taking Virtue with them. Not included in the theater version is Hogarth's depiction of the harsh realities of Bethlehem Hospital, or Bedlam, where spectators pay to gawk at the inmates, and where Rakewell's libertine journey ends dismally (Pl. 8). On the boards, the didacticism is even more emphatic. Rakewell shoots himself to background music which slows in tempo until it is "render'd as dismal as possible" and Virtue proclaims a triumph over the demonstrated "baneful influence of Vice."

In "A Rake's Progress" (1735), Hogarth depicts an inverse relationship between morality and the misuse of money. In the first of the eight prints, young Tom Rakewell inherits wealth from his miserly father and misspends it for the remainder of his life in copying the lifestyle of an aristocrat. His moral poverty is evident as he offers money to the mother of pregnant Sarah Young, his former girlfriend, who stands disconsolately poising a wedding ring. Letters containing his false promises to her clarify the situation. Material wealth is the cornerstone of this series as we next see the rake being measured by a tailor for new clothes while a lawyer pilfers cash; and an upholsterer's hammering to ready the room for mourning results in a shower of previously hidden gold coins (Pl. 1). The levee (Pl. 2) shows Rakewell in a fashionable morning gown, courted by a gardener, huntsman, and others, while a list of gifts from the nobility to opera star Farinelli includes a snuff box from Rakewell. His nocturnal taste shows in the Rose Tavern where he carouses and is himself raked by harlots (Pl. 3). As part of this debauched ambiance, a pregnant woman sings the bawdy ballad "Black Joke." In daylight, the faithful Sarah saves Rakewell from street arrest while a group of gamblers fills out the visual exposition of the rake's dissipation (Pl. 4). Saved by the middle class girl he ruined, Rakewell next weds a rich widow to recoup his losses. Sarah, her mother, and Rakewell's infant offspring unsuccessfully try to abort this clandestine wedding (Pl. 5). Rakewell's marriage of convenience cannot meet his needs, and he soon rails despairingly in a Covent Garden gambling house (Pl. 6). The juggernaut of vice presses on as he is jailed for debt in Fleet Street prison where he runs up more bills. A prisoner drops a "Scheme for paying y^e Debts of y^e Nation" to the floor as Sarah faints away and Rakewell's wife scolds (Pl. 7). The social nadir of Bedlam illumines darkly Rakewell's last loss—his reason—and this graphic anti-progress concludes, as it began, with Sarah's sorrow (Pl. 8).

What did the playwright do with Hogarth's harsh comment on the misappropriation of inherited wealth? He seems to have enhanced entertainment values and emphasized instruction at the same time. The drama embellishes the series by (a) adding stage links only imaginable by spectators of the print sequences, (b) framing the progress with a morality masque starring Virtue and Vice, and (c) replacing Hogarth's serious ironic tone with slapstick and songs drawn from stage musical fare, such as the burletta Poor Vulcan! by Charles Dibdin, which premiered in February 1778 (LS, 5, I, 109). Basically, Hogarth's eight prints of 1735 are transformed in part into a series of tableaux vivants which served, with variations, in the late 1770's as strong visual reminders for an audience already familiar with the original pictorial sequence.

For example, directions for the second scene attempt to put on the boards the initial print, adding music and slapstick as "money from the raftor falls into Clown's mouth." The play invites the spectator to follow Sarah and her mother after they leave Rakewell and listen to their duet, sung to the music of Air I of The Beggar's Opera. The lyrics change, so that Peachum's cynical comment "Through all the employments of life/Each neighbor abuses his brother" becomes "His vows, ah! Why did'st thou believe?/He ne'er meant a promise to keep," with the new association of Sarah's being cast off by Rakewell.

The drama closely follows the series for the rake's levee, where professionals "pay Court" to Rakewell. A new character, "Van Butchel," who sings in dialect, is added. The opportunism of those proffering services to the young man becomes clear in their musical medley when they announce they will "plunder him as fast as we can agree." At the Rose Tavern, stage directions for Rakewell state "the actor must let his intoxication gradually increase." Before Rakewell's arrest, the bailiff sings a solo. Sarah saves her lover, as in the sequence, but a small revelation of his character not in the print marks the incident: he "kisses her hand" before returning to his sedan chair.

The stage piece exploits the potential emotional element in such gestures to the point of sentimentality. For instance, Sarah's lament following Rakewell's marriage to the rich "Old Woman" shows grief driving her to despair; she sings "The Grave will extinguish my woes/Then Sarah—prepare thee to die" to the music of the seventeenth century ballad tune "Mary's Lamentation." The drama also exploits the sensational as the smoking fire in a Covent Garden gambling house (Hogarth's Pl. 5) becomes a public catastrophe with fire engines and furniture being carried into the street and "Confusion kept up as long as necessary."

In the jail scene, the rake turns out of his breeches a "Scheme to Pay the National Debt," a specific verbal echo of the Fleet Street print, and the prisoners sing a familiar tune ("Welcome, Brother Debtor") as musical background to his off-stage suicide. Then Virtue returns to ascend with "Liberty and Benevolence" on a cloud, able to relax now that Vice's influence has run its destructive course.

The Rake's Progress is an essentially uneven dramatic work. The playwright colors the didacticism of Hogarth's prints with music and farce, yet underscores it by adding Virtue and Vice and the melodrama of Rakewell's suicide and Sarah's probable death. The author capitalizes on the suspense of choice, characteristic of the morality play, by dramatizing it in conflicts between Vice and Virtue. Yet the effect remains unbalanced. This palpable form of Hogarth's visual satire loses much of its impact without a balance of serious, comic, and musical ingredients. Furthermore, the musical elements are so haphazardly distributed that they often contribute to a patchwork effect, as when the bailiff sings a solo prior to making an arrest.

Although The Rake's Progress purports to imitate Hogarth's "Comedy," where a "biginning, middle & an End/ Are Aptly join'd; where parts on parts depend,/ Each made for each, as Bodies for their Soul," the 15 scenes alternate too erratically between humor and melodrama to convey the artistic unity and moral conviction evident in the pictorial sequence. But this stage piece does demonstrate the persistence of Hogarth's visual presence in later eighteenth-century life along with the adaptability of his graphic scenes for the London theater.

Clearly Theophilus Cibber's comical, lyrical exploitation in The Harlot's Progress of Hogarth's designs exhibits a more coherent dramatic structure than the tentative, disjointed medley of music and moralism in The Rake's Progress. Further, Cibber's piece adds literary insight to our concept of the hardly dumb genre of pantomime, with its musical and masque components. The added melodrama and sentimentality in The Rake's Progress can help to index theatrical taste in the later period. For students of the century, both works demonstrate clearly an aspect of the reliance on Hogarth's art by playwrights. They also show the flexibility of the London stage in the use of elements of