Saul (HWV 53), an oratorio in three…

Saul (HWV 53), an oratorio in three acts written by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Charles Jennens, is first performed on January 16, 1739, at the King’s Theatre in London.

Taken from the 1st Book of Samuel, the story of Saul focuses on the first king of Israel’s relationship with his eventual successor, David; one which turns from admiration to envy and hatred, ultimately leading to the downfall of the eponymous monarch.

The work, which Handel began in 1738, includes the famous Dead March, a funeral anthem for Saul and his son Jonathan, and some of the composer's most dramatic choral pieces.

Many historians believe the libretto for Israel in Egypt (HWV 54), a biblical oratorio by Handel, was compiled by Handel's collaborator Charles Jennens; it is composed entirely of selected passages from the Hebrew Bible, mainly from Exodus and the Psalms.

Israel in Egypt premieres on April 4, 1739, at London's King's Theatre in the Haymarket.

Handel had started it soon after the opera season at King's Theatre was cancelled because of a lack of subscribers.

Probably the Organ Concerto in F major "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale", which Handel had finished before, was played between the acts among other things.

The oratorio is not well received by audiences, although commended in the Daily Post, and the second performance is shortened, the mainly choral work now augmented with Italian arias.

Henry Brooke had begun his career as a poet.

His now forgotten Universal Beauty was published in 1735, and Alexander Pope thought its sentiments and poetry fine.

He then turned dramatist by adapting extant plays, such as The Earl of Essex.

He writes from the Tory point of view and becomes one of the most important figures in Augustan drama, although not for his successes.

His Gustavus Vasa is not particularly savage or dark, and it takes relatively few liberties.

However, his previous The Earl of Essex had been perceived as highly political, and therefore Gustavus Vasa (1739) earns the distinction of being the first play banned by the Licensing Act of 1737.

The play concerns the liberation of Sweden from Denmark in 1521 by King Gustav I of Sweden (then regent).

Robert Walpole believes that the villain of the play resembles him.

Further, a facetious "attack" on it is the first public writing of Samuel Johnson, whose A Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the English Stage feigns support for Walpole while it drives the censor's argument to reductio ad absurdum.