SOURCE: "The Migrant Muses: A Study of Gay's Later Drama," in John Gay and the Scriblerians, edited by Peter Lewis and Nigel Wood, Vision Press; St. Martin's Press, 1988, pp. 163-83.

In the following essay, Williams examines Gay's depictions of women in light of the works of other Scriblerians, especially Pope and Swift. Williams suggests that the unevenness of Gay's later works in part stems from his attempts to translate into dramatic representations topics better addressed in prose or poetry.

One of Pope's epitaphs on Gay tells only half the truth:

    Favourite of the muses,
 He was led by them to every elegant art:
     Refined in taste,
 And fraught with graces all his own:
   In various kinds of poetry
       Superior to many,
       Inferior to none.1

The muses were, in fact, cruelly capricious in their favours, alternately wafting Gay to pinnacles of brilliance and leaving him to flounder through a...