Henry Carey (writer)
Encyclopedia
Henry Carey was an English
poet, dramatist and song-writer. He is remembered as an anti-Walpolean
satirist and also as a patriot. Several of his melodies continue to be sung today, and he was widely praised in the generation after his death. Because he worked in anonymity, selling his own compositions to others to pass off as their own, contemporary scholarship can only be certain of some of his poetry, and a great deal of the music he composed was written for theatrical incidental music. However, under his own name and hand, he was a prolific song writer and balladeer, and he wrote the lyrics for almost all of these songs. Further, he wrote numerous operas and plays. His life is illustrative of the professional author in the early 18th century. Without inheritance or title or governmental position, he wrote for all of the remunerative venues, and yet he also kept his own political point of view and was able to score significant points against the ministry of the day. Further, he was one of the leading lights of the new "Patriotic"
movement in drama.
and The Gentleman's Magazine
said in 1795 that he was the illegitimate son of George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax
. Carey did not make the claim himself, but he did use "Savile" as the name of three of his male children, and these corresponded to the births of Halifax's own three sons. Furthermore, he dedicated all of his major works to Halifax (Gillespie 127). His biography in The Gentleman's Magazine also stated that Carey received a "generous annuity" from the Savile family, but that seems less likely and remains unconfirmed. The fact that, even when his most popular plays were on the boards, Carey would write for pay argues against such an annuity.
Aside from rumor, it is impossible to be sure of Carey's parents. It is possible that a Henry and a Mary Carey, both school teachers, were his parents. Indeed his first profession, according to Richard Hawkins
, was as a music teacher in a boarding school
for the middle gentry, a position he held while also working as an author, so these two Careys are the most likely candidates for at least his surrogate, if not his biological, parents.
, friend of Jonathan Swift
's and other Tory
wits, Carey worked as a "subaltern" to James Worsdale
later in his life, in 1734, when he was best paid and most famous. Since he was writing for pay when he had theatrical successes, it seems reasonable that he had been hiring his pen for quite some time. In the 18th century, he appears to have done hack work for the periodicals of the day. His first accredited work was a weekly publication of a set of serialized romance fictions entitled Records of Love in January through March of 1710. This work was aimed at a female readership and was written with a clear expectation of an intelligent, educated, and populous set of readers. He also appears as a singer of Italian
and English entre-acte songs at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
around 1710 (Gillespie 127). His first poetry
publication came in 1713, the year of the height of the Tory ministry under Queen Anne with Poems on Several Occasions.
In 1714, Carey had a job as a psalmist at Lincoln's Inn
church and also at Drury Lane
. He performed there with his music students. Critically, the Tory ministry fell with the death of Anne, and Robert Walpole's Whigs
were on the rise. The leaders of the former government, Robert Harley and Henry St. John
, were accused of treason
over the coming months, and, while St. John fled, Harley was imprisoned in the Tower of London
. In 1715, Carey wrote his first play, an afterpiece
entitled The Contrivances. On July 13, 1717, Carey lost both of his jobs, at Drury Lane and at Lincoln's Inn, for a singular political statement. Harley had just been freed from the Tower and had attended Lincoln's Inn Church, and Carey set Psalm 124
to a jaunty, celebratory tune and sang it. The Psalm concerns the Exodus
of the Israelites, announcing that
It concludes with "Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped."
Even though Carey lost those two jobs, he was soon back at Drury Lane, and he married Elizabeth Pearks in September. He produced his second play, Hanging and Marriage, in 1722. The theatrical seasons of 1723 and 1724 were dominated by pantomime
and spectacle
plays in London (inducing a young William Hogarth
to satirize the abandonment of drama for puppets), and Carey worked providing the music to some of these productions. In 1723, he wrote the music for Harlequin
Dr. Faust
us (text, such as it was, by Barton Booth
) at Drury Lane. From 1723-1733, Carey was the "unofficial composer in residence" for Drury Lane, and he wrote and performed much of the music between acts, preludes, and epilogue music, as well as the music called for by dances and other entertainments in the plays (Gillespie 127).
Henry Carey never ceased to be a composer nor to work as a singer and musician. Even as he began to have greater success as a poet and playwright, he continued to work in music. Furthermore, Carey worked in a theatre that was associated with the Whig party. Colley Cibber
, Robert Wilks
, and Barton Booth were patronized first by Joseph Addison
and his circle and then by Robert Walpole
and his circle, and yet Carey appears to have been an unambiguous supporter of the Tory ministry of Henry St. John
and Harley and the literary circle of Alexander Pope
. When, therefore, Pope satirized the theatrical vacuity of the pantomime stage in The Dunciad
, he was aiming not at the musicians and composers, but rather at the replacement of drama with spectacle.
(1725), satirized Ambrose Philips
who was a frequent and famous target of Alexander Pope
's wrath. Philips had written a series of ode
s to "all persons", from Robert Walpole
to the mother in the nursery, and the latter provided the occasion for Carey to exaggerate. Philips had employed a 2.5' iambic line, and Carey devastatingly claimed that the half-line matched Philips's halfwitted conception. The poem was so successful that Carey himself began to be known as "Namby Pamby Carey" (while Philips became known as "Namby Pamby"), and the poem even came to be used as children's literature
. Furthermore, the term "namby pamby" came into widespread usage to describe any nonsensical frippery. "Sally in Our Alley
", one of Carey's songs, was also exceptionally successful, and it has been performed by many singers through to the modern era.
Carey was, after Namby Pamby, a well known figure among those opposed to Robert Walpole, and the poem had been praised by Alexander Pope (as "Sally in our Alley" had been by Joseph Addison
). Carey was an admirer and subscriber to the opera
s of Handel
, but he, like John Gay
and Alexander Pope, thought that the operatic stars were absurd. Therefore, he began to satirize opera in 1726 and in that year he produced Faustina, or, the Roman Songstress, a satire of Faustina Bordoni
. Faustina was at that time in a hissing fight with Francesca Cuzzoni
and actually came to blows the next year during a performance of Handel. In the next year, he wrote Mocking is Catching to satirize Senesino
, the Italian
castrati opera star.
In 1730, Carey may have been the first to sing "God Save the King" at a Patriot Whig meeting, and there is some reason to attribute the song to him. Also that year, he added music and introduced ballad
s for his previous play, Hanging and Marriage, and put the play on as The Clown's Stratagem. He used the basic text of the play again, with new music, for Betty, or, The Country Bumpkins in 1732. These two characteristics—a love of opera and frustration at its abuses and a love of patriotism and frustration at Walpole's policies—would show up in all of Carey's professional works.
As a playwright
, Carey was a significant figure in the re-emergence of satirical
drama in the 1730s. After the success of Namby Pamby, Carey was favored by the older generation of Tory
wits and the Scriblerus Club
. After John Gay
's invention of the ballad opera
with The Beggar's Opera
, Carey turned to writing musical burlesque
s. He wrote a great deal of music and some librettos for other playwrights during this period.
In 1732, J. F. Lampe, Thomas Arne, J. C. Smith and Henry Carey formed the English Opera project. Their goal was to revive serious opera in English. Together, they formed the English Opera Company, and Carey wrote two librettos, for Amelia (set by Lampe and acted at the Little Theatre at The Haymarket
(an opposition playhouse favored by Henry Fielding)) and Teraminta (set by Smith and performed at Lincoln's Inn Fields
). Amelia was a great popular success, but the opera company failed, and the project came to nought (Gillespie 128).
Having satirized the foreignness of opera, in 1734 Carey turned his attention to the poorly written, mass produced tragedy. Chrononhotonthologos
was a parody of bombastic tragedy
and, particularly, the very hack-written spectacle
plays he had collaborated on at Drury Lane. The play was daring, for it was a satire
of Caroline of Ansbach
and George II of the United Kingdom. The Queen was attacked for her alliance with Robert Walpole and her general caprice. It also had a generous amount of music by Carey. If contemporary allies understood the criticisms inherent in the play, it was also possible to see it as a burlesque
with nonsense verse
. He followed that up with the ballad farce
of The Honest Yorkshire-Man.
Interestingly, although Carey's attempt to revive serious, patriotic English opera did not work, his attempts at parody
and satire
in opera did. He had previously satirized the exoticism and emptiness of the English public's love of prima donna
singers and castrati, but in 1737, he adapted The Dragon of Wantley
from a Lincolnshire
folk ballad
into a full mock-opera. This literary adaptation was a step beyond adapting literary plays into ballads (as John Gay
had done), for it began with a folk ballad and transformed it into opera. The play, with music by John Frederick Lampe
, punctured the vacuous operatic conventions and pointed a satirical barb at Robert Walpole and his taxation policies. The play was a huge success. Its initial run was sixty-nine performances in the first season, which exceeded even The Beggar's Opera. The play debuted at the Haymarket, where its coded attack on Walpole would have been clear, but its long run occurred after it moved to Covent Garden, which had a much greater capacity for staging. Part of its satire of opera was that it had all of the words sung, including the recitative
s and da capo
aria
s (Gillespie 128). The play itself is very brief on the page, as it relied extensively on absurd theatrics, dances, and other non-textual entertainments. The Musical Entertainer from 1739 contains engravings showing how the staging was performed (Gillespie 128).
From 1737 to 1740, he wrote The Musical Century in one Hundred English Ballads in two volumes. Although Carey complained that his enemies were calling him "Ballad-maker," the work was praised later by Charles Burney
, and in the 19th century opinion of Carey's clear, simple, and memorable ballad tunes went even higher. Also in 1738, he helped found the Fund for Decayed Musicians, and he produced Margery, or, a Worse Plague than the Dragon, a sequel to The Dragon of Wantley.
He had another popular success in 1739 with Nancy, or, The Parting Lovers, a patriotic play about a sailor leaving his beloved to fight against the Spanish
. As with other works, Carey's point was primarily patriotic. Patriotic plays at the time were often demurrals of official policy and England's foreign entanglements. Nancy was set as well as written by Carey, and its main characters are a sailor, Nancy, and a Press Gang officer. The play broke new ground in explicitly treating a contemporary matter of social concern in song (Gillespie 128).
Carey's son, Charles, died in 1743, and Carey hanged himself at his home in London later that year.
While the anonymous account in The Gentleman's Magazine says that Carey had an annuity, he left a pregnant second wife (Sarah, whom he married between 1729 and 1733) and three dependent children, and both Hawkins and The London Stage say that he was despondent over financial difficulties. Grief over the death of his son is another possible explanation of his suicide, and Suzanne Aspden speculates that Carey suffered from paranoia
, while others have suspected that he had depression
or other maladies. His daughter Anne would become an actress and bear an illegitimate son, Edmund Carey, who would later be known as Edmund Kean
.
, would cite Carey as a predecessor for his tongue twisters and nonsense verse in Namby Pamby and Chrononhotonthologos
. At the same time, Carey's productions were noted in his own day for their political acuity and bravery (if not foolhardiness). He was willing to offend and suffer the consequences of his convictions, but he made his political statements in a diverting and apparently frivolous manner, thereby allowing his friends to respond to his politics and his enemies to dismiss his levity. In the Macaulay-dominated view of literary history of the early 20th-century, Carey was represented as a balladeer whose fundamental moroseness was proven by his shameful suicide, and his plays, now devoid of topicality, were set as broad entertainments.
Musicologists
have recognized, however, the subtle gifts necessary for Carey's music, and theater historians are beginning to recognize the context of his plays. He was the most prolific English song composer of 1715-1740, and he wrote his own lyrics to all but twelve of his two hundred and fifty songs (Gillespie 128). He was responsible for linking the vocal style of Henry Purcell
to the later style of Arne by combining popular English folks song and tavern song with Italian flourishes.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
poet, dramatist and song-writer. He is remembered as an anti-Walpolean
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
satirist and also as a patriot. Several of his melodies continue to be sung today, and he was widely praised in the generation after his death. Because he worked in anonymity, selling his own compositions to others to pass off as their own, contemporary scholarship can only be certain of some of his poetry, and a great deal of the music he composed was written for theatrical incidental music. However, under his own name and hand, he was a prolific song writer and balladeer, and he wrote the lyrics for almost all of these songs. Further, he wrote numerous operas and plays. His life is illustrative of the professional author in the early 18th century. Without inheritance or title or governmental position, he wrote for all of the remunerative venues, and yet he also kept his own political point of view and was able to score significant points against the ministry of the day. Further, he was one of the leading lights of the new "Patriotic"
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
movement in drama.
Early life
Henry Carey was born in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
said in 1795 that he was the illegitimate son of George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax PC was an English statesman, writer, and politician.-Family and early life, 1633–1667:...
. Carey did not make the claim himself, but he did use "Savile" as the name of three of his male children, and these corresponded to the births of Halifax's own three sons. Furthermore, he dedicated all of his major works to Halifax (Gillespie 127). His biography in The Gentleman's Magazine also stated that Carey received a "generous annuity" from the Savile family, but that seems less likely and remains unconfirmed. The fact that, even when his most popular plays were on the boards, Carey would write for pay argues against such an annuity.
Aside from rumor, it is impossible to be sure of Carey's parents. It is possible that a Henry and a Mary Carey, both school teachers, were his parents. Indeed his first profession, according to Richard Hawkins
Richard Hawkins
thumb|250px|right|Sir Richard HawkinsAdmiral Sir Richard Hawkins was a 17th century English seaman, explorer and Elizabethan "Sea Dog", and was the son of Admiral Sir John Hawkins....
, was as a music teacher in a boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
for the middle gentry, a position he held while also working as an author, so these two Careys are the most likely candidates for at least his surrogate, if not his biological, parents.
Early musical and literary work
Scholars have trouble identifying Carey's first works, because he was probably writing anonymously. According to Laetitia PilkingtonLaetitia Pilkington
Laetitia Pilkington was a celebrated Anglo-Irish poet and important source of information on the early 18th century. Her Memoirs are the source of much of what is known of the personalities and habits of Jonathan Swift and others.Laetitia was born of two distinguished families...
, friend of Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
's and other Tory
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
wits, Carey worked as a "subaltern" to James Worsdale
James Worsdale
James Worsdale was an Irish and English portrait painter, actor, literary fraud, and libertine whose lively conversation, wittiness, and boldness allowed him to move among the highest circles of literary life...
later in his life, in 1734, when he was best paid and most famous. Since he was writing for pay when he had theatrical successes, it seems reasonable that he had been hiring his pen for quite some time. In the 18th century, he appears to have done hack work for the periodicals of the day. His first accredited work was a weekly publication of a set of serialized romance fictions entitled Records of Love in January through March of 1710. This work was aimed at a female readership and was written with a clear expectation of an intelligent, educated, and populous set of readers. He also appears as a singer of Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and English entre-acte songs at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...
around 1710 (Gillespie 127). His first poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
publication came in 1713, the year of the height of the Tory ministry under Queen Anne with Poems on Several Occasions.
In 1714, Carey had a job as a psalmist at Lincoln's Inn
Lincoln's Inn
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...
church and also at Drury Lane
Drury Lane
Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster....
. He performed there with his music students. Critically, the Tory ministry fell with the death of Anne, and Robert Walpole's Whigs
British Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
were on the rise. The leaders of the former government, Robert Harley and Henry St. John
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his atheism. In 1715 he supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the...
, were accused of treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
over the coming months, and, while St. John fled, Harley was imprisoned in the Tower of London
Tower of London
Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...
. In 1715, Carey wrote his first play, an afterpiece
Afterpiece
An afterpiece is a short, usually humorous one-act playlet or musical work following the main attraction, the full-length play, and concluding the theatrical evening. This short comedy, farce, opera or pantomime was a popular theatrical form in the 18th and 19th centuries...
entitled The Contrivances. On July 13, 1717, Carey lost both of his jobs, at Drury Lane and at Lincoln's Inn, for a singular political statement. Harley had just been freed from the Tower and had attended Lincoln's Inn Church, and Carey set Psalm 124
Psalm 124
Psalm 124 is the 124th psalm from the Book of Psalms. It is one of fourteen psalms that begins with the words "A song of ascents" ....
to a jaunty, celebratory tune and sang it. The Psalm concerns the Exodus
The Exodus
The Exodus is the story of the departure of the Israelites from ancient Egypt described in the Hebrew Bible.Narrowly defined, the term refers only to the departure from Egypt described in the Book of Exodus; more widely, it takes in the subsequent law-givings and wanderings in the wilderness...
of the Israelites, announcing that
- "If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us:
- Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:
- Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul."
It concludes with "Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped."
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
and spectacle
Spectacle
In general, spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Derived in Middle English from c. 1340 as "specially prepared or arranged display" it was borrowed from Old French spectacle, itself a reflection of the Latin spectaculum "a show" from spectare "to view,...
plays in London (inducing a young William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
to satirize the abandonment of drama for puppets), and Carey worked providing the music to some of these productions. In 1723, he wrote the music for Harlequin
Harlequin
Harlequin or Arlecchino in Italian, Arlequin in French, and Arlequín in Spanish is the most popularly known of the zanni or comic servant characters from the Italian Commedia dell'arte and its descendant, the Harlequinade.-Origins:...
Dr. Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
us (text, such as it was, by Barton Booth
Barton Booth
Barton Booth was one of the most famous dramatic actors of the first part of the 18th century.Booth was from Lancashire and was educated at Westminster School, where his success in the Latin play Andria gave him an inclination for the stage...
) at Drury Lane. From 1723-1733, Carey was the "unofficial composer in residence" for Drury Lane, and he wrote and performed much of the music between acts, preludes, and epilogue music, as well as the music called for by dances and other entertainments in the plays (Gillespie 127).
Henry Carey never ceased to be a composer nor to work as a singer and musician. Even as he began to have greater success as a poet and playwright, he continued to work in music. Furthermore, Carey worked in a theatre that was associated with the Whig party. Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber
Colley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style...
, Robert Wilks
Robert Wilks
Robert Wilks was a British actor and theatrical manager who was one of the leading managers of Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in its heyday of the 1710s...
, and Barton Booth were patronized first by Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
and his circle and then by Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
and his circle, and yet Carey appears to have been an unambiguous supporter of the Tory ministry of Henry St. John
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke was an English politician, government official and political philosopher. He was a leader of the Tories, and supported the Church of England politically despite his atheism. In 1715 he supported the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 which sought to overthrow the...
and Harley and the literary circle of Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
. When, therefore, Pope satirized the theatrical vacuity of the pantomime stage in The Dunciad
The Dunciad
The Dunciad is a landmark literary satire by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times. The first version was published in 1728 anonymously. The second version, the Dunciad Variorum was published anonymously in 1729. The New Dunciad, in four books and with a...
, he was aiming not at the musicians and composers, but rather at the replacement of drama with spectacle.
Namby Pamby and anti-Walpolean satire
His poem, Namby PambyNamby Pamby
Namby Pamby is a term for affected, weak, and maudlin speech/verse. However, its origins are in Namby Pamby , by Henry Carey.Carey wrote the poem as a satire of Ambrose Philips and published it in his Poems on Several Occasions...
(1725), satirized Ambrose Philips
Ambrose Philips
-Life:He was born in Shropshire of a Leicestershire family. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1699. He seems to have lived chiefly at Cambridge until he resigned his fellowship in 1708, and his pastorals were probably written in...
who was a frequent and famous target of Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
's wrath. Philips had written a series of ode
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...
s to "all persons", from Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
to the mother in the nursery, and the latter provided the occasion for Carey to exaggerate. Philips had employed a 2.5' iambic line, and Carey devastatingly claimed that the half-line matched Philips's halfwitted conception. The poem was so successful that Carey himself began to be known as "Namby Pamby Carey" (while Philips became known as "Namby Pamby"), and the poem even came to be used as children's literature
Children's literature
Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...
. Furthermore, the term "namby pamby" came into widespread usage to describe any nonsensical frippery. "Sally in Our Alley
Sally in Our Alley
Sally in Our Alley is a British romantic comedy drama film made at Ealing Studios. It was directed by Maurice Elvey and starred Gracie Fields, Ian Hunter, and Florence Desmond....
", one of Carey's songs, was also exceptionally successful, and it has been performed by many singers through to the modern era.
Carey was, after Namby Pamby, a well known figure among those opposed to Robert Walpole, and the poem had been praised by Alexander Pope (as "Sally in our Alley" had been by Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
). Carey was an admirer and subscriber to the opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s of Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
, but he, like John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
and Alexander Pope, thought that the operatic stars were absurd. Therefore, he began to satirize opera in 1726 and in that year he produced Faustina, or, the Roman Songstress, a satire of Faustina Bordoni
Faustina Bordoni
Faustina Bordoni was an Italian mezzo-soprano.-Early career:She was born in Venice and brought up under the protection of the aristocratic brother composers Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello. Her singing teacher was another composer, Michelangelo Gasparini...
. Faustina was at that time in a hissing fight with Francesca Cuzzoni
Francesca Cuzzoni
Francesca Cuzzoni was an Italian operatic soprano of the Baroque era.-Early career:Cuzzoni was born in Parma. Her father, Angelo, was a professional violinist, and her singing teacher was Francesco Lanzi. She made her debut in her home city in 1714, singing in La virtù coronata, o Il Fernando by...
and actually came to blows the next year during a performance of Handel. In the next year, he wrote Mocking is Catching to satirize Senesino
Senesino
Senesino was a celebrated Italian contralto castrato, particularly remembered today for his long collaboration with the composer George Frideric Handel.-Early life and career:...
, the Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
castrati opera star.
In 1730, Carey may have been the first to sing "God Save the King" at a Patriot Whig meeting, and there is some reason to attribute the song to him. Also that year, he added music and introduced ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
s for his previous play, Hanging and Marriage, and put the play on as The Clown's Stratagem. He used the basic text of the play again, with new music, for Betty, or, The Country Bumpkins in 1732. These two characteristics—a love of opera and frustration at its abuses and a love of patriotism and frustration at Walpole's policies—would show up in all of Carey's professional works.
Carey as dramatic satirist
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
, Carey was a significant figure in the re-emergence of satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
drama in the 1730s. After the success of Namby Pamby, Carey was favored by the older generation of Tory
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
wits and the Scriblerus Club
Scriblerus Club
The Scriblerus Club was an informal group of friends that included Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, John Arbuthnot, Henry St. John and Thomas Parnell. The group was founded in 1712 and lasted until the death of the founders, starting in 1732 and ending in 1745, with Pope and Swift being...
. After John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
's invention of the ballad opera
Ballad opera
The term ballad opera is used to refer to a genre of English stage entertainment originating in the 18th century and continuing to develop in the following century and later. There are many types of ballad opera...
with The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
, Carey turned to writing musical burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
s. He wrote a great deal of music and some librettos for other playwrights during this period.
In 1732, J. F. Lampe, Thomas Arne, J. C. Smith and Henry Carey formed the English Opera project. Their goal was to revive serious opera in English. Together, they formed the English Opera Company, and Carey wrote two librettos, for Amelia (set by Lampe and acted at the Little Theatre at The Haymarket
The Haymarket
Haymarket is a street in the St. James's district of the City of Westminster, London. It runs from Piccadilly Circus at the north to Pall Mall at the south...
(an opposition playhouse favored by Henry Fielding)) and Teraminta (set by Smith and performed at Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London, UK. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in developing London", as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner observes...
). Amelia was a great popular success, but the opera company failed, and the project came to nought (Gillespie 128).
Having satirized the foreignness of opera, in 1734 Carey turned his attention to the poorly written, mass produced tragedy. Chrononhotonthologos
Chrononhotonthologos
Chrononhotonthologos is a satirical play by the English poet and songwriter Henry Carey from 1734. 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.The play is relatively short on the...
was a parody of bombastic tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
and, particularly, the very hack-written spectacle
Spectacle
In general, spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Derived in Middle English from c. 1340 as "specially prepared or arranged display" it was borrowed from Old French spectacle, itself a reflection of the Latin spectaculum "a show" from spectare "to view,...
plays he had collaborated on at Drury Lane. The play was daring, for it was a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
of Caroline of Ansbach
Caroline of Ansbach
Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach was the queen consort of King George II of Great Britain.Her father, John Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, was the ruler of a small German state...
and George II of the United Kingdom. The Queen was attacked for her alliance with Robert Walpole and her general caprice. It also had a generous amount of music by Carey. If contemporary allies understood the criticisms inherent in the play, it was also possible to see it as a burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
with nonsense verse
Nonsense verse
Nonsense verse is a form of light, often rhythmical verse, usually for children, depicting peculiar characters in amusing and fantastical situations. It is whimsical and humorous in tone and tends to employ fanciful phrases and meaningless made-up words. Nonsense verse is closely related to...
. He followed that up with the ballad farce
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
of The Honest Yorkshire-Man.
Interestingly, although Carey's attempt to revive serious, patriotic English opera did not work, his attempts at parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
and satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
in opera did. He had previously satirized the exoticism and emptiness of the English public's love of prima donna
Prima donna
Originally used in opera or Commedia dell'arte companies, "prima donna" is Italian for "first lady." The term was used to designate the leading female singer in the opera company, the person to whom the prime roles would be given. The prima donna was normally, but not necessarily, a soprano...
singers and castrati, but in 1737, he adapted The Dragon of Wantley
Dragon of Wantley
The Dragon of Wantley is a 17th century satirical verse parody about a dragon and a brave knight. It was included in Thomas Percy's 1767 Reliques of Ancient Poetry....
from a Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
folk ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
into a full mock-opera. This literary adaptation was a step beyond adapting literary plays into ballads (as John Gay
John Gay
John Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
had done), for it began with a folk ballad and transformed it into opera. The play, with music by John Frederick Lampe
John Frederick Lampe
John Frederick Lampe was a musician.He was born in Saxony, but came to England in 1724 and played the bassoon in opera houses. His wife, Isabella Lampe, was sister-in-law to the composer Thomas Arne with whom Lampe collaborated on a number of concert seasons...
, punctured the vacuous operatic conventions and pointed a satirical barb at Robert Walpole and his taxation policies. The play was a huge success. Its initial run was sixty-nine performances in the first season, which exceeded even The Beggar's Opera. The play debuted at the Haymarket, where its coded attack on Walpole would have been clear, but its long run occurred after it moved to Covent Garden, which had a much greater capacity for staging. Part of its satire of opera was that it had all of the words sung, including the recitative
Recitative
Recitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
s and da capo
Da capo
Da Capo is a musical term in Italian, meaning from the beginning . It is often abbreviated D.C. It is a composer or publisher's directive to repeat the previous part of music, often used to save space. In small pieces this might be the same thing as a repeat, but in larger works D.C...
aria
Aria
An aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
s (Gillespie 128). The play itself is very brief on the page, as it relied extensively on absurd theatrics, dances, and other non-textual entertainments. The Musical Entertainer from 1739 contains engravings showing how the staging was performed (Gillespie 128).
From 1737 to 1740, he wrote The Musical Century in one Hundred English Ballads in two volumes. Although Carey complained that his enemies were calling him "Ballad-maker," the work was praised later by Charles Burney
Charles Burney
Charles Burney FRS was an English music historian and father of authors Frances Burney and Sarah Burney.-Life and career:...
, and in the 19th century opinion of Carey's clear, simple, and memorable ballad tunes went even higher. Also in 1738, he helped found the Fund for Decayed Musicians, and he produced Margery, or, a Worse Plague than the Dragon, a sequel to The Dragon of Wantley.
He had another popular success in 1739 with Nancy, or, The Parting Lovers, a patriotic play about a sailor leaving his beloved to fight against the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. As with other works, Carey's point was primarily patriotic. Patriotic plays at the time were often demurrals of official policy and England's foreign entanglements. Nancy was set as well as written by Carey, and its main characters are a sailor, Nancy, and a Press Gang officer. The play broke new ground in explicitly treating a contemporary matter of social concern in song (Gillespie 128).
Carey's son, Charles, died in 1743, and Carey hanged himself at his home in London later that year.
While the anonymous account in The Gentleman's Magazine says that Carey had an annuity, he left a pregnant second wife (Sarah, whom he married between 1729 and 1733) and three dependent children, and both Hawkins and The London Stage say that he was despondent over financial difficulties. Grief over the death of his son is another possible explanation of his suicide, and Suzanne Aspden speculates that Carey suffered from paranoia
Paranoia
Paranoia [] is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself...
, while others have suspected that he had depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
or other maladies. His daughter Anne would become an actress and bear an illegitimate son, Edmund Carey, who would later be known as Edmund Kean
Edmund Kean
Edmund Kean was an English actor, regarded in his time as the greatest ever.-Early life:Kean was born in London. His father was probably Edmund Kean, an architect’s clerk, and his mother was an actress, Anne Carey, daughter of the 18th century composer and playwright Henry Carey...
.
Literary significance
Henry Carey's work has been tarred with allegations of triviality since his own day. He had an extraordinary gift with melody and wordplay, and later authors, such as Edward LearEdward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
, would cite Carey as a predecessor for his tongue twisters and nonsense verse in Namby Pamby and Chrononhotonthologos
Chrononhotonthologos
Chrononhotonthologos is a satirical play by the English poet and songwriter Henry Carey from 1734. 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.The play is relatively short on the...
. At the same time, Carey's productions were noted in his own day for their political acuity and bravery (if not foolhardiness). He was willing to offend and suffer the consequences of his convictions, but he made his political statements in a diverting and apparently frivolous manner, thereby allowing his friends to respond to his politics and his enemies to dismiss his levity. In the Macaulay-dominated view of literary history of the early 20th-century, Carey was represented as a balladeer whose fundamental moroseness was proven by his shameful suicide, and his plays, now devoid of topicality, were set as broad entertainments.
Musicologists
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
have recognized, however, the subtle gifts necessary for Carey's music, and theater historians are beginning to recognize the context of his plays. He was the most prolific English song composer of 1715-1740, and he wrote his own lyrics to all but twelve of his two hundred and fifty songs (Gillespie 128). He was responsible for linking the vocal style of Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
to the later style of Arne by combining popular English folks song and tavern song with Italian flourishes.
External links
- Free scores Mutopia ProjectMutopia projectThe Mutopia Project is a volunteer-run effort to create a library of free content sheet music, in a way similar to Project Gutenberg's library of public domain books.The music is reproduced from old scores that are out of copyright...