r ^^ MM-y^r^ot'^^^y^ IS ■ifiji ■.-.: XX, ;, ;a;i; •■■■uKKiS L ^\J y Note, — Three Hundred copies of this Edition printed on fne deckle-edge Royal 8vo paper. The fifty Portraits are given in duplicate, otte on Japanese and the other on plate paper, as India proofs. Each of these copies is numbered. No.X.lL '' Their Majesties Servants " Dr. DORAN, F.S.A. VOLUME THE FIRST ■^aCant^e -press BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON X "THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS'' ANNALS THE ENGLISH STAGE THOMAS BETTERTON TO EDMUND KEAN Dr. DORAN, F.S.A. edited and revised by robert w. lowe aia3it|) J?ift2 eroppcrplate iportrait0 anU (BiQl)tz MooB dEnsrabmee IN THREE VOLUMES VOLUME THE FIRST LONDON I O H \ L. N I >r M O 14, KIN(; WILLIAM STREET, STRAND MDCCCLXXXVIll 117^ -ir. -.1 Sfacf? Annex 1)75. a PREFACE, It is unnecessary to apologise for a new edition of Dr. Doran's Annals of the Stage. The two editions already published have been for many years out of print, and the first is so rare that copies of it bring a high price whenever they occur for sale. And this demand is not a mere bibliographical accident, for the book has held for many years a recognised posi- tion as the standard popular history of the English stage. The admirable work of Genest, indispensable as it is to every writer on theatrical history, and to every serious student of the stage, is in no sense a popular work, and is, indeed, rather a collection of facts towards a history than u history itself. In preparing this new edition every effort has been made to add to its interest by the introduc- tion of portraits and other illustrations, and to its authority as a book of reference, by correcting those errors which are scarcely to be avoided by 6-io VI PREFACE. a writer working among the confused, inaccurate, and contradictoiy documents of theatrical history. No one who has not ventured into this maze can conceive the difficulty of keeping the tnie path, and I can imagine nothing better calculated to sap one's self-confidence than the task of noting the false turnings made by such a writer as Dr. Doran. I can hardly hope that my own work, light as it is in comparison with his, will be found free from sins of omission, and even of commission. My principle has been to pass no error, however trifiing ; but, at the same time, I have not thought myself entitled to discuss matters of opinion, or to criticise, either directly or indirectly. Dr. Doran's treatment of his subject. Thus it would be easy to supplement the information regarding the ancient theatres and the theatre of Shakspeare's time con- tained in the first and second chapters ; but. as Dr. Doran obviously intended that his real work should begin with the Eestoration Theatres, I have not interfered with his scheme. I trust that, in this, as in other respects, my work has been done in a spirit free from captiousness. The illustrations to this edition have been chosen, not from the book " illustrator's " point of view, but with a serious desire to increase its value as a history. In the case of the portraits, those which PREFACE. vii Dr. Doran specially mentions, have, wherever it was possible, been selected, and in every instance I believe the portrait given is an accurate and trust- worthy likeness. The headpieces, intended to form a supplement to the full-page illustrations, include portraits of persons whose importance scarcely justi- fied their place among the larger pictures, drawings of theatres, and of actors in character. The tail- pieces are reproductions of Sayer's beautiful little drawings of Garrick and his contemporaries in their best characters ; and in their case no chronological arrangement is possible. For many valuable notes I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Alban Doran, who intrusted to me his father's annotated copy of this work. These notes have in every case been acknowledged and marked " Doran MS" EOBEET W. LOWE. London, September 1887, CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PROLOGUE I CHAPTER II. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS . . . 37 CHAPTER III. THE *' BOY ACTRESSES," AND THE "YOUNG LADIES " . . 60 CHAPTER IV. THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING's COMPANY .... 96 CHAPTER V. THOMAS BETTERTON . . . . . • . I09 CHAPTER VI. "exeunt" AND "enter" 1 36 CHAPTER VII. ELIZABETH BARRY 1 49 CHAPTER VIII. "THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THE STAGE" . . . 1 62 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. p^GE THE DKAMATIC POETS . . . . . . 183 CHAPTER X. PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS . . . . . . . 213 CHAPTER XI. THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES .••■'•-.•'. . . 237 CHAPTER XII. THE AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. . . 246 CHAPTER XIII. A SEVEN years' RIVALRY. . . . . . . 274 CHAPTER XIY. THE UNITED AND THE DISUNITED COMPANIES . 310 CHAPTER XV. UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY 317 CHAPTER XYI. COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT . ... . 337 CHAPTER XVII. THE PROGRESS OF JAMES QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BARTON BOOTH 356 CHAPTER XVill. BARTON BOOTH 391 LIST OF COPPERPLATE PORTRAITS. VOLUME I; Engeaved by Messes. Annan & Swan, London. ' PAGE I. Dr. Doean Frontispiece II. Richard Burbage . . . • ^6 ^ \ From an original picture in Dulwioh ) . III. Nathaniel Field ^ College \ IV. Edward Alleyn Do. do. 43 \ From au original picture in the ) V. John Lowen . | Ashmolean Museum, Oxford \ ^^ VI. Nell Gwyn . • From the picture by Gascar . .83 \ From the original in the Dorset J VII. Michael Mohun ] collection . . . . \ '°° VIII. Joseph Harris As Cardinal Wolsey . . . .136 \ As Dominique in the "Spanish) ,^^ IX. Anthony Leigh j priar" . . . . . 1^4 T^ \ From the original of Sir- Godfrey ) .^ X. Elizabeth Barry j Kneller . . . . ; j 160 XI. Thomas Betterton Do. do. 185 XII. Colley Gibber . From the picture by Grisoni . . 266 Xin. Mrs, Bracegirdle 302 XIV. James Quin . . From the original by Hudson . . 334 XV. Lavinia Fenton 3^4 XVI. Barton Booth 400 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ON AVOOD. VOLUME I. Enqbaved by Del Oeme & Butler, London, and printed on Japanese PAPER BY Ed. Badocreau, London. PAOE I 1. The Bear Garden — Sixteenth Century . 2. The Swan Theatre — As it appeared in 1 6 14 . . 37 3. The Globe Theatre — Sixteenth Century. . . 60 4. The Fortune Theatre — Sixteenth Century 96 5. Theatre Royal, Lincoln's Inn Fields — 17 14 . . 109 6. The Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden — 1662 . 136 7. Do. do. do. — Eiver View 149 8. Contest for Dogget's Coat and Badge. . 163 9. Collet Cibber — From a painting by J. B. Van Loo . 183 10. Sir "\ViLLiA3r Dayenant — FromapaintingbyGreenhutli 213 11. Mrs. Centliyre 237 12. Prynne 246 13. Sir Richard Steele 274 14. Thomas Dogget— From a rare contemporary print . 310 15. Pope and Dr. Garth — By Hogarth . . . 317 16. Spiller's Benefit Ticket — By Hogarth . . 337 17. The New and Old Theatres Royal, Haymarket — 1720-1821 356 18. Barton Booth 391 LIST OF TAILPIECES ON WOOD. VOLUME T. PAGE 1. Mr. Garrick as Sir John Brute in " The Provoked Wife" 36 2. Mr. Garrick as King Lear — Act iii. Scene i . . 135 3. Mrs. Barry and Mr. Garrick as Donna Violante AND Don Felix IN " The Wonder " . . . 236 4. Mr. Garrick as Hamlet — Act i. Scene 4 . . . 355 5. Mr. Foote as the Doctor in the " Devil upon two Sticks" 390 6. Mr. Garrick as Abel Druqger in the "Alchymist" 426 \.H THE BEAR GARDEN CHAPTER I. PROLOGUE. The period of the origin of the drama is an unsettled question, but it has been fixed at an early date, if we may accept the theory of a recent writer, who suggests that Moses described the Creation from a visionaiy pictorial representation, which occupied seven days from the commencement to the close of the spectacle ! Among the most remote of the Chinese traditions, the theatre holds a conspicuous place. In Cochin- China there is at this day a most primitive character about actors, authors, and audience. The governor VOL. L A 2 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 interrup- tion. For the largesse distributed by the patron of the drama, and such of the spectators as choose to follow his example, the actors and actresses furiously scramble, while the poor poet stands by, sees his best situations sacrificed, and is none the richer — by way of compensation. In Greece the profession of actor was accounted honourable. In Rome it was sometimes a well- requited, but also a despised vocation. During the decade of years when that aristocratic democrat Pisistratus held power, the drama first appeared (it is said) at Athens. It formed a portion of the reli- gion of the State. The theatre was a temple in which, rudely enough at first, the audience were taught how the will, not only of men but of gods, must necessarily submit to the iiTesistible force of Destiny. This last power, represented by a com- bination of the l)Tic and epic elements, formed the drama which had its origin in Greece alone. In such a sense the Semitic races had no drama at all, while in Greece it was almost exclusively of Attic growth, its religious character being especially sup- ported on behalf of the audience by the ever-sagacious, morally, and fervently-pious chorus. Lyric tragedy existed before the age of Thespis and Pisistratus ; but a spoken tragedy dates from that period alone, above GREEK AND ROMAN ACTORS. 3 five centuries earlier than the Christian era ; and the new theatre found at once its Piynne and its Collier in that hearty hater of actors and acting, the legis- lative 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 oholi, sjd., was established, but the receipts were made over to the poor.^ From morning till dewy eve these roofless buildings, cap- able of containing on an average twenty thousand persons, were filled from the ground to the topmost seat, in the sweet spring-tide, sole theatrical season of the Greeks. Disgrace and disfranchisement were the penalties laid upon the professional Roman actor. He was accounted infamous, and was excluded from the tribes. Nevertheless, the calling in Italy had something of a religious quality. Livy tells us of a company of Etruscan actors, ballet-pantomimists, however, rather than comedians, who were employed to avert the anger of the gods, which was manifested by a raging pestilence. These Etruscans were in their way the originators of the drama in Italy. That drama was at first a dance, then a dance and song ; with them was subsequently interwoven a story. From the period of Livius Andronicus (b.c. 240) is dated the ^ Professor Ward says : " The entrance-money was from the time of Pericles provided out of the public treasury." VOL. I. " B 4 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. origin of an actual Latin theatre, a theatre the glory of which was at its highest in the days of Attius and Terence, but for which a dramatic literature became extinct when the mimes took the place of the old comedy and tragedy. Even in Eome the skill of the artist sometimes freed him from the degradation attached to the exercise of his art. Eoscius, the popular comedian, contemporaiy with Cicero, was elevated by Sulla to the equestrian dignity, and with ^sopus, the great tragedian, enjoyed the friendship of Tully and of Tully's friends, the wisest and the noblest in Eome. Eoscius and ^sopus were what would now be called scholars and gentlemen, as well as unequalled artists, whom no amount of application could appal when they had to achieve a triumph in their art. An Austrian emperor once "encored" an entire opera (the Matrimonio Segreto) ; but, according to Cicero, his friend ^sopus so delighted his enthusiastic audi- ence, that in one piece they encored him " millies," a thousand, or perhaps an indefinite number of times. The Eoman tragedian lived well, and bequeathed a vast fortune to his son. Eoscius earned £2,2 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 Labe- rius, an author of knightly rank, to appear on the stage in one of these pieces ; and Laberius obeyed. THE EARLY PANTOMIMISTS. 5 not for the sake of the honormium, ;^4000, but from dread of disobeying an order from so powerful a master. The unwilling actor profited by his degra- dation to satirise the policy of Csesar, who did not resent the liberty, but restored Laberius to the rank and equestrian privileges which he had forfeited by appearing on the stage. Laberius, however, never recovered the respect of his countrymen, not even of those who had applauded him the most loudly. The licentious pantomimists were so gross in their performances that they even disgusted Tiberius, who forbade them from holding any intercourse, as the professional histriones or actors of the drama had done, with Romans of equestrian or senatorial dig- nity. It was against the stage, exclusively given up to their scandalous exhibitions, that the Christian fathers levelled their denunciations. They would have approved a " well-trod stage," as Milton did, and the object attributed to it by Aristotle, — but they had only anathemas for that horrible theatre where danced and postured Bathyllus and Hylas, and Pylades, Latinus and Nero, and even that graceful Paris, whom Domitian slew in his jealousy, and of whom Martial wrote that he was the great glory and grief of the Roman theatre, and that all Venuses and Cupids were buried for ever in the sepulchre of Paris, the darli^'vg 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 6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. buffoons ; aud when the period of Clmstianity suc- ceeded, its professors and teachers took of the evil epoch what best suited their purposes. In narrative dialogue, or song, they di'amatised the incidents of the lives of the saints, and of One gi-cater than saints ; and they thus rendered intelligible to lis- teners what would have been incomprehensible if it had been presented to them as readers. In Castle-Hall, before fann-house fires, on the bridges, and in the market-places, the men who best peifonned the united offices of missionary and actor, were, at once, the most popular preachers and players of the day. The gi'eatest of them all, St. Adhelm. when he found his audience growing weaiy of too much serious exposition, would take his small harp from under his robes, and would strike up a naixative song, that would render his hearers hilarious. The mixture of the sacred and profane in the early dialogues and drama prevailed for a lengthened period. The profane sometimes superabounded, and the higher Church authorities had to look to it. The monotony of monastic life had caused the wandering glee-men to be too warmly welcomed within the monastery circles, where there were men who cheerfully em- ployed their energies in furnishing new songs and lively "patter" to the strollers. It was, doubtless, all well meant; but more serious men thought it wise to prohibit the indulgence of this peculiar literaiy pursuit. Accordingly, the Council of Clovershoe, and decrees bearing the king's mark, severally ordained that actors, and other vagabonds therein named, EARLY ENGLISH THEATRE. 7 should no longer have access to monasteries, and that no priest should either play the glee-man himself, or encourage the members of that disreputable profes- sion, by turning ale poets, and writing songs for them. It is a singular fact, that one of our earliest theatres had Geoffrey, a monk, for its manager, and Dunstable — immortalised by Silvester Daggerwood — for a locality. This early manager, who flourished about 1119,^ rented a house in the town just named, when a drama was represented, which had St. Kathe- rine for a heroine, and her whole life for a subject. This proto-theatre was, of course, burnt down ; and the managing monk withdrew from the profession, more happy than most ruined managers, in this, that he had his cell at St. Albans, to which he could retire, and therein find a home for the remainder of his days. Through a course of Mysteries, Miracle-plays — illustrating Scripture, history, legend, and the suffer- ings of the martyrs, — Moralities, in which the vices were in antagonism against the virtues, and Chronicle- plays, which were histoiy in dialogue, we finally arrive at legitimate Tragedy and Comedy. Till this last and welcome consummation, the Church as regu- larly 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- 1 Geoffrey was made Abbot of St. Albans in 11 19. The play, of course, was many years earlier. 8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. tory of Greek Classical Literature, remarks : — " The believers in a pui'e 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. Eeligious poetiy of any kind, except that which has been inspired, has seldom been the work of minds suffi- ciently heavenly and spiritual, to be perfectly suc- cessful in attaining the end of poetry, namely the elevation of the thoughts to a level with the subject. It brings God down to man, instead of raising man to Him. It causes that which is most offensive to religious feeling, and even good taste, iiTeverent familiarity with subjects which cannot be contem- plated without awe. But a religious drama would be, to those who realise to their own minds the spiri- tuality of God, nothing less than anthropomorphism and idolatry. Clii'istians of a less advanced age, and believers in a more sensuous creed, were able to view with pleasure the mystery-plays in which the gravest truths of the Gospel were dramatically repre- sented ; 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 pro- fane dramas which represented in a ludicrous light subjects of the most holy character." Mysteries kept the stage from the Norman to the THE PLAYERS' FIRST PATRON. 9 Tudor era. The Moralities began to displace them during the reign of Henry VI., who was a less be- neficial patron of the stage than that Richard III. who has himself retained a so unpleasant possession of the scene. Actors and dramatists have been un- grateful to this individual, who was their first prac- tically useful patron. Never, previous to Richard's time, had an English prince been known to have a company of players of his own. When Duke of Gloucester, a troop of such servants was attached to his household. Richard was unselfish towards these new retainers ; whenever he was too "busy," or "not i' the vein " to receive instruction or amusement at their hands, he gave them licence to travel abroad, and forth went the mirthful company, from county to county, mansion to mansion, from one corporation- hall and from one inn-yard to another, playing securely under the sanction of his name, winning favour for themselves, and a great measure of public regard, probably, for their then generous and princely master. The fashion thus set by a prince was followed by the nobility, and it led to a legal recognition of the actor and his craft, in the royal licence of 1572, whereby the players connected with noble houses were empowered to play wherever it seemed good to them, if their master sanctioned their absence, without any let or hindrance from the law. ' The patronage of actors by the Duke of Gloucester led to a love of acting by gentlemen amateurs. Richard had ennobled the profession, the gentlemen lo THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. of the Inns of Court took it up, and they soon had kings and queens leading the applause of approving audiences. To the same example may be traced the custom of having dramatic performances in public schools, the pupils being the performers. These boys, or, in their place, the children of the Chapel Royal, were frequently summoned to play in pre- sence of the King and Court. Boatsful of them went down the river to Greenwich, or up to Hamp- ton Court, to enliven the dulness or stimulate the religious enthusiasm of their royal auditors there. At the former place, and when there was not yet any suspicion of the orthodoxy of Hemy VIII., the boys of St. Paul's acted a Latin play before the sovereign and the representatives of other sovereigns. The object of the play was to exalt the Pope, and consequently Luther and his wife were the foolish villains of the piece, exposed to the contempt and derision of the delighted and right-thinking hearers. In most cases the playwrights, even when members of the clerg)% 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, " lialph Poister Doister," about 1540. The author was a "clerk," named Nicholas Udall, whom Eton boys, whose master he was, hated because of his harshness. The rough and reverend gentleman brought forth the above piece, just one CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY ACTORS. i r year previous to his losing the mastership, on suspicion of being concerned in a robbeiy 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 Heniy VIII. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, Chancellor of the University, immediately wrote a characteristic letter to the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Matthew Parker. It is dated 27th March 1545. "I have been informed," he says, " that the youth in Christ's College, contrary to the mind of the Master and President, hath of late played a tragedy called 'Pammachus,' a part of which tragedy is so pestiferous as were intolerable. If it be so, I intend to travail, as my duty is, for the reforma- tion of it. I know mine office there, and mind to do in it as much as I may." Parker answers on the 3d of April, that the play had been performed with the concurrence of the College authorities, after means had been taken to strike out "slanderous cavillations and suspicious sentences," and " all such matter whereby offence might greatly have risen. Hitherto," adds Parker, "have I not seen any man that was present at it to show himself grieved ; albeit it was thought their time and labour might be spent in a better-handled matter." Gardiner is not satisfied with this, and he will have the subject investigated. Accordingly, some of the audience are ordered to be examined to discover if what they applauded was what the King's government had reproved. " I have heard specialities," he writes, "that they" (the actors) "reproved Lent fastings, all ceremonies, and albeit 12 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 re- presentation, they were responsible for all that was uttered, as it must have had the approval of their judgments. A strict examination followed. Nearly the entire audience passed under it, but not a man could or would remember that he had heard anything to which he could make objection. Therewith Parker transmitted to Gardiner the stage-copy of the tragedy, which the irate prelate thus reviews : — " Perusing the book of the tragedy which ye sent me, I find much matter not stricken out, all which, by the parties' own confession, was uttered very naught, and on the other part something not well omitted." Flagrant lies are said to be mixed up with incontro- vertible truths ; and it is suggested, that if any of the audience had declared that they had heard nothing at which they could take offence, it must have been because they had forgotten much of what they had heard. Ultimately, Parker was left to deal with the parties as he thought best ; and he wisely seems to have thought it best to do nothing. Plays were the favourite recreation of the university men ; albeit, as Parker writes, "Two or three in Trinity College think it veiy unseeming that Christians should play or be present at any profane comedies or tragedies." CHURCH, STATE, AND STAGE. 13 Actors and clergy came into direct collision, when, 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 1 55 1 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 follow- ing year Richard Ogle forwarded to the Council a forged licence, taken from the players — a matter which was pronounced to be "worthy of correction." The young king's patronage of his own " servants " was not marked by a princely liberality ; the salary of one of his players of interludes, John Brown, was five marks yearly as wages, and one pound three shillings and fourpence for his livery. Of the party dramatists of this reign, that reverend ^ It would appear that noblemen's players were prohibited from acting, even before their masters, without leave from the Privy Council. 14 THEIR MAJESTIES* SERVANTS. 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 Ossoiy), with a wife to control the episcopal hospitality. Bale had " seen the w^orld." He had gone through mar- vellous adventures, of which his adversaries did not believe a word ; and he had converted the most abstruse doctrinal subjects into edifying semi-lively comedies. The bishop did not value his enemies at the worth of a rush in an old king's chamber. He was altogether a Boanerges ; and when his " John, King of England," was produced, the audience, com- prising two factions in the Church and State, found the policy of Home towards this country illustrated with such effect, that while one party hotly denounced, the other applauded the coarse and vigorous audacity of the author. So powerful were the influences of the stage, when thus applied, that the government of Queen Mary made similar application of them in support of their own views. A play, styled " llespublica," exhibited to the people the alleged iniquity of the lleformation, pointed out the dread excellence of the sovereign her- self (personified as Queen Nemesis), and exemplified her inestimable qualities, by making all the Virtues follow in her train as Maids of honour. Such, now, were the orthodox actors ; but the here- tical 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 sin- / EARLY DIFFICULTIES OF ENGLISH ACTORS. 15 gularly included— being, as it was said, disseminators of seditions and heresies. The eye of the observant government also w^atched the resident actors in town. King Edward had ordered the removal of the king's revels and masques from Warwick Inn, Holborn, " to the late dissolved house of Blackfriars, London," where considerable outlay was made for scenery and machinery — adjuncts to stage effect — which are erroneously supposed to have been first introduced a century later by Davenant. There still remained acting a company at the Boar's Head, without Aldgate, on whom the police of Mary were ordered to make levy. The actors had been playing in that inn-yard a comedy, entitled a " Sack full of News." The order of the privy council to the mayor informs his worship, that it is " a lewd play ;" bids him send his officers to the theatre without delay, and not only to apprehend the comedians, but to " take their play-book from them and send it before the privy council." The actors were under arrest for four-and-twenty hours, and were then set free, but under certain 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- i6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. friars, that dissolved monastery was not legally con- verted into a theatre till the year 1576, when Eliza- beth was on the throne. In that year ^ the Earl of Leicester's senants were licensed to open their series of seasons in a house, the site of which is occupied by Apothecaries' Hall and some adjacent buildings. At the head of the company was James, father of Richard Burbage, the original representative of Richard III. and of Hamlet, the author of which tragedies, so named, was, at the time of the opening of the Blackfriars' theatre, a lad of twelve years of age, surmounting the elementary difficulties of Latin and Greek in the Free School of Stratford- on-Avon. In Elizabeth the drama possessed a generous patroness and a vindictive censor. Her afternoons at Windsor Castle and Richmond were made plea- sant to her by the exertions of her players. The cost to her of occasional peifonnances at the above residences during two years amounted to a fraction over ;!^444. There were incidental expenses also, proving that the actors were well cared for. In the year 1575, among the estimates for plays at Hamp- ton Court, the liberal sum of ^8, 14s. 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 manellous production, when considered ^ The patent was dated 1574, and does not specify any particular building or locality. ELIZABETH AND "RICHARD II." 17 as the work of a bishop, Still, of Bath and Wells — was represented amid a world of laughter. There, too, was exercised a sharp censorship over both actors and audience. In a letter from Vice- Chancellor Hatcher to Burleigh, the conduct of Punter, a student of St. John's, at stage-plays at Caius and Trinity, is complained of as unsteady. In 1 58 1 the heads of houses again make application to Burleigh, objecting to the players of the Great Cham- berlain, the Earl of Oxford, poet and courtier, exhi- biting certain plays already " practised " by them before the King. The authorities, when scholastic audiences were noisy, or when players brought no novelty with them to Cambridge, applied to the great statesman in town, and vexed him with dramatic troubles, as if he had been general stage-manager of all the companies strolling over the kingdom. On one occasion the stage was employed as a van- tage ground whereon to raise a battery against the power of the stage's great patroness, the Queen. In 1599, the indiscreet followers of Essex "filled the pit of the theatre, where Rutland and Southampton are daily seen, and where Shakspeare's company, in the great play of ' Richard 11.,' have, for more than a year, been feeding the public eye with pictures of the deposition of kings." In June of the following year, " those scenes of Shakspeare's play disturb Elizabeth's dreams. The play had had a long and splendid run, not less from its glorious agony of dra- matic passion than from the open countenance lent to it by the Earl, who, before his voyage, was a J 8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. <'onstant auditor at the Globe, and by his constant companions, Eutland and Southampton. The gi'eat parliamentaiy 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 usui-joation 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 warnings sink into her mind. When Lambard, Keeper of the Records, waits upon her at the palace, she exclaims to him, * I am Richard ! Kuow you not that ? ' " The perforaiance of this play was, nevertheless, not prohibited. When the final attempt of Essex was about to be made, in Februarj- 1601 — "To fan the courage of their crew," says Mr. Ilepworth Dixon, from whose Personal History of Lord Bacon 1 boiTow these details, " and prepare the citizens for news of a royal deposition, the chiefs of the insuiTec- 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 Mont- eagle, speaking for the rest, tells him that they want to have played the next day Shakspeare's deposition of Richard II. Phillips objects that the play is stale, that a new one is running, and that the company STEPHEN GOSSON. 19 will lose money by a change. Monteagle meets his objections. The theatre shall not lose ; a host of gentlemen from Essex House will fill the galleries ; if there is fear of loss, here are 40s, to make it up. Phillips takes the money, and King Eichard 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 Shakspeare's brow, Gosson, the "parson" of St. Botolph's, discharged the first shot against stage plays which had yet been fired by any one not in absolute authority. Gosson's book was entitled, A School of Abuse, and it 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 plays, argcd, 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 1 1579 (2cl edition). VOL. I. C 20 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. women, such care for their garments that they be not trodden on, such eyes to their laps that no chips light on them, such pillows to their backs that they take no hurt, such masking in their ears, I know not what ; such giving them pippins to pass the time ; such playing at foot-saunt without cards ; such 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 attractive what he denounces as pernicious. The playwTights he assails with the virulence of an author, who, hav- ing been unsuccessful himself, has no gladness in the success, nor any generosity for the shortcomings of others. Yet he cannot deny that some plays are moral, such as " Cataline's Conspiracy," — " because," as he elegantly observes, " it is said to be a pig of mine own sow." This, and one or two other plays written by him, he complaisantly designates as "good plays, and sweet plays, and of all'plays the best plays, and most to be liked." Let us now return to the year of Shakspeare's birth. The great poet came into the world when the English portion of it was deafened with the thunder of Archbishop Grindal, wlio flung his bolts against the profession which the child in his cradle at Stratford was about to ennoble for ever. England "ROGUES AND VAGABONDS?" 21 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 government, when Shakspeare was eight years of age, enacted that startling statute which is supposed to have branded dramatic art and artists with infamy. But the celebrated statute of 1572 does not declare players to be " rogues and vagabonds." It simply threatens to treat as such all acting companies who presume to set up their stage without the license of " two justices of the peace at least." This was rather to protect the art than to insult the artist ; and a few years subsequent to the publication of this statute, Elizabeth granted the first royal patent conceded in England to actors — that of 1576.^ By this authority Lord Leicester's servants were empowered to produce such plays as seemed good to them, "as well," says the Queen, " for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall think good to see them." Sovereign could scarcely pay a more graceful compliment to poet or to actor. This royal patent sanctioned the acting of plays 1 Should be 1574. It is dated 7th May 1574. 22 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. within the liberties of the city ; but against this the citv 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 aiTant 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 crj' was shi'ill 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 heedless of connection between premises and con- clusion 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 FRIENDS AND FOES. 23 Paul's Cross preacher, " it will make such a tragedy that all London 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-requited by authors and actors as their earlier friend, Kichard of Gloucester. To this day the stage exhibits the great earl, according to the legend contrived by his foes, as the murderer of his wife. Sanctioned by the court, befriended by the noble, and followed by the general public, the players stood their ground, but they lacked the discretion which should have distinguished them. They bearded authority, played in despite of legal prohibitions, and introduced forbidden subjects of state and religion upon their stage. Thence ensued suspensions for indefinite periods, severe supervision when the 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 train the Queen's children of the revels, and to exercise them ^ These quotations are both from the same sermon. 24 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. iu playing within the Blackfriars' or elsewhere all plays which had the sanction of old Samuel Danyell. His queen, Anne, was both actress and manager in the masques performed at court, the expenses of which often exceeded, indeed were ordered not to be limited to, ^looo. "Excellent comedies" were played before Prince Charles and the Prince Palsgrave ^ at Cambridge ; and the members of St. John's, Clare, and Trinity, acted before the King and court in 1615, when the illustrious guests were scattered among the colleges, and twenty-six tuns of wine consumed within five days ! The lawyers alone were offended at the visits of the court to the amateurs at Cambridge, especially when James went thither to see the comedy of Ignoramus, in which law and law^-ers are treated with small measure of respect. When James was prevented from going to Cambridge, he was accus- tomed 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 tariying and wending — a fortnight's residence in one town being the time limited, with injunction not to play " during church hours." Then there were unlicensed satirical plays in unlicensed houses. Sir John Yorke, his wife and brothers, were fined and imprisoned, because of a scandalous play acted in Sir John's house, in favour ' Or, Prince Palatine. ARCHBISHOP BANCROFT. 25 of Popery. On another occasion, in 161 7, we hear of a play, in some country mansion, in which the King, represented as a huntsman, observed that he had rather hear a dog bark than a cannon roar. Two kinsmen, named Napleton, discussed this matter, whereupon one of them remarked that it was a pity the King, so well represented, ever came to the crown of England at all, for he loved his dogs better than his subjects. Whereupon the listener to this remark went and laid information before the council against the kinsman who had uttered it ! The players could, in James's reign, boast that their profession was at least kindly looked upon by the foremost man in the English Church. " No man," says Hacket, " was more wise or more serious than Archbishop Bancroft, the Atlas of our clergy, in his time ; and he that writes this hath seen an interlude well presented before him, at Lambeth, by his own gentlemen, when I was one of the youngest spec- tators." The actors thus had the sanction of the Archbishop of Canterbury in James's reign, as they had that of Williams, Archbishop of York, in the next. Hacket often alludes to theatrical matters. " The theatres," he says, in one of his discourses made during the reign of Charles II., when the preacher was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, " are not large enough nowadays to receive our loose gallants, male and female, but whole fields and parks are thronged with their concourse, where they make a muster of their gay clothes." Meanwhile, in 16 16, the pulpit once more issued anathemas against the 26 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. stage. The denouncer, on this occasion, was the preacher of St. Mary Overy's, named Sutton, whose undiscriminating censure was boldly, if not logically, answered by the actor, Field. There is a letter from the latter in the State Paper Office, in which he remonstrates against the sweeping condemnation of all players. The comedian admits that what he calls his trade has its conniptions, like other trades ; but lie 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 licence to act comedy, tragedy, history, &c., for the solace and pleasure of his Majesty and his subjects, at the Globe, and at their private house in the pre- cincts of 131ackfriars. This licence was made out to Hemings, Burbagc, Condell, Lowen, Tooley, Under- wood, Field, Benfield, Gough, Eccleston, Robinson, Shancks, and their associates. Their success rendered them audacious, and, in 1624, they got into trouble, on a complaint of the Spanish ambassador. The actors at the Globe had produced Middleton's "Game at Chess," in which the action is carried on by black and white pieces, representing the Reformed and Romanist parties. The latter, being the rogues of the piece, are foiled, and are " put in the bag." The Spanish envoy's complaint was founded on A SUPPRESSED PLAY. 27 the fact that living persons were represented by the actors, such persons being the King of Spain, Gondomar, and the famous Antonio de Dominis, who, after being a Romish bishop (of Spalato), pro- fessed Protestantism, became Dean of Windsor, and after all died in his earlier faith, at Rome. On the ambassador's complaint, the actors and the author were summoned before the council, but no imme- diate 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 amount- ing to five times that sum, for nine afternoons suc- cessively, may be accepted as a proof of the popu- larity of this play. The Spaniard, however, would not let the matter rest ; the play was suppressed, the actors forbidden to represent living personages on the stage, and the author was sent to prison. Middleton was not long detained in durance vile. James set him free, instigated by a quip in a poor epigram, — " Use but your royal hand, 'twill set me free ! 'Tis but removing of a man — that's me." A worse joke never secured for its author a greater boon — that of liberty. With all this, an incident of the following year proves that the players disregarded peril, and found profit in excitement. For Shrovetide, 1625, they 28 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. announced a play founded on the Dutch horrors at Amboyna, but the performance was stopped, on the application of the East India Company, " for fear of disturbances this Shrovetide." A watch of 800 men was set to keep all quiet on Shrove Tuesday ; and the subject was not again selected for a piece till 1673, when Drs'den's "Amboyna" was produced in Drury Lane, and the cruelties of the Dutch con- demned in a serio-comic fashion, as those of a people — so the epilogue intimated to the public — " who have no more religion faith — than you." In James's days, the greater or less prevalence of the plague regulated the licences for playing. Thus, permission was given to the Queen's Servants to act *'in their several houses, the Curtain, and the Boar's Head, Middlesex, as soon as the plague decreases to 30 a week, in London." So, in the very first year of .Charles L, 1625, the "common players " have leave not only to act where they will, but " to come to court, now the plague is reduced to six." Accordingly, there was a merry Christmas season at Hampton Court, the actors being there ; and, writes Rudyard to Nethercole, " the demoiselles " (maids of honour, doubtless), " mean to present a French pastoral, wherein the Queen is a principal actress." Thus, the example set by the late Queen Anne and now adopted by Henrietta Maria, led to the introduction of actresses on the public stage, and it was the manifestation of a taste for acting exhibited by the French princess, that led to the appearance in London of actresses of that nation. PULPIT AND STAGE. 29 With the reign of Charles I. new hopes came to the poor player, bnt therewith came new adversaries. Charles I. was a hearty promoter of all sports and pleasures, provided his people would be merry and wise according to his prescription only. Wakes and maypoles were authorised by him, to the infinite disgust of the Puritans, who liked the authorisation no more than they did the suppression of lectures. When Charles repaired to church, where the Booh of Sports was read, he was exposed to the chance of hearing the minister, after reading the decree as he was ordered, calmly go through the Ten 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 sub- sequently Archbishop of York, held a living, he pleaded in behalf of the right of his Northampton- shire parishioners to dance round the maypole. When ordered to deliver up the Great Seal by the King, he retired to his episcopal palace at Buckden, where, says Hacket, " he was the worse thought of by some strict censurers, because he admitted in his public hall a comedy once or twice to be presented before him, exhibited by his own servants, for an evening recreation." Being then in disgrace, this simple matter was exaggerated by his enemies into a report, that on an Ordination Sunday, this arro- gant Welshman had entertained his newly-ordained clergy with a representation of Shakspeare's "Mid- summer's Night's Dream," the actors in which had 30 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. been expressly brought down from London for the purpose ! In the troubled days in which King Charles and Bishop Williams lived, the stage suffered with the throne and church. After this time the names of the old houses cease to be familiar. Let us take a parting glance of these primitive temples of our drama The royal theatre, Blackfriars, was the most nobly patronised of all the houses opened previous to the Restoration. The grown-up actors were the most skilled of their craft ; and the boys, or apprentices, were the most fair and effeminate that could be procured, and could profit by instruction. On this stage Shakspeare enacted the Ghost in " Hamlet," Old Adam, and a similar line of characters, usually intrusted to the ablest of the performers of the second cla>;s. Blackfriars was a winter house. Some idea of its capability and pretension may be formed from the fact, that in 1633 its proprietors, the brothers Burbage,^ let it to the actors for a yearly rent of ^50. In 1655 it was pulled dow^n,'^ after a successful career of about three-quarters of a century. Upon the strip of shore, between Fleet Street and the Thames, there have been erected three theatres. In the year 1580, the old monastery of Whitefriars was given up to a company of players ; but the * The owners .seem to have been Cuthbert and "William Burbage, uncle and nephew. 2 The year of its de.-;tiuction .seems uncertain. THE OLD HOUSES. 31 Whitefriars' Theatre did not enjoy a very lengthened career. In the year 16 16, that in which Shakspeare died, it had already fallen into disrepute and decay, and was never afterwards used for the representation of dramatic pieces. The other theatre;^, in Dorset Gardens, were built subsequently to the Eestoration. 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 162 1, 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, de- stroyed its interior fittings, and pulled down the building.^ The site and adjacent ground were soon covered by dwelling-houses. Meanwhile, the inn yards, or great rooms at the inns, were not yet quite superseded. The Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, near which lived Anthony Bacon, to the extreme dis- like 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. 1 It was standing in 1661 ; in which year it was advertised for sale, with the ground belonging to it. 32 TUEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 Shak- speare and his fellows, flourished from 1594 to 161 3, when it fell a prey to the flames caused by the wad- ding of a gun, which lodged in and set fire to the thatched roof. The new house, erected by a royal and noble subscription, was of wood, but it was tiled. Its career, however, was not very extended, for in 1654, the owner of the freehold, Sir Matthew Brand, pulled the house down ; and the name of Globe Alley is all that is left to point out the whereabouts of the popular summer-house in Southwark, On the same bank of the gi'eat river stood the Hope, a play-house four times a week, and a garden for bear-baiting on the alternate days. In the former was first played Jonson's " Bartholomew Fair." When plays were suppressed, the zealous and orthodox sol- diery broke into the Hope, horsewhipped the actors, and shot the bears. This place, however, in its character of Bear Garden, rallied after the Restora- tion, 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 bv Ilenslowe and Alleyn into a theatre. Here, the richest receipts were made on the Sunday, till the THE DRAMA IN SHOREDITCH. 33 law interfered, and put down these performances, the dear delight of the Southwarkians and their visitors from the opposite shore, of the olden time. The supposed assertion of Taylor, the Water poet, has often been quoted, namely, that between Wind- sor Bridge and Gravesend there were not less than 40,000 watermen, and that more than half of these found employment in transporting the holiday folks from the Middlesex to the Southwark shore of the river, where the players were strutting their little hour at the Globe, the Rose, and the Swmi, and Bruin was being baited in the adjacent gardens. A misprint has decupled what was about the true number, and even of these, many were so unskilful that an Act was passed in the very first year of King James, for the protection of persons afloat, whether on pleasure or serious business. In Holywell Lane, near High Street, Shoreditch, is the site of an old wooden structure which bore the distinctive name of "The Theatre," and was accounted a sumptuous house, probably because of the partial introduction of scenery there. In the early part of Shakspeare's career, as author and actor, it was closed, in consequence of proprietary disputes ; and with the materials the Globe, at Bankside, was rebuilt or considerably enlarged. There was a second theatre in this district called "The Curtain," a name still retained in Curtain Road. This house remained open and successful, till the accession of Charles I., subsequent to which time stage plays gave way to exhibitions of athletic exercises. 34 THEIK MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. This district was especially dramatic ; the popular taste was not only there directed towards the stage, but it was a district wherein many actors dwelt, and consequently died. The baptismal register of St. Leonard's contains Christian names which appear to have been chosen with reference to the heroines of Shakspeare ; and the record of burials bears the name of many an old actor of mark whose remains now lie within the churchyard. Not a vestige, of course, exists of any of these theatres ; and yet of a much older house traces may be seen by those who will seek them in remote Cornwall. This relic of antiquity is called Piran Round. It consists of a circular embankment, about ten feet high, sloping backwards, and cut into steps for seats or standing-places. This embankment encloses a level area of grassy ground, and stands in the middle of a flat, wild heath. A couple of thousand spec- tators could look down from the seats upon the grassy circus which formed a stage of more than a hundred feet in diameter. Here, in very early times, sports were played and combats fought out, and rustic councils assembled. The ancient Cornish Mysteries here drew tears and laughter from the mixed audiences of the day. They were popular as late as the period of Shakspeare. Of one of them, a five act piece, entitled "The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood," the learned Davies Gilbert has given a translation. In this historical ])iece, played for edification in Scripture history, the PIRAN ROUND. 35 stage directions speak of varied costumes, variety of scenery, and complicated machinery, all on an open-air stage, whereon the deluge was to roll its billows and the mimic world be lost. This cataclysm achieved, the depressed spectators were rendered merry. The minstrels piped, the audience rose and footed it, and then, having had their full of amuse- ment, 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 in- land, and the agricultural labourers to the cottages and farm-houses which dotted, here and there, the otherwise dreary moor. Such is Piran Hound described to have been, and the " old house " is worthy of tender preservation, for it once saved England from invasion ! About the year 1600, " some strollers," as they are called in Somer's Tracts, were playing late at night at Piran. At the same time a party of Spaniards had landed with the intention of surprising, plundering, and burning the village. As the enemy were silently on their way to this consummation, the players, who were representing a battle, " struck up a loud alarum with drum and trumpet on the stage, which the enemy hearing, thought they were discovered, made some few idle shots, and so in a hurly-burly fled to their boats. And thus the townsmen were apprised of their danger, and delivered from it at the same time." VOL. I. D 36 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. Tlius 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. Hi. viamcic aa Sir Jcnn Erate. THE SWAN THEATRE. CHAPTER II. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS. It was in the eventful year 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, Gosson, ^ Should be 1579. Stephen Gosson's Schoole of Abuse was entered at Stationers' Hall, July 22, 1579. Dr. Doran corrects this in the second edition. 38 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVAISTS. 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. AMicn 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, incap- able 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 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 argument. They were invented in order to appease false gods ; consequently, the playing of them must excite to wrath a true Deity ! They are no recrea- tion, because people come away from them wearied. The argument, in tragedy, he informs us, is murder ; in comedy, it is social vice. This he designates as bad instruction ; and remembering Field's query to Sutton, he would vciy much like to know in what * Gosson was not made rector of St Botolph till 1600. TREATISE AGAINST STAGE PLAYS. 39 page of Holy Writ authority is given for the voca- tion 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 there- upon he reminds you, not very appositely, that Ham was accursed for deriding his father ! Players change their apparel and put on women's attire, — as if they had never read a chapter in Deuteronomy in their lives ! If coming on the stage under false representation of their natural names and persons be not an offence against the Epistle to Timothy, he would thank you to inform him what it is ! As to looking on these pleasant evils and not falling into sin, — you have heard of Job and King David, and you are worse than a heathen if you do not remember what they looked upon with innocent intent, or if you have forgotten what came of the looking. He reminds parents, that while they are at the play, there are wooers who are carrying off the hearts of their daughters at home; perhaps, the very daughters themselves from home. This seems to me to be less an argument against resorting to the theatre than in favour of your taking places for your " young ladies," as well as for yourselves. The writer looks too wide abroad to see what lies at his feet. He is in Asia, citing the Council of Laodicea 40 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 de- cided that no actor should be admitted to the sacra- ment. 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 hoiTor of risking a similar fate in like locali- ties. 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 sufibcated ; that stages have been swept down by storms and spectators trodden to death ; that less than forty years previous to the time of his writing, eight persons had been killed and many more wounded, by the fall of a London playhouse ; and that a similar calamity had lately occurred in the city of Lyons — the writer conceives he has advanced sufficient argument, and administered more than enough of admonition, to deter any person from entering a theatre henceforth and for ever. This paper pellet had not long been printed, when the vexed author miglit 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 POOR MALLORY ! 41 Townsend. The master carries in his pocket a royal licence to form a company, whose members, in honour of the King's sister, shall be known as " the Lady Elizabeth's servants ; " with permission to act when and where they please, in and about the city of London, unless when the plague shall be more than ordinarily prevalent. There was no present opportunity to touch these licensed companies ; and, accordingly, a sect of men who professed to unite loyalty with orthodoxy, looking eagerly about them for offenders, detected an unlicensed fraternity playing a comedy in the old house, before noticed, of Sir John Yorke. The result of this was the assembling of a nervously- agitated troop of offenders in the Star Chamber. One Christopher Mallory was made the scapegoat, for the satisfactory reason that in the comedy alluded to he had represented the devil, and in the last scene descended through the stage, with a figure of King James on his back, remarking the while, that such was the road by which all Protestants must necessarily travel ! Poor Mallory, condemned to fine and imprisonment, vainly ob- served that there were two points, he thought, in his favour — that he had not played in the piece, and had not been even present in the house ! Meanwhile the public flocked to their favourite houses, and fortune seemed to be most blandly smiling on "masters," when there suddenly appeared the monster mortar manufactured by Prynne, and discharged by him over London, with an attendant 42 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. amount of thunder, which shook ever}' building in the metropolis. Prynne had just previously seen the painters busily at work in beautifying the old " Fortune," and the decorators gilding the horns of the "Red Bull." He had been down to White- friars, and had there beheld a new theatre rising neai' 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 Jinis, of a thousand and several hundred pages. Prj'nne, in some sense, did not lead opinion against the stage, but followed that of individuals who suffered certain discomfort from their vicinity to the chief house in Blackfriars. In 1631, the churchwardens and constables petitioned Laud, on behalf of the whole parish, for the removal of the players, whose presence was a grievance, it was asserted, to Blackfriars generally. The shopkeepers affirm that their goods, exposed for sale, are swept off their stalls by the coaches and people sweeping onward to the playhouse ; that the concourse is so great, the inhabitants are unable to take beer or coal into their houses while it continues ; that to get through Ludgate to the water is just impos- sible ; and if a fire break out Heaven help them, how can succour be brought to the sufferers through such mobs of men and vehicles ? Christenings are disturbed in their joy by them, and the sorrow of burials intruded on. Persons of honour dare not go abroad, or if abroad, dare not venture home while the theatre is open. And tlicn there is that other PRYNNE'S " HISTRIO-MASTIX." 43 house, Edwaid Alleyn's, rebuilding in Golden Lane, and will not the Council look to it ? The Council answer that Queen Henrietta Maria is well affected towards 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 Middlesex, for which license may be given to Alleyn, " servant of the Lord Admiral," in Golden Lane. Each company is to play but twice a week, " for- bearing 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 1 6 19, and cannot longer be tolerated. But compen- sation must be awarded. The players, bold fellows, claim ^21,000! The referees award ^3000, and the delighted inhabitants offer ^100 towards it, to get rid of the people who resort to the players, rather than of the players themselves. Then spake out Prynne. He does not tell us how many prayer-books had been recently published, but he notes, with a cry of anguish, the printing of forty thousand plays within the last two years. "There are five devil's chapels," he says, " in London ; and yet in more extensive E,ome, in Nero's days, there were but three, and those," he adds, "were three too many!" When the writer gets beyond statistics he grows rude ; but he was sincere, and accepted all the responsibi- lity of the course taken by him, advisedly. 44 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 masque, and played it at Whitehall, in the presence of a delighted audience, consisting of royal and noble personages. The most play-loving of the lords followed the example afforded by the lawyers, and the King himself assumed the buskin, and turned actor, for the nonce. Tom Carew was busy with superintending the rehearsals of his *' Coelum Bri- tannicum," 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 Piynne might have heard him and his brother Harry humming the airs over as they walked together across the park to Whitehall. When the day of representation arrived, great was the excitement and intense the delight of some, and the scorn of others. Among the noble actors who rode down to the palace was Rich, Earl of Holland. All passed off so pleasantly that no one dreamed it was the inauguration of a struggle in which Prynne was to lose his estate, his freedom, and his ears ; the King and the earl their heads ; while gallant Will Lawes, as honest a man as any of them, was, a dozen years after, to be found among the valiant dead who fell at the siege of Chester. Ere this denoument to a tragedy so mirthfully commenced had been reached, there were other defiances cast in tlio teeth of audacious, but too PLAYS AT OXFORD. 45 harshly-treated Prynne. There was a reverend play- wright 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 "Hoyal Slave," one of three out of his four plays which sleep under a righteous oblivion. The King and Queen went down to witness the performance of the scholastic amateurs ; and, considering that a main incident of the piece comprises a revolt in order to achieve some reasonable liberty for an oppressed people, the subject may be considered more sugges- tive than felicitous. The fortunes of many of the audience were about to undergo mutation, but there was an actor there whose prosperity commenced from that day. All the actors played with spirit, but this especial one manifested such self-possession, displayed such judgment, and exhibited such powers of conception and execution, that King, Queen, and all the illustrious audience showered down upon him applauses — hearty, loud, and long. His name was Busby. He had been so poor thatjhe received ;^5 to enable him to take his degree of B.A. West- minster was soon to possess him, for nearly three- score years the most famous of her " masters." " A very great man ! " said Sir Roger de Coverley ; "he whipped my grandfather ! " When Prynne, and Bastwick, and Burton — released \ 46 TilElU MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. from prison by the Long Parliament — entered London in triumph, with wreaths of ivy and rosemary round their hats, the players who stood on the causeway, or at tavern windows, to witness the passing of the victims, must have felt uneasy at their arch-enemy being loose again. Between politics, perverse parties, the plague, and the parliament, the condition of the actors fell from bad to worse. In a dialogue which professedly passed at this time between Cane of the "Fortune" and Eeed of the "Friers," one of the speakers deplores the going-out of all good old things, and the other, sighingly, remarks that true Latin is as little in fashion at Inns of Court as good clothes are at Cambridge. At length arrived the fatal year 1647, when, after some previous attempts to abolish the vocation of the actors, the parliament disbanded the army and suppressed the players. The latter struggled manfully, but not so success- fully, as the soldiery. They were treated with less consideration; the decree of February 1647^ in- formed them that they were no better than heathens ; that they were intolerable to Christians ; that they were incorrigible and vicious offenders, who would now be compelled by whip, and stocks, and gyves, and prison fare, to obey ordinances which they had hitherto treated with contempt. Had not the glorious Elizabeth stigmatised them as " rogues," and the sagacious James as " vagabonds ? " Mayors and sheriffs, and high and low constables were let loose ^ FeVjruaiy 1647-48 : that is, February 1648. This act succeeded the one mentioned in the next paragraph. ACTOES MILITANT. 47 upon them, and encouraged to be merciless ; menace was piled upon menace; money penalties were hinted at in addition to corporeal punishments — and, after all, plays were enacted in spite of this counter- enactment. But these last enactors were not to be trifled with; and the autumn saw accomplished what had not been effected in the spring. The Perfect Weekly Account for "Wednesday, Oct. 20, to Tuesday, Oct. 26," informs its readers that on "Friday an ordinance passed both Houses for suppressing of stage-plays, which of late began to come in use again." The ordinance itself is as uncivil a document as ever proceeded from ruffled authority ; and the framers clearly considered that if they had not crushed the stage for ever, they had unquestionably frozen out the actors as long as the existing government should endure. At this juncture, historians inform us that many of the ousted actors took military service — generally, as was to be expected, on the royalist side. But, in 1647, the struggle was virtually over. The great fire was quenched, and there was only a trampling out of sparks and embers. Charles Hart, the actor — grandson of Shakspeare's sister — holds a prominent place among these players turned soldiers as one who rose to be a major in Rupert's Horse. Charles Hart, however, was at this period only seventeen years of age, and more than a year and a half had elapsed since Rupert had been ordered beyond sea, for his weak defence of Bristol. Rupert's major was, pro- 48 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. bably, that very "jolly good fellow" with whom Pepys used to take wine and anchovies to such excess as to make it necessary for his " girl " to rise early, and fetch her sick master fresh water, wherewith to slake his thirst, in the morning. The enrolment of actors in either army occurred at an earlier period, and one Hart was certainly among them. Thus Alleyn, erst of the Cockpit, filled the part of quartermaster-general to the King's army at Oxford. Burt became a cornet, Shatterel was some- thing 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 Eobinson, 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 Eobinson been encountered by Swanston, a player of Presbyterian tendencies, who served in the Parlia- mentary army. A " tenific broadsword combat " between the two might have been an encounter which both armies might have looked at with in- terest, and supported by applause. Of the military fortunes of the actors none was so favourable as brave little Mohun's, who crossed to Flanders, re- turned a major, and w^as subsequently set down in the " cast " under his militaiy title. Old Taylor retired, with that original portrait of Shakspeare to solace him, which was to pass by the hands of HARD TIMES. 49 Davenant, to that glory of our stage, " Incomparable Betterton." Pollard, too, withdrew, and lusty Lowen, after a time, kicked both sock and buskin out of sight, clapped on an apron, and appeared, with well- merited success, as landlord of the Three Pigeons, at Brentford. 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 Shaks- peare was driven from Blackfriars and the Cockpit, was it fair to allow Bel and the Dragon to be en- acted 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 river-side a tragedy- king or two found refuge with kinsfolk. The old theatres stood erect and desolate, and the owners, with hands in empty pockets, asked how they were 50 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 soitow. An elder actor puts his hands on the lad's shoulder, and cries : " Before the old scene is on again, boy, thy face will be as battered as the flag there on the roof-top ! " And as this elder actor passes on, he has a word with a poor fellow-mime who has been less pro- vident than he, and whose present necessities he relieves according to his means. Near them stand a couple of deplorable-looking *' door-keepers," or, as we should call them now, "money-takers," and the well-to-do ex-actor has his allusive joke at their old rascality, and affects to condole with them that the time is gone by when they used to scratch their neck where it itched not, and then dropped shilling and half-crown pieces behind their collars ! But they were not the only poor rogues who suffered by revolution. That slipshod tapster, whom a guest is cudgelling at a tavern-door, was once the proudest and most extravagantly-dressed of the tobacco-men whose notice the smokers in the pit gingerly en- treated, 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, STRUGGLING. 51 gentlemen 1 " 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. Noiv, they shamble about in pairs, and resignedly accept the smallest dole, and think mournfully of the time when they heralded the coming of kings, and softly tuned the dirge at the burying of Ophelia ! Even these have pity to spare for a lower class than themselves, — the journeymen playwrights, whom the managers once retained at an annual stipend and "beneficial second nights." The old playwrights were fain to turn pamphleteers, but their works sold only for a penny, and that is the reason why those two shabby-genteel people, who have just nodded sorrowfully to the fiddlers, are not joyously tippling sack and Gascony wine, but are imbibing unorthodox ale and heretical small beer. " Cunctis graviora cothurnis ! " murmurs the old actor, whose father was a schoolmaster ; " it's more pitiful than any of your tragedies ! " The distress was severe, but the profession had to abide it. Much amendment was promised, if only something of the old life might be pursued without peril of the stocks or the whipping-post. The autho- rities 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 pro- hibit the entrance of all temptations into "the six- penny rooms;" and the tobacco-men, who swore with 52 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. earnest irreverence to vend nothing but the pure Spanish leaf, even in the threepenny galleries. But the tragedy which ended "svith 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 conjec- ture from the fact of the advertisements which began to appear in the papers — sometimes of the publication of a solitary play, at another of the entire dramatic works of that most noble lady the Marchioness of New- castle. The actors themselves united boldness with circumspection. Richard Cox, dropping the words play and i^layer, constructed a mixed entertainment, in which he spoke and sang ; and on one occasion so aptly mimicked the character of an artisan, that a master in the craft kindly and earnestly oflered to engage him. During the suppression, Cowley's " Guardian " was privately played at Cambridge. The authorities would seem to have winked at these pri- vate representations, or to have declined noticing them until after the expiration of the period within which the actors were exposed to punishment. Too great audacity, however, was promptly and severely visited from the earliest days after the issuing of the prohibitory decree. A first-rate troop obtained pos- session of the Cockpit for a few days, in 164S. They had played unmolested for three days, and were in the very midst of " The Bloody Brother" on the fourth, DUEANCE A^LE. 53 when the house was invaded by the Puritan soklieiy, the actors captured, the audience dispersed, and the seats and the stage righteously smashed into frag- ments. The players (some of them among the most accomplished of their day) were paraded through the streets in all their stage finery, and clapped into the Gate House and other prisons, whence they were too happy to escape, after much unseemly treatment, at the cost of all the theatrical property which they had carried on their backs into durance vile. This severity, visited in other houses as well as the Cockpit, caused some actors to despair, while it rendered others only a little more discreet. Rhodes, the old prompter at Blackfriars, turned bookseller, and opened a shop at Charing Cross. There he and one Betterton, an ex-under-cook in the kitchen of Charles I., who lived in Tothill Street, talked mourn- 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 con- gregate at certain seasons. A delegate from their number might be seen whispering to the citizen captain in command at Whitehall, who, as wicked people reported, consented, for a " consideration," not to bring his red-coats down to the Bull or other localities where private stages were erected — espe- cially during the time of Bartholomew Fair, Christma?, VOL. I. E 54 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. and other joyous tides. To his shame, be it recorded, the captain occasionally broke his promise, or the poor actors had fallen short in their purchase-money of his pledge, and in the very middle of the piece, the little theatre would be invaded, and the audience be rendered subject to as much virtuous indignation as the actors. The cause of the latter, however, found supporters in many of the members of the aristocracy. Close at hand, near Khodes'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 preseiTation of the deed by which he and his ancestors had held them, than he did for the loss of the acres themselves. Hatton was the employer, so to speak, of Dugdale, and the patron of literary men and of actors, and, it must be added, of very frivolous company besides. He devoted much time to the pre- paration 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 per- sonally and politically suitable wife for Charles H., and aftenvards discarded his own eldest son for manying that incomparable lady. In Hatton, the players had a supreme patron in town ; and they found friends as serviceable to them in the noble- men 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, CROMWELL'S RELAXATIONS. 55 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 1 649 ; but this granddaughter of old Sir Walter Cope, who lost Camden House at cards to a Cheapside mercer, Sir Baptist Hicks, was a strong-minded woman, and perhaps found some consolation in patronising the pleasures which the enemies of her defunct lord so stringently prohibited. When the play was over, a collection was made among the noble spectators, whose contributions were divided between the players according to the measure of their merits. This done they wended their way down the avenue to the high road, where probably, on some bright summer afternoon, if a part of them prudently re- turned afoot to town, a joyous but less prudent few "padded it" to Brentford, and made a short but glad night of it with their brother of the "Three Pigeons." At the most this was but a poor life ; but such as it was, the players were obliged to make the best of it. If they were impatient, it was not without some reason, for though Oliver despised the stage, he could condescend to laugh at, and with, men of less dignity in their vocation than actors. Buffoonery 56 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. was not entirely expelled from his otlienvise grave court. At the marriage festival of his daughter Frances and his son-in-law Mr. Rich, the Protector woukl not tolerate the utterance of a line from Shakspeare, expressed from the lips of a player ; but there were hired buffoons at that entertainment, wliich they well-nigh brought to a tragical conclu- sion. A couple of these saucy fellows seeing Sir Thomas Hillingsley, the old gentleman-usher to the Queen of Bohemia, gravely dancing, sought to excite a laugh by trying to blacken his face with a burnt cork. The high-bred, solemn old gentleman was so aroused to anger by this unseemly audacity, that he drew his dagger, and, but for swift interference, would have run it beneath the fifth rib of the most active of his rude assailants. On this occasion, Cromwell himself was almost as lively as the hired jesters ; snatching off the wig of his son Richard, he feigned to fling it in the fire, but suddenly pass- ing the wig under him, and seating himself upon it, he pretended that it had been destroyed, amid the servile applause of the edified spectators. The actors might reasonably have argued that "Hamlet" in Scotland Yard or at Holland House was a more worthy entertainment than such grown-up follies in the gallciy at AVhitehall. Those follies ceased to be ; Oliver had passed away, and Richard had laid down the greatness which had never sat well upon him. Important changes were at hand, and the merry rattle of Monk's drums coming up Gray's Inn Road, welcomed by MONK'S GOOD TASTE. 57 thousands of dusty spectators, announced no more cheering prospect to any class than to the actors. The Oxford vintner's son, Will Davenant, might be seen bustling about in happy hurry, eagerly showing young Betterton how Taylor used to play Hamlet, under the instruction of Burbage. and announcing bright days to open-mouthed Kynaston, ready at a moment's warning to leap over his master's counter, and take his standing at the balcony as the smooth- cheeked Juliet. Meanwhile, beaming old E-hodes, with a head full of memories of the joyous Blackfriars' days, and the merry afternoons over the water, at the Globe, leaving his once apprentice, Betterton, listening to Davenant's stage histories, and Kynaston, not yet out of his time, longing to flaunt it before an audience, took his own way to Hyde Park, where Monk was encamped, and there obtained, in due time, from that far-seeing individual, licence to once more raise the theatrical flag, enrol the actors, light up the stage, and, in a word, revive the English theatre. In a few days the drama commenced its new career in the Cockpit, in Drury Lane ; and this fact seemed so significant, as to the character of General Monk's tastes that, subsequently, when he and the Council of State dined in the city halls, the companies treated their guests, after dinner, with satirical farces, such as "Citizen and Soldier," " Country Tom," and "City Dick," with, as the newspapers inform us, " dancing and singing, many shapes and ghosts, and the like ; and all to please his Excellency the Lord General." 58 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. The English stage owes a debt of gratitude to both Monk and Khodes. The former made glorious summer of the actors' winter of discontent ; and the latter inaugurated the Restoration by introducing young Betterton. The son of Gharles L's cook was, for fifty-one years, the pride of the English theatre. His acting was witnessed by more than one old con- temporary of Shakspeare, — the poet's younger brother being among them, — he suniving 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 marvel- lous 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 airjTiess of his Woodville, or the cowardly bluster of his Thersites. The old actors who had been frozen out, and the new who had much to learn, could not have rallied round a more noble or a worthier chief; for Betterton was not a greater actor than he was a true and honourable gentleman. Only for him, the old frozen-outs would have fared but badly. He enriched himself and them, and, as long as he lived, gave dignity to his profession. The humble lad, BETTERTON. 59 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 Common- wealth times, and he was a monarch ^ho 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 Under- bill ; 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 per- haps 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. THE GLOBE THEATRE. CHAPTER III. THE " BOY ACTRESSES," AND THE " YOUNG LADIES." The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is the " sacred ground" of the English drama since the restora- tion of monarchy. At the Cockpit (Pit Street re- mains a memory of the place), otherwise called the Phoenix, in the ** lane " above-named, the old Eng- lish 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 THE PATENTS. 6r made to re-establish 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, Killigrew, at the head of the King's Com- pany (the Cockpit being closed), opened at the new theatre in Drury Lane, in August^ 1663, with a play of the olden time — the " Humourous Lieu- tenant " 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 1 660, on the site of the old granary of Salisbury house, which had served for a theatre in the early years of the reign of Charles I. This little stage was lapped up by the great tongue of fire, by which many a nobler edifice was destroyed, in 1666. But previous to the fire, thence went Davenant and the Duke's troop to the old Tennis Court, the first of the three theatres in Portugal Row, on the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, from which the houses took their name. In 1 67 1, Davenant being dead, the company, under the nominal management of his widow, migrated to a house designed by Wren, and deco- rated by Grinling Gibbons. This was the Duke's Theatre, in Dorset Gardens. It was in close vici- nity to the old Salisbury Court Theatre, and it pre- ^ The second and final patents were dated— Killigrew's, 25tli Ajjiil 1662 ; Davenant's, 15th January 1663. 2 April (2d edition). The exact date is 8tli April, as given by Downes. 62 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. scnted a double face — one towards Fle*et 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 1 808, and its suc- cessor, built by Smirke, was destroyed in 1856. On the site of the latter now stands the Royal Italian Opera, the representative, in its way, of the line of houses wherein the Duke's Company struggled against their competitors of the King's. The first house of those competitors in Drury Lane was burnt in 1672, but the King's Company took refuge in the "Fields" till Wren built the new house, opened in 1674. The two troops remained divided, yet not opposed, each keeping to its recog- nised stock pieces, till 1682, when Killigrew, having " shuffled off this mortal coil," ^ the two companies, after due weeding, formed into one, and abandoning Lincoln's Inn to the tennis-players, Dorset Gardens to the wrestlers, and both to decay, they opened at the New Drury, built by Sir Christopher, on the 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 1812. ' Killi^jrew died after, not before, the union of the two companies. Chalmers expressly says that he lived to see them united, and gives March 1683 ;i.'< the time of his death. CHARLES SHAKSPEARE. 63 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 Avent 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 Shakspeare's brother Charles, who lived to this period, Oldys says: — "This opportunity made the actors greedily inquisitive into every little circum- stance, more especially in Shakspeare's dramatic character, which his brother could relate of him. But he, it seems, was so stricken in years, and pos- sibly his memory so weakened by infirmities (which 1 Davenant performed "The Siege of Eliodes" two years before Cromwell's death, namely, in 1656. [See Mr. Joseph Knight's Preface to his recent edition of the " Roscius Anglicanus."] Cromwell also per- mitted the entertainment named "The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru" to be represented, from political motives. 64 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. might make him the easier pass for a man of weak intellects), that he could give them but little light into their inquiries ; and all that could be recol- lected 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 pail; in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sung a song." This description applies to old Adam, in " As You Like It ; " and he who feebly shadowed it forth, formed a link which connected the old theatre with the new. The principal actors in Killigrew's Company, from which that of Drur}* Lane is descended, were Bate- man, Baxter, Bird (Theophilus), Blagden, Burt, Cart- wright, Clun, Duke, Hancock, Hart, Kynaston, Lacy, !Mohun, the Shatterels (AVilliam and Kobert), and Wintersel. Later additions gave to this com- pany Beeston, Bell, Charleton, " Scum " Goodman, Griffin, Hains, Joe Hams, Hughes, Lyddoll, Beeves, and Shirley. The "ladies" were Mrs. Corey, Eastland, Hughes, Knep, the Marshalls (Anne and Bebecca), Butter, Uphill, whom Sir Bobert Howard too tardily mar- ried, and Weaver. Later engagements included those of Mrs. Boutel, Gw^n (Nell), James, Beeves, and Verjuice. These were sworn at the Lord FRENCH ACTRESSES IN LONDON. 65 Chamberlain's Office to serve the King. Of the " gentlemen," ten were enrolled on the Royal House- hold 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 troop included the great Betterton, Dixon, Lilliston, Lovel, Nokes (Robert), and six lads em- ployed to represent female characters — Angel, Wil- liam Betterton, a brother of the great actor (drowned early in life, at Wallingford), Floid, Kynaston (for a time), Mosely, and Nokes (James). Later, Davenant added Blagden, Harris, Price, and Richards ; 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 ex- cited all the fury of Prynne, who called these actresses by very unsavoury names ; but who, in 66 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. styling them " unwomanish and graceless," did not mean to imply that they were awkward and unfemi- nine, 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 Prj'iine, namely, Thomas Brand, in a comment addressed to Laud, " glad am I to say they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage, so that I do not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Although Brand asserts " that all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this town " were "justly offended" at these women "or mon- sters rather," as Pnnne calls them, " expelled from their own countiy," adds Brand, yet more sober- thinking people did not fail to see the propriety of Juliet being represented by a girl rather than by a boy. Accordingly, we hear of English actresses even before the Kestoration, mingled, however, with boys, who shared with them that " line of business." " Tlie boy's a pretty actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the " Court Beggar," played at the Cockpit, in 1632, "and his mother can play her part. The women now are in great request." Piynne groaned at the "request" becoming general. "They have now," he wTites, 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 * Mr. Kni^lit, in the Preface before mentioned, quotes some lines from the Prolo<,Tie to this performance, showing that it was a public performance for money. This being so settles the question in the next paragraph as to the identity of the first professional actress. FIEST ENGLISH ACTRESS. 67 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 Khodes was permitted to reopen the stage, he could only assemble boys about him for his Evadnes, Aspasias, and the other heroines of ancient tragedy. Now, the resumption of the old practice of " women's parts being represented by men in the habits of women," gave offence, and this is assigned as a reason in the first patents accorded to Killigrew and Davenant why those managers were authorised to employ actresses to represent all female characters. Killigrew was the first to avail himself of the privi- lege. It was time. Some of Ehodes's " boys " were men past forty, who frisked it as wenches of fifteen ; even real kings were kept waiting because theatrical queens had not yet shaved ; when they did appear, they looked like "the guard disguised," and when the prompter called "Desdemona" — "enter Giant!" Who the lady was who first trod the stage as a professional actress is not known ; but that she belonged to Killigrew's Company is certain. The character she assumed was Desdemona, and she was introduced by a prologue written for the occasion by Thomas Jordan. It can hardly be supposed that she was too modest to reveal her name, and that of Anne Marshal has been suggested, as also that of Margaret Hughes. On the 3d of January 1661, Beaumont 68 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. and Hetcher's " Bc<:jf.,^ir's Bush " was performed at Killigrew's Theatre, " it being veiy well done," says Pepys, " and here the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." Davenant did not bring forward his actresses before the end of June 1 66 1, when he produced the second part of the " Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs. Davenport as Iloxa- lana, and Mrs. Saunderson as lanthe ; both these ladies, with Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Long, boarded in Davenant's house. Killigrew abused his privilege to employ ladies. In 1664, his comedy, the "Par- son's Wedding," wherein the plague is made a comic incident of, connected with unexampled profligacy, was acted, "I am told" are Pepys's own words, " by nothing but women, at the King's house." By this time the vocation of the " boy-actresses " had altogether passed away ; and there only remains for me to briefly trace the career of those old world representatives of the gentle or truculent heroines depicted by our early dramatists. There were three members of Killigrew's, or the King's Company, who were admirable representa- tives of female characters before the Civil Wars. These were Hart, Burt, and Clun — all pupils of luckless Bobinson, slain in fight, who was himself an accomplished " actress." Of the three, Ilart rose to the greatest eminence. His Duchess, in Shirley's " Cardinal," was the most successful of his youthful parts. After the Restoration, he laid down Cassio to take Othello, from Burt, by the King's command, and was as great in the Moor as Betterton, at the HART. 69 other house, was in Hamlet. His Alexander, which he created, always filled the theatre ; and his dignity therein was said to convey a lesson even to kings. His Brutus was scarcely inferior, while his Catiline was so unapproachable, that when he died, Jonson's tragedy died with him/ Rymer styles him and Mohun the ^Esopus and Roscius of their time. When they acted together (Amintor and Melantius) in the " Maid's Tragedy," the town asked no greater treat. Hart was one of Pepys's prime favourites. He was a man whose presence delighted the eye, before his accents enchanted the ear. The humblest character intrusted to him was distinguished by his careful study. On the stage he acknowledged no audience ; their warmest applause could never draw him into a moment's forgetfulness of his assumed character. In Manly, "The Plain Dealer," as in Catiline, he never found a successor who could equal him. His salary was, at the most, three pounds a week, but he is said to have realised ^1000 yearly after he became a shareholder in the theatre. He finally retired in 1682, on a pension amounting to half his salary, which he enjoyed, however, scarcely a year. He died of a painful inward complaint in 1683, and was buried at Stanmore Magna. There is a tradition that Hart, Mohun, and Betterton fought on the King's side at Edgehill, in 1642. The last-named was then a child, and some things are attributed to Charles Hart which 1 Very questionable. Langbaine (169 1) says, "This play is still in vogue on the stage, and always presented with success." 70 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. belonged to his father. If Charles was but eighteen when his namesake, the King, returned in 1660, it must have been his father who was at Edgehill with Mohun, and who, perhaps, played female characters ill Ills 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 ^5co 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 Lieu- tenant ; " but as Subtle, in the " Alchymist," he was the admiration of all playgoers. After acting this comic part, Clun made a tragic end on the night of the 3d of August 1664. With a lady hanging on his arm, and some liquor lying under his belt, he was gaily passing on his way to his country lodgings in Kentish Town, when he was assailed, murdered, and flung into a ditch, by rogues, one of whom was captured, " an Irish fellow, most cruelly butchered and bound." " The house will have a great miss of him," is the epitaph of Pepys upon versatile Clun. Of the boys belonging to Davenant's Company, who at first appeared in woman's boddice, but soon found their occupation gone, some were of greater fame than others. One of these. Angel, turned from waiting-maids to low comedy, caricatured French- men and foolish lords. We hear nothing of him after 1673. The younger Betterton, as I have said, was drowned at Wallingford. Mosely and Floid represented a vulgar class of women, and both died KYN ASTON. 71 before the year 1674; but Kynaston and James Nokes long survived to occupy prominent positions on the stage. Kynaston made "the loveliest lady," for a boy, ever beheld by Pepys. This was in 1660, when Kynaston played Olympia, the Duke's sister, in the "Loyal Subject;" and went with a young fellow- actor to carouse, after the play, with Pepys and Captain Ferrers. Kynaston was a handsome fellow under every guise. On the 7th of January 1661, says Pepys, "Tom and I, and my wife, to the theatre, and there saw 'The Silent Woman.' Among other things here, Kynaston, the boy, had the good turn to appear in three shapes. First, as a poor woman, in ordinary clothes, to please Morose ; then, in fine clothes, as a gallant — and in them was clearly the prettiest woman in the whole house ; and lastly, as a man — and then likewise did appear the handsomest man in the house." When the play was concluded, and it was not the lad's humour to carouse with the men, the ladies would seize on him, in his theatrical dress, and, carrying him to Hyde Park in their coaches, be foolishly proud of the precious freight which they bore with them. Kynaston was not invariably in such good luck. There was another handsome man. Sir Charles Sed- ley, 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 VOL. I. F 72 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. the Stage. A consequence was, that on the 30th of January 1669/ Kynaston was waylaid by three or four assailants, and so clubbed by them, that there was no play on the following evening ; and the victim, mightily bruised, was forced to keep his bed. He did not recover in less than a week. On the 9th of Februaiy 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 tjTants of the drama, retained a certain beauty to the last. " Even at past sixty," Gibber 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 KjTiaston's mien " to the stately step he had been so early confined to in a female decency." The same writer praises Kynaston's Leon, in " Kule a Wife and have a Wife," for its determined manliness and honest authority. In the heroic tyrants, his piercing eye, his quick, impetuous tone, and the fierce, lion-like majesty of his bearing and utterance, " gave the spectator a kind of trembling admiration." When Gibber played Syphax, in " Gato," 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 drama- tists with a laughable earnestness ; but in Shak- speare's monarchs he was every inch a king — dignified ^ Dr. Doran misreads Pepys, who gives the , \vlii(.'li Lacy really jilayi'd. "SCUM" GOODMAN. loi 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 distinguished, whether wearing the sock or the buskin, majestic in loftily-toned kings, and absurd in sillily-amorous knights. Downes has praised him as superior to Nokes, in at least one part, and his Slender has won eulogy from so stern a critic as Dennis. Among the men who subsequently joined the Theatre Royal, there were some good actors, and a few great rogues. Of these, the best actor and the greatest rogue was Cardell Goodman, or Scum Good- man, as he was designated by his enemies. His career on the stage lasted from 1677, as Poly- perchon, in Lee's "Rival Queens," to 1688. His most popular parts were Julius Csesar and Alexander. He came to the theatre hot from a fray at Cam- bridge University, whence he had been expelled for cutting and slashing the portrait of that exemplary Chancellor, the Duke of Monmouth. This rogue's salary must have been small, for he and Griffin shared the same bed in their modest lodging, I02 TllEIll MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. and having Init one shirt between them, wore it each in his turn. The only dissension which ever occuiTed between them was caused by Goodman, who, having to pay a visit to a lady, clapped on the shirt when it was clean, and Griffin's day for wearing it ! For restricted means, however, every gentleman of spirit, in those days, had a resource, if he chose to avail himself of it. The resource was the road, and Cardell Goodman took to it with alacrity. But he came to grief, and found himself with gp'es on in Newgate ; yet he escaped the cart, the rope, and Tyburn. King James gave " his Majesty's servant " his life, and Cardell returned to the stage — a hero. A middle-aged duchess, fond of heroes, adopted him as a lover, and Cardell Goodman had fine quarters, rich feeding, and a dainty wardrobe, all at the cost of his mistress, the ex-favourite of a king, Barbara, the Duchess of Cleveland. Scum Goodman was proud of his splendid degradation, and paid such homage to " my duchess," as the impudent fellow called her, that when he expected her presence in the theatre, he would not go on the stage, though king and queen were kept waiting, till he heard that "his duchess " was in the house. For her he played the mad scene in Alexander with double vigour, and cared for no other applause so long as her Grace's fan signalled approbation. Scum might have had a rare, if a rascally, life, had he been discreet ; but he was fool as well as knave. A couple of the Duchess's children in the Duchess's house annoyed him, and Scum suborned a villainous . GOODMAN'S PROPHECY. 103 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 1690, Scum loudly wished he might be — what he very much deserved to be, if the young fellow did not turn out a good actor, Colley was so delighted with the earnest criticism, that the tears flowed to his eyes. At least, he says so. King James having saved Cardell's neck, Goodman, out of pure gratitude, perhaps, became a Tory, and something more, when William sat in the seat of his father-in-law. After Queen Mary's death. Scum was in the Fenwick and Charnock plot to kill the King. When the plot was discovered. Scum was ready to peach. As Fenwick's life was thought by his friends to be safe if Goodman could be bought off and got out of the way, the rogue was looked for, at the Fleece, in Covent Garden, famous for homicides, and at the robbers' and the revellers' den, th.Q Dog, in Drury Lane. Fenwick's agent, O'Bryan, erst soldier and highway- man, 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 I04 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. to a man who was the first forger of bank-notes ! Scum suddenly disappeared, and Lord Manchester, our Ambassador in Paris, inquired after him in vain. It is impossible to say whether the rogue died by an avenging hand, or starvation. We are better acquainted with the fate of the last of Scum's fair favourites, the pretty Mrs, Price of Drury Lane. This Ariadne was not disconsolate for her Theseus. She married '* Charles, Lord Banbury," who was not Lord Banbury, for the House of Peers denied his claim to the title ; and he was not Mrs. Price's husband, as he was already mamed to a living lady, Mrs. Lester. Of this confusion in social arrange- ments the world made small account, although the law did pronounce in favour of Mrs. Lester, without troubling itself to punish "my lord." The Judges pronounced for the latter lady, solely on the ground that she had had children, and the actress none. Joseph Haines ! "Joe " with his familiars, "Count Haines " with those who affected great respect, was a rogue in his way, — a merry rogue, a ready wit, and an admirable low comedian, from 1672 to 1701, We first hear of him as a quickwitted lad at a school in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, whence he was sent, through the liberality of some gentlemen who had remarked his talents, to Queen's College, Oxford. There Haines met with AVilliamson, the Sir Joseph of after days, distinguished alike for his scholarship, his abilities as a statesman, the important offices he held, and the liberality with which he dispensed the fortune which he honourably acquired. JO. HAINES. 105 Williamson chose Haines for a friend, and made him his Latin secretary when Williamson was ap- pointed 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. In 1673, his Sparkish, in the " Country Wife " — his original character — was accepted as the type of the airy gentleman of the day. His acting on, and his jokes off, the stage were the themes in all coteries and coffee-houses. He was a great practical jester, and once engaged a simple-minded clergyman as " Chaplain to the Theatre Royal," and sent him behind the scenes, ringing a bell, and calling the players to prayers ! When Romanism was looking up, under James II., Haines had the impudence to announce to the convert Sunderland, — unworthy son of Waller's Sacharissa, — his adoption of the King's religion, being moved thereto by the Virgin, ^ Other accounts say that he commenced his theatrical life early, at the " Nursery." VOL. 1. H io6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. who had appeared to him in a dream, saying, " Joe, arise ! " This was too mnch even for Sunderland, wlio drily observed that " she would have said * Joseph,' if only out of respect for her husband ! " The rogue showed the value of a " profession," which gave rise to as many pamphlets as Dryden's, by subsequently recanting, — not in the church, but on the stage ; he the while covered with a sheet, holding a taper, and delivering some stupid rhymes, — to the very dullest of which he had the art of giving wonderful expression by his accent, emphasis, modulation, and felicity of application. The audience that could bear this recantation-prologue could easily pardon the speaker, who would have caused even greater errors to have been pardoned, were it only for his wonderful impersonation of Captain Bluff (1693) in Congreve's "Old Bachelor." The self- complaisant way in which he used to utter "Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in his day," was universally imitated, and has made the phrase itself proverbial. His Roger, in " ^Esop," was another of his successes, the bright roll of which was crowned by his lively, impudent, iiTcsistible Tom Errand, in Farquhar's " Constant Couple," — that most triumphant comedy of a whole centuiy. The great fault of Haines lay in the liberties which he took with the business of the stage. He cared less to identify himself with the characters he represented than, through them, to keep up a communication with the spectators. AVhen Hart, then manager, cast Joe for the simple part of a HAINES AS A JOKER. 107 Senator, in " Catiline," in which Hart played the hero, Joe, in disgust at his role, 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 com- panion, a witty fellow, who knew two or three living languages as familiarly as he did his own. With an English peer he once visited Paris, where Joe is said to have got imprisoned for debt, incurred in the character, assumed by him, of an English lord. After his release, he returned to England, self-invested with the dignity of " Count," a title not respected by a couple of bailiffs, who arrested Joseph, on Holborn Hill, for a little matter of ^20. " Here comes the carriage of my cousin, the Bishop of Ely," said the unblushing knave ; " let me speak to him ; I am sure he will satisfy you in this matter." Consent was given, and Haines, putting his head in at the carriage-door, hastily informed the good Simon Patrick that " here were two Romanists in- io8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 1 " The scrupulous gentlemen were well content ; but when an explanation ensued, the vexed bishop paid the money out of very shame, and Joe and the bailiffs spread the story. They who remembered how Haines played Lord Plausible, in the " Plain Dealer," were not at all surprised at his deceiving a bishop and a brace of bailiffs. Sometimes his wit was of a nicer quality. When Jeremy Collier's book against the stage was occupying the public mind, a critic expressed his surprise, seeing that the stage was a mender of morals. " True," answered Joe, ** but Collier is a mender of morals, too ; and two of a trade, you know, never agree ! " Haines was the best comic actor, in his peculiar line of comedy, during nearly thirty years that he was one of "their majesties' servants." He died at his house in Hart Street, Covent Garden, then a fashionable locality, on the 4th of April 1701, and was buried in the gloomy churchyard of the parish, which has nothing to render it bright but the memory of the poets, artists, and actors whose bodies are there buried in peace. Let us now consider the men in Davenant's, or the Duke's Company, who acted occasionally in Dorset Gardens, but mostly in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields. Of these, the greatest actor was good Thomas Betterton, — and his merits claim a chapter to himself. THEATUE BOTAL, POBT0GAL STBEET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS CHAPTER V. THOMAS BETTERTON. The diaries, biographies, journals, and traditions of the time will enable us, with some little aid from the imagination, not only to see the actor, but the social aspects amid which he moved. By aid of these, I find that, on a December night, 1661, there is a crowded house at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is "Hamlet," with young Mr. Betterton, who has been two years on the stage, in the part of the Dane. The Ophelia is the real object of the young fellow's love, charming Mistress Saunderson. Old ladies and gentlemen, repairing in capacious coaches no TilEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. to this representation, remind one another of the lum- bering and cnishing of carriages about the old play- house in the Blackfriars, causing noisy tumults which drew indignant appeals from the Puritan house- keepers, 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 ofiered to the public ! The Jehus contend for place with the eagerness of ancient Britons in a l)attle of chariots. And see, the mob about the pit- doors have just caught a bailiff attempting to arrest an honest playgoer. They fasten the official up in a tub, and roll the trembling wretch all *' round the square." They finish by hurling him against a car- riage, which sweeps from a neighbouring street at full gallop. Down come the horses over the ban*elled 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 lucldess Viscount Grandison. As yet she is only Mrs. Palmer ; next year she will be Countess of Castlemaine. At length the audience are all safely housed and eager. Indifferent enough, however, they are during the opening scenes. The fine gentlemen laugh loudly and comb their periwigs in the "best rooms." The fops stand erect in the boxes to show how folly looks in clean linen ; and the orange nymphs, with their costly entertainment of fruit from Seville, giggle and chatter, as they stand on the benches below with old and young admirers, proud of being recognised in the boxes. HAMLET THE DANE. in 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 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 commend- able to the grave orator, is most exquisitely perfect in him ; for by a full and significant action of body he charms our attention. Sit in a full theatre, and you will think you see so many lines drawn from the cir- cumference of so many ears, while the actor is the centre." This was especially the case with Betterton ; 112 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. and now, as Hamlet's first soliloquy closes, and the charmed but silent audience " feel music's pulse in all their arteries," Mr. Pepys almost too loudly exclaims in his ecstasy, " It's the best acted part ever done by man." And the audience think so, too ; there is a hurricane of applause ; after which the fine gentle- men renew their prattle with the fine ladies, and the orange girls beset the Sir Foplings, and this universal trifling is felt as a relief after the general emotion. Meanwhile, a critic objects that young Mr. 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 by Shakspeare 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 whicli they were to receive additional warrant. Mistress Saunderson was a lady worthy of all tlic homage here implied. There was mind in lior acting ; and she not only pos- sessed personal beauty, but also the richer beauty of a virtuous life. They were a well-matched couple ME. AND MRS. BETTERTON. 113 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 Komeo ! 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 ambas- sadors, in a bloody struggle for precedency, which was ultimately won by the Don ! Fifty years after these early triumphs, an aged couple resided in one of the best houses in Russell Street, Covent Garden, — the walls of which were covered with pictures, prints, and drawings, selected with taste and judgment. They were still a 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 114 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 iTiin, 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 T3th of April, 1710 — his benefit night; and the tears are in the lady's eyes, and a painful sort of smile on her trembling lips, for Betterton kisses her as he goes forth that afternoon to take leave, as it proved, of the stage for ever. He is in such pain from gout that he can scarcely walk to his carriage, and how is he to enact the noble and fiery Melantius in that ill-named drama of horror, " The Maid's Tragedy " ? Hoping for the best, the old player is conveyed to the theatre, built by Sir John Vanbrugh, in the Haymarket, the site of which is now occupied by the " Opera-house." Through the stage-door he is carried in loving arms to his dress- ing-room. At the end of an hour Wilks is there, and Pinkethman, and Mrs. BaiT}-, all dressed for their parts, and agreeably disappointed to find the Melantius of the night robed, armoured, and be- sworded, with one foot in a buskin and the other in a slipper. To enable him even to wear the latter, he had first thrust his inflamed foot into water ; but stout as he seemed, trying his strength to and ffo in the room, the hand of Death was at that moment descending on the grandest of English actors. HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 115 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 accom- plished 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 youtli did promise much, and Lis ripe years Will see it all performed," a murmuring comment ran round the house, that this had been eff'ected by Betterton himself. Again, when he bids Amintor " hear thy friend, who has more years than thou," there were probably few who did not wish that Betterton were as young as Wilks : but when he subsequently thundered forth the famous passage, "My heart will never fail me," there was a veiy tempest of excitement, which was carried to its utmost height, in thundering peal on Ii6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. peal of unbridled approbation, as the great Khodian 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 " hravoes !'' may have thrown more than the original meaning into the phrase — " That little word was worth all the sounds That ever I shall hear a<;ain I " Few were the words he was destined ever to hear again ; and the subsequent prophecy of his own certain and proximate death, on which the curtain slowly descended, was fulfilled eight and forty hours after they were uttered. Such was the close of a career which had 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 Underhill, Quin, Macklin, King, and in later times, Bartley and Cooper, most of whom at least accom- plished their half centuiy. The record of that career aftords many a lesson and valuable suggestion to young actors, but I have to say a word previously of the Bettertons, before the brothers of that name, Thomas and the less known William, assumed the sock and buskin. Tothill Street, Westminster, is not at present a fine or a fragrant locality. It has a crapulous look TOTHILL STREET. 117 and a villainous smell, and petty traders now huddle together where nobles once were largely housed. Thomas Betterton was born here, about the year 1634-5.^ The street was then in its early decline, or one of King Charles's cooks could hardly have had home in it. Nevertheless, there still clung to it a considerable share of dignity. Even at that time there was a Tothill Fields House of Correc- tion, whither vagabonds were sent, who used to earn scraps by scraping trenchers in the tents pitched in Petty France. All else in the imme- diate 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 cer- tainly the sire of one, and the circumstance of the apprenticeship of young Thomas to a bookseller was no evidence to the contrary. In those days, it was the custom for greater men than the chefs in the King's kitchen, namely, the bishops in the King's church, to apprentice their younger sons, at least, to trade, or to bequeath sums for that especial purpose. The last instance I can remember of this traditionary custom presents itself in the person, not indeed of a son of a bishop, but of the grandson of an archbishop, namely, of John Sharp, Archbishop of York from 1 69 1 to 1 7 1 4. He had influence enough with Queen Anne to prevent Swift from obtaining a bishopric. His son was Archdeacon of Northumberland, and of this archdeacon's sons one was Prebendary of Dur- * Malone gives tlie date of his baptism as i ith August 1635. Ii8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. ham, while the other, the celebrated Granville Sharp, the "friend of the Negro," was apprenticed to a linen- draper, on Tower Hill. The early connection of Betterton, therefore, with Rhodes, the Charing Cross bookseller, is not to be accepted as a proof that his sire was not in a " respectable " position in society. That sire had had for his neighbour, only half-a-dozen years before Thomas was born, the well-known Sir Henry Spelman, who had since removed to more cheerful quarters in Barbican. A very few years previously. Sir George Carew resided here, in Caron House, and his manuscripts are not very far from the spot even now. They refer to his experiences as Lord Deputy in Ireland, and are deposited in the library at Lambeth Palace. These great men were neighbours of the elder Betterton, and they had succeeded to men not less remarkable. One of the latter was Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, the friend of Spenser, and the Talus of that poet's " Iron Flail." The Greys, indeed, had long kept house in Tothill Street, as had also the Lords Dacre of the South. When Betterton was born here, the locality was still full of the stoiy of Thomas Lord Dacre, who went thence to be hanged at Tyburn, in 1 54 1 . 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, vciy much to his surprise, was hanged in consequence. The mansion built by his son, the last lord, had not lost its first freshness when the Bettertons resided here, and its TWO GENERATIONS' PRAISE. 119 name, Stourton House, yet survives in the corrupted form of Strutton Ground. Thus, the Bettertons undoubtedly resided in a "fashionable" locality, and we may fairly conclude that their title to " respectability " has been so far established. That the street long continued to enjoy a certain dignity is apparent from the fact that, in 1664, when Betterton was rousing the town by his acting, as Bosola, in Webster's "Duchess of Malfy," Sir Henry Herbert established his office of Master of the Revels, in Tothill Street. It was not till the next century that the decline of this street set in. Southern, the dramatist, resided and died there, but it was in rooms over an oilman's shop ; and Edmund Burke lived modestly at the east end, before those mysterious thousands were amassed by which he was enabled to establish himself as a country gentleman. 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 in his diary for October 1662, in which he says — "Betterton is a very sober, serious man, and studious, and humble, following of his studies ; and is rich already with what he gets and saves." There is the great and modest artist's whole life — earnestness, labour, lack of presumption, and the recompense. At the two ends of his career, two competent judges pronounced him to be the best actor they had ever seen. The two men were Pepys, who was born in the reign of Charles I., and Pope, who died in the reign of i:o THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. George II. This testimony refers to above a century, duringwliich time the stage knew no such player as he. Pope, indeed, notices that okl critics used to place Hart on an equality with him ; this is, probably, an eiTor for Harris, who had a party at court among the gay people there who were oppressed by the majesty of Betterton.^ Pepys alludes to this partisanship in 1663. "This fellow" (Harris), he remarks, "grew ver\' proud of late, the King and everybody else crying him up so high, and that above Betterton, he being a tnore aery man, as he is, indeed." From the dav of Betterton's bris^ht 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 repre- sentative. In the " green-room," as on the stage, he was, for the time being, subdued or raised to the quality of him whose likeness he had put on. In presence of the audience, he w^as 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 Better- ton and Harris could not contain from laughing, in the midst of a most serious part, from the ridiculous 1 I see no reason to doubt that Hart ratlier than Harris was the rival in question. Hart was an older actor than Betterton, and he and Mohun were the supports of the old school, which its admirers pronounced in- finitely superior to that of Betterton. See, for instance, the Hutoria Histrionica. BETTERTON'S ADOPTED DAUGHTER. 121 mistake of one of the men upon the stage ; which I did not like." Then for his humility, I find the testimony of Pepys sufficiently corroborated. It may have been politic in him, as a young man, to repair to Mr. Cowley's lodg- ings in town, and ask from that author his particular views with regard to the Colonel Jolly in the " Cutter of Coleman Street," which had been intrusted to the young actor; but the politic humility of 1661 was, in fact, the practised modesty of his life. In the very meridian of his fame, he, and Mrs. Barry also, were as ready to take instruction respecting the characters of Jaffier and Belvidera, from poor battered Otway, as they subsequently were from that very fine gentle- man, Mr. Congreve, when they were cast for the hero and heroine of his comedies. Even to bombastic Rowe, who hardly knew his own reasons for language put on the lips of his characters, they listened with deference ; and, at another period, " Sir John and Lady Brute " were not undertaken by them till they had conferred with the author, solid Vanbrugh. The mention of these last personages reminds me of a domestic circumstance of interest respecting Betterton. He and Mrs. Barry acted the principal characters in "The Provoked Wife;" the part of Lady Fancyfull was played by Mrs. Bowman. This young lady was the adopted child of the Bettertons, and the daughter of a friend (Sir Frederick Watson, Bart.) whose indiscretion or ill-luck had scattered that fortune the laying of the foundation of which is recorded by Pepys. To the sire Betterton had in- i::2 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. trusted the bulk of his little wealth as a commercial venture to the East Indies, A ruinous failure en- sued, and I know of nothing which puts the private life of the actor in so pleasing a light, as the fact of his adopting the child of the wholly ruined man who had nearly ruined him. He gave her all he had to bestow, careful instruction in his art ; and the lady became an actress of merit. This merit, added to considerable personal charms, won for her the homage of Bowman, a player who became, in course of time, the father of the stage, though he never grew, con- fessedly, 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 veiy 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 reheai'sal. Those actors might ^ have reaped valuable instruction out of the harvest j of old Thomas's experience and wisdom, had they I 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 BROTHER ACTORS ! 123 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 any subsequent actor of eminence — namely, about one hundred and thirty ! In some single seasons he studied and represented no less than eight original parts — an amount of labour which would shake the nerves of the stoutest among us now. His brief relaxation was spent on his little 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 puppets were not alive ; and so similar in vitality appeared to him, on the same night, at Drury Lane, the Jupiter and Alcmena in '* Amphitryon," played by Betterton and Mrs. Barry, that on being asked what he thought of them, Roger, taking them for puppets, answered, "They did wonderfully well for rags and sticks." Provincial engagements were then unknown. Tra- velling companies, like that of Watkins, visited Bath, a regular company from town going thither only on royal command ; but magistrates ejected strollers from Newbury; and Reading would not tolerate them, even out of respect for Mr. Betterton. At Windsor, however, there was a troop fairly patro- nised, where, in 1 706, a Mistress Carroll, daughter of an old Parliamentarian, was awakening shrill echoes VOL. I. I 124 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 maiTied her; and when, a few months later, Betterton played Sir Thomas Beaumont, in the lady's comedy, "Love at a Ven- ture,"^ 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 dis- cover proofs of Betterton's moral worth and mental power. Glorious Thomas not only associated with *' Glorious John," but became his critic, — one to whom Diyden listened with respect, and to whose suggestions he lent a ready acquiescence. In the poet's " Spanish Friar," there was a passage which spoke of kings' bad titles growing good by time ; a supposed fact which was illustrated by the lines — " So, when clay's burned for a hundred years. It starts forth china ! " The player fearlessly pronounced this passage "meaUy' 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, * Should be Sii- Thomas Beaumont in " Tlie Platonic Lady." STAGE AND PULPIT. 125 and discarded bigotry as he did perukes. He could extend a friendly hand to the benevolent Arian, Fiimin, and welcome, even after he entered the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth, such a visitor as the great actor Betterton. Did objection come from the rigid and ultra-orthodox? — the prelate might have reminded them that it was not so long since a bishop was hanged, and that the player was a far more agreeable and, in every respect, a worthier man than the unlucky diocesan of Waterford. However this may be questioned or conceded, it is indisput- able that when Tillotson and Betterton met, the greatest preacher and the greatest player of the day were together. I think, too, that the divine was, in the above respect, somewhat indebted to the actor. We all remember the story how Tillotson was puzzled to account for the circumstance that his friend the actor exercised a vaster power over human sympathies and antipathies than he had hitherto done as a preacher. The reason was plain enough to Thomas Betterton. " You, in the pulpit," said he, " only tell a story : I, on the stage, show facts." Observe, too, what a prettier way this was of putting it than that adopted by Garrick when one of his clerical friends was similarly perplexed. " I account for it in this way," said the latter Roscius : " You deal with facts as if they were fictions ; I deal with fictions as if I had faith in them as facts." Again, what Betterton thus remarked to Tillotson was a modest comment, which CoUey Gibber has rendered perfect in its application, in the words 126 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. which tell us that " the most a Vandyke can arrive at is to make his Portraits of Great Persons seem to think. A Shakspeare goes farther yet, and tells you ivhat 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 com- ment of Betterton — more gracefully than Bossuet did by the actors, whom he consigned, as such, to the nethermost Gehenna — is the more easily to be believed, from the fact that he introduced into the pulpit the custom of preaching from notes. Thence- forth, he left oJti' "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 1 710, 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 founda- tion for the old legend which told of an ungenerous rivalry between Shakspeare and Old Ben. The player who had been as fearless with Dryden as Socrates was with his friend Euripides — "judiciously lopping" redundant nonsense or false and mean maxims, as Dryden himself confesses — was counsellor, rather than critic or censor, with young Pope. The latter. BETTERTON AND POPE. 127 at the age of twelve years, had written the greater portion of an imitative epic poem, entitled Alcander, Prince of Rhodes. I commend to artists in search of a subject the incident of Pope, at fifteen or six- teen, showing this early effort of his Muse to Bet- terton. It was a poem which abounded in dashing exaggerations, and fair imitations of the styles of the then greater English poets. There was a dramatic vein about it, however, or the player would not have advised the bard to convert his poem into a play. The lad excused himself. He feared encountering either the law of the drama or the taste of the town ; and Betterton left him to his own unfettered way. The actor lived to see that the boy was the better judge of his own powers, for young Pope produced his Essay 07i Criticism the year before Betterton died. A few years later the poet rendered any possible ful- filment of the player's counsel impossible, by dropping the manuscript of Alcander into the flames. Atter- bury 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 128 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. Jervas, and under his instructions, he became an artist — in his way, but yet an artist — if a copier of portraits deserves so lofty a name. In 17 13, he writes to Gay : — " You may guess in how uneasy state I am, when every day the performances of others appear more beautiful and excellent, and my own more despicable. I have thrown away three Dr. Swifts, each of which was once my vanity, two Lady Bridgewaters, a Duchess of Montague, half-a-dozen Earls, and one Knight of the Garter." He perfected, however, and kept his portrait of Betterton, from Kneller, which passed into the collection of his friend Murray, and which is now in that of Murray's descendant, the Earl of Mansfield. Kneller's portrait of Betterton is enshrined among goodly company at princely Knole — the patrimony of the Sackvilles. It is there, with that of his fellow- actor, Mohun, his friend Diyden, and his great suc- cessor 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 sub- due it, render it rapt and hushed to, at the most, a murmur, was work for an artist ; and in such effects no one approached him. And yet the rage of Othello was more " in his line " than the tenderness of Cas- talio ; 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 BETTERTON'S MAGNANIMITY. 129 dignity and earnestness of Betterton were so noto- rious and so attractive, that people flocked only to hear him speak a prologue, while brother actors looked on, admired, and despaired. Age, trials, infirmity, never damped his ardour. Even angry and unsuccessful authors, who railed against the players who had brought their dramas to grief, made exception of Betterton. He was always ready, always perfect, always anxious to effect the utmost within his power. Among the foremost of his merits may be noticed his freedom from all jealousy, and his willingness to assist others up the height which he had himself surmounted. That he played Bassanio to Dogget's Shylock is, perhaps, not saying much by way of illustration ; but that he acted Horatio to Powell's Lothario ; that he gave up Jupiter (Am- phitryon) and Valentine, two of his original parts, to Wilks, and even yielded Othello, one of the most elaborate and exquisite of his *' presentments," to Thurmond, are fair instances in point. When Bowman introduced young Barton Booth to " old Thomas," the latter welcomed him heartily, and after seeing his Maximus, in " Valentinian," recognised in him his successor. At that moment the town, specu- lating on the demise of their favourite, had less dis- cernment. They did not know whether Verbruggen, with his voice like a cracked drum, or idle Powell, with his lazy stage-swing, might aspire to the sove- reignty ; 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. I30 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. When CoUey Gibber first appeared before a Lon- don audience he was a " volunteer " who went in for practice ; and he had the misfortune, on one occa- sion, 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 salaiy ; 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 him- self delighted to honour him. Gharles, James, Queen Mar)', and Queen Anne, sent him assui'ances of their admiration ; but King William admitted him to a private audience, and when the patentees of Drury Lane were, through lack of general patronage, sug- gesting the expediency of a reduction of salaries, great Nassau placed in the hands of Betterton the licence which freed him from the thraldom of the Drury tyrants, and authorised him to open the second theatre erected in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Next to his most sacred Majesty, perhaps the most formidable person- age in the kingdom, in the eyes of the actors, was the Lord Chamberlain, who was master of the very lives of the performers, having the absolute control of the stage whereby they lived. This potentate, however, seemed ever to favour Betterton. Wlien unstable, yet useful, Powell suddenly abandoned Druiy Lane, to join the company in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Gham- ANTHONY ASTON. 131 berlain 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 him- self again to that in the Lane — the angry Lord Cham- berlain sent a " messenger " after him to his lodgings, and clapped the unofiending Thespian, for a couple of days, in the Gate House. While Powell was with Betterton, the latter pro- duced the " Fair Penitent," by Eowe, Mrs. Bariy 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, requir- ing the services of the man in his dressing-room, and not remembering where he was, called aloud for him so repeatedly, and at length so angrily, that Warren leapt up in a fright, and ran from the stage. His cloak, however, had got hooked to the bier, and this he dragged after him, sweeping down, as he dashed off in his confusion, table, lamps, books, bones, and upsetting the astounded Calista herself. Irrepressible laughter convulsed the audience, but Betterton's reve- rence for the dignity of tragedy was shocked, and he stopped the piece in its full career of success, until the town had ceased to think of Warren's escapade. I know of but one man who has spoken of Betterton at all disparagingly — old Anthony Aston. But even that selfish cynic is constrained so to modify his cen- sure 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 perso- 132 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. noted, though," mark the distinction, " not have acted it better.** Aston's grounds for his wish are so many justifications of Betterton ; " for," says Anthony, *' when he threw himself at Ophelia's feet, he appeared a little too grave for a young student just from the University of "Wittenberg." "His repartees," Anthony thinks, " were more those of a philosopher than the sporting flashes of young Hamlet ; " as if Hamlet were not the gravest of students, and the most philo- sophical of young Danes ! Aston caricatures the aged actor only again to commend him. He depreciates the figure which time had touched, magnifies the defects, registers the lack of power, and the slow sameness of action ; hints at a little remains of paralysis, and at gout in the now thick legs, profanely utters the words " fat " and " clumsy," and suggests that the face is ** slightly pock-marked." But we are therewith told that his air was serious, venerable, and majestic ; and that though his voice was " low and gi'umbling, he could turn it by an artful climax which enforced an universal attention even from the fops and orange- girls." Gibber declares that there was such enchant- ment in his voice alone, the multitude no more cared for sense in the words he spoke, " than our musical connoisseurs think it essential in the celebrated airs of an Italian Opera." Again, he says, " Could how Betterton spoke be as easily known as what he spoke, then might you see the Muse of Shakspeare in her triumph." "I never," says honest Colley, "heard a line in tragedy come from Betterton, wherein my judg- ment, my ear, and my imagination were not fully GIBBER, ON BETTERTON. 133 satisfied, which, since his time, I cannot equally say of any one actor whatsoever." This was written in 1 740, the year before little David took up the rich inheri- tance of "old Thomas" — whose Hamlet, however, the latter actor could hardly have equalled. The next great pleasure to seeing Betterton's Hamlet is to read Gibber's masterly analysis of it. A couple of lines reveal to us the leading principle of his Brutus. "When the Betterton-Brutus," says CoUey, "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 1 74 1 , court and city, with doctors of divinity and enthusiastic bishops, were hurrying to Goodman's Fields, to witness the Richard of the gentleman from Ipswich, named Garrick. During the long career of Betterton he played at Drury Lane, Dorset Gardens, Lincoln's Inn Fields (in both theatres), and at the Opera-house in the Haymarket. The highest salary awarded to this great master of his art was ^5 per week, which included £ I by way of pension to his wife, after her retire- ment in 1694. In consideration of his merits, he was allowed to take a benefit in the season of 1 708-9, when the actor had an ovation. In money for admis- sion, he received, indeed, only ^76; but in complimen- 134 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. tar\' guineas, he took home with him to Eiisscll Street ;^450 more. The terms in which the Tatler spoke of him living. — the tender and affectionate, manly and heart-stimng passages in which the same writer be- wailed him when dead, — are eloquent and enduring testimonies of the greatness of an actor, who was the glory of our stage, and of the worth of a man whose loss cost his sorrowing widow her reason.^ ''Decus et Dolor." "The grace and the grief of the theatre." It is well applied to him who laboured incessantly, lived irreproachably, and died in harness, universally esteemed and regretted. He was the jewel of the English stage ; and I never think of him, and of some to whom his example was given in vain, without say- ing, with Overbur}^ ** I value a worthy actor by the corruption of some few of the quality, as I would do gold in the ore ; I should not mind the dross, but the purity of the metal." The feeling of the English public towards Better- ton is in strong contrast with that of the French towards their great actor. Baron. Both men grew old in the public sen^ice, but both were not treated with equal respect in the autumn of that service. Betterton, at seventy, was upheld by general esteem and crowned by general applause. "When Baron, at seventy, was playing Nero, the Paris pit audience, longing for novelty, hissed him as he came down the stage. The fine old player calmly crossed his * It is generally implied, if not stated outright, that Mrs. Betterton never recovered her reason after her husband's death ; but this seems an error, because she made a Will, which is dated loth March 1711-12, when she was presumably sane. THOMAS BETTERTON, GENTLEMAN. 135 arms, and looking his rude assailants in the face, exclaimed, "Ungrateful pit! 'twas I who taught you ! " That was the form of Baron's exit ; and Clairon was as cruelly driven from the scene when her dimming eyes failed to stir the audience with the old, strange, and delicious terror. In other guise did the English public part with their old friend and servant, the noble actor, fittingly described in the licence granted to him by King William, as "Thomas Betterton, Gentleman." Mr Garrick as King Lear. THE DTTKE'S THEATRE, DORSET GARDEN. CHAPTER VI. exeunt" and "enter. After Bettcrton, there was not, in the Duke's Com- pany, a more accomplished actor than Harris. lie 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 hy Mr. Ilailes ; — " in his habit of Henry v., mighty like a player ; " and as Cardinal Wolsey ; which latter portrait may now be seen in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge. HARKIS. 137 Pepys assigns good grounds for his esteem for Harris. "I do find him," says the diarist, "a very excellent person, such as in my whole acquaintance I do not know another better qualified for converse, whether in things of his own trade, or of other kind ; a man of great understanding and observation, and very agreeable in the manner of his discourse, and civil, as far as is possible. I was mighty pleased with his company," a company with which were united, now Killigrew and the rakes, and anon, Cooper the artist, and " Cooper's cosen Jacke," and " Mr. Butler, that wrote Hudibras," being, says Mr. Pepys, " all eminent men in their way." Indeed, Harris was to be found in company even more eminent than the above, and at the great coffee- house in Covent Garden he listened to or talked with Dryden, and held his own against the best wits of the town. The playwrights were there too ; but these were to be found in the coffee-houses, gene- rally, often wrapped up in their cloaks, and eagerly heeding all that the critics had to say to each other respecting the last new play. Harris was aware that in one or two light characters he was Betterton's equal. He was a restless actor, threatening, when discontented, to secede from the Duke's to the King's Company, and causing equal trouble to his manager Davenant, and to his monarch Charles — the two officials most vexed in the settling of the little kingdom of the stage. There was a graceful, general actor of the troop to which Harris belonged, who drew upon himself the 138 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. special observation of the Government at home and an English ambassador abroad. Scudamore was the original Garcia of Congreve's " Mourning Bride ; " he also played amorous young knights, sparkling young gentlemen, scampish French and English beaux, gay and good-looking kings, and roystering kings' sons ; such as Harr}', Prince of Wales. Off the stage, he enacted another part. When King James was in exile, Scudamore was engaged as a Jacobite agent, and he carried many a despatch or message between London and St. Germains. But our ambassador, the Earl of Manchester, had his eye upon him. One of the Earl's despatches to the English Government, written in 1700, concludes with the words : — " One Scudamore, a player in Lincoln's Inn Fields, has been here, and was with the late King, and often at St. Germains. He is now, I believe, at London. Several such sort of fellows go and come very often ; but I cannot see how it is to be prevented, for without a positive oath nothing can be done to them." The date of this despatch is August 1700, at which time the player ought to have been engaged in a less perilous character, for an entiy in Luttrell's Diary, 28th May 1 700, records that " Mr. Scudamore of the play-house is married to a young lady of ^4000 fortune, who fell in love with him." Cave Underbill was another member of Davenant's Company. He was not a man for a lady to fall in love with; but in 1668 Davenant pronounced him the truest comedian of his troop. He was on the CAVE UNDERBILL. 139 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. Underbill 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, viz., on the 3d of June 1709.^ The patronage of the public was previously bespoken by Mr. Bickerstafife, 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 ■^ Anthony Aston, from whom this description is qnoted, says that it was not modesty that prevented his understanding why he was admired, but sheer stupidity. ^ He practically retired from the active work of his profession about 1707. MO THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. the Gravcdigger, 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 proprietors 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-Toiy, addicted in coffee-houses to drink the Duke of York's health more heartily than that of his brother, the King. With rare exchange of actors, and exclusive right of representing particular pieces, the two theatres continued in opposition to each other until the two companies were formed into one in the year 1682. Meanwhile, fire destroyed the old edifice of the King's Company, in Drury Lane, in January 1672, and till Wren's new theatre was ready for them in 1674, the unhoused troop played occasionally at Dorset Gar- dens,^ or at Lincoln's Inn Fields, as opportunity ofi'ered. On the occasion of opening the new house, contemporaiy accounts state that the prices of admis- sion were raised : to the boxes, from 2s. 6d. to 4s. ; pit, 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 19th October 1667, paid 4s. for admittance to the upper boxes, if his record be true." * I can find no authority for this. The Kin<^'s Company appear to have played n:4ularly at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Dorset Garden was the new theatre of the Duke's Company. 2 Pe])y8 is no doubt accurate. The higher prices were charged appar- ently from the opening of the old theatre in 1663. "THE HAUGHTY GEORGE POWELL." 141 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 disappoint- ment, he challenged to single combat, and, in the cool air of " next morning," was sorry for his folly. Idle- ness 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 displea- sure 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 1 7 1 2. " 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 degrada- tion that his example was a wholesome terror to young actors willing to follow it, but fearful of the conse- quences. During his career, from 1687 to 17 14, in which year he died, he originated about forty new parts, and in some of them, such as Brisk, in the ''Double Dealer;" Aboan,in "Oroonoko;" the gallant, gay Lothario ; Lord Morelove, in the " Careless Hus- VOL. I. K 142 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. band;" and Fortius, in " Cato," he has rarely been equalled. On the first night of the " Kelapse," in M liich 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 literaiy contributions to the drama were such as a man of his quality was likely to make, — chiefly plagiarisms awkwardly appropriated. GrifRn 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 Poyal. 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 "FatalJealousy," and Duncan, in "Macbeth;" Otway as the King, in Mrs. Behn's "Forced Marriage." They both failed. Lee, one of the most beautiful of readers, lost his voice through nervousness; Otway, audacious enough at the coffee-houses, lost his confidence. There were eight other actors of the period whose success was unquestionable and well deserved. Little Bow- man, who between this period and 1739, the year of his death, never failed to appear when his name was in the bills. He was a noted bell-ringer, had sung JEVON'S BUFFOONERIES. 143 songs to Charles II., and, when "father of the stage," he exacted applause from the second George. Cade- man 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 be- tween the benevolence of his brethren and the small profits of his publishing, his life was rendered toler- able, 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 nap- kin," said an offended waiter to him. " Never mind, boy," was the reply ; " I'm not proud — it will do for me!" The dust of this jester lies in Hampstead churchyard. ^ Genest conjectures, I think justly, that this must have happened at a rehearsal. Downes says nothing about the house being ecstatic. 144 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. Longer known was Anthony Lee or Leigh, that industrious and mirthful player, who, in the score of years he was before the public — from 1672 to 1692 — originated above thrice that number of characters. His masterpiece was Dryden's Spanish Friar, Domi- nique. IIow 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 h}'po- crisy, of the Spanish Friar, Leigh stretched the veil of piety so thinly over him, that in exexy look, word, and motion, you saw a palpable, wicked shuess shine throughout it. Here he kept his vivacity demurely confined, till the pretended duty of his function demanded it : and then he exerted it with a choleric, sacerdotal insolence. I have never yet seen any one that has filled them" (the scenes of broad jests) " with half the truth and spirit of Leigh. I do not doubt but the poet's knowledge of Leigh's genius helped him to many a pleasant stroke of nature, which, without that knowledge, never might have entered into his conception." Leigh had the art of making pieces — dull to the reader, side- splitting mirth to an audience. In such pieces he and Nokes kept up the ball between them ; but with the players perished also the plays. 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 SANDFOED AND SMITH. 145 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- 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" (171 7), and Bickerstajffe's "Hypocrite" (1768), were only adaptations — the first of "Tartuff"e," and the second of the "Nonjuror." Mr. Gxenford, how- ever, reproduced the original in a more perfect form than Medbourne, in a translation in verse, which was brought out at the Haymarket, in 1 85 1, with a success most honestly earned by all, and especially deserving on the part of Mr. Webster, who played the principal character. Sandford and Smith were two actors whose names constantly recur together, but whose merits were not all of the same degree. The tall, handsome, manly Smith, frequently played Banquo ; when his ghost, in the same tragedy, was represented by the short, spare, drolly ill-featured, and undignified Sandford ! The latter was famous for his villains — from those of tragedy to ordinary stage ruffians in broad belt and black wig — permanent type of those wicked people in melodramas to this day. This idiosyncrasy amusingly puzzled Gharles II., who, in supposed allusion to Shaftesbury, declared that the greatest villain of his time was fair-haired. 146 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. The public of his period were so accustomed to see Sandford represent the malignant heroes, that when they once saw him as an honest man, who did not prove to be a crafty knave before the end of the fifth act, they hissed the piece out of sheer vexation. Sandford rendered villainy odious by his forcible representation of it. By a look, he could win the attention of an audience "to whatever he judged worth more than their ordinary notice;" and by attending to the punctuation of a passage, he divested it of the jingle of rhyme, or the measured monotony of blank verse. So misshapen, harsh, fierce, yet craftily gentle and knavi silly persuasive could Sandford render himself, Cibber believes that Shakspeare, conscious of other qualities in him, would have chosen him to repre- sent Richard, had poet and player been contempora- neous. The generous Colley adds, that if there was anything good in his own Richard, it was because he had modelled it after the fashion in which he thought Sandford would have represented that monarch. Sandford withdrew from the stage, after thirty-seven years' service, commencing in 1661 and terminating in 1698. The career of his more celebrated colleague. Smith, extended only from 1663 to 1696, and that with the interruption of several years when his strong Toryism made him unacceptable to the prejudiced Whig audiences of the early part of the reign of "William.^ He originally represented Sir Fopling * Very doubtful. The cause of his retirement was no doubt the AN ACTOE OF SPIRIT. 147 Flutter (1676), and Pierre (1682); Chamont (1680), in "The Orphan," and Scandal (1695), in "Love for Love." In the following year he died in harness. The long part of Cyaxares, in " Cyrus the Great," overtaxed his strength, and on the fourth represen- tation 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 Gibber, with fine satire, "whose character as a gentleman could have been no way impeached, had he not degraded it by being a celebrated actor, had the misfortune, in a dispute with a gentleman behind the scenes, to receive a blow from him. The same night an account of this action was carried to the King, to whom the gentleman was represented so grossly in the wrong, that the next day his Majesty sent to forbid him the court upon it. This indignity cast upon a gentleman only for maltreating a player, was looked upon as the concern of every gentleman ! and a party was soon formed to assert and vindicate their honour, by humbling this favoured actor, whose slight injury had been judged equal to so severe a notice. Accordingly, the next time Smith acted, he was received with a chorus of cat- calls, that soon convinced him he should not be suffered to proceed in his part ; upon which, with- out the least discomposure, he ordered the curtain qiiarrel afterwards mentioned. If he was off the stage for eleven years, as Dr. Doran says, he must have retired in 1684, long Lefore William was king. 148 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. to be dropped, and having a competent fortune of his own, tlionght the conditions of adding to it, by remaining on the stage, were too dear, and from tliat day entirely quitted it." Not " entirely," for he returned to it in 1695, after a secession of eleven years, under the persuasion, it is believed, of noble friends and ancient comrades. Dr. Burney states that the audience made a political matter of it. If so, Whigs and Tories had not long to contend, for the death of this refined player soon supervened. Of the two most eminent ladies who joined the Uuke's Company previous to the union of the two houses. Lady Slingsby (formerly Mrs. Aldridge, next Mrs. Lee,) is of note for the social rank she achieved ; Mrs. Barry for a theatrical reputation which placed her on a level with Betterton himself. Lady Slingsby withdrew from the stage in 1685, after a brief course of ten or a dozen years. She died in the spring of 1694, and was interred in old St. Pancras churchyard, as " Dame Mary Slingsby, Widow." That is the sum of what is known of a lady whom report connects with the Yorkshire baronets of Scriven. Of her colleague, there is more to be said ; but the " famous Mrs. Barry " may claim a chapter to herself. RIVER VIEW OP DUKE'S THEATRE. CHAPTER VII. ELIZABETH BARRY The "great Mrs. Barry," the Handbook of London tells us, lies buried in Westminster Cloisters. I did not there look for her tomb. To come at the grave of the great actress, I passed through Acton Vale and into the ugliest of village churches, and, after service, asked to be shown the tablet which recorded the death and burial of Elizabeth Barry. The pew- opener directed me to a mural monument which, I found, bore the name of one of the family of Smith ! I remonstrated. The good woman could not ac- count for it. She had always taken that for Elizabeth I50 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. Barn's monument. It was in the church somewhere. " There is no stone to any such person in this church," said the clerk, " and I know 'em all ! " We walked down the aisle discussing the matter, and paused at the staircase at the west end ; and as I looked at the wall, while still conversing, I saw in the shade the tablet which Curll says is outside, in God's xlcre, 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, 171 3, aged 55 years." "That is she!" said I. The two officials looked puzzled and inquiring. At length the pew-opener ventured to ask : " And who was she, sir ? " " The original Monimia, Belvidera, Isabella, Calista " " Lor ! " said the good woman, '* only a player ! " " Only a player ! " This of the daughter of an old Cavalier ! The seventeenth ccntuiy gave many ladies to the stage, and Elizabeth Bany was certainly the most famous of them. She was the daughter of a barrister, who raised a regiment for the King, and thereby was himself raised to the rank of colonel. The effort did not help his ]\Iajesty, 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 ^ Curll, in his History of the Stage (1741), savs it was Lady Dave- nant, a particular friend of Sir William Davenant. ^ MRS. BARRY AND LORD ROCHESTER. 151 light eyes beneath her dark hair and brows was as yet mere girlish spirit ; it was not intelligence. That was given her by Rochester. Davenant was in despair at her dulness ; but he acknowledged the dignity of her manners. At three separate periods managers rejected her. " She will never be an actress ! " they exclaimed. Rochester protested that he would make her one in six months. The wicked young Earl, who lived in Lincoln's Inn Fields, near the theatre, became her master, and, of course, fell in love with his pupil. The pains he bestowed upon his young mistress were infinite. Sentence by sentence he made her understand her author ; and the intelligence of the girl leaped into life and splendour under such instruction. To fami- liarise 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 M^hen she was about to enact Isabella, the Hungarian Queen, in " Mustapha," the page who bore her train was tutored so to move as to aid in the display of grace and majesty which was to charm the town. For some time, however, the town refused to re- cognise 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 152 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. audience were. At the head of the latter were Charles II. and the Duke and Duchess of York. Rochester had asked for their presence, and they came to add to the triumph of Colonel Barry's daughter. Crabbed old Anthony Aston, the actor and prompter, spoke disparagingly of the young lady. According to him, she was no colonel's daughter, but " woman to Lady Shelton, my godmother." The two condi- tions were not incompatible. It was no unusual thing to find a lady in straitened circumstances fulfilling the ofiice 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 Bany was in parts which she had studied under her preceptor. Lord Rochester, she cannot be said to have established herself as the greatest actress of her time till the year 1680. L"p to this period she appeared in few characters suited to her abilities. In tragedies, she enacted the confidants to the gi^eat theatrical queens, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Bet- terton ; in comedies, the rattling, reckless, and auda- cious women, at whose sallies the pit roared approba- tion, and the box ladies were not much startled. But, in the year just named, Otway produced his tragedy of "The Orphan, or the Unhappy Marriage," in which Mrs. Barry was the Monimia to the Castalio of Bet- terton. On the same night the part of the Page was charmingly played by a future gi-eat actress, Mrs. Bracegirdle, then not six years old. In Monimia, Mrs. Barry exercised some of those attributes which GIBBER, ON MRS. BARRY. 153 she possessed above all actresses Gibber had ever seen, and which those who had not seen her were unable to conceive. " In characters of greatness," says Gibber, in his Apology, " she had a presence of elevated dig- nity ; her mien and motion superb, and gracefully ma- jestic ; 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 sub- sided into the most affecting melody and softness." From the position which she took by acting Mo- nimia, Mrs. Barry was never shaken by any rival, however eminent. Her industry was as indefatigable as that of Betterton. During the thirty-seven years she was on the stage, beginning at Dorset Gardens, in 1673, and ending at the Haymarket, in 17 10, she originated one hundred and twelve characters ! Mo- nimia was the nineteenth of the characters of M'hich she was the original representative ; the first of those which mark the "stations" of her glory. In 1682, she added another leaf to the chaplet of her own and Otway's renown, by her performance of Belvidera. In the softer passions of this part she manifested herself the "mistress of tears," and night after night the town flocked to weep at her bidding, and to enjoy the luxury of woe. The triumph endured for years. Her Monimia and Belvidera were not even put aside by her Gassandra, in the "Gleomenes" of Dryden, first actea at the Theatre Eoyal, 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 154 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. praise is not unduly applied ; for ISIrs. Bany could give expression to the rant of Drydcn, and even to that of Lee, without ever verging towards bombast. "In scenes of anger, defiance, or resentment," writes Gibber, ** while she was impetuous and temble, she poured out the sentiment with an enchanting har- mony." Anthony Aston describes her in tragedy as *' solemn and august ; " and she, perhaps, was never more so than in Isabella, the heroine of the tragic drama rather than tragedy, by Southerne, '* The Fatal Marriage." Aston remarks, that " her face ever expressed the passions ; it somewhat preceded her action, as her action did her words." Her versatility was marvellous, and it is not ill illustrated by the fact that in the same season she created two such opposite characters as Lady Brute, in Vanbrugh's " Provoked Wife," and Zara, in Congreve's " Mourning Bride." The last of her great tragic triumphs, in a part of which she was the original representative, occurred in 1 703, 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. Bany did not fall short of them in the heroine ; and she perhaps surpassed expectation, when, in 1705, she elicited the admiration of the town by her creation of the sparkling character of Clarissa, in " The Con- federacy." By this time she was growing rich in wealth as well as in gloiy. In former days, when the play was over, the attendant boy used to call for " Mrs. Barry's clogs ! " or " Mrs. Bracegirdle's "POINTS." 155 pattens!" but noiv, "Mrs. Barry's chair" was as familiar a sound as " Mrs. Oldfield's." If she was not invariably wise in the stewardship of her money, some portions were expended in a judicious manner creditable to her taste. At the sale of Betterton's effects, she purchased the picture of Shakspeare which Betterton bought from Davenant, who had pur- chased 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. TJieir 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 efhgy of Shakspeare passed with another bride into another house, Lady Anne Brydges, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess, carrying it with her to Stowe on her marriage with the Marquis of Buckingham, subsequently Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. The Chandos portrait of the great dramatist is thus descended. Mrs. Barry, like many other eminent members of her profession, was famous for the way in which she uttered some single expression in the play. The *' Look there ! " of Spranger Barry, as he passed the body of Rutland, always moved the house to tears. So, the " Remember twelve ! " of Mrs. Siddon's Bel- videra ; the " Well, as you guess ! " of Edmund Kean's Richard; the " Qu'en dis tu?" of Talma's Auguste ; the " Je crois 1 " of Rachel's Pauline ; the 156 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. *' Je vois ! " of Mademoiselle Mars's Valerie, were " points " which never failed to excite an audience to enthusiasm. But there were two phrases with which Mrs. Barry could still more deeply move an audience. AVhcu, in " The Orphan," she pronounced the words, " Ah, poor Castalio ! " not only did the audience weep, but the actress herself shed tears abundantly. The other phrase was in a scene of Banks's puling tragedy, "The Unhappy Favourite, or the Earl of Essex." In that play, Mrs. Barry represented Queen Elizabeth, and that with such efiect that it was currently said, the people of her day knew more of Queen Elizabeth from her imper- sonation of the character than they did from history. The apparently commonplace remark, " What mean my grieving subjects?" was invested by her with such emphatic grace and dignity, as to call up murmurs of approbation which swelled into thunders of applause. Mary of Modena testified her admira- tion 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 corona- tion. Thus attired, the queen of the hour represented the Elizabeth, with which enthusiastic crowds became so'much more familiar than they were with the Eliza- beth 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 RIVAL QUEENS. 157 gesture." So entirely did she surrender herself to the influences of the characters she represented, that in stage dialogues she often turned pale or flushed red, as varying passions prompted. With the audience she was never for a moment out of favour after she had made her merit apparent. They acknowledged no greater actress, — with the single exception of Mrs. Betterton in the character of Lady Macbeth. Nevertheless, on and behind the stage Mrs. Barry's supremacy was sometimes 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 ward- robe 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 exas- perated 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 158 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. the exclamation of " Die, sorceress, die ! and all my wrongs die with thee ! " sent her polished dagger right through the stiff armour of Mrs. Bputell's stays. The consequences were a scratch and a shriek, but there was no great harm done. An investigation fol- lowed, and some mention was made of a real jealousy existing in Mrs. Bariy's breast in reference to an admirer of loAver rank than Alexander, lured from her feet by the little, flute-voiced Boutell. The deed itself was, however, mildly construed, and Mrs Bany was believed when she declared that she had been car- ried away by the illusion and excitement of the scene. We shall see the same scene repeated, with similar stage effects, by Mrs. Woffington and Mrs. Bellamy. If there were a lover to add bitterness to the quarrel engendered by the veil, Mrs. Bany might have well spared one of whom she possessed so many. Without being positively a transcendent beauty, her attractions were confessed by many an Antony from the country, who thought their world of acres well lost for the sake of a little sunshine from the eyes of this vanquishing, imperious, banquetting, heart and purse destroying Cleopatra. There were two classes of men who made epigi'ams, or caused others to make them against her, namely, the adorers on whom she ceased to smile, and those on whom she refused to smile at all. The coffee-house poetry which these perpetrated against her is the reverse of pleasant to read ; but, under the protection of such a wit as Etherege, or such a fine gentleman as Rochester, Mrs. Barry cared little for her puny assailants. MRS. BARRY'S RETIREMENT. 159. Tom Brown taxed her with mercenary feelings ; but against that and the humour of writers who affected intimate acquaintance with her affairs of the heart and purse, and as intimate a knowledge of the amount which Sir George Etherege and Lord Rochester bequeathed to their respective daughters, of whom Mrs. Barry was the mother, she was armed. Neither of these children survived the " famous actress." She herself hardly survived Betterton — at least on the stage. The day after the great tragedian's final appearance, Mrs. Barry trod the stage for the last time. The place was the old Haymarket, the play the " Spanish Friar," in which she enacted the Queen. And I can picture to myself the effect of the famous passage, when the Queen impetuously betrays her overwhelming love. " Haste, my Teresa, haste; and call him back!" "Prince Bertram?" asks the confidant ; and then came the full burst, breaking through all restraint, and revealing a woman who seemed bathed in love. " Torrismond ! There is no other he ! " Mrs. Barry took no formal leave of the stage, but quietly withdrew from St. Mary-le-Savoy, in the Strand, to the pleasant village of Acton. Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Knight, and Mrs. Bradshaw, suc- ceeded to her theatrical dominion, by partition of her characters. If tragedy lost its queen, Acton gained a wealthy lady. Her professional salary had not been large, but her " benefits " were very productive ; they who admired the actress or who loved the woman, alike VOL. I. L i6o THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. pouring out gold and jewels in her lap. It was especially for her that performers' benefits were first devised. Authors alone had hitherto profited by such occasions, but, in recognition of her merit, King James commanded one to be given on her behalf, and what was commenced as a compliment soon passed into a custom. In a little more than three years from the date when the curtain fell before her for the last time, Elizabeth Bany died. Brief resting season after such years of toil ; but, perhaps, sufiicient for better ends after a career, too, of unbridled pleasure ! *' This great actress," says Gibber, " dy'd of a fever, towards the latter years of Queen Anne ; the year I have forgot, but perhaps you wiU recollect it, by an expres- sion that fell from her in blank verse, in her last hours, when she was delirious, viz. — " Ha ! lia ! and so they make us lords, by dozens ! " This, however, does not settle the year so easily as CoUey thought. In December 1 7 1 1 , 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 171 3, and the utterance of the words quoted above only indicates that her wandering memory was then dealing with incidents full two years old. They who would sec how Mrs. Barry looked living, have only to consult Knellcr's grand picture, in which she is represented with her fine hair drawn back from MRS. BARRY AND LA CHAMPMESLE. i6i her forehead, the face full, fair, and rippling with intellect. The eyes are inexpressibly beautiful. Of all her living beauty, living frailty, and living intel- ligence, 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 Champmesle." This French lady was the original Hermione, Berenice, Monimia, and Phaedra. 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- mesle, 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 Champmesle 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 hurried to perdition by so resplendent and destructive a genius, was a matter of exultation ! Having sketched the outline of Mrs. Barry's career, I proceed to notice some of her able, though less illustrious, colleagues. CONTEST FOR DOGGET'S COAT AND BADGE. CHAPTEE VIII. THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE. On the i6th November 1682, the United Company, the flower of both houses, opened their season at the Theatre Royal, in Drury Lane. The theatre in Dorset Gardens was only occasionally used ; and from 1682 to 1695 there was but one theatre in London. Betterton and Mrs. Barry were, of course, at the head of this company, to which there came some accessions of note ; among others Mrs. Percival, better known as Mrs. Mountfort, and finally as Mrs. Verbruggen. A greater accession was that of the charming Mrs. Bracegirdle. The third lady was Mrs. MRS. MOUNTFORT. 163 Jordan, a name to be made celebrated by a later and a greater actress, who had no legal claim to it. Of the new actors, some only modestly laid the foundations of their glory in this company. Chief of these was Colley Gibber, 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'Am- boise," and of seventeen, as Sigismond in Powell's "Alphonso." Bowen, too, began with coachmen, and similar small parts, while that prince of the droll fellows of his time, Pinkethman, commenced his career with a tailor's part, of six lines in length, in Shadwell's " Volunteers." Among the other new actors were Mountfort,^ Norris,^ and Doggett, with Verbruggen (or Alexander, as he sometimes called himself, from the character which he loved to play) ; Gillow, Carlisle, Hodgson, and Peer. Amid these names, that of Mrs. Mountfort stands out the most brilliantly. Her portrait has been so exquisitely limned by Colley Cibber, that we see her as she lived, and moved, and spoke. " Mrs. Mountfort was mistress of more variety of humour than I ever knew in any one actress. This variety, too, was attended with an equal vivacity, which made her excellent in characters extremely different. As she was naturally a pleasant mimic, she had the skill to make that talent useful on the stage. Where the elocution is round, distinct, voluble, and various, as Mrs. Mountfort's was, the 1 Mountfort seems to have acted as early as 1678. ^ Norris does not appear in tlie bills till 1699. I64 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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,' w^hich part she acted, she trans- formed her whole being — body, shape, voice, lan- guage, look and features — iuto almost another animal, with a strong Devonshire dialect, a broad laughing voice, a poking head, round shoulders, an unconcciving eye, and the most bedizening, dowdy dress that ever covered the untrained limbs of a Joan Trot. To have seen her here, you would have thought it impossible that the same could ever have been recovered to, what was as easy to her, the gay, the lively, and the desirable. Nor was her humour limited to her sex, for while her shape permitted, she was a more adroit, pretty fellow than is usually seen upon the stage. Her easy air, action, mien, and gesture, quite changed from the coif to the cocked- hat and cavalier in fashion. People were so fond of A PICTURE IN WORDS. 165 seeing her a man that when the part of Bayes, in 'The Eehearsal,' had for some time lain dormant, she was desired to take it up, which I have seen her act with all the true coxcombly spirit and humour that the sufficiency of the character required. "But what found most employment for her whole various excellence at once was the part of Melantha, in ' Mariage a la Mode.' Melantha is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and body, are in a continual hurry to be something more than is necessary or commendable. The first ridiculous airs that break from her are upon a gallant, never seen before, who delivers her a letter from her father, recommending him to her good graces as an honourable lover. Here, now, one would think that she might naturally show a little of the sex's decent reserve, though never so slightly covered. No, sir ! not a tittle of it ! Modesty is the virtue of a poor-souled countiy gentlewoman. She is too much a court-lady to be under so vulgar a confusion. She reads the letter, therefore, with a careless, dropping lip, and an erected brow, humming it hastily over, as if she were impatient to outgo her father's commands, by making a complete conquest of him at once ; and that the letter might not embarrass her attack, crack ! she crumbles it at once into her palm, and pours upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and i66 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 im- pertinence, 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 engage- ment to half a score visits, which she sivinis from him to make, with a promise to return in a twinkling." Happy Mrs. Mountfort, w^hom, 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 Batchelor;" and as Mrs. Yerbruggen, — Charlotte Welldon, in " Oroonoko ; " ^ Lady Lurewell, in the " Constant Couple ; " and Bizarre, in the " Inconstant." She died in 1703. In some respects, Mrs. Bracegirdle, who was on the stage from 1680 to 1707, and subsequently lived in easy retirement till 1 748, was even superior to Mrs. Mountfort. Mrs. Bariy 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, * Dr. Doran spells " Oroonoko " wrong throughout. In this he fol- lows Genest ; but the latter corrects his blunder in his " errata." MRS. BRACEGIRDLE. 167 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 friend- ships 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 Avith her, because of her youth, her cheerful gaiety, her musical 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 in- telligence and expression which are superior to mere beauty. She so enthralled her audience that, it is quaintly said, she never made an exit without the audience feeling as if they had moulded their faces into an imitation of hers. Then she was as good, practically, as she was beautiful ; and the poor of the neighbourhood in which she resided looked upon her as a beneficent divinity. Her performance of Statira was considered a justi- fication of the frantic love of such an Alexander as Lee's; and "when she acted Millamant, all the faults, follies, and afl^ectation of that agreeable tyrant were i68 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. venially melted down into so many charms and attrac- tions of a conscious beauty." Young gentlemen of the town pronounced themselves in tender but unre- quited love with her. Jack, Lord Lovelace, sought a return for his ardent homage, and obtained not what he sought. Authors vrrote characters for her, and poured out their own passion through the medium of her adorers in the comedy. For her, Congreve com- posed his Ai'aminta and his Cynthia, his Angelica, his Almeria, and the Millamant, in the " Way of the World," which Gibber 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 pro- mised union of wit and beauty ; and even Congreve, not in the best taste, illustrated her superiority to himself, when he wrote of her — • " Pious Belinda goes to prayers Whene'er I ask the favour, Yet the tender fool's in tears When she thinks I'd leave her. Would I were free from this restraint. Or else had power to win her ; Would she could make of me a saint, Or I of her a sinner." The most singular testimony ever rendered to this virtue occurred on the occasion when Dorset, Devon- shire, Halifax, and other peers, were making of that virtue a subject of eulogy over a bottle. Halifax re- marked, they might do something better than praise her; and thereon he put down two hundred guineas, MRS. BRACEGIRDLE'S CHASTITY. 169 which the contributions of the company raised to eight hundred, — and this sum was presented to the lady, as a homage to the rectitude of her private character. Whether she accepted this tribute, I do not know; but I know that she declined another from Lord Bur- lington, who had long loved her in vain. " One day," says Walpole, " he sent her a present of some fine old china. She told the servant he had made a mistake ; that it was true the letter was for her, but the china for his lady, to whom he must carry it. Lord ! the countess was so full of gratitude, when her husband came home to dinner." Mrs. Bracegirdle lived to pass the limit of fourscore, and to the last was visited by much of the wit, the worth, and some of the folly of the town. On one occasion, a group of her visitors were discussing the merits of Garrick, whom she had not seen, and Gibber spoke disparagingly of his Bayes, preferring in that part his own pert and vivacious son, Theophilus. The old actress tapped Colley with her fan; "Come, come, Gibber," she remarked; "tell me if there is not some- thing like envy in your character of this young gentle- man. The actor who pleases everybody must be a man of merit." Golley smiled, tapped his box, took a pinch, and, catching the generosity of the lady, replied : " Faith, Bracey, I believe you are right ; the young fellow is clever ! " Between 1682 and 1695, ^^^ actors were of greater note than luckless Will Mountfort, of whose violent death the beauty of Mrs. Bracegirdle was the unin- J70 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. tentional cause. Handsome Will was the efficient representative of fops who did not forget that they were gentlemen. So graceful, so ardent, so winning as a lover, actresses enjoyed the sight of him plead- ing at their feet. In the younger tragic characters he was equally effective. His powers of mimicry won for him the not too valuable patronage of Judge Jeffries, to gratify whom, and the lord mayor and minor city magnates, in 1685, Mountfort pleaded before them in a feigned cause, in which, says Jacobs, " he aped all the great lawyers of the age in their tone of voice, and in their action and gesture of body," to the delight of his hearers. On the stage, he was one of the most natural of actors ; and even Queen Mary was constrained to allow, that disgusted as she was with Mrs. Behn's " Kover," she could not but admire the grace, ease, intelligence, and genius of Mountfort, who played the dissolute hero, sang as well as he spoke, and danced with stately dignity. But poor Will was only the hero of a brief hour ; and the inimitable original of Sir Courtly Nice was murdered by two of the most consummate villains of the order of gentlemen then in town. Charles, Lord Mohun, had, a few years previous to this occurrence, been tried with the Earl of Warwick for a murder, arising out of a coffee-house brawl ;^ on being acquitted by the House of Lords, he solemnly promised never to get into such a difficulty again. But one Captain Richard Hill, being in " love " with * The trial of Mohun and "Warwick took place seven years after Mountfort's death — that is, in 1699. MOUNTFORT'S DEATH. 171 Mrs. Bracegirdle, who heartily despised him, wanted a villain's assistance in carrying ofi' the beautiful actress, and found the man and the aid he needed in Lord Mohun. In Buckingham Court, off the Strand, where the captain lodged, the conspirators laid their plans ; and learning that Mrs. Bracegirdle, with her mother and brother, was to sup one evening at the house of a friend, Mr. Page, in Princes Street, Drury Lane, they hired six soldiers — emissaries always then to be had for such work — to assist in seizing her and carrying her off in a carriage, stationed near Mr. Page's house. About ten at night, of the 9th December 1692, the attempt was made ; but what with the lady's screams, the resistance of the friend and brother, and the gathering of an excited mob, it failed ; and a strange compromise was made, whereby Lord Mohun and Hill were allowed to unite in escort- ing 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 cap- tain remained in the street — the latter with a drawn sword in his hand, and both of them occasionally drinking canary — sent to Mrs. Mountfort, to warn her husband, who was from home, to look to his safety. Warned, but not alarmed, honest Will, who loved his wife and respected Mrs. Bracegirdle, came round from Norfolk Street, saluted Lord Mohun (who embraced him, according to the then fashion with men), and said a word or two to his lordship, not complimentaiy to the character of Hill. Thence, 173 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. from the latter — words, a blow, and a pass of his sword through Mountfort's body — which the poor actor, as he lay dying on the floor of his own dining- room, declai'ed, was given by Hill before Mountfort could draw his sword. The captain fled from Eng- land, but my lord, surrendering to the watchmen of the Duchy of Lancaster, was tried by his peers, four- teen of whom pronounced him guilty of murder ; but as above threescore gave a difl'erent verdict, Mohun lived on till he and the Duke of Hamilton hacked one another to death in that savage butchery — the famous duel in Hyde Park.^ Mountfort, at the age of thirty-three, and with some reputation as the author of half-a-dozen dramas, was carried to the burying-ground of St. Clement's Danes, where his remains rest with those of Lowen, one of the original actors of Shakspeare's plays, Tom Otway, and Nat. Lee. His fair and clever widow became soon the wife of Verbruggen — a rough diamond — a wild, untaught, yet not an unnatural actor. So natural, indeed, was he, that Lord Halifax took Oroonoko from Powell, who was originally cast for it, and gave it to Verbruggen. Such was the power of Lord Chamberlains ! He could touch tenderly the finer feelings, as well as excite the wilder emotions of the heart. Powell, on the other hand, was a less impassioned player, who would appear to have felt more than he made his audience feel, for in the 1 It is only fair to Hill to say that Dr. Doran adopts a theory re- gardinj:; the death of Mountfort which is, at least, doubtful. It is quite as possible that he was killed in a fair fight with Hill VERBRUGGEN. 173 original Spectator, No. 290, February 171 2, Powell begs the public to believe, that if he pauses long in Orestes, he has not forgotten his part, but is only overcome at the sentiment. Verbruggen died in 1708. Among his many original characters were Oroonoko, Bajazet, Alta- mont, and Sullen. He survived his wife about five years. I think if she loved Will Mountfort, she stood in some awe of fiery Jack Verbruggen ; who, in his turn, seems to have had more of a rough courtesy than a warm affection for her. " For he would often say," remarks Anthony Aston, "D — me ! though I don't much value my wife, yet nobody shall affront her ! " and his sword was drawn on the least occasion, which was much in fashion in the latter end of King William's reign. And let me add here, that an actor's sword was sometimes drawn for the king. James Carlisle, a respectable player, whose comedy, " The Fortune Hunters," was well received in 1689, was not so tempted by success as to prefer authorship to soldiership in behalf of a great cause. When the threatened destruction of the Irish Pro- testants was commenced with the siege of London- derry, Carlisle entered King William's army, serving in Ireland. In 169 1, he was in the terrible fray in the morass at Aghrim, under Ginkell, but imme- diately led by Talmash. In the twilight of that July day, the Jacobite general, St. Ruth, and the poor player from Drury Lane, were lying among the dead ; and there James Carlisle was buried, with the remainder of the six hundred slain on the victor's 174 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. side, before their surviving 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 i6th, 1700, shows that he left the stage for a time, and under sin- gular circumstances. The paragraph runs thus : — " We hear that this day Mr. Bowen, the late famous comedian at the new Play-house, being convinced by Mr. Collier's book against the stage, and satisfied that a shopkeeper's life was the readiest way to heaven of the two, opens a cane shop, next door to the King's Head Tavern, in Middle Bow, Holborn, where it is not questioned but all manner of canes, toys, and other curiosities, will be obtained at reasonable rates. This sudden change is admired at, as well as the reasons which induced him to leave such a profitable employ ; but the most judicious conclude it is the effect of a certain person's good nature, who has more compassion for his soul than for his own." Bowen was not absent from the stage more than a year. He was so jealous of his reputation, that when he had been driven to fury by the assertion that John- son played Jacomo, in the "Libertine," better than he did, and by the emphatic confirmation of the asser- tion by Quin, he fastened a quarrel on the latter, got him in a room in a tavern, alone, set his back to the door, drew his sword, and assailed Quin with such blind fury, that he killed himself by falling on Quin's weapon. The dying Irishman, however, generously acquitted his adversary of all blame, and the greater " JUBILEE DICKY." 175 actor, after trial, returned to his duty, having inno- cently 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 excellently well. Nature had made him for them ; but she was not constant to her meek and lean favourite ; for Peer grew fat, and being unable to act any other character Avith equal effect, he lost his vocation, and he died lingeringly of grief, in 1713, when he had passed threescore years and ten. He had been property-man also, and in this capacity the theatre owed him, at the time of his decease, among other trifling sums, "threepence, for blood, in 'Macbeth.' " ^ 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 de- rive value from it, and were announced as the sons of ^ Dr. Doran in his MS. gives the following curious and valuable note, regarding Quin's trial and punishment, which states a fact abso- lutely unknown to any of Quin's biographers : — " 1718. The papers of the day say that Quin and Bowen fought on the question which was the honester man. The coroner's inquest found it ' Se Defendendo ; ' but an Old Bailey jury returned a verdict of Manslaughter, and at the end of the Session I find, among the names of malefactors sent to Tyburn, or otherwise punished, ' Mr. Quin, the comedian, burnt in the hand.' " ^ This is taken from the Guardian, No. 82. Geuest calls it a humorous account of him. 176- THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. Jubilee Dicky. He is said to have acted Cato, and other tragic characters, in a serio-burlesque manner. He was the original Scrub, and Don Lopez in the "Wonder," and died about the year 1733. Dogget, -vvho was before the public from 1691 to 1 713, and who died in 1721, was a Dublin man — a fjiilure 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 cha- racter. Congreve discerned his talent, and wrote for him Fondlewife in the " Old Batchelor," Sir Paul Pliant in the "Double Dealer," and the veiy diflferent 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 Druiy Lane Theatre, with Gibber and Wilks (from 1709 to 171 2), on the admission of Booth, which displeased him, he was considered worth ^1000 a year. The consciousness of his value, and his own independence of character, gave some trouble to managers and Lord Chamberlains. On one occasion, having left Drury Lane, at some ofifence 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 DOGGET'S BADGE. 177 guarding his own interests, are now forgotten. Of his strong political feeling we still possess a trace. Dogget was a staunch Whig. The accession of the house of Brunswick, dated from a first of August. On that day, in 17 16, and under George I., Dogget gave " an oranp'e-coloured livery, with a badge, re- presenting Liberty," to be rowed for by six water- men, whose apprenticeship had expired during the preceding year. He left funds for the same race to be rowed for annually, from London Bridge to Chelsea, " on the same day for ever." The match still takes place, with modifications caused by changes on and about the river ; but the winners of the money- prizes, now delivered at Fishmongers' Hall, have yet to be thankful for that prudence in Dogget, which was sneered at by his imprudent contemporaries. Dogget never took liberties with an audience ; Pinkethman was much addicted to that bad habit. He would insert nonsense of his own, appeal to the galleiy, 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 dis- approbation. He did not lose his self-possession ; but assuming a penitent air, with a submissive glance at the audience, he said in a stage aside, " Odso, I believe I have been in the wrong here ! " This cleverly-made confession brought down a round of applause, and " Pinkey " made his exit, corrected, but not disgraced. Another trait of his stage life is worthy of notice. He had been remarkable for his VOL. I. M 178 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 audacity and vivacity only returned on his again assuming the sable vizard. Pinkethman was entirely the architect of his own fortune. He made his way by talent and industiy. He established the Richmond Theatre, and there was no booth at Greenwich, Richmond, or May-Fair, so well patronised as his. " He's the darling of Fortunatus" says Downes, " and has gained more in theatres and fairs in twelve years than those who have tupjged at the oar of acting these fifty." After the division of the company into two, in 1695, the following new actors appeared between that period and the close of the century. At Drury Lane, Hilde- brand Horden, ISIrs. 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, Verbruggen, who joined from Drury Lane, leaving his clever wife there. Pack ; and, that this house might boast a glory something like that enjoyed by its rival, in Mrs. Oldfield, — in 1700 Booth made his first appearance, with a success, the 1 The elder Mrs. Gibber (second edition). NEW ACTORS. 179 significance of which was recognised and welcomed by the discerning and generous Betterton. Mrs. Oldfield, Wilks, and Booth, like Colley Gibber, though they appeared towards the close of the seven- teenth, 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 promis- ing actor, who died of a brawl at the Hose Tavern, Covent Garden. He and two or three comrades were quaffing their wine, and laughing, at the bar, when some fine gentlemen, in an adjacent room, affecting to be disturbed by the gaiety of the players, rudely ordered them to be quiet. The actors returned an answer which brought blood to the cheek, fierce words to the lips, hand to the sword, and a resulting fight, in which the handsome Hildebrand was slain by a Captain Burgess. The captain was carried to the Gate-house, from which, says the Protestant Mercury, he was rescued at night, " by a dozen or more of fellows with short clubs and pistols." So ended, in 1696, Hildebrand Horden, not without the sympathy of loving women, who went in masks, and some with- out the vizard, to look upon and weep over his hand- some, shrouded corpse. A couple of paragraphs in Luttrell's Diary conclude Horden's luckless story : "Saturday, 17th October, Mr. John Pitts was tried at the session for killing Mr. Horden, the player, and acquitted, he being no ways accessary thereto, more than being in company when 'twas done." On Tuesday, 30th November 1697, the diarist writes: i8o THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. "Captain Burgess, tvho killed Mr. Ilorden, 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 dcsers'es 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 Gorvino, in Jonson's " Volpone ; " surpassed Smith in the part of Pierre, and was only second to Quin, in Volpone himself. His Ventidius, in Diyden's tragedy, "All for Love," to Booth's Anthony, is praised for its natural display of the true spirit of a rough and generous soldier. Of his original parts, the chief were Jack Stanmore, in " Oroonoko ; " Aimwell, in the " Beaux Stratagem ; " Gharles, in the " Busy Body ; " Pylades, in the " Distressed Mother;" Golonel Briton, in the "Wonder;" Zanga, in tlie " Revenge ; " and Manly, in the " Pro- voked Husband." That some of these were beyond his powers is certain; but he owed his being cast for them to the fi-iendship of Wilks, when the latter was manager. To a like cause may be ascribed the circumstance of his having the same salary as Bet- * This is a most inaccurate statement. Benjamin Jonson, or Johnson, was a comedian of the highest order. Davies calls him " That chaste copier of nature," and praises him heartily : Victor is enthusiastic in his appreciation of him : and Lloyd, in his "Actor," specially commends him. He was very great in his more famous namesake's comedies. 2 Should he John ^lills. William was a much less important actor. 3 1736. He died November or December 1736. THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY. i8i terton, ^4 per week, and £1 for his wife ; but this was not till after Betterton's death. At Lincoln's Inn Fields, Thurmond, though a respectable actor, failed to shake any of the public confidence in Betterton. Of Scudamore, I have already spoken. Pack was a vivacious comic actor, whose " line " is well indicated in the characters of Brass, Marplot, and Lissardo, of which he was the original representative. He withdrew from the stage in 1 72 1, a bachelor; and, in the meridian of life, opened a tavern in Charing Cross. I have now named the principal actors and actresses who first appeared between the Restoration and the year 1 70 1, Betterton and Mrs. Barry being the noblest of the players of that half century ; Cibber, Booth, and Mrs. Oldfield, the bright promises of the century to come. It is disappointing, however, to find that in the very last year of the seventeenth century " the grand jury of Middlesex presented the two play-houses, and also the bear-garden, as nuisances and riotous and disorderly assemblies." So Luttrell writes, in December 1 700, at which time, as contem- porary accounts inform us, the theatres were "pestered with tumblers, rope-dancers, and dancing men and dogs from France." Betterton was then in declining health, and appeared only occasionally; the houses, lacking other attraction, were ill attended, and public taste was stimulated by offering the " fun of a fair," where Mrs. Barry had drowned a whole house in tears. The grand jury of Middlesex did not see that with rude amusements the spectators grew rude too. i82 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. The jury succeeded in preventing play-bills from being posted in the city, and denounced the stnp:e as a pastime which led the way to murder. The last denunciation was grounded on the fact, that Sir Andrew Slanning had been killed just before, on his way from the play-house. When men wore swords and hot tempers these catastrophes were not infre- quent. 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. AVhatcver 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 1 700 was exe- cuted at Tyburn, with six other malefactors, who, on the same day, in the Newgate slang of the period, went Westward Hoe ! On the poor players fell all the disgrace ; but I think I shall be able to show, in the next chapter, that the fault lay rather with the poets. These, in their turn, laid blame upon the public ; but it is the poet's business to elevate, and not to pander to a low taste. The foremost men of the tuneful brother- hood, of the period from the Kestoration to the end of the centuiy, have much to answer for in this last respect. COLLET GIBBER. CHAPTER IX. THE DKAMATIC POETS. Noble, gentle, and humble Authors. It is a curious fact, that the number of dramatic writers between the years 1 659-1 700, mchisive, ex- ceeds that of the actors. A glance at the following list will show this. Sir W. Davenant, Dryden, Porter, Mrs. Behn, Lee, Cowley, Hon. James Howard, Shadwell, Sir S. Tuke, Sir R. Stapylton, Lord Broghill (Earl of Or- rery), Flecknoe, Sir George Etherege, Sir R. Howard, Lacy (actor), Betterton (actor), Earl of Bristol, Duke 1 84 TIIEIK MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. of Buckin ^H H^ I ^^^Hgl hI H HB -^„^ 1 BOOTH MADE A MANAGER. 401 heavy ; Walker, a failure ; Digges, stagy ; Kemble, next to the original; Pope, "mouthy;" Cooke, altogether out of his line ; Wright, weak ; Young, traditional but effective ; and Vandenhoff, classically correct and statuesque. In Cato, the name of Booth stands supreme ; in that, the kinsman of the Earls of Warrington was never equalled. It was his good fortune, too, not to be admired less because of the affection for Betterton in the hearts of surviving admirers. This is manifest from the lines of Pope: — " On Avon's bank where flow'rs eternal blow, If I but ask, — if any weed can grow ? — One tragic sentence if I dare deride, Which Betterton's grave action dignified. Or well-mouth'd Booth with emphasis proclaims (Though but perhaps a muster-roll of names), How will our fathers rise up in a rage. And swear all shame is lost in George's age." The performance of Cato raised Booth to fortune as well as to fame ; and through Bolingbroke he was appointed to a share in the profits of the manage- ment of Drury Lane, with Cibber, Wilks, and Dogget. The last-named, thereupon, retired in disgust, with compensation ; and Cibber hints that Booth owed his promotion as much to his Tory sentiments as to his merits in acting Cato. The new partner had to pay ^600 for his share of the stock property," which was to be paid by such sums as should arise from half his profits of acting, till the whole was dis- charged." This incumbrance upon his share he discharged out of the income he received in the first year of his joint management. 402 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. His fame, however, by this time had culminated. He sustained it well, but he cannot be said to have increased it. No other such a creation as Cato fell to his lot. Young and Thomson could not serve him as Addison and opportunity had done, and if he can be said to have won additional laurels after Cato, it was in the season of 1 722-23, 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 w^as also one of his most brilliant. Meanwhile, a success off the stage secured him as much happiness as, on it, he had acquired wealth and reputation. The home he had kept with Susan Mountfort was broken up. In the course of this " intimate alliance of strict friendship," as the moral euphuists called it. Booth had acted with remarkable generosity towards the lady. In the year 1 7 1 4 they bought several tickets in the State Lotteiy, and agreed to share equally whatever fortune might en- sue. Booth gained nothing ; the lady won a prize of ;!f 5000, and kept it. His friends counselled him to claim half the sum, but he laughingly remarked that there had never been any but a verbal agree- ment 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 MISS SANTLOW. 403 Zeal. He described her, with all due ardour, in an Ode on Mira, dancing, — as resembling Venus in shape, air, mien, and eyes, and striking a whole theatre with love, when alone she filled the spacious scene. Thus was Miss Santlow in the popular Cato's eyes : — ■ " Whether her easy body bend. Or her fair bosom heave with sighs. Whether her graceful arms extend, Or gently fall, or slowly rise. Or returning, or advancing ; Swimming round, or side-long glancing ; Gods, how divine an air Harmonious gesture gives the fair." Her grace of motion effected more than eloquence, at least so Booth thought, who thus sang the nymph in her more accelerated steps to conquest : — " But now the flying fingers strike the lyre. The sprightly notes the nymph inspire. She whirls around ! she bounds ! she springs ! As if Jove's messenger had lent her wings. Such Daphne was .... Such were her lovely limbs, so flushed her charming face ! So round her neck ! her eyes .so fair ! So rose her swelling chest ! so flow'd her amber hair ! While her swift feet outstript the wind. And left the enamour'd God of Day behind." Now, this goddess became to Booth one of the truest, most charming, and most unselfish of mortal wives.^ 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 ^ Bellchambers, in his Notes to " Gibber," is very severe on this mar- riage. " In the year 17 19, Mr. Booth, who seems to have been a liber- tine and a sensualist, gave his hand to Miss Santlow, a strumpet of condition " — and then follow some very strong remarks on Booth and his wife. 404 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. her smiles, Marlborough had given what he least cared to part with — gold. Craggs, the Secretary of State, albeit a barber's son, had made her spouse, in all but name, and their daughter was mother of the first Lord St. Germans, and, by a second marriage, of the fii'st Marquis of Abercorn. The Santlow blood thus danced itself into very excellent company ; but the aristocracy gave good blood to the stage, as well as took gay blood from it. Contemporaiy with Booth and Mrs. Santlow were the sisters, frolic Mrs. Bick- nell and Mrs. Younger. They were nearly related to Keith, Earl Marshal of Scotland. Their father had served in Flanders under King William, " perhaps," says Mr. Carruthers, in his Life of Pope, " rode by the side of Steele, whence Steele's interest in Mrs. Bicknell, whom he praises in the Tatler and Spec- tator.'" 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 for- tune 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 logic- ally, adds, that her reception as an actress was, per- haps, owing to the admiration she had excited as a dancer. The part was suited to her figure and capa- city. "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 PLAYERS' MARRIAGES. 405 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 re- membered, longed for, and now longed in vain for, that sight which used to set a whole audience half distraught with delight, when in the very ecstasy of her dance, Santlow contrived to loosen her clustering auburn hair, and letting it fall about such a neck and shoulders as Praxiteles could more readily imagine than imitate, danced on, the locks flying in the air, and half a dozen hearts at the end of every one of them. The union of Booth and Miss Santlow was as pro- ductive of happiness as that of Betterton and Miss Saunderson. Indeed, with some few exceptions, the marriages of English players have been generally so. As much, perhaps, can hardly be said of the alliances of French actors. Moliere had but a miserable time of it with Mademoiselle Bejart; but he revenged him- self by producing domestic incidents of a stormy and aggravating nature, on the stage. The status of the French players was even lower, in one respect, than that of their English brethren. The French ecclesias- tical law did not allow of marrying or giving in mar- riage 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 VOL. I. 2 B 4o6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 maiTiages were valid, seeing that the contracting parties were not excommunicated actors when the ceremony was performed, whatever they may have been a month before, or a month after. No such difficulties as these had to be encountered by Booth and Miss Santlow ; and the former lost no opportunity to render justice to the excellence of his wife. This actor's leisure was a learned leisure. Once, in his poetic vein, when turning an ode of his favourite Horace into English, he went into an original digression on the becomingness of a married life, and the peculiar felicity it had brought to himself. Thus sang the Benedict when the union was a few brief years old : — " Happy the hour when first our souls were joined !^ The social virtues and the cheerful mind Have ever crowned our days, beguiled our pain ; Strangers to discord and her clamorous train. Connubial friendship, hail ! but haste away. The lark and nightingale reproach thy stay ; From splendid theatres to rural scenes. Joyous retire ! so bounteous Heav'n ordains. There we may dwell in peace. There bless the rising morn, and flow'iy field, Charm'd with the guiltless sports the woods and waters yield." But neither the married nor the professional life of TOM ELEINGTON. 407 Booth was destined to be of long continuance. His health began to give way before he was forty. The managers hoped they had found a fair substitute for him in the actor Elrington. Tom Elrington subse- quently became so great a favourite with the Dublin audience that they remembered his Bajazet as pre- ferable to that of Barry or Mossop, on the ground that in that character his voice could be heard be- yond the Blind Quay, whereas that of the other- named actors was not audible outside the house ! Elrington had none of the scholar-like training of Booth. He was originally apprentice to an uphol- sterer in Co vent Garden, was wont to attend plays unknown to his master, and to act in them privately, and with equal lack of sanction. His master was a vivacious Frenchman, who, one day, came upon him as, under the instruction of Chetwood, he was study- ing a part in some stilted and ranting tragedy. The stage-struck apprentice, in his agitation, sewed his book up inside the cushion, on which he was at work, "while he and Chetwood exchanged many a desponding look, and every stitch went to , both their hearts." The offenders escaped detection ; but on another occasion the Frenchman came upon his apprentice as he was enacting the Ghost in " Hamlet," when he laid the spirit, with irresistible efifect of his good right arm. Elrington was, from the beginning, a sort of " copper Booth." His first appearance on the stage, at Drury Lane, in 1709, was in Oroonoko, the character in which Booth had made his coup d'essai in Dublin. He was ambitious. 4o8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. too, and had influential support. When Gibber re- fused to allow hira to play Torrismond, while Elring- ton was yet young, a noble friend of the actor asked the manager to assign cause for the refusal. Colley was not at a loss. " It is not with us as with you, my Lord," said he; "your Lordship is sensible that there is no difficulty in filling places at court, you cannot be at a loss for persons to act their part there ; but I assure you, it is quite otherwise in our theatrical world. If we should invest people with characters they should be unable to support, we should be undone." Elrington, after a few years of success in Dublin, boldly attempted to take rank in London with Booth himself. He began the attempt in his favourite part of Bajazet, Booth playing Tamerlane. The latter, we are told by Victor, " being in full force, and per- haps animated by a spirit of emulation towards the new Bajazet, exerted all his powers ; and Elrington owned to his fi'iends 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 Elring- ton on his, adding that his Bajazet was ten times as good as that of Mills, who had pretensions to play the character. The compliment was not ill-deserved, for Elrington possessed many of the natural and some of the acquired qualifications of Booth, whom perhaps he equalled in Oroonoko. He undoubtedly excelled Mills in Zanga, of which the latter was the original BOOTH AND THE OXFORD MAN. 409 representative. After Dr. Young had seen Elrington play it, he went round, shook him cordially by the hand, thanked him heartily, and declared he had never seen the part done such justice to as by him ; " acknowledging, with some regret," says Dr. Lewis, *' that Mills did but growl and mouth the character." Such was the actor who became for a time Booth's "double," and might have become his rival. During the illness of the latter, in 1728-29, Elrington, we are told, was the principal support of tragedy in Drury Lane. At that time, says Davies, " the man- agers were so well convinced of his importance to them, that they offered him his own conditions, if he would engage with them for a term of years." Elrington replied, " I am truly sensible of the value of your offer, but in Ireland I am so well rewarded for my services that I cannot think of leaving it on any consideration. There is not a gentleman's house to which I am not a welcome visitor." Booth has been called indolent, but he was never so when in health, and before a fitting audience. On one thin night, indeed, he was enacting Othello rather languidly, but he suddenly began to exert himself to the utmost, in the great scene of the third act. On coming off the stage, he was asked the cause of this sudden effort. " I saw an Oxford man in the pit," he answered, " for whose judgment I had more respect than for that of the rest of the audience ; " and he played the Moor to that one but efficient judge. Some causes of languor may, per- haps, be traced to the too warm patronage he received, 4IO THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. or rather friendship, at the hands of the nobility. It was no uncommon thing for " a carnage and six " to be in waiting for him — the equipage of some court friend — which conveyed him, in what was then con- sidered 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 aflfected his health ; and on one occasion his recovery was despaired of. But the public favourite was restored to the town ; and learned Mattaire celebrated the event in a Latin ode, in which he did honour to the memoiy of Betterton, and the living and invigorated genius of Booth. That genius was not so perfect as that of his great predecessor. When able to go to the theatre, though not yet able to perform, he saw Wilks play two of his parts, — Jaffier and Hastings, — and heard the applause which was awarded to his efforts ; and the sound was ungrateful to the ears of the philosophical and unimpassioned Cato. But Jaffier was one of his triumphs ; and he whose ten- derness, pity, and teiTor had touched the hearts of a whole audience, was painfully affected at the triumph of another, though achieved by different means. One of the secrets of his own success, lay, un- doubtedly, in his education, feeling, and judgment. It may be readily seen from Aaron Hill's rather elaborate criticism, that he was an actor who made "points;" "he could soften and slide over, with an elegant negligence, the improprieties of a part he acted ; while, on the contrar}^ he could dwell with BOOTH'S EXTRAOEDINARY ABILITIES. 411 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 follow- ing, 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 his secret of attaining this great lesson of the theatre, was an adaptation of his look to his voice, by which artful imitation of nature, the variations in the sounds of his words gave propriety to every change in his countenance. So that it was Mr, Booth's peculiar felicity to be heard and seen the same ; whether as the pleased, the grieved, the pitying, the reproachful, or the angry. One would be almost tempted to borrow the aid of a very bold figure, and to express this excellency the more significantly, by permission to affirm, that the Blind might have seen him in his voice, and the Deaf have heard him in his visage.'" In his later years, says a critic, " his merit as an actor was unrivalled, and even so extraordinary, as to be almost beyond the reach of envy." His Othello, Cato, and his Polydore, in the " Orphan," in which he was never equalled, were long the theme of admira- 412 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. tioii to his sun'ivors, as were in a less degree his soiTowing and not roaring Lear, his manly yet not blustering Hotspur. Dickey Brass and Dorimant, "NVildair and Sir Charles Easy,^ Pinchwife, Manley, and Young Bevil, were among the best of his essays in comedy, — where, however, he was surpassed by Wilks. " But then, I believe," says a critic, " no one will say he did not appear the fine gentleman in the character of Bevil, in the 'Conscious Lovers.' It is said that he once played Falstaff in the pre- sence of Queen Anne, ' to the delight of the whole audience.' " Aaron Hill, curiously statistical, states, that by the peculiar delivery of certain sentiments in Cato, Booth was always sure of obtaining from eighteen to twenty rounds of applause during the evening, — marks of approval, both of matter and manner. Like Better- ton, he abounded in feeling. There was nothing of the stolidity of " Punch " in either of them. Betterton is said to have sometimes turned as " white as his neck- cloth," on seeing his father's ghost; while Booth, when playing the ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, was once so horror-stricken at his distraught aspect, as tobe too dis- concerted to proceed, for a while, in his part. Either actor, however, knew how far to safely yield them- selves 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 ' These four characters were certainly not among Booth's best "W'ildair and Sir Charles Easy were Wilks' parts, and indeed I cannot find tliat Booth ever i)layt'd any of the four. BOOTH'S MAGNANIMITY^. 413 French actor, did not know better than they, that while rules may teach the actor not to raise his arms above his head, he will do well to break the rule, if passion carry him that way. " Passion," as Baron remarked, " knows more than art." I have noticed the report that Booth and Wilks were jealous of each other ; I think there was more of emulation than of envy between them. Booth could make sacrifices in favour of young actors as unre- servedly as Betterton. I find, even when he was in possession, as it was called, of all the leading parts, that he as often played Laertes, or even Horatio, as the Ghost or Hamlet. His Laertes was wonderfully fine, and in a great actor's hands, may be made, in the fifth act, at least, equal with the princely Dane himself. Again, although his Othello was one of his grandest impersonations, he would take Cassio,in order to give an aspirant a chance of triumph in the Moor. In " Macbeth," Booth played, one night, the hero of the piece ; on another, Banquo ; and on a third, the little part of Lennox. He was quite content that Gibber should play Wolsey, while he captivated the audience by enacting the King. His Henry was a mixture of frank humour, dignity, and sternness. Theophilus Gibber says enough to convince us that Booth, in the King, could be familiar without being vulgar, and that his anger was of the quality that excites terror. He pronounced the four words, " Go thy ways, Kate," with such a happy emphasis as to win admiration and applause: and "when he said, ' Now, to breakfast with what appetite you may,' his 414 THEIR MAJESTIES- SERVANTS. expression mus rapid and vehement, and his look tremendous." The credit attached to the acting of inferior parts by leading players was shared with Booth by Wilks and 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 come- dies, 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 recognised as a playgoer, and a judge of acting; but to an un- appreciating audience he could exhibit an almost contemptuous disinclination to exert himself. On one occasion of this sort he was made painfully sensible of his mistake, and a note was addressed to him from the stage-box, the purport of which was to know whether he was acting for his own diversion or in the service and for the entertainment of the public ? On another occasion, with a thin house, and a cold audience, he was languidly going through one of his usually grandest impersonations, namely, Pyrrhus. At his very dullest scene he started into the utmost brilliancy and effectiveness. His eye had just pre- viously detected in the pit a gentleman, named Stanyan, the friend of Addison and Steele, and the correspondent of the Earl of Manchester. Stanyan was an accomplished man and a judicious critic. BOOTH'S HOTSPUE. 415 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 i 712-13, when Booth studied, played, and triumphed in Cato, he within not many weeks studied and performed five original and very varied characters, Cato being the last of a roll, which included Arviragus, in the "Successful Pirate;" Captain Stanworth, in the " Female Advocates ; " Captain Wildish, in "Humours of the Army;" Cinna, in an adaptation of Corneille's play, and finally, Cato. No doubt Booth was finest when put upon his mettle. In May 1726, for instance, Giffard from Dublin appeared at Drury Lane, as the Prince of Wales, in "Henry IV." The debutant was known to be an admirer of the Hotspur of roaring Elrington. The Percy was one of Booth's most perfect exhibi- tions ; and, ill as he was on the night he was to play it to Giffard' s Harry, he protested that he would surprise the new comer, and the house too ; and he played with such grace, fire, and energy, that the audience were beside themselves with ecstasy, and the new actor was profuse at the side-scenes, and 4i6 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. 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 solitaiy, but competent, individual in the pit. He confessed that he considered profit after fame, and thought that large audiences tended to the increase of both. The intercourse between audience and actor was, in his time, more intimate and familiar than it is now. Thus we see Booth entering a coffee-house in Bow Street, one morning after he had played Varanes, on the preceding night. The gentlemen present, all playgoers, as naturally as they were cofiee-house frequenters, cluster round him, and acknowledge the pleasure they had enjoyed in witnessing him act. These pleasant morning critics only venture to blame him for allowing such 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 indignity in Booth's eye, than half empty benches. It was not the business of managers, he said, to be wise to empty boxes. " There were many more spectators," he said, " than men of taste and judgment ; and if by the artifice of a pantomime they could entice a greater number to partake of a good play than could be drawn without it, he could not see any great harm in it ; and that, as those pieces were performed BOOTH'S LAST ILLNESS. 417 after the play, they were no interruption to it." In short, he held pantomimes to be rank nonsense, which might be rendered useful, after the fashion of his explanation. His retirement from the stage may be laid to trie importunity of Mr. Theobald, who urged him to act in a play, for a moment attributed to Shakspeare, the " Double Falsehood." Booth struggled through the part of Julio, for a week, in the season of 1727-28, and then withdrew, utterly cast down, and in his forty-sixth year. Broxham, Friend, Colebatch, and Mead came with their canes, perukes, pills, and proposals, and failing to restore him, they sent him away from London. The sick player and his wife wandered from town to Bath, from the unavailing springs there to Ostend, thence to Antwerp, and on to Holland, to consult Boerhaave, who could only tell the invalid that in England a man should never leave off his winter clothing till midsummer-day, and that he should resume it the day after. From Hol- land 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 per- suaded 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, 4i8 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. and that Sir Hans Sloanc 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 plas- tered, 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 techni- calities ; and, after declaring everything to be very much worse than the state of Denmark, as briefly described by Hamlet, Alexander Small, the especial examiner, signing the report, added a postscript thereto, implying that "There was no fault in any part of his body, but what is here mentioned." Poor fellow ! We are told that he recovered from his fever, but that he died of the jaundice, helped, I think, by the treatment. A few days subsequently the body was privately interred in Cowley Church, near Uxbridge, where he occasionally resided. A few old friends, and some dearer than friends, accompanied him to the grave. His will was as a kiss on either cheek of his beautiful BOOTH'S WILL. 4,9 widow, and a slap on both cheeks of sundry of his relations. To the former he left everything he had possessed, and for the very best of reasons. "As I have been," he says, " a man much known and talked of, my not leaving legacies to my relations may give occasion to censorious people to reflect upon my 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 addi- tions and advantages since arising from her laborious employment on the stage during twelve years past, I thought myself bound by honesty, honour, and gra- titude, due to her constant affection, not to give away any part of the remainder of her fortune at my death, having already bestowed, in free gifts, upon my sister, Barbara Rogers, upwards of thirteen hundred pounds, out of my unfe's substance, and full four hundred pounds of her money on my undeserving brother, George Booth (besides the gifts they received before my marriage), and all those benefits were conferred on my said brother and sister, from time to time, at the earnest solicitation of my wife, who was perpe- tually entreating me to continue the allowance I gave my relations before my marriage. The inhuman return that has been made my wife for these obligations, by my sister, I forbear to mention." This was justice without vengeance, and worthy of the sage, of whom Booth was the most finished representative. The 430 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. generosity of Hester Santlow, too, 1ms been fittingly preserved in the will ; the whole of which, moreover, is a social illustration of the times. In Westminster, "Barton Street" keeps up the actor's name; and "Cowley Street" the remembrance of his proprietorship of a countiy estate near Ux- bridge. 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 PyiThus 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 1 728-29. Elrington could not supply the place of the former ; nor Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Horton com- bined, 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 Eaftor as Dorinda, in Dry den's version of the " Tempest," on the 2nd of Januaiy 1729, marks the first step in the bright and unchequered career of one who is better remembered as Kitty Clive, of whom, more hereaftor.^ She was not able to save Gibber's pastoral comedy, ' Chetwood states that her first character was Ismenes, a page, in " Mithridates," in which she sang with extraordinary success. Genest supposes this to have been in November 1728. AN ILL-MANNERED AUDIENCE. 421 " Love in a Eiddle," from condemnTition by an audi- ence 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 " Lover's Opera," born of Gay's success, brought no such golden results to their authors or the house, which was still happy in retaining Wilks. On the other hand, in the Fields, where ballad- opera had been a mine of wealth to astonished managers, classical tragedy took the lead, with Quin leading in everything, and growing in favour with a town whose applause could no longer be claimed by Booth. But classical tragedy reaped no golden harvests. Barford's " Virgin Queen " lives but in a line of Pope to Arbuthnot. The " Themistocles " (Quin) of young Madden, whom Ireland ought to remember as one of her benefactors who was no mere politician, lived but for a few nights.^ 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 unattrac- tive. Hawker, an actor, vainly tried to rival Gay, 1 Acted nine times. VOL. I. 2 C 422 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. with a serio-comic opera, the "Wedding," and Gay himself was doomed to suffer disappointment ; for the authorities suppressed his "Polly," a vapid con- tinuation 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 QueensbeiT)^, who punished the Court by absenting themselves from its pleasures and duties. The poet, who desired nothing but the joys of a quiet life, a good table, and a suit of blue and silver, all which he enjoyed beneath the ducal roof, happiest of mercer's apprentices, found compensation in publishing his work by subscription, whereby he realised so large a sum as to satisfy his utmost wishes. Drury Lane was not fortunate in any of its new pieces in the season of 1729-30. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Mrs. Oldfield, by her recommenda- tion, and by her acting, obtained even partial success for a comedy, by the Eev. James Miller, the " Hum- ours 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 * It was acted fourteen times — a great success in those days. " SOPHONISBA." 423 best bred men in England," He was certainly well connected, but he exhibited more efficiency in colonis- ing Georgia than in writing poetry. His "Timoleon " had neither beauty of style, nor incident. This season, too, saw the first dramatic attempt of Thomson, in " Sophonisba." Lee's tragedy of that name used to drown the female part of the house in tears ; but Thomson's could not stir even his own friends to enthusiasm. They rose from the full-dress rehearsals to which they were invited, dulled in sense rather than touched or elevated. Thomson's play is far less tender than Lee's ; his Sophonisba (the last character originally played by Mrs. Oldfield), more stern and patriotic, and less loving. The author himself described her as a " female Cato," and in the Epilogue not too delicately indicated that if the audience would only applaud a native poet, " Then other Shakspeares yet may rouse the stage, And other Otways melt another age." ** Sophonisba," which Thomson was not afraid to set above the heroine of Corneille, abounds in plati- tudes, and it was fatal to Gibber, who, never toler- able 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 !" 424 THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS. Her gi-andcur 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, aud therewith suddenly teinninated 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 rebelli- ous ; self-taught as a boy might be, and with nothing feminine in her character or pursuits. With self- assertion, too, she was weak enough to be won by a knave with a sweet voice, whose cruel treatment drove his intractable wife to the stage, where she failed to profit by her fine opportunities. The coiTesponding season at Lincoln's Inn Fields was the usual one of an unfashionable house ; but Quin, Byan, 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 sudden * Charlotte Charke says in her Autobiography that this was her first appearance, but it was really her second. MORE THEATRES. 425 death of Spiller, stricken by apoplexy, as he was playing in the "Rape of Proserpine." He was in- imitable 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 Gifiard 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 i 728 ; his second, and a better, the " Temple Beau," was played at Goodman's Fields. Ralph, who had been a schoolmaster in Philadelphia, and came to England to thrive by political, satirical, or dramatic writings, and to live for ever in the abuse lavished on him by Pope, supplied a ballad-opera, the "Fashionable Lady," which was intended to rival the " Beggar's Opera." To Macheath-Walker is ascribed a tragedy, the " Fate of Villany ; " and Mottley, the disappointed candidate for place, and the compiler of Joe Miller's Jests — Miller being a better joker than he was an actor — wrote for this house his " Widow Bewitched," the last and poorest of his contributions to the stage. 426 THEIR ^lAJESTIES' SERVANTS. For the Haymarket, Fielding wrote the only piece which has come down to our times, his immortal burlesque-tragedy of "Tom Thumb," in which the weakness and bombast of late or contemporary writers are copied with wonderful eflfect. Young suffered severely by this; — and the "Oh, Hunca- munca ! 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. Mr. G£irrick as Abel Dru£$er. INDEX. Actor, profession of, iu Greece and Rome, 2, 3. Actors and clergy in collision, 13 ; playing under forged licence, 13 ; authors, 185 ; Dennis' abuse of, 361. Actors' famous "Points," 155. Actresses, introduction of, 28 ; pre- restoration English, 66. Addison, Joseph, part author of the "Tender Husband," 294; his "Rosamond," 301 ; his ''Cato,"329 ; his " Drummer," 339. Aldridge, Mrs., 148. AUeyn, Edward, 31, 43, 48. " Amboyna," 28. Angel, 65, 70. Anne, queen of James I., an actress, 24. Anne, Princess, as Lemandra, 94. Apothecaries' Hall the site of an early theatre, 16. Arbuthnot, part author of " Three Hours after Marriage," 342. Arrest of players, 15. Arrowsmith, dramatist, 207. Arsinoe, first opera after the Italian fashion, 295. Aston, Anthony, his criticisms of Bet- terton, 131 ; of Mrs. Barry, 152, 154, 156 ; his appearance at Lincoln's Inn Fields, 369. Audience on the stage forbidden, 289. Audiences of the seventeenth century, 246. Baker, Thomas, dramatist, 275. Bale, Bishop, 14. Bancroft, Archbishop, 25. Bancroft, John, dramatist, 208. Bankes, John, dramatist, 234. Bankside, theatres on the, 32. Barford, Richard, dramatist, 421. Baron, the French actor, 134. Barry, Mrs. Elizabeth, 121, 148, 190; account of her life, 149-161 ; tutored by Lord Rochester, 151 ; as Isabella in " Mustapha," 151 ; as Alcraena, 123 ; as Calista, 131, 154 ; as Moni- mia, 152, 156 ; her industry, 153 ; as Belvidera, 153 ; as Cassandra, 153 ; as Lady Brute, 154 ; as Zara, 154 ; as Clarissa, 154 ; as Isabella in the ''Fatal Marriage," 154; as Queen Elizabeth, 156 ; in free comedy, 156 ; and Mrs. Boutell, 157 ; and Lord Rochester and Etheridge, 158, 159; her last appearance, 159; the first player to have a benefit, 160 ; her death, 160 ; her portrait by Kneller, 160. Barton Street, Westminster, 143. ^ Bateman, actor, 64. Baxter, actor, 64. Bear Garden, 32. Beckingham, dramatist, 350, 363. Beeston, actor, 64. "Beggar's Opera," 386; its famous run, 388. Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 238 ; her indecency, 239- Bell, actor, 64. Benefits, performers', first devised for Mrs. Barry, 160. Benfield, actor, 26. Betterton, father of the actor, 53, 117 ; Betterton, Mrs. (see also Mrs. Saunder- son), 94 ; instructs the Princesses Mary and Anne, 94 ; in her old age, 113 ; pensioned by Queen Anne, 95. Betterton, Thomas 53, 57, S^, 65, 191, 297, 310, 311, 314; account of his 428 INDEX. life. 109-135; as Hiimlet, 109, iii, 131 ; tutored in H.imlet by Dave- iiiint, 112; his famous benefit, 114, 312; as Melantius, 114; his death, 1 16, 314 ; as Bosola, 119; in " Masta- pha," 120 ; as Colonel Jolly, 121 ; his modesty, 12 1 ; in the "Provoked Wife," 121 ; as Jupiter, 123 ; his friendship with Drj'den and Tillot- son, 124, and Pope, 126; as Othello, 128, 129; .18 Castalio, 128; his por- trait by Kneller and Pope, 128 ; as Biissanio, 129 ; as Horatio, 129 ; pat- ronised by royalty, 130 ; licence granted to him by "William III., 130; adversely criticised by Aston, 131 ; Gibber's praise of, 132, 133 ; as Bru- tus, 133; his salary. 133; the Taller on Betterton, 134 ; as au author, 185 ; helps Booth, 394. Betterton, "William, 25, 70. Bicknell, Mrs., 404 ; death of, 373. Bird, Theophilus, 64 ; accident to, 96. Bishopsgate Street, theatre at an inn, 31- Blackfriars' theatre, 16, 22 ; its history, 30.42. Blagden, actor, 64, 65. Boar's Head, the, without Aldgate, 15. Boheme, Anthony, 356, 4CX) ; marries Mrs. Seymour, 374 ; as Herod, 375. Book of Sports, the, 29. Booth, Barton, 2S3, 315 ; as Maximus, 129, 394 ; recognised by Betterton as his successor, 129, 178 ; leading actor at Drury Lane, 312 ; in " Elf rid," 312 ; as Pyrrhus, 321, 396 ; as Cato, 329, 396, 397 ; made a manager, 330, 401 ; as Hastings, 331 ; his marriage, 358 ; as Cleombrotus, 359; as Alonzo, 365 ; as Young Bevil, 370, 402 ; as Hotspur, 379, 415 ; his illness, 381 ; as Julio, 386, 417 ; his last season, 386 ; his last appearance, 386 ; ac- count of his life, 391-420; as Pam- philus, 392 ; his debut as Oroonoko, 392 ; and Betterton, 394 ; as Cap- tain "Worthy, 395 ; as the Ghost in " Hamlet," 395 ; keeps house with Susan Mountfort, 396 ; as Tamer- lane, 408 ; his sense of appreciation, 409 ; Aaron Hill's criticism of him, 410, 411 ; his great parts, 411, 412; his feeling, 412 ; as Laertes, 413 ; as Henry VIIL, 413; finest when on his mettle, 414, 416 ; his powers of ap- plication, 415 ; his love of fame, 416 ; his retirement, 417; his death, 418 ; his will, 418. Boothby, Mrs., dramatist, 237. Boutel, Mrs., 64, 82. Bowen, "William, 163 ; converted by . Collier's "Short "View," 174; killed by Quin, 174, 349 ; his original char- acters, 350. Bowman, 122, 142. Bowman, Mrs., as Lady Fancyful, 121 ; adopted by the Bettertons, 121, Boyer, Abel, dramatist, 212. Boyle, Charles, dramatist, 287. " Boys " superseded by women, 67. " Boys " in Rhodes's company, 67. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Aune, 162, 166, 169 ; as the Page in "The Orphan," 152 ; as Millamant, 167 ; as Statira, 167 ; her high private character, 167, 168 ; and Lord Burlington, 169 ; attempted to be carried off by Hill, 171 ; opposed by Mrs. Oldfield, 302. Bradshaw, Mrs., 315 ; her marriage, 332- Brady, Nicholas, dramatist, 234. Brett, Colonel, patentee, 306 ; sells his share, 311. Bristol, George, Earl of, "190. Brown, Tom, on Mrs. Barry, 159. Buckingham, Duke of, 187. Bull, the, in Bishopsgate Street, 31. Bullock, Christopher, his " Woman's a Riddle," 343 ; his " Perjuror," 351 ; as Bardach, 363 ; his death, 369. Bullock, Mrs., as Mrs. Sliucemode, 380. Bullock, "William, 178, 180. Burbage, James, 16. Burbage, Richard, 22, 26. Burnaby, Charles, dramatist, 278. Burt, 48, 64 ; in female characters, 70 ; as Cicero, 70. Busby, Dr., an amateur actor, 45. Cademan, 143 ; accident to, 143. Cambridge, plays at, 11, 16, 24, 52, Cantrell. Miss, as Polly Peachum, 421. Carey, Henry, Viscount Falkland, 193. Carlell, Sir Ludovick, 200. Carlisle, James, 163 ; killed at Aghrun, 173 ; an author, 186. INDEX. 429 Carrol, Mrs. (afterwards Mrs. Cent- livre), 123. Cartwright, Rev. Wm., dramatist, 45. Cartwright, actor, 64 ; his bequest to Dulwich College, 97 ; great as Fal- staflf, 97. Caryll, Earl of, 190. Castlemaine, Lady, 249, 250. " Cato," by Addison, 329, 397. Centlivre, Mrs., 124, 243, 369, 385 ; her " Busy Body," 311 ; her ''Wonder," 330> 331 ; her "Bold Stroke for a Wife," 351. Champmesl^, La, the French actress, 161, Charke, Charlotte, daughter of Colley Gibber, 424. Charles L and the stage, 29. Charles IL and Dryden, 228 ; at the theatre (see chap. xLi.). Charleton, actor, 64. Children of the Chapel Royal perform- ing before royalty, 10. Children of the Revels, 23. Church employs the stage in early times 7. Cibber, Colley, quoted : on Kynaston, 72 ; on Nokes, 75 ; on Betterton, "^32, 133 ; on Underbill, 139 ; on An- thony Leigh, 144 ; on Mrs. Barry, J^53> 154; on Mrs. Mountfort, 163 ; on the wearing of vizard-masks, 265 ; on theatrical dissensions, 307 ; on the success of the United Companies, 317 ; on the critics, 319 ; on Est- court, 325. Cibber, Colley, 302, 319; as the Chaplain in "The Orphan," praised by Good- man, 103 ; and Betterton, 130; as Sir Gentle's Servant, 163 ; as Sigismond, 163; and his wig, 266 ; his comedies, 280; his "Careless Husband" an attempt at greater decency, 292 ; Wilks and Dogget, 318 ; his famous play " The Nonjuror," 345, 346-349 ; his "Refusal," 366; as Achoreus, 378 ; his share of " The Provoked Husband," 386 ; in the law courts, 387 ; his "Love in a Riddle," 421 ; hissed as Scipio, 423. Cibber, Mrs., the elder, 178, 180. Cibber, Theophilus, his first appear- ance, 366 ; as Pistol, 366, 420 ; his first wife, 379. 82 ; mimics Lady Clei-ical actors, 10 ; auditors, 268. Clive, Kitty, 420. Clun, 64 ; superior to Mohun as lago, 70 ; as Subtle, 70 ; his tragic death, 70. Cockburn, Mrs., dramatist, 241. Cockpit, the, in Drury Lane, 57, 59. Coleman, Mrs. Edward, early -actress, 67. Collier, Jeremy, his "Short View" converts Bowen, 174; attacks the indecency of the stage, 225. Collier, W., M.P., patentee of Drury Lane, 312, 315, 316. Company of Players, Richard IIL first English prince to employ them, 9. Condell, 26. Congreve, 223, 225, 226, 233, 273 ; and Mrs. Bracegirdle, 168 ; and Voltaire, 214 ; his sarcasm on Cibber, 294 ; his death, 421. Cooke, G. F., 401. Corey, John, 277. Corey, Mrs., 64, Harvey, 259. Corj-e, John, dramatist, 207. Co vent Garden Theatre, different build- ings, 62. Cowley, Abraham, dramatist, 216. Cowley Street, Westminster, 420. Cox, Richard, 52. Crauford, David, dramatist, 212, Cromwell, Lady Mary, 250. Cromwell's buffooneries, 55. Cross Keys, Gracechurch Street, 31. Crowne, John, dramatist, 219, 222 ; his death, 233. Curtain Road, 33. Theatre, the, 33. Davenant, 57, 221, 232; his com- pany, 61, 65 ; his improvements of Shakspeare's plays, 2, 19. Davenport, Mrs., 65 ; as Roxalana, 68, 91 ; entrapped by a mock marriage by the Earl of Oxford, 92. Da vies, Mrs., 65, 92; Charles II. 'a mistress, 93. Davys, Mrs., authoress, 341. Decrees regarding players, 14, 21, 46, 47- Dennis, 216, 234, 277, 291, 361 ; his "Appius and Virginius," 311; the inventor of stage thunder, 311 ; his "Invader of his Countrj'," 358. 430 INDEX. Dering, Charles, duel with Taughan on the stage, 261. Digges, 401. Dixon, actor, 65. Dogget, 163, 176 ; as Shylock, 176 ; his originiil parts, 176 ; a manager of Drury Laue, 176 ; his Coat and Badge, 177 ; as an author, 186; the first "star," 272; as Moneytrap, 300 ; his care in dressing his parts, 300 ; Cibber and Wilks, 318 ; gives up management, 330, 401. Dorset Garden, Duke's Theatre in, 61. Drake, Dr., 210. Dramatists, list of, 183, 184, 213. 214. Drury Lane Theatre, 60 ; the various theatres, 62 ; burnt, 140 ; united ■with the Haymarket, 305 ; its wan- ing prospects, 381. Diyden, John, 221, 224, 227-229, 232 ; his " Amboyna," 28 ; his friendship with Betterton, 124; his assault upon Shakspeare, 219. Duelling in the theatre, 261. Duffett, Thomas, dramatist, 209. Duke, actor, 64. Duke's Theatre, 61. Dunstable, early theatre at, 7. Durfey, Thomas, 234, 330 ; in his decline, 284; his "Prophets," 311. Eastlaxd, Mrs., 64. Eccleston, actor, 26. Egleton, "Baron," 373. Elizabeth, a sharp censor, 16 ; stage used to attack, 17, 18. Elrington, Tom, in "Oroonnko," 341, 407, 408 ; a substitute for Booth, 407 ; as Bajazet, 407 ; pl.iys against Booth, 408 ; principal tragedian at Drury Lane, 409. £11 core introduced at the Haymarket, 315- Estcourt, Richard, his youthful ad- ventures, 284 ; as Dominic, 295 ; " the true Serjeant Kite," 302, 325 ; his career, 324-326 ; becomes a wine merchant, 326 ; his death, 326. Etherege, Sir John, 202-207. Eugene, Prince, and Mrs. CentliTre, 320. Evans, Miss, a dancer, 272. Evelyn at the theatre, 251, 257; on licentious plays, 255. Falkl.\>'T), Viscount, 193. Fane, Sir Francis, 201. Farquhar, Captain George, 234, 281 ; his "Recruiting Oflficer," 297; his death, 304. Farren, M'Uliam, mentioned, 97. Fenton, Elijah, his treatment by Cib- ber, 374; success of his "Mariamne,"' 374- Fenton, Lavinia, her first appearance, 384 ; as Polly Peachum, 388 ; and the Duke of Bolton, 389. Field, Nathaniel, the actor, 26. Fielding, Henry, 425; his "Tom Thumb," 353, 426, Filmer, Dr., 210. Flecnoe, 229. Floid, actor, 65, 70. Folkes, ilartin, marries Mrs. Brad- shaw, 332. Footmen admitted free to gallery, 267. Fortune Theatre, Playhouse Yard, 31- Foster, actor, 40. French actors and actresses in Black- friars, 65 ; pelted off the stage, 66. French Company, a, at Lincoln's Inn, 357- Frowde, Philip, dramatist, 383. Fryer, Peg, an actress eighty-five yeara old, 364. "Gammek Gcrton's Needle," 16. Garrick, David, 125, 133, 169. Gay, John, 342 ; his first piece, 329 ; his " What D ye Call It? " 334 ; his " Captives," 376 ; the " Beggar's Opera," 386, 388; his "Polly" for- bidden, 422, Geoffrey, an early manager, 7. Gibbs, Mrs., 65. GifFard as Prince of "Wales in " Henry IV." 415- Gildon, Charles, 220, 285. Gillow, actor, 163. Globe Alley, 32. Globe Theatre, 32, 33. Gloucester, Richard, Duke of, 9. Goffe, an actor, 54. Goodman, Cardell ("Scum"), 64; as Julias Caesar, loi ; as Alexander, INDEX. 431 loi ; his rascalities, 102, 103 ; his prophecy regarding Gibber, 103. Goodman's Fields Theatre, 425. Gosson, Stephen, ig, 37. Goiigh, actor, 26. Gould, Robert, dramatist, 209. Gracechurch Street Theatre in an inn, 31- Griffin, Benjamin, his young days, 338 ; an author, 364. Griffin, Captain, 64, 142, 275. Grindal, Archbishop, 20. Guilnian, actor, 40. Gwyn, Madam, 87. Gwyn, Nell. 64, 79, 82, 251 ; her birth, 83 ; her first appearance as Crydaria, 84; her lovers. 85; as Almahide, 87; her sons, 87; her extravagance, 88; her death, 89. Haines, Joseph, 64, 104 ; at Drury Lane, 105 ; as Spai'kish, 105 ; his practical jokes, 105, 107 ; as Captain Bluff, 107 ; as Roger in "jEsop," 107 ; as Tom Errand, 107 ; his misconduct on the stage, 107; his death, 108. Hancock, actor, 64. Harris (the great actor of that name), 64, 65, 137 ; as Romeo, 113 ; a rival to Betterton, 120 ; as Henry V., 136 ; as AVolsey, 136 ; his portrait b}' Hailes, 136. Harris, Joseph (actor and author), 186. Hart, Charles, 47, 64, 86, 87 ; as the Duchess in Shirley's "Cardinal," 68 ; as Othello, 68 ; as Alexander, 69 ; as Brutus, 69 ; as Cataline, 69 ; as Amintor, 69 ; as Manly, 69 ; his retirement, 69 ; his bearing on the stage, 69 ; his death, 69 ; Haines's practical joke on Hart, 106. Harvey, Lady, and Mrs. Corey, 259. Hatton, Lord, 54. Hawker, dramatist, 421. Hawkins, licensed to train children of the revels, 23. Haymarket, Vanbrugh's theatre in the, 297. Haymarket Tlieatre opened, 378. Haywood, Mrs., dramatist, 367, 421 ; as an actress, 373. Hemings, 26. Henslowe, money-lender and manager, 31- Herbert, Sir Henry, Master of the Revels, iig. Higden, Henry, a jovial dramatist, 2og. Higgins, a posture master, 314. Higgons, Bevil, dramatist, 277. Hill, Aaron, 340, 368, 376 ; account of, 312-14. Hill, Captain Richard, murders Mountfort, 170. Hippisley, 388. " Histrio-Mastix," 42. Hodgson, actor, 163. Holden, Mrs., 65; her unfortunate blunder. 95. Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, "The Theatre " in, 33. Hope, the, a pl.iyhouse, 32. Hopkins, Charles, dramatist, 211. Horden, Hildebrand, 178 ; killed in a brawl, 179. Horton, Mrs., 336; as Isabella, 365. Howard, Edward, dramatist, 196, 197. Howard, James, dramatist, 197, igg. Howard, Sir Robert, dramatist, ig8. Hughes, actor, 64. Hughes, John, dramatist, 361 ; his "Siege of Damascus," 361, 362. Hughes, Mrs. Margaret, 64 ; suggested to have been the first actress, 67 ; wooed by Prince Rui^ert, 78. Inns, theatres at, 15, 31. Jacob, Sir Hildebrand, dramatist, 372. James 1 a jjatron of the stage, 23, 25. James, Mrs., 64. Jennings, Mrs., 65. Jevon, Tliomas, as Jobson, 143 ; as Lycurgus, 143 ; his silly buffoonery, 143; his one play, 185. Johnson, Benjamin, 178 ; a great actor, 180. Johnson, Charles, dramatist, 328, 352. Keen, Theophilus, his death, 352, Kemble, Charles, allusion to, 277. Kenible, J. P., 401. Kendall, licensed to train children of the revels, 23. Killigrew, Thomas, 61 ; his patent, 62 ; his death, 62 ; his company, 64 ; the 432 INDEX. first to employ actresses for all female characters, 67. Killigrew, Sir William, author, 195. Kirkham, licensed to train children of Revels, 23. Knight, Joseph, his edition of the Riscius Aniilicanus, 63 n, 66 n. Kiiipp, Mrs., 64, 80. Kyiiastoii, 57,64, 65 ; asOlympia, 71 ; in "The Silent Woman,' 71 ; a ladies' favourite, 71 ; thrashed by order of Sedley, 71 ; as Leon, 72 ; as Henry IV., 73; his death, 74; as Boabdelin, 87. Lacy, John, 64 ; instructor of Nell Gwyn, 84 ; a great Falstaff, 97 ; the original Teague, 97 ; as Bayes, 97 ; as Captain Otter, 98 ; his quarrel with Hon. Edward Howard, 98 ; his posthumous comedy, 99. Lansdowne, Lord, 194; his "Jew of Venice," 276. Leanard, John, dramatist, 208. Lee, Mrs., actress, 148. Lee, Nat, 221, 232 ; tries his fortune as an actor, 142 ; his death, 233. Leicester, Earl of, 23 ; his players, 16, Leigh, Anthony, 144 ; as Dominique, 144. Leveridge, Dick, 272 ; as Pyramus, 343- Lewis, David, dramatist, 384. Licensed players, 9, 26, 41. Lilliston, 65. Lincoln's Inn Fields, theatres in, 61, 62, 337. Little Rose Theatre, 32. _Long, Mrs., actress, 65. Lovel, actor, 65. Lowen, actor, 26, 49. Lyddoll, 64. MacSwinet, 273 note, 315, 316 ; takes the Haymarket Theatre, 302, 306, 309- Madden, Dr. Samuel, dramatist, 421. Maidwell, L., dramatist, 209. JIallory, Christopher, punished, 41. Manley, Mrs., dramatist, 240. Manning, Francis, dramatist, 285. Marshall, Anne, 64, 81, 82; said to have been the first actress, 67. Marshall, Rebecca, 65, 81 ; as Dorothea, 82 ; as Queen of Sicily, 82 ; and Sir Hugh Middletou, 262. Marshall, Stephen, the Presbyterian, father of the actresses, 81. Martyn, Benjamin, dramatist, 422. Medbourne, Matthew, 65, 144 ; his death, 14s ; an author, 185. Middleton, the dramatist, imprisoned, 26, 27. Middleton, Sir Hugh, and Rebecca Marshall, 262. Miller, Rev. James, dramatist, 422. Mills, John, 178 ; his character as an actor, 180 ; his original characters, 180 ; as Zanga, 365. Milward, "William, his first appearance, 378. Miracle plays, 7. Mitchell, Joseph, dramatist, 368, Mohuu, Major, 48, 64, 69, 99; as lago, 70; his portrait, 100; as Maximin, 100 ; as Clytus, 100 ; his versatility, 100 ; his modesty, 100. Mohun, Lord, concerned in Mount- fort's murder, 170. Moore, Master, 40. Moore, Sir Thomas, his "Mangora," 351- Moralities, 7, 9. Moseley, 65, 70. Mossop, 400. Motteux, Peter Anthony, 210 ; his dis- graceful death, 210. Mottley, John, dramatist, 364-67, 425. Mouiitfort, Mrs. (see also Mrs. Ver- bruggen), 162, 275 ; described by CoUeyCibber. 163 ; in "The Western Lass," 164 ; as Bayes, 165 ; as Me- lantha, 165 ; her original characters, 166 ; her death, 166, 286. Mountfort, Susan, 356, 357; lives with Booth, 396 ; as Ophelia, 396 ; her in- sanity, 396 ; success in the lottery, 402. Mountfort, William, 163, 169 ; his powers of mimicry, 170 ; his murder, 170-72 ; an author, 185. Mysteries and Miracle Plays, 7, 8. Newcastle, Duke of, 187, 188. Nokes, James, 65, 74, 144 ; as Nurse in "Caius Marius " and "Fatal Jealousy," 75 ; as Sir Arthur Addel, 77 ; before Charles II., 77. INDEX. 433 Nokes, Robert, 65. "Nonjuror," Gibber's, 345, 346-349. Norris, 65, 163 ; as Dicky in " Constant Couple," 175; his original characters, 176 ; his death, 176. Odell, Thomas, dramatist, 367. Odingsell, Gabriel, an unfortunate dramatist, 379, 3S0. Oldfield, Mrs. Anne, 166, 178, 286, 320, 366, 379 ; as Lady Betty Modish, 293 ; as Biddy Tipkin, 295 ; and Mrs. Bracegirdle, 302 ; as Marcia, 329 ; as Jane Shore, 331 ; as Violante, 332 ; as Lady Jane Grey, 334 ; as Maria in the "Nonjuror," 347; as Celonis, 359 ; as Indiana, 370 ; as Cydene, 376 ; as Sophonisba, 423 ; her last part, 424. Oldmixon, John, dramatist, 212, 287 ; operas, 63. Opera, introduction of, after the Ita- lian manner, 295. Orrery, Lord, 191, 192, 283. Otway, 232 ; tries his fortune on the stage, 142 ; his assault on Shak- speare, 219 ; his death, 233. Owenson, a comic Tamerlane, 282. Oxford, Earl of, 92. Oxford, plays at, 45. Pack, 178, 343; his original characters, 181 ; as Thisbe, 343 ; his retirement, 369- Pantomimes, 319, 377. Paris Garden, 32. Patents — (1574), 21 ; Killigrew's, 61; Davenant's, 61 ; value of, 306. Payne licensed to train children of revels, 23. Payne, Nevil, 208. Peer, William, 163 ; as the Apothecary and as the speaker of the prologue in ''Hamlet," 17S ; his death, 175, 330- Pepys, Samuel, 71, 78, 79, 80, 82, 86, III, H2, 119, 120, 137, 246, 247, 248, 249, 252, 254, 264 ; his low opinion of Shakspeare, 221. Percival, Mrs., see Mrs. Verbruggen. Philips, Ambrose, 368 ; success of his "Distressed Mother," 321; his "Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester," 371- Philips, Mrs., dramatist, 238. "Phoenix," the, 60. Pinkethman, 163 ; an incorrigible "gagger," 177; as Harlequin, 178; his good fortune, 178 ; his death, 377- Piran Round, 34. Pix, Mrs., dramatist, 186, 242. Playhouse Yard, 31. Playhouses and Bear Garden presented as a nuisance, 181. Pollard, 49. Pope, Alexander, actor, 401. Pope Alexander, on Betterton, 119; and Ambrose Philips, 323 ; part author of " Three Hours after Mar- riage," 342. Pordage, Samuel, dramatist, 208. Porter, Tom, 201. Porter, Mrs., 316; as Hermione, 321 ; as Lucia in "Cato," 329 ; as Alicia, 331; as Isabella, 342; as Lady Woodvil, '347 ; as Volumnia, 359 ; as Leonora, 365. Powell, George, 305, 315 ; imprisoned for deserting Betterton's company, 131 ; his dresser's contretemps, 131 ; as Falstaff, 141 ; his original parts, 141 ; as Worthy, 142 ; Oroonoko taken from him, 172 ; as Orestes, 172 ; an author, 186 ; striking a gentleman, 307 ; his death, 336 ; injured by Sandford on the stage ; 349- Price, actor, 65. Price, Mrs., her curious marriage, 104. Prices of admission, 140, 306. "Provoked Husband," by Vanbrugh and Cibber, 386. Prynne's "Histrio-Mastix," 42. Queen's Theatre, the, 297. Quin, James, 341, 357, 400 ; kills Boweu, 174, 175 note, 349 ; his first appearance, 334 ; as Hotspur, Tamer- lane, Morat, Mark Antony, and Scipio, 350 ; as Sir Walter Raleigh, 357 ; as Henry IV. of France, 363 ; his progress, 366 • as Macheath, 424. Raftok, Miss (afterwards Mrs. Clive), her first appearance as Dorinda, 420. 434 INDEX. "R:ill>li Roister Doister," lo. Bi'llih, Junies, 425. Riveiiscroft, Edward, dramatist, 219, 222. Rawlins, Tom, dramatist, 208. Reakstraw, actor, killed on the stage, 374- Rud Eull, Clerkcmvell, 31. Reeves, actor, 64. Reeves, Mrs., actress, 64. "Rehearsal, The," 188. Revet, Ned, dramatist, 207. Rhodes, the prompter, 53, 117; receives a licence fiom Monk, 57. Rhodes, Ricliard, the autlior, 207. Rich, Christopher, 62, 273 note; driven from Drury Lane by Collier, 312 ; his jiatenl restored, 337. Rich, Jolin, 338 ; opens Lincoln's Inn Fields, 337; as Harlequin, 345; founds the Christmas pantomime, 377- Richard III. first royal patron of stage in England, 9. Richards, actor, 65. Riots, 260. Robinson, Will, actor, 26 ; killed in action, 48; an accomplished "ac- tress," 68. Rocliester, Wilmot, Earl of, 190. Rogers, Mrs., as Amand;i, 142 ; her death, 356 ; her characters, 357. " Rogues and Vagabonds," 21. Rose Alley, 32. Rose Tlieatre, 32, 33. Rowe, Nicholas, 305; his "Tamer- lane," 281; his "Fair Penitent," 286, 288; his "Jane Shore," 330, 331; his "La