Classical epic and the London fairs, 1697–1734

This chapter argues that our understanding of the cultural presence of classical epic in England between Dryden’s Aeneid and Pope’s Homer needs to be supplemented by familiarization with Elkanah Settle’s fairground droll The Siege of Troy, the central entertainment depicted in Hogarth’s Southwark Fair (1734–5). The show was a popular favourite between the late 1690s and at least 1734, at both Southwark and Bartholomew fairs and in enactment by both actors and puppets. After describing Settle’s own career and setting the droll’s contents in cultural, aesthetic, and historical contexts, the chapter argues that its message of a transhistorical Trojan/British working class with a continuous identity and recreational culture is telling in the context of the serial changes of constitution and ruling class over the previous seventy years. The droll was also an important link in the transhistorical chain of performances related to Troy, from Shakespeare to Victorian burlesque theatre.