

  Take care how you marry — for, oh! in that wheel,

  Sing tantararara, blanks all, blanks all.

  STOCKS. That the stage is a lottery, by all ‘tis agreed;

  Where ten plays are damned, ere one can succeed;

  The blanks are so many, the prizes so few,

  We all are undone, unless kindly you,

  Sing tantararara, clap all, clap all.

  EPILOGUE

  SPOKEN BY MISS RAFTOR

  LUD! I’m almost ashamed to show my face!

  Was ever woman like my Lady Lace?

  Maids have been often wives, and widows soon,

  But I’m maid, wife, and widow, all in one.

  Who’d trust to Fortune, if she plays such pranks?

  Ten thousand — and a lord! and bot
h prove blanks?

  Piteous case! and what is still more madding,

  To lose so fine a lord before I had him.

  Had all been well till honeymoon was over,

  It had been then no wonder to discover,

  I a new mistress, he a rival lover.

  To wake so soon from such delicious dreams,

  Such pure, polite, extravagant fine schemes,

  Of plays, and operas, and masquerades,

  Of equipage, quadrille, and powdered blades,

  And all blown up at once — Oh! horrid sentence!

  Forced to take up at last — with — faugh! an old acquaintance.

  But hold — when my misfortunes I recall,

  Agad! ‘tis well I’Ve any man at all.

  Yet since discarded once at such short warning,

  This too may turn me off to-morrow morning.

  If that should happen, I were finely slurred;

  What should I then do? What! why get a third.

  Well, if he does, as I have cause to fear,

  To-morrow night, gallants, you’ll find me here.

  THE MODERN HUSBAN D

  One of Fielding’s most serious plays, The Modern Husband was first performed on 14 February 1732 at the Royal Theatre, Drury Lane and focuses on a man who sells his wife, but then sues for damages by adultery when the money is found insufficient. The playwright put a lot of effort into crafting the play and he admits in the prologue he was striving to come up with something new. As in other plays by Fielding, it criticises vice and society, particularly regarding the law allowing a husband to sue for damages when his wife committed adultery. This view of marriage later served as the theme for Fielding’s novel Amelia. The play was well received when it first ran, though critics complained the characters were somewhat lacking in depth and the plot faulty.

  The drama introduces Mr Modern, who decides to trade his wife for money from Captain Bellamant. The money is not enough to satisfy Mr Modern, so he sues Lord Richly for damages by adultery. A witness is found to reveal that Mr Modern originally sold his wife to Lord Richly, which undermines his case and he is unable to gain the extra money. During this time, another couple, the Bellamants, are paralleled to the Moderns. Mr Bellamant is involved in an affair with Mrs Modern until Mr Modern catches them. Mrs Bellamant forgives Mr Bellamant for his actions. Other characters through the play are involved with their own romantic pursuits, including the Bellamants’ son, Captain Bellamant, who pursues and marries Lady Charlotte Gaywit, and their daughter, Emilia, who marries Mr Gaywit, another of Mrs Modern’s lovers.

  The original title page

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

  ACT I.

  ACT II.

  ACT III.

  ACT IV.

  ACT V.

  EPILOGUE

  EPILOGUE

  TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

  SIR ROBERT WALPOLE

  KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER

  Sir, — While the peace of Europe, and the lives and fortunes of so great a part of mankind depend on your counsels, it may be thought an offence against the public good to divert by trifles of this nature any of those moments which are so sacred to the welfare of our country.

  But however ridiculed or exploded the muses may be, in an age when their greatest favourites are liable to the censure and correction of every boy or idiot, who shall have it in his power to satisfy the wantonness of an evil heart at the expense of the reputation and interest of the best poet, yet has this science been esteemed, honoured, protected, and often professed by the greatest persons of antiquity. Nations and the

  Muses have generally enjoyed the same protectors.

  The reason of this is obvious: as the best poets have owed their reward to the greatest heroes and statesmen of their times, so those heroes have owed to the poet that posthumous reputation, which is generally the only reward that attends the greatest actions. By them the great and good blaze out to posterity, and triumph over the little malice and envy which once pursued them.

  Protect therefore, sir, an art for which you may promise yourself such notable advantages; when the little artifices of your enemies, which you have surmounted, shall be forgotten; when envy shall cease to misrepresent your actions, and ignorance to misapprehend them. The Muses shall remember their protector, and the wise statesman, the generous patron, the steadfast friend, and the true patriot; but above all, that humanity and sweetness of temper, which shine through all your actions, shall render the name of SIR ROBERT WALPOLE dear to his no longer ungrateful country.

  That success may attend all your counsels, that you may continue to preserve us from our enemies abroad, and to triumph over your enemies at home, is the sincere wish of, Sir,

  Your most obliged,

  Most obedient humble servant,

  HENRY FIELDING

  PROLOGUE

  SPOKEN BY MR. WILKS

  IN early youth our author first begun

  To combat with the follies of the town;

  Her want of art his unskilled muse bewailed,

  And, where his fancy pleased, his judgment failed.

  Hence your nice tastes he strove to entertain

  With unshaped monsters of a wanton brain!

  He taught Tom Thumb strange victories to boast,

  Slew heaps of giants, and then — killed a ghost!

  To rules, or reason, scorned the dull pretence,

  And fought, your champion ‘gainst the cause of sense!

  At length, repenting frolic flights of youth,

  Once more he flies to nature and to truth:

  In virtue’s just defence aspires to fame,

  And courts applause without the applauder’s shame!

  Impartial let your praise or censure flow,

  For, as he brings no friend, he hopes to find no foe.

  His muse in schools too unpolite was bred,

  To apprehend each critic — that can read;

  For, sure no man’s capacity’s less ample

  Because he’s been at Oxford or the Temple!

  He shows but little judgment, or discerning,

  Who thinks taste banished from the seats of learning.

  Nor is less false, or scandalous th’ aspersion,

  That such will ever damn their own diversion,

  But poets damned, like thieves convicted, act,

  Rail at their jury, and deny the fact!

  To-night (yet strangers to the scene) you’ll view

  A pair of monsters most entirely new!

  Two characters scarce ever found in life,

  A willing cuckold — sells his willing wife!

  But, from whatever clime the creatures come,

  Condemn ‘em not — because not found at home.

  If then true nature in his scenes you trace,

  Not scenes that Comedy to Farce debase;

  If modern vice detestable be shown,

  (And, vicious as it is, he draws the town;)

  Though no loud laugh applaud the serious page,

  Restore the sinking honour of the stage:

  The stage, which was not for low farce designed,

  But to divert, instruct, and mend mankind.

  DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

  MEN

  LORD RICHLY — Mr. Cibber.

  MR. BELLAMANT — Mr. Wilks.

  CAPTAIN BELLAMANT — Mr. Cibber, Jun.

  MR. GAYWIT — Mr. Mills, Jun.

  MR. MODERN — Mr. Bridgewater.

  LORD LAZY — Mr. Bowman.

  COLONEL COURTLY — Persons who at — Mr. Hallam, Jun.

  MR. WOODALL — tend Lord Richly’s — Mr. Harper.

  CAPTAIN MERIT — levee. Mr. Paget.

  CAPTAIN BRAVEMORE — Mr. Watson.

  JOHN, servant to Modern — Mr. Berry.

  PORTER to Lord Richly — Mr. Mullart.

  WOMEN

  LADY CHARLOTTE GAYWIT — Mrs. Cibber.

  MRS. BELLAMANT �
� Mrs. Horton.

  MRS. MODERN — Mrs. Heron.

  EMILIA — Mrs. Butler.

  LATELY — Mrs. Charke.

  SCENE. — LONDON

  ACT I.

  SCENE I.

  Mrs. Modern’s House.

  MRS. MODERN at her toilet; Lately attending.

  MRS. MODERN. Lud! this creature is longer in sticking a pin, than some people are in dressing a head. Will you never have done fumbling?

  LATELY. There, ma’am, your ladyship is drest.

  MRS. MODERN. Drest! ay, most frightfully drest, I am sure — If it were not too late, I would begin it all again. This gown is wretchedly made, and does not become me. — When was Tricksy here?

  LATELY. Yesterday, ma’am, with her bill.

  MRS. MODERN. HOW! her bill already?

  LATELY. She says, ma’am, your ladyship bid her bring it.

  MRS. MODERN. Ay, to be sure, she’ll not fail to remember that.

  LATELY. She says, too, ma’am, that she’s in great distress for her money.