 When Fielding returned to working with the Royal Theatre , his piece The Lottery became an immediate success and lasted for decades after . Combined with The Modern Husband , Fielding could have received up to 1 @,@ 000 pounds from the plays ' first run . This placed Fielding at the position of being the main contributor of plays to the Royal Theatre . Currently , Fielding is primarily viewed as a novelist , but his plays suggest that he wished to be a playwright and that his career would be in theatre . Although Fielding wrote twenty @-@ six plays , only a handful of them were ever published in critical editions before 1990 . 
