"Our Purpose is the Same": Whitefield, Foote, and the Theatricality of Methodism

"Our Purpose is the Same": Whitefield, Foote, and the Theatricality of Methodism MISTY G. ANDERSON On June 28,1760, Samuel Foote staged The Minor, an irreverent satiric afterpiece aimed at George Whitefield, the popular preacher in the growing Methodist movement. It features a Methodist madam, Mrs. Cole, and her pastor, Dr. Squintum, who assures her that the spiritual process of regeneration reconciles the contradiction between her present work and her future salvation. The Minor, which uses the rehearsal framework, is preoccupied with actors and acting in its form and its content. The main plot features a father, William Wealthy, in disguise to test the virtue of his extravagant son George, the same device Sheridan later uses in The School for Scandal. Foote appeared as himself in the comic prelude, promising his onlookers "one of those itinerant field orators" as dessert, and openly likening these preachers to actors: "I consider these gentlemen in the light of public performers, like myself; and whether we exhibit at Tottenhamcourt , or the Hay-market, our purpose is the same, and the place is immaterial" (8). Though many Methodists expressed their frustration and disgust with the piece, the London public sought it out, crowding the opening and creating a demand for regular Monday, Wednesday, and Friday performances after the eighth night. It was published July 8, 1760, and went through four editions that year. Haymarket performances began daily in August, and after October 25th the play was appearing alternately at the 125 126 /ANDERSON Drury Lane and Covent Garden theaters, with Foote periodically in the cast. The piece continued to appeal long after Foote left the stage, appearing every year from 1760 until 1780, and then enjoying revivals through 1797. ' Whitefield's "televangelist" blend of theatrical and theological discourses proved rich with paradoxes for satirists like Foote to exploit. It seems that Whitefield was content to pack a theater on the benefit night for a prominent Methodist, Edward Shuter, after denouncing the theaters as "evil" and actors as "the Devil's children grinning at you."2 Whitefield's repudiation of the theater was always in tension with his own showmanship. He surpassed John Wesley as a charismatic preacher and was envied by Garrick, who declared he would give £100 if he "could only say 'Oh!' like Mr. Whitefield."3 Many, including Foote, made the same cynical connection that John Forster made between the somewhat beleaguered theaters and the thriving career of Whitefield: "At the Tabernacle itself, in Tottenhamcourt -road, his sermons now offered daily and weekly dram-drinking such as none of the theaters could provide; and in the crowds that such stimulants excited were found people of every condition.... "4 The theatrical bent of Whitefield and the satiric reactions he provoked have been documented and discussed by Harry S. Stout, Albert Lyles, Simon Trefman, Matthew Kinservik, and others.5 My interest here is in the ways that the Methodist movement resurrected doubts that had dogged radical protestants and dissenters since the Reformation: how does one authenticate a conversion experience, and how does the doctrine of spiritual "rebirth" trouble psychologized and forensic definitions of the individual subject? In Whitefield, critics like Foote saw a dangerous mobile subjectivity that could transcend the law and undermine the possibility of deriving secular morality from religion. Methodism's emphasis on regeneration and conversion challenged the forensic location of the Lockean subject at the heart of most modern political theory; if Socrates awake and Socrates asleep are not the same man, how much more are Socrates sinner and Socrates of the "New Birth" not the same? The "regenerate" self of Methodism, focused on faith, not works, looked past the sociable Enlightenment models of authority that made the civil subject accountable to a common standard of behavior. The sexual content of the satire unfolds in light of this crisis of location for the "true" Methodist. Historically, most sexual satires of religious figures expose hypocrites; the divine or devotee in question masks devious intentions (usually sexual) with a pious performance. This type of hypocrisy informs Rabelais's portrait of the Monk and the Abbey of Thélème, wafts about Chaucer's carnal pilgrims, and frames Moliére's Tartuffe. Restoration and Our...