UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA
IRVINE
v.l
\
Their Majesties' Servants
Volume I.
ANNALS OF THE
ENGLISH STAGE
OR
THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
BY
JOHN DORAN, LL.D.
VOLUME I
BIGELOW, BROWN & CO., Inc.
NEW YORK
Contents
I. PROLOGUE i
II. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 34
III. THE "BoY ACTRESSES" AND THE " YOUNG
LADIES" 55
IV. THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY 88
V. THOMAS BETTERTON ..... 100
VI. "EXEUNT" AND "ENTER" .... 125
VII. ELIZABETH BARRY 137
VIII. "THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS
STAGE " . ' . . . . . . 149
IX. THE DRAMATIC POETS .... 168
X. PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS . . . .196
XI. THE DRAAIATIC AUTHORESSES . . . 219
XI I, THE AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY 228
XIII. A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY . . . .254
XIV. THE UNITED AND THE DISUNITED COM-
PANIES 287
XV. UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY . . . 294
XVI. COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAMR OF IT . 313
XVII. THE PROGRESS OF JAMES QUIN, AND DE-
CLINE OF BARTON BOOTH . . .331
XVIII. BARTON BOOTH 336
Their Majesties' Servants
CHAPTER I.
PROLOGUE
THE period of the origin of the drama is an un-
settled 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 char-
acter 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
i
2 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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-re-
quited, 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 neces-
sarily 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 Sem-
itic races had no drama at all, while in Greece it was
almost exclusively of Attic growth, its religious char-
acter being especially supported, on behalf of the
audience, by the ever sagacious, morally and fer-
vently pious chorus. Lyric tragedy existed before
the age of Thespis and Pisistratus ; but a spoken
tragedy dates from that period alone, above five cen-
turies 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, three and one-
PROLOGUE 3
fourth pence, was established, but the receipts were
made over to the poor. 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
springtide, 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 some-
thing of a religious quality. Livy tells us of a com-
pany of Etruscan actors, ballet-pantomimists, how-
ever, 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,
the glory of which was at its highest in the days of
Attius and Terence, but for which a dramatic liter-
ature 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 exer-
cise of his art. Roscius, the popular comedian,
contemporary with Cicero, was elevated by Sulla to
the equestrian dignity, and with ^Esopus, the great
tragedian, enjoyed the friendship of Tully, and of
Tully's friends, the wisest and the noblest in Rome.
Roscius and ^Esopus were what would now be called
scholars and gentlemen, as well as unequalled artists,
4 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 ^Esopus so delighted his enthusi-
astic 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. Caesar induced
Decius Laberius, an author of knightly rank, to ap-
pear on the stage in one of these pieces ; and Labe-
rius obeyed, not for the sake of the honorarium,
^4,000, but from dread of disobeying an order from
so powerful a master. The unwilling actor profited
by his degradation to satirise the policy of Caesar,
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, how-
ever, 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
PROLOGUE 5
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 grace-
ful 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 buf-
foons ; and when the period of Christianity succeeded,
its professors and teachers took of the evil epoch
what best suited their purposes. In narrative dia-
logue, 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 farmhouse 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 play-
ers 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 nar-
rative song, that would render his hearers hilarious.
6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 wander-
ing gleemen to be too warmly welcomed within the
monastery circles, where there were men who cheer-
fully employed their energies in furnishing new songs
and lively " patter " to the strollers. It was, doubt-
less, all well meant ; but more serious men thought
it wise to prohibit the indulgence of this peculiar
literary pursuit. Accordingly, the Council of Clover-
shoe, 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 gleeman
himself, or encourage the members of that disrep-
utable profession, by turning ale-poets, and writing
songs for them.
It is a singular fact, that one of our earliest thea-
tres had Geoffrey, a monk, for its manager, and
Dunstable immortalised by Silvester Daggerwood
for a locality. This early manager, who flourished
about 1119, rented a house in the town just named,
when a drama was represented, which had St. Kath-
erine 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 re-
tire, and therein find a home for the remainder of his
days.
Through a course of mysteries, miracle-plays,
PROLOGUE 7
illustrating Scripture, history, legend, and the suffer-
ings 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 " His-
tory 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 feel-
ing, 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. " Chris-
tians 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
8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 repre-
sented 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 bene-
ficial 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 use-
ful 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 toward these new retainers ;
whenever he was too " busy," or " not i' the vein " to
receive instruction or amusement at their hands, he
gave them license to travel abroad, and forth went
the mirthful company, from county to county, man-
sion 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 license of 1572,
whereby the players connected with noble houses
were empowered to play wherever it seemed good to
PROLOGUE 9
them, if their masters sanctioned their absence, with-
out any let or hindrance from the law.
The patronage of actors by the Duke of Glouces-
ter 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 puolic
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 enthu-
siasm 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 rep-
resentatives 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, ex-
posed 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," in 1540.
The author was a " clerk," named Nicholas Udall,
io THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
whom Eton boys, whose master he was, hated be-
cause of his harshness. The rough and reverend
gentleman brought forth the above piece, just one
year previous to his losing the mastership, on suspi-
cion 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. Mat-
thew 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 pestifer-
ous 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 dis-
cover if what they applauded was what the king's
PROLOGUE 1 1
government had reproved. " I have heard special-
ities," 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 trans-
mitted 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. Ulti-
mately, 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 rec-
reation 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,
12 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
at the accession of Edward VI. (i 547), 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 "ser-
vants " 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 play-
ing anywhere, save in their master's presence.
Severity led to fraud. In the autumn of the fol-
lowing year, Richard Ogle forwarded to the council
a forged license, 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 mar-
vellous adventures, of which his adversaries did not
PROLOGUE 13
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, com-
prising two factions in the Church and state, found
the policy of Rome toward this country illustrated
with such effect, that while one party hotly de-
nounced, 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 Reforma-
tion, pointed out the dread excellence of the sover-
eign herself (personified as Queen Nemesis), and ex-
emplified 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 or-
dered 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, ad-
14 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
juncts to stage effect, which are erroneously sup-
posed to have been first introduced a century later,
by Davenant. There still remained acting, a com-
pany 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 stipu-
lations to be observed by them " and all other players
throughout the city." Namely : they were to exer-
cise 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 Black-
friars, that dissolved monastery was not legally
converted into a theatre till the year 1576, when
Elizabeth was on the throne. In that year 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 representa-
tive of Richard III. and of Hamlet, the author of
which tragedies, so named, was, at the time of the
. PROLOGUE 15
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 pat-
roness 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 resi-
dences 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 14^. is set down "for
the boyling of the brawns against Xtmas."
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 presented 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
16 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 1 599, the indiscreet followers of Essex " filled the
pit of the theatre, where Rutland and Southampton
are daily seen, and where Shakespeare'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 Shakespeare'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 perni-
cious 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 warn-
ings sink into her mind. When Lambard, keeper
of the records, waits upon her at the palace, she ex-
claims to him, " I am Richard ! Know you not
that ? "
The performance of this play was, nevertheless,
PROLOGUE ' 17
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 insurrec-
tion 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 Shakespeare'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 ob-
jections. The theatre shall not lose ; a host of
gentlemen from Essex House will fill the galleries ;
if there is fear of loss, here are 40^. to make it up.
Phillips take the money, and King Richard is duly
deposed for them, and put to death."
Meanwhile, the profession of player had been as-
sailed by fierce opponents. In 1587, when twenty-
three summers lightly sat on Shakespeare'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 pro-
fessed to contain " a pleasant invective against poets,
players, jesters, and such like caterpillars of a com-
monwealth." Gosson's pleasantry consists in his
illogical employment of invective. Domitian favoured
i8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 maskings in their ears, I know not
what ; such giving them pippins to pass the time ;
such playing at foot-saunt without cards ; such tick-
ing, 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 attract-
ive what he denounces as pernicious. The play-
wrights he assails with the virulence of an author
who, having been unsuccessful himself, has no glad-
ness in the success, nor any generosity for the short-
comings, of others. Yet he cannot deny that some
plays are moral, such as " Catiline's Conspiracy,"
" because," as he elegantly observes, " it is said to be
PROLOGUE 19
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 Shakespeare'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 Strat-
ford 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 re-
hearsals went actively on before the master of the
revels. The numbers of the players, however, so
increased and spread over the kingdom, that the gov-
ernment, when Shakespeare 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 artists; and a
few years subsequent to the publication of this statute,
Elizabeth granted the first royal patent conceded in
England to actors, that of 1 576. By this authority,
20 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Lord Leicester's servants were empowered to pro-
duce such plays as seemed good to them, "as well,"
says the queen, " for the recreation of our loving sub-
jects 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 through-
out 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 alder-
men and the county justices, that thereon was founded
that animosity which led dramatic authors to repre-
sent 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 brother-
hood were safe in the shelter of Blackfriars, adjacent
to the city walls. Safe, but neither welcome nor un-
molested. 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 dis-
turbed 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 un-
successful. The Blackfriars was patronised by a
public whose favours were also solicited by those
" sumptuous houses," the " Theatre " and the " Cur-
tain," in Shoreditch. Pulpit logicians reasoned, more
PROLOGUE a i
heedless of connection between premises and conclu-
sion 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 Lon-
don may well mourn while it is London." But for
the sympathy of the Earl of Leicester, it would have
gone ill with these players. He has been as ill-re-
quited by authors and actors as their earlier friend,
Richard of Gloucester. To this day, the stage ex-
hibits the great earl, according to the legend con-
trived 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 sus-
pension was rescinded, and renewed transgression on
the part of the reckless companies, even to the play-
ing on a Sunday, in any locality where they con-
jectured 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
32 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
train the queen's children of the revels, and to exer-
cise them in playing within the Blackfriars or else-
where, all plays which had the sanction of old Samuel
Danyell. His queen, Anne, was both actress and
manager in the masques peformed at court, the ex-
penses of which often exceeded, indeed were ordered
not to be limited to ;i,ooo. "Excellent comedies"
were played before Prince Henry and the Prince Pal-
grave, 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 con-
sumed 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 " Igno-
ramus," in which law and lawyers are treated with
small measure of respect. When James was pre-
vented 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 un-
licensed 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,
PROLOGUE 23
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 Racket, " 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 inter-
lude 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. Racket 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 Litchfield 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
24 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 !
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 license to
act comedy, tragedy, history, etc., for the solace and
pleasure of his Majesty and his subjects, at the Globe,
and at their private house in the precincts of Black-
friars. This license was made out to Hemings, Bur-
bage, Condell, Lowen, Tooley, Underwood, Field,
Benfield, Gough, Eccleston, Robinson, Shancks, and
their associates. Their success rendered them auda-
cious, and, in 1624, they got into trouble, on a com-
plaint 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 Spalatro), professed Protestantism, became
Dean of Windsor, and after all died in his earlier
faith, at Rome. On the ambassador's complaint,
PROLOGUE 25
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, how-
ever, 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 :
" Rise but your royal hand, 'twill set me free !
'Tis but the ' moving 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 an-
nounced 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 eight
hundred 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
26
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 licenses 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
thirty 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." Accord-
ingly, there was a merry Christmas season at Hamp-
ton 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 mani-
festation 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 May-poles 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
PROLOGUE *7
was ordered, calmly go through the Ten Command-
ments, 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 subse-
quently Archbishop of York, held a living, he
pleaded in behalf of the right of his Northampton-
shire parishioners to dance round the May-pole.
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 Shakespeare's " Midsummer
Night's Dream," the actors in which had been ex-
pressly 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 pro-
cured, and could profit by instruction. On this stage
28 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Shakespeare enacted the ghost in " Hamlet," old
Adam, and a similar line of characters, usually en-
trusted 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 Bur-
bage, let it to the actors for a yearly rent of .50.
In 1655 it was pulled down, 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 1 580, 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 Shakespeare died, it had
already fallen into disrepute and decay, and was never
afterward 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 White-
cross Street with Golding Lane, stood the old For-
tune, 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, des-
troyed its interior fittings, and pulled down the
building. The site and adjacent ground were soon
covered by dwelling-houses.
PROLOGUE 29
Meanwhile, the inn yards, or great rooms at the
inns, were not yet quite superseded. The Cross
Keys in Grace-church Street, the Bull in Bishopsgate
Street, near which lived Anthony Bacon, to the ex-
treme 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
Shakespeare 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 where-
about of the popular summer-house in Southwark.
On the same bank of the great river stood the
Hope, a playhouse 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 sol-
diery broke into the Hope, horsewhipped the actors,
and shot the bears. This place, however, in its char-
30 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
acter 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 Hens-
lowe and Alleyn into a theatre. Here, the richest
receipts were made on the Sunday, till the law inter-
fered 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 Wind-
sor bridge and Gravesend there were not less than
forty thousand 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 num-
ber, 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 Holy well Lane, near High Street, Shoreditch,
is the site of an old wooden structure, which bore
the distinctive name of " The Theatre," and was ac-
counted a sumptuous house, probably because of the
partial introduction of scenery there. In the early
part of Shakespeare'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
PROLOGUE 31
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 toward 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
Shakespeare ; 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 Corn-
wall.
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 specta-
tors 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 coun-
cils 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 Shakespeare. Of one of them, a five-act piece,
entitled, "The Creation of the World, with Noah's
32 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Flood," the learned Davies Gilbert has given a trans-
lation. 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 del-
uge was to roll its billows, and the mimic world be
lost. This cataclysm achieved, the depressed spec-
tators 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 la-
bourers to the cottages and farmhouses 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 burn-
ing 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."
PROLOGUE 33
Thus the players rescued the kingdom ! Their
sons and successors were not so happy in rescuing
their king ; but the powerful enemies of each sup-
pressed both real and mimic kings. How they dealt
with the monarchs of the stage, our prologue at an
end, remains to be told.
CHAPTER II.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS
IT was in the eventful year of 1587, 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, Gos-
son, in the parish of St. Botolph, of which he was
the incumbent, first nibbed his pen, 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, incapa-
ble 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 coro-
nation 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
34
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 35
pamphleteer sending up his testimony from Cheap-
side 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 argu-
ment. They were invented to appease false gods ;
consequently, the playing of them must excite to
wrath a true Deity ! They are no recreation, be-
cause 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, and 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
36 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 daugh-
ters 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 Aries, 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 local-
ities. 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 inti-
mated 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 simi-
37
lar 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 license 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, look-
ing 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 Chris-
topher Mallory was made the scapegoat, for the satis-
factory 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,
38 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 smil-
ing on " masters," when there suddenly appeared the
monster mortar manufactured by Prynne, and dis-
charged 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 " For-
tune," 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 suf-
fered certain discomfort from their vicinity to the
chief house in Blackfriars. In 1631 the church-
wardens 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 to 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 Lud-
gate to the water is just impossible; and if a fire
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 39
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 ?
The Council answer that Queen Henrietta Maria
is well affected toward plays, and that therefore
good regulation is more to be provided than sup-
pression 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 Middle-
sex, for which license may be given to Alleyn, "ser-
vant 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 compen-
sation must be awarded. The players, bold fellows,
claim ^21,000! The referees award ^"3,000, and
the delighted inhabitants offer ;ioo toward 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 devils' chapels," he says, " in London ; and
40 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
yet in more extensive Rome, in Nero's days, there
were but three, and those," he adds, " were three too
many!" When a 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 pas-
times 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 mask,
and played it at Whitehall in the presence of a de-
lighted audience consisting of royal and noble per-
sonages. 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 " Ccelum 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 hum-
ming the airs over as they walked together across
the park to Whitehall. When the day of representa-
tion 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 dtnofiement to a tragedy so mirthfully
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 41
commenced had been reached, there were other defi-
ances 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 right-
eous 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 reason-
able 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 judg-
ment, 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 $ to enable him
to take his degree of B. A. Westminster was soon
to possess him, for nearly threescore years the most
famous of her "masters." "A very great man!"
said Sir Roger de Coverley ; " he whipped my grand-
father ! "
When Prynne, and Bastwick, and Burton re-
42 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
leased irom prison by the Long Parliament entered
London in triumph, with wreaths of ivy and rosemary
round their hats, the players who stood on the cause-
way, 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 "Friars," 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, 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 stigma-
tised them as " rogues," and the sagacious James as
" vagabonds ? " Mayors and sheriffs, and high and
low constables were let loose upon them, and encour-
aged to be merciless ; menace was piled upon menace ;
money penalties were hinted at in addition to cor-
poreal punishments and, after all, plays were
enacted in spite of this counter-enactment.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 43
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 pro-
ceeded 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 Shakespeare's sister, holds a prom-
inent 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 seven-
teen 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, where-
with 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,
44 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Shake-
speare to solace him, which was to pass by the hands
of Davenant, to that glory of our stage, "incompa-
rable 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.
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 Shake-
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 45
speare 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 gentle-
men, fast merchant-factors, and wild young appren-
tices 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 riverside 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 fellow mime who has been less provident than
he, and whose present necessities he relieves accord-
46 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
ing to his means. Near them stand a couple of
deplorable-looking "doorkeepers," or, as we should
call them now, "money-takers," and the well-to-do
ex-actor has his illusive joke at their old rascality,
and affects to condole with them that the time is
gone by when they used to scratch their necks 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 ex-
travagantly 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 journeyman playwrights,
whom the managers once retained at an annual sti-
pend and " beneficial second nights." The old play-
wrights were fain to turn pamphleteers, but their
works sold only for a penny, and that is the reason
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 47
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. " Cttnctis
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 cr the whipping-post. The authori-
ties 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 con-
tinued 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 Marchion-
ess of Newcastle. The actors themselves united
boldness with circumspection. Richard Cox, drop-
ping the words play and player, constructed a mixed
48 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Cam-
bridge. 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 se-
verely visited, fr m the earliest days after the issuing
of the prohibitory decree. A first-rate troupe obtained
possession of the Cockpit for a few days, in 1648.
They had played, unmolested, for three days, and
were in the very midst f 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
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 .o 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 mourn-
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 49
fully 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 re-
ported, consented, for a "consideration," not to bring
his redcoats 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 cap-
tain 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 Scot-
land 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
$0 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 afterward 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 5 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
5 1
prudently returned afoot to town, a joyous but less
prudent few " paddled 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 Shakespeare, expressed
from the lips of a player ; but there were hired buf-
foons 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 un-
seemly 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
52 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 com-
ing up Gray's Inn Road, welcomed by thousands of
dusty spectators, announced no more cheering pros-
pect 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 Better-
ton 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 en-
camped, and there obtained, in due time, from that
far-seeing individual, license 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
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS 53
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 Shakespeare, 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 mar-
vellous 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 remark-
able than the low comedy of his Old Bachelor, the
airiness 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
54 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Underbill ; 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.
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 (Pitt Street remains
a memory of the place), otherwise called the Phcenix,
in the " lane " aboved 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 reestablish the stage, which, after an uneasy
course of about four years, was terminated by Charles
II., who, in 1663, granted patents for two theatres,
and no more, in London. Under one patent, Killi-
grew, at the head of the king's company (the Cockpit
being closed), opened at the new theatre in Drury
Lane, in August, 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
S3
56 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 troupe 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 Grin-
ling Gibbons. This was the Duke's Theatre, in
Dorset Gardens. It was in close proximity to the
old Salisbury Court Theatre, and it presented a
double face, one -to ward 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 troupes remained
divided, yet not opposed, each keeping to its recog-
nised stock pieces, till 1682, when Killigrew, having
"shuffled off this mortal coil," the two companies,
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 57
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
1 6th 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 1 8 1 2.
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, Davenant publicly exhibited a mixed enter-
tainment, 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 consterna-
tion, 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 Shakespeare's brother Charles, who lived to
this period, Oldys says : " This opportunity made the
actors greedily inquisitive into every little circum-
$8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
stance, more especially in Shakespeare'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 intel-
lects), 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 droop-
ing, 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 Bate-
man, Baxter, Bird (Theophilus), Blagden, Burt, Cart-
wright, 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
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 59
Mrs. Boutel, Gwyn (Nell), James, Reeves, and Ver-
juice. 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, subse-
quently 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 troupe included the great Betterton, Dixon,
Lilliston, Lovel, Nokes (Robert), and six lads em-
ployed to represent female characters, Angel, Will-
iam Betterton, a brother of the great actor (drowned
early in life, at Wallingford), Floid, Kynaston (for
a time), Mosely, and Nokes (Janus). Later, Davenant
added Blagden, Harris, Price, and Richards ; Med-
bourn, 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 estab-
lished 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
60 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 ad-
dressed 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 coun-
try," adds Brand, yet more sober-thinking people did
not fail to see the propriety of Juliet being repre-
sented by a girl rather than by a boy. Accordingly,
we hear of English actresses even before the Restora-
tion, mingled, however, with boys who shared with
them that "line of business." "The boy's a pretty
actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the "Court Beg-
gar," 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 " becom-
ing 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
by amateurs, including Matthew Locke and Henry
Purcell ; the parts of lanthe 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
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 61
only assemble boys about him for his Evadnes,
Aspasias, and the other heroines of ancient tragedy.
Now, the resumption of the old practice of " wom-
en's parts being represented by men in the habits of
women" gave offence, and this is assigned as a
reason in the first patents, according 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 privi-
lege. 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
Marshall has been suggested, as also that of Mar-
garet Hughes. On the 3d of January, 1661, Beau-
mont 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
a woman come upon the stage." Davenant did not
bring forward his actresses before the end of June,
1 66 1, when he produced the second part of the
" Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs. Davenport as Roxa-
lana, and Mrs. Saunderson as lanthe; both these
ladies, with Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Long, boarded in
62 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 inci-
dent 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 tune 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 accom-
plished "actress." Of the three, Hart rose to the
greatest eminence. His Dutchess in Shirley's " Car-
dinal," 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 unap-
proachable, that when he died, Jonson's tragedy
died with him. Rymer styles him and Mohun the
jEsopus 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
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 63
accents enchanted the ear. The humblest character
entrusted 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, ^3 a week, but he is said to
have realised 1,000 yearly, after he became a share-
holder 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 Better-
ton 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 name-
sake 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 lago 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 Au-
gust, 1664. With a lady hanging on his arm, and
some liquor lying under his belt, he was gaily passing
64 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
on his way to his country lodgings in Kentish Town,
where 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 bodice, 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 repre-
sented 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 Cap-
tain Ferrers. Kynaston was a handsome fellow under
every guise. On the 7th of January, 1661, says
Pepys, " Tom and I, and my wife, went to the thea-
tre, 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 hand-
somest man in the house." When the play was
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 65
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 3Oth of January,
1669, Kynaston was waylaid by three or four assail-
ants, 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 gth of Febru-
ary 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 Kynas-
ton'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, impet-
66 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
uous tone, and the fierce, lion-like majesty of his bear-
ing and utterance, "gave the spectator a kind of
trembling admiration."
When Gibber 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 Shakespeare'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 Gibber, " 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, put-
ting 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 ; " Free-
man, in the " Plain Dealer ; " and Count Baldwin, in
" Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage." His early practice,
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 67
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 other-
wise," 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 great-
est of the "boy actresses." So exalted was his rep-
utation, " 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 Better-
ton, 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 Kynaston s of Oteley,
Salop, he sent his own son to college, and lived to
see him ordained. This Reverend Mr. Kynaston pur-
chased 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 kins-
men.
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 exer-
cise of female characters, was admirable in his pecul-
68 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
iar 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 Gibber's gallery, one of the most perfect,
drawn by Colley's hand, is that of James Nokes.
Gibber 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." Gibber
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 Gib-
ber 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 pro-
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 69
voked, 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 was 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 audi-
tors. 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 con-
sternation 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 some-
times hold him several minutes) gave your imagina-
tion as full content as the most absurd thing he could
say open 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 dis-
charged, 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 con-
tentedly ignorant fools.
There was no actor whom the city so rejoiced in
as Nokes ; there was none whom the court more
70 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Moliere's
"ficole 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 en-
trance on the stage, king and court broke into unex-
tinguishable 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 repre-
sentative 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.
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
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 71
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 con-
fess 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 Lon-
don 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 Killi-
grew 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 con-
sidered 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 greenroom of the King's 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 subse-
72 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
quently occupied by Bubb Dodington, the Margra-
vine 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
.4,520, 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 par-
ents 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
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 73
minx, whom she did not hesitate to pronounce a
"wench," and whom Pepys himself speaks of affec-
tionately 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 stayed 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 tender-
ness. 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 Hunting-
74 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
denshire 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 conversa-
tion, 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 "pray-
ing Presbyterian."
On the other hand, we learn from Sir Peter Leices-
ter's " History of Cheshire," that the royalist, Lord
Gerard of Bromley, retained this staunch Presby-
terian in his house as his chaplain. Further, we
are told that this chaplain married a certain illegiti-
mate Elizabeth, whose father was a Button of
Button, and that of this marriage came Anne and
Rebecca. As Sir Peter was himself connected with
both the Gerards and Buttons 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 lanthe's," meaning Mrs. Betterton's.
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 75
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.
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 inten-
sity 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 hum-
bly born would be the mother of a line of dukes, or
that her great-grandson 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 dis-
puted by Coal Yard, Drury Lane, and also by Ox-
ford) where Nell's father, James Gwyn, a "captain,"
76 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
according to some, a fruiterer, according to others,
died in prison. The captain, with his wife Helena,
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 sis-
ter 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 sus-
ceptible 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 seri-
ous part, Cydaria, in the "Indian Emperor." She
was then not more than fifteen, though some say
seventeen, years of age. For tragedy she was un-
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 7?
fitted : her stature was low, though her figure was
graceful ; and it was not till she assumed comic char-
acters, 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 epi-
logues with wonderful effect, danced to perfection,
and in her peculiar but not extensive line was, per-
haps, 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 com-
pany, 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 Buck-
hurst a man who for one youthful vice exhibited a
thousand manly virtues. The story, that Lord Buck-
hurst 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 naught.
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 im-
78 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
prompt u 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, 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 appro-
bation 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 ;ioo 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. The ex-favourite, however,
bore with equal indifference the scorn of Charles
79
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 Dry-
den's "Conquest of Granada," the prologue to which
she spoke in a straw hat as broad as a cartwheel, 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 toward 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 playbills
from 1670 to 1682 ; but there is no ground for be-
lieving that the " Madame Gwyn " of the later period
was the Mrs. Ellen of the earlier, poorer, and merrier
times. Nelly's first son, Charles Beauclerc, was born
8o THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 duke-
dom. 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 x 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) 1 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, .6,000, annually, were tossed to her
from the Excise, that hardest taxation of the poor,
and ^3,000 more were added for the expenses of
each son. She blazed publicly at Whitehall, with
diamonds outflashing those usually worn, as Evelyn
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 81
has it, "by the like cattle." At Burford House,
Windsor, her gorgeous country residence, she could
gaily lose ^1,400 in one night at basset, and pur-
chase diamond necklaces the next day, at fabulous
prices. Negligently dressed as she was, she always
looked fasctnating ; 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 death-bed,
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
Duffett are blasphemous in their expressions, making
of her, as they do, a sort of divine essence, and be-
coming satirical by their exaggerated and disgusting
eulogy. For such a person, the pure and pious
Bishop Kenn 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 en-
dowed like a princess, but she left debts and died
8a THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 subse-
quently 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 pub-
licly 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 repu-
diated. The affront, which she herself could laugh
at, was taken up by Thomas 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 plenipo-
tentiary" at the making of the treaty of Ryswick,
and chief commissioner in establishing the union of
England and Scotland. His excellent taste and lib-
erality laid the foundations of the collection of antiques
which yet attracts visitors to Wilton. But love for
leading playhouse factions did not die out in his fam-
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 83
ily. 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 fac-
tion, 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. Jen-
nings, Mrs. Long, and Mrs. Norris. Chief among
these were Mistresses Davenport, Davies, Saunder-
son, 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
$4 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 mar-
riage that the actress condescended to listen to his
suit. The lovers were privately married, and the lady
was, in the words of old Downes, "crept 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 inim-
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 85
itable singing of the old song of " My lodging is on
the cold ground." Then there was the public fur-
nishing of a house for her, and the presentation of a
ring worth ;6oo, 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 her-
self 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 en-
chantment 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 gallan/ 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 Mile, 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 Der-
wentwater 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
86 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
to us as Mrs. Betterton. For about thirty years she
played the chief female characters, especially in
Shakespeare's plays, with great success. She cre-
ated 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
unexceptional was Mrs. Betterson's character, that
when Crowne's " Calista " 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 accomplish-
ment 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 mis-
pronunciation of a word, when playing in " Romeo
THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES 87
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 com-
pany."
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 troupe, the first
names of importance are those of Lacy, and little
Major Mohun, the low comedian and the high tra-
gedian. Of those who precede them alphabetically,
but little remains on record. We only know of The-
ophilus 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 fur-
niture, 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
88
THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY 89
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 "Killing, no Murder." 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, Tar-
tuffe 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 spec-
tacle 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 license went
too far. In Howard's " Silent Woman," the sar-
casms reached the king, and moved his Majesty to
90 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 mis-
chief. 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 al-
together so ill-disposed as to have refused ghostly
advice at the hands of " a bishop, an old acquaintance
of his," says PepySj " who went to see him." Who
could this bishop have been, who was the old ac-
quaintance 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 1 68 1 .
THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY 91
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 pro-
logue. 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
9* THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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
Shakespeare 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" 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 ! "
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 distin-
guished, whether wearing the sock or the buskin,
majestic in loftily toned kings, and absurd in sillily
amorous knights. Downes has praised him as su-
perior 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
THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY 93
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 Caesar and Alexander. He came
to the theatre hot from a fray at Cambridge Univer-
sity, 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
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 quar-
ters, rich feeding, and a dainty wardrobe, all at the
cost of his mistress, the ex-favourite of a king, Bar-
bara, 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
94 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 dis-
covery, 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
Gibber, going through the little part of the Chaplain,
in the "Orphan," one spring morning of [690, 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 Fen wick and Char nock 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
THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY 95
and got out of the way, the rogue was looked for, at
the " Fleece," in Covent Garden, famous for homi-
cides, 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, in-
quired after him in vain. It was 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 Ban-
bury," 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 quick-witted lad at a school in
96 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 abili-
ties 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 ap-
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, 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. 1
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
1 Other accounts say that he commenced his theatrical life early,
at the " Nursery."
THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY 97
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 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-com-
placent way in which he used to utter " Hannibal
was a very pretty fellow in his day," was univer-
sally imitated, and has made the phrase itself pro-
verbial. His Roger, in " Esop," was another of his
successes, the bright roll of which was crowned by
his lively, impudent, irresistible Tom Errand, in Far-
quhar'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
98 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
less to identify himself with the characters he repre-
sented than, through them, to keep up a communica-
tion with the spectators. When Hart, then manager,
cast Joe for the simple part of a Senator, in " Cati-
line," in which Hart played the hero, Joe, in disgust
at his r61e, 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, as-
sumed 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 bail-
iffs, 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 ttfie carriage door, hastily informed the good
99
Simon Patrick that "here were two Romanists, in-
clined 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 occupy-
ing 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. /
H
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 tu-
mults 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 attempt-
ing to arrest an honest playgoer. They fasten the
official up in a tub, and roll the trembling wretch all
100
THOMAS BETTERTON 101
"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
young and old 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 enchant-
ment. "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
102 THEIR MAJESTIES* SERVANTS
good fortune to see the original, especially in Hamlet.
How grand the head, how lofty the brow, what elo-
quence 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 Gibber'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 com-
mendable 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 thea-
tre, 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 silence 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.'V^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 Fop-
lings, and this universal trifling is felt as a relief
after the general emotion.
Meanwhile, a critic objects that young Mr. Better-
ton 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
THOMAS BETTERTON 103
by Shakespeare himself; amid which Mr. Pepys re-
marks, " 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 Mer-
cutio, 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 !
104 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 hand-
some pair. The venerable lady, indeed, looks pale
and somewhat saddened. The gleam of April sun-
shine 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 I3th 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
THOMAS BETTERTON 105
now occupied by the " Opera-house." Through the
stage door he is carried in loving arms to his dress-
ing-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 Melan-
tius of the night robed, armoured, and besworded,
with one foot in a buskin and the other in a slipper.
To enable him to even 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 ac-
complished 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,"
106 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
a murmuring comment ran round the house, that this
had been effected by Betterton himself. Again, when
he bid Amintor " hear thy friend, who has more years
than thou," there were probably few who did not
wish that Betterton was 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 cer-
tain 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 com-
menced 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 Underbill, Quin, Macklin, King, and in
later times, Bartley and Cooper, most of whom at
THOMAS BETTERTON 107
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 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
1634-35. The street was then in its early decline,
or one of King Charles's cooks could hardly have had
a 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 con-
trary. 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 the grandson of an archbishop, namely, of John
toS THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Arch-
deacon 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 Spel-
man, who had since removed to more cheerful quar-
ters 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 Ire-
land, 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
Lord 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
THOMAS BETTERTON 109
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.
Southerne, 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 means of
which he was at length enabled to establish himself
as a country gentleman.
Gait, and the other biographers of Betterton, com-
plain 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 for 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
no THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 cen-
tury, 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 op-
pressed by the majesty of Betterton. 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 days 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 representa-
tive. In the " greenroom," 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
THOMAS BETTERTON in
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
entrusted to the young actor ; but the politic humil-
ity of 1 66 1 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 Fanciful 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
entrusted the bulk of his little wealth as a commer-
cial 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
112 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 pre-
scribe 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 under-
gone 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
THOMAS BETTERTON 113
any subsequent actor of eminence namely, about
130! In some single seasons he studied and repre-
sented no less than eight original parts an amount
of labour which would shake the nerves of the stout-
est among us now.
His brief relaxation was spent on his little Berk-
shire farm, whence he once took a rustic to Bar-
tholomew 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 pup-
pets were not alive ; and so similar in vitality ap-
*peared 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. Trav-
elling 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 Wind-
sor, however, there was a troupe 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
114 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
when, a few months later, Betterton played Sir
Thomas Beaumont, in the lady's comedy, " Love at
a Venture," 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 whict
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
THOMAS BETTERTON 115
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 simi-
larly 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 Gibber 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 Shakespeare 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 gratefully 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. Thence-
n6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
forth, 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 Dry-
den, 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 ungen-
erous rivalry between Shakespeare and Old Ben.
The player who had been as fearless with Dryden
as Socrates was with his friend Euripides "judi-
ciously lopping " redundant nonsense or false and
mean maxims, as Dryden himself confesses was
counsellor, rather than critic or censor, with young
Pope. The latter, ^t the age of twelve years, had
written a 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
THOMAS BETTERTON 117
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 exe-
cuted a copy, which still exists. His friendly inter-
course 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 deserve so lofty a name. In 1713, he
writes to Gay : " You may guess in how uneasy a
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
Doctor 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
Il8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
goodly company at princely Knowle 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 tender-
ness 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 jeal-
ousy, and his willingness to assist others up the
height which he had himself surmounted. That he
played Bassanio to Doggett'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
THOMAS BETTERTON 119
original parts, to Wilks, and even yielded Othello,
one of the most elaborate and exquisite of his " pre-
sentments," 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," recog-
nised in him his successor. At that moment the
town, speculating on the demise of their favourite, had
less discernment. They did not know whether Ver-
bruggen, 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 Gibber first appeared before a Lon-
don 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 hear-
ing that the former was Gibber, 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 gen-
120 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
eral patronage, suggesting the expediency of a reduc-
tion of salaries, great Nassau placed in the hands of
Betterton the license which freed him from the thral-
dom 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 abso-
lute 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 pro-
duced 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, re-
quiring the services of the man in the dressing-room,
and not remembering where he was, called aloud for
him so repeatedly, and at length so angrily, that
Warren leaped up in a fright, and ran from the
stage. His cloak, however, 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. Irre-
THOMAS BETTERTON 121
pressible laughter convulsed the audience, but Bet-
terton'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 Better-
ton 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 dis-
tinction, "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 Witten-
berg." "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 there-
with 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
122 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
enforced an universal attention even from the fops and
orange-girls." Gibber 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
Shakespeare 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 what-
soever." 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 pleas-
ure to seeing Betterton's Hamlet is to read Gibber'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. Gibber 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.
THOMAS BETTERTON 123
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 i
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 1708-09, 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 testi-
monies 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. " 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, with-
out 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 toward Betterton
is in strong contrast with that of the French toward
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
THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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, " Ungrate-
ful 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 de-
licious terror. In other guise did the English public
part with their old friend and servant, the noble
actor, fittingly described in the license granted to
him by King William, as " Thomas Betterton, Gentle-
man."
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 his Cardinal Wol-
sey, which latter portrait may now be seen in the
Pepysian Library at Cambridge.
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,
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126 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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, gener-
ally, 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 charac-
ters he was Better-ton'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 troupe 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 roistering 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 between Lon-
don 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
"EXEUNT" AND "ENTER" 127
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 with-
out 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, i/oo, records that Mr. Scudamore of the
playhouse is married to a young lady of ;4,ooo
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 troupe. 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.
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. Gibber 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,
128 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
viz., on the 3d of June, 1709. The patronage of the
public was previously bespoken by Mr. Bickerstaffe,
in the Tatler, whose father had known " honest Cave
Underbill " 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 Underbill played his old part of
the gravedigger, professedly because he was fit for no
other. His judgment was not ill-founded, if Gibber's
testimony be true that he was really worn and dis-
abled, and excited pity rather than laughter. The
old man died a pensioner of the theatre whose pro-
prietors he had helped to enrich, with the reputation
of having, under the pseudonym of Elephant Smith,
composed a mock funeral sermon on Titus Gates ;
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 un-
housed troupe played occasionally at Dorset Gardens,
or at Lincoln's Inn Fields, as opportunity offered.
On the occasion of opening the new house, contem-
porary accounts state that the prices of admission
were raised ; to the boxes, from 2s. 6d, to 4?. ; pit,
" EXEUNT " AND " ENTER " 129
from is. 6d. to 2s. 6d. ; the first gallery, from is. to
is. 6d. ; and the upper gallery, from 6d. to is.
Pepys, however, on the iQth October, 1667, paid
45. for admittance to the upper boxes, if his record
be true.
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 disap-
pointment, 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 dis-
pleasure 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 Alex-
ander, 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
130 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
some of them, such as Brisk, in the "Double
Dealer;" Aboan, in "Oronooko;" the gallant, gay
Lothario; Lord Morelove, in the "Careless Hus-
band;" 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 liba-
tions, 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." Ot-
way, 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 con-
fidence. 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
"EXEUNT" AND "ENTER" 131
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 publish-
ing, 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. 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 am 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
132 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
years he was before the public from 1672 to 1692
originated above thrice that number of characters.
His masterpiece was Dryden's Spanish friar, Domi-
nique. 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 Gibber. " 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 de-
manded 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.
Less happy than Leigh was poor Matthew Med-
bourne, 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 Gates caused his arrest on the 26th of
November, 1678, and his death, for poor Med-
"EXEUNT" AND "ENTER" 133
bourne died of the Newgate rigour in the following
March. He is memorable as being the first who
introduced Moliere's "Tartuffe" on the English
stage, in a close translation, which was acted in
1670, with remarkable success. Gibber's " Non-
juror" (1717), and Bicker staffe's "Hypocrite"
(1768), were only adaptations the first of "Tar-
tuffe," and the second of the "Nonjuror." Mr.
Oxenforde, 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 amus-
ingly puzzled Charles II., who, in supposed allusion
to Shaftesbury, declared that the greatest villain of
his time was fair-haired.
The public, of this 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
134 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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,
Gibber 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 Tory-
ism made him unacceptable to the prejudiced Whig
audiences of the early part of the reign of William.
He originally represented Sir Fopling Flutter (1676),
and Pierre (1682); Chamont (1680), in "The Or-
phan," and Scandal (1695), in "Love for Love." In
the following year he died in harness. The long part
of Cyaxares, in "Cyriis 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 Gib-
ber, with fine satire, " whose character as a gentleman
"EXEUNT" AND "ENTER" 135
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 for-
bid 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. Accord-
ingly, 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 for-
tune 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. Doctor 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.
136 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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. Pan-
eras 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.
CHAPTER VII.
ELIZABETH BARRY
THE "great Mrs. Barry," the "Handbook of Lon-
don " 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 ac-
count for it. She had always taken that for Eliza-
beth 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 Curie 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.
138 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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, Ca-
lista "
" 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 bar-
rister, wh9 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 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 de-
spair 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 fa-
ELIZABETH BARRY 139
miliarise 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 Isa-
bella, 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 rec-
ognise 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 promp-
ter, spoke disparagingly of the young lady. Accord-
ing to him she was no colonel's daughter, but
"woman to Lady Shelton, my godmother." The
two situations were not incompatible. It was no
unusual thing to find a lady in straitened circum-
stances 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,
140 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 confi-
dants 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 pro-
duced 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 ac-
tresses Gibber had ever seen, and which those who
had not seen her were unable to conceive. " In
characters of greatness," says Gibber, in his " Apol-
ogy." " 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 indefati-
gable 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 112 characters! Monimia was
the nineteenth of the characters of which she was
ELIZABETH BARRY 141
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
Ot way'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 verg-
ing toward bombast. In " scenes of anger, defiance,
or resentment," writes Gibber, "while she was im-
petuous and terrible, she poured out the sentiment
with an enchanting harmony." Anthony Aston de-
scribes 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 some-
what 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
142 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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, sur-
passed expectation when, in 1705, she elicited the
admiration of the town by her creation of the spark-
ling 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 pur-
chased the picture of Shakespeare 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 Shakespeare 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
ELIZABETH BARRY 143
Chandos. The Chandos portrait of the great dram-
atist 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. Siddons's Bel-
videra ; 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 Mile. Mars's Valerie, were "points"
which never failed to excite an audience to enthusi-
asm. 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 trag-
edy, 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 Eliza-
beth from her impersonation of the character than
they did from history. The apparently common-
place 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
144 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
queen of the hour represented the Elizabeth, with
which enthusiastic crowds became so much more
familiar than they were with 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 char-
acters 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 ques-
tioned, 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
ELIZABETH BARRY 145
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 illu-
sion and excitement of the scene. We shall see this
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, ban-
queting, heart and purse destroying Cleopatra.
There were two classes of men who made epigrams,
or caused others to make them against her, namely,
146 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 pro-
tection 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 Hay-
market, 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 confidante ; and then came the
full burst, breaking through all restraint, and reveal-
ing a woman who seemed bathed in love : " Torris-
mond ! 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. Brad-
shaw succeeded to her theatrical dominion, by par-
ELIZABETH BARRY H7
tition 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 in her behalf, and what was com-
menced 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 Gibber, "dy'd of a fever,
toward 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.
148 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 ChampmesleV' This
French lady was the original Hermione, Berenice,
Monimia, and Phaedre. These were written ex-
pressly 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 Champ-
mesl6, 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 Champmesl6 was ruining the young Marquis de
Sevigne, his mother wrote proudly of the actress
as her "daughter-in-law!" as if to have a son hur-
ried 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.
CHAPTER VIII.
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE"
ON the i6th November, 1682, the United Com-
pany, the flower of both houses, opened their season
at the Theatre Royal, 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
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, com-
menced his career with a tailor's part, of six lines in
length, in Shadwell's "Volunteers." Among the
149
150 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
other new actors were Mountfort, Norris, and Dog-
gett, with Verbruggen (or Alexander, as he some-
times 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 Gibber, 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
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE" 151
into almost another animal, with a strong Devonshire
dialect, a broad laughing voice, a poking head, round
shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and the most bedizen-
ing, 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 ' Marriage & 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 tor-
tured 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
1 52 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 im-
patient 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, Gibber 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
Bachelor ; " and as Mrs. Verbruggen, Charlotte
Welldon, in " Oronooko ; " Lady Lurewell, in the
" Constant Couple ; " and Bizarre, in the " Incon-
stant." She died in 1703.
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE" 153
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 culti-
vate ; 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. Gibber, 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 musi-
cal voice, and her happy graces of manner. Her
form was perfect. Gibber says, " She had no greater
claims to beauty than what the most desirable bru-
nette 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
i$4 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
resided looked upon her as a beneficent divin-
ity.
Her performance of Statira was considered a justi-
fication 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 them-
selves in tender but unrequited love with her. Jack,
Lord Lovelace, sought a return for his ardent hom-
age, 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 Cib-
ber 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."
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE" 155
The most singular testimony ever rendered to this
virtue occurred on the occasion when Dorset, Devon-
shire, 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 pre-
sented 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 four-
score, 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
Gibber spoke disparagingly of his Bayes, preferring
in that part his own pert and vivacious son, The-
ophilus. The old actress tapped Colley with her
fan. " Come, come, Gibber," 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,
156 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 unin-
tentional fault. 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
Jeffreys, 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 mur-
dered 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 ; on
being acquitted by the House of Lords, he solemnly
promised never to get into such a difficulty again.
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE" 137
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 Qth of
December, 1 692, 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 of 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
158 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Ham-
ilton hacked one another to death in that savage
butchery the famous duel in Hyde Park.
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 Shakespeare'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 un-
natural actor. So natural indeed was he, that Lord
Halifax took Oronooko from Powell, who was origi-
nally 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 1 708. Among his many origi-
nal characters * were Oronooko, Bajazet, Altamont,
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE" 159
and Sullen. He survived his widow 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," re-
marks 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 Will-
iam'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 Tal-
mash. 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 surviv-
ing companions in arms marched westward.
Carlisle's fellow actor, Bowen, was a "low come-
dian " of some talent, and more conceit. A curious
paragraph in the Post-Boy, for November 16, 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 playhouse, being con-
160 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
vinced 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 reason-
able 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, how-
ever, 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.
Peer, later in life, came to grief also, but in a dif-
ferent 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 excel-
lently well. Nature had made him for them; but
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE" 161
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 prop-
erty-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.' '
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.
Doggett, 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 char-
acter. Congreve discerned his talent, and wrote for
him Fondlewife in the "Old Bachelor," 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. Some-
what illiterate, he spelt " whole " phonetically, with-
out 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 Cib-
i6a THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
her and Wilks (from 1709 to 1712), on the admis-
sion of Booth, which displeased him, he was considered
worth ;i,ooo 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 cham-
berlain'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.
Doggett 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., Doggett
gave " an orange-coloured livery, with a badge, repre-
senting Liberty," to be rowed for by six watermen,
whose apprenticeship had expired during the preced-
ing 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 Doggett, which was
sneered at by his imprudent contemporaries.
Doggett 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 con-
fusion 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 disappro-
bation. He did not lose his self-possession ; but as-
suming 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 " Pin key " 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 " ex-
pression " would be more perfect if the actor laid
aside the inevitable mask of Harlequin. Pinketh-
man did so ; but all expression was thereby lost. It
was no longer the saucy Harlequin that seemed
speaking. Pinkey, so impudent on all other occa-
sions, was uneasy and feeble on this, and his audac-
ity 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 Mayfair,
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
1 64 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Lane Hildebrand Horden, Mrs. Gibber, Johnson,
Bullock, Mills, Wilks ; and, as if the century should
expire, reckoning a new glory, Mrs. Oldfield. At
Lincoln's Inn Fields, Thurmond, Scudamore, Ver-
bruggen, 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 170x3 Booth made his
first appearance, with a success, the significance
of which was recognised and welcomed by the dis-
cerning and generous Betterton.
Mrs. Oldfield, Wilks, and Booth, like Colley Cib-
ber, though they appeared toward 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 com-
rades 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 re-
turned an answer which brought blood to the cheek,
fierce words to the lips, hand to the sword, and a re-
sulting 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
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE" 165
over his handsome, shrouded corse. A couple of
paragraphs in Luttrell's Diary conclude Horden's
luckless story: "Saturday, i/th October, Mr. John
Pitts was tried at the session for killing Mr. Hor-
den, the player, and acquitted, he being no ways
accessory thereto, more than being in company when
'twas done." On Tuesday, 3Oth November, 1697,
the diarist writes : " Captain Burgess, who killed Mr.
Horden, the player, has obtained his Majesty's
pardon."
Of Mrs. Gibber, 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. William Mills de-
serves a word or two more of notice than these last.
He was on the stage from 1696 to 1737, and though
only a " solid " actor, he excelled Gibber in Corvino,
in Jonson's " Volpone ; " surpassed Smith in the
part of Pierre, and was only second to Quin, in Vol-
pone 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 " Oronooko ; " 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 Hus-
band." 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 man-
ager. To a like cause may be ascribed the circum-
stance of his having the same salary as Betterton,
1 66 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
per week, and i for his wife ; but this was not
till after Betterton's death.
At Lincoln's Inn Fields, Thurmond, though a re-
spectable actor, failed to shake any of the public con-
fidence 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, be-
tween 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 playhouses, 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 attrac-
tions, were ill attended, and public taste was stimu-
lated 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 playbills from being posted
in the city, and denounced the stage as a pastime
"THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE" 167
which led the way to murder. This last denunciation
was grounded on the fact that Sir Andrew Stanning
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 New-
gate slang of the period, went Westward Ho !
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 brother-
hood, of the period from the Restoration to the end
of the century, have much to answer for in this
last respect.
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, Shad well, 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, Doctor 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, Ravens-
croft, Wycherley, Arrowsmith, Nevil Payne, Sir W.
Killigrew, Duffet, Sir F. Fane, Otway, Durfey, Raw-
lins, 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, be-
1 68
THE DRAMATIC POETS 169
tween 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, Har-
ris, 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 Gibber (actor), Mrs. Trotter (Cockburn),
Gould, Mrs. Fix, Mrs. Manley, Norton, Scott, Doggett
(actor), Dryden, Jr., 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.
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 Bet-
terton's eight plays, I find one tragedy borrowed from
Webster ; and of his comedies, one was taken from
Marston ; a second raised on Moliere's George Dan-
din ; a third was never printed ; his " Henry the
Fourth " was one of those unhallowed outrages on
Shakespeare, of which the century in which it ap-
peared was prolific ; his " Bondman " was a poor re-
construction of Massinger's play, in which Betterton
1 70 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 " In-
jured Lovers " ends almost as tragically as the apoc-
ryphal 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 " Zelmani " is only hypothetically attributed to
Mountfort, on the ground, apparently, of its absurdi-
ties. In the preface to his " Successful Strangers,"
Mountfort modestly remarks, " I have a natural incli-
nation 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 Mar-
lowe's " Doctor Faustus " into an impassioned sort of
burlesque, with the addition of Harlequin and Scara-
mouch to give zest to the buffoonery !
Carlisle, the actor who fell at Aghrim, was the
THE DRAMATIC POETS 171
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 Shakespeare would not attract, and accord-
ingly George Powell combined authorship with acting,
and borrowed from Shirley, from Brome, and from
Middleton. Mrs. Fix, 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 physi-
cian, 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 Doggett's con-
tribution to stage literature. He was the author of
one lively, but not edifying, piece, entitled the " Coun-
try 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, contrib-
uted toward 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
172 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Orien-
tal ; he died a beggar ; bankrupt in everything but
impudence. Dryden and Pope have given him ever-
lasting 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 bur-
lesque tragedy, the " Rehearsal ; " but even in this
he is said to have had the assistance of Butler, Mar-
tin Clifford, and Doctor Sprat. Written to deride
the bombastic tragedies then in vogue, Dayenant,
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 afterward broke into peal
upon peal of laughter. The rehearsed play com-
mences with a scene between the royal usher and the
THE DRAMATIC POETS 173
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 repre-
sented after the Restoration. The "Country Cap-
tain," 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 cor-
recting, the vices of the times ; and singular, in their
slipshod 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, particu-
larly in " Variety," and the " Triumphant Widow, or
174 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 come-
dies 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 pro-
duced 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 adapta-
tion 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; 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
THE DRAMATIC POETS 175
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 unpopu-
larity of Shakespeare, 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 Cox-
comb," was " taken from the French." The chief
scenes were mere translations of Moliere's " ficole
des Femmes ; " but life, and fun, and wit, were given
to them again by Betterton, who in th'e 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 Shake-
speare " 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 vic-
tory of Macroom, rescued him from defeat at Clon-
mel, and crushed Muskerry, and his numerous papal
176 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
host. From Richard Cromwell Broghill kept aloof,
and helped forward the Restoration, for which ser-
vice Charles made him a peer, Earl of Orrery. The
earl showed his gratitude by deifying kings, and in-
culcating 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 only sees an
old one under a new name, such wearying sameness
is there in the rhymed phrases of them all.
Orrery's tilt against Shakespeare 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 wait-
ing, 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
THE DRAMATIC POETS 177
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 "Alte-
mira " 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
178 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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
Shakespeare, which was unpardonable. He recon-
structed the "Merchant of Venice," called it the
"Jew of Venice," and assigned Shylock to Doggett.
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 trag-
ically designed by the author." Dryden, Pope, and
Johnson, have in their turn eulogised Granville ; but.
THE DRAMATIC POETS 179
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 seven-
teenth 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 pre-
cedence for their comparative purity, if not for decided
dramatic talent. To the former, an old colonel of
the Cavalier times, Charles II. recommended a com-
edy 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 de-
lighted 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 commenda-
tion 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,
i8o THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
namely, his comedy of "Pandora." The heroine of
this drama, resolving to cloister herself up from mar-
riage, 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 " Pan-
dora." The masters of the stage objected to it in
that form ; and, it being all the same to the complai-
sant 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 cen-
sure than praise at the hands of a greater critic and
poet than himself. Pepys took no interest in Stapyl-
ton'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 re-
marks truly, in a very awkward simile (" Life of
Dryden "), that " the merit of his good things evapo-
rated 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,
THE DRAMATIC POETS 181
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 How-
ard 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,"
i8a THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
which, if Pepys's criticism may be accepted, was a
mighty pretty, witty, pleasant, mirthful comedy, fur-
nished 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 Shake-
speare, 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 the 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 Shad well
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 ex-
hibited by giving two opposite catastrophes to his
"Vestal Virgins," between which the public were
free to choose. Sir Robert has generally been looked
upon as a servile courtier ; but people were astounded
THE DRAMATIC POETS 183
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 mani-
fested 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 him-
self 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 mint
184 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
in their footsteps, that the King of France's tnaitre
de dame 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 there-
fore 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 Car-
lile, 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 Cor-
neille; 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
THE DRAMATIC POETS 185
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 recon-
ciled 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
186 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 marry 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 un-
distinguished, 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 devilish-
ness 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
THE DRAMATIC POETS 187
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. Ether-
ege, 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 hussy, 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 never-
i8S THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
theless the longer liver of the two, indulged in ex-
cesses which, from their inexpressible infamy, betray
a sort of insanity. When he, with other blackguards
of good blood, was brought to trial for public out-
rages, which disgusted even the hideous wretches
that lurked about Covent Garden, Chief Justice Fos-
ter 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 two thousand 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 mis-
creant. He was not yet free from his bond 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, servile 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 Cleopa-
tra," wherein a single incident in Shakespeare's play
is spun out into five acts ; " Bellamira," in which
comedy, partly founded on the " Eunuchus " of Ter-
ence, he exhibited the frailty of Lady Castlemaine,
THE DRAMATIC POETS 189
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 Gar-
den," for portions of which the author is indebted
to Moliere's " Ecole des Maris," and on which Pepys's
criticism is not to be gainsaid : " 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 Fleet wood
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
; 1,000 profit to Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in a
single month of 1664, and was acted before enrap-
tured gallants and appreciating nymphs, at White-
hall, 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
190 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 exem-
plifications 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 gen-
tlemen are such unmitigated rascals, and the women
girls and matrons are such unlovely hussies, in
rascality and unseemliness quite a match for the men,
THE DRAMATIC POETS 191
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, 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. Arrowship
was in like plight, and his sole comedy, " The Refor-
mation," was obliged to give way to Shakespeare'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 threadbare coat, having a
calling that will maintain it woolly ! " Then there was
192 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Leanard, who stole not more audaciously than he was
stolen from, when he chose to be original Colley
Gibber having taken many a point from the " Coun-
terfeits," 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 es-
teemed 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, unsuc-
cessfully, for the stage, because he prescribed for, or
rather against, the most fashionable malady of the
day, when it attacked theatre-hunting 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 remark-
able for the sensational 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." 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
THE DRAMATIC POETS 193
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 Buffet, 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, how-
ever, 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 scandal-
ised by incidents in Scott's " Unhappy Kindness," in
1697. Doctor Drake was another plagiarist, who
revenged himself, in the last-named year, for the con-
demnation of his " Sham Lawyers," by stating on
the title-page that it had been "damnably acted."
That year was fatal, too, to Doctor Filmer, the cham-
pion of the stage against Collier. Even Betterton
and Mrs. Barry failed to give life to the old gentle-
man'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, to England, where he
carried on the vocations of a trader in Leadenhall
Street, clerk in the foreign department of the post-
194 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
office, translator, original writer, dramatist, and " fast
man," till the too zealous pursuit of the latter call-
ing 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 differ-
ent pieces in all. By different men, Peter has been
diversely rated. Dryden said of him, in reference to
his one tragedy, " Beauty in Distress : "
s " 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 Wycherley in wit."
But an anonymous poet writes, in reference to one
of his various poor adaptations, "The Island Prin-
cess : "
" 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 trium-
phantly won. It was an odd idea ; but Peter Mot-
teux 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 ! "
Hard drinking, and what was euphoniously called
THE DRAMATIC POETS 195
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 "Friend-
ship Improved," bear traces of what he might have
done. He has the merit, however, of not being inde-
cent, a fact which the epilogue to " Boadicea," fur-
nished 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, " Vic-
torious 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 ex-
ercise 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 Hugue-
not, 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.
CHAPTER X.
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS
THE men who took up dramatic authorship seri-
ously as a vocation, during the last half of the seven-
teenth century, amount to something more than two
dozen. They begin with Davenant and Dryden ;
include Tate and Brady, Lee and Otway, Wycherley,
Congreve, Gibber, 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 in-
sert 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, Dry-
den, Shirley, Lee, Cowley, Shadwell, Flecknoe, Settle,
Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Otway, Durfey,
Banks, Rymer, Tate, Brady, Southerne, Congreve,
Cibber, Dilke, Vanbrugh, Gildon, Farquhar, Dennis,
and Rowe. The half dozen in italics were poets
laureate.
196
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 197
All of them were sons of "gentlemen," save three,
Davenant, Cowley, and Dennis, whose sires were,
respectively, a vintner, a hatter, and a saddler. The
sons, however, received a collegiate education. Cow-
ley distinguished himself at Cambridge, but Dave-
nant 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 yields Tate and
Brady; and better fruit still, Southerne, 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, fruit-
lessly, to a vast portion of the territory there un-
justly made over by the English Government to the
French. Gibber 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 gentle-
men that idleness and love of pleasure made them
dramatic poets. Shadwell, Raven scroft, Wycherley,
Durfey, Banks, Southerne, Congreve, and Rowe, were
all apprenticed to the law ; but the study was one
198 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 endeav-
oured to turn at least Melpomene to good account,
tried to pursuade the public that Shakespeare was
even of less merit than it was the fashion to assign
to him. In 1678, 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 Shakespeare." He says, that "no
woman bred out of a pigsty could talk so meanly as
Desdemona," in that tragedy which Rymer calls "a
bloody farce without salt or savour." Of Brutus and
Caesar, he says Shakespeare has depicted them as
"Jack Puddins." To show how much better he un-
derstood 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
Shakespeare of anachronisms, and his Saxon princess
is directed to " pull off her patches ! " The author
was ambitious enough to attempt to supersede Shake-
speare, 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 " Fcedera,"
and a more voluminous writer, or rather adapter, of
dramatic pieces. He spoke, however, of Tasso, as
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 199
compassionately as the village painter did of Titian ;
but his usefulness was acknowledged by the commen-
tator, who remarked that men might construct good
plays by following his precepts and avoiding his ex-
amples. Boyer has said something similar of Gildon,
who was a critic as well as a 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 retrimmed 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 admira-
tion. The audience condemned the former as " pro-
fane," 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 judg-
ment." " 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 pun-
ishment of it ? " namely, profanity. Thus were the
skulls of the Commonwealth leaders tossed up in
200 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS 4
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." Never-
theless, 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."
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 201
One of the most remarkable circumstances in
Cowley's character, considering how he distinguished
himself at college, is that he never thoroughly under-
stood the rules of grammar ; and that in seriously
setting up for a dramatic author, he took, like Dry-
den, the course in which he acquired the least honour.
When Charles II., on hearing of Cowley's death, de-
clared 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 con-
sidered better men by some judges, were guilty of
an offence from which he was entirely free. That
offence consisted in their various attempts to im-
prove Shakespeare, 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
Caesar ; " and Dry den, who with at least some show of
reason rearranged "Troilus and Cressida," united with
Davenant in a sacrilegious destruction of all that is
beautiful in the " Tempest." Nat. Lee, who was
accounted mad, had at least sense enough to refrain
from marring Shakespeare. 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 Shakespeare's. Crowne,
more impudently, remodelled two parts of " Henry
VI.," with some affectation of reverence for the
202 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
original author, and a bold assertion of his own origi-
nal 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 Shakespeare.
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 Montague 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
Shakespeare, in altering his " King Lear," and " Co-
riolanus," 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 cur-
tain descends. Tate smirkingly maintained that he
wrought into perfection the rough and costly material
left by Shakespeare. " 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 Gibber's version of " Richard
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 303
III.," which was constructed out of Shakespeare,
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 danc-
ing, 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 Shakespeare to the capacities of those
who could appreciate him. There were unhappy per-
sons 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-Night's Dream," which he "had
never seen before, nor ever shall again," that "it is
the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw
in my life."
Of the characteristics of the chief of these dram-
204 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
atists, 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 meas-
ure 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 origi-
nality, lacking the power to give it effect. Ravens-
croft 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 epigram-
matic 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's wit," and an obscenity rivalling that of
" Curculio ; " but he had none o"f the pathos which
is to be found in the "Rudens." But Wycherley
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 205
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 Cartha-
ginian ; 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 Trap-
bois 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
courtesans, brilliant, through being decked with
diamonds ; but not a jot the more virtuous or attract-
ive on that account. Among the comedy-writers
206 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
of this half century, however, Congreve and Wycher-
ley 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 remem-
bered 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 main-
tained 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 judg-
ment by saying :
He's bound to please, not to write well, and knows
There is a mode in plays as well as clothes."
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 207
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 Caelia song, in his " Marriage a 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 pas-
sages in Congreve's " Double Dealer," a comedy of
which the author said "the mechanical part was
perfect." The play was not a success, and the fault
was laid to its gross innuendoes, and its plainer in-
decency. " I declare," says the author, in the pref-
ace, "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
208 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 pro-
ductions 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 be-
lieve 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 insin-
uated, 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
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 209
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 " Cleom-
enes," but to a pert, coffee-house fop, who pre-
sumed 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 Almanzer as freely as he did
the bombast of Maximin. Still he was uneasy under
210 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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,
and I'll go and see it as often as I do 'The Spanish
Friar.' " " All for Love " is Dryden's most care-
fully written play, and the author repeatedly de-
clared that the scene in Act I, between Anthony and
Venditius, 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 Tillot-
son, 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 scour-
ger, of the vice ; and yet he could warmly approve
the purity of Southerne, when Southerne chose to be
pure, and acknowledged 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 !
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 21 1
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 Dry-
den. 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 Wil-
mot, when he says in the "Essay upon Satire,"
" Rochester I despise for want of wit." Rochester
may have praised Shadwell because he hated Dry-
den ; 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 J "
In one respect, Dryden was no match at all for
Shadwell; and, indeed, he has, inadvertently, con-
fessed as much. When speaking of his incapacity
for writing comedy, he says, "I want that gaiety
212 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
of humour which is required in it ; my conversation
slow and dull ; my humour saturine 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 re-
marked 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 ap-
pointed, 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,
Gibber, etc., 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 licen-
tiousness of manners under Charles II., we are still
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 213
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 1'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 re-
cently 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 Fau-
burg St. Germain to witness a new play by Vol-
taire. Critics examined the plot, philosophised on its
humour, applauded its absurdities, enjoyed its wit,
and congratulated themselves on the circumstances
that the Voltairean wit especially was as enjoyable
then as in the preceding century ! Of the author-
ship 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 edi-
tions as an undoubted work by Voltaire !
On looking back upon the names of these authors
214 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 come-
dies 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 " Theo-
dosius, 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 superabun-
dance of the poet's extravagance." Let it not be
forgotten that Addison accuses Lee and Shakespeare
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 success-
ful. 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 choris-
ters walking before the body, candle in hand, and
singing an ode of Horace, like a poet. His vic-
tim, 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
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 215
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
; 1 0,000 of it to Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough,
who so valued the " honour and pleasure of his com-
pany," 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 Gibber,
Vanbrugh, and Rowe, of whom the first, too care-
less of his money affairs, died the poorest man.
Better men than either of the last, sleep in hum-
bler 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, Lin-
coln'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 Charterhouse. Crowne
died in distress, just as he hoped his " Sir Courtley
Nice " would have placed him at his ease. Wy crier-
ley, 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 Co vent Garden. Two other
poets, who passed away unencumbered by a single
splendid shilling, rest in St. James's, Westminster,
2i6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Tom Durfey and Bankes. Careless, easy, free, and fud-
dling Tate died in the sanctuary of the Mint, and St.
George's, South wark, 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 "Oronooko," 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.
PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 217
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, and 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 Nor-
wich 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. Ot way's thoughtful eye re-
deemed his slovenly dress and his fatness, and seemed
to warrant the story of his repenting after his carous-
ing. Lee dressed as ill as Otway, but lacked his
2i8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
contemplative eye, yet excelled him in fair looks, and
in a peculiar luxuriance of hair.
Shaftesbury, in his "Characteristics," shows us
how the playhouse 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.
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 Ephra Behn, the not less notorious
Mrs. Manley, the gentle and learned Mrs. Cockburn,
the rather aristocratic Mrs. Boothby (of whom noth-
ing is known but that she wrote one play, called
" Marcatia," in 1669), fat Mrs. Pix, and that thorough
Whig, Mrs. Centlivre. The last four belong also 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 Cor-
neille. In those grave pieces, represented at court
in the early years of the Restoration, the poetess
endeavoured to direct the popular taste, and to cor-
rect it also. Had she not died (of smallpox, 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
219
220 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 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 moni-
tions of old, by Cassandra ; so she abandoned Eng-
land 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 down-
right nastiness, save Ravenscroft and Wycherley;
but the latter of these had more originality of inven-
tion and grace of expression. To these writers, and
to those of their detestable school, she set a revolting
THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES 221
example. Dryden preceded her, by a little, on the j
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. Remonstrancejwi
useless wjth_Jhis wanton hussy, ^.s for her private
liieTithas 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 Killi-
grew, from Brome, from Tatham, from Shirley, from
the Italian comedy, from Moliere, and more legiti-
mately from the old romances. She adapted skil-
fully; 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
222 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
done homage to the king by dedicating her " Feigned
Courtesans" to Nell Gwyn, and styling that worthy
sister of her's 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 Cleve-
land. 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 1 "
The authoress, in her next venture, in the same
year, a comedy, written in a week, and which per-
ished 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
THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES 223
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 Smith'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
Constantin, 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,
224 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 admira-
tion 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. Fix enjoyed a certain sort of vogue from
1696 to 1709. She came from Oxfordshire, was the
daughter of a clergyman, was married to a Mr. Fix,
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. Fix's forgotten incidents ; and, indeed, contem-
porary 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 oc-
casionally 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 humour-
ous. Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Cockburn, and Mrs. Fix
were ridiculed in a farce called " The Female Wits,"
their best endowments satirised, and their peculiarities
mimicked. The first and last of those ladies repre-
THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES 225
sented 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 Cent-
livre.
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. Writ-
ing 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 "Won-
der," 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 ex-
pect to avoid a similar destiny ; 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
226 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
others, rtolen wholesale from Moliere 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 chal-
lenges 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 succes-
sion of Colonel Feignwells, from C. Bullock down to
Mr. Graham ! This piece, however, was but moder-
ately 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, con-
cludes the list of plays from the pen of this industri-
ous 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,
THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES 227
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 cen-
tury, 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.
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 i$th of August, 1661, Charles and
the Duke and Duchess of York are leaving the apart-
ments 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 be-
tween 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 ob-
228
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 229
tained places close to madame and her double escort.
The play was Jonson'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 cava-
liers were singing " Up we go ? "
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 gra-
cious king, than he breaks his vow, rushes to the
play, perjures himself out of royal 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
THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 hand-
some generally, as I used to take them to be, but
that they are finely dressed. The company that
came 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
a crowded audience to greet the king and queen,
with whom now appears the Castlemaine, once more,
and near her Lucy's Walter's boy, the Duke of Mon-
mouth, 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 Decem-
ber, at the tragedy of the " Valiant Cid," she did not
smile once during the whole play. But nobody pres-
ent 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,
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 231
he records that "it was full of citizens, and so the
less pleasant." The Duke's House was less "gen-
teel " 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 Salis-
bury 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 specta-
tors by their conduct. "They did show," writes
the immortal journalist, "some impertinent and me-
thought unnatural dalliances there, before the whole
world, such as kissing of hands, and leaning one upon
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 im-
mensely 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
232 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Falcon-
bridge ! 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 occasions describes
as " all the pleasure of the play ; " meaning, thereby,
the presence of Lady Castlemaine, or of Miss Stew-
art, 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 confu-
sion 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
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 233
King's 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 pri-
vate, increased the popularity of the drama, as the
vices of the king increased the fashion of being dis-
solute ; 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 unat-
tended. The vizard had not yet fallen to the disrep-
utable. Such ladies as are above designated entered
into struggles of wit with the fine gentlemen, banter-
ing 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 pleas-
ant pastime of many hearers, is made manifest by
234 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Pepys, who once took his place on "the upper bench
next the boxes," and describes 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 flirta-
tions, 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, par-
ticularly 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
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 235
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 cen-
sured 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 2ist 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, there 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 Castle-
maine, 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 ven-
tured 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
236 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
untenable. From of old there had been a corrupt
society, and a society protesting against the cor-
ruption. Before Charles made his first visit to the
theatre, there was lying in Newgate the ex-royalist,
but subsequently Puritan poet, George Withers. 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 Bac-
chus, 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 ;
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 237
Such are those poets in these days,
Who vent the fumes of lust and wine,
Then crown each other's 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 play-
going only second to Pepys, but as sharp an observer
and a graver censor than the Admiralty clerk, ad-
dressed 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 Christen-
dom, 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, etc., 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 that the ladies and 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 devo-
tion, besides the advantages it gives to our reproachful
blasphemers." Evelyn, however, does not pursue his
statement to a logical exclusion. He proposes to
close the houses on Friday and Saturday, or to repre-
238 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
sent 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 "de-
bauched 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
become with us a licentious excess and a vice, and
need severe censors, that should look as well to their
morality as to their lives 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 audi-
ence, 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
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 239
at a new play of Dryden's, " with several of my rela-
tions." 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 White-
hall, 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 com-
mand. Evelyn attended ; but as he looked around,
he bethought him of the London that was lying in
charred ruins, and he sorrowingly records his disap-
proval of "any such pastime in a time of such judg-
ments 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 ex-
traordinary virtues, which had gained his especial
esteem. This grave maid, among the too 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
240 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
actress for being a discreet and virtuous young lady.
In 1675 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, after-
ward Queens of England, the Lady Henrietta Went-
worth, afterward the evilly impelled favourite of the
Duke of Monmouth, and Miss Jennings, subsequently
the sharp-witted wife of the great Duke of Marlbor-
ough. There were others of less note, with profes-
sional 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 lost one
worth about 80, borrowed of the Countess of Suf-
folk. "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 some-
times provoked, at others altogether unjustifiable,
and always more savage than humourous. In 1669
Mrs. Corey gratified Lady Castlemaine by giving an
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 241
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 imperti-
nence. 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 opposi-
tion ; for Lady Harvey had hired a number of per-
sons, 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 the custom to
return the price of admission to all persons who left
the theatre before the close of the first act. Conse-
quently 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
doorkeepers, who followed them into the house ; and
therewith such derangement of the royal comfort,
that a special decree was issued commanding pay-
ment to be made on entering, but still allowing the
patron of the drama to recover his money if he with-
drew on or before the close of the first act.
But there were greater scandals than these. On the
242 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
2d of February, 1679, there is a really awful commo-
tion, 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, dia-
monds, and shamelessness in the most conspicuous
seat in the house. Some tipsy gentlemen in the
street hard by hear of her wit and handsome pres-
ence, and the morality of these drunkards is straight-
way 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 com-
bined 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
243
playing in Dorset Gardens. The adversaries fought
on till Bering got a thrust from the Welshman which
stretched him on the boards ; whereupon the author-
ities intervened, as there was no more mischief
to be done, and put Master Vaughan under re-
straint till Bering'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
Brury. 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 Buke'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 Mon-
244 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
day 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 val-
iant 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 out-
rage. How the knight was punished the record in
the state paper office does not say ; but about a fort-
night 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 arrange-
ment 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.
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 245
Much company often congregated here, generally
with the purpose of assigning meetings where fur-
ther 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 fin-
ger 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 cockerels 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 inter-
est from the town fops to the rustic young squires
who came to the theatre in cordovant 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
246 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
her chair. These beaux were hard to fix, so erratic
were they in their habits. They ran, as Gatty perti-
nently has it, " from one playhouse to the other play-
house ; and if they like neither the play nor the
women, they seldom stay any longer than the comb-
ing of their periwigs, 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 periwigs redolent of
the essence of orange and jasmine, entered into con-
versation, 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 ob-
servers, like those who ridiculed the man of mode,
for " his gloves drawn up to his elbows and his peri-
wig more exactly curled than a lady's head newly
dressed for a ball."
Of the vizard-masks, Gibber tells the whole history
in a few words : " I remember the ladies were then
observed to be decently afraid of venturing barefaced
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 attend-
ing 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 laugh-
ter. Farquhar's Pindress says to Lucinda, "Didn't
you chide me for not putting stronger laces in your
stays, when you had broken one as strong as a
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 247
hempen cord with containing a violent ti-hee at a
jest in the last play ? "
Gibber describes the beaux of the seventeenth cen-
tury 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 Gibber by the hand-
some, 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 fancy-
ing the wearing it might ensure him success among
the ladies, he went around to Gibber's dressing-room,
and entered into negotiations for the purchase of
that wonderful cataract periwig. The fine gentle-
men 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."
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 cur-
tain 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."
248 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Some fine gentlemen were unequal to such gal-
lantry. 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. Toward
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. Pre-
viously, the lackeys 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,
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 249
gold-laced, thick-calved, irreverent lackey 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 rever-
ence. " 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 gentle-
men, 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 illus-
trates 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 qualifica-
tion, signed by the Right Honourable the Lord
Dartmouth to the Reverend Mr. Nicholson, to be
his chaplain extraordinary ; the said qualification be-
ing 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. Nichol-
son will repair to the pit-keeper's house, in Vinegar
Yard, at the Crooked Billet, he shall have the mov-
ables restored, giving a reasonable gratitude."
Probably Mr. Nicholson did not claim his qualifi-
cation. His patron was son of the Lord Dartmouth
who corresponded with James II. while expressing
allegiance to William III., and was subsequently
250 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 drama-
tist, 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, sur-
rounded by papers, and waiting for the colonel.
Tredenham and the documents were conveyed in
custody before the earl, to whom the former ex-
plained that he was a poet, sketching out a play,
that the papers seized formed portions 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. Treden-
ham," 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
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 251
whole play." He says all our tragedies; but, we
know that such was not the case when the heroes
of ' Shakespeare, 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 Heckett on this matter. Sermons
thus testify to a matter of fashion. It appears from
a play, Dryden's "Sir Martin Marall," that if Lon-
doners 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 Lon-
don 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 nonjuring Collier. Mirthful-minded South, he
who preached to the Merchant Tailors of the rem-
nant 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 thou-
sand 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 heart suffi-
352 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
ciently 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-bred 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 cen-
tury, 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 of Hyde
Park. In the winter, they are an encumbrance to
the playhouse, 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 " (afterward 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 playhouse, is
dead; a fever slew her in eight and forty hours.
AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 253
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 Doggett (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 50 ! 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 $ 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 quad-
rupeds, 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 declin-
ing health of Betterton) to mar the other. And so
closes the half century.
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 profit-
able. 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 Shakespeare ; and, for a time, Doggett, by creat-
ing laughter, reaped more glittering reward than
Betterton, by drawing tears. The first season, how-
ever, of the eighteenth century was commenced with
great spirit. Drury Lane opened with Gibber's
"Love Makes a Man," an adaptation from Beau-
mont and Fletcher. Gibber 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
254
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 255
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," 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 "Con-
stant Couple," " Sir Harry Wildair." The reputa-
tion 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 Loraine, 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. Fix, the author, having failed in this mixture
of rhyme and blank verse, failed in a greater degree
in her next play in prose, the " Tsar of Muscovy."
Booth and Mrs. Barry could do nothing with such ma-
terials. The masters forthwith enacted the " Lady's
Visiting Day," by Burnaby. In this comedy Bet-
terton played the gallant lover, Courtine, to the Lady
Love^oy of Mrs. Barry. The lady here would only
marry a prince. Courtine wins her as Prince Alex-
ander of Muscovy : and the audience laughed as they
256 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
recognised therein the incident of the merry Lord
Montagu wooing the mad Duchess Dowager of Albe-
marle, 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's (Lord Lansdowne) "Jew
of Venice," "improved" from Shakespeare, who
was described as having furnished the rude sketches
which had been amended and adorned by Granville's
new master-strokes !
Gildon's dull piece of Druidism, "Love's Victim,
or the Queen of Wales," appeared and failed, not-
withstanding 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 ad-
miration of the public for Farquhar. He was absurd
enough to say so in print, and to speak contemptu-
ously 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 Shakespeare'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,
Bevjl illustrated the right divine and impeccability of
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 257
his late liege sovereign, King James ; denounced the
Revolution, by implication ; did in his only play what
Doctor Sacheverill did in the pulpit, and made even
his Jacobites laugh by his bouncing line, " The gods
and godlike 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 demon-
stratively, 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 " Moodish Hus-
band." 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
4 la Mode." The author was then six and twenty
258 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Charterhouse with Addison, had left the uni-
versity 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 Maj-
esty'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 inces-
sant 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 re-
deem 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
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 259
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 Brampton (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 un-
dertakers, 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. " Noth-
ing," 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 Addi-
son's sake ; and the author of the new comedy re-
ceived the appointment of writer of the Gazette.
After a closing of the houses during Bartholomew
Fair, the Drury Lane company met again ; and again
260 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
won the town by Gibber'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 re-
ceived .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 Gibber's comedies, the " Twin Rivals " had only
what the French call a succh d'estime.
To the eight pieces of Drury, Lincoln's Inn op-
posed 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, Better-
ton ; Bajazet, Verbruggen ; Axalla, Booth ; Aspasia,
Mrs. Barry. In this piece, Rowe left sacred for pro-
fane history, and made his tragedy so politically al-
lusive 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
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 261
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 gal-
lantry 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 the 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 offi-
cial 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 abun-
dantly.
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 Ox-
262 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
ford, 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.
It seemed as if the king-killing in the plebeian
lady's tragedy required some counteraction, and ac-
cordingly, Lord Orrery's posthumous play of " Alte-
mira" was next brought forward. There is a true
king and also a usurper in this roaring yet senti-
mental tragedy, in whom Whigs and Tories might
recognise the sovereigns whom they respectively
adored. One monarch himself complacently re-
marks :
" 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 (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 for-
gotten 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. Cent-
livre) 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
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 263
Drury, was Baker's "Tunbridge Walks," the man-
ners 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 ter-
rific 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 had tempted that public, in April,
with a comedy, entitled " Fair Example, or the Mod-
ish Citizens," by Estcourt, a strolling player, but
soon afterward 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
in 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 troupe. 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 daugh-
ter. 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
264 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 mys-
tery he had painfully learned took to the joys and
sorrows, trials, triumphs, and temptations of a wan-
dering 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 Citi-
zens," 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 Moliere's " M&iecin
malgr6 Lui," in the cold dish called " Love's Contri-
vance ; " 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 diplo-
macy as in the drama.
Gildon's play of the " Patriot, or the Italian Con-
spiracy," the last produced this year, with Mills as
Cosmo de Medici, and Wilks as his son Julio, merits
notice only as an instance of the mania for recon-
structing accepted stories. Gildon, toward the close
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 265
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 Shakespeare's plays performed, 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 con-
demned to death for treason against King William,
on the day her husband was murdered by Lord
Mohun ! The Jacobite father was, however, par-
doned. Mrs. Mountfort, or Verbruggen, left a suc-
cessor 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 Peni-
tent," the one great triumph of the year. The
other novelties require only to be recorded. That
most virulent and unscrupulous of Whig partisan
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, how-
ever, be remembered now, but for the preeminence
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,
266 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
"Different Widows," by a judicious, anonymous
author; "Love Betrayed," Burnaby's last of a poor
four, and that a marring of Shakespeare'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 ttyle he succeeded, four months
after his comedy (the dullest in the English language)
had failed. Boyle may have been a worthy antago-
nist of Bentley, touching the genuineness of the
"Epistles of Phalaris," but he could not vie with
such writers of comedy as Gibber, Farquhar, and
Steele. The production of the "Fickle Shepherd-
ess " a ruthless handling of Randolph's fine pas-
toral, "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, Better-
ton ; 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 devot-
ing 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
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 267
leaves, however, mmch 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 dur-
ing 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, ihe prevailing faction propped his throne,
And to four volumes let his plays run on."
Shakespeare, in name, at least, reappears more
frequently on the stage during the Drury Lane
season of 1702-04, when "Hamlet," "King Lear,"
"Macbeth," " Timon of Athens," "Richard III.,"
the "Tempest," and "Titus Andronicus," were per-
formed. These, however, were the "improved"
editions of the poet. The novelties were, the " Ly-
ing Lover," by Steele ; " Love, the Leveller ; " and
the "Albion Queens." It was the season in which
great Anne fruitlessly forbade the presence of vizard-
268 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
masks in the pit, and of gallants on the stage ; recom-
mended cleanliness of speech, and denounced the
shabby people who occasionally tried to evade the
money-takers. 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 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 un-
truth as anything uttered by the Lying Lover
himself, who, when he does express a mawkish sen-
timent 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 throngs of gallows-birds in Newgate. That
Steele seriously intended his play to be the begin-
ning of an era of " new comedy," is, however, cer-
tain. 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
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 269
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 describes 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
meet 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 sea-
270 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
son. Eton had no reason to be proud of the comedy
of its alumnus, Walker, " Marry or Do Worse ; " and
in the tragedy of "Abra Mule," with its similes,
which continually run away with their rider, the
young Master of Arts, Trapp, shows that he was as
poor a poet, 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 Pinketh man'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
Caesar," " Othello," and " Timon of Athens," were
the plays by, or from Shakespeare, which were played
this season.
The season of 1704-05, at Drury Lane, now pros-
pering, to the considerable vexation of Kit Rich,
chief proprietor, who felt himself unable to avoid
paying his company, their salaries, is notable for the
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 271
production of Gibber'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 licentious-
ness of the drama was made by one who had been
himself a great offender. 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 con-
versational piece, not one of much action. The dia-
logue 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. Gib-
ber's greatest claim to respect seems to me to rest
on this elegant and elaborate, though far from fault-
less 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 de-
spaired 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 " Bracey "
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,
foreboding discomfort ; 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,
272 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 senti-
ments 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 neg-
ligently 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 excel-
lently acted, an agreeably gay woman of quality, a
little too conscious of her natural attractions."
Neither Gibber'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 writ-
ten by Defoe, by the Duke of Argyll, by Mrs. Old-
field's particular friend, Maynwaring! Congreve,
who had revelled in impurity, and stoutly asserted
his cleanliness, ungenerously declared, "Gibber 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."
Doctor 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
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 273
to follow even decently the original cast, which in-
cluded Sir Charles Easy, Wilks ; Lord Foppington,
Gibber ; 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. 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 Addi-
son ; 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 appear-
ance in London as Dominic, in the " Spanish Friar."
Of Shakespeare'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
274 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
composer, who understood English no better than he
did music, " shall be the means of bringing this man-
ner 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 1'Epine, the pupil of
Greber, and subsequently the ill-favoured but happy
wife of Doctor 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," patron-
ised 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 New-
market, ;i,6oo, and who was afterward the munifi-
cent 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 dis-
cord did opera commence among us. "Arsinoe,"
however, had a certain success, toward 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
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 275
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 Hay-
market, built for them by Vanbrugh, under a sub-
scription filled by thirty persons of quality, at ;ioo
each, for which they received free admissions for life.
Under his license 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 license to Van-
brugh, 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. Fix,
Swiney, and one or two other obscure writers, in-
cluding Chaves, author of a condemned comedy, the
" Cares of Love." Baker describes Chaves as a per-
son of no consideration, on the ground that he dedi-
cated his play to " Sir William Read, the mounte-
bank," who, I think, could very well afford to pay
the usual fee. With these poor aids, and many mis-
chances, the first season at the Queen's Theatre, on
the site of our present Opera House, came to an
unsatisfactory conclusion.
The season of 1705-06, 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 Gibber's tragedy, "Perolla and
Izadora." The great success was Farquhar's "Re-
cruiting Officer," played on the 8th April, 1706,
with this cast : Plume, Wilks ; Brazen, Gibber ;
276 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Kite, Estcourt ; Bullock, Bullock ; Balance, Keene ;
Worthy, Williams ; Costar Pearmain, Norris ; Apple-
tree, 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 1$, 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 circum-
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 277
stance of the year was, that the chapel in Russell
Court was then building ; 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, " Adven-
tures in Madrid," by fat Mrs. Fix, 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 Leveredge and Mrs. Tofts at the head of them,
failed to render the often broken but prolonged sea-
son of 1705-06, which begun in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
and terminated at the house in the Haymarket, profit-
able.
In many respects it did not deserve to be, for Van-
brugh, with more wit and humour, and more judg-
ment 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 de-
praved, among whom such public entertainments are
278 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
produced and encouraged. In this symptom of de-
generate manners we are, I believe, unmatched by
any nation that is, or ever was, in the world." In
the "Confederacy," Doggett's fame as an actor cul-
minated. 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. Doggett,
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 Doggett 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 war-
rior 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 un-
dertook 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 singu-
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 279
lar, 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 Addi-
son 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, ema-
nated from his own university. Addison, charmed
with the lines, inquired after the writer, and dis-
covered 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 substi-
tute 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, 1706-07 ; dur-
ing which, Swiney parted from Rich, took the Hay-
market, from Vanbrugh, at a rent of ^5 i 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 sing-
28o THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
ing by Mrs. Tofts, in English and Italian ; and some
dancing." The mainstay of the season was the
" Recruiting Officer." Estcourt was advertised as
" The True Sergeant Kite," against Pack, who played
it at the Haymarket. At Drury, where Rich de-
pended 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."
In the season of 1 706-07, at the Haymarket, Mrs.
Oldfield and Mrs. Bracegirdle first played together,
the younger actress ultimately winning or van-
quishing the town. Gibber, 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
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 281
greatest attempt to overcome the latter was made,
by producing a truly and drily classical tragedy, by
Edmund Smith, called "Phaedra and Hippolytus,"
which the public would not endure above three nights,
to the disgust and astonishment of Addison, as re-
corded in the Spectator. Smith, or Neale rather,
the former being a name he adopted from a benevo-
lent 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 dis-
grace. His success on the stage, when he made this
his sole attempt, was perhaps impeded by the exac-
tions of actors and actresses at rehearsal, to suit
whose caprices he had to write fresh verses, and fur-
nish 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 joy-
ous "Beaux' Stratagem," first played on the 8th of
March, 1 707, was written in six painful weeks. Ton-
son gave him .30 for the right of printing, and this,
282 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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) ; Boniface, Bullock ; Sul-
len, Verbruggen (his last original character ; the
stage was thoughtful of his orphan children as it was
of those of Farquhar) ; Gibbet, Gibber ; Count Bel-
lair, Bowman ; Sir Charles Freeman, Keene ; Lady
Bountiful, Mrs. Powell ; Mrs. Sullen, Mrs. Oldfield ;
Cherry, Mrs. Bicknell ; Dorinda, Mrs. Bradshaw.
This piece was the great glory of the Haymarket
season, 1706-07.
The season of 1707-08 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 novelties were Gibber'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 acces-
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 283
sion 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 Skip-
with, who had formerly held a larger share. The
Monthly Mirror, for March, 1708, 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 Gibber. It was by Colonel
Brett's influence that the union of the companies was
effected, under the patent held by him and Rich ;
284 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
and henceforward the great house in the Haymarket
was given up to Swiney and Italian opera, at the fol-
lowing prices for admission, which will be found to
form a strong contrast with those at present ex-
tracted from the British pocket : Stage-boxes, los.
6d. ; boxes, 8s. ; pit, $s. ; lower gallery, 2s. 6d. ;
upper gallery, is. 6d.
I have stated above that the union of the com-
panies 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. Gibber 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 ven-
geance. 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 cer-
tainly 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 exer-
cised, 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
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY 285
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. Gibber will best
tell what followed :
" Several little disgraces were put upon them, par-
ticularly 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 extraordi-
nary use. All this while the other party were pas-
sively 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 com-
mand, 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 commo-
tions, enters the messenger, with the order of silence
in his hands, whom the same actor officiously intro-
286 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
duced, 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, toward the
patentee, in the manner of Shakespeare'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 vin-
dictive 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 ten-
ants 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, Hay market) 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.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE UNITED AND THE DISUNITED COMPANIES
THE names of Betterton, Booth, Wilks, Gibber,
Mills, Powell, Estcourt, Pinkethman, Jr., Keene,
Norris, Bullock, Pack, Johnson, Bowen, Thurmond,
Bickerstaff; of Mistresses Barry, Bradshaw, Old-
field, 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 per-
haps 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 Shakespeare,
Theobald, gave the first of about a score of for-
gotten dramas to the stage ; but his " Persian
Princess " swept it but once or twice with her train.
Tavernor, the proctor, who could paint landscapes
almost as ably as Caspar Poussin, proved but a poor
dramatist ; and his " Maid the Mistress," was barely
listened to.
Matters did not improve in 1708-09, in which sea-
son Brett's share of the patent was made over to
Wilks, Gibber, and Estcourt, the other shares
amounting to nearly a dozen. The only success of
?8 7
288 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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"),
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 im-
postors 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 re-
sented by him as a plagiarism. In this piece, Better-
ton 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 deli-
cately pressed upon him for acceptance, and Mis-
tresses 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
THE UNITED AND DISUNITED COMPANIES 289
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 license 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 23d, 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. 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 "El-
frid," 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 experi-
ence 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 rela-
tion of the youthful Aaron. Under the peer's aus-
pices, 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
290 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 im-
practicable 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. Whereupon, Hill new-nibbed his pen, and
addressed himself to composition again.
The treasury gained more by the appearance of
Elrington, in " Oronooko," 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, Doggett,
Mills, Mrs. Barry, Oldfield, and other actors of mark.
Drury had opened with Dryden. The Queen's
Theatre, Haymarket, commenced its season on the
1 5th of September, 1709, with Shakespeare. The
THE UNITED AND DISUNITED COMPANIES 291
play was "Othello," with Betterton in the Moor;
but oh! shade of the bard of Avon, there was be-
tween 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 Bet-
terton, soon after his benefit, on the I3th 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 repe-
tition 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 seem 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 arrange-
ment, and noblemen, who espoused the part of the
292 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Better-
ton, 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," a poor sequel to the
" Busy Body," brought her nothing more substantial
than a dedication fee of 40 from the Earl of Port-
land, the son of William III.'s " Bentinck." This was
more than Johnson obtained for dedicating his con-
demned 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 license
to himself, Wilks, Cibber, and Doggett. Collier with-
drew, however, from the management, and the three
actors named paid him 700 a year for doing noth-
ing. From this time may be dated the real pros-
THE UNITED AND DISUNITED COMPANIES 293
parity 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.
CHAPTER XV.
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY
NATURALLY and justifiably jubilant is Colley Cib-
ber 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 dis-
charged us of all commands, before we took a shilling
for our own use."
These halcyon days had, no doubt, their little
passing clouds ; some prejudice and jealousies would
arise among the leaders, as excellence began to mani-
fest itself from below ; but these, as Cibber remarks,
with a lofty philosophy, were " frailties, which socie-
ties of a higher consideration, while they are com-
posed of men, will never be entirely free from."
Cibber and his fellows deserved to prosper. Al-
though they enjoyed a monopoly they did not abuse
294
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 295
it ; and ; 1,500 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, with-
out the aid of " those barbarous entertainments," of
acrobats and similar personages, for which the digni-
fied Gibber had the most profound and wholesome
horror.
While the management was in the hands of Gibber,
Wilks, and Doggett, 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 Doggett. However imprac-
ticable the latter was, Gibber 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." Doggett
would sit sullen and silent, at the same table with
Gibber, at Will's the young gentlemen of the town
loitering about the room, to listen to the critics, or
look at the actors and Gibber would treat the old
player with deference, till the latter would graciously
please to be softened, and ask for a pinch of snuff
from Colley's box, in token of reconciliation.
Almost the only word approaching to complaint
advanced by Gibber refers to public criticism. The
newspapers, and especially Mist's Journal, he says,
" took upon them very often to censure our manage-
ment, with the same freedom and severity as if we
had been so many ministers of state." This is
thoroughly Cibberian in humour and expression.
296 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
For these critics, however, Colley had a supreme
contempt. Wilks and Booth, who succeeded Dog-
gett, were more sensitive, and would fain have made
reply; but Gibber 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 pan-
tomimes came in, Gibber 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 sup-
ported ; and, accordingly, when the "Orphan" was
revived, and the town had just been falsely told that
Gibber 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," and
Mrs. Centlivre's " Perplexed Lovers," were failures.
But the lady fell with some Mat. The epilogue pro-
duced more sensation than the play. Prince Eugene
was then in England, and to Mrs. Oldfield were en-
trusted lines complimentary to the military talents
of the prince, and his brother in arms, the Duke of
Marlborough. Political feuds were then so embit-
tered, that the managers were afraid to allow the
epilogue to be spoken ; but on the second night, they
fortified themselves by the chamberlain's license, and
brave Mistress Oldfield delivered it, in spite of men-
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 297
acing 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 High-
ness 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 their 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 Reverend Samuel Wesley, in his some-
what 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."
298 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
The great night of this season was that in which
Philips's version of Racine's " Andromaque " was
played the i/th of March, 1712. Of the "Dis-
tressed 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 declam-
atory 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, the Spectator related the effect
the tender tale 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 sor-
row." 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
Honey combe and Captain Sentry, backed by two or
three old servants, the captain wearing the sword
he had wielded at Steinkirk, are described as being
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 299
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 sympa-
thies oscillated between the ladies, with a word of
smart censure now and then for either ; calling An-
dromache 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 un-
doing 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 Ton-
son 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
30 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 ridi-
cule 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 But-
ton's and threaten Pope with a degrading application
of it for having expressed contempt of the author's
Pastorals.
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 Sergeant Kite and Sir Francis Gripe.
Downes asserts that he was a born actor. Steele
mournfully says, "If I were to speak of merit neg-
lected, misapplied, or misunderstood, might I not say
that Estcourt has a great capacity? but it is not
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 301
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 interpo-
lating jokes and catches of his own, which raised a
laugh among the general public, but which made
critics frown. Gibber 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 Gibber in his "Apology," "was
so amazing and extraordinary a mimic, that no man
or woman, from the coquette to the Privy-Councillor,
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 writ-
ten part of Falstaff, which he acted, his own notes
and observations upon almost every speech of it, de-
scribing 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 char-
acter 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
302 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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, Est-
court'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 a 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 impor-
tant 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 whole-
sale, as well as retail, by his old servant, trusty An-
thony (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,
etc."
On the foundation of the "Beef Steak Club,"
Estcourt was appointed Providore ; and in the exer-
cise of this office to the chief wits and leading men
of the nation, he wore a small gold gridiron, sus-
pended around his neck by a green silk riband.
Doctor 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.
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 303
His name may be to future times unroll'd,
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 states-
man was at this present time the husband of an
Italian lady, and on this fact, albeit she was not a
304 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
dulcts uxor, the Italian singers founded their hopes.
As the lady's brother was hanged at Tyburn, half
a dozen years later, fcfr murdering his servant, Shrews-
bury had no great cause, ultimately, to be proud of
the connection. Nevertheless, it served the purpose
of the foreign vocalists, it would seem, as the cham-
berlain 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 subse-
quently 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 compet-
itors.
First on the list was fat Charles Johnson, who was
even a more frequent lounger at Button's than Am-
brose Philips, and who had a play ready for represen-
tation 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
Bachelor," and the " Committee," which some people,
like Sir Roger, considered a "good Church of Eng-
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 305
land comedy." The piece, however, made no im-
pression ; nor was much greater effected by that
learned proctor, Taverner's " French Advocates," 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 busi-
ness 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, and " Cinna's
Conspiracy" raised no emotions. The sole success
of the season in this line was Addison's " Cato," first
played on the I4th of April, 1713 ; thus cast : Cato,
Booth ; Syphax, Gibber ; Juba, Wilks ; Portius, Pow-
ell ; Sempronius, Mills ; Marcus, Ryan ; Decius, Bo-
man ; 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
306 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 re-
hearsals, 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 intel-
ligence to deliver with well-feigned humility the
player's 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 license which Wilks, Gibber, and Doggett held
at the queen's pleasure. Doggett withdrew on a pe-
cuniary arrangement, agreed upon after some litiga-
tion, 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 "Won-
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 307
der." The tragedy was written after the poet had
ceased to be under-secretary to the Duke of Queens-
berry, and after he had studied Spanish, in hopes
of a foreign appointment through Halifax, who, accord-
ing to the story, only congratulated him on be-
ing able to read Don Quixote in the original ! " Jane
Shore" was brought out February 2, 1714. Hast-
ings, Booth ; Dumont, Wilks ; Glo'ster, Gibber ; 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 suffer-
ings 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 un-
equalled 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. The sinning wife and
moaning husband of the tragedy were the lively lady
and the quick-tempered lover of this comedy. The
308 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
Violanthe 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 ist 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 awhile, 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, in-
stead 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, sen-
sible, and wealthy husband, to whom her exemplary
and prudent conduct endeared her ; and the happi-
ness of this couple was well established. Probably,
when Martin was away on Friday evenings, at the
Young Devil Tavern, where the members of the so-
ciety 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
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 309
applause as the originator of the characters of Co-
rinna, in the " Conspirator," 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 unparallelled. Addison, Congreve, Gay, Am-
brose 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 license, held by Wilks, Gibber, Booth, and
Doggett, died also. In the new license, Steele, who,
since we last met with him at the play, had endured
variety of fortune, was made a partner. He had mar-
ried that second wife whom he treated so politely in
his little failures of allegiance. He had established
the Tatter, cooperated in the Spectator, had begun
and terminated the Guardian, and had started the
Englishman. He had served the Duke of Marl-
borough in and out of office, and had been elected
M. P. for Stockbridge, after nobly resigning his
commissionership of stamps, and his pension as "ser-
vant to the late Prince George of Denmark." He
had been expelled the House for writing what the
House called seditious pamphlets, and had then re-
turned to literature, and now to occupation as a man-
ager. 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 Gibber,
3io THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 remark-
able, 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, how-
ever, to every young actor ; for, on the 2Oth 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.
Charles Johnson was, of course, ready with a com-
edy, 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 "Wr^it 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
UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 311
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.
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 inter-
ruption. Rowe, by this license, easily extricates him-
self 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 Gardner 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
312 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 toward 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.
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 1 8th 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, Knapp, Mrs. Rogers,
and Mrs. Knight. Gibber 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."
313
314 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 first made his appear-
ance 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 Yar-
mouth, 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 digni-
fied calling of a glazier. The " 'prentice lad," dis-
gusted 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, 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, Shakespeare'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
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME. OF IT 315
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, Gibber,
Mills, and Mrs. Oldfield could not secure a triumph
for the play which Steele thought was more dis-
graceful to the stage than to the comedy. There
is a novel mixture of sentiment, caricature, and farci-
cal 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 prob-
ably 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 remem-
ber right, the fifth act was written in a week's
time. . . . He would walk about his room, and dic-
tate 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 aver-
ment, 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
3i 6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 ma-
chinery, 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 antici-
pate 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 worth-
less 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 compli-
ment to matrimony at the hands of the widow ; but
there is a slip in poetical justice, for a lover who
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 317
deserts his mistress, when he finds, as Lord Peter.
borough 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 Gibber had a famous
company, in which Quin quietly made his way to
the head, 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 innuendo. 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 prof-
ligacy, producing a highly moral, semi-religious drama,
" Lucius."
But while moral poets were polluting the stage,
and immoral women undertaking to purify it, a rev-
erend 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 deli-
cate subject than the Christian poets of a later era
3i8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
or, to speak correctly, than the later poets of a
Christian era.
In this season I find the first trace of a " fashion-
able night," and a later hour for beginning the play
than any of subsequent times. I quote from Genest :
" 1 8 June, 1717. By particular desire of several ladies
of quality. ' Fatal Marriage.' Biron, Booth ; Ville-
roy, 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-pan-
tomime the forerunner of the line of pantomime,
which, not withstanding our presumed advance in
civilisation, still has its admirers. In novelty, Dick
Leveredge, 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
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 319
by Savage, " Woman's a Riddle." It was 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 pa-
tron, who came behind the scenes, and had recom-
mended 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 " Pere 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 aston-
ishment 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
320 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
young actor play an old man with a perfectness not
to be expected but from players of the longest expe-
rience. " How great was my surprise," says Ricco-
boni, "when I learned 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 con-
ceived 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 the 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 arti-
ficially 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 Gibber'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's Lane, his unknown mother, but not
that light lady, the Countess Macclesfield, wearing
a mask. Savage had passed from a shoemaker's
shop to the streets, had written a poem on the Ban-
gorian Controversy, had adapted a play translated
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 321
from the Spanish by the wife of Mr. Baron Price,
and which Bullock readapted 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 ; gener-
ous Wilks patronised the boy, and Steele, befriending
a lad of parts, designed to give him ;i,ooo, 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." Gibber
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 perform-
ances keep close to the true purposes of its institu-
tion."
Gibber 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.
322 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 loy-
alty 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 pro-
logue, he was now poet laureate and land sur-
veyor 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 nonjuring 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, Sir Heartley ;
Gibber, Doctor 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
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 323
folks by her exquisite coquetry in Maria. The play
was not a servile imitation of, but an excellent adap-
tation to modern circumstances of the "Tartuffe."
Thoroughly English, it abounds with the humour
and manner of Gibber, and, despite some offences
against taste, it was at this time the purest comedy
on the stage. There was farce enough for- the gal-
lery, maxim and repartee, suggestions and didactic
phrases for the rest of the house. The success sur-
passed even expectation. It raised against Gibber a
phalanx of implacable foes, foes who howled at
everything of which he was afterward 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 ! " Gibber foresaw the tempest,
and, probably, also the prosperous gales which were
to follow, to which there is some allusion in the epi-
logue 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, Gibber 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 Mists
Journal, for fifteen years, lost no opportunity of maul-
ing the detested offender. With the editor of that
paper, says Gibber, "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 ingen-
iously 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 Gibber, late comedian of the Theatre
Royal, notorious for writing the " Nonjuror." ' The
compliment in the latter part, I confess," adds
Gibber, " 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. Hitherto the sword had dealt
lightly with actors. In 1692, indeed, Sandford nearly
killed Powell, on the stage. On the I3th 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
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 325
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.
Cowen was the original representative of Sir Joshua
Wittol ( Old Bachelor"), 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, Tamer-
lane, 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 1 8th 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 Doctor Smith was head-
master. The doctor and submasters held the stage
in abhorrence till now, when a brilliant alumnus was
likely to shed lustre on the corporation of " Merchant
Tailors and Linen Armorers." 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 mas-
ters, in this, acted against their own former precept
and example ; but they made amends by a religious
326 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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. Becking-
ham's tragedy exhibits a romantic story, or stories,
in a classical costume. There is severity enough to
gratify rigid tastes, with a little of overwarmth 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 sea-
son. 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 " Per-
jurer," and Sir Thomas Moore justly criticised his
own tragedy of " Mangore, King of the Timbusians,"
when he called it a " trifle." It is a very noisy trifle,
concerned with love, battle, murder, and worse, be-
tween 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 audi-
ence 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
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 327
cause it to live to our own times, was Mrs. Centlivre's
"Bold Stroke for a Wife." Sprightly Mrs. Cent-
livre was as fervent a Whig as Gibber, 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 that 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 nar-
rating, 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 upward of two hun-
dred persons walked, in deep mourning.
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," bor-
rowed a little from Shirley, and more from Moliere,
furnished, in Ombre and Lady Frances Ombre, some
ideas, probably, to Gibber, when he placed a similar
328 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 ^1,000!
The great effort of the season was made in bring-
ing out "Busiris," a tragedy, by the Reverend Doc-
tor Young, author of "Night Thoughts." It was
played on March 7, 1719, by Booth, Elrington,
WUks, 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 Dollabella, Noodle, Doodle, the great
little prince, and Huncamunca. The travesty is
rich and facile ; not least so in that passage mimick-
ing the various addresses to the sun, who is bid to rise
no more but hide his face and put the world in mourn-
ing. On these, Fielding remarks that "the author
of Busiris ' is extremely anxious to prevent the sun's
COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT 329
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 laureate, " because the late instances he
had received of his Grace's undeserved and uncom-
mon 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 re-
warding 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 Memmon (Wilks) and Mandane (Mrs. Old-
field), found such favour in the author's own estima-
tion, 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."
Doctor Young was at this time thirty-eight years
of age, but was not yet "famous." Born when
Charles II. was king and Dryden laureate, the Hamp-
shire 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 be-
fore the public in 1713, 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
330 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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.
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, how-
ever, as yet, he only shared the leading business in
tragedy and comedy with Ryan, and the less distin-
guished Evans. Southwark Fair, a fashionable resort,
contributed to the company a new actor, Bohemia or
Boheme, with great comic power ; and Susan Mount-
fort 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 "Oro-
nooko," "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 nov-
elty worthy of notice was the " Sir Walter Raleigh "
of poor Doctor Sevvell, in which Quin played the hero
with indifferent success. The author was more re-
markable than his piece. He was of good family,
332 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
and a pupil of Boerhaave ; but, unsuccessful as a
practitioner in London, he, curiously enough, gained
fortune and reputation in the smaller sphere of Hamp-
stead, 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 es-
teemed, 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 circum-
stances, 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 work-
houses, 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 hedgerow, that was once the bound-
ary 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 Sep-
tember, 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
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 333
patentees and the government. Within the period
mentioned Miss Santlow had made Booth happy, a
union which helped to make Susan Mountfort mad,
and Dennis's " Invader of His Country," and South-
erne's " Spartan Dame," were produced. The former
was the second of three adaptations from Shake-
speare'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 Shakespeare'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 be-
tween 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, be-
334 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
tween 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 in-
congruities, and it survived but during a brief popu-
larity. The author was now sixty years of age,
Dennis seven years his senior. The older and un-
luckier, and less courteous poet, gained nothing by
his play to compensate for the annuity he had pur-
chased, but the term of which he had outlived.
Southerne gained ^500 by his "author's nights"
alone ; for patronage and presence on which occa-
sions, the plausible poet personally solicited his
friends. For the copyright he received an additional
;l20.
About six weeks after Southerne's play was pro-
duced, 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 mis-
behaviour 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 a
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,
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 335
and the government, of which the duke was a mem-
ber. 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 license !
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 min-
gled 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 Malagina, 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 gener-
ally, 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, Gibber, and Wilks were permitted to re-
336 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
open Drury under a license, after an interval of a
few days, and the season thus recommencing on the
28th of January, with the "Careless Husband,"
Gibber playing Lord Foppington, ran on to August
23d, when the house closed with "Bartholomew
Fair!" The only novelty was Hughes's "Siege of
Damascus," with false quantities in his classical
names, and much heaviness of treatment of an apt
story. It was Hughes's first play, and he died un-
conscious of its success. He was then but forty-
three years of age. The old schoolfellow of Isaac
Watts had begun his career by complimenting King
William and eulogising Queen Anne. He had pub-
lished clever translations, composed very gentleman-
like 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
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 337
the same audiences who took delight in Norris's
Barnaby Brittle, Shepherd's Sir Tunbelly Clumsey
and Mrs. Booth's Helena, in the "Rover." Never-
theless, 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 Beck-
ingham's second, last, and unsuccessful essay, " Henri
IV. of France." What was the course of the Mer-
chant 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 Pre-
tenders," showed some power of drawing character,
especially an effeminate footman, Bardash, 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 Fulk Greville line, used to subscribe his
political vote so singularly first for ministers, then
for the opposition, and thirdly, not at all, in unde-
viating regularity.
This piece failing, came Theobald's adaptation of
Shakespeare's " Richard II.," very much for the worse,
338 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 reappearance 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
Officer," 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
PROGRESS OF QU1N, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 339
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 license 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 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 fre-
quently and more recently than " Cato," was first
played in the Drury Lane season of 1720-21. On
the 1 8th 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 han-
dling which, one of his biographers has described him
as " superior even to Shakespeare ! " 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 lago Zanga at the
340 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
close. Young obtained but $Q 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 for-
gotten, 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.
Gibber's comedy, the " Refusal," skilfully built up
from the " Femmes Savantes " of Moliere 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 au-
thor of the " Nonjuror " from the stage. The other
incidents of this season are confined to the appear-
ance of Gibber'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 ap-
peared, 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 corre-
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 341
spending 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 ; " Cori-
olanus; Aumerle, in "Richard II.;" Aaron, in "Ti-
tus Andronicus;" Leonato to Ryan's Benedick, etc.
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 Shakespearian revivals, creditable to Rich, was
also distinguished for the failure of the original pieces
produced. The " Chimaera " 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. Heywood, a lady who
began by writing as loosely as Aphra Behn, con-
cluded 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 was only succeeded 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 over-
joyed, for she loves the younger prince ; but she is
also much shocked, and escapes from her embarrass-
ment by suicide.
The next novelty was a tragedy in one act, and
with four characters, "Fatal Extravagance," attrib-
342 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
uted to Miller, 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 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 Philips'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 Cartismund (Mrs.
Porter) to Vanoc (Booth), and the intervention of
the Romans in these British domestic matters, inter-
ested 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," being confined to Sturmy's
tragedy, " Love and Duty ; " Lynceus, one of the
half-hundred sons of ^Egyptus, by Quin. The love
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 343
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
couple 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 im-
provement 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, humourous
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 sentimen-
tal 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
344 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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, how-
ever, is, that it is excessively indecent. There is
nothing worse in Aphra Behn than the remarks
made to Cimberton, the coxcomb with reflection, on
Lucinda. This top, 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 de-
clared 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 manipu-
lated and reformed from the "Andria" of Terence,
though Tom (Gibber) 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.
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 345
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 better might afford,
And gave the harmless fellow a good word :
Set up with these, he ventured on the town,
And with a borrowed play outdid poor Crowne.
There he stopped 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, Cib-
ber ; Margaret, Mrs. Oldfield ; Duchess of Gloucester,
Mrs. Porter), was produced in this season. It was
the last and worst of Philips's 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 Shakespeare's
" Henry VI."
Even in Doctor 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 re-
346 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
turned 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 other-
wise provided for !
Philips was followed by an inferior author, but a
greater man, Sir Hildebrand Jacobs, 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 indiffer-
ently 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. Fa-
voured by Wilks and patronised by Theophilus Gib-
ber, the ragged, rakish fellow slunk at nights into
the theatre, and by day lounged where he could, com-
posing 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 tem-
porary 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 cor-
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 347
rectness 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. Heywood followed Savage's example, in act-
ing in her own comedy, " A Wife to Be Let ; " 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 Gibber; 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 Gibber ; and Hippisley and others,
acting "Julius Caesar," as a comic piece, was not a
happy idea. 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 prom-
ising young actor, too, was lost to the troupe, in young
Rackstraw. 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
348 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
eye, pierced the 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 imperti-
nence of Colley Gibber. 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. Gibber knew his antece-
dents; that his Jacobite principles had been an ob-
stacle 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 un-
necessarily 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 inde-
pendently 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 crea-
tion.
Boheme, in Herod, played well up to the Mariamne
of Mrs. Seymour; but he could not approach Mon-
dory in that character, in the French play by Tristan.
Mondory used to have his audience, on this occasion,
departing from him depressed, silent, wrapped 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
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 349
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 Odys-
sey 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 East-
hampstead, 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 Shakespeare'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 sit-
uations especially between her and Henry (Booth).
Hill cut out all Shakespeare's comic characters ; but
he was so anxious for the success of the piece, that
THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
he spent ^200 of his own on the scenery, of which
he made a present to the managers ; 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 ven-
geance ; 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 represen-
tations, before it was consigned to oblivion. But the
company was strong enough to make their old reper-
tory, with Shakespeare 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 Mira-
bel, and a score of similar merry characters.
The company had not to complain : yet the mana-
gers had found it necessary to support their stock-
pieces by a novelty a ballet-pantomime, "The
Necromancer," 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
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 351
" 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 2Oth of De-
cember, 1723, "The Necromancer, or the History of
Doctor 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 splen-
dour of the scenes, the vastness of the machinery,
and the grace and ability of Rich himself, raised har-
lequinade above Shakespeare, 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 attrac-
tions of pantomime, a new theatre invited the public.
The little theatre in the Haymarket opened its
doors for the first time on the I2th of September,
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
THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
account for its having straightway died ; but it served
to introduce to the stage the utility actor, Mil ward.
The theatre was only open for a few nights.
Of the season 1724-25, 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 Gibber's quivering tragedy tones, when
playing Achonus, in his adaptation from Beaumont
and Fletcher's "False One." In " Caesar 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 2ist of January, 1725. The "Bath Un-
masked" was the only original comedy produced.
It describes 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
Shakespeare he shone conspicuously, and his Hot-
spur, 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. Gibber,
first wife of Theophilus, claimed the favour of the
town ; and the elder Gibber surrendered one or two
old characters to a younger actor, Bridgewater. Amid
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 353
a succession of old dramas, one novelty only was of-
fered, 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 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 ac-
tresses, disturbed the audience, and prevented all
attention ; and, I believe, if the verses had been re-
peated in the original Greek, they would have been
understood and received in the same manner." The
young actresses were Mrs. Brett and Mrs. Gibber ;
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 "grew sick at the sight of a man, and
refines, upon the significancy of phrases, till she re-
solves common observations into indecency." In the
" French Fortune-Teller," the public failed to be
regaled with a piece stolen from Ravenscroft, who
had stolen his from the French. The third play was
354 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
" Money's the Mistress," which the audience damned
in spite of the reputation of Southerne, who, with
this failure, closed a dramatic career which had com-
menced half a century earlier. In its course he had
written ten plays, the author of which had this in
common with Shakespeare, 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 expecta-
tions raised by comedies whose authors were " gentle-
men," in whose success the "quality," generally,
were especially interested. At Drury it was the
" Rival Modes," by Moore Smyth ; 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 (Gibber), brings his son to town
(Lord Toupet, a modern beau, by Theophilus Gibber),
in order that he may marry Melissa, with her father's
consent. Amoret contrives to upset this arrange-
ment, and the other lovers are duly united. The
plot was good, the players unsurpassable, the two
Gibbers fooling it to the top of their bent, and
old and new fashions were pleasantly contrasted;
355
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, 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 Sev-
erne'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 Gibber, 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
356 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
talents, to an eminent position, from a humble station.
Pope stooped to call Moore Smyth the son of a foot-
man, and, when the latter name was assumed on his
taking his maternal grandfather's estates, the Whigs
lampooned him as born at "the paternal seat of
his family the tap-house of the prison-gate, at
Monaghan."
Moore was on intimate terms with the Mapledur-
ham 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 ex-
pressed and weakly founded charge of plagiarism.
Welsted, who was of a good Leicestershire family,
and of fair abilities, had moved Pope's wrath by writ-
ing satirical verses against him, and the feeling was
embittered when the two dramatists united in address-
ing "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 reveng-
ing 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
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 357
Quin, as Eurydamus, with Mrs. Berriman, as Can-
dace, 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 commenda-
tion 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 ac-
cordingly. The author's final condemnation was
only postponed for a night or two, when he sank,
never to rise again.
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 a cloud. In one of the irreg-
ular 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
358 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 will be offering her every-
thing 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, Gibber, Mrs.
Oldfield, Porter, Horton, and others, who shed splen-
dour 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 " Beggar's 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,
359
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 Qth 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 Shakespeare ; Doctor 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 Gibber, the " Provoked
Husband ; " in which the Lord and Lady Townly
were played by these incomparable lovers, Wilks
and Mrs. Oldfield. Gibber acted Sir Francis Wrong-
head, and young Wetherell, Squire Richard. Van-
brugh was at this time dead in 1 726, at his house
in Whitehall, of quinsy. The critics and enemies of
Gibber 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 ap-
plauded those which they were sure were by Van-
brugh. Gibber published the imperfect play left by
Sir John, and thereby showed that his adversaries
condemned and approved exactly in the wrong places.
Gibber enjoyed another triumph this season.
Steele, abandoning the responsibilities of manage-
360 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
ment, to follow his pleasure, had submitted to a
deduction of ji i$s. 4</., 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.
Gibber 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 discon-
certed 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." Gibber,
however, recovered himself, and vanquished his ad-
versaries, 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 prefer-
ment 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
PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH 361
placemen, 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 Gibber, as doubtful as Con-
greve, 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 Polly ; Peacham, 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. 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 Locket was singing
his song touching courtiers and bribes, was the first
to blunt the point of the satire, by calling encore.
362 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 Peacham
and Locket 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 Gulli-
ver," 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
Carbery ; 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.
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 ad-
mission into Westminster School. Doctor 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 elocu-
tionist, and he took to Latin as readily as Erasmus ;
but then he had Nicholas Rowe for a schoolfellow ;
and, one day, was cast for Pamphilus in the " Andria."
Luckily, or unluckily, he played this prototype of
363
364 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
young Bevil in Sleele'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 clergy-
man, 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 Oronooko 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 acci-
dent, when, in 1698, he made his d^but as Oronooko.
It was a sultry night in June. While waiting to go
on, before his last scene, he inadvertently wiped his
darkened face, and the lampblack 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 was as hilarious as
the old. " I looked like a magpie," said Barton ;
" but they lampblacked 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 tri-
umph ; this was so complete, that Ashbury, the
BARTON BOOTH 365
" 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 Den-
mark, he carries a letter of recommendation to the
father of the stage ; and generous old Thomas, jeal-
ous 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 Roches-
ter's "Valentinian." Betterton played Atius, 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 dis-
tinct from that of Betterton's, created a great im-
pression. "Booth with the silver tongue," gained
the epithet before Barry was born. Westminster
366 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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,
1635-
At first, Booth was thought of as a promising
undergraduate of the buskin, and he had faults to
amend. He confessed to Gibber that " he had been
for some time too frank a lover of the bottle ; " but
having the tipsiness of Powell ever before him as a
terrible warning, he made a resolution of maintaining
a sobriety of character, from which he never departed.
Gibber pronounces this to be "an uncommon act of
philosophy in a young man ; " but he adds, that "in
his fame and fortune he afterward 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 Gibber puts it, " only
BARTON BOOTH 367
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 char-
acters ; 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, con-
signed to her ^3,200, which were speedily squan-
dered 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
368 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
wildness which rendered many of her hearers almost
as distraught as herself ; soon after which she died.
Meanwhile, her more faithful friend, the acknowl-
edged successor of Betterton, achieved his two great-
est 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 heavi-
est 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 ambas-
sador, 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 ; Addi-
son named young Ryan, son of a Westminster tailor,
as Marcus, and the young fellow justified the nomina-
BARTON BOOTH 369
tion. Wilks, Gibber, 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 exclu-
sively 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. 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 mana-
gers paid the actor a similar pecuniary compliment,
and for five and thirty 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,
Gibber, and Doggett, were as satisfied as the public,
for the share of profit to each at the end of this event-
ful season amounted to ^1,350!
When Booth and his fellow actors, after the close
37 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 de-
manded 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
Caesar 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
$0 toward the repairs of St. Mary's Church.
The Church, of which Booth was intended to be
a minister, added its approbation, through Doctor
Smalridge, Dean of Carlisle, who was present at the
performance in Oxford. "I heartily wish all dis-
courses from the pulpit were as instructive and edi-
fying, 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 pul-
pits 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 Pom-
fret and Matthew Clarke were drawing as great
crowds as Booth ; Bradbury, that cheerful-minded
BARTON BOOTH 371
patriarch of the Dissenters, was even more enter-
taining; 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 resort-
ing 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 ; Doctor 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, incon-
sistent, 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."
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 ; Sheri-
dan, conventional, but grandly eloquent ; Mossop,
heavy; Walker, a failure; Digges, stagy ; Kemble,
next to the original ; Pope, " mouthy ; " Cooke, alto-
gether out of his line ; Wright, weak ; Young, tra-
ditional but effective; and Vandenhoff, classically
37* THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 flowers 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-mouthed 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 I "
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 Gibber, Wilks, and Doggett.
The last named, thereupon, retired in disgust, with
compensation ; and Gibber 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 bin
BARTON BOOTH 373
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 toward 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 ^5,000, 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 thea-
tre with love, when alone she filled the spacious
scene. Thus was Miss Santlow in the popular
Cato's eyes :
374 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
" 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. But see of what perilous stuff she was made
who enraptured the generally unruffled poet Thom-
son 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 to
the first Lord St. Germains, and, by a second mar-
riage, of the first Marquis of Abercorn. The Sant-
low blood thus danced itself into very excellent
BARTON BOOTH 375
company ; but the aristocracy gave good blood to
the stage, as well as took gay blood from it. Con-
temporary with Booth and Mrs. Santlow were the
sisters, frolic Mrs. Bicknell and Mrs. Younger. They
were nearly related to Keith, Earl Marshal of Scot-
land. 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. Gibber says, somewhat equivo-
cally, " 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,
37 6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 cluster-
ing 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 excep-
tions, the marriages of English players have been
generally so. As much, perhaps, can hardly be said
of the alliances of French actors. Moliere had but
a miserable time of it with Mile. Bejart ; but
he revenged himself by producing domestic inci-
dents 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 contract-
BARTON BOOTH 377
ing 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 mar-
ried life, and the peculiar felicity it had brought to
himself. Thus sang the Benedick when the union
was a few brief years old :
" Happy the hour when first our souls were joined I
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 substi-
tute 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
378 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 train-
ing 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 Chet-
wood, he was studying a part in some stilted and
ranting tragedy. The stagestruck 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 Oronooko, the character in which
Booth had made his coup d'essai in Dublin. He was
ambitious, too, and had influential support. When
Gibber 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 parts there ; but I assure you, it is quite other-
BARTON BOOTH 379
wise 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 toward
the new Bajazet, exerted all his powers ; and Elring-
ton 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 Oronooko. He
undoubtedly excelled Mills in Zanga, of which the
latter was the original representative. After Doctor
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 Doctor 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
380 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
that time, says Davies, " the managers were so well-
convinced of his importance to them, that they
offered him their 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 considera-
tion. There is not a gentleman's house to which
I am not a welcome visitor."
Booth has been called indolent, but he never was
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 audi-
ence ; " and he played the Moor to that one but
efficient judge. Some causes of languor may, per-
haps, be traced to the too warm patronage he re-
ceived, 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 re-
stored 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 invigor-
BARTON BOOTH 381
ated genius of Booth. That genius was not so per-
fect 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 ungrate-
ful 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 the whole audience, was painfully affected
at the triumph of another, though achieved by differ-
ent means.
One of the secrets of his own success lay, undoubt-
edly, 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 the 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 fol-
lowing, by Hill, is as graphic as anything in Gibber :
"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
382 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 sound
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 bor-
row 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 de-
gree his sorrowing and not roaring Lear, his manly
yet not blustering Hotspur. Dickey Brass and Dori-
mant, Wildair and Sir Charles Easy, Pinchwife, Man-
ley, 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 audi-
ence.' "
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
BARTON BOOTH 383
marks of approval both of matter and manner. Like
Bettetfon, he abounded in feeling. There was noth-
ing 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 Ham-
let, 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 bet-
ter 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 Hora-
tio, as the Ghost or Hamlet. His Laertes was won-
derfully 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, Ban quo, and on a
384 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
third the little part of Lennox. He was quite con-
tent that Gibber should play Wolsey while he capti-
vated the audience by enacting the king. His
Henry was a mixture of frank humour, dignity, and
sternness. Theophilus Gibber says enough to con-
vince 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 appe-
tite you may,' his expression was rapid and vehe-
ment, and his look tremendous."
The credit attached to the acting of inferior parts
by leading players was shared with Booth by Wilks
and Gibber. 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 lan-
guid without the excuse of illness. He would play
his best to a single man in the pit whom he recog-
nised 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 sen-
sible 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
BARTON BOOTH 385
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 previ-
ously detected in the pit a gentleman named Stan-
yan, 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 Stan worth, in the
"Female Advocates;" Captain Wildish, in "Hu-
mours 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 Elring-
ton. 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
386 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
surprise the newcomer, 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 soli-
tary, but competent, individual in the pit. He con-
fessed that he considered profit after fame, and
thought the 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 wit-
nessing him act. These pleasant morning critics
only venture to blame him for allowing such un-
meaning 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 indig-
nity 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 judg-
ment ; and if by the artifice of a pantomime they
could entice a greater number to partake of a good
BARTON BOOTH 387
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 inter-
ruption 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 Shakespeare,
"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
388 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 loth 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 technical-
ities ; 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, imply-
ing 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
BARTON BOOTH 389
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 con-
duct in this latter act of my life ; therefore, I think it
necessary to declare that I have considered my cir-
cumstances, 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 em-
ployment on the stage during twelve years past, I
thought myself bound by honesty, honour, and grati-
tude 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, upward of ; 1,300 out of my wife's
substance, and full ^400 of her money on my unde-
serving 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 repre-
sentative. 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, " Booth Street " keeps up the
actor's name ; and " Cowley Street " the remem-
brance of the proprietorship of a country estate near
390 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 think-
ing 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. Gibber carefully instructed his
son Theophilus in the part of Pistol, which became
his one great part, and the appearance of Miss Rafter
as Dorinda, in Dryden's version of the " Tempest,"
on the 2d of January, 1729, marks the first step in
the bright and uncheckered career of one who is
better remembered as Kitty Clive, of whom, more
hereafter. She was not able to save Gibber's pas-
toral comedy, "Love in a Riddle," from condemna-
tion 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 Gibber fit to compete with them
in comedy. Musical pieces, such as the "Village
Opera," and the " Lovers' Opera," born of Gay's suc-
cess, brought no such golden results to their authors
or the house, which was still happy in retaining Wilks.
BARTON BOOTH 391
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 Ar-
buthnot. 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. 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 author-
ities 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 publish-
ing his work by subscription, whereby he realised so
large a sum as to satisfy his utmost wishes.
392 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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 recommenda-
tion, and by her acting, obtained even partial suc-
cess for a comedy, by the Rev. James Millar, 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 by the
zeal of the author's friends, who crowded the house,
and as loudly applauded the candle-snuffers and fur-
niture 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 colo-
nising Georgia than in writing poetry. His " Timo-
leon " 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,
BARTON BOOTH 393
" Then other Shakespeares 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 plati-
tudes, and it was fatal to Gibber, 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. Old-
field, 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 Gibber. 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 rebel-
lious ; self-taught as a boy might be, and with nothing
feminine in her character or pursuits, With self-
394 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS
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, Gibber, Mills, and Bridge-
water. 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 sud-
den death of Spiller, stricken by apoplexy, as he was
playing in the " Rape of Proserpine." He was inim-
itable 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 Philadel-
phia, and came to England to thrive by political,
satirical, or dramatic writings, and to live for ever in
BARTON BOOTH 395
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 Villainy ; " 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 bur-
lesque-tragedy of " Tom Thumb," in which the weak-
ness 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.
END OF VOLUME I.
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