Chrononhotonthologos
Although the play has been seen as nonsense verse, it was also seen and celebrated at the time as a satire on Robert Walpole and Queen Caroline, wife of George II.
It concerns King Chrononhotonthologos and Queen Fadladinida of Queerummania who face an invasion by the Antipodeans (who are inverted people from the other side of the world).
The Antipodeans, who have their heads where their midsections should be, who walk upon their hands, etc., advance in columns (literally standing upon each other) rather than ranks, and the performance has a great dumbshow with them.
Carey consistently undercuts the lofty expectations of the kingdom-in-crisis plot by having the feared enemy be the Antipodean (or Acrostic) and by having the characters travesty the repetitive verse of tragedy.
When King Chrononhotonthologos visits General Bombardinian in his tent after single-handedly destroying the Antipodean army with a glare, the general orders, Traverse from Pole to Pole; sail round the World, Bring every Eatable that can be eat: The King shall eat, tho' all Mankind be starv'd.
These tongue twisters are nonsense, but they are also parodies of the ignorantly contrived exotic names used by contemporary opera and tragedy.
King Chrononhotonthologos begins the play offended by sleeplessness, declaring, These Royal Eyes thou (Somnus) never more shall close.
However, Chrononhotonthologos is a far more dangerously political satire than Gay's The Beggar's Opera or Henry Fielding's Tom Thumb had been.
The real life political events that are partially encoded in the play concern Caroline of Ansbach and George II.
Mrs. Howard's influence was diminished to nothing, and George II, although still disliking his wife, did not involve himself in politics, leaving the field clear for her to continue to give power to Robert Walpole.
John Gay had been promised patronage by Mrs. Howard, and that doomed his chances when George II became king, for it earned him the enmity of Queen Caroline.
The friends and admirers of Gay (including Alexander Pope and Henry Carey) regarded this political game as a personal and moral betrayal.
The nonsense verse and the immediate parody of opera are entertaining, but the political satire hidden beneath the frivolity was one component of the play's success.
The nonsense achieves part of its humor by fulfilling the structural and phonetic requirements of an extant form, but substituting silly syllables for meaningful ones, thereby allowing the listener or reader to enjoy the suggestion that the usual words are empty placeholders (e.g. when Jonathan Swift's King of Lilliput has a royal title ending in "Ully Mully Goo," the nonsense sounds and weighs the same as the titles of real kings and, implicitly, is just as meaningful).
Finally, in the context of Augustan drama, Carey's play contributed to the sentiment that led to the establishment of the Licensing Act 1737, when the theaters would be subject to official censorship.
