SOURCE: Lockwood, Thomas. “Theatrical Fielding.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 32, no. 2 (fall 1999): 105-10.

In the following excerpt, Lockwood claims that, with its dramatic elements, Shamela shows the current of Fielding's theatrical imagination.

What I mean by this title is not so much the Fielding who worked in theater as the Fielding in whom theater itself worked and kept on working, imaginatively, all his life. From his playhouse experience, he took or was taken by a certain deeply theatrical habit of imagination that bathes the material of his post-dramatic writing career and, in some cases, I would argue, underpins the creative structure of that writing. I am talking about something more or other than a dramatic imagination, which Fielding had in deficient supply at best, even when he was writing plays. So I use the word “theatrical” to suggest that this habit of imagination takes in the whole ensemble...