by Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was born in 1707 into a family with aristocratic connections. His father, Edmund, had ancestors who were earls, and his mother, Sarah, was daughter of the judge Sir Henry Gould. Their son Henry attended the elite Eton College, but then found himself forced to earn a living in his early twenties when a disputed inheritance claim left him without support. At this point, the young Fielding turned to playwriting and political journalism. In all, he would write some 25 plays, many satirizing the political corruption of the times. So scathing was his ridicule of corrupt government ministers, particularly of the powerful prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, that Parliament passed the 1737 Licensing Act, by which all new plays had to be approved and licensed by the lord chamberlain before production. This exercise in government...