The Harlot's Progress (1733), The Rake's Progress (Ms., ca. 1778-1780)

The volume reprints two eighteenth-century stage adaptations inspired by William Hogarth's engraved sequences: one dramatizes a six-scene narrative of a young woman's descent into vice, transforming the original moralizing prints into a grotesque pantomime that substitutes harlequinade, songs, and a concluding masque for several of the engravings' grimmer episodes; the other renders an eight-print series about a prodigal man's folly into a dramatized entertainment. An introductory essay situates both pieces within the visual-verbal exchange between print and theater and highlights the central role of music, spectacle, and contemporary song in their stage realizations.