This is Fielding’s translation of Molière’s L’Avare. The American edition from 1823 I found online, opens its preface with observations that “This piece is a plagiarism from Molière, but it might well pass for a tree of English growth, for the characters are copies from nature, and nature is everywhere the same.” Intriguing as the beliefs behind this phrase are, here I’ll simply be offering my usual miscellany of thoughts and responses.

The miser of the play’s title is called an old man Lovegold, and we learn at the play’s opening that he is in love with the young Mariana. Lovegold’s son, Frederick, is also in love with Mariana. Now this is not an uncommon position for a play, as something identical is to be found in The Anatomist, and, I’m sure, other works of this time. Ultimately, the ending is as you would expect: Lovegold is tricked out of his money, and ends up financing Frederick’s married life with Angelina.

The miser is such a stock figure that some of the more curious things to say about this play concern the way in which the tropes of miserliness are propagated and interrogated. Consider Lovegold’s relations with servants. When Lovegold is organising a dinner, his cook, James, immediately starts to assess the cost, causing Lovegold to exlaim that “my children, my servants, my relations, can pronounce nothing but money!” In part, this is just another example of Lovegold’s one-dimensional view of the world; yet, at the same time, it also rings true: this is a play obsessed with money, and even if we are clearly shown that miserliness is wrong, we are still obliged to accept it at some level as one of the conditions of the comedy. If we abjured all need for money to be happy, why then is it so important for the miser’s gold to end up in the hands of the young lovers? I suppose what I’m getting here is the way the whole play is warped around financial issues, to the point that other aspects vanished. The best example of this is another servant-master conversation, this time between Lovegold and Mariana’s maid Lappet, whose earthy innuendo becomes something else when it enters Lovegold’s head. Lovegold is telling her about his concerns over the lack of material gain in a marriage with Mariana.

LOVEGOLD In short Lappet, I must touch, touch, touch, something real.
LAPPET Never fear, you shall touch something real. I have heard talk of a certain country where she has a very pretty freehold; which shall be put into your hands.
LOVEGOLD Nay, if it were a copyhold I should be glad to touch it: but there is another thing that disturbs me.

And the conversation moves on so swiftly that Lappet’s bawdy reference to her mistress’s private parts hardly leaves a mark. Indeed, I’m still slightly unsure about whether there is meant to be something of ‘country matters’ here or not, so strong is the influence of pecuniary power over all.

For all the prevalence of talk of money and its potency in this play, power relations are not what they might first appear. After all, Lovegold may be rich, but his miserly anxiety makes him the weakest and most vulnerable figure in this world. He stands only to lose in any exchange, both in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. When Lovegold meets Mariana, the young woman’s taste for gifts (encouraged by her acquisitive mother) soon prompts the anguished aside of “I shall be undone! I wish I was buried while I have one farthing left!” from Lovegold. Much later in the play, at the beginning of the third act, Frederick’s servant Ramilie gives the essence of such vulnerability when he rushes up to his master, with a box:

FREDERICK What’s done?
RAMILIE I have it under my arm, sir; – here it is!
FREDERICK What? What?
RAMILIE Your father’s soul, sir, his money.

It’s enough to make you almost feel sorry for poor Lovegold.