[In the following essay, Appleton describes Wonders in the Sun, as an odd opera full of political allusions that failed with both critics and audience.]

Theatre historians and musicologists have been bewildered by Thomas D'Urfey's Wonders in the Sun. Dr. Burney found it a “whimsical drama,” John Genest an “eccentric piece,” and today we are still hard put to classify it. Described by the author as a “Comick Opera,” D'Urfey's entertainment was performed by Betterton's company on the 5th of April, 1706, at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, and acted again on the 6th, 8th, 9th, and 10th of that month. According to Downes the production was a failure, “not answering half the expenses of it.” It was never revived, though some of the songs and dances were salvaged to enliven subsequent performances of King Lear, The Rival Queens, and The Humorous Lieutenant during the same season.

D'Urfey at least had the satisfaction of a third night benefit, but even this occasion was marred, for on the same evening, April the 8th, George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer had its première at Drury Lane. Commenting gleefully on his triumph over D'Urfey, Farquhar wrote: “He brought down a huge Flight of frightful Birds upon me, when (Heaven knows) I had not a Feather'd Fowl in my Play, except one single Kite: But I presently made Plume a Bird, because of his Name, and Brazen another, because of the Feather in his Hat; and with these three I engag'd his whole Empire, which I think was as great a Wonder as any in the Sun.” (Works, Nonesuch ed., II, 42.)

D'Urfey's failure must have been still more embarrassing to him since he had dedicated his work to that circle of wits, the Kit-Cat Club, and it had been published by its presiding genius, Jacob Tonson. The dedication was in some ways surprising, for D'Urfey some years before had been strongly pro-Tory. But since writing Sir Barnaby Whigg (1681) and The Royalist (1682) his political opinions had mellowed. It was his boast that he stayed on good terms with five monarchs. Furthermore, Addison and Steele, both members of the Club, were living proof that it was possible to be both a Whig and a gentleman. Congenial as he found their company, there is little reason, however, to credit Dr. Burney's uncorroborated statement that the members of the Kit-Cat Club contributed lyrics to many of the songs. (History of Music, II, 657.)

There is no question, however, that D'Urfey drew on a variety of sources. Montague Summers singles out The Birds as the prime inspiration for his opera. In The Tatler No. 11 Steele seems to suggest such a likeness, observing of his “state-plays” that his “method is the same that was used by the old Athenians.” Previously, however, in The Tatler No. 1 he noted D'Urfey's “peculiar talent in the Lyrick way of writing, and that a manner wholly new and unknown to the ancient Greeks and Romans.” In short, the resemblances between the cloud-cuckoe-land of Aristophanes and D'Urfey's kingdom of birds are, at best, debatable.

His single most important source is unquestionably Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone (1638; 1657). The leading character in his comic opera, Domingo Gonzales, has been plucked from Godwin's novel and sent out once more on a voyage of celestial exploration. Throughout his career D'Urfey was eclectic, laying hands on whatever material appealed to him, and such voyages were commonplace in seventeenth-century literature. In the realm of the novel, Marjorie Nicolson suggests, his further debts are to Cyrano de Bergerac and Defoe. The former's Voyage dans la Lune (1650) had appeared in English in 1687, and in it D'Urfey could find not only his friend Domingo, but also a kingdom of politically-conscious birds. Defoe's Consolidator (1705) with its satirical and topical allusions may well have offered him further hints.

In addition, D'Urfey could find ample sources in the theatre. Mrs. Behn's The Emperor of the Moon (1687) and Elkanah Settle's The World in the Moon (1697) make typical use of the tradition of the celestial voyage. Further parallels have been noted between his work and Brome's The Antipodes (1638), and the solar jabberwocky spoken in his play has been likened to that spoken by Parolles' tormentors in All's Well That Ends Well, but these are, at the most, debts of little consequence. His work is basically unclassifiable, a unique mixture of fantasy, low comedy, song and satire which that mistress of surrealist drama, the Duchess of Newcastle, might well have envied. If his play belongs to any category it would fit most comfortably into those bizarre folios of her works, sandwiched, perhaps, between The Blazing World and her projected animal comedy, Sir Puppy Dogman.

The political allusions in his play are the source of the greatest trouble to a modern reader, since they reflect two contemporary political crises. The question of the union with Scotland was at that time being hotly debated. Episcopalians and Roman Catholics north of the Tweed had united in opposition to the proposal, and in April, 1706, the Commission for a Union was in session. Queen Anne was further plagued by internal political problems. Strongly pro-Tory herself, Marlo borough's triumph at Blenheim had forced her to give ground to the Whig though she resisted as far as possible their increasing political pressure. The “high flyers” in D'Urfey's play without doubt represent the High Church Tory faction she favored, the “low flyers” the Low Church Whig faction which she distrusted. Not impossibly, the five leading “low flyers” may represent the powerful Whig Junto which Anne particularly disliked. But in any case, the political allegory cannot be interpreted too literally, since D'Urfey over the years had learned the value of some discretion in his politics.

The musical aspects of his work are considerably more interesting. Since the successful production at Drury Lane of Stanzani's Arsinoe (1705), sung entirely in English, London had witnessed a succession of operatic entertainments. Vanbrugh's Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket had opened on April 9th, 1705, with The Loves of Ergasto, performed by a group of Italian singers. A month before the production of D'Urfey's comic opera another Anglicized Italian opera, The Temple of Love, had been performed there, and before long London audiences were hearing opera in English, opera in Italian, and, on occasion, opera sung in both languages. It soon became apparent that fashionable audiences preferred their opera in Italian, but there were, nonetheless, persistent efforts to encourage native English opera.

John Dennis' Essay on the Opera's After the Italian Manner (1706) championed the tradition of Purcell against Italian importations. Addison, despite the debacle of his English opera, Rosamond (Drury Lane March 1706/7), waged a continuing campaign in The Spectator (notably in Nos. 5 and 18) to make opera less “irrational and exotic,” to use Dr. Johnson's famous phrase, and to cure librettists of the notion that “nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.” (The Spectator, No. 18.)

D'Urfey also sided with those who hoped to overthrow Italian opera. In his Prologue to The Old Mode and the New (performed in 1703) he observed:

If comic scenes could please like cap'ring Tricks,
Or could be sounded with Italian Squeaks,
We might suppose this play would last six weeks.

Years later, in his Preface to New Operas (1721) he reiterated his complaint. To suggest, however, that Wonders in the Sun played any significant part in the development of English comic opera would be an overstatement. D'Urfey for many years had enjoyed success as a songwriter, but he had no real conception of what an English comic opera might be, and Wonders in the Sun's fantastic libretto is primarily an excuse for a variety of musical interpolations. Some were already familiar. His dialogue between a Satyr and a Nymph he had used once before in Cynthia and Endimion (1697) and used once again in Ariadne (1721). He drew upon well-known airs of Draghi, Eccles, and Lully to provide settings for some of the lyrics. How the others were set is unknown. Some, he tells us, were not performed, owing to the length of the work. Were the remainder set to traditional tunes or did he commission new settings for them? Whatever may be the answer, his work belongs to that familiar musical category, the pasticcio.

It would be pleasant to find a link, musical or textual, between Wonders in the Sun and that triumphant example of English comic opera, The Beggar's Opera, but to do so would be to strain the argument. Gay's Newgate pastoral, with its razor-sharp satire and consistent point-of-view, is incomparably finer. It is also a pasticcio in the use that it makes of ballad airs, but of striking originality in its bitter-sweet blend of mordant lyrics and tuneful melody. But there is a naive charm also in D'Urfey's solar world of songs, satire, slapstick and spectacle. In its crude way it foreshadows not only the modern topical revue, but also the fantastic world of that pioneer of the cinema, Georges Méliès.