Frightned Wives and Children: Fielding writes that Tragedy frightens "wives and children" with her "Rage." Why should the Tragick Muse frighten "wives and children," and what does it mean that she does? One should note at least two things here: first, Fielding selects "wives and children" to be frightened, not men or fathers and sons; second, it is "Tragedy" that frightens "with her Rage." On the one hand, those who are frightened the poor, weak innocents; by grouping "wives and children" together, Fielding conjures the modern phrase, "women and children," a phrase that has the rhetorical effect of feminizing children and infantilizing women. On the other hand, the Tragick Muse Melpomene is a not only a woman, but also the most masculine of muses. According to Pierluigi Battistini, Laura Peperoni and Marina Zuccoli at the University of Bologna, Melpomene is most often depicted as "a woman in buskins, holding a sceptre and a dagger covered in blood." Like Lady Macbeth, Tragic rage is very capable of committing "rapes" and "murders." Instead of instructing and delighting, Tragedy has perhaps become so unnaturally distorted that she can only frighten "wives and children." Neither manly and capable nor soft and feminine, the Tragick Muse is a spectacular monster much like the farcical issue of a corrupted British stage.