Opening mid-season at Haymarket on July 24, The Gipsy Prince was the collaboration of Thomas Moore who composed the libretto and lyrics and Michael Kelly who provided the musical score and performed in the title role. [1]  Although declared "a very poor piece" in Thomas Dutton's the Dramatic Censor, [2] The Gipsy Prince was nevertheless popular with audiences and was performed for ten nights, the second longest run of Haymarket's season from June 18 to October 7. The average number of performances for a single piece that season was four nights, and the longest run was secured by The Corsair; or the Italian Nuptials, which may have been acted as many as nineteen times. [3]  Dutton's opinion of the play was not shared by his publisher, the theatre aficionado John Roach, who was amused by the ploy of presenting the Irish disguised as Gipsies. [4]  Kelly claimed that he had so thoroughly lost all trace of brogue that he was no longer capable of playing a stage Irishman. [5]  In spite of his disclaimer, Kelly in the title role as the Gipsy Prince readily communicated to the audience what John Larpent in his duty as censor had failed to see: these Gipsies under the Spanish Inquisition were very like the Irish under British rule.

If the disguise had become too transparent, then further disguise might not be helpful, but the attempt was nevertheless made, probably more out of delight in elaborating the hoax than with any conviction that readers might be fooled. Timed for publication at the end of the Haymarket summer season, the hoax might have been intended to stir up sufficient controversy to convince Colman, manager of the Haymarket from 1789 to 1805, [6]  to give place to The Gipsy Prince on the performance calendar for 1802. In September, 1801, John Roach published "two genuine Historical Narratives" which are identified on the title-page as the sources for The Gipsy Prince and The Corsair, "performed at the Haymarket Theatre, with universal Applause; being the only New Dramas, produced at the Summer Theatre, during the present Season." [7] The Corsair was the work of Charles Farley, so it is no surprise that Farley himself has translated the "Historical Record," said to be "from the Italian of Geoffrey Benini." [8]  The source for Moore's play, so this edition declares, is The Gipsy Prince; or, The Loves of Don Sebastian de Nurillo, and the Fair Antonia, translated "from the Spanish of Hermandez de Feyjoo, a Writer of considerable eminence, who flourished towards the close of the fifteenth century." [9]  "The Spanish Original," according to the note on the title-page, "may be seen in the British Museum." [10]  The translator is identified on the title-page as "C. Moor, Esq." In the 'Supplementary Remarks' it is stated that "Mr. Charles Moore, an Irish gentleman of very respectable connexions, and well know to the literary world, by his translation of the Odes of Anacreon, has constructed the Musical Entertainment, recently produced at the Haymarket Theatre, under the title of the Gipsy Prince." [11] 

Every detail of this edition has been twisted to serve the hoax. There is no fifteenth-century Spanish author named Hermandez de Feyjoo. Although this name is to be found in the catalogue of the British Library, it occurs only in reference to this "translation." [12]  There is no Spanish original. The translator is "C. Moor," perhaps a playful reference to Carl Moor, the hero of Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers, which had been translated into English by Alexander Tytler in 1792. [13]  The stage adaptation, Joseph Holman's The Red Cross Knights, was revived at the Haymarket on August 24, 1801, exactly one month after the opening of The Gipsy Prince. Holman argued that Carl Moor was not the radical revolutionary some critics had argued him to be, but rather a man whose ethical character "commands admiration, when devoted to a good cause, become a torment to the possessor, when perverted from the proper channel." The cause of that change, similar to the fate of the Gipsy Prince, derives from witnessing the evil abuse of power perpetrated by others. [15]  In addition to the notorious "C. Moor" as translator, this edition also names the author of the English adaptation, "Mr. Charles Moore," another nom de plume to join company with Anacreon Moore, Thomas Brown the Younger, and Thomas Little. As a prose narrative it shares similarities with Moore's The Epicurean, [16]  and as a polemical hoax championing the cause of the exploited Irish, it can be considered alongside of Moore's Memoirs of Captain Rock. [17]  Kelly most likely authored the concluding notes to the songs, but the narrative, with its classical allusions and its three inserted lyrical poems, was the work of Moore himself.

The major difference between the play and prose narrative is that the latter is charged with salaciously explicit sexual episodes, at odds with the insistence by "C. Moor" that "Hermandez de Feyjoo" possesses "a very devout and religious character, indulges in prolix moral reflexions, and interlards his narrative too copiously with pious comment." With reminders that moral commentary has been omitted, the text preserves the flowery rhetoric of erotic indulgence. In their youth Roderic (not the uncle but the father of Antonia) and Dominic (the father of Sebastian) were students at the University of Saragossa. At the convent of St. Benito they encounter two novices, "whose uncommon beauty and elegance of figure inspired them with, the most ardent and ungovernable passion." Obsessed with sexual desire, they manage "to gain access to their mistresses":

When the girls become pregnant, Roderic and Dominic smuggle them out of the convent and flee to Italy where Sebastian and Antonia are born and where their mothers die within the year. Roderic, who seeks advancement in the Church, must pretend that Antonia is his niece. Sebastian is put under the care of an uncle and experiences a series of adventures that take him to the Far East and back again, at which point (p. 15) the events of the prose narrative begin to coincide with those of the play. After hiding the Gipsy Prince overnight the garden pavilion, Antonia decides it would be much better to disguise him in female attire to share her bedroom as her personal maid. The disguise works well enough until Don Roderic becomes sexually aroused at the sight of Antonia's new companion: "The demon of desire instantly seized upon his reverence" (p. 25), but his amorous assault is resisted with such a degree of violence that the chamber-maid's masculine identity is exposed. Far more than the stage play, the prose narrative reveals the moral hypocrisy of the Inquisitor.

The prose version concludes with 'Supplementary Remarks' that promise "a brief analysis and examination of the Play" (p. 31), but present only the Dramatis Personae and the lyrics to the songs with notes apparently by Kelly. In his Reminiscences, Kelly recalls how the collaboration on the play came about. The two met in the King’s Road at the cottage of Anna Maria Crouch, Kelly’s frequent singing partner on stage and full-time partner off stage. Together they had performed the roles of Fatima and Selim in Colman’s Blue-Beard, Katherine and Seraskier in James Cobb’s The Siege of Belgrade, Lady Elinor and Lord William in Cobb’s The Haunted Tower, Louisa and Frederick in Prince Hoare’s No Song, No Supper, Lodoiska and Count Floreski in John Philip Kemble’s Lodoiska. Moore arrived at the cottage in the company of Michael Kelly’s brother Joseph. It was Kelly who instigated the collaboration:

Kelly's disappointment was not in the ten-day run, but in Colman's reluctance to slate the musical entertainment for the following year. As a sample of Moore’s lyrics, Kelly cited the song that he sang in his title role as the Gipsy Prince upon his first appearance in the Gipsy camp, "I have roam’d through many a weary round." The theme of restless wandering is countered in the finale with the Gipsy Prince's declaration of abiding love to Antonia.

In addition to his successes as stage tenor, Kelly was frequently enlisted as stage composer. Among the sixty-two dramatic works for which he composed the songs, thirteen were for William Dimond, including the adaptation of Byron’s Bride of Abydos (Drury Lane, 2 May 1818); seven were for Matthew Gregory Lewis, and six were for George Colman. Twice he teamed up with Charles Dibdin, twice with James Cobb. Among the box-office attractions featuring his music were also Lewis's The Castle Spectre (Drury Lane, 14 December 1797) and Colman's Bluebeard (1798), in both of which Kelly sang the lead tenor role. He composed the music for Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Pizarro (1799), Joanna Baillie’s De Montfort (1800), and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Remorse (Drury Lane, 23 January 1813). With a team as talented as Kelly and Moore, one might have expected Colman to provide a more enduring commitment.

The Gipsy Prince was Moore’s first endeavor as a playwright. The scene is set in Murcia, the province in southeast Spain between Andalusia and Valencia on the Mediterranean coast. The repression of Jews, Muslims, and Gipsies under the Inquisition had brought about cautious alliances among the persecuted. [19]  The plot is thin and most of the action is reflected in the fourteen songs. Although the characters are provided with little depth or development, the performers fleshed them out effectively both in acting and in song. The two comic characters, the obnoxious skirt-chasing Rincon and the Gipsy girl Poppee, have original and well-articulated roles.

Kelly’s overture, in his usual manner, opens softly and simply, then quickly transforms itself into a bravura piece resolutely and immovably planted in D major. The shift in tempo is a motif that Kelly also employed in the 'Chorus of Gipsies,' which opens with a dirge, "Bleak rains may fall," but then becomes a dance, "Merry we still fly." In the opening scene, the peasants are gathered celebrating a wedding and singing in chorus of their contented life: "Happy the hearts that love has blest." Intruding upon this happy scene, Rincon exercises his accustomed lechery by preying on the young girls: "If one of you wishes a partner, my dearies,/ Or – dam’me – if two of you, I am the man." His first brazen flirtation is an attempt to seduce the bride, Blanch, while her peasant groom is pushed aside. As an occasion to introduce his character, his first song, was a series of risqué quatrains, each describing a unconsummated affair. This song, "My heart, I confess has had amorous fidgets," was deleted, and for the performance Moore provided him with comic lyric, "I remember," revealing the character's incapacities, slipping memory, and inability to distinguish his second-childhood from his first. For this song Moore composed the music as well as the lyrics, and it has the unique feature of avoiding the strophic structure typically preferred by Moore. Rincon sings of the prophecy of a toothless old woman, who promised him potency as a "son of a gun." [20]  His fancy can shoot even if he cannot.

The role of Rincon, played by John Fawcett, provides the comic subplot of the piece. During the regular season, Fawcett performed as comic actor and singer at Covent Garden, popular in such comic roles as Jemmy Jump in John O’Keefe’s Farmer (1787), Placid in Hannah Cowley’s Every One has his Fault, Dr. Pangloss in George Colman’s The Heir at Law (1797), and Ollapod in The Poor Gentleman (1801). He was so successful as Caleb Quotem in Throw Physic to the Dogs (1798), a comic opera by Henry Lee and Samuel Arnold, that for subsequent revivals it was retitled as Caleb Quotem and his Wife! or, Paint, Poetry, and Putty. Fawcett’s first wife, the actress Susan Moore, died in 1797 after nine years of marriage. He married a second time in 1806 to Anne Gaudry, who played the role of Blanch, object of Rincon’s advances. Fawcett heightened the comedy of his performance as Rincon through his ineffectual persistence, seemingly oblivious of his own impotence.

Scene 2 opens with the Gipsies gathered around a fire and singing "Black rains may fall." The Gipsy Prince arrives, dressed "in a fanciful half Eastern Dress." When his followers depart to set up their tents, the Prince sings his wandering song, "I've roam'd thro' many a weary round." He is about to exit when two Alguazils, enforcing officers of the Inquisition, drag in a frail Jew. Hearing the Jew's pleas for help, the Prince asks the officers to tell him the man's crime, why they are treating him cruelly, and where they are taking him. His only crime is that he is a Jew, and for that crime he shall be thrown into the dungeon to await execution. The Jew is played by the husband of Mrs. Atkins, née Warrell, of Covent Garden. Describing her as a much admired singer, The Thespian Dictionary (1805) observes that Mr. Atkins "is oftener seen than heard." He was most often cast, that is, in pantomimic roles. So too here as the pursued and persecuted Jew, his role is to quake, cower, tremble, and, when rescued by the Prince, to show his humble gratitude. The Prince draws his sword and demands the old man's release. The Alguazils respond with swords; they fight; one officer is wounded, and both flee leaving their prisoner to escape. The Prince's skirmish with the Alguazils is secretly witnessed by Rincon.

In protecting the old Jew, the Gipsy Prince arouses the wrath of the Grand Inquisitor, Don Roderick, played by veteran comic villain Richard Suett, known for such roles as Yusuph in Cobb’s Siege of Belgrade (1791), Varnel in Kemble’s Lodoiska (1794), the Sultan in Prince Hoare’s Mahmoud, Prince of Persia (1796), and Ibrahim in Colman’s Blue-Beard (1798). Scene 3 is set in the garden of the Inquisitor, Don Roderick, in the company of the Corregidor, Don Dominick, who presides as magistrate to sentence those who oppose the faith and order of the Church. Their conversation introduces two essential elements to the plot: Don Roderick has niece for whom he is eager to arrange a marriage; Don Dominick has a long lost son who would have been the ideal husband. Antonia, the niece, enters with singing and accompanying herself on the guitar. In a comic trio, 'Sweet oh! sweet,' Don Roderick curses the music as intolerable noise and Don Dominick begs her to play on. A messenger arrives with the news that a stranger has interfered with the arrest of a Jew and has wounded one of the officers. Don Roderick vows to capture the stranger and have him executed for the offence.

In the characters of Don Dominick and Antonia, the cast is rounded out with two more strong players. John Emery had performed at Covent Garden as Able Drugger in The Tobacconist, as Farmer Ashfield in Speed the Plough, as Silky in Road to Ruin, as Zekiel Homespun in The Heir at Law, and Sam in Raising the Wind. To her role as Antonia, Rosemond Mountain, née Wilkinson, brought what was widely acclaimed as a truly lyrical voice. At Covent Garden she performed as Fidelia in Edward Moore’s The Foundling and as Leonora in Isaac Bickerstaff’s Padlock. In disagreement over salary she left Covent Garden to perform at Haymarket and Drury Lane, also singing in concerts at Vauxhall.

After Don Roderick and Don Dominick depart, Antonia is alone in the garden, pondering her uncle's insistence that she find a husband. Just at this moment the Prince clambers over the garden wall to escape his pursuers, not realizing that he has trespassed into the garden of the Grand Inquisitor himself. Careful not to alarm or frighten her, the Gipsy Prince emerges from hiding, bowing deeply, and praising her for her song. As happens in plays, they quickly fall in love, and express their mutual attraction in duet, 'Good night! Good night, I must away.' Antonia conceals the Prince in the turret in her uncle's garden, which may be bolted from within. To signal that he may safely open the door, she will strum on her guitar. When Don Roderick observes her lingering by the turret, she attempts to lull his suspicions by claiming that she has a pet bird.

Scene 4 takes place that evening in the Gipsy camp. The duet by Poppee and Lachimee, "Where Gipsy gone,/ Night falling on,/ Fly, to de tents in der willows fly " is sung in dialect. In the dramatis personae they are identified as Hindu Gipsies. Moore is responding to recent research tracing the Hindu roots of the Romany language. [21]  Although newly arrived in Murcia, they might be presumed to speak Romany with a mixture of Spanish. [22]  For the London stage, Moore might have given them the dialect of English Gipsies. Instead, he has them speak in a Pidjin dialect already made familiar in such slave plays as Fawcett's Obi, or Three-Fingered Jack, with music by Samuel Arnold, first performed at Haymarket just the year previous (5 July 1800) [23] , or Colman’s Inkle and Yarico, also with music by Samuel Arnold, which premiered at Haymarket fourteen years earlier (4 August 1787). Both Obi and Inkle and Yarico were again performed at Haymarket during the 1801 season with same actresses, Misses Tyrer and Manage, as African slaves. [24]  Moore thus added a further dimension to the covert satire on the subjugation of the Irish. By having the Gipsy speak in a Pidjin dialect, he hinted that the minorities in Spain were treated by Inquisitors much as slaves at the hands of plantation slaveholders.

Rincon enters as Poppee and Lachimee finish their song. They tease him and snatch at his clothes, tossing first his hat and then his wig to their companions. Just as they are on the point of removing more of his dress, the Alguazils rush in to arrest the Gipsies. In the Finale to Act I, with a melody adapted from Giovanni Paisiello, the Alguazils claim their prisoners, "In the name and glory of the Inquisitory stand we command." [25]  As they are marched off to prison, the Gipsies deny their guilt in counter-chorus, "Why need we fear your brow severe?/ What crime is ours?"

Again in the garden with the turret, Act II, Scene 1 opens with Antonia strumming her guitar to summon the Prince. Together they sing a duet, "Come from thy Cage, silly bird, dost thou hear,/ Thy mistress is singing to thee." No sheet music was published for this song, nor is it listed with the song lyrics published with the hoax translation. Either the melody was too well known for Kelly to publish it with his compositions, or, as seems more likely, it was omitted from the performance. In the ensuing dialogue, the Prince reveals that he knows neither his parents nor even his own name. They no sooner take the garden path and stroll off-stage than Don Roderick and the Alcaide enter from the opposite side. The Alcaide reports that the Gipsies have been imprisoned and that their leader has yet to be found. During the latter half of this Alcaide's report, Antonia and the Prince reappear on stage. Antonia is able to conceal him once again in the turret before she is seen by her uncle. She again averts his suspicions with her story about keeping a pet bird. Swearing death to the Gipsy leader, Don Roderick exits, and leaves Antonia alone on stage to sing of a forlorn maid who has lost her lover, 'Yes, now I shall think of that heart broken maid.'

Following Antonia's exit, the garden becomes a hiding place for Rincon in his attempt to impose himself on Poppee. The manuscript version was revised for stage performance. As originally drafted, Rincon pulls the Gipsy girl after him, attempts to kiss her and ply her with wine. Their duet, which opens with Rincon's lines, "Before then I fall to kissing you,/ Here is a drop to baptise you." Rincon's notion of "baptism" is to convert the heathen into a properly Christian consort. In the version as performed, Poppee enters the garden alone and sings a song that thematically parallels Antonia's lament for the heartbroken maid. But Poppee's lament is expressed in terms of a more resilient philosophy. One must deal with hardships and get on with life, a Gipsy's life of thievery and song. In her solo, 'Oh me was born to wander,' she tells of having run off with a drummer boy who subsequently abandoned her. Rincon enters to hear the final stanza of her song, and takes the lines to argue that she is a promiscuous heathen. Rincon's part in their duet, 'Fye, fye, you're quite a sinner, girl,' taunts her for her dingy skin and heathen ways. He intends to shame her as a wanton pagan, and then offer his forgiving embrace. Not deluded by his "holier than thou" condescension, Poppee turns the shame back on him: "Eh! Have you got no shame now, man,/ For why you talk of christen?" Replying to Rincon's effort to embrace her as his "dingy Miss," Poppee tells him to get back to his "fine white Miss." She is not for sale. In his next strophe, Rincon, Spanish profligate though he is, swears a very Irish oath, "By the cowl of St. Bridget," the celebrated Nun of Leinster.

After Poppee runs off, Rincon sees Antonia's guitar. He picks it up, brushes the strings, and the turret door opens. The Prince thinks that he has been caught by the Alguazirs. Rincon momentarily worries that he has been discovered as prowler in a stranger's garden, but that worry passes when he recognizes the Prince as the person who rescued the Jew and fought with the officers. To prevent Rincon from alerting the Alguazirs, the Prince locks him in the turret. Without realizing that the Prince has gone in search of her, Antonia returns from the opposite side of the stage, strums her guitar, and hears a clamor from within the turret. Puzzled that door has been locked from without rather than from within, she opens it and shouts in alarm when Rincon steps out. Rincon vows to call a guard to arrest the Gipsy who has locked him in. Antonia commences a song, 'Oh! in pity hear me suing,' joined first by Rincon, who quickly deduces that Antonia is protecting the Gipsy, then by the Prince, who is determined to lock him up again. With Rincon back in the turret the lovers ponder their fate. Would she be willing to forsake her heritage and live with a Gipsy? Would he be willing to give up his nomadic life of wandering to stay with her? In their duet, Antonia affirms, "Yes, for thee too charming stranger,/ I could smile at every danger," [26]  but the Prince knows that he cannot expose her to a life of persecuted wanderings. Antonia and the Prince depart; the Alguazirs arrive, find the drunken Rincon locked in the turret, and arrest him as a heretic. The scene ends with the discovery of Antonia and the Prince, who are taken by the officers to stand before the tribunal of the Inquisition.

Rincon is no foe of miscegenation as long as it entails no other commitment than sexually exploiting a Gipsy girl. Moore's play, however, also presents the opposite example of interracial love, the very matter that had come to be frequently addressed in criticism of Othello. [27]  By the end of the eighteenth century, miscegenation had been redefined in the context of colonial expansion and the slave trade. In Colman's Inkle and Yarico, an English trader, Inkle, is shipwrecked in the West Indies and rescued by a slave-girl,Yarico. They fall in love, but Inkle no sooner returns to civilization than he plans to sell Yarico into slavery and marry a wealthy white woman, Narcissa. At the last moment, Inkle's sense of love and honor revive, and he returns to marry the faithful Yarico. Interracial, yes, but a white male makes the choice. [28]  In Moore's play, it is a white woman, like Desdemona, who is about to defy the taboo. At the crucial moment, however, Moore provides the not altogether unanticipated turn. The Gipsy Prince is not a Gipsy at all.

When he is brought before the Inquisitor, the Corrigidor, and the Alcaide to confront charges of opposing the Church, he is recognized by Don Dominick as his long-lost son, Sebastian. Although he might now take his place among the elite class of Murcia, Sebastian has lived too long among the Gipsies to ignore their plight. Once pardoned, he makes a passionate appeal for the release of his people. Moore avoids a facile and contrived happy-ending by making it clear that the problems of racial subjugation and class exploitation still persist. For the finale, the lovers are joined by the Gipsies and they sing in chorus a turnabout of the Gipsy Prince's first song. He has now found a bride and a home: "The Gipsy Prince no more shall roam."

Moore's libretto adheres to the conventional formula of the popular musical entertainment. In its romance plot it cautiously compromises the theme of interracial marriage, but in its comic subplot it more boldly ridicules and denounces the exploitation of the subjugated and marginalized lower classes. Moore's lyrics were fully integrated into situation and character, not simply interpolated, as was often the case in contemporary musical production. Kelly's musical settings were apt and varied, even the tunes adapted from Paisiello. The entire performance had the support of an experienced and capable cast. The humor depended chiefly upon Fawcett, who acted the lecherous and tipsy Rincon. His song, 'I remember,' with music as well as words by Moore, was the most original composition of the piece. The saucy and self-reliant Poppee was played by Miss Tyrer, who had joined Haymarket just the previous season, when she performed as Josephine in Children in the Wood. She had been tutored in voice by Anna Maria Crouch, and Kelly arranged her songs especially for her voice. At the close of the season at Haymarket, Miss Tyrer chose the role of the slave-girl in Inkle and Yarico for her benefit performance (September 28, 1801). [29]  After leaving Haymarket, she performed on the Dublin stage. [30] 

The 'Notice' in The Monthly Mirror (July, 1801) judged The Gipsy Prince "flimsy and uninteresting," but praised the good taste and "scientific arrangement" of the music. As Moore's biographer Ronan Kelly has observed, the dialogue was panned but the music was praised. Billed as a "Musical Entertainment," the songs were "applauded heartily" and "praised unanimously" in the reviews. The critic in Morning Post (25 July 1801) complained that "the reputed author of the dialogue had not been very studious of originality." [31]  The dissatisfaction with the dialogue was not altogether unjustifiable. To be sure, the romance plot accompanied by comic sub-plot adhered to the conventional formula for the genre, and the amorous old man was a stock character. But Rincon presented a marked departure from the stock stereotype. The interracial theme was current but not widely risked by other playwrights. Nor had any recent work presented Gipsies as major characters. The Gipsies, a comic opera by Charles Dibdin, was performed at the Haymarket (3 August 1778). In that work, a brother and sister of nobility (Clarin and Spinetta), together with the sister’s maid (Laura), disguise themselves as Gipsies for amusement. [32]  Moore and Kelly created a more original and daring piece than critics of the period were willing to acknowledge in print. Far more bold than bringing to the stage Gipsies, or would-be Gipsies, was the hint that honest Irishmen were behind the disguise and the Inquisitors were stand-ins for the deluded agents of the British government.