Play: Rape upon Rape; or, The Justice Caught in his own Trap

Title and Historical Context
"Rape upon Rape; or, The Justice Caught in his own Trap" is a satirical play by Henry Fielding first staged in 1730. It belongs to Fielding's early dramatic period, when he used the comedy of the stage to attack public abuses and private vice. The play sits squarely in the tradition of Restoration and early 18th-century satire, using coarse humour and comic improbabilities to expose systemic corruption and the moral failures of those who administer the law.
Fielding wrote at a time when many English institutions were widely perceived as venal and inefficient, and the play channels that political dissatisfaction into theatrical farce. Though bawdy in tone and libertine in incident, its satire aims at the very serious problem of miscarried justice: magistrates who exploit power, officials who accept bribes, and a legal order that protects the rich while trampling the vulnerable.

Plot and Structure
The plot threads several comic and scandalous situations into a broader indictment of judicial corruption. Central incidents revolve around accusations of sexual assault and the tangled web of false charges, bribery, and perjury that obscure the truth. Fielding orchestrates a succession of misunderstandings, disguises, and mock trials that reveal how easily justice can be manipulated when those who are supposed to enforce it are themselves compromised.
The play moves briskly between farcical set pieces and pointed satirical interludes. Scenes of ribald humour and crude dialogue are balanced by moments in which the machinery of law, summonses, examinations, and benches of magistrates, becomes a source of ridicule. The climax turns on the exposure of a corrupt magistrate, literally "caught in his own trap," whose attempts to subvert proceedings are reversed and laid bare for public mockery.

Themes and Satirical Targets
At its core, the play interrogates hypocrisy: men who publicly uphold the law while privately profiting from its abuses. Fielding's satire targets not only individual venality but the cultural and institutional conditions that permit it, bribery, nepotism, and the social privilege that shields the powerful from accountability. Sexual politics also figure prominently; sexualized comic episodes are deployed to critique how women's bodies and reputations are instrumentalized within legal and social transactions.
Fielding refuses simple didacticism, however; the play's laughter is double-edged. Bawdy jokes and comic excess invite audience complicity even as the script indicts the same tastes and tolerances that enable corruption. This ambivalence lets the play function both as entertainment and as a corrosive social commentary, urging spectators to question the integrity of those in power.

Characterization and Tone
Characters are drawn broadly, types rather than deep psychological portraits, so that corrupt magistrates, crafty lawyers, swaggering libertines, and put-upon victims can serve the allegorical purpose of satire. The moral center rests with a few figures who embody probity and common sense; their exposure of abuses provides the play's ethical payoff. The tone alternates between broad farce and pointed invective, with Fielding's comic gifts allowing him to be both rude and razor-sharp.
Dialogues are often swift and epigrammatic, and scenes rely on physical comedy and stage trickery to underscore the absurdity of legal pretensions. The coarse humour is intentional: it shocks the audience into recognizing the filth at the heart of supposedly respectable institutions.

Reception and Legacy
Contemporary audiences found the play lively and provocative, and it contributed to Fielding's reputation as a bold satirist of public life. It provoked debate about the ethics of lampooning officials and the proper limits of theatrical invective. Over time the play has been read as an important example of early 18th-century social satire and a direct ancestor of Fielding's later, more sustained moral imagination in the novel.
While some aspects of its humour read as dated or offensive to modern tastes, the play's core concerns, abuse of power, legal hypocrisy, and the gap between public virtue and private vice, remain resonant. Its mixture of farce and moral critique helps explain why Fielding moved from the stage to the novel as he continued to interrogate society's failings.