The Fashionable Lady | |
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Written by | James Ralph |
Date premiered | April 2, 1730 [1] |
Place premiered | Goodman's Fields Theatre |
Original language | English |
Genre | Ballad opera [1] |
The Fashionable Lady; or, Harlequin's Opera is a 1730 ballad opera by James Ralph (opened 2 April 1730 at Goodman's Fields Theatre; performances are recorded through 4 December 1730 and 4 May 1731). [1] [2]
James Ralph turned to satire and stage work after the cool reception of his early serious poems, collaborating in the theatre from 1729 (including the prologue to Henry Fielding's The Temple Beau ). [3] The play premiered at Goodman's Fields Theatre on 2 April 1730; the printed text was issued for J. Watts and advertised in the Daily Post that day. [1]
It was performed at Goodman's Fields Theatre on 2, 4, 13, 18, 21, and 23 April; 28 May; 2 and 17 June; 27 July; 11 November; 4 December 1730; and 4 May 1731. [2]
Sir Peevish Terrible the Critick, Poets, Sailors, Gods, Goddesses, Witches, Dragons, Devis, &c. [4]
The Fashionable Lady lampoons the state of English drama, contemporary theatre management, and the vogue for Italian opera; its dialogue follows the Congreve–Vanbrugh school, and the action is punctuated by songs to familiar airs, recalling The Beggar's Opera . [6] Its dramatis personae include types such as Mr Ballad, Mrs Prattle, Messrs Modely, Hackum, and Trifle, and Sir Peevish Terrible, the critic. [7] This theatrical satire parallels Ralph's earlier essays in The Touch-Stone , which mocked Italian opera for "singing in an unknown dialect". [8] It also engages self-reflexively with the commercial ethos of ballad opera; one character quips, "All Poets. Ay, ay, any thing for Money." [9]
Assessments of the play vary: Elizabeth R. McKinsey has called it "a hyperbolic take-off" on The Beggar's Opera, describing it as "a mediocre play about writing a bad play" and likening it to Federico Fellini's 8½ , "a bad movie about making a bad movie". [7] In contrast, nineteenth-century theatre historian John Genest recorded that it "met with tolerable success" and was "not badly written". [6] [10]
Although The Fashionable Lady has often been described as the first play on the London stage written by an American, [6] [11] [7] archival research published in 1964 established that Ralph was born in London around 1705. [12] Some later musicological commentary has also styled it "the first opera by an American". [13]