Tom Thumb is a short burlesque play that mocks the overblown tragedies fashionable on the early eighteenth-century stage. Its tiny hero, Tom Thumb, is celebrated at King Arthur's court for defeating giants, and the court's rivalries and passions swirl around him.
Fielding fills the play with exaggerated speeches and deliberate absurdity, parodying real dramatists. He later revised it as The Tragedy of Tragedies. It shows his early gift for comic satire.