Date of Award

8-1971

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

First Advisor

Dr. Robert A. Caldwell

Abstract

Henry Fielding is more widely known as a novelist than a playwright. Except for Tom Thumb, his dramatic works are largely ignored. And yet many of these plays enjoyed great success in Fielding's time. This edition presents a critical, old-style text of two of Fielding's most popular plays, both of which are adaptations of Molière: The Mock Doctor; or the Dumb Lady Cur'd, taken from Le Médecin Malgré Lui, and The Miser, taken from L'Avare. Each play is presented in the form which represents as nearly as possible Fielding's final intentions, so far as can be determined from the textual evidence. The principles for an old-spelling text set forth by W. W. Greg and Fredson Bowers have been followed.

The introduction to this edition consists of the following: (a) Bibliographical Descriptions, (b) History of the Texts, (c) Establishment of the Texts, (d) Literary History of the Texts, and (e) Preface to the Texts. The format for the Bibliographical Descriptions has been drawn from Bowers' Principles of Bibliographical Description. Each of the editions collated for the present text has been described in quasi-facsimile; the accounts in this section are as complete as possible so that what appears on each page of an edition can be readily determined. The History of the Texts is an evaluation of the interrelationship of the editions collated for each play; a filiation of these editions is presented which indicates that the second issue of the London 1732 edition of The Mock Doctor and the London 1733 edition of The Miser are the only authoritative texts. The rationale behind the editorial alterations in each copy-text is discussed in the Establishment of the Texts. In the Literary History of the Texts, an analysis is made of the precise nature of these adaptations from Molière. This section illustrates that, while Fielding adhered closely to the text of Le Médecin Malgré Lui in writing The Mock Doctor, he allowed himself much greater latitude in adapting L'Avare for the English stage; Fielding's Miser incorporates extensive alterations in plot and characterization, with the result that the denouement is brought about more humorously and with less contrivance than in L'Avare.

The format for each play, described in the Preface to the Texts, follows that set forth by Bowers in his edition of Dekker's plays. The footnotes for each play record all substantive and semi-substantive departures in the present text from that edition chosen as copy-text. The appendices for each play include: (a) explanatory notes, (b) a list of editorial alterations in the accidentals of the copy-text, (c) an historical collation of substantive and semi-substantive variants in the editions collated, and (d) a list of line-end hyphenations which of necessity have been altered from the copy-text. The explanatory notes are intended to clarify obscure words and references and to provide information not easily found in modern-day dictionaries and encyclopedias. The list of editorial alterations in the accidentals of the copy-text comprises those emendations which do not substantially affect the meaning of the contexts in which they appear. Alterations of this nature have been kept to a minimum; no attempt has been made to regularize spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The historical collation serves primarily as a record of the corruption of the text. This section contains all of the substantive readings which were rejected in the copy-text as listed in the footnotes, all rejected substantive variants in the editions collated, and all accidental alterations which achieve semi-substantive significance.

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