Fielding, Henry

Fielding, Henry (1707–54), English novelist and dramatist. His first three plays were comedies aimed at contemporary and literary follies, as was Tom Thumb the Great; or, The Tragedy of Tragedies (1730), which satirized the conventions of the heroic drama. With his ballad opera The Welsh Opera; or, The Grey Mare the Better Horse (1731) he openly attacked both political parties, and also brought the Royal Family, thinly disguised, on to the stage. The repercussions were sufficiently alarming for Fielding to drop politics for a time and write for Drury Lane five plays dealing light-heartedly with the contemporary social scene. In 1736 he again attacked the government in Pasquin, followed in 1737 by The Historical Register for the Year 1736. He also put on plays by other authors which attacked the administration, and it was probably the cumulative effect that finally decided the government to curtail the liberty of the theatres. Adopting as a pretext the scurrility of a play entitled The Golden Rump (see GOODMAN'S FIELDS THEATRE) the authorities rushed through the Licensing Act (see LORD CHAMBERLAIN). The closing of the unlicensed Haymarket Theatre, where all Fielding's plays had been produced, hit him hard, and with a wife and growing family to support he deserted the stage for the more lucrative career of novel-writing, including Tom Jones, published in 1749.