Opera and Politics in Queen Anne's Britain, 1705-1714 (Music in Britain, 1600-2000, 31) 1783277157, 9781783277155

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Opera and Politics in Queen Anne’s Britain, 1705–1714

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Music in Britain, 1600–2000 ISSN 2053-3217 Series Editors:

Byron Adams, Rachel Cowgill and Peter Holman This series provides a forum for the best new work in the field of British music studies, placing music from the early seventeenth to the late twentieth centuries in its social, cultural, and historical contexts. Its approach is deliberately inclusive, covering immigrants and emigrants as well as native musicians, and explores Britain’s musical links both within and beyond Europe. The series celebrates the vitality and diversity of music-making across Britain in whatever form it took and wherever it was found, exploring its aesthetic dimensions alongside its meaning for contemporaries, its place in the global market, and its use in the promotion of political and social agendas. Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to Professors Byron Adams, Rachel Cowgill, Peter Holman or Boydell & Brewer at the addresses shown below. All submissions will receive prompt and informed consideration. Professor Byron Adams, Department of Music – 061, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521–0325 email: [email protected] Professor Rachel Cowgill, Department of Music, University of York Heslington, York, YO10 5DD email: [email protected] Emeritus Professor Peter Holman MBE, 119 Maldon Road, Colchester, Essex, CO3 3AX email: [email protected] Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF email: [email protected] Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this volume.

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Opera and Politics in Queen Anne’s Britain, 1705–1714 Thomas McGeary

THE BOYDELL PRESS Published online by Cambridge University Press

© Thomas McGeary 2022 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Thomas McGeary to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2022 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 978 1 78327 715 5 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 80010 594 2 (ePDF) The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Cover Image: Design for Stage Scenery (Hampton Court) with Mythological Figures, James Thornhill, 1675–1734, The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1922.1617, CC0 Public Domain Designation.

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We live in a Nation where at present there is scarce a single Head that does not teem with Politics. —The Medley (1710) Our English Musick is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its stead. —Joseph Addison (1711) Italian opera, an exotick and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed. —Samuel Johnson (1779)

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❧ Contents Lists of Illustrations

viii

List of Music Examples

ix

Preface xi Acknowledgements xiv Note to the Reader

xv

Introduction 1 1

Opera in the English Manner

19

2

The Infiltration of Italian Music and Singing

55

3

Italian and English Singing and Partisan Politics

99

4

The Haymarket Theatre: A Whig Project

125

5

Whigs and Opera in the Italian Manner

183

6 1710: The Year of Great Change in Politics and Opera

212

7

Whigs Confront Opera: Britain at a Machiavellian Moment

241

8

Addison: Opera and the Politics of Politeness

286

9

The Whig Campaign for English Opera; Handel Celebrates the Peace

304

Epilogue 335 Appendix 1: Operatic Works Produced or Known in London, ca. 1660–1704

337

Appendix 2: Principal Independent Theatre Masques Produced in London, 1676–1705

341

Appendix 3: Opera Performances by Season in London, 1705–14

345

Appendix 4: Aria Types in All-sung Operas Produced in London, 1705–14. 349 Bibliography 355 Index 409

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Illustrations ❧  Plates 4.1 Sir James Thornhill. Queen Anne’s Patronage of the Arts. Pen and ink with grey wash. 21 × 25.1 cm. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Sir Bruce Ingram Collection. 63.52.256. Photo courtesy of Huntington Art Collections, San Marino, California. 139 4.2 Sir James Thornhill. The First Great Flat Scene. Pen and ink over pencil with grey wash. 27.6 × 22.8 cm. Art Institute of Chicago. Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection. 1922.1617. Used with permission of the Art Institute of Chicago. CC0 Public Domain Designation. 140 4.3 Facing title pages to Li amori di Ergasto / The Loves of Ergasto (1705). Photograph courtesy of Princeton University Library. 154 4.4 Sir James Thornhill. Classical Landscape Seen through an Arch. Pen and ink over pencil with grey wash. Reproduced courtesy of Sotheby’s, London.

155

6.1 Frontispiece to A Second Tale of a Tub; or the History of Robert [sic] Powel the Puppet-Show-Man (1715). Photograph courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. 231 The author and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and individuals for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

❧  Tables 4.1 Subscribers to the Haymarket Theatre, Their Political Affiliation, and Kit-Cat Membership

130

5.1 Dedicatees of Operas Produced in London, 1706–14

184

5.2 Subscribers to a Fund for Debt Relief of Thomas Clayton, December 1708–September 1710

186

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Music Examples 2.1. ‘A Song after the Italian Mode’ by ‘Seignior William in Northamptonshire’. Source: New Ayres and Dialogues (1678)

66

2.2. Giovanni Baptista Draghi, From Harmony, from Heav’nly Harmony: A Song for St Cecilia’s Day (1687): (a) countertenor solo, from the duet and chorus ‘The Trumpet’s Loud Clangour’; (b) countertenor solo, from the chorus ‘As from the Pow’r of Sacred Lays’. Source: Giovanni Baptista Draghi, From Harmony, from Heav’nly Harmony: A Song for St Cecilia’s Day (1689), Bryan White, ed. Purcell Society Edition Companion Series, 3 (London: Stainer and Bell, 2010). 66 2.3. Henry Lawes, ‘Sweet Echo, Sweetest Nymph’, from John Milton, Comus (1634). Source: British Library, Add. MS 53,723, f. 37 verso; and Ian Spink, Henry Lawes, pp. 58–9.

79

4.1 Recitative between Arsinoe and Ormondo, from Thomas Clayton, Arsinoe (1705), Act I, scene 4. Source: British Library, Egerton 3664, pp. 16–17, and printed word book. 150 4.2 Recitative and aria, ‘Guide Me, Lead Me’, from Thomas Clayton, Arsinoe (1705), Act I, scene 1. Source: British Library, Egerton 3664, pp. 4–5, and printed word book. 151 4.3 Aria ‘Love’s Darts Are in Your Eyes’, from Giovanni Bononcini, Camilla (1706), Act I, scene 3. Source: Songs in the New Opera of Camilla (Cullen edition, 1707).

157

4.4 Aria ‘Love’s Blind, and Strikes Our Hearts’, from Temple of Love (1706), Act III, scene 1. Source: Songs in the New Opera, Call’d the Temple of Love (1706).

160

4.5 Aria ‘Pleasure Calls: Fond Hearts Recover’, from Thomyris, Queen of Scythia (1707), Act III, scene 5. Source: Songs in the Opera Call’d Thomyris, Queen of Scythia (1707). 169 4.6 Aria ‘Son’ Guerriero’, from Pyrrhus and Demetrius (1708), Act II, scene 1. Source: Songs in the Opera Call’d Pyrrhus and Demetrius, p. 34.

178

8.1 Recitative from Giovanni Bononcini, Camilla (1706), Act I. Source: Royal College of Music MS 79, Act I scene 11, p. 34 (Act I, scene xiv in printed word book). 301 ix Published online by Cambridge University Press

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music examples

8.2 Daniel Purcell, ‘A Song Sung by Mr Leveridge’, from Richard Steele, The Lying Lover (1703), Act III. Source: The Monthly Mask of Vocal Music (July 1704). 301 8.3 Daniel Purcell, ‘A Cantata after the Italian Stile’. Source: The Monthly Mask of Vocal Music (September 1708). 302

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Preface

A

s the most spectacular, prestigious, and yet controversial theatrical entertainment in London, opera must have had some relation to politics. This volume, Opera and Politics in Queen Anne’s Britain, 1705–1714, explores the relations of Italian-style opera and politics against the background of domestic Tory-Whig party strife and the continental War of the Spanish Succession during the reign of Queen Anne. Even before Italian-style opera was introduced to London in 1705, Italian and English singing were politicised around the singers Margarita de l’Epine and Catherine Tofts. The features of Italian and English singing were used by Whigs to deride Tory statesman and define British national identity. The best-known English responses to opera are the criticisms and satire by Whigs John Dennis, Richard Steele, and Joseph Addison. Contrary to this impression of opposition, opera’s introduction had its origin in 1703 with the Whig John Vanbrugh’s plans for a theatre in the Haymarket, a project largely supported by Whigs and the Kit-Cat Club. Some prologues, epilogues, and librettos of operas from 1706 to 1708 express ideas sympathetic to or that endorse Whig politics. The writings by Dennis, Steele, and Addison are often presented as if sharing a common viewpoint; but their ideas can be distinguished, and Addison proposed correcting opera in line with the ideal of politeness. By 1710 opera in London was an Italian institution, dominated by Italians singing librettos in Italian composed by Italians. Nonetheless, several Whig promoters of opera produced works that embody an English aesthetic for dramatic music. After arriving in England in 1710, George Frideric Handel was enlisted as composer by both sides of the War of the Spanish Succession. An early serenata celebrated an Allied victory in Spain. But his later setting of the Te Deum and Jubilate for the Thanksgiving Day celebration of the Peace of Utrecht led to his dismissal by the future King of Britain. There is no single or simple relationship between opera and politics that can be explored, such as how political party affiliation affected opera patronage and attendance or how operas themselves carried topical political ideas. Rather, the question explored in this and two companion books is not the relationship between opera and politics, but what were the relations between opera and politics at the time of its production and reception. The scope of each book is determined by two distinct periods of British political history – the era of Queen Anne and the rule of Sir Robert Walpole as prime minister – and the ways of relating the terms ‘opera’ and ‘politics’. The results vary for each book. The ‘politics of opera’ can be explored at many levels. Opera might be studied as an institution in the theatrical realm: the activities of composers, singers, xi

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preface

managers, and patrons as they strive for prominence and success in the realm of musical culture. Or opera might be studied for its role in asserting the hegemony of its patrons and their taste in the domain of culture, or how operatic themes reflect transformations in political or philosophical thought, or how the institution of opera replicates the structures of power and values that organise social life, or as an expression of the spirit of the Baroque or Enlightenment, or as a force in nationalism and forging national identity – among other ways as well. Such broad studies of opera – carried out at high levels of abstraction about cultural and historical eras and society – prove too prone to unbounded generalizations and underlying assumptions to yield satisfactory results. Instead, these three books explore opera and politics for the period 1700– 1742 by taking politics in a narrower and more historically precise and productive manner relating to partisan politics: the quest for power and office, the daily contest between factions to influence the political nation and gain political power. At times, though, party politics and opera were indifferent to each other. The conventional, instinctive way scholars have approached the politics of opera (and oratorio) in eighteenth-century Britain has been guided by an article of faith, a presupposition that Robert D. Hume calls a ‘generic expectation’: discovering topical allegories, allusions, or analogues between characters and actions in musical-dramatic works and contemporary political figures or events.1 As Hume shows, several seventeenth-century English operatic works, mostly with some Court sponsorship, do have political function – usually as royalist celebrations. But for opera in eighteenth-century Britain, the generic expectation approach has been unsatisfactory and does not withstand scrutiny. These books place opera against the backdrop of domestic and international politics and attempt to recover by recourse to the rich contemporary documentation how opera (its singers, composers, management, or individual operas) was involved in the rough-and-tumble world of domestic politics; to recover the political meaning opera would have had for the audiences of its day, how opera was used to do political work, or how one strain of party-political thought might conceive an opera suitable for Britain. The first study, The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain, explored the relation of Italian opera to British politics during the period of the Ministry of Sir Robert Walpole, in the narrower sense of engagement with daily partisan politics.2 The rise of Walpole roughly coincided with the establishment of the Royal Academy of Music in 1719, when Italian opera became established as London’s most elite theatrical entertainment and Handel composed most of his operas for London. Confirming Hume’s earlier insight, the book shows how

1

Robert D. Hume, ‘The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 10 (1998), 15–43.

2

Thomas McGeary, The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

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preface

xiii

for this period, the allegorical method was unsound and consistently produced interpretations that were unsatisfactory and incompatible with historical facts. That study shows that, yes, there was a political dimension to opera, but that it occurred in other ways. The events and persons at the Haymarket theatre (especially the singers Cuzzoni, Faustina, Senesino, and Farinelli) were used in partisan journalism to attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Walpole Ministry. There was political content in the librettos themselves: they often express ideas about the civic and personal duties of rulers and their subjects. In their poetic justice, the librettos offered object lessons of moral and civic behaviour. A planned volume, covering the period of Pope, Handel, and Walpole, will explore the politics of opera at the broader level of cultural politics: how the institution of opera – with its associations with the court, Ministry, and Whig political-social oligarchy – was invoked in literary and print forms to do the political work of hastening the downfall of the Walpole Ministry. Often adopting the rhetoric of classical Roman authors and English republican and Old Whig thought, writers with an oppositional orientation offered up opera as a consequence of the corruption, luxury, and False Taste that were spawned by the Robinocracy and the Modern Whigs. The very presence of opera (but especially the stellar castrato Farinelli) was evidence of the need to drive Walpole from office. These two volumes close conveniently at 1742, a year marked by the triple conjunction of events in the narratives of opera, politics, and satire: Handel had produced his last opera; Walpole fell from power; and Pope published the final book of his greatest satire, The Dunciad, which brought to a close Britain’s most brilliant era of satire of the cultural life of Georgian Britain. The period covered by the present volume includes events critical for opera in Britain: the introduction of opera in the Italian style (though initially sung in English), the consequences of the rise of the imported star Italian castratos, the transformation of opera into an Italian institution that supplanted opera sung in Italian, and the arrival of Handel and his first opera composed for Britain. The period may be brief but was crucial for the history of both politics and opera in Britain. Thomas McGeary Champaign, Illinois December 2021

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Acknowledgments

F

or assistance in providing the time and access to the primary materials necessary for this book, especially in the years before ECCO and EEBO, I am grateful for residential fellowships at the Newberry Library, Chicago; the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles; the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, for an NEH Summer Fellowship; the Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, Connecticut; and to the assistance of their staffs. As well, I benefitted from a Newberry Library-British Academy travel grant. I have benefitted from the assistance or encouragement of Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, Graydon Beeks, Lorenzo Bianconi, Donald Burrows, Anne Desler, Alison DeSimone, James Hume, Peter Holman, David Hunter, Harry Johnstone, Michael Lorenz, Bill Mann, the late Fred Nash, John Roberts, Pat Rogers, Valerie Rumbold, Carole Taylor, Jennifer Thorp, Bryan White, and Calhoun Winton. I have been guided by the model of historical scholarship and the encouragement of (the late) Howard Weinbrot and Robert D. Hume. Their example sets high standards to emulate and imbues humility at one’s own efforts. Helpful has been the assistance of archivists or librarians: Anna Louise Mason, Archives and Documentation Manager, Castle Howard, Yorkshire; Chrispin Powell, Boughton House; Emma Floyd, Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, London; Christopher Hunwick, Archives of the Duke of Northumberland, Alnwick Castle; and Peter Foden and Victoria Perry, Belvoir Castle. As well, I am grateful to the College of Engineering, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for providing a haven that allowed me to complete the research and writing of this series of books, and to the Boydell Press for their immediate interest in this volume.

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Note to the Reader

D

uring the era of Queen Anne, the English still used the Julian (Old Style) calendar, whereas the Continent used the Georgian (New Style) calendar, which ran 10 or 11 days ahead of the Old Style calendar. The New Year began on 1 January in the New Style, but on Lady Day or 25 March for the New Style. All years are given as if beginning on 1 January. For England, this leaves an ambiguity of the year for dates between 1 January and 25 March (before the calendar reconciliation in September 1752). Dates in England are presumed Old Style (o.s.), and dates on the Continent as New Style (n.s.); however, to avoid confusion some dates on the Continent are given in both Old and New Style. For the convenience of readers, peers are usually referred to by their more familiar titles at the time of mention (not always their ultimate title) rather than family name. Following common practice, Robert Harley and Henry St John are referred to by family name until receiving their titles. England became part of Britain (Great Britain) in 1707. But it is impractical to try to insist on using Britain or British only after 1707, especially since even contemporaries were prone to using Britain, Britons, British, or the allegorical figure Britannia, even when primarily England or English was meant. The text will use English or British as seems convenient. In many cases, English is used unproblematically to refer to the language. I try to avoid using the terms English opera or Italian opera without some qualification, since Italian could refer both to an opera sung in Italian or an opera in the Italian manner; and English opera could refer to Italian-style opera sung in English or to a characteristic national type of opera, in contrast to Italian-style opera (whether sung in Italian or English). John Vanbrugh’s new theatre in the Haymarket quickly became known as the Queen’s theatre, and later the King’s theatre (depending on the monarch). For the sake of consistency with original sources, the theatre will be referred to as the Haymarket theatre. Where possible I have consulted original sources for manuscripts and printed sources, even when available in modern printed editions (which are often unreliable). Transcriptions observe original spelling, capitalization (though originals are often indeterminate), and punctuation. Some punctuation is added in brackets for clarity. Common abbreviations are not expanded; unusual abbreviations are expanded in square brackets. In texts, passages in italic and roman are silently reversed. The place of publication of pre-1800 books is London, except when noted. To avoid awkward locutions, I have occasionally used Englishmen or Britons, realizing women would also have been included.

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❧  Bibliographic Note To avoid encumbering the notes with routine citations to reference works, the following have been consulted and will not be cited, except to document extremely pertinent sources or to correct details: the print edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., eds Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), and its online version as Grove Music Online / Oxford Music Online; the print edition and online version of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485–1714, eds Andrew Ashbee, David Lasocki, Peter Holman, and Fiona Kisby, 2 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses … in London, 1660–1800, eds Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, 16 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–93); The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1690–1715, eds Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley, and D. W. Hayton, 5 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); and The History of Parliament: The House of Lords, 1660–1715, ed. Ruth Paley, 5 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Biographies of parliamentarians can be found on the History of Parliament website. For Handel, essential sources are George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents, vol. 1, 1609–1725, eds Donald Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe, and Anthony Hicks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); The Cambridge Handel Encyclopeida, eds Annette Landgraf and David Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); and Winton Dean and John Merrill Knapp, Handel’s Operas, 1704–1726, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Much has been written on the history of the early years of opera in London. The following are most pertinent: Curtis A. Price, ‘The Critical Decade for English Music Drama, 1700–1710’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 26 (1978), 38–76 [provides fuller documentation for chapter ‘Italianate Opera and the Reform of the Play’, pp. 111–34 of subsequent book]; Price, Music in the Restoration Theatre, with a Catalogue of Instrumental Music in the Plays, 1665–1713 ([Ann Arbor, Mich.]: UMI Research Press, 1979); George E. Dorris, Paolo Rolli and the Italian Circle in London, 1715–1744 (The Hague: Mouton, 1967); Lowell E. Lindgren, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729)’, Studi Musicali, 15–16 (1987), 248–380; and Lindgren, ‘A Bibliographic Scrutiny of Dramatic Works Set by Giovanni and His Brother Antonio Maria Bononcini’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1972). Important sources of documentation are: Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke’s Theatrical Papers, 1706–1711 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982); Milhous and Hume, A Register of English Theatrical Documents, 1660–1737, 2 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991); and Milhous and Hume’s edition of John Downs, Roscius Anglicanus (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1987). Studies of the political history of period of Anne’s reign are vast. Most pertinent for this study are: Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (London: Hambledon Press, 1987); Brian W. Hill, The Growth of Parliamentary

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Parties, 1688–1742 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1976); Edward Gregg, Queen Anne (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980); and Gregg, The Protestant Succession in International Politics, 1710–1716 (New York: Garland, 1986). Wolfgang Michael, England under George I: The Beginnings of the Hanoverian Dynasty, trs. and abr. by L. B. Namier (London: Macmillan, 1936), draws on Hanoverian archival sources, and Onno Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart und die Succession des Hauses Hannover in Groß-Britannien und Irland im Zusammenhange der europäischen Angelegenheiten von 1660 bis 1714, 14 vols (Vienna: Wilhelm Braunmüller, 1875–88), draws on the Imperial archives. Two comprehensive handbooks to the period are Geoffrey Holmes, The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain 1660–1722 (London: Longman, 1993); and Jeremy Gregory and John Stevenson, Britain in the Eighteenth Century, 1688–1820 (London: Longman, 2000). Biographies of the major figures (even some that might seem dated) that make extensive use of archival sources are still valuable resources. Especially useful for citations from the Blenheim Papers is William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, with His Original Correspondence, ed. John Wade, new ed., 3 vols (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1847–8). Important sources of contemporary documentation include: Abel Boyer, The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, Digested into Annals. Year the First [– Eleventh] for the Year 1703–04 [– the Pacific Year] (1703–13); Boyer, Quadriennium Annæ Postremum; or the Political State of Great Britain during the Last Four Years of the Late Queen’s Reign, collected 2nd ed., 8 vols in 4 (1718–19); Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time, 2 vols (1724–34) and modern edition: Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time: With Notes by the Earls of Dartmouth and Hardwick, Speaker Onslow, and Dean Swift, 2nd ed. enlarged, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833); Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1857); James Macpherson, Original Papers; Containing the Secret History of Great Britain, from the Restoration, to the Accession of the House of Hannover, 2 vols (1775) [contains transcriptions of MS correspondence in British Library, Stowe MSS, 222–232 (= Hanoverian State Papers)]; and Henry L. Snyder, ed., The Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Dates for plays given in parenthesis give the year of the imprint of the printed play; when this is (as often happens) the year following the known date of first performance, both are given. Principal sources for performance dates are: William van Lennep, ed., The London Stage, 1660–1800, part 1, 1600–1700 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965); Emmett L. Avery, ed., The London Stage, 1660–1800, part 2, 1700–1729, 2 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960); for the 1700–1710 seasons: Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, eds, The London Stage, 1660–1800: Part 2: 1700–1729. A New Version, Draft of the Calendar for Volume I, 1700–1711. Online: www.personal. psu.edu/hb1/London Stage 2001; and Annals of English Drama, 975–1700, Alfred Harbage, rev. S. Schoenbaum (London: Methuen, 1964). Many eighteenth-century printed texts are now available through online portals such as Early English Books Online (EEBO) or Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO).

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Introduction

W

hen Princess Anne ascended the throne on 8 March 1702 as last of the Stuart monarchs upon the death of William III, ‘the whole fabric of the national life was permeated by the spirit of party, to a degree without precedent even during the Exclusion crisis’.1 The nation was embroiled in the rage of party over the Succession, the Church, the war with France, the Peace, empire, and trade. England was torn by antagonism between Whigs and Tories, who practiced politics as a blood sport. Change of Ministry was ominous, for ministers out of office could be charged with treason for past policies, treaties, or advice to the monarch. They could face the scaffold, the Tower, or choose to flee for their lives. Fresh were memories of the impeachment of the Earl of Danby (1678), in 1683 the trials and executions of Lord Russell for his suspected role in the Rye House plot and of the martyr Algernon Sidney for his republican writings, and (for Whigs) the martyrs of the Bloody Assizes in 1685.2 More recently in April 1701, the Tory managers in the Commons vindictively impeached four Whig lords for their role in advising the King about the Partition Treaties of 1698 and 1700.3 In February 1710 Whigs impeached the high-flying Tory churchman Henry Sacheverell for an incendiary sermon preached at St Paul’s Cathedral. Jonathan Swift wrote to Stella in February 1711 that the aim of the extremist Tory October Club was ‘to call the old [Whig] ministry to account, and get off five or six heads’.4 In the December 1711 debate on ‘No Peace without Spain’, the Whig Thomas Wharton would threaten that any minister who attempted a separate peace with France ‘might answer for it to the House with his head’.5 Then with a Tory Commons, in 1712 the Whig MP Robert Walpole would be sent to the Tower on trumped-up charges of corruption, and the Commons would expel the Whig MP Richard Steele in 1714 for his party journalism. At the accession of George I, with Whigs now firmly in 1

Geoffrey S. Holmes and W. A. Speck, eds, The Divided Society: Parties and Politics in England, 1694–1716 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1968), 2.

2

For further examples, Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (1967; London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 114–15. On Whig martyrs, Melinda Zook, ‘“The Bloody Assizes”: Whig Martyrdom and Memory after the Glorious Revolution’, Albion, 27 (1995), 373–96.

3

The Junto were lords who managed the Whigs for the following thirteen years: John, Lord Somers; Charles Montagu (Earl of Halifax); Thomas, Lord Wharton; Edward Russell (Earl of Orford); and later Charles Spencer (Earl of Sunderland).

4

Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 1:195 (18 February 1711).

5

As quoted in B. W. Hill, The Growth of Parliamentary Parties, 1689–1742 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1976), 135.

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714

power, the Tories Viscount Bolingbroke and Duke of Ormonde would flee to France for safety, and the moderate Tory Earl of Oxford would be impeached and sent to the Tower for two years. Tory-Whig partisanship was not confined to politics and permeated every aspect of the professional, financial, and leisure life of London: newspapers, periodicals, the press, race tracks, the theatre, clubs, drinking toasts, coffee houses, playing cards, taverns, hospitals, doctors, the marriage market, and even placement of women’s cosmetic face patches – all reflected Tory-Whig allegiance.6 A Spectator paper by Joseph Addison described how even in the country the ‘Spirit of Party’ foments ‘a kind of Brutality and rustic Fierceness’ not seen in the politer men of the Town.7 Exclaimed one journalist in 1710, ‘We live in a Nation where at present there is scarce a single Head that does not teem with Politics’.8 As at moments of political crisis in the reign of Charles II, literature, poetry, and theatre engaged with political controversy.9 Satire in all forms was a major tool for partisan invective. Ideas of economic policy became politicised,10 as 6

Geoffrey Holmes, The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain, 1660–1722 (London: Longman, 1993), 334; Holmes, British Politics, 20–33. The face patches are mentioned in Spectator, no. 81 (2 June 1711).

7

Spectator, no. 126 (25 July 1711). On the seventeenth century as one of party strife, J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675–1725 (London: Macmillan, 1967), 12–14.

8

The Medley, no. 5 (12 October 1710).

9

H. T. Dickinson, ed., Politics and Literature in the Eighteenth Century (London: J. M. Dent, 1974); W. A. Speck, Society and Literature in England 1700–60 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983), 14–40; Speck, ‘Political Propaganda in Augustan England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, ser. 5, vol. 22 (1972), 17–32; J. A. Downie, To Settle the Succession of the State: Literature and Politics, 1678–1750 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994), 63–89; Michael Meehan, Liberty and Poetics in Eighteenth Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1986); Gary Stuart de Krey, A Fractured Society: The Politics of London in the First Age of Party, 1688–1715 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 177–258; and Holmes, British Politics, 23–4. Politics in the theatre: Shirley Strum Kenny, ‘Theatrical Warfare, 1695–1710’, Theatre Notebook, 27 (1973), 130–45; John Loftis, ‘The London Theatres in Early EighteenthCentury Politics’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 18 (1955), 365–93; and Loftis, The Politics of Drama in Augustan England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).



10

On how parties shaped ideas of empire and political economy: Steve[n] Pincus, ‘Addison’s Empire: Whig Conceptions of Empire in the Early 18th Century’, Parliamentary History, 31 (2012), 99–117; Pincus, ‘Empire and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713)’, pp. 153–75 in New Worlds? Transformations in the Culture of International Relations around the Peace of Utrecht, eds Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana (London: Routledge, 2017); Nicholas Hudson, ‘Challenging the Historical Paradigm: Tories, Whigs, and Economic Writing, 1680–1714’, Eighteenth-Century Life, vol. 40, no. 3 (September 2016), 68–88 [revises notion of Whig progressiveness on economic policy]; D. Coleman, ‘Politics and Economics in the Age of Anne: The Case of the Anglo-French Trade Treaty of 1713’, pp. 187–211 in Trade, Government, and

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did history writing (and even music history) as Tory and Whig writers retold English history with a party bias.11 It was in these years that all-sung opera in the Italian manner appeared on the London stage in January 1705 and came to assume a dominant place in the cultural and social life of Britain. As an expensive, visually spectacular, and elite entertainment, opera – along with its singers (but especially the castrato singer) – became a lightning rod, sparking responses from many quarters that reflected diverse social, moral, religious, and cultural concerns and agendas – often not musical at all.12 The early objections to Italian singing and opera became a constant chorus for the rest of the century and beyond.

Economy in Pre-Industrial England, eds Coleman and A. H. John (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976). 11







12

John Carswell, From Revolution to Revolution: England 1688–1776 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 89; Mark Knights, ‘The Tory Interpretation of History in the Rage of Parties’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 68 (2005), 353–73 [and especially further sources mentioned in note 1]; Philip Hicks, ‘Bolingbroke, Clarendon, and the Role of the Classical Historian’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 20 (1987), 445–71; Deborah Stephan, ‘Laurence Echard – Whig Historian’, Historical Journal, 32 (1989), 843–66; Steven N. Zwicker and David Bywaters, ‘Politics and Translation: The English Tacitus of 1698’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 52 (1989), 319–46; and Addison Ward, ‘The Tory View of Roman History’, Studies in English Literature, 4 (1964), 413–56. The most notorious partisan history may be the retelling of the Civil War by Edward Hyde (Earl of Clarendon), The True Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, 2 vols (1702–4) [with the inflammatory preface to volume 2 and dedication to Queen Anne by the Earl of Rochester (see J. P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party, 1689–1720 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977], 61–82)]. Tories were incensed by the third volume of A Compleat History of England, 3 vols (1706; 2nd ed., 1719), by the Whig White Kennett. Gilbert Burnet’s History of His Own Time, 2 vols (1724–34) has a Whig outlook. Abel Boyer’s chronicle, The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, Digested into Annals, 11 vols (1703–13), has a strong Whig partisanship. Collected reprint edition as Quadriennium Annae Postremum; or the Political State of Great Britain, 2nd ed., 8 vols in 4 (1718–19). On culture politicised: Sean Walsh, ‘“Our Lineal Descents and Clans”: Dryden’s Fables Ancient and Modern and Cultural Politics in the 1690s’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 63 (2001), 175–200. On music-history writing with a Tory viewpoint, Amy Dunigan, ‘Tory Defenses of English Music: Thomas Tudway and Roger North’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 40 (2016), 36–66. On the political aspects of church music, William Weber, The Rise of Musical Classics in Eighteenth-Century England: A Study in Canon, Ritual, and Ideology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992). See, for example, Xavier Cervantes, ‘“Tuneful Monsters”: The Castrati and the London Operatic Public, 1667–1737’, Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research, 2nd ser., 13 (1998), 1–24; Todd S. Gilman, ‘The Italian (Castrato) in London’, pp. 49–70 in The Work of Opera: Genre, Nationhood, and Sexual Difference, eds Richard Dellamora and Daniel Fischlin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); and Lowell Lindgren, ‘Critiques of Opera in London, 1705–1719’, Il melodramma italiano in Italia e in

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The readily available, amusing, and eminently quotable squibs and satire by the essayists Richard Steele and Joseph Addison in the polite Tatler and Spectator papers (1709–12) and the jeremiad by Italian opera’s arch-foe John Dennis in his vicious and intemperate Essay on the Opera’s (1706) have been repeated uncritically by writers so often that they have distorted modern impressions of the role and place of early opera in Britain. They have been taken to characterise the English response to, and opinions about, Italian opera as if they represent a considered judgment of it. Overlooked is the fact that many who valued and enjoyed opera and spent lavish sums on it felt no need to defend or promote it in public print. These early criticisms have often distressed lovers of opera and Handel and led to belief that the British were incapable of appreciating Italian opera, were victims of False Taste, or were only following the latest fashion of elite society for an art otherwise reviled by moralists and men of letters. One aim of these books on opera and politics is to show that such objections do not represent the full spectrum of British attitudes towards opera and that the targets were often not opera itself. The hostilities to opera by the Whigs Steele, Addison, and Dennis might lead to the impression that objection to opera was part of Whig political-cultural programme. Indeed, one opera historian asserted that ‘all-sung opera was Tory musical theatre’.13 What emerges, though, in this volume is that the appearance of Italian-style opera was the result of the Whig John Vanbrugh’s plan of 1703 to build a new theatre in the Haymarket for plays and opera, a project largely supported by Whig aristocrats and Kit-Cat Club members as part of a broader Whig political-cultural programme (see chapter 4). 111 The usual way to explore the relation of opera and politics has been by applying what Robert D. Hume calls a ‘generic expectation’: searching for topical allegories, allusions, or analogues between characters and actions in operas and contemporary political figures or events.14 For England, this expectation

Germania nell’ età barocca, Contributi musicologici del Centro Ricerche dell’ A.M.I.S.Como, 9 (Como, 1995), 145–65. 13

Neil Zaslow, ‘An English Orpheus and Euridice of 1697’, Musical Times, 118 (1977), 805–8 (on p. 808).

14

Robert D. Hume, ‘The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 10 (1998), 15–43, argues that, with the exception of a few operas or masques mounted for dynastic family events during the Restoration, the search for allegories and topical allusions in late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century English theatre works is inherently unsatisfactory. I extend his insight to eighteenth-century opera in McGeary, The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). The approach has been so undertheorised and never put to any systematic empiric application that a single writer could offer multiple, contradictory interpretations of the same work.

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about musical-theatre works does apply to a small number of operatic works produced with royal support during the reign of Charles II.15 But when invoked for several operas of the reign of Queen Anne – British Enchanters, Camilla, Rosamond, Rinaldo, the unproduced L.C. Silla, and Teseo – the interpretations offered by scholars are not coherent, incomplete, and inconsistent with contemporary circumstances; nor are there the slightest traces in the surviving written record suggesting they were intended or received as topical allegories; nor do they have any of the framing devices, accompanying commentary, or textual clues that tip off a reader or audience member to look for allegory or partisan application.16 This expectation that English operas were allegorical may have been reasonably derived from the many celebratory, festive operas or serenatas produced for the Habsburg or Bourbon courts (and their emulators) intended as an instrumentum regni, to demonstrate the power and authority of the princely sponsor and dynasty.17 But significantly, such allegorical works (for example, Albion and Albanius) have emblematic, symbolic, or mythic figures and deities that are suited for abstraction, personation, and reference to the prince and family in the audience. Such applications are often spelled out in accompanying texts or the work’s prologue.18 Allegorical stage works were usually addressed to the prince in the audience. By the time she ascended the throne, Anne was a semi-invalid and was not even known to have attended the theatre; the two operas she saw were brought from the public theatre and presented before her (in reduced form) at court on occasions of her birthday; neither makes direct reference to the monarch.19 Two scholarly articles have related opera to the politics of Anne’s reign. Both are unsatisfactory: each is based on a narrow selection from the great amount of contemporary documentation, uses politics in an imprecise and vague sense, and abounds in factual errors (or disputable assertions); and neither attempts a survey of the decade of operas produced, their place in chronology, genre, and language sung. One article recognises the Whig support for opera and 15

These are identified in Hume, ‘Politics of Opera’.

16

I examine the grounds for judging allegories in operas, and several of these operas in The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain, 12–93.

17

Lorenzo Bianconi and Thomas Walker, ‘Production, Consumption and Political Function of Seventeenth-Century Opera’, Early Music History, 4 (1984), 209–96 (at p. 260).

18

Criteria for assuredly allegorical works are presented in McGeary, Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain, 12–56. On how deep-seated is the belief, see Reinhard Strohm: ‘We must remember that Handel was writing operas in London, where the opera was of major political importance and inseparable from very concrete social conditions. … In opera libretti of the Baroque period, and not only in Handel’s, all representations of history have some bearing on the present’: Essays on Handel and Italian Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 35, 48.

19

Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘Music in the Birthday Celebrations at Court in the Reign of Queen Anne: A Documentary Calendar’, pp. 1–24 in A Handbook for Studies in 18th-Century English Music, 19 (2008).

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Addison’s commitment to advancing a culture of politeness; it asks how Handel’s operas ‘affected, and how they were affected by, the politics of the period’.20 But the essay advances claims about the consequences for opera of actions by the Tory Ministry and Lord Chamberlain’s office that are unsupported by evidence or can easily be shown to be inaccurate or implausible. It uses the generic-expectation allegorical method to discover (supposed) topical, partisan allegorical meanings in Rinaldo and Teseo that will provide answers to the question, ‘Can the operas of a composer as secretive as Handel reveal anything worth knowing about politics?’ Ultimately, the article fails to do so. The other, also drawing on a very thin survey of the literary sources, summarises rather inconclusively and equivocally about opera: ‘the debate over which was discussed largely in terms of the political differences between some Tories, who were against it, and some prominent Whigs, who were its supporters’. Curiously, the criticisms of opera by the Whigs Dennis and Addison are quoted, but none by Tory critics.21 This book does not deny that at times and in some ways there was a relation between opera and politics during Anne’s reign, but not in the conventional manner of Hume’s generic expectation. The one opera that deliberately engages partisan politics is Addison’s Rosamond, a tribute to the great Whig hero of Blenheim, the Duke of Marlborough. It does so not by means of thorough-going allegory or personation but by choice of subject and displaying the plans for Blenheim Palace. Other operas by librettists sympathetic to

20

Paul Monod, ‘The Politics of Handel’s Early London Operas, 1711–1718’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 16 (2006), 445–72. Monod concentrates on the role of politics on ‘sponsorship, financing, publicizing, staging, performance, and reception of words as well as music’ (447), but much of the discussion fails to muster needed evidence and provide meaningful answers due to factual errors and misunderstanding about the opera system in London (especially the role of the Vice Chamberlain); many claims are compromised by questionable, unsupported assertions based on faulty understanding of opera. The allegorical interpretations fail to meet the criteria in McGeary, Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain.

21

Richard Leppert, ‘Imagery, Musical Confrontation and Cultural Difference in Early 18th–Century London’, Early Music, 14 (1986), 323–45. Most of the essay is devoted to speculative interpretations of a group of paintings depicting an opera rehearsal in a private setting. It was not the case that throughout the period ‘Italian opera was foreign in every notable regard’ or that opera was ‘a popular victory among audiences’ and ‘represented something akin to popular culture; a box office success’ (330). It is not clear how Nicolini ‘could promote the Whig cause almost single-handedly’ (331). As shown in chapter 4, it was not the case that the Whigs favoured Margarita and the Tories Mrs Tofts (336). Elsewhere, Leppert’s claim about early opera, that ‘Tory writers, forming the musico-political opposition, argued the glories of native English singers and music alike and decried the Italian invaders (the Tory’s special rage was directed toward the castrati)’, is not borne out by the historical record; Richard Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 20.



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Whiggism glance at the current political situation in broad ways favourable to Whig political ideology. Exploring how Italian singers and singing were related to politics in the reign of Anne will require entwining multiple narrative strands: histories of politics, theatre, music, and opera, with glances at the survival of the Roman classical tradition. 111 British political history of the eighteenth century has been a lively and productive field and understanding of it has changed substantially. The traditional view had been that politics of the era was conducted in a two-party framework of contest between Whig and Tory,22 with a steady, triumphal ascent of progressive, liberal Whiggism over reactionary, conservative Toryism.23 In 1929, however, Lewis Namier proposed a startling revision of this view, arguing that ‘the political life of the period could be fully described without ever using a party denomination’.24 Instead, politicians were motivated by family and regional connections, self-interest, and the hopes of achieving political power. In 1956 Robert Walcott transported the insight of the ‘Namier Revolution’ to the era of Queen Anne.25 Instead of a two-party system, he argued, the period’s parliamentary politics could be seen in terms of shifting alliances based on family or regional connections or as dependency on a territorial magnate or interest.

22

The view is enshrined in such classics as William T. Morgan, English Political Parties and Leaders in the Reign of Queen Anne, 1702–1710 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1920); George M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts (London: Methuen and Co., 1904); Trevelyan, The Two-Party System in English Political History, The Romanes Lecture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926); and Trevelyan, England under Queen Anne (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1930–4).

23

On what is called the ‘Whig Interpretation’, see Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1931): ‘The tendency in many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present [vi]’. See also Donald Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, 2nd ed. (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 3–5; and Ernst Mayr, ‘When Is Historiography Whiggish?’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 51 (1990), 301–9.

24

Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929; 2nd ed.: London: Macmillan, 1957), quote on p. xi. See also Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution (1930; 2nd ed.: London: Macmillan, 1961), 179–215.

25

First suggested in ‘English Party Politics, 1688–1714’, pp. 81–131 in Essays in Modern English History in Honor of Wilbur Cortez Abbott (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941); developed in English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956); and defended in ‘The Idea of Party in the Writing of Later Stuart History’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 1, no. 2 (May 1962), 54–61.

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Walcott’s revisionary programme stimulated a burst of new archival and documentary research. There is now agreement by historians, that – with certain subtle qualifications – the contest between Whig and Tory was the principal element in British politics between 1689 and 1715, and that the contest did reflect well-defined ideological positions on church, state, economy, trade, and foreign policy.26 Granted, the parties were nowhere as coherent and organised as parties of subsequent centuries. The delineation of the party interest was subtle and often confusing even for contemporary Britons, especially in the years of William III.27 The uncertainly of party alignment was due not to the absence of clear party interest but to the inability before 1715 of either party to secure effective domination and power (partly due to William and Anne’s attempts to govern by mixed ministries). But there were party issues, leaders, and patronage. Despite Tory-Whig party alignment, at times and for a cluster of certain issues, the political divisions are better described by a long-standing Court-Country dichotomy dating from the 1680s that often cut across party lines.28

26



Holmes, British Politics, 2–9 and especially 327–34; Plumb, Growth of Political Stability, xiv–xv, 46; Holmes and Speck, Divided Society; and W. A. Speck, Stability and Strife: England, 1714–1760 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977). See also Plumb, review of Walcott, English Politics, in English Historical Review, 72 (1957), 126–9; W. A. Speck, Tory and Whig: The Struggle in the Constituencies, 1701–15 (London: Macmillan, 1970); Henry Horwitz, ‘Parties, Connections, and Parliamentary Politics, 1689–1714: Review and Revision’, Journal of British Studies, 6 (1966–7), 45–69; Henry L. Snyder, ‘Party Configurations in the Early EighteenthCentury House of Commons’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. 45, no. 111 (1972), 38–72.

27

Parties under William: Henry Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the Reign of William III (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977); Hill, Growth of Parliamentary Parties, 29–90; J. R. Jones, The First Whigs: The Politics of the Exclusion Crisis, 1678–1683 (London: Oxford University Press, 1961).

28

There was no Country party, as such, but rather a traditional Country programme, ideology, or attitude. On the Country interest and its survival: David Hayton, ‘The “Country” Interest and the Party System, 1689–c.1720’, pp. 37–85 in Party and Management in Parliament, 1660–1784, ed. Clyve Jones (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984); J. B. Owen, ‘The Survival of Country Attitudes in the Eighteenth-Century House of Commons’, pp. 42–69 in Britain and the Netherlands, eds J. S. Bromley and E. H. Kossmann (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971); Colin Hayton, ‘Sir Richard Cocks: The Political Anatomy of a Country Whig, c. 1695–1702’, pp. 241–68 in Restoration, Ideology, and Revolution, eds Gordon J. Schochet, Patricia E. Tatspaugh, and Carol Brobeck (Washington, D.C.: The Folger Shakespeare Library, 1990); and H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977), 91–118, 163–92.

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As much as monarchs and contemporaries denounced party and faction,29 the brute reality was that, as Geoffrey Holmes states, the ‘lifeblood’ of the ‘body politic … was the existence and conflict of two major parties’.30 J. H. Plumb describes the state of politics in the reign of Anne: It is impossible to deny the ferocity of party strife, Whig versus Tory, in Parliament and in the constituencies. The impeachments – Somers, Portland, Wharton, Sacheverell, Marlborough, Walpole – were all party impeachments; the growing ruthlessness in the use of place; the keen struggles in county and borough elections; the acrid attacks in speeches and pamphlets: all these bespeak a world of politics totally different from that observed by Namier for the middle years of the eighteenth century.31

No better insight into party positions and the strength of their antagonism towards each other can be found than from a pair of contemporary parti pris propaganda pieces. A Whig election pamphlet from 1708 points out the salient differences between the parties, highlighting the merits of the Whigs: The true principle of the Whigs is to maintain the Religion, Liberty and Property of their Country; … To keep the Monarchy within its just Bounds, and secure it with Laws from Tyranny at home, … To reverence and esteem good Churchmen, yet tolerate Dissenters; and in a word, to keep our excellent Constitution as it now stands, between the two Extreams of Arbitrary Power, and a Commonwealth. … [Whigs] have broke all Measures with the Pretender. The true Principle of the Tories is to profess Passive Obedience and NonResistance, to set up an Establishment opposite to Liberty, void of Property, and destructive of all the Ends of human Society; to persecute those that differ from them in Opinion, and in short to make a Government as absolute and lawless as is possible.32

29

Caroline Robbins, ‘“Discordant Parties”: A Study of the Acceptance of Party by Englishmen’, Political Science Quarterly, 73 (1958), 505–29.

30

Holmes, British Politics, 6.

31

Plumb, Growth of Political Stability, 157.

32

Arthur Maynwaring and the Duchess of Marlborough, Advice to the Electors of Great Britain; Occasioned by the Intended Invasion from France (April 1708), 2. On the principles of the parties, Holmes, British Politics, 13–50; Craig Rose, England in the 1690s: Revolution, Religion and War (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 63–104; W. A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); H. T. Dickinson, ‘The Tory Party’s Attitude to Foreigners: A Note on Party Principles in the Age of Anne’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 40 (1967), 153–65; Kenyon, Revolution Principles; Dickinson, Liberty and Property; and J. G. A. Pocock: ‘The Varieties of Whiggism from Exclusion to Reform: A History of Ideology and Discourse’, pp. 215–310 in Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).



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For the other side, the Tory viewpoint was presented in a pamphlet from 1714 by the High-Churchman, and later convicted Jacobite plotter, Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester:33 The Merits of the Church-Party.

The Merits of the Whigs.

I. No New War, no New Taxes.

I. A New War, Six Shillings in the Pound, a General Excise, and a Poll-Tax.

II. No Attempt against the Church.

II. A General and Unlimited Comprehension, without Common-Prayer-Book or Bishops.

III. No Repeal of the Conditions upon which the Crown was settled upon the King.

III. The Repeal of the Act of Limitations of the Crown [i.e., Act of Settlement], &c.

IV. No Foreigners in Employment.

IV. An equal Distribution of Places between Turks, Germans, and Infidels.

V. No Standing Army.

V. An Augmentation of Troops for the better Suppressing of Mobs and Riots.

VI. No Long Parliament.

VI. The Repeal of the Triennial Act.

VII. No Restraint on the Liberty of the Press.

VII. An Act to Prohibit all Libels in Favor of the Church or Churchmen, and to enable Freethinkers to Write against God and the Christian Religion.

VIII. No Insulting the Memory of the Queen.

VIII. An Encouragement to all Men to speak ill of the Queen and Her Friends.

Total. No Alteration of the Constitution in Church and State.

Total. An entire and thorough Revolution.

Utrum horum mavis accipe. Chuse which you please.

33

Francis Atterbury, English Advice, to the Freeholders of England (1714).

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Three great issues dominated politics in the reign of Anne: the Succession, the Church, and the War of the Spanish Succession and the Peace.

❧  Succession The death of Princess Anne’s only surviving child, the eleven-year-old William, Duke of Gloucester on 30 July 1700 made the succession to the English throne a pressing issue. Conceivably on Anne’s death (now certainly without an heir), the Crown could pass to another Stuart, James II, Anne’s half-brother. The issue of the Succession – what Jonathan Swift called ‘the greatest Topick of Slander, Jealousy, Suspicion and Discontent’34 – would be at the centre of British politics until August 1714.35 To guarantee the Protestant Succession, Parliament passed the Act of Settlement in June 1701 to exclude James from the Succession and provide that after the deaths of William and Anne, the crowns of England and Ireland would pass not just to a Protestant but specifically to Sophia, the dowager Electress of Hanover and her Protestant heirs.36 The Scottish Parliament did not assent to the Act, leaving the possibility of a Stuart king for Scotland. When James II died in exile at St Germain on 16 September 1701, Louis XIV recognised James’s exiled son James Francis Edward Stuart (‘The Pretender’) as the rightful Prince of Wales. With Louis’s recognition of the Pretender, there was fear a powerful France would support a Jacobite invasion and that Stuart loyalty in Scotland might cause civil war. Securing the Protestant Succession by reducing the power of France became a goal of William’s foreign policy. The Act of Union of 1707 further secured the Succession by uniting the crowns of Scotland and England.37 In the last years of Anne’s reign, Whigs (justifiably) feared the Tory Ministry might subvert the Hanoverian Succession and engineer the return of the Pretender. Anne ruled knowing that at times the succession to her crown was uncertain (although she herself never wavered in her commitment to the Protestant Succession). As Daniel Defoe reported in 1713, ‘The main things which agitate the Minds of Men now, is the Protestant Succession and the Pretender’.38

34

Jonathan Swift, ‘Some Free Thoughts upon the Present State of Affairs’, pp. 291–311 in English Political Writings, 1711–1714, eds Bertrand A. Goldgar and Ian Gadd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 304.

35

Studied in detail in Edward Gregg, The Protestant Succession in International Politics, 1710–1716 (New York: Garland, 1986).

36

Summary in Holmes, Making of a Great Power, 428–9.

37

For its importance, John Robertson, ed., A Union for Empire: The Union of 1707 in the History of British Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

38

[?Daniel Defoe], An Answer to a Question That No Body Thinks of (1713), 4,

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❧  The Church Anne prided herself on her firm support of the Church of England and was naturally disposed towards the Tories, who were heartened by the accession of a Queen who would defend the Church and look favourably on its true friends. For good reason, Jonathan Swift referred to Tories as the Church Party. Yet there was substance to the Tory cry ‘The Church Is in Danger’.39 Many Anglicans and their bishops had refused to accept the Revolution and swear loyalty oaths to William and Mary; these non-jurors formed a schism in the Church. The Toleration Act of 1689, granting religious freedom to Trinitarian Protestants and undermining the monopoly position of the Anglican Church, was a victory for the Whigs. The number of dissenting congregations grew; by 1711 they outnumbered Anglican parishes two to one. The Church was split into High and Low factions. The High Church, associated with the Tory party, emphasised passive obedience, non-resistance, divine right, and loyalty to the House of Stuart. High-Churchmen hoped a Tory government would suppress Dissent, finance church building, and restrain publication of anti-church material. The Low-Church faction was more sympathetic to Dissenters, towards whom Whigs were more tolerant.40 Toleration of Dissent had political consequences. Dissenters and the French Huguenot émigrés voted more predictably for Whigs; the Anglican clergy were generally Tory partisans. The Test and Corporation Acts of 1661 and 1673 had required holders of national or local office to take communion at their parish church once a year. To comply, many dissenting office holders were ‘occasional conformers’, taking communion at least once a year while attending chapels or meetinghouses.41 Outlawing Occasional Conformity was a Tory cause and lay at the heart of conflict between Tories and Whigs.

39

See, for example, the notorious and controversy-igniting High-Church pamphlet, The Memorial of the Church of England (1705), by James Drake.

40

On the conflict between Dissenters and Anglicans, Raymond D. Tumbleson, Catholicism in the English Protestant Imagination: Nationalism, Religion, and Literature, 1660–1745 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. chapter 3.

41

Occasional Conformity was the practice whereby Dissenters took communion as required once a year in the Church of England to fulfil the requirement of the Test and Corporation Acts that local and national officeholders in the civil, military, and learned professions prove their adherence to the Church by taking the sacrament. See John Flaningam, ‘The Occasional Conformity Controversy: Ideology and Party Politics, 1697–1711’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 17, no. 1 (Fall 1977), 38–62; George Every, The High Church Party 1688–1718 (London: S.P.C.K., 1956), 105–24; and G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State 1688–1730: The Career of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 63–80.

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❧  War and the Peace Renewal of war with France in 1702 with the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession and the need to finance it divided British society and revived tension between the landed Country interest (roughly aligned with Tories and Old Whigs) and interests of the ‘monied men’ of the City (roughly allied with the Whigs). Tories complained the countryman’s land tax paid for a war that benefited the financiers of London. Whigs, conscious of England’s interdependence with the Continent and need to secure the Protestant Succession, took the war aims more seriously. They saw the war against France as both a defence of the Revolution of 1688 and the Protestant Succession and an enterprise to capture the trade of France and Spain with the New World. A war that initially had aimed to contain French ambitions in northern Europe, grew to a two-front war, as England and the Dutch found themselves allied with Austria to install the Emperor’s younger son, Archduke Charles, as King of Spain. Hence the Whig cry, ‘No Peace without Spain’. Despite Marlborough’s series of victories against the French, by 1710 the nation had grown weary of war that seemed to have no end. Anne’s new Tory Ministry installed in April–September 1710 was desperate to extricate Britain from the war and achieve peace; it embarked on secret negotiations with France for a peace separate from the Allies. When the Preliminaries for what would be the Treaty of Utrecht were leaked to the public, Whigs and the Allies were outraged at the betrayal of the Allies and the original war aims. ‘It is doubtful’, states Holmes, ‘whether any other matter so continuously aggravated relations between Whig and Tory from 1708 to 1712 as the making of peace’.42 111 London audiences expected an evening at the theatre to be filled with music. From the 1670s, plays came to include increasing amounts of songs, incidental music, musical entertainments, and masques, culminating in the 1690s with the ‘multimedia spectaculars’ (to use Judith Milhous’s term) produced by Thomas Betterton with music by Henry Purcell, now commonly called dramatic operas. Operas in the sense of all-sung dramatic works were produced with support from the court of Charles II in emulation of the court of Louis XIV. The works mounted from 1673 to 1686, though, established no lasting English form of all-sung opera. Chapter 1, ‘Opera in the English Manner’, traces the English experience with opera (or more precisely, whatever the English considered to be ‘opera’) and surveys critical writings to gain an idea of national expectations for an opera. Soon after opera sung all in Italian became the norm on the London stage, Joseph Addison lamented in 1711 that ‘our English Musick 42

Holmes, British Politics, 75. Competing war aims are summarised in Tony Claydon, ‘The “Balance of Power” in British Arguments over Peace, 1697–1713’, pp. 176–94 in New Worlds?, eds Schmidt-Voges and Solana.

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is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its stead’.43 By recovering this sense of what ‘English Musick’ meant for Addison, we can better understand the response to Italian-style opera on the English stage. Central to the English sense of opera was a mode of singing. Chapter 2, ‘Infiltration of Italian Music and Singing’, surveys the infiltration of Italian singing (including recitative) and English acquaintance with it at court, theatres, music-meetings, and private performances, as well as the English responses to it as voiced in prologues and epilogues to plays and in plays themselves. Playwrights, managers, and actors felt disadvantaged by the foreign singing and characterised it as irrational and unintelligible sound and noise. In contrast to Italian singing was the development of a native style of vocal music that would be part of what Addison considered ‘our English Musick’.44 The Italian-English opposition was embodied in the two singers Catherine Tofts and Margarita de l’Epine. With Italian singing and singers permeating England’s musical culture, the values associated with Italian and English singing crystallised in the decades of the 1680s and 1690s. Chapter 3, ‘Italian and English Singing and Partisan Politics’, shows how singing and singers were politicised by Whig polemicists in satires on Tory naval officers and ministers. Catherine Tofts became associated with Whigs and Margarita de l’Epine with Tories, and especially the Earl of Nottingham. Incidents in the management of land and naval warfare (Cadiz, Vigo Bay, Blenheim, Gibraltar, and Malaga) were exploited, and the qualities associated with Italian and English singing were used by Whig satirists to score hits against the Tory admirals and ministers. The outcries against opera by Whigs Richard Steele and John Dennis and the more careful criticism by Joseph Addison have been taken to represent the English attitude to Italian-style opera. But opera in the Italian manner was initially promoted by a project funded largely by Whig aristocrats, patrons, and statesmen. Chapter 4, ‘The Haymarket Theatre: A Whig Project’, traces John Vanbrugh’s 1703 plan for a monopoly on London’s theatre and his construction of a playhouse for plays and opera. The establishment of the Haymarket theatre was a facet of the Whig cultural programme for England. The theatre itself was politicised and derided by some as a blasphemous Whig Kit-Cat project. The chapter follows how opera went from being sung in English, to being bilingual productions, with the castratos Valentini and Nicolini singing in Italian. The politics of the operas themselves is not found in the conventional way of identifying allegories between characters and actions in operas and contemporary political figures or events. But chapter 5, ‘Whigs and Opera in the Italian Manner’, shows that some prologues, epilogues, and librettos themselves from 1706 to 1708 convey sentiments that would be sympathetic to or endorse Whig politics. While not a thoroughgoing allegory, Rosamond (1707)

43

Joseph Addison, Spectator, no. 18 (21 March 1711).

44

Ibid.

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is a party-piece that celebrates the Whig’s hero, the Duke of Marlborough, the victor at Blenheim. The year 1710 was recognised by observers at home and abroad as a moment of great change in English politics. The change portended far-reaching consequences for the conduct of the War of the Spanish Succession, the Peace, and the Hanoverian Succession. Over a course of five months in 1710, Queen Anne swept out most of the Whigs from her Ministry and replaced them with Tories – creating a Tory Ministry, divided as it was by personal rivalry between Oxford and Bolingbroke, that lasted for the remainder of her reign. As explored in chapter 6, ‘1710: The Year of Great Change in Politics and Opera’, 1710 was also a fateful crux for opera in London. After being sung initially in English and then in bilingual productions, opera at the Haymarket became an Italian institution, producing what can truly be called ‘Italian opera’ – sung in Italian, with casts dominated by Italian singers, with librettos and music by Italian poets and composers. Opera in London was now perceived as an institution from which local artists were largely excluded. In some ways it became politicised along party lines. This great change of 1710 lies behind Addison’s lament about the fate of ‘our English Musick’. The year was a landmark in another way for opera in London: towards the end of the year, the Hanoverian Elector Georg Ludwig (future King George I) allowed his court musician George Frideric Handel to make his first visit to London, presumably with hopes of composing an opera, hopes he realised with the speedy composition of Rinaldo, produced the following year. The opera criticism and satire by the Whigs Richard Steele and Joseph Addison are often presented together with the tract of the Whig John Dennis as if they expressed a univocal, coherent response to opera. A pair of chapters examines the responses to opera by Steele, Dennis, the Whig third Earl of Shaftesbury, and Addison. By precisely situating each writing in the progression of operas produced, the form of the opera discussed (dramatic opera or all-sung), the language of the opera (English, bilingual, or Italian), each writer’s experience seeing opera, and the nature of his own efforts at writing a text for musical setting, we can distinguish and understand the differing responses of these Whigs to opera. In many ways, despite the seeming differences, their viewpoints do share a principle about dramatic music. The chapters will go some way to dissolve the seeming contradiction between the objections of those Whig writers to opera and the promotion and support of Italian-style opera by other Whigs. The outcries of Steele and Dennis against opera may seem xenophobic and irrational. Chapter 7, ‘Whigs Confront Opera: Britain at a Machiavellian Moment’, shows how their approaches to opera can be seen grounded in the civic humanist or classical republican tradition, one that took seriously the effect of the arts on civic society. For this tradition, the central concern was the survival of the republic, which was seen as fragile and whose health needed constant attention. The republic’s fate hung suspended between virtue and the effects of corruption. These Whig responses can be seen as drawing on the rhetoric of this tradition and imagining Britain at what J. G. A. Pocock calls a

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Machiavellian Moment: a moment when the republic faces an external threat and its fate hangs in the balance. In his more nuanced reflections on opera, Shaftesbury also draws on this tradition and advocates the simplicity of Italian opera. Due to his literary prominence and amusing jests and satire of opera, Addison’s Spectator papers may be the period’s criticism of opera best known to a general reader. Because of the lack of success of his own opera Rosamond, Addison has often been mischaracterised as a spiteful opponent of opera. Chapter 8, ‘Addison: Opera and the Politics of Politeness’, presents a wholescale reconsideration of Addison’s stance towards opera. Rather than a broad condemnation of opera, he carefully proposes corrections of opera grounded in common-sense principles of verisimilitude, dramatic decorum, and human nature. His critique is a proposal for an opera compatible with the larger Whig cultural project of advancing ‘politeness’ as an aesthetic and social norm suited for England. By 1710 the Haymarket theatre was producing opera sung only in Italian. Chapter 9, ‘The Whig Campaign for English Opera; Handel Celebrates the Peace’, shows how several of the early Whig promoters of opera still believed in the imperative of dramatic works sung in English and mounted works sung in English. The highwater mark of this campaign, Calypso and Telemachus (1712), an Italian-style opera sung in English, was subject to attempted suppression by an Italian cabal said to have been led by the singer Nicolini. By now, Handel had achieved unofficial status as a court composer, and his composing of the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate for the Day of Thanksgiving for the Peace and an opera for the French ambassador put him in the embarrassing situation of helping celebrate the Peace with France that betrayed his employer, the Elector of Hanover. For the remainder of Anne’s reign, opera sung all in Italian prevailed at the Haymarket theatre. Tories controlled the Ministry, but the scheming of Oxford and Bolingbroke for a Stuart restoration was thwarted, and upon the Queen’s death, the Hanoverian Succession peacefully came to pass. 111 What will this study tell us about opera and politics of the era of Queen Anne? At the court of Charles II and other continental absolute princes, opera – along with other court ceremonials, festivities, and protocols, let alone splendid palaces adorned with works of art – cast prestige and gloire upon the sponsoring prince and dynasty. By the time of Anne’s reign, the court’s position as a place

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that drew courtiers and as a source of cultural patronage and leadership had declined,45 although it retained its political significance.46 Without a strong cultural programme and support for it at court, cultural leadership and patronage in England passed to aristocrats, wealthy patrons, clubs and academies, private impresarios, and theatre managers.47 In these years, a Whig political-cultural programme independent of the court was emerging. So far, this Whig programme has been described primarily in its literary aspect.48 This study will add a musical facet to this Whig cultural programme by showing how the promotion of opera was initially largely a Whig enterprise and product of its cultural patronage. For opera and music historians, the book will broaden to foreign and domestic politics the context for the introduction and response to all-sung opera in the Italian manner. It brings together numerous previously unknown or under-appreciated print and manuscript sources and offers corrected context and interpretations of some well-known literary accounts and conventional beliefs about opera in its first critical decade in London. For English literature, this book explores ways verse, periodical literature, prologues, epilogues, plays themselves, and satire directly engage cultural and political issues. It shows how opera history can illumine literary works and satire and corrects prevailing understanding of the writings of Steele, Dennis, and Addison. It shows how literature had readily recognised political content and could exploit the contentious Italian singing, singers, and opera for partisan political propaganda. For political historians, the study will show how party ideas and ideologies were worked out in the domain of the cultural politics of opera. For British cultural historians, the study shows how Italian singing and Italian-style opera intersected with, and reflected contemporary political and cultural issues, and at times were used for partisan purposes. By looking just at opera, this study

45

Robert O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 242; Bucholz, ‘“Nothing but Ceremony”: Queen Anne and the Limitations of Royal Ritual’, Journal of British Studies, 30 (1991), 313; and Amanda Eubanks Winkler, ‘Courtly Connections: Queen Anne, Music, and the Public Stage’, pp. 187–206 in Beyond Boundaries: Rethinking Music Circulation in Early Modern England, eds Linda Austern, Candace Bailey, and Amanda Banks Winkler (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2017).

46

As argued in Hannah Smith, ‘The Court in England, 1714–1760’, History, 90 (2005), 23–41.

47

Cf. Hannah Smith, Georgian Monarchy: Politics and Culture, 1714–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 123–60. For the later Hanoverians, that while there was ‘disdain for officially sponsored royal culture’, a loyalist culture was contributed by individuals, corporate, or commercial interests.

48

See further in chapter 5.

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amplifies (and at places corrects) James Winn’s 2014 study of Anne’s patronage of the arts.49 Readers from neighbouring disciplines will understand the need to survey background material familiar to them for the benefit of readers from other disciplines. The political history recounted here may seem a partial and selective account, but events and political figures have necessarily been selected and highlighted as they relate to the London opera system and political figures and to illumine the events that impinge on opera.

49

James A. Winn, Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), tends to overstate Anne’s interest and direct involvement in promoting opera (see pp. 370, 374, and 391).

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Chapter 1

Opera in the English Manner

I

talian-style opera was a late-comer to Britain. Created at the courts of Northern Italy in the first decade of the seventeenth century as a humanist effort to recapture what were thought the powers of ancient Greek music, by mid-century opera had spread throughout Italy and across the Alps to most of the major princely courts. While some English musicians and travellers would have encountered opera during their continental travels, the JacobeanCaroline court’s thirst for musical drama was satisfied by its own multimedia court masques. The idea of all-sung opera on continental models seemed not attractive to England’s Restoration theatre managers. It required subsidy from or partnership with the court of Charles II to produce forms of all-sung opera on French models, but no long-lasting local tradition was established. The Restoration theatre did develop its own way of incorporating music with drama, one suited to the English ‘genius’, one that reflected an English disposition towards rational drama: a characteristic operatic tradition that is distinguished other than merely being sung in English. But after all-sung opera was introduced to London in 1705, interventions by the Lord Chamberlain – shuffling the musicians, singers, and managers between the two theatres – eliminated the conditions needed for the English form of opera (helped along in no small way by an audience enamoured by the Italian castrato singer). By 1710 opera in the Italian style had come to dominate the London stage, and in March 1711 Joseph Addison could lament ‘our English Musick is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its stead’.1 This chapter traces the English experience with dramatic works with music to recover what was this rooted-out ‘English Musick’ and to understand the basis for the response to all-sung, Italian-style opera.

❧  Music in the Theatre To revive the London stage, shortly after his return in 1660, Charles II granted patents for two royal theatres. One was granted to Sir William Davenant under the patronage of the Duke of York, another to Sir Thomas Killigrew, which operated under the direct patronage of the King.2 At first the companies played 1

Spectator, no. 18 (21 March 1711).

2

The classic histories of London Restoration theatre: Montague Summers, The Restoration Theatre (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trübner, 1934); Leslie Hotson,

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at temporary locations. In November 1671, after playing at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Duke’s Company (where the actor Thomas Betterton was a co-manager) moved to a new building at Dorset Garden; it was the most magnificent of London’s theatres, built for scenery and spectacle.3 Sometime about that time, Betterton went over to France to see the latest in machinery and scenes for the theatre and probably saw Psyché (1671), the comédie en ballet by Moliere and Lully.4 The King’s Company moved to the Theatre Royal in Bridges Street, near Drury Lane in 1663. After the theatre and all its sets, scenery, and costumes were destroyed by fire in 1672, the company rebuilt the theatre in 1674. The restoration playgoer wanted the evening well-filled with music.5 Even before the play began, the audience would hear two pairs of pieces of The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928); Allardyce Nicoll, Restoration Drama, 1660–1700, vol. 1 of A History of English Drama 1660–1900, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952–9). See also, Robert D. Hume, ed., The London Theatre World, 1660–1800 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980); and Susan J. Owen, ed., A Companion to Restoration Drama (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) [= Blackwell Companion]; and Andrew R. Walkling, English Dramatick Opera, 1661–1706 (London: Routledge, 2019), 38–116, and Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 1656–1688 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). 3

Betterton at Dorset Garden: Judith Milhous, Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 1695–1708 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979). On the intended use of the theatre, John R. Spring, ‘The Dorset Garden Theatre: Playhouse or Opera House?’, Theatre Notebook, vol. 34, no. 2 (1980), 60–9; Robert D. Hume, ‘The Nature of the Dorset Garden Theatre’, Theatre Notebook, 36, no. 3 (1982), 99–109.

4

Milhous, Thomas Betterton, 29; Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court, 1540–1690 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 94.

5

On English music for the theatre, including precedents for English dramatic opera, see principally: Curtis Price, Music in the Restoration Theatre: With a Catalogue of Instrumental Music in the Play, 1665–1713 ([Ann Arbor, Mich.]: UMI Research Press, 1979); Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, and Walkling, English Dramatick Opera. See also: John Caldwell, The Oxford History of English Music, vol. 1, From the Beginnings to c. 1715 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 555–87; Margaret Laurie, ‘Music for the Stage II’, pp. 306–40 in Music in Britain: The Seventeenth Century, ed. Ian Spink (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); Todd Gilman, ‘London Theatre Music, 1600–1719’, pp. 243–73 in Companion to Restoration Drama, ed. Owen; Robert E. Moore, Henry Purcell and the Restoration Theatre (London: Heinemann, 1961), 1–37 [chapter 1: background]; Richard Luckett, ‘Music’, pp. 258–83 in The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription, eds Robert Latham and William Matthews, vol. 10, Companion (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1983); Eric Walter White, A History of English Opera (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), 90–136 [on Locke and Purcell]; Edward Dent, Foundations of English Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), 125–48; Kathryn Lowerre, Music and Musicians on the London Stage, 1695–1705 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); James A. Winn, ‘Theatrical Culture 2: Theatre and Music’, pp. 104–19 in The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1650–1740, ed. Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998);



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instrumental music called the first and second music (each pair containing contrasting sections, usually dance forms). After the spoken prologue announcing the play, an overture (often in the French style) or ‘curtain tune’ was performed. After each of the first four acts was an act tune. In time, each play would have a purpose-composed suite of act music by one of Britain’s leading composers. A full suite of act music should have nine movements. Instrumental music for plays became a mainstay of English published instrumental music.6 As early as 1664, one French traveller commented on how the English came to the theatre early, for the sake of the music.7 The English taste was for plays with liberal amounts of musical embellishment. In addition to the act music, into the action of the five-act play, playwrights provided occasions for incidental songs and instrumental music (mostly for dancing): a servant was invited to sing a favourite song; songs and dances accompanied a wedding; songs were provided for sailors, drunkards, witches, spirits, and mad characters; music was called to relieve a character’s melancholy; young men enlisted musicians to woo a lady; or a gentleman called for music to entertain a company. On a larger, more spectacular scale, choruses of priests and temple assistants added solemnity to religious ceremonies and incantations; soldiers and crowds formed triumphal processions; and supernatural figures (especially favoured were witches) appeared in marvellous scenes. Often an act or the play itself ended with a musical entertainment (or masque) – a long, self-contained section of solo or ensemble songs, choruses, dances, and instrumental music, often including machinery – presented for the nobles and major characters of the narrative, as well as entertainment for the audience. As if this were not enough music, the managers could introduce songs between acts (entr’actes) or other theatrical entertainments after the play. Most such songs, incidental music, and entertainments were not essential to the forward movement of the narrative of the play proper, although music and songs could help elaborate ceremonies, define local colour or character, and heighten stage action. The main speaking characters of the play usually listen to, but do not participate in, the incidental music. Some exceptional actors and actresses, such as Anne Bracegirdle, were noted for their singing ability. Songs from plays were mainstays of English music publishing.8



Winn, ‘Heroic Song: A Proposal for a Revised History of English Theatre and Opera, 1656–1711’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 30 (1996–7), 113–37. For a corrective to the view that the addition of theatrical songs into plays marked a degeneration (and a demonstration of their role and function), Dianne Dugaw, ‘“Critical Instants”: Theatre Songs in the Age of Dryden and Purcell’, EighteenthCentury Studies, 23 (1989–90), 157–81.

6

Instrumental suites are catalogued in Price, Music in the Restoration Theatre.

7

Samuel de Sorbière, Relation d’un voyage en Angleterre, où sont touchées plusiers choses, qui regardent l’estat des sciences, et de la religion, et autres (Paris, 1664), 167.

8

See the bibliography of seventeenth-century printed song books in Cyrus L. Day and Eleonore B. Murrie, English Song-Books 1651–1702 (London: Bibliographical Society,

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When the songs, incidental music, and the musical entertainments for a play were extensive and full of multimedia spectacle, the English might – but quite inconsistently – call the work an ‘opera’. (See appendix 1 for list of principal examples of the variety of such operatic works.) Such a play given ‘operatic treatment’ is now commonly called a dramatic opera (John Dryden) or less commonly semiopera (Roger North) to distinguish it from an all-sung drama in the sense established by seventeenth-century French and Italian practice: a work consisting of a complete dramatic plot presented throughout by speechlike recitative for dialogue with sung arioso or arias for moments of heightened emotional expression or reflection.9 Many plays given operatic treatment were revivals of old plays, where the new librettist’s main task was to pare down the spoken play proper – the ‘just Drama’ of John Dryden or ‘correct play’ of Peter Motteux – to make room for the added incidental music, musical entertainments, or masques.10 (Further discussion of dramatic opera is given below.) Self-contained musical entertainments that were long and complex enough, included scenic effects and machinery, and had sufficient thematic or allegorical unity might be called ‘masques’ – such as Prospero’s Masque of Juno with singing by Iris, Ceres, and Juno conjured for Ferdinand and Miranda in the last act of Shakespeare’s Tempest. They may have been called ‘masques’ because they resemble the entries of the Jacobean-Caroline court masque.11 Usually 1940); manuscript works are included in Ian Spink, English Song: Dowland to Purcell (1974; with updated bibliography, New York: Taplinger, 1984), 261–73. 9

Dryden used the term ‘dramatic opera’ for his King Arthur. Roger North frequently used the term ‘semiopera’ for Betterton’s works: ‘[He] contrived a sort of plays, which were called Operas but had bin more properly called Semioperas, for they consisted of half Musick, and half Drama’; Roger North on Music, Being a Selection from His Essays Written during the Years c. 1695–1728, ed. John Wilson (London: Novello, 1959), 353. Also, North, The Musical Grammarian, 1728, eds Mary Chan and Jamie C. Kassler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 266–7; North, Roger North’s Cursory Notes of Musick (c. 1698–c. 1703): A Physical, Psychological and Critical Theory, eds Chan and Kassler (Kensington, New South Wales: Unisearch, 1986), 230–1. The term suggests North saw opera as all-sung and plays with music only ‘partly’ in the mode of opera.

10

For ‘just Drama’, see John Dryden, ‘Of Heroique Playes. An Essay’, in The Works of John Dryden, vol. 11, Plays: The Conquest of Granada, Marriage a-la-Mode, the Assignation (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1978), 9. For ‘correct play’, see Peter Motteux, The Island Princess (1699), Preface. One later writer succinctly describes the nature of the dramatic opera: ‘After the Restoration, we had at different Times several Entertainments, which were then stiled Dramatic Operas; and were, indeed, regular Stage-Plays, larded with Pieces of occasional Music, Vocal and Instrumental, proper to the Fable’; Joseph Dorman, The Curiosity: or Gentleman and Lady’s Library (1739), 10.

11

What sets the Restoration ‘theatre masque’ apart from the Jacobean-Caroline court masque is that it has no spoken poetry or declamation; there is no introductory antimasque episode of comic, antic, or grotesque characters that was swept aside with the first entry of the masquers; there are no masked characters, actors, or dancers;

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based on a theme suitable for a wedding, the masque may occasionally present a short narrative from a classic fable, as in the ‘Mask of Orpheus’ by Matthew Locke in The Empress of Morocco (1673). In time, such theatre masques came to be presented as independent, stand-alone entertainments or interludes (see appendix 2), culminating in William Congreve’s Judgment of Paris (1701) or John Dennis’s Orpheus and Euridicé (1707).

❧  Development of Dramatic Opera With the resources of Dorset Garden, Betterton indulged his love of multimedia spectacles by producing revivals of old plays embellished with music, dance, moveable scenes, and flying machines. These productions set the pattern for the English taste for giving plays ‘operatic’ treatment. Of these early productions, Roger North later remarked, ‘It had bin strange if they [playwrights and managers] had not observed this promiscuous tendency to musick [on the part of the public], and not have taken it into their scenes and profited by it’ and to relieve ‘the gentlemen of the theatre’ from sitting bored during a tedious play.12 The productions mounted there by Betterton between 1673 and 1692 Judith Milhous calls the ‘Dorset Garden spectaculars’.13 Betterton began by mounting expanded versions of Macbeth (1673), the Empress of Morocco (1673), and the Tempest (1674).14 Shakespeare’s original Macbeth had only minimal music for witches: but beginning already in 1610, producers could

and usually no participation of the courtiers in the audience in the final dances (revels). Adopting the term ‘theatre masque’ from Gilman, ‘London Theatre Music’, 251, who distinguishes it from the court masque (pp. 251–6); they can be roughly distinguished between those interpolated into a play, and independent free-standing entities (often as afterpieces). On the confusion in terminology, Eugene Haun, But Hark! More Harmony; the Libretti of Restoration Opera in English (Ypsilanti, Mich.: Eastern Michigan University Press, 1971), 132–3. Michael Burden proposes the term ‘independent masque’. Andrew Walkling recognises a form of ‘interrupted masque’ in Empress of Morroco, Dido and Aeneas, and King Arthur, see ‘The Apotheosis of Absolutism and the Interrupted Masque: Theatre, Music, and Monarchy in Restoration England’, pp. 193–231 in Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II, eds Julia M. Alexander and Catharine MacLeod (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007). 12

Roger North on Music, ed. Wilson, 306, 353 (referring to the 1690s); cf. North, The Musical Grammarian, eds Chan and Kassler, 266.

13

Milhous, Thomas Betterton, 43. Milhous distinguishes them by ‘the number of sets required and their elaborateness; the number people called for, both performer and support personnel; the amount of money invested; and the length of time needed to prepare such a show’ (45). On the works of the period 1673–5, Walkling, English Dramatick Opera, 117–55.

14

On adaptions of Shakespeare: Christopher Spencer, ed., Five Restoration Adaptions of Shakespeare (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1963).

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not resist adding more Hecate scenes with witches.15 William Davenant’s revivals of Macbeth beginning in 1663 added a third scene with song, dance, and flying witches in the second act. Betterton’s revival on 18 February 1673 was especially spectacular, according to the eyewitness, the prompter John Downes: ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth, … being drest in all it’s Finery, as new Cloth’s, new Scenes, Machines, as flyings for the Witches; with all the Singing and Dancing in it: … being in the nature of an Opera, it Recompens’d double the Expense: it proves still a lasting Play’.16 The Hecate scenes with their songs, thunder, dances, flying and vanishing witches, carrying away of Hecate, and the sinking cave greatly delighted Samuel Pepys.17 The threat that spectacle posed to drama and actors’ livelihood for the King’s Company was voiced in an epilogue to The Ordinary, from the stage of Lincoln’s Inn Fields (the company’s temporary house) within several months of the new production – with the common insult to the audience for liking such empty entertainment that appeals to the eye: Now empty shows must want of sense supply, Angels shall dance, and Macbeths Witches fly: You shall have storms, thunder & lightning too And Conjurers raise spirits to your view: … Damn’d Plays shall be adorn’d with mighty Scenes And Fustian shall be spoke in huge Machines.18

15

Roger Fiske, ‘The “Macbeth” Music’, Music and Letters, 45 (1964), 114–25; Robert E. Moore, ‘The Music in Macbeth’, Musical Quarterly, 47 (1961), 22–40; and Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 128–36. Betterton at first likely retained earlier songs written for Thomas Middleton’s The Witch (ca. 1613) by Robert Johnson. For the settings of the music, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, ed., Music for ‘Macbeth’, Recent Researches in Music of the Baroque Era, 133 (Middleton, Wisc.: A-R Editions, 2004).

16

John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus (1708), eds Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1987), 71–2.

17

Scenes and machinery are described in Macbeth, a Tragedy. With all the Alterations, Amendments, Additions, and New Songs (1674). Pepys records frequent attendance at Macbeth; see Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription, eds Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1976–83), especially entries for 28 December 1666 (‘a most excellent play for variety’; 7:423); 7 January 1667 (‘a most excellent play … especially in divertissement’; 8:7); 19 April 1667 (‘one of the best plays for a stage, and variety of dancing and music, that ever I saw’; 8: 171); 16 October 1667 (8:482); 6 November 1667 (8:521); 12 August 1668 (saw ‘to our great content’; 9:278); 21 December 1668 (9:398); and 15 January 1669 (9:416). Amanda Eubanks Winkler, ‘Society and Disorder’,” chapter 7 in The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell, ed. Rebecca Herissone (London: Taylor and Francis, 2012), (ebook edition), pp. 27–33, offers a survey of scholarship; and Winkler, O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: Music for Witches, the Melancholic, and the Mad on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2006).

18

Epilogue to a revival of The Ordinary, by William Cartwright (?April 1673), in A Collection of Poems. Written upon Several Occasions by Several Persons (1673), 167.

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The Empress of Morocco (3 July 1673), a heroic tragedy by Elkanna Settle produced at Dorset Garden, had two long musical episodes.19 Act II has a dance by Moors around a palm tree, with a closing song by a priest. Integrated into the plot in Act IV as an entertainment before the court is the ‘Mask of Orpheus’ by Matthew Locke, featuring Orpheus, Pluto, Proserpine, and attendants. Recalling the classic Jacobean-Stuart court masque, it includes a brief participation by one of the attending courtiers as Euridyce. Sung in declamatory style, Locke’s masque notably attempts an expression of the anguish of Orpheus. Shakespeare’s Tempest was first revived by the Duke’s Company on 7 November 1667 (pub. 1670) in a version by Davenant and Dryden.20 Their adaptation was given operatic treatment in Thomas Shadwell’s revival at Dorset Garden on 30 April 1674, ‘made into an Opera’, according to Downes, ‘having all New in it; as Scenes [and] Machines … perform’d in it so Admirably well, that not any succeeding Opera got more Money’.21 With new music by Locke, Giovanni Baptista Draghi, Pelham Humfrey, Pietro Reggio, and others, it is often taken to mark the first fully developed dramatic opera. Shakespeare originally provided incidental songs for Ariel and the drunken Stephano, dance music for the Shapes, solemn music for those charmed by Prospero, and most notably Prospero’s Masque of Juno. Shadwell added songs for new characters and a Dance of Fantastic Spirits. He dropped Prospero’s masque and instead added two others: a Masque of the Devils conjured by Prospero to frighten the shipwrecked nobles (II.iv), and – to makes amends for their rough treatment – for the entertainment of the nobles and sailors, a Masque of Neptune, featuring Neptune, Amphitrite, Aeolus, and other sea gods with their choruses and dances. With new scenes, machines, and flying sets and mounted at relatively low cost, the Tempest made the company more money than any other production, recalled Downes, and according to Milhous and Hume, was likely the most popular work on the London stage before the Beggar’s Opera (1728).22 A revival in 1695 of the Tempest (now no longer attributed to Henry Purcell) received a new, expanded musical setting, now more broadly in the Italian style.23

19

Modern musical edition: Matthew Locke, Dramatic Music, ed. Michael Tilmouth, Musica Britannica, 51 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1986), 1–16.

20

William Barclay Squire, ‘The Music of Shadwell’s “Tempest”’, Musical Quarterly, 7 (1921), 565–78; and Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 136–44. Modern musical edition Locke, Dramatic Music, ed. Tilmouth, 17–86.

21

Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, eds Milhous and Hume, 73–4. On the 1674 staging of the Tempest, Jocelyn Powell, Restoration Theatre Production (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 62–83.

22

Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, eds Milhous and Hume, 74 n218.

23

Of this 1695 Tempest, it is now agreed that only one song in the 1695 revival is by Henry Purcell; see Margaret Laurie, ‘Did Purcell Set The Tempest?’ Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 90 (1963–4), 43–57. Laurie suggests John Weldon as the likely composer.

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The King’s Company opened its new theatre on 26 March 1674 with a revival of John Fletcher’s The Beggar’s Bush. In a prologue Dryden apologised for their ‘Plain Built’ theatre’s ‘mean ungilded Stage’ and lack of all the enticements needed to attract audiences. Dryden is also certainly glancing at the ‘famisht’ French musicians, dancers, and singers who no doubt were conspicuous in London preparing for the opening four days later on 30 March 1674 of the French opera Ariane, ou le Mariage de Bacchus (see below): ’Twere Folly now a stately Pile [Dorset Garden] to raise, To build a Play-House while You throw down Plays, Whilst Scenes, Machines, and empty Opera’s reign, And for the Pencil [paint brush] You the Pen disdain. While Troops of famisht Frenchmen hither drive, And laugh at those upon whose Alms they live: Old English Authors vanish, and give place To these new Conqu’rors of the Norman Race.24

Likely intended to compete with Ariane produced the previous year at Drury Lane (see below) was Psyche, Shadwell’s play embellished with music produced at Dorset Garden on 27 February 1675. Modelled on the comédie en ballet of that name by Moliere and Lully (1671), probably seen by Betterton in Paris, it was more typical of the English idea of an ‘operatic’ entertainment. With music by Matthew Locke and Giovanni Baptista Draghi, and ornaments and decorations by Betterton, the work’s ‘great Design was to entertain the Town with variety of Musick, curious Dancing, splendid Scenes and Machines’ (Preface).25 Locke provided the earliest use of ‘opera’ in the title of such a musically elaborated play when he published his music as The English Opera; or the Vocal Musick in Psyche (1675). He noted he borrowed the term ‘opera’ from the way Italians differentiate works performed in music with ‘splendid Scenes and Machines’ from extempore, spoken comedies.26 Locke noted Shadwell prudently did not strictly follow the Italian model in his tragedy (that is, make it all-sung) and 24

John Dryden, ‘A Prologue Spoken at the Opening of the New House, Mar. 26. 1674’, in Miscellany Poems. … By the most Eminent Hands (1684), 288.

25

Music for Psyche: Matthew Locke, The English Opera; or, The Vocal Music in Psyche … To which Is Adjoined the Instrumental Musick in the Tempest (1675). Locke did not include Draghi’s act music and dances. Modern musical edition: Locke, Dramatic Music, ed. Tilmouth, 87–229. See also: Murray Lefkowitz, ‘Shadwell and Locke’s Psyche: The French Connection’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 106 (1979–80), 42–55; White, History of English Opera, 90–136; Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 298–303, 345–55; Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 105–21; Moore, Purcell and the Restoration Theatre, 29–31; and Curtis A. Price, Henry Purcell and the London Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 296–7. On French influence on English theatre, Sandra Tuppen, ‘Equal with the Best Abroad: French Influence on English Theatre Music, 1660–1685’, 2 vols (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wales, 1997).

26

Locke’s definition shows that for the English, ‘opera’ meant a work with prominent scenes, sets, machinery, and marvellous effects.

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mixed the music with the ‘interlocutions, as more proper to our Genius’ (Preface). Locke prided himself on introducing music ranging from ballad to air, including counterpoint, recitative, fugue, canon, and ‘Chromatick Musick’ as never before seen at court or theatre (Preface). In addition to incidental songs, choruses, and dances, Shadwell provided for several major musical sections that alternate with scenes of spoken dialogue and rival in length the spoken play. Act I opens with an entertainment for Psyche by poor swains led by Pan, who sings in recitative; this is followed by a masque for four Sylvans and four Dryads, presenting offerings to Psyche; then follows a symphony and song for the descent of Venus. A Song of Procession (with Dance and Chorus of Priests) at the Temple of Apollo Delphicus opens Act II, followed by a dialogue of despairing lovers. Act III opens at the Palace of Cupid with song, chorus, and dance for Cyclops and Vulcan as they forge large vases of silver; then follows a Triumphal Procession (with song and dance) of Priests of Mars preparing for the meeting of Mars and Venus in the air (with song for Mars and Venus). Act IV opens with the entertainment Cupid plans to present for Psyche, followed by the Song of the River God and Nymphs to dissuade Psyche from drowning herself. Act V opens in Hell with the song of Furies and Devils and a dialogue between Pluto and Proserpine with attendants. The opera concludes at the Palace of Jupiter. After songs of shepherds is the descent of Apollo and gods, a song by Elizian Lovers, a symphony for the descent of Jupiter, Cupid, and Psyche, with machines and songs. The whole ends with a Grand Chorus to celebrate Cupid and Psyche. In one respect Psyche violates what will be a convention of dramatic opera: the roles of Venus, Apollo, and Chief Priest both sing and act. Psyche was followed at Dorset Garden by another dramatic opera, Circe (May 1677), produced by Charles Davenant with music by John Bannister.27 The King’s Company tried (with small success) to compete with the more prosperous and powerful Duke’s Company with its plays given operatic treatment. It mocked their plays in travesty productions such as The Empress of Morocco. A Farce (1673), The Mock-Tempest (1674), and Psyche Debauch’d (1675). Dryden’s The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man (1674), designed as a dramatic opera that combines a rimed version of Paradise Lost with sung interludes by singers who were not the play’s principal actors, was probably intended for the King’s Company but shelved because of the expensive scenes and machines required for it.28 These plays given operatic treatment were mounted by commercial theatre managers, who apparently did not feel audiences were ready for an all-sung

27

See Walkling, English Dramatick Opera, 189–93. The work had five acts, each with a scenic tableau.

28

Haun, But Hark! More Harmony, 119–25; on Dryden’s State of Innocence, James Winn, ‘When Beauty Fires the Blood’: Love and the Arts in the Age of Dryden (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 210–30.

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musical-theatrical work.29 The impetus for opera in its continental sense was the result of support and partnership from the court of Charles II.

Opera from the Court of Charles II Opera, the era’s most prestigious musical-dramatic form, was one of the ways courts outwardly expressed their majesty, power, and cultural ambitions. Charles II was intent on establishing the prestige of his court in emulation of continental models, but especially the court of Louis XIV, which he had known during his exile.30 But efforts by his court and theatre managers at producing opera on the continental model were sporadic, varied, and established no lasting presence or native form. In the first year of his reign, Charles granted Giulio Gentileschi a license on 22 October 1660 to establish a house for an Italian opera in London. But nothing came of the venture. For reasons and purpose unclear, about that time, a full manuscript score of Francesco Cavalli’s Italian opera L’Erismene, with underlain text translated into English, was prepared in or brought to England (in about 1656–60), but no trace of a performance exists.31 In early August 1664, Thomas Killigrew, who had been abroad with Charles and travelled in France and Italy, had in mind to set up opera in London, for he told Pepys of his plans to build a theatre at Moorfields, as a ‘nursery’ for young actors and to serve as an opera house. Killigrew expected to put on four operas per year, each to run for six weeks. Pepys believed ‘we shall have the best Scenes and Machines, the best Musique, and everything as Magnificent as is in Christendome; and to that end [he] hath sent for voices and painters and other persons from Italy’.32 Pepys was to be disappointed, for nothing came of this scheme of Killigrew’s either. But the musicians recruited by Killigrew were absorbed into the Chapel Royal of Queen Catherine Braganza by 1666, which

29

On theatre works with music in the ‘fallow’ period during reign of Charles, Walkling, English Dramatic Opera, 209–32.

30

On opera under Charles: Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 359–88; Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, passim; White, History of English Opera, 102–4; and Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 172–6. Bryan White, ‘Restoration Opera and the Failure of Patronage’, pp. 289–309 in From Republic to Restoration: Legacies and Departures, ed. Janet Clare (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), highlights the role of court patronage in the production of all-sung opera.

31

On the opera’s background, see the essays in the edition of the Francesco Cavalli opera, L’Erismena. Dramma per music by Aurelio Aureli (Venice 1655/56), ed. Michael Burden (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2018). The score possibly was obtained (or commissioned) by the merchant Robert Bargrave (1628–60) (see pp. xlvii–lii). See also David Stuart and Greg Skidmore, ‘Cavalli’s “Erismena’”, Early Music, 38 (2010), 482–3; and White, History of English Opera, 54–5, with evidence for date of 1673.

32

Pepys, Diary, 2 August 1664, 5:230.

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raised the musical quality of the Chapel establishment and made it the best place to hear the latest in continental sacred music by its native exponents.33 A year later, at a music meeting at Lord Brouncker’s on 12 February 1667, Killigrew confided another plan to Pepys: to produce Italian operas in the two London theatres.34 At the meeting, Pepys met Draghi, who had recently entered the service of the Queen, who revealed to him he had composed an opera. Draghi sang for Pepys ‘a play in Italian for the Opera’ ‘all in the Recitativo’ from his opera-in-progress for Killigrew.35 Killigrew’s opera plans must have been in some state of forwardness, for as many as nine Italian musicians were now resident in London with salaries of £200 per annum.36 But ultimately, none of Killigrew’s plans brought forth an opera. It required more direct court subsidy and partnership to bring opera to London. For the first seventeen years of his reign, Charles was satisfied with various court entertainments, such as balls, masques, and plays with music.37 A step towards a resident opera company was the arrival of the Frenchman Robert Cambert, along with a group of singers and instrumentalists. He was sent over by Louis XIV in August or September 1673 as maître de la musique to the household of the King’s mistress the Duchess of Portsmouth.38 His first production was the Ballet et musique (January–February 1674), a French pastoral with six danced entries. Sometime in early 1674, Cambert and Louis Grabu, possibly with Killigrew’s involvement, formed a Royal Academy of Music for the production of opera.39 Before any production from the Royal Academy is known, on 5 January 1674, the usually accurate and meticulous John Evelyn recorded, ‘I saw an Italian Opera in musique, the first that had been in England of this

33

Peter Leech, ‘Musicians in the Catholic Chapel of Catherine of Braganza, 1662–92’, Early Music, 29 (2001), 570–87.

34

Thomas Killigrew, then manager of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, had encountered music in various parts of Italy. On the meeting: Pepys, Diary, 12 February 1667, 8:54–6.

35

Pepys, Diary, 12 February 1667; 8:55.

36

Magaret Mabbett, ‘Italian Musicians in Restoration England (1660–90)’, Music and Letters, 67 (1986), 237–47.

37

Eleanore Boswell, The Restoration Court Stage (1660–1702) with a Particular Account of the Production of ‘Calisto’ (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1932); Walkling, Masque and Opera in England.

38

John Buttrey, ‘New Light on Robert Cambert in London, and His ballet et musique’, Early Music, 23 (1995), 198–220.

39

Pierre Danchin, ‘The Foundation of the Royal Academy of Music in 1674 and Pierre Perrin’s Ariane’, Theatre Survey, 25 (1984), 53–67; Christina Bashford, ‘Perrin and Cambert’s “Ariane, ou le Mariage de Bacchus” Re-Examined’, Music and Letters, 72 (1991), 1–26; Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 343–4; Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 219–63.

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kind’.40 No record exists of any such Italian opera. But since Evelyn had heard opera in Italy, he surely knew what he was hearing; he may have seen an unrecorded opera sung in Italian or may just have seen a score of one. But if by ‘Italian’ Evelyn meant ‘all sung’ (and not specifying the language), he could have seen the Ballet et musique or heard a rehearsal or performance of the forthcoming Royal Academy’s French opera Ariane, ou le mariage de Bacchus by Pierre Perrin and Cambert, which ran 30 March through 23 April 1674 at Drury Lane to celebrate the recent marriage of James, Duke of York, and his second wife, Maria Beatrice d’Este of Modena. Another French opera followed several months later, Cambert’s Pomone, originally produced in Paris in 1671 but adapted for performance at Drury Lane theatre in April 1674.41 After this, the Royal Academy drops from sight. To further Charles’s operatic aspirations, Nicholas Staggins was ordered sworn as Master of the Music on 15 August 1674, replacing Grabu.42 His first effort was his music for John Crowne’s court masque Calisto; or, the Chaste Nymph, rehearsed and presented at Court (Whitehall) in December 1674– February 1675.43 A spoken play on a mythological subject, Calisto had a sung allegorical prologue and entries of singing and dancing by pastoral characters after each act. Princesses Anne and Mary and other young women of the court took spoken parts and performed in some dances, which were mostly taken by professional dancers.44 Staggins was sent to France and Italy for a year in February 1676, presumably to absorb the operatic practices there.45 The King’s interest turned again to opera in 1683 along with the improvement of his political and financial situation after resolution of the Rye House Plot. In that year, Staggins produced the small-scale, all-sung Venus and Adonis,46 a 40

John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn. Now Printed in Full from the Manuscripts, E. S. de Beer, ed., 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 5 January 1674, 4:30.

41

Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 281, seems to doubt Pomone was performed and gives no discussion of the work.

42

Andrew Ashbee, David Lasocki, Peter Holman, and Fiona Kisby, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485–1714, 2 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 2:1041.

43

On Calisto: Boswell, Restoration Court Stage, 177–227; White, History of English Opera, 99–101; Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 366–74; Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 88–111; and Walkling, ‘Masque and Politics at the Restoration Court: John Crowe’s Calisto’, Early Music, 24 (1996), 27–62.

44

On the masque and participation of royal princesses, James A. Winn, Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1–14; Winn, ‘When Beauty Fires the Blood’, 236–44.

45

Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 298–303; Ashbee et al., Biographical Dictionary, 2:1041.

46

Modern musical edition: John Blow, Venus and Adonis, ed. Bruce Wood, Purcell Society Edition Companion Series 2 (London: Stainer and Bell, 2008), supplanting earlier Purcell Society Edition. On the newly discovered libretto, Richard Luckett, ‘A New Source for “Venus and Adonis”’, Musical Times, 130 (1989), 76–9. See also:

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collaboration with the court musician John Blow, with libretto now attributed to Anne Finch (née Kingsmill),47 performed before the King at Whitehall or Windsor in early 1683 and later revived at Josias Priest’s Chelsea boarding school for girls on 17 April 1684.48 Venus and Adonis presents the fable in a series of episodes. The work consists of a sung prologue and three acts (including traditional act music). Each act develops (in the model of an entry of a masque) an event of the fable presented in song (recitative, arioso, and aria), dance, and chorus: the huntsmen entice Adonis to go hunting, ultimately with Venus’s consent; in the middle scene, Venus instructs Cupid in the art of amatory marksmanship; and the final scene is the death of Adonis after his return from the hunt, followed by Venus’s lament. The whole ends with a Grand Dance. The court venue and large number of songs, chorus, and dancing and minimal long-range narrative link Venus and Adonis with the Jacobean-Caroline masque tradition as heavily influenced by French models.49 The circumstances for the composition and first performance of Nahum Tate and Henry Purcell’s all-sung Dido and Aeneas are still uncertain largely due to sparse documentation and the incomplete state of the surviving score.50 Quite Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 374–5; White, History of English Opera, 102–4; Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 172–6; Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 131–5; and Peter Holman, Henry Purcell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 198–200. 47

Identified by James Winn in ‘“A Versifying Maid of Honour”: Anne Finch and the Libretto for Venus and Adonis’, Music and Letters, 76 (1995), 540–71. The attribution is endorsed by Andrew Pinnock, ‘The Rival Maids: Anne Killigrew, Anne Kingsmill and the Making of the Court Masque Venus and Adonis (music by John Blow)’, Early Music, 46 (2018), 631–52.

48

Bruce Wood has provided dating and identification of two possible performance locations in Blow, Venus and Adonis, ed. Wood, xi–xiv.

49

Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 131–5, points to French influences in Venus and Adonis.

50

Critical edition of the libretto: Irena Cholij, ‘Dido and Aeneas with The Loves of Dido and Aeneas in Measure for Measure’, pp. 95–169 in Henry Purcell’s Operas: The Complete Texts, ed. Michael Burden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Modern musical editions: Henry Purcell, Dido and Aeneas, ed. Dennis Arundell, rev. ed. Margaret Laurie, Purcell Society Edition 3 (Sevenoaks, Kent: Novello, 1979). This Purcell Society Edition in reprinted in Henry Purcell, Dido and Aeneas: An Opera, ed. Curtis Price, Norton Critical Scores (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), which includes essays on historical background and selected essays on criticism and analysis. Also editions by Ellen Harris, Dido and Aeneas (London: Eulenburg, 1987). Some aspects of past discussions of Dido and Aeneas are now rendered obsolete by using the questionable date of 1689 for the premiere at Josias Priest’s girls’ school. Principal discussions include: White, History of English Opera, 111–13; Price, Henry Purcell, 225–34; Ellen Harris, Henry Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas’, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Moore, Purcell and the Restoration Theatre, 38–69; Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 176–96; Holman, Henry Purcell, 158–9, 194–201;





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possibly it also had court origins, with a presentation before the King in May 1683 or May 1684 proposed.51 The best that can now be said confidently is there was a performance sometime before July 1688 (possibly on 1 December 1687) at Priest’s boarding school.52 Dido and Aeneas is modelled on Venus and Adonis, which Purcell certainly knew, since it was composed by his teacher and fellow Gentleman of the Chapel Royal John Blow. Like Venus and Adonis, its plot is constructed from episodes consisting of songs, dances, and choruses and has minimal narrative development, again linking it to the entries of the masque tradition. In three acts, each scene develops with recitative, arioso, song, choruses, and dance an episode in Aeneas’s brief stay in Carthage: Dido’s anguish and entrance of Aeneas; the plotting of the Sorceress and enchantresses in the cave; Dido and Aeneas in a grove (rain forces Dido’s exit); the Sorceress (in guise of Mercury) commands Aeneas’s departure; the Sorceress and enchantresses delight in the sailors’ preparing to depart; the farewells of Dido and Aeneas; and Dido’s lament with a closing chorus of cupids. Many allegories have been proposed for Dido and Aeneas; with its date uncertain (and certainly not 1689) to provide its political context, the allegories themselves are only speculation.53 There has been disagreement about the proper genres of Venus and Adonis and Dido and Aeneas – masque, court masque, theatre masque, opera, or chamber opera. The best approach is to follow Andrew Walkling, who wisely proposes that categorization is ultimately a futile undertaking. Taking into account their musical elements, form, and performing forces and venue as



Bruce Wood, Purcell: An Extraordinary Life (London: ABRSM, 2009), 81–2; and Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 136–9. A survey of recent interpretations dealing with gender/sexuality in Dido and Aeneas is given in Winkler, ‘Society and Disorder’, 11–13, 17–20.

51

On the possible court origins and performances of Dido and Aeneas: Andrew Pinnock, ‘Deus ex machina: A Royal Witness to the Court Origin of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas’, Early Music, 40 (2012), 265–78; and Pinnock, ‘Which Genial Day? More on the Court Origin of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, with a Shortlist of Dates for Possible Performance before King Charles II’, Early Music, 43 (2015), 199–212.

52

For dating relying on Bryan White, ‘Letter from Aleppo: Dating the Chelsea School Performance of Dido and Aeneas’, Early Music, 39 (2009), 417–28. The history of the efforts at dating (which is linked to allegorical interpretations) is surveyed in Andrew Walkling, ‘Politics, Occasions and Texts’, chapter 6 in Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell (ebook edition, pp. 22–8); and Ellen Harris, Henry Purcell’s ‘Dido and Aeneas’, 2nd ed., 30–52; Harris seems to leave 1684, 1687, and 1689 as possible first performances.

53

For summary of proposed allegories for Dido and Aeneas (relying on the doubtful date of 1689), Harris, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, 2nd ed., 34–44; and Walkling, ‘Politics, Occasions and Texts’. On the questionable enterprise of such interpretations in general, see Robert D. Hume, ‘The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 10 (1998), 15–43.

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important criteria, Walkling proposes considering each as an experimental, sui generis work, whose impact on a native English opera tradition is uncertain.54 Sometime before April 1683, Blow and Staggins, perhaps buoyed with the completion of Venus and Adonis, petitioned Charles ‘for the creating an Academy or Opera of Musick, & performing or causing to be performed therein their Musicall compositions’.55 Nothing is known of the Lord Chamberlain’s response to the petition. But the court took some initiative, for in mid-August 1683, it was reported ‘The Managers of ye Kings Theatre intend wth in short time to p[er]forme an Opera in like manner of yt of ffrance’.56 The project had royal support, for Betterton was sent to Paris in August to ‘fetch yt designe’ and negotiate ‘with some persons capable of representing on [sic] opera in England’, to include ‘comedians’ and ‘the Italian players’, and possibly Lully’s opera company.57 In the event, Betterton’s mission to import a French opera failed. But Betterton made contact with Grabu, now in France, and ‘did treat with Monsr Grabu’ ‘to endeavour to represent something at least like an Opera in English for his Majestyes diversion’.58 Betterton did return with Grabu, and the result was the most ambitious English-language operatic effort of the King’s reign,

54

See Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 292–4. Both were originally performed privately, and Dido and Aeneas in the public theatre only when divided into four acts as masques in Measure for Measure (1700). Each work has a unique formal pattern of recitative, arioso, ayre, chorus, and dance. Performance at court or privately differentiates them from public opera but links them to the court masque tradition, as does concentration of dances and choruses (reflecting French influence); but unlike the court masque, each is an all-sung narrative without the characteristic elements of the court masque. Importantly, unlike other court productions, both use casts of English singers; and unlike the usual English expectation for an opera, both lack spectacular stage effects and machinery.

55

Quoting petition in Ashbee et al., Biographical Dictionary, 2:1041; see also Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 130–1.

56

Newdigate newsletter (14 August 1683), at Folger Shakespeare Library, l.c. 1417; also printed in John H. Wilson, ‘Theatre Notes from the Newdigate Newsletters’, Theatre Notebook, 15 (Spring 1961), 79–84 (at p. 82).

57

Letter from Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, English ambassador to France, Paris, 25 August 1683, to the Earl of Sunderland; Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Seventh Report. Part 1. Report and Appendix (London: Her Majesties’ Stationary Company, 1879), 288.

58

Letter from Viscount Preston, Paris, 22 September 1683, to the Duke of York; as quoted in Blow, Venus and Adonis, ed. Wood, p. xiv, and Grabu, Albion and Albanius, ed. White, xii (see note 59). Also printed in Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Seventh Report. Part 1. Report and Appendix, 290. As the letter makes clear, Grabu’s return to England was contingent upon him gaining royal protection for a former ‘poor servant of his Majesty’s’. Further on Grabu, see Andrew Walkling, ‘Ups and Downs of Louis Grabu’, Royal Musical Association. Research Chronicle, 48 (2017), 1–64.

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John Dryden’s all-sung Albion and Albanius (1685; music pub. 1687) with music by Grabu.59 Albion and Albanius was originally to be the sung prologue to Dryden’s play King Arthur. At a cost of some £4,000, it must have been part of a court-subsidised, royalist campaign to celebrate the monarchy and Charles’s providential deliverance from the 1683 Rye House Plot – not a commercial venture. An allegorical prologue sung in English, with scenery and machinery, the opera’s three acts represent by means of allegorical figures the history of the Restoration and the rescue and revival of Augusta (London) from the Plot and extol the triumph of justice and order by Albion and Albanius (Charles II and his brother James) over anarchy and rebellion. For reasons not known, Dryden set aside the spoken main play King Arthur and expanded the prologue into the full-scale Albion and Albanius. Privately rehearsed before Charles in May 1684, the public presentation at Betterton’s Dorset Garden theatre was delayed due to the King’s death on 6 February 1685, and it was not publicly performed until 3 June, with last-minute revisions appropriate for the new monarch, James II. After a few performances, news of the Duke of Monmouth’s landing reached London on 13 June, which halted further productions. The lack of further performances or productions was due not so much to aesthetic failure or poor commercial reception60 as to the new King’s unwillingness to continue to honour what must have been Charles’s financial commitments to Betterton.61 But in any case, after the Glorious Revolution, a 59





60



61

Critical edition of text: John Dryden, The Works of John Dryden, vol. 15, Plays: Albion and Albanius, Don Sebastian, Amphityron, ed. Earl Miner (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1976), 1–55. The music was published as Albion and Albanius: An Opera. Or, Representation in Musick (1687). Modern musical edition: Louis Grabu, Albion and Albanius, ed. Bryan White, Purcell Society Edition Companion Series 1 (London: Stainer and Bell, 2007). See also Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 383–8; Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 160–70; and Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 295–303; and Phillip Harth, Pen for a Party: Dryden’s Tory Propaganda in Its Contexts (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 254–8. A convenient summary of the allegorical plot is provided in Paul Hammond, ‘Dryden’s Albion and Albanius: The Apotheosis of Charles II’, pp. 169–83 in The Court Masque, ed. David Lindley (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984). Edward Dent’s denunciation – a ‘monument of stupidity’ and ‘indescribably dull’ – established the conventional wisdom about the work. See Dent, Foundations of English Opera: ‘not a success’ (160), ‘failure’ (160, 165), ‘worst misfortune’ was Grabu as composer (161), ‘monument of stupidity’ (165), ‘indescribably dull’ (167). Bryan White offers a fresh perspective on the supposed weaknesses of Grabu’s setting of Dryden’s text, ‘Lost in Translation? Louis Grabu and John Dryden’s Albion and Albanius’, pp. 187–206 in Musical Exchange between Britain and Europe, 1500– 1800, ed. J. Cunningham (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020). Following here White, ‘Restoration Opera and the Failure of Patronage’, 304–5. White points out that such a production could never have been expected to be commercially viable, noting that opera could not flourish in either Italy or France without subsidy.

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revival of Albion and Albanius, a royalist work celebrating the Stuarts, would have been impossible on the London stage. The final effort at a French opera in London, Quinault and Lully’s Cadmus et Hermione (written for Paris in 1673), produced on 11 February 1686 and no doubt by an imported French troupe, seems to have made no impression.62 With Albion and Albanius and Cadmus et Hermione, the impact of court culture on opera expires.63 For two decades, the fate of Albion and Albanius, lack of patronage by the new monarchs, and poor commercial prospects seem to have chilled interest by theatre managers in sponsoring opera along continental models. In the new political climate, anti-French animus no doubt also played a role in discouraging French-style operatic works.

The United Company Devasted by the complete loss of its properties in the fire at its Bridges Street theatre in 1672, handicapped by its smaller Drury Lane theatre, suffering the defection of Dryden and Nathaniel Lee, and finally thrown into bankruptcy by failing finances, the King’s Company folded, and in 1682 London’s two theatre companies were combined in the United Company.64 Now London had a stable, well-managed, and profitable theatre company and no longer needed rival companies competing to mount lavish works to attract an audience. As the need for new music at the Chapel Royal dried up with the more austere court of William and Mary, the court composer Henry Purcell turned his energies to theatre music for the United Company (as well as writing numerous court odes).65 No doubt as part of his own enthusiasm for multimedia spectacle, Betterton encouraged Purcell to expand the music he composed for plays at the Dorset Garden theatre. Over the remainder of his short career, Purcell composed music for over forty plays.66

62

Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 304–5.

63

As noted by Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 307.

64

On the United Company, summarised in Milhous, Thomas Betterton, 31–48. Fuller histories in Hotson, Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, and Nicoll, Restoration Drama.

65

Wood, Purcell, 124–6, 132, suggests the changes in the Chapel Royal motivated this new direction of Purcell’s musical output. Roger Savage offers more complex possibilities, adding financial pressures, lack of court interest in French opera, and impetus from Betterton; see Savage, ‘The Theatre Music’, pp. 313–83 in The Purcell Companion, ed. Michael Burden (London: Faber and Faber, 1994) [with extensive bibliography], at pp. 318–23.

66

On Purcell’s theatre music and the three dramatic operas (in addition to notes below): Price, Henry Purcell; Moore, Purcell and the Restoration Theatre; Wood, Purcell, 125–75; Savage, ‘Theatre Music’, 364–83; White, History of English Opera, 109–36; Holman, Henry Purcell, 188–227; and J. A. Westrup, Purcell (New York: Collier, 1962), 115–67. Much of Purcell’s theatre music is collected in the two volumes of Orpheus Britannicus (1698, 1702) and volumes of theatre music in the Purcell Society edition.

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Under Betterton’s direction, the United Company closed three seasons with works by Purcell: Dioclesian (late May 1690); King Arthur (?May 1691); and The Fairy-Queen (2 May 1692; imprint 1693).67 These works are recognised as the highpoint of (what is called) dramatic opera and Purcell’s writing for the stage. All three exemplify the features of dramatic opera: the core of each is a lengthy, fully developed ‘just Drama’ (Dryden) or ‘a correct play’ (Motteux) but reduced in length to make way for extended incidental music, musical entertainments, or masques in addition to the customary act music and interpolated songs. For Purcell’s first dramatic opera The Prophetess: or, The History of Dioclesian (known as Dioclesian), Betterton kept most of Beaumont and Massinger’s play intact.68 He elaborated scenes where they had only indicated music and song. In Act II, Diocles and Delphia appear in the air in a chariot drawn by dragons accompanied by a Symphony of Musick in the Air to announce Diocles had killed the boar that had infested the land (actually Aper, murderer of Numerianus), followed by chorus, song, and symphonies to accompany his imperial coronation. Later, a Dance of Furies accompanies the appearance of a dreadful monster. In Act III, music and a song accompany Maximinian as he stands gazing at the Princess Aurelia. In Act IV a Triumphal Procession of martial song and dancers sounds the victorious entry of Dioclesian. In Act V to celebrate the nuptials of Dioclesian and Maximinian, Delphia calls for a masque before the Court. After a Prelude sung by Cupid (with an echo) and duet by a Bacchanalian and a Silvan (followed by a symphony), an ornate machine descends with four stage levels or platforms representing palaces of Flora, Pomona, Bacchus, and the Sun, on which enter the gods, Arcadians, heroes, mythic figures, and dancers. Then enter performers of the masque in five entries, each with solos and chorus. The whole concludes with a Grand Dance and Chorus. Uniquely for a dramatic opera, probably in emulation of 67

Betterton at United Company: David Roberts, Thomas Betterton: The Greatest Actor of the Restoration Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 102–19; Milhous, Thomas Betterton, 80–188; and Milhous, ‘“Multimedia Spectacular”. On the Restoration Stage’, pp. 41–66 in British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660–1800, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1984). Fuller histories by Hotson, Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, and Nicoll, Restoration Drama.

68

Critical edition of text: Julia Muller, ‘The Prophetess: or, The History of Dioclesian’, pp. 171–51 in Henry Purcell’s Operas, ed. Burden. Modern musical edition: Henry Purcell, Prophetess, or the History of Dioclesian, rev. ed. Margaret Laurie, Purcell Society Edition 9 (London: Novello, 1979). See also in general: Price, Henry Purcell, 263–88; Julia Muller, Words and Music in Henry Purcell’s First Semi-Opera ‘Dioclesian’ (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1990); Julia and Franz Muller, ‘Purcell’s Dioclesian on the Dorset Garden Stage’, pp. 232–42 in Performing the Music of Henry Purcell, ed. Michael Burden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Moore, Purcell and the Restoration Theatre, 130–49; Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 197–205; and (on the shivering in the Frost Scene) Lionel Sawkins, ‘Trembleurs and Cold People: How Should They Shiver?’ pp. 243–64 in Performing the Music of Henry Purcell, ed. Burden.



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Albion and Albanius (1685), the music in full score was published the following year by subscription for the author, and dedicated to Charles Seymour, the sixth Duke of Somerset.69 In about 1684, Dryden conceived the play King Arthur, likely intended to celebrate Charles’s deliverance from the 1683 Rye House Plot. At some point, the play was abandoned and only the allegorical prologue Albion and Albanius was produced at Dorset Garden in 1685 (see above). Dryden’s King Arthur: or, The British Worthy. A Dramatick Opera was now produced in 1691 at Dorset Garden under Betterton’s direction with music by Purcell.70 Into the play about King Arthur and the Saxons are introduced five sequences of incidental music: the Saxons’ ritual sacrifice in a place of Heathen worship with chorus of priests (I.ii); a ‘Song of Triumph’ for the Britons (I.iii); songs for spirits, sirens, nymphs, and sylvans who attempt to mislead Arthur and his men in their pursuit of the Saxons (II.i); a pastoral entertainment by shepherds and shepherdesses of song and dance to ease the anxieties of the heroine, Emmeline (II.Ii); and songs and dance for sirens and spirits who try to tempt Arthur from his rescue of Emmeline from Osmond (IV.ii). In addition, Dryden provided two masques for Purcell to set. In the first, the heathen Saxon magician Osmond attempts to thaw Emmeline’s cold heart by presenting a ‘Prospect of Winter in Frozen Countries’ containing the famous Frost Scene where Cupid warms the passions of the inhabitants of a frozen land (III.ii). After Arthur’s defeat of the Saxons, the opera closes with Merlin’s conjuring for Arthur an elaborate patriotic masque, a vision celebrating ‘The Wealth, the Loves, and Glories of our Isle’ where Britons and Saxons are one people. The stage opens to display the Order of the Garter with a song in honour of St George. Venus’s ‘Fairest Isle, all Isles Excelling’ is recognised as possibly Purcell’s finest song (V.ii). In King Arthur, the play and musical portions are more integrated than usual. Exceptionally, the spirits Grimbald

69

Original music published as The Vocal and Instrumental Musick of the Prophetess, or the History of Dioclesian (1691), and A Collection of Ayres, Compos’d for the Theatre, and upon Other Occasions. By the Later Mr Henry Purcell (1697) to the Duke of Somerset, in gratitude for his ‘Generous Encouragement of his Performances’.

70

Critical editions of text: John Dryden, The Works of John Dryden, vol. 16, Plays: King Author [sic], Cleomenes, Love Triumphant, Contributions to the Pilgrim (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1996), 1–69, 475–513; and H. Neville Davies, ‘King Arthur; or, The British Worthy’, pp. 253–335 in Henry Purcell’s Operas, ed. Burden. Modern musical edition: Henry Purcell, King Arthur, ed. Dennis Arundell, rev. ed., Margaret Laurie, Purcell Society Edition, 26 (London: Novello, 1971). See also in general: Price, Henry Purcell, 289–319; Moore, Purcell and the Restoration Theatre, 70–99; Winn, ‘When Beauty Fires the Blood’, 274–304 [primarily literary emphasis; points to other analyses]; J. M. Armistead, ‘Dryden’s King Arthur and the Literary Tradition: A Way of Seeing’, Studies in Philology, 85 (1988), 53–72; Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 206–15. There is considerable literature from the literary aspect, not noted here.



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and Philidel have both speaking and singing roles, and the main characters are present (but do not sing) in several of the musical episodes.71 The original prologue to King Arthur was an allegorical celebration of the Restoration and the two Stuart monarchs. Since the original 1684 version of the play is not extant, it is unknown if (or how) the original King Arthur had an allegorical design. Whether the play produced when Dryden was out of favour with the new monarchs had an allegorical design is still disputed.72 But as a patriotic piece, King Arthur continued to be produced into the eighteenth century.73 Purcell’s third dramatic opera, The Fairy-Queen: An Opera (2 May 1692), is an adaptation (usually misattributed to Elkanna Settle) of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.74 The spoken prologue places it among those works 71

On integration of the play and music: James Winn, ‘“Confronting Art with Art”: The Dryden-Purcell Collaboration in King Arthur’, Restoration, 34 (Fall 2010), 33–53, and Amanda Eubanks Winkler, ‘The Intermedial Dramaturgy of Dramatick Opera: Understanding Genre through Performance’, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 42 (2018), 13–38 (esp. 18–20). Winkler, though, overlooks that the participation of the two spirits is very atypical for dramatic opera.

72

Allegory in King Arthur: Price, Henry Purcell, 289–319; Price, ‘Political Allegory in Late-Seventeenth-Century English Opera’, pp. 1–29 in Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean, ed. Nigel Fortune (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); David Bywaters, Dryden in Revolutionary England (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1991); Andrew Pinnock, ‘A Double Vision of Albion: Allegorical Re-Alignments in the Dryden-Purcell Semi-Opera King Arthur’, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 31 (2010), 55–81; Pinnock, ‘King Arthur Expos’d: A Lesson in Anatomy’, pp. 243–56 in Purcell Studies, ed. Curtis Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Steven N. Zwicker, ‘How Many Political Arguments Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?’ Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 31 (2010), 103–16; and James A. Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987). For a corrective, whose lessons are scarcely considered, see Hume, ‘Politics of Opera’. I have elaborated on Hume and proposed a set of criteria for evaluating allegorical interpretations, which cast doubt on the allegorical interpretations of King Arthur, in Opera and Politics in Handel’s Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 12–56.



73

King Arthur in the eighteenth century: Ellen T. Harris, ‘King Arthur’s Journey into the Eighteenth Century’, pp. 257–89 in Purcell Studies, ed. Price; Todd Gilman, ‘David Garrick’s Masque of King Arthur with Thomas Arne’s Score (1770)’, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 31 (2010), 139–62; and Michael Burden, ‘Purcell’s King Arthur in the 1730s’, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 31 (2010), 117–38.

74

Critical edition of text: Roger Savage, ‘The Fairy-Queen: An Opera’, pp. 337–407 in Henry Purcell’s Operas, ed. Burden. Modern musical editions: Henry Purcell, The Fairy Queen, eds Bruce Wood and Andrew Pinnock, Purcell Society Edition, 12 (London: Stainer and Bell, 2009); and Purcell, The Fairy-Queen: An Opera, ed. Michael Burden (New York: Eulenburg, 2009). See also in general: Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 225–9; Price, Henry



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undertaken ‘to please this Age, / To bring it more in liking with the Stage’ by calling ‘in her Sister Musick to her aid’. With extensive music by Purcell and dances by Josias Priest, it was said £3,000 was expended on the production. The ‘just play’ presents Shakespeare’s main plot involving the royals, courtiers, two pairs of young lovers, the rude mechanicals, and the fairy world ruled by Titania and Oberon. The speaking real-life actors of the world of the court and rude mechanicals are segregated from the singers and dancers of the musical part, who are the inhabitants of the fairy world. Five masques or musical entertainments grow out of the situation of the Shakespeare play. At the end of Act II, after the entrance of Titania and her train, the scene changes to a fairyland grotto where Titania commands revels to begin, consisting of a prelude; a first song with dances and choruses; songs for Night, Mystery, Secresie, and Sleep with Attendants; and a Dance of the Followers of Night. To entertain her new-found love Bottom, in a great wood at the end of Act III, Titania commands a Fairy Masque by fairies, fawns, dryads, and naiads who perform songs, dances, and a chorus; then follows a dialogue song between Coridon and Mopsa, and a concluding dance of haymakers. At the end of Act IV, Titania commands the descent in a machine of Juno with peacocks to bless the lovers. Oberon then commands as an entertainment for Titania an illuminated scene of a Chinese Garden, with songs by a Chinese man and woman, chorus, and dance by monkeys. Then two women announce Hymen; they all then join in song, dance, and a Grand Chorus. After the two original theatre companies were combined in the United Company in 1682, Christopher Rich gained control of the company and applied financial austerity to increase shareholder profits, to the detriment, as they claimed, of the livelihoods of the players. At the end of the 1693–4 season, dissatisfied with Rich’s management and treatment of actors, the veteran actor-manager Thomas Betterton led a rebellion of the senior actors from the company, obtained from the Lord Chamberlain a license, and in 1695 started a rival company at the small theatre at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.75 He raised a subscription to convert and outfit the theatre.76 Betterton took with him most of the best actors and singers. Purcell’s younger colleague the composer John Eccles went with Betterton’s rebel company. There he concentrated on writing instrumental music and songs for plays. But the theatre was not suited for the multimedia spectacles Betterton previously mounted for Rich.

Purcell, 320–57; Moore, Purcell and the Restoration Theatre, 100–129; and Roger Savage, ‘The Shakespeare-Purcell “Fairy Queen”: A Defence and Recommendation’, Early Music, 1 (1973), 200–221. 75

On Betterton’s revolt: Milhous, Thomas Betterton, 151–88; and Roberts, Thomas Betterton, 154–72. Shirley Strumm Kenny focuses on the competition of plays produced in ‘Theatrical Warfare, 1695–1710’, Theatre Notebook, 27 (1973), 130–45; and Lowerre discusses the musical consequences in Music and Musicians on the London Stage.

76

Milhous, Thomas Betterton, 75.

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Rich took advantage of Dorset Garden and Drury Lane and continued mounting impressive dramatic operas:77 including Bonduca (1695), The Indian Queen (1695) with Henry Purcell’s incomplete score completed by his brother Daniel,78 Brutus of Alba (1696), Cinthia and Endimion (1697), the expensive failure The World in the Moon (1697), the successful The Island Princess (1699), and the long-postponed spectacular The Virgin Prophetess (1701), plus revivals of other dramatic operas, especially of Henry Purcell (see appendix 2). With his theatre’s limited resources, Betterton had modest success collaborating with Peter Motteux mounting smaller, theatre works with music (some called masques, afterpieces, interludes, or musical entertainments), including the celebratory Williamite The Taking of Namur and His Majesty’s Safe Return (1695) and Europe’s Revels for the Peace, and His Majesties Happy Return (1697),79 as well as The Loves of Mars and Venus (1696), Hercules (1697), and Love’s a Jest (1696) (see appendix 2).80

Rinaldo and Armida In the 1698 to 1699 season, Betterton presented a major challenge to Rich with the dramatic opera Rinaldo and Armida: A Tragedy (1698, imprint 1699), with music by Eccles, the house composer.81 For this offering, Betterton turned to John Dennis, who had already established himself as a writer of comedy and 77

On dramatic operas of this period, Walkling, English Dramatick Opera, 233–306.

78

Critical edition of text: Julia K. Wood, ‘The Indian Queen’, pp. 409–69 in Henry Purcell’s Operas, ed. Burden. Modern musical edition: Henry Purcell, Indian Queen, eds Margaret Laurie and Andrew Pinnock, Purcell Society Edition, 19 (London: Novello, 1994). See also in general: Moore, Purcell and the Restoration Theatre, 155–77; Price, Henry Purcell; and Andrew Pinnock, ‘Play into Opera: Purcell’s The Indian Queen’, Early Music, 18 (1990), 3–21.

79

See Kathryn Lowerre, ‘A ballet des nations for English Audiences: Europe’s Revels for the Peace of Ryswick (1697)’, Early Music, 35 (2007), 419–33.

80

On Motteux’s masques: Lucyle Hook, ‘Motteux and the Classical Masque’, pp. 105–15 in British Theatre and the Other Arts, ed. Kenny; Peter Anthony Motteux and John Eccles, The Rape of Europa by Jupiter (1694) and Acis and Galatea (1701), intro, Lucyle Hook, Augustan Reprint Society, no. 208 (1981); Lowerre, ‘A ballet des nations for English Audiences’.

81

Rinaldo and Armida was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in November 1698. On the confused matter of the priority of Rinaldo and Armida and Motteux’s Island Princess, see William van Lennep, ed., The London Stage, 1660–1800, part 1, 1600–1700 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965); and John Dennis, Rinaldo and Armida, ed. Steven Plank, Recent Researches in Music of the Baroque, 176 (Middleton, Wisc.: A-R Editions, 2011). The full play text for Rinaldo and Armida was published in December 1698, although the imprint is 1699). The portions that were set to music (‘Entertainments’ or masque-like episodes) were published in December 1698 as The Musical Entertainments in the Tragedy of Rinaldo and Armida (imprint: 1699), 97–115; reprinted in Theatre Miscellany, Luttrel Society Reprint, 14 (1953). Modern musical edition: Dennis, Rinaldo and Armida, ed. Plank.



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formidable critic.82 Despite his later infamy as an opponent of Italian opera in Essay on the Opera’s (1706), throughout his career Dennis defended the union of music and drama and passionately believed in the importance of the stage to Britain’s civic well-being (see further on his critical ideas in chapter 7). Certainly with Betterton’s encouragement, Dennis provided Eccles opportunities for a prominent role for music by modifying the usual conventions of dramatic opera. Although he says Rinaldo and Armida ‘has gone in the World under the Name of an Opera’, neither ‘the Dramatical Part of it’ nor ‘the Musical part of it’, he wrote, are like ‘our usual Opera’s’,83 that is, dramatic operas. Conforming with usual practice of dramatic operas, in addition to songs and incidental music, Dennis provided in each act what he calls a musical entertainment, which is related to the surrounding drama. Each entertainment, similar to a masque entry, comprises symphonies, songs, ritornellos, and choruses. The musical entertainments are performed by spirits. Dennis printed separately the texts for the musical entertainments of the opera. Given the setting of Armida’s enchanted palace, the tragedy had roles for ‘Aerial, Terrestrial, and Infernal Spirits’ (in the shapes of shepherds, shepherdesses, and nymphs). Since they have plausible roles in Armida’s enchanted domain, it is appropriate that they also participate in the musical entertainments, but Rinaldo and Armida do not – so conforming to Dryden’s principle of verisimilitude of who may properly sing (see below). The musical entertainment in Act I is sung by spirits who attempt to seduce the Christians who come to free Rinaldo from Armida’s Enchanted Palace. In Act II the musical entertainment consists of the songs of spirit shapes commanded by Armida meant to be a dream to terrify Rinaldo. In Act III, Armida commands spirits in the shape of Venus and Cupids to entertain Rinaldo in Armida’s Palace. The entertainment in Act IV is the spirits who come to revenge the injury they think Rinaldo has done to Armida. In Rinaldo and Armida Dennis dramatically integrated – more so than usual with dramatic operas – the act music with the action of the spoken tragedy.84 As he informs us, ‘All the Musick in this Play, even the Musick between the Acts, is part of the Tragedy’.85 Dennis’s innovation for the usual conventions of the act tunes of plays (which usually follow from the mood or character of the concluded act) was to direct that even the music between the 82

See his comedies The Impartial Critick (1693) and A Plot, and No Plot (1697), as well as critical works Remarks on a Book Entituled, Prince Arthur (1696) and The Usefulness of the Stage (1698); all reprinted in Edward N. Hooker, ed., The Critical Works of John Dennis, 2 vols (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1939). His A Plot, and No Plot had been produced at Christopher Rich’s Drury Lane in 1697. Further on Dennis as critic, see chapter 8.

83

Preface, The Musical Entertainments in the Tragedy of Rinaldo and Armida (1699).

84

On the musical integration with the dramatic opera: Kathryn Lowerre, ‘Dramatick Opera and Theatrical Reform: Dennis’s Rinaldo and Armida and Motteux’s The Island Princess’, Theatre Notebook, 59 (2005), 23–40.

85

Dennis, Preface, Musical Entertainments.

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acts contributed to the drama.86 That is, the act tune functions as a transition between acts, establishing the mood for the following scene. For example, the overture played after the Prologue is a trumpet tune supposed to be played by the Good Spirits who look over the whole action. The music after Act I, functioning as a transition, ‘begins with a Trumpet Tune, suppos’d to be play’d by the same Spirits who play’d the Overture, but changes with the Scene to soft Musick, and falls gradually to softer, and at last Drowzy Musick, which continues very softly [during] the first Ten or Twelve Lines of the Second Act’. The music after the second act continues the Terrible Music of the Infernal Spirits and changes to the ‘Soft and Gay’ music to enchant Rinaldo. After the third act, ‘the Instruments express the Alarm that the Infernal Regions take at Rinaldo’s departure’. And after the fourth act, ‘the spirits attending on Armida, express their Grief for the Calamity which has befall’n her’. The number of performances of the Dennis-Eccles Rinaldo and Armida is not known, but the work suffered in comparison to Rich’s hastily mounted but more successful dramatic opera The Island Princess; or, The Generous Portuguese Made into an Opera, premiered the following month on 4 February 1699, with music by Daniel Purcell, Richard Leveridge, and Jeremiah Clarke.87 Motteux adapted Nahum’s Tate’s 1687 reworking of John Fletcher’s play of 1621, as he wrote, not into ‘a correct play’ but into ‘what we here call an Opera’;88 he inserted several masques and musical entertainments, in addition to act tunes and incidental music. Motteux had a clear sense of what the English expected for operas, since he had written about their differences from continental operas in his Gentleman’s Journal (see below). At the end of Act II to celebrate the King’s deliverance from prison is mounted ‘An Entertainment of Music and Dancing’, consisting of an entry of solo songs, chorus, and a Grand Chorus with dance. A temple scene in Act IV is given solemnity by an Incantation and an Enthusiastic Song sung by Brahmins. The opera concludes with a four-part all-sung masque ‘The Four Seasons or Love in Every Age. A Musical Interlude’. Quite independent of the main plot, it is in effect an afterpiece, but it is followed by ten more lines of dialogue.

Opera or Dramatic Opera? Modern scholars have made many attempts to define ‘dramatic opera’, disagreeing in determining whether a given work – if not a play – is a masque, an opera,

86

Ibid.

87

Motteux’s Island Princess is not to be confused with an earlier alteration by Nathum Tate (25 April 1687), which has some incidental music but does not rise to the level of a dramatic opera. Facsimile edition: Peter Motteux, The Island Princess, intro. by Curtis A. Price and Robert D. Hume, Music for the London Stage, Series C, vol. 2 (Tunbridge Wells: Richard Macnutt, 1985), also with resolution of confused situation of the priority of Dennis’s Rinaldo and Armida and Motteux’s Island Princess.

88

Motteux, The Island Princess, ‘To the Reader’.

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chamber opera, or dramatic opera.89 As we have seen, the English themselves were not consistent in applying the term ‘opera’.90 In English usage of the time, ‘opera’ was applied to dramatic works with various amounts of music and spectacle, from a play with large amounts of incidental music to the all-sung Albion and Albanius. The prompter John Downes called the following works operas: Macbeth (‘in nature of ’), Tempest, Psyche, Circe, Lancaster Witches (‘a kind of ’), Albion and Albanius, King Arthur, Dioclesian, Fairy-Queen, British Enchanters, Temple of Love, and The Kingdom of the Birds. But Dryden called King Arthur a ‘dramatic opera’, and George Granville called his British Enchanters a ‘tragedy’. Appendix 1 lists the major musical-dramatic works of the seventeenth century, listing their contemporary designation(s) and a modern description/ designation. Ultimately, determining when a play given operatic treatment becomes a dramatic opera is a matter of judgment. But there is a tendency of some recent scholars to evade making such nice distinctions and to call such theatre works as Henry Purcell’s trio of works Dioclesian, King Arthur, and Fairy-Queen ‘operas’.91 Judith Milhous has introduced the term ‘multimedia spectacular’ and Robert Hume calls them ‘dialogue operas’; Andrew

89



The most extended discussion of dramatic opera is now Walkling, English Dramatick Opera, 1661–1708. Two other important discussions are Milhous, ‘Multimedia Spectacular’, and Richard Luckett, ‘Exotick but Rational Entertainments: The English Dramatick Operas’, pp. 123–41, 232–4 in English Drama: Forms and Development, eds Marie Axton and Raymond Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). See also, Haun, But Hark! More Harmony, 50–143; Moore, Purcell and the Restoration Theatre; Price, Henry Purcell, 263–357; Roberts, Thomas Betterton, 102–19; Michael Burden, ‘Aspects of Purcell’s Operas’, pp. 3–27 in Henry Purcell’s Operas, ed. Burden; Laurie, ‘Music for the Stage II’, pp. 314–40; White, History of English Opera, 90–136; Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 197–231; Savage, ‘Theatre Music’ [with extensive bibliography], esp. 364–78; Roger Fiske, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 7–1; Robert Hume, ‘Opera in London, 1695–1706’, pp. 67–91 in British Theatre and the Other Arts, ed. Kenny; Wood, Purcell, ‘Ambique Entertainments’, 117–20 [stage spectacle as a defining feature]; Winn, ‘Heroic Song’; and Winn, ‘Theatrical Culture 2’ [duplicates in places ‘Heroic Song’].

90

See for example, the Prologue to Edward Ravenscoft’s The Anatomist: or the Sham Doctor (1697): ‘And what we call a Masque some will allow / To be an Op’ra, as the World does now’.

91

For example, Michael Burden collects Dido and Aeneas, Dioclesian, King Arthur, The Fairy-Queen, and The Island Princess as operas (Henry Purcell’s Operas). In one place, Burden recognises dramatic operas do not meet current criteria of opera (as all-sung) and uses the term as an honorific: ‘The “problem” is, of course, fictitious; dramatick opera was opera – or at least one kind of legitimate opera – as far as the composers and their public were concerned, and it is as operas that we must view them, even though they may be alien to contemporary notions of operatic drama’; (‘Purcell Debauch’d: The Dramatick Operas in Performance’, pp. 145–62 in Performing the Music of Henry Purcell, ed. Burden (at p. 146).

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Walkling introduces the term ‘spectacle-tragedy’ for a form approaching a fully formed dramatic opera.92 What the English terminology does suggest is that to give a play operatic treatment meant paring down the spoken dramatic text and creating occasions for songs, incidental music, and large-scale musical entertainments. But music was not enough: marvellous spectacle and aerial machinery was essential to the English idea of an opera. At the core of what is now usually considered a dramatic opera is a ‘just Drama’ (Dryden) or ‘a correct play’ (Motteux) elaborated with music. The musical sections are segregated from (or distinct from) the spoken main play, which can stand on its own as a drama. With the exception of several episodes in Psyche and King Arthur, the roles of actors and singers are distinct, and the actors usually do not sing (or participate) in the musical episodes. Because of the segregation of the play and the music, the production of a dramatic opera requires two casts: a full troupe of speaking actors and a full musical establishment of singers, chorus, instrumentalists, and dancers. This requirement largely eliminated the conditions necessary for this native tradition after the generic division of the theatres ordered by the Lord Chamberlain in December 1707 (see chapter 4). As well, a well-rigged theatre to provide the scenic effects and machines is needed. ‘Masque’, another term used loosely in the period, can be reserved for shorter, self-contained, all-sung musical sections (often called musical entertainments) with allegorical or mythic figures that were interpolated into plays; afterpieces or musical interludes, such as written by Motteux for Betterton at Lincoln’s Inn Fields (see appendix 2); or expanded for free-standing, theatre entertainments such as William Congreve’s Judgment of Paris or John Dennis’s Orpheus and Euridicé.

All-Sung Opera Nonetheless, the notion of opera as an all-sung dramatic work along the continental lines was known to most English music lovers or theatregoers of the time. From first-hand experience travelling abroad, reports of travellers, or just current knowledge, many knew that in Italy and France opera meant an all-sung musical-dramatic work, and especially one that had extensive spectacle and scenic effects.93 Peter Motteux’s Preface to The Fairy-Queen (1692) reports 92

Milhous, ‘Multimedia Spectacular’; Hume, ‘Politics of Opera’; Walkling, English Dramatick Opera, 82. Milhous uses the term ‘multimedia spectacular’ for Betterton’s plays with music in ‘Multimedia Spectacular’; she distinguishes them by ‘the number of sets required and their elaborateness; the number people called for, both performer and support personnel; the amount of money invested; and the length of time needed to prepare such a show’ (45). Hume calls most dramatic operas ‘dialog’ operas (17).

93

References to musical experiences (and opera) of seventeenth-century travellers to Italy: Michael Tilmouth: ‘Music and British Travellers Abroad, 1600–1730’, pp. 357–82 in Source Materials and the Interpretation of Music: A Memorial Volume to Thurston Dart, ed. Ian Bent (London: Stainer and Bell, 1981); and White, History of English Opera, 49–53. Plays often mention travellers returned from France or Italy.

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what travellers to Italy and France knew about opera, and especially at Venice during Carnival. For the readers of his Gentleman’s Journal (January 1692) Motteux gave a definition of opera as customarily used: ‘Other Nations bestow the name of Opera only on such Plays whereof every word in sung’.94 But the term had already been defined in this meaning in 1656 in Thomas Blount’s Glossographia: or a Dictionary (1656) as a poetic work ‘not acted after the vulgar [i.e., common] manner, but performed by Voyces in that way, which the Italians term Recitative, being likewise adorned with Scenes by Perspective, and extraordinary advantages by Musick’. Writing earlier in Venice in June 1645, John Evelyn recorded that operas are ‘Comedies & other plays represented in Recitative Music by the most excellent Musitians vocal & Instrumental’ and immediately went on to add, ‘together with variety of Seeanes painted & contrived with no lesse art of Perspective, and Machines, for flying in the aire, & other wonderfull motions. So taken together it is doubtlesse one of the most magnificent & expensfull diversions the Wit of Men can invent’.95 So when he witnessed William Davenant’s Siege of Rhodes (on 5 May 1659) and described it as ‘a new Opera after the Italian way in Recitative Music and Sceanes, much inferior to the Italian composure & magnificence’, for him, the scenery was of crucial consideration.96 Publishing his music for Psyche in 1675, Locke noted he borrowed the term opera from the way Italians differentiate works performed in music with ‘splendid Scenes and Machines’ from extempore, spoken comedies (Preface). John Dryden defined opera in the Preface to his all-sung Albion and Albanius as ‘An Opera is a poetical Tale of Fiction, represented by Vocal and Instrumental Musick, adorn’d with Scenes, Machinery and Dancing’. When he closed the Preface by glancing at King Arthur, his careless locution describing King Arthur as ‘a Play, Of the Nature of the Tempest; which is a Tragedy mix’d with Opera’ (10) almost applies ‘opera’ to just the ‘Scenes, Machines, Songs and Dances’ added to a play as part of the operatic treatment. From these definitions emerges a critical point: for the seventeenth-century English, songs and incidental music were not quite enough to elevate in a play to the operatic: spectacle, scenery, machines, dance, and other marvellous appeals to the eye were also needed.

Rationale for Dramatic Operas As the above indicates, the English were aware of the unique nature of their own form of opera suitable to their ‘genius’ and claimed its merits. Central to their concept of a proper opera is the segregation of the play proper and the added musical elements. In a simplified form, it may be seen as the issue of rational text contrasted to irrational music in the entertainment. Hence, Matthew Locke, cautioned that in devising the libretto to Psyche, Thomas Shadwell 94

Gentleman’s Journal (January 1692), 5.

95

Evelyn, Diary, June 1645, 2:449–50.

96

Evelyn, Diary, 5 May 1659, 3:229.

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arranged that ‘all the Tragedy be not in Musick’, as in in Italian opera, ‘and therefore mixt it with [spoken] interlocutions, as more proper to our Genius’.97 Dryden, describing King Arthur (though he calls it an ‘opera’), recognised the segregation of the elements; he says the Fable of it is all spoken and acted by the best of the Comedians [actors]; the other part of the entertainment to be performed’ by the same Singers and Dancers who are introduc’d in this present Opera. It cannot properly be call’d a Play, because the action of it, is suppos’d to be conducted sometimes by supernatural means, or Magick; nor an Opera because the Story of it is not sung.98

As a speaker in Charles Gildon’s dialogue The Complete Art of Poetry (1718), asserted succinctly in approving the dramatic operas of Henry Purcell: ‘In them, what was proper for Musick, was sung, and the Drama performed as all other Drama’s were [i.e., spoken]’.99 George Granville, author of the dramatic opera fully titled The British Enchanters: or, No Magick Like Love. A Dramatic Poem. With Scenes, Machines, Musick, and Decorations, &c. (1706), considered only dramatic operas as true English operas. He dismissed the Addison-Clayton Rosamond and the unproduced Congreve-Eccles Semele as ‘Masques’, not operas.100 A pragmatic justification for the segregation of play and music was offered by Motteux: ‘Our English genius will not rellish that perpetual Singing’ of continental all-sung opera. Indeed, ‘Our English Gentlemen, when their Ear is satisfy’d, are desirous to have their mind pleas’d, and Music and Dancing industriously intermix’d with Comedy or Tragedy’.101 Here we see introduced the principle that the mind and ear are each pleased or satisfied in different ways. For Motteux, the charms of music ‘command our attention when used in their place’ and ‘Plays altogether sung, will soon make one uneasy’. A sentiment echoed by Granville, who claimed the drama falls short in both the French and Italian operas: ‘An English Stomach requires something solid and substantial,

97

Matthew Locke, The English Opera, Preface, [iv].

98

Dryden, Albion and Albanius, Preface, ed. cited, 10.

99

Charles Gildon, The Complete Art of Poetry, 2 vols (1718), 1:103. The speaker in the conversation is very hostile to ‘the new Mode’ operas all-sung in Italian. The dialogue seems to have been written to refer to the recent opera seasons 1707 to 1710 with their bilingual operas. George Granville, Preface to The British Enchanters: or, No Magick Like Love; in The Genuine Works in Verse and Prose of George Granville, 2 vols (1732), 1:[np]. The Preface was not published in the original libretto of British Enchanters (1706), so it probably represents Granville’s matured ideas; Granville must know of Semele from the text’s publication in Congreve’s Works, in 1710. For a plea to take seriously Granville’s ideas on opera: Wolfgang Hirschmann, ‘The British Enchanters and George Granville’s Theory of Opera’, pp. 38–48 in Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel, eds Colin Timms and Bruce Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

100



101

Gentleman’s Journal (January 1692), 5.

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and will rise hungry from a Regale of nothing but Sweet-meats [i.e., music]’.102 But for Granville, lack of song throughout might not be a liability, for ‘if the Numbers [rhythms of verse] are of themselves harmonious, there will be no need of Musick to set them off; a good Verse, well pronounced, is in it self musical’.103 Roger North, though, voiced a reservation about the dramatic operas. He saw ‘the gentlemen of the Theatres’ were bored by sitting still during a tedious play and needed musical entertainment.104 Of the resulting dramatic operas he famously disapproved: ‘There is a fatall objection to all these ambique entertainments: they break unity, and distract the audience. Some come for the play and hate the musick, others come onely for the musick, and the drama is pennance to them, and scarce any are well conconciled to both’.105 Two selections that Thomas Pope Blount chose to include in ‘Concerning Opera’s’ in his De Re Poetica: Or, Remarks Upon Poetry (1694) – Dryden’s Preface to Albion and Albanius and Motteux’s essay from the Gentleman’s Journal – serve to confirm the prevailing English idea about music and the stage: singing was appropriate to supernatural figures, divinities, heroes, those descended from them, and ‘meaner sorts’ (see below); and that the native preference was for a clear segregation between the spoken ‘just Drama’ or ‘correct play’ and the musical entertainments.106 For good measure, as a third selection, Blount included an extract by Thomas Rymer from his A Short View of Tragedy (1693) that rails against the all-sung French operas so much in vogue, as a ‘most pernicious’ ‘Debauch’ against ‘Nature and good Sense’. It is inconceivable, Rymer claimed, that ‘an Opera and Civil Reason, should be the growth of one and the same Climate’. But – his critique taking a political spin by associating opera with the Universal Monarch Louis XIV – it is no wonder, he says, that opera has to be ‘monstrous, enormous, and outragious to Nature’ to flatter and appeal to the French Grand Monarch.107

Relaxation of Poetic Standards The segregation of the play and the incidental songs and musical entertainments has a consequence: it seemed to require lesser poetic quality of the verse provided for the musical parts than for the play proper itself. English librettists and playwrights were both conscious and apologetic for it – especially knowing that the poetic verse provided for the composer could be read alone in private where they were not subservient to the music. In the criticism (and parodies) of Italian songs and opera in London (see below), among the features critics faulted was the poor quality of the verse and its impact on the quality of English poetry. 102

Granville, Preface to British Enchanters, in Works, 1:[np].

103

Ibid.

104

Roger North on Music, ed. Wilson, 353; similar sentiment on p. 306, and North’s The Musical Grammarian, eds Chan and Kessler, 266.

105

Roger North on Music, ed. Wilson, 307.

106

Thomas Pope Blount, ‘Concerning Operas’, in De Re Poetica: Or, Remarks upon Poetry … Extracted Out of the Best and Choicest Criticks (1694), 120–7.

107

Thomas Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy (1693), 9–19.

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Poets rationalised to the readers of their play texts that they could exercise their poetic and dramatic talents in the ‘just Drama’ or ‘correct play’ of the dramatic opera but felt constrained by the type of verse needed by the composer for musical setting. In the Preface to the dramatic opera Psyche, Thomas Shadwell apologised to those reading the play text: ‘In all the words which are sung, I did not so much take care of the Wit of Fancy of ’em, as the making of ’em proper for Musick’. Dryden considered he had well discharged his task to provide Louis Grabu with words suitable for musical setting for Albion and Albanius, so that ‘I have therefore no need to make excuses for meanness of thought in many places’.108 Later in the Dedication of King Arthur, he again apologised: But the Numbers of Poetry and Vocal Musick, are sometimes so contrary, that in many places I have been oblig’d to cramp my Verses, and make them rugged to the Reader, that they may be harmonious to the Hearer: Of which I have no Reason to repent me, because these sorts of Entertainment are principally design’d for the Ear and Eye; and therefore in Reason my Art on this occasion, ought to be subservient to his [Purcell’s].

Motteux likewise apologised for the verse he provided for the theatre masque Britain’s Happiness, a Musical Interlude (1704): This kind of Writing is, as it were, but the Cloath, which the Composer must Embroyder; for the Poet must confine his Fancy to such Words and Measures, as may give the Musician occasion to display his own; a Task that will scarcely get the Writer any Reputation answerable to the Trouble, except among the few that are sensible of the difficulty.

These apologies for the literary quality of verse for music presage the later criticism and satire of the poetic quality of opera librettos or their English translations and Dennis’s claim that opera drove out serious poetry (see further in chapter 8).

❧  English Expectations for Opera English Language The English, as we have seen, did not require an operatic theatrical work to be all-sung, but there were two expectations. First, and it went almost without saying, it should be performed in the island’s native language. Essential to English self-identity was its Protestantism, and essential to Protestant belief – and a point of great contrast to the Church of Rome – was that the liturgy and Holy Writ should be understood by the lay person: otherwise, the redeeming Divine Word could not be understood. What was central to Protestantism must 108

Dryden, Albion and Albanius, Preface, ed. cited. See also Nahum Tate’s ‘To the Reader’ for The Anniversary Ode for the Fourth of December, 1697 (1698): ‘I was Confin’d (for the Present to such Measures and Compass as the Musical Performance would admit; upon which Consideration the Reader’s favourable allowance is requested’.

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also be central to British civic life as well. The point could not be put better than by the Whig Bishop Gilbert Burnet in his exposition of the Twenty-Fourth Article of the Church of England, ‘On speaking in the Congregation in such a Tongue as the People understandeth’: ‘It is a Thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the Custom of the Primitive Church, to have Publick Prayer in the Church, or to Minister the Sacraments in a Tongue not understanded of the People’. In Burnet’s gloss, with a closing glance at opera, he says, the ends of worship are lost, if the Worship of God is a Thread of such sounds, as makes the Person who officiates, a Barbarian to the rest. They have nothing but noise and shew to amuse them, which how much soever they may strike upon and entertain the Senses, yet they cannot affect the Heart, nor excite the Mind: So that the natural effect of such a way of Worship is to make Religion a Pageantry, and the Publick Service of God an Opera.109

Similarly, Samson Estwick could preach and denounce in 1696 the practice of the Church of Rome, who ‘has lock’d up the few sound Pieces of Devotion remaining in their Breviary, in a Language not understood by the generality of their People’.110 Arthur Bedford, in 1706 could commend the regulation of music in the Church of England, ‘That all be sung in the Common Language’.111 Five years later in his The Great Abuse of Musick (1711), Bedford blasted the ‘Immodesty and profaness of our English Operas’ and again emphasised that ‘we ought to mind the Words, and the Design of the Psalmist more than the Harmony of the Sounds’.112 It was one of Sir Christopher Wren’s guiding principles in designing the fifty new parish churches for London that, while the churches of necessity need to be large, ‘but still, in our reformed Religion, it should seem vain to make a Parish-church larger, than that all who are present can both to hear distinctly, and see the Preacher’.113

Verisimilitude Another element crucial to understanding Dryden’s and the English conception of opera, or what is appropriate for operatic treatment, was adherence to the principle of verisimilitude. In short, the question was: ‘Who may sing on the stage?’ This principle helps explain the segregation of the play and music.

109

Gilbert Burnet, An Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England (1699), 262–5 (at p. 262).

110

Samson Estwick, The Usefulness of Church-Musick: A Sermon (1696), 20.

111

Arthur Bedford, The Temple Musick (1706), 220.

112

Arthur Bedford, The Great Abuse of Musick (1711), 252. On pp. 104–34, Bedford cites specifics from operas and dramatic operas up through the operas sung in Italian Almahide and Idaspes of January and March 1710. Bedford’s key text is I Cor. 14.15: ‘I will sing with the Spirit, and I will sing with the Understanding also’.

113

Life and Works of Sir Christopher Wren. From the Parentalia; or Memoirs, by His Son Christopher, 2 vols (London: Edward Arnold [1903]), 2:195.

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As set out by Aristotle, verisimilitude meant that the character and actions of persons shown must be probable and follow of necessity and, above all, not be contrary to reason.114 Verisimilitude also relates to genre: since tragedy must imitate the actions of superior men, it should represent men as better than they are. Inescapably associated with verisimilitude is the concept of decorum: the speech given to characters must be appropriate to their station, age, manners, passions, and character.115 In the hands of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century critics, there came to be developed the notion of ‘two verisimilitudes’. There is a reality that is common, predictable, and probable, as found in ordinary, real-life persons. But there is the unlikely, improbable, and extraordinary life: the marvellous or extraordinary verisimilitude of gods, goddesses, mythological figures, and characters such as from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. They have become so common and familiar that they can be legitimately shown on stage, though with verisimilitude and decorum.116 England’s great critic Dryden can be seen as developing these principles into a concept of ‘operatic verisimilitude’ in the Preface to Albion and Albanius, where he articulated the aesthetic-critical principles that were intended to apply to the work at hand, but that apply as well to dramatic operas and masques: An Opera is a poetical Tale of Fiction. … The suppos’d Persons of this musical Drama, are generally supernatural, as Gods and Goddesses, and Heroes, which at least are descended from them, and are in due time, to be adopted into their Number. The Subject therefore being extended beyond the Limits of Humane Nature, admits of that sort of marvellous and surprising conduct, which is rejected in other Plays.117

Dryden is here delimiting those for whom operatic verisimilitude applied: supernatural persons (beyond ‘Humane Nature’), gods, goddesses, heroes (presumably those from mythology and fable), and those descended from them.

114

Aristotle, Poetics, ch. 15.

115

Aristotle, ibid.; Rhetoric, 3.7; see also in Horace, Ars Poetica, lines 156–78. Also discussed in greater detail, by Walkling, English Dramatick Opera, 11–14 and following.

116

How these principles applied to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century neo-classical criticism and importantly to opera are demonstrated in Piero Weiss, ‘Opera and Neoclassical Dramatic Criticism in the Seventeenth Century’, Studies in the History of Music, 2 (New York: Broude Brothers, 1988), 1–30; and Weiss, ‘Baroque Opera and the Two Verisimilitudes’, pp. 117–26 in Music and Civilization: Essays in Honor of Paul Henry Lang, eds Edmond Strainchamps and Maria Rika Maniates (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984. On how widespread and commonplace the ideas were, see The Whole Art of the Stage (1684) [a translation of François Hédelin, abbé d’Aubignac, La pratique du theatre (Paris, 1657), book 2, chapter 2 (‘Of Probability and Decency’), 74–6 (first pagination)].



117

Dryden, Albion and Albanius, Preface, ed. cited. Cf. William Congreve’s justification for creating the figure of Ino in Semele; Semele (1710), Argument.

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Since by their nature, supernatural figures appear in an all-sung genre, they must sing (or conversely, only those in an opera may sing).118 To this precept of what characters are appropriate to opera, Dryden adds that of decorum (propriety): Yet propriety is to be observ’d even here. The Gods are all to manage their peculiar Provinces: and what was attributed by the Heathens to one Power, ought not to be perform’d by an other. … To conclude, they must all act according to their distinct and peculiar Characters.119

In addition to the supernatural characters and their descendants, Dryden grants that ‘meaner Persons, may sometimes be gracefully introduc’d, especially if they have relation to those first times, which Poets call the Golden Age’. Dryden is again invoking decorum: since shepherds in Arcadia are thought naturally to sing, they may be introduced into opera along with the supernatural characters: Shepherds might reasonably be admitted, as of all Callings, the most innocent, the most happy, and who by reason by the spare time they had, in their almost idle Employment, had most leisure to make Verses, and to be in Love; without somewhat of which Passion, no Opera can possibly subsist.120

Here Dryden is drawing on Julius Scaliger’s well-known discussion of the origin of poetry in the natural way of living of the first men, that of shepherds; since they live in leisure in Arcadia, their life encouraged singing and poetry.121 Dryden’s principle may account for the prevalence of pastoral operas among the early operas mounted in London – Li amori di Ergasto (1705), Temple of Love (1706), Love’s Triumph (1708), Pastor fido (1712), and Dorinda (1712, as a revival of Love’s Triumph). We can readily see how these principles of operatic verisimilitude and related notion of decorum were at work in English operatic works of the Restoration period. In the dramatic opera, the main play (the ‘just Drama’ or ‘correct play’), being a heroic play, has elevated, heroic, true-to-life characters; since they carry the burden of representing the main dramatic narrative, they must converse in spoken speech. Decorum demands that it is not proper for them to sing. Conversely, for the main play, singing in inserted songs, incidental music, or musical entertainments is allowed for the ‘meaner Persons’ or lesser figures:

118

Moore’s summary is apt: ‘In short, music, appealing to the senses rather than the sense [i.e., mind], could not be the language of an English hero; the singers could sing, but he at least must speak’ (Purcell and the Restoration Theatre, 33).

119

Dryden, Albion and Albanius, Preface, ed. cited, 3.

120

Ibid., 6.

121

Julius Scaliger, Poetices Libri Septem (1561) [De Re Poёtica], book 1, chapter 4. Extracted as ‘Concerning the Eglogue, Bucolick, or Pastoral’ in Blount, De Re Poetica, 38–40. Complete translation of the section available in Select Translations from Scaliger’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Frederick M. Padelford, Yale Studies in English, 26 (New York: Henry Holt, 1905), 21–32.

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servants, shepherds, priests and temple assistants, crowds, rustics, soldiers, sailors, as well as supernatural spirits and witches.122 For works such as masques or operas, the characters are from mythology, fable, or are ‘supernatural, as Gods and Goddesses, and Heroes, which at least are descended from them’ – and so are allowed to sing. In short, the neo-classical doctrine of decorum highlights for us a fundamental principle for seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English dramatic music: it is fitting and appropriate for gods and goddesses, allegorical, mythological, supernatural, and pastoral characters to sing in all-sung opera, the musical sections in dramatic operas, and masques. But to accept Italian opera of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – with its heroic and historical (or quasi-historical) characters who sing – as legitimate is to abandon the principle of verisimilitude. This principle is the basis for a frequent objection to opera: it is ridiculous ‘to conceive a Hero that sings’. This notion had been famously voiced (in translation) in England as early as 1678 (and will be echoed by Addison in 1711) by the French belletrist immigré Charles de Marguetel Saint-Evremond: There is another thing in Opera’s so contrary to Nature that I cannot be reconciled to it; and that is the singing of the whole Piece from beginning to end, as if the Persons represented had ridiculously agreed to treat in Musick both the most common and most important Affairs of Life. Is it to be imagined that a Master calls his Servant, or sends him on an Errand, singing; that one Friend imparts a secret to another, singing: that men deliberate in Council, singing; that Orders in time of Battle are given singing; and that men are melodiously killed with Sword, Pike, and Musket? This is the downright way to lose the Life of Representation.123

Later, St Evremond lists some things that may be sung, such as vows, prayers, sacrifices, and religious ceremonies.

Segregation The result of the application of these principles to dramatic opera is the segregation of the musical episodes and their performers from the ‘just Drama’ or ‘correct play’ and its characters and narrative (as discussed above). This practice conforms with the contemporary French stage works with music, such as the 122

The principles of verisimilitude allowed supernatural characters (sorcerers and magicians) to mingle among the company of real-life figures (and hence allowed to sing): partly by convention, and, as George Granville explained, ‘they supply the Place of the Gods with the Ancients, and make a more natural Appearance by being Morals, with the Difference only of being endowed with supernatural powers’; Granville, Preface to The British Enchanters, in Genuine Works in Verse and Prose (1732).

123

‘Upon Opera’s to the Duke of Buckingham’, pp. 521–8 in The Works of Mr de St. Evremont, 2 vols (1700), on 522–3. The textual history and circumstances of the essay are given in Walkling, Masque and Opera, 285–90. Relying on Dryden, Ferrand Spence defended all-sung opera from St Evremond in his Miscellanea: or Various Discourses (1686); see Irving Lowens, ‘St. Evremond, Dryden, and the Theory of Opera’, Criticism, 1 (1959), 226–48.



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comédie en ballet (for example, Le bourgois gentilhomme), where the main business of the play is carried on in spoken dialogue, into which are interspersed episodes of music, song, and dance (often at the end of or between acts). The practice was announced by Pierre Corneille in a source known to Dryden, the prefatory remarks to his Andromède (1650), with music by Dassoucy and stage scenery by the Italian scenic designer Giacomo Torelli.124 For each act of the tragedy, Corneille allowed a divertissement with a flying machine with a consort of music, which I have employed only to satisfy the ears of the spectators, while their eyes are engaged in watching the machine sink or rise again or concentrating on something that prevents them from paying attention to what the actors might be saying. … But I have taken good care that nothing should be sung that was essential to the understanding of the play … if it had been their [the words’s] function to convey any important information.125

What was essential for understanding in the tragedy had to be spoken. For the genre of all-sung opera, though, all characters must be divinities, allegorical figures, or drawn from mythology, legend, and fable. This expectation about operatic verisimilitude is seen in the musical-dramatic works produced in England in the seventeenth century (see appendix 1): the imported French operas Ariane (1674), Pomone (1674), and Cadmus et Hermione (1686); and the English Venus and Adonis (?early 1683) and Dido and Aeneas (?1684–?7); the prologue Albion and Albanius (1685); theatrical masques, musical interludes, or entertainments of Peter Motteux; and William Congreve’s librettos for The Judgment of Paris (1701) and Semele (written ?1703–4; unproduced), and John Dennis’s Orpheus and Euridicé (1707). What was absolutely novel for the Italian-style operas introduced to London in 1705, beginning with Arsinoe, Camilla, Rosamond, Thomyris, Pyrrhus and Demetrius, and thereafter (with the exception of pastorals) was that all the characters are heroic or real-life (meaner) figures and all of them sing. The breach of verisimilitude when generals sing was taken up by Addison and others as a risible feature of opera. 111 The London audience that experienced opera in the Italian manner after 1705 was accustomed to having the evening at the theatre filled with music. So much 124

On Andromède and the French tragedie en machine: Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 48–52.

125

Pierre Corneille, Argument to Andromède; in Pierre Corneille, Andromède. Tragédie, ed. Christian Delmas (Paris: Marcel Didier, 1974), 11–12:

une machine volante avec un concert de Musique, que je n’ai employée qu’à satisfaire les oreilles des spectateurs, tandis que leurs yeux sont arrêtés à voir descendre ou remonter une machine, ou s’attachent à quelque chose qui leur empèche de prêter attention à ce que pourraient dire les Acteurs, … mais je me suis bien gardé de faire rien chanter qui fût nécessaire à l’intelligence de la Pièce, … si elles avaient eu à instruire l’Auditeur de quelque chose d’important.

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so, that as Roger North, noted, ‘Some come for the play and hate the musick, others come onely for the musick, and the drama is a pennance to them, and scare any are well reconciled to both’.126 The Restoration London stage had seen a variety of musical-theatric works: plays with musical embellishments, allsung operas in French (sung by imported singers), allegorical prologues sung in English, and the native form of dramatic opera. Produced privately or at court were the pair of sui generis all-sung works in English, Venus and Adonis and Dido and Aeneas. But within this variety of theatrical works with music, there was something that was an ‘English musick’. In addition to being sung in English and observing the principles of verisimilitude and decorum, it had an approach to setting of the poetic text that gave prominence the rational play and poetic text (see following chapter), and (at least still for some writers) a segregation of the spoken ‘just Drama’ or ‘correct play’ from the incidental music, musical entertainments, or masques.127 These features contributed to making an ‘operatic’ work in the English manner a rational entertainment – an ‘English Musick’ that Addison lamented was rooted out by opera in the Italian manner.

126

North, Roger North on Music, ed. Wilson, 307.

127

This principle of segregation seems to have been maintained by John Dennis but abandoned by Joseph Addison and John Hughes, who accepted the conventions of Italian-style opera.

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Chapter 2

The Infiltration of Italian Music and Singing

E

ven if London music lovers had not seen an Italian opera, they became acquainted with the Italian musical style through Italian songs and singers through their presence on the London musical scene: performing at court, in public music-meetings, at private homes, in the Chapel Royal, and in London theatres (as stand-alone concerts, before or after plays, or as entr’actes). Gradually, Italian vocal and instrumental music came to play a prominent role in English musical life – a process J. A. Westrup called ‘the gradual infiltration and eventual domination of Italian musicians’.1 This background conditioned English expectations and responses towards Italian opera. This experience with Italian singing is surveyed in this chapter.

❧  Music at the Court of Charles II The Restoration of Charles II brought a renewal of civic society and English musical life, stimulated by the import of both French and Italian music and musicians. In emulation of continental courts, Charles sponsored the arts to restore the legitimacy and prestige of the Stuart court. His reign is known for the King’s own taste for the French fashions that he acquired during his periods of exile at the French court in 1646 to 1648 and 1651 to 1654 – and especially the European taste for French dance and dance music. He likely saw the young Louis XIV and Lully dance and heard the earliest ballet music by Lully. The English fashion for French taste is reflected in plays of the period, though not always favourably,2 especially as caricatured, most memorably, 1

J. A. Westrup, ‘Foreign Musicians in Stuart England’, Musical Quarterly, 27 (1941), 70–89, at 88.

2

For some earlier representative (hostile) mentions of French dancing, fashions, and music/opera in plays: George Etherege, The Man of Mode, or, Sr Fopling Flutter (1676), Prologue and throughout the play [A character ‘went to Paris a plain bashful English Blockhead, / And is return’d a fine undertaking French fop’]; Aphra Behn, False Count, or, a New Way to Play an Old Game (1682), Prologue; John Lacy, Sir Hercules Buffon; or, the Poetical Squire (June 1684), Epilogue; [Thomas Jevon], The Devil of a Wife (1686), Prologue [mention of the opera Cadmus et Hermione]; William Mountfort, The Injured Lovers: or, the Ambitious Father (February 1688), Epilogue [French song and dance]; and Thomas Shadwell, The Squire of Alsatia (May 1688), Prologue [infected by French; must have rime]; Thomas Shadwell, The Lancashire Vvitches, and Teague o Divelly the Irish Priest (September 1681, pub. 1682), pp. 14, 35–6; Thomas Jevon, The Devil of a Wife, or a Comical Transformation (1686), Prologue; anon., The Bragadocio;

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for example, in Sir Fopling Flutter in George Etherege’s comedy The Man of Mode (11 March 1676). At his return to England, Charles quickly reconstituted the King’s Musick, establishing his own Twenty-Four Violins using a core of pre-Commonwealth musicians. French dance music so inflected Charles’s taste that the musical amateur and writer on music Roger North recalled that the King ‘could not bear any musick to which he could not keep the time’.3 Charles restored the Chapel Royal and its services, choir, and organ.4 He wanted variety and novelty in its services, which now veered away from the severe Jacobean style.5 The new style of anthems cultivated by Pelham Humfrey, Henry Purcell, and John Blow had verse solos, string ritornellos, and dance rhythms to appeal to the monarch’s taste. The musical amateur and diarist John Evelyn noted the introduction in 1662 to the Chapel of ‘the French fantastical light way, [which was] better suiting a Tavern or Play-house than a Church’.6 But Roger North’s recollection that during the first years of Charles’s reign ‘all musick affected by the beau-mond’ ran to ‘the French way’ has obscured how Charles also cultivated Italian music.7 From his days in France, Charles was also acquainted with Italian music, which had been brought to the French court by Cardinal Mazarin as a means to project Roman and Barberini culture. There Charles saw the Italian operas by Cavalli (Egisto, 1646), Rossi (Orfeo, 1647), and Caproli (Le nozze de Peleo e di Theti, 1654).8 or, the Bawd turn’d Puritan (February 1691) [‘The parti-colour’d Priests put on their Masquerading Robes, and tread a French Dance to the sound of an Organ’, p. 14]; and Thomas D’urfey, Love for Money: or, the Boarding School (1691) [a French fop is mocked, and a song (7) mimics the French]. 3

Roger North, Roger North on Music, Being a Selection from His Essays Written during the Years c. 1695–1728, ed. John Wilson (London: Novello, 1959), 299–300. The observation also appears in North, Roger North’s Cursory Notes of Musick (c. 1698–c. 1703): A Physical, Psychological and Critical Theory, eds Mary Chan and Jamie C. Kessler (Kensington, New South Wales: Unisearch, 1986), 213; and North, The Musical Grammarian, 1728, eds Mary Chan and Jamie C. Kassler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 262.

4

Peter Leech, ‘Musicians in the Catholic Chapel of Catherine of Braganza, 1662–92’, Early Music, 29 (2001), 570–87.

5

On French influence on the Chapel Royal and its music, Donald Burrows, Handel and the English Chapel Royal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 21–7; and Peter Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court, 1540–1690 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 389–414. On Charles’s restoration of the Chapel Royal, David Baldwin, The Chapel Royal: Ancient and Modern (London: Duckworth, 1990), 188–97.

6

John Evelyn, The Diary of John Evelyn. Now Printed in Full from the Manuscripts, ed. E. S. de Beer, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 21 December 1662, 3:347. Roger North also frequently notes the King’s aversion to earlier styles of music.

7

Roger North on Music, 350.

8

The classic study of Italian opera in France is Henry Prunières, L’opéra italien en france avant Lulli (Paris: Édouard Champion, 1913), esp. 38–320. See also James R. Anthony,

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It has now been determined that the ‘Italian Musick’ of Charles was established in 1664 when Secretary of State Sir Henry Bennet (Lord Arlington) recruited Vincenzo Albrici from the Medici court to lead and recruit an ensemble of Italian musicians.9 The ensemble, which was quite distinct from the regular court-music establishment, would grow to have a core of at least seven musicians, including two Albrici relatives and two castratos. It performed mostly Roman-repertory private chamber music and at the Queen’s Catholic chapel. They were not involved in opera. The Italian singers were an exclusive and rare novelty, and there was social cachet for those who could hear them. At court in January 1667, Pepys and Evelyn both recorded hearing ‘rare Italian voices, 2 Eunuchs’.10 Pepys and Evelyn French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau, rev. and exp. ed. (Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1997), 64–71, 72–83 [on comédie-ballet]; Robert M. Isherwood, Music in the Service of the King: France in the Seventeenth Century (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973), 114–49; and Margaret Murata, ‘Why the First Opera Given in Paris Wasn’t Roman’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 7 (1995), 87–105 [on role of Cardinal Mazarin]. 9





10

A correction to the convention account is documented in Ester Lebedinksi, ‘“Obtained by Peculiar Favour, & Much Difficulty of the Singer”: Vincenzo Albrici and the Function of Charles II’s Italian Establishment at the English Restoration Court’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 143 (2018), 325–59. Earlier accounts, many that need some qualification, include: Margaret Mabbett, ‘Italian Musicians in Restoration England (1660–90)’, Music and Letters, 67 (1986), 237–47; W. J. Lawrence, ‘Foreign Singers and Musicians at the Court of Charles II’, Musical Quarterly, 9 (1923), 217–25; Westrup, ‘Foreign Musicians in Stuart England’; Lowell E. Lindgren, ‘The Great Influx of Italians and Their Instrumental Music into London, 1701–1710’, pp. 419–84 in Arcangelo Corelli fra mito e realtà storica, Atti del Congresso Internazionale di Studi, Fusignano, 11–14 Settembre 2003, 2 vols (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2007), vol. 2; Andrew R. Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 1656–1688 (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017); Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers; Richard Luckett, ‘Music’, pp. 258–81 in The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription, vol. 10, Companion, eds Robert Latham and William Matthews, 11 vols (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1983); Graham Dixon, ‘Purcell’s Italianate Circle’, pp. 38–51 in The Purcell Companion, ed. Michael Burden (Portland, Ore.: Amadeus Press, 1994). On some individual musicians: Lindgren, ‘Nicola Cosimi in London, 1701–1705’, Studi Musicali, 11 (1982), 229–48; Lindgren, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729)’, Studi Musicali, 16 (1987), 247–380; Samantha Owens, ‘Johann Sigismund Cousser (Kusser): A “European” in Early Eighteenth-Century England and Ireland’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 45 (2010), 445–67. For biographical documentation of musicians at court: Andrew Ashbee, ed., Lists of Payments to the King’s Musick in the Reign of Charles II (1660–1685) (Snodland, Kent: Ashbee, 1981); and Andrew Ashbee, David Lasocki, Peter Holman, and Fiona Kisby, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485–1714, 2 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). Evelyn, Diary, 24 January 1667, 3:474: ‘This Evening I heard rare Italian voices, 2 Eunuchs & one Woman, in his Majesties greene Chamber next his cabinet’; Pepys, Diary, 16 February 1667, 8:64–5.

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recorded hearing Italian singers and instrumentalists at private meetings hosted by important court officials; and both availed themselves of direct knowledge of Italian music by inviting professionals to perform with them and give lessons.11 At a music-meeting at Lord Brouncker’s the following month on 12 February 1667, Pepys met Giovanni Baptista Draghi, who had recently entered the Queen’s service.12 Draghi sang for Pepys ‘a play in Italian for the Opera’, ‘all in the Recitativo’.13 At another music-meeting at Lord Brouncker’s four days later, Thomas Killigrew brought six of the Italian musicians (‘whereof two eunuchs’), plus Albrici. Pepys was not fully won over, though: I confess, very good musique they made … but yet not at all more pleasing to me then what I have heard in English by Mrs. Knipp, Captain Cooke and others. Nor do I dote of the Eunuchs; they sing endeed pretty high and have a mellow kind of sound, but yet I have been as well satisfied with several women’s voices, and men also.14

Italian musicians had by now replaced the Portuguese ones in the Queen’s private chapel;15 on Easter Day 1667 Pepys reported that while he liked the Italian compositions, ‘yet the voices [of] the Eunuches I do not like like our women, nor am more pleased with it at all then [sic] with English voices’.16 Yet still fascinated by the eunuch singers, in October 1668, Pepys went three times to hear the ‘French eunuch’ (probably Baldasarre Ferri) sing in revivals of Fletcher’s pastoral The Faithful Shepherdess for the King’s Company at Drury Lane theatre. Now he could record ‘such action and singing I could never have imagined to have heard[.] … I do admire his action as much as his singing, being both beyond all I even saw or heard’.17 As a consequence of the Test Act of 1673, intended to bar Catholics from court, Charles disbanded his Italian establishment, and many of the Italian musicians associated with the court fled England, although Draghi – who was music master to the Princesses Anne and Mary – and others remained and had successful careers. The taste for Italian music was now well established,

11

See Mabbett, ‘Italian Musicians’, 239.

12

Draghi: Ashbee et al., Biographical Dictionary, 1:359–61; and Peter Holman, ‘The Italian Connection: Giovanni Battista Draghi and Henry Purcell’, Early Music Performer, 22 (2008), 4–19 (reprinted in Peter Holman, ed., Henry Purcell [Farnham: Ashgate], 42–58).

13

Pepys, Diary, 12 February 1667, 8:55.

14

Pepys, Diary, 16 February 1667, 8:65.

15

Leech, ‘Musicians in the Catholic Chapel of Catherine of Braganza’.

16

Pepys, Diary, 7 April 1667, 8:154.

17

Pepys, Diary, 12 and 14 October 1668, 9:327 and 329. Pepys’s diary is the only evidence that John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess played on 10, 12, and 14 October. Also, William Van Lennep, ed., The London Stage, 1660–1800, part 1, 1660–1700 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965), 147.

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and in following years, numerous Italian musicians and singers sought livelihoods in England.18

❧  Rising Tide of Italian Music With London’s civic and cultural life renewed at the Restoration, public concert life arose, beginning notably with John Bannister’s first regular concerts in his house in 1672.19 Soon London had several venues for regular music-meetings (or concerts) at private homes, taverns, and music rooms. Most important was the Great Room in the York Buildings, well-known for its concerts by 1685.20 This large, ornate room remained an important concert venue for upwards of forty years. We have little information about the early programmes at music-meetings and concerts, although they certainly contained English songs and instrumental music (English consort music, suites of English and French dances, Italian solo and trio sonatas) and no doubt Italian arias and cantatas (with both arias and recitative).21 Although French taste dominated the early years of Charles’s reign, the tide began to turn towards Italian music around 1674. By 1682 French taste had given way to the Italian at the Chapel Royal about the time Purcell became the Chapel’s organist.22 North explained how Italian music displaced the taste for French music, pointing to four impulses.23 First was the arrival in 1674 of the 18

See Lindgren, ‘Nicola Cosimi in London’, and Lindgren, ‘Accomplishments of Nicola Haym’.

19

History of the rise of public concerts in London: Hugh A. Scott, ‘London’s First Concert Room’, Music and Letters, 18 (1973), 379–90 [with extracts from notices in newspapers]; Michael Tilmouth, ‘Some Early London Concerts and Music Clubs, 1670–1720’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 84 (1957–8), 13–26; Percy M. Young, The Concert Tradition: From the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century (New York: Roy Publishers, 1965), 28–44; Anthony A. Olmstead, ‘The Capitalization of Musical Production: The Conceptual and Spatial Development of London’s Public Concerts, 1660–1750’, pp. 106–38 in Music and Marx: Ideas, Practice, Politics, ed. Regula Burckhardt Qureshi (New York: Routledge, 2002).

20

On history of the York Buildings music room: Peter Holman, ‘The Sale Catalogue of Gottfried Finger’s Music Library: New Light on London Concert Life in the 1690s’, Royal Musical Association. Research Chronicle, 43 (2010), 23–38.

21

Indications of Italian vocal and instrumental repertory (especially at York Buildings and private music-meetings) can be found in auction sales catalogues: (a) that of the concert promoter Thomas Britton is printed in John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (1776; repr. New York: Dover, 1963), 2:792–3; (b) that of the concert promoter, composer, and instrumentalist Godfrey Finger, which included much Italian instrumental and vocal music; Holman, ‘Sale Catalogue of Gottfried Finger’s Music Library’, 33 n62.

22

Burrows, Handel and the Chapel Royal, 22.

23

Roger North on Music, 307–11, 355–9.

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violinist, teacher, and composer the senior Nicola Matteis, ‘that Stupendous violin’, as Evelyn called him.24 By the early 1680s, the violin solo and trio sonatas of Corelli arrived in England in the form of printed and manuscript copies. As North recalled, Corelli’s works ‘became the onely musick relished for a long time, and there seemed to be no satiety of them, nor is the vertue of them yet exhaled [sic], and it is a question whether it will ever be spent, for if musick can be immortall, Corelli’s consorts will be so’.25 Crucial to the spread of Italian music, according to North, was the technology of music engraved or etched on copper plates, which was more subtle and accurate than printing from moveable type and cheaper than manuscript copies.26 North finally pointed to Englishmen who had travelled to Italy, where they heard the best music and returned ‘confirmed in the love of the Itallian manner, and some contracted no litle skill and proved exquisite performers’.27 A landmark along the way to the embrace of the Italian taste was the publication on 28 May 1683 of Henry Purcell’s collection of twelve trio sonatas (Sonnata’s of III Parts: Two Viollins and Basse), where, we are told, Purcell has faithfully endeavour’d a just imitation of the most fam’d Italian Masters; principally, to bring the Seriousness and gravity of that Sort of Musick [Italian] into vogue, and reputation among our Country-men, whose humor ’tis time now, should begin to loath the levity, and balladry of our neighbours [the French]. (To the Reader)

Italian instrumental forms supplanted English Renaissance contrapuntal consort music and dance forms, such as Purcell’s own viol fantasias.28 Even before Italian singers were common in London, English amateur musicians were adding Italian vocal music to their libraries and repertoires in the form of collections of manuscript and printed music. In the early 1660s an English musician had compiled for a collector a manuscript that contained

24

Evelyn on Matteis: Evelyn, Diary, 19 November and 2 December 1674; 20 November 1679, 4:48 (‘stupendious Violin Signor Nicholao’); 4:49 [he ‘struck all mute’]; 4:186–7. His son was a fashionable teacher of singing and published two sets titled Collection of New Songs (1696, 1699); see Simon Jones, ‘The Legacy of the “Stupendous” Nicola Matteis’, Early Music, 39 (2001), 553–68.

25

Corelli’s trio sonatas (op. 1) and solo sonatas (op. 2) were printed in Rome in 1681 and 1685.

26

Manuscript copies were more valued because they were more legible and written on better quality paper.

27

Roger North on Music, 310. On English travellers, see Michael Tilmouth, ‘Music and British Travellers Abroad, 1600–1730’, pp. 357–82 in Source Materials and the Interpretation of Music: A Memorial Volume to Thurston Dart, ed. Ian Bent (London: Stainer and Bell, 1981).

28

Influence of Italian fashions on Purcell, Alan Howard, Compositional Artifice in the Music of Henry Purcell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 104–40, 236–70.

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Italian songs that interested him.29 Pietro Reggio, who sang among the Italian musicians at Court as early as 1665, copied a volume of Italian songs for ‘Monsieur Didie’ in 1681 that includes airs by Luigi Rossi, Giacomo Carissimi, Francesco Cavalli, and others.30 By the 1680s, the Roman repertory of vocal music was being systematically copied into manuscripts as English collectors compiled or commissioned collections of Italian cantatas.31 Publishers of song collections included occasional songs by Italian composers, and some in Italian.32 John Playford’s Select Ayres and Dialogues for One, Two, and Three Voyces (1659), although mostly songs by English composers, included three Italian ‘ayres’, one with an extended four-and-one-half-measure melisma.33 Playford exploited the taste for Italian singing by beginning in 1664 to print ‘A Brief Discourse of the Italian Manner of Singing’ in editions of his An Introduction to the Skill of Musick, a style of singing taught, he says, in England for the past 40 years.34 Reggio published The Art of Singing (1678) to explain 29

H. Diack Johnstone, ‘Aryes and Arias: A Hitherto Unknown Seventeenth-Century English Songbook’, Early Music History, 16 (1997), 167–201.

30

British Library, MS Harley 1501; on Reggio: Gloria Rose, ‘Pietro Reggio – A Wandering Musician’, Music and Letters, 46 (1965), 207–61; Ashbee et al., Biographical Dictionary, 2:950–2.

31

On the Roman repertory, Lebedinksi, ‘Obtained by Peculiar Favour’, 346–52. On the cantata manuscripts in England: (a) Lowell Lindgren, ‘J. S. Cousser, Copyist of the Cantata Manuscript in the Truman Presidential Library, and Other Cantata Copyists of 1697–1707, Who Prepared the Way for Italian Opera in London’, pp. 737–82 in ‘Et facciam dolçi canti’: Studi in onore di Agostino Ziino in occasione del suo 65o. compleanno (Lucca, 2003) [with list of twenty-six Italian cantata manuscripts copied or used in Great Britain, ca. 1697–1707]. (b) An itemised invoice drawn up by the music copyist William Armstrong for the future Vice Chamberlain Thomas Coke, which lists Italian arias and cantatas (see Thomas McGeary, ‘Vice Chamberlain Coke and Italian Opera in London: New Documents’, Early Music, 46 [2018], 653–74). (c) Sixteen manuscripts of English provenance of Bononcini’s Italian cantatas are listed in Lowell Lindgren, ‘Bononcini’s “Agreable and Easie Style, and Those Fine Inventions in His Basses (to which He Was Led by an Instrument upon which He Excels)”’, pp. 135–75 in Aspects of the Secular Cantata in Late Baroque Italy, ed. Michael Talbot (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), on pages 138–9 and 167–8.

32

Italian songs in printed song collections are indexed in Cyrus L. Day and Eleonore B. Murrie, English Song-Books 1651–1702 (London: Bibliographical Society, 1940). See especially: A. B., Synopsis of Vocal Music (1680), containing ‘Fourteen Italian Songs’ with English words; and J. Forbes, Cantus, Songs and Fancies (Aberdeen, 1682), containing ‘choicest Italian-Songs’ with English words.

33

‘Victoria, il mio core non lagrimar’ (66). The other two are on pages 66 and 67.

34

This essay was a translation of Caccini’s foreword to Le nuove musiche (1602). Playford says it was written by a gentleman returned from Italy some ‘some Years since’; the style of singing demonstrated is the by-now antiquated style of monody from the early part of the century, demonstrating trills as repeated notes, and the modern trills as ‘Gruppi’. The discourse rejects long divisions in favour of crescendos, diminuendos, and exclamation. The discourse was first printed in the fourth edition of 1664 and

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vocal ornamentation, and two years later his Songs set by Signior Pietro Reggio (1680) collected his settings of Cowley poems (with a few settings of Italian verse and some vocal music from The Tempest, some including recitative). Playford’s Scelta di canzonette italiane (1679), compiled by Girolamo Pignani, who observed ‘how favorably Italian compositions are received by music lovers in this city’, included vocal works by the Italian musicians resident in London Draghi and Matteis, as well as by other noted Italian composers Carissimi and Pasquini.35 Later, Henry Playford was advertising ‘Several Books of Italian Musick both Vocal and Instrumental lately sent over from Italy’.36 The third volume of his The Theatre of Music (1685–7) included a recitative-air pair (in English) by Draghi.37 Two volumes of Harmonia Sacra (1688 and 1693) include Roman compositions. While the Chapel Royal’s service for James II’s coronation in April 1685 was Anglican, he inaugurated a new Catholic Chapel Royal with a midnight Mass at Christmas 1686. Princess Anne became guarantor of the Anglican Chapel Royal. Displacing the disliked Portuguese musicians, the Chapel Royal became a centre of Italian music and offered places for many Italian musicians, including Draghi as organist.38 Best known today of the imported musicians (through Purcell’s harpsichord piece ‘Siface’s Farwell’) was the castrato Giovanni Francesco Grossi, called ‘Siface’, visiting from the Modenese Court, who sang for six months early in 1687. Evelyn heard him there on 20 January and at a private music-meeting at Pepys’s home in April, where Siface accompanied himself on the harpsichord.39

Italian Song For a knowledgeable English music lover, Italian singing would mean two things: its characteristic syllabic, rapid, speech-like recitative (stile recitativo, recitativo semplice, or secco-style recitative) for delivering monologues or dialogues, and for lyrical expression, arias of smooth, spun-out lyrical melodic lines, with frequent two-note slurs and multi-measure melismas usually of continued until the twelfth edition of 1694; see Ian Spink, ‘Playford’s “Directions for Singing After the Italian Manner’”, Monthly Musical Record, 89 (1959), 130–5. 35

‘quanto favorevolmente sono ricevute le Composizione Italiane dagli amatori della Musica, in cotesta Città’ (Preface). On the repertory, Dixon, ‘Purcell’s Italianate Circle’, 39–40; Dixon concludes the repertory was primarily Roman, and especially of Carissimi, not Italian in general.

36

Advertisement in book 4 of Deliciæ Musicæ (1696), ii. A promised catalogue soon appeared: A General Catalogue of all the Choicest Musick-Books in English, Latin, Italian and French, both Vocal and Instrumental (n.d.).

37

Book 3 (1686), 54–5, a setting of ‘Where Art Thou, God of Dreams!’; facsimile ed. with introduction by Robert Spencer, The Theatre of Musick (Tunbridge Wells: Richard Macnutt, 1983).

38

Peter Leech, ‘Music and Musicians in the Catholic Chapel of James II at Whitehall, 1686–1688’, Early Music, 39 (2011), 379–400.

39

Evelyn, Diary, 30 January 1687, 4:537; and 19 April 1687, 4:547.

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eighth or sixteenth notes for single syllables, and repetition of words and short text phrases. Arias came to be commonly in da capo form. Towards the end of the Commonwealth, English composers applied the recitative style to complete dramas. Richard Flecknoe used recitative for two all-sung dramas that have been little noticed. A lengthy preface to Ariadne Deserted by Theseus (1654) sets out the ‘Excellency of Recitative Musick’.40 Flecknoe claims he had the idea for a play in Recitative Musick, while travelling in Italy. The ‘particular way of Recitative’ he used for the English language, he claims, differs necessarily from that the Italians use for theirs. His The Mariage of Oceanus and Brittania (1659) was probably intended to employ recitative. The music for both does not survive, and it is not known if either was produced.41 Works in the recitative style that were heard by London audiences were produced by Sir William Davenant at his London mansion Rutland House in 1657–9.42 During his exile in Paris in 1645–50, he would have seen the productions of Italian opera introduced by Cardinal Mazarin, including the Italian operas Egisto (1646) by Francesco Cavalli and Orfeo (1647) by Luigi Rossi.43 These works are often said to have been a way to mount heroic plays despite the Commonwealth prohibitions of public theatre (in the probably erroneous rationale made current by John Dryden).44 Davenant enlisted Henry Lawes, Henry Cooke, and Matthew Locke to compose music for what was the first allsung drama produced in England, The Siege of Rhodes … a Representation … Sung in Recitative Musick (1656). He followed with two more works: The Cruelty 40

Ariadne Deserted by Theseus, and Found and Courted by Bacchus. A Dramatick Piece A[da]pted for Recitative Musick (1654); the Preface is reprinted complete, and the work discussed in Eugene Haun, But Hark! More Harmony: The Libretti of Restoration Opera in English (Ypsilanti, Mich.: Eastern Michigan University Press, 1971), 35–49. A single copy of the libretto is held at the Henry E. Huntington Library.

41

The Mariage of Oceanus and Brittania. An Allegoricall Fiction, Really Declaring Englands Riches, Glory, and Puissance by Sea. To be Represented in Musick, Dances, and Proper Scenes 1659). The work is discussed in Haun, But Hark! More Harmony, 96–103. A single copy of the libretto is held at the Henry E. Huntington Library.

42

On Davenant’s operas: Arthur H. Nethercott, Sir William D’avenant: Poet, Laureat and Playhouse-Manager (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1938), 295–336; Alfred Harbage, Sir William Davenant, Poet, Venturer, 1606–1668 (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935), 124–8, 243–50 and passim; Edward Dent, Foundations of English Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), 52–77; Haun, But Hark!, More Harmony, 50–95. On the prosody and metrics of mid-century opera librettos and their fate, Andrew Pinnock and Bruce Wood, ‘A Mangled Chime: The Accidental Death of the Opera Libretto in Civil War England’, Early Music, 36 (2008), 265–84.



43

On Davenant in Paris: Nethercott, Sir William D’avenant, 302–36; and Harbage, Sir William Davenant, 119–30.

44

John Dryden, ‘Of Heroique Plays: An Essay’; Preface to The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards (1672); in The Works of John Dryden, vol. 11, Plays: The Conquest of Granada, Marriage a-la-Mode, the Assignation (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1978), 9.

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714

of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and Sir Francis Drake (1659). Little or no music survives, but it seems certain they were presented in recitative with songs and choruses. The three were revived with the opening of the theatres after 1660, but it seems they were spoken, not given in recitative. When in 1659 Matthew Locke expanded James Shirley’s five-act masque Cupid and Death (1653), he introduced three long recitative scenes.45

Recitative and Aria There are enough mentions of recitative coming from plays at the time to show that playwrights could assume audiences were familiar with the idea of recitative, even if they had no direct experience of Davenant or Locke’s productions. In the prologue to John Dryden’s comedy The Wild Gallant (1663), the play’s poet presents his play to two astrologers, who damn his ‘ill design’d’ play, judging ‘It should have been but one continued Song’ – suggesting something more like Davenant’s experiments in recitative. That year Katherine Philips had objected that a song in her play Pompey should be marked ‘Recitative Musick’.46 Davenant’s play The Play-House to be Let (1663) reports a decision by a musician about what kind of novelty will fill the house during the summer’s Long Vacation. He hits on the idea to introduce an ‘Heroique story in Stilo Recitativo’.47 In Davenant’s The Man’s the Master (1668), a character calls for a song ‘in Recitativo and in Parts’.48 Thomas Shadwell’s The Royal Shepherdess. A Tragi-Comedy (1669) contains an entertainment where the shepherds present a pastoral song and dance to the King and Queen: ‘one arises and sings as follows, In Stilo recitative’, answered by a chorus of shepherds and shepherdesses (Act III). The Duke of Buckingham’s Rehearsal (1672), a burlesque of the new rhyming heroic plays, has its satiric target the poet Bayes (usually taken to be John Dryden) propose in his play to have the soldiers enter holding a lute and ‘play the battle in recitativo’.49 Locke’s music for Shadwell’s Psyche (1675) contains a variety of styles of singing, including an entrance for Pan and Chief Priest singing in declamatory recitative (Act I). The play The Loving Enemies by Lewis Maidwell (1680) directs 45

Initially privately presented before the Portuguese ambassador; Locke’s recitatives were probably written for the 1659 performance. See Edward J. Dent, intro. and ed., Cupid and Death. Musica Britannica, 2 (London: Stainer and Bell, 1951), and Dent, Foundations of English Opera, 81–96; Walkling, Masque and Opera, 161–2, 184–5, and passim.

46

As quoted in Curtis Price, ‘The Songs for Katherine Philips’ Pompey (1663)’, Theatre Notebook, 38 (1979), 61–6.

47

The Works of Sir William Davenant (1673), 67–119 (second pagination, at 71–2). Mentioned are ‘The History of Sr Francis Drake’, ‘The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru’, and a scene of Alexander. The musician gives a credible account of the special use of recitative.

48

Davenant, Works, 329–83 (second pagination, on pp. 361–2).

49

Buckingham’s play was written 1663–4, produced in 1671, and first printed in 1672. Quoted from Act V, scene 1.

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a bass to sing ‘recitative’.50 Finally, the two works from about 1683 to 1687, Venus and Adonis and Dido and Aeneas, although known at the time only to a narrow court or private audience, included dialogue in varied styles of recitative. Already by 1678 the Italian styles of singing were known enough that one ‘Seignior William from Northamptonshire’ parodied both the recitative and elaborate, melismatic vocal lines in ‘A Song after the Italian Mode’ (see example 2.1).51 Influential in furthering the Italian music vocal style among composers was Draghi’s setting of Dryden’s ode From Harmony, from Heav’nly Harmony, performed for St Cecilia’s day on 22 November 1687.52 The style deeply influenced Purcell and especially his similar Hail! Bright Cecilia (1692).53 Instead of the French-influenced style of the odes of Blow and Purcell with vocal and choral movements based on dance forms and declamatory solo movements, Draghi used an opening imitative five-part prelude and fugue (instead of French overture), and massive choruses based on polyphony (instead of French dance rhythms) with antiphonal contrasts between instruments and voices. The solo voice writing is fluent and melodic, with drawn-out phrases, embellished with sequence-driven, stepwise melismas of running eighth or sixteenth notes (see example 2.2). To introduce the English to current literature, music, and poetry, the French Huguenot immigré Peter Motteux, later active as a translator and provider of librettos for English musical-theatric works, launched the Gentleman’s Journal: or the Monthly Miscellany in January 1692. Fostering music was central to his mission, and each issue included songs with music suitable for musicians of

50

Maidwell, Loving Enemies (1680), 43.

51

Printed in New Ayres and Dialogues (1678). Two similar parodies of Italian songs appeared in two undated song sheets early in the eighteenth century: (1) ‘A New Song set after the Manner of our Foreign Composers of Musick to English Words. Wherein is expos’d their agreeable way in dividing of Sentences & destroying good Sence, by way of Sacrifice. By an Outalian’, British Library, Hl.1601 (245) [I thank Alison DeSimone for this reference]; and (2) ‘A New Song after the Italian Manner’, Henry E. Huntington Library, shelfmark 81013.I94 (Backus, 1546).

52

Modern musical edition: Giovanni Battista Draghi, From Harmony, from Heav’nly Harmony: A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day, 1687, ed. Bryan White, Purcell Society Edition Companion Series 3 (London: Stainer and Bell, 2010). On Draghi’s ode and the St Cecilia tradition, Bryan White, Music for St Cecilia’s Day: From Purcell to Handel (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2019).

53

Influence of Draghi: Holman, ‘The Italian Connection’; Holman, Four and Twenty Fiddlers, 425–39; and Holman, Henry Purcell, 170–7. Songs by Draghi (some pairs of recitatives and ayres) had already appeared in numerous editions of Playford’s Choice Ayres, Songs, and Dialogue (1673–84) and The Theatre of Music (1685–7); indexed in Day and Murrie, English Song-Books 1651–1702.

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Example 2.1. ‘A Song after the Italian Mode’ by ‘Seignior William in Northamptonshire’ (1678)

Voice

j j j j j & œ™ œ œ œ œ œ œ

™ œ œ œ J #˙

See how ames Sil-ver Streams are now de - tain’d

.

Ÿ 5 ‰ œJ œJ œJ œ œ œ œ œJ œ œj w for you, like Xer - xes it hath

chain’d,

Ÿ œœ œœ & ‰ œJ œJ œJ œ œœ œ œ bœ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œbœ œ œ œ œ that it for - gets

jŸ j & œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ™bœ œ œ œ ˙ œ œ

œ œ ‰ J œJ J ˙

10

to

j j j ‰ & œ œ œ ˙

15

till your sweet Song,

run,

till your sweet Song,

j j j œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ till your sweet Song

20 œ#œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ bœ œ b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ#œ œ œ & œ œ œ œ œ

œ œœœ#œ œœ œ œ œœ œœœ œ #œ œ œ Ÿœ ™ #œ w & œB # œœ œœbœ œœ œœœbœ œ#œB n œœ B # œ œ J be

done

Example 2.2. Giovanni Baptista Draghi, From Harmony, from Heav’ly Harmony: A Song for St Cecilia’s Day (1687) (a) countertenor solo, from the duet and chorus ‘The Trumpet’s Loud Clangour’ (b) countertenor solo, from the chorus ‘As from the Pow’r of Sacred Lays’ a. Countertenor Solo

40 j 3 Œ Œ &4 œœœœœœ œ œ ‰ œ œ œœœœœ œœœœœ e

& œ œ œ

trum

-

œ œ ‰ œj œ œ œ 45

trum-pet’s loud clang-our,

-

-

-

-

-

-

pet’s,

the

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ Œ œ

the trum-pet’s loud clang

-

-

-

-

-

our

b.

j j b & b c ‰ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ œ œ œœ the liv ing 65

Countertenor Solo

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modest skills.54 To satisfy the rising interest in Italian music, he printed three Italian songs, although all with English words, and a song in recitative.55 The distinctive features of Italian-style vocal music were so familiar that Richard Steele, not otherwise known for his sensitivity or awareness of music, in his The Funeral: or, Grief A-la-Mode (December 1701; pub. 1702), can parody an Italian song when he portrays Trim mocking the poetry of Thomas Campley when he sings Campley’s song (in fact a bill for £300): Ay, this is Poetry, this is a Song indeed? Faith I’ll Set it, and Sing it my self— Pray Pay to Mr. William Trim——so far in recitatiro [sic]—— Three Hundred, [singing ridiculously——] Hund—dred——Hundred——Hundred thrice repeated, because ’tis Three Hundred Pounds, I Love repetitions in Musick, when there’s a good reason for it, Po———unds after the Italian Manner——If they’d bring me such Sensible words as these, I’d Out-strip all your Composers, for the Musick Prize—

Here Steele has Trim referring to the competition among English composers for prizes (hence ‘the Musick Prize’) for their musical settings of William Congreve’s masque Judgment of Paris that were performed at Dorset Garden in March–June 1701.

❧  Italian Singers in Concert By the 1690s imported Italian singers were becoming common and given prominent notice in concert advertisements and in verse.56 An ‘Italian Woman’ sponsored by Draghi, performing at the music-meeting at York Buildings in January 1693, made a great impression. Celebrated in a poem as a singer whose

54

The songs are indexed in (anon.), ‘Index to the Songs and Musical Allusions in the Gentleman’s Journal, 1692–94’, Musical Antiquary, 2 (1910–11), 225–34. On the mission of the Gentleman’s Journal, Hendrik Knif, Gentlemen and Spectators: Studies in Journals, Opera and the Social Scene in Late Stuart London (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society (1995), 101–27.

55

They appear in (1) September 1692, pp. 28–31; (2) June 1693, pp. 209–11; and (3) July 1693, pp. 243–46. The first and last have both English and Italian words. Musically, the first is a small da capo song in triple meter and has melismas of two and four measures; the second has predominance of slurs, stepwise motion, and a melisma of 1 3/4 measures; the third is in sprightly triple meter. For good measure, a ‘Complaint in Recitative’ to an English text is given in May 1693, pp. 169–70, which seems less like Italian recitative (recitativo semplice or secco recitativo) than an English declamatory ayre. The August 1692 issue includes ‘Ah me to many deaths decreed’ ‘set by Mr. Purcell the Italian Way’, 26–7.





56

These notices are collected in Michael Tilmouth, ‘A Calendar of References to Music in Newspapers Published in London and the Provinces (1660–1719)’, Royal Musical Association. Research Chronicle, 1 & 2 (1961–2).

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‘elevating Notes’ made ‘not Winter with us, but the Spring’,57 she was also the subject of ‘A Song on the Italian Woman’.58 One amateur musician wrote about her to the music theorist William Holder on 7 January 1693: We have here arrived very Lately a young Italian Gentlewoman who sings to admiration; as they say; & Sung Last Tuesday [3 January] in York buildings at the Musick Meetings. Where by [she] received above 3 score & 10 pounds on her account, and might have had as much more if there had been Room. Mr Baptist [Draghi] & his Partner there were at the Charge of bringing her from Italy (with her father & Mother) wch cost them about 150 ll.

Of note in this account is that recently arrived singers were brought to Court from the theatres, in this case for Princess Anne: She was carried to the Princess of Denmark last week to sing, by Mr Baptist; who like[d] her so well that she [Anne] gave Baptiste 20 Guineas to dispose of; which he immediately gave all to her. But as no body can please all, there are some of our English practical musitians, who have endeavoured to lessen her. I am partlly promised to hear her within a very little time.59

The following November 1693, the castrato Pier Francisco Tosi was a featured performer in a music-meeting.60 Several of England’s Imperial allies in the wars to contain the ambitions of Louis XIV for Universal Monarchy seem to have been a source of visiting Italian virtuoso singers – perhaps as instances of the princely protocol of sending singers as ambassadors of good will. A newspaper in April 1699 reported ‘a Signior Clementine, the famous Eunuch, Servant to the Elector of Bavaria’ had been hired to sing at Christopher Rich’s Drury Lane as a counterattraction to the French dancer Jean Ballon and Italian singer Segismondo Fideli at Betterton’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields (see below). He was ‘a Person of that extraordinary Desert [sic] in Singing, that his yearly Salary on that Account is 500 L a Year’.61 Clem57

Van Lennep, ed., London Stage, part 1, 417. ‘Poem on the Italian Woman Lately Come into England; Who Sings at the Musick-House in York-Buildings’ (1693) (‘What elevating Notes are these I hear!’). Luttrel copy (EEBO) dated ‘10 Jan. 1692/3’. The singer is unlikely to have been Margarita de l’Epine, as frequently conjectured.

58

‘A Song on the Italian Woman, the Words by Mr. Hemingham. Set by Mr. R. Courtiville’, Thesaurus Musicus: Being, a Collection of the Newest Songs, book I (1693), pp. 22–3 (‘Where Phaebus with his kindest look’).

59

Letter from John Baynard, 7 January 1693, to William Holder, author of The Natural Grounds and Principles of Harmony (1694); British Library, Sloane MS 1388, f. 78. The performance date is not noted in Van Lennep, ed., London Stage, part 1. Also transcribed in Curtis A. Price, ‘The Critical Decade for English Music Drama, 1700–1710’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 26 (1978), 38–76 (on p. 41 n10).

60

Notice for his concert: Van Lennep, ed., London Stage, part 1, 429.

61

Clementine: Post-Boy, no. 627 (13–15 April 1699). He is also mentioned in the Epilogue to the anonymous Feign’d Friendship: or the Mad Reformer (May [or earlier] 1699; pub. ?June 1699); the speaker states the town is not satisfied enough with English plays, ‘And ’tis meer folly now to think to win ye / Without Balon or Seignior Clementine’.

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entine’s reputation was already known in England. Peregrine Bertie, travelling in Germany with the Earl of Manchester, both future subscribers to building the Haymarket theatre in 1703, wrote to the Countess of Rutland from Hanover on 27 September 1686 that they will be at the Court at Dresden to hear ‘the Bella Margarita sing,62 and att Vienna, [to hear] the famous Clement’.63 Clementine’s reputed £500 annual salary is likely an exaggeration (as were most reports of singers’ salaries) but confirms the public’s perception about the singers’ extravagant salaries.64 One of the characters in A Comparison between the Stages (1702), Ramble, says to Critick, ‘commend me to Signior Clemente – he got more for being an Eunuch that [sic] if he had the best Back in Christendom: the Ladies paid more for his Caponship than they wou’d h’ done for his virility’.65 (This quip is an early example of male patriarchal resentment by accusing women of being overly fond of castrato singers despite the loss of their manhood, and subtle insinuations they are pleasing women by means other than aesthetic.)66 At the end of the year (25 December 1699), the future theatre builder and opera impresario John Vanbrugh wrote to the Earl of Manchester, then Ambassador in Paris, of a another recently arrived singer, ‘the Emperor’s Crooked Eunuch, Francisco’, who was to get 125 guineas for singing five times, while the



He is likely the ‘Signor Clementino’ (Clemente Hader; also known as Clementino de Hadersbergh), who had been active in Vienna in 1681–2. He sang in at least two operas in Vienna: I varii effetti d’Amore (1685) and Il Palladio in Roma (1695), both with music by Antonio Draghi.

62

The ‘Bella Margarita’ is Margherita (Margarita) Salicola (of Saxony; 1660–1717); she began her career under the protection of the Duke of Mantua and sang for the Elector of Saxony from 1685 to 1693, when she returned to Italy.

63

Letter from Peregrine Bertie, 27 September 1686, to the Countess of Rutland. Belvoir Castle; MSS, vol. 19, f. 288. I thank His Grace, the Duke of Rutland for permission to quote from the letter, and Victoria Perry for providing digital image. See also summary in Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland, K. G., 4 vols (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1888–95), 2:111. In 1689, Clementine (Clementino) reported that his previous employer was the Emperor, and he was now serving the Elector of Bavaria in a capacity other than a singer; see John Rosselli, ‘From Princely Service to the Open Market: Singers of Italian Opera and Their Patrons, 1600–1850’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 1 (1989), 1–32.



64

On common exaggeration of salaries, Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘Opera Salaries in Eighteenth-Century London’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 46 (1993), 26–83.

65

A Comparison between the Stages (1702), 49.

66

For later examples, see Thomas McGeary, ‘Verse Epistles on Italian Opera Singers, 1724–1736’, Royal Musical Association. Research Chronicle, 33 (2000), 29–88; McGeary, ‘Repressing Female Desire on the London Opera Stage, 1724–1727’, Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 4 (2000), 40–58; and related articles in chapter 7, note 97.

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actor Dogget got only £30 to act six times.67 Many other Italian singers in these decades are known only from advertisements in London newspapers.68

Italian Singing Noticed from the Stage A sense of the degree of infiltration and contemporary awareness of Italian music, and more precisely Italian singing – as well as the prevailing attitudes and responses towards it – can be gained from plays, which Colley Cibber called ‘the Mirrours of our Lives’, or as Charles Johnson has a character state, the playhouse is ‘That Microcosm, that representative of the great World’.69 The Restoration audience that went to a play wanted its evening well filled with music. This passion for music – what North called the audience’s ‘promiscuous tendency to musick’ –was satisfied before the play with the first and second act music and overture and then four curtain tunes between acts.70 In addition, the play itself could have incidental music with chorus and dance for processions, temple ceremonies, welcomes, incantations, and entertainments for those in the play. As well, most Restoration English plays themselves contain many occasions for songs, music, dances, and talk about music.71 Such occasions for music are 67

John Vanbrugh to the Earl of Manchester, 25 December 1699; in The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, eds Bonamy Dobreé and Geoffrey Webb, 4 vols (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1928), 4:4. The identification of the singer as Francisco Goodsens, a later string player in London theatre orchestras, in Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, A Register of English Theatrical Documents, 1660–1737, 2 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), no. 1611, is unlikely. More likely, he is (Baron) Francesco Ballerini, ‘one of the most famous singers at the imperial court’; see Lawrence Bennett, The Italian Cantata in Vienna: Entertainment in the Age of Absolutism (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2013), 101.

68

See Tilmouth, ‘A Calendar of References to Music in Newspapers’; also noted throughout Van Lennep, ed., London Stage, part 1.

69

Colley Cibber, The Lady’s Last Stake, or the Wife’s Resentment (December 1707), Prologue; Lady Rakelove, in Charles Johnson, The Gentleman-Cully (August 1701), 42. Other mentions of plays as weather glasses or mirrors of society: Thomas Shadwell, The Woman’s Captain (1679; pub. 1680), Prologue (‘The Nation’s weather-glass a Playhouse is’); and Nahum Tate, The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth (1681; pub. 1682) (‘The Play-House is the Nation’s Weather-Glass’). See also Allardyce Nicoll, Restoration Drama, 1660–1700, vol. 1 of A History of English Drama 1660–1900, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952–9), 198–200.

70

Roger North on Music, 306.

71

For overviews of music in the London theatre, Curtis A. Price, Music in the Restoration Theatre: With a Catalogue of Instrumental Music in the Plays, 1665–1713 ([Ann Arbor, Mich.]: UMI Research Press, 1979); Kathryn Lowerre, Music and Musicians on the London Stage, 1695–1705 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); Margaret Laurie, ‘Music for the Stage II: From 1650’, pp. 306–40 in Ian Spink, ed., Music in Britain: The Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992); Roger Savage, ‘The Theatre Music’, pp. 313–83 in Burden, ed., The Purcell Companion; Luckett, ‘Music’; Todd Gilman, ‘London Theatre Music, 1600–1719’, pp. 243–73 in Susan J. Owen, ed., A Companion to

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conventions for the sake of introducing musical entertainments into a play: when a servant is called in to sing a recent ‘favourite’ song, or when a gentleman hosts an informal house concert (music-meeting) to demonstrate his musical taste, to entertain the ladies, or court a young woman. A play may call for drinking, bawdy, sailor, or Scotch songs. Comedies concluding with weddings required festive music on stage. Some stage action includes groups going off to music-meetings, with accompanying banter about music. Some early mentions in plays accept Italian musicians matter-of-factly as routine elements of musical life. Beginning in the 1680s comedies increasingly include occasions for Italian music and mentions of castrato singers. Some scenes show comic characters (mostly beaux, fops, and sparks) or travellers from the Continent possessed of a passing familiarity with Italian music, suggesting it could be a necessary accomplishment for a man of fashion, even if mocked as pretentious. For example, in Thomas Shadwell’s The Lancashire Witches, and Tegue o Divelly the Irish Priest (1681; pub. 1682), Sir Edward, a new-fashioned gentleman grown servile to foreign taste, invites musicians to play a ‘An Italian Song’.72 In Shadwell’s comedy Bury-Fair (1689), a company is promised a little concert of music, whereupon two women enter, who ‘sing an Italian Song of two parts’.73 A scene in William Mountfort’s Greenwich-Park (mid-April 1691), introduces Sir Thomas Reveller who brags that at age forty-eight, he still has ‘Lungs as shrill as an Eunuch, fa, la, la, la’.74 Thomas Southern’s The Wives Excuse: or, Cuckolds Make Themselves (December 1691, pub. 1692) shows a company at a music-meeting. After an Italian Song, the company advance to the front of the stage and converse, some characters showing a pretence of being au fait with Italian music: Mr. Friendall. Ladies and Gentleman, how did you like the Musick? Sightly. O very fine sure, Sir. … Wellvile. Especially the Vocal part. For I did not understand a word on’t. Mr. Friendall. Nor I, faith, Wellvile, but the words were Italian. They sung well, and that’s enough for the pleasure of the Ear. Courtall. By which I find your Sense is sound. Mr. Friendall. And sound sense is a very good thing, Courtall--… [To Mr. Wilding] Vocal, or Instrumental! Which do you most approve of? If you are for the Instrumental, there were the Sonata’s to night, and the Chacons, which you know—

Restoration Drama (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Robert G. Noyes, ‘Conventions of Song in Restoration Tragedy’, PMLA, 53 (1938), 62–88; as well as the extensive literature on the theatrical music of Henry Purcell (see note 100 in this chapter) 72

From 1691 edition, p. 36.

73

Shadwell, Bury-Fair, 27.

74

Mountfort, Greenwich-Park, 5.

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714 Wilding. The Sonata’s and the Chacons which I know! Not I, Sir, I don’t know ’em: they may be two Italian Fidlers of your acquaintance, for any thing I know of ’em. Mr. Friendall. Fye, fye, Fidlers! Masters, if you please, Wilding, Masters, excellent in their Art, and Famous for many admirable Compositions.75

Here Courtly comments that Mr Friendall, with his ‘Sonata’s and Chacons’ has been caught in his own snare and proves his ignorance of Italian music. Later, Lovemore asks the music masters for a song at parting: Mr. Friendall. O by all means, an English Song. Wellvile. Any Song, which won’t oblige a Man to tell you, he has seen an Opera at Venice to understand.76

We may see Wellvile objecting to the pretension of preferring foreign song that requires a person who has been to Italy to understand. The banter shows how widespread (but superficial) knowledge of Italian music, or at least its terms, had become. Shadwell’s The Volunteers, or the Stock Jobbers (November 1692, pub. 1693) has two beaux commend the Italian music being played, as if connoisseurs: ‘that’s Chromatick’, ‘That Fuge’s finely taken’, ‘And bacely [punning on base or bass?] carried on. All Italian Sir, all Italian’.77 A servant in William Congreve’s Love for Love (April 1695) betrays his provincial (but superior) taste when asked if he loves music: ‘Yes, I have a reasonable good Ear, Sir, as to Jiggs and Country Dances; and the like; I don’t much matter your Sola’s or Sonata’s, they give me the Spleen’.78 These mentions seem to accept Italian music as a commonplace part of musical life of London. A matter of fashion or taste perhaps, but so far nothing so threatening as to be expelled from Britain, yet rather useful in comedy for characterizing (or satirizing) persons. Sometimes, however, a stage character’s passion for Italian music could be an affectation and (hence) object of ridicule. The stage character who is overly fond of Italian songs tends to put the object of his passion in less than favourable light: the distain cast upon the speaker of the unwarranted or excessive praise transfers to his passion. Hence, in a scene in Thomas D’Urfey’s The Marriage-Hater Match’d (January 1692), when Lord Brainless proposes to sing to Lady Pupsey and her lap dog ‘an Italian Air’,79 the offer demeans the gift, because the ‘Pert, Noisy, Impertinent Boy, [who is] always thrusting himself into the Ladies Company, [is] receiv’d for the … Diversion his Folly gives’. 75

Southern, The Wives Excuse, 5–6.

76

Southern, The Wives Excuse, 9–10.

77

Shadwell, Volunteers, 27.

78

Congreve, Love for Love, 19.

79

D’Urfey, Marriage-Hater Match’d, 17.

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Critique of Singers But more often singers of Italian songs drew comment about their voices.80 An easy target for derision was the unnatural quality of the high voices of both sopranos and castrato singers. Motteux’s Prologue to George Farquhar, The Inconstant: or, The Way To Win Him (February 1702), likened playgoers to gourmands: Plays are like Suppers: Poets are the Cooks. … Your Rarity for the fair Guests to gape on Is your nice Squeaker, or Italian Capon [eunuch].

The actor William Penkethman, speaker of the Prologue to Thomas D’Urfey’s The Old Mode and the New; or, Country Miss with Her Furbeloe (11 March 1703), complained the comedy might last six weeks if it could be ‘sounded with Italian Squeaks’.81 His theatre, Drury Lane, then ‘must try to traffick cross the Water, / Five hundred [pounds] raise for some foreign Matter’. But Penkethman ventured that if required, How like Midnight Grimalkin should I squawl? No, ’tis the rare high Notes that fire your Blood, And rare high Words too, tho’ not understood.

With the last line, he rails against the unintelligibility of singing in Italian.82 In The Metamorphosis: or, the Old Lover Out-witted (October 1704) by John Corye (Corey), Sir Credulous Mammon visits a quack astrologer.83 Nickum,

80

Italian singers as squeaks and squalls: George Farquhar, The Inconstant: or, the Way to Win Him. (February 1702), Prologue [compares playgoers to gourmands: ‘Plays are like Suppers: Poets are the Cooks. / … / Your Rarity for the fair Guests to gape on / Is your nice Squeaker, or Italian Capon (eunuch)’]; Martin Bladen, Solon; or, Philosophy No Defense against Love (unacted, pub. 1705), Epilogue: ‘Ee’n hideous bawling Toft’s wild Notes will please’; Richard Steele, The Tender Husband (23 April 1705), Epilogue: ‘th’Italian squaling Tribe’; The Fashionable Lover; or Wit in Necessity (April 1706), Prologue: ‘squawling Songsters so bewitch’d the Town’; Thomas Baker, The Fine Lady’s Airs: or, an Equipage of Lovers (December 1708): ‘I hate your Italian Squaling, like a Woman in Labour’ (20); John Corye (or Corey), The Metamorphosis: or, the Old Lovers Out-Witted (September 1704); and Abel Evans, The Apparition; or, the Sham Wedding (25 November 1713): ‘a squaking Coxcom … he should be’.

81

A character in Mary Pix’s The Beau Defeated: or, the Lucky Younger Brother [1700], refers to a fop ‘squeaking like an Eunuch’ (15).

82

He continues: ‘For bating some few Travellers come home, / Who have for breeding made the Tour of Rome, / Each Ditty, chanted by the dear bought fair, / Is Arabick to all the Judges there’.

83

Premiere unknown; only known performance at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 2 October 1704.

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one of the sharpster astrologer’s confederates, fits Sir Credulous with an otocausticon, a cap with long ears, so he can hear things five hundred miles away:84 Nickum. What hear you now? Sir Credulous. A Squawl something like Singing. Nickum. That’s an Italian Singer, mightily in Vogue at a Consort in York-Buildings.85

The Epilogue to the anonymous The Amorous Miser: or, the Younger the Wiser (unacted; pub. February 1705) remarks that while ‘Poets … / May rail against the Vices of the Age’, yet the Town rushes ‘to hear L’[E]pine Italian squeak’. Richard Steele, responding to the opera Li amori di Ergasto, sung all in Italian (9 April 1705), in the Epilogue to The Tender Husband (23 April 1705), implored Britons, From Foreign Insult save this English Stage. No more th’Italian squaling Tribe admit.

Cultural Concerns Many derisory comments merely strike at the easy target of high-pitched voices of castratos or sopranos as squalls and squeaks. But more substantial charges of cultural significance are lodged, although expressed by raillery and insult: that the stage is embracing entertainments that appeal only to sight, sound, and pleasure; that songs sung in a foreign language are nonsense and have no place on an English stage, as opposed to the rational, manly English sense and wit that should prevail.86 These themes, once sounded, were repeated endlessly in following decades, as Italian singing gained an even more prominent place on 84

Otocausticon: hearing trumpet

85

Corye, The Metamorphosis, 7–8.

86

British sense contrasted to Italian and French modes: James Drake, The Sham Lawyer; or, the Lucky Extravagant (31 May 1697), Prologue; Charles Boyle, As You Find It (28 April 1703), Epilogue; Richard Wilkinson, Vice Reclaim’d; or, the Passionate Mistress (June 1703), Prologue [quoted in text]; Roger Boyle, The Tragedy of King Saul (unacted; 1703), Prologue; John Banks [adapted from], The Albion Queens; or the Death of Mary Queen of Scotland (6 March 1704), Prologue [not permitted to be spoken]; Thomas D’Urfey, ‘A Prologue for Cave Underhill’ (24 July 1704?), in Songs Compleat [1719], p. 328; John Dennis, Gibraltar; or the Spanish Adventurers (16 February 1705), Prologue: ‘The Hour will one Day come that shall advance / The British Muse o’er Foreign Song and Dance; / You like your Father shall be fond of Sense, / And Poets treat you at their own Expence’; [Mary Pix], The Conquest of Spain (May 1705); ‘An Epilogue for the Theatre Royal’, in Diverting Post, no. 34 (9 June 1705); Peter Motteux, The Temple of Love (7 March 1706), Epilogue; anon. The Fashionable Lover; or, Wit in Necessity (April 1706), Prologue; Delarivière Manley, Almyna; or, the Arabian (16 December 1706, pub. 1707), Epilogue; Mary Pix, The Adventures in Madrid (1706), Prologue; ?William Congreve, ‘A Prologue Spoken to a Tragedy as the New Play-House in the Hay-Market’, in Muses Mercury (July 1707) [no one listens to the voice of Nature, but only to ‘The far-fetch’d Trash of Italy and France’, (169–70)]; Colley Cibber, The Double Gallant; or, the Sick Lady’s Cure (1 November 1707), Epilogue; Colley Cibber, The Lady’s Last Stake

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the English stage, ultimately in 1710 with the establishment of operas sung all in Italian at the Haymarket theatre. Concerns about the (supposed) effects of singing in Italian had early origin. As early as 1682, John Sheffield (the Duke of Buckingham), could bemoan in An Essay on Poetry, ‘How shamefull, and what monstrous things?’ when ‘Dances, Flutes, Italian Songs, and rime / May keep up sinking Nonsense for a time’ on the English stage.87 For James Drake, in The Sham Lawyer; or, the Lucky Extravagant (31 May 1697), operatic entertainments at Lincoln’s Inn Fields are linked with the other popular entertainments and lack ‘Manly sense’ and strong ‘wit’: Instead of Manly sense, and strong writ Plays, They bring you Harlequin, and Opera’s. They let you thus, like Children, have your will, Knowing how fond you are of Rattles still.88

Mary Pix’s Prologue to The Deceiver Deceived produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields (November–December 1697, pub. 1698), accuses Drury Lane of fostering nonsense, With Powderle-Pimp of Dance, Machine and Song They’ll spin ye out short Nonsense four hours long.

In December 1699 a character Wildish in A Cure for Jealousie (1699, pub. 1701) by John Corye (Corey), compares changes in playhouses to alterations in government: Wit and good sense have been long banisht thence, and in their stead Farce, Song, and Dance have got the Soveraign Sway. Farce writers and Songsters are now the most fam’d for Wit, and Jack Puddings for Acting. A Capering Monsieur shall get more in a Month then [than] a good player can in a Year.89

As George Granville regretted in his Epilogue to Charles Boyle’s As You Find It (28 April 1703): Well had it been if as we fetch from France And Italy their Mode of Song and Dance,   Our sturdy Britains wou’d have borrow’d Sense.

}

Again, John Dennis’s Prologue to his play Gibraltar; or the Spanish Adventurers (16 February 1705), contrasts the foreign song to the sense of British poetry and foresees the day when British sense will triumph over foreign song and dance: The Hour will one Day come that shall advance The British Muse o’er Foreign Song and Dance; (13 December 1707, pub. ?1708), Epilogue; William Taverner, The Maid the Mistress (1708), Prologue; and Nicholas Rowe, The Royal Convert (1708), Prologue. 87

Sheffield, Essay on Poetry.

88

Drake, The Sham Lawyer, Prologue.

89

Corye, A Cure for Jealousie, 21.

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714 You like your Father shall be fond of Sense, And Poets treat you at their own Expence.

The actor Barton Booth’s Epilogue to The Cares of Love: or a Night’s Adventure (1 August 1705), asks why foolishly bring a play to the stage When nought but Farce and Song can please the Age? … While with meer Voice the Tawny Tuscan [Margarita] throngs The Lab’ring House to hear her senseless Songs.

Dennis creates a gender polarization by contrasting the manly sense of British tragedy with the effeminacy of the senselessness of the Italian castrato. In the Prologue to his tragedy Iphigenia (December 1699), reacting to the infiltration of Italian singing and French dance on the London stage, Dennis has The Genius of English introduce the ‘Tragick Muse who admonishes Britons’ for succumbing to the effeminizing effect of Italian singing: Oh is my Brittain faln to that degree, As for effeminate Arts t’ abandon me? I left the enslav’d Italian with Disdain, And servile Gallia, and dejected Spain: Grew proud to be confin’d to Brittain’s Shore, … But, Oh! … Here Song and Dance, and ev’ry Trifle reigns, And leaves no room for my exalted strains. Those Arts now rule that soften’d foreign Braves, And sunk the Southern Nations into Slaves.

The Genius of England concurs: Oh what wou’d my magnanimous Henry say, Or Edward’s Soul returning to the day; To see a Bearded more than Female throng Dissolv’d and dying by an Eunuchs Song.

These passages highlight concern about English national (rational) values as under threat from soft Italian song (nonsense). The feminizing effect of Italian opera will be a common theme in later responses to opera.90

❧  English Song Across the seventeenth century, the English developed an approach to setting texts suited to its national genius or temperament: a characteristic declamatory style of song-setting that was in marked contrast to the Italian aria or the 90

Thomas McGeary, ‘Gendering Opera: Italian Opera as the Feminine “Other” in England, 1700–42’, Journal of Musicological Research, 14 (1994), 17–34; and McGeary, ‘“Warbling Eunuchs”: Opera, Gender, and Sexuality on the London Stage’, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, 7, n.s. (1992), 1–22. See also chapter 7, note 97.

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French arioso and air. For Addison, the sense of an ‘English Musick’ would have embraced this native way of setting English verse. English song flourished on the stage, and most plays included a few incidental songs sung by a minor character. It has been estimated that from 1660 to 1719 over 600 stage works were provided at least one or two songs, as well as masques and musical entertainments.91 Theatre songs are broadly of two types. Most are rather simple, strophic, ballad-like songs, commonly with tuneful (triple-meter) dance rhythms, tending towards modern tonal style. Vocal lines tended to be syllabic, though two-note slurs are common. The songs made no great demands on singers or creativity of the composer, although there was still great attention given to clear expression of the text. By the 1680s, English composers were devoting greater care and artistry to theatre songs and developed a distinctive declamatory solo song style that contributed to the native sense of an ‘English Musick’ that had its origins earlier in the century. Travelling in Italy in the early 1600s, composers including John Dowland and John Cooper (Giovanni Coprario) were introduced to the style and aims of monody (stile rappresentativo) developed by the Florentine Camerata. Returning to England they experimented with speech-like presentation of English texts. This influence can be found in some of Dowland’s lute songs and the English style of declamatory solo songs used in court masques92 of Nicholas Lanier, William Lawes, Alfonso Ferrabosco, and others that sought to capture the rhythms and contours of English declaimed verse.93 Whether this distinctive style was directly indebted to, derived from the Florentine Camerata, represents a parallel application of similar principles with different outcomes, is an adaptation to the acoustics of the performance venues for masques, or is a perceived analogy is subject to debate.94

91

Gilman, ‘London Theatre Music’, 243.

92

Music in the English masque: Peter Walls, Music in the English Courtly Masque, 1604– 1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); and Walkling, Masque and Opera in England.

93

On declamatory technique: Ian Spink, ed., Music in Britain: The Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 156–9, 163–7; Spink, English Song, Dowland to Purcell (1974; with updated bibliography, New York: Taplinger, 1984), 38–71; Spink, Henry Lawes: Cavalier Songwriter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Spink, ‘English Cavalier Songs, 1620–1660’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 86 (1959–60), 61–78; and Spink, ‘Solo Song and Vocal Duet’, pp. 134–54 in New Oxford History of Music, ed. Gerald Abraham, vol. 6, Concert Music, 1630–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); and Vincent Duckles, ‘English Song and the Challenge of Italian Monody’, pp. 1–42 in Duckles and Franklin B. Zimmerman, Words to Music: Papers on English Seventeenth-Century Song (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1967). See also works about Purcell’s song settings, note 100 below.

94

Peter Walls sets out the possibilities in ‘The Origins of English Recitative’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 110 (1983–4), 25–40 (esp. 34–40) and Music in the English Courtly Masque, 1604–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 86–103. See also discussions by Ian Spink (arguing it is an indigenous development due to reasons of acoustics of masque performance) and Nigel Fortune, ‘Solo Song and Cantata’, in New

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Subsequent English composers, including Lanier and Lawes, developed a recitative-like style of declamatory ayre for longer settings in masques, solo songs, and dramatic monologues.95 The style of declamatory ayre was disseminated in the many song book publications of John Playford from 1652 to 1669 in volumes variously titled Ayres and Dialogues, Select Musicall Ayres and Dialogues, or The Treasury of Music.96 The English declamatory style tended to have more angular, disjunct, and rhythmically varied melodic lines that followed the shape, rhythm, and inflections of a heightened, spoken text. While they often had long melismas, they were usually limited more to ‘word painting’ and cadences, instead of the Italian melismas, which were longer, sequence-driven, and applied more extensively throughout the aria.97 The declamatory style was used by a younger generation of composers to set the sophisticated poetry of the so-called Cavalier poets and also found its way into odes and theatre songs. Although cathedral music of the period (especially the full anthem) generally avoided overt Italian influences, by the last quarter of the century, solos in florid declamatory style are found in verse anthems. A celebrated example of the declamatory ayre, well known because it is a setting by Henry Lawes from John Milton’s masque of Comus (1634), is the ayre ‘Sweet Echo’ (example 2.3).98 To a later ear, accustomed to the beauty of Italian melody, this style that gives priority to expression of the text over beautiful melody was incomprehensible. The self-confidant and unrelenting advocate of the fashionable Italian opera Charles Burney printed the song so the reader could ‘hear’ the object of his distain. He could not refrain from ridiculing the setting – although correctly highlighting how distinctive is Lawes’s approach: The notes … neither constitute an air, nor melody; and, indeed, they are even too frequently prolonged for recitative. It is difficult to give a name … to such a series of unmeaning sounds. … I should be glad, indeed, to be informed … what is the Oxford History of Music, ed. Gerald Abraham, vol. 5, The Age of Humanism, 1540–1630 (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), esp. pp. 211–15. 95



Michael I. Wilson, Nicholas Lanier: Master of the King’s Musick (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994) [a biographical study with little about music]; Duckles, ‘English Song and the Challenge of Italian Monody’, with edition of Lanier’s ‘Hero and Leander’; Spink, English Song, 46–8, 100–106, passim. For Lawes, a major biographical and literary study is Willa M. Evans, Henry Lawes: Musician and Friend of Poets (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1941). For emphasis on Lawes’s musical activities, Ian Spink, Henry Lawes: Cavalier Songwriter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), and Spink, English Song, 75–99.

96

See the bibliography of seventeenth-century printed and manuscript works in Spink, English Song, 261–73; fuller bibliographic details in Day and Murrie, English Song-Books.

97

Spink, English Song, 53–9. On florid declamatory style in verse anthems: Spink, Restoration Cathedral Music, 1660–1714 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 34–9.

98

Spink, Henry Lawes, 58–61.

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Example 2.3. Henry Lawes, ‘Sweet Echo, Sweetest Nymph’, from John Milton, Comus (1634)

&b C ˙

Voice

œ œ™ œ ™ J

Sweet Ech - o,

? C˙ b

Continuo

& b œ ‰ œJ ˙

5

sweet - est nymph

˙ #˙

Me-an-der’s mar-gent green,

œ

œ

j & b Œ œj™ œr œ œ œ œj œ

10

w

œ œ œ œ œ™ œ J J J J J

œ˙ ‰ œJ œ™ J R

that lives un- seen

˙

œ œ ˙ œ œ

œ™ œJ œj œj œ™j œr w

shell, By slow

?b ˙

#˙

œ˙ J

œ

And in thy vi - o - let

˙

œ

˙

˙

˙

w

em-braid-er’d vale,

œ

˙

œ #œ nœ ™ œj w

Where the love-lorn night-in-gale Night-ly to thee her sad

?b ˙

œ

r j ‰ œj œ™j œ œ™ œ œj œ œ œJ ˙ J J

j j j œ œ œ œ™ œ ˙

j œ™ B n œ #˙

with-in thy air - y

song mourn-eth well;

w

w

musical merit of this song, except insipid simplicity, and its having been set for a single voice, instead of being mangled by the many-headed monster, Madrigal?99

Burney clearly sees how the aim of a declamatory ayre – lying between recitative and air – diverges from that of either modern Italian aria or secco recitative. London’s leading Restoration theatre composers, including Henry and Daniel Purcell, John Eccles, John Weldon, and Richard Leveridge drew on this tradition, setting texts with melodic lines that were shaped in response to the rhythms, contours, rhetorical gestures, and inflections of a poetic text given heightened expression. Henry Purcell’s excellence as a song writer is universally said due to his sensitive settings of English verse,100 as noted as by his 99

Charles Burney, A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present (1776–89; Frank Mercer, ed.; reprint ed., 2 vols: New York: Dover: 1957), 2:302–4. For discussion of Purcell’s text setting: Margaret Laurie, ‘Purcell’s Extended Solo Songs’, Musical Times 125, no. 1691 (January 1984), 19–25; Franklin B. Zimmerman, ‘Sound and Sense in Purcell’s “Single Songs”’, pp. 43–90 in Vincent Duckles and Franklin B. Zimmerman, Words to Music: Papers on English Seventeenth-Century Song, Read at a Clark Library Seminar, December 11, 1965 (Los Angeles, Calif.: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1967); Ellen Harris, ed. and intro, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 98–122 [notes that Purcell’s declamatory style is not indebted to Lully]; Harris, ‘Recitative and Aria

100

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714

publisher Henry Playford: ‘In all Sorts of Musick … he was especially admir’d for the Vocal, having a peculiar Genius to express the energy of English Words, whereby he mov’d the Passion of all his Auditors’.101 His friend the organist Henry Hall explained how he did this: ‘Each syllable first weigh’d, or short, or long, / That it might too be Sense, as well as Song’.102 Although the text provided by the playwright as printed in the playbook may appear as a rimed strophic song (often with numbered stanzas) or Pindaric stanzas, in more ambitious settings the composer progresses through the text as it comes, expressing the changing characters, mood, and emotions of each phrase or line(s) of text, rarely repeating phrases or doubling back to repeat earlier sections, lines, or phrases. The resulting song is in two or more distinct music-text units, with changing tempo, meter, key, mode, and general expressive character to express or amplify the changing content of the poetry. The music-text units can range from secco-like recitative, to arioso, to declamatory air, to dance-like melodies. Such songs are called multi-sectional theatre songs.103 They have been misleadingly called cantatas,104 but through-composed is an apt expression.



in Dido and Aeneas’, Studies in the History of Music, 2: Music and Drama (New York: Broude Brothers, 1988), 31–59; Bruce Wood, ‘Purcell and His Poets’, Early Music, 32 (2015), 225–31; Wood, Henry Purcell: An Extraordinary Life, ‘The Energy of English Words’, (London: ABRSM, 2009), 88–91; James A. Winn, ‘“Confronting Art with Art”: The Dryden-Purcell Collaboration in King Arthur’, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture: 1660–1700, 34 (2010), 33–53 [critical discussions of song setting in King Arthur]; Martin Adams, Henry Purcell: The Origins and Development of His Musical Style (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 194–221; Spink, English Song, 203–42, and passim; Holman, Henry Purcell, 38–59. Burney grudgingly expressed admiration for Purcell’s ‘superior felicity and passion in expressing the poet’s sentiments’ and having ‘fortified, lengthened, and tuned, the true accents of our mother-tongue’; General History of Music, ed. Mercer, 2:392, 404–5.

101

‘The Bookseller to the Reader’, Orpheus Britannicus, 2 vols (1698, 1702), 1:iii. (Fasimile edition: New York: Broude Brothers, 1965).

102

‘To the Memory of My Dear Friend Mr. Henry Purcell’, Orpheus Britannicus, 1:vi.

103

Large collections of these multi-sectional theatre songs can be found in Purcell’s Orpheus Britannicus (1698, 1702); the issues of The Monthly Masque of Vocal Music (1702–11) [facsimile edition, Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, eds, The Monthly Masque of Vocal Music (1702–1711): A Facsimile Edition (Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 2007)]; A Collection of Choicest Songs and Dialogues (1703); and John Eccles, A Collection of Songs for One Two and Three Voices (1704). For modern musical editions, see the edition in progress of John Eccles, Incidental Music, eds Amanda Eubanks Winkler et al., Recent Researches in Music of the Baroque (Middleton, Wisconsin, A-R Editions, 2015– ); and volumes 16, 20, 21, and 25 of the Purcell Society’s edition of Purcell’s works.

104

Spink, English Song, calls these multi-sectional declamatory ayres ‘cantatas’ (215–16); but this term is recognised as misleading, since the declamatory sections do not alternate with the aria-like sections (as do cantatas); see Holman, Henry Purcell, 45.

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Such songs – with an additional purpose to show case the skills of the professional singers – do have some virtuosic roulades, flourishes, and melismas on single syllables, words, or phrases. But there is an important contrast to Italian vocal writing: the use of melismas is generally limited to illustrating or highlighting characteristic words with analogous musical shapes and contours (‘word painting’) or emphasizing major cadences or points of arrival. Da capo repeats of an opening music-text unit are rare, if non-existent. Purcell is said never to have written a da capo aria, although his later songs begin to show Italianate influences.105 The primarily syllabic settings (although with frequent stepwise slurs), declamatory style, and avoidance of da capo forms all keep presenting the text and its meaning and expressiveness foremost to the listener. The settings kept the song primarily a literary (and rational) entertainment; the songs realise the hallowed expectation that the music should be the handmaiden to the text. These sectional songs, which can be quite long, often have a cumulative dynamic. In a manner that could be mistaken for recitative, they often begin with syllabic, rhetorical vocal gestures sung over a long, sustained bass note (pedal tone); the following sections can become quicker and more rhythmic as they move towards more tuneful and vocally embellished concluding sections. As an island of highly developed song in the midst of spoken dialogue by the main characters of a play, such set-piece theatre songs are analogous to the arias and airs of Italian and French opera. The multi-sectional theatre ayre was especially appropriate for the mad song, to show the fractured and dissociated emotions of the character. Purcell’s mad songs ‘From Silent Shades’, ‘From Rosy Bowers’, ‘I’ll Sail Upon the Dog Star’, and ‘Let the Dreadful Engines of Eternal Will’ remained popular show pieces for singers through the following century.106 Purcell’s ‘From Silent Shades’ has a text of forty-four poetic lines in varying meters and lengths. To match the

Some strophic songs can become strophic variations where the music of the first stanza is modified as needed to adapt to the sense of following stanzas. 105

On Italian influences on Purcell, Spink, English Song, 221–32; Holman, ‘The Italian Connection’. See especially the song ‘Ah me! To many Deaths decreed’ (said by Motteux to be in ‘the Italian Way’; Gentleman’s Journal (August 1692, 26–7); in Orpheus Britannicus, 2nd ed (1706), 160–1. See also the opening section of ‘A Single Song’; ibid, p. 162. Purcell wrote no full-scale da capo arias: Holman, Henry Purcell, 43.

106

Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘Henry Purcell’s Mad Songs in the Theatre and Concert Rooms in the Eighteenth Century’, pp. 91–105 in British Music, Musicians and Institutions, c. 1630–1800: Essays in Honour of Harry Diack Johnstone, eds Peter Lynan and Julian Rushton (Woodbridge: Boydell, forthcoming). On the mad song on the stage, Amanda E. Winkler, ‘Society and Disorder’, chapter 7 in The Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell, ed. Rebecca Herissone (London: Taylor and Francis, 2012; ebook edition). All included in Purcell’s posthumous Orpheus Britannicus (1698, 1702).

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character’s changing emotional states, Purcell breaks the text into thirteen music-text sections, with new music to express the affect of each section.107

❧  Consequence of the Theatre Division of 1695 An increase in protests and resentment against Italian singing and French dancing rose after 1695 in large part as a result of Betterton’s revolt and establishment of a theatre at Lincoln’s Inn Fields (see chapter 1). London again had two theatres, and the managers were spurred to offer a variety of novelties to draw audiences. In the 1697 to 1698 season, with competition heating up, Christopher Rich undertook what Colley Cibber (then acting under him) apologetically called the ‘barbarous introducing of French Mimicks, and Tumblers’.108 In the spring of 1699, Betterton responded and brought over the French dancer Jean Ballon for 500 guineas. Even though Ballon lost him money, in the following season Betterton imported the dancer Anthony L’Abbé for three seasons and then for 400 guineas Madame Subligny of the Paris Opera. In April 1699 Rich faced the competition and imported the ‘Signior Clementine, the famous Eunuch’ mentioned above.109 Actors and dramatists found themselves sharing the stage with singers, French dancers, rope-dancers, acrobats, contortionists (posture-masters), exotic animals, and the like from the lower end of the cultural spectrum. By the end of the century, a production had come to include so much dance, machinery, scenery, and song – spinning out the evening to four or more hours of ‘nonsense’ – that one author, speaking from the stage at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1697, could say the mélange, Which put together, makes it hard to say, If Poet, Painter, or Fidler made the Play.110

These years of competition mark what Judith Milhous calls ‘the darkest period for English theatre since the Commonwealth’, as both companies

107

The setting is schematised in Wood, ‘Purcell and His Poets’, 227.

108

Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740), ed. B. R. S. Fone (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1968), 171.

109

On Betterton’s revolt and decade of competition: Judith Milhous, Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 1695–1708 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979), 151–88; and David Roberts, Thomas Betterton: The Greatest Actor of the Restoration Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 154–72. Shirley Strumm Kenny focuses on the competition of plays produced in ‘Theatrical Warfare, 1695–1710’, Theatre Notebook, 27 (1973), 130–45; and Kathryn Lowerre discusses the musical consequences in Music and Musicians on the London Stage, 1695–1705 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009).



110

Prologue to Mary Pix, The Deceiver Deceived (November 1697; pub. 1698); reissued as The French Beau (1699).

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suffered from the expensive competition.111 From the stage, playwrights and actors again railed at the necessity of appealing to the eye and ear by crowding the stage with novelties to the detriment of wit, sense, drama, and players’ livelihood. Audiences were insulted for their false taste in supporting and enjoying such entertainments.112 111

Milhous, Thomas Betterton, 113.

112

For examples from these years of writers objecting to the non-theatrical entertainments: ?George Powell, Bonduca; or, the British Heroine (Sept. 1695), Prologue; [Thomas Scot(t)], The Unhappy Kindness; or, a Fruitless Revenge (July 1696?), Prologue; Edward Ravenscroft, The Anatomist; or, the Sham Doctor (14 November 1696), Prologue, by Motteux; James Drake, The Sham Lawyer; or, the Lucky Extravagant (31 May 1697), Prologue: ‘Instead of Manly sense, and strong writ Plays, / They bring you Harlequin, and Opera’s [dramatic operas]. / They let you thus, like Children, have your will, / Knowing how fond you are of Rattles still’; Mary Pix, The Innocent Mistress (June 1697), Prologue, by Motteux; [George Powell], The Imposture Defeated; or, a Trick to Cheat the Devil (September 1697), Prologue; [anon.], The Unnatural Mother, the Scene in the Kingdom of Siam (September 1697), Prologue; Edward Ravenscroft, The Italian Husband (November 1697; pub. 1698), Praelude; Mary Pix, The Deceiver Deceived (November–December 1697, pub. 1698), Prologue: ‘With Powderle-Pimp of Dance, Machine and Song / They’ll spin ye out short Nonsense four hours long’; John Crowne, Caligula (February–March 1698), Epilogue; [Charles Gildon], Phaeton; or, the Fatal Divorce (March–April 1698), prologue; Peter Motteux, Beauty in Distress (April 1698), Preface; Thomas D’Urfey, The Campaigner; or, the Pleasant Adventures at Brussels (June 1698), Epilogue; George Farquhar, Love and a Bottle (December 1698, pub. 1699), epilogue, by Jo. Haynes; Henry Smith, The Princess of Parma (April 1699), Epilogue, by Peter Motteux; Thomas D’Urfey, The Famous History of the Rise and Fall of Massaniello (May 1699, pub. 1700), Prologue; [anon.], Feign’d Friendship; or, the Mad Reformer (May 1699, pub. ?1699), Epilogue; John Dennis, Iphigenia (December 1699, pub. 1700), Prologue; Shakespeare/Charles Gildon, Measure for Measure (February 1700), Prologue; [William Burnaby], The Reform’d Wife (March 1700), Prologue; [Catherine Trotter], Love At a Loss; or, Most Votes Carry It (November 1700, pub. 1701), Prologue; Colley Cibber, Love Makes a Man: or, the Fop’s Fortune (1701?), Prologue [to please all tastes, tried ‘French Airs’]; Nicholas Rowe, The Ambitious Step Mother (December 1700, pub. 1701), Prologue and Epilogue; Roger Boyle, Altemira (December 1701, pub. 1702), Prologue, by Henry St John; Thomas D’Urfey, The Old Mode and the New; or, Country Miss with Her Furbeloe (11 March 1703), Prologue; Charles Boyle, As You Find It (28 April 1703), Prologue; Boyle, As You Find It (April 1703), Epilogue; Thomas Shadwell/Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (5 July 1703), Prologue; John Banks [adapted from], The Albion Queens; or the Death of Mary Queen of Scotland (6 March 1704), Prologue [not permitted to be spoken]; David Craufurd [sic], Love at First Sight (25 March 1704), Prologue; Thomas D’Urfey, ‘A Prologue for Cave Underhill’ (?24 July 1704), in Songs Compleat (1719), p. 328; Colley Cibber, The Careless Husband (7 December 1704), Epilogue; Martin Bladen, Solon; or, Philosophy No Defense against Love (unacted, pub. 1705), Epilogue; [anon.], The Amorous Miser (unacted, pub. February 1705), Epilogue; [Susanna Centlivre], The Gamester (early February 1705), Epilogue, by Charles Johnson (‘Nor Song, nor Dance can Bribe your Presence here’); [A. Chaves], The Cares of Love, or, a Night’s Adventure (1 August 1705), Epilogue (‘Nought but Farce and Song can please the Age / … / Old

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Many observers looked back at the consequences of this competition in the later 1690s and linked Italian singing with French dancing as cause for the debasement of the stage. John Downes, the former prompter at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, similarly recalled that Mr. Betterton, to gratify the desires and Fancies of the Nobility and Gentry; procur’d from Abroad the best Dances and Singers, as, Monsier L’Abbe, Madam Sublini, Monsieur Balon, Margarita Delpine, Maria Gallia and divers others; who being Exorbitantly Expensive, produc’s small Profit to him and his Company, but vast Gain to themselves.113

In his notorious jeremiad against the theatres, A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), Jeremy Collier claimed that more music introduced into plays increased the ‘Mischief ’ of plays, for ‘a Lewd Play with good Musick is like a Loadstone Arm’d, it draws much stronger than before’.114 Taking a glance back at the two English stages after 1695 are the participants in the dialogue A Comparison between the Two Stages (1702).115 Ramble turns the conversation to ‘Singing and Dancing’ and Critic chimes in that such were the ‘unnatural Ornaments’ and ‘the very staple Commodity of the Stage’. He said he looked upon ‘the Drama to be in a very wretched condition, when it can’t subsist without those absurd and foreign Diversions’. To which Sullen adds that ‘the Men of Sense about Town’ now jested that the stage ‘shou’d now be prostituted to Vagabonds, to Caperers, Eunuchs, Fiddlers, Tumblers and Gipsies’. At the time, in late April 1698, Motteux could complain that the times were not favourable to his new tragedy Beauty in Distress, for it has ‘no Singing, no Dancing’.116

Shakespear’s Genius Now is laid aside’); Thomas D’Urfey, The Old Mode and the New (1703), Prologue; [John Vanbrugh], The Mistake (27 December 1705), Prologue, by Richard Steele; George Granville, The British Enchanters; or No Magick Live Love (21 February 1706); The Temple of Love (7 March 1706), Epilogue; The Fair in an Uproar, or The Dancing=Dogs (August 1707), Prologue; ‘A Prologue Spoken to a Tragedy at the New Play-House in the Hay-Market’ in The Muses Mercury (July 1707), 169–70: (‘The far-fetch’d Trash of Italy and France’); and William Taverner, The Maid the Mistress (June, 1708), Prologue (‘Attempts to please you without Song or Dance, / Without Italian Airs, or Steps from France’). 113

John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, eds Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1987), 96–7. He estimated that Margarita had gained 10,000 pounds since her arrival. See also A Comparison Between the Two Stages (1702), 155; customarily attributed to Charles Gildon; modern edition by Staring B. Wells (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1942).

114

Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), 279. See also [Jeremy Collier], Mr. Collier’s Dissuasive from the Play-House after the Tempest (1704).

115

Following quotes from pp. 45 and 46.

116

Preface to Beauty in Distress. A Tragedy (April 1698).

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After castratos were appearing regularly in operas, in The Apparition (1710),117 Satan, in a dialogue with a Doctor of Divinity speaks of the causes of the decline of the London stage and places the blame on the poets, players, ‘And Eunuch Singing Choristers, from Rome’. The common complaints about debased theatrical entertainments are voiced in the widely known Epilogue to George Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle (December 1698; pub. 1699), where the popular actor Joseph Haynes, speaking in mourning, relates all that has been tried in order to attract and please audiences, pointedly naming the Italian singers Rampony and Fideli, who had recently been appearing in London theatres: What Arts, what Merit, ha’n’t we us’d to win ye? First to divert ye with some new French strowlers; We brought ye Bona Sere’s, Barba Colar’s. [Mocking the late singers. When their Male Throats no longer drew your Money. We got ye an Eunuch’s Pipe, Seignior Rampony. That Beardless Songster we cou’d ne’re make much on; The Females found a damn’d Blot in his Scutcheon. An Italian now we’ve got of mighty Fame, Don Segismondo Fideli. —There’s Musick in his Name, His voice is like the Musick of the Spheres It shou’d be Heavenly for the Price it bears. [20 l. a time. He’s a handsome fellow too, look brisks and trim. If he don’t take ye, Then the Devil take him.118

The Italian singer Signor Rampany had sung in French, Italian, and English, at York Buildings on 28 March and 15 April 1698; Segismondo Fideli had performed ‘a new Entertainment of Vocal Musick’ at the York Buildings on 22 December 1698 and six days later at Drury Lane.119 The author of The Life of that Eminent Comedian Robert Wilks (1733), referring to this famous epilogue, stated that about this time [1698] ‘shoals of Italian Squallers were daily imported; and the Drury-Lane Company almost broke. Upon this Occasion it was, that the facetious Jo. Haynes composed this Epilogue, and spoke it in Mournings’.120 Richard Wilkinson took up the theme in the Prologue to his comedy Vice Reclaim’d: or, the Passionate Mistress (23 June 1703) and remarked how foreign

117

Quoting from 1710 edition. The dialogue is a satire on Matthew Tindal, The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted, against the Romish and All Other Priests (1706), a controversial tract which stimulated a range of replies and defences.

118

Bona sera was slang for a prostitute.

119

Rampony: van Lennep, ed., London Stage, part 1, 493 and 494. Fideli: London Stage, part 1, 507 and 508. For the second performance, not stated is if he performed between acts, before or after the play, or was the complete entertainment.

120

Page 8. Similar sentiments voiced in The Prologue to Charles Boyle’s As You Find It (April 1703).

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singers – here Margarita de l’Epine and her German accompanist Jakob (Giacomo) Greber – and dancers are needed to entice audiences to the theatre: Humour, which once prevail’d, is laid aside, And can’t appear but by some Foreign Aid: Singing and Dancing is the only Grace, And Shakespear’s well wrought Scenes will have no place,   With Fam’d L’Epine, and great Greber’s Base.

}

Even if the theatre managers pander to audience taste with Italian singing, they lose: the singers ‘L’Epine and Tofts sneak off with all our Gains’. As one epilogue in June 1705 complains to the audience: And you so Fashionably nice are grown, Nothing but what is Foreign, will go down: You hardly will accept of Song and Dance, But what’s produc’d from Italy or France.121

When the opera Li amori di Ergasto (1705) and later operas sung all in Italian appeared in London, they carried with them the opprobrium of one of the entertainments that caused the decline of English drama and the stage.

France versus Italy Italian singing was invoked almost as if an evil twin with French dancing as debaser of the stage. On the London stage, expressions of anti-French sentiment deride the beaux and fops who pursue French dancing, music, and manners.122 Perhaps because of the prominence of French opera at the court of Charles II, later there was general English antipathy to and lack of interest in French opera. The animus against French opera (rather than Italian opera) seems stronger and is easier to understand, aside from traditional English xenophobia and current anti-royalist sentiment. France, as an absolute monarchy, was a military threat, colonial and commercial rival, dominant cultural force, and supporter of the Jacobite cause. French Catholicism and Louis’s aspiration to Absolute Monarchy were a direct threat to both English and European Protestantism.

121

‘An Epilogue for the Theatre Royal’, Diverting Post, vol. 2, no. 34 (9–16 June 1705).

122

Later satiric representations and derision of French dance and fashion in comedies: Thomas D’Urfey, The Intrigues at Versailles: or, a Jilt in all Humours (1697), Prologue derides French foppery and fashions; anon., Feign’d Friendship: or the Mad Reformer (?1699), an Englishman improved under ‘the French Air’ is the greatest fool (22); Colley Cibber, Love Makes a Man: or, the Fop’s Fortune (?1701), Prologue [to please all tastes we tried ‘French Airs’]; [Charles Johnson], The Gentleman-Cully (August 1701; pub. 1702), a character is derided for ‘French Dances, French Airs, and French Perukes’; and Richard Steele, The Tender Husband; or, the Accomplish’d Fools (1705), mocking French dancing (pp. 32–3). Cf. Daniel Defoe’s characterization of the French in The True-Born Englishman (1700/1701), ‘Where Mankind lives in haste, and thrives by Chance, / A Dancing Nation, Fickle and Untrue’; lines 118–19.



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Recent was resentment at the pro-Catholic and pro-French leanings of the Stuart courts and their aspirations to French-style absolutist governance.123 For some proximate causes there were the recent wars. Earlier in the seventeenth century, England had waged wars against the Dutch republic, as an economic and trade threat. The Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–4) established France as England’s major European threat. In the meantime, the marriage of the Duke of York to the Catholic Maria Beatrice, Duchess of Modena and goddaughter of Louis XIV, on 30 September 1673 by proxy in Modena, provoked Parliamentary outrage and raised fears that the new princess would be a French agent at court.124 By late 1673, the Venetian secretary could write home to the Doge and Senate, ‘No one is able to explain why the people of England detest the French alliance so violently’.125 During the Third Anglo-Dutch War, England was initially allied with France against the republican United Provinces. But during the course of the war, French successes and the overthrow of the Dutch republicans in favour of William III made France now the greater threat. The war, coupled with the popular conviction that Louis XIV had corrupted the English court and obstructed 123



On anti-French attitudes: Michael Duffy, The Englishman and the Foreigner: The English Satirical Print, 1600–1832 (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey 1986), 31–9; Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 5–6, 17, 24–5, 87–91; H. T. Dickinson, ‘The Tory Party’s Attitude to Foreigners: A Note on Party Principle in the Age of Anne’, Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research, 40 (1967), 153–65 [general dislike of foreigners, but French in particular]; H. T. Dickinson, The Politics of the People in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995), 267; Steve Pincus, Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650–1668 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 350–68; Pincus, ‘Republicanism, Absolutism and Universal Monarchy: English Popular Sentiments During the Third Dutch War’, pp. 214–66 in Culture and Society and in the Stuart Restoration, ed. Gerald MacLean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), passim; and G. K. Hunter, ‘Elizabethans and Foreigners’, Shakespeare Survey, 17 (1964), 37–52 (esp. 45–6); Tony Claydon, ‘The “Balance of Power” in British Arguments Over Peace, 1697–1713’, pp. 176–208 in New Worlds? Transformations in the Culture of International Relations Around the Peace of Utrecht, eds Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana (London: Routledge, 2017), esp. 181–5; Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c. 1714–80: A Political and Social Study (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993); and Michèle Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity: National Identity and Language in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1996), 37–41 (French as ‘fops’). A contemporary physiological explanation for the English antipathy to French music is given in A Treatise Upon the Modes: Or, a Farewell To French Kicks (1715), 22–3. On the relation of French politics and English national culture, Michael Meehan, Liberty and Poetics in Eighteenth Century England (Wolfeboro, N.H.: Corromhold, 1986).

124

On popular opposition to the marriage, James A. Winn, Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 18; Steven C. A. Pincus, ‘From Butterboxes to Wooden Shoes: The Shift in English Popular Sentiment from Anti-Dutch to AntiFrench in the 1670s’, Historical Journal, 38 (1995), 352–3.

125

Girolamo Alberti, 31 October/10 November 1673; printed in Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, p. 170. Quoted in Pincus, ‘From Butterboxes to Wooden Shoes’, 333.

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peace with the Dutch, turned English popular sentiment against France, and Charles II was forced to abandon the French alliance and sign a peace with the Dutch (who became England’s most reliable ally against France).126 England joined by continental allies had been at war against France from 1689 to 1697. War with France was soon renewed again in 1702, this time with the added aim of ensuring the Hanoverian Succession. Cultural achievements under Louis and the prestige of French taste at Charles’s court aggravated British anxiety about inferiority in culture and the arts; French cultural hegemony was feared as a precursor to Popery and arbitrary government.127 Consumption of French fashions was a drain on balance of trade. A Treatise upon the Modes: or a Farewell to French Kicks (1715) argued the choice of ‘Modes or Fashion’ relates to the political interest of the nation. The tract dissuaded the use of French fashions and asserted that imitation of them would be a tribute to the virtues, valour, and achievements in the arts and sciences of France, which do not equal or excel the British.128 Thomas Rymer’s condemnation of French opera in A Short View of Tragedy (1693) (see chapter 1) was directly tied to its being a form suitable for Louis, the Grand Monarch. The English in turn could disparage the French arts and criticism for their servility to the rules, and celebrate their own freedom which, following Longinus, was necessary for great art.129 Alexander Pope voiced in 1711 the British satisfaction in being free of the tyranny of France, which was cultural and political as well. After the sack of Rome by Charles V, the arts spread across Europe, But Critic Learning flourish’d most in France. The Rules, a Nation born to serve, obeys, And Boileau still in Right of Horace sways. But we, brave Britons, Foreign Laws despise’d, And kept unconquer’d, and unciviliz’d, Fierce for the Liberties of Wit, and bold.130

The attitude towards Italy was ambivalent; but objection seemed specific to singing on the English stage. England had long looked to Italy as the font and origin of the fine arts. English connoisseurs imported Italian artists and musicians and collected paintings, sculpture, and antiquities; architects imitated Italian Palladian and Baroque styles. Italy had produced canonical works of art that were touchstones of taste in the visual arts, and their language was acknowledged the most suitable for music. In the seventeenth and eighteenth 126

Pincus, ‘From Butterboxes to Wooden Shoes’, 333–61.

127

Ibid., 358–9.

128

The treatise includes a detailed critique of French taste in music, pp. 22–3. John Withers’s The Dutch Better Friends than the French, 3rd ed. (1713), proposed to disabuse the reader of ‘Partisans of France and the Pretender’.

129

See John Dryden, Dedication of Examen Poeticum (1693).

130

An Essay on Criticism (1711), lines 712–17; poem begun earlier, in about 1709. A writer in the Grub-street Journal, no. 58 (11 February 1731), makes a similar point and cites the Treatise upon the Modes.

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centuries, Italian musicians dispersed across the courts of Europe and into England, bringing the latest in opera. The animus against Italy tended to be against its moral and sexual laxity and the effects of the dominance there of the Catholic church. The hot, horrid climate of Italy was said to breed illicit and immortal sexual activity: masquerades at Carnival encouraged clandestine sexual encounters; women went out in society accompanied by cisbiseos instead of their husbands; sodomy was said to be rampant, especially by the clergy.131 A common Protestant charge was of the immorality of priests.132 In Italy, it was widely reported the poor had their sons castrated in hopes of making them virtuoso singers; they were said to serve as catamites for Italian cardinals. In the writings of later critics, the immorality of Italy was manifested in the effeminate, sensual nature of its opera, which was said to feminise British men and upset patriarchal gender roles.133 Italy’s depressed economy and condition of agriculture were believed due to its absolutist sacred and secular governance. On balance, France was feared as a nearer and greater threat to England than Italy; Italian opera it seems, despite the objections to Italian singing, was welcomed as the most agreeable and musical of the forms of opera.

❧  English and Italian Singing Comments about Italian songs and singing allow the speaker to frame England as manly, rational, and full of sense; whereas, Italian singing represents a devalued feminine intrusion without sense, mere squalling and screeching. Italian singing is unfit for the English stage – with insidious effects on the national character and civic spirit and a threat to Protestantism and gender norms. These oppositions will be developed and soon put to partisan political use (see next chapter). The contrasts were voiced from the stage. For example, in The Bath, or, the Western Lass, by Thomas D’Urfey (May 1701), honest English music is contrasted to the (false) taste for Italian music by Sir Carolus Codshead, an old fellow, who loves the tunes of the time of Henry VIII and Charles, which are also contrasted to modern taste: ‘we taste nothing now-a-days but your Italian Fricasees, your Quavers, and your Trillo’s, when one of your Down derries and Twangdillo’s are worth a hundred of ’em, by my Ancestors’.134

131

Cf. Daniel Defoe’s characterization of the Italians in The True-Born Englishman (1700/1701): ‘Lust chose the Torrid Zone of Italy, / Where Blood ferments in Rapes and Sodomy’; lines 96–7. An earlier The Character of Italy; or, The Italian Anatomiz’d by an English Chyrurgion (1660), indicts Italians for every conceivable fault and vice.

132

These charges are all catalogued in Reasons Humbly Offer’d for a Law to Enact the Castration of Popish Ecclesiastics, As the Best Way to Prevent the Growth of Popery in England (1700); the tract was frequently reprinted. The writer argues castration of Catholic priests will rid the kingdom of priests and prevent growth of popery.

133

See chapter 7, note 97.

134

D’Urfey, The Bath, 56

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Thomas Baker’s comedy Tunbridge-Walks: or, the Yeoman of Kent (?27 January 1703) features Woodcock (a yeoman of Kent who is the voice of honest country values), who asks Reynard (a gentleman who lives by his wits) and answers his own rhetorical question about the entertainments of the city versus those of the country: ‘And pray, What are your Town Diversions? —To hear a parcel of Italian Eunuchs, like so many Cats, squawll out somewhat you don’t understand—’, which he contrasts to ‘The Song of my Lady’s Birth-Day, by an honest Farmer, and a merry Jig by a Country-Wench that has Humour in her Buttocks, is worth Forty on’t’.135 Reynard, trying (vainly, it turns out) to prove to Woodcock that he’s a husband worthy of his daughter despite his smaller fortune, implores that ‘we generous Hearts Marry for Love, and ne’re value Money’. To dispute which Woodcock points to his fondness for the entertainments of London: ‘Not value Money — Very like, If it were not for such extravagant Sparks as you, that want a true Sense of Money, we shou’dnt have so much Subscription Musick, nor so may French Buffoons skipping over to run away with it’.136 Here he hits at both Italian singers (one had ‘a Damn’d Counter-Tenor Voice’) and French dancers. For Woodcock, an honest gentleman up to London, the taste for Italian singers is a sign that everyone in London is mad.137 For him, Italian music has none of the virtue of the music of the Tudor and Stuart countryside.

❧  Tofts and Margarita The attraction of virtuoso singers in London and their significance for English cultural politics is manifest in the celebrity of the two most prominent non-acting singers in London: the Italian (or Tuscan) Françoise Margarita de l’Epine138 and the Englishwoman Catherine Tofts. The two epitomised virtuosic singing but later also came to represent the opposition between Italian and English music – even though both sang in English and Italian. In addition to singing before or after plays, as entr’actes in plays, or in private gatherings, Margarita and Mrs Tofts frequently appeared in subscription concert series organised on their behalf by patrons, creating a sense of partisanship between (at least some of) their followers.139 Given their exclusiveness and expense, music subscription series must have been prominent, must-attend events – both socially and musically – for London’s elite society. Their popularity 135

Baker, Tunbridge-Walks, 4–5.

136

Ibid., 28.

137

Ibid., 32.

138

Margarita’s name is now commonly given as ‘Margherita’ in reference sources; for the sake of consistency with contemporary sources, the common eighteenth-century form is used throughout this book.

139

A common form of presenting music was by subscription (either for a single event, or a series). For a sum, possibly up to a guinea or more, the purchaser would receive a number of tickets to a concert or series of concerts.

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– and the amount of disposable entertainment money they absorbed – was keenly resented by dramatists, theatre managers, and actors, as seen stated above.

Margarita Margarita de l’Epine was probably born about 1680. Despite occasionally writing a French version of her name (as ‘Marguerite de L’épine’),140 she was consistently said to be ‘Tuscan’.141 In her early years in England, she was usually accompanied by the German musician and composer Jakob (Giacomo) Greber on cello (‘great Greber’s base’) or harpsichord; he acted as her manager, and the two were later married.142 For the 1702 to 1703 season, she sang on evenings of plays at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.143 When she sang before the Queen in April 1703, she received 30 guineas from the Privy Purse.144 Her final performance that season was advertised in the play bills for the afternoon of 12 May 1703, as ‘This is truly the last time’,145 but she sang on the evening of a play on 27 May 1703 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and three times in June 1703 at Tunbridge Wells.146 140

See letters soliciting ticket purchase sent to (future Vice Chamberlain) Thomas Coke, ca. April 1704–February 1706; British Library, Add. MS 69,951, ff. 116–17 (single bifolium) and 118–19 (single bifolium); reprinted in McGeary, ‘Vice Chamberlain Coke and Italian Opera’.

141

On Margarita’s early career, see D. F. Cook, ‘Françoise Marguérite de l’Epine: The Italian Lady?’ Theatre Notebook, 35 (1981), 58–73, and 104–13; and E. L. Moor, ‘Some Notes on the Life of Françoise Marguerite de l’Epine’, Music and Letters, 28 (1947), 341–6 (plus plate).

142

On Greber’s activities in London drawn from Cousser’s commonplace book: Harold E. Samuel, ‘A German Musician Comes to London in 1704’, Musical Times, 122, no. 1663 (1981), 591–3; and Samantha Owens, The Well-Travelled Musician: John Sigismond Cousser and Musical Exchange in Baroque Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), 100–102. On their marriage, see this chapter, note 151.

143

She is unlikely to have been the ‘Italian Gentlewoman’ who sang in a concert at the York Buildings on 3 November 1702 and at York Buildings on 3 December 1702. In both cases it was more likely the Baroness (Maria Gallia Lendenheim); see Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘New Light on the Baroness’, Theatre Notebook, 73 (2019), 2–17. It is also unlikely she was the ‘Italian woman’ who performed in London in 1693, as often stated.

144

Dated 28 April 1703, ‘P:d as given to ye Itallian woman for Singing before ye Queen 32 5 – [ = 30 guineas]’ from the Privy Purse accounts (kept by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough). British Library Add. MS 61,420, f. 77r.

145

Mentioned in letter from Lord Treasurer Sidney Godolphin to Duchess of Marlborough, [12 May 1703]; Henry L. Snyder, ed., The Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), no. 174, 1:181. The Daily Courant (29 May 1703) had stated a concert for 1 June would be ‘the last time of her singing on the stage whilst she stays in England’. The concert with instrumental music composed by Greber was deferred to 11 June (Daily Courant, 8 and 10 June 1703).

146

See facsimile of signed receipt, dated 27 May 1703, reproduced (without giving MS location) in Moor, ‘Some Notes on the Life of Françoise Marguerite de l’Epine’ (unpaginated plate). Moor errs in stating this is the only surviving autograph of Margarita; see two letters to Thomas Coke in McGeary, ‘Vice Chamberlain Coke and Italian Opera’.

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For the performance on 27 May 1703, she received (what seems the usual amount of) 20 guineas. Since the income of lesser-level players might be £10–20 per season, the size of her payment highlights the danger to the players’ livelihood such performances represented.147 At the end of May 1703, the chronicler Narcissus Luttrell recorded, ‘Several lords and gentlemen are carrying on a subscription, which ’tis thought will amount to 20,000 guineas, for Mrs. Seigniora [Margarita], the Italian songstresse at the playhouses here’.148 The amount, as in most claims about singers’ payments, is surely exaggerated, but conveys the perception of their excessive income. Her presence that season on the London stage was soon noted in prologues and epilogues to plays in June and July and other minor verse.149 Richard Wilkinson, in the Prologue to his comedy Vice Reclaim’d: or, the Passionate Mistress (23 June 1703) (see above), had mentioned Margarita and Greber. For the Prologue to the Tragedy of King Saul (unacted, pub. June 1703), Roger Boyle (or Joseph Trapp) has King David grant, Though Margaretta’s Worth would justly shine, Were but her Songs, as is her Voice, Divine.

And the Prologue to Thomas Shadwell’s Shakespeare adaptation Timon of Athens (5 July 1703) makes the familiar complaint that to draw playgoers, innovations are needed, including ‘Tumblers, and French Girls and fam’d L’epine’. In July–August 1703, Margarita, accompanied by Greber, was giving weekly concerts at Tunbridge Wells, where it was reported that the ‘famous Italian Lady … perform’d to the content and great satisfaction of all the Nobility and Gentry, which are in such great numbers there, as has not been seen these many years’.150 Among the nobility who heard her at court, the theatre, and at Tunbridge Wells in summer of 1703 was certainly the Secretary of State and High-Tory defender of the church, the ‘dismal’ Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham. 147

Players’ salaries from Robert D. Hume, ‘The Value of Money in EighteenthCentury England: Incomes, Prices, Buying Power – and Some Problems in Cultural Economics’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 77 (2015), 373–416 (at p. 399).

148

Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1857), 5:303 (between 29 May and 1 June 1703).

149

Mentions of Margarita: Roger Boyle, The Tragedy of King Saul (unacted; ?1703), Prologue; Richard Wilkinson, Vice Reclaim’d; or, the Passionate Mistress (June 1703), Prologue [quoted in text]; Shakespeare, Timon of Athens (1703), Prologue; John Banks [adapted from], The Albion Queens; or the Death of Mary Queen of Scotland (6 March 1704), Prologue: her ‘Charming Ayres / … So Elegant, so Passionate and fine!’; The Amorous Miser: or, the Younger the Wise (unacted, pub. February 1705), Epilogue [by Peter Motteux]; ‘On Margaretta’, in Diverting Post, no. 13 (13–20 January 1705): ‘the Tuscan spreads her vocal Charms’; ‘The Farewell’, Diverting Post, no. 36 (23–30 June 1705): ‘fam’d Margaritta [whose] skill /Does our cramm’d Theatres with Praises fill’; Barton Booth, The Cares of Love (August 1705), Prologue: ‘the Tawny Tuscan’; [Susanna Centlivre], The Gamester (early February 1705), 31; [A. Chaves], The Cares of Love (1 August 1705), Epilogue; and John Vanbrugh, Sganarell, or, the Cuckold in Conceit (22 March 1707), Epilogue.

150

Post-Man, no. 1170 (10–12 August 1703).

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It was quickly and widely known that Nottingham was in thrall to her and her singing. He was by no means the first or only nobleman to succumb to the charms of a singer, but his infatuation and support of Margarita were enough to mark her as a Tory favourite. How his infatuation with Margarita was turned to political use is explored in the following chapter. The following season, from January through April 1704, Margarita sang regularly at Drury Lane as one of the extra-theatrical entertainments. About this time, for an adaption of John Banks’s The Albion Queens; or the Death of Mary Queen of Scotland at Drury Lane (6 March 1704), the Prologue described the Charming Ayres Of Segniora Francisc. Marg. L’Epine, So Elegant, so Passionate and fine!

Margarita apparently left England that summer of 1704,151 for in December Drury Lane announced, ‘The famous Signiora Francesca Margaretta de l’Epine, being lately return’d to England, will sing several Songs in Italian and English, never perform’d before by her’.152 Margarita appeared mostly on Saturdays at Drury Lane singing entr’actes from late December 1704 through May 1705. Her Saturday series is likely alluded to in the Epilogue to the unacted comedy The Amorous Miser (pub. February 1705): while poets futilely endeavour to raise the declining stage, the Town ‘now to hear L’[E]pine Italian squeak, / Subscribe themselves her Bubbles by the Week’. In August 1705 in the Prologue to The Cares of Love (see above) the actor Barton Booth had called Margarita, ‘the Tawny Tuscan’, to emphasise her (presumably) Italian origin.153 It must be emphasised, she sang both Italian and English songs.154 In 1704 Johann Sigismund Cousser (Kusser), a fellow German musician then in London, specifically recommended to Greber how to humour the English: ‘Devote yourself to the English language, and sing an English aria from time 151

She and Greber likely were in Amsterdam at the time; they were lawfully married when a baptism of a daughter in Amsterdam in October 1704 is noted in a registry of the French Catholic Chapel; see Alison DeSimone, ‘“Equally Charming, Equally Too Great”: Female Rivalry, Politics, and Opera in Early Eighteenth-Century London’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12 (2017), 73–101 (at p. 77).

152

Quoted in Emmett L. Avery, ed., London Stage, 1660–1800, part 2, 1700–1729, 2 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960), 1:83 (30 December 1704).

153

A poem ‘On Margaretta’ in the Diverting Post, no. 13 (13–20 January 1705), states, ‘the Tuscan spreads her vocal Charms’, also emphasizing her Italian origin. Her dark complexion is mentioned in ‘On Margarita’ (‘Where Tawny peg displays her Vocal charms’), Brotherton Library, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, ‘Poems on Several Occasions’, Lt52 f. 4v (c. 1700–1710).

154

One of the songs in her repertoire was the da capo aria ‘S’en vola il dio d’amore’ from Bononcini’s Camilla, which would be produced in English translation in London in 1706; in The Monthly Mask of Vocal Music (December 1704 [pub. 1703] (‘Sung by Sig. ra Margaritta De Lepine at the Theatre)’; no. 52 in the facsimile edition, eds Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2007).

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to time. That pleases them very much’.155 Margarita sang in operas, cantatas, and masques in London until May 1719, when she married the musician and composer Johann Christoph Pepusch.

Mrs Tofts A year after Margarita’s debut, an English singer, Catherine Tofts, born about 1685,156 began her public career in the ‘Subscription Musick’, a series of ten concerts held at roughly two-week intervals at both Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatres from 30 November 1703 to 30 March 1704.157 Like most women over about sixteen years of age, even though unmarried, she was called ‘Mrs Tofts’. The series was organised and patronised by prominent Whigs (on Tofts’s Whig patronage, see following chapter). The programmes at the Subscription Musick concerts consisted primarily of instrumental and vocal music by Henry and Daniel Purcell, Jeremiah Clark, Richard Leveridge, Charles Dieupart, and John Weldon, as well as Italian songs.158 Each programme included instrumental music and dances by the celebrity French dancers Anthony L’Abbé, Philippe Du Ruel, René Cherrier, and other English dancers. Several programmes consisted of large-scale works, John Weldon’s The Judgment of Paris (1701) and Motteux’s Britain’s Happiness: A Musical Interlude (1704), intended as a prologue to an opera. In Motteux’s patriotic masque-like work, set before a prospect of Dover Castle, Neptune, jealous of Anne’s vast power over the seas, raises up a storm but is calmed by Pallas Athena, who convinces him all the world is pleased to accept the ‘Empire of the Fair’. From January through March 1704, Mrs Tofts and Margarita were appearing separately (though concurrently) in theatres, possibly in competing subscription series, but the two had appeared together at a court-sponsored concert held on 30 December 1703 at Windsor Castle to fête the Austrian Archduke Charles, then enroute to Spain (see next chapter). Like Margarita, she sang both English and Italian songs. Her status as the pre-eminent English singer was confirmed when she was given the role of Arsinoe in the first Italian-style opera in England, Arsinoe, Queen of Cyrus, on 16 January 1705, at Drury Lane, also supported by subscription. While Mrs Tofts had the lead role in the evening’s main piece, Margarita

155

As translated in Samuel, ‘A German Musician Comes to London’, 591. Further on Cousser’s advice to Greber, Owens, The Well-Travelled Musician, 100–102.

156

The most comprehensive account is Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘The Harmonious Unfortunate: New Light on Catherine Tofts’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 22 (2011), 217–34; see also the earlier Mollie Sands, ‘Mrs Tofts, 1685?–1756’, Theatre Notebook, 20 (1966), 100–113.

157

On ‘The Subscription Musick’, Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘The Subscription Musick of 1703–04’, Musical Times, 153 (2012), 29–44.

158

See the song headed ‘Sung by Mrs Tofts in the Subscription Musick’, which is the da capo aria ‘Senza la legiadria la bellezza nulla val’; The Monthly Mask of Vocal Music (January 1704); no. 55 in the Baldwin and Wilson edition.

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sang Italian and English songs before and after the opera.159 Probably because she was not a foreign singer, Mrs Tofts received considerably less individual notice in prologues, epilogues, and verse than Margarita, although she was recipient of two poems in the Diverting Post in 1705 to 1706.160 Following another of Margarita’s series of performances at Drury Lane in early 1705, Mrs Tofts in turn appeared there eleven times as an entr’acte entertainment, along with dancers. She sang leading roles in Camilla and other operas until she retired from the stage in 1709 and travelled to Venice, where she sang in private concerts and there married the English banker and resident (and later consul) Joseph Smith.161

The ‘Tuneful Rival Sisters’ Inevitably, the two singers were paired; but unlike as with the celebrated Rival Queens Faustina and Cuzzoni in the 1720s, they were usually treated as a pair who represented fashionable virtuosic singing, although contrasted as Italian and English singers.162 The ‘rivalry’ is rather a poetic figure once used that overstates any competition or animosity.163 The only evidence of an antagonism comes from a biased source: Mrs Tofts’s servant. The instance occurred on the evening of 5 February 1704, when Mrs Tofts’s servant, Ann Barwick, threw oranges and hissed at Margarita while she was singing at Drury Lane on an evening with a play, and was taken into custody. Mrs Tofts felt obliged to disown any complicity in her late servant’s action and to urge her punishment in an apology to Rich the theatre manager that was published in the next day’s newspaper.164 159

For example: ‘And the famous Signiora Francisca Margaretta de l’Epine will, before the Beginning and after the Ending of the Opera, perform several Entertainments of Singing in Italian and English’; Daily Courant, no. 859 (16 January 1705). The singers of the opera itself are not mentioned.

160

Tofts poems: Samuel Phillips, ‘Upon Mrs. Tofts’, Diverting Post, no. 19 (24 February–3 March 1705), and ‘Made on Mrs. Tofts’, Diverting Post (February 1706), 8–9. She is mentioned in ‘On Mrs Tofts’ (‘When the pierian Maids with glorious Aim’), Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, ‘Poems on Several Occasions’, Lt 52, f. 10r.

161

On the circumstances of her retirement, and correction of the erroneous belief of her insanity, see Baldwin and Wilson, ‘Harmonious Unfortunate’.

162

On l’Epine and Mrs. Tofts together: Martin Bladen, Solon; or, Philosophy No Defense against Love (unacted, pub. 1705), Epilogue ([quoted in text)]; ‘An Epilogue for the Theatre Royal’ Diverting Post, no. 34 (9–16 June 1705); ‘A Prologue Against the French and Italian Singing and Dancing’, in Reflections, Moral, Comical, Satirical, etc. on the Vice and Follies of the Age (1707), 16–17 (derogates audience for adoring Italian opera); and William Taverner, The Maid the Mistress (June 1708), Prologue: ‘Return fair Tofts and heavenly Lepine / Give me soft Musick in your tuneful Scene’; Secretaria di Apollo; or, Letters from Apollo, 2 vols (1704), 1:98 (‘Why is not Margarita de Lespina? Why is not Mrs. Tofts’, a member or graduate of Cambridge or Oxford asks).

163

On the rivalry in the context of creation of celebrity, DeSimone, ‘“Equally Charming, Equally Too Great’”.

164

Daily Courant, no. 567 (8 February 1704). Misdated in Moor.

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More frequently, as early as 1704, the two are mentioned together as a pair of singers, with Margarita often distinguished as Tuscan. A poem ‘On Musick’ in June 1705 laments that no longer do the miracles of Orpheus occur, but now ‘L’Epine, and Tofts, the Hearts of all have won’.165 Martin Bladen’s Epilogue to his unacted Solon; or, Philosophy No Defense Against Love (1705) repeats the familiar claim that only novelty ‘upholds th’almost forsaken Stage’. After Italian farces and the French dancers Du Ruell and L’Abbé, L’Espine’s admir’d a while, and by degrees, Ee’n [sic] hidious bawling Toft’s wild Notes will please.

One epilogue intended for Drury Lane from June 1705 complained (in the context of worry about the declining stage) that even if the theatres pander to audience taste with Italian singing, they lose: ‘L’Epine, and Tofts sneak off with all our Gains’.166 The poem Subscription; or, the Power of Musick (1707) treats the pair as equals in diverting the attention of peers at subscription concerts: Two tuneful Rival Sisters next appear, Who justly claim th’Applauses of each Peer; Here English Tofts and Margaretta meet, Equally Charming, equally too Great, To bear their Songs the Lords their due forsake, And are transported when the Charmers shake [i.e., trill].167

In the same year, ‘A Prologue Against the French and Italian Singing and Dancing’ claims L’Epine and Tofts they [the audience] only will adore. Sense they disclaim, and all Poetick Rage, As bold Intruders on the sinking Stage.168

A year later, John Gay’s poem Wine (1708) refers to ‘the Tuscan Dames, / Or warbling Tofts more soft Melodious Tongue’.169 With the introduction of Italian-style opera in 1705, the two appeared together without controversy in leading roles in Thomyris (1707), Love’s Triumph (1708), Pyrrhus and Demetrius (1708), and Clotilda (1709), as well as in concerts, both singing in Italian and English. In 1707 they sang in ‘An Ode for Vocal and Instrumental Musick’ on the death of the Duke of Devonshire

165

Diverting Post, no. 36 (23–30 June 1705).

166

‘An Epilogue for the Theatre Royal’; Diverting Post, no. 34 (9–16 June 1705).

167

‘Subscription; or the Power of Musick: A Poem’, appended to Moral Reflections and Pleasant Remarks (1707), 12.

168

In Reflections, Moral, Comical, Satyrical, &c. on the Vices and Follies of the Age, part 3 (1707), 16–17. The Prologue continues to accuse the ‘Cully’ audience of paying ‘Extortion for their Harlot-Song. / In jarring Recitation they delight, / As if to Harmony and Sense they’d equal Spight’.

169

Gay, Wine, 8.

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(mentioned in ‘The Power of Musick’ in chapter 3), written by the Whig John Hughes and set to music by Pepusch; they sang as Britannia (Margarita) and Augusta (Tofts), who weep for Devonshire.170 While both were appearing in Italian-style operas, William Taverner, in the Prologue to his The Maid the Mistress (5 June 1708), could protest that since efforts to please the audience ‘Without Italian Airs, or Steps from France’ have failed, Return fair Tofts and heavenly Lepine Give me soft Musick in your tuneful Scene.

In all, any real serious antagonism seems absent. The pair are held up as celebrated singers; but most noteworthy is the distinguishing of Margarita as Italian and Mrs Tofts as English – a contrast that was put to partisan use (see following chapter). 111 London audiences and music lovers had experienced the gradual ‘infiltration and eventual domination’ of Italian singing in a variety of venues in London, at Court, the Chapel Royal, theatres, and public and private music-meetings – but not without resistance and objection. The infiltration of Italian singing culminated in April 1705 with the production at the Haymarket theatre of Li amori di Ergasto, an opera all-sung in Italian. While Italian music was adopted by many professional and amateur musicians, the appearance of Italian singing (in tandem with French dancing and other entertainments) on the London stage sparked a range of responses reflecting cultural and civic values. Sung in a foreign language by sopranos and castratos, Italian singing was early on ridiculed by some as little more than unintelligible squalls and squeaks: its popularity indicated a debased English taste that preferred sound and nonsense to the wit and sense of solid English comedy and drama. Objections to Italian singing often appear in the context of lament over the loss of English public spirit due to its effeminate, irrational nature, and calls to preserve the English stage and the livelihood of its actors and playwrights. When a stage character comes up to London from the country, English music is presented as the moral centre of English common sense in taste. Exotic Italian singing was a lightning rod that sparked attention to varied issues of cultural politics. Implicit in the concerns spoken from the stage is a pressing question: What public entertainment best serves the English public: Italian singing and French dancing or native comedy, drama, and songs in English? 170

‘An Ode for Vocal and Instrumental Musick. To the Memory of the most Noble William Duke of Devonshire. Obit Anno MDCCVII. Set to Musick by Mr. Pepusch’; in John Hughes, Poems on Several Occasions, 2 vols (1735), 2:178–83. The ode alternates recitative and aria; all three aria texts indicate lines as da capo.

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With Britain at war against the Dutch in the years 1665–7 and 1672–4 and then the French (1689–97 and 1702–13), patriotic urgency in asserting native virtues found expression in railing against foreign singing and dancing on the London stage. The ‘cultural baggage’ that Italian singing acquired could be put to use for partisan political purposes, as explored in chapter 3.

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Chapter 3

Italian and English Singing and Partisan Politics

E

nglish responses to Italian singing and all-sung opera in the Italian manner played out against the backdrop of domestic and foreign politics. Dominating both was the War of the Spanish Succession, which engaged the great powers of Europe for over a decade.1 Domestic politics was also inflamed by the ‘rage of party’ that consumed the entire twelve years of Queen Anne’s reign. The associations that Italian and English singers and singing had acquired in the 1680s and 1690s were put to partisan use in Tory-Whig party polemic. Carlos II, the Habsburg King of Spain, was a dying invalid, without an heir. With his death long expected, for decades, the great powers of Europe had disputed over his successor. By virtue of family marriages, there were three claimants from the Habsburg and Bourdon dynasties: for the Bourbons, Louis XIV’s grandson Philip, duc d’Anjou; and for the Habsburgs, Emperor

1







On the War of Spanish Succession, the treaties, and background from the English perspective: David Ogg, England in the Reigns of James II and William III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 459–85; Steven B. Baxter, William III and the Defense of European Liberty, 1650–1702 (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966); John B. Hattendorf, England in the War of the Spanish Succession: A Study of the English View and Conduct of Grand Strategy, 1702–1712 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987); J. A. C. Hugill, No Peace without Spain (Oxford: Kensal Press, 1991); William Roosen, ‘The Origins of the War of the Spanish Succession’, pp. 151–75 in The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jeremy Black (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987); and Mark A. Thomson, ‘Louis XIV and the Origins of the War of the Spanish Succession’, pp. 140–61 in William III and Louis XIV: Essays 1680–1720 by and for Mark A. Thomson, eds Ragnhild Hatton and J. S. Bromley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968). On the war from the Austrian viewpoint: Linda and Marsha Frey, A Question of Empire: Leopold I and the War of Spanish Succession (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); and Charles W. Ingrao, In Quest and Crisis: Emperor Joseph I and the Habsburg Monarchy (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1979. From the wider European perspective: Onno Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart und die Succession des Hauses Hannover, 14 vols (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1875–88) [especially useful for primary Austrian sources]. On the war from the French perspective: Arsène Legrelle, La diplomatie français et la succession d’Espagne, 4 vols (Gand: F.-L. Dullé-plus, 1888–92).

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Leopold’s younger son, Archduke Charles, and the Electoral Prince of Bavaria (who soon died).2 William III and Louis XIV had arranged two partition treaties in 1698 and 1700 to divide up among the claimants the Spanish empire after Carlos’s death – an empire comprising Spanish America, Naples, Sicily, Milan, and the Spanish Netherlands. The death of Carlos on 1 November 1700 set in train events that led to a continental war, fought mainly in the Low Countries, but reaching into Italy, Spain, and along the Danube. By his will, Carlos left his all possessions to Philip, on the condition they remain intact and that the French and Spanish crowns were not united. The Maritime powers England and Holland (the Dutch or the United Provinces) were content that Philip inherit only the Spanish crown, as long as it was not united with France. By right of treaty the Emperor claimed Spain and her entire possessions for Archduke Charles. Louis accepted Carlos’s will and proclaimed Philip King of Spain, an action that antagonised the Maritime powers and other European states, for a Spanish empire under Bourbon control would upset the balance of power and jeopardise the Dutch and English access to trade in the Mediterranean and America. In early 1701 Louis quickly seized the initiative. By diplomacy he gained Bavaria, Cologne, Savoy, and Portugal as allies. He sent troops into the Spanish Netherlands, occupied the Dutch barrier fortresses, and sent forces into the Rhineland and northern Italy. Louis sent Philip to Spain, who entered Madrid as King of Spain on 18 February 1701. The Emperor mobilised troops and in May 1701 the Imperial General Prince Eugene made his celebrated crossing of the Tyrolean Alps into northern Italy to drive the French out of Italy and recover rightful Habsburg territories. Louis’s provocations made war with Britain and the Dutch inevitable. Knowing he would not be able to lead another campaign against the French himself, William prepared John Churchill, then the Earl (later Duke) of Marlborough, to lead a coalition against France by appointing him Commander-in-Chief of English forces (1 June 1701) and ambassador to The Hague (26 June).



On the military campaigns in Spain: Lord Mahon [Philip Henry, 5th Earl Stanhope], History of the War of the Succession in Spain (London: John Murray, 1836) [useful for transcriptions of documents]; David Francis, The First Peninsular War, 1702–1713 (London: E. Benn, 1975); Henry Kamen, The War of Succession in Spain, 1700–1715 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 10–24; Arthur Parnell, The War of the Succession in Spain during the Reign of Queen Anne, 1702–1711 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1888); John A. Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714 (London: Longman, 1999), 266–360 and passim; Derek McKay, Prince Eugene of Savoy (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977); and Max Braubach, Prinz Eugen von Savoyen: Eine Biographie, 5 vols (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1963), 1:301–68.

2

The Emperor’s case was based on his first marriage to the Infanta Margaretha Theresia (1651–73), younger daughter of Philip IV; Louis XIV’s case on his marriage to the Infanta’s stepsister Maria Theresa (1638–83).

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Following Eugene’s military successes in Italy, England and the Dutch joined the Emperor in the Grand Alliance (27 August/7 September 1701). Led by Marlborough as diplomat and military commander, the Alliance sought to prevent the continental hegemony of Louis XIV, support Austrian claims to the Spanish throne, keep Spanish America out of Bourbon hands, and ensure the thrones of France and Spain were never united. William distrusted parties and tried to govern without being ruled by Whigs or Tories.3 He realised securing the Protestant Succession and preparing England for war with France required a new Ministry and Parliament; by the end of 1700, the Junto Whig Lords Orford, Halifax, and Somers had been dismissed or resigned from offices, and William installed moderate Tories to important places: Sidney Lord Godolphin as Lord Treasurer; Princess Anne’s uncle, the Earl of Rochester, as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and Marlborough as Captain-General. The General Election of January–February 1701 returned control of the Commons to Tories. The first major piece of business by the Tory Parliament was investigating the two partition treaties, resulting in the impeachment in April 1701 of four Whig Lords – Portland, Somers, Orford, and Halifax – for their role in advising the King on the treaties.4 None were convicted, but the impeachments inflamed party antagonism. A recurring means to ensure the Hanoverian Succession were proposals to invite a member of the Electoral family to reside in England, usually the dowager Electress Sophia or her grandson, the Electoral Prince Georg August (future George II). In September 1701 William secretly invited the Electoral Prince to England and proposed granting the Electress a pension, a plan opposed by Princess Anne, who feared a rival heir residing in England – initiating a tension between Anne and the House of Hanover that lasted throughout her reign.5 Anne scuttled the plan by (falsely) claiming she was bearing an heir.6 On 30

3

William especially disliked the Junto Whigs – Charles Montagu (later Lord Halifax), John Lord Somers, Thomas Lord Wharton, Edward Russell (later Earl of Orford), and Charles Spencer (later Earl of Sunderland) – for their appetite for place and power; as well, he suspected Whigs of republicanism.

4

Journals of the House of Commons, 13 (1699–1702), 465, 489–90. On the impeachments, charges, and trials: Chester Kirby, ‘The Four Lords and the Partition Treaty’, American Historical Review, 52 (1947), 477–90; Henry Horwitz, Revolution Politicks: The Career of Daniel Finch, Second Earl of Nottingham, 1647–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 162–3. For a contemporaneous account, A State of the Proceedings in the House of Commons, with Relation to the Impeached Lords: and What Happened Thereupon Between the Two Houses (1701). The trials can be followed in Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1857).

5

On the 1701 invitation: Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart, 9:322, 454. See also Edward Gregg, ‘Was Queen Anne a Jacobite?’, Journal of the Historical Association, 57 (1972), 358–75 (at 368); and Gregg, Queen Anne (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 123.

6

Edward Gregg, The Protestant Succession in International Politics, 1710–1716. New York: Garland, 1986), 18 (and sources in 315 n29). The politics of extending, accepting,

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December 1701, the prolific Whig pamphleteer John Toland published Reasons for Addressing His Majesty to Invite into England Their Highnesses, the Electress Dowager and the Electoral Prince of Hanover (imprint 1702), which rationalised that having a member of the House of Hanover residing in England would ensure the Hanoverian Succession and foil the designs of those plotting the return of the Stuarts.7 When James II died in exile on 6/16 September 1701, Louis’s recognition of his son, James Francis Edward (the so-called ‘Pretender’), as the Prince of Wales violated the terms of the Treaty of Ryswick (by which Louis recognised William as rightful monarch). The action so incensed William, he recalled his ambassador, Charles Montagu, the Earl (later Duke) of Manchester. Seizing on growing resentment of Louis’s recognition of the Pretender and other provocations, William dissolved Parliament on 11 November 1701 and called new elections with the aim of getting a Parliament more agreeable to voting supplies for a pending war. Whigs gained enough seats to bring the parties to near equality in the new Parliament that sat on 30 December 1701. But this Parliament would not last long. During a hunt in Richmond Park on 21 February 1702, William’s horse stumbled on a molehill and threw him, breaking his collar bone; a short illness weakened the King. Marlborough and Godolphin, friends since youth and now ministerial partners, and Robert Harley, Tory leader in the Commons, began planning for the Succession. When William died on 8 March 1702, the crown passed to Princess Anne. Like William, Anne abhorred the idea of parties and aspired to work through powerful ministers who would moderate party faction and work for the national interest. Initially, she relied on her long-time favourites, the Earl of Rochester, Robert Harley, and the Earl of Marlborough and his wife Sarah. A firm ‘true born Whig’, Sarah received the places of mistress of the robes, groom of the stole, ranger of Windsor Park, and Keeper of the Privy Purse – all worth annually over £6,000.



7

or refusing an invitation (or summons) were complex and shifting. The Queen’s refusals to extend an invitation could be taken as covert support of her half-brother James; if Whigs objected, they could be charged with failing to support the Protestant Succession. The Queen feared having a rival court in London, which might be a centre for opposition to her ministers or used to displace her from the throne. Sophie, the dowager Electress, was eager to reside in England (along with her grandson) and receive a pension, her due, as presumptive heir. The Elector, however, was opposed to the invitation, fearing the Electress or Electoral Prince in London could be manipulated into being the basis of an opposition party; he feared the Tory motive might be to disrupt relations with Hanover and somehow further the Jacobite cause. But he could not openly refuse the invitation for himself, which might suggest he was un-interested in English affairs and in assuming the English crown; he also feared his presence might seem an attempt to displace Anne. Journals of the House of Lords, 17 (1702–5), 43; voted on 16 May 1702. It received a reply: An Answer to Mr. Toland’s Reasons for Addressing His Majesty to Invite into England their Highnesses the Electress Dowager, and the Electoral Prince of Hanover (1702).

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The Ministry seemed like a ‘family’ to Swift, as he would later deem it: Lord Treasurer Godolphin’s only son Francis had married the Marlboroughs’ eldest daughter Henrietta (1698), and their second daughter Anne married Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland (1700), a young zealous Whig and later Junto member of Anne’s Ministry.8 Anne assembled a Tory Ministry, including the Earl of Nottingham and Sir Charles Hedges, his protégé, as secretaries of state. Marlborough, retained as Captain-General, insisted that Sidney Godolphin be Lord Treasurer as essential for managing the Treasury to finance the coming campaigns.9 Retained as well were the Duke of Somerset and Henry Boyle. Anne immediately purged many Whigs carried over from William’s Ministry. Halifax, Somers, Orford, and Wharton were removed from the Privy Council and other offices. In May the Earl of Manchester was turned out as secretary of state; likewise, was the Earl of Carlisle, as First Lord of the Treasury and Gentleman of the Bedchamber, both after just four months in office. Anne sent Marlborough to Holland on 14 March 1702 to assure the Dutch she would continue William’s policies and support the Grand Alliance; Parliament declared war on France and Spain on 4 May 1702. As required by a new monarch, Parliament was dissolved on 2 July. In a speech to Parliament, the Queen made known her preference for the Tories.10 In October 1702, the Electress and her advisor Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz began intrigues with Whigs and Tories to obtain an invitation, pension, and household in England.11 To spite the Queen, in 1704, some Tories and Rochester (to retaliate for his dismissal as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) considered introducing a parliamentary measure to invite Sophia.12 The election won the Tories a majority in the Commons. The new Parliament sat on 20 October 1702, with Harley as Speaker. The Queen declared her intention of ‘carrying on the just and necessary war’.13 To punish Dissenters, Parliament introduced in three successive sessions (1702–4) bills outlawing Occasional Conformity, bills especially advocated by the High-Tory

8

For Swift’s use of the term: Jonathan Swift, English Political Writings, 1711–1714, eds Bertrand A. Goldgar and Ian Gadd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 4, 53 n18, 100 (‘a particular Family’). Swift blamed the ‘family’ for Britain’s political difficulties and prolongation of the war.

9

Their partnership in the Ministry can be followed in Henry L. Snyder, ed., The Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); their friendship, in Frances Harris, General in Winter: The Marlborough-Godolphin Friendship and the Reign of Anne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

10

Queen’s preference for Tories: Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time … with Notes by the Earls of Dartmouth and Hardwick, and Speaker Onslow, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1823), 5:45.

11

Gregg, Protestant Succession, 19; Gregg, Queen Anne, 209.

12

Ibid., 20.

13

Journals of the House of Lords, 17 (1702–5), 156.

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Nottingham.14 The Tories could barely forgive the Queen and her Ministry for letting the bills fail in the Lords, which otherwise would alienate Whigs and Nonconformists. Daniel Defoe’s notorious The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702) was a monitory satire to Dissenters on the dangers of the High-Church campaign against the first Occasional Conformity bill.15 Despite what would be a Dutch pattern of hesitancy to engage the French army in a decisive battle, the climax of Marlborough’s 1702 campaign, the capture of Liège, removed the French threat to the United Provinces and left him in an excellent position for next season’s campaign.16 The 1702 summer naval campaign to Spain under Admiral Sir George Rooke had mixed and controversial success (see below). After Marlborough returned from his campaigns, the Queen raised him to a dukedom on 14 December in recognition of both his military and diplomatic services. The Allies received a boost with the Methuen Treaty, concluded in May 1703, by which Portugal defected to the Allies, leaving Philip to rely solely on France to maintain his crown. The treaty committed the Maritime powers to placing Charles on the Spanish throne. Marlborough’s 1703 campaign in the Low Countries and the Rhine gained Cologne and Bonn and assured the security of the United Provinces. The Emperor proclaimed Archduke Charles as King of Spain and declared war on France on 1/12 September 1703. The Maritime powers found themselves allies with Austria in demanding the entire Spanish inheritance for the Habsburgs (hence the slogan ‘No Peace without Spain’). Charles set off from Vienna on 19 September 1703 to claim his throne by force of Allied forces (on his progress to Spain, see below). He arrived at Lisbon on 7 March 1704, and Allied forces set sail on 24 July 1705 and besieged Barcelona, where Charles entered as King of Spain on 9 October. Throughout the Spanish campaign, Charles only securely controlled Catalonia. He held Barcelona as his capital until he left for Austria in September 1711 to succeed his brother as Emperor. Befitting his status, Charles established an opera at his court, directed by Antonio Caldara.17 14

Ultimately, in return for Nottingham’s defection from the Tories and support for the ‘No Peace without Spain’ motion and to drive Harley from office, the Whigs sold out the Dissenters and supported an Occasional Conformity bill in 1711. See Horwitz, Revolution Politicks, 230–5.

15

On the politics of the satire, see the revisionist account by Ashley Marshall, The Practice of Satire in England, 1658–1770 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 153–8.

16

Marlborough’s campaigns are summarised in Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough, His Life and Times, 4 vols (London: G. G. Harrap, 1933–8), 2:94–122; David G. Chandler, Marlborough as Military Commander (London: Batsford, 1973); and William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, with His Original Correspondence, ed. John Wade, new ed., 3 vols (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1847–8).

17

Ursula Kirkendale, Antonio Caldara: Life and Venetian-Roman Oratorios, rev. and trans. Warren Kirkendale (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2007), 52–5.

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In the summer campaign of 1704, Austria was threatened by the march of the French and Bavarian armies down the Danube towards Vienna. Marlborough marched British troops 250 miles from Flanders up the Rhine, joined the Imperial armies under Prince Eugene, and on 2 August achieved his greatest victory at Blenheim, a small village along the Danube. The French and Bavarians fled in disarray and their generals were captured. The Grand Monarch’s army lost its reputation for invincibility, and Austria was safe from further threat from France.

❧  Singers and National Politics In the ‘first age of party’ and with a nation engaged in a continental war, Italian and English singing and singers became politicised: the attributes Italian and English singing had previously acquired became grist for partisan poetry and satire. The cultural politics of singing was carried out using as proxies the Tuscan Margarita de l’Epine and the Englishwoman Catherine Tofts, the two most prominent non-acting singers in London.18 The two were opposed in one poem as rival sisters, apparently because they were singing in separate subscription series, but more frequently they are invoked together as exemplars of virtuosic singers and later appeared together onstage in operas singing in both English and Italian.19 Rivalry was less between the singers than between their partisans. But more important culturally and politically, it was one of singing in English versus Italian on the basis of convenient associations of each with a nation and language. By early 1703 the partisanship between the followers of Mrs Tofts and Margarita had become established enough to be exploited and manipulated – both for defining national identity and for partisan purposes.20 The polemic that developed drew on the valorisations for singing already developed in the previous decades: sound, nonsense, foreign intrusion, and effeminacy for Italian music; by contrast, manliness, reason, wit, and rationality as suitable for English music.

Margarita: Nottingham’s Favourite Frequently hearing Margarita at the theatre, at Tunbridge Wells, and private concerts in spring and summer of 1703, was the Tory Secretary of State Daniel Finch, Earl of Nottingham. His family and wider public were aware of his infatuation with the exotic singer. One relation remarked in October 1703, ‘I have heard

18

Adopting here and throughout the spelling ‘Margarita’, which was used most commonly at the time; modern sources use various spellings.

19

On the rivalry in the context of creation of celebrity, Alison DeSimone, ‘“Equally Charming, Equally Too Great”: Female Rivalry, Politics, and Opera in Early Eighteenth-Century London’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12 (2017), 73–101.

20

Catherine Tofts was not at the time married; the designation ‘Mrs’ was commonly given to female actresses and singers over about the age of sixteen.

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My Ld No[ttingham]: never failed it, when she [Margarita] sung on ye stage’.21 Nottingham was not the only nobleman to succumb to the charms of Margarita; the same writer added he hoped Nottingham and the eighty-three-year-old Whig Francis Newport, Earl of Bradford ‘won’t quarell for places, not that L.d Nott: has her now to him self ’. But the infatuation and sponsorship of her by the fifty-sixyear-old ‘dismal’ minister and defender of the Church apparently were enough to bring notoriety to Nottingham and notice to Margarita as a Tory favourite. Although required to be in attendance at Court due to his ministerial post, Nottingham received Anne’s permission to take two weeks absence beginning 17 September 1703 to be with family and friends at Burley-on-the-Hill, his newly completed country house.22 Margarita and Greber joined him there. News of her presence at Burley spread widely among family and friends. His second daughter, Essex Finch, wife of Sir Roger Mostyn, Tory MP, reported to her father on 26 September that Richard Viscount (I) Bulkeley had written from London that he presumed Greber ‘and Madamoisele have followed yr L.sp [to Burley and] he is very much pleased with ye thoughts [of] how well is ye Lsp entertained at Burley’.23 Two days later, his eldest daughter, Mary Finch, now widow of William Savile, Marquis of Halifax, wrote her father, obviously in reference to Margarita’s visit at Burley: I am very much discontented to[o], to find in yr letter that your Ldsp can suppose that Margaritas being at Burly could possible make me wish my self there, more than yr being there without her would have done, for I assure you yr company without her, is satisfaction enough.24

21

Sir Charles Lyttleton, 10 October 1703, to Viscount Christopher Hatton (father of Nottingham’s second wife); British Library, Add. MS 29,579, f. 469.

22

Godolphin, Bath, 9 September 1703, to Nottingham; British Library, Add. MS 29,589, ff. 153–5. On 18 September, Nottingham’s undersecretary of state Richard Warre, wrote to enquire if Lord and Lady Nottingham had arrived safely; in following weeks he was sending flying packets of official papers to Burley; see British Library, Add. MS 29,589, ff. 190, 237, 239. On Burley-on-the-Hill and the Finch family: Pearl Finch, A History of Burley-on the-Hill, Rutland (London: John Bale, Sons, and Danielsson, 1901), esp. 163–236 on Daniel Finch.



23

Lady Essex (Finch) Mostyn (Nottingham’s second daughter), 26 September 1703, Burley, to Nottingham at Whitehall (British Library, Add. MS 29,589, f. 235), reporting that Lord Bulkeley had written her that ‘Griber has bin at ye Privy garden to enquire when ye Stamford coach set out from London & aboundance of other questions of ye kind by which he concludes he [Greber] & Madameoisele have followed yr L.sp [to Burley.] he is very much pleased with ye thoughts how well is ye Lsp is entertained at Burley’. As Secretary, Nottingham had a house in the Privy Garden (see Godolphin, 28 March 1708, to Marlborough, Snyder, ed., Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, letter no. 400, 1:39, and no. 752, 2:741).

24

Mary (Finch) Halifax, 28 Sept. 1703, to Nottingham; British Library, Add. MS 29,589, f. 239v.

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Daughter Essex also wrote her father about the same time: ‘I did expect also to hear from you while Margaretta was at Burley. I can’t but think though yr Ldsp loves musick very much, you are pretty well tired with a whole weeks entertainment’.25 Towards the end of the year, there are hints Nottingham was organizing and soliciting from friends for a series of music-meetings at which Margarita would sing and for which she would no doubt receive various douceurs. Nottingham’s father-in-law, Christopher Viscount Hatton, a Tory with suspected Jacobite sympathy, out at his country seat in Northamptonshire, received this news, written 4 November 1704, from the Tory MP Charles Bertie in London:26 ‘My Lord Nottingham has gott mee to bee a Contributor to La Signora Francesca Margarita’s charming Voice & many of your house are Subscribers to the Same’.27 One of Nottingham’s targeted contributors, the Tory Viscount (later Earl) Hugh Cholmondeley in the country at Broadwell, wrote Nottingham on 16 December 1703, apparently to apologise for not coming to town (Parliament had sat on 9 November 1703) to attend one of the private performances he organised: I am Endeavouring to Obey your Lops Commands and attend you in Town, but wee Country Gentlemen are not able to come to the price of Margeritas Voice with out doeing Pennance whole Months in the Country first, to raise a Fund suffitient to defray the Expence; however I hope to kiss your Ldps Hands by the Xtmas Hollydays, and shall then readily throw in my Mite to advance any Project that may bring a new relish and Gousto to your Lps Pleasurable part of your Life; and doe from this Day List my self under your Lsps and St Cæcellias banner towards so good a work.28

As late as 1709, the Tory writer of scandalous histories, Delarivier Manley, could write of Nottingham’s infatuation, knowing the reader knew the targets: Look what a grave Seignior comes next, he was once in the Government, and the Head of a Party, but he too much neglected both, to admire a singing Creature at

25

Essex (Finch) Mostyn, to Nottingham, at Burley; British Library, Add. MS 29,588, f. 20. Sir Roger Mostyn, Bt, MP (Nottingham’s son-in-law and political follower) had also heard Margarita, probably at one of Nottingham’s events, for Richard Cox wrote to Nottingham from Dublin on 8 August 1703: ‘I shall allways Rejoyce in the felicityes of yr Noble family, & therefore may take liberty to congratulate the happy Marriage of my Lady Essex, I can [not] doubt but tis soe, for no body can be ill humourd that Loves Musick, and I remember I met S.r Roger one evening at that Devotion’. British Library, Add. MS 29,589, ff. 87–8.

26

Probably the Hon. Charles Bertie (ca. 1640–1711), Tory MP for Uffington, nr. Stamford, Lincolnshire, son of the Tory Montagu Bertie, second Earl of Lindsey.

27

Charles Bertie, London, 4 November 1703, to Hatton; British Library, Add. MS 29,568, f. 149v (Cook errs in transcribing as Gerbie).

28

Cholmondely, 9 November 1703, to Nottingham; British Library, Add. MS 29,589, f. 320r–v.

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the Opera, whom no body else could admire, and yet he gave her Four thousand Chequins for her Favour, and the like Sum repeated to keep it secret.29

The supposed effect of Margarita’s singing upon Nottingham and his fellow statesmen is used to indict the Tory Ministry’s execution of its naval strategy in ‘On Orpheus and Margarita’, written as early as July 1703 by the Whig Lord Halifax (Charles Montagu).30 Halifax’s motive (beyond just the prevailing political skirmishing) for attacking the secretary specifically was his being one of the lords targeted for impeachment by Nottingham in February– March 1701 for their role advising William about the partition treaties (see above). In the War of the Spanish Succession, Whigs favoured continental land campaigns (which Marlborough’s victories validated) to contain Louis, while most Tories held to their Blue Water strategy of using Maritime naval power against Spain and France; it was a cheaper and safer strategy that could capture merchant goods, ships, and ports.31 Halifax’s poem exploits the comparative success of the two strategies. On Orpheus and Margarita 32 Hail tuneful Pair! Say, by what wondrous Charms, One ’scap’d from Hell, and one from Greber’s Arms. When the soft Thracian [Orpheus] struck the trembling strings The Winds were husht, and furl’d their airy Wings. And since the tawney Tuscan [Margarita] rais’d her Strain, R—[Rooke] Strikes his Sails, and dozes on the Main. Treaties unfinish’d in the Office sleep, And Sh— [Shovel] yawns for Orders on the Deep.

29

Delarivier Manley, Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality, of Both Sexes. From the New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediteranean, 2 vols (1709), 1:172.

30

The poem was widely circulated and printed. An early version is in a manuscript commonplace volume of political poems, British Library, Add. MS 40,060, f. 30r, which dates the poem July 1703. Other texts are found in Poems on Affairs of State, from 1640 to Тhis Present Year 1704, 3 vols (1704), 3:407; the Diverting Post (February 1706), 8; and A New Collection of Poems Relating to State Affairs (1705), 552–3. All have textual variants (some recorded below), mostly expanding abbreviations, adding punctuation, and providing alternative adjectives. Also reprinted (with slight variants) in the supplement [3:46 (1750)] to The Works of the Most Celebrated Minor Poets, 2 vols (1749), with the title ‘On Orpheus and Signora Francisca Margaritta’ and attributed there to Halifax (also in the later edition, The Works of Celebrated Authors, 2 vols [1750], 1:236). The names are confirmed in the 1750 reprint. A manuscript copy in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (Lt 81, f.6r) also supplies the names. See also Margaret Crum, ed., First-line Index of English Poetry 1500–1800 in Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), H132 and H100.

31

David A. Baugh, ‘Great Britain’s “Blue Water” Policy, 1689–1815’, International Historical Review, 10 (1988), 33–58.

32

Diverting Post (February 1706), 8.

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italian and english singing and partisan politics Thus equal Charms an equal Conquest gain,33 To him [Orpheus] high Woods and bending Timber came,   To her [Margarita] shrub H—s and Fr: N—m.34 How both attract the Muses can relate, He Trees and Stones, She Ministers of St—e.35

}

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Orpheus has escaped from Hades; Margarita, from the arms of Greber. Their charms are ironically said to be equal: Orpheus stilled the winds and attracted forests and tall trees. Margarita’s strains cause Sir Admiral George Rooke to roll up his sails and sleep at sea, Secretaries of State (Hedges and Nottingham) to leave treaties unattended, and Sir Admiral Cloudesly Shovel to await orders at sea. The irony is most pointed in the triplet: Orpheus’s music is powerful enough to command ‘high woods and humble bushes’; whereas Margarita summons only the two secretaries of state, the tall Nottingham and the ‘shrub’ Sir Charles Hedges.36 (In addition to the play on his name, ‘shrub’ partakes of an obsolete meaning of a mean, inferior, insignificant person.) The images of the dozing admirals lulled by Margarita and ineffective ministers serve Whig polemic against the Tory Ministry and its Blue Water policy.

The Naval Campaigns The basis for Rooke’s pacific reputation exploited in this and other poems lay in recent naval expeditions. In the first summer campaign in 1702, Rooke was given command of a fleet, with the Duke of Ormonde commanding land forces, and sent to capture the strategic fort at the port of Cadiz, up the Spanish coast from Gibraltar. The expedition’s goal as envisioned in March was that Cadiz would serve to winter the fleet and as a mid-way point for expeditions into the Mediterranean to support the Allies.37 Rooke left London to assume his command later that month. The task of assembling such a large land and sea force, and delays in issuing orders ensured that only by June were the troops embarked and the fleet set sail from St Helens on 26 June.38 But the fleet was repeatedly forced back to Torbay

33

Correcting ‘Claims’ to ‘Charms’, following other versions.

34

It is not clear why the Diverting Post version reads ‘Fr: N—m’ at this point (= ‘father’?); correcting ‘So’ to ‘To’, following other versions. The version in Poems on Affairs of State has ‘bending Timber came’ and ‘tall N—m’ while the British Library manuscript has ‘humble bushes came’ and ‘tall Nottingham’.

35

The last couplet is present only in the Diverting Post version.

36

Sir Charles Hedges represented what Holmes calls ‘roughly the political “centre” of the Court Tories in the House of Commons’; Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 256.

37

Marlborough, The Hague, 24 March 1701, to Godolphin; in Snyder, ed., MarlboroughGodolphin Correspondence, letter no. 53, 1:53.

38

Rooke’s orders are printed in Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of the House of Lords, vol. 5 (new series), 1702–1704 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery

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by unfavourable westerly winds until 20 July. Three weeks later, the fleet anchored off Cadiz on 12 August. Some troops landed at Cadiz on 15 August 1702 and engaged the enemy, but it appeared impractical for the land forces to take the fortress, and Rooke decided against bombarding the fort. Against Ormonde’s objections, he headed home with the troops and fleet on 18/29 September. By a stroke of good timing, the expedition was salvaged when Rooke learned that a French-Spanish treasure fleet had put in at Vigo Bay, farther up the Spanish coast. Rooke attacked on 12 October, the entire fleet was destroyed, and a large treasure taken; yet Rooke failed to leave a garrison at Vigo.39 The Whig historian Bishop Gilbert Burnet opined, ‘Thus ended this expedition, which was ill projected, and worse executed’.40 The mixed outcome of Rooke’s expedition is remarked in a contemporary couplet from January 1703: Pacifick Admiralls [Rooke] to save the Fleet Shall fly from Conquest [Cadiz] and shall Conquest meet [Vigo].41

Office, 1910), 101–11. The volume includes records of the proceedings, lists of documents examined, orders, and minutes of testimony of officers. 39

Oscar Browning, ed., The Journal of Sir George Rooke, Admiral of the Fleet, 1700–1702. Publications of the Naval Records Society, 9 (1897). Browning comments: ‘The fleet sailed away [from Cadiz] on September 18/29, not only with tarnished honour, but with the entire failure of an undertaking from which so much was expected. Thus the disgraceful disaster of Cadiz was redeemed by a glorious victory, which was very largely the result of accident’ (xl). See also William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Times to the Present, 5 vols (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1898), 2:377–85; John Campbell, Lives of the Admirals, 4 vols (1742), 4:345–6; J. H. Owen, War at Sea Under Queen Anne, 1702–1708 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), 77–86; and Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 5:102–231, passim. For a contemporaneous account, An Impartial Account of all the Material Transactions of the Grand Fleet and Land Forces … By an Officer That Was Present in Those Actions (1703).

40

Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time, 2:333.

41

William Walsh, ‘The Golden Age Retriev’d’ [first line: ‘Sicilian Muse begin a loftier Flight’]. Quoting here an early manuscript, British Library, Add. MS 40,060, ff. 17v–20r, where the poem is dated in a contemporaneous hand, ‘Jan 1702/3’. The poem circulated widely in manuscript and print; printed in Poems on Affairs of State, from the Reign of King James the First to … 1703, 2 vols (1703), 2:422–5; The Works of the Most Celebrated Minor Poets. … Wentworth, … 2 vols (1749), 2:127–30; and Frank Ellis, ed., Augustan Satirical Verse, 1697–1704, vol. 6 in Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660–1714, 7 vols (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963–75), 487–505 [see pp. 780–3 for manuscript sources]. The poem, sometimes titled ‘The Golden Age Restored’, is a satire on the election results for the October 1702 Parliament; a Whig reply circulated titled ‘The Golden Age Revers’d’ [‘Sicilian Goddess whose Prophetick Tongue’], dated Feb. 1702/3.

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In the spring 1703 naval campaign, Rooke cruised the French coast and Bay of Biscay for a month, returned home after never engaging the enemy, and was back in Bath by June. Josiah Burchett summarises the campaign in A Complete History of the Most Remarkable Transactions at Sea (1720): ‘Thus ended an Expedition with a great part of the Fleet, from which very little Advantage accrued, [and which] a Squadron of small Ships might have had much better Success’.42 The Whig historian Rapin de Thoyras wrote that Rooke sailed ‘as if his design had been to keep far from meeting the French fleet, … and to do the enemy no harm’.43 Admiral Shovel’s reputation fared little better. That summer he commanded a large fleet in an ill-planned, poorly manned expedition into the Mediterranean to protect British shipping and support the Allies.44 Leaving England at the end of June, he returned at the end of September as ordered, with the appearance of accomplishing nothing and disappointing the Allies. Bishop Burnet recorded everything was so ill laid in this Expedition, as if it had been intended, that nothing should be done by it. … Nor was it easy to imagine, what the design of so great an Expedition could be, or why so much Money was thrown away on such a Project.45

Halifax’s portrait of Admiral Rooke draws on his wide reputation for reluctance to engage the enemy and eagerness to return home, traits that are satirised in Daniel Defoe’s The Dyet of Poland, which attacks extremists in both parties. Written in June 1704, it circulated in manuscript and was privately printed before publication in July 1705. His [Rooke’s] Voyages never have been made in vain, He took such care of coming Home again: No Man cou’d ever give him a Defeat, And none can match him at a safe Retreat. … A Neg’tive Soldier, always in the Right, Was never Beaten, and would seldom Fight.46

42

Josiah Burchett, A Complete History of the Most Remarkable Transactions at Sea (1720), 645.

43

Rapin de Thoyras, The History of England, trans. Tindal, 2nd ed., 4 vols (1732–47), 4:575. Campbell, Lives of the Admirals, 4:352, comments, ‘His Enemies, indeed, said then, as they said often, that he intended to do nothing’.

44

Clowes, The Royal Navy, 2:387–8; Owen, War at Sea Under Queen Anne, 86.

45

Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History, 2:358–9; Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 5:284–97. Campbell, Lives of the Admirals, 4:309, concurs that Shovel was sent with ‘Instructions [that] were very large; and [without] Force to accomplish almost any Part of those Instructions’. Shovel’s being ‘chain’d to Orders’ is noticed in the poem Great Britain’s Hope, in An Address to my Lord Pembroke [ca. 1709], 4; for the navy, admirals ‘wait the tedious Orders of the Shore; / Where Counsellors are paid to bawl or snore’.

46

Quoted from Ellis, ed., Augustan Satirical Verse, 1704–1714, 7:96; on the poem’s topical allegory, 7:72–5.

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After conveying Archduke Charles to Lisbon the following January 1704 on the way to assume the Spanish throne by way of Britain (see below), Rooke then sailed into the Mediterranean at the end of April. Sighting the French fleet off Toulon, he lost the advantage by calling a council of war; the French escaped, and Rooke headed to Lisbon, capturing Gibraltar on 24 July. On 13 August he engaged the French at Malaga; the fleets were of equal strength, and both suffered heavy losses; at the end of the day, the French withdrew. Although the battle was a draw, each side claimed victory.47 Rooke and Marlborough were caught up in party strife over the outcomes of their campaigns.48 On 12 November 1702, a day of Public Thanksgiving, the campaigns of both Marlborough and the Rooke-Ormonde expedition were celebrated as of equal merit. Despite the equivocal outcome of the Cadiz-Vigo expedition, the Tory House of Commons voted thanks to Rooke and Ormonde on 21 November 1702 for ‘so wonderful a Victory’ at Vigo, ‘an Action, so glorious in the Performance, and so extensive in its Consequence’ – making the most of a failure to achieve the expedition’s initial objective.49 In the Lords, though, that month the Whig Junto launched an inquiry into Rooke’s campaign, calling for instructions, ship’s journals, and flag officers for testimony.50 Rooke’s support in the Court and Commons was so great that the Lords’ motion to censure Rooke failed on 17 February 1703.51 The following year, in February– March 1704, the Lords also investigated Shovel’s summer 1703 Mediterranean campaign and vindicated him.52

47

Clowes, Royal Navy, 2:390–404; Owen, War at Sea, 86–97.

48

Controversy flared up in the partisan newspapers and political pamphlets. Rooke was defended and praised in, for example, A Narrative of Sir George Rooke’s Late Voyage to the Mediterranean, … With a Description of Gibraltar (1704), which acknowledges the ‘Spight and Detraction’ the sea battles had been treated with by a ‘certain Faction’ (1); A Review of the Late Engagement at Sea, … with some Remarks on the Conduct of our Admirals, particularly Sir G. R. (1704), which answers ‘some very scurrilous Reflections thrown upon our Admirals, but most particularly on Sir George Rooke’ and claims the French were ‘heartily beaten’ (18); The Life and Glorious Actions of the Right Honourable Sir George Rook, Kt. (1707); and [Charles Tooke], celebratory poem, To the Right Honourable Sir George Rooke, … at His Return from His Glorious Enterprize near Vigo (1702). See also William Pittis’s commendatory A Funeral Poem Sacred to the Immortal Memory of Sir George Rooke, Kt. (1709), where Rooke was not as greedy for money or honours as was Marlborough. Campbell, Lives of the Admirals, 4:365, wrote his ‘Zeal for the Church, and his strict Adherence to the Tories exposed him to the Aversion’ of the Whigs.



49

Journals of the House of Commons, 14 (1702–4), 39 [quoted].

50

Journals of the House of Lords, 17 (1702–5), 279–93; in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of the House of Lords, vol. 5, 101–24 (item 1833).

51

Journals of the House of Lords, 17 (1702–5), 295.

52

Journals of the House of Lords, 17 (1702–5), 391, 398, 537–8 [vindication]; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of the House of Lords, vol. 5, 462–535 (item 1985).

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Rooke’s equivocal outcome at Malaga in August 1704 was a partisan flash point as Tories cried it up as equal to Marlborough’s near-simultaneous victory at Blenheim on 2 August 1704. On 25 October 1704 the Commons voted to congratulate your Majesty upon the great and glorious Successes … in the intire Defeat of the united Force of France and Bavaria, by … the Command, and by the Courage and Conduct of the Duke of Marlborough, and in the Victory obtained by your Majesty’s Fleet, under the Command, and by the courage and Conduct, of Sir George Rooke.53

The Duchess of Marlborough indignantly recalled how the Duke’s ‘compleat Victory at Blenheim [was] … ridiculously paired with Sir George Rook’s Drawn Battle with the French at sea’.54 The Lords took no notice of Rooke’s victory, because, as a diplomat reported to the Duke of Shrewsbury, ‘my Ld Marlb’s friends thought y.t [the naval battle] & Blenheim ought not to be mentioned on a day’.55 An elegist for Rooke in May 1709 returned to elevate Rooke over Marlborough’s victories at Blenheim and later at Ramillies (12/23 May 1706): Oh! were my Lays but equal to my Zeal, … Blenheim’s Campaign to Vigo’s Flames should yield, And Malaga surmount Ramellies Field56

The naval focus of ‘Orpheus and Margarita’ in July 1703, beyond just a Whig indictment of Tory management of the war, puts the blame for the naval failures on the effect of Margarita’s lulling, drowsy-ing singing upon Nottingham, Hedges, and the two admirals. The references to Nottingham in this and other poems arise from his great interest in Admiralty affairs, something unusual for state secretaries.57 Nottingham prided himself on his profound understanding of naval affairs, but seamen doubted his competence; they sneered at his ignorance and felt he interfered too much.58

53

Journals of the House of Commons, 14 (1702–4), 392.

54

An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (1742), 80.

55

George Stepney, Vienna, 22 November 1704 (n.s.), to the Duke of Shrewsbury, [Italy]; Northamptonshire Record Office, Montagu Volume 52, no. 113.

56

[William Pittis], Nereo. A Funeral-Poem Sacred to the Immortal Memory of Sir George Rooke, Kt. Lately Deceas’d (17 May 1709). The author compares Rooke’s personal character to Marlborough, implying Rooke never took bribes or benefitted from his place for personal gain.

57

Under William III, Nottingham served on the Admiralty Board and was his chief minister for naval affairs; see Horwitz, Revolution Politicks, 15–16, 34–5, 37–8, 108–9, 118–19, 130–2; and Mark A. Thomson, The Secretaries of State, 1681–1782 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 80–1, 87–8.

58

Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History, 2:94–5, reports that the admirals complained Nottingham was ‘ignorant of sea affairs’; the Whig historian John Oldmixon, The

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Mrs Tofts as Whig Favourite While Margarita was known for her sponsorship by the Tory Nottingham and his friends and relations, the affiliation of Catherine Tofts with Whigs was also known. She had grown up in the household of the arch-Whig and Low-Churchman Bishop Gilbert Burnett, and on that account viciously satirised and reviled in the Tory polemicist Delarivier Manley’s chronique scandaleuse of 1710, Memoires of Europe.59 Mrs Tofts was supported by a group of Whig peers, and especially Charles Seymour, the ‘proud’ Duke of Somerset. During the course of one of her subscription series in the 1703 to 1704 season (see previous chapter), Mrs Tofts wrote Somerset asking his intervention in a matter concerning the series. Apparently, when Somerset was out of town, some of the ‘Lords Subscribers’, as Tofts called them, made proposals to her about repertory or offered financial terms that did not meet her expectations. Despite some ‘extraordinary Proposalls’ after her first concert from Christopher Rich, the death of her father, a cold, and possible greater earnings singing on her own, she honoured her commitment to the Lords Subscribers. It was to Somerset, presumably as the leader of the Lords Subscribers, that she wrote, asking him to give directions and provide her justice.60 One sign of Somerset’s and the Earl of Manchester’s sponsorship of subscription music comes from about March 1702: a supposed set of minutes of voted resolutions of a (probably) fictional club.61 The approved resolution states: ‘That the Duke of Sommerset and Ld Manchester be suspended [from] the inscription of subscriptions till May faire’.62 Somerset continued his protection of Mrs Tofts. On 17 March 1709, Sir John Percival (later Earl of Egmont), then in Ireland, received from his uncle in History of England during the Reigns of King William and Queen Mary (1735), 94, adds that without consultation, he ‘sent Orders which could not be obeyed, without endangering the whole Fleet’; Thomas B. Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James II, 5 vols (Philadelphia, Pa.: J. B. Lippincott, 1873), 4:232–3. 59

Delarivier Manley, Memoires of Europe, Towards the Close of the Eighth Century, 2 vols (1710), 1:284, and 2:305–20. See Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘The Harmonious Unfortunate: New Light on Catherine Tofts’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 22 (2011), 217–34.

60

Petition of Catherine Tofts to the Duke of Somerset (n.d.); London, National Portrait Gallery. Tonson Papers. MS 129, box 1 (‘Unrelated Notes’). I thank Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson for sharing their transcription of this document. The petition is printed in Baldwin and Wilson, ‘The Harmonious Unfortunate’, 234.

61

Fictional clubs were common vehicle for satires; see Robert J. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933), 99–105. A similar possible fictional female club that voted on operatic matters, is found in one of the counterfeit continuations of the Tatler (see chapter 6, p. 234).

62

‘Votes’, British Library, Add. MS 40,050, ff. 8–9, on 9v. Dated in contemporary hand March 1701/2. Ophelia Field cites the poem several times, but it is uncertain that the Kit-Cat Club is the club intended; Field, The Kit-Cat Club (London: Harper, 2008).

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London news how Somerset was soliciting gentlemen to purchase tickets for Mrs Tofts’s upcoming benefit on 22 March of the opera Pyrrhus and Demetrius, in which she sang the role of Climene: Our famous Nicolini got 800 guineas for his [benefit] day, & tis thought M.rs Tofts whose turn it is on tuesday next will get a vast deal. She was on Sunday last at the Duke of Somersets, where there was about 30 gentlemen, & every kiss was a guinea: Some took three, others, four, other 5, kisses at that rate, but none less than One. A pretty trade if it would last all the year!

Percival, who was an avid music lover, was chided by his uncle: ‘How many wou’d S.r John Percival have taken had he been there?’63 Somerset’s vanity and his self-fashioning as an arts patron (John Macky called him ‘a lover of Musick and Poetry’) was manifest in his insistence on having his name at the top of lists sent around by managers or impresarios soliciting subscriptions to new operas.64 One instance of such behaviour became topic of gossip when he once confounded John Jacob Heidegger’s efforts to raise an opera subscription in probably 1709. Arthur Maynwaring, the Duchess of Marlborough’s secretary and confidant, repeated to her ‘a ridiculous story’ about Somerset: It has allways been usual for him to begin the Subscriptions for Opera’s: And when Heydeker, after a hundred attendances in vain, got his Paper delivered to him, he sent him [Heidegger] out word, that he never look’d upon Papers in Town, but that he was going into the Countrey, & wou’d carry his along with him, & there consider of it. This Paper, that was to be consider’d of, consisted of two lines & a half, expressing onely the name of the opera, & the number & price of the Tickets, & Away he carried it, certainly intending that nothing shou’d be done, but that the whole Town shou’d wait for the Opera till he return’d. Heydeker having taken the Best advice that is to be got here in so difficult a Case, at last was perswaded to make another Paper, & send it to my L.d Dorchesters where there is a Jocky-Meeting, to try if any one there will be bold enough to sign it [,] but he is still in great perplexity, & thinks himself undone, & has it under consideration to go Post into the Countrey.65

Somerset’s name does appear at the head of several of surviving subscription lists.66

63

Ch. Dering, 17 March 1709, London, to John Percival; British Library, Add. MS 47,025, f. 118r (233); also in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont, 2 vols (Dublin: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1909), 2:236.

64

John Macky, Memoirs of the Secret Services of John Macky, Esq. (1733), 17.

65

Arthur Maynwaring, ‘Monday afternoon’, [?1709], to the Duchess of Marlborough, Woodstock; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,460, ff. 130–3, at f. 132. Date ‘?1709’ is endorsed in pencil, but the anecdote may be in relation to a subscription to the opera Thomyris (premiered 1 April 1707) which Heidegger was promoting; Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke’s Theatrical Papers, 1706–1715 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 16–18, 47, 89, 98.

66

See Thomas McGeary, ‘More Light (and Some Speculation) on Vanbrugh’s Haymarket Theatre Project’, Early Music, 48 (2020), 91–104.

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Visit of Archduke Charles Early in the War of the Spanish Succession, on 1/12 September 1703, the Emperor proclaimed his younger son, Archduke Charles, as King of Spain. Charles set off from Vienna on 19 September (n.s.) to Lisbon, by way of Imperial territory, the United Provinces, and England. From there he was to be escorted by Admiral Rooke to Portugal to marry the Portuguese Infanta and seize his throne by force of English and Allied arms. With an entourage of some 163 members of his household, 210 horses, and 47 coaches and carriages, he travelled with great state and ceremony through Europe.67 His entourage and equipage were said to cost £15,000 and the cost to Britain to transport him to Portugal was projected to cost £105,000.68 En route, he was fêted at Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Halle, and Weissenfels. On 16 October he arrived at the court at Düsseldorf, where the Elector Palatinate Johann Wilhelm (r. 1690–1716), an ally of the Emperor and Treasurer of the Holy Roman Empire, maintained a celebrated musical establishment.69 Anne sent the Duke of Marlborough there to meet Charles. Marlborough had audiences with Charles and received a jewelled sword from the Emperor, and both were entertained by hunting and a ‘very fine Italian Opera’, La monarchia stabilita, an allegorical opera in three acts with forty-nine scenes.70 67

His journey and entourage are given in Johann Friedrich Braun, Das Leben seiner Majestät Caroli des Dritten Königs in Spanien und der Indien. &c. 2 vols (Leipzig, 1708), 2:232–5; and supplement to Wiennerisches Diarium, no. 15 (22–6 September 1703): ‘Eigentliche Relation … bey dem Abschied Ihro Königl. Majest. In Spanien Caroli III’. The journey is summarised in Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuarts, 10:395–9 (citing dispatches to Vienna). The Wiennerisches Diarium gives periodic accounts of his travels. The route and full entourage were described in dispatches from George Stepney, from Vienna and Cologne, 19 September and 24 November 1703, to Secretary of State Charles Hedges; The National Archives. SP 80/21, ff. 314–19, 335–40, and 501–8.

68

Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 5:318 (15 July 1703), 5:352 (26 October 1703).

69

On their political alliance against France, Georg Wilhelm Sante, ‘Die kurpfälzische Politik des Kurfürsten Johann Wilhelm 1690–1716), vornehmlich im spanischen Erbfolgekriege’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 44 (1924), 19–64; and H. Fahrmbacher, ‘Kurfürst Johann Wilhelms Kriegsstaat im spanischen Erbfolgekriege (1700–14)’, Zeitschrift des bergischen Geschichtsverein, 48 (1951), 185–9.

70

London Gazette, no. 3957 (11–14 October 1703) [quoted]. Of the entertainment at Dusseldorf, Braun, Das Leben seiner Majestät Caroli des Dritten, reports: ‘So lange sie an diesem Durchl. Hoffe waren, suchten sie ihre belustignung theils in der jagt, theils in denen ihnen zu ehren angestellten vorteffl. Opern’ (1:242). The music to La monarchia stabilita was composed by the court Kapellmeister, Hugo Wilderer; the allegorical plot-outline is summarised in Friedrich Walter, Geschichte des Theaters und der Musik am kurpflalzischen Hofe (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1898?), 66–7. The opera was repeated for Carnival 1705. See also Wolfgang Horn/Rolf Willhardt, Rheinische Symphonie: 700 Jahre Musik in Düsseldorf (Münster: Gudrun Horn, 1987), 44–5.

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After travelling through Rotterdam, where he was met again by Marlborough, then to The Hague and waiting there for favourable winds, Charles finally set sail for England on 20 November, only to be blown back. He finally arrived at Portsmouth on 26 December (o.s.), where he was met by the Dukes of Somerset and Marlborough and Prince George. He spent an evening at Petworth as guest of Somerset and arrived at Windsor Castle on the evening of 29 December 1703.71 For two days he was fêted with the most elaborate state visit of Anne’s reign.72 The afternoon of 30 December ‘was spent in Entertainments of Musick, and other Diversions, the Court making the most splendid Appearance that ever was known in England,’ reported a contemporary chronicler.73 Charles left for Petworth the next day and returned to Portsmouth on 1 January, and Admiral Rooke led the fleet that set sail on 5 January to carry him to Lisbon. The fleet was twice forced back by contrary winds; Rooke and Charles finally reached Lisbon on 25 March/5 April (only to find the Infanta had died). For the afternoon’s musical entertainment at Windsor, in addition to using musicians of the Queen’s and Prince’s households, the Queen spent lavishly to hire London’s leading musicians especially for the occasion: 260 guineas was paid out of the Privy Purse by the Duchess of Marlborough for the singers Margarita de l’Epine (40 guineas), Catherine Tofts (30 guineas), and Richard Leveridge (30 guineas), and instrumentalists Jakob Greber (40 guineas), Charles Dieupart (30 guineas), Nicola Cosimi (30 guineas), Nicola Haym (30 guineas), and Francesco Gasparini (30 guineas).74 Although no record of the programme survives, it certainly included songs (probably sung in

71

Abel Boyer gives the English portion of his journey in The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, Digested into Annals. Year the Second [for the year 1703–4] (1704), 225–9. Also in London Gazette, nos. 3957, 3969, 3979, 3980, 3981, 3982 (11–14 October, 22–5 November, 27–30 December 1703, 30 December 1703–3 January 1704, 3–6 January, 6–10 January 1704). The Archduke was entertained at Windsor as a means to save money and trouble for the Queen: see Snyder, ed., Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, 1:243 n4.

72

Gregg, Queen Anne, 178.

73

Boyer, History of the Reign of Queen Anne, … Year the Second (1704), 227. See also the Daily Courant, no. 535 (3 January 1704): ‘extraordinary fine Musick play’d all the while’; and Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 5:374–5. For what seems an eyewitness account, see letter from Lady Rachel Russell, 1 January 1704, to her daughter Lady Granby; Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland, K. G. Preserved at Belvoir Castle, 4 vols (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1888–1905), 2:178–9 (‘The afternoon past a little while at basset, musick, and country dances’). On the protocol of the visit: Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), 146–7.

74

‘A list of the Vocal and Instrumental Musick that attended upon the King of Spain at Windsor being neither her Majesties nor the Prince’s Servants’ paid out of the Privy Purse by the Duchess of Marlborough; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,420, f. 13r.

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Italian and English), instrumental music, and possibly excerpts from English dramatic operas. Five days later at Drury Lane was held the fourth concert of the Subscription Musick featuring Catherine Tofts. For that concert on 4 January 1704, Maynwaring wrote an ‘Epilogue to the Ladies’ spoken by the actor Robert Wilkes that glanced back at the recent Court entertainment for Charles, at which both Tofts and Margarita (‘the tuneful Pair’) had sung.75 Maynwaring opens his epilogue saluting the ‘Circle of the Fair’, the ladies in the boxes and pit facing the stage. He takes the occasion to praise them for supporting Mrs Tofts’s concert, which he turns into a celebration of native English music and song against those who favour Italian singing at other venues: With Joy we see this Circle of the Fair Since the late Trial [at Windsor Castle] of the tuneful Pair; Your Country’s Friends, you love the Native Strains Of Musick here, where England’s Genius reigns. In other Walls tho Harmony be found. You know it’s foreign, and disdain the Sound. Who haunt new Consorts, Faction would create, And are Dissenters in Apollo’s State: They shun our Stages where he keeps his Court, And to some gloomy Meeting-house resort. While you [the Fair] with Duty own his rightful Cause, And guard this Place establish’d by his Laws.76

Maynwaring takes up the contrasting patriotic values of partisans of English and Italian singing using the analogy between Britain and Apollo’s realm of music. Apollo rightfully keeps his court on the stage where English is sung, the Genius of England reigns, and Apollo’s laws govern. The patriotic friends of English music consciously disdain the foreign harmony. The ‘other walls’ of the gloomy meeting houses are probably the music room in York Buildings, the site of frequent concerts, where the dissenting followers of Italian music promote faction in Apollo’s musical state. The remainder of the Epilogue consists of fulsome praise of Charles on whose behalf England was at war with France. A printed copy of the programme, such as were likely distributed at other concerts of the Subscription Musick, gives the three-act programme: four songs sung by Tofts (in English and Italian); four scenes from Henry Purcell’s 75

Henry L. Snyder, ‘The Prologues and Epilogues of Arthur Maynwaring’, Philological Quarterly, 50 (1971), 610–29 (on p. 613), erroneously states that the ‘tuneful Pair’ were Mrs Tofts and Robert Wilks.

76

Maynwaring, ‘Epilogue to the Ladies’, lines 1–12; quoting from the broadside version. Also printed in Poems on Affairs of State, from 1640 to This Present Year 1704, 3 vols (1704), 3:421–2; Snyder, ‘Prologues and Epilogues of Arthur Maynwaring’; and Pierre Danchin, ed., Prologues and Epilogues of the Eighteenth Century, part 1: 1701–1720, 1:172–3 (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1990). The broadside was advertised in the Daily Courant, no. 539 (7 January 1704).

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Bonduca, Fairy Queen, and King Arthur; ‘An Ode on the Glorious Beginning of Her Majesty’s Reign’, set by Daniel Purcell; and four dances.77 The concert may have repeated music performed several days earlier at Windsor Castle. The evening programme had a patriotic orientation. Britain’s mythic AngloSaxon past and the origins of her immemorial Constitution – which in Whig eyes were re-affirmed by the Glorious Revolution, defended by William, and under threat by French aims at Universal Monarchy – are recalled in the excerpts by Henry Purcell. The sections from the Temple Scene in Bonduca precede the Britons’ going off to battle the Romans while the Druid priests invoke Great Ruguith to defend Britain from the invaders. The song-chorus pair (‘To Arms, to Arms: Your Ensigns strait display’ and ‘Britains, Strike Home: Revenge your Country’s Wrongs: / Fight, and Record your selves in Druids Songs’) were frequently reprinted and became a popular patriotic rallying cry during times of war. Daniel Purcell’s ‘Ode on the Glorious Beginning of Her Majesty’s Reign’ has the usual allegorical apparatus glorifying Anne but comes around to the war and the cause of Charles’s visit: How glorious will her Reign appear? What Trophies guild our British Sphere? Since then to her Laurels soft Peace is a Bar, Sound Trumpets, come Warriors, harmoniously jar, Restoring sweet Peace by her Conquest in War.

The programme – featuring the English singer Catherine Tofts, music of the Purcells, and a purpose-composed ode – is not just patriotic but Whiggish in its orientation and celebration of the war aims.

Nottingham and Margarita In 1704 Whig writers again took up Nottingham’s infatuation with Margarita and the attributes of Italian music to score political hits about the influence of her singing on Nottingham’s direction of the naval war. In The Dyet of Poland (June 1704; pub. July 1705), Daniel Defoe recasts the recent history of Poland as an analogy between France and England and cautions that the divisive Tory policies could have caused a foreign invasion (from France) and installation of a puppet king (the Pretender).78 Defoe blames Nottingham, the ‘slow unsteady Mannager’, for the lethargic conduct of public

77

The unique copy of the four-page word book for the concert is held at the Folger Shakespeare Library (PR 3291.S67.Cage). Further on the Subscription Musick and the programme, see Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘The Subscription Musick of 1703–04’, Musical Times, 153 (2012), 29–44, where the pages of the programme word book are reproduced.

78

Privately circulated in print before being published in July 1705; on the poem’s background, Ellis, ed., Augustan Satirical Verse, 1704–1714, 7:72–5 (quoted from this edition, pp. 88–9).

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business, and especially his orders to the navy. Defoe places responsibility squarely on Margarita’s influence on the government, from ministers to MPs: The slow unsteady Mannager appears Too hot for Peace, too cold for Polish Wars; While charm’d with Foreign Margueritta’s Song, His sleeping Orders he delays too long. Whole Fleets attend the Minstrels softer Notes; By her the Statesman steers, the Member votes.

Defoe compared Margarita’s powers to those of Orpheus: Well might the Syren be compar’d to him [Orpheus] That doz’d old Nature with his Touch Sublime. The lofty Cedars danc’d his softer Airs, And lofty Stupid Statesmen bow to hers.79

Orpheus makes the lofty cedars dance; Margarita can only make the tall, slow, unsteady Nottingham and fellow politicians bow and fail to attend to affairs of state. The Tory pamphleteer William Pittis defends Nottingham in in his reply to Defoe, The Dyet of Poland, A Satyr. Consider’d Paragraph by Paragraph (July 1705).80 He counters it is better to pass time with music than horseracing and asks Defoe to recall who was secretary of state at the time of Vigo, the taking of towns in the Low Countries, and the recent victory at Blenheim. Then ‘he must Condemn himself for Blaming his L---p’s dispatch of the Publick Business’ (16). Nottingham’s captivity to Margarita also appears in the Whig poet Nicholas Rowe’s Horatian imitation ‘The Lord G— to the E. of S— ’ (January 1706).81 In 79

Quoted from Ellis, ed., Augustan Satirical Verse, 1704–1714, 7:88–9.

80

Written in June 1704, and circulated in manuscript prior to publication; see Ellis, ed., Augustan Satirical Verse, 1704–1714, 74–5.

81

Assuming Rowe titles the lords correctly, the poem’s events can be dated between Granville’s creation as Baron on 13 March 1703 and his death on 3 December 1707. Printed here from the manuscript copy at the British Library, ‘The 4th Ode 2d Book of Horace / Ld Granvile to the E of Scarsdale’; Add. MS 40,060, ff. 65v–66r, which dates the poem ‘Jan 1705/6’. Later printings of the poem regularise spelling and punctuation. The poem was printed as ‘Ad Xanthiam. Ne sit Ancillæ tibi amor pudori. The Lord G— to the E. of S—’ in Nicholas Rowe, Poems on Several Occasions (1714), 10–14; The Poetical Works of Nicholas Rowe (1715), 10–13; and The Miscellaneous Works of Nicholas Rowe, 3rd ed. (1737), 6–9. Other manuscript copies at the British Library, Add. MS 37,684 (Taylor Papers, vol. 3), f. 13r–13v; and Harley MS 6914, f. 112 (these two sources read ‘Careless of his soul & Fame’); Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, (Lt. 11, pp. 53–5), which provides Nottingham’s name. A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses … in London, 16601800, eds Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, 16 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–93), 2:277, cites a manuscript copy at the Essex Record Office; Crum, First-line Index of English Poetry, D366, cites a copy at the Bodleian Library.





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his original, Horace urged Xanthias to have no shame about his love for his slave-girl and recalled Achilles and Ajax who were also enamoured of slaves. Transporting the poem to Britain, Rowe has the Tory John Baron Granville urge the Tory Robert Leke, Earl of Scarsdale, to damn society and publicly espouse his love for the actress-singer Anne Bracegirdle, to whom he reputedly left £1,000 in his will.82 Rowe has Granville hold up the example of Nottingham’s infatuation with Margarita: Doe not most Fragrant Earle disclaim Thy Bright thy Reputable Flame For Bracegirdle the Brown But publickly espouse the Dame And say G-- D-- the Town … Did not base Grebers Pegg [Margarita] inflame The sober E [arl] of N [ottingham] Of sober sire descended, That Carless of his house and fame To Play=houses he nightly came And left Church undefended83

Aside from the ironic parallel of the aged, unsteady Nottingham to Achilles or Ajax, the last line is especially insulting to Nottingham, a strong High Churchman. He had led the attack against Dissenters and Nonconformists by repeatedly having the Occasional Conformity bills introduced in the Commons. Secretary of State Nottingham fell from power in April 1704. By then, the unity Anne desired would require changes in her government. The High-Tory Henry St John was brought in as Secretary at War on 4 April 1704, which strengthened Marlborough’s control over the military. Nottingham was head of a Tory cabal that pressured the Queen to put herself in the hands of the Tories and dismiss the Whigs Somerset, Carlisle, and Thomas Tenison, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Resenting the Tory pressures on her, Anne balked at Nottingham’s ultimatum and instead dismissed two of his Tory associates, including the High Tory (if not suspected Jacobite) Lord Chamberlain Earl of Jersey, whereupon Nottingham had no choice but to return the seals on 22 April. Jersey was succeeded on 23 April by the Whig nonentity the Earl of Kent,



A similar use (in this case regarding a peer’s infatuation with a rope-dancer) is found in a poem in the Diverting Post, no. 13 (13–20 January 1704).

82

Of Scarsdale, Macky, said, ‘No man loves the Company of Ladies more than he, … [and is more] successful in his Intriques’; Memoirs of the Secret Services of John Macky, Esq. (1733), 81. Scarsdale may have been infatuated with Bracegirdle as early as 1700; Scarsdale left Bracegirdle £1,000 (Biographical Dictionary, 2:277).

83

British Library, Add. MS 40,060, ff. 65v–66r.

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nicknamed ‘bugg’, and after a seemly delay Nottingham was succeeded by Robert Harley on 16 May.84 St John commented the following May on Nottingham’s fall with a remark that both notices how Margarita was a Tory favourite and wryly comments on the power of her voice: ‘Margarita’s singing assembled them, and a court whisper has broke ’em’.85 The Whig radical John Tutchin’s fiercely anti-playhouse periodical the Observator in July 1706 – fearing the political and religious security of Britain is in the hands those who support the theatre, opera, and singers – exposes Nottingham as retiring from attending to the great issues of state to listen to Margarita:86 Can we ever think the Government, the Religion, the Liberties of England safe under the Guardianship of those that are pleas’d with nothing but Vanities, who read Plays instead of Aristotle and Machiavel, and lay the Foundations of Theatres [i.e., the Haymarket theatre (see following chapter)] instead of Schools of Virtue? Can we help Laughing and Weeping the same time, to see a Secretary retiring from the Great Affairs of State to an Alcove with Donna Margaritta de la Pin, alias Pegg Thorn, to hear her Sing Colly my Cow, and Uptails all?87

Here Nottingham stands for a Ministry whose fitness to govern is questioned on account of Margarita’s singing, which here is impugned as nothing more than rural country songs.

Tofts and Margarita With Tory ministers and admirals indicted as derelict in their duties due to Margarita’s singing, the implicit symmetry aligning Whigs with Mrs Tofts could not be avoided. Jonathan Swift was aware of the political alignment and used it for a speculation: ‘Suppose for Argument sake, that the Tories favoured Margarita, the Whigs, Mrs Tofts, and the Trimmers, [the castrato] Valentini, would not Margaritians, Toftians and Valentinians be very tolerable Marks of Distinction?’88

84

Horwitz, Revolution Politicks, 197–9; Marlborough, Harwich, 8 April 1704, to Godolphin; Snyder, ed., Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, letter no. 283, 1:274– 5); Godolphin, [18 April 1704], to Duchess of Marlborough (Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, letter no. 290, 1:280–1).

85

Henry St John, 9 May 1704, [London], to Sir William Trumbull; British Library, Add. MS 72,489, ff. 142–4 (at f. 143r). Also printed in Adrian C. Lashmore-Davies, ‘The Correspondence of Henry St. John and Sir William Trumbull, 1698–1710’, EighteenthCentury Life, vol. 32, no. 3 (2008), 23–179, no. 67 (at pp. 150–1).

86

The paper’s anti-playhouse bias is seen in numerous issues; see Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, A Register of English Theatrical Documents, 1660–1737, 2 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), nos. 1697, 1712, 1733, 1737, 1738, 1747, 1752, 1760, 1819, 1853, and 1877.

87

Observator, vol. 5, no. 34 (10–13 July 1706).

88

The jibe at the castrato singer Valentini mocks his castration and ambiguous gender; ‘An Argument … Against Abolishing Christianity in England … Written in the Year

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The Whig John Hughes’s poem ‘The Power of Musick’ (1705) reiterates the Margarita-Nottingham connection and now compliments the Whig Lords who favour the English music of Catherine Tofts:89 Musick has Learnt the discord of the State, And Consorts jar with Whig, and Tory, Hate; Here S—t [Somerset] and D—re [Devonshire], attend To British Tofts, and ev’ry Note commend; To Native merit just, they’re pleas’d to see, We’ve Roman Arts, from Roman Bondage free. There fam’d L’Epine does equal Skill employ, While list’ning Peers Crowd with Extatick Joys. B—d [Bedford] to hear her Song his Dice forsakes, And N—m’s [Nottingham’s] transported when she Shakes [trills]; Lull’d Statesmen melt away their drowsy Cares Of England’s Safety in Italian Aires.

Here the party alignments are explicit: a pair each of Whig and Tory lords is a partisan of an English and Italian singer. Moreover, Hughes stacks the moral and ethical merits in favour of the English singer. The Whig Dukes of Devonshire and Somerset, both in the cabinet at the time and leaders of attacks on Nottingham, are attentive and alert to each note sung and to the virtues of native talent.90 Mrs Tofts, as we saw, did benefit from Somerset’s patronage. Devonshire and Somerset are pleased to see ‘We’ve Roman Arts from Roman Bondage free’. The arts that flourished under liberty of the Roman Republic now flourish in Britain, where they are free from absolute princely rulers and the Catholic Church. The peers Bedford and Nottingham crowd to ecstatic joy at hearing Margarita; instead of attending to the care of the nation, they are transported, lulled, and melted to slumber. Bedford from a Whig family, was a temporary convert to Toryism from 1703 through early 1707.91 Even before he left for his Grand 1708’; in Jonathan Swift, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1711), 151–81 (at 166–7). 89

Diverting Post, no. 34 (9–16 June 1705). Also printed as ‘Tofts and Margarita’ in A New Collection of Poems Relating to State Affairs (1705), 553. Although published anonymously, it was attributed to John Hughes in Letters by Several Eminent Persons Deceased including the Correspondence of John Hughes, ed. John Duncombe, 3 vols, 2nd ed. with additions (1773), 3:li–lii. See last note in this chapter for additional versions.

90

Godolphin, 1 June 1707, to Marlborough; Snyder, ed., Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, letter no. 808, 2:803 note. [Godolphin refers to ‘our two dukes’.] Some of Devonshire’s interest in Italian instrumental music is documented, but nothing suggests special partiality to English singers; see Lowell Lindgren, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym, 1678–1729’, Studi Musicali, 16 (1987), 247–380 (at pp. 254, 255). Tory descriptions of Somerset and Devonshire (among other Whigs) are given in William Shippen, Faction Display’d. A Poem (1704), 3, 12, but do not mention music nor singing.

91

Dates of Bedford’s temporary Toryism (which may have ended as early as February 1707) are given in Clyve Jones, ‘The Parliamentary Organization of the Whig Junto

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Tour at age 16, Bedford was noted for his weakness for gambling; abroad he amassed gambling debts while in Rome.92 He brought the musicians Nicola Haym and Nicola Cosimi to England from Italy, maintained a private musical establishment, and was already a prominent patron of music, having sponsored the performance of John Weldon’s setting of The Judgment of Paris for the Prize Musick (see below). He paid William Armstrong, music copyist and violist in the Haymarket orchestra, £5 9s. 5d. for a score of Camilla.93 Several contemporary versions of the poem add a couplet: Who would not send each Post blank Passes [passports] o’er, Rather than keep such Strangers from our Shore?94

The answer to the rhetorical question of the final couplet is, of course, the Tories: they would rather let in a flood of foreigners with blank passports, than keep Italian singers from England. 111 In the decades of their infiltration into London music life, Italian and English singing and singers acquired a cluster of contrasted associations and valorisation: a contrast conveniently embodied by Margarita and Mrs Tofts. At first in the 1680s and 1690s, the opposition was used in an apparently non-partisan way to articulate notions of British nationalism and identity. The associations were then put to partisan use. The widely known infatuation of the Tory Earl of Nottingham with Margarita was used by Whigs to disparage him and the Ministry. The failures of his Ministry and its naval campaigns were said due to the influence of the Italian singer. The Whigs claimed the patriotic high ground by their support of the native English singer Mrs Tofts and the virtues of English singing.



in the Reign of Queen Anne: The Evidence of Lord Ossulston’s Diary’, Parliamentary History, 10 (1991), 164–82 (at p. 168). Maynwaring noted Bedford’s return to his family’s Whiggism in an dated letter to the Duchess of Marlborough: ‘[Bedford] is quite recovered from the infatuation of Lord Granville, and is returned to the principles of his family, and as a proof of that, begins to get rich, and has paid his debts, and I believe he is a very honest welltempered man’; Private Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 2 vols, 2nd ed. (London: Henry Colburn, 1838), 1:206. Macky wrote, ‘He loves Play, and doth not seem to have any inclination for Business’; Memoirs, 37.

92

Gladys Scott Thomson, The Russells in Bloomsbury, 1669–1771 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1740), 88, 90–91.

93

Thomson, Russells in Bloomsbury, 122–32; Lindgren, ‘Accomplishments of Nicola Haym’, 247–380; Lindgren, ‘Nicola Cosimi in London, 1701–1705,” Studi Musicali, 11 (1982), 229–48.

94

The final couplet is added in ‘Tofts and Margarita’, in Poems on Affairs of State, from 1640 to … 1704, 3 vols (1704), 3:455, with minor textual differences from version titled ‘The Power of Musick’, and in the manuscript version (‘On M.rs Tofts & Signora Margaritta’) at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds (Lt 81, f. 7r).

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Chapter 4

The Haymarket Theatre: A Whig Project

M

arlborough’s victory at Blenheim in August 1704 was a turning point in the war. To commemorate his victory, on 18 January 1705 Anne granted Marlborough the royal estate at Woodstock; here the nation would build a great house, Blenheim Palace, which would be designed by the Whig architect John Vanbrugh. With the sitting of Parliament on 24 October 1704 came another attempt by extreme Tories to force passage of the Occasional Conformity bill by a measure called ‘The Tack’, ‘tacking’ it to the Land Tax bill, on which appropriation of money for the war depended.1 With the Queen’s support, the Tack was defeated in the Lords, antagonizing the Tories. Now alienated from High-Churchmen and Tories, Marlborough and Godolphin (the Duumvirs) were moving towards alliance with the Whigs, who were their best support for the war and union with Scotland. In the bitterly fought General Election of May–June 1705, the Ministry threw its weight against the hot-headed Tories and Tackers, and Whigs hammered at all Tories without distinction. Anne indicated she welcomed Whigs to help realise her goal of moderation. A Tory election pamphlet, The Memorial of the Church of England (July 1705), a High-Church attack charging the Duumvirs and the Duchess of Marlborough with undermining the Church by encouraging the Whigs and placing them in office, so offended Anne with its implication the Church was in danger under her Ministry that persons distributing the pamphlet were taken up and jailed.2 The election brought the parties to near-parity in the Commons, with Robert Harley leading the moderate Tories. Yet political controversy was disrupting Anne’s Ministry. The Queen would have to choose between the Duumvirs and Harley. In May 1705 the Whig Junto lords, insistent on placing more Whigs in office, began pressing the Queen to advance the young Whig leader Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, Marlborough’s son-in-law, as secretary of state – a

1

On its defeat by means of the ‘Track’: Henry L. Snyder, ‘The Defeat of the Occasional Conformity Bill and the Tack: A Study in the Techniques of Parliamentary Management in the Reign of Queen Anne’, Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research, 41 (1968), 172–92; and Clyve Jones, ‘“Too Wild to Succeed”: The Occasional Conformity Bills and the Attempts by the House of Lords to Outlaw the Tack in the Reign of Anne’, Parliamentary History, 20 (2011), 414–27.

2

Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1857), 5:574 (19 July 1705).

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move resisted by Anne, who disliked both the Junto and Sunderland. Among young Whigs who did obtain government appointments, Robert Walpole came onto the Admiralty Board on 25 June 1705. The Queen was reluctant to make more changes; she was afraid that concessions to the Whigs, whose support was necessary to carry on the war, would alienate Tories, towards whom Harley urged the Queen. That summer France attempted unsuccessfully to land James (the ‘Pretender’) in Scotland to gain his crown. In November 1705 Anne urged the new Parliament to prosecute the ‘speediest Way to Restore the Monarchy of Spain to the House of Austria’ and bring ‘a prosperous End to the present War’.3 The idea of an invitation to the House of Hanover rose again that year. In April 1705, Sir Rowland Gwynne, the English Resident in Hanover and confidant of the Electress, wrote to the Earl of Stamford that Sophia was willing to reside in England when called, an idea he said the Hanoverian court approved. Sensing it was a means to disrupt relations between the two courts, the Elector and Ministry opposed the idea.4 In Parliament, Tories again raised the issue on 15 November 1705 with Lord Haversham’s ‘Hanover Motion’ that proposed an address to the Queen to invite the Electress or her grandson to reside in England to ensure the Succession and preserve the Constitution.5 The Electress was willing to accept such an invitation, but Anne vigorously opposed it now and for the rest of her reign, fearing a rival court as a ploy to limit her authority and to depose her.6 The purpose of these Tory-sponsored invitations was to embarrass the Whigs. 3

Abel Boyer, History of the Reign of Queen Anne, Digested into Annals. Year the Fourth [for the Year 1705–6] (1706), 200.

4

On the Gwynne letter: Edward Gregg, Queen Anne (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 210–11; Gregg, The Protestant Succession in International Politics, 1710–1716 (New York: Garland, 1986), 20–2. The Elector’s letter of 1/12 April 1707 to Gwynn is in James Macpherson, Original Papers; Containing the Secret History of Great Britain from the Restoration, to the Accession of the House of Hannover, 2 vols (1775), 2:92. The letter was published as Sir Roland Gwynne’s Letter to the Earl of Stamford (1705), reprinted as one of Five Letters (1714); on burning the letter, The MarlboroughGodolphin Correspondence, ed. Henry L. Snyder (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 2:800 n5.

5

Printed as The Lord Haversham’s Speech in the House of Peers. On Thursday, November 15, 1705 (1705). On the Hanover motion: Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time, 2nd ed., 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833), 5:231–41; and Gregg, Queen Anne, 211–12. On ministerial sentiment on the Hanover motion: Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, 1:510 n3. Baron Haversham was ‘One of the most notorious if not influential of the administrations’ critics’; Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, 3:1209 n3.

6

See A Letter from Her Royal Highness, the Princess Sophia, Electress of Brunswic & Luneburg, to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (letter dated Hanover, 3 November 1705; published 1706). An endorsement by Charles Gildon is a Review of Her Royal Highness the Princess Sophia’s Letter to the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury [1706]. On Anne’s previous support of the idea (and the Elector’s opposition), Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, 1:215 n1. On Anne’s opposition,

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To counteract the Tory invitations and show their support for the Protestant Succession, the Whig Junto introduced in November 1705 the Regency Bill, which, upon the Queen’s death, created a Regency Council to govern until the Electress (or her heir) could arrive in England, and the Naturalization Bill, which naturalised the Electress and her heirs.7 There was now constitutional machinery to ensure the Protestant Succession. As recognition of the Junto’s support, Anne sent Lord Halifax, accompanied by Joseph Addison (as secretary) and John Vanbrugh (in his role of Clarenceaux–Herald), to Hanover in April 1706 to personally present the Regency and Naturalization Acts and install the Electoral Prince into the Order of the Garter; Halifax also carried to the Electoral family many messages from Whig peers affirming their loyalty to the House of Hanover.8

❧  The Haymarket Theatre Against the backdrop of the War of the Spanish Succession and Tory-Whig conflict, the theatrical world was also beset by its own rivalry and contest. At Anne’s accession, there were two theatre companies competing for London’s limited theatre audience. Christopher Rich held a patent and mounted productions at Drury Lane and Dorset Garden, while Thomas Betterton’s rebel company played at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre and was faring poorly. The introduction of opera ‘in the Italian manner’ (as it was originally designated) to London in 1705 – conventionally narrated as an invasion and conquest by a foreign art form – was rather one of native origin set in motion in early 1703 by the Whig playwright and architect John Vanbrugh.9 In spring–summer of 1703, Vanbrugh submitted to the Lord Chamberlain a set of proposals, ‘An see letter from Anne, St. James’s, 13 November [1705], to the Duke of Marlborough (excerpt in Gregg, Queen Anne, 211); misdated 24 November as printed in The Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne, ed. Beatrice C. Brown (London: Cassell, 1935), 176; and Gregg, Queen Anne, 23–4. On Anne’s fear of a member of the Hanoverian court in London, Gregg, ‘Was Queen Anne a Jacobite?’ (esp. 367–8). 7

Summary in Geoffrey Holmes, The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain, 1660–1722 (London: Longman, 1993), 429–30.

8

Anne, 2 April 1706, to the Elector; Brown, ed., Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne, 183–4; Halifax instructions: Brown, ed., Letters and Diplomatic Instructions, 186–7; Whig messages to Hanover in 1706 are in Macpherson, Original Papers, 2:32–57.

9

On Vanbrugh as architect and the building of the theatre in the context of Vanbrugh’s career: Kerry Downes, Vanbrugh (London: A. Zwemmer, 1977), 40–4; Downes, Sir John Vanbrugh: A Biography (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), 253–71; and Vaughan Hart, Sir John Vanbrugh: Storyteller in Stone (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), 40–3. For an exhaustive documentary study of the history of the Haymarket theatre, reconstruction of the original building, and the controversies surrounding it, see Graham F. Barlow, ‘From Tennis Court to Opera House’, 3 vols (D.Phil. dissertation,



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Establishmt for ye Company’, with rosters and budgets for actors, dancers, singers, and instrumentalists, even down to barbers, ‘necessary women’, and bill carriers.10 Since the rosters drew on the leading players from both companies, it seems Vanbrugh intended uniting the two companies to achieve a monopoly on theatrical productions. With a full-strength troupe of actors and a complete musical establishment overseen by John Eccles, then house composer at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he could stage plays with music, as well as dramatic operas with their musical entertainments, Betterton’s specialty from his years at Dorset Garden. Joining him as manager was the playwright William Congreve, writer of popular comedies and fellow target of Jeremy Collier. Colley Cibber later recalled that Vanbrugh’s stately new theatre was intended as a new home for Betterton’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre troupe, ‘to recover them therefore, to their due Estimation’.11 Betterton transferred his license to Vanbrugh, putting his company under Vanbrugh’s management.12 Part of Vanbrugh’s plan for his theatre monopoly was building a large, new theatre in the Haymarket to house his company. To help finance the building, he hit on the idea of raising money by subscription, a method used previously by



University of Glasgow, 1983), 1:256–431; summarised in Barlow, ‘Vanbrugh’s Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket, 1703–9’, Early Music, 17 (1989), 515–21. On scenery at the Haymarket, Richard Southern, Changeable Scenery: Its Origin and Development in the British Theatre (London: Faber and Faber, [1952], 177–87; and Lowell Lindgren, ‘The Staging of Handel’s Operas in London’, pp. 93–119 in Handel Tercentenary Collection, eds Stanley Sadie and Anthony Hicks ([Ann Arbor, Mich.]: UMI Research Press, 1987).

10

The relevant documents are calendared in Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, eds, A Register of English Theatrical Documents, 1660–1737, 2 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), nos. 1713–16. The principal document is reprinted in Allardyce Nicoll, Early Eighteenth Century Drama, vol. 2 of A History of English Drama, 1660–1900, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952–9), 276–8 (but document misdated 1707). The proposal is analysed (and date corrected) in detail by Judith Milhous, ‘The Date and Import of the Financial Plan for a United Theatre Company in P.R.O. LC 7/2’, Maske und Kothurn: Internationale Beiträge zur Theatrewissenschaft, 21 (1975), 81–8; and Milhous, Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 1695–1708 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979), 169–70.

11

Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, ed. B. R. S. Fone (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Michigan Press, 1968), 172. Aside from Cibber, as Milhous, Thomas Betterton, 170, points out, no evidence confirms Cibber’s statement (from about 1740) that rescuing Betterton’s company was Vanbrugh’s intention in building the new theatre; see also John Downes, Roscius Anglicus, eds Milhous and Hume (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1987), 99 n353.

12

Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, eds Milhous and Hume, 98–9; and 99 n353. Vanbrugh and Congreve did receive a license for a company dated 14 December 1704; Milhous and Hume, Register of English Theatrical Documents, no. 1793.

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Betterton to convert and outfit the theatre at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.13 He must have been circulating the idea of the theatre in early 1703, for by March 1703 he had collected pledges of 100 guineas from twenty-nine potential subscribers (see table 4.1), with one late addition bringing the number to thirty subscribers.14 At its nucleus were members of the prestigious Whig social, literary, and political Kit-Cat Club, a select group of grandees and writers who met regularly organised by the Whig publisher Jacob Tonson.15 Determining precisely who were Kit-Cats in early 1703 is difficult, but no more than thirteen or fourteen of the thirty subscribers were likely Kit-Cats at the time, so the theatre was not, as often perceived, strictly a Kit-Cat project.16 But more telling than the number of Kit-Cats, are the political allegiances of the subscribers, who are predominantly Whigs (table 4.1). But to contemporaries, ‘Kit-Cat’ did mean ‘Whig’. Of the subscribers, twenty-three are known Whigs, and two of these are Junto lords (Halifax and Wharton); of Tories, two are known to be moderate Hanoverian Tories. The subscribers shared close personal and political ties, who, during sitting of Parliament, would have had almost daily contact as peers or elected MPs. At the time of subscribing, only about four would not have been parliament men.

13

Milhous, Thomas Betterton, 73.

14

A copy (in the hand of Vanbrugh) of the sheet containing the brief terms of the agreement and list of subscribers was retained by the Duke of Portland (then Earl); now at the Portland Papers, University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections, Pw 2/571. On the list of subscribers, Judith Milhous, ‘New Light on Vanbrugh’s Haymarket Theatre Project’, Theatre Survey, 17 (1976), 143–61. In addition to signing a pledge sheet, each subscriber signed with Vanbrugh a contract. The relevant documents for the subscription are reproduced, transcribed, and discussed in Thomas McGeary, ‘More Light (and Some Speculation) on Vanbrugh’s Haymarket Theatre Project’, Early Music, 48 (2020), 91–104.

15

Ophelia Field, The Kit-Cat Club (London: Harper Press, 2009) provides lively accounts of the members of the club and their political activities (although unreliable on some matters of fact and motivation). See also Robert O. Allen, The Clubs of Augustan London (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933), esp. 35–55. On the Whig political activities of the club: Philip Carter, ‘Kit-Cat Club’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edition).

16

Determining Club membership at any time is problematic; see McGeary, ‘More Light (and Some Speculation)’. According to John Macky, A Journey through England (1714), 188, the club was limited to thirty-nine members of the first rank in learning and offices of state. On the theatre as a Kit-Cat project, Field, The Kit-Cat Club, 133–41. Michael Foss rightly recognises Whig support for Italian Opera but overstates that the theatre was ‘paid for by the contributions of his [Vanbrugh’s] fellow club-members’; see Foss, The Age of Patronage: The Arts in England, 1660–1750 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971), 148–9. Abigail Williams also recognises Whig support of opera but overstates that ‘the lavish spectacles at the Haymarket were funded through the subscriptions of the Club’s wealthy members’, in Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681–1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 232.



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Table 4.1. Subscribers to the Haymarket Theatre,i Their Political Affiliation, and Kit-Cat Membership Kit-Cat Memberii

Political Affiliation and Principal Offices near Time of Subscription

Subscriber

1702

‘at first’

Somerset Charles Seymour (1662–1748) 6th Duke of Somerset (the ‘Proud’ Duke)

–

×

Court Whig; KG (1684); chancellor Camb. Univ. (1689); PC (1701); lord president (1702); master of the horse (1702–12)

Devonshire William Cavendish (1641–1707) 4th Earl (1684) and 1st Duke (1694) of Devonshire

–

×

Court Whig; follower of Earl of Shaftesbury and one of the Immortal Seven (1688); KG, PC, and lord steward (1689); father of Hartington

Richmond Charles Lennox (1672–1723) 1st Duke of Richmond (1675)

–

×

Court Whig; KG (1681); illeg. son of Charles II

Newcastle John Holles (1662–1711) 1st Duke of Newcastle (1694)

–

×

Court Whig; Whig Junto supporter; lord lieut. Notts. (1694) and Yorks. (1699); KG (1698)

Lindsey Robert Bertie (1660–1723) 4th Earl of Lindsey (1701), cr. Marquis (1706)

–

–

Tory/Whig: Tory (1703); PC (1701); lord gt. chamberlain (1701); follower of Danby; convert to mild Whig (1705 election)

Bolton Charles Powlett (ca. 1661–1722) 2nd Duke of Bolton (1699)

–

–

Whig; follower of first Earl of Shaftesbury; adherent of Whig Junto; lord lieut. Hants. (1699); v.-adm. Hants. and Isle of Wight (1692); subscriber to Thomas Clayton debt-relief

Carlisle Charles Howard (1669–1738) 3rd Earl of Carlisle (1692)

×

–

Court Whig; lord lieut. Cumb. & Westmld. (1694); PC (1701); gentleman of the bedchamber (1700–March 1702), Castle Howard designed by Vanbrugh

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Table 4.1—continued Kit-Cat Memberii

Political Affiliation and Principal Offices near Time of Subscription

Subscriber

1702

‘at first’

Darwentwater Edward Radclyffeiii (1655–1705) 2nd Earl of Derwentwater (1696)

–

–

Jacobite family; Catholic, nonjuror; had aspirations to be thought a poet (d. 29 April 1705)

Kent Henry Grey (1671–1740) 12th Earl (1702), Marquis (1706), Duke (1710) of Kent

–

–

Court Whig; PC (1704); lord lieut. Herefs. (1704); lord chamberlain (1704–10)

Cholmondely Hugh Cholmondeley (ca. 1662–1725) 2nd Viscount Cholmondeley (1681), cr. Earl (1706)

–

–

Court Whig; lord lieut. N. Wales (1702) and Cheshire (1703); PC (1705)

Bedford Wriothesley Russell (1680–1711) 2nd Duke of Bedford (1706)

–

–

Whig family; KG (1702); lord lieut. Mdx., Beds., and Cambs. (1700); temporary convert to Toryism (1703 to early 1707)

Hallifax Charles Montagu (1661–1715) cr. Baron Halifax (1700), cr. Earl (1714)

–

×

Junto Whig lord; stepfather and 2nd cousin of Earl of Manchester; PC (1695)

Essex Algernon Capell (1670–1710) 2nd Earl of Essex (1683)

×

–

Whig; lord lieut. Herts (1692); brig. gen. (1702); maj. gen. (1704); gentleman of the bedchamber (1691–March 1702)

P. Bertie Peregrine Bertie (ca. 1663–1711) 2nd son of Robert Bertie, 3rd Earl of Lindsey

–

–

Whig, MP (1701, 1702, 1705); nephew and follower of Wharton; vice chamberlain (1692–1706); PC (1695); accompanied Manchester on Grand Tour; Vanbrugh’s second partner (1708) —(continued)

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Table 4.1—continued Kit-Cat Memberii

Political Affiliation and Principal Offices near Time of Subscription

Subscriber

1702

‘at first’

Manchester Charles Montagu (ca. 1662–1722) 4th Earl, Duke (1719) of Manchester (1685)

×

–

Court Whig; PC (1698); lord lieut. Hunts. (1689); secretary of state (Jan.–March 1702); captain of yeoman of the guard (1689– March 1702)

–

–

Father of Thomas Coke (Whig), later 1st Earl of Leicester

×

Whig, MP (1689–1690); dep. lieut. Wilts. (1701); kinsman and ally of Duke of Newcastle

Edw: Coke Edward Coke of Holkham (1676–1707)

Kingston Evelyn Pierrepont (1665–1726) × 5th Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull (1690); cr. Marquis of Dorchester (1706); cr. Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull (1715) Grafton Charles Fitzroy (1683–1757) 2nd Duke of Grafton; 3rd earl of Arlington (1723)

×

–

Court Whig; lord lieut. Suff. (1705); v.-adm. Suff. (1705)

Cornwallis Charles Cornwallis (1675–1722) 4th Baron Cornwallis (1698)

×

×

Whig, MP (1695–1698); lord lieut. and custos rot. Suffolk (1698–1703)

Edmd: Dunch Edmund Dunch (?1677–1719) Hervey John Hervey (1665–1751) cr. Baron Hervey (1703), cr. 1st Earl of Bristol (1714)

– –

Whig, MP (1701–2, 1705–19); nephew and follower of Wharton; married niece of Marlborough –

Whig, MP (1694–1703); Marlborough protégé; kinsman and follower of Godolphin

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Table 4.1—continued Kit-Cat Memberii

Political Affiliation and Principal Offices near Time of Subscription

1702

‘at first’

×

–

Whig, MP (1695–1701, 1702–7); nephew and follower of Orford; captain of the yeomen of the guard (1702–7); lord steward (1707–10)

–

–

Hanoverian Tory; MP (1701–3); son-in-law of Rochester and follower of Seymour (1701); later voted with Whigs (1711–13)

–

×

Junto Whig lord; PC (1697–1702); lord lieut. Oxon (1697–1702); comptroller of the household (1689–1702); included by Field in 1702

Abingdon Montagu (Venables) Bertie (1673–1743) 2nd Earl of Abingdon (1699)

–

–

Hanoverian Tory; constable of the Tower (1702–15); PC (1702– 7); Nottingham ally

Ormond James Butler (1665–1745) 2nd Duke of Ormonde

–

–

Tory; PC (1696); gen. horse (1702); lord lieut. Somerset (1691) and Ireland (1703)

–

–

Whig, MP (1705–9)

–

–

Whig, MP (1694–95)

Subscriber Hartington William Cavendish (1672 [1673] –1729) Marquis of Hartington (1694), succ. as 2nd Duke of Devonshire (1707) Conway Francis Seymour(-)Conway (1679–1732) 1st Baron Conway (13 March 1703) Wharton Thomas Wharton (ca. 1648–1715) 5th Baron Wharton (1696), cr. Earl (1706) and Marquis (1715) of Wharton

Woodstock Henry Bentinck (1682–1726) Viscount Woodstock (1689), 2nd Earl (1709), 1st Duke (1716) of Portland Kildareiv John FitzGerald (ca. 1661–9 Nov. 1707); succ. as 18th Earl of Kildare [I] (1664)

—(continued)

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Table 4.1—concluded Kit-Cat Memberii Subscriber Edm: Denton Sir Edmund Denton (1676–1714); Baronet (1699) Monthermer John Montagu (1690–1749) Visct. Monthermer (1702), 2nd Duke of Montagu (1709)

1702

‘at first’

Political Affiliation and Principal Offices near Time of Subscription

–

–

Whig, MP (1698–1713); follower and client of Wharton

–

–

Whig Married daughter of Duke of Marlborough; master of great wardrobe (1705)

v

Sources: Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. edn (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), appendix A; The History of Parliament. The House of Commons, 1690–1715, 5 vols (London: History of Parliament Trust, 2002); The History of Parliament. The House of Lords, 1660–1715, 5 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Clyve Jones, ‘The Parliamentary Organization of the Whig Junto in the Reign of Queen Anne: The Evidence of Lord Ossulston’s Diary’, Parliamentary History, 10, part 1 (1991), 164–82; Clyve Jones, ‘Party Affiliation in the House of Lords in 1710: A Contemporary Assessment’, Parliamentary History, 28 (2009), 179–190; Judith Milhous, ‘New Light on Vanbrugh’s Haymarket Theatre Project’, Theatre Survey, 17 (1976): 143–61; G. E. Cockayne, The Complete Peerage, ed. Vicary Gibbs, 13 vols (London: St Catherine Press, 1910–59); Robert Walcott, Jr., English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (New York: Russell and Russell, 1956). Names are first given as transcribed on the scribal copy of the circulating subscription sheet, ca. March 1703. Francis Seymour was created Baron Conway on 17 March 1703, suggesting earliest date of contract. i ‘The Names of the Subscribers to the building a New Theatre in the Haymarkett’. University of Nottingham, Manuscripts and Special Collections, Portland Papers. Pw2.571. A scribal copy of circulating subscription sheet with subscribers’ names; the scribe has presumably transcribed original signatures that were on the circulating pledge sheet. ii Membership in the Kit-Cat club in ca. 1703–5 is difficult to determine precisely. Given are identifications in two sources: (a) a subscription list for a club meeting taking place in 1702 (Tonson Papers, National Portrait Gallery: see Lynch, Jacob Tonson, 41); (b) list of members ‘at first’ given in Abel Boyer, The History of the Life and Reign of Queen Anne (1722), 524. Ophelia Field, The Kit-Cat Club (London: Harper, 2008), lists club membership without giving probable dates of membership. iii Milhous (mis-)identifies as Francis Radcliffe (d. 1696). iv Milhous (mis-)identifies as Robert Leinster, 19th Earl of Kildare (1675–1744). v Boughton House; Montagu Papers; Accounts of Elias De Rit, 14 August 1704: ‘to John Vanbrugh esq. for the first two payments of 100 guineas for building the theatre in the Haymarket for my Lord Monthermer’.

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In May 1704 Vanbrugh began signing contracts with subscribers and collecting their quarter-instalments towards the subscription. In return, each subscriber (for himself only) had the lifetime privilege of ‘seeing all Plays and Operas Gratis’. These contracts are the first explicit mention of ‘operas’ as part of the project. At this point, to Englishmen operas most likely would have meant semi- or dramatic operas of the sort that had been staged in the 1690s; fewer might have considered all-sung operas in the Italian manner, but even fewer, opera in the French manner. A point not sufficiently recognised is that the contract gave to the subscribers, as a group, right to use the theatre ten nights per year for ‘Entertainments by Musick or otherwise’ of their own. This intended function suggests how tightly interconnected was the group of subscribers, associated by their regular interactions in Parliament, the Kit-Cat Club, races at Newmarket, coffee-houses, or other political clubs where Whigs socialised. As we have seen, Whigs had been active in these years sponsoring subscription concerts for Catherine Tofts, and several had sponsored the prize for setting Congreve’s Judgment of Paris. It seems likely the subscribers intended to have the Haymarket available for projects such as the 1703 to 1704 subscription series for Mrs Tofts. There are no known instances of the Haymarket theatre being used for such purposes, but one such project might have been Lord Halifax’s subscription ‘for the encouragement of good comedies’ in January– February 1707.17 The Haymarket theatre, then, can be seen as a venue for Whigs to further their cultural programme. Vanbrugh began acquiring property as early as June 1703 and hoped to begin construction in July and start productions at Christmas, but lawsuits delayed his progress. The foundation stone was laid on 18 April 1704 by the Duke of Somerset, attended by Anne Churchill, second daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and wife of the Whig Earl of Sunderland.18 On 31 August 1704, a newsletter writer reported that the playhouse was being roofed and an opening by Christmas was expected.19 The writer also included the rumour ‘it’s said the Queen gave 1000 Guineas towards it’. No record of a contribution by the Queen in known; but later when suffering financial losses, in March–April 1708 Vanbrugh held out hope the Queen and Duchess of Marlborough would come to rescue the theatre. The progress of the theatre and its opening production were reported in the Diverting Post for 28 October 1704: 17

See Milhous and Hume, Register of English Theatrical Documents, nos. 1885 and 1886; and Milhous and Hume, The London Stage, 1660–1800, Part 2: 1700–1729. A New Version, Draft of the Calendar for Volume I, 1700–1711, 334. Online: www.personal.psu. edu/hb1/London Stage 2001.

18

There has been confusion about the identity of the person laying the cornerstone; I follow here the conclusion of Downes, Sir John Vanbrugh, 255–6.

19

Quoted in J. D. Alsop, ‘The Quarrel between Sir John Vanbrugh and George Powell’, Restoration and Eighteenth Century Theatre Research, 2nd ser., vol. 1, no. 1 (Summer 1990), 28–9.

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The Play-House in the Hay-Market … built by the Subscription Money of most of our Nobility, is almost finish’d, in the mean time two Opera’s translated from the Italian by good Hands, are setting to Musick, one by Mr. Daniel Purcel, which is called Orlando Furioso, and the other by Mr. Clayton, both Opera’s are to be perform’d by the best Artists eminent both for Vocal and Instrumental Musick at the Opening of the House.20

The opera by Mr Clayton would be Thomas Clayton’s Arsinoe; that by Daniel Purcell is not known to have been completed or produced. The following issue of the Diverting Post reported on another work being planned: Amadis de Gaul, an Opera in French, Set to Musick by Baptista de Lully, and translated into English by the Honorable G[eorge]. Granville Esq; now set to Musick by Mr. Eccles: The Parts are all dispos’d, and will speedily be perform’d at the New Theatre in little Lincoln’s-Inn-Field.21

Granville’s opera would be his dramatic opera, The British Enchanters, not produced until 1706. At the time, the theatre at Lincoln’s Inn Fields was probably announced because the Haymarket theatre was not yet completed. At this moment in October 1704, it seems Vanbrugh and Congreve were open-minded about ‘opera’: Arsinoe was all-sung in the Italian style; British Enchanters was a dramatic opera, so likely was Purcell’s Orlando Furioso, since his previous stage works had also dramatic operas (see appendix 1); the Purcell work was also likely to be a dramatic opera, a form likely adaptable from a French tragédie lyrique. Further information about the plans of Vanbrugh and Congreve is revealed in a letter from the end of 1705, by William Cleland, a man-about-town, aspiring military officer, and friend of Richard Steele, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Pope.22 On 6 December 1705 he wrote to his friend James Erskine in Scotland, whom he was keeping abreast of news in London, about the state of opera in London: Operas are extremlie al amode in the Italian Manner. besydes Arsinoe, Clayton, who composed it, has Composed another, the words by Mr Addison. A base Viol [player] here, Sioni [Saggione] a Venetian, [has composed] another, the words verbatim from the Italian by Motteux: Eccles another, the words by Congreve; Daniell Purcell another. I don’t know who is his Poet.23

20

Diverting Post, no. 1 (28 October 1704); Milhous and Hume, Register of English Theatrical Documents, no. 1782.

21

Diverting Post, no. 2 (28 October–4 November 1704); not in Milhous and Hume, Register of English Theatrical Documents.

22

See John Burton Cleland, comp., The Ancient Family of Cleland (London: Hicks, Wilkinson, & Sears, 1905), 33–9, esp. on whether he actually wrote a letter in defence of the Dunciad. On Cleland and Steele, C. J. Wright, ‘Some Unpublished Correspondence of Sir Richard Steele’, British Library Journal, 8 (1982), 80–93.

23

William Cleland, London, 6 December 1705, to James Erskine; Edinburgh, National Records of Scotland, GD124/15/259/3 [not in Milhous-Hume, Register]. Punctuation silently added for clarity. I am indebted to Calhoun Winton for bringing this letter to attention.

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This letter adds to the operas Vanbrugh and Congreve must have been projecting about 1704–5: Rosamond, Temple of Love, and Semele. Addison and Clayton’s Rosamond would be produced in 1707 at Drury Lane. Peter Motteux and Giuseppe Fedelli Saggione’s Temple of Love would be produced in 1706 at the Haymarket. Semele by Congreve and Eccles never reached the stage, although it was under consideration for production in 1707.24 Cleland’s letter confirms it was intended for the opening of the Haymarket theatre but was not produced, most likely because the theatre was not yet completed or had the necessary machinery. The newspaper notices and Cleland’s letter reveal that Vanbrugh and Congreve, experienced men of the theatre, had anticipated the necessity of having a number of operas in preparation as the basis for a repertory and had been enlisting Whig men of letters for librettos and local composers (Daniel Purcell, John Eccles, Thomas Clayton, and the resident Italian Saggione) to set them. The nature of the operas being projected reveals that, at the time, poets and composers had no consensus about the form opera would take. Clayton’s Arsinoe was an all-sung heroic drama (with comic minor characters) on a royal subject, with a large-scale musical entertainment (Epithalamium Song) and Grand Chorus in the final act. Temple of Love was a small-scale pastoral opera, closing with a large chorus and dance. Rosamond was a quasi-historical fable with a sub-plot of comic characters and a tableau representing the plans of Blenheim Palace and a descending machine with two Guardian Spirits. Semele, on an event from mythology (the subject type commended by Dryden), was called an opera, but with elaborate descending stage machinery, dramatic narrative constructed from series of tableaux, and acts ending with choruses and dances, it is closer to a masque.

24



For Semele, D. F. McKenzie, ed., The Works of William Congreve, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 2:237–68, 607–26; John Eccles, Semele: An Opera, ed. Richard Platt, Musica Britannica 76 (London: Stainer and Bell, 2000); Curtis A. Price, Music in the Restoration Theatre: With a Catalogue of Instrumental Music in the Plays, 1665–1713 ([Ann Arbor, Mich.]: UMI Research Press, 1979), 123–4; Stoddard Lincoln, ‘Eccles and Congreve: Music and Drama on the Restoration Stage’, Theatre Notebook, 18 (1963), 7–18; Lincoln, ‘The First Setting of Congreve’s Semele’, Music and Letters, 44 (1963), 103–17; Lincoln, ‘The Librettos and Lyrics of William Congreve,’ pp. 116–32 in British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660–1800, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny (Washington, D.C.: The Folger Shakespeare Library, 1984); and essays in in the booklet accompanying the Academy of Ancient Music/Cambridge Handel Opera recording of Semele, CD recording (AAM012). Semele is better seen situated in the context of 1704–5 as a full musical elaboration of a conventional English dramatic opera (itself essentially a spoken play with large amounts of incidental music) – but now with all the spoken dialogue (which otherwise would be taken by actors) performed by singers. The usual mixed company of an actors and singers is now replaced by a cast all of singers.

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714

Cultural Politics of the Haymarket Theatre Although the street entrance of Vanbrugh’s theatre was a modest Georgian façade of brick and stone, the theatre’s interior was a triumph of exuberant Baroque architecture by the designer of Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace. Colley Cibber recalled it as ‘a vast, triumphal Piece of Architecture’ with ‘vast Columns’ and ‘guilded Cornices’.25 Sir James Thornhill’s decoration of the theatre transforms it into a Whig tribute to Queen Anne and Britannia; upon opening, it was called the Queen’s Theatre. Rising high above the forestage and pit, partially supported by six columns flanking the forestage, was a dome probably carrying the Baroque allegorical painting, Queen Anne’s Patronage of the Arts, as preserved in a drawing by Thornhill (plate 4.1).26 Below at the centre is Queen Anne as Pallas Athena (as signified by the letters AR on shield), patroness of the arts and protector of the state, surrounded by a circular frieze of musical instruments along with the heraldic beasts of Britain, the royal crown, the Garter Star, and figures of Time and Fame. From the large black voids hung chandeliers.27 Above, atop Mount Parnassus is seated Apollo, the god of song and music. To his left and right on clouds are the nine Muses, supplemented by an allegory of painting and navigation. Thornhill’s drawing of the theatre’s forestage arch shows behind it The First Great Flat Scene (plate 4.2).28 At the sides are the columns with gilded capitals and cornices. On the flat scene itself, below, Atlas supports a globe upon which Britannia is seated with the heraldic beasts of Britain; above, is Apollo, patron of the arts, drawn by steeds guided by Aurora and accompanied by putti. Whigs sitting in their theatre might well have thought their building fulfilled Sir Christopher Wren’s ideal of the political use of architecture with his emphasis on what elsewhere Whigs called ‘Publick Spirit’ or love of country: ‘Public Buildings being the Ornament of a Country, it [architecture] establishes a Nation, draws people and commerce; makes the People love

25

Cibber, Apology, ed. Fone, 173.

26

James Thornhill, ‘Queen Anne’s Patronage of the Arts’; Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, Sir Bruce Ingram Collection. 63.52.256; pen and wash; 8 1/4 × 9 7/8 in. (21 × 25.1 cm). The painting and its subject are reproduced and discussed in James Winn, ‘The Performance Created by a Comma: A Cautionary Tale’, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, vol. 27, no. 2 (Winter 2012), 5–12; Winn, Queen Anne, 393–4 (errs in stating the ceiling was a barrel arch); Winn, ‘“Praise the Patroness of Arts’”, pp. 7–40 in Queen Anne and the Arts, ed. Cedric D. Reverend II (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2015), 37; and discussed in Barlow, ‘Vanbrugh’s Queen’s Theatre’, 517.

27

The auditorium was rebuilt at the end of the 1708–9 season, covering over the dome and its painting; Cibber, Apology, ed. Fone, 173.

28

James Thornhill, ‘First Great Flat Scene’; Art Institute of Chicago. Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection. 1922.1617; pen and ink over pencil with grey wash; 27.6 × 22.8 cm; reproduced and discussed in Barlow, ‘Vanbrugh’s Queen’s Theatre’, 517.

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Plate 4.1. Queen Anne’s Patronage of the Arts. Sir James Thornill’s drawing for the painting on the dome in the Haymarket theatre (prior to the remodeling in 1709). Above, Apollo atop Mt Parnassus is flanked by the Muses and allegories of navigation and painting. Below, Queen Anne as Pallas Athena (as signified by the letters AR on shield) is surrounded by the heraldic beasts of Britain, royal crown, star of the Garter, and figures of Time and Fame. From the large black voids hung chandeliers.

their native Country, which Passion is the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth’.29 The new theatre came in for attack from many quarters. Moralists and enemies of the stage of the ilk of Jeremy Collier and Arthur Bedford saw its grandeur and the expense of building a Baroque temple to a secular entertainment (by Whigs, no less, the accused enemies of the Church) as an affront (if not blasphemy) to piety – especially at a time when St Paul’s remained unfinished, lacking the two west towers and dome. 29

Christopher Wren, Parentalia: or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens (1750), 351. Also for contemporary ideas about the ethical uses of architecture to reflect or reform a nation, Maximilian Novak, ‘Shaping the Augustan Myth: John Dryden and the Politics of Restoration Augustanism’, pp. 1–21 in Paul J. Korshin and Robert R. Allen, eds, Green Centennial Studies (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1984), at p. 8.

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Plate 4.2. Sir James Thornill’s drawing, The First Great Flat Scene, a flat behind the forestage arch for the Haymarket theatre (prior to the remodeling in 1709). At the sides are columns with gilded capitals and cornice. Below: Atlas supports a globe upon which Britannia is seated with the heraldic beasts of Britain. Above: Apollo and steeds are guided by Aurora and accompanied by putti.

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When Queen Anne granted the license to the playwrights Vanbrugh and Congreve, she proclaimed it was for ‘the better Reforming the Abuses, and Immorality of the Stage’.30 In an irony not lost on moralists, the plays of Vanbrugh and Congreve were among the principal exhibits in Collier’s denunciation of the stage in his notorious tract A Short View of the Immorality, and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698).31 Presumably, it was thought that by licensing the new theatre, the Lord Chamberlain could exert stricter control over plays. But yet another theatre being raised was quickly and viciously denounced by moralists as an affront to decency. Members of the Society for Reformation of Manners published in 1704 an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison, asking him ‘to inform Her Majesty of what is carrying on without her Knowledge, so much to the Detriment of Religion and Morality’ by one ‘who Debauch’d it to a degree beyond the Loosness of all former Times’.32 Shortly before the theatre opened, a mock ‘Advertisement’ broadside was circulated, soliciting subscribers to the theatre and satirically listing fictional places upon the governing board, but in effect satirizing the promoters and ridiculing Christians for subscribing to the playhouses, where every play will have an equal shares of ‘Bawdy and Blasphemy’.33 What must have outraged critics of the immorality and vice of the theatre was the Whig poet and Kit-Cat Samuel Garth’s ‘Prologue Spoken at the First Opening of the Queen’s Theatre in the Hay-Market’, which began by

30

London: National Archives, LC 5-154, p. 35; quoted from the London Gazette, no. 4082 (21–5 December 1704). Printed in Joseph Wood Crutch, Comedy and Conscience after the Restoration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), 186.

31

The fullest account of the controversy is Sister Rose Anthony, The Jeremy Collier Stage Controversy, 1698–1726 (Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University, 1937). The wider social context of the campaign against the theatre is given in Dudley W. R. Bahlman, The Moral Revolution of 1688 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957); the growing literature since Bahlman is cited in Craig Rose, ‘Providence, Protestant Union and Godly Reformation in the 1690s’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, 3 (1993), 151–69. See also Robert D. Hume, ‘Jeremy Collier and the Future of the London Theatre in 1698’, Studies in Philology, 4 (1999), 480–511.

32

A Letter from Several Members of the Society for Reformation of Manners. To the Most Reverend Father in God Thomas [Tenison] By Divine Providence, Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury (1704); facsimile reprint in Antitheatrical Tracts, 1702–1704, Arthur Freeman, ed. (New York: Garland, 1974). A Letter to a Lady Concerning the New Play House (letter dated 29 September, 1705, imprint, 1706), by Jeremy Collier also objects, saying the money had better been spent building churches.

33

‘Advertisement’ (British Library; formerly: 816 m. 19(35); now 74/816 m. 19(35). See Albert Rosenberg, ‘A New Motive for the Censorship of Owen Swiney’s “The Quacks”’, Notes and Queries (September 1958), 393–6 (on p. 395); on the context of the theatrical rivalry, Shirley Strumm Kenny, ‘Theatrical Warfare, 1695–1710’, Theatre Notebook, 28 (1973), 130–45.

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comparing building the theatre to the creation of the world, and the poet to the divine Creator:34 Such was our Builder’s Art, that soon as Nam’d, This Fabrick, like the Infant-World, was Fram’d. The Architect must on dull Order wait. But ’tis the Poet only can Create.

In England during the Reformation, In the good Age of Ghostly Ignorance How did Cathedrals rise, and Zeal Advance! The Merry Monks said Orisons at Ease, Large were their Meals, and light their Penances; Pardon for Sins was purchased with Estates, And none but Rogues in Rags Dy’d Reprobates.

But in London more money now goes to raising theatres instead of churches: But now that Pious Pageantry’s no more, And Stages Thrive, as Churches did before.

Garth’s Prologue, which was considered so impertinent the players would not speak it, was answered by a parody, which denounced the building of the theatre.35 An outraged Daniel Defoe devoted a whole issue of his Review (no. 26, 3 March 1705) to ridiculing the notion that two playwrights singled out by Collier for their obscene and profane comedies would be expected to reform the stage by building a new theatre, which should be devoted to ‘the Encouragement of Vertue, and, in short, to Contribute to the Exceeding Reformation of our Manners’. The ‘Stupendous Height, the Ornament and Magnificence of its Building’, Defoe sneered ironically, are ‘Demonstrations of the Great Zeal of our Nobility and Gentry [the thirty subscribers], to the Encouragement of Learning, and the Suppressing Vice and Immorality’.36 34

Garth’s Prologue was not spoken and did not appear in the word book to Li amori di Ergasto but was printed separately, and then widely reprinted. Another fulsome and adulatory manuscript poem on the Haymarket was written by one ‘Mr Burch’: ‘To Mr Congreve & Vanbrugh upon ye Building of ye new Playhouse’ (in part, ‘Now witt & harmony again combine / To raise new Trophy’s to the ye sacred nine’); University of Nottingham Library, Manuscripts and Special Collections, Portland (Holles) MS Pw V 9753.

35

The players’ refusal was reported by Godolphin; Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, 1:442 n2. On the parody of the Whig prologue, Thomas McGeary, ‘A Satire on the Opening of the Haymarket Theater’, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, 15, n.s. (2000), 18–32 (with correction in vol. 16 [2001], 112–15). Both are also printed in Pierre Danchin, The Prologues and Epilogues of the Eighteenth Century, part 1, vol. 1, 1701–1720 (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1990), 264–9.

36

See also J. A. Downie, ‘Defoe’s Review, the Theatre, and Anti-High-Church Propaganda’, Restoration and Eighteenth Century Theatre Research, vol. 15, no. 1 (May 1976), 24–32.

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Defoe included a poem that claimed the theatre could not escape its origin, on the site of a dung heap in a stable yard: A Lay-stall this, Apollo spoke the Word, And straight arose a Playhouse from a T—— … The Stables have been Cleans’d, the Jakes made Clear, Herculean Labours, ne’r will Purge us here.

The theatre received more ridicule for the hypocrisy of its Whig promoters. Even before the Haymarket opened, from the rival stage at Drury Lane on 29 March 1705, in his play The Quacks, or, Love’s the Physician, Owen Swiney mocked Vanbrugh, Garth, and the Kit-Cats for being creatures of the Whig publisher Jacob Tonson, and in the play’s preface, he noted the irony that ‘the Gentlemen of the other House’ are the ones ‘who are to reform the Stage, [and] purify our Diversions … having known so well what it is to corrupt it’. In the play, Swiney has Tonson address a physician (probably aimed at Garth): Have not I incorporated you, made you an order of Poets, and manag’d the thing so gravely that out of this Body of Scriblers, have been chosen Heralds,37 Reformers of Manners, and deep Physicians! … Han’t I brought you from Garrets to build Palaces? wou’d any of you been heard of, if it had not been for me?38

The Whig Kit-Cat Club is identified with the Haymarket in a satire of a club member, in A Kit-Kat C—b describ’d (1705), as ‘a Principal Contributor towards the Transforming a Stable into a Theatre’ – and especially for the hypocrisy of Vanbrugh and Congreve being chosen as reformers of the theatre: He [a Kit-Cat] subscribes largely to the Building of a New Playhouse, to shew his Aversion to Prophaness and Immorality, and is altogether for Capt. H—d [Vanbrugh] and Mr. C—ve’s being Directors of it, because those two Gentlemen’s Drammatick Performances have so very much answer’d the Design of the Royal Proclamations for a General Reformation of Manners.

The theatre took political flack as well. The ‘Advertisement’ (mentioned above) soliciting subscribers charged that ‘to please their Republican Friends they [the Whigs] design to bring no King or Queen upon the Stage who (with Songs and Dances included) shall Reign above Three Hours and a Half ’.39 (A common Tory defamation of Whigs was that they were republicans and haters of kings.) In the Tory High-Churchman Charles Leslie’s Rehearsal of Observator, no. 41 (5–12 May 1705), ‘Observator’ (his Whig strawman) challenges ‘Country-man’

37

Vanbrugh was Clarenceux King-at-Arms (herald extraordinary). Further on the play, see Rosenberg, ‘A New Move for Censorship’.

38

Swiney, The Quacks, or, Love’s the Physician, 14–15.

39

‘Advertisement’ (as in note 33).

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to show any action by ‘Whiggs or Dissenters, which contains the least Disrespect or Threatning towards the Church or Religion!’ Whereupon the Countryman can barely control his indignation that ‘the Kit-Cat Clubb is now grown Famous and Notorious, all over the Kingdom’ and that all the effort spent on their theatre is at the expense of the building of St Paul’s. A later political tract from 1711 denouncing the hypocrisy of the new breed of Modern Whigs asks, ‘Was not the New Playhouse in the Haymarket, built chiefly by Whig-Contributions? Was it not in their impious manner Anti-consecrated, as it were, by a Whig-Prologue, in Praise of Play-houses above Churches?’40 Although contemporaries, as just seen, thought the Haymarket theatre was largely a Kit-Cat project, Judith Milhous has suggested the contemporary association of the club with the theatre was probably ‘motivated by religious prejudice and anti-Whig political bias, and directed against a conveniently conspicuous target’.41 By the end of the first season, Vanbrugh’s project was already running into financial difficulties, for in May 1705, Defoe was delighted to report ‘the founders of this Structure … complain of Deficient Funds for the Compleating the building, and … some Gentlemens Names stand to the Roll, whose money has not yet Encreased the Bank’ – that is, subscribers were already delinquent in paying their pledges.42

1704–1705 Season Vanbrugh’s theatre was still not finished in time for Christmas, for on 16 December the Diverting Post announced that Clayton’s opera, ‘Set after the Italian manner’, would be performed at Drury Lane.43 A newspaper notice implying the unfinished theatre was opened with a concert given for the Queen in November 1704 has been shown by James Winn to be garbled and misinterpreted, and there was no such inaugural concert.44

Arsinoe Despite being planned for the Haymarket theatre, Thomas Clayton’s Arsinoe. Queen of Cyprus premièred at Christopher Rich’s Drury Lane theatre on 16 January 1705. Clayton had been a member of the King’s Music and had recently returned from a trip to Italy (about when and where we know nothing), where he presumably collected librettos, music, and was acquainted with opera at the turn of the century. In his libretto’s Preface, Clayton announced his purpose: 40

Joseph Trapp, The Character and Principles of the Present Set of Whigs (1711), 21 or 44 [depending on edition]; referring to Garth’s prologue.

41

On the Kit-Cat Club’s interest in the theatre: Robert J. Allen, ‘The Kit-Cat Club and the Theatre’, RES 7, no. 25 (January 1931), 56-61; Allen, Clubs of Augustan England; and Field, Kit-Cat Club. For Milhous’s corrective, see ‘New Light’, 147.

42

Defoe, Review, no. 2 (3 May 1705).

43

Announced in the Diverting Post, no. 3 (9–16 December 1704).

44

Winn, ‘The Performance Created by a Comma’, 5–12. Since the Queen was now a semi-invalid, her attendance was extremely unlikely.

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‘to introduce the Italian manner of Musick on the English Stage’. He especially highlighted to the reader the Italian-style recitative. Despite its supposed novelty, recitative was known about and practiced in England in the previous century. What really was novel about Arsinoe was not recitative per se but that the entire narrative dialogue was not spoken (as in a dramatic opera) but sung in secco-style Italian recitative (recitativo semplice). Clayton attests to the effort he expended in training the English cast in this new manner of singing dialogue. Judging from the extant scenery drawings for Arsinoe by Sir James Thornhill, and the number of scene changes called for in the libretto, Clayton and his anonymous librettist (see below) conceived Arsinoe for a theatre fully rigged for moveable scenery, which Vanbrugh’s unfinished theatre could not yet provide.45 Drury Lane was in fact at the time a better choice, for Rich’s theatre already had at hand the singers, dancers, instrumentalists, and working moveable scenery. An advertisement for the first performance of Arsinoe suggests the opera fit somewhat unobtrusively within the customary theatrical pattern of a main piece preceded and followed by song, dances, instrumental music, or an afterpiece.46 As the early advertisements announced: A New Opera never perform’d before, call’d Arsino’e Queen of Cyprus, After the Italian manner, All Sung, being set to Musick by Master Clayton. With several Entertainments of Danceing by Monsieur l’Abbee, Monsieur du Ruel, Monsieur Cherrier, Mrs. Elford, Mrs. du Ruel, Mrs. Moss, and others. And the famous Signiora Francisca Margaretta de l’Epine will, before the Beginning and after the Ending of the Opera, perform several Entertainments of Singing in Italian and English.47 45

The four drawings are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, D.25–28, 1891. The drawings are reproduced and discussed (in context of the Drury Lane theatre) by Graham Barlow, ‘Sir James Thornhill and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 1705’, Proceedings of a Symposium Sponsored by the Manchester University of Drama (London: Methuen and Co., 1972), 179–200. Several are reproduced in Edgar de N. Mayhew, Sketches by Thornhill in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1967), nos. 2–3; and Roger Fisk, English Theatre Music in the Eighteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1973). They are available online at the Victoria and Albert Museum website.

46

Curtis Price has argued (on the basis of advertisements and playbills for Arsinoe) that it was originally presented with fragments of other works; in one case, for example, directions in play text of Centlivre’s Love’s Contrivance read ‘let the Diversion begin’. Price thus argues ‘England’s first Italian opera was introduced by actors, who, once the music began, sat wordless at the side of the stage and watched the masque as did the audience proper’ (46). But this argument has not been accepted, rests on misreading the stage directions, and certainly was not the case for all thirty performances of Arsinoe; no other contemporary source mentions such an arrangement; see ‘The Critical Decade for English Music Drama, 1700–1710’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 26, (1978), 38–76 (on pp. 45–6). Also repeated in Music in the Restoration Theatre, 114–15.

47

Advertisement in the Daily Courant, no. 859 (16 January 1705).

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The phrase ‘after the Italian manner’ would have indicated to the audience it was not the customary dramatic opera but was all-sung throughout.48 The star soprano Margarita de l’Epine, it should be noted, did not sing in the opera, but only as an added attraction. The dancing could have been before or after the opera, but some of the dancers named no doubt appeared in the musical entertainment with dancing and chorus as the ‘Epithalamium Song’ in the opera’s final scene. As princess, Anne had been an avid lover of music, danced in Calisto with her sister, and took music lessons.49 The premiere of a new opera in the Italian manner, sung by London’s leading theatre singers, was certainly of interest to her; so, for the celebration of her birthday the following month, held on 5 February 1705, a performance of Arsinoe was mounted for her at court. To mark the occasion, Congreve wrote a prologue describing how the Muse will abandon satire and now draw inspiration from the various virtues found at court among the fair, especially from Anne, ‘to whose Indulgent Pow’r / We owe the Blessings of the Present Hour’.50 Despite the outcry that Italian singing on the London stage had provoked, and the subsequent satire and invective directed against Italian opera proper, no immediate objection was raised against Arsinoe. As appendices 1 and 2 show, Arsinoe entered upon the London stage as one of many and varied musical-theatric works. Arsinoe was also novel in that it had quasi-historic characters (instead of divinities and fabulous characters) who sang. In one way, though, Arsinoe shared a feature with native English drama and dramatic operas: towards the end of the third act is introduced the ‘Epithalamium Song’ performed before the royal couple preceded by a dance and scored for two alto soloists and chorus with instrumental symphonies and ritornellos.51 This entertainment recalls the musical entertainments presented before monarchs or noble couples that were common in English plays and dramatic operas. Arsinoe also introduced London audiences to the complex, artificial court dramas that had become typical of Italian opera. After a two-part Sinfonia (overture), the opera opens with Arsinoe sleeping in a garden. Ormondo, in love with Dorisbe, whose kingdom Arsinoe has usurped, enters and fights off an assassin (sent, as we learn by Dorisbe). Dorisbe enlists Ormondo for revenge on Arsinoe, whom he now loves. After many plot complications, involving a rival for the love of Dorisbe, mistaken ownership of a scarf given by Arsinoe 48

The title page of the first edition of the libretto clarifies: ‘After the Italian Manner. All Sung’.

49

Queen Anne’s interest in music is documented throughout Winn, Queen Anne.

50

‘Prologue to the Court: On the Queen’s Birth-Day’; Works of William Congreve, ed. McKenzie, 2: 359–60. On the Prologue, Danchin, Prologues and Epilogues of the Eighteen Century, part 1, vol. 1, 254–7, and Winn, Queen Anne, 400–402.

51

Full manuscript scores for Arsinoe are at the British Library, Egerton MS 3664; and Houghton Library, Harvard University, M 1500.C685 A6 1705. Both contain the recitatives, orchestral accompaniments to arias, and the complete ‘Epithalamium Song’, not found complete in the printed Songs from the opera.

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to her rescuer, Arsinoe’s death sentence upon Ormondo, imprisonment of Ormondo, revelation in a letter of Ormondo’s identity (as Pelops, Prince of Athens), and Dorisbe’s attempted suicide, the opera ends with a grand musical entertainment to celebrate the marriage of Arsinoe and Pelops. Every account of Arsinoe contains some errors, misconceptions, biases, or items of conventional wisdom that must be corrected. Given Rich’s long history of devious, underhanded, and disreputable management practices and cheating of his actors, it has been assumed that Rich somehow stole Arsinoe from Vanbrugh’s Haymarket company.52 But as Clayton later explained, his friend the cellist and composer Charles Dieupart arranged to have his opera produced at Rich’s Drury Lane in exchange for a portion of the profits.53 Assisting the project as well was the cellist and composer Nicola Haym. Clayton has been denied credit for composing the music for Arsinoe and said to have assembled it from old Italian arias he brought back from Italy.54 But contemporary evidence from close associates is unanimous in naming him as composer. The two copies of the manuscript score, the numerous collections of printed songs from the opera, and every contemporary witness credit Clayton as composer.55 It is also incorrectly stated that Haym and Dieupart participated in composing the music.56 At the time, the prevailing practice for operas and 52

On Rich stealing Arsinoe: see, for example, Milhous, ‘New Light’.

53

Clayton explains how he arranged for production at the Drury Lane in his Preface to a word book for concerts at York Buildings: see Thomas McGeary, ‘Thomas Clayton and the Introduction of Italian Opera to England’, Philological Quarterly, 77 (1998), 171–86. From Clayton’s account, it does not appear that Rich surreptitiously stole the opera; it was arranged by his colleague Dieupart for half share in the profits, and probably with agreement of the Lord Chamberlain.

54

Insinuation begun by the anonymous author of ‘A Critical Discourse on Opera’s and Italian Musick in England’, appended to the anonymously translated François Raguenet, A Comparison Between the French and Italian Musick and Operas (1709). Authorship of ‘A Critical Discourse’ is uncertain; it is variously attributed to Nicola Haym or John Ernst Galliard. Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (1776; reprint ed., 2 vols; New York, 1963), 2:829 note, cites Galliard, and endorsed by S. Lincoln, ‘J. E. Galliard and “A Critical Discourse”’, Musical Quarterly, 53 (1967), 347–64. Lowell Lindgren, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729)’, Studi Musicali, xvi (1987), 247–380 (on p. 292), points to a source suggesting Haym.

55

For example, Clayton is named in the printed libretto, the manuscript scores at the British Library and the Houghton Library (see note 51 above), the printed Songs, ‘A Critical Discourse’, notices in the Muses Mercury, the letter writer William Cleland, Richard Steele (letters printed in the Spectator, and the members of the Marlborough circle who subscribed debt relief for Clayton (see table 5.2). The denial of his authorship was part of the campaign against Clayton begun by author of ‘A Critical Discourse’.

56

This fact has been repeated, based, apparently, on a misinterpretation by Allardyce Nicoll, ‘Italian Opera in England. The First Five Years’, Anglia, 46, no. 34 (1922), 257–81 (on p. 259 n1).

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pasticcios was to appropriately credit the arias to the several composers, so there is no reason to doubt Clayton’s authorship. The libretto has conventionally been attributed to Peter Motteux on no other basis than a 1747 list of plays said to be by him.57 Since Motteux claimed authorship of numerous librettos for other operas, masques, and works intended for musical setting, did not claim Arsinoe, and no contemporaries attributed it to him, his authorship must be seriously doubted; here the libretto will be considered anonymous. The libretto was not merely translated from the Italian source libretto (Arsinoe, written by Tomaso Stanzani for a Bologna production in 1677) as commonly asserted. Rather, the anonymous librettist substantially adapted the source libretto: shortening recitatives, deleting entire scenes, eliminating one minor character, streamlining the plot down to its more essential character motivation, accelerating the plot denouement, and (in line with English theatre practice) adding the musical entertainment of the Epithalamium in the final act.58 Arsinoe’s modern reputation has suffered; and despite its 30 performances, Clayton’s music is routinely derided for its aesthetic deficiencies and criticised for failing to meet the standards of the newer style of arias that were being written by composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti and Giovanni Bononcini – a style familiar to modern listeners from the London operas of Handel and especially his Rinaldo (1711). Its reputation stems from the animus of the anonymous writer of ‘A Critical Discourse on Opera’s and Musick in England’ (1709). The author famously condemns Arsinoe, saying, ‘it little deserv’d the Name of an Opera’; ‘it will be as difficult to discover one tolerable thing’ as it was for Diogenes seeking an honest man. ‘There is nothing in it but a few Sketches of antiquated Italian Airs, so mangled and sophisticated, that instead of Arsinoe, it ought to be called the Hospital of the old Decrepid Italian Opera’s’.59 This opinion (and even precise phrases) has been used by Sir John Hawkins, Charles Burney, and other modern writers. Features of Clayton’s writing suggest these objections are based on anachronistic, inappropriate criteria. Clayton’s point of departure was not current Italian operatic vocal writing but the native English style found in the multi-sectional theatre songs as exemplified by the Purcell brothers, John Eccles, and others. By contrast to Italian vocal writing, Clayton’s vocal lines may appear too angular, syllabic (although with two-note slurs and short melismas), and not very lyrical. The text setting attempts to follow natural rhythms, and the vocal lines aspire to follow the contours of speech. The text settings meet English expectations: the 57

Motteux is first cited as author on a 1747 list of the works of the English dramatic poets, probably compiled by John Mottley (for the publisher W. Reeve) and appended to Thomas Whincop’s play Scanderberg: or, Love and Liberty (1747), 243.

58

For further reconsideration of Clayton’s Arsinoe, see Thomas McGeary, ‘Thomas Clayton’s Arsinoe (1705) Reconsidered: An English Opera in the Italian Manner’, Royal Musical Association. Research Chronicle (forthcoming).

59

‘A Critical Discourse on Opera’s and Musick in England’ (1709), 65.

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words must be primary; music is to be the handmaid to poetry. Clayton’s arias tend toward a variety of sectional forms, avoiding reliance on the da capo aria form (see appendix 3). His approach is to progress through the text, providing new musical material for new phrases or sections of text and avoiding internal ritornellos. In Clayton’s settings, there are ample occasions for singers to show off their virtuosity in melismas at appropriate words and at cadences. But, in general as in English practice, such places are reserved for expressive words and at cadences: hence the words of the arias are not occasions for vocalization on empty syllables. Only five arias in the manuscript score of Arsinoe have accompaniment by violins (see appendix 4), so in most arias, the voice will be prominent and not have to compete against instruments. Clayton and his librettist actually achieved that desideratum for operatic dramaturgy: they carefully distributed quite regularly the three dozen or so somewhat short arias among the secco-style recitative of the three acts – achieving the goal of presenting the plot by recited dialogue, and then pausing the action for arias and duets that express character emotions or reactions. Rather than using English declamatory-style recitative, Clayton used the Italian style of secco recitative. Example 4.1 is a short passage of dialogue in recitative between Arsinoe and Ormondo. In many ways, Arsinoe (and Rosamond as well) aspires to be an all-sung opera suited for English taste and expectations, not a transplanted Italian opera. Example 4.2 is the opening aria from Arsinoe. To an English audience, it might seem the opera was beginning with a conventional multi-sectional theatre ayre of Henry Purcell or John Eccles: it opens with a short passage of recitative over a sustained bass note and moves on to two musical sections for two new sections of text. The example continues to the first section of a da capo aria.

Li amori di Ergasto After Rich had scored the coup of producing Clayton’s opera, Vanbrugh’s partner Congreve pessimistically wrote his friend Joseph Keally in Ireland on 3 February 1705, ‘I know not when the house will open, nor what we shall begin withal; but I believe with no opera. There is nothing settled yet’.60 Probably due to the loss of Arsinoe and unreadiness of the other operas they had in prospect, Vanbrugh and Congreve desperately needed an opera to open the theatre and turned to the German composer and cellist Jakob Greber, who had been active in London since about 1702. Trained in Italy and accompanist and manager for the singer (and later his wife) Margarita de l’Epine, he was experienced in up-to-date Italian vocal music.

60

William Congreve, 3 February 1705, London, to Joseph Keally, Keally (Kealley) Mount, Kilkenny; in William Congreve, Letters and Documents, ed. John C. Hodges (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), letter no. 20, p. 35. On Keally, Kathleen M. Lynch, ‘Congreve’s Irish Friend’, PMLA, 53 (1938), 1076–87.

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Example 4.1. Recitative between Arsinoe (sung by Mrs Tofts) and Ormondo (sung by Mr Hughes), from Thomas Clayton, Arsinoe (1705), Act, I, scene 4 ARSINOE

# c ‰ r œ ‰ œ œ™ œ R J B#

Voice

Ye Gods! who can

? ## c

Continuo

ORMONDO ARSIN. œ r r œ ‰ B ##œj œ œ B## ‰ J œJ ™ œR J

#œ J

this

be?

A lov- er.

en de

˙

w

-

˙

ORM. ARSIN. 5 # œ ‰ B ## j œ ‰ #œ œ ™ œ œ Œ # ‰ œJ œ ‰ œJ ™ œ œ œ œ œ ≈ œ œJ œ # R R R R J # œ R J J J R R B J B - part.

I go, and leave my Heart.

? ## w

˙

O stay,

˙

Re-solve not quite so soon!

Take this, and

˙

˙

(Aside) œ œ œ (She goes out) œ ‰ œJ œ œ œ œ œ™ #œ œ ‰ œ œR œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ™ # R J Œ # J J J J J J J R J J R J B know

? ##

w

I owe

my life to you.

˙

If not e- nough, I owe my Heart and Crown

˙

˙

œ

œ

Only on 9 April 170561 did the Haymarket theatre open with Greber’s opera Li amori di Ergasto (The Loves of Ergasto), which had a short run against Arsinoe, still playing at Drury Lane. With his theatre still incomplete, the remainder of Vanbrugh’s first season consisted only of plays, which could be produced without elaborate sets. Details about the opera, its cast, how Vanbrugh arranged for the opera, and the number of performances are unclear, and evidence is conflicting. John Downes, the retired theatre prompter for Lincoln’s Inn Fields and chronicler of London theatrical life, reported in 1708: And upon the 9th, of April 1705. Captain Vantbrugg open’d his new Theatre in the Hay-Market, with a Foreign Opera, Perform’d by a new set of Singers, Arriv’d from Italy; (the worst that e’re came from thence) for it lasted but 5 Days, and

61

The confusion about dates of the premiere can be resolved. An extract from a Newdigate newsletter at the Folger Shakespeare Library (l.c. 2878) was printed by John H. Wilson, ‘Theatre Notes from the Newdigate Newsletters’, Theatre Notebook, 15 (1961), 79–84 (at p. 82), where the date of the premiere was inferred to be 23 April (‘on Monday next’ [i.e., 23 April]) based on a misreading of the newsletter’s date as 19 April 1705; a closer examination shows the newsletter’s date is ‘April 7th 1705’; thus the Monday following the previously mentioned entry, which was military appointments on 7 April (see Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 5:700), is 9 April 1705; this date agrees with John Downes (see next note).

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Example 4.2. Opening recitative and aria (beginning), ‘Guide Me, Lead Me’, for Ormondo (sung by Mr Hughes) from Thomas Clayton, Arsinoe (1705), Act I, scene 1 [Recit] b C œ œ œ œj œj Œ b & ‹ Queen of Dark-ness,

Voice

? bb C w

Continuo

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œ

‰ œR œR

˙

Œ

œœœœœœ

˙

œ œœœ J J

5

œ

œ œ œ J Lead

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me,

œ

œ œ ‰ œR œR J œ œ J

œ œ

Where the Nymph whom I

a -

j œ ‰ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

œ œ œj œ œ œ J Guide me, Lead me,

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œœœ J

˙

œœœœœœ œ œ œœœœœœœ

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˙

Air b œ œ œ œœœ œ b J & J ‹ Guide me, Lead me, ? bb œ œ œ œ

b &b Œ ‹

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[etc.]

they being lik’d but indifferently by the Gentry; they in a little time marcht back to their own Country.62

Colley Cibber, though, some thirty-five years later recalled it had only three performances.63 62

Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, eds Milhous and Hume, 99. The opera is unnamed in Downes. It is unlikely, as Downes implies, that Vanbrugh brought over an entire company, for which practice there seem no evidence; see John Rosselli, ‘From Princely Service to the Open Market: Singers of Italian Opera and Their Patrons, 1600–1850’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 1 (1989), 1–32.

63

Cibber, Apology, 175. Cibber seems to confuse and conflate Ergasto with Triumph of Love.

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The cast of Ergasto is not known, for no singers are named in the word book and there are no advertisements for the early weeks.64 It is curious that no advance notices have been found publicizing what certainly would have been a special attraction in London and especially to the theatre’s Whig KitCat subscribers. Since most of London’s leading theatre singers were already engaged in Drury Lane for Arsinoe, Downes is possibly correct that Vanbrugh and Greber used singers recently arrived from Italy; but there certainly were English singers who could perform Greber’s score. For one local singer, the Baroness (Joanna Maria Lendenheim), there is a contract with Vanbrugh that hints she might have sung three times in Ergasto.65 For a late (if not the last) production on 24 April, one ‘new Italian boy’ had a role, perhaps for Cupid.66 It is not known if the star soprano Margarita de l’Epine sang in the opera. (She may have been under contract to Drury Lane.) Ergasto was not an auspicious opening for Vanbrugh’s theatre. Its obscurity may be due to timing and emptying out of the Town. It opened the day after Easter; Parliament had been prorogued on 14 March and members may have gone back to their country seats; Marlborough and his officers had left for the summer campaigns on 29 March. Many courtiers, office holders, and no doubt Kit-Cat subscribers may have left early for the races at Newmarket, where the Queen had gone on 10 April, and then to Cambridge University on 16 April for conferral of degrees.67 No music survives for Ergasto; but judging from Greber’s score for another opera and an aria to words by Nicola Haym, Ergasto would likely have been in up-to-date Italian vocal style.68 Nineteen of the twenty-two arias are indicated in the libretto as da capo.

64

There is much speculation about the cast of Ergasto; see the summaries in Milhous and Hume, eds, London Stage, 1660–1800, Part 2, 180, 220.

65

Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘New Light on the Baroness’, Theatre Notebook, 73 (2019), 2–17, discuss a contract dispute between Haym and Vanbrugh and Congreve regarding the Baroness (whose last name they correct) and suggest she may have had a role in Ergasto; see contract in Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke’s Theatrical Papers, 1706–1715 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 2 n2.

66

Advertisements in the Daily Courant for 23 and 24 April 1705. This could be the last of the three or five performances cited by Cibber or Downes.

67

See Winn, Queen Anne, 402–4.

68

An opera titled in the library catalogue as Gli amori d’Ergasto, signed by ‘Giacomo Greber’ (Ősterreichische Nationalbibliotek Musiksammlung Mus. Hs. 17252), has no relation to the 1705 opera. The manuscript has a ‘Prologo’ followed by a ‘Pastorale’ in three acts. The cast, actions, and verse have no relation to the 1705 opera, and (inconsistent with the catalogue title) there is no Ergasto in the opera’s cast. The opera was performed for the proxy marriage of Archduke Charles (then as Carlos III in Spain) with Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, while she was in Vienna, May 1707–8. For the aria to words by Haym, see the manuscript aria, ‘La cagion de miei tormenti’; Cambridge. Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 44, ff. 118v–120r. Set for soprano, two violins, and basso continuo.

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The source of the libretto for this slight pastoral opera is not known: Greber may have acquired it on the continent, written it himself, or had one written or adapted by an Italian poet in London (such as Haym).69 The opera has even been known by an incorrect presumed Italian title (Gli amori d’Ergasto) due to the missing Italian title page in the British Library copy. Its language has also often been given incorrectly, but the printed libretto with Italian and English title pages and text printed in both Italian and English on facing pages (see plate 4.3) makes certain the opera was performed in Italian. The language is confirmed in the Epilogue (not included in the printed libretto), written by Congreve and spoken by the actress-singer Anne Bracegirdle. It cites how In sweet Italian strains our shepherds sing, Of harmless love our painted forests ring In notes, perhaps less foreign than the Thing.70

The opera is a pastoral with five roles: Amore, who sings the Prologue, and two ninfe and two pastori. In the slight and conventional pastoral plot, the true love of each pair is thwarted; but in the end, a misunderstanding is cleared up (one pair turns out to be brother and sister) and the proper pairs of lovers are united. No scenery is described in the libretto, and the opera could well have been produced at the unfinished Haymarket theatre – being played on the forestage in front of the proscenium arch with just a single painted back drop or flat. The drawing Classical Landscape Seen through an Arch (plate 4.4) by Sir James Thornhill of a flat pastoral scene behind the proscenium arch of a theatre (whose arch and cornices match the Great Flat Scene) could be for a scene that served for Ergasto.71 Arsinoe, sung in English by London’s familiar theatre singers in an accessible English vocal style, received favourable notice, often in the same breath with Camilla. But it was the otherwise little-noted Li amori di Ergasto, sung all in Italian, that immediately raised an outcry by Richard Steele from the rival stage of Drury Lane (discussed in chapter 7).

1705–1706 Season At the end of the 1704–5 season, Vanbrugh revived his goal of combining the two companies at the Haymarket. Even though by now he had an ally in the 69

Eric Walter White states it was based on Gli amori piacevoli d’Ergasto (1661, by Aurelio Amalteo; Sartori, 1834); see A History of English Opera (London: Faber and Faber, 1983), 141; but a comparison of the librettos shows this is not the case (see previous note).

70

William Congreve, ‘Epilogue at the Opening of the Queen’s Theatre in the HayMarket, with an Italian Pastoral: Spoken by Mrs. Bracegirdle’, in The Works of Mr. William Congreve, 3 vols (1710), 3:964–5; also Works of William Congreve, ed. McKenzie, 2:353, 644–6.

71

Sir James Thornhill, Classical Landscape Seen through an Arch; formerly in collection of Michael W. Ingram; sold at Sotheby’s sale of 8 December 2005, lot 133. Reproduced by courtesy of Sotheby’s; also reproduced and discussed in Barlow, ‘Vanbrugh’s Queen’s Theatre’, 515.

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Plate 4.3. Facing Italian and English title pages for the word book for Li amori di Ergasto / The Loves of Ergasto (1705), the opera sung in Italian that opened the Haymarket theatre on 9 April 1705

Lord Chamberlain, the Court Whig Earl of Kent, who had been a subscriber to the Haymarket theatre, the plan failed when Rich, content with the present arrangement and the success of Arsinoe and his acting company, rejected all possibility of a union.72 Betterton’s company played at Lincoln’s Inn Fields over summer 1705 while the new theatre was being completed. When the new season opened on 30 October 1705 with a revival of Vanbrugh’s successful play The Confederacy, London now had reasonably competitive theatre companies: Betterton’s at the Haymarket and Rich’s Patent Company at Drury Lane. Midway through the season, Vanbrugh’s partner William Congreve presciently realised that the Haymarket was a losing proposition against the resources of Rich at Drury Lane and ended his partnership with Vanbrugh, writing Keally on 15 December 1705, ‘I have quitted the affair of the Haymarket. You may imagine I got nothing by it’.73

72

See Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘The Drury Lane Actor’s Petition of 1705’, Theatre Notebook, 39 (1985), 62–5.

73

Congreve, London, 15 December 1705, to Joseph Keally; in Congreve, Letters and Documents, letter no. 22, p. 38.

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Plate 4.4. Sir James Thornhill’s drawing, Classical Landscape Seen through an Arch, such as could have been used for a single scene needed for the production of Li amori di Ergasto / Loves of Ergasto and Temple of Love at the Haymarket (prior to the remodeling in 1709). As in plate 4.2, at the sides are the columns with gilded capitals and cornice.

Camilla For Rich’s second season at Drury Lane, Arsinoe was revived on 27 October 1705 for eleven performances, and on 2 March 1706 Rich revived Henry Purcell’s dramatic opera King Arthur for two performances. Drury Lane premiered on 30 March 1707 its second opera in the Italian manner, Giovanni Bononcini’s Camilla (Naples, 1696), one of the most popular and widely produced operas of the era. Camilla was the result of initiative by Nicola Haym. Although he had been in London since March 1701, he was not among those enlisted in Vanbrugh’s early efforts at assembling a repertory of operas for his new theatre.74 Now seeing Italian-style opera taking hold in London with Arsinoe and 74

On Haym’s recruitment and early years in London: Lindgren, ‘Accomplishments of Nicola Haym’.

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Li amori di Ergasto, Haym likely approached Rich with the idea of producing an Italian opera he had in hand, Camilla.75 In the dedication to Lady Wharton, wife of the Whig Junto lord, Owen Swiney noted that ‘the English Genius is not so inharmonious, but that a publick Encouragement may render us capable of contending for the Mastery with the Italians themselves’. Swiney hoped Camilla ‘may serve at present to give us a Taste of the Italian Musick, and in Time prove a Foil to the English’. In keeping with English demands for intelligible theatrical entertainments, Haym provided English texts for Bononcini’s arias and set to music new recitatives in English. Camilla was sung by a cast of favourite English singers (including Mr Hughes, Richard Leveridge, Mrs Tofts, and Mrs Lindsey – most also singing in Arsinoe). Bononcini’s Camilla, a favourite on the Continent, was already known in London through selected arias in concert performance and publication in the Monthly Masque of Musick. It ran for ten performances that season and became London’s first enduring Italian opera, receiving 111 performances through 1728.76 Like Arsinoe, Camilla is a heroic opera with complicated plot. Camilla, disguised as the shepherd Dorinda, spears a boar to save the life of Prenesto, son of Latinus who has usurped her kingdom. As a reward Latinus orders troops to help Camilla recover her territory (actually from himself). As a complication, Latinus’s daughter Lavinia is in love with his enemy Turnus. A series of crises, including Latinus’s imprisonment of Dorinda/Camilla and her rescue by Prenesto, prolong the drama. Finally, in a battle between the forces of Camilla and Latinus, Camilla prevails. Moved by Love, Camilla banishes anger and pardons all, lovers are united, and the Chorus proclaims: ‘Happy, happy is the Swain, / Who loves, and has not lov’d in vain’. The London version of Camilla gave the English a quite faithful version of an up-to-date, fully formed Italian opera. About two-thirds of Bononcini’s original Italian arias were retained in Haym’s shortened version for London. The 51 rather short arias are regularly distributed amidst secco-style recitative, achieving the goal of advancing the plot while providing for moments of lyrical expression. The vocal writing is more lyrical and melodic than is Clayton’s, and the vocal lines contain numerous, long virtuoso melismas (see example 4.3). The 43 da capo arias, about half of which have orchestral accompaniment (see appendix 4), however, could be seen as tipping the emphasis towards opera as an on-stage concert, towards the sensuous over the rational, for the singer goes back to the beginning of the aria to repeat the complete first section.

75

On Haym’s negotiations for providing Camilla, Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, 2 n1. On Camilla in London, see the exhaustive account in Lowell Lindgren, ‘A Bibliographic Scrutiny of Dramatic Works Set by Giovanni and His Brother Antonio Maria Bononcini’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1972); and Lindgren, ‘Camilla and The Beggar’s Opera’, Philological Quarterly, 59 (1980), 44–61.

76

Camilla reached 111 London performances on 14 December 1728; Lindgren, ‘Camilla and The Beggar’s Opera’, 56.

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Example 4.3. Aria ‘Love’s Darts Are in Your Eyes’, sung by Mr Ramondon (as Metius) from Giovanni Bononcini, Camilla (1706), Act I, scene 3. Part A of a da capo aria. Original Naples version has four-part string accompaniment.

# 3 & #4 ‹

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15

#

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35

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Œ U ˙

40

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ing.

U ˙

Œ

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714

For Camilla’s premiere, in accord with usual English theatrical practice, Arthur Maynwaring wrote an Epilogue, spoken by the actress-singer Anne Oldfield but representing the voice of Drury Lane, which casts Drury Lane and the Haymarket as if rival nations ruled by monarchs (the managers Rich and Vanbrugh).77 The results of Vanbrugh’s failed attempt (in about 1703) to unite the theatres resulted that ‘Both Houses now Italian Musick Sing’ (that is, Arsinoe and Camilla at Drury Lane and Li amori di Ergasto at the Haymarket). But if Vanbrugh’s union had succeeded, England would never have seen Camilla but only the old-fashioned English-style masques Judgment of Paris (1701) and the even older Loves of Mars and Venus (1696). Maynwaring, who indeed enjoyed Italian opera (see chapter 5), is here aligning Drury Lane with Italian music, and Vanbrugh’s Haymarket with the native English masque. Seven months later, after division of the personnel of the companies in September (see below), in a Prologue at the opening of the Haymarket for the 1706–7 season on 15 October 1706, the playwright George Farquhar answered on behalf of the Haymarket.78 Again adopting the parallel of the theatre world and the conflict on the Continent, he aligns Rich with Louis XIV. The Haymarket he aligns with sense, poetry, and British law, and Rich’s Drury Lane with sound, foreign law, and nonsense: The Muses cause we own, here stand our Ground, With Sense to Combate all the Power of Sound: They [Drury Lane] take the Foreign; we the British Law, The Poets our, and theirs the Fa, la, la.79

He flatters the audience in the theatre named after the Queen for their patriotism in both politics and the theatre: Our State, and Stage must Liberty pursue When Rul’d by Anna, and Maintained by you.80

Arsinoe fared well compared with Camilla for this season, but Camilla ended up running for sixty-five performances over five seasons, against Arsinoe’s thirty performances over three seasons (see appendix 3). With Arsinoe and Camilla running in repertory for twenty-one productions at Drury Lane that season, opera in the Italian manner (but sung all in English) was readily accepted by London’s theatre public, although it was not yet a complete conquest, for 77

The Prologue is attributed to Richard Estcourt in the printed libretto, but written by Maynwaring; Snyder, ‘Prologues and Epilogues of Arthur Maynwaring’, 615; Epilogue reprinted from MS text, pp. 624–5). The manuscript in the Blenheim Papers also mentions the ‘Opera of Birds’ (Wonders in the Sun, 5 April 1706) by Thomas D’Urfey.

78

‘The Prologue Spoken by Mr. Wilks at the Opening of the Theatre in the HayMarket, October the 15th, 1706’; printed in Donald C. Mullin, ‘The Queen’s Theatre, Haymarket: Vanbrugh’s Opera House’, Theatre Survey, 8 (1967), 84–105 (at p. 91).

79

Farquhar, ‘Prologue at the Opening of the Haymarket’, lines 16–19.

80

Ibid., lines 25–6.

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in the same season Rich was also producing English dramatic operas. The competition between theatres was at least partly responsible for a renewed interest in English dramatic opera at both theatres. For the 1705–6 season, Vanbrugh countered Rich’s successful Arsinoe and Camilla by mounting what seemed his preference in dramatic music: two English dramatic operas of the sort that Betterton had specialised in at Dorset Garden and Drury Lane. The Granville-Eccles The British Enchanters: Or, No Magick Like Love (21 February 1706), the first new English dramatic opera produced in five years, was a good success, running for 12 performances. The allegorical Wonders in the Sun (5 April 1706) by Thomas D’Urfey, a ‘comical opera’ (but a dramatic opera in genre), was an expensive failure, with but five performances.

Temple of Love Not until late in the season did Vanbrugh mount his second Italian-style opera, The Temple of Love (7 March 1706), significantly another pastoral, the subject matter endorsed by Dryden. This pastoral opera sung in English, a collaboration by librettist Peter Motteux and composer and double-bass player Gioseppe Fedeli Saggione, was even less successful, with only two performances on 7 and 14 March 1706. The title page phrase ‘English’d from the Italian’ suggests Motteux translated and adapted an Italian libretto, which Saggione set to his own music. The collaboration was presumably underway by 1705, judging from Cleland’s letter, and so Temple of Love stems from a period when poets and composers were experimenting with the forms opera for England would take. The plot is a rather confusing mélange of plots and episodes. Set in Arcadia, the main plot involves the amours of two pairs of shepherds and shepherdesses: Sylvander is in search of his lost bride Ornida, whom he thinks is Eurilla, a shepherdess. The shepherd Thyrsis is in love with Phillis, a friend of Eurilla/ Ornida, who loves the inconstant Thyrsis. A counterplot of Countryman and Countrywoman pair provide comic relief with their petty jealousies, squabbles, and misunderstandings. A satyr lurks about, observing and interfering with the above plots; the whole is overseen by Diana and Venus. The three pairs are ultimately properly joined, and the pastoral ends with a final Grand Chorus of song and dance. Like Vanbrugh’s previous opera, Temple of Love could have been produced in an unfinished theatre, since like Li amori di Ergasto it could be played in front of a single Arcadian scene. Of the 31 arias indicated in the word book, about two-thirds (21) are in da capo form (or indicated as such in the libretto text).81 Saggione’s music is more melodic and Italianate than Clayton’s; its arias with long virtuoso melismas and sustained notes of three to five measures (some as long as eight or nine measures) provided good virtuoso vehicles for the mostly local English theatre singers, including Mr Lawrence, Mr Cook, Mrs Bracegirdle, and Mrs Bowman. The Italian singer Maria Margarita Gallia is given many very virtuosic arias (see example 4.4), including one with a sustained high note of six measures. 81

Arias and indication of da capo are often uncertain in the printed libretto text. Of the eighteen arias in the printed Songs, fourteen are unambiguously in da capo form.

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714

Example 4.4. Aria ‘Love’s Blind, and Strikes Our Hearts’, sung by Maria Gallia (as Eurilla/Orinda), from Temple of Love (1706), Act III, scene 1. Part A of da capo aria.

Voice

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But the thread-bare, confusing plot and stereotyped characters, lacking any real drama or conflict, were not such as to command much sustained interest. Playing against Arsinoe and Camilla at Drury Lane, Temple of Love could not eke out more than two performances.

The Lord Chamberlain’s Office In addition to the managers Vanbrugh, Congreve, and Rich, an important agent in the early history of opera was the Lord Chamberlain’s office. Regulation and oversight of London’s theatres was in the hands of the Lord Chamberlain, at the time, the Whig Earl of Kent, assisted by his Secretary Sir John Stanley and (since 3 December 1706) Vice Chamberlain Thomas Coke, both Tory

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courtiers.82 The Lord Chamberlain’s office seems to have tried to accommodate wishes of the managers, shareholders, and impresarios to ensure the financial success of opera. Given Kent’s more pressing duties at Court, he left much of the daily details of running the theatrical aspect of the office to Coke and Stanley. Kent was a subscriber to Vanbrugh’s Haymarket theatre project and so may have been especially accommodating to his requests. It was from the Lord Chamberlain’s office that Vanbrugh, Rich, Swiney, Collier, Hill, Heidegger, and others had to seek approval for most matters of theatre management. From surviving records, it appears the Lord Chamberlain had authority to approve decisions, great and small – including orchestra and singer salaries, approval of contracts and salaries, resolution of contract disputes, distribution of singers and actors between theatres, and even permission for private performances by singers. The office seems to have been especially active at times of financial failure and managerial conflict, when an unusually larger number of documents survive. Kent’s Vice Chamberlain was the wealthy Tory Derbyshire MP and courtier Thomas Coke.83 One of the Tory Henry St John’s oldest friends and member of his cohort of rakes and men-about-town, he was among a group of young Tory politicians aspiring for office. With Marlborough’s influence, he became teller of the Exchequer (May 1704), the post he exchanged for that of Vice Chamberlain, which brought him to the centre of court activities.84 Queen Anne was so pleased with his service, she granted him a £1,000 pension.85 Coke’s initial appointment to the Exchequer was a political gift and related to St John’s appointment and advancement in the Ministry (he was appointed Secretary of War on 4 April 1704). But Coke may have been interested in the Vice Chamberlain post (or been thought a suitable candidate for it) because of his own personal interest in music and opera. A rich and cultivated aristocrat, Coke was also a serious book collector.86 His extensive surviving papers are the

82

On Stanley: Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘A Letter to Sir John Stanley: A New Theatrical Document of 1712’, Theatre Notebook, 43 (1989), 73–80.

83

On Thomas Coke: Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke; and Thomas McGeary, ‘Vice Chamberlain Coke and Italian Opera in London: New Documents’, Early Music, 46 (2018), 653–74.

84

For Marlborough’s promotion of Coke, see McGeary, ‘Vice Chamberlain Coke’. On the post, J. C. Sainty and R. O. Bucholz, compilers, Officials of the Royal Household, 1660–1837, part 1, Department of the Lord Chamberlain and Associated Offices (London: University of London, Institute of Historical Research, 1998), 2.

85

On Coke’s service as Vice Chamberlain, Robert O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 45.

86

A Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures, Drawings, Prints, and A Valuable Library of Books, … Thomas Coke (1728); copy in the British Library, Coke papers. British Library, Add. MS 69,968.

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greatest source of information about the management of London theatre and opera at the time.87 Before his appointment, Coke, an amateur recorder player, had commissioned manuscript copies of music from Captain Prencourt. An early devotee of Italian vocal music, in 1704 he commissioned from William Armstrong manuscript copies of some Italian arias and cantatas and was obtaining copies of the latest arias from Arsinoe from the singer Richard Leveridge. With Coke at the Lord Chamberlain’s office, theatre managers had a sympathetic ear as they tried to find an arrangement of theatres, actors, instrumentalists, and singers that would make opera a profitable venture on the London stage – an enterprise becoming futile by the need to pay the extravagant salaries demanded by the singers.

Military Campaigns and Politics In the military campaigns in the Low Countries in summer 1706, Marlborough’s victory at Ramillies on 12/23 May 1706 routed a French army of comparable size and drove the French from the southern Netherlands to their own borders, ensuring Allied control of the Low Countries. Ramillies and other Allied victories turned the military tide against the French and brought Louis to offer the first serious peace proposals to the Dutch on 12/23 July; failure to follow up on French overtures led to accusations the Marlborough-Godolphin Ministry was prolonging the war beyond what the Dutch needed for their security. In Italy in July 1706, Prince Eugene led the Imperial army in a successful campaign in the Piedmont and defeated the French army and raised the siege of Turin on 27 August/7 September. 88 By the Treaty of Milan 2/13 March 1707, the French withdrew from northern Italy. The terms of the Emperor’s peace with France vexed the Allies, for it freed up French troops for action in Spain, the Rhine, and the Low Countries. After an 18-month campaign by the Whig Junto lords and supported by Godolphin’s threat to resign, with great reluctance Anne yielded on 3 December 1706 and appointed in place of Hedges as a secretary of state the Earl of Sunderland, whom she found politically and personally obnoxious. On the same date, Thomas Coke exchanged his lucrative post of teller of the Exchequer for that of Vice Chamberlain of the Household, then held by the independent, but Whiggish-inclined Peregrine Bertie (one of the subscribers to the Haymarket theatre and for a time, a partner of Vanbrugh). After the appointment of Sunderland, the Whig Junto lords were determined to obtain further government posts for Whigs. But concessions to the Junto only alienated the Queen from the Duumvirs and caused her to rely increasingly on Robert Harley in her attempt for political moderation. A great accomplishment of Whig statecraft and a further guarantee for the Hanoverian Succession was the Act of Union of Scotland and England under

87

See Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke.

88

Derek McKay, Prince Eugene of Savoy (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 100–107.

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one monarch, effective 1 May 1707. As early as 1704, the Queen’s declining health made the security of the Hanoverian Succession ever more crucial. The union of the crowns of Scotland and England would end with her death; and because the Act of Settlement did not apply to Scotland, there was a real possibility that without a common succession, as stipulated in the Act, Scotland might restore the Pretender with the aid of France. The military campaigns of 1707 were disappointments. In Spain, on 14/25 April 1707, the Allied army suffered an embarrassing defeat by superior Franco-Spanish forces at Almanza, setting back Allied prospects in Spain. Rumours flew in England of French peace offerings, but Whigs were insistent on ‘No Peace without Spain’: Spain and her possessions must become part of the Habsburg monarchy. But back-bench Tories were dissatisfied with continuing a war that would only benefit the Dutch and those financing the war, a war Tories came to see as a ‘bottom-less pit’.89 In that summer, it was now obvious to those at court that Abigail Masham, a cousin of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and a bedchamber woman to the Queen, was now a close confidant of Anne with growing influence on her and replacing Sarah in her favour.90 A relation of Harley, she was a channel of communication to Queen, aiding Harley’s return to power in 1710. By end of 1707 Anne and Sarah were estranged over politics in the Ministry. The idea of an invitation for a member of the Electoral family to reside in London continued to arise and provoke Anne’s opposition. In July 1707 one Scott, an Englishman residing in Hanover, was in England scheming with the Tories to obtain an invitation to the Electress to reside in England. The proposal was disavowed by the Elector, who recalled him to Hanover.91 Again, in October 1707, Marlborough was worried about a rumour of a Tory scheme for a Parliamentary motion to invite the Electress, which would have embarrassed the Ministry.92 Despite Anne’s favour, Harley’s position was weakening. His 89

The phrase comes from the subtitles of John Arbuthnot’s series of anti-war ‘John Bull’ pamphlets. See chapter 5, p. 239 and note 107.

90

The deteriorating relations were widely known; Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), esp. 167–72 and passim. See also Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, letter no. 799 (22 May 1707); Gregg, Protestant Succession, 25–6; Gregg, Queen Anne; and Winn, Queen Anne.

91

Scott affair: Marlborough, Meldert, 28 July/8 August 1707, to Godolphin; MarlboroughGodolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, nos. 863 and 874, 2:864–5 and 877–8; see also 2:865 n7, 2:870 n2, and 2:878 n1. Also, Mathilde Knoop, Kürfurstin Sophie von Hannover (Hildesheim: August Lay, 1969), 207–9. The affair was initially described in a letter from Robethon, Hanover, 22 July/2 August 1707, to Cardonnel (Marlborough’s secretary); in William Coxe, Memoirs of Marlborough, ed. John Wade, 3 vols (London: Bell and Sons, 1893) 2:124–5. The invitation was opposed by the Elector.



92

Marlborough 2/13 October 1707, Westrem, to Godolphin; Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Synder, no. 925, 2:929. No such motion was made.

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secretary was convicted of high treason on 19 January 1708 for selling state papers to the French – a scandal the Whigs fanned to implicate Harley.

1706–1707 Season Over the summer of 1706, Vanbrugh again attempted to arrange through the Lord Chamberlain a union of the theatre companies, or at least an arrangement that would reduce his financial losses. Rich, confident in the profitability of operas, resisted Vanbrugh’s schemes. On 14 August 1706, Vanbrugh, fearing the costs of running the Haymarket, turned over direction and profits of the theatre to Owen Swiney – receiving ground rent and five pounds for every acting day. Prior to the opening of the 1706–7 season, in September 1706, the Lord Chamberlain ordered a complete restructuring of the London theatres. The singers and musicians at the Haymarket were sent to Rich’s Drury Lane (leaving behind at the Haymarket only enough instrumentalists to perform overtures and act tunes), and most of the best actors at Drury Lane were given to the Haymarket theatre. As a result, operas and musical entertainments could only be performed at Drury Lane. Both theatres were allowed to perform plays, but Rich could add singing and dancing. Both companies seemed to operate profitably this season. One drawback of acting at the Haymarket theatre, according to Cibber, was that the ‘vast Columns’, ‘guilded Cornices’, and excessively high roof caused such reverberation that ‘scarce one Word in ten, could be distinctly heard’ – although it was quite suited for trumpets or the ‘Swell of an Eunuch’s holding tone’.93 Without singers and instrumentalists at the Haymarket, Swiney has to abandon a revival of Granville’s successful dramatic opera British Enchanters because of his objection to producing a version of it without its singing and dancing.94 It was later revived as an expanded play without music and dancing (see chapter 5). Rich now had a monopoly on the forces required for mounting opera, both in the Italian manner and English dramatic opera. The Muses Mercury for January 1707 commended the town for their ‘relish’ of operas (including Arsinoe) and supporting them by subscription. It announced Rich’s ambitious programme of five new works, all to be sung in English: Daniel Purcell’s Orlando Furioso; John Dennis’s masque Orpheus and Euridicé set by Daniel Purcell; the Congreve-Eccles Semele; the Addison-Clayton Rosamond; and Heidegger’s production of the Motteux-Pepusch Thomyris. The other works in Rich’s 1706 to 1707 season at Drury Lane were revivals of Arsinoe and Camilla and of four English dramatic operas, Island Princess, Tempest, Timon of Athens, and Macbeth. All these productions were sung in English, Camilla achieving twenty-three further performances. At least for this season, the combination of actors, singers, and instrumentalists at Drury Lane allowed both Italian opera and the native English dramatic opera to be

93

Cibber on acoustics, Apology, ed. Fone, 173.

94

Granville’s objection: Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, doc. 7.

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produced on the same stage. As yet, Italian-style opera’s conquest of the London stage was by no means complete.

Rosamond Of the new works projected by Rich, only Rosamond and Thomyris reached the stage. Rosamond (4 March 1707) had original music by Thomas Clayton to a libretto by Joseph Addison. Since the opera celebrates the Whig hero the Duke of Marlborough’s victory at Blenheim in August 1704, at least the idea of celebrating Marlborough in a topical theatre piece could have arisen in late 1704, at the time of the outpouring of literary works celebrating Marlborough’s victory. Party leaders promoted rival panegyrics of Marlborough’s victory. Tories sponsored John Philips’s Blenheim (1705).95 Lord Treasurer Godolphin’s commission of Addison to commemorate the victory resulted in The Campaign, an example of Whig sublime verse, announced as ready for publication on 28 October 1704 but likely delayed until 14 December (but carrying the year 1705) to coincide with the Duke’s return to London from his campaigns.96 The poem gained Addison the post of undersecretary of state to Sunderland in July 1705. Cleland’s mention that Rosamond was underway several years before its 1707 premiere is confirmed by a note by Addison’s literary executor, the Whig Thomas Tickell: ‘The Opera of Rosamond was written, while he possessed that employment’ as undersecretary of state, an employment he began in July 1705.97 An early date is also confirmed by ‘2 April 1706’ written on the cover of an autograph copy of the libretto that Addison presented to the Duchess of Marlborough before leaving on 12 April 1706 to Hanover as secretary on a diplomatic mission, including Vanbrugh, to confer the Garter on the Electoral Prince.98 The Queen decided on 18 January 1705 to grant the royal estate at Woodstock to Marlborough; she announced the grant to the Commons on 14 February, which was enacted by the Lords on 14 March.99 Since the legend of Henry and Rosamond took place at Woodstock, the subject of the opera could have arisen at that time. In any case, the opera with such a subject is undoubtedly a Whig party piece. (Rosamond is discussed further in chapter 5.) 95

On rival party celebrations of Blenheim: Andreas K. E. Mueller, ‘Politics, Politeness, and Panegyrics: Defoe, Addison, and Philips on Blenheim’, Philological Quarterly, 93 (2015), 121–47; and Juan Christian Pellicer, ‘Queen Anne: Patron of Poets?’, pp. 57–64 in Queen Anne and the Arts, ed. Reverend II.

96

On genesis and dating of The Campaign, Robert D. Horn, ‘Addison’s Campaign and Macaulay’, PMLA, vol. 63, no. 3 (1948), 886–902, on 895 (who also notes other panegyrics on Marlborough’s victory).

97

Thomas Tickell, Introduction to Rosamond in Addison’s Works (1721); C. Sainty, comp., Officials of the Secretaries of State, 1660–1782 (London: Athlone Press, 1973), 63. Addison served initially under Sir Charles Hedges.

98

The date written on Addison’s presentation copy of Rosamond to the Duchess (in the Mary Hyde Collection, Houghton Library, MS Hyde 11) is not in Addison’s hand.

99

Chronology is easily followed in Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 5:509–15.

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The postponement in the production of Rosamond was likely due at first to Vanbrugh’s theatre’s lack of the aerial machinery and moveable scenery needed, and then after September 1706 without the needed musical forces due to the Lord Chamberlain’s restructuring of the theatres. Not quite the least successful of operas in English, Rosamond ran three nights, one more than Temple of Love, the minimum to gain the author his benefit. Although the music was later condemned by the author of a ‘Critical Discourse’, the pro-Whig Muses Mercury puffed the opera.100 Both Clayton and Addison had been abroad and so were familiar with Italian opera circa 1700. Clayton’s dates and itinerary abroad are not known; Addison travelled in Italy in 1701–3 (further on his Italian travels in chapter 8). Whatever deficiencies Arsinoe and Rosamond may have when viewed against the standards of opera in Italy, they cannot be seen as mere lack of competence on the part of librettist and composer, but at least as an attempt to create an all-sung opera suitable for the London stage. The legendary nature of the story no doubt made it a suitable subject to be sung, according to Dryden’s criteria of probability or verisimilitude. As approved by Dryden, Rosamond has a comic subplot of the squabbles of Sir Trusty (Knight of the Bower) and his wife Grideline that mirrors the main plot of the marriage of Henry and Eleanor. Linking Rosamond to the dramatic operas at Dorset Garden, is the spectacle of the descending machine at the beginning of Act III. While Henry is asleep in the bower, appears a vision of a descending cloud, in which are two Angels, ‘the Guardian Spirits of the British Kings in War and Peace’. One outcome of their dialogue is that the Spirit of War instils such a love of valour into Henry that he renounces his illicit love of Rosamond to return to war. Most topical and celebratory of Marlborough is the change of scene showing the Plan of Blenheim Palace. Rich, knowing the potential of exotic Italian singers to draw audiences, brought over from Italy the castrato Valentino Urbani (called Valentini) to sing at Drury Lane. His means of contact with Valentini is unknown. In any case, Valentini arrived in London by December 1706. In that month Delarivier Manley complained that her tragedy Almyna: or, the Arabian Vow (16 December 1706, imprint 1707) had played at the Haymarket theatre at ‘so illfated Time, viz: The immediate Week before Christmas between Devotion and Camilla (the Eunuch having then never Sung but once)’. She is likely referring to performances by Valentini at Drury Lane drawing away her audience. It is not clear whether she referred to Valentini singing in concerts, as an entertainment with plays, or in the role of Turnus in a revival of Camilla.

The anonymous author of ‘A Critical Discourse’ claimed Rosamond was only suffered to be performed ‘on purpose to frighten all England with its abominable Musick’ (68). The Whig-leaning Muses Mercury (February 1707) puffed Clayton’s music for Rosamond: ‘The Harmony of the Numbers, and the Beauty of the Sentiments are universally admired. … [T]he Airs of Rosamund are fine, the Passions well touch’d’ (52).

100

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Denouncing the attraction of the opera running at Drury Lane and defending the spoken theatre, the play’s Prologue spoken by Colley Cibber addresses the supporters of the stage in the audience, repeating many of the long-standing complaints against Italian singing: To You the Patrons of the lab’ring Player, Who spight of Syren sound for Sense declare; Whose Manlier Judgments, more Delighted hear What well informs the Mind, than vainly charms the Ear. To You its firm Support, the Stage opprest Calls loud for Aid against the Modish Tast.

If a singer’s voice joined the ‘Actor’s Force of Gesture, and his Fire’, at least the ‘dark Translated Nonsense then might pass’ – a swipe at the poor stage presence of many opera singers with ‘dangling Arms, and lifeless Eyes, / A hum-drum Princess’ chanting lullabies. The Prologue grants the perfection of French dancing and Italian song and painting, but ‘Our best Diversion is an English Play’. The Epilogue reiterates the notion that the theatre would need to adopt ‘the new Italian way’ to attract audiences, given that ‘Sound in spight of Sense’ is what pleases them. Camilla, in which Valentini first appeared, had been revived that season, beginning on 26 November. It is not known when he began singing the role of Turnus, which he took over from, or shared with Mr Hughes.101 But when Camilla was presented at court for the Queen’s birthday on 6 February 1707, Valentini was paid 20 guineas from the Privy Purse.102 He is first advertised as singing the role of Turnus on 8 March 1707; presumably he sang the role in Italian, for there were printed librettos and song sheets with substitute arias from Camilla in Italian and advertised as sung by Valentini. Rich had now taken the first step down the path that led to opera sung all in Italian coming to dominate the London stage: that first step being that bête noire of the English stage, the bilingual opera with a castrato singing his role in Italian while others sang in English.103

Thomyris Following the disappointing run of Rosamond, Rich began a more successful run of eight performances of Thomyris, Queen of Scythia on 1 April 1707, a project of John Heidegger, who seems to have been acting as an independent impresario. With a collection of arias by Bononcini, Scarlatti, Albinoni, and other Italian composers in hand, he engaged Motteux to devise a libretto, provide English words to the Italian arias, and write new dialogue for recitative, which was set by Johann Christoph Pepusch, who acted as musical coordinator and

101

Many of the songs for Turnus in the printed Songs are assigned to Valentini or Mr Hughes.

102

Ordered paid on 25 June 1708; British Library Add. MS 61,420, f. 31.

103

Printed librettos indicate that local singers Margarita and Catherine Tofts would sing in Italian in scenes with the castratos, while the rest of the opera was carried out in English.

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composed any new music needed.104 Heidegger offered the resulting opera to Rich in return for proceeds from four nights’ playing.105 To cover the expenses of mounting the opera and Valentini’s salary, Rich raised a subscription of 200 guineas for the first run – justified, no doubt, by the audience’s eagerness to hear Valentini sing the role of Orontes.106 Thomyris was a born bilingual opera: the libretto gives the role of Orontes in both Italian and English. The role may have been sung on occasion by the local singer Mr Hughes.107 The libretto adds a note: The Part of Orontes being Sung by Signior Valentino, at the Desire of most of the Nobility who subscrib’d for the first Performances of this Opera, you have here the same [aria text] in Italian as it is translated out of English and adjusted to the same Musick.108

Thomyris was a landmark in another sense: it was the first pasticcio (or ‘medley’) opera on the London stage. Instead of an opera with music composed by a single composer to a purpose-written libretto, the opera consisted of arias by Scarlatti, Bononcini, and others adapted to an English libretto by Motteux. He apologised in the Preface that ‘those who would not have Sense sacrific’d to Sound, nor the Mind displeas’d while the Ears are entertain’d’ will consider the difficulty of his task of fitting English words ‘too manly’ to Italian music. Thomyris was a return to heroic-style Italian opera and demonstrates Motteux’s understanding of the conventions of Italian-style opera. Pepusch was fluent and comfortable in the new Italian vocal style of recitative. No recitatives are included in the printed Songs, but examples of Pepusch’s other settings of recitative suggest the style he employed. Since about 1705–6, he and his collaborator the Whig poet and violinist John Hughes were among the earliest exponents of writing English cantatas in the Italian manner of alternating recitative and da capo aria. In 1710 they published a set of Six English Cantatas, all in the Italian manner and whose recitative style resembled the Italian secco-style of recitative, rather than the declamatory English style of the generation of Henry Purcell and John Eccles. More significantly, the arias by Scarlatti and Bononcini in Thomyris were an advance in introducing to London audiences the newer style of Italian vocal writing: with repetition of words and short text phrases, step-wise lyrical vocal lines, a majority of da capo arias (38 of 54 or 55 arias are in da capo form), and long sequence-driven melismas and sustained notes to show off the virtuosity of the singers, Valentini, Margarita, and Mrs Tofts, as well as Mr Lawrence, Richard Leveridge, and Mrs Lindsey. Some melismas frequently would run from three to five measures long. In such arias – and especially when

104

On the division of responsibility, Muses Mercury (March 1707), 76.

105

Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, doc. 9.

106

Terms of subscription, Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, doc. 8.

107

The libretto and the printed Songs assign songs of Orontes to Hughes or Valentini.

108

Thomyris, 4.

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Example 4.5, the complete first section of the aria ‘Pleasure Calls: Fond Hearts Recover!’ for Queen Thomyris from Thomyris, Act III, scene 5, sung by Margarita, shows all the hallmarks of the Italian vocal style

Voice

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# ™ ™ œ œ œ™ œ œ ‰ ™ r 3œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ ™ r œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ & # œ œ œJ R J R ‹ Lov - er At last en - joy œ Œ ? ## ‰ ™ œR œ ™ œ œ œ Œ Ó Ó œ # œ ‰ œœœœœœœœ œœœœœœœœœœœœ œ Œ Ó &# ‹ œ œ œ œ ? ## œ Ó Ó œ Ó

15

## Œ œ 3œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œJ œ ™ œ œ ™ œ20 œ œ™ œ ˙ J J J J R & J J R ‹ Fears are o - ver. Let the Lov - er, let the Lov - er At last en - joy, œ œ œ œ ™ ? ## ‰™ R œ œ Œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ —(continued)

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714 Example 4.5—concluded

# ˙ &# ‹ ? ## Ó

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U # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ™ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™ œ œ ™ œ œ œ™ œ œ Œ ∑ Ó Œ J R J R &# ‹ at last en-joy. œ U œ ? ## Ó œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ œ Ó œ œ œ

25

compounded by being da capo arias and sung in Italian – the English audience would find the balance had swung to sound over sense, or as Motteux himself admitted, ‘Sense sacrific’d to Sound’ – a complaint that had been voiced since the 1690s when Italian singing was being introduced to London. It was this 1706–7 season at Drury Lane under Rich’s management that the tide had turned for the ascendancy of opera in the Italian manner. In that season, Clayton’s two native English ventures, Arsinoe and Rosamond, had a total of six performances; operas with arias composed by Italians reached thirty-one performances (Camilla totalled twenty-three, Thomyris had eight performances). Whatever the aesthetic merits of Clayton’s music, it would be hard for his English-influenced style of vocal writing and short, sectional arias to stand comparison with the new melody-dominated, florid Italian vocal writing by Bononcini and Scarlatti. The local singers, judging by the printed music they sang, had vocal skill and agility to sing roles of comparable (or at times greater) virtuosity to Valentini. But Valentini’s singing in Camilla and Thomyris gave the English their first sustained experience with the unique delights and ravishments of the castrato singing sensuous Italian arias.

Haymarket against Drury Lane In the 1706–7 season, reacting to the attractions of Valentini, Camilla, and Thomyris at Drury Lane, playwrights and actors at the Haymarket theatre joined to deride London audiences for flocking to opera – echoing the complaints from the 1690s about the nonsense of Italian singing and stating what authors should do to win audiences with their sunken taste. The Epilogue to Sganarell, or, the Cuckold in Conceit (22 March 1707), addressed to officers bound for the wars in the Low Countries, asks with ironic incredulity, ‘Who could have thought, in these Harmonious days, / That any Stage should hope to live by Plays?’ He refers to the ‘useless hearts of homebred Beaus’,

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Who fond of Musick’s charmes unkindly say —Lord how is’t possible to bear a Play. These tender Souls, with Opera’s affected, Like only Those that Dance, & never Acted; Or English aiming at Italian Scenes, Whose gentle Throats can warble like L’Epine’s.109

A major effort on the behalf of serious drama was a tragedy by Edmund Smith Phaedra and Hippolitus (21 April 1707). Addison’s Prologue acknowledges the long history of Italian opera and offers a fairly straightforward account of its all-sung character: Long has a Race of Heroes fill’d the Stage, That rant by Note, and through the Gamut rage; In Songs and Airs express their martial Fire, Combate in Trills, and in a Feuge expire.

But Addison then turns to its effect on London audiences: While lull’d by Sound, and undisturb’d by Wit, Calm and Serene you indolent sit; And from the dull Fatigue of Thinking Free, Hear the Facetious Fiddles Repartie: Our Home-spun Authors must forsake the Field, And Shakespear to the soft Scarlatti yield.

Addison pretends the author had been advised to form his play after the ‘new Taste’ of the day and cast Valentini as Hippolitus. If so, the audience would not have been surprised to see a eunuch Hippolitus shun Phaedra; but (taking a swipe at bilingual operas) would they tolerate ‘should she in English speak, / And could Hippolitus reply in Greek?’ The idea recurs that authors should turn to Italian music and French dance if their plays at the Haymarket do not succeed. The author (possibly William Congreve) of the Prologue to an unnamed tragedy (June or July 1707, Haymarket), asked, in the face of the popularity of French dance and Italian opera, How could he hope the Tragic Scene should please, … When all are pleas’d with empty Show, or Noise? Loud tumid Bombast, or lewd Farce, and Dance, The far-fetch’d Trash of Italy and France?110

The theme continued the following season. In the Epilogue to his The Double Gallant; or, the Sick Lady’s Cure (1 November 1707) Colley Cibber swears, if the play did not succeed, … he’ll write the next to Musick, In Doggerel Rhimes, wou’d make or Him, or you, sick: 109

Sganarell, Epilogue, lines 17–22; attributed to Arthur Maynwaring and reprinted in Snyder, ‘Prologues and Epilogues of Arthur Maynwaring’, 626.

110

Printed in the Muses Mercury (July 1707), 169–70.

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714 His Groveling Sense, Italian Air, shall Crown, And then, he’s sure, ev’n Nonsense will go down.

Speaking the Prologue to Nicholas Rowe’s The Royal Convert (25 November 1707, Haymarket; imprint 1708), Thomas Betterton asks of the fools and coxcombs of the Town in the audience, What Art, what Method, shall the Poet find, To hit the Taste of each fantastic Mind?

since Now Fidling, and the Charms of Sing-Song, win ye; Harmonious Peg and warbling Valentini.

The most imaginative and personal response was uttered by Cibber in the Epilogue spoken to his The Lady’s Last Stake (13 December 1707, printed ?1708). Cibber wonders what will happen to the players ‘when poor Plays are quite cry’d down’. He imagines ‘great Caesar’ as a candle snuffer at the opera, or ‘proud Roxana’ stooping to hold Tofts’s train. The beauty of actresses may give them a livelihood outside the theatre, but he has no such prospects. But all he can do is ape Italian opera. When his wife and child are hungry, they must ask and reply in recitative and song. Cibber imagines that if he changes his name, O! the soft name of Seignior Cibberini, Imagine then, that thus with amorous Air I give you Raptures, while I squall Depair. [Sings Italian]

If that won’t do, he’ll try French, English, or Dutch; and he implores But if you can’t allow my Voice inviting, E’en let me live by Acting, and by Writing.

1707–1708 Season The 1707–8 opera season opened in November with bilingual revivals of Camilla and Thomyris at Drury Lane with Valentini singing in Italian, and Margarita and Mrs Tofts singing in Italian when in scenes with Valentini. The Haymarket offered only plays without musical entertainments. Despite his success with operas, dramatic operas, and plays with music and dance, Rich’s position at Drury Lane was being undermined by his notorious ill-treatment of players, who accused him of cheating them on salaries. By November 1707 the players and singers were in open mutiny to him. Vanbrugh, seeing the success of opera at Drury Lane the previous season, worked behind the scenes to obtain his monopoly on opera. In December 1707 Vanbrugh revoked his agreement with Swiney, resumed financial and managerial control of his theatre, and kept him only as only a salaried manager. With the connivance of the Lord Chamberlain, Vanbrugh began signing singers, drawing up rosters, and estimating nightly expenses and income for the coming season. As a result of Vanbrugh’s behind-the-scenes machinations, including the intervention of the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Chamberlain Kent issued the

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Order of Union, a reorganization of the theatres on 31 December 1707.111 With this generic division, productions of opera at Drury Lane were halted; and all singers, dancers, and instrumentalists were sent to the Haymarket, where Vanbrugh finally had his wished-for monopoly on opera. With the generic split between the theatres, for the first time since 1695, all the actors were now united at Drury Lane, resulting in what is called the Union of 1708.112 After the New Year, opera production resumed at the Haymarket theatre with the new pastoral opera Love’s Triumph (26 February 1708). Vanbrugh was pleased to write to the Earl of Manchester, now ambassador in Venice, on 24 February 1708 that ‘Operas are Establish’d at the Haymarket, to the generall likeing of the whole Towne’.113 Joseph Addison, as undersecretary of state to Sunderland, also wrote on the same day to Manchester echoing his optimism, reporting of Love’s Triumph, ‘The Gay part of the town is in high Expectation of a New opera that is to make its appearance on Thursday next’.114 A new castrato, Gioseppi Cassani, presumably contracted previously by Rich for his theatre, joined bilingual productions of Camilla on 7 and 10 February 1708 at the Haymarket. He did not please. Vanbrugh reported to Vice Chamberlain Coke about the ‘Cruell Clamour & Disgust of the Towne against the House for Imposing such a Singer: which gave the Opera a very mischievous shock’.115 Addison reported to Manchester on 24 February that Cassani was so

111



The involvement of the Duke is noted in Vanbrugh’s letter of 24 February to the Earl of Manchester: ‘At last I got the Duke of Marlbor: to put an end to the Playhouse Factions, by engaging the Queen to exert her Authority’. Letter from Vanbrugh, 24 February 1708, London, to Manchester, Venice; The Manchester Papers, James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, OSB MSS fc.37, vol. 13, no. 28 (cited below as Manchester Papers). Partial excerpts or transcripts of many letters from the Manchester Papers are given in Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne, ed. Duke of Manchester, 2nd ed., 2 vols (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1864) (cited as Court and Society), with differences in transcription and often with silent omissions; and The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, eds Bonamy Dobrée and Geoffrey Webb, vol. 4, The Letters (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1928). The letters are calendared with some transcripts or summaries in Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Eighth Report, part 2, Report on the MSS. of His Grace the Duke of Manchester, appendix (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1881). Further information on the Manchester correspondence in Thomas McGeary, ‘The Earl of Manchester and Opera in London’ (forthcoming).

112

The order is printed in Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, 49–50.

113

Vanbrugh, 24 February 1708, London, to Manchester, Venice (see note 111 above).

114

Joseph Addison, 24 February 1708, London, to Manchester (Venice); Manchester Papers, vol. 13, no. 29. Also in The Letters of Joseph Addison, ed. Walter Graham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), no. 105, pp. 93–4.

115

Vanbrugh, 14 May 1708, to Thomas Coke; Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, doc. 70, pp. 109–13.

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offended at being hissed so severely he declared he would not sing any further.116 Nonetheless, Vanbrugh had to honour his contract in full. Despite his optimism, the monopoly Vanbrugh sought was turning out to be a financial nightmare. Even with a monopoly, opera was operating under a fatal disadvantage: income fell below the great expenses for the singers, costumes, instrumentalists, and theatre personnel. Moreover, there was no sustaining income from plays that could have been produced on the four other nights of the week. The leading singers found themselves indispensable for the success of opera; and Vanbrugh had been forced by the Lord Chamberlain to meet their salary demands: £430 for Valentini, and £400 for Margarita, Mrs Tofts, and Cassani.117 The Haymarket had only three operas in repertory (two holdovers from previous seasons) to keep audiences entertained, and after three seasons, they were growing tired even of Camilla. Soon in desperation, Vanbrugh was seeking royal backing. In late February 1708, he laid before Lord Chamberlain Kent a plan for the Queen to give a £1,000 bounty to the opera, a plan for which he enlisted Marlborough’s assistance.118 At one point by March 1708, he had lost £606 for just sixteen performances and reported to the Lord Chamberlain he was covering the losses himself.119 Lack of income was exacerbated by the Town’s refusal to enter into subscriptions for the new opera Love’s Triumph.120 In April he was unsuccessfully pressing Marlborough, Godolphin, and the Lord Chamberlain to approach the Queen for a £1,000 subsidy.121 By midApril, Vanbrugh gave up the opera monopoly he had desired and cancelled the remainder of the season. He leased the opera company and all its properties to Swiney on 11 May 1708, who now managed it.122 Vanbrugh now only received house rental. Still in financial distress, he now turned to the Duchess of Marlborough, requesting a pension. She consulted Arthur Maynwaring, who was acting as her go-between with Vanbrugh, who at the time was also building Blenheim Palace. Maynwaring had a clear idea of the financial ‘folly’ of Vanbrugh’s Haymarket project. He replied to the Duchess in June: I have read M.r Van.’s letter [lost], & can onely say I am sorry for him, because I believe he is unhappy through his own folly, & I can see no reasonable way to 116

Addison, 24 February 1708, London, to Manchester, Letters of Joseph Addison, ed. Graham, no. 105, pp. 93–4.

117

As of January 1708; Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, doc. 49.

118

Ibid., docs. 53, 83–5; Vanbrugh, 24 February 1708, London, to Manchester, (Venice) (see note 111 above).

119

Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, docs. 57 and 64.

120

Vanbrugh, 24 February 1708, London, to Manchester, (Venice) (see note 111 above).

121

Vanbrugh, mid-April 1708, to Coke; Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, doc. 64.

122

Vanbrugh, 11 May 1708, London, to Manchester, (Venice); Manchester Papers, vol. 14, no. 10. Also printed in Vanbrugh, Letters, 4:20–2; Court and Society, 2:354–6; and Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, 106–7.

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help him. What I mean by his folly, is his building the Playhouse which certainly cost him a great deal more than was Subscribed; & his Troubles arise from the workmen that built it, & the Tradesmen that furnish’d Cloaths &c for the Actors. … I canot advise You to do anything for him out of y.r own Estates.123

The Duke of Marlborough also advised against a pension.124 While Colley Cibber regarded this generic division of the theatres as the turning point that re-united the theatre companies and brought his profession into a golden age, it was clear to contemporaries that this generic split was fatal to English dramatic music: the Haymarket had not the actors needed for the spoken portions (the ‘just Drama’ or ‘correct play’) of dramatic operas.125 An anonymous disgruntled librettist pointed out that his Alarbas. A Dramatick Opera (imprint 1709), ‘drawn according to the Model of our English Dramatic Opera’s’, was now unsuited for either theatre, ‘The Opera-Theatre being wholly taken up with Italian Airs, and the other totally excluding the Musical Part’ (Preface).126 The Epilogue included a paean to Britain as an Arcadia of peace and innocence, and praise of Anne and Marlborough’s victories. Giles Jacob put the lack of a revival of Granville’s successful dramatic opera The British Enchanters (first produced 21 February 1706) to ‘the Division of the Theatre, … [which] was intended for the better Encouragement of the Italian Opera’s at that time the prevailing Passion of the Town’.127 It was this generic split that prevented productions of dramatic opera that is behind Addison’s later lament that ‘Our English Musick is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its stead’.128

1708–1709 Season The generic division ensured a fairly quiet season for the Haymarket theatre. At Drury Lane, the reunited company of actors grew discontented under Rich, who was withholding portions of the receipts for benefit nights. Behind the

123

Maynwaring, 15 June 1708, to Duchess of Marlborough; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,459, f. 54r–54v. Date provided editorially in pencil.

124

Marlborough, Terbank, 20 June/1 July 1708, to Duchess of Marlborough; in Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, no. 1012, 2:1016; Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Private Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 2nd ed., 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1838), 1:153–7.

125

For Cibber, the Union led to recovery of ‘the Credit of the Stage’; Apology, ed. Fone, 208.

126

Alarbas (published in 1709) was to have, in addition to interspersed songs, dances, and solemn music for a temple scene, numerous uses of stage machinery: a descent of Cupid in a chariot drawn by doves and an ascent and descent of a Fury. At a banquet of nobles is presented ‘The Masque’, with songs, dance, choruses, and a closing ‘Descent of Hymen’.

127

Giles Jacob, The Poetical Register; or, the Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets (1719), 124–5.

128

Spectator, no. 10 (22 March 1711).

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scenes, Swiney, the actors, and the Lord Chamberlain were conspiring to create a new combined company of singers and actors at the Haymarket theatre. Rich ignored a Lord Chamberlain’s order to pay actors their arrears and was ‘silenced’ on 6 June 1709 by the Lord Chamberlain, who two days later granted actors permission to play at the Haymarket.129 Vanbrugh, who still had an interest in seeing the Haymarket theatre successful and had bills to settle up, had been corresponding with Manchester in Venice about obtaining composers or singers for London. His presence at Vienna in April–May 1707, while en route to Venice had failed to secure permission for Bononcini to travel to London (he was in the Emperor’s employ at the time).130 But in Venice Manchester became acquainted with Nicolini, hearing him at the opera, and even making a run-out to Vicenza to hear him and Senesino in an opera in May 1708.131 Manchester was able to recruit Nicolini to London, news that was eagerly received in London (see chapter 5). Manchester returned from his Venetian embassy on the last day of November.132 Quite possibly his entourage included Nicolini.

Pyrrhus and Demetrius Rich had an opera already prepared for Nicolini: Pyrrhus and Demetrius, which had a rehearsal on 9 December 1708. Theatres were closed until 14 December in observance of mourning for Prince George, Anne’s husband (died on 28 October 1708), so the public had to wait until then to hear Nicolini join Valentini in the new opera, which ran for an unprecedented twenty-seven performances at the Haymarket. To take advantage of demand, Rich doubled ticket prices. After Nottingham’s daughter Mary heard Nicolini later in December, she had to chide her father: ‘if yr Ldsp cou’d guess what Nicholini’s singing is, yu wou’d come to hear him, for tis much beyond anything yu ever heard, tis better yn [than] Margarita ever was, & people tell me tis beyond Sephachio [Siface]’.133 For the 18 December performance of the opera, thirty-five Whig MPs were so eager to hear Nicolini they left a crucial Commons debate early at 5 p.m. for the theatre. The Tory managers seized the opportunity to call a division at 7 p.m., which, due to the absconded Whigs, they won. When news of the Whig

129

Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘The Silencing of Drury Lane in 1709’, Theatre Journal, 32 (1980), 427–47.

130

Manchester at Vienna and Bononcini: see letter from Vanbrugh, 24 February 1708, to Manchester (see note 111 above).

131

Manchester, Venice, 10 May 1708, to Prince Hercolani [Venice]; Manchester Papers, vol. 14, no. 8; Court and Society, 2:287, mistakenly gives Venice, not Vicenza.

132

Manchester’s arrival for that date is recorded by Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 6:379. Nicolini’s arrival date is uncertain.

133

Mary [Roxburghe], 25 December [1708] to Earl of Nottingham; Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland, Wigston Magna, Leicester, DG 7, Bundle 23, folder 1708 (A45).

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loss reached the theatre towards the end of the second act, the Tories gloated, and the Whig MPs were reproached by their party.134 Pyrrhus and Demetrius was adapted by Nicola Haym from an opera by Alessandro Scarlatti (Naples, 1694). As with Camilla, Haym’s version of Pyrrhus and Demetrius allowed the London audience to experience an up-to-date Italian opera. The London version follows the outline of the original Pirro e Demetrio and includes about 33 of Scarlatti’s original arias; Haym supplied twenty-one comparable arias of his own. Arias and recitatives are in Italian or English according to the singer. The violist and music copyist William Armstrong provided English translations to seventeen arias. As seen on appendix 4, in Pyrrhus and Demetrius, the arias are becoming more elaborate and bearing more weight: more than three-fourths are da capo arias, almost half have instrumental accompaniment, and there are extensive instrumental ritornellos. From now on, in each opera more than twenty-three arias will have orchestral accompaniment. The vocal lines contain frequent, long, virtuoso melismas for the star singers Nicolini, Valentini, Margarita, Tofts, and the Baroness. There were two editions of Songs from the opera. Example 4.6 is an aria for Nicolini, showing the expansion of the arias by orchestral introduction, long vocal melismas, and internal ritornellos. When Nicolini joined the cast of revivals of Camilla (25 January 1709), Swiney anticipated such demand, he printed tickets to control crowding in the pit. To renew interest in Pyrrhus and Demetrius, Swiney advertised the opera on 2 April 1709 as ‘With an entire set of new Scenes, Painted by two famous Italian Painters (lately arrived from Venice)’, doubtless the painters Marco Ricci and Giantonio Pellegrini invited by Manchester, who might have arrived in his entourage. It was the great success of Pyrrhus and Demetrius with its virtuoso arias sung by two star castratos that incensed the anonymous author of Nugӕ Canorӕ: or, The Taste of the Town in Poetry and Musick (5 April 1709) to indict ‘the Humour of the Town in running after Opera’s’.135 When Marlborough and British arms are so renowned, he asked, why are the fine arts in Britain sunk in shame? After reminding that arts and great states rise and fall equally, the author rehearses the claims made for the power of music, recycles all the conventional charges against Italian opera and foreign singers, and praises British wit and sense. The author looks towards the day when … your own Arts and Artists you’l admit, And British Musick hear and British Wit.136

134

The episode is described in Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 305–6; based primarily on a letter by Addison, 31 December 1708, to Henry Newton; Addison, Letters, ed. Smithers, 124. (The Addison letter refers to the most recent Saturday the opera was performed.)

135

Nugӕ Canorӕ, i.

136

Ibid., 16.

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Example 4.6. Aria ‘Son’ guerriero’ as sung by Nicolini (as Pyrrhus) from Pyrrhus and Demetrius (1708), Act II, scene 1. Part A of da capo aria.

Violin 1 & 2

Voice

Continuo

œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œœœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

b &b c œ b &b c

∑

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œ

Œ

œœœœœœœœœœœœ

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∑

∑

œœœœœœœœœ

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Œ

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5

b &b

? bb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b œ &b

- ro,

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b œœŒ &b Œ

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œ

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œ œ œJ œ œR œR œ œ œR œ œJ œj ‰ œ œr œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ J R R

son’ guer-rie - ro, e so - no a - man-te

œ

-

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e da_a-man

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œ‰ œ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ J J J J —(continued)

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Example 4.6—concluded

b &b

10

∑

∑

∑

b œ œ œœ œ œ œ & b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œJ œ œ œ œ œ ? bb œj ‰ œj ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ J J -

-

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j j j œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œJ ‰

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Ó

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15

te pug-ne -

∑

j œ œj œj œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

Œ

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- ro; da_a-man œœ œ œ œ œ e da_a-man-te pug - ne - ro, œ œ ? bb œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœœœœ œ J ‰ J ‰ œ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ J J J 5

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-

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œ œ œœ œœ œœ Œ œœ œœœœ œœ U ∑ ‰ œ œ œ œ œJ œJ œ œ ˙ RR 20

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œ

Œ

œ

œœœœ

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714

If Britons do justice to their ‘Native Song’ and employ sense, she will have composers and singers to match Purcell and Mrs Tofts. Britons are reminded that until Camilla appeared and usurped Arsinoe’s empire, Your own Arsinoe your Wonder rais’d, And envy, what she cou’d not injure, prais’d. The Crouded Scene with loud Applauses rung, Yet British were the Airs, and Britains sung.137

As a closing, the author imagines the state of the forlorn British stage: the shades of Shakespeare and Conway berate Britons for allowing foreign songs and sound to supplant ‘Solid Sense’. At present the dramatic Muse regrets she cannot give just praise to Marlborough’s victories and his cause. But a painter could draft a scene showing him fighting for freedom, tyranny hurled from her throne, Louis XIV humbled, and his toils ceased, bringing peace.

❧  Fall of Harley and Triumph of the Whigs Behind the political scenes, Harley was intriguing against Marlborough and Godolphin. Learning of Harley’s plotting against them, the Duumvirs threatened to resign.138 Needing Marlborough to carry on the war, Anne abandoned Harley and accepted his resignation on 10 February 1708. Henry St John and other Harleyites resigned in solidarity, although not Vice Chamberlain Thomas Coke, who, true to his reputation as ‘leech-like’, retained his office.139 They were replaced not by Junto Whigs but by adherents of Lord Treasurer Godolphin, called ‘Lord Treasure’s Whigs’, headed by Henry Boyle as Secretary of State (13 February 1708) and Robert Walpole as Secretary at War (25 February 1708). The Fall of Harley showed that, despite Anne’s wishes for moderation, party-dominated ministries could not be avoided; the Duumvirs knew their main source of support was now the Whigs. The remainder of Anne’s reign was a struggle for supremacy in the cabinet between Tory and Whig. Ministerial turmoil coupled with anti-Union sentiment and Jacobite sympathisers in Scotland led France to support a failed March invasion to land James in Scotland. Seizing the moment, Anne called a General Election for May 1708. Ministerial influence was used against Harley and the Tories. Maynwaring’s Advice to the Electors of Great Britain; Occasioned by the Intended Invasion from France (19 April 1708) hammered away at the danger 137

Ibid., 26.

138

On the Fall of Harley, see most extensively, Geoffrey Holmes and W. A. Speck, ‘The Fall of Harley in 1708 Reconsidered’, English Historical Review, 217 (1965), 673–98 (reprinted in Geoffrey Holmes, Politics, Religion and Society in England, 1679–1742 [London: Hambledon Press, 1986], 57–82); see also Henry L. Snyder, ‘Godolphin and Harley: A Study of Their Partnership in Politics’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 30 (1967), 241–71; and Brian W. Hill, Robert Harley: Speaker, Secretary of State and Premier Minister (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), 101–17.

139

Holmes, British Politics, 50, 263.

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of Jacobitism and was especially effective after the abortive invasion.140 In the election Whigs gained a majority of sixty-nine seats in the Commons, their only majority during Anne’s reign. Encouraged, the Junto lords threatened to go into opposition to the Court if not granted more ministerial places, especially for Somers and Wharton. Crises continued to arise over invitations to Hanover. In April 1708 the erratic Earl of Peterborough proposed that the Electress and her grandson reside in England.141 Marlborough and Godolphin saw the difficulties a Hanoverian presence would cause the Queen. The following month the ministers received a letter from an E. Lewis informing that the Electoral Prince intended to visit London with the Electress.142 Lord Haversham visited the Queen on 21 July 1708, warning that the Whigs were planning an invitation in the next Parliamentary session. Anne politely heard out Haversham but appealed to Marlborough to prevent the Electoral Prince’s visiting England.143 On 30 June/11 July 1708 at Oudenarde, Marlborough gained his third great victory, which exposed north-eastern France to direct attack by the Allies; the following month, he began the siege of the fortress of Lille. Its surrender on 12/23 October, inflicted on Louis his greatest-ever loss of territory. The death on 28 October 1708 of Prince George, Anne’s husband of twenty-five years, broke her resistance to the Whig Junto lords, and in following months she admitted more Whigs into the Ministry: Prince George’s post as Lord High Admiral went at first to the Court Tory Pembroke (25 November), then to Orford. Somers became Lord President of the Council (25 November), 140

On the authorship of the Advice to the Electors, see Henry L. Snyder, ‘Daniel Defoe, the Duchess of Marlborough, and the Advice to the Electors of Great Britain,’ Huntington Library Quarterly, 29 (1965), 58–62.

141

Robethon, 7/18 May 1708, Hanover, to Godolphin; in Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, 2:226–7. See also Marlborough [13/24 May 1708, Brussels], to Godolphin; Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, 2:980–1; Gregg, Queen Anne, 268–9 [quoting letter from Anne, 22 May 1708, to Godolphin); Gregg, Protestant Succession, 35; Macpherson, Original Papers, 2:110–11 (letters from Peterborough (3/14 April) and Elector (15/16 May). On Anne objections in 1708, see her letter of 22 July 1708, to the Duke of Marlborough; in Anne, Letters and Diplomatic Instructions, 253–4 [extract].

142

E. Lewis, 22 May 1708, to Robert Harley, [Brampton]; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland, Preserved at Welbeck Abbey [= Harley Papers, vol. 1], 6 vols (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1897– 1901), 4:490; Godolphin, 17 May 1708, to Marlborough; in Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, no. 988, 2:985 and 985 n1 (see also letter no. 996)

143

Gregg, Queen Anne, 269 (citing letter from Godolphin, 30 July 1708, to Marlborough). In Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, ed. Snyder, see the letters of Marlborough, 12/13 July 1708, to the Duchess, 2:1035; Marlborough, 29 July /9 August 1708, to Godolphin, 2:1054; Marlborough, 5/16 August 1708, to the Duchess, 2:1061–2; and Marlborough, 9/20 August 1708, to Godolphin, 2:1067–8. Also, Anne, 22 July 1708, to Marlborough (quoted in Gregg, Queen Anne, 269), and Anne, Letters and Diplomatic Instructions, 253–4.

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Wharton became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (4 December), and other lesser Whigs gained appointments. All the Junto lords except Halifax were now in the Cabinet. The Ministry was resolved to continue the war, for a defeated and reduced France could not obstruct the Succession and support the Pretender; but Tories repeated the charge that a prolonged war only helped the Ministry retain power and benefitted Whig financiers. 111 Rather than an imported ‘exotic’ (as Samuel Johnson called it) entertainment from Italy, all-sung opera ‘in the Italian manner’ was an outcome of a local effort by John Vanbrugh to unite London’s theatre companies and, to further that goal, build a new theatre for plays and operas. The major backers for the building of Vanbrugh’s theatre were aristocrats and members of the political-literary and socially exclusive Whig Kit-Cat Club. The introduction of Italian-style opera can be seen as part of a Whig cultural programme. In the years 1704 to 1705, local poets and composers were devising various forms of musical-theatric works in English to meet Vanbrugh’s coming needs for repertory for his theatre. The works prepared ranged from the conventional English dramatic opera, a spoken play with extensive music, to works in the Italian manner with the narrative presented all-sung with Italian-style secco recitative interspersed with arias. With Thomyris and Pyrrhus and Demetrius, English audiences were introduced to up-to-date arias by leading Italian composers, the vehicles for the virtuoso display of the imported castrato singers. Important to note is that, so far, these Italian-style operas were first sung in English, but when the Italian castratos joined the cast, they sang their roles in Italian, leading to what outraged many critics, the bilingual opera.

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Chapter 5

Whigs and Opera in the Italian Manner

M

any of the shrillest critics of opera in the Italian manner in its first years in London were Whigs. Writers have never tired of quoting the satire, squibs, and jeremiads against opera by Richard Steele, John Dennis, and Joseph Addison. But these writings do not fairly represent either English or Whig response to opera. As shown in this and later chapters, many (if not most) Whigs accepted and encouraged opera in one form or another. As early as spring 1703, Vanbrugh had been soliciting subscriptions for building a theatre in the Haymarket intended for plays and opera. The majority of the subscribers to the theatre were Whigs (table 4.1), including thirteen or fourteen members of the predominantly Whig political-social-literary Kit-Cat Club. To contemporaries, the number of Kit-Cats among the subscribers marked the Haymarket as a Whig project.1 Whig participation in encouraging opera is also revealed by their number among the dedicatees of the operas produced during Anne’s reign (table 5.1). Their support for the Haymarket theatre and opera can be seen as an expression of a broad Whig cultural programme that also advanced their political interests (see below). Despite the modern disparagement of Thomas Clayton’s Arsinoe and his music for Rosamond, Whigs supported Clayton as a composer, as seen in the efforts of the Whigs on his behalf. On 28 January 1708, the often financially distressed Clayton was committed to the Fleet Prison as an insolvent debtor (for reasons not yet determined).2 Members of the Marlborough family contributed 53 guineas in 1, 2, or 5 guinea amounts to his relief. Since the list of subscribers (table 5.2) is now among the Blenheim Papers, the Duchess of Marlborough (probably with the assistance of her secretary and confidant Arthur Maynwaring) likely organised the subscription.3 When the Junto Whig Lord Thomas Wharton went to Dublin in April 1709 as Lord Lieutenant, he took Joseph Addison, then Undersecretary to Sunderland, as 1

The description of the Kit-Cat Club as ‘A Club that gave Direction to the State’ is probably exaggerated in Faction Display’d (1704).

2

The commitment is recorded at National Archives, Fleet Commitment Books, PRIS 1/2, p. 48. The cause of the debt is at present not known; evidence of Clayton’s periodic indebtedness is summarised in Andrew Ashee, David Lasocki, Peter Holman, and Fiona Kisby, compilers, A Biographical Dictionary of English Court Musicians, 1485–1714, 2 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 1:257.

3

The list is in the Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,611, ff. 244–5. I am grateful to Jennifer Thorp for assistance in transcribing this document.

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Table 5.1. Dedicatees of Operas Produced in London, 1706–1714 Opera, date, and dedicatee

Party affiliation

The Temple of Lovei (7 March 1706) Charles Montagu (Lord Halifax) (see table 4.1)

Whig Junto lord (dedication in printed Songs)

Camilla (30 March 1706) Lucy Loftus, wife of Thomas Wharton (see table 4.1)

Wife of Whig Junto lord

Thomyris, Queen of Scythia (1 April 1707) Francis Godolphin (as Lord Royalton), succ. as 2nd Earl of Godolphin (see table 4.1)

Moderate Tory; cofferer of household; son of Lord Treasurer Sidney Godolphin

Love’s Triumph (26 February 1708) Thomas, Baronet Frankland

Whig MP

Pyrrhus and Demetrius (14 December 1708) Henrietta Churchill, wife of Francis Daughter of Duke and Duchess of Godolphin (succ. as 2nd Earl of Godolphin) Marlborough Clotilda (2 March 1709) Jemima Crew, wife of Henry Grey, Earl of Kent (see table 4.1) Almahide (10 January 1710) Johann Wenzell, Count von Gallas L’Idaspe fedele (25 May 1710) Henry Grey (see table 4.1); now Duke of Kent Etearco (10 January 1711) Charles Montagu (Lord Halifax) (see table 4.1) Rinaldo (24 February 1711) Queen Anne

Wife of Court Whig Imperial ambassador from Austria to Great Britain (1705–11) Court Whig Junto Whig lord Moderate Tory

Antioco (12 December 1711) Juliana Noel, dowager Countess of Burlington

Whig family

L’Ambleto (27 February 1712) Henry Bentinck, Earl of Portland (see table 4.1)

Whig

Ercole (3 May 1712) Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle (as Thomas Lord Pelham)

Court Whig

Il pastor fido (22 November 1712) Armyne Cartwrightii Dorinda (10 December 1712) Henry Bentinck, Earl of Portland (see table 4.1)

Tory family (family of Captain Henry Cartwright, deputy-paymaster of forces, Antwerp) Whig —(continued)

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Table 5.1. Dedicatees of Operas Produced in London, 1706–1714 (concluded) Opera, date, and dedicatee

Party affiliation

Teseo (10 January 1713) Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington

Whig

Ernelinda (26 February 1713) Richard Lowther, 2nd Viscount Lonsdale

Whig; protégé of Wharton

Silla (?June 1713; not produced) Louis duc d’ Aumont de Rochbaron

Ambassador from France to Britain (1713)

Creso (27 January 1714) Henry Bentinck, Earl of Portland (see table 4.1)

Whig

Arminio (4 March 1714) Henrietta Churchill, wife of Francis Daughter of Duke and Duchess of Godolphin (succ. as 2nd Earl of Godolphin) Marlborough Notes: i Dedication (dated 7 October 1706) present in the printed collection, Songs in the Opera Call’d the Temple of Love (1706); see David Hunter, Opera and Song Books Published in England 1703–1726: A Descriptive Bibliography (London: Bibliographical Society, 1997), no. 32a (without identifying the dedicatee). ii For identification, see David Hunter, ‘Bridging the Gap: The Patrons-in-Common of Purcell and Handel’, Early Music, 37 (2009), 626.

his secretary and invited the Whig poet John Hughes, who though declined.4 As befitting his status as vice-regent, Wharton travelled with great equipage and finery, at expense to the treasury of £3,000.5 At Dublin Castle, he maintained an active court and social life that attracted people of quality, even from England. To ensure musical events, as his director of court music, Wharton ‘took over with him Mr. Clayton, who compos’d Arsinoe, Rosamond, and other Opera’s, and had several entertainments of that kind in the Castle’, as reported by Richard Steele in 1715.6 It is unlikely that Clayton produced full versions of 4

Biographia Britannica; Or, the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons, 7 vols (1747–66), 4:2702.

5

The Treasury ordered £3,000 ‘as royal bounty for his equipage & the expenses for his voyage to Ireland’; Calendar of Treasury Books, ed. William A. Shaw (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1952), 22:708. On Wharton’s mission and entourage: Christopher Robbins, The Earl of Wharton and Whig Party Politics, 1679–1715 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), 227–9 [repeats the unfounded statement that Wharton introduced opera to Ireland]; Peter Smithers, The Life of Joseph Addison (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 147–54; Abel Boyer, The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, Digested into Annals. … Year the Eighth (1710), 169–79; Lewis A. Dralle, ‘Kingdom in Reversion: The Irish Viceroyalty of the Earl of Wharton, 1708–1710’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 15 (1953), 393–431; and Herbert Wood, ‘Addison’s Connection with Ireland’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 34 (1904), 133–58.



6

Richard Steele, Memoirs of the Life of the Most Noble Thomas Late Marquess of Wharton (1715), 69–76. Confirmation of Clayton’s presence in Dublin comes from a

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Table 5.2 .Subscribers to a Fund for Debt Relief of Thomas Clayton, December 1708–September 1710 Namei

Amount subscribed (pounds, shilling, pence)ii

Lady H: Ryalton

5–7–6

Henrietta Churchill (1681–1733), first daughter of Duke and Duchess of Marlborough; married (1698) Francis Godophin (styled Viscount Ryalton [1706–12]), son of Marlborough’s ministerial partner, Sidney Godolphin (1645–1712); styled Viscountess Ryalton (1706–12); Countess of Godolphin (1712); later suo jure Duchess of Marlborough (1722). Lord Ryalton

5–7–6

Francis Godolphin (1678–1766), styled Viscount Ryalton (1706–12); son of Lord Treasurer Sidney Godolphin (1645–1712; cr. earl, 1706), Marlborough’s ministerial partner; married (1698) Henrietta Churchill, Duke and Duchess of Marlborough’s daughter; MP; succ. as second earl 1712. Lady Sunderland

5–7–6

Anne Churchill (1683–1716), second daughter of Duchess of Marlborough; married (1700) Charles Spencer (ca. 1674–1722), third Earl of Sunderland, Whig Junto Lord. Lord Hallyfax

5–7–6

Charles Montagu (1661–1715), Baron Halifax (cr. 1700); Whig Junto Lord Lord Sunderland

5–7–6

Charles Spencer (ca. 1674–1722), third Earl of Sunderland (succ. to title, 1702); Whig Junto Lord; married (1700) Anne Churchill, second daughter of Duchess of Marlborough. Mr Secretary Boyle

5–7–6

Henry Boyle (1669–1725), Whig MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer (1701), Secretary of State (N) (13 Feb. 1708–20 Sept. 1710); cr. first Baron Carlton (19 Oct. 1714). One of the Lord Treasurer’s Whigs Sr Edmond Denton

2 – 3 –0

Sir Edmond Denton of Hillesden (1676–1714), baronet (12 May 1699), Whig MP, follower of Junto Whig Lord Wharton. Mr Tyrrell

1–1–6

James Tyrrell (1642–1718), of Whig country family; friend of John Locke; political and historical writer; military officer under Duke of Marlborough. Duke of Bolton

5–7–6

Charles Powlett (Paulet) (1661–1722), second Duke of Bolton (succ. 1699); Whig; one of those ‘in arms’ with William in 1688. Mr Mainwaring

5–7–6

Arthur Maynwaring (1668–1712), MP; auditor of the imprest (1705); Whig political writer and poet; secretary and confidant to Duchess of Marlborough. —(continued) https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800105942.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press

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Table 5.2—concluded Namei

Amount subscribed (pounds, shilling, pence)ii

Ld Manchester

5–7–6

Charles Montagu (1662–1722), fourth Earl of Manchester (succ. to title, 1683); cr. Duke (1719); Whig, Secretary of State (S), Jan.–May 1702; past ambassador to Paris, Vienna, Turin, and Venice (returned to England early Dec. 1708). Ld Stairs [sic]

5–7–6

John Dalrymple (1673–1747), second Earl of Stair (succ. to title, 8 Jan. 1707); served under Marlborough, 1702–11 Source: ‘A charitable Collection for Mr Clayton the composer of Arsinoe, who gave the first rise to the Italian Musick on the English Stage; and is now a Prisoner for Debt in the Fleet’. British Library, Add. MS 61,611, f. 244 (first page of bifolium). The date of the list can be determined as between the return of the earl of Manchester from Venice (early December 1708) and the term of Henry Boyle as Secretary of State (13 Feb. 1708–20 Sept. 1710). Notes: i Names as given on the manuscript ii Contributions are in multiples of one guinea (at the time = 1 – 1– 6).

his operas in Dublin, as commonly stated, although in addition to pieces for state occasions, he might have performed arias or scenes from operas.7 Clayton presumably supplemented the local Music Master for the State Music at the time, Johann Sigismund Cousser.8 letter by Joseph Addison, from Dublin Castle, to Thomas Hopkins, Undersecretary of State, 26 April 1709, probably about paying Clayton’s salary: ‘I have paid the fifty Guineas in Specie to poor Clayton who is more Your humble servant that [sic] he is able to Express’; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,636, f. 36; extract in Addison, Letters, appendix, no. 164, p. 415. 7

The source that states Clayton produced operas in Dublin is (the not always reliable) W. H. Grattan Flood, ‘Music-Printing in Dublin from 1700 to 1750’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 38 (1908; pub. 1909), 236–40, which is cited by subsequent writers: ‘The production of Arsinoe, Rosamund, and other “operas”, under Thomas Clayton, at Dublin Castle, during the viceroyalty of Lord Wharton, in 1709, gave a fillip to the musical life of the Irish metropolis’. Grattan Flood gives no sources. Likely, he is extrapolating from Steele’s Memoirs. Arias or scenes from operas, cantatas, or odes might have been presented (with participation of local singers and musicians). If such documentation existed, it was probably destroyed in the fire at the Dublin Record Office in 1922.

8

On Cousser in Dublin and London: Samantha Owens, ‘Johann Sigismund Cousser (Kusser): A “European” in Early Eighteenth-Century England and Ireland’, HändelJahrbuch, 56 (2010), 445–67; Owens, ‘Johann Sigismund Cousser, William III and the Serenata in Early Eighteenth-Century Dublin’, Eighteenth-Century Music, 6 (2009), 7–39; Owens, The Well-Travelled Musician: John Sigismond Cousser and Musical Exchange in Baroque Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017); Harold E. Samuel, ‘John

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Other Whigs had earlier advanced the cause of all-sung English dramatic music. The Whig Junto poet and literary patron Lord Halifax, the Court Whig Duke of Somerset, and the Whig MP Anthony Henley – all three members of the Kit-Cat Club – had sponsored The Prize Musick, the competition to set to music another Kit-Cat Club member William Congreve’s masque The Judgment of Paris, a project Roger North thought was ‘a preludium to the latter Operas’.9 Halifax, a subscriber to the Haymarket theatre, received the dedication of John Eccles’s published score of The Judgment of Paris, and Henry Playford dedicated the second volume of Henry Purcell’s Orpheus Britannicus (1701–2) to him as ‘the Greatest Encourager of Poesy and Musick’, Halifax owned a manuscript score of Giovanni Bononcini’s Camilla in Italian.10 He received the dedication of the printed songs of The Temple of Love (1706) and was praised by Nicola Haym in the dedication of the opera Etearco (1711) for his ‘noble Efforts … to encourage and promote Entertainments of this Kind, since their first Introduction on the English Stage’.11 In early 1707, he was involved in negotiations to produce Congreve and Eccles’s Semele.12 In July 1707, he received from the Earl of Manchester (his step-brother) in Vienna some ‘Songs’, ‘the Cantate of the Emperour’s own making [which] is so good Wee suppose Bononcini had a hand in it’, and a ‘Fine Opera’.13 This opera is certainly Bononcini’s Etearco, which Halifax passed on to Haym to prepare for the stage (premiered on 10 January 1711).14 The Earl of Manchester, another subscriber to the Haymarket theatre, kept up his interest and encouragement of opera while on his second diplomatic

Sigismond Cousser in London and Dublin’, Music and Letters, 61 (1980), 158–71; and Samuel, ‘A German Musician Comes to London in 1704’, Musical Times, 122 (no. 1663), (September 1981), 591–3. 9

On the sponsorship: George Stepney, Vienna, 3 December 1701, to the Earl of Halifax (Bodleian MS. 25,427, f.67); quoted from William Congreve, Letters and Documents, ed. John C. Hodges (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), 21 n4. North’s opinion: Roger North, Roger North on Music, ed. John Wilson (London: Novello, 1959), 312.

10

Presently at British Library, RM b 9-10 (Acts II and III only).

11

Nicola Haym, dedication of Etearco (1711). Haym may have been in Halifax’s employ from mid-1711; see Lowell Lindgren, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym, 1678–1729’, Studi Musicali, 16 (1987), 247–380.

12

Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke’s Theatrical Papers, 1706–1715 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), doc. 8.

13

Charles Montagu (Lord Halifax), [London], 19/30 July 1707, to Manchester (now at Venice): ‘I return your Lordship a thousand thanks, for the Songs and the Fine Opera which you have sent Me [.] The Cantata of the Emperours [Joseph I] own making is so good Wee suppose Bononcini had a hand in it: and I am afraid He will excel his Predessers in Musick, more then [sic] in Polliticks.… I have not yet tried the Opera but it promises well’. On the Manchester Papers, see chapter 4 note 111.

14

Haym, dedication of Etearco (1711).

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mission to Venice from 1707 to 1708.15 Vanbrugh, Halifax, Addison, Henry Boyle, and the Duchess of Marlborough fed him news about opera in London and solicited his assistance for recruiting musicians and singers for the opera. Although his goal was Venice, he stopped first at the Habsburg Court at Vienna, from 21 April to 18 May, to carry a message from Queen Anne. He had audiences with Emperor Joseph, an avid musician and composer, who provided him the compositions (mentioned above) he sent on to Halifax. Employed at the Imperial Court was Giovanni Bononcini, whom Manchester certainly met (as inferred from mentions in his correspondence). In addition to the score of Etearco, this contact with Bononcini raised hope in Lord Treasurer Sidney Godolphin that Bononcini might travel to London. These hopes came to nothing, for on 27 May 1707, Henry Boyle, then Chancellor of the Exchequer and member of the Treasury with Godolphin, had to regret: I … am sorry that it is so difficult to get Boninchini over here[.] I don’t find that there is like to be any farther steps made towards it, so we must content our selves w:th his musick, & particularly I long to hear his new Opera, w:ch my Lord Halifax has not yet reciev’d.16

Of the opera received by Halifax, Addison would later report to Manchester that ‘Bononcini’s Opera is very much admired and has bin plaid several times at his Ldp’s house’.17 These gifts of music to Britain from the Emperor and his court composer must be seen in light of the pattern of using gifts of cultural objects between heads of state to confirm international alliances.18 In lieu of the composer himself, London had to be satisfied instead with an opera by him. After a brief detour to Turin to meet with Allied commanders, Manchester arrived in Venice in July 1707. While there, as suiting his status representing a great power, he set up a grand residence, attended opera, and hosted gala entertainments for foreign and local dignitaries.19 Manchester’s entertainments included balls and music, and no doubt drew local musicians, including the singer Nicola Grimaldi (called ‘Nicolini’). On the basis of a passing mention by John Mainwaring, Handel’s first English biographer, it has been speculated that for Carnival 1707–8 Handel may have been in Venice and there met Manchester and received encouragement and an invitation to London.20 Given his interest in music and hosting entertainments, 15

Further on Manchester abroad as diplomat and his musical interests, see Thomas McGeary, ‘Earl of Manchester and Opera in London’.

16

Henry Boyle, 27 May 1707, London, to Manchester [Venice]; Manchester Papers, vol. 10, no. 33; also in Court and Society, 2:223.

17

Joseph Addison, 7 October 1707, London, to Manchester, Venice; Manchester Papers, vol. 11), no. 22; also printed in Addison, Letters, no. 87, p.79.

18

On exchange of gifts, see chapter 6, p. 224 and note 53.

19

See McGeary, ‘Earl of Manchester and Opera in London’.

20

On the question of Manchester’s invitation to Handel, the indirect evidence is presented and examined in David Hunter, The Lives of George Frideric Handel (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015), 156; see also below, chapter 9.

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there is little doubt that had Handel been in Venice the two would have met; but such corroboration is lacking. Manchester and the Duchess of Marlborough, whom he flattered as ‘a great Encourager of Musick’, exchanged letters in March–April 1708 about the Venetian musician Luigi Mancia, whom Manchester recommended for a place at Queen Anne’s court: he would be capable ‘of putting the Opera on a Right Foot’.21 But the Duchess replied she doubted the Queen would take on any new musicians and that since everyone says the opera ‘is in so much disorder’ she was ‘fearfull to medle’ in any negotiations; nor was the Duchess herself interested at that time in taking on a musician.22 In March 1708 London was resigned that Bononcini would not come to London. Manchester reported to the Duchess of Marlborough, ‘I did speak about it but Found difficulty[.] he could never propose to make any long stay’.23 But Manchester did score the coup of engaging Nicolini for his first visit to London. Nicolini had been singing widely in Italy since the late 1690s, and no doubt reports from Grand Tourists had reached Vanbrugh and others in the London opera community. Knowing new star singers would be necessary for the opera to flourish, when Vanbrugh wrote to Manchester on 24 February 1708 deputizing him to engage Nicolini for the coming season, he added that ‘Valentini is mighty earnest with me to get Nicolini over’.24 Manchester made a highly fêted run-out to Vicenza in May to hear Nicolini and Senesino sing in the opera Igene Regina di Sparta (May 1708).25 Manchester’s attendance was reported in the local gazette and celebrated in a sonnet by Aurelio Aureli, dedicated to Manchester.26 After returning to Venice, Manchester informed the Duchess of Marlborough on 6 July of his success, ‘I have prevailed with one of the best voices who 21

Draft letter from Manchester, Venice, 16 March 1708, to Duchess of Marlborough; Manchester Papers, vol. 13, no. 45; and Court and Society, 2:321–3 [with silent omissions].

22

Duchess of Marlborough, 13 April 1708, St. James’s, to Manchester, Venice; Manchester Papers, vol. 13, no. 66; also in Court and Society, 2:337–8.

23

Draft letter from Manchester, Venice, 16 March 1708, to Duchess of Marlborough; Manchester Papers, vol. 13, no. 45; and Court and Society, 2:321–3 [with silent omissions]: ‘Mr Boyle did mention that My Ld Treasurer [Godolphin] was once thinking of getting from Vienna Bononcini[.] I did speak about it but Found difficulty[.] he could never propose to make any long stay’.

24

John Vanbrugh, London, 24 February 1708, to Manchester (Venice); Manchester Papers, vol. 13, no. 28. Excerpt in Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, Interdocument, 85–6.

25

Igene Regina di Sparta. Drama per musica. Libretto by Aurelio Aureli; music by Carlo Francesco Polarolo (Sartori 12772). The cast included Nicola Grimaldi (Nicolini) and Francesco Bernardi (Senesino).

26

The sonnet by Aurelio Aureli dedicated to Manchester is at Manchester Papers, vol. 12, no. 29 (calligraphic exemplar, undated); and printed in Court and Society, which misidentifies the circumstances of the sonnet and opera.

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will be in England by the End of Sepbr’.27 Personal contact from the English ambassador carrying an offer of a contract surely persuaded Nicolini to accept the invitation. Manchester did not leave Venice until 5 October, not arriving in England until last day of November. Nicolini arrived in London (possibly as part of Manchester’s entourage) in time to sing with Valentini in Pyrrhus and Demetrius in early December. During her long absences from court, the Duchess of Marlborough was kept apprised of opera affairs by Maynwaring, himself a musical amateur and follower of opera, as well as major Whig propagandist. His biographer, the Whig John Oldmixon, wrote, ‘Upon the Introducing the Italian Opera’s on the Stage, [he] was one of the first that espous’d it; and having a good Taste of Musick, took delight to play some of the Airs on his Spinnet’.28 He wrote a prologue and epilogue to Camilla.29 He told the Duchess he was ‘very glad y.r Grace can be diverted with a harpsichord, & I will be sure to practice upon it, against I have the honour to wait upon you’ and offered to loan her one given to him by Lord Burlington that he never uses.30 On 7 September 1708 he wrote the Duchess about going to hear a rehearsal of Pyrrhus and Demetrius, which was planned for later that season: It is said to be an extream fine one, tho’ of a graver kind, than Camilla. but I think yr Grace won’t like it the worse for that. I have heard too that Nicolini the famous Singer is certainly coming. & I hope you will think all this good news.31

Noteworthy is the news anticipating the arrival of Nicolini, being arranged by Manchester. Two days later, Maynwaring reported, ‘The Opera that I heard on Tuesday is rather finer I think, than any that has been yet’.32 Maynwaring had informed the duchess about Vanbrugh’s failing finances at the Haymarket (see above) and also subscribed to Clayton’s debt relief. The Duchess looked after Nicolini in London. In November 1709 she furnished a room for Nicolini at Montagu House, home of her youngest daughter Mary, who had married John Montagu, second Duke of Montagu in 1705, himself (then Lord Monthermer) one of the subscribers to the Haymarket

27

Manchester, 6 July 1708, Venice, to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, London; Manchester Papers, vol. 14, no. 39.

28

[John Oldmixon], The Life and Posthumous Works of Arthur Maynwaring, Esq. (1715), 68.

29

Henry L. Snyder, ‘The Prologues and Epilogues of Arthur Maynwaring’, Philological Quarterly, 50 (1971), 610–29 (on pp. 615, 624–5).

30

Maynwaring, ?May 1708, to Duchess of Marlborough. Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,459, f. 41r. He preferred to use a worse harpsichord, because it has an ‘uncom[m]on quality of being very seldom out of tune’.

31

Maynwaring, 7 September 1708, to Duchess of Marlborough; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,459, f. 91r.

32

Maynwaring, 9 September 1708, to Duchess of Marlborough; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,459, f. 95v.

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theatre.33 Several weeks later on New Year’s Day 1710, she wrote Lady Cowper, wife of the former Whig Lord Chancellor Cowper, ‘I must … let you know that monsr Nickolini will be with me upon monday if my lord chancellour & you are att liberty to doe me the honour to dine here, if not I hope you will bee so good as to appoynt any other day’.34 Later she was vying with the Duchess of Shrewsbury for the privilege of hosting Nicolini to sing privately (see chapter 9). The Duke of Marlborough, a moderate Tory but with strong family ties with Whigs, attended opera, and at various times his influence was invoked on behalf of furthering opera in London and Brussels. As seen above, in October 1703 when he was sent to meet Archduke Charles in Düsseldorf, he and Charles were fêted by an opera at the Electoral court. While on campaign in October 1706 at Metz, he had correspondence with Brussels about saving the opera there;35 from a field camp on 30 August 1707 he wrote to Count Zinzendorf, with a letter introducing the singer John Abel, requesting he be given an opportunity to perform before the Emperor.36 By early 1708 Vanbrugh’s finances at the Haymarket were in distress, and he was searching for ways to cover the high salaries for singers. In February 1708 he wrote to Manchester in Venice that he had gotten Marlborough to urge the Queen ‘to exert her Authority’ to ‘put an end to the Playhouse Factions’ by sending the actors to Drury Lane, thus ‘the Operas are Establish’d at the Haymarket, to the generall likeing of the whole Towne’.37 Vanbrugh also 33

Maynwaring, 15 November 1709, to Duchess of Marlborough; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,460, ff. 118–21. Maynwaring writes (ciphers are realised in brackets): ‘[Halifax] said he wou’d employ [Maynwaring] in a negociation of more consequence, which was this; Nicolini had an opera that he desired might be practis’d in his Room, which had been furnish’d by [the Duchess of Marlborough], who had never seen it [the room] since; … if [the Duchess of Marlborough] woud come to hear this musick, he shou’d be very glad (ff. 119–20)’. Elsewhere the letter discusses who should invite guests to hear a rehearsal of Almahide (premiere, 10 January 1710).

34

Duchess of Marlborough, ‘New Years Day’ [1710], to Lady Cowper. Hertfordsire Archives and Local Studies. Panshanger Papers, DE/P/F 63. Endorsed [docket title] ‘Jan.ry 1.st 1710’.

35

See letters between Marlborough, ‘Grand Mets’ ( = Gramets or Grandmetz), and M. de Renswoude, Brussels, October 1706; in George Murray, ed., Letters and Dispatches of John Churchill, 5 vols (London: John Murray, 1845), 3:159, 165. On opera at Brussels, see Jacques Isnardon, Le Théâtre de la Monnaie depuis sa foundatione jusqu’à nos jours (Brussels: Schott Frères, 1890), 5–13; and Lionel Renieu, Histoire des Théâtres de Bruxelles, depuis leur origine jusqu’à ce jour, 2 vols (Paris: Duchartre & van Buggenhoudt), 1:129–31, 2:666–75.

36

Marlborough, Soignies, 30 August 1707, to Count Zinzendorff; in Murray, ed., Letters and Dispatches of John Churchill, 3:541.

37

Vanbrugh, [London], 24 February 1708, to Manchester, [Venice]; Manchester Papers, vol. 13, no. 28; Also printed in The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh, vol. 4, The Letters, ed. Geoffrey Webb (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1928), 16–17.

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reported to Manchester in the same letter that he had informed the Duumvirs Marlborough and Godolphin of the ‘Necessity there is for the Queen to be at Some Expence’ towards the opera, and several months later, Vanbrugh wrote the Lord Chamberlain that ‘both my Lord Treasurer [Godolphin] & Marlborough Declard it would be right, for the Queen to give a Thousand Pounds a year towards the opera support’ (which never materialised).38 In London, Camilla was performed expressly for Marlborough on 17 March 1709, and later that year while campaigning in the Low Countries, Marlborough and Prince Eugene were fêted with an opera in Brussels.39 It was reported in June 1712 that ‘as he was comeing from the Opera that he was huzza’d by some hundreds of Gentlemen that wish’d him again at the head of the army, and hop’d to have him there very soon’.40 (Anne had removed him from his command on 29 December 1711). After Nicolini returned to Venice at the end of the 1711–12 season, he wrote Marlborough a fulsome, obsequious letter expressing willingness to serve him in any way.41 After leaving England, Nicolini remembered the favours from the Marlborough family. When the Duchess’s grandson, William, Viscount Ryalton and Marquess of Blandford, was travelling in Rome in 1721, he wrote her: Nicolini comes to see me sometimes, & always says, He shall ever retain a gratefull sense of yr many favours to him, when he w.s in England, w.ch country he says he hopes to see once more before he dies; his voice is very much decay’d, & by no means so good as it ws in England.42

Joseph Addison might seem an anomaly to be placed among Whigs furthering Italian-style opera, given the failure of his Rosamond and his critical writings about opera in the Spectator. But among Whig men of letters, he had a broad acquaintance with the national styles of opera, having seen operas in 38

Mentioned in a letter from Vanbrugh, ca. mid-April 1708, to Vice Chamberlain Thomas Coke; quoted in Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, doc. 64.

39

Letter to Sir John Percival (later the Earl of Egmont) from his uncle, Charles Dering, 17 March 1709: ‘this day Camilla is acted expressly for L.d Malburow’; British Library, Add. MS 47,025, f. 118r (= p. 233); also in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont, 2:236. On Marlborough and Prince Eugene attending opera at Brussels; see Isnardon, Théâtre de la Monnaie: ‘Le 15 octobre [1709], Eugène de Savoie, retour de l’armée à la deuxième représentation d’Amadis. On signale encore la présence du Prince, accompagné du duc de Marlborough, á une représentation de les Saisons. Il est évident que le retour de l’armée et de ces seigneurs favorisa l’exploitation du Grand-Théâtre; ils assistaient presque tous les soirs au spectacle “avec un grandissime concourse de noblesse”’ (13).



40

Letter from Thomas Harley, envoy to Hanover, not dated but ?1712; British Library, Add. MS 40,621, ff. 88–9. I am grateful to David Hunter for this reference.

41

Letter from Nicolini, Venice, 18 November 1712, to Marlborough; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,368, f. 101.

42

William, Viscount Ryalton and Marquess of Blandford, Rome, 30 August 1721, to Duchess of Marlborough; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,440, f. 36r.

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Paris, Florence, Venice, and Vienna while living and travelling abroad from 1701 to 1703. A revision of received ideas about his writings, suggests he accepted the form and proposed corrections for its improvement (see chapter 9). A key figure in advancing English musical-dramatic music and opera was the Huguenot Peter Motteux. He established his Whig bona fides with numerous Williamite odes and dedications to Whig patrons.43 He wrote texts for many English masques, afterpieces, and provided librettos for several English operas. His periodical Gentleman’s Journal had devoted a long essay on opera in January 1692. An important vehicle in promoting opera in the Italian manner was the literary journal the Muses Mercury (January 1707–January 1708), edited by the Whig polemicist John Oldmixon and dedicated to the Whig William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire. The Mercury had an unmistakably strong Whig bias and published a conspicuously large number of Whig writers and poets, although it did include other non-Whig writers, including John Dryden. A regular section ‘Of the Opera’s and Plays’ kept readers informed of the operas planned or performed during those two seasons (1706–7 and 1707–8): Semele, Orlando Furioso, Orpheus and Euridicé, the unproduced Dido (i.e., Scarlatti’s La Didone delirante [Naples, 1696]), Thomyris, Pyrrhus and Demetrius, and Love’s Triumph.44 Special praise was given to Clayton’s music for Arsinoe and Rosamond. The Mercury printed Dennis’s libretto to the masque Orpheus and Euridicé and applauded news of the 31 December 1707 theatre reorganization that granted the Haymarket a monopoly on operas, ‘with which all Lovers of Opera’s are very well pleas’d’ and predicted opera ‘is now in a fairer way to live than ever’.45 It bears stressing yet once again, that what these Whigs intended to be supporting in these early years was opera all-sung in English (the enigmatic Li amori di Ergasto remains an exception). As late as August 1708, Vanbrugh told Manchester enough operas had been translated to last several more years – presumably he was still expecting operas to be sung in English.46 There is no comparable evidence of Tory promotion of operatic works, but members of Tory families are known to have attended opera.47 Nottingham’s infatuation and sponsoring Margarita in the years 1703–5 has been seen above, 43

Robert N. Cunningham, Peter Anthony Motteux (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1933); dedicatees of his works included William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire; Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax; Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury; Edward Russell, Earl of Orford; Henry Thynne; Henry Boyle; James Stanhope, Earl Stanhope; and Edward Coke.

44

See the section ‘Of the Opera’s and Plays’, for January, February, March, September, October, and December 1707, and January 1708.

45

Muses Mercury (December 1707).

46

Vanbrugh, 17 August 1708, to Manchester (?Venice); Manchester Papers, vol. 14, no. 71; also in Court and Society, 2:383–4, and Vanbrugh, Letters, no. 15, 4:25–6.

47

For members of the Tory Wentworth family attending opera: James J. Cartwright, ed., The Wentworth Papers, 1705–1739 (London: Wyman & Sons, 1883), passim. While in Paris, St John was at the opera and yielded his seat in a box to the Pretender, causing

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and his son would attend opera and later be a director and supporter of the opera company.48 Several Tories or family members are among the subscribers to the building of the Haymarket theatre (table 4.1) but are scarce as recipients of dedications of opera librettos (table 5.2). From such documentation as we have, it is not possible to generalise confidently about attendance patterns at opera by Whigs or Tories. From her youth, Anne enjoyed and participated in music-making.49 By the time Italian-style opera was introduced to London, Anne’s poor health (obesity and gout) prevented her attendance at public theatres. She only saw Arsinoe and Camilla each once when they were presented before her at court for her birthdays (in 1705 and 1707), and then probably in reduced form.50 For her birthdays in 1711 and 1712, entertainments of Italian music (presumably largely drawn from the operas at the Haymarket) were organised and presented by Handel and Nicolini.51 If the choice of these Queen heroines (Arsinoe, Camilla, Thomyris, Almahide) as subjects for opera is significant (despite the unlikelihood Anne would have seen them staged), it is as exempla from history validating and legitimating a female monarch and lending to Anne the dignity implied by the virtues of the female monarchs in the operas. Anne’s own interest in opera was too slight to be the basis for court sponsorship of it as an instrumentum regni, as in the reigns of Charles II and Louis a political scandal; James Winn, Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 593. 48

See book of accounts for Lord Daniel Finch (later third Earl of Nottingham and eighth Earl of Winchilsea); Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland, Wigston Magna, Leicester; DG 7, Box 21, account 6 (1709). As Lord Finch, he was a subscriber and director of the Royal Academy of Music; see Carole Taylor, ‘Italian Operagoing in London, 1700–1745’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, Syracuse University, 1991).

49

On Anne’s musical training and interests, Winn, Queen Anne, esp. 1–3, 84, 185–6, 233–4, and passim. Winn overstates her direct sponsorship of opera (see pp. 115, 370, 373, 374, 391). By the time of the introduction of opera, she was a semi-invalid and not known to have attended the theatre. Winn summarises her knowledge and patronage of the arts in ‘“Praise the Patroness of Arts’”, pp. 7–40 in Cedric D. Reverend II, ed., Queen Anne and the Arts (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2015).

50

Robert O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 232–3.

51

The 1711 celebration was organised by Handel; see Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘Handel, Eccles and the Birthday Celebrations for Queen Anne in 1711’, Musical Times, 154 (2013), 77–84, and Winn, Queen Anne, 545–6. The 1712 birthday celebration was described by Abel Boyer: After Divine Service, ‘There was an Entertainment of Instrumental Musick, as usual; … and at Night was perform’d at Court, an exc:ellent Consort collected out of several Italian Operas, by Signior Cavaliero Nicolini Grimaldi and perform’d by him, and the other best Voices’; History of the Reign of Queen Anne … Year the Tenth [for 1711–12] (1712), 344. See also, Winn, Queen Anne, 580. A birthday ode for 1713 was composed by Handel, but it is not known if it was performed (see chapter 9).





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XIV – a means of expressing and demonstrating the power and authority of the monarch, dynasty, or state. The lack of a cultural programme emanating from Queen Anne’s court and her own absence from the theatre and opera may have left her Tory ministers such as Nottingham, Robert Harley, and Henry St John themselves disinclined to officially promote opera.52 Alternatively, they may have been too preoccupied with politics to be concerned with musical patronage nor interested in consorting with rival Whig politicians of the KitCat Club who were.53

❧  Whig Cultural Programme After the Glorious Revolution, in lieu of the usual court sponsorship of the arts as a cultural programme, Whig grandees in their political and cultural ascent took upon themselves the imperative of devoting their cultural, social, and financial capital to promoting up-to-date musical-theatric works. They might have acted from any number of motives: promoting national pride, aesthetic satisfaction, civic duty to increase the taste and cultural standards of Britons, or cultural-status aspiration and identification. There was no doubt that the great Whig statesmen who emerged under the reign of William – Halifax, Somerset, Dorset, Somers – aspired to be the new Maecenases of their era and did in fact use their state offices as means of cultural patronage. Many Whig peers had to vacate their household posts with the death of William, and many Whigs in government held over from William’s Ministry were swept from office in the months following Anne’s accession. They now had more time for arts patronage. This Whig cultural programme has been studied primarily in literature.54 Whig writers sought modern forms that would move beyond the classical-bound

52

On decline on Court patronage, see introduction, pp. 16–17. The fullest picture of the cultural life at Anne’s court is given in Winn, Queen Anne. Winn highlights odes and musical entertainments that were presented at Court but does not show such were a focal point for operatic activity or for a cultural programme involving music, as in the reign of Charles II.

53

Geoffrey Holmes notes that ‘as the reign went on it became increasingly rare for the leading partisans of the Whig and Tories to meet each other socially’; British Politics, 21.

54

David Womersley, introduction to David Womersley, ed., Augustan Critical Writing (London: Penguin Books, 1997); Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture; David Womersley, ed., ‘Cultures of Whiggism’: New Essays on English Literature and Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2005); Peter Walmsley, ‘Whigs in Heaven: Elizabeth Rowe’s Friendship in Death’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 44 (2011), 315–30; and Nicholas Hudson, [review] ‘Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Culture, 1681–1714’, The Age of Johnson, 18 (2007), 453. Further on Whig sentiments in literature: Michael Meehan, Liberty and Poetics in Eighteenth Century England (Wolfeboro, N.H., Croom Helm, 1986); Sean Walsh, ‘“Our



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Latinate tradition and be appropriate to the new constitutional liberty achieved in post-Revolution Britain: a literature that would gain cultural authority for Whigs, revitalise and reform English artistic culture, directly engage politics and public events (especially eulogizing William, the Revolution, and his wars), affirm Britain as a Protestant nation, and forge a British identity. It would aspire to a sublimity free from imitation. The new aesthetic would transcend the authority of the ancients, rules, and tradition. In practice, many painters, architects, and musicians still looked to Italy for artistic models and standards of taste and employed the apparatus of classical divinities and symbolism. French artistic models were avoided because of the long-standing English sensitivity to French cultural hegemony with its use of art in service of absolutism and as a threat to Protestantism. Nonetheless, the neoclassical ‘rules’ as formulated by French critics were formative for English theory of painting and poetry, although in practice, Britons primarily followed Italian painters and architects. Many Britons would have recognised as new and progressive an opera based on a model from Italy – traditionally the font and origin of the arts. Opera in the Italian manner had the advantage that it was recognizably different from a French tragédie lyrique. Political-nationalist animus seems to have coloured English response to French opera. Reports from travellers to France uniformly disparaged French-style singing.55 The Dryden-Grabu Albion and Albanius was by now likely remembered by so few, and so tainted with associations of the Stuarts and French culture, as to be a viable model to theatre managers for a full-scale English opera. How British Whigs turned to Italy for ideologically suitable models of the arts is manifest in the poem Liberty (1705). After the characteristic Whig invocation of Liberty (notably, not a classic Muse) to whom all British blessings are due, the poem extols the benefits of a Northern climate where Liberty resides. All the natural blessings that climate and soil might offer Italy are destroyed by religious tyranny. The arts flourished in ancient Rome, now in ruins. Yet the blessings of nature still allowed the arts to revive in modern Rome: architecture (Michelangelo), sculpture (Bernini), painting (Guido, Correggio, Titian, and Raphael), and music (Corelli). But now the noble arts are debased and perverted in a land of Popish tyranny. Britain now boasts her own arts: Our Learning and our Laws— For to inform the Mind, the Soul to arm With Courage, which no Danger can alarm; Lineal Descents and Clans”: Dryden’s Fables Ancient and Modern and Cultural Politics in the 1690’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 63 (2001), 175–200; Leon Guillamet, Defoe and the Whig Novel: A Reading of the Major Fiction (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2010), 20–45 [identifies four areas of concern: liberty, property, captivity (slavery), and trade, commerce, and imperialism]. 55

See, for example, the comments of Joseph Addison and the Duke of Shrewsbury in chapters 8 and 9.

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714 To give Ambition Bounds when in Success, And lend a pitious Ear to Virtue in Distress; To guard our Liberties from Lawless Force, And curb Usurpers in their Dangerous Course; To answer each Insulted Nation’s Pray’rs; These are our British Arts, these are our Gen’rous Cares.56

Nature has given powers to music – … Musick has Charms to move The coldest Breast to Pity and to Love. Musick with unresisted Force controuls. With Pleasure we resign our conquer’d Souls.57

– but when reason prevails, they are realised in Britain, not in Italy: Musick has Charms, ’tis true; but what avail Her Charms, unless o’re Reason to prevail? For there [in Italy] it serves but to debauch the Mind, Of ev’ry Nobler Thought disarms Mankind. Howe’re ’tis well contriv’d to sooth their Pains, Makes ’em [Italians] perhaps forget th’ unhappy Chains [of the Church].58

The goal for British Whigs in 1705 is to foster an opera that ‘o’re Reason’ will prevail, that will ‘inform the Mind, the Soul to arm / With Courage’, and ‘guard our Liberties from Lawless Force’. Such were the ideals that opera sung in English would satisfy at Vanbrugh’s theatre.

❧  Politics in the Operas It is often presumed that Baroque opera was – by virtue of what Robert D. Hume calls a ‘generic expectation’ – allusive or allegorical of contemporary events, political figures, or dynasties.59 This is often true of operas and serenatas produced at continental princely courts and of several Restoration operatic works produced in London that undoubtedly were intended or perceived to have contemporary allegorical application to the Stuarts. But this expectation is not, as argued above, fulfilled for Italian-style operas in eighteenth-century London. The operas lack the prologues, mythological figures, deities, or accompanying printed keys, dedications, or other cues that point to allegorical

56

Liberty, 8.

57

Ibid., 7.

58

Ibid., 8.

59

Robert D. Hume, ‘The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 10 (1998), 15–43; Hume does identify English works that undoubtedly were intended or perceived to have contemporary allegorical application.

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content. Addison’s libretto for Rosamond (see below) comes closest to having a topical political context and allusion.60 Contemporary political and social concerns have always seeped into the London theatres,61 and in the first several years of opera, Whig political ideals – or at least ideas sympathetic to Whiggery – occasionally surfaced during an evening at the opera. In line with English theatrical tradition, early operas had spoken prologues and epilogues that often carry topical political allusions; several opera librettos were written or adapted for London by local poets (specifically Motteux) and do seem to glance at, or have application to, the contemporary political situation. After 1710, with rare exception, operas at the Haymarket were based on Italian source librettos or classic fable and myth, and topicality is wanting. The opera season took place when Marlborough and his officers were home from the summer campaigns. Owen Swiney hoped Pyrrhus and Demetrius (14 December 1708) would ‘relieve the Duke of Marlborough, after the long Fatigues of this [past summer’s] wonderful Campaign’.62 Favourable allusions to the War of the Spanish Succession and Liberty link these English operas with Whiggish sentiment; the Whiggish slant becomes significant as public opinion slowly turned against the War.

1705–1706 Season British Enchanters In his second season, Vanbrugh produced his first operatic work sung in English, the dramatic opera The British Enchanters: or, No Magick like Love. A Tragedy (21 February 1706) by the Tory playwright George Granville. Sometime in the mid-1690s, as ‘the first Essay of a very infant Muse’, Granville adapted the tragédie en musique of Quinault and Lully Amadis de Gaule (Paris, 1684).63 Thomas Betterton, Granville reports, had seen a draft of the play and begged it for the stage. He must have seen opportunities for music and scenery for enchantments, battles, and musical entertainments of the sort he had indulged 60

Allegorical interpretations have been proposed for British Enchanters, Rosamond, Rinaldo, Silla, and Teseo. Such interpretations have been found unsatisfactory in McGeary, Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), where the features that are commonly found in operas and plays that were undoubtedly intended and seen as having political application are identified. For Rosamond and British Enchanters, see below.

61

The classic study is John Loftis, The Politics of Drama in Augustan England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963); see also, Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 23–4.

62

Dedication of libretto to the Duke’s daughter, Henrietta (then Lady Ryalton), whose ‘excellent Taste in Musick’ he commends.

63

The transformation is described in Stoddard Lincoln, ‘The Anglicization of Amadis de Gaul’, pp. 46–52 in Emmett L. Avery and John W. Ehrstine, eds, On Stage and Off: Eight Essays in English Literature (Pullman, Wash.: Washington State University Press, 1968).

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at Dorset Garden. The dramatic opera was announced for production at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 4 November 1704, but only produced two years later.64 Granville transported the action from France to Britain and invented a new subplot involving the British King Celius, who had promised his daughter Oriana as a bride to the Roman Emperor Constantius. Granville retained much of the original plot involving the brother-and-sister evil enchanter and enchantress who (with the aid of a host of demons) are trying to avenge the death of their brother at the hands of Amadis, in part by thwarting his love for Oriana. Protecting the couple is the good enchantress Urganda. Beyond the nationalism of the new setting, the British King, and Britons in ancient dress, Whigs in the audience could have cheered a chorus sung by captives freed by the evil enchantress Arcabon under the power of Love:   Liberty! Liberty! Ah how sweet is Liberty! Arm, arm, the gen’rous Britains cry, Let us live free, or let us die, Trumpets sounding, Banners flying, Braving Tyrants, Chains defying.65

Otherwise, for this version no convincing topical allusions in the dramatic opera can be found.

Temple of Love Both the War and Anne’s reign are celebrated by Peter Motteux’s Prologue to the English pastoral opera The Temple of Love (7 March 1706), Vanbrugh’s second Italian-type opera that played for only two performances.66 Motteux’s Prologue, with passing mention of Marlborough and Anne, announced: Abroad the British Warrior Conquests gains; At home there’s Harmony, —Great Anna Reigns. The Consort Politic divinely charms; Her Wisdom rules, and willing Skill performs.

In a conceit that puts Anne in the company of Orpheus, Amphion, Timotheus, and Apollo, her wise rule will bring concord and harmony to Europe: She gives the Movement with an equal Sway; The Spheres keep Time, applauded, as they play. Such Pow’r, Antipathies can reconcile, And tune the greater World, like her more happy Isle. In spight of War we thus with Peace are blest, And Love alone can here alarm the Breast.

64

Diverting Post, no. 2 (28 October–4 November 1704).

65

Granville, British Enchanters, Act III, scene 1.

66

The libretto is a translation (and adaptation) of an Italian libretto. A virtue Motteux claims for the opera is reconciling ‘English Words, with soft Venetian Air’ and giving ‘manly English an Italian Grace’ (Preface).

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Despite this panegyric to Anne and claim that under her reign England is a safe retreat from war on the Continent, nothing in this slight pastoral of love intrigues among the inhabitants of Arcadia (in which all the love-pairs are sorted out and ultimately united) might have had any topical political bearing.

Camilla Lady Wharton, wife of the Whig Junto Lord Thomas Wharton, received the dedication of the successful Camilla (30 March 1706) produced at Drury Lane.67 The Prologue by the Whig Arthur Maynwaring imagines that the din of war in northern Italy between Bourbon France and England’s Habsburg ally Austria led by Prince Eugene has driven the shepherdess Camilla (actually a queen in disguise in the opera) to safety on the stage of Drury Lane in London: Whilst Martial Troops, with more than Martial Rage, For Austria these, for Bourbon those engage, Cover with Blood th’ unhappy Latian Plains, Insult their Shepherds, and oppress their Swains, Camilla frighten’d from her Native Seat, Hither is driv’n to beg a safe Retreat.

The opera’s music will soften the ‘ye Fair’ in the audience to pity the exiled shepherdess and inspire ‘your Warrior Lords’ to bravery. The Epilogue by Maynwaring invokes the current theatrical competition and imagines Drury Lane warring with the Haymarket as if against France, enlisting dancers and singers as allies.68 Using the stage-as-state allegory to refer to Great Britain, Maynwaring waxes patriotic in praise of the mild reign of Queen Anne and the Whig goals of liberty and containing France: Our Stage is thus, an Emblem of the State, With Mildness Rul’d, by Opposition Great. Abroad we Conquer our Insulting Foes, And Universal Monarchy Oppose: Yet feel the Blessings of a Peaceful Reign, And safe at Home, our Liberties Maintain.

After the initial run in the regular season, extra performances were added through the summer of 1706. Prologues to these added performances glance at the continuing continental war. The Prologue for a performance on 23 May rejoiced in Marlborough’s victory at Ramillies (news of his victory on 12 May

67

On Camilla’s success, Lindgren, ‘Camilla and The Beggar’s Opera’, Philological Quarterly, 59 (1980), 44–61; and Lindgren, ‘I trionfi di Camilla’, Studi musicali, 6 (1977), 89–159.

68

The Epilogue is attributed to Estcourt in the printed libretto; Snyder, ‘Prologues and Epilogues’, 615, attributes it to Maynwaring due to an autograph copy among the Blenheim Papers.

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reached London on the evening of 16 May).69 The Prologue gallantly places credit for the victory upon the charms of the British Fair: Ladies, to you our Gratitude wee pay For the late Triumphs of a glorious Day; Urg’d by your Charms our Troops their Foes subdue, And well may Conquer, when inspir’d by You.

The French would have prevailed instead ‘If her faint women shin’d with Eyes so bright’. The ‘wretched Slaves’ oppressed by French ‘Lawless Power’ cannot contend with Britons, ‘arm’d with Freedom’, blessed by British beauties, and warmed by thoughts of the fair circle at the theatre.70 For a performance on 5 July 1706 at Drury Lane, ‘A Prologue in the Opera call’d Camilla’, by Colley Cibber, recognises England’s progress against France in the continental war:71 While frowning Mars our smiling Isle surrounds, While British Arms give wild Ambition Bounds,      And France the Forts she stole in Peace, in war refunds.

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At home, a calm Britain ‘is safe beneath Her Sovereign’s Wings’, at ‘Peace and Harmony, / Secure against the Frauds of France or Rome’ (that is, the twin frauds of Absolutism and Popery). Cibber flatters the ‘fair’ in the theatre for inspiring Britain’s soldiers in combat (far more than do the French women). Her ‘conqu’ring Heroes’ are, ironically, in greater danger in the pit at Drury Lane than in the trenches, for they face ‘Less danger in the Swords of France’ than from the ‘English Eyes’ and ‘Beauty’s Charms’ of Britain’s ‘Fair’, against whom their hearts ‘Have no

69

‘Prologue at Camilla 23.rd May 1706’; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS, 61,360, f. 6 (not in Snyder). For Marlborough’s victory: Gregg, Queen Anne, 215–16.

70

The poem is discussed in Winn, Queen Anne, 428–9. In the couplet ‘Shall any dare to breathe in English Air / Whose dismall looks their Secret spleen declare’, Winn takes the word ‘dismall’ to refer to Nottingham (who indeed had such an epithet). But the context clearly indicates ‘dismall’ refers to those who breathe English air, thus rendering the interpretation untenable. On 24 May 1706, Godolphin wrote to Halifax: ‘I shall not trouble you wth one word upon the progress of the D: of Marlboroughs successes [at Ramillies and the cities retaken as the French retreated], because you will hear them so much quicker from the Hague, but the effect of them yesterday, at ye last representation of Camilla, wch you will See in the papers enclosed, will I make no question bee very agreeable to you’; British Library, Add. MS 7,121, ff. 33–4. Winn, Queen Anne, 429, takes the reference to Camilla to refer to the Prologue spoken on 23 May; there is no reason to believe the papers sent by Godolphin included a copy of the Prologue (no printed copy known), nor that the Prologue would convey evidence of the effect of his victories.



71

Unique copy of the Prologue held at the Newberry Library, Chicago (Case 6A159, no. 55; date by Narcissus Luttrell, 10 July 1706); reprinted in Pierre Danchin, The Prologues and Epilogues of the Eighteenth Century, part 1, vol. 1, 1701–1720 (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1990), 342–3.

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Defence at home’. A shortened version of the opera was presented before the Queen for her birthday in 1707, and several reasons for the Queen calling for the performance have been suggested.72

1706–1707 Season Rosamond One opera directly allusive of a specific statesman and serving party interest was Joseph Addison’s Rosamond (4 March 1707), a tribute to the Whig hero the Duke of Marlborough and celebration of his victory against the French in August 1704 at Blenheim.73 Since the idea for Rosamond must have arisen in late 1704 or early 1705, in the flush of Whig euphoria over Marlborough’s victory, it might be expected the opera would have opened at Vanbrugh’s theatre. But the theatre was not complete and the Lord Chamberlain’s shuffling of the actors and musicians between the theatres deprived the Haymarket of the musicians and singers necessary to perform an opera, deferring the premiere until March 1707 at Drury Lane. A popular story in folklore, the subject of Fair Rosamond was no doubt chosen because Rosamond’s Bower was at Woodstock Park, the royal estate given by Anne to the Duke, the site of Blenheim Palace, being built for Marlborough in gratitude for his victory. That Rosamond’s lover was Henry II provided an occasion to parallel Marlborough with one of England’s few great Warrior Kings. In a compliment that was thought ‘too gross’, one W. W.’s prologue to the opera equates ‘the Greatest Hero’ with Mars keeping court at Blenheim.74 The intended identification of Marlborough with Henry II is unmistakable in a dream sequence in Act III, scene 1. While Henry is asleep in a grotto, ‘a Cloud descends, in it two Angels suppos’d to be the Guardian Spirits of the British Kings in war and in Peace’. One commends the rewards of Peace; the other urges him to War and foresees Whatever glorious and renown’d In British Annals can be found;

72

Winn, Queen Anne, 373–4, offers the example of a work (a serenata, not an opera, as he states) presented in Ghent for the Queen’s birthday as basis for speculating how Anne might have applied Camilla to her own circumstances. Winn introduces each unpersuasive speculation as ‘perhaps’.

73

On Rosamond as tribute to Marlborough, Curtis A. Price, ‘Political Allegory in LateSeventeenth-Century English Opera’, pp. 1–29 in Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean, ed. Nigel Fortune (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 22–5. On Rosamond and nationalism, Brean Hammond, ‘Joseph Addison’s Opera Rosamond: Britishness in the Early Eighteenth Century’, ELH, 3 (2006), 601–29. Further on context of Rosamond, Smithers, Life of Joseph Addison, 114–20; and Winn, Queen Anne, 441–7.

74

Printed in Muses Mercury (March 1707), 57–8. Winn’s interpretation, Queen Anne, 447, is among those that see Rosamond as a veiled allegory between Henry and Marlborough; the Prologue actually compares Marlborough to Mars (not Henry).

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714 Whatever Actions shall adorn Britannia’s Heroes yet unborn In dreadful Visions shall succeed; On fancy’d Fields the Gaul shall bleed, Cressy shall stand before his Eyes, And Agincourt and Blenheim rise.

At its culmination, Henry sees ‘the great Reward / For Anna’s mighty Chief prepar’d’. The scene changes to ‘the Plan of Blenheim Castle’, which is described in sublime verse by the guardian representing War: Behold the glorious Pile ascending! Columns swelling, Arches bending, Domes in awful Pomp arising, Art in curious Strokes surprizing, Foes in figur’d Fights contending, Behold the glorious Pile ascending!

Shamed and inspired by the sublime vision, and overcoming love and grief, Henry renounces his self-indulgent ‘soft inglorious Hours’ of love and passion for Rosamond to pursue military glory. Learning that the news of Rosamond’s death was false (she was given only a sleeping draught by the jealous Queen Eleonora), Henry reconciles with his Queen, and Rosamond is sent to a convent. With its celebration of Marlborough and vision of Blenheim, Rosamond is a Whig party piece, especially with its affirmation of Britain’s commitment to the war against France. The opera reflects onto Marlborough the lustre of Henry, who controlled Anjou, Normandy, Aquitaine, and Brittany. Henry’s actual behaviour is not to be paralleled to that between the Duke and Duchess, but as holding up his renunciation of an illicit love as an exemplum of setting duty before self-interest and pleasure, a moral duty widely found in classical republican thought, opera librettos, and common moralizing. These imperatives give the opera a political spin insofar as it is a guide for a prince or statesman’s behaviour. Somewhat awkwardly for a celebratory piece, Addison’s libretto represents how – upon Henry’s return to England for a reunion with his mistress Rosamond – the jealous Queen Eleonora forces Rosamond to drink poison (in reality a sleeping draught) instead of accepting death by a dagger. Hence, attempts at construing it as a thoroughgoing allegory relating Henry, Rosamond, and Eleanora with the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough lead to contradictions, inconsistencies, and embarrassing aspersions on the Duke and Duchess that it is improbable a politically attuned writer and staunch Whig such as Addison intended or expected contemporaries to recognise.75 75

There are no contemporary comments or keys suggesting allegories or allusions in the opera. Hammond, ‘Addison’s Opera Rosamond’, sees the opera ‘readable’ as celebrating the recent Union with Scotland. Luis R. Gamez, ‘Mocking the Meat It Feeds On: Representing Sarah Churchill’s Hystericks in Addison’s Rosamond’, Comparative Drama, 29 (1995), 270–85, sees the opera as allegorizing the Duchess of Marlborough’s

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Granville’s dramatic opera British Enchanters of the previous season was successful enough (with twelve performances) to call for a revival. But in the meantime, the Lord Chamberlain had separated the musicians from the Haymarket. The players remaining at the theatre proceeded to announce more productions, but Granville was so outraged at the prospect of a pared-down version without the singing and dancing that on 9 December 1706 he successfully petitioned his brother-in-law Sir John Stanley, the Lord Chamberlain’s secretary, to suppress the production.76 Granville was prevailed on to recast the piece, and he provided ‘several Alterations and Additions, and some entire new Scenes, to fill up the Space’ left by elimination of the ‘Musical Entertainments’. The play-only version premiered on 22 March 1707, for three performances.77 Drury Lane had stolen the march on Vanbrugh for a celebration of Marlborough, so Granville’s revision follows Rosamond’s lead to celebrate the general. For this revision, what was a ‘Bower of Bliss’ – where after victory in a battle against the evil enchanter Arcalaus, Amadis wins Oriana’s heart (V.i) – becomes ‘Urganda’s Bower of Bliss: Being a Representation of Woodstock-Park’.78 The good enchantress Urganda later tells Amadis (almost paralleling the story of Henry and Rosamond) that the bower Here faithful Lovers to safe Joys remove, The soft Retreat of Glory and of Love, By Fate prepar’d, to crown the happy Hours, Of mighty Kings, and famous Conquerours: The Bower of Bliss ’tis call’d, and is the same Which Mortals shall hereafter Blenheim name, Delicious Seat, ordain’d a sweet Recess For thee, and for a future Amadis.

jealousy of her husband. Hammond rightly questions why ‘making the Duchess look ridiculous would serve any purpose’ (629 n64). Hammond’s reading of Rosamond is justifiably questioned in the Scriblerian, 41 (2008), 5. This allegorical reading is also considered by Winn, Queen Anne, 446–7. 76

For the petition, Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, doc. no. 7.

77

Granville gave the history of the production in the ‘Advertisement to the Reader’ to Poems upon Several Occasions (1712) and in the Preface to British Enchanters, in The Genuine Works in Verse and Prose of George Granville, 2 vols (1732), 1:n.p. The revised versions are contained in numerous later editions of Granville’s works; for bibliography, Elizabeth Handasyde, Granville the Polite: The Life of George Granville, Lord Lansdowne, 1666–1735 (London: Oxford University Press, 1933).

78

Price, ‘Political Allegory’, postulates a 1710 quarto second edition of the British Enchanters, which cannot be located. In later editions, ‘Urganda’s Prophecy’ and several various prologues and epilogues are presented as separate works; a manuscript copy of the prophecy is in the Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,360, ff. 40–1.

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This addition hints that the famous knight-adventurer Amadis could be seen as a loose personation of the Duke of Marlborough (as did Henry II in Rosamond).79 Instead of the original Epilogue, to parallel the Guardian of War’s prophecy in Rosamond and to honour the namesake of the theatre, at the end of the tragedy Granville added lines for Urganda that introduce a prophecy spoken in front of ‘a Scene representing the Queen, and the several Triumphs of Her Majesty’s Reign’: High on a Throne, appears the Martial Queen, With Grace sublime, and with Imperial Mien; Surveying round her with impartial Eyes Whom to protect, or whom she shall chastise.

A later edition inserts here: ‘Next to her side, victorious Marlbro’ stands / Waiting, observant of her dread Commands’.80 Continuing lines praise this queen; and perhaps with a slight Tory spin, the Tory Granville identifies her: If curious to inspect the Book of Fate, You’d farther learn the destin’d Time and Date Of Britain’s Glory, know, this Royal Dame From Stuart’s Race shall rise, Anna shall be her name.

The revised British Enchanters needs to be seen less as a Tory betraying his party than a patriotic celebration of a Stuart monarch in a theatre named after her and decorated in honour of her. Subsequently, on 29 September 1710, Granville succeeded Robert Walpole as Secretary of War in the new Tory Ministry, and on 31 December 1711, he was one of twelve Tory peers (as Lord Lansdown) Queen Anne created to prevent defeat of Nottingham’s ‘No Peace without Spain’ motion in the Lords. Hence, in the following editions of his works, to obscure his past partisan gestures, Granville expunged from British Enchanters the additions favourable to Marlborough.

Thomyris The genesis of Thomyris, Queen of Scythia, premiered at Drury Lane on 1 April 1707, was a collection of arias by Alessandro Scarlatti, Giovanni Bononcini, and others that Heidegger sought to turn into an opera. To do so, he enlisted Peter Motteux, a librettist with strong Whig sympathies to devise a plot and write new verse for recitatives and to fit to the arias provided to him. Motteux may have chosen a historical subject he could parallel to the current English international situation and to provide sentiments favourable to Whiggery and flatter Queen Anne. The subject of Queen Thomyris and her defence against the invading King Cyrus allows a complimentary parallel of 79

For unpersuasive allegorical interpretations that go further, see those in Price, ‘Political Allegory’, 25–8; and Amanda Eubanks Winkler, ‘Musical Politics in George Granville’s The British Enchanters’, pp. 187–204, 286, in Reverend II, ed., Queen Anne and the Arts.

80

1732 edition of The Genuine Works.

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Anne against Louis XIV and celebration of resistance to Absolute Monarchy. Motteux’s parallel device loosely follows that of Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane, the favourite Whig party piece perennially revived on 5 November that contrasts William to Louis XIV in the guises of Tamerlane and Bajazet.81 The story deals with the Scythians’ repulsion of the Persian invasion led by Cyrus. Motteux deliberately implies connections between the opera’s historical plot and the continental war, for the Prologue’s opening description of Cyrus could apply equally to Louis XIV (especially with the mention of Queen Anne): Long had a restless Monarch’s boundless Sway Made half the Globe or tremble, or obey; Doom’d, like his Subjects, all Mankind his Slaves; By Choice destroying, as bless’d Anna saves; And, turning all his Neighbours into Foes, Grudg’d Men Heav’n’s darling Gifts of Freedom and Repose.

Again drawing on the favoured Whig topos of the Myth of the Gothic North, the description of Queen Thomyris ruling a free Northern race could be taken for Anne: With Virtues crown’d, adorn’d with ev’ry Grace, A Queen then rul’d a Warlike Northern Race; Who, bless’d and free, contented with their own, For Glory fought, and the World’s Good alone. Down by her Arms, Grand Cyrus soon was hurl’d, And, by a Woman, Heav’n reveng’d the World.

Turning to contemporary Britain, we learn ‘to Anna, in a happy Hour, / Jove gave his Scales of Justice, and of Pow’r’, and ‘Her Genius quells the World’s ambitious Foe’. Having set up the Thomyris-Anne comparison, yet denying a modern parallel (which in time-honoured fashion only encourages the application by denying it) in the manner of Rowe’s prologue to Tamerlane, Motteux proposes instead a more flattering conceit: Yet, when this Day we show a Scythian Queen, Think not we dare attempt a Modern Scene. As Britain’s Beauties all the World’s excel, Great Anna’s Reign disdains a Parallel.

In the opera itself, the war between the Scythians and Persians is the backdrop for a conventional court drama that features the usual young persons in love (one of them with an enemy), designed marriages, conflicts between love and duty, incognito prisoners, love triangles, rescues, and heroic renunciations. The opening aria for Princess Cleora, sung by the Whig favourite Mrs Tofts, might have been cheered by the Whigs in the house: ‘Freedom, thou greatest Blessing, / Why have I lost thy Joys?’ Shortly later, Motteux gave Queen

81

On the topical use of the story, McGeary, Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain, 45–6.

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Thomyris verses that certainly would flatter (or provide a model for) Queen Anne: My Soul no greater Empire craves: ’Tis nobler thus my Pow’r to hold, And lead by Love the Free and Bold, Than drive a World of Slaves.82

For obvious reasons, Motteux chose not to continue the narrative to its well-known conclusion, as told by Herodotus: Thomyris’s defeat of Cyrus, her cutting off his head and stuffing it in a bag of blood so that he might sate himself with blood.83 In the closing lieto fino (from the Scythians’ point of view), the lesson to be drawn from the defeat of Persia and the union of long-thwarted lovers is stated by the final coro: Love and Vertue the Conquest obtain. Peace shall last; Freedom by Union shall gain: … Victorious And Glorious Astrea’s Reign The Blessings shall maintain.

Other than the implied Thomyris-Anne and Cyrus-Louis XIV personations, nothing in Motteux’s libretto suggests any extended narrative allegory. The point of the libretto is to set in opposition Britain or the freedom-loving Scythians to the Persians, whose king rules by ‘arbitrary’ power and where luxury holds sway. Such a plot validates Whig war aims and promises the blessing of Love, Virtue, and Freedom from Anne’s victory over France. In a patriotic gesture, Motteux boasts that except for the music, ‘neither the Words, the Thoughts, nor the Design owe any thing to Italy’. His Preface asks for understanding for the difficulties of putting English words to pre-existing Italian arias.

1708–1709 Season Pyrrhus and Demetrius The opera Pyrrhus and Demetrius (14 December 1708) featured the debut of Nicolini, just arrived from Venice. Owen Swiney dedicated the opera to Henrietta Churchill, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and married to the son of his ministerial colleague Lord Treasurer Godolphin. In the Dedication, Swiney links the opera with the continental war, in particular flattering Marlborough’s easy victories: I hope Your Ladiship will continue to support these Entertainments, if it be only to relieve the Duke of Marlborough, after the long Fatigues of this wonderful Campaign: 82

Motteux, Thomyris, Queen of Scythia, Act I, scene 2.

83

The History of Herodotus, 1:214.

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Tho’ ’tis possible, that even whilst You are seeing the first Representation of this Piece, he is delighted with a Nobler Scene in Flanders, and is just entring Ghent in Triumph: And that too at a Season [i.e., winter] only fit for these Diversions. But indeed, he has at length made War it self a Diversion; for he takes, or recovers what Towns he pleases, Laughs at the vain Attempts of the French, and if ever he lets them gain a seeming Advantage, it is only that he may give them a surer Blow.

As the later younger Duchess of Marlborough in her own right, Henrietta would be a patroness of Bononcini in the 1720s and 1730s. The opera itself is one of those complicated court love-intrigues playing out the conflict and jealousies of two friends in love with the same woman, Climene, though married to Pyrrhus, which seems unlikely to have been chosen to have an allegoric relation to British politics. The London version alters the final scene of the original libretto Pirro e Demetrio set by Scarlatti for production in Naples in 1694. Now, the final chorus is a topical paean to Britannia: Live Great Thames thou Beauteous Queen of Rivers may thy Glorious name Immortall Grow. Destinys Crowning thee, still with Favours, all Seas, and Rivers, to thee swift Bow.84

Although the opera lacks any Whiggish praise of liberty, the dedication and paean to Marlborough make the opera sympathetic to (if not a gift to) the Marlborough family and Whig interests. The first five London seasons saw a variety of types of opera offered: pastorals and heroic dramas; pasticcios or operas composed by a single composer; original English librettos or translations and adaptations of Italian librettos; sung all in English, all in Italian, or as bilingual. When librettos were written, translated, or adapted by local poets, there was opportunity to have prologues, epilogues, or librettos themselves glance at, allude, or have some relevance to contemporary British political concerns, at the time primarily about the war with France. However, beginning in 1710, the opera company at the Haymarket became an Italian institution, with no need for English librettists – and consequently, no opportunity for the operas themselves to reflect on British politics. 111 Defeat at Oudenarde (30 June/11 July 1708), loss of Lille (12/23 October 1708), and other military disasters of the year brought France desperate for peace. Louis secretly offered terms to the Dutch in March 1709.85 But the Allies were 84

This Chorus text is given in the printed Songs; the libretto has a different text.

85

On the new peace offers, Arsène Legrelle, La diplomatie français et la succession d’Espagne, 4 vols (Gand: F.-L. Dullé-plus, 1888–92), 4:467–86; Winston S. Churchill, Marlborough, His Life and Times, 4 vols (London: G. G. Harrap, 1933–8), 2:524–9; and John C. Rule, ‘France and the Preliminaries to the Gertruydenberg Conference,

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so insistent on ‘No Peace without Spain’ (which meant forcing Louis to do the impossible: force his grandson Philip to give up the Spanish throne) that the peace preliminaries collapsed on 24 May/4 June, and France renewed the war. It seemed to Tories that the war in Spain was being fought by the English and Dutch mainly to benefit Austria, who was not bearing her share of the war effort, and that Marlborough’s strategy for peace was merely to continue the war and enrich the monied men of the City (primarily Whigs) at public expense. During a visit home from the campaigns in spring 1709, Marlborough unsuccessfully asked the Queen to make him Captain-General for life as a way of bolstering his declining reputation. The request only confirmed Tory charges he aspired to the crown as King John.86 Hoping for a decisive victory that would break the peace deadlock, Marlborough engaged the French at Malplaquet on 31 August/11 September 1709. The results, though, were a stalemate: the Allies suffered more than twenty thousand casualties against fourteen thousand for the French. The French retired in formation, but the Allies were weakened and could not continue to advance to Paris. With victory at so great a cost, Marlborough’s reputation suffered, as Tories made propaganda about ‘the butcher’s bill’ and ‘the butcher of Malplaquet’. Britain was now becoming weary of war. Tory propaganda repeated the usual charges that the Whigs and Marlborough were prolonging a war that mainly benefited the Allies and impoverished the country gentry. The rising national debt, high taxes, reduced trade, and the failed peace negotiations made the Whig Ministry unpopular. Further events in the winter 1709–10 – a poor harvest, a severe winter, and a flood of over ten thousand refugees from the Palatinate that displaced London workers – augured ill for the Whig Ministry. With Parliament in Whig control, the Junto lords overplayed their hand in dealing with the high-flying Tory churchman Dr Henry Sacheverell.87 On 5 November 1709, the Whig celebration of William’s birthday and landing at Torbay, Sacheverell had preached a provocative sermon at St Paul’s, ‘The Perils of False Brethren, Both in Church and State’. The sermon was a daring attack on Dissenters, low and moderate churchmen, Occasional Conformity, the Revolution Principles, and the Protestant Succession. Tories rallied behind Sacheverell, and upwards of one hundred thousand copies of the sermon were printed. To deter the clergy from using their pulpits for political propaganda, the Whigs impeached Sacheverell on 13 December, turning the sermon’s September 1709–March 1710’, pp. 97–115 in Studies in Diplomatic History: Essays in Memory of David Bayne Horn, eds Ragnild Hatton and M. S. Anderson (London: Longman, 1970). 86

Henry Snyder, ‘The Duke of Marlborough’s Request of His Captain-Generalcy for Life: A Re-Examination’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 45 (1967), 67–83.

87

Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973); Holmes, ‘The Sacheverell Riots: The Crowd and the Church in Early EighteenthCentury London’, Past and Present, 72 (1976), 55–85.

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advocacy of divine right, passive obedience, and non-resistance into evidence of Tory sedition and loyalty to the House of Stuart. The trial in the Lords in February and March 1710 became a public spectacle and excited fierce political protest: the London mob rioted, a flood of pamphlets issued forth, and a countrywide demonstration of High-Church Toryism (if not Jacobitism) erupted and focused public discontent on the Whig Ministry. Sacheverell was convicted but received only a light token punishment. After the trial, he travelled through England in procession – cheered, fêted, and showered with gifts. In the end, impeaching a clergyman only showed the nation that Whiggery was a threat to the Church. The Sacheverell Crisis ultimately brought down the Duumvirs and Whigs and ushered in the last truly Tory government for one hundred years.

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Chapter 6

1710: The Year of Great Change in Politics and Opera

E

ncouraged by the nation’s outcry at the Whig trial of a High-Churchman, dismayed at the losses at Malplaquet, and weary of a war with no end in sight, Anne resolved to free herself from the Junto Whigs. She was now secretly conferring with Robert Harley, while Lord Treasurer Godolphin was steadily losing influence. The stalemate of Malplaquet gave Louis hope he could now obtain more favourable peace terms than in the previous year. Fresh negotiations with the Dutch opened at Gertruydenberg in February 1710 but still made little progress due to Allied insistence on ‘No Peace without Spain’.1 The Queen and the Duchess of Marlborough, her former favourite, were now so estranged, their last in-person and acrimonious interview was on 6 April 1710.2 The first sign of what Jonathan Swift called ‘that great change at court’ and the rise of Harley and the overthrow of the Whigs was on 14 April 1710, with Anne’s surprise appointment of the moderate Whig the Duke of Shrewsbury as Lord Chamberlain in place of the Earl of Kent.3

1

On the run-up to the failed Gertruydenberg peace negotiations, John C. Rule, ‘France and the Preliminaries to the Getruydenberg Conference, September 1709 to March 1710’, pp. 98–115 in Ragnhild Hatton and M. S. Anderson, eds, Studies in Diplomatic History: Essays in Memory of David Bayne Horn (London: Longman, 1970).

2

Thereafter they communicated only by letter, the last from Sarah on 13 June 1710; she then communicated through the Queen’s personal physician, the Whig Sir David Hamilton. On the collapse of their relationship, Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 141–78; Edward Gregg, Queen Anne (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, 287–96, 307–9, 313, 324–9. Sarah gives her version in An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (1742), 239–44.

3

For Swift’s use of the phrase: Jonathan Swift: ‘Memoirs, Relating to That Change which Happened in the Queen’s Ministry in the Year 1710, Written in October, MDCCXIV’; in Jonathan Swift, The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, 14 vols, ed. Herbert Davis and Irvin Ehrenpreis (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1939–68), 8:107–28; and Examiner, no. 48 (30 October 1710), ‘that great Change in the ministry’. On the consequences of the change in ministry, Edward Gregg, The Protestant Succession in International Politics, 1710–1716 (New York: Garland, 1986), 44–60; Gregg, Queen Anne, 309–21; and William T. Morgan, ‘The Ministerial Revolution of 1710 in England’, Political Science Quarterly, 36 (1921), 184–210.



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The dismissal of the Earl of Sunderland, the Marlboroughs’ son-in-law, whom Anne despised and resented for being forced on her by the Junto, followed on 13/14 June 1710. Stocks fell at the news, but Anne was disingenuous when she assured the Bank of England that she planned no further removals, as was widely feared. The changes in the Ministry led France to break off peace negotiations on 1/12 July in hopes of achieving better terms. Anxious that the cabinet changes portended diminishing support for the war or Hanoverian Succession, at the instigation of Marlborough and the Whigs, envoys from the Allies, including the Austrian ambassador Johann Wenzel, Count von Gallas (see below), urged the Queen to make no further ministerial changes. In July 1710 Harley made secret approaches to France, conducted by the Jacobite Earl of Jersey with the Abbé François Gaultier, to negotiate a separate peace with France and restore the Pretender.4 A more ominous sign of coming change was Anne’s reluctant dismissal on 8 August of Lord Treasurer Godolphin, now aged and worn out after thirty years of high office (and eight of them serving Anne).5 The Treasury was put into commission, later headed by Harley as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Queen’s decision in cabinet on 20 September to dissolve Parliament and call a General Election for October prompted the resignation of most of the Whigs in the cabinet, including Henry Boyle, as Secretary of State, replaced by Henry St John. By the end of September, few Whigs remained in high ministerial office. Because he was still indispensable for conduct of the war, Marlborough remained as Captain-General; Robert Walpole, a prominent young Whig, retained his new post as Treasurer of the Navy. ‘It is affirmed by the Tories’, Swift wrote in September 1710, that ‘the great Motive of all these Changes was the absolute Necessity of a Peace, which they thought the Whigs were for perpetually delaying’.6 The significance of the changes was clear. It was correctly expected by Allies and Britons that the new Ministry would separately negotiate a peace with France, thus betraying the Allies and preparing a Jacobite restoration – in short, the Succession was in danger.

4

On the secret Jersey-Gaultier negotiations: Ragnhild Hatton, George I: Elector and King (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 70–8; Gregg, Protestant Succession, 102–24; Gregg, Queen Anne, 334–7; and A. D. MacLachlan, ‘The Road to Peace, 1710–13’, pp. 197–215 in Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714, ed. Geoffrey Holmes (London: Macmillan, 1969).

5

Clayton Roberts, ‘The Fall of the Godolphin Ministry’, Journal of British Studies, 22 (1982), 71–93; Henry L. Snyder, ‘Godolphin and Harley: A Study of their Partnership in Politics’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 30 (1966–7), 241–71.

6

Swift, 9 September 1710, London, to Archbishop King, Dublin; The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. David Woolley, 5 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999– 2014), no. 95, 1:291. His Examiner, no. 13/14 (2 November 1710) also defends the change and argues the war was continued to benefit the financial interests (on numbering of the Examiner, see note 14 below).

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❧  Tory Triumph The new Tory Ministry set in motion a propaganda campaign to attack the previous Whig Ministry, discredit Marlborough, and prepare the nation for peace.7 Harley’s propaganda machine employed some of the best talent of his day – Daniel Defoe, Delarivier Manley, and Jonathan Swift.8 Richard Steele had founded the popular Tatler periodical on 12 April 1709.9 Using his post as Gazetteer he provided news along with lucubrations in the persona of Isaac Bickerstaff on manners, morals, fashion, theatre, and literature. The paper was intended to ‘expose the false Arts of Life, to pull off the Disguises of Cunning, Vanity and Affectation, and to recommend a general Simplicity in our Dress, our Discourse, and our Behaviour’.10 The Tatler had a subtle Whig orientation but gradually became overtly partisan in summer 1710 as the Tories 7

B. W. Hill, ‘Oxford, Bolingbroke, and the Peace of Utrecht’, Historical Journal, 16 (1973), 241–63.

8

Harley’s propaganda machine for the peace and party journalism of the period (in addition to works cited later): J. A. Downie, Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 131–48; Downie, Jonathan Swift: Political Writer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 135–65; Ashley Marshall, Political Journalism in London, 1695–1720: Defoe, Swift, Steele and Their Contemporaries (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), 13–44; Michael Foot, The Pen and the Sword: Jonathan Swift and the Power of the Press, 3rd ed. (London: William Collins, 1984), 119–371; Douglas Coombs, The Conduct of the Dutch: British Opinion and the Dutch Alliance during the War of the Spanish Succession (The Hague, the Netherlands: M. Nijhoff, 1958), 233–384; David H. Stevens, Party Politics and English Journalism, 1702–1742 (Chicago, Ill.: privately published, 1916), 1–80; Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 3 vols (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962–83), 2:387–634; Bertrand A. Goldgar, The Curse of Party: Swift’s Relations with Addison and Steele (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1961); Herbert J. Davis, Jonathan Swift: Essays on His Satire and Other Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 126–42; and P. B. J. Hyland, ‘Liberty and Libel: Government and the Press during the Succession Crisis in Britain, 1712–1716’, English Historical Review, 101 (1986), 863–88. On Defoe’s polemics: P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, A Political Biography of Daniel Defoe (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006), 115–35; and Lawrence Poston III, ‘Defoe and the Peace Campaign, 1710–1713: A Reconsideration’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 27 (1963), 1–20. For Delarivier Manley, Rachel Carnell, Backlash: Libel, Impeachment, and Populism in the Reign of Queen Anne (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2020).



9

On the Tatler: Donald F. Bond, ed. with intro., The Tatler, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987); and Calhoun Winton, Captain Steele: The Early Career of Richard Steele (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), 101–28. Richmond P. Bond, The Tatler: The Making of a Literary Journal (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), summarises the purpose of the Tatler as to demolish folly and vice, encourage rational benevolence, and raise personal and aesthetic taste (v).

10

Dedication to Arthur Maynwaring, in vol. 1 of the collected reprint edition of the Tatler (1710); in Tatler, ed. D. F. Bond, 1:8.

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were consolidating power.11 Under the masks of fictional characters, the Tatler defended the Whigs who had been in power, celebrating Marlborough and deriding Harley.12 To counter the Tatler, St John founded the Examiner on 3 August 1710 as the Ministry’s official organ to examine ‘false Wit, false Learning, false Politicks, and false Divinity’. The Whig propagandist John Oldmixon divined the purpose of the Examiner: ‘to misrepresent and vilify’ everyone who opposed the peace, render the past glorious Ministry ‘odious’, and applaud all those in ‘Service of France and the Pretender’.13 Swift came over from Ireland on 7 September 1710 and took up editorship of the Examiner.14 His first Examiner (no. 13/14, 2 November 1710), defended the recent ‘Revolutions at Court’ and the Queen’s dismissal of Whigs. To prepare the public for Marlborough’s dismissal, Swift’s notorious Examiner no. 27/28 (8 February 1711) attacked Marlborough under the guise of the Roman general Marcus Licinius Crassus (ca. 80– 53 bc), who was notorious for his ambition and ruthless avarice.15 11

On the Tatler’s Whig partisanship: Charles A. Knight, A Political Biography of Richard Steele (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009), 50–1, 58–66, 77; Tatler, ed. Bond, 1:xxii– xxiii. See also commentary in Richard Steele, Tracts and Pamphlets by Richard Steele, ed. Rae Blanchard (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1944); Winton, Captain Steele, passim.

12

Pro-Whig issues included no. 4, 19 April 1709 (praise for the Whig Junto), and no. 130, 7 February 1710 (eulogy of present Whig government). See Calhoun Winton, ‘Steele, the Junto and The Tatler no. 4’, Modern Language Notes, 72 (1957), 178–82: ‘Steele made the apparently innocuous Tatler a vehicle for partisan propaganda from its earliest beginnings’ (178).

13

John Oldmixion, Memoirs of the Press, Historical and Political, for Thirty Years Past, from 1710 to 1740 (1742), 8.

14

Swift and the Examiner: Jonathan Swift, The Examiner and Other Political Pieces Written in 1710–1711, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1940); Frank H. Ellis, ed., Swift vs. Mainwaring: The Examiner and The Medley (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), xxxiv–liv (Ellis’s numbering differs from that of usual editions, being one numeral higher); Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 2:406–22; Downie, Jonathan Swift: Political Writer, 142–54; W. A. Speck, ‘The Examiner Examined: Swift’s Tory Pamphleteering’, pp. 138–54 in Focus: Swift, ed. C. J. Rawson (London: Sphere, 1971); and (for a corrective) Speck, ‘The Examiner Re-Examined’, Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism, vol. 16, no. 1 (April 1993), 34–43; and Richard I. Cook, ‘“Mr. Examiner” and “Mr. Review”: The Tory Apologetics of Swift and Defoe’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 29 (1966), 127–46. On Swift’s journalism and the Examiner, Marshall, Political Journalism in London, 125–56.

15

In a campaign against the Parthians, Crassus was slain, and, according to one source, to mock him for his greed, the Parthian King ordered molten gold poured into his mouth, saying, ‘Now satisfie thy self with Gold, of which in life thou hast been so unsatiably greedy’. As given in Laurence Echard, The Roman History, from the Building of the City, to the Perfect Settlement of the Empire by Augustus Cæsar, 5 vols, 5th ed. (1702), 1:312. For the various versions in classical sources: Dio Cassius, Roman History,

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Whigs countered the Examiner in their own journals. Under the direction of their chief propagandist Arthur Maynwaring, they thought, as Oldmixon reported, it was necessary to let people see ‘the Mischief and Ruin that was likely to fall on them by the dark Intrigues of the New Ministers the Queen had taken into her Service’.16 Joseph Addison’s five issues of the Whig-Examiner (14 September–12 October 1710) were succeeded by the more out spoken and effective Medley (5 October 1710–3 March 1712), edited and written mainly by Maynwaring.17 For seven and a half months, the Medley answered Swift’s Examiner blow by blow, issue by issue.18 Such malicious print warfare only aggravated party enmity. Continuing in the background were the long-running Whig papers the Flying Post (1695–1733) and Daily Courant (1702–35). The attacks on the Ministry by the Gazetteer Steele could not be tolerated, especially a series of partisan papers in June–July 1710.19 Finally, on 31 August 1710, the Examiner admonished Steele/Bickerstaff that after venturing too far afield from exposing ‘Vice and Folly’ and recommending ‘Morality and Virtue’, he was instructed ‘No more of your Politick Lucubrations’.20 Upon arriving in London, Swift had foreseen ‘The Tatler expects every day to be turned out of his employment’.21 Indeed, in October 1710 Harley forced Steele to give up the periodical. He resigned as Gazetteer and brought the Tatler to a close on 2 January 1711.22 Two months later, Steele and Addison began the Spectator (see below). In the October General Election23 the Whigs cried ‘No Popery, No Pretender’ and ‘The Succession is in Danger’; the Tories cried ‘Queen and Church’. St John’s Letter to the Examiner (October 1710), timed for the election, cited 40.27; Plutarch, 31.7, 32,1; and Lucius Annaeus Florus, Epitomae de Tito Livio, 1.46,10. Maynwaring replied to Swift in the Medley, no. 20 (12 February 1711), calling the attack a ‘dangerous Fit of Defamation’ and ‘Disease of Scandal’. 16

Oldmixion, Memoirs of the Press, Historical and Political, 8.

17

On Maynwaring and the Medley: Swift vs. Mainwaring, liv–lxiii, ed. Ellis.

18

Examiner, no. 13/14 (2 November 1710) to no. 45/46 (14 June 1711); Maynwaring replied in the Medley, no. 6 (6 November) to no. 38 (18 June 1711). Both periodicals had preceding and following issues written by others.

19

See Tatler, no. 187, 20 June 1710 (attack on critics of Marlborough); no. 191, 29 June 1710 (veiled caustic portrait of Robert Harley); and no. 193, 4 July 1710 (satiric essay on the Harley ministry).

20

Examiner, no. 5 (31 August 1710).

21

Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 9 September 1710, 1:8.

22

John Gay, The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country (3 May 1711): ‘He lay’d it down as a sort of Submission to, and Composition with the Government for some past Offences’. On Steele’s loss of the Tatler, George A. Aitken, The Life of Richard Steele, 2 vols (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889), 1:286–9.

23

On the election: William T. Morgan, ‘An Eighteenth-Century Election in England’, Political Science Quarterly, 37 (1922), 565–604.

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Steele as an example of ‘Weekly Poison’. St John charged the Kit-Cats for impugning the Queen and set forth the Ministry’s rationale for peace: the original war aims were just, but Britain’s Allies had tricked her into carrying the burden of a war not in her best interest; and Whigs prolonged the war so Marlborough and the City’s monied men could benefit while the country gentlemen bore the burden of the land tax. In the election, anti-Whig sentiment and war weariness brought a Commons majority for the Tories, but the Tories were splintered by internal disputes. The moderate Harley had to contend with the radical High Tories of the October Club.24 These vociferous, country MPs, the greater part said to be Jacobites, were bent on seeking revenge upon Marlborough and removing Whigs from the Ministry. St John, a Tory extremist, wanted to obtain a quick peace, even at the expense of abandoning the Allied war aims. Harley favoured a war policy of partial disengagement: maintain a balance through diplomacy and conduct a limited war to obtain a peace that included the Allies. When Marlborough returned to England at the end of 1710, he found himself under attack by the press and Parliament. As a condition for his remaining as Captain-General, Sarah accepted dismissal from her employments on 17 January 1711.25 She was replaced in Anne’s favour by Abigail Masham, who became Keeper of the Privy Purse; Sarah’s other places were given to the Duchess of Somerset. Harley was the victim of an assassination attempt on 8 March 1711, and St John used the months of his recovery to take over leadership of the Tories. In April 1711 the Ministry opened secret contacts with James through the Abbé Gautier, hinting he might be restored if he converted to the Church of England.26 St John gained influence in the Commons when, upon his recovery, Harley was raised to the peerage as the Earl of Oxford on 23 May 1711 and created Lord Treasurer on 29/30 May replacing Godolphin. Walpole, an outspoken antagonist of the Tories, lost his post as Treasurer of the Navy the following month.

24

The Secret History of the October Club: From Its Original to This Time (1711). A second part appeared in the same year.

25

Henry L. Snyder, ed., Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 3:1658. The Duke carried Sarah’s gold key (symbol as Keeper of the Privy Purse) to the Queen the following day.

26

On Ministry approaches to James beginning in April 1711: H. N. Fieldhouse, ‘Bolingbroke’s Share in the Jacobite Intrigue of 1710–14’, English Historical Review, 52 (1937), 4–49; J. H. and Margaret Shennan, ‘The Protestant Succession in English Politics, April 1713–September 1715’, pp. 252–70 in William III and Louis XIV: Essays 1680–1720 by and for Mark A. Thomson, eds Ragnhild Hatton and J. S. Bromley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968); Brian W. Hill, Robert Harley: Speaker, Secretary of State, and Premier Minister (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988), 174–5; and Daniel Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Politics, 1710–14 (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1984), 182–93.

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❧  Year of Great Change at the Haymarket As in the political world, the year 1710 was a year of great change at the Haymarket theatre. The 1709–10 season began with the Haymarket producing operas and plays under Swiney’s management. Swiney had hired away from Drury Lane the veteran actors Robert Wilks, Colley Cibber, and Thomas Doggett. But the double company of singers and actors at one theatre would prove an unhappy combination; the actors resented their reduced income due to losing two acting nights a week as well as the extravagant salaries paid the singers. To boost income, Swiney resorted to the old expedient of using extra-theatrical entertainments to draw audiences, including a Dutch contortionist (commented on with horror by Steele in the Tatler) and appearances by the four North American Indian Kings.27 A sign of tension within the company was the refusal of the singers Nicolini, Valentini, and Margarita to sing as entr’acte entertainment for plays.28

1709–17 10 Season Although Drury Lane began the season ‘silenced’, the unemployed actors repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to perform. On 19 November 1709, a minor shareholder in Drury Lane, the Tory lawyer and MP William Collier – whom Colley Cibber called ‘a true liquorish Courtier’ 29 and who was a member of St John’s rakish cohort that included Vice Chamberlain Thomas Coke – was able to obtain a license from the Lord Chamberlain to resume producing plays at the theatre, where Rich was forbidden any role in management. Since Collier had no practical experience in theatre management, this grant of a license must be seen as a gift by virtue of his political and social connections. The company resumed producing plays on 23 November. Drury Lane was not allowed to produce operas – thus maintaining Swiney’s opera monopoly at the Haymarket. London now again had two companies producing plays. Collier hired as manager of Drury Lane another theatrical novice, the twenty-four-year-old Aaron Hill, recently returned from three years spent in Constantinople and travels in central Europe, and then two years in Italy as a tutor to a young nobleman on his Grand Tour.30 Hill, an entrepreneur and enthusi27

The Dutch posture-master Mr Higgins first appeared on 7 December 1709. For Steele’s comment: Tatler, no. 108 (17 December 1709). The Four Indian Kings appeared in April 1710; see Milhous and Hume, London Stage, 1660–1800, Part 2, 565–8.

28

Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke’s Theatrical Papers, 1706–1715 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), Interdocument (17 March 1710); and Joseph R. Roach, ‘Cavaliere Nicolini: London’s First Opera Star’, Educational Theatre Journal, 28 (1976), 189–205 (at p. 195–7).

29

Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, ed. B. R. S. Fone (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1968), 236.

30

On Hill’s literary and theatrical enterprises at the time: Christine Gerrard, Aaron Hill: Muses’ Projector, 1685–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 15–38. On Hill’s travels, Gerrard, Aaron Hill, 11–13; and on Hill in Italy, John Ingamells, A Dictionary

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astic promoter of literary projects (including founding the British Apollo), was trying to establish himself as a man of letters. He had recently published two poems that continued the vogue for militaristic Whig panegyrics that glorified British military successes.31 Despite what his biographer calls Hill’s being ‘thoroughly Whiggish in outlook, temperament, and political connections’, Collier must have hired Hill for his social and literary connections and spirit for innovation and theatrical reform.32 But the actors at Drury Lane resented Hill’s high-handed, imperious yet amateurish management. Towards the end of the season on 2 June 1710 the actors rioted and ejected Hill from the theatre; the Lord Chamberlain again silenced the theatre. Swiney began the 1709–10 opera season in November with revivals of Camilla, Thomyris, and Pyrrhus and Demetrius. With roles taken by the castratos Valentini and Nicolini as the vanguard of castratos to come, all three operas were bilingual productions. In that season, the absurdity of operas sung in two languages was abandoned: the new productions of Almahide (10 January 1710) and L’Idaspe fedele (23 March 1710) set the norm that serious opera on the London stage would be sung all in Italian for the remainder of the century and beyond.33 John Heidegger, who slowly was assuming a role as an opera impresario, explained that singing all in Italian was necessary because ‘the chief Actors [the Italian singers] would not be able to perform their parts in our Language’.34 He turned this to an advantage, though, for Italian, he claimed, ‘’Tis a Language with more Vowels, softer, and more adapted to Musick than any other’. To accommodate the audience, he provided a facing English translation of the Italian text in the printed word books. A little more than a year later, Addison, making fun of the audience’s attention span in the theatre, wrote of this decision in his overview of the history of Italian opera in London: ‘At length the Audience grew tir’d of understanding Half the Opera [the English portion],

of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701–1800 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), entry for William Wentworth, pp. 989–90 31

Hill’s Camillus (1707) repeats the usual clichés of Whig panegyric to celebrate the Whig general Charles Mordaunt, third Earl of Peterborough, as M. Furius Camillus, one of the great heros and generals of the Roman Republic; The Invasion: A Poem to the Queen (1708) celebrates Anne, the war, and impending victory over France.

32

For Hill’s politics, Gerrard, Aaron Hill, 9. On Hill’s ideas regarding the theatre and reforming of acting, Gerrard, Aaron Hill, 145–71; and Aaron Hill and William Popple, The Prompter: A Theatrical Paper (1734–1736), eds William W. Appleton and Kalman A. Burnim (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966).

33

The two intermede in Almahide were sung in English for initial productions by the popular actor-singers Thomas Doggett, Letitia Cross, and Mrs Lindsey from Drury Lane.

34

‘To the Reader’ prefixed to Almahide. The absurdities are also gleefully pointed out in W. R. Chetwood, A General History of the Stage, from Its Origin in Greece down to the Present Time (1749), 142.

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and therefore to ease themselves intirely of the Fatigue of Thinking, have so order’d it at Present that the whole Opera is perform’d in an unknown Tongue’.35

17 10–17 11 Season The 1709–10 season had ended with Drury Lane again silent, and shareholders were eager to have their theatre rented out to a theatre company. At the Haymarket, Swiney had a profitable but difficult season managing the veteran actors, whereas the star singers wanted their own company and theatre for opera. Uncertainty was in the air about the coming season. After a flurry of negotiations and litigations over the summer and autumn of 1710, Lord Chamberlain Shrewsbury sent Swiney and the actors back to Drury Lane (6 November 1710), thus uniting London’s acting companies under a license given to Swiney and the three actor-managers. Shrewsbury left the opera company intact at the Haymarket. This generic division of plays and operas between the theatres was the last major change to affect opera and drama and ensured the monopoly of Italian opera at the Haymarket. Shrewsbury sent Collier to the Haymarket as proprietor of the opera company. Collier in turn farmed out for £600 per year the right to manage the opera company to Hill, who assumed financial responsibility.36 As manager of the opera company, Hill could now realise his ambition to raise the production of opera in London to the level he likely saw in Venice and Rome. For two new operas, he raised a £3,000 subscription for ‘new Cloaths, for the Actors [singers], Rich Scenes, Machines and other Expensive Decorations’.37 To arouse the public’s expectations, he planted this ‘puff ’ in his British Apollo for 4 December 1710: Q. Gentlemen, There is a great Rumor goes about Town, that the Theater at the Hey-Market [sic], will be Beautified in an Extraordinary Manner, both as to Decorations and Machines. … A. We can assure you there is sufficient Grounds for the Report, not only from the Prospect we may conceive from the Ingenuity of the Present Master of that House, Aaron Hill, Esq; who is a Gentleman not only of as bright Parts as perhaps any in Europe, for such an Undertaking, but also has a generous Soul in proportion thereunto, and a sufficient Estate to go through such a Glorious Undertaking; … We understand the Stage already is extended every way to a great Degree, Preparatory for the other Performances design’d to be produced upon it. …We will not doubt, but our People of Quality and Gentry, will with the greatest Alacrity, encourage an Undertaking intended in so peculiar a manner, to advance their Delight and Satisfaction. An Undertaking not only so delightful, but also perfectly Innocent in its own Nature: Opera’s being free, even from those 35

Donald F. Bond, ed., Spectator, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), no. 18 (21 March 1711), 1:81.

36

Cibber, Apology, ed. Fone, 235.

37

As described in a subsequent deposition in the legal proceedings against Hill; see Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘The Haymarket Opera in 1711’, Early Music, 17 (1989), 523–37.

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Imputations of Immoralities cast upon Plays. … There needs nothing to be said in the applause of the Musical Part of an Opera, since they who are not delighted therewith, can have no Harmony in their Souls.38

The notice promised the theatre would be ‘the most Illustrious Theatre in Europe’ and foreign visitors would flock to see it. Hill had launched the 1710–11 season with revivals of L’Idaspe fedele and Pyrrhus and Demetrius. The two new productions he puffed were Etearco (10 January 1711) and Rinaldo (24 February 1711). Etearco had languished unproduced since Manchester had sent it from Vienna to Lord Halifax in July 1708. Rinaldo would be Handel’s first Italian opera for London and feature new scenery and descending machinery. Despite the promising outlook for opera under Hill, there was dissention among the singers. One observer noted that the quareling that they say has been amongst the opera performers (who have been togather by the Ears like Whig & Tory) has turnd this part of the world upside down, ’tis you must know a very great peice of ill breeding to commend Margrettas singing, Or any other who Nickolena does not think fit to recommend.39

❧  Handel’s Arrival in Britain For a composer of his new opera, Hill was beneficiary of a stroke of good fortune. After a journey to Italy, one wandering German musician, George Frideric Handel, arrived in London in October 1710 to try his fortune in one of Europe’s most lucrative cities for musicians.40 After several years of composing operas in Hamburg, in late 1706 Handel headed to Italy, the home of opera, where he spent the next four and one-half years.41 He wrote operas for Florence 38

The British Apollo: or, Curious Amusements for the Ingenious, vol. 3, no. 108 (1–4 December 1710). On the British Apollo’s involvement with music, Rosamond McGuiness, ‘Musical Provocation in Eighteenth-Century London: The “British Apollo”’, Music and Letters, 68 (1987), 333–42.

39

Ann Hadley, London, 21 December 1710, to Frances Thyn(n)e, Leweston, Dorsetshire; Archives of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle, vol. 22, f. 228r.

40

Handel’s date of arrival is uncertain. John Roberts advances the date of arrival to October; Roberts, ‘“At His First Coming to England”: Handel’s Habsburg Serenata’, pp. 31–61 in Händel’s Weg von Rom nach London, ed. Wolfgang Birtel (Mainz: Are Edition, 2012).

41

For Handel’s time in Italy, the sources are thin. Best documented are his two years in Rome and residence with his principal patron the Marquis Ruspoli, which are documented by Ursula Kirkendale. The final, revised version of her research is translated into Italian in Ursula Kirkendale, Georg Friedrich Händel, Francesco Maria Ruspoli e Roma, revised by Warren Kirkendale and translated by Giorgio Monari (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana, 2017); revised versions of the original English publications are Ursula Kirkendale, ‘Handel with Ruspoli: New Documents from the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, December 1706 to December 1708’, pp. 361–415 in Ursula

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and Venice and composed sacred and secular music for the most prominent musical patrons of Rome, Florence, and Naples. Although Italy was beset by invading Habsburg and Bourbon armies during the War of the Spanish Succession, Handel travelled freely there. He composed for patrons of both Habsburg and Bourbon allegiances, despite the fact that his epithet ‘il sassone’ implied his native allegiance would have been with the Habsburg Imperialists. After producing his opera Agrippina for Carnival 1709–10, Handel left Venice in late February or March 1710, having secured letters of introduction to the Imperial courts at Innsbruck and Düsseldorf. In Venice, during one of the Carnival seasons (likely 1709–10), he probably met Prince Ernst August, brother of the Elector of Hanover, and Baron Johann Adolf Kielmansegg, courtier and diplomat at the Hanoverian court.42 Either may have encouraged a visit to Hanover. Also at Venice, he no doubt would have met the English ambassador, the Earl of Manchester, who might have pointed out the potential of London for an aspiring opera composer.43 Handel headed north through Imperial territories and arrived at the Hanoverian court by 4 June 10. Upon his arrival at Hanover, the dowager Electress Sophia wrote glowing letters about the young musician to her granddaughter the Princess Royal Sophia Dorothea at the Prussian Court, and mentioned that he was already committed to compose an opera for Düsseldorf.44 Handel made such an impression, especially on the Electoral Prince and Princess (future King George II and Queen





Kirkendale and Warren Kirkendale, Music and Meaning: Studies in Music History and the Neighbouring Disciplines (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2007); Kirkendale, ‘The Ruspoli Documents on Handel’, pp. 287–350 in Music and Meaning; and Kirkendale, ‘The War of the Spanish Succession Reflected in Music by Antonio Caldara (Mantua, Milan, Vienna, Rome)’, pp. 269–85 in Music and Meaning. For general accounts: Donald Burrows, Handel, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 31–52; and Hunter, Lives of George Frideric Handel, 153–9 [for careful evaluation of the evidence]. For additional documentary sources: Donald Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe, and Anthony Hicks, eds, George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents, vol. 1, 1609–1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Best documented are the years of Handel’s residence in Rome; for useful surveys: Juliane Riepe, Händel vor dem Fernrohr: Die Italienreise (Beeskow, Germany: Ortus Musikverlag, 2013) [for a wide-ranging survey of the politics, art, and culture of Rome, pp. 385–409]; Sabine Ehrmann-Herfort and Mattias Schnetther, eds, Georg Friedrich Händel in Rom (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2010).

42

Documentation is lacking that Handel met Prince Ernst August, Baron Kielmansegg, or the Earl of Manchester. Hunter, Lives of George Frideric Handel, 156, 158, evaluates the evidence. John Mainwaring, in Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (1760), states he met Manchester in Venice; but no independent confirmation has been found, despite dedicated research.

43

Further on Manchester’s recruitment of Nicolini, see Thomas McGeary, ‘The Earl of Manchester and Opera in London’ (forthcoming).

44

Handel: Collected Documents, eds Burrows et al., 1:180–2. See also Burrows, Handel, 2nd ed., 52–3; Burrows, ‘Handel and Hanover’, pp. 35–59 in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti:

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Caroline), that he was appointed Kapellmeister to the Electoral Court on 16 June; he began drawing his salary that summer.45 Also in the Elector’s employ at the time was the soprano Elisabetta Pilotti Schiavonetti (Schiavonetto) and her husband, Giovanni, a cellist, harpsichordist, and composer.46 The Elector’s late father, Ernst August of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1629–98; Elector, 1692), had established an orchestra after the Lully model, mounted operas, and in 1687–9 built a magnificent opera theatre, described by an English traveller as ‘the best painted and the best contriv’d in all Europe’.47 The Hanoverian court maintained a palace and a number of boxes at several opera theatres in Venice through the 1720s, and on his last visit in 1686, Ernst August took along his son, the future George I.48 The late Elector had engaged Agostino Steffani in 1688 as Kapellmeister, whom Handel may have met in Rome, and who brought the court opera to its highpoint.49 Ernst August, whose goal was to elevate the duchy to an Imperial electorate, used opera to enhance the prestige of his court. Due to reduction in revenue upon his accession as Elector, his son shut down the court opera but retained a large ensemble of instrumentalists. As a result, at Hanover there was no opportunity for Handel’s opera ambitions, especially during the ongoing War of the Spanish Succession, and his known compositions for the Electoral court are limited to a small number of chamber duets and instrumental pieces. After entering service at Hanover, in August–September 1710 Handel left for Düsseldorf to follow through on his promise to write an opera. Düsseldorf was the seat of the Elector Palatine Johann Wilhelm, allied with Georg Ludwig and the Emperor in the war against France.50 The Elector, whom Steffani had previously served as statesman and ecclesiastic, was one of Germany’s great art Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), at 39; Hunter, Lives of George Frideric Handel, 159, 442. 45

Burrows, ‘Handel and Hanover’, 40.

46

Pilotti was employed in the household of Electoral Princess Caroline from 1705–16, even though she was on the stage in London; see Hellen Coffey, ‘Music for an Elector and King: The Hanover Hofkapelle during the Reigns of George I and II’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 61 (2015), 135–52; and Peggy Daub, ‘Queen Caroline of England’s Music Library’, pp. 131–47 in David Hunter, ed., Music Publishing and Collecting: Essays in Honor of Donald W. Krummel (Urbana, Ill.: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 1995), 136.

47

John Toland, An Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover (1705), 52–3.

48

Colin Timms, ‘George I’s Venetian Palace and Theatre Boxes in the 1720s’, pp. 95–130 in Music and Theatre: Essays in Honour of Winton Dean, ed. Nigel Fortune (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

49

Music and opera at the Hanoverian court: Colin Timms, Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and His Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 38–68; Heinrich Sievers, Hannoversche Musikgeschichte: Dokumente, Kritiken und Meinungen (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1979), 89–102, 107–60; and Coffey, ‘Music for an Elector and King’, 146.

50

Düsseldorf connections with the Emperor and Austria: see chapter 3 p. 116.

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lovers and patrons and maintained a large musical establishment and opera company. Archduke Charles and Marlborough had previously been entertained there with an opera in October 1703. The opportunity to compose an opera at Düsseldorf fell through, and since there was no possibility for opera at the Electoral court either, Handel looked to London. Despite the heroic myth of Handel as an independent artist who became a path-breaking musical entrepreneur, eschewing patronage and depending on public support for his oratorios, Handel, whose father had been a court physician, was always deferential and observant of his obligations to princely families and aristocratic patrons.51 So it is certain that after Handel expressed his desire to travel to London, the Elector granted him temporary leave. Allowing Handel to travel to London as an Electoral servant and representative may have played some role in mollifying the strained relations between Hanover and the Imperialists and Anne’s Tory Ministry, whose policies were increasingly favouring a separate peace with France and the possibility of the return of the Pretender.52 Since the Renaissance, princely courts had sent their illustrious musicians, artists, and persons of learning to visit other courts as a way to project and advertise their patronage of the arts and letters, and to reflect lustre upon themselves by the prestige of those they had been able to attach to their courts. Even if not on formal diplomatic missions, travelling artists could also carry back vital information about foreign courts.53 The visits of Handel, Pilotti, and her husband to London in late 1710 may be seen in light of this courtly tradition.54 As well, they may have been functioning in some way 51

On Handel’s relations with princely courts and patrons and sense of obligation to them, as well as his motives for travelling to London, Hunter, Lives of George Frideric Handel, esp. 147–72 and passim; also Hunter, ‘Royal Patronage of Handel in Britain: The Rewards of Pension and Office’, pp. 127–53 in Handel Studies: A Gedenkschrift for Howard Serwer, ed. Richard King (Hillsdale, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 2009). Handel’s success in Italy would have required a network of connections and reliance on patrons (and deference to them). Even in England, Handel depended on and received aristocratic and royal patronage, ultimately to the amount of £600 annually from the Crown.

52

On strained relations between Hanover and the Tory ministry of Oxford and Bolingbroke, Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), 91–4.

53

Artists and musicians as exchange between of courts: John Rosselli, ‘From Princely Service to the Open Market: Singers of Italian Opera and Their Patrons, 1600–1850’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 1 (1989), 1–32, esp. 3–12; and Rosselli, ‘The Castrati as a Professional Group and a Social Phenomenon, 1550–1850’, Acta Musicologica, 60 (1988), 143–79. Hunter, Lives of George Frideric Handel, 161–2, gives examples in the seventeenth centuries. For a paradigmatic case, see Suzanne G. Cusick, Francesca Caccini at the Medici Court: Music and the Circulation of Power (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press: 2009), 20–3.

54

Handel’s role an ‘advance cultural representative’ was first advanced in Burrows, ‘Handel and Hanover’, 45. The present account amplifies Burrows, making use of

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to fill the invitations to Hanover for a member of the Electoral family to be present in London – otherwise so opposed by the Queen. Their residence could also serve to accustom Britons to the coming presence of Hanoverians in London. It was as servants of the Elector that Handel, Pilotti, and her husband arrived in London for the 1710–11 opera season. For that season, Pilotti appeared in the revival of L’Idaspe fedele that opened the Haymarket’s new opera season on 22 November 1710, where she was identified as ‘in the Service of her Highness the Princess Sophia of Hanover’, and the new production of Etearco and subsequent ones.55 Her husband performed in the opera orchestra.56 Handel’s first contacts in London were no doubt courtesy visits to Electoral representatives and others he met in Italy. His documented contacts, though, in this first year were with members of the court and theatre management. Heidegger introduced Handel to Sir John Stanley, secretary to Lord Chamberlain Shrewsbury,57 and no doubt the Tory Vice Chamberlain Thomas Coke.

Habsburg Victory Serenata Handel’s first London commission came from Johann Wenzel, Count von Gallas (1669–1719), ambassador to Britain of both Austria and Archduke Charles in Spain.58 In 1709 the war in Spain, where the Allies and France were contesting to put their candidate on the Spanish throne, was not going well for the Allies. mentions of Handel and Pilotti in printed librettos and archival evidence relating Pilotti with the Hanoverian Court. Burrows mentions only Handel; but as shown here, Pilotti and her husband played similar roles. See also Burrows, ‘Bringing Europe to Britain: Handel’s First Decade in London’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 56 (2010), 65–77. An alternate narrative, in which the Elector more deliberately sent Handel as a source of information about the English court is proposed in Hunter, Lives of George Frideric Handel, 166–9. 55

Daily Courant, no. 2836 (24 November 1710), and subsequent issues. Also in the librettos of Il pastor fido (1712); Hercole (1712); and Ernelinda (1713). In Amadigi di Gaula (1715), she is identified as servant of the Princess of Wales.

56

Giovanni Schiavonetti (Schiavonetto) performed in the opera orchestra; he died in 1730. See Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, passim; Reinhard Strohm, ‘Italian Operisti North of the Alps, c. 1700–c. 1750’, pp. 1–59 in The EightheenthCentury Diaspora of Italian Music and Musicians, ed. Reihnard Strohm (Brepols: Turnhout, 2001), 79; and Nobert Dubowy, ‘Italienische Instrumentalisten in deutschen Hofkapellen’, pp. 61–120 in Eightheenth-Century Diaspora, at pp. 78–9.

57

David Hunter, ‘Bridging the Gap: The Patrons-in-Common of Purcell and Handel’, Early Music, 37 (2009), 621–32 (at p. 623). On Stanley: Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘A Letter to Sir John Stanley: A New Theatrical Document of 1712’, Theatre Notebook, 43 (1989), 71–80.

58

On Gallas’s mission in London: Elke Jarnut-Derbolav, Die Ősterreichische Gesandtschaft in London (1701–1711): Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Haager Allianz. Bonner Historische Forschungen, 37 (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid, 1972), 171–515 (arrival at Harwich, 17 February, at London 20 February); Onno Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart und die Succession des Hauses Hannover in Groß=Britannien und Irland im

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The Allied high point was the capture of Madrid on 27 June 1705, where Charles was proclaimed king, and when the Allies controlled the four major cities of Spain. But soon the Franco-Spanish forces advanced on the Allies, who retreated to Valencia. The decisive Franco-Spanish annihilation of the British, Dutch, and Portuguese forces at Almanza (25 April 1707) turned the tide against the Allies, and a series of offensives drove Charles back to Catalonia, the only secure territory he held, and where he held his court at Barcelona. After more Allied failures in 1708 and 1709, the tide momentarily turned in their favour the following summer in Aragon. After Franco-Spanish forces suffered defeat at Almenara (27 July 1710), they withdrew inland to Saragosa, where on 20 August the Allies won a decision victory, and the war seemed to be going in Charles’s favour. Philip and his court fled to Madrid and then Valladolid. The Allies controlled Aragon, took Toledo, and on 17/28 September Charles re-entered Madrid.59 News of the Saragosa victory reached London on 25 August (o.s.) 1710 and was greeted with jubilation, illuminations, and fireworks. The victory promised the peace sought by the Tory Ministry. To mark the victory, Queen Anne proclaimed a day of General Thanksgiving for 7 November. Following common practice at European courts for such events, on that evening Gallas hosted at his residence a grand celebration including an Italian serenata composed by Handel.60 The work is an allegorical conversation on Mount Olympus between Jove, Juno, Minerva, Astrea (England), and Mercury: the divinities celebrate Archduke Charles as a heroic figure who alone is King of Spain and pay tribute to the Emperor, Queen Anne, and the United Provinces as ‘glorious champions’ of liberty. The commanders in Spain likewise receive praise. Gallas had already been a figure on the London opera scene. Earlier that year, he was the recipient of Heidegger’s dedication of the pasticcio Almahide (10 January 1710). Since the opera contains the overture and four arias from Bononcini’s opera Turno Aricino (Vienna, 1707) and eleven arias from his Mario Zusammenhange der europäischen Angelegenheiten von 1660 bis 1714, 14 vols (Vienna: Wilhelm Braunmüller, 1875–88), 14:175–86 and passim; and Max Braubach, Prinz Eugen von Savoyen: Eine Biographie, 5 vols (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1963), vols 2 and 3 passim (on his dismissal, 3:72–6). 59

On the campaign and battle, see especially Arthur Parnell, The War of Succession in Spain during the Reign of Queen Anne, 1702–1711 (London: George Bell and Sons, 1888), 279–87; also in general, David Francis, The First Peninsular War 1702–1713 (London: E. Benn, 1975); Henry Kamen, The War of Succession in Spain, 1700–1715 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 10–24; Lord Mahon [Philip Henry, fifth Earl Stanhope], History of the War of the Succession in Spain, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1836) [useful for transcriptions of documents]; and John A. Lynn, The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714 (London: Longman, 1999), 266–360, passim. On the battle’s consequences, Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart, 13:537–46.

60

On the identification of the serenata: John H. Roberts, ‘“At His First Coming to England”: Handel’s Habsburg Serenata’, pp. 31–61 in Wolfgang Birtel, ed., Händel’s Weg von Rom nach London (Mainz: Are Edition, 2012), from which some details of the event are drawn.

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fuggitivo (Vienna, 1708), it is speculated Gallas may have been an intermediary in transmitting the scores to London, and the dedication recognises this role.61 Accepting a commission from an Imperialist patron was politically safe for Handel, in the sense of honouring a military victory celebrated by both the Queen and Emperor and no doubt the Elector as well. The introductions to officials in the Lord Chamberlain’s office no doubt led to Handel’s invitation to participate in a grand entertainment at court for the Queen’s birthday on 6 February 1711. A chronicler reported: Between One and Two in the Afternoon, was perform’d a fine Consort, being a Dialogue in Italian, in Her Majesty’s Praise, set to excellent Musick by the famous Mr Hendel, a Retainer to the Court of Hanover, in the Quality of Director of his Electoral Highness’s Chapple, and sung by Signior Cavaliew [sic] Nicolini Grimaldi, and the other Celebrated Voices of the Italian Opera: With which Her Majesty was extreamly well pleas’d.62

The nature of this birthday entertainment remains uncertain since there is no surviving cantata by Handel that might be the Italian dialogue.63 This printed 61



62



63

No direct evidence has been found for speculations about Gallas’s involvement in transmitting the scores. The printed Songs does not identify the composer of any arias. Lowell Lindgren speculates the connection in ‘A Bibliographic Scrutiny of Dramatic Works Set by Giovanni and His Brother Antonio Maria Bononcini’ (Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1972), 230–3. Lindgren surmises: ‘It would not be surprising if Gallas had scores of some works by GB [Giovanni Bononcini] in London. … [I]n 1710, he apparently provided the Haymarket with scores for various operas, from which arias were extracted for the pasticcio called ALMAHIDE’ (230). Heidegger’s dedication of the opera to Gallas is supposed to recognise his supplying the music for the opera. The fulsome dedication makes no mention of Gallas providing the music. Lindgren identifies five operas as sources of arias for Almahide. Gallas’s possible transmission of the opera scores becomes a certainty in Lindgren’s later article: ‘He [Gallas] then supplied the London opera house with two of Bononcini’s Viennese scores, which were utilized as bases for Almahide, dedicated to Gallas’; Lowell Lindgren, ‘Vienna, the “natural centro” for Giovanni Bononcini’ in Il teatro musicale italiano nel Sacro Romano Impero nei secoli XVIIe, eds Alberto Colanzi et al. (Como: AMIS, 1999), at pp. 370–1. Abel Boyer, The History of the Reign of Queen Anne, Digested into Annals … Year the Ninth ([for 1710–11] imprint 1711), 335; also in the 2nd ed., Quadriennium Annæ Postremum; or the Political State of Great Britain, 8 vols in 4 (1718), vols 1 and 2:156 (commonly called ‘The Political State’), reading ‘Cavalier’ and making other corrections. On the birthday celebrations, Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘Music in the Birthday Celebrations at Court in the reign of Queen Anne: A Documentary Calendar’, pp. 1–24 in A Handbook for Studies in 18th-Century English Music, 19 (2008). Donald Burrows, ‘Eternal Source for Speculation: Handel’s Birthday Ode for Queen Anne’, Handel Institute Newsletter, vol. 20, no. 2 (Autumn 2009), 5. The ‘Dialogue’ (as mentioned in the printed account) was a common term for theatre songs for two singers, commonly alternating sung in dialogue; it seems likely it was used for a cantata for two singers.

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account is probably garbled, and the court may have heard a cantata for two voices set after the Italian manner by John Eccles, and then later in the day, a programme supervised by Handel of Italian music from the repertoire of the opera, possibly including his own compositions, performed by musicians of the court or from the opera company.64

Rinaldo With an internationally experienced composer of opera now in London, Hill could realise his vision of an international-calibre opera in London with Handel’s Rinaldo, the first Italian opera especially composed for London since Li amori di Ergasto. In his dedication ‘To Her Most Sacred Majesty, the Queen’, Hill declared this ‘English Opera’ is a ‘Native of your Majesty’s Dominions’ and hoped to see it ‘more splendid than her Mother, the Italian’.65 In his Preface to the word book, Hill boasted he had spared ‘no Pains or Cost’ so operas in London could flourish in their ‘proper Grandeur’, such as he surely had seen on the Continent. He says he had striven to correct deficiencies in previous operas, which he claimed were not composed for English taste and singers and lack the ‘Machines and Decorations, which bestow so great a Beauty on their Appearance’. Hill drew up a scenario and wrote an English text drawing on the story of the crusaders’ conquest of Jerusalem and the episode of Rinaldo and Armida from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581). For the opera, he added new episodes, commissioned Giacomo Rossi, a poet residing in London, to translate his text, and commissioned Handel to compose the music. Rinaldo reached the stage on 24 February 1711.66 Rinaldo was also a projection of the Hanoverian court in London. Pilotti sang the role of Armida; in the word book, she is identified as ‘Virtuosa’ and

No documentation supports James Winn’s speculation that ‘the Italian singers who were about to present the premiere of Handel’s Rinaldo in 1711 gave the queen a preview of the music on her birthday’; ‘“Praise the Patroness of Arts’”, pp. 7–40 in Queen Anne and the Arts, ed. Cederic D. Reverend II (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 2015), 34. Rinaldo would have been in preparation for its premiere eighteen days later.

64

Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson, ‘Handel, Eccles and the Birthday Celebrations for Queen Anne in 1711’, Musical Times, 154 (2013), 77–84. On the event, see Peter Holman, ‘New Light on John Eccles (1670–1735): Handel’s Court Colleague’, Handel Institute Newsletter, 32 (2021), 5–8.

65

Dedication to Rinaldo (1711).

66

On the role of Hill and Rossi in the libretto, Curtis Price, ‘English Traditions in Handel’s Rinaldo’, pp. 120–37 in Handel Tercentenary Collection, eds Stanley Sadie and Anthony Hicks (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1987). Fuller on Rinaldo in Winton Dean and John M. Knapp, Handel’s Operas, 1704–1726, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Claims for Rinaldo’s success on the London stage, importance in Handel’s career, and place in opera history have been exaggerated; see David Hunter, ‘Bragging on Rinaldo: Ten Ways Writers Have Trumpeted Handel’s Coming to Britain’, Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, 10 (2004), 113–31, where numerous fictions are exposed.

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Handel as the ‘Maestro di Capella’ ‘di S. A. E. d’Hanover’.67 The printed songs, Arie dell’Opera di Rinaldo (1711), identify the composer as ‘Maestro di Capella di Sua Altezza Elettorale d’Hannover’. Many of the scenes of Rinaldo took advantage of sets and properties already at the theatre, but with the extensive new costumes, about five new sets, and new machinery, the production surpassed any that yet had been seen at the Haymarket.68 Some of the scenic effects as called for in the libretto were later remarked on in the Spectator papers. Steele, one never sympathetic to Italian opera, ridiculed Hill’s stagecraft for ‘having raised too great an Expectation in [the] printed Opera’, so it is possible not all the effects described by Hill were actually realised.69 Despite the attractions of Valentini, Nicolini, Pilotti, new scenic spectacle, puff in the British Apollo, and Handel’s music, income did not match expenses. Losses were so great that after two performances Collier fired Hill and assumed control of the theatre. Tradesmen complained to the Lord Chamberlain about their unpaid bills, and on 5 March the Lord Chamberlain ordered Collier to produce a full accounting of all money in hand and all that was owed to performers, servants, and tradesmen. It was determined that the debts incurred were owed by Hill, who found himself in Chancery Court defending himself against tradesmen for recovery of their debts.70

Opera and Political Partisanship With Tories controlling the Ministry and Commons after the 1710 General Election, partisanship was played out by the opera public through their own personal support of, or cabals against, Italian opera and singers. As a way of striking at the Tories and their Italian opera, in March–April 1711 some Whigs hit upon the idea of ridiculing Italian opera by means of Martin Powell’s puppet shows.71 The intent was to burlesque Italian opera by holding up a puppet show as a serious rival to it and making ridicule of Italian opera a Whig cause.

67

Payments to Pilotti for the 1710–11 season are given in Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, 164, 172–3.

68

On the new scenery, staging, and machinery required for Rinaldo, see the tables in Michael Burden, ‘Handel’s Rinaldo and London’s Opera House’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 62 (2016), 137–56. The extent of the new costuming and scenery are indicated in the documentation of the legal complaints against Hill; see Milhous and Hume, ‘Haymarket Opera in 1711’.

69

Spectator, no. 14 (16 March 1711), ed. Bond, 1:63–5.

70

On Hill’s dismissal and subsequent lawsuits, Milhous and Hume, ‘Haymarket Opera in 1711’, from which emerge the extraordinary expenses incurred by Hill.

71

Burlesquing or parodying opera was a favourite device of eighteenth-century French marionette theatres; see Frank Whiteman Lindsay, Dramatic Parody by Marionettes in Eighteenth Century Paris (New York: [King’s Crown Press] Columbia University Press, 1946), 46–120.

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Powell’s was the first and most successful of the fashionable London puppet shows.72 He is first known presenting shows in Bath in 1709.73 That winter he was performing at a theatre in St Martin’s Lane, for on 3 January 1710 the Tatler complains (in mock worry about its effects) that Punchinello has drawn away most of the women from the opera. The following year, Powell moved to a theatre in the Little Piazza at Covent Garden for a four-month season, when he began to advertise regularly. Steele could then report in the Spectator that the Haymarket opera and Powell’s theatre were ‘the Two leading Diversions of the Town’, with Whittington and His Cat set up against Rinaldo.74 The titles of Powell’s puppet plays for the 1710–11 season, as advertised along with those for the other theatres in the Whig-leaning Daily Courant, suggest how elaborate his puppet-theatre sets must have been (see Plate 6.1) and indicate the explicit burlesque of Italian opera: the History of Whitington, thrice Lord Mayor of London: With Variety of New Scenes in Imitation of the Italian Opera’s (23 February 1711) the Vertuous Wife, … And Variety of new Scenes in Imitation of the Italian Opera’s (8 March 1711) a new Opera call’d Heroick Love, with variety of Scenes, Pageantry and Machinery in imitation of the Italian Opera’s (12 March 1711) a new Opera, call’d, The British Inchanter; … with Seignioro Punchanello encountring a Lion in the Amphi-Theatre (26 March 1711) the History of King Bladud, the Founder of the Bath; with Curious Entertainments of Machinary, … with Seignior Punchanello Encountring and Killing a Lion in the Amphi-Theatre (23 April 1711) a new Opera, call’d Poor Robin’s Dream; or, The Vices of the Age Exposed … with a New Machine (30 April 1711) an Opera, call’d The Fairy Queen. With new Scenes, Machines, and several Dances by Farius (14 May 1711)

All but one of these shows are described as operas or imitations of the Italian opera and must have been accompanied by singing and miniature theatrical sets imitating those at the Haymarket. Plate 6.1 shows what purports to be Powell’s puppet theatre with a perspective set with side-wings, cloud-borders,

72

George Speaight, ‘“Powell from the Bath”: An Eighteenth-Century London Puppet Theatre’, pp. 38–51 in Studies in English Theatre History in Memory of Gabrielle Enthover (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1952); Speaight, The History of the English Puppet Theatre (London: George G. Harrap, 1955), 92–102; Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, eds, A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, …. in London, 1660–1800, 16 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973–93), 12:120–4.

73

References to him appear in Tatlers, nos. 16, 44, 45, 50, 51, and 77 (17 May 1709; 21 and 23 July; 4 and 6 August; and 6 October 1711). His final London season was 1713–14.

74

Spectator, no. 14 (16 March l711), ed. Bond, 1:63.

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Plate 6.1 Frontispiece of A Second Tale of a Tub (1715), showing Martin Powell standing in front of his puppet theatre with miniature set imitating those at the Haymarket theatre. Shown are the sliding side-wings (with cloud-borders) and back shutter-pair (with cloud-border).

and sliding back shutters.75 Burlesquing opera doubtless was one of Powell’s ways to amuse his audiences. 75

Powell’s puppet theatre is presumably shown in the frontispiece to Thomas Burnet and George Duckett, A Second Tale of a Tub, or the History of Robert [sic] Powel the Puppet-Show-Man (1715) (see plate 6.1); the Second Tale lists the titles of his shows (pp. 218–19), where the pig is described as of the ‘Italian Race’. The verisimilitude of Powell’s sets is remarked on in the Spectator, no. 14 (16 March 1711).

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The British Inchanter and The History of King Bladud pointedly parody Nicolini’s famous battle with the lion in L’Idaspe fedele (III.ii) still playing at the Haymarket; in the puppet shows, Punch battles a pig.76 In a Spectator in the month following Rinaldo’s debut, in a swipe against opera, Steele commended Powell’s puppet theatre for none of the lapses in verisimilitude and mechanical failures in Hill’s stage machinery. Steele indulged his (mock) disappointment in Hill’s production: The King of Jerusalem is obliged to come from the City on foot, instead of being drawn in a triumphant Chariot by white Horses, as my Opera-Book had promised me; and thus while I expected Armida’s Dragons should rush forward towards Argantes, I found the Hero was obliged to go to Armida, and hand her out of her Coach.77

The final – and not the least – point in Powell’s favour was ‘it is in our own Language’. Whether Powell intended the puppet shows to carry political overtones is uncertain; but evidence from a letter of 11 May 1711 from London to the diplomat John (later Viscount) Molesworth, then in Holland, suggests that some Whigs did use his puppet-shows for partisan benefit: As to Publick matters of deversion, I believe what I shall recount of a Poppott show will move at once your laughter and contempt of the persons concern’d in it, (I do not mean the moveing Engines: that only seem to Act and Speak), but the real Actors for it, the Wood and wire figures Appertain to the most ingenuous Mr: Powel whose aspireing never carried him beyond hope of Entertaining the idle and silly part of the Town and Country with the Creation of ye World78 or such a slight Drolery. But now that the Whigs have espousd him [Mr Powell] he has turnd his Ordinary Show into an Opera in redicule of Hydaspes in which Punch most Heroicaly kills a Pig and sings an Io pean79 in Italian Musick, this has Affronted Nicolino and he threatens to tread the Stage no more. But what will most surprise you is yt this folly prevaild so much, that it was Acted six weeks by subscription at a Crown a tickett. Mr Walpole and Mr Mackertny were Managers: received the Ticketts at the Door and suffered no Tory to mix with them in this Extraordinary pleasure.80 76

The libretto to L’Idaspes fedele describes the battle: ‘Hydaspes grasping the Lion’s Neck with his Arms, strangles him, when falling at last to the Ground, he sets his Foot on his Neck in sign of Victory’ (60).

77

Spectator, no. 14 (16 March 1711), ed. Bond, 1:64.

78

One of his puppet plays at Bath was The Creation of the World (Tatler, no. 16, 17 May 1709). Powell in Bath is noted in Tatler nos. 44, 45, and 50 (21 and 23 July, and 4 August 1709).

79

A Greek shout of triumph.

80

Identity of the writer is uncertain. Transcribed from original manuscript, now in a private collection. The letter was formerly among the papers of M. L. S. Clements, Ashfield Lodge, Cootehill, co. Cavan, and extracted in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. 8 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1913), 251; the date is provided in Spectator, ed. Bond, 1:64.

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Molesworth’s correspondent was exaggerating the Whig exclusiveness of the puppet shows. Attending at least one show (possibly not one of the six subscriptions) was a party of Tory ministers, rakes, and men about town, including Henry St John (Secretary of State), George Granville (Secretary at War), Thomas Coke (Vice Chamberlain), Sir John Stanley (Secretary to the Lord Chamberlain), and William Collier (manager of the Haymarket theatre) – perhaps to show the puppet show did not sting them at all. Sitting on St John’s lap was the young Mary Granville, future friend of Handel.81 The two managers were prominent Whigs. The Whig Lieutenant-General George Maccartney, a protégé of Marlborough but man of ill-repute, had been dismissed from the army the previous December. He was forced to sell his command at half value, as Jonathan Swift reported to Stella (11 December 1710), because while at camp ‘drinking Destruction to the present ministry, and dressing up a hat on a stick, and calling it Harley; then drinking a glass with one hand, and discharging a pistol with the other at the maukin [scarecrow], wishing it were Harley himself ’.82 He was a second to the Whig Lord Mohun in his notorious and scandalous duel with the Tory Scottish Peer the Duke of Hamilton.83 Robert Walpole was a rising Whig MP, described by Swift as ‘one of the Whigs chief speakers’, whose dismissal from his remaining ministerial post as Treasurer of the Navy had been announced on 2 January 1711.84 Because he was a dwarf or hunchbacked (see plate 6.1), Powell was a convenient vehicle for satiric and partisan attacks. In Tatler papers of summer 1709, Steele had invented a vicious quarrel with Powell as a ruse for a Whig attack on the High-Church Bishop Offspring Blackall in the latter’s controversy with the Low-Church Whig Benjamin Hoadly; and in a pamphlet Punch Turned Critick (1712), ‘Seignioro Punchanello’ is made to attack the rector of St Paul’s.85 The Holmes, British Politics, 24, misstates the entertainment as a ‘satirical opera by Porrel’. J. H. Plumb rightly notes it was ‘a burlesque of the Italian opera’ which ‘was worth Walpole’s time’ to irritate the Ministry; Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole: The Making of a Statesman (London: Cresset, 1956), 173. 81

On the theatre party, Hunter, ‘Bridging the Gap’, 623.

82

Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Williams, 11 December 1710, 1:120. The event at the army camp and retributions were widely commented upon; for example, letters from Peter Wentworth, from ca. 12 to 19 December 1710 in The Wentworth Papers 1705–1739, ed. James J. Cartwright (London: Wyman and Sons, 1883), 162–5; Examiner, no. 20/21 (21 December 1710); Medley, no. 12 (18 December 1710); and John Oldmixon, The Life and Posthumous Works of Arthur Maynwaring (1715), 189 (they were dismissed because ‘a Toast in their Merriment [was] disagreeable to the new Ministers’).

83

Maccartney, Lord Mohun’s second, was accused of killing Hamilton after the two participants had wounded each other; rather than stand trial, he fled to Europe; H. T. Dickinson, ‘The Mohun-Hamilton Duel: Personal Feud or Whig Plot?’ Durham University Journal, 57 (1965), 159–65.

84

Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Williams, 2:442.

85

Speaight, ‘Powell from the Bath’, 44; Tatler, nos. 44, 45, 50, and 51 (21 and 23 July, 4 and 6 August 1709).

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most ambitious political use of Powell is found in A Second Tale of a Tub, or the History of Robert [sic] Powel the Puppet-Show-Man (1715), a satiric attack in which the intrigues of the Tory minister Robert Harley and his colleagues are told under fictitious characters.86 Identifying Harley as a puppeteer is apt since he was regarded as a manipulative, secretive politician. Powell’s puppet-opera Poor Robin’s Dream had Robert (Robin) Harley as target. Steele was forced to give up the Tatler after 271 issues on 2 January 1711. In collaboration with Joseph Addison, he embarked on a new periodical, the Spectator, beginning on 1 March – just in time to include comments on Handel’s Rinaldo in its early issues. The Tatler, though, had been so popular that in the meantime counterfeit continuations in the same spirit soon appeared. One continuation, also using the persona of Isaac Bickerstaff, appeared under the editorship of the Whig poet William Harrison, a young man of letters and protégé of Swift.87 Its thirteenth issue (15–17 February 1711) took up Bickerstaff ’s old quarrels with his adversary the puppet master Martin Powell.88 This issue gently resumes the anti-Italian opera tone of the Tatler by printing a letter from Powell, asserting he has out-matched Bickerstaff in their quarrels. As evidence – and obviously taking a swipe at Hill’s expenses for the operas that season – he points out in grievance that he lately had the Honour to furnish the House in the Haymarket with half a Dozen of my Seas tack’d together, and a Sail of weather-beaten Ships, for the Opera of Etearco. This I had never mentioned, but that the Persons [Collier and Hill], concerned therein, have had the Assurance to make frequent Use of Four hundred Yards and upwards of my old Waves, without so much as quoting me in the Margin.89

The fictional letter is quite accurate, for the second scene of Etearco changes to two characters ‘a Ship-board, and in a Storm’. The remainder of the issue carries on a defence of Thomas Clayton and Catherine Tofts by printing a resolution of a club of ladies asserting (ironically) that ‘Mr. Waller never writ a good Song, That Mr. Clayton cannot set one, nor Mrs Tofts sing one’.

86

The Second Tale was published in late 1714 (imprint 1715) but begun in October of 1712. The authors were two young Whigs, Thomas Burnet and George Duckett; see The Letters of Thomas Burnet to George Duckett, 1712–1722, ed. David Nichol Smith (Oxford: The Roxburghe Club, 1914).

87

See Robert C. Elliott, ‘Swift’s “Little” Harrison, Poet and Continuator of the Tatler’, Studies in Philology, 46 (1949), 554–9; Tatler, ed. Bond, 205–6; Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Williams, 2:54. Valerie Rumbold disallows Swift and confirms Harrison as the likely author of the continuation; Valerie Rumbold, ed., Jonathan Swift, Parodies, Hoaxes, Mock Treatises, Polite Conversation, Directions to Servants and Other Works (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), App. G, pp. 581–601.

88

This is the third attempt at a Tatler continuation running from 13 January to 19 May 1711; Tatler, ed. Bond, 1:xxvi.

89

The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff Esq; collected reprint edn, 5 vols (1712), no. 13, 5:65–70 (at p. 67).

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While Powell’s puppet show mocked the Tory Italian opera, Whigs also suffered because of partisanship. The soprano Pilotti, associated with the Hanoverian court, fell victim of a Tory cabal to sabotage her performances because of her association with Hanover. The Countess of Bristol, of a staunch Whig family, explained to her husband on 26 April 1711 that I have been mightily sollicited for the Opera [L’Idaspe fedele on 28 April], for the Benefit of Pilota who has a great interest made against her, because she came from Hanover, and has so many Whigg friends, in which number she reckons me, and has been to see me, so I have taken a Ticket, and now promised to go, being out of hopes of being better entertain’d: yesterday I Din’d with Lady Dalkeith, and she and Lady Katt: sup’d with me, after the Opera [Rinaldo], which was as full as ever I saw it at a Subscription, but that was by way of party, in order to get it empty on saturday [the day of Pilotti’s benefit].90

A year later, the Countess wrote to her husband on 5 April 1712, ‘I venture to the Opera, because poor Pilota has great faction made against her’.91 That evening was a benefit of Antiochus for Pilotti.

❧  The Peace Campaign In Spain after the victory at Saragosa, the rest of the 1710 campaign did not go well for the Allies, and Saragosa set in train the misfortunes of Archduke Charles in Spain. With the collapse of the Gertruydenberg peace conference, Louis sent troops back into Spain, driving the Allies back towards Catalonia. The campaign ended with the Allied surrender at Brihuega (29 November/9 December 1710) and the humiliating capture of the British General James Stanhope. The defeat destroyed the Allies’ last chance of installing Charles on the Spanish throne and achieving ‘No Peace without Spain’. The following year, an unexpected event altered European politics and British attitudes towards the war and the peace. On 6/17 April 1711 Charles’s elder brother the Habsburg Emperor Joseph I died suddenly of smallpox at age of thirty-three. Archduke Charles, on whose behalf the Allies were fighting in Spain, became the sole male Habsburg heir. Charles left for Vienna to assume the Imperial crown, leaving his wife Elizabeth to govern. He travelled through Italy, detouring to Frankfurt where on 23 December 1712 he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Britain and Portugal concluded armistices at the end of 1712, and in the following year Elizabeth and the Imperial forces abandoned Spain, and Barcelona capitulated in September 1714.

90

Lady Hervey, 26 April 1711, to John, Lord Hervey; Suffolk Record Office, Bury St Edmunds. Hervey Papers 941/46/10, p. 152; also printed in Letter-Books of John Hervey, First Earl of Bristol, ed. Syndenham Henry Augustus Hervey (Wells: Ernest Jackson, 1894), no. 353, p. 301. The benefit was for Idaspes on 28 April 1711.

91

Lady Hervey, 5 April 1712, to John, Lord Hervey; Suffolk Record Office, Bury St Edmunds. Hervey Papers 941/46/10, p. 157; also printed Letter-Books of John Hervey, ed. Hervey, no. 382, p. 323.

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Now for Tories, a peace that left the Bourbon Philip on the Spanish throne seemed more desirable than Charles uniting Austria with Spain and her New World possessions, upsetting the European balance of power and raising the spectre of the recreation of the Austro-Spanish empire of Charles V.92 For Whigs, handing over Spain to Philip amounted to abandoning the war aim of ‘No Peace without Spain’. Tory determination to end the war, even if it meant abandoning the Allies, was clear in Swift’s Examiner, no. 38/39 (26 April 1711), which claimed that ‘No Peace without Spain’ now was only a ploy to prolong the war to the advantage of the Allies, Marlborough and the family, and the Whig financiers. The Jersey-Gaultier negotiations begun in July 1710 had been conducted in secret, and the preliminary articles were approved in cabinet in May 1711. The Ministry sent the Tory poet Matthew Prior to Paris to see if Louis would accept the Preliminaries. It was agreed to hold a congress at Utrecht in January 1712.93 Oxford’s propagandist Daniel Defoe prepared the public for peace with Reasons Why This Nation Ought to Put a Speedy End to This Expensive War (6 October 1711), arguing the original war aims had been won and the balance of power was safer if Austria did not possess Spain; continuing the war would benefit only the Allies, the Marlboroughs, and the monied men of the City. The Preliminaries, signed in London on 27 September 1711, were leaked to the public in the Whig Daily Courant on 13 October 1711.94 It was widely suspected (and probably true) they were revealed with the contrivance of Count Gallas.95 It was reported back to Vienna that in the coffeehouses, readers Whig and Tory alike were ‘astonished’ and ‘struck dumm’ at the betrayal of the Allies and the war aims, and stocks fell the following day.96 Whig opposition to the ‘shamefull’ peace solidified, and it was feared the Peace would lead to a Jacobite restoration when France was no longer an enemy.97 Maynwaring attacked 92

See H. T. Dickinson, ed., ‘The Letters of Henry St. John to the Earl of Orrery, 1709– 1711’, pp. 137–99 in Camden Fourth Series, vol. 14 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1975), at 138–9.

93

MacLachlan, ‘Road to Peace’; Hill, ‘Oxford, Bolingbroke, and the Peace of Utrecht’.

94

The Preliminaries were made public in the Daily Courant, no. 3121 (13 October 1711); and Flying Post, no. 3127 (13–16 October 1711). The ministerial Post Boy, no. 2563 (13–16 October 1711) defended the still undisclosed peace, which was to have ‘honourable and advantageous Terms’; see also nos. 2579 and 2580 (20–2 and 22–4 November).

95

On Gallas’s disclosure of the preliminary peace terms: Jarnut-Derbolav, Die Ősterreichische Gesandtschaft in London, 497–514; Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuarts, 14:175–86.

96

Hoffmann to Vienna (27 October 1711); quoted in Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuarts, 14:178 (‘Whigs wie Tories in den Kaffeehäusern waren darüber so erstaunt, daß sie stumm einander ansahen. Die Papiere an der Börse fielen um einige Percent’.) Gallas reported a similar reaction to the ‘scandalosen Präliminarien’ (Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuarts, 14:178 n3).

97

Public opposition to the Peace, Gregg, Protestant Succession, 130–8. On differing Tory and Whig views about the consequences of the Peace, Tony Claydon, ‘The “Balance

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the Preliminaries in several pamphlets.98 Arguing the war was going well, he claimed Spain must be won for Austria. ‘An ill Peace is worse than War itself ’, he asserted. Oxford tried to assure the dowager Electress Sophia and the Elector of the need for peace and that the treaty recognised the Hanoverian Succession.99 Anne, offended by Gallas’s strong representation of the Emperor’s opposition to the Peace and believing he had leaked the Preliminaries, banned him from Court on 26 October/6 November due to his ‘disagreeable’ conduct, and he departed London on 9 December 1711.100 Backed by the anger of the Dutch, Elector, and German allies, Whigs along with Baron Bothmar and Marlborough launched a hostile campaign against the Preliminaries. Opponents of the Preliminaries were heartened when the Elector protested them through a Memorial intended for the Queen presented by Bothmar to St John on 28 November (but never presented to the Queen).101 The Memorial, widely distributed in over one thousand copies and printed in the Whig Daily Courant on 5 December 1711, argued the Allies must remain united and Spain be won for the Habsburgs. Preparing the public for accepting the peace was Swift’s partisan and distorted appeal to British xenophobia The Conduct of the Allies, and of the Late Ministry, in Beginning and Carrying on the Present War (27 November 1711). of Power” in British Arguments over Peace, 1697–1713’, pp. 176–208 in New Worlds? Transformations in the Culture of International Relations Around the Peace of Utrecht, eds Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana (London: Routledge, 2017). 98

Pamphlets on the Preliminaries include: Arthur Maynwaring, Remarks upon the Present Negotiations of Peace begun between Britain and France (1711) [quoted, p. 35]. Replying to the Post Boy, no. 2563 (13–16 October 1711), Maynwaring also attacked the Preliminaries in Remarks on the Preliminary Articles Offer’d by the French King, in Order to Procure a General Peace. A Publish’d in the Daily Courant, and Postscript to the Post-Boy, of Octob. the 13th (1711), to which the Tory Abel Roper replied in Cursory but Curious Observations …. upon a Late Famous Pamphlet (1711).

99

Oxford’s letters of 5 October 1711 to Sophia and the Elector; in James Macpherson, ed., Original Papers: Containing the Secret History of Great Britain, from the Restoration, to the Accession of the House of Hanover, 2 vols (1775), 2:255–6. On Gallas’s denial at Court: Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart, 14:175–86; JarnutDerbolav, Die Ősterreichische Gesandtschaft in London, 502–9; and Abel Boyer, ‘A true account of Count Gallas being forbid the Court’ [marginal note], The History of the Reign of Queen Anne ... Year the Tenth [for 1711–12], (1712), 252–3, who noted that ‘no minister … had a better and fairer Character; or was more esteem’d and beloved’; moreover, he was extolled by the tradesmen because he regularly paid his bills; also in 2nd ed., Boyer, Quadriennium Annæ Postremum, vols 1 and 2: 596–8.

100

101



Text of Baron Bothmar’s memorial (dated 28 November/9 December 1711), published as Memorial Delivered to One of Her Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, by His Excellency the Baron de Bothmar Envoy Extraordinary from His Electoral Highness of Hannover. Also printed in the Daily Courant, no. 3166 (5 December 1711). On the episode and its impact, Boyer, History of the Reign of Queen Anne ... Year the Tenth [1711–12], 270–6 [second edn, Quadriennium Annæ postremum, vols 5 and 6:661–6]; Foot, Pen and the Sword, 315–16; and Gregg, Protestant Succession, 133–8.

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The most successful political pamphlet of the era, it was timed for the opening of Parliament and in two months sold over eleven thousand copies.102 Swift violently attacks the Dutch and discredits the past Whig Ministry; only by Marlborough’s removal could the war be ended. England, Swift claimed, was suffering high taxes in a war benefitting the Allies and being prolonged to the benefit of London’s monied men. Opening Parliament on 7 December 1711, the Queen made public her determination for peace. The Ministry’s peace treaty was threatened when it lost a vote in the Whig-dominated Lords on the issue of Nottingham’s motion of ‘No Peace without Spain’ on 7 December 1711.103 Nottingham had been won over by Whig support of an Occasional Conformity bill. To ensure the Lords’ support for the treaty, Anne created twelve new peers on 1 January 1712. No longer needed for the war effort, she removed Marlborough as Captain-General on 29 December 1711 and further disgraced him by dismissing him from all other offices two days later. In response to Swift and the dismissal of Marlborough, Steele replied with The Englishman’s Thanks to the Duke of Marlborough (January 1712). Prince Eugene returned to London in January to plead the Emperor’s case for continuation of the war.104 In the following month, the Queen continued a sweep of Whigs, removing the Duke of Somerset and Marlborough’s daughters Lady Ryalton and Countess of Sunderland from court posts. The Tories executed a successful Parliamentary offensive against the Whigs in January 1712, indicting Marlborough and Walpole for peculation. On 17 January, Walpole was convicted of trumped-up charges of ‘notorious corruption’, expelled from the Commons, and sent to the Tower for the remainder of the session. Marlborough, although not prosecuted, was further disgraced when the Queen suspended work on Blenheim Palace on 1 June. The sudden death of the aged 102

Jonathan Swift, English Political Writings, 1711–1714: The Conduct of the Allies and Other Works, eds Bertrand A. Goldgar and Ian Gadd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1–9, 341–79. See also Foot, Pen and Sword, 293–306; Downie, Jonathan Swift, Political Writer, 157–60; and Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 2:481–501.

103

The Lords voted ‘That no Peace can be safe or honourable to Great Britain or Europe, if Spain and The West-Indies are to be allotted to any Branch of the House of Bourbon’; Journals of the House of Lords, 19 (1711), 339. Whigs gained Nottingham’s defection from the ministry by supporting a watered-down version of an Occasional Conformity bill. On the proposal in the Commons, G. S. Holmes, ‘The Commons’ Division on “No Peace without Spain”, 7 December 1711’, Historical Research, 33 (1960), 223–4.

104

The (supposed) incognito visit can be followed in Narcissus Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 6 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1857), 6:711–23. The ‘opera’ Marlborough and Eugene attended on 7 January (Luttrell, 6:713) was likely The Tempest; or the Enchanted Island, as altered by D’Avenant and Dryden; advertised as ‘With new Scenes, Machines, and all the Original Decoration to the Play’; Emmettt L. Avery, ed., The London Stage, 1660–1800, part 2, 1700–1729, 2 vols (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1960), 1:266.

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and worn-out Lord Treasurer Godolphin on 15 September 1712 at St Albans, a Marlborough country house, so broke Marlborough’s spirit that he wrote to Nottingham, ‘I can so little bear this unexpect’d blow that I am quite determin’d to go out of England, which I have had thoughts of doing for some time’.105 To avoid being subject to public persecution, he exiled himself to the Continent on 30 November 1712, followed by Sarah in February.106 In March–July 1712, the Tory John Arbuthnot, the Queen’s favourite physician and friend of Handel, published his series of five John Bull pamphlets, constituting an extended Tory satirical allegory on Whiggism and the war against France.107 Peace negotiations including the Allies opened at Utrecht on 29 January 1712, but it was assumed these were a sham since Britain and France had already secretly negotiated a peace. Marlborough’s previous summer campaign brought him close to an invasion of France; but not wanting to jeopardise the Peace, St John issued the infamous ‘Restraining Orders’ on 10/21 May 1712 to the Duke of Ormonde, Marlborough’s successor, forbidding any engagement with the enemy.108 The Imperialists chose to fight on. At his insistence, St John was raised to the peerage on 7 July 1712, not to an earldom as he desired but as Viscount Bolingbroke. Britain’s betrayal of its Allies was affirmed when an armistice with France was proclaimed on 8 August 1712. 111 The consequences of the great change at the Haymarket were far-reaching. With the 1710–11 season, the opera company, now managed by a court Tory political appointee, was producing operas sung in Italian by casts of primarily Italian singers, with Italian librettos set by Italian composers, and from which the local librettists, composers, and singers were largely excluded. The casts of Etearco and Rinaldo included only one native singer, Mr Lawrence, and that in only minor roles. In March 1711, one ‘R. T.’ could write in to ‘Mr Spectator’, in a letter that was not published at the time: The opera-house is wholly in the hands of foreigners; and the house in drury-lane is not suffered to have any musical entertainments; so that our English

105

Marlborough, 15 September 1712, St Albans, to Nottingham; Record Office of Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, Wigston Magna, Leicester, GD7, bundle 24, 1712.

106

Edward Gregg, ‘Marlborough in Exile, 1712–1714’, Historical Journal, 15 (1972), 593–618. For the range of satire and polemic against Marlborough, Robert D. Horn, Marlborough: A Survey: Panegyrics, Satire, and Biographical Writings, 1688–1799 (Folkestone, Kent: Dawson, 1975).

107

John Arbuthnot, The History of John Bull, eds Alan W. Bower and Robert A. Erickson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976).

108

Bolingbroke, 10/21 May 1712, London, to Ormonde; in Bolingbroke, Letters and Correspondence, Public and Private, ed. Gilbert Parke, 4 vols (1798), 2:319–21.

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masters are totally excluded from all opportunities of shewing themselves; and we are compelled to have Italian musick or none.109

Three months later, in June 1711, Thomas Clayton, forced to produce English musical works at his house in York Buildings, likewise complained, ‘at present the English Musick is wholly lost, and the Opera perform’d only in the Italian Language’.110 His colleague John Hughes observed in May 1712, ‘It is some Years that the Musick of our Theatre has been almost wholly supply’d by [Italians]’.111 And Daniel Purcell recalled on 24 February 1713 that ‘the Introducing Italian Opera’s upon the English Stage, has so altered the Taste of this Nation, as to Musick, that scarce any thing, but what bears some Resemblance of the Italian Style and Manner, is received with Favour or heard with Patience’.112 Opera in London was now perceived as an Italian institution, one that is some ways had been politicised along Tory-Whig lines. It is this great change of 1710 that is behind Addison’s quite accurate lament in the Spectator in March 1711 that ‘our English Musick is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its stead’.113

109

Unpublished letter to the Spectator, after March 1711, in Original and Genuine Letters Sent to the Tatler and Spectator, ed. Charles Lillie, 2 vols (1725), 1:233.

110

Thomas Clayton, Preface to The Passion of Sappho and Feast of Alexander (1711).

111

Preface, Calypso and Telemachus, v.

112

Daniel Purcell, Preface to Six Cantatas ... Compos’d (after the Italian Manner (February 1713).

113

Spectator, no. 18 (21 March 1711), ed. Bond, 1:82.

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Chapter 7

Whigs Confront Opera: Britain at a Machiavellian Moment

W

higs played a prominent role in building the Haymarket theatre and promoting all-sung Italian-style opera. This advocacy might seem at odds with the well-known criticism of, if not opposition to, Italian opera by the Whigs Richard Steele, John Dennis, and Joseph Addison, whose views have often been taken to characterise the English response to opera at large, as if they presented a univocal view about opera. This impression can be corrected by bringing up several points. The many Whigs who promoted and patronised opera left little or no testimony in favour of opera to set against the written criticisms of Steele, Dennis, and Addison. These critics in fact held divergent views about opera, and little effort has been made to distinguish them (especially between Steele and Addison). Importantly there was no unitary ‘Italian opera’ the critics were responding to; they were not reacting to the same stage experience. In the years 1705 to 1710, what were called ‘operas’ encompassed the English dramatic opera, masques, and works sung in English, in English and Italian, or all in Italian. Placing each of these critics in the context of what operas they were responding to and considering their own personal aptitudes and experience with opera clarifies the significance of each writer’s critique. Rather than the intemperate responses some writings have been characterised as, a careful consideration shows there were serious moral, aesthetic, or political bases behind their views. This chapter examines the responses of three Whig writers: Richard Steele, John Dennis, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury. All engage Italian-style opera at the level of cultural politics: what sort of opera should appear on the English stage? What effect does opera have on British Publick Spirit? The critiques by Steele and Dennis, rather than mere irrational, xenophobic attacks, have a foundation in a venerable classical tradition, which Hans Baron called ‘civic humanism’,1 but for this period might better be called,

1

The term civic humanism was coined by Hans Baron (see note 3) for the merging of Roman republicanism and humanism arising in Florence in the early decades of the 1400s, as the attempt to reform and revitalise the life of Italian city-states according to ancient models. Drawing on Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, Virgil, and above all Cicero, civic humanism ‘aims at the reform of political communities generally by improving the moral behaviour of their ruling elites. It does this by exposing them to “good letters”, to the arts worthy of a free man, the liberal arts, the arts which make men noble, wise

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following Blair Worden, ‘classical republicanism’.2 The more thoughtful consideration of opera by the Earl of Shaftesbury also lies in this classical republican tradition. Addison’s comments on Italian opera, taken up in the following chapter, both gently satirizing some risible features and seriously considering aesthetic issues of opera, can be seen as an attempt to correct opera as part of the Whig cultural programme of ‘politeness’. Nonetheless, while there was divergence in the points of view and response of these writers to opera, there was some agreement about what sort of musical-dramatic entertainment was suited for the London stage,

❧  Classical Republican Tradition Recovery of the Roman classical republican tradition was the central achievements of the Italian Renaissance.3 Early quattrocento humanists, following the lead of Petrarch, discovered the canonical Greek and Roman rhetoricians

and good’; James Hankins, ‘The “Baron Thesis” after Forty Years and Some Recent Studies of Leonardo Bruni’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 56 (1995), 309–38 (at p. 330). 2

As suggested by Blair Worden, ‘Classical Republicanism and the Puritan Revolution’, pp. 182–200 in History and Imagination: Essays in Honor of H. R. Trevor-Roper, eds Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Valerie Pearl, and Blair Worden (London: Holmes and Meier, 1982). Quentin Skinner proposes to refer to ‘a neo-roman’ theory; Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), ix, 11 n31; 54 n174; 55 n176.

3

The classic discussions of the origins of civic humanist and classical republican thought are: Hans Baron, Humanistic and Political Literature in Venice and Florence at the Beginning of the Quattrocento (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955); Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in the Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966); Baron, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism: Essays on the Transition from Medieval to Modern Thought, 2 vols (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); Baron, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni: Studies in Humanistic and Political Literature (Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press, 1968). For concise overviews: J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975); Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 1–48, 152–89; Skinner, ‘Political Philosophy’, pp. 389–452 in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, eds Charles B. Schmitt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), esp. 408–2; and Anthony Grafton, ‘Humanism and Political Theory’, pp. 9–29, and Nicolai Rubinstein, ‘Italian Political Thought, 1450–1530’, pp. 30–65, in The Cambridge History of Political Thought, 1450–1700, ed. Mark Goldie with J. H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Baron’s view has been revised and qualified: Jerrold E. Seigel, ‘“Civic Humanism” or Ciceronian Rhetoric? The Culture of Petrarch and Bruni’, Past and Present, no. 34 (July 1966), 3–48; with reply by Baron, ‘Leonardo Bruni: “Professional Rhetorician” or “Civic Humanist”?’ Past and Present, no. 36 (April 1967), 21–37; and Hankins, ‘The “Baron Thesis” after Forty Years’.





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and relied on them to create a new way of historical thinking that turned away from an unusable medieval tradition. Looking to restore classical values, the humanists found new ideas about citizenship, private morality, liberty, and republican government in the model of the Roman Republic and the works of classical authors. This tradition informed European thought through the eighteenth century, not only about politics and history but also for the arts. The rhetoric of this tradition stressed the role of art to encourage virtue in the citizen (what the English called Publick Spirit) and hence for the health and survival of the republic. The chief concern of the classical republican tradition was to preserve the republic: to prevent (what was often thought) the inevitable decay, decline, and fall of the republic. A republic was inherently fragile and subject to degeneration into tyranny, oligarchy, or mob rule; its survival required preservation of the personal virtue of the citizen against the forces of corruption and luxury; the citizen must put the good of the state above his own self-interest. In the classical view, the well-being of the state – and for Whigs especially this meant preservation of liberty and property, the Protestant church, and a constitutional monarchy – is dependent on the moral character of the citizen. The citizen had to be independent, and this usually meant he was a free property holder, and even better, a country farmer. Only where property guaranteed a stable modicum of wealth and well-being would the citizen have independence from the ruler, court, and patron and so have the leisure and disinterestedness to put the republic’s good above his own needs. In times of rampant urban corruption, the citizen could ideally retire to his rural estate to cultivate his private virtues. Celebration of this rural ideal is a recurring theme in Horatian and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British verse. From this standpoint, the question the classical republican would ask was, ‘What is the effect of all-sung, Italian-style opera on the political well-being of the state?’ It is this concern that lies behind the invective against opera by Steele and Dennis and the more principled reflections by the Earl of Shaftesbury. The tenets of classical republicanism are found in diverse Greek and Roman classical texts that were part of many Britons’ formal education. But the principles would also have been absorbed through the general cultural literacy of the day, from the classics in translation and histories of the ancient world, to topical print media such as the Tatler, Spectator, and political pamphlets; as well, they were embodied in the moral lessons of drama, poetry, operas, and paintings. The historical record, and especially the canonical texts of Titus Livy and Cornelius Tacitus, demonstrated that the actions of individual men and women made states rise to greatness or fall into tyranny. Hence it is those ancient worthy heroes possessed of virtue or Publick Spirit who are portrayed in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings, drama, or operas.4 4

Leonardo Bruni, De militia (1420) lists those good men who protected the citizenry and defended the republic: Camillus, Valerius Publicola, Fabius Maximus, Marcus Attilius Regulus, Publius Scipio, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Metellus, Gaius Marius, and Servilius Hahala. Jonathan Swift compiled a list (containing both ancients and

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The shorthand for the moral qualities necessary for the citizen was the term virtus.5 Classical republicanism was a secular vocabulary of concepts linked in some way to virtue: liberty, corruption, luxury, fortune, the citizen, and the republic. The tradition saw history as the eternal conflict between virtue and corruption, and between liberty and tyranny (or slavery). At each moment of its history, the republic struggled to preserve its virtue and liberty against corruption. Hence, a citizen’s primary duty is cultivation and exercise of virtue. The greatest threat to the republic is the citizen who lacks virtue and imperils the state by placing his own pleasures, desires, and self-interest above the good of the state. For Dennis, it was not Caesar who destroyed Roman liberties, ‘but the whole Body of the Patricians, by their Ambition, their Avarice, and their Luxury’.6 A citizen’s moral corruption could be more insidious than external threats because it slowly, quietly, and insidiously destroyed the state from within. The greatest sappers of virtue were luxury and effeminacy; these corrupted both the citizen personally and the state as a whole.7 Luxury was incom-



5



moderns), ‘Of those who have made great Figures in some particular Action or Circumstance of their Lives’, in The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1962), 5:83–4. Other ancient heroes, many appearing in opera, are: Leonidas (who led the small band of Spartans against the invading Persians), Cato of Utica (who chose suicide over life under the tyrant Caesar), Scipio Africanus Major (who practiced self-mastery and gave freedom to a conquered female slave), Lucius Brutus (who denounced and executed his own sons because they plotted to restore the tyrant Tarquin), Regulus (who voluntarily returned to Carthage, as promised, to face certain death by gruesome torture after failing in his peace embassy to Rome), Mucius Scaevola (who burned his hand to demonstrate the fortitude of the Romans), Martius Curtius (who rode his horse into a chasm to fulfil a prophecy and save Rome), Alexander the Great (who extended mercy to the family of Darius), and Cincinnatus (who refused public honours after a military triumph and returned to his humble farm). The canonical discussion of the virtues necessary for the citizen was Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties), esp. 1.5–29, the West’s most influential guide to civic behaviour. On the Roman concept, Catalina Balmaceda, Virtus Romana: Politics and Morality in the Roman Historians (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2017); on the medieval and Christian tradition of the virtues, see Rosemond Tuve, ‘Notes on the Virtues and Vices’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 26 (1963), 264–303. Cicero ranks one’s duties from country, parents, children, family, to kinsmen. See also Cicero, De Republica, 6.13 On the importance of Cicero: Hans Baron, ‘The Memory of Cicero’s Roman Civic Spirit in the Medieval Centuries and in the Florentine Renaissance’, pp. 1:94–133 in In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism; Baron, ‘Cicero and the Roman Civic Spirit in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 22 (1938), 72–97.

6

John Dennis, Julius Caæsar Acquitted, and His Murderers Condemn’d (1722), 10.

7

On luxury and effeminacy in antiquity and their civic effects, John Sekora, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins

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patible with the simpler, sterner days of the citizen-farmer-soldier of the Roman Republic, and its introduction was said to lead to the collapse of the Republic. The argument went that wealth bred indulgence in sensual pleasures (voluptates) and led men to satisfy their private desires and appetites; in pursuit of luxury, men abandon frugality and their ability to keep their needs within bounds of moderation. Luxury elevates private interest over civic responsibility and destroys civic virtue. In short, men become slaves to luxury; luxury destroys virtue.8 The most dreaded effect of luxury was effeminacy in males. ‘What is more vile or disgraceful’, Cicero could ask, ‘than a womanish man?’9 The effeminate soul, taught the younger Seneca, became a slave to uncontrolled emotions.10 The classic fear was that effeminacy (which could also be excessive love of women) distracts and prevents the male citizen from fulfilling his public obligations – and especially military service – to the state. The elder Seneca pointed to the effect of luxury on Rome’s youth: Look at our young men: … Libidinous delight in song and dance transfixes these effeminates [effeminatos]. Braiding the hair, refining the voice till it is as caressing as a woman’s, competing in bodily softness with women, beautifying themselves with filthy fineries – this is the pattern our youths set themselves. Which of your contemporaries – quite apart from his talent and diligence – is sufficiently a man?11

Effeminacy in a citizen was dangerous because it rendered soldiers, who should be possessed of manly virtue, soft and unfit to endure the rigors of the campaign and to prevail in combat. Essential for achieving perfection of the republic is liberty, which in turn was essential for the arts and sciences to flourish. Flourishing arts and sciences University Press, 1977), 23–42; and Christopher J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 45–86. On the effects of luxury on health, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistulae Morales, 78, 22–5; and Marcus Annaeus Seneca, Controversiae 1. Pref. 7–8. Machiavelli, Discorsi, I.6.4 8

On man as slave to luxury, Cicero, Tusculanarum Disputationum, 3.8; Cicero, De Officiis, 1.30.106, 2.10.37; Tacitus, Historiarum, 2.69.

9

Tusculanarum Disputationum, 3.17.36 (Quid est autem nequius aut turpius effeminato viro?). J. E. King, trans., Cicero, Tusculan Disputations. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950).

10

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistulae Morales, 114.24. The letter argues the state of literary style as a sign of character.

11

Marcus Annaeus Seneca, Controversiae 1. Pref. 7–8 (ecce ingenia desidiosae iuventutis ... cantandi saltandique obscena studia effeminatos tenent, [et] capillum frangere et ad muliebres blanditias extenuare vocem, mollitia corporis certare cum feminis et inmundissimis se excolere munditiis nostrorum adulescentium specimen est. Quis aequalium vestrorum quid dicam satis ingeniosus, satis studiosus, immo quis satis vir est?). M. Winterbottom, trans., The Elder Seneca. Declamations, 2 vols, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974).

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were a sign of a virtuous and healthy republic.12 Conversely, debased arts and artists were signs of a republic in danger. The historian Sallust claimed Rome achieved greatness with the expulsion in 510 bc of the Tarquins, the last of her kings.13 It was a commonplace that with liberty came Rome’s Golden Age, the days of the simple citizen-farmer-soldier. Sallust praised Rome before the fall of Carthage in 146 bc, when good morals were cultivated, frugality ruled in the home, and there was little or no avarice; then, the Romans found it easy to bear ‘hardship, danger, anxiety, and adversity’.14 Such poverty during the Republic was necessary for a free way of life.15 One Briton, Henry Neville, in 1680 could proclaim that ‘if they had kept their poverty, they [the Romans] had kept their government and their virtue too’.16 Reflecting on their own past, Roman historians writing during the Empire were pessimistic about the survival of republics. Historians conceived states following repeating patterns of rise to greatness, corruption, decline, and fall.17 Every schoolboy knew that the decline and fall of the Republic was due less to conquest from abroad than to internal corruption by wealth and luxury. Roman historians were assiduous in chronicling the introduction of corruption by their forbearers. Roman historians thought they could pinpoint the introduction of luxury and corruption. For some, that point was the return of the army in 187 bc following the conquest of Asia in 189 bc.18 For others, the crisis was due to contact with Greek dissoluteness, occurring in the years after 168 bc when Rome achieved universal domination with the fall of Macedonia and transported its riches to Rome.19 For many, the decisive point was 146 bc, when – freed from the Carthaginian threat at the end of the Third Punic War – peace brought the 12

M. M. Goldsmith provides a useful summary in ‘Liberty, Luxury and the Pursuit of Happiness’, pp. 225–51 in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony S. Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 226.

13

Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 7; Livy, 1.17, 46; 2.1, 9, 15.

14

(labores, pericula, dubias atque asperas); Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 9–10. See also Lucius Annaeus Florus, Epitomae, esp. 1.31.15; 1.34.19; 1.35.20; and 1.47.12.

15

Machiavelli, Discorsi, 3:25.1.

16

Henry Neville, Plato Redivivus (Second Dialogue), in Two English Republican Tracts. Plato Redivivus … by Henry Neville, An Essay Upon the Constitution … by Walter Moyle, ed. Caroline Robbins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 97. The argument for English frugality was made in George MacKenzie, The Moral History of Frugality. With Its Opposite Vice, Covetousness and Niggardliness, Prodigality, and Luxury (1691).

17

On history in cycles: Plato, Republic, 8; Plato, Laws, 3; Aristotle, Politics, 5; and Polybius, Histories, 6.3–10, 57.

18

Pliny, Naturalis Historia, 33.53; Livy, 39.6.

19

Polybius, Histories 31.25. On the effects of luxury: Plutarch, Marcus Cato (Life of Cato) 18. On Cato’s attitude to luxury, H. H. Scullard, Roman Politics 220–150 B.C., 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), 153–76; and Alan E. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 78–102.

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rise of corruption and the breakdown of virtue.20 Disagree they might on the beginning of the Republic’s decline, but they agreed in seeing internal degeneration occurring at specific moments due to external forces that corrupted virtue. Summary expressions of the mythology of the perfection of the Republic, the effects of luxury and effeminacy, and the decline of Rome saturate seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British writings. A typical example occurs in a text widely known in Britain, the Abbé Vertot’s Histoire des révolutions arrivées dans le gouvernement de la républic romaine (1719).21 The early Romans, Vertot reminded his readers, thought that abhorrence of luxury and adherence to the poverty of their ancestors was ‘the surest Guardian of Liberty’. In the Republic’s youth, all the Romans were husbandmen and soldiers: By means of this voluntary Poverty, and a laborious Life, the Republic bred in her Bosom no men but what were strong, robust, full of Valour, and who expecting nothing from one another, did by a mutual Independence, preserve the Liberty of their Country. … But after the Destruction of that Rival of Rome, … Luxury and the Love of Riches came into Rome with the Treasures of the conquered Provinces; and that Poverty and Temperance, which had form’d so many great Captains, fell into contempt.

Vertot summarised the effects of the luxury caused by wealth: After the Conquest of Asia, they began to introduce Women-Singers and Dancers into their Entertainments. The young Men chose Them for the Objects of their foolish Passion. They curled their Hair after Their Manner, affected to imitate the very Sound of their Voice, and their lascivious Gate [sic], and excell’d those infamous Women in nothing but Vice and Effeminacy. … But after the Destruction of that Rival of Rome [Carthage], the Romans, invincible abroad, sunk beneath the Weight of their own Greatness.22

20

Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 10; Bellum Jugurthinum, 41; Velleius Paterculus, Historiae Romanae 2.1; Pliny, Naturalis Historiae, 33.53.

21

Widely known in Britain through translation; citing here Abbé Vertot, The History of the Revolutions That Happened in the Government of the Roman Republic, trans. Mr Ozell and others, 3rd edn (1724). A. W. Lintott, ‘Imperial Expansion and Moral Decline in the Roman Republic’, Historia. Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte, 21 (1972), 626–38, points out that Roman historians provided both economic and moral analyses for the political failure of the Republic. For a modern corrective that avoids moral analysis, see Ramsay MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988).

22

Vertot, History of the Revolutions, a1r–v, a4r–v.

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❧  English Republican Tradition Englishmen caught in the turmoil of the Commonwealth, Restoration, Exclusion Crisis, and the Glorious Revolution drew on Roman republican thought to challenge the supposed despotism of the Stuarts, learn from Rome’s achievements and mistakes, challenge the orthodoxies of the Puritan Revolution, and justify the Commonwealth and constitutional monarchy.23 These writings by Marchamont Nedham, John Milton, James Harrington, the martyr Algernon Sidney, Henry Neville, Walter Moyle, and others created the tradition of English republican thought.24 The principal conduit of the republican tradition to seventeenth-century England was Niccolò Machiavelli’s commentaries on Livy, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy), written as early as 1513 to 1519 and widely translated into English as early as 1636. Blair Worden identifies what Machiavelli meant for seventeenth-century readers: 23

Worden, ‘Classical Republicanism,’ 182, 185.

24

Of the extensive literature on the English republican tradition, major discussions include: Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), 3–55; Zera S. Fink, The Classical Republicans: An Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth-Century England, 2nd edn (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1962); Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 333–461; Charles Blitzer, An Immortal Commonwealth: The Political Thought of James Harrington (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1960); David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner, eds, Milton and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli, eds, Machiavelli and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Perez Zagorin, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954), esp. 106–63; Markku Peltonen, Classical Humanism and Republicanism in English Political Thought, 1570–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Reservations about, or reinterpretations of various points of Pocock are offered in Vicki Sullivan, ‘The Civic Humanist Portrait of Machiavelli’s English Successors’, History of Political Thought, 15 (1994), 73–96; Victoria Kahn, ‘Revising the History of Machiavellism: English Machiavellism and the Doctrine of Things Indifferent’, Renaissance Quarterly, 43 (1993), 526–61; and David Wootton, ‘The Republican Tradition: From Commonwealth to Common Sense’, pp. 13–41 in Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society, 1649–1776, ed. David Wootton (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994); Jack Fruchtman, ‘Classical Republicanism, Whig Political Science, Tory History: The State of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 20 (1996), 94–103; and Cesare Vasoli, ‘The Machiavellian Moment: A Grand Ideological Synthesis’, Journal of Modern History, 49 (1977), 661–70; and essays in The Political Imagination in History: Essays Concerning J. G. A. Pocock, ed. D. N. De Luna (Baltimore, Md.: Owlworks, 2006). For Pocock’s own review, J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Machiavellian Moment Revisited: A Study in History and Ideology’, Journal of Modern History, 53 (1981), 49–72.



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Pointing back to Livy, Machiavellianism celebrated the glories of the early Roman republic and lamented the erosion of the civic virtue and the manly independence which were held to have flourished in the classical and late medieval city-states. Pointing back to Polybius, Machiavellianism propounded the cyclical view of history and examined the problem of the balanced constitution. Pointing back to Tacitus, it explored the techniques, and revelled in the fascination, of power.25

For Machiavelli, the history of the ancient world provided examples for human conduct, revealed the laws that rule the world of politics, and showed how the Roman Republic achieved her unparalleled power and greatness. The key event was when she escaped the tyranny of her kings. Experience shows that ‘cities have never expanded either in dominion or in riches if they have not been in freedom’.26 The wisest and surest way to achieve greatness is by a republican form of government where the common good is pursued (although for Machiavelli a prince could rule ruthlessly to establish a state and promote the common good). Like his contemporaries, Machiavelli saw man’s fate hanging in the balance between virtù and Fortuna, usually personified as a woman.27 It was not solely by Fortuna that Rome triumphed but by ‘a rare and extreme virtue’.28 For a republic to attain liberty and civic greatness, virtù – that willingness to do whatever is necessary for civic glory and greatness – must be possessed by all citizens. For Machiavelli the absence of virtù meant effeminacy, a consequence of luxury and leisure. Effeminacy was not just a private matter but posed a public danger.29 An effeminate people accepted slavery and corruption and could not defend their freedom.30 Machiavelli was aware he was dealing with man subject to time and the force of his natural instincts. Virtù and glory were always impermanent. Virtù could only temporarily master Fortuna. The decline of a state, as with all works of man, was inevitable and followed a natural cycle of birth, flowering, decline,

25

Worden, ‘Classical Republicanism’, 183. Antecedents to Machiavelli are discussed in Quentin Skinner, ‘Machiavelli’s Discorsi and the Pre-Humanist Origins of Republican Ideas’, pp. 121–41 in Bock, Skinner, and Viroli, eds, Machiavelli and Republicanism. See also Felix Raab, The English Face of Machiavelli: A Changing Interpretation, 1500–1700 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), esp. 168–263; and Victoria Kahn, Machiavellian Rhetoric: From the Counter-Reformation to Milton (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994) [esp. on Milton, 169–235].

26

(maravigliosissima è a considerare a quanta grandezza venne Roma, poiché la si liberò da’ suoi Re.) Machiavelli, Discorsi, 2.2.

27

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, Fortune Is a Woman: Gender and Politics in the Thought of Niccolò Machiavelli (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1984), esp. 143–69.

28

(una rara ed estrema virtù); Machiavelli, Discorsi, 2.2.

29

Harvey C. Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 31.

30

Machiavelli, Discorsi, 1.17.

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and death.31 The republic constantly faced moments of outside threat. The struggle was ongoing and dynamic, but not purely capricious. There were fleeting, favourable moments when a bold ruler, acting in accordance with the demands of the moment, could take decisive political action, gain Fortuna’s favour, control events, and save the republic.32 Such a singular moment in time, when the republic faced Fortuna, is what J. G. A. Pocock aptly called a ‘Machiavellian moment’: the moment in which the republic was seen as confronting its own temporal finitude, as attempting to remain morally and politically stable in a stream of irrational events conceived as essentially destructive of all systems of secular stability. In the language which had been developed for the purpose, this was spoken of as the confrontation of ‘virtue’ with ‘fortune’ and ‘corruption’.33

Classical republicanism or civic humanism and Machiavelli were transmitted for English republican thought in James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656).34 To remedy the loss of the Gothic constitution balanced between a monarch and great feudal lords, he designed an ideal commonwealth where civic independence rested on the freehold of land, local militias, and rotation of office; wealth based on commerce or finance would corrupt citizens by making them dependent on others. It was freeholders who could exercise the disinterested duties as citizens, immune from corruption of a court. Such a republic required frequent parliaments. Like Machiavelli, he associated virtue with pursuit of the public good and rising above the ‘mire of private interest’. The English Restoration drew a line under England’s experiment with a republic, but republican ideas continued to be central to English political thought. Except when used in partisan defamation of Whigs, republicanism now rarely meant a popular commonwealth, absolute parliamentary sovereignty, or open opposition to monarchy. It tended to refer to England’s mixed constitution: limiting the powers of the monarch and balancing them with Parliament.35 To challenge the supposed despotism of the later Stuarts, writers again took up classical republican ideas. Writing during the Exclusion Crisis, Algernon 31

Machiavelli, Discorsi, 3:1.

32

Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. 25; Machiavelli, Discorsi, 2:1, 29, 30; 3:9; 3:31.

33

Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, viii. This is the second of Pocock’s definitions of the term, but the only one used in this study.

34

Importantly, see J. G. A. Pocock, ed., The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 169 (quoted); Blair Worden, ‘Harrington’s Oceana: Origins and Aftermath, 1651–1660’, pp. 111–38 in Wootton, ed., Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society; and Pocock, ‘Machiavelli, Harrington and English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth Century’, in pp. 80–103 of Pocock, Politics, Language and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1971).

35

Robbins, Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, 41–2; Worden, ‘Classical Republicanism’, 193. Harrington’s principles are adapted to a monarchical state (i.e., constitutional monarchy) in Neville’s Plato Redivivus (1680).

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Sidney asserted in his Discourses Concerning Government (written, 1681–3; published, 1689) that ‘all that was ever desirable, or worthy of praise and imitation in Rome, did proceed from its liberty, grow up and perish with it’.36 Liberty in constitutional governments fosters virtue, he argued; yet men, who are by nature subject to corruption, are more susceptible to it with increasing prosperity and luxury.37 Political writing surrounding the Glorious Revolution drew on republican ideas from the days of the Commonwealth, embodied in the hallowed Revolution Principles. William’s invasion by invitation in November 1688 could be seen as a restoration of the ancient constitution and preservation of Britain’s religion, laws, and liberties.38 36

Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, ed. Thomas C. West, rev. ed. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1996), 144. For Sidney and republicanism, Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Blair Worden, ‘The Commonwealth Kidney of Algernon Sidney’, Journal of British Studies, 24 (1985), 1–40; and J. G. A. Pocock, ‘England’s Cato: The Virtues and Fortunes of Algernon Sidney’, Historical Journal, 37 (1994), 915–35. Contemporaneous summaries of Sidney are found in State Tracts (1693); Sidney Redidivus: Or the Opinion of the late Honourable Collonel Sidney as to Civil Government (1689).

37

Sidney, Discourses; esp. 2:1, 11, 17, 23, 25, 36.

38

These principles, which legitimised the Glorious Revolution, comprised ideas about England’s ancient constitution, contract theory, natural rights, natural liberty, and mixed or limited monarchy (the King in Parliament), which became the bedrock of English political thought. Major expositions of the ‘Revolution Principles’ include: J. P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party, 1689–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Kenyon, ‘The Revolution of 1688: Resistance and Contract’, pp. 43–69 in Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society in Honour of J. H. Plumb, ed. Neil McKendrick (London: Europa, 1974); H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977), 57–90; Mark Goldie, ‘The Roots of True Whiggism, 1688–94’, History of Political Thought, 1 (1980), 185–236; Goldie, ‘The Revolution of 1689 and the Structure of Political Argument: An Essay and an Annotated Bibliography of Pamphlets on the Allegiance Controversy’, Bulletin of Research in the Humanities, 82 (1980), 473–564. On influences on the Glorious Revolution, see also: Lois Schwoerer, ‘The Right to Resist: Whig Resistance Theory, 1688 to 1694’, pp. 232–52 in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, eds Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Blair Worden, ‘Republicanism and the Restoration, 1660–1683’, pp. 139–93, in Wootton, ed., Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society; Worden, ‘The Revolution of 1688–9 and the English Republican Tradition’, pp. 241–77 in The Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution and Its World Impact, ed. Jonathan I. Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and Julian H. Franklin, John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty: Mixed Monarchy and the Right of Resistance in the Political Thought of the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). On the nature of 1688, Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009), argues it was a genuine revolution. See





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Followers of the classical republican tradition took as an article of faith that since the same desires and passions have existed in all men at all times, one must learn from the examples of history and apply them to one’s own times.39 Adopting the Polybian notion that history was a series of repeating cycles, and that modern states could suffer the same fates as past states and empires, Britons instinctively drew parallels between their history and that of Rome. Machiavelli taught that ‘in all cities and peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were. So that if one examines the past with diligence, it is easy to foresee the future of any commonwealth, and to apply those remedies which were used of old’.40 Or, as Moyle and Trenchard summarised, ‘the same Causes will produce like Effects in all Ages’.41 Modern states could avert impending fates if they were attentive to their own circumstances and were willing to take corrective action. Writing in about 1699, Moyle examined in detail parallels between the ancient world and England and related the causes of the rise and fall of the Roman Republic to contemporary English events. Britain and the Republic both enjoyed the best constitutions and passed through the same stages; each stage had its inherent flaws that led to corruption and dissolution. Roman history taught Britons the fragility of republics, the external threats to freedom, the conditions necessary for liberty, and the effects of luxury, corruption, and

also H. T. Dickinson, ‘The Eighteenth-Century Debate on the “Glorious Revolution”’, History, 61 (1976), 28–45; and H. T. Dickinson, ‘How Revolutionary was the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688?’ British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 11 (1988), 125–42. 39

Frank Turner, ‘British Politics and the Demise of the Roman Republic: 1700–1939’, Historical Journal, 29 (1986), 577–9. Marchamont Nedham alludes to events in Roman history to reflect on currents events; The Case of the Commonwealth of England, Stated, ed. Philip A. Knachel (Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1969), esp. 100, 101–2, 104–9, 112–13, 116–23. For parallels with Rome drawn during the Commonwealth, Blair Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 25, 78–81, 95–9, 113–14, 120–1, 131–2, 186, 219–20, 222–6, 233–5, 258, 349–52; see also Worden, ‘Marchamont Nedham and the Beginnings of English Republicanism, 1649–1656’, pp. 45–81 in Wootton, ed., Republicanism, Liberty, and Commercial Society.

40

(in tutte le Città e in tutt’ i Popoli sono quelli medesimi desiderj e quelli medesimi umori, e come vi furono sempre. In modó ch’egli è facil cosa a chi esamina con diligenza le cose passate, prevedere in ogni Repubblica le future, e farvi quelli rimedj che dagli antichi sono stati usati, o non ne trovando degli usati, pensarne de’ nuovi, per la similitudine degli accidenti); Machiavelli, Discorsi, 1:39; as translated in Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 83–4.

41

Walter Moyle and John Trenchard, An Argument, Shewing, That a Standing Army Is Inconsistent with a Free Government, and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy (1697), 5.

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effeminacy. The mistakes of Rome, though, could be corrected by England, if she established good laws and practiced austere virtue.42

❧  Classical Republicanism and the Arts The principal tenet of classical republican rhetoric – that the republic’s survival depended on the personal virtue of the citizen – had a direct application to thought about opera, for it implied what might be called a classical republican theory of art: an instrumental theory that evaluated art not in aesthetic terms, but insofar as it contributed to the virtue of the citizen and the health of the republic.43 As powerful shapers of personal values, the arts had a twofold burden. While as objects of sense, they must please, they must also avoid sensuousness, irrationality, and effeminacy – whatever leads to self-indulgence or cultivating private interests. But they must also contribute to the health of the state. As Horace asserted in his famous tag ‘utile dulce’, the arts must instruct and delight.44 As John Barrell observes, ‘the discourse of “civic humanism” … valued the various genres of literature and the visual arts more or less as they contributed to the education of citizens’.45 The power of the arts over individual citizens has a cumulative effect and ultimately affected the health of the whole state. The common metaphor of the state as a ‘body politic’, whose well-being is 42

Robbins, ed., Two English Republican Tracts, 37–8, 105–7; Fink, Classical Republicans, 170–74.

43

For an application of classical republicanism to painting, see George Turnbull, A Treatise on Ancient Painting (1740) and throughout the writings of the Earl of Shaftesbury. Classical republican thought in eighteenth century arts has only been thinly explored. The major attempt has been by John Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: ‘The Body of the Public’ (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), and Barrell, ‘“The Dangerous Goddess”: Masculinity, Prestige, and the Aesthetic in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain’, Cultural Critique, no. 12 (1989), 101–31; essays in Painting and the Politics of Culture: New Essays on British Art, 1700– 1850, ed. John Barrell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), esp. 40–51; and Robert Rosenblum, Transformations in Late Eighteenth Century Art (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), 50–106 (on representing exemplars of virtue). Barrell’s attempt has generally been criticised for being too selective and overlooking other current trends in British art; see Andrew Hemingway, ‘The Political Theory of Painting without the Politics’, Art History, 10 (1987), 381–95; Ronald Paulson, ‘Shaftesbury Meets Karl Marx’, New Republic (10 and 17 August 1987), 39–42; and Paulson, ‘Single-Barrelled’, Times Literary Supplement (19 February 1993), 20. On civic humanist ideas in literature, Michael Meehan, Liberty and Poetics in Eighteenth Century England (London: Croom Helm, 1986).





44

Horace, Ars poetica, line 334.

45

John Barrell, The Birth of Pandora and the Division of Knowledge (Philadelphia:, Pa. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), xiv.

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the aggregate of the health of its citizens, is seen in the illustrated title page to Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651).46 It was a commonplace that the arts and sciences (like the republic as a whole) rise and flourish under liberty and decline with tyranny and corruption.47 In the first century A.D., Longinus recorded what was for him already the wellworn truth that ‘democracy is the kindly nurse of great men, and that great men of letters may be said to have flourished only under democracy and perished with it’. Freedom, continued Longinus, fires the imagination of great-souled men with hope, rivalry, and competition for prizes.48 No better evidence for how this idea about liberty and the arts seeped into British thought can be found than its frequent appearance in the periodical literature of the early eighteenth century. In a Tatler in 1710, Steele reports a vision: ‘In the Train of the Goddess of Liberty were the several Arts and Sciences, who all of them flourished underneath her Eye’. While two years later in the Spectator, Addison is confident that ‘Riches and Plenty are the natural Fruits of Liberty, and where these abound, Learning and all the Liberal Arts will immediately lift up their Heads and flourish’. And again three years later, Lewis Theobald’s Censor observed that ‘Free States and Kingdoms have been always observ’d to produce Men of Letters and Genius; and where-ever a true

46

Thomas Hobbes, Leviatian: or, The Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth (1651); see Hobbes’s explanation, part 2, ch. 17: ‘the Multitude so united in one Person, is called Common-Wealth’; also the Introduction. On the tradition, David G. Hale, The Body Politic: A Political Metaphor in Renaissance English Literature (The Hague: Mouton, 1971); and Michael Schoenfeldt, ‘Reading Bodies’, pp. 215–43 in Reading, Society, and Politics in Early Modern England, eds Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Jonathan Gill Harris, Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1–4.

47

At the point of the revival of the classical republican tradition, Leonardo Bruni, following Sallust and Tacitus, in his Oratio in funere Johannis Strozzae (1428) and Le vite di Dante e del Petrarca (1436), set forth a vision of Florence as the historical inheritance of Roman liberty and virtue, repeating the lesson that arts and letters flourish in periods of liberty, and civilizations decline under tyranny. Under tyrannical Roman emperors, he claimed, Latin studies and literature suffered destruction; in Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, and David Thompson, intro. and trans., The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni: Selected Texts, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 46 (Binghamton, N.Y.: Renaissance Society of America, 1987), 96, 125–6. See also Baron, Crisis, 1:360–73; and James Hankins, ‘Humanism and the Origins of Modern Political Thought’, in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 129 and 131.

48

Longinus, On the Sublime, ch. 44; in T. S. Dorsch, trans., Aristotle, Horace, Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1965), 157. In a complementary manner, Longinus shows how wealth corrupts taste. Contemporary translation, Leonard Welsted, trans., The Works of Dionysius Longinus, or the Sublime: or, A Treatise Concerning the Sovereign Perfection of Writing (1712), 125–31.

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Liberty reigns, there must be a Spirit of Reason and good Sense’.49 Reflecting a new commercial society, Britons also argued trade and commerce flourished under liberty and republics.50 The arts were caught in a bind: liberty, wealth, and leisure were necessary for the arts to flourish, but the excessive cultivation of the arts that led to debasement of them could be a sign of luxury and corruption. Decline in the arts, therefore, could portend loss of Publick Spirit and liberty.51 The arts are not merely a sign of the health of the republic and liberty; but there was a causal relation, for a corruption in one causes a corruption in the other. In setting out the role of the arts in his ideal state, Plato regarded the place of music of such great importance in the education of youth, that a change in music may pose danger to the state: This is the point to which, above all, the attention of our rulers should be directed, – that music and gymnastic be preserved in their original form, and no innovation made. … For any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to be prohibited. So Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him; – he says that when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.52

Cicero concurs with Plato about the powerful relationship between music and moral character in a frequently cited passage from De Legibus (The Laws): nothing can so easily influence young and impressionable minds as the variety of vocal sounds. One can hardly express what an enormous power that [vocal sounds] exerts for better or worse. It animates the sluggish and calms the excited; now it relaxes the emotions, now it makes them tense. In Greece many states would have benefited from retaining the old-fashioned manner of singing. As it was, their characters changed along with their singing and degenerated into effeminacy. Either they were corrupted, as some think, by the sweet seductiveness of the music, or, after their sternness had been subverted

49

Tatler, no. 161 (20 April 1710); Spectator, no. 287 (29 January 1712); Lewis Theobald, The Censor, no. 28 (13 June 1715); Joseph Addison, Letter from Italy (1703), lines 119–58 for an expansive paean. George Turnbull, who applied these ideas to painting, stated: ‘Liberty or a free Constitution is absolutely necessary to produce and uphold that Freedom, Greatness and Boldness of Mind, without which it cannot rise to noble and sublime Conceptions’; A Treatise on Ancient Painting (1740), 99. On pp. 99–107, Turnbull collects all the classical sources relating to the progress and decline of liberty and the arts. The flourishing arts have a fragile existence. See also David Hume, ‘Of the Rise of the Arts and Sciences’, in Essays Moral and Political, 2 vols (1741–2).

50

John Oldmixon, Torism and Trade Can Never Agree (1713), 5–6; William Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands (1673; 7th ed., 1705), 213–14.

51

Marcus Annaeus Seneca, Epistulae Morales, 114. Hildebrand Jacob, Of the Sister Arts; an Essay (1734), 32–3, provides a causal scheme for the decline in the arts.

52

Republic, 4.424B; Benjamin Jowett trans.

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by other vices, their ears and souls became changed, leaving room for this musical change too.53

Either music corrupted the soul, or vice corrupted the musician. One need only substitute Italian-style opera in the previous sources to find anticipations of the ideas about opera in the writings of Steele, Dennis, and Shaftesbury.

❧  Britain at a Machiavellian Moment Richard Steele It is as an application of this classical republican tradition that we can understand Richard Steele and John Dennis instinctively responding with alacrity to Italian-style opera. Rather than as examples of xenophobic fear of opera, we can see them concerned with the effect of opera, luxury, and effeminacy on British liberty and what Britons called Publick Spirit. They reified Italian-style opera into an active historical agent, with supposed effects on audience members and their moral character, and on the fate of Britain. Both saw Britain – in the midst of the War of the Spanish Succession – as caught at a Machiavellian moment: they imagine Britain as a fragile republic confronting the external force of foreign, effeminate opera; Britain hangs in the balance between succumbing to luxury and corruption or maintaining her Publick Spirit by rejecting Italian-style opera, an analogue to the luxuries of the East that corrupted the Roman Republic. Although Steele’s ideas about opera are usually presented along with those of his fellow Whig and collaborator in the Spectator papers Joseph Addison, their ideas can be distinguished and reflect their different temperaments, experience, and interests.54 Both were born in 1672, Addison to a cleric in Wiltshire. Steele was of humbler background, both as an Irishman and an orphan. They were classmates at Charterhouse School (1686–7) and later at Oxford 1687–91), although at different colleges. Thereafter, their careers diverged.

53

Cicero, De Legibus, 2.38 (adsentior enim Platoni nihil tam facile in animos teneros atque molles influere quam varios canendi sonos, quorum dici vix potest quanta sit vis in utramque partem; namque et incitat languentes et languefacit excitatos et tum remittit animos, tum contrahit, civitatiumque loc multarum in Graecia interfuit, antiquum vocum conservare modum; quarum mores lapsi ad mollitiam mollitis pariter sunt inmutati cum cantibus, aut hac dulcedine corruptelaque depravati, ut quidam putant, aut, cum severitas eorum ob alia vitia cecidisset, tum fuit in auribus animisque mutatis etiam huic mutationi locus [Loeb text]); as translated in Cicero, The Republic and The Laws, trans. Niall Rudd, 137.

54

The contrast can be seen in their divergent accounts of the early years of opera: Steele’s is biting and sarcastic (Tatler, no. 12, 5–7 May 1709), whereas Addison’s, though leavened with humour and satire, is a fairly accurate history (Spectator, no. 18, 21 March 1711).

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Addison remained as a tutor and fellow and wrote English poetry and Latinate verse and orations. With the assistance of Lords Wharton and Somers, Addison travelled on the Continent (1699 to 1703) to prepare for public service. Upon his return, he pursed a literary career, publishing his Letter from Italy (1703), dedicated to Halifax; Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705), dedicated to Somers; and an example of Whig sublime poetry, The Campaign (1705), a celebration of Marlborough’s Blenheim victory, commissioned by Lord Treasurer Godolphin. His sole spoken work for the stage was the tragedy Cato (1713). With his literary accomplishments and continental experience, Addison’s political engagement was primarily ministerial: under Whigs, he gained posts as Undersecretary of State to Hedges and Sunderland (1705–9), then as chief secretary to Lord Wharton’s mission to Dublin (1709). With the Hanoverian Succession, he was given a variety of posts, finally becoming Secretary of State (1717), albeit an ineffectual one. He lacked Steele’s aptitude for the combative world of party journalism; yet when writing the Freeholder (1715–16), he could provide substantive essays justifying the Hanoverian Succession.55 Steele left Oxford without a degree and relying on political allies began a career in the military, also becoming the writer of the successful comedies The Funeral (1702), The Lying Lover (1703), and The Tender Husband (1705). Throughout his life, he was known as one of the strongest advocates for reforms of abuses of the stage,56 especially in opposing Italian opera, gaining the epithet ‘the Censor of Great Britain’.57 With the Tatler in 1709, he began his career in journalism writing for the emerging polite reading public, and then as a vigorous Whig propagandist in 1712–14, finally earning expulsion from the Commons for his writings. While the cosmopolitan belletrist Addison gently satirised some specific incidents of the production of Rinaldo and L’Idaspe fedele as occasions for humorous letters to the Spectator, he in general accepts the basic principles and legitimacy of all-sung opera and proposes to correct some features to bring it in line with polite taste and common sense (see chapter 8). Lacking Addison’s learning and continental travels, Steele – the soldier, man of the theatre, Whig propagandist – is consistently hostile and antagonistic to opera: he took almost any opportunity to deride or abuse it and its influence, even mocking Italian recitative well before an opera sung in Italian had yet appeared on the London stage. His biographer Rae Blanchard observed how Steele ‘campaigned so

55

See modern edition, Joseph Addison, The Freeholder, ed. James Leheny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).

56

But it was later said his ‘recommending the Play-Houses did more to promote the present Madness of the Age … than all the Agents Hell ever employed before’; [?Daniel Defoe], The Fears of the Pretender Turn’d into the Fears of Debauchery (1715). Colley Cibber, though, commended his efforts; Dedicatory Epistle to Ximena (1719).

57

John Loftis, Steele at Drury Lane (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1952), 2, 12–25, 66–9.

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heartily against Italian opera and so often deplored the trend of entertainment away from drama pure and simple’.58 To understand Steele and Dennis, we must attend to what form of opera they were responding to. Arsinoe (16 January 1705) did not receive any immediate criticism and was often favourably mentioned along with Bononcini’s Camilla. Three months later, John Vanbrugh mounted a quickly arranged production of Li amori di Ergasto on 9 April, sung all in Italian. Steele responded exactly two weeks later. His comedy The Tender Husband; or, the Accomplished Fools opened on 23 April 1705 at Drury Lane and was followed by Steele’s Epilogue that assailed the opera at the Haymarket and called on Britons to save their stage from the ‘Foreign Insult’ of ‘th’Italian squaling Tribe’. It was Ergasto (allsung in Italian) that set off Steele’s outcry, not Arsinoe. The thirty lines of Steele’s Epilogue repeat many topics already well established in earlier squibs against Italian singing: xenophobia, ridicule of a performance in an unintelligible tongue, the effeminacy of Italian-style singing, disdain of the castrato, and fear for the future of the English theatre. From the stage of Drury Lane, Steele contrasts the vices associated with Italian singing and the virtues associated with the native English stage. The result is an inventory of the proper virtues that should constitute the British Publick Spirit. Steele begins by raising the banner of British nationalism and Whig ideals of Liberty and the Protestant religion:

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Britons, who constant War, with factious Rage, For Liberty against each other wage,        From Foreign Insult save this English Stage. No more th’Italian squaling Tribe admit, In Tongues unknown; ’tis Popery in Wit. The Songs (their selves confess) from Rome they bring; And ’tis High-Mass, for ought you know, they Sing. Husbands take Care, the Danger may come nigher, The Woman say their Eunuch is a Friar.

Fear of Catholic conspiracy, treachery, and sedition had been part of English life since the sixteenth century.59 And now with the Pretender just across the channel, there was a new threat of a Jacobite invasion from France.

58



59

Rae Blanchard, ‘The Songs in Steele’s Plays’, pp. 185–200 in Pope and His Contemporaries: Essays Presented to George Sherburn, eds James L. Clifford and Louis Landa (Oxford: Clarendon, 1949), 185. Blanchard observes Steele insisted on the song texts in his plays have lyrical value and so to be ‘on the side of “rational” entertainment’ (195). For similar sentiments by Steele antagonistic to Italian opera, see Indiana’s speech in his The Conscious Lovers (1723), Act II, scene 1. Steele’s The Theatre makes fun of the castrato Benedetto Baldassari (called ‘Nihilin Beneditti’) in nos. 20 and 21 (8 and 12 March 1720). For examples, G. Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904), 1:xvii–xviii.

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Steele censures his countrymen for their indolent attention to an effeminate foreign entertainment instead of to British wit, tragedy, and comedy: But is it not a serious Ill to see Europe’s great Arbiters so mean can be; Passive, with an affected Joy to sit, Suspend their native Taste of Manly Wit; Neglect their Comic Humour, Tragic Rage, For known Defects of Nature [castratos], and of Age.

If Britons must dote on foreign literature, let it be the Roman classics that preach the honour of civic virtue, not products of modern Italy: Arise for shame, ye Conqu’ring Britons, rise, Such unadorn’d Effeminacy despise; Admire (if you will doat on Foreign Wit) Not what Italians Sing, but Romans Writ.

Steele’s patriotic peroration anticipated his later efforts to encourage English dramatic music and his later Censorium project (see chapter 9). Advocating for British arts and science against those who favour foreign taste and manners, he enjoins, Let Anna’s Soil be known for all its Charms; As Fam’d for Lib’ral Sciences, as Arms: Let those Derison meet, who would Advance Manners, or Speech, from Italy or France; Let them learn [from] You, who wou’d your Favour find, And English be the Language of Mankind.

Steele’s opinion of opera’s castrato singers was no more charitable three years later when he wrote to Joseph Keally in Ireland on 7 October 1708: ‘The taste for Plays is expired. We are all for Operas, performed by eunuchs every way impotent to please’.60 Here Steele makes use of the common double entendre to impugn Valentini’s capacity to please both as a singer and lover. Steele began the Tatler on 12 April 1709, using the persona of Isaac Bickerstaff as the author. In the fourth Tatler for 19 April 1709,61 Steele has Bickerstaff report from Will’s Coffee-house for 18 April about letters from the Haymarket that inform about the ‘great Applause’ received by Pyrrhus and Demetrius. Sung in both English and Italian and featuring the castratos Valentini and Nicolini, it was the second-most performed opera of the period: This Intelligence is not very acceptable to us Friends of the Theatre; for the Stage being an Entertainment of the Reason and all our Faculties, this Way of being pleas’d with the Suspence of ’em for Three Hours together, and being given up 60

Steele to Joseph Keally, Keally (Kealley) Mount, Kilkenny, 7 October 1708; The Correspondence of Richard Steele, ed. Rae Blanchard, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), no. 26, p. 25.

61

Richard Steele, The Tatler, ed. Donald F. Bond, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), attributes this essay to Steele.

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to the shallow Satisfaction of the Eyes and Ears only, seems to arise rather from the Degeneracy of our Understanding, than an Improvement of our Diversions. That the Understanding has no Part in the Pleasure is evident, from what these Letters very positively assert, to wit, That a great Part of the Performance was done in Italian.62

Notable is that Bickerstaff/Steele is writing as a friend of the theatre, who has not seen the opera, but who takes the occasion to repeat some of the commonplaces directed at Italian singing in the previous decade. Bickerstaff ’s account continues: And a Great Critick fell into Fits in the Gallery, at seeing, not only Time and Place, but Languages and Nations confus’d in the most incorrigible Manner. His Spleen is so extreamly moved on this Occasion, that he is going to publish another Treatise against the Introduction of Opera’s, which, he thinks, has already inclined us to Thoughts of Peace, and if tolerated, must infallibly dispirit us from carrying on the War.63

The Great Critick is surely John Dennis, who indeed had already published his furious Essay on the Opera’s After the Italian Manner in 1706.64 Dennis would return to opera two years later in An Essay upon Publick Spirit (1711). An aim of the Tatler was to improve the taste, manners, and entertainments of the town, and Steele frequently takes up topics related to theatre, especially with the goal to maintain the dignity of the stage. The castrato Nicolini had been singing in London since December 1708, and a passage praising his acting in Tatler, no. 115 (3 January 1710), might seem to suggest an ambivalence of Steele towards opera and its star singer. Bickerstaff reports he had gone to the opera the previous Friday and was surprised at the thin house for that performance of the otherwise popular Pyrrhus and Demetrius. But his surprise vanished when he learned that the Tumbler (or posture-master) was not to appear that night at (what he ironically calls) ‘so noble an Entertainment’ as the opera. Bickerstaff reports he was ‘fully satisfied’ instead with the sight of the acting of Nicolini, who, in contrast to the Tumbler, ‘does Honour to an human Figure, as much as the other vilified and degrades it’. Separating the actor from the singer, Steele goes to great length to praise the subtle gestures and expressiveness of Nicolini, which would be a model for English actors.65 Steele’s casual and ironic reference to opera as ‘so noble an Entertainment’ in contrast to the degradation of the human form by a tumbler suggests his praise of Nicolini is not an endorsement of opera but of superior 62

Tatler, ed. Bond, 1:39.

63

The word ‘another’ and the phrase ‘the Introduction of ’ (present in the original essay half-sheet) are omitted in later reprints of the Tatler, as well as the main text of the Bond edition.

64

A notice that the Essay was ‘Just published’ appeared in the Post=Man, no. 1598 (9–11 April 1706); also in the Post Boy for 11 April 1706, and Daily Courant for 11 April 1706.

65

On Nicolini and theatrical acting, Joseph R. Roach, ‘Cavaliere Nicolini: London’s First Opera Star’, Educational Theatre Journal, 28 (1976), 189–205.

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acting. Addison also praised Nicolini’s acting and held him up as a model for English actors in Spectator, no. 13 (15 March 1710).66 Steele returns to form in Tatler, no. 167 (4 May 1710), in a eulogy on the recently deceased actor Thomas Betterton, from ‘whose Actions I had received more strong Impressions of what is great and noble in Human Nature, than from the Arguments of the most solid Philosophies, or the description of the most charming Poets I had ever read’. By contrast to the impression made by great tragedians, such as Betterton, Steele opines that ‘The Opera’s, which are of late introduced, can leave no Trace behind them that can be of Service beyond the present Moment’ – a result, no doubt due to their mere sensuous nature and lack of appeal to reason. By now, the operas lately introduced were being sung all in Italian (see appendix 3). Steele repeated the sentiment later in Spectator, no. 22 (26 March 1711), observing that now the ‘Understanding is dismissed from our Entertainments’ such as ‘Plays and Operas’. After Steele was forced to cease the Tatler on 2 January 1711, two months later on the first of March, Steele and Addison launched the Spectator. Handel’s first opera for London, Rinaldo, had premiered at the Haymarket the previous week on 24 February, and – given its prominence in the social life of London and the usual need to find topics for a paper published six times a week – Italian opera became an attractive and irresistible source for humorous and satirical papers. About the same time, Martin Powell was presenting his puppet shows in Covent Garden that satirised the current Italian operas, partly by burlesquing Nicolini’s fight with the lion in Idaspe. The Tatler and Spectator had been promoting Powell and his puppet shows for partisan purposes (see chapter 8). Observing in Spectator, no. 14 (16 March 1711), that the opera in the Haymarket and puppet show in Covent Garden are ‘at present the Two leading Diversions of the Town’, Steel found occasion to disparage Handel’s recent Rinaldo. Since Powell had set up Whittington and His Cat against Rinaldo and Armida, Steele set out to compare the two productions. Powell had wisely not described in print the sets and staging of his puppet shows, whereas Aaron Hill, the promoter at the Haymarket, had given detailed descriptions of the set, costumes, and machinery of Rinaldo in the printed opera word book. The descriptions, Steele pointed out, raised too great expectation for the actual stage machinery on the Haymarket’s stage. This discrepancy gave Steele the opportunity to ridicule the actual action in Rinaldo: instead of the King of Jerusalem arriving being drawn in a ‘triumphant Chariot by white Horses’, he walked in on stage. Instead of Armida’s dragons rushing to carry her chariot towards Argantes, he had to go to her and hand her out of her coach. He commended the boy who managed the painted dragons that spit fire and smoke, and hoped in the future he could make his ‘whole Action compleat’ by keeping ‘his Head a little lower, and hiding his Candle’.67 66

For a dismissive account of Nicolini’s presence in London, see letter no. 212 in Original and Genuine Letters Sent to the Tatler and Spectator, ed. Charles Lillie, 2 vols (1725), 2:274–8.

67

That is, he generated smoke by blowing out powdered rosin through a candle flame.

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As for animals, Powell had his Punch and his pig dance a parody of a minuet together, whereas Hill’s sparrows and chaffinches, instead of perching in trees, fly over the stage and up into the galleries and put out the candles. Powell’s mechanisms and scenery were well-handled, but those at the Haymarket were ill-managed, so the audience saw ‘a Prospect of the Ocean in the midst of a delightful Grove’.68 Granted, Addison will also have fun with the problem of the sparrows in Rinaldo, the comic actor who played the lion in Nicolini’s combat in Idaspe, and a projector who proposes an opera on Alexander to be performed all in Greek. But such humorous essays in the persona of Mr Spectator are such as needed for topical humour for a popular periodical.69 But in other essays, he writes as a serious critic discussing verisimilitude, decorum, and reform of Italian opera (see chapter 8). At the end of the 1711–12 season, advertisements in June prominently announced Nicolini’s impending departure to Italy and last performances on the London stage.70 Steele and Addison felt differently about the departure. Addison expressed his disappointment: I am very sorry to find, by the Opera Bills for this Day, that we are likely to lose the greatest Performer in Dramatick Musick that is now living, or that perhaps ever appeared upon a Stage. I need not acquaint my reader, that I am speaking of Signior Nicolini. The Town is highly obliged to that Excellent Artist, for having shewn us the Italian Musick in its Perfection.71

But in ‘On Nicolini’s leaving the Stage’,72 Steele writes triumphantly, almost in vengeance, sending the singer home in shame to take luxury with him and leave Britain with her liberty, masculinity, reason, and morals intact. Since the castrato Nicolini sang his roles only in Italian, Steele’s allusions here and elsewhere object specifically to singing in Italian on the London stage, recalling his initial response to Li amori di Ergasto. At a Machiavellian moment, Britain must triumph over Fortuna and the effects of external corruption. At the core of Steele’s rhetoric is the ruling image of Nicolini and opera as an Italian import – bearing luxury and sexual 68

Presumably, the backdrop cloth showing ‘a Calm and Sunshiny Sea’, from Act II, scene 1, was seen behind the moveable side-wings for the set for Act I, scene 6 representing ‘A delightful Grove in which the Birds are heard to sing, and seen flying up and down among the Trees’.

69

Spectator, nos. 5, 13, and 31 (6 and 15 March, 5 April 1711).

70

See Avery, ed., London Stage, part 2, 1: 277–78. Announcements of Nicolini’s last nights are given in current newspapers.

71

Spectator, no. 405 (14 June 1712).

72

Included by Steele in the Poetical Miscellanies … Publish’d by Mr. Steele (1714), 44–5. Reprinted (and tentatively attributed to Steele) in The Occasional Verse of Richard Steele, ed. Rae Blanchard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952). Donald F. Bond (overlooking the possibility that Steele and Addison differed in their opinion on opera) questions Blanchard’s attribution; Spectator, ed. Bond, 3:514.

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corruption – that must be repelled, not unlike those imported luxuries from the East that worried Roman historians: Begon, our Nation’s Pleasure and Reproach! Britain no more with idle Trills debauch; Back to thy own unmanly Venice sail, Where Luxury and loose Desires prevail; There thy Emasculating Voice employ, And raise the Triumphs of the wanton Boy.

The terms ‘unmanly’, ‘loose desires’, ‘emasculating’, and ‘wanton Boy’ (Nero’s Sporus) associate Nicolini and Italian singing with abhorred effeminacy. The foreign import corrupts the Publick Spirit of Britons – learned and soldier alike – which is necessary for the free exercise of liberty: Long, ah! too long the soft Enchantment reign’d, Seduc’d the Wise, and ev’n the Brave enchain’d; Hence with thy Curst deluding Song! away! Shall British Freedom thus become thy Prey? Freedom, which we so dearly us’d to Prize, We scorn’d to yield it —But to British Eyes. Assist ye, Gales; with expeditious Care Waft this prepost’rous Idol of the Fair; Consent, ye Fair, and let the Trifler go, Nor bribe with Wishes adverse Winds to blow: Nonsense grew pleasing by his Syren Arts, And stole from Shakespear’s self our easie Hearts.73

The injunctions ‘hence’, ‘away’, ‘begone’, ‘assist ye, Gales’ suggest that as if at a decisive Machiavellian moment, Steele commands the wind to send away the foreign threat in order to preserve the republic. The rhetorical strategy employed here by Steele is an exemplary illustration of how, as Edward Said has shown in his discussion of orientalism, European culture has gained a sense of definition and strength by contrasting itself to an ‘Other’.74 For Steele, this Other is opera and the castrato from Italy, by contrast to which he defines Britain’s national identity. As founder of the Tatler, humorous essayist, and writer of occasional verse, Steele cannot avoid engaging with Italian opera, one of the Town’s reigning diversions; for him, opera is an instance of the need to reform English manners and taste. It is important to emphasise that it is singing in Italian on the London stage that Steele consistently objects to, leaving to be seen in chapter 9 what form of sung musical-dramatic work he would advocate.

John Dennis A year after Steele’s opening salvo against an opera sung in Italian, he was joined by the staunch Whig playwright, poet, and critic John Dennis, another 73

Steele, ‘On Nicolini’s leaving the Stage.’

74

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), esp. 1–7.

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outspoken and persistent antagonist of all-sung opera. But while the two Whigs have different reasons to object, their responses are both rooted in the principles of classical republicanism. During his career as a critic, Dennis’s frequent confrontations with opera can be seen motivated by the question: ‘What sort of musical drama is suitable for England?’75 Throughout his writings, Dennis sees Britain at a Machiavellian moment, when its liberty and Publick Spirit are threatened by a foreign source. In 1704, in the opening years of the War of the Spanish Succession, he could write that ‘the Liberties of Europe, and of this Island particularly, are in no small Danger at present from the growing Power of France’.76 Within two years, he cited the danger as arising from the luxury and corruption manifest in Italian opera.77 Italian opera became Dennis’s bête noir, and even as late as 1726 in The Stage Defended he was charging that opera corrupted public taste and civic spirit. Worse, though, the Machiavellian threat is no longer external, it is now present in London in its theatres. Dennis’s principal essay is without doubt the most hostile and vituperative attack on Italian-style opera, the tone of which is well captured in its full title: Essay on the Opera’s After the Italian Manner, Which Are About to Be Establish’d on the English Stage: With Some Reflections on the Damage Which They May Bring to the Publick (1706).78 His attack on opera is frequently and enthusiastically quoted on account of its lively quotes against opera, but it must not be taken as representative of the English attitude to opera in general, nor of Dennis’s views on all musical-dramatic works. Dennis responded with alacrity to the appearance of all-sung opera. He wrote to a friend Henry D’Avenant that the publication of the Essay was beset by delays and difficulties (which he does not elaborate); but he seems to have had printed copies in hand by 20 March 1706, when he sent D’Avenant a copy.79 The pamphlet was finally announced to the public on 11 April 1706 as ‘just published’. Hence, Dennis could have seen only three all-sung operas in London: two in English, Arsinoe (6 January 1705) and The Temple of Love (7 March 1706), and Li amori di Ergasto (9 April 1705) in Italian. He might have known about the coming production of Camilla, which would premiere on 30 March at Drury Lane, after the Essay was in print, as well as others known to be in 75

For surveys of Dennis’s life and criticism, The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. Edward N. Hooker, 2 vols (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1943), 2:lxxvii–cxliii; H. G. Paul, John Dennis: His Life and Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1911); and Avon J. Murphy, John Dennis (Boston, Mass.: Twayne, 1984).

76

Preface, Liberty Asserted (1704).

77

Essay on the Opera’s, iv–v, vii

78

The Essay on the Opera’s is reprinted in Dennis, Critical Works, ed. Hooker, 1:382–93, with useful annotations. A sympathetic reading is given by Murphy, John Dennis, 109–113. Hooker rather exaggerates in claiming ‘virtually all critics and dramatic writers opposed it [opera]’ (523).

79

Dennis, London, 20 March 1706, to Henry D’Avenant; Folger Shakespeare Library, Y.c.747(1); reprinted in Dennis, Critical Works, ed. Hooker, 2:520.

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planning. Unlike Steele, Dennis was likely acquainted with opera on the Continent. He had travelled to France and Italy in 1688,80 and like most travellers availed himself of music in the churches and opera houses. In Italy, he reported, he heard ‘so much fine Musick’ in ‘both their Churches and Theatres’.81 At the time of writing the Essay on the Opera’s, Dennis was a prominent poet, playwright, and critic. In his obituary, he was recalled as ‘the last Classick Wit of King Charles’s Reign’.82 But after about 1710, his reputation faded. Because of his quarrelsome nature and confrontations with other literary figures, he gained many enemies and became an object of ridicule.83 Most damaging was his feud with Alexander Pope, which earned him a place among the Dunces.84 But Samuel Johnson, despite cavils about some of his judgments, could call for a collected edition of his writings.85 He may be best known today for the Essay, but its tone and overstated case have injured his reputation for those who know his work only by the Essay. Dennis had a lacklustre career as a playwright. Only one of his five plays, the staunchly Whig tragedy Liberty Asserted (24 February 1704), was a success, perhaps because it was a party piece, for Addison noted it ‘has ye Whiggs for its patrons and Supporters’.86 Despite his animus against Italian-style opera, Dennis was a passionate defender of the moral and social utility of English drama. In response to Jeremy Collier,87 he produced The Usefulness of the 80

Dennis was in Lyon (1 October 1688), Savoy (21 October 1688), Turin (23 October 1688), and Rome (1 December 1688), according to letters published in John Dennis, Miscellanies in Verse and Prose (1693). The exact length of his trip in not known; Paul, John Dennis, 4–6.

81

Dennis, Preface, The Musical Entertainments in the Tragedy of Rinaldo and Armida (1699).

82

Weekly Miscellany, no. 57 (12 January 1734), 3.

83

On Dennis’s feuds and reputation: Dennis, Critical Works, ed. Hooker, 2:xlvi–lxxvi. A recent appreciation is given by John Morillo, ‘John Dennis: Enthusiastic Passions, Cultural Memory, and Literary Theory’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 34 (2000), 21–41.

84



Pope repeatedly made Dennis, ‘the great Critick’, a target in the Dunciad; see Valerie Rumbold, The Poems of Alexander Pope, vol. 3, The Dunciad (1728) & The Dunciad Variorum (1729) (Harlow: Pearson, 2007), 68–9, 140–1, 143, 153–5, 157–9, 189–90, 227–8, 248–50. Pope attacked Dennis in Essay on Criticism (1711), line 273, which prompted Dennis’s reply in Reflections Critical and Satyrical, Upon a Late Rhapsody, Call’d an Essay upon Criticism (1711). Giles Jacob, without irony, called him ‘the greatest Critick of this Age’; An Historical Account of the Lives and Writings of our most Considerable Poets (1720), 257.

85

Dennis, Critical Works, ed. Hooker, 2:lxvii.

86

Joseph Addison to Ambrose Philips, 10 March 1704; in The Letters of Joseph Addison, ed. Walter Graham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), letter no. 43, p. 49. On the play’s principles, see Dennis, Preface to Liberty Asserted (1704).

87

Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698). See also Dennis’s defences in A Large Account of the Taste in Poetry, and the Causes of the

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Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion (1698), and in response to William Law he wrote The Stage Defended (1726).88 His rebuttal to Collier’s charge of the stage’s profanity and immorality has a counterpart in his defence of the stage from the foreign influence of opera. His choice of the title-page epigram from Cicero’s De Legibus (The Laws) immediately puts the Essay into the classical republican tradition and its concern about the effects of art and music on the state: ‘Negat enim Mutari posse Musicas Leges sine Mutatione Legum Publicarum’.89 This concern about music was present early in the Prologue to his tragedy Iphigenia (1699), where Dennis was reacting to the effects of the infiltration of Italian singing. Here, Dennis already sees Britain at a Machiavellian moment, when liberty hangs in the balance with enslavement to Italian music. Using the Whig notion of the Myth of the North, the Genius of England retells the Progress of Liberty, in terms of Tragedy, from Greece to England. Rising ‘to a Warlike Symphony’, the Genius of England reports that Tragedy has fled England. She laments that Tragedy had wandered from Greece, Rome, France, and Spain, and found a welcome home in Britain. She is now dismayed that her sons have taken up song and dance from servile and enslaved Italy and France. She admonishes Britons: they are facing internal corruption from the external threats from Italy (song) and France (dance). A forsaken Tragedy now addresses her lament to the Genius of England: Oh is my Brittain faln to that degree, As for effeminate Arts t’ abandon me? I left the enslav’d Italian with disdain, And servile Gallia, and dejected Spain: Grew proud to be confin’d to Brittain’s shore, Where Godlike Liberty had fix’d before;     Where Liberty thrives most, I most can soar. … Here [in Britain] Song and Dance, and ev’ry Trifle reigns, And leaves no room for my exalted strains. Those Arts now rule that soften’d foreign Braves, And sunk the Southern Nations into Slaves.

}

Noting the males in the audience, the Genius of England concurs: Oh what wou’d my magnanimous Henry say, Or Edward’s Soul returning to the day; To see a Bearded more than Female throng Dissolv’d and dying by an Eunuchs Song. Degeneracy of It (1702) and The Person of Quality’s Answer to Mr. Collier’s Letter, being a Disswasive from the Play-House (1704). See also Murphy, John Dennis, 19–25. 88

William Law’s work was The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage-Entertainment Fully Demonstrated (1726).

89

(The laws of music cannot be changed without bringing a change in the laws of the state [2.39]); as translated by Rudd in Cicero, The Republic and The Laws, 137. The sentiment goes back to Plato’s Republic, 4.424C–D.

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It is still not too late to redeem Britain at this Machiavellian moment. The Genius of England urges Britons to leave ‘Sound and Show’ to her soft neighbors and attend to the great voices of Tragedy and Britannia. In the Essay on the Opera’s, Dennis offers several lines of argument based on classical republican principles to show how Italian opera destroys the Publick Spirit that is essential to maintaining the ‘Interest and Reputation of England’ (6). His critique of operas after the Italian manner derives from their essential nature: they are all-sung. He limits his criticism to ‘those Opera’s which are entirely Musical’ and exempts the English dramatic opera, ‘for those which are Drammatical may be partly defended by the Examples of the Ancients’ (Preface); that is, they have both spoken and sung choral parts. In the dramatic opera, the spoken ‘just Play’ carries the rational spoken dialogue that was distinct from the songs, incidental music, and musical entertainments. Dennis’s commitment to dramatic music was genuine, for he had collaborated with London’s leading theatre composers on two works: the dramatic opera Rinaldo and Armida (discussed in chapter 1), with music by John Eccles, and later The Masque of Orpheus and Euridicé (1707), with music by Daniel Purcell.90 Orpheus and Euridicé was planned, although not produced, for Rich’s 1706–7 season at Drury Lane, and its text was printed in the Whig Muses Mercury in February 1707. Like the Judgment of Paris, Orpheus and Euridicé is an independent theatre masque. With the aid of Proserpine and the Chorus of Spirits, Orpheus successfully pleads Pluto for the release of Euridice. Dennis calls for mood-setting music, beginning with a ‘Symphony, Soft, yet Noble’ passing to a ‘Dreadful Symphony’ to introduce Pluto. Since all the characters are figures from mythology, it is suitable that they sing. Dennis, Eccles, and Daniel Purcell must have been aware of the new Italian modes of writing for voice; however, judging from the formal schemes of Dennis’s strophes for music, the two works likely were in the English manner, for there are no indications of recitative-aria pairs, let alone of da capo arias. Eccles’s text settings for solo singers are in the tradition of the English theatre song, the style he and Henry Purcell had already been writing since the 1680s. A constant refrain in Dennis’s writings is the importance of drama for the civic health of the nation. He sketched the idea in the Preface to Liberty Asserted (1704) and fully developed it in The Stage Defended (1726). Reasonable public entertainments are advantageous to good government; all the more important is the greater need to guard against their corruption. For Dennis, ‘of all publick Diversions, the Drama is the most reasonable, manly, noble, and instructive Diversion; the excelling in which, shews the Excellence and the Strength of Genius of that particular Nation where it appears’.91 By contrast, Italian opera

90

Libretto printed in the Muses Mercury (February 1707), 29–35.

91

Stage Defended, 29. The importance of drama to the state is stressed especially on iv–v, 29–32.

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has ‘a natural Tendency to the introducing a general and total Corruption of Manners, which is inconsistent with Liberty’.92 Dennis’s complaint against Italian opera is premised on the neo-classical expectation that drama, although it must delight, must be rational, intelligible, and conducive to imitation of virtue. It must not indulge in the irrational and the sensuous, which – harmful enough in themselves – might also distract from the ennobling, rational, and intelligible aspects of the drama. Dennis insists he is in no way prejudiced against music, that there ‘is no Man living who is more convinc’d than my self of the Power of Harmony, or more penetrated by the Charms of Musick’ (2). But his acceptance of music is conditional: it must be ‘subordinate to some nobler Art, and subservient to Reason’. Essential to making opera a rational entertainment is the element of spoken poetry as found in dramatic operas. In the modern all-sung operas, Dennis insists, music has become independent and an end in itself. Having abandoned the nobler art of poetry, ‘it becomes a meer sensual Delight, utterly incapable of informing the Understanding, or of reforming the Will’.93 The more charming music becomes, the more pernicious its effects; the more habitual it becomes, the more men will prefer music instead of the reasonable entertainments. The great fear in the classical republican tradition, and the surest sign of indulging private self-interest, was effeminacy, which subverted the masculine virtue essential to preserve the republic. The ‘soft and effeminate Measures of the Italian Opera’ are at the heart of Dennis’s fears: ‘Manly Pleasures are rational Pleasures. … The Pleasure that effeminate Musick gives, is a mere sensual Pleasure, [by] which he who gives or he who receives in a supreme Degree, must be alike unmann’d’.94 While reason takes man out into the world, sensual delight focuses and confines a person inward: As soft and delicious Musick by soothing the Senses, and making a Man too much in Love with himself, makes him too little fond of the publick, so by emasculating and dissolving the mind, it shakes the very foundation of Fortitude, and so is destructive of both branches of the publick Spirit.95

In the Essay, Dennis offers many rationales to show how the aesthetic features of Italian opera undermine Publick Spirit, especially relating to proper gender roles and sexuality. Italian opera, he asserts, has a corrupting influence upon ‘the Minds and Manners of Men’. He observes that the ancient Romans 92

Stage Defended, iv.

93

Essay on the Opera’s, 2.

94

Essay upon Publick Spirit, 19. For earlier on effeminacy and music, see Linda Phyllis Austern, ‘Alluring the Auditorie to Effeminacie: Music and the Idea the Feminine in Early Modern England’, Music and Letters, 74 (1993), 343–54.

95

Essay on the Opera’s, 9. In the Preface to Iphigenia (pub. 1700), Dennis wrote: ‘The misfortunes of England have always happened from particular persons loving themselves too much, and others too little, and taking too little care of the publick, and too much of themselves’.

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and modern Italians share the same sun and soil, but there is a great difference between them: the modern Italian men are neither virtuous, wise, nor valiant; and women cannot be trusted out of their husbands’ sight. The only way to account for this difference, Dennis claims, is ‘the Reigning Luxury of Modern Italy’: ‘that soft and effeminate Musick which abounds in the Italian Opera’.96 Another argument found in the Essay upon Public Spirit about the effeminizing effect of opera is directed to the interest of its female audience: The Ladies, with humblest Submission, seem to mistake their Interest a little in encouraging Opera’s; for the more the Men are enervated and emasculated by the Softness of the Italian Musick, the less will they care for them, and the more for one another. There are some certain Pleasures [sodomy] which are mortal Enemies to their Pleasures, that past the Alps about the same time with the Opera; and if our [opera] Subscriptions go on, at the frantick rate that they have done, I make no doubt but we shall come to see one Beau take another for Better for Worse, as once an imperial harmonious Blockhead did Sporus.97

Dennis’s reference to Sporus is characteristic of the period’s practice of drawing parallels between Britain and Rome: especially to those British features that portend a parallel to its decay, decline, and fall. The ‘imperial harmonious Blockhead’ is Nero, who, as related by Suetonius in De Vita Caesarum (6.28), castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him. Nero married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife. Dennis made the same association of Italian opera and sodomy in the Essay on the Opera’s:

96

Essay on the Opera’s, vii.

97

Essay upon Publick Spirit, 25. The association of opera with sodomy from Italy was common; see Jonathan Swift, Intelligencer, no. 3 (collected edn, 1728): ‘An old Gentleman said to me, that many Years ago, when the Practice of an unnatural Vice grew frequent in London, and many were prosecuted for it, he was sure that it would be the Fore-runner of Italian Opera’s and Singers; and then we should want nothing but Stabbing or Poisoning, to make us perfect Italians’. See also Plain Reasons for the Growth of Sodomy in England (ca. 1728–31): ‘For since the Introduction of Italian Operas here, our Men are grown insensibly more and more Effeminate; and whereas they used to go from a good Comedy, warm’d with the Fire of Love; and from a good Tragedy, fir’d with a Spirit of Glory; they Sit indolently and supine at an Opera, and suffer their Souls to be Sung away by the Voices of Italian Syrens’ (18). On the sexualization of Italian opera, see Thomas McGeary, ‘Repressing Female Desire on the London Opera Stage, 1724–1727’, Women & Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 4 (2000), 40–58; McGeary, ‘Gendering Opera: Italian Opera as the Feminine “Other” in England, 1700–42’, Journal of Musicological Research, 14 (1994), 17–34; McGeary, ‘“Warbling Eunuchs”: Opera, Gender, and Sexuality on the London Stage’, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research, 7, new series (1992), 1–22; and McGeary, ‘Verse Epistles on Italian Opera Singers, 1724–1736’, Royal Musical Association. Research Chronicle, 33 (2000), 29–88.



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I affirm that an Opera after the Italian Manner is monstrous, … it is so prodigiously unnatural, that it could take its beginning from no Country, but that which is renowned throughout the World, for preferring monstrous abominable Pleasures to those which are according to Nature.98

As another tactic, he translates from the tenth satire of the neo-classical critic Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux describing the effect on a virtuous wife brought to a tragèdie lyrique by her uxorious husband. There she hears so many airs that inflame her thoughts to sacrificing everything to passionate love, ‘to which Lully has given fresh Fire by the Charms of his Musick’ that one can’t doubt but that ‘having all her Soul possest with those melting Sounds, she does not instantly withdraw to some convenient Retirement, and with some young Medoro bring these fine Speculations to practise’.99 The fear of luxury, another of critic Dennis’s persistent bêtes noire, rhetorically draws on the classical republican tradition and Roman historians.100 In 1723, when Bernard Mandeville released his subversive defence of private vice and luxury as benefits for the public good in The Fable of the Bees (1723),101 the outraged Dennis replied in Vice and Luxury: Publick Mischiefs: (1724). For this tract, Dennis’s appeal to classical authority is again seen in his title-page epigram from Cicero’s De Senectute (On Old Age), where Cato the Elder (the Censor) reports an imaginary speech of Archytas of Tarentum to the young Scipio Africanus, the vanquisher of Carthage, and Gaius Laelius on the evils of sensual pleasure: ‘The most fatal curse given by nature to mankind’, said Archytas, ‘is sensual greed: this incites men to gratify their lusts heedlessly and uncontrollably, thus bringing about national betrayals, revolutions, and secret negotiations with the enemy. Lust will drive men to every sin and crime under the sun’.102

98

Dennis, Essay on the Opera’s, 14.

99

Ibid., vi–vii. Luxury debate in eighteenth century: Sekora, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett, 63–88; Berry, The Idea of Luxury; Malcolm Jack, Corruption and Progress: The Eighteenth-Century Debate (New York: AMS Press, 1989), 1–62; M. M. Goldsmith, Private Vices, Public Benefits: Bernard Mandeville’s Social and Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desire and Delectable Goods, eds Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

100

101

F. B. Kaye, introduction, Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924; reprint: Indianapolis, Ind., Liberty Fund, 1988). For contemporary sources and reaction to Mandeville’s tract: J. Martin Stafford, ed., Private Vices, Publick Benefits? The Contemporary Reception of Bernard Mandeville (Solihull: Ismeron, 1997).

102

(Nullam capitaliorem pestem quam voluptatem corporis hominibus dicebat a natura datam, cuius voluptatis avidae libidines temere et ecfrenate ad potiendum incitarentur. Hinc patriae proditiones, hinc rerum publicaraum eversiones, hinc cum hostibus clandestine colloquia nasci; nullum denique scelus, nullum malum facinus esse, ad

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In addition to its effects on Publick Spirit, Dennis repeatedly asserts Italian opera drives out poetry wherever it arrives.103 This claim was frequent in Italian treatises about the poetics of opera librettos and echoed as late as 1773 by Charles Burney.104 Dennis points to the poor quality of the poetic translations of the Italian verse given in the librettos of the Italian operas in London. The decay of poetry is not inconsequential. As the Roman historians related, the decline of poetry in Greece and Rome preceded the decline of their liberty and republics.105 Since the power of a nation chiefly consists in the spirit of its people and since ‘Poetry augments this Spirit where ever it finds it, and sometimes begets it where it was not before’ (7), the displacement of poetry by opera would be detrimental to England’s liberty. In England, Dennis associates the establishment of drama with the Reformation and rise of liberty, and the three have flourished together (11). Dennis fears for the future of poetry in post-opera England. The progress of music and poetry being linked to each other, the favourable reception of opera by English audiences, who ‘will hardly suffer a Play, that is not interlarded with Singing and Dancing’, (4) portends the decline of English poetry and drama, which are the great supports of liberty. He further observes in Remarks upon Cato, a Tragedy (1713) how even a very faulty tragedy can have great success due to the ‘general ill Taste of the people, which is partly the Effect of the Italian Opera; …. a People accustom’d for so many Years to that, are as ill-prepar’d to judge of a good Tragedy, as Children that are eating Sugar-plumbs are to taste Champaign and Burgundy’ (7). In 1706, in the midst of war with France and Spain, ‘when Liberty, and the Reformation are in the utmost Danger’ (12), England is embracing an art form that destroys Publick Spirit and tends to slavery (10). In the years following the Essay on the Opera’s, Dennis’s disdain of opera was well-known (and shared by some) in London. Jonathan Swift wrote to

quod suscipiendum non libido voluptatis impelleret); Cicero, De Senectute, 12.39–40; Loeb text, Cicero, Selected Works, trans. Michael Grant (London: Penguin, 1971), 228. 103

Dennis repeats his claim that opera drives out poetry in Reflections Critical and Satyrical, upon a Late Rhapsody, Call’d an Essay on Criticism (1711), Preface: ‘wherever the Italian Opera had come, it had driven out Poetry from that Nation, and not only Poetry, but the very Tast[e] of Poetry, and of all the politer arts’. Dennis makes clear his target is the resulting poor quality of the English translations of Italian verse as published by Jacob Tonson. See also Stage Defended, x; Essay upon Publick Spirit, 20; and Original Letters, Familiar, Moral and Critical, 2 vols (1721), 1:77 (letter to Judas Iscariot, ‘On the Degeneracy of the Publick Taste’, 25 May 1719); and 1:11 (letter to Richard Norton, 10 August 1708).

104

See Robert Freeman, ‘Apostolo Zeno’s Reform of the Libretto’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 21 (1968), 321–41 (esp. 332–3). The idea occurs in a source certainly known to Dennis, Rene Rapin, Réflexions sur la poétique de ce temps et sur les ouvrages poètes anciens et modernes (1674). Cf. Charles Burney, ‘The passion for dramas in music has ruined true tragedy as well as comedy in this country’; The Present State of Music in France and Italy, 2nd edn (1773), 207.

105

Essay on the Opera’s, 10–11.

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Ambrose Philips from London on 8 March 1709: ‘The Town is run mad after a new Opera. Poetry and good Sense are dwindling like Echo into Repetition and Voice. Critick Dennis vows to G— these Opera’s will be ruin of the Nation and brings Examples from Antiquity to prove it’.106 Steele’s reference a month later in the Tatler, no. 4 (18 April 1709), to ‘the Great Critick … so extreamly moved on this Occasion, that he is going to publish another Treatise against the Introduction of operas’ was certainly to Dennis.107 In 1711, amid Whig anger over the peace terms with France, worry about the future of the Protestant Succession, and at the point when opera was now sung all in Italian, Dennis renewed his attack on opera’s threat to British liberty in a work already cited, but whose full title is revealing, An Essay upon Publick Spirit; Being a Satyr in Prose upon the Manners and Luxury of the Time, the Chief Sources of Our Present Parties and Divisions (1711), in which he promises to expose ‘the mighty Mischiefs that the Introduction of foreign Manners and foreign Luxury hath done to this Island’ [v]. For Dennis, Publick Spirit is ‘the ardent Love of one’s Country’, which equates with the love of a nation’s ‘peculiar Customs and Manners’.108 Nothing more distinguishes a nation than its customs and manners; and (echoing Plato and Cicero) nothing injures a nation more than forsaking and changing them. Of all the fashions introduced among from abroad, argues Dennis, ‘none shews so deplorable a want of Publick Spirit as the Italian Opera’.109 Finally, in one of his last major works, The Stage Defended (1726), he still maintains it is agreed by all that the Italian operas are sensual and effeminate, compared to the genuine Drama, and a greater real Promoter of wanton and sensual Thoughts than ever the Drama was pretended to be, because too great a Part of them consisting of Softness of Sound, and of Wantonness of Thought, they have nothing of that good Sense and Reason, and that artful Contrivance which are essential to the Drama.110

Steele, Dennis, and Nationalism The shrill, intemperate outcries against opera by Steele and Dennis are among the best-known and often-quoted English responses to opera. Their polemics, instead of being xenophobic jeremiads, can be seen as grounded in the rhetoric of civic humanism or classical republicanism. They write as if Britain were at a Machiavellian moment: at a moment when the fate of the republic hangs in the balance between virtue and corruption; when 106

Jonathan Swift, The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. David Woolley, 5 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999–2014), letter no. 67, 238–40 (at p. 239).

107

Tatler, no. 4 (18 April 1709); passage quoted from the folio half-sheet printing.

108

Essay upon Publick Spirit (1711), 2–3.

109

Ibid., 18. The tract repeats many of the charges against Italian opera voiced in the Essay on the Opera’s (vi, 15, 22, 25).

110

Dennis, The Stage Defended, v.

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Publick Spirit risks dissolution from the effects of Italian opera – a fear heightened (or made real) in their cases by the ongoing War of the Spanish Succession and the spectre of return of the Pretender with the aid of France. Both are deeply involved with the issue of emerging British nationalism: with the question, as Howard Weinbrot phrases it, ‘How does a great nation determine its identities?’111 The writings of Steele and Dennis repeat and amplify most of the charges levelled against Italian song and singing voiced in the prologues, epilogues, and verse from the 1680s and 1690s, and give them substance by grounding them in the tenets of classical republicanism. From these ideas, it is not difficult to parse out how the expressions about Italian and English singing and the effeminacy attributed to opera and the castrato singer can align as binary opposites that articulate a sense of British national identity, many with traditional gender valorisations. As is common, defining national identity is done in reference to an inferior ‘Other’ – in this case Italian singing and opera. British Virtues

Features of the ‘Other’

masculine

feminine

northern hardiness rational spoken word Protestant liberty; public spirit manly wit, comic humor clear gender roles

southern softness, passivity, idleness sensual, loose desires pure melody (singing opera in Italian) Catholic slavery; corruption by luxury effeminate fashions from Italy and France corruption of sexual norms by the eunuchs and sensuous music Italian culture

Roman Republican values

Benedict Anderson defined a nation as ‘an imagined political community’ envisioned as a ‘deep, horizontal comradeship’ or ‘fraternity’.112 The nation is invented out of prior cultural systems; usually invoked are the religious community and the dynastic realm. At the moment, Britain’s legitimate dynasty (Stuart or Hanoverian) was still contested, but there was little doubt that England was a Protestant nation. Also necessary for the invention of nations was abandonment of the medieval, static, cosmic-universal conception of temporality; necessary is a ‘conception of history as an endless chain of cause and effect [and] of radical separations between past and present’ and of a community ‘moving onward

111

Howard Weinbrot, Britannia’s Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 1.

112

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. edn (London: Verso, 1991), 6.

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through calendrical time’.113 Such a conception of historical time is in accord with the classical republican notion of a history of nations that go through decay, decline, and fall and encounter Machiavellian moments. If Britain was imagined with a limited constitution committed to defending liberty and property and at a fragile moment in its history, Italian-style opera – a foreign cultural import from Catholic states under the sway of an absolute ruler or pope – was a danger poised directly at the heart of British national identity. We can justly doubt whether the effects of a performed opera on an audience member or on the nation were as great and catastrophic as Steele and Dennis feared. It was the rhetoric of the classical tradition and Machiavelli that provided a ready vocabulary for Steele, Dennis, and other critics to attack opera. Despite their shared rhetoric of opposition to opera, the two diverged in what they found objectionable about opera and singing: Steele, who had provided for songs in his plays, focused on singing in Italian, and that specifically by Valentini and Nicolini. About all-sung works, we have yet no comment from him. Dennis is not opposed to singing or instrumental music in dramatic works; in fact, his Rinaldo and Armida provides for innovative uses of music in a dramatic opera. He believes the stage should be a rational, intelligible entertainment in which spoken dialogue should predominate, a goal defeated by an all-sung musical-dramatic work, no matter the language. The classical republican programme placed private pleasure in opposition to the public good. Luxury and pleasure deformed the personality, rendering it unable to participate in civic life. We can note that Dennis, and to an extent Steele as well, is attending mainly to the surface, aesthetic features of melody, song, and music, ignoring the verbal content of the opera itself. Minus the musical delivery, the texts of operas fulfil the age-old demands of drama and poetry: to celebrate virtue and show the downfall of vice. The lieto fine of operas shows the triumph of love and duty over pursuit of private interest or illicit love – in short, contributing to the public good.114

Shaftesbury on Opera and Liberty A further application of classical republican thought to the politics of Italian-style opera is provided by the Whig Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, grandson of the Whig statesman of the Exclusion Crisis and champion of the supremacy of Parliament, the first Earl of Shaftesbury. Deeply read in Greek and Roman literature and a writer of philosophic treatises on 113

Anderson, Imagined Communities, 23, 27.

114

On how opera librettos can inculcate moral values: Don Neville, ‘Moral Philosophy in the Metastasian Dramas’, Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario, vol. 7, no. 1 (1982), 28–46; Michael F. Robinson, ‘How to Demonstrate Virtue: The Case of Porpora’s Two Settings of Mitridate’, Studies in Music from the University of Western Ontario, vol. 7, no. 1 (1982), 47–64; and McGeary, ‘The Opera Stage as Political History’, pp. 210–46 in The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

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taste, culture, and manners, Shaftesbury was the most erudite and learned of the commentators on opera. Like Dennis, Shaftesbury had some first-hand acquaintance with opera during his Grand Tour from 1686 to 1689, which took him to France and Italy. While in Paris in December 1687, he wrote to his tutor John Locke: ‘Their opera I have not seen yet, but shall to-morrow. I am afraid I shall like that but too well, for I am a perfect slave to fine music’.115 He spent time in Italy, visiting Pisa, Naples, Venice, and Bologna, where (as his son stated) he ‘acquired a great knowledge in the polite arts’, no doubt including opera.116 Of course, Shaftesbury may also have seen productions of all-sung opera in London beginning in 1705. According to his son, ‘Of the Rudiments of Musick too he was not Ignorant, and his thoughts concerning it have been approved by the Greatest Masters in that Science’, perhaps including Handel.117 It may seem inappropriate to invoke Shaftesbury (demonstrably sympathetic to opera) to validate Steele and Dennis in their application of classical republican principles to opera. But it is precisely Shaftesbury’s discussion of opera in terms of its connection to spectacle, simplicity, and its effect on the maintenance of liberty that links him with Steele and Dennis and suggests there are serious grounds for their concerns. While Steele and Dennis may disagree with Shaftesbury about the merits of Italian-style opera, all ultimately share a Whig’s concern for opera’s effects on British liberty and Publick Spirit. Shaftesbury’s thoughts on Italian opera are contained in a letter written in 1709 to the French Huguenot refugee translator and belletrist Pierre Coste, then living in England since 1697 and later tutor to his son.118 Although the letter

115

Shaftesbury, 1 December 1687, to John Locke; in Benjamin Rand, ed., The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1900), 273. He spent considerable time in Italy, where (as his son stated [see next note]) he ‘acquired a great knowledge in the polite arts’, no doubt including Italian opera. Of course, Shaftesbury may also have seen productions of Italian-style opera produced in London beginning in 1705.

116

Quotations from ‘Sketch of my Father’s Life’ by the Fourth Earl, probably written before 1739 and intended to be prefixed to an edition of the Characteristicks; London, National Archives. Shaftesbury family papers. MS 30/24/21/226 f. 2. The sketch formed the basis (with some omissions) for the entry on the Third Earl in Pierre Bayle’s A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical, ed. Thomas Birch, 10 vols (1734–41), 9:179– 86; also reprinted in Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen, xvii–xxxi, from where (xix) it is quoted here.

117

See Thomas McGeary, ‘Shaftesbury on Liberty and Spectacle in Italian Opera’, Music and Letters, 74 (1993), 530–41.

118

The letter (in a letter copybook) is at London, National Archives. Shaftesbury family papers. MS 30/24/22/7, pp. 27–30. The letter (dated 19 February 1709) was first printed with modernised spelling and punctuation in Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen, ed. Rand, 396–9. Quotations from the ‘Letter to Coste’ are taken from McGeary, ‘Shaftesbury on Liberty and Spectacle’, which discusses the letter and its context in greater detail and transcribes from the original letter copybook.

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remained unpublished until the twentieth century, it may have been known to Handel.119 His remarks on opera were prompted by Coste’s sending him a copy of the Abbé François Raguenet’s pamphlet Parallèle des Italiens et des Français en ce qui regarde la musique et les opèras (1702), in which a Frenchman controversially proclaims the superiority of Italian opera.120 Following the lead of Raguenet, Shaftesbury compares French and Italian opera, but his discussion drifts to focus on the role of spectacle in theatre: here spectacle is a symptom of the decline in taste and a sign of the loss of liberty in the state at large. Shaftesbury’s principal objection, as he voices to Coste, is giving in to the ‘Machine and Decorations of the Theatre’ – a practice that is ‘vulgar, miserable, barbarouse; and is directly that which corrupted the Roman Stage or rather made it impossible for ’em to succeed in their Tragedy or Opera’.121 Shaftesbury’s objection to spectacle is a parallel to Steele’s and Dennis’s objections to the effeminacy and sensuousness of all-sung opera and its resulting effect on liberty. To support his objections to such spectacle in opera, Shaftesbury directs Coste to Horace’s Epistle to Augustus (Epistles 2.1), specifically to the oftencited passage in which Horace briefly recounts the history of Roman poetry.122 119

See Thomas McGeary, ‘Shaftesbury, Handel, and Italian Opera’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 32 (1986), 99–104.

120

Shaftesbury does not mention Raguenet’s treatise by name, but it can be identified by the passages he quotes in French. Coste presumably sent Shaftesbury the copy of the ?1708 edition that appears in an inventory of Shaftesbury’s library. See the entry in the MS catalogue of Shaftesbury’s library dated 1709 that records: ‘In Duodecimo …. II. chez ROGER Paralele des Italiens et des François Etc. a Amsterdam’. London, National Archives. Shaftesbury family papers. MS 30/24/23, p. 68. Quotations in text from 1702 edition. An anonymous eighteenth-century translation (sometimes attributed to Nicola Haym or Johann Ernst Galliard) appeared in 1709 as A Comparison Between the French and Italian Musick and Opera’s. Facsimile edition with introduction by Charles Cudworth (Farnborough, Hants., England: Gregg International, 1968); reprinted by Oliver Strunk in the Musical Quarterly 32 (1946), 411–36, and Source Readings in Music History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1950), 473–88.



121

‘Letter to Coste’, 539.

122

Horace, Epistles, 2.1, 139–213. C. O. Brink, Horace on Poetry, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 3:476, points out that this passage, while not an accurate history of the Roman stage, was regarded as a more factual history of Roman poetry than it in fact could have been; but nonetheless it ‘greatly influenced later European views’. On Horace, see also John Oldmixon, Reflections on the Stage, and Mr Collyer’s Defense of the Short View (1699), 83–7, with comments on Dacier’s notes on Horace. Horace was the author most frequently cited by Shaftesbury in the Characteristicks. He had previously written Coste two lengthy letters (1 October and 15 November 1706) discussing passages in Horace; only the first is printed in Shaftesbury, Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen, ed. Rand, 355–66. The letters are discussed in Robert Voitle, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671–1713 (Baton Rouge, La.:



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Horace places the origin of Latin poetry in the harvest festivals of the simple, frugal, sturdy old Roman farmers. With seeming historical accuracy (of what must have been a legendary account), Horace traces a sequence of their poetry from ‘harvest festivals to dialogue in rough verses, rustic slanging, licence, aggression, and the need for legal redress’.123 Later Greek influences refined Latin poetry, which nonetheless retained too much rusticity. After the Romans prevailed in the Punic Wars, according to Horace, the Roman poet had the leisure to study Greek tragedy (Sophocles, Thespis, and Aeschylus) and showed his genius for successfully adapting the tragic style to the Roman stage (lines 162–6). But instead of cultivating the tragic (appealing to the ear), Roman poets gave in to spectacle (appealing to the eye) to attract an audience (lines 182–210). Shaftesbury had earlier quoted to Coste Horace’s lines describing the giving-in to spectacle: Migravit ab aure voluptas Omnis ad incertos oculos et gaudia vana.124

According to Horace, intimidated by the indocti and the knights who might call for a bear or prize fight in the middle of a play, poets now introduce more and more spectacle on the stage: cavalry, infantry, kings in chains, triumphal processions, imported costumes, a giraffe, or white elephant – all to delight the wandering eye. Here in Horace (and as Shaftesbury reads him) is the arc of a rise and fall of dramatic poetry in Latium: in a primitive period, the rural Roman countryside was the birthplace of Roman drama; the conquest of Greece introduced the fine arts to Rome. After the Punic Wars, the Roman poets – with a natural bent towards tragedy (which required attention by the ear) – successfully studied and adapted the Greek tragedians (though the Romans tended not to polish and revise their work enough); but instead of refining it, they let their enthusiasm run after ‘the marvellouse, the outrageouse, the extream of things’ (appealing to eye).125 Abhorrence of spectacle on the stage looms large in Shaftesbury’s concerns with liberty and freedom, and ultimately leads to his objection to Raguenet’s giving in to spectacle. Shaftesbury had elsewhere criticised spectacle in the arts: ‘Nothing is more fatal, either to painting, architecture, or the other arts, than this false relish, which is governed rather by what immediately strikes the sense,

Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 254–6. On Shaftesbury as a critic of Horace (including specifically the Epistle to Horace), see Frank Stack, Pope and Horace: Studies in Imitation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 123

As summarised by Brink, Horace on Poetry, 3:476.

124

(All pleasure migrated away from the ear to the unreliable eyes and empty joys); Epistle to Augustus, lines 187–8.

125

‘Letter to Coste’, 539.

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than by what consequentially and by reflection pleases the mind, and satisfies the thought and reason’.126 To put Shaftesbury’s fixation in perspective, we should note that objections to spectacle had been a commonplace of ancient and neo-classical theatrical criticism. Aristotle had identified spectacle as the least of the six elements of drama and was suspicious of its contribution to the tragedy.127 Horace’s critique of spectacle in the Epistle to Augustus was well known in England. Thomas Rymer, for example, in A Short View of Tragedy (1693) cites with approval Aristotle’s statement that a tragedy must please both sight and hearing; but he observes that too many plays succeed by virtue of show and action, even when there is ‘nothing of a Tragedy, nothing of a Poet all the while’.128 Rymer recalls that Horace ‘was very angry with these empty Shows and Vanity, which the Gentlemen of his time ran like mad after’ and quotes (like Shaftesbury and later Addison) the line from the Epistle to Augustus: ‘Incertos oculos, et gaudia vana’.129 Rymer, like Shaftesbury, sees opera as a prime example of excess spectacle, although he singles out French opera, asking what Horace would think of the modern French opera then in vogue: There it is for you to bewitch your eyes, and to charm your ears. There is a Cup of Enchantment, there is Musick and Machine; Circe and Calipso in conspiracy against Nature and good Sense. ’Tis a Debauch the most insinuating, and the most pernicious; none would think an Opera and Civil reason, should be the growth of one and the same Climate.130

Shaftesbury’s appeal to Horace’s account of spectacle and the decline of Roman drama would not in itself seem so serious an objection to opera. But for Shaftesbury, opera or drama corrupted by spectacle may harm a nation politically. The significance of giving in to spectacle is clarified later in the letter where, after his summary of Horace, Shaftesbury sketches a theory about the relation between the arts and society. Specifically, he sees tragedy as the natural expression of a free people and an art inherently suited to maintaining a republican form of government. Shaftesbury explains to Coste how tragedy supports the lifestyle of the free, frugal, virtuous Roman. When the Roman people were free and a republic, they had a taste for tragedy, which was a natural consequence of liberty, for 126

‘A Notion on the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules’, in Second Characters: Or the Language of Forms, ed. Benjamin Rand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 61. See also Second Characters, 167–70, where Shaftesbury writes, ‘Spectacle corrupts more than the example mends or terrifies’.

127

Poetics, 1450b, 1453b.

128

Thomas Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy (1693), 9.

129

Rymer, Short View, 9, misquotes the line as ‘insanos oculos, et gaudia vana’. Joseph Addison also uses the full two lines as the motto to Spectator no. 18 (March 21, 1711), one of the papers on Italian opera.

130

Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy, 9.

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experiencing tragedy helped reinforce the Romans’ freedom by showing the ‘Afflictions and Misfortunes … and Miserys’ of the private life of tyrants and kings who ‘make the World unfortunate and afflict the People’.131 Witnessing on stage the disasters that attend the great teaches a free people to ‘content themselves with Privacy, enjoy their safer State, and prize the Equality and Justice of their Guardian Laws’.132 Tragedy is an expression of the natural interests of a free people, and a means of reassuring and encouraging their freedom. Dennis had stated the Athenians expended public expense on presenting tragedies because ‘they regarded it as the very Barrier of Liberty, which it supported by exposing the Misfortunes of Tyrants, and the Calamities that attended upon Arbitrary Pow’r’.133 Shaftesbury’s belief in the relation of governments and the flourishing and decay of ‘Liberty and Letters’ is worked out most carefully in the Soliloquy: or Advice to an Author, published in 1710.134 In a brief history of the progress of the arts, Shaftesbury concludes with the commonplace that ‘Poetry, Rhetorick, Musick, and the other kindred Arts … have been deliver’d to us in such Perfection, by Free Nations’.135 Elsewhere, he can bluntly assert: ‘The high Spirit of Tragedy can ill subsist where the Spirit of Liberty is wanting’.136 Thus, for Shaftesbury there is both a causal and a symptomatic relationship between the governance of a state, its liberty, and its arts and letters.137 A free people with a

131

‘Letter to Coste’, 539.

132

‘Soliloquy’, in Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, 1:116. John Dennis claimed the Greeks supported tragedy ‘because they regarded it as the very Barrier of Liberty, which it supported by exposing the Misfortune of Tyrants, and the Calamities that attended upon Arbitrary Pow’r’; Preface to Liberty Asserted. A Tragedy (1704).

133

John Dennis, Preface to Liberty Asserted.

134

The ‘Soliloquy: Or Advice to an Author’ was collected with other essays in the first edition of Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 3 vols (1711) and included in the numerous later editions of the Characteristicks. Quotation here are taken from the exemplary modern edition, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Philip Ayres, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 1:83–186. An accessible modern spelling, reading edition was published as Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Numerous other facsimiles are available. Shaftesbury’s writings are appearing in the Standard Edition of Shaftesbury’s Complete Works, ed. Gerd Hemmerich, Wolfram Benda, and Ulrich Schödlbauer (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt, 1981– ). On the relation of liberty to the arts in Shaftesbury’s thought, see Voitle, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 334–5, 351, and 355–6. See also ‘Soliloquy’, in Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, esp. 1:115–19, 126 (quoting 1:117).



135

‘Soliloguy’, in Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, 1:125–6. See also ‘The Letter Concerning Design’, in Second Characters, 22–3.

136

‘Soliloquy’, in Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, 1:116.

137

Ibid., 1:117.

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taste for tragedy is taught to be content and enjoy a life of republican liberty. Conversely, spectacles help keep the populace amused and content in slavery. As we have seen, Roman historians Sallust and Livy claimed Rome achieved greatness with the expulsion of the last of her kings, in 510 B.C., and the founding of the Republic.138 As Shaftesbury points out to Coste, Horace’s Epistle to Augustus was ‘more than a Critique upon the Roman Stage’. It was also an implicit attack upon the Emperor Augustus’s own taste for spectacle. By mentioning Suetonius in the letter, Shaftesbury certainly expected Coste to recall De Vita Caesarum, where Suetonius described the frequency, variety, and magnificence of the public spectacles sponsored by Augustus to entertain the people.139 Given Shaftesbury’s belief in the relationship between drama and forms of government, it becomes clearer why he objects to Raguenet’s condoning operatic spectacle. Spectacle undercuts the efficacy of tragedy. Spectacle on the opera stage could only indicate lack of, or lead to loss of, liberty. As his remarks suggest, Shaftesbury shared the conviction that Rome had achieved its greatness under the Republic and tyranny was the enemy of the arts and sciences. The idea that the decline of Roman arts and letters began under Augustus was a commonplace since Seneca and Tacitus and was widely espoused in early eighteenth-century Britain.140 Shaftesbury held the belief that ‘’Tis no astonishing Reflection to observe how fast the World declin’d in Wit and Sense, in Manhood, Reason, Science, and in every Art when once the Roman Empire had prevail’d and spread an universal Tyranny and Oppression over Mankind’.141 This concern with the effects of tyranny and oppression upon the arts follows inevitably from Shaftesbury’s political views.142 For seven years, he was the ward of his grandfather, the Whig statesman who spent his last years in exile. 138

Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 7; Livy, 1.17, 46; 2.1, 9, 15. See M. L. W. Laistner, The Greater Roman Historians (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1947), 53–4; Donald C. Earl, The Political Thought of Sallust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 41–59; and Donald C. Earl, The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), 17–19.

139

Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, 2:43–5. Suetonius writes of Augustus’s ‘interest and pleasure in the spectacle, which he never denied but often frankly confessed’ (2:45) (studio spectandi ac voluptate, qua teneri se neque dissimulavit umquam et saepe ingenue professus est.). Suetonius, trans. J. C. Rolfe. The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951).

140

See Howard D. Weinbrot, Augustus Caesar in ‘Augustan’ England: The Decline of a Classical Norm (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), 69–79.

141

‘Miscellaneous Reflections’, in Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, 2:116; see also Fink, Classical Republicans, 47 n89.

142

On Shaftesbury’s political views, Robbins, Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman, 128–32. On Shaftesbury’s Old Whig and Commonwealth principles, see Voitle, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 70–6, 206–8, 212, and 414. The influence of Shaftesbury’s concept of Liberty on later Whig writers is noted by Alan D. McKillop, ‘Ethics and Political History in Thomson’s Liberty’, in Pope and His Contemporaries: Essays Presented to

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In his years in the Commons and Lords, the third Earl adhered to the Country or Old Whig programme. He worked to secure a parliament free of the Crown’s influence, toleration for Dissenters, and support for William’s wars to contain the Absolute Monarchy of Louis XIV. Like many in England of his day, Shaftesbury instinctively drew parallels between ancient Rome and England and sought lessons from history he could apply to his own time.143 This view gains validity from Shaftesbury’s belief in the cyclic nature of history.144 Like Machiavelli, he frames the discussion in terms of liberty, tyranny, and luxury and their effects on the arts and sciences. This potential for application to modern Britain provides yet another reason why Shaftesbury is so concerned about spectacle on the modern opera stage: its presence could only indicate lack of, or lead to, loss of liberty. Writing about 1712, Shaftesbury considers the state of the arts in recent Britain, but with an eye constantly looking back at the history of Rome. Addressing the Whig Junto leader Lord Somers during the War of the Spanish Succession, Shaftesbury writes of the period of the reigns of Charles II and James II: I can myself remember the time, when, in respect of music, our reigning taste was in many degrees inferior to the French. The long reign of luxury and pleasure under King Charles the Second, and the foreign helps and studied advantages given to music in a following reign [James II], could not raise our genius the least in this respect.145

Like most Whigs, Shaftesbury places the point when Britain secured her (hitherto precarious) liberties at the Glorious Revolution, when the threat of civil disturbances was eased with the establishment of Britain’s mixed or constitutional monarchy.146 Then under William, and referring to the Nine Years War he led against France (1689–97), when the spirit of the nation was grown more free, though engaged at that time in the fiercest war, and with the most doubtful success, we no sooner began to turn ourselves towards music, and enquire what Italy in particular produced, than in an instant we outstripped our neighbours the French, entered into a

George Sherburn, eds James L. Clifford and Louis A. Landa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 215. 143

On the basis for drawing parallels between Roman and Britain, see Frank M. Turner, ‘British Politics and the Demise of the Roman Republic: 1700–1939’, Historical Journal, 29 (1986), 577–99. The idea is developed in Philip Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

144

See Stanley Grean, Shaftesbury’s Philosophy of Religion and Ethics: A Study in Enthusiasm ([Columbus, Ohio]: Ohio University Press, 1967), 80–2, and Voitle, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 334 and 415.

145

‘Letter Concerning Design’. Written about 1712 and first published posthumously in the fifth edition of the Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinion, Times (1732). Quoted from Second Characters, 20.

146

‘Soliloquy’, in Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, 1:116–17.

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genius far beyond theirs, and raised ourselves an ear, and judgment, not inferior to the best now in the world.147

Shaftesbury associates French culture with servility under the Universal Monarch. When England took up Italian music, she surpassed France and acquired the musical taste and sophistication suitable to a free Britain.148 Britain in 1710 under Queen Anne is ‘an Age when Liberty is once again in its Ascendant’.149 Under liberty, music will flourish by adopting the Italian taste in music. The War of the Spanish Succession, which, fears Shaftesbury, threatens the world with a ‘Universal Monarchy, and a new Abyss of Ignorance and Superstition’, parallels Rome’s Punic wars, when the presence of Carthaginian power acted as a check or restraint on luxury, indulgence, and corruption in Rome.150 Because of the war, he writes in 1710, ‘The British Muses, in this Din of Arms, may well lie abject and obscure; especially being as yet in their mere Infant State’.151 Shaftesbury anticipates what effect Britain’s ‘established Liberty will produce in everything which relates to Art, when Peace returns to us on these happy Conditions’.152 But for Shaftesbury and a long tradition of historians, Rome’s victory in the Punic Wars marked a change in her fortune: the removal of the Carthaginian threat followed by her conquests in the Near East fostered the accumulation of wealth, internal corruption, and the growth of refinement and luxury – all incompatible with the simpler, sterner life of earlier times. As Shaftesbury had learned from Horace, it was precisely at such a moment after the Punic Wars ‘the Roman People shou’d soon come to the Taste of tragedy’. But instead, their genius ‘grew rather wors by running into the marvellouse,

147

‘Letter Concerning Design’, in Second Characters, 20.

148

Shaftesbury seems to share a common notion that associated artistic servility with the despotic government of Louis XIV. Cf. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (ca. 1709, pub. 1711). After the sack of Rome in 1527, Thence Arts o’er all the Northern World advance; But Critic Learning flourish’d most in France. The Rules, a Nation born to serve, obeys, And Boileau still in Right of Horace sways. But we, brave Britons, Foreign Laws despis’d, And kept unconquer’d, and unciviliz’d, Fierce for the Liberties of Wit, and bold, We still defy’d the Romans, as of old. (lines 712–18).

149

‘Soliloquy’, in Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, 1:118.

150

Ibid., 1:118. On Carthage as a check on the Roman Republic (and so maintaining her ancient virtue): Florus, Epitomae, 1,31, following Livy, reports that Scipio Nascia (opposing Cato, who declared ‘delendam esse Carthaginem’) thought that Carthage should be preserved, lest the fear of the rival city being removed, prosperity would begin to have a demoralizing effect.

151

‘Soliloquy’, in Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, 1:115.

152

Ibid., 1:116.

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the outrageouse, the extream of things’. Finally, with the coming of the Empire, Shaftesbury states, No sooner had that Nation begun to lose the Roughness and Barbarity of their Manners, and learn of Greece to form their Heroes, … than by their unjust Attempt upon the Liberty of the world they justly lost their own. With their liberty they lost not only their Force of Eloquence, but even their Stile and Language it-self.153

In 1710 Shaftesbury is worried that the war’s end will put Britain in a situation similar to that of Rome: ‘’Tis with us at Present as with the Roman People in those early Days, when they wanted only Repose from arms to apply themselves to the Improvement of Arts and Studys’.154 Elsewhere he had commented on the ‘lame Condition of our English Stage’, which has ‘become of late the Subject of a growing Criticism’.155 And the charges Shaftesbury levels against it could have been uttered by Horace: We hear it openly complained, he writes, ‘That in our newer Plays as well as in our older, in Comedy as well as Tragedy, the Stage presents a proper Scene of Uproar, – Duels fought; Swords drawn, many of a Side; Wounds given, and sometimes dress’d too; the Surgeon call’d, and the Patient prob’d and tented upon the Spot. That in our Tragedy, nothing is so common as Wheels, Racks, and Gibbets properly adorn’d; Executions decently perform’d; Headless Bodys and Bodiless Heads expos’d to view: Battles fought: Murders committed, and the Dead carryd off in great Numbers’. – Such is our politeness!156

The task for England is to break the parallel with Rome at this Machiavellian moment by avoiding running after spectacle. Although Shaftesbury’s ostensible purpose is to convey to Coste his reactions to Raguenet’s treatise, it is only towards the end of the letter when he turns to the topic of French and Italian opera that it becomes evident why he devoted so much time to spectacle and liberty. He immediately states his principal concern: that Raguenet gives in to the vulgar spectacle of the theatre, which made it ‘impossible for ’em to succeed in their Tragedy or Opera’. Here Shaftesbury has in mind Raguenet’s conclusion, in which a Frenchman says of the Italians, ‘To conclude all, the Italian decorations and their machines are more beautiful than those of France’.157 Raguenet then provides lengthy descriptions of the stages, machines, stage decorations, and scene transformations he had seen in Turin and Venice.158 153

Ibid., 1:116–17.

154

Ibid., 1:118.

155

‘Miscellaneous Reflections’, in Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, 2:250–1.

156

Ibid., 2:251.

157

(Enfin, pour les Décorations & pour les machines, les Opéra d’Italie l’emportent encore beaucoup sur ceux de France.); Raguenet, Parallèle des Italiens et des Français (1702 edn), 114–15.

158

Raguenet, Parallèle des Italiens et des Français (1702 edn), 115–17.

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But it is in his comparison of French and Italian recitative, Shaftesbury claims, that Raguenet also shows a little of that false taste he had already shown in his penchant for spectacle. He complains of Italian recitative, as Shaftesbury paraphrases, ‘qu’il est trop simple, trop uni’ (that it is too simple, too plain). Raguenet prefers French recitative, for Italian recitative is, for him, ‘not properly a song; for they only, so to say, speak in their Recitative; there is almost no inflection nor modulation in this so-called song’.159 In line with disapproving excess spectacle, Shaftesbury, contrary to Raguenet, believes that adopting the simple Italian recitative is one way of restoring the true nature of ancient Greek tragedy with its chorus. Shaftesbury predicted that ‘as Countrys grow more Polite and take after this Italien manner of rendering their Recitative more plain and simple’, opera would gradually approach the nature of drama. Tragedy and opera would then be transformed and approach Greek tragedy, with its expressive musical modes and harmony. For Shaftesbury, recitative should be on a plain foot, ‘just next to common Speech’; but he believes at present it is ‘in reality not reduc’d enough to its true antient simplicity’. The conventional opposite to Italian opera was the French tragédie lyrique, and Shaftesbury devotes a sheet of ‘hard Criticism’ to the failures of French opera, objecting specifically to two features: French choruses are ridiculous, a ‘gross sort of Musik’ fit only for the parterre, and the French récit is essentially too adorned and not distinguished enough from the air. From these comments, Shaftesbury’s ideal of operatic action emerges: one that is closer to the Italian than to the French. He distinguishes in dramatic action two parts. First, what he calls ‘the more sedately passionate’ and ‘moving Places’ are the lyrical portions or arias. Such sections of reflection, soliloquy, and chorus are the proper place for measured music and orchestral accompaniment. Second, the noble, quick, and strong parts wherein the action of the tragedy is represented should be conveyed in recitative, for they would be ridiculous if sung. For Shaftesbury, to be effective these types of operatic action must be clearly distinguished, and the fault of French opera is to adorn the récit so that it too closely approaches the air. Shaftesbury frequently invokes the ideal of the simple. In general, simplicity for Shaftesbury is the absence of false ornament and exaggeration, a principal mark of artistic excellence. Moreover, the simple is the sure way of imitating Nature, and both are equated in Shaftesbury’s mind with the perfection of antique Greek art. Needless to say, for Shaftesbury, modern artists are not following the simple style.160 Thus, Shaftesbury’s frequent injunctions to simplify 159

(qui n’est point proprement un chant; car ils ne font, pour ainsi dire, que parler dans leur Récitatif, il n’y a presque point d’inflexion ni de modulation dans ce prétendu chant.); Raguenet, Parallèle des Italiens et des Français (1702 edn), 72–3.

160

See Characteristicks, ed. Ayres, 1:167–9, 215, and 226–7; 2:254 n2 (Shaftesbury’s note) and 195–6; Second Characters, 60–1; Grean, Shaftesbury’s Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, 13; and Voitle, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 364–5. On the many uses and forms that the protean notion of the simple took in eighteenth-century aesthetics, see

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the music of opera are a way of trying to recapture that simple imitation of Nature characteristic of Greek art and drama. Shaftesbury’s letter to Coste provides an outline of the causal connection between features of opera (spectacle and recitative) and their effect on the audience and society – in this case, the maintenance of liberty and freedom. Shaftesbury will have Italian-style opera, but he would like it simple and unadorned. 111 The Whigs Steele, Dennis, and Shaftesbury – although they may arrive at different ideas about all-sung opera and its proper place in British culture – bring to their discussions a framework grounded in the hallowed principles of classical republicanism. All three, writing about opera in the midst of Britain’s War of the Spanish Succession, see Britain at a Machiavellian moment when Britain’s fate hangs in the balance between liberty and Publick Spirit or corruption and tyranny. Opera threatens to tilt the balance away from liberty and Publick Spirit.

Raymond D. Haven, ‘Simplicity, A Changing Concept’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 14 (1953), 3–32.

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Chapter 8

Addison: Opera and the Politics of Politeness

A

more sympathetic and nuanced Whig approach to opera as a legitimate musical-dramatic form is given in Joseph Addison’s early Spectator papers. Readily available and of obvious interest to English literature, aesthetics, as well as opera, they may be the best-known writings on opera of the period – also the most misunderstood. This chapter attempts a wide-ranging re-evaluation of Addison, showing he is not, as often claimed, an opponent of opera but accepts it and proposes to correct some risible features and reform it to accord with a polite society. The Tatler and Spectator papers and the writings of the Earl of Shaftesbury were the principal proponents of ‘politeness’, the contemporary term that covers the broad transformation of post-Revolutionary English society and culture.1 This new social-cultural ideal was largely a Whig initiative.2 Its ideals arose 1





2

The fullest presentation of politeness is Lawrence E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), and his earlier writings: ‘Politeness for Plebs, Consumption and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England’, pp. 362–82 in The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800, Image, Object, Text, eds Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1995); ‘The Third Earl of Shaftesbury and the Progress of Politeness’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 18 (1984–5), 186–214; ‘Gender, Conversation and the Public Sphere in Early Eighteenth-Century England’, pp. 100–115 in Textuality and Sexuality: Reading Theories and Practices, eds Judith Still and Michael Worton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993); ‘Liberty, Manners, and Politeness in Early Eighteenth-Century England’, Historical Journal, 32 (1989), 583–605; and ‘Property and Politeness in the Early EighteenthCentury Whig Moralists: The Case of the Spectator’, pp. 221–33 in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, eds Susan Staves and John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1995). Brian Cowan offers a refinement of Klein in ‘Mr. Spectator and the Coffeehouse Public Sphere’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 37 (2002), 345–66. Useful overview in Nicholas Phillipson, ‘Politeness and Politics in the Reigns of Anne and the Early Hanoverians’, pp. 211–45 in The Varieties of British Political Thought, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). See also essays in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, eds Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and Gordon J. Schochet, ed, Politics, Politeness, and Patriotism (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1993), both with essays by Klein. The Whig nature of politeness is most fully elaborated in Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, 123–31, 143–53, 175–93, and passim. See also Lawrence E. Klein, ed., Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (Cambridge:

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from developments following the Revolution, resulting in Britain’s self-identification as a ‘polite and commercial people’.3 For Addison, opera is bound with politeness, for it was established by ‘persons of the greatest Politeness’ (no. 18), and the goal of the Spectator’s criticism was to establish among them a ‘Taste of polite Writing … relating to Operas and Tragedies’ (no. 58).4 Addison can be seen as addressing the implicit question, ‘What sort of opera is suitable for a polite Whig nation?’ The Glorious Revolution of 1688–9 established England as a constitutional monarchy, validated the Revolution Principles, and confirmed it as Protestant nation – ideas all central to Whig ideology. As was readily apparent, England was becoming a wealthy, commercial trading nation with growing prosperity, consumption of consumer goods, and numerous urban institutions from coffeehouses to academies. The requirements of financing and managing William’s wars against France brought about a reorganization of the military, enlargement of the size and functions of the administration, and the Financial Revolution with the establishment of the Bank of England, Royal Exchange, national debt, and public credit.5 But this change in society brought into question the terms virtue and corruption of the seventeenth-century English republican tradition. For James Harrington’s vision of the Commonwealth, wealth based on finance and commerce (leading to luxury) was a corruption of the virtues of frugality, agrarian livelihood, and public duty (Publick Spirit) of the free, independent landholder – or what became the ‘landed interest’. Ownership of inherited land defended by militias of armed freeholders provided liberty and independence. For the republican tradition of Harrington, the wealth of a new urban commercial



Cambridge University Press, 1999), xv–xx (quoted, p. 31); J. G. A. Pocock, ‘The Varieties of Whiggism’, pp. 215–51 in Virtue, Commerce, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 235–7. William Walker, ‘Ideology and Addison’s Essays on the Pleasures of the Imagination’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 24 (Spring 2000), 65–84, demonstrates convincingly that Addison did not represent a marxian bourgeois or middle-class ideology, or of Habermasian public sphere, but a Whig programme of social, cultural, and commercial values of politeness. Lee Andrew Elioseff also challenges the notion of Addison and the Spectator speaking for a middle class; ‘Joseph Addison’s Political Animal: Middle-Class Idealism in Crisis’, Eighteenth Century Studies, 6 (1973), 372–81.

3

Paul Langford cites its use in William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–9); see A Polite and Commercial People, England, 1727–1783 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), iii.

4

All citations to the Spectator from Donald F. Bond, ed., The Spectator, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).

5

The classic studies are P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (London: Macmillan, 1976), and John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 88–134, See also John Brewer and J. H. Plumb, eds, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1982).

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society – based on speculative investment in intangible forms of property, such as stocks, bonds, bank notes, and public funds, whose values rose and fell – was seen as unstable, transient, and insubstantial; such forms of credit were often figured as a young woman. Such dependency on the promises of others to pay was dangerous and bred corruption.6 Corruption bred by commerce and credit now replaced the fickleness of Fortuna as the enemy of virtue. In a new urban, commercial society, the classic Spartan and Roman virtues needed for freedom and liberty, as exemplified in the heroes of the Roman Republic and transmitted in plays, opera seria plots, and epics and to be emulated in military careers – all easily gendered as ‘masculine’ – were no longer relevant or suitable for the cultivation and refinement of the arts and manners in the new urban social-commercial order.7 In the new commercial society, the relation of virtue and commerce was reversed.8 Instead of the enemy of virtue, commerce and credit were now seen 6

On various contemporary views towards credit, Julian Hoppit, ‘Attitudes to Credit in Britain, 1680–1790’, Historical Journal, 33 (1990), 305–22. On gendering credit as feminine: Terry Mulcaire, ‘Public Credit; or, the Feminization of Virtue in the Marketplace’, PMLA, 114 (1999), 1029–42; Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. 1–139; and Ingrassia, ‘Women Writing/Writing Women: Pope, Dulness, and Feminization in the Dunciad’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 14 (1990), 40–58; J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975), esp. 439–42, 452–6.

7

On the inadequacy, inappropriateness, and decline, of the epic and heroic modes: Howard Weinbrot, Britannia’s Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 204–56; Elaine McGirr, Heroic Mode and Political Crisis, 1660–1745 (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2009); and Andrew Lincoln, ‘The Culture of War and Civil Society in the Reigns of William III and Anne’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 44 (2011), 455–74, who points out that the rise of a professional military put traditional masculine military activity beyond the range of most gentlemen (pp. 456–7). On Locke’s attack on classical virtues, Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, 65–6. Peter Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 70, notes Thomas Hobbes had little use for the manly virtues. St Evremond argues the unsuitability of ancient heroes as models in ‘Of Ancient and Modern Tragedy’, in The Works of Monsieur de St. Evremond, 3 vols (1714), 3:2–22. How the Englishman might reconcile the social reality of his life with the classical, heroic images shown in operas is suggested in Philip Ayers, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Sir William Temple gave examples of ‘illustrious persons’ who traced the path of ‘heroic virtue’ in ‘Upon Heroick Virtue’, in Miscellanea. The Second Part. In Four Essays (1690).

8

On politeness as a distinctively modern form of virtue, J. W. Burrow, Whigs and Liberals: Continuity and Change in English Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988). On the transformation of the relation of virtue to commerce and credit: Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, 423–61; Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History, 48–50,

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as a necessary foundation of personal freedom and well-being. Freed from the constraints of frugality and rude agrarian life, the fruits of commerce offered the citizen the opportunity for moral and cultural refinement. The notion of credit as a stabilizing and virtuous social force is represented in Addison’s famous Allegory of Credit in Spectator, no. 3 (3 March 1711). The liberty to pursue one’s own economic self-interest and desire for luxury was provided not by armed militias of freeholders but by living under the protection of parliamentary government and a professional military. The ultimate justification of the pursuit of self-interest occurred in 1714 with Bernard Mandeville’s scandalous doctrine of Private Vices, Publick Benefits.9 Important as well for politeness was a rethinking of the authority of religion and morality that arose from Latitudinarian churchmanship and the Cambridge Platonists. These rational strains of Christianity stressed that man was naturally good, and that tender passions, pity, and compassion are springs of benevolence and good actions. The basis of morality and ethics was not the threat or promise of future rewards or punishment but man’s natural moral sense and feelings. This theological re-evaluation of man’s nature, one essentially anti-Hobbesian and anti-ecclesiastic, led to the ‘moral sense’ school of ethics identified with Shaftesbury, especially An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit (1699, rev. 1711) and The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody (1709). Shaftesbury believed man possessed a natural moral sense to guide human action; goodness and virtue were based not on authority and orthodoxy but in human nature, a sense and love of what is good. For Shaftesbury both ethical action and aesthetic taste derived from this moral sense; hence, there was a unity of ethical truth and sense of beauty.10 Aesthetic refinement indicated moral refinement. An outer refinement of manners and taste reflected inner moral virtue. 108–16, and passim; Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, 123–53, and passim; Shelly Burtt, Virtue Transformed: Political Argument in England, 1688–1740 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 32–4; Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism, 4–5, 70; and Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph, 20th anniversary edn (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 9–12. Steve C. Pincus, ‘Neither Machiavellian Moment nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial Society and the Defenders of the English Commonwealth’, American Historical Review, 103 (1998), 705–36, demonstrates the incompatibility of classical republicanism and the newly emerging commercial society. 9

See Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714). The sentiment was anticipated in his Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn’d Honest (1705). On Mandeville’s thought, M. M. Goldsmith, Private Vices, Public Benefits: Bernard Mandeville’s Social and Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Burtt, Virtue Transformed, esp. 128–9, and passim; and F. B. Kaye, introduction to Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924).

10

On moral sense, human nature, and taste in Shaftesbury: Stanley Grean, Shaftesbury’s Philosophy of Religion and Ethics: A Study in Enthusiasm (Athens, Ohio: Ohio

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All these changes brought forth a new cultural paradigm of virtue suitable for the commercial world of consumption that was embodied in politeness: a cluster of more feminine values of natural sociability, sentiment, and refinement of morals and cultural accomplishments. All led to a new conception of masculinity and the ideal of the gentleman.11 In this new world, authority was shifted away from the court, church, universities, and critical canons to the man of good sense and taste, both based in human nature.12 Politeness validated commerce and credit and became a commodity itself. Shaftesbury had claimed that ‘all politeness is owing to liberty’.13 Politeness was able to reconcile the virtue of the classical republican tradition with the values of the new commercial world.14 Gentlemen, ladies, a country squire, manners, the Town, genius, writing, conversation, wit, imagination, style, manners, taste, and learning – all could be ‘polite’.15

University Press, 1967), 152–63, 184–228; Grean, introduction to Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. John M. Robertson (1900; reprint ed.: Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), xxviii–xxxv; Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, 48–57 [pointing out Shaftesbury never actually used the term]; Shaftesbury, Characteristics, ed. Klein, xxvi–xxix; Preben Mortensen, ‘Shaftesbury and the Morality of Art Appreciation’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 55 (1994), 631–50 [with a reconsideration of the concept of ‘disinterestedness’ in Shaftesbury’s aesthetics]; Robert Voitle, ‘Shaftesbury’s Moral Sense’, Studies in Philology, 52 (1955), 17–38; Ernest Tuveson, ‘Shaftesbury and the Not So Simple Plan of Human Nature’, Studies in English Literature, 5 (1965), 403–34; and D. D. Raphael, The Moral Sense (London: Oxford University Press, 1947). 11



On the new concept of masculinity and male behaviour (often as feminization of males) in culture of politeness: E. J. Clery, The Feminization Debate in EighteenthCentury England: Literature, Commerce and Luxury (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2004); Philip Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society, Britain, 1660–1800 (Harlow: Longman, 2001); John Barrell, ‘“The Dangerous Goddess”, Masculinity, Prestige, and the Aesthetic in Early EighteenthCentury Britain’, Cultural Critique, no. 12 (1989), 101–31; Stephen H. Gregg, Defoe’s Writings and Manliness: Contrary Men (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009); and Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History, 114. However, Carolyn Williams, Pope, Homer, and Manliness: Some Aspects of Eighteenth-Century Classical Learning (London: Routledge, 1993), shows Pope’s efforts to preserve a classical sense of masculinity.

12

Samuel Johnson summarised that Addison decided ‘by taste rather than by principles’; ‘Life of Addison’, in The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, 4 vols (1779–81), 2:439.

13

Shaftesbury, Characteristics, ed. Klein, 31.

14

Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness, 150–3.

15

Such attributions are found throughout the Spectator papers.

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❧  Addison and Italian Opera Addison’s jests at events at the Haymarket theatre and his critiques of opera, coupled with the failure of his own Rosamond, have been used by modern writers to portray him as an opponent, if not hostile enemy, of the new form of Italian-style opera. Because of their collaboration in the Tatler and Spectator, Addison’s ideas on opera have often been conflated with those of Steele (and presented in tandem with John Dennis, as well), as if all took the same stance towards opera.16 Addison’s satire and criticism of opera were taken as slights or disrespect to Handel and led to questions of his competence as a judge and critic of music. The later arch-proponent of Italian opera Charles Burney charged that, possessed of ‘the grossest ignorance, or defect of ear’, Addison ‘discovers, whenever he mentioned the subject [of music or opera], a total want of sensibility as well as knowledge in that art’.17 Sir John Hawkins opined that Addison’s comments ‘plainly indicate that he had no judgment of his own to direct him’ and incline one to ‘question as well the goodness of the author’s ear as his knowledge of [the] subject’.18 These charges no doubt set the tone for many later critics who did not take seriously Addison’s criticism of opera.19 Even serious scholars misunderstand the tone of some essays and cannot resist the opportunity to charge Addison with extreme opposition to opera. One writes that ‘Joseph Addison launched a scathing satirical attack against this new, meaningless operatic genre in the columns of the Spectator’ and noted ‘his satirical rejection of Handel’s Rinaldo’.20 Overlooking Addison’s exposure to opera on his European tour, another 16

See especially, Sigmund A. E. Betz, ‘The Operatic Criticism of the Tatler and Spectator’, Musical Quarterly, 14 (1945), 318–30, which frequently conflates the two as authors of the Spectator.

17

Charles Burney, A General History of Music, (1776–89; ed. Frank Mercer, reprint edn in 2 vols, New York: Dover, 1957), 2:658. Burney cites Addison’s choice of Clayton to set Rosamond as further evidence of Addison’s deficient taste (despite the fact that Arsinoe was very popular at the time, receiving thirty performances in three seasons).

18

John Hawkins, A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (1776; reprint of Novello 1853 edn in 2 vols: New York: Dover, 1963), 1:xxi–xxii. Hawkins objected that Addison took an empirical approach to aesthetics and criticism, instead of seeing music as a science based on immutable principles and laws of harmony, symmetry, proportion, and order (1:xix–xxii).

19

The charge that Addison lacked sensitivity to music is refuted in Peter M. Briggs, ‘Joseph Addison and the Art of Listening, Italian Opera, and the Music of the Mother Tongue’, Age of Johnson, 16 (2005), 157–76.

20

Pierre Dubois, Music in the Georgian Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 19. The long paper (no. 14) containing extensive satire of Rinaldo was written by Steele, not Addison. Even a long exposition of Addison’s ideas, in the context of a longer survey of the responses of Steele and Dennis, highlights his ‘anti-operatic’ arguments; see Hendrik Knif, Gentlemen and Spectators: Studies in Journals, Opera

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disparages Addison’s qualifications as a critic: ‘All of Addison’s comments on music … bespeak a complacent amateurism’ and show unawareness ‘of the technical developments that were making the music of his time a stronger language’.21 Another mistakes (as if they were about actual operas) certainly fictitious and satirical reports of an opera Projector who presents to the assembled coffeehouse a scheme for an extravagant opera on ‘The Expedition of Alexander the Great’, which is a send-up of absurd stage sets and actions, and plans to surprise the audience with one hundred horses and to divert the New River through the opera house.22 Of Englishmen who wrote about opera, Addison had the most recent experience of it on the Continent. After residence at Oxford from 1687 to 1698, with the assistance of Lords Wharton and Somers, he received a treasury grant of £200 towards travel on the Continent. Although the primary purpose of the trip was to prepare him for public service, Addison was attentive to the many cultural attractions of the Continent. He left for France in late August 1699. His Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c. in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703 (1705) contain observations in France and Italy. Addison rather ostentatiously parades his classical learning as he identifies ancient monuments, inscriptions, places, and ruins with citations in classical texts, and describes modern churches, paintings, libraries, sculpture, medals, and cabinets of curiosity.23 Like many travellers, he sought out opera. Addison reported his impression of the Lully-Quinault opera Proserpine to William Congreve in August 1699. For him, like most Englishmen, French opera did not please: I cou’d have wisht for your company last night at ye Opera where you would have seen paint enough on ye actors Faces to have Dawbed a whole street of sign-posts. Every man that comes upon the Stage is a Beau: the Shepherds are all Embroidered, Pluto has his Valet de chambre, and a couple of Riders appears in Red Stockins. Alpheus throws aside his Sedge and makes Love in a Fair periwig and a plume of Feathers but with such a horrid voice that [one] woud think the murmurs of a Country-Brook much better music. It is as

and the Social Scene in Late Stuart London (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society (1995), 49–58. 21

James A. Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence: A History of the Relations between Poetry and Music (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981), 247–8. None of Addison’s comments suggest, as Winn states, that he recognised that opera’s ‘shape was more and more dictated by purely musical considerations’ (201).

22

See Spectator, nos. 5 and 29; Betz, ‘Operatic Criticism of the Tatler and Spectator’.

23

On Addison on the Grand Tour, Peter Smithers, Life of Joseph Addison (Oxford: Clarendon, 1954), 44-88; John Ingamells, A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701-1800 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 9–19; C. D. Thorpe, ‘Two Augustans Cross the Alps: Dennis and Addison on Mountain Scenery’, Studies in Philology, 32 (1935), 463–82.

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ridiculous to criticise an opera as a puppet-show or I cd send you over a Long Catalogue of the like Indecencys.24

Addison makes only a passing mention of singing and music; he seems most exercised about violations of verisimilitude and common sense.25 His reaction to French singing is also evident in a letter from Blois to the embassy’s secretary Abraham Stanyan at Paris: ‘I assure you I dont envey your Entertainments at Paris so long as this season lasts. I would as soon be in a neighbouring wood as at ye Opera and in my opinion Find in it more beautiful scenes and pleasantest Music’.26 Addison left Marseilles for Genoa on 12 December 1700.27 From there he crossed the Apennines to the Po Valley and traversed northern Italy to arrive in Venice for the 1700–1 Carnival, where he is known to have seen three operas in the last two weeks of January: Diomede punito da Alcide (at Sant’ Angelo), Il Pericle in Samo (at San Fantini), and Catone uticense (at San Giovanni Grisostomo).28 He saw enough to venture some global opinions in his Remarks. His attitude towards Italian opera on its home ground is serious and critical, but not hostile. His opinions usually repeat commonplaces, such as ‘The Poetry of ’em is generally as exquisitely ill, as the Musick is good’.29 His thoughts on opera often echo Dryden. He points to certain advantages Italian language and poetry lend Italian opera over that of the French or English. First, of course, is the perennial observation about ‘the celebrated Smoothness of their Tongue’. He sees as a further advantage the greater difference in vocabulary between poetry and prose (or common discourse). That is, in certain words reserved for use in poetry, several letters may be dropped, giving Italian verse ‘something beautiful and sonorous in the Expression’.

24

Walter Graham, ed., The Letters of Joseph Addison (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), 4. A similar report was given in Spectator no. 29. Proserpine was performed in Paris on 7 July 1699.

25

On the central place of good or common sense (bon sens) or taste in Addison’s criticism, Lee Andrew Elioseff, The Cultural Milieu of Addison’s Literary Criticism (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1963), 28–40.

26

Addison to Abraham Stanyan, Letters of Joseph Addison, ed. Graham, 21. The date suggested is May 1700.

27

Addison erroneously gives December 1699 in Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, etc. in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703 (1705). On Addison and opera in Italy, see also Knif, Gentlemen and Spectators, 163–74.

28

For details on the opera productions and documentation of Addison’s attendance, Eleanor Selfridge-Field, A New Chronology of Venetian Opera and Related Genres, 1660–1760: The Calendar of Venetian Opera (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007), 246, 248–9; and Selfridge-Field, ‘Italian Opera, English Letters, and French Journalism: The Mercure de France’s Debts to Joseph Addison’, Revue de Musicologie, 83 (1997), 185–203.

29

Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, 96.

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Otherwise, Italian poetry would sink into a ‘Poorness of Language’ and appear ‘wretchedly low and vulgar’.30 He is more focused on certain aspects of plot and action, which turn out to be breaches of decorum or verisimilitude, concerns that surface later in the Spectator. He asks, ‘who can endure to hear one of the rough old Romans squeaking thro’ the Mouth of an Eunuch, especially when they may chuse a Subject out of Courts where Eunuchs are really Actors, or represent by ’em any of the soft Asiatic Monarchs?’31 He is unhappy with Catone uticense, rather trivially pointing out the incongruity of seeing on the shelves of Cato’s library volumes of Plutarch and Tasso. Of the action, he was more severe: After a short Soliloquy he [Cato] strikes himself with the Dagger that he holds in his Hand, but being interrupted by one of his Friends, he stabs him [the friend] for his Pains, and by the Violence of the Blow unluckily breaks the Dagger on one of his Ribs, so that he is forc’d to dispatch himself by tearing up his first Wound.32

Turns in the plots also struck him as ridiculous. In the second opera,33 Il Pericle in Samo, he recalled: The King of the Play endeavours at a Rape, but the Poet being resolv’d to save his Heroine’s Honour, has so order’d it, that the King always acts with a great CaseKnife stuck in his Girdle, which the lady snatches from him in the Struggle, and so defends her self.34

From Venice, he headed south, crossing the Apennines a second time, and passed through Rome quickly on the way to Naples for Holy Week, and then back to Rome (July 1701). Passing through Siena, Leghorn, Pisa, and Lucca in the following October–November 1701, in Florence he encountered the Duke of Shrewsbury and attended opera at least twice with him and several other travellers.35 He crossed the Apennines to Bologna, and then on to Vienna, where on 30 November 1702 in the company of the minister George Stepney and other English travellers, he was entertained by the Emperor with ‘an Opera at Court for the Close of the Evening’.36 The opera was Joseph Fux’s La clemenza d’Au30

Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, 98–9.

31

Ibid., 97.

32

Ibid., 97–8.

33

Selfridge-Field, ‘Italian Opera, English Letters, and French Journalism’, corrects Addison’s misidentification of the opera as Diomede punito da Alcide at San Angelo.

34

Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, 98.

35

As recorded in the Journal of Charles Duke of Shrewsbury 1700–1706; Northamptonshire Record Office, Montagu Volume 65. Entries for 6 and 9 November 1701, p. 114. In his Remarks, Addison states he saw his eighth opera in Florence.

36

Letter from George Stepney, Vienna, 2 December 1702; London, National Archives, SP 80/19, pp. 365–7; see also Knif, Gentlemen and Spectators, 171–2.

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gusto, composed to celebrate the English victory at Vigo Bay and premiered on 15 November 1702. Returning to Italy during the War of the Spanish Succession, he quickly crossed the Po Valley to Turin and in early December 1702 had an easy crossing of the Alps at Mt Cenis into Switzerland, arriving at Geneva on 9 December. Homeward bound through Imperial territory, by February-March 1703 he was at Hamburg, an important opera centre, where he befriended the English resident John Wych. Wych was among the patrons of the Hamburg opera company; Addison saw opera and likely met Reinhard Keiser, Johann Mattheson, and possibly Handel.37 He returned to London in February 1704. In the meantime, John Vanbrugh had launched his theatre project at the Haymarket. Addison was likely among the Whig writers Vanbrugh approached for works for his theatre. Addison already had in hand an unfinished play, Cato, which at the moment he chose not to complete (it was ultimately completed and produced in April 1713). Marlborough’s victory at Blenheim in August 1704 was the occasion for Addison’s The Campaign, published in late 1704 (though dated 1705). In gratitude for the victory, the Queen granted the royal estate at Woodstock to Marlborough for a grand palace. An opera celebrating Marlborough was a fitting subject for a Whig-sponsored theatre. The mention of Rosamond in William Cleland’s letter of December 1705 and a statement by Thomas Tickell confirm that Addison’s opera was probably begun in 1705.38 Addison’s opera, Rosamond, with Thomas Clayton as composer, was not produced until March 1707 at the Drury Lane theatre (the only theatre producing opera at the time). It had received complimentary notices in the Whig Muses Mercury but had only the three performances needed for an author’s benefit. The short run (not the shortest for an opera in the period) has caused many writers to attribute Addison’s later criticism of opera to spite at the opera’s failure. But certainly, Addison knew many plays had disappointingly short initial runs, and it is not clear why the short run of his opera should incite hatred to the whole genre. Addison had no further involvement producing opera, although his collaborator Clayton would continue working with other Whig-affiliated poets in further projects of English dramatic music (see following chapter). When in 1707, shortly after Rosamond (4 March 1707) and Thomyris (1 April 1707), Addison wrote the Prologue to his friend Edmund Smith’s tragedy Phaedra and Hippolitus (21 April 1707), in addition to lamenting the audience’s reception of Italian-style opera to the detriment of English tragedy, he also focused on the lapses in decorum and verisimilitude of opera: Long has a Race of Heroes fill’d the Stage, That rant by Note, and through the Gamut [scale] rage;

37

As speculated by Smithers, Life of Joseph Addison, 79; and followed by Donald Burrows, Handel (New York: Schirmer, 1994), 20.

38

Further on genesis of Rosamond, see chapter 5.

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opera and politics in queen anne’s britain, 1705–1714 In Songs and Airs express their martial Fire, Combate in Trills, and in a Feuge [sic] expire.

While Addison does satirise the breaches of decorum and verisimilitude of opera productions, he does not reject opera outright.

❧  A Polite Opera About the time that Addison left for Ireland in April 1709 as secretary to Lord Wharton, Richard Steele launched what would be the immensely popular Tatler on 12 April 1709. So it was not until Addison returned in September that his imprint on the Tatler was seen, turning it more into the single-essay periodical than a medley of letters and reports from coffeehouses. Except for the report about Pyrrhus and Demetrius with the notice of John Dennis’s forthcoming essay on opera (no. 4, 10 April 1709) and remarks on Nicolini’s acting (no. 115, 3 January 1710), opera is not a prominent topic in the Tatler, nor the Guardian or the Englishman, other Steele periodicals. Because it had become too political, Robert Harley had forced Steele to close the Tatler on 2 January 1711 (although there were several continuations by other hands). Steele and Addison quickly launched a continuation, the Spectator, on 1 March 1711. Chastened by the shutdown of the Tatler, the Spectator claimed to be non-political, but its general Whiggish cosmopolitan political-cultural orientation is unmistakable.39 Since the Spectator needed content for six issues a week, Steele and Addison seized on the current fashions of London society, including the rage for opera, as subjects for topical essays – both humorous and serious. In the meantime, Handel premiered his first opera for the London stage, Rinaldo, on 24 February, and L’Idaspe fedele was revived. Steele quickly devoted an issue (no. 14, 16 March 1711) to ridiculing the stage action, scenery, and props of Rinaldo (as seen above). As well as contributing humorous items on opera, Addison wrote serious critical essays about it. His Spectator papers break new ground in aesthetics and show the influence of the empirical, sensationist natural philosophy of John Locke.40 He takes an affective, audience-oriented approach to aesthetics and criticism,

39

Howard Weinbrot, Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture, 1660–1780 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 348–51. In fact, paper no. 287 (29 January 1712) is a veritable statement of Whig political ideology, and no. 516 by Steele (22 October 1712) is a paean to William III. As well, the first seven volumes of the collected reprint editions of 1712–13 were dedicated to the Whigs Lords Sommers and Halifax, Henry Boyle, Duke of Marlborough, Lord Wharton, Earl of Sunderland, and the ambassador Sir Paul Methuen.

40

Fuller considerations of Addison’s criticism include Elioseff, The Cultural Milieu of Addison’s Literary Criticism; Edward A. Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom, Joseph Addison’s Social Animal (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1971) [but not reliable on the supposed bourgeois aspects of Addison’s thought]; and Leopold Damrosch, ‘The Significance of Addison’s Criticism’, Studies in English Literature, 19 (1979), 421–30.

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exploring the effect of the work on a man of good sense (bon sens) and taste.41 His orientation towards opera is not the moral-civic critique of Steele, Dennis, nor the application of orthodox neo-classical rules of tragedy, but the shared actual experience of his fellow polite London audience members drawing on their shared faculties of human nature. His touchstone is that ‘Musick [opera], Architecture and Painting, as well as Poetry and Oratory, are to deduce their Laws and Rules from the General Sense and Taste of Mankind, and not from the Principles of those Arts themselves’ (no. 29). For music, the criteria are a ‘Man of an ordinary Ear’ and ‘a composer should fit his Musick to the Genius of the People’.42 The traditional role of the critic was to point out the beauties or blemishes of a work. Writing to an urban audience with whom he shared experience of recent seasons of opera, his essays tend to focus on blemishes or risible features of the scenery and stage action of recent productions (Camilla, Idaspe, and Rinaldo). Railing against silliness in stage sets and productions is always in season.43 Such jests made good journalism and are useful for a lively narration of the early years of opera in London, but have overshadowed the serious consideration Addison gives to elements of opera, especially recitative and word-text setting. The fault, he claims, lies as much with the opera producers themselves as with the English audience for tolerating the productions and for their adulation of the castrato singers. Addison opens his series of papers in Spectator no. 5 (6 March 1711), less than two weeks after the premiere of Rinaldo, with a concession about an individual opera, not the whole genre, by repeating a common complaint, which could also apply to operas Addison saw in Paris and Venice: ‘An Opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its Decorations, as its only Design is to



Addison is so credited in, for example, Katharine E. Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn, A History of Esthetics, rev. ed. (Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 1953), 237–9, 321–2; Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present: A Short History (New York: Macmillan, 1966), esp. 183–5; William K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 254– 62, 286–8; and James Sambrook, The Eighteenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1700–1789, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1993), 130–4. On Addison’s aesthetics: Elioseff, The Cultural Milieu of Addison’s Literary Criticism, esp. 10–18, 150–88; Robert Holub, ‘The Rise of Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century’, Comparative Literature Studies, 15 (1978), 217–82; William H. Youngren, ‘Addison and the Birth of Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics’, Modern Philology, 79, (1982), 267–83; John L. Mahoney, ‘Addison and Akenside: The Impact of Psychological Criticism on Early English Romantic Poetry’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 6 (1966), 365–74; and Wallace Jackson, ‘Affective Values in Early Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 27 (1968), 87–92 [traces the influence of Addison’s ideas].

42

On adapting the art to taste, see also Spectator, no. 70 (21 May 1711).

43

One wonders if Addison is violating his own later strictures for a critic in Spectator, no. 291 (2 February 1712). Wit can make a reader think ‘every Thing which is laughed at with any Mixture of Wit, is ridiculous in it self ’. A critic with the ‘Gift of Ridicule is apt to find Fault with any Thing … and very often censures a Passage, not because there is any Fault in it, but because he can be merry upon it’.

41

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gratify the Senses, and keep up an indolent Attention in the Audience’. But he offers the hope of correction by continuing, ‘Common Sense however requires, that there should be nothing in the Scenes and Machines which may appear Childish and Absurd’. He then mentions some examples of absurdities in the sets of Rinaldo and other imagined operas. His point is the simple one of appeal to common sense and consistency. He recommends that the sets be all artificial and not mix painted side-wings and stage props with real animals. He makes great fun of the consequences of a report of real sparrows being let loose in the staged garden scene in Rinaldo and the risible ideas of diverting the New River into the theatre and setting off illuminations and fireworks in the opera house, as well as fictional reports that Christopher Rich once thought of setting loose real mice in an opera of Dick Wittington and his cat, and that a firm of gardeners was to supply a grove of real orange trees for Rinaldo. None, it should be noted, he claims actually occurred in an opera. His next paper, Spectator no. 13, consists of a series of fictional reports about the episode of Nicolini’s battle with the lion in Idaspe, which has afforded the Town great amusement. These he offers more as examples of the ‘reigning Entertainments of the Politer Part of Great Britain’ and their lack of ‘common Sense’. Addison does not intend the humorous reports to reflect poorly on Nicolini, who he goes on to praise for his acting skills and as a model for English tragedians. Based on his first-hand experience, Addison’s next paper (Spectator, no. 18) gives a fairly accurate account of the progress of opera in London, from Arsinoe, composed to an English libretto, to operas where English words were adapted to arias originally written in Italian. Here he makes legitimate points about how inept were some English translations that were fitted to the Italian melodies. He givens as an example Turnus’s aria from Bononcini’s Camilla (I.v). The music composed to express the ‘Resentments of an angry Lover’ (‘Barbara si t’intendo si crudel’) is provided with words expressing the ‘dying away and languishing’ of a lover’s lament: ‘Frail are a lovers hopes, and fatall is the fair’. Addison recalled another example where the music for an Italian verse reflected the word order, ‘And turn’d my Rage into Pity’; the English translation, however, reversed the words to ‘And into Pity turn’s my Rage’. He also faults English adaptors who put long melismas to insignificant words such as ‘and’, ‘the’, ‘for’, and ‘from’ – ‘to the eternal Honour of our English Particles’. Addison notes the next stage was the bilingual opera where castratos sang their roles in Italian alongside others singing in English. Then, when ‘the Audience grew tir’d of understanding Half the Opera, and therefore to ease themselves intirely of the Fatigue of Thinking, [they] have so order’d it at Present that the whole Opera is perform’d in an unknown Tongue’. It should be noted that Addison is indicting not operas, but the sense and taste of even the ‘Persons of the greatest Politeness’ who introduced opera for tolerating the inept translations or the absurd practice of mounting operas in a language they do not understand. He slyly notes that future generations will be curious to know why their forefathers sat like ‘Foreigners in their own Country’ to hear plays acted in a language they did not understand. We now know that this was not a deliberate

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choice by the audience, but the results partly of changes forced upon the companies by the Lord Chamberlain’s office. In this paper, Addison promised in a following one (no. 29) to put down some ‘several Hints’ that may be considered by producers of opera. Here he considers at length the essential element of all-sung opera, recitative.44 Addison briefly passes over the surprise of London audiences at the breach of decorum to hear ‘Generals singing the Word of Command, and Ladies delivering Messages in Musick’. But he actually thinks this method of Italian-style opera of passing from recitative to aria better than passing from spoken speech to song, as in plays or the English dramatic operas of Henry Purcell. So, Addison does not outright dismiss the validity of Italian-style opera. Addison had first-hand experience with the three prevailing styles of recitative, French, Italian, and English. In Paris, he heard the French style, which tended to use long and short note values on a narrow range of pitches with frequent changes of meter to match the scansion of classical declaimed French verse. In Italy, he heard the Italian style of recitativo semplice, which set the seven or eleven syllables of the lines of Italian verse to rapid, mostly repeated notes of the same length over a sustained bass with conventional cadence formulas. Addison recognises that each language has a unique and distinctive ‘Tone’, ‘Accent’, or ‘Sound of the Whole Sentence’. Samuel Pepys, when first hearing Italian recitative, made a similar observation: ‘The words I did not understand, and so know not how they are fitted. … There is a proper accent in every country’s discourse, and that doth reach in their setting of notes to words, which therefore cannot be natural to anybody else but them’.45 Addison grants that each nation’s preferring the tone or accent of its own is a matter of custom. From this, it follows for Addison that ‘the Recitative Musick in every Language should be as different as the Tone or Accent of each Language, for otherwise what may properly express a Passion in one Language, will not do it in another’. The ‘more Musical and Tuneful’ recitative makes the accents of a language sound natural, clearly express the passions, and please the polite English ear. Addison does not object to attempting English opera in the all-sung Italian manner but faults the practice of ‘making use of Italian Recitativo with English Words’. Example 4.1 shows the secco-style of recitative used by Thomas Clayton in Arsinoe. The English production of Bononcini’s Camilla retained most of the original music for arias (provided with English verse) but with newly written English text and music for recitatives. The adaptor Nicola Haym instinctively chose to use the Italian secco or semplice style. As seen in example 8.1, the

44

The Importance of recitative for Italian opera, and the care needed in composing, was stated in the anonymous translator’s note to François Raguenet, A Comparison between the French and Italian Musick and Opera’s (1709), 35 n22.

45

Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds, Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription, 11 vols (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1976–83), 8:54–5.

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melodic and rhythmic inflections of the recitative in the English adaptation were at odds with the natural ‘Tone or Accent’ of the English text. The difference in recitative styles can be seen in several examples from Daniel Purcell. While at Oxford, Addison would have known Purcell, organist at his own Magdalene College, who in 1692 set his ‘A Song for St Cecelia’s Day’.46 Addison possibly also saw London productions of the plays or dramatic operas with Purcell’s music: The World in the Moon (1697), Brutus of Alba (1696), and The Island Princess (1699). Purcell’s earlier style of recitative is probably what Addison had in mind for his ‘English Musick’. In the openings of some multi-sectional theatre songs (see example 8.2), Purcell sets the opening lines in the declamatory recitative style, with a variety of note values and angular melodic contours that follow the inflection of heightened speech. The English declamatory recitative did allow short, florid passages to heighten or illustrate individual words or signal cadences. But when deliberately writing in the new Italian style, as in the cantatas he wrote to words by John Hughes, Daniel Purcell follows the secco recitative style, as in example 8.3.47 This setting forces the English syllables onto mostly repeated notes of the same pitch and length, disregarding the stress, length, or inflection of the spoken English verse. Recitative was of such current interest that several days later the British Apollo ran a reader’s question asking its authors for their opinion of recitative in ‘a late daily Paper’, especially about the example of a general and lady singing.48 The British Apollo thinks the illustration of a general and lady ‘very Idle’ and overall defends the practice of recitative and opines that oratory might be more beautiful if it adopted some of its features. But the authors deny, though, that they should be taken to be promoting Italian opera, which for the usual reasons would better be banished from the English stage. They defend recitative because it ‘may be equally used in English Opera’s’. Then they take a swipe at Addison, denying him ‘that Skill and Tast in Music he pretends to, to set up for such a nice Critic’ because of his reflection on the music of that ‘incomparable Master’ Henry Purcell. 111 Addison’s survey of the early English reception of opera concludes that ‘At present, our Notions of Musick [opera] are so very uncertain, that we do not know what it is we like; only, in general, … So it be of foreign growth’ (no. 18). This 46

See Bryan White, Music for St Cecilia’s Day from Purcell to Handel (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019), 331–2.

47

‘A Cantata after the Italian Stile’ from Monthly Mask of Vocal Musick (September 1708) example 8.3, is the earliest known printed cantata in the Italian manner; not included in the Six English Cantatas [1710], by John Hughes and Daniel Purcell (advertised in the Tatler for 25–27 April 1710).

48

British Apollo, vol. 4, no. 6 (6–9 April 1711). The questions were supposedly from readers but may have been invented by the paper’s editors.

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Example 8.1. Recitative between Latinus (sung by Mr Turner?), Turnus (sung by Mr Hughes), and Lavinia (sung by Joanna Maria Lendenheim), composed by Nicola Haym for Camilla, Act I, scene 11 (Act I, scene 14 in word book)

Voice

Continuo

LATINUS TURNUS LAVINIA ? b c Œ ‰œj œ œ ‰ œ œ œJ œJ B b ≈ œr œr œr œ b ‰ œj œ œ Œ j r œr & J J R R J J œ œ œ

?b c

La-vin- ia, hast thou cho- sen?

w

What do I hear!

˙

˙

I’ve cho-sen one, wor- thy your

˙

˙

6

LATINUS 5 j j ? ‰ œ œJ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ œ b J R R JJ J J J J J J J J J

& b œJ

Daugh-ter and your rone.

?b ˙

˙

Oh name him to me, that I may bless thee and this aus-pic-ious day.

˙

!7

˙

˙

˙

6

˙

Example 8.2. Beginning of Daniel Purcell, ‘A Song Sung by Mr Leveridge’, from Richard Steele, The Lying Lover (1703), Act III

Voice

j r ™ œ ™ # œ™ œ œ™ ™ r ™ & # c œ œ™ œ œ J œJ œR œJ œ œ œJ œJ ™ œR J R œ œ™œ œJ Ve - nus has le,

Continuo

has le her Gree-cian Isles, with all, all, all her gau

? ## c w

œ J

# œ œ j œ™ & # œ™ J R R œ™ train

? ## œ

# & # #œ smiles

? ## ˙

of lit - tle

Bn œ œ™ J

in

˙

w

Loves

œ

œ œ R my lar -

˙

-

œ

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remark suggests his ultimate goal is to engage the audience to consider what should be planted in the stead of the English opera that had been rooted out. Granted, Addison does satirise and criticise some risible features of the recent opera productions: but he is not making broad-brush condemnations of opera, nor advocating banishing it or its castrato singers from Britain in the manner of Steele or Dennis. He accepts opera, despite some absurdities in productions and inept translations, as a legitimate theatrical form. Addison has noticeably avoided invoking Aristotle, the French critics, or theory of tragedy (such as observance of poetic justice, the Unities, or rules of tragic plot and character) that had so preoccupied previous writers on opera (such as John Dryden, John Dennis, or Thomas Rymer). Nor does he level the usual charges about the irrationality or effeminacy of an all-sung opera (pace Dennis). With comments directed to the managers of the theatres as well as the audience, he

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is trying to guide opera into a form suitable for polite London. He does so by engaging his fellow London operagoers (and those who have only heard about it) to consideration of opera and so improve their taste, though he is doing so less by pointing out beauties, than blemishes.49 The blemishes he finds would be apparent, he might claim, to any person of good taste, common sense, and ‘an ordinary Ear’ who experiences the operas in London. For Addison, an opera for a polite nation should, at least, not ‘take the entire Possession of our Ears’, nor make us ‘incapable of hearing Sense’. It should be sung in English and have a declamatory style of recitative that matches the tone and accent of English; the arias should have careful matching of sense and affect between the text and music; and the libretto should be without ‘the forced Thoughts, cold Conceits, and unnatural Expressions of an Italian Opera’.50 Addison was able to conceive of a corrected opera, since opera has a ‘Tendency to the Refinement of humane Nature’.51 Such an opera, guided by common sense and taste, would eliminate its potential threat to liberty as claimed by Steele and Dennis. For both Addison and Shaftesbury, a corrected opera would contribute to forming the taste of a polite, Whig Britain. Unfortunately, by 1710, the reorganization of the theatre companies had quite rooted out ‘our English Musick’ and rendered near impossible the conditions necessary for anything to be ‘planted in its stead’.

49

Johnson saw Addison’s purpose as ‘to infuse literary curiosity, by gentle and unsuspected conveyance, into the gay, the idle, and the wealthy; he therefore presented knowledge in the most alluring form, not lofty and austere, but accessible and familiar’; Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, 2:439–40.

50

Spectator, no. 13 (15 March 1711). Later Addison would ridicule the silliness of poor English translations of Italian arias; see the Guardian, no. 124 (3 August 1713).

51

Spectator, no. 18 (21 March 1711).

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Chapter 9

The Whig Campaign for English Opera; Handel Celebrates the Peace

O

pera all-sung in Italian became the norm for serious opera on the London stage with the production of Almahide (10 January 1710). Many of the Whig-aligned poets and musicians involved in introducing opera in the Italian manner found themselves no longer employed at the Haymarket. They took up Addison’s challenge to plant something in the place of Italian opera and turned their energies to promoting their own operatic works in English. Their campaign for an English dramatic music was actively promoted by Richard Steele, the early opponent of Italian-style opera. The resulting campaign for musical works sung in English can be seen as part of a Whig cultural politics: a way of shaping English national culture through vernacular dramatic works with music. After Thomas Clayton returned from Ireland (accompanying Wharton’s mission as Lieutenant Governor) in September 1709, he produced a pastoral masque, announced for the Great Room in York Buildings on 3 May 1710, for which Steele’s Tatler carried announcements.1 The libretto was likely written by John Hughes.2 Also at liberty were Clayton’s colleagues the composer and cellist Charles Dieupart, who lost his position at the Haymarket at the end of the 1709–10 season, and the cellist, composer, and compiler of pasticcios Nicola Haym, who lost his place at the end of the 1710–11 season.3 Both had 1



Steele announced ‘a Pastoral Mask to be performed on the 27th Instant in YorkBuildings, for the Benefit of Mr. Clayton, and composed by him’; Tatler, nos. 163 and 166 (25 April and 2 May 1710). On Steele’s promotion of works sung in English, John Loftis, ‘Richard Steele’s Censorium’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 14 (1950), 43–66, and John Loftis, Steele at Drury Lane (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1952), 98–118.

2

A manuscript (not all autograph) volume of poems by John Hughes contains ‘A Pastoral Masque. Copy’, which is likely that set by Clayton; Harvard University, Houghton Library, TS 1138.119*; and printed in Hughes, Poems on Several Occasions, 2 vols (1735), 1:151–5.

3

On Haym’s and Dieupart’s activities with the opera companies: Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke’s Theatrical Papers, 1706-1715 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), passim, and Lowell Lindgren, ‘The Accomplishments of the Learned and Ingenious Nicola Francesco Haym (1678–1729)’, Studi Musicali, 16 (1987), 247–380 (esp. pp. 258–69, and also p. 339 for a mention of Dieupart). Graydon Beeks suggests reasons for the dismissals of Dieupart and Haym

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assisted Clayton in producing Arsinoe.4 In spring 1711 the three now undertook to produce concerts of English vocal music at Clayton’s house in York Buildings on 24 and 29 May and 16 July 1711.5 With operas now being based on pre-existing librettos in Italian, Peter Motteux’s skills as translator and adaptor were no longer needed; but in any case, by about 1708 his interests had turned to dealing in paintings and importing luxury good and fineries from India, China, and Japan. Steele actively promoted these concerts and used his literary contacts to obtain librettos for Clayton to set to music. In February or March of 1711, he asked Hughes, a violinist himself and the poet most active in providing texts for vocal music in English, ‘to alter this poem for musick preserving as many of Dryden’s works and verses as you can. It is to be performed by a voice well skilled in recitative’.6 The work was an adaptation of Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast,7 which was performed with Clayton’s setting of William Harrison’s Passion of Sappho and Matthew Prior’s If Wine and Music Have the Power for the concerts in May and July.

in ‘“Exit, Pursued by a Bear”: The Haymarket Opera Orchestra and Handel’s Arrival in England’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 42–3 (1996/1997), 55–67. 4

Thomas Clayton, Preface to The Passion of Sappho, and Feast of Alexander. Set to Musick by Mr. Thomas Clayton. As It Is Perform’d at His House in York-Buildings (1711); reprinted in Thomas McGeary, ‘Thomas Clayton and Italian Opera in London’, Philological Quarterly, 77 (1999), 171–86. Their role was probably not as co-composers but to provide the basso continuo accompaniment for recitatives; see Peter Holman, Before the Baton: Musical Direction and Conducting in Stuart and Georgian Britain (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), 215–18.

5

The advertisements mention ‘Mr. Clayton’s house in York Buildings’; Clayton must have been living in the house that belonged to the Great Room that was used for concerts; see Peter Holman, ‘The Sale Catalogue of Gottfried Finger’s Music Library: New Light on London Concert Life in the 1690s’, Royal Musical Association. Research Chronicle, 43 (2010), 23–38 (at pp. 31–2).

6

Steele, ?February or March 1711, to Hughes; Rae Blanchard, ed., The Correspondence of Richard Steele (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941), no. 43, p. 44.

7

Hughes shortened and revised Dryden’s poem, dividing it into recitatives, arias, and duets. The libretto is included in Hughes’s, Poems on Several Occasions, 2 vols (1735), 2:71–8, where the text is slightly revised from the 1711 libretto. A manuscript (not all autograph) volume of poems by Hughes contains ‘Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Musick: An Ode in Honour of S.t Cecilia’s Day. By M.r Dryden. Alter’d for Musick. By M.r Hughes. Copy’; Harvard University, Houghton Library, TS 1138.119*. On The Feast of Alexander, Bryan White, Music for St Cecelia’s Day: From Purcell to Handel (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2019), 308–12, 316. Both librettos were published before the concert on 10 May 1711. A setting of ‘If Wine and Music have the Power’ by Matthew Prior was added for the third concert on 16 July 1711. Clayton revived The Passion of Sappho and The Feast of Alexander for a benefit concert for a Mrs Hemings at York Buildings on 14 December 1711 (the benefit was advertised in the Spectator).



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Clayton still felt the need to explain to the audience the rationale for English dramatic music. His arguments continued a cultural poetics that sought a vernacular vocal music congenial to a British national identity or ‘Genius’. In the Preface to the word book for the first concert, Clayton asks indulgence for his efforts and explains the grounds for excellence in setting vocal music. Since music should be the handmaiden to the text, the closer the musical setting reproduces the inflections and rhythms of poetry and speech, the closer it represents Nature: ‘Musick is to make the Poetry more emphatical, it is at the same time both to Speak and Sigh’. None of which, Clayton claimed, were possible if the music was composed to a language foreign to an English audience.

❧  1711–1712 Season The operas produced as part of the Haymarket opera’s own 1711–12 season were all in Italian, being the usual mixture of revivals and new productions (see appendix 3). As alternatives for this season, Clayton, Dieupart, and Haym planned another series of eight subscription concerts at Clayton’s house in York Buildings. Alexander Pope was agreeable to assisting the project. In preparation for the series, on 26 July 1711 Steele wrote to Pope asking ‘whether you are at Leisure to help Mr. Clayton, that is Me to some Words for Musick against Winter’.8 In response, Pope quickly wrote the ‘Ode for Music on St Cecilia’s Day’.9 To promote the series, Steele printed two letters in the Spectator from the musicians setting out the rationale for their project. Introducing the first letter on 26 December 1711, Steele granted that ‘Pleasure and Recreation of one Kind or other are absolutely necessary to relieve our Minds and Bodies from too 8

Steele, 26 July 1711, to Pope; Correspondence of Richard Steele, ed. Blanchard, 48. The letter to Pope is also included in George Sherburn, ed., The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 1:131. Pope mentions Steele’s request in a later letter to his friend Caryll on 2 August 1711 (Correspondence of Richard Steele, ed. Blanchard, 1:132); it is also recorded by Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), no. 65, 1:28.

9

Pope wrote on 6 December 1712, to Steele saying he was ‘at leisure for the Design you were pleasd to propose to me. As to what I now send you, I claim no other merit in it than the readiness of my Complyance, for I sate down to write it as soon as I receivd your lettr’. He closed asking ‘if Mr Clayton made any Use of the Ode I left in yr hands last Winter?’. The unpublished letter (formerly at Blenheim) is summarised in Correspondence of Richard Steele, ed. Blanchard, no. 68, and excerpted in Simon Finch Catalogue no. 27, with further bibliographic details. I am grateful to James May for providing a photocopy of the Finch catalogue. The Ode in question is not ‘The Temple of Love’, as often hitherto reported. On the work’s identification as the ‘Ode for Music on St Cecilia’s Day’ (published in July 1713), see Rae Blanchard, ‘Pope’s “Ode for Music on St. Cecilia’s Day”’, ELH, 8 (1941), 143–5 [with a mention of the ‘lost’ letter of 6 December 1712, mentioned in previous note]. Clayton does not seem to have set the poem (which would have been suitable for performance on 22 November, St Cecelia’s Day). Pope published the poem in July 1713.



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constant Attention and Labour’. Since public diversions based on poetry and music are tolerated, they should be monitored and supervised to prevent anything that ‘tends to the Corruption of Manners, or which is too mean or trivial for the Entertainment of reasonable Creatures’. It is from his concern for the quality of London entertainments that Steele introduces Clayton and his colleagues as persons ‘capable of advancing the present state of Musick’. Clayton’s first letter expands on his rationale for dramatic or vocal music in English, what he calls ‘Italian Musick grafted upon English Poetry’. Appealing to the paper’s efforts at dramatic reform, Clayton flatters Mr Spectator that their opinions on music aesthetics agree: that you consider Musick only valuable as it is agreeable to and heightens the Purpose of Poetry, … that without it a Composure [composition] of Musick is the same thing as a Poem where all the Rules of poetical Numbers are observed, but the Words of no Sense or Meaning; to say it shortly, meer musical Sounds are in our Art no other than nonsense Verses are in Poetry. Musick therefore is to aggravate what is intended by Poetry; it must always have some Passion or Sentiment to express, or else Violins, Voices, or any other Organs of Sound, afford an Entertainment very little above the Rattles of Children.10

The target of these remarks is clearly the Italian opera at the Haymarket. The letter has a strong undercurrent of resentment at the success of Italian opera; Clayton hints at ‘the just Complaints we all of us have’ at being ‘set aside in the present Opera’. They advance their project to rescue English music and musicians from the ruin they have suffered from those who affect Italian music as superior, and from foreign musicians who expect the English to submit to Italian taste. Their enterprise was apparently perceived as a challenge to Italian opera; and a little over three weeks later, Steele printed a second letter (18 January 1712) from Clayton and his colleagues, in which they denied their ‘Intention is to destroy Operas in General’ but only to ‘improve our Circumstances, by improving the Art which we profess’, which they claim is ‘utterly destroyed at present’. Nevertheless, Clayton takes the opportunity to enlarge on the deficiencies of prevailing opera: the Songs of different Authors injudicious put together, and a Foreign Tone and Manner which are expected in every Thing now performed amongst us, … insomuch that the Ears of the People cannot now be entertained with any thing but what has an impertinent Gayety, without any just Spirit; or a Languishment of Notes, without any Passion or common Sense.11

Clayton’s closing notice, ‘There will be no Performances in York-Buildings, til after that of the Subscription’, suggests he is responding to a directive from the Lord Chamberlain’s office to avoid competing with the six subscription performances for Antioco, which concluded on 5 January 1712, although the 10

Spectator, no. 258 (26 December 1711); Donald F. Bond, ed., The Spectator, 5 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 2:502–7.

11

Spectator, no. 278 (18 January 1712), ed. Bond, 2:582–5.

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opera continued with additional performances through 14 June. 12 Calls for subscriptions to Clayton’s series, which was announced as ‘almost full’, appeared in the Spectator for 13 and 15 February 1712. It is uncertain if the series took place.13 Clayton continued to be active composing for English musical-dramatic works. He presented a concert of vocal music at Hickford’s Music Room on 13 December 1716, including his Ode for the Prince’s Birthday and Ode on the King. His Passion of Sappho was revived as an afterpiece on 15 November 1718 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The last we hear of Clayton as a composer is in May and June 1720, when anthems by him were performed at the Chapel Royal.14

Calypso and Telemachus The high point of the Whig campaign for English dramatic music was the opera Calypso and Telemachus, produced at the Haymarket theatre on 17 May 1712. With John Hughes’s original English libretto set by the German composer John Galliard, it was in all ways like an Italian opera but sung in English.15 The opera was intended, as Hughes stated in the word book’s Preface, ‘as an Essay for the Improvement of Theatrical Musick in the English Language, after the Model of the Italians’. This effort at an English opera ran afoul of a hostile Italian-opera cabal, apparently headed by Nicolini. Calypso and Telemachus was presented outside the Haymarket’s regular opera season, with Hughes and Galliard presumably acting as independent impresarios. The five other productions were Italian operas, which played for a total of forty-five performances, while Calypso and Telemachus achieved only five (see appendix 3). The five singers were collected from those not performing in the Italian operas: Margarita, Maria Manina (Margarita’s sister), Mrs Barbier, Mrs Pearson, and Richard Leveridge. The printed Songs, consisting of the overture and arias only,16 demonstrates that in Calypso and Telemachus Galliard had mastered the idiom and style of Italian opera: tuneful and engaging arias, majority of arias in da capo form, contrast in types of arias, and several very effective set pieces for the major singers. The arias allow for virtuoso display; two-to-three measure melismas are common, with several extending to twelve measures for Margarita and Leveridge. Given the opera’s importance in English operatic history, it is surprising it has not been given a political allegorical interpretation, especially since operas based on fables are eminently suited for allegorical application. Hughes based

12

For Antioco subscription, Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, nos. 180–2.

13

White, Music for St Cecelia’s Day, 312, suggests they did not.

14

Donald Burrows, Handel and the Chapel Royal (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005), 168–9, 186, 601, 603.

15

Discussed in J. Merrill Knapp, ‘A Forgotten Chapter in English Eighteenth-Century Opera’, Music and Letters, 42 (1961), 4–16, who prints the Preface in full; and Knapp, ‘English Reactions to Handel and Italian Opera in London during 1711 to 1720’, Göttingen Händel-Beiträge, 2 (1986), 155–69.

16

John Galliard, Songs in the Opera of Calyso and Telemachus (28 June 1712).

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his libretto on an episode in François Fénélon’s Les avantures de Télémaque, fils d’Ulysee (1699), written for the instruction of Fénélon’s pupil the dauphin Duke of Burgundy. Fénélon invents a new episode in the Odyssey in which Telemachus, accompanied by Mentor (actually Minerva in disguise), is on a quest to find his father and return home to Ithaca. His adventure partially re-enacts that of his father; he is stranded and tempted by the beauties and wonders of Calypso’s island and her promise of eternal youth. Had Queen Anne’s son, William, Duke of Gloucester survived, Hughes’s opera might have made a suitable object lesson for the young prince and future king of England. Hughes spells out clearly the moral of the opera. Telemachus is rewarded for his right action in finally following the precept of Minerva: Let not Pleasure’s Charm undo thee; Trust not the deluding Joy.17

The opera was inserted into the current partisan politics of opera in a commendatory poem addressed to Hughes by one Topham Foot.18 Against the backdrop of theatrical partisanship, he extols the virtues of Hughes’s opera and anticipates its humiliation of its Italian rivals: When Dearest Hughes you Strike ye Tunefull Strings And taught by you Our British Opera Sings, Th’ Italian muse is forc’d to Quit the Stage, Whilst Charms Superior Captivate ye Age, Musick & Verse no Longer Disagree, Nor’s Sence thought useless now to Harmony. In your Telemachus both Parts unite, & Charming Sounds are Joyn’d with Solid Wit.19

In addition to its virtues as an exemplum of English opera and expectation that it would drive out Italian opera, Hughes’s opera calms party faction: Soothd with your Verse fierce Factions Peace proclaim Rough Whiggs Grow mild, & Hottest Torys Tame: At your Command their Conquerd Passions move With you they Rage, they Pity, Hate, & Love.

When Foot’s poem was posthumously revised and printed in 1735,20 politics was no longer dominated by Tory-Whig strife, and the penultimate couplet

17

Hughes, Calypso and Telemachus, Act I, scene 7.

18

Foot, son of a London merchant and nephew of the bibliophile Richard Topham, matriculated at Trinity College on 6 June 1707, aged seventeen, and was admitted as a student at the Inner Temple on 13 February 1710. He died in August 1712.

19

Manuscript poem on a small bifolium tipped onto the inner front cover of the Henry E. Huntington Library copy of John Hughes, Calypso and Telemachus (1712) (shelf mark 105725). The revised poem is included in Hughes, Poems on Several Occasions, 2:16–17.

20

Hughes, Poems on Several Occasions, 2:16–17.

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above was eliminated. Presented in the remainder of the poem are poetic ekphrases of various scenes of the opera. A hitherto un-noted letter by Hughes suggests Addison and Steele may have planned to promote the opera, but also shows Hughes’s need to justify English opera. A frequent contributor to the Spectator, Hughes wrote a letter not printed but no doubt intended to appear before the opera’s production. Writing to Mr Spectator, Hughes hints at a cabal against the opera: After the encouragement you have shewn to musical entertainments of English composition, I persuade myself you will approve of the endeavours of the gentlemen who attempt to bring an English opera upon the stage, and contribute toward the supporting of so laudable an undertaking, against the affectation of some, and the prejudice of others, who have declared against it.21

He answers the major objection against the opera: ‘that the poetry is English’ and notes the irony of this objection, that what should be a virtue of the opera is turned against it. He grants that ‘the soft and open pronunciation of the Italian language favours music in general more than ours does’ but maintains that a skilful English poet can make up most of the defect. In some scenes, the roughness of English may be more appropriate. Any remaining disadvantage to English poetry is more than compensated for by a language that communicates ideas, rather than seeming to be mere ‘brute syllables’: ‘for our senses are never so elegantly gratified as when our reason has a share in the entertainment’. He offers Galliard’s music as compelling proof ‘that the English Language is capable of the most agreeable Graces of Harmony’. Hughes considers the ‘certain cant’ that ‘since the music is the only thing to be regarded in an opera’, there is no advantage in hearing it sung in English. For Hughes, ‘the greatest beauty’ in dramatic music is that which affects our passions’, and music achieves its greatest beauties when music is adapted to ‘words of known signification’. Both the effectiveness of arias and recitative depend on their being understood. He also defends opera in English in the Preface to the opera’s libretto. Hughes replies to what later became a common charge against supposed English connoisseurship of opera, that English encouragement of Italian opera is an unwarranted ‘Affectation of every thing that is Foreign’. Rather, the English should be praised for being ‘willing to be instructed in so elegant an Art by the best Examples’ from Rome and Venice and for the generous encouragement they were giving the new art form. As hinted in Hughes’s letter, Calypso and Telemachus encountered opposition from the Italian-opera faction in London. Hughes’s earlier Williamite panegyric poems, his association with the family of the Whig Lord Chancellor 21

‘A Letter designed for The Spectator. Now first printed’; in Letters by Several Eminent Persons Deceased. Including the Correspondence of John Hughes, Esq., ed. John Duncombe, 2nd ed. with additions, 3 vols (1773), 1:96–102. Merely dated 1712 and without closing, like Hughes’s other contributions, it likely would have been printed anonymously or signed with letter ‘Z’. Internal evidence clarifies the date and context as between January and May of 1712 that year.

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Cowper, and his literary collaborations left no doubt he was a true Whig. His nephew and posthumous editor, John Duncombe wrote he was ‘Firm to the revolution and the protestant establishment’.22 On the political-literary front, Hughes wrote a group of Williamite poems: The Triumph of Peace (1697), celebrating the Peace of Ryswick; The Court of Neptune (1699; imprint 1700), on William’s return from Holland, dedicated to Lord Halifax; and The House of Nassau. A Pindarick Ode (1702), on the death of William III, dedicated to the Duke of Somerset. His Ode to the Memory of William, Duke of Devonshire (1707), the Whig lord mentioned in the poem ‘Tofts and Margarita’, was sung by Catherine Tofts and Margarita de l’Epine.23 Hughes is said to have encouraged Addison to bring Cato to the stage on 14 April 1713 so the principles of liberty there inculcated would encourage ‘the old English public spirit at that dangerous crisis’.24 Contemporaries thought the short five-performance run of the opera was due to political interference by the Lord Chamberlain, the now-Tory-collaborator Duke of Shrewsbury, and likely with the assistance of his Tory Vice Chamberlain Thomas Coke. During the opera’s run, Addison in the Spectator for 14 June 1712 commended Nicolini as ‘the greatest Performer in Dramatick Musick that is now living’ and how ‘The Town is highly obliged to that Excellent Artist, for having shewn us the Italian Musick in its Perfection, as well as for that generous Approbation he lately gave to an Opera of our Country’.25 But two days later an indignant letter sent to the Spectator (but not printed) by one calling himself ‘Trueman English’ objected to Addison’s portrayal, citing Nicolini’s haughty, offensive, and imperious treatment of local musicians. He moves on to Calypso and Telemachus: As to his applauding the English opera, it was base hypocrisy, for he, the contemptible eunuch that lodgeth with him [another singer], and some others, have often been heard to ridicule it; and he and some of his friends did, before it was publickly performed, strenuously endeavour to blast its reputation; and finding themselves unable to gain that point, by reason of the excellence both of the poetry and musick, they have ever since by malicious and indirect practices endeavoured to suppress it, which it is hoped by all true English lovers of musick they will not be able to accomplish.26

A fuller account of what were the ‘malicious and indirect practices’ against the opera was given by John Duncombe in 1772: 22

John Duncombe, ed., Letters, by John Hughes, Esq. and Several Other Eminent Persons Deceased, 3 vols (1773), 3:10.

23

All reprinted in Hughes’s Poems on Several Occasions.

24

Letters by Several Eminent Persons Deceased, 1:xii–xiii.

25

Spectator, no. 405 (14 June 1712), ed. Bond, 1:513–14.

26

Dated 16 June 1712; printed in a volume of letters received from readers but not printed; in Charles Lillie, ed., Original and Genuine Letters Sent to the Tatler and Spectator, 2 vols (1725), 2:275.

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Such was, at that time, the partiality in favour of Italian operas, that, after many such had been encouraged by large subscriptions, this of ‘Calypso and Telemachus’, originally written and set in English after the Italian manner, was prepared with the usual expense of scenes and decorations; and being much crowded and applauded at the rehearsals, a subscription was obtained for it as usual. This alarmed the whole Italian band, who apprehending that their harvest would soon be at an end, had interest enough, (the duke of Shrewsbury, whose dutchess was an Italian, being then lord chamberlain) to procure an order, the day before the performing of this opera, to take off the subscription for it, and to open the house at the lowest prices, or not at all. This was designed to sink it, but failed of its end. It was, however, performed, though under so great discouragement, at the queen’s theatre in the Haymarket, and was revived, some years after, at the theatre in Lincoln’s-inn-fields.27

The opera in fact was at first advertised as by subscription, but on the day of the performance, only individual ticket prices were announced, in effect reducing the potential income for the opera.28 In dedicating the libretto to the Duchess of Hamilton, Hughes acknowledged how the Duke’s ‘early Promoting of this Opera has been a great Means of its appearing now on the Theatre’. James Douglas, fourth Duke of Hamilton, one of the most important members of the Scottish aristocracy and leader of the Scottish court party, was at the time a Privy Councillor, and Anne would soon appoint him (on 29 August 1712) as ambassador to France to speed the peace negotiations (the post, though, was filled by the Duke of Shrewsbury upon Hamilton’s death in the notorious duel on 15 November 1712).29 It is likely the Duke’s influence at court helped prevent the opera’s complete suppression. There is circumstantial evidence to support there was an attempted suppression of the opera by the ‘Italian band’ through the interest of Lord Chamberlain Shrewsbury and his wife during a Tory Ministry.30 The Duke of Shrewsbury, one of the ‘immortal seven’ who signed the letter of invitation to William, is one of the more enigmatic figures in early eighteenth-century politics. He had the confidence of William and held office under him, but tried to avoid being a party man, although in the 1690s he was nominal head of the Whigs and supported them even when their demands were extreme.31 In November 1700, 27

Letters by Several Eminent Persons, 1:96 note–97 note. The opera was revived for three performances in February and March 1717.

28

Advertisements in Spectator, nos. 379–81 (15–17 May 1712).

29

For Hamilton, Robert Walcott, English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 126. The appointment was controversial because Whigs feared the Scottish peer was a Jacobite eager to bring back the Pretender.

30

No documents from the office of Vice Chamberlain Coke survive related to the production of Calypso and Telemachus.

31

On Shrewsbury’s political career: William Coxe, Private and Original Correspondence of Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821), 632–65; T. C. Nicholson and A. S. Turberville, Charles Talbot, Duke of

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disillusioned with the divisiveness and rancour in the Ministry, he resigned his posts, retired from politics, and left for the Continent. As did most travellers to Italy, Shrewsbury passed through France and so was familiar with the two national styles of opera and had firm opinions about them. In his journal, he reveals that, like most Englishmen, Italian opera pleased him more than did French opera. In Paris, he saw an opera on 21 November 1700: ‘I thought the musick & voyces of the Opera very indifferent’.32 At Montpellier, on 21 December he recorded: ‘The Comte de Rouve … ordered his own box for me at the Opera, … the opera was Amadis de Grece, indifferent, & worse executed’.33 In Florence, he took a box for the run of the opera, and in October– November 1701 attended at least eight times, at least once with Joseph Addison (see previous chapter). He clearly articulates the fundamental differences between the national styles: the scenes were poor, the theatre little, no dancing, & not above 2 or 3 good voyces, but the musick pleases me much better than the French [.] It is always set to express the meaning of the words, they sing the dialogue much faster than the French, almost as fast as if it were spoke, which makes it less tedious, their songs have many repetitions, but many of them extream fine.34

Shrewsbury also heard operas rehearsed twice in Rome,35 and shows he was an astute judge of voices. At Venice, with the consul and the Earl of Cardigan, he heard ‘the Vicentina’ sing,36 ‘who has still the old & fine voice, strong more Shrewsbury (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930); and Robin Eagles, ‘“I Have Neither Interest nor Eloquence Sufficient to Prevaile”: The Duke of Shrewsbury and the Politics of Succession during the Reign of Anne’, eBLJ 2015. Article 11. 32

Journal of the Duke of Shrewsbury (1700–1706). Northamptonshire Record Office, Montagu Volume 65, p. 4; Paris, 21 November 1700. The journal is excerpted in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury, vol. 2, part 2 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1903), 746–99; this passage on p. 747.

33

Journal of the Duke of Shrewsbury, p. 22; Montpellier, 21 December 1700; also in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of Buccleuch and Queensbury, 749.

34

Journal of the Duke of Shrewsbury, p. 113; Florence, 30 October 1701; also in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of Buccleuch and Queensbury, 756.

35

Journal of the Duke of Shrewsbury, pp. 138 and 141; Rome, 13 and 20 December 1701. In Rome in 1704 he wrote back to Sir William Trumbull, that he was steady to Protestantism and not inclined to Catholicism and goes to churches only to look at the paintings; ‘their Churches, the Musick, ~ ~ ~ Illuminations, & scenes delight ye Ear & Eye beyond our Operas’; British Library, Add. MS 72,483, 228v. Also printed in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Downshire, 6 vols (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1924–5), 1:839.

36

Margarita Faccioli (called La Vicentina) of Vicenza is recorded as singing publicly in Vicenza (La violenza d’amore [1713], Il trionfo della costanze [1714]); Venice (Orlando furioso [1713], Rodomonte sdegnato [1714]); and Brescia (Cefalo [1715], Li rivali generosi [1715], Griselda, Nerone fatto Cesare, Tomiri amante inimica [all 1716]).

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like an Eunuch than a woman’.37 The following week, he heard a woman sing at the Incurables, but whose voice was ‘far short of the Vicentina old as she is’.38 Born a Catholic, Shrewsbury had converted to the Church of England in 1679 but was rumoured to have reconverted during his stay in Rome from 1701 to spring 1705. He lost esteem because of his marriage in Rome to Adelaide, Marchioness of Paleotti, an impoverished Italian widow of high rank who converted to Protestantism to marry him but too was suspected of remaining Catholic.39 He returned to England in January 1706. But his old Whig friends received him coldly and with suspicion, feeling that by his leaving England, going to Rome, and marrying a Roman Catholic, he had deserted them. Despite his known aversion to office, the Tories, sensing Shrewsbury’s alienation from the Whigs, made every effort to gain him for their party. By late 1708 he had become an intimate of Harley and had moved into open opposition to the Marlborough-Godolphin Ministry. He voted with the Tories and joined Tory political clubs.40 His contemporaries saw him betraying the Whigs with a vengeance.41 It was his appointment as Lord Chamberlain on 14 April 1710 that presaged the establishment of a Tory Ministry. Shortly after Shrewsbury’s appointment, Arthur Maynwaring, the Duchess of Marlborough’s secretary and confidant, wrote her on 21 April 1710: You are certainly in the right, that [the Duke of Shrewsbury] will never be true to the Whiggs. … I think if he declare himself a Tory, there are so many secret Arrows that may be shot at him, that he will soon be beaten down: And if he pretends to act with the Whiggs it will be so unsincere and awkward an Alliance that it will not last.42

37

Journal of the Duke of Shrewsbury, p. 432; Venice, 14 June 1704. On 1 July, he again heard her: ‘[she] sung well, but musick abominably set like a Tune at a Rope dancers’; Journal of the Duke of Shrewsbury, p. 437; Venice, 2 July 1704.

38

Journal of the Duke of Shrewsbury, p. 435; Venice, 21 June 1704.

39

Frank H. Ellis, ed., Augustan Satirical Verse, 1704–1714 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975), 7:315 note, 549, 590–6.

40

J. H. Plumb, ‘The Organization of the Cabinet in the Reign of Queen Anne’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 7 (1957), 137–57. See also Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 1:84, 272–3, 294, 505.

41

The Life and Character of Charles Duke of Shrewsbury (1718) states he ‘was brought into all their Measures for pulling down the Duke of Marlborough and Earl Godolphin. … [N]ever was [he] so active in any Administration as in this’ (20, 22). William Coxe, Shrewsbury’s otherwise sympathetic biographer, concedes he ‘became the chief instrument, not only in procurring the dismission of the whigs, and the disgrace of Godolphin and Marlborough, but in effecting that change of policy, which so fatally marked the four last years of queen Anne’; Coxe, Private and Original Correspondence of Charles Talbot, 664.

42

Arthur Maynwaring, 21 April 1710, to the Duchess of Marlborough. Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add. MS 61,461, ff. 9–10. Also with silent omissions in Sarah Churchill,

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Shrewsbury’s Italian duchess was ridiculed, if not vilified, by the Whigs. She shocked and scandalised society and was abused for her vulgar humour, loose morals, large figure, and masculine features.43 In ‘A New Protestant Littany’, attributed to Maynwaring, we are asked to be delivered From Sh—ys Dutchess exalted by fate From bawding for whores to be Chief baud of State.44

The Duchess of Marlborough, a staunch Whig now dismissed from court, openly despised her, and the two became open rivals, mirroring the political divisions between their husbands and those at court. The Duke of Shrewsbury realised he had to drop the Duchess of Marlborough due to the personal and political differences between her, the Queen, and Abigail Masham.45 The two duchesses competed with their assemblies: the Duchess of Shrewsbury’s were said to be especially cultured, a meeting place of the artistic, literary, and musical.46 The Duchess of Marlborough’s entertainments were what Robert Bucholz calls ‘something of a Whig anticourt’.47 The two duchesses were rivals for the honour of presenting Nicolini. Shortly after his arrival in London, the Duchess of Marlborough engaged him to sing at one of her assemblies on 9 December 1708; but the opera manager Swiney arranged an open rehearsal that night, and the Duchess of Shrewsbury prevailed on him to attend the rehearsal, bringing him in her coach. (Mrs Tofts refused

Duchess of Marlborough, Private Correspondence of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, 2nd ed., 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1838), 1:311. 43

Dorothy H. Somerville, The King of Hearts: Charles Talbot, Duke of Shrewsbury (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962), 229–30, 289–94; Nicholson and Turberville, Charles Talbot, 182–4, 216.

44

Quoting a version dated Feb. 1712; British Library, Add. MS 40,060, f. 88. On the manuscript versions of the poem, Augustan Satirical Verse, 1704–1714, ed. Ellis, 7:548– 51, 689–90. The first line given above also appears as ‘From a Masculine Dutchess’ preposterous Fate’.

45

Nicholson and Turberville, Charles Talbot, 169; James J. Cartwright, ed., The Wentworth Papers, 1705–1739 (London: Wyman, 1883), 213, 214, 283. On the friction between the duchesses, Henry L. Snyder, ed., The Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), nos. 1543, 1549, 1570.

46

Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 187 and 380 n44; Nicholson and Tuberville, Charles Talbot, 169, 183; Somerville, King of Hearts, 289; and Wentworth Papers, 208 and 210. On the Duchess of Shrewsbury and the Italian circle in England, George E. Dorris, Paolo Rolli and the Italian Circle in London, 1715–1744 (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), 73–5.

47

R. O. Bucholz, ‘“Nothing but Ceremony”: Queen Anne and the Limitations of Royal Ritual’, Journal of British Studies, 30 (1991), 309; Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993).

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to sing because of Nicolini’s previous commitment.)48 The following year, the Duchess of Marlborough furnished a room for Nicolini at Montagu House,49 and on New Year’s Day 1710, she hosted a dinner with Nicolini.50 The Duke’s position as Lord Chamberlain, with his control over theatres, actors, and musicians, no doubt gained for his Duchess the attendance of musicians of the opera company for her social events. When Prince Eugene visited London in January 1712, he dined at the Shrewsburys’ on 10 January, when Nicolini sang.51 In honour of Eugene, Whigs sponsored their own successful entertainments, which were an embarrassment to the Court.52 In the 1711–12 season, the Duchess of Shrewsbury gave private concerts at Kensington with singers (including Nicolini and Margarita) and instrumentalists from the opera.53 In 1714 the Duchess requested from the opera company a performance of Ernelinda, which she had missed while in Ireland with her husband as Lord Lieutenant.54 The Duke’s familiarity with Italian opera, the couple’s alienation from Whig politicians, and the Duke’s position as Lord Chamberlain all lend credence to contemporary belief that Shrewsbury used his office to support an Italian cabal against Calypso and Telemachus led by Nicolini (despite Addison’s statement otherwise).

48

Isabella Lady Wentworth, 10 December 1708, to her son, Lord Raby; Wentworth Papers, British Library, Add. MS 31,143, f. 243: ‘the Dutchis of Molbery had gott the Etallian to sing & he sent an excuse, but the Dutchis of Shrosberry made him com, brought him in her coach, but Mrs Taufs huft & would not sing because he had first put it ofe’. Also in Wentworth Papers, 66.

49

Maynwaring, 15 November 1709, to Duchess of Marlborough; Blenheim Papers, British Library, Add MS 61,460, ff. 118–21: ‘Nicolini had an opera that he desired might be practis’d in his Room, which had been furnish’d by [Duchess of Marlborough], who had never seen it since’. Continuing, Maynwaring reports he advised that the Duchess of Montagu was the proper person to issue invitations for the rehearsal.

50

Duchess of Marlborough, 1 January 1710, to Lady Mary Cowper; Herefordshire Archives and Local Studies, Panshanger Papers, DE/P/F63, letter no. 71.

51

Peter Wentworth, London, 11 January 1712, to Lord Strafford; British Library, Wentworth Papers, Add. MS 22,227, ff. 122v–123r: ‘Wednesday was the Opera & there he [Prince Eugene} brought a great crowd, so much that operas are to be perform’d thrice a week whilst he stays here [.] … Last night … he sup[t] that night at the Duke of Shrewsburys [.] Nicholinia sung’. Also in Wentworth Papers, 247.

52

Bucholz, ‘Nothing but Ceremony’, 309.

53

Documents printed in Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, 191–3. The document is undated; Milhous and Hume give ‘Season of 1712–13?’; but Winton Dean, ‘Handel’s Early London Copyists’, in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, ed. Peter Williams, 79 n6, redates it to the previous season because one of the singers was no longer in London.

54

Somerville, King of Hearts, 291.

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Steele’s Censorium After the conclusion of the concerts at York Buildings and the run of Calypso and Telemachus in May 1712, Steele fitted up a room in the buildings and used it for his own project, the Censorium, a series of performances of poetry, dramatic presentations, music, lectures, and scientific experiments.55 Steele seems to have begun planning events late in 1712, again enlisting the assistance of Pope. The first known Censorium presentation was in May 1715, and scattered reports of events are found until about 1722 or 1723. Steele intended the edifying entertainments as an ‘improvement of the public taste in pleasures, which is rather corrupted … from sensual gratification’.56 Such a programme of using pleasure and entertainment as a means to virtue and knowledge continues Steele’s programme foreshadowed in the Tatler and Spectator of improving and correcting public taste. One of Steele’s specific aims was to provide an alternative to the Italian opera. Patrons will be ‘entertained … at a lower expense than seeing an Opera, with all the pleasures which the liberal and mechanic Arts … can produce—Musick, Eloquence, and Poetry, are the powers which do most strongly affect the imagination and influence the passions of men’.57 In June at the end of the 1711–12 season, Nicolini left London, an event marked with some glee and approval by Steele, and some regret by Addison (as seen above). After firing Aaron Hill as manager in March 1711 due to the financial disaster of Rinaldo, William Collier, now sole manager of the financially sinking Haymarket opera and seeing that Drury Lane was prospering, used his connections with the Tory Ministry to be let out of his bad bargain at the Haymarket with Swiney and on 17 April 1712 obtained from the Lord Chamberlain a license for himself and the actors Wilks, Doggett, and Cibber to produce plays at Drury Lane while Swiney resumed management of the opera at the Haymarket.58

Handel Celebrates the Peace During their first season in London, Handel and Pilotti had great success in London’s musical and operatic world. As agreed with the Elector, Handel and probably Pilotti as well returned to Hanover after the 1710–11 season, which had included the premiere of Rinaldo.59 Pilotti returned to London for the following 55

On the Censorium: Loftis, Steele at Drury Lane, 104–5; Loftis, ‘Richard Steele’s Censorium’.

56

Town-Talk, no. 4 (6 January 1716); quoted from collected reprint ed. (1790); the periodical carried several promotional pieces for the Censorium project.

57

Town-Talk, no. 4 (6 January 1716).

58

Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, A Register of English Theatrical Documents, 1660–1737 (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), nos. 2183 and 2184.

59

Passports were issued to Pilotti and her husband to Holland in June 1711; see London, National Archives, SP 44/401 (8 June 1711). I thank David Hunter for his reference.

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1711–12 season, when she sang in new productions of Antioco (12 December 1711), L’Ambleto (27 February 1712), and Hercole (3 May 1712), and the following season in Dorinda (10 December 1712).60 Librettos to these operas identify her as a servant of the Hanoverian court.61 Handel’s absence for the 1711–12 season was regretted by opera-lovers, who approached the Duke of Marlborough to use his relationship with the Elector to ask for a return visit. At the end of May 1712, Baron Christoph Friedrich Kreienberg, the Hanoverian resident in London, complied with their wishes and wrote the Elector that The day before yesterday, the Duke of Marlborough informed me that for some time a large number of lords and ladies had asked him to humbly request through me that Your Electoral Excellency might graciously deign to give your Capellmeister Handel permission to come here for several months. … Also, the managers of the opera thought to produce something exceptional on the stage next winter, and have spent a great sum on that account.62

Marlborough was a promising choice for approaching the Elector on matters of opera, for he himself had attended opera in London and the Continent and was a long-time friend and military ally of the Elector (on Marlborough and opera, see chapter 5). The Elector, whose succession to the English throne depended upon Marlborough’s military successes, responded favourably, for by mid-October 1712, Handel was back in London preparing for the coming season. On 24 October, he completed the second act of Il pastor fido and completed Teseo on 19 December.

60

Daily Courant, no. 2836 (24 November 1710). Also in the librettos of Il pastor fido (22 November 1712); Hercole (3 May 1712); and Ernelinda (?26 February 1713). In Amadigi di Gaula (25 May 1715), she is identified as servant of the Princess of Wales.

61

Payments for the 1711–12 season given in Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, 186, 191–2 [the latter payments are misdated by the editors].

62

(‘Der Duc von Marlborough hat mir vorgestern zu erkennen gegeben, daß eine große Anzahl Lords und damen ihn schon eine Zeitlang her sehr gebehten beÿ Euer Churfürstlichen Durch- leuchten durch mich unter thänigst anzuhalten, daß Dieselbe ihrem Capell Meister Hendell auf einige Monaht hieher zu kommen erlaubniß zugeben Gnädigst geruhen möchten. …, auch die Unternehmer von der Opera gegen nechsten Winter etwas sonderliches auf das Theatrum zu bringen gedächten, auch deshalben große Unkosten anwendeten’.) Christoph Friedrich Kreienberg, London, 23 May/3 June 1712, to Georg Ludwig; Hanover, Niedersächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Cal. Br. 24 Nr 1694, ff. 234–5. Also transcribed (with slightly different readings) and translated in Donald Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe, and Anthony Hicks, eds, George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents, vol. 1, 1609–1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1:239–49.

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❧  1712–1713 Season The 1712–13 season opened on 12 November 1712 with a trio of pastoral operas: a revival of Love’s Triumph (as The Triumph of Love; 12 November 1712),63 Handel’s Il pastor fido (22 November 1712), and Dorinda (10 December 1712).64 The early pastorals of the season used, in the words of the Opera Register, ‘ye Same Scene & Habits [costumes]’ and ‘ye Habits were old’. The ‘great sum’ mentioned by Kreienberg probably refers to the expenses for Handel’s Teseo (10 January 1713), which had ‘all ye Habits new & richer than ye former with 4 New Scenes, & other Decorations & Machines’.65 The investment in spectacle, though, did not draw audiences. Receipts did not produce enough income, and after two performances of Teseo, in the words of the Opera Register, ‘Mr Swiny Brakes & runs away & leaves ye Singers unpaid ye Scenes & Habits also unpaid for’.66 That is, he was insolvent and fled to the Continent in January 1713. The singers agreed to continue performing, and the Lord Chamberlain directed the treasurer of the Haymarket to pay their arrears. At this point, Heidegger sensed an opportunity and re-entered the world of opera. Assuming Swiney’s lease on the Haymarket, he became manager of the opera company. Sometime at the end of the season, Handel made his first essay in English sacred music with the anthem ‘As Pants the Hart’.67 Pilotti had returned to Hanover in summer 1712, and with preparations for the 1712–13 season 63

The identity of this opera (described by Dorris, Paolo Rolli and the Italian Circle in London, 271, as Il trionfo d’Amore, ‘a collection of music’) is uncertain. The sole known copy of the libretto (as The Triumph of Love) at the Columbia University Library, consists of the original sheets of Love’s Triumph of 1708 with a new title page (with imprint 1713 [such dating was a common printer’s practice for works published late in the previous calendar year]). Charles Burney and others have presumed it was performed in Italian and, hence, translated the title. There is no indication suggesting which language it was sung in.

64

On these three pastorals, see Lindgren, ‘Accomplishments of Nicola Haym’, 299. Edward J. Dent, ‘A Pastoral Opera by Alessandro Scarlatti’, Music Review, 12 (1951), 7–14, identifies the source as an opera by Scarlatti.

65

Judith Milhous, ‘Opera Finances in London, 1674–1738’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), 567–92 (at pp. 56–7); quotations from the so-called ‘Coleman Opera Register’; Konrad Sasse, ‘Opera Register from 1712 to 1734 (ColmanRegister)’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 5 (1959), 200–201. The scenes that were probably specially created were a ‘Temple of Minerva’ (I.i), ‘a horrible Desart full of frightful Monsters’ (III.iv), an ‘Inchanted Island’ (IV. iii), Medea’s ‘Enchanted Palace’ (V.i), and the palace on fire (V.v). As well, the machine was fitted out to provide for descents of Theseus sleeping (IV.iii), ‘Medea out of a Cloud’ (IV. vi), ‘Medea in a Chariot drawn by flying Dragons’ (V.v), and of ‘Minerva descending in a Machine’ (V.vi).



66

Swiney flees: Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, 189, 198.

67

The date of performance is uncertain; Burrows, Handel and the English Chapel Royal, 56–74.

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underway, her absence was of concern. The Electoral councillor Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz received a letter from his former secretary Jobst Dietrich Brandshagen, written on 21 October 1712: ‘Signora Pilotta has not yet come over, and … the Hanoverian Capellmeister Mr. Handel said that she [is] already on her journey and very much expected because the opera will soon begin’.68 Pilotti did return to London for the premieres of Handel’s next two operas, Il pastor fido and Teseo. Composer and singer were again identified as ‘Maestro di Capella’ and ‘virtuosa’ ‘di S. A. E. d’Hannover’.69 Terms of the impending Peace between Britain and France had been disclosed to the public in October 1712. For such an important event as the Peace, a public service with ceremonial music of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral was called for. The English composers William Croft, composer to the Chapel Royal, or John Eccles, Master of the Queen’s Musick, might have been expected to provide the music. But in an obvious slight to them, and a sign of his esteem at court, the Queen (or her Ministry) commissioned Handel to compose what would be the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate for the celebration,70 which at the time, in anticipation of the formal treaty, was projected for 23 April. Handel completed the Te Deum on 14 January 1713. By now, Handel had overstayed his leave from Hanover. He had returned to a nation whose Tory Ministry had achieved armistice with France and was aggressively pursuing a separate peace that renounced the terms of the Grand Alliance and betrayed his employer the Elector. In January, the Elector received a request from Queen Anne, through Lord Bolingbroke, informing him that the Queen had commanded Handel to write for her a Te Deum and Jubilate to be performed in St Paul’s. Knowing that Handel had extended his absence, and respecting Handel’s obligations as a princely servant, she asked the Elector’s permission for Handel to remain a little while longer until the ceremony. The Elector’s correspondent added he had no doubt ‘that Your Electoral Majesty would be happy that one of your servants should have the honour of serving Her Majesty’s pleasure in some way’.71

68

(‘Die Signora Pilota ist noch nicht über kommen, u. … der Hannoversche Capellmeister Hr. Händel sagete, daß sie [ist] schon auf der reise u. sehr verlanget, weilen die Opera balt angehen würden’.) Jobst Dietrich Brandshagen, [London], 21 October 1712, to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; Hanover, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, L/Br97. Also transcribed (with slightly different readings) and translated in Burrows et al., eds, Handel: Collected Documents, 1:244.

69

Payments for the 1712–13 season in Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, 199, 200, 201.

70

On the service, Burrows, Handel and the Chapel Royal, 75–105.

71

(‘es würde E Ch M froh seyn, daß jemand von Dero bedienten Ihrer Mt in einigen Sachen nach Gefallen zu dienen die Ehre hätte’.) Thomas Grote, [London], 13 January 1713, to Georg Ludwig, Hanover; Hanover, Niedersächsiches Haupstaatsarchive, Hann. 91 Grote III Nr 2, ff. 92r, 98. As transcribed and translated in Burrows et al., eds, Handel: Collected Documents, 1:252; and Donald Burrows, ‘Handel and Hanover’, pp.

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The Elector obliged the Queen by granting the request. By doing so, the Elector could help ameliorate the strained relations between the courts, and in some sense have an Electoral presence without a formal invitation from the Queen. In addition to composing the Te Deum and Jubilate, for Anne’s birthday on 6 February 1713, Handel (somewhat in the role of a Court composer) wrote ‘Eternal Source of Light Divine’. The ode would have a royalist-Tory appeal, for it celebrated the Queen ‘who brought a lasting peace on earth’. But it is not known if it actually came to be performed, although the score shows Handel made last-minute changes to ready it for performance.72

Silla and the D’Aumont Embassy As a public sign of their commitment to the coming Peace, in December 1712 France and Britain had ceremonial exchanges of ambassadors: the Duke of Shrewsbury was sent to Paris, and Louis XIV sent duc Louis-Marie d’Aumont Rochbaron to London. Shrewsbury landed at Calais on 27 December. The two ambassadors met in crossing at Boulogne, where d’Aumont entertained Shrewsbury, and d’Aumont went on to land at Dover on 30 December 1712.73 The ambassadors observed customary state protocols: they had private and public audiences with the monarchs, made ceremonial public entries, and hosted entertainments for aristocrats and notables, both to honour the host country and to project the prestige and power of the ambassador’s home country.74

35–59 in Bach, Handel, Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed. Peter Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), at 42. 72

On the 1713 Ode: Donald Burrows, ‘Eternal Source for Speculation: Handel’s Birthday Ode for Queen Anne’, The Handel Institute Newsletter, vol. 20, no. 2 (Autumn 2009), [4]–[6]; Burrows, Handel and the English Chapel Royal, 105–10; James A. Winn, ‘Style and Politics in the Philips-Handel Ode for Queen Anne’s Birthday, 1713’, Music and Letters, 89 (2008), 547–61; and Michael Custodis, ‘Kunst und Karriere: Georg Friedrich Händel’s Ode Eternal Source of Light Divine’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 65 (2008), 225–41. David Hunter, The Lives of George Frideric Handel (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2015), 169–72, discusses the attribution to Philips, but considers the evidence inconclusive.

73

The itineraries are reported in the Hamburger Relations-Courier, various newspapers, and summarised in Abel Boyer, Quadriennium Annæ Postrenum: or the Political State of Great Britain, 2nd ed., 8 vols in 4, vol. 5 [for the year 1713] (1719), 17–18.

74

D’Aumont’s entry (1 July, o.s.) is described in the Post Boy, no. 2831 (30 June–1 July 113). Shrewsbury’s entry (11 June, n.s.) is described in the Post Boy, no. 2822 (9–12 June 1713). On the ceremonial role of such public entries as legitimation of the power of a prince or his representative, Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450– 1650 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1973), 7–41, 47–50; and Helen Jacobsen, Luxury and Power: The Material World of the Stuart Diplomat (1660–1714) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).



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D’Aumont arrived in London on 1 January 1713, and was met ‘with great Acclamation of the People, and all other Marks of Respect’,75 due in part, as a ballad that traduced him claimed, because ‘He threw out his Cash, that the Mob might admire him’.76 But as a symbol of France and the ‘shameful’ Peace, d’Aumont subsequently suffered jeering by crowds (especially when he stopped throwing money to crowds from his coach). His house on Great Ormond Street was destroyed by fire on 27 January, widely believed as an act of arson. The Queen later granted him apartments at Somerset House.77 The peace treaty was signed at Utrecht on 31 March/11 April 1713, and Peace was publicly proclaimed on May 5 – accompanied by fireworks and bonfires. By its terms, Britain kept Gibraltar and Minorca and gained territories in Canada; the Dutch retained the right to maintain defensive fortresses to defend their border; Spain retained its Bourbon monarch and American possessions; the coast from the Netherlands to Calais was demilitarised; France recognised the Hanoverian Succession, renounced the prospect of uniting the French and Spanish crowns, and repudiated the claims of the Pretender, who was to be exiled from France to the Duchy of Lorraine. Britain received from Spain the asiento, or monopoly on slave trading to Spanish America for the benefit of the South Sea Company. Britain was now a major economic and military force in Europe. The Elector, the Emperor, and Imperial allies were left to continue the war against Louis XIV, in hopes of obtaining better terms. The Emperor made peace the following year with the Treaty of Rastadt on 6 March 1714. Whereas the Whigs Addison, Hughes, and Congreve had celebrated Britannia militant against France, the Tory poet Alexander Pope recast an earlier pastoral poem into a celebration of the Ministry’s peace as a British triumph in his royalist Windsor Forest, when ‘Peace and Plenty tell, a Stuart reigns’: Hail Sacred Peace! hail long-expected Days, That Thames’s Glory to the Stars shall raise!78

The Peace of Utrecht was seen by Whigs, many Britons, and the Allies as a betrayal of the Grand Alliance. What Marlborough gained by his victories, the Ministry gave away by the Peace. Whigs believed that its favourable terms left France so insufficiently reduced in power that it could continue to support a Jacobite restoration; the articles about commerce so endangered trade with Portugal that the Commerce Treaty was defeated by Parliament on 10 June 1713 by Whigs with the aid of the Hanoverian (‘Whimsical’) Tories.

75

Abel Boyer, History of the Life and Reign of Queen Anne (1722), 643.

76

The Merchant A-la-mode; to the Tune of Which No Body Can Deny (1713).

77

D’Aumont’s reception and events that turned public opinion against him are recorded in Boyer, Quadriennium Annæ Postrenum, 2nd ed., vol. 5 [for the year 1713] (1719), 18–24.

78

On the poem as celebrating the Peace, Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: A Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 199–207.

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The public activities of d’Aumont’s ‘vain, ostentatious, and ruinous embassy’79 were widely reported in the domestic and international press and newsletters, including his attending the opera and plays (February), lavishly entertaining ministers and people of quality (March), attending the Public Act at Oxford and taking a Doctor of Civil Law (June), attending an installation of Garter Knights (August), reviewing the Horseguards (August), and hosting barge music and fireworks on the Thames (August and September). He maintained a musical establishment, which was put to service for entertainments, such as hosting balls and masquerades (April, May, and August) and giving a ball and masquerade to celebrate Saint Louis’s birthday (September).80 As part of these festivities celebrating d’Aumont’s embassy and the Peace was to be Handel’s unproduced opera L.C. Silla, whose libretto had a fulsome dedication to d’Aumont dated 2 June 1713.81 On the basis of the stage scenery required and the demands on singers, it was no doubt planned for production by the resident opera company at the Haymarket theatre. Although documentation is lacking, the production probably was initiated by the Tory Ministry

79

Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Letters Correspondence, Public and Private, ed. Gilbert Parke, 4 vols, (1798), 4:332 note: ‘Louis XIV gave him 100,000 livres, and granted him a pension of 50,000 for four years, to recover his finances’.

80

Opera and plays: Hamburger Relations-Courier, no. 23 (9 February 1713). Entertaining: Hamburger Relations-Courier, no. 36 (3 March 1713). Balls and masquerades: Post Boy, no. 2814 (21–3 May 1713); Evening Post, no. 591 (21–3 May 1713); British Mercury, no. 412–13 (27 May–3 June 1713); British Mercury, no. 424 (19 August 1713); newsletter for 24 April/5 May 1713, Henry Snyder Collection, Los Angeles, W. A. Clark Memorial Library, BM 29/45 J-12. Public Act and DCL: newsletter for 18 June 1713, Henry Snyder Collection, Los Angeles, Calif., W. A. Clark Memorial Library, LC 3629. Garter Knights: Hamburger Relations-Courier, no. 126 (11 August 1713). Horseguards: Hamburger Relations-Courier, no. 130 (18 August 1713). Music and fireworks on Thames: British Mercury, no. 424 (19 August 1713); Hamburger Relations-Courier, no. 154 (29 September 1713). Ball for St. Louis’s Day: Hamburger Relations-Courier, no. 142 (8 September 1713). Other events in d’Aumont’s reception are mentioned in Duncan Chisholm, ‘Handel’s “Lucio Cornelio Silla”’, Early Music, 14 (1986), 64–70, and Winn, Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 615–16. On d’Aumont’s musical establishment, Peter Holman, ‘Arcangelo Corelli, His Trumpet Sinfonia and the Mysterious Mr. Twisleton: New Light on a Murky Episode in British, French and Jacobite Cultural Politics’, A Handbook for Study in Eighteenth-Century English Music, 25 (2021), 1–24.

81

On Silla, see J. Merrill Knapp, ‘The Libretto of Handel’s “Silla”’, Music and Letters, 50 (1969), 68–75; and Winton Dean and John M. Knapp, Handel’s Operas, 1704–1726, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 260–72. Chisholm, ‘Handel’s “Lucio Cornelio Silla’”, proposes a political interpretation of Silla; this proposed allegorical reading is doubted in McGeary, Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 35–7. The libretto is translated in Handel: Collected Documents, eds Burrows et al., 1:271–5.

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that achieved the Peace.82 With Shrewsbury abroad in Paris, Vice Chamberlain Thomas Coke must have arranged the use of the theatre and its company to produce the opera after its regular season had closed on 30 May. The opera apparently was never produced, but Handel’s involvement in the planned production marking the embassy of d’Aumont must have been widely known, for the surviving printed libretto states ‘La Musica è del Sig. Georgio Federico Hendel Maestro di Capella di S.A.E. di Hannover’.

Celebrating the Peace Plans for the Day of Thanksgiving were underway in February. The earliest known English public notices of Handel as composer of the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate were London newspaper and newsletter mentions on 7 March (o.s.) 1713;83 but knowledge must have been widespread even earlier, for an account in the Hamburger Relations-Courier with a dateline of 24 February/7 March gave details of the upcoming Thanksgiving service: ‘In addition [to the commemorative pennies] there is a new kind of Te Deum with the notes set by the famous musician Handel, which will then be sung’.84 This notice in one of the most influential newspapers in Germany made certain it was known throughout the Holy Roman Empire that the Elector’s servant was to participate in celebrating the Peace that betrayed the Elector and Emperor.85 Handel’s music was publicly rehearsed at least four times at 82

No newspapers or manuscript newsletters mention Silla. Otherwise, it has been speculated Silla was performed at Burlington House, where Handel may have resided at the time. However, one newsletter reports that on the date of the supposed production of Silla, ‘This day ye duke de Aumont ye ffrench Ambr Nobly Entertained Sr Isaack Newton president of the Royall Society, ye two Secretaryes, ye Treasurer w.th sev.ll others of ye Society at Somerset House’; Henry Snyder collection of newsletters, Los Angeles, W. A. Clark Memorial Library, Newsletter LC 3622. Chisholm and Dean and Knapp err in stating dedication dates in printed word books indicate the date of the première. Dedication dates often do not agree with the known first performance, and imprint years of many word books do not agree with the year of the premiere. There is no evidence that d’Aumont sponsored the opera.

83

Dawks’s News-Letter, 7 March 1713 (reprinted in Handel: Collected Documents, eds Burrows et al., 1:264); the ministerial Post Boy, no. 2781 (5–7 March 1713); and the Evening Post, no. 558 (5–7 March 1713).

84

(‘Uberdem [Gedenck Pfenningen] hat man eine neue Sort von ein Te Deum mit denen Noten des berübmten Musici Hendel auffgesetzet, welches alsdann gesungen werden soll’.) Hamburger Relations-Courier, no. 44 (17 March 1713, n.s.; item dateline, ‘London, from 7 March’ is New Style, which is eleven days ahead of the Old Style calendar used in England). The items transcribed here and below are also printed in Heinz Becker, ‘Die frühe Hamburgische Tagespresse als musikgeschichtliche Quelle’, pp. 22–45 in Heinrich Husman, ed., Beiträge zur Hamburgischen Musikgeschichte” (Hamburg: Musikwissenschaftlichen Instituts des Universität Hamburg), 35; most are also printed and translated in Handel: Collected Documents, eds Burrows et al., 1:263–4.

85

Inken Schmidt-Voges, ‘Diverging Concepts of Peace in German Newspapers, 1712/1713: A Case Study of the Hamburger Relations-Courier’, pp. 209–26 in New

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St Paul’s and the Banqueting House (Whitehall) in March and May, with ‘Mr Hendel’ usually mentioned as composer.86 In addition to incoming private correspondence, the Hanoverian court could follow the progress of the Service through notices in the Hamburg newspaper. The first rehearsal on 5 March (o.s.), was described: ‘Yesterday took place a rehearsal of the recently mentioned Song of Praise composed by Mr. Handel, which will be sung on the day of the Proclamation of Peace at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and at which the Queen will be present’.87 The newspaper also reported on the 19 March (o.s.) rehearsal at Whitehall: ‘There was a great crowd of people, and anyone who wanted to get in had to pay half a guinea per person’.88 The Elector was now in the embarrassing position of it known in Britain and Europe that his servant was contributing to celebrating the Peace and had composed an opera fêting the ambassador of a country Hanover and Austria were still at war with. The Elector’s biographer Ragnhild Hatton explains his embarrassing position: ‘He [Georg Ludwig] who had protested against the Tory Ministry’s peace making with France, would become the laughing stock – if not an object of hatred – with his allies in Europe if he permitted his own Kappelmeister, paid with Hanoverian money, to celebrate the victories of perfidious Albion’.89 Despite this apparent lapse in loyalty, Handel never lost the Elector’s favour. Contrary to legend, there was no lasting enmity between them. To save face, the Elector arranged an amicable dismissal of his servant. On 5/16 June 1713, Worlds? Transformations in the Culture of International Relations Around the Peace of Utrecht, eds Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana (London: Routledge, 2017): ‘At the beginning of the eighteenth-century, the Hamburger Relations-Courier was not only a well-established newspaper for Hamburg merchants but one of the most influential periodicals in the Holy Roman Empire … and was one of the two main newspapers used as information sources by the envoys of the Imperial Diet’ (212). 86

Known rehearsals were held on 5 and 7 March (St Paul’s) and 19 March and 13 May (Banqueting House); Burrows, Handel and the English Chapel Royal, 78. Handel is mentioned as the composer in Dawks’s News-Letter, 5 March 1713; Post Boy, no. 2781 (5–7 March 1713); the British Mercury, no. 401 (11 March 1713); and the Evening Post, no. 558 (5–7 March 1713), where the music is described as ‘extraordinarily fine, both vocal and Instrumental’.

87

(‘Gestern geschahe eine Probe des neulich gedachten von Mr. Händel componirten Lob-Gesanges, welches auff den Tag der Friendens Verkündigung in der St. PaulsKirche, und wobey die Köngigin gegenwärtig seyn wird, abgesungen werden soll’.) Hamburger Relations-Courier, no. 53 (3 April 1713, n.s.); item dateline, London, 17 March (n.s.); also printed and translated in Handel: Collected Documents, eds Burrows et al., 1:266.

88

(‘Es war ein großer Zulauff von Menschen, und muste [sic] jeder darin wolte, eine halbe Guinee vor seine Persohn geben’.) Hamburger Relations-Courier, no. 58 (11 April 1713, n.s.); item dateline, London, 31 March (n.s.); also printed and translated in Handel: Collected Documents, eds Burrows et al., 1:267.

89

Ragnhild M. Hatton, The Anglo-Hanoverian Connection, 1714–1760, The Creighton Trust Lecture (London: University of London, 1982), 14–15.

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Kreienberg reported back to Hanover that ‘since his Highness was determined to dismiss him, Mr Handel accepted it, and desired nothing save that the affair be conducted with a good grace and that he might be given a little time here so that he could enter the Queen’s service’.90 Handel seems to have realised that composing for such a state affair was a breach of loyalty – though apparently it was not so for a subject of the Holy Roman Empire to compose for Italian patrons allied with the Bourbons. Kreienberg spelled out quite clearly that an advantage to the Elector from Handel’s prolonged presence in London was his friendship with Dr John Arbuthnot, with whom Handel shared an interest in music.91 Arbuthnot, who Swift said was ‘the Queen’s favorite physician’,92 had been passing on to him news about the Queen’s health, news kept from the Whigs.93 And in return, Arbuthnot has been satisfying the Queen’s desire of news about Hanover. Kreienberg closed his letter adding he informed Handel ‘that, when some day his Highness comes here, he might re-enter his service’ (‘que S.A.E. venant un jour ici, il pourra rentrer dan son Service’). A month later (3/14 July 1713), Kreienberg informed Robethon that the dismissal had gone amicably, Handel understood he was not in disgrace with the Elector, and ‘he will not lack for anything when his Majesty the Elector

90

(‘que comme S[son] A[ltesse] [E]lectorale] etoit resolüe de le casser, il s’y soumettoit et qu’l ne souhaittoit rien sinon que l’affaire se fit de bonne grace, et qu’on luy donnat un peu de tems pour entrer ici au service de la Reyne’). Christoph Friedrich Kreienberg, London, 5/16 June 1713, to Jean de Robethon; Hanover, Niedersächsisches Hauptstaatsarchive, Dep. 103 I 148, ff. 135–6; as transcribed and translated in full in Handel: Collected Documents, eds Burrows et al., 1:275–7; and Burrows, ‘Handel and Hanover’, 43–4.

91

Arbuthnot was later among the composers around the Duke of Chandos at Cannons; see Graydon Beeks, ‘“A Club of Composer”; Handel, Pepusch, and Arbuthnot at Cannons’, pp. 209–21 in Handel Tercentenary Collection, eds Stanley Sadie and Anthony Hicks (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1987). See also Graydon Beeks and Leslie M. M. Robarts, ‘John Arbuthnot’, in The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia, eds Annette Landgraf and David Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 49. Swift, Chandos, and others drew on Arbuthnot’s musical judgment; see Angus Ross, ed., The Correspondence of Dr John Arbuthnot (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2006), 224, 232, 237, 268, 293, 393. Anne used another physician, the strong Whig Sir David Hamilton, for confidential errands and sources of information that ministers kept from her; see Edward Gregg, ‘Was Queen Anne a Jacobite?’ History, 57 (1972), 358–75 (at p. 370). Hamilton distrusted Robert Harley and was a conduit of information from the Queen to Whig politicians; see Philip Roberts, ed., The Diary of Sir David Hamilton, 1709–1714 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), xxxi.



92

Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Williams (8 December 1711); 2:433.

93

Hatton, Anglo-Hanoverian Connection, 14–15; Burrows, ‘Handel and Hanover’, 44–5.

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comes here. He will continue to tell me all he knows’.94 Handel was quickly taken back into Georg Ludwig’s service when he became King of England.95 The Elector may also have agreed to let Handel enter the Queen’s service because he maintained a fierce neutrality in English party politics and wanted to avoid any occasion of alienating the Queen from Hanover.96 D’Aumont made his ceremonial public entry through London on 1 July 1713. After several postponements, the public Thanksgiving Service was finally held at St Paul’s on 7 July 1713 (o.s.), although the Queen attended a service at St James’s Palace. In the climate of Tory-Whig acrimony about the Peace, the service at St Paul’s became a partisan affair. A contemporary Whig-biased chronicle recorded: both Houses of Parliament met in order to their going to St Paul’s Church; But it was observ’d, that very few Members of the Whigg Party, in either House, appear’d in that Solemnity, which is not much to be wonder’d at; since it would have been preposterous, if not a mocking of Religion, for Men to return Almighty God Thanks for a Peace, which they had endeavour’d to prevent, and still disapproved.97

Freed from Electoral obligations, Handel entered Queen Anne’s service on 28 December 1713 with an annual £200 pension, which the Elector continued as King. Pilotti apparently returned to Hanover for 1713–14 and remained in Electoral service. Anne’s pension to Handel has usually been interpreted as a reward for writing the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate. But David Hunter points out such a large pension was quite extraordinary since most pensions for musicians ranged from £40 to £56 per annum; he plausibly suggests that Anne instead sought to strengthen her ties with Hanover by substituting a British pension for the salary Handel lost from Hanover.98

94

(‘qu’il ne pourra pas manquer d[’]estre fort bien [in cypher: quand Mg.r l’Electeur sera ici. Il continuera an me dire tout ce qu’il scaura’.). Christoph Friedrich Kreienberg, 3/14 July 1713, London, to Jean de Robethon, Hanover; Henry E. Huntington Library, MS HM 44710, f. 57 [ciphers by clerk realised in text]. Also transcribed (with some misreadings of the manuscript) and translated in Burrows, ‘Handel and Hanover’, and Handel: Collected Documents, eds Burrows et al., 1:277–8.

95

Hatton, Anglo-Hanoverian Connection, 14–15; Burrows, ‘Handel and Hanover’, 43–6.

96

Edward Gregg, ‘Marlborough in Exile, 1712–1714’, Historical Journal, 15 (1972), 593–618 (at p. 601).

97

Abel Boyer, Quadriennium Annæ Postremum; or the Political State of Great Britain. [For the year 1713]. 8 vols in 4 (1719), 6:15. The partisanship was noted even in Vienna, for the Wiennerisches Diarium, no. 1044 (2–4 August 1713), 6, reported: ‘In der Kirchen zu St. Paul aber wäre niemand, als die Partey von Torris und 2. Herren von der Partey von Wiggs erschienen’. Shortly after the great change, Swift had noted there were no Whigs at Court on a Thanksgiving day; Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Williams, November 1710, 1:84.

98

David Hunter, ‘Royal Patronage of Handel in Britain: The Rewards of Pension and Office’, pp. 127–53 in Handel Studies: A Gedenkschrift for Howard Serwer, ed. Richard

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When Pilotti returned to London after the Hanoverian Succession to perform in the 1714–15 to 1716–17 seasons, it was likely as a favoured member of the royal court, for when she performed in Lucio Vero (26 February 1715), Amadigi di Gaula (25 May 1715), at a benefit (9 May 1716), and in Tito Manlio (4 April 1717), she is identified in word books or advertisements as ‘Servant to her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales’ (Princess Caroline).99 For each of her three benefits in 1715–17, the King gave her 20 guineas.100 After the initial seasons of offering operas in various forms – heroic operas, pastorals, dramatic operas, operas sung all in English, as bilingual operas, then operas all in Italian – opera productions at the Haymarket settled into the classic form of opera seria: reduced number of arias, predominance of longer da capo arias, sung all in Italian, casts usually of six singers, and increased orchestral accompaniments for arias (see appendices 3 and 4). After a series of losing seasons, Heidegger gave up producing operas after the 1716–17 season.101 Opera in London did not resume until April 1720 under the newly chartered Royal Academy of Music.

King (Hillsdale, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 2009); figures for other musicians are given on p. 147; on the pension: p. 145. 99





Payments to Pilotti for the 1714–15 season in Milhous and Hume, Vice Chamberlain Coke, 237. She is mentioned in a letter from Attilio Ariosti to Giuseppe Riva, Paris 3/14 March 1720; see Lowell Lindgren, ‘Parisan Patronage of Performers from the Royal Academy of Musick’, Music and Letters, 58 (1977), 4–28 (at p. 8). Pilotti and her husband were in the service of Caroline, Princess of Wales in August 1725; see letter from Giuseppe Riva, 8 August 1725, in Lowell Lindgren, ed., Musicians and Librettists in the Correspondence of Gio. Giacomo Zamboni (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Rawlinson Letters 116-138). Royal Musical Association. Research Chronicle, 24 (1991), no. 172, p. 86. Pilotti received payments from the Hanoverian court from 1727 to her death in 1742; see Hellen Coffey, ‘Music for an Elector and King: The Hanover Hofkapelle during the Reigns of George I and II’, Händel-Jahrbuch, 61 (2015), 135–152. In summer of 1722, she (with her husband) sang for Prince-Bishop Count Johann Philipp Franz Schönborn at Würzburg; see Lowell Lindgren and Colin Timms, eds, The Correspondence of Agostino Steffani and Giuseppe Riva, 1720–1728, and Related Correspondence with J. P. F. von Schönborn and S. B. Pallavicini. Royal Musical Association. Research Chronicle, 36 (2003), 33. She was in Stuttgart (1726) and Hanover (from 1727), where she died on 5 May 1742 (Biographical Dictionary); and Nobert Dubowy, ‘Italienische Instrumentalisten in deutschen Hofkapellen’, pp. 61–120 in The Eightheenth-Century Diaspora of Italian Music and Musicians, ed. Reinhard Strohm (Brepols: Turnhout, 2001), at pp. 78–9. Other payments to Pilotti are cited in Dean and Knapp, Handel’s Operas, 669.

100 101

Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume, ‘Heidegger and the Management of the Haymarket Opera, 1713–17’, Early Music, 17 (1999), 65–84; and McGeary, Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain, 61–2.

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❧  The Hanoverian Succession The Treaty of Utrecht did not ease party strife, for the terms of the Peace and the Succession were hotly contested. Whigs saw it as a betrayal of the Allies and British interests. A peace so favourable to France coupled with the Ministry’s known contacts with the Pretender led Whigs to fear (correctly, as it turned out) the Ministry was attempting to set aside the Hanoverian Succession and arrange the return of James, the Pretender. Anne, though, it has been demonstrated, never had any intention to restore her half-brother to the throne.102 The Ministry’s main propaganda objective now was to deny any notion that the Protestant Succession was in danger. Addison and Steele had ended the original run of the Spectator on 6 December 1712. Steele resumed journalism with the Guardian on 12 March 1713, which still continued the Tatler’s and Spectator’s aims to use gentle humour and the polite dialogue of fictional characters reform society and public morals.103 With the country so divided politically and Whigs fanning hysteria against the Pretender, Addison’s tragedy Cato (14 April 1713) became a political touchstone; each side cried it up, seeing in its personations of Cato and Julius Caesar their own political heroes and enemies. Every night the Whigs, now out of office, cheered the line: ‘The post of honour is a private station’.104 To oppose the Ministry propaganda and mount their own campaign to challenge the Peace and ensure the Protestant Succession, the Whig leaders enlisted Steele as the party’s chief spokesman, to replace Maynwaring, who had died on 12 November 1712.105 So he could enter full-time into politics and propaganda warfare, in July Steele wrote Oxford and resigned his place in the Stamp Commission and was elected to Parliament in the summer’s General Election.106 He closed the Guardian on 1 October, and founded an exclusively political paper, the Englishman, which ran from 6 October 1713 to 15 February 1714.107 As the paper’s first issue stated, when the dangers to the state are so 102

Arguing that Anne did not intend the restoration of her half-brother, Gregg, ‘Was Queen Anne a Jacobite?’

103

On the Guardian, Richard Steele, The Guardian, ed. John Calhoun Stephens (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1982); Winton, Captain Steele, 154–78.

104

Politics surrounding Cato: McGeary, Opera and Politics in Handel’s Britain, 28–30.

105

On Steele’s political journalism: Winton, Captain Steele,165–203; Charles A. Knight, Political Biography of Richard Steele (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009); Richard Steele, Tracts and Pamphlets by Richard Steele, ed. Rae Blanchard (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1944). Ashley Marshall, Political Journalism in London, 1695–1720: Defoe, Swift, Steele and Their Contemporaries (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), 157–96.

106

Steele, draft of a letter 4 June 1713, to Robert Harley; Correspondence of Richard Steele, ed. Blanchard, no. 80, pp. 79–81.

107

On the Englishman: Richard Steele, The Englishman: A Political Journal by Richard Steele, ed. Rae Blanchard (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955); Winton, Captain Steele, 179–94.

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great, now is not the time ‘to improve the Taste of Men by the Reflections and Railleries of Poets and Philosophers’.108 In the nation’s partisan climate, Steele and Swift sparred publicly in print and became personal and political enemies. Such heated, malicious print warfare only heightened the rage of party.109 In The Crisis: … with Some Seasonable Remarks on the Danger of a Popish Succession (19 January 1714), Steele argued the Treaty of Utrecht had failed to achieve peace and the war aims; with France still a formidable enemy, the Protestant Succession and Church were still in danger.110 For the Tories, Swift replied with The Publick Spirit of the Whigs (23 February 1714).111 He viciously attacked Steele personally and denied the Ministry had done anything ‘tending towards bringing in the Pretender, or to weaken the Succession in the House of Hanover’ (12). In Parliament, the Tories indicted Steele and the Crisis for their seditious libels against the Ministry and expelled him from the Commons on 18 March 1714, marking victory for the Ministry’s propaganda war. In the following month, the last Whigs were purged from government. Swift withdrew from London on the last day of May and left for Ireland to take up his deanship of St Patrick’s Cathedral. The General Election of August-September 1713 gave the Tories an even larger majority in the Commons. Their Parliamentary majority, though, was threatened by a split into adherents of Oxford’s moderation and followers of Bolingbroke’s high-flying Tory extremism. Oxford and Bolingbroke were each separately negotiating secretly with the Pretender, hoping for his conversion to the Church of England as a condition for his return. Marlborough, assessing the situation for the Hanoverian minister Robethon, on 30 November 1713, wrote: ‘The Whole conduct of our ministry, both as to affaires at home and abroad, leaves no rome [sic] to doubt of their intentions to bring in the Pretender’.112 Nothing, he added, could assure the Succession more than having a lawful heir in England. 108

Englishman, no. 1 (6 October 1713).

109

On this final phase of party journalism, Winton, Captain Steele, 165–203; J. A. Downie, Jonathan Swift: Political Writer (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 183–90; J. A. Downie Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 170–81.

110

On Steele’s Crisis: Steele, Tracts and Pamphlets, 125–81; Winton, Captain Steele, 185–87, 195–8; and Knight, Political Biography of Richard Steele, 145–50.

111

On Swift’s Public Spirit: Downie, Swift, Political Writer, 187–90; Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, His Works, and the Age, 3 vols (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962–83), 2:702–13; Jonathan Swift, English Political Writings, 1711-1714: The Conduct of the Allies and Other Works, eds Bertrand A. Goldgar and Ian Gadd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 37–9, 241–84, 446–76; and Jonathan Swift, The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, vol. 8, Political Tracts, 1713–1719, eds Herbert Davis and Irvin Ehrenpreis (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1953), 8:xvii–xix, 27–68.

112

Letter from Marlborough, Antwerp, 30 November 1713, to Robethon; as translated in James Macpherson, Original Papers; Containing the Secret History of Great Britain from the Restoration, to the Accession of the House of Hannover, 2 vols (1775), 2:515–17.

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After Anne’s near-fatal illness over Christmas 1713, panic struck the City, and politics was now dominated by the Succession. The nation was bitterly divided: Whigs were united in their support of the Hanoverians and fanned hysteria against the Pretender. Tories were splintered between Hanoverians and those who indulged the fantasy of engineering the return of the Pretender. Fearing a Stuart restoration after Anne’s death or even a civil war, Whigs of the Junto secretly planned with generals for armed resistance in case of the Pretender’s return.113 When Oxford and Bolingbroke learned of the Pretender’s refusal on 13 March 1714 to renounce his Roman Catholic faith, the two ministers knew any plans to restore the Pretender had to be abandoned, and each in his way sought to retain power and influence with the Hanoverians. Anxious that the Pretender might renounce his Catholic faith and aware there were ministers trying to arrange for his succession, some in London continued believing that an heir residing in England would help ensure the Succession. One initiative to the Electoral court in April 1713 was blocked by the Elector, refusing to countenance any invitation except expressly from the Queen for fear of disturbing Hanover-London relations. The issue came to a crisis on 12/23 April 1714 when the Electoral envoy Baron Georg von Schütz demanded the Lord Chancellor issue a writ summoning the Electoral Prince to Parliament. Anne, who opposed any Electoral family’s presence in England, was so incensed by the demand she immediately banned Schütz from court and ordered his recall.114 Nonetheless, in April–May rumours flew of a secret trip by the Electoral Prince (as Duke of Cambridge) to London.115 On 7 May the 113

Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. ed. (London: Hambledon Press, 1987), xxxiii, 83–6, 97, 473 n66.

114

On the series of invitations in the spring of 1714 and affair of von Schütz and the Writ, Wolfgang Michael, England under George I: The Beginnings of the Hanoverian Dynasty, trans. and abridged by L. B. Namier (London: Macmillan, 1936), 29–34; Macpherson, Original Papers, 2:537–623 (esp. 589–600). Also, Onno Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart und die Succession des Hauses Hannover in Groß=Britannien und Irland im Zusammenhange der europäischen Angelegenheiten von 1660 bis 1714, 14 vols (Vienna: Wilhelm Braunmüller, 1875–88); 14:491–6; Abel Boyer, Quadriennium Annae Postremum, [for the year 1714], (1719), vols 7 and 8, 321–2; Edward Gregg, Queen Anne (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 381–7; Gregg, The Protestant Succession in International Politics, 1710–1716 (New York: Garland, 1986), 235–7; and Ragnhild M. Hatton, George I: Elector and King (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 107–9.

115

See letters to Sir William Trumbull, 16 April 1714, ‘We have bin for these two or three days last past under an Alarum at ye. noise of the D. of Cambridge’s coming over, but he is not yet come’ (British Library, Add. MS 72,496, f. 131r); 30 April 1714, ‘In ye mean time tis confidently reported by one party y.t ye Duke of C. will come over’ (British Library, Add. MS 72,493, f. 19v); 13 May 1714, ‘ye Parties who were Divided pro & con in their Opin. of ye D. of C’s coming over, seem now to Unite in a beleif [sic] that it will not bee very soon’ (British Library, Add. MS 72,493, f. 22v). I am grateful to David Hunter for drawing these letters to my attention.

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dowager Electress and the Elector sent a Memorial to Queen Anne, requesting a writ for a family member to go to England, with pensions and titles for other members of the Electoral family.116 Anne indignantly wrote Sophia on 19/30 May declaring the idea was ‘disagreeable to Me’ and demanding the Electoral Prince not visit England.117 When Sophia died on 28 May/8 June, the Succession passed to her son the Elector Georg Ludwig. Oxford and Bolingbroke continued to struggle for control of the cabinet.118 On 27 July, finally tired of the dissention in her cabinet, Anne took back Oxford’s white staff. But unforgiving of Bolingbroke’s dissolute personal life and political extremism, she thwarted his ambition to control the Ministry. Within three days, Anne was mortally ill; on her deathbed she handed the Lord Treasurer’s white staff to the Duke of Shrewsbury. Two days later, on 1 August – bereft of children, widowed since 1708, and long suffering from gout, obesity, and the effects of seventeen pregnancies – died a forty-nine-year-old Anne, the last of the Stuart monarchs.119 ‘I beleive sleep was never more wellcome to a weary traveller than death was to her’, wrote Arbuthnot to Swift.120

116

The Memorial is translated in Macpherson, Original Papers, 2:608–10. See also Gregg, Protestant Succession, 241–3; Gregg, Queen Anne, 383; Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart, 14:602. After the dowager Electress’s death and now as heir apparent, the Elector repeated the request that a member of the family reside in London; Gregg, Queen Anne, 385; Gregg, Protestant Succession, 243.

117

On this invitation crisis: Abel Boyer, Quadriennium Annae Postremum [for the year 1714] (1719), 599–600; Macpherson, Original Papers, 2:613-621; Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart, 14:572–8; and Gregg, Queen Anne, 384. The correspondence became public: see Three Letters Sent, Two from Her Most Gracious Majesty, viz. One to the Princess Sophia, the Other to the Duke of Cambridge, and One from the Lord High Treasurer [Oxford] to the Duke of Cambridge; Relating to his Coming Over to England (published on (?)1 July 1714); also printed in Five Letters (1714); reprinted in Macpherson, Original Papers, 2:620–1; and The Letters and Diplomatic Instructions of Queen Anne, ed. Beatrice C. Brown (London: Cassell, 1935), 413–15.



118

Conflict between Oxford and Bolingbroke and last months of the ministry: Geoffrey Holmes, ‘Harley, St. John and the Death of the Tory Party’, pp. 216–37 in Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1714, ed. Holmes (London: Macmillan, 1969) and pp. 139–60 in Holmes, Politics, Religion and Society, 1679–1742 (London: Hambledon Press, 1986); Michael, England under George I, 37–51; Gregg, ‘Was Queen Anne a Jacobite?’; Gregg, Queen Anne, 330–95; H. T. Dickinson, Bolingbroke (London: Constable, 1970), 75–133; Daniel Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Politics, 1710–1714 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984).

119

On last days of Anne, Henry L. Snyder, ‘The Last Days of Queen Anne: The Account of Sir John Evelyn Examined’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 34 (1971), 261–76; Gregg, Queen Anne, 388–95; Michael, England under George I, 52–5.

120

Arbuthnot, London, 12 August 1714, to Swift, Dublin; The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D.D., ed. David Woolley, 5 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999–2014), no. 350, 2:70–1 (at p. 70).

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Shrewsbury, a firm Hanoverian, guided the succession to the Elector, who was peacefully proclaimed ‘King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc’. on 1 August. On the evening of the same day, at Dover upon their return to England from exile, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough learned of the passing of their royal mistress.121 111 Despite the party conflict, Anne’s reign achieved the Union with Scotland, thwarted French ambitions to Universal Monarchy, secured the Hanoverian Succession, raised Britain to a major power of Europe, and led to a period of flourishing arts, letters, and sciences. Not least, London emerged as one of the principal European centres of all-sung opera in the Italian manner.

121

Marlborough had been planning his return since April in response to deteriorating conditions in the Oxford-Bolingbroke Ministry; William Coxe, Memoirs of the Duke of Marlborough, with His Original Correspondence, ed. John Wade, new ed., 3 vols (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1847–8), 3:367–9, 374.

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Epilogue

A

fter the theatrical failure of Albion and Albanius and then lack of support from the court of William and Mary, the willingness of theatre managers to risk producing all-sung operatic works waned. Audience interest in drama combined with music was mostly satisfied by the English dramatic opera, independent theatre masques, musical entertainments, or afterpieces. Nearly one hundred years after the birth of opera in the courts of northern Italy and its spread to courts and cities across Europe, it fell to a group of Whig aristocrats in 1703 to take up the task of building a new theatre for the production of plays and operas. At the time, there was no consensus on what form opera would take (see appendix 4), but it was taken for granted it would be sung in English. The initial impetus to mount operas was, in the broadest sense, an aspect of the cultural programme of the ascendant Whig oligarchy. In such a context, the Haymarket theatre itself was politicised. Several early operas had librettos by local poets with Whig affiliations; and in epilogues, prologues, and passing allusions in the operas themselves are sentiments sympathetic with Whig political ideals. Most obvious is the direct allusion to the Whig hero the Duke of Marlborough in Joseph Addison’s Rosamond. In 1707 Christopher Rich hired as an exotic attraction an Italian castrato to sing at Drury Lane, an action with unforeseen consequences. The imported singers sang in their native language alongside local ones singing in English. Opera then passed from being bi-lingual productions to being sung all in Italian. Thereafter, by 1710 (and well into the following century) opera in London was an Italian institution: with rare exceptions, serious opera was sung all in Italian by casts dominated by Italian singers, with librettos by Italian poets and music composed by Italians. A landmark of 1710 was Handel’s first trip to London, resulting in his first Italian opera composed for England. With the Hanoverian Succession, opera might have flourished. Now with financial resources far exceeding those of his electorate and war with France at an end, George I could have followed the model of his father and other European courts to turn the Haymarket theatre into a court opera, but the new King’s support for opera early in his reign extended only to giving bounties for operas he attended and occasional gifts to singers. Such support was not enough to put a public opera on a secure financial basis. After twelve seasons, the novelty of opera wore off. Without star-power singers, attendance dwindled, and the Haymarket theatre went dark after the 1716–17 season. When production of Italian opera resumed in April 1720, it was under a new form of organization. A group of aristocrats and wealthy patrons founded the Royal Academy of Music as a chartered joint-stock company, with subscribed capital of as much as £15,000 and annual royal bounty of £1,000. The Royal Academy immediately became one of Europe’s most prestigious opera 335

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epilogue

companies. It offered stellar salaries and a season of up to more than sixty performances, attracting Europe’s best singers and composers. The political landscape of Britain was now fundamentally changed. From the days of the instability of Tory-Whig ‘rage of party’ of Anne’s reign, a period of political stability followed. The Whig oligarchy was now firmly established in politics, society, and the professions, and the Tory party marginalised politically until 1760. By 1722 a schism in the Whig leadership had been resolved and Robert Walpole emerged as prime minister. Active political engagement now assumed a new form: a two-decades-long campaign by dissident Whigs, Tories, and Jacobites to remove Walpole from power – a campaign that permeated politics, society, and the world of arts and letters. One use of opera in the partisan politics during the Walpole era was explored in The Politics of Opera in Handel’s Britain. With London’s Whig social and political elite organizing and managing a succession of opera companies, with subsidies by the royal family and nobility, the institution of Italian opera – and especially its star singers – became a focal point of cultural politics. Critics and partisan polemicists pointed to Italian opera as a sign of the corruption, luxury, and False Taste spawned by the Walpole Ministry. Antagonism to opera was now exploited by the political opposition to Walpole, whose propaganda held up opera as visible evidence of the need for his removal. This role of opera will be explored in a projected volume on opera and cultural politics in the age of Pope, Handel, and Walpole, 1720 to 1742.

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Appendix 1 Operatic Works Produced or Known in London, ca. 1660–1706

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appendix 1 Appendix 1. Operatic Works Produced or Known in London, ca. 1660–1706

Date

Title (text/music)

Contemporary Descriptions

Type/ Genre

Venue / Notes

ca. 1660– 72

Erismena ( — / Cavalli)

Drama per musica

Italian all-sung opera

MS only extant; not performed?

1673

Macbeth (Shakespeare-W. Davenant / Locke)

In the nature of an opera

Play with music

DG

1673

Empress of Morocco (Settle / Locke)

Tragedy

Play with masque (Orpheus and Euridice)

DG

1674 (?)

State of Innocence (Dryden)

Opera

Dramatic opera

Not composed; intended for DL

1674

Tempest (Shakespeare-Shadwell / — )

Comedy

Play with music

DG

1674

Ballet et musique (Bremond / Cambert)

Divertissement

Ballet/pastoral (in French)

Court

1674

Ariane, ou le mariage de Bacchus (Perrin/Grabu) An opera

French all-sung opera

DL

1674

Pomone ( — / Cambert)

Opera

French all-sung opera

DL

1675

Psyche (Shadwell/ Locke)

Tragedy / ‘English opera’

Dramatic opera

DG

1675

Calisto (Crowne/ Staggins )

Masque

Play with entries after acts

Court

1677

Circe (Davenant / Bannister)

Tragedy

Dramatic opera

DG (H. Purcell set Temple Scene, I.iv)

1677

Rare en tout (Roche-Guilhen / — )

Comedie meslée de musique

Comedy with musical interludes?

Court

?1683/84; 1684

Venus and Adonis (Finch / Blow)

Opera/ masque

All sung (opera-masque)

Court; Priest’s Boarding School

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Appendix 1—continued Date

Title (text/music)

Contemporary Descriptions

Type/ Genre

Venue / Notes

?1863/84; ?1687/88

Dido and Aeneas (Tate / H. Purcell)

An opera/masque

All sung (opera-masque)

Court (?); Priest’s Boarding School

1685

Albion and Albanius (Dryden / Grabu)

An opera

All-sung allegorical prologue

Court (rehearsals); DG

1686

Cadmus et Hermione (Quinault / Lully)

French all-sung opera

York Buildings

1690

Prophetess / Dioclesian (Fletcher-MassingerBetterton / H. Purcell)

After the manner of an opera

Dramatic opera

DG

1691

King Arthur (Dryden / H. Purcell)

Dramatick opera

Dramatic opera

DG

1692

Fairy-Queen (Shakespeare-anon. / H. Purcell)

An opera

Dramatic opera

DG

1695

Indian Queen (Dryden-Betterton [after R. Howard] / H. & D. Purcell)

An opera

Dramatic opera

DG

1695

Bonduca ( — / H. Pucell)

Tragedy

Dramatic opera

DL

1696

Brutus of Alba (Tate / D. Purcell)

New opera

Dramatic opera

DG

1697

World in the Moon (Settle / Clarke & D. Purcell)

An opera

Dramatic opera

DG

1697

Cinthia and Endimion (D’Urfey / Clarke & D. Purcell)

Opera

Dramatic opera

Court / DL

1698

Rinaldo and Armida (Dennis / Eccles)

Tragedy

Dramatic opera

LIF

1699

Island Princess (Fletcher-Tate-Motteux / D. Purcell, Clark, & Leveridge)

An opera

Dramatic opera

DL

1700

The Pilgrim (Vanbrugh / D. Purcell)

Comedy

Play with masque

DL; with Dryden’s Secular Masque —(continued)

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appendix 1 Appendix 1—concluded

Date

Title (text/music)

Contemporary Descriptions

Type/ Genre

Venue / Notes

1700

The Grove (Oldmixon / D. Purcell)

An opera

Dramatic opera

DL

1701

Alexander the Great (Finger-D. Purcell)

Tragedy

Dramatic opera

DL

1701

Virgin Prophetess (Settle / Finger)

An opera

Dramatic opera

DL

1706

British Enchanters (Granville / Eccles-Corbett-Isaack)

Tragedy

Dramatic opera

Haymarket

1706

Wonders in the Sun (D’Urfey / — )

Comic opera

Dramatic opera

Haymarket

Sources: Michael Burden, ed., Henry Purcell’s Operas: The Complete Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 5, table 1 (covering 1690–1701 only); Todd Gilman, ‘London Theatre Music, 1600–1719’, pp. 243–73 in A Companion to Restoration Drama, ed. Susan J. Owen (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), appendix; Lucyle Hook, ‘Motteux and the Classical Masque’, pp. 105–15 in British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1600–1800, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library,1984); Robert D. Hume, ‘The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 10 (1998), 15–43, table 1; Andrew Walkling, Masque and Opera in England, 1656–1688 (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). DL = Drury Lane; LIF = Lincoln’s Inn Fields; DG = Dorset Garden

Appendix 2 Principal Independent Theatre Masques Produced in London, 1676–1705

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Appendix 2. Principal Independent Theatre Masques Produced in London, 1676–1705 Date

Title (Text/Music)

Titled as

Genre

Venue / Notes

1676

Beauties Triumph (Duffett / Banister)

Masque

Masque with spoken dialogue

Boarding School at Chelsea

1694

The Rape of Europa by Jupiter (Motteux / Eccles)

Masque

All-sung masque

DG; inserted into Valentinian (Fletcher-Betterton)

1695

Masque in Timon of Athens ( — / H. Purcell)

Play

All-sung masque

DL; inserted into Act II of The History of Timon of Athens, or The Man-Hater

1695

The Taking of Namur and His Majesty’s Safe Return (Motteux / Eccles)

Musical entertainment

All sung masque (emblematic tableau)

LIF

1696

The Loves of Mars and Venus (Motteux / Eccles & Finger)

Play set to music / masque

All-sung masque

LIF; its three acts inserted into (and alternating with) three acts of The Anatomist, or the Sham Doctor (Ravenscroft)

1697

Hercules (Motteux / Eccles)

Masque

All-sung masque

LIF; Act III of the medley The Novelty (Motteux)

1697

Europe’s Revels for the Peace, and His Majesties Happy Return (Motteux / Eccles)

Musical interlude

All sung masque (emblematic tableau)

Court & LIF

1697

Ixion (Ravenscroft? / Eccles)

Masque

All-sung masque

LIF; inserted into Act III of The Italian Husband (Ravenscroft)

1699

Love and Riches Reconcil’d (Harris / Akeroyde)

Masque

All-sung masque

LIF; inserted into Act III and following last act of Love’s a Lottery and a Woman the Prize (Harris)

1699

The Four Seasons and a Love in Every Age (Motteux / Eccles)

Musical interlude

All-sung masque

DL

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Appendix 2—concluded Date

Title (Text/Music)

Titled as

Genre

Venue / Notes

1700

The Secular Masque (Dryden / H. Purcell, Finger)

Masque

All-sung masque

DL; inserted into The Pilgrim (Fletcher-Vanbrugh)

1700

Loves of Dido and Aeneas (Tate, H. Purcell)

Opera / entertainment

All-sung masque

LIF; as four entertainments into Measure for Measure (Charles Gildon)

1700

Peleus and Thetis (Granville / Eccles)

Masque

All-sung masque

LIF; inserted into The Jew of Venice (Shakespeare-Granville)

1701

Acis and Galatea (Motteux / Eccles)

Masque

All-sung masque

LIF; inserted into The Mad Lover (Fletcher-Motteux)

1701

Wine and Love (Motteux/ Eccles)

Masque

All-sung masque

LIF; inserted into The Mad Lover (Fletcher-Motteux)

1701

Judgment of Paris (Congreve / D. Purcell, Weldon, Finger, Franck, & Eccles)

Masque

All-sung masque

DG, York Buildings

1704

Britain’s Happiness (Motteux / Leveridge & Weldon)

Musical All-sung masque interlude (New entertainment)

LIF & DL (two productions)

1705

The Mountebank, or The Humours of the Fair (Motteux /—)

Musical interlude

DL; inserted into Farwel Folly (Motteux)

All-sung masque

Sources: Michael Burden, ed., Henry Purcell’s Operas: The Complete Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 5, table 1 (covering 1690–1701); Todd Gilman, ‘London Theatre Music, 1660–1719’, pp. 243–73 in A Companion to Restoration Drama, ed. Susan J. Owen (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Lucyle Hook, ‘Motteux and the Classical Masque’, pp. 105–15 in British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1600–1800, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library,1984); and Robert D. Hume, ‘The Politics of Opera in Late Seventeenth-Century London’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 10 (1998), p. 15–43, table 1. DL = Drury Lane; LIF = Lincoln’s Inn Fields; DG = Dorset Garden

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Appendix 3 Opera Performances by Season in London, 1705–1714

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Appendix 3. Opera Performances by Season in London, 1705–1714 Opera

1704– 1705– 1706– 1707– 1708– 1709– 1710– 1711– 1705 1706 1707 1708 1709 1710 1711 1712

1712– 1713

1713– 1714

1714– 1715 Total

Language / Notes

Arsinoe 16 Jan. 1705 (DL)

16

11

3

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

30

English

Li amori di Ergasto* 9 April 1705 (H)

5

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

5

Italian * Title as given on Italian title page of libretto

Temple of Love 7 March 1706 (H)

-

2

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

2

English

Camilla 30 March 1706 (DL)

-

10

23

14

13

5

-

-

-

-

-

65

English, then bilingual

Rosamond 4 March 1707 (DL)

-

-

3

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

3

English

Thomyris 1 April 1707 (DL)

-

-

8

12

-

7

-

-

-

-

-

27

Bilingual

Love’s Triumph* 26 Feb. 1708 (H)

-

-

-

9

-

-

-

-

2**

-

-

11

Bilingual *Title occasionally given as Triumph of Love **Sole copy of libretto is a reissue (as Tri­umph of Love) of 1708 libretto

Pyrrhus and Demetrius 14 Dec. 1708 (H)

-

-

-

-

27

10

10

-

-

-

-

47

Bilingual

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Appendix 3—continued Opera

1704– 1705– 1706– 1707– 1708– 1709– 1710– 1711– 1705 1706 1707 1708 1709 1710 1711 1712

1712– 1713

1713– 1714

1714– 1715 Total

Language / Notes

Clotilda 2 March 1709 (H)

-

-

-

-

7

-

3

-

-

-

-

10

Bilingual

Almahide 10 Jan. 1710 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

14

4

7

-

-

-

25

Italian (intermede in English)

L’Idaspe fedele 23 March 1710 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

13

15

12

-

-

-

40

Italian

Etearco 10 Jan. 1711 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

7

-

-

-

-

7

Italian

Rinaldo 24 Feb. 1711 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

15

9

2

-

11

37

Italian

Antioco 12 Dec. 1711 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

17

6

-

-

23

Italian

Ambleto 27 Feb. 1712 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

7

-

-

-

7

Italian

Ercole 3 May 1712 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

5

-

-

-

5

Italian

Calypso and Telemachus 17 May 1712 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

5

-

-

-

5

English

—(continued)

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348

appendix 3 Appendix 3—concluded

Opera

1704– 1705– 1706– 1707– 1708– 1709– 1710– 1711– 1705 1706 1707 1708 1709 1710 1711 1712

1712– 1713

1713– 1714

1714– 1715 Total

Language / Notes

Il pastor fido 22 Nov. 1712 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

7

-

-

7

Italian

Dorinda 10 Dec. 1712 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

10

3

-

13

Italian

Teseo 10 Jan. 1713 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

13

-

-

13

Italian

Ernelinda 26 Feb. 1713 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

10

7

5

22

Italian

L.C. Silla (June 1713; unperformed)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Italian Dedication dated 2 June 1713, but no evidence it was ever performed.

Creso 27 Jan. 1714 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

2

12

14

Italian

Arminio 4 March 1714 (H)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

9

6

15

Italian

Total

21

23

37

35

47

49

54

62

52

31

36

433

H = Haymarket (Queens); DL = Drury Lane

Appendix 4 Aria Types in All-sung Operas Produced in London, 1705–1714

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350

appendix 4 Appendix 4. Aria Types in All-sung Operas Produced in London, 1705–1714 Libretto (premiere)

Printed Songs

Arias or duets

Da capo arias

Arias or duets

Da capo arias

With accom-­ paniment

E

36

21

36

12

5*

26

H

Li amori di Ergasto I 9 April 1705 (H)

22

19

—

—

—

—

P

Temple of Love 7 March 1706 (H)

E

28*

20

18**

14

2***

32

P

*Total arias indicated from libretto or Songs ** Arias for minor characters not included in Songs *** Two arias with flute accompaniment in Songs

Camilla 30 March 1706 (DL)

E; then E/I

52

4

51

43

20*

16 & 20

H

No arias with accompaniment in Songs (eds by Walsh and Cullen) * Number in Symphonys

Rosamond E 4 March 1707 (DL)

43

2

42

11

5*

38

H/F

* No arias with accompaniment in Songs, but five are marked ‘with violins’

Thomyris 1 April 1707 (DL)

E/I

55

38

54

38

1*

44

Love’s Triumph (Triumph of Love) 26 Feb. 1708 (H)

E/I

70*

15

68

54

—

46

Opera (premiere and theatre)

Language

Arsinoe 16 Jan. 1705 (DL)

Hunter Plot no. type

Notes *No arias with accompaniment given in Songs. Manuscript scores have five arias with accompaniment With concluding musical entertainment for Act III

* No arias with accompaniment in Songs; but one marked ‘with Oboe’ * Many items in libretto marked for omission P

* Excludes airs marked for omission

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800105942.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

appendix 4 Appendix 4—continued Libretto (premiere)

Printed Songs

Arias or duets

Da capo arias

Arias or duets

Da capo arias

With accom-­ paniment

E/I

54

46

53

43/44

24

49/57

H

Clotilda 2 March 1709 (H)

E/I

40

35

42

39

27

53

H

Almahide 10 Jan. 1710 (H)

I*

37**

35

42

38

34

64

H

* Two interludes sung in English in early productions ** Libretto omits 5 English songs from second interlude (which are present in Songs or Symphonys)

L’Idaspe fedele 23 March 1710

I

39

*

39

38

34

69

H

*No repetition of texts indicated in 1710 libretto; 1712 libretto indicates 6 da capo arias.

Etearco 10 Jan. 1711 (H)

I

37

35

35

34

28

75

H

Rinaldo 24 Feb. 1711 (H)

I

32

31

33

31*

23**

—

F

* 30 in HHA edition ** Music based on HHA edition.

Antioco 12 Dec. 1711 (H)

I

35*

35

35

31**

32

83

H

* 7 arias not contained in Songs ** Includes 2 ambiguous arias in Songs

Ambleto 27 Feb. 1712 (H)

I

41

36

39

33

26

84

H

Opera (premiere and theatre)

Language

Pyrrhus and Demetrius 14 Dec. 1708 (H)

Hunter Plot no. type

Notes Two editions: Walsh and Cullen

—(continued)

351

Printed Songs

Arias or duets

Da capo arias

Arias or duets

Da capo arias

With accom-­ paniment

I

26

26

—

—

—

—

F

Calypso and Telemachus 17 May 1712 (H)

E

32

26

32

26*

24

85

F

* Includes 6 dal segno or ABA′ arias

Il pastor Fido 22 Nov. 1712 (H)

I

23

11

24

20

17*

—

P

Music based on HG edition

Dorinda 10 Dec. 1712 (H)

I

37

21

—

—

—

—

P

Teseo 10 Jan. 1713 (H)

I

33

30

33

27

30*

—

H

Ernelinda 26 Feb. 1713 (H)

I

35

35

—

—

—

—

H

—

—

—

—

—

—

Opera (premiere and theatre)

Language

Ercole 3 May 1712 (H)

L.C. Sillia (June 1713; unperformed)

—

Hunter Plot no. type

—

Notes

Music based on HG edition

appendix 4

Libretto (premiere)

352

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Appendix 4—continued

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appendix 4

353

Appendix 4—concluded Libretto (premiere)

Printed Songs

Arias or duets

Da capo arias

Arias or duets

Da capo arias

With accom-­ paniment

Opera (premiere and theatre)

Language

Hunter Plot no. type

Creso 27 Jan. 1714) (H)

I

33

32

24

24

23

88

H

Arminio 4 March 1714 (H)

I

31

31

28

28

24

89

H

Notes

Da capo arias are those indicated by ‘da capo’ or repeat in text of initial lines of aria text. In Songs, some arias are lacking ‘da capo’ indication, but arias with medial fermata sign are counted as da capo; dal segno arias are counted as da capo arias. Symphonys = publications of instrumental part books for those arias with instrumental accompaniment (usually violin I and II, and viola; occasionally parts for solo violin, oboe, or trumpet in individual arias are included in one of the part books) Hunter = David Hunter, Opera and Song Books Published in England, 1703–1726; A Descriptive Bibliography (London: Bibliographical Society, 1997); H = heroic (quasi-historical); P = pastoral; F = fable (mythology); HG = Händel Gesellschaft edition; HHA = Hallische Händel Ausgabe

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781800105942.016 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Bibliography ❧  Manuscripts Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Record Office, Hervey Papers 941/46/10 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MU MS 44 Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University, Houghton Library MS Hyde 11 M 1500.C685 A6 1705 TS 1138.119*

Edinburgh, National Records of Scotland, GD124/15/259/3 Granthan, Lincolnshire, Belvoir Castle Hanover, Niedersächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Cal. Br. 24 Nr 1694 Hanover, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, L/Br97 Herefordshire Archives and Local Studies. Panshanger Papers, DE/P/F63 Leeds, University of Leeds, Brotherton Library Lt 81 Lt. 11

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Index Almahide  219, 227, 304 Almanza, Battle of  163, 227 Amadigi di Gaula 328 Amorous Miser, The  74, 93 Amphion 200 Anderson, Benedict  273 Anglo–Dutch Wars  87–8 Anne, Princess and Queen of England  1, 8, 11, 12, 15, 91, 94, 101–4, 116, 121, 125–7, 138, 141, 152, 161, 162, 163, 174, 175, 180–1, 189, 190, 192, 193, 200–1, 203, 206–8, 212–13, 217, 224, 226, 237, 238, 282, 312, 315, 320–1, 325–7, 329, 331–3 musical interest and entertainments at court  5, 30, 58, 62, 68, 117–9, 146, 195–6, 227–8, 312 Antiochus 235 Antioco 318 Apollo  118, 200 Apparition, The 85 Arbuthnot, Dr. John  239, 326, 332 History of John Bull  163, 239 Ariane, ou le Mariage de Bacchus. See under Cambert, Robert Aristotle  50, 122, 278, 302 Armstrong, William  124, 162, 177 Arsinoe (as heroic ruler)  195 Arsinoe. See under Clayton, Thomas arts and classical republicanism  253–6 and liberty  254–5 consequences and effects  253–6 corruption of  255–6 use and purpose  253–6 Ashley Cooper, Anthony, first Earl of Shaftesbury   15–16, 274, 280, 280 Ashley–Cooper, Anthony, fourth Earl of Shaftesbury   275 Ashley–Cooper, Anthony, third Earl of Shaftesbury  15, 241, 274–85, 286, 289–90, 303 Forms 277–8 Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit 289 Letter Concerning Design 281–2 Miscellaneous Reflections  280, 283

Abel, John  192 act music  20–1, 42 Act of Settlement  11, 163 Act of Union of Scotland and England  11, 162 Act of Union  Addison, Joseph  xi, 13–14, 15, 16, 19, 52, 53, 54, 77, 127, 137, 164, 166, 173, 175, 183, 189, 193–4, 203–4, 216, 219–20, 234, 240, 241, 254, 256–7, 261, 262, 265, 278, 310, 311, 313, 316, 317, 322, 329 criticism of opera  16, 291–4, 300–3 on ‘our English Musick’  v, 13, 14, 15, 19, 54, 77, 175, 240, 300 Campaign, The  165, 257, 295 Cato  257, 295, 311, 329 Freeholder 257 Letter from Italy 257 Prologue to Edmund Smith, Phaedra and Hippolitus   171, 295–6 Remarks on Several Parts of Italy 257, 292, 293–4 Rosamond  5, 6, 14–15, 46, 53, 137, 149, 164, 165–6, 170, 183, 185, 193, 194, 199, 203–4, 205–6, 291, 295 allegory in  203–4 Song’ for St Cecelia’s Day 300 Whig–Examiner 216 See also Tatler and Spectator ‘Advertisement’ 141 Alarbus. A Dramatick Opera 175 Alberti Girolamo  87 n125 Albinoni, Tomaso  167 Albion and Albanius. See under Dryden, John, and see also under Purcell, Henry, and Grabu, Louis Albrici, Vincenzo  57–8 allegory, political, in opera  xii–xiii, 4–5, 6, 14, 32, 38, 198–9, 203–4, 205, 206, 208, 323 See also individual operas Allies (Grand Alliance)  13, 68, 88, 116, 162, 163, 181, 189, 209, 212, 213, 217, 225–6, 227, 235, 236, 239 320, 322 See also Grand Alliance Almahide (as heroic ruler)   195

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Ashley–Cooper, Anthony, third earl of Shaftesbury (cont’d) Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody, The  289 Second Characters  277–8, 28 Soliloguy: or Advice to an Author 279, 281, 282–3 Atterbury, Bishop Francis   10 Augustus, Emperor of Rome  280 Aureli, Aurelio  190 Baker, Thomas, Tunbridge–Walks 90 Ballerini, (Baron) Francesco  69, 70 n67 Ballet et musique. See under Cambert, Robert Ballon, Jean  68, 82, 84 Banks, Joseph, The Albion Queen 93 Bannister, John  59 Circe  27, 43 Barbier, Mrs  308 Barcelona  104, 226, 235 Baron, Hans  241 Baroness, The. See Lendenheim, Joanna Maria Barrell, John  253 Barwick, Ann  95 Baynard, John  68 n59 Beatrice, Maria, Queen of England  87 Bedford, Arthur  49 Great Abuse of Musick  49, 49 n112 Bedford, Duke of. See Russell, Wriothesley, Duke of Bedford Bennet, Sir Henry, Lord Arlington  57 Bentinck, Henry, Earl of Portand  101 Bernardi, Francesco (called ‘Senesino’) xiii, 176, 190 Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo  197 Bertie, Charles  107 Bertie, Peregrine  69, 162 Betterton, Thomas   13, 20, 23–4, 26, 33, 34, 35–7, 39, 40, 44, 68, 82, 127, 128–9, 154, 159, 172, 199, 261 Bickerstaff, Isaac  214, 216, 234, 259–60 Biscay, Bay of  111 Blackall, Bishop Ofspring  233 Bladen, Martin, Solon 96 Blanchard, Rae  257–8 Blenheim Palace  125, 137, 138, 166, 174, 203–4, 238, 295 Blenheim, Battle of  105, 113, 120, 125, 165, 203, 295 Blount, Thomas, Glossographia: or a Dictionary 45 Blount, Thomas Pope, De re poetica 47

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Blow, John  33, 56 Venus and Adonis  30–2, 53, 54, 65 Blue Water strategy  108, 109 Boileau–Despréaux, Nicholas  270 Bolingbroke, Viscount. See St John, Henry Bologna  148, 275, 294 Bonduca. See under Purcell, Henry Bononcini, Giovanni  148, 167–8, 170, 176, 188, 189, 190, 206, 209 Camilla  5, 124, 153, 155–9, 160, 164, 166, 167, 172, 173, 174, 177, 188, 191, 193, 195, 201–3, 219, 258, 264, 297, 298, 299, 301 Mario fuggitivo 227–8 Turno Aricino 227 Booth, Barton  93 Booth,Cares of Love, The 76 Bordoni, Faustina  xiii, 95 Bothmar, Hans Caspar von  237 Boulogne 321 Bourbon, House of  5, 100, 101, 201, 222, 236, 322, 236 Bowman, Mrs  159 Boyle, Charles, As You Find It 75 Boyle, Henry  103, 180, 189, 213 Boyle, Richard, Earl of Burlington  191 Boyle, Roger, The Tragedy of King Saul 92 Bracegirdle, Anne  21, 121, 153, 159 Bradford, Earl of. See Newport, Francis, Earl of Bradford Brandshagen, Jobst Dietrich  320 Brihuega, Battle of  235 Bristol, Countess of  235 Britannia  xv, 97, 138, 204, 209, 267, 322 British Apollo. See Hill, Aaron British Enchanters. See under Granville, George Broschi, Carlo (called ‘Farinelli’)  xiii Brouncker, Lord  29, 58 Brudenell, George, Earl of Cardigan  313 Brussels, opera at   192, 193 Brutus of Alba 40 Bucholz, Robert  315 Buckingham, Duke of. See Sheffield, John, Duke of Buckingham Bulkeley, Richard Viscount  106 Burchett, Josiah, A Complete History of the Most Remarkable Transactions at Sea 111 Burley–on–the–Hill 106–7 Burlington, Earl of. See Boyle, Richard, Earl of Burlington

index Burnet, Bishop Gilbert  49, 114 Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time  110, 111 Exposition of the Thirty–Nine Articles of the Church of England  49 Burnett, Thomas, and Ducket, George, A Second Tale of a Tub 231 Burney, Charles  78, 148, 271, 291 Butler, James, Duke of Ormonde  2, 109–10, 112, 239 Cadiz, expedition   109–10, 112 Cadmus et Hermione. See under Lully Caesar, Julius  244 Caldara, Antonio  104 Calisto 146 Calypso and Telemachus. See under Hughes, John  Cambert, Robert  29 Ariane, ou le Mariage de Bacchus 26, 29, 30, 53 Ballet et musique 29–30 Pomone  30, 53 Cambridge Platonists  289 Camilla (as fictional ruler)   195 Camilla. See under Bononcini, Giovanni Caprioli, Le nozze de Peleo e di Theti 56 Cardigan, Earl of. See Brudenell, George, Earl of Cardigan Cares of Love 93 Carissimi, Giacomo  61, 62 Carlisle, Earl of. See Howard, Charles, Earl of Carlisle Carlos II, King of Spain  100 Carnival, Venice  45, 89, 122, 189, 293 Caroline, Electoral Princess, later Queen of England  222, 328 Carthage  246, 282 Cartwright, William, The Ordinary 24, 25 Cassani, Gioseppi  173, 174 Castle Howard  138 Catherine of Braganza, Queen of England   29 chapel of  58 Catholic Church, Catholicism  86–8, 123 Cato (the Elder)  270 Catone uticense 293–4 Cavalli Francesco  61 Egisto  56, 63 L’Erismene 28 Cavendish, William, Duke of Devonshire  96–7, 123, 311 Censorium  259, 317 Chapel Royal  28–9, 35, 56, 308

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music for  56–8, 59, 62 Charles II, King of England, reign and court of  2–3, 13, 19, 28, 29, 30–1, 33, 34, 55–6, 58, 86–8, 195, 281 music at court  55–8 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor  88, 236 Charles, Archduke of Austria and later Emperor Charles VI  13, 94, 100, 104, 112, 116–18, 192, 224, 225–6, 235–6 trip to Spain via England  116–18 Cherrier, René  94 Cholmondeley, Hugh Viscount  107 Church of England  12, 125, 289 language in services  48–49 music in services  78–9. See also Chapel Royal Churchill, Henrietta, Lady Ryalton, Countess Godolphin  103, 208–9, 238 Churchill, Anne, Countess of Sunderland  103, 135, 238 Churchill, John, Earl then Duke of Marlborough  6, 13, 100–4, 116–17, 121, 135, 161, 166, 172, 177, 180, 181, 199, 200, 203–4, 205–6, 208, 210, 213, 214–15, 217, 224, 233, 236, 237, 238, 239, 257, 295, 318, 314, 318, 322, 330, 333 and opera  174–5, 192–3, 224 military campaigns  104, 105, 108, 112–13, 121, 125, 152, 162, 165, 174–5, 180, 181, 201, 203, 210 See also Blenheim Palace and Blenheim, Battle of Churchill, Mary  191 Churchill, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough  102, 113, 115, 117, 125, 135, 163, 165, 174, 183, 189, 190, 191, 193, 203, 212, 217, 239, 314–16, 333 and opera  189–92, 193, 315 Churchill, William, Viscount Ryalton and Marquess of Blandford  193 Cibber, Colley  82, 128, 138, 151, 164, 175, 218, 317 Epilogue to The Double Gallant   171 Lady’s Last Stake 70 Prologue and Epilogue to Delariviere Manley, Almyna 167 Prologue to Camilla 202–3 Prologue to The Lady’s Last Stake 172 Cicero, De Legibus (The Laws)  255, 266, 270 Cinthia and Endimion 40

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Circe  27, 43 civic humanism. See classical republicanism Clarke, Jeremiah  42, 94 classical republicanism  242–56, 267 272, 274, 285, 289 See also republican tradition Clayton Thomas  137, 144–9, 159, 164, 166, 170, 183, 185, 187, 194, 234, 240, 295, 304–8 debt relief  183, table 5.2, 191 Arsinoe  53, 94, 137, 144–9, 150, 153, 154, 155, 160, 162, 170, 183, 185, 194, 195, 258, 264, 298, 299, 305 Ode for the Prince’s Birthday 308 Ode on the King 308 Passion of Sappho 308 Preface to Passion of Sappho 305 Rosamond. See under Addison, Joseph Cleland, William  136–37, 159, 165, 295 Clementine (Clemente Hader)  68–9, 69 n61, 82 Clotilda 96 Coke, Thomas, Vice Chamberlain  160–2, 146, 149, 154, 160, 173, 180, 218, 225, 233, 311, 324 Collier, Jeremy  128, 138, 142 A Short View of the … English Stage  84, 141, 265 Collier, William  218–19, 220, 229, 233, 234, 239, 317 commerce 289 commercial society  287–8, 289 Congreve, William  53, 128, 136–7, 141, 164, 292, 322 Judgment of Paris, The  23, 53, 67, 94, 124, 135, 158, 188, 267 Love for Love 72 Semele  23, 44, 46, 53, 137, 164, 188, 194 ‘Prologue’ 171 Cook, Mr (singer)  159 Cooke, Henry (composer)  63 Cooper, John (Giovanni Coprario)  77 ‘correct play’ (Motteux)  22, 22 n10, 36, 42, 44, 47, 48, 51, 52, 54, 175 Corelli, Archangelo  60, 197 Corneille, Pierre, Andromède 53 Correggio, Antonio Allegri da  197 corruption  244–7, 252, 256, 263, 264, 287–8 Corye (Corey), John Cure for Jealousie, A 75 Metamorphosis 73–4 Cosimi, Nicola  117, 124 Coste, Pierre  275–85 passim

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Cousser (Kusser), Johann Sigismund  93, 187 Cowper, Mary, Countess   192 Cowper, William, Earl and Lord Chancellor 310–11 Crassus, Marcus Licinius  215 credit  288–9, 289 ‘Critical Discourse on Opera’s and Musick in England, A’  148, 166 Croft, William  320 Crowne, Thomas, Calisto; or the Chaste Nymph 30 Cupid and Death. See under Shirley, James Cuzzoni, Francesca  xiii, 95 Cyrus, King of Persia  206–8 d’Aumont, duc Louis–Marie  xi, 16, 321–4, 327 D’Avenant, Henry  264 D’Urfey, Thomas Bath, or, the Western Lass, The 89 Marriage–Hater Match’d, The 72 Old Mode and the New, The 73 Wonders in the Sun 159 Daily Courant  216, 230, 236–7 Danby, Earl of. See Osborne, Thomas, Earl of Danby Davenant, Charles  27 Circe. See Circe Macbeth  23–4, 42, 164 Davenant, William 19, 24, 25, 45, 63–4 Siege of Rhodes, The   45, 63 The Man’s the Master 64 Playhouse to be Let, The 64 The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru 63–4 Sir Francis Drake 64 de l’Epine, Margarita  14, 74, 84, 86, 90–4, 94–7, 105–9, 113, 117–19, 119–24, 146, 149, 152, 168–70, 172, 173, 177, 194, 218, 311, 316, 308 as Tory favorite  92–3, 105–9 de Thoyras, Rapin, The History of England 111 declamatory ayre  76–82 decorum  51–2, 54, 294 Defoe Daniel  11, 104, 111, 119–20, 142–3, 144, 214, 236 Answer to a Question That No Body Thinks of 11 Dyet of Poland  111, 119 Reasons Why This Nation Ought to … [End] This Expensive War 236 Shortest Way with the Dissenters 104

index Dennis, John  xi, 14, 183, 241, 243, 244, 256, 260, 263–72 passim, 275, 279, 285, 291, 296, 297, 302–3 Essay on the Opera’s After the Italian Manner  4, 41, 260, 264–72 passim, Essay upon Publick Spirit 272 Gibraltar; or the Spanish Adventurers 75–6 Iphigenia 76 Liberty Asserted 265 Orpheus and Euridicé  23, 44, 53, 164, 194, 267 Preface to Liberty Asserted 267 Prologue to Iphigenia 266 Remarks on Cato 271 Rinaldo and Armida  40–2, 267, 274 Stage Defended  264, 267 Usefulness of the Stage  265–72 passim Vice and Luxury: Publick Mischiefs 270 Devonshire, Duke of. See Cavendish, William, Duke of Devonshire Dido and Aeneas. See under Purcell, Henry Dieupart, Charles  94, 117, 147, 304, 306–7 Diomede punito da Alcide 293 Dissent, toleration of  12, 103–4, 118, 121, 144, 210 Diverting Post 95 Dogget, Thomas  218, 317 Dorinda  51, 319, 387 Dorset Garden theatre  20, 23, 25, 27, 34, 35, 37, 40, 67, 127, 128, 159, 166, 196, 200 Douglas, James, Duke of Hamilton  312 Dover  94, 321, 333 Dowland, John  77 Downes, John  24, 43, 58, 62, 67, 84, 150–52 Draghi, Giovanni Baptista  25, 26, 29 From Harmony, from Heav’nly Harmony 65–6 Drake, James, The Sham Lawyer 75 dramatic opera: definition and development   22, 19–27, 36–44, 45–7 Drury Lane theatre  35, 40, 58, 68, 73, 85, 93, 94, 95, 118, 127, 137, 143, 144–5, 150, 153, 154, 155, 158, 159, 164, 165, 166, 167, 170, 172–5, 192, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 218–19, 220, 258, 317 Drury Lane vs Haymarket   158, 170–2, 201

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Dryden, John  22, 25, 26, 27, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 47, 49, 63, 64, 65, 137, 159, 166, 194, 197, 293, 302, 305 on opera  22, 41, 44, 45–6, 48, 50–1 Albion and Albanius  5, 34–5, 37, 43, 45, 46, 53. See also under Grabu, Louis Alexander’s Feast 305 King Arthur: or, The British Worthy  34, 36, 37–8, 43, 44, 48, 155. See also under Purcell, Henry Preface to Albion and Albanius 45, 46, 47, 51–2, 197 Proloque to Beggar’s Bush 26 State of Innocence and the Fall of Man 27 Wild Gallant 64 Du Ruel(l)  94, 96 Dublin, visit by Thomas Wharton  183, 185, 187 Duke’s Company  19, 20–5, 27 Duncombe, John  311 Düsseldorf, court and opera at  116, 192, 222, 223–4 Duumvirs (Marlborough and Godolphin)  102, 103, 125, 162, 180, 193, 211, 314 See also Churchill, John, and Godolphin, Sydney Eccles, John, 39, 40–2, 79, 128, 136, 137, 148, 149, 164, 168, 228, 267, 320 Judgment of Paris. See under Congreve, William Rinaldo and Armida. See under Dennis, John Semele. See under Congreve, William effeminacy  245, 247, 249, 253, 256, 263, 268–9 Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick– Wolfenbüttel, Archduchess and later Empress   152 n68, 235 Emperor, Holy Roman   223, 227, 294, 322 See also Emperors Leopold I and Joseph I ‘English Musick’. See under Addison, Joseph English republican tradition  287 Ernelinda 316 Ernst August, Elector of Hanover  223 Ernst August, Prince of Hanover  222 Erskine, James  136 Estwick, Samson, Usefulnes of Church– Musick, The  49

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Etearco  188, 221, 234, 239 Etherege, George, Man of Mode 55 Eugene, Prince of Savoy  100, 105, 162, 193, 201, 238, 316 Europe’s Revels for the Peace, and His Majesty’s Happy Return. See under Motteux, Peter Evelyn, John  29, 45, 56, 57–8, 60, 62 Examiner  215–16, 236 Faccioli, Margarita (called ‘Vicentina’) 313–14 Farinelli. See Broschi, Carlo  Farquhar, George Inconstant, The 73 Love and a Bottle 85 ‘Prologue Spoken by Mr. Wilkes’  158 Faustina. See Bordoni, Faustina Fedeli, Segismondo  68, 85 Fénélon, François, Les avantures de Télémaque 309 Ferrabosco, Alfonso  77 Ferri, Baldasarre  58 Financial Revolution  287–8 Finch, Anne, Venus and Adonis 30–1 Finch, Daniel, second Earl of Nottingham  14, 92–3, 103, 104, 105–9, 119–22, 176, 194, 196, 206, 238, 239 and Margarita  92–3, 105–9 Finch, Daniel, Lord, later third Earl of Nottingham 195 Finch, Essex  106–7 Finch, Mary  106, 176 Flecknoe, Richard  63 Ariadne Deserted by Theseus 63 The Mariage of Oceanus and Brittania 63 Fleet Prison  183 Fletcher, John  42 Beggar’s Bush 26 The Faithful Shepherdess 58 Florence  194, 221–2, 294, 313 Florentine Camerata  77 Flying Post 216 Foot, Topham  309 Fortuna  249–50, 288 France, English attitudes toward  88 ‘Francisco’ (Francesco Ballerini)  69, 70 n67 French opera  26, 30, 33, 35, 47, 81, 86, 88, 197, 278, 284, 292, 313 Fux, Joseph, La clemenza d’Augusto 294–5 Gallas, Johann Wenzel, Count von  213, 225, 227–8, 236–7

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Gallia, Maria Margarita  84, 159 Galliard, John, Calypso and Telemachus 308 See also Hughes, John, Calypso and Telemachus Garth, Samuel  143 ‘Prologue Spoken at the First Opening of the Queen’s Theatre’  141–2 Gasparini, Francesco  117 Gaultier, Abbé François  213, 217, 236 Gay, John Beggar’s Opera 25 Wine 96 generic division of the theatres   175, 220 generic expectation  xii, 4–5 Gentileschi, Giulio  28 Georg August, Electoral Prince of Hanover, Duke of Cambridge and later King George II of England  101, 222, 223, 331 Georg Ludwig, Elector and later King George I of England  15, 126, 127, 163, 181, 165, 223–4, 227, 237, 317, 318, 320–1, 322, 324–7, 331–3 George I, King of England. See Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover George II, King of England. See Georg August, Electoral Prince of Hanover George, Prince of Denmark  117, 176, 181 Gertruydenberg peace conference  212, 235 Gibraltar, Battle of  112 Gildon, Charles Comparison between the Stages, A 69, 84 Complete Art of Poetry, The  46 Gli amori d’Ergasto. See Li amori di Ergasto Glorious Revolution  34, 119, 196, 248, 251, 281, 287 Godolphin, Sydney, Lord Treasurer  101–3, 125, 162, 165, 174, 180, 189, 208, 212, 213, 217, 239, 314 Godolphin, Francis, later Earl Godolphin 103 Grabu, Louis  29, 30, 33–4, 37, 48. See also under Dryden, Albion and Albanius Grand Alliance (Allies)  100, 103, 104, 320 Granville, George, later Baron Granville  199–200, 205, 233 British Enchanters   5, 43, 46–7, 136, 159, 164, 175, 199–200, 205–6 Granville, John Lord  75, 121

index Granville, Mary (Mrs Delany)  233 ‘great change’ in ministry (Swift)  15, 218, 212 n3 Greber, Jacob  86, 91, 93, 106, 109, 117, 121, 149–53 Li amori di Ergasto  51, 74, 86, 98, 150–3, 156, 159, 160, 194, 228, 258, 262, 264 Grey, Henry, Earl then Duke of Kent  122, 154, 160–1, 172, 174, 212 Grey, Thomas, Earl of Stamford  126 Grimaldi, Nicolini (Nicola)  14, 115, 176, 177, 218, 219, 229, 232, 259, 260–2, 263, 296, 298, 311, 315–16, 317 Grossi, Giovanni Francesco (called Siface)  62, 176 Guido Reni  197 Gwynne, Roland  126 Habsburg dynasty  5, 100–4, 163, 189, 201, 222, 225–7, 235, 237 Habsburg Victory Serenata. See under Handel, George Frideric Hadley, Ann  221 Halifax, Lord. See Montagu, Charles, Lord Halifax Hall, Henry  80 Hamburger Relations–Courier 324 Hamilton, Duchess of  312 Hamilton, James, Duke of  233, 312 Handel George Frideric  xi, 148, 189–90, 221–2, 224–5, 227, 239, 276, 291, 295, 296, 317–27 arrival and first years in London 224–5 and Hanoverian court  222, 223–4, 228, 317–27 Agrippina 222 Arie dell’Opera di Rinaldo  229 ‘As Pants the Hart’  319 ‘Eternal Source of Light Divine’  321 Habsburg Victory Serenata  227 Pastor fido  51, 318, 319 Rinaldo  5, 6, 15, 221, 228, 234, 235, 239, 257, 261, 291, 296, 297–8, 317 sets and scenic effects  229, 232, 261–2, 296, 298 Silla  5, 323–4, 325 Teseo  5, 6, 318 Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate  xi, 16, 320–1, 320–1, 324–5, 327, ‘Hanover Motion’, The  126 Hanoverian Succession  11, 12, 16, 88, 102, 162–3, 213, 237, 257, 322, 328

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See also Succession and Protestant Succession Harley, Robert, later Earl of Oxford  102, 103, 122, 125–6, 162, 163, 180, 196, 212–15, 216, 217, 234, 237, 314, 329–32 Harrington, James  248, 250, 287–8 The Commonwealth of Oceana 250 Harrison, William  234 Passion of Sappho 305 Hatton, Christopher Viscount  106 n21, 107 Hatton, Ragnild  325 Haversham, Lord, 126, 181 Hawkins, John  148, 291 Haym, Nicola  117, 124, 147, 152–3, 155–6, 177, 188, 299, 304, 306–7 Haymarket (Queen’s) theatre  4, 69, 97, 122, 136, 150, 158, 164, 166, 172–5, 176, 183, 191, 192, 197, 203, 205, 209, 218, 220, 225, 230, 239, 259, 261, 291, 295, 304, 306, 307, 308, 317, 319 architecture and decoration of  138–40 building by subscription  127–37 outcry against  141–4 Haymarket vs Drury Lane  158, 170–2, 201 Haynes, Joseph  85 Hedges, Charles  103, 109, 162 Heidegger, John Jacob  115, 167–8, 206, 219, 225, 227, 319, 328 ‘To the Reader’ to Almahide 219 Henley, Anthony  188 Henry II, King of England (character in Rosamond)  165, 203–4, 205–6 Herbert, Thomas, Earl of Pembroke  181 Hercules 40 Herodotus 208 Hickford’s Music Room  308 Hill, Aaron  218–19, 220, 228–9, 234, 261, 317 British Apollo  219, 220–1, 229, 300 Rinaldo, Dedication  228 Rinaldo, Preface to   228 His Majesty’s Safe Return. See under Motteux, Peter Hoadly, Bishop Benjamin  233 Holder, William  68 Holmes, Geoffrey  9, 13 Horace  121, 243, 253 Epistle to Augustus (Epistles 2.1) 276–8 Horatian imitation  120 Howard, Charles, Earl of Carlisle  103, 121

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Hughes, John  97, 123, 168, 185, 240, 300, 304, 305, 308–12, 322 ‘A Letter Designed for The Spectator’ 310 ‘An Ode for Vocal and Instrumental Musick’ 96–7 Calypso and Telemachus  16, 308–17 Preface   308 Court of Neptune 311 House of Nassau 311 Ode to the Memory of William, Duke of Devonshire 311 ‘Power of Musick’ 123 Six English Cantatas 168 Triumph of Peace 311 Hughes Mr (singer)  150, 156, 167–8 Hume, Robert D.  xii, 4, 25, 43, 197 Humfrey, Pelham   25, 56 Hunter, David  327 Hyde, Lawrence, Earl of Rochester  101, 102, 103 Igene Regina di Sparta 190 Indian Kings, North American  218 Indian Queen, The 40 instrumentum regni  5, 195–6 invitation to Hanover   101, 101 n6, 103, 126–7, 163, 181, 225, 321, 331–2. Island Princess, The. See under Motteux, Peter  Italian singing, critiques of  70–4 Italy, English attitudes toward  88–9 Jacob, Giles, The Poetical Register   175 Jacobite, Jacobitism  180, 181, 211, 213, 236, 258 James, Duke of Monmouth  34 James, Duke of York and James II, King of England  11, 19, 20, 30, 34, 87, 102 James Francis Edward Stuart (the ‘Pretender’)  11, 102, 126, 182, 194 n47, 213, 217, 224, 258, 273, 322, 329, 330–1 Jersey, Earl of. See Villier, Edward, Earl of Jersey Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatinate  116, 192, 223–3 John Bull pamphlets. See Arbuthnot, John, The History of John Bull Johnson, Charles, The Gentleman’s–Cully 70 Johnson, Samuel  182, 265 Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor  188, 192, 235

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Josias Priest’s Chelsea boarding school  31, 32 Judgment of Paris, The. See under Congreve, William, and see also Eccles, John, and Weldon, John Junto. See Whig Junto lords ‘just Drama’ (Dryden)  22, 22 n10, 36, 44, 47, 48, 51, 52, 54, 175 Kaiser, Reinhard  295 Keally, Joseph  149, 154, 259 Kent, Earl later Duke of. See Grey, Henry, Earl of Kent Kielmansegg, Baron Johann Adolf  222 Killigrew, Sir Thomas  19, 28–9, 58 King Arthur. See under Dryden, John, and Purcell, Henry King’s Company  20, 24, 26, 27, 35 Kingdom of the Birds, The 43 Kit–Cat Club  4, 14, 129, table 4.1, 135, 143–4, 152, 182, 183, 188 Kit–Kat C—b Described, A 143 Kreienberg, Christoph Friedrich  318, 326 L’Abbé, Anthony  82, 84, 94, 96 L’Ambleto 318 L’Erismene. See under Cavalli, Francesco L’Idaspe fedele  221, 219, 225, 235, 257, 262, 296, 297, 298 La Didone delirante 194 La monarchia stabilita 116 Land Tax bill  125 Lanier, Nicholas  77 Latitudinarianism 289 Law, William, The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage–Entertainment 266 Lawes, Henry  63 ‘Sweet Echo’  78–9 Lawes, William  77 Lawrence, Mr (singer)  159, 168, 239 Lee, Nathaniel  35 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (von)  103, 320 Leke, Robert, Earl of Scarsdale  121 Lendenheim, Joanna Maria (the Baroness)  152, 177 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor  100, 104, 116, 162, 176 Leppert, Richard  6, 6 n21 Leslie, Charles, Rehearsal of Observator 143–4 Leveridge, Richard  42, 79, 94, 117, 156, 162, 168, 308 Lewis, E.  181

index Li amori di Ergasto. See under Greber, Jacob Liberty 197 Liège, Siege of  104 Life of that Eminent Comedian Robert Wilks 85 Lille, Siege of  181, 209 Lincoln’s Inn Fields theatre  20, 39, 44, 68, 75, 82, 84, 91, 94, 127, 128–9, 136, 154, 200 Lindsey, Mrs (singer)  156, 168 Lisbon  104, 112, 116, 117 Livy, Titus  243, 248, 280 Locke, John  275, 296 Locke, Matthew  23, 25, 26, 27, 45, 63, 64, 275, 296 Empress of Morocco, The  23, 25 Masque of Orpheus  23, 25 Psyche  25, 26, 27, 43, 44, 45, 64 English Opera; or the Vocal Musick in Psyche, The   26–7, 45 Longinus 254 Lord Chamberlain, and office  19, 20, 33, 39, 44, 121, 127, 141, 154, 160–2, 164, 166, 172, 173, 176, 193, 203, 205, 218, 219, 220, 227, 229, 299, 307, 317, 319, 331 See also Coke, Thomas, Vice Chamberlain See also Grey, Henry, Earl of Kent See also Stanley, Sir John See also Talbot, Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury Louis XIV, King of France  11, 28, 29, 47, 55, 68, 86–8, 99–100, 102, 105, 158, 162, 180, 181, 195, 206–8, 209–10, 212, 235, 236, 281–2, 321, 322 Love’s a Jest 40 Love’s Triumph. See under Motteux, Peter Loves of Mars and Venus, The  40, 158 Lucca 294 Lucio Vero 328 Lucca 294 Lully, Jean–Baptiste  20, 26, 33, 35, 55, 136, 199, 223, 270, 292 Amadis de Gaule 199 Cadmus et Hermione  35, 53 Proserpine 292 Psyché  20, 26 Luttrell, Narcissus  92 luxury  244–7, 252, 256, 262–3, 264, 270, 272 Lyttleton, Charles  105–6 Macbeth (Davenant and Dryden)  23–4, 42, 164

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Maccartney, General George   233 Machiavelli, Niccolò  122, 248–50, 252, 274, 281, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livo 248 Machiavellian moment  16, 250, 256, 262, 263, 264, 266, 267, 272, 274, 283, 285 Madrid  100, 226 Maidwell, Lewis, Loving Enemies, The   64–5 Mainwaring, John  189 Malaga, Battle of  112–13 Malplaquet, Battle of  210, 212, 221, 222 Manchester, Earl of. See Montagu, Charles, Earl later Duke of Manchester Mancia, Luigi  190 Mandeville, Bernard  289 Fable of the Bees 270 Manina, Maria  308 Manley, Delarivier  214 Almyna: or, the Arabian Vow 166 Memories of Europe 114 Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons 107–8 Margarita. See de l’Epine, Margarita Margarita, ‘Bella’. See Salicola, Margherita Maria Beatrice d’Este, Mary of Modena, Queen of England  30, 87 Maritime powers  100, 104 Marlborough, Duke and Duchess of. See Churchill, John and Sarah Marlborough ‘family’, the  103, 183, 209, 236 Mary, Princess and Queen of England  30, 58 Masham, Abigail Hill  163, 217, 315 masque  19, 22–3, 25, 30, 31, 44 Jacobean–Stuart court masque  19, 22 theatre masque  44 Matteis, Nicola  60, 62 Mattheson, Johann  295 Maynwaring, Arthur   115, 171, 183, 216, 314–15, 329 Advice to the Electors of Great Britain  9, 180–1 and opera  174–91 as political writer  9, 216, 236–7 ‘Epilogue to the Ladies’  118 Prologues and Epilogue to Camilla  158, 191, 201–2 Mazarin, Cardinal Jules  56, 63 Medley 216 Memorial of the Church of England 125 Memorial, the Elector’s  237

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Methuen Treaty  104 Michelangelo Buonorrati   197 Milan  100, 162 Milan, Treaty of  162 Milhous, Judith  13, 23, 25, 43, 82, 144 Milton, John  248 Comus 78 Molesworth, John Viscount   232–3 Molière, Jean Baptiste, Psyché   20, 26 Monod, Paul  5–6, 6 n20 Montagu, Duke of. See Monthermer, John, Duke of Montagu Montagu House  191, 316 Montagu, Charles, Lord Halifax  127, 129, 135, 182, 188, 189, 196, 221, 311 ‘On Orpheus and Margarita’  101, 103, 108–9, 113 Montagu, Charles, Earl then Duke of Manchester  69, 102, 103, 114, 173, 176, 192, 194 diplomatic missions abroad  188–91 Monthermer, John, Duke of Montagu 191 Monthly Masque of Musick 156 moral school of ethics  289 Mordaunt, Charles, Earl of Peterborough 181 Mostyn, Roger  106 Motteux, Peter Anthony  22, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 53, 73, 136, 137, 148, 167–8, 170, 194, 199, 206–8, 305 Beauty in Distress 84 Britain’s Happiness   94 Britain’s Happiness, Prologue  48 Europe’s Revels for the Peace, and His Majesty’s Happy Return 40 Fairy–Queen, Preface  36, 44 Gentleman’s Journal  42, 45, 47, 65, 194 Island Princess  40, 42, 164 Love’s Triumph  51, 96, 173, 174, 194, 319 Taking of Namur 40 Temple of Love, Prologues  200 Thomyris  96, 164, 167, 172, 182, 194, 206–8, 219, 295 Preface 208 Mountfort, William, Greenwich–Park 71 Moyle, Walter  248, 252 Muses Mercury  164, 166, 194, 189–92, 193, 208, 295 music in theatres  19–23, 70–4, 79–82 Myth of the North  266 Namier, Lewis  7

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Naples  100, 155, 177, 194, 209, 222, 275, 294 Naturalization Act  127 Nedham, Marchamont  248 Nero  263, 269 Neptune  25, 94, 311 Neville, Henry  246, 248 Newport, Francis, Earl of Bradford  106 Nicolini. See Grimaldi, Nicolini ‘No Peace without Spain’  1, 13, 104, 163, 206, 210, 212, 235, 238 Nonconformism, nonconformists  9, 12, 103, 104, 118, 121, 144, 210, 281 See also Dissent, toleration of North, Roger  22, 23, 47, 54, 56, 57, 59–60, 188 Nottingham, Earl of. See Finch, Daniel, second Earl of Nottingham  Nugӕ Canorӕ: or the Taste of the Town  177–80 Occasional Conformity  12, 12 n41, 103–4, 121, 125, 238 Oldfield, Anne  158 Oldmixon, John  191, 194, 215 Memoirs of the Press, Historical and Political  215, 216 ‘On Musick’  96 operatic treatment, of plays  22, 25, 27, 43, 45, 49 Opera Register (Coleman’s)   319 Order of the Garter  127 Order of Union, Lord Chamberlain’s  173 Orford, Lord. See Russell, Edward, Lord Orford Original and Genuine Letters Sent to the Tatler and Spectator 239 Orlando Furioso. See under Purcell, Daniel Ormonde, Duke of. See Butler, James, Duke of Ormonde Orpheus  25, 96, 109, 120, 200, 267 Orpheus and Euridicé. See under Dennis, John Osborne, Thomas, Earl of Danby  1 Oudenarde, Battle of  181, 209 Ovid, Metamorphoses 50 Oxford, Earl of. See Robert Harley Paleotti, Adelaide, Marchioness of  192, 314–16 Paris  10, 26, 30, 33, 35, 63, 69, 82, 194, 210, 236, 275, 293, 297, 299, 313, 321, 324

index partition treaties  100, 108 Pasquini, Bernardo  62 Pastor fido, Il. See under Handel, George Frideric peace negotiations with France  213, 236, 239 Peace (Treaty) of Utrecht (the Peace)  xi, 13, 16, 213, 214, 217, 224, 320–2, 324, 329 Pearson, Mrs (singer)  308 Pellegrini, Giantonio  177 Pembroke, Earl of. See Herbert, Thomas, Earl of Pembroke Penkethman, William  73 Pepusch, Johann  167–8 Six English Cantatas 168 Pepys, Samuel  24, 28, 29, 57–8, 62, 299 Pericle in Samo, Il 293–4 Percival, John, later Earl of Egmont 114–15 Perrin, Pierre, Arianne. See under Cambert, Robert Peterborough, Earl of. See Mordaunt, Charles, Earl of Peterborough Petrarch, Francesco  242 Philip, duc’Anjou  100, 104, 227, 236 Philip, John, Blenheim 165 Philips, Ambrose  272 Phillips, Katherine, Pompey 64 Pignani, Girolamo  62 Pilotti. See Schiavonetti (Schiavenetto), Elizabeth Pilotti Pirro e Demetrio. See under Scarlatti, Alessandro Pisa, 275, 294 Pittis, William, The Dyet of Poland. A Satyr 120 Pix, Mary, Deceiver Deceived, The 75 Plato, The Republic 255 Playford, Henry   62, 80, 188 Harmonia Sacra 62 Theatre of Music 62 Playford, John  61–2 Ayres and Dialogues 78 ‘Brief Discourse on the Italian Manner of Singing’  61 Introduction to the Skill of Musick 61 Scelta di canzonette italiane 62 Select Ayres and Dialogues 61 Select Musical Ayres and Dialogues 78 Treasury of Music 78 Pliny (the Elder)  247 n20 Plumb, J. H.  9 Pocock, J. G. A.  16–17, 250 politeness  286, 289–90, 297

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Polybius 252 Pomone. See under Cambert, Robert Pope, Alexander  88, 136, 265, 306 Dunciad xiii, ‘Ode for Music on St Cecilia’s Day’ 306 Windsor Forest 322 Portland, Duchess of  29 Portland, Earl of. See Bentinck, Henry, Earl of Portland Powell, Martin  229–31, 233, 234–5, 261–2 Preliminaries for peace  13, 236–7 Prencourt, Captain  162 Prior, Matthew  236 If Wine and Music Have the Power 305 Prize Musick, the  67, 188 Progress of Liberty 266 ‘A Prologue Against the French and Italian Singing’  96 Protestant Succession  11, 12, 13, 101, 210 See also Succession and Hanoverian Succession Protestantism, 48–49, 86 Psyche (Molière). See under Lully Psyche (Shadwell/Locke). See under Locke, Matthew, and Shadwell, Thomas Psyche Debauch’d 27 Publick Spirit  243, 243, 255, 256, 258, 264, 268, 271–3, 275–85 passim, 285, 287 Punch Turned Critick 233 Punic Wars  246, 277, 282 Puppet show, Martin Powell’s  229–31 Purcell, Daniel  42, 79, 94, 136, 137, 148, 240, 267, 300–302 ‘An Ode on the Glorious Beginning of Her Majesty’s Reign’  119 Brutus of Alba 300 Island Princess  164, 300 Orlando Furioso  136, 164, 194 World in the Moon 300 Purcell, Henry, 13, 25, 35, 40, 56, 59, 79–80, 118–19, 148, 149, 168, 267, 299, 300 Bonduca 40 Dido and Aeneas  31–3, 53, 54, 65 Dioclesian, The Prophetess, or the History of  36–7, 43 Fairy–Queen  36, 36, 38–9, 43, 119. See also under Motteux, Peter Hail! Bright Cecilia 65 King Arthur 119 See also under Dryden, John Orpheus Britannicus 188

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Purcell, Henry (cont’d) Sonnata’s of III Parts 60 Virgin Prophetess, The 40 Pyrrhus and Demetrius. See under Scarlatti, Alessandro, Pyrrhus and Demetrius Queen’s theatre. See Haymarket theatre Quinault, Jean–Phillippe Amadis de Gaule. See under Lully Cadmus et Hermione. See under Lully Proserpine. See under Lully Raguenet, Abbé François, Parallèle des Italiens et des Français  276, 283–4 Ramillies, Battle of  113, 162, 201 Rampany, Signor  85 Raphael Stanzio  197 Rastadt, Treaty of  322 recitative English–style  78–9, 149, 300, 303 French–style  284, 299 Italian–style  45, 62–3, 67–80, 145, 149, 156, 168, 182, 257, 284, 299, 300 Regency Act  127 Regency Council  127 Reggio, Pietro  25, 61 Art of Singing 61 Songs Set by Signior Pietro Reggio 61 republican tradition, English  248–53 republics  244–7, 249–53 Restraining Orders, Bolingbroke’s  239 Ricci, Marco  177 Ricco, Giacomo  228 Rich, Christopher  39–40, 68, 82, 95, 114, 127, 144–5, 147, 149, 154, 155, 158–9, 160, 164, 167–8, 170, 172–3, 176, 218 Rinaldo and Armida. See under Dennis, John Robethon, Jean de  326, 330 Rochester, Earl of. See Hyde, Lawrence, Earl of Rochester Rome, ancient republic  243, 245, 246–9, 251, 252, 252–3, 256, 266, 269, 271, 277, 280, 280–3, 288 decline and fall   246–7 Rome, modern  85, 88, 124, 193, 197, 202, 220, 222, 223, 258, 269, 294, 310, 313, 314, 330 Rooke, Sir George  104, 109–13, 116, 117 Rosamond (as character in folktale)  203, 205 Rosamond. See under Addison, Joseph Rossi, Luigi  61 Rossi Orfeo  56, 63

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Rowe, Nicholas ‘Lord G— to the E. of S—’  120 Royal Convert, Prologue  172 Tamerlane 207 Royal Academy of Music (1674)  29, 30 Royal Academy of Music (1720–1728) 328 Russell, Edward, Lord Orford  101, 103, 181 Russell, William, Lord  1 Russell, Wriothesly, Duke of Bedford  123–4, 138, 194 Rutland, Countess of  69 Rye House Plot  30, 34, 37 Rymer, Thomas  302 A Short View of Tragedy  47, 88, 278 Ryswick, Treaty of  102 Sacheverell, Dr Henry  1, 210–11 Sacheverell Crisis  210–11, 212 Saggione, Giuseppe Fedelli  136, 137, 159 Said, Edward  263 Saint–Evremond, Charles de Marguetel 52 Salicola, Margherita  69 Sallust  246, 280, Saragosa, Battle of  227, 235 Scaliger, Julius  51 Scarlatti, Alessandro  148, 167–8, 170, 206 Pyrrhus and Demetrius  53, 96, 115, 176–9, 182, 191, 194, 199, 208, 219, 221, 259, 260, 296 Pirro e Demetrio  177, 209 Scarsdale, Earl of. See Leke, Robert, Earl of Scarsdale Schiavonetti (Schiavenetto), Elizabeth Pilotti  223, 223 n46, 224–5, 228, 229, 235, 317–18, 319–20, 327–8 Schiavonetti (Schiavnetto), Giovanni  223, 224–5 Schütz, Georg von  331 Scott 163 Second Tale of a Tub, A  231, 234 segregation of play and music  44, 45, 47, 52–3, 54 ‘Seignor William from Northamptonshire’ 65 Semele. See under Congreve, William, and see also Eccles, John, and Weldon, John semiopera See dramatic opera Seneca 280 Senesino. See Bernardi, Francesco Settle, Elkana  38 Empress of Morocco  25

index Seymour, Charles, Duke of Somerset  37, 103 114, 115, 117, 121, 135, 188, 196, 311 Sgnanarell, or, the Cuckold in Conceit, Epilogue 170–1 Shadwell Thomas, 25, 26, 45, 46, 48 Bury–Fair 71 Lancaster Witches  43, 71 Royal Shepherdess 64 Psyche. See under Locke, Matthew, Psyche Timon of Athens 92 Shaftesbury, Earls of. See under Ashley Cooper Shakespeare, William  86, 180 Macbeth 23–4. See also Macbeth (Davenant) 24 Tempest  22, 25. See also Tempest (Davenant and Dryden) See also Purcell, Henry, The Fairy–Queen Sheffield John, Duke of Buckingham Essay on Poetry, An 75 Rehearsal, The   64 Shirley, James, Cupid and Death 64 Shovel, Cloudesly  109, 111–12 Shrewsbury, Duchess of. See Paleotti, Adelaide, Marchioness of Shrewsbury, Duke of. See Talbot, Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury  Sidney, Algernon (the Martyr)  1, 248, 251 Discourses Concerning Government 251 Siena 294 Siface. See Grossi, Giovanni Francesco Silla. See under Handel, George Frideric Smith, (Consul) Joseph  95 Society for the Reformation of Manners 141 Somers, John Lord  101, 103, 181, 181, 257, 281, 292 Somerset, Duchess of  217, 238 Somerset, Duke of. See Seymour, Charles, Duke of Somerset songs in plays  21, 61–2 English declamatory ayre  76–82 Italian style  62–7, 70–3 Songs for theatre 300 Sophia Dorothea, Princess Royal of Prussia 222 Sophia, dowager Electress of Hanover  11, 101, 103, 126–7, 163, 181, 222, 225, 237, 331–2 Southern, Thomas Volunteers, The   72

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Thomas, Wives Excuse 71 spectacle  275–85 passim Spectator papers  2, 4, 16, 193, 216, 229, 230, 232, 234, 240, 254, 257, 261, 286, 289, 291, 294, 296, 297–300, 306–7, 310, 311, 317, 329 Spencer, Charles, Earl of Sunderland  103, 125–6, 135, 162, 165, 173, 213 Sporus  263, 269 St John, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke  1, 121, 122, 162, 180, 196, 213, 215, 217, 218, 233, 237, 239, 330–2 Letter to the Examiner 216–17 St Paul’s Cathedral  138, 210, 320, 325, 327 Staggins, Nicholas  30, 33 Stamford, Earl of. See Grey, Thomas, Earl of Stamford  126 Stanhope, General James  235 Stanley, Sir John  160, 205, 225, 233 Stanyan, Abraham  293 Stanzani Tomaso  148 Steele, Richard  xi, 1, 14, 15, 67, 136, 183, 214, 216–17, 234, 254, 256, 257, 258–63¸272–4, 275, 285, 296, 297, 302–3, 304, 306, 307, 310, 317, 329–30 closing of the Tatler  214–15, 216, 218, 234 on opera  xi, 67, 74, 53, 229, 230, 241, 243, 305 See also Tatler and Spectator papers, and Handel, George Frideric, Rinaldo political career and writer  214–15, 216, 329–30 ‘On Nicolini’s leaving the Stage’  262–3 Crisis, The 330 Dying Lovers 257 Englishman  296, 329–30 Englishman’s Thanks to the Duke of Marlborough 238 Funeral: or Grief A–la–Mode, The 67, 257 Guardian  296, 329 Lying Lover   301 Memoirs of . . . Thomas Late Marquess of Wharton  185, 185, 187 Tender Husband  74, 257, 258 Epilogue 258–9 See also Tatler and Spectator papers Steffani, Agostino  223 Stepney, George  294 Stuart, House of  102, 211 See also James II, and James Francis Edward Stuart

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Subligny, Madame  82, 84 Subscription Musick, The  90, 94, 118 Subscription; or, the Power of Musick 96 Succession (to English throne)  11, 12, 13, 16, 102, 126–7, 182, 329, 331–3 See also Hanoverian and Protestant Succession Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum  269, 280 Sunderland, Earl of. See Spencer, Charles, Earl of Sunderland Swift, Jonathan  1, 11, 103, 122, 136, 212, 213, 214–15, 216, 233, 271, 326, 330–1, 332 Conduct of the Allies 237–8 Examiner 236 ‘the great change’  15, 212, 212 n3 Letters to Stella 1 Publick Spirit of the Whigs 330 Swiney, Owen  156, 164, 176, 177, 199, 218, 219, 220, 315, 317, 319 Pyrrhus and Demetrius, Dedication  208 Quacks, or, Love’s the Physician 143 Tacitus, Cornelius  243, 280 Tack, the  125 Taking of Namur, The. See under Motteux, Peter Talbot, Charles, Duke of Shrewsbury  113, 212, 220, 225, 294, 311–16, 321, 324, 324, 332–3 Tasso, Torquato, Gerusalemme liberata 228 Tate, Nahum, 42 Dido and Aeneas. See under Purcell, Henry Tatler papers  4, 214–15, 216, 218, 234, 254, 257, 259, 260–1, 272, 286, 291, 296, 304, 317 Tatler, continuation of  234 Tempest (Davenant)  164 Temple of Love  43, 51, 137, 159, 166, 188, 200, 264 Tenison, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury  121, 141 Test Act  58 Test and Corporation Acts  12 Thanksgiving, Day of  227, 320, 324–5, 327 Theatre Royal  20 theatre songs  79–82, 300–1 Theobald, Lewis, The Censor 254–5 Thomyris (as historical ruler)  195, 206–8 Thomyris. See under Motteux, Peter Thornhill, Sir James  138

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Classical Landscape Seen through an Arch  153, 155 First Great Flat Scene, The  138, 140 Queen Anne’s Patronage of the Arts 138 sets for Arsinoe 145 Tickell, Thomas  165, 295 Timon of Athens 164 Titian Vecellio  197 Tito Manlio 328 Tofts, Catherine  xi, 14, 86, 90, 94–7, 105, 114, 117–19, 122–4, 135, 156, 168, 172, 174, 177, 207, 210–11, 234, 311, 315–16 Toland, John  102 An Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover  223, 223 n47 Reasons for Addressing His Majesty to Invite Their Highnesses [etc.] 102 Toleration Act   12 Tonson, Jacob  129, 143 Tories, Tory party   12, 93, 108–9, 125, 163, 165, 176, 180, 182, 214–15, 216, 217, 229, 233, 236, 322, 329, 330–1 and opera  92–3, 105–9, 194–5 Tosi, Pier Francisco  68 Toulon 112 tragedy, Greek  284 Trapp, Joseph, The Character and Principles of the Present Set of Whigs 144 Treatise upon the French Modes 88 Trenchard, John  252 Triumph of Love 319 Truman English  311 Tunbridge Wells  91, 92, 105 Turin  162, 189, 283, 295 Tutchin, John, Observator 122 United Company  35–6, 39 Urbani, Valentino (called ‘Valentini’)  14, 122, 166, 167–8, 172, 173, 176, 177, 190–1, 218, 219, 229, 259 Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate. See under Handel, George Frideric Utrecht, peace conference  236, 239 Valentini. See Urbani, Valentino Vanbrugh, John, xi, xv, 4, 14, 69, 125, 141, 143, 147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 158–9, 162, 165, 189, 190, 194, 199, 200, 205, 295 Haymarket theatre and opera company  172–4, 176, 182, 183, 192–3 The Confederacy 154 See also Haymarket theatre

index Venus and Adonis. See under Blow, John verisimilitude  49–52, 54, 294 Aristotle on  50 Dryden on  50–2 Vertot, Abbé, Histoire des revolutions arrives dans le gouvernement … romaine 247 Vicentina. See Faccioli, Margarita Venice  45, 72, 95, 173, 176, 177, 189–90, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 208, 220, 223, 263, 275, 283, 293, 294, 297, 310, 313 Vienna  69, 104, 105, 116, 176, 188, 189, 194, 221, 235, 236, 294 Vigo Bay, expedition to  110, 112, 120 Villier, Edward, Earl of Jersey  121, 213, 236 virtue (virtù, virtus)   243, 244–6, 287–8 Walcott, Robert  7–8 Walkling, Andrew  32–3, 44 Waller, Edmund  234 Walpole, Robert  1, 126, 180, 206, 213, 217, 233, 238 Walsh, William, ‘The Golden Age Retriev’d’ 110–11 War of the Spanish Succession  xi, 13, 99–105, 108, 109–13, 116, 125, 126, 127, 199, 200, 207–8, 209, 222, 223, 225, 235, 256, 264, 273, 281–2 Weinbrot, Howard  xiv, 273 Weldon, John  79, 94 Weldon, The Judgment of Paris. See also under Congreve, William Westrup, J.A.  55 Wharton, Lady  156, 201 Wharton, Lord, later Marquis  1, 103, 129, 181, 182, 183, 185, 257, 292, 296, 304

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Whig cultural programme  14, 17, 135, 183, 196–8, 304 Whig junto lords  112, 125–6, 127, 162, 181–2, 212 Whig–Examiner 216 Whigs, Whig party   12, 13, 108, 114, 125, 163, 165, 176–7, 180–1, 181–2, 183, 196, 207, 210–11, 213, 214–15, 216, 217, 229, 233, 235, 236, 241, 287, 312, 314, 316, 322, 329, 330–1 Wilks, Robert  85, 118, 158, 218, 317 Wilkinson Richard, Vice Reclaim’d: or the Passionate Mistress  85–6, 92 William III, King of England  1, 100–2, 119, 197, 210, 251, 281, 287, 311, 312 William and Mary, monarchs of England  12, 35, 335 William, Prince of England and Duke of Gloucester  11, 309 Windsor Castle  31, 94, 102, 117–19, 322 Winn, James   18, 144 Woodstock (royal estate)  125, 165, 203, 205, 295 Worden, Blair  242, 248–9 World in the Moon, The 40 Wren, Sir Christopher  49, 138–9 Wych, John  295 York Buildings  58, 67, 85, 118, 240, 304, 305, 306, 307, 317 York, Duke of. See James, Duke of York  19, 20 Zinzendorf, Nikolas Ludwig, Count of 192

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