‘Mungo Here, Mungo There’

This chapter provides a definitive account of one of Dibdin’s best-known works, The Padlock, which has long been recognized as an important landmark in the representation of black characters in eighteenth-century theatre. The Padlock is most frequently associated with the librettist Isaac Bickerstaff, but this chapter redirects attention to the interaction of Bickerstaff’s words with Dibdin’s music, and to Dibdin’s celebrated performances as Mungo in one of the first comic plays to feature a major character in blackface on the British stage. Placing Mungo in the context of Dibdin’s numerous depictions of racial others (both Black and Oriental), the author argues that Dibdin’s racial performances reflect tensions surrounding slavery, social class, and imperial expansion, but remain stubbornly equivocal about these tensions as they turn captivity, servitude, and chattel slavery into the subject of comedy.