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Title: Their Majesties' Servants (Volume 1 of 3) - Annals of the English Stage
Author: Doran, John
Language: English
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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
The oe ligature has been replaced by 'oe' or 'OE'.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
More detail can be found at the end of the book.
NOTE.--_Three Hundred copies of this Edition printed on fine
deckle-edge Royal 8vo paper. The fifty Portraits are given in
duplicate, one on Japanese and the other on plate paper, as India
proofs._
_Each of these copies is numbered._
_No._ ..........
"Their Majesties' Servants"
DR. DORAN, F.S.A.
VOLUME THE FIRST
Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
[Illustration: (Frontispiece, Dr. Doran)]
"_THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS_"
ANNALS
OF
THE ENGLISH STAGE
FROM
THOMAS BETTERTON TO EDMUND KEAN
BY
DR. DORAN, F.S.A.
_EDITED AND REVISED BY ROBERT W. LOWE_
With Fifty Copperplate Portraits and Eighty Wood Engravings
_IN THREE VOLUMES_
VOLUME THE FIRST
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND
MDCCCLXXXVIII
PREFACE.
It is unnecessary to apologise for a new edition of Dr. Doran's
_Annals of the Stage_. The two editions already published have been
for many years out of print, and the first is so rare that copies of
it bring a high price whenever they occur for sale. And this demand
is not a mere bibliographical accident, for the book has held for
many years a recognised position as the standard popular history of
the English stage. The admirable work of Genest, indispensable as
it is to every writer on theatrical history, and to every serious
student of the stage, is in no sense a popular work, and is, indeed,
rather a collection of facts towards a history than a history itself.
In preparing this new edition every effort has been made to
add to its interest by the introduction of portraits and other
illustrations, and to its authority as a book of reference, by
correcting those errors which are scarcely to be avoided by a writer
working among the confused, inaccurate, and contradictory documents
of theatrical history. No one who has not ventured into this maze can
conceive the difficulty of keeping the true path, and I can imagine
nothing better calculated to sap one's self-confidence than the task
of noting the false turnings made by such a writer as Dr. Doran. I
can hardly hope that my own work, light as it is in comparison with
his, will be found free from sins of omission, and even of commission.
My principle has been to pass no error, however trifling; but, at
the same time, I have not thought myself entitled to discuss matters
of opinion, or to criticise, either directly or indirectly, Dr.
Doran's treatment of his subject. Thus it would be easy to supplement
the information regarding the ancient theatres and the theatre of
Shakspeare's time contained in the first and second chapters; but,
as Dr. Doran obviously intended that his real work should begin with
the Restoration Theatres, I have not interfered with his scheme. I
trust that, in this, as in other respects, my work has been done in a
spirit free from captiousness.
The illustrations to this edition have been chosen, not from the book
"illustrator's" point of view, but with a serious desire to increase
its value as a history. In the case of the portraits, those which
Dr. Doran specially mentions, have, wherever it was possible, been
selected, and in every instance I believe the portrait given is an
accurate and trustworthy likeness. The headpieces, intended to form
a supplement to the full-page illustrations, include portraits of
persons whose importance scarcely justified their place among the
larger pictures, drawings of theatres, and of actors in character.
The tailpieces are reproductions of Sayer's beautiful little drawings
of Garrick and his contemporaries in their best characters; and in
their case no chronological arrangement is possible.
For many valuable notes I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Alban
Doran, who intrusted to me his father's annotated copy of this work.
These notes have in every case been acknowledged and marked "_Doran
MS._"
ROBERT W. LOWE.
LONDON, _September 1887_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
PROLOGUE 1
CHAPTER II.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 37
CHAPTER III.
THE "BOY ACTRESSES," AND THE "YOUNG LADIES" 60
CHAPTER IV.
THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY 96
CHAPTER V.
THOMAS BETTERTON 109
CHAPTER VI.
"EXEUNT" AND "ENTER" 136
CHAPTER VII.
ELIZABETH BARRY 149
CHAPTER VIII.
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THE STAGE" 162
CHAPTER IX.
THE DRAMATIC POETS 183
CHAPTER X.
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 213
CHAPTER XI.
THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES 237
CHAPTER XII.
THE AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 246
CHAPTER XIII.
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 274
CHAPTER XIV.
THE UNITED AND THE DISUNITED COMPANIES 310
CHAPTER XV.
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 317
CHAPTER XVI.
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 337
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PROGRESS OF JAMES QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BARTON BOOTH 356
CHAPTER XVIII.
BARTON BOOTH 391
LIST OF COPPERPLATE PORTRAITS.
VOLUME I.
ENGRAVED BY MESSRS. ANNAN & SWAN, LONDON.
PAGE
I. DR. DORAN _Frontispiece_
II. RICHARD BURBAGE 16
III. NATHANIEL FIELD { From an original picture in Dulwich } 26
{ College }
IV. EDWARD ALLEYN Do. do. 43
V. JOHN LOWEN { From an original picture in the } 49
{ Ashmolean Museum, Oxford }
VI. NELL GWYN From the picture by Gascar 83
VII. MICHAEL MOHUN { From the original in the Dorset } 100
{ Collection }
VIII. JOSEPH HARRIS As Cardinal Wolsey 136
IX. ANTHONY LEIGH { As Dominique in the "Spanish } 144
{ Friar" }
X. ELIZABETH BARRY { From the original of Sir Godfrey } 160
{ Kneller }
XI. THOMAS BETTERTON Do. do. 185
XII. COLLEY CIBBER From the picture by Grisoni 266
XIII. MRS. BRACEGIRDLE 302
XIV. JAMES QUIN From the original by Hudson 334
XV. LAVINIA FENTON 384
XVI. BARTON BOOTH 400
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD.
VOLUME I.
ENGRAVED BY DEL ORME & BUTLER, LONDON, AND PRINTED ON JAPANESE PAPER
BY ED. BADOUREAU, LONDON.
PAGE
1. THE BEAR GARDEN--Sixteenth Century 1
2. THE SWAN THEATRE--As it appeared in 1614 37
3. THE GLOBE THEATRE--Sixteenth Century 60
4. THE FORTUNE THEATRE--Sixteenth Century 96
5. THEATRE ROYAL, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS--1714 109
6. THE DUKE'S THEATRE, DORSET GARDEN--1662 136
7. Do. do. do. --River View 149
8. CONTEST FOR DOGGET'S COAT AND BADGE 162
9. COLLEY CIBBER--From a painting by J. B. Van Loo 183
10. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT--From a painting by Greenhuth 213
11. MRS. CENTLIVRE 237
12. PRYNNE 246
13. SIR RICHARD STEELE 274
14. THOMAS DOGGET--From a rare contemporary print 310
15. POPE AND DR. GARTH--By Hogarth 317
16. SPILLER'S BENEFIT TICKET--By Hogarth 337
17. THE NEW AND OLD THEATRES ROYAL, HAYMARKET--1720-1821 356
18. BARTON BOOTH 391
LIST OF TAILPIECES ON WOOD.
VOLUME I.
PAGE
1. MR. GARRICK AS SIR JOHN BRUTE IN "THE PROVOKED WIFE" 36
2. MR. GARRICK AS KING LEAR--Act iii. Scene 1 135
3. MRS. BARRY AND MR. GARRICK AS DONNA VIOLANTE AND DON FELIX
IN "THE WONDER" 236
4. MR. GARRICK AS HAMLET--Act i. Scene 4 355
5. MR. FOOTE AS THE DOCTOR IN THE "DEVIL UPON TWO STICKS" 390
6. MR. GARRICK AS ABEL DRUGGER IN THE "ALCHYMIST" 426
[Illustration: THE BEAR GARDEN]
CHAPTER I.
PROLOGUE.
The period of the origin of the drama is an unsettled question, but
it has been fixed at an early date, if we may accept the theory of a
recent writer, who suggests that Moses described the Creation from a
visionary pictorial representation, which occupied seven days from
the commencement to the close of the spectacle!
Among the most remote of the Chinese traditions, the theatre
holds a conspicuous place. In Cochin-China there is at this day a
most primitive character about actors, authors, and audience. The
governor of the district enjoys the least rude seat in the sylvan
theatre; he directs the applause by tapping with his fingers on a
little drum, and as at this signal his secretaries fling strings full
of _cash_ on to the stage, the performance suffers from continual
interruption. For the largesse distributed by the patron of the
drama, and such of the spectators as choose to follow his example,
the actors and actresses furiously scramble, while the poor poet
stands by, sees his best situations sacrificed, and is none the
richer--by way of compensation.
In Greece the profession of actor was accounted honourable. In Rome
it was sometimes a well-requited, but also a despised vocation.
During the decade of years when that aristocratic democrat
Pisistratus held power, the drama first appeared (it is said) at
Athens. It formed a portion of the religion of the State. The theatre
was a temple in which, rudely enough at first, the audience were
taught how the will, not only of men but of gods, must necessarily
submit to the irresistible force of Destiny. This last power,
represented by a combination of the lyric and epic elements, formed
the drama which had its origin in Greece alone. In such a sense the
Semitic races had no drama at all, while in Greece it was almost
exclusively of Attic growth, its religious character being especially
supported on behalf of the audience by the ever-sagacious, morally,
and fervently-pious chorus. Lyric tragedy existed before the age of
Thespis and Pisistratus; but a spoken tragedy dates from that period
alone, above five centuries earlier than the Christian era; and the
new theatre found at once its Prynne and its Collier in that hearty
hater of actors and acting, the legislative Solon.
At the great festivals, when the theatres were opened, the expenses
of the representations were borne partly by the State and partly
by certain wealthy officials. The admission was free, until
over-crowding produced fatal accidents. To diminish the latter an
entrance-fee of two _oboli_, 3-1/4d., was established, but the
receipts were made over to the poor.[1] From morning till dewy eve
these roofless buildings, capable of containing on an average twenty
thousand persons, were filled from the ground to the topmost seat, in
the sweet spring-tide, sole theatrical season of the Greeks.
Disgrace and disfranchisement were the penalties laid upon the
professional Roman actor. He was accounted infamous, and was excluded
from the tribes. Nevertheless, the calling in Italy had something
of a religious quality. Livy tells us of a company of Etruscan
actors, ballet-pantomimists, however, rather than comedians, who were
employed to avert the anger of the gods, which was manifested by a
raging pestilence. These Etruscans were in their way the originators
of the drama in Italy. That drama was at first a dance, then a
dance and song; with them was subsequently interwoven a story. From
the period of Livius Andronicus (B.C. 240) is dated the origin of
an actual Latin theatre, a theatre the glory of which was at its
highest in the days of Attius and Terence, but for which a dramatic
literature became extinct when the mimes took the place of the old
comedy and tragedy.
Even in Rome the skill of the artist sometimes freed him from the
degradation attached to the exercise of his art. Roscius, the popular
comedian, contemporary with Cicero, was elevated by Sulla to the
equestrian dignity, and with Æsopus, the great tragedian, enjoyed
the friendship of Tully and of Tully's friends, the wisest and the
noblest in Rome. Roscius and Æsopus were what would now be called
scholars and gentlemen, as well as unequalled artists, whom no amount
of application could appal when they had to achieve a triumph in
their art. An Austrian emperor once "encored" an entire opera (the
_Matrimonio Segreto_); but, according to Cicero, his friend Æsopus so
delighted his enthusiastic audience, that in one piece they encored
him "millies," a thousand, or perhaps an indefinite number of times.
The Roman tragedian lived well, and bequeathed a vast fortune to his
son. Roscius earned £32 daily, and he too amassed great wealth.
The mimes were satirical burlesques, parts of which were often
improvised, and had some affinity to the pasquinades and
harlequinades of modern Italy. The writers were the intimate friends
of emperors; the actors were infamous. Cæsar induced Decius Laberius,
an author of knightly rank, to appear on the stage in one of these
pieces; and Laberius obeyed, not for the sake of the _honorarium_,
£4000, but from dread of disobeying an order from so powerful a
master. The unwilling actor profited by his degradation to satirise
the policy of Cæsar, who did not resent the liberty, but restored
Laberius to the rank and equestrian privileges which he had forfeited
by appearing on the stage. Laberius, however, never recovered the
respect of his countrymen, not even of those who had applauded him
the most loudly.
The licentious pantomimists were so gross in their performances
that they even disgusted Tiberius, who forbade them from holding
any intercourse, as the professional _histriones_ or actors of the
drama had done, with Romans of equestrian or senatorial dignity.
It was against the stage, exclusively given up to their scandalous
exhibitions, that the Christian fathers levelled their denunciations.
They would have approved a "well-trod stage," as Milton did, and the
object attributed to it by Aristotle,--but they had only anathemas
for that horrible theatre where danced and postured Bathyllus and
Hylas, and Pylades, Latinus and Nero, and even that graceful Paris,
whom Domitian slew in his jealousy, and of whom Martial wrote that
he was the great glory and grief of the Roman theatre, and that all
Venuses and Cupids were buried for ever in the sepulchre of Paris,
the darling of old Rome.
In this our England, minds and hearts had ever been open to dramatic
impressions. The Druidical rites contained the elements of dramatic
spectacle. The Pagan Saxon era had its dialogue-actors, or buffoons;
and when the period of Christianity succeeded, its professors and
teachers took of the evil epoch what best suited their purposes.
In narrative dialogue, or song, they dramatised the incidents
of the lives of the saints, and of One greater than saints; and
they thus rendered intelligible to listeners what would have been
incomprehensible if it had been presented to them as readers.
In Castle-Hall, before farm-house fires, on the bridges, and in
the market-places, the men who best performed the united offices
of missionary and actor, were, at once, the most popular preachers
and players of the day. The greatest of them all, St. Adhelm, when
he found his audience growing weary of too much serious exposition,
would take his small harp from under his robes, and would strike up a
narrative song, that would render his hearers hilarious.
The mixture of the sacred and profane in the early dialogues and
drama prevailed for a lengthened period. The profane sometimes
superabounded, and the higher Church authorities had to look to it.
The monotony of monastic life had caused the wandering glee-men to
be too warmly welcomed within the monastery circles, where there
were men who cheerfully employed their energies in furnishing new
songs and lively "patter" to the strollers. It was, doubtless, all
well meant; but more serious men thought it wise to prohibit the
indulgence of this peculiar literary pursuit. Accordingly, the
Council of Clovershoe, and decrees bearing the king's mark, severally
ordained that actors, and other vagabonds therein named, should
no longer have access to monasteries, and that no priest should
either play the glee-man himself, or encourage the members of that
disreputable profession, by turning ale poets, and writing songs for
them.
It is a singular fact, that one of our earliest theatres had
Geoffrey, a monk, for its manager, and Dunstable--immortalised
by Silvester Daggerwood--for a locality. This early manager, who
flourished about 1119,[2] rented a house in the town just named,
when a drama was represented, which had St. Katherine for a heroine,
and her whole life for a subject. This proto-theatre was, of course,
burnt down; and the managing monk withdrew from the profession, more
happy than most ruined managers, in this, that he had his cell at St.
Albans, to which he could retire, and therein find a home for the
remainder of his days.
Through a course of Mysteries, Miracle-plays--illustrating Scripture,
history, legend, and the sufferings of the martyrs,--Moralities,
in which the vices were in antagonism against the virtues, and
Chronicle-plays, which were history in dialogue, we finally arrive
at legitimate Tragedy and Comedy. Till this last and welcome
consummation, the Church as regularly employed the stage for
religious ends, as the old heathen magistrates did when they made
village festivals the means of maintaining a religious feeling
among the villagers. Professor Browne, in his _History of Greek
Classical Literature_, remarks:--"The believers in a pure faith can
scarcely understand a religious element in dramatic exhibitions. They
who knew that God is a spirit, and that they who worship Him must
worship him in spirit and in truth, feel that His attributes are too
awful to permit any ideas connected with Deity to be brought into
contact with the exhibition of human passions. Religious poetry of
any kind, except that which has been inspired, has seldom been the
work of minds sufficiently heavenly and spiritual, to be perfectly
successful in attaining the end of poetry, namely the elevation of
the thoughts to a level with the subject. It brings God down to man,
instead of raising man to Him. It causes that which is most offensive
to religious feeling, and even good taste, irreverent familiarity
with subjects which cannot be contemplated without awe. But a
religious drama would be, to those who realise to their own minds the
spirituality of God, nothing less than anthropomorphism and idolatry.
Christians of a less advanced age, and believers in a more sensuous
creed, were able to view with pleasure the mystery-plays in which
the gravest truths of the Gospel were dramatically represented; nay,
more, just as the ancient Athenians could look even upon their gross
and licentious comedy as forming part of a religious ceremony, so
could Christians imagine a religious element in profane dramas which
represented in a ludicrous light subjects of the most holy character."
Mysteries kept the stage from the Norman to the Tudor era. The
Moralities began to displace them during the reign of Henry VI., who
was a less beneficial patron of the stage than that Richard III. who
has himself retained a so unpleasant possession of the scene. Actors
and dramatists have been ungrateful to this individual, who was
their first practically useful patron. Never, previous to Richard's
time, had an English prince been known to have a company of players
of his own. When Duke of Gloucester, a troop of such servants was
attached to his household. Richard was unselfish towards these new
retainers; whenever he was too "busy," or "not i' the vein" to
receive instruction or amusement at their hands, he gave them licence
to travel abroad, and forth went the mirthful company, from county to
county, mansion to mansion, from one corporation-hall and from one
inn-yard to another, playing securely under the sanction of his name,
winning favour for themselves, and a great measure of public regard,
probably, for their then generous and princely master.
The fashion thus set by a prince was followed by the nobility, and it
led to a legal recognition of the actor and his craft, in the royal
licence of 1572, whereby the players connected with noble houses were
empowered to play wherever it seemed good to them, if their master
sanctioned their absence, without any let or hindrance from the law.
The patronage of actors by the Duke of Gloucester led to a love of
acting by gentlemen amateurs. Richard had ennobled the profession,
the gentlemen of the Inns of Court took it up, and they soon had
kings and queens leading the applause of approving audiences. To the
same example may be traced the custom of having dramatic performances
in public schools, the pupils being the performers. These boys, or,
in their place, the children of the Chapel Royal, were frequently
summoned to play in presence of the King and Court. Boatsful of them
went down the river to Greenwich, or up to Hampton Court, to enliven
the dulness or stimulate the religious enthusiasm of their royal
auditors there. At the former place, and when there was not yet any
suspicion of the orthodoxy of Henry VIII., the boys of St. Paul's
acted a Latin play before the sovereign and the representatives of
other sovereigns. The object of the play was to exalt the Pope, and
consequently Luther and his wife were the foolish villains of the
piece, exposed to the contempt and derision of the delighted and
right-thinking hearers.
In most cases the playwrights, even when members of the clergy, were
actors as well as authors. This is the more singular, as the players
were generally of a roystering character, and were but ill-regarded
by the Church. Nevertheless, by their united efforts, though they
were not always colleagues, they helped the rude production of the
first regularly constructed English comedy, "Ralph Roister Doister,"
about 1540. The author was a "clerk," named Nicholas Udall, whom
Eton boys, whose master he was, hated because of his harshness. The
rough and reverend gentleman brought forth the above piece, just one
year previous to his losing the mastership, on suspicion of being
concerned in a robbery of the college plate.
Subsequently to this, the Cambridge youths had the courage to play
a tragedy called "Pammachus," which must have been offensive to the
government of Henry VIII. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor
of the University, immediately wrote a characteristic letter to the
Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Matthew Parker. It is dated 27th March 1545. "I
have been informed," he says, "that the youth in Christ's College,
contrary to the mind of the Master and President, hath of late
played a tragedy called 'Pammachus,' a part of which tragedy is so
pestiferous as were intolerable. If it be so, I intend to travail,
as my duty is, for the reformation of it. I know mine office there,
and mind to do in it as much as I may." Parker answers on the 3d
of April, that the play had been performed with the concurrence of
the College authorities, after means had been taken to strike out
"slanderous cavillations and suspicious sentences," and "all such
matter whereby offence might greatly have risen. Hitherto," adds
Parker, "have I not seen any man that was present at it to show
himself grieved; albeit it was thought their time and labour might
be spent in a better-handled matter." Gardiner is not satisfied with
this, and he will have the subject investigated. Accordingly, some
of the audience are ordered to be examined to discover if what they
applauded was what the King's government had reproved. "I have heard
specialities," he writes, "that they" (the actors) "reproved Lent
fastings, all ceremonies, and albeit the words of sacrament and mass
were not named, yet the rest of the matter written in that tragedy,
in the reproof of them was expressed." Gardiner intimates that if
the authorities concurred, after exercising a certain censorship, in
licensing the representation, they were responsible for all that was
uttered, as it must have had the approval of their judgments.
A strict examination followed. Nearly the entire audience passed
under it, but not a man could or would remember that he had heard
anything to which he could make objection. Therewith Parker
transmitted to Gardiner the stage-copy of the tragedy, which the
irate prelate thus reviews:--"Perusing the book of the tragedy which
ye sent me, I find much matter not stricken out, all which, by the
parties' own confession, was uttered very naught, and on the other
part something not well omitted." Flagrant lies are said to be mixed
up with incontrovertible truths; and it is suggested, that if any of
the audience had declared that they had heard nothing at which they
could take offence, it must have been because they had forgotten much
of what they had heard. Ultimately, Parker was left to deal with
the parties as he thought best; and he wisely seems to have thought
it best to do nothing. Plays were the favourite recreation of the
university men; albeit, as Parker writes, "Two or three in Trinity
College think it very unseeming that Christians should play or be
present at any profane comedies or tragedies."
Actors and clergy came into direct collision, when, at the accession
of Edward VI. (1547), the Bishop of Winchester announced "a solemn
dirge _and mass_," in honour of the lately deceased king, Henry VIII.
The indiscreet Southwark actors thereupon gave notice that at the
time announced for the religious service they would act a "solempne
play" to try, as the bishop remarks in a letter to Paget, "who shall
have most resort, they in game or I in earnest." The prelate urgently
requests the interference of the Lord Protector, but with what
effect, the records in the State Paper Office afford no information.
Some of these Southwark actors were the "servants" of Henry Grey,
Marquis of Dorset, whose mansion was on the opposite side of the
river. In 1551 he was promoted to the dukedom of Suffolk, but his
poor players were then prohibited from playing anywhere, save in
their master's presence.[3]
Severity led to fraud. In the autumn of the following year Richard
Ogle forwarded to the Council a forged licence, taken from the
players--a matter which was pronounced to be "worthy of correction."
The young king's patronage of his own "servants" was not marked by a
princely liberality; the salary of one of his players of interludes,
John Brown, was five marks yearly as wages, and one pound three
shillings and fourpence for his livery.
Of the party dramatists of this reign, that reverend prelate,
"Bilious Bale," was the most active and the least pleasant-tempered.
Bale had been a Romanist priest, he was now a Protestant bishop (of
Ossory), with a wife to control the episcopal hospitality. Bale had
"seen the world." He had gone through marvellous adventures, of which
his adversaries did not believe a word; and he had converted the
most abstruse doctrinal subjects into edifying semi-lively comedies.
The bishop did not value his enemies at the worth of a rush in an
old king's chamber. He was altogether a Boanerges; and when his
"John, King of England," was produced, the audience, comprising two
factions in the Church and State, found the policy of Rome towards
this country illustrated with such effect, that while one party hotly
denounced, the other applauded the coarse and vigorous audacity of
the author.
So powerful were the influences of the stage, when thus applied, that
the government of Queen Mary made similar application of them in
support of their own views. A play, styled "Respublica," exhibited
to the people the alleged iniquity of the Reformation, pointed out
the dread excellence of the sovereign herself (personified as Queen
Nemesis), and exemplified her inestimable qualities, by making all
the Virtues follow in her train as Maids of honour.
Such, now, were the orthodox actors; but the heretical players
were to be provided against by stringent measures. A decree of the
sovereign and council, in 1556, prohibited all players and pipers
from strolling through the kingdom; such strollers--the pipers
singularly included--being, as it was said, disseminators of
seditions and heresies.
The eye of the observant government also watched the resident actors
in town. King Edward had ordered the removal of the king's revels and
masques from Warwick Inn, Holborn, "to the late dissolved house of
Blackfriars, London," where considerable outlay was made for scenery
and machinery--adjuncts to stage effect--which are erroneously
supposed to have been first introduced a century later by Davenant.
There still remained acting a company at the Boar's Head, without
Aldgate, on whom the police of Mary were ordered to make levy. The
actors had been playing in that inn-yard a comedy, entitled a "Sack
full of News." The order of the privy council to the mayor informs
his worship, that it is "a lewd play;" bids him send his officers to
the theatre without delay, and not only to apprehend the comedians,
but to "take their play-book from them and send it before the privy
council."
The actors were under arrest for four-and-twenty hours, and were
then set free, but under certain stipulations to be observed by them
"and all other players throughout the city,"--namely: they were to
exercise their vocation of acting "between All Saints and Shrovetide"
only; and they were bound to act no other plays but such as were
approved of by the Ordinary. This was the most stringent censorship
to which the stage has ever been subjected.
Although Edward had commanded the transfer of the company of actors
from Warwick Inn to Blackfriars, that dissolved monastery was not
legally converted into a theatre till the year 1576, when Elizabeth
was on the throne. In that year[4] the Earl of Leicester's servants
were licensed to open their series of seasons in a house, the site of
which is occupied by Apothecaries' Hall and some adjacent buildings.
At the head of the company was James, father of Richard Burbage, the
original representative of Richard III. and of Hamlet, the author of
which tragedies, so named, was, at the time of the opening of the
Blackfriars' theatre, a lad of twelve years of age, surmounting the
elementary difficulties of Latin and Greek in the Free School of
Stratford-on-Avon.
In Elizabeth the drama possessed a generous patroness and a
vindictive censor. Her afternoons at Windsor Castle and Richmond were
made pleasant to her by the exertions of her players. The cost to her
of occasional performances at the above residences during two years
amounted to a fraction over £444. There were incidental expenses
also, proving that the actors were well cared for. In the year 1575,
among the estimates for plays at Hampton Court, the liberal sum of
£8, 14s. is set down "for the boyling of the brawns against Xtmas."
[Illustration: (Richard Burbage.)]
As at Court, so also did the drama flourish at the Universities,
especially at Cambridge. There, in 1566, the coarse dialect
comedy, "Gammer Gurton's Needle"--a marvellous production, when
considered as the work of a bishop, Still, of Bath and
Wells--was represented amid a world of laughter.
There, too, was exercised a sharp censorship over both actors and
audience. In a letter from Vice-Chancellor Hatcher to Burleigh, the
conduct of Punter, a student of St. John's, at stage-plays at Caius
and Trinity, is complained of as unsteady. In 1581 the heads of
houses again make application to Burleigh, objecting to the players
of the Great Chamberlain, the Earl of Oxford, poet and courtier,
exhibiting certain plays already "practised" by them before the
King. The authorities, when scholastic audiences were noisy, or when
players brought no novelty with them to Cambridge, applied to the
great statesman in town, and vexed him with dramatic troubles, as if
he had been general stage-manager of all the companies strolling over
the kingdom.
On one occasion the stage was employed as a vantage ground whereon
to raise a battery against the power of the stage's great patroness,
the Queen. In 1599, the indiscreet followers of Essex "filled the
pit of the theatre, where Rutland and Southampton are daily seen,
and where Shakspeare's company, in the great play of 'Richard II.,'
have, for more than a year, been feeding the public eye with pictures
of the deposition of kings." In June of the following year, "those
scenes of Shakspeare's play disturb Elizabeth's dreams. The play had
had a long and splendid run, not less from its glorious agony of
dramatic passion than from the open countenance lent to it by the
Earl, who, before his voyage, was a constant auditor at the Globe,
and by his constant companions, Rutland and Southampton. The great
parliamentary scene, the deposition of Richard, not in the printed
book, was possibly not in the early play; yet the representation of
a royal murder and a successful usurpation on the public stage is an
event to be applied by the groundlings, in a pernicious and disloyal
sense. Tongues whisper to the Queen that this play is part of a great
plot to teach her subjects how to murder kings. They tell her she is
Richard; Essex, Bolingbroke. These warnings sink into her mind. When
Lambard, Keeper of the Records, waits upon her at the palace, she
exclaims to him, 'I am Richard! Know you not that?'"
The performance of this play was, nevertheless, not prohibited.
When the final attempt of Essex was about to be made, in February
1601--"To fan the courage of their crew," says Mr. Hepworth Dixon,
from whose _Personal History of Lord Bacon_ I borrow these details,
"and prepare the citizens for news of a royal deposition, the
chiefs of the insurrection think good to revive, for a night, their
favourite play. They send for Augustine Phillips, manager of the
Blackfriars Theatre, to Essex House; Monteagle, Percy, and two or
three more--among them Cuffe and Meyrick--gentlemen whose names
and faces he does not recognise, receive him; and Lord Monteagle,
speaking for the rest, tells him that they want to have played the
next day Shakspeare's deposition of Richard II. Phillips objects that
the play is stale, that a new one is running, and that the company
will lose money by a change. Monteagle meets his objections. The
theatre shall not lose; a host of gentlemen from Essex House will
fill the galleries; if there is fear of loss, here are 40s. to make
it up. Phillips takes the money, and King Richard is duly deposed for
them, and put to death."
Meanwhile, the profession of player had been assailed by fierce
opponents. In 1587,[5] when twenty-three summers lightly sat on
Shakspeare's brow, Gosson, the "parson" of St. Botolph's, discharged
the first shot against stage plays which had yet been fired by
any one not in absolute authority. Gosson's book was entitled, _A
School of Abuse_, and it professed to contain "a pleasant invective
against poets, players, jesters, and such like caterpillars of
a Commonwealth." Gosson's pleasantry consists in his illogical
employment of invective. Domitian favoured plays, _argal_, Domitian's
domestic felicity was troubled by a player--Paris. Of Caligula,
Gosson remarks, that he made so much of players and dancers, that
"he suffered them openly to kiss his lips, when the senators
might scarcely have a lick at his feet;" and the good man of St.
Botolph's adds, that the murder of Domitian, by Charea, was "a fit
catastrophe," for it was done as the Emperor was returning from a
play!
As a painter of manners, Gosson thus gaily limns the audiences of
his time. "In our Assemblies at plays in London, you shall see such
heaving and shouting, such pitching and shouldering to sit by
women, such care for their garments that they be not trodden on,
such eyes to their laps that no chips light on them, such pillows
to their backs that they take no hurt, such masking in their ears,
I know not what; such giving them pippins to pass the time; such
playing at foot-saunt without cards; such ticking, such toying, such
smiling, such winking, and such manning them home when the sports
are ended, that it is a right comedy to mark their behaviour." In
this picture Gosson paints a good-humoured and a gallant people. When
he turns from failings to vices, the old rector of St. Botolph's
dwells upon them as Tartuffe does upon the undraped shoulders of
Dorinne. He likes the subject, and makes attractive what he denounces
as pernicious. The playwrights he assails with the virulence of an
author, who, having been unsuccessful himself, has no gladness in
the success, nor any generosity for the shortcomings of others.
Yet he cannot deny that some plays are moral, such as "Cataline's
Conspiracy,"--"because," as he elegantly observes, "it is said to be
a pig of mine own sow." This, and one or two other plays written by
him, he complaisantly designates as "good plays, and sweet plays, and
of all plays the best plays, and most to be liked."
Let us now return to the year of Shakspeare's birth. The great poet
came into the world when the English portion of it was deafened
with the thunder of Archbishop Grindal, who flung his bolts against
the profession which the child in his cradle at Stratford was about
to ennoble for ever. England had been devastated by the plague of
1563. Grindal illogically traced the rise of the pestilence to the
theatres; and to check the evil he counselled Cecil to suppress the
vocation of the idle, infamous, youth-infecting players, as the
prelate called them, for one whole year, and--"if it were for ever,"
adds the primate, "it were not amiss."
Elizabeth's face shone upon the actors, and rehearsals went actively
on before the Master of the Revels. The numbers of the players,
however, so increased and spread over the kingdom, that the
government, when Shakspeare was eight years of age, enacted that
startling statute which is supposed to have branded dramatic art and
artists with infamy. But the celebrated statute of 1572 does _not_
declare players to be "rogues and vagabonds." It simply threatens
to treat as such all acting companies who presume to set up their
stage _without_ the license of "two justices of the peace at least."
This was rather to protect the art than to insult the artist; and a
few years subsequent to the publication of this statute, Elizabeth
granted the first _royal_ patent conceded in England to actors--that
of 1576.[6] By this authority Lord Leicester's servants were
empowered to produce such plays as seemed good to them, "as well,"
says the Queen, "for the recreation of our loving subjects as _for
our solace and pleasure_, when we shall think good to see them."
Sovereign could scarcely pay a more graceful compliment to poet or to
actor.
This royal patent sanctioned the acting of plays within the
liberties of the city; but against this the city magistrates
commenced an active agitation. Their brethren of Middlesex followed
a like course throughout the county. The players were treated as the
devil's missionaries; and such unsavoury terms were flung at them
and at playwrights, by the city aldermen and the county justices,
that thereon was founded that animosity which led dramatic authors to
represent citizens and justices as the most egregious of fools, the
most arrant of knaves, and the most deluded of husbands.
Driven from the city, Burbage and his gay brotherhood were safe in
the shelter of Blackfriars, adjacent to the city walls. Safe, but
neither welcome nor unmolested. The devout and noble ladies who had
long resided near the once sacred building, clamoured at the audacity
of the actors. Divine worship and sermon, so they averred, would be
grievously disturbed by the music and rant of the comedians, and by
the debauched companions resorting to witness those abominable plays
and interludes.
This cry was shrill and incessant, but it was unsuccessful. The
Blackfriars' was patronised by a public whose favours were also
solicited by those "sumptuous houses" the "Theatre" and the "Curtain"
in Shoreditch. Pulpit logicians reasoned, more heedless of connection
between premises and conclusion than Grindal or Gosson. "The cause
of plagues is sin," argues one, "and the cause of sin are plays;
therefore, the cause of plagues are plays." Again: "If these be not
suppressed," exclaims a Paul's Cross preacher, "it will make such a
tragedy that all London may well mourn while it is London."[7] But
for the sympathy of the Earl of Leicester it would have gone ill with
these players. He has been as ill-requited by authors and actors as
their earlier friend, Richard of Gloucester. To this day the stage
exhibits the great earl, according to the legend contrived by his
foes, as the murderer of his wife.
Sanctioned by the court, befriended by the noble, and followed by
the general public, the players stood their ground, but they lacked
the discretion which should have distinguished them. They bearded
authority, played in despite of legal prohibitions, and introduced
forbidden subjects of state and religion upon their stage. Thence
ensued suspensions for indefinite periods, severe supervision when
the suspension was rescinded, and renewed transgression on the part
of the reckless companies, even to the playing on a Sunday, in any
locality where they conjectured there was small likelihood of their
being followed by a warrant.
But the most costly of the theatrical revels of King James took
place at Whitehall, at Greenwich, or at Hampton Court, on Sunday
evenings--an unseemly practice, which embittered the hatred of
the Puritans against the stage, all belonging to it, and all who
patronised it. James was wiser when he licensed Kirkham, Hawkins,
Kendall, and Payne to train the Queen's children of the revels, and
to exercise them in playing within the Blackfriars' or elsewhere
all plays which had the sanction of old Samuel Danyell. His queen,
Anne, was both actress and manager in the masques performed at court,
the expenses of which often exceeded, indeed were ordered not to be
limited to, £1000. "Excellent comedies" were played before Prince
Charles and the Prince Palsgrave[8] at Cambridge; and the members of
St. John's, Clare, and Trinity, acted before the King and court in
1615, when the illustrious guests were scattered among the colleges,
and twenty-six tuns of wine consumed within five days!
The lawyers alone were offended at the visits of the court to the
amateurs at Cambridge, especially when James went thither to see
the comedy of _Ignoramus_, in which law and lawyers are treated
with small measure of respect. When James was prevented from going
to Cambridge, he was accustomed to send for the whole scholastic
company to appear before him, in one of the choicest of their pieces,
at Royston. Roving troops were licensed by this play-loving king to
follow their vocation in stated places in the country, under certain
restrictions for their tarrying and wending--a fortnight's residence
in one town being the time limited, with injunction not to play
"during church hours."
Then there were unlicensed satirical plays in unlicensed houses. Sir
John Yorke, his wife and brothers, were fined and imprisoned, because
of a scandalous play acted in Sir John's house, in favour of Popery.
On another occasion, in 1617, we hear of a play, in some country
mansion, in which the King, represented as a huntsman, observed that
he had rather hear a dog bark than a cannon roar. Two kinsmen, named
Napleton, discussed this matter, whereupon one of them remarked that
it was a pity the King, so well represented, ever came to the crown
of England at all, for he loved his dogs better than his subjects.
Whereupon the listener to this remark went and laid information
before the council against the kinsman who had uttered it!
The players could, in James's reign, boast that their profession
was at least kindly looked upon by the foremost man in the English
Church. "No man," says Hacket, "was more wise or more serious than
Archbishop Bancroft, the Atlas of our clergy, in his time; and he
that writes this hath seen an interlude well presented before him,
at Lambeth, by his own gentlemen, when I was one of the youngest
spectators." The actors thus had the sanction of the Archbishop of
Canterbury in James's reign, as they had that of Williams, Archbishop
of York, in the next. Hacket often alludes to theatrical matters.
"The theatres," he says, in one of his discourses made during the
reign of Charles II., when the preacher was Bishop of Lichfield
and Coventry, "are not large enough nowadays to receive our loose
gallants, male and female, but whole fields and parks are thronged
with their concourse, where they make a muster of their gay clothes."
Meanwhile, in 1616, the pulpit once more issued anathemas against
the stage. The denouncer, on this occasion, was the preacher of
St. Mary Overy's, named Sutton, whose undiscriminating censure was
boldly, if not logically, answered by the actor, Field. There is
a letter from the latter in the State Paper Office, in which he
remonstrates against the sweeping condemnation of all players. The
comedian admits that what he calls his trade has its corruptions,
like other trades; but he adds, that since it is patronised by the
King, there is disloyalty in preaching against it, and he hints
that the theology of the preacher must be a little out of gear,
seeing that he openly denounces a vocation which is not condemned in
Scripture!
[Illustration: (Nathaniel Field.)]
Field, the champion of his craft in the early part of the seventeenth
century, was one of the dozen actors to whom King James, in 1619,
granted a licence to act comedy, tragedy, history, &c., for the
solace and pleasure of his Majesty and his subjects, at the Globe,
and at their private house in the precincts of Blackfriars. This
licence was made out to Hemings, Burbage, Condell, Lowen, Tooley,
Underwood, Field, Benfield, Gough, Eccleston, Robinson, Shancks,
and their associates. Their success rendered them audacious, and,
in 1624, they got into trouble, on a complaint of the Spanish
ambassador. The actors at the Globe had produced Middleton's "Game at
Chess," in which the action is carried on by black and white pieces,
representing the Reformed and Romanist parties. The latter, being
the rogues of the piece, are foiled, and are "put in the bag." The
Spanish envoy's complaint was founded on the fact that living
persons were represented by the actors, such persons being the King
of Spain, Gondomar, and the famous Antonio de Dominis, who, after
being a Romish bishop (of Spalato), professed Protestantism, became
Dean of Windsor, and after all died in his earlier faith, at Rome. On
the ambassador's complaint, the actors and the author were summoned
before the council, but no immediate result followed, for, two
days later, Nethercole writes to Carleton, informing him that "the
comedy in which the whole Spanish business is taken up, is drawing
£100 nightly." At that time, a house with £20 in it was accounted a
"good house," at either the Globe or Blackfriars. Receipts amounting
to five times that sum, for nine afternoons successively, may be
accepted as a proof of the popularity of this play. The Spaniard,
however, would not let the matter rest; the play was suppressed, the
actors forbidden to represent living personages on the stage, and the
author was sent to prison. Middleton was not long detained in durance
vile. James set him free, instigated by a quip in a poor epigram,--
"Use but your royal hand, 'twill set me free!
'Tis but removing of a man--that's me."
A worse joke never secured for its author a greater boon--that of
liberty.
With all this, an incident of the following year proves that the
players disregarded peril, and found profit in excitement. For
Shrovetide, 1625, they announced a play founded on the Dutch horrors
at Amboyna, but the performance was stopped, on the application of
the East India Company, "for fear of disturbances this Shrovetide." A
watch of 800 men was set to keep all quiet on Shrove Tuesday; and the
subject was not again selected for a piece till 1673, when Dryden's
"Amboyna" was produced in Drury Lane, and the cruelties of the
Dutch condemned in a serio-comic fashion, as those of a people--so
the epilogue intimated to the public--"who have no more religion
faith--than you."
In James's days, the greater or less prevalence of the plague
regulated the licences for playing. Thus, permission was given to the
Queen's Servants to act "in their several houses, the Curtain, and
the Boar's Head, Middlesex, as soon as the plague decreases to 30 a
week, in London." So, in the very first year of Charles I., 1625,
the "common players" have leave not only to act where they will, but
"to come to court, now the plague is reduced to six." Accordingly,
there was a merry Christmas season at Hampton Court, the actors
being there; and, writes Rudyard to Nethercole, "the _demoiselles_"
(maids of honour, doubtless), "mean to present a French pastoral,
wherein the Queen is a principal actress." Thus, the example set
by the late Queen Anne and now adopted by Henrietta Maria, led to
the introduction of actresses on the public stage, and it was the
manifestation of a taste for acting exhibited by the French princess,
that led to the appearance in London of actresses of that nation.
With the reign of Charles I. new hopes came to the poor player, but
therewith came new adversaries. Charles I. was a hearty promoter of
all sports and pleasures, provided his people would be merry and
wise according to his prescription only. Wakes and maypoles were
authorised by him, to the infinite disgust of the Puritans, who liked
the authorisation no more than they did the suppression of lectures.
When Charles repaired to church, where the _Book of Sports_ was read,
he was exposed to the chance of hearing the minister, after reading
the decree as he was ordered, calmly go through the Ten Commandments,
and then tell his hearers, that having listened to the commands of
God and those of man, they might now follow which they liked best.
When Bishop Williams, of Lincoln, and subsequently Archbishop of
York, held a living, he pleaded in behalf of the right of his
Northamptonshire parishioners to dance round the maypole. When
ordered to deliver up the Great Seal by the King, he retired to
his episcopal palace at Buckden, where, says Hacket, "he was the
worse thought of by some strict censurers, because he admitted in
his public hall a comedy once or twice to be presented before him,
exhibited by his own servants, for an evening recreation." Being
then in disgrace, this simple matter was exaggerated by his enemies
into a report, that on an Ordination Sunday, this arrogant Welshman
had entertained his newly-ordained clergy with a representation of
Shakspeare's "Midsummer's Night's Dream," the actors in which had
been expressly brought down from London for the purpose!
In the troubled days in which King Charles and Bishop Williams lived,
the stage suffered with the throne and church. After this time the
names of the old houses cease to be familiar. Let us take a parting
glance of these primitive temples of our drama.
The royal theatre, Blackfriars, was the most nobly patronised of all
the houses opened previous to the Restoration. The grown-up actors
were the most skilled of their craft; and the boys, or apprentices,
were the most fair and effeminate that could be procured, and could
profit by instruction. On this stage Shakspeare enacted the Ghost
in "Hamlet," Old Adam, and a similar line of characters, usually
intrusted to the ablest of the performers of the second class.
Blackfriars was a winter house. Some idea of its capability and
pretension may be formed from the fact, that in 1633 its proprietors,
the brothers Burbage,[9] let it to the actors for a yearly rent of
£50. In 1655 it was pulled down,[10] after a successful career of
about three-quarters of a century.
Upon the strip of shore, between Fleet Street and the Thames,
there have been erected three theatres. In the year 1580, the old
monastery of Whitefriars was given up to a company of players; but
the Whitefriars' Theatre did not enjoy a very lengthened career.
In the year 1616, that in which Shakspeare died, it had already
fallen into disrepute and decay, and was never afterwards used for
the representation of dramatic pieces. The other theatres, in Dorset
Gardens, were built subsequently to the Restoration.
In the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and in the street now
called Playhouse Yard, connecting Whitecross Street with Golding
Lane, stood the old Fortune, erected in 1600, for Henslowe (the
pawnbroker and money-lender to actors) and Alleyn, the most unselfish
of comedians. It was a wooden tenement, which was burned down in
1621, and replaced by a circular brick edifice. In 1649, two years
after the suppression of plays by the Puritan Act, when the house was
closed, a party of soldiers, "the sectaries of those yeasty times,"
broke into the edifice, destroyed its interior fittings, and pulled
down the building.[11] The site and adjacent ground were soon covered
by dwelling-houses.
Meanwhile, the inn yards, or great rooms at the inns, were not yet
quite superseded. The Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, the Bull in
Bishopsgate Street, near which lived Anthony Bacon, to the extreme
dislike of his grandmother; and the Red Bull, in St. John Street,
Clerkenwell, which last existed as late as the period of the Great
Fire, were open, if not for the acting of plays, at least for
exhibitions of fencing and wrestling.
The Surrey side of the Thames was a favourite locality for plays,
long before the most famous of the regular and royally-sanctioned
theatres. The Globe was on that old joyous Bankside; and the Little
Rose, in 1584, there succeeded to an elder structure of the same
name, whose memory is still preserved in Rose Alley. The Globe, the
summer-house of Shakspeare and his fellows, flourished from 1594 to
1613, when it fell a prey to the flames caused by the wadding of
a gun, which lodged in and set fire to the thatched roof. The new
house, erected by a royal and noble subscription, was of wood, but it
was tiled. Its career, however, was not very extended, for in 1654,
the owner of the freehold, Sir Matthew Brand, pulled the house down;
and the name of Globe Alley is all that is left to point out the
whereabouts of the popular summer-house in Southwark.
On the same bank of the great river stood the Hope, a play-house
four times a week, and a garden for bear-baiting on the alternate
days. In the former was first played Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair."
When plays were suppressed, the zealous and orthodox soldiery
broke into the Hope, horsewhipped the actors, and shot the bears.
This place, however, in its character of Bear Garden, rallied
after the Restoration, and continued prosperous till nearly the
close of the seventeenth century. There remains to be noticed,
Paris Garden, famous for its cruel but well-patronised sports. Its
popular circus was converted by Henslowe and Alleyn into a theatre.
Here, the richest receipts were made on the Sunday, till the law
interfered, and put down these performances, the dear delight of the
Southwarkians and their visitors from the opposite shore, of the
olden time.
The supposed assertion of Taylor, the Water poet, has often been
quoted, namely, that between Windsor Bridge and Gravesend there were
not less than 40,000 watermen, and that more than half of these found
employment in transporting the holiday folks from the Middlesex to
the Southwark shore of the river, where the players were strutting
their little hour at the _Globe_, the _Rose_, and the _Swan_, and
Bruin was being baited in the adjacent gardens. A misprint has
decupled what was about the true number, and even of these, many were
so unskilful that an Act was passed in the very first year of King
James, for the protection of persons afloat, whether on pleasure or
serious business.
In Holywell Lane, near High Street, Shoreditch, is the site of an old
wooden structure which bore the distinctive name of "The Theatre,"
and was accounted a sumptuous house, probably because of the partial
introduction of scenery there. In the early part of Shakspeare's
career, as author and actor, it was closed, in consequence of
proprietary disputes; and with the materials the Globe, at Bankside,
was rebuilt or considerably enlarged. There was a second theatre in
this district called "The Curtain," a name still retained in Curtain
Road. This house remained open and successful, till the accession
of Charles I., subsequent to which time stage plays gave way to
exhibitions of athletic exercises.
This district was especially dramatic; the popular taste was not only
there directed towards the stage, but it was a district wherein many
actors dwelt, and consequently died. The baptismal register of St.
Leonard's contains Christian names which appear to have been chosen
with reference to the heroines of Shakspeare; and the record of
burials bears the name of many an old actor of mark whose remains now
lie within the churchyard.
Not a vestige, of course, exists of any of these theatres; and yet of
a much older house traces may be seen by those who will seek them in
remote Cornwall.
This relic of antiquity is called Piran Round. It consists of a
circular embankment, about ten feet high, sloping backwards, and cut
into steps for seats or standing-places. This embankment encloses
a level area of grassy ground, and stands in the middle of a flat,
wild heath. A couple of thousand spectators could look down from
the seats upon the grassy circus which formed a stage of more than
a hundred feet in diameter. Here, in very early times, sports were
played and combats fought out, and rustic councils assembled. The
ancient Cornish Mysteries here drew tears and laughter from the mixed
audiences of the day. They were popular as late as the period of
Shakspeare. Of one of them, a five act piece, entitled "The Creation
of the World, with Noah's Flood," the learned Davies Gilbert has
given a translation. In this historical piece, played for edification
in Scripture history, the stage directions speak of varied costumes,
variety of scenery, and complicated machinery, all on an open-air
stage, whereon the deluge was to roll its billows and the mimic world
be lost. This cataclysm achieved, the depressed spectators were
rendered merry. The minstrels piped, the audience rose and footed it,
and then, having had their full of amusement, they who had converged,
from so many starting points, upon Piran Round, scattered again on
their several ways homeward from the ancient theatre, and as the sun
went down, thinned away over the heath, the fishermen going seaward,
the miners inland, and the agricultural labourers to the cottages and
farm-houses which dotted, here and there, the otherwise dreary moor.
Such is Piran Round described to have been, and the "old house"
is worthy of tender preservation, for it once saved England from
invasion! About the year 1600, "some strollers," as they are called
in Somer's Tracts, were playing late at night at Piran. At the
same time a party of Spaniards had landed with the intention of
surprising, plundering, and burning the village. As the enemy were
silently on their way to this consummation, the players, who were
representing a battle, "struck up a loud alarum with drum and trumpet
on the stage, which the enemy hearing, thought they were discovered,
made some few idle shots, and so in a hurly-burly fled to their
boats. And thus the townsmen were apprised of their danger, and
delivered from it at the same time."
Thus the players rescued the kingdom! Their sons and successors were
not so happy in rescuing their King; but the powerful enemies of
each suppressed both real and mimic kings. How they dealt with the
monarchs of the stage, our prologue at an end, remains to be told.
[Illustration: Mr. Garrick as Sir John Brute.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Professor Ward says: "The entrance-money was from the time of
Pericles provided out of the public treasury."
[2] Geoffrey was made Abbot of St. Albans in 1119. The play, of
course, was many years earlier.
[3] It would appear that noblemen's players were prohibited from
acting, even before their masters, without leave from the Privy
Council.
[4] The patent was dated 1574, and does not specify any particular
building or locality.
[5] 1579 (2d edition).
[6] Should be 1574. It is dated 7th May 1574.
[7] These quotations are both from the same sermon.
[8] Or, Prince Palatine.
[9] The owners seem to have been Cuthbert and William Burbage, uncle
and nephew.
[10] The year of its destruction seems uncertain.
[11] It was standing in 1661; in which year it was advertised for
sale, with the ground belonging to it.
[Illustration: THE SWAN THEATRE.]
CHAPTER II.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS.
It was in the eventful year 1587,[12] while Roman Catholics were
deploring the death of Mary Stuart; while Englishmen were exulting at
the destruction dealt by Drake to a hundred Spanish ships in the port
of Cadiz; while the Puritan party was at angry issue with Elizabeth;
while John Fox was lying dead; and while Walsingham was actively
impeding the ways and means of Armada Philip, by getting his bills
protested at Genoa,--that the little man, Gosson, in the parish of
St. Botolph, of which he was the incumbent, first nibbed his pen,[13]
and made it fly furiously over paper, in wordy war against the stage
and stage-players.
When the Britons ate acorns and drank water, he says, they were
giants and heroes; but since plays came in they had dwindled into
a puny race, incapable of noble and patriotic achievements! And
yet next year, some pretty fellows of that race were sweeping the
Invincible Armada from the surface of our seas!
When London was talking admiringly of the coronation of Charles I.,
and Parliament was barely according him one pound in twelve of the
money-aids of which he was in need, there was another pamphleteer
sending up his testimony from Cheapside to Westminster, against the
alleged abomination of plays and players. This writer entitles his
work _A short Treatise against Stage Plays_, and he makes it as
sharp as it is short. Plays were invented by heathens; they must
necessarily be prejudicial to Christians!--_that_ is the style of
his assertion and argument. They were invented in order to appease
false gods; consequently, the playing of them must excite to wrath
a true Deity! They are no recreation, because people come away from
them wearied. The argument, in tragedy, he informs us, is murder; in
comedy, it is social vice. This he designates as bad instruction; and
remembering Field's query to Sutton, he would very much like to know
in what page of Holy Writ authority is given for the vocation of an
actor. He might as well have asked for the suppression of tailors,
on the ground of their never being once named in either the Old
Testament or the New!
But this author finds condemnation there of "stage effects,"
rehearsed or unrehearsed. You deal with the judgments of God in
tragedy, and laugh over the sins of men in comedy; and thereupon
he reminds you, not very appositely, that Ham was accursed for
deriding his father! Players change their apparel and put on women's
attire,--as if they had never read a chapter in Deuteronomy in their
lives! If coming on the stage under false representation of their
natural names and persons be not an offence against the Epistle to
Timothy, he would thank you to inform him _what_ it is! As to looking
on these pleasant evils and not falling into sin,--you have heard of
Job and King David, and you are worse than a heathen if you do not
remember what _they_ looked upon with innocent intent, or if you have
forgotten what came of the looking.
He reminds parents, that while _they_ are at the play, there are
wooers who are carrying off the hearts of their daughters at home;
perhaps, the very daughters themselves _from_ home. This seems to
me to be less an argument against resorting to the theatre than in
favour of your taking places for your "young ladies," as well as for
yourselves. The writer looks too wide abroad to see what lies at his
feet. He is in Asia, citing the Council of Laodicea against the
theatre. He is in Africa, vociferating, as the Council of Carthage
did, against audiences. He is in Europe, at Arles, where the Fathers
decided that no actor should be admitted to the sacrament. Finally,
he unites all these Councils together at Constantinople, and in a
three-piled judgment sends stage, actors, and audiences to Gehenna.
If you would only remember that many royal and noble men have been
slain when in the theatre, on their way thither, or returning
thence, you will have a decent horror of risking a similar fate in
like localities. He has known actors who have died after the play
was over; he would fain have you believe that there is something in
_that_. And when he has intimated that theatres have been burnt and
audiences suffocated; that stages have been swept down by storms and
spectators trodden to death; that less than forty years previous
to the time of his writing, eight persons had been killed and many
more wounded, by the fall of a London playhouse; and that a similar
calamity had lately occurred in the city of Lyons--the writer
conceives he has advanced sufficient argument, and administered
more than enough of admonition, to deter any person from entering a
theatre henceforth and for ever.
This paper pellet had not long been printed, when the vexed author
might have seen four actors sailing joyously along the Strand.
There they are, Master Moore (there were no _managers_ then; they
were "masters" till the Georgian era), Master Moore, heavy Foster,
mirthful Guilman, and airy Townsend. The master carries in his
pocket a royal licence to form a company, whose members, in honour of
the King's sister, shall be known as "the Lady Elizabeth's servants;"
with permission to act when and where they please, in and about the
city of London, unless when the plague shall be more than ordinarily
prevalent.
There was no present opportunity to touch these licensed companies;
and, accordingly, a sect of men who professed to unite loyalty with
orthodoxy, looking eagerly about them for offenders, detected an
unlicensed fraternity playing a comedy in the old house, before
noticed, of Sir John Yorke. The result of this was the assembling
of a nervously-agitated troop of offenders in the Star Chamber. One
Christopher Mallory was made the scapegoat, for the satisfactory
reason that in the comedy alluded to he had represented the devil,
and in the last scene descended through the stage, with a figure
of King James on his back, remarking the while, that such was the
road by which all Protestants must necessarily travel! Poor Mallory,
condemned to fine and imprisonment, vainly observed that there were
two points, he thought, in his favour--that he had not played in the
piece, and had not been even present in the house!
Meanwhile the public flocked to their favourite houses, and fortune
seemed to be most blandly smiling on "masters," when there suddenly
appeared the monster mortar manufactured by Prynne, and discharged by
him over London, with an attendant amount of thunder, which shook
every building in the metropolis. Prynne had just previously seen
the painters busily at work in beautifying the old "Fortune," and
the decorators gilding the horns of the "Red Bull." He had been down
to Whitefriars, and had there beheld a new theatre rising near the
old time-honoured site. He was unable to be longer silent, and in
1633 out came his _Histrio-Mastix_, consisting, from title-page to
_finis_, of a thousand and several hundred pages.
Prynne, in some sense, did not lead opinion against the stage,
but followed that of individuals who suffered certain discomfort
from their vicinity to the chief house in Blackfriars. In 1631,
the churchwardens and constables petitioned Laud, on behalf of the
whole parish, for the removal of the players, whose presence was a
grievance, it was asserted, to Blackfriars generally. The shopkeepers
affirm that their goods, exposed for sale, are swept off their stalls
by the coaches and people sweeping onward to the playhouse; that
the concourse is so great, the inhabitants are unable to take beer
or coal into their houses while it continues; that to get through
Ludgate to the water is just impossible; and if a fire break out
Heaven help them, how can succour be brought to the sufferers through
such mobs of men and vehicles? Christenings are disturbed in their
joy by them, and the sorrow of burials intruded on. Persons of honour
dare not go abroad, or if abroad, dare not venture home while the
theatre is open. And then there is that other house, Edward
Alleyn's, rebuilding in Golden Lane, and will not the Council look to
it?
[Illustration: (Edward Alleyn.)]
The Council answer that Queen Henrietta Maria is well affected
towards plays, and that therefore good regulation is more to be
provided than suppression decreed. There must not be more than two
houses, they say; one on Bankside, where the Lord Chamberlain's
servants may act; the other in Middlesex, for which license may be
given to Alleyn, "servant of the Lord Admiral," in Golden Lane. Each
company is to play but twice a week, "forbearing to play on the
Sabbath Day, in Lent, and in times of infection."
Here is a prospect for old Blackfriars; but it is doomed to fall. The
house had been condemned in 1619, and cannot longer be tolerated.
But compensation must be awarded. The players, bold fellows, claim
£21,000! The referees award £3000, and the delighted inhabitants
offer £100 towards it, to get rid of the people who resort to the
players, rather than of the players themselves.
Then spake out Prynne. He does not tell us how many prayer-books
had been recently published, but he notes, with a cry of anguish,
the printing of forty thousand plays within the last two years.
"There are five devil's chapels," he says, "in London; and yet in
more extensive Rome, in Nero's days, there were but three, and
those," he adds, "were three too many!" When the writer gets beyond
statistics he grows rude; but he was sincere, and accepted all the
responsibility of the course taken by him, advisedly.
While the anger excited by this attack on pastimes favoured by
the King was yet hot, the assault itself was met by a defiance.
The gentlemen of the Inns of Court closed their law-books, got
up a masque, and played it at Whitehall, in the presence of a
delighted audience, consisting of royal and noble personages. The
most play-loving of the lords followed the example afforded by the
lawyers, and the King himself assumed the buskin, and turned actor,
for the nonce. Tom Carew was busy with superintending the rehearsals
of his "Coelum Britannicum," and in urging honest and melodious Will
Lawes to progress more rapidly with the music. Cavalier Will was
not to be hurried, but did his work steadily; and Prynne might have
heard him and his brother Harry humming the airs over as they walked
together across the park to Whitehall. When the day of representation
arrived, great was the excitement and intense the delight of some,
and the scorn of others. Among the noble actors who rode down to the
palace was Rich, Earl of Holland. All passed off so pleasantly that
no one dreamed it was the inauguration of a struggle in which Prynne
was to lose his estate, his freedom, and his ears; the King and the
earl their heads; while gallant Will Lawes, as honest a man as any of
them, was, a dozen years after, to be found among the valiant dead
who fell at the siege of Chester.
Ere this _dénouement_ to a tragedy so mirthfully commenced had been
reached, there were other defiances cast in the teeth of audacious,
but too harshly-treated Prynne. There was a reverend playwright
about town, whom Eton loved and Oxford highly prized; Ben Jonson
called him his "son," and Bishop Fell, who presumed to give an
opinion on subjects of which he was ignorant, pronounced the Rev.
William Cartwright to be "the utmost that man could come to!" For
the Christ Church students at Oxford, Cartwright wrote the "Royal
Slave," one of three out of his four plays which sleep under a
righteous oblivion. The King and Queen went down to witness the
performance of the scholastic amateurs; and, considering that a
main incident of the piece comprises a revolt in order to achieve
some reasonable liberty for an oppressed people, the subject may be
considered more suggestive than felicitous. The fortunes of many of
the audience were about to undergo mutation, but there was an actor
there whose prosperity commenced from that day. All the actors played
with spirit, but this especial one manifested such self-possession,
displayed such judgment, and exhibited such powers of conception
and execution, that King, Queen, and all the illustrious audience
showered down upon him applauses--hearty, loud, and long. His name
was Busby. He had been so poor that he received £5 to enable him to
take his degree of B.A. Westminster was soon to possess him, for
nearly three-score years the most famous of her "masters." "A very
great man!" said Sir Roger de Coverley; "he whipped my grandfather!"
When Prynne, and Bastwick, and Burton--released from prison by the
Long Parliament--entered London in triumph, with wreaths of ivy and
rosemary round their hats, the players who stood on the causeway,
or at tavern windows, to witness the passing of the victims, must
have felt uneasy at their arch-enemy being loose again. Between
politics, perverse parties, the plague, and the parliament, the
condition of the actors fell from bad to worse. In a dialogue which
professedly passed at this time between Cane of the "Fortune" and
Reed of the "Friers," one of the speakers deplores the going-out of
all good old things, and the other, sighingly, remarks that true
Latin is as little in fashion at Inns of Court as good clothes are
at Cambridge. At length arrived the fatal year 1647, when, after
some previous attempts to abolish the vocation of the actors, the
parliament disbanded the army and suppressed the players. The latter
struggled manfully, but not so successfully, as the soldiery. They
were treated with less consideration; the decree of February 1647[14]
informed them that they were no better than heathens; that they were
intolerable to Christians; that they were incorrigible and vicious
offenders, who would now be compelled by whip, and stocks, and
gyves, and prison fare, to obey ordinances which they had hitherto
treated with contempt. Had not the glorious Elizabeth stigmatised
them as "rogues," and the sagacious James as "vagabonds?" Mayors and
sheriffs, and high and low constables were let loose upon them,
and encouraged to be merciless; menace was piled upon menace; money
penalties were hinted at in addition to corporeal punishments--and,
after all, plays were enacted in spite of this counter-enactment.
But these last enactors were not to be trifled with; and the
autumn saw accomplished what had not been effected in the spring.
The _Perfect Weekly Account_ for "Wednesday, Oct. 20, to Tuesday,
Oct. 26," informs its readers that on "Friday an ordinance passed
both Houses for suppressing of stage-plays, which of late began to
come in use again." The ordinance itself is as uncivil a document
as ever proceeded from ruffled authority; and the framers clearly
considered that if they had not crushed the stage for ever, they
had unquestionably frozen out the actors as long as the existing
government should endure.
At this juncture, historians inform us that many of the ousted
actors took military service--generally, as was to be expected, on
the royalist side. But, in 1647, the struggle was virtually over.
The great fire was quenched, and there was only a trampling out of
sparks and embers. Charles Hart, the actor--grandson of Shakspeare's
sister--holds a prominent place among these players turned soldiers
as one who rose to be a major in Rupert's Horse. Charles Hart,
however, was at this period only seventeen years of age, and more
than a year and a half had elapsed since Rupert had been ordered
beyond sea, for his weak defence of Bristol. Rupert's major was,
probably, that very "jolly good fellow" with whom Pepys used to
take wine and anchovies to such excess as to make it necessary for
his "girl" to rise early, and fetch her sick master fresh water,
wherewith to slake his thirst, in the morning.
The enrolment of actors in either army occurred at an earlier period,
and one Hart was certainly among them. Thus Alleyn, erst of the
Cockpit, filled the part of quartermaster-general to the King's
army at Oxford. Burt became a cornet, Shatterel was something less
dignified in the same branch of the service--the cavalry. These
survived to see the old curtain once more drawn; but record is made
of the death of one gallant player, said to be Will Robinson, whom
doughty Harrison encountered in fight, and through whom he passed
his terrible sword, shouting at the same time: "Cursed is he that
doeth the work of the Lord negligently!" This serious bit of stage
business would have been more dramatically arranged had Robinson
been encountered by Swanston, a player of Presbyterian tendencies,
who served in the Parliamentary army. A "terrific broadsword combat"
between the two might have been an encounter which both armies
might have looked at with interest, and supported by applause. Of
the military fortunes of the actors none was so favourable as brave
little Mohun's, who crossed to Flanders, returned a major, and was
subsequently set down in the "cast" under his military title. Old
Taylor retired, with that original portrait of Shakspeare to solace
him, which was to pass by the hands of Davenant, to that glory
of our stage, "Incomparable Betterton." Pollard, too, withdrew, and
lusty Lowen, after a time, kicked both sock and buskin out of sight,
clapped on an apron, and appeared, with well-merited success, as
landlord of the Three Pigeons, at Brentford.
[Illustration: (John Lowen.)]
The actors could not comprehend why their office was suppressed,
while the bear-baiters were putting money in both pockets, and
non-edifying puppet-shows were enriching their proprietors. If
Shakspeare was driven from Blackfriars and the Cockpit, was it fair
to allow Bel and the Dragon to be enacted by dolls, at the foot of
Holborn Bridge? The players were told that the public would profit
by the abolition of their vocation. Loose young gentlemen, fast
merchant-factors, and wild young apprentices were no longer to be
seen, it was said, hanging about the theatres, spending all their
spare money, much that they could not spare, and not a little which
was not theirs to spend. It was uncivilly suggested that the actors
were a merry sort of thieves, who used to attach themselves to the
puny gallants who sought their society, and strip them of the gold
pieces in their pouches, the bodkin on their thighs, the girdles
buckled to give them shape, and the very beavers jauntily plumed to
lend them grace and stature.
In some of the streets by the river-side a tragedy-king or two found
refuge with kinsfolk. The old theatres stood erect and desolate, and
the owners, with hands in empty pockets, asked how they were to be
expected to pay ground-rent, now that they earned nothing? whereas
their afternoon-share used to be twenty--ay, thirty shillings, sir!
And see, the flag is still flying above the old house over the
water, and a lad who erst played under it, looks up at the banner
with a proud sorrow. An elder actor puts his hands on the lad's
shoulder, and cries: "Before the old scene is on again, boy, thy
face will be as battered as the flag there on the roof-top!" And as
this elder actor passes on, he has a word with a poor fellow-mime
who has been less provident than he, and whose present necessities
he relieves according to his means. Near them stand a couple of
deplorable-looking "door-keepers," or, as we should call them now,
"money-takers," and the well-to-do ex-actor has his allusive joke at
their old rascality, and affects to condole with them that the time
is gone by when they used to scratch their neck where it itched not,
and then dropped shilling and half-crown pieces behind their collars!
But they were not the only poor rogues who suffered by revolution.
That slipshod tapster, whom a guest is cudgelling at a tavern-door,
was once the proudest and most extravagantly-dressed of the
tobacco-men whose notice the smokers in the pit gingerly entreated,
and who used to vend, at a penny the pipeful, tobacco that was not
worth a shilling a cart-load. And behold other evidences of the
hardness of the times! Those shuffling fiddlers who so humbly peer
through the low windows into the tavern room, and meekly inquire:
"Will you have any music, gentlemen?" they are tuneful relics of the
band who were wont to shed harmony from the balcony above the stage,
and play in fashionable houses, at the rate of ten shillings for each
hour. _Now_, they shamble about in pairs, and resignedly accept the
smallest dole, and think mournfully of the time when they heralded
the coming of kings, and softly tuned the dirge at the burying of
Ophelia!
Even these have pity to spare for a lower class than themselves,--the
journeymen playwrights, whom the managers once retained at an annual
stipend and "beneficial second nights." The old playwrights were
fain to turn pamphleteers, but their works sold only for a penny,
and that is the reason why those two shabby-genteel people, who have
just nodded sorrowfully to the fiddlers, are not joyously tippling
sack and Gascony wine, but are imbibing unorthodox ale and heretical
small beer. "_Cunctis graviora cothurnis!_" murmurs the old actor,
whose father was a schoolmaster; "it's more pitiful than any of your
tragedies!"
The distress was severe, but the profession had to abide it. Much
amendment was promised, if only something of the old life might
be pursued without peril of the stocks or the whipping-post. The
authorities would not heed these promises, but grimly smiled--at the
actors, who undertook to promote virtue; the poets, who engaged to
be proper of speech; the managers, who bound themselves to prohibit
the entrance of all temptations into "the sixpenny rooms;" and the
tobacco-men, who swore with earnest irreverence to vend nothing but
the pure Spanish leaf, even in the threepenny galleries.
But the tragedy which ended with the killing of the King gave sad
hearts to the comedians, who were in worse plight than before, being
now deprived of hope itself. One or two contrived to print and sell
old plays for their own benefit; a few authors continued to add a
new piece, now and then, to the stock, and that there were readers
for them we may conjecture from the fact of the advertisements which
began to appear in the papers--sometimes of the publication of a
solitary play, at another of the entire dramatic works of that most
noble lady the Marchioness of Newcastle. The actors themselves united
boldness with circumspection. Richard Cox, dropping the words _play_
and _player_, constructed a mixed entertainment, in which he spoke
and sang; and on one occasion so aptly mimicked the character of an
artisan, that a master in the craft kindly and earnestly offered to
engage him. During the suppression, Cowley's "Guardian" was privately
played at Cambridge. The authorities would seem to have winked at
these private representations, or to have declined noticing them
until after the expiration of the period within which the actors were
exposed to punishment. Too great audacity, however, was promptly
and severely visited from the earliest days after the issuing of
the prohibitory decree. A first-rate troop obtained possession of
the Cockpit for a few days, in 1648. They had played unmolested for
three days, and were in the very midst of "The Bloody Brother" on
the fourth, when the house was invaded by the Puritan soldiery, the
actors captured, the audience dispersed, and the seats and the stage
righteously smashed into fragments. The players (some of them among
the most accomplished of their day) were paraded through the streets
in all their stage finery, and clapped into the Gate House and other
prisons, whence they were too happy to escape, after much unseemly
treatment, at the cost of all the theatrical property which they had
carried on their backs into durance vile.
This severity, visited in other houses as well as the Cockpit,
caused some actors to despair, while it rendered others only a
little more discreet. Rhodes, the old prompter at Blackfriars,
turned bookseller, and opened a shop at Charing Cross. There he
and one Betterton, an ex-under-cook in the kitchen of Charles I.,
who lived in Tothill Street, talked mournfully over the past, and,
according to their respective humours, of the future. The cook's
sons listened the while, and one of them especially took delight in
hearing old stories of players, and in cultivating an acquaintance
with the old theatrical bookseller. In the neighbourhood of the
ex-prompter's shop, knots of very slenderly-built players used to
congregate at certain seasons. A delegate from their number might
be seen whispering to the citizen captain in command at Whitehall,
who, as wicked people reported, consented, for a "consideration,"
not to bring his red-coats down to the Bull or other localities
where private stages were erected--especially during the time of
Bartholomew Fair, Christmas, and other joyous tides. To his shame,
be it recorded, the captain occasionally broke his promise, or the
poor actors had fallen short in their purchase-money of his pledge,
and in the very middle of the piece, the little theatre would be
invaded, and the audience be rendered subject to as much virtuous
indignation as the actors.
The cause of the latter, however, found supporters in many of the
members of the aristocracy. Close at hand, near Rhodes's shop, lived
Lord Hatton, first of the four peers so styled. His house was in
Scotland Yard. His lands had gone by forfeiture, but the proud old
Cheshire landowner cared more for the preservation of the deed by
which he and his ancestors had held them, than he did for the loss
of the acres themselves. Hatton was the employer, so to speak, of
Dugdale, and the patron of literary men and of actors, and, it must
be added, of very frivolous company besides. He devoted much time
to the preparation of a Book of Psalms and the ill-treatment of his
wife; and was altogether an eccentric personage, for he recommended
Lambert's daughter as a personally and politically suitable wife
for Charles II., and afterwards discarded his own eldest son for
marrying that incomparable lady. In Hatton, the players had a supreme
patron in town; and they found friends as serviceable to them in the
noblemen and gentlemen residing a few miles from the capital. These
patrons opened their houses to the actors for stage representations;
but even this private patronage had to be distributed discreetly.
Goffe, the light-limbed lad who used to play women's parts at the
"Blackfriars," was generally employed as messenger to announce
individually to the audience when they were to assemble, and to the
actors the time and place for the play. One of the mansions, wherein
these dramatic entertainments were most frequently given, was Holland
House, Kensington. It was then held and inhabited by the widowed
countess of that unstable Earl of Holland, whose head had fallen
on the scaffold in March 1649; but this granddaughter of old Sir
Walter Cope, who lost Camden House at cards to a Cheapside mercer,
Sir Baptist Hicks, was a strong-minded woman, and perhaps found some
consolation in patronising the pleasures which the enemies of her
defunct lord so stringently prohibited. When the play was over, a
collection was made among the noble spectators, whose contributions
were divided between the players according to the measure of their
merits. This done they wended their way down the avenue to the high
road, where probably, on some bright summer afternoon, if a part of
them prudently returned afoot to town, a joyous but less prudent few
"padded it" to Brentford, and made a short but glad night of it with
their brother of the "Three Pigeons."
At the most this was but a poor life; but such as it was, the players
were obliged to make the best of it. If they were impatient, it was
not without some reason, for though Oliver despised the stage, he
could condescend to laugh at, and with, men of less dignity in their
vocation than actors. Buffoonery was not entirely expelled from
his otherwise grave court. At the marriage festival of his daughter
Frances and his son-in-law Mr. Rich, the Protector would not tolerate
the utterance of a line from Shakspeare, expressed from the lips of
a player; but there were hired buffoons at that entertainment, which
they well-nigh brought to a tragical conclusion. A couple of these
saucy fellows seeing Sir Thomas Hillingsley, the old gentleman-usher
to the Queen of Bohemia, gravely dancing, sought to excite a laugh by
trying to blacken his face with a burnt cork. The high-bred, solemn
old gentleman was so aroused to anger by this unseemly audacity, that
he drew his dagger, and, but for swift interference, would have run
it beneath the fifth rib of the most active of his rude assailants.
On this occasion, Cromwell himself was almost as lively as the hired
jesters; snatching off the wig of his son Richard, he feigned to
fling it in the fire, but suddenly passing the wig under him, and
seating himself upon it, he pretended that it had been destroyed,
amid the servile applause of the edified spectators. The actors might
reasonably have argued that "Hamlet" in Scotland Yard or at Holland
House was a more worthy entertainment than such grown-up follies in
the gallery at Whitehall.
Those follies ceased to be; Oliver had passed away, and Richard had
laid down the greatness which had never sat well upon him. Important
changes were at hand, and the merry rattle of Monk's drums coming
up Gray's Inn Road, welcomed by thousands of dusty spectators,
announced no more cheering prospect to any class than to the actors.
The Oxford vintner's son, Will Davenant, might be seen bustling about
in happy hurry, eagerly showing young Betterton how Taylor used to
play Hamlet, under the instruction of Burbage, and announcing bright
days to open-mouthed Kynaston, ready at a moment's warning to leap
over his master's counter, and take his standing at the balcony as
the smooth-cheeked Juliet.
Meanwhile, beaming old Rhodes, with a head full of memories of the
joyous Blackfriars' days, and the merry afternoons over the water,
at the Globe, leaving his once apprentice, Betterton, listening to
Davenant's stage histories, and Kynaston, not yet out of his time,
longing to flaunt it before an audience, took his own way to Hyde
Park, where Monk was encamped, and there obtained, in due time, from
that far-seeing individual, licence to once more raise the theatrical
flag, enrol the actors, light up the stage, and, in a word, revive
the English theatre. In a few days the drama commenced its new career
in the Cockpit, in Drury Lane; and this fact seemed so significant,
as to the character of General Monk's tastes that, subsequently, when
he and the Council of State dined in the city halls, the companies
treated their guests, after dinner, with satirical farces, such as
"Citizen and Soldier," "Country Tom," and "City Dick," with, as the
newspapers inform us, "dancing and singing, many shapes and ghosts,
and the like; and all to please his Excellency the Lord General."
The English stage owes a debt of gratitude to both Monk and Rhodes.
The former made glorious summer of the actors' winter of discontent;
and the latter inaugurated the Restoration by introducing young
Betterton. The son of Charles I.'s cook was, for fifty-one years, the
pride of the English theatre. His acting was witnessed by more than
one old contemporary of Shakspeare,--the poet's younger brother being
among them,--he surviving till shortly after the accession of Charles
II. The destitute actors warmed into life and laughter again beneath
the sunshine of his presence. His dignity, his marvellous talent,
his versatility, his imperishable fame, are all well known and
acknowledged. His industry is indicated by the fact that he created
one hundred and thirty new characters! Among them were Jaffier and
Valentine, three Virginiuses, and Sir John Brute. He was as mirthful
in Falstaff as he was majestic in Alexander; and the craft of his
Ulysses, the grace and passion of his Hamlet, the terrible force of
his Othello, were not more remarkable than the low comedy of his Old
Bachelor, the airyness of his Woodville, or the cowardly bluster of
his Thersites. The old actors who had been frozen out, and the new
who had much to learn, could not have rallied round a more noble or
a worthier chief; for Betterton was not a greater actor than he was
a true and honourable gentleman. Only for him, the old frozen-outs
would have fared but badly. He enriched himself and them, and, as
long as he lived, gave dignity to his profession. The humble lad,
born in Tothill Street, before monarchy and the stage went down, had
a royal funeral in Westminster Abbey, after dying in harness almost
in sight of the lamps. He deserved no less, for he was the king of
an art which had well-nigh perished in the Commonwealth times, and
he was a monarch who probably has never since had, altogether, his
equal. Off as on the stage, he was exemplary in his bearing; true
to every duty; as good a country gentleman on his farm in Berkshire
as he was perfect actor in town; pursuing with his excellent wife
the even tenor of his way; not tempted by the vices of his time, nor
disturbed by its politics; not tippling like Underhill; not plotting
and betraying the plotters against William, like Goodman, nor
carrying letters for a costly fee between London and St. Germains,
like Scudamore. If there had been a leading player on the stage in
1647, with the qualities, public and private, which distinguished
Betterton, there perhaps would have been a less severe ordinance than
that which inflicted so much misery on the actors, and which, after a
long decline, brought about a fall; from which they were, however, as
we shall see, destined to rise and flourish.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Should be 1579. Stephen Gosson's _Schoole of Abuse_ was entered
at Stationers' Hall, July 22, 1579. Dr. Doran corrects this in the
second edition.
[13] Gosson was not made rector of St. Botolph till 1600.
[14] February 1647-48: that is, February 1648. This act succeeded the
one mentioned in the next paragraph.
[Illustration: THE GLOBE THEATRE.]
CHAPTER III.
THE "BOY ACTRESSES," AND THE "YOUNG LADIES."
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is the "sacred ground" of the English
drama since the restoration of monarchy. At the Cockpit (Pit Street
remains a memory of the place), otherwise called the Phoenix, in the
"lane" above-named, the old English actors had uttered their last
words before they were silenced. In a reconstruction of the edifice
near, rather than on, the old site, the young English actors, under
Rhodes, built their new stage, and wooed the willing town.
There was some irregularity in the first steps made to re-establish
the stage, which, after an uneasy course of about four years, was
terminated by Charles II., who, in 1663,[15] granted patents for two
theatres, and no more, in London. Under one patent, Killigrew, at
the head of the King's Company (the Cockpit being closed), opened at
the new theatre in Drury Lane, in August[16] 1663, with a play of
the olden time--the "Humourous Lieutenant" of Beaumont and Fletcher.
Under the second patent, Davenant and the Duke of York's Company
found a home--first at the old Cockpit, then in Salisbury Court,
Fleet Street, the building of which was commenced in 1660, on the
site of the old granary of Salisbury house, which had served for a
theatre in the early years of the reign of Charles I. This little
stage was lapped up by the great tongue of fire, by which many a
nobler edifice was destroyed, in 1666. But previous to the fire,
thence went Davenant and the Duke's troop to the old Tennis Court,
the first of the three theatres in Portugal Row, on the south side of
Lincoln's Inn Fields, from which the houses took their name.
In 1671, Davenant being dead, the company, under the nominal
management of his widow, migrated to a house designed by Wren, and
decorated by Grinling Gibbons. This was the Duke's Theatre, in Dorset
Gardens. It was in close vicinity to the old Salisbury Court Theatre,
and it presented a double face--one towards Fleet Street, the other
overlooking the terrace which gave access to visitors who came by
the river. Later, this company was housed in Lincoln's Inn Fields
again; but it migrated, in 1732, to Covent Garden, under Rich. Rich's
house was burnt down in 1808, and its successor, built by Smirke, was
destroyed in 1856. On the site of the latter now stands the Royal
Italian Opera, the representative, in its way, of the line of houses
wherein the Duke's Company struggled against their competitors of the
King's.
The first house of those competitors in Drury Lane was burnt in 1672,
but the King's Company took refuge in the "Fields" till Wren built
the new house, opened in 1674. The two troops remained divided, yet
not opposed, each keeping to its recognised stock pieces, till 1682,
when Killigrew, having "shuffled off this mortal coil,"[17] the
two companies, after due weeding, formed into one, and abandoning
Lincoln's Inn to the tennis-players, Dorset Gardens to the wrestlers,
and both to decay, they opened at the New Drury, built by Sir
Christopher, on the 16th of November 1682. Wren's theatre was taken
down in 1791; its successor, built by Holland, was opened in 1794,
and was destroyed in 1809. The present edifice is the fourth which
has occupied a site in Drury Lane. It is the work of Wyatt, and was
opened in 1812.
Thus much for the edifice of the theatres of the last half of the
seventeenth century. Before we come to the "ladies and gentlemen" who
met upon the respective stages, and strove for the approval of the
town, let me notice that, after the death of Oliver,[18] Davenant
publicly exhibited a mixed entertainment, chiefly musical, but which
was not held to be an infringement of the law against the acting of
plays. Early in May 1659, Evelyn writes:--"I went to see a new opera,
after the Italian way, in recitative music and scenes, much inferior
to the Italian composure and magnificence; but it was prodigious,
that in a time of such public consternation, such a vanity should
be kept up or permitted." That these musical entertainments were
something quite apart from "plays," is manifest by another entry in
Evelyn's diary, in January 1661:--"After divers years since I had
seen any play, I went to see acted 'The Scornful Lady,' at a new
theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields."
Of Shakspeare's brother Charles, who lived to this period, Oldys
says:--"This opportunity made the actors greedily inquisitive into
every little circumstance, more especially in Shakspeare's dramatic
character, which his brother could relate of him. But he, it seems,
was so stricken in years, and possibly his memory so weakened by
infirmities (which might make him the easier pass for a man of weak
intellects), that he could give them but little light into their
inquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother
_Will_ in that station, was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas
he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies,
wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard,
and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was
forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at
which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of
them sung a song." This description applies to old Adam, in "As You
Like It;" and he who feebly shadowed it forth, formed a link which
connected the old theatre with the new.
The principal actors in Killigrew's Company, from which that of Drury
Lane is descended, were Bateman, Baxter, Bird (Theophilus), Blagden,
Burt, Cartwright, Clun, Duke, Hancock, Hart, Kynaston, Lacy, Mohun,
the Shatterels (William and Robert), and Wintersel. Later additions
gave to this company Beeston, Bell, Charleton, "Scum" Goodman,
Griffin, Hains, Joe Harris, Hughes, Lyddoll, Reeves, and Shirley.
The "ladies" were Mrs. Corey, Eastland, Hughes, Knep, the Marshalls
(Anne and Rebecca), Rutter, Uphill, whom Sir Robert Howard too
tardily married, and Weaver. Later engagements included those of Mrs.
Boutel, Gwyn (Nell), James, Reeves, and Verjuice. These were sworn at
the Lord Chamberlain's Office to serve the King. Of the "gentlemen,"
ten were enrolled on the Royal Household Establishment, and provided
with liveries of scarlet cloth and silver lace. In the warrants of
the Lord Chamberlain they were styled "_Gentlemen_ of the Great
Chamber;" and they might have pointed to this fact as proof of the
dignity of their profession.
The company first got together by Rhodes, subsequently enlarged
by Davenant, and sworn to serve the Duke of York, at Lincoln's
Inn Fields, was in some respects superior to that of Drury Lane.
Rhodes's troop included the great Betterton, Dixon, Lilliston,
Lovel, Nokes (Robert), and six lads employed to represent female
characters--Angel, William Betterton, a brother of the great actor
(drowned early in life, at Wallingford), Floid, Kynaston (for a
time), Mosely, and Nokes (James). Later, Davenant added Blagden,
Harris, Price, and Richards; Medbourn, Norris, Sandford, Smith, and
Young. The actresses were Mrs. Davenport, Davies, Gibbs, Holden,
Jennings, Long, and Saunderson, whom Betterton shortly after married.
This new fashion of actresses was a French fashion, and the mode
being imported from France, a French Company, with women among them,
came over to London. Hoping for the sanction of their countrywoman,
Queen Henrietta Maria, they established themselves in Blackfriars.
This essay excited all the fury of Prynne, who called these actresses
by very unsavoury names; but who, in styling them "unwomanish
and graceless," did not mean to imply that they were awkward and
unfeminine, but that acting was unworthy of their sex, and unbecoming
women born in an era of grace.
"Glad am I to say," remarks as stout a Puritan as Prynne, namely,
Thomas Brand, in a comment addressed to Laud, "glad am I to say they
were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage, so that I do
not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Although
Brand asserts "that all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this
town" were "justly offended" at these women "or monsters rather," as
Prynne calls them, "expelled from their own country," adds Brand,
yet more sober-thinking people did not fail to see the propriety of
Juliet being represented by a girl rather than by a boy. Accordingly,
we hear of English actresses even before the Restoration, mingled,
however, with boys, who shared with them that "line of business."
"The boy's a pretty actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the "Court
Beggar," played at the Cockpit, in 1632, "and his mother can play
her part. The women now are in great request." Prynne groaned at the
"request" becoming general. "They have now," he writes, in 1633,
"their female players in Italy and other foreign parts."
Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" was privately acted[19] by amateurs,
including Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell; the parts of Ianthe
and Roxalana were played by Mrs. Edward Coleman and another lady.
The piece is so stuffed with heroic deeds, heroic love, and heroic
generosity, that none more suitable could be found for ladies to
appear in. Nevertheless, when Rhodes was permitted to reopen the
stage, he could only assemble boys about him for his Evadnes,
Aspasias, and the other heroines of ancient tragedy.
Now, the resumption of the old practice of "women's parts being
represented by men in the habits of women," gave offence, and this
is assigned as a reason in the first patents accorded to Killigrew
and Davenant why those managers were authorised to employ actresses
to represent all female characters. Killigrew was the first to avail
himself of the privilege. It was time. Some of Rhodes's "boys" were
men past forty, who frisked it as wenches of fifteen; even real kings
were kept waiting because theatrical queens had not yet shaved; when
they did appear, they looked like "the guard disguised," and when the
prompter called "Desdemona"--"enter GIANT!" _Who_ the lady was who
first trod the stage as a professional actress is not known; but that
she belonged to Killigrew's Company is certain. The character she
assumed was Desdemona, and she was introduced by a prologue written
for the occasion by Thomas Jordan. It can hardly be supposed that
she was too modest to reveal her name, and that of Anne Marshal has
been suggested, as also that of Margaret Hughes. On the 3d of January
1661, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush" was performed at
Killigrew's Theatre, "it being very well done," says Pepys, "and here
the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." Davenant
did not bring forward _his_ actresses before the end of June 1661,
when he produced the second part of the "Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs.
Davenport as Roxalana, and Mrs. Saunderson as Ianthe; both these
ladies, with Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Long, boarded in Davenant's house.
Killigrew abused his privilege to employ ladies. In 1664, his comedy,
the "Parson's Wedding," wherein the plague is made a comic incident
of, connected with unexampled profligacy, was acted, "I am _told_,"
are Pepys's own words, "by nothing but women, at the King's house."
By this time the vocation of the "boy-actresses" had altogether
passed away; and there only remains for me to briefly trace the
career of those old world representatives of the gentle or truculent
heroines depicted by our early dramatists.
There were three members of Killigrew's, or the King's Company,
who were admirable representatives of female characters before the
Civil Wars. These were Hart, Burt, and Clun--all pupils of luckless
Robinson, slain in fight, who was himself an accomplished "actress."
Of the three, Hart rose to the greatest eminence. His Duchess,
in Shirley's "Cardinal," was the most successful of his youthful
parts. After the Restoration, he laid down Cassio to take Othello,
from Burt, by the King's command, and was as great in the Moor
as Betterton, at the other house, was in Hamlet. His Alexander,
which he _created_, always filled the theatre; and his dignity
therein was said to convey a lesson even to kings. His Brutus was
scarcely inferior, while his Catiline was so unapproachable, that
when he died, Jonson's tragedy died with him.[20] Rymer styles him
and Mohun the Æsopus and Roscius of their time. When they acted
together (Amintor and Melantius) in the "Maid's Tragedy," the town
asked no greater treat. Hart was one of Pepys's prime favourites.
He was a man whose presence delighted the eye, before his accents
enchanted the ear. The humblest character intrusted to him was
distinguished by his careful study. On the stage he acknowledged no
audience; their warmest applause could never draw him into a moment's
forgetfulness of his assumed character. In Manly, "The Plain Dealer,"
as in Catiline, he never found a successor who could equal him.
His salary was, at the most, three pounds a week, but he is said
to have realised £1000 yearly after he became a shareholder in the
theatre. He finally retired in 1682, on a pension amounting to half
his salary, which he enjoyed, however, scarcely a year. He died of a
painful inward complaint in 1683, and was buried at Stanmore Magna.
There is a tradition that Hart, Mohun, and Betterton fought on the
King's side at Edgehill, in 1642. The last-named was then a child,
and some things are attributed to Charles Hart which belonged to
his father. If Charles was but eighteen when his namesake, the King,
returned in 1660, it must have been his father who was at Edgehill
with Mohun, and who, perhaps, played female characters in his early
days.
Burt, after he left off the women's gear, acted Cicero, with rare
ability, in "Catiline," for the getting up of which piece Charles II.
contributed £500 for robes. Of Clun, in or out of petticoats, the
record is brief. His Iago was superior to Mohun's, but Lacy excelled
him in the "Humourous Lieutenant;" but as Subtle, in the "Alchymist,"
he was the admiration of all playgoers. After acting this comic part,
Clun made a tragic end on the night of the 3d of August 1664. With
a lady hanging on his arm, and some liquor lying under his belt, he
was gaily passing on his way to his country lodgings in Kentish Town,
when he was assailed, murdered, and flung into a ditch, by rogues,
one of whom was captured, "an Irish fellow, most cruelly butchered
and bound." "The house will have a great miss of him," is the epitaph
of Pepys upon versatile Clun.
Of the boys belonging to Davenant's Company, who at first appeared
in woman's boddice, but soon found their occupation gone, some
were of greater fame than others. One of these, Angel, turned from
waiting-maids to low comedy, caricatured Frenchmen and foolish lords.
We hear nothing of him after 1673. The younger Betterton, as I have
said, was drowned at Wallingford. Mosely and Floid represented a
vulgar class of women, and both died before the year 1674; but
Kynaston and James Nokes long survived to occupy prominent positions
on the stage.
Kynaston made "the loveliest lady," for a boy, ever beheld by Pepys.
This was in 1660, when Kynaston played Olympia, the Duke's sister,
in the "Loyal Subject;" and went with a young fellow-actor to
carouse, after the play, with Pepys and Captain Ferrers. Kynaston
was a handsome fellow under every guise. On the 7th of January 1661,
says Pepys, "Tom and I, and my wife, to the theatre, and there saw
'The Silent Woman.' Among other things here, Kynaston, the boy, had
the good turn to appear in three shapes. First, as a poor woman,
in ordinary clothes, to please Morose; then, in fine clothes, as a
gallant--and in them was clearly the prettiest woman in the whole
house; and lastly, as a man--and then likewise did appear the
handsomest man in the house." When the play was concluded, and it was
not the lad's humour to carouse with the men, the ladies would seize
on him, in his theatrical dress, and, carrying him to Hyde Park in
their coaches, be foolishly proud of the precious freight which they
bore with them.
Kynaston was not invariably in such good luck. There was another
handsome man, Sir Charles Sedley, whose style of dress the young
actor aped; and his presumption was punished by a ruffian, hired
by the baronet, who accosted Kynaston in St. James's Park, as "Sir
Charles," and thrashed him in that character. The actor then mimicked
Sir Charles on the stage. A consequence was, that on the 30th of
January 1669,[21] Kynaston was waylaid by three or four assailants,
and so clubbed by them, that there was no play on the following
evening; and the victim, mightily bruised, was forced to keep his
bed. He did not recover in less than a week. On the 9th of February
he reappeared, as the King of Tidore, in the "Island Princess," which
"he do act very well," says Pepys, "after his beating by Sir Charles
Sedley's appointment."
The boy who used to play Evadne, and now enacted the tyrants of the
drama, retained a certain beauty to the last. "Even at past sixty,"
Cibber tells us, "his teeth were all sound, white, and even as one
would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty." Colley attributes
the formal gravity of Kynaston's mien "to the stately step he had
been so early confined to in a female decency." The same writer
praises Kynaston's Leon, in "Rule a Wife and have a Wife," for its
determined manliness and honest authority. In the heroic tyrants, his
piercing eye, his quick, impetuous tone, and the fierce, lion-like
majesty of his bearing and utterance, "gave the spectator a kind of
trembling admiration."
When Cibber played Syphax, in "Cato," he did it as he thought
Kynaston would have done, had he been alive to impersonate the
character. Kynaston roared through the bombast of some of the
dramatists with a laughable earnestness; but in Shakspeare's monarchs
he was every inch a king--dignified and natural. The true majesty
of his Henry IV. was so manifest, that when he whispered to Hotspur,
"Send us your prisoners, or you'll hear of it," he conveyed, says
Cibber, "a more terrible menace in it than the loudest intemperance
of voice could swell to." Again, in the interview between the
dying King and his son--the dignity, majestic grief, the paternal
affection, the injured, kingly feeling, the pathos and the justness
of the rebuke--were alike remarkable. The actor was equal to the task
assigned him by the author--putting forth "that peculiar and becoming
grace which the best writer cannot inspire into any actor that is not
born with it."
Kynaston remained on the stage from 1659 to 1699. By this time
his memory began to fail and his spirit to leave him. These
imperfections, says the generous Colley, "were visibly not his own,
but the effects of decaying nature." But Betterton's nature was not
thus decaying; and his labour had been far greater than that of
Kynaston, who created only a score of original characters, the best
known of which are, Harcourt, in the "Country Wife;" Freeman, in
the "Plain Dealer;" and Count Baldwin, in "Isabella, or the Fatal
Marriage." His early practice in representing female characters
affected his voice in some disagreeable way. "What makes you feel
sick?" said Kynaston to Powell--suffering from a too riotous "last
night." "How can I feel otherwise," asked Powell, "when I hear your
voice?"
Edward Kynaston died in 1712, and lies buried in the churchyard of
St. Paul's, Covent Garden. If not the greatest actor of his day,
Kynaston was the greatest of the "boy-actresses." So exalted was
his reputation, "that," says Downes, "it has since been disputable
among the judicious, whether any woman that succeeded him so sensibly
touched the audience as he."
In one respect he was more successful than Betterton, for he not only
made a fortune, but kept what he had made, and left it to his only
son. This son improved the bequest by his industry as a mercer in
Covent Garden; and, probably remembering that he was well-descended
from the Kynastons of Oteley, Salop, he sent his own son to college,
and lived to see him ordained. This Reverend Mr. Kynaston purchased
the impropriation of Aldgate; and, despite the vocations of his
father and grandfather, but in consequence of the prudence and
liberality of both, was willingly acknowledged by his Shropshire
kinsmen.
Kynaston's contemporary, James Nokes, was as prudent and as fortunate
as he; but James was not so well-descended. His father (and he
himself for a time) was a city toyman--not so well to do, but he
allowed his sons to go on the stage, where Robert was a respectable
actor, and James, after a brief exercise of female characters, was
admirable in his peculiar line. The toyman's son became a landholder,
and made of his nephew a lord of the soil. Thus, even in those days
of small salaries, players could build up fortunes; because the more
prudent among them nursed the little they could spare with care, and
of that little made the very utmost.
Nokes was, to the last night of his career, famous for his
impersonation of the Nurse in two plays; first, in that strange
adaptation by Otway of "Romeo and Juliet" to a Roman tragedy, "Caius
Marius;" and secondly, in Nevil Payne's fierce, yet not bombastic
drama, "Fatal Jealousy." Of the portraits to be found in Cibber's
gallery, one of the most perfect, drawn by Colley's hand, is that of
James Nokes. Cibber attributes his general excellence to "a plain
and palpable simplicity of nature, which was so utterly his own,
that he was often as accountably diverting in his common speech as
on the stage." His very conversation was an unctuous acting; and, in
the truest sense of the word, he was "inimitable." Cibber himself,
accomplished mimic as he was, confessedly failed in every attempt
to reproduce the voice and manner of James Nokes, who identified
himself with every part so easily, as to reap a vast amount of fame
at the cost of hardly an hour's study. His range was through the
entire realm of broad comedy, and Cibber thus photographs him for the
entertainment of posterity.
"He scarce ever made his first entrance in a play but he was received
with an involuntary applause, not of hands only, for those may be,
and have often been, partially prostituted and bespoken, but by a
general laughter, which the very sight of him provoked, and nature
could not resist; yet the louder the laugh the graver was his look
upon it; and sure the ridiculous solemnity of his features were
enough to have set a whole bench of bishops into a titter, could he
have been honoured (may it be no offence to suppose it) with such
grave and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous distresses which
by the laws of comedy folly is often involved in, he sunk into such
a mixture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consternation so ruefully
ridiculous and inconsolable, that when he had shook you to a fatigue
of laughter, it became a moot point whether you ought not to have
pitied him. When he debated any matter by himself, he would shut up
his mouth with a dumb, studious pout, and roll his full eye into such
a vacant amazement, such a palpable ignorance of what to think of it,
that his silent perplexity (which would sometimes hold him several
minutes) gave your imagination as full content as the most absurd
thing he could say upon it."
This great comic actor was naturally of a grave and sober
countenance; "but the moment he spoke, the settled seriousness of his
features was utterly discharged, and a dry, drolling, or laughing
levity took such full possession of him, that I can only refer the
idea of him to your imagination." His clear and audible voice better
fitted him for burlesque heroes, like Jupiter Ammon, than his middle
stature; but the pompous inanity of his travestied pagan divinity,
was as wonderful as the rich stolidity of his contentedly ignorant
fools.
There was no actor whom the City so rejoiced in as Nokes; there
was none whom the Court more delighted to honour. In May 1670,
Charles II., and troops of courtiers, went down to Dover to meet the
Queen-mother, and took with them the Lincoln's-Inn-Fields comedians.
When Henrietta Maria arrived, with her suite of French ladies and
gentlemen, the latter attired, according to the prevailing fashion,
in very short blue or scarlet laced coats, with broad sword belts,
the English comedians played before the royal host and his guests
the play founded on Molière's "Ecole des Femmes," and called "Sir
Solomon." Nokes acted Sir Arthur Addel, in dressing for which part
he was assisted by the Duke of Monmouth. In order that he might the
better ape the French mode, the duke took off his own sword and
belt, and buckled them to the actor's side. At his first entrance on
the stage, King and Court broke into unextinguishable laughter, so
admirably were the foreign guests caricatured; at which outrage on
courtesy and hospitality, the guests, naturally enough, "were much
chagrined," says Downes. Nokes retained the duke's sword and belt to
his dying day, which fell in the course of the year 1692. He was the
original representative of about forty characters, in plays which
have long since disappeared from the stage. Charles II. was the first
who recognised, on the occasion of his playing the part of Norfolk,
in "Henry VIII.," the merit of Nokes as an actor.[22]
James Nokes left to his nephew something better than the sword and
belt of the Duke of Monmouth, namely, a landed estate at Totteridge,
near Barnet, of the value of £400 a year. Pepys may have kissed
that nephew's mother, on the August day of 1665, when he fell into
company near Rochester with a lady and gentleman riding singly, and
differing as to the merits of a copy of verses, which Pepys, by his
style of reading aloud, got the husband to confess that they were as
excellent as the wife had pronounced them to be. "His name is Nokes,"
writes the diarist, "over against Bow Church.... We promised to meet,
if ever we come both to London again, and at parting, I had a fair
salute on horseback, in Rochester streets, of the lady."
Having thus seen the curtain fall upon the once "boy-actresses," I
proceed to briefly notice the principal ladies in the respective
companies of Killigrew and Davenant, commencing with those of the
King's House, or Theatre Royal, under Killigrew's management, chiefly
in Drury Lane. The first name of importance in this list is that of
Mrs. Hughes, who, on the stage from 1663 to 1676, was more remarkable
for her beauty than for her great ability. When the former, in
1668, subdued Prince Rupert, there was more jubilee at the Court of
Charles II., at Tunbridge Wells, than if the philosophic Prince had
fallen upon an invention that should benefit mankind. Rupert, whom
the plumed gallants of Whitehall considered as a rude mechanic, left
his laboratory, put aside his reserve, and wooed in due form the
proudest, perhaps, of the actresses of her day. Only in the May of
that year Pepys had saluted her with a kiss, in the green-room of
the Kings House. She was then reputed to be the intimate friend and
favourite of Sir Charles Sedley. "A mighty pretty woman," says Pepys,
"and seems, but is not, modest." The Prince enshrined the frail
beauty in that home of Sir Nicholas Crispe, at Hammersmith, which was
subsequently occupied by Bubb Doddington, the Margravine of Anspach,
and Queen Caroline of Brunswick. She well-nigh ruined her lover, at
whose death there was little left beside a collection of jewels,
worth £20,000, which were disposed of by lottery, in order to pay
his debts. Mrs. Hughes was not unlike her own Mrs. Moneylove in "Tom
Essence," a very good sort of person till temptation beset her. After
his death she squandered much of the estate which Rupert had left to
her, chiefly by gambling. Her contemporary, Nell Gwyn, purchased a
celebrated pearl necklace belonging to the deceased Prince for £4520,
a purchase which must have taken the appearance of an insult, in the
eyes of Mrs. Hughes. The daughter of this union, Ruperta, who shared
with her mother the modest estate bequeathed by the Prince, married
General Emanuel Scrope Howe. One of the daughters of this marriage
was the beautiful and reckless maid of honour to Caroline, Princess
of Wales, whom the treachery of Nanty Lowther sent broken-hearted
to the grave, in 1726. Through Ruperta, however, the blood of her
parents is still continued in the family of Sir Edward Bromley.
Mrs. Knipp (or Knep) was a different being from Margaret Hughes.
She was a pretty creature, with a sweet voice, a mad humour, and
an ill-looking, moody, jealous husband, who vexed the soul and
bruised the body of his sprightly, sweet-toned, and wayward wife.
Excellent company she was found by Pepys and his friends, whatever
her horse-jockey of a husband may have thought of her, or Mrs. Pepys
of the philandering of her own husband with the minx, whom she did
not hesitate to pronounce a "wench," and whom Pepys himself speaks
of affectionately as a "jade" he was always glad to see. Abroad he
walks with her in the New Exchange to look for pretty faces; and of
the home of an actress, in 1666, we have a sketch in the record of a
visit in November, "To Knipp's lodgings, whom I find not ready to go
home with me; and there staid reading of Waller's verses, while she
finished dressing, her husband being by. Her lodging very mean, and
the condition she lives in; yet makes a show without doors, God bless
us!"
Mrs. Knipp's characters embraced the rakish fine ladies, the rattling
ladies'-maids, one or two tragic parts; and where singing was
required, priestesses, nuns, and milkmaids. As one of the latter,
Pepys was enchanted at her appearance, with her hair simply turned up
in a knot, behind.
Her intelligence was very great, her simple style of dressing much
commended; and she could deliver a prologue as deftly as she could
either sing or dance, and with as much grace as she was wont to
throw into manifestations of touching grief or tenderness. She
disappears from the bills in 1678, after a fourteen years' service;
and there is no further record of the life of Mistress Knipp.
Anne and Rebecca Marshall are names which one can only reluctantly
associate with that of Stephen Marshall the divine, who is said to
have been their father. The Long Parliament frequently commanded
the eloquent incumbent of Finchingfield, Essex, to preach before
them. Cambridge University was as proud of him as a distinguished
_alumnus_, as Huntingdonshire was of having him for a son. In
affairs of religion he was the oracle of Parliament, and his advice
was sought even in political difficulties. He was a mild and
conscientious man, of whom Baxter remarked, that "if all the bishops
had been of the spirit and temper of Usher, the Presbyterians of the
temper of Mr. Marshall, and the Independents like Mr. Burroughs, the
divisions of the Church would have been easily compromised." Stephen
Marshall was a man who, in his practice, "preached his sermons o'er
again;" and Firmin describes him as an "example to the believers in
word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, and in purity." He died
full of honours and understanding; and Westminster Abbey afforded him
a grave, from which he was ruthlessly ejected at the Restoration. It
is hardly possible to believe that such a saint was the father of the
two beautiful actresses whom Nell Gwyn taunted with being the erring
daughters of a "praying Presbyterian."
On the other hand, we learn from Sir Peter Leicester's _History of
Cheshire_, that the _royalist_, Lord Gerard of Bromley, retained this
staunch Presbyterian in his house as his chaplain. Further, we are
told, that this chaplain married a certain illegitimate Elizabeth,
whose father was a Dutton of Dutton, and that of this marriage came
Anne and Rebecca. As Sir Peter was himself connected with both the
Gerards and Duttons by marriage, he must be held as speaking with
some authority in this matter.
Pepys says of Anne Marshall, that her voice was "not so sweet as
Ianthe's," meaning Mrs. Betterton's. Rebecca had a beautiful hand,
was very imposing on the stage, and even off of it was "mighty fine,
pretty, and noble." She had the reputation of facilitating the
intrigue which Lady Castlemaine kept up with Hart, the actor, to
avenge herself on the King because of his admiration for Mrs. Davies.
One of her finest parts was Dorothea, in the "Virgin Martyr;" and
her Queen of Sicily (an "up-hill" part) to Nell Gwyn's Florimel,
in Dryden's "Secret Love," was highly appreciated by the playgoing
public.
[Illustration: (Nell Gwyn.)]
With the exception of Mrs. Corey, the mimic, and pleasing little
Mrs. Boutel, who realised a fortune, with her girlish voice and
manner, and her supremely innocent and fascinating ways, justifying
the intensity of love with which she inspired youthful heroes, the
only other actress of the King's company worth mentioning is Nell
Gwyn; but Nell was the crown of them all, winning hearts throughout
her jubilant career, beginning in her early girlhood with that of
a link-boy, and ending in her womanhood with that of the king.
Nell Gwyn is claimed by the Herefordshire people. In Hereford city,
a mean house in the rear of the Oak Inn is pointed out as the place
of her birth. The gossips there little thought that a child so humbly
born would be the mother of a line of dukes, or that her great
grandson[23] should be the bishop of her native town, and occupy
for forty years the episcopal palace in close proximity to the poor
cottage in which the archest of hussies first saw the light.
But the claims of Pipe Lane, Hereford, are disputed by Coal Yard,
Drury Lane, and also by Oxford, where Nell's father, James Gwyn, a
"captain," according to some, a fruiterer according to others, died
in prison. The captain with his wife Helena,[24] somewhile a resident
in St. Martin's Lane, had two daughters, Nell and Rose. The latter
married a Captain Capels, and, secondly, a Mr. Foster; little else is
known of her, save that her less reputable sister left her a small
legacy, and that she survived till the year 1697. Nelly was born
early in 1650; and tradition states that she very early ran away
from her country home to town, and studied for the stage by going
every night to the play. I suspect Coal Yard was her first bower,
that thence she issued to cry "fresh herrings!" and captivate the
hearts of susceptible link-boys; and passed, from being hander of
strong waters to the gentlemen who patronised Madame Ross's house,
to taking her place in the pit, with her back to the orchestra, and
selling oranges and pippins, with pertinent wit, gratis, to liberal
fops who would buy the first and return the second with interest. As
Rochester assures us, there was a "wondering pit" in presence of this
smartest and most audacious of orange-girls. It was natural enough
that she should attract the notice of the actors, that Lacy should
give her instruction, and that from Charles Hart she should take that
and all the love he could pay her. The latter two were spoken of
in prologues, long after both were dead, as "those darlings of the
stage."
Under the auspices of Charles Hart, Nelly made her first appearance
at the (King's) theatre, in a serious part, Cydaria, in the "Indian
Emperor." She was then not more than fifteen, though some say
seventeen years of age. For tragedy she was unfitted: her stature
was low, though her figure was graceful; and it was not till she
assumed comic characters, stamped the smallest foot in England on the
boards, and laughed with that peculiar laugh that, in the excess of
it, her eyes almost disappeared, she fairly carried away the town,
and enslaved the hearts of city and of court. She spoke prologues
and epilogues with wonderful effect, danced to perfection, and in
her peculiar but not extensive line was, perhaps, unequalled for the
natural feeling which she put into the parts most suited to her.
She was so fierce of repartee that no one ventured a second time to
allude sneeringly to her antecedents. She was coarse, too, when the
humour took her; could curse pretty strongly if the house was not
full, and was given, in common with the other ladies of the company,
to loll about and talk loudly in the public boxes, when she was not
engaged on the stage. She left both stage and boxes for a time, in
1667, to keep mad house at Epsom with the clever Lord Buckhurst--a
man who for one youthful vice exhibited a thousand manly virtues.
The story, that Lord Buckhurst separated from Mistress Gwyn for a
money consideration and a title, can be disproved by the testimony
of a character which all Peru could not have influenced, and of
chronology, which sets the story at nought.
They who would read Buckhurst's true character, will find it in the
eloquent and graceful dedication which Prior made of his poems to
Buckhurst's son, Lionel. Like the first Sackville, of the line of the
Earls of Dorset, he was himself a poet; and, "To all you ladies now
on land," although not quite the impromptu it is said to have been,
is an evidence how gracefully he could strike the lyre on the eve of
a great battle. In short, Buckhurst, who took Nelly from the stage,
and who found Prior in a coffee-shop and added him to literature, was
a "man," brave, truthful, gay, honest, and universally beloved. He
was the people's favourite; and Pope assures us, when Buckhurst had
become Earl of Dorset, that he was "the grace of courts, the muses'
pride."
After a year's absence,[25] Mistress Gwyn returned to the stage.
In all nature, there was nothing better than she, in certain parts.
Pepys never hoped to see anything like her in Florimel, with her
changes of sex and costume. She was little, pretty, and witty; danced
perfectly, and with such applause, that authors would fain have
appropriated the approbation bestowed on her "jig," to the play in
which it was introduced. A play, without Nell, was no play at all to
Mr. Pepys. When, in 1667, she followed Buckhurst to Epsom, and flung
up her parts and an honestly-earned salary for a poor £100 a-year,
Pepys exclaims, "Poor girl! I pity her; but more the loss of her at
the King's house." The Admiralty-clerk's admiration was confined to
her merry characters; he speaks of her Emperor's Daughter, in the
"Indian Emperor," as "a great and serious part, which she does most
basely."
Her own party hailed her return; but she did not light upon a bed
of roses. Lady Castlemaine was no longer her patroness--rather
that and more of Nelly's old lover, Charles Hart, who flouted the
ex-favourite of Buckhurst. That ex-favourite, however, bore with
equal indifference the scorn of Charles Hart and the contempt of
Charles Sackville;--she saw compensation for both, in the royal
homage of Charles Stuart. Meanwhile, she continued to enchant the
town in comedy, to "spoil" serious parts in Sir Robert Howard's
mixed pieces, and yet to act with great success characters, in which
natural emotion, bordering on insanity, was to be represented. Early
in 1668, we find her among the loose companions of King Charles;
"and I am sorry for it," says Pepys, "and can hope for no good to
the state, from having a Prince so devoted to his pleasure." The
writers for the stage were of a like opinion. Howard wrote his "Duke
of Lerma," as a vehicle of reproof to the King, who sat, a careless
auditor, less troubled than Pepys himself, who expected that the play
would be interrupted by royal authority. The last of her original
characters was that of Almahide, in Dryden's "Conquest of Granada,"
the prologue to which she spoke in a straw hat as broad as a cart
wheel, and thereby almost killed the King with laughter. In this
piece, her old lover, Hart, played Almanzor; and his position with
respect to King Boabdelin (Kynaston) and Almahide (Nelly) corresponds
with that in which he stood towards King Charles and the actress. The
passages reminding the audience of this complex circumstance threw
the house into "convulsions."
From this time, Ellen Gwyn disappears from the stage. A similar
surname appears in the play-bills from 1670 to 1682; but there is no
ground for believing that the "Madam Gwyn" of the later period was
the Mrs. Ellen of the earlier, poorer, and merrier times. Nelly's
first son, Charles Beauclerc, was born in her house, in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, in May 1670; her second, in the following year, at her
house in Pall Mall, the garden terrace of which overlooked the then
green walk in the park, from which Evelyn saw, with shame, the King
talking with the impudent "comedian." This younger son, James, died
at Paris, 1680. The elder had Otway for a tutor. In his sixth year
he was created Earl of Burford, and in his fourteenth was created
a duke. His mother had addressed him, in the King's hearing, by an
epithet referring to his illegitimacy, on the plea that she did not
know by what title to call him. Charles made him an earl. Accident
of death raised him to a dukedom. Harry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans,
of whom report made the second husband of Henrietta Maria, had just
died. Blind as he had been, he had played cards to the last--some
one sitting near him to tell him the points. At an age approaching
to ninety years, he had passed away. Charles gave the name of St.
Albans, with the title of duke, to Nell Gwyn's eldest son, adding
thereto the registrarship of the High Court of Chancery, and the
office (rendered hereditary) of Master Falconer of England. The
present and tenth Duke of St. Albans is the lineal descendant of
Charles Stuart and Ellen Gwyn.
The King had demurred to a request to settle £500 a year on this
lady, and yet within four years she is known to have exacted from
him above £60,000. Subsequently, £6000, annually, were tossed to
her from the Excise,--that hardest taxation of the poor,--and £3000
more were added for the expenses of each son. She blazed publicly
at Whitehall, with diamonds out-flashing those usually worn, as
Evelyn has it, "by the like cattle." At Burford House, Windsor, her
gorgeous country residence, she could gaily lose £1400[26] in one
night at basset, and purchase diamond necklaces the next day, at
fabulous prices. Negligent dresser as she was, she always looked
fascinating; and fascinating as she was, she had a ready fierceness
and a bitter sarcasm at hand, when other royal favourites, or sons of
favourites, assailed or sneered at her. With the King and his brother
she bandied jokes as freely as De Pompadour or Du Barry with Louis
XV. By impulse, she could be charitable; but by neglecting the claims
of her own creditors she could be cruel. Charles alluded to her
extravagance when, on his deathbed, he recommended those shameless
women, Cleveland and Portsmouth, to his brother's kindness, and hoped
he would "not let Nelly starve." An apocryphal story attributes the
founding of Chelsea Hospital to Nelly's tenderness for a poor old
wounded soldier who had been cheated of his pay. The dedications to
her of books by such people as Aphra Behn and Duffet are blasphemous
in their expressions, making of her, as they do, a sort of divine
essence, and becoming satirical by their exaggerated and disgusting
eulogy. For such a person, the pure and pious Bishop Ken was once
called upon to yield up an apartment in which he lodged, and the
peerage had a narrow escape of having her foisted upon it as Countess
of Greenwich. This clever actress died in November 1687 of a fit of
apoplexy, by which she had been stricken in the previous March.
She was then in her thirty-eighth year. She had been endowed like a
princess, but she left debts, and died just in time to allow James to
discharge them out of the public purse. Finally, she was carried to
old St. Martin's-in-the-Fields to be buried, and Tennison preached
her funeral sermon. When this was subsequently made the ground of
exposing him to the reproof of Queen Mary, she remarked, that the
good doctor, no doubt, had said nothing but what the facts authorised.
In the time of Nelly's most brilliant fortunes, the people who
laughed at her wit and impudence publicly contemned her. In February
1680 she visited the Duke's Theatre, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, on
which occasion a person in the pit called her loudly by a name
which, to do her justice, she never repudiated. The affront, which
she herself could laugh at, was taken up by William Herbert, brother
of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who had married the younger sister of
another of the King's favourites, Henrietta de Querouaille. The
audience took part, some with the assailant, others with the champion
of Nelly. Many swords were drawn, the sorrows of the "Orphan" were
suspended, there was a hubbub in the house, and more scratches given
than blood spilt. That Nelly found a knight in Thomas Herbert only
proves that a hot-headed young gentleman may become a very sage as
years grow upon him. This Thomas, when Earl of Pembroke, was "first
plenipotentiary" at the making of the treaty of Ryswick, and Chief
Commissioner in establishing the Union of England and Scotland. His
excellent taste and liberality laid the foundations of the collection
of antiques which yet attracts visitors to Wilton. But love for
leading play-house factions did not die out in his family. Four and
forty years after he had drawn sword for the reputation of Nell
Gwyn, his third Countess, Mary, sister of Viscount Howe, headed the
Cuzzoni party at the Opera-house against the Faustina faction, led
by the Countess of Burlington and Lady Delawar. Whenever Faustina
opened her mouth to sing, Lady Pembroke and her friends hissed the
singer heartily; and as soon as Cuzzoni made a similar attempt, Lady
Burlington and her followers shrieked her into silence. Lord Pembroke
sat by, thinking, perhaps, of the young days when he was the champion
of Nell Gwyn, or of Margaret Symcott, if an old tradition be true
that such was Nelly's real name.
Of the ladies who played at the Duke's House, under Davenant, the
principal were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Gibbs, Mrs. Holden,
Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Long, and Mrs. Norris. Chief among these were
Mistresses Davenport, Davies, Saunderson, and Long. Mrs. Davenport
is remembered as the Roxalana of Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes," which
she played so well that Pepys could not forget her in either of
her successors, Mrs. Betterton or Mrs. Norton. She is still better
remembered in connection with a story of which she is the heroine,
although that character in it has been ascribed to others.
Aubrey de Vere, the twentieth Earl of Oxford, was the last of his
house who held that title, but the one who held it the longest,
namely, seventy years, from 1632 to 1702. Aubrey de Vere despised
the old maxim, "Noblesse oblige." He lived a roystering life, kept a
roystering house, and was addicted to hard drinking, rough words, and
unseemly brawling and sword-slashing in his cups. The young earl made
love, after the fashion of the day and the man, to Mrs. Davenport,
but he might as well have made love to Diana; and it was not till
he proposed marriage that the actress condescended to listen to his
suit. The lovers were privately married, and the lady was, in the
words of old Downes, "erept the stage." The honeymoon, however, was
speedily obscured; Lord Oxford grew indifferent and brutal. When the
lady talked of her rights, he informed her that she was not Countess
of Oxford at all. The apparent reverend gentleman who had performed
the ceremony of marriage was a trumpeter, who served under this very
noble Lord in the King's own regiment of cavalry. The forlorn fair
one, after threatening suicide, sought out the King, fell at his
feet, and demanded justice. The award was made in the shape of an
annuity of £300 a year, with which "Lord Oxford's Miss," as Evelyn
calls her, seems to have been satisfied and consoled; for Pepys, soon
after, being at the play, "saw the old Roxalana in the chief box, in
a velvet gown, as the fashion is, and very handsome, at which I was
glad."
As for Miss Mary Davies, it is uncertain whether she was the
daughter of a Wiltshire blacksmith, or the less legitimate offspring
of Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Berkshire, or of the earl's
son--not the poet, but the colonel. However this may be, Mary Davies
was early on the stage, where she danced well, played moderately ill,
announced the next afternoon's performance with grace, and won an
infamous distinction at the King's hands, by her inimitable singing
of the old song, "My lodging is on the cold ground." Then there was
the publicly furnishing of a house for her, and the presentation of
a ring worth £600, and much scandal to good men and honest women.
Thereupon Miss Davies grew an "impertinent slut," and my Lady
Castlemaine waxed melancholy, and meditated mischief against her
royal and fickle lover. The patient Queen herself was moved to anger
by the new position of Miss Davies, and when the latter appeared in a
play at Whitehall, in which she was about to dance, her Majesty rose
and left the house. But neither the offended dignity of the Queen,
nor Lady Castlemaine "looking fire," nor the bad practical jokes of
Nell Gwyn, could loose the King from the temporary enchantment to
which he surrendered himself. Their daughter was that Mary Tudor, who
married the second Earl of Derwentwater, whose son, the third earl,
was the gallant young fellow who lost his head for aid afforded to
his cousin, the first Pretender, in 1715. Before his death, a request
was made to the Duke of Richmond, son of Charles II., by Madlle. de
Querouaille, to present a memorial to the Lords in order to save the
young earl's life. The Duke presented the memorial, but he added his
earnest hope that their lordships would reject the prayer of it! In
such wise did the illegitimate Stuarts play brother to each other!
Through the marriage of the daughter of Lord Derwentwater with the
eighth Lord Petre, the blood of the Stuart and of Moll Davies still
runs in their lineal descendant, the present and twelfth lord.
Happy are the women who have no histories! Such is the case with
Miss Saunderson, better known to us as Mrs. Betterton. For about
thirty years she played the chief female characters, especially in
Shakspeare's plays, with great success. She created as many new parts
as she played years; but they were in old-world pieces, which have
been long forgotten. In the home which she kept with her husband,
charity, hospitality, and dignity abided. So unexceptionable was Mrs.
Betterton's character, that when Crowne's "Calisto" was to be played
at court in 1674, she was chosen to be instructress to the Lady Mary
and the Lady Anne. These princesses derived from Mrs. Betterton's
lessons the accomplishment for which both were distinguished when
queens, of pronouncing speeches from the throne in a distinct and
clear voice, with sweetness of intonation, and grace of enunciation.
Mrs. Betterton subsequently instructed the Princess Anne in the
part of Semandra, and her husband did the like office for the young
noblemen who also played in Lee's rattling tragedy of "Mithridates."
Two individuals, better qualified by their professional skill
and their moral character, to instruct the young princesses and
courtiers, and to exercise over them a wholesome authority, could not
then have been found on or off the stage. After Betterton's death,
Queen Anne settled on her old teacher of elocution a pension of £500
a year.
Of the remainder of the actresses who first joined Davenant, there
is nothing recorded, except their greater or less efficiency. Of
Mrs. Holden, Betterton's kinswoman, the only incident that I can
recall to mind is, that once, by the accidental mispronunciation of a
word, when playing in "Romeo and Juliet," and giving it "a vehement
action, it put the house into such a laughter, that London Bridge at
low water was silence to it!" Under its echoes let us pass to the
"gentlemen of the King's Company."
FOOTNOTES:
[15] The second and final patents were dated--Killigrew's, 25th April
1662; Davenant's, 15th January 1663.
[16] April (2d edition). The exact date is 8th April, as given by
Downes.
[17] Killigrew died after, not before, the union of the two
companies. Chalmers expressly says that he lived to see them united,
and gives March 1683 as the time of his death.
[18] Davenant performed "The Siege of Rhodes" two years before
Cromwell's death, namely, in 1656. [See Mr. Joseph Knight's Preface
to his recent edition of the "Roscius Anglicanus."] Cromwell also
permitted the entertainment named "The Cruelty of the Spaniards in
Peru" to be represented, from political motives.
[19] Mr. Knight, in the Preface before mentioned, quotes some lines
from the Prologue to this performance, showing that it was a public
performance for money. This being so settles the question in the next
paragraph as to the identity of the first professional actress.
[20] Very questionable. Langbaine (1691) says, "This play is still in
vogue on the stage, and always presented with success."
[21] Dr. Doran misreads Pepys, who gives the date as 31st January
1669.
[22] I doubt whether _James_ Nokes ever played the part. Genest
evidently approves of Davies's suggestion that Robert Nokes was the
actor of it.
[23] This should be grandson.
[24] Or Eleanor.
[25] She was absent only about six weeks; Pepys chronicles her
departure under July 13, 1667, and her return under August 22, 1667.
[26] Peter Cunningham says, "1400 guineas, or £5000 at least of our
present money."
[Illustration: THE FORTUNE THEATRE.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY.
Of the King's Company, under Killigrew--Hart, Burt, and Clun have
already been noticed as players who commenced their career by acting
female parts. Of the other early members of this troop, the first
names of importance are those of Lacy, and little Major Mohun,
the low comedian, and the high tragedian. Of those who precede
them alphabetically, but little remains on record. We only know of
Theophilus Bird, that he broke his leg when dancing in Suckling's
"Aglaura," probably when the poet changed his tragedy, in which the
characters killed each other, into a sort of comedy, in which they
all survived. Cartwright, on the other hand, has left a lasting
memorial. If you would see how the kind old fellow looked, go down
to Dulwich College--that grand institution, for which actors have
done so much and which has done so little for actors--and gaze on his
portrait there. It is the picture of a man who bequeathed his books,
pictures, and furniture to the College which Alleyn, another actor,
had founded. In early life, Cartwright had been a bookseller, at the
corner of Turnstile, Holborn; and in his second vocation his great
character was Falstaff.
Lacy was a great Falstaff, too; and his portrait, a triple one,
painted by Wright and etched by Hopkins, one of the Princess
Elizabeth's pages, is familiarly known to Hampton Court visitors.
Lacy had been first a dancing-master, then a lieutenant in the army,
before he tried the stage. In his day he had no equal; and his
admirers denied that the day to come would ever see his equal. Lacy
was handsome, both in shape and feature, and is to be remembered
as the original performer of Teague, in the "Committee;" a play
of Howard's, subsequently cut down to the farce of "The Honest
Thieves." And eight years later (1671), taught by Buckingham, and
mimicking Dryden, he startled the town with that immortal Bayes, in
the "Rehearsal;" a part so full of happy opportunities that it was
coveted or essayed for many years, not only by every great actor,
whatever his line, but by many an actress, too; and last of all by
William Farren, in 1819.
There was nothing within the bounds of comedy that Lacy could not act
well. Evelyn styles him "Roscius." Frenchman, or Scot, or Irishman,
fine gentleman or fool, rogue or honest simpleton, Tartuffe or
Drench, old man or loquacious woman,--in all, Lacy was the delight
of the town for about a score of years. The King ejected the best
players from parts, considered almost as their property, and assigned
them to Lacy. His wardrobe was a spectacle of itself, and gentlemen
of leisure and curiosity went to see it. He took a positive enjoyment
in parts which enabled him to rail at the rascalities of courtiers.
Sometimes this Aristophanic licence went too far. In Howard's "Silent
Woman," the sarcasms reached the King, and moved his majesty to
wrath, and to locking up Lacy himself in the Porter's Lodge. After
a few days' detention, he was released; whereupon Howard, meeting
him behind the scenes, congratulated him. Lacy, still ill in temper,
abused the poet for the nonsense he had put into the part of Captain
Otter, which was the cause of all the mischief. Lacy further told
Howard he was "more a fool than a poet." Thereat the honourable
Edward, raising his glove, smote Lacy smartly with it over the face.
Jack Lacy retaliated by lifting his cane and letting it descend quite
as smartly on the pate of a man who was cousin to an earl. Ordinary
men marvelled that the honourable Edward did not run Jack through the
body. On the contrary, without laying hand to hilt, Howard hastened
to the King, lodged his complaint, and the house was thereupon
ordered to be closed. Thus, many starved for the indiscretion of one;
but the gentry rejoiced at the silencing of the company, as those
clever fellows and their fair mates were growing, as that gentry
thought, "too insolent."
Lacy, soon after, was said to be dying, and altogether so
ill-disposed, as to have refused ghostly advice at the hands of "a
bishop, an old acquaintance of his," says Pepys, "who went to see
him." Who could this bishop have been who was the old acquaintance
of the ex-dancing-master and lieutenant? Herbert Croft, or Seth
Ward?--or, Isaac Barrow, of Sodor-and-Man, whose father, the mercer,
had lived near the father of Betterton? But, whoever he may have
been, the King's favour restored the actor to health; and he remained
Charles's favourite comedian till his death, in 1681.
When Lacy's posthumous comedy, "Sir Hercules Buffoon," was produced
in 1684, the man with the longest and crookedest nose, and the most
wayward wit in England--Tom Durfey--furnished the prologue. In that
piece he designated Lacy as the standard of true comedy. If the play
does not take, said lively Tom--
"all that we can say on't
Is, we've his fiddle, but not his hands to play on't!"
Genest, a critic not very hard to please, says that Lacy's friends
should have "buried his fiddle with him."
Michael Mohun is the pleasantest and, perhaps, the greatest name on
the roll of the King's Company. When the players offended the King,
Mohun was the peacemaker.
One cannot look on Mohun's portrait, at Knowle, without a certain
mingling of pleasure and respect. That long-haired young fellow wears
so frank an aspect, and the hand rests on the sword so delicately yet
so firmly! He is the very man who might "rage like Cethegus, or like
Cassius die." Lee could never willingly write a play without a part
for Mohun, who, with Hart, was accounted among the good actors that
procured profitable "third days" for authors. No Maximin could defy
the gods as he did; and there has been no franker Clytus since the
day he originally represented the character in "Alexander the Great."
In some parts he contested the palm with Betterton, whose versatility
he rivalled, creating one year Abdelmelich, in another Dapperwit,
in a third Pinchwife, and then a succession of classical heroes and
modern rakes or simpletons. Such an actor had many imitators, but,
in his peculiar line, few could rival a man who was said to speak as
Shakspeare wrote, and whom nature had formed for a nation's delight.
The author of the Epilogue to "Love in the Dark" (that bustling piece
of Sir Francis Fane's, from the Scrutinio,[27] in which, played by
Lacy, Mrs. Centlivre derived her Marplot), illustrates the success of
Mohun's imitators by an allusion to the gout from which he suffered:
"Those Blades indeed, but cripples in their art,--
Mimic his foot, but not his speaking part."
Of his modesty, I know no better trait than what passed when
Nat. Lee had read to him a part which Mohun was to fill in one of
Lee's tragedies. The Major put aside the manuscript, in a sort of
despair--"Unless I could play the character as beautifully as you
read it," said he, "it were vain to try it at all!"
[Illustration: (Michael Mohun.)]
Such is the brief record of a great actor, one who before our civil
jars was a young player, during the civil wars was a good soldier,
and in the last years of Charles II. was an old and a great actor
still. Of the other original members of the Theatre Royal, there is
not much to be said. Wintershell, who died in 1679, merits, however,
a word. He was distinguished, whether wearing the sock or the buskin,
majestic in loftily-toned kings, and absurd in sillily-amorous
knights. Downes has praised him as superior to Nokes, in at least one
part, and his Slender has won eulogy from so stern a critic as Dennis.
Among the men who subsequently joined the Theatre Royal, there were
some good actors, and a few great rogues. Of these, the best actor
and the greatest rogue was Cardell Goodman, or _Scum_ Goodman, as he
was designated by his enemies. His career on the stage lasted from
1677, as Polyperchon, in Lee's "Rival Queens," to 1688. His most
popular parts were Julius Cæsar and Alexander. He came to the theatre
hot from a fray at Cambridge University, whence he had been expelled
for cutting and slashing the portrait of that exemplary Chancellor,
the Duke of Monmouth.
This rogue's salary must have been small, for he and Griffin shared
the same bed in their modest lodging, and having but one shirt
between them, wore it each in his turn. The only dissension which
ever occurred between them was caused by Goodman, who, having to
pay a visit to a lady, clapped on the shirt when it was clean, and
Griffin's day for wearing it!
For restricted means, however, every gentleman of spirit, in those
days, had a resource, if he chose to avail himself of it. The
resource was the road, and Cardell Goodman took to it with alacrity.
But he came to grief, and found himself with gyves on in Newgate;
yet he escaped the cart, the rope, and Tyburn. King James gave "his
Majesty's servant" his life, and Cardell returned to the stage--a
hero.
A middle-aged duchess, fond of heroes, adopted him as a lover,
and Cardell Goodman had fine quarters, rich feeding, and a dainty
wardrobe, all at the cost of his mistress, the ex-favourite of a
king, Barbara, the Duchess of Cleveland. Scum Goodman was proud of
his splendid degradation, and paid such homage to "_my_ duchess," as
the impudent fellow called her, that when he expected her presence
in the theatre, he would not go on the stage, though king and queen
were kept waiting, till he heard that "his duchess" was in the house.
For her he played the mad scene in Alexander with double vigour, and
cared for no other applause so long as her Grace's fan signalled
approbation.
Scum might have had a rare, if a rascally, life, had he been
discreet; but he was fool as well as knave. A couple of the Duchess's
children in the Duchess's house annoyed him, and Scum suborned a
villainous Italian quack to dispose of them by poison. A discovery,
before the attempt was actually made, brought Scum to trial for a
misdemeanour. He had the luck of his own father, the devil, that
he was not tried for murder. As it was, a heavy fine crippled him
for life. He seems, however, to have hung about the stage after he
withdrew from it as an actor. He looked in at rehearsals, and seeing
a likely lad, named Cibber, going through the little part of the
Chaplain, in the "Orphan," one spring morning of 1690, Scum loudly
wished he might be--what he very much deserved to be, if the young
fellow did not turn out a good actor. Colley was so delighted with
the earnest criticism, that the tears flowed to his eyes. At least,
he says so.
King James having saved Cardell's neck, Goodman, out of pure
gratitude, perhaps, became a Tory, and something more, when William
sat in the seat of his father-in-law. After Queen Mary's death, Scum
was in the Fenwick and Charnock plot to kill the King. When the
plot was discovered, Scum was ready to peach. As Fenwick's life was
thought by his friends to be safe if Goodman could be bought off
and got out of the way, the rogue was looked for, at the _Fleece_,
in Covent Garden, famous for homicides, and at the robbers' and the
revellers' den, the _Dog_, in Drury Lane. Fenwick's agent, O'Bryan,
erst soldier and highwayman, now a Jacobite agent, found Scum at
the _Dog_, and would then and there have cut his throat, had not
Scum consented to the pleasant alternative of accepting £500 a year,
and a residence abroad. This to a man who was the first forger of
bank-notes! Scum suddenly disappeared, and Lord Manchester, our
Ambassador in Paris, inquired after him in vain. It is impossible to
say whether the rogue died by an avenging hand, or starvation.
We are better acquainted with the fate of the last of Scum's fair
favourites, the pretty Mrs. Price of Drury Lane. This Ariadne was not
disconsolate for her Theseus. She married "Charles, Lord Banbury,"
who was _not_ Lord Banbury, for the House of Peers denied his claim
to the title; and he was not Mrs. Price's husband, as he was already
married to a living lady, Mrs. Lester. Of this confusion in social
arrangements the world made small account, although the law did
pronounce in favour of Mrs. Lester, without troubling itself to
punish "my lord." The Judges pronounced for the latter lady, solely
on the ground that she had had children, and the actress none.
Joseph Haines! "Joe" with his familiars, "Count Haines" with those
who affected great respect, was a rogue in his way,--a merry
rogue, a ready wit, and an admirable low comedian, from 1672 to
1701. We first hear of him as a quickwitted lad at a school in St.
Martin's-in-the-Fields, whence he was sent, through the liberality
of some gentlemen who had remarked his talents, to Queen's College,
Oxford. There Haines met with Williamson, the Sir Joseph of after
days, distinguished alike for his scholarship, his abilities as a
statesman, the important offices he held, and the liberality with
which he dispensed the fortune which he honourably acquired.
Williamson chose Haines for a friend, and made him his Latin
secretary when Williamson was appointed Secretary of State. If
Haines could have kept official and state secrets, his own fortune
would now have been founded; but Joe gossiped in joyous companies,
and in taverns revealed the mysteries of diplomacy. Williamson
parted with his indiscreet "servant," but sent him to recommence
fortune-making at Cambridge. Here, again, his waywardness ruined him
for a professor. A strolling company at Stourbridge Fair seduced him
from the groves of Academus,[28] and in a short time this foolish
and clever fellow, light of head, of heart, and of principle, was
the delight of the Drury Lane audiences, and the favoured guest in
the noblest society where mirth, humour, and dashing impudence were
welcome.
In 1673, his Sparkish, in the "Country Wife"--his original
character--was accepted as the type of the airy gentleman of the
day. His acting on, and his jokes off, the stage were the themes in
all coteries and coffee-houses. He was a great practical jester,
and once engaged a simple-minded clergyman as "Chaplain to the
Theatre Royal," and sent him behind the scenes, ringing a bell,
and calling the players to prayers! When Romanism was looking up,
under James II., Haines had the impudence to announce to the convert
Sunderland,--unworthy son of Waller's Sacharissa,--his adoption of
the King's religion, being moved thereto by the Virgin, who had
appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joe, arise!" This was too much
even for Sunderland, who drily observed that "she would have said
'Joseph,' if only out of respect for her husband!"
The rogue showed the value of a "profession," which gave rise to as
many pamphlets as Dryden's, by subsequently recanting,--not in the
church, but on the stage; he the while covered with a sheet, holding
a taper, and delivering some stupid rhymes,--to the very dullest of
which he had the art of giving wonderful expression by his accent,
emphasis, modulation, and felicity of application. The audience that
could bear this recantation-prologue could easily pardon the speaker,
who would have caused even greater errors to have been pardoned,
were it only for his wonderful impersonation of Captain Bluff (1693)
in Congreve's "Old Bachelor." The self-complaisant way in which he
used to utter "Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in his day," was
universally imitated, and has made the phrase itself proverbial. His
Roger, in "Æsop," was another of his successes, the bright roll of
which was crowned by his lively, impudent, irresistible Tom Errand,
in Farquhar's "Constant Couple,"--that most triumphant comedy of a
whole century.
The great fault of Haines lay in the liberties which he took with
the business of the stage. He cared less to identify himself with
the characters he represented than, through them, to keep up a
communication with the spectators. When Hart, then manager, cast
Joe for the simple part of a Senator, in "Catiline," in which Hart
played the hero, Joe, in disgust at his _rôle_, spoiled Hart's best
point, by sitting behind him, absurdly attired, with pot and pipe in
hand, and making grimaces at the grave actor of Catiline; which kept
the house in a roar of laughter. Hart could not be provoked to forget
his position, and depart from his character; but as soon as he made
his _exit_, he sent Joe his dismissal.
Joe Haines then alternated between the stage and the houses of his
patrons. "Vivitur ingenio"--the stage-motto, was also his own, and
he seems to have added to his means by acting the jester's part
in noble circles. He was, however, no mere "fool." Scholars might
respect a "classic," like Haines, and travelling lords gladly hire as
a companion, a witty fellow, who knew two or three living languages
as familiarly as he did his own. With an English peer he once visited
Paris, where Joe is said to have got imprisoned for debt, incurred in
the character, assumed by him, of an English lord. After his release,
he returned to England, self-invested with the dignity of "Count," a
title not respected by a couple of bailiffs, who arrested Joseph, on
Holborn Hill, for a little matter of £20.
"Here comes the carriage of my cousin, the Bishop of Ely," said the
unblushing knave; "let me speak to him; I am sure he will satisfy you
in this matter."
Consent was given, and Haines, putting his head in at the
carriage-door, hastily informed the good Simon Patrick that "here
were two Romanists inclined to become Protestants, but with yet some
scruples of conscience."
"My friends," said the eager prelate to them, "if you will presently
come to my house, I will satisfy you in this matter!" The scrupulous
gentlemen were well content; but when an explanation ensued, the
vexed bishop paid the money out of very shame, and Joe and the
bailiffs spread the story. They who remembered how Haines played Lord
Plausible, in the "Plain Dealer," were not at all surprised at his
deceiving a bishop and a brace of bailiffs.
Sometimes his wit was of a nicer quality. When Jeremy Collier's book
against the stage was occupying the public mind, a critic expressed
his surprise, seeing that the stage was a mender of morals. "True,"
answered Joe, "but Collier is a mender of morals, too; and two of a
trade, you know, never agree!"
Haines was the best comic actor, in his peculiar line of comedy,
during nearly thirty years that he was one of "their majesties'
servants." He died at his house in Hart Street, Covent Garden, then
a fashionable locality, on the 4th of April 1701, and was buried in
the gloomy churchyard of the parish, which has nothing to render it
bright but the memory of the poets, artists, and actors whose bodies
are there buried in peace.
Let us now consider the men in Davenant's, or the Duke's Company, who
acted occasionally in Dorset Gardens, but mostly in Portugal Row,
Lincoln's Inn Fields. Of these, the greatest actor was good Thomas
Betterton,--and his merits claim a chapter to himself.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Should be Intrigo, which Lacy really played.
[28] Other accounts say that he commenced his theatrical life early,
at the "Nursery."
[Illustration: THEATRE ROYAL, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS]
CHAPTER V.
THOMAS BETTERTON.
The diaries, biographies, journals, and traditions of the time will
enable us, with some little aid from the imagination, not only
to see the actor, but the social aspects amid which he moved. By
aid of these, I find that, on a December night, 1661, there is a
crowded house at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is
"Hamlet," with young Mr. Betterton, who has been two years on the
stage, in the part of the Dane. The Ophelia is the real object of the
young fellow's love, charming Mistress Saunderson. Old ladies and
gentlemen, repairing in capacious coaches to this representation,
remind one another of the lumbering and crushing of carriages about
the old playhouse in the Blackfriars, causing noisy tumults which
drew indignant appeals from the Puritan housekeepers, whose privacy
was sadly disturbed. But what was the tumult there to the scene
on the south side of the "Fields," when "Hamlet," with Betterton,
as now, was offered to the public! The Jehus contend for place
with the eagerness of ancient Britons in a battle of chariots.
And see, the mob about the pit-doors have just caught a bailiff
attempting to arrest an honest playgoer. They fasten the official
up in a tub, and roll the trembling wretch all "round the square."
They finish by hurling him against a carriage, which sweeps from a
neighbouring street at full gallop. Down come the horses over the
barrelled bailiff, with sounds of hideous ruin; and the young lady
lying back in the coach is screaming like mad. This lady is the
dishonest daughter of brave, honest, and luckless Viscount Grandison.
As yet she is only Mrs. Palmer; next year she will be Countess of
Castlemaine.
At length the audience are all safely housed and eager. Indifferent
enough, however, they are during the opening scenes. The fine
gentlemen laugh loudly and comb their periwigs in the "best rooms."
The fops stand erect in the boxes to show how folly looks in clean
linen; and the orange nymphs, with their costly entertainment of
fruit from Seville, giggle and chatter, as they stand on the benches
below with old and young admirers, proud of being recognised in the
boxes.
The whole court of Denmark is before them; but not till the words,
"'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother," fall from the lips
of Betterton, is the general ear charmed, or the general tongue
arrested. Then, indeed, the vainest fops and pertest orange girls
look round and listen too. The voice is so low, and sad, and sweet;
the modulation so tender, the dignity so natural, the grace so
consummate, that all yield themselves silently to the delicious
enchantment. "It's beyond imagination," whispers Mr. Pepys to his
neighbour, who only answers with a long and low drawn "_Hush!_"
I can never look on Kneller's masterly portrait of this great player,
without envying those who had the good fortune to see the original,
especially in Hamlet. How grand the head, how lofty the brow, what
eloquence and fire in the eyes, how firm the mouth, how manly the
sum of all! How is the whole audience subdued almost to tears, at
the mingled love and awe which he displays in presence of the spirit
of his father! Some idea of Betterton's acting in this scene may be
derived from Cibber's description of it, and from that I come to the
conclusion, that Betterton fulfilled all that Overbury laid down with
regard to what best graced an actor. "Whatsoever is commendable to
the grave orator, is most exquisitely perfect in him; for by a full
and significant action of body he charms our attention. Sit in a full
theatre, and you will think you see so many lines drawn from the
circumference of so many ears, while the actor is the centre." This
was especially the case with Betterton; and now, as Hamlet's first
soliloquy closes, and the charmed but silent audience "feel music's
pulse in all their arteries," Mr. Pepys almost too loudly exclaims
in his ecstasy, "It's the best acted part ever done by man." And the
audience think so, too; there is a hurricane of applause; after which
the fine gentlemen renew their prattle with the fine ladies, and the
orange girls beset the Sir Foplings, and this universal trifling is
felt as a relief after the general emotion.
Meanwhile, a critic objects that young Mr. Betterton is not
"original," and intimates that his Hamlet is played by tradition come
down through Davenant, who had seen the character acted by Taylor,
and had taught the boy to enact the Prince after the fashion set by
the man who was said to have been instructed by Shakspeare himself;
amid which Mr. Pepys remarks, "I only know that Mr. Betterton is the
best actor in the world."
As Sir Thomas Overbury remarked of a great player, his voice was
never lower than the prompter's nor higher than the foil and target.
But let us be silent, here comes the gentle Ophelia. The audience
generally took an interest in this lady, and the royal Dane, for
there was not one in the house who was ignorant of the love-passages
there had been between them, or of the coming marriage by which
they were to receive additional warrant. Mistress Saunderson was a
lady worthy of all the homage here implied. There was mind in her
acting; and she not only possessed personal beauty, but also the
richer beauty of a virtuous life. They were a well-matched couple on
and off the stage; and their mutual affection was based on a mutual
respect and esteem. People thought of them together, as inseparable,
and young ladies wondered how Mr. Betterton could play Mercutio,
and leave Mistress Saunderson as Juliet, to be adored by the not
ineffective Mr. Harris as Romeo! The whole house, as long as the
incomparable pair were on the stage, were in a dream of delight.
Their grace, perfection, good looks, the love they had so cunningly
simulated, and that which they were known to mutually entertain,
formed the theme of all tongues. In its discussion, the retiring
audience forgot the disinterring of the regicides, and the number of
men killed the other day on Tower Hill, servants of the French and
Spanish ambassadors, in a bloody struggle for precedency, which was
ultimately won by the Don!
Fifty years after these early triumphs, an aged couple resided in one
of the best houses in Russell Street, Covent Garden,--the walls of
which were covered with pictures, prints, and drawings, selected with
taste and judgment. They were still a handsome pair. The venerable
lady, indeed, looks pale and somewhat saddened. The gleam of April
sunshine which penetrates the apartment cannot win her from the fire.
She is Mrs. Betterton, and ever and anon she looks with a sort of
proud sorrow on her aged husband. His fortune, nobly earned, has been
diminished by "speculation," but the means whereby he achieved it are
his still, and Thomas Betterton, in the latter years of Queen Anne,
is the chief glory of the stage, even as he was in the first year of
King Charles. The lofty column, however, is a little shaken. It is
not a ruin, but is beautiful in its decay. Yet that it should decay
at all is a source of so much tender anxiety to the actor's wife,
that her senses suffer disturbance, and there may be seen in her
features something of the distraught Ophelia of half a century ago.
It is the 13th of April, 1710--his benefit night; and the tears are
in the lady's eyes, and a painful sort of smile on her trembling
lips, for Betterton kisses her as he goes forth that afternoon to
take leave, as it proved, of the stage for ever. He is in such pain
from gout that he can scarcely walk to his carriage, and how is he
to enact the noble and fiery Melantius in that ill-named drama of
horror, "The Maid's Tragedy"? Hoping for the best, the old player
is conveyed to the theatre, built by Sir John Vanbrugh, in the
Haymarket, the site of which is now occupied by the "Opera-house."
Through the stage-door he is carried in loving arms to his
dressing-room. At the end of an hour Wilks is there, and Pinkethman,
and Mrs. Barry, all dressed for their parts, and agreeably
disappointed to find the Melantius of the night robed, armoured, and
be-sworded, with one foot in a buskin and the other in a slipper. To
enable him even to wear the latter, he had first thrust his inflamed
foot into water; but stout as he seemed, trying his strength to and
fro in the room, the hand of Death was at that moment descending on
the grandest of English actors.
The house rose to receive him who had delighted themselves, their
sires, and their grandsires. The audience were packed "like Norfolk
biffins." The edifice itself was only five years old, and when it was
a-building, people laughed at the folly which reared a new theatre in
the country, instead of in London;--for in 1705 all beyond the rural
Haymarket was open field, straight away westward and northward. That
such a house could ever be filled was set down as an impossibility;
but the achievement was accomplished on this eventful benefit night;
when the popular favourite was about to utter his last words, and to
belong thenceforward only to the history of the stage he had adorned.
There was a shout which shook him, as Lysippus uttered the words
"Noble Melantius," which heralded his coming. Every word which could
be applied to himself was marked by a storm of applause, and when
Melantius said of Amintor--
"His youth did promise much, and his ripe years
Will see it all performed,"
a murmuring comment ran round the house, that this had been effected
by Betterton himself. Again, when he bids Amintor "hear thy friend,
who has more years than thou," there were probably few who did not
wish that Betterton were as young as Wilks: but when he subsequently
thundered forth the famous passage, "My heart will never fail me,"
there was a very tempest of excitement, which was carried to its
utmost height, in thundering peal on peal of unbridled approbation,
as the great Rhodian gazed full on the house, exclaiming--
"My heart
And limbs are still the same: my will as great
To do you service!"
No one doubted more than a fractional part of this assertion, and
Betterton, acting to the end under a continued fire of "_bravoes!_"
may have thrown more than the original meaning into the phrase--
"That little word was worth all the sounds
That ever I shall hear again!"
Few were the words he was destined ever to hear again; and the
subsequent prophecy of his own certain and proximate death, on which
the curtain slowly descended, was fulfilled eight and forty hours
after they were uttered.
Such was the close of a career which had commenced fifty-one years
before! Few other actors of eminence have kept the stage, with the
public favour, for so extended a period, with the exception of Cave
Underhill, Quin, Macklin, King, and in later times, Bartley and
Cooper, most of whom at least accomplished their half century. The
record of that career affords many a lesson and valuable suggestion
to young actors, but I have to say a word previously of the
Bettertons, before the brothers of that name, Thomas and the less
known William, assumed the sock and buskin.
Tothill Street, Westminster, is not at present a fine or a fragrant
locality. It has a crapulous look and a villainous smell, and petty
traders now huddle together where nobles once were largely housed.
Thomas Betterton was born here, about the year 1634-5.[29] The
street was then in its early decline, or one of King Charles's cooks
could hardly have had home in it. Nevertheless, there still clung
to it a considerable share of dignity. Even at that time there was
a Tothill Fields House of Correction, whither vagabonds were sent,
who used to earn scraps by scraping trenchers in the tents pitched
in Petty France. All else in the immediate neighbourhood retained
an air of pristine and very ancient nobility. I therefore take the
father of Betterton, cook to King Charles, to have been a very good
gentleman, in his way. He was certainly the sire of one, and the
circumstance of the apprenticeship of young Thomas to a bookseller
was no evidence to the contrary. In those days, it was the custom
for greater men than the _chefs_ in the King's kitchen, namely, the
bishops in the King's church, to apprentice their younger sons, at
least, to trade, or to bequeath sums for that especial purpose. The
last instance I can remember of this traditionary custom presents
itself in the person, not indeed of a son of a bishop, but of the
grandson of an archbishop, namely, of John Sharp, Archbishop of
York from 1691 to 1714. He had influence enough with Queen Anne to
prevent Swift from obtaining a bishopric. His son was Archdeacon of
Northumberland, and of this archdeacon's sons one was Prebendary
of Durham, while the other, the celebrated Granville Sharp, the
"friend of the Negro," was apprenticed to a linen-draper, on Tower
Hill. The early connection of Betterton, therefore, with Rhodes, the
Charing Cross bookseller, is not to be accepted as a proof that his
sire was not in a "respectable" position in society. That sire had
had for his neighbour, only half-a-dozen years before Thomas was
born, the well-known Sir Henry Spelman, who had since removed to
more cheerful quarters in Barbican. A very few years previously, Sir
George Carew resided here, in Caron House, and his manuscripts are
not very far from the spot even now. They refer to his experiences as
Lord Deputy in Ireland, and are deposited in the library at Lambeth
Palace. These great men were neighbours of the elder Betterton, and
they had succeeded to men not less remarkable. One of the latter was
Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, the friend of Spenser, and the Talus
of that poet's "Iron Flail." The Greys, indeed, had long kept house
in Tothill Street, as had also the Lords Dacre of the South. When
Betterton was born here, the locality was still full of the story of
Thomas Lord Dacre, who went thence to be hanged at Tyburn, in 1541.
He had headed a sort of Chevy-chase expedition into the private park
of Sir Nicholas Pelham, in Sussex. In the fray which ensued, a keeper
was killed, of which deed my lord took all the responsibility, and,
very much to his surprise, was hanged in consequence. The mansion
built by his son, the last lord, had not lost its first freshness
when the Bettertons resided here, and its name, _Stourton_ House,
yet survives in the corrupted form of Strutton Ground.
Thus, the Bettertons undoubtedly resided in a "fashionable" locality,
and we may fairly conclude that their title to "respectability"
has been so far established. That the street long continued to
enjoy a certain dignity is apparent from the fact that, in 1664,
when Betterton was rousing the town by his acting, as Bosola, in
Webster's "Duchess of Malfy," Sir Henry Herbert established his
office of Master of the Revels, in Tothill Street. It was not till
the next century that the decline of this street set in. Southern,
the dramatist, resided and died there, but it was in rooms over an
oilman's shop; and Edmund Burke lived modestly at the east end,
before those mysterious thousands were amassed by which he was
enabled to establish himself as a country gentleman.
Galt, and the other biographers of Betterton, complain of the paucity
of materials for the life of so great an actor. Therein is his life
told; or rather Pepys tells it more correctly in an entry in his
diary for October 1662, in which he says--"Betterton is a very sober,
serious man, and studious, and humble, following of his studies;
and is rich already with what he gets and saves." _There_ is the
great and modest artist's whole life--earnestness, labour, lack of
presumption, and the recompense. At the two ends of his career, two
competent judges pronounced him to be the best actor they had ever
seen. The two men were Pepys, who was born in the reign of Charles
I., and Pope, who died in the reign of George II. This testimony
refers to above a century, during which time the stage knew no
such player as he. Pope, indeed, notices that old critics used to
place Hart on an equality with him; this is, probably, an error for
Harris, who had a party at court among the gay people there who were
oppressed by the majesty of Betterton.[30] Pepys alludes to this
partisanship in 1663. "This fellow" (Harris), he remarks, "grew very
proud of late, the King and everybody else crying him up so high, and
that above Betterton, he being a _more aery man_, as he is, indeed."
From the day of Betterton's bright youth to that of his old age, the
sober seriousness of the "artist," for which Pepys vouches, never
left him. With the dress he assumed, for the night, the nature of
the man--be it "Hamlet" or "Thersites," "Valentine" or "Sir John
Brute," of whom he was to be the representative. In the "green-room,"
as on the stage, he was, for the time being, subdued or raised to
the quality of him whose likeness he had put on. In presence of
the audience, he was never tempted by applause to forget his part,
or himself. Once only, Pepys registers, with surprise, an incident
which took place at the representation of "Mustapha," in 1667. It was
"bravely acted," he says, "only both Betterton and Harris could not
contain from laughing, in the midst of a most serious part, from the
ridiculous mistake of one of the men upon the stage; which I did not
like."
Then for his humility, I find the testimony of Pepys sufficiently
corroborated. It may have been politic in him, as a young man, to
repair to Mr. Cowley's lodgings in town, and ask from that author his
particular views with regard to the Colonel Jolly in the "Cutter of
Coleman Street," which had been intrusted to the young actor; but the
politic humility of 1661 was, in fact, the practised modesty of his
life. In the very meridian of his fame, he, and Mrs. Barry also, were
as ready to take instruction respecting the characters of Jaffier and
Belvidera, from poor battered Otway, as they subsequently were from
that very fine gentleman, Mr. Congreve, when they were cast for the
hero and heroine of his comedies. Even to bombastic Rowe, who hardly
knew his own reasons for language put on the lips of his characters,
they listened with deference; and, at another period, "Sir John and
Lady Brute" were not undertaken by them till they had conferred with
the author, solid Vanbrugh.
The mention of these last personages reminds me of a domestic
circumstance of interest respecting Betterton. He and Mrs. Barry
acted the principal characters in "The Provoked Wife;" the part of
Lady Fancyfull was played by Mrs. Bowman. This young lady was the
adopted child of the Bettertons, and the daughter of a friend (Sir
Frederick Watson, Bart.) whose indiscretion or ill-luck had scattered
that fortune the laying of the foundation of which is recorded by
Pepys. To the sire Betterton had intrusted the bulk of his little
wealth as a commercial venture to the East Indies. A ruinous failure
ensued, and I know of nothing which puts the private life of the
actor in so pleasing a light, as the fact of his adopting the child
of the wholly ruined man who had nearly ruined _him_. He gave her all
he had to bestow, careful instruction in his art; and the lady became
an actress of merit. This merit, added to considerable personal
charms, won for her the homage of Bowman, a player who became, in
course of time, the father of the stage, though he never grew,
confessedly, old. In after years, he would converse freely enough
of his wife and her second father, Betterton; but if you asked the
carefully-dressed Mr. Bowman anything with respect to his age, no
other reply was to be had from him than--"Sir, it is very well!"
From what has been previously stated, it will be readily believed
that the earnestness of Betterton continued to the last. Severely
disciplined, as he had been by Davenant, he subjected himself to the
same discipline to the very close; and he was not pleased to see it
disregarded or relaxed by younger actors whom late and gay "last
nights" brought ill and incompetent to rehearsal. Those actors might
have reaped valuable instruction out of the harvest of old Thomas's
experience and wisdom, had they been so minded.
Young actors of the present time--time when pieces run for months
and years; when authors prescribe the extent of the run of their
own dramas, and when nothing is "damned" by a patient public--our
young actors have little idea of the labours undergone by the
great predecessors who gave glory to the stage and dignity to the
profession. Not only was Betterton's range of characters unlimited,
but the number he "created" was never equalled by any subsequent
actor of eminence--namely, about one hundred and thirty! In some
single seasons he studied and represented no less than eight original
parts--an amount of labour which would shake the nerves of the
stoutest among us now.
His brief relaxation was spent on his little Berkshire farm, whence
he once took a rustic to Bartholomew Fair for a holiday. The master
of the puppet-show declined to take money for admission--"Mr.
Betterton," he said, "is a brother actor!" Roger, the rustic, was
slow to believe that the puppets were not alive; and so similar in
vitality appeared to him, on the same night, at Drury Lane, the
Jupiter and Alcmena in "Amphitryon," played by Betterton and Mrs.
Barry, that on being asked what he thought of them, Roger, taking
them for puppets, answered, "They did wonderfully well for rags and
sticks."
Provincial engagements were then unknown. Travelling companies, like
that of Watkins, visited Bath, a regular company from town going
thither only on royal command; but magistrates ejected strollers
from Newbury; and Reading would not tolerate them, even out of
respect for Mr. Betterton. At Windsor, however, there was a troop
fairly patronised, where, in 1706, a Mistress Carroll, daughter of
an old Parliamentarian, was awakening shrill echoes by enacting
Alexander the Great. The lady was a friend of Betterton's, who had
in the previous year created the part of Lovewell in her comedy of
the "Gamester." The powers of Mrs. Carroll had such an effect on
Mr. Centlivre, one of the cooks to Queen Anne, that he straightway
married her; and when, a few months later, Betterton played Sir
Thomas Beaumont, in the lady's comedy, "Love at a Venture,"[31] his
friend, a royal cook's wife, furnished but an indifferent part for a
royal cook's son.
In other friendships cultivated by the great actor, and in the
influences which he exerted over the most intellectual men who were
his friends, we may discover proofs of Betterton's moral worth and
mental power. Glorious Thomas not only associated with "Glorious
John," but became his critic,--one to whom Dryden listened with
respect, and to whose suggestions he lent a ready acquiescence.
In the poet's "Spanish Friar," there was a passage which spoke of
kings' bad titles growing good by time; a supposed fact which was
illustrated by the lines--
"So, when clay's burned for a hundred years,
It starts forth china!"
The player fearlessly pronounced this passage "_mean_," and it was
forthwith cancelled by the poet.
Intimate as this incident shows Betterton to have been with Dryden,
there are others which indicate a closer intimacy of the player with
Tillotson. The divine was a man who placed charity above rubrics,
and discarded bigotry as he did perukes. He could extend a friendly
hand to the benevolent Arian, Firmin, and welcome, even after he
entered the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth, such a visitor as
the great actor Betterton. Did objection come from the rigid and
ultra-orthodox?--the prelate might have reminded them that it was
not so long since a bishop was hanged, and that the player was a far
more agreeable and, in every respect, a worthier man than the unlucky
diocesan of Waterford. However this may be questioned or conceded, it
is indisputable that when Tillotson and Betterton met, the greatest
preacher and the greatest player of the day were together. I think,
too, that the divine was, in the above respect, somewhat indebted
to the actor. We all remember the story how Tillotson was puzzled
to account for the circumstance that his friend the actor exercised
a vaster power over human sympathies and antipathies than he had
hitherto done as a preacher. The reason was plain enough to Thomas
Betterton. "You, in the pulpit," said he, "only tell a story: I, on
the stage, show facts." Observe, too, what a prettier way this was
of putting it than that adopted by Garrick when one of his clerical
friends was similarly perplexed. "I account for it in this way," said
the latter Roscius: "You deal with facts as if they were fictions; I
deal with fictions as if I had faith in them as facts." Again, what
Betterton thus remarked to Tillotson was a modest comment, which
Colley Cibber has rendered perfect in its application, in the words
which tell us that "the most a Vandyke can arrive at is to make his
Portraits of Great Persons seem to _think_. A Shakspeare goes farther
yet, and tells you _what_ his Pictures thought. A Betterton steps
beyond 'em both, and calls them from the grave, to breathe and be
themselves again in Feature, Speech, and Motion." That Tillotson
profited by the comment of Betterton--more gracefully than Bossuet
did by the actors, whom he consigned, as such, to the nethermost
Gehenna--is the more easily to be believed, from the fact that he
introduced into the pulpit the custom of preaching from notes.
Thenceforth, he left off "telling his story," as from a book, and,
having action at command, could the nearer approach to the "acting of
facts."
"_Virgilium tantum vidi!_" Pope said this of Dryden, whom he once
saw when a boy. He was wont to say of Betterton, that he had known
him from his own boyhood upwards, till the actor died, in 1710, when
the poet was twenty-two years of age. The latter listened eagerly to
the old traditions which the player narrated of the earlier times.
Betterton was warrant to him, on the authority of Davenant, from whom
the actor had it, that there was no foundation for the old legend
which told of an ungenerous rivalry between Shakspeare and Old Ben.
The player who had been as fearless with Dryden as Socrates was with
his friend Euripides--"judiciously lopping" redundant nonsense or
false and mean maxims, as Dryden himself confesses--was counsellor,
rather than critic or censor, with young Pope. The latter, at the
age of twelve years, had written the greater portion of an imitative
epic poem, entitled _Alcander, Prince of Rhodes_. I commend to
artists in search of a subject the incident of Pope, at fifteen or
sixteen, showing this early effort of his Muse to Betterton. It was
a poem which abounded in dashing exaggerations, and fair imitations
of the styles of the then greater English poets. There was a dramatic
vein about it, however, or the player would not have advised the bard
to convert his poem into a play. The lad excused himself. He feared
encountering either the law of the drama or the taste of the town;
and Betterton left him to his own unfettered way. The actor lived to
see that the boy was the better judge of his own powers, for young
Pope produced his _Essay on Criticism_ the year before Betterton
died. A few years later the poet rendered any possible fulfilment
of the player's counsel impossible, by dropping the manuscript of
_Alcander_ into the flames. Atterbury had less esteem for this work
than Betterton. "I am not sorry your _Alcander_ is burnt," he says;
"but had I known your intentions I would have interceded for the
first page, and put it, with your leave, among my curiosities."
Pope remembered the player with affection. For some time after
Betterton's decease the print-shops abounded with mezzotinto
engravings of his portrait by Kneller. Of this portrait the poet
himself executed a copy, which still exists. His friendly intercourse
with the half-mad Irish artist, Jervas, is well known. When alone,
Pope was the poet; with Jervas, and under his instructions, he
became an artist--in his way, but yet an artist--if a copier of
portraits deserves so lofty a name. In 1713, he writes to Gay:--"You
may guess in how uneasy state I am, when every day the performances
of others appear more beautiful and excellent, and my own more
despicable. I have thrown away three Dr. Swifts, each of which
was once my vanity, two Lady Bridgewaters, a Duchess of Montague,
half-a-dozen Earls, and one Knight of the Garter." He perfected,
however, and kept his portrait of Betterton, from Kneller, which
passed into the collection of his friend Murray, and which is now in
that of Murray's descendant, the Earl of Mansfield.
Kneller's portrait of Betterton is enshrined among goodly company at
princely Knole--the patrimony of the Sackvilles. It is there, with
that of his fellow-actor, Mohun, his friend Dryden, and his great
successor Garrick--the latter being the work of Reynolds. The grand
old Kentish Hall is a fitting place for such a brotherhood.
This master of his art had the greatest esteem for a _silent_ and
_attentive_ audience. It was easy, he used to say, for any player
to rouse the house, but to subdue it, render it rapt and hushed to,
at the most, a murmur, was work for an artist; and in such effects
no one approached him. And yet the rage of Othello was more "in his
line" than the tenderness of Castalio; but he touched the audience
in his rage. Harris competed with him for a brief period, but if he
ever excelled him it was only in very light comedy. The dignity
and earnestness of Betterton were so notorious and so attractive,
that people flocked only to hear him speak a prologue, while brother
actors looked on, admired, and despaired.
Age, trials, infirmity, never damped his ardour. Even angry and
unsuccessful authors, who railed against the players who had brought
their dramas to grief, made exception of Betterton. He was always
ready, always perfect, always anxious to effect the utmost within his
power. Among the foremost of his merits may be noticed his freedom
from all jealousy, and his willingness to assist others up the
height which he had himself surmounted. That he played Bassanio to
Dogget's Shylock is, perhaps, not saying much by way of illustration;
but that he acted Horatio to Powell's Lothario; that he gave up
Jupiter (Amphitryon) and Valentine, two of his original parts, to
Wilks, and even yielded Othello, one of the most elaborate and
exquisite of his "presentments," to Thurmond, _are_ fair instances
in point. When Bowman introduced young Barton Booth to "old Thomas,"
the latter welcomed him heartily, and after seeing his Maximus,
in "Valentinian," recognised in him his successor. At that moment
the town, speculating on the demise of their favourite, had less
discernment. They did not know whether Verbruggen, with his voice
like a cracked drum, or idle Powell, with his lazy stage-swing,
might aspire to the sovereignty; but they were slow to believe in
Booth, who was not the only young actor who was shaded in the setting
glories of the sun of the English theatre.
When Colley Cibber first appeared before a London audience he was a
"volunteer" who went in for practice; and he had the misfortune, on
one occasion, to put the great master out by some error on his own
part. Betterton subsequently inquired the young man's name and the
amount of his salary; and hearing that the former was Cibber, and
that, as yet, he received nothing, "Put him down ten shillings a
week," said Betterton, "and forfeit him five." Colley was delighted.
It was placing his foot on the first round of the ladder; and his
respect for "Mr. Betterton" was unbounded. Indeed there were few
who did not pay him some homage. The King himself delighted to
honour him. Charles, James, Queen Mary, and Queen Anne, sent him
assurances of their admiration; but King William admitted him to a
private audience, and when the patentees of Drury Lane were, through
lack of general patronage, suggesting the expediency of a reduction
of salaries, great Nassau placed in the hands of Betterton the
licence which freed him from the thraldom of the Drury tyrants, and
authorised him to open the second theatre erected in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. Next to his most sacred Majesty, perhaps the most formidable
personage in the kingdom, in the eyes of the actors, was the Lord
Chamberlain, who was master of the very lives of the performers,
having the absolute control of the stage whereby they lived. This
potentate, however, seemed ever to favour Betterton. When unstable,
yet useful, Powell suddenly abandoned Drury Lane, to join the company
in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Chamberlain did not deign to notice the
offence; but when, all as suddenly, the capricious and unreliable
Powell abandoned the house in the Fields, and betook himself again
to that in the Lane--the angry Lord Chamberlain sent a "messenger"
after him to his lodgings, and clapped the unoffending Thespian, for
a couple of days, in the Gate House.
While Powell was with Betterton, the latter produced the "Fair
Penitent," by Rowe, Mrs. Barry being the Calista. When the dead
body of Lothario was lying decently covered on the stage, Powell's
dresser, Warren, lay there for his master, who, requiring the
services of the man in his dressing-room, and not remembering
where he was, called aloud for him so repeatedly, and at length so
angrily, that Warren leapt up in a fright, and ran from the stage.
His cloak, however, had got hooked to the bier, and this he dragged
after him, sweeping down, as he dashed off in his confusion, table,
lamps, books, bones, and upsetting the astounded Calista herself.
Irrepressible laughter convulsed the audience, but Betterton's
reverence for the dignity of tragedy was shocked, and he stopped the
piece in its full career of success, until the town had ceased to
think of Warren's escapade.
I know of but one man who has spoken of Betterton at all
disparagingly--old Anthony Aston. But even that selfish cynic is
constrained so to modify his censure as to convert it into praise.
When Betterton was approaching threescore years and ten, Anthony
could have wished that he "would have resigned the part of Hamlet
to some young actor who might have _personated_, though," mark the
distinction, "_not have acted it better_." Aston's grounds for his
wish are so many justifications of Betterton; "for," says Anthony,
"when he threw himself at Ophelia's feet, he appeared a little too
grave for a young student just from the University of Wittenberg."
"His repartees," Anthony thinks, "were more those of a philosopher
than the sporting flashes of young Hamlet;" as if Hamlet were not the
gravest of students, and the most philosophical of young Danes! Aston
caricatures the aged actor only again to commend him. He depreciates
the figure which time had touched, magnifies the defects, registers
the lack of power, and the slow sameness of action; hints at a little
remains of paralysis, and at gout in the now thick legs, profanely
utters the words "fat" and "clumsy," and suggests that the face is
"slightly pock-marked." But we are therewith told that his air was
serious, venerable, and majestic; and that though his voice was "low
and grumbling, he could turn it by an artful climax which enforced
an universal attention even from the fops and orange-girls." Cibber
declares that there was such enchantment in his voice alone, the
multitude no more cared for sense in the words he spoke, "than our
musical connoisseurs think it essential in the celebrated airs of
an Italian Opera." Again, he says, "Could _how_ Betterton spoke be
as easily known as _what_ he spoke, then might you see the Muse of
Shakspeare in her triumph." "I never," says honest Colley, "heard a
line in tragedy come from _Betterton_, wherein my judgment, my ear,
and my imagination were not fully satisfied, which, since his time,
I cannot equally say of any one actor whatsoever." This was written
in 1740, the year before little David took up the rich inheritance
of "old Thomas"--whose Hamlet, however, the latter actor could
hardly have equalled. The next great pleasure to seeing Betterton's
Hamlet is to read Cibber's masterly analysis of it. A couple of
lines reveal to us the leading principle of his Brutus. "When the
Betterton-Brutus," says Colley, "was provoked in his dispute with
Cassius, his spirit flew only to his eye; his steady look alone
supplied that terror which he disdained an intemperance in his voice
should rise to." In his least effective characters, he, with an
exception already noted, excelled all other actors; but in characters
such as Hamlet and Othello he excelled himself. Cibber never beheld
his equal for at least two-and-thirty years after Betterton's
death, when, in 1741, court and city, with doctors of divinity and
enthusiastic bishops, were hurrying to Goodman's Fields, to witness
the Richard of the gentleman from Ipswich, named Garrick.
During the long career of Betterton he played at Drury Lane, Dorset
Gardens, Lincoln's Inn Fields (in both theatres), and at the
Opera-house in the Haymarket. The highest salary awarded to this
great master of his art was £5 per week, which included £1 by way of
pension to his wife, after her retirement in 1694. In consideration
of his merits, he was allowed to take a benefit in the season of
1708-9, when the actor had an ovation. In money for admission, he
received, indeed, only £76; but in complimentary guineas, he took
home with him to Russell Street £450 more. The terms in which the
_Tatler_ spoke of him living,--the tender and affectionate, manly
and heart-stirring passages in which the same writer bewailed him
when dead,--are eloquent and enduring testimonies of the greatness
of an actor, who was the glory of our stage, and of the worth of a
man whose loss cost his sorrowing widow her reason.[32] "_Decus et
Dolor._" "The grace and the grief of the theatre." It is well applied
to him who laboured incessantly, lived irreproachably, and died in
harness, universally esteemed and regretted. He was the jewel of the
English stage; and I never think of him, and of some to whom his
example was given in vain, without saying, with Overbury, "I value a
worthy actor by the corruption of some few of the quality, as I would
do gold in the ore; I should not mind the dross, but the purity of
the metal."
The feeling of the English public towards Betterton is in strong
contrast with that of the French towards their great actor, Baron.
Both men grew old in the public service, but both were not treated
with equal respect in the autumn of that service. Betterton, at
seventy, was upheld by general esteem and crowned by general
applause. When Baron, at seventy, was playing Nero, the Paris pit
audience, longing for novelty, hissed him as he came down the stage.
The fine old player calmly crossed his arms, and looking his rude
assailants in the face, exclaimed, "Ungrateful pit! 'twas I who
taught you!" That was the form of Baron's _exit_; and Clairon was as
cruelly driven from the scene when her dimming eyes failed to stir
the audience with the old, strange, and delicious terror. In other
guise did the English public part with their old friend and servant,
the noble actor, fittingly described in the licence granted to him by
King William, as "Thomas Betterton, Gentleman."
[Illustration: Mr. Garrick as King Lear.]
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Malone gives the date of his baptism as 11th August 1635.
[30] I see no reason to doubt that Hart rather than Harris was the
rival in question. Hart was an older actor than Betterton, and he
and Mohun were the supports of the old school, which its admirers
pronounced infinitely superior to that of Betterton. See, for
instance, the _Historia Histrionica_.
[31] Should be Sir Thomas Beaumont in "The Platonic Lady."
[32] It is generally implied, if not stated outright, that Mrs.
Betterton never recovered her reason after her husband's death; but
this seems an error, because she made a Will, which is dated 10th
March 1711-12, when she was presumably sane.
[Illustration: THE DUKE'S THEATRE, DORSET GARDEN.]
CHAPTER VI.
"EXEUNT" AND "ENTER."
After Betterton, there was not, in the Duke's Company, a more
accomplished actor than Harris. He lived in gayer society than
Betterton, and cared more for the associates he found there. He had
some knowledge of art, danced gracefully, and had that dangerous gift
for a young man--a charming voice, with a love for displaying it. His
portrait was taken by Mr. Hailes;--"in his habit of Henry V., mighty
like a player;" and as Cardinal Wolsey; which latter portrait may now
be seen in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge.
[Illustration: (Joseph Harris.)]
Pepys assigns good grounds for his esteem for Harris. "I do find
him," says the diarist, "a very excellent person, such as in my whole
acquaintance I do not know another better qualified for converse,
whether in things of his own trade, or of other kind; a man of great
understanding and observation, and very agreeable in the manner
of his discourse, and civil, as far as is possible. I was mighty
pleased with his company," a company with which were united, now
Killigrew and the rakes, and anon, Cooper the artist, and "Cooper's
cosen Jacke," and "Mr. Butler, that wrote Hudibras," being, says
Mr. Pepys, "all eminent men in their way." Indeed, Harris was to be
found in company even more eminent than the above, and at the great
coffee-house in Covent Garden he listened to or talked with Dryden,
and held his own against the best wits of the town. The playwrights
were there too; but these were to be found in the coffee-houses,
generally, often wrapped up in their cloaks, and eagerly heeding all
that the critics had to say to each other respecting the last new
play.
Harris was aware that in one or two light characters he was
Betterton's equal. He was a restless actor, threatening, when
discontented, to secede from the Duke's to the King's Company, and
causing equal trouble to his manager Davenant, and to his monarch
Charles--the two officials most vexed in the settling of the little
kingdom of the stage.
There was a graceful, general actor of the troop to which Harris
belonged, who drew upon himself the special observation of the
Government at home and an English ambassador abroad. Scudamore was
the original Garcia of Congreve's "Mourning Bride;" he also played
amorous young knights, sparkling young gentlemen, scampish French
and English beaux, gay and good-looking kings, and roystering kings'
sons; such as Harry, Prince of Wales. Off the stage, he enacted
another part. When King James was in exile, Scudamore was engaged
as a Jacobite agent, and he carried many a despatch or message
between London and St. Germains. But our ambassador, the Earl of
Manchester, had his eye upon him. One of the Earl's despatches to the
English Government, written in 1700, concludes with the words:--"One
Scudamore, a player in Lincoln's Inn Fields, has been here, and was
with the late King, and often at St. Germains. He is now, I believe,
at London. Several such sort of fellows go and come very often; but
I cannot see how it is to be prevented, for without a positive oath
nothing can be done to them." The date of this despatch is August
1700, at which time the player ought to have been engaged in a less
perilous character, for an entry in Luttrell's Diary, 28th May 1700,
records that "Mr. Scudamore of the play-house is married to a young
lady of £4000 fortune, who fell in love with him."
Cave Underhill was another member of Davenant's Company. He was not a
man for a lady to fall in love with; but in 1668 Davenant pronounced
him the truest comedian of his troop. He was on the stage from 1661
to 1710, and during that time the town saw no such Gravedigger in
"Hamlet" as this tall, fat, broad-faced, flat-nosed, wide-mouthed,
thick-lipped, rough-voiced, awkwardly-active low comedian. So modest
was he also that he never understood his own popularity, and the
house was convulsed with his solemn Don Quixote and his stupid
Lolpoop in "The Squire of Alsatia" without Cave's being able to
account for it.[33]
In the stolid, the booby, the dully malicious, the bluntly vivacious,
the perverse humour, combining wit with ill-nature, Underhill was
the chief of the actors of the half century during which he kept the
stage. Cibber avers thus much, and adds that he had not seen Cave's
equal in Sir Sampson Legend in Congreve's "Love for Love." A year
before the old actor ceased to linger on the stage he had once made
light with laughter, a benefit was awarded him, viz., on the 3d of
June 1709.[34] The patronage of the public was previously bespoken
by Mr. Bickerstaffe, in the _Tatler_, whose father had known "honest
Cave Underhill" when he was a boy. The _Tatler_ praises the old
comedian for the natural style of his acting, in which he avoided all
exaggeration, and never added a word to his author's text, a vice
with the younger actors of the time.
On this occasion Underhill played his old part of the Gravedigger,
professedly because he was fit for no other. His judgment was not ill
founded, if Cibber's testimony be true that he was really worn and
disabled, and excited pity rather than laughter. The old man died a
pensioner of the theatre whose proprietors he had helped to enrich,
with the reputation of having, under the pseudonym of Elephant Smith,
composed a mock funeral sermon on Titus Oates; and with the further
repute of being an ultra-Tory, addicted in coffee-houses to drink the
Duke of York's health more heartily than that of his brother, the
King.
With rare exchange of actors, and exclusive right of representing
particular pieces, the two theatres continued in opposition to each
other until the two companies were formed into one in the year 1682.
Meanwhile, fire destroyed the old edifice of the King's Company, in
Drury Lane, in January 1672, and till Wren's new theatre was ready
for them in 1674, the unhoused troop played occasionally at Dorset
Gardens,[35] or at Lincoln's Inn Fields, as opportunity offered. On
the occasion of opening the new house, contemporary accounts state
that the prices of admission were raised: to the boxes, from 2s. 6d.
to 4s.; pit, from 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d.; the first gallery, from 1s. to
1s. 6d.; and the upper gallery, from 6d. to 1s. Pepys, however, on
the 19th October 1667, paid 4s. for admittance to the upper boxes, if
his record be true.[36] Down to the year 1682, the King's Company
lost several old and able actors, and acquired only Powell, Griffin,
and Beeston. George Powell was the son of an obscure actor. His own
brilliancy was marred by his devotion to jollity, and this devotion
became the more profound as George saw himself surpassed by steadier
actors, one of whom, Wilks, in his disappointment, he challenged to
single combat, and, in the cool air of "next morning," was sorry
for his folly. Idleness made him defer learning his parts till the
last moment; his memory often failed him at the most important
crisis of the play; and the public displeasure fell heavily and
constantly on this clever but reckless actor. The _Tatler_ calls him
the "haughty George Powell," when referring to his appearance in
Falstaff for his benefit, in April 1712. "The haughty George Powell
hopes all the good-natured part of the town will favour him whom
they applauded in Alexander, Timon, Lear, and Orestes, with their
company this night, when he hazards all his heroic glory in the
humbler condition of honest Jack Falstaff." Valuable aid, like the
above, he obtained from the _Spectator_ also, with useful admonition
to boot, from which he did not care to profit; and he fell into such
degradation that his example was a wholesome terror to young actors
willing to follow it, but fearful of the consequences. During his
career, from 1687 to 1714, in which year he died, he originated
about forty new parts, and in some of them, such as Brisk, in the
"Double Dealer;" Aboan, in "Oroonoko;" the gallant, gay Lothario;
Lord Morelove, in the "Careless Husband;" and Portius, in "Cato,"
he has rarely been equalled. On the first night of the "Relapse," in
which he played Worthy, he was so fired by his libations, that Mrs.
Rogers, as Amanda, was frightened out of her wits by his tempestuous
love-making. Powell's literary contributions to the drama were such
as a man of his quality was likely to make,--chiefly plagiarisms
awkwardly appropriated.
Griffin was an inferior actor to Powell; but he was a wiser and
a better man. He belonged to that class of actors whom "society"
welcomed with alacrity. He was, moreover, of the class which had
served in the field as well as on the stage, and when "Captain
Griffin" died in Queen Anne's reign, the stage lost a respectable
actor, and society a clever and a worthy member.
The accessions to the Duke's Company were of more importance than
those to the company of the Theatre Royal. In 1672, the two poets,
Lee and Otway, tempted fortune on the stage: Lee, in one or two
parts, such as the Captain of the Watch, in Payne's "Fatal Jealousy,"
and Duncan, in "Macbeth;" Otway as the King, in Mrs. Behn's "Forced
Marriage." They both failed. Lee, one of the most beautiful of
readers, lost his voice through nervousness; Otway, audacious enough
at the coffee-houses, lost his confidence. There were eight other
actors of the period whose success was unquestionable and well
deserved. Little Bowman, who between this period and 1739, the year
of his death, never failed to appear when his name was in the bills.
He was a noted bell-ringer, had sung songs to Charles II., and, when
"father of the stage," he exacted applause from the second George.
Cademan was another of the company. Like Betterton and Cartwright,
he had learnt the mystery of the book-trade before he appeared as a
player. He was driven from the latter vocation through an accident.
Engaged in a fencing-scene with Harris, in "The Man's the Master," he
was severely wounded by his adversary's foil, in the hand and eye,
and he lost power not only of action but of speech. For nearly forty
years the company assigned him a modest pension; and between the
benevolence of his brethren and the small profits of his publishing,
his life was rendered tolerable, if not altogether happy.
His comrade, Jevon, an ex-dancing master, was one of the hilarious
actors. He was the original Jobson in his own little comedy, "A Devil
of a Wife," which has been altered into the farce of "The Devil to
Pay." He took great liberties with authors and audience. He made
Settle half mad and the house ecstatic, when having, as Lycurgus,
Prince of China, to "_fall on his sword_," he placed it flat on the
stage, and falling over it, "_died_," according to the direction of
the acting copy.[37] He took as great liberties at the coffee-house.
"You are wiping your dirty boots with my clean napkin," said an
offended waiter to him. "Never mind, boy," was the reply; "I'm not
proud--it will do for me!" The dust of this jester lies in Hampstead
churchyard.
Longer known was Anthony Lee or Leigh, that industrious and mirthful
player, who, in the score of years he was before the public--from
1672 to 1692--originated above thrice that number of characters. His
masterpiece was Dryden's Spanish Friar, Dominique. How he _looked_
in that once famous part, may be seen by any one who can gain access
to Knowle, where his portrait, painted for the Earl of Dorset,
still hangs--and all but speaks. But we may see how Leigh looked
by another portrait, painted in words, by Cibber. "In the canting,
grave hypocrisy, of the Spanish Friar, Leigh stretched the veil of
piety so thinly over him, that in every look, word, and motion, you
saw a palpable, wicked slyness shine throughout it. Here he kept his
vivacity demurely confined, till the pretended duty of his function
demanded it: and then he exerted it with a choleric, sacerdotal
insolence. I have never yet seen any one that has filled them" (the
scenes of broad jests) "with half the truth and spirit of Leigh. I
do not doubt but the poet's knowledge of Leigh's genius helped him
to many a pleasant stroke of nature, which, without that knowledge,
never might have entered into his conception." Leigh had the art
of making pieces--dull to the reader, side-splitting mirth to an
audience. In such pieces he and Nokes kept up the ball between them;
but with the players perished also the plays.
[Illustration: (Anthony Leigh.)]
Less happy than Leigh was poor Matthew Medbourne, an actor of merit,
and a young man of some learning, whose brief career was cut short
by a too fervent zeal for his religion, which led him into
a participation in the "Popish Plot." The testimony of Titus Oates
caused his arrest, on the 26th of November 1678, and his death;--for
poor Medbourne died of the Newgate rigour in the following March.
He is memorable, as being the first who introduced Molière's
"Tartuffe" on the English stage, in a close translation, which was
acted in 1670, with remarkable success. Cibber's "Nonjuror" (1717),
and Bickerstaffe's "Hypocrite" (1768), were only adaptations--the
first of "Tartuffe," and the second of the "Nonjuror." Mr. Oxenford,
however, reproduced the original in a more perfect form than
Medbourne, in a translation in verse, which was brought out at the
Haymarket, in 1851, with a success most honestly earned by all, and
especially deserving on the part of Mr. Webster, who played the
principal character.
Sandford and Smith were two actors whose names constantly recur
together, but whose merits were not all of the same degree. The tall,
handsome, manly Smith, frequently played Banquo; when his ghost,
in the same tragedy, was represented by the short, spare, drolly
ill-featured, and undignified Sandford! The latter was famous for
his villains--from those of tragedy to ordinary stage ruffians in
broad belt and black wig--permanent type of those wicked people in
melodramas to this day. This idiosyncrasy amusingly puzzled Charles
II., who, in supposed allusion to Shaftesbury, declared that the
greatest villain of his time was fair-haired.
The public of his period were so accustomed to see Sandford represent
the malignant heroes, that when they once saw him as an honest man,
who did not prove to be a crafty knave before the end of the fifth
act, they hissed the piece out of sheer vexation. Sandford rendered
villainy odious by his forcible representation of it. By a look, he
could win the attention of an audience "to whatever he judged worth
more than their ordinary notice;" and by attending to the punctuation
of a passage, he divested it of the jingle of rhyme, or the measured
monotony of blank verse.
So misshapen, harsh, fierce, yet craftily gentle and knavishly
persuasive could Sandford render himself, Cibber believes that
Shakspeare, conscious of other qualities in him, would have chosen
him to represent Richard, had poet and player been contemporaneous.
The generous Colley adds, that if there was anything good in his
own Richard, it was because he had modelled it after the fashion
in which he thought Sandford would have represented that monarch.
Sandford withdrew from the stage, after thirty-seven years' service,
commencing in 1661 and terminating in 1698.
The career of his more celebrated colleague, Smith, extended only
from 1663 to 1696, and that with the interruption of several years
when his strong Toryism made him unacceptable to the prejudiced
Whig audiences of the early part of the reign of William.[38] He
originally represented Sir Fopling Flutter (1676), and Pierre
(1682); Chamont (1680), in "The Orphan," and Scandal (1695), in "Love
for Love." In the following year he died in harness. The long part of
Cyaxares, in "Cyrus the Great," overtaxed his strength, and on the
fourth representation of that wearisome tragedy, Smith was taken ill,
and died.
King James, in the person of Smith, vindicated the nobility of his
profession. "Mr. Smith," says Cibber, with fine satire, "whose
character as a gentleman could have been no way impeached, had he
not degraded it by being a celebrated actor, had the misfortune, in
a dispute with a gentleman behind the scenes, to receive a blow from
him. The same night an account of this action was carried to the
King, to whom the gentleman was represented so grossly in the wrong,
that the next day his Majesty sent to forbid him the court upon it.
This indignity cast upon a gentleman only for maltreating a player,
was looked upon as the concern of every gentleman! and a party was
soon formed to assert and vindicate their honour, by humbling this
favoured actor, whose slight injury had been judged equal to so
severe a notice. Accordingly, the next time Smith acted, he was
received with a chorus of catcalls, that soon convinced him he should
not be suffered to proceed in his part; upon which, without the least
discomposure, he ordered the curtain to be dropped, and having a
competent fortune of his own, thought the conditions of adding to it,
by remaining on the stage, were too dear, and from that day entirely
quitted it." _Not_ "entirely," for he returned to it in 1695, after
a secession of eleven years, under the persuasion, it is believed,
of noble friends and ancient comrades. Dr. Burney states that the
audience made a political matter of it. If so, Whigs and Tories
had not long to contend, for the death of this refined player soon
supervened.
Of the two most eminent ladies who joined the Duke's Company
previous to the union of the two houses, Lady Slingsby (formerly
Mrs. Aldridge, next Mrs. Lee,) is of note for the social rank she
achieved; Mrs. Barry for a theatrical reputation which placed her on
a level with Betterton himself. Lady Slingsby withdrew from the stage
in 1685, after a brief course of ten or a dozen years. She died in
the spring of 1694, and was interred in old St. Pancras churchyard,
as "Dame Mary Slingsby, Widow." That is the sum of what is known of a
lady whom report connects with the Yorkshire baronets of Scriven. Of
her colleague, there is more to be said; but the "famous Mrs. Barry"
may claim a chapter to herself.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] Anthony Aston, from whom this description is quoted, says that
it was not modesty that prevented his understanding why he was
admired, but sheer stupidity.
[34] He practically retired from the active work of his profession
about 1707.
[35] I can find no authority for this. The King's Company appear to
have played regularly at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Dorset Garden was the
new theatre of the Duke's Company.
[36] Pepys is no doubt accurate. The higher prices were charged
apparently from the opening of the old theatre in 1663.
[37] Genest conjectures, I think justly, that this must have happened
at a rehearsal. Downes says nothing about the house being ecstatic.
[38] Very doubtful. The cause of his retirement was no doubt the
quarrel afterwards mentioned. If he was off the stage for eleven
years, as Dr. Doran says, he must have retired in 1684, long before
William was king.
[Illustration: RIVER VIEW OF DUKE'S THEATRE.]
CHAPTER VII.
ELIZABETH BARRY.
The "great Mrs. Barry," the _Handbook of London_ tells us, lies
buried in Westminster Cloisters. I did not there look for her tomb.
To come at the grave of the great actress, I passed through Acton
Vale and into the ugliest of village churches, and, after service,
asked to be shown the tablet which recorded the death and burial
of Elizabeth Barry. The pew-opener directed me to a mural monument
which, I found, bore the name of one of the family of Smith!
I remonstrated. The good woman could not account for it. She had
always taken that for Elizabeth Barry's monument. It was in the
church somewhere. "There is no stone to any such person in this
church," said the clerk, "and I know 'em all!" We walked down the
aisle discussing the matter, and paused at the staircase at the west
end; and as I looked at the wall, while still conversing, I saw in
the shade the tablet which Curll says is outside, in God's Acre, and
thereon I read aloud these words:--"Near this place lies the body of
Elizabeth Barry, of the parish of St. Mary-le-Savoy, who departed
this life the 7th of November, 1713, aged 55 years." "That is she!"
said I.
The two officials looked puzzled and inquiring. At length the
pew-opener ventured to ask: "And who was she, sir?"
"The original Monimia, Belvidera, Isabella, Calista"----
"Lor!" said the good woman, "only a player!"
"_Only a player!_" This of the daughter of an old Cavalier!
The seventeenth century gave many ladies to the stage, and Elizabeth
Barry was certainly the most famous of them. She was the daughter
of a barrister, who raised a regiment for the King, and thereby was
himself raised to the rank of colonel. The effort did not help his
Majesty, and it ruined the Colonel, whose daughter was born in the
year 1658.
Davenant[39] took the fatherless girl into his house, and trained
her for the stage, while the flash of her light eyes beneath her
dark hair and brows was as yet mere girlish spirit; it was not
intelligence. _That_ was given her by Rochester. Davenant was in
despair at her dulness; but he acknowledged the dignity of her
manners. At three separate periods managers rejected her. "She will
never be an actress!" they exclaimed. Rochester protested that he
would make her one in six months.
The wicked young Earl, who lived in Lincoln's Inn Fields, near the
theatre, became her master, and, of course, fell in love with his
pupil. The pains he bestowed upon his young mistress were infinite.
Sentence by sentence he made her understand her author; and the
intelligence of the girl leaped into life and splendour under such
instruction. To familiarise her with the stage, he superintended
thirty rehearsals thereon, of each character in which she was to
appear. Of these rehearsals twelve were in full costume; and when
she was about to enact Isabella, the Hungarian Queen, in "Mustapha,"
the page who bore her train was tutored so to move as to aid in the
display of grace and majesty which was to charm the town.
For some time, however, the town refused to recognise any magic in
the charmer; and managers despaired of the success of a young actress
who could not decently thread the mazes of a country dance. Hamilton
owned her beauty, but denied her talent. Nevertheless, she one night
burst forth in all her grandeur, and Mustapha and Zanger were not
more ardently in love with the brilliant queen than the audience
were. At the head of the latter were Charles II. and the Duke and
Duchess of York. Rochester had asked for their presence, and they
came to add to the triumph of Colonel Barry's daughter.
Crabbed old Anthony Aston, the actor and prompter, spoke
disparagingly of the young lady. According to him, she was no
colonel's daughter, but "woman to Lady Shelton, my godmother." The
two conditions were not incompatible. It was no unusual thing to find
a lady in straitened circumstances fulfilling the office of "woman,"
or "maid," to the wives of peers and baronets. We have an instance
in the _Memoirs of Mrs. Delaney_, and another in the person of Mrs.
Siddons.
Successful as Elizabeth Barry was in parts which she had studied
under her preceptor, Lord Rochester, she cannot be said to have
established herself as the greatest actress of her time till the
year 1680. Up to this period she appeared in few characters suited
to her abilities. In tragedies, she enacted the confidants to the
great theatrical queens, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Betterton; in comedies,
the rattling, reckless, and audacious women, at whose sallies the pit
roared approbation, and the box ladies were not much startled. But,
in the year just named, Otway produced his tragedy of "The Orphan,
or the Unhappy Marriage," in which Mrs. Barry was the Monimia to the
Castalio of Betterton. On the same night the part of the Page was
charmingly played by a future great actress, Mrs. Bracegirdle, then
not six years old. In Monimia, Mrs. Barry exercised some of those
attributes which she possessed above all actresses Cibber had ever
seen, and which those who had not seen her were unable to conceive.
"In characters of greatness," says Cibber, in his _Apology_, "she
had a presence of elevated dignity; her mien and motion superb, and
gracefully majestic; her voice full, clear, and strong, so that no
violence of passion could be too much for her; and when distress or
tenderness possessed her, she subsided into the most affecting melody
and softness."
From the position which she took by acting Monimia, Mrs. Barry was
never shaken by any rival, however eminent. Her industry was as
indefatigable as that of Betterton. During the thirty-seven years
she was on the stage, beginning at Dorset Gardens, in 1673, and
ending at the Haymarket, in 1710, she originated one hundred and
twelve characters! Monimia was the nineteenth of the characters of
which she was the original representative; the first of those which
mark the "stations" of her glory. In 1682, she added another leaf
to the chaplet of her own and Otway's renown, by her performance
of Belvidera. In the softer passions of this part she manifested
herself the "mistress of tears," and night after night the town
flocked to weep at her bidding, and to enjoy the luxury of woe.
The triumph endured for years. Her Monimia and Belvidera were not
even put aside by her Cassandra, in the "Cleomenes" of Dryden,
first acted at the Theatre Royal, in 1692. "Mrs. Barry," says the
author, "always excellent, has, in this tragedy, excelled herself,
and gained a reputation, beyond any woman whom I have ever seen on
the theatre." The praise is not unduly applied; for Mrs. Barry
could give expression to the rant of Dryden, and even to that of
Lee, without ever verging towards bombast. "In scenes of anger,
defiance, or resentment," writes Cibber, "while she was impetuous and
terrible, she poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony."
Anthony Aston describes her in tragedy as "solemn and august;"
and she, perhaps, was never more so than in Isabella, the heroine
of the tragic drama rather than tragedy, by Southerne, "The Fatal
Marriage." Aston remarks, that "her face ever expressed the passions;
it somewhat preceded her action, as her action did her words." Her
versatility was marvellous, and it is not ill illustrated by the fact
that in the same season she created two such opposite characters as
Lady Brute, in Vanbrugh's "Provoked Wife," and Zara, in Congreve's
"Mourning Bride." The last of her great tragic triumphs, in a part
of which she was the original representative, occurred in 1703,
when, in her forty-fifth year, she played Calista, in "The Fair
Penitent," that wholesale felony of Rowe from Massinger! Though the
piece did not answer the expectations of the public, Mrs. Barry did
not fall short of them in the heroine; and she perhaps surpassed
expectation, when, in 1705, she elicited the admiration of the town
by her creation of the sparkling character of Clarissa, in "The
Confederacy." By this time she was growing rich in wealth as well
as in glory. In former days, when the play was over, the attendant
boy used to call for "Mrs. Barry's clogs!" or "Mrs. Bracegirdle's
pattens!" but _now_, "Mrs. Barry's chair" was as familiar a sound as
"Mrs. Oldfield's." If she was not invariably wise in the stewardship
of her money, some portions were expended in a judicious manner
creditable to her taste. At the sale of Betterton's effects, she
purchased the picture of Shakspeare which Betterton bought from
Davenant, who had purchased it from some of the players after the
theatres had been closed by authority. Subsequently, Mrs. Barry sold
this relic, for forty guineas, to a Mr. Keck, whose daughter carried
it with her as part of her dowry, when she married Mr. Nicoll, of
Colney Hatch. _Their_ daughter and heiress, in her turn, took the
portrait and a large fortune with her to her husband, the third
Duke of Chandos; and, finally, Mrs. Barry's effigy of Shakspeare
passed with another bride into another house, Lady Anne Brydges, the
daughter of the Duke and Duchess, carrying it with her to Stowe on
her marriage with the Marquis of Buckingham, subsequently Duke of
Buckingham and Chandos. The Chandos portrait of the great dramatist
is thus descended.
Mrs. Barry, like many other eminent members of her profession, was
famous for the way in which she uttered some single expression in the
play. The "Look there!" of Spranger Barry, as he passed the body of
Rutland, always moved the house to tears. So, the "Remember twelve!"
of Mrs. Siddon's Belvidera; the "Well, as you guess!" of Edmund
Kean's Richard; the "Qu'en dis-tu?" of Talma's Auguste; the "Je
crois!" of Rachel's Pauline; the "Je vois!" of Mademoiselle Mars's
Valerie, were "points" which never failed to excite an audience to
enthusiasm. But there were two phrases with which Mrs. Barry could
still more deeply move an audience. When, in "The Orphan," she
pronounced the words, "Ah, poor Castalio!" not only did the audience
weep, but the actress herself shed tears abundantly. The other phrase
was in a scene of Banks's puling tragedy, "The Unhappy Favourite,
or the Earl of Essex." In that play, Mrs. Barry represented Queen
Elizabeth, and _that_ with such effect that it was currently
said, the people of her day knew more of Queen Elizabeth from her
impersonation of the character than they did from history. The
apparently commonplace remark, "What mean my grieving subjects?" was
invested by her with such emphatic grace and dignity, as to call up
murmurs of approbation which swelled into thunders of applause. Mary
of Modena testified her admiration by bestowing on the mimic queen
the wedding-dress Mary herself had worn when she was united to James
II., and the mantle borne by her at her coronation. Thus attired, the
queen of the hour represented the Elizabeth, with which enthusiastic
crowds became so much more familiar than they were with the Elizabeth
of history. But this "solemn and august" tragedian could also command
laughter, and make a whole house joyous by the exercise of another
branch of her vocation. "In free comedy," says Aston, "she was alert,
easy, and genteel, pleasant in her face and action, filling the stage
with variety of gesture." So entirely did she surrender herself
to the influences of the characters she represented, that in stage
dialogues she often turned pale or flushed red, as varying passions
prompted.
With the audience she was never for a moment out of favour after
she had made her merit apparent. They acknowledged no greater
actress,--with the single exception of Mrs. Betterton in the
character of Lady Macbeth. Nevertheless, on and behind the stage
Mrs. Barry's supremacy was sometimes questioned and her commands
disobeyed. When she was about to play Roxana to the Statira of Mrs.
Boutell, in Nat. Lee's "Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander
the Great," she selected from the wardrobe a certain veil which
was claimed by Mrs. Boutell as of right belonging to her. The
property-man thought so too, and handed the veil to the last-named
lady. His award was reasonable, for she was the original Statira,
having played the part to the matchless Alexander of Hart, and to
the glowing Roxana of the fascinating Marshall. I fear, however,
that the lady was not moderate in her victory, and that by flaunting
the trophy too frequently before the eyes of the rival queen, the
daughter of Darius exasperated too fiercely her Persian rival in
the heart of Alexander. The rage and dissension set down for them
in the play were, at all events, not simulated. The quarrel went on
increasing in intensity from the first, and culminated in the gardens
of Semiramis. When Roxana seized on her detested enemy there, and
the supreme struggle took place, Mrs. Barry, with the exclamation
of "Die, sorceress, die! and all my wrongs die with thee!" sent her
polished dagger right through the stiff armour of Mrs. Boutell's
stays. The consequences were a scratch and a shriek, but there was no
great harm done. An investigation followed, and some mention was made
of a real jealousy existing in Mrs. Barry's breast in reference to
an admirer of lower rank than Alexander, lured from her feet by the
little, flute-voiced Boutell. The deed itself was, however, mildly
construed, and Mrs. Barry was believed when she declared that she
had been carried away by the illusion and excitement of the scene.
We shall see the same scene repeated, with similar stage effects, by
Mrs. Woffington and Mrs. Bellamy.
If there were a lover to add bitterness to the quarrel engendered
by the veil, Mrs. Barry might have well spared one of whom she
possessed so many. Without being positively a transcendent beauty,
her attractions were confessed by many an Antony from the country,
who thought their world of acres well lost for the sake of a little
sunshine from the eyes of this vanquishing, imperious, banquetting,
heart and purse destroying Cleopatra. There were two classes of
men who made epigrams, or caused others to make them against her,
namely, the adorers on whom she ceased to smile, and those on
whom she refused to smile at all. The coffee-house poetry which
these perpetrated against her is the reverse of pleasant to read;
but, under the protection of such a wit as Etherege, or such a
fine gentleman as Rochester, Mrs. Barry cared little for her puny
assailants.
Tom Brown taxed her with mercenary feelings; but against that and
the humour of writers who affected intimate acquaintance with her
affairs of the heart and purse, and as intimate a knowledge of the
amount which Sir George Etherege and Lord Rochester bequeathed to
their respective daughters, of whom Mrs. Barry was the mother, she
was armed. Neither of these children survived the "famous actress."
She herself hardly survived Betterton--at least on the stage. The
day after the great tragedian's final appearance, Mrs. Barry trod
the stage for the last time. The place was the old Haymarket, the
play the "Spanish Friar," in which she enacted the Queen. And I can
picture to myself the effect of the famous passage, when the Queen
impetuously betrays her overwhelming love. "Haste, my Teresa, haste;
and call him back!" "Prince Bertram?" asks the confidant; and then
came the full burst, breaking through all restraint, and revealing a
woman who seemed bathed in love. "_Torrismond!_ There is no other HE!"
Mrs. Barry took no formal leave of the stage, but quietly withdrew
from St. Mary-le-Savoy, in the Strand, to the pleasant village of
Acton. Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Knight, and Mrs. Bradshaw,
succeeded to her theatrical dominion, by partition of her characters.
If tragedy lost its queen, Acton gained a wealthy lady. Her
professional salary had not been large, but her "benefits" were very
productive; they who admired the actress or who loved the woman,
alike pouring out gold and jewels in her lap. It was especially
for her that performers' benefits were first devised. Authors alone
had hitherto profited by such occasions, but, in recognition of her
merit, King James commanded one to be given on her behalf, and what
was commenced as a compliment soon passed into a custom.
In a little more than three years from the date when the curtain
fell before her for the last time, Elizabeth Barry died. Brief
resting season after such years of toil; but, perhaps, sufficient for
better ends after a career, too, of unbridled pleasure! "This great
actress," says Cibber, "dy'd of a fever, towards the latter years of
Queen Anne; the year I have forgot, but perhaps you will recollect
it, by an expression that fell from her in blank verse, in her last
hours, when she was delirious, viz.--
"Ha! ha! and so they make us lords, by dozens!"
This, however, does not settle the year so easily as Colley thought.
In December 1711, Queen Anne, by an unprecedented act, created twelve
new peers, to enable the measures of her Tory ministers to be carried
in the Upper House. Mrs. Barry died two years later, on the 7th of
November 1713, and the utterance of the words quoted above only
indicates that her wandering memory was then dealing with incidents
full two years old.
[Illustration: (Elizabeth Barry.)]
They who would see how Mrs. Barry looked living, have only to consult
Kneller's grand picture, in which she is represented with her fine
hair drawn back from her forehead, the face full, fair, and
rippling with intellect. The eyes are inexpressibly beautiful. Of all
her living beauty, living frailty, and living intelligence, there
remains but this presentment.
It was customary to compare Mrs. Barry with French actresses; but
it seems to me that the only French actress with whom Mrs. Barry
may be safely compared is Mademoiselle, or, as she was called with
glorious distinction, "the Champmeslé." This French lady was the
original Hermione, Berenice, Monimia, and Phædra. These were written
expressly for her by Racine, who trained her exactly as Rochester did
Elizabeth Barry,--to some glory on the stage, and to some infamy off
it. La Champmeslé, however, was more tenderly treated by society at
large than the less fortunate daughter of an old royalist colonel.
The latter actress was satirised; the former was eulogised by the
wits, and she was not even anathematised by French mothers. When La
Champmeslé was ruining the young Marquis de Sevigné, his mother wrote
proudly of the actress as her "daughter-in-law!" as if to have a son
hurried to perdition by so resplendent and destructive a genius, was
a matter of exultation!
* * * * *
Having sketched the outline of Mrs. Barry's career, I proceed to
notice some of her able, though less illustrious, colleagues.
FOOTNOTE:
[39] Curll, in his History of the Stage (1741), says it was Lady
Davenant, a particular friend of Sir William Davenant.
[Illustration: CONTEST FOR DOGGET'S COAT AND BADGE.]
CHAPTER VIII.
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE."
On the 16th November 1682, the United Company, the flower of both
houses, opened their season at the Theatre Royal, in Drury Lane. The
theatre in Dorset Gardens was only occasionally used; and from 1682
to 1695 there was but one theatre in London.
Betterton and Mrs. Barry were, of course, at the head of this
company, to which there came some accessions of note; among others
Mrs. Percival, better known as Mrs. Mountfort, and finally as Mrs.
Verbruggen. A greater accession was that of the charming Mrs.
Bracegirdle. The third lady was Mrs. Jordan, a name to be made
celebrated by a later and a greater actress, who had no legal claim
to it.
Of the new actors, some only modestly laid the foundations of their
glory in this company. Chief of these was Colley Cibber, who, in
1691, played Sir Gentle's Servant in Southerne's "Sir Anthony Love,"
had a part of nine lines in Chapman's "Bussy d'Amboise," and of
seventeen, as Sigismond in Powell's "Alphonso." Bowen, too, began
with coachmen, and similar small parts, while that prince of the
droll fellows of his time, Pinkethman, commenced his career with a
tailor's part, of six lines in length, in Shadwell's "Volunteers."
Among the other new actors were Mountfort,[40] Norris,[41] and
Doggett, with Verbruggen (or Alexander, as he sometimes called
himself, from the character which he loved to play); Gillow,
Carlisle, Hodgson, and Peer.
Amid these names, that of Mrs. Mountfort stands out the most
brilliantly. Her portrait has been so exquisitely limned by Colley
Cibber, that we see her as she lived, and moved, and spoke.
"Mrs. Mountfort was mistress of more variety of humour than I ever
knew in any one actress. This variety, too, was attended with an
equal vivacity, which made her excellent in characters extremely
different. As she was naturally a pleasant mimic, she had the skill
to make that talent useful on the stage. Where the elocution is
round, distinct, voluble, and various, as Mrs. Mountfort's was, the
mimic there is a great assistance to the actor. Nothing, though
ever so barren, if within the bounds of nature, could be flat in her
hands. She gave many heightening touches to characters but coldly
written, and often made an author vain of his work, that, in itself,
had but little merit. She was so fond of humour, in what low part
soever to be found, that she would make no scruple of defacing her
fair form to come heartily into it, for when she was eminent in
several desirable characters of wit and humour, in higher life,
she would be in as much fancy, when descending into the antiquated
Abigail of Fletcher, as when triumphing in all the airs and vain
graces of a fine lady; a merit that few actresses care for. In a
play of Durfey's, now forgotten, called 'The Western Lass,' which
part she acted, she transformed her whole being--body, shape, voice,
language, look and features--into almost another animal, with a
strong Devonshire dialect, a broad laughing voice, a poking head,
round shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and the most bedizening, dowdy
dress that ever covered the untrained limbs of a Joan Trot. To have
seen her here, you would have thought it impossible that the same
could ever have been recovered to, what was as easy to her, the gay,
the lively, and the desirable. Nor was her humour limited to her sex,
for while her shape permitted, she was a more adroit, pretty fellow
than is usually seen upon the stage. Her easy air, action, mien, and
gesture, quite changed from the coif to the cocked-hat and cavalier
in fashion. People were so fond of seeing her a man that when the
part of Bayes, in 'The Rehearsal,' had for some time lain dormant,
she was desired to take it up, which I have seen her act with all
the true coxcombly spirit and humour that the sufficiency of the
character required.
"But what found most employment for her whole various excellence at
once was the part of Melantha, in 'Mariage à la Mode.' Melantha is
as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room, and
seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that
could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. Her
language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and body, are in a continual
hurry to be something more than is necessary or commendable. The
first ridiculous airs that break from her are upon a gallant, never
seen before, who delivers her a letter from her father, recommending
him to her good graces as an honourable lover. Here, now, one would
think that she might naturally show a little of the sex's decent
reserve, though never so slightly covered. No, sir! not a tittle
of it! Modesty is the virtue of a poor-souled country gentlewoman.
She is too much a court-lady to be under so vulgar a confusion. She
reads the letter, therefore, with a careless, dropping lip, and an
erected brow, humming it hastily over, as if she were impatient to
outgo her father's commands, by making a complete conquest of him
at once; and that the letter might not embarrass her attack, crack!
she crumbles it at once into her palm, and pours upon him her whole
artillery of airs, eyes, and motion. Down goes her dainty, diving
body to the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load
of her own attractions; then launches into a flood of fine language
and compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls
and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and, to complete her
impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit that she will
not give her lover leave to praise it. Silent assenting bows, and
vain endeavours to speak, are all the share of the conversation he
is admitted to, which at last he is relieved from, by her engagement
to half a score visits, which she _swims_ from him to make, with a
promise to return in a twinkling."
Happy Mrs. Mountfort, whom, as actress and woman, Cibber has
thus made live for ever! As Mrs. Percival, she was the original
representative of Nell in the piece now known as "The Devil to Pay;"
as Mrs. Mountfort,--Belinda, in the "Old Batchelor;" and as Mrs.
Verbruggen,--Charlotte Welldon, in "Oroonoko;"[42] Lady Lurewell, in
the "Constant Couple;" and Bizarre, in the "Inconstant." She died in
1703.
In some respects, Mrs. Bracegirdle, who was on the stage from 1680
to 1707, and subsequently lived in easy retirement till 1748, was
even superior to Mrs. Mountfort. Mrs. Barry saw her early promise,
and encouraged her in her first essays. In her peculiar line she
was supreme, till the younger and irresistible talent of Mrs.
Oldfield brought about her resignation. Unlike either of these
brilliant actresses, she was exposed to sarcasm only on account of
her excellent private character. Platonic friendships she _did_
cultivate; with those, slander dealt severely enough; and writers
like Gildon were found to declare, that they believed no more in the
innocency of such friendships than they believed in John Mandeville;
while others, like Tom Brown, only gave her credit for a discreet
decorum. Cibber, more generous, declares that her virtuous discretion
rendered her the delight of the town; that whole audiences were
in love with her, because of her youth, her cheerful gaiety, her
musical voice, and her happy graces of manner. Her form was perfect.
Cibber says, "she had no greater claims to beauty than what the most
desirable brunette might pretend to." Other contemporaries notice her
dark brown hair and eyebrows, her dark, sparkling eyes, the face from
which the blush of emotion spread in a flood of rosy beauty over her
neck, and the intelligence and expression which are superior to mere
beauty. She so enthralled her audience that, it is quaintly said,
she never made an _exit_ without the audience feeling as if they had
moulded their faces into an imitation of hers. Then she was as good,
practically, as she was beautiful; and the poor of the neighbourhood
in which she resided looked upon her as a beneficent divinity.
Her performance of Statira was considered a justification of the
frantic love of such an Alexander as Lee's; and "when she acted
Millamant, all the faults, follies, and affectation of that
agreeable tyrant were venially melted down into so many charms and
attractions of a conscious beauty." Young gentlemen of the town
pronounced themselves in tender but unrequited love with her. Jack,
Lord Lovelace, sought a return for his ardent homage, and obtained
not what he sought. Authors wrote characters for her, and poured
out their own passion through the medium of her adorers in the
comedy. For her, Congreve composed his Araminta and his Cynthia, his
Angelica, his Almeria, and the Millamant, in the "Way of the World,"
which Cibber praises so efficiently. That this dramatist was the only
one whose homage was well-received and presence ever welcome to her,
there is no dispute. When a report was abroad that they were about to
marry, the minor poets hailed the promised union of wit and beauty;
and even Congreve, not in the best taste, illustrated her superiority
to himself, when he wrote of her--
"Pious Belinda goes to prayers
Whene'er I ask the favour,
Yet the tender fool's in tears
When she thinks I'd leave her.
Would I were free from this restraint,
Or else had power to win her;
Would she could make of me a saint,
Or I of her a sinner."
The most singular testimony ever rendered to this virtue occurred
on the occasion when Dorset, Devonshire, Halifax, and other peers,
were making of that virtue a subject of eulogy over a bottle. Halifax
remarked, they might do something better than praise her; and thereon
he put down two hundred guineas, which the contributions of the
company raised to eight hundred,--and this sum was presented to the
lady, as a homage to the rectitude of her private character.
Whether she accepted this tribute, I do not know; but I know that
she declined another from Lord Burlington, who had long loved her in
vain. "One day," says Walpole, "he sent her a present of some fine
old china. She told the servant he had made a mistake; that it was
true the letter was for her, but the china for his lady, to whom he
must carry it. Lord! the countess was so full of gratitude, when her
husband came home to dinner."
Mrs. Bracegirdle lived to pass the limit of fourscore, and to the
last was visited by much of the wit, the worth, and some of the folly
of the town. On one occasion, a group of her visitors were discussing
the merits of Garrick, whom she had not seen, and Cibber spoke
disparagingly of his Bayes, preferring in that part his own pert and
vivacious son, Theophilus. The old actress tapped Colley with her
fan; "Come, come, Cibber," she remarked; "tell me if there is not
something like envy in your character of this young gentleman. The
actor who pleases everybody must be a man of merit." Colley smiled,
tapped his box, took a pinch, and, catching the generosity of the
lady, replied: "Faith, Bracey, I believe you are right; the young
fellow _is_ clever!"
Between 1682 and 1695, few actors were of greater note than luckless
Will Mountfort, of whose violent death the beauty of Mrs. Bracegirdle
was the unintentional cause. Handsome Will was the efficient
representative of fops who did not forget that they were gentlemen.
So graceful, so ardent, so winning as a lover, actresses enjoyed the
sight of him pleading at their feet. In the younger tragic characters
he was equally effective. His powers of mimicry won for him the
not too valuable patronage of Judge Jeffries, to gratify whom, and
the lord mayor and minor city magnates, in 1685, Mountfort pleaded
before them in a feigned cause, in which, says Jacobs, "he aped all
the great lawyers of the age in their tone of voice, and in their
action and gesture of body," to the delight of his hearers. On the
stage, he was one of the most natural of actors; and even Queen Mary
was constrained to allow, that disgusted as she was with Mrs. Behn's
"Rover," she could not but admire the grace, ease, intelligence, and
genius of Mountfort, who played the dissolute hero, sang as well as
he spoke, and danced with stately dignity. But poor Will was only the
hero of a brief hour; and the inimitable original of Sir Courtly Nice
was murdered by two of the most consummate villains of the order of
gentlemen then in town.
Charles, Lord Mohun, had, a few years previous to this occurrence,
been tried with the Earl of Warwick for a murder, arising out of a
coffee-house brawl;[43] on being acquitted by the House of Lords, he
solemnly promised never to get into such a difficulty again. But one
Captain Richard Hill, being in "love" with Mrs. Bracegirdle, who
heartily despised him, wanted a villain's assistance in carrying off
the beautiful actress, and found the man and the aid he needed in
Lord Mohun. In Buckingham Court, off the Strand, where the captain
lodged, the conspirators laid their plans; and learning that Mrs.
Bracegirdle, with her mother and brother, was to sup one evening
at the house of a friend, Mr. Page, in Princes Street, Drury Lane,
they hired six soldiers--emissaries always then to be had for such
work--to assist in seizing her and carrying her off in a carriage,
stationed near Mr. Page's house. About ten at night, of the 9th
December 1692, the attempt was made; but what with the lady's
screams, the resistance of the friend and brother, and the gathering
of an excited mob, it failed; and a strange compromise was made,
whereby Lord Mohun and Hill were allowed to unite in escorting her
home to her house, in Howard Street, Strand. In that street lived
also Will Mountfort, against whom the captain uttered such threats,
in Mrs. Bracegirdle's hearing, that she, finding that my lord and the
captain remained in the street--the latter with a drawn sword in his
hand, and both of them occasionally drinking canary--sent to Mrs.
Mountfort, to warn her husband, who was from home, to look to his
safety. Warned, but not alarmed, honest Will, who loved his wife and
respected Mrs. Bracegirdle, came round from Norfolk Street, saluted
Lord Mohun (who embraced him, according to the then fashion with
men), and said a word or two to his lordship, not complimentary to
the character of Hill. Thence, from the latter--words, a blow, and
a pass of his sword through Mountfort's body--which the poor actor,
as he lay dying on the floor of his own dining-room, declared, was
given by Hill before Mountfort could draw his sword. The captain fled
from England, but my lord, surrendering to the watchmen of the Duchy
of Lancaster, was tried by his peers, fourteen of whom pronounced him
guilty of murder; but as above threescore gave a different verdict,
Mohun lived on till he and the Duke of Hamilton hacked one another to
death in that savage butchery--the famous duel in Hyde Park.[44]
Mountfort, at the age of thirty-three, and with some reputation as
the author of half-a-dozen dramas, was carried to the burying-ground
of St. Clement's Danes, where his remains rest with those of Lowen,
one of the original actors of Shakspeare's plays, Tom Otway, and Nat.
Lee. His fair and clever widow became soon the wife of Verbruggen--a
rough diamond--a wild, untaught, yet not an unnatural actor. So
natural, indeed, was he, that Lord Halifax took Oroonoko from Powell,
who was originally cast for it, and gave it to Verbruggen. Such was
the power of Lord Chamberlains! He could touch tenderly the finer
feelings, as well as excite the wilder emotions of the heart. Powell,
on the other hand, was a less impassioned player, who would appear to
have felt more than he made his audience feel, for in the original
_Spectator_, No. 290, February 1712, Powell begs the public to
believe, that if he pauses long in Orestes, he has not forgotten his
part, but is only overcome at the sentiment.
Verbruggen died in 1708. Among his many original characters were
Oroonoko, Bajazet, Altamont, and Sullen. He survived his wife about
five years. I think if she loved Will Mountfort, she stood in some
awe of fiery Jack Verbruggen; who, in his turn, seems to have had
more of a rough courtesy than a warm affection for her. "For he would
often say," remarks Anthony Aston, "D---- me! though I don't much
value my wife, yet nobody shall affront her!" and his sword was drawn
on the least occasion, which was much in fashion in the latter end of
King William's reign. And let me add here, that an actor's sword was
sometimes drawn for the king. James Carlisle, a respectable player,
whose comedy, "The Fortune Hunters," was well received in 1689, was
not so tempted by success as to prefer authorship to soldiership in
behalf of a great cause. When the threatened destruction of the Irish
Protestants was commenced with the siege of Londonderry, Carlisle
entered King William's army, serving in Ireland. In 1691, he was
in the terrible fray in the morass at Aghrim, under Ginkell, but
immediately led by Talmash. In the twilight of that July day, the
Jacobite general, St. Ruth, and the poor player from Drury Lane,
were lying among the dead; and there James Carlisle was buried, with
the remainder of the six hundred slain on the victor's side, before
their surviving companions in arms marched westward.
Carlisle's fellow-actor, Bowen, was a "low comedian" of some talent,
and more conceit. A curious paragraph in the _Post-Boy_, for November
16th, 1700, shows that he left the stage for a time, and under
singular circumstances. The paragraph runs thus:--
"We hear that this day Mr. Bowen, the late famous comedian at the new
Play-house, being convinced by Mr. Collier's book against the stage,
and satisfied that a shopkeeper's life was the readiest way to heaven
of the two, opens a cane shop, next door to the King's Head Tavern,
in Middle Row, Holborn, where it is not questioned but all manner of
canes, toys, and other curiosities, will be obtained at reasonable
rates. This sudden change is admired at, as well as the reasons which
induced him to leave such a profitable employ; but the most judicious
conclude it is the effect of a certain person's good nature, who has
more compassion for his soul than for his own."
Bowen was not absent from the stage more than a year. He was so
jealous of his reputation, that when he had been driven to fury by
the assertion that Johnson played Jacomo, in the "Libertine," better
than he did, and by the emphatic confirmation of the assertion by
Quin, he fastened a quarrel on the latter, got him in a room in a
tavern, alone, set his back to the door, drew his sword, and assailed
Quin with such blind fury, that he killed himself by falling on
Quin's weapon. The dying Irishman, however, generously acquitted his
adversary of all blame, and the greater actor, after trial, returned
to his duty, having innocently killed, but not convinced poor Bowen,
who naturally preferred his Jacomo to that of Johnson.[45]
Peer, later in life, came to grief also, but in a different way. The
spare man was famous for two parts; the Apothecary, in "Romeo and
Juliet," and the actor who humbly speaks the prologue to the play in
"Hamlet." These parts he played excellently well. Nature had made him
for them; but she was not constant to her meek and lean favourite;
for Peer grew fat, and being unable to act any other character with
equal effect, he lost his vocation, and he died lingeringly of grief,
in 1713, when he had passed threescore years and ten. He had been
property-man also, and in this capacity the theatre owed him, at the
time of his decease, among other trifling sums, "threepence, for
blood, in 'Macbeth.'"[46]
Norris, or "Jubilee Dicky," was a player of an odd, formal, little
figure, and a squeaking voice. He was a capital comic actor, and
owed his by-name to his success in playing Dicky, in the "Constant
Couple." So great was this success, that his sons seemed to derive
value from it, and were announced as the sons of Jubilee Dicky.
He is said to have acted Cato, and other tragic characters, in a
serio-burlesque manner. He was the original Scrub, and Don Lopez in
the "Wonder," and died about the year 1733.
Dogget, who was before the public from 1691 to 1713, and who died
in 1721, was a Dublin man--a failure in his native city, but in
London a deserved favourite, for his original and natural comic
powers. He always acted Shylock as a ferociously comic character.
Congreve discerned his talent, and wrote for him Fondlewife in the
"Old Batchelor," Sir Paul Pliant in the "Double Dealer," and the
very different part of Ben in "Love for Love." This little, lively,
cheerful fellow, was a conscientious actor. Somewhat illiterate--he
spelt "whole" phonetically, without the _w_--he was a gentleman in
his acts and bearing. He was prudent too, and when he retired from
partnership in Drury Lane Theatre, with Cibber and Wilks (from 1709
to 1712), on the admission of Booth, which displeased him, he was
considered worth £1000 a year. The consciousness of his value, and
his own independence of character, gave some trouble to managers
and Lord Chamberlains. On one occasion, having left Drury Lane, at
some offence given, he went to Norwich, whence he was brought up to
London, under my Lord's warrant. Dogget lived luxuriously on the
road, at the Chamberlain's expense, and when he came to town, Chief
Justice Holt liberated him, on some informality in the procedure.
Little errors of temper, and extreme carefulness in guarding his
own interests, are now forgotten. Of his strong political feeling we
still possess a trace. Dogget was a staunch Whig. The accession of
the house of Brunswick, dated from a first of August. On that day, in
1716, and under George I., Dogget gave "an _orange_-coloured livery,
with a badge, representing Liberty," to be rowed for by six watermen,
whose apprenticeship had expired during the preceding year. He left
funds for the same race to be rowed for annually, from London Bridge
to Chelsea, "on the same day for ever." The match still takes place,
with modifications caused by changes on and about the river; but the
winners of the money-prizes, now delivered at Fishmongers' Hall, have
yet to be thankful for that prudence in Dogget, which was sneered at
by his imprudent contemporaries.
Dogget never took liberties with an audience; Pinkethman was much
addicted to that bad habit. He would insert nonsense of his own,
appeal to the gallery, and delight in their support, and the
confusion into which the other actors on the stage were thrown; but
the joke grew stale at last, and the offender was brought to his
senses by loud disapprobation. He did not lose his self-possession;
but assuming a penitent air, with a submissive glance at the
audience, he said in a stage _aside_, "Odso, I believe I have been
in the wrong here!" This cleverly-made confession brought down a
round of applause, and "Pinkey" made his exit, corrected, but not
disgraced. Another trait of his stage life is worthy of notice. He
had been remarkable for his reputation as a speaking Harlequin, in
the "Emperor of the Moon." His wit, audacity, emphasis, and point,
delighted the critics, who thought that "expression" would be more
perfect if the actor laid aside the inevitable mask of Harlequin.
Pinkethman did so; but all expression was thereby lost. It was no
longer the saucy Harlequin that seemed speaking. Pinkey, so impudent
on all other occasions, was uneasy and feeble on this, and his
audacity and vivacity only returned on his again assuming the sable
vizard.
Pinkethman was entirely the architect of his own fortune. He made
his way by talent and industry. He established the Richmond Theatre,
and there was no booth at Greenwich, Richmond, or May-Fair, so well
patronised as his. "He's the darling of _Fortunatus_," says Downes,
"and has gained more in theatres and fairs in twelve years than those
who have tugged at the oar of acting these fifty."
After the division of the company into two, in 1695, the following
new actors appeared between that period and the close of the century.
At Drury Lane, Hildebrand Horden, Mrs. Cibber,[47] Johnson, Bullock,
Mills, Wilks; and, as if the century should expire, reckoning a new
glory,--Mrs. Oldfield. At Lincoln's Inn Fields,--Thurmond, Scudamore,
Verbruggen, who joined from Drury Lane, leaving his clever wife
there, Pack; and, that this house might boast a glory something like
that enjoyed by its rival, in Mrs. Oldfield,--in 1700 Booth made his
first appearance, with a success, the significance of which was
recognised and welcomed by the discerning and generous Betterton.
Mrs. Oldfield, Wilks, and Booth, like Colley Cibber, though they
appeared towards the close of the seventeenth, really belong to the
eighteenth century, and I shall defer noticing them till my readers
and I arrive at that latter period. The rest will require but a few
words. Young Horden was a handsome and promising actor, who died
of a brawl at the Rose Tavern, Covent Garden. He and two or three
comrades were quaffing their wine, and laughing, at the bar, when
some fine gentlemen, in an adjacent room, affecting to be disturbed
by the gaiety of the players, rudely ordered them to be quiet. The
actors returned an answer which brought blood to the cheek, fierce
words to the lips, hand to the sword, and a resulting fight, in which
the handsome Hildebrand was slain by a Captain Burgess. The captain
was carried to the Gate-house, from which, says the _Protestant
Mercury_, he was rescued at night, "by a dozen or more of fellows
with short clubs and pistols." So ended, in 1696, Hildebrand Horden,
not without the sympathy of loving women, who went in masks, and some
without the vizard, to look upon and weep over his handsome, shrouded
corpse. A couple of paragraphs in Luttrell's Diary conclude Horden's
luckless story: "Saturday, 17th October, Mr. John Pitts was tried
at the session for killing Mr. Horden, the player, and acquitted,
he being no ways accessary thereto, more than being in company when
'twas done." On Tuesday, 30th November 1697, the diarist writes:
"Captain Burgess, _who killed_ Mr. Horden, the player, has obtained
his Majesty's pardon."
Of Mrs. Cibber, it can only be said that she was the wife of a great,
and of Bullock, that he was the father of a good, actor. To Johnson
no more praise can be awarded than to Bullock.[48] William[49] Mills
deserves a word or two more of notice than these last. He was on
the stage from 1696 to 1737,[50] and though only a "solid" actor,
he excelled Cibber, in Corvino, in Jonson's "Volpone;" surpassed
Smith in the part of Pierre, and was only second to Quin, in Volpone
himself. His Ventidius, in Dryden's tragedy, "All for Love," to
Booth's Anthony, is praised for its natural display of the true
spirit of a rough and generous soldier. Of his original parts, the
chief were Jack Stanmore, in "Oroonoko;" Aimwell, in the "Beaux
Stratagem;" Charles, in the "Busy Body;" Pylades, in the "Distressed
Mother;" Colonel Briton, in the "Wonder;" Zanga, in the "Revenge;"
and Manly, in the "Provoked Husband." That some of these were beyond
his powers is certain; but he owed his being cast for them to the
friendship of Wilks, when the latter was manager. To a like cause
may be ascribed the circumstance of his having the same salary as
Betterton, £4 per week, and £1 for his wife; but this was not till
after Betterton's death.
At Lincoln's Inn Fields, Thurmond, though a respectable actor, failed
to shake any of the public confidence in Betterton. Of Scudamore, I
have already spoken. Pack was a vivacious comic actor, whose "line"
is well indicated in the characters of Brass, Marplot, and Lissardo,
of which he was the original representative. He withdrew from the
stage in 1721, a bachelor; and, in the meridian of life, opened a
tavern in Charing Cross. I have now named the principal actors and
actresses who first appeared between the Restoration and the year
1701, Betterton and Mrs. Barry being the noblest of the players of
that half century; Cibber, Booth, and Mrs. Oldfield, the bright
promises of the century to come. It is disappointing, however, to
find that in the very last year of the seventeenth century "the
grand jury of Middlesex presented the two play-houses, and also the
bear-garden, as nuisances and riotous and disorderly assemblies." So
Luttrell writes, in December 1700, at which time, as contemporary
accounts inform us, the theatres were "pestered with tumblers,
rope-dancers, and dancing men and dogs from France." Betterton was
then in declining health, and appeared only occasionally; the houses,
lacking other attraction, were ill attended, and public taste was
stimulated by offering the "fun of a fair," where Mrs. Barry had
drowned a whole house in tears. The grand jury of Middlesex did not
see that with rude amusements the spectators grew rude too. The
jury succeeded in preventing play-bills from being posted in the
city, and denounced the stage as a pastime which led the way to
murder. The last denunciation was grounded on the fact, that Sir
Andrew Slanning had been killed just before, on his way _from_ the
play-house. When men wore swords and hot tempers these catastrophes
were not infrequent. In 1682, a coffee-house was sometimes turned
into a shambles by gentlemen calling the actors at the Duke's House
"Papists." What was the cause of the fray in which Sir Andrew fell
I do not know. Whatever it was, he was run through the body by Mr.
Cowlan; and that the latter took some unfair advantage is to be
supposed, since he was found guilty of murder, and in December 1700
was executed at Tyburn, with six other malefactors, who, on the same
day, in the Newgate slang of the period, went _Westward Hoe!_
On the poor players fell all the disgrace; but I think I shall be
able to show, in the next chapter, that the fault lay rather with
the poets. These, in their turn, laid blame upon the public; but it
is the poet's business to elevate, and not to pander to a low taste.
The foremost men of the tuneful brotherhood, of the period from the
Restoration to the end of the century, have much to answer for in
this last respect.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Mountfort seems to have acted as early as 1678.
[41] Norris does not appear in the bills till 1699.
[42] Dr. Doran spells "Oroonoko" wrong throughout. In this he follows
Genest; but the latter corrects his blunder in his "errata."
[43] The trial of Mohun and Warwick took place seven years after
Mountfort's death--that is, in 1699.
[44] It is only fair to Hill to say that Dr. Doran adopts a theory
regarding the death of Mountfort which is, at least, doubtful. It is
quite as possible that he was killed in a fair fight with Hill.
[45] Dr. Doran in his MS. gives the following curious and valuable
note regarding Quin's trial and punishment, which states a fact
absolutely unknown to any of Quin's biographers:--"1718. The papers
of the day say that Quin and Bowen fought on the question which was
the honester man. The coroner's inquest found it 'Se Defendendo;' but
an Old Bailey jury returned a verdict of Manslaughter, and at the end
of the Session I find, among the names of malefactors sent to Tyburn,
or otherwise punished, 'Mr. Quin, the comedian, burnt in the hand.'"
[46] This is taken from the _Guardian_, No. 82. Genest calls it a
humorous account of him.
[47] The elder Mrs. Cibber (second edition).
[48] This is a most inaccurate statement. Benjamin Jonson, or
Johnson, was a comedian of the highest order. Davies calls him
"That chaste copier of nature," and praises him heartily: Victor is
enthusiastic in his appreciation of him: and Lloyd, in his "Actor,"
specially commends him. He was very great in his more famous
namesake's comedies.
[49] Should be John Mills. William was a much less important actor.
[50] 1736. He died November or December 1736.
[Illustration: COLLEY CIBBER.]
CHAPTER IX.
THE DRAMATIC POETS.
Noble, gentle, and humble Authors.
It is a curious fact, that the number of dramatic writers between the
years 1659-1700, inclusive, exceeds that of the actors. A glance at
the following list will show this.
Sir W. Davenant, Dryden, Porter, Mrs. Behn, Lee, Cowley, Hon. James
Howard, Shadwell, Sir S. Tuke, Sir R. Stapylton, Lord Broghill (Earl
of Orrery), Flecknoe, Sir George Etherege, Sir R. Howard, Lacy
(actor), Betterton (actor), Earl of Bristol, Duke of Buckingham,
Dr. Rhodes, Sir Edward Howard, Settle, Caryll (Earl of Caryll, of
James II.'s creation), Henry Lucius Carey (Viscount Falkland), Duke
of Newcastle, Shirley, Sir Charles Sedley, Mrs. Boothby, Medbourne
(actor), Corye, Revet, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Arrowsmith,
Neville Payne, Sir W. Killigrew, Duffet, Sir F. Fane, Otway, Durfey,
Rawlins, Leanard, Bankes, Pordage, Rymer, Shipman, Tate, Bancroft,
Whitaker, Maidwell, Saunders (a boy-poet), and Southerne.
Here are already nearly threescore authors (some few of whom had
commenced their career prior to the Restoration) who supplied the
two theatres, between 1659 and 1682, in which latter year began that
"Union," under which London had but one theatre till the year 1695.
Within the thirteen years of the Union, appeared as dramatic writers,
The Earl of Rochester;--Jevon, Mountfort, Harris, Powell, and
Carlisle (actors); Wilson, Brady, Congreve, Wright, and Higden.
From the period of the dissolution of the Union to the end of the
century occur the names of,
Colley Cibber (actor), Mrs. Trotter (Cockburn), Gould, Mrs. Pix, Mrs.
Manley, Norton, Scott, Dogget (actor), Dryden, jun., Lord Lansdowne
(Granville), Dilke, Sir John Vanbrugh, Gildon, Drake, Filmer,
Motteux, Hopkins, Walker, W. Phillips, Farquhar, Boyer, Dennis,
Burnaby, Oldmixon, Mrs. Centlivre (Carroll), Crauford, and Rowe.
[Illustration: (Thomas Betterton.)]
In the above list there are above a hundred names of authors,
none of whose productions can now be called stock-pieces; though of
some four or five of these writers a play is occasionally performed,
to try an actor's skill or tempt an indifferent audience.
Of the actors who became authors, Cibber alone was eminently
successful, and of him I shall speak apart. The remainder were
mere adapters. Of Betterton's eight plays, I find one tragedy
borrowed from Webster; and of his comedies, one was taken from
Marston; a second raised on Molière's "George Dandin"; a third was
never printed; his "Henry the Fourth" was one of those unhallowed
outrages on Shakspeare, of which the century in which it appeared
was prolific; his "Bondman" was a poor reconstruction of Massinger's
play, in which Betterton himself was marvellously great; and his
"Prophetess" was a conversion of Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy into
an opera, by the efficient aid of Henry Purcell, who published the
music in score, in 1691. There was noble music wedded to noble words,
and for the recreation of those who could appreciate neither; there
was a dance of quaint figures from whom, when about to sit down, the
chairs slipped under them, took up the measure, and concluded by
dancing it out.
Medbourne produced only his translation of the "Tartuffe," Jevon only
one comedy. Mountfort, like Betterton, was an indifferent author. His
"Injured Lovers" ends almost as tragically as the apocryphal play in
which all the characters being killed at the end of the fourth act,
the concluding act is brought to a close by their executors. In
Mountfort's loyal tragedy all the principal personages receive their
quietus, and the denouement is left in the hands of a solitary and
wicked colonel, with a contented mind. "Edward the Third" is so much
more natural than the above, that it is by some assigned to Bancroft,
while "Zelmane" is only hypothetically attributed to Mountfort, on
the ground, apparently, of its absurdities. In the preface to his
"Successful Strangers," Mountfort modestly remarks, "I have a natural
inclination to poetry, which was born and not bred in me." He showed
small inventive power in his bustling comedy, "Greenwich Park," and
less respect for a master in minstrelsy, when he turned poor Kit
Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" into an impassioned sort of burlesque,
with the addition of Harlequin and Scaramouch to give zest to the
buffoonery!
Carlisle, the actor who fell at Aghrim, was the author of the
"Fortune Hunters;" and Joseph Harris, who was a poor comedian, and
the marrer of four adapted and unsuccessful plays, resumed under
Queen Anne his original vocation of engraver to the Mint. The age was
one of adapters, whose cry was that Shakspeare would not attract,
and accordingly George Powell combined authorship with acting,
and borrowed from Shirley, from Brome, and from Middleton. Mrs.
Pix, and the romancers, produced a few plays, from one of which a
recent dramatist has stolen as boldly as George himself was wont
to steal. I allude to the "Imposture Defeated," in which Artan (a
demon) enables Hernando, a physician, to foretell the fate of each
patient, according as Artan takes his stand at the foot or at the
head of the bed. One word will suffice for Dogget's contribution to
stage literature. He was the author of one lively, but not edifying,
piece, entitled the "Country Wake," in which he provided himself with
a taking part called Hob, and one for Mrs. Bracegirdle--Flora. In a
modified form, this piece was known to our grandfathers as "Flora;"
or, "Hob in the Well."
The actors themselves, then, were not efficient as authors. Let
us now see what the noble gentlemen, the amateur rather than
professional poets, contributed towards the public entertainment, and
their own reputation, during the last half of the seventeenth century.
They may be reckoned at a dozen and a half, from dukes to knights.
Of the two dukes, Buckingham and Newcastle, the former is the more
distinguished dramatic writer. He was a man of great wit and no
virtue; a member of two universities, but no honour to either. He
was one who respected neither his own wife nor his neighbour's, and
was faithful to the King only as long as the King would condescend
to obey his caprices. From 1627, when he was born, to April 1688,
the year of his death, history has placed no generous action of his
upon record, but has registered many a crime and meanness. He lived a
profligate peer, in a magnificence almost oriental; he died a beggar;
bankrupt in everything but impudence. Dryden and Pope have given him
everlasting infamy; the latter not without a touch of pity, felt not
at all by the former. Historians have justified the severity of the
poets; Gilbert Burnet has dismissed him with a sneer, and Baxter has
thrown in a word on behalf of his humanity.
His play of the "Chances" was a mere adaptation of the piece so
named, by Beaumont and Fletcher. Plays which were attributed to
him, but of which he was not the author, need not be mentioned. The
Duke's dramatic reputation rests on his great burlesque tragedy, the
"Rehearsal;" but even in this he is said to have had the assistance
of Butler, Martin Clifford, and Dr. Sprat. Written to deride the
bombastic tragedies then in vogue, Davenant, Dryden, and Sir Robert
Howard are, by turns, struck at, under the person of the poet Bayes;
and the irritability of the second, under the allusions, are perhaps
warrant that the satire was good. The humour is good, too; the very
first exhibition of it excited the mirth which afterwards broke into
peal upon peal of laughter. The rehearsed play commences with a scene
between the royal usher and the royal physician, in a series of
whispers; for, as Mr. Bayes remarks, the two officials were plotting
against the King; but this fact it was necessary, as yet, to keep
from the audience!
Mr. Cavendish, whose services in the royal cause deservedly earned
for him that progress through the peerage which terminated in his
creation as Duke of Newcastle, was the opposite of Buckingham in
most things save his taste for magnificence, in which he surpassed
Villiers. Two thousand pounds were as cheerfully spent on feasting
Charles I., as the Duke's blood was vainly shed for the same monarch
in the field. He lived like a man who had the purse of Fortunatus;
but in exile at Antwerp, he pawned his best clothes and jewels, that
he and his celebrated wife might have the means of existence. He was
the author of a few plays, two of which were represented after the
Restoration. The "Country Captain," and "Variety," were composed in
the reign of Charles I. The "Humourous Lovers," and the "Triumphant
Widow," subsequently. These are bustling but immoral comedies,
suiting, but not correcting the vices of the times; and singular,
in their slip-shod style, as coming from the author of the pompous
treatise on horses and horsemanship. Pepys ascribes the "Humourous
Lovers" to the Duchess. He calls it a "silly play; the most silly
thing that ever came upon a stage. I was sick to see it, but yet
would not but have seen it, that I might the better understand her."
Pepys is equally severe against the "Country Captain." The Duke
seems to have aimed at the delineation of character, particularly in
"Variety," and the "Triumphant Widow, or, the Medley of Humours."
Johnson grieves over the oblivion which, in his time, had fallen on
these works, and later authors have declared that the Duke's comedies
ought not to have been forgotten. They have at least been remembered
by some of our modern novelists in want of incident.
Of the three earls, all of whose pieces were produced previous to
1680, there is not much to be said in praise. The eccentric, clever,
brave, inconsistent, contradictory George Digby, Earl of Bristol,
he who turned Romanist at the instigation of Don John of Austria,
and aiming at office himself, conspired against Clarendon, was the
author of one acted piece, "Elvira," one of the two out of which
Mrs. Centlivre built up her own clever bit of mosaic, the "Wonder."
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in whom all the vices of Buckingham
were exaggerated; to whom virtue and honour seemed disgusting, and
even the affectation of them, or of ordinary decency, an egregious
folly, found leisure in the least feverish hour of some five years'
drunkenness, to give to the stage an adaptation of "Valentinian," by
Beaumont and Fletcher, in which he assigned a part to Mrs. Barry--the
very last that any other lover would have thought of for his
mistress. The noble poet, little more than thirty years old, lay in
a dishonoured grave when his piece was represented, in 1680;[51] but
the young actress just named, gaily alluded, in a prologue, to the
demure nymphs in the house who had succumbed, nothing loath, to the
irresistible blandishments of this very prince of blackguards.
The Earl of Caryll was a man of another spirit. He was the head of
the family to which Pope's Carylls belonged, and being a faithful
servant of James II., in adversity as well as in prosperity, the King
made him an earl, at that former period, when the law of England did
not recognise the creation. Caryll was of the party who talked of
the unpopularity of Shakspeare, and who for the poet's gold offered
poor tinsel of their own. His rhymed drama of the "English Princess,
or the death of Richard the Third," owed its brief favour to the
acting of Betterton, who could render even nonsense imposing. His
comedy of "Sir Solomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb," was "taken from the
French." The chief scenes were mere translations of Molière's "Ecole
des Femmes;" but life, and fun, and wit were given to them again by
Betterton, who in the comic old Sir Solomon shook the sides of the
"house," as easily as he could, in other characters, move them to
wonder, or melt them to tears.
In 1664, another "lance was broken with Shakspeare" by Lord Orrery,
the Lord Broghill of earlier days. There was something dramatic
in this lord's life. He was a marvellous boy, younger son of a
marvellous father, the "great Earl of Cork." Before he was fifteen,
Dublin University was proud of him. At that age he went on the "grand
tour," at twenty married the Earl of Suffolk's daughter, and landed
in Ireland, to keep his wedding, on the very day of the outbreak
of the Rebellion of 1641. The young bridegroom fought bravely for
homestead and king, and went into exile when that king was slain; but
he heeded the lure of Cromwell, won for him the victory of Macroom,
rescued him from defeat at Clonmel, and crushed Muskerry and his
numerous Papal host. From Richard Cromwell, Broghill kept aloof, and
helped forward the Restoration, for which service Charles made him
a peer--Earl of Orrery. The earl showed his gratitude by deifying
kings, and inculcating submissiveness, teaching the impeccability
of monarchs, and the extreme naughtiness of their people. Pepys
comically bewails the fact, that on going to see a new piece by
Orrery, he sees only an old one under a new name, such wearying
sameness is there in the rhymed phrases of them all.
Orrery's tilt against Shakspeare is comprised in his attempt to
suppress that poet's "Henry V.," by giving one of his own, in which
Henry and Owen Tudor are simultaneously in love with Katherine of
France. The love is carried on in a style of stilted burlesque; and
yet the dignity and wit of this piece enraptured Pepys--but then he
saw it at Court in December 1666, Lord Bellasis having taken him to
Whitehall, after seeing "Macbeth" at the Duke's House,--"and there,"
he says, "after all staying above an hour for the players, the King
and all waiting, which was absurd, saw 'Henry V.' well done by the
Duke's people, and in most excellent habits, all new vests, being put
on but this night. But I sat so high, and so far off, that I missed
most of the words, and sat with a wind coming into my back and neck,
which did much trouble me. The play continued till twelve at night,
and then up, and a most horrid cold night it was, and frosty, and
moonshine;" and it might have been worse.
In Orrery's "Mustapha" and "Tryphon," the theme is all love and
honour, without variation. Orrery's "Mr. Anthony" is a five-act
farce, in ridicule of the manners and morals of the Puritans. Therein
the noble author rolls in the mire for the gratification of the
pure-minded cavaliers. Over Orrery's "Black Prince," even vigilant
Mr. Pepys himself fell asleep, in spite of the stately dances.
Perhaps he was confused by the author's illustration of genealogical
history; for in this play, Joan, the wife of the Black Prince, is
described as the widow of Edmund, Earl of Kent--_her father!_ But
what mattered it to the writer whose only teaching to the audience
was, that if they did not fear God, they must take care to honour
the King? Orrery's "Altemira" was not produced till long after
his death. It is a roar of passion, love (or what passed for it),
jealousy, despair, and murder. In the concluding scene the slaughter
is terrific. It all takes place in presence of an unobtrusive
individual, who carries the doctrine of non-intervention to its
extreme limit. When the persons of the drama have made an end of one
another, the quietly delighted gentleman steps forward, and blandly
remarks, that there was so much virtue, love, and honour in it all,
that he could not find it in his heart to interfere, though his own
son was one of the victims!
A contemporary of Orrery, young Henry Carey, Viscount Falkland, son
of the immortal soldier who fell at Newbury, wrote one piece, the
"Marriage Night," of which I know nothing, save that it was played
in the Lent of 1664; but I do know that the author had wit, for when
some one remarked, as Carey took his seat in the House of Commons for
the first time, that he looked as if he had not sown his wild oats,
he replied, that he had come to the place where there were geese
enough to pick them up!
The last of the dramatic lords of this century was that Lord
Lansdowne whom Pope called "Granville the polite," and absurdly
compared with Surrey, by awkwardly calling the latter the "Granville
of a former age." Granville was a statesman, a Tory, a stiff-backed
gentleman in a stiff-backed period, and a sufferer for his opinions.
Driven into leisure, he addressed himself to literature, in
connection with which he committed a crime against the majesty of
Shakspeare, which was unpardonable. He reconstructed the "Merchant
of Venice," called it the "Jew of Venice," and assigned Shylock
to Dogget. Lord Lansdowne's "She Gallants" is a vile comedy for
its "morals," but a vivacious one for its manner. Old Downes, the
prompter, sneers at the offence taken at it by some ladies, who, he
thinks, affected rather than possessed virtue themselves. But ladies,
in 1696, _were_ offended at such outrages on decency as this play
contains. They were not the first who had made similar protest. Even
in this lord's tragedy of "Heroic Love," Achilles and Briseis are
only a little more decent than Ravenscroft's loose rakes and facile
nymphs. The only consolation one has in reading the "Jew of Venice"
(produced in 1701) is, that there are some passages the marrer could
not spoil. As for Shylock, Rowe expressed the opinion of the public
when, in spite of the success of the comic edition of the character,
he said, modestly enough, "I cannot but think the character was
_tragically designed_ by the author." Dryden, Pope, and Johnson
have in their turn eulogised Granville; but, as a dramatic poet, he
reflects no honour either on the century in which he was born, or
on that in which he died. Indeed, of the dramatist peers of the
seventeenth century, there is not a play that has survived to our
times.
And now, coming to a dozen of baronets, knights, and honourables, let
us point to two,--Sir Samuel Tuke and Sir William Killigrew, who may
claim precedence for their comparative purity, if not for decided
dramatic talent. To the former, an old colonel of the cavalier times,
Charles II. recommended a comedy of Calderon's, which Sir Samuel
produced at the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre, in 1663, under the
title of the "Adventures of Five Hours." The public generally, and
Pepys especially, were unusually delighted with this well-constructed
comedy. When it was played at Whitehall, Mrs. Pepys saw it from Lady
Fox's "_pew_;" and, making an odd comparison, the diarist thought
"Othello" a "mean thing," when weighed against the "Adventures;" but
his chief praise is, that it is "without one word of ribaldry;" and
Echard has added thereto his special commendation as a critic.
Sir Robert Stapylton says of William Killigrew what could not be said
of his brother Tom (whose plays were written before the Restoration),
that in him were found--
"---- plots well laid,
The language pure and ev'ry sentence weighed."
Sir William, a soldier of the first Charles's fighting time, a
courtier, and vice-chamberlain to the Queen, in "Rowley's" days, was
the author of four or five plays, one only of which deserves any
notice here,--namely, his comedy of "Pandora." The heroine of this
drama, resolving to cloister herself up from marriage, allows love to
be made to her in jest, and, of course, ends by becoming a wife in
happy earnest. The author had, at first, made a tragedy of "Pandora."
The masters of the stage objected to it in that form; and, it being
all the same to the complaisant Sir William, he converted his tragedy
into a comedy!
Sir Robert Stapylton, himself a Douay student converted to
Protestantism; a cavalier, who turned to a hanger-on at court--but
who was always a scholar and a gentleman,--has received more censure
than praise at the hands of a greater critic and poet than himself.
Pepys took no interest in Stapylton's "Slighted Maid," even though
his own wife's maid, Gosnell, had a part in it; and Dryden has
remarked of it, with too much severity, that "there is nothing in the
first act that might not be said or done in the second; nor anything
in the middle which might not as well have been at the beginning or
the end." Stapylton, like the wits of his time, generally wrote more
weakly than he spoke. This was the case, too, with Tom Killigrew,
of whom Scott remarks truly, in a very awkward simile (_Life of
Dryden_), that "the merit of his good things _evaporated_ as soon as
he attempted to _interweave_ them with comedy."
But who is this jaunty personage, so noisy at a rehearsal of one of
his own indifferent plays? It is "Ned Howard," one of the three sons
of the dirty Earl of Berkshire, the first Howard who bore that title,
and whom Pepys saw one July day of 1666, serving the King with
liquor, "in that dirty pickle I never saw man in, in my life." The
daughter of this Earl was the wife of Dryden.
And what does Ned Howard say at rehearsal? The actors are making some
objection to his piece; but he exclaims, "In fine,--it shall read,
and write, and act, and print, and pit, box, and gallery it, egad,
with any play in Europe!" The play fails; and then you may hear Ned
in any coffee house, or wherever there is a company, proclaiming, by
way of excuse, that "Mr. So-and-so the actor didn't _top his part,
sir_!" It was Ned Howard's favourite phrase.
The old Earl of Berkshire gave three sons to literature, besides a
daughter to Dryden; namely, Sir Robert, James, and this Edward. The
last-named was the least effective. His characters "talk," but they
are engaged in no plot; and they exhibit a dull lack of incident.
The most of his six or seven dramas were failures; but from one of
them, which was the most original, indecent, and the most decidedly
damned, Mrs. Inchbald condescended to extract matter which she
turned to very good purpose in her "Every one has his Fault." Edward
Howard gratified the court-party in his tragedy of "The Usurper," by
describing, under the character of Damocles the Syracusan, the once
redoubted Oliver Cromwell: while Hugo de Petra but thinly veiled Hugh
Peters; and Cleomenes is said to have been the shadow of General
Monk. Lacy said that Ned was "more of a fool than a poet;" and
Buckingham was of the same opinion.
James Howard came under Buckingham's censure too; and an incident in
the "English Monsieur," which, if Pepys's criticism may be accepted,
was a mighty, pretty, witty, pleasant, mirthful comedy, furnished
the satirical touch in the "Rehearsal," where Prince Volscius falls
in love with Parthenope, as he is pulling on his boots to go out
of town. James Howard belonged to the faction which affected to
believe that there was no popular love for Shakspeare, to render
whom palatable, he arranged "Romeo and Juliet" for the stage, with a
double denouement--one serious, the other hilarious. If your heart
were too sensitive to bear the deaths of the loving pair, you had
only to go on the succeeding afternoon to see them wedded, and set
upon the way of a well-assured domestic felicity!
This species of humour was not wanting in Sir Robert Howard,--who
won his knighthood by valour displayed in saving Lord Wilmot's life
in that hot affair at Cropredy Bridge. Sir Robert has been as much
pommelled as patted by Dryden. Buckingham dragged him in effigy
across the stage, and Shadwell ridiculed the universality of his
pretensions by a clever caricature of him, in the "Impertinents,"
as Sir Positive Atall. For the King's purpose, Howard cajoled the
Parliament out of money; for his own purpose, he cajoled the King
out of both money and place; and netted several thousands a year by
affixing his very legible signature to warrants, issued by him as
Auditor of the Exchequer. The humour which he had in common with his
brother James, he exhibited, by giving two opposite catastrophes to
his "Vestal Virgin," between which the public were free to choose.
Sir Robert has generally been looked upon as a servile courtier; but
people were astounded at the courage displayed by him in his "Great
Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma;" in which the naughtiness of the
King's ways, and still more that of the women about him, was shown
in a light which left no doubt as to the application of the satire.
His bombastic periods have died away in the echoes of them which
Fielding caught in his "Tom Thumb;" but his comic power is strongly
and admirably manifested in his "Committee," a transcript of Puritan
life, which--applied to Quakers, for want of better subjects for
caricature--may still be witnessed in country theatres, in the farce
of "Honest Thieves." Like many other satirists, Sir Robert could not
detect his own weak points. In his "Blind Lady," he ridicules an old
widow in desperate want of a seventh husband; and at threescore and
ten, he himself married buxom Mistress Dives, one of the Maids of
Honour to Queen Mary.
Of comedies portraying national or individual follies, perhaps the
most successful, and the most laughable, was James Howard's "English
Monsieur," in which the hero-Englishman execrates everything that is
connected with his country. To him an English meal is poison, and
an English coat degradation. The English Monsieur once challenged
a rash person who had praised an English dinner, and, says he, "I
ran him through his mistaken palate, which made me think the hand
of justice guided my sword." Is there a damp walk, along which the
Gallo-Englishman passes--he can distinguish between the impressions
previously left there by English or French ladies,--the footsteps
of the latter being of course altogether the more fairy-like. "I
have seen such _bonne mine_ in their footsteps, that the King of
France's _maître de danse_ could not have found fault with any one
tread amongst them all. In these walks," he adds, "I find the toes of
English ladies ready to tread upon one another."
Later in the play, the hero quarrels with a friend who had found
fault with a "pair of French tops," worn by the former. These boots
made so much noise when the wearer moved in them, that the friend's
mistress could not hear a word of the love made to her. The wearer,
however, justifies the noise as a fashionable French noise: "for,
look you, sir, a French noise is agreeable to the ear, and therefore
not unagreeable, not prejudicial to the hearing; that is to say, to a
person who has seen the world." The English Monsieur, as a matter of
course, loves a French lady, who rejects his suit; but to be repulsed
by a French dame had something pleasant in it; "'twas a denial with a
French tone of voice, so that 'twas agreeable." Ultimately, the nymph
bids him a final adieu, and the not too dejected lover exclaims to a
friend: "Do you see, sir, how she leaves us; she walks away with a
French step!"
One word may be said here for Sir Ludovick Carlell, the old gentleman
of the bows to Charles I. Like Shirley, Killigrew, and Davenant,
he had written plays before the time of the Commonwealth; and he
survived to write more after the Restoration. The only one, however,
which he offered to the players was a translation of "Heraclius,"
by Corneille; and that was returned on his hands. There is another
knight, Sir Francis Fane, from whose comedy of "Love in the Dark,"
Mrs. Centlivre, more clever at appropriation than Mrs. Inchbald, has
taken Intrigo, the man of business, and turned him into Marplot,
with considerable improvements; but as Fane himself borrowed every
incident, and did not trouble himself about his language, his merit
is only of the smallest order. He wrote a fair masque, and in his
unrepresented "Sacrifice" was little courtier enough to make his
Tamerlane declare that "princes, for the most part, keep the worst
company." He and Sir Robert Howard, both Tories, could, when it
pleased them, tell the truth, like the plainest spoken Whig.
More successful than Sir Francis was rollicking Tom Porter, or Major
Porter, according to his military rank. Both were luckless gentlemen;
but Tom wrote one play, the "Villain," which put the town in a flame,
and raised Sandford's fame, as an actor, to its very highest. Tom
was also the author of a rattling comedy, called the "Carnival,"
but rioting, and bad company and hot temper marred him. He and
Sir Henry Bellasys, dining at Sir Robert Carr's, fell into fierce
dispute, out of mutual error; fierce words, then a thoughtless blow
from Sir Henry, then swords crossing, and tipsy people parting the
combatants. They were really warm friends; but Tom had been struck,
and honour forbade that he should be reconciled till blood had flown.
So Dryden's boy was employed to track Bellasys, and the Major came
upon him in Covent Garden, where they fought, surrounded by a crowd
of admirers. Tom's honour was satisfied by passing his sword through
the body of his dearest friend. The knight felt the wound was mortal,
but he beckoned the less grievously wounded major to him, kissed
him, and remained standing, that Tom might not be obstructed in his
flight. The friend and poet safe, the knight fell back, and soon
after died. There was really noble stuff in some of these dissolute
fine gentlemen! But there are no two of them who have so faithfully
illustrated themselves, and the times in which they lived, as Sir
George Etherege and Sir Charles Sedley; the former, a knight by
purchase, in order to please a silly woman, who vowed she would many
none but a man of title; the latter, a baronet by inheritance. Sir
George, born in 1636, was the descendant of a good--Sir Charles, born
three years later, a member of a better--family, reckoning among its
sons scholars and patrons of scholars. Sir George left Cambridge
undistinguished, but took his degree in foreign travel, came home to
find the study of the law too base a drudgery for so free a spirit,
and so took to living like a "gentleman," and to illustrating the
devilishness of that career by reproducing it in dramas on the stage.
Sedley left Oxford as Etherege left Cambridge, ingloriously,
bearing no honours with him. Unlike Sir George, however, he was a
home-keeping youth, whereby his wit seems not to have suffered.
He nursed the latter in the groves, or at the paternal hearth at
Aylesford, in Kent, till the sun of the restored monarchy enticed
him to London. There his wit recommended him to the King, won for him
the hatred of small minds, and elicited the praise of noble spirits,
who were witty themselves, and loved the manifestation of wit in
others. "I have heard," says honest, brilliant, and much-abused
Shadwell, "I have heard Sedley speak more wit at a supper than all my
adversaries, putting their heads together, could _write_ in a year."
This testimony was rendered by a man whose own reputation as a wit
has the stamp and the warrant of Rochester.
Two more atrocious libertines than these two men were not to be found
in the apartments at Whitehall, or in the streets, taverns, and dens
of London. Yet both were famed for like external qualities. Etherege
was easy and graceful, Sedley so refinedly seductive of manner that
Buckingham called it "witchcraft," and Wilmot "his prevailing, gentle
art." _I_, humbler witness, can only say, after studying their works
and their lives, that Etherege was a more accomplished comedy-writer
than Sedley, but that Sedley was a greater _beast_ than Etherege.
These two handsome fellows, made in God's image, marred their manly
beauty by their licentiousness, and soon looked more like two
battered, wine-soaked demons, than the sons of Christian mothers.
Etherege, however, fierce and vindictive as he could be under
passion, was never so utterly brutalised in mind as Sedley, nor so
cruel in his humours at any time. If Sedley got up that groundless
quarrel with Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, the alleged cause
of which was some painted hussey, it was doubtless out of the very
ferocity of his fun, which he thought well spent on exhibiting the
prelate as sharing in the vices common at court.
Etherege, perhaps, had the stronger head of the two; he, at all
events, kept it sufficiently free to be able to represent his King
on more than one small diplomatic mission abroad. Sedley, who was
nevertheless the longer liver of the two, indulged in excesses
which, from their inexpressible infamy, betray a sort of insanity.
When he, with other blackguards of good blood, was brought to trial
for public outrages, which disgusted even the hideous wretches that
lurked about Covent Garden, Chief Justice Foster addressed him from
the bench with a "Sirrah!" and told him, while the reminiscence of
the plague and the smoke of the Great Fire still hung over the court,
that it was such wretches as he that brought God's wrath so heavily
upon the kingdom. But neither the heavy fine of 2000 marks, nor his
imprisonment, nor his being bound over to keep the peace for three
years, nor his own conscience, nor the rebuke of wise men, could
restrain this miscreant. He was not yet free from his bond[52] when
he, and Buckhurst and others were carried off to the watch-house
by the night-constables for fighting in the streets, drunk, as was
their custom, and as naked as their drawn swords. On this occasion,
in 1668, the King interfered in their favour, and Chief Justice
Keeling, senile betrayer of his trust, let them go scatheless; but
he punished the constables by whom they had been arrested!
Etherege contributed three comedies to the stage:--"The Comical
Revenge, or Love in a Tub," "She Would if She Could," and the "Man of
Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter." Sedley wrote the "Mulberry Garden;" a
tragedy, called "Antony and Cleopatra," wherein a single incident in
Shakspeare's play is spun out into five acts; "Bellamira," in which
comedy, partly founded on the "Eunuchus" of Terence, he exhibited
the frailty of Lady Castlemaine, and the audacity of Churchill--a
translated drama from the French, called the "Grumbler," and a
tragedy, entitled the "Tyrant King of Crete." Of all Sedley's pieces,
the best is the "Mulberry Garden,"[53] for portions of which the
author is indebted to Molière's "Ecole des Maris," and on which
Pepys's criticism is not to be gainsayed:--"Here and there a pretty
saying, and that not very many either." "Bellamira" is remembered
only as the play, during the first representation of which the roof
of the Theatre Royal fell in, with such just discrimination as to
injure no one but the author. Sir Fleetwood Shepherd said that "the
wit of the latter had blown the roof from the building." "Not so,"
rejoined Sedley, "the heaviness of the play has broke down the house,
and buried the author in the ruins!"
Etherege's comedies were, in their day, the dear delight of the
majority of playgoers. I say the majority; for though "Love in a
Tub" brought £1000 profit to Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in a
single month of 1664, and was acted before enraptured gallants
and appreciating nymphs, at Whitehall, some found it a silly play.
It gave Etherege a name and a position; and when his next comedy
appeared, "She Would if She Could," a thousand anxious people,
with leisure enough of an afternoon to see plays (it was only at
Court that they were acted at night), were turned away from the
doors. To me, this piece is very distasteful, and it is not without
satisfaction I read that it was on the first night "barbarously
treated," according to Dennis, and that Pepys found "nothing in
the world good in it, and few people pleased with it." The plot
and denouement he pronounces as "mighty insipid;" yet he says of
the piece as a whole, that it was "dull, roguish, and witty." The
actors, however, were not perfect on the first night. Dennis praised
the truth of character, the purity, freedom, and grace of the
dialogue; and Shadwell declared that it was the best comedy since the
Restoration, to his own time. All this eulogy is not to be accepted.
Etherege's third comedy, the "Man of Mode," has been described as
"perhaps the most elegant comedy, and containing more of the real
_manners_ of high life than any one the English stage was ever
adorned with." In the latter respect alone is this description true;
but, though the piece is dedicated to a lady, the Duchess of York, it
could have afforded pleasure, as the _Spectator_ remarks, only to the
impure. People, no doubt, were delighted to recognise Rochester in
Dorimant, Etherege himself in Bellair, and the stupendous ass, Beau
Hewitt, in Sir Fopling; but it must have been a weary delight; so
debased is the nature of these people, however truly they represent,
as they unquestionably did, the manners, bearing, and language of the
higher classes.
How they dressed, talked, and thought; what they did, and how they
did it; what they hoped for, and how they pursued it; all this, and
many other exemplifications of life as it was then understood, may
be found especially in the plays of Etherege, in which there is a
bustle and a succession of incidents, from the rise to the fall of
the curtain. But the fine gentlemen are such unmitigated rascals, and
the women--girls and matrons--are such unlovely hussies, in rascality
and unseemliness quite a match for the men, that one escapes from
their wretched society, and a knowledge of their one object, and
the confidences of the abominable creatures engaged therein, with a
feeling of a strong want of purification, and of that ounce of civet
which sweetens the imagination.
Of the remaining amateur writers there is not much to be said.
Rhodes was a gentleman's son without an estate, a doctor without
practice, and a dramatist without perseverance. His one comedy,
"Flora's Vagaries" (1667), gave a capital part to Nelly, and a
reputation to the doctor, which he failed to sustain. Corye was
another idle gentleman, who, in the same year,[54] produced his
"Generous Enemies," and that piece was a plagiarism. Ned Revet
also exhausted himself in one comedy, "The Town Shifts," which the
town found insipid. Arrowsmith was in like plight, and his sole
comedy, "The Reformation," was obliged to give way to Shakspeare's
"Macbeth," converted into an opera. Nevil Payne was the author of
three pieces--"Fatal Jealousy," in which Nokes earned his name of
_Nurse Nokes_; the "Morning Ramble," which was less attractive in
1673, than the "Tempest," even in an operatic form, or "Hamlet," with
Betterton for the hero; and the "Siege of Constantinople," a tragedy,
in which Shaftesbury and his vices were mercilessly satirised. Tom
Rawlins wrote three poor plays, the last in 1678, and he had as great
a contempt for the character of author as Congreve himself. He was,
like Joe Harris, "engraver of the Mint," kept fellowship with wits
and poets, wrote for amusement, and "had no desire to be known by a
_thread_bare coat, having a calling that will maintain it _woolly_!"
Then there was Leanard, who stole not more audaciously than he was
stolen from, when he chose to be original--Colley Cibber having taken
many a point from the "Counterfeits," to enrich "She Would and She
Would Not." Pordage was about as dull a writer as might be expected
of a man who was land-steward to "the memorable simpleton," Philip,
Earl of Pembroke. Shipman enjoys the fame of having been highly
esteemed by Cowley--he certainly was not by the public; and Bancroft,
the surgeon, had the reputation of having been induced to write, as
he did, unsuccessfully, for the stage, because he prescribed for,
or rather against, the most fashionable malady of the day, when it
attacked theatre-haunting fops and actors who stooped to imitate
the gentlemen. From these he caught the stage fever, and suffered
considerably. Whitaker's one play, "The Conspiracy," is remarkable
for the sensation incident of a ghost appearing, leading Death by the
hand! Maidwell's comedy of "The Loving Enemies" (the author was an
old schoolmaster), was noticeable for being "designedly dull, lest by
satirising folly the author might bring upon his skull the bludgeon
of fools."[55] Saunders, and his "Tamerlane the Great," are now
forgotten; but Dryden spoke of the author, in an indecent epilogue,
as "the first boy-poet of our age;" who, however, though he blossomed
as early as Cowley, did not flourish as long.
Wilson was another professional writer, but less successful on the
stage than in his recordership of Londonderry. Another lawyer,
Higden, was one of the jolliest of fellows; and wishing the actors to
be so too, he introduced so many drinking scenes into his sole play,
"The Wary Widow," that the players, who tippled their real punch
freely, were all drunk by the end of the third act; and the piece was
then, there, and thereby, brought to an end!
In the last years of the seventeenth century, a humble votary of
the muses appeared in Duffet, the Exchange milliner; and in Robert
Gould, a servant in the household of Dorset, where he caught from the
wits and gay fellows assembled at Knowle or at Buckhurst, a desire
to write a drama. He was, however, a schoolmaster, when his play
of the "Rival Sisters"--in which, other means of slaughter being
exhausted, a thunderbolt is employed for the killing a lady--was but
coldly received. Gould was not a plagiarist, like Scott, the Duke of
Roxburgh's secretary, nor so licentious. The public was scandalised
by incidents in Scott's "Unhappy Kindness," in 1697. Dr. Drake was
another plagiarist, who revenged himself in the last-named year, for
the condemnation of his "Sham Lawyer," by stating on the title-page
that it had been "damnably acted." That year was fatal, too, to Dr.
Filmer, the champion of the stage against Collier. Even Betterton
and Mrs. Barry failed to give life to the old gentleman's "Unnatural
Brother;" and the doctor ascribed his want of success to the fact,
that never at any one time had he placed more than three characters
on the stage! The most prolific of what may be termed the amateur
writers, was Peter Motteux, a French Huguenot, whom the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes brought, in 1660,[56] to England, where he
carried on the vocations of a trader in Leadenhall Street, clerk
in the foreign department of the Post Office, translator, original
writer, dramatist, and "fast man," till the too zealous pursuit of
the latter calling found Peter dead, in very bad company, in St.
Clements Danes, in the year 1718. Of his seventeen comedies, farces,
and musical interludes, there is nothing to be said, save that one
called "Novelty" presents a distinct play in each act,--or five
different pieces in all. By different men, Peter has been diversely
rated. Dryden said of him, in reference to his one tragedy, "Beauty
in Distress:"
"Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown;
But too much plenty is thy fault alone:
At least but two in that good crime commit;--
Thou in design, and Wycherly in wit."
But an anonymous poet writes, in reference to one of his various poor
adaptations, "The Island Princess:"
"Motteux and Durfey are for nothing fit,
But to supply with songs their _want_ of wit."
How Motteux found time for all his pursuits is not to be explained;
but, much as he accomplished in all, he designed still more--one of
his projects being an opera, to be called "The Loves of Europe," in
which were to be represented the methods employed in various nations,
whereby ladies' hearts are triumphantly won. It was an odd idea;
but Peter Motteux was odd in everything. And it is even oddly said
of him, "that he met with his fate in trying a very odd experiment,
highly disgraceful to his memory!"[57]
Hard-drinking, and what was euphoniously called _gallantry_, killed
good-tempered Charles Hopkins, son of the Bishop of Londonderry. Had
he had more discretion and less wit, he might have prospered. His
tragedies, "Pyrrhus," "Boadicea," and "Friendship improved," bear
traces of what he might have done. He has the merit, however, of not
being indecent,--a fact which the epilogue to "Boadicea," furnished
by a friend and spoken by a lady, rather deplores, and in indecent
language, regrets that uncleanness of jest is no longer acceptable to
the town!
Walker merits notice, less for his two pieces, "Victorious Love,"
and "Marry or do worse," than for the fact that this young Barbadian
was the first actor whom Eton school gave to the stage. He appeared,
when only eighteen, in the first-named piece, but quickly passed
away to the study of the law and the exercise of the latter as a
profession, in his native island. I know nothing worthy of record
of the few other gentlemen who wrote plays, rather as a relaxation
than a vocation, save that Boyer, a refugee Huguenot, like Motteux,
and a learned man, adapted Racine's "Iphigenia in Aulis," for
representation; that Oldmixon was an old, unscrupulous, party-writer;
and that Crauford was historiographer for Scotland to Queen Anne, and
has left no name of note among dramatic writers.
FOOTNOTES:
[51] "Valentinian" was probably produced in 1684.
[52] The Bond was entered into in 1663.
[53] Genest says that "Bellamira" is by far the best of Sedley's
plays.
[54] Should be 1671.
[55] This is, of course, satirically said by the author.
[56] The Edict of Nantes was not revoked till 1685. Motteux was born
in 1660.
[57] _Biographia Dramatica._
[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT.]
CHAPTER X.
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS.
The men who took up dramatic authorship seriously as a vocation,
during the last half of the seventeenth century, amount to something
more than two dozen. They begin with Davenant and Dryden; include
Tate and Brady,[58] Lee and Otway, Wycherley, Congreve, Cibber, and
Vanbrugh; and conclude with Farquhar, and with Rowe.
I include Sir John Vanbrugh because he preferred fame as an author to
fame as an architect, and I insert Congreve, despite the reflection
that the ghost of that writer would daintily protest against it if
he could. When Voltaire called upon him, in London, the Frenchman
intimated that his visit was to the "author." "I am a _gentleman_,"
said Congreve. "Nay," rejoined the former, "had you been only a
gentleman, you would never have received a visit from me at all."
Let me here repeat the names:--_Davenant_, _Dryden_, Shirley, Lee,
Cowley, _Shadwell_, Flecknoe, Settle, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley,
Otway, Durfey, Banks, Rymer, _Tate_, Brady, Southerne, Congreve,
_Cibber_, Dilke,[59] Vanbrugh, Gildon, Farquhar, Dennis, and _Rowe_.
The half dozen in italics were poets-laureate.
All of them were sons of "gentlemen," save three, Davenant, Cowley,
and Dennis, whose sires were, respectively, a vintner, a hatter,[60]
and a saddler. The sons, however, received a collegiate education.
Cowley distinguished himself at Cambridge, but Davenant left Oxford
without a degree, and from the former University Dennis was expelled,
in March 1680, "for assaulting and wounding Sir Glenham with a sword."
Besides Cowley and Dennis, we are indebted to Cambridge for Dryden,
Lee, and Rymer. From Oxford University came Davenant, and Settle,
degreeless as Davenant, with Shirley, whose mole on his cheek had
rendered him ineligible in Laud's eyes, for ordination; Wycherley,
Otway, Southerne, and Dilke. Dublin University yielded Tate and
Brady; and better fruit still, Southerne,[61] Congreve, who went to
Ireland at an early age, and Farquhar. Douay gave us Gildon, and we
are not proud of the gift.
Lee, Otway, and Tate were sons of clergymen. Little Crowne's
father was an Independent minister in Nova Scotia, and Crowne
himself laid claim, fruitlessly, to a vast portion of the territory
there--unjustly made over by the English Government to the French.
Cibber was an artist, on the side of his father the statuary, and a
"gentleman" by his mother.
It may be said of a good number of these gentlemen that idleness and
love of pleasure made them dramatic poets. Shadwell, Ravenscroft,
Wycherley, Durfey, Bankes, Southerne, Congreve, and Rowe, were all
apprenticed to the law; but the study was one too dull for men of
their vivacious temperament, and they all turned from it in disgust.
According to their success, so were they praised or blamed.
The least successful dramatists on the above list were the most
presumptuous of critics. Rymer, who was wise enough to stick to the
law while he endeavoured to turn at least Melpomene to good account,
tried to persuade the public that Shakspeare was even of less merit
than it was the fashion to assign to him. In 1678,[62] Rymer boldly
asserted that "in the neighing of a horse as the growling of a
mastiff, there is a meaning; there is as lively expression and, may
I say, more humanity than many times in the tragical flights of
Shakspeare." He says, that "no woman bred out of a pigstye could
talk so meanly as Desdemona," in that tragedy which Rymer calls "a
bloody farce without salt or savour." Of Brutus and Cæsar, he says
Shakspeare has depicted them as "Jack Puddins." To show how much
better he understood the art, Rymer published, in 1678, the tragedy
he could not get represented, "Edgar, or the English Monarch." He
professes to imitate the ancients, and his tragedy is in rhyme;
he accuses Shakspeare of anachronisms, and his Saxon princess is
directed to "pull off her patches!" The author was ambitious enough
to attempt to supersede Shakspeare, and he pooh-poohed John Milton
by speaking of _Paradise Lost_ as "a thing which some people were
pleased to call a poem."
Dennis was not quite so audacious as this. He was a better critic
than the author of the _Foedera_, and a more voluminous writer, or
rather adapter, of dramatic pieces. He spoke, however, of Tasso
as compassionately as the village-painter did of Titian; but his
usefulness was acknowledged by the commentator, who remarked that men
might construct good plays by following his precepts and avoiding
his examples. Boyer has said something similar of Gildon, who was a
critic as well as dramatist--namely, "he wrote an _English Art of
Poetry_, which he had practised himself very unsuccessfully in his
dramatic performances."
Cowley, although he is now little remembered as a dramatic writer,
was among the first who seized the earliest opportunity after the
Restoration to set up as playwrights; but Cowley failed, and was
certainly mortified at his failure. He re-trimmed a play of his
early days, the "Guardian," and called it the "Cutter of Coleman
Street." All there is broad farce, in which the Puritan "congregation
of the spotless" is coarsely ridiculed, and cavalierism held up to
admiration. The audience condemned the former as "profane," and
Cowley's cavaliers were found to be such scamps that he was suspected
of disloyalty. Gentle as he was by nature, Cowley was irritable
under criticism. "I think there was something of faction against
it," he says, "by the early appearance of some men's disapprobation
before they had seen enough of it to build their dislike upon their
judgment." "Profane!" exclaims Abraham, with a shudder, and declares
it is enough to "knock a man down." Is it profane, he asks, "to
deride the hypocrisy of those men whose skulls are not yet bare
upon the gates since the public and just punishment of it," namely,
profanity. Thus were the skulls of the Commonwealth leaders tossed
up in comedy. He adds, in a half saucy, half deprecatory sort of
way, that "there is no writer but may fail sometimes in point of
wit, and it is no less frequent for the auditors to fail in point of
judgment." Nevertheless, he had humbly asked favour at the hands of
the critics when his piece was first played, in these words:--
"Gentlemen critics of Argier,
For your own int'rest, I'd advise ye here
To let this little forlorn hope go by
Safe and untouch'd. 'That must not be!' you'll cry.
If ye be wise, it must: I'll tell ye why.
There are 7, 8, 9,--stay, there are behind
Ten plays at least, which wait but for a wind
And the glad news that we the enemy miss;
And those are all your own, if you spare this.
Some are but new-trimm'd up, others quite new,
Some by known shipwrights built, and others too
By that great author made, whoe'er he be,
That styles himself 'Person of Quality.'"
The "Cutter" rallied a little, and then was laid aside; but some
of its spars were carried off by later gentlemen, who have piqued
themselves on their originality. Colonel Jolly's advice to the bully,
Cutter, if he would not be known, to "take one more disguise at last,
and put thyself in the habit of a gentleman," has been quoted as
the wit of Sheridan, who took his Sir Anthony Absolute from Truman,
_senior_. And when Cowley made Aurelia answer to the inquiry, if she
had looked in Lucia's eye, that she had, and that "there were pretty
babies in it," he little thought that there would rise a Tom Moore to
give a turn to the pretty idea, and spoil it, as he has done, in the
"Impromptu," in _Little's Poems_.
One of the most remarkable circumstances in Cowley's character,
considering how he distinguished himself at college, is, that he
never thoroughly understood the rules of grammar! and that in
seriously setting up for a dramatic author, he took, like Dryden, the
course in which he acquired the least honour. When Charles II., on
hearing of Cowley's death, declared that he had not left a better man
behind him in England, the King was, assuredly, not thinking of the
poet as a dramatist.
Several of Cowley's contemporaries who were considered better men
by some judges, were guilty of offence from which he was entirely
free. That offence consisted in their various attempts to improve
Shakspeare, by lowering him to what they conceived to be the taste
of the times. Davenant took "Measure for Measure," and "Much Ado
about Nothing," and manipulated them into one absurd comedy, the
"Law against Lovers." He subsequently _improved_ "Macbeth" and
"Julius Cæsar;"[63] and Dryden, who with at least some show of
reason, re-arranged "Troilus and Cressida," united with Davenant in a
sacrilegious destruction of all that was beautiful in the "Tempest."
Nat Lee, who was accounted mad, had at least sense enough to refrain
from marring Shakspeare. Shadwell corrected the great poet's view
of "Timon of Athens," which, as he not too modestly observed, he
"made into a play;" but, with more modesty in the epilogue, he asked
for forgiveness for his own part, for the sake of the portion that
was Shakspeare's. Crowne, more impudently, remodelled two parts of
"Henry VI.," with some affectation of reverence for the original
author, and a bold assertion of his own original merits with regard
to some portions of the play. Crowne's originality is shown, in
making Clifford swear like a drunken tapster, and in affirming
that a king is a king--sacred, and not to be even _thought_ ill
of, let him be never so hateful a miscreant. Ravenscroft, in _his_
"Titus Andronicus," only piled the agony a little more solidly
and comically, and can be hardly said to have thereby molested
Shakspeare. There was less excuse for Otway, who, not caring to do
as he pleased with a doubtful play, ruthlessly seized "Romeo and
Juliet," stripped the lovers of their romance, clapped them into a
classical costume, and converted the noble but obstinate houses of
Capulet and Montagu into riotous followers of Marius and Sylla--Caius
Marius the younger wishing he were a glove upon the hand of Lavinia
Metella, and a sententious Sulpitius striving in vain to be as light
and sparkling as Mercutio. Tate's double rebuke to Shakspeare, in
altering his "King Lear" and "Coriolanus," was a small offence
compared with Otway's assault. He undertook, as he says, to "rectify
what was wanting;" and accordingly, he abolishes the faithful fool,
makes a pair of silly lovers of Edgar and Cordelia, and converts
the solemn climax into comedy, by presenting the old king and his
matchless daughter, hand in hand, alive and merry, as the curtain
descends. Tate smirkingly maintained, that he wrought into perfection
the rough and costly material left by Shakspeare. "In my humble
opinion," said Addison, "it has lost half its beauty;" and yet
Tate's version kept its place for many years!--though not so long
as Cibber's version of "Richard III.," which was constructed out
of Shakspeare, with more regard for the actor than respect for the
author.
In the last year of the century, the last attempt to improve that
inefficient poet was made by Gildon, who produced at Lincoln's
Inn Fields _his_ idea of what "Measure for Measure" should be, by
omitting all the comic characters, introducing music and dancing,
transposing incidents, adding much nonsense of his own to that
of Davenant, and sprinkling all with an assortment of blunders,
amusing enough to make some compensation for the absence of the comic
characters in the original play.
It seemed to be the idea of these men, that it were wise to reduce
Shakspeare to the capacities of those who could appreciate him. There
_were_ unhappy persons thus afflicted. Even Mr. Pepys speaks of
"Henry VIII." as "a simple thing, made up of a great many patches."
The "Tempest," he thinks, "has no great wit--but yet good, above
ordinary plays." "Othello" was to him "a mean thing," compared
with the last new comedy by another author. "Twelfth Night," "one
of the weakest plays I ever saw on the stage." "Macbeth," he liked
or disliked, according to the humour of the hour; but there was a
"divertissement" in it, which struck him as being a droll thing in
tragedy, but in this case proper and natural! Finally, he records,
in 1662, of the "Midsummer's Night's Dream," which he "had never
seen before, nor ever shall again," that "it is the most insipid,
ridiculous play, that ever I saw in my life."
Of the characteristics of the chief of these dramatists, it may be
said, first of Davenant, that, if he was quick of fancy and careful
in composition, the result is not answerable to the labour expended
on it. One of the pleasantest features about Dryden was, that as he
grew old he increased in power; but his heart was untouched by his
own magic, and he was but a cold reader of the best of his own works.
Lee, as tender and impassioned as he is often absurd and bombastic,
was an exquisite reader of what he wrote, his heart acknowledging
the charm. Shadwell's characters have the merit of being well
conceived, and strongly marked; and Shirley (a poet belonging to
an earlier period), has only a little above the measure of honour
due to him, when he is placed on a level with Fletcher. Crowne is
more justly placed in the third rank of dramatists; but he had
originality, lacking the power to give it effect. Ravenscroft had
neither invention nor expression; yet he was a most prolific writer,
a caricaturist, but without truth or refinement; altogether unclean.
Wycherley, on the other hand, was admirable for the epigrammatic turn
of his stage conversations, the aptness of his illustrations, the
acuteness of his observation, the richness of his character-painting,
and the smartness of his satire; in the indulgence or practice of all
which, however, the action of the drama is often impeded, that the
audience may enjoy a shower of sky rockets.
Pope said that Wycherley was inspired by the Muses, with the wit of
Plautus. He had, indeed, "Plautus' wit," and an obscenity rivalling
that of the "Curculio;" but he had none of the pathos which is to be
found in the "Rudens." But Wycherley was also described as having the
"art of Terence and Menander's fire." If by the first, Pope meant
skill in invention of plot, Wycherley surpassed the Carthaginian;
and as to "Menander's fire," in Wycherley it was no purifying fire;
and Wesley was not likely to illustrate a sermon by a quotation from
Wycherley, as St. Paul did by citing a line from Menander.
We are charmed by the humour of Wycherley; but after that, posterity
disagrees with Pope's verdict. We are _not_ instructed by the sense
of Wycherley, nor swayed by his judgment, nor warmed honestly by
his spirit; his unblushing profligacy ruins all. But if his men and
women are as coarse as Etherege's or Sedley's, they are infinitely
more clever people; so clever, indeed, that Sheridan has not been too
proud to borrow "good things" from some of them. Wycherley is perhaps
more natural and consistent than Congreve, whose Jeremy speaks like
an oracle, and is as learned, though not so nasty as his master. It
may be, that for a man to enjoy Congreve's wit, he should be as witty
as Congreve. To me, it seems to shine at best but as a brilliant
on a dirty finger. As for his boasted originality, Valentine and
Trapbois are Don Juan and M. Dimanche; and as for Valentine, as the
type of a gentleman, his similes smack more of the stable-yard than
the drawing-room; and there is more of impertinent prattle generally
among his characters than among those of Wycherley. His ladies are a
shade more elegant than those of the latter poet; but they are mere
courtezans, brilliant, through being decked with diamonds; but not
a jot the more virtuous or attractive on that account. Among the
comedy-writers of this half century, however, Congreve and Wycherley
stand supreme; they were artists; too many of their rivals or
successors were but coarse daubers.
In coarseness of sentiment the latter could not go beyond their
prototypes; and in the expression of it, they had neither the wit
of their greatest, nor the smartness of their less famous masters.
This coarseness dates, however, from earlier days than those of the
Restoration; and Dryden, who remembered the immorality of Webster's
comedies, seems to have thought that the Restoration was to give the
old grossness to the stage, as well as a new king to the country.
It is, nevertheless, certain, that a large portion of the public
protested against this return to an evil practice, and hissed his
first piece, "The Wild Gallant," played in the little theatre in Vere
Street, Drury Lane, in 1662. "It was not indecent enough for them,"
said the poet, who promised "not to offend in the way of modesty
again." His "Kind Keeper, or Mr. Limberham," under which name the
Duke of Lauderdale is said to have been satirised, and which Dryden
held to be his best comedy, was utterly condemned. "Ah!" said he, "it
was damned by a cabal of keepers!" It never occurred to him that the
public might prefer wit to immorality. Long before, he had written an
unseemly piece, called "The Rival Ladies;" he seasoned it in what he
maintained was the taste of the town, and in a prologue--prologues
then were often savagely defiant of the opinions of the audience,
asserted his own judgment by saying:--
"He's bound to please, not to write well, and knows
There is a mode in plays as well as clothes."
I do not know how true it may be that Dryden, the coarsest of
dramatic writers, was "the modestest of men in conversation;" but
I have small trust in the alleged purity of a writer who stooped
to gratify the baser feelings of an audience, according to their
various degrees; who could compose for one class the filthy dish
served up in his "Wild Gallant," and for another the more dangerous,
if more refined, fare for youthful palates, so carefully manipulated
in the Alexis and Cælia song, in his "Mariage à la Mode."
We must not forget, indeed, that the standard of morals was different
at that time from what it is now. Later in the half century, Jeremy
Collier especially attacked Congreve and Wycherley, as men who
applied their natural gifts to corrupt instead of purify the stage.
The public too were scandalised at passages in Congreve's "Double
Dealer," a comedy of which the author said "the mechanical part was
perfect."[64] The play was not a success, and the fault was laid to
its gross inuendoes, and its plainer indecency. "I declare," says the
author, in the preface, "that I took a particular care to avoid it,
and if they find any, it is of their own making, for I did not design
it to be so understood."
This point, on which the author and the public were at issue, proves
that on the part of the latter the standard was improving--for
Congreve is deep in the mire before the first scene is over. He had
looked for censure for other offence, and says in his usual lofty
manner with the critics:--"I would not have anybody imagine that I
think this play without its faults, for I am conscious of several,
and ready to own 'em; but it shall be to those who are able to find
'em out." This is not ill said. For the critics there was at least
as much contempt as fear. In "The Country Wife," Wycherley speaks of
"the most impudent of creatures, an ill poet, or what is yet more
impudent, a second-hand critic!" The less distinguished writers were,
of course, severer still against the critics.
In later years, Sheridan expressed the greatest contempt for such
part of the public as found that the grossness of Congreve was not
compensated for by his wit. Sheridan avowed that Congreve must be
played unmutilated or be shelved. He compared his great predecessor
to a horse whose vice is cured at the expense of his vigour.
Sheridan must, nevertheless, have felt that he was in error with
regard to these old authors. In his "Trip to Scarborough," which
is an entire recasting of Vanbrugh's "Relapse," he makes Loveless
(Smith) say, "It would surely be a pity to exclude the productions
of some of our best writers for want of a little wholesome pruning,
which might be effected by any one who possessed modesty enough to
believe that we should preserve all we can of our deceased authors,
at least, till they are outdone by the living ones."
Dryden said of Congreve's "Double Dealer," that though it was
censured by the greater part of the town, it was approved of by those
best qualified to judge. The people who had a sense of decency were
derided by Dryden; they were angry, he insinuated, only because the
satire touched them nearly. Applying the grossest terms to women,
in a letter to Walsh, he protests that they are incensed because
Congreve exposes their vices, and that the gallants are equally
enraged because their vices, too, are exposed; but even if it were
true that Congreve copied from nature, it is also true that he laughs
_with_ his vicious and brilliant bad men and women, makes a joke of
vice, and never attempts to correct it.
Dryden, as an erst Westminster boy and Cambridge man, may have
felt some annoyance on the exposure of his false quantity in the
penultimate of "Cleomenes," but to a pert coffee-house fop, who
presumed to review his tragedy of that name, he could deliver a
crushing reply. In that play Cleomenes virtuously resists the
blandishments of Cassandra. "Had I been left alone with a young
beauty," said a stripling critic to glorious John, "I would not have
spent my time like your Spartan." "That, sir," said Dryden, "perhaps
is true; but give me leave to tell you, you are no hero!" Good as
this is, Lee said even a better thing to the coxcomb who visited
him in Bedlam, during Lee's four years sojourn there. "It is an
easy thing," observed this fellow, "to write like a madman." "No,"
answered Lee, "it is not an easy thing to write like a madman; but it
is very easy to write like a fool."
Dryden, however, could criticise himself with justness. He confessed
that he was not qualified to write comedies. He saw, too, the
defects in his tragedies. He was ashamed of his "Tyrannic Love,"
and laughed at the rant and fustian of his Maximin. He allowed that
in his "Conquest of Granada" the sublimity burst into burlesque,
and he could censure the extravagance of Almanzor as freely as he
did the bombast of Maximin. Still he was uneasy under censure; he
was disappointed at the reception given to his "Assignation," and
complained bitterly of the critics, especially of Settle. His best
defender was Charles II. Some courtiers ventured to wonder at the
King going so often to see "The Spanish Friar," as the piece was a
wholesale robbery. "Odds fish!" exclaimed Charles, "select me another
such a comedy,[65] and I'll go and see it as often as I do 'The
Spanish Friar.'" "All for Love" is Dryden's most carefully written
play, and the author repeatedly declared that the scene in Act I.,
between Anthony and Ventidius, was superior to anything he had ever
composed.
Dryden attributed whatever merit he had as a writer of prose to
having studied the works of Tillotson, and the prelate, it will be
remembered, owed some of his graces of delivery to Betterton. In his
comedies, Dryden was the encourager, not the scourger of vice; and
yet he could warmly approve the purity of Southerne, when Southerne
chose to be pure, and acknowledge that it were as politic to silence
vicious poets as seditious preachers. If there were few good poets
in his day, Dryden sees the cause in the turbulence of the times;
and if people loved the stilted nonsense of heroic tragedies, it was
simply, he says, because "the fashion was set them by the court." To
court-protection, he himself owed much, and he states what one may
smile at now, that the King's kindness, in calling the "Maiden Queen"
_his_ play,--that singular piece, in which there are eight women and
three men, saved the drama from the malice of the poet's enemies.
There is no such privilege for poets in our days!
Had Shadwell, who left the law to find a livelihood by literature,
not been a Whig, we should have heard less of him in parallels or
contrasts with Dryden. Of his dramatic pieces, amounting to about a
dozen and a half, there is scarcely one that does not please more in
perusal than any by the poet of the greater name,--always excepting
Dryden's "Love for Love." Shadwell's "Squire of Alsatia," "Bury
Fair," "Epsom Wells," and some others, were necessarily favourites
with _his_ public, as they are good character comedies, brisk with
movement and incident. For attacking Dryden's "Duke of Guise,"
Dryden pilloried the assailant for ever, as "Mac Flecnoe;" but when
he says that "Shadwell never deviates into sense," he has as little
foundation for his assertion as he has for his contempt of Wilmot,
when he says in the _Essay upon Satire_, "Rochester I despise for
want of wit." Rochester may have praised Shadwell because he hated
Dryden; but Dryden's aspersions on the other two spring decidedly
more from his passion than his judgment. To Shadwell was given the
laureateship of which Dryden was deprived. The latter would have
borne the deprivation better if the laurel-crown had fallen on
another head, as he sings to Congreve:
"Oh that your brows my laurel had sustained;
Well had I been depos'd, if you had reigned!"
In one respect, Dryden was no match at all for Shadwell; and, indeed,
he has, inadvertently, confessed as much. When speaking of his
incapacity for writing comedy, he says, "I want that gaiety of humour
which is required in it; my conversation slow and dull; my humour
saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour
to break jests in company, and endeavour to make repartees; so that
those who decry my comedies do me no injury, except it be in point
of profit; reputation in them is the last thing to which I shall
pretend." This is the picture of a dull man, of which Shadwell, whose
comedies, to say the least of them, have as much merit as Dryden's,
was the exact opposite. He was a most brilliant talker; and Rochester
remarked of him that even had Shadwell burnt all he wrote, and only
printed all he spoke, his wit and humour would be found to exceed
that of any other poet.
We come, however, to a greater than Shadwell, in Sir John Vanbrugh,
who belongs to two centuries, and who was a man of many occupations,
but a dramatist by predilection. He was architect, poet, wit, herald;
he stole some of his plots; and he sold his office of Clarencieux,
to which he had been appointed, _because_ he was a successful
playwright. He had humour, and was exceedingly coarse; but, says
Schlegel, "under Queen Anne, manners became again more decorous;
and this may be easily traced in the comedies. In the series of
English comic poets, Wycherley, Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Steele,
Cibber, &c., we may perceive something like a gradation from the
most unblushing indecency to a tolerable degree of modesty." This,
however, is only partly true; and Schlegel himself remarks in the
same page, "that after all we know of the licentiousness of manners
under Charles II., we are still lost in astonishment at the audacious
ribaldry of Wycherley and Congreve."
Of Vanbrugh's ten or eleven plays, that which has longest kept
the stage is the "Relapse," still acted, in its altered form, by
Sheridan, as the "Trip to Scarborough." This piece was produced
at the Theatre de l'Odeon, in Paris, in the spring of 1862, as
a posthumous comedy of Voltaire's! It was called the "Comte de
Boursoufle," and had a "run." The story ran with it that Voltaire had
composed it in his younger days for private representation, that it
had been more than once played in the houses of his noble friends,
under various titles, that he had then locked it up, and that the
manuscript had only recently been discovered by the lucky individual
who persuaded the manager of the Odeon to produce it on his stage!
The bait took. All the French theatrical world in the capital flocked
to the Faubourg St. Germain to witness a new play by Voltaire.
Critics examined the plot, philosophised on its humour, applauded
its absurdities, enjoyed its wit, and congratulated themselves on
the circumstance that the Voltairean wit especially was as enjoyable
then as in the preceding century! Of the authorship they had no doubt
whatever; for, said they, if Voltaire did not write this piece,
who _could_ have written it? The reply was given at once from this
country; but when the mystification was exposed, the French critics
gave no sign of awarding honour where honour was due, and probably
this translation of the "Relapse" may figure in future French
editions as an undoubted work by Voltaire!
On looking back upon the names of these authors by profession,
the brightest still is Otway's, of whom his critical biographers
have said that, in tragedy, few English poets ever equalled him.
His comedies are certainly detestable; but of his tragedies,
"Venice Preserved" alone is ever now played. The "Orphan" is read;
"Alcibiades," "Don Carlos," "Titus and Berenice" are all forgotten.
Successful as he is in touching the passions, and eminently so
in dealing with ardent love, Otway, I think, is inferior to Lee,
occasionally, in the latter respect. Of Lee, Mrs. Siddons entertained
the greatest admiration, notwithstanding his bombast, and she read
his "Theodosius, or the Force of Love," with such feeling, as to at
once wring sighs from the heart and tears from the eyes. She saw in
Lee's poetry a very rare quality, or, as Campbell remarks, "a much
more frequent capability for stage effect than a mere reader would
be apt to infer from the superabundance of the poet's extravagance."
Let it not be forgotten that Addison accuses Lee _and Shakspeare_
of a spurious sublimity; and, he adds, that "in these authors, the
affectation of greatness often hurts the perspicuity of style!"
The professional authors were not equally successful. Davenant
achieved a good estate, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, like a
gentleman. Dryden, with less to bequeath, was interred in the same
place, without organ or ceremony, two choristers walking before the
body, candle in hand, and singing an ode of Horace--like a poet. His
victim, Tom Shadwell, acquired wealth fairly; he lies in Chelsea
Church, but his son raised a monument to his memory in the Abbey that
he might be in thus much as great a man as his satirist. Congreve,
too, is there, after enjoying a greater fortune than the others
together had ever built up, and leaving £10,000 of it to Henrietta,
Duchess of Marlborough, who so valued the "honour and pleasure of
his company" when living, that, as the next best thing, she sat of
an evening with his "wax figure" after he was dead. Among the dead
there, also, rest Cibber, Vanbrugh, and Rowe, of whom the first, too
careless of his money affairs, died the poorest man.
Better men than either of the last sleep in humbler graves. Poor
Nat Lee, tottering homeward from the Bull and Harrow, on a winter's
night, and with more punch under his belt than his brain could bear,
falls down in the snow, near Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields,
and is dead when he is picked up. _He_ is shuffled away to St.
Clement's Danes. If Lee died tipsy, outside a public-house, Otway
died half-starved, within one, at the Bull, on Tower Hill. The merits
of Lee and Otway might have carried them to Westminster, but their
misfortunes barred the way thither. Almost as unfortunate, Settle
died, after hissing in a dragon at Bartholomew Fair, a recipient of
the charity of the Charter-house. Crowne died in distress, just as
he hoped his "Sir Courtly Nice" would have placed him at his ease.
Wycherley, with less excuse, died more embarrassed than Crowne, or
would have done so had he not robbed his young wife of her portion,
made it over to his creditors, and left her little wherewith to bury
him in the churchyard in Covent Garden. Two other poets, who passed
away unencumbered by a single splendid shilling, rest in St. James's,
Westminster--Tom Durfey and Bankes. Careless, easy, free, and
fuddling Tate, died in the sanctuary of the Mint; and St. George's,
Southwark, gave him a few feet of earth; while Brady pushed his way
at court to preferment, and died a comfortable pluralist and chaplain
to Caroline, Princess of Wales. Farquhar, with all his wit, died a
broken-hearted beggar, at the age of thirty-seven; and Dennis, who
struggled forty years longer with fortune, came to the same end,
utterly destitute of all but the contemptuous pity of his foes, and
the insulting charity of Pope.
I think that, of the whole brotherhood, Southerne, after he left the
army and had sown his wild oats, was the most prudent, and not the
least successful. He was a perfect gentleman; he did not lounge away
his days or nights in coffee-houses or taverns, but after labour,
cultivated friendship in home circles, where virtue and moderate
mirth sat at the hearth. In his bag-wig, his black velvet dress, his
sword, powder, brilliant buckles, and self-possession, Southerne
charmed his company, wherever he visited, even at fourscore. He kept
the even tenor of his way, owing no man anything; never allowing
his nights to be the marrer of his mornings; and at six and eighty
carrying a bright eye, a steady hand, a clear head, and a warm
heart--wherewith to calmly meet and make surrender of all to the
Inevitable Angel.
As Southerne originally wrote "Oroonoko," that tragedy could not now
be represented. The mixture of comic scenes with tragic is not its
worst fault. His comedies are of no worth whatever, except as they
illustrate the manners and habits of his times. They more closely
resemble those of Ravenscroft than of Congreve or Wycherley. His
"Sir Anthony Love" was successful; it is impossible to conjecture
wherefore. It has not a wise sentiment or a happy saying in it;
and all to be learned from it is, that Englishmen, when abroad, in
those days, used to herd together in self-defence, against being
cheated; that they were too wise to learn anything by travel; and
were fond of passing themselves off as having made a campaign. As
Cowley anticipated Moore, in the "Cutter," so, in "Sir Anthony,"
has Southerne anticipated Burns. "Of the King's creation," says the
supposed Sir Anthony to Count Verola, "you may be; but he who makes a
count, never made a man." There is the same sentiment improved in the
well-known lines:
"A king may mak' a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Gude faith he canna fa' that."
Southerne was not more famous for the nicety of his costume than
"little starched Johnny Crowne" was for his stiff, long cravat; or
Dryden for his Norwich drugget suit, or his gayer dress in later
days, when, with sword and Chadrieux wig, he paraded the Mulberry
Garden with his Mistress Reeve--one of that marvellous company of
1672, which writers with long memories used to subsequently say could
never be got together again. Otway's thoughtful eye redeemed his
slovenly dress and his fatness, and seemed to warrant the story of
his repenting after his carousing. Lee dressed as ill as Otway, but
lacked his contemplative eye, yet excelled him in fair looks, and in
a peculiar luxuriance of hair.
Shaftesbury, in his "Characteristics," shows us how the play-house
authors throned it in coffee-houses, and were worshipped by small
wits. There were, however, dramatic authors who never went thither;
and of these, the ladies, I have now to speak.
[Illustration: Mrs. Barry and Mr Garrick in "The Wonder."]
FOOTNOTES:
[58] Brady was in no sense a professional dramatic author.
[59] I doubt if Dilke is correctly included in this category.
[60] A grocer. (Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_.)
[61] Southerne is said to have been at Oxford and Dublin Universities.
[62] This is a quotation from Rymer's second work, "A Short View of
Tragedy," published in 1693.
[63] Whether Davenant altered "Julius Cæsar" is somewhat doubtful.
[64] Congreve (ed. 1774) merely says that it was _regular_.
[65] "_Steal_ me another such."
[Illustration: MRS. CENTLIVRE.]
CHAPTER XI.
THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES.
During this half century, there were seven ladies who were more or
less distinguished as writers for the stage. These were the virtuous
Mrs. Philips, the audacious Aphra Behn, the not less notorious Mrs.
Manley, the gentle and learned Mrs. Cockburn, the rather aristocratic
Mrs. Boothby (of whom nothing is known but that she wrote one play,
called "Marcatia,"[66] in 1669), fat Mrs. Pix, and that thorough
Whig, Mrs. Centlivre. The last four also belong to the beginning of
the eighteenth century; and three at least apologised that they,
women as they were, should have ventured to become dramatists.
The "virtuous Mrs. Philips," of Evelyn, the "matchless Orinda,"
of Cowley and other poets, translated the "Pompey" and "Horace"
of Corneille. In those grave pieces, represented at court in the
early years of the Restoration, the poetess endeavoured to direct
the popular taste, and to correct it also. Had she not died (of
small-pox, and in the thirty-third year of her age), she might have
set such example to the playwrights as the Bettertons did to the
actors; but her good intentions were frustrated, and her place was
unhappily occupied by the most shameless woman who ever took pen in
hand, designedly to corrupt the public.
Aphra Behn was a Kentish woman, whose early years were passed
at Surinam, where her father, Johnson, had resided, as
lieutenant-general.[67] After a wild training in that fervid school,
she repaired to London, married a Dutchman, named Behn, who seems to
have straightway disappeared,--penetrated, by means of her beauty,
to the court of Charles II.,--and obtained, by means of her wit, an
irregular employment at Antwerp,--that of a spy. The letters of her
Dutch lovers belong to romance; but there is warrant for the easy
freedom of this woman's life. In other respects she was unfortunate.
On her return to England, her political reports and prophecies were
no more credited than the monitions of old, by Cassandra; so she
abandoned England to its fate, and herself "to pleasure and the
muses."
Her opportunities for good were great, but she abused them all.
She might have been an honour to womanhood;--she was its disgrace.
She might have gained glory by her labours;--but she chose to reap
infamy. Her pleasures were not those which became an honest woman;
and as for her "Muses," she sat not with them on the slopes of
Helicon, but dragged them down to her level, where the Nine and their
unclean votary wallowed together in the mire.
There is no one that equals this woman in downright nastiness,
save Ravenscroft and Wycherley; but the latter of these had more
originality of invention and grace of expression. To these writers,
and to those of their detestable school, she set a revolting example.
Dryden preceded her, by a little, on the stage; but Mrs. Behn's
trolloping muse appeared there before the other two writers I have
mentioned, and was still making unseemly exhibition there after
the coming of Congreve. With Dryden she vied in indecency, and was
not overcome. To all other male writers of her day she served as a
provocation and an apology. Intellectually, she was qualified to have
led them through pure and bright ways; but she was a mere harlot,
who danced through uncleanness, and dared or lured them to follow.
Remonstrance was useless with this wanton hussey. As for her private
life, it has found a champion in a female friend, whose precious
balsam breaks the head it would anoint. According to this friend,
Mrs. Behn had numerous good qualities; but "she was a woman of sense,
and consequently loved pleasure;" and she was "more gay and free than
the modesty of the precise will allow."
Of Aphra Behn's eighteen plays, produced between 1671 and
1696,--before which last year, however, she had died,--but few are
original. They are adaptations from Marlowe, from Wilkins, from
Killigrew, from Brome, from Tatham, from Shirley, from the Italian
comedy, from Molière, and more legitimately from the old romances.
She adapted skilfully; and she was never dull. But then, all her
vivacity is wasted on filth. When the public sent forth a cry of
horror at some of the scenes in her play of "The Lucky Chance," she
vindicated herself by asking, "was she not loyal?"--"Tory to the
back bone;"--had she not made the King's enemies ridiculous, in
her five-act farces;--and had she not done homage to the King, by
dedicating her "Feigned Courtezans" to Nell Gwyn, and styling that
worthy sister of hers in vice and good nature so perfect a creature
as to be something akin to divinity?
For Mrs. Manley there was more excuse. That poor daughter of an old
royalist had some reason to depict human nature as bad in man and
in woman. The young orphan trusted herself to the guardianship of a
seductive kinsman, who married her when he had a wife still living.
This first wrong destroyed her, but not her villainous cousin; and
unfortunately, the woman upon whom the world looked cool, incurred
the capricious compassion of the Duchess of Cleveland. When the
caprice was over, and Mrs. Manley had only her own resources to
rely upon, she scorned the aid offered her by General Tidcombe,
and made her first venture for the stage in the tragedy of "Royal
Mischief," produced at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in 1696.
It is all desperate love, of a very bad quality, and indiscriminate
murder, relieved by variety in the mode of killing; one unfortunate
gentleman, named Osman, being thrust into a cannon and fired from it,
after which his wife, Selima, is said to be
"Gathering the smoking relics of her lord!"
The authoress in her next venture, in the same year, a comedy,
written in a week, and which perished in a night, "The Lost Lover,"
introduced what the public had been taught to appreciate--a virtuous
wife. Her other pieces, written at intervals of ten years, were,
"Almyna," founded on the story of the Caliph who was addicted to
marrying one day, and beheading his wife the next; and "Lucius,"
a semi-sacred play, on the supposed first Christian king of
Britain--both unsuccessful.
Mrs. Manley survived till 1724. When not under the "protection" of a
friend, or in decent mourning for the lovers who died mad for her,
she was engaged in composing the _Memoirs of the New Atalantis_,--a
satire against the Whig ministry, the authorship of which she
courageously avowed, rather than that the printer and publisher
should suffer for her. The Tory ministry which succeeded, employed
her pen; and with Swift's Alderman Barber,--he being Tory printer,
she resided till her death, mistress of the house, and of the
alderman.
Contemporary with Mrs. Manley was Miss Trotter, the daughter of a
Scottish officer, but better known as Mrs. Cockburn, wife and widow
of an English clergyman. She was at first a very learned young
lady, whose speculations took her to the Church of Rome, from which
in later years she seceded. She was but seventeen, when, in 1696,
her sentimental tragedy, "Agnes de Castro," was played at Drury
Lane. Her career, as writer for the stage, lasted ten years, during
which she produced five pieces, all of a sentimental but refined
class,--illustrating love, friendship, repentance, and conjugal
faith. There is some amount of word-spinning in these plays; and this
is well marked by Genest's comment on Mrs. Cockburn's "Revolution
of Sweden,"--namely, that if Constantia, in the third act, had been
influenced by common sense, she would have spoiled the remainder of
the play.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Cockburn was a clever woman, and kept no dull
household, though she there wrote a defence of Locke, while her
reverend husband was pursuing an account of the Mosaic deluge. As a
metaphysical and controversial writer, she gathered laurels and abuse
in her day, for the latter of which she found compensation in the
friendship and admiration of Warburton. She was a valiant woman too;
one whom asthma and the ills of life could not deter from labour. But
death relieved her from all these in 1749; and she is remembered in
the history of literature as a good and well-accomplished woman--the
very opposite of Mrs. Behn and all her heroines.
Fat Mrs. Pix enjoyed a certain sort of vogue from 1696 to 1709.[68]
She came from Oxfordshire, was the daughter of a clergyman, was
married to a Mr. Pix, and was a woman of genius, and much flesh. She
wrote eleven plays, but not one of them has survived to our time. Her
comedies are, however, full of life; her tragedies more than brimful
of loyalty; later dramatists have not disdained to pick up some of
Mrs. Pix's forgotten incidents; and indeed, contemporary playwrights
stole her playful lightning, if not her thunder; her plots were not
ill conceived, but they were carried out by inexpressive language,
some of her tragedies being in level prose, and some mixtures of
rhyme and blank verse. She herself occasionally remodelled an old
play, but did not improve it; while, when she trusted to herself, at
least in a farcical sort of comedy, she was bustling and humorous.
Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Cockburn, and Mrs. Pix were ridiculed in a farce
called the "Female Wits," their best endowments satirised, and
their peculiarities mimicked. The first and last of those ladies
represented some of their dramas as written by men, a subterfuge
to which a greater than either of them was also obliged to resort,
namely, Susanna Centlivre.
Susanna Freeman was her maiden name. She was the orphan daughter of
a stout but hardly-dealt with parliamentarian, and of a mother who
died too early for the daughter's remembrance. Anthony Hammond is
said to have been in love with her, a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox to
have married her, and a Captain Carrol to have left her a widow--all
before she was well out of her teens. Thus she had passed through a
school of experience, and to turn it to account, Susanna Carrol began
writing for the stage. Writing for--and acting on it, for we find
her in 1706 playing "Alexander the Great" at Windsor, where she also
married Mr. Centlivre, Queen Anne's chief cook.
Of Mrs. Centlivre's nineteen plays, three at least are still well
known, the "Busy Body," the "Wonder," and "A Bold Stroke for a
Wife." When she offered the first to the players--it was her ninth
play--the actors unanimously denounced it. Wilks, who had hitherto
been unaccustomed to the want of straining after wit, the common
sense, the unforced sprightliness, the homely nature, for which this
piece is distinguished--declared that not only would it be "damned,"
but that the author of it could hardly expect to avoid a similar
destiny;[69] and yet its triumph was undoubted, though cumulative.
Hitherto the authoress had written a tragi-comedy or two, the comic
scenes in which alone gave evidence of strength, but not always
of delicacy. She had, in others, stolen wholesale from Molière,
and the old English dramatists. She produced a continuation to the
"Busy Body" in "Marplot," but we do not care for it; and it is not
till her fourteenth piece, the "Wonder," appeared in 1714, that she
again challenges admiration. This, too, is an adaptation; but it is
superior to the "Wrangling Lovers," from which it is partly taken,
and which had no such hero as the Don Felix of Wilks. The "Bold
Stroke for a Wife" was first played in 1718, when the Tory public had
forgiven the author for her satires against them, and the theatrical
public her fresh adaptations of old scenes and stories. The "Bold
Stroke for a Wife" is entirely her own, and has had a wonderful
succession of Colonel Feignwells, from C. Bullock down to Mr. Braham!
This piece, however, was but moderately successful; but it has
such vivacity, fun, and quiet humour in it, that it has outlived
many a one that began with greater triumph, and in "the real Simon
Pure," first acted by Griffin, it has given a proverb to the English
language. One other piece, the "Artifice," a five-act farce, played
in 1722, concludes the list of plays from the pen of this industrious
and gifted woman.
Mrs. Centlivre had unobtrusive humour, sayings full of significance
rather than wit, wholesome fun in her comic, and earnestness in her
serious, characters. Mrs. Centlivre, in _her_ pictures of life,
attracts the spectator. There may be, now and then, something, as
in Dutch pictures, which had been as well away; but this apart, all
the rest is true, and pleasant, and hearty; the grouping perfect,
the colour faithful, and enduring too--despite the cruel sneer of
Pope, who, in the _Life of Curll_, sarcastically alludes to her as
"the cook's wife in Buckingham Court," in which vicinity to Spring
Gardens, Mrs. Centlivre died in 1723.
Such were the characteristics of the principal authors who led,
followed, trained, or flattered the public taste of the last half
of the seventeenth century, and a few of them of the first part of
the century which succeeded. Before we pass onward to the stage of
the eighteenth century, let us cast a glance back, and look at the
quality of the audiences for whom these poets catered.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] "Marcelia."
[67] Her father never resided at Surinam. He died on the voyage out.
[68] The _Biographia Dramatica_ gives 1709 as the year of Mrs. Pix's
last play; but this is certainly an error, as Mrs. Bracegirdle, who
retired in 1707, is in the cast.
[69] Genest states in strong terms his utter disbelief in this
story. It is stated in the _Biog. Dram._ that Wilks used this strong
expression regarding "A Bold Stroke for a Wife."
[Illustration: PRYNNE.]
CHAPTER XII.
THE AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Speedily after the Restoration, there was no more constant visitor
at the theatre than Charles II., with a gay, and what is called a
gallant, gathering. Thus we are arrested by a crowd at the Temple
Gate. On the 15th of August 1661, Charles and the Duke and Duchess
of York are leaving the apartments of the Reader, Sir Henry Finch,
with whom they have been dining, and an eager audience is awaiting
them in the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, where "The Wits" is to be
represented,--a piece "never yet acted," says Pepys, "with scenes."
Two nights later, the same piece is playing, and the Queen of
Bohemia is there, "brought by my Lord Craven," whom some do not
scruple to speak of as the ex-Queen's husband. A week later, Charles
and "Madame Palmer" were at the theatre in Drury Lane, with the
Duke of York and his wife. "My wife," says Pepys, "to her great
content had a full sight of them all the while." The King's Madame
Palmer became, in fact, an attraction; seated between Charles and
his brother, Pepys beheld her a few weeks later, when he and his
wife escorted Lord Sandwich's young daughters to the theatre, and
obtained places close to Madame and her double escort. The play was
Johnson's "Bartholomew Fair," with the puppets, and all its virulent
satire against the Puritans. As Pepys listened and remembered that
no one had dared to bring forward this slashing play for the last
forty years, he wondered at the audacity of managers now, and grieved
that the King should countenance it. But what recked the laughing
King, when Puritanism was in the dust, and troops of cavaliers were
singing, "Up go we?"
Occasionally, if Pepys witnesses a play ill-acted, he finds
compensation in sitting near some "pretty and ingenious lady."
At that time oranges were more costly than pines are now, and to
offer one of the former, even to an unknown fair neighbour, was an
intimation of a readiness on the part of the presenter to open a
conversation. To behold his most sacred Majesty seated in his box was
for ever, with Pepys, even a stronger attraction than the eyes or
the wit of the fairest and sprightliest of ladies. Again and again,
he registers a vow to refrain from resorting to the theatre during a
certain period, but he no sooner hears of the presence there of his
religious and gracious King, than he breaks his vow, rushes to the
play, perjures himself out of loyal courtesy, and next morning writes
himself down an ass.
At the Cockpit in Drury Lane, Charles's consort, Catherine, was
exhibited to the English people for the first time on an autumn
afternoon of 1662, when Shirley's "Cardinal" was represented. Pepys,
of course, was there too, and reproduces the scene: "By very good
fortune, I did follow four or five gentlemen who were carried to a
little private door in a wall, and so crept through a narrow place,
and came into one of the boxes next the King's, but so as I could
not see the King or Queen, but many of the fine ladies, who are not
really so handsome generally, as I used to take them to be, but that
they are finely dressed. The company that come in with me into the
box were all Frenchmen that could speak no English; but, Lord, what
sport they made to ask a pretty lady that they got among them, that
understood both French and English, to make her tell them what the
actors said!"
Soon after this, in dreary November, there is again a crowded
audience to greet the King and Queen, with whom now appears the
Castlemaine, once more, and near her Lucy Walter's boy, the Duke of
Monmouth, all beauty and pretty assurance; and Pepys sees no harm in
a company who have come together to witness a comedy whose name might
well describe the look and bearing of the outraged Queen, namely,
the "Scornful Lady." No wonder that, in December, at the tragedy of
"The Valiant Cid," she did not smile once during the whole play.[70]
But nobody present on that occasion seemed to take any pleasure but
what was in the greatness and gallantry of the company.
That greatness and that gallantry were the idols of the diarist.
With what scorn he talks of the audience at the Duke's Theatre a
few days later, when the "Siege of Rhodes" was represented. He was
ill-pleased. The house was "full of _citizens_!" "There was hardly,"
says the fastidious son of an honest tailor, "a gallant man or
woman in the house!" So, in January 1663, at the same theatre, he
records that "it was full of citizens, and so the less pleasant."
The Duke's House was less "genteel" than the Cockpit; but the royal
visitors at the latter were not much more refined in their manners
than the audience in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or Salisbury Court. Early
in January 1663, the Duke of York and his wife honoured a play of
Killigrew's by their presence, and did not much edify the spectators
by their conduct. "They did show," writes the immortal journalist,
"some impertinent and methought unnatural dalliances there, before
the whole world, such as kissing of hands, and leaning upon one
another."
But there were worse scenes than these conjugal displays at the
King's House. When Pepys was dying to obtain the only prize in all
the world he desired, Lady Castlemaine's picture, that bold person
was beginning to lose, at once, both her beauty and her place of
favour with the King. Pepys was immensely grieved, for she was
always more to him than the play and players to boot. He had reason,
however, to be satisfied that she had not lost her boldness. In
January, 1664, the "Indian Queen" was played at the King's House, in
Drury Lane. Lady Castlemaine was present before the King arrived.
When he entered his box, the Countess leaned over some ladies who
sat between her and the royal box, and whispered to Charles. Having
been thus bold in face of the audience, she arose, left her own box
and appeared in the King's, where she deliberately took a place
between Charles and his brother. It was not the King alone but the
whole audience with him who were put out of countenance by this cool
audacity, exhibited to prove that she was not so much out of favour
as the world believed.
What a contrast is presented by the appearance of Cromwell's
daughter, Lady Mary, in her box at this same theatre, with her
husband, Viscount Falconbridge! Pepys praises her looks and her
dress, and suggests a modest embarrassment on her part, as the
house began to fill, and the admiring spectators began to gaze too
curiously on Oliver's loved child; "she put on her vizard, and so
kept it on all the play, which of late has become a great fashion
among the ladies, which hides their whole face."
Mary Cromwell, modestly masked, was a prettier sight than what Pepys
on other occasion describes as "all the pleasure of the play;"
meaning thereby, the presence of Lady Castlemaine, or of Miss
Stewart, her rival in royal favour, but not her equal in peerless
beauty. With these, but in less exalted company than they, we now
meet with Nell Gwyn, in front of the house. She is seen gossiping
with Pepys, who is ecstatic at the condescension; or she is blazing
in the boxes, prattling with the young and scented fops, and
impudently lying across any three of them, that she may converse
as she pleases with a fourth. And there is Sir Charles Sedley
looking on, smiling with or at the actors of these scenes, among
the audience, or sharply and wittily criticising the players on the
stage, and the words put into their mouths by the author, or flirting
with vizard masks in the pit. Altogether, there is much confusion and
interruption; but there is also, occasionally, disturbance of another
sort, as when, in June 1664, a storm of hail and rain broke through
the roof of the Kings House, and drove the half-drowned people from
the pit in a disorder not at all admired.
Like Evelyn, Pepys was often at the Court plays, but, except with the
spectacle of the Queen's ladies, and the King's too, for that matter,
he found small delight there,--the house, although fine, being bad
for hearing. This Court patronage, public and private, increased
the popularity of the drama, as the vices of the King increased the
fashion of being dissolute; and when Charles was sadly in need of a
collecting of members of parliament to throw out a bill which very
much annoyed him, and was carried against him, he bade the Lord
Chamberlain to scour the play and other houses, where he knew his
parliamentary friends were to be found, and to send them down to vote
in favour of their graceless master.
Ladies of quality, and of good character, too, could in those days
appear in masks in the boxes, and unattended. The vizard had not
yet fallen to the disreputable. Such ladies as are above designated
entered into struggles of wit with the fine gentlemen, bantering
them unmercifully, calling them by their names, and refusing to tell
their own. All this was to the disturbance of the stage, but this
battle of the wits was so frequently more amusing than what might be
passing for the moment on the stage, that the audience near listened
to the disputants rather than to the actors. Sir Charles Sedley was
remarkable as a disputant with the ladies, and as a critic of the
players. That the overhearing of what was said by the most famous
of the box visitors was a pleasant pastime of many hearers, is made
manifest by Pepys, who once took his place on "the upper bench next
the boxes," and described it as having "the advantage of seeing and
hearing the great people, which may be pleasant when there is good
store."
To no man then living in England did fellowship with people of
quality convey such intense delight as to Pepys. "Lord!" he exclaims,
in May 1667, "how it went against my heart to go away from the very
door of the Duke's playhouse, and my Lady Castlemaine's coach, and
many great coaches there, to see 'The Siege of Rhodes.' I was very
near making a forfeit," he adds, "but I did command myself."
He was happiest with a baronet like Sir Philip Frowd at his side, and
behind him a couple of impertinently pretty actresses, like Pierce
and Knipp, pulling his hair, drawing him into gossiping flirtations,
and inducing him to treat them with fruit. The constant presence of
lively actresses in the front of the house was one of the features
of the times, and a dear delight to Pepys, who was never weary of
admiring their respective beauties.
Proud as he was of sitting, for the first time in his life, in a
box, at four shillings, he still saw the pit occupied by greater
men than any around him, particularly on the first night of a new
piece. When Etherege's comedy, "She Would if She Could," was first
played, in February 1668, to one of the most crowded, critical, and
discontented audiences that had ever assembled in the Duke's House,
the pit was brilliant with peers, gallants, and wits. There, openly,
sat Buckingham, and Buckhurst, and Sedley, and the author, with many
more; and there went on, as the audience waited till the pelting
rain outside had ceased to fall, comment and counter-comment on the
merits of the piece and of the actors. Etherege found fault with the
players, but the public as loudly censured the piece, condemning it
as silly and insipid, but allowing it to possess a certain share of
wit and roguishness.
From an entry in the _Diary_ for the 21st of December 1668, we learn
that Lady Castlemaine had a _double_, who used to appear at the
theatre to the annoyance of my lady and the amusement of her royal
friend. Indeed, here is a group of illustrations of the "front of the
stage;" the house is the Duke's, the play "Macbeth." "The King and
Court there, and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine, and
close to a woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose gossip
that pretends to be like her, and is so, something. The King and Duke
of York minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me,
but it vexed me to see Moll Davies, in a box over the King's and my
Lady Castlemaine's, look down upon the King, and he up to her; and
so did my Lady Castlemaine once, to see who it was; but when she saw
Moll Davies, she looked like fire, which troubled me."
To these audiences were presented dramatic pieces of a very
reprehensible quality. Charles II. has been more blamed than any
other individual because of this licentiousness of the stage. I have
before ventured to intimate, that the long-accepted idea that the
court of Charles II. corrupted English society, and that it did so
especially through patronising the licentiousness of poets and the
stage, seems to me to be untenable. From of old there had been a
corrupt society, and a society protesting against the corruption.
Before Charles made his first visit to the theatre, there was lying
in Newgate the ex-Royalist, but subsequently Puritan poet, George
Wither. In the dedication of his HALLELUJAH, in 1641, he thus
describes the contemporary condition of society:--"So innumerable are
the foolish and profane songs now delighted in, to the dishonour of
our language and religion, that hallelujahs and pious meditations
are almost out of use and fashion; yea, not at private only, but at
our public feasts, and civil meetings also, scurrilous and obscene
songs are impudently sung, without respecting the reverend presence
of matrons, virgins, magistrates or divines. Nay, sometimes in their
despite they are called for, sung, and acted, with such abominable
gesticulations, as are very offensive to all modest hearers and
beholders, and fitting only to be exhibited at the diabolical
assemblies of Bacchus, Venus, or Priapus."
In the collection of hymns, under this title of HALLELUJAH, there
is a hymn for every condition in and circumstance of life, from the
King to the Tailor; from a hymn for the use of two ardent lovers, to
a spiritual song of grateful resignation "for a Widower or a Widow
deprived of a troublesome Yokefellow!" There is none for the player;
but there is this hit at the poets, who supplied him with unseemly
phrases, and the flattering friends who crowned such bards:--
"Blasphemous fancies are infused,
All holy new things are expell'd,
He that hath most profanely mused,
Is famed as having most excelled:
Such are those poets in these days,
Who vent the fumes of lust and wine,
Then crown each others' heads with bays,
As if their poems were divine."
Against the revived fashion of licentious plays, some of the wisest
men among theatrical audiences protested loudly. No man raised his
voice with greater urgency than Evelyn. Within six years of the
Restoration, he, who was in frequency of playgoing only second
to Pepys, but as sharp an observer and a graver censor than the
Admiralty clerk, addressed a letter to Lord Cornbury on this
important subject. The letter was written a few weeks previous
to the Lent season of 1665, and the writer mourns over a scandal
less allowed in any city of Christendom, than in the metropolis of
England, namely--"the frequency of our theatrical pastimes during
the indiction of Lent. Here in London," he says, "there were more
wicked and obscene plays permitted than in all the world besides.
At Paris three days, at Rome two weekly, and at the other cities,
Florence, Venice, &c., only at certain jolly periods of the year, and
that not without some considerable emolument to the public, while
our interludes here are every day alike; so as the ladies and the
gallants come reeking from the play _late on Saturday night_" (was
Saturday then a fashionable day for late performances?) "to their
Sunday devotions; and the ideas of the farce possess their fancies
to the infinite prejudice of devotion, besides the advantages it
gives to our reproachful blasphemers." Evelyn, however, does not
pursue his statement to a logical conclusion. He proposes to close
the houses on Friday and Saturday, or to represent plays on these
nights only for the benefit of paupers in or out of the workhouses.
Remembering rather the actresses who disgraced womanhood, than such
an exemplary and reproachless pair as Betterton and his wife, he
recommends robbery of the "debauched comedians," as he calls them,
without scruple. What if they be despoiled of a hundred or so a
year? They will still enjoy more than they were ever born to; and the
sacrifice, he quaintly says, will consecrate their scarce allowable
impertinences. He adds, with a seriousness which implies his censure
of the royal approval of the bad taste which had brought degradation
on the stage--"Plays are now with us become a licentious excess, and
a vice, and need severe censors, that should look as well to their
morality as to their lines and numbers."
This grave and earnest censor, however, allowed himself to be
present at stage representations which he condemns. He objects but
does not refrain. He witnesses masques at Court, and says little;
enjoys his play, and denounces the enjoyment, in his diary, when
he reaches home. He has as acute an eye on the behaviour of the
ladies, especially among the audience, as for what is being uttered
on the stage. "I saw the tragedy of 'Horace,'" he tells us, in
February 1668, "written by the _virtuous_ Mrs. Phillips, acted before
their Majesties. Betwixt each act a masque and antique dance."
Then speaking of the audience, where the King's "lady" was wont to
outblaze the King's "wife," he adds:--"The excessive gallantry of
the ladies was infinite: those especially on that ... Castlemaine,
esteemed at £40,000 and more, far outshining the Queen." Later in the
year he is at a new play of Dryden's, "with several of my relations."
He describes the plot as "foolish, and very profane. It afflicted
me," he continues, "to see how the stage was degenerated and polluted
by the licentious times."
When forming part of the audience, by invitation of the Lord
Chamberlain, at the Court plays, at Whitehall, in September 1666,
Evelyn uses as freely his right of judgment. He sat ill at ease
in the public theatres, because they were abused, he says, "to
an atheistical liberty." The invitation to see Lord Broghill's
"Mustapha" played before the King and Queen, in presence of
a splendid court, was a command. Evelyn attended; but as he
looked around, he bethought him of the London that was lying in
charred ruins, and he sorrowingly records his disapproval of "any
such pastime in a time of such judgments and calamities." With
better times come weaker censures on these amusements; and the
representation of the "Conquest of Granada," at Whitehall in 1671,
wins his admiration for the "very glorious scenes and perspectives,
the work of Mr. Streeter, who well understands it." In the following
year, although not frequenting court plays, he takes a whole bevy of
maids of honour _from_ court to the play. Among them was one of whom
he makes especial mention, on account of her many and extraordinary
virtues, which had gained his especial esteem. This grave maid, among
the two vivacious ladies whom Evelyn 'squired to an afternoon's play,
was Mistress Blagg, better known to us from Evelyn's graceful sketch
of her life, as Mrs. Godolphin.
Mrs. Blagg was herself not the less a lovely actress for being a
discreet and virtuous young lady. In 1675[71] Evelyn saw her act in
Crowne's masque-comedy, "Calisto, or the Chaste Nymph." His friend
acted in a noble but mixed company--all ladies--namely, the Ladies
Mary and Anne, afterwards Queens of England, the Lady Henrietta
Wentworth, afterwards the evilly-impelled favourite of the Duke of
Monmouth, and Miss Jennings, subsequently the sharp-witted wife of
the great Duke of Marlborough. There were others of less note, with
professional actresses to aid them, while a corps-de-ballet of peers
and nymphs of greater or less repute, danced between the acts. For
the piece, or for the interludes, Evelyn had less admiration than
he had for Mrs. Blagg's splendour. She had about her, he informs
us, £20,000 worth of jewels, of which she had lost one worth about
£80, borrowed of the Countess of Suffolk. "The press was so great,"
he adds, "that it is a wonder she lost no more;" and the intimation
that "the Duke" (of York) "made it good," shows that Mrs. Blagg was
fortunate in possessing the esteem of that not too liberal prince.
The entire stage arrangements at Whitehall were not invariably
of a liberal character, and the audiences must have had, on some
occasions, an uncourtly aspect; "people giving money to come in," he
writes in this same year 1675, "which was very scandalous, and never
so before at Court-diversions."
Of the turbulence of audiences in those days, there are many
evidences on record. It was sometimes provoked, at others altogether
unjustifiable, and always more savage than humorous. In 1669, Mrs.
Corey gratified Lady Castlemaine, by giving an imitation of Lady
Harvey, throughout the whole of the part of Sempronia, in "Catiline's
Conspiracy." Lady Harvey, much excited, had influence enough with
her brother, Edward Montagu, Lord Chamberlain, to induce him to
lock Mrs. Corey up, for her impertinence. On the other hand, Lady
Castlemaine had still greater influence with the King; and not only
was Mrs. Corey released, but she was "ordered to act it again, worse
than ever." Doll Common, as the actress was called, for her ability
in playing that part in the "Alchymist," repeated the imitation,
with the required extravagance, but not without opposition; for Lady
Harvey had hired a number of persons, some of whom hissed Doll, while
others pelted her with fruit, and the King looked on the while,
amazed at the contending factions, whose quarrels subsequently
brought him much weariness in the settling.
Then, again, much disturbance often arose from noisy, financial
squabbles. It was a custom to return the price of admission to all
persons who left the theatre before the close of the first act.
Consequently, many shabby persons were wont to force their way in
without paying, on the plea that they did not intend to remain beyond
the time limited. Thence much noisy remonstrance on the part of the
door-keepers, who followed them into the house; and therewith such
derangement of the royal comfort, that a special decree was issued,
commanding payment to be made on entering; but still allowing the
patron of the drama to recover his money, if he withdrew on or before
the close of the first act.
But there were greater scandals than these. On the 2d of February
1679, there is a really awful commotion, and imminent peril to
house and audience, at the Duke's Theatre. The King's French
favourite, the Duchess of Portsmouth, is blazing with rouge,
diamonds, and shamelessness, in the most conspicuous seat in the
house. Some tipsy gentlemen in the street hard by, hear of her
wit and handsome presence, and the morality of these drunkards is
straightway incensed. The house is panic-stricken at seeing these
virtuous Goths rushing into the pit, with drawn swords in one
hand--flaming, smoking, ill-smelling torches, in the other; and with
vituperative cries against "the Duchess of Portsmouth, and other
persons of honour." The rioters, not satisfied with thrusting their
rapiers at the arms, sides, and legs of the affrighted people in the
pit, hurl their blazing torches among the astounded actors on the
stage! A panic and a general flight ensue. The house is saved from
destruction; but as it is necessary to punish somebody, the King
satisfies his sense of justice by pressing hard upon the innocent
actors, and shutting up the house during the royal pleasure!
Much liquor, sharp swords, and angry tempers, combined to interrupt
the enjoyment of many a peaceful audience. An angry word, passed, one
April evening of 1682, between Charles Dering, the son of Sir Edward,
and the hot-blooded young Welshman, Mr. Vaughan, led to recrimination
and sword-drawing. The two young fellows, not having elbow-room in
the pit, clambered on to the stage, and fought there, to the greater
comfort of the audience, and with a more excited fury on the part
of the combatants. The stage was that of the Duke's Company, then
playing in Dorset Gardens. The adversaries fought on, till Dering
got a thrust from the Welshman which stretched him on the boards;
whereupon the authorities intervened, as there was no more mischief
to be done, and put Master Vaughan under restraint, till Dering's
wound was declared not to be mortal.
The 'tiring rooms of the actresses were then open to the fine
gentlemen who frequented the house. They stood by at the mysteries
of dressing, and commented on what they beheld and did not behold,
with such breadth and coarseness of wit, that the more modest or
least impudent ladies sent away their little handmaidens. The
dressing over, the amateurs lounged into the house, talked loudly
with the pretty orange girls, listened when it suited them, and at
the termination of the piece crowded again into the 'tiring room of
the most favourite and least scrupulous of the actresses. Among these
gallants who thus oscillated between the pit and the dressing bowers
of the ladies, was a Sir Hugh Middleton, who is not to be confounded
with his namesake of the New River. On the second Saturday of
February 1667, Sir Hugh was among the joyous damsels dressing for the
play, behind the stage of old Drury. The knight was so unpleasantly
critical on the nymphs before him, that one of them, sharp-tongued
Beck Marshall, bade him keep among the ladies of the Duke's House,
since he did not approve of those who served the King. Sir Hugh burst
out with a threat, that he would kick, or what was worse, hire his
footman to kick, her. The pretty but angry Rebecca nursed her wrath
all Sunday; but on Monday she notified the ungallant outrage to the
great champion of insulted dames, the King. Nothing immediately came
of it; and on Tuesday, there was Sir Hugh, glowering at her from the
front of the house, and waylaying her, as she was leaving it with a
friend. Sir Hugh whispers a ruffianly-looking fellow, who follows
the actress, and presses upon her so closely, that she is moved by a
double fear--that he is about to rob, and perhaps stab her. A little
scream scares the bravo for a minute or so. He skulks away, but anon
slinks back; and, armed with the first offensive missile he could
pick up in a Drury Lane gutter, he therewith anoints the face and
hair of the much-shocked actress, and then, like the valiant fellows
of his trade, takes to his heels. The next day, sweet as Anadyomene
rising from the sea, the actress appeared before the King, and
charged Sir Hugh with being the abettor of this gross outrage. How
the knight was punished, the record in the State Paper Office does
not say; but about a fortnight later a royal decree was issued, which
prohibited gentlemen from entering the 'tiring rooms of the ladies
of the King's Theatre. For some nights the gallants sat ill at ease
among the audience; but the journals of the period show that the
nymphs must have been as little pleased with this arrangement as the
fine gentlemen themselves, who soon found their way back to pay the
homage of flattery to the most insatiable of goddesses.
Not that all the homage was paid to the latter. The wits loved to
assemble, after the play was done, in the dressing-rooms of the
leading actors with whom they most cared to cultivate an intimacy.
Much company often congregated here, generally with the purpose of
assigning meetings, where further enjoyment might be pursued.
Then, when it was holiday with the legislature, the house was filled
with parliament-men. On one of these occasions, Pepys records, "how a
gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating of some fruit
in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead; but with much ado,
Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him to
life again." This was an incident of the year 1667.
Returning to the front of the stage, we find the ladies in the boxes
subjected to the audible criticisms of "the little cockerells of the
pit," as Ravenscroft calls them, with whom the more daring damsels
entered into a smart contest of repartees. As the "play-house" was
then the refuge of all idle young people, these wit-combats were
listened to with interest, from the town fops to the rustic young
squires, who came to the theatre in cordivant gloves, and were quite
unconscious of poisoning the affected fine ladies with the smell
of them. The poets used to assert that all the wit of the pittites
was stolen from the plays which they read or saw acted. It seemed
the privilege of the box-loungers to have none, or to perform other
services; namely, to sit all the evening by a mistress, or to blaze
from "Fop's corner," or to mark the modest women, by noting those
who did not use their fans through a whole play, nor turn aside their
heads, nor, by blushing, discover more guilt than modesty. Thrice
happy was she who found the greatest number of slaves at the door of
her box, waiting obsequiously to hand or escort her to her chair.
These beaux were hard to fix, so erratic were they in their habits.
They ran, as Gatty pertinently has it, "from one play-house to the
other play-house; and if they like neither the play nor the women,
they seldom stay any longer than the combing of their perriwigs, or a
whisper or two with a friend, and then they cock their caps, and out
they strut again." With fair and witty strangers these gay fellows,
their eyebrows and perriwigs redolent of the essence of orange
and jasmine, entered into conversation, till a gentleman's name,
called by a door-keeper in the passage, summoned him to impatient
companions, waiting for him outside; when he left the "censure" of
his appearance to critical observers, like those who ridiculed the
man of mode for "his gloves drawn up to his elbows and his perriwig
more exactly curled than a lady's head newly dressed for a ball."
Of the vizard-masks, Cibber tells the whole history in a few words:
"I remember the ladies were then observed to be decently afraid of
venturing bare-faced to a new comedy, till they had been assured they
might do it without insult to their modesty; or if their curiosity
were too strong for their patience, they took care at least to save
appearances, and rarely came in the first days of acting but in
masks, which custom, however, had so many ill consequences attending
it, that it has been abolished these many years."
The poets sometimes accused the ladies of blushing, not because of
offence, but from constraint on laughter. Farquhar's Pindress says
to Lucinda, "Didn't you chide me for not putting a stronger lace in
your stays, when you had broke one as strong as a hempen-cord with
containing a violent _ti-hee_ at a ---- jest in the last play?"
Cibber describes the beaux of the seventeenth century as being of
quite a different stamp from the more modern sort. The former "had
more of the stateliness of the peacock in their mien," whereas the
latter seemed to place their highest emulation in imitating "the
pert air of a lapwing." The greatest possible compliment was paid to
Cibber by the handsome, witty, blooming young fop, Brett, who was so
enchanted with the wig the former wore as Sir Novelty Fashion, in
"Love's Last Shift," that fancying the wearing it might ensure him
success among the ladies, he went round to Cibber's dressing-room,
and entered into negotiations for the purchase of that wonderful
cataract perriwig. The fine gentlemen among the audience had, indeed,
the credit of being less able to judge of a play than of a peruke;
and Dryden speaks of an individual as being "as invincibly ignorant
as a town-sop judging of a new play."
[Illustration: Colley Cibber.)]
Lord Foppington, in 1697, did not pretend to be a beau; but he
remarks, "a man must endeavour to look wholesome, lest he make so
nauseous a figure in the side-box, the ladies should be compelled to
turn their eyes upon the play." It was the "thing" to look
upon the company, unless some irresistible attraction drew attention
to the stage; and the curtain down, the beau became active in the
service of the ladies generally. "Till nine o'clock," says Lord
Foppington, "I amuse myself by looking on the company, and usually
dispose of one hour more in leading them out."
Some fine gentlemen were unequal to such gallantry. At these,
Southerne glances in his "Sir Anthony Love," where he describes the
hard drinkers who "go to a tavern to swallow a drunkenness, and
then to a play, to talk over their liquor." And these had their
counterparts in
"the youngsters of a noisy pit,
Whose tongues and mistresses, outran their wit."
It was, however, much the same in the boxes, where the beaux' oath
was "zauns," it being token of a rustic blasphemer to say "zounds;"
and where, though a country squire might say, "bless us!" it was the
mark of a man of fashion to cry, "dem me!"
With such personages in pit and boxes, we may rest satisfied that
there was a public to match in the gallery--a peculiar as well as a
general public.
A line in a prologue of the year 1672, "The stinking footman's
sent to keep your places," alludes to a custom by which the livery
profited. Towards the close of the century, the upper gallery of
Drury Lane was opened to footmen, _gratis_. They were supposed to be
in attendance on their masters, but these rather patronised the other
house, and as Drury could not attract the nobility, it courted the
favour of their not very humble servants. Previously, the lacqueys
were admitted after the close of the fourth act of the play. They
became the most clamorous critics in the house. It was the custom,
when these fellows passed the money-taker, to name their master, who
was supposed to be in the boxes; but many frauds were practised. A
stalwart, gold-laced, thick-calved, irreverent lacquey swaggered
past money and check-taker one afternoon, and named "the Lord ----,"
adding the name which the Jews of old would never utter, out of
fear and reverence. "The Lord ----!" said the money-taker to his
colleague, after the saucy footman had flung by, "who is he?" "Can't
say," was the reply; "some poor Scotch lord, I suppose!" Such is an
alleged sample of the ignorance and the blasphemy of the period.
Returning to the pit, I find, with the critics and other good men
there, a sprinkling of clerical gentlemen, especially of chaplains;
their patrons, perhaps, being in the boxes. In the papers of the
day, in the year 1697, I read of a little incident which illustrates
social matters, and which, probably, did not much trouble the
theatrical cleric who went to the pit so strangely provided. "There
was found," says the paragraph, "in the pit of the playhouse, Drury
Lane, Covent Garden, on Whitsun Eve, a qualification, signed by the
Right Honourable the Lord Dartmouth to the Reverend Mr. Nicholson, to
be his Chaplain Extraordinary; the said qualification being wrapped
up in a black taffety cap, together with a bottle-screw, a knotting
needle, and a ball of sky-colour and white knotting. If the said Mr.
Nicholson will repair to the pit-keeper's house, in Vinegar Yard, at
the Crooked Billet, he shall have the moveables restored, giving a
reasonable gratitude."
Probably Mr. Nicholson did not claim his qualification. His patron
was son of the Lord Dartmouth who corresponded with James II. while
expressing allegiance to William III., and was subsequently Queen
Anne's Secretary of State, and the annotator of Burnet's _History of
his Own Times_.
The audiences of King William's time were quick at noticing and
applying political allusions; and Government looked as sharply after
the dramatic poets as it did after the Jacobite plotters. When much
intercourse was going on between the exiled king at St. Germains and
his adherents in this country, a Colonel Mottley (of whose son, as a
dramatist, I shall have occasion to speak in a future page) was sent
over by James with despatches. The Earl of Nottingham laid watch for
him at the Blue Posts, in the Haymarket, but the Secretary's officers
missed the Colonel, seizing in his place a Cornish gentleman, named
Tredenham, who was seated in a room, surrounded by papers, and
waiting for the Colonel.
Tredenham and the documents were conveyed in custody before the Earl,
to whom the former explained that he was a poet, sketching out a
play, that the papers seized formed portion of the piece, and that
he had nothing to do with plots against his Majesty _de facto_.
Daniel Finch, however, was as careful to read the roughly-sketched
play, as if it had been the details of a conspiracy; and then the
author was summoned before him. "Well, Mr. Tredenham," said he, "I
have perused your play, and heard your statement, and as I can find
no trace of a plot in either, I think you may go free."
The sincerity of the audiences of those days is something doubtful,
if that be true which Dryden affirms, that he observed, namely, that
"in all our tragedies the audience cannot forbear laughing when the
actors are to die: 'tis the most comic part of the whole play." He
says, _all_ our tragedies; but we know that such was not the case
when the heroes of Shakspeare, represented by Betterton, Hart, or
Harris, suffered mimic dissolution, and it is but a fair suggestion
that it was only in the bombast and fustian tragedies, in which death
was the climax of a comic situation, and treated bombastically, that
the audiences were moved to laughter.
Sincere or not, the resident Londoners were great playgoers, and
gadders generally. I have already quoted Bishop Hackett on this
matter. Sermons thus testify to a matter of fashion. It appears
from a play, Dryden's "Sir Martin Marall," that if Londoners were
the permanent patrons, the country "quality" looked for an annual
visit. At the present time it is the visitors and not the residents
in London who most frequent the theatre. "I came up, as we country
gentlewomen use, at an Easter Term, to the destruction of tarts and
cheesecakes, to see a new play, buy a new gown, take a turn in the
park, and so down again to sleep with my forefathers."
This resort to the theatres displeased better men than non-juring
Collier. Mirthful-minded South, he who preached to the Merchant
Tailors of the remnant that should be saved, calls theatres "those
spiritual pest-houses, where scarce anything is to be heard or seen
but what tends to the corruption of good manners, and from whence
not one of a thousand returns, but, infected with the love of vice,
or at least with the hatred of it very much abated from what it was
before. And that, I assure you, is no inconsiderable point gained by
the tempter, as those who have any experience of their own hearts
sufficiently know. He who has no mind to trade with the devil,
should be so wise as to keep away from his shop." South objects to a
corrupt, not to a "well-trod stage."
Yet South, like Collier later, laid to the scene much of the sin of
the age.
If we were to judge of the character of women by the comedies of
the last half of the seventeenth century, we might conclude that
they were all, without exception, either constantly at the play,
or constantly wishing to be there. But the Marquis of Halifax, in
his _Advice to a Daughter_, shows that they were only a class.
"Some ladies," he says, "are bespoke for merry meetings, as Bessus
was for duels. They are engaged in a circle of idleness, where
they turn round, for the whole year, without the interruption of a
serious hour. They know all the players' names, and are intimately
acquainted with all the booths at Bartholomew Fair. The spring, that
bringeth out Flies and Fools, maketh them inhabitants in Hyde Park.
In the winter, they are an encumbrance to the play-house, and the
ballast of the drawing-room."
We may learn how the playhouse, encumbered by the fast ladies of
bygone years, stood, and what were the prospects of the stage at this
time, by looking into a private epistle. A few lines in a letter
from "Mr. Vanbrook" (afterwards Sir John Vanbrugh) to the Earl
of Manchester, and written on Christmas Day, 1699, will show the
position and hopes of the stage as that century was closing. "Miss
Evans," he writes, "the dancer at the new play-house, is dead; a
fever slew her in eight and forty hours. She's much lamented by the
town, as well as by the house, who can't well bear her loss; matters
running very low with 'em this winter. If Congreve's play don't
help 'em they are undone. 'Tis a comedy, and will be played about
six weeks hence. Nobody has seen it yet." The same letter informs
us that Dick Leveridge, the bass singer of Lincoln's Inn Fields
Theatre, was tarrying in Ireland, rather than face his creditors in
England, and that Dogget (of whom there is no account, during the
years 1698, 1699, 1700), had been playing for a week at the above
theatre, for the sum of £30! This is the first instance I know of, of
the "starring" system; and it is remarkable that the above sum should
have been given for six nights' performances, when Betterton's salary
did not exceed £5 per week.
The century closed ill for the stage. Congreve's play, "The Way
of the World," failed to give it any lustre. Dancers, tumblers,
strong men, and quadrupeds, were called in to attract the town; and
the Elephant at the _Great Mogul_, in Fleet Street, "drew" to such
an extent that he would have been brought upon the stage, but for
the opinion of a master-carpenter, that he would pull the house
down. There was an empty treasury at both the theatres. There was
ill-management at one, and ill-health (the declining health of
Betterton) to mar the other. And so closes the half century.
NOTE.--In the second edition, after the words, "This is the first
instance of the 'starring' system," Dr. Doran adds:--If Dogget was
the first _star_, he was also an early stroller, and head of a
strolling company. Each member wore a brocaded waistcoat, rode his
own horse, and was everywhere respected, as a gentleman. So says
Aston, reminding one of Hamlet's "Then came each actor on his ass."
Steele, in the _Tatler_ (No. 12), speaks of the manager, MacSwiney,
as "little King Oberon," who mortgaged his whole empire (the
theatre) to Divito (Christopher Rich), whom Steele thus describes:
"He has a perfect skill in being unintelligible in discourse,
and uncomeatable in business. But he, having no understanding
in this polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money,
ladder-dancers, rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut
in the place of Shakspeare's heroes and Jonson's humorists."
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Pepys certainly means on account of the dulness of the play.
[71] Should be 15th and 22d December 1674.
[Illustration: SIR RICHARD STEELE.]
CHAPTER XIII.
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY.
The great players, by giving action to the poet's words, illustrated
the quaintly expressed idea of the sweet singer who says:
"What Thought can think another Thought can mend."
Nevertheless, the theatres had not proved profitable. The public
greeted acrobats with louder acclaim than any poet. King William
cared more to see the feats of Kentish Patagonians than to listen
to Shakspeare; and, for a time, Dogget, by creating laughter,
reaped more glittering reward than Betterton, by drawing tears.
The first season, however, of the eighteenth century was commenced
with great spirit. Drury Lane opened with Cibber's "Love Makes a
Man," an adaptation from Beaumont and Fletcher. Cibber was the
Clodio; Wilks, Carlos; and Mrs. Verbruggen, Louisa. Five other new
pieces were produced in this brief season. This was followed by the
"Humour of the Age," a dull comedy, by Baker, who generally gave
his audience something to laugh at, and showed some originality in
more than one of his five pieces. He was an attorney's son, and an
Oxford University man; but he took to writing for the stage, had an
ephemeral success, and died early, in worse plight than any author,
even in the days when authors occasionally died in evil condition.
The third novelty was Settle's mad operatic tragedy, the "Siege of
Troy,"[72] with a procession in which figured six white elephants!
Griffin returned to the stage from the army, with "Captain" attached
to his name, and played Ulysses. The dulness and grandeur of Settle's
piece were hardly relieved by Farquhar's sequel to his "Constant
Couple," "Sir Harry Wildair." The reputation of the former piece
secured for the latter a _run_ of nine nights, so were successes
calculated in those early days. Wilks laid down Sir Harry to enact
the distresses of Lorraine, in Mrs. Trotter's new play, "The Unhappy
Penitent," which gave way in turn for Durfey's intriguing comedy,
"The Bath, or the Western Lass," in which Mrs. Verbruggen's "Gillian
Homebred," made her the darling of the town. In the same season,
the company at Lincoln's Inn Fields produced a like number of new
pieces. In the first, the "Double Distress," Booth, Verbruggen,
Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle wasted their talents. Mrs. Pix,
the author, having failed in this mixture of rhyme and blank verse,
failed in a greater degree in her next play in prose, the "Czar of
Muscovy." Booth and Mrs. Barry could do nothing with such materials.
The masters forthwith enacted the "Lady's Visiting Day," by Burnaby.
In this comedy, Betterton played the gallant lover, Courtine, to the
Lady Lovetoy of Mrs. Barry. The lady here would only marry a prince.
Courtine wins her as Prince Alexander of Muscovy; and the audience
laughed as they recognised therein the incident of the merry Lord
Montagu wooing the mad Duchess-Dowager of Albemarle, as the Empress
of China, and marrying her under that very magnificent dignity, to
any inferior to which the Duchess had declared she would not stoop.
The hilarity of the public was next challenged by the production
of Granville (Lord Lansdowne's) "Jew of Venice,"--"improved"
from Shakspeare, who was described as having furnished the rude
sketches which had been amended and adorned by Granville's new
master-strokes![73]
Gildon's dull piece of Druidism, "Love's Victim, or the Queen of
Wales," appeared and failed,[74] notwithstanding its wonderful cast;
but Corye's "Cure for Jealousy" brought the list of novelties merrily
to a close; for though the audience saw no fun in it, they did in the
anger of the author--a little man, with a whistle of a voice, who
abandoned the law for the stage, and was as weak an actor as he was
an author. He attributed his failure to the absurd admiration of the
public for Farquhar. He was absurd enough to say so in print, and
to speak contemptuously of poor George's "Jubilee Farce." In those
wicked days, literary men loved not each other!
In 1702, the Drury Lane Company brought out eight new pieces,
and worked indefatigably. They commenced with Dennis's "Comical
Gallant,"--an "improved" edition of Shakspeare's "Merry Wives," in
which Powell made but a sorry Falstaff. This piece gave way to one
entirely original, and very much duller, the "Generous Conqueror,"
of the ex-fugitive Jacobite, Bevil Higgons. In this poor play, Bevil
illustrated the right divine and impeccability of his late liege
sovereign, King James; denounced the Revolution, by implication; did
in his only play what Dr. Sacheverell did in the pulpit, and made
even his fellow Jacobites laugh by his bouncing line, "The gods and
god-like kings can do no wrong."
Laughter more genuine might have been expected from the next novelty,
Farquhar's "Inconstant;" but that clever adaptation of Fletcher's
"Wild-Goose Chase," with Wilks for Young Mirabel, did not affect
the town so hilariously as I have seen it do when Charles Kemble,
gracefully, but somewhat too demonstratively, enacted the part
of that gay, silly, but lucky gentleman. Still less pleased were
the public with the next play, tossed up for them in a month, and
condemned in a night, Burnaby's "Modish Husband." Of course, this
husband, Lord Promise, is a man who loves his neighbour's wife, and
cares not who loves his own. An honest man in this comedy, Sir Lively
Cringe, does not think ill of married women, and he is made a buffoon
and more, accordingly. When Lady Cringe, in the dark, holds her lover
Lionel with one hand, her husband with the other, and declares that
her fingers are locked with those of the man she loves best in the
world, Sir Lively believes her. In this wise did the stage hold the
mirror up to nature at the beginning of the last century.
Not more edifying nor much more successful was Vanbrugh's "False
Friend," a _comedy_ in which there is a murder enacted before
the audience! What the house lost by it was fully made up by the
unequivocal success of the next new piece, the "Funeral, or Grief
à la Mode." The author was then six and twenty years of age; this
was his first piece, and his name was Steele. All that was known of
him then was, that he was a native of Dublin, had been fellow-pupil
at the Charter House with Addison, had left the University without
a degree, and was said to have lost the succession to an estate in
Wexford by enlisting as "a _private gentleman_ in the Horse Guards;"
a phrase significant enough, as the proper designation of that body,
at this day, is "Gentlemen of her Majesty's Royal Horse Guards." He
was the wildest and wittiest young dog about town, when in 1701,
he published, with a dedication to Lord Cutts, to whom he had been
private secretary, and through whom he had been appointed to a
company in Lord Lucas's Fusiliers, his _Christian Hero_, a treatise
in which he showed what he was not, by showing what a man ought to
be. It brought the poor fellow into incessant perplexity, and even
peril. Some thought him a hypocrite, others provoked him as a coward,
all measured his sayings and doings by his maxims in his _Christian
Hero_, and Dick Steele was suffering in the regard of the town, when
he resolved to redeem the character which he could not keep up to the
level of his religious hero, by composing a comedy! He thoroughly
succeeded, and there were troopers enough in the house to have beat
the rest of the audience into shouting approbation, had they not
been well inclined to do so spontaneously. The "Funeral" is the
merriest and the most perfect of Steele's comedies. The characters
are strongly marked, the wit genial, and not indecent. Steele was
among the first who set about reforming the licentiousness of the
old comedy. His satire in the "Funeral" is not against virtue, but
vice and silliness. When the two lively ladies in widow's weeds meet,
Steele's classical memory served him with a good illustration. "I
protest, I wonder," says Lady Brumpton (Mrs. Verbruggen), "how two of
us thus clad can meet with a grave face." The most genuine humour in
the piece was that applied against lawyers; but more especially in
the satire against undertakers, and all their mockery of woe. Take
the scene in which Sable (Johnson) is giving instructions to his
men, and reviewing them the while:--"Ha, you're a little more upon
the dismal. This fellow has a good mortal look--place him near the
corpse. That wainscot-face must be a-top o' the stairs. That fellow's
almost in a fright, that looks as if he were full of some strange
misery, at the end o' the hall! So!--But I'll fix you all myself.
Let's have no laughing now, on any provocation. Look yonder at that
hale, well-looking puppy! You ungrateful scoundrel, didn't I pity
you, take you out of a great man's service, and show you the pleasure
of receiving wages? Didn't I give you ten, then fifteen, then twenty
shillings a-week, to be sorrowful? And _the more I give you the
gladder you are_!" This sort of humour was new, no wonder it made a
sensation. Steele became the spoiled child of the town. "Nothing,"
said he, "ever makes the town so fond of a man as a successful play."
Old Sunderland and younger Halifax patronised Steele for his own and
for Addison's sake; and the author of the new comedy received the
appointment of _Writer of the Gazette_.
After a closing of the houses during Bartholomew Fair, the Drury Lane
Company met again, and again won the town by Cibber's "She Would
and She Would Not." This excellent comedy contrasts well with the
same author's also admirable comedy, the "Careless Husband." In the
latter there is much talk of action; in the former there is much
action during very good talk. There is much fun, little vulgarity,
sharp epigrams on the manners and morals of the times, good-humoured
satire against popery, and a succession of incidents which never
flags from the rise to the fall of the curtain. The plot may be not
altogether original, and there is an occasional incorrectness in the
local colour; but taken as a whole, it is a very amusing comedy, and
it kept the stage even longer than Steele's "Funeral."
Far less successful was Drury with the last and eighth new play of
this season, Farquhar's "Twin Rivals," for the copyright of which the
author received £15, 6s. from Tonson. Farquhar, perhaps, took more
pains with this than with any of his plays, and has received praise
in return; but after Steele and Cibber's comedies, the "Twin Rivals"
had only what the French call a _succès d'estime_.
To the eight pieces of Drury, Lincoln's Inn opposed half a dozen,
only one of which has come down to our times, namely, Rowe's
"Tamerlane," with which the company opened the season:--Tamerlane,
Betterton; Bajazet, Verbruggen; Axalla, Booth; Arpasia, Mrs. Barry.
In this piece, Rowe left sacred for profane history, and made his
tragedy so politically allusive to Louis XIV. in the character of
Bajazet, and to William III. in Tamerlane, that it was for many
years represented at each theatre on every recurring 4th and 5th
of November, the anniversary of the birth and of the landing of
King William. In Dublin, the anniversary of the great delivery from
"Popery and wooden shoes," was marked by a piece of gallantry on
the part of the Lord Lieutenant, or, in his absence, the Lords
Justices--namely, by arrangement with the manager, admission to the
boxes was free to every lady disposed to honour the theatre with her
presence!
Rowe has made a virtuous hero of Tamerlane, without at all causing
him to resemble William of Orange; but, irrespective of this, there
is life in this tragedy, which, with some of the bluster of the
old, had some of the sentiment of a new school. In 1746, when the
Scottish Rebellion had been entirely suppressed, it was acted on the
above anniversaries with much attendant enthusiasm, Mrs. Pritchard
speaking an epilogue written for the occasion by Horace Walpole, and
licensed by the Chamberlain, the Duke of Grafton, notwithstanding a
compliment to his Grace, which Walpole thought might induce the Duke,
out of sheer modesty, to withhold his official sanction. Tamerlane
has been a favourite part with many actors. Lady Morgan's father, Mr.
Owenson, made his first appearance in it, under Garrick's rule; but
a Tamerlane with a strong Irish brogue and comic redundant action
created different sensations from those intended by the author, and
though the audience did not hiss, they laughed abundantly.
To "Tamerlane" succeeded "Antiochus the Great," a tragedy, full
of the old love, bombast, and murder. The author was a Mrs. Jane
Wiseman, who was a servant in the family of Mr. Wright, of Oxford,
where, having filled her mind with plays and romances, she wrote this
hyper-romantic play, and having married a well-to-do Westminster
vintner, named Holt, she succeeded in seeing it fail, as it well
deserved to do.[75]
It seemed as if the king-killing in the plebeian lady's tragedy
required some counter-action, and accordingly, Lord Orrery's
posthumous play of "Altemira" was next brought forward. There is
a true king and also an usurper in this roaring yet sentimental
tragedy, in whom Whigs and Tories might recognise the sovereigns whom
they respectively adored. One monarch himself complacently remarks:--
"Whatever crimes are acted for a crown,
The gods forgive, when once that crown's put on."
To touch the Lord's anointed is an unpardonable sin; but if the Whigs
were rendered uneasy by this sentiment, they probably found comfort
in the speech wherein _Clerimont_[76] (Betterton), while owning
respect for the deprived monarch, confesses the fitness of being
loyal to the one who displaced him.
To these three tragedies succeeded three now-forgotten comedies, "The
Gentleman Cully," in which Booth fooled it to the top of his bent, in
the only English comedy which ends without a marriage. The "Beaux'
Duel," and the "Stolen Heiress," two of Mrs. Carroll's (she had not
yet become Mrs. Centlivre) bolder plagiarisms from old dramatists,
brought the Lincoln's Inn season to a close.
In the season of 1703, Drury Lane produced seven, and Lincoln's Inn
Fields six, pieces. The first, at Drury, was Baker's "Tunbridge
Walks," the manners of which smack of the old loose times. Then came
Durfey's "Old Mode and the New," a long, dull, satirical comedy, on
the fashions of Elizabeth's days and those of Anne. Durfey was then
at his twenty-eighth comedy, and in the decline of his powers. Little
flourished about him save that terrific beak which served for a nose,
and also for an excuse for his dislike to have his likeness taken.
In other respects, the wit, on whose shoulder Charles had leaned, to
whose songs William had listened, and at them Anne even then laughed,
was in vogue, but not with the theatrical public.
A new author tempted that public, in April, with a comedy, entitled
"Fair Example, or the Modish Citizens," by Estcourt, a strolling
player, but soon afterwards a clever actor in this company, a man
whom Addison praised, and a good fellow, whom Steele admired.
His career had, hitherto, been a strange one. He ran away from a
respectable home at Tewkesbury, when fifteen, to play Roxalana with
some itinerants, and fled from the company, on being pursued thither
by his friends, in the dress lent him by a kind-hearted girl of the
troop. In this dress, Estcourt made his way on foot to Chipping
Norton, at the inn of which place the weary supposed damsel was
invited to share the room of the landlord's daughter. Then ensued
a scene as comic as any ever invented by dramatist, but from which
the parties came off with some perplexity, and no loss of honour.
The young runaway was caught and sent home, and thence he was
despatched to Hatton Garden, and bound by articles to learn there the
apothecary's mystery. It is not known when he broke from these bonds;
but it is certain that he again--some say after he had himself failed
in the practice of the mystery he had painfully learned, took to the
joys and sorrows, trials, triumphs, and temptations of a wandering
player's life till 1698, or about that period, when he appeared in
Dublin, with success. He was between thirty and forty years of age,
when he came to London with the "Fair Example," an adaptation, like
the "Confederacy," of Dancour's "Modish Citizens," but not destined
to an equal success, despite the acting of Cibber and Norris, and
that brilliant triad of ladies, Verbruggen, Oldfield, and Powell.
In June, Mrs. Carroll served up Molière's "Médecin malgré lui," in
the cold dish called "Love's Contrivance;" and, in the same month,
Wilkinson and his sole comedy, "Vice Reclaimed," appeared; and are
now forgotten.
Next, Manning tried the judgment of the town with his "All for the
Better," a comedy, of triple plots--stolen from old writers. Manning
resembled Steele only in leaving the University without a degree. If
Steele obtained a Government appointment after his dramatic success,
Manning acquired a better after his failure. He was, first, Secretary
to our Legation in Switzerland; and, secondly, Envoy to the Cantons;
and was about as respectable in diplomacy as in the drama.
Gildon's play of the "Patriot, or the Italian Conspiracy," the last
produced this year,[77] with Mills as Cosmo de Medici, and Wilks as
his son, Julio, merits notice only as an instance of the mania for
reconstructing accepted stories. Gildon, towards the close of his
wayward and silly career, transmuted Lee's ancient Roman "Lucius
Junius Brutus," into the modern Italian "Patriot." The public
consigned it to oblivion.
During this season, when "Macbeth" was the only one of Shakspeare's
plays performed,[78] the theatre in Dorset Gardens was prepared for
opera; and in the summer the company followed Queen Anne to Bath,
by command; but there went not with them the most brilliant actress
of light comedy that the two centuries had hitherto seen, Mrs.
Verbruggen, that sparkling Mrs. Mountfort whose father, Mr. Perceval,
was condemned to death for treason against King William, on the day
her husband was murdered by Lord Mohun! The Jacobite father was,
however, pardoned. Mrs. Mountfort, or Verbruggen, left a successor
equal, perhaps superior, to herself, in Mrs. Oldfield.
The season of 1703, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, was distinguished by
the success of Rowe's "Fair Penitent,"--the one great triumph of
the year.[79] The other novelties require only to be recorded. That
most virulent and unscrupulous of Whig partizan-writers, Oldmixon,
opened the season with his third and last dramatic essay, "The
Governor of Cyprus," supported by Betterton, Booth, Powell, and
Mrs. Barry. Oldmixon was a poor dramatist, but he made a tolerable
excise officer,--a post which he acquired by his party-writings.
He would not, however, be remembered now, but for the pre-eminence
for dirt and dulness which Pope has awarded him in the _Dunciad_.
The entire strength of the company, Betterton excepted, was wasted
on the comedies,--"Different Widows," by a judicious, anonymous
author; "Love Betrayed," Burnaby's last of a poor four, and that a
marring of Shakspeare's "Twelfth Night;" and "As you find It" (for
Mrs. Porter's benefit, in April). This was the only play written by
Charles Boyle, grandson of the dramatist Earl of Orrery, to which
title he succeeded, four months after his comedy (the dullest in the
English language) had failed. Boyle may have been a worthy antagonist
of Bentley, touching the genuineness of the "Epistles of Phalaris;"
but he could not vie with such writers of comedy as Cibber, Farquhar,
and Steele. The production of the "Fickle Shepherdess,"--a ruthless
handling of Randolph's fine pastoral, "Amyntas,"--pleased but for
a few nights, though every woman of note in the company, and all
beautiful, played in it,--making love to, or prettily sighing at, or
as prettily sulking with, each other. The great event of the season
was, undoubtedly, the "Fair Penitent:" Lothario, Powell; Horatio,
Betterton; Altamont, Verbruggen; Calista, Mrs. Barry; Lavinia, Mrs.
Bracegirdle.
Rowe had, in his "Tamerlane," thundered, after the manner of Dryden:
had tried to be as pathetic as Otway, and had employed some of the
bombast of Lee. But he lacked strength to make either of the heroes
of that resonant tragedy vigorous. In devoting himself, henceforth,
to illustrate the woes and weaknesses of heroines, he discovered
where his real powers lay; and Calista is one of the most successful
of his portraitures. There is gross and unavowed plagiarism from
Massinger's "Fatal Dowry," but there is a greater purity of sentiment
in Rowe, who leaves, however, much room for improvement in that
respect, by his successors. Richardson saw this, when he made of his
Lovelace a somewhat purified Lothario. Rowe, however, notwithstanding
the weak point in his Fair Penitent, who is more angry at being
found out, than sorry for what has happened, has been eminently
successful; for all the sympathy of the audience is freely rendered
to Calista. The tragedy may still be called an acting play, though
it has lost something of the popularity it retained during the last
century, when even Edward, Duke of York, and Lady Stanhope, enacted
Lothario and Calista, in the once famous "private theatre" in Downing
Street. Johnson's criticism is all praise, as regards both fable and
treatment. The style is purely English, as might be expected of a
writer who said of Dryden, that--
"Backed by his friends, th' invader brought along
A crew of foreign words into our tongue,
To ruin and enslave our free-born English song.
Still, the prevailing faction propped his throne,
And to four volumes let his plays run on."
Shakspeare, in name, at least, re-appears more frequently on the
stage during the Drury Lane season of 1703-4, when "Hamlet," "King
Lear," "Macbeth," "Timon of Athens," "Richard III.," the "Tempest,"
and "Titus Andronicus," were performed.[80] These, however, were the
"improved" editions of the poets. The novelties were, the "Lying
Lover," by Steele; "Love, the Leveller;" and the "Albion Queens."
It was the season in which great Anne fruitlessly forbade the
presence of vizard-masks in the pit, and of gallants on the stage;
recommended cleanliness of speech, and denounced the shabby people
who occasionally tried to evade the money-takers.[81] Steele, in his
play, attempted to support one of the good objects which the Queen
had in view; but in striving to be pure, after his idea of purity,
and to be moral, after a loose idea of morality, he failed altogether
in wit, humour, and invention. He thought to prove himself a good
churchman, he said, even in so small a matter as a comedy; and in
his character of comic poet, "I have been," he says, "a martyr and
confessor for the church, for this play was damned for its piety."
This is as broad an untruth as anything uttered by the "Lying Lover"
himself, who, when he does express a mawkish sentiment after he has
killed a man in his liquor, can only be held to be "a liar," as
before. Steele was condemned for stupidity in a piece, the only ray
of humour in which pierces through the dirty, noisy, drunken throng
of gallows birds in Newgate. That Steele seriously intended his play
to be the beginning of an era of "new comedy," is, however, certain.
In the prologue, it was said of the author--
"He aims to make the coming action move
On the tried laws of Friendship and of Love.
He offers no gross vices to your sight,--
Those too much horror raise, for just delight."
Steele's comedy was a step in a right direction; and his great fault
was pretending to be half-ashamed of having made it. That it had
a "_clear_ stage and no favour," is literally true. It was one of
the first pieces played without a mingling of the public with the
players;--an evil fashion, which was not entirely suppressed for
threescore years after Queen Anne's decree, when Garrick proved more
absolute than her majesty. It was a practice which so annoyed Baron,
that proudest of French actors, that to suggest to the audience in
the house the absurdity of it, he would turn his back on them for a
whole act, and play to the audience on the stage. Sometimes the noise
was so loud, that an actor's voice could be scarcely heard. "You
speak too low!" cried a pit-critic to Defresne. "And you too high!"
retorted the actor. The offended pit screamed its indignation, and
demanded an abject apology. "Gentlemen," said Defresne, "I never felt
the degradation of my position till now;" ... and the pit interrupted
the bold exordium by rounds of applause, under which he resumed his
part.
Of the other pieces produced this season at Drury Lane, it will
suffice to say, that "Love the Leveller" was by "G. B., gent.,"
who ascribes its failure to his having adopted the counsel of
friends, and who consoles himself by the thought, that "it found so
favourable a reception that the best plays hardly ever met with a
fuller audience." Happy man! his piece was at least damned by a full
house. The "Albion Queens" was an old play, by Banks, which, dealing
with the affairs of England and Scotland, was held to be politically
dangerous; but good Queen Anne now licensed it, on the report of its
inoffensiveness made by "a nobleman;" and its dulness, relieved by
good acting, delighted our easy forefathers for half a century.
Lincoln's Inn failed to distinguish itself this season. Eton had no
reason to be proud of the comedy of its _alumnus_, Walker, "Marry, or
Do Worse;" and in the tragedy of "Abra Mulé," with its similes, which
continually run away with their rider, the young Master of Arts,
Trapp, shows that he was as poor a poet,[82] in his early days, as
that translation of Virgil, which so broke the rest of Mrs. Trapp,
proved him to be in his later years, when he was D.D., and Professor
of Poetry. Dennis's "Liberty Asserted" only demonstrated how heartily
he hated the French; and as there was no dramatist who did so, in the
same degree, when the French and the Pretender were very obnoxious,
some years later, this thunder of Dennis was revived to stimulate
antipathies. Queen Anne's Scottish historiographer did nothing for
the English stage, by his comedy of "Love at First Sight," and
farces like the "Stage Coach," the "Wits of Woman," and "Squire
Trelooby," are only remarkable because Betterton and the leading
actors played in them as readily as in "first pieces."
During May Fair, the theatre was closed, some of the actors playing
there, at Pinkethman's booth. In the same season they played before
the Queen at St. James's, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," with
Betterton as Falstaff, which he subsequently acted for his own
benefit. This piece, and also "Julius Cæsar," "Othello," and "Timon
of Athens," were the plays by or _from_ Shakspeare, which were played
this season.
The season of 1704-5, at Drury Lane, now prospering, to the
considerable vexation of Kit Rich, chief proprietor, who felt himself
unable to avoid paying his company their salaries, is notable for the
production of Cibber's "Careless Husband." He who now reads it for
the first time may be surprised to hear that in this comedy a really
serious and eminently successful attempt to reform the licentiousness
of the drama was made by one who had been himself a great
offender.[83] Nevertheless the fact remains. In Lord Morelove we have
the first lover in English comedy, since licentiousness possessed it,
who is at once a gentleman and an honest man. In Lady Easy, we have,
what was hitherto unknown, or laughed at,--a virtuous, married woman.
It is a conversational piece, not one of much action. The dialogue is
admirably sustained, not only in repartee, but in descriptive parts.
There is some refinement manifested in treating and talking of things
unrefined, and incidents are pictured with a master's art. Cibber's
greatest claim to respect seems to me to rest on this elegant and
elaborate, though far from faultless comedy. So carefully did he
construct the character of the beautiful and brilliant coquette, Lady
Betty Modish, whose waywardness and selfishness are finally subdued
by a worthy lover, that he despaired finding an actress with power
enough to realise his conception. It was written for Mrs. Verbruggen
(Mountfort), but she was now dead; Mrs. Bracegirdle _might_ have
played it; but "Bracy" was not a member of the Drury Lane company.
There was, indeed, Mrs. Oldfield, but Colley could scarcely see more
in her than an actress of promise. Reluctantly, however, he entrusted
the part to her, forboding discomfort;[84] but there ensued a triumph
for the actress and the play, for which Colley was admiringly
grateful to the end of his life. To her, he confessed, was chiefly
owing the success, though every character was adequately cast. He
eulogised her excellence of action, and her "personal manner of
conversing." He adds, "There are many sentiments in the character of
Lady Betty Modish that I may almost say, were originally her own, or
only dressed with a little more care than when they negligently fell
from her lively humour; had her birth placed her in a higher rank
of life, she had certainly appeared in reality what in this play she
only excellently acted, an agreeably gay woman of quality, a little
too conscious of her natural attractions."
Neither Cibber's friends nor foes seem to have at all enjoyed
his success. They would not compromise their own reputation by
questioning the merit of this rare piece of dramatic excellence,
but they insinuated or asserted that he was not the author. It
was written by Defoe, by the Duke of Argyll, by Mrs. Oldfield's
particular friend, Maynwaring! Congreve, who had revelled in
impurity, and stoutly asserted his cleanliness, ungenerously
declared, "Cibber has produced a play consisting of fine gentlemen
and fine conversation, all together, which the ridiculous town, for
the most part, likes." Congreve had not then forgiven the ridiculous
world for receiving so coldly his own last comedy, "The Way of the
World." Dr. Armstrong has more honestly analysed the play, and
pointed out its defects, without noticing its merits; but Walpole,
no bad judge of a comedy of such character, has enthusiastically
declared that it "deserves to be immortal." It has failed in that
respect, because its theme, manners, follies, and allusions are
obsolete, to say nothing of a company to follow even decently
the original cast, which included Sir Charles Easy, Wilks; Lord
Foppington, Cibber; and Lady Betty Modish, Mrs. Oldfield.
Steele's "Tender Husband, or the Accomplished Fools," in which he had
Addison for a coadjutor, was produced in April 1704.[85] Addison's
share therein was not avowed till long subsequently; but it was
handsomely acknowledged, at last, by Steele, in the _Spectator_.
In the concluding paper of the seventh volume, Steele alluded to
certain scenes which had been most applauded. These, he said, were
by Addison; and honest Dick added, that he had ever since thought
meanly of himself in not having publicly avowed the fact. This comedy
was chiefly a satire on the evils of romance reading; and was of a
strictly moral, yet decidedly heavy tendency; but with a Biddy Tipkin
(Mrs. Oldfield), to which there has been, as to Lady Betty Modish, no
efficient successor. There was a good end in both these plays. The
other novelties, "Arsinoe, Queen of Cyprus," an opera; "Gibraltar, or
the Spanish Adventurer," a failure of Dennis's; "Farewell Folly," by
Motteux; and the "Quacks," by Swiney--oblivion wraps them all.
In this season Dick Estcourt made his first appearance in London as
Dominic, in the "Spanish Friar." Of Shakspeare's plays, "Hamlet,"
"Henry IV.," and "Macbeth," were frequently repeated during the
season.
"Arsinoe," which I have mentioned above, merits a special word in
passing, as being the first attempt to establish opera in England,
after the fashion of that of Italy. "If this attempt," says Clayton,
the composer, who understood English no better than he did music,
"shall be a means of bringing this manner of music to be used in
my native country, I shall think my study and pains very well
employed." The principal singer was Mrs. Tofts, who for two years
had been singing, after the play, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, against
Marguerite de l'Epine, the pupil of Greber, and subsequently the
ill-favoured but happy wife of Dr. Pepusch, who fondly called her
Hecate--she answering good-humouredly to the name. The Earl of
Nottingham (son of Lord Chancellor Finch), and the Duke of Bedford,
who lost by dice more than his father made by the "Bedford Level,"
patronised and went into ecstasy at the song and shake of "the
Italian lady," as Marguerite was called. The proud Duke of Somerset,
who was as mean as he was proud, and, according to Lord Cowper, as
cowardly as he was arrogant, supported native talent, in Mrs. Tofts;
as did also that Duke of Devonshire, whom Evelyn wonderingly saw
lose, with calmness, at Newmarket, £1600, and who was afterwards the
munificent lover, and heart-stricken mourner, of another beautiful
vocalist, Miss Campion. Mrs. Tofts had another supporter in her too
zealous servant, Anne Barwick, who one night went to Drury Lane, and
assailed Marguerite with hisses and oranges, to the great disgust
of her honest mistress. In such discord did opera commence among
us. "Arsinoe," however, had a certain success, towards which the
composer, Clayton, contributed little; and he was destined to do less
subsequently.
The season of the rival company was passed in two houses:--at
Lincoln's Inn Fields, from October till the April of 1705, when the
company with the "four capital B.'s," Betterton, Booth, Mrs. Barry,
and Mrs. Bracegirdle, removed to the house in the Haymarket, built
for them by Vanbrugh, under a subscription filled by thirty persons
of quality, at £100 each, for which they received free admissions for
life. Under his licence at Lincoln's Inn Fields, Betterton produced
nothing of note this season but Rowe's "Biters," a satirical comedy,
which failed. At the end of the season he consigned his licence
to Vanbrugh, under whom he engaged as leading tragedian. Vanbrugh
opened on the 9th of April, with an opera, the "Triumph of Love."
It failed, as did old plays inadequately filled, and new pieces, by
Mrs. Pix, Swiney, and one or two other obscure writers, including
Chaves, author of a condemned comedy, the "Cares of Love." Baker
describes Chaves as a person of no consideration, on the ground that
he dedicated his play "to Sir William Read, the Mountebank," who, I
think, could very well afford to pay the usual fee. With these poor
aids, and many mischances, the first season at the Queen's Theatre,
on the site of our present Opera House, came to an unsatisfactory
conclusion.
The season of 1705-6, at Drury Lane, with a few nights at Dorset
Gardens, would have been equally unsatisfactory, but for one great
success to balance the failures of repatching of old pieces,
worthless new comedies, and the fruitless struggle of fashionable
patrons to sustain Cibber's tragedy, "Perolla and Izadora." The great
success was Farquhar's "Recruiting Officer," played on the 8th April
1706, with this cast. Plume, Wilks; Brazen, Cibber; Kite, Estcourt;
Bullock, Bullock; Balance, Keene; Worthy, Williams; Costar Pearmain,
Norris; Appletree, Fairbank; Sylvia, Mrs. Oldfield; Melinda, Mrs.
Rogers; Rose, Mrs. Susan Mountfort; Lucy, Mrs. Sapsford.
This lively comedy was so successful that Tonson, in a fit of
liberality, gave the author fifteen pounds, and a supplementary half
crown for the copyright. The money was welcome; for, between having
married, or rather being married by, a woman who pretended she had a
large fortune, when she really had only a large amount of love for
Farquhar, who was more attracted by the pretence than the reality;
between this, his commission sold, his patrons indifferent, his
family cares increasing, and his health declining, poor George was
in sorry need, yet buoyant spirits. Critics foretold that this play
would live for ever; but unfortunately it has been found impossible
to separate the wit and the lively action from the more objectionable
parts, and we may not expect to see its revival. Farquhar has drawn
on his own experiences in the construction, and all the amiable
people in the piece were transcripts of good Shrewsbury folk, whose
names have been preserved. Farquhar immortalised the virtues of his
hosts, and did not, like Foote, watch them at the tables at which he
was a guest, to subsequently expose them to public ridicule.
"Santlow, famed for dance," first bounded on to the stage during this
season, and the heart of Mr. Secretary Craggs bounded in unison.
Miss Younger, too, first trod the boards, March 1706, when about
seven years old, as the Princess Elizabeth, in "Virtue Betrayed;"
but, perhaps, the most notable circumstance of the year was, that
the chapel in Russell Court was then building;[86] but it was under
difficulties, to extricate it from which the Drury Lane company
played "Hamlet," and handed over the handsome proceeds to the
building committee!
Vanbrugh's two comedies, the "Confederacy" and the "Mistake" (the
latter still acted under the title of "Lovers' Quarrels"), Rowe's
"Ulysses," the "Faithful General," by an anonymous young lady, a
forgotten tragedy, the "Revolution of Sweden," by Mrs. Trotter,
an equally forgotten comedy, "Adventures in Madrid," by fat Mrs.
Pix, tragic, comic, and extravaganza operas, by Lansdown, Durfey,
and others,--all this novelty, a fair company of actors, troops of
dancers, and a company of vocalists with Dick Leveridge and Mrs.
Tofts at the head of them, failed to render the often broken but
prolonged season of 1705-6, which begun in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and
terminated at the house in the Haymarket, profitable.
In many respects it did not deserve to be, for Vanbrugh, with more
wit and humour, and more judgment in adaptation than Ravenscroft,
sought to bring back comedy to the uncleanliness in which the latter
writer had left it. There came a cry, however, from the outer world
against this condition of things. Lord Gardenstone, a lord of seat,
I believe, and not a lord of state, as it is said in the North,
indignantly remarked of the "Confederacy":--"This is one of those
plays which throw infamy on the English stage and general taste,
though it is not destitute of wit and humour. A people must be in
the last degree depraved among whom such public entertainments are
produced and encouraged. In this symptom of degenerate manners we
are, I believe, unmatched by any nation that is, or ever was, in the
world."
In the "Confederacy," Dogget's fame as an actor culminated. He
dressed Moneytrap with the care of a true artist. On an old,
threadbare, black coat, he tacked new cuffs and collar to make
its rustiness more apparent. Genest, quoting Wilks, adds that
the neck of the coat was stuffed so as to make the wearer appear
round-shouldered, and give greater prominency to the head. Wearing
large square-toed shoes with huge buckles over his own ordinary
pair, made his legs appear smaller than they really were. Dogget,
we are told, could paint and mould his face to any age. Kneller
recognised in him a superior artist. Sir Godfrey remarks that "_he_
could only copy nature from the originals before him, but that
Dogget could vary them at pleasure and yet keep a close likeness."
It must be confessed the public were more pleased with this piece
than with Rowe's "Ulysses," in which Penelope gave so bright an
example of conjugal duty and maternal love, in the person of Mrs.
Barry, to the Ulysses of Betterton, and the Telemachus of Booth. That
public would, perhaps, have cared more for the grace and nature of
Addison's "Rosamond," produced at Drury Lane, in March 1707, with
its exquisite flattery cunningly administered to the warrior who
then dwelt near Woodstock, had it been set by a less incompetent
musician than William's old band-master, Clayton, the conceited
person, who undertook to improve on Italian example, and who violated
the accents and prosody of our language, as well as all rules of
musical composition. It is singular, however, that neither Arne
nor Arnold have been much more successful, in resetting Addison's
opera, than Clayton himself. The piece was played but three times,
and the author's witty articles against the absurdities of Italian
opera are supposed, by some writers, to have owed their satire to
the failure of "Rosamond." One great and happy success Addison
achieved through this piece, which compensated for any disappointment
springing from it. Poetical warrant of its excellence was sent to
him from many a quarter; but the brightest wreath, the most elegant,
refined, graceful, and the most welcome of all, emanated from his
own University. Addison, charmed with the lines, inquired after the
writer, and discovered him in an undergraduate of Queen's College,
the son of a poor Cumberland clergyman, and named Thomas Tickell.
It was a happy day when both met, for then was laid the foundation
of a long and tender friendship. To "Rosamond" and his own musical
lines upon it, Tickell owed the felicity of his life, as Addison's
friend at home, his secretary in his study, his associate abroad,
his assistant and substitute in his office of Secretary of State,
and, finally, less happy but not less honourable, the executor of his
patron's will, and the editor of his patron's works.
"Rosamond" was produced during one of the most unlucky seasons at
Drury Lane, 1706-7; during which Swiney parted from Rich, took
the Haymarket, from Vanbrugh, at a rent of £51[87] per night, and
carried with him some of the best actors from Drury. "The deserted
company," as they called themselves, advertised the "Recruiting
Officer," for their benefit, "in which they pray there may be
singing by Mrs. Tofts, in English and Italian; and some dancing."
The main stay of the season was the "Recruiting Officer." Estcourt
was advertised as "the true Serjeant Kite," against Pack, who played
it at the Haymarket. At Drury, where Rich depended chiefly on opera,
it was said that "sound had got the better of sense;" and the old
motto, "_vivitur ingenio_," was no longer applicable. It is at the
Haymarket, says the dedication of "Wit without Money," to Newman, the
prompter, that "wit is encouraged, and the player reaps the fruit
of his labours, without toiling for those who have always been the
oppressors of the stage."
[Illustration: (Mrs. Bracegirdle.)]
In the season of 1706-7, at the Haymarket, Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs.
Bracegirdle first played together,--the younger actress ultimately
winning or vanquishing the town. Cibber, too, joined the company, at
the head of whom remained Betterton and Mrs. Barry. Every effort was
made to beat opera, by a production of pieces of a romantic or
classical cast; and Addison's pen, in prologue on the stage, or in
praise in the _Spectator_, was wielded in the cause of the players,
his neighbours.
Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Manley, contributed now-forgotten plays.
The former,--the "Platonic Lady," in which there is the unpleasant
incident of a couple of lovers, who ultimately prove to be brother
and sister. Mrs. Manley, in "Almyna," recommended what she had little
practised,--unlimited exercise of heroic virtue. Some vamped-up old
pieces, with new names, were added, and subscription lists were
opened, to enable the company, whose interests were espoused by Lord
Halifax, to make head against opera. The greatest attempt to overcome
the latter was made, by producing a truly and drily-classical
tragedy, by Edmund Smith, called "Phædra and Hippolytus," which the
public would not endure above three nights,[88] to the disgust and
astonishment of Addison, as recorded in the _Spectator_. Smith, or
Neale rather--the former being a name he adopted from a benevolent
uncle--was not the man to give new lustre to the stage. Scarcely a
year had elapsed since he had been expelled from Oxford University;
the brilliancy of his career there could not save him from that
disgrace. His success on the stage, when he made this his sole
attempt, was perhaps impeded by the exactions of actors and actresses
at rehearsal, to suit whose caprices he had to write fresh verses,
and furnish them with "tags," whereby to secure applause, as they
made their _exit_. The play fell, and the author with it. The once
brilliant scholar descended to become a sot. The once best-dressed
fop of his day, became known by the nickname of "Captain Rag;" and
as neither his wild life nor his careless style of costume seriously
affected his great personal beauty, the women, tempering justice with
clemency, called him the Handsome Sloven! This scholar, poet, critic,
and drunkard, attempted to recover his reputation by writing a
tragedy on the subject of Lady Jane Grey; but he died in the attempt.
A greater dramatist than he died this season in a blaze of triumph
from the stage, under the dull cloud of poverty at home--George
Farquhar. His joyous "Beaux' Stratagem," first played on the 8th of
March 1707, was written in six painful weeks. Tonson gave him £30
for the right of printing, and this, with what he received from the
managers, solaced the last weeks of the life of the ex-captain, who
had sold his commission, and had been deluded by a patron who had
promised to obtain preferment for him. Farquhar had lost everything,
but sense of pain and flow of spirits. He died in April 1707, while
the public were being enchanted by his comedy, so rich in delineation
of character and in variety of incident. It was thus cast: Aimwell,
Mills; Archer, Wilks; Scrub, Norris; Foigard, Bowen (then newly come
from Ireland);[89] Boniface, Bullock; Sullen, Verbruggen (his last
original character; the stage was thoughtful of his orphan children
as it was of those of Farquhar); Gibbet, Cibber; Count Bellair,
Bowman; Sir Charles Freeman, Keen; Lady Bountiful, Mrs. Powell; Mrs.
Sullen, Mrs. Oldfield; Cherry, Mrs. Bicknell; Dorinda, Mrs. Bradshaw.
This piece was the great glory of the Haymarket season, 1706-7.
The season of 1707-8 was the last for a time of the two opposing
houses, and it requires but a brief notice. Powell at Drury Lane was
weak as leading tragedian against Betterton at the Haymarket, and
Rich, the manager, produced no new piece. At the rival house the
only novelties were Cibber's adaptations of two or three forgotten
plays, the bricks with which he built up his, at first "hounded," but
ultimately successful, "Double Gallant," in which he played Atall;
the same author's "Lady's Last Stake," a heavy comedy; and Rowe's
"Royal Convert," a heavier tragedy of the times of Hengist and Horsa.
In this play, the courtly author bade for the bays (which were not to
encircle his brows till the accession of George I.), by introducing
a complimentary prophecy alluding to Queen Anne and the then
much-canvassed Union of England and Scotland. This was, perhaps, not
worse than the references made by the savage Saxon Rodogune to Venus,
and to the Eagle that bore Jove's thunder! There are, nevertheless,
some stately scenes in this play. Of its failure, Rowe did not
complain, he simply, on printing it, quoted the words, "Laudatur et
alget," on the title-page. Critics have thought that the story was
of too religious a texture to please. It was too obscure to excite
interest.
At the end of this season the two companies were _ordered_, by the
Lord Chamberlain, to unite; and they were not indisposed to obey.
The patent for Drury Lane was then held by Rich, and Sir Thomas
Skipwith, who had formerly held a larger share. _The Monthly Mirror_,
for March 1798, says that Rich's father was an attorney, to one of
whose clients Sir Thomas owed a large sum of money. Being unable to
pay it, he put up a part of his theatrical patent to auction, and
Rich bought the share for £80! In Christopher Rich's time a _quarter_
share was sold to Colman for £20,000. Sir Thomas now consigned what
share he held to Colonel Brett--a man more famous, as the husband of
the divorced wife of Charles Gerard, second Earl of Macclesfield,
of whom fiction still makes the mother of Savage, the poet,--and as
the father of Anne Brett, George I.'s _English_ mistress, than for
aught else, except it be that he was the friend of Colley Cibber. It
was by Colonel Brett's influence that the union of the companies was
effected, under the patent held by him and Rich; and henceforward
the great house in the Haymarket was given up to Swiney and Italian
opera, at the following prices for admission, which will be found
to form a strong contrast with those at present extracted from the
British pocket:--Stage-boxes, 10s. 6d.; Boxes, 8s.;[90] Pit, 5s.;
Lower Gallery, 2s. 6d.; Upper Gallery, 1s. 6d.
I have stated above that the union of the companies was the result
of an order from the Lord Chamberlain. How absolute was the
authority of this official may be gathered from various incidents
on record. Cibber cites one to this effect. Powell, the actor,
holding controversy on theatrical matters, at Will's Coffee House,
was so excited as to strike one of the speakers on the opposite side.
Unluckily, this speaker was a kinsman of the master or manager of
the house where Powell played, and he rushed to the Chamberlain's
office to obtain redress, that is vengeance. In the absence of
the supreme officer, the Vice-Chamberlain took up the quarrel. He
_probably_ ordered the actor to offer an apology; and he _certainly_
shut up Drury Lane Theatre, because the manager, who had received
no communication from him, had permitted Powell to appear before
such reparation was made. The embarrassed company of comedians were
not allowed to resume their calling for two or three days, and thus
serious injury was inflicted on such actors as were paid only on
the days of performance. This was in King William's reign, but the
power was not less, nor less absolutely exercised in the reign of
Queen Anne; and on this very occasion which led to the Chamberlain's
order for the union of the companies. Great dissension had arisen at
Drury Lane by a new arrangement with respect to benefits, whereby the
patentees took a third of the receipts. The more discontented went
over to the Haymarket; others remained, protested, and sought for
redress at the legal tribunal. Cibber will best tell what followed:--
"Several little disgraces were put upon them, particularly in the
disposal of parts in plays to be revived; and as visible a partiality
was shown in the promotion of those in their interest, though their
endeavours to serve them could be of no extraordinary use. All this
while the other party were passively silent, till one day, the actor
who particularly solicited their cause at the Lord Chamberlain's
office, being shown there the order signed for absolutely silencing
the patentees, and ready to be served, flew back with the news to
his companions, then at a rehearsal, at which he had been wanted;
when being called to his part, and something hastily questioned by
the patentee for his neglect of business, this actor, I say, with an
erected look and a theatrical spirit, at once threw off the mask,
and roundly told him: 'Sir, I have now no more business here than
you have. In half an hour you will neither have actors to command,
nor authority to employ them.' The patentee who, though he could
not readily comprehend his mysterious manner of speaking, had just
glimpse of terror enough from the words to soften his reproof into
a cold formal declaration, that 'if he would not do his work he
should not be paid.' But now, to complete the catastrophe of these
theatrical commotions, enters the messenger, with the order of
silence in his hands, whom the same actor officiously introduced,
telling the patentee that the gentleman wanted to speak with him,
from the Lord Chamberlain. When the messenger had delivered the
order, the actor, throwing his head over his shoulder, towards the
patentee, in the manner of Shakspeare's Harry VIII. to Cardinal
Wolsey, cried: 'Read o'er that! and then to breakfast, with what
appetite you may!' Though these words might be spoken in too
vindictive and insulting a manner to be commended, yet, from the
fulness of a heart injuriously treated, and now relieved on that
instant occasion, why might they not be pardoned? The authority of
the patent, now no longer subsisting, all the confederated actors
immediately walked out of the house, to which they never returned,
till they became themselves the tenants and masters of it."
Let me note here that in May 1708, Vanbrugh wrote to Lord
Manchester:--"I have parted with my whole concern (the Queen's
Theatre, Haymarket) to Mr. Swiney, only reserving my rent, so he is
entire possessor of the Opera, and most people think will manage it
better than anybody. He has a good deal of money in his pocket, that
he got before by the acting company, and is willing to venture it
upon the singers." This proves that the lack of prosperity, which
marked the end of the last century, did not distinguish the beginning
of the new.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] The Virgin Prophetess, or the Fate of Troy.
[73] Second edition. In this piece Bassanio (Betterton) is the most
prominent character; and though the whole piece was converted into a
comedy, Dogget is said to have acted Shylock with much effect, and
without buffoonery. Granville gave the profits of the play to one who
needed them, Dryden's son.
[74] This seems inaccurate. The author says it was well received.
[75] The _Biographia Dramatica_ expressly says that it was with the
profits of this play that she and her husband set up a tavern in
Westminster. Whincop also seems to imply that the piece was a success.
[76] Clorimon.
[77] This is an assumption not justified by the facts. All of this
chapter is a mere copying from Genest; and though Genest puts "All
for the Better," and "The Patriot" last in his list, it is only
because there is no record when they were produced.
[78] "Timon of Athens" was performed at Drury Lane, 5th July 1703.
[79] Scarcely accurate. Downes says that it was "a very good play
for three acts; but failing in the two last, answer'd not their
expectation," p. 46.
[80] "The Taming of the Shrew" also--5th July 1704.
[81] See Genest ii. 296, for copy of this edict.
[82] "Abra Mulé" is pronounced by Genest to be a fairly good tragedy.
It was certainly very successful, for it was played fourteen times.
[83] This is most unfair to Cibber, whose comedies are particularly
inoffensive.
[84] Incorrect. Cibber's doubts were dispelled by Mrs. Oldfield's
playing of Leonora in "Sir Courtly Nice" at Bath two seasons
previously. He wrote Lady Betty Modish expressly for her.
[85] 23d April 1705.
[86] The bill says, "Repairing and fitting up."
[87] Should be £5 for every acting day, and not to exceed £700 a year.
[88] It was played four times. Genest, ii. 370.
[89] Bowen came from Ireland about 1689, nearly twenty years before.
[90] In this season the prices for Boxes seem to have been 15s., 10s.
6d., and 8s.
[Illustration: THOMAS DOGGET.]
CHAPTER XIV.
THE UNITED AND THE DISUNITED COMPANIES.
The names of Betterton, Booth, Wilks, Cibber, Mills, Powell,
Estcourt, Pinkethman, jun., Keen, Norris, Bullock, Pack, Johnson,
Bowen, Thurmond, Bickerstaff--of Mistresses Barry, Bradshaw,
Oldfield, Powell, Rogers, Saunders, Bicknell, Knight, Porter,
Susan Mountfort, and Cross,--indicate the quality of a company,
which commenced acting at Drury Lane, and which, in some respects,
was perhaps never equalled; though it did not at first realise
a corresponding success. Betterton only "played" occasionally,
though he invariably acted well. The new pieces produced failed
to please. The young Kentish attorney, and future editor of
Shakspeare,--Theobald, gave the first of about a score of forgotten
dramas to the stage; but his "Persian Princess" swept it but once
or twice with her train. Taverner, the proctor, who could paint
landscapes almost as ably as Gaspar Poussin, proved but a poor
dramatist; and his "Maid the Mistress," was barely listened to.
Matters did not improve in 1708-9, in which season Brett's share of
the patent was made over to Wilks, Cibber, and Estcourt,--the other
shares amounting to nearly a dozen. The only success of this season
was achieved by Mrs. Centlivre's "Busy Body" (Marplot, by Pack), and
_that_ was a success of slow growth. Baker, who had ridiculed his
own effeminate ways in Maiden ("Tunbridge Walks"), now satirised the
women; but the public hissed his "Fine Lady's Airs," almost as much
as they did Tom Durfey's "Prophets." In the latter piece, rakish,
careless, penniless Tom, laughed at the religious impostors of the
day who dealt with the past dead and with future events; but the
public did not see the fun of it, and damned the play, whose author
survived to write worse. Then there was the "Appius and Virginia,"
of Dennis,--of which nothing survives but the theatrical thunder,
invented by the author for this tragedy,--and the use of which,
after the public had condemned the drama of a man who equally feared
France abroad and bailiffs at home, was always resented by him as a
plagiarism. In this piece, Betterton acted the last of his long list
of the dramatic characters created by him,--Virginius. Shortly after
this took place that famous complimentary benefit for the old player,
when the pit tickets were paid for at a guinea each. The actors could
scarcely get through "Love for Love," in which he played Valentine,
for the cloud of noble patrons clustered on the stage, when guineas
by the score were delicately pressed upon him for acceptance,--and
Mistresses Barry and Bracegirdle supported him at the close; while
the former spoke the epilogue, which was the dramatic apotheosis of
Betterton himself.
On the following June, actors and patentees were at issue; and their
dissensions were not quelled by the Lord Chamberlain closing the
house; from which Rich, of whose oppressions the actors complained,
was driven by Collier, the M.P. for Truro, to whom, for political as
well as other reasons, a licence was granted to open Drury Lane. When
Collier took forcible possession of the house, he found that Rich had
carried off most of the scenery and costumes; but he made the best
of adverse circumstances and a company lacking Betterton and other
able actors; and he opened Drury on November 23rd, 1709, under the
direction of Aaron Hill, with "Aurungzebe," and Booth for his leading
tragedian.
Booth wished to appear in a new tragedy, and Hill wrote in a week
that "Elfrid" which the public damned in a night.[91] Hill was always
ready to write. At Westminster, he had filled his pockets by writing
the exercises of young gentlemen who had not wit for the work; and
by and by he will be writing the "Bastard," for Savage. Meanwhile,
here was "Elfrid," written and condemned. The author allowed that it
was "an unpruned wilderness of fancy, with here and there a flower
among the leaves, but without any fruit of judgment." At this time,
Hill was a young fellow of four and twenty, with great experience and
some reputation. A friendless young "Westminster," he had at fifteen
found his way alone to Constantinople, where he obtained a patron
in the ambassador, the sixth Lord Paget,--a distant relation of the
youthful Aaron. Under the peer's auspices, Hill travelled extensively
in the East; and subsequently, ere he was yet twenty, accompanied Sir
William Wentworth, as travelling tutor, over most of Europe. Later,
his poem of "Camillus," in defence of Lord Peterborough, procured
for him the post of secretary to that brave and eccentric peer, with
whom he remained till his marriage. Then Aaron lived with a divided
allegiance to his wife and the stage, for the improvement of which he
had many an impracticable theory. He would willingly have written a
tragedy for Booth once a week.
Tragedies not being in request, Hill tried farce, and produced his
"Walking Statue," a _screamer_, as improbable as his "Elfrid" was
_unpruned_. The audience would not tolerate it; and Hill came before
them in a few days with a comedy,--"Trick upon Trick," at which the
house howled rather than laughed.[92] Whereupon Hill new-nibbed his
pen, and addressed himself to composition again.
The treasury gained more by the appearance of Elrington, in
"Oroonoko," than by Hill's novelties. Then, the trial of putting the
fairy dancer, Santlow, into boy's clothes, and giving her the small
part of the Eunuch in "Valentinian" to play, and an epilogue to be
spoken in male attire, succeeded so well, that she was cast for
Dorcas Zeal in Charles Shadwell's "Fair Quaker of Deal," wherein she
took the town, and won the heart of Booth. In this character-piece
Flip, the sea-brute, is contrasted with Beau Mizen, the sea-fop;
but the latter is, in some degree, a copy of Baker's Maiden, the
progenitor of the family of Dundreary.
From Collier, there went over to the Haymarket, under Swiney,
Betterton, Wilks, Cibber, Dogget, Mills, Mrs. Barry, Oldfield, and
other actors of mark. Drury had opened with Dryden. The Queen's
Theatre, Haymarket, commenced its season on the 15th of September
1709, with Shakspeare. The play was "Othello," with Betterton in the
Moor; but oh! shade of the bard of Avon, there was between the acts
a performance by "a Mr. Higgins, a posture-master from Holland," and
the critics, silently admiring "old Thomas," loudly pronounced the
feats of the pseudo-Hollander to be "marvellous." The only great
event of the season was the death of Betterton, soon after his
benefit, on the 13th of April 1710, of which I have already spoken at
length.
About this period, the word _encore_ was introduced at the operatic
performances in the Haymarket, and very much objected to by
plain-going Englishmen. It was also the custom of some who desired
the repetition of a song to cry _altra volta! altra volta!_ The
Italian phrase was denounced as vigorously as the French exclamation;
and a writer in the _Spectator_ asks when it may be proper for him to
say it in English, and would it be vulgar to shout _again! again!_
The season of 1710-11 was a languishing one. Players and playgoers
seemed to feel that the great glory of the stage was extinguished
in the death of Betterton and the departure of Mrs. Barry. Collier,
restless and capricious, gave up Drury Lane for opera at the
Haymarket, Swiney exchanging with him. The united company of actors
assembling at the former, contributed £200 a year as a sort of
compensation to Collier, as well as refraining from playing on a
Wednesday, when an opera was given on that night. The Thursday
audiences were all the larger for this; but the inferior actors, who
were paid by the day, felt the hardship of this arrangement, and
noblemen, who espoused the part of the English players against the
foreign singers, expressed an opinion, as they walked about behind
the scenes, that "it was shameful to take part of the actors' bread
from them to support the silly diversions of people of quality."
Booth and Powell shared the inheritance of Betterton, and Mrs.
Bradshaw succeeded to that of Mrs. Barry; but Mrs. Porter was
soon to dispute it with her. The old stock pieces were well cast,
but no new play obtained toleration for above a night or two. Mrs.
Centlivre's "Marplot,"[93] a poor sequel to the "Busy Body," brought
her nothing more substantial than a dedication fee of £40 from the
Earl of Portland, the son of William III.'s "Bentinck." This was
more than Johnson obtained for dedicating his condemned comedy, the
"Generous Husband," to the last of the three Lords Ashburnham, who
were alive in 1710. Poor Elkanah Settle, too, pensioned poet of the
city, and a brother of the Charterhouse, was employed by Booth to
adapt Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle," which
Elkanah transformed to the "City Ramble," Booth playing Rinaldo.
Settle was so unpopular at this time, that he brought out his play in
the summer season when the town was scantily peopled. The only result
was that it was damned by a thin house instead of a crowded one.
At the close of the season Swiney returned to the Opera; Collier
to Drury Lane, under a new licence to himself, Wilks, Cibber, and
Dogget. Collier withdrew, however, from the management, and the three
actors named paid him £700 a year for doing nothing. From this time
may be dated the real prosperity of the sole and united company of
actors, for whom a halcyon score of years was now beginning. On the
other hand, the opera only brought ruin, and drove into exile its
able but unlucky manager, Swiney. FOOTNOTES:
[91] This is a specimen of one of the greatest difficulties in the
revision of Dr. Doran. He frequently writes of a play as being
damned, which really was played for a few nights with no great
success. In the present case, "Elfrid" was played five times.
[92] The comedy was entitled "Squire Brainless, or, Trick upon
Trick." Neither of these pieces was the ghastly failure Dr. Doran
implies.
[93] Acted six times.
[Illustration: POPE AND DR. GARTH.]
CHAPTER XV.
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY.
Naturally and justifiably jubilant is Colley Cibber when giving the
history of the united companies. That union led to a prosperity
of twenty years, though the union itself did not last so long. We
now find houses crowded beyond anything known to that generation;
and that not so much from surpassing excellence on the part of the
actors, as from their zeal, industry, and the willingness with
which they worked together. This success doubled the salaries of
the comedians, and "in the twenty years, while we were our own
directors," says Colley, with honest pride, "we never had a creditor
that had occasion to come twice for his bill; every Monday morning
discharged us of all demands, before we took a shilling for our own
use."
These halcyon days had, no doubt, their little passing clouds;
some prejudices and jealousies would arise among the leaders, as
excellence began to manifest itself from below; but these, as Cibber
remarks, with a lofty philosophy, were "frailties, which societies of
a higher consideration, while they are composed of men, will never
be entirely free from." Cibber and his fellows deserved to prosper.
Although they enjoyed a monopoly they did not abuse it; and £1500
profit to each of the three managers, in one year, the greatest sum
ever yet so realised on the English stage, showed what might be done,
without the aid of "those barbarous entertainments," of acrobats
and similar personages, for which the dignified Cibber had the most
profound and wholesome horror.
While the management was in the hands of Cibber, Wilks, and Dogget,
the good temper of the first was imperturbable. He yielded, or seemed
to yield, to the hot hastiness of Wilks, and lent himself to the
captious waywardness of Dogget. However impracticable the latter
was, Cibber always left a way open to reconciliation. In the very
bitterest of their feuds, "I never failed to give him my hat and
'_your servant_,' whenever I met him, neither of which he would ever
return for above a year after; but I still persisted in my usual
salutation, without observing whether it was civilly received or
not." Dogget would sit sullen and silent, at the same table with
Cibber, at Will's--the young gentlemen of the town loitering about
the room, to listen to the critics, or look at the actors--and Cibber
would treat the old player with deference, till the latter was
graciously pleased to be softened, and ask for a pinch from Colley's
box, in token of reconciliation.
Almost the only word approaching to complaint advanced by Cibber
refers to public criticism. The newspapers, and especially _Mist's
Journal_, he says, "took upon them very often to censure our
management, with the same freedom and severity as if we had been so
many ministers of state." This is thoroughly Cibberian in humour
and expression. For these critics, however, Colley had a supreme
contempt. Wilks and Booth, who succeeded Dogget, were more sensitive,
and would fain have made reply; but Cibber remarked that the noise
made by the critics was a sign of the ability and success of the
management. If we were insignificant, said he, and played only to
empty houses, these fellows would be silent.
When the fashion of patronising the folly of pantomimes came in,
Cibber reluctantly produced one at Drury Lane, but only "as crutches
to the plays." In the regular drama itself, it seemed immaterial
to him what he acted, so that the piece was well supported; and
accordingly when the "Orphan" was revived, and the town had just been
falsely told that Cibber was dead, "I quietly stole myself," he says,
"into the part of the Chaplain, which I had not been seen in for many
years before;" and as the audience received him with delight, Colley
was satisfied and triumphant.
In the first season the poets were less successful than the players;
Johnson's "Wife's Relief,"[94] and Mrs. Centlivre's "Perplexed
Lovers," were failures. But the lady fell with some _éclat_. The
epilogue produced more sensation than the play. Prince Eugene
was then in England, and to Mrs. Oldfield were entrusted lines
complimentary to the military talents of the Prince, and his brother
in arms, the Duke of Marlborough. Political feuds were then so
embittered, that the managers were afraid to allow the epilogue to
be spoken; but on the second night, they fortified themselves by the
Chamberlain's licence, and brave Mistress Oldfield delivered it, in
spite of menacing letters addressed to her. The piece fell; but the
authoress printed it, with a tribute of rhymed homage to the prince,
who acknowledged the same by sending her a handsome and heavy gold
snuff-box, with this inscription:--"The present of his Highness
Prince Eugene of Savoy to Susanna Centlivre." Those heavy boxes--some
of them furnished with a tube and spring for shooting the snuff up
the nose, were then in fashion, and prince could hardly give more
fitting present to poetess than a snuff-box, for which--
"Distant climes their various arts employ,
To adorn and to complete the modish toy.
Hinges with close-wrought joints from Paris come,
Pictures dear bought from Venice and from Rome.
* * * * *
Some think the part too small of modish sand,
Which at a niggard pinch they can command.
Nor can their fingers for that task suffice,
Their nose too greedy, not their hand too nice,
To such a height with these is fashion grown,
They feed their very nostrils with a spoon."
So sang the Rev. Samuel Wesley, in his somewhat indelicate satire on
snuff, addressed to his sister, Keziah. Mrs. Centlivre's box probably
figured at Drury Lane, and in very good company, with other boxes
carried by ladies; for, says the poet--
"They can enchant the fair to such degree,
Scarce more admired could French romances be,
Scarce scandal more beloved or darling flattery;
Whether to th' India House they take their way,
Loiter i' the Park, or at the toilet stay,
Whether at church they shine, or sparkle at the play."
The great night of this season was that in which Philips' version of
Racine's "Andromaque" was played,--the 17th of March, 1712. Of the
"Distressed Mother," the following was the original cast:--Orestes,
Powell; Pyrrhus, Booth; Pylades, Mills; Andromache, Mrs. Oldfield;
Hermione, Mrs. Porter. The English piece is even duller than the
French one; but there is great scope in it for good declamatory
actors, and Booth especially led the town on this night to see in him
the undoubted successor of Betterton.
All that could be done to render success assured, was done on
this occasion, not only by the poet, but by his friends. Before
the tragedy was acted, the _Spectator_ informed the public that a
masterpiece was about to be represented. On the first night, there
was a packed audience of hearty supporters. During the run of the
play,[95] the _Spectator_ related the effect the tender tale had had
on Sir Roger de Coverley.
We learn from Addison, in the puff preliminary, that at the reading
of the "Distressed Mother," by one of the actors,--the players, who
listened, were moved to tears, and that the reader, in his turn,
was so overcome by his emotions, "that he was frequently obliged
to lay down the book, and pause, to recover himself and give vent
to the humanity which rose in him at some irresistible touches of
the imagined sorrow." On the first night of its being played, the
performance was said to be "at the desire of several ladies of
quality." Sir Roger de Coverley, with Will Honeycombe and Captain
Sentry, backed by two or three old servants,--the Captain wearing the
sword he had wielded at Steinkirk, are described as being in the pit,
early--four o'clock--before the house was full and the candles were
lighted. There was access then for the public for a couple of hours
before the curtain rose. The Knight thought the King of France could
not strut it more imposingly than Booth in Pyrrhus. He found the plot
so ingeniously complicated, that he could not guess how it would end,
or what would become of Pyrrhus. His sympathies oscillated between
the ladies, with a word of smart censure now and then for either;
calling Andromache a perverse widow, and anon, Hermione "a notable
young baggage." Turgid as this English adaptation now seems,--to
Addison, its simplicity was one of its great merits. "Why!" says Sir
Roger, "there is not a single sentence in the play that I don't know
the meaning of!" It was listened to with a "very remarkable silence
and stillness," broken only by the applause; and a compliment is paid
to Mills who played Pylades, in the remark, "though he speaks but
little, I like the old fellow in whiskers as well as any of them."
The epilogue, spoken by Mrs. Oldfield, and undoing all the soft
emotions wrought by the tragedy, was repeated twice, for several
consecutive nights. The audience could not have enough of it, and
long years after, they called for it, whenever the piece was revived.
Budgell was the reputed author, but Tonson printed it, with Addison's
name as the writer. The latter, however, ordered that of Budgell to
be restored, "that it might add weight to the solicitation which he
was then making for a place."
Thus Ambrose Philips showed that he could write something more
vigorous than the Pastorals, which had given him a name while at
the University. He took higher rank among the wits at Button's
Coffee-house, and had no reason to fear the censure or ridicule of
men like Henry Carey, who fastened upon him the name of Namby Pamby.
Success made the author not less solemn, but more pompous. He wore
the sword, which he could boldly use, although his foes called him
Quaker Philips--with an air; and the successful author of a new
tragedy could become arrogant enough to hang a rod up at Button's,
and threaten Pope with a degrading application of it, for having
expressed contempt of the authors Pastorals.[96]
Whatever may be thought of this, Rowe and Philips were the first
authors of the last century who wrote tragedies which have been
played in our own times. But a greater than either was rising; for
Addison was giving the last touches to "Cato;" and he, with Steele
and others, was imparting his views and ideas on the subject to
favourite actors over tavern dinners.
At the close of this season, was finished the brief career of an
actor, who was generally considered to possess rare talents, but
who was variously judged of by such competent judicial authority as
Steele and Cibber. I allude to Richard Estcourt. His London career
as a player lasted little more than half a dozen years, during which
he distinguished himself by creating Serjeant Kite and Sir Francis
Gripe. Downes asserts that he was a born actor. Steele mournfully
says, "If I were to speak of merit neglected, misapplied, or
misunderstood, might I not say that Estcourt has a great capacity?
but it is not the interest of those who bear a figure on the stage
that his talents were understood. It is their business to impose upon
him what cannot become him, or keep out of his hands anything in
which he could shine." Chetwood alludes to his habit of interpolating
jokes and catches of his own, which raised a laugh among the general
public, but which made critics frown. Cibber has been accused of
being unjust to him, but Colley's judgment seems to be rendered with
his usual fairness, lucidity, and skill.
"This man," says Cibber in his _Apology_, "was so amazing and
extraordinary a mimic, that no man or woman, from the coquette to the
privy-counsellor, ever moved or spoke before him, but he could carry
their voice, look, mien, and motion, instantly into another company.
I have heard him make long harangues and form various arguments,
even in the manner of thinking, of an eminent pleader at the bar,
with every the least article and singularity of his utterance so
perfectly imitated that he was the very _alter ipse_, scarce to be
distinguished from his original. Yet more, I have seen upon the
margin of the written part of Falstaff, which he acted, his own notes
and observations upon almost every speech of it, describing the true
spirit of the humour, and with what tone of voice, with what look or
gesture, each of them ought to be delivered. Yet in his execution
upon the stage, he seemed to have lost all those just ideas he had
formed of it, and almost through the character he laboured under a
heavy load of flatness. In a word, with all his skill in mimicry, and
knowledge of what ought to be done, he never upon the stage could
bring it truly into practice, but was, upon the whole, a languid,
unaffecting actor."
His Kite, however, is said to have been full of lively, dashing,
natural humour. Off the stage, Estcourt's society was eagerly sought
for, and he was to be met in the best company, where, on festive
nights, he recited, gave his imitations, and was not too proud
to pocket his guerdon. The old Duke of Marlborough gladly held
fellowship with Estcourt, and as the latter occasionally got guerdon
out of the Duke, he must have been a great and very affecting actor
indeed. It was probably his spirit of good fellowship which induced
him to leave the stage (in 1711) for another calling. This change was
sufficiently important for the _Spectator_ to notice, with a fine
bit of raillery, too:--"Estcourt has lain in, at the Bumper, Covent
Garden, neat, natural wines, to be sold wholesale, as well as retail,
by his old servant, trusty Anthony (Aston). As Estcourt is a person
altogether unknowing in the wine trade, it cannot but be doubted that
he will deliver the wine in the same natural purity that he receives
it from the merchants," &c.
On the foundation of the "Beef Steak Club," Estcourt was appointed
_Providore_; and in the exercise of this office to the chief wits and
leading men of the nation, he wore a small gold gridiron, suspended
round his neck by a green silk riband. Dr. King alludes to the
company, their qualities, and the dignity of the ex-actor, in his
_Art of Cookery_:
"He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes,
May be a fit companion o'er beef steaks.
His name may be to future times unrolled,
In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's made of gold."
Estcourt died in 1712, and was buried in the "yard" of St. Paul's,
Covent Garden. Near him lie Kynaston and Wycherley, Susanna
Centlivre, Wilks, Macklin, and other once vivacious stage celebrities
of later times.
I have already had to notice, and shall have to do so again, the
despotic power exercised by the Lord Chamberlain over theatrical
affairs. One of the most remarkable instances presents itself
this year, in connection with the Opera House, indeed, but still
illustrative of my subject. John Hughes, who will subsequently appear
as a dramatic author, of purer pretensions, had written the words for
the composer of "Calypso and Telemachus." A crowd of the "quality,"
connoisseurs and amateurs, had attended the rehearsal, with which
they were so satisfied that a subscription was formed to support the
performance of the opera. This aroused the jealousy of the Italian
company then in London, who appealed for protection to the Duke of
Shrewsbury, the then Chamberlain.
This Duke was the Charles Talbot, in whose house it had been
decided that William of Orange should be invited to England, and
who, corresponding with James after William was on the throne, had
been discovered, and forgiven. He had been loved, it is said, by
Queen Mary and the Duchess of Marlborough; but this able, gentle,
wayward, and one-eyed statesman, was at this present time the
husband of an Italian lady, and on this fact, albeit she was not
a _dulcis uxor_, the Italian singers founded their hopes. As the
lady's brother was hanged at Tyburn, half a dozen years later, for
murdering his servant, Shrewsbury had no great cause, ultimately, to
be proud of the connexion. Nevertheless, it served the purpose of
the foreign vocalists, it would seem, as the Chamberlain protected
their interests, and issued an order for the suppression of the
subscription, adding, that the doors must be opened at the lowest
playhouse prices, or not at all. Even under this discouragement the
opera was played with success, and was subsequently revived, with
good effect, at Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Romantic drama, light, bustling comedy, with less vice and not much
less wit than of old, and the severest classical tragedy, challenged
the favour of the town in the Drury Lane season of 1712-13. Severe
tragedy won the wreath from its competitors.
First on the list was fat Charles Johnson, who was even a more
frequent lounger at Button's than Ambrose Philips, and who had a play
ready for representation every year and a half. It is a curious fact,
that his "Successful Pirate," a sort of melodrama, in five acts, the
scene in Madagascar, and the action made up of fighting and wooing,
aroused the ire of the virtuous Dennis. This censor wrote to the Lord
Chamberlain, complaining that in such a piece as the above the stage
was prostituted, villainy encouraged, and the theatre disgraced; that
same theatre where, a few nights previously, had been acted the "Old
Batchelor," and the "Committee," which some people, like Sir Roger,
considered a "good Church of England comedy." The piece, however,
made no impression; nor was much greater effected by that learned
proctor, Taverner's "French Advocates,"[97] nor by the farcical
"Humours of the Army," which the ex-soldier Charles Shadwell had
partly constructed out of his own military reminiscences, as he sat
at his desk in the Revenue Office at Dublin.
Equally indifferent were the public to a comedy called the "Wife of
Bath," written by a young man who had been a mercer's apprentice in
the Strand, and who was now house-steward and man of business to
the widowed Duchess of Monmouth at her residence, no longer in the
mansion on the south side of Soho Square, about to be turned into
auction rooms, but in fresh, pure, rustic, Hedge Lane, which now, as
Whitcombe Street, lacks all freshness, purity, and rusticity. The
young man's name was Gay; but it was not on this occasion that he was
to make it famous.
In stern tragedy, the "Heroic Daughter," founded on Corneille's
"Cid," wrung no tears,[98] and "Cinna's Conspiracy" raised no
emotions. The sole success of the season in this line was Addison's
"Cato," first played on the 14th of April, 1713; thus cast: Cato,
Booth; Syphax, Cibber; Juba, Wilks; Portius, Powell; Sempronius,
Mills; Marcus, Ryan; Decius, Boman; Lucius, Keen; Marcia, Mrs.
Oldfield; Lucia, Mrs. Porter.
Of the success of this tragedy, a compound of transcendent beauties
and absurdity, I shall speak, when treating of Booth, apart. It
established that actor as the great master of his art, and it brought
into notice young Ryan, the intelligent son of an Irish tailor, a
good actor, and a true gentleman. "Cato" had the good fortune to be
represented by a band of superior actors, who had been enlightened
by the instruction of Addison, and stimulated, at rehearsals, by
the sarcasm of Swift. Factions united in applause; purses--not
bouquets--were presented to the chief actor, and the Cato night was
long one of the traditions about which old players loved to entertain
all listeners.
While thus new glories were rising, old ones were fading away or
dying out. Long-nosed Tom Durfey was poor enough to be grateful for a
benefit given in his behalf, the proceeds of which furnished him with
a fresh supply of sack, and strengthened him to new attempt at song.
About the same time died the last of the actors of the Cromwellian
times, Will Peer, one who was qualified by nature to play the
Apothecary in "Romeo and Juliet," and by intelligence to deliver with
well-feigned humility the players' prologue to the play in "Hamlet,"
but whom old age, good living, and success rendered too fat for the
first and too jolly for the second.
In the season of 1713-14, Booth was associated in the licence
which Wilks, Cibber, and Dogget held at the Queen's pleasure.
Dogget withdrew on a pecuniary arrangement, agreed upon after some
litigation, and the theatre was in the hands of the other three
eminent actors. The old pieces of this season were admirably cast; of
the new pieces which were failures it is not necessary to speak, but
of two which have been played with success from that time down to the
last year, some notice is required. I allude to Rowe's "Jane Shore,"
and Mrs. Centlivre's "Wonder." The tragedy was written after the
poet had ceased to be Under-Secretary to the Duke of Queensberry,
and after he had studied Spanish, in hopes of a foreign appointment
through Halifax, who, according to the story, only congratulated
him on being able to read Don Quixote in the original! "Jane Shore"
was brought out, February 2, 1714. Hastings, Booth; Dumont, Wilks;
Glo'ster, Cibber; Jane Shore, Mrs. Oldfield; Alicia, Mrs. Porter.
A greater contrast to "Cato" could not have been devised than this
domestic tragedy, wherein all the unities are violated, the language
is familiar, and the chief incidents the starving of a repentant
wife, and the generosity of an exceedingly forgiving husband. The
audience, which was stirred by the patriotism of "Cato," was moved
to delicious tears by the sufferings and sorrow of Jane Shore, whose
character Rowe has elevated in order to secure for her the suffrages
of his hearers. The character was a triumph for Mrs. Oldfield, who
had been trained to a beautiful reading of her part by Rowe himself,
who was unequalled as a reader by any poet save Lee; and "Jane
Shore," as a success, ranked only next to "Cato." The third, sixth,
and tenth nights were for the author's benefit. On the first two the
boxes and pit "were laid together," admission half-a-guinea; the
third benefit was "at common prices."
Much expectation had been raised by this piece, and it was realised
to the utmost. It was otherwise with the "Wonder," from which
little was expected, but much success ensued.[99] The sinning wife
and moaning husband of the tragedy were the lively lady and the
quick-tempered lover of this comedy. The Violante of Mrs. Oldfield
and the Don Felix of Wilks were talked of in every coffee-house. The
wits about the door, and the young poets in the back room at the
new house set up by Button, talked as vivaciously about it as their
rivals at Tom's, on the opposite side of the way; and every prophecy
they made of the success of the comedy in times to come, does credit
to them as soothsayers.
The death of Queen Anne, on the 1st of August 1714, cannot be said
to have prematurely closed the summer season of this year. However,
the actors mourned for a month, and then a portion of them played
joyously enough, for a while, in Pinkethman's booth, at Southwark
Fair.
At this period the stage lost a lady who was as dear to it as Queen
Anne, namely, Mrs. Bradshaw. Her departure, however, was caused
by marriage, not by death; and the gentleman who carried her off,
instead of being a rollicking gallant, or a worthless peer, was a
staid, solemn, worthy antiquary, Martin Folkes, who rather surprised
the town by wedding young Mistress Bradshaw. The lady had been on the
stage about eighteen years; she had trodden it from early childhood,
and always with unblemished reputation. She had her reward in an
excellent, sensible, and wealthy husband, to whom her exemplary and
prudent conduct endeared her; and the happiness of this couple was
well established. Probably, when Martin was away on Friday evenings,
at the Young Devil Tavern, where the members of the Society of
Antiquaries met, upon "pain of forfeiture of sixpence," Mrs. Folkes
sat quietly at home, thinking without sadness of the bygone times
when she won applause as the originator of the characters of Corinna,
in the "Conspirator,"[100] Sylvia, in the "Double Gallant," and
Arabella Zeal, in the "Fair Quaker." In other respects, Mistress
Bradshaw is one of the happy, honest women who have no history.
If the age of Queen Anne was not quite so fully the golden age of
authors as it has been supposed to be, it was still remarkable for
a patronage of literature hitherto unparalleled. Addison, Congreve,
Gay, Ambrose Philips, Rowe, were among the dramatic authors who, with
men of much humbler pretensions, held public offices, were patronised
by the great, or lived at their ease. With the death of this Queen,
the patent or licence, held by Wilks, Cibber, Booth, and Dogget, died
also. In the new licence, Steele, who, since we last met with him at
the play had endured variety of fortune, was made a partner. He had
married that second wife whom he treated so politely in his little
failures of allegiance. He had established the _Tatler_, co-operated
in the _Spectator_, had begun and terminated the _Guardian_, and had
started the _Englishman_. He had served the Duke of Marlborough in
and out of office, and had been elected M.P. for Stockbridge, after
nobly resigning his Commissionership of Stamps, and his pension as
"servant to the late Prince George of Denmark." He had been expelled
the House for writing what the House called seditious pamphlets,
and had then returned to literature, and now to occupation as a
manager. From the new government, under the new king, by whom he
was soon after knighted, Steele had influence enough to ultimately
obtain a _patent_, in the names of himself, Booth, Wilks, and Cibber,
which protected them from some small tyrannies with which they were
occasionally visited by the officials in the Lord Chamberlain's
office.
The season of 1714-15 was not especially remarkable, save for this,
that the great actors who were patentees frequently played small
parts, in order to give young actors a chance. It was not given,
however, to every young actor; for, on the 20th of April, 1715, when
Rowe's "Lady Jane Grey" was produced (Dudley, Booth; Lady Jane, Mrs.
Oldfield), the very insignificant part of the Lieutenant of the Tower
was played by a new actor from Ireland,--one James Quin, who was
destined to equal Booth in some parts, and to be surpassed in some,
by an actor yet at school,--David Garrick.
[Illustration: (James Quin.)]
Charles Johnson was, of course, ready with a comedy, stolen from
various sources,--"Country Lasses." Gay, who had returned from
Hanover with the third Earl of Clarendon, whose secretary he had
become, after leaving the service of the Duchess of Monmouth,
produced his hilarious burlesque of old and modern tragedies,--the
"What d'ye call It?" The satire of this piece was so fine, that deaf
gentlemen who saw the tragic action and could not hear the
words, and the new sovereign and court who heard the words but could
not understand their sense, were put into great perplexity; while the
honest galleries, reached by the solemn sounds, and taking manner for
matter, were affected to such tears as they could shed, at the most
farcical and high-sounding similes. It was only after awhile that the
joke was comprehended, and that the "What d'ye call It?" was seen to
be a capital burlesque of "Venice Preserved." The very Templars, who
of course comprehended it all, from the first, and went to hiss the
piece, for the honour of Otway, could not do so, for laughing; and
this only perplexed the more the matter-of-fact people, not so apt to
discover a joke.[101]
Rowe's "Lady Jane" did not prove so attractive as "Jane Shore." There
were only innocence and calamity wherewith to move the audience; no
guilt; no profound intrigue. But there is much force in some of the
scenes. The very variety of the latter, indeed, was alleged against
the author, as a defect, by the many slaves of the unity of time and
place. It was objected to Rowe, that in his violation of the unities
he went beyond other offenders,--not only changing the scene with
the acts, but varying it within the acts. For this, however, he had
good authority in older and better dramatists. "To change the scene,
as is done by Rowe, in the middle of an act, is to add more acts to
the play; since an act is so much of the business as is transacted
without interruption. Rowe, by this licence, easily extricates
himself from difficulties, as in 'Lady Jane Grey,' when we have been
terrified by all the dreadful pomp of public execution, and are
wondering how the heroine or poet will proceed; no sooner has Jane
pronounced some prophetic rhymes than--pass and be gone--the scene
closes, and Pembroke and Gardiner are turned out upon the stage."
The critic wished to stay and witness a "public execution," not
satisfied with the pathos of the speech uttered by Jane, and which,
for tenderness, sets the scene in fine contrast with that of the
quarrelling and reconciliation between Pembroke and Guilford. Rowe's
Jane Grey interests the heart more fully than Jane Shore or Calista:
but the last two ladies have a touch of boldness about them, in which
the first, from her very innocence, is wanting; and audiences are,
therefore, more excited by the loudly-proclaimed wrongs of the women
who have gone astray than by the tender protests of the victim who
suffers for the crimes of others.
George Powell ended his seven and twentieth season this year, at
the close of which he died. For the old actor gone, a young actress
appeared,--Mrs. Horton, "one of the most beautiful women that ever
trod the stage." She had been a "stroller," ranting tragedy in barns
and country towns, and playing Cupid, in a booth at suburban fairs.
The attention of managers was directed towards her; and Booth, after
seeing her act in Southwark, engaged her for Drury Lane, where her
presence was more agreeable to the public than particularly pleasant
to dear Mrs. Oldfield.
FOOTNOTES:
[94] Acted about seven times. In second edition Dr. Doran quotes
a letter from Cromwell to Pope in which is stated that this play
brought Johnson £300.
[95] Acted about nine times.
[96] This story is not true. (Second edition).
[97] Should be "Female Advocates."
[98] Yet it was played about eight times.
[99] It was acted only six times.
[100] Should be "Confederacy."
[101] Quoted from a humorous account of the piece's reception,
written by Pope.
[Illustration: SPILLER'S BENEFIT TICKET.]
CHAPTER XVI.
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
"Augustus," as it was the fashion to call George I., by performing
a justifiable act, inflicted some injury this year, by restoring
the Letters Patent of Charles II. to Christopher Rich, of which the
latter had been deprived, and under which his son, John, opened the
revived theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, on the 18th December 1714,
with the "Recruiting Officer." The enlarged stage was "superbly
adorned with looking-glasses on both sides;" a circumstance which
Quin said "was an excellent trap to such actresses who admired
their own persons more than they attended to the duties of their
profession." Some good actors left Drury for the Fields;--Keen,
the two Bullocks, Pack, Spiller, Cory, Knap, Mrs. Rogers, and Mrs.
Knight. Cibber rather contemptuously says of such of the above as he
names, that "they none of them had more than a negative merit,--being
able only to do us more harm by leaving us without notice, than they
could do us good by remaining with us; for, though the best of them
could not support a play, the worst of them, by their absence, could
maim it,--as the loss of the least pin in a watch may obstruct its
motion."
John Rich's company in the Fields either played old pieces, or
adaptations from them, or "from the French"; none of which deserved
even a passing word, except a roaring farce--pieces which now grew
popular--called "Love in a Sack," by Griffin, whom I notice not as
an indifferent author, but as an excellent comedian, who made his
first appearance in a double capacity. Griffin may also be noticed
under a double qualification. He was a gentleman and a glazier. His
father was a Norfolk rector, and had been chaplain to the Earl of
Yarmouth,--that gallant Sir Robert Paston, who was in France and
Flanders with James, Duke of York. In the Paston Free School, at
North Walsham, Griffin learnt his "rudiments," having done which
his sire apprenticed him to the useful but not dignified calling of
a glazier. The "'prentice lad," disgusted at the humiliation, ran
away, took to strolling, found his way, after favourable report, to
Rich's theatre, and there proved so good an actor, that the Drury
Lane management ultimately lured him away to a stage where able
competitors polished him into still greater brilliancy. The season
concluded on the last day of July[102] 1715 with a "benefit for Tim
Buck, to release him out of prison."
In the following October, Drury commenced a season which, save a
few days of summer vacation, extended to the close of August 1716.
During this time, Shakspeare's best plays were frequently acted,
old comedies revived with success, and obscure farces played and
consigned to oblivion. The great attempt, if not success, of the
season, was the comedy of the "Drummer, or the Haunted House," first
played in March 1716, and not known to be Addison's till Steele
published the fact after the author's death. Tonson, however, knew
or suspected the truth, for he gave £50 for the copyright. Wilks,
Cibber, Mills, and Mrs. Oldfield could not secure a triumph for the
play--which Steele thought was more disgraceful to the stage than
to the comedy. There is a novel mixture of sentiment, caricature,
and farcical incident in this piece. Warton describes it as "a just
picture of life and real manners; where the poet never speaks in
his own person, or totally drops or forgets a character, for the
sake of introducing a brilliant simile or acute remark; where no
train is laid for wit, no Jeremys or Bens are suffered to appear."
More natural, it was less brilliant than the artificial comedies
of Congreve; but its failure probably vexed the author, as it
certainly annoyed the publisher. Tickell omitted it from his edition
of Addison's works, but Steele gave these reasons for ascribing it to
the latter; they are a little confused, but they probably contain the
truth:--"If I remember right, the fifth act was written in a week's
time.... He would walk about his room, and dictate in language with
as much freedom and ease as any one could write it down.... I have
been often thus employed by him.... I will put all my credit among
men of wit, for the truth of my averment, when I presume to say,
that no one but Mr. Addison was in any other way the writer of the
'Drummer.' ... At the same time, I will allow that he has sent for me
... and told me, that 'a gentleman, then in the room, had written a
play that he was sure I would like; but it was to be a secret; and he
knew I would take as much pains, since he recommended it, as I would
for him.'"
At Lincoln's Inn Fields, the season of 1715-16 had this of remarkable
in it, that John Rich revived the "Prophetess," as it enabled him to
display his ability in the introduction and management of machinery,
and his success in raising the prices of admission. Bullock's farce,
the "Cobbler of Preston," was begun on a Friday, finished the next
day, and played on the Tuesday following--in order to anticipate
Charles Johnson's farce,--like this, derived from the introduction to
the "Taming of the Shrew," at Drury Lane. Of the other plays--one,
the "Fatal Vision," was written by Aaron Hill, who, having lost
property and temper in a project how to extract olive oil from
beech-nuts, endeavoured to inculcate in his piece the wrongfulness of
giving way to rash designs and evil passions. This play he dedicated
to the two most merciless critics of the day, Dennis and Gildon.
Then of the "Perfidious Brother," it is only to be stated that it
was a bad play stolen by young Theobald from Mestayer, a watchmaker,
who had lent him the manuscript. That an attorney should have the
reprehensible taste to steal a worthless play seemed a slur upon
the lawyer's judgment. Another new play, the "Northern Heiress," by
Mrs. Davys, a clergyman's widow, but now the lively Irish mistress
of a Cambridge coffee-house, reminds me of the five-act farces of
Reynolds, with its fops, fools, half-pay officers, fast gentlemen,
and flippant ladies. There are ten people married at the end, a
compliment to matrimony, at the hands of the widow; but there is a
slip in poetical justice; for, a lover who deserts his mistress, when
he finds, as Lord Peterborough did of Miss Moses, that her fortune
was not equal to his expectations, marries her, after discovering
that he was mistaken.
Herewith we come to the Drury Lane season of 1716-17. Booth, Wilks,
and Cibber had a famous company, in which Quin quietly made his way
to the head,[103] and Mrs. Horton's beauty acted with good effect
on Mrs. Oldfield. In the way of novelty, Mrs. Centlivre produced
a tragedy, the "Cruel Gift," in which nobody dies, and lovers are
happily married. The most notable affair, however, was the comedy,
"Three Hours after Marriage," in which Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot,
three grave men, who pretended to instruct and improve mankind,
insulted modesty, virtue, and common decency, in the grossest way,
by speech or inuendo. There is not so much filth in any other comedy
of this century, and the trio of authors stand stigmatised for their
attempt to bring in the old corruption. In strange contrast we have
Mrs. Manley, a woman who began life with unmerited misfortune, and
carried it on with unmitigated profligacy, producing a highly moral,
semi-religious drama, "Lucius."
But while moral poets were polluting the stage, and immoral women
undertaking to purify it, a reverend Archdeacon of Stowe, the
historian, Lawrence Echard, in conjunction with Lestrange, put on
the stage of Drury Lane, a translation of the "Eunuchus" of Terence.
It did not survive the third night; but the audience might have
remarked how much more refinedly the Carthaginian of old could treat
a delicate subject than the Christian poets of a later era--or, to
speak correctly, than the later poets of a Christian era.
In this season I find the first trace of a "fashionable night," and
a later hour for beginning the play than any of subsequent times. I
quote from Genest:--"18 June, 1717. By particular desire of several
Ladies of Quality. 'Fatal Marriage.' Biron, Booth; Villeroy, Mills;
Isabella, Mrs. Porter; Victoria, Mrs. Younger. An exact computation
being made of the number which the Pit and Boxes will hold, they are
laid together; and no person can be admitted without tickets. By
desire, the play is not to begin till nine o'clock, by reason of the
heat of the weather--nor the house to be opened till eight." What a
change from the time when Dryden's Lovely exclaimed:--
"As punctual as three o'clock at the playhouse!"
The corresponding season (1716-17) at Lincoln's Inn requires but
brief notice. Rich, who had failed in attempting Essex, played,
as Mr. Lun, Harlequin, in the "Cheats, or the Tavern Bilkers," a
ballet-pantomime--the forerunner of the line of pantomime which,
notwithstanding our presumed advance in civilisation, still has
its admirers. In novelty, Dick Leveridge, the singer, produced
the burlesque of "Pyramus and Thisbe"--those parts being played
by himself and Pack, with irresistible comic effect, especially
when caricaturing the style of the Italian opera, where your hero
died in very good time and tune. English opera was not altogether
neglected in the Fields, but little was accomplished in the way of
upholding the drama. Bullock produced a comedy, which he was accused
of stealing from a manuscript by Savage--"Woman's a Riddle." It is a
long, coarse farce, in which the most decent incident is the hanging
of Sir Amorous Vainwit, from a balcony, as he is trying to escape
in woman's clothes, which are caught by a hook, and beneath which a
footman stands with a flambeau. We learn, too, from this comedy, that
young ladies carried snuff-boxes in those days.
Taverner, the proctor, also produced a comedy quite as extravagant,
and not a whit less immoral than Bullock's--the "Artful Husband."
It had, however, great temporary success, quite enough to turn the
author's head, and by his acts to show that there was nothing in it.
The "Artful Husband," however, brought into notice a young actor
who had but a small part to play,--Stockwell. His name was Spiller.
The Duke of Argyle thought, and spoke well of him before this. On
the night in question, Spiller, who dressed his characters like
an artist, went through his first scenes exquisitely, and without
being recognised by his patron, who came behind the scenes, and had
recommended him warmly to the notice of Rich. Genest says he hopes
this story is true. I am sure it is not improbable; and for this
reason. I once saw Lafont acting the Son in "Père et Fils." Opposite
to the side on which he made his exit an aged actor, who represented
the father, passed me. I was delighted with the truth and beauty
of his acting, and at the end of the scene asked who he was. To my
astonishment, I heard that Lafont, whom I had well known as an actor
for more than twenty years, was playing both parts. This identifying
power was Spiller's distinguishing merit. Riccoboni saw the young
actor play an old man with a perfectness not to be expected but from
players of the longest experience. "How great was my surprise," says
Riccoboni, "when I learnt that he was a young man, about the age
of twenty-six. I could not believe it; but owned that it might be
possible, had he only used a broken and a trembling voice, and had
only an extreme weakness possessed his body, because I conceived
that a young actor might, by the help of art, imitate that debility
of nature to such a pitch of excellence; but the wrinkles of his
face, his sunk eyes, and his loose yellow cheeks, the most certain
marks of age, were incontestable proofs against what they said to me.
Notwithstanding all this, I was forced to submit to truth, because I
was credibly informed that the actor, to fit himself for the part of
this old man, spent an hour in dressing himself, and disguised his
face so nicely, and painted so artificially a part of his eyebrows
and eyelids, that at the distance of six paces it was impossible not
to be deceived."
In the next season, at Drury (1717-18), the only remarkable piece
produced was Cibber's adaptation of "Tartuffe," under the name of
the "Nonjuror." In the lustre of the "Nonjuror" paled and died out
the first play by Savage, "Love in a Veil." Not twenty years had
elapsed since this luckless and heartless young vagabond was born,
in Fox Court, Gray's Inn Lane, his unknown mother, but not that
light lady, the Countess of Macclesfield, wearing a mask. Savage
had passed from a shoemaker's shop to the streets, had written a
poem on the Bangorian Controversy, had adapted a play translated
from the Spanish, by the wife of Mr. Baron Price, and which Bullock
re-adapted and produced at Drury Lane before Savage could get his own
accepted. "Love in a Veil" seems to have been founded on an incident
in the Spanish comedy; but however this may be, it failed to obtain
the public approval. The author, however, did not altogether fail;
generous Wilks patronised the boy, and Steele, befriending a lad of
parts, designed to give him £1000, which he had not got, with the
hand of a natural daughter, whom the young and wayward poet did not
get. The "Nonjuror" alone survives as a memorial of the Drury season
of 1717-18.
We owe the piece to fear and hatred of the Pope and the Pretender.
It addressed itself to so wide a public that Lintot gave the liberal
sum of a hundred guineas for the copyright, and it was so acceptable
to the King that he gave a dedication fee of twice that number of
guineas to the author, who addressed him as "dread Sir," and spoke
of himself as "the lowest of your subjects from the theatre."
Cibber adds, "Your comedians, Sir, are an unhappy society, whom
some severe heads think wholly useless, and others, dangerous to
the young and innocent. This comedy is, therefore, an attempt to
remove that prejudice, and to show what honest and laudable uses
may be made of the theatre, when its performances keep close to the
true purposes of its institution." Cibber goes on to remark, that
perhaps the idly and seditiously inclined may cease to disturb their
brains about embarrassing the government, if "proper amusements" be
provided for them. For such his play is rather a chastisement than an
amusement, and he thinks _that_ would have been all the better taken
had it not been administered by a comedian. The Nonjurors, whose
allegiance was paid to the Pretender, were perhaps not worthy of a
more exalted scourger; but he fears that truth and loyalty demanded
a nobler champion. He flatteringly alludes to the small number of
malcontents. His piece had either crushed them, or their forces were
not so great as supposed, "there being no assembly where people are
so free, and apt to speak their minds, as in a crowded theatre, of
which," says the courtly fellow, "your Majesty may have lately seen
an instance in the insuppressible acclamations that were given on
your appearing to honour this play with your royal presence."
On the night of representation, Rowe, in a prologue--he was now Poet
Laureate and Land Surveyor of the Customs in the Port of London,
deprecated the piece being considered unjustifiably discourteous.
"Think not our colours may too strongly paint
The stiff non-juring separation saint.
Good breeding ne'er commands us to be civil
To those who give the nation to the devil!"
The play was admirably acted by Booth, Colonel Woodvil; Mills, Sir
John; Wilks, Heartley; Cibber, Dr. Wolf (the Cantwell of the modern
arrangement); and Walker (soon to be famous as Captain Macheath),
Charles. Mrs. Porter played Lady Woodvil, and Mrs. Oldfield turned
the heads and touched the hearts of all lively and susceptible folks
by her exquisite coquetry, in Maria. The play was not a servile
imitation of, but an excellent adaptation to modern circumstances of,
the "Tartuffe." Thoroughly English, it abounds with the humour and
manner of Cibber, and despite some offences against taste, it was at
this time the purest comedy on the stage. There was farce enough for
the gallery, maxim and repartee, suggestions and didactic phrases for
the rest of the house. The success surpassed even expectation. It
raised against Cibber a phalanx of implacable foes--foes who howled
at everything of which he was, afterwards, the author; but it gained
for him his advancement to the poet-laureateship, and an estimation
which caused some people to place him, for usefulness to the cause of
true religion, on an equality with the author of "The Whole Duty of
Man!" Cibber foresaw the tempest, and, probably, also the prosperous
gales which were to follow, to which there is some allusion in the
Epilogue spoken by Mrs. Oldfield, which, of course, had a fling
against marriage:--
"Was't not enough that critics might pursue him?
But must he rouse a party to undo him?
These blows, I told him, on his plays would fall:
But he, unmov'd, cried, ----'s blood! we'll stand it all!"
In the theatre itself the opposition to the piece was confined,
Cibber says, to "a few smiles of silent contempt. As the satire was
chiefly employed on the enemies of the Government, they were not so
hardy as to own themselves such, by any higher disapprobation or
resentment." They made up for this constrained silence, as above
noted, and _Mist's Journal_, for fifteen years, lost no opportunity
of mauling the detested offender. With the editor of that paper,
says Cibber, "though I could never persuade my wit to have an open
account with him (for, as he had no effects of his own, I did not
think myself obliged to answer his bills), notwithstanding, I will
be so charitable to his real _manes_, and to the ashes of his paper,
as to mention one particular civility he paid to my memory after he
thought he had ingeniously killed me. Soon after the 'Nonjuror' had
received the favour of the town, I read in one of his journals the
following short paragraph:--'Yesterday died Mr. Colley Cibber, late
comedian of the Theatre Royal, notorious for writing the _Nonjuror_.'
The compliment, in the latter part, I confess," adds Cibber, "I did
not dislike, because it came from so impartial a judge."
The stage lost this year an excellent actor, Irish Bowen, who, at
the age of fifty-two, was slain in duel by young Quin.[104] Hitherto
the sword had dealt lightly with actors. In 1692, indeed, Sandford
nearly killed Powell, on the stage. On the 13th of October they were
acting together, in "OEdipus, King of Thebes," when the former, to
whom a real dagger had been delivered by the property-man, instead
of a weapon, the blade of which run up, when the point was pressed,
into the handle, gave poor Powell a stab three inches deep; the wound
was, at first, thought to be mortal, but Powell recovered. Five years
later, in July 1697, I find brief mention in the papers of a duel
between an actor and an officer. The initials only of the principals
are given: "Mr. H., an actor, of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, fought
Mr. D., an officer, at Barnes Elms." Whether the former was young
Hodgson or young Harris is not now to be determined, nor the grounds
of the quarrel. The issue of it was that the player dangerously
wounded the soldier; and it is added, that both parties exhibited
brilliant courage. Bowen was the original representative of Sir
Joshua[105] Wittol ("Old Batchelor"), Jeremy ("Love for Love"), and
Foigard ("Beaux' Stratagem").
Quin passed over to Lincoln's Inn Fields in this season of 1717-18,
where he played Hotspur, Tamerlane, Morat ("Aurungzebe"), Mark
Antony, and created the part of Scipio, in the "Scipio Africanus,"
written by young Beckingham, the pride of Merchant Tailors' School.
Beckingham must also have been the pride of Fleet Street, and
especially of the craft of linen-drapers, of which his father was
a worthy and well-to-do member. The piece was played on the 18th
of February 1718. The author was then but nineteen years of age,
and was full of bright promise. A tragedy by one so young, excited
the public, and most especially the juvenile public, at Merchant
Tailors', where Dr. Smith was head-master. The Doctor and sub-masters
held the stage in abhorrence till now, when a brilliant _alumnus_
was likely to shed lustre on the corporation of "Merchant Tailors
and Linen Armourers." Now they proclaimed high jubilee, gave the
lads a half-holiday on the author's night, and joyfully saw the
whole school swarming to the pit of Lincoln's Inn, to uphold the
tragedy by this honoured _condiscipulus_. The masters, in this, acted
against their own former precept and example; but they made amends
for it by religious zeal, and by expelling all the Jewish pupils from
the school! Israel was the scapegoat, and the Christian sense of
propriety was gratified. But Quin's Scipio established a taste for
theatricals at Merchant Tailors', where classical plays were acted,
for some years, as at Westminster. Beckingham's tragedy exhibits a
romantic story, or stories, in a classical costume. There is severity
enough to gratify rigid tastes, with a little of over-warmth of
action on the part of one of three lovers, which shows that the young
poet was not unread in the older masters.
But there were worse and better plays than "Scipio" brought out
on the same stage this season. Taverner failed in a _pendant_ to
his "Artful Husband," the "Artful Wife." Bullock did little for
the credit of the stage by his farce of the "Perjuror," and Sir
Thomas Moore justly criticised his own tragedy of "Mangora, King of
the Timbusians," when he called it a "trifle." It is a very noisy
trifle, concerned with love, battle, murder, and worse, between
the Spaniards and South American Indians. Rich thought its bustle
might carry its absurdities successfully through, and Sir Thomas
stimulated the actors, when at rehearsal, by inviting them to supper,
at which Leigh, the two Bullocks, Williams, Ogden, Knapp, and
Giffard, Mistresses Knight, Bullock, and Kent, made a joyous party,
as hilarious as the audience was, whose laughter alone prevented them
from hissing down the nonsense of an obscure man who was knighted for
some forgotten service--certainly not for any rendered to the Muses.
The piece of this season which had stuff in it to cause it to live
to our own times, was Mrs. Centlivre's "Bold Stroke for a Wife."
Sprightly Mrs. Centlivre was as fervent a Whig as Cibber, and had
written verses enough in praise of Brunswick to entitle her to be
Poetess-Laureate, had the Princess Caroline had a voice in the
matter, when Rowe died this very year, and Newcastle recommended
tipsy Eusden for the office of "birthday fibber." The "Bold Stroke,"
laughed at and denounced by Wilks, and taken reluctantly in hand by
the actors, is a fair specimen of that lighter comedy which borders
upon farce, but in which the fun is genuine, and the incidents not
so improbable but that they may be accepted, or, by the rapidity of
their succession, laughed at and forgotten.
This season, withal, was not successful. It broke the heart of Keen,
actor and sharer. In the former capacity, though Savage thought his
life worth narrating, he won few laurels,--but his wreath was not
entirely leafless. He was loved, too, by his brethren of both houses,
whose subscriptions defrayed the expenses of a funeral, at which
upwards of two hundred persons walked in deep mourning.[106]
At this time, Drury, with its old, strong company, was patronised
by court and town. Plays, acted at Hampton Court, before the King,
were repeated in the public theatre. Of the former, I shall speak
in a future page. Two new comedies proved, indeed, inferior to Mrs.
Centlivre's "Bold Stroke," at the other house. Charles Johnson's
"Masquerade," borrowed a little from Shirley, and more from Molière,
furnished, in Ombre and Lady Frances Ombre, some ideas, probably, to
Cibber, when he placed a similar pair on the stage, in Lord and Lady
Townley. A worse piece was more successful,--the rambling comedy,
"Chit Chat," by a Mr. Thomas Killigrew, a gentleman who, like his
namesake, had a place at court, but not his namesake's wit. The
courtiers, with the Duke of Argyle at their head, carried the piece
through eleven representations, and enriched the treasury by £1000.
The great effort of the season was made in bringing out "Busiris," a
tragedy, by the Rev. Dr. Young, author of _Night Thoughts_. It was
played on March 7, 1719, by Booth, Elrington, Wilks, Mills, Walker
and Thurmond, Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Thurmond.
"Busiris" was Young's earliest tragedy. It is written in a stilted
and inflated style, and bears all the marks of a juvenile production.
The plot of the piece is void of all ingenuity; but there is little
that is borrowed in it, save the haughty message sent by Busiris to
the Persian Ambassador, which is the same as that returned by the
Ethiopian prince to Cambyses, in the third book of Herodotus. Of the
phrasing, and indeed of the incidents of this tragedy, Fielding made
excellent fun, in his mock tragedy of "Tom Thumb." The sovereigns
and courtiers of Egypt gave little trouble to be converted into
Arthur and Dollalolla, Noodle, Doodle, the great little prince, and
Huncamunca. The travestie is rich and facile; not least so in that
passage mimicking the various addresses to the sun, who is bid to
rise no more, but hide his face and put the world in mourning, On
these, Fielding remarks, that "the author of 'Busiris' is extremely
anxious to prevent the sun's blushing at any indecent object; and,
therefore, on all such occasions, he addresses himself to the sun,
and desires him to keep out of the way." It was dedicated to the Duke
of Newcastle, the patron of Eusden, the laureat, "because the late
instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon
favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had
taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron." If this favour
consisted in rewarding Young for writing for the court, the favour
_may_ have been "undeserved," but it was by no means "uncommon."
The concluding incident of this play,--the double suicide of
Memnon (Wilks) and Mandane (Mrs. Oldfield), found such favour in
the author's own estimation, that he repeated it in his next two
tragedies, in each of which a couple of lovers make away with
themselves. This tripled circumstance reminds a critic of the remark
of Dryden:--"The dagger and the bowl are always at hand to butcher a
hero, when a poet wants the brains to save him."
Dr. Young was at this time thirty-eight years of age, but was not
yet "famous." Born when Charles II. was king and Dryden laureat,
the Hampshire godson of the Princess Anne, was as yet only known as
having been the friend of the Duke of Wharton, and of Tickell; as
having first come before the public in 1713,[107] with a poem to
Granville, in which there is good dramatic criticism; and of having
since written poems of promise rather than of merit, the latest of
which was a paraphrase on part of the book of Job, which, curiously
enough, abounds with phrases which show the author's growing
intercourse with the playhouse and theatrical people. "Busiris" was
written in the year that "Cato" was played, but its performance was
delayed till this year, and its dramatic death occurred long before
"Cato" departed from the stage,--to be read, at least, as long as an
admirer of Addison survives.
[Illustration: Mr. Garrick as Hamlet.]
FOOTNOTES:
[102] Should be August.
[103] Quin can hardly be said to have been even near the head of this
company.
[104] See page 175 for some curious facts relating to this.
[105] Sir Joseph.
[106] He was buried at St. Clement's. Six actors held the
pall.--_Doran MS._
[107] 1712.
[Illustration: THE NEW AND OLD THEATRES ROYAL, HAYMARKET.]
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PROGRESS OF JAMES QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BARTON BOOTH.
Quin made great advances in the public favour in the season of
1718-19, at Lincoln's Inn, where, however, as yet, he only shared
the leading business in tragedy and comedy with Ryan, and the
less distinguished Evans. Southwark Fair, a fashionable resort,
contributed to the company a new actor, Bohemia or Boheme, with
great comic power; and Susan Mountfort replaced for a few weeks
Mrs. Rogers, who had held for a time the tragic parts once acted by
Mrs. Barry and Bracegirdle, and who died about this time. Of Susan
Mountfort's touching end I will speak in a future page. Mrs. Rogers
had been on the stage since 1692, and numbered among her original
parts:--Imoinda, Oriana, Melinda, and Isabinda, in "Oroonoko,"
"Inconstant," "Recruiting Officer," and "Busy Body."
During this season a French company acted for some time in the
Fields, where the "Tartuffe" was also played against the "Nonjuror."
The only novelty worthy of notice was the "Sir Walter Raleigh" of
poor Dr. Sewell, in which Quin played the hero with indifferent
success. The author was more remarkable than his piece. He was
of good family, and a pupil of Boerhaave; but, unsuccessful as a
practitioner in London, he, curiously enough, gained fortune and
reputation in the smaller sphere of Hampstead, until, as a singular
biographical notice informs us, "three other physicians settled at
the same place, after which his gains became very inconsiderable."
He became a poor poet instead of a rich physician; "kept no house,
but was a boarder; was much esteemed, and so frequently invited to
the tables of gentlemen in the neighbourhood, that he had seldom
occasion to dine at home." Seven years after Quin failed to lift
him into dramatic notoriety, this Tory opponent of the Whig Bishop
of Salisbury, and one of the minor contributors (it is said) to the
_Spectator_ and _Tatler_, though he is not included in Bissett's
lives of the writers in the first-named periodical, died, "and was
supposed," says the anonymous biographer already quoted, "at that
time to be in very indigent circumstances, as he was interred in the
meanest manner, his coffin being little better than those allotted by
the parish to their poor who are buried from the workhouses, neither
did a single friend or relation attend him to the grave. No memorial
was placed over his remains; but they lie just under a holly-tree,
which formed part of a hedge-row, that was once the boundary of the
churchyard." Such was the end of the poet, through whom Lincoln's Inn
Fields hoped, in 1719, to recover its ancient prosperity.
Eventful incidents marked the Drury Lane season of 1719-20. It
commenced in the middle of September, between which time, and the
last week of the following January, things went on prosperously as
between players and public, but not so as between patentees and the
government. Within the period mentioned Miss Santlow had made Booth
happy--an union which helped to make Susan Mountfort mad,[108] and
Dennis's "Invader of His Country," and Southerne's "Spartan Dame,"
were produced. The former was the second of three adaptations[109]
from Shakspeare's "Coriolanus." Forty years before, in 1682, Nahum
Tate fancied there was something in the times like that depicted
in the days of Coriolanus. To make the parallel more striking, he
pulled Shakspeare's play to pieces, and out of the fragments built up
his own "Ingratitude of a Commonwealth." Nahum altered all for the
worse; and he wrote a new fifth act, which was still worse than the
mere verbal or semi-alterations. The impudence of the destroyer was
illustrated by his cool assurance in the prologue, that--
"He only ventures to make gold from ore,
And turn to money what lay dead before."
Tate was now followed by Dennis, who altered "Coriolanus" for
political reasons, brought it out at Drury Lane, in the cause of his
country and sovereign, and perhaps thought to frighten the Pretender
by it. The failure was complete; although Booth played the principal
male character, and Mrs. Porter Volumnia.
Southerne's "Spartan Dame" had been interdicted in the reign of
William and Mary, as it was supposed that the part of Celonis (Mrs.
Oldfield), wavering between her duty to her father, Leonidas, and
that owing to her husband, Cleombrotus (Booth), would have painfully
reminded some, and joyfully reminded other, of the spectators,
of the position of Mary, between her royal sire and her princely
consort. But it would have been as reasonable to prohibit "Othello"
or "King Lear," because of the presence in them of individuals so
related. Southerne's play has no local colour about it, but abounds
in anachronisms and incongruities, and it survived but during a brief
popularity. The author was now sixty years of age, Dennis seven years
his senior.[110] The older and unluckier, and less courteous poet,
gained nothing by his play to compensate for the annuity he had
purchased, but the term of which he had outlived. Southerne gained
£500 by his "author's nights" alone; for patronage and presence on
which occasions, the plausible poet personally solicited his friends.
For the copyright he received an additional £120.
About six weeks after Southerne's play was produced--that is, after
the performance of the "Maid's Tragedy," January 23, 1720, an order
from the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Chamberlain, suddenly closed the
theatre! The alleged cause was "_information_ of misbehaviour on the
part of the players." The real cause lay in Sir Richard Steele, the
principal man who held the patent!
Since we last parted with the knight, he had been ungenerously
trying, in pamphlets, to hunt to the scaffold the last Tory ministers
of Queen Anne; he had lost his second wife; he had been projecting
an union of Church and Kirk; he had invented a means of keeping
fish alive while being transported across sea; he had been living
extravagantly; but he had also offended his patron, the Duke of
Newcastle, and therewith, the King, whose servant the Duke was, and
the Government, of which the Duke was a member. Steele, in fact, had
vehemently and successfully opposed, by speech and pamphlet, Lord
Sunderland's Peerage Bill, which proposed to establish twenty-five
hereditary peers of Scotland to sit in the English House of Lords,
in place of the usual election of sixteen; and to create six new
English peerages, with the understanding that the Crown would never,
in future, make a new peer except on the extinction of an old family.
Steele denounced, in the _Plebeian_, the aristocratical tendency
of the bill, and to such purpose, that the theatre he governed was
closed, and his name struck out of the licence!
Steele appealed to the public, in a pamphlet, the _Theatre_; and
showed, by counsel's opinion, how he had been wronged; he estimated
his loss at nearly £10,000, and finally sank into distress, with
mingled bitterness and wit. His old ducal patron had loudly
proclaimed he would ruin him. "This," said Steele, "from a man in his
circumstances, to one in mine, is as great as the humour of Malagene,
in the comedy, who valued himself for his activity in 'tripping up
cripples.'"
Dennis entered the lists against Sir Richard; but the worst the
censor could say against the knight was, that he had a dark
complexion, and wore a black peruke. Dennis also attacked actors
generally, as rogues and vagabonds in the eye of the law, and liable
to be whipped at the King's porter's lodge. Such was the testimony of
this coarse Cockney, the son of a saddler, and a fellow who, for his
ill-doings, had been expelled from Cambridge University.
Booth, Cibber, and Wilks were permitted to reopen Drury under a
licence, after an interval of a few days, and the season thus
recommencing on the 28th of January, with the "Careless Husband,"
Cibber playing Lord Foppington, ran on to August 23rd, when the house
closed, with "Bartholomew Fair!" The only novelty was Hughes's "Siege
of Damascus," with false quantities in its classical names, and much
heaviness of treatment of an apt story. It was Hughes's first play,
and he died unconscious of its success. He was then but forty-three
years of age. The old school-fellow of Isaac Watts had begun his
career by complimenting King William and eulogising Queen Anne.
He had published clever translations, composed very gentlemanlike
music, contributed to the _Spectator_, and obtained a place among
the wits. He wrote, in 1712, the words of the opera of "Calypso and
Telemachus," to prove how gracefully the English language might
be wedded to music. Two Lord Chancellors were among his patrons,
Cowper and Macclesfield, and that he held the Secretaryship to the
Commissioners of the Peace was a pleasant consequence thereof.
His "Siege of Damascus" has for moral, that it is wrong to extend
religious faith by means of the sword. The angry lover who left the
city he had saved, to assault it with the Arabians from whom he had
saved it, and to meet the lady of his love full of abhorrence for the
traitor, might have produced some emotion; but loving, loved, living,
and dying, they all talk, seldom act, and never touch. Nevertheless,
Booth, Wilks, Mills, and Mrs. Porter had attentive listeners, if not
ecstatic auditors, during a run of ten nights. The long tirades and
the ponderous similes gratified the same audiences who took delight
in Norris's Barnaby Brittle, Shepherd's Sir Tunbelly Clumsey, and
Mrs. Booth's Helena, in the "Rover." Nevertheless, Hughes acquired
no fame. When Swift received a copy of his works, he wrote to
Pope:--"I never heard of the man in my life, yet I find your name
as a subscriber. He is too grave a poet for me; and, I think, among
the mediocrists in prose as well as in verse." Pope sanctioned the
judgment; adding, that what Hughes wanted in genius, he made up as an
honest man. Hitherto, the great tragedy of this century was "Cato."
At Lincoln's Inn, Quin played the King to Ryan's Hamlet, and created
Henri Quatre in young Beckingham's second, last, and unsuccessful
essay, "Henry IV. of France." What was the course of the Merchant
Tailors' pupil, and son of the Fleet Street linen-draper, after this,
I am unable to say, further than that he died in obscurity some ten
years later. A comedy, by "Handsome Leigh," a moderately fair actor,
called "Kensington Gardens, or the Pretenders," showed some power of
drawing character, especially an effeminate footman, Bardach, played
by Bullock, but it did nothing for a theatre which was now partly
relying on subscriptions in aid. At the head of the subscribers was
the last Baron Brooke, whose more famous son, the first Earl of
Warwick, of the Fulke Greville line, used to subscribe his political
vote so singularly--first for ministers, then for the opposition, and
thirdly, not at all, in undeviating regularity.
This piece failing, came Theobald's adaptation of Shakspeare's
"Richard II.," very much for the worse, but so far to the profit of
the adapter that the Earl of Orrery conferred on him an unusually
liberal gift for the dedication, namely, a hundred pound note,
enclosed in a box of Egyptian pebble, which was worth a score of
pounds more. The original author was less munificently remunerated,
except in abiding glory.
Another attempt served the house as poorly namely, the re-appearance
of a Mrs. Vandervelt, not because she was a clever, but that she was
a very aged actress, eighty-five years old, who had not played since
King Charles's time, but who had spirits enough to act the Widow
Rich, in the "Half-pay Officers," a vamped-up farce, by Molloy, the
political writer, and strength enough to dance a sprightly jig after
it. As the hostess of a tavern in Tottenham Court Road, Peg Fryer, as
the old dame was called off the stage, kept a merry and prosperous
house.
Another adaptation was Griffin's comedy, "Whig and Tory," which had
nothing political in it but the name; and by which that excellent low
comedian, who ought to have been in the Church, and who would not be
a glazier, did not add to his fame.
The "Imperial Captives" was a more ambitious venture, by a new
author, Mottley. It was a tragedy, in which Quin played Genseric,
King of the Vandals, and in which there is much love and a little
murder, in the old thundering style, and all at cross-purposes.
Distress made a poet of Mottley. His father was a Jacobite colonel,
who followed James to France; his mother, a thorough-bred Whig, who
stayed under William in England. Occasionally, they settled their
political differences, and met. Mottley was one of those men who
depend on patrons. He had lost a post in the Excise Office, and had
not gained either of two which had been promised him, one in the Wine
Licence Office, by Lord Halifax, and one in the Exchequer to which
he had been appointed, but from which he was immediately ousted
by Sir Robert Walpole. An estate, in which he had a reversionary
interest, was sold by his widowed and extravagant mother to pay her
debts, and thus stripped of post and prospects, Mottley made an essay
as dramatic author, a career in which he was not destined to be
distinguished, although Queen Caroline patronised him during a part
of it--but so she did Stephen Duck! "Cato" was not superseded; but
Young was putting the finishing stroke to his "Revenge."
That tragedy, which has been acted more frequently and more recently
than "Cato," was first played in the Drury Lane season of 1720-21.
On the 18th of April, of the latter year, Zanga was played by Mills,
while Booth took Alonzo, and Wilks, Carlos. The secondary parts were
thus played by the better actors. Mrs. Porter played Leonora, Mrs.
Horton, Isabella. This was a fine cast, and the piece was fairly
successful. A story in the _Guardian_, and two plays, by Marlowe and
Aphra Behn, are said to have furnished Young with his materials, in
handling which, one of his biographers has described him as "superior
even to Shakspeare!" The action does not flag, the situations are
dramatic, the interest is well sustained, and the language is
expressive and abounding in poetical beauty. The story of love,
jealousy, and murder is, however, a little marred by the puling lines
of the black Iago,--Zanga, at the close. Young obtained but £50 for
the copyright of this piece.
Young's "Revenge," if built upon other plays, has served the turn of
later authors. In Lord John Russell's "Don Carlos," the reason given
for the grovelling Cordoba's hatred of the Spanish prince, reminds
the reader of that of Zanga for Alonzo; not less in the fact itself,
the blow believed to be forgotten, but in the expression. Any one,
moreover, who remembers the avowal which Artabanus makes of his guilt
in the "Artaxerxes" of Metastasio, will be inclined to think that the
Italian had in his mind the similar speech of the Moor to his master.
Cibber's comedy, the "Refusal," skilfully built up from the "Femmes
Savantes" of Molière and the South Sea mania, ran, like the more
famous tragedy, but six nights, a riot attending each representation,
and finally ending in driving a good play by the author of the
"Nonjuror" from the stage. The other incidents of this season are
confined to the appearance of Cibber's son, Theophilus, who made his
first essay in the Duke of Clarence, in the second part of "Henry
IV.," as arranged by Betterton. It was a modest attempt on the part
of him whose Pistol was to serve, down to our day, as a tradition
to be followed. As this vagabond Theophilus appeared, there, on the
other hand, departed the very pearl of chambermaids, Mrs. Saunders,
who retired to become the friend and servant of Mrs. Oldfield. This
last lady played but rarely this year; but Mrs. Horton profited by
the opportunity, and Mrs. Porter, as a tragic actress, drew the town.
Lincoln's Inn was, at least, active in its corresponding season. The
progress of Quin is curiously marked. He played Glo'ster to the Lear
of Boheme; Hector, in "Troilus and Cressida," Ryan playing Troilus;
the Duke in "Measure for Measure;" Coriolanus; Aumerle, in "Richard
II.;" Aaron, in "Titus Andronicus;" Leonato to Ryan's Benedick, &c.
&c. Moreover, while in the "Merry Wives" he played Falstaff with
great effect to the Host of Bullock, in the first part of "Henry IV."
Bullock played the Knight, and Quin the King. The season, remarkable
for Shakspearian revivals, creditable to Rich, was also distinguished
for the failure of the original pieces produced. The "Chimæra" was a
satire by Odell, a Buckinghamshire squire, pensioned by Government.
It was aimed at the speculators in Change Alley, but it smote them
tenderly. The "Fair Captive" was an adaptation by Mrs. Haywood,
a lady who began by writing as loosely as Aphra Behn, concluded
by writing as decorously as Mrs. Chapone, and left charge to her
executors, in 1756, to give no aid to any biography of her that might
be attempted, on the ground that the least said was the soonest
mended.
This comedy[111] was only exceeded in dulness by the tragedy which
succeeded it, "Antiochus," by Mottley, who could not gain fortune
either as poet or placeman. In the play, Antiochus is in love with
his father's wife, Stratonice, who, on being surrendered to his son,
by her husband, Seleucus, is a little overjoyed, for she loves the
younger prince; but she is also much shocked, and escapes from her
embarrassment by suicide.
The next novelty was a tragedy in one act and with four characters,
"Fatal Extravagance," attributed to Miller,[112] the son of a
Scottish stone-cutter. Miller was a sort of exaggerated Richard
Savage; inferior to him as a poet, and in every respect a more
inexcusable vagabond. He had no redeeming traits of character, and
he destroyed health and fortune (both restored more than once), as
insanely as he did fame and the patience of his friends. In "Fatal
Extravagance," Belmour, played by Quin, kills a creditor who holds
his bond, of which he also robs the dead man, mixes a "cordial,"
administers it to his wife and three children (off the stage), drinks
and dies. The butchery[113] is soon got through, in one act. Miller
subsequently declared that the piece was a gift to him from Aaron
Hill. That busy and benevolent person had no money to give to a
beggar; so he sat down and wrote a tragedy for him. It was a piece of
clever extravagance.
It was far more amusing than Ambrose Philip's tragedy the "Briton,"
which was the sole novelty of the Drury Lane season 1721-22. The
tragedy lacked neither skill, poetical spirit, nor incident; indeed,
of love incidents there is something too much. But the amours of
Yvor (Wilks) and Gwendolin (Mrs. Booth), the infidelities of Queen
Cartismand (Mrs. Porter) to Vanoc (Booth), and the intervention of
the Romans in these British domestic matters, interested but for a
few nights, if then, an audience ill-read in their own primitive
history.
Lincoln's Inn Fields was scarcely more prolific in novelty; this,
with the exception of a poor drama, the "Hibernian Friend,"[114]
being confined to Sturmy's tragedy, "Love and Duty;" Lynceus, one
of the half hundred sons of Ægyptus, by Quin. The love is that of
Lynceus and his cousin, Hypermnestra; the duty, that of killing
her husband, on the bridal night, by command of her father. The
"Distressed Bride," which is the second name of this piece, wisely
disobeys her sire, who is ultimately slain; after which, the young
people, sole survivors of fifty couples married yesterday (the
bridegrooms, all brothers; and sisters, all the brides), are made
happy by the hope of long life unembittered by feuds with their
kinsfolk.
The last two tragedies may be looked upon as a backsliding, after
"Cato," "Jane Shore," and the "Revenge;" and in tragedy there was
little improvement for several years. Meanwhile, Lincoln's Inn Fields
acquired Walker, from Drury Lane, and Tony Aston, an itinerant actor,
the first, perhaps, who travelled the country with an entertainment
in which he was the sole performer. On the other hand, the house
lost pretty Miss Stone, humorous Kit Bullock (Wilks's son-in-law),
and busy George Pack; the last, the original Marplot, Lissardo, and
many similar characters. Pack turned vintner in Charing Cross. Quin's
ability was nightly more appreciated.
There was more "study" for the Drury Lane actors in 1722-23. Mrs.
Centlivre's muse died calmly out with the comedy of the "Artifice."
In the good scenes there was an approach to sentimental comedy, more
fully reached, in November, by Steele, in his "Conscious Lovers," in
which Booth played Young Bevil, and Mrs. Oldfield, Indiana. There
was not an inferior performer in any of the other parts of this
comedy, which Fielding sneers at, by making Parson Adams declare that
there were things in it that would do very well in a sermon. Modern
critics have called this comedy dull, but decent; perhaps because
Steele affected to claim it as at least moral in its tendency. The
truth, however, is, that it is excessively indecent. There is nothing
worse in Aphra Behn than the remarks made by Cimberton, the "coxcomb
with reflection," on Lucinda. This fop, played by Griffin, is for
winning a beauty by the rules of metaphysics. There is more pathos
than humour in this comedy; the author of which had now recovered his
share in the patent, by favour of Sir Robert Walpole; and it is by
directing attention only to such scenes as those between Bevil and
Indiana, or between the former and his friend Myrtle (Wilks), that
critics have not correctly declared that the sentiments are those of
the most refined morality! For the very attempt to render them so,
even partially, Sir Richard has been sneered at, very recently, by a
writer who looks upon Steele as a fool for preferring to make Bevil
the portrait of what a man ought to be rather than what man really
was. The story of the piece is admirably manipulated and reformed
from the "Andria," of Terence, though Tom (Cibber) is but a sorry
Davus.
On one night of the performance of this play, a general officer was
observed in the boxes, weeping at the distresses of Indiana. The
circumstance was noted to Wilks, who, with kindly feeling ever ready,
remarked, "I am certain the officer will fight none the worse for
it!" Steele must have had more than ordinary power, if he could draw
tears from martial eyes in those days.
It is not to be supposed that Pope set the author, as a writer, below
Crowne; and yet, in the following lines, where the two are mentioned,
there is no very complimentary allusion to Sir Richard:--
"When simple Macer, now of high renown,
First sought a poet's fortune in the town,
'Twas all th' ambition his high soul could feel,
To wear red stockings and to dine with Steele.
Some ends of verse his betters might afford,
And gave the harmless fellow a good word.
Set up with these, he ventured on the town,
And with a borrow'd play outdid poor Crowne.
There he stopt short, nor since has writ a tittle,
But has the wit to make the most of little."
Crowne, at least, found something of an imitator in Ambrose Philips,
whose tragedy, "Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester" (Duke, Booth; Beaufort,
Cibber; Margaret, Mrs. Oldfield; Duchess of Gloucester, Mrs.
Porter), was produced in this season. It was the last and worst of
Philips' three dramatic essays. The insipid additions in the scene
of Beaufort's death are justly described by Genest as being in
Crowne's vapid and senseless fashion; and the public would not accept
this cold, declamatory, conversational play as a substitute for the
varied incidents which go to the making up of the second part of
Shakspeare's "Henry VI."
Even in Dr. Johnson's time, "it was only remembered by its title;" we
may, therefore, here take leave of the old secretary of the Hanover
Club, who found more fortune in place and pension in Ireland, than
he could derive from poetry and play writing in England. To the
latter country he returned in 1748, to "enjoy himself," in pursuit of
which end he died the following year. Addison once thought him well
enough provided for, by being made a Westminster justice. "Nay," said
Ambrose, like a virtuous man in comedy, "though poetry be a trade I
cannot live by, yet I scorn to owe subsistence to another which I
ought not to live by;" and he nobly gave up the justiceship--as soon
as he was otherwise provided for!
Philips was followed by an inferior author, but a greater man, Sir
Hildebrand Jacob, with a classical tragedy, "Fatal Constancy," in
which all the unities are preserved; but _that_ did not bring it the
nearer to "Cato."
Then followed, in the summer and less fashionable portion of the
season, Savage's tragedy, "Sir Thomas Overbury," in which the author
played, very indifferently, the hero. At this time, the hapless
young man was not widely known, except to those friends on whose
charity he lived while he abused it. Favoured by Wilks and patronised
by Theophilus Cibber, the ragged, rakish fellow, slunk at nights
into the theatre, and by day lounged where he could, composing his
tragedy on scraps of paper. In producing it, ever ready Aaron Hill
assisted him; and his profits, amounting to about £200, gave him
a temporary appearance of respectability. Savage is said to have
been deeply ashamed of having turned actor; but it seems to me that
he was only ashamed of having failed. He had neither voice, figure,
nor any other qualification for such a profession. The tragedy lived
but three days. There is something adroit in the conduct of the
plot, and evidence of correctness of conjecture as to the truth of
the relations between Overbury and Lady Somerset,--but there was no
vitality therewith; and the poet gained no lasting fame by the effort.
Mrs. Haywood followed Savage's example, in acting in her own comedy,
"A Wife to be Let;"[115] but as this and other original pieces or
adaptations passed away unheeded or disgraced, I may here conclude
my notice of this season, by recording the death of Mrs. Bicknell, a
woman, or rather an actress of merit, and the original representative
of Cherry in the "Beaux' Stratagem."
Against Drury, the house in the Fields long struggled in vain.
Audiences, of five or six pounds in value, discouraged the actors.
Egleton was not equal to Cibber; yet the "Baron," as he was called,
from having assumed the title, when squandering his little patrimony
in France, was next to Colley in fops. Quin, Ryan, and Boheme could
not attract like Booth, Wilks, and Cibber; and Hippisley and others,
acting "Julius Cæsar," as a comic piece, was not a happy idea.[116]
Not more so, was that of turning the story of "Cartouche," who had
recently been broken on the wheel, into a farce. The company lost
their best actress, too, in Mrs. Seymour, whom Boheme married and
took off the stage, to Ryan's great regret, as she acted admirably
up to him. A promising actor, too, was lost to the troop, in young
Reakstraw. In the summer vacation he was playing Darius, in a booth
in Moorfields,--no derogation in those days. In the scene in which he
is attacked by Bessus and Nabarzanes, one of the latter two thrust
his foil at the King so awkwardly, that it entered the eye, pierced
his brain, and laid the actor, after a scream, dead upon the boards!
With this season, it is to be noted that the fortune of Lincoln's Inn
mended--thanks to the impertinence of Colley Cibber. To the latter,
a tragedy had been presented by a modest gentleman, of a good old
Staffordshire family, named Fenton. He was forty years of age at this
time. Cibber knew his antecedents, that his Jacobite principles had
been an obstacle to his ordination, for which he was well qualified,
and that although he had been secretary and tutor in the family of
Lord Orrery, Fenton had also earned his bread in the humble, but
honourable, capacity of usher in a boarding-school. Colley read the
tragedy, "Mariamne," and after keeping it unnecessarily long, he
returned it, with the advice that Fenton should stick to some honest
calling, and cease to woo the Muses. Elijah Fenton, however, had
friends who enabled him now to live independently of labour, and by
their counsel he took "Mariamne" to Rich, who immediately brought
it out, with Quin as Sohemus, Boheme as Herod, and Mrs. Seymour as
Mariamne--her one great creation.
Boheme, in Herod, played well up to the Mariamne of Mrs. Seymour;
but he could not approach Mondory in that character, in the
French play by Tristan. Mondory used to have his audience, on
this occasion, departing from him, depressed, silent, wrapt in
meditation. He surrendered himself entirely to the part, and died
of the consequences of his efforts. Herod was as truly the name of
the malady to which he succumbed, as _Orestes_ was of that which
killed Montfleury, as he was playing Oreste, in Racine's tragedy of
"Andromaque."
The old story of Herod and Mariamne is so simple and natural that
it appeals to every heart, in every age. Fenton perilled it by
additions; but the tragedy won a triumph, and the poet to whom Pope
paid about £250 for translating four books of the _Odyssey_ for him,
netted four times that sum by this drama. He became famous, and
critics did not note the false quantity which the Cambridge man gave
to the penultimate of Salome. Fenton was rendered supremely happy,
but his dramatic fame rests on this piece alone. He never wooed
Melpomene again, but lived calmly the brief seven years of life which
followed his success. Like Prior dying at Wimpole, the honoured guest
of Harley, Fenton died at Easthampstead, the equally esteemed guest
of Sir William Trumbull, son of King William's secretary of state.
In Pope's well-known epitaph, Fenton's character is beautifully
described in a few simple lines.
Aaron Hill was the exact opposite of quiet Fenton. His beech-nut oil
company having failed, he joined Sir Robert Montgomery in a project
for colonising South Carolina; and this too proving unproductive,
he turned to the stage, and brought out in the season of 1723-24,
at Drury Lane, his tragedy of "Henry V."--an "improvement" of
Shakspeare's historical play of the same name. Hill's additions
comprise a Harriet (Mrs. Thurmond), for whom he invented a breeches
part, and some melodramatic situations--especially between her and
Henry (Booth). Hill cut out all Shakspeare's comic characters; but he
was so anxious for the success of the piece, that he spent £200 of
his own on the scenery, of which he made a present to the managers;
and, after all, his play failed, despite the brilliant Katherine of
Mrs. Oldfield, and the Dauphin of Wilks.
More successful was the "Captives," by Gay. The ex-mercer was now a
poet, whom the "quality" petted; but he was not yet at the summit of
his fame. The "Captives" did not help to raise him. The story was
found unnatural, and the style stilted. A Persian captive (Booth)
is a Joseph, against whom the Median Queen, whom he has offended,
vows vengeance; in pursuit of which, love and murder are extensively
employed. Mrs. Oldfield had one good scene in it as Cydene, captive
wife of the Persian Joseph, for whom she entertains a warm regard,
of which he is worthy; yet these actors, well seconded, could only
drag the tragedy through seven representations, before it was
consigned to oblivion. But the company was strong enough to make
their old repertory, with Shakspeare in the van, attractive; and
they had nothing to regret, when the season closed, but the death of
Pinkethman, who for two and thirty years, and chiefly at Drury Lane,
had been the most irresistible laughter-compeller of that stage, on
which he had originated Beau Clincher, Old Mirabel, and a score of
similar merry characters.
The company had not to complain; yet the managers had found
it necessary to support their stock-pieces by a novelty--a
ballet-pantomime, "The Necromancer,"[117] by the younger Thurmond,
a dancing-master. Rich, at Lincoln's Inn, where "Edwin" could not
have drawn a shilling; where Belisarius (Boheme) begged an obolus in
vain; and Hurst's "Roman Maid" (Paulina, Mrs. Moffat), represented a
hermit as dwelling in a lone cave, near the Mount Aventine--a hermit
would be as likely to be found in a wood on Snow Hill--Rich, I say,
improved on Thurmond's idea, by producing on the 20th of December
1723, "The Necromancer, or the History of Dr. Faustus," and thereby
founded pantomime, as it has been established among us, at least
during the Christmas-tide, for now a hundred and forty years.
Rich, with his "Necromancer," conjured all the town within the ring
of his little theatre. The splendour of the scenes, the vastness
of the machinery, and the grace and ability of Rich himself, raised
harlequinade above Shakspeare, and all other poets; and Quin and
Ryan were accounted little of in comparison with the motley hero.
The pantomime stood prominently in the bills; during the nights of
its attraction the prices of admission were raised by one-fourth,
and the weekly receipts advanced from six hundred (if the house was
full every night, which had been a rare case in the Fields), to a
thousand pounds. The advanced price displeased the public, with whom
ultimately a compromise was made, and a portion returned to those who
chose to leave the house before the pantomime commenced.
While the drama was thus yielding to the attractions of pantomime, a
new theatre invited the public. The little theatre in the Haymarket
opened its doors for the first time on the 12th of September[118]
1723, with the "French Fop," of which the author, Sandford, says,
that he wrote it in a few weeks, when he was but fifteen years of
age. That may account for its having straightway died; but it served
to introduce to the stage the utility actor, Milward. The theatre was
only open for a few nights.
Of the season 1724-5, at Drury Lane, there is little to be said, save
that the inimitable company worked well and profitably in sterling
old plays. Wilks returned to Sir Harry Wildair, and the public
laughed at Cibber's quivering tragedy tones, when playing Achoreus,
in his adaptation from Beaumont and Fletcher's "False One." In
"Cæsar in Egypt," Antony and Cleopatra were played by Wilks and Mrs.
Oldfield, who were never more happy than when making love on the
stage. This was the sole novelty of the season.
In the Fields there was more of it, but that most relied on was
Rich's "Harlequin Sorcerer," produced on the 21st of January 1725.
The "Bath Unmasked" was the only original comedy produced. It
described Bath as made up of very unprincipled people, with a good
lord to about a score of knaves and hussies. It was the first and not
lucky essay of miserable Gabriel Odingsell, who, nine years later,
in a fit of madness, hung himself in his house, Thatched Court,
Westminster.
Booth was more brilliant than he had ever yet been, in the Drury
Lane season of 1725-26. In Shakspeare he shone conspicuously, and
his Hotspur to the Prince of Wales of Giffard, from Dublin, charmed
as much by its chivalry as Cato did by its dignity. Mrs. Oldfield
enjoyed, and Mrs. Cibber, first wife of Theophilus, claimed the
favour of the town; and the elder Cibber surrendered one or two
old characters to a younger actor, Bridgewater. Amid a succession
of old dramas, one novelty only was offered, a translation of the
"Hecuba" of Euripides, with slight variations. The author was
Richard West, son-in-law of Bishop Burnet, and father of young West,
the early friend of Walpole and Gray. His play was acted on the
3d[119] of February 1726, at which time West was Lord Chancellor
of Ireland. On the first night a full audience would not listen to
the piece, and on the next two nights there was scarcely an audience
assembled to listen. Neither Booth as Polymnestor, nor Mrs. Porter
as Hecuba, could win the general ear. It did not succeed, wrote
the author, "because _it was not heard_. A rout of Vandals in the
galleries intimidated the young actresses, disturbed the audience,
and prevented all attention; and, I believe, if the verses had been
repeated in the original Greek, they would have been understood and
received in the same manner." The young actresses were Mrs. Brett
and Mrs. Cibber; the latter was not the famous lady of that name,
destined to the highest walks of tragedy. Lord Chancellor West died
in December of this year.
The above single play was, however, worth all the novelties produced
by Rich at Lincoln's Inn Fields. These were comedies of a farcical
kind. In one of them, the "Capricious Lovers," by Odingsell, there
was an original character, Mrs. Mincemode (Mrs. Bullock), who "grows
sick at the sight of a man, and refines upon the significancy of
phrases, till she resolves common observations into indecency." In
the "French Fortune-teller,"[120] the public failed to be regaled
with a piece stolen from Ravenscroft, who had stolen his from the
French. The third play was "Money the Mistress," which the audience
damned, in spite of the reputation of Southerne, who, with this
failure, closed a dramatic career which had commenced half a century
earlier. In its course he had written ten plays, the author of
which had this in common with Shakspeare--that he was born at
Stratford-on-Avon.
With this year, 1726-27, came the first symptom of a "break-up" in
the hitherto prosperous condition of Drury Lane. It occurred in the
first long and serious illness of Booth, which kept him from the
theatre, three long and weary months to the town. The season at Drury
Lane, however, and that at Lincoln's Inn Fields, had this alike, that
after Booth's welcome return, all London was excited by expectations
raised by comedies whose authors were "gentlemen," in whose success
the "quality," generally, were especially interested. At Drury it
was the "Rival Modes," by Moore Smythe; at Lincoln's Inn Fields,
the "Dissembled Wanton, or, my Son, get Money," by Leonard Welsted.
In the former piece there is a gay lover, Bellamine (Wilks), wooing
the grave Melissa (Mrs. Porter), while the serious Sagely (Mills)
pays suit to the sprightly widow Amoret (Mrs. Oldfield). An old
beau of King William's time, Earl of Late Airs (Cibber), brings his
son to town (Lord Toupet, a modern beau, by Theophilus Cibber), in
order that he may marry Melissa, with her father's consent. Amoret
contrives to upset this arrangement, and the other lovers are duly
united. The plot was good, the players unsurpassable, the two Cibbers
fooling it to the top of their bent, and old and new fashions were
pleasantly contrasted; but the action was languid, and the piece was
hissed.
The incident lacking here, abounded in Welsted's intriguing
comedy, the "Dissembled Wanton," a character finely acted by Mrs.
Younger[121]--whose marriage with Beaufort (Walker) being forbidden
by her father, Lord Severne (Quin), by whom she had been sent to
France, she reappears in her father's presence as Sir Harry Truelove,
whose real character is known only to Emilia (Mrs. Bullock), Lord
Severne's ward. Emilia's intimacy with Sir Harry causes the rupture
of her marriage with Colonel Severne, and some coarse scenes have to
be got through before all is explained; the respective lovers are
united, and Humphrey Staple (Hall) finds it useless to urge his son
Toby (W. Bullock) to get money by espousing the rich ward Emilia.
Although Welsted's comedy was lively, it was found to be ill-written.
He had had time enough to polish it, for ten years previous to its
production Steele had commended the plot, the moral, and the style;
he had even praised its decency. Like Moore Smyth's, it could not
win the town. The respective authors, who made so much ineffectual
noise in their own day, would be unknown to us in this, but for the
censure of Pope. In the _Dunciad_ they enjoy notoriety with Theobald,
or Cibber, Gildon, Dennis, Centlivre, and Aaron Hill. Moore was
an Oxford man, who assumed his maternal grandfather's name--being
his heir--and held one or two lucrative posts under Government.
His father, the famous Arthur Moore, a wit, a politician, and a
statesman, who was long M.P. for Grimsby, had risen, by force of his
talents, to an eminent position from a humble station. Pope stooped
to call Moore Smyth the son of a footman, and, when the latter name
was assumed on his taking his maternal grandfather's estate, the
Whigs lampooned him as born at "the paternal seat of his family--the
taphouse of the prison-gate, at Monaghan."
Moore was on intimate terms with the Mapledurham ladies--the Blounts,
and with others of Pope's friends, as well as with Pope himself. Some
tags of the poet's lines he had introduced into his unlucky comedy,
and on this Pope supported a grossly-expressed and weakly-founded
charge of plagiarism. Welsted, who was of a good Leicestershire
family, and of fair abilities, had moved Pope's wrath by writing
satirical verses against him, and the feeling was embittered when
the two dramatists united in addressing _One Epistle_ to Pope, in
which they touched him more painfully than he cared to confess.
Neither Moore nor Welsted ever tempted fortune on the stage again.
"Coestus artemque repono," said the former, on the title-page of his
comedy, as if he was revenging himself on society. Welsted confined
himself, after some skirmishing with his critics, to his duties in
the Ordnance Office. His wives were women of some mark. The first was
the daughter of Purcell; the second the sister of Walker, the great
defender of Londonderry.
A better gentleman than either, Philip Frowde--scholar, wit, poet,
true man, friend of Addison, and a friend to all,--was praised by
the critics for his "Fall of Saguntum;" but the public voice did not
ratify the judgment, though Ryan, as Fabius, and Quin, as Eurydamas,
with Mrs. Berriman, as Candace,--an Amazonian queen, with nothing
very womanly about her,--exerted themselves to the utmost. One other
failure has to be recorded--"Philip of Macedon," by David Lewis, the
friend of Pope. With a dull tragedy, Pope's friend had no more chance
of misleading the public, than his foes, with weak comedies. The
greater poet's commendation so little influenced that public, that on
the first night, with Pope himself in the house, the audience was so
numerically small,--though Walker, Ryan, Quin, Mrs. Berriman, Mrs.
Younger, and others, were, in their "habits" as unlike Macedonians
as they could well be,--the managers deemed acting to such a house
not profitable, and dismissed it accordingly. The author's final
condemnation was only postponed for a night or two, when he sank,
never to rise again.[122]
[Illustration: (Lavinia Fenton.)]
With Booth's failing health, and the ill-success of novelties
produced at either house, there was a gloom over theatrical matters.
But at this very time a sun was rising from behind the cloud. In
one of the irregular series of performances, held at the little
theatre in the Haymarket, in 1726, there appeared a young lady, in
the part of Monimia, in the "Orphan," and subsequently as Cherry,
in the "Beaux' Stratagem." She was pretty, clever, and eighteen;
but she was not destined to become either the tragic or the comic
queen. Soon after, however, thanks to the judgment of Rich, who
gave her the opportunity, she was hailed as the queen of
English song. She was known as Lavinia Fenton, but she was the
daughter of a naval lieutenant, named Beswick. Her widowed mother
had married a coffee-house keeper in Charing Cross, whose name of
Fenton was assumed by his step-daughter. Before we shall hear of
her at Lincoln's Inn Fields, a lieutenant[123] will be offering her
everything he possessed except his name; but Lavinia, without being
as discreet, was even more successful than Pamela, and died a duchess.
Throughout the reign of George I., Barton Booth kept his position
as the first English tragedian,--undisturbed even by the power of
Quin. Associated with him, were comedians,--Wilks, Cibber, Mrs.
Oldfield, Porter, Horton, and others, who shed splendour on the
stage, at this period. The new dramatic poets of that reign were
few, and not more than one of those few can be called distinguished.
The name of Young alone survives in the memory, and that but for one
tragedy, the "Revenge." Of comedies, there is not one of the reign of
George I. that is even read for its merits. It is otherwise with the
comedies of an actress and dramatist who died in this reign,--Susanna
Centlivre; and yet a contemporary notice of her death simply states
that, as an actress, "having a greater inclination to wear the
breeches than the petticoat, she struck into the men's parts;" and
that the dramatist "had a small wen on her left eyelid, which gave
her a masculine air." Eventful to both houses was the season of
1727-28. It was the last season of Booth, at Drury Lane; and it was
the first of the "Beggars' Opera," at Lincoln's Inn Fields. After
thirty years' service, in the reigns of William, Anne, George I.,
and now in that of George II., in which Garrick was to excel him,
that admirable actor was compelled, by shattered health, to withdraw.
For many nights he played Henry VIII., and walked in the coronation
scene, which was tacked to various other plays, in honour of the
accession of George II., who, with the royal family, went, on the 7th
of November, to witness Booth enact the King. On the 9th of January,
Booth, after a severe struggle, played, for the sixth and last time,
Julio, in the "Double Falsehood;" a play which Theobald ascribed to
Shakspeare; Dr. Farmer, to Shirley; others, to Massinger; but which
was chiefly Theobald's own, founded on a manuscript copy which,
through Downes, the prompter, had descended to him from Betterton,
and which served Colman, who certainly derived his Octavian from
Julio.
The loss in Booth was, in some degree, supplied by the "profit"
arising from a month's run of a new comedy by Vanbrugh and
Cibber--the "Provoked Husband;" in which the Lord and Lady Townley
were played by these incomparable lovers--Wilks and Mrs. Oldfield.
Cibber acted Sir Francis Wronghead, and young Wetherell, Squire
Richard. Vanbrugh was at this time dead--in 1726, at his house in
Whitehall, of quinsey. The critics and enemies of Cibber were sadly
at fault on this occasion. Hating him for his "Nonjuror," they
hissed all the scenes of which they supposed him to be the author;
and applauded those which they were sure were by Vanbrugh. Cibber
published the imperfect play left by Sir John, and thereby showed
that his adversaries condemned and approved exactly in the wrong
places.
Cibber enjoyed another triumph this season. Steele, abandoning the
responsibilities of management, to follow his pleasure, had submitted
to a deduction of £1, 13s. 4d. nightly, to each of his partners,
for performing his duties. Steele was at this time in Wales, dying,
though he survived till September 1729. His creditors, meanwhile,
claimed the "five marks" as their own, and the case went into the
Rolls Court, before Sir Joseph Jekyll. Cibber pleaded in person the
cause of himself and active partners, and so convincingly, that he
obtained a decree in their favour.
In presence of this new audience, the old actor confesses he felt
fear. He carried with him the heads of what he was about to urge;
but, says Colley, "when it came to the critical moment, the dread and
apprehension of what I had undertaken so disconcerted my courage,
that though I had been used to talk to above fifty thousand people
every winter, for upwards of thirty years together, an involuntary
and unexpected proof of confusion fell from my eyes; and as I found
myself quite out of my element, I seemed rather gasping for life,
than in a condition to cope with the eminent orators against me."
Cibber, however, recovered himself, and vanquished his adversaries,
though two of them were of the stuff that won for them, subsequently,
the dignity of Lord Chancellor.
The "Beggar's Opera" season at Lincoln's Inn Fields was the most
profitable ever known there. Swift's idea of a Newgate pastoral was
adopted by Gay, who, smarting under disappointment of preferment at
Court, and angry at the offer to make him gentleman-usher to the
youngest of the royal children, indulged his satirical humour against
ministers and placement, by writing a Newgate comedy, at which Swift
and Pope shook their heads, and old Congreve, for one of whose three
sinecures Gay would have given his ears, was sorely perplexed as to
whether it would bring triumph or calamity to its author. The songs
were added, but Cibber, as doubtful as Congreve, declined what Rich
eagerly accepted, and the success of which was first discerned by the
Duke of Argyle, from his box on the stage, who looked at the house,
and "saw it in the eyes of them."
Walker, who had been playing tragic parts, and very recently Macbeth,
was chosen for Macheath, on Quin declining the highwayman. Lavinia
Fenton was the Polly; Peachum, by Hippisley; and Spiller made a
distinctive character of Mat o' the Mint. Walker "knew no more of
music than barely singing in tune; but then his singing was supported
by his inimitable action, by his speaking to the eye and charming the
ear." It was at the close of a long run of the piece that Walker once
tripped in his words. "I wonder," said Rich, "that you should forget
the words of a part you have played so often!" "Do you think," asked
Walker, with happy equivocation, "that a man's memory is to last for
ever?"
Sixty-two nights in this season the "Beggar's Opera" drew crowded
houses.[124] Highwaymen grew fashionable, and ladies not only carried
fans adorned with subjects from the opera, but sang the lighter, and
hummed the coarser, songs. Sir Robert Walpole, who was present on
the first night, finding the eyes of the audience turned on him as
Lockit was singing his song touching courtiers and bribes, was the
first to blunt the point of the satire, by calling _encore_. Swift
says, "_two_ great ministers were in a box together, and all the
world staring at them." At this time it was said that the quarrel of
Peachum and Lockit was an imitation of that of Brutus and Cassius,
but the public discerned therein Walpole and his great adversary
Townshend.
"The Beggar's Opera" hath knocked down _Gulliver_, wrote Swift
to Gay. "I hope to see Pope's 'Dulness' (the first name of the
_Dunciad_) knock down the 'Beggar's Opera,' but not till it hath
fully done its job." But Gay had no "mission;" he only sought to
gratify himself and the town; to satirise, not to teach or to warn;
the "opera" made "Gay rich, and Rich gay;" the former sufficiently so
to make him forego earning a fee of twenty guineas by a dedication,
and the latter only so far sad, that at the end of the season,
Lavinia Fenton, after two benefits, was taken off the stage by the
Duke of Bolton. The latter had from his wedding-day hated his wife,
daughter and sole heiress of the Earl of Carberry; but his love
for Lavinia was so abounding, that on his wife's death, he made a
Duchess of "Polly;" but their three sons were not born at a time that
rendered either of them heir to the ducal coronet, which, in 1754,
passed to the Duke's brother. Gay's author's night realised a gain to
him of £700, and enabled him to dress in "silver and blue." While he
is blazing abroad, the once great master, Booth, is slowly dying out.
Let us tell his varied story as his life ebbs surely away.
[Illustration: Mr. Foote as the Doctor.]
FOOTNOTES:
[108] Very imaginative. Mrs. Mountfort lived with another lover, Mr.
Minshull, for a year before Booth's marriage.
[109] There are adaptations of "Coriolanus" by Tate, Dennis,
Sheridan, and Kemble.
[110] Dennis born 1657; Southerne 1660.
[111] Tragedy.
[112] Should be Mitchell.
[113] But the wife and children do not die; the poisoned cup having
been emptied, and refilled with a harmless potion.
[114] Should be "Hibernia Freed."
[115] "By reason of the indisposition of an actress."
[116] This is a most strange mistake. It is evidently caused by the
entry in Genest on 10th January 1723, which is:--"Julius Cæsar. Comic
characters--Hippisley, &c." This of course means that the characters
in the tragedy which were, according to theatrical usage, played by
comedians (the _Plebeians_, for instance), were played by Hippisley,
&c., not that all the characters were made comic.
[117] Thurmond's piece appears to have been called "Harlequin Doctor
Faustus."
[118] Genest says 12th of December 1723.
[119] Should be 2d.
[120] Should be "Female Fortune-teller."
[121] Emilia is the Dissembled Wanton.
[122] Acted four times.
[123] Cooke (_Memoirs of Macklin_) says "a young libertine of very
high rank."
[124] The Notes to the _Dunciad_ say "sixty-three days,
uninterrupted;" but this is probably an error.
[Illustration: BARTON BOOTH.]
CHAPTER XVIII.
BARTON BOOTH.
At this period it was evident that the stage was about to lose its
greatest tragedian since the death of Betterton. Booth was stricken
past recovery, and all the mirth caused by the "Beggar's Opera" could
not make his own peculiar public forget him. Scarcely eight and
thirty years had elapsed since the time when, in 1690, a handsome,
well-bred lad, whose age did not then amount to two lustres, sought
admission into Westminster School. Dr. Busby thought him too young;
but young Barton Booth was the son of a gentleman, was of the
family of Booth, Earl of Warrington, and was a remarkably clever
and attractive boy. The Doctor, whose acting had been commended by
Charles I., perhaps thought of the school-plays, and recognised in
little Barton the promise of a lover in Terence's comedies. At all
events, he admitted the applicant.
Barton Booth, a younger son of a Lancashire sire, was destined
for Holy Orders. He was a fine elocutionist, and he took to
Latin as readily as Erasmus; but then he had Nicholas Rowe for a
school-fellow; and, one day, was cast for Pamphilus in the "Andria."
Luckily, or unluckily, he played this prototype of young Bevil in
Steele's "Conscious Lovers" with such ease, perfection, and charming
intelligence, that the old dormitory shook with plaudits. The shouts
of approbation changed the whole purpose of his sire; they deprived
the church of a graceful clergyman, and gave to the stage one of the
most celebrated of our actors.
He was but seventeen, when his brilliant folly led him to run away
from home, and tempt fortune, by playing Oroonoko, in Dublin. The
Irish audiences confirmed the judgment of the Westminster critics,
and the intelligent lad moved the hands of the men and the hearts
of the women, without a check, during a glorious three years of
probation. And yet he narrowly escaped failure, through a ridiculous
accident, when, in 1698, he made his _début_ as Oroonoko. It was a
sultry night in June. While waiting to go on, before his last scene,
he inadvertently wiped his darkened face, and the lamp-black thereon
came off in streaks. On entering on the stage, unconscious of the
countenance he presented, he was saluted with a roar of laughter,
and became much confused. The generous laughers then sustained him
by loud applause. But Booth was disturbed by this accident, and to
obviate its repetition, he went on, the next night, in a crape mask,
made by an actress to fit close to his face. Unfortunately, in the
first scene the mask slipped, and the new audience were as hilarious
as the old. "I looked like a magpie," said Barton; "but they
lamp-blacked me for the rest of the night, and I was flayed before I
could get it off again." The mishap of the first night did not affect
his triumph; this was so complete that Ashbury, the "master," made
him a present of five guineas; bright forerunners of the fifty that
were to be placed in his hands by delighted Bolingbroke.
The hitherto penniless player was now fairly on the first step of
the ascent it was his to accomplish. When he subsequently passed
through Lancashire to London, in 1701, his fame had gone before him;
he reached the capital with his manly beauty to gain him additional
favour, with a heavy purse, and a steady conviction of even better
fortune to come. With such a personage, his hitherto angry kinsmen
were, of course, reconciled forthwith.
One morning early in that year, 1701, he might have been seen leaving
Lord Fitzharding's rooms at St. James's, with Bowman, the player, and
making his way to Betterton's house in Great Russell Street. From the
lord in waiting to Prince George of Denmark, he carries a letter of
recommendation to the father of the stage; and generous old Thomas,
jealous of no rival, depreciator of no talent, gave the stranger a
hearty welcome; heard his story, asked for a taste of his quality,
imparted good counsel, took him into training, and ultimately brought
him out at Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1701, as Maximus, in Rochester's
"Valentinian." Betterton played Ætius, and Mrs. Barry, Lucina. These
two alone were enough to daunt so young an actor; but Booth was not
vain enough to be too modest, and the public at once hailed in him a
new charmer. His ease, grace, fire, and the peculiar harmony of his
voice, altogether distinct from that of Betterton's, created a great
impression. "Booth with the silver tongue" gained the epithet before
Barry was born. Westminster subsequently celebrated him in one of her
school prologues:--
"Old Roscius to our Booth must bow,
'Twas then but art, 'tis nature now,"
and the district was proud of both players; of the young one of
gentle blood, educated in St. Peter's College, and of the old one,
the royal cook's son, who was christened in St. Margaret's, August
12,[125] 1635.
At first, Booth was thought of as a promising undergraduate of the
buskin, and he had faults to amend. He confessed to Cibber that "he
had been for some time too frank a lover of the bottle;" but, having
the tipsyness of Powell ever before him as a terrible warning, he
made a resolution of maintaining a sobriety of character, from which
he never departed. Cibber pronounces this to be "an uncommon act
of philosophy in a young man;" but he adds, that "in his fame and
fortune he afterwards enjoyed the reward and benefit."
For a few years, then, Booth had arduous work to go through, and
every sort of "business" to play. The House in the Fields, too,
suffered from the tumblers, dancers, and sagacious animals, added to
the ordinary and well-acted plays at the House in the Lane. Leisure
he had also amid all his labour, to pay successful suit to a young
lady, the daughter of a Norfolk baronet, Sir William Barkham, whom
he married in 1704. The lady died childless six years later. Till
this last period--that, too, of the death of Betterton--Booth may be
said to have been in his minority as an actor, or, as Cibber puts it,
"only in the promise of that reputation," which he soon after happily
arrived at. Not that when that was gained he deemed himself perfect.
The longest life, he used to say, was not long enough to enable an
actor to be _perfect_ in his art.
Previous to 1710 he had created many new characters; among others,
Dick, in the "Confederacy;" and he had played the Ghost in "Hamlet,"
with such extraordinary power, such a supernatural effect, so solemn,
so majestic, and so affecting, that it was only second in attraction
to the Dane of Betterton. But Pyrrhus and Cato were yet to come.
Meanwhile, soon after his wife's death, he played Captain Worthy,
in the "Fair Quaker of Deal," to the Dorcas Zeal of Miss Santlow,
destined to be his second wife--but not just yet.
The two great characters created by him, between the year when he
played with Miss Santlow in Charles Shadwell's comedy, and that
in which he married her, were Pyrrhus, in the "Distressed Mother"
(1712), and "Cato" (1713). Within the limits stated, Booth kept
household with poor Susan Mountfort, the daughter of the abler
actress of that name. At such arrangements society took small
objection, and beyond the fact, there was nothing to carp at in
Barton's home. The latter was broken up, however--the lady being
in fault--in 1718, when Booth, who had been the faithful steward
of Susan's savings, consigned to her £3200, which were speedily
squandered by her next "friend," Mr. Minshull. The hapless young
creature became insane; in which condition it is credibly asserted
that she one night went through the part of Ophelia, with a
melancholy wildness which rendered many of her hearers almost as
distraught as herself; soon after which she died. Meanwhile, her more
faithful friend, the acknowledged successor of Betterton, achieved
his two greatest triumphs--in characters originally represented by
him--Pyrrhus and Cato. Those who have experienced the affliction of
seeing or reading the "Distressed Mother," may remember that the
heaviest part in that heavy play is that of Pyrrhus. But in acting
it, Booth set the Orestes of less careful Powell in the shade. "His
entrance," says Victor, "his walking and mounting to the throne, his
sitting down, his manner of giving audience to the ambassador,[126]
his rising from the throne, his descending and leaving the
stage--though circumstances of a very common character in theatrical
performances, yet were executed by him with a grandeur not to be
described."
But it is with "Cato" that Booth is identified. Fortunate it
was for him that the play Addison had kept so long in his desk
was not printed, according to Pope's advice, for readers only.
Fortunate, too, was the actor in the political coincidences of
the time. Marlborough, now a Whig, had asked to be appointed
"commander-in-chief for life." Harley, Bolingbroke, and the other
Tories, described this as an attempt to establish a perpetual
dictatorship. The action and the sentiment of "Cato" are antagonistic
to such an attempt, and the play had a present political, as well
as a great dramatic interest. Common consent gave the part of the
philosopher of Utica to Booth; Addison named young Ryan, son of
a Westminster tailor, as Marcus, and the young fellow justified
the nomination. Wilks, Cibber, and Mrs. Oldfield filled the other
principal parts. Addison surrendered all claim to profit, and on the
evening of April 14, 1713, there was excitement and expectation on
both sides of the curtain.
Booth really surpassed himself; his dignity, pathos, energy, were
all worthy of Betterton, and yet were in nowise after the old
actor's manner. The latter was forgotten on this night, and Booth
occupied exclusively the public eye, ear, and heart. The public
judgment answered to the public feeling. The Tories applauded
every line in favour of popular liberty, and the Whigs sent forth
responsive peals to show that they, too, were advocates of popular
freedom.[127] The pit was in a whirlwind of delicious agitation, and
the Tory occupants of the boxes were so affected by the acting of
Booth, that Bolingbroke, when the play was over, sent for the now
greatest actor of the day, and presented him with a purse containing
fifty guineas, the contributions of gentlemen who had experienced
the greatest delight at the energy with which he had resisted a
perpetual dictatorship, and maintained the cause of public liberty!
The managers paid the actor a similar pecuniary compliment, and for
five-and-thirty[128] consecutive nights "Cato" filled Drury Lane, and
swelled the triumph of Barton Booth. There was no longer anything
sad in the old exclamation of Steele--"Ye gods! what a part would
Betterton make of Cato!" The managers, Wilks, Cibber, and Dogget,
were as satisfied as the public, for the share of profit to each
at the end of this eventful season amounted to £1350! When Booth
and his fellow-actors, after the close of the London season, went
to Oxford to play "Cato," before a learned and critical audience,
"our house was in a manner invested, and entrance demanded by twelve
o'clock at noon, and, before one, it was not wide enough for many who
came too late for places. The same crowds continued for three days
together (an uncommon curiosity in that place), and the death of Cato
triumphed over the injuries of Cæsar everywhere. At our taking leave,
we had the thanks of the Vice-Chancellor, 'for the decency and order
observed by our whole society;' an honour," adds Cibber, proudly,
"which had not always been paid on the same occasion." Four hundred
and fifty pounds clear profit were shared by the managers, who gave
the actors double pay, and sent a contribution of fifty pounds
towards the repairs of St. Mary's Church.
The church, of which Booth was intended to be a minister, added
its approbation, through Dr. Smalridge, Dean of Carlisle, who was
present at the performance in Oxford. "I heartily wish all discourses
from the pulpit were as instructive and edifying, as pathetic and
affecting, as that which the audience was then entertained with
from the stage." This is a reproach to church-preachers at the
cost of a compliment to Booth; and old Compton, ex-dragoon, and
now dying Bishop of London, would not have relished it. Some of
the metropolitan pulpits were, no doubt, less "entertaining" than
the stage, but many of them were held to good purpose; and, as for
the Nonconformist chapels, of which Smalridge knew nothing--there
enthusiastic Pomfret and Matthew Clarke were drawing as great crowds
as Booth; Bradbury, that cheerful-minded patriarch of the Dissenters,
was even more entertaining; while Neale was pathetic and earnest
in Aldersgate Street; and John Gale, affecting and zealous, amid
his eager hearers in Barbican. There is no greater mistake than in
supposing that at this time the whole London world was engaged in
resorting exclusively to the theatres, and especially to behold Booth
in Cato.
The grandeur of this piece has become somewhat dulled, but it
contains more true sayings constantly quoted than any other English
work, save Gray's Elegy. It has been translated into French, Italian,
Latin, and Russian, and has been played in Italy and in the Jesuits'
College at St. Omer. Pope adorned it with a prologue; Dr. Garth
trimmed it with an epilogue; dozens of poets wrote testimonial
verses; tippling Eusden gave it his solemn sanction, while Dennis,
with some "horseplay raillery," but with irrefutable argument,
inexorably proved that, despite beauties of diction, it is one of
the most absurd, inconsistent, and unnatural plays ever conceived by
poet. But, Johnson remarks truly, "as we love better to be pleased
than to be taught, Cato is read, and the critic is neglected."
[Illustration: (Barton Booth.)]
Booth reaped no brighter triumph than in this character, in which
he has had worthy, but never equally able successors. Boheme was
respectable in it; Quin imposing, and generally successful; Sheridan,
conventional, but grandly eloquent; Mossop, heavy; Walker, a
failure; Digges, stagy; Kemble, next to the original; Pope, "mouthy;"
Cooke, altogether out of his line; Wright, weak; Young, traditional
but effective; and Vandenhoff, classically correct and statuesque.
In Cato, the name of Booth stands supreme; in _that_, the kinsman of
the Earls of Warrington was never equalled. It was his good fortune,
too, not to be admired less because of the affection for Betterton in
the hearts of surviving admirers. This is manifest from the lines of
Pope:--
"On Avon's bank where flow'rs eternal blow,
If I but ask,--if any weed can grow?--
One tragic sentence if I dare deride,
Which Betterton's grave action dignified,
Or well-mouth'd Booth with emphasis proclaims
(Though but perhaps a muster-roll of names),
How will our fathers rise up in a rage,
And swear all shame is lost in George's age."
The performance of Cato raised Booth to fortune as well as to fame;
and through Bolingbroke he was appointed to a share in the profits
of the management of Drury Lane, with Cibber, Wilks, and Dogget.
The last-named, thereupon, retired in disgust, with compensation;
and Cibber hints that Booth owed his promotion as much to his Tory
sentiments as to his merits in acting Cato. The new partner had
to pay £600 for his share of the stock property, "which was to be
paid by such sums as should arise from half his profits of acting,
till the whole was discharged." This incumbrance upon his share he
discharged out of the income he received in the first year of his
joint management.
His fame, however, by this time had culminated. He sustained it well,
but he cannot be said to have increased it. No other such a creation
as Cato fell to his lot. Young and Thomson could not serve him as
Addison and opportunity had done, and if he can be said to have won
additional laurels after Cato, it was in the season of 1722-23, when
he played Young Bevil, in Steele's "Conscious Lovers," with a success
which belied the assertion that he was inefficient in genteel comedy.
The season of 1725-26 was also one of his most brilliant.
Meanwhile, a success off the stage secured him as much happiness as,
on it, he had acquired wealth and reputation. The home he had kept
with Susan Mountfort was broken up. In the course of this "intimate
alliance of strict friendship," as the moral euphuists called it,
Booth had acted with remarkable generosity towards the lady. In the
year 1714 they bought several tickets in the State Lottery, and
agreed to share equally whatever fortune might ensue. Booth gained
nothing; the lady won a prize of £5000, and kept it. His friends
counselled him to claim half the sum, but he laughingly remarked that
there had never been any but a verbal agreement on the matter; and
since the result had been fortunate for his friend, she should enjoy
it all.
A truer friend he found in Miss Santlow, the "Santlow famed for
dance," of Gay. From the _ballet_ she had passed to the dignity of
an actress, and Booth had been enamoured of her "poetry of motion"
before he had played Worthy to her Dorcas Zeal. He described her,
with all due ardour, in an _Ode on Mira, dancing_,--as resembling
Venus in shape, air, mien, and eyes, and striking a whole theatre
with love, when alone she filled the spacious scene. Thus was Miss
Santlow in the popular Cato's eyes:--
"Whether her easy body bend,
Or her fair bosom heave with sighs,
Whether her graceful arms extend,
Or gently fall, or slowly rise,
Or returning, or advancing;
Swimming round, or side-long glancing;
Gods, how divine an air
Harmonious gesture gives the fair."
Her grace of motion effected more than eloquence, at least so Booth
thought, who thus sang the nymph in her more accelerated steps to
conquest:--
"But now the flying fingers strike the lyre,
The sprightly notes the nymph inspire.
She whirls around! she bounds! she springs!
As if Jove's messenger had lent her wings.
Such Daphne was....
Such were her lovely limbs, so flushed her charming face!
So round her neck! her eyes so fair!
So rose her swelling chest! so flow'd her amber hair!
While her swift feet outstript the wind,
And left the enamour'd God of Day behind."
Now, this goddess became to Booth one of the truest, most charming,
and most unselfish of mortal wives.[129] But see of what perilous
stuff _she_ was made who enraptured the generally unruffled poet
Thomson almost as much as she did Barton Booth. For _her_ smiles,
Marlborough had given what he least cared to part with--gold. Craggs,
the Secretary of State, albeit a barber's son, had made her spouse,
in all but name, and their daughter was mother of the first Lord St.
Germans, and, by a second marriage, of the first Marquis of Abercorn.
The Santlow blood thus danced itself into very excellent company;
but the aristocracy gave good blood to the stage, as well as took
gay blood from it. Contemporary with Booth and Mrs. Santlow were the
sisters, frolic Mrs. Bicknell and Mrs. Younger. They were nearly
related to Keith, Earl Marshal of Scotland. Their father had served
in Flanders under King William, "perhaps," says Mr. Carruthers, in
his _Life of Pope_, "rode by the side of Steele, whence Steele's
interest in Mrs. Bicknell, whom he praises in the _Tatler_ and
_Spectator_." Mrs. Younger, in middle age, married John, brother of
the seventh Earl of Winchelsea.
When Miss Santlow left the ballet for comedy, it was accounted one
of the lucky incidents in the fortune of Drury. Dorcas Zeal, in the
"Fair Quaker of Deal," was the first original part in which Miss
Santlow appeared. Cibber says, somewhat equivocally, "that she was
then in the full bloom of what beauty she might pretend to," and
he, not very logically, adds, that her reception as an actress was,
perhaps, owing to the admiration she had excited as a dancer. The
part was suited to her figure and capacity. "The gentle softness
of her voice, the composed innocence of her aspect, the modesty of
her dress, the reserved decency of her gesture, and the simplicity
of the sentiments that naturally fell from her, made her seem the
amiable maid she represented."
Many admirers, however, regretted that she had abandoned the
ballet for the drama. They mourned as if Terpsichore herself had
been on earth to charm mankind, and had gone never to return. They
remembered, longed for, and now longed in vain for, that sight which
used to set a whole audience half distraught with delight, when
in the very ecstasy of her dance, Santlow contrived to loosen her
clustering auburn hair, and letting it fall about such a neck and
shoulders as Praxiteles could more readily imagine than imitate,
danced on, the locks flying in the air, and half a dozen hearts at
the end of every one of them.
The union of Booth and Miss Santlow was as productive of happiness
as that of Betterton and Miss Saunderson. Indeed, with some few
exceptions, the marriages of English players have been generally
so. As much, perhaps, can hardly be said of the alliances of French
actors. Molière had but a miserable time of it with Mademoiselle
Béjart; but he revenged himself by producing domestic incidents
of a stormy and aggravating nature, on the stage. The _status_
of the French players was even lower, in one respect, than that
of their English brethren. The French ecclesiastical law did not
allow of marrying or giving in marriage amongst actors. They were
excommunicated, by the mere fact that they were stage-players. The
Church refused them the Sacrament of Marriage, and a loving couple
who desired to be honestly wed, were driven into lying. It was their
habit to retire from their profession, get married as individuals who
had no vocation, and the honeymoon over, to return again to the stage
and their impatient public. The Church was aware of the subterfuge,
and did its utmost to establish the concubinage of parties thus
united; but civil law and royal influence invariably declared that
these marriages were valid, seeing that the contracting parties were
not excommunicated actors when the ceremony was performed, whatever
they may have been a month before, or a month after.
No such difficulties as these had to be encountered by Booth and Miss
Santlow; and the former lost no opportunity to render justice to the
excellence of his wife. This actor's leisure was a learned leisure.
Once, in his poetic vein, when turning an ode of his favourite
_Horace_ into English, he went into an original digression on the
becomingness of a married life, and the peculiar felicity it had
brought to himself. Thus sang the Benedict when the union was a few
brief years old:--
"Happy the hour when first our souls were joined!
The social virtues and the cheerful mind
Have ever crowned our days, beguiled our pain;
Strangers to discord and her clamorous train.
Connubial friendship, hail! but haste away,
The lark and nightingale reproach thy stay;
From splendid theatres to rural scenes,
Joyous retire! so bounteous Heav'n ordains.
There we may dwell in peace.
There bless the rising morn, and flow'ry field,
Charm'd with the guiltless sports the woods and waters yield."
But neither the married nor the professional life of Booth was
destined to be of long continuance. His health began to give way
before he was forty. The managers hoped they had found a fair
substitute for him in the actor Elrington. Tom Elrington subsequently
became so great a favourite with the Dublin audience that they
remembered his Bajazet as preferable to that of Barry or Mossop, on
the ground that in that character his voice could be heard beyond the
Blind Quay, whereas that of the other-named actors was not audible
outside the house! Elrington had none of the scholar-like training
of Booth. He was originally apprentice to an upholsterer in Covent
Garden, was wont to attend plays unknown to his master, and to act
in them privately, and with equal lack of sanction. His master was
a vivacious Frenchman, who, one day, came upon him as, under the
instruction of Chetwood, he was studying a part in some stilted and
ranting tragedy. The stage-struck apprentice, in his agitation, sewed
his book up inside the cushion, on which he was at work, "while he
and Chetwood exchanged many a desponding look, and every stitch
went to both their hearts." The offenders escaped detection; but
on another occasion the Frenchman came upon his apprentice as he
was enacting the Ghost in "Hamlet," when he laid the spirit, with
irresistible effect of his good right arm. Elrington was, from the
beginning, a sort of "copper Booth." His first appearance on the
stage, at Drury Lane, in 1709, was in Oroonoko, the character in
which Booth had made his _coup d'essai_ in Dublin. He was ambitious,
too, and had influential support. When Cibber refused to allow him
to play Torrismond, while Elrington was yet young, a noble friend of
the actor asked the manager to assign cause for the refusal. Colley
was not at a loss. "It is not with us as with you, my Lord," said he;
"your Lordship is sensible that there is no difficulty in filling
places at court, you cannot be at a loss for persons to act their
part there; but I assure you, it is quite otherwise in our theatrical
world. If we should invest people with characters they should be
unable to support, we should be undone."
Elrington, after a few years of success in Dublin, boldly attempted
to take rank in London with Booth himself. He began the attempt in
his favourite part of Bajazet, Booth playing Tamerlane. The latter,
we are told by Victor, "being in full force, and perhaps animated
by a spirit of emulation towards the new Bajazet, exerted all his
powers; and Elrington owned to his friends that, never having felt
the force of such an actor, he was not aware that it was in the power
of mortal to soar so much above him and shrink him into nothing."
Booth was quite satisfied with his own success, for he complimented
Elrington on his, adding that his Bajazet was ten times as good
as that of Mills, who had pretensions to play the character. The
compliment was not ill-deserved, for Elrington possessed many of
the natural and some of the acquired qualifications of Booth, whom
perhaps he equalled in Oroonoko. He undoubtedly excelled Mills in
Zanga, of which the latter was the original representative. After
Dr. Young had seen Elrington play it, he went round, shook him
cordially by the hand, thanked him heartily, and declared he had
never seen the part done such justice to as by him; "acknowledging,
with some regret," says Dr. Lewis, "that Mills did but growl and
mouth the character." Such was the actor who became for a time
Booth's "double," and might have become his rival. During the illness
of the latter, in 1728-29, Elrington, we are told, was the principal
support of tragedy in Drury Lane. At that time, says Davies, "the
managers were so well convinced of his importance to them, that they
offered him his own conditions, if he would engage with them for a
term of years." Elrington replied, "I am truly sensible of the value
of your offer, but in Ireland I am so well rewarded for my services
that I cannot think of leaving it on any consideration. There is not
a gentleman's house to which I am not a welcome visitor."
Booth has been called indolent, but he was never so when in health,
and before a fitting audience. On one thin night, indeed, he was
enacting Othello rather languidly, but he suddenly began to exert
himself to the utmost, in the great scene of the third act. On
coming off the stage, he was asked the cause of this sudden effort.
"I saw an Oxford man in the pit," he answered, "for whose judgment
I had more respect than for that of the rest of the audience;" and
he played the Moor to that one but efficient judge. Some causes
of languor may, perhaps, be traced to the too warm patronage he
received, or rather friendship, at the hands of the nobility. It
was no uncommon thing for "a carriage and six" to be in waiting for
him--the equipage of some court friend--which conveyed him, in what
was then considered the brief period of three hours to Windsor, and
back again the next day in time for play or rehearsal. This agitated
sort of life seriously affected his health; and on one occasion his
recovery was despaired of. But the public favourite was restored to
the town; and learned Mattaire celebrated the event in a Latin ode,
in which he did honour to the memory of Betterton, and the living and
invigorated genius of Booth. That genius was not so perfect as that
of his great predecessor. When able to go to the theatre, though not
yet able to perform, he saw Wilks play two of his parts,--Jaffier and
Hastings,--and heard the applause which was awarded to his efforts;
and the sound was ungrateful to the ears of the philosophical and
unimpassioned Cato. But Jaffier was one of his triumphs; and he
whose tenderness, pity, and terror had touched the hearts of a whole
audience, was painfully affected at the triumph of another, though
achieved by different means.
One of the secrets of his own success, lay, undoubtedly, in his
education, feeling, and judgment. It may be readily seen from
Aaron Hill's rather elaborate criticism, that he was an actor who
made "points;" "he could soften and slide over, with an elegant
negligence, the improprieties of a part he acted; while, on the
contrary, he could dwell with energy upon the beauties, as if he
exerted a latent spirit, which he kept back for such an occasion,
that he might alarm, awaken, and transport, in those places only
which were worthy of his best exertions." This was really to depend
on "points;" and was, perhaps, a defect in a player of whom it has
been said, that he had learning to understand perfectly what it was
his part to speak, and judgment to know how it agreed or disagreed
with his character. The following, by Hill, is as graphic as anything
in Cibber:--"Booth had a talent at discovering the passions, where
they lay hid in some celebrated parts, by the injudicious practice
of other actors; when he had discovered, he soon grew able to
express them; and his secret of attaining this great lesson of the
theatre, was an adaptation of his look to his voice, by which artful
imitation of nature, the variations in the sounds of his words gave
propriety to every change in his countenance. So that it was Mr.
Booth's peculiar felicity to be heard and seen the same; whether as
the pleased, the grieved, the pitying, the reproachful, or the angry.
One would be almost tempted to borrow the aid of a very bold figure,
and to express this excellency the more significantly, by permission
to affirm, that _the Blind might have seen him in his voice, and the
Deaf have heard him in his visage_."
In his later years, says a critic, "his merit as an actor was
unrivalled, and even so extraordinary, as to be almost beyond the
reach of envy." His Othello, Cato, and his Polydore, in the "Orphan,"
in which he was never equalled, were long the theme of admiration
to his survivors, as were in a less degree his sorrowing and not
roaring Lear, his manly yet not blustering Hotspur. Dickey Brass and
Dorimant, Wildair and Sir Charles Easy,[130] Pinchwife, Manley, and
Young Bevil, were among the best of his essays in comedy,--where,
however, he was surpassed by Wilks. "But then, I believe," says a
critic, "no one will say he did not appear the fine gentleman in the
character of Bevil, in the 'Conscious Lovers.' It is said that he
_once_ played Falstaff in the presence of Queen Anne, 'to the delight
of the whole audience.'"
Aaron Hill, curiously statistical, states, that by the peculiar
delivery of certain sentiments in Cato, Booth was always sure
of obtaining from eighteen to twenty rounds of applause during
the evening,--marks of approval, both of matter and manner. Like
Betterton, he abounded in feeling. There was nothing of the stolidity
of "Punch" in either of them. Betterton is said to have sometimes
turned as "white as his neck-cloth," on seeing his father's ghost;
while Booth, when playing the ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, was
once so horror-stricken at his distraught aspect, as to be too
disconcerted to proceed, for a while, in his part. Either actor,
however, knew how far to safely yield themselves to feeling. Judgment
was always within call; the head ready to control the heart, however
wildly it might be impelled by the latter. Baron, the French actor,
did not know better than they, that while rules may teach the actor
not to raise his arms above his head, he will do well to break the
rule, if passion carry him that way. "Passion," as Baron remarked,
"knows more than art."
I have noticed the report that Booth and Wilks were jealous of each
other; I think there was more of emulation than of envy between
them. Booth could make sacrifices in favour of young actors as
unreservedly as Betterton. I find, even when he was in possession,
as it was called, of all the leading parts, that he as often played
Laertes, or even Horatio, as the Ghost or Hamlet. His Laertes was
wonderfully fine, and in a great actor's hands, may be made, in the
fifth act, at least, equal with the princely Dane himself. Again,
although his Othello was one of his grandest impersonations, he would
take Cassio, in order to give an aspirant a chance of triumph in the
Moor. In "Macbeth," Booth played, one night, the hero of the piece;
on another, Banquo; and on a third, the little part of Lennox. He was
quite content that Cibber should play Wolsey, while he captivated
the audience by enacting the King. His Henry was a mixture of frank
humour, dignity, and sternness. Theophilus Cibber says enough to
convince us that Booth, in the King, could be familiar without being
vulgar, and that his anger was of the quality that excites terror.
He pronounced the four words, "Go thy ways, Kate," with such a happy
emphasis as to win admiration and applause: and "when he said, 'Now,
to breakfast with what appetite you may,' his expression was rapid
and vehement, and his look tremendous."
The credit attached to the acting of inferior parts by leading
players was shared with Booth by Wilks and Cibber. Of the latter,
his son says, that "though justly esteemed the first comedian of his
time, and superior to all we have since beheld, he has played several
parts, to keep up the spirit of some comedies, which you will now
scarcely find one player in twenty who will not reject as beneath his
Mock-Excellence."
Booth _could_, after all, perhaps, occasionally be languid without
the excuse of illness. He would play his best to a single man in the
pit whom he recognised as a playgoer, and a judge of acting; but to
an unappreciating audience he could exhibit an almost contemptuous
disinclination to exert himself. On one occasion of this sort he was
made painfully sensible of his mistake, and a note was addressed to
him from the stage-box, the purport of which was to know whether
he was acting for his own diversion or in the service and for the
entertainment of the public?
On another occasion, with a thin house, and a cold audience, he was
languidly going through one of his usually grandest impersonations,
namely, Pyrrhus. At his very dullest scene he started into the utmost
brilliancy and effectiveness. His eye had just previously detected
in the pit a gentleman, named Stanyan, the friend of Addison and
Steele, and the correspondent of the Earl of Manchester. Stanyan was
an accomplished man and a judicious critic. Booth played to him with
the utmost care and corresponding success. "No, no!" he exclaimed, as
he passed behind the scenes, radiant with the effect he had produced,
"I will not have it said at Button's, that Barton Booth is losing his
powers!"
Some indolence was excusable, however, in actors who ordinarily
laboured as Booth did. As an instance of the toil which they had to
endure for the sake of applause, I will notice that in the season of
1712-13, when Booth studied, played, and triumphed in Cato, he within
not many weeks studied and performed five original and very varied
characters, Cato being the last of a roll, which included Arviragus,
in the "Successful Pirate;" Captain Stanworth, in the "Female
Advocates;" Captain Wildish, in "Humours of the Army;" Cinna, in an
adaptation of Corneille's play, and finally, Cato.
No doubt Booth was finest when put upon his mettle. In May 1726, for
instance, Giffard from Dublin appeared at Drury Lane, as the Prince
of Wales, in "Henry IV." The debutant was known to be an admirer
of the Hotspur of roaring Elrington. The Percy was one of Booth's
most perfect exhibitions; and, ill as he was on the night he was to
play it to Giffard's Harry, he protested that he would surprise the
new comer, and the house too; and he played with such grace, fire,
and energy, that the audience were beside themselves with ecstasy,
and the new actor was profuse at the side-scenes, and even out of
hearing of Booth, in acknowledgment of the great master and his
superiority over every living competitor.
Betterton cared little if his audience was select, provided it also
was judicious; Booth, however, loved a full house, though he could
play his best to a solitary, but competent, individual in the pit.
He confessed that he considered profit after fame, and thought that
large audiences tended to the increase of both. The intercourse
between audience and actor was, in his time, more intimate and
familiar than it is now. Thus we see Booth entering a coffee-house in
Bow Street, one morning after he had played Varanes, on the preceding
night. The gentlemen present, all playgoers, as naturally as they
were coffee-house frequenters, cluster round him, and acknowledge
the pleasure they had enjoyed in witnessing him act. These pleasant
morning critics only venture to blame him for allowing such unmeaning
stuff as the pantomime of "Perseus and Andromeda" to follow the
classical tragedy and mar its impression. But the ballet-pantomime
draws great houses, and is therefore a less indignity in Booth's eye,
than half empty benches. It was not the business of managers, he
said, to be wise to empty boxes. "There were many more spectators,"
he said, "than men of taste and judgment; and if by the artifice of
a pantomime they could entice a greater number to partake of a good
play than could be drawn without it, he could not see any great harm
in it; and that, as those pieces were performed after the play, they
were no interruption to it." In short, he held pantomimes to be rank
nonsense, which might be rendered useful, after the fashion of his
explanation.
His retirement from the stage may be laid to the importunity of Mr.
Theobald, who urged him to act in a play, for a moment attributed
to Shakspeare, the "Double Falsehood." Booth struggled through
the part of Julio, for a week, in the season of 1727-28, and then
withdrew, utterly cast down, and in his forty-sixth year. Broxham,
Friend, Colebatch, and Mead came with their canes, perukes, pills,
and proposals, and failing to restore him, they sent him away from
London. The sick player and his wife wandered from town to Bath,
from the unavailing springs there to Ostend, thence to Antwerp, and
on to Holland, to consult Boerhaave, who could only tell the invalid
that in England a man should never leave off his winter clothing
till midsummer-day, and that he should resume it the day after.
From Holland the sad couple came home to Hampstead, and ultimately
back to London, where fever, jaundice, and other maladies attacked
Booth with intermitting severity. Here, in May 1733, a quack doctor
persuaded him that if he would take "crude mercury" it would not only
prevent the return of his fever but effectually cure him of all his
complaints. As we are gravely informed that, within five days the
poor victim "took within two ounces of two pounds weight of mercury,"
we are not surprised to hear that at the end of that time Booth
was _in extremis_, and that Sir Hans Sloane was at his bedside to
accelerate, as it would seem, the catastrophe.
To peruse what followed is like reading the details of an
assassination. As if the two pounds, minus two ounces, of mercury
were not enough, poor Booth was bled profusely at the jugular, his
feet were plastered, and his scalp was blistered; he was assailed
in various ways by cathartics, and mocked, I may so call it, by
emulsions; the _Daily Post_ announced that he lay a-dying at his
house in Hart Street, other notices pronounced him moribund in
Charles Street; but he was alive on the morning of the 10th of May
1733, when a triad of prescriptions being applied against him, Cato
at length happily succumbed. But the surgeons would not let the
dead actor rest; they opened his body, and dived into its recesses,
and called things by strong names, and avoided technicalities; and,
after declaring everything to be very much worse than the state of
Denmark, as briefly described by _Hamlet_, Alexander Small, the
especial examiner, signing the report, added a postscript thereto,
implying that "There was no fault in any part of his body, but what
is here mentioned." Poor fellow! We are told that he recovered from
his fever, but that he died of the jaundice, helped, I think, by the
treatment.
A few days subsequently the body was privately interred in Cowley
Church, near Uxbridge, where he occasionally resided. A few old
friends, and some dearer than friends, accompanied him to the grave.
His will was as a kiss on either cheek of his beautiful widow, and
a slap on both cheeks of sundry of his relations. To the former he
left everything he had possessed, and for the very best of reasons.
"As I have been," he says, "a man much known and talked of, my not
leaving legacies to my relations may give occasion to censorious
people to reflect upon my conduct in this latter act of my life;
therefore, I think it necessary to declare that I have considered
my circumstances, and finding, upon a strict examination, that all
I am now possessed of does not amount to two-thirds of the fortune
my wife brought me on the day of our marriage, together with the
yearly additions and advantages since arising from her laborious
employment on the stage during twelve years past, I thought myself
bound by honesty, honour, and gratitude, due to her constant
affection, not to give away any part of the remainder of her fortune
at my death, having already bestowed, in free gifts, upon my sister,
Barbara Rogers, upwards of thirteen hundred pounds, _out of my
wife's substance_, and full four hundred pounds of her money on my
undeserving brother, George Booth (besides the gifts they received
before my marriage), and all those benefits were conferred on my said
brother and sister, from time to time, at the earnest solicitation of
my wife, who was perpetually entreating me to continue the allowance
I gave my relations before my marriage. The inhuman return that has
been made my wife for these obligations, by my sister, I forbear to
mention." This was justice without vengeance, and worthy of the sage,
of whom Booth was the most finished representative. The generosity
of Hester Santlow, too, has been fittingly preserved in the will; the
whole of which, moreover, is a social illustration of the times.
In Westminster, "Barton Street" keeps up the actor's name; and
"Cowley Street" the remembrance of his proprietorship of a country
estate near Uxbridge. To pass through the former street is like
being transported to the times of Queen Anne. It is a quaint old
locality, very little changed since the period in which Barton built
it. No great stretch of imagination is required to fancy the original
Pyrrhus and Cato gliding along the shady side, with a smile on his
lips and a certain fire in his eye. He is thinking of Miss Santlow!
* * * * *
With Booth slowly dying, and Mrs. Oldfield often too ill to act,
the prospects of Drury began to wane in 1728-29. Elrington could
not supply the place of the former; nor Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Horton
combined, that of the latter. Cibber carefully instructed his son
Theophilus in the part of Pistol, which became his one great part,
and the appearance of Miss Raftor as Dorinda, in Dryden's version of
the "Tempest," on the 2nd of January 1729, marks the first step in
the bright and unchequered career of one who is better remembered as
Kitty Clive, of whom, more hereafter.[131] She was not able to save
Cibber's pastoral comedy, "Love in a Riddle," from condemnation
by an audience who had the ill-manners, as it was considered, to
hiss, despite a royal presence in the house. As the new names rose
the old ones fell off, and Congreve and Steele--the first rich and
a gentleman, the second needy, but a gentleman, too--died in 1729,
leaving no one but Cibber fit to compete with them in comedy. Musical
pieces, such as the "Village Opera" and the "Lover's Opera," born of
Gay's success, brought no such golden results to their authors or the
house, which was still happy in retaining Wilks.
On the other hand, in the Fields, where ballad-opera had been a mine
of wealth to astonished managers, classical tragedy took the lead,
with Quin leading in everything, and growing in favour with a town
whose applause could no longer be claimed by Booth. But classical
tragedy reaped no golden harvests. Barford's "Virgin Queen" lives but
in a line of Pope to Arbuthnot. The "Themistocles" (Quin) of young
Madden, whom Ireland ought to remember as one of her benefactors
who was no mere politician, lived but for a few nights.[132] Mrs.
Heywood succeeded as ill with her romantic tragedy, "Frederick,
Duke of Brunswick," which was five acts of flattery to the House of
Hanover, some of whose members yawned over it ungratefully. But the
"Beggar's Opera" could always fill the house whether Miss Cantrell
warbled Polly, with the old cast, or children played all the parts--a
foolish novelty, not unattractive. Hawker, an actor, vainly tried to
rival Gay, with a serio-comic opera, the "Wedding," and Gay himself
was doomed to suffer disappointment; for the authorities suppressed
his "Polly," a vapid continuation of the fortunes of Macheath and
the lady, and thereby drove almost to the disaffection of which he
was accused, not only Gay, but his patrons, the Duke and Duchess of
Queensberry, who punished the Court by absenting themselves from its
pleasures and duties. The poet, who desired nothing but the joys of
a quiet life, a good table, and a suit of blue and silver, all which
he enjoyed beneath the ducal roof, happiest of mercer's apprentices,
found compensation in publishing his work by subscription, whereby he
realised so large a sum as to satisfy his utmost wishes.
Drury Lane was not fortunate in any of its new pieces in the season
of 1729-30. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Mrs. Oldfield, by her
recommendation, and by her acting, obtained even partial success for
a comedy, by the Rev. James Miller, the "Humours of Oxford." This
satirical piece brought the author into trouble with his University,
at some of whose members it was aimed, and it did not tend to raise
him in the estimation of his congregation in Conduit Street.
The tragedy of "Timoleon" was ruined[133] by the zeal of the
author's friends, who crowded the house, and as loudly applauded
the candle-snuffers and furniture as they did Mills or Mrs. Porter.
Martyn, the author, had been a linen-draper, but his epitaph in
Lewisham Churchyard describes him as "one of the best bred men
in England." He was certainly well connected, but he exhibited
more efficiency in colonising Georgia than in writing poetry. His
"Timoleon" had neither beauty of style, nor incident.
This season, too, saw the first dramatic attempt of Thomson, in
"Sophonisba." Lee's tragedy of that name used to drown the female
part of the house in tears; but Thomson's could not stir even his
own friends to enthusiasm. They rose from the full-dress rehearsals
to which they were invited, dulled in sense rather than touched
or elevated. Thomson's play is far less tender than Lee's; his
Sophonisba (the last character originally played by Mrs. Oldfield),
more stern and patriotic, and less loving. The author himself
described her as a "female Cato," and in the Epilogue not too
delicately indicated that if the audience would only applaud a native
poet,
"Then other Shakspeares yet may rouse the stage,
And other Otways melt another age."
"Sophonisba," which Thomson was not afraid to set above the heroine
of Corneille, abounds in platitudes, and it was fatal to Cibber, who,
never tolerable in tragedy, was fairly hissed out of the character
of Scipio, which he surrendered to a promising player, Williams. The
latter was violently hissed also on the first night of his acting
Scipio, he bore so close a resemblance to his predecessor. Mrs.
Oldfield, alone, made a sensation, especially in the delivery of the
line,
"Not one base word of Carthage--on thy soul!"
Her grandeur of action, her stern expression, and her powerful tone
of voice, elicited the most enthusiastic applause. Exactly two months
later, on the 28th of April 1730, she acted Lady Brute, and therewith
suddenly terminated her thirty years of service, dying exactly six
months after illness compelled her to withdraw.
Before noticing more fully the career of Mrs. Oldfield, let me record
here, that on the night she played Lady Brute in the "Provoked Wife,"
the part of Mademoiselle was acted by Charlotte Charke, the wife of
a good singer, but a worthless man, and the youngest child of Colley
Cibber.[134] There seems to have been a touch of insanity, certainly
there was no power of self-control in this poor woman. From her
childhood she had been wild, wayward, and rebellious; self-taught
as a boy might be, and with nothing feminine in her character or
pursuits. With self-assertion, too, she was weak enough to be won
by a knave with a sweet voice, whose cruel treatment drove his
intractable wife to the stage, where she failed to profit by her fine
opportunities.
The corresponding season at Lincoln's Inn Fields was the usual one
of an unfashionable house; but Quin, Ryan, Walker, and Boheme were
actors who made way against Wilks, Cibber, Mills, and Bridgewater.
No new piece of any value was produced; the only incidents worth
recording being the playing of Macheath by Quin, for his benefit: and
the sudden death of Spiller, stricken by apoplexy, as he was playing
in the "Rape of Proserpine." He was inimitable in old men, though he
himself was young; but whatever he played, he so identified himself
with his character that Spiller disappeared from the eyes and the
thoughts of an audience, unconsciously deluded by the artist.
As the town grew, so also did theatres increase; that in Goodman's
Fields, and the little house in the Haymarket, were open this season.
At the former Giffard and his wife led in tragedy and comedy; but
the company was generally weak. Not so the authors who wrote for the
house. First among them was Fielding, a young fellow of three and
twenty; bred to the law, but driven to the drama by the inability
of his father, the General, to supply him with funds. His first
play, "Love in Several Masques," was acted at Drury Lane in 1728;
his second, and a better, the "Temple Beau," was played at Goodman's
Fields.
Ralph, who had been a schoolmaster in Philadelphia, and came to
England to thrive by political, satirical, or dramatic writings, and
to live for ever in the abuse lavished on him by Pope, supplied a
ballad-opera, the "Fashionable Lady," which was _intended_ to rival
the "Beggar's Opera." To Macheath-Walker is ascribed a tragedy, the
"Fate of Villany;" and Mottley, the disappointed candidate for place,
and the compiler of _Joe Miller's Jests_--Miller being a better joker
than he was an actor--wrote for this house his "Widow Bewitched," the
last and poorest of his contributions to the stage.
For the Haymarket, Fielding wrote the only piece which has come down
to our times, his immortal burlesque-tragedy of "Tom Thumb," in which
the weakness and bombast of late or contemporary writers are copied
with wonderful effect. Young suffered severely by this;--and the
"Oh, Huncamunca! Huncamunca, oh!" was a dart at the "Oh, Sophonisba!
Sophonisba, oh!" of Jamie Thomson. Of the other pieces I need not
disturb the dust. Let me rather, contemplating that of Mrs. Oldfield,
glance at the career of that great actress, who living knew no rival,
and in her peculiar line has never been excelled.
[Illustration: Mr. Garrick as Abel Drugger.]
FOOTNOTES:
[125] Malone says "August 11."
[126] "Giving his answer to the ambassador."--_Victor._
[127] Dr. Doran exactly reverses the state of the case. Dr. Johnson
says: "The Whigs applauded every line in which liberty was mentioned,
as a satire on the Tories; and the Tories echoed every clap, to show
that the satire was unfelt."
[128] Wrong. Victor in his Memoirs of Booth says five-and-twenty
nights: but this also is incorrect. On May 9, 1713, "Cato" is
announced to be played for the twentieth time, and on May 10, for
Mrs. Rogers' benefit, "The Funeral" is in the bill. Cibber says
"Cato" was acted every day for a month, Mondays excepted.
[129] Bellchambers, in his Notes to "Cibber," is very severe on this
marriage. "In the year 1719, Mr. Booth, who seems to have been a
libertine and a sensualist, gave his hand to Miss Santlow, a strumpet
of condition"--and then follow some very strong remarks on Booth and
his wife.
[130] These four characters were certainly not among Booth's best.
Wildair and Sir Charles Easy were Wilks' parts, and indeed I cannot
find that Booth ever played any of the four.
[131] Chetwood states that her first character was Ismenes, a page,
in "Mithridates," in which she sang with extraordinary success.
Genest supposes this to have been in November 1728.
[132] Acted nine times.
[133] It was acted fourteen times--a great success in those days.
[134] Charlotte Charke says in her _Autobiography_ that this was her
first appearance, but it was really her second.
INDEX.
Actor, profession of, in Greece and Rome, 2, 3.
Actors and clergy in collision, 13;
playing under forged licence, 13;
authors, 185;
Dennis' abuse of, 361.
Actors' famous "Points," 155.
Actresses, introduction of, 28;
pre-restoration English, 66.
Addison, Joseph, part author of the "Tender Husband," 294;
his "Rosamond," 301;
his "Cato," 329;
his "Drummer," 339.
Aldridge, Mrs., 148.
Alleyn, Edward, 31, 43, 48.
"Amboyna," 28.
Angel, 65, 70.
Anne, queen of James I., an actress, 24.
Anne, Princess, as Lemandra, 94.
Apothecaries' Hall the site of an early theatre, 16.
Arbuthnot, part author of "Three Hours after Marriage," 342.
Arrest of players, 15.
Arrowsmith, dramatist, 207.
Arsinoe, first opera after the Italian fashion, 295.
Aston, Anthony, his criticisms of Betterton, 131;
of Mrs. Barry, 152, 154, 156;
his appearance at Lincoln's Inn Fields, 369.
Audience on the stage forbidden, 289.
Audiences of the seventeenth century, 246.
Baker, Thomas, dramatist, 275.
Bale, Bishop, 14.
Bancroft, Archbishop, 25.
Bancroft, John, dramatist, 208.
Bankes, John, dramatist, 234.
Bankside, theatres on the, 32.
Barford, Richard, dramatist, 421.
Baron, the French actor, 134.
Barry, Mrs. Elizabeth, 121, 148, 190;
account of her life, 149-161;
tutored by Lord Rochester, 151;
as Isabella in "Mustapha," 151;
as Alcmena, 123;
as Calista, 131, 154;
as Monimia, 152, 156;
her industry, 153;
as Belvidera, 153;
as Cassandra, 153;
as Lady Brute, 154;
as Zara, 154;
as Clarissa, 154;
as Isabella in the "Fatal Marriage," 154;
as Queen Elizabeth, 156;
in free comedy, 156;
and Mrs. Boutell, 157;
and Lord Rochester and Etheridge, 158, 159;
her last appearance, 159;
the first player to have a benefit, 160;
her death, 160;
her portrait by Kneller, 160.
Barton Street, Westminster, 143.
Bateman, actor, 64.
Baxter, actor, 64.
Bear Garden, 32.
Beckingham, dramatist, 350, 363.
Beeston, actor, 64.
"Beggar's Opera," 386;
its famous run, 388.
Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 238;
her indecency, 239.
Bell, actor, 64.
Benefits, performers', first devised for Mrs. Barry, 160.
Benfield, actor, 26.
Betterton, father of the actor, 53, 117.
Betterton, Mrs. (see also Mrs. Saunderson), 94;
instructs the Princesses Mary and Anne, 94;
in her old age, 113;
pensioned by Queen Anne, 95.
Betterton, Thomas, 53, 57, 58, 65, 191, 297, 310, 311, 314;
account of his life, 109-135;
as Hamlet, 109, 111, 131;
tutored in Hamlet by Davenant, 112;
his famous benefit, 114, 312;
as Melantius, 114;
his death, 116, 314;
as Bosola, 119;
in "Mustapha," 120;
as Colonel Jolly, 121;
his modesty, 121;
in the "Provoked Wife," 121;
as Jupiter, 123;
his friendship with Dryden and Tillotson, 124;
and Pope, 126;
as Othello, 128, 129;
as Castalio, 128;
his portrait by Kneller and Pope, 128;
as Bassanio, 129;
as Horatio, 129;
patronised by royalty, 130;
licence granted to him by William III., 130;
adversely criticised by Aston, 131;
Cibber's praise of, 132, 133;
as Brutus, 133;
his salary, 133;
the _Tatler_ on Betterton, 134;
as an author, 185;
helps Booth, 394.
Betterton, William, 25, 70.
Bicknell, Mrs., 404;
death of, 373.
Bird, Theophilus, 64;
accident to, 96.
Bishopsgate Street, theatre at an inn, 31.
Blackfriars' theatre, 16, 22;
its history, 30, 42.
Blagden, actor, 64, 65.
Boar's Head, the, without Aldgate, 15.
Boheme, Anthony, 356, 400;
marries Mrs. Seymour, 374;
as Herod, 375.
_Book of Sports_, the, 29.
Booth, Barton, 283, 315;
as Maximus, 129, 394;
recognised by Betterton as his successor, 129, 178;
leading actor at Drury Lane, 312;
in "Elfrid," 312;
as Pyrrhus, 321, 396;
as Cato, 329, 396, 397;
made a manager, 330, 401;
as Hastings, 331;
his marriage, 358;
as Cleombrotus, 359;
as Alonzo, 365;
as Young Bevil, 370, 402;
as Hotspur, 379, 415;
his illness, 381;
as Julio, 386, 417;
his last season, 386;
his last appearance, 386;
account of his life, 391-420;
as Pamphilus, 392;
his _début_ as Oroonoko, 392;
and Betterton, 394;
as Captain Worthy, 395;
as the Ghost in "Hamlet," 395;
keeps house with Susan Mountfort, 396;
as Tamerlane, 408;
his sense of appreciation, 409;
Aaron Hill's criticism of him, 410, 411;
his great parts, 411, 412;
his feeling, 412;
as Laertes, 413;
as Henry VIII., 413;
finest when on his mettle, 414, 416;
his powers of application, 415;
his love of fame, 416;
his retirement, 417;
his death, 418;
his will, 418.
Boothby, Mrs., dramatist, 237.
Boutel, Mrs., 64, 82.
Bowen, William, 163;
converted by Collier's "Short View," 174;
killed by Quin, 174, 349;
his original characters, 350.
Bowman, 122, 142.
Bowman, Mrs., as Lady Fancyful, 121;
adopted by the Bettertons, 121.
Boyer, Abel, dramatist, 212.
Boyle, Charles, dramatist, 287.
"Boys" superseded by women, 67.
"Boys" in Rhodes's company, 67.
Bracegirdle, Mrs. Anne, 162, 166, 169;
as the Page in "The Orphan," 152;
as Millamant, 167;
as Statira, 167;
her high private character, 167, 168;
and Lord Burlington, 169;
attempted to be carried off by Hill, 171;
opposed by Mrs. Oldfield, 302.
Bradshaw, Mrs., 315;
her marriage, 332.
Brady, Nicholas, dramatist, 234.
Brett, Colonel, patentee, 306;
sells his share, 311.
Bristol, George, Earl of, 190.
Brown, Tom, on Mrs. Barry, 159.
Buckingham, Duke of, 187.
Bull, the, in Bishopsgate Street, 31.
Bullock, Christopher, his "Woman's a Riddle," 343;
his "Perjuror," 351;
as Bardach, 363;
his death, 369.
Bullock, Mrs., as Mrs. Mincemode, 380.
Bullock, William, 178, 180.
Burbage, James, 16.
Burbage, Richard, 22, 26.
Burnaby, Charles, dramatist, 278.
Burt, 48, 64;
in female characters, 70;
as Cicero, 70.
Busby, Dr., an amateur actor, 45.
Cademan, 143;
accident to, 143.
Cambridge, plays at, 11, 16, 24, 52.
Cantrell, Miss, as Polly Peachum, 421.
Carey, Henry, Viscount Falkland, 193.
Carlell, Sir Ludovick, 200.
Carlisle, James, 163;
killed at Aghrun, 173;
an author, 186.
Carrol, Mrs. (afterwards Mrs. Centlivre), 123.
Cartwright, Rev. Wm., dramatist, 45.
Cartwright, actor, 64;
his bequest to Dulwich College, 97;
great as Falstaff, 97.
Caryll, Earl of, 190.
Castlemaine, Lady, 249, 250.
"Cato," by Addison, 329, 397.
Centlivre, Mrs., 124, 243, 369, 385;
her "Busy Body," 311;
her "Wonder," 330, 331;
her "Bold Stroke for a Wife," 351.
Champmeslé, La, the French actress, 161.
Charke, Charlotte, daughter of Colley Cibber, 424.
Charles I. and the stage, 29.
Charles II. and Dryden, 228;
at the theatre (see chap. xii.).
Charleton, actor, 64.
Children of the Chapel Royal performing before royalty, 10.
Children of the Revels, 23.
Church employs the stage in early times, 7.
Cibber, Colley, quoted: on Kynaston, 72;
on Nokes, 75;
on Betterton, 132, 133;
on Underhill, 139;
on Anthony Leigh, 144;
on Mrs. Barry, 153, 154;
on Mrs. Mountfort, 163;
on the wearing of vizard-masks, 265;
on theatrical dissensions, 307;
on the success of the United Companies, 317;
on the critics, 319;
on Estcourt, 325.
Cibber, Colley, 302, 319;
as the Chaplain in "The Orphan," praised by Goodman, 103;
and Betterton, 130;
as Sir Gentle's Servant, 163;
as Sigismond, 163;
and his wig, 266;
his comedies, 280;
his "Careless Husband" an attempt at greater decency, 292;
Wilks and Dogget, 318;
his famous play "The Nonjuror," 345, 346-349;
his "Refusal," 366;
as Achoreus, 378;
his share of "The Provoked Husband," 386;
in the law courts, 387;
his "Love in a Riddle," 421;
hissed as Scipio, 423.
Cibber, Mrs., the elder, 178, 180.
Cibber, Theophilus, his first appearance, 366;
as Pistol, 366, 420;
his first wife, 379.
Clerical actors, 10;
auditors, 268.
Clive, Kitty, 420.
Clun, 64;
superior to Mohun as Iago, 70;
as Subtle, 70;
his tragic death, 70.
Cockburn, Mrs., dramatist, 241.
Cockpit, the, in Drury Lane, 57, 59.
Coleman, Mrs. Edward, early actress, 67.
Collier, Jeremy, his "Short View" converts Bowen, 174;
attacks the indecency of the stage, 225.
Collier, W., M.P., patentee of Drury Lane, 312, 315, 316.
Company of Players, Richard III. first English prince to employ
them, 9.
Condell, 26.
Congreve, 223, 225, 226, 233, 273;
and Mrs. Bracegirdle, 168;
and Voltaire, 214;
his sarcasm on Cibber, 294;
his death, 421.
Cooke, G. F., 401.
Corey, John, 277.
Corey, Mrs., 64, 82;
mimics Lady Harvey, 259.
Corye, John, dramatist, 207.
Covent Garden Theatre, different buildings, 62.
Cowley, Abraham, dramatist, 216.
Cowley Street, Westminster, 420.
Cox, Richard, 52.
Crauford, David, dramatist, 212.
Cromwell, Lady Mary, 250.
Cromwell's buffooneries, 55.
Cross Keys, Gracechurch Street, 31.
Crowne, John, dramatist, 219, 222;
his death, 233.
Curtain Road, 33.
---- Theatre, the, 33.
Davenant, 57, 221, 232;
his company, 61, 65;
his improvements of Shakspeare's plays, 2, 19.
Davenport, Mrs., 65;
as Roxalana, 68, 91;
entrapped by a mock marriage by the Earl of Oxford, 92.
Davies, Mrs., 65, 92;
Charles II.'s mistress, 93.
Davys, Mrs., authoress, 341.
Decrees regarding players, 14, 21, 46, 47.
Dennis, 216, 234, 277, 291, 361;
his "Appius and Virginius," 311;
the inventor of stage thunder, 311;
his "Invader of his Country," 358.
Dering, Charles, duel with Vaughan on the stage, 261.
Digges, 401.
Dixon, actor, 65.
Dogget, 163, 176;
as Shylock, 176;
his original parts, 176;
a manager of Drury Lane, 176;
his Coat and Badge, 177;
as an author, 186;
the first "star," 272;
as Moneytrap, 300;
his care in dressing his parts, 300;
Cibber and Wilks, 318;
gives up management, 330, 401.
Dorset Garden, Duke's Theatre in, 61.
Drake, Dr., 210.
Dramatists, list of, 183, 184, 213, 214.
Drury Lane Theatre, 60;
the various theatres, 62;
burnt, 140;
united with the Haymarket, 305;
its waning prospects, 381.
Dryden, John, 221, 224, 227-229, 232;
his "Amboyna," 28;
his friendship with Betterton, 124;
his assault upon Shakspeare, 219.
Duelling in the theatre, 261.
Duffett, Thomas, dramatist, 209.
Duke, actor, 64.
Duke's Theatre, 61.
Dunstable, early theatre at, 7.
Durfey, Thomas, 234, 330;
in his decline, 284;
his "Prophets," 311.
Eastland, Mrs., 64.
Eccleston, actor, 26.
Egleton, "Baron," 373.
Elizabeth, a sharp censor, 16;
stage used to attack, 17, 18.
Elrington, Tom, in "Oroonoko," 341, 407, 408;
a substitute for Booth, 407;
as Bajazet, 407;
plays against Booth, 408;
principal tragedian at Drury Lane, 409.
_Encore_ introduced at the Haymarket, 315.
Estcourt, Richard, his youthful adventures, 284;
as Dominic, 295;
"the true Serjeant Kite," 302, 325;
his career, 324-326;
becomes a wine merchant, 326;
his death, 326.
Etherege, Sir John, 202-207.
Eugene, Prince, and Mrs. Centlivre, 320.
Evans, Miss, a dancer, 272.
Evelyn at the theatre, 251, 257;
on licentious plays, 255.
Falkland, Viscount, 193.
Fane, Sir Francis, 201.
Farquhar, Captain George, 234, 281;
his "Recruiting Officer," 297;
his death, 304.
Farren, William, mentioned, 97.
Fenton, Elijah, his treatment by Cibber, 374;
success of his "Mariamne," 374.
Fenton, Lavinia, her first appearance, 384;
as Polly Peachum, 388;
and the Duke of Bolton, 389.
Field, Nathaniel, the actor, 26.
Fielding, Henry, 425;
his "Tom Thumb," 353, 426.
Filmer, Dr., 210.
Flecnoe, 229.
Floid, actor, 65, 70.
Folkes, Martin, marries Mrs. Bradshaw, 332.
Footmen admitted free to gallery, 267.
Fortune Theatre, Playhouse Yard, 31.
Foster, actor, 40.
French actors and actresses in Blackfriars, 65;
pelted off the stage, 66.
French Company, a, at Lincoln's Inn, 357.
Frowde, Philip, dramatist, 383.
Fryer, Peg, an actress eighty-five years old, 364.
"Gammer Gurton's Needle," 16.
Garrick, David, 125, 133, 169.
Gay, John, 342;
his first piece, 329;
his "What D'ye Call It?" 334;
his "Captives," 376;
the "Beggar's Opera," 386, 388;
his "Polly" forbidden, 422.
Geoffrey, an early manager, 7.
Gibbs, Mrs., 65.
Giffard as Prince of Wales in "Henry IV.", 415.
Gildon, Charles, 220, 285.
Gillow, actor, 163.
Globe Alley, 32.
Globe Theatre, 32, 33.
Gloucester, Richard, Duke of, 9.
Goffe, an actor, 54.
Goodman, Cardell ("Scum"), 64;
as Julius Cæsar, 101;
as Alexander, 101;
his rascalities, 102, 103;
his prophecy regarding Cibber, 103.
Goodman's Fields Theatre, 425.
Gosson, Stephen, 19, 37.
Gough, actor, 26.
Gould, Robert, dramatist, 209.
Gracechurch Street Theatre in an inn, 31.
Griffin, Benjamin, his young days, 338;
an author, 364.
Griffin, Captain, 64, 142, 275.
Grindal, Archbishop, 20.
Guilman, actor, 40.
Gwyn, Madam, 87.
Gwyn, Nell, 64, 79, 82, 251;
her birth, 83;
her first appearance as Crydaria, 84;
her lovers, 85;
as Almahide, 87;
her sons, 87;
her extravagance, 88;
her death, 89.
Haines, Joseph, 64, 104;
at Drury Lane, 105;
as Sparkish, 105;
his practical jokes, 105, 107;
as Captain Bluff, 107;
as Roger in "Æsop," 107;
as Tom Errand, 107;
his misconduct on the stage, 107;
his death, 108.
Hancock, actor, 64.
Harris (the great actor of that name), 64, 65, 137;
as Romeo, 113;
a rival to Betterton, 120;
as Henry V., 136;
as Wolsey, 136;
his portrait by Hailes, 136.
Harris, Joseph (actor and author), 186.
Hart, Charles, 47, 64, 86, 87;
as the Duchess in Shirley's "Cardinal," 68;
as Othello, 68;
as Alexander, 69;
as Brutus, 69;
as Cataline, 69;
as Amintor, 69;
as Manly, 69;
his retirement, 69;
his bearing on the stage, 69;
his death, 69;
Haines's practical joke on Hart, 106.
Harvey, Lady, and Mrs. Corey, 259.
Hatton, Lord, 54.
Hawker, dramatist, 421.
Hawkins, licensed to train children of the revels, 23.
Haymarket, Vanbrugh's theatre in the, 297.
Haymarket Theatre opened, 378.
Haywood, Mrs., dramatist, 367, 421;
as an actress, 373.
Hemings, 26.
Henslowe, money-lender and manager, 31.
Herbert, Sir Henry, Master of the Revels, 119.
Higden, Henry, a jovial dramatist, 209.
Higgins, a posture-master, 314.
Higgons, Bevil, dramatist, 277.
Hill, Aaron, 340, 368, 376;
account of, 312-14.
Hill, Captain Richard, murders Mountfort, 170.
Hippisley, 388.
"Histrio-Mastix," 42.
Hodgson, actor, 163.
Holden, Mrs., 65;
her unfortunate blunder, 95.
Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, "The Theatre" in, 33.
Hope, the, a playhouse, 32.
Hopkins, Charles, dramatist, 211.
Horden, Hildebrand, 178;
killed in a brawl, 179.
Horton, Mrs., 336;
as Isabella, 365.
Howard, Edward, dramatist, 196, 197.
Howard, James, dramatist, 197, 199.
Howard, Sir Robert, dramatist, 198.
Hughes, actor, 64.
Hughes, John, dramatist, 361;
his "Siege of Damascus," 361, 362.
Hughes, Mrs. Margaret, 64;
suggested to have been the first actress, 67;
wooed by Prince Rupert, 78.
Inns, theatres at, 15, 31.
Jacob, Sir Hildebrand, dramatist, 372.
James I. a patron of the stage, 23, 25.
James, Mrs., 64.
Jennings, Mrs., 65.
Jevon, Thomas, as Jobson, 143;
as Lycurgus, 143;
his silly buffoonery, 143;
his one play, 185.
Johnson, Benjamin, 178;
a great actor, 180.
Johnson, Charles, dramatist, 328, 352.
Keen, Theophilus, his death, 352.
Kemble, Charles, allusion to, 277.
Kemble, J. P., 401.
Kendall, licensed to train children of the revels, 23.
Killigrew, Thomas, 61;
his patent, 62;
his death, 62;
his company, 64;
the first to employ actresses for all female characters, 67.
Killigrew, Sir William, author, 195.
Kirkham, licensed to train children of the revels, 23.
Knight, Joseph, his edition of the _Roscius Anglicanus_, 63 _n_,
66 _n_.
Knipp, Mrs., 64, 80.
Kynaston, 57, 64, 65;
as Olympia, 71;
in "The Silent Woman," 71;
a ladies' favourite, 71;
thrashed by order of Sedley, 71;
as Leon, 72;
as Henry IV., 73;
his death, 74;
as Boabdelin, 87.
Lacy, John, 64;
instructor of Nell Gwyn, 84;
a great Falstaff, 97;
the original Teague, 97;
as Bayes, 97;
as Captain Otter, 98;
his quarrel with Hon. Edward Howard, 98;
his posthumous comedy, 99.
Lansdowne, Lord, 194;
his "Jew of Venice," 276.
Leanard, John, dramatist, 208.
Lee, Mrs., actress, 148.
Lee, Nat, 221, 232;
tries his fortune as an actor, 142;
his death, 233.
Leicester, Earl of, 23;
his players, 16.
Leigh, Anthony, 144;
as Dominique, 144.
Leveridge, Dick, 272;
as Pyramus, 343.
Lewis, David, dramatist, 384.
Licensed players, 9, 26, 41.
Lilliston, 65.
Lincoln's Inn Fields, theatres in, 61, 62, 337.
Little Rose Theatre, 32.
Long, Mrs., actress, 65.
Lovel, actor, 65.
Lowen, actor, 26, 49.
Lyddoll, 64.
MacSwiney, 273 _note_, 315, 316;
takes the Haymarket Theatre, 302, 306, 309.
Madden, Dr. Samuel, dramatist, 421.
Maidwell, L., dramatist, 209.
Mallory, Christopher, punished, 41.
Manley, Mrs., dramatist, 240.
Manning, Francis, dramatist, 285.
Marshall, Anne, 64, 81, 82;
said to have been the first actress, 67.
Marshall, Rebecca, 65, 81;
as Dorothea, 82;
as Queen of Sicily, 82;
and Sir Hugh Middleton, 262.
Marshall, Stephen, the Presbyterian, father of the actresses, 81.
Martyn, Benjamin, dramatist, 422.
Medbourne, Matthew, 65, 144;
his death, 145;
an author, 185.
Middleton, the dramatist, imprisoned, 26, 27.
Middleton, Sir Hugh, and Rebecca Marshall, 262.
Miller, Rev. James, dramatist, 422.
Mills, John, 178;
his character as an actor, 180;
his original characters, 180;
as Zanga, 365.
Milward, William, his first appearance, 378.
Miracle-plays, 7.
Mitchell, Joseph, dramatist, 368.
Mohun, Major, 48, 64, 69, 99;
as Iago, 70;
his portrait, 100;
as Maximin, 100;
as Clytus, 100;
his versatility, 100;
his modesty, 100.
Mohun, Lord, concerned in Mountfort's murder, 170.
Moore, Master, 40.
Moore, Sir Thomas, his "Mangora," 351.
Moralities, 7, 9.
Moseley, 65, 70.
Mossop, 400.
Motteux, Peter Anthony, 210;
his disgraceful death, 210.
Mottley, John, dramatist, 364-67, 425.
Mountfort, Mrs. (see also Mrs. Verbruggen), 162, 275;
described by Colley Cibber, 163;
in "The Western Lass," 164;
as Bayes, 165;
as Melantha, 165;
her original characters, 166;
her death, 166, 286.
Mountfort, Susan, 356, 357;
lives with Booth, 396;
as Ophelia, 396;
her insanity, 396;
success in the lottery, 402.
Mountfort, William, 163, 169;
his powers of mimicry, 170;
his murder, 170-72;
an author, 185.
Mysteries and Miracle Plays, 7, 8.
Newcastle, Duke of, 187, 188.
Nokes, James, 65, 74, 144;
as Nurse in "Caius Marius" and "Fatal Jealousy," 75;
as Sir Arthur Addel, 77;
before Charles II., 77.
Nokes, Robert, 65.
"Nonjuror," Cibber's, 345, 346-349.
Norris, 65, 163;
as Dicky in "Constant Couple," 175;
his original characters, 176;
his death, 176.
Odell, Thomas, dramatist, 367.
Odingsell, Gabriel, an unfortunate dramatist, 379, 380.
Oldfield, Mrs. Anne, 166, 178, 286, 320, 366, 379;
as Lady Betty Modish, 293;
as Biddy Tipkin, 295;
and Mrs. Bracegirdle, 302;
as Marcia, 329;
as Jane Shore, 331;
as Violante, 332;
as Lady Jane Grey, 334;
as Maria in the "Nonjuror," 347;
as Celonis, 359;
as Indiana, 370;
as Cydene, 376;
as Sophonisba, 423;
her last part, 424.
Oldmixon, John, dramatist, 212, 287;
operas, 63.
Opera, introduction of, after the Italian manner, 295.
Orrery, Lord, 191, 192, 283.
Otway, 232;
tries his fortune on the stage, 142;
his assault on Shakspeare, 219;
his death, 233.
Owenson, a comic Tamerlane, 282.
Oxford, Earl of, 92.
Oxford, plays at, 45.
Pack, 178, 343;
his original characters, 181;
as Thisbe, 343;
his retirement, 369.
Pantomimes, 319, 377.
Paris Garden, 32.
Patents--(1574), 21;
Killigrew's, 61;
Davenant's, 61;
value of, 306.
Payne licensed to train children of the revels, 23.
Payne, Nevil, 208.
Peer, William, 163;
as the Apothecary and as the speaker of the prologue in "Hamlet,"
175;
his death, 175, 330.
Pepys, Samuel, 71, 78, 79, 80, 82, 86, 111, 112, 119, 120, 137, 246,
247, 248, 249, 252, 254, 264;
his low opinion of Shakspeare, 221.
Percival, Mrs., see Mrs. Verbruggen.
Philips, Ambrose, 368;
success of his "Distressed Mother," 321;
his "Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester," 371.
Philips, Mrs., dramatist, 238.
"Phoenix," the, 60.
Pinkethman, 163;
an incorrigible "gagger," 177;
as Harlequin, 178;
his good fortune, 178;
his death, 377.
Piran Round, 34.
Pix, Mrs., dramatist, 186, 242.
Playhouse Yard, 31.
Playhouses and Bear Garden presented as a nuisance, 181.
Pollard, 49.
Pope, Alexander, actor, 401.
Pope Alexander, on Betterton, 119;
and Ambrose Philips, 323;
part author of "Three Hours after Marriage," 342.
Pordage, Samuel, dramatist, 208.
Porter, Tom, 201.
Porter, Mrs., 316;
as Hermione, 321;
as Lucia in "Cato," 329;
as Alicia, 331;
as Isabella, 342;
as Lady Woodvil, 347;
as Volumnia, 359;
as Leonora, 365.
Powell, George, 305, 315;
imprisoned for deserting Betterton's company, 131;
his dresser's _contretemps_, 131;
as Falstaff, 141;
his original parts, 141;
as Worthy, 142;
Oroonoko taken from him, 172;
as Orestes, 172;
an author, 186;
striking a gentleman, 307;
his death, 336;
injured by Sandford on the stage, 349.
Price, actor, 65.
Price, Mrs., her curious marriage, 104.
Prices of admission, 140, 306.
"Provoked Husband," by Vanbrugh and Cibber, 386.
Prynne's "Histrio-Mastix," 42.
Queen's Theatre, the, 297.
Quin, James, 341, 357, 400;
kills Bowen, 174, 175 _note_, 349;
his first appearance, 334;
as Hotspur, Tamerlane, Morat, Mark Antony, and Scipio, 350;
as Sir Walter Raleigh, 357;
as Henry IV. of France, 363;
his progress, 366;
as Macheath, 424.
Raftor, Miss (afterwards Mrs. Clive), her first appearance as
Dorinda, 420.
"Ralph Roister Doister," 10.
Ralph, James, 425.
Ravenscroft, Edward, dramatist, 219, 222.
Rawlins, Tom, dramatist, 208.
Reakstraw, actor, killed on the stage, 374.
Red Bull, Clerkenwell, 31.
Reeves, actor, 64.
Reeves, Mrs., actress, 64.
"Rehearsal, The," 188.
Revet, Ned, dramatist, 207.
Rhodes, the prompter, 53, 117;
receives a licence from Monk, 57.
Rhodes, Richard, the author, 207.
Rich, Christopher, 62, 273 _note_;
driven from Drury Lane by Collier, 312;
his patent restored, 337.
Rich, John, 338;
opens Lincoln's Inn Fields, 337;
as Harlequin, 345;
founds the Christmas pantomime, 377.
Richard III. first royal patron of stage in England, 9.
Richards, actor, 65.
Riots, 260.
Robinson, Will, actor, 26;
killed in action, 48;
an accomplished "actress," 68.
Rochester, Wilmot, Earl of, 190.
Rogers, Mrs., as Amanda, 142;
her death, 356;
her characters, 357.
"Rogues and Vagabonds," 21.
Rose Alley, 32.
Rose Theatre, 32, 33.
Rowe, Nicholas, 305;
his "Tamerlane," 281;
his "Fair Penitent," 286, 288;
his "Jane Shore," 330, 331;
his "Lady Jane Grey," 335;
his Prologue to the "Nonjuror," 347.
Rupert, Prince, and Mrs. Hughes, 78.
Russell Court Chapel, proceeds of "Hamlet" given to, 299.
Rutter, Mrs., 64.
Ryan as Marcus in "Cato," 329;
chosen by Addison for the part, 397.
Rymer, Thomas, 215;
on Shakspeare, 215.
St. John Street, Clerkenwell, 31.
St. Katherine, early drama, 7.
Salisbury Court Theatre, 61.
Sandford, 65, 145;
as Banquo's Ghost to Smith's Banquo, 145;
famous for his villains, 145, 146;
nearly kills Powell on the stage, 349.
Sandford, dramatist, 378.
Santlow, Hester (Mrs. Booth), 298;
as the Eunuch in "Valentinian," 314;
as Dorcas Zeal, 314, 404;
her marriage, 358, 403;
Booth's ode to her, 403.
Saunders, dramatist, 209.
Saunders, Mrs., her retirement, 366.
Saunderson, Mrs. (afterwards Mrs. Betterton), 65;
as Ianthe, 68;
as Ophelia, 109, 112.
Savage, Richard, his first play, 345;
his attempt at acting, 372.
Scott, Thomas, dramatist, 210.
Scudamore, 138, 178;
a Jacobite agent, 138;
marries a fortune, 138.
Sedley, Sir Charles, 202-7, 251, 252;
mimicked by Kynaston, 71.
Settle, Elkanah, 233, 316.
Sewell, Dr., dramatist, 357.
Seymour, Mrs., marries Boheme, 374;
as Mariamne, 375.
Shadwell, Thomas, 219, 222, 229, 233.
Shakspeare, Charles, 63.
Shakspeare, W., acting in his own comedy of "As you Like it," 64;
"improvements" on him, 219, 289;
the Chandos portrait, 155.
Shakspeare's plays more frequently acted in 1703-4, 289.
Shaucks, actor, 26.
Shatterel, 48.
Shatterel, Robert, 64.
Shatterel, William, 64.
Sheridan, R. B., borrowing from Wycherley, 223;
on the old comedies, 226.
Sheridan, Thomas, 400.
Shipman, 208.
Shirley, actor, 64.
Shirley, James, dramatist, 222.
Skipwith, Sir Thomas, patentee, 306.
Slingsby, Lady Mary, 148;
her death, 148.
Smith, William, actor, 65;
as Banquo, 145;
as Sir Fopling Flutter and Pierre, Chamont and Scandal, 147;
as Cyaxares, 147;
his death, 147;
the reason of his retirement, 147.
Smith, Edmund ("Captain Rag"), 303.
Smythe, James Moore, dramatist, 381, 382, 383.
South, on the wickedness of theatres, 271.
Southerne, Thomas, dramatist, 234;
his "Spartan Dame," 359;
his last play, 380.
Spiller, James, his wonderful acting of an old man, 344;
as Mat o' the Mint, 388;
his sudden death, 425.
Stage, condition of, at end of seventeenth century, 181, 273;
at beginning of eighteenth century, 274.
Stage denounced by the clergy, 13, 19, 20, 26, 37, 38.
"Stage Plays: A Short Treatise against," 38.
Stapylton, Sir Robert, dramatist, 196.
Starring, first instance of, 272.
Steele, Sir Richard, 278;
his comedy of "The Funeral," 278;
his _Christian Hero_, 279;
his "Lying Lover," 289;
his "Tender Husband," 294;
made a partner in the Drury Lane patent, 333, 334;
on Addison's "Drummer," 340;
his name struck out of the patent, 360, 361;
his "Conscious Lovers," 370;
his creditors' actions against his partners, 387;
his death, 421.
Still, Bishop, 17.
Stone, Miss, actress, 369.
Strolling players, 6, 9, 14, 21, 24, 123.
Sturmy, John, dramatist, 369.
Suppression of the theatres, 49-52.
Sutton, preacher at St. Mary Overy's, 26.
Swan Theatre, 33.
Swanston, a Presbyterian player, 48.
Symcott, Margaret, said to be Nell Gwyn's real name, 91.
Tate, Nahum, 220, 234;
his assault on "Coriolanus," 358.
Taverner, 311, 344, 351.
Taylor, Joseph, actor, 48, 57.
Tennis Court Theatre, 61.
"Theatre, The," 33.
Theatres, one of the earliest, 7.
Theatres, two only licensed in London, 61.
Theobald, Lewis, 311, 341;
his "Richard II.," 363.
Thomson, James, his first dramatic attempt, "Sophonisba," 423.
Thurmond, actor, 178, 181.
Tillotson, Archbishop, his friendship with Betterton, 124.
Tofts, Mrs., singer, 296.
Tooley, actor, 26.
Tothill Street, Westminster, 116.
Townsend, actor, 40.
Trotter, Miss (see Mrs. Cockburn).
Tuke, Sir Samuel, 195.
Turbulent audiences, 259.
Udal, Nicholas, 10.
Underhill, Cave, 138;
as the Gravedigger, 139, 140;
as Don Quixote and Lolpoop, 139;
as Sir Sampson Legend, 139.
Underwood, actor, 26.
Union of the two companies in 1682, 62, 162.
Union ordered by Lord Chamberlain, 1708, 305.
Unlicensed plays and houses, 24.
Uphill, Mrs., 64.
Vanbrugh, Sir John, 230, 386;
his theatre in the Haymarket, 297;
as manager, 297;
his indecency, 299;
his "Confederacy," 300;
lets his theatre to MacSwiney, 302, 309.
Vandenhoff, 401.
Verbruggen, 163, 172, 178;
as Oroonoko, 172, 173;
as Bajazet, 173;
as Altamont, 173;
as Sullen, 173.
Verbruggen, Mrs., 162, 275;
described by Colley Cibber, 163;
in "The Western Lass," 164;
as Bayes, 165;
as Melantha, 165;
her original characters, 166;
her death, 166, 286.
Verjuice, Mrs., 64.
Vizard masks, 265.
Voltaire, "The Relapse" attributed to, 231.
Walker, Thomas, actor, 369, 401, 425;
as Macheath, 388.
Walker, William, dramatist, 212.
Walpole, Sir Robert, and the "Beggar's Opera," 389.
Warren (a dresser), his amusing accident on the stage, 131.
Warwick Inn, Holborn, 15.
Weaver, 64.
Webster, Benjamin, mentioned, 145.
Welsted, Leonard, dramatist, 381.
West, Richard, his "Hecuba" condemned unheard, 380.
Whitaker, William, dramatist, 209.
Whitefriars' Theatre, 30.
Wilks, Robert, 178, 275;
as Sir Charles Easy, 294;
as Plume, 298;
as Archer, 304;
Wilks, Cibber, and Dogget, 318;
as Juba, 329;
as Dumont, 331;
as Don Felix, 332;
as Carlos, 365;
as Sir Harry Wildair, 378;
as Antony, 379.
Williams, Bishop, 25, 29.
Williams, as Scipio, 423.
Wilson, John, dramatist, 209.
Wintersel, 64, 101;
as Slender, 101.
Wiseman, Mrs. Jane, authoress, 282.
Wither, George, his "Hallelujah," 254.
Wright, 401.
Wycherley, William, 222;
borrowed from, by Sheridan, 223;
his death, 234.
York, Duke of, his company, 61.
Yorke, Sir John, 24, 41.
Young, an early actor, 65.
Young, C. M., 401.
Young, Dr. Edward, 354, 385;
his "Busiris," 353;
his "Revenge," 365.
Younger, Mrs., 298, 404;
in the "Dissembled Wanton," 382.
END OF VOL. I.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
The oe ligature has been replaced by 'oe' or 'OE'.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, misspelling by the author,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, has been retained. For example,
a while, awhile; playhouse, play-house; coffee house, coffee-house;
inuendo; intrusted.
See the Note at the front of the book: This etext is derived from #216
of the 300 copies printed. The duplicates of the portraits have been
removed.
p. 19 'twenty three' replaced by 'twenty-three'.
p. 44 'dénoûment' replaced by 'dénouement'.
p. 155 'dis tu' replaced by 'dis-tu'.
p. 200 'mâitre' replaced by 'maître'.
p. 304 'Farqhuar' replaced by 'Farquhar'.
p. 327 'had attend' replaced by 'had attended'.
p. 345 'incontestible' replaced by 'incontestable'.
p. 369 'couple' replaced by 'couples'.
p. 392 'debut' replaced by 'début'.
INDEX:
Kirkham: 'Revels' replaced by 'the revels'.
Payne: 'revels' replaced by 'the revels'.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Their Majesties' Servants (Volume 1 of 3) - Annals of the English Stage" ***
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