The Grub-Street Opera is a ballad opera satirising politics and the court. It presents the household of Squire Somebody, his wife and their servants, with characters standing in for real public figures, and it mocks ambition, quarrels and corruption through songs set to popular tunes.
Fielding wrote it in the early 1730s, and it was reportedly withdrawn before staging, though it later appeared in print. It belongs to the sharp political comedies that helped bring about theatre censorship.