H enry F ielding , Plays, vol. 1, 1728–1731, ed. Thomas Lockwood. Pp. xxviii + 780 (The Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. £130.00 (ISBN 0 19 925789 2)

H enry F ielding , Plays, vol. 1, 1728–1731, ed. Thomas Lockwood. Pp. xxviii + 780 (The Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. £130.00 (ISBN 0 19 925789 2)

Abstract

NOTES AND QUERIES December 2005 speak language, then, but language speaks writers. KIRK C OMBE Denison University doi:10.1093/notesj/gji469 ß The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org HENRY FIELDING, Plays, vol. 1, 1728–1731, ed. Thomas Lockwood. Pp. xxviii þ 780 (The Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. £130.00 (ISBN 0 19 925789 2). THIS is the first of three projected volumes of Fielding’s dramatic writings in the Wesleyan edition. It includes some of his best-known works for the theatre: Tom Thumb in both its original and its revised version, The Tragedy of Tragedies; both the 1730 and 1734 texts of The Author’s Farce, which through the work of Pat Rogers and Brean Hammond has become key to the history of authorial self-consciousness; and The Coffee-House Politician, made famous in modern times by its afterlife as the Lionel Bart musical, Lock Up Your Daughters (1959). There are also three rarities. Fielding began his stage career in awe of Congreve, and Love in Several Masques and The Temple Beau are reformed intrigue comedies of familiar pattern. The Letter-Writers, first performed in 1731, also has its roots