The Harlot's Progress, The Rake's Progress Part 1

The Harlot's Progress, The Rake's Progress.

by Theophilus Cibber and Anonymous and Mary F. Klinger.

INTRODUCTION

The prints and engraved sequences of William Hogarth (1697-1764) inspired a wide range of dramatic entertainments throughout the eighteenth century. The types include comedy of manners (_The Clandestine Marriage_, 1766), burletta with _tableau vivant_ (_Ut Pictura Poesis!_ 1789), specialty act (_A Modern Midnight Conversation_, 1742), cantata (_The Roast Beef of Old England_, ca. 1759), ballad opera (_The Decoy_),[1] pantomime (_The Jew Decoy'd_ and _The Harlot's Progress_, 1733), and a morality ballad opera (_The Rake's Progress_, ca. 1778-1780). Two of these are reprinted here. Theophilus Cibber's "Grotesque Pantomime Entertainment" of Hogarth's six-scene series "A Harlot's Progress" (1732), ent.i.tled _THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS_; or The Ridotto Al'Fresco," was first published 31 March 1733 for its Drury Lane debut as an afterpiece.[2] Less familiar is the anonymous "Dramatised Version" of Hogarth's eight-print sequence "A Rake's Progress" (1735), British Library Add. MS. 25997, ent.i.tled The Rake's Progress.[3]

Of critical interest in looking at the engravings along with the dramas they inspired is the evidence provided of significant visual-verbal reciprocities in the period. In particular, it shows one aspect of the interrelationship operative between (1) creation of the prints, with the artist often relying perceptibly on dramatic literature and theatrical sets,[4] and (2) inspiration from print to theater, as playwrights generated new stage pieces based on the graphic works. Moreover, these two dramas underscore the importance of music in eighteenth century theater where the use of songs in pantomimes and new lyrics for old tunes in ballad opera were alike commonplace by mid-century.[5] The plays lend support to Bertrand Bronson's observation that, in an age which "thought Man the proper study of Mankind," it is not surprising that the "major emphasis (and accomplishment) in music should be dramatic and, in a broad sense, social."[6] These dramas add visual and musical insights to literary concerns of the time.

In "A Harlot's Progress" (1732) Hogarth's six prints recount a few years in the young life of "M. Hackabout" from her innocent arrival in London (from Yorkshire) through debauchery, prost.i.tution, and theft to death from venereal disease at the age of 23. Hogarth's engraved sequence shows about 12 characters, including Moll's child and supernumerary harlots at her funeral. The stage piece by Colley Cibber's son ent.i.tled _The Harlot's Progress_ consists solely of stage directions and verses set to six "Airs." It has 27 characters, including a "little Harlequin Dog." The harlot's new name, "Kitty," probably refers to the actress (Mrs. Raftor, later Kitty Clive) who initially played this role. The music for the songs seems to be lost, though many tunes can be identified.[7] Furthermore, Roger Fiske reports that later in 1733 this work was offered at Bartholomew Fair with a band that included "oboes, ba.s.soons, horns, trumpets, drums and strings." Though traditionally _The Harlot's Progress_ has been treated as pantomime, Fiske considers it a "mixture of masque, ballad opera and pantomime."[8] Actually Cibber's piece, with its concluding "Masque," more closely fits Paul Sawyer's definition of pantomime as "a mixture of comic (sometimes called grotesque) elements" concerning the love adventures and misadventures of Harlequin and Columbine, "largely in dumb show," but "occasionally interspersed with songs and dances."[9] In addition, Sawyer notes, there is a "serious part," usually drawn from mythology, featuring dancing, recitative, song, and some dialogue. In the present case, this would be the masque of "The Judgment of Paris" which concludes _The Harlot's Progress_ (p. 12).

On the stage, Cibber shifts the Hogarthian tone from an ineluctable moral formula (the wages of sin equal death) to one that transforms social and moral punishment into lyrical pageantry. To accomplish this, he uses the mechanical humor of harlequinade and omits three grim occasions portrayed by Hogarth: Hackabout's apprehension by Sir John Gonson in a garret (Pl. 4), her early death from venereal disease (Pl.

5), and her funeral with its morally dubious mourners (Pl. 6). Cibber replaces the potential moral commentary of these three prints with stage antics and dance. Cibber's harlot "Kitty" is sent to Bridewell like Hogarth's Moll Hackabout (Pl. 4), but her punishment there turns magically into a dance.

The "Keeper" forces her and other women to beat hemp, but the blocks suddenly disappear; in their stead appear her lover Harlequin, with Scaramouch and others, and all "dance off" to the "Ridotto al'Fresco,"

while the Keeper "runs away frighted." The threat of punishment vanishes with the blocks. At the "Ridotto," in a stage set depicting a Vauxhall scene, people appear in masquerade, and a grand "Comic Ballad" is performed to various musical tunes. But this is not the end of the pantomime, for yet to come is "The Judgment of Paris," John Weaver's "Dramatic Entertainment" after the "Manner of the Ancient Greeks and Romans," which had premiered in February 1733.[10]

Though he was quite consciously imitating Hogarth's "Celebrated Designs," Cibber's directions do not specify that costuming duplicate Hogarth's contemporary London figures such as the notorious Mother Needham, Colonel Charteris (Pl. 1), Justice Gonson (Pl. 4), or the quarreling doctors Misaubin and Rock at Moll's deathbed (Pl. 5).[11] In addition to changing the name "M. Hackabout" to "Kitty" the "Country Girl," Cibber dubs his Charteris character "Old Debauchee," Needham "Madame Decoy," and the Jew who keeps Kitty, "Beau Mordecai."

The comic element a.s.serts itself in the first stage scene as Harlequin hides in Kitty's trunk and then disguises himself as a cadet, imitating Hackabout's lover in Hogarth's second print. During this stage trick, Madame Decoy sings new verses to an eighteenth century ballad celebrating the innocent beauties of rural poverty (Air I, "What tho' I am a Country La.s.s"). Clearly, audiences familiar with the more biting pictorial scenes of a harlot's life would be easily diverted, even relieved, by the elaborate mixture of Greek and Italian elements, and the flourish of songs in the parodic ballad opera tradition. Cibber of course capitalized on the occasion, popularity, and familiarity of Hogarth's six prints in 1733, but his theatrical realization clarifies the quality of pantomimic entertainment with its numerous contemporary graphic allusions, revealing an aborted moral embellished by a splay of music and masque.

Theophilus Cibber's entertainment was quite successful on the London stage, having a good run at the patent theaters and the fairs in 1733 and for a while thereafter.[12] Furthermore, it is related to an important event in Drury Lane history. Cibber seceded with a group of actors in May of 1733 from that theater because of management disputes.

After playing at the fairs, the protesting actors performed at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket until the spring of 1734 when they returned to Drury Lane. In a letter to patentee John Highmore, Cibber wrote of the _Harlot's Progress_: "This entertainment (for which I am indebted to Mr. Hogarth's designs) the Town were pleased to approve of and encourage." But, he adds, it might have been performed "three months sooner than it was, but for the Obstructions I met with from my Partners."[13] This theatrical quarrel created much public discussion in the first decade of the century (_LS_, 3, 1, "Introduction," _pa.s.sim_).

Hogarth included in his print "Southwark Fair" (which came out after August 1733) a showcloth of John Laguerre's engraving "The Stage Mutiny," a print that in turn had been inspired by the actors'

secession. Hogarth's additions to the Laguerre print demonstrate his close touch with these events (_HGW_, I, 156-7).[14] _The Harlot's Progress_ provides us with a good example of the genre "Grotesque Pantomime," and throws much light on the London stage entertainment stream of an evening that included Hogarth, harlequin, Venus and Paris, as well as dancing and singing.

Hogarth's eight prints of "A Rake's Progress" of 1735[15] provided the subject--the rise and fall of a libertine--for a morality ballad opera more than forty years later. The 15-scene stage piece, ent.i.tled _The Rake's Progress_, elaborates visually and musically the formula: follow virtue and avoid vice. The author clearly counted on audience familiarity with the graphic scenes many years after their appearance, and on an increased receptivity to explicit moralizing. This ma.n.u.script was submitted by the unknown playwright to Drury Lane sometime between September 1778 and June 1780. The possible date is most clearly focused in the Sheridans' joint management. Richard a.s.sumed the management in 1776 and held it to at least 1809, but his father Thomas managed it with his son only for the seasons 1778-1779 and 1779-1780.[16] I think it is therefore possible to suggest a date for the ma.n.u.script between September 1778 when Thomas Sheridan came to Drury Lane, and the end of the 1779-1780 theatrical season, when he left at the age of 61.[17] The piece was not performed.

Like the Cibber work, the text consists of stage directions and songs.

Allusions to Hogarth appear in t.i.tle, characters, plot, and specific scenes. Moreover, a "transparency" introduces the artist in a literal stage portrait. This device praises Hogarth and reminds the audience of the graphic correspondences in dramatic form to come.

_The Rake's Progress_ makes significant changes in the content of Hogarth's series, expanding characters and scenes, and altering the denouement somewhat from madness to suicide. New elements of music and clowning change his lugubrious didacticism to a lyrical warning in a form I call "morality ballad opera." The morality and masque features appear in such characters as "Virtue" and "Vice" who frame the piece, and "Liberty" and "Benevolence" who descend and ascend on a cloud, at the end taking Virtue with them. Not included in the theater version is Hogarth's depiction of the harsh realities of Bethlehem Hospital, or Bedlam, where spectators pay to gawk at the inmates, and where Rakewell's libertine journey ends dismally (Pl. 8). On the boards, the didacticism is even more emphatic. Rakewell shoots himself to background music which slows in tempo until it is "render'd as dismal as possible"

and Virtue proclaims a triumph over the demonstrated "baneful influence of Vice."

In "A Rake's Progress" (1735), Hogarth depicts an inverse relationship between morality and the misuse of money. In the first of the eight prints, young Tom Rakewell inherits wealth from his miserly father and misspends it for the remainder of his life in copying the lifestyle of an aristocrat. His moral poverty is evident as he offers money to the mother of pregnant Sarah Young, his former girlfriend, who stands disconsolately poising a wedding ring. Letters containing his false promises to her clarify the situation. Material wealth is the cornerstone of this series as we next see the rake being measured by a tailor for new clothes while a lawyer pilfers cash; and an upholsterer's hammering to ready the room for mourning results in a shower of previously hidden gold coins (Pl. 1). The levee (Pl. 2) shows Rakewell in a fashionable morning gown, courted by a gardener, huntsman, and others, while a list of gifts from the n.o.bility to opera star Farinelli includes a snuff box from Rakewell. His nocturnal taste shows in the Rose Tavern where he carouses and is himself raked by harlots (Pl. 3).

As part of this debauched ambiance, a pregnant woman sings the bawdy ballad "Black Joke." In daylight, the faithful Sarah saves Rakewell from street arrest while a group of gamblers fills out the visual exposition of the rake's dissipation (Pl. 4). Saved by the middle cla.s.s girl he ruined, Rakewell next weds a rich widow to recoup his losses. Sarah, her mother, and Rakewell's infant offspring unsuccessfully try to abort this clandestine wedding (Pl. 5). Rakewell's marriage of convenience cannot meet his needs, and he soon rails despairingly in a Covent Garden gambling house (Pl. 6). The juggernaut of vice presses on as he is jailed for debt in Fleet Street prison where he runs up more bills. A prisoner drops a "Scheme for paying y^{e} Debts of y^{e} Nation" to the floor as Sarah faints away and Rakewell's wife scolds (Pl. 7). The social nadir of Bedlam illumines darkly Rakewell's last loss--his reason--and this graphic anti-progress concludes, as it began, with Sarah's sorrow (Pl. 8).

What did the playwright do with Hogarth's harsh comment on the misappropriation of inherited wealth? He seems to have enhanced entertainment values and emphasized instruction at the same time. The drama embellishes the series by (a) adding stage links only imaginable by spectators of the print sequences, (b) framing the progress with a morality masque starring Virtue and Vice, and (c) replacing Hogarth's serious ironic tone with slapstick and songs drawn from stage musical fare, such as the burletta _Poor Vulcan!_ by Charles Dibdin, which premiered in February 1778 (_LS_, 5, I, 109). Basically, Hogarth's eight prints of 1735 are transformed in part into a series of _tableaux vivants_ which served, with variations, in the late 1770's as strong visual reminders for an audience already familiar with the original pictorial sequence.

For example, directions for the second scene attempt to put on the boards the initial print, adding music and slapstick as "money from the raftor falls into Clown's mouth." The play invites the spectator to follow Sarah and her mother after they leave Rakewell and listen to their duet, sung to the music of Air I of _The Beggar's Opera_. The lyrics change, so that Peachum's cynical comment "Through all the employments of life/Each neighbor abuses his brother" becomes "His vows, ah! Why did'st thou believe?/He ne'er meant a promise to keep," with the new a.s.sociation of Sarah's being cast off by Rakewell.

The drama closely follows the series for the rake's levee, where professionals "pay Court" to Rakewell. A new character, "Van Butchel,"

who sings in dialect, is added. The opportunism of those proffering services to the young man becomes clear in their musical medley when they announce they will "plunder him as fast as we can agree." At the Rose Tavern, stage directions for Rakewell state "the actor must let his intoxication gradually increase." Before Rakewell's arrest, the bailiff sings a solo. Sarah saves her lover, as in the sequence, but a small revelation of his character not in the print marks the incident: he "kisses her hand" before returning to his sedan chair.

The stage piece exploits the potential emotional element in such gestures to the point of sentimentality. For instance, Sarah's lament following Rakewell's marriage to the rich "Old Woman" shows grief driving her to despair; she sings "The Grave will extinguish my woes/Then Sarah--prepare thee to die" to the music of the seventeenth century ballad tune "Mary's Lamentation." The drama also exploits the sensational as the smoking fire in a Covent Garden gambling house (Hogarth's Pl. 5) becomes a public catastrophe with fire engines and furniture being carried into the street and "Confusion kept up as long as necessary."

In the jail scene, the rake turns out of his breeches a "Scheme to Pay the National Debt," a specific verbal echo of the Fleet Street print, and the prisoners sing a familiar tune ("Welcome, Brother Debtor") as musical background to his off-stage suicide. Then Virtue returns to ascend with "Liberty and Benevolence" on a cloud, able to relax now that Vice's influence has run its destructive course.

_The Rake's Progress_ is an essentially uneven dramatic work. The playwright colors the didacticism of Hogarth's prints with music and farce, yet underscores it by adding Virtue and Vice and the melodrama of Rakewell's suicide and Sarah's probable death. The author capitalizes on the suspense of choice, characteristic of the morality play, by dramatizing it in conflicts between Vice and Virtue. Yet the effect remains unbalanced. This palpable form of Hogarth's visual satire loses much of its impact without a balance of serious, comic, and musical ingredients. Furthermore, the musical elements are so haphazardly distributed that they often contribute to a patchwork effect, as when the bailiff sings a solo prior to making an arrest.

Although _The Rake's Progress_ purports to imitate Hogarth's "Comedy,"

where a "biginning, middle & an End/ Are Aptly join'd; where parts on parts depend,/ Each made for each, as Bodies for their Soul," the 15 scenes alternate too erratically between humor and melodrama to convey the artistic unity and moral conviction evident in the pictorial sequence. But this stage piece does demonstrate the persistence of Hogarth's visual presence in later eighteenth-century life along with the adaptability of his graphic scenes for the London theater.

Clearly Theophilus Cibber's comical, lyrical exploitation in _The Harlot's Progress_ of Hogarth's designs exhibits a more coherent dramatic structure than the tentative, disjointed medley of music and moralism in _The Rake's Progress_. Further, Cibber's piece adds literary insight to our concept of the hardly dumb genre of pantomime, with its musical and masque components. The added melodrama and sentimentality in _The Rake's Progress_ can help to index theatrical taste in the later period. For students of the century, both works demonstrate clearly an aspect of the reliance on Hogarth's art by playwrights. They also show the flexibility of the London stage in the use of elements of music and dance to link separate print scenes, and so attempt a bridge between the forms of art and drama. These two examples of the lively interplay operative between stage and print in the early and late decades heighten appreciation of the expectancies of cultural experiences of different audiences in the eighteenth century.

THE TUNES

_The Harlot's Progress_ and _The Rake's Progress_ are alike interesting for the parodic ballad opera pattern of setting new words to familiar tunes. Though neither work includes the music, some songs indicate familiar melodies such as "Let us take the road" from _The Beggar's Opera_. In _The Harlot's Progress_, the six "Airs" come from varied sources, with new lyrics by Theophilus Cibber. Of the approximately 24 unnumbered tunes and catches in _The Rake's Progress_, the most outstanding in connection with the print sequence is "Black Joke,"

Richard Leveridge's bawdy tune shown by Hogarth in the Rose Tavern print being sung by a pregnant woman (Pl. 5). In the stage piece, this song is part of a medley sung to Rakewell by the various professionals who compete for his money. The most important tunes are those from _Poor Vulcan!_ the burletta by Charles Dibdin (February 1778), supporting my 1778-1780 date for _The Rake's Progress_ ma.n.u.script.

The sources used to trace the musical airs include Claude Simpson's _The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music_ (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1966); Minnie Sears' _Song Index_ (and _Supplement_) (New York: Wilson Company, 1926 and 1934); Edythe N. Backus: _Catalogue of Music Printed Before 1801_ (San Marino, Cal.: The Huntington Library, 1949), and William Barclay Squire, "An Index of Tunes in the Ballad-Operas," _The Musical Antiquary_, II (October 1910), 1-17.[18]

E. V. Roberts points out that "the lack of a ballad designation for a ballad-opera air usually means that the tune in question was composed specially for that ballad opera" and that, because most "unnamed tunes were unknown outside their ballad operas," they were "neither copied nor printed, and simply do not turn up in the collections."[19] The catches in _The Rake's Progress_ are not traceable. The numbering for songs in _The Rake's Progress_ is my own. Airs from both plays give us some idea of the rich musical treasure English stagewriters could draw upon for theatrical offerings in the eighteenth century.[20]

THE HARLOT'S PROGRESS

_Air I_: "What tho I am a Country La.s.s" is an eighteenth century ballad by Martin Parker printed in _Orpheus Calendonius; or, A Collection of Scots Songs Set to Music by W[illiam] Thomson_, II (London 1733), p. 85. Its first two lines are "Although I be but a Country La.s.s/Yet a lofty Mind I bear-a." It was used by Theophilus Cibber (as Air XII) in his 1732 one-act version of Charles Coffey's _The Devil to Pay_ where the transformed cobbler's wife Nell sings: "Tho late I was a Cobler's Wife,/In cottage most obscure-a" (pp. 20-21). In _The Harlot's Progress_, this air, sung by Madame Decoy, is clearly appropriate for seducing Kitty-Moll into the world of bawds and prost.i.tutes, with its theme of magical change and the conquest of innocence by vice.

_Air II_: "Brisk Tom and Jolly Kate" is Air IX of Lacy Ryan's _The Cobler's Opera_ (London 1729), which has tunes by Leveridge, Purcell, and others. The lyrics in Ryan's piece allude to Bridewell: "Pray; Sir, did I not give to you a Pa.s.sage free/When Hemp did threaten," (pp. 14-15).

_Air III_: "Maggy Lawther" is a tune used by Theophilus Cibber (Air IX) in _Patie and Peggy ... A Scotch Ballad Opera_ (London 1730), p. 10.

_Air IV_: "Oh! what Pleasures will abound" is Air VII of Henry Fielding's _The Lottery_ (London 1732). Johann Pepusch composed the music for this air in collaboration with Lewis Theobald for the pantomime opera _Perseus and Andromeda_ (1730). Fielding's name for the tune was "In Perseus and Andromeda."

_Air V_: "Lads a Dunce." The music is preserved in British Library Add.

MS. 29371, fol. 30a, no. 45, and printed in Fielding's _The Grub-Street Opera_ as Air II (ed. Edgar V. Roberts, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), p. 92. Its composer is not known.

_Air VI_: "Maidens fresh as a Rose" appears as Air VI in Ebenezer Forrest's ballad opera _Momus turn'd fabulist; or, Vulcan's Wedding_, a work translated from the French of Fuzelier and Le Grand (London 1729), p. 12. It also could be the song in D'Urfey's _Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy_ (1719), with a slightly different t.i.tle, "Maiden fresh as a Rose," though the syllabic pattern does not seem to match: "Young buxome and full of jollity,/Take no Spouse among Beaux," (I, p. 57).

THE RAKE'S PROGRESS

_Airs I-III_ are not traceable ("From Virue's sluggish Rules be free,"

"Mary's Dream" and "Alteration").

_Air IV_: "Duett" to the tune "An Old Woman Cloathed in Gray" is the familiar first tune of John Gay's _The Beggar's Opera_, ed. Edgar V.

Roberts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1969), pp. 94-95.

_Air V_: Van Butchel's song ("See Martin dus his goods display") is not in the songbooks. Prof. Roberts suggests the lyrics could fit the music of "Lillibullero," sometimes used for songs in dialect. Henry Purcell wrote or arranged this Irish burden which was used in 12 ballad operas, including Fielding's _Don Quixote in England_ (1733).

Simpson (p. 454) gives one example in dialect: "By Creist my dear Morish vat makes de sho'shad" (ca. 1689).

_Air VI_: "Shelah O'Sudds" (to the tune "The Siege of Troy") is not traceable.

_Air VII_: "Medley. Tune, 'Pet.i.tion Poor Vulcan'" is from Charles Dibdin's burletta _Poor Vulcan!_ (London 1778) which begins: "The humble prayer and pet.i.tion/Of Vulcan, who his sad condition" (I, 1, p. 7).