Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Author's Farce/archive3

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Karanacs 03:39, 4 September 2010 [1].

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The Author's Farce

The Author's Farce (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Featured article candidates/The Author's Farce/archive1
• Featured article candidates/The Author's Farce/archive2
• Featured article candidates/The Author's Farce/archive3

Nominator(s): ɳOCTURNEɳOIR ^♯♭ 20:00, 16 August 2010 (UTC). Ottava Rima

Third time's a charm, or something like that. Relevant info is on previous nominations. Requests for comment have been solicited and hopefully addressed. ɳOCTURNEɳOIR ^♯♭ 20:00, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

• Comment—no dab links, no dead external links. Ucucha 20:04, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Sources comments

• No citations to Ingrassia 1998 or Kinservik. If not cited sources, these should be listed as "Further reading"
• Ref 3: "p." not "pp."
• The references list "Fielding 1967" and "Fielding 2004". The former is an edition of the play, to which a single quote from the play is cited. That's fair enough. But the numerous citations to "Fielding 2004" are of information that does not appear to come from Fielding, but rather from the compilers of Plays Vol. I of which Thomas Lockwood is given as the editor. You also have 3 citations to "Lockwood 2004" (6, 48 and 61). Is this the same book as Plays Vol. I? If so, I suggest that as Lockwood appears to have the prime responsibility for the cited Fielding 2004 material, the form of these citations is changed to Lockwood, and the reference is listed as "Lockwood, Thomas (ed.): Henry Fielding: Plays Vol. 1 (1728–1731) etc.

Otherwise sources look OK Brianboulton (talk) 11:24, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry this took so long; it's been done. ɳOCTURNEɳOIR ^♯♭ 17:18, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Comments: I read this at its first FAC, and observe many improvements. I feel the article is close to FA standard, but would like to see comments on or attention to the following:-

• Lead
  • The lead is on the short side, not really a summary of the whole article. For instance, it says nothing about the performance history and next to nothing about the critical reception.
  • The phrase "The Author's Farce is now considered a critical success..." is slightly confusing. It begs the question: "considered by whom?" I assume the intended meaning is something like "Modern critics generally approve of the play"; if so, I think the sentence should be appropriately reworded.
• Plot section: the opening of the second paragraph does not follow smoothly from the first. I suggest: "The puppet show functions as a play within the play. At the start..."
• Same para: I'm not sure about "In response...". Perhaps: "Mrs Novel then claims..."
• Themes
  • Some repetitiive wording could be avoided. Thus "the plot serves as revenge for the rejection of Fielding's previous play.[10] However, Fielding's rejection by the Theatre Royal and his being forced into minor theatres proved beneficial..." could be simplified to "the plot serves as revenge for the rejection of Fielding's previous play. by the Theatre Royal.[10] However, his being forced into minor theatres proved beneficial..." etc
  • "contain plot structures that differed" is a clash of tenses
  • Third para, first line: perhaps "reflects" rather than represents? Only a suggestion.
• Sources
  • I'm not sure here, but "who Fielding was aware of but were not directly connected to his life" doesn't read elegantly, and I am suspicious of the grammar. I would have written it as "of whom Fielding was aware but who were not directly connected to his life", but that may be just personal preference - think about it.
  • The tenses question arises again in the second paragraph, with "he also drew" and later "Fielding drew". The discussion of the play is generally in the present tense ("There is a strong similarity...", "both plays describe..." etc)
• Performance history
  • Is the first sentence necessary? See beginning of Themes section.
  • Some confusion: the play opened on 31 March and ran for 41 performances. In the next paragraph we have "for its run beginning on 21 April 1730". Was this second run after the first 41 performances? Then we have later reference sto a run of 32 performances in May and June. How many "runs" were there? Obviously the matter is complicated by the number of changes and stagings of individual acts, but I don't yet get a clear picture of the early performance history. Perhaps there is a tendency towards overdetailing here?
  • "as far away as Dublin" sounds POVish
  • Fielding's producing a revised version is a significant fact that ought to be mentioned in the lead.
• Critical response: I believe the section should be written in the literary present, e.g. "Most later critics agree...", "Frederick Homes Dudden, writing in 1966, is clear..." etc.

When these are addressed I'll be happy to support. Brianboulton (talk) 10:50, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

• Support: Most of my concerns have been addressed, largely by Malleus. I've done a few fixes myself, mainly to resolve the clashes of tense that were evident, paricularly in the later criticism paragraphs. Overall I think the article now meets the criteria and I am happy to support. Brianboulton (talk) 17:55, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comments. I have two slight uneases about this article, the first rather similar to the comment attributed to Emperor Joseph II after first listening to Mozart's Il Seraglio – "too many notes". The level of detail occasionally feels obsessive, and can make it difficult to see the wood for the trees. My second concern is related to the first, and is most easily seen in the Critical response section, which seems to be little more than a prose list of everything anyone has ever said about the play. From the third paragraph onwards there seems little effort to organise the comments into themes. I think this section also needs a little pruning – I'm not sure what "Harold Pagliaro, in 1998, pointed out that the play was Fielding's 'first great success'" has got to do with critical response, for instance. Also, I don't entirely understand what "Wilbur Lucius Cross, in 1918, believed the play revealed Fielding's farcical and burlesque talent and not regular drama." is saying. He believed it in 1918 but not in 1917 or 1919? What exactly does "revealed Fielding's farcical and burlesque talent and not regular drama" mean? That Fielding had no talent for regular drama, or that it's simply not evident in The Author's Farce? Or something else? Malleus Fatuorum 17:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm OK with the level of detail, although it's pretty dry. Much drier than the actual play. In the distant future, we'll have vid excerpts of a modern reconstruction of the play.

• No hyphen after an -ly adverb.
• "it quickly"—you could remove "it".
• "but he is poorly advised and the work is rejected by his local theatre." Remove "he" and put a comma after "advised".
• A not-so-nice "noun plus -ing": "It begins with the Goddess of Nonsense choosing a mate from a series of suitors along the River Styx".
• Awkward: "The goddess eventually chooses Signior Opera, a foreign castrato opera singer, as her favourite, after he sings an aria about money." Could it be: "The goddess eventually chooses a foreign castrato opera singer as her favourite—Signior Opera—after he sings an aria about money."
• Why not use ellipsis more? "but she is quick to forgive".
• "The play was first noted on 18 March 1730; notices ran in the Daily Post stating that the play was in rehearsal." Should that be "1730, when the Daily Post ran ..."? Tony (talk) 01:37, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

PS I do think this one is worth polishing to promotion standard. It is definitely within reach. Please keep at it. Tony (talk) 05:26, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

• Reply

• I think that we've got all of these now. Malleus Fatuorum 16:30, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

• Support. I've rearranged the material in the Critical response section into what I think makes a more logical structure, and I think that Tony's prose objections have been dealt with. Some pruning has also been done to remove some (in my opinion) distracting detail, so I'm going to be the first to support this article's promotion. Malleus Fatuorum 16:04, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Support. I read through the article yesterday and saw no problems that I couldn't fix myself. Ucucha 18:49, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

• Images reviewed in last FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:36, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.