The London Merchant

A tragedy that follows the downfall of a young apprentice due to his association with a prostitute, it is remarkable for its use of middle and working class characters.

By 1730, he began writing plays such as George Barnwell (also known as The London Merchant), Fatal Curiosity, Silvia, and The Country Burial.

"[2] Lillo may have taken his title The London Merchant as a twist to make real the fictional play featured in Francis Beaumont's Knight of the Burning Pestle.

Sarah Millwood, a London prostitute, schemes to find some innocent young man "who, having never injured women, [would] apprehend no injury from them" (I.iii) to seduce and exploit for money.

This evokes new feelings of guilt from George, and he is prompted to steal a large sum of money from his employer's funds to give to her to amend the situation.

After giving her the money, George feels unworthy of his kind master, Thorowgood, so he runs away and leaves a note for Trueman confessing his crime.

At first she refuses him since his employer's money is no longer at his disposal, but she quickly remembers that he has previously mentioned a rich uncle.

Producers strove to remove these aspects from theater to ensure that the audience did not model themselves after the immoral decisions of characters.

The London Merchant follows this general trend and goes further to include a moral message intended to be learned by apprentices watching the play.

In the dedication to "The London Merchant", Lillo argues that "Plays founded on moral tales in private life may be of admirable use by carrying conviction to the mind with such irresistible force as to engage all the faculties and powers of the soul in the cause of virtue, by stifling vice in its first principles."

[4] He suggests that due to accounts from Thorowgood, Trueman, and Maria, as well as evidence from his actions in the play, Barnwell is at his essence a good character despite his crimes, and the audience should sympathize with and learn from him.

[4] Because of this, she is not offered the same "redemption" that is granted to Barnwell at the end of the play, as he is accepted by Trueman and dies respected by other characters.

[4] Daniel Defoe argued that the trade of the merchants and the land of the elites were codependent, supporting and supplying one another with necessities.

Barnwell describes their union as an "intercourse of woe" instructing Trueman to "pour all your griefs into my breast and in exchange take mine" (Act V, scene ii).

While there are obvious homoerotic implications to this dialogue, its presence in the play shows how the exchange created by merchants helps to sustain society.

In addition to exchange, another economic element that serves as a metaphor in the play is excess, which is most strongly exhibited through passion.

Hynes describes that the most dangerous thing about passion is its insatiability, because "erotic love, unlike trade, includes no machinery of impulse and abatement, no way of rationally regulating itself".

[7] In terms of economics, two men would exchange a young man, and with him came money to pay for his training, food, and boarding.

[13] The story is adapted from the ballad, George Barnwell, but the plot has been modified to strengthen its connection to the urban lower classes.

The London Merchant provided a tempered breakdown of a complicated social issue and simplified it into a parable about personal loyalty and sexual appetite, making it easy for the masses to identify with the characters.

Where tragedies had previously been reserved for the nobility, Lillo brought the concept to the everyman character and further complicated his idea by including the situation of acquisition through exchange, rather than through conquest.

[16] The London Merchant originally closed with a gallows scene that Lillo was encouraged by his associates to cut from the production of the play.

During the eighteenth century, six times a year, the government would execute a large number of people at Tyburn for the crime of theft.

[18] Polly Fields' work examines The London Merchant through the lens of the economic theories of the time and those that Lillo was known to subscribe to.

One of, if not the only character that Lillo truly expands is Millwood, a woman who uses her body and her wits to convince George Barnwell to steal and even kill to supply her with money.

Lillo's background as a jeweler gave him a unique perspective on the economy as he was a solid member of the bourgeois class and an avid participant in capitalism.

Her rebellion continues to death, as the last scene in which she appears in the regular text is a scathing criticism of the hierarchy and hypocritical nature of men and the economy.

This is reinforced with the opening scene in the play where Millwood entices George Barnwell, and Lucy, is standing nearby as an apprentice, quietly watching her master and learning the trade.

(Fields, 1999)[citation needed] Lillo's work reinforces bourgeois values while changing the face of eighteenth-century theater with a tragedy of the middle class.

[citation needed] Thomas Skinner Surr adapted the play into the three-volume novel George Barnwell, published in 1798.