[In the following excerpt, Humphreys argues that Shamela attacks a number of literary and political figures, and that Fielding's parody is a result of his irritation with the moralizing tone of some of his contemporaries, which was brought to a head with the publication of Pamela.]

In April 1741, five months after Pamela appeared, Fielding disclosed his opinion of Richardson's book. An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews, while directed mainly against Pamela, purports, however, to be by ‘Conny Keyber’, a pseudonym aiming jointly at Conyers Middleton and Colley Cibber but hardly sufficing, either then or now, to conceal Fielding's authorship, which is evident in incontrovertible identity of phrase and outlook between this and his other works.¹ Middleton, librarian of Cambridge University, had aroused Fielding's levity with his Life of Cicero (1741), obsequiously dedicated to Lord Hervey. Hervey himself (1696-1753), a man of considerable ability though mercilessly satirized as an effeminate dilettante of letters, ‘Lord Fanny’ of Pope's First Satire of the Second Book of Horace and ‘Sporus’ of the Epistle to Arbuthnot, confidant of Queen Caroline, political turncoat and intriguer, first opposing then supporting Walpole, is taken off again as Didapper in Joseph Andrews. Cibber (1671-1757), a leading and irrepressible figure as playwright and actor (especially in comedy), was often derided for cheerful vanity, and his autobiographical Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Comedian (1740) had, like Pamela, been recently both acclaimed and mocked. Appointed Poet Laureate in 1730 he wrote universally ridiculed laureate odes, and Pope made him the hero of the revised Dunciad (1742). The Apology is, however, highly diverting and informative.

In the words of Swift, whom he profoundly admired, Fielding strove to expose ‘the numerous and gross corruptions in religion and learning’ (politics also) and to devise ‘a satire that would be useful and diverting’ (A Tale of a Tub, ‘Apology’). Shamela is his second burlesque on apparent absurdity: the first was his take-off of heroic tragedy, Tom Thumb (1730), which still, like Shamela, lives by its outrageously comic gusto.

Fielding probably did not know that Richardson wrote Pamela's allegedly authentic papers. The puzzle about the novel's authorship added piquancy to its astonishing popularity. Finally its sheer success, and the emergence of unauthorised imitations like Pamela's Conduct in High Life by John Kelly (published in May 1741 ‘from her Original Papers’), drove Richardson into the open, and in December his name appeared in the enlarged version which tells of Pamela's life after marriage, as well as before.

Fielding, then, aimed not at the hidden Richardson but at the visible Cibber and Middleton. Whether he really thought that either wrote Pamela is uncertain. Shamela's title-page implicates Cibber (though as author of the Apology, not of Pamela), and Parson Oliver associates the ‘remarkable epistles’ prefixed to Pamela with Cibberian bombast. Fielding repeatedly pilloried the Apologist in his periodical The Champion, particularly for the ‘peculiar Modesty which shines in all the Actions of this Great Man’ (22nd April 1740). Cibber's book, cheerfully guiltless in fact of any such quality, also provoked a very funny Champion paper (17th May 1740), arraigning him for murdering the language with ‘a certain Weapon called a Goose-quill’. ‘Keyber's’ dedication in Shamela, parodying Middleton's to Lord Hervey, may also envisage Cibber's to Henry Pelham: this deprecates flattery (while blatantly practising it) and is ecstatically self-congratulatory about Pelham's favour. Otherwise Shamela does not much parody Cibber. Hits at him, however, include sideswipes at Walpole, an example, it was held, of irrepressible effrontery in politics, like Cibber in matters theatrical: Walpole was habitually ‘the Great Man’, or ‘Brass’, or ‘his Honour’.

Middleton is more amply mishandled in Shamela, and he is touched again in Joseph Andrews: the tone of his dedication to Hervey may be deduced from Shamela's imitation, though its deferential tastelessness almost surpasses parody and makes Hervey as ridiculous as Fielding's satire could do. Finally, Methodism for many Anglicans was ‘enthusiastic’ cant: George Whitefield in particular, founder of its Calvinistic wing, provoked Fielding to condemn the ‘detestable doctrine’ of faith as against good works, associated with him, and to seek ‘to restore the true use of Christianity’ via works such as Benjamin Hoadley's Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament.

Various irritants, then, irked Fielding around 1740. Pamela, that ‘nonsensical ridiculous book’, to quote Parson Oliver, brought things to a head. Its mixtures of ejaculatory moralizing and prudential motive, of adolescent rusticity and mature acumen, stirred Fielding into writing Joseph Andrews, so proving himself a great novelist, and provoking Richardson's rueful boast, to Lady Bradshaigh, that ‘the Pamela which he abused in his Shamela taught him how to write to please, tho' his manners are so different’.²

Only when studied in close detail alongside Pamela does Shamela reveal the full cogency of Fielding's wit, which turned to their uproarious disadvantage so many innocently intended traits. Yet Shamela is more than ribaldry. To take it solemnly would be to invite derision, yet its purpose is deeply felt. Fielding was outraged that so many clergy endorsed Pamela: Dr Benjamin Slocock, recommending it from St Saviour's, Southwark, was only the most notable of what seemed foolish zealots for the ‘epidemical phrenzy’. In Joseph Andrews Fielding would expose Parson Barnabas by confronting him with the honest, charitable Adams. So in Shamela, strong though the satire on Shamela's ‘vartue’, it is stronger still against such religion as glosses vice with the formulas of faith. Parson Williams is promoted from a small virtuous part in Pamela to a large vicious one in Shamela, so that false conduct may be mercilessly drubbed, and the honest zeal of good clergy urged against him: Parson Oliver's straight speaking is impressive. The caricature is, indeed, overstrong: where the book lives best is rather in the superbly funny sexuality of Shamela herself. But to this the outrageous religious hypocrisy is a notable auxiliary; the force with which Fielding derides it is the measure of his repulsion. …

Notes

1. See Charles B. Woods's analysis in ‘Fielding and the Authorship of Shamela’ (Philological Quarterly, xxv, 1946).

2. Correspondence, 1804, iv. 286.