Rape upon Rape
The play was shown four more times at the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre during that December under a new title, The Coffee-House Politician.
There is little information known as to why Fielding retitled the play, although Cross and Dudden both speculate that it was based on objections to the title.
[2] Fielding's original title may well allude to the vogue for 'she tragedies' popular from the late seventeenth into the eighteenth century which focus upon the exploitation of female suffering.
Charles Macklin, playing Porer and Brazencourt, met with success and ended up stealing parts of the show.
[7] After this set up, Fielding introduces a traditional comedic love plot in which Hilaret contemplates running off and marrying Constant.
Her father, Politic, stops her from running off with Constant to argue about the role of private and public concerns in regards to love.
The play has obvious political connections as title refers to the rape case of Colonel Francis Charteris, dubbed "Rapemaster General of Great Britain".
"[11] However, the use of "rape" in the play is more than just forced sexual intercourse; it is used to describe all abuses of freedom and the corruption of power.
[12] The title, without needing to actually include Charteris, allows for the play to serve as a critique of abuses of power and immorality.
The type of character also appeared in multiple plays that Fielding would have known, including: Toby Clincher in Sir Harry Wildair (1701) and Postscript in The Generous Husband: or, The Coffee-House Politician (1711).
The general idea behind Politick are an incarnation of the news of the day and his discussions involve many events that were contemporaneous with the play.
Other works use the same character type, including Butler's Hudibras, Thomas Baker's The Humour of the Age (1701), Swift's Project for the Advancement of Religion, and the Reformation of Manners (1709), and Christopher Bullock's The Per-Juror (1717).
However, as Thomas Lockwood points out, "These earlier stage justices are precedents more than sources, as the scope and development of the Squeezum character are beyond anything to be found in these other examples.
It was shown in Boston, New Haven, and Toronto in 1960, Melbourne in 1961, again at the Mermaid Theatre in 1962, and later Pasadena and Fort Lauderdale in 1968 and at East Haddam and the West End in 1969.
[20] E. P. Whipple, in an 1849 review of Roscoe's biography of Fielding, declared that Murphy would have to be drunk to have actually appreciated the play.
