Congreve’s The Judgment of Paris: A New Source and a New Reading

ABSTRACT William Congreve wrote the libretto for a music prize competition held in London in 1701: The Judgment of Paris. The libretto and its settings have received scholarly interpretation and recordings but till now no source for the libretto has been suggested. This article suggests that Congreve drew on the only known prior dramatization of the story, by the second-century Ce Greek satirical writer Lucian, well known to Congreve and his contemporaries. The article further considers Congreve’s treatment of Lucian’s and other ancient accounts of Paris’ story, discerns possible meanings of his libretto for its audience beyond those suggested in recent studies of the work, and identifies it as a harbinger of mid-eighteenth-century English words-and-music compositions on the theme of choice and responsibility.