Dragon of Wantley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Dragon of Wantley is a 17th century satirical verse parody about a dragon and a brave knight. It was included in Thomas Percy's 1767 Reliques of Ancient Poetry.

The poem is a parody of medieval romances and satirizes a local churchman. In the poem, a dragon appears in Yorkshire and eats children and cattle. The knight More of More Hall battles the dragon and kills it. The Wantley of the poem is Wharncliffe, five miles to the north of Sheffield, South Yorkshire. Sir Francis Wortley, the diocese ecclesiastic, and the parishioners of Wharncliffe had a disagreement on tithing and how much the parish owed (under the law of "First Fruits"), so the poem makes him a dragon. More of More Hall was a lawyer who brought a suit against Wortley and succeeded, giving the parishioners relief. Thus, this parody romance satirizes Wortley. The author of the poem is unknown.

[edit] The Augustan parody

Henry Carey wrote a burlesque opera called The Dragon of Wantley in 1734. Carey's opera is at once a satire of the ridiculousness of operatic staging and an indirect satire of the government's tax policy. In Carey's play, More of More Hall is a drunk who pauses to deal with the dragon only between bouts of drinking and carousing with women. A young country woman offers herself as a human sacrifice to More to persuade him to take on the cause of battling the dragon, and she is opposed by a former lover of More's who has interest in him now that a rival has appeared.

The battle with the dragon takes place entirely offstage, and More only wounds the dragon (who is more reasonable than More in his dialogue). The main action concerns the lavish dances and songs by the two sopranos and More.