In the wake of Clive’s acclaim as Nell, the Cibbers father and son began from 1732 to mount a series of Clive comic vehicles written by Henry Fielding, whose 1730 ballad opera
The Author’s Farce at a fringe theatre had made a splash. Fielding’s Clive vehicles departed sharply from the vocal and stage lines Carey had until then helped create for his former pupil. Instead of Anglicized high-style airs, Fielding reset low common tunes, rich in sexual innuendo. Instead of sprightly, upright heroines, Fielding’s
dramatis personae for Clive lost their maidenheads, their morals, and their minds. Fielding botched Clive’s first-ever spoken principal part,
The Covent Garden Tragedy (1 June 1732). Fielding set this mock-tragedy in the Rose Tavern, an infamous brothel whose real-life personnel he lightly fictionalized, with Clive as the chief doxy. Audiences recoiled, and the show closed. Fielding, backed by summer manager Theophilus, had then to scramble to get up an ‘operatized’ version of Molière’s
The Mock Doctor (23 June 1732), whose wife-beating scenes were co-extensive with the action of
The Devil to Pay. A hit,
The Mock Doctor ushered in Clive’s new line of smart female protagonists in translated French comedies. This stage type was to be mined throughout her career by Fielding, later Clive vehicle writers, and Clive herself. In his adaptation of Molière’s
The Miser (1733) and of Regnard’s
The Intriguing Chambermaid (1734), Fielding cemented Clive’s ownership of precocious chambermaid roles. From 1733, several engravers printed Clive’s actual likeness; previously the only available image of ‘Miss Rafter’ had been a mezzotint of a half-naked nymph from a seventeenth-century oil. In the spring of 1733 Clive became embroiled in her first clash with theatre managers. Theophilus Cibber, angered not to have inherited the management of Drury Lane from his father, persuaded most of its players to quit and join his rival company. Clive stayed on at Drury Lane – possibly to gain new parts, particularly those formerly owned by recently deceased star comedienne
Anne Oldfield – as did Fielding, who continued to write Clive vehicles. In the ensuing court battle, Chief Justice Philip Yorke sided with Theophilus Cibber, who returned with his company in March 1734 to co-manage Drury Lane alongside a new investor, Charles Fleetwood. During the rebellion Clive had been attacked in the press as ‘Miss Prudely Crotchet’, a scheming songster who pretended to modesty while arrogantly advancing her ambition. Fielding had defended Clive, praising her real and imagined qualities in his playbook introductions. Appearing on a theatre bill dated 5 October 1733 for the first time as 'Mrs. Clive,' she was assumed to have married in 1733 the non-practicing barrister George Clive, scion of Shropshire landed gentry and uncle of the later Major-General Robert Clive (‘Clive of India’). The marriage actually took place on 30 March 1731 at the church of St Mary le Savoy. This marriage was almost certainly a sham, from Kitty’s side to win a respectable name while shielding her earnings from any husband, from George’s side to disguise his passionate interest in men; George Clive went on to live with an older barrister who left him a considerable inheritance. In 1734 the Molière translator James Miller supplanted Fielding as Drury Lane’s writer of Clive vehicles. Miller’s respect for Clive’s onstage brilliance materialized in his brittle French-sourced parts and witty epilogues for her; these included
The Coffee House (1738, after Jean-Baptiste Rousseau), whose ‘Life of a Beau’ – Carey wrote the music, Miller the words – became one of Clive’s, and the era’s, most celebrated songs. In November 1736 Clive again opposed Theophilus Cibber, who wished to give to his new wife Susannah (house composer Thomas Arne’s sister) roles understood to belong to Clive, starting with Polly in
The Beggar’s Opera. For weeks Clive fought Cibber in the press; an
ad hominem stage burlesque of the conflict was published, in two versions to keep up with unfolding events. Clive ultimately prevailed, winning over a hostile Drury Lane audience on 31 December 1736 with an extemporized stage speech, an event which testifies to her compelling presence as a performer. From 1738 to 1743 Clive was at the zenith of her stardom as Britain’s first songster. Her song and vehicles circulated nationally in print.
Comus (1738) – a music vehicle for Clive as Euphrosyne, and a spoken one for Susannah Cibber, and Irish tragedienne James Quin – took London by storm, and toured to Dublin in summer of 1741. While in Dublin Clive trained up a song in Irish Gaelic, and subsequently delivered the first-ever performance of this then-forbidden language on a licensed British stage. In London, from 1738 Clive established herself as a leading Shakespearean comedienne (often with song) in revivals often instigated by the Shakespeare Ladies Club. Clive’s Portia opposite Charles Macklin’s Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (14 February 1741) entered stage lore. Handel gifted Clive an air for her 1740 season benefit – the only such composition of his career – setting for her ‘Love’s but a Frailty’ from Congreve’s
The Way of the World. Handel then engaged Clive to lead his 1743 oratorio company. Handel wrote the role of Delilah in
Samson to Clive’s stage line and reputation, and gave her a brief bespoke solo in
Messiah. Clive added ‘Life of a Beau’ to her parts seemingly at will. This air captures her public profile. Sung originally i
n propria persona (‘Miss Kitty’) in Miller’s
The Coffee House, the air profiles Clive as a pert, rational, propitious female patriot calling for war against Spain. ‘Life of a Beau’ identifies the enemy at home as queer opera connoisseurs who lament the departure of the castrato Farinelli, who had in fact quit London for the Spanish court. Apart from their popularity, Clive’s repeated, self-instigated staging of homophobia may have helped screen the irregularity of her arrangement with George Clive. == Image crisis ==