miih
 
 ,•1^ . 
 
 /l^.
 
 "THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS." 
 
 ANNALS 
 
 OP 
 
 THE ENGLISH STAGE, 
 
 THOMAS BETTERTON TO EDMUND KEAN. 
 By Dr.^DORAN, F.S.A., 
 
 AUTBOB OF " TABLE TEAITS," " LIVJES OF THE QPEEN8 OF EN0L4ND OF THE HOUSE OF 
 HANOVEE," ETC.. ETC. 
 
 A Memoir op Dr. Doran, and an Introduction and Conclusion, 
 By R. H STODDARD. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER, 
 
 23 South Ninth Street. 
 1890.
 
 
 TO 
 
 €lin)aib ill. Ularb, $1.^., 
 
 IN MEMORY OP PLEASANT OLD CONVERSE TOGETHER, 
 
 ON PLAYS, PLAYERS, AND PLAY-GOING TIMES. 
 
 THIS CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS A 
 
 COMPLETE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH STAGE 
 
 IS INSCRIBED, 
 
 ^ark of l^omaigt to ti)E .ilrtist anU Scstttm for tjit f runtJ, 
 
 WITH THE BEST WISHES OF 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 li 
 
 BILL OF THE PLAY." 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 CHAP. PACK 
 
 I. — Prologue 9 
 
 II.— The Decline and FaU of the Players ... 32 
 
 III. — The "Boy Actresses," and the "Young Ladies" . . 47 
 
 IV". — The Gentlemen of the King's Company ... 70 
 
 "^ — Thomas Botterton 79 
 
 VI.— "Exeunt," and "Enter" 36 
 
 VII.— Elizabeth Barry 104 
 
 VIII. — "Their first appearance on this stage" .... 113 
 
 IX. — The Dramatic Poets. — Noble, gentle, and humble Authors . 127 
 
 X. — Professional Authors 147 
 
 XI. — The Dramatic Authoresses 163 
 
 XII. — The Audiences of the Seventeenth Century . . . 169 
 
 XIIL— A Seven Years' Rivalry 188 
 
 XIV. — The United and the Disunited Companies . . . 211 
 
 XV. — Union, Strength, Prosperity 216 
 
 XVI. — Competition, and what came of it 230 
 
 XVII. — The Progress of James Quin, and Dechne of Barton Booth 24 2 
 
 XVIII.— Barton Booth 265 
 
 XIX.— Mrs. Oldfield .288 
 
 XX.— From the Death of Anne Oldfield to that of Wilks . 301 
 
 XXL— Robert WUks 308 
 
 XXIL— Enter, Garrick 319 
 
 XXIIL — Garrick, Quin, Mrs. Porter 333 
 
 XXIV. — Rivalry; and Enter, Spranger Barry . , , . 343 
 
 XX Y.— The old Dublin Theatre 351 
 
 XXVI. — Garrick and Quin ; Garrick and Barry .... 357 
 
 XXVIL— The Audiences of 1700-1750 369 
 
 XXVIIL— Exit, James Quin 391 
 
 XXI.X.— England and Scotland 405
 
 MEMOIR. 
 
 It has fallen to the lot of many to write books ; but it has 
 not fallen to the lot of many to write their lives, or, writing 
 them, to have them read. What makes an author a fit sub- 
 ject for biography, has seldom been determined, either by 
 himself or by his own generation. He may consider him- 
 self worthy of biographic honors, and they may not ; or 
 vice versa. What Shakespeare thought of his work, we 
 have no means of knoAving, other than such as we fancy we 
 detect in his Sonnets (which may, or may not, be autobio- 
 graphic) ; but what hundreds of scribblers have thought of 
 their work, we cannot well help knowing, even if we would, 
 so voluminous are the records which they have left behind 
 them. There was Percival Stockdale, for example ; who 
 was ever more convinced of his greatness than he ? He lived 
 to be seventy-five years old, and to publish upwards of 
 twenty different works ; — among which was a Life of Wal- 
 ler, whom he edited : a tragedy, and three volumes of poems : 
 four volumes of sermons : a treatise on Education : an En- 
 quiry into the Laws of Poetr}", with a Defence of Pope : two 
 volumes of Lectures on the Truly Eminent English Poets : 
 and Memoirs of his Life and Writings, which last, he knew, 
 would " live and escape the havoc that has been made of my 
 literary fame ! " Has it done so ? Did you ever hear of 
 the great Stockdale— cZar^^w et venerahile nomen ? If I 
 have rescued him for a moment from the wallet which 
 Time bears upon his back, and in which he drops alms for 
 Oblivion, it is because he is a representative of a class who 
 
 vii
 
 Vlll MEMOIR. 
 
 insist upon being considered what they are not — authors. 
 Others occur to me ; but surely one, — such an one as Perci- 
 val Stockdale, — is enough 
 
 " To point a moral, or adorn a tale." 
 
 They are not dead, for nothing can be said to have died, 
 that has not lived. 
 
 " Keep them. Oblivion, they are thine." 
 
 The writers who are most readily forgotten are frequently 
 those who have most entertained us, — not through their 
 creations, for they are in no sense creators; but through 
 the stores of knowledge which they have gathered for us. 
 They possess no interest outside of their work, which we 
 would as soon have furnished by machines as by men, if only 
 machines could furnish it, as perhaps they may some day. 
 Among the dubious definitions in Johnson's Dictionary, 
 there is one which remains unchanged. It is that of the 
 word Lexicogeapher, whom we are still instructed to be- 
 lieve "a harmless drudge." This definition, liberally inter- 
 preted, indicates the kind of writer whom I have in mind, 
 and who is more accurately described by Johnson's defini- 
 tion of the word Compiler: "A collector. One who 
 frames a composition from various authors." Whether a 
 compiler is an author, in the strict sense, may be questioned. 
 That he may be, and often is, an author, in an enjoyable 
 sense, is certain. If to frame a composition from various 
 authors is to be a compiler, as Johnson declared, Montaigne 
 was one, and Burton was another. That they were think- 
 ers, as well as compilers, does not change the character of 
 their work, which is the most learned and most suggestive 
 of the kind that we have. The elder Disraeli was also a 
 compiler ; but he cannot be called learned, in spite of his 
 multifarious reading, nor at all satisfactory except to super-
 
 MEMOIR. ix 
 
 ficial inquirers. What he was, wlien critically examined, 
 and where many of his pretended " discoveries" were derived, 
 Bolton Corney has shown. Quite as entertaining as Disraeli, 
 and much more scholarly, was the late Dr. John Doran, Ph.D. 
 F.S.A., who ranks high among English collectors of ana, 
 and who, if he had been earlier in the field, might have been 
 a dangerous rival to the author of " The Curiosities of Litera- 
 ture." He has written largely of many things and many 
 men, and with an intelligence which makes us regret that 
 he contented himself with reproducing the work of others, 
 when he might have i^roduced better work of his own. He 
 seems not to have thought of himself, but of his literary 
 tasks, and, provided that these were faithfully performed, 
 to have been content with his lot, from which the calcula- 
 tions of vainer and more ambitious men were absent. Few 
 men of letters have written so well and so voluminously 
 as Dr. Doran, without leaving more memorials of their 
 lives than he. They are short and simjile, like the annals 
 of the poor ; but they are honorable to him and to Litera- 
 ture. 
 
 John Doran was born in London in 1807. If he could 
 not substantiate the common claim of his countrymen to be 
 descended from Irish kings, he was a member of an old 
 Irish family of Drogheda, to whose splendor in former times 
 he used to refer, b}^ declaring, with a humorous assumption 
 of historic seriousness, that they were the first people in 
 their particular part of the country to wear blue breeches ! 
 Of his early life we are only told that he accompanied his 
 father to Paris, where he completed his education, and that 
 he resided several years in France and Germany, where the 
 knowledge that he obtained was more useful, and of greater 
 rarity then than it is to-day. A clever lad, with an attrac- 
 tion toward Literature, he wrote, at the age of fifteen, a 
 melodrama entitled "The Wandering Jew," which was 
 played at Surrey Theatre for the benefit of Thomas Blan-
 
 X MEMOIR. 
 
 chard ; and he was subsequently employed on the staff of 
 the Literary Chronicle, until it passed into the hands of 
 John Stirling and his friends. The Fourth Estate was 
 liberally represented at that time by young Doran's vivacious 
 and versatile countrymen, — and by none more brilliantly 
 than William Maginn, who was alike remarkable for his 
 talents and for his imprudence. He was, as we all remem- 
 ber, the original of Captain Shandon in " Pendennis," and 
 from all that I have read about him, I cannot think his por- 
 trait is overdrawn. Very different from this unfortunate, 
 but happy-go-lucky man of genius, was John Doran, who 
 possessed the gayety of the Celt without his recklessness ; who 
 was scrupulously exact in the performance of his professional 
 duties ; and whose pen, — at least, in his early manhood, — ■ 
 was not his sole means of subsistence. If it was ever his 
 crutch, it was then only his staff. 
 
 Doran's first serious essay in Literature was the *' History 
 and Antiquities of the Town and Borough of Eeading, in 
 Berkshire" (1835), an elaborate work, which has long since 
 been forgotten by all save the antiquarian student, but 
 which must have had considerable merit of a special sort, 
 since it obtained for him the degree of M.A., and, after- 
 ward, of LL.D., from the University of Marburg. He 
 was, for eleven years, the editor of a London weekly news- 
 paper, which deeply concerned itself with religious politics 
 (whatever that may be), during which time he edited an 
 edition of Anthon's Xenophon's Anabasis. Six or seven 
 years later he became one of the editors of the Athenceum, 
 and burgeoned out from a journalist into an author. He 
 edited and finished *' Filia Dolorosa " (1853), a Memoir of 
 Marie Therese, Duchess d'Angouleme, which had been be- 
 gun by Mrs. Isbella Eomer, an English woman of letters, 
 who is only remembered by the titles of four or five works of 
 travels ; and he wrote a Life of Dr. Young for Tegg's edition 
 of that poet.
 
 MEMOIR. XI 
 
 The list of Dr. Doran's writings (so far as I have been 
 able to complete it) is as follows : — " Table Traits, and 
 Something on Them " (1854) ; "Habits and Men " (1854) ; 
 ''Queens of the House of Hanover" (1855); "Knights 
 and their Days " (1856) ; " Monarchs Retired from Busi- 
 ness" (1857) ; "History of Court Fools" (1858) ; "New 
 Pictures and Old Panels " (1859) ; " Princes of the House 
 of Wales" (1859) ; "Memoirs of Queen Adelaide" (1861) ; 
 "His Majesty's Servants" (1863); "Saints and Sinners" 
 (1868); "A Lady of the Last Century" (1873); "Mann 
 and Manners " (1876), and " London in Jacobite Times " 
 (1877). Among the works which he edited may be men- 
 tioned a " Selection of Ballads Contributed to Bentley's Mis- 
 cellany " (1859) ; and an English reprint of a volume of 
 essays by the late H. T. Tuckerman, entitled " The Col- 
 lector " (1868). 
 
 Dr. Doran's latest literary employment was the manage- 
 ment of Notes and Queries ; the plan of which was in the 
 line of the studies which he had pursued for years, and 
 which he brought to bear upon its pages with remarkable 
 success. His last contributions to Literature were papers 
 on " Dwarfs," in the new edition of the Encyclopedia Bri- 
 tannica ; a sketch on "Shakespeare in France" in the 
 Nineteenth Century (January, 1878) ; and a letter to the 
 editor of the Athenwum, upon the fiftieth anniversary of 
 the birth of that journal. He died at 33 Lansdowne Eoad, 
 ' Netting Hill, on the 25th of January, 1878, after a brief 
 illness with bronchitis, and all that was mortal of him was 
 buried four days later at Kensal Green. He was sincerely 
 mourned by his friends. "It is not often," said the Athe- 
 ncBum, "that death, by a single blow, spreads such wide 
 sorrow amongst literary workers. For Doran was at home 
 in most of our literary coteries, and whilst no one encoun- 
 tered him in society •without being charmed by his pleasant 
 address and animated conversation, it was impossible for
 
 Xll MEMOIR. 
 
 any one to make the first approaches toward intimacy with 
 him, and not to entertain a cordial liking for one so over- 
 flowing with manly kindliness and honest sympathy. The 
 regard with which he inspired his habitual associates was a 
 sentiment of the closest attachment." He was one of the 
 few men whose age might well be doubted. ** Though he 
 never affected to be younger than his years, Doran did not 
 to the last strike casual observers, or even his ordinary ac- 
 quaintance, as a veteran whose career had begun in the first 
 decade of the present century. The whiteness of his hair 
 w^ould, indeed, have been appropriate to an octogenarian. 
 But to the last his countenance, voice, and manner were 
 those of a man in the middle stage of middle age. His 
 smile had the freshness of a yet earlier period, and his whole 
 bearing, as he delivered anecdote after anecdote to a group 
 of listeners at a dinner- table, or in the corner of a crowded 
 drawing-room, was so light and easy in its gayety, that no 
 stranger, seeing him for the first time in any of the earlier 
 months of last season, imagined how nearly he had ap- 
 proached the end of his seventieth year. On the other 
 hand, those intimate friends to whom he used to pour forth 
 his personal reminiscences of John Kemble and Mrs. Sid- 
 dons were induced by the remoteness of the recollections to 
 magnify his age in an amusing manner." 
 
 Dr. Doran's place in Literature will be among those who 
 have entertained as well as instinicted their readers, for his 
 works afford just the intellectual diversion that is most ac- 
 ceptable to men of cultivated taste and scholarly attainments 
 in their hours of idleness. **Even the slightest of -..nem 
 may be described as works in which a writer, having an un- 
 usually large acquaintance with curious and too generally 
 neglected literature, has reproduced the multifarious results 
 of his devious readings with excellent judgment and humor. 
 It should also be remembered, to the great credit of these 
 dexterous manipulations of the curiosities of literature, that
 
 MEMOIR. XUl 
 
 they exhibit everywhere the candor and sincerity for which 
 their autlior was remarkable. Had he been capable of con- 
 descending to artifices sometimes conspicuous in literary 
 achievements, Doran's facile pen could have easily worked 
 into pompous essays and pretentious treatises the materials 
 which he offered with equal modesty and openness to the 
 thousands of educated readers who were with good reason 
 thankful for them. But good as they are in their peculiarly 
 novel way, Dr. Doran's books do not give any adequate idea 
 of his literary usefulness. To a critical journal, that in 
 surveying the entire field of letters needs the assistance of 
 men possessing an accurate knowledge of the outlying fields 
 and the hidden nooks and corners of literary achievement, 
 he was of almost inestimable convenience and value. The 
 same may be said of his exceptional fitness for the editorial 
 management of Notes and Queries, which, in addition to 
 its other titles of respect, fully justifies the felicitous words 
 in which Lord Houghton, in an after-dinner speech, called 
 it a repertory of useless knowledge. Moreover, Dr. Doran 
 was especially serviceable to literary criticism on account of 
 his special knowledge of large subjects, as well as by the di- 
 versity of his out-of-the-way information. At present we 
 know not where to look for his equal as a student of eigh- 
 teenth century literature. Nor should it be forgotten that, 
 whilst he was remarkable as a critic for his knowledge of 
 details, he was even more remarkable for considerateness to- 
 ward the authors on whom he passed judgment. Perhaps 
 no critic ever did his full duty to the public Avith so much 
 tenderness toward writers. 'You are not mistaken, my 
 dear fellow, as to your facts,' he once remarked in his kind- 
 liest way to a young writer, 'but don't hurt people need- 
 lessly with that strong pen of yours. When you come to be 
 as old as I am, you will be sorry to remember that you have 
 been guilty of needless cruelty to any one.' The gentleness 
 of this just speech was very characteristic of the man, and
 
 XIV m:emoir. 
 
 may help to account for the hold he had on the affections of 
 his friends." 
 
 A tender-hearted man, a scholarly student, a careful, 
 painstaking writer, who honored the profession by which he 
 lived — such was Dr. John Doran, who has left no successor 
 tnat is worthy of him. 
 
 R. H. S.
 
 OTRODUCTION. 
 
 The ground which Dr. Doran has covered in what may be 
 callfid the biographical part of these volumes, occupies a century 
 and three-quarters, beginning with Thomas Betterton, who com- 
 menced his dramatic career in 1659, and ending with Edmund 
 Kean, who finished his dramatic career in 1833. Between these 
 dates flourished all the great actors and actresses of the English 
 stage — all, that is, except the first actors of the Elizabethan dra- 
 ma, of whom we know little or nothing except their names, and 
 the parts which they filled. That the original representatives of 
 Shakespeare's characters, — Burbage, Taylor, and the rest, — were 
 excellent players, tradition asserts, but in what their excellence 
 consisted we can only conjecture ; for dramatic criticism, if it can 
 be said to have existed then, was merely verbal, and dramatic 
 biography was unthought of. That tradition handed down to 
 their successors the way in which they played their Hamlets and 
 jRichards and Ziears, is more than likely : and that it lingers 
 yet on the stage is not improbable. Still, there is no certainty 
 about it, no such certainty, at any rate, as in the days of Charles 
 the First, when their immediate successors confronted audiences 
 who could remember their masters, and compare them with them. 
 The line of succession, — if broken, was broken during the Com- 
 monwealth, when the theatres were closed, and His Majesty's 
 Servants, as the players were called, followed the fortunes of his 
 luckless Majesty in the field, where they fought bravely, where 
 they became quartermasters, majors, coronets, and what not, and 
 where one of them, — a certain Will Robinson, — encountered the 
 savage Harrison, who ran his sword through him, shouting as he 
 did so, " Cursed is he who doeth the work of the Lord neg- 
 ligently ! " 
 
 The calling of the player was subject to many vicissitudes, and 
 much abuse. His first literary adversary was Stephen Gosson, 
 who, in his School o/ Abuses (1579), indulged in what he called 
 
 XV
 
 XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 a "pleasant invective against poets, pipers, players, jesters, and 
 suchlike catterpillars of a Commonwealth," and who drew awful 
 examples from Roman history. A damned dramatist himself, he 
 launched damnation at all who succeeded. He was followed by 
 William Prynne, a voluminous Puritan pamphleteer, who elected 
 himself Dramatic Censor of the age, in his Histrio-Mastix : the 
 Players' Scoiirge, or Actors' Tragedle (iG33), for which he 
 was committed to the Tower, and sentenced to pay a fine of five 
 thousand pounds ; to be expelled from the Universary of Oxford, 
 from the Society of Lincoln's Inn, and from his profession of the 
 law ; to stand twice in the pillory, each time losing an ear ; to 
 have his book burnt before his face by the hangman ; and to suf- 
 fer perpetual imprisonment. A third assailant of the drama was 
 Jeremy Collier, an English Nonjuring bishop, who lashed him- 
 self into fury in A Short View of the Immorality and Pro- 
 fatieness of the English Stage (1698), evidences of which evil 
 qualities he found readily enough in the plays of Dryden, Con- 
 greve, and Vanbrugh. They defended themselves as well as they 
 could (some of them rather tamely, it must be confessed), and a 
 paper war of some years' duration was the consequence. Mr. S. 
 Austin Allibone, who is nothing if not moral, calls him the Re- 
 former of the English Stage, a distinction of no great value, if the 
 Stage be in the condition which he supposes, and which he sums 
 up as the School of Vice. " Certain it is," he eloquently remarks, 
 " that conducted as our theatres are at present, taking together 
 that which is acted upon, behind and before the stage, we con- 
 sider that no one who has a proper regard for the interests of 
 morality can consistently lend his influence or countenance to 
 such demoralizing exhibitions. If it should be thought that we 
 are too severe in our judgment, we answer that the facts of the 
 case are in this, as in every other question, the best evidence. 
 This evidence will prove that three out of every four young men 
 who become victims to licentiousness and intcmpeiance are first 
 introduced to vice through the medium of the theatre. As to 
 the other sex — how fathers can permit their daughters, husbands 
 their wives, lovers the objects of their affections, to have their 
 eyes and ears offended by what must be heard and witnessed by 
 those who visit the theatres, is marvellous indeed 1"
 
 INTRODUCTION. XVli 
 
 Thackeray disposed of Dr. Firinin, if I remember rightly, by 
 sending liim to America, where lie became connected with the 
 press. I forget how Dickens disposed of Pecksniff, but my own 
 impression is that that irrepressible moralist emigrated to Phila- 
 delphia, where he abandoned the difficult study of architecture 
 for the easier study of bibliography, and where, under a nom de 
 plume, he continued to remind us of our moral responsibilities, 
 by editing "A Critical Dictionary of English literature." 
 
 The sweet Puritan poet, Milton, thought better of the stage 
 than the sour Puritan critic Prynne, for a year or two before the 
 latter vented his rage upon it in the Hlstrio-Mastix, he made 
 his earliest appearance in print, in the Second Folio, in "An 
 Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare," the 
 greatness of whose genius he was the second poet, to pay homage 
 to, Ben Jonson being the first, and who, he declared, had built 
 for himself a live-long monument, 
 
 "And so sepulcliered in such pomp dost lie, 
 That kings for such a tomb would wish to die." 
 
 He had a wise and liberal mind, for one and not the least of the 
 intellectual recreations of his merry man was dfiUKved from the 
 drama : 
 
 " Then to the well-trod stage anon. 
 If Jonson's learned sock be on, 
 Or sweetest Sliakespeare, Fancy's child. 
 Warbles his native woodnotes wild." 
 
 The poera in which this Immortal celebrates himself and his 
 cloudless existence (" L'Allegro "), is saturated with the spirit of 
 Shakespeare, who, we may be sure, was Milton's constant com- 
 panion in the pleasant village of Horton, vhtre he passed six of 
 the happiest years of his life, and where he wrote that incompai a- 
 ble masque of which Shakespeare himself would have been pmud 
 — "Comas." The Age of Elizrdieth was the most dramatic age 
 that England had ever seen, not so much because it was crowded 
 with great events, (though these were not to be despised), as be- 
 cause it was "rammed with life," — abundant, valiant, dominant, 
 physical life, that shrank from nothing, and irrepressible intel- 
 lectual life that mastered whatever it grappled with, If there
 
 XVlil INTEODUCTION. 
 
 was ever a time when Britons never would be slaves, it was then, 
 as Philip of Spain found to his cost, and as the pedantic followers 
 of the old schoolmen found to their cost. What an England it 
 was — the England of Sydney, Raleigh and Drake, — the England 
 of Spenser and Shakespeare ! Famous for many things, it was 
 famous above all for its dramatic writing, which in a few years 
 re iched a greatness that has ever since been the wonder of the 
 nations, who have bestowed their homage upon the Master through 
 whom it reached that greatness, and who now sits alone in the 
 Heaven of Fame, — the supreme poet of mankind ! What his 
 great contemporaries thought of him we have no accurate means of 
 knowing ; (there were no coffee-houses then where the wits of the 
 town met, and laid down critical laws, as they did a century later 
 at Will's; — and there were no diurnals that chronicled the doings 
 of the players at the Globe, or the Blackfriars ;) — but what was 
 thought of his works may be gathered from the writings of some 
 of his jealous fellows, who decried his successes, and to whom he 
 was an upstart crow beautified with their feathers (were you badly 
 plucked by him, Master Greene?) and may be inferred from the 
 fortune which these works produced him, and which enabled him 
 to retire, a prosperous gentleman, to Stratford. That he was 
 the most popular poet of the times is proved by the surreptitious 
 quartos, which would not have continued to be printed unless 
 there had been a demand for them, and by the testimony of Ben 
 Jonson, who declared that he worshipped his memory this side 
 of idolatry. 
 
 " Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were 
 To see thee in our waters yet appear. 
 And make those flights upon the banks of Thanaes, 
 That did so take Eliza and our James I " 
 
 The fame of Shakespeare, which suffered eclipse under the 
 Commonwealth, set in darkness after the Restoration, which 
 ushered in the worst age of the English drama. Of the early 
 dramatists Beaumont and Fletcher were played ten times where 
 Sh:ikespeare was played once, and when Shakespeare was played 
 at all, his fair proportions were wofully mutilated. The flight 
 which had so taken Eliza and our James, was not suited to the 
 aviary in which Davenant, Killigrew, Howard and the rest aired
 
 INTRODUCTION, XIX 
 
 their little singing birds. The number of dramatists, so called, 
 iu the last half of the seventeenth century, exceeded the number 
 of actors, and very dreary reading they are, being at once dull, 
 and indecent. Their plays were finely acted, however, and were 
 mounted with a splendor that was new to the English theatres. 
 They possessed, besides, a charm which was lacking on the Eliza- 
 bethan Stage, — the female parts were no longer played by boys, 
 but by women. They are said to have come in with other French 
 fashions, which had so taken our Charles on the Continent, and 
 which proved rather expensive to the English people before his 
 reign was finished. The first great actor of the period was Tho- 
 mas Betterton, the son of an under-cook of Charles the First, who 
 was the undisputed monarch of the stage for over half a century, 
 and who created upwards of one hundred and thirty dift'erent 
 parts. Pepys reflected the opinion of his audiences when he 
 said, "I only know that Mr. Betterton is the best actor in the 
 ■world." Contemporary with Betterton was Lacy, who was a 
 great Falstaff, Mohun, who was the favorite hero of his tragedies, 
 Powell, Wilks, Harris, and later. Barton Booth, the true successor 
 of Betterton. The most famous actress of the perioil was Eliza- 
 beth Barry, who in thirty-seven years created one hundred and 
 twelve parts. She was the original Moniraia, Belvidera, Isabella, 
 and Calista, and could create in the same season such opposite 
 characters as Lady Brute iu "The Provoked Wife," and Zara 
 in 'The Mourning Bride." 
 
 Dr. Doran enumerates above a hundred Post-Shakespearian dra- 
 matists, none of whose productions (and they were very volumi- 
 nous) can now be called stock-pieces. The most eminent were 
 Dryden, Lee, and Otway, who represented the poetic side of the 
 English drama, — at any rate, they wrote iu verse, — and Congreve, 
 Etherege, and Vanbrugh, who laid the foundation upon which 
 Sheridan, Goldsmith, the Colmans, Cumberland, and others, 
 raised the structure of prose comedy. It is possible, I suppose, 
 to read them, but the object in view must be iinperaiive, and one's 
 amount of unoccupied leisure endless. Waiving the question of 
 morals, the comedies of Congreve are extremely brilliant. Hunt 
 admired them after a fashion, though he confessed that the heart- 
 lessness and duplicity of some of his characters are not to be taken
 
 XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 without allowance for llie ugly idtial. "There is somelliiug not 
 riMtural, both in bis characters and wit; and we read him rather 
 to see how entertaining he cm make his superior fine ladies and 
 gentlemen, and what a pack of sensual busybodies they are, like 
 insects over a pool, than from any true sense of them as men and 
 women." Thackeray, who compares him with Swift, wliose truth 
 fri<xhtens one, and whose laugh ler makes one rhelanchoiy, ?ays, 
 " We liave in Congreve a humorous observer of another school, 
 to whom the world seems to have no moral at all, and wliose 
 ghastly doctrine seems to be that we should eat and drink and be 
 merry wheu we can, and go to the deuce (if there be a deuce) 
 wlien the time comes.'' 
 
 The qualities which distingui.-h the Elizabethan drama disap- 
 peared during the Restoration. Truth to nature, insight into 
 character, the art of saying rememberable things, — were lost: 
 what were called " the unities," concerning which nobody was 
 clear, were insisted upon, and types of character, or what in Ben 
 Jonsou's plays were considered humors, usurped the places of 
 men and women. The masterly blank verse of Shakespeare and 
 Beaumont and Fletcher was succeeded by rhymed couplets, which 
 abounded with extravagant similes. How absurd the poetic plays 
 of the Restoration were may be gathered from " The Rehearsal," 
 in which they were held up to deserved ridicule. Roman and 
 Greek history and mythology furnished their heroes and heroines. 
 Lee, for example, paid his respects to Mithridates, Alexander the 
 Great, Nero, Lucius Junius Brutus, and Constantine the Great: 
 Dryden rather affected Oriental subjects, — Inilian Emperors, Con- 
 quests of Grenada, Auruugzebes, and w hat not : Rowe was Orien- 
 tal in his Tamerlane, classical in his Ulysses, and historical in his 
 Jane Shore and Lady Jane Grey : Crowne whs classical in his 
 Andromache, Darius, Regulus and Caligula, and liistorical in his 
 Charles Vlllth., the Destruction of Jerusalem, and Henry the 
 Sixth : Otway was classical in his Alcibiades, and Cains Marius, 
 historical in his Don Carlos, and romantic in his Venice Pre- 
 served ; and Settle generally miscellaneous in his Cambyses, the 
 Empress of Morocco, the Conquest of China, Ibrahim, the Illus- 
 trious Bassa, the Heir of Morocco, the Virgin Prophetess, or the 
 Fate of Troy, and the Siege of Troy. The more remote the time
 
 INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 in which their characters lived, and the less that was kuowii of 
 the countries in which their plots were laid, the better both were 
 adapted for ihe purposes of these dramatists. They could not 
 well violate nature, for it never entered into their schemes, and 
 if they did, who iu tlie world cared ? Ceriaiidy not their audi- 
 ences, who had Ceased to read Shakespeare, and certainly not 
 their players, whose successes depended upon their acting, and 
 not upon the plays they acted in. It almost seemed as if the rule 
 was — the worse the play, the better the player. 
 
 The Poetic Drama had possession of the English stage through 
 the greater part of the eighteenth century — a circumstance which 
 speaks well (or ill) for the patience of those who witnessed it. A 
 glance at the " Biogr.iphica Dramatica" will show what they 
 put up with from Thomson, say, and Young, and Hill, and Mal- 
 lett, and the whole rag tag, and bob-tail of Parnassus. It 
 cropped out in tlie present century, — this poor Poetic Drama, — 
 in the versified plays of Shiel, Maturin, Knowles, Miss Mitford, 
 Talfourd, and Bulwer, and has ended, — it would seem, — with the 
 tragedies of Tennyson, which have added nothing to his reputa- 
 tion, and but little, I imagine, to his bank account. 
 
 " Good Friend, for Jesus' sake forbear 
 To dig the dust inclosed here." 
 
 We know nothing, as I have said before, of the Elizabethan 
 actors, but we know a great de;d of their successors under the 
 Restoration, and later. We owe this knowledge to one who was 
 equally noted as a player and a dramatist, — and who was the first, 
 and in many respects, the best of English dramatic critics. I 
 mean Colley Gibber, of course, whose "Apology for his Life" 
 holds a mirror up to the nature of his fellows for upwards of forty 
 years, during which the English stage was in iis glory, illustrated, 
 as it was, by the genius of Belterton, Booth, Haines, Moliun, 
 Mountfort, Nokes, Wilks, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Old- 
 field, — not forgetting Colley himself, tlian whom a better judge 
 of acting never put pen to paper. No historian of the stage can 
 aflford to neglect this unique book, which is not only the most 
 amusing ever written, but the best that we have concerning actors 
 and actresses. It is impossible to read it without admiration for
 
 XXll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the talents of Gibber, or witl.out seeing, so far as words c;ui 
 make us see, the form and pressure, as well as the magnificent 
 though elaborate art, of his great contemporaries. W« have the 
 cream of it, so far as it relates to such of ihem as come within 
 the scope of Dr. Doian's work, which is at once a dramatic his- 
 tory as well as a collection of dramatic biograpliia5- -critical, 
 scholarly, exhaustive, and every way entertaining. 
 
 Heading between the lines in the pages which follow, we trace 
 the progress of English dramatic writing in its decadence and its 
 renaissance, — from the twilight of its settintr to the twilight of its 
 rising sun, — and trace at the same time the progress of the art 
 which embodies il. We see in the latter a gradual return to 
 nature (if, indeed, we can ever be said to see nature on the stage), 
 a gradual departure from stilled and artificial ideals, and a grad- 
 ual creation of characters within the range of human possibilities. 
 Old schools of acting give place to new schools, as Booth, and 
 Garrick, and Kean rise in succession, ami unseat Betterton, and 
 Quin, and the Kemblcs. Periwigs and small swords, brocaded 
 dresses and high-heeled shoes vanish in the Limbo of discarded 
 "properties," and something like correctness of costume appears, 
 — until Shylock, ceasing to be a comic character, puts on the gaber- 
 dine of his race, and Macbeth, ceasing to be a British officer, re- 
 sumes his native kilt and tartans. This bodily change of the dra- 
 matic art, if I may call il such, is ai^companied by a change in 
 the spirit of <lramatic writing, \vhiih, if not again inspired, as in 
 the days of the early masters, is yet illuminated by the glory of 
 the greatest — Shakespeare. There is a vitality in his creations 
 which perpetually asserts itself, and which is never lost sight of 
 amid the shadows of Dryden, Otvvay, and Rowe. They lived 
 for a time through the exertions of the players, but not as Shakes- 
 peare lived, for however good Betterton and Booth and Gariiek 
 and Kean may have been in Melantius, and Cato, and Lothario, 
 and Bertram, they were better in Hamlet, Oihello, Lear, and 
 Richard. The test of the greatest actors is their ability to play 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Thus much (and imperfectly) by way of Prologue to " their 
 Majesties' Players," from whom, I will no longer detain the reader.
 
 DOPiAFS ANi\ALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 The period of the origin of the drama is an unsettled question, 
 but it has been fixed at an eariy date, if Ave may accept the theory 
 of a recent writer, who suggests that Moses described the Creation 
 from a visionary pictorial representation, which occupied seven 
 days, from the commencement to the close of the spectacle ! 
 
 Among the most remote of the Chinese traditions, the theatre 
 holds a conspicuous place. In Cochin-China, there is at this day 
 a most primitive clraracter about actors, authors, and audience. 
 The governor of the district enjoys the least rude seat in the 
 sylvan theatre ; he directs the applause by tapping with his fingers 
 on a little drum, and as, at this signal, his secretaries fling strings 
 full of cash on to the stage, the performance suffers from continual 
 interruption. For the largesse distributed by the patron of the 
 drama, and such of the spectators as choose to follow his example, 
 the actors and actresses furiously scramble, while the poor poet 
 stands by, sees bis best situations sacrificed, and is none the 
 richer, — by way of compensation. 
 
 In Greece, the profession of actor was accounted honorable. 
 In Rome, it was sometimes a well-requited, but also a despised 
 vocation. During the decade of years, when that aristocratic dem- 
 oci-at Pisistratus held power, the drama first appeared (it is said) 
 at Athens. It formed a portion of the religion of the state. The 
 theatre was a temple in which, rudely enough at first, the audience 
 were taught how the will, not only of men but of gods, must 
 necessarily submit to the irresistible force of Destiny. This last 
 1*
 
 10 nOEAN's ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 power, represented by a combination of the lyric and epic 
 elanients, 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 religions 
 character being especially supported, on behalf of the audience, 
 Dy the ever sagacious, morally, and fen^ently pious chonis. Lyric 
 (ragedy existed before the age of Thespis and Pisistratus ; but a 
 spoken tragedy dates from that period alone, above five centuries 
 earlier than the Christian era ; and the new theatre found at once 
 its l^rynne and its Collier in that hearty hater of actors and act- 
 ing, the legislative Solon. 
 
 At the great festivals, when the theatres were opened, the ex- 
 penses 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, Z\d., was established, but the receipts 
 were made over to the poor. From morning till dewy eve these 
 rootless buildings, capable of containing, on an average, twenty 
 thousand persons, were filled from the ground to the topmost 
 seat, in the sweet spring-tide, sole theatrical season of the Greeks. 
 
 Disgrace and disfranchisement were the penalties laid upon the 
 professional Roman actor. He was accounted infamous, and waS 
 excluded from the tribes. Nevertheless, the calling in Italy had 
 something of a religious quality. Livy tells us of a company of 
 Etruscan actors, ballet-pantomimists, however, rather than co- 
 medians, 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 intei'woven a story. From the period of Liviup 
 Andronicus (b. c. 240) is dated the origin of an actual Latit 
 theatre, the glory of which was at its highest in the days of Attiiie 
 and Terence, but for which a dramatic literature became extinct 
 when the mimes took the place of the old comedy and tragedy. 
 
 Even in Rome the skill of the artist sometimes freed him from 
 the degradation attached to the exercise of his art. Roscius, the 
 popular comedian, contemporary with Cicero, was elevated by 
 Sulhi to the equestrian dignity, and with ^sopus, the great
 
 PKOLOGUE. 11 
 
 tragedian, enjoyed the friendship of Tully, and of Tall}'s friends, 
 the wisest and the noblest in Rome, Roscius and ^sopus were 
 what would now be called scholars and gentlemen, as well as un- 
 equalled artists, whom no amount of application could appall when 
 they had to achieve a triumph in their art. An Austrian emperor 
 once " encored" an entire opera (the Matrimonio Ser/reto); but, 
 according to Cicero, his friend ^sopus so delighted his enthu- 
 siastic audience, that in one piece they encored him " millies" a 
 thousand, or perhaps an indefinite number of times. The Roman 
 tragedian lived well, and bequeathed a vast fortune to his son. 
 Roscius earned £32 daily, and he, too, amassed great wealth. 
 
 The mimes were satirical burlesques, parts of which were often 
 improvised, and had some affinity to the pasquinades and harlequin- 
 ades of modern Italy. The writers were the intimate Mends of 
 emperors ; the actors were infamous. Cfesar induced Decius 
 Laberius, an author of knightly rank, to appear on the stage in 
 one of these pieces ; and Laberius obeyed, not for the sake of the 
 honorarium, £4,000, but from dread of disobeying an order from 
 so powerful a master. The unwilling actor profited by his de- 
 gradation to satirize the policy of Ctesar, who did not resent the 
 liberty, but restored Laberius to the rank and equestrian privi- 
 leges 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 hold- 
 ing any intercourse, as the professional histriones or actors of the 
 drama had done, Avith Romans of equestrian or senatorial dignity. 
 It was against the stage, exclusively given up to their scandalous 
 exhibitions, that the Christian fiithers 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 
 forever in the sepulchre of Pai-is, the darling of old Rome.
 
 12 DOUAM's annals of IJiE 8TAGE. 
 
 In this our England, minds and hearts had ever been open to 
 dramatic impressions. The Druidical rites contained the elements 
 of dramatic spectacle. The Pagan Saxon era had its dialogue- 
 actors, or buffoons ; and when the period of Christianity suf- 
 ceeded, its professors and teachere took of the evil epoch what best 
 suited their purposes. In narrative dialogue, or song, they drama- 
 tized the incidents of the lives of the saints, and of One greater 
 than saints ; and they thus rendered intelligible to listeners, what 
 would have been incomprehensible if it had been presented to 
 them Jis readers. 
 
 In Castle-Hall, before farm-house fires, on the bridges, and in 
 the market-places, the men who best performed the united offices 
 of missionary and actor, were, at once, the most popular preachers 
 and players of the day. The greatest of them all, St. Adhelm, 
 when he found his audience growing weary of too much serious 
 exposition, would take his small harp from under his robes, and 
 would strike up a narrative song, that would render his hearers 
 hilarious. 
 
 The mixture of the sacred and profane in the early dialog-ues 
 and drama prevailed for a lengthened period. The profane some- 
 times superabounded, and the higher church authorities had to 
 look to it. The monotony of monastic life had caused the wan- 
 dering glee-men to be too warmly welcomed within the monastery 
 circles, where there were men who cheerfully employed their 
 energies in furnishing new songs and lively " patter" to the strollers. 
 It was, doubtless, all well meant ; but more serious men thought 
 it wise to prohibit the indulgence of this peculiar literary pursuit. 
 Accordingly, the Council of Clovershoe, and decrees bearing the 
 king's mark, severally ordained that actors, and other vagabonds 
 therein named, should no longer have access to monasteries, and 
 that no priest should either play the glee-man himself, or c - 
 courage the members of that disreputable profession, by turning 
 ale-poets, and writing songs for them. 
 
 It is a singular fact, that one of our earliest theatres had Geof- 
 fi-ey, a monk, for its manager, and Dunstable, — immortalized 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. Katherine for a
 
 rROLOOUE. 13 
 
 boroine, and Ler 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 
 Script'j''e, history, legend, and the sufferings of the martyrs. Moral- 
 ities — in which the vices were in antagonism against the virtues, 
 and Chronicle-plays, which were history in dialogue, we finally 
 arrive at legitimate tragedy and comedy. Till this last and 
 welcome consummation, the Church as regularly employed the 
 stage for religious ends, as the old heathen magistrates did when 
 they made village festivals the means of maintaining a religious 
 feeling among the villagers. Professor Browne, in his History of 
 Greeh Classical Literature^ remarks : — " The believers in a pure 
 faith can scarcely understand a religious element in dramatic 
 exhibitions. They who know that God is a spirit, and that they 
 who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, feel 
 that His attributes are too awful to permit any ideas connected 
 with Deity to be brought into contact with the exhibition of 
 human passions. Religious poetry of any kind, except that which 
 has been inspired, has seldom been the work of minds sufficiently 
 heavenly and spiritual, to be perfectly successfiil in attaining the 
 end of poetry, namely, the elevation of the thoughts to a level 
 with the subject. It brings God down to man, instead of raising 
 man to Him. It causes that which is most offensive to religious 
 feeling, and even good taste, irreverent famiUarity with subjects 
 which cannot be contemplated without awe. But a religious 
 drama would be, to those who realize to their own minds the 
 spirituality of God, nothing less than anthropomorphism and 
 idolatry. " Christians of a less advanced age, and believers in ;i 
 more sensuous creed, were able to view with pleasure the mystery- 
 plays in which the gravest truths of the Gospel were dramatically 
 represented ; nay, more, just as the ancient Athenians could look 
 even upon their gross and licentious comedy, as forming part of 
 a religious ceremony, so could Christians imagine a religious ele- 
 ment in profane dramas which represented in a ludicrous light 
 subjects of the most holy character."
 
 14 dohan's annals of the stage. 
 
 Mysteries kept the stage from tlie Norman to the Tudor eia. 
 The Morahties began to displace them during the reign of Henry 
 VI., who was a less beneficial patron of the stage than that Richard 
 III. who has himself retained a so unpleasant possession of the 
 scene. Actors and dramatists have been ungrateful to this indi- 
 vidual, who was their first practically useful patron. Never, 
 pivvious to Richard's time, had an English prince been known to 
 have a company of players of his own. When Duke of Glouces- 
 ter, 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 license to travel abroad, 
 and forth went the mirthful company, fi-om 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 favor for themselves, and a great measure of public 
 regard, probably, for their then generous and princely master. 
 
 The fashion thus set by a prince was followed by the nobility, 
 and it led to a legal recognition of the actor and his craft, in the 
 royal license of 1572, whereby the players connected with noble 
 houses were empowered to play Avherever it seemed good to them, 
 if their masters sanctioned their absence, without any let or hin- 
 derance from the law. 
 
 The patronage of actors by the Duke of Gloucester led to a love 
 of acting by gentlemen amateurs. Richard had ennobled the 
 profession, the gentlemen of the Inns of Court took it up, and 
 they soon had kings and queens leading the applause of approv- 
 ing audiences. To the same example may be traced the custom 
 of having dramatic performances in public schools, the pupils being 
 the performers. These boys, or, in their place, the children of 
 the Chapel Royal, were frequently summoned to play in presence 
 of the king and court. Boatsful of them went down the river to 
 Greenwich, or up to Hampton Court,, to enliven the dulness or 
 stimulate the religious enthusiasm of their royal auditors there. 
 At the former place, and when there was not yet any suspicion of 
 the orthodoxy of Henry VIIL, 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
 
 PROLOGUE. 15 
 
 consequently, Luther and bis wife were the foolish villains of the 
 piece, exposed to the contempt and derision of the delighted and 
 right-thinking hearers. 
 
 In most cases the playwrights, even when members of the clergy, 
 were actors as well as authors. This is the more singular, as the 
 players were generally of a roystering character, and were but ill- 
 regarded by the Church. Nevertheless, by their united eftoi-ts. 
 though they were not always colleagues, they helped the rude 
 production of the first regularly constructed English comedy, 
 " Ralph Roister Doister," in 1540. The author was a " clerk," 
 named Nicholas Udall, whom Eton boys, whose Master he was, 
 hated because of his harshness. The rough and reverend gentle- 
 man brought forth the above piece, just one year previous to bis 
 losing the Mastership, on suspicion of being concerned in a robbery 
 of the college plate. 
 
 Subsequently to this, the Cambridge youths had the courage to 
 play a tragedy called Pammachus, which must have been offensive 
 to the government of Henry VIII. Gardiner, Bishop of Win- 
 chester, Chancellor of the University, immediately wrote a char- 
 acteristic 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 Para- 
 machus, a part of which tragedy is so pestiferous as were intolera- 
 ble. If it be so, I intend to travail, as my duty is, for the refor- 
 mation 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 where- 
 by offence might greatly have risen. Hitherto," adds Parker, 
 " have I not seen any man that was present at it, to show him- 
 self grieved ; albeit it was thought their time and labor 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 re- 
 proved. " I have heard specialities," he writes, •' that they" (the
 
 16 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 actors) " reproved Lent fastings, all ceremonies, and albeit the 
 words of sacrament and mass were not named, yet the rest of the 
 matter written in that tragedy, in the reproof of them Avas ex- 
 pressed." Gardiner intimates that if the authorities concurred, 
 after exercising a certain censorship, in hcensing the representa- 
 tion, they were responsible for all that was uttered, as it must have 
 fiad 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 
 luid heard any thing to which he could make objection. There- 
 ivith, Parker transmitted to Gardiner the stage-copy of the tragedy, 
 which the irate prelate thus reviews : — " Perusing the book of the 
 tragedy which ye sent me, I find much matter not stricken out, all 
 which by the parties' own confession, was uttered very naught, 
 and on the other part something not well omitted." Flagrant lies 
 are said to be mixed up with incontrovertible truths ; and it is 
 suggested, that if any of the audience had declared that they had 
 heard nothing at which they could take offence, it must have been 
 6ecause they had forgotten much of what they had heard. Ulti- 
 mately, Parker was left to deal with the parties as he thought 
 oest; and he wisely seems to have thought-it best to do nothing. 
 Plays were the favorite recreation of the university men ; albeit, 
 AS Parker writes, " Two or three in Trinity College think it very 
 dnseeming that Christians should play or be present at any profane 
 eomedies or tragedies." 
 
 Actors and clergy came into direct collision, when, at the ac- 
 iession of Edward VI. (1547), the Bishop of Winchester an- 
 /lounced " a solemn dirge and mass,''^ in honor of the lately 
 deceased king, Henry VIII. The indiscreet Southwark actore 
 /hereupon gave notice that, at the time announced for the religious 
 « rvice, they would act a " solempne play" to try, as the bishop 
 ';'niarks in a letter to Paget, " who shall have most resort, they in 
 i>ame or I in earnest." The prelate urgently requests the inter- 
 ference 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 " servapts" of Henry 
 (■'•vcy. Marquis of Dorset, whose mansion was on the opposite side 
 f)f the river. In 1551 he was prom< tt d to the dukef'^^'m of Suf
 
 PROLOGUE. 17 
 
 folk, but his poor players were tlieii prohibited from playing any 
 where, save in their master's presence. 
 
 Severity led to fi-aud. In the autumn of the following year. 
 Richard Ogle forwarded to the Council a forged license, taken 
 from the players — a matter which was pronounced to be " worthy 
 of correction." The young king's patronage of his own " ser- 
 vaiits" was not marked by a princely liberality ; the salary of one 
 of his players of interludes, John Brown, was five marks yearly, as 
 wages; and one pound three shillings and fourpence, for his 
 livery. 
 
 Of the party dramatists of this reign, that reverend prelate, 
 " Bilious Bale," was the most active and the least pleasant-tempered. 
 Bale had been a Romanist priest, he was now a Protestant bishop 
 (of Ossory), with a wife to control the episcopal hospitality. Bale 
 " had seen the world." lie had gone through marvellous adven- 
 tures, 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 pro 
 duced, the audience, comprising two factions in the church and 
 state, found the policy of Rome towards this country illustrated 
 with such effect, that while one party hotly denounced, the other 
 applauded the coarse and vigorous audacity of the author. 
 
 So powerful were the influences of the stage, when thus applied, 
 that the government of Queen Mary made similar application of 
 them in support of their own views. A play, styled " Respublica," 
 exhibited to the people the alleged iniquity of the Reformation, 
 pointed out the dread excellence of the sovereign herself (personi- 
 fied as Queen Nemesis), and exemplified her inestimable qualities, 
 I'y making all the Virtues follow in her train as Maids of honor. 
 
 Such, now, were the orthodox actors ; but the heretical players 
 were to be provided against by stringent measures. A decree of 
 the sovereign and council, in 1556, prohibited all players and 
 pipers from strolling through the kingdom ; such strollers — the 
 pipers singularly included — being, as it was said, disseminators of 
 seditions and heresies. 
 
 The eye of the observant government also watched the resident
 
 18 dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 actors in town. King Edward liad ordered the removal of the 
 king's revels and masques from Warwick Inn, Holborn, " to the 
 late dissolved house of Blackfriars, London," where considerable 
 utlay was made for scenery and machinery — adjuncts to stage 
 ilect — which are erroneously supposed to hav^e been first intro- 
 i I need a century later, by Davenant. There still remained acting-. 
 ;i company at the Boar's Head, without Aldgate, on whom the 
 jtolice of Mary were ordered to make levy. The actors had been 
 |)l:iying in that inn-yard a comedy, entitled a " Sack full of News." 
 The order of the privy council to the mayor informs his worship, 
 that it is " a lewd play ;" bids him send his officers to the theatre 
 without delay, and not only to apprehend the comedians, but to 
 " take their play-book from them and send it before the privy 
 council." 
 
 The actors were under arrest for four-and-twenty hours, and 
 were then set free, but under certain stipulations to be observed by 
 them " and all other players throughout the city." Namely ; they 
 were to exercise their vocation of acting " between All Saints and 
 Shrovetide" only ; and they were bound to act no other plays but 
 such as were approved of by the Ordinary. This was the most 
 stringent censorship to which the stage has ever been subjected. 
 
 Although Edward had commanded the transfer of the company 
 of actors from Warwick Inn to Blackfriars, that dissolved monas- 
 tery was not legally converted into a theatre till the year 1576, 
 when Elizabeth was on the throne. In that year the Earl of 
 Leicester's servants were licensed to open their series of seasons in 
 a house, the site of which is occupied by Apothecaries' Hall, and 
 some adjacent buildings. At the head of the company was James, 
 father of Richard Burbage, the original 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 Rich- 
 mond were made pleasant to her by the exertions of her players. 
 The cost to her of occasional performances at the above residences 
 during two yenrs, amounted to a friction over £444. There were
 
 PKOLOGUE, 19 
 
 incidental expenses also, proving that the actors were well cared 
 for. In the year 1575, among the estimates for plays at Hampton 
 Court, the liberal sum of £S 145. 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 com- 
 edy, Gammer Ourton's Needle — a marvellous production, when 
 considered as the work of a bishop. Still, of Bath and Wells — was 
 represented amid a world of laughter. 
 
 Tliere, too, was exercised a sharp censorship over both actors 
 and audience. In a letter from Vice-Chancellor Hatcher to Bur- 
 leigh, the conduct of Punter, a student of St. John's, at stage-plays 
 at Caius and Trinity, is complained of as unsteady. In 1581 the 
 heads of houses again make application to Burleigh, objecting to 
 the players of the Gi-eat Chamberlain, the Earl of Oxford, poet and 
 courtier, exhibiting certain plays already " practised" by them be- 
 fore the King. The authorities, when scholastic audiences were 
 noisy, or when players brought no novelty with them to Cam- 
 brido-e, applied to the great statesman in town, and vexed him with 
 dramatic troubles, as if he had been general stage-manager of all 
 the companies strolling over the kingdom. 
 
 On one occasion the stage was employed as a vantage ground, 
 whereon to raise a battery against the power of the stage's great 
 patroness, the Queen. In 1599, the indiscreet followers of Essex 
 " filled the pit of the theatre, where Rutland and Southampton are 
 daily seen, and where Shakspeare's company, in the great play of 
 Richard II., have, for more than a year, been feeding the public 
 eye with pictures of the deposition of kings." In June, of the 
 following year, " those scenes of Shakspeare's play disturb EUza- 
 beth's dreams." The play had had a long and splendid run, not 
 less from its glorious agony of dramatic passion than from the open 
 countenance lent to it by the Earl, who, before his voyage, was a 
 Ci>nstant auditor at the Globe, and by his constant companions, 
 Rutland and Southampton. The great parliamentary scene, the 
 deposition of Richard, not in the printed book, was possibly not 
 in the early play ; yet the representation of a royal nuirder and a 
 successful usurpation on the public stage is an event to be applied 
 by the groundlings, in a pernicious and disloyal sense. Tongues
 
 20 DORANS ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 whisper to the Qiieeu that this phiy is part of a great plot to ttaoh 
 her subjects how to murder kings. They tell her slic is Riohard ; 
 Essex, Bolingbroke. These warnings sink into her mind. When 
 Lambard, Keeper of the Records, waits upon her at the palace, 
 she exclaims to liim, " I am Richard ! Know you not that?" 
 
 The performance of this play was, nevertheless, not prohibited. 
 When the final attempt of Essex was about to be made, in Feb- 
 ruary, 1601, — "To fan the courage of their crew," says Mr. Hep- 
 worth Dixon, from whose Personal History of Lord Bacon I 
 borrow these details, " and prepare the citizens for news of a 
 royal deposition, the chiefs of the insurrection think good to 
 revive, for a night, their favorite play. They send for Augustine 
 Phillips, manager of the Blackfriars Theatre, to Essex House, 
 Monteagle, Percy, and two or three more — among them Cufte and 
 Meyrick — gentlemen whose names and faces he does not re- 
 cognize, receive him ; and Lord Monteagle, speaking for the rest, 
 tells him that they want to have played the next day Shakspeare's 
 deposition of Richard H. Phillips objects that the play is stale, 
 that a new one is running, and that tlie company will lose money 
 by a change. Monteagle meets his objections. The theatre shall 
 not lose ; a host of gentlemen from Essex House will fill the 
 galleries ; if there is fear of loss, here are 40s. to make it up. 
 Phillips takes the money, and King Richard is duly deposed for 
 them, and put to death." 
 
 Meanwhile, the profession of player had been assailed by fierce 
 opponents. In 1587, when twenty-three summers lightly sat on 
 Shakspeare's brow, Gosson, the " parson" of St. Botolph's, dis- 
 charged the fii'st shot against stage plays which had yet been 
 fired by any one not in absolute authority. Gosson's book was 
 entitled, A School of Abuse, and it professed to contain " a 
 pleasant invective against poets, players, jesters, and such like 
 riaterpillars of a Commonwealth." Gosson's pleasantry consists in 
 his illogical employment of invective. Domitian favored plays, 
 argal, Domitian's domestic felicity was troubled by a player — 
 Paris. Of Caligula, Gosson remarks, that he made so nuich of 
 players and dancers, that "he sutfered 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
 
 PROLOGUE. 21 
 
 Domitian, by Charca, was " a fit catastrophe," for it was done as 
 the Emperor was returnhig from a play ! 
 
 As a painter of manners, Gosson thus gayly limns the audiences 
 of his time. " In our Assemblies at plays in London, you shall 
 see such heaving and shouting, such pitching and shouldering 
 to sit by women, such care for their garments that they be not 
 ti'odden on, such eyes to their laps that no chips light on them, 
 such pillows to their backs that they take no hurt, such masking-s 
 in their ears, I know not what ; such giving them pippins to pass 
 the time ; such playing at foot-saunt without cards ; such ticking, 
 such toying, such smiling, such winking, and such manning them 
 home when the sports are ended, that it is a right comedy to 
 mark their behavior." In this picture Gosson paints a good- 
 humored and a gallant people. When he turns from failings to 
 vices, the old rector of St. Botolph's dwells upon them as Tartnffe 
 does upon the undraped shoulders of Dorinne. He likes the sub- 
 ject, and makes attractive what he denounces as pernicious. The 
 playwrights he assails with the virulence of an author, who, having 
 been unsuccessful himself, has no gladness in the success, nor any 
 generosity for the short-comings of others. Yet he cannot deny 
 that some plays are moral, such as "Catiline's Conspiracy," — 
 " because," as ho elegantly observes, " it is said to be a pig of 
 mine own sow." This, and one or two other plays written by 
 him, he complaisantly designates as " good plays, and sweet plays, 
 and of all plays the best plays, and most to be liked." 
 
 Let us now return to the year of Shakspeare's birth. The 
 great poet came into the world when the English portion of it 
 was deafened with the thunder of Archbishop Grindal, who flung 
 his bolts against the profession Avhich the child in his cradle at 
 Stratford was about to ennoble forever. England had been de- 
 vastated by the plague of 1563. Grindal illogically traced the 
 rise of the pestilence to the theatres ; and to check the evil, he 
 ^^ounselled 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 forever," adds the primate, "it were not amiss." 
 
 Elizabeth's face shone upon the actors, and rehearsals went 
 actively on before the Master of the Revels. The numbers of the 
 players, however, so increased and spread over the kingdom, that
 
 22 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 the government, when Shakspeare was eight years of age, enacte 
 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 pre- 
 sume to set up their stage ivithout the license of " two justices of 
 the peace at least." This was rather to protect the art than to 
 insult the artists ; and a few years subsequent to the publication 
 of this statute, Elizabeth granted the first royal patent conceded 
 in England to actors — that of 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 within the 
 liberties of the city ; but against this the city magistrates com- 
 menced an active agitation. Their brethren of Middlesex followed 
 A like course throughout the county. The players were treated 
 as the devil's missionaries ; and such unsavory terms were flung 
 at them and at playwrights, by the city aldermen and the county 
 justices, that thereon was founded that animosity which led 
 dramatic authors to represent citizens and justices as the most 
 egregious of fools, the most arrant of knaves, and the most de- 
 luded of husbands. 
 
 Driven from the city, Burbage and his gay brotherhood were 
 safe in the shelter of Blackfriars, adjacent to the city walls. Safe, 
 but neither welcome nor unmolested. The devout and noble 
 ladies who had long resided near the once sacred building, 
 clamored at the audacity of the actors. Divine worship and ser- 
 mon, so they averred, would be grievously disturbed by the music 
 and rant of the comedians, and by the deboshed companions re- 
 sorting to witness those abominable plays and interludes. 
 
 Tliis cry was slii-ill and incessant, but it was unsuccessful. The 
 Blackfriars' was patronized by a public whose favors were also 
 solicited by those "sumptuous houses," the "Theatre" and the 
 " Curtain" in Shoreditch. Pulpit logicians reasoned, more heed- 
 less of connection between premises and conclusion than GrindaJ
 
 PROLOGUE. 23 
 
 or Gosson. " The cause of plagues is sin," argues one, " and the 
 cause of sin are plays ; therefore, the cause of plagues are plays." 
 Again : " If these be not suppressed," exclaims a Paul's Cross 
 preacher, " it will make sui-h a tragedy that all London may well 
 mourn while it is London." Bat for the sympathy of the Earl of 
 Leicester, it would have gone ill with these players. He has been 
 as ill-requited by authors and actors as their earlier friend, Richard 
 of Gloucester. To this day, the stage exhibits the great earl, 
 according to the legend contrived by his foes, as the murderer of 
 his wife. 
 
 Sanctioned by the court, befriended by the noble, and followed 
 by the general public, the players stood their ground ; but they 
 lacked the discretion which should have distinguished them. They 
 bearded authority, played in despite of legal prohibitions, and 
 introduced forbidden subjects of state and religion upon their 
 stage. Thence ensued suspensions for indefinite periods, severe 
 supervision when the suspension was rescinded, and renewed 
 transgression on the part of the reckless companies, even to the 
 playing on a Sunday, in any locality where they conjectured there 
 was small likelihood of their being followed by a warrant. 
 
 But the most costly of the theatrical revels of King James took 
 place at Whitehall, at Greenwich, or at Hampton Court, on Sun- 
 day evenings — an unseemly practice, which embittered the hatred 
 of the Puritans against the stage, all belonging to it, and all who 
 patronized it. James was wiser when he licensed Kirkham, Haw- 
 kins, Kendall, and Payne, to train the queen's children of the 
 revels, and to exercise them in playing within the Blackfriars' or 
 elsewhere, all plays which had the sanction of old Samuel Danyell. 
 His queen, Anne, was both actress and manager in the masques 
 performed at court, the expenses of which often exceeded, indeed 
 /were ordered not to be hmited to £1,000. " Excellent comedies" 
 were played before Prince Henry and the Prince Palgrave, 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 1 
 
 ITie lawyers alone were off"ended at the visits of the court to 
 the amateurs at Cambridge, especially when James went thither
 
 24 DORAN'S ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 to sec the comedy of " Ignoramus," in which law and lawyers are 
 treated with small measure of respect. When James was pre- 
 vented from going to Cambridge, he was accustomed to send for 
 the whole scholastic company to appear before him, in one of the 
 choicest of their pieces, at Royston. Roving troops wore licensed 
 by this play-loving king to follow their vocation in stated places 
 in the country, under certain restrictions for their tarrying and 
 wending — a fortnight's residence in one town being the time 
 limited, with injunction not to play " during church hours." 
 
 Then there were unlicensed satirical plays in unlicensed houses. 
 Sir John Yorke, his wife and brothers, were fined and inipi'isoned, 
 because of a scandalous play acted, in Sir John's house, in favor 
 of Popery. On another occasion, in 1617, we hear of a play, in 
 some country mansion, in which the king, represented as a hunts- 
 man, 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 Ilacket, " 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 Lamleth, by his own gentlemen, when I 
 was one of the youngest spectators," The actors thus had the 
 sanction of the Archbishop of Canterbury in James's reign, as 
 they bad that of Williams, Archbishop of York, in the next. 
 Ilacket often alludes to theatrical matters, " The theatres," lie 
 says, in one of his discourses made during the reign of diaries II., 
 when the preacher was Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, — " are 
 not large enough now-a-days to receive our loose gallants, male 
 and female, but whole fields and parks are thronged with their 
 concourse, where they make a muster of their gay clothes." 
 Meanwhile, in 1616, the pulpit once more issued anathemas against 
 the stage. The denouncer, on this occasion, was the preaclier oi
 
 PROLOGUE, 25 
 
 St. Mary Overy's, named Sutton, wliose uiuliscriuiinatino^ consurc 
 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 corrnp- 
 tions, like other ti'ades ; but he adds, that since it is patr<:)nized bv 
 the king, there is disloyalt}^ in preaching against it, and he hints 
 that the theology of the preacher must be a little out of gear, see- 
 ing that he openly denounces a vocation Avhich is not condemned 
 in Scripture ! 
 
 Field, the champion of his craft in the early part of the seven- 
 teenth century, was one of the dozen actors to whom King James, 
 in 1619, granted a license to act comedy, tragedy, history, etc., 
 for the solace and pleasure of his Majesty and his subjects, at the 
 Globe, and at their private house in the precincts of Blackfriars. 
 This license was made out to Hemings, Burbage, Condell, Lowen, 
 Tooley, Underwood, Field, Benfield, Gough, Eccleston, Robinson, 
 Shancks, and their associates. Their success rendered them 
 audacious, and, in 1624, they got into trouble, on a complaint of 
 the Spanish Ambassador. The actors at the Globe had produced 
 Middleton's " Game at Chess," in which the action is carried on 
 by black and white pieces, representing the Reformed and Roman- 
 ist parties. The latter, being the rogues of the piece, are foiled, 
 and are " put in the bag." The Spanish envoy's complaint w;is 
 founded on the fact that living persons were represented by the 
 actors, such persons being the King of Spain, Gondomar, and the 
 famous Antonio de Dominis, who, after being a Romish bishop 
 (of Spaiatro), professed Protestantism, became Dean of Windsor, 
 and after all died in his earlier faith, at Rome. On the ambassa- 
 dor's complaint, the actors and the author were summoned before 
 the council, but no immediate result followed, for, two days later, 
 Ncthercole writes to Carleton, informing him that " the comedy in 
 which the whole Spanish business is taken up, is drawing £100 
 nightly." At that time, a house with £20 in it was accounted a 
 " good house," at either the Globe or Blackfriars. Receipts 
 amounting to five times that sum, for nine afternoons successively, 
 may be accepted as a proof of the popularity of this play. The 
 Spaniard, however, would not let the matter rest ; the play waa 
 Vol.. I.— 2
 
 26 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 suppressed, the actors forbidden to represent living personages on 
 the stage, and the author was sent to prison. Middleton was not 
 long detained in durance vile. James set him free, instigated by 
 a quip in a poor epigram, — 
 
 " Rise but your royal liand, 'twill set me free 1 
 'Tis but the ' moving of a man' — that's me." 
 
 A worse joke never secured for its author a greater boon — that of 
 liberty. 
 
 With all this, an incident of the following year proves that the 
 playei's disregarded peril, and found profit in excitement. For 
 Shrovetide, 1625, they announced a play founded on the Dutch 
 horrors at Amboyna, but the performance was stopped, on the 
 application of the East India Company, " for fear of disturbances 
 this Shrovetide." A watch of 800 men was set to keep all quiet 
 on Shrove Tuesday ; and the subject was not again selected for a 
 piece till 1673, when Dryden's "Amboyna" was produced in 
 Drury Lane, and the cruelties of the Dutch condemned in a serio- 
 comic fashion, as those of a people — so the epilogue intimated to 
 the public — "who have no moi-e religion, faith — than you." 
 
 In James's days, the greater or less prevalence of the plague 
 regulated the licenses for playing. .Thus, permission was given to 
 the Queen's Servants to act " in their several houses, the Curtain, 
 and the Boar's Head, Middlesex, as soon as the plague decreases 
 to 30 a week, in London." So, in the very first year of Charles I., 
 1625, the "common players" have leave not only to act where 
 they will, but "to come to court, now the plague is reduced to 
 six.'' Accordingly, there was a merry Christmas season at Hamp- 
 ton Court, the actors being there ; and, writes Rudyard to Nether- 
 cole, "the demoiselles''' (maids of honor, 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 actitig ex- 
 hibited by the French princess, that led to the appearance in 
 London of actresses of that nation. 
 
 With the reign of Charles I. new hopes came to the poor player, 
 but therewith came new adversaries. Charles I. was a hearty pro
 
 PROLOGUE. 27 
 
 moter of all sports and pleasures, provided his people would be 
 merr)- and wise according to his prescription only. Wakes and 
 maypoles were authorized by him, to the infinite disgust of the 
 Puritans, who liked the authorization 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 
 liearing the minister, after reading the decree as he was ordered, 
 calmly go through the Ten Commandments, and then tell hia 
 hearers, that having listened to the commands of God and those of 
 man, they might now follow which they liked best. 
 
 When Bishop Williams, of Lincoln, and subsequently Arch 
 bishop of York, held a living, he pleaded in behalf of the right of 
 his Northamptonshire parishioners to dance round the maypole 
 When ordered to deliver up the Great Seal by the King, he re- 
 tired to his episcopal palace at Buckden, Avhere, says Hacket, " he 
 was the worse thought of by some strict censurers, because he ad- 
 mitted in his public hall a comedy once or twice to be presented 
 before him, exhibited by his own servants, for an evening recrea- 
 tion." Being then in disgrace, this simple matter was exaggerated 
 by his enemies into a report, that on an Ordination Sunday, this 
 arrogant Welshman had entertained his newly-ordained clergy with 
 a representation of Shakspeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," 
 the actors in which had been expressly brought down from London 
 for the purpose I 
 
 Li 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 patronized 
 of all the houses opened previous to the Restoration. The grown- 
 up actors were the most skilled of their craft; and the boys, or 
 apprentices, were the most fair and effeminate that could be pro- 
 cured, and could profit by instruction. On this stage Shakspeare 
 enacted the Ghost in " Hamlet," Old Adam, and a similar line of 
 characters, usually intrusted to the ablest of the performers of the 
 second class. Blackfiiars 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
 
 28 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 a yearly rent of £50. In 1655 it was pulled down, after a success- 
 ful 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 Whitcfriars was given up to a company of players ; 
 but the Whitefriars' Theatre did not enjoy a very lengthened 
 career. In the year 1016, that in which Shakspeare died, it had 
 already fallen into disrepute and decay, and was never afterwards 
 used for the representation of dramatic pieces. The other theatres, 
 in Dorset Gardens, were built subsequently to the Restoration. 
 
 In the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and in the street now 
 called Playhouse Yard, conaccting Whitecross Street with Golding 
 Lane, stood the old Fortune, erected in 1600, for Ilenslowe (the 
 pawnbroker and money-lender to actors) and AUeyn, the most 
 unselfish of comedians. It was a wooden tenement, which was 
 burned down in 1621, and replaced by a circular brick edifice. In 
 1649, two years after the suppression of plays by the Puritan Act, 
 when the house was closed, a party of soldiers, " the sectaries of 
 those yeasty times," broke into the edifice, destroyed its interior 
 fittings, and pulled down the building. The site and adjacent 
 ground were soon covered by dwelling-houses. 
 
 Meanw^hile, the inn yards, or great rooms at the inns, were not 
 yet quite superseded. The Cross Keys in Grace-church Street, 
 the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, near which lived Anthony Bacon, 
 to the extreme dislike of his grandmother ; and the Red Bull, in 
 St, John Street, Clerkenwell, which last existed as late as the 
 period of the Great Fire, were open, if not for the acting of plays, 
 at least for exhibitions of fencing and wrestling. 
 
 The Surrey side of the Thames was a favorite locality for 
 plays, long before the most famous of the regular and royally- 
 sanctioned theatres. The Globe was on that old, joyous Bank- 
 side ; and the Little Rose, in 1584, there succeeded to an elder 
 structure of the same name, whose memory is still preserved in 
 Rose Aliey. The Globe, the summer-house of Shakspeare and 
 his fellows, flourished from 1594 to 1613, when it fell a prey to 
 the flames caused by the wailding 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,
 
 PROLOQUE. 29 
 
 howevor, was not veiy 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 whereabout 
 of the popular summer-house in Southwark. 
 
 On the same bank of the great river stood the Hope, a playhouse 
 four times a week, and a garden for bear-baiting on the alternate 
 days. In the former was first played Jonson's " Bartholomew 
 Fair." When plays were suppressed, the zealous and orthodox 
 soldiery broke into the Hope, horsewhipped the actors, and shot 
 the bears. This place, however, in its character of Bear Garden, 
 rallied after the Restoration, and continued prosperous till nearly 
 the close of the l7th century. There remains to be noticed, Paris 
 Garden, famous for its cruel but well-patronized sports. Its popu- 
 lar circus was converted by Henslowe and AUeyn into a theatre. 
 Here, the richest receipts were m^de on the Sunday, till the law 
 interfered and put down these performances, the dear delight of 
 the Southwarkians and their visitors from the opposite shore, of 
 the olden time. 
 
 The supposed assertion of Taylor, the Water poet, has often 
 been quoted, namely, that between Windsor bridge and Gravesend 
 there were not less than 40,000 watermen, and that more than 
 half of these found employment in transporting the holiday folks 
 from the Middlesex to the Southwark shore of the river, where 
 the players were strutting their little hour at the Globe^ the Rose, 
 and the Swan, and Bruin was being bated 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 conse- 
 quence 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 success-
 
 30 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 ful, till the accession of Charles I., subsequent to which time stage 
 plays gave way to exhibitions of athletic exercises. 
 
 This district was especially dramatic; the popular taste was not 
 only there directed towards the stage, but it was a district wherein 
 many actors dwelt, and consequently died. The baptismal regis* 
 ter of St. Leonard's contains Christian names which appear to 
 iiave been chosen with reference to the heroines of Shakspeare 
 a. id the record of burials bears the name of many an old actor of 
 mark whose remains now lie within the churchyard. 
 
 Not a vestige, of course, exists of any of these theatres ; and 
 yet of a much older house, traces may be seen by those who will 
 seek them in remote Cornwall. 
 
 This relic of antiquity is called Piran Round. It consists of a 
 circular embankment, about ten feet high, sloping backwards, and 
 cut into steps for seats, or standing-places. This embankment 
 encloses a level area of grassy ground, and stands in the middle of 
 a flat, wild heath. A couple of thousand spectators could look 
 down from the seats upon the grassy circus which formed a stage 
 of more than a hundred feet in diameter. Here, in very early 
 times, sports were played and combats fought out, and rustic coun- 
 cils assembled. The ancient Cornish Mysteries here drew tears 
 and laughter from the mixed audiences of the day. They were 
 popular as late as the period of Shakspeare. Of one of them, 
 a five-act piece, entitled " The Creation of the World, with Noah's 
 Flood," the learned Davies Gilbert has given a translation. In 
 this historical piece, played for edification in Scripture history, the 
 stage directions speak of varied costumes, variety of scenery, and 
 complicated machinery, all on an open-air stage, whereon the 
 deluge was to roll its billows, and the mimic world be lost. This 
 cataclysm achieved, the depressed spectators were rendered merry. 
 The minstrels piped, the audience rose and footed it, and then, 
 having had their full of amusement, they who had converged, 
 from so many starting-points, upon Piran Round, scattered again 
 on their several ways homeward from the ancient theatre, and, as 
 the sun went down, thinned away over the heath, the fishermen 
 going seaward, the miners inland, and the agricultural laborers to 
 the cottages and farmhouses which dotted, here and there, the 
 otherwise dreary moor.
 
 FilOLOGUS 81 
 
 Such is Piran Round described to have been, and the " old 
 house" is worthy of tender preservation, for it once saved Eng- 
 land 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 towns- 
 men were apprised of their danger, and delivered from it at the 
 same time." 
 
 Thus the players rescued the kingdom ! Their sons and suc- 
 cessors were not so happy in rescuing their King ; but the power- 
 fill enemies of each suppressed both real and mimic king?. How 
 they dealt with the monarchs of the stage, our prologue at an end, 
 remains to be told.
 
 S2 DOJiA^■'s ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 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 exult- 
 ing at the destruction dealt by Drake to a hundred Spanisli sliips 
 in the port of Cadiz ; while the Puritan party was at angry issue 
 with Elizabeth ; while John Fox was lying dead, and while Wal- 
 singham was actively impeding the ways and means of Armada 
 Philip, by getting his bills protested at Genoa, — that the little 
 man, Gosson, in the parish of St. Botolph, of which he was the 
 incumbent, first nibbed his pen, and made it fly furiously over 
 paper, in wordy war against the stage and stage-players. 
 
 When the Britons ate acorns and drank water, he says, they 
 were giants and heroes ; but since plays came in they had dwin- 
 dled into a puny race, incapable of noble and patriotic achievements ! 
 And yet next year, some pretty fellows of that race were sweeping 
 the Invincible Armada from tlie surface of our seas ! 
 
 When London was talking admiringly of the coronation of 
 Charles L, and Parliament was barely accortling him one pound 
 in twelve of the money-aids of which he was in need, there was 
 another pamphleteer sending up his testimony from Cheapside to 
 Westminster, against the alleged abomination of plays and players. 
 This writer entitles his work A short Treatise against Stage Plays, 
 and he makes it as sharp as it is short. Plays were invented by 
 heathens ; they must necessarily be prejudicial to Christians ! — that 
 is the style of his assertion and argument. They were invented in 
 order to appease false gods ; consequently, the playing of them 
 must excite to wrath a true TJeity ! They arc no recreation, be- 
 cause people come away from them wearied. The argument, in 
 tragedy, he informs us, is murder ; in comedy, it is social vice. 
 This he designates as bad instruction ; and remembering Field's 
 query to Sutton, he would very much like to know in what page
 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS. 83 
 
 of Holy Writ authority is given for the vocation of an actor, lie 
 might as well have asked for the suppression of tailors, on the 
 ground of their never being once named in either the Old Testa- 
 ment 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, and not very appositely, that Ham was 
 accursed for deriding his father ! Players change their apparel 
 and put on women's attire, — as if they had never read a chapter 
 in Deuteronomy, in their lives ! If coming on the stage under false 
 representation of their natural names and persons be not an offence 
 against the Epistle to Timothy, he would thank j'ou to inform 
 him what it is ! As to looking on these pleasant evils and not 
 falling into sin, — j^ou 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 oft" the hearts of their daughters at home ; 
 perhaps the very daughteis themselves from home. This seems 
 to me to be less an argument against resorting to the theatre than 
 in favor of your taking places for your " young ladies," as well as 
 for yourselves. The writer looks too wide abroad to see what 
 lies at his feet. He is in Asia, citing the Council of Laodicea 
 against the theatre. He is in Africa, vociferating, as the Council 
 of Carthage did, against audiences. He is in Europe, at Aries, 
 where the Fathers decided that no actor should be admitted to the 
 sacrament. Finally, he unites all these Councils together at Con- 
 stantinople, and in a three-piled judgment sends stage, actors and 
 audiences to Gehenna. 
 
 If you would only remember that many royal and noble men 
 liave been slain when in the theatre, on their way thither, or re- 
 turning thence, you will have a decent horror of risking a similar 
 fate in like localities. He has known actors Avho have died after 
 the play was over ; he would fain have you believe that there is 
 something in that. And when he has intimated that theatres have 
 been burnt and audiences suffocated ; that stages have been swept
 
 34 doran's annals of tue stage, 
 
 down by storms and spectators trodden to death ; tbat less than 
 forty years previous to tlic 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 
 ai-gument, and administered more than enough of admonition to 
 deter any person from entering a theatre henceforth and forever. 
 
 This paper pellet had not long been printed, when the vexed 
 author might have seen four actors sailing joyously along the 
 Strand. There they are, Mastei* Moore (there were no managers 
 then ; they were " masters " till the Georgian era), Master Moore, 
 heavy Foster, mirthful Guilman, and aiiy Townsend. The master 
 carries in his pocket a royal license to form a company, whose 
 members, in honor 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 com- 
 panies ; 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 rep- 
 resented 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 impris- 
 onment, vainly observed that there were two points, he thought, 
 in his favor — that he had not played in the piece, and had n«i 
 been even present in the house ! 
 
 Meanwhile the public flocked to their favorite houses, and for- 
 tune seemed to be most blandly smiling on " masters," when there 
 suddenly appeared the monster mortar manufactured by Prynne, 
 and discharged by him over London, with an attendant amount 
 of thunder, which shook every building in the metropolis. Prynne 
 had just previously seen the painters busily at work in beautifying
 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS. 35 
 
 the old " Fortune," and the decorators gilding the horns of the 
 " Red Bull." lie had been down to AVhitefriars, and had there 
 beheld a new theatre rising near the old time-honored site. He 
 was unable to be longer silent, and in 1633 out came his Histrio- 
 Mastix, consisting, from title-page to finis, of a thousand and 
 several hundred pages. 
 
 Prynne, in some sense, did not lead opinion against the stage, 
 but followed that of individuals who suffered certain discomfort 
 fi'om 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 to sale, are swept off 
 their stalls by the coaches and people sweeping onward to the 
 playhouse ; that the concourse is so great, the inhabitants are 
 unable to take beer or coal into their houses while it continues; 
 that to get through Ludgate to the water is just impossible ; and 
 if a fire break out. Heaven help them, how can succor be brought 
 to the sufferers through such mobs of men and vehicles ? Chris- 
 tenings are disturbed in their joy by them, and the sorrow of 
 burials intruded on. Persons of honor dare not go abroad, or if 
 abroad, dare not venture home while the theatre is open. And 
 then there is that other house, Edward Alleyn's, rebuilding in 
 Golden Lane, and will not the Council look to it? 
 
 The Council answer that Queen Henrietta Maria is well aflFected 
 towards plays, and that therefore good regulation is more to be 
 provided than suppression decreed. There must not be more 
 than two houses, they say ; one on Bankside, where the Lord 
 Chamberlain's servants may act ; the other in Middlesex, for which 
 license may be given to Alleyn, " servant of the Lord Admiral," 
 in Golden Lane. Each company is to play but twice a week. 
 " forbearing to play on the Sabbath Day, in Lent, and in times of 
 infection." 
 
 Here is a prospect for old Blackfriars ; but it is doomed to fall. 
 The house had been condemned in 1619, and cannot longer be 
 tolerated. But compensation must be awarded. The players, 
 bold fellows, claim £21,000! The referees award £3,000, and 
 the delighted inhabitants offer £100 towards it, to get rid of the
 
 36 dokan's annals of the stage, 
 
 people wlio resort to the players, rather than of the players them- 
 selves. 
 
 Then spake out Pryune. 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 tAvo 
 years. " There are five devil's chapels," he says, " in London ; 
 and yet in more extensive Rome, in Nero's days, there were but 
 three, and those," he adds, " were three too many !" When the 
 writer gets beyond statistics he grows rude ; but he was sincere, 
 and accepted all the responsibility of the course taken by him, 
 advisedly. 
 
 While the anger excited by this attack on pastimes favored by 
 the King was yet hot, the assault itself was met by a defiance. 
 The gentlemen of the Inns of Court closed their law-books, got up 
 a mask, and played it at Whitehall, in the presence of a delighted 
 audience, consisting of royal and noble personages. The most 
 play-loving of the lords followed the example aftbrded by the law- 
 yers, and the King himself assumed the buskin, and turned actor, 
 for the nonce. Tom Carew was busy with superintending the 
 rehearsals of his " Coelum Britannicum," and in urging honest and 
 melodious Will Lawes to progress more rapidly with the music. 
 Cavalier Will was not to be hurried, but did his work steadily ; 
 and Prynne might have heard him and his Brother Harry hum- 
 ming 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 ofi" so pleasantly that no 
 one dreamed it was the inauguration of a struggle in which Pi-jnne 
 was to lose his estate, his freedom, and his ears ; the King and the 
 earl their heads ; while gallant Will LaAves, 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 denouement to a tragedy so mirthfully commenced had 
 been reached, there were other defiances cast in the teeth of auda- 
 cious, but too harshly-treated Prynne. There was a reverend 
 playwright about town, whom Eton loved and Oxford highly 
 prized; Ben Jonson called him his " son," and Bishop Fell, who
 
 THE decline: and fall of the players. 37 
 
 presumed to give an opinion on subjects of which he was ignorant, 
 pronounced the Rev. William Caitwright to be "the utmost that 
 man could come to !" For the Christ Church students at Oxford, 
 Cartwriglit wrote the -" Royal Slave," one of three out of his four 
 plays which sleep under a righteous oblivion. The King and 
 Queen went down to witness the performance of the scholastic 
 amateurs ; and, considering that a main incident of the piece com- 
 prises a revolt in order to achieve some reasonable liberty for an 
 oppressed people, the subject may be considered more suggestive 
 than felicitous. The fortunes of many of the audience were about 
 to undergo mutation, but there was an actor there whose prosper- 
 ity 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 exe- 
 cution, that King, Queen, and all the illustrious audience showered 
 down upon him applauses — hearty, loud, and long. His name 
 was Busby. He had been so poor that he received £5 to enable 
 him to take his degree of B. A. Westminster was soon to pos- 
 sess him, for nearly threescore years, the most famous of her 
 " masters." " A very great man !" said Sir Roger de Coverley ; 
 " he whipped my grandfather !" 
 
 When Prynne, and Bastwick, and Burton — released from prison 
 by the Long Parliament — entered London in triumph, with 
 wreaths of ivy and rosemary round their hats, the players who 
 stood on the causeway, or at tavern windows, to witness the pass- 
 ing of the victims, must have felt uneasy at their arch-enemy being 
 loose again. Between politics, perverse parties, the plague, and 
 the parliament, the condition of the actors fell from bad to worse. 
 In a dialogue which professedly passed at this time between Cane 
 of the " Fortune" and Reed of the " Friers," one of the speakers 
 ileplores the going-out of all good old things, and the other, sigh- 
 ingly, remarks that true Latin is as little in f;ishion at Lins of 
 Court as good clothes are at Cambridge. At length arrived the 
 fatal year 1647, when, after some previous attempts to abolish the 
 vocation of the actors, the parliament disbanded the army and 
 suppressed the players. The latter struggled manfully, but not so 
 successfully, as the soldiery. Tliey were treated with less consider- 
 ation ; the decree of Febrnarj^ 1647, informed them that they were
 
 38 doran's annals of thet stage. 
 
 no better than lieatliens; 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 stigmatized them as " rogues," and 
 the sagacious James as " vagabonds ?" Mayors and sheriffs, and 
 high and low constables were let loose upon them, and encouraged 
 to be merciless ; menace was piled upon menace ; money penalties 
 were hinted at in addition to borporeal 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 or- 
 dinance 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 rufiled authority ; and 
 the framers clearly considered that if they had not crushed the 
 stage for ev^er, 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 1G47, the struggle was virtually over. 
 The great fire was quenched, and there was only a trampling out 
 of sparks and embers. Cliarles 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. Ru- 
 pert's major was, probably, that very "jolly good fellow" with 
 whom Pepys used to take wine and anchovies to such excess as to 
 make it necessary for his " girl" to rise early, and fetch her sick 
 master fresh water, wherewith to slake his thirst, in the morning. 
 
 The enrolment of actors in either army occurred at an earlier 
 period, and one Hart was certainly among them. Thus Alleyn, 
 erst of the Cockpit, filled the part of quartermaster-general to the 
 King's army at Oxford. Burt became a cornet, Shatterel was
 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS. 39 
 
 something less dignified in the same branch of the service, — the 
 cavalry. These survived to see the old curtain once more drawn ; 
 but record is made of the death of one gallant player, said to be 
 Will Robinson, whom doughty Harrison encountered in fight, and 
 through whom he passed his terrible sword, shouting at the same 
 time : " Cursed is he that doeth the Avork of the Lord negligently !" 
 This serious bit of stage business would have been more dramat- 
 ically arranged had Robinson been encountered by Swanston, a 
 player of Presbyterian tendencies, who served in the Parliamentary 
 army. A " terrific broad-sword combat" between the two might 
 have been an encounter which both armies might have looked at 
 with interest, and supported by applause. Of the military fortunes 
 of the actors none was so favorable as brave little Mohun's, who 
 crossed to Flanders, returned a major, and was subsequently set down 
 in the " cast" under his military title. Old Taylor retired, with that 
 original portrait of Shakspeare to solace him, which was to pass 
 by the hands of Davenant to that glory of our stage, " incompar- 
 able 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 sup- 
 pressed, while the bear-baiters were putting money in both pockets, 
 and non-edifying puppet-shows Avere enriching their proprietors. 
 If Shakspeare was driven from Blackfriars and the Cockpit, was it 
 fair to allow Bel and the Dragon to be enacted by dolls, at the 
 foot of Holborn Bridge ? The players were told that the public 
 would profit by the abolition of their vocation. Loose young 
 gentlemen, fast merchant-factors, and wild young apprentices were 
 no longer to be seen, it was said, hanging about the theatres, 
 spending all their spare money, much that they could not spare, 
 and not a little which was not theirs to spend. It was uncivilly 
 suggested that the actors were a merry sort of thieves, who used 
 to attach themselves to the puny gallants who sought their society, 
 and strip them of the gold pieces in their pouches, the bodkin on 
 their thighs, the girdles buckled to give them shape, and the very 
 beavers jauntily plumed to lend them grace and stature. 
 
 In some of the streets by the river side a tragedy-king or two
 
 40 doean's annals of the stage. 
 
 found refuge with kinsfolk. The old theatres stood erect and 
 desolate, and the owners, with hands in empty pockets, -i-sked how 
 they were to be expected to pay ground-rent, now that they 
 earned nothing ? whereas their afternoon share used to be twenty 
 — ay, thirty shillings, sir ! And see, the flag is still flying above 
 the old house over the water, and a lad who erst played under 
 it, looks up at the banner with a proud sorrow. An elder actor 
 puts his hands on the lad's shoulder, and cries: "Before the old 
 scene is on again, boy, thy face will be as battered as the flag 
 there on the roof-top !" And as this elder actor passes on, he 
 has a word with a fellow-mime who has been less provident than 
 he, and whose present necessities he relieves 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 evi- 
 dences of the hardness of the times ! Those shufliing fiddlers who so 
 humbly peer through the low windows into the tavern room, and 
 meekly inquire : " Will you have any music, gentlemen ?" they are 
 tuneful i-elics 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. Nou)^ they shamble about in 
 pairs, and resignedly accept the smallest dole, and think mourn- 
 fully of the time when the}- heralded the coming of kings, and 
 softly tuned the dirge at the burying of Ophelia ! 
 
 Even these liave 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-
 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS. 41 
 
 genteel people, who have just nodded sorrowfully to the fiddlers, 
 are not joyously tipplhig sack and Gascony wine, but are im- 
 bibing unorthodox ale and heretical small beer. " Cunctis gravio- 
 ra cofhurnis /" murmurs the old actor, whose father was a school- 
 master ; " it's more pitiful than any of your tragedies !" 
 
 The distress was severe, but the profession had to abide it. 
 Much amendment was promised, if only something of the old life 
 might be pursued without peril of the stocks or the whipping- 
 post. The authorities would not heed these promises, but grimly 
 smiled, — at the actors, who undertook to promote virtue; the 
 poets, who engaged to be proper of speech; the managers, who 
 bound themselves to prohibit the entrance of all temptations into 
 "the sixpenny rooms;" and the tobacco-men, who swore with 
 earnest irreverence, to vend nothing but the pure Spanish leaf, 
 even in the threepenny galleries. 
 
 But the tragedy which ended with the killing of the King gave 
 sad hearts to the comedians, who were in worse plight than 
 before, being now deprived of hope itself. One or two contrived 
 to print and sell old plays for their own benefit; a few authors 
 continued to add a new piece, now and then, to the stock, and 
 that there were readers for them we may conjecture from the fact 
 of the advertisements which began to appear in the papers, — 
 sometimes of the publication of a solitary play, at another of the 
 entire dramatic works of that most noble lady the Marchioness of 
 Newcastle. The actors themselves united boldness with circum- 
 spection. Richard Cox, dropping the words ^^to/ and player, con- 
 structed a mixed entertainment in which he spoke and sang, and, 
 on one occasion, so aptly mimicked the character of an artisan, 
 that a master in the craft kindly and earnestly offered to engage 
 him. During the suppression, Cowley's " Guardian" was privately 
 played at Cambridge. The authorities would seem to have 
 winked at these private representations, or to have declined 
 noticing them until after the expiration of the period within which 
 tlie actors were exposed to punishment. Too great audacity, 
 however, was promptly and severely visited, from the earliest days . 
 after the issuing of the prohibitory decree. A first-rate troop 
 obtained possession of the Cockpit for a few days, in 1648. They 
 liad plaved, unmolested, for three days, and were in the very
 
 42 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 midst of the "Bloody Brother," on the fourth, when the house 
 was invaded by the Puritan soldiery, the actors captured, the 
 audience dispersed, and the seats and the stage righteously 
 smashed into fragments. The phxyers (some of them the 
 most accomplished of their day) were paraded through the 
 streets in all their stage finery, and clapped into the Gate 
 House and other prisons, whence they were too happy to escape, 
 after much unseemly treatment, at the cost of all the theatrical 
 pi'operty which they had carried on their backs into durance 
 vile. 
 
 This severity, visited in other houses as well as the Cockpit, 
 caused some actors to despair, while it rendered others only a 
 little more discreet. Rhodes, the old prompter at Blackfriars, 
 turned bookseller, and opened a shop at Charing Cross. There 
 he and one Betterton, an ex-under-cook in the kitchen of Charles 
 I., who lived in Tothill Street, talked mournfully over the past, 
 and, according to their respective humors, 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 ac- 
 quaintance with the old theatrical bookseller. In the neighbor- 
 hood of the ex-prompter's shop, knots of very slenderly-built 
 players used to congregate at certain seasons. A delegate from 
 their number might be seen whispering to the citizen captain in 
 command at Whitehall, who, as wicked people reported, con- 
 sented, for a " consideration," not to bring his red-coats down to 
 the Bull or other localities where private stages were erected, — 
 especially during the time of Bartholomew Fair, Christmas, and 
 other joyous tides. To his shame be it recorded, the captain oc- 
 casionally 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 actor*?. 
 
 The cause of the latter, however, found supporters in many of 
 the members of the aristocracy. Close at hand, near Rhodes's 
 shop, lived Lord Uatton, first of the four peers so styled. Ilis 
 house was in Scotland Yard. His lands had gone by forfeiture, 
 but the proud old Cheshire land-owner cared more for the preser- 
 vation of the deed by which he and his ancestors had he-Id them,
 
 THE DECLINE AXU FALL OF THE PLAYERS. 43 
 
 than be did for the loss of the acres themselves. Hatton was the 
 employer, so to speak, of Dugdale, and the patron of literaiy men 
 and of actors, and — it must be added — of very frivolous company 
 besides. He devoted much time to the preparation of a Book of 
 Psalms and the ill-treatment of, his wife ; and was altogether an 
 eccentric personage, for he recommended Lambert's daughter as a 
 jxjrsonally and politically suitable wife for Charles II., and after- 
 wards discarded his own eldest son for marrying that incomparable 
 lady. In Hatton, the players had a supreme patron in town ; 
 and they found friends as serviceable to them in the noblemen and 
 gentlemen residing a few miles from the capital. These patrons 
 opened their houses to the actors, for stage representations ; but 
 even this private patronage had to be distributed discreetly. 
 Goffe, the light-hmbed lad who used to play women's parts at the 
 " Blackfriars," was generall}^ employed as messenger to announce 
 individually to the audience when they were to assemble, and to 
 the actors the time and place for the play. One of the mansions 
 wherein these dramatic entertainments were most frequently given, 
 was Holland House, Kensington. It was then held and inhabited 
 by the widowed countess of that unstable Earl of Holland, whose 
 head had fallen on the scaffold, in March, 1649; but this grand- 
 daughter 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 patronizing the 
 pleasures which the enemies of her defunct lord so stringently pro- 
 hibited. 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 
 ])robably, on some bright summer afternoon, if a part of them pru- 
 dently returned afoot to town, a joyous but less prudent few "pad- 
 dled it" to Brentford, and made a short but glad night of it with 
 tlivir 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 impa- 
 tient, it was not without some reason, for though Oliver despised 
 the stage, he could condescend to laugh at, and with, men 
 of less dignity in their vocation than actors. Buffoonery was
 
 44 doran's anxals of the stage. 
 
 not entirely expelled fi'ora lils otherwise grave court. At the 
 marriage festival of his daughter Frances and his son-in-law Mr. 
 Rich, the Protector would not tolerate the utterance of a line from 
 Shakspeare, expressed from the lips of a player ; but there were 
 hired buffoons at that entertainracut, which they well-nigh brou'i'ht 
 to a tragical conclusion. A couple of these saucy fellows seeintj 
 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 Rich- 
 ard, he feigned to fling it in the tire, but suddenly passing the 
 wig under him, and seating himself upon it, he pretended that it 
 had been destroyed, amid the servile applause of the edified spec- 
 tators. The actors might reasonably have argued that " Hamlet" 
 in Scotland Yard or at Holland House was a more worthy enter- 
 tainment than such grown-up follies in the gallery at Whitehall. 
 
 Those follies ceased to be ; Oliver had passed away, and Richard 
 had laid down the greatness which had never sat well upon him. 
 Important changes were at hand, and the merry rattle of Monk's 
 drums coming up Gray's Inn Road, welcomed by thousands of 
 dusty spectators, announced no more cheering prospect to any 
 class than to the actors. The Oxford vintner's son, Will Davenant, 
 might be seen bustUng about in happy hurry, eagerly showing 
 young Betterton how Taylor used to play Hamlet, under the 
 instruction of Burbage, and announcing bright days to open- 
 mouthed Kynaston, ready at a moment's warning to leap over his 
 master's counter, and take his standing at the balcony as the 
 smooth-cheeked Juliet. 
 
 Meanwhile, beaming old Rhodes, with a head full of memories 
 of the joyous Blackfriars' days, and the merry afternoons over the 
 water, at the Globe, leaving his once apprentice, Betterton, listen- 
 ing to Davenaiit's stage histoi'ios, and Kynaston, not yet out of his 
 time, longing to flaunt it before an audience, took his own way to 
 Hyde Park, wliere Monk was encamped, and there obtained, in
 
 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PLAYERS. 45 
 
 due time, from that far-seeing individual, license to once more raise 
 the theati'ical flag, enroll the actors, light up the stage, and, in a 
 word, revive the English theatre. In a few days the drama com- 
 menced 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 dinnei-, 
 with satirical farces, such as " Citizen and Soldier," " Country 
 Tom" and " City Dick," with, as the newspapers inform us, " danc- 
 ing and singing, many shapes and ghosts, and the like ; and all to 
 please his Excellency the Lord General." 
 
 The English stage owes a debt of gratitude to both Monk and 
 Rhodes. The former made glorious summer of the actors' winter 
 of discontent ; and the latter inaugurated the Restoration by in- 
 troducing young Betterton. The son of Charles L's cook was, for 
 fifty-one years, the pride of the English theatre. His acting was 
 witnessed by more than one old contemporary of Shakspeare, — 
 the poet's younger brother being among them, — he surviving till 
 shortly after the accc^ion of Charles II. The destitute actors 
 warmed into life and laughter again beneath the sunshine of his 
 presence. His dignity, his marvellous talent, his versatility, his 
 imperishable fame, are all well known and acknowledged. His 
 industry is indicated by the fact that he created one hundred and 
 thirty new characters ! Among them were Jaffier and Valentine, 
 three Virginiuses, and Sir John Brute. He was as mirthful in 
 Falstaft' as he Avas majestic in Alexander ; and the craft of his 
 Ulysses, the grace and passion of his Hamlet, the terrible force of 
 his Othello, were not more remarkable than the low comedy of 
 his Old Bachelor, the airiness of his Woodville, or the cowardly 
 bluster of his Thersites. The old actors who had been frozen out, 
 and the new who had much to learn, could not have rallied round 
 a more noble or a worthier chief; for Betterton was not a greater 
 actor than he was a true and honorable 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 pro 
 fession. The humble lad, born in Tothill Street, before monarchy 
 and the stage went down, had a royal funeral in Westminster 
 Abbey, after dying in harness almost in sight of the lamps. He
 
 46 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 deserved no less, for he was the king of an art which had well-nigb 
 perished in the Commonwealth times, and he was a monarch who 
 probably has never since had, altogether, his equal. Off, as on the 
 stage, he was exemplary in his bearing ; true to every duty ; aa 
 good a country-gentleman on his farm in Berkshire as he was per- 
 fect actor in town ; pursuing with his excellent wife the even tenor 
 of his way ; not tempted by the vices of his time, nor disturbed by 
 its politics ; not tippling like Underbill ; not plotting and betray- 
 ing the plotters against William, like Goodman, nor carrying letters 
 for a costly fee between London and St. Gennains, like Scuda- 
 more. If there had been a leading player on the stage in 1647, 
 with the qualities, public and private, which distinguished Better- 
 ton, there perhaps would have been a less severe ordinance than 
 that which inflicted so much misery on the actors, and which, 
 after a long decline, brought about a fall ; from which they were, 
 however, as we shall see, destined to rise and flourish.
 
 THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES. 47 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 
 THE " BOY ACTRESSES," AND THE " YOUNG LADIES." 
 
 The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is the " sacred ground" of the 
 English drama, since the restoration of monarchy. At the Cock- 
 pit (Pit Street remains a memory of the place), otherwise called 
 the Phoenix, in the " lane" above named, the old English actors 
 had uttered their last words before they were silenced. In a re- 
 construction of the edifice near, rather than on, the old site, tho 
 young English actors, under Rhodes, built their new stage, and 
 wooed the willing town. 
 
 There was some irregularity in the first steps made to re-estab- 
 lish the stage, which, after an uneasy course of about four years, 
 was terminated by Charles II., who, in 1663, granted patents for 
 two theatres, and no more, in London. Under one patent, Killi- 
 grew, at the head of the King's company (the Cockpit being 
 closed) opened at the new theatre in Drury Lane, in August, 1663, 
 with a play of the olden time, — the " Humorous Lieutenant," of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. Under the second patent, Davenant and 
 the Duke of York's company found a home, — first at the old 
 Cockpit, then in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, the building of 
 which was commenced in 1660, on the site of the old granary of 
 Salisbury house, which had served for a theatre in the early years 
 of the reign of Charles I. This little stage was lapped up by the 
 great tongue of fire, by which many a nobler edifice was destroyed , 
 in 1666. But previous to the fire, thence went Davenant and the 
 Duke's troop to the old Tennis Court, the first of the three theatres 
 in Portugal Row, on the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, from 
 which the houses took their name. 
 
 In 1671, Davenant being dead, the company, under the nominal 
 management of his widow, migrated to a house designed by Wren, 
 and decorated by Grinling Gibbous. This was the Duke's Theatre,
 
 4S doran's annals of the stags;. 
 
 in Dorset Gardens. It was in close proximity to the old Salisbui-y 
 Court Theatre, and it presented a double face, — oiie towards Fleet 
 Street, the other overlooking the terrace which gave access to 
 visitors who came by the river. Later, this company was housed 
 in Lincoln's Lin Fields again ; but it migrated, in 1732, to Covent 
 Garden, under Rich. Rich's house was burnt down in 1S08, and 
 its successor, built by Smirke, was destroyed in 1856. On the 
 site of the latter now stands the Royal Italian Opera, the represent- 
 ative, in its way, of the line of houses wherein the Duke's com- 
 pany 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 troojjs re- 
 mained divided, yet not opposed, each keeping to its recognized 
 stock pieces, till 1682, when, Killigrew having " shulBed otf 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 16th of November, 
 1682. Wren's theatre was taken down in 1791 ; its successor, 
 built by Holland, was opened in 1794, and was destroyed in 1809. 
 The present edifice is the fourth which has occupied a site in 
 Drury Lane. It is the work of Wyatt, and was opened in 1812. 
 
 Thus much for the edifice of the theatres of the last half of the 
 seventeenth century. Before we come to the " ladies and gentle- 
 men" 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 entertainment, chiefly musical, 
 but which was not held to be an infringement of the law against 
 the acting of plays. Early in May, 1659, Evelyn writes : — " I went 
 to see a new opera, after the Italian way, in recitative music and 
 scenes, much inferior to the Italian composure and magnificence ; 
 but it was prodigious, that in a time of such public consternation, 
 such a vanity should be kept up or permitted." That these mu- 
 sical entertainments were something (juite 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."
 
 THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOU^^G LADIES. 49 
 
 Of Shakspeare's brother Charles, who lived to this period, Oldya 
 says : — " This opportunity made the actors greedily inquisitive 
 into every little circumstance, more especially in Shakspeare's 
 dramatic character, which his brother could relate of him. But 
 he, it seems, was so stricken in years, and possibly his memory' so 
 weakened by infirmities (which might make him the easier pass 
 for a man of weak intellects), that he could give them but little 
 light into their inquiries ; and all that could be recollected fi-om 
 him of his brother Will in that station, was the faint, general, and 
 almost lost ideas, he had of having once seen him act a part in one 
 of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old 
 man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping 
 and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried 
 by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some 
 company who were eating, and one of them sung a song." This 
 description applies to old Adam, in " As You Like It ;" and he 
 who feebly shadowed it forth, formed a link which connected the 
 old theatre with the new. 
 
 The principal actors in Killigrew's company, from which that 
 of Drury Lane is descended, were Bateman, Baxter, Bird (The- 
 ophilus), Blagden, Burt, Cartwright, Clun, Duke, Hancock, Hart, 
 Kynaston, Lacy, Mohun, the Shatterels (William and Robert), 
 and Wintersel. Later additions gave to this company Beeston, 
 Bell, Charleton, " Scum" Goodman, Griffin, Hains, Joe Harris, 
 Hughes, Lyddoll, Reeves, and Shirley. 
 
 The " ladies" were Mrs. Corey, Eastland, Hughes, Knep, the 
 Marshalls (Anne and Rebecca), Rutter, Uphill, whom Sir Robert 
 Howard too tardily married, and Weaver. Later engagements 
 included those of Mrs. Boutel, Gwyn (Nell), James, Reeves, and 
 Verjuice. These were sworn at the Lord Chamberlain's Ofiice to 
 serve the King. Of the " gentlemen," ten were enrolled on the 
 Royal Household Establishment, and provided with liveries of 
 scarlet cloth and silver lace. In the warrants of the Lord Cham- 
 berlain they were styled " Gentlemen of the Great Chamber;" and 
 they might have pointed to this fact as proof of the dignity of 
 their profession. 
 
 The company first got together by Rhodes, subsequently enlarg- 
 ed by Davenant, and sworn to serve the Duke of York, at Lin- 
 Vol. I. — 3
 
 50 doean's annals of the stage. 
 
 coin's Inn Fields, was in some respects superior to that of Drury 
 Lane. Rhodes's troop included the great Betterton, Dixon, Lillis- 
 ton, Lovel, Nokes (Robert), and six lads employed to represent 
 female characters, — Angel, William Betterton, a brother of the 
 great actor (drowned early in life, at Wallingford), Floid, Kynas- 
 ton (for a time), Mosely, and Nokes (Janus). Later, Davenant 
 added Blagden, Harris, Price, and Richards ; Medbourn, Norris, 
 Sandford, Smith, and Young. The actresses were Mrs. Davenport, 
 Davies, Gibbs, Holden, Jennings, Long, and Saunderson, whom 
 Betterton shortly after married. 
 
 This new fashion of actresses was a French fashion, and the 
 mode being imported from France, a French company, with wo- 
 men among them, came over to London. Hoping for the sanction 
 of their countrywoman. Queen Henrietta Maria, they established 
 themselves in Blackfriars. This essay excited all the fury of 
 Prynne, who called these actresses by very unsavory names ; but 
 who, in styling them " unwomanish and graceless," did not mean 
 to imply that they were awkward and unfeminine, but that acting 
 was unworthy of their sex, and unbecoming women born in an 
 era of grace. 
 
 "Glad am I to say," remarks as stout a Puritan as Prynne, 
 namely, Thomas Brand, in a comment addressed to Laud, "Glad 
 am I to say they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the 
 stage, so that I do not think they will soon be ready to try the 
 same again." Although Brand asserts "that all virtuous and well- 
 disposed persons in this town" were "justly offended" at these 
 women " or monsters rather," as Prynne calls them, " expelled from 
 their own country," adds Brand, yet more sober-thinking people 
 did not fail to see the propriety of Juliet being represented by a 
 girl ratlier than by a boy. Accordingly, we hear of English 
 actresses even before the Restoration, mingled, however, with boys 
 who shared with them that "line of business." "The boy's a 
 pretty actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the " Court Beggar," played 
 at the Cockpit, in 1632, "and his mother can play her part. The 
 women now are in great request." Prynne groaned at the "re- 
 quest" becoming general. "They have now," he writes, in 1633, 
 " their female players in Italy and other foreign parts." 
 
 Davcnant's " Siege of Rhodes" was privately acted by amateurs.
 
 THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES. 51 
 
 including Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell ; the parts of lanthe 
 and Roxalana were played by Mrs. Edward Coleman and another 
 lady. The piece is so stnffed with heroic deeds, heroic love, and 
 heroic generosity, that none more suitable could be found for 
 ladies to appear in. Nevertheless, when Rhodes was permitted 
 to re-open 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, according to 
 Kiiligrew and Davenant, why those managers were authorized to 
 employ actresses to represent all female characters. Kiiligrew 
 was the first to avail himself of the privilege. It was time. Some 
 of Rhodes's " boys" were men past forty, who frisked it as wenches 
 of fifteen ; even real kings were kept waiting because theatrical 
 queens had not yet shaved ; when they did appear they looked 
 like "the guard disguised," and when the prompter called "Des- 
 demona" — " enter Giant !" Who the lady was who first trod the 
 stage as a professional actress is not known ; but that she belonged 
 to Killigrew's company is certain. The character she assumed 
 was Desdemona, and she was introduced by a prologue written for 
 the- occasion by Thomas Jordan. It can hardly be supposed that 
 she was too modest to reveal her name, and that of Anne Marshall 
 has been suggested, as also that of Margaret Hughes. On the 3d 
 of January, 1661, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush" was 
 performed at Killigrew's Theatre, " it being very well done," says 
 Pepys, "and here the first time that ever I saw women come 
 upon the stage." Davenant did not bring forward his actresses 
 before the end of June, 1661, when he produced the second part 
 of the "Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs. Davenport as Roxalana, and 
 Mrs. Saunderson as lanthe; both these ladies, with Mrs. Davies 
 and Mrs. Long, boarded in Davenant's house. Kiiligrew abused 
 his privilege to employ ladies. In 1664, his comedy, "the Parson's 
 Wedding," wherein the plague is made a comic incident of, con- 
 nected with unexampled profligacy, was acted, "I am /oW," are 
 Pepys's ow^n words, "by nothing but women, at the King's 
 house."
 
 52 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 By this time the vocation of the " boy-actresses" had altogether 
 passed away; and there only remains for me to briefly trace the 
 career of those old world representatives of the gentle or truculent 
 heroines depicted by our early dramatists. 
 
 There were three members of Killigrew's, or the King's company, 
 who were admirable representatives of female characters before 
 the Civil Wars. These were Hart, Burt, and Clun — all pupils of 
 luckless Robinson, slain in fight, who was himself an accom- 
 plished "actress." Of the three. Hart I'ose to the greatest emi- 
 nence. His Duchess in Shirley's "Cardinal," was the most 
 successful of his youthful parts. After the Restoration, he laid 
 down Cassio to take Othello from Burt, by the King's command, 
 and was as great in the Moor as Betterton, at the other house, was 
 in Hamlet. His Alexander, which he created, always filled the 
 theatre ; and his dignity therein was said to convey a lesson even 
 to kings. His Brutus was scarcely inferior, while his Catiline was 
 so unapproachable, that when he died, Jonson's tragedy died with 
 him. Rymer styles him and Mohun, the ^^^^sopus 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 favorites. He was a man whose pres- 
 ence delighted the eye before his accents enchanted the ear. The 
 humblest chari},cter 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 forget- 
 fulness of his assigned 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 realized £1,000 yearly, after he became a shareholder in 
 the theatre. He finally rctii'ed in 1682, on a pension amounting 
 to half his salary, which he enjoyed, however, scarcely a year. 
 He died of a, painful iuwai'd complaint in 168;l, and was buried 
 at Stanmore Magna. 
 
 Thei'e is a tradition that IJart, Mohun, and Betterton, fought on 
 the King's side at Kdgehill, in 1042. The last named was then a 
 child, and some things ?(vq attributed to Charles Hart, which be- 
 longed to his father. If Charles was but eighteen when his name- 
 sake the Kino; returned in 1660, it must have been his father who
 
 THE BOY ^CTRE.-SES AND THE YOUNG LADIES. 53 
 
 was at Edgeliill with Moluiii, and who, perhaps, played female 
 characters in his early days. 
 
 Burt, after he left ott' the women's gear, acted Cicero with rare 
 ability, in "Catiline," for the getting up of which piece Charles II. 
 contributed £500 for robes. Of Clun, in or out of petticoats, the 
 record is brief. His lago was superior to Mohun's, but Lacy excelled 
 him in the "Humorous Lieutenant;" but as Subtle, in the "Alchy- 
 mist," he was the admiration of all play-goers. After acting this 
 comic part, Clun made a tragic end on the night of the third of 
 August, 1664, With a lady hanging on his arm, and some liquor 
 lying under his belt, he was gayly passing on his way to his 
 country lodgings in Kentish Town, where he was assailed, mur- 
 dered, and flung into a ditch, by rogues, one of whom was cap- 
 tured, " an Irish fellow most cruelly butchered and bound." " The 
 house will have a great miss of him," is the epitapy of Pepys upon 
 versatile Clun. 
 
 Of the boys belonging to Davenant's Company, who at first 
 appeared in woman's bodice but soon found their occupation 
 gone, some were of greater fame than others. One of these, 
 Angel, turned from waiting-maids to low comedy, caricatured 
 Frenchmen and foolish lords. We hear nothing of him after 
 1673. The younger Betterton, as I have said, was drowned at 
 Wallingford. Mosely and Floid represented a vulgar class of 
 women, and both died before the year 1674; but Kynaston and 
 James Nokes long survived to occupy prominent positions on the 
 stage. 
 
 Kynaston made " the loveliest lady," for a boy, ever beheld by 
 Pepys. This was in 1660, when Kynaston played Olympia, the 
 Duke's sister, in the " Loyal Subject ;" and went with a young 
 fellow-actor to carouse, after the play, with Pepys and Captain 
 Ferrers. Kynaston was a handsome fellow under every guise. 
 On the 7th of January, 1661, says Pepys, "Tom and I, and my 
 wife, went 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
 
 54 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 mail in the house." When the phiy was concluded, and it was 
 not the hxd's humor to carouse with the men, the ladies would 
 seize on him, in his theatrical dress, and, carrying him to Hyde 
 Park in their coaches, be foolishly proud of the precious freight 
 which they bore with them. 
 
 Kynaston was not invariably in such good luck. There was 
 another handsome man, Sir Charles Sedley, whose style of dress 
 the young actor aped ; and his presumption was punished by a 
 ruflian, hired by the baronet, who accosted K3'naston in St. James' 
 Park, as "Sir Charles," and thrashed him in that character. The 
 actor then mimicked Sir Charles on the stage. A consequence 
 was, that on the 30th of January, 1609, Kynaston was waylaid by 
 three or four assailants, and so clubbed by them that there was no 
 play on the following evening ; and the victim, mightily bruised, 
 was forced to keep his bed. He did not recover in less than a 
 week. On the 9th of February he reappeared, as the King of 
 Tidore, in the " Island Princess," which " he do act very well," 
 says Pepys, " after his beating by Sir Charles Sedley's appointment." 
 
 The boy who used to play Evadne, and now enacted the tyrants 
 of the drama, retained a certain beauty to the last. " Even at past 
 sixty," Cibber tells us, " his teeth were all sound, white, and even 
 as one would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty." CoUey 
 attributes the formal gravity of Kynaston's mien " to the stately 
 step lie had been so early confined to in a female decency." The 
 same writer praises Kynaston's Leon, in " Rule a Wife and have a 
 Wife," for its determined manliness and honest authority. In the 
 heroic tyrants, his piercing eye, his quick, impetuous tone, and 
 the fierce, lion-like majesty of his bearing and utterance, " gave 
 the spectator a kind of trembling admiration." 
 
 When Cibber played Syphax, in " Cato," he did it as he thought 
 Kynaston would have done, had he been alive to impersonate the 
 character. Kynaston roared through the bombast of some of the 
 dramatists with a laughable earnestness; but in Shakspeare's 
 nionarchs he was every inch a king — dignified and natural. The 
 true majesty of his Henry IV. was so manifest, that when he 
 whispered to Hotspur, " Send us your prisoners, or you'll hear of 
 it," he conveyed, says Cibber, " a more terrible menace in it than 
 the loudest intemperance of voice could swell to." Again, iu the
 
 THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES. 55 
 
 interview between the dying king and his son, the dignity, majes- 
 tic grief, the paternal affection, the injured kingly feeling, tlie 
 pathos and the justness of the rebuke, were alike remarkable. The 
 actor was equal to the task assigned him by the author, — putting 
 forth " that peculiar and becoming grace, which the best writer 
 cannot inspire into any actor that is not born with it." 
 
 Kynaston remained on the stage from 1659 to 1699. By this 
 time, his memory began to fail and his spirit to leave him. These 
 imperfections, says the generous Colley, " were visibly not his own, 
 but the effects of decaying nature." But Bettcrton's nature was 
 not thus decaying ; and his labor had been far greater than that of 
 Kynaston, who created only a score of original characters, the best 
 known of which are, Harcourt, in the " Country Wife ;" Freeman, 
 in the " Plain Dealer ;" and Count Baldwin, in " Isabella, or the 
 Fatal Marriage." His early practice, in representing female char- 
 acters, affected his voice in some disagreeable way. " What 
 makes you feel sick ?" said Kynaston to Powell — suffering from a 
 too riotous " last night." " How can I feel otherwise," asked 
 Powell, " when I hear your voice 2" 
 
 Edward Kynaston died in 1712, and lies buried in the church- 
 yard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. If not the greatest actor of 
 his day, Kynaston was the greatest of the " boy-actresses." So 
 exalted was his reputation, " that," says Downes, " it has since 
 been disputable among the judicious, whether any woman that 
 succeeded him, so sensibly touched the audience as he." 
 
 In one respect he was more successful than Betterton, for he 
 not only made a fortune, but kept what he had made, and 
 left it to his only son. This son improved the bequest by his in- 
 dustry, as a mercer in Covent Garden ; and, probably remember- 
 ing that he was well descended from the Kynastons of Oteley, 
 Salop, he sent his own son to college, and lived to see him oi*- 
 dained. This Reverend Mr. Kynaston purchased the impropria- 
 tion of Aldgate ; and, despite the vocations of his father and grand- 
 father, but in consequence of the prudence and liberality of both, 
 was willingly acknowledged by his Shropshire kinsmen. 
 
 Kynaston's contemporary, James Nokes, was as prudent and as 
 fortunate as he ; but James was not so well descended. His 
 father (and he himself for a time) was a city toyman — not so well
 
 56 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 to do, but he ullowed his sons to go on tlie stage, where Robert 
 was a respectable actor, and James, after a brief exercise of female 
 characters, was admirable in his peculiar line. The toyman's son 
 became a landholder, and made of his nephew a lord of the soil. 
 Thus, even in those days of small salaries, players could build up 
 fortunes ; because the more prudent among them nursed the little 
 they could spare, with care, and of that little made the very 
 utmost. 
 
 Nokes was, to the last night of his career, famous for his un- 
 personation of the Nurse in two plays ; first, in that strange adapta- 
 tion by Otway, of " Romeo and Juliet" to a Roman tragedy, 
 " Caius Marius ;" and secondly, in Nevil Payne's fierce, yet not 
 bombastic drama, " Fatal Jealousy." Of the portraits to be found 
 in Gibber's gallery, one of the most perfect, drawn by Colley's 
 hand, is that of James Nokes. Gibber attributes his general ex- 
 cellence to " a plain and palpable simplicity of nature, which was 
 so utterly his own, that he was often as accountably diverting in 
 his common speech as on the stage." Ilis very conversation was 
 an unctuous acting ; and, in the truest sense of the word, he was 
 " inimitable." Gibber himself, accomplished mimic as he was, 
 confessedly failed in every attempt to reproduce the voice and 
 manner of James Nokes, who identified himself with every part 
 so easily, as to reap a vast amount of fame at the cost of hardly 
 an hour's study. His range was through the entire realm of broad 
 comedy, and Gibber thus photographs him for the entertainment 
 of posterity : 
 
 " He scarce ever made his first entrance in a play but he was 
 received with an involuntary applause ; not of hands only, for 
 those may be, and have often been, partially prostituted and be- 
 spoken, but by a general laughter, which the very sight of him 
 provoked, and nature could not resist ; yet the louder the laugh 
 the graver was his look upon it; and sure the ridiculous solemnity 
 of his features were enough to have set a whole bench of bishops 
 into a titter, could he have been honored (may it be no offence 
 to suppose it) with such grave and right reverend auditors. In 
 the ludicrous distresses which, by the laws of comedy, folly is 
 often involved in, he sunk into such a mixture of piteous pusil- 
 lanimity, and a consternation so ruefully ridiculous and inconsola-
 
 THE BOY AGTKESSKS AND THE YOUXG LADIES. 57 
 
 ble, that when he had shook you to a fatigue of laugliter, it be- 
 came a moot point whether you ought not to have pitied him. 
 When he debated any matter by himself, he would shut up his 
 mouth with a dumb, studious pout, and roll his full eye into such 
 a vacant amazement, such a palpable ignorance of what to think 
 of it, that his silent perplexity (which would sometimes hold him 
 several minutes) gave your imagination as full content as the mo.-t 
 absurd thing he could say upon it" 
 
 This great comic actor was naturally of a grave and sober coun- 
 tenance ; " but the moment he spoke, the settled seriousness of his 
 features was utterly discharged, and a diy, drolling, or laughing 
 levity took such full possession of him, that I can only refer the 
 idea of him to your imagination." Ilis clear and audible voice 
 better fitted him for burlesque heroes, like Jupiter Amnion, than 
 his middle st^xturc ; but the pompous inanity of his trav'estied 
 pagan divinity, was as wonderful as the rich stolidity of his con- 
 tentedly ignorant fools. 
 
 There was no actor whom the City so rejoiced in as Nokes , 
 there was none whom the Court more delighted to honor. In May, 
 1670, Charles II., and troops of courtiers, went down to Dover to 
 meet the Queen-mother, and took with them the Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields comedians. When Henrietta Maria arrived, with her suite 
 of French ladies and gentlemen, the latter attired, according to the 
 prevailing fashion, in very short blue or scarlet laced coats, with 
 broad sword belts, the English comedians played before the royal 
 host and his guests, the play, founded on Moliere's " Ecole des 
 Femmes," and called " Sir Solomon." Nokes acted Sir Arthur 
 Addel, in dressing for which part he was assisted by the Duke of 
 Monmouth. In order that he might the better ape the French mode, 
 the duke took off his own sword and belt, and buckled them to 
 the actor's side. At his first entrance on the stage. King and 
 Court broke into unextinguishable laughter, so admirably were the 
 foreign guests caricatured ; at which outrage on courtesy and 
 hospitality, the guests, naturally enough, " were much chagrined," 
 says Downes. Nokes retained the duke's sword and belt to his 
 dying day, which fell in the course of the year 1692. He was the 
 original representative of about forty characters, in plays which 
 have long since disappeared from the stage. Charles II. was the 
 3*
 
 58 doran's anxals of the stage. 
 
 first who recognized, on the occasion of his playincj the part of 
 Norfolk, in " Henry VIIL," tlie merit of Nokes as an actor. 
 
 James Nokes left to his nephew something better than the 
 sword and belt of the Duke of Monmouth, namely, a landed 
 estate at Totteridge, near Barnet, of the value of £400 a year. 
 Pepys may have kissed that nephew's mother, on the August day 
 of 1665, when he fell into company near Rochester with a lady 
 and gentleman riding singly, and differing as to the merits of a 
 copy of verses, which Pepys, by his style of reading aloud, got the 
 husband to confess that they were as excellent as the Avife had 
 pronounced them to be. " His name is Nokes," writes the diarist, 
 " over against Bow Church. . . We promised to meet, if ever 
 we come both to London again, and at parting, I had a fair salute 
 on horseback, in Rochester streets, of the lady." 
 
 Having thus seen the curtain fall upon the once " boy actresses," 
 I proceed to briefly notice the principal ladies in the respective 
 companies of Killigrew and Davenant, commencing with those of 
 the King's House, or Theatre Royal, under Killigrew's manage 
 ment, chiefly iu Drury Lane. The first name of importance in 
 this list is that of Mrs. Hughes, who, on the stage from 1663 to 
 1676, was more remarkable for her beauty than for her great 
 ability. When the former, in 1668, subdued Prince Rupert, there 
 was more jubilee at the Court of Cliarles H., at Tunbridge Wells, 
 than if the philosophic Prince had fallen upon an invention that 
 should benefit mankind. Rupert, whom the plumed gallants of 
 Whitehall considered as a rude mechanic, left his laboratory, put 
 aside his reserve, and wooed in due form the proudest, perhaps, 
 of the actresses of her day. Only in the May of that year Pepys 
 had saluted her with a kiss, in the green-room of the King's 
 House. She was then reputed to be the intimate friend and 
 favorite of Sir Charles Sedley ; " A mighty pretty woman," saj's 
 P(,'j)y.s, " and seems, but is not, modest." The I'rincc enshrined 
 the frail beauty in that home of Sir Nicholas Crispe, at Hammer- 
 smith, which was subsequently occupied by Bubb Doddington, 
 the Margravine of Anspach, and Queen Caroline of Brunswick. 
 She well-nigh ruined her lover, at whose death there was little left 
 beside a collection of jewels, worth £20,000, which were disposed 
 uf by lottery, in order to pay his debts. Mrs. Hughes was not
 
 THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES. 59 
 
 unlike lier own Mrs. Moneylove in " Tom Essence," a very good 
 sort of person till temptation beset her. After his death she 
 squandered much of the estate which Rupert had left to her, 
 chiefly by gambling. Ilcr contemporary, Nell Gywn, purchased, 
 a celebrated pearl necklace belonging to the deceased Prince for 
 £4,520, a purchase which must have taken the appearance of an 
 insult, in the eyes of Mrs. Hughes. The daughter of this union, 
 Ruperta, who shared with her mother the modest estate bequeathed 
 by the Prince, married General Emanuel Scrope Howe. One of 
 the daughters of this maniage was the beautiful and reckless maid 
 of honor to Caroline, Princess of Wales, whom the treachery of 
 Nanty Lowther sent broken-heurted to the grave, in 1726. 
 Through Ruperta, however, the blood of her parents is still con 
 tinued in the family of Sir Edward Bromley. 
 
 Mrs. Knipp (or Kncp) was a different being from Margaret 
 Hughes, She was a pretty creature, with a sweet voice, a mad 
 humor, and an ill-looking, moody, jealous husband, who vexed the 
 soul and bruised the body of his sprightly, sweet-toned and way- 
 ward wife. Excellent company she was found by Pepys and his 
 friends, whatever her horse-jockey of a husband may have thought 
 of her, or Mrs. Pepys of the philandering of her own husband 
 with the minx, whom she did not hesitate to pronounce a " wench," 
 and whom Pepys himself speaks of aftectionatoly as a "jade" he 
 was always glad to see. Abroad he walks with her in the New 
 Exchange to look for pretty faces ; and of the home of an actress, 
 in 1666, we have a sketch in the record of a visit in November, 
 "To Knipp's lodgings, whom I find not ready to go home with 
 me ; and there staid reading of Waller's verses, while she finished 
 dressing, her husband being by. Her lodging very mean, and the 
 condition she lives in ; yet makes a show without doors, God 
 bless us 1" 
 
 Mrs. Knipp's characters embraced the rakish fine ladies, the 
 rattling ladies' -maids, one or two tragic parts ; and where singing 
 was required, priestesses, nuns, and milk-maids. As one of the 
 latter, Pepys was enchanted at her appearance, with her hair sim- 
 ply turned up in a knot behind. 
 
 Her intelligence was very great, her simple style of dressing 
 much commended ; and she could deliver a prologue as deftly a
 
 60 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 slie could either sing or dance, and with as much grace as she was 
 wont to throw into raanifestations of touclilng grief or tenderness. 
 She disappears from the hills in 1678, after a fourteen years' ser- 
 vice ; and there is no further reci)rd of tlie life of Mistress Knipp. 
 
 Anne and Rebecca Maishall are names which one can only 
 reluctantly associate with that of Stephen Marshall the divine, wlio 
 is said to have been their father. The Long Parliament frequently 
 commanded the eloquent incumbent of Finchingfield, Essex, to 
 preach before them. Cambridge University was as proud of him 
 as a distinguished alumnus, a^ Huntingdonshire was of having him 
 for a son. In aftaii's of religion he was the oracle of Parliament, 
 and his advice was sought even in political difficulties. He was a 
 mild and conscientious man, of whom Baxter remarked, that " if 
 all the bishops had been of the spirit and tempcn- of Usher, the 
 presbyterians of the temper of Mr. Marshall, and tlie independents 
 like Mr. Burroughs, the divisions of the Church wcnxld have been 
 easily compromised." Stephen Marshall was a man who, in his 
 practice, " preached his sermons o'er again ;" and Firmin describes 
 him as an " example to the believers in word, in conversation, in 
 charity, in faith, and in purity." He died full of honors and under- 
 standing ; and Westminster Abbey afforded him a grave, from 
 which he was ruthlessly ejected at the R<>storation. It is hardly 
 possible to believe that such a saint was the father of the two 
 beautiful actresses whom Nell Gwyn taunted with being the erring 
 daughters of a " praying Presbyterian." 
 
 On the other hand, we learn from Sir Peter Leicester's History 
 of Cheshire, that the royalist, Lord Gerard of Bromley, retained 
 this stanch Presbyterian in his house as his chaplain. Further, 
 we are told that this chaplain mai-ried a certain illegitimate Eliza- 
 beth, whose father was a Dutton of Dutton, and that of this mar- 
 riage came Anne and Rebecca. As Sir Peter was himself con- 
 nected with both the Gerards and Dnttons by marriage, he must 
 be held as speaking with some authoiity in this matter. 
 
 Pepys says of Anne Marshall, that her voice was " not so sweet 
 as Ian the's," meaning Mrs. P)ctterton's. Rebecca had a beautiful 
 hand, was very imposing on the stage, and even oft' of it was 
 "mighty fine, pretty, and noble." She had the reputation of 
 facilitating the intrigue which Lady Castlemainc kept up witb
 
 THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES. 61 
 
 Hart, the actor, to avenge herself on the King because of his ad- 
 miration for Mrs. Davics. One of her finest parts was Dorothea, 
 in the " Virgin Martyr ;" and her Queen of Sicily (an " up-hill" 
 part) to Nell Gwyn's Florimel, in Dryden's " Secret Love," was 
 highly appreciated by the play-going public. 
 
 With the exception of Mrs. Corey, the mimic, and pleasing 
 little Mrs. Boutel, who realized a fortune, with her girlish voice 
 and manner, and her supremely iimocent and fascinating ways, 
 justifying the intensity of love with which she inspired youthful 
 heroes, the only other actress of the King's company worth men- 
 tioning is Nell Gwyn ; but Nell was the crown of them all, win- 
 ning hearts throughout her jubilant career, beginning in her early 
 girlhood with that of a link-boy, and ending in her womanhood 
 with that of the king. 
 
 Nell Gywn is claimed by the Herefordshire people. In Here- 
 ford city, a mean house in the rear of the Oak Inn is pointed 
 out as the place of her birth. The gossips there little thought 
 that a child so humbly born would be the mother of a line of 
 dukes, or that her great-grandson should be the bishop of her 
 native town, and occupy for foi-ty years the episcopal palace in 
 close proximity to the poor cottage in which the archest of hussies 
 first saw the light. 
 
 But the claims of Pipe Lane, Hereford, are disputed by Coal 
 Yard, Drury Lane, and also by Oxford, where Nell's father, James 
 Gwyn, a " captain," according to some, a fruiterer accoiding to 
 others, died in prison. The captain with his wife Helena, some- 
 while a resident in St. Martin's Lane, had two daughters, Nell and 
 Rose. The latter married a Captain Capels, and, secondly, a Mr. 
 Foster ; little else is known of her, save that her less reputable 
 sister left her a small legacy, and that she survived till the year 
 1697. Nelly was born early in 1650; and tradition states that 
 she very early ran away from her country home to town, and 
 studied for the stage by going every night to the play. I suspect 
 Coal Yard was her first bower, that thence she issued to cry 
 " fresh herrings !" and captivate the hearts of susceptible link- 
 boys ; and passed, from being liander of strong waters to the gen- 
 tlemen who patronized Madame floss's house, to taking her place 
 in the pit, with her back to the orchestra, and selling oranges and
 
 62 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 pippins, with pertinent wit gratis, to liberal fops wlio would buy 
 the first and return the second with interest. As Rochester 
 assures us, there was a " wondering pit" in presence of this smart- 
 est and most audacious of orange-girls. It was natural enough 
 that she should attract the notice of the actors, that Lacy should 
 give her instruction, and that from Charles Hart she should take 
 that and all the love he could pay her. The latter two were 
 spoken of in prologues, long after both were dead, as "those 
 darlings of the stage." 
 
 Under the auspices of Charles Hart, Nelly made her first ap- 
 pearance at the (King's) theatre, in a serious part, Cydaria, in 
 the " Indian Emperor." She was then not more than fifteen, 
 though some say seventeen, years of age. For tragedy she was 
 unfitted : her stature was low, though her figure was graceful ; and 
 it was not till she assumed comic characters, stamped the smallest 
 foot in England on the boards, and laughed with that peculiar 
 laugh that, in the excess of it, her eyes almost disappeared, she 
 fairly carried away the town, and enslaved the hearts of city and 
 of court. She spoke prologues and epilogues with wonderful 
 effect, danced to perfection, and in her peculiar but not extensive 
 line was, perhaps, unequalled for the natural feeling which she put 
 into the parts most suited to her. She Avas so fierce of repartee 
 that no one ventured a second time to allude sneeringly to her 
 antecedents. She was coarse, too, when the hurnor took her; 
 could curse pretty strongly if the house was not full, and was 
 given, in common Avith the other ladies of the company, to loll 
 about and talk loudly in the public boxes, when she was not 
 engaged on the stage. She left both stage and boxes for a time, 
 in 1667, to keep mad house at Epsom with the clever Lord Buck- 
 hurst — a man who for one youthful vice exhibited a thousand 
 manly virtues. The story, that Lord Buckhurst separated from 
 Mistress Gwyn for a money consideration and a title, can be dis- 
 proved by the testimony of a character which all Peru could not 
 have influenced, and of chronology, which sets the story at 
 naught. 
 
 They who would read Buckhurst's true character, will find it 
 in the eloquent and graceful dedication which Prior made of his 
 poems to Buckhurst's son, Lionel. Like the first Sackville, of
 
 THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES. 63 
 
 the line of the Earls of Dorset, he was himself a poet; and "To 
 all you ladies now on land," although not quite the impromptu it 
 is said to have been, is an evidence how gracefully he could strike 
 the lyre on the eve of a great battle. In short, Buckhurst, who 
 took Nelly from the stage, and who found Prior iu a coffee-shop 
 and added him to literature, was a "man," brave, truthful, gay, 
 honest, and universally beloved. He was the people's favorite ; 
 and Pope assures us, when Buckhurst had become Earl of Dorset, 
 that he was " the grace of courts, the muses' pride." 
 
 After a year's absence. Mistress Gwyn returned to the stage. 
 In all nature, there was nothing better than she, in certain parts. 
 Pepys never hoped to see any thing like her in Florimel, with her 
 changes of sex and costume. She was little, pretty, and witty ; 
 danced perfectly, and with such applause, that authors would fain 
 have appropriated the approbation bestowed on her "jig," to the 
 play in which it was introduced. A play, without Nell, was no 
 play at all to Mr. Pepys. When, in 1667, she followed Buck- 
 hurst to Epsom, and flung up her parts and an honestly earned 
 salary for a poor £100 a year, Pepys exclaims, " Poor girl ! I pity 
 her ; but more the loss of her at the King's house." The Ad- 
 miralty clerk's admiration was confined to her merry characters ; 
 he speaks of her Emperor's Daughter, in the " Indian Emperor," 
 as " a great and serious part, which she does most basely." 
 
 Her own party hailed her return ; but she did not light upon a 
 bed of roses. Lady Castlemaine was no longer her patroness — 
 rather that and more of Nelly's old lover, Charles Hart, who 
 flouted the ex-favorite of Buckhurst. That ex-favorite, however, 
 bore with equal indifference the scorn of Charles Hart and the 
 contempt of Charles Sackville ; — she saw compensation for both, 
 in the royal homage of Charles Stuart. Meanwhile, she con- 
 tinued to enchant the town in comedy, to " spoil" serious parts in 
 Sir Robert Howard's mixed pieces, and yet to act with great 
 success characters, in which natural emotion, bordering on in- 
 sanity, was to be represented. Early in 1668, we find her among 
 the loose companions of King Charles ; " and I am sorry for it," 
 says Pepys, " and can hope for no good to the state, from having 
 a Prince so devoted to his pleasure." The writers for the stage 
 were of a like opinion. Howard wrote his " Duke of Lerma,"
 
 64 dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 as a vehicle of reproof to the Khig, who sat, a careless auditor, 
 less troubled than Pepys himself, who expected that the play 
 would be interrupted by royal authority. The last of her original 
 characters was that of Almahide, in Dryden's " Conquest of 
 Granada," the prologue to which she spoke in a straw hat as broad 
 as a cartwheel, and thereby almost killed the King with laughter, 
 ill this piece, her old lover. Hart, played Almanzor; and his 
 position with respect to King Boabdelin (Kynaston) and Almahide 
 (Nelly) corresponds with that in which he stood towards King 
 Charles and the actress. The passages reminding the audience of 
 this complex circumstance threw the house into " convulsions." 
 
 From this time, Ellen Gwyn disappears from the stage. A 
 similar sui-name appears in the play-bills from 1670 to 1682; but 
 there is no ground for believing that the " Madame Gwyn" of the 
 later period was the Mrs. Ellen of the earlier, poorer, and merrier 
 times. Nelly's first son, Charles Beauclerc, was born in her house 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in Ma}^, 1670; her second, in the follow- 
 ing year, at her liouse in Pall Mall, the garden terrace of which 
 overlooked the then green walk in the park, from which Evelyn 
 saw, with shame, the King talking with the impudent " comedian." 
 This younger son, James, died at Paris, 1680. The elder had 
 Otway for a tutor. In his sixth year he was created Earl of 
 Burford, and in his fourteenth was created a duke. His mother had 
 addressed liim, in the King's hearing, by an epithet referring to 
 his illegitimacy, on the plea that she did not know by what title 
 to call him. Charles made him an earl. Accident of death 
 raised him to a dukedom. Harry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, of 
 whom report made the second husband of Henrietta Maria, had 
 just died. Blind as he had been, he had played cards to the last 
 — some one sitting near him to tell him the points. At an age 
 approaching to ninety years, he had passed away. Charles gave 
 the name of St. Albans, with the title of duke, to Nell Gwyn's 
 eldest son, adding thereto the registrarship of the High Court of 
 Chancery, and the office (rendered hereditary) of Master Falconer 
 of England. The present and tenth Duke of St. Albans is the 
 \ineal descendant of Charles Stuart and Ellen Gwyn. 
 
 The King had demurred to a request to settle £500 a year on 
 this lady, and yet within four years she is known to have exacted
 
 THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES. Go 
 
 from him above £80,000. Suhsequeutly, £6,000, annually, were 
 tossed to her from the Excise, — that hardest taxation of the poor, 
 — and £3,000 more -were added for the expenses of each son. She 
 blazed publicly at Whitehall, witli diamonds out-flashing those 
 usually worn, as Evelyn has it, " by the like cattle." At Burford 
 House, Windsor, her gorgeous country residence, she could gayly 
 'i)se £1,400 in one night at basset, and purchase diamond neck- 
 laces the next day, at fabulous prices. Negligent dresser as she 
 was, she always looked fascinating; and fascinating as she was, 
 she had a ready fierceness and a bitter sarcasm at hand, when 
 other royal favorites, or sons of favorites, assailed or sneered at 
 her. With the King and his brother she bandied jokes as freely 
 •<js De Pompadour or Du Barry with Louis XV. By impulse, 
 she could be charitable ; but by neglecting the claims of her own 
 creditors, she could be cruel. Charles alluded to her extravagance 
 when, on his death-bed, he recommended those shameless women, 
 Cleveland and Portsmouth, to his brother's kindness, and hoped 
 he would " not let Nelly starve." An apocryphal story attributes 
 the founding of Chelsea Hospital to Nelly's tendei'ness for a poor 
 old wounded soldier who had been cheated of his pay. The 
 dedications to her of books by such people as Aphra Behn and 
 Duffet are blasphemous in their expressions, making of her, as they 
 do, a sort of divine essence, and becoming satirical by their ex- 
 aggerated and disgusting eulogy. For such a person, the pure 
 and pious Bishop Kenn was once called upon to yield up an 
 apartment in which he lodged, and the peerage had a narrow 
 escape of having her foisted upon it as Countess of Greenwich. 
 This clever actress died in November, 1687, of a fit of apoplexy, 
 by which she had been stricken in the previous March. She was 
 then in her thirty-eighth year. She had been endowed like a 
 -princess, but she left debts, and died just in time to allow James 
 to discharge them out of the public purse. Finally, she was 
 carried to old St. Martin's-in-the-Fields to be buried, and Ten- 
 nison preached her funeral sermon. Wlien this was subsequently 
 made the ground of exposing him to the reproof of Queen Mary, 
 she remarked, that the good doctor, no doubt, had said nothing 
 but what the facts authorized. 
 
 In the time of Nelly's most brilliant fortunes, the people who
 
 GO doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 laiiglied at her wit and impudence publicly contemned her. In 
 Febvaary, 1680, she visited the Duke's Theatre, in Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, on which occasion a person in the pit called her loudly 
 by a name which, to do her justice, she never repudiated. The 
 aifront, which she herself could laugh at, was taken up by William 
 Iferbert, brother of Philip, Eai-1 of Pembroke, who had married 
 the younger sister of another of the King's favorite^ Henrietta de 
 Qiierouaille. The audience took part, some with the assailant, 
 others with the champion of Nelly. Many swords were drawn, 
 the sorrows of the " Orphan" were suspended, there was a hubbub 
 in the house, and more scratches given than blood spilt. That 
 Nelly found a knight in Thomas Herbert only proves that a hot- 
 headed young gentleman may become a very sage as years grow 
 upon hira. Tliis Thomas, when Earl of Pembroke, was "first 
 plenipotentiary" at the making of the treaty of Ryswick, and 
 Chief Commissioner in establishing the Union of England and 
 Scotland. His excellent taste and liberality laid the foundations 
 of the collection of antiques which yet attracts visitors to Wilton. 
 But love for leading play-house factions did not die out in his 
 family. Four and forty years after he had drawn sword for the 
 reputation of Nell Gwyn, his third Countess, Mary, sister of Vis- 
 count Howe, headed the Cnzzoni party at the Opera-house against 
 the Faustina faction, led by the Countess of Burlington and Lady 
 Delawar. Whenever Faustina opened her mouth to sing. Lady 
 Pembroke and her friends hissed the singer heartily; and as soon 
 as Cnzzoni made a similar attempt, Lady Burlington and her fol- 
 lowers shrieked her into silence. Lord Pembroke sat by, think- 
 ing, perhaps, of the young days when he was the champion of Nell 
 Gwyn, or of Margaret Symcolt, if an old tradition be true that 
 such was Nelly's real name. 
 
 Of the ladies who played at the Duke's House, under Davcnaiit, 
 the principal were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Davies, Mrs, Gibbs, Mrs. 
 Holden, Mrs, Jennings, Mrs. Long, and Mrs. Norris. Chief among 
 these were Mistresses Davenport, Davies, Sannderson, and Long. 
 Mrs. Davenport is remembered as the Koxalana of Davcnant's 
 " Siege of Rliodes," which she played so well that Pepys could 
 not forget her in either of her successors, Mrs. Betterton or Mrs. 
 Norton. She is still better remembered in connection with a story
 
 THE BOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUIn^G LADIES. G7 
 
 of which she is the heroine, although that character in it has been 
 ascribed to others. 
 
 Aubrey de Vere, the twentieth Earl of Oxford, was the last of 
 his house who held that title, but the one who held it the longest, 
 namely, seventy years, from 1632 to 1702. Aubrey de Vere 
 despised the old maxim, " Noblesse oblige." He lived a royster- 
 ing life, kept a roystering house, and was addicted to hard drink- 
 ing, rough words, and unseemly brawling and sword-slashing, in 
 his cups. Tlie young earl made love, after the fashion of the day 
 and the man, to Mrs. Davenport ; but he might as well have made 
 love to Diana ; and it was not till he proposed marriage that the 
 actress condescended to listen to his suit. The lovers were pri- 
 vately married, and the lady was, in the words of old Downes, 
 " crept the stage." The honeymoon, however, was speedily ob- 
 scured ; Lord Oxford grew indifferent and brutal. When the lady 
 talked of her rights, he informed her that she was not Countess of 
 Oxford at all. The apparent reverend gentleman who had per- 
 formed the ceremony of marriage was a trumpeter, who served 
 under this very noble lord in the King's own regiment of cavalry. 
 The forlorn fair one, after threatening suicide, sought out the King, 
 fell at his feet, and demanded justice. The award was made in 
 the shape of an annuity of £300 a year, with which " Lord Ox- 
 ford's Miss," as Evelyn calls her, seems to have been satisfied and 
 consoled ; for Pepys, soon after, being at the play, " saw the old 
 Roxalana in the chief box, in a velvet gown, as the fashion is, and 
 very handsome, at which I was glad." 
 
 As for Miss Mary Davies, it is uncertain whether she was 1 he 
 daughter of a Wiltshire blacksmith, or tlie less legitimate offspring 
 of Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Berkshire, or of the earl's 
 son — not the poet, but the colonel. However this may be, Mary 
 Davies was early on the stage, where she danced well, played 
 moderately ill, announced the next afternoon's performance with 
 grace, and won an infamous distinction at the King's hands, by 
 her inimitable singing of the old song of " My lodging is on the 
 cold ground." Then there was the publicly furnishing of a house 
 for her, and the presentation of a ring worth £600, and much 
 scandal to good men and honest women. Thereupon Miss Daviea 
 grew an "impertinent slut," and my Lady Castlemaine waxed
 
 68 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 melancholy, and meditated miscliief against her royal and fickle 
 lover. The patient Queen herself was moved to anger by the new 
 position of Miss Davies, and vs^hen the latter appeared in a play at 
 Whitehall, in which she was about to dance, her Majesty rose and 
 left the house. But neither the offended dignity of the Queen, 
 nor Lady Castlemaine " looking fire," nor the bad practical jokes 
 of Nell Gwyn, could loose the King from the temporary enchant- 
 ment to which he surrendered himself. Their daughter was that 
 Mary Tudor, who married the second Earl of Derwentwater, whose 
 son, the third earl, was the gallant young fellow who lost his head 
 for aid afforded to his cousin, the first Pretender, in 1715. Before 
 his death, a request was made to the Duke of Richmond, son of 
 Charles II., by Madlle. de Querouaille, to present a memorial to 
 the Lords in order to save the young earl's life. The duke pre- 
 sented the memorial, but he added his earnest hope that their 
 lordships would reject the prayer of it ! In such wise did the ille- 
 gitimate Stuarts play brother to each other ! Through the mar- 
 riage of the daughter of Lord Derwentwater with the eighth Lord 
 Petre, the blood of the Stuart and of Moll Davies still runs in their 
 lineal descendant, the present and twelfth lord. 
 
 Happy are the women who have no histories ! Such is the case 
 with Miss Saunderson, better known to us as Mrs. Betterton. For 
 about thirty years she played the chief female characters, especially 
 in Shakspeare's plays, with great success. She created as many 
 new parts as she played years ; but they were in old-world pieces, 
 which have been long forgotten. In the home which she kept 
 with her husband, charity, hospitality, and dignity abided. So 
 unexceptional was Mrs. Betterton's character, that when Crowne's 
 "Calista" was to be played at court in 1674, shevvas chosen to be 
 instructress to the Lady Mary and the Lady Anne. These prin- 
 cesses derived from Mrs. Betterton's lessons the accomplishment 
 for which both were distinguished when queens, of pronouncing 
 speeches from the throne in a distinct and clear voice, with sweet- 
 ness of intonation, and grace of enunciation. Mrs. Betterton sub- 
 sequently instructed the Princess Anne in the part of Semandra, 
 and her husband did the like office for the young noblemen who 
 also played in Lee's rattling tragedy of " Mithridatcs." Two indi- 
 viduals, better qualified by their professioiud skill and their moral
 
 THE EOY ACTRESSES AND THE YOUNG LADIES. h) 
 
 character, to instruct the young princesses and courtiers, and to 
 exercise over them a wholesome authority, could not then have 
 been found on or off the stage. After Betterton's death, Queen 
 Anne settled on her old teacher of elocution a pension of £500 a 
 year. 
 
 Of the remainder of the actresses who first joined Davenant, 
 there is nothing recorded, except their greater or less efiicieucy. 
 Of Mrs. Holden, Betterton's kinswoman, the only incident that I 
 can recall to mind is, that once, by the accidental mispronuncia- 
 tion of a word, when playing' in "Romeo and Juliet," and giving 
 it " a vehement action, it put the house into such a laughter, that 
 London Bridge at low water was silence to it !" Under its echoes 
 let us pass to the " gentlemen of the King's Company."
 
 70 doran's annals of the STAaiL 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING's COMPANY. 
 
 Of the king's company, under Killigrew — Hart, Burt, and Clun 
 have already been noticed as players' who commenced their career 
 by acting female parts. Of the other early members of this troop, 
 the first names of importance are those of Lacy, and little Major 
 INIohun, the low comedian, and the high tragedian. Of those 
 who precede them alphabetically, but little remains on record. 
 We only know of Theophilus Bird, that he broke his leg when 
 dancing in Suckling's " Aglaui'a," probably when the poet changed 
 his tragedy, in which the characters killed each other, into a sort 
 of comedy, in which they all survived. Cartwright, on the other 
 hand, has left a lasting memorial. If you would see how the kind 
 old fellow looked, go down to Dulwich College — that grand insti- 
 tution, for which actors have done so much and which has done so 
 little for actors — and gaze on his portrait there. It is the picture 
 of a man who bequeathed his books, pictures, and furniture, to 
 the College which AUeyn, another actor, had founded. In early 
 life, Cartwright had been a bookseller, at the corner of Turnstile, 
 Holborn ; and in his second vocation his great character was 
 Falstaff. 
 
 Lacy was a great Falstaff, too ; and his portrait, a triple one, 
 painted by Wright and etched by Hopkins, one of the Princess 
 Elizabeth's pages, is familiarly known to Hampton Court visitors. 
 Lacy had been first a dancing-master, then a lieutenant in the 
 army, before he tried the stage. In his day he had no equal ; and 
 his admirers denied that the day to come would ever see his equal. 
 Lacy was handsome, both in shape and feature, and is to be remem- 
 bered as the original performer of Teague, in the " Committee ;" a 
 play of Howard's, subsequently cut down to the farce of " Killing, 
 no Murder." And eight years later ( 1671), taught by Bucking- 
 ham, and mimicking Dryden, he startled the town with that im-
 
 THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING S COMPANY. 71 
 
 mortal Bayes, in the " Rehearsal ;" a part so full of happy oppor- 
 tunities that it was cc>veted or essayed for many years, not only 
 by every great actor, whatever his line, but by many an actress', 
 too ; and last of all by William Farren, in 1819. 
 
 There was nothing within the bounds of comedy that Lacy 
 could not act well. Evelyn styles him " Roscius." Frenchman, or 
 Scot or Irishman, fine gentleman or fool, rogue or honest simple- 
 ton, TartufFe or Drench, old man or loquacious woman, — in all, 
 Lacy was the delight of the town for about a score of years. The 
 king ejected the best players from parts, considered almost as 
 their property, and assigned them to Lacy. His wardrobe was a 
 spectacle of itself, and gentlemen of leisure and curiosity went to 
 see it. He took a positive enjoyment in parts which enabled him 
 to rail at the rascalities of courtiers. Sometimes this Aristophanic 
 license went too far. In Howard's " Silent Woman," the sarcasms 
 reached the King, and moved his majesty to wrath, and to locking 
 up Lacy himself in the Porter's Lodge. After a few days' deten- 
 tion, he was released ; whereupon, Howard, meeting him behind 
 the scenes, congratulated him. Lacy, still ill in temper, abused 
 the poet for the nonsense he had put into the part of Captain 
 Otter, which was the cause of all the mischief. Lacy further told 
 Howard, he was " more a fool than a poet." Thereat, the honor- 
 able Edward, raising his glove, smote Lacy smartly with it over 
 the face. Jack Lacy retaliated, by lifting his cane and letting it 
 descend quite as smartly on the pate of a man who was cousin to 
 an earl. Ordinary men marvelled that the honorable Edward did 
 not run Jack through the body. On the contrary, without laying 
 hand to hilt, Howard hastened to the king, lodged his complaint, 
 and the house was thereupon ordered to be closed. Thus, many 
 starved for the indiscretion of one ; but the gentiy rejoiced at the 
 silencing of the company, as those clever fellows and their fair 
 mates were growing, as that gentry thought, " too insolent." 
 
 Lacy, soon after, was said to be dying, and altogether so ill- 
 disposed, as to have refused ghostly advice at the hands of " a 
 bishop, an old acquaintance of his," says Pepys, " who went to 
 see him." Who could this bishop have been, who was the old 
 acquaintance of the ex-dancing-master and lieutenant ? Herbert 
 Croft, or Seth Ward ? — or Isaac Barrow, of Sodor-and-Man, whoso
 
 72 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 father, the mercer, had lived near the father of Betterton ? But, 
 whoever he may have been, the Kmg's favor restored the actor to 
 health ; and he remained Charles's favorite comedian till his death 
 in 1681. 
 
 When Lacy's posthumous comedy, "Sir Hercules Buffoon," 
 was produced in 1684, the man with the longest and crookedest 
 nose, and the most wayward wit in England — Tom Durfcy — fur- 
 nished the prologue. In that piece he designated Lacy as the 
 standard of true comedy. If the play does not take, said lively 
 
 Tom— 
 
 " all that we can say on't 
 Is, we've his fiddle, but not his hands to play on't!" 
 
 Genest, a critic not very hard to please, says that Lacy's friends 
 should have " buried his fiddle with him." 
 
 Michael Mohun is the pleasantest and, perhaps, the greatest 
 name on the roll of the King's company. When the players of- 
 fended the King, Mohun was the peacemaker. 
 
 One cannot look on Mohun's portrait, at Knowle, without a 
 certain mingling of pleasure and respect. That long-haired young 
 fellow wears so frank an aspect, and the hand rests on the sword 
 so delicately yet so firmly ! He is the very man who might " rage 
 like Cethegus, or like Cassius die." Lee could never willingly 
 write a play without a part for Mohun, who, with Hart, was ac- 
 counted among the good actors that procured profitable " third 
 days" for authors. No Maximin could defy the gods as he did ; 
 and there has been no franker Clytus since the day he originally 
 represented the character in " Alexander the Great," In some 
 parts he contested the palm with Betterton, whose versatility he 
 rivalled, creating one year Abdelmelich, in another Dapperwit, in 
 a third Pinchwife, and then a succession of classical heroes and 
 modern rakes or simpletons. Such an actor had many imitators, 
 but, in his peculiar line, few could rival a man who was said to 
 speak as Shakspeare wrote, and whom nature had formed for a 
 nation's delight. The author of the Epilogue to " Love in the 
 Dark" (that bustling piece of Sir Francis Fane's, from the " Scru- 
 tinio," in which, played by Lacy, Mrs. Centlivre derived her 
 Marj)lot), illustrates the success of Mohun's imitators by an allusioo 
 to the ijout from which he suffered :
 
 THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING's COMPANY. 73 
 
 " Those Blades indeed, but cripples in their art, — 
 Mimic his foot, but not his speaking part." 
 
 Of his modesty, I know no better trait than what passed when 
 Nat. Lee had read to him a part which Mohun was to fill in one 
 of Lee's tragedies. The Major put aside the manuscript, in a sort 
 of despair — " Unless I could play the character as beautifully as 
 you read it," said he, " it were vain to try it at all !" 
 
 Such is the brief record of a great actor, one who before our 
 civil jara was a young player, during the civil wars was a good 
 soldier, and in the last years of Charles II. was an old and a great 
 actor still. Of the other original members of the Theatre Royal, 
 there is not much to be said. Wintershell, who died in 1679, 
 merits, however, a word. He was distinguished, whether wearing 
 the sock or the buskin, majestic in loftily-toned kings, and absurd 
 in sillily-amorous knights. Downes has praised him as superior to 
 Nokes, in at least one part, and his Slender has won eulogy from 
 so stern a critic as Dennis. 
 
 Among the men who subsequently joined the Theatre Royal, 
 there were some good actors, and a few great rogues. Of these, 
 the -best actor and the greatest rogue was Cardell Goodman, or 
 Scum Goodman, as he was designated by his enemies. His career 
 on the stage lasted from 1677, as Polyperchon, in Lee's "Rival 
 Queens," to 1688. His most popular parts were Julius Ctesar and 
 Alexander. He came to the theatre hot from a fray at Cambridge 
 University, whence he had been expelled for cutting and slashing 
 the portrait of that exemplary Chancellor, the Duke of Monmouth. 
 
 This rogue's salary must have been small, for he and Griffin 
 shared the same bed in their modest lodging, and having but one 
 shirt between them, wore it each in his turn. The only dissension 
 which ever occurred between them was caused by Goodman, who, 
 having to pay a visit to a lady, clapped on the shirt when it was 
 clean, and Griffin's day for wearing it ! 
 
 For restricted means, however, every gentleman of spirit, in 
 those days, had a resource, if he chose to avail himself of it. The 
 resource was the road, and Cardell Goodman took to it with 
 alacrity. But he came to grief, and found himself with gyves on 
 in Newgate ; yet he escaped the cart, the rope, and Tyburn. King 
 Vol. I.— 4
 
 1 4 DORAJs S ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 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-favorite of a king, 
 Barbara, the Duchess of Cleveland. Scum Goodman was proud 
 of his splendid degradation, and paid such homage to "wy 
 duchess," as the impudent fellow called her, that when he expected 
 her presence in the theatre, he would not go on the stage, thougli 
 king and queen were kept waiting, till he heard that " his duchess " 
 was in the house. For her, he played the mad scene in Alex- 
 ander with double vigor, 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 villanous Italian quack to dispose of them by 
 poison. A discovery, before the attempt was actually made, 
 brought Scum to trial for a misdemeanor. He had the luck of his 
 own father, the devil, that he was not tried for murder. As it 
 was, a heavy fine crippled him for life. He seems, however, to have 
 hung about the stage after he withdrew from it as an actor. He 
 looked in at rehearsals, and seeing a likely lad, named Cibber, 
 going through the little part of the Chaplain, in the " Orphan," 
 one spring morning of 1690, Scum loudly wished he might be — 
 what he very much deserved to be, if the young fellow did not 
 turn out a good actor. CoUey 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 Fcnwick's life was thought, by his friends, to be safe if Good- 
 man could be bought oft" and got out of the way, the rogue was 
 looked for, at the Fleece, in Covent Garden, famous for homicides, 
 and at the robbers' and the revellers' den, the Dog, in Drury Lane. 
 Fenwick's agent, O'Bryan, erst soldier and highwayman, now a
 
 THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING's COMPAJSTY. 75 
 
 Jacobite agent, found Scum at the Dog, and would then and there 
 have cut his tliroat, had not Scum consented to the pleasant alter- 
 native of accepting £500 a year, and a residence abroad. This to 
 a man who was the first forger of bank-notes ! Scum suddenly 
 disappeared, and Lord Manchester, our Ambassador in Paris, in- 
 quired after him in vain. It 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 favorites, the pretty Mrs. Price of Drury Lane. This Ariadne 
 was not disconsolate for her Theseus. She mamed " 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 hus- 
 band, as he was already married to a living lady, Mrs. Lester. Of 
 this confusion in social arrangements the world made small 
 account, although the law did pronounce in favor of Mrs. Lester, 
 without troubling itself to punish " my lord." The Judges pro- 
 nounced for the latter lady, solely on the ground that she had had 
 children, and the actress none. 
 
 Joseph Haines 1 "Joe," with his familiars; "Count Haines," 
 with those who affected great respect, was a rogue, in his w^ay — a 
 merry rogue, a ready wit, and an admirable low comedian, from 
 1672 to 1701. We first hear of him as a quick-witted lad at a 
 school in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, whence he was sent, through 
 the liberality of some gentlemen who had remarked his talents, to 
 Queen's College, Oxford. There Haines met with Williamson, 
 the Sir Joseph of after days, distinguished alike for his scholar- 
 ship, his abilities as a statesman, the important offices he held, 
 and the liberality with which he dispensed the fortime which he 
 honorably acquired. 
 
 Williamson chose Haines for a friend, and made him his Latin 
 secretary when Williamson was appointed Secretary of State. \{ 
 Haines could have kept ofiicial and state secrets, his own fortune 
 would now have been founded ; but Joe gossiped in joyous com- 
 panies, and in taverns revealed the mysteries of diplomacy. Wil- 
 liamson parted with his indiscreet " servant," but sent him to 
 recommence fortune-making at Cambridge. Here, again, his way- 
 wardness ruined him for a professor. A strolling company at 
 Stourbridge Fair seduced him from the groves of Academus, and
 
 76 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 in a short time this foolish and clever fellow, light of head, of 
 heart, and of principle, was the delight of the Drury Lane audi- 
 ences, and the favoi'ed guest in the noblest society where mirth, 
 humor, 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 look- 
 ing up, under James H., Haines had the impudence to announce 
 to the convert Sunderland — unworthy son of Waller's Sacharissa — 
 his adoption of the King's religion, being moved thereto by the 
 Virgin, who had appeared to him in a dream, saying, " Joe, arise !" 
 This was too much, even for Sunderland, who drily observed that 
 " she would have said ' Joseph,' if only out of respect for her hus- 
 band !" 
 
 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 expres- 
 sion by his accent, emphasis, modulation, and felicity of applica- 
 tion. 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 wonder- 
 ful 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 
 mitated, 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, irresistible Tom Errand, in Far- 
 quhar's " Constant Couple" — that most triumphant comedy of a 
 whole century. 
 
 The great fault of Haines lay in the liberties which he took 
 
 * Other accounts say that he commenced his theatrical life early, at the 
 " Nursery."
 
 THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY. 77 
 
 with the business of the stage. He cared less to identify himself 
 with the characters he represented than, through them, to keep 
 up a communication with the spectators. When Hajt, then man- 
 ager, cast Joe for the simple part of a 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 char- 
 acter ; 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 inginis" — the stage-motto, was also his 
 own, and he seems to have added to his means by acting the jest- 
 er's part in noble circles. He was, however, no mere "fool." 
 Scholars might respect a "classic," like Haines, and travelling 
 lords gladly hire as a companion, a witty fellow, who knew two or 
 three living languages as familiarly as he did his own. With an 
 English peer he once visited Paris, where Joe is said to have got 
 imprisoned for debt, incurred in the character, assumed by him, 
 of an English lord. After his release he returned to England, 
 self-invested with the dignity of " Count," a title not respected by 
 a couple of bailiffs who arrested Joseph, on Holborn Hill, for a 
 little matter of £20. 
 
 " Here comes the carriage of my cousin, the Bishop of Ely," 
 said the unblushing knave ; " let me speak to him ; I am sure he 
 will satisfy you in this matter." 
 
 Consent was given, and Haines, putting his head in at the car- 
 riage door, hastily informed the good Simon Patrick that " here 
 were two Romanists, inclined to become Protestants, but with yet 
 some scruples of conscience." 
 
 "My friends," said the eager prelate to them, "if you will pres- 
 ently come to my house, I will satisfy you in this matter !" The 
 scrupulous gentlemen were well content ; but when an explanation 
 ensued, the vexed bishop paid the money out of very shame, and 
 Joe and the bailiffs spread the story. They who remembered how 
 Haines played Lord Plausible, in the "Plain Dealer," were not at 
 all surprised at his deceiving a bishop and a brace of bailiffs. 
 
 Sometimes his wit was of a nicer quality. When Jeremy Col-
 
 78 doran's aj^tnals of the stage. 
 
 lier'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, IVOI, and was 
 buried in the gloomy chui'chyard 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 com- 
 pany, 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.
 
 THOMAS BETTERTON. 79 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THOMAS BETIERTON. 
 
 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 Mi-. Betterton, who has been two years 
 on the stage, in the part of the Dane. The Ophelia is the real 
 object of the young fellow's love, charming Mistress Saunderson. 
 Old ladies and gentlemen, repairing in capacious coaches to this 
 representation, remind one another of the lumbering and crushing 
 of carriages about the old playhouse in the Blackfriars, causing 
 noisy tumults which drew indignant appeals from the Puritan 
 housekeepers, whose privacy was sadly disturbed. But what was 
 the tumult there to the scene on the south side of the " Fields," 
 when " Hamlet," with Betterton, as now, was offered to the pub- 
 lic ! The Jehus contend for place with the eagerness of ancient 
 Britons in a battle of chariots. And see, the mob about the pit- 
 doors have just caught a bailiff attempting to arrest an honest 
 playgoer. They fasten the official up in a tub, and roll the trem 
 bling wretch all " round the square." They finish by hurling him 
 against a carriage, which sweeps from a neighboring street at full 
 gallop. Down come the horses over the barrelled bailiff, with 
 sounds of hideous ruin ; and the young lady lying back in the 
 coach is screaming like mad. This lady is the dishonest daughter 
 of brave, honest, and luckless Viscount Grandison. As yet, she is 
 only Mrs. Palmer; next year she will be Countess of Castlemaine. 
 
 At length the audience are all safely housed and eager. Indlffer 
 ent 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
 
 80 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 looks in clean linen ; and the orange nymphs, with their costly 
 entertainment of fruit from Seville, giggle and chatter, as they 
 stand on the benches below, with young and old admirers, proud 
 of being recognized in the boxes. 
 
 The whole court of Denmark is before them ; but not till the 
 words, " 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother," fall from the 
 lips of Bctterton, is the general ear charmed, or the general tongue 
 arrested. Then, indeed, the vainest fops and pertest orange girls 
 look round and listen too. The voice is so low, and sad, and 
 sweet; the modulation so tender, the dignity so natural, the grace 
 so consummate, that all yield themselves silently to the delicious 
 enchantment. " It's beyond imagination," whispers Mr. Pepys to 
 his neighbor, who only answers with a long and low drawn 
 ''Hush /" 
 
 I can never look on Kneller's masterly portrait of this great 
 player, without envying those who had the good fortune to see the 
 original, especially in Hamlet. How grand the head, how lofty 
 the brow, what eloquence and fire in the eyes, how firm the mouth, 
 how manl}^ 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 commendable to the grave orator, is most 
 exquisitely perfect in him ; for by a full and significant action of 
 body he charms our attention. Sit in a full theatre, and you will 
 think you see so many lines drawn from the circumference of so 
 many ears, while the actor is the centre." This was especially 
 the case with Betterton ; and now, as Hamlet's first soliloquy 
 closes, and the charmed but silent audience " feel music's pulse in 
 all their arteries," Mr. Pepys almost too loudly exclaims in liis 
 ecstasy, " It's the best acted part ever done by man." And the 
 audience think so, too ; there is a hurricane of applause ; after 
 which the fine gentlemen renew their prattle with the fine ladies, 
 and the orange girls beset the Sir Foplings, and this universal 
 trifling is felt as a relief after the general emotion. 
 
 Meanwhile, a critic objects that young Mr. Betterton ia not
 
 THOMAS BETTERTON. 81 
 
 " original," and intimates that lais Hamlet is played by tradition 
 come down througli Davenant, who had seen the character acted 
 by Taylor, and had taught the boy to enact the prince after the 
 fashion set by the man who was said to have been instructed by 
 Shakspeare himself; amid which Mr, Pepys remarks, "I only 
 know that Mr. Betterton is the best actor in the world." 
 
 As Sir Thomas Overbury remarked of a great player, his voice 
 was never lower than the prompter's nor higher than the foil and 
 target. But let us be silent, here comes the gentle Ophelia. The 
 audience generally took an interest in this lady and the royal 
 Dane, for there was not one in the house who was ignorant of the 
 love-passages there had been between them, or of the coming mar- 
 riage by which they were to receive additional warrant. Mistress 
 Saunderson was a lady worthy of all the homage here implied. 
 There was mind in her acting ; and she not only possessed per- 
 sonal beauty, but also the richer beauty of a virtuous life. They 
 were a well-matched couple on and off the stage ; and their mutual 
 affection was based on a mutual respect and esteem. People 
 thought of them together, as inseparable, and young ladies won- 
 dered how Mr, Betterton could play Mercutio, and leave Mistress 
 Saunderson as Juliet, to be adored by the not ineffective Mr. Har 
 ris as Romeo ! The whole house, as long as the incomparable 
 pair were on the stage, were in a dream of delight. Their grace, 
 perfection, good looks, the love they had so cunningly simulated, 
 and that which they were known to mutually entertain, formed 
 the theme of all tongues. In its discussion, the retiring audience 
 forgot the disinterring of the regicides, and the number of men 
 killed the other day on Tower Hill, servants of the French and 
 Spanish ambassadors, in a bloody struggle for precedency, which 
 was ultimately won by the Don ! 
 
 Fifty years after these early triumphs, an aged couple resided in 
 one of the best houses in Russell Street, Covent Garden, — the 
 walls of which were covered with pictures, piints, and drawings, 
 selected with taste and judgment. They were still a handsome 
 pair. The venerable lady, indeed, looks pale and somewhat sad- 
 dened. The gleam of April sunshine which penetrates the apart- 
 ment 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 
 4*
 
 82 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 husband. His fortune, nobly earned, Las been diminished by 
 " speculation," but the means whereby he achieved it are his still, 
 and Thomas Betterton, in the latter years of Queen Anne, is the 
 chief glory of the stage, even as he was in the first year of King 
 Charles. The lofty column, however, is a little shaken. It is not 
 a ruin^ but is beautiful in its decay. Yet that it should decay at 
 all is a source of so much tender anxiety to the actor's wife, that 
 her senses suffer disturbance, and there may be seen in her features 
 something of the distraught Ophelia of half a century ago. 
 
 It is the 13th of April, 1710 — his benefit night ; and the tears 
 are in the lady's eyes, and a painful sort of smile on her trembling 
 lips, for Betterton kisses her as he goes forth that afternoon to 
 take leave, as it proved, of the stage forever. He is in such pain 
 from gout that he can scarcely walk to his carriage, and how is he 
 to enact the noble and fiery Melantius in that ill-named drama of 
 horror, " The Maid's Tragedy ?" Hoping for the best, the old 
 player is conveyed to the theatre, built by Sir John Vanbrugh, in 
 the Haymarket, the site of which is now occupied by the " Opera- 
 house." Through the stage-door he is carried in loving arms to 
 his dressing-room. At the end of an hour Wilks is there, and 
 Pinkethman, and Mrs. Barry, all dressed for their parts, and agree- 
 ably disappointed to find the Melantius of the night robed, ar- 
 mored, and besworded, with one foot in a buskin and the other 
 in a slipper. To enable him even to wear the latter, he had first 
 thrust his inflamed foot into water ; but stout as he seemed, 
 trying his strength to and fro in the room, the hand of Death was 
 at that moment descendino; on the grandest of Eno-lish actors. 
 
 The house rose to receive him who had delighted themselves, 
 their sires, and their grandsires. The audience were packed " like 
 Norfolk bifiins." 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 west- 
 ward 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 favorite 
 was about to utter his last words, and to belong thenceforward 
 only to the history of the stage he had adorned.
 
 THOMAS BETTERTON. 83 
 
 There was a shout wliich slioi)k him, as Lysippus uttered the 
 words " Noble Mclantius," which heralded his coming. Every 
 word which could be applied to himself was marked by a storm 
 of applause, and when Melautius said of Amintor — 
 
 " His youth did promise much, and his ripe years 
 Will see it all performed," 
 
 a murmuring comment ran round the house, that this had been 
 effected by Betterton himself. Again, when he bids Amintor 
 " hear thy friend, who has more years than thou," there were prob- 
 ably few who did not wish that Betterton were as young as Wilks : 
 but when he subsequently thundered forth the famous passage, 
 " My heart will never fail me," there was a very tempest of excite- 
 ment, which was carried to its utmost height, in thundering peal 
 on peal of unbridled approbation, as the great Rhodian gazed full 
 on the house, exclaiming — 
 
 " My heart 
 And limbs are still the same : my will as great 
 To do you service!" 
 
 No one doubted more than a fractional part of this assertion, and 
 Betterton, acting to the end under a continued fire of '■^bravoesf" 
 may have thrown more than the original meaning into the phrase — ■ 
 
 " That little word was worth all the sounds 
 That ever I shall hear again 1" 
 
 Few were the words he was destined ever to hear again ; and 
 the subsequent prophecy of his own certain and proximate death, 
 on which the curtain slowly descended, was fulfilled eight and 
 forty hours after they were uttered. 
 
 Such was the close of a career which had commenced fifty-one 
 years before ! Few other actors of eminence have kept the stage, 
 with the public favor, for so extended a period, with the exception 
 of Cave Underbill, Quin, Macklin, King, and in later times, Bart- 
 ley and Cooper, most of whom at least accomplished their half 
 century. The record of that career jjffords many a lesson and 
 valuable suggestion to young actors, but I have to say a word pre-
 
 84 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 viously of the Bettertons, before the brothers of thai name, Thomas 
 and the less known William, assumed the sock and buskin, 
 
 Tothill Street, Westminster, is not at present a fine or fragrant 
 locality. It has a crapulous look and a villanous 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 Correction, whither vagabonds 
 were sent, who used to earn scraps by scraping trenchers in the 
 tents pitched in Petty France. All else in the immediate neigh- 
 borhood 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 certairdy 
 the sire of one, and the circumstance of the apprenticeship of 
 young Thomas to a bookseller was no evidence to the contrary. 
 In those days, it was the custom for greater men than the chefs 
 in the King's kitchen, namely, the bishops in the King's church, 
 to apprentice their younger sons, at least, to trade, or to bequeath 
 sums for that especial purpose. The last instance I can remember of 
 this traditionary custom presents itself in the person, not indeed 
 of a son of a bishop, but of the grandson of an archbishop, namely, 
 of John Sharp, Archbishop of York from 1691 to 1714. He had 
 influence enough with Queen Anne to prevent Swift from obtain- 
 ing a bishopric. His son was Archdeacon of Northumberland, 
 and of this archdeacon's sons one was Prebendary of Durham, 
 while the other, the celebrated Granville Sharp, the " friend of the 
 Negro," was apprenticed to a linendraper, on Tower Hill. The 
 early connection of Betterton, therefore, with Rhodes, the Charing 
 Ci-oss 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 
 Ills neighbor, only half-a-dozen years before Thomas was born, the 
 well-known Sir Henry Spehnan, 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 expe- 
 riences as Lord Deputy in Ireland, and are deposited in the library
 
 THOMAS BETTEKTON. 85 
 
 at Lambeth Palace. These great men were neighbors of the elder 
 Betterton, and they had succeeded to men not less remarkable. 
 One of the latter was Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, the friend of 
 Spenser, and the Talus of that poet's " Iron Flail." The Greys, 
 indeed, had long kept house in Tothill Street, as had also the Lord 
 Dacre of the South. When Betterton was born here, the locality 
 was still full of the story of Thomas Lord Dacre, who went thence 
 to be hanged at Tyburn, in 1541. He had headed a sort of Chevy- 
 chase expedition into the private park of Su' Nicholas Pelham, in 
 Sussex. Li the fray which ensued, a keeper was killed, of which 
 deed my lord took all the responsibility, and, very much to his 
 surprise, was hanged in consequence. The mansion built by his 
 son, the last lord, had not lost its first freshness when the Better- 
 tons resided here, and its name, Stourton House, yet survives in 
 the corrupted form of Strutton Ground. 
 
 Thus, the Bettertons undoubtedly resided in a " fashionable " 
 locality, and we may fairly conclude that their title to " respecta- 
 bility " 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 
 oflBce 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 oil- 
 man's shop ; and Edmund Burke lived modestly at the east end, 
 before those mysterious thousands were amassed by means of 
 which he was at length enabled to establish himself as a country 
 gentleman. 
 
 Gait, and the other biographers of Betterton, complain of the pau- 
 city 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, labor, lack of pre- 
 sumption, 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
 
 86 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 of Charles I., and Pope, who died in the reign of George II. This 
 testimony refers to above a century, during which time the stage 
 knew no such player as he. Pope, indeed, notices that old critics 
 used to place Hart on an equality with him ; this is, probably, an 
 error for Harris, who had a party at court among the gay people 
 there who were oppressed by the majesty of Betterton. Pepys 
 alludes to this partisanship in 1663. "This fellow" (Harris), he 
 remarks, "grew very proud of late, the King and everybody else 
 crying him up so high, and that above Betterton, he being a more 
 aery man, as he is, indeed." 
 
 From the days of Betterton's bright youth to that of his old age, 
 the sober seriousness of the " artist," for which Pepys vouches, 
 never left him. With the dress he assumed, for the night, the 
 nature of the man — be it "Hamlet" or "Thersites," "Valentine" 
 or " Sir John Brute," of whom he was to be the representative. 
 In the " green-room," as on the stage, he was, for the time being, 
 subdued or raised to the quality of him whose likeness he had put 
 on. In presence of the audience, he was never tempted by ap- 
 plause to forget his part, or himself. Once only, Pepys registers, 
 with surprise, an incident which took place at the representation 
 of " Mustapha," in 1667. It was "bravely acted," he says, "only 
 both Betterton and Harris could not contain from laughing, in the 
 midst of a most serious part, from the ridiculous mistake of one 
 of the men upon the stage ; which I did not like." 
 
 Then for his humility, I find the testimony of Pepys sufficiently 
 corroborated. It may have been politic in him, as a young man, 
 to repair to Mr. Cowley's lodgings in town, and ask from that 
 author his particular views with regard to the Colonel Jolly in the 
 *' Cutter of Coleman Street," which had been intrusted to the 
 young actor; but the politic humility of 1661 was, in fact, the 
 practised modesty of his life. In the very meridian of his fame, 
 he, and Mrs. Barry also, were as ready to take instruction respect- 
 ing the characters of Jaffier and Belvidera, from poor battered 
 Otway, as they subsequently were from that very fine gentleman, 
 Mr. Congreve, when they were cast for the hero and heroine of 
 his comedies. Even to bombastic Rowe, who hardly knew his 
 own reasons for language put on the lips of his characters, they 
 listened with deference ; and, at another period, " Sir John and
 
 THOMAS BETTERTON. 87 
 
 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 Fancyful was played by Mrs. Bowman. This young lady 
 was the adopted child of the Bettertons, and the daughter of a 
 friend (Sir Frederick Watson, Bart.) whose indiscretion or ill-luck 
 had scattered that fortune, the laying of the foundation of which is 
 recorded by Pepys. To the sire, Betterton had intrusted the bulk 
 of his little wealth as a commercial venture to the East Indies. A 
 ruinous failure ensued, and I know of nothing which puts the pri- 
 vate life of the actor in so pleasing a light, as the fact of his adopt- 
 ing 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 Bow- 
 man, a player who became, in course of time, the father of the 
 .stage, though he never grew, confessedly, old. In after years, he 
 would converse fi-eely enough of his wife and her second father, 
 Betterton ; but if you asked the carefully-dressed Mr. Bowman 
 any thing with respect to his age, no other reply was to be had 
 from him than — " Sir, it is very well !" 
 
 From what has been previously stated, it will be readily believed 
 that the earnestness of Betterton continued to the last. Severely 
 disciplined, as he had been by Davenant, he subjected himself to 
 the same discipline to the very close ; and he was not pleased to 
 see it disregarded or relaxed by younger actors whom late and gay 
 "last nights" brought ill and incompetent to rehearsal. Those 
 actors might have reaped valuable instruction out of the harvest 
 of old Thomas's experience and wisdom, had they been so minded. 
 
 Young actors of the present time — time when pieces run for 
 months and years ; when authors prescribe the extent of the run 
 of their own dramas, and when nothing is " damned " by a patient 
 public — our young actors have little idea of the labors undergone 
 by the great predecessors who gave glory to the stage and dignity 
 to the profession. Not only was Betterton's range of characters 
 unlimited, but the number he " created " was never equalled bv
 
 88 doran's axnals of the stage. 
 
 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 labor which would 
 shake the nerves of the stoutest among us now. 
 
 His brief relaxation was spent on his little Berkshire faim, 
 whence he once took a rustic to Bartholomew Fair for a holiday. 
 The master of the puppet-show declined to take money for admis- 
 sion. " Mr. Betterton," he said, '' is a brother actor !" Roger, the 
 rustic, was slow to believe tliat 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 Bet- 
 terton and Mrs. Barry, that on being asked what he thought of 
 tliem, Roger, taking them for puppets, answered, " They did won- 
 derfully well for rags and sticks." 
 
 Provincial engagements were then unknown. Travelling com- 
 panies, like that of Watkins, visited Bath, a regular company 
 from town going thither only on roj'al command ; but magistrates 
 ejected strollers from Newbury ; and Reading would not tolerate 
 them, even out of respect for Mr. Betterton. At Windsor, how- 
 ever, there was a troop fairly pati'onizcd, wliere, in 1706, a Mistress 
 Carroll, daughter of an old parliamentarian, was awakening shrill 
 echoes by enacting Alexander the Great. The lady was a friend 
 of Betterton's, who had in the previous year created the part of 
 Lovewell in her comedy of the " Gamester." The powers of Mrs. 
 Carroll had such an effect on Mr. Centlivre, one of the cooks to 
 Queen Anne, that he straightway married her ; and when, a few 
 months later, Betterton played Sir Thomas Beaumont, in the lady's 
 comedy, " Love at a Venture," his friend, a royal cook's wife, fur- 
 nished 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 fi-iends, we may discover proofs of Betterton's moral 
 worth and mental power. Glorious Thomas not only associated 
 with "Glorious John," but became bis critic, — one to whom Dry- 
 den listened with respect, and to whose suggestions he lent a 
 ready acquiescence. In the poet's "Spanish Fair," there was a 
 passage which spoke of kings' bad titles growing good by time; 
 a supposed fact which was illustrated by the lines —
 
 THOMAS BETTERTON. 8tf 
 
 "So, when clay's burued for a hundred years, 
 It starts forth china I" 
 
 The player fearlessly pronounced this passage " ??iea?i," and it was 
 forthwith cancelled by the poet. 
 
 Intimate as this incident shows Betterton to have been with 
 Dryden, there are others which indicate a closer intimacy of the 
 player with Tillotson. The divine was a man who placed charity 
 above rubrics, and discarded bigotry as he did perukes. He could 
 extend a friendly hand to the benevolent Arlan, Firmin ; and wel- 
 come, even after he entered the arehiepiscopal palace at Lambeth, 
 such a vasitor as the great actor, Betterton. Did objection come 
 fi'om the rigid and ultra-orthodox? — the prelate might have re- 
 minded 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. How- 
 ever this may be questioned or conceded, it is indisputable that 
 when Tillotson and Betterton met, the greatest preacher and the 
 greatest plaj^er 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 fiiend the actor exercised a vaster 
 power over human sympathies and antipathies than he had hitherto 
 done as a preacher. The reason was plain enough to Thomas 
 Betterton. " You, in the pulpit," said he, " only tell a story : I, 
 on the stage, show facts." Observe, too, what a prettier way this 
 was of putting it than that adopted by Garrick when one of his 
 clerical friends was similarly perplexed. '• I account for it in this 
 way," said the latter Roscius : " You deal with facts as if they were 
 fictions; I deal with fictions as if I had faith in them as facts." 
 Again, what Betterton thus remarked to Tillotson was a modest 
 comment, which Colley Gibber has rendered perfect in its applica- 
 tion, in the words which tell us that " the most a Vandyke can 
 arrive at is to make his Portraits of Great Persons seem to think. 
 A Shakspeare goes farther yet, and tells you what his Pictures 
 thought. A Betterton steps beyond 'em both, and calls them 
 from the grave, to breathe and be themselves again in Feature, 
 Speech, and Motion." That Tillotson profited by the comment of
 
 90 dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 Betterton — more gratefully than Bossuet did by the actors, whom 
 he consigned, as such, to the nethermost Gehenna — is the more 
 easily to be believed, from the fact that he introduced into the 
 pulpit the custom of preaching from notes. Thenceforth, he left 
 off " telling his story," as from a book, and, having action at com- 
 mand, could the nearer approach to the " acting of facts.'' 
 
 " Virgilium tantum vidi ! " Pope said this of Dry den, whom he 
 once saw, when a boy. He was wont to say of Betterton, that he 
 had known him from his own boyhood upwards, till the actor 
 died, in 1710, when the poet was twenty-two years of age. The 
 latter listened eagerly to the old traditions which the player nar- 
 rated of the earlier times. Betterton was warrant to him, on the 
 authority of Davenant, from whom the actor had it, that there was 
 no foundation for the old legend which told of an iingenei'ous ri- 
 valry between Shakspeare and Old Ben. The player who had been 
 as fearless with Dryden as Socrates was with his friend Euripides 
 — "judiciously lopping " redundant nonsense or false and mean 
 maxims, as Dryden himself confesses — was counsellor, rather than 
 critic or censor, with young Pope. The latter, at the age of twelve 
 years, had written the greater portion of an imitative epic poem, 
 entitled Alcander, Prince of Rhodes. I commend to artists in 
 search of a subject the incident of Pope, at fifteen or sixteen, 
 showing this early effort of his Muse to Betterton. It was a poem 
 which abounded in dashing exaggerations, and fair imitations of the 
 styles of the then greater English poets. There was a dramatic 
 vein about it, however, or the player would not have advised the 
 bard to convert his poem into a play. The lad excused himself. 
 He feared encountering either the law of the drama or the taste of 
 the town ; and Betterton left him to his own unfettered way. The 
 actor lived to see that the boy was the better judge of his own 
 powers, for young Pope produced his Essay on Criticism the year 
 before Betterton died. A few years later the poet rendered any pos- 
 sible fulfilment of the player's counsel impossible, by dropping the 
 manuscript of Alcander into the flames. Atterbury had less esteem 
 for this work than Betterton. "I am not sorry your Alcander is 
 burnt," he says, " but had I known your intentions I would have 
 interceded for the first p<ige, and put it, with your leave, among 
 my curiosities."
 
 THOMAS BETTERTON, 91 
 
 Pope remembered the player with affection. For some time 
 after Betterton's decease the print-shops abounded with n^ ezzotinto 
 engravings of his portrait by Kneller. Of this portrait the poet 
 himself executed a copy, which still exists. His friendly inter- 
 course with the half-mad Irish artist, Jervas, is well known. When 
 alone. Pope was the poet; with Jervas, and under his instructions, 
 he became an artist, — in his way ; but yet an artist, — if a copier 
 of portraits deserve so lofty a name. In 1713, he writes to Gay : — • 
 " You may guess in how uneasy a state I am, when every day the 
 performances of others appear more beautiful and excellent, and 
 my own more despicable. 1 have thrown away three Dr. Swifts, 
 each of which was once my vanity, two Lady Bridgwaters, 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 Mans- 
 field. 
 
 Kneller's portrait of Betterton is enshrined among goodly com- 
 pany at princely Knowle — the patrimony of the Saekvilles. It is 
 there, with that of his fellow-actor, Mohun ; his friend, Dryden ; 
 and his great successor, Garrick ; — the latter being the work of 
 Reynolds. The grand old Kentish Hall is a fitting place for such 
 a brotherhood. 
 
 This master of his art had the greatest esteem for a silent and 
 attentive audi^mce. It was easy, he used to say, for any player to 
 rouse the house, but to subdue it, render it rapt and hushed to, at 
 the most, a murmur, was work for an artist ; and in such effects 
 no one approached him. And yet the rage of Othello was more 
 " in his line " than the tenderness of Castalio ; but he touched the 
 audience in his rage. Harris competed with him for a brief pe- 
 liod, but if he ever excelled him it was only in very light comedy. 
 The dignity and earnestness of Betterton were so notorious and 
 so attractive, that people flocked only to hea,r him speak a pro- 
 logue, while brother actors looked on, admired, and despaired. 
 
 Age, trials, infirmity never damped his ardor. 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 ut-
 
 92 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 most within liis 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 Bas.saiiio to Doggott's Shylock is, perliaps, not 
 saying much by way of illusti'atioTi ; but that he acted Horatio to 
 Powell's Lothario ; that he gave up Jupiter (Amphitryon) and 
 Valentine, two of his original pails, to Wilks, and even yieldctl 
 Othello, one of the most elaborate and exquisite of his " present- 
 ments," to Thurmond, are fair instances in point. When Bowman 
 introduced young Barton Bi^oth to " old Thomas," the latter wel- 
 comed him heartily, and after seeing his Maximus, in " Valen- 
 tinian," recognized in him his successor. At that moment the 
 town, speculating on the demise of their favorite, had less discern- 
 ment. They did not know whether Verbriiggen, with his voice 
 like a cracked drum, or idle Powell, with his lazy stage-swing, 
 might aspire to the sovereignty ; but they were slow to believe in 
 Booth, who was not the only young actor who was shaded in the 
 setting glories of the sun of the English theatre. 
 
 When CoUey Cibber first appeared before a London audience, 
 he was a "volunteer" who went in for practice; and he had the 
 misfortuTie, on one occasion, to put the great master out, by some 
 error on his own part. Betterton subsc(|ueiitly inquired the young 
 man's name, and the amount of his salary ; and hearing that the 
 former was Cibber, and that, as yet, he received nothing, " Put 
 him down ten shillings a-week," said Betterton, " and forfeit him 
 five." Colley was delighted. It was placing his foot on the first 
 round of the ladder; and his respect for " Mr. Betterton " was un- 
 bounded. Indeed there were few who did not pay him some 
 homage. The King himself delighted to honor him. Charles, 
 James, Queen Mary, and Queen Anne, sent him assurances of their 
 admiration ; but King William admitted him to a private audi- 
 ence, and when the patentees of Drury Lane were, through lack 
 of general patronage, suggesting the expediency of a reduction of 
 salaries, great Nassau placed in the hands of Betterton the license 
 which freed him from the thraldom of the Drury tyrants, and 
 authorized him to open the second theatre erected in Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields. Next to his most sacred Majesty, perhaps the most 
 formidable personage in the kingdom, in the eyes of the actors,
 
 THOMAS BETTERTON. 93 
 
 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 favor Bet- 
 terton. When unstable yet useful Powell suddenly abandoned 
 Drury Lane to join the company in Lincoln's Lin Fields, the 
 Chamberlain did not deign to notice the offence ; but when, all as 
 suddenly, the capricious and unreliable Powell abandoned the 
 house in the Fields, and betook himself again to that in the Lane 
 — the angry Lord Chamberlain sent a " messenger " after him to 
 his lodgings, and clapped the unoffending Thespian, for a couple 
 of days, in the Gate House. 
 
 While Powell was with Betterton, the latter produced the 
 "Fair Penitent," by Rowe, Mrs. Barry being the Calista. When 
 the dead body of Lothario was lying decently covered on the 
 stage, Powell's dresser, Warren, lay there for his master, who, 
 requiring the services of the man in his dressing-room, and not re- 
 membering where he was, called aloud for him so repeatedly, and 
 at length so angrily, that Warren leaped up in a fright, and ran 
 from the stage. His cloak, however, 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 LTcprcssible laughter convulsed the 
 audience, but Betterton's reverence for the dignity of tragedy was 
 shocked, and he stopped the piece in its full career of success, 
 until the town had ceased to think of Warren's escapade. 
 
 I know of but one man who has spoken of Betterton at all dis- 
 paragingly — old Anthony Aston. But even that selfish cynic is 
 constrained so to modify his censure, as to convert it into praise. 
 W^hen Betterton was approaching threescore years and ten, An- 
 thony could have wished that he " would have resigned the part 
 of Hamlet to some young actor who might have peisonated, 
 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 ap- 
 peared a little too grave for a young student just from the Univer- 
 sity 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 gravcat of students, and the most philo-
 
 94 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Bophical of young Danes ! Aston caricatures the aged actor only 
 again to commend liim. He depreciates the figure which time had 
 touched, magnifies the defects, registers the lack of power, and 
 the sloM 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, 
 veneiahle, and majestic ; and that though his voice was " low and 
 grumbling, he could turn it by an artful climax which enforced an 
 universal attention even from the fops and orange-girls." Gibber 
 declares that there was such enchantment in his voice alone, the 
 multitude no more cared for sense in the words he spoke, " than 
 our musical connoisseurs think it essential in the celebrated airs 
 of an Italian Opera." Again, he says, "Could hoiv Betterton 
 spoke be as easily known as ivhat he spoke, then might you see 
 the Muse of Shakspeare in her triumph." " I never," says honest 
 Colley, " heard a line in tragedy come from Betterton, wherein my 
 judgment, my ear, and my imagination were not fully satisfied, 
 which, since his time, I cannot equally say of any one actor what- 
 soever." This was written in 1740, the year before little David 
 took up the rich inheritance of " old Thomas" — whose Hamlet, 
 however, the latter actor could hardly have equalled. The next 
 great 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 
 Golley, " was provoked in his dispute with Gassius, 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, ex- 
 celled all other actors; but in characters such as Hamlet ai-d 
 Othello he excelled himself. Gibber never beheld his equal for at 
 lea;"' two-and-thirty years after Betterton's death, when, in 1 741, 
 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 Ilaymarket. The highest salary awarded to
 
 THOMAS BETTERTOy. 95 
 
 this great master of his art was £5 per week, which inchided £l 
 by way of pension to his wife, after her retirement in 1694. In 
 consideration of his merits, he was allowed to take a benefit in the 
 season of 1708-9, when the actor had an ovation. In money for 
 admission he received, indeed, only £76 ; but in complimentary 
 guineas, he took home with him to Russell Street £450 more. 
 The terms in which the Tatler spoke of him living, — the tender 
 and affectionate, manly and heart-stirring passages in which the 
 same writer bewailed him when dead, — are eloquent and enduring 
 testimonies of the greatness of an actor, who was the glory of our 
 stage, and of the worth of a man whose loss cost his sorrowing 
 widow her reason. " Decus et Dolor.'''' " The grace and the grief 
 of the theatre." It is well applied to him who labored incessantly, 
 lived irreproachably, and died in harness, universally esteemed 
 and regretted. He was the jewel of the English stage ; and [ 
 never think of him, and of some to whom his example was given 
 in vain, without saying, with Overbury, "I value a worthy actor 
 by the corruption of some few of the quality, as I would do gold 
 in the ore ; I should not mind the dross, but the purity of the 
 metal." 
 
 The feeling of the English public towards Betterton is in strong 
 contrast with that of the French towards their great actor. Baron. 
 Both men grew old in the public service, but both were not treated 
 with equal respect in the autumn of that service. Betterton, at 
 seventy, was upheld by general esteem and crowned by general 
 applause. When Baron, at seventy, was playing Nero, the Paris 
 pit audience, longing for novelty, hissed him as he came down the 
 stage. The fine old player calmly crossed his arms, and looking 
 his rude assailants in the face, exclaimed, " Ungrateful pit ! 'twas 
 I who taught you I" 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 
 teiTor. In other guise did the English public part with their old 
 friend and servant, the noble actor, fittingly described in the 
 license granted to him by King William, as " Thomas Betterton, 
 Gentleman."
 
 96 dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 EXEUNT AND "ENTER.' 
 
 After Betterton, there was not, in the Duke's company, a more 
 accompUshed actor than Harris. He lived in gayer society than 
 Betterton, and cared more for the associates he found there. He 
 had some knowledge of art, danced gracefully, and had that dan- 
 gerous gift for a young man — a charming voice, with a love for 
 displaying it. His portrait was taken by Mr. Hailes ; — " in his 
 habit of Henry V., mighty like a player ;" and as Cardinal Wolsey ; 
 which latter portrait may now be seen in the Pepysian Library at 
 Cambridge. 
 
 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 play-wrights were 
 there too ; but these were to be found in the cofRie-houses, gen- 
 erally, 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 dis- 
 contented, to secede from the Duke's to the King's company, and
 
 " exeunt" and " ENTER." 97 
 
 causing equal trouble to his manager, Davenant, and to his mon- 
 arch, Charles,— the two officials most vexed in the settling oi the 
 little kino-dora of the stao-e. 
 
 There was a graceful general actor of the troop to which Harris 
 belonged, who drew upon liiraself the special observation of the 
 government at home and an English ambassador abroad. Scuda- 
 inore was the original Garcia of Congreve''s " Mourning Bride ;" 
 he also played amorous young knights, sparkling young gentle- 
 men, scampish French and English beaux, gay and good-looking 
 kings, and roystering kings' sons ; such as Harry, Prince of Wales. 
 Off the stage, he enacted another part. When King James was in 
 exile, Scudamore was engaged as a Jacobite agent, and he carried 
 many a dispatch or message between London and St. Germains. 
 But our Ambassador, the Earl of Manchester, had his eye upon him. 
 One of the Earl's dispatches to the English government, written in 
 1700, concludes with the words: — "One Scudamore, a player in 
 Lincohi'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 dispatch is August, 1700, 
 at which time the player ought to have been engaged in a less 
 perilous character, for an entry in Luttrell's Diary, 28th May, 1700, 
 records that "Mr. Scudamore of the playhouse is married to a 
 young lady of £4,000 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 stage from 1661 to 1710, and during that time the 
 town saw no such Gravedigger in "Hamlet" as this tall, fat, broad- 
 faoed, flat-nosed, wide-mouthed, thick-lipped, rough-voiced, awk- 
 wardly-active low comedian. So modest was he also that he never 
 understood his own popularity, and the house was con\'ulsed 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 viva- 
 cious, the perverse humor, combining wit with ill-nature, Under- 
 aiU was the chief of the actors of the half century, during which 
 Vol. :. — 5
 
 98 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 be kept the stage. Gibber avers thus nmch, and adds that lie 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, Bickerstaffe, in the Tatier. whose 
 father had known " honest Cave Underhill" when he was a boy. 
 The Tatier praises the old comedian for the natural style of his 
 acting, in which he avoided all exaggeration, and never added a 
 word to his author's text, a vice with the younger actors of the 
 time. 
 
 On this occasion Underhill played his old part of the Grave- 
 digger, professedly because he was fit for no other. His judgment 
 was not ill-founded, if Cibber's testimony be true that he was 
 really worn and disabled, and excited pity rather than laughter. 
 The old man died a pensioner of the theatre whose proprietors he 
 had helped to enrich, with the reputation of having, under the 
 pseudonym of Elephant Smith, composed a mock funeral seniion 
 on Titus Gates; and with the further repute of being an ultra- 
 Tory, addicted in coffee-houses to drink the Duke of York's health 
 more heartily than that of his brother, the King. 
 
 With rare exchange of actors, and exclusive right of represent- 
 ing particular pieces, the two theatres continued in opposition to 
 each other until the two companies were formed into one, in the 
 year 1682. Meanwhile, fire destroyed the old edifice of the King's 
 company, in Drury Lane, in January, 1672, and till Wren's new 
 theatre was ready for them in 1674, the unhoused troop played 
 occasionally at Dorset Gardens, or at Lincoln's Inn P'ields, as op- 
 portunity offered. On the occasion of opening the new house, 
 contemporary accounts state that the prices of admission were 
 raised ; to the boxes, from 2s. Qd. to 4*. ; pit, from Is. 6d. to 
 2s. 6c?. ; the first gallery, from Is. to Is. 6d. ; and the upper gal- 
 lery, from 6d. to Is. Pepy^, however, on the 19th October, 1667, 
 paid 4s. for admittance to the upper boxes, if his record be true. 
 
 Down to the year 1682, the Kuig'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 bril- 
 liancy was marred bv his devotion to jollity, and this devotion
 
 "exeunt" and "enter," 99 
 
 became the more profound as George saw himself surpassed by 
 steadier actors, one of whom, Wilks, in his disappointment, he 
 challenged to siuorle combat, and, in the cool air of " next morn- 
 ing," was sorry for his folly. Idleness made him defer learning 
 his parts till the last moment ; his memory often failed him at the 
 most importavjt crisis of the play, and the public displeasure fell 
 heavily and constantly on this clever, but reckless, actor. The 
 Taller calls him the " haughty George Powell," when referring to 
 his appearance in Falstaff for his benefit, in April, 1'712. "The 
 haughty George Powell hopes all the goodnatured part of the 
 town will favor him whom they applauded in Alexander, Timon, 
 Lear, and Orestes, with their company this night, when he hazards 
 all his heroic glory in the humbler condition of honest Jack Fal- 
 stati'." Valuable aid, like the above, he obtained from the Spec- 
 tator also, with useful adniDnition to boot, from which he did not 
 care to profit ; and he fell into such degradation that his example 
 was a wholesome terror to young actors willing to follow it, but 
 fearful of the consequences. During his career, from 1687 to 1714, 
 in which year he died, he originated about forty new parts, and in 
 Bome of them, such as Brisk, in the " Double Dealer ;" Aboan, in 
 " Oronooko ;" the gallant, gay Lothario ; Lord Morelove, in the 
 " Careless Husband ;" and Portius, in " Cato," he has rarely been 
 equalled. On the first night of the " Relapse," in which he played 
 Worthy, he was so fired by his libations, that Mrs. Rogers, as 
 Amanda, was frightened out of her wits by his tempestuous love- 
 making. Powell's literary contributions to the drama were such 
 as a man of his quality was likely to make, — chiefly plagiarisms 
 awkwardly appropriated. 
 
 Griftin was an inferior actor to Powell ; but lie 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 respectabi*; 
 actor, and societ}^ a clover and a worthy member. 
 
 The accessions to the Duke's company were of more importance 
 than those to the company of the Theatre Royal. Li 1G72, the two 
 poets, Lee and Otway, tempted fortune on the stage ; Lee, in one 
 or two part?, such as the Captain of the Watch, in Payne's " Fatal
 
 100 DORAjX's annals of a"HE STAGE. 
 
 Jealousy," and Dunean, in " Macbeth." Otway, as the King, in 
 Mrs. Behn's " Forced Marriage." They bt th failed. Lee, one of 
 the most beautiful of readers, lost his voice through nervousness. 
 Otway, audacious enough at the coffee-houses, lost his confidence. 
 There were eight other actors of the period whose success was 
 unquestionable and well deserved. •■ Little Bowman, who between 
 this period and 1739, the year of his death, never failed to appear 
 when his name was in the bills. He was a noted bell-ringer, had 
 sung songs to Charles IL, and, when " father of the stage," ho 
 exacted applause from the second George. Cademan was another 
 of the company. Like Betterton and Cartw right, 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. En- 
 gaged in a fencing-scene with Harris, in " The Man's the Master," 
 he was severely wounded by his adversary's foil, in the hand and 
 eye, and he lost power not only of action but of speech. For 
 nearly forty years the company assigned him a modest pension ; 
 and between the benevolence of his brethren and the small profits 
 of his publishing, his life was rendered tolerable, if not altogether 
 happy. 
 
 His comrade, Jevon, an ex-dancing master, was one of the hila- 
 rious actors. He was the original Jobson in his own little com- 
 edy, "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," accord- 
 ing to the direction of the acting copy. He took as great liberties 
 at the coffee-house. " You are wiping your dirty boots with my 
 clean napkin," said an offended waiter t ; him. " Never mind, 
 boy," was the reply ; " I am not proud — it will do for me !" The 
 dust of this jester lies in ILunpstead churchyard. 
 
 Longer known was Anthony Lee or Leigh, that industrious and 
 mirthful player, who, in the score of years he was before the public 
 — from 1672 to 1692 — originated above thrice that number of 
 characters. His master-piece was Dryden's Spanish Friar, Domi- 
 nique. How he looked in that once famous part, may be seen by 
 »ny one who can gain access to Knowle, where his portrait, painted
 
 "exeunt" and '-enter/' 101 
 
 for tlie Earl of Dorset, still liangs — and all but speaks. But we 
 may see how Leigh looked by another portrait, painted in words, 
 by Gibber. " In the canting, grave hypocrisy of the Spanish 
 Friar, Leigh stretched the veil of piety so thinly over him, that in 
 every look, word, and motion, you saw a palpable, Avicked slyness 
 shine throughout it. Here he kept his vivacity demurely confined, 
 till the pretended duty of his function demanded it; and then he 
 exerted it with a choleric, sacerdotal insolence. I have never yet 
 seen any one that has filled them" (the scenes of broad jests) " with 
 half the truth and spirit of Leigh. I do not doubt but the poet's 
 knowledge of Leigh's genius helped him to many a pleasant stroke 
 of nature, which, without that knowledge, never might have en- 
 tered 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 Medbourne, an actor 
 of merit, and a young man of some learning, whose brief career 
 was cut short by a too fervent zeal for his religion, which led him 
 into a participation in the " Popish Plot." The testimony of Titus 
 Gates caused his arrest on the 26th of November, 1Q18, and his 
 death ; — for poor Medbourne died of the Newgate rigor in the fol- 
 lowing March. He is memorable, as being the first who introduced 
 Moli^re's " Tartuflfe" on the English stage, in a close translation, 
 which was acted in 1670, with remarkable success. Gibber's 
 "Nonjuror" (17 17), and Bickerstafte's "Hypocrite" (1768), were 
 only adaptations — the first of "Tartuffe," and the second of the 
 " Nonjuror." Mr. Oxenforde, however, reproduced the original in 
 a more perfect form than Medbourne, in a translation in verse, 
 which was brought out at the Hay market, in 1851, with a success 
 most honestly earned by all, and especially deserving on the part 
 of Mr. Webster, who played the principal character. 
 
 Sandford and Smith were two actors, whose names constantly 
 recur together, but whose merits were not all of the same degree. 
 The tall, handsome, manly Smith, frequently played Banquo ; 
 when his ghost, in the same tragedy, was represented by the 
 short, spare, drolly, ill-featured, and undignified Sandford ! The 
 latter was famous for his villains — from those of tragedy to ordi-
 
 102 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 nary stage ruffians in broad belt and black wig — permanent type 
 of those wicked people in melo-dramas to this day. This idiosyn- 
 crasy amusingly puzzled Charles II., who, in supposed allusion to 
 Shaftesbury, declared that the greatest villain of his time was fair- 
 haired. 
 
 The public, of his period, were so accustomed to see Sandford 
 represent the malignant heroes, that when they once saw him as 
 an honest man, who did not prove to be a crafty knave before the 
 end of the fifth act, they hissed the piece, out of sheer vexation. 
 Sandford rendered villany odious, by his forcible representation of 
 it. By a look, he could win the attention of an audience "to 
 whatever he judged worth more than their ordinary notice ;" and 
 by attending to the punctuation of a passage, he divested it of the 
 jingle of rhyme, or the measured monotony of blank verse. 
 
 So misshapen, harsh, fierce, yet craftily gentle and knavishly 
 persuasive, could Sandford render himself, — Gibber believes that 
 Shakspeare, conscious of other qualities in him, would have chosen 
 him to represent Richard, had poet and player been contempora- 
 neous. The generous CoUey adds, that if there was any thing 
 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 pre- 
 judiced Whig audiences of the early part of the reign of William. 
 He originally represented Sir Fopling Flutter (16*76), and Pierre 
 (1682); Chamont (1680), in "The Orphan," and Scandal (1695), 
 111 " Love for Love." In the following year he died in harness. 
 The long part of Cyaxarcs, in " Cyrus the Great," overtaxed his 
 strength, and on the fourth representation of that wearisome tra- 
 gedy. Smith was taken ill, and died. 
 
 King James, in the person of Smith, vindicated the nobility of 
 his profession. " Mr. Smith," says Cibber, with line satire, " whoso 
 character as a gentleman could have been no way impeached, had 
 he not degraded it by being a celebrated actor, had the misfor-
 
 "exeunt" and "enter." 103 
 
 tunc, 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 gentlemau 
 only for maltreating a player, was looked upon as the concern of 
 every gentleman ! and a party was soon formed to assert and vin- 
 dicate their honor, by humbling this favored 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 pro- 
 ceed in his part ; upon which, without the least discomposure, he 
 ordered the curtain to be dropped, and having a competent for- 
 tune of his own, thought the conditions of adding to it, by re- 
 maining on the stage, were too dear, and from that day entirely 
 quitted it." Not "entirely," for he returned to it, in 1695, after 
 a secession of eleven years, under the persuasion, it is believed, of 
 noble friends and ancient comrades. Dr. Burncy states that the 
 audience made a political matter of it. If so, Whigs and Tories 
 had not long to contend, for the death of this refined player soon 
 supervened. 
 
 Of the two most eminent ladies who joined the Duke's com- 
 pany 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 with- 
 drew from the stage in 1685, after a brief course often 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 chap- 
 ter to herself.
 
 101 uokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRY. 
 
 The "great Mrs. Barry," the Handbook of London tells us, Ilea 
 buried in Westminster Cloisters. I did not there look for her 
 tomb. To come at the grave of the great actress, I passed through 
 Acton Vale and into the ugliest of village churches, and, after 
 service, asked to be shown the tablet which recorded the death 
 and burial of Elizabeth Barry. The pew-opener directed me to 
 a mural monument which, I found, bore the name of one of the 
 family of Smith ! 
 
 I remonstrated. The good woman could not account for it. 
 She had always taken that for Elizabeth Barry's monument. It 
 was in the church somewhere. "There is no stone to any such 
 person in this church," said the clerk, " and I know 'em all !" 
 We walked down the aisle discussing the matter, and paused at 
 the staircase at the west end ; and as I looked at the wall, while 
 still conversing, I saw in the shade the tablet which Curie says is 
 outside, in God's Acre, and thereon I read aloud these words: — 
 " Near this place lies the body of Elizabeth Barry, of the parish 
 of St. Mary-le-Savoy, who departed this life the Vth of November, 
 1713, aged 55 years." "That is she !" said I. 
 
 The two officials looked puzzled and inquiring. At length, the 
 pew-opener ventured to ask : " And who was she, sir ?" 
 
 " The original Monimia, Belvidera, Isabella, Calista" — 
 
 "Lor!" said the good woman, "only a player!" 
 
 " Only a player .'" This of the daughter of an old Cavalier ! 
 
 The seventeenth century g;ive iiiaiiy ladies to the stage, and 
 Elizabeth Barry was certainly llie in(jst famous of them. She was 
 the daughter of a barrister, who raised a regiment for the King, 
 and thereby was himself raiseil to the rank of colonel. The effort 
 did not help his Majesty, and it ruined the Colonel, whose daugh- 
 ter was born in the year 1658.
 
 ELIZABETH BARRY. 105 
 
 Davenant took the fatherless girl into his house, and trained 
 her for the stage, -while the tlash of her light eyes beneath her 
 dark hair and Urows 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 pio- 
 tested that he would make her one iu 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 lie bestowed upon his young nustress 
 were infinite. Sentence by sentence he made her understand 
 her author ; and the intelligence of the girl leaped into life and 
 splendor under such instruction. To familiarize her with the 
 stage, he superintended thirty rehearsals thereon, of each character 
 in which she was to appear. Of these I'ehearsals, twelve were in 
 full costume ; and when she was about to enact Isabella, the 
 Hungarian Queen, in " Mustapha," the page who bore her train 
 was tutored so to move as to aid in the display of grace and 
 majesty which was to charm the town. 
 
 For some time, however, the town refused to recognize any 
 magic in the charmer; and managers despaired of the success of 
 a young actress who could not decently thread the mazes of a 
 country dance. Hamilton owned her beauty, but denied her talent. 
 Nevertheless, she one night burst forth in all her grandeur, and 
 Mustapha and Zanger were not more ardently in love with the 
 brilliant queen than the audience were. At tlie head of the latter 
 were Charles II. and the Duke and Duchess of York. Roche^ster 
 had asked for their presence, and they came to add to the triumph 
 of Colonel Barry's daughter. 
 
 Crabbed old Antony Aston, the actor and prompter, spoke 
 disparagingly of the young lady. According to him, she was no 
 colonel's daughter, but " woman to Lady Shclton, my godmother." 
 The two conditions were not incompatible. It was no un- 
 usual thing to find a lady in straitened circumstances fulfilling the 
 office of "woman," or "maid," to the wives of peers and baro- 
 nets. Wo have an instance in the Memoirs of Mrs. Delaney, aud 
 another in the person of Mrs. Siddons,
 
 106 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Successful as Elizabetli Barry was in parts which she had stud- 
 ied under hcv preceptor Lord Rochester, she cannot he said to 
 have estabHshed herself as the greatest actress of her time till the 
 year 1680. Up to this period she appeared in few characters 
 suited to her abilities. In tragedies, she enacted the confidants to 
 the great theatrical queens, Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Bettcrton ; in com- 
 eilie.s, the rattling, reckless, and audacious women, at whose 
 sallies the pit roared approbation, and the box ladies were not 
 much startled. But, in the year just named, Otway produced his 
 tragedy of " The Orphan, or the Unhappy Marriage," in which 
 Mrs. Barry was the Monimia to the Castalio of Betterton. On 
 the same night, the part of the Page was charmingly played by a 
 future great actress, Mrs. Bracegirdle, then not six years old. 
 In Monmiia, Mrs. Barry exercised some of those attributes which 
 she possessed above all actresses Gibber had ever seen, and which 
 those who had not seen her were unable to conceive. " In char- 
 acters of greatness," says Gibber, in his Apolof/;/, " she had a 
 presence of elevated dignity ; her mien and motion superb and 
 gracefully majestic ; her voice full, clear, and strong, so that no 
 violence of passion could be too much for her ; and when distress 
 or tenderness possessed her, she subsided into the most affecting 
 melody and softness." 
 
 From the position which she took by acting* Monimia, Mrs. 
 Barry was never shaken by any rival, however eminent. Her 
 industry was as indefatigable as that of Betterton. During the 
 thirty-seven years she was on the stage, beginning at Dorset 
 Gardens, in 1673, and ending at the Haymarket, in IVIO, she 
 originated one hundred and twelve characters ! Monimia was the 
 nineteenth of the characters of which she was the original repre- 
 sentative ; the first of those which mark the " stations" of her 
 glory. In 1682 she added another leaf to the cliaplet 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 bid- 
 ding, and to enjoy the luxury of woe. The triumjdi endured for 
 years. Her Monimia and Belvidera were not even put aside by 
 her Cassandra, in the " Cleomenes" of Dryden, first acted at the 
 Theatre Royal, in 1692. "Mrs. Barry," says the author, "always
 
 ELIZABETH BAERY. 107 
 
 excellent, has, in this tragech', excelled herself, and gained a repu' 
 tation beyond any woman wliom I have ever seen on the theatre." 
 The praise is not unduly applied ; for Mrs. Barry could give 
 expression to the rant of Dryden, and even to that of Lee, without 
 ever verging towards bombast. In " scenes of anger, deliance, or 
 resentment," writes Gibber, " while she was impetuous and terrible, 
 si;e poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony." 
 Antony 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 Southenie, — "The 
 Fatal Marriage." Aston remarks, that " her face ever expressed 
 the passions ; it somewhat preceded her action, as her action did 
 her words." Her vei*satility 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 slie was the original 
 representative, occurred in 1703, when, in her forty-iifth year, she 
 played Calista, in " The Fair Penitent," that wholesale felony of 
 Kowe from Massinger! Though the piece did not answer the 
 expectations of the public, Mrs. Barry did not fall short of them, 
 in the heroine ; and she, perhaps, surpassed expectation, when, in 
 1705, she elicited the admiration of the town by her creation of 
 the sparkling character of Clarissa, in "The Confederacy." By 
 this time she was growing rich in wealth as Avell as in glory. In 
 former daj's, when the play was over, the attendant boy used to 
 call for " Mrs. Barry's clogs !" or " Mrs. Bracegirdle's pattens !" 
 but now, " Mrs. Barry's chair" was as familiar a sound as " Mrs. 
 Oldfield's." If she was not invariably wise in the stewardship of 
 her money, some portions were expended in a judicious manner 
 creditable to her taste. At the sale of Betterton's eft'ects, she 
 ]>ui-chased the picture of Shakspeare which Betterton bought fi'om 
 Davenant, who had purchased it from some of the players after 
 the theatres had been closed by authority. Subsequently, Mrs. 
 Barry sold this relic, for forty guineas, to a Mr. Keck, whose 
 daughter carried it with her as part of her doAvry, when she mar- 
 ried Mr. Nicoll, of Colney Hatch. Their daughter and heiress, in 
 her turn, took the portrait and a large foiiune with her to her
 
 lOS doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 hushaiid, the third Duke of Chandos ; aud, finally, Mrs. Barry's 
 ?fRo-y of Shakspeare passed with another bride into another lioiise, 
 Lady Anne Brydges, the dangliter of the Duke and Duchess, 
 carrying it with her to Stowe on her marriage with the Mar()uis 
 of Buckingliam, subsequently Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. 
 The Chandos portrait of the great dramatist is tlms descended. 
 
 Mrs. Barry, like many other eminent members of her profession, 
 was fanious for the way in which she uttered some single expres- 
 sion in tlie play. The " Look there !" of Spranger Barry, as he 
 passed the body of Rutland, always moved the house to tears. 
 So, the " Remember twelve !" of Mrs. Siddons' Belvidera ; the 
 " Well, as you guess !" of Edmund Kean's Richard ; the " Qu'en 
 dis-tu ?" of Talma's Auguste ; the " Je crois !" of Rachel's Pau- 
 line ; the " Je vois !" of JVIademoiselle ISIars's Valerie, were " points" 
 which never failed to excite an audience to enthusiasm. But 
 there were two phrases with which Mrs. Barry could still more 
 deeply move an audience. When, in "The Orphan," she pro- 
 nounced 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 " Un- 
 happy Favorite, or tlie Earl of Essex." In that play, Mrs. Barry 
 represented Queen Elizabeth, and that with such effect that it was 
 currently said, the people of her dtiy knew more of Queen Eliza- 
 beth from her impersonation of the character than they did from 
 history. The apparently common-place remark, " What mean my 
 grieving subjects ?" was invested by lier 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 IL, and the 
 mantle borne by her at her coronation. Thus attired, the queen 
 of the hour represented the Elizabeth, with which enthusiastic 
 crowds became so much more familiar than they were with the 
 Elizabeth of history. But this " solemn and august" tragedian 
 could also command laughter, and make a wliolc house joyous by 
 the exercise of another branch of her vocation. " Tn free comedy," 
 says Aston, " she was alert, easy, and genteel, pleasant in her face 
 and action, filling the stage with variety of gesture. So entirely
 
 ELIZABETH BARRY, 109 
 
 did she surrender lierself 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 favor, 
 after slie had made her merit apparent. They acknowledged no 
 greater actress, — with the single exception of Mrs. Bettcrton in 
 the character of Lady Macbeth. Nevertheless, on and behind the 
 stage Mrs. Bany's supremacy was sometimes questioned, and her 
 commands disobeyed. When she was about to play Roxana to 
 the Statira of Mrs. Boutell, in Nat. Lee's " Rival Queens, or the 
 Death of Alexander the Great," she selected from the wardrobe a 
 certain veil which was claimed by Mrs. Boutell as of right belong- 
 ing to her. The property-man thought so too, and handed the 
 veil to the last named lady. His award was reasonable, for ^e 
 was the original Statira, having played the part to the matchless 
 Alexander of Hart, and to the glowing Roxana of the fascinating 
 Marshall. I fear, however, that the lady was not moderate in her 
 victory, and that by flaunting the trophy too frequently before the 
 eyes of the rival queen, the daughter of Darius exasperated too 
 fiercely her Persian rival in the heart of Alexander. The rage and 
 dissension set down for them in the play were, at all events, not 
 simulated. The quarrel went on increasing in intensity from the 
 first, and culminated in the gardens of SeniiramLs. When Roxana 
 seized on her detested enemy there, and the supreme struggle 
 took place, Mrs. Barry, with the exclamation of " Die, sorceress, 
 die ! and all my wrongs die with thee !" sent her polished dagger 
 right through the stiff armor of Mrs. Boutell's stays. The conse- 
 quences were a scratch and a shriek, but there was no great harm 
 done. An investigation followed, and some mention was made of 
 a real jealousy existing in Mrs. Barry's breast in reference to an 
 admirer of lower rank than Alexander, lured fi'om her feet by the 
 little, flute- voiced Boutell. The deed itself was, however, mildly 
 construed, and Mrs. Barry was believed when she declared that 
 she had been carried away by the illusion and excitement of the 
 scene. We shall see this same scene repeated, with similar stage 
 effects, by Mrs. Woffington and Mrs. Bellamy. 
 
 If there we're a lover to add bitterness to the quarrel engendered 
 by the veil, Mrs. Barry might have well spared one of whom she
 
 110 i>okan"s annals of tue stage. 
 
 possessed so many. Without being positively a transcendeut 
 beauty, lier attractions were confessed by many an Anthony 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, 
 banqueting, heart and purse destroying Cleopatra. There were 
 two classes of men who made epigrams, or caused others to make 
 them against her, namely, the adorers on whom she ceased to 
 smile, and those on whem 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 Ether- 
 ege, or such a fine gentleman as Rochester, Mrs. Barry cared little 
 for her puny assailants. 
 
 Tom Brown taxed her with mercenary feelings ; but against 
 that and the humor of writers who affected intimate acquaintance 
 with her affairs of the heart and purse, and as intimate a knowl- 
 edge of the amount which Sir George Etherege and Lord Roches- 
 ter bequeathed to their respective daughters, of whom Mrs. Barry 
 was the mother, she was armed. Neither of these children sur- 
 vived the " famous actress." She herself hardly survived Better- 
 ton, — 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 Ilaymarket, 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 be- 
 trays 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 I There is no 
 other HE !" 
 
 Mrs. Barry took no formal leave of the stage, but quietly with- 
 drew from St. Mary-le-Savoy, in the Strand, to the pleasant village 
 of Acton. Mrs, Porter, Mrs. Rogers, Mrs. Knight, and J\Irs. Brad- 
 shaw, succeeded to her theatrical dominion, by partition of her 
 characters. If tragedy lost its queen, Acton gained a wealthy lady. 
 Her professional salary had not been large, but her " benefits" 
 were very productive ; they who admired the actress or who loved 
 the woinan, alike pouring out gold and jewels in her lap. It was 
 especially for her that performers' benefits were first devised.
 
 ELIZABETH BARRY. Ill 
 
 Authors alone had hitherto profited by such occasions, but in rec- 
 ognition of her merit, King James commanded one to be given in 
 her behalf, and what was commenced as a compliment soon passed 
 into a custom. 
 
 In a little more than three years from the date when the curtain 
 fell before her for the last time, Elizabeth Barry died. Brief 
 resting season after such years of toil ; but, perhaps, sufficient for 
 better ends — after a career, too, of unbridled pleasui-e I " This 
 great actiess," says Gibber, "dy'd of a fever, towards the latter 
 years of Queen Anne ; the year I have forgot, but perhaps you 
 will recollect it, by an expression that fell from her in blank 
 verse, in her last hours, when she was delirious, viz. : 
 
 " ' Ha 1 ha I and so they make us lords, by dozens !' " 
 
 This, however, does not settle the year so easily as Colley thought. 
 In December, 1711, Queen Anne, by an unprecedented act, created 
 twelve new peers, to enable the measures of her Tory ministers to 
 be carried in the Upper House. Mrs. Barry died two years later, 
 on the 7th of November, I7l3, 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 see how Mrs. Barry looked living, have only 
 to consult Kneller's grand picture, in which she is represented 
 with her fine hair drawn back from her forehead, the face full, fair, 
 and rippling with intellect. The eyes are inexpressibly beautiful 
 Of all her living beauty, living frailty, and living intelligence, there 
 remains but this presentment. 
 
 It was customary to compare Mrs. Barry with French actresses ; 
 but it seems to me that the only French actress with whom Mrs. 
 Barry may be safely compared is Mademoiselle, or, as she was 
 called wdtli glorious distinction, " the Champmesle." This French 
 lady was the original Ilermione, Berenice, Monimia, and Phaedre. 
 These were written expressly for her by Racine, who trained her 
 exactly as Rochester did Elizabeth Barry, — to some glory on the 
 stage, and to some infamy off it. La Champmesle, however, was 
 more tenderly treated by society at large than the less fortunate 
 daughter of an old royalist colonel. The latter actress was satir- 
 ized ; the former was eulogized by the wits, and she was not even
 
 112 doran's annals of tue stage. 
 
 anatbeniatized 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 hur- 
 ried to perdition by so resplendent and destructive a genius, was 
 a matter of exultation ! 
 
 Having sketched the outline of Mrs. Barry's career, I proceed 
 to notice some of her able, though less illustrious, colleagues.
 
 *' THEIR FIRST APrKAHAXCE ON THIS STAOR." 113 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 "their fiust appearance on this stage." 
 
 On the 16tli November, 1682, the United Company, the flower 
 of both houses, opened their season at the Theatre Royal, Drnry 
 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 chang- 
 ing Mrs. Bracegirdle. The third lady was Mrs. Jordan, a name to 
 be made celebrated by a later and greater actress, who liad no 
 legal claim to it. 
 
 Of the new actors, some only modestly laid the foundations of 
 their glory in this company. Chief of these was Colley Cibber, 
 who, in 1691, played Sir Gentle's Servant in Southerne's "Sir An- 
 thony Love," had a part of nine lines in Chapman's " Bussy d'Am- 
 boise," and of seventeen, as Sigismond in Powell's " Alphonso." 
 Bo wen, 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 Shad well's 
 "Volunteers." Among the other new actors were Mountfort, 
 Norris, and Doggett, with Verbruggen (or Alexander, as he some- 
 times called himself, from the character which he loved to play) ; 
 Gillow, Carlisle, Hodgson, and Peer. 
 
 Amid these names, that of Mrs. Mountfort stands out the most 
 brilliantly. Her portrait has been so exquisitely limned by Colley 
 Cibber, that we see her as she lived, and moved, and spoke. 
 
 " Mrs, Mountfort was mistress of more variety of humor than I 
 ever knew in any one actress. This variety, too, was attended with 
 an equal vivacity, which made her excellent in characters extremely
 
 jl-i doran's annals of the stagk 
 
 different. As she was naturally a pleasant mimic, she had the 
 skill to make that talent useful on the stage. Where the elocu- 
 tion is round, distinct, voluble, and various, as Mrs. Mountfort's 
 was, the mimic there is a great assistance to the actor. Nothing, 
 though ever so barren, if within the bounds of nature, could be 
 flat in her hands. She gave many heightening touches to charac- 
 ters but coldly written, and often made an author vain of his work, 
 that, in itself, had but little merit. She was so fond of humor, 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 humor, in 
 liigher 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 foi-gotten, called 'The Western 
 Lass,' which part she acted, she transformed her whole being, — 
 body, shape, voice, language, look, and features, — into almost an- 
 other animal, with a strong Devonshire dialect, a broad laughing 
 voice, a poking head, round shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and 
 the most bedizening, dowdy dress that ever covered the untrained 
 limbs of a Joan Trot. To have seen her here, you would have 
 thought it impossible that the same could ever have been recovered 
 to, what was as easy to her, the gay, the lively, and the desii'able. 
 Nor was her humor limited to her sex, for while her shape per- 
 mitted, she was a more adroit, pretty fellow than is usually seen 
 upon the stage. Her easy air, action, mien, and gesture, quite 
 changed from the coif to the cocked-hat and cavalier in fashion. 
 People were so fond of seeing her a man that when the part of Bayes, 
 in * The Rehearsal,' had for some time lain dormant, she was de- 
 sired to take it up, which I have seen her act with all the true 
 coxcombly spirit and humor that the sufficiency of the character 
 required. 
 
 " But what found most employment for hor whole various excel- 
 lence at once was the part of Melantha, iu ' Alariagc a la Mode.' 
 Melantha is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a draw- 
 ing-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. Iler language, dress, motion, manners, soul, and
 
 "their first appearance on this stage." 115 
 
 body, are in a continual hurr}' to be something more than is neces- 
 sary 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 
 honorable 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 ! Mode&ty is 
 the virtue of a poor-souled country gentlewoman. She is too 
 much a court-lady to be under so vulgar a confusion. She reads 
 the letter, therefore, with a careless, dropping lip, and an erected 
 brow, humming it hastily over, as if she were impatient to outgo 
 her father's commands, by making a complete conquest of him 
 at once ; and that the letter might not embarrass her attack, 
 crack ! she crumbles it at once into her palm, and pours upon 
 him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion. Down goes 
 her dainty diving, body to the ground, as if she were sinking 
 under the conscious load of her own attractions ; then launches 
 into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing her 
 chest forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving 
 water; and, to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond 
 of her own wit that she vvill not give her lover leave to praise it. 
 Silent assenting bows, and vain endeavors to speak, are all the 
 share of the conversation he is admitt<jd to, which at last he is re- 
 lieved fi'om, by her engagement to half a score visits, which she 
 swims froni him to make, with a pi'omlse to return in a twinkling." 
 
 Happy Mrs. Mountfort, whom, as actress and woman. Gibber 
 has thus made live for ever ! As Mrs. Percival, she was the 
 original representative of Nell in the piece now known as " The 
 Devil to Pay ;" as Mrs, Mountfort, — Belinda, in the " Old Bach- 
 elor ;" and as Mrs. Verbruggen, — Charlotte Welldon, in " Oro- 
 nooko ;" Lady Lurewell, in the " Constant Couple ;" and Bizarre, 
 in the "Inconstant." She died in 1703. 
 
 In some respects, Mrs. Bracegirdle, who was on the stage from 
 1680 to 1707, and subsequently lived in easy retirement till 1748, 
 was even superior to Mrs, Mountfort. Mrs. Barry saw her early 
 promise, and encouraged her in her first essays. In her peculiar 
 line she was supreme, till the younger and irresistible talent of 
 Mrs. Oldfield brought about her resignation. Unlike either o^
 
 116 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 these brilliant actresses, slie was exposed to sarcasm only on ac- 
 count of lier excellent private character. Platonic friendships slio 
 did cultivate ; with those, slander dealt severely enough ; and 
 writers like Gildon were found to declare, that they believed no 
 nioi'e in the innocency of such friendships than they believed in 
 Jnhn Mandeville; while others, like Tom Brown, only gave her 
 credit for a discreet decorum. Gibber, more generous, declares 
 I hat her virtuous discretion rendered her the delight of the town ; 
 that whole audiences were in love with her, because of her youth, 
 her cheerful gayety, 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 brunette 
 might pretend to." Other contemporaries notice her dark brown 
 hair and eyebrows, her dark, sparkling eyes, the face from which 
 the blush of emotion spread in a flood of rosy beauty over her 
 neck, and the intelligence and expression which are superior to 
 mere beauty. She so enthralled her audience that, it is quaintly 
 said, she never made an exit without the audience feeling as if 
 they had moulded their faces into an imitation of her's. Then 
 she was as good, practically, as she was beautiful ; and the poor 
 of the neighborhood in which she resided looked upon her as 
 a beneficent divinity. 
 
 Her performance of Statira was considered a justification of 
 the frantic love of such an Alexander as Lee's ; and, " when she 
 acted Millamant, all the faults, follies, and aff'ectation of that agree- 
 able tyrant, were venially melted down into so many charms and 
 attractions of a conscious beauty." Young gentlemen of the town 
 pronounced tliemselves in tender but unrequited love with her. 
 Jack, Lord Lovelace, sought a return for his ardent homage, and 
 obtained not what he sought. Authors wrote characters for her, 
 and poured out their own passion through the medium of her 
 adorers in the comedy. For her, Gongreve composed his Ara- 
 minta and his Gyntliia, his Angelica, his Almeria, and the Mil 
 ianiant, in the " Way of the World," which Gibber praises so efti- 
 ciently. That this dramatist was the oidy one whose homage was 
 well received and presence ever welcome to her, there is no dis- 
 pute. When a report was abroad that they were about to marry, 
 the minor poets hailed the promised union of wit and beauty ; and
 
 "their first appearance on this stage." 117 
 
 even Congveve, not in the best taste, illustrated her superiority tc 
 himself, when he wrote of her — 
 
 Pious Belinda goes to prayers 
 
 Whene'er I ask the favor, 
 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 oc- 
 curred on the occasion when Dorset, Devonshire, Halifax, and 
 other peers, were making of that virtue a subject of eulogy, over 
 a bottle. Halifax remarked, they might do something better than 
 praise her ; and thereon he put down two hundred guineas, which 
 the contributions of the company raised to eight hundred, — and 
 this sum was presented to the lady, as a homage to the rectitude 
 of her private character. 
 
 Whether she accepted this tribute, I do not know ; but I know 
 that she declined another from Lord Burlington, who had long 
 loved her in vain. " One day," says Walpole, " he sent her a 
 present of some fine old china. She told the servant he had made a 
 mistake ; that it Avas true the letter was for her, but the china for 
 his lady, to whom he must carry it. Lord ! the countess was so 
 full of gratitude, when her husband came home to dinner." 
 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle lived to pass the limit of fourscore, and to the 
 last was visited by much of the wit, the worth, and some of the 
 folly of the town. On one occasion, a group of her visitors were 
 discussing the merits of Garrick, whom she had not seen, and 
 Cibber spoke disparagingly of his Bayes, preferring in that part his 
 own pert and vivacious son, Theophilus. The old actress tapped 
 CoUey with her fan ; " Come, come, Cibber," she remarked ; " tell 
 me if there is not something like envy in your character of this 
 young gentleman. The actor who pleases everybody must be a 
 man of merit." CoUey 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 !"
 
 118 DOKAN's ANNAFJi OF THE STAGE. 
 
 Between 1682 and 1695, few actors were of greater note than 
 luckless Will Mountfort, of whose violent death the beauty of 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle was the unintentional fault Handsome Will 
 was the efficient representative of fops who did not forget that 
 they were gentlemen. So graceful, so ardent, so winning as a 
 lover, actresses enjoyed the sight of him pleading at their feet. 
 In the younger tragic characters, he was equally effective. His 
 powers of mimicry won for him the not too valuable patronage 
 of Judge 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 law- 
 yers of the age in their tone of voice, and in their action and 
 gesture of body," to the delight of his hearers. On the stage he 
 was one-of the most natural of actors; and even Queen Mary was 
 constrained to allow, that disgusted as she was with Mrs. Behn's 
 "Rover," she could not but admire the grace, ease, intelli- 
 gence 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 oc- 
 currence, 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 Mrs. Bracegirdle, who heartily despised him, wanted a vil- 
 lain's assistance in carrying off the beautiful actress, and found the 
 man and the aid he needed, in Lord Mohun. In Buckingham 
 Court, off the Strand, where the captain lodged, the conspirators 
 laid their plans; and learning that Mrs. Bracegirdle, with her 
 mother and brother, was to sup one evening at the house of a 
 friend, Mr. Page, in Princes Street, Drury Lane, they hired six 
 soldiers — emissaries always then to be had for such work — to 
 assist in seizing her and carrying her off in a carriage, stationed 
 near Mr. Page's house. About ten at night, of the 9th of Decem- 
 ber, 1692, the attempt was made; but what with the lady's
 
 "THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE OX THIS STAGE." 119 
 
 screams, the resistance of the friend and brother, and the gather- 
 ing of an excited mob, it failed ; and a strange compromise -n as 
 made, whereby Lord Mohun and Hill were allowed to unite in 
 escorting her home to her house in Howard Street, Strand. In 
 that street lived also Will Mountfort, against whom the captain 
 uttered such threats, in Mrs. Bracegirdle's hearing, that she, find- 
 ing that my lord and the captain remained in the street, — the 
 latter with a drawn sword in his hand, and both of them occasion- 
 ally drinking canary, — sent to Mrs. Mountfort to warn her hus- 
 band, who was from home, to look to his safety. Warned, 
 but not alarmed, honest Will, who loved his wife and respected 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle, came round from Norfolk Street, saluted Lord 
 Mohun (who embraced him, according to the then fashion with 
 men), and said a word or two to his lordship, not complimentary 
 to the character of Hill. Thence, from the latter, — words, a blow, 
 and a pass of his sword through Mountfort's body, — which the 
 poor actor, as he lay dying on the floor of his own dining-room, de- 
 clared, was given by Hill before Mountfort could draw his sword. 
 The captain fled from England, but my lord, surrendering to the 
 watchmen of the Duchy of Lancaster, was tried by his peers, 
 fourteen of whom pronounced him guilty of murder ; but as above 
 threescore gave a different verdict, Mohun lived on till he and 
 the Duke of Hamilton hacked one another to death in that savage 
 butchery — the famous duel in Hyde Park. 
 
 Mountfort, at the age of thirty-three, and with some reputation 
 as the author of half a dozen dramas, was carried to the burpng- 
 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 Oronooko 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 mora 
 than he made his audience feel ; for in the original Spectator, No. 
 290, February, I7l2, Powell "begs the pubHc to beheve, that if
 
 120 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 he pauses long in Orestes, lie lias not forgotten his part, but is 
 only overcome at the sentiment." 
 
 Verbruggen died in 1708. Among his many original characters 
 were Oronooko, Bajazet, Altamont, and Sullen, lie survived his 
 widow about five years. I think if she loved Will Mountfort, she 
 stood in some awe of ficiy 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 Antony Aston — 
 '" D— me ! though I don't much value my wife, yet nobody shah 
 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 some- 
 times 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 soldier- 
 ship, in behalf of a great cause. When the threatened destruction 
 of the Irish Protestants was commenced with the siege of London- 
 derry, Carlisle entered King William's army, serving in Ireland. 
 In 1691 he was in the terrible fray in the morass at Aghrim, 
 under Ginkell, but immediately led by Talmash. In the twilight 
 of that July day, the Jacobite general, St. Ruth, and the poor 
 player from Drury Lane, were lying among the dead ; and there 
 James Carlisle was buried, with the remainder of the six hundred 
 slain on the victor's side, before their surviving companions in arms 
 marched westward. 
 
 Carlisle's fellow-actor, Bowen, was a " low comedian" of some 
 talent, and more conceit. A curious paragraph in the Post-Boy, 
 for November 16th, 1700, shows that he '^^eft the stage for a time, 
 and under singular circumstances. The paragraph runs thus: — 
 
 " We hear that this day, Mr. Bowen, the late famous comedian 
 at the new Play-house, being convinced by Mr. Collier's book 
 against the stage, and satisfied that a shopkeeper's life was the 
 readiest way to heaven of the two, opens a cane-shop, next door 
 to the King's Head Tavern, in Middle Row, Ilolborn, where it is 
 not questioned but all manner of canes, toys, and other curiosities, 
 will be obtained at reasonable rates. This sudden change is ad- 
 mired at, as well as the reasons which induced him to leave such 
 a profitable employ; but the most judicious conclude it is tho
 
 " THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE." 121 
 
 effect of a certain person's good natui-e, who has more compassion 
 for his soul than for his own." 
 
 Bowen was not absent from tlie stage more than a year. He 
 was so jealous of his reputation, that when he had been driven to fury 
 by the assertion that Johnson played Jacomo, in the " Libertine," 
 better than he did, and by the emphatic confirmation of the 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, gener- 
 ously acquitted his advei-sary of all blame, and the greater actor, 
 after trial, returned to his duty, having innocently killed, but not 
 convinced poor Bowen, who naturally preferred his Jacomo to 
 that of Johnson. 
 
 Peer, later in life, came to grief also, but in a different way. 
 The spare man was famous for two parts ; the Apothecary, in 
 " Romeo and Juliet," and the actor who humbly speaks the pro- 
 logue to the play, in " Hamlet." These parts he played excel- 
 lently well. Nature had made him for them ; but she was not 
 constant to her meek and lean favorite ; for Peer grew fat, and 
 being unable to act any other character with equal effect, he lost 
 his vocation, and he died lingeringly of grief, in I7l3, when he 
 had passed threescore yeai's 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 bye-name to his success in playing Dicky, in 
 the " Constant Couple." So great was this success, that his sons 
 seemed to derive value from it, and were announced as the sons 
 of Jubilee Dicky. He is said to have acted Cato, and other tragic 
 characters, in a serio-burlesque manner. He was the original 
 Scrub and Don Lopez, in the " Wonder," and died about the year 
 1733. 
 
 Doggett, who was before the public from 1691 to 1713, and 
 who died in 1721, was a Dublin man — a failure in his native city, 
 but in London a deserved favorite, for his original and natural 
 Vol. I. — 6
 
 122 doran's annals of the stage, 
 
 comic powers. He always acted Sbylock as a ferociously comic 
 character, Congreve discerned his talent, and wrote for him 
 Fondlewife in the " Old Bachelor," Sir Paul Pliant in the " Double 
 Dealer," and the very difterent part of Ben in " Love for Love." 
 This little, lively, cheerful fellow, was a conscientious actor. Some- 
 vhat illiterate — he spelt "whole" phonetically, without tlie v) — 
 he was a gentleman in his acts and bearing. He was prudent too, 
 and when he retired from partnership in Drury Lane Theatre, 
 with Gibber and Wilks (from 1709 to 1712), on the admission of 
 Booth, which displeased him, he was considered worth £1,000 a 
 year. The consciousness of his value, and his own independence 
 of character, gave some trouble to managers and Lord Chamber- 
 lains. On one occasion, having left Drury Lane, at some ofience 
 given, he went to Norwich, whence he was brought up to London, 
 under my Lord's warrant, Doggett lived luxuriously on the road, 
 at the Chamberlain's expense, and when he came to town, Chief 
 Justice Holt liberated him, on some informality in the procedure. 
 
 Little errors of temper, and extreme carefulness in guarding his 
 own interests, are now forgotten. Of his strong political feeling 
 we still possess a trace, Doggett was a stanch Whig, The ac- 
 cession of the house of Brunswick dated from a first of August. 
 On that day, in 1716, and under George L, Doggett gave "an 
 orange-colored livery, with a badge, representing Liberty," to be 
 rowed for by six watermen, whose apprenticeship had expired 
 during the preceding year. He left funds for the same race to be 
 rowed for annually, from London Bridge to Chelsea, " on the 
 same day for ever," The match still takes place, with modifica- 
 tions caused by changes on and about the river ; but the winners 
 of the money-prizes, now delivered at Fishmongers' Hall, have yet 
 to be thankful for that prudence in Doggett, which was sneered at 
 by his imprudent contemporaries, 
 
 Doggett never took liberties with an audience ; Pinkcthman 
 was much addicted to that bad habit. He would insert nonsense 
 of his own, appeal to the gallery, and delight in their support., and 
 the confusion into which the other actors on the stage were thrown ; 
 but the joke grew stale at last, and the offender was brought to 
 his senses by loud disapprobation. He did not lose liis self-pos- 
 session ; but assuming a penitent air, with a submissive glance at
 
 "THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ON THIS STAGE." 123 
 
 the audience, he said in a stage aseo?e," Odso, I believe I have been 
 in the wrong here !" This cleverly-made confession brought down 
 a round of applause, and " Pinkey" made his exit, corrected, but 
 not disgraced. Another trait of his stage life is worthy of notice. 
 He had been remarkable for his reputation as a speaking Harle- 
 quin, in the " Emperor of the Moon." His wit, audacity, empha- 
 sis, and point, delighted the critics, who thought that " expression" 
 would be more perfect if the actor laid aside the inevitable mask 
 of Harlequin. Pinkethman did so ; but all expression was thereby 
 lost. It was no longer the saucy Harlequin that seemed speaking. 
 Pinkey, so impudent on all other occasions, was uneasy and feeble 
 on this, and his audacity and vivacity only returned on his again 
 assuming the sable vizard. 
 
 Pinkethman was entirely the architect of his own fortune. He 
 made his way by talent and industry. He established the Rich- 
 mond Theatre, and there was no booth at Greenwich, Richmond, 
 or May-Fair, so well patronized as his. " He's the darling of 
 Forimmtus^'' says Downes, " and has gained more in theatres and 
 fairs in twelve years than those who have tugged at the oar of 
 acting these fifty." 
 
 After the division of the company into two, in 1695, the following 
 new actors appeared between that period and the close of the cen- 
 tury. At Drury Lane — Hildebrand Horden, Mrs. Gibber, John- 
 son, Bullock, Mills, Wilks ; and, as if the century should expire, 
 reckoning a new glory, — Mrs. Oldfield. At Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 — Tlmrmond, Scudamore, Verbruggen, who joined from Drury 
 Lane, leaving his clever wife there, Pack ; and, that this house 
 might boast a glory something like that enjoyed by its rival, in 
 Mrs. Oldfield, — in 1700, Booth made his first appearance, with a 
 success, the significance of which was recognized and welcomed 
 by the discerning and generous Betterton. 
 
 Mrs. Oldfield, Wilks, and Booth, like Golley Gibber, though they 
 appeared towards the close of the seventeenth, really belong 
 to the eighteenth century, and I shall defer noticing them till my 
 readers and I arrive at that latter period. The rest will require 
 but a few words. Young Horden was a handsome and promising 
 actor, who died of a brawl at the Rose Tavern, Govent Garden. 
 He and two or three comrades were quaflSng their wine, and
 
 124 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 laughing at the bar, when some fine gentlemen, in an adjacent 
 room, aftecting to be disturbed by the gayety of the players, rudely 
 ordered them to be quiet. The actors returned an answer wliich 
 brought blood to the check, fierce words to the lips, hand to the 
 sword, and a resulting fight, in which the handsome Ilildcbrand 
 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, Ilildebrand Ilorden, not with- 
 out the sympathy of loving women, who went in masks, and some 
 without the vizard, to look upon and wetep over his handsome, 
 shrouded corse. A couple of paragraphs in Luttrell's Diary con- 
 clude Horden's luckless story: "Saturday, 17th October, Mr. 
 John Pitts was tried at the session for killing Mr. Horden, the 
 player, and acquitted, he being no ways accessary thereto, more 
 than being in company when 'twas done." On Tuesday, 30th 
 November, 1697, the diarist writes : "Captain Burgess, who killed 
 Mr. Horden, the player, has obtained his Majesty's pardon." 
 
 Of Mrs. 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. Wil- 
 liam Mills deserves a word or two more of notice than these last. 
 He was on the stage from 1696 to 1737, and though oiily a 
 " solid" actor, he excelled Gibber in Corvino, in Jonson's " Vol- 
 pone ;" surpassed Smith in the part of Pierre, and was only second 
 to Quin, in Volpone himself His Ventidius, in Dryden's 
 tragedy, " All for Love," to Booth's Anthony, is praised for its 
 natural display of the true spirit of a rough and generous soldier. 
 Of his original parts, the chief were Jack Stanmore, in "Oro- 
 nooko ;" Aimwell, in the " Beaux Strategem ;" Charles, in the 
 "Busy Body;" Pylades, in the "Distressed Mother;" Colonel 
 Briton, in the " Wonder ;" Zanga, in the " Revenge ;" and Maidy, 
 in the " Provoked Husband." That some of these were beyond 
 his powers is certain ; but he owed his being cast for them to 
 the friendship of Wilks, when the latter was manager. To a like 
 cause may be ascribed the circumstance of his having the same 
 salary as Betterton, £4 per week, and £l for his wife ; but this 
 was not till after Betterton's death.
 
 "their first appearance on this stage," 125 
 
 At Lincoln's Inn Fields, Thurmond, though a respectable actor, 
 failed to shake any of the public confidence in Bctterton. Of 
 Scudamore, I have already spoken. Pack was a vivacious comic 
 actor, whose "line" is well indicated in the characters of Brass, 
 Marplot, and Lissardo, of which he was the original representative. 
 He withdrew from the stage in 1721, a bachelor; and, in the 
 meridian of life, opened a tavern in Charing Cross. I have now 
 named the principal actors and actresses who first appeared, be- 
 tween the Restoration and the year 1701, Betterton and Mrs. 
 Barry being the noblest of the players of that half century ; Gib- 
 ber, Booth, and Mrs. Oldficld, 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 gi'and jury of Middlesex 
 presented the two play-houses, and also the bear garden, as 
 nuisances and riotous and disorderly assemblies." So Luttrell 
 writes, in December 1700, at which time, as contemporary ac- 
 counts inform us, the theatres were " pestered with tumblers, 
 rope-dancers, and dancing men and dogs from France." Better- 
 ton was then in declining health, and appeared only occasionally ; 
 the houses, lacking other attractions, were ill attended, and public 
 taste was stimulated by oftering the " fun of a fair," where Mrs. 
 Barry had drowned a whole house in tears. The grand jury of 
 Middlesex did not see that with rude amusements the spectators 
 grew rude too. The jury succeeded in preventing play-bills from 
 being posted in the city, and denounced the stage as a pastime 
 which led the way to murder. This last denunciation was 
 grounded on the fact, that Sir Andrew Stanning had been killed 
 just before, on his way from the play-house. When men wore 
 swords and hot tempers these catastrophes were not infrequent. 
 In 1682, a coftee-house was sometimes turned into a shambles by 
 gentlemen calling the actors at the Duke's House "papists.'" 
 What was the cause of the fray in which Sir Andrew fell I do 
 not know. Whatever it was, he was run through the body by 
 Mr. Cowlan ; and that the latter took some unfeir advantage is to 
 be supposed, since he was found guilty of murder, and in Decem- 
 ber, 1700, was executed at Tyburn, with six other malefactors, 
 who, on the same day, in the Newgate slang of the period, went 
 Westward Hoe !
 
 126 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 On the poor players fell all the disgrace ; but I think I shall be 
 able to show, in the next chapter, that the fault lay rather with 
 the poets. These, in their turn, laid blame upon the public ; but 
 it is the poet's business to elevate, and not to pander to a low 
 taste. The foremost men of the tuneful brotherhood, of the 
 period from the Restoration to the end of the century, have mach 
 to answer for in this last respect.
 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS. 127 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS. 
 Noble, gentle, and humble Authors. 
 
 It is a curious fact, that the number of dramatic writers between 
 the years 1659-1700, inchisive, exceeds that of the actors. A 
 glance at the following list will show this : 
 
 Sir. W. Davenant, Diyden, Porter, Mrs. Behn, Lee, Cowley, 
 Hon. James Howard, Shadwell, Sir S. Tuke, Sir R. Stapylton, 
 Lord Broghill (Earl of Orrery), Flecknoe, Sir George Etherege, 
 Sir R. Howard, Lacy (actor), Betterton (actor). Earl of Bristol, 
 Duke of Buckingham, Dr. Rhodes, Sir Edward Howard, Settle, 
 Caryll (Earl of Caryll, of James IL's creation), Henry Lucius 
 Carey (Viscount Falkland), Duke of Newcastle, Shirley, Sir 
 Charles Sedley, Mrs. Boothby, Medbourne (actor), Corye, Revet, 
 Crowne, Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Arrowsmith, Ncvil Payne, Sir 
 W. Killigrew, Duflfet, Sir F. Fane, Otway, Durfey, Rawlins, 
 Leanard, Bankes, Pordage, Rymer, Shipman, Tate, Bancroft, 
 Whitaker, Maidwell, Saunders (a boy poet), and Southerne. 
 
 Here are already nearly threescore authors (some few of whom 
 had commenced their career prior to the Restoration) who sup- 
 plied the two theatres, between 1659 and 1682, in which latter 
 year began that "Union," under which London had but one 
 theatre, till the year 1695. 
 
 Within the thirteen years of the Union, appeared as dramatic 
 writers, 
 
 The Earl of Rochester ; — Jevon, Mountfort, Harris, Powell, and 
 Carlisle (actors) ; Wilson, Brady, Congreve, Wright, and Higden. 
 
 From the period of the dissolution of the Union to the end of 
 the century occur the names of 
 
 Colley Cibber (actor), Mrs. Trotter (Cockburn) Gould, Mrs. Pix, 
 Mrs. Manley, Norton, Scott, Doggett (actor), Dryden, jun., Lord
 
 128 DORAiS's AJSNALS OF THE .' TAGE. 
 
 Lanadowne (Granville) Dilke, Sir John Vaubrugh, Gildon, Drake, 
 Fihner, Motteux, Hopkins, Walker, W. Phillips, Farquhar, Boyer, 
 Dennis, Burnaby, Oldmixon, Mrs. Centlivre (Carroll) Crauford, 
 and Rowe. 
 
 In the above list there are above a hundred names of authors, 
 rone of whose productions can now be called stock-pieces ; though 
 of some four or five of these writers a play is occasionally perform- 
 ed, to try an actor's skill or tempt an indifterent audience. 
 
 Of the actors who became authors. Gibber alone was eminently 
 successful, and of him I shall speak apart. The remainder wore 
 mere adapters. Of Betterton's eight plays, I find one tragedy 
 borrowed fi-om Webster; and of his comedies, one was taken 
 from Marston ; a second raised on Moliere's, George Dandin; a 
 third was never printed ; his " Henry the Fourth" was one of 
 those unhallowed outrages on Shakspeare, of which the century 
 in which it appeared was prolific ; his " Bondman" was a poor re- 
 construction of Massinger's play, in which Betterton himself was 
 marvellously great ; and his " Prophetess" was a conversion of 
 Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy into an opera, by the efficient 
 aid of Henry Purcell, who published the music in score, in 1691. 
 There was noble music wedded to noble words, and for the re- 
 creation of those who could appreciate neither ; there was a dance 
 of quaint figures from whom, when about to sit down, the chairs 
 slipped under them, took up the measure, and concluded by 
 dancing it out. 
 
 Medbourne produced only his translation of the "Tartufte," 
 Jevon only one comedy. Mountfort, like Betterton, was an indif- 
 ferent author. His "Injured Lovers" ends almost as tragically 
 as the apocryphal play in which all the characters being killed at 
 the end of the fourth act, tlie concluding act is brought to a close 
 by their executors. In Mountfort's loyal tragedy all the princijtal 
 personages receive their quietus, and the denouement is left in the 
 hands of a solitary and wicked colonel, with a contented mind. 
 " Edward the Third" is so much more natural than the above, 
 that it is by some assigned to Bancroft, while "Zelinani" is only 
 hypothetically attributed to Mountfort, on the ground, apparently, 
 of its absurdities. In the preface to his " Successful Strangers," 
 Mountfort modestly remarks, "I have a natural inclination to
 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS. 129 
 
 poetry, which was born and not bred in me." He showed small 
 inventive power in his bustling comedy, "Greenwich Park," and 
 less respect for a master in minstrelsy, when he turned poor Kit 
 Marlowe's " Doctor Faustus" into an impassioned sort of bur- 
 lesque, with the addition of Harlequin and Scaramouch to give 
 zest to the buffoonery ! 
 
 Carlisle, the actor who fell at Aghrim, was the author of the 
 " Fortune Hunters;" and Joseph Harris, who was a poor comedian, 
 and the marrer of four adapted and unsuccessful plays, resumed, 
 under Queen Anne, his original vocation of engraver to the Mint. 
 The age was one of adapters, whose cry was that Shakspeare 
 would not attract, and accordingly George Powell combined 
 authorship with acting, and borrowed from Shirley, from Brome, 
 and from Middleton. Mrs. Pix, and the romancers, produced a 
 few plays, from one of which a recent dramatist has stolen as 
 boldly as George himself was wont to steal. I allude to the " Im- 
 posture Defeated," in which Artan (a demon) enables Hernando, 
 a physician, to foretell the fate of each patient, according as Artan 
 takes his stand at the foot, or at the head of the bed. One word 
 will suffice for Doggett's contribution to stage literature. He was 
 the author of one lively, but not edifying, piece, entitled the 
 " Country Wake," in which he provided himself with a taking 
 part called Hob, and one for Mrs. Bracegirdle, — Flora. In a mod- 
 ified form, this piece was known to our grandfathers as " Flora ;" 
 or, " Hob in the Well." 
 
 The actors themselves, then, were not efficient as authors. Let 
 us now see what the noble gentlemen, the amateur rather than 
 professional poets, contributed towards the public entertainment 
 and their own reputation during the last half of the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 They may be reckoned at a dozen and' a half, from dukes to 
 knights. Of the two dukes, Buckingham and Newcastle; the 
 fiirmer is the more distinguished dramatic writer. He was a man 
 cf great wit and no virtue ; a member of two universities, but no 
 honor to either. He was one who respected neither his own wife 
 nor his neighbor's, and was faithful to the King only as long as 
 the King would condescend to obey his caprices. From 1627, 
 when he was bom, to April, 1688, the year of his death, history 
 6*
 
 130 dokan's axnals of the stage. 
 
 has placed no generous action of his upon record, but has regis- 
 tered many a crime and meanness. He lived a profligate peer, in 
 a magnificence almost oriental ; he died a beggar ; bankrupt in 
 every thing but impudence, Dryden and Pope have given him 
 everlasting infamy ; the latter not without a touch of pity, felt not 
 at all by the former. Historians have justified the severity of the 
 poets ; Gilbert Burnet has dismissed him with a sneer, and Baxter 
 has thrown in a word on behalf of his humanity. 
 
 His play of the " Chances" was a mere adaptation of the piece 
 so named, by Beaumont and Fletcher. Plays which were at- 
 tributed to him, but of which he was not the author, need not be 
 mentioned. The Duke's dramatic reputation rests on his great 
 burlesque tragedy, the " Rehearsal ;" but even in this he is said 
 to have had the assistance of Butler, Martin Clifford, and Dr. 
 Sprat. Written to deride the bombastic tragedies then in vogue, 
 Davenant, Dryden, and Sir Robert Howard are, by turns, struck 
 at, under the person of the poet Bayes ; and the irritability of the 
 second, under the allusions, are perhaps warrant that the satire 
 was good. The humor is good, too ; the very first exhibition of it 
 excited the mirth which afterwards broke into peal upon peal of 
 laughter. The rehearsed play commences with a scene between 
 the royal usher and the royal physician, in a series of whispers ; 
 for, as Mr. Bayes remarks, the two oflScials were plotting against 
 the King ; but this fact it was necessary, as yet, to keep fi-om the 
 audience ! 
 
 Mr, Cavendish, whose services in the royal cause deservedly 
 earned for him that progress through the peerage which termina- 
 ted in his creation as Duke of Newcastle, was tlie opposite of 
 Buckingham in most things save his taste for magnificence, in 
 which he surpassed Villiers. Two thousand pounds were as 
 cheerfully spent on feasting Charles I., as the duke's blood was 
 vainly shed for the same monarch in the field. He lived like a 
 man who had the purse of Fortunatus ; but in exile at Antwerp, 
 he pawned his best clothes and jewels, that he and his celebrated 
 wife might have the means of existence. He was tlie author of a 
 few plays, two of which were represented after the Restoration. 
 The " Country Captain," and " Variety," were composed in the 
 reign of Charles I. The " Humorous Lovers," and the " Triuiu
 
 THE DRAM.ITIC POETS. 131 
 
 pliant Widow," subsequently. These are bustling but immoral 
 comedies, suiting, but not correcting the vices of the times ; and 
 singular, in their slip-shod style, as coming from the author of the 
 pompous treatise on horses and horsemanship. Pepys ascribes 
 the " Humorous Lovers" to the duchess. He calls it a " silly 
 play ; the most silly thing that ever came iipon a stage. I was 
 sick to sec it, but yet would not but have seen it, that I might the 
 better understand her." Pepys is equally severe against the 
 " Country Captain." The duke seems to have aiined at the 
 delineation of character, particularly in "Variety," and the 
 " Triumphant Widow, or, the Medley of Humors." Johnson 
 grieves over the oblivion which, in his time, had fallen on these 
 works, and later authors have declared that the duke's comedies 
 ought not to have been forgotten. They have at least been re- 
 membered by some of our modern novelists in want of in- 
 cident. 
 
 Of the three earls, all of whose pieces were produced previous 
 to 1680, there is not much to be said in praise. The eccentric, 
 clever, brave, inconsistent, contradictory George Digby, Earl of 
 Bristol, he who turned Romanist at the instigation of Don John 
 of Austria, and aiming at office himself, conspired against Claren- 
 don, was the author of one acted piece, " Elvira," one of the two 
 out of which Mrs. Centlivre built up her own clever bit of mosaic, 
 the " Wonder." Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, in whom all the vices 
 of Buckingham were exaggerated ; to wdiom virtue and honor 
 seemed disgusting, and even the affectation of them, or of ordinary 
 decency, an egregious folly, found leisure in the least feverish 
 hour of some five years' drunkenness, to give to the stage an adap- 
 tation of " Valentinian," by Beaumont and Fletcher, in which he 
 assigned a part to Mrs. Barry — the very last that any other lover 
 would have thought of for his mistress. The noble poet, little 
 more than thirty years old, lay in a dishonored grave when his 
 piece was represented, in 1G80 ; but the young actress just named, 
 gayly alluded, in a prologue, to the demure nymphs in the house 
 who had succumbed, nothing loath, to the irresistible blandish- 
 ments of this very prince of blackguards. 
 
 The Earl of Caryll was a man of another spirit. He was the 
 Lead of the family to w hich Pope's Carylls belonged, and being a
 
 132 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 faithful servant of James II., in adversity as well as in prosperity, 
 the King made him an earl, at that former period, when the law 
 of England did not recognize the creation. Caryll was of the 
 party who talked of the unpopularity of Shakspeare, and who for 
 the poet's gold offered poor tinsel of their own. His rhymed 
 drama of the " English Princess, or the death of Richard the 
 Third," owed its brief favor to the acting of Betterton, who could 
 n;nder even nonsense imposing. His comedy of " vSir Solomon, 
 or the Cautious Coxcomb," was " taken from the French." The 
 chief scenes were mere translations of Moliere's " Ecole des Fem- 
 mes ;" but life, and fun, and wit, were given to them again by 
 Betterton, who in the comic old Sir Solomon shook the sides of 
 the " house," as easily as he could, in other characters, move them 
 to wonder, or melt them to tears. 
 
 In 1664, another " lance was broken with Shakspeare" by Lord 
 Orrery, the Lord Broghill of earlier days. There was something 
 dramatic in this Lord's life. He was a marvellous boy, younger 
 son of a marvellous father, the " great Earl of Cork." Before he 
 ■was fifteen, Dublin University was proud of him. At that age he 
 went on the " grand tour," at twenty married the Earl of Suffolk's 
 daughter, and landed in Ireland, to keep his wedding, on the very 
 day of the outbreak of the Rebellion of 1641. The young bride- 
 groom fought bravely for homestead and king, and went into exile 
 when that king was slain ; but he heeded the lure of Cromwell, 
 won for him the victory of Macroom, rescued him from defeat at 
 Clonmel, and crushed Muskerry, and his numerous Papal host. 
 From Richard Cromwell, Broghill kept aloof, and helped forward 
 the Restoration, for which service Charles made him a peer — 
 Earl of Orrery. The earl showed his gratitude by deifying kings, 
 and inculcating submissivencss, teaching the impeccability of mon- 
 archs, and the extreme naughtiness of their people. Pepys 
 comicly bewails the fact, that on going to see a new piece by ' 
 Orrery he only sees an old one under a new name, such wearying 
 sameness is there in the rhymed phi-ases of them all. 
 
 Orrery's tilt against Shakspeare is comprised in his attempt to 
 suppress that poet's " Henry V.," by giving one of his ov.-n, in 
 which Henry and Owen Tudor are simultaneously in love with 
 Katherine of France. The love is carried on in a style of stilted
 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS. 133 
 
 burlesque; and y3t the dignity and wit of this piece enraptured 
 Pepys — but then he saw it at Court, in December, 1666; Lord 
 Bellasis having taken him to \Yhitehall, after seeing " Macbeth" 
 at the duke's house ; — " and there," he says, " after all staying 
 above an hour for the players, the King and all waiting, which was 
 absurd, saw ' Henry V.' well done by the duke's people, and in 
 most excellent habits, all new vests, being put on but this night. 
 But I sat so high, and so far off, that I missed most of the words, 
 and sat with a wind coming into my back and neck, which 
 did much trouble me. The play continued till twelve at night, 
 and then up, and a most horrid cold night it was, and frosty, and 
 moonshine ;" and it might have been worse. 
 
 In Orrery's " Mustapha" and " Tryphon," the theme is all love 
 and honor, without variation. Orrery's " Mr. Anthony" is a five 
 act farce, in ridicule of the manners and morals of the Puritans, 
 Therein the noble author rolls in the mire for the gratification of 
 the pure-muided cavaliers. Over Orrery's " Black Prince," even 
 vigilant Mr. Pepys himself fell asleep, in spite of the stately dances. 
 Perhaps he was confused by the author's illustration of genea- 
 logical history ; for in this play, Joan, the wife of the Black Prince, 
 is described as the widow of Edmund, Earl of Kent — her father ! 
 But what mattered it to the writer whose only teaching to the 
 audience was, that if they did not fear God, they must take care- 
 to honor the King ? Orrery's " Altemira" was not produced till 
 long after his death. It is a roar of passion, love (or what passed 
 for it), jealousy, despair, and murder. In the concluding scene the 
 slaughter is terrific. It all takes place in presence of an unobtru- 
 sive individual, who carries the doctrine of non-intervention to its 
 extreme limit. When the persons of the drama have made an 
 end of one another, the quietly delighted gentleman steps forward, 
 and blandly remarks, that there was so much virtue, love, and 
 honor in it all, that he could not find it in his heart to interfere 
 though his own son was one of the victims ! 
 
 A contemporary of Orrery, young Henry Carey, Viscount Falk- 
 land, son of the immortal soldier who fell at Newburj^ wrote one 
 piece, the " Marriage Night," of which I know nothing, save that 
 it was played in the Lent of 1664 ; but I do know that the author 
 had wit, for when some one remarked, as Carey took his seat in
 
 134 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 the House of Conmions for the first time, that he looked as if he 
 had not sown his wild oats, he replied, that he had come to the 
 place where there were geese enough to pick them up ! 
 
 The last of the dramatic lords of this century was that Lord 
 Lansdowne whom Pope called "Granville the polite," and absurdly 
 compared with Surrey, by awkwardly calling the latter the " Gran- 
 ville of a former age." Granville was a statesman, a Tory, a stitf- 
 backed gentleman in a stiff-backed period, and a sufferer for his 
 opinions. Driven into leisure, he addressed himself to literature, 
 in connection with which he committed a crime against the 
 majesty of Shakspeare, which was unpardonable. He recon- 
 structed the " Merchant of Venice," called it the " Jew of Venice," 
 and assigned Shylock to Doggett. Lord Lansdowne's " She-Gal- 
 lants" is a vile comedy for its " morals," but a vivacious one for 
 its manner. Old Downes, the prompter, sneers at the offence 
 taken at it by some ladies, who, he thinks, affected rather than 
 possessed, virtue, themselves. But ladies, in 1696, were offended 
 at such outrages on decency as this play contains. They were not 
 the first who had made similar protest. Even in this lord's 
 tragedy of " Heroic Love," Achilles and Briseis are only a little 
 more decent than Ravenscroft's loose rakes and facile nymphs. 
 The only consolation one has in reading the " Jew of Venice" 
 (produced in 1701) is, that there are some passages the marrer 
 could not spoil. As for Shylock, Rowe expressed the opinion of 
 the public when, in spite of the success of the comic edition of 
 the character, he said, modestly enough, " I cannot but think the 
 character was tragically designed by the author." Dryden, Pope, 
 and Johnson, have in their turn eulogized Granville ; but, as a 
 dramatic poet, he reflects no honor either on the century in which 
 he was born, or on that in which he died. Indeed, of the drama- 
 tist peers of the seventeenth century, there is not a play that has 
 survived to our times. 
 
 And now, coming to a dozen of baronets, knights, and honorables, 
 let us point to two, — Sir Samuel Tuke and Sir William Killi- 
 grew, who may claim precedence for their comparative purity, if 
 not for decided dramatic talent. To the former, an old colonel 
 of the cavalier times, Charles H. recommended a comedy of Cal 
 derou's, which Sir Samuel produced at the Lincoln's Inn Fields
 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS. 135 
 
 theatre, in 1663, under the title of the "Adventures of Five 
 Hours." The public generally, and Pepys especially, were un- 
 usually delighted with this well-constructed comedy. When it 
 was played at Whitehall, Mrs. Pepys saw it from Lady Fox's 
 "juew;" and, making an odd comparison, the diarist thought 
 "Othello" a "mean thing" when weighed against the "Adven- 
 tures ;" but his chief praise is, that it is " without one word of 
 ribaldry ;" and Echard has added thereto his special commendation 
 as a critic. 
 
 Sir Robert Stapylton says of William Killigrew what could not 
 be said of his brother Tom (whose plays were written before the 
 Restoration), that in him were found — 
 
 " plots well laid, 
 
 The language pure and ev'ry sentence weighed." 
 
 Sir William, a soldier of the first Charles's fighing time, a 
 courtier, and vice-chamberlain to the Queen, in " Rowley's" days, 
 was the author of four or five ])lays, one only of which deserves 
 any notice here, — namely, his comedy of " Pandora." The he- 
 roine of this drama resolving to cloister herself up from marriage, 
 allows love to be made to her in jest, and of course ends by be- 
 coming a wife in happy earnest. The author had, at first, made 
 a tragedy of " Pandora." The masters of the stage objected to it 
 in that form ; and, it being all the same to the complacent Sir 
 William, he converted his tragedy into a comedy ! 
 
 Sir Robert Stapylton, himself a Douay student converted to 
 Protestantism ; a cavalier, who turned to a hanger-on at court — 
 but who was always a scholar and a gentleman, — has received 
 more censure than praise at the hands of a greater critic and poet 
 than himself. Pepys took no interest in Stapylton's " Slighted 
 Maid," even though his own wife's maid, Gosnell, had a part in 
 it ; and Dryden has remarked of it, with too much severity, that 
 "there is nothing in the first act that might not be said or done 
 in the second ; nor any thing in the middle which might not as 
 well have been at the beginning or the end." Stapylton, like the 
 wits of his time, generally, wrote more weakly than he spoke. This 
 was the case, too, with Tom Killigrew, of whom Scott remarks 
 truly, in a very awkward simile {Life of Dryden), that " the merit
 
 136 DORAN'S ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 of his good things evapo)-ated as soon as he attempted to interwcavs 
 them with comedy." 
 
 But, who is this jaunty personage, so noisy at a rehearsal of one 
 of his own indifferent plays ? It is " Ned Howard," one of the 
 three sons of the dirty Earl of Berkshire, the first Howard who 
 bore that title, and whom Pepys saw one .July day of 1666, serving 
 the King with liquor, " in that dirty pickle I never saw man in, 
 in my life." The daughter of this Earl was the wife of Dryden. 
 
 And what does Ned Howard say at rehearsal ! The actors arc 
 making some objection to his piece ; but he exclaims, " In fine, — 
 it shall read, and writ.'., and act, and print, and pit, box, and gallery 
 it, egad, with any play in Europe !" The play fails ; and then you 
 may hear Ned in any coft'ce-house, or wherever there is a company, 
 proclaiming, by way of excuse, that " Mr. So and-so, the actor, 
 didn't top his part, sir !" It was Ned Howard's favorite phrase. 
 
 The old Earl of Berkshire gave three sons to literature, besides 
 a daughter to Dryden ; namely, Sir Robert, James, and this 
 Edward. The last named was the least eftective. His characters 
 " talk" but they are engaged in no plot ; and they exhibit a dull 
 lack of incident. The most of his six or seven dramas were fail- 
 ures ; but from one of ther <, which was the most original, in- 
 decent, and the most decidedly damned, Mrs. Inchbald con- 
 descended to extract matter which she turned to very good pur- 
 pose in her " Every one has his Fault." Edward Howard gratified 
 the court-party in his trag idy of " The Usurper," by describing, 
 nnder the character of r'amocles the Syracusan, the once re- 
 doubted Oliver Cromwell \ while Hugo de Petra but thinly veiled 
 Hugh Peters ; and Cleom^ ;ncs is said to have been the shadow of 
 Genera] Monk. Lacy sa d that Ned was " more of a fool than a 
 poet ;" and Buckingham was of the same opinion. 
 
 James Howard came i nder Buckingham's censure, too ; and an 
 aicident in the " Englis i Monsieur," which, if Pepys's criticism 
 ■nay be accepted, was . mighty pretty, witty, pleasant, mirthful 
 jomedy, furnished the , itirical toucli in the " Rehearsal," where 
 Prince Volscins falls ir 'ove with Parthenope, as he is pulling on 
 ais boots to go out of >wn. James Howard belonged to the fac- 
 tion which affected to clieve that there was no popular love for 
 Shakspeare, to rendr vliom palatable, he arranged " Romeo and
 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS. 137 
 
 Juliet" for the stage, with a double denouement — one serious, the 
 other hilarious. If your heart were too sensitive to bear the 
 deaths of the loving pair, you had only to go on the succeeding 
 afternoon to see them wedded, and set upon the way of a well- 
 assured domestic felicity ! 
 
 This species of humor was not wanting in Sir Robert Howard, — 
 who won his knighthood by valor displayed in saving Lord Wil- 
 mot's life, in the hot affair at Croprcdy Bridge. Sir Robert has 
 been as much pommelled as patted by Dryden. Buckingham 
 dragged him in effigy across the stage, and Shadwell ridiculed the 
 universality of his pretensions by a clever caricature of him, in thf 
 " Impertinents," as Sir Positive Atall. For the King's purpose, 
 Howard cajoled the parliament out of money; for his own pur- 
 pose, he cajoled the King out of both money and place ; and 
 netted several thousands a year by affixing his very legible signa- 
 ture to wai-rants, issued by him as Auditor of the Exchequer. The 
 humor which he had in common with his brother James, he exhib- 
 ited by giving two opposite catastrophes to his " Vestal Virgins," 
 between which the public were free to choose. Sir Robert has 
 generally been looked upon as a servile courtier; but people were 
 astounded at the courage displayed by him in his " Great Favor- 
 ite, or the Duke of Lerma;" in which the naughtiness of the 
 King's ways, and still more that of the women about him, was 
 shown in a light which left no doubt as to the application of the 
 satire. His bombastic periods have died away in the echoes of 
 them which Fielding caught in his "Tom Thumb;" but his comic 
 power is strongly and adnnrably manifested in his " Committee," 
 a transcript of Puritan life, which — applied to quakers, for want 
 of better subjects for caricature — may still be witnessed in country 
 theatres, in the farce of "Honest Thieves." Like many other 
 satirists, Sir Robert could not detect his own weak points. In his 
 " Blind Lady," he ridicules an old widow in desperate want of a 
 seventh husband ; and at threescore and ten he himself married bux- 
 om Mistress Dives, one of the Maids of Honor to Queen Mary. 
 
 Of comedies portraying national or individual follies, perhaps 
 the most successful, and the most laughable, was James Howard's 
 "English Monsieur," in which the hero-Englishman execrates 
 every thing that is connected with his country. To him, an Eng-
 
 138 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 lish meal is poison, and an English coat, degradation. Tbe English 
 Monsieur once challenged a rash person who had praised an Eng- 
 lish dinner, and, says he, " I ran him through his mistaken palate, 
 which made me think the hand of justice guided my sword." Is 
 there a damp walk, along which the Gallo-Englishman passes — he 
 can distinguish between the impressions previously left there by 
 English or French ladies, — the footsteps of the latter being of 
 course altogether the more fairy-like. " I have seen such bonne 
 mine in their footsteps, that the King of France's maitre de danse 
 could not have found fault with any one tread amongst them all. 
 In these walks," he adds, " I find the toes of English ladies ready 
 to tread upon one another." 
 
 Later in the play, the hero quarrels with a friend who had found 
 fault with a " pair of French tops," worn by the former. These 
 boots made so much noise when the wearer moved in them, that 
 the friend's mistress could not hear a word of the love made to 
 her. The wearer, however, justifies the noise as a fashionable 
 French noise : " for, look you, sir, a French noise is agreeable to 
 the ear, and therefore not unagreeable, not prejudicial to the hear- 
 ing ; that is to say, to a person who has seen the world." The 
 English Monsieur, as a matter of course, loves a French lady, who 
 rejects his suit ; but to be repulsed by a French dame had some- 
 thing pleasant in it ; " 'twas a denial with a French tone of voice, 
 so that 'twas agreeable." Ultimately, the nymph bids him a final 
 adieu, and the not too dejected lover exclaims to a fiiend : " Do 
 you see, sir, how she leaves us; she walks away with a French 
 step!" 
 
 One word may be said here for Sir Ludovick Carlile, the old 
 gentleman of the bows to Charles I. Like Shirley, Killigrew, and 
 Davenant, he had written plays before the time of the Common- 
 wealth ; and he survived to write more, after the Restoration. The 
 only one, however, which he oftered to the players was a transla- 
 tion of " Heraclius," by Corneille ; and that was returned on his 
 hands. There is another knight. Sir Francis Fane, from whose 
 comedy of " Love in the Dark," Mrs. Centlivre, more clever at 
 appropriation than Mrs. Inchbald, has taken Intrigo, the man of 
 business, and turned him into Marplot, with considerable improve- 
 ments ; but as Fane himself boiTowed every incident, and did not
 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS. 139 
 
 trouble himself about his language, his merit is only of the small- 
 est order. He wrote a fair masque, and in his unrepresented 
 " Sacrifice" was little courtier enough to make his Tamerlane de- 
 clare that " princes, for the most part, keep the worst company." 
 He and Sir Robert Howard, both Tories, could, when it pleased 
 them, tell the truth, like the plainest spoken Whig. 
 
 More successful than Sir Francis was rollicking Tom Porter, or 
 Major Porter, according to his military rank. Both were luck- 
 less gentlemen ; but Tom wrote one play, the " Villain," which 
 put the town in a flame, and raised Sandford's fame, as an actor, to 
 its very highest. Tom was also the author of a rattling comedy, 
 called the " Carnival," but rioting, and bad company and hot 
 temper marred him. He and Sir Henry Bcllasys, dining at Sir 
 Robert Carr's, fell into fierce dispute, out of mutual error ; fierce 
 words, then a thoughtless blow from Sir Henry, then swords 
 crossing, and tipsy people parting the combatants. They were 
 really warm friends ; but Tom had been struck, and honor forbade 
 that he should be reconciled till blood had flown. So Dryden's 
 boy was employed to track Bcllasys, and the major came upon 
 him in Covent Garden, where they fought, surrounded by a crowd 
 of admirers. Tom's honor was satisfied by passing his sword 
 through the body of his dearest friend. The knight felt the 
 wound was mortal, but he beckoned the less grievously wounded 
 major to him, kissed him, and remained standing, that Tom might 
 not be obstnicted in his flight. The friend and poet safe, the 
 knight fell back, and soon after died. There was really noble stuff 
 in some of these dissolute fine gentlemen ! But there are no two 
 of them who have so faithfully illustrated themselves, and the 
 times in which they lived, as Sir George Etherege and Sir Charles 
 Sedley ; the former, a knight by purchase, in order to please a silly 
 woman, who vowed she would mairy none but a man of title ; the 
 latter, a baronet by inheritance. Sir George, born in 1636, was 
 tlie descendant of a good — Sir Charles, born three years later, a 
 member of a better — family, reckoning among its sons, scholars 
 and patrons of scholars. Sir George left Cambridge undistin- 
 guished, but took his degree in foreign travel, came home to find 
 the study of the law too base a drudgery for so free a spirit, and 
 80 took to Irving like a "gentleman," and to illustrating the
 
 140 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 devilishness of that career by reproducing it in dramas on the 
 stage. 
 
 Sedley left Oxford as Ethcrege left Cambridge, ingloriously, 
 bearing no honors with him. Unlike Sir George, however, he was 
 a home-keeping youth, whereby his wit seems not to have suf- 
 fered. He nursed the latter in the groves, or at the paternal 
 hearth at Aylesford, in Kent, till the sun of the restored monarchy 
 enticed him to London. There his wit recommended him to the 
 King, won for him the hatred of small minds, and elicited the 
 praise of noble spirits, who were witty themselves, and loved the 
 manifestation of wit in others. " I have heard," says honest, bril- 
 liant, and much-abused Shadwell, " I have heard Sedley speak 
 more wit at a supper than all my adversaries, putting their heads 
 together, could write in a year." This testimony was rendered by 
 a man whose own reputation as a wit has the stamp and the war- 
 rant of Rochester. 
 
 Two more atrocious libertines than these two men were not to 
 be found in the apartments at Whitehall, or in the streets, taverns, 
 and dens of London. Yet both were famed for like external qual- 
 ities. Etherege was easy and graceful, Sedley so refinedly seduc- 
 tive of manner that Buckingham called it " witchcraft," and Wil- 
 mot "his prevailing, gentle, art." /, humbler witness, can only 
 say, after studying their works and their lives, that Etherege was a 
 more accomplished comedy-writer than Sedley, but that Sedley 
 was a greater beast than Etherege. 
 
 These two handsome fellows, made in God's image, marred their 
 manly beauty by their licentiousness, and soon looked more like 
 two battered, wine-soaked demons, than the sons of Christian 
 mothers. Etherege, however, fierce and vindictive as he could be 
 under passion, was never so utterly brutalized in mind as Sedley, 
 nor so cruel in his humors at any time. If Sedley got up that 
 groundless quarrel with Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury, the 
 alleged cause of which was some painted hussy, it was doubtless 
 out of the very ferocity of his fun, which he thought Avell spent 
 on exhibiting the prelate as sharing in the vices common at 
 Court. 
 
 Etherege, perhaps, had the stronger head of the two ; he, at all 
 events, kept it sufficiently free to be able to represent his King on
 
 THE DRAMATIC POEIS. HI 
 
 more than one small diplomatic mission abroad. Sedley, who was 
 nevertheless the longer liver of the two, indulged in excesses 
 w hich, from their inexpressible infamy, betray a sort of insanity. 
 When he, with other blackguards of good blood, was brought to 
 trial for public outrages, which disgusted even the hideous wretches 
 that lurked about Covent Garden, Chief Justice Foster addressed 
 hiip. from the bench with a " Sirrah !" and told him, while the 
 reminiscence of the plague and the smoke of the Great Fire still 
 hung over the court, that it was such wretches as he that brought 
 God's wrath so heavily upon the kingdom. But neither the heavy 
 fine of 2,000 marks, nor his imprisonment, nor his being bound 
 over to keep the peace for three years, nor his own conscience, 
 nor the rebuke of wise men, could restrain this miscreant. He 
 was not yet free from his bond when he, and Buckhurst and others 
 were carried off to the watch-house by the night constables for 
 fighting in the streets, drunk, as was their custom, and as naked 
 as their drawn swords. On this occasion, in 1668, the King in- 
 terfered in their favor, and Chief Justice Keeling, servile betrayer 
 of his tnist, let them go scatheless ; but he punished the consta- 
 bles by whom they had been arrested ! 
 
 Etherege contributed three comedies to the stage : — " The 
 Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub," "She Would if She Could," 
 and the " Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter." Sedley wrote 
 the " Mulberry Garden ;" a tragedy, called " Antony and Cleopa- 
 tra," v/herein a single incident in Shakspeare's play is spun out 
 into five acts ; " Bellamira," in which comedy, partly founded on 
 the " Euuuchus" of Terence, he exhibited the frailty of Lady 
 Castlemaine, and the audacity of Churchill — a translated drama 
 from the French, called the " Grumbler," and a tragedy, entitled 
 the " Tyrant King of Crete." Of all Sedley's pieces, the best is 
 the " Mulberry Garden," for portions of which the author is in- 
 debted to Moliere's " Ecole des Maris," and on which Pepys's 
 criticism is not to be gainsayed : — " Here and there a pretty say- 
 ing, and that not very many either." "Bellamira" is remem- 
 bered only as the play, during the first representation of which 
 the roof of the Theatre Royal fell in, with such just discrimination 
 as to injure no one but the author. Sir Fleetwood Shepherd 
 Raid that "the wit of thi^ latter had blown the roof from the build-
 
 142 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 ing." " Not so," rejoined Sedley, " the heaviness of the play has 
 broke down the house, and buried the author in the ruins !" 
 
 Etherege's comedies were, in their day, the dear delight of the 
 majority of playgoers. I say the majority ; for though " Love in 
 a Tub" brought £1,000 profit to Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in 
 a single month of 1664, and was acted before enraptured gallants 
 and appreciating nymphs, at Whitehall, some found it a silly play. 
 It gave Etherege a name and a position ; and when his next com- 
 edy appeared, " She Would if She Could," a thousand anxious 
 people, with leisure enough of an afternoon to see plays (it was 
 only at Court that they were acted at night), were turned away from 
 the doors. To me, this piece is very distasteful, and it is not with- 
 out satisfaction I read that it was on the first night "barbarously 
 treated," according to Dennis, and that Pepys found " nothing in the 
 world good in it, and few people pleased with it." The plot and 
 denouement he pronounces as " mighty insipid ; " yet he says of the 
 piece as a whole, that it was " dull, roguish, and witty." The actors, 
 however, were not perfect on the first night. Dennis praised the 
 truth of character, the purity, freedom, and grace of the dialogue, 
 and Shadwell declared that it was the best comedy since the Res- 
 toration, to his own time. All this eulogy is not to be accepted. 
 Etherege's third comedy, the " Man of Mode," has been described 
 as " perhaps the most elegant comedy, and containing more of the 
 real manners of high life, than any one the English stage was ever 
 adorned with." In the latter respect alone is this description 
 true ; but, though the piece is dedicated to a lady, the Duchess 
 of York, it could have afforded pleasure, as the Spectator remarks, 
 only to the impure. People, no doubt, were delighted to recog- 
 nize Rochester in Dorimant, Etherege himself in Bellair, and the 
 stupendous ass. Beau Hewitt, in Sir Fopling ; but it must have 
 been a weary delight ; so debased is the nature of these people, 
 however truly they represent, as they unquestionably did, the 
 manners, bearing, and language of the higher classes. 
 
 How they dressed, talked, and thought ; what they did, and 
 how they did it ; what they hoped for, and how they pursued it ; 
 all this, and many other exemplifications of life as it was then 
 understood, may be found especially in the plays of Etherege, in 
 which there is a bustle and a succession of incidents, from the
 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS. 143 
 
 rise to the fall of the curtaiu. But the fine gentlemen are such 
 dnmitigatcd rascals, and the women — girls and matrons, are such 
 unlovely hussies, in rascality and unseemliness quite a match for 
 tlie men, that one escapes from their wretched society, and a 
 kr.owledge of their one object, and the confidences of the abom- 
 inable creatures engaged therein, with a feeling of a strong want 
 of purification, and of that ounce of civet which sweetens the im- 
 agination. 
 
 Of the remaining amateur writers there is not much to be said. 
 Rhodes was a gentleman's son without an estate, a doctor without 
 practice, and a dramatist without perseverance. His one comedy, 
 "Flora's Vagaries" (1667), gave a capital part to Nelly, and a 
 reputation to the doctor, which he failed to sustain. Corye was 
 another idle gentleman, who, in the same year, produced his 
 " Generous Enemies," and that piece was a plagiarism. Ned Rev- 
 et also exhausted himself in one comedy, "The Town Shifts," 
 which the town found insipid. Arrowsmith was in like plight, and 
 his sole comedy, " The Reformation," was obliged to give way to 
 Shakspeare's " Macbeth," converted into an opera. Nevil Payne 
 was the author of three pieces ; " Fatal Jealousy," in which Nokes 
 earned his name of Nurse Nokes ; the " Morning Ramble," which 
 was less attractive in 1673, than the "Tempest," even in an oper- 
 atic form, or " Hamlet," with Betterton for the hero ; and the 
 " Siege of Constantinople," a tragedy in which Shaftesbury and 
 his vices were mercilessly satirized. Tom Rawlins wrote three 
 poor plays, the last in 1678, and he had as great a contempt for 
 the character of author as Congreve himself He was, like Joe 
 Harris, " engraver of the Mint," kept fellowship with wits and 
 poets, wrote for amusement, and " had no desire to be known by 
 a thread-'h^xe coat, having a calling that will maintain it woolly .'" 
 Then there was Leanard, who stole not more audaciously than he 
 was stolen from, when he chose to be original — Colley Gibber 
 having taken many a point from the " Counterfeits," to enrich 
 "She Would and She Would Not." Pordage was about as dull 
 a writer as might be expected of a man who was landsteward to 
 "the memorable simpleton," Philip, Earl of Pembroke. Shipman 
 enjoys the fame of having been highly esteemed by Cowley — he 
 certainly was not by the public ; and Bancroft, the surgeon, had
 
 144 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 the reputation of having been induced to write, as he did, unsiio- 
 cessfully, for the stage, because he prescribed for, or rather against, 
 the most fashionable malady of the day, when it attacked theatre- 
 haunting fops and actors who stooped to imitate the gentlemen. 
 From these he caught the stage fever, and sufiered considerably. 
 Whitaker's one play, " The Conspiracy," is remarkable for the 
 sensation incident of a ghost appearing, leading Death by the 
 hand ! Maidwell's comedy of " The Loving Enemies" (the author 
 was an old schoolmaster), was noticeable for being " designedly 
 dull, lest by satirizing folly the author might bring upon his skull 
 the bludgeon of fools." Saunders, and his " Tamerlane the Great," 
 are now forgotten ; but Dryden spoke of the author, in an indecent 
 epilogue, as "tlie first boy-poet of our age;" who, however, 
 though he blossomed as early as Cowley, did not flourish as long. 
 
 Wilson was another professional writer, but less successful on 
 the stage than in his.recordership of Londonderry. Another law- 
 yer, Higden, was one of the jolliest of fellows ; and wishing the 
 actors to be so, too, he introduced so many drinking scenes into 
 his sole play, " The Wary Widow," that the players, who tippled 
 their real punch freely, were all drunk by the end of the third 
 act ; and the piece was then, there, and thereby, brought to an 
 end! 
 
 In the last years of the seventeenth century, a humble votary of 
 the muses appeared in DufFet, the Exchange milliner ; and in Robert 
 Gould, a servant in the household of Dorset, where he caught from 
 the wits and gay fellows assembled at Knowle or at Buckhurst, a 
 desire to write a drama. He was, however, a schoolmaster, when 
 his play of the " Rival Sisters," — in which, other means of slaugh- 
 ter being exhausted, a thunderbolt is employed for the killing a 
 lady, was but coldly received. Gould was not a plagiarist, like 
 Scott, the Duke of Roxburgh's secretary, nor so licentious. The 
 public was scandalized by incidents in Scott's " Unhappy Kiiid- 
 Qcss," in 1697. Dr. Drake was another plagiarist, who revenged 
 himself in the last-named year, for the condemnation of his "Sham 
 Lawyers," by stating on the title-page that it had been " damnably 
 acted." That year was fatal, too, to Dr. Fihner, tlie champion of 
 the stage against Collier. Even Bettcrton and Mrs. Bariy failed 
 to give life to the old gentleman's " Unnatural Brother ;" and the
 
 THE DRAMATIC POETS. 145 
 
 doctor ascribed his want of success to the fact, that never at any 
 one time had he placed more than three characters on the stage ! 
 The most prohfic of what may be termed the amateur writers, was 
 Peter Motteux, a French Huguenot, whom the revocation of tlie 
 edict of Nantes brought, in 1660, to England, where he carried on 
 the vocations of a trader in Leadenhall Street, clerk in the foreign 
 depaitment of the Post Office, translator, original writer, drama- 
 tist, and " fast man," till the too zealous pursuit of the latter calling 
 found Peter dead, in veiy bad company in St. Clements Danes, in 
 the year 1718. Of his seventeen comedies, farces, and musical 
 interludes, there is nothing to be said, save that one called " Nov- 
 elty" presents a distinct play in each act, — or five difterent pieces 
 in all. By dilferent men, Peter has been diversely rated. Dry- 
 den said of him, in reference to his one tragedy, "Beauty in 
 Distress :" 
 
 " Thy incidents, perhaps, too thick are sown ; 
 But too much plenty is thy fault alone : 
 At least but two in that good crime commit ; — 
 Thou in design, and Wycherley in wit." 
 
 But an anonymous poet writes, in reference to one of his various 
 poor adaptations, " The Island Princess :" 
 
 " Motteux and Durfey are for nothing fit. 
 But to supply with songs their want of wit." 
 
 How Motteux found time for all his pursuits is not to be ex- 
 plained ; but, much as he accomplished in all, he designed still 
 more — one of his projects being an opera, to be called " The Loves 
 of Europe," in which were to be represented the methods em- 
 ployed in various nations, whereby ladies' hearts are triumphantly 
 won. It was an odd idea; but Peter Motteux was odd in every 
 thing. And it is even oddly said of him, " that lie met with his 
 fate in trying a very odd experiment, highly disgraceful to his 
 memory !" 
 
 Hard-drinking, and what was euphoniously called c/allantry, 
 killed good-tempered Charles Hopkins, son of the Bishop of Lon- 
 donderry. Had he had more discretion and less wit, he might 
 have prospered. His tragedies, " Pyrrhus," " Boadicea," and 
 "Friendship Improved," bear traces of what he might have done. 
 Vol. 1.-1
 
 14:6 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 He has the merit, however, of not being indecent, — a fact which 
 the epilogue to " Boadicea," furnished by a friend and spoken by 
 a lady, rather deplores, and in indecent language, regrets that 
 uncleanness of jest is no longer acceptable to the town ! 
 
 Walker merits notice, less for his two pieces, " Victorious Love," 
 and " Marry or do worse," than for tlie fact that this young Bar- 
 badian was the first actor whom Eton school gave to the stage. 
 He appeared, when only eighteen, in the first-named piece, but 
 quickly passed away to the study of the law and the exercise of 
 the latter as a profession, in his native island. I know nothing 
 worthy of record of the few other gentlemen who wrote plays, 
 rather as a relaxation than a vocation, save that, Boyer, a refugee 
 Huguenot, like Motteux, and a learned man, adapted Racine's 
 " Iphigenia in Aulis," for representation ; that Oldmixon was an 
 old, unscrupulous party-writer ; and that Crauford was historio- 
 grapher for Scotland to Queen Anne, and has left no name of note 
 among dramatic writers.
 
 PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS 14^ 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS. 
 
 The men who took up dramatic autliorship seriously as a voca- 
 tion, during the last half of the seventeenth century, amount to 
 something more than two dozen. They begin with Davenant and 
 Dryden ; include Tate and Brady, Lee and Otway, Wycherley, 
 Congreve, Gibber, and Vaiibrugh ; and conclude with Farquhar, 
 and with Rowe. 
 
 I include Sir John Vanbrugh because he preferred fame as an 
 author to fame as an architect, and I insert Congreve, despite the 
 reflection that the ghost of that writer would daintily protest 
 against it if he could. When Voltaire called upon him, in Lon- 
 don, the Frenchman intimated that his visit was to the " author." 
 " I am a gentleman,^'' said Congreve. " Nay," rejoined the former^ 
 " had you been only a gentleman, you would never have received 
 a visit from me at all," 
 
 Let me here repeat the names : — Davenant, Dryden, Shirley, 
 Lee, Cowley, Shadwell, Flecknoe, Settle, Crowne, Ravenscroft, 
 Wycherley, Otway, Durfey, Banks, Rymer, Tate, Brady, Southerne, 
 Congreve, Gibber, Dilke, Vanbrugh, Gildon, Farquhar, Dennis, and 
 Hotoe. The half dozen in italics were poets-laureate. 
 
 All of them were sons of " gentlemen," save three, Davenant, 
 Cowley, and Dennis, whose sires were, respectively, a vintner, a 
 hatter, and a saddler. The sons, however, received a collegiate 
 education. Cowley distinguished himself at Cambridge, but Dav- 
 enq,nt left Oxford without a degree, and from the former Univer- 
 sity Dennis was expelled, in March, 1680, "for assaulting and 
 wounding Sir Glenham with a sword." 
 
 Besides Cowley and Dennis, we are indebted to Cambridge for 
 Dryden, Lee, and Rymer. From Oxford University came Dave- 
 nant, and Settle, degreeless as Davenant, with Shirley, whose mole 
 on his cheek had rendered him ineligible in Laud's eyes, for ordi-
 
 14:8 poran's annals of the stage. 
 
 nation ; Wyclierle}', Otway, Soiitherne, and Dilke. Dublin Uni- 
 versity yields Tate and Brady ; and better fiiiit still, Southeriie, 
 Congrevc, who went to Ireland at an early age, and Farquhar. 
 Douay gave us Gildon, and we are not proud of the gift. 
 
 Lee, Otway, and Tate were sons of clergymen. Little Crowiie's 
 father was an Lidependent minister in Nova Scotia, and Crowne 
 himself laid claim, fruitlessly, to a vast portion of the territory 
 tliere — unjustly made over by the English Government to the 
 French. Gibber was an artist, on the side of his father the statu- 
 ary, and a "gentleman" by his mother. 
 
 It may be said of a good number of these gentlemen that idle- 
 ness and love of pleasure made them dramatic poets. Shadwell, 
 Ravenscroft, Wycherley, Durfey, Banks, Southerne, Congreve, and 
 Rowe, were all apprenticed to the law ; but the study was one too 
 dull for men of their vivacious temperament, and they all turned 
 from it in disgust. According to their success, so were they 
 praised or blamed. 
 
 The least successful dramatists on the above list were the most 
 presumptuous of critics. Rymer, who was wise enough to stick to 
 the law while he endeavored to turn at least Melpomene to good 
 account, ti'ied to persuade the public that Shakspeare was even of 
 less merit than it was the fashion to assign to liim. In 1678, Ry- 
 mer boldly asserted that " in the neighing of a horse as the growl- 
 ing- of a mastiff, there is a meaning; there is as lively expression, 
 and, may I say, more humanity than many times in the tragical 
 flights of Shakspeare." He says, that " no woman bred out of a 
 pigstye could talk so meanly as Desdemona," in that tragedy 
 which Rymer calls " a bloody farce without salt or savor." Of 
 Br::tus and Caesar, he says Shakspeare has depicted them as "Jack 
 Puddins." To show how much better he understood the art, 
 Rymer published, in 1678, the ti-agedy he could not get represent- 
 ed, " Edgar, or the English Monarch." lie professes to imitate 
 the ancients, and ])is tragedy is in rhyme ; he accuses Shakspeare 
 of anachronisms, and his Saxon princess is directed to "pull off 
 her patches !" The autlior was ambitious enough to attempt to 
 supersede Shakspeare, and he pooh-poohed John Milton by speak- 
 ing of Paradise Lost as " a thing which some people were pleased 
 to call K)em."
 
 PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS. 149 
 
 Dennis was not quite so audacious as this. He was a better 
 critic than the author of the Fcedera, and a more voluminous 
 writer, or rather adapter, of dramatic pieces. He spoke, however, 
 of Tasso, as compassionately as the village painter did of Titian ; 
 but his usefulness was acknowledged by the commentator, wlio 
 remarked that men might construct good plays by following his 
 precepts, and avoiding his examples. Boyer has said something 
 similar of Gildon, who was a critic as well as dramatist — namely, 
 "he wrote an English Art of Poetry, which he had practised him- 
 self very unsuccessfully in his dramatic performances." 
 
 Cowley, although he is now little remembered as a dramatic 
 writer, was among the first who seized the earliest opportunity 
 after the Restoration to set up as playwrights ; but Cowley failed, 
 and was certainly mortified at his failure. He re-trimmed a play 
 of his early days, the " Guardian," and called it the " Cutter of 
 Coleman Street." All there is broad farce, in which the Puritan 
 " congregation of the spotless" is coarsely ridiculed, and cavalier- 
 ism held up to admiration. The audience condemned the former 
 as "profane," and Cowley's cavaliers were found to be such 
 scamps that he was suspected of disloyalty. Gentle as he was by 
 nature, Cowley was irritable under criticism. " I think there was 
 something of faction against it," he says, "by the early appear- 
 ance of some men's disapprobation before they had seen enough 
 of it to build their dislike upon their judgment." " Profane !" ex- 
 claims Abraham, with a shudder, and declares it is enough to 
 "knock a man down," Is it profane, he asks, "to deride the 
 hypocrisy of those men whose skulls are not yet bare upon the 
 gates since the public and just punishment of it ?" namely, pro- 
 fanity. Thus were the skulls of the Conmionwealth leaders tossed 
 up in comedy. He adds, in a half saucy, half deprecatory sort of 
 way that " there is no writer but may fail sometimes in point of 
 wit, and it is no less frequent for the auditors to fail in point of 
 judgment." Nevertheless, he had humbly asked favor at the hands 
 of the critics when his piece was first played, in these words : — 
 
 " Gentlemen critics of Argier, 
 For your own int'rest, I'd advise ye here 
 To let this little forlorn hope go by 
 Safe and untouch' d. ' That must not be I' you'll cry.
 
 150 DORAN's ANNA.LS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 If yc be wise, it must ; T'U tell 3'e why. 
 There are 7, 8. 9, — stay, there are behind 
 Ten plays at least, which wait but for a wind 
 And the glad news that we the enemy miss ; 
 And those are all your own, if you spare this. 
 Some are but new-trimm'd up, others quite new, 
 Some by known sliipwrights built, and others too 
 By that great author made, whoe'er he be, 
 That styles himself ' Person of Quality.' " 
 
 The "Cutter" rallied a little, and then was laid aside; but 
 some of its spars were carried oft' by later gentlemen, who have 
 piqued themselves on their originality. Colonel Jolly's advice to 
 the bully, Cutter, if he would not be known, to "take one more 
 disguise at last, and put thyself in the habit of a gentleman," has 
 been quoted as the wit of Sheridan, who took his Sir Anthony 
 Absolute from Truman, senior. And when Cowley made Aurelia 
 answer to the inquiry, if she had looked in Lucia's eye, that she 
 had, and that " there were pretty babies in it," he little thought 
 that there would rise a Tom Moore to give a turn to the pretty idea 
 and spoil it, as he has done, in the " Impromptu," in Little's Poems. 
 
 One of the most remarkable circumstances in Cowley's charac- 
 ter, considering how he distinguished himself at college, is, that 
 he never thoroughly understood the rules of grammar ! and that 
 in seriously setting up for a dramatic author, he took, like Dry- 
 den, the course in which he acquired the least honor. When 
 Charles II., on hearing of Cowley's death, declared that he had 
 not left a better man behind him in England, the King was, as- 
 suredly, not thinking of the poet as a dramatist. 
 
 Several of Cowley's contemporaries who were considered better 
 men by some judges, were guilty of oft'ence from which he was 
 entirely free. That oft'ence consisted in their various attempts to 
 improve Shakspeare, by lowering him to what they conceived to 
 be the taste of the times. Davenant took " Measure for Measure," 
 and " Much Ado about Nothing," and manipulated them into one 
 absurd comedy, the " Law against Lovers." He subsequently 
 improved "Macbeth" and "Julius Caesar;" and Dryden, who with 
 at least some show of reason, re-arranged " Troilus and Cressida," 
 united with Davenant in a sacrilegious destruction of all that is 
 beautiful in the " Tempest." Nat. Lee, who was accounted mad,
 
 PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS. 151 
 
 had at least sense enough to refrain from marring Shakspeare. 
 Shadwell corrected the great poet's view of " Timon of Athens," 
 which, as he not too modestly observed, he " made into a play ;" 
 hut, with more modesty in the epilogue, he asked for forgiveness 
 for his own part, for the sake of the portion that was Shakspeare's. 
 Crowne, more impudently, re-modelled two parts of " Henry 
 VI.,'* with some affectation of reverence for the original author, 
 and a bold assertion of his own original merits with regard to 
 Jiome portions of the play. Crowne's orignality is shown, in mak- 
 ing Clifford swear like a drunken tapster, and in affirming that a 
 king is a king — sacred, and not to be even thought ill of, let him 
 be never so hateful a miscreant. Ravenscroft, in his " Titus An- 
 dronicus," only piled the agony a little more solidly and comically, 
 and can be hardly said to have thereby molested Shakspeare. There 
 was less excuse for Otway, who, not caring to do as he pleased with 
 a doubtful play, ruthlessly seized " Romeo and Juliet," stripped the 
 lovers of their romance, clapped them into a classical costume, and 
 converted the noble but obstinate houses of Capulet and Montague 
 into riotous followers of Marius and Sylla — Cains Marius the 
 younger wishing he were a glove upon the hand of Lavinia Metella, 
 and a sententious Sulpitius striving in vain to be as light and 
 sparkling as Mercutio. Tate's double rebuke to Shakspeare, in 
 altering his " King Lear," and " Coriolanus," was a small offence 
 compared with Otway's assault. He undertook, as he says, to 
 " rectify what was wanting ;" and accordingly, he abolishes the 
 faithful fool, makes a pair of silly lovers of Edgar and Cordelia, 
 and converts the solemn climax into comedy, by presenting the 
 old king and his matchless daughter, hand in hand, alive and 
 merry, as the curtain descends. Tate smirkingly maintained that 
 he wrought into perfection the rough and costly material left by 
 81 akspeare. " In my humble opinion," said Addison, " it has lost 
 balf its beauty ;" and yet Tate's version kept its place for many 
 years ! — though not so long as Cibber's version of " Richard 
 III.," which was constructed out of Shakspeare, with more re- 
 gard for the actor than respect for the author. 
 
 In the last year of the century, the last attempt to improve that 
 inefficient poet was made by Gildon, who produced at Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields his idea of what " Measure for Measure" should be, by
 
 152 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 omitting all the comic characters, introducing music and dancing, 
 transposing incidents, adding much nonsense of his own to that 
 of Davenant, and sprinkling all with an assortment of blunders, 
 amusing enough to make some compensation for the absence of 
 the comic characters in the original play. 
 
 It seemed to be the idea of these men, that it were wise to re- 
 duce Shakspeare to the capacities of those who could appreciate 
 him. There ivere unhappy persons thus afflicted. Even Mr. 
 Pepys speaks of " Henry VIII." as " a simple thing, made up of 
 a great many patches." The " Tempest," he thinks, " has no 
 great wit — but yet good, above ordinary plays." " Othello" was 
 to him " a mean thing," compared with the last new comedy by 
 another author. " Twelfth Night," " one of the weakest plays 1 
 ever saw on the stage." " Macbeth," he liked or disliked, accord- 
 ing to the humor of the hour ; but there was a " divertissement" 
 in it, which struck him as being a droll thing in tragedy, but in 
 this case proper and natural ! Finally, he records, in 1662, of 
 the " Midsummer Night's Dream," which he " had never seen 
 before, nor ever shall again," that " it is the most insipid, ridicu- 
 lous play that I ever saw in my life." 
 
 Of the characteristics of the chief of these dramatists, it may be 
 said, first of Davenant, that, if he was quick of fancy and carefiil in 
 composition, the result is not answerable to the labor expended on 
 it. One of the pleasantest features about Dryden was, that as he 
 grew old, he increased in power; but his heart was untouched by 
 his own magic, and he was but a cold reader of the best of his 
 own works. Lee, as tender and impassioned as he is often absurd 
 and bombastic, was an exquisite reader of what he wrote, his 
 heart acknowledging the charm. Shadwell's characters have the 
 merit of being well conceived, and strongly marked ; and Shirley 
 (a poet belonging to an earlier period) has only a little above the 
 measure of honor due to him, when he is placed on a level with 
 Fletcher. Crowne is more justly placed in the third rank of 
 dramatists ; but he had originality, lacking the power to give it 
 effect. Ravenscroft had neither invention nor expression ; yet he 
 was a most prolific writer, a caricaturist, but without truth or re- 
 finement; altogether unclean. Wycherley, on the other hand, 
 was admirable for the epigrammatic turn of his stage conversa-
 
 PROFESSIONAL AUTH0}{3. 153 
 
 tions, the aptness of his ilhistratioiis, the acutencss of his observa- 
 tion, the richness of his character-painting, and tlie smartness of 
 his satire ; in the indnlg-ence or practice of all whicli, however, the 
 action of the drama is often impeded, that the audience may enjoy 
 H shower of sky-rockets. 
 
 Pope said that Wycherley was inspired by the Muses, with the 
 wit of Plautns. He had, indeed, "Plautus' wit," and an obscenity 
 rivalling that of the " Curculio ;" but he had none of the pathos 
 which is to be found in the " Rudens." But Wycherley was also 
 described as having the " art of Terence and Menander's fire." If by 
 the first. Pope meant skill in invention of plot, Wycherley surpassed 
 the Carthaginian ; and as to " Menander's fire," in Wycherley it 
 was no purifying fire ; and Wesley was not likely to illustrate a 
 sermon by a quotation from Wycherley, as St. Paul did by citing 
 a line from Menander. 
 
 We are charmed by the humor of Wycherley ; but after that, 
 posterity disagrees with Pope's verdict. We are not instructed 
 by the sense of Wycherley, nor swayed by his judgment, nor 
 warmed honestly by his spirit; his unblushing profligacy ruins 
 all. But if his men and women are as coarse as Ethereffc's or 
 
 o 
 
 Sedley's, they are infinitely more clever people ; so clever, indeed, 
 that Sheridan has not been too proud to borrow " good things" 
 from some of them. Wycherley is perhaps more natural and con- 
 sistent than Congreve, whose Jeremy speaks like an oracle, and 
 is as learned, tliough not so nasty as his master. It may be, that 
 for a man to enjoy Congreve's wit, he should be as witty as Con- 
 grove. To me, it seems to shine at best but as a brilliant on a 
 dirty finger. As for his boasted originality, Valentine and Trap- 
 bois are Don Juan and M. Dimanche ; and as for Valentine, as 
 the type of a gentleman, his similes smack more of the stable-yard 
 than the drawing-room ; and there is more of impertinent prattle 
 generally among his characters than among those of Wycherley. 
 His ladies are a shade more elegant than those of the latter poet; 
 but they are mere courtezans, brilliant, through being docked with 
 diamonds; but not a jot the more virtuous or attractive on that 
 account. Among the comedy-writers of this half century, how- 
 ever, Congi'eve and Wycherley stand supreme ; they were artists ; 
 too many of their rivals or successors were but coarsf daubers.
 
 x54 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 In coarseness of sentiment the latter could not go beyond their 
 prototypes ; and in the expression of it, they had neither the wit 
 of tljcir greatest, nor the smartness of their less famous masters. 
 This coarseness dates, however, from earlier days than those of 
 the Restoration ; and Dryden, who remembered the immorality 
 of Webster's comedies, seems to have thought that the Restora- 
 tion was to give the old grossness to the stage, as well as a new 
 king to the country. It is, nevertheless, certain that a large por- 
 tion of the public protested against this return to an evil practice, 
 and hissed his first piece, " The Wild Gallant," played in the little 
 theatre in Vere Street, Drury Lane, in 16G2. " It was not indecent 
 enough for them," said the poet, who promised " not to offend in 
 the way of modesty again." His " Kind Keeper, or Mr. Limber- 
 ham," under which name the Duke of Lauderdale is said to have 
 been satirized, and which Dryden held to be his best comedy, Avas 
 utterly condemned. " Ah !" said he, " it was damned by a cabal of 
 keepers !" It never occurred to him that the public might pre- 
 fer wit to immorality. Long before, he had written an unseemly 
 piece, called " The Rival Ladies," he seasoned it in what he main- 
 tained was the taste of the town, and in a prologue — prologues 
 then were often savagely defiant of the opinions of the audience, 
 asserted his own judgment by saying: 
 
 " He's bound to please, not to write well, and knows 
 There is a mode in playa as well as clothes." 
 
 I do not know how true it may be that Dryden, the coarsest of 
 dramatic writers, was " the modestest of men in conversation ;" 
 but I have small trust in the alleged purity of a writer who stooped 
 to gratify the baser feelings of an audience, according to their 
 various degrees ; who could compose for one class the filthy dish 
 served up in his " Wild Gallant," and for another the more dan- 
 gerous, if more refined, fare for youthful palates, so carefully man- 
 ipulated in the Alexis and Cajlia song, in his " Mariage a la 
 Mode." 
 
 We must not forget, indeed, that the standard of morals was 
 different at that time from what it is now. Later in the half cen- 
 tury, Jeremy Collier especially attacked Congrevc and Wy^cherley, 
 as men who appiictl their natural gifts to corrupt instead of purify
 
 PROFESSIONAL AUTHOES. 155 
 
 the stage. The public too were scandalized at passages in Con- 
 greve's " Double Dealer," a comedy of which the author said " the 
 mechanical part was perfect." The play was not a success, and 
 the fault was laid to its gross innuendoes, and its plainer indecency. 
 "I declare," says the author, in the preface, "that I took a par- 
 ticular care to avoid it, and if they find any, it is of their own 
 making, for I did not design it to be so understood." 
 
 This point, on which the author and the public were at issue, 
 proves that on the part of the latter the standard was improving 
 — for Congreve is deep in the mire before the first scene is over. 
 He had looked for censure for other ofience, and says in his usual 
 lofty manner with the critics : — *^ I would not have anybody 
 imagine that I think this play without its faults, for I am conscious 
 of several, and ready to own 'em ; but it shall be to tliose who are 
 able to find 'em out." This is not ill said. For the critics there 
 was at least as much contempt as fear. In " The Countiy Wife," 
 Wycherley speaks of " the most impudent of creatures, an ill poet, 
 or what is yet more impudent, a second-hand critic !" The less 
 distinguished writers w^ere, of course, severer stiU against the 
 critics. 
 
 In later years, Sheridan expressed the greatest contempt for 
 such part of the public as found that the grossness of Congreve 
 was not compensated for by his wit. Sheridan avowed that Con- 
 greve must be played unmutilated or be shelved. He compared 
 his great predecessor to a horse whose vice is cured at the expense 
 of his vigor. 
 
 Sheridan must, nevertheless, have felt that he was in error with 
 regard to these old authors. In his " Trip to Scarborough," which 
 is an entire recasting of Vanbrugh's " Relapse," he makes Loveless 
 (Smith) say, " It would surely be a pity to exclude the produc- 
 tions of some of our best writers for want of a little wholesome 
 pruning, which might be effected by any one who possessed 
 modesty enough to believe that we should preserve all we can of 
 our deceased authors, at least, till they are outdone by the living 
 ones." 
 
 Dryden said of Congreve's " Double Dealer," that though it was 
 censured by the greater part of the town, it was approved of by 
 those best qualified to judge. The people who had a sense of
 
 156 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 decency were derided by Dryden ; they were angry, he insinuated, 
 only because the satire touched them nearly. Applying the 
 grossest terms to women, in a letter to Walsh, he protests that 
 the}' are incensed because Congrcve exposes their vices, and that 
 the gallants are c<pially enraged because their vices, too, are ex- 
 posed; but even if it were true that Congreve copied from nature, 
 it is also true that he laughs ivith his vicious and brilliant bad 
 men and women, makes a joke of vice, and never attempts to cor- 
 rect it. 
 
 Dryden, as an erst Westminster boy and Cambridge man, may 
 have felt some annoyance on the exposure of his false quantity in 
 the penultimate of " Cleomenf i," but to a pert coffee-house fop, 
 who presumed to review his tragedy of tliat name, he could deliver 
 a crushing reply. In that play Cleomcnes virtuously resists the 
 blandishments of Cassandra. " Had I been left alone with a 
 young beauty," said a stripling critic to glorious John, "I would 
 not have spent my time like your Spartan." " That, sir," said 
 Dryden, " perhaps is true ; but give me leave to tell you, you are 
 no hero !" Good as this is, Lee said even a better thing to the 
 coxcomb who visited him in Bedlam, dui-ing Lee's four years' 
 sojourn there. "It is an easy thing," observed this fellow, "to 
 write like a madman." " No," answered Lee, " it is not an easy 
 thing to write like a madman ; but it is very easy to write like a 
 fool." 
 
 Dryden, however, could criticize himself with justness. He 
 confessed that he was not qualified to write comedies. He saw, 
 too, the defects in his tragedies. lie was ashamed of his "Ty- 
 rannic Love," and laughed at the rant and fustian of his Maximin. 
 He allowed that in his " Conquest of Granada" the sublimity burst 
 into burlesque, and he could censure the extravagance of Alinan- 
 zcr as freely as he did the bombast of Maximin. Still he was un- 
 easy under censure ; he was disappointed at the reception given 
 to his "Assignation," and complained bitterly of the crilics, 
 especially of Settle. His best defender was Charles II. Some 
 ('ourti(;rs ventured to wonder at the King going so often to see 
 " The Spanisli Friar," as the piece was a wliolesale robbery. 
 " Oddii Fish !" exclaimed Charles, " select me another such a 
 comedy, and I'll go and see it as often I do ' The Spanish Friar.' "
 
 PROFESSrOXAL AUTHORS. 157 
 
 **A11 for Love" is Drydeii's most carefully written play, and the 
 author repeatedly declared that the scene in Act 1, between An- 
 thony and Ventidius, was superior to any thing he had ever com- 
 pofied 
 
 Dryden atti'ibuted whatever merit he had as a writer of prose to 
 having studied the works of Tillotson, and the prelate, it will be 
 remembered, owed some of his graces of delivery to Betterton. 
 In his comedies, Dryden was the encourager, not the scourgcr of 
 vice ; and yet he could warmly approve the purity of Southerne, 
 when Southerne chose to be pure, and acknowledge that it were 
 as politic to silence vicious poets as seditious preachers. If there 
 were few good poets in his day, Dryden sees the cause in the 
 turbulence of the times ; and if people loved the stilted nonsense 
 of heroic tragedies, it was simply, he says, because " the fashion 
 was set them by the court." To court-protection, he himself owed 
 much, and he states what one may smile at now, that the King's 
 kindness, in calling the " Maiden Queen" his play, — that singular 
 piece, in which there are eight women and three men, saved the 
 drama from the malice of the poet's enemies. There is no such 
 privilege for poets, in our days ! 
 
 Had Shadwell, who left the law to find a livelihood by litera- 
 ture, not been a Whig, we should have heard less of him in par- 
 allels or contrasts with Dryden. Of his dramatic pieces, amount- 
 ing to about a dozen and a half, there is scarcely one that does 
 not please more in perusal than any by the poet of the greater 
 name, — always excepting Dryden's " Love for Love." Shadwell's 
 "Squire of Alsatia," "Bury Fair," "Epsora Wells," and some 
 others, were necessarily favorites with his public, as they are good 
 character comedies, brisk with movement and incident. For 
 attacking Dryden's " Duke of Guise," Dryden pilloried the assail- 
 ant for ever, as " Mac Flecnoe ;" but when he says that " Shadwell 
 never deviates into sense," he has as little foundation for his 
 assertion as he has for his contempt of Wilmot, when he says in 
 i\\Q Essay upon Satire, "Rochester I despise for want of wit.'' 
 Rochester may have praised Shadwell because he hated Dryden ; 
 but Dryden's aspersions on the other two spring decidedly more 
 from his passion than his judgment. To Shadwell was given the 
 laureateship of which Dryden was deprived. The latter would
 
 158 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 have borne the deprivation better if the laui-el-crov^'n had fallen on 
 another head, as he sings to Congreve : 
 
 "Oh that your brows my laurel had sustained; 
 Well had I been depos'd, if you had reigned 1" 
 
 In one respect, Dryden was no match at all for Shadwell ; and, 
 indeed, he has, inadvertently, confessed as much. When speaking 
 of his incapacity for writing comedy, he says, " I want that gayety 
 of humor which is required in it ; my conversation slow and dull ; 
 my humor saturnine and resei"ved. In short, I am none of those 
 who endeavor to break jests in company, and endeavor to make 
 repartees ; so that those who decry my comedies do me no injury, 
 except it be in point of profit ; reputation in them is the last thing 
 to which I shall preten I." This is the picture of a dull man, of 
 which Shadwell, whose comedies, to say the least of them, have 
 as much merit as Dryden's, was the exact opposite. He was a 
 most brilliant talker ; and Rochester remarked of him that even 
 had Shadwell burnt all he wrote, and only printed all he spoke, 
 his wit and humor Avould be found to exceed that of any other 
 poet. 
 
 We come, however, to a greater than Shadwell, in Sir John 
 Vanbrugh, who belongs to two centuries, and who was a man of 
 many occupations, but a dramatist by predilection. lie was ar- 
 chitect, poet, wit, herald ; he stole some of his plots ; and he sold 
 his office of Clarencieux, to which he had been appointed, because 
 he was a successful play-wright. He had humor, and was exceed- 
 ingly coarse ; but, says Schlegel, " under Queen Anne, manners 
 became again more decorous ; and this may be easily traced in 
 the comedies. In the series of English comic poets, Wycherley, 
 Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Steele, Gibber, <fec., we may per- 
 ceive something like a gradation from the most unblushing inde- 
 cency to a tolerable degree of modesty." This, however, is only 
 partly true ; and Schlegel himself remarks in the same page, " that 
 after all we know of the licentiousness of manners under Charles 
 II., we are still lost in astonishment at the audacious ribaldry of 
 Wycherley and Congreve." 
 
 Of Vanbrugh's ten or eleven plays, that which has longest kept 
 the stage is the " Relapse," still acted, in its altered form, by
 
 PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS. 159 
 
 Sheridan, as the " Trip to Sc-u-borough." This piece was pro- 
 duced at t]ie Theatre de I'Odeon, in Paris, in the spring of 1862, 
 as a posthumous comedy of Voltaire's ! It was called the " Cerate 
 de Boursoufle," and had a " run." The story ran with it that 
 Voltaire had composed it in his younger days for private represen- 
 tation, that it had been more than once played in the houses of his 
 noble friends, under various titles, that he had then locked it up, and 
 that the manuscript had only recently been discovered by the lucky 
 individual who persuaded the manager of the Odeon to produce it 
 on his stage! The bait took. All the French theatrical world 
 in the capital flocked to the Faubourg St. Germain to witness a 
 new play by Voltaire. Critics examined the plot, philosophized 
 on its humor, applauded its absurdities, enjoyed its wit, and con- 
 gratulated themselves on the circumstance that the Voltairean 
 wit especially was as enjoyable then as in the preceding century ! 
 Of the authorship they had no doubt whatever ; for, said they, 
 if Voltaire did not write this piece, who comZo? have written it? 
 The reply was given at once from this country ; but when the 
 mystification was exposed, the French critics gave no sign of 
 awarding honor where honor was due, and probably this transla- 
 tion of the " Relapse" may figure in future French editions as an 
 undoubted work by Voltaire ! 
 
 On looking back upon the names of these authors by profession, 
 the brightest still is Otway's, of whom his critical biographers 
 have said that, in tragedy, few English poets ever equalled him. 
 His comedies are certainly detestable ; but of his tragedies " Ven- 
 ice Preserved" alone is ever now played. The " Orphan" is read ; 
 " Alcibiades." " Don Carlos," " Titus and Berenice," are all for- 
 gotten. Successful as he is in touching the passions, and eminent- 
 ly so in dealing with ardent love, Otway, I think, is inferior to 
 Lee, occasionally, in the latter respect. Of Lee, Mrs. Siddon?, 
 entertained the greatest admiration, notwithstanding his bombast, 
 and she read his " Theodosius, or the Force of Love," with such 
 feeling, as to at once wring sighs from the heart and tears from 
 the eyes. She saw in Lee's poetry a very rare quality, or, as 
 Campbell remarks, " a much more frequent capability for stage 
 efiect than a mere reader would be apt to infer from the super- 
 abundance of the poet's extravagance." Let it not be forgotten
 
 IGO dokan"s aknals of the stage. 
 
 that Addison accuses Lee and Shakspcare of a spurious sublimity ; 
 and, he adds, that " in these authors, the atiectatiou of greatness 
 often hulls the perspicuity of style I" 
 
 The professional authors were not equally successful. Davenant 
 achieved a good estate, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, 
 like a gentleman. Dryden, with less to bequeath, was interred in 
 the same place, without organ or ceremony, two choristers walk- 
 ing before the body, candle in hand, and singing an ode of Horace, 
 — like a poet. His victim, Tom Shadwell, acquired wealth, fairly ; 
 he lies in Chelsea Church, but his son raised a monument to his 
 memory in the Abbey, that he might be in thus much as great a 
 man as his satirist. Congreve, too, is there, after enjoying a 
 greater fortune than the others together had ever built up, and 
 leaving £10,000 of it to Henrietta, Duchess of jSJarlborough, who 
 so valued the " honor and pleasure of his company," when living, 
 that, as the next best thing, she sat of an evening with his 
 " wax figure" after he was dead. Among the dead there, also, rest 
 Cibber, Vanbrugh, and Rowe, of whom, the first, too careless of 
 his money aftairs, died the poorest man. 
 
 Better men than either of the last, sleep in humbler graves. 
 Poor Nat Lee, tottering homeward from the Bull and Harrow, on 
 a winter's night, and with more punch under liis belt than his 
 brain could bear, falls down in the snow, near Duke Street, Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields, and is dead when he is picked up. He is shuf- 
 fled away to St, Clement's Danes. If Lee died tipsy, outside a 
 public-house, Otway died half-starved, within one, at the Bull, on 
 Tower Hill. The merits of Lee and Otway might have carried 
 them to Westminster, but their misfortunes barred the way 
 thither. Almost as unfortunate. Settle died, after hissing in a 
 dragon at Bartholomew Fair, a recipient of the charity of the 
 Charter-house. Crowne died in distress, just as he hoped his 
 *' Sir Courtly Nice" would have placed him at his ease. Wy- 
 cherley, with less excuse, died more embarrassed than Crowne, or 
 would have done so had he not robbed his young wife of her por- 
 tion, made it over to his creditors, and left her little wherewith to 
 bury him in the churchyard in Covent Garden. Two other poets, 
 who passed away unencumbered by a single splendid shilling, rest 
 in St. James's, Westminster, — Tom Durfey and Bankes. Careless,
 
 PROFESSIONAL AUTHORS. 'l«)l 
 
 easy, free, and fudclling Tate died in the sanctuary of the Mint, 
 and St. George's, South wark, gave him a few feet of earth ; while 
 Brady pushed his way at court to preferment, and died a comfort- 
 able pluralist and chaplain to Carolitie, Princess of Wales. Fanpi- 
 aar, with all his wit, died a broken-hearted beggar, at the age of 
 thirty-seven ; and Dennis, who struggled foily years longer with 
 fortune, came to the same end, utterly destitute of all but the 
 contemptuous pity of his foes, and the insulting charity of Pope. 
 
 I think that of the whole brotherhood, Southerne, after lie left 
 the army and had sown his wild oats, was the most prudent and 
 not the least successful. He was a perfect gentleman ; he did not 
 lounge away his days or nights in coffee-houses or taverns, but after 
 labor, cultivated friendship in home circles, where virtue and mod- 
 erate mirth sat at the hearth. In his bag-wig, his black velvet 
 dress, his sword, powder, brilliant buckles, and self-possession, 
 Southerne charmed his company, wherever he visited, even at 
 four-score. He kept the even tenor of his way, owing no man 
 any thing ; never allowing his nights to be the marrer of his morn- 
 ings ; and at six and eighty carrying a bright eye, a steady hand, a 
 clear head, and a warm heart — wherewith to calmly meet and 
 make suiTender of all to the Inevitable Angel. 
 
 As Southerne originally wrote " Oronooko," that tragedy could 
 not now be represented. The mixture of comic scenes with 
 tragic is not its worst fault. His comedies are of no worth what- 
 ever, except as they illustrate the manners and habits of his times. 
 They more closely resemble those of Ravenscroft than of Congreve 
 or Wycherley. His " Sir Anthony Love " was successful ; it is 
 impossible to conjecture wherefore. It has not a wise sentiment 
 or a happy saying in it ; and all to be learned from it is, that 
 Englishmen, when abroad, in those days, used to herd together in 
 self-defence, against being cheated ; that they were too wise to 
 learn any thing by travel ; and were fond of passing themselves off 
 as having made a campaign. As Cowley anticipated Moore, in 
 the " Cutter," so, in " Sir Anthony," has Southerne anticipated 
 Burns. " Of the King's creation," says the supposed Sir Anthony 
 to Count Yerola, " you may be ; but he who makes a count, never 
 made a man." There is the same sentiment improved in the well- 
 known lines :
 
 102 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 A king may mak' a belted knight, 
 
 A marquis, duke, ar, a' that; 
 But an honest man's aboon his might, 
 
 Gude faith he eauua fa' that. 
 
 Southerne was not more famous for tlie nicety of his costume 
 than " Uttle starched Johnny Crowne"was for his stiff, long cravat,* 
 or Dryden for liis Norwich drugget suit, or his gayer dress in later 
 days, when, with sword and Chadrieux wig, he paraded the Mul-- 
 berry garden with his Mistress Reeve — one of that marvellous 
 company of 1672, which writers with long memories used to sub- 
 sequently say could never be got together again. Otway's thought- 
 ful eye redeemed his slovenly dress, and his fatness, and seemed 
 to warrant the story of his repenting after his carousing. Lee 
 dressed as ill as Otway, but lacked his contemplative eye, yet ex- 
 celled him in fair looks, and in a peculiar luxuriance of hair. 
 
 Shaftesbury, in his " Characteristics," shows us how the play- 
 house authors throned it in coffee-houses, and were worshipped 
 by small wits. There were, however, dramatic authors who never 
 went thither ; and of these, the ladies, I have now to speak.
 
 THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES. 163 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES. 
 
 During tliis half century, there were seven ladies who were 
 more or less distinguished as writers for the stage. These were 
 the virtuous Mrs. Philips, the audacious Aphra Behn, the not less 
 notorious Mrs. Manley, the gentle and learned Mrs. Cockburn, the 
 rather aristocratic Mrs. Boothby (of whom nothing is known, but 
 that she wrote one play, called " Marcatia," in 1669), fat Mrs. Pix, 
 and that thorough Whig, Mrs. Centlivre. The last four belong 
 also to the beginning of the eighteenth century; and three at 
 least apologized that they, women as they were, should have ven- 
 tured to become dramatists. 
 
 The " virtuous Mrs. Philips," of Evelyn, the " matchless Orinda," 
 of Cowley and other poets, translated the " Pompey " and " Hor- 
 ace " of Corneille. In those grave pieces, represented at Court in 
 the early years of the Restoration, the poetess endeavored to di- 
 rect the popular taste, and to correct it also. Had she not died 
 (of small-pox, and in the thirty-third year of her age), she might 
 liave set such example to the play-wrights as the Bettertons did to 
 the actors ; but her good intentions were frustrated, and her place 
 was unhappily occupied by the most shameless woman who ever 
 took pen in hand, designedly to corrupt the public. 
 
 Aphra Behn was a Kentish woman, whose early years were 
 passed at Surinam, where her father, Johnson, had resided, as 
 lieutenant-general. After a wild training in that fervid school, she 
 repaired to London, married a Dutchman, named Behn, who 
 S(;ems to have straightway disappeared, — penetrated, by means of 
 her beauty, to the court of Charles H., — and obtained, by means 
 of her wit, an irregular employment at Antwerp, — that of a spy. 
 The letters of her Dutch lovers belong to romance ; but there is 
 warrant for the easy freedom of this woman's life. In other 
 respects she w.is unfortunate. On her return to England, her
 
 164 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 political reports and propliccies were no more credited than the 
 monitions of old, by Cassandra ; so she abandoned England to its 
 fate, and herself " to pleasure and the muses." 
 
 Her opportunites for good were great, but she abused them all. 
 She might have been an honor to womaidiood ; — she was its dis- 
 grace. She might have gained glory by her labors ; — but she 
 chose to reap infamy. Her pleasures were not those which became 
 an honest woman; and as for her " Muses," she sat not with 
 them on the slopes of Helicon, but dragged them down to her 
 level, where the Nine and their unclean votary wallowed together 
 in the mire. 
 
 There is no one that equals this woman in downright nastiness, 
 save Ravenscroft and Wycherley ; but the latter of these had 
 more originality of invention and grace of expression. To these 
 writers, and to those of their detestable school, she set a revolting 
 example. Dryden preceded her, by a little, on the stage ; but 
 Mrs. Behn's trolloping muse appeared there before the other two 
 writers I have mentioned, and was still making unseemly exhi- 
 bition there after the coming of Congreve. With Dryden she 
 vied in indecency, and was not overcome. To all other male 
 writers of her day she, served as a provocation and an apology. 
 Intellectually, she was qualified to have led them through pure 
 and bright ways ; but she was a mere harlot, who danced through 
 uncleanness, and dared or lured them to follow. Remonstrance 
 was useless with this wanton hussy. As for her private life, it 
 has found a champion in a female friend, whose precious balsam 
 breaks the head it would anoint. According to this friend, Mrs. 
 Behn had numerous good qualities ; but " she was a woman of 
 sense, and consequently loved pleasure ;" and she was " more gay 
 and free than the modesty of the precise will allow." 
 
 Of Aphra Behn's eighteen plays, produced between 1671 and 
 1696, — before which last year, however, she had died, — but few 
 are original. They are adaptations from Marlowe, from Wilkins, 
 from Killigrew, from Brome, from Tatham, from Shirley, from 
 the Italian comedy, from Moliere, and more legitimately from the 
 old romances. She adapted skilfully ; and she was never dull. 
 But then, all her vivacity is wjusted on iilth. When the public 
 sent forth a cry of horror at some of the scenes in her play of
 
 THE DRAMATIC AUTflOKESSES. 165 
 
 " The Lucky Chance," she vindicated herself by asking, " was she 
 not loyal ?" — " Tory to the back bone ;" — had she not made the 
 King's enemies ridiculous, in her five-act farces ; — and had she 
 not done homage to the King, by dedicating her " Feigned Cour- 
 tezans" to Nell Gwyn, and styling that worthy sister of her's in 
 vice and good nature, — so perfect a creature as to be something 
 akin to divinity ? 
 
 For Mrs, Manley there was more excuse. That poor daughter 
 of an old royalist had some reason to depict human nature as bad, 
 in man and in woman. The young orphan trusted herself to the 
 guardianship of a seductive kinsman, who married her when he 
 had a wife still living. This first wrong destroyed her, but not 
 her villanous cousin ; and, unfortunately, the woman upon whom 
 the world looked cool, incurred the capricious compassion of the 
 Duchess of Cleveland. When the caprice was over, and Mrs. 
 Manley had only her own resources to rely upon, she scorned the 
 aid offered her by General Tidcombe, and made her first venture 
 for the stage in the tragedy of " Royal Mischief," produced at the 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre, in 1696. It is all desperate love, of 
 a very bad quality, and indiscriminate murder, relieved by variety 
 in the mode of killing ; one unfortunate gentleman, named Osman, 
 being thrust into a cannon and fired from it, after which his wife, 
 Selima, is said to be 
 
 " Gathering the smoking relics of her lord 1" 
 
 The authoress, in her next venture, in the same year, a comedy, 
 written in a week, and which perished in a night, " Tlie Lost 
 Lover," introduced what the public had been taught to appreciate 
 — a virtuous wife. Her other pieces, written at intervals of ten 
 years, were " Almyna," founded on the story of the Caliph who 
 was addicted to marrying one day, and beheading his wife the 
 next ; and " Lucius," a semi-sacred play, on the supposed first 
 Christian king of Britian — both unsuccesssful. 
 
 Mrs. Manley survived till 1724. When not under the "protec- 
 tion" of a friend, or in decent mourning for tlie lovers who died 
 mad for her, she was engaged in composing the Memoirs of the 
 New Atalantis, — a satire against the Whig ministry, the author- 
 ship of which she courageously avowed, rather than that the
 
 166 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 printer and publisher sliould suft'er for lier. The Tory ministry 
 which succeeded, empUiyed lier pen ; and with Swift's Alderman 
 Barber, — he being Tory printer, she resided till her death, mis- 
 tress of the liouse, and of the aldei'man. 
 
 Contemporary with Mrs. Manley was Miss Trotter, the daughter 
 of a Scottish officer, but better known as Mrs. Cockburn, wife and 
 widow of an English clergyman. She was at first a very learned 
 young lady, whose speculations took her to tlie church of Rome, 
 from which in later years she seceded. She was but seventeen, 
 Avhen, in 1696, lier sentimental tragedy, "Agnes de Castro," was ■ 
 played at Drury Lane, Her career, as writer for the stage, lasted 
 ten years, during which she produced five pieces, all of a senti- 
 mental but refined class, — illustrating love, friendship, repentance, 
 and conjugal faith. There is some amount of word-spinning in 
 these plays ; and this is well marked by Genest's comment on 
 Mrs. Cockburn's " Revolution of Sweden," namely, that if Con- 
 stantia, in the third act, had been influenced by common sense, 
 she would liave spoiled the remainder of the play. 
 
 Nevertheless, Mrs. Cockburn was a clever woman, and kept no 
 dull household, though she there wrote a defence of Locke, while 
 her reverend husband was pursuing an account of the Mosaic 
 deluge. As a metaphysical and controversial writer, she gathered 
 laurels and abuse in her day, for the latter of which she found 
 compensation in the friendship and admiration of Warburton. 
 She was a valiant woman, too ; one, whom asthma and the ills of 
 life could not deter from labor. But death relieved her from all 
 these, in 1749 ; and she is remembered in the history of literature 
 as a good and well-accomplished woman ; the very opposite of 
 Mrs. Behn and all her heroines. 
 
 Fat Mrs. Pix enjoyed a ceilain sort of vogue from 1690 to 
 1709. She came from Oxfordshire, was the daughter of a clersrv- 
 man, was married to a Mr. Pix, and was a woman of genius, and 
 much flesh. She wrote eleven plays, but not one of them 
 lias survived to our time. Her comedies are, however, 
 full of life ; her tragedies more than brimful of loyalty ; later 
 dramatists liave not disdained to pick up some of Mrs. Pix's for- 
 gotten incidents ; and, indeed, contemporary play-wriglits stole 
 her playful lightning, if not her thunder ; her plots were not ill-
 
 THE DRAMATIC AUTHORESSES. 167 
 
 conceived, but tliey were carried out by inexpressive language, 
 Rome of her tragedies being in level prose, and some, mixtures of 
 rhyme and blank verse. She herself occasionally remodelled an 
 old play, but did not improve it ; while, when she trusted to her- 
 selr^ at least in a farcical sort of comedy, she was bustling and 
 humorous. Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Cockburn, and Mrs. Pix were 
 ridiculed in a farce called the " The Female Wits," their best en- 
 dowments satirized, and their peculiarities mimicked. Tlie first 
 and last of those ladies represented some of their dramas as writ- 
 ten by men, a subterfuge to which a greater than either of them 
 was also obliged to resort, namely, Susanna Centli\Te. 
 
 Susanna Freeman was her maiden name. She was the orphan 
 daughter of a stout but hardly-dealt with parliamentarian, and of 
 a mother who died too early for the daughter's remembrance. 
 Anthony Hammond is said to have been in love with her, a 
 nephew of Sir Stephen Fox to have married her, and a Captain 
 Carrol to have left her a widow — all before she was well out of 
 her teens. Thus she had passed through a school of experience, 
 and to turn it to account, Susanna Carrol began writing for 
 the stage. Writing for — and acting on it, for we find her in 1706 
 playing " Alexander the Great" at Windsor, where she also mar- 
 ried Mr. Centlivre, Queen Anne's chief cook. 
 
 Of Mrs. Centlivre's nineteen plays, three at least are still well 
 known, the " Busy Body," the " Wonder," and " A Bold Stroke for 
 a Wife." When she offered the first to the players — it was her 
 ninth play — the actors unanimously denounced it. Wilks, who 
 had hitherto been unaccustomed to the want of straining after wit, 
 the common sense, the unforced sprightliness, the homely nature, 
 for which this piece is distinguished — declared that not only would 
 it be " damned," but that the author of it. could hardly expect to 
 avoid a similar destiny ; and yet its triumph was undo ibted, 
 though cumulative. 
 
 Hitherto the authoress had written a tragi-comedy or two, the 
 comic scenes in which alone gave evidence of strength, but not 
 always of delicacy. She had, in others, stolen wholesale from 
 Moliere, and the old English dramatists. She produced a con 
 tinuation to the " Busy Body," in " Marplot," but we do not care 
 for it ; and it is not till her fourteenth piece, the " Wonder," ap-
 
 168 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 peared in 1714, that she again challenges admiration. This, too, 
 is an adaptation ; but it is superior to the " Wrangling Lovers," 
 fi'om which it is partly taken, and which had no such hen) 
 as the Don Felix of Wilks. The " Bold Stroke for a Wife" 
 was first played in 1718, when the Tory public had forgiven the 
 author for her satires against them, and the theatrical public het 
 fresh adaptations of old scenes and stories. The " Bold Stroke 
 for a Wife" is entirely her own, and has had a wonderful succes- 
 sion of Colonel Feignwells, froni C. Bullock down to Mr. Brahanj ! 
 This piece, however, was but moderately successful ; but it has 
 such vivacity, fun, and quiet liumor in it, that it has outlived 
 many a one that began with greater triumph, and in "the real 
 Simon Pure," first acted by Griffin, it has given a proverb to the 
 English language. One other piece, the "Artifice," a five act 
 farce, played in 1722, concludes the list of plays from the pen of 
 this industrious and gifted woman. 
 
 Mrs. Centlivre had unobtrusive humor, sayings full of signifi- 
 cance rather than wit, wholesome fun in her comic, and earnestness 
 in her serious, characters. Mrs. Centlivre, in her pictures of life, 
 attracts the spectator. There may be, now and then, something, 
 as in Dutch pictures, which had been as well away ; but this apart, 
 all the rest is true, and pleasant, and hearty ; the grouping perfect, 
 the color faithful, and enduring too — despite the cruel sneer of 
 Pope, who, in the Life of Curll, sarcastically alludes to her as 
 "the cook's wife in Buckingham Court," in which vicinity to 
 Spring Gardens, Mrs. Centlivre died in 1723. 
 
 Such were the characteristics of the principal authors who led, 
 followed, trained, or flattered, the public taste of the last lialf of 
 the seventeenth century, and a few of them of the first pari of the 
 century which succeeded. Before we pass onward to the '.!,VigQ of 
 the eighteenth century, let us cast a glance back, and lo « a'., the 
 quality of the audiences for whom these poets catered.
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 169 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Speedily after the Restoration, there was no more constant 
 visitor at the theatre than Charles IL, with a gay and what is 
 called a gallant gathering. Thus we are an-ested by a crowd at 
 the Temple Gate. On the 15th of August, 1661, Charles and the 
 Duke and Duchess of York are leaving the apartments of the 
 Reader, Sir Henry Finch, with whom they have been dining, and 
 an eager audience is awaiting them in the Lincoln's Inn Fields 
 Theatre, where " The Wits" is to be represented — a piece " never 
 yet acted," says Pepys, " with scenes." Two nights later, the 
 same piece is playing, and the Queen of Bohemia is there, 
 " brought by my Lord Craven," whom some do not scruple to 
 speak of as the ex-Queen's husband. A week later, Charles and 
 " Madame Palmer" were at the theatre in Drury Lane, with the 
 Duke of York and his wife. " My wife," says Pepys, " to her 
 gi'cat content, had a full sight of them all the while." Tlie King's 
 Madame Palmer became, in fact, an attraction ; seated between 
 Charles and his brother, Pepys beheld her a few weeks later, 
 when he and his wife escorted Lord Sandwich's young daughters 
 to the theatre, and obtained places close to Madame and her 
 double escort. The j^Iay was Jonson's " Bartholomew Fair," with 
 the puppets, and all its virulent satire against the Puritans, As 
 Pepys listened and remembered that no one had dared to bring 
 forward this slashing play for the last forty years, he wondered at 
 the audacity of managers now, and grieved that the King should 
 countenance it. But what recked the laughing King, when Puri- 
 tanism was in the dust, and troops of cavaliers were singing 
 " Up we go ?" 
 
 Occasionalh', if Pepys witnesses a play ill-acted, he finds com- 
 pensation in sitting near some " pretty and ingenious lady." At 
 tliut time oranges were more costly than pines are now, and to 
 Vol. I.— 8
 
 170 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 offer one of tlie former, even to an unknown fair neighbor, was an 
 intimation of a readiness on the part of the presenter to open a 
 conversation. To behold his most sacred Majesty seated in liis 
 box was for ever, with Pepys, even a stronger attraction than the 
 eyes or the wit of the fairest and sprightliest of la<lies. Again 
 and again he registers a vow to refrain frona resorting to tlie thea- 
 tre during a certain period, but lie no sooner hears of tlie presence 
 there of his religious and gracious King, than he breaks his vow, 
 rushes to the play, perjures himself out of loyal courtesy, and 
 next morning writes himself down an ass. 
 
 At the Cockpit in Drury Lane, Charles's consort, Catherine, was 
 exhibited to the English people for the first time, on an autumn 
 afternoon of 1662, when Shirley's "Cardinal" was represented. 
 Pepys, of course, was there too ; and reproduces the scene : " By 
 very good fortune, I did follow four or five gentlemen who were 
 carried to a little private door in a wall, and so crept through a 
 narrow place, and came into one of the boxes next the King's, but 
 so as I could not see the King or Queen, but many of the fine 
 ladies, who are not really so handsome generally, as I used to 
 take them to be, but that they are finely dressed. The company 
 that came in with me into the box were all Frenchmen that could 
 speak no English ; but. Lord, what sport they made to ask a 
 pvetty lady that they got among them, that understood both French 
 and English, to make her tell them what the actors said !" 
 
 Soon after this, in dreary November, there is again a crowded 
 audience to greet the King and Queen, with whom now appears 
 the Castlemaine, once more, and near her Lucy Walter's boy, the 
 Duke of Monmouth, all beauty and pretty assurance ; and Pepys 
 sees no harm in a company who have come together to witness a 
 curaedy whose name might well describe the look and bearing of 
 the outraged Queen, namely, the " Scornful Lady." No wonder 
 that, in December, at the tragedy of the " Valiant Cid," she di ' 
 not smile once during the whole play. But nobody present on 
 that occasion seemed to take any pleasure but what was in the 
 greatness and gallantry of the con>pany. 
 
 That greatness and that gallantry were the idols of the diarist. 
 "With what scorn he talks of the audience at the Duke's Theatre a 
 few days later, when the " Siege of Rhodes" was rcprcL,ented. lie
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 171 
 
 was ill-pleased. The house was " full of cidzens /" " There was 
 hardly," says the fastidious son of an honest tailor, " a gallant man 
 or woman in the house !" So, in Januar}^ 1663, at the same 
 theatre, he records that " it was full of citizens, and so the less 
 pleasant." The Duke's House was less " genteel" than the Cock- 
 pit ; but the royal visitors at the latter were not much more 
 refined in their manners than the audience in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 or Salisbury Court. Early in Januaiy, 1663, the Duke of York 
 and his wife honored a play of Killigrew's by their presence, 
 and did not much edify the spectators by their conduct, 
 "They did show," writes the immortal journalist, "some im- 
 pertinent and methought unnatural dalliances there, before the 
 whole world, such as kissing of hands, and leaning one upon 
 another." 
 
 But there were worse scenes than these conjugal displays at the 
 King's House. When Pepys was dying to obtain the only prize 
 in all the world he desired, Lady Castlemaine's picture, that bold 
 . person was beginning to lose, at once, both her beauty and her 
 place of favor with the King. Pepys was immensely gTieved, for 
 she was always more to him than the play and players to boot. 
 He had reason, however, to be satisfied that she had not lost her 
 boldness. In January, 1664, the "Indian Queen" was played at 
 the King's House, in Druiy Lane. Lady Castlemaine was present 
 before the King arrived. When he entered his box, the Countess 
 .caned over some ladies who sat between her and the royal box, 
 and whispered to Charles. Having been thus bold in face of the 
 audience, she arose, left her own box and appeared in the King's, 
 where she deliberately took a place between Charles and liis 
 brother. It was not the King alone, but the whole audience with 
 him who were put out of countenance by this cool audacity, ex- 
 hibited to prove that she was not so much out of favor as the 
 world believed. 
 
 What a contrast is presented by the appearance of Cromwell's 
 daughter. Lady Mary, in her box at this same theatre, Avith her 
 husband, Viscount Falconbridge ! Pepys praises her looks and 
 her dress, and suggests a modest embarrassment on her part as 
 the house began to fill, and the admiring spectators began to 
 ^aze too curiously on Oliver's loved child ; " she put on her
 
 172 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 vizard, and so kept it on all the play, which of late has become 
 a great fashion among the ladies, which hides their whole face." 
 
 Mary Cromwell, modestly masked, was a prettier sight than 
 what Pepys on other occasions describes as " all the pleasure of 
 the play ;" meaning thereby, the presence of Lady Castlemaine, or 
 of Miss Stewart, her rival in royal favor, but not her equal in peei- 
 less beauty. With these, but in less exalted company than they, 
 we now meet with Nell Gwyn, in front of the house. She is seen 
 gossiping with Pepys, who is ecstatic at the condescension ; or 
 she is blazing in the boxes, prattling with the young and scented 
 fops, and impudently lying across any three of them, that she 
 may converse as she pleases with a fourth. And there is Sir 
 Charles Sedley looking on, smiling with or at the actors of these 
 scenes, among the audience, or sharply and wittily criticizing the 
 players on the stage, and the words put into their mouths by the 
 author, or flirting with vizard masks in the pit. Altogether, there 
 is much confusion and interruption ; but there is also, occasion- 
 ally, disturbance of another sort, as when, in June, 1664, a stonn, 
 of hail and rain broke through the roof of the King's House, and 
 drove the half-drowned people from the pit in a disorder not at 
 all admired. 
 
 Like Evelyn, Pepys was often at the Court plays, but, except 
 with the spectacle of the Queen's ladies, and the King's, too, for 
 that matter, he found small delight there, — the house, although 
 fine, being bad for hearing. This Court patronage, public and 
 private, increased the popularity of the drama, as the vices of the 
 King increased the fashion of being dissolute ; and when Charles 
 was sadly in need of a collecting of members of pari lament to throw 
 out a bill which very much annoyed him, and was carried against 
 him, he bade the Lord Chamberlain to scour the play and other 
 houses, where he knew his parliamentary friends were to be found, 
 and to send them down to vote in favor of their graceless master. 
 
 Ladies of quality, and of good character, too, could in those 
 days appear in masks in the boxes, and unattended. The vizard 
 had not yet fallen to the disreputable. Such ladies as are above 
 designated entered into struggles of wit with the fine gentlemen, 
 bantering them unmercifully, calling thom by their names, and 
 refusing to tell their own. All this was to the disturbance of tho
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 173 
 
 re, but this battle of the wits was so fi-equently more amusing 
 than what might be passing for the moment on the stage, that the 
 audience near listened to the disputants rather than to the actoi-s. 
 Sir Cliarles Sedley was remarkable as a disputant with the ladies, 
 and as a critic of the players. That the overhearing of what was 
 said by the most famous of the box visitors was a pleasant pastime 
 of many hearers, is made manifest by Pepys, who once took his 
 place on " the upper bench next the boxes," and described it as 
 having " the advantage of seeing and hearing the great people, 
 which may be pleasant when there is good store." 
 
 To no man then living in England did fellowship with people 
 of quality convey such intense delight as to Pepys. " Lord !" he 
 exclaims, in May, 1667, "how it went against my heart to go 
 away from the very door of the Duke's playhouse, and my Lady 
 Castlemaine's coach, and many great coaches there, to see ' The 
 Siege of Rhodes.' I was very near making a forfeit," he adds, 
 " but I did command myself." 
 
 He was happiest with a baronet like Sir Philip Frowd at his 
 side, and behind him a couple of impertinently pretty actresses, 
 like Pierce and Knipp, pulling his hair, drawing him into gos- 
 siping flirtations, and inducing him to treat them with fruit. The 
 constant presence of lively actresses in the front of the house was 
 one of the features of the times, and a dear delight to Pepys, who 
 was never weary of admiring their respective beauties. 
 
 Proud as he was of sitting, for the first time in his life, in a 
 box, at four shillings, he still saw the pit occupied by greater men 
 than any around him, particularly on the first night of a new 
 piece. When Etherege's comedy, " She Would if She Could," 
 was first played, in February, 1668, to one of the most crowded, 
 critical, and discontented audiences that had ever assembled in 
 the Duke's House, the pit was brilliant with peers, gallants, and 
 wits. There, openly sat Buckingham, and Buckhurst, and Sedley, 
 and the author, with many more ; and there went on, as the audi- 
 ence waited till the pelting rain outside had ceased to fall, com- 
 ment and counter-comment on the merits of the piece and of the 
 actors. Etherege found fault with the players, but the public as 
 loudly censui-ed the piece, condemning it as silly and insipid, but 
 allowing it to possess a certain share of wit and roguishness.
 
 174: doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 From an entry in the Diary for the 21st of December, 1668, 
 we learn that Lady Castlemaine had a double, who used to appear 
 at the theatre to the annoyance of my lady, and the amusement 
 of her royal friend. Indeed, here is a group of illustrations of 
 the " front of the stage ;" the house is the Duke's, the play " Mac- 
 beth." " The King and Court tliere, and we sat just under them 
 and my Lady Castlemaine, and close to a woman that comes into 
 the pit, a kind of a loose gossip that pretends to be like her, and 
 is so, something. The King and Duke of York minded me, and 
 smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me, but it vexed 
 me to see Moll Davis, in a box over the King's and my Lady 
 Castlemaine's, look down upon the King, and he up to her ; and 
 so did my Lady Castlemaine once, to see who ' it was ; but when 
 she saw Moll Davis, she looked like fire, which troubled me." 
 
 To these audiences were presented dramatic pieces of a very 
 reprehensible quality. Charles IL lias been more blamed than 
 any other individual, because of this licentiousness of the stage. 
 I have before ventured to intimate, that the long-accepted idea 
 that the court of Charles IL corrupted English society, and that it 
 did so especially through patronizing the licentiousness of poets 
 and the stage, seems to me untenable. From of old there had 
 been a corrupt society, and a society protesting against the cor- 
 ruption. Before Charles made his first visit to the theatre, there 
 was lying in Newgate the ex-royalist, but subsecjucntly Puritan 
 poet, George Withers. In the dedication of his Hallelujah, in 
 1641, he thus describes the contemporary condition of society: — 
 "So innumerable are the foolish and profane songs now delighted 
 in, to the dishonor of our language and religion, that hallelu- 
 jahs and pious meditations are almost out of use and fashion ; 
 vea, not at private only, but at our public feasts, and civil meet- 
 ings also, scurrilous and obscene songs are impudently sung, with- 
 out respecting the reverend presence of matrons, virgins, magis- 
 trates, or divines. Nay, sometimes in their despite they are called 
 for, sung, and acted, with such abominable gesticulations, as are 
 very offensive to all modest hearers and beholders, and fitting only 
 to be exhibited at the diabolical assemblies of Bacchus, Venus, or 
 I'riapus !" 
 
 lu the collection of hymns, under this title of Hallelujah,
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 175 
 
 tlicre is a I13 inii for every condition in and circumstance of life, 
 from the King to the Tailor ; from a hymn for the use of two 
 ardent lovers, to a spiritual song of grateful resignation " for a 
 Widower or a Widow deprived of a troublesome Yokefellow !'* 
 There is none for the player ; but there is this hit at the poets, 
 who supplied him with unseemly phrases, and the flattering friends 
 who crowned such bards : 
 
 " Blasphemous fancies are infused, 
 
 All holy new things are expell'd, 
 He that hath most profanely mused, 
 
 Is famed as having most excelled : 
 Such are those poets in these days, 
 
 Who vent the fumes of lust and wine. 
 Then crown each other's heads with bays, 
 
 As if their poems were divine." 
 
 Against the revived fashion of licentious plays, some of the 
 wisest men among theatrical audiences protested loudly. No 
 man raised his voice with greater urgency than Evelyn. Within 
 Bix years of the Restoration, he, who was in frequency of play- 
 going only second to Pepys, but as sharp an observer and a graver 
 censor than the Admiralty clerk, addressed a letter to Lord Corn- 
 bury on this important subject. The letter was written a few 
 weeks previous to the Lent season of 1665, and the writer mourns 
 over a scandal less allowed in any city of Christendom, than in 
 the metropolis of England, namely — " the frequency of our the- 
 atrical pastimes during the indiction of Lent. Here in London," 
 he says, " there were more wicked and obscene plays permitted 
 than in all the world besides. At Paris three days, at Rome two 
 weekly, and at the other cities, Florence, Venice, &c., only at cer- 
 tain jolly periods of the year, and that not without some consider- 
 able emolument to the public, while our interludes here are every 
 day alike ; so that the ladies and gallants come reeking from the 
 piay late on Saturday nighC (was Saturday then a fashionable 
 day for late performances ?) " to their Sunday devotions ; and the 
 ideas of the farce possess their fancies to the infinite prejudice of 
 devotion, besides the advantages it gives to our reproachful blas- 
 phemers.'' Evelyn, however, does not pursue his statement to a
 
 176 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 logical exclusion. He proposes to close the houses on Friday and 
 Saturday, or to represent plays on these nights only for the hene- 
 fit of paupers in or out of the workhouses. Remembering ratlier 
 tlie actresses who disgraced womanhood, than such an cxem{)lary 
 and reproachless pair as Bettei'ton and his wife, he recommends 
 robbery of the " debauched comedians," as he calls them, without 
 scruple. What if they be despoiled of a hundred or so a year ? 
 They will still enjoy more than they were ever born to ; and the sacri- 
 fice, he quaintly says, will consecrate their scarce allowable imper- 
 tinences. He adds, with a seriousness which implies his censure 
 of the royal approval of the bad taste which had brought degrada- 
 tion on the stage — " Plays are now become with us a licentious 
 excess, and a vice, and need severe censors, that should look as 
 well to their morality as to their lives and numbers." 
 
 This grave and earnest censor, however, allowed himself to be 
 present at stage representations which he condemns. He objects 
 but does not refrain. He witnesses masques at Court, and says 
 little ; enjoys his play, and denounces the enjoyment, in his diary, 
 when he reaches home. He has as acute an eye on the behavior 
 of the ladies, especially among the audience, as for what is being 
 uttered on the stage. " I saw the tragedy of ' Horace,' " he tells 
 us, in February, 1668, "written by the virtuous Mrs. PhilHps, 
 acted before their Majesties. Betwixt each act a masque and 
 antique dance." Then speaking of the audience, where the 
 King's " lady" was wont to outblaze the King's " wife," he adds : 
 — " The excessive gallantry of the ladies was infinite : those es- 
 pecially on that . . Castlemaine, esteemed at £40,000 and more, 
 far outshining the Queen." Later in the year he is at a new play 
 of Dryden's, " with several of my relations." He describes the 
 plot as " foolish and very profane. It afflicted me," lie continues, 
 " to see how the stage was degenerated and polluted by the licen- 
 tious times." 
 
 When forming part of the audience, by invitation of the Lord 
 Chamberlain, at the Court plays, at Whitehall, in September, 
 1666, Evelyn uses as freely his right of judgment. He sat ill at 
 ease in the public theaties, because they were abused, he says, 
 " to an atheistical liberty." The invitation to see Lord Broghill's 
 " Mustapha" played before the King and Queen, in presence of a
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 177 
 
 splendid court, was a command. Evelyn attended ; but as he 
 looked around, he bethought him of the London that was lying in 
 chan-ed ruins, and he sorrowingly records his disapproval of " any 
 such pastime in a time of such judgments and calamities." With 
 better times come weaker censures on these amusements ; and the 
 representation of the " Conquest of Granada," at Whitehall, in 
 1671, wins his admiration for the "very glorious scenes and per- 
 spectives, the work of Mr. Streeter, who well understands it." In 
 the following year, although not frequenting court plays, he takes 
 a whole bevy of maids of honor //'om court to the play. Among 
 them was one of whom he makes especial mention, on account of 
 her many and extraordinary virtues, which had gained his especial 
 esteem. This grave maid, among the too vivacious ladies whom 
 Evelyn 'squired to an afternoon's play, was Mistress Blagg, better 
 known to us from Evelyn's graceful sketch of her life, as Mrs 
 Godolphin. 
 
 Mrs. Blagg was herself not the less a lovely actress for being a 
 discreet and virtuous young lady. In 1675 Evelyn saw her act 
 in Crowne's masque-comedy, " Calisto, or the Chaste Nymph." 
 His friend acted in a noble but mixed company — all ladies — 
 namely, the Ladies Mary and Anne, afterwards Queens of England, 
 the Lady Henrietta Wentworth, afterwards the evilly-impelled 
 favorite of the Duke of Monmouth, and Miss Jennings, sub- 
 sequently the sharp-witted wife of the great Duke of Marlborough. 
 There were others of less note, with professional actresses to aid 
 them, while a corps de ballet of peers and nymphs of greater or 
 less repute, danced between the acts. For the piece, or for the 
 interludes, Evelyn had less admiration than he had for Mrs. 
 Blagg's splendor. She had about her, he informs us, £20,000 
 worth of jewels, of which she lost one worth about £80, borrowed 
 of the Countess of Suffolk. " The press was so great," he adds, 
 •' that it is a wonder she lost no more ;" and the intimation that 
 "The Duke" (of York)' "made it good," shows that Mrs. Blagg 
 Avas fortunate in possessing the esteem of that not too liberal 
 prince. The entire stage arrangements at AVhitehall were not in- 
 variably of a liberal character, and the audiences must have had, 
 on some occasions, an uncourtly aspect ; " people giving money to
 
 178 DORAN'S' ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 come in," he Avrites in this same year 1675, " wliich was very 
 scandalous, and never so before at Court-diversions." 
 
 Of the turbulence of audiences in those days, there are many 
 evidences on record. It was sometimes provoked, at others 
 altogether unjustifiable, and always more savage than humorous. 
 In 1669, Mrs. Corey gratified Lady Castleraaine, by giving an 
 imitation of Lady Harvey, throughout the whole of the part of 
 Sempronia, in " Catiline's Conspiracy." Lady Harvey, much ex- 
 cited, had influence enough with her brother, Edward Montagu, 
 Lord Chamberlain, to induce him to lock Mrs. Corey up, for her 
 impertinence. On the other hand, Lady Castlemaine had still 
 greater influence with the King ; and not only was Mrs. Corey re- 
 leased, but she was " ordered to act it again, worse than ever." 
 Doll Common, as the actress was called, for her ability in playing 
 that part in the " Alchymist," repeated the imitation, with the re- 
 quired extravagance, but not without opposition ; for Lady Har- 
 vey had hired a number of persons, some of whom hissed Doll, 
 while others pelted her with fruit, and the King looked on the 
 while, amazed at the contending factions, whose quarrels sub- 
 sequently brought him much weariness in the settling. 
 
 Then, again, much disturbance often arose from noisy financial 
 squabbles. It was the custom to return the price of admission to 
 all persons who left the theatre before the close of the first act. 
 Consequently, many shabby persons were wont to force their way 
 in without paying, on the plea that they did not intend to remain 
 beyond the time limited. Thence much noisy remonstrance on 
 the part of the door-keepers, who followed them into the house ; 
 and therewith such derangement of the royal comfort, that a 
 special decree was issued, commanding payment to be made on 
 entering; but still allowing the patron of the drama to recover 
 his money, if he withdrew on or before the close of the first act. 
 
 But there were greater scandals than these. On the 2d of 
 February, 1679, there is a really awful commotion, and imminent 
 peril to house and audience, at the Duke's theatre. The King's 
 French favorite, the Duchess of Portsmouth, is blazing with 
 rouge, diamonds, and shamelessness, in the most conspicuous seat 
 in the house. Some tipsy gentlemen in the street hard by, liear 
 of her wit and handsome presence, and the morality of these
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 179 
 
 drunkards is straightway incensed. ' Tlie house is panic-stricken 
 at seeing these virtuous Goths rushing into the pit, with drawn 
 swords in one hand, — fianiing, smoking, ill-sraelling torches in 
 the other ; and with vituperative cries against " the Duchess of 
 Portsmouth, and other persons of honor." The rioters, not 
 satisfied with thrusting their rapiers at the arras, sides, and legs 
 of the afi'righted people in the pit, hurl their blazing torches 
 among the astounded actors on the stage ! A panic and a gen- 
 eral flight ensue. The house is saved from destruction ; but as it 
 is necessary to punish somebody, the King satisfies his sense of 
 justice by pressing hard upon the innocent actors, and shutting up 
 the house during the royal pleasure ! 
 
 Much liquor, sharp swords and angry tempers, combined to in- 
 terrupt the enjoyment of many a peaceful audience. An angry 
 word, passed, one April evening of 1682, between Charles Dering, 
 the son of Sir Edward, and the hot-blooded young Welshman, 
 Mr. Vaughan, led to recrimination and sword drawing. The two 
 young fellows, not having elbow-room in the pit, clambered on to 
 the stage, and fought there, to the greater comfort of the audience, 
 and with a more excited fury on the part of the combatants. The 
 stage was that of the Duke's company, then playing in Dorset 
 Gardens. The adversaries fought on, till Dering got a thrust from 
 the Welshman which stretched him on the boards ; whereupon 
 the authorities intervened, as there was no more mischief to be 
 done, and put Master Vaughan under restraint, till Dering's wound 
 was declared not to be mortal. 
 
 The 'tiring rooms of the actresses were then open to the fine 
 gentlemen who frequented the house. They stood by at the 
 mysteries of dressing, and commented on what they beheld and 
 did not behold, with such breadth and coarseness of wit, that the 
 more modest, or least impudent ladies, sent away their little hand- 
 maidens. The dressing over, the amateurs lounged into the 
 house, talked loudly with the pretty orange girls, listened when it 
 suited them, and at the termination of the piece crowded again 
 into the 'tiring room of the most favorite and least scrupulous of 
 the actresses, Amono; these gallants who thus oscillated between 
 the pit and the dressing bowers of the ladies, was a Sir Hugh 
 Middleton, who is not to be confounded with his namesake of the
 
 180 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 New River. On the second Saturday of Februaiy, 1607, Sii 
 Hugh was among the joyous damsels dressing for the play, be- 
 hind the stage of Old Drury. The knight was so unpleasantly 
 critical on the nymphs before him, that one of them, sharp-tongued 
 Beck Marshall, bade him keep among the ladies of the Diike's 
 house, since he did not approve of those who served the King. 
 Sir Huo-h burst out with a threat, that he would kick, or what was 
 worse, hire his footman to kick, her. The pretty but angry 
 Rebecca nursed her wrath all Sunday ; but on Monday she notified 
 the ungallant outrage to the great champion of insulted dames, 
 the King. Nothing immediately came of it ; and on Tuesday, 
 there was Sir Hugh, glowering at her from the front of the house, 
 and waylaying her as she was leaving it with a friend. Sir Hugh 
 whispers a ruffianly-looking fellow, who follows the actress, and 
 presses upon her so closely, that she is moved by a double fear, 
 — that he is about to rob, and perhaps stab her. A little scream 
 scares the bravo for a minute or so. He skulks away, but anon 
 slinks back ; and, armed with the first offensive missile he could 
 pick up in a Drury Lane gutter, he therewith anoints the face 
 and hair of the much shocked actress, and then, like the valiant 
 fellows of his trade, takes to his heels. The next day, sweet as 
 Anadyomene rising from the sea, the actress appeared before the 
 King, and charged Sir Hugh with being the abettor of this gross 
 outrage. How the knight was punished, the record in the State 
 Paper office does not say; but about a fortnight later a royal 
 decree was issued, which prohibited gentlemen from entering the 
 'tiring rooms of the ladies of the King's theatre. For some nights 
 the gallants sat ill at ease among the audience ; but the journals 
 of the period show that the nymphs must have been as little 
 pleased with this arrangement as the fine gentlemen themselves, 
 who soon found their way back to pay the homage of flattery to 
 the most insatiable of goddesses. 
 
 Not that all the homage was paid to the latter. The wits loved 
 to assemble, after the pla}'' was done, in the dressing-rooms of the 
 leading actors with whom they most cared to cultivate an inti- 
 macy. Much company often congregated here, generally with the 
 purpose of assigning meetings, where further enjoyment might bo 
 oursued.
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ISl 
 
 Then, when it was holiday with the legislature, the lituise was 
 filled with parliament-men. On one of these occasions, Pcpys re- 
 cords, "how a gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, 
 eating of some fruit in the midst of the play, did drop down as 
 dead ; but, with much ado, Orange Moll did thrust her finger 
 down his throat, and brought him to life again." This was an in- 
 cident of the year 16Q1. 
 
 Returning to the front of the stage, we find the ladies in the 
 boxes subjected to the audible criticisms of "the little cockerells 
 of the pit," as Ravenscroft calls them, with whom the more daring 
 damsels entered into a smart contest of repartees. As the " play- 
 house " was then the refuge of all idle young people, these wit- 
 combats were listened to with interest, fi-om the town fops to the 
 rustic young squires who came to the theatre in cordovant gloves, 
 and were quite unconscious of poisoning the affected fine ladies 
 with the smell of them. The poets used to assert that all the wit 
 of the pittites was stolen from the plays which they read or saw 
 acted. It seemed the privilege of the box-loungers to have none, 
 or to perform other services ; namely, to sit all the evening by a 
 mistress, or to blaze from " Fop's corner," or to mark the modest 
 women, by noting those who did not use their fans through a 
 whole play, nor turn aside their heads, nor, by blushing, discover 
 more guilt than modesty. Thrice happy was she who found the 
 greatest number of slaves at the door of her box, waiting obsequi- 
 ously to hand or escort her to her chair. These beaux were hard 
 to fix, so erratic were they in their habits. They ran, as Gatty 
 pertinently has it, " from one play-house to the other play-house ; 
 and if they like neither the play nor the women, they seldom stay 
 any longer than the combing of their perriwigs, or a whisper or 
 two with a friend, and then they cock their caps, and out they 
 strut again." With fair and witty strangers these gay fellows, 
 their eye-brows and periwigs redolent of the essence of orange 
 and jasmine, entered into conversation, till a gentleman's name, 
 called by a door-keeper in the passage, summoned him to impa- 
 tient companions, waiting for him outside ; when he left the " cen- 
 BQre " of his appearance to critical observers, like those who ridi- 
 culed the man of mode, for " his gloves drawn up to his elbowji
 
 182 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 and his perriwig luorc exactly curled than a lady's head newly 
 dressed for a ball." 
 
 Of the vizard-masks, Gibber tells the whole history, in a few 
 words : " I remember the ladies were then observed to be decently 
 afraid of venturing bare-faced to a new comedy, till they had been 
 assured they might do it without insult to their modesty ; or, if 
 their curiosity were too strong for their patience, they took care 
 at least to save appearances, and rarely came in the first days of 
 acting but in masks, which custom, however, had so many ill con- 
 sequences attending it, that it has been abolished these many 
 years." 
 
 The poets sometimes accused the ladies of blushing, not because 
 of offence, but from constraint on laughter. Farquhar's Pindress 
 says to Lucinda, "Didn't you chide me for not putting stronger 
 laces in your stays, when you had broken one as strong as a 
 
 hempen-cord with containing a violent ti-hee at a jest in the 
 
 last play ?" 
 
 Gibber describes the beaux of the seventeenth century as being 
 of quite a different stamp from the more modern sort. The for- 
 mer had more of the stateliness of the peacock in their mien, 
 whereas the latter seemed to place their highest emulation in imi- 
 tating " the pert air of a lapwing." The greatest possible com- 
 pliment was paid to Gibber by the handsome, witty, blooming 
 young fop, Brett, who was so enchanted with the wig the former 
 wore as Sir Novelty Fashion, in " Love's Last Shift," that fancying 
 the wearing it might insure him success among the ladies, he 
 went around to Gibber's dressing-room, and entered into negotia- 
 tions for the purchase of that wonderful cataract periwig. The 
 fine gentlemen among the audience had, indeed, the credit of be- 
 ing less able to judge of a play than of a peruke ; and Dryden 
 speaks of an individual as being " as invincibly ignorant as a 
 town-sop judging of a new play." 
 
 Lord Foppington, in 1697, did not pretend to be a beau; but 
 he remarks, " a man must endeavor to look wholesome, lest he 
 make so nauseous a figure in the side-box, the ladies should be 
 compelled to turn their eyes upon the play." It was the "thing" 
 to look upon the company, unless some irresistible attraction drew 
 attention to the stage ; and the curtam down, the beau became
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 183 
 
 active in the service of the ladies generally. " Till nine o'clock," 
 says Lord Foppington, " I amuse myself by looking on the 
 company, and usually dispose of one hour more in leading them 
 out." 
 
 Some fine gentlemen were unequal to such gallantry. At these 
 Southerne glances in his " Sir Anthony Love," where he describes 
 the hard drinkers who " go to a tavern to swallow a drunkenness, 
 and then to a play, to talk over their liquor." And these had 
 their counterparts in 
 
 "the youngsters of a noisy pit, 
 Whose tongues and mistresses outran their wit." 
 
 It was, however, much the same in the boxes, where the beaux' 
 oath was " zauns," it being token of a rustic blasphemer to say 
 " zounds ;" and where, though a country squire might say, " bless 
 us !" it was the mark of a man of fashion to cry, " dem me !" 
 
 With such personages in pit and boxes, we may rest satisfied 
 that there was a public to match in the gallery — a peculiar as well 
 as a general public. 
 
 A line in a prologue of the year 1672, "The stinking footman's 
 sent to keep your places," alludes to a custom by which the livery 
 profited. Towards the close of the century, the upper gallery of 
 Drury Lane was opened to footmen, gratis. They were supposed 
 to be in attendance on their masters, but these rather patronized 
 the other house, and as Drury could not attract the nobility, it 
 courted the favor of their not very humble servants. Previously, 
 the lacqueys were admitted after the close of the fourth act of the 
 play. They became the most clamorous critics in the house. It 
 was the custom, when these fellows passed the money-taker, to 
 name their master, who was supposed to be in the boxes ; but 
 many frauds were practised. A stalwart, gold-laced, thick-calved, 
 irreverent lacquey swaggered past money and check-taker, one af- 
 ternoon, and named " the Lord ," adding the name which tlie 
 
 Jews of old would never utter, out of fear and reverence. " The 
 
 Lord !" said the money-taker to his colleague, after the saucy 
 
 footman had flung by, " who is he ?" " Can't say," was the re- 
 ply ; " some poor Scotch lord, I suppose !" Such is an alleged 
 sample of the ignorance and the blasphemy of the period.
 
 184 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Returning to the pit, I find, v.'itli tile critics and other good men 
 there, a sprinkling of clerical gentlemen, especially of chaplains ; 
 their patrons perhaps being in the boxes. In the papers of the 
 d.ty, in the year 1G97, I read of a little incident which illustrates 
 social matters, and which, probably, did not much trouble the the- 
 atrical cleric who went to the pit so strangely provided. " There 
 was found," says the paragraph, " in the pit of the play-house, 
 Drury Lane, Covent Garden, on Whitsun Eve, a qualification, 
 signed by the Right Honorable the I^ord Dartmouth to the Rev- 
 erend Mr. Nicholson, to be his Chaplain Extraordinary ; the said 
 qualification being wrapped up in a black tafFety cap, together with 
 a bottle-screw, a knotting-needle, and a ball of sky-color and 
 white knotting. If the said Mr. Nicholson will repair to the pit- 
 keeper's house, in Vinegar Yard, at the Crooked Billet, he shall 
 have the movables restored, giving a reasonable gratitude." 
 
 Probably Mr. Nicholson did not claim his qualification. His 
 patron was son of the Lord Dartmouth who corresponded with 
 James II. while expressing allegiance to William HI., and was 
 subsequently Queen Anne's Secretary of State, and the annotator 
 of Burnet's History of his Own Times. 
 
 The audiences of King William's time were quick at noticing 
 and applying political allusions ; and Government looked as sharply 
 after the dramatic poets as it did after the Jacobite plotters. 
 When much intercourse was going on between the exiled king at 
 St. Germains and his adherents in this country, a Colonel Mottley 
 (of whose son, as a dramatist, I shall have occasion to speak in a 
 future page) was sent over by James with dispatches. The Earl 
 of Nottingham laid watch for him at the Blue Posts, in the Hay- 
 market, but the Secretary's officers missed the Colonel, seizing in 
 his place a Cornish gentleman, named Tredenhara, who was 
 seated in a room, surrounded by papers, and waiting for the Colo- 
 nel. 
 
 Tredenham and the documents were conveyed in custody before 
 the Earl, to whom the former explained that he was a poet, sketching 
 out a play, that the papers seized formed portions of the piece, and 
 that he had nothing to do with plots against his Majesty de facto. 
 Daniel Finch, however, was as careful to read the roughly-sketched 
 play, as if it had been the details of a conspiracy ; and then the
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 185 
 
 author was, summoned before him. " Well, Mr. Tredeuhara," 
 said he, " I have perused your play, and heard your statement, 
 and as I can find no trace of a plot in either, I tliink you may 
 go free." 
 
 The sincerity of the audiences of those days is something 
 doubtful, if that be true which Dryden affirms, that he observed 
 namely, that "in all our tragedies the audience cannot forbear laugh- 
 ing when the actors are to die : 'tis the most comic part of the 
 whole play." He says all our tragedies ; but we know that such 
 was not the case when the heroes of Shakspeare, represented by 
 Betterton, Hart, or Harris, suffered mimic dissolution, and it is 
 but a fjiir suggestion that it was only in the bombast and fustian 
 tragedies, in which death was the climax of a comic situation, 
 and treated bombastically, that tlie audiences were moved to 
 laughter. 
 
 Sincere or not, the i*esident Londoners were great playgoere, 
 and gadders generally. I have already quoted Bishop Hackett 
 on this matter. Sermons thus testify to a matter of fashion. It 
 appears from a play, Dryden's " Sir Martin Marall," that if Lon- 
 doners were the permanent patrons, the country " quaUty" looked 
 for an annual visit. At the present time it is th« visitors and not 
 the residents in London who most frequent the theatre. " I came 
 up, as we country gentlewomen use, at an Easter Term, to the 
 destruction of tarts and cheesecakes, to see a new play, buy a 
 new gown, take a turn in the park, and so down again to sleep 
 with my forefathers." 
 
 This resort to the theatres displeased better men than non- 
 juring Collier. Mirthful-minded South, he who preached to the 
 Merchant Tailors of the remnant that should be saved, calls thea- 
 tres " those spiritual pest-houses, where scarce any thing is to be 
 heard or seen but what tends to the corruption of good manners, 
 and from whence not one of a thousand returns, but, infected with 
 the love of vice, or at least with the hatred of it very much abated 
 from what it was before. And that, I assure you, is no inconsid- 
 erable point gained by the tempter, as those who have any experi- 
 ence of their own heart sufficiently know. He who has no mind 
 to trade with the devil, should be so wise as to keep away from 
 his shop." South objects to a corrupt, not to a " well-bred stage."
 
 186 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Yet South, like Collier later, laid to the scene mucli of the sin 
 of the age. 
 
 If we were to judge of the character of women by the come- 
 dies of the last half of the seventeenth century, we might conclude 
 that they were all, without exception, either constantly at the 
 play, or constantly wishing to be there. But the Marquis of Hali- 
 fax, in his Advice to a Daughter, shows that they were only a 
 class. " Some ladies," he says, " are bespoke for merry meetings, 
 as Bessus was for duels. They are engaged in a circle of idleness, 
 where they turn round, for the whole year, without the interruption 
 of a serious hour. They know all the players' names, and are inti- 
 mately acquainted with all the booths at Bartholomew Fair. The 
 spring, that bringeth out Flies and Fools, maketh them inhabitants 
 of Hyde Park. In the winter, they are an encumbrance to the 
 play-house, and the ballast of the drawing-room." 
 
 We may learn how the play-house, encumbered by the fast 
 ladies of by-gone years, stood, and what were the prospects of the 
 stage at this time, by looking into a private epistle. A few lines 
 in a letter from " Mr. Vanbrook" (afterwards Sir John Vanbragh) 
 to the Earl of Manchester, and written on Christmas Day, 1699, 
 will show the position and hopes of the stage, as that century was 
 closing. " Miss Evans," he writes, " the dancer at the new play- 
 house, is dead ; a fever slew her in eight and forty hours. She's 
 much lamented by the town, as well as by the house, who can't 
 well bear her loss ; matters running very low with 'em this winter. 
 If Congreve's play don't help 'em they are undone. 'Tis a com- 
 edy, and will be played about six weeks hence. Nobody has seen 
 it yet." The same letter informs us that Dick Leveridge, the bass 
 singer of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, was tarrying in Ireland, 
 rather than face his creditors in England, and that Doggett (of 
 whom there is no account during the years 1698, 1699, lYOO) 
 had been playing for a week at the above theatre, for the sura of 
 £30 ! This is the fii-st instance I know of, of the " starring" sys- 
 tem ; and it is remarkable that the above sum should have been 
 given for six nights' performances, when Betterton's salary did 
 not exceed £5 per week. 
 
 The century closed ill for the stage. Congreve's play, '* The 
 Way of the World," failed to give it any lustre. Dancers, turn-
 
 AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 187 
 
 blcrs, strong men, and quadrupeds, were called in to attract tlie 
 town; and tbe Elephant at the Great Mogul in Fleet Stieet 
 " drew" to such an extent that he would have been brought upon 
 the stage but for the opinion of a master-carpenter that he would 
 pull the house down. There was an empty treasury at both the 
 theatres. There was iiiia-'tnagement at one, and ill-health (the 
 declining health of Betterton) to mar the otuer. And so closes 
 the half century.
 
 188 doban's annals of the stage. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A SEVEN YEARS RIVALRY. 
 
 The great players, by giving action to the poet's words, illus- 
 trated the quaintly-expressed idea of the sweet singer who says : 
 
 " What Thought can think another Thou,^ht can mend." 
 
 Nevertheless, the theatres had not proved profitable. The pub- 
 lic greeted acrobats with louder acclaim than any poet. King 
 William cared more to see the feats of Kentish Patagonians than 
 to listen to Shakspeare ; and, for a time, Doggett, by creating 
 laughter, reaped more glittering reward than Betterton, by draw- 
 ing tears. The first season, however, of the eighteenth century 
 was commenced with great spirit. Drury Lane opened with Gib- 
 ber's " Love Makes a Man," an adaptation from Beaumont and 
 Fletcher. Gibber was the Clodio ; Wilks, Garlos ; and Mrs. Ver- 
 bruggen, Louisa. Five other new pieces were produced in this 
 brief season. This was followed by the " Humor of the Age," a 
 dull comedy, by Baker, who generally gave his audience some- 
 thing to laugh at, and showed some originality in more than one 
 of his five pieces. He was an attorney's son, and an Oxford Uni- 
 versity man ; but he took to writing for the stage, had an ephem- 
 eral success, and died early, in worse plight than any author, even 
 in the days when authors occasionally died in evil condition. The 
 third novelty was Settle's mad operatic tragedy, the " Siege of 
 Troy," with a procession in which figured six white elephants 
 Griffin returned to the stage from the army, with " Gaptain" at- 
 tached to his name, and plaved Ulysses. The dulncss and gran- 
 deur of Settle's piece were hardly relieved by Farquhar's sequt;! 
 to his " Constant Gouple," " Sir Harry Wildair." The reputation 
 of the former piece secured for the latter a run of nine nights, so 
 were successes calculated in those early days. Wilks laid down
 
 A. SEVEN YEAES' RIVALRY. 189 
 
 Sir Harry to enact the distresses of Lorraine, in Mrs.' Ti'otter's new 
 play, " The Unhappy Penitent," which gave way in turn for Dur- 
 fey's intriguing comedy, " Tlie Bath, or the Western Lass," in 
 which Mrs. Verbruggen's " GiUian Homebred," made her the dar- 
 ling of the town. 
 
 In the same season, the company at Lincohi's Lin Fields pro- 
 duced a Uke number of new pieces. Li the first, the " Double 
 Distress," Booth, Verbruggen, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle 
 wasted their talents. Mrs. Fix, the author, having failed in this 
 mixture of rhyme and blank verse, failed in a greater degree in 
 her next play in prose, the " Czar of Muscovy." Booth and Mrs. 
 Barry could do nothing with such materials. The masters forth- 
 with enacted the "Lady's Visiting Day," by Burnaby. In this 
 comedy Betterton played the gallant lover, Courtine, to the Lady 
 Lovetoy of Mrs. Barry. The lady here would only marry a 
 prince. Courtine wins her as Prince Alexander of Muscovy : and 
 the audience laughed as they recognized therein the incident of 
 the merry Lord Montagu wooing the mad Duchess, Dowager of 
 Albemarle, as the Empress of China, and marrying her under that 
 very magnificent dignity, to any inferior to which the Duchess 
 had declared she would not stoop. 
 
 The hilarity of the public was next challenged by the produc- 
 tion of Granville (Lord Lansdowne's) "Jew of Venice," — "im- 
 proved" from Shakspeare, who Avas described as having furnished 
 the rude sketches which had been amended and adorned by 
 Granville's new master-strokes ! 
 
 Gildon's dull piece of Druidism, " Love's Victim, or the Queen 
 of Wales," appeared and failed, notwithstanding its wonderful 
 cast ; but Corye's " Cure for Jealousy" brought the list of novelties 
 merrily to a close ; for though the audience saw no fun in it, they 
 did in the anger of the author — a little man, with a whistle of a 
 voice, who abandoned the law for the stage, and was as weak an 
 actor as he was an author. He attributed his fiiilure to the absurd 
 admiration of the public for Farquhar. He was absurd enough to 
 say so in print, and to speak contemptuously of poor George's 
 "Jubilee Farce." In those wicked days, literary men loved not 
 each other ! 
 
 In 1V02, the Drury Lane company brought out eight new
 
 190 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 pieces, and worked indefatigably. They commenced with Dennis'i* 
 " Comical Gallant," — an " improved" edition of Shakspeare'a 
 " Merry Wives," in which Powell made but a sorry Falstaff. Thi.i 
 piece gave way t# one entirely original, and very much duller, the 
 ' Generous Conqueror," of the ex-fugitive Jacobite, Bevil Higgons. 
 In this poor play, Bevil illustrated the right divine and impecca- 
 bility of his late liege sovereign, King James ; denounced the 
 Revolution, by implication ; did in his only play what Dr. Sache- 
 verell did in the pulpit, and made even his fellow-Jacobites laugh 
 by his bouncing line, " The gods and god-like kings can do no 
 wrong." 
 
 Laughter more genuine might have been expected from the 
 next novelty, Farquhar's " Inconstant ;" but that clever adaptation 
 of Fletcher's " Wild-Goose Chase," with Wilks for young Mirabel, 
 did not affect the town so hilariously as I have seen it do when 
 Charles Kemble gracefully, but somewhat too demonstratively, 
 enacted the part of that gay, silly, but lucky gentleman. Still less 
 pleased were the public with the next play, tossed up for them in 
 a month, and condemned in a night, Burnaby's " Modish Hus- 
 band." Of course, this husband, Lord Promise, is a man who 
 loves his neighbor's wife, and cares not who loves his own. An 
 honest man in this comedy. Sir Lively Cringe, does not think ill 
 of married women, and he is made a buffoon and more, accord- 
 ingly. When Lady Cringe, in the dark, holds her lover Lionel 
 with one hand, her husband with the other, and declares that her 
 fingers are locked with those of the man she loves best in the 
 world, Sir Lively believes her. In this wise did the stage hold the 
 mirror up to nature, at the beginning of the last century. 
 
 Not more edifying nor much more successful was Vanbrugh'a 
 " False Friend," a comedy in which there is a murder enacted be- 
 fore the audience ! What the house lost by it was fully made up 
 by the unequivocal success of the next new piece, the " Funeral, 
 or Grief a la Mode." The author was then six and twenty years 
 of age ; this was his first piece, and his name Avas Steele. All 
 that was known of him then was, that he was a native of Dublin, 
 had been fellow -pupil at the Charter House with Addison, had 
 left the University without a degree, and was said to have lost the 
 succession to an estate in Wexford by enlisting as '^'^ a, private gen-
 
 A SEVEN years' RIVALRY. 191 
 
 tleman in the Horse Guards ;" a phrase significant enough, as the 
 proper designation of that body, at this day, is " Gentlemen of her 
 Majesty's Royal Horse Guards." He was the wildest and wittiest 
 young dog about down, when in 1701 he published, with a dedi- 
 cation to Lord Cutts, to whom he had been private secretary, and 
 through whom he had been appointed to a company in Lord 
 Lucas's Fusiliers, his Christian Hero, a treatise in which he 
 showed what he was not, by showing what a man ought to be. It 
 brought the poor fellow into incessant perplexity, and even peril. 
 Some thought him a hypocrite, others provoked him as a coward, 
 all measured his sayings and doings by his maxims in his Chris- 
 tian Hero, and Dick Steele was suffering in the regard of the town, 
 when he resolved to redeem the character which he could not 
 keep up to the level of his religious hero, by composing a comedy .' 
 He thoroughly succeeded, and there were troopers enough in the 
 house to have beat the rest of the audience into shouting appro- 
 bation, had they not been well inclined to do so, spontaneously. The 
 "Funeral" is the merriest and the most perfect of Steele's com- 
 edies. The characters are strongly marked, the wit genial, and 
 not indecent. Steele was among the first who set about reform- 
 ing the licentiousness of the old comedy. His satire in the " Fu- 
 neral" is not against virtue, but vice and silliness. When the two 
 lively ladies in widow's weeds meet, Steele's classical memory 
 served him with a good illustration. " I protest, I wonder," says 
 Lady Brampton (Mrs. Verbruggen), "how two of us thus clad 
 can meet with a grave face." The most genuine humor in the 
 piece was that applied against lawyers ; but more especially in the 
 satire against undertakers, and all their mockery of woe. Take 
 the scene in which Sable (Johnson) is giving instructions to his 
 men, and reviewing them the while : — " Ha, you're a little mere 
 upon the dismal. This fellow has a good mortal look — place hira 
 near the corpse. That wainscot-face must be a-top o' the stairs. 
 That fellow's almost in a fright, that looks as if he were full of 
 some strange inisery, at the end o' the hall ! So ! — But I'll fix 
 you all myself Let's have no laughing now, on any provocation. 
 Look yonder at that hale, well-looking puppy ! You ungrateful 
 scoundrel, didn't I pity you, take you out of a great man's service, 
 and show you the pleasure of receiving wages? Didn't I give you
 
 192 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 ten, then fifteen, then twenty shiUings a week, to be sorrowful ! 
 And the more I (jive you the gladder you are P'' This sort of 
 humor was new, no wonder it made a sensation. Steele became 
 the spoiled child of the town. " Nothing," said he, "ever makes 
 the town so fond of a man as a successful play." Old Sunderland 
 and younger Halifax patronized Steele for his own, and for Ad« 
 ilison's sake; and the author of the new comedy received the ap- 
 pointment of Writer of the Gazette. 
 
 After a closing of the houses during Bartholomew Fair, the 
 Drury Lane Company met again ; and again won the town by 
 Gibber's " She Would and She Would Not" This excellent com- 
 edy contrasts well with the same author's also admirable comedy, 
 the " Careless Husband." In the latter there is much talk of 
 action ; in the former there is much action during very good talk. 
 There is much fun, little vulgarity, sharp epigrams on the manners 
 and morals of the times, good humored satire against popery, and 
 a succession of incidents which never flags fi-om the rise to the fall 
 of the curtain. The plot may be not altogether original, and 
 there is an occasional incorrectness in the local color ; but taken 
 as a whole, it is a very amusing comedy, and it kept the stage 
 even longer than Steele's " Funeral." 
 
 Far less successful was Drury with the last and eighth new play of 
 this season, Farquhar's " Twin Rivals," for the copyright of which 
 the author received £15 6s. from Tonson. Farquhar, perhaps, 
 took more pains with this than with any of his plays, and has re- 
 ceived praise in return ; but after Steele and Cibber's comedies, 
 the " Twin Rivals" had only what the French call a succes d'es- 
 time. 
 
 To the eight pieces of Drury, Lincoln's Lin opposed half a doz- 
 en, only one of which has come down to our times, namely, 
 Rowe's " Tamerlane," with which the company opened the season : 
 — Tamerlane, Betterton ; Bajazet, Verbruggen ; Axalla, Booth ; 
 Aspasia, Mrs. Barry. In this piece, Rowe left sacred for profane 
 history, and made his tragedy so politically allusive to Louis 
 XIV. in the character of Bajazet, and to William III. in Tamer- 
 lane, that it was for many years represented at each theatre on 
 every recurring 4th and 5th of November, the anniversary of the 
 birth and of the landing of King William. In Dublin, the anni-
 
 A SEVEN YEaRS' EIVALRY. 1D3 
 
 versary of the gi'eat delivery from " Popery and wooden shoes," 
 was marked by a piece of gallantry on the part of the Lord Lieu- 
 tenant, or, in his absence, the Lords Justices — namely, by arrange- 
 ment with the manager, admission to the boxes was free to 
 every lady disposed to honor the theatre with her presence ! 
 
 Rowe has made a virtuous hero of Tamerlane, without at all 
 causing him to resemble William of Orange ; but, irrespective of 
 this, there is life in this tragedy, which, with some of the bluster 
 of the old, had some of the sentiment of the new school. In 1746, 
 when the Scottish Rebellion had been entirely suppressed, it was 
 acted on the above anniversaries with much attendant enthusiasm, 
 Mrs. Pritchard speaking an epilogue written for the occasion by 
 Horace Walpole, and licensed by the Chamberlain, the Duke of 
 Grafton, notwithstanding a compliment to his Grace, which Walpole 
 thought might induce the Duke, out of sheer modesty, to with- 
 hold his official sanction, Tamerlane has been a favorite part 
 with many actors. Lady Morgan's father, Mr. Owenson, made 
 his first appearance in it, under Garrick's rule ; but a Tamerlane 
 with a strong L'ish brogue and comic redundant action created 
 different sensations from those intended by the author, and 
 though the audience did not hiss, they laughed abundantly. 
 
 To " Tamerlane" succeeded " Antiochus the Great," a tragedy 
 full of the old love, bombast, and murder. The author was a Mrs. 
 Jane Wiseman, who was a servant in the family of Mr. Wright, 
 of Oxford, where, having filled her mind with plays and romances, 
 she wrote this hyper-romantic play, and having married a well-to- 
 do Westminster vintner, named Holt, she succeeded in seeing it 
 fail, as it well deserved to do. 
 
 It seemed as if the king-killing in the plebeian lady's tragedy 
 required some counter-action, and accordingly, Lord Orrery's post- 
 - humous play of " Altemira" was next brought forward. There is 
 a true king and also a usurper in this roaring yet sentimental 
 tragedy, in whom Whigs and Tories might recognize the sover- 
 eigns whom they respectively adored. One monarch himself 
 complacently remarks : — 
 
 " Wliatever crimes are acted for a crown. 
 The goda forgive, when once that crown's put on." 
 
 To touch the Lord's anointed is an unpardonable sin ; but if 
 Vol. I.— 9
 
 194 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 the Whigs were rendered uneasy by this sentiment, they prcbably 
 found comfort in the speech wherein Clerimont (Betterton), while 
 owning respect for the deprived monarch, confesses the fitness of 
 being loyal to the one who displaced him. 
 
 To these three tragedies succeeded three now-forgotten come- 
 dies, " The Gentleman Cully," in which Booth fooled it to the top 
 of his bent, in the only English comedy which ends without a 
 marriage. The " Beaux' Duel," and the " Stolen Heiress," two of 
 Mrs. Carroll's (she had not yet become Mrs. Centlivre) bolder 
 plagiarisms from old dramatists, brought the Lincoln's Inn season 
 to a close. 
 
 In the season of 1703 Drury Lane produced seven, and Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields six, pieces. The first, at Drury, was Baker's 
 " Tunbridge Walks," the manners of which smack of the old 
 loose times. Then came Durfey's " Old Mode and the New," a 
 long, dull, satirical comedy, on the fashions of Elizabeth's days 
 and those of Anne. Durfey was then at his twenty-eighth come- 
 dy, and in the decline of his powers. Little flourished about him 
 save that terrific beak which served for a nose, and also for an ex- 
 cuse for his dislike to have his hkeness taken. In other respects, 
 the wit, on whose shoulder Charles had leaned, to whose songs 
 William had listened, and at them Anne even then laughed, was 
 in vogue, but not with the theatrical public. 
 
 A new author had tempted that public, in April, with a come- 
 dy, entitled " Fair Example, or the Modish Citizens," by Estcourt, 
 a strolling player, but soon afterwards a clever actor in this com- 
 pany, a man whom Addison praised, and a good fellow, whom 
 Steele admired. His career had, hitherto, been a strange one. 
 He ran away from a respectable home in Tewkesbury, when 
 fifteen, to play Roxalana with some itinerants, and fled from the 
 company, on being pursued thither by his friends, in the dresa 
 lent him by a kind-hearted girl of the troop. In this dress, Est- 
 court made his way on foot to Chipping Norton, at the inn of 
 which place the weary supposed damsel was invited to share the 
 room of the landlord's daughter. Then ensued a scene as comic 
 as any ever invented by dramatist, but from which the parties 
 came oft" with some perplexity, and no loss of honor. The young 
 runaway was caught and sent home, and thence he was dispatched
 
 A SEVEN years" KIVALRY. 195 
 
 to Hatton Garden, and bound by articles to learn there the 
 apothecary's mystery. It is not known when he broke from 
 these bonds ; but it is certain that he again — some say after he 
 liad himself failed in the practice of the mystery he had painfully 
 learned, took to the joys and sorrows, trials, triumphs, and 
 temptations of a wandering player's life till 1698, or about that 
 period, when he appeared in Dublin, with success. He was be- 
 tween thirty and forty years of age when he came to London 
 with the " Fair Example," an adaptation, like the " Confederacy," 
 of Dancour's " Modish Citizens," but not destined to an equal suc- 
 cess, despite the acting of Gibber and Norris, and that brilliant 
 triad of ladies, Verbruggen, Oldfield, and Powell. In June, Mrs. 
 Carroll served up Moliere's " Medecin malgre lui," in the cold dish 
 called " Love's Contrivance ;" and, in the same month, Wilkinson 
 and his sole comedy, " Vice Reclaimed," appeared ; and are now 
 forgotten. 
 
 Next, Manning tried the judgment of the town with his " All 
 for the Better," a comedy, of triple plots, — stolen from old writers. 
 Manning resembled Steele only in leaving the University without 
 a degree. If Steele obtained a Government appointment after his 
 dramatic success, Manning acquired a better after his failure. He 
 was first, Secretary to our Legation in Switzerland ; and, secondly, 
 Envoy to the Cantons ; and was about as respectable in diplomacy 
 as in the drama. 
 
 Gildon's play of the " Patriot, or the Italian Conspiracy," the 
 last produced this year, with Mills as Cosmo de Medici, and 
 Wilks as his son Julio, merits notice only as an instance of the 
 mania for reconstructing accepted stories. Gildon, towards the 
 close of his wayward and silly career, transmuted Lee's ancient 
 Roman " Lucius Junius Brutus" into the modern Italian " Patriot." 
 The public consigned it to oblivion. 
 
 During this season, when " Macbeth" was the only one of Shaks- 
 peare's plays performed, the theatre in Dorset Gardens was pre- 
 pared for opera ; and in the summer the company followed Quecu 
 Anne to Bath, by command ; but there went not with them the 
 most brilliant actress of light comedy that the two centuries had 
 hitherto seen, Mrs. Verbruggen, that sparkling Mrs. Mountfort 
 whose father, Mr. Perceval, was condemned to death for treason
 
 196 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 against King William, on tlio day her luisband was murdered by 
 Lord Mohun ! The Jacohite father was, however, pardoned. 
 Mrs. Mountfort, or Verbriiggen, left a successor equal, perhaps 
 superior, to herself, in Mrs. Oldtield. 
 
 The season of 1703, at Lincoln's Liu Fields, was distinguished 
 b\ the success of Rowe's " Fair Penitent," — the one great triumph 
 
 • f the year. The other novelties require only to be recorded. 
 
 riiat most virulent and unscrupulous of Whig partisan-writers, 
 Uldmixon, opened the season with his third and last dramatic 
 essay, the " Governor of Cyprus," supported by Bctterton, Booth, 
 Powell, and Mrs. Barry. Oldmixon was a poor dramatist, but he 
 made a tolerable excise officer, — a post which he acquired by his 
 party-writings. He would not, however, be remembered now, 
 but for the pre-eminence for dirt and dulness which Pope has 
 awarded him in the D unclad. The entire strength of the com- 
 pany, Betterton excepted, was wasted on the comedies, — " Dif- 
 ferent Widows," by a judicious, anonymous author; "Love Be- 
 trayed," Burnaby's last of a poor four; and that a marring of 
 Shakspeare's " Twelfth Night," and " As You find It" (for Mrs. 
 Porter's benefit, in April). This was the only play written by 
 Charles Boyle, grandson of the dramatist Earl of Orrery, to which 
 title he succeeded, four months after his comedy (the dullest in 
 the English language) had failed. Boyle may have been a worthy 
 antagonist of Bentley, touching the genuineness of the " Epistles 
 of Phalaris ;" but he could not vie with such Avriters of comedy as 
 Cibber, Farquhar, and Steele. The production of the " Fickle 
 Shepherdess," — a ruthless handling of Randolph's fine pastoral, 
 " Amyntas," — pleased but for a few nights, though every woman 
 of note in the company, and all beautiful, played in it, — making 
 love to, or prettily sighing at, or as prettily sulking with, each 
 other. The great event of the season was, undoubtedly, the 
 " Fair Penitent :" Lothario, Powell ; Horatio, Betterton ; Altaraont, 
 Verbruggen; Calista, Mrs. Barry; Lavinia, ilrs. Braccgirdle. 
 
 Rowe had, in his " Tamerlane," thundered, after the manner of 
 Dryden ; had tried to be as pathetic as Otway, and had employed 
 some of the bombast of Lee. J>ut he lacked strength to make 
 either of the heroes of that resonant tragedy, vigorous. In de- 
 voting himself, henceforth, to illustrate the woes and weaknesses
 
 A SEVEN YEAKS" KIVALRY. 197 
 
 of heroines, he discovered where his real powers lay ; and Calista 
 is one of the most successful of his portraitures. There is gross 
 and unavowed plagiarism from Massiiiger's " Fatal Dowry," but 
 there is a greater purity of sentiment in Rowe, who leaves, how- 
 ever, much room for improvement iu that respect, by his success- 
 ors, Richardson saw this, when he made of his Lovelace a 
 somewhat purified Lothario. Rowe. however, notwithstanding the 
 weak point in his Fair Penitent, who is more angry at being found 
 out, than sorry for what has happened, has been eminently suc- 
 cessful ; for all the sympathy of the audience is freely rendered to 
 Calista. The tragedy may still be called an acting play, though 
 it has lost something of the popularity it retained during the last 
 century, when even Edward, Duke of York, and Lady Stanhope, 
 enacted Lothario and Calista, in the once famous " private theatre" 
 in Downing Street. Johnson's criticism is all praise, as regards 
 both fable and treatment. The style is purely English, as might 
 be expected of a writer who said of Dryden, that — 
 
 " Backed by his friends, th' invader brought along 
 A crew of foreign words into our tongue, 
 To ruin and enslave our free-born English song. 
 Still, the prevailing faction propped his throne, 
 And to four volumes let his plays run on." 
 
 Shakspeare, in name, at least, re-appears more frequently on the 
 stage during the Dnuy Lane season of 1703-4, when "Hamlet," 
 " king Lear," " Macbeth," " Tiraon of Athens," " Richard IIL," 
 the "Tempest," and "Titus Andronicus," were performed. These, 
 however, were the " improved" editions of the poet. The novel- 
 ties were, the " Lying Lover," by Steele ; " Love, the Leveller ;" 
 and the " Albion Queens." It was the season in which great 
 Anne fruitlessly forbade the presence of vizard-masks in the pit, 
 and of gallants on the stage ; recommended cleanliness of speech, 
 and denounced the shabby people who occasionally tried to evade 
 the money-takers. Steele, in his play, attempted to suppoi-t one 
 of the good objects which the Queen had in view; but in stri\ing 
 to be pure, after his idea of purity, and to be moral, after a loose 
 idea of morality, he failed altogether in wit, humor and invention. 
 lie thought to prove himself a good churchman, he said, even Id
 
 198 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 80 small a matter as a comedy ; and in his character of comic poet, 
 " I have been," he says, " a martyr and confessor for the church, 
 for this play was damned for its piety." This is as broad an un- 
 truth as any thing uttered by the " Lying Lover" himself, who, 
 when he does express a mawkish sentiment after he has killed a 
 man in his liquor, can only be held to be " a liar," as before. 
 Steele was condemned for stupidity in a piece, the only ray of 
 humor in which, pierces through the dirty, noisy, drunken 
 throng of gallows-birds in Newgate. That Steele seriously in- 
 tended his play to be the beginning of an era of " new comedy," 
 is, however, cert;\in. In the prologue, it was said of the author — 
 
 " He aims to make the coming action move 
 On the tried laws of Friendship and of Love. 
 He ofl'ers no gross vices to your sight, — 
 Those too much horror raise, for just delight." 
 
 Steele's comedy was a step in a right direction ; and his great 
 fault was pretending to be half-ashamed of having made it. That 
 it had a " clear stage and no favor," is literally true. It was one 
 of the first pieces played without a mingling of the public with the 
 players ; — an evil fashion, which was not entirely suppressed for 
 threescore years after Queen Anne's decree, when Garrick proved 
 more absolute than her majesty. It was a practice which so an- 
 noyed Baron, that proudest of French actors, that to suggest to 
 the audience in the house the absurdity of it, he would turn his 
 back on them for a whole act, and play to the audience on the 
 stage. Sometimes the noise was so loud, that an actor's voice 
 could be scarcely heard. " You speak too low !" cried a pit-critic 
 to Defresne. " And you too high !" retorted the actor. The 
 offended pit screamed its indignation, and demanded an abject 
 apology. " Gentlemen," said Defresne, " I never felt the degra- 
 dation of my position till now ;" . . . and the pit interrupted the 
 bold exordium by rounds of applause, under which he resumed 
 his part. 
 
 Of the other pieces produced this season at Drury Lane, it 
 will suffice to say, that " Love the Leveller" was by '' G. B., 
 gent.," who ascribes its failure to hi3 having adopted the counsel 
 of friends, and who consoles himself by the thought, that "it
 
 A SEVEN years' RIVALRY, 199 
 
 Tound so favorable a reception that the best plays hardly ever 
 met with a fuller audience." Happy man ! his piece was at least 
 damned by a full house. The " Albion Queens" was an old play 
 by Banks, which, dealing with the affairs of England and Scotland, 
 was held to be politically dangerous ; but good Queen Anne now 
 licensed it, on the report of its inoffensiveness made by " a noble- 
 man ;" and its dulness, relieved by good acting, delighted our 
 easy forefathers for half a century. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn failed to distinguish itself this season. Eton had 
 no reason to be proud of the comedy of its alumnus, Walker, 
 " Marry or do Worse ;" and in the tragedy of " Abra Mule," with 
 its similes, which continually run away with their rider, the yonng 
 Master of Arts, Trapp, shows that he was as poor a poet, in his 
 early days, as that translation of Virgil, which so broke the rest 
 of Mrs. Trapp, proved him to be in his later years, when he was 
 D. D., and Professor of Poetry. Dennis's " Liberty Asserted" 
 only demonstrated how heartily he hated the French ; and as 
 there was no dramatist who did so, in the same degree, when the 
 French and the Pretender were very obnoxious, some years later, 
 this thunder of Dennis was revived to stimulate antipathies. Queen 
 Anne's Scottish historiographer did nothing for the English 
 stage, by his comedy of " Love at First Sight," and farces like the 
 " Stage Coach," the " Wits of Woman," and " Squire Trelooby," 
 are only remarkable because Betterton and the leading actors 
 played in them as readily as in " first pieces." 
 
 During May Fair, the theatre w^as closed, some of the actors 
 playing there, at Pinkethraan's booth. In the same season they 
 played before the Queen at St. James's, in the " Merry Wives of 
 Windsor," with Betterton as Falstaff, wdiich he subsequently acted 
 for his own benefit. Tliis piece, and also " Julius Ceesar," 
 " Othello," and " Timon of Athens," were the plays by or from 
 Shakspeare, which were played this season. 
 
 The season of 1Y04-5, at Drury Lane, now prospering, to the 
 considerable vexation of Kit Rich, chief proprietor, who felt him- 
 self unable to avoid paying his company their salaries, is notable 
 for the production of Gibber's " Careless Husband." He who now 
 reads it for the first time may bo surprised to hear that in this 
 comedy a really serious and eminently successful attempt to
 
 200 doran's annals of tue stage. 
 
 reform the licentiousness of the drama was made by one who had 
 been himself a great oftender. Nevertheless, the fact remains. la 
 Lord Morelove we have the first lover in English comedy, since 
 licentiousness possessed it, who is at once a gentleman and an 
 honest man. In Lady Easy, we have, what was hitherto unknown 
 or laughed at, — a virtuous married woman. It is a conversational 
 piece, not one of much action. The dialogue is admirably sus- 
 tained, not only in repartee, but in descriptive parts. There is some 
 refinement manifested in treating and talking of things unrefined, 
 and incidents are pictured with a master's art. Gibber's greatest 
 claim to respect seems to me to rest on this elegant and elaborate, 
 though far from faultless comedy. So carefully did he construct 
 the character of the beautiful and brilliant coquette, Lady Betty 
 Modish, whose waywardness and selfishness are finally subdued 
 by a worthy lover, that he despaired finding an actress with 
 power enough to realize his conception. It was written for Mrs. 
 V^erbruggen (Mountfort), but she was now dead ; Mrs. Bracegirdle 
 might have played it ; but " Bracey" was not a member of the 
 Drury Lane company. There was, indeed, Mrs. Oldfield, but Col- 
 ley could scarcely see more in her than an actress of promise. 
 Reluctantly, however, he intrusted the part to her, foreboding dis- 
 comfort ; but there ensued a triumph for the actress and the play, 
 for which Colley was admiringly grateful to the end of his life. 
 To her, he confessed, was chiefly owing the success, though every 
 character was adequately cast. He eulogized her excellence of 
 action, and her "personal manner of conversing." He adds, 
 " There are many sentiments in the character of Lady BettJ 
 Modish that I may almost say were originally her own, or only 
 dressed with a little more care than when they negligently fell 
 from her lively humor ; had her birth placed her in a higher rank 
 of life, she had certainly appeared in reality what in this play she 
 only excellently acted, an agreeably gay woman of quality, a little 
 too conscious of her natural attractions." 
 
 Neither Gibber's friends nor foes seem to have at all enjoyed 
 his success. They would not conipi'omise their own reputation 
 by questioning the merit of this rare piece of dramatic excellence, 
 but they insinuated or assei'ted that he was not the author. It 
 was written by Defoe, by the Duke of Argyll, by Mrs. Oldtield'a
 
 A SEVE^' years' ri\ alry. 201 
 
 particular friend, Maynwaring ! Congi-eve, who had revelled in 
 impurity, and stoutly asserted his cleanliness, ungenerously de- 
 clared, " Gibber has produced a play consisting of fine, gentlemen 
 and fine conversation, all together, which the ridiculous town, for 
 the most part, likes." Congreve liad not then forgiven the 
 ridiculous world for i-eceiving so coldly his own last comedy, the 
 " Way of the World." Dr. Armstrou'T has more honestly ana- 
 lyzed the play, and pointed out its defects, without noticing itj' 
 merits ; but Walpole, no bad judge of a comedy of such character 
 has enthusiastically declared that it " deserves to be immortal.' 
 It has failed in that respect, because its theme, manners, follies, and 
 allusions, are obsolete, to say nothing of a company to follow even 
 decently the original cast, which included Sir Charles Easy, 
 Wilks ; Lord Foppington, Gibber ; and Lady Betty Modish, Mrs. 
 Oldfield. 
 
 Steele's " Tender Husband, or the Accomplislied Fools," in 
 which he had Addison for a coadjutor, was produced in April, 1704. 
 Addison's share therein was not avowed till long subsequently : 
 but it was handsomely acknowledged, at last, by Steele, in the 
 Spectator. In the concluding paper of the seventh volume, Steele 
 alluded to certain scenes which had been most applauded. These, 
 he said, were hy Addison ; and honest Dick added, that he had 
 ever since thought meanly of himself in not having publicly 
 avowed the fact. This comedy was chiefly a satire on the evils of 
 romance reading, and was of a strictly moral, yet decidedly heavy 
 tendency ; but with a Biddy Tipkin (Mrs. Oldfield), to which 
 there has been, as to Lady Betty Modish, no efficient successor. 
 There was a good end in both these plays. The other novelties, 
 " Arsinoe, Queen of Gyprus," an opera ; " Gibraltar, or the Span- 
 ish Adventurer," a faihare of Dennis's ; " Farewell Folly," by Mot 
 teux ; and the " Quacks," by Swincy — oblivion wraps them all. 
 
 Li this season Dick Estcourt made his first appearance in Lon- 
 don as Dominic, in the " Spanish Friar," Of Shakspeare's plays, 
 " Hamlet," " Henry IV.," and " Macbeth," were frequently repeat- 
 ed during the season. 
 
 ''Arsinoe," whicli I have mentioned above, merits a special 
 word in passing, as being the first attempt to establish opera in 
 Eiiglaiid, after the fashion of that of Italy. "If tl is attempt,'
 
 202 PORAl^'S ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 says Clayton, the composer, who understood English no better 
 than he did music, " shall be the nieans of bringing this manner 
 of music to be used in my native country, I shall think my study 
 and pains very well employed." The principal singer was Mrs. 
 Tofts, who for two years had been singing, after the play, at Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields, against Marguerite de I'Epine, the pupil of Gre- 
 bcr, and subsequently the ill-favored but happy wife of Dr, Pepusch, 
 
 "> fondly called her Hecate — she answering good-humored- 
 13 to the name. The Earl of Nottingham (son of Lord Chan- 
 cellor Finch), and the Duke of Bedford, who lost by dice more 
 than his father made by the " Bedford Level," patronized and 
 went into ecstasy at the song and shake of " the Italian lady," as 
 Marguerite was called. The proud Duke of Somerset, who was 
 as mean as he was proud, and, according to Lord Cowper, as 
 cowardly as he was arrogant, supported native talent, in Mrs. 
 Tofts ; as did also that Duke of Devonshire, Avhom Evelyn won- 
 deringly saw lose, with calmness, at Newmarket, £1,600, and who 
 was afterwards the muniticent lover, and heart-stricken mourpev, 
 of another beautiful vocalist, Miss Campion. Mrs. Tofts haol 
 another supporter in her too zealous servant, Anne Barwick, who 
 one night went to Drury Lane, and assailed Marguerite with hisses 
 and oranges, to the great disgust of her honest mistress. In such 
 discord did opera commence among us. " Arsinoe," however, 
 had a certain success, towards which the composer, Clayton, con- 
 tributed little ; and he was destined to do less subsequently. 
 
 The season of the rival company was passed in two houses : — 
 at Lincoln's Inn Fields, from October till the April of 1705, when 
 the company with the " four capital B.'s," Betterton, Booth, Mrs. 
 Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle, removed to the house in the Ilay- 
 market, built for them by Vanbrugh, under a subscription filled 
 by thirty persons of quality, at £100 each, for which they re- 
 ceived free admissions for life. Under his license at Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, Betterton produced nothing of note this season but Rowe's 
 " Biters," a satirical comedy, which failed. At the end of the 
 season he consigned his license to Vanbrugh, under whom he en- 
 gaged as leading tragedian. Vanbrugh opened on the 9th of 
 April, with an opera, the " Triumph of Love." It failed, as did 
 old plays inadequately filled, and, rew pieces, by Mrs. Fix, Swinoy,
 
 A SEVEN years' RIVALRY. 203 
 
 tnd one or two other obscure writers, including Chaves, author 
 of a condemned comedy, the " Cares of Love." Baker describes 
 Chaves as a person of no consideration, on the ground that he 
 dedicated his play to " Sir William Read, the Mountebank," who, 
 I think, could very well atford to pay the usual fee. With these 
 poor aids, and many mischances, the first season at the Queen's 
 Theatre, on the site of our present Opera House, came to an un 
 satisfactory conclusion. 
 
 The season of 1705-6, at Drury Lane, with a few nights at Dor- 
 set Gardens, would have been equally unsatisfactory, but for ona 
 great success to balance the failures of repatching of old pieces, 
 worthless new comedies, and the fruitless struffo;le of fashionable 
 patrons to sustain Cibber's tragedy, " Perolla and Izadora." The 
 great success was Farquhar's " Recruiting Officer," played on the 
 8th April, 1706, with this cast. Plume, Wilks ; Brazen, Cibber ; 
 Kite, Estcourt ; Bullock, Bullock ; Balance, Keene ; Worthy, 
 Williams ; Costar Pearmain, Norris ; Appletree, Fairbank ; Sylvia, 
 Mrs. Oldfield ; Mehnda, Mrs. Rogers ; Rose, Mrs. Susan Mount- 
 fort ; Lucy, Mrs. Sapsford, 
 
 Tliis lively comedy was so successful that Tonson, in a fit of 
 liberality, gave the author fifteen pounds, and a supplementary 
 half crown for the copyright. The money was welcome ; for, be- 
 tween having married, or rather being married by, a woman who 
 pretended she had a large fortune, when, she really liad only a large 
 amount of love for Farquhar, who was more attracted by the pre- 
 tence than the reality ; between this, his commission sold, his 
 patrons indifferent, his family cares increasing, and his health de- 
 clining, poor George was in sorry need, yet buoyant spirits. 
 Critics foretold that this play would live for ever ; but unfortunate- 
 ly it has been found impossible to separate the wit and the lively 
 action from the more objectionable parts, and we may not expect 
 to see its revival. Farquhar has drawn on his own experiences in 
 the construction, and all the amiable people in the piece were tran- 
 scripts of good Shrewsbury folk, whose names have been preserved. 
 Farquhar immortalized the virtues of his hosts, and did not, like 
 Foote, watch them at the tables at which he was a guest, to sub- 
 sequently expose them to public ridicule. 
 
 " Santlow, famed for dance," first bounded on to the stage
 
 204 D0KA^'"S ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 during this season, and the heart of Mr. Secretary Craggs boundc J 
 in uni>on. Miss Younger, too, first trod the boards, March, 1706, 
 when about seven years old, as the Princess Elizabeth, in " Virtue 
 Betrayed;" but, perhaps, the most notable circumstance of the 
 year was, that the chapel in Russell Court was then building ; but 
 it was under difficulties, to extricate it from which theDrury Lane 
 compai\y played " Hamlet," and handed over the handsome 
 proceeds to the building committee ! 
 
 Vanbrugh's two comedies, the " Confederacy" and the " Mis- 
 take" (the latter still acted under the title of " Lovers' Quarrels"), 
 Rowe's " Ulysses," the " Faithful General," by an anonymous young 
 lady, a forgotten tragedy, the " Revolution of Sweden," by Mrs. 
 Trotter, an equally forgotten comedy, " Adventures m Madrid," 
 by fat Mrs. Pix, tragic, comic, and extravaganza operas, by Lans- 
 down, Durfey, and others, — all this novelty, a fair company of 
 actors, troops of dancers, and a company of vocalists with Dick 
 Leveredge and Mrs. Tofts at the head of them, failed to render 
 the often broken but prolonged season of 1705-6, which began 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and terminated at the house in the Hay- 
 market, profitable. 
 
 In many respects it did not deserve to be, for Vanbrugh, with 
 more wit and humor, and more judgment in adaptation than Ravens- 
 croft, sought to bring back comedy to the uncleanliness in which 
 the latter writer had left it. There came a cry, however, from 
 the outer world, against this condition of things. Lord Garden- 
 stone, a lord of seat, I believe, and not a lord of state, as it is said 
 in the north, indignantly remarked of the " Confederacy :" — " This 
 is one of those plays which throw infamy on the English stage and 
 general taste, though it is not destitute of wit and humor. A 
 people must be in the last degree depraved, among whom such 
 public entertainments are produced and encouraged. In this 
 symptom of degenerate manners we are, I believe, unmatched by 
 any nation that is, or ever was, in the world." In the •' Con- 
 federacy," Doggett's fame as an actor culminated. He dressed 
 Moneytrap with the care of a true artist. On an old threadbaie 
 black coat, he tacked new cufi's and collar to make its rustiness 
 more apparent. Genest, quoting Wilks, adds, that the neck of the 
 coat was stuft'ed so as to make the wearei- appear round-shoui-
 
 A SEVEN YEARS' EIVALRY. 205 
 
 dered, and give greater prominency to tlie head. Wearing large, 
 Bquare-toed shoes with huge buckles over his own ordinary pair, 
 made his legs appear smaller than they really were. Doggett, we 
 are told, could paint and mould his face to any age. Kneller re- 
 cognized in him a superior artist. Sir Godfrey remarks, that 
 "Ae could only copy nature from the originals before him, but 
 that Doggett could vary them at pleasure, and yet keep a close 
 likeness." It must be confessed the public were more pleased 
 with this piece than with Rowe's " Ulysses," in which Penelope 
 gave so bright an example of conjugal duty and maternal love, in 
 the person of Mrs. Barry, to the Ulysses of Betteiton, and the 
 Telemachus of Booth. That public would, perhaps, have cared 
 more for the grace and nature of Addison's "Rosamond," pro- 
 duced at Drury Lane, in March, 1707, with its exquisite flattery 
 cunningly administered to the warrior who then dwelt near Wood- 
 stock, had it been set by a less incompetent musician than William's 
 old band-master, Clayton, the conceited person, who undertook to 
 improve on Italian example, and who violated the accents and 
 prosody of our language, as well as all rules of musical com- 
 position. It is singular, however, that neither Arne nor Arnold 
 have been much more successful, in resetting Addison's Opera, 
 than Clayton himself. The piece was played but three times, 
 and the author's witty ailicles against the absurdities of Italian 
 opera are supposed, by some writers, to have owed their satire 
 to the failure of " Rosamond." One great and happy success 
 Addison achieved through this piece, which compensated for any 
 disappointment springing from it. Poetical warrant of its excel- 
 lence was sent to him from many a quarter; but the brightest 
 wreath, the most elegant, refined, graceful, and the most welcome 
 of all, emanated from his own University. Addison, charmed with 
 the lines, inquired after the writer, and discovered him in an 
 under-graduate of Queen's College, the son of a poor Cumberland 
 clergyman, and named Thomas Tickell. It was a happy day when 
 both met, for then was laid the foundation of a long and tender 
 friendship. To " Rosamond" and his own musical lines upon it, 
 Tickell owed the felicity of his life, as Addison's fi-iend at home, 
 his secretary in his study, his associate abroad, his assistant and 
 substitute in his office of Secretary of State, and, finally, less
 
 20G doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 happy but not less honorable, the executor of his patron's will 
 and the editor of his patron's works. 
 
 " Rosamond" was produced during one of the most unlucky 
 seasons at Drury Lane, 1706-7; during which, Svviuey parted 
 ft'om Rich, took the Haymarket, from Vanbrugh, at a rent of £51 
 per night, and carried with him some of the best actors from 
 Drury. "The deserted company," as they called themselves, 
 advertised the " Recruiting Officer," for their benefit, " in which 
 they pray there may be singing by Mrs. Tofts, in English and 
 ItaUan ; and some dancing." The main stay of the season was 
 the " Recruiting Officer." Estcourt was advertised as " The true 
 Serjeant Kite," against Pack, who played it at the Haymarket. 
 At Drury, where Rich depended chiefly on opera, it was said that 
 " sound had got the better of sense ;" and the old motto, " vivitur 
 inffenio," was no longer applicable. It is at the Haymarket, says 
 the dedication of " Wit without Money," to Newman, the prompt- 
 er, that " wit is encouraged, and the player reaps the fruit of his 
 labors, without toiling for those who have always been the op- 
 pressors of the stage." 
 
 In the season of 1706-7, at the Haymarket, Mrs. Oldfield and 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle first played together, — the younger actress ulti- 
 mately winning or vanquishing the town. Gibber, too, joined 
 the company, at the head of whom remained Betterton and Mrs. 
 Barry. Every effort was made to beat opera, by a production of 
 pieces of a romantic or classical cast ; and Addison's pen, in pro- 
 logue on the stage, or in praise in the Spectator, was wielded in 
 the cause of the players, his neighbors. 
 
 Mrs. Centlivre, and Mrs. Mauley, contributed now-forgotten 
 plays. The former, — the " Platonic Lady," in which there is the 
 unpleasant incident of a couple of lovers, who ultimately prove to 
 be brother and sister. Mrs. Manley, in " Almyna," recommended 
 what she had little practised, — unlimited exercise of heroic virtue. 
 Some vampcd-up old pieces, with new names, were added, and 
 subscription lists were opened, to enable the cotnpan}^ whose in 
 terests were espoused by Lord Halifax, to make head against opera. 
 The greatest attempt to overcome the latter was made, by produc- 
 ing a truly and drily-classical tragedy, by Edmund Smith, called 
 " Phaedra and Hippolytus," which the public would not endure
 
 A SEVEN years' RIVALRY. 207 
 
 above three nights, to the disgust and astonishment of Addison, aa 
 recorded in the Spectator. Smith, or Neale rather, — the former 
 being a name he adopted from a benevolent unck\ — was not the 
 man to give new lustre to the stage. Scarcely a year had elapsed 
 since he had been expelled from Oxford University ; the brilliancy 
 of his career there could not save him from that disgrace. His 
 success on the stage, when he made this his sole attempt, was per- 
 haps impeded by the exactions of actors and actresses at rehearsal, 
 to suit whose caprices he had to write fi'esh verses, and furnish 
 them with " tags," whereby to secure applause, as they made their 
 exit. The play fell, and the author with it. The once brilliant 
 scholar descended to become a sot. The once best-dressed fop of 
 his day, became known by the nickname of " Captain Rag ;" and 
 as neither his wild life nor his careless style of costume seriously 
 affected his great personal beauty, the women, tempering justice 
 with clemency, called him the Handsome Sloven ! This scholar, 
 poet, critic and drunkard, attempted to recover his reputation, by 
 writing a tragedy, on the subject of Lady Jane Grey ; but he died 
 in the attempt. 
 
 A greater dramatist than he died this season, in a blaze of 
 triumph from the stage, under the dull cloud of poverty, at home, 
 — George Farquhar. His joyous " Beaux Stratagem," first played 
 on the 8th of March, 1707, was written in six painful weeks. Ton- 
 eon gave him £30 for the right of printing, and this, with what 
 he received from the managers, solaced the last weeks of the life 
 of the ex-captain, who had sold his commission,' and had been de- 
 luded by a patron who had promised to obtain preferment for him. 
 Farquhar had lost every thing, but sense of pain and flow of spirits. 
 He died in April, 1707, while the public were being enchanted by 
 his comedy, — so rich in delineation of character and in variety of 
 incident. It was thus cast : Aimwell, Mills ; Archer, Wilks ; 
 Scrub, Norris ; Foigard, Bowen (then newly come from Ireland) ; 
 Boniface, Bullock ; Sullen, Verbruggen (his last original character ; 
 — the stage was thoughtful of his orphan children as it was of 
 those of Farquhar) ; Gibbet, Gibber ; Count Bellair, Bowman ; Sii 
 Charles Freeman, Keene ; Lady Bountiful, Mrs. Powell ; Mrs. Sul 
 jen, Mrs, Oldfield ; Cherry, Mrs. Bicknell ; Dorinda, Mrs. Bradshaw 
 This piece was the great glory of the Hay market season, 1V06-7.
 
 208 doran's anmals of the stage. 
 
 The season of 1 707-8 was the last for a time of the two oppos- 
 ing houses, and it requires but a brief notice. Powell at Drury 
 Lane was weak as leading tragedian against Betterton at the Ilay- 
 tnarket, and Rich, the manager, produced no new piece. At the 
 rival house the novelties were Gibber's adaptations of two or three 
 forgotten plays, the bricks with which he built up his, at first 
 '' hounded," but ultimately successful, " Double Gallant," in which 
 lie played Atall ; the same author's " Lady's Last Stake," a heavy 
 comedy ; and Rowe's " Royal Convert," a heavier tragedy of the 
 times of Hengist and Horsa. In this play, the coiirtly author 
 bade for the bays (which were not to encircle his brows till the ac- 
 cession of George L), by introducing a complimentary prophecy 
 alluding to Queen Anne and the then much-canvassed Union of 
 England and Scotland. This was, perhaps, not worse than the ref- 
 erences made by the savage Saxon Rodogune to Venus, and to 
 the Eagle that bore Jove's thunder ! There are, nevertheless, some 
 stately scenes in this play. Of its failure, Rowe did not complain, 
 he simply, on printing it, quoted the words " Laudatur et alget," 
 on the title-page. Critics have thought that the -story was of too 
 religious a texture to please. It was too obscure to excite 
 interest. 
 
 At the end of this season the two companies were ordered, by 
 the Lord Chamberlain, to unite ; and they were not indisposed to 
 obey. The patent for Drury Lane was then held by Rich and 
 Sir Thomas Skipwith, who had formerly held a larger share. The 
 Monthly Mirror, for Mai'ch, 1798, says that Rich's father was an 
 attorney, to one of whose clients Sir Thomas owed a large sum ot 
 money. Being unable to pay it, he put up a part of his theatrical 
 patent to auction, and Rich bought the share for £80 ! In Chris- 
 topher Rich's time a quarter share was sold to Colman for £20,000. 
 Sir Thomas now consigned what share he held to Colonel Brett, — 
 a man more famous, as the husband of the divorced wife of Charles 
 Gerard, second Earl of Macclesfield, of whom fiction still makes 
 the mother of Savage, the poet, — and as the father of Anne Brett, 
 George I.'s English mistress, than for aught else, except it be that 
 he was the friend of Colley Cibber. It was by Colonel Brett's in- 
 fluence that the union of the companies was etFected, under the 
 patent held by him and Rich ; and henceforward the great house
 
 A SEVEN years' RIV'ALIU^ 209 
 
 lu the Hayiuarket was given up to Swiiiey and Italian Opera, at 
 the following- prices for admission, which will be found to form 
 a strong contrast with those at present extracted from the British 
 pocket: — Stage-boxes, 10s. 6c?.; Boxes, 8s.-, Pit, 5s.; Lower Gal- 
 lery, 2s. Qd. ; Upper Gallery, Is. 6(/. 
 
 I have stated above that the union of the companies was the 
 result of an order from the Lord Chamberlain. How absolute 
 was the authority of this official may be gathered from vari- 
 ous incidents on record. Gibber cites one to this effect : Powell, 
 the actor, holding controversy on theatrical matters, at Will's 
 Coftee House, was so excited as to strike one of the speakers on 
 the opposite side. Unluckily, this speaker was a kinsman of the 
 master or manager of the house where Powell played, and he rush- 
 ed to the Chamberlain's office to obtain redress, that is vengeance. 
 In the absence of the supreme officer, the Vice-Chamberlain took 
 up the quarrel. He probably ordered the actor to offer an apology ; 
 and he certainly shut up Drury Lane Theatre, because the man- 
 ager, who had received no communication from him, had permitted 
 Powell to appear before such reparation was made. The embarrass- 
 ed company of comedians were not allowed to resume their call- 
 ing for two or three days, and thus serious injury was infficted on 
 such actors as were paid only on the days of performance. This 
 was in King William's reign, but the power was not less, nor less 
 absolutely exercised, in the reign of Queen Anne ; and on this 
 very occasion which led to the Chamberlain's order for the union 
 of the companies. Great dissension had arisen at Drury Lane by 
 a new arrangement with respect to benefits, whereby the patentees 
 took a third of the receipts. The more discontented went over to 
 the Haymarket ; others remained, protested, and sought for re- 
 dress at the legal tribunal. Gibber will best tell what follow- 
 ed:— 
 
 " Several little disgraces were put upon them, particularly in the 
 disposal of parts in plays to be revived ; and as visible a partiality 
 was shown in the promotion of those in their interest, though their 
 endeavors to serve them could be of no extraordinary use. All 
 this while the other party were passively silent, till one day, the 
 actor who particularly solicited their cause at tne Lord Chamber 
 Iain's office, being shown there the order signed for absolutely
 
 210 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 silencing tbe patentees, and ready to be served, flew back with the 
 news to his companions, tlien at a rehearsal, at which he had been 
 wanted; when being called to his part, and something hastily 
 questioned by the patentee for his neglect of business, this actor, 
 I say, with an erected look and a theatrical spirit, at once threw 
 off the mask, and roundly told him : ' Sir, I have now no more 
 business here than you have. In half an hour you will neither 
 have actors to command, nor authority to employ them.' The 
 patentee who, though he could not readily comprehend his myste- 
 rious manner of speaking, had just glimpse of terror enough from 
 the words to soften his reproof into a cold formal declaration, that 
 * if he would not do his work he should not be paid.' But now, 
 to complete the catastrophe of these theatrical commotions, enters 
 the messenger, with the order of silence in his hands, whom the 
 same actor officiously introduced, telling the patentee that the 
 gentleman wanted to speak with him, from the Lord Chamberlain. 
 When the messenger had delivered the order, the actor, throwing 
 his head over his shoulder, towards the patentee, in the manner of 
 Shakspeare's Harry VIII. to Cardinal Wolsey, cried: 'Read o'er 
 that ! and then to breakfast, with what appetite you may I' Though 
 these words might be spoken in too vindictive and insulting a man- 
 ner to be commended, yet, from the fulness of a heart injuriously 
 treated, and now relieved on that instant occasion, why might they 
 not be pardoned? The authority of the patent, now no longer 
 subsisting, all the confederated actors immediately walked out of 
 the house, to which they never returned, till they became them- 
 selves the tenants and masters of it." 
 
 Let me note here that in May, 1708, Vanbrugh wrote to Lord 
 Manchester : — " I have parted with my whole concern (the Queen's 
 Theatre, Haymarket) to Mr. Swiney, only reserving my rent, sc 
 he is entire possessor of the Opera, and most people think will 
 manage it better than anybody. He has a good deal of money 
 in his pocket, that he got before by the acting company, and is 
 willing to venture it upon the singers." This proves that the lack 
 of prosperity, which marked the end of the last century, did not 
 distinofuish the beginning of the new.
 
 THE UNITED ANP THE DISUNITED COMPANIES. 211 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE UNITED AND THE DISUNITED COMPANIES. 
 
 The names of Betterton, Booth, Wilks, Gibber, Mills, Powell, 
 Estcourt, Pitikethman, jun.. Keen, Norris, Bullock, Pack, John- 
 son, Bowen, Thurmond, BickerstafF; — of Mistresses Barry, Brad- 
 shaw, Oldfield, Powell, Rogers, Saunders, Bicknell, Knight, 
 Porter, Susan Mountfort, and Cross, — indicate the quality of a com- 
 pany, which commenced acting at Drury Lane, and which, in some 
 respects, was perhaps never equalled ; though it did not at first real- 
 ize a corresponding success. Betteiton only " played" occasion- 
 ally, though he invariably acted well. The new pieces produced, 
 failed to please. The young Kentish attorney, and future editor 
 of Shakspeare, — Theobald, gave the first of about a score of for- 
 gotten dramas to the stage ; but his " Persian Princess" swept it 
 but once or twice with her train. Taverner, the proctor, who 
 could paint landscapes almost as ably as Gaspar Poussin, proved 
 but a poor dramatist ; and his " Maid the Mistress," was barely 
 listened to. 
 
 Matters did not improve in 1708-9, in which season Brett's 
 share of the patent was made over to AVilks, Cibber and Estcourt, 
 — the other shares amounting to nearly a dozen. The only suc- 
 cess of this season was achieved by Mrs. Centlivre's " Busy Body" 
 (Marplot, by Pack), and that was a success of slow growth. 
 Baker, who had ridiculed his own effeminate ways in Maiden 
 (" Tunbridge Walks"), now satirized the women; but the public 
 hissed his " Fine Lady's Airs," almost as much as they did Tom 
 Durfey's " Prophets." Li the latter piece, rakish, caroless, pen- 
 niless Tom, laughed at the religious impostors of the day who 
 dealt with the past dead and with future events ; but the public 
 did not see the fun of it, and dainned the play, whose author sur- 
 vived to write worse. Then there was the " Appius and Virginia," 
 of Dennis, — of which nothing survives but the theatrical thunder.
 
 212 dokan's axxals of tiie stage. 
 
 invented by tlie author fur this ti'agedy, — and the use of which, 
 after the pubUc had condemned the drama of a man who equally 
 foared France abroad and bailiffs at home, was always resented by 
 liim as a plagiarism. In this piece, Betterton acted the last of 
 liis long list of the dramatic characters created by him, — Virginius. 
 Sliortly after this, took place that famous complimentary benefit 
 for the old player, when the pit tickets were paid for at a guinea 
 each. The actors could scarcely get through " Love for Love," 
 in which he played Valentine, for the cloud of noble patrons 
 clustered on the stage, when guineas by the score were delicately 
 pi'essed upon him for acceptance, — and Mistresses Barry and 
 Bracegirdle supported him at the close ; while the former spoke 
 the epilogue, Vifhicli was the dramatic apotheosis of Betteilon him- 
 self. 
 
 On the following June, actors and patentees were at issue ; and 
 their dissensions were not quelled by the Lord Chamberlain closing 
 the house ; from which Rich, of whose oppressions the actors com- 
 plained, was driven by Collier, the M. P. for Truro, to whom, for 
 political as well as other reasons, a license was granted to open 
 Drury Lane. When Collier took forcible possession of the house, 
 he found that Rich had carried ofl" most of the scenery and 
 costumes ; but he made the best of adverse circumstances and 
 a company lacking Betterton and other able actors ; and he 
 opened Drury on November 23d, 1709, under the direction of 
 Aaron Hill, with " Aurungzebe," and Booth for his leading tra- 
 gedian. 
 
 Booth wished to appear in a new tragedy, and Hill wrote in a 
 week, that " Elfrid" which the public damned in a night. Hill 
 was always ready to write. At Westminster, he had filled his 
 pockets by writing the exercises of young gentlemen who had not 
 wit for the work ; and by and by he will be writing the " Bastard," 
 for Savage. Meanwhile, here was " Elfrid," written and con- 
 demned. The author allowed that it was " an unpruncd wilder- 
 ness of fancy, with here and there a flower among the leaves, but 
 without any fruit of judgment." At this time. Hill was a young 
 fellow of four and twenty, with great experience and some repu- 
 tation. A friendless young " Westminster," he had at fifteen 
 found his way alone to Constantinople, where he obtained a
 
 THE L'NITED AND THE DISUNITED COMPANIES. 213 
 
 patron in the ambassador, tlie sixth Lord Paget, — a distant relar 
 lion of t he youthful Aaron. Under the peer's auspices. Hill trav- 
 elled extensively in the East; and subsequently, ere he was yet 
 twenty, accompanied Sir William Wentworth, as travelling tutor, 
 over most of Europe. Later, his poem of " Camillus," in defence 
 of Lord Peterborough, procured for him the post of secretaiy to 
 that brave and eccentric peer, with whom he remained till his 
 mamage. Then Aaron lived with a divided allegiance to his wife 
 and the stage, for the improvement of which he had many an im- 
 practicable theory. He would willingly have written a tragedy 
 for Booth once a week. 
 
 Tragedies not being in request. Hill tried farce, and produced 
 his " Walking Statue," a screamer, as improbable as his " Elfiid" 
 was unpruned. The audience would not tolerate it ; and Hill 
 came before them in a few days with a comedy — " Trick upon 
 Trick," at which the house howled rather than laughed. Where- 
 upon, Hill new-nibbed his pen, and addressed himself to com- 
 position again. 
 
 The treasury gained more by the appearance of Elrington, in 
 *' Oronooko," than by Hill's novelties. Then, the trial of putting the 
 fairy dancer, Santlow, into boy's clothes, and giving her the small 
 part of the Eunuch in " Valentinian" to play, and an epilogue to 
 be spoken in male attire, succeeded so well, that she Avas cast for 
 Dorcas Zeal in Charles Shadwell's " Fair Quaker of Deal," wherein 
 she took the town, and won the heart of Booth. In this character- 
 piece Flip, the sea-brute, is contracted with Beau Mizen, the sea- 
 fop, but the latter is, in some degree, a copy of Baker's Maiden, 
 the progenitor of the family of Dundreary. 
 
 From Collier, there went over to the Haymarket, under Swiney, 
 Betterton, Wilks, Cibber, Doggett, Mills, Mrs. Barry, Oldfield, and 
 other actors of mark. Drury had opened with Dryden. The 
 Queen's Theatre, Haymarket, commenced its season on the 15th 
 of September, 1709, with Shakspeare. The play was "Othello," 
 with Betterton in the Moor ; but oh ! shade of the bard of Avon, 
 there was between the acts a performance bv " a Mr. Higgins, a 
 posture-master from Holland," and the critics, silently admiring 
 " old Thomas," loudly pronounced the feats of the pseudo-Hol- 
 lander to be " marvellous." The only great event of the season
 
 214 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 was the death of Bctterton, soon after his benefit, on the 13th of 
 April, 1710, of which I have ah-cady spoken at length. 
 
 About this period, the word encore was introduced at the 
 operatic performances in the Haymarket, and very much objected 
 to by plain-going Englishmen. It was also the custom of some 
 who desired the repetition of a song, to cry altra volta ! altra 
 volta! The Italian phrase was denounced as vigorously as the 
 French exclamation ; and a writer in the Spectator asks, when it 
 may be proper for him to say it in English ? and would it be vulgar 
 to shout again ! again ! 
 
 The season of 1710-11 was a languishing one. Players and 
 play -goers seemed to feel that the great glory of the stage was ex- 
 tinguished, in the death of Betterton and the departure of Mrs. 
 Barry. Collier, restless and capricious, gave up Drury Lane for 
 opera at the Haymarket, Swiney exchanging with him. The 
 united company of actors assembling at the former, contributed 
 £200 a year as a sort of compensation to Collier, as well as refrain- 
 ing from playing on a Wednesday when an opera was given on 
 that night. The Thursday audiences were all the larger for this ; 
 but the inferior actors, who were paid by the day, felt the hard- 
 ship of this arrangement, and noblemen, who espoused the part 
 of the English players against the foreign singers, expressed an 
 opinion, as they walked about behind the scenes, that " it was 
 shameful to take part of the actors' bread fi'om them, to support 
 the silly diversions of people of quality." 
 
 Booth and Powell shared the inheritance of Betterton, and Mrs. 
 ]>radshaw succeeded to that of Mrs. Barry ; but Mrs. Porter was 
 soon to dispute it with her. The old stock pieces were well cast, 
 but no new play obtained toleration for above a night or two. 
 Mrs. Centlivre's " Marplot," a poor sequel to the " Busy Body," 
 brought her nothing more substantial . than a dedication fee of 
 £40 fi-om the Earl of Portland, the son of William III.'s "Ben- 
 tinck." This was more than Johnson obtained for dedicating 
 his condemned comedy, the " Generous Husband," to the last of 
 the three Lords Ashburnham, who were alive in 1710. Poor 
 Elkanah Settle, too, pensioned poet of the city, and a brother of 
 the Charterhouse, was employed by Booth to adapt Beaumont 
 and Fletcher's " Knight of the Burning Pestle," which Elkanat
 
 THE UNITED AND THE DISUNITED COMPANIES. 215 
 
 transformed to the " City Ramble," Booth playing Rinaldo. 
 Settle was so unpopular at this time, that he brouglit out his play 
 in the summer season when the town was scantily peopled. The 
 only result was that it was damned by a thin house instead of a 
 crowded one. 
 
 At the close of the season Swiney returned to the opera ; Col- 
 lier to Drury Lane, under a new license to himself, Wilks, Cibber 
 and Doggett. Collier withdrew, however, from the management, 
 and the three actors named paid him £700 a year for doing 
 nothing. From this time may be dated the real prosperity of the 
 sole and united company of actors, for whom a halcyon score of 
 years was now beginning. On the other hand, the opera only 
 brought ruin, and drove into exile its able but unlucky manager, 
 Swiney.
 
 21 G doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITT. 
 
 Naturally and justifiablv jubilant is Colley Gibber when giving 
 the history of the united companies. That union led to a pros- 
 perity of twenty years, though the union itself did not last so long. 
 We now find houses crowded be3fond any thing known to that 
 generation ; and that not so much from surpassing excellence on 
 the part of the actors, as fi-om their zeal, industry, and the willing- 
 ness with which they worked together. This success doubled the 
 salaries of the comedians, and " in the twenty years, while we were 
 our own directors," says Colley, with honest pride, " we never 
 had a creditor that had occasion to come twice for his bill ; every 
 Monday morning discharged us of all commands, before we took a 
 shilling for our own use." 
 
 These halcyon days had, no doubt, their little passing clouds ; 
 some prejudices and jealousies would arise among the leaders, as 
 exccllpnce began to manifest itself from below; but these, as Cib- 
 ber remarks, with a lofty philosophy, were " frailties, which socie- 
 ties of a higher consideration, while they are composed of men, 
 will never be entirely free from." Cibber and his fellows deserved 
 to prosper. Although they enjoyed a monopoly they did not 
 abuse it; and £1,500 profit to each of the three managers, in one 
 year, the greatest sum ever yet so realized on the English stage, 
 showed what might be done, without the aid of " those barbarous 
 entertainments," of acrobats and similar personages, for which the 
 dignified Cibber had the most profound and wholesome horror. 
 
 While the management was in the hands of Cibber, Wilks, and 
 Doggctt, the good temper of the first was imperturbable. He 
 yielded, or seemed to yield, to the hot hastiness of Wilks, and 
 lent himself to tlie captious waywardness of Doggett. However 
 impracticable the latter was, Cibber always left a way open to 
 reconciliation. In the very bitterest of their feuds, " I nevei
 
 UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY. 217 
 
 failed to give him my hat and ' your servant,^ whenever I met 
 him, neither of which he would ever return for above a year after; 
 but I still persisted in my usual salutation, without obsei-ving 
 whether it was civilly received or not." Doggett would sit sullen 
 and silent, at the same table with Gibber, at Will's — the young 
 gentlemen of the town loitering about the room, to listen to {\w 
 critics, or look at the actors — and Gibber would treat the (.'•! 
 player with deference, till the latter was graciously pleased to be 
 softened, and asked for a pinch from Colley's box, in token of 
 reconciliation. 
 
 Almost the only word approaching to complaint advanced by 
 Gibber refers to public criticism. The newspapers, and especially 
 Mist''s Journal, he says, " took upon them very often to censure 
 our management, with the same freedom and severity as if we had 
 been so many ministers of state." This is thoroughly Gibberian 
 in humor and expression. For these critics, however, Colley had 
 a supreme contempt. Wilks and Booth, who succeeded Doggett, 
 were more sensitive, and would fain have made reply ; but Gibber 
 remarked that the noise made by the critics was a sign of the 
 ability and success of the management. If we were insignificant, 
 said he, and played only to empty houses, these fellows would be 
 silent. 
 
 When the fashion of patronizing the folly of pantomimes came 
 in, Gibber reluctantly produced one at Drury Lane, but only " as 
 crutches to the plays." In the regular drama itself, it seemed im- 
 material to him what he acted, so that the piece was well support- 
 ed ; and accordingly when the " Orphan" was revived, and the 
 town had just been falsely told that Gibber was dead, "I quietly 
 stole myself," he says, " into the part of the Ghaplain, which 
 I had not been seen in for many years before ;" and as the aud- 
 ience received hun with delight, Golley was satisfied and trium- 
 phant. 
 
 In the first season the poets were less successful than the play- 
 ers; Johnson's "Wife's Relief," and Mrs. Gentlivre's "Perplexed 
 Lovers," were failures. But the lady fell with some eclat. The 
 epilogue produced more sensation than the play. Prince Eugene 
 was then in England, and to Mrs. Oldfield were intrusted lines 
 complimentary to the military talents of the Prince, and his 
 Vol. I. — 10
 
 218 doran's annals of thp: stage. 
 
 brother in arms, the Duke of Marlborough, Political feuds were 
 then so embittered, that the managers were afraid to allow the 
 epilogue to be spoken ; but on the second night, they fortified 
 themselves by the Chamberlain's license, and brave Mistress Old- 
 field delivered it, in spite of menacing letters addressed to her. 
 The piece fell ; but the authoress printed it, with a tribute of 
 rhymed homage to the prince, who acknowledged the same by 
 sending her a handsome and heavy gold snuff-box, with this in- 
 scription : — " The present of his Highness Prince Eugene of Savoy 
 to Susanna Centlivre." Those heavy boxes — some ol them fur- 
 nished with a tube and spring for shooting the snuff up the nose, 
 were then in fashion, and prince could hardly give more fitting 
 present to poetess than a snuff-box, for which — 
 
 "Distant climes their various arts employ, 
 To adorn and to complete the modish toy. 
 Hinges with close-wrought joints from Paris come, 
 Pictures dear bought from "Venice and from Rome. 
 Hi ill * * * * 
 
 Some think the part too small of modish sand, 
 Which at a niggard pinch they can command. 
 Nor can their fingers for that task suffice, 
 Their nose too greedy, not their hand too nice, 
 To such a height with these is fashion grown, 
 They feed their very nostrils with a spoon." 
 
 So sang the Rev. Samuel Wesley, in liis somewhat indelicate 
 satire on snuff, addressed to his sister, Keziah. Mrs. Centlivre's 
 box probably figured at Drury Lane, and in very good company, 
 with other boxes carried by ladies ; for, says the poet — 
 
 " They can enchant the fair to such degree, 
 Scarce more admired could French romances be, 
 Scarce scandal more beloved or darling flattery; 
 Whether to th' India House they take their way. 
 Loiter i' the Park, or at the toilet stay, 
 Whether at church they shino, or sparkle at the play." 
 
 Tlie great night of this season was that in which Philips' version 
 of Racine's "Andromaque was played — the l7th of March, 1712. 
 Of the " Distressed Mother," the following was the original cast
 
 UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY. 219 
 
 — Orestes, Powell ; Pyrrhus, Booth ; Pylades, Mills ; Andromache, 
 Mrs. Oldfield ; Hermione, Mrs. Porter. The English piece is even 
 duller than the French one ; but there is great scope in it for 
 good declamatory actors, and Booth especially led the town on 
 this night to see in him the undoubted successor of Bettertou. 
 
 All that could be done to render success assured, was done on 
 this occasion, not only by the poet, but by his friends. Before 
 the tragedy was acted, the Spectator informed the public that a 
 master-piece was about to be represented. On the first night, 
 there was a packed audience of hearty supporters. Dui'ing the 
 run of the play, the Spectator related the effect the tender tale 
 had had on Sir Roger de Coverley. 
 
 We learn from Addison, in the puff preliminary, that at the 
 reading of the " Distressed Mother," by one of the actors, — the 
 players, who listened, were moved to tears, and that the reader, 
 in his turn, was so overcome by his emotions " that he was fre- 
 quently obliged to lay down the book, and pause, to recover him- 
 self and give vent to the humanity which rose in him at some 
 irresistible touches of the imag-ined sorrow." On the first night 
 of its being played, the performance was said to be " at the desu-e 
 of several ladies of quality." Sir Roger de Coverley, with Will 
 Honeycombe and Captain Sentry, backed by two or three old 
 sers'ants, — the Captain wearing the sword he had wielded at 
 Steinkirk, are described as being in the pit, early — four o'clock, 
 before the house was full and the candles were lighted. There 
 was access then for the public for a couple of hours before the 
 curtain rose. The Knight thought the King of France could not 
 strut it moi'e imposingly than Booth in Pyrrhusv He found the 
 plot so ingeniously complicated, that he could not guess how it 
 would end, or what would become of PyrrHus. His sympathies 
 oscillated between the ladies, with a word of smart censure now 
 and then for either ; calling Andromache a perverse widow, and 
 anon, Hermione " a notable young baggage." Turgid as this 
 English adaptation now seems, — to Addison, its simplicity was 
 one of its gi-eat merits. " Why !" says Sir Roger, " there is not 
 a single sentence in the play that I don't know the meaning of!" It 
 Avas listened to with a " very remarkable silence and stillness," 
 broken only by the applause; and a comphment is paid to Mills,
 
 220 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 who played Pylades, in the remark, " thouoh lie speaks but little, 
 I like the old fellow in whiskers as well as any of tlicin." 
 
 The epilogue, spoken by Mrs. Oldfie'd, and undoing all the soft 
 emotions wrought by the tragedy, w;i.s ix^peated twice, for several 
 consecutive nights. The audience could not have enough of it, 
 and long years after, they called for it, Avhenever the piece was 
 revived. Budgell was the reputed author, but Tonson printed it 
 with Addison's name as the writer. The latter, however, ordered 
 that of I5udgell to be restored, " that it might add weight to the 
 sohcitation which he was then making for a place." 
 
 Thus Ambrose Philips showed that he could write something 
 more vigorous than the Pastorals, which had given him a name 
 while at the University, lie took higher rank among the wits at 
 Button's Coffee House, and had no reason to fear the censure or 
 ridicule of men like Henry Carey, who fastened upon him the 
 name of Namby Pamby. Success made the author not less sol- 
 emn, but more pompous. He wore the sword, which he could 
 boldly use, although his foes called him Quaker Philips, — with an 
 air ; and the successful author of a new tragedy could become 
 arrogant enough to hang a rod up at Button's, and threaten Pope 
 with a degrading application of it, for having expressed contempt 
 of the author's Pastorals. 
 
 \Vhatever may be thought of this, Rowe and Philips were the 
 first authors of the last century who wrote tragedies which have 
 been played in our own times. But a greater than either was ris- 
 ing ; for Addison was giving the last touches to " Cato ;" and he, 
 with Steele, and others, was imparting his views and ideas on the 
 subject to favorite actors over tavern dinners. 
 
 At the close of this season was finished the brief career of an 
 actor, who was generally considered to possess rare talents, but 
 who was variously judged of bv such nomp(!tent judicial authority 
 as Steele and Cihber. I allude to Richard Estcourt. His London 
 career as a player lasted little more than half-a-dozen years, 
 during which he distinguished himself by creating Serjeant Kite 
 and Sir Francis Gripe. Downes asserts that he was a born actor. 
 Steele mournfully says, " If I were to speak of merit neglected, 
 misapplied, or misunderstood, might I not say that Estcourt has a 
 great capacity ? but it is not the interest of those who bear a figure
 
 UNION. STRENGTPI, PROSPERITY. 221 
 
 on the stage that his talents wore understood. Tt is their business 
 to impose upon him what cannot become him, or keep out of his 
 hands any thing in which he could shine." Cliotwood alludes tc 
 his habit of interpolating jokes and catches of his own, which 
 raised a laugh among the general public, but which made critics 
 frown. Gibber has been accused of being unjust to him, but 
 Colley's judgment seems to be rendered with his usual fairness, 
 lucidity, and skill. 
 
 " This man," says Gibber in his Apology, " was so amazing and 
 extraordinary a mimic, that no man or woman, from the coquette 
 to the privy-counsellor, ever moved or spoke before him, but he 
 could carry their voice, look, mien, and motion, instantly into 
 another company. I have heard him make long harangues and 
 form various arguments, even in the manner of thinking, of an 
 eminent pleader at the bar, with every the least article and singu- 
 larity of his utterance so perfectly imitated that he was the very 
 alter ipse, scarce to be distinguished from his original. Yet more, 
 I have seen upon the margin of the written part of Falstaff, which 
 he acted, his own notes and observations upon almost every speech 
 of it, describing the true spirit of the humor, and with what tone 
 of voice, with what look or gesture, each of them ought to be de- 
 livered. Yet in his execution upon the stage, he seemed to have 
 lost all those just ideas he had formed of it, and almost through 
 the character he labored under a heavy load of flatness. In a 
 word, with all his skill in mimicry, and knowledge of what ought 
 to be done, he never upon the stage could bring it truly into 
 practice, but was, upon the whole, a languid, unaffecting actor." 
 
 His Kite, however, is said to have been full of lively, dashing, 
 natural humor. Off the stage, Estcourt's society was eagerly 
 sought for, and he was to be met in the best company, where, on 
 festive nights, he recited, gave his imitations, and was not too 
 proud to pocket his guerdon. The old Duke of Marlborough 
 gladly held fellowship with Estcourt, and as the latter occasionally 
 got guerdon out of the Duke, he must have been a great and very 
 affecting actor indeed. It was probably his spirit of good-fellow- 
 ship which induced him to leave the stage (in 1711) for another 
 calling. This change was sufficiently important for the Spectator 
 to notice, with a fine bit of raillery, too : — " Estcourt has lain in.
 
 222 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 at the Bumper, Coveiit Garden, neat, natural wines, to be sold 
 wholesale, as well as retail, by his old seiTant, trusty Anthony 
 (Aston). As Estcourt is a person altogether unknowing in the 
 wine trade, it cannot but be doubted that he will deliver the wine 
 in the same natural purity that he receives it from the merchants, 
 &c." 
 
 On the foundation of the "Beef Steak Club," Estcourt was ap- 
 pointed Providore ; and in the exercise of this office to the chief 
 wits and leading men of the nation, he wore a small gold gridiron, 
 suspended around his neck by a green silk riband. Dr. King al- 
 ludes to the company, their qualities, and the dignity of the ex- 
 actor, in his Art of Cookery : — 
 
 " He that of honor, wit, and mirth partakes, 
 May be a fit companion o'er beef steaks. 
 His name may be to future times unroll'd, 
 In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's made of gold." 
 
 Estcourt died in 1712, and was buried in the "yard" of St. 
 Paul's, Covent Garden. Near him lie Kynaston and Wycherley, 
 Susanna Centlivre, Wilks, Macklin, and other once vivacious stage 
 celebrities of later times. 
 
 I have already had to notice, and shall have to do so again, the 
 despotic power exercised by the Lord Chamberlain over theatri- 
 cal affaire. One of the most remarkable instances presents itself 
 this year, in connection with the Opera House, indeed, but still 
 illQstrative of my subject. John Hughes, who will subsequently 
 appear as a dramatic author, of purer pretensions, had written the 
 words for the composer of " Calypso and Telemachus." A crowd 
 of the " quality," connoisseurs and amateurs, had attended the re- 
 liearsal, with which they were so satisfied that a subscription was 
 ' formed to support the performance of the Opera. This aroused 
 the jealousy of the Italian company then in London, who appealed 
 for protection to the Duke of Shrewsbury, the then Chamber- 
 lain. 
 
 This Duke was the Charles Talbot, in whose house it had been 
 decided that William of Orange should be invited to England, 
 and who, corresponding with James after William was on the 
 throne, had been discovered, and forgiven. He had been loved,
 
 fJNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY. 223 
 
 it is said, by Queen Mary and the Duchess of Marlborough ; but 
 this able, gentle, wayward, and one-eyed statesman, was at this 
 present time the husband of an Italian lady, and on this fact, 
 albeit she was not a dulcis uxor, the Italian singers founded their 
 hopes. As the lady's brother was hanged at Tyburn, half a dozen 
 years later, for murdering his servant, Shrewsbury had no great 
 cause, ultimately, to be proud of the connection. Nevertheless, it 
 served the purpose of the foreign vocalists, it would seem, as the 
 Chamberlain protected their interests, and issued an order for the 
 suppression of the subscription, adding, that the doors must be 
 opened at the lowest play-house prices, or not at all. Even under 
 this discouragement the opera was played with success, and was 
 subsequently revived, with good eftect, at Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
 
 Romantic drama, light, bustling comedy, with less vice and 
 not much less wit than of old, and the severest classical trage- 
 dy, challenged the favor of the town in the Drury Lane season 
 of 1712-13. Severe tragedy won the wreath from its compet- 
 itors. 
 
 First on the list was fat Charles Johnson, who was even a more 
 frequent lounger at Button's than Ambrose Philips, and who had 
 a play ready for representation every year and a half It is a 
 curious fact, that his " Successful Pirate," a sort of melo-drama, in 
 five acts, the scene in Madagascar, and the action made up of 
 fighting and wooing, aroused the ire of the virtuous Dennis. This 
 censor wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, complaining that in such 
 a piece as the above the stage was prostituted, villany encouraged, 
 and the theatre disgraced ; that same theatre where, a few nights 
 previously, had been acted the " Old Bachelor," and the " Com- 
 mittee," which some people, like Sir Roger, considered a " good 
 Church of England comedy." The piece, however, made no im- 
 pression ; nor was much greater effected by that learned proctor, 
 Tavorner's " French Advocates," nor by the farcical " Humors of 
 the Array," which the ex-soldier Charles Shadwell had partly con- 
 structed out of his own military reminiscences, as he sat at his 
 desk in the Revenue Office at Dublin. 
 
 Equally indifferent were the public to a comedy called the 
 " Wife of Bath," written by a young man who had been a 
 mercer's apprentice in the Strand, and who was now house-stew-
 
 224: dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 ard and man of business to the widowed Ducliess of Monraoulh 
 at her residence, no longer in the mansion on the south side of 
 Soho Square, about to be turned into auction rooms, but in fresh, 
 pure, rustic Uedge Lane, wliich now, as Whitcombe Street, lacks 
 all freshness, purity, and rusticity. The young man's name was 
 Gay ; but it was not on this occasion that he was to make it 
 faiuous. 
 
 In stern tragedy, the " Heroic Daughter," founded on Corneille's 
 " Cid," wrung no tears, and " Cinna's Conspiracy" raised no 
 emotions. The sole success of the season in this line was Addi- 
 son's "Cato," first played on the 14th of April, 1713; thus cast: 
 Cato, Booth; Syphax, Gibber; Juba, Wilks; Fortius, Powell; 
 Sempronius, Mills ; Marcus, Ryan ; Decius, Boman ; Lucius, 
 Keen ; Marcia, Mrs. Oldfield ; Lucia, Mrs. Porter. 
 
 Of the success of this tragedy, a compound of transcendent 
 beauties and absurdity, I shall speak, when treating of Booth, 
 apart. It established that actor as the great master of his art, and 
 it brought into notice young Ryan, the intelligent son of an Irish 
 tailor, a good actor, and a true gentleman. " Cato" had the good 
 fortune to be represented by a band of superior actors, who had 
 been enlightened by the instruction of Addison, and stimulated at 
 rehearsals, by the sarcasm of Swift. Factions united in applause ; 
 purses — not bouquets — were presented to the chief actor, and the 
 Cato night was long one of the traditions about which old players 
 loved to entertain all listeners. 
 
 WhUe thus new glories were rising, old ones were fading away, 
 or dying out. Long-nosed Tom Durfey was poor enough to be 
 grateful for a benefit given in his behalf, the proceeds of which 
 furnished him with a fresh supply of sack, and strengthened him 
 to new attempt at song. About the same time died the last of the 
 actors of the Cromwellian times. Will Peer, one who was qualified 
 by nature to play the Apothecary in " Romeo and Juliet," and by 
 intelligence to deliver with well -feigned humility the players' pro- 
 logue to the play in " Hamlet," but whom old age, good living, 
 and success rendered too fat for the first, and too jolly for the 
 second. 
 
 In the season of 1Y13-14, Booth was associated ni the license 
 which Wilks, Gibber, and Doggett held at the Queen's pleasure.
 
 UNION, STKENGTI], PKOSPEIUTY. 225 
 
 Doggett withdrew on a pecuniary arrangement, agreed upon after 
 some litigation, and the theatre was in the hands of tlie other 
 three eminent actors. The ohl pieces of this season were ad- 
 mirably cast; of the new pieces which were failures it is not 
 necessary to speak, but of two which have been played with suc- 
 cess from that time down to the last year, some notice is required. 
 I allude to Rowe's" Jane Shore," and Mrs. Centlivre's " Wonder." 
 The tragedy was written after tlie poet had ceased to be Under- 
 Secretary to the Duke of Queensberry, and after he had studied 
 Spanish, in hopes of a foreign appointment through Halifax, who, 
 according to the story, only congratulated him on being able to 
 read Don Quixote in the original ! " Jane Shore" was brought 
 out, February 2, I7l4. Hastings, Booth; Dumont, Wilks; 
 Glo'ster, Gibber ; Jane Shore, Mrs. Oldfield ; Alicia, Mrs. Porter. 
 A greater contrast to " Cato" could not have been devised than 
 this domestic tragedy, wherein all the unities are violated, the 
 language is familiar, and the chief incidents the starving of a re- 
 pentant wife, and the generosity of an exceedingly forgiving hus- 
 band. The audience, which was stirred by the patriotism of 
 " Cato," was moved to delicious tears by the sufferings and sorrow 
 of Jane Shore, whose character Rowe has elevated in order to 
 secure for her the suffi'ages of his hearers. The character was a 
 triumph for Mrs. Oldfield, who had been trained to a beautiful 
 reading of her part by Rowe himself, who was unequalled as a 
 reader by any poet save Lee ; and " Jane Shore," as a success 
 ranked only next to " Cato." The third, sixth, and tenth nights 
 were for the author's benefit. On the first two the boxes and pit 
 " were laid together," admission half-a-guinea ; the third benefit 
 was " at common prices." 
 
 Much expectation had been raised by this piece, and it was real- 
 ized to the utmost. It was otherwise with the " Wonder," from 
 w hich little was expected, but much success ensued. The sinning 
 wife and moaning husband of the tragedy were the lively lady 
 and the quick-tempered lover of this comedy. The Violanthe of 
 Mrs. Oldfield and the Don FeUx of Wilks were talked of in every 
 cofiee-house. The wits about the door, and the young poets in 
 the back room at the new house set up by Button, talked as 
 vivaciously about it as their rivals at Tom's, on the opposite side of 
 10*
 
 226 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 the way ; and every prophecy they made of the success of the com- 
 edy in times to come, does credit to them as soothsayers. 
 
 The death of Queen Anne, on the first of August, I7l4, cannot 
 be said to have prematurely closed the summer season of this year, 
 However, the actors mourned for a month, and then a portion of 
 them played joyously enough, for a while, in Pinkethman's booth 
 at Southwark Fair. 
 
 At this period the stage lost a lady who was as dear to it as 
 Queen Anne, namely, Mrs. Bradshaw. Her departure, however, 
 was caused by marriage, not by death ; and the gentleman who 
 carried her oft', instead of being a rollicking gallant, or a worthless 
 peer, was a staid, solemn, worthy antiquary, Martin Folkes, who 
 rather surprised the town by wedding young Mistress Bradshaw. 
 The lady had been on the stage about eighteen years ; she had 
 trodden it from early childhood, and always with unblemished 
 reputation. She had her reward in an excellent, sensible, and 
 wealthy husband, to whom her exemplary and prudent conduct 
 endeared her; and the happiness of this couple was well estab- 
 lished. Probably, when Martin was away on Friday evenings, at 
 the Young Devil Tavern, where the members of the society of 
 Antiquaries met, upon "pain of forfeiture of sixpence," Mrs. 
 Folkes sat quietly at home, thinking without sadness of the by- 
 gone times when she won applause as the originator of the char- 
 acters of Corinna, in the " Conspirator," Sylvia, in the " Double 
 Gallant," and Arabella Zeal, in the " Fair Quaker." In other re- 
 pects. Mistress Bradshaw is one of the happy, honest women who 
 have no history. 
 
 If the age of Queen Anne was not quite so fully the golden age 
 of authors as it has been supposed to be, it was still remarkable 
 for a patronage of literature hitherto unparalleled. Addison, Con- 
 greve, Gay, Ambrose Philips, Rowe, were among the dramatic 
 authors who, with men of much humbler pretensions, held public 
 offices, were patronized by the great, or lived at their ease. With 
 the death of this Queen, the patent or license, held by Wilks, 
 Gibber, Booth and Doggett, died also. In the new license, 
 Steele, who, since we last met with him at the play, had endured 
 variety of fortune, was made a partner. He had married that 
 second wife whom he treated so politely in his little failures of
 
 UNION, STRENGTH, PROSPERITY. 227 
 
 allegiance. He bad establislicd the Tatlcr, co-operated in the 
 Spectator, had begun and terminated the Guardian, and had 
 started the Engluhman. He had served the Duke of Marlborough 
 in and out of office, and had been elected M. P. for Stockbridge, 
 after nobly resigning his Commissionership of Stamps, and his 
 pension as " servant to the late Prince George of Denmark." He 
 had been expelled the House for writing what the House called 
 seditious pamphlets, and had then returned to literature, and now 
 to occupation as a manager. From the new government, under 
 tlie new King, by whom he was soon after knighted, Steele had 
 influence enough to ultimately obtain a patent, in the names of 
 himself. Booth, Wilks and Gibber, which protected them from 
 some small tyrannies with which they were occasionally visited by 
 the officials in the Lord Ghamberlain's office. 
 
 The season of 1714-15 was not especially remarkable, save for 
 this, that the great actors who were patentees ft-equently played 
 small parts, in order to give young actors a chance. It was not 
 given, however, to every young actor; for, on the 20th of April, 
 1715, when Rowe's " Lady Jane Grey" was produced (Dudley, 
 Booth ; Lady Jane, Mrs. Oldfield), the very insignificant part of 
 the Lieutenant of the Tower was played by a new actor from Ire- 
 land, — one James Quin, who was destined to equal Booth in some 
 parts, and to be surpassed in some, by an actor yet at school, — • 
 David Garrick. 
 
 Chai'les Johnson was, of course, ready with a comedy, stolen 
 from various sources, — " Country Lasses." Gay, who had re- 
 turned from Hanover with the third Earl of Clarendon, whose 
 secretary he had become, after leaving the service of the Duchess 
 of Monmouth, produced his hilarious burlesque of old and modern 
 tragedies, — the "What d'ye call It?" The satire of this piece 
 was so fine, that deaf gentlemen who saw the tragic action and 
 could iiot hear the words, and the new sovereign and court who 
 lieard the words but could not understand their sense, were put 
 into great perplexity ; while the honest galleries, reached by the 
 solemn sounds, and taking manner for matter, were affected to such 
 tears as they could shed, at the most farcical and high-sounding 
 similes. It was only after awhile that the joke was comprehended, 
 and that the "What d'ye call It?" was seen to be a capital bur-
 
 228 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 lesquc of " Venice Preserved." The very Templars, wlio of course 
 comprehended it all, from the first, and went to hiss the piece, for 
 the honor of Otway, could not do so, for laughing ; and this only 
 perplexed the more the matter-of-fact people, not so apt to dis 
 cover a joke. 
 
 Rowe's " Lady .Jane" did not prove so attractive as " Jane 
 Shore." There were only innocence and calamity wherewith to 
 move the audience ; no guilt ; no profound intrigue. But there 
 is much force in some of the scenes. The very variety of the 
 latter, indeed, was alleged against the author, as a defect, by the 
 many slaves of the unity of time and place. It was objected to 
 Uowe, that in his violation of the unities he went beyond other 
 offenders, — not only changing the scene with the acts, but varying 
 it within the acts. For this, however, lie had good authority in 
 older and better dramatists. " To change the scene, as is done by 
 Kowe, in the middle of an act, is to add more acts to the play ; 
 •><nce an act is so much of tlie business as is transacted without 
 Interruption. Rowe, by this license, easily extricates himself from 
 difficulties, as in 'Lady Jane Grey,' when we have been tenilied 
 . y all the dreadful pomp of public execution, and are wondering 
 how the heroine or poet will proceed ; no sooner has Jane pro- 
 nounced some proplietic rhymes than — pass and be gone — the 
 scene closes, and Pembroke and Gardner are turned out upon the 
 stage." The critic wished to stay and witness a "public ex- 
 ecution," not satisfied with the pathos of the speech uttered by 
 Jane, and which, for tenderness, sets the scene in fine contrast 
 with that of the quarrelling and reconciliation between Pembroke 
 and Guilford. Rowe's Jane Grey interests the heart more fully 
 than Jane Shore or Calista; but the last two ladies have a touch 
 of boldness about them, in which the first, from her very in- 
 nocence, is wanting ; and audiences are, therefore, more excited 
 by the loudly proclaimed wrongs of the women who have gone 
 astray than by the tender protests of the victim who sufters for 
 the crimes of others. 
 
 George Powell ended his seven and twentieth season this year, 
 at the close of which he died. For the old actor gone, a young 
 actress appeared, — Mrs. Horton, " one of the most beautiful 
 women that ever trod the stage." She had been a " stroller,"
 
 I'h70N, STEENGTH, PROSPERITY. 229 
 
 ranting tragedy in barns and countiy towns, and playing Cupid 
 in a bootli at suburban fairs. The attention of managers was di- 
 rected towards ber; and Booth, after seeing her act in South- 
 wark, engaged lier for Drury Lane, where her presence was more 
 agreeable to the public than particularly pleasant to dear Mra. 
 Oldfield.
 
 00 doran's annals of tke stage. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 
 
 " Augustus," as it was the fashion to call George L, "by per- 
 forming a justifiable act, inflicted some injury this year, by restor- 
 ing the Letters Patent of Charles 11. to Christopher Rich, of 
 which the latter had been deprived, and under which his son, 
 John, opened the revived theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, on the 
 18th December, 1714, with the " Recruiting Officer." The en- 
 larged stage was " superbly adorned with looking-glasses on both 
 sides ;" a circumstance, which Quin said, " was an excellent trap to 
 such actresses who admired their own persons more than they at- 
 tended to the duties of their profession." Some good actors left 
 Drury for the Fields ; — Keen, the two Bullocks, Pack, Spiller, 
 Cory, Knap, Mrs. Rogers, and Mrs. Knight. Cibber rather con- 
 temptuously says of such of the above as he names, that " they 
 none of them had more than a negative merit, — being able only 
 to do us more harm by leaving us without notice, than they could 
 do us good by remaining with us ; for, though the best of them 
 could not support a play, the worst of them, by their absence, 
 could maim it, — as the loss of the least pin in a watch may ob- 
 struct its motion." 
 
 John Rich's company in the Fields either played old pieces, or 
 adaptations from them, or " from the French ;" none of which de- 
 served even a passing word, except a roaring farce — pieces which 
 now grew popular — called " Love in a Sack," by Griffin, whom I 
 notice not as an indifferent author, but as an excellent comedian, 
 who made his first appearance in a double capacity. Griffin may 
 also be noticed under a double qualification. lie was a gentle- 
 man and a glazier. His ftithcr was a Norfolk rector, and had 
 been chaplain to the Earl of Yarmouth, — that gallant Sir Rob- 
 ert Paston, who was in France and Flanders with James, Duke 
 of York. In the Paston Free School, at North Walsham, Griffin
 
 COMPETITION, AXD WHAT CAME OF IT. 231 
 
 learnt his " rudiments," having done which, his sire apprenticed 
 him to the useful but not dignified calling of a glazier. The 
 " 'prentice lad," disgusted at the humiliation, ran away, took to 
 strolling, found his way, after favorable report, to Rich's theatre, 
 and there proved so good an actor, that the Drury Lane manage- 
 ment ultimately lured him away to a stage where able competitors 
 polished him into still greater brilliancy. The season concluded 
 on the last day of July, 1715, with a "benefit for Tim Buck, to 
 release him out of prison." 
 
 In the following October, Drury commenced a season which, 
 .save a few days of summer vacation, extended to the close of 
 August, I7l6. During this time, Shakspeare's best plays were 
 frequently acted, old comedies revived with success, and obscure 
 farces played and consigned to oblivion. The great attempt, if 
 not success, of the season, was the comedy of the " Drummer, or 
 the Haunted House," first played in March, I7l6, and not 
 known to be Addison's till Steele published the fact, after the 
 author's death. Tonson, however, knew or suspected the truth, 
 for he gave £50 for the copyright. Wilks, Gibber, Mills and Mrs. 
 Oldfield, could not secure a triumph for the play — which Steele 
 thought was more disgraceful to the stage than to the comedy. 
 There is a novel mixture of sentiment, caricature, and farcical in- 
 cident in this piece. Warton describes it as " a just picture of 
 life and real manners ; where the poet never speaks in his own 
 person, or totally drops or forgets a character, for the sake of in- 
 troducing a brilliant simile or acute reiuark ; where no train is laid 
 for wit, no Jeremys or Bens are suffered to appear." More natu- 
 ral, it was less brilliant than the artificial comedies of Congreve; 
 but its failure probably vexed the author, as it certainly annoyed 
 the publisher. Tickell omitted it from his edition of Addison's 
 works, but Steele gave these reasons for ascribing it to the latter ; 
 they are a little confused, but they probably contain the truth : — 
 " If I remember right, the fifth act was written in a week's time. 
 . . . He would walk about his room, and dictate in language 
 with as much freedom and ease as any one could write it down. 
 ... I have been often thus employed by him. ... I will 
 put all my credit among men of wit, for the truth of my averment, 
 when I presume to say, that no one but Mi\ Addison was in anv
 
 232 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 other way the writer of the ' Dnmimer.' ... At the same time, I 
 will allow that he has sent for rae . . . and told me that ' a 
 gentleman, then in the room, had written a play that he was sure I 
 would like ; but it was to be a secret ; and he knew I would take as 
 much pains, since he recommended it, as I would for him.' " 
 
 At Lincoln's Inn Fields, the season of 1715-16 had this of re- 
 markable in it, that John Rich revived the " Prophetess," as it en- 
 abled him to display his ability in the introduction and manage- 
 ment of machinery, and his success in raising the prices of admis- 
 sion. Bullock's farce, the " Cobbler of I'reston," was begun on a 
 Friday, finished the next day, and plaj'ed on the Tuesday follow- 
 ing — in order to anticipate Charles Johnson's farce — like this, de- 
 rived from the introduction to the " Taming of the Shrew," at 
 Drury Lane. Of the other plays — one, the " Fatal Vision," was 
 wi-itten by Aaron Hill, who, having lost property and temper in 
 a project how to extract olive-oil from beech-nuts, endeavored 
 to inculcate in his piece the wrongfulness of giving way to rash 
 designs and evil passions. This play he dedicated to the two 
 most merciless critics of the day, Dennis and Gildon. Then of 
 the "Perfidious Brother," it is only to be stated that it was a bad 
 play stolen by young Theobald from Mestayer, a watchmaker, 
 who had lent him the manuscript. That an attorney should have 
 the reprehensible taste to steal a worthless play seemed a slur 
 upon the lawyer's judgment. Another new play, the " Northern 
 Heiress," by Mrs. Davys, a clergyman's widow, but now the lively 
 Irish mistress of a Cambridge coftee-house, reminds me of the five- 
 act farces of Reynolds, with its fops, fools, half-pay officers, fast 
 gentlemen, and flippant ladies. There are ten people married at 
 the end, a compliment to matrimony, at the hands of the widow ; 
 but there is a slip in poetical justice ; for a lover who deserts his 
 mistress, when he finds, as Lord Peterborough did of Miss Moses, 
 that her foitune was not equal to his expectations, marries her, 
 after discovering that he was mistaken. 
 
 Herewith we come to tlie Drury Lane season of 1 7 1 6-1 7. Booth, 
 Wilks, and Cibber had a famous company, in which Quin quietly 
 made his way to the head, and IVIrs. liorton's beauty acted with 
 good cftect on Mrs. Oldfi'dd. I]i the way of novelty, Mrs. Cent- 
 livre produced a tragedy, the " Cruel Gift," in which nobody dies.
 
 COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 233 
 
 and lovers are happily married. The most notable affair, however, 
 was the comedy, " Three Hours after Marriage," in which Gay, 
 Pope, and Arbuthnot, tliree grave men, who pretended to instruct 
 and unprove mankind, insulted modesty, virtue, and common de- 
 cency, in the grossest way, by speech or innuendo. There is not 
 so much filth in any other comedy of this century, and the trio of 
 authors stand stigmatized for their attmnpt to bring in the old 
 corruption. In strange contrast we have Mrs. Manley, a woman 
 who began life with unmerited misfortune, and carried it on with 
 unmitigated profligacy, producing a highly moral, semi-religious 
 drama, " Lucius." 
 
 But while moral poets were polluting the stage, and immoral 
 women undertaking to purify it, a reverend Archdeacon of 
 Stowe, the historian, Lawrence Echard, in conjunction with Le- 
 strange, put on the stage of Drury Lane a translation of the 
 " Eunuchiis" of Terence. It did not survive the third night ; but 
 the audience might have remarked how much more refinedly the 
 Carthaginian of old could treat a delicate subject than the Chris- 
 tian poets of a later era — or, to speak correctly, than the later 
 poets of a Christian era. 
 
 In this season I find the first trace of a "fashionable night," and 
 a later hour for beginning the play than any of subsequent times. 
 I quote from Genest : — " 18 June, I7l7. By particular desire of 
 several Ladies of Quality. ' Fatal Marriage.' Biron, Booth ; 
 Villeroy, Mills ; Isabella, Mrs. Porter ; Victoria, Mrs. Younger. 
 An exact computation being made of the number which the Pit 
 and Boxes will hold, they are laid together ; and no person can 
 be admitted without tickets. By desire, the play is not to begin 
 till nine o'clock, by reason of the heat of the weather — nor the 
 house to be opened till eight." What a change ^rom the time 
 when Dryden's Lovely exclaimed : — 
 
 '•As punctual as three o'clock at the playhouse 1" 
 
 The corresponding season (1716-17) at Lincoln's Iim requires 
 but brief notice. Rich, who had failed in attempting Essex, played, 
 as Mr. Lun, II;u'lequin, in the " Cheats, or the Tavern Bilkers," a 
 ballet-pantomime — the forerunner of the line of pantomime which, 
 notwithstanding our presumed advance in civilization, still has its
 
 234 dokak's annals of the stage. 
 
 admirers. In novelty, Dick Leveridge, the singer, produced the 
 burlesque of " Pyrainus und Thi.sbc" — those parts being play- 
 ed by himself and Pack, with irresistible comic eflect, es- 
 pecially when caricaturing the style of the Italian Opera, where 
 your hero died in very good time and tune, English Opera 
 was not altogether neglected in the Fields, but little was accom- 
 plished in the way of upholding the drama. Bullock produced a 
 comedy, which he was accused of stealing from a manuscript by 
 Savage — " Woman's a Riddle." It is a long coarse farce, in which 
 the most decent incident is the hanging of Sir Amorous Vain wit, 
 from a balcony, as he is trying to escape in woman's clothes, 
 which are caught by a hook, and beneath which a footman stands 
 with a flambeau. We learn too, from this comedy, that young 
 ladies carried snuft'-boxes in those days. 
 
 Taverner, the proctor, also produced a comedy quite as extrava- 
 gant, and not a whit less immoral than Bullock's — the " Artful 
 Husband." It had, however, great temporary success, quite 
 enough to turn the author's head, and by his acts to show that 
 there was nothing in it. 
 
 " The Artful Husband," however, brought into notice a young 
 actor who had but a small part to play, — Stockwell. His name 
 was Spiller. The Duke of Argyle thought, and spoke well of him 
 before this. On the night in question, Spiller, who dressed his 
 characters like an artist, went through his first scenes exquisitely, 
 and without being recognized by his patron, who came behind the 
 scenes, and had recommended him warmly to the notice of Rich. 
 Genest says he hopes this story is true. I am sure it is not im- 
 probable ; and for this reason : I once saw Lafont acting the 
 Son in " Pere et Fils." Opposite to the side on which he made 
 his exit an aged actor, who represented the father, passed me. I 
 was delighted with the truth and beauty of his acting, and at the 
 end of the scene asked who he was. To my astonishment, I 
 heard that Lafont, whom I had well known as an actor for more 
 than twenty years, was playing both parts. This identifying 
 power was Spiller's distinguishing merit. Riccoboni saw the 
 young actor play an old man with a perfectness not to be expect- 
 ed but from players of the longest experience. " How great was 
 my surprise," says Riccoboni, " when I learnt that he was a
 
 COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 235 
 
 young man, about the age of twenty-six. I could not believe it ; 
 but owned that it might be possible, had he only used a broken 
 and a trembling voice, and had only an extreme weakness possess- 
 ed his body, because I conceived that a young actor might, by 
 the help of art, imitate that debility of nature to such a pitch of 
 excellence ; but the wrinkles of his face, his sunk eyes, and his 
 loose, yellow cheeks, the most certain marks of age, were incon- 
 testable proofs against what they said to me. Notwithstanding all 
 this, I was forced to submit to truth, because I was credibly in- 
 formed that the actor, to fit himself for the part of this old man, 
 spent an hour in dressing himself, and disguised his face so nicely, 
 and painted so artificially a part of his eyebrows and eyelids, that 
 at the distance of six paces it was impossible not to be de- 
 ceived." 
 
 In the next season, at Drury (1717-18), the only remarkable 
 piece produced was Gibber's adaptation of "Tavtuffe," under the 
 name of the " Nonjuror." In the lustre of the " Nonjuror" paled 
 and died out the first play by Savage, " Love in a Veil." Not 
 twenty years had elapsed since this luckless and heartless young 
 vagabond was born, in Fox Court, Gray's Inn Lane, his unknown 
 mother, but not that light lady, the Countess of Macclesfield, wear- 
 ing a mask. Savage had passed from a shoemaker's shop to the 
 streets, had written a poem on the Bangorian Controversy, had 
 adapted a play translated from the Spanish, by the wife of Mr. 
 Baron Price, and which Bullock readapted and produced at Drury 
 Lane before Savage could get his own accepted. "Love in a 
 Veil" seems to have been founded on an incident in the Spanish 
 comedy ; but however this may be, it failed to obtain the public 
 approval. The author, however, did not altogether fail ; generous 
 Wilks patronized the boy, and Steele, befriending a lad of parts, 
 designed to give him £1,000, which he had not got, with the hand 
 (»f a natural daughter, whom the young and wayward poet did not 
 gL't. The " Nonjuror" alone survives as a memorial of the Druiy 
 season of 1717-18. 
 
 We owe the piece to fear and hatred of the Pope and the Pre- 
 tender. It addressed itself to so wide a public, that Lintot gave 
 the liberal sura of a hundred guineas for the copyright ; and it was 
 5o acceptable to the King, that he gave a dedication fee of twice
 
 236 doran's annals op^ the stage. 
 
 that number of guineas to the author, who addressed him as 
 "dread Sir," and spoke of himself as "the lowest of your subjects 
 from the theatre." Gibber adds, " Your comedians, Sir, are an 
 unhappy society, whom some severe heads think wholly useless, 
 and others, dangerous to the young and innocent. This comedy 
 is, therefore, an attempt to remove that prejudice, and to show 
 what honest and laudable uses may be made of the theatre, when 
 its performances keep close to the true purposes of its institution." 
 
 Oibber goes on to remark, that perhaps the idly and seditiously 
 inclined may cease to disturb their brains about embarrassing the 
 government, if " proper amusements" be provided for them. For 
 such, his play is rather a chastisement than an amusement, and 
 he thinks that would have been aU the better taken had it not 
 been administered by a comedian ? The Nonjurors, whose 
 allegiance was paid to the Pretender, were perhaps not worthy of 
 a more exalted scourger ; but he fears that truth and loyalty 
 demanded a nobler champion. lie flatteringly alludes to the 
 small number of malcontents. Ilis piece had either crushed 
 them, or their forces were not so great as supposed, " there being 
 no assembly where people are so free, and apt to speak their 
 minds, as in a crowded theatre, of which," says the courtly fellow, 
 " Your Majesty may have lately seen an instance in the insuppres- 
 sible acclamations that were given on your appearing to honor this 
 play with your royal presence." 
 
 On the. night of representation, Rowe, in a prologue — he was 
 now Poet Laureate and Land Surveyor of the Customs in the Port 
 of London, deprecated the piece being considered unjustifiably 
 discourteous. 
 
 " Tliink not our colors may too strongly paint 
 The stiff non-juring separation saint. 
 Good breeding ne'er commands us to be civil 
 To tlaose who give the nation to the devil 1" 
 
 The play was admirably acted by Booth, Colonel Woodvil; 
 Mills, Sir John ; Wilks, Sir Heartley ; Cibber, Dr. Wolf (the Cant- 
 well of the modern arrangement) ; and Walker (soon to be famous 
 as Captain Macheath), Charles. Mrs. Porter played Lady Wood- 
 vil, and Mrs. Oldfield turned the heads and touched the hearts of
 
 COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 237 
 
 all lively and susceptible folks by her exquisite coquetry, in Maria, 
 The play was not a servile imitation of, but an excellent adap- 
 tation to, modern circumstances of, the "Tartuffe." Thoroughly 
 Englis-h, it abounds with the humor and manner of Gibber, and 
 despite some otFcnces against taste, it was at this time the purest 
 comedy on the stage. There was farce enough for the gallery, 
 maxim and repartee, suggestions and didactic phrases for the rest 
 of the house. The success surpassed even expectation. It raised 
 against Gibber a phalanx of implacable foes — foes who howled at 
 every thing of which he was, afterwards, the author ; but it gained 
 for him his advancement to the poet-laureateship, and an estima- 
 tion which caused some people to place him, for usefulness to the 
 cause of trite religion, on an equality with the author of " The 
 Whole Duty of Man !" Gibber foresaw the tempest, and, prob- 
 ably, also the prosperous gales which were to follow, to which 
 there is some allusion in the Epilogue spoken by Mrs. Oldfield, 
 which, of course, had a fling against marriage. 
 
 "Was 't not enough that critics might pursue him? 
 But must he rouse a party to undo liim? 
 These blows, I told him, on his plays would fall: 
 But he, unmov'd, cried 's blood! we'll stand it all I" 
 
 In the theatre itself the opposition to the piece was confined, 
 Gibber says, to '' afew smiles of silent contempt. As the satire was 
 chiefly employed on the enemies of the Government, they were 
 not so hardy as to own themselves such, by any higher disap- 
 probation or resentment." They made up for this constrained 
 silence, as above noted, and Misfs Journal^ for fifteen years, lost 
 no opportunity of mauling the detested off"ender. With the 
 editor of that paper, says Gibber, " though I could never persuade 
 my wit to have an open account with him (for, as he had no ef- 
 fects of his own, I did not think myself obliged to answer his bills), 
 notwithstanding, I will be so charitable to his real manes, and to 
 the ashes of his paper, as to mention one particular civility he paid 
 to my memory after he thought he had ingeniously killed me. 
 Soon after the ' Nonjuror' had received the favor of the town, T 
 read in one of his journals the following short paragraph : — 'Yes- 
 terday died Mr. GoUey Gibber, late comedian of the Theatre Royal,
 
 238 doran's annals of tue stage. 
 
 notorious for writing the Nonjuror.'' The compliment in the 
 latter part, I confess," adds Gibber, " I did not dislike, because it 
 came from so impartial a judge." 
 
 The stage lost this year an excellent actor, Irish Bowen, who, at 
 the age of tifty-two, was slain in duel by young Quin. Hitherto the 
 sword had dealt lightly with actors. In 1692, indeed, Sandford 
 nearly killed Powell, on the stage. On the 13th of October tlicy 
 were acting together, in " Oedipus, King of Thebes," when the 
 former, to whom a real dagger had been delivered by the property 
 man, instead of a weapon the blade of which run up, when the 
 point was pressed, into the handle, gave poor Powell a stab three 
 inches deep ; the wound was, at first, thought to be mortal ; but 
 Powell recovered. Five years later, in July, 1697, I find brief 
 mention in the papers of a duel between an actor and an oificer. 
 The initials only of the principals are given : " Mr. H., an actor, 
 of Lincohi's Inn Fields Theatre, fought Mr. D., an officer, at 
 Barnes Elms." Whether the former was young Hodgson or 
 young Hari'is is not now to be determined, nor the grounds of the 
 quarrel. The issue of it was that the player dangerously wounded 
 the soldier ; and it is added, that both parties exhibited brilliant 
 courage. 
 
 Co wen was the original representative of Sir Joshua Wittol 
 ("Old Bachelor"), Jeremy ("Love for Love"), and Foigard 
 (" Beaux' Stratagem"). 
 
 Quin passed over to Lincoln's Inn Fields in this season of 1 71 7- 
 1 8, where he played Hotspur, Tamerlane, Morat (" Aurungzebe"), 
 Mark Anthony, and created the part of Scipio, in the " Scipio 
 Africanus," written by young Beckingham, the pride of Merchant 
 Tailors' School. Beckingham must also have been the pride of 
 Fleet Street, and especially of the craft of linen-drapers, of which 
 his father was a worthy and well-to-do member. The piece was 
 played on the 18th of February, 1718. The author was then but 
 nineteen years of age, and was full of bright promise. A tragedy 
 by one so young, excited the public, and most especially the 
 j venile public, at Merchant Tailors', where Dr. Smith was head- 
 master. The Doctor and sub-masters held the stage in abhor- 
 rence till now, when a brilliant alumnus was likely to shed lustre 
 on the corporation of " Merchant Tailors and Linen Armorers.**
 
 COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 239 
 
 Now they proclaimed high jubilee, gave the lads a half holiday 
 on the author's night, and joyfully saw the whole school swarming 
 to the pit of Lincoln's Inn, to uphold the tragedy by this honored 
 condiscipulas. The masters, in this, acted against their own 
 former precept and example ; but they made amends by a re- 
 ligious zeal, and by expelling all the Jewish pupils from the 
 school ! Israel was the scapegoat, and the Christian sense of pro- 
 piiety was gratified. 
 
 But Quin's Scipio established a taste for theatricals at Merchant 
 Tailors', where classical plays were acted, for some years, as at 
 Westminster. Beckingham's tragedy exhibits a romantic story, 
 or stories, in a classical costume. There is severity enough to 
 gratify rigid tastes, with a little of over-w'armth of action on the 
 part of one of three lovers, which shows that the young poet was 
 not unread in the older masters. 
 
 But there were worse and better plays than " Scipio" brought 
 out on the same stage this season. Taverner failed in a pendant 
 to his " Artful Husband," the " Artful Wife." Bullock did little 
 for the credit of the stage by his farce of the "Perjurer," and Sir 
 Thomas Moore justly criticized his own tragedy of " Mangore, 
 King of the Timbusians," when he called it a " trifle." It is a 
 very noisy trifle, concerned with love, battle, murder, and worse, 
 between the Spaniards and South American Indians. Rich thought 
 its bustle might carry its absurdities successfully through, and Sir 
 Thomas stimulated the actors, when at rehearsal, by inviting them 
 to supper, at which Leigh, the two Bullocks, Williams, Ogden, 
 Knapp, and Giffard, Mistresses Knight, Bullock, and Kent, made 
 a joyous party, as hilarious as the audience was, whose laughter 
 alone prevented them from hissing down the nonsense of an ob- 
 Bcure man who was knighted for some forgotten service — certainly 
 aot for any rendered to the Muses. 
 
 The piece of this season which had stuff" in it to cause it to live 
 to our own times, was Mrs. Centlivre's " Bold Stroke for a Wife." 
 Sprightly Mrs. Centlivre was as fervent a Whig as Gibber, and had 
 written verses enough in praise of Brunswick to entitle her to be 
 poetess-Laureate, had the Pi-incess Caroline had a voice in the 
 matter, when Rowe died this very year, and Newcastle recom- 
 mended tipsy Eusden for the office of " birthday fibber." The
 
 210 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 "Bold Stroke," laughed at and denounced by Wilks, and taken 
 reluctantly in hand by the actors, is a fair specimen of that lighter 
 comedy which borders upon farce, but in which the fun is genu- 
 ine, and the incidents not so improbable but that they may be 
 accepted, or, by the rapidity of their succession, laughed at and 
 forgotten. 
 
 This season, withal, was not successful. It broke the heart of 
 Keen, actor and sharer. In the former capacity, though Savage 
 thought his life worth narrating, he won few laurels, — but his 
 wreath was not entirely leafless. He was loved, too, by his breth- 
 ren of both houses, whose subscriptions defrayed the expenses of 
 a funeral, at which upwards of two hundred persons walked, in 
 deep mourning. 
 
 At this time, Drury, with its old, strong comjjany, was patron- 
 ized by court and town. Plays, acted at Hampton Court, before 
 the King, were repeated in the public theatre. Of the former I 
 shall speak in a future page. Two new comedies proved, indeed, 
 inferior to Mrs. Centlivre's " Bold Stroke," at the other house. 
 Charles Johnson's " Masquerade," borrowed a little from Shirley, 
 and more from Moliere, furnished, in Ombre and Lady Francis 
 Ombre, some ideas, probably, to Gibber, when he placed a similar 
 pair on the stage, in Lord and Lady Townley. A worse piece was 
 more successful, — the rambling comedy, " Chit Chat," by a Mr. 
 Thomas Killigrew, a gentleman who, like his namesake, had a 
 place at court, but not his namesake's wit. The courtiers, with 
 the Duke of Argyle at their head, carried the piece through eleven 
 representations, and enriched the treasury by £1,000 ! 
 
 The great efibrt of the season was made in bringing out " Busi- 
 ris," a tragedy, by the Rev. Dr. Young, author of Night Thouphts. 
 It was played on March 7, 1719, by Booth, EIrington, Wilks, 
 Mills, Walker and Thurmond, Mrs. Oldtield and Mrs. Thurmond. 
 
 " Busiris" was Young's earliest tragedy. It is written in a stilt- 
 ed and inflated style, and bears all the marks of a juvenile produc- 
 tion. The plot of the piece is void of all ingenuity ; but there is 
 little that is borrowed in it, save the haughty message sent by 
 Busiris to the Persian Ambassador, which is the same as that re- 
 turned by the Ethiopian prince to Cambyses, in the third book of 
 Herodotus. Of the phrasing, and indeed of the incidents of thia
 
 COMrETITIOX, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 241 
 
 tragedy, Fielding made excellent fun, in his mock tragedy of 
 " Tom Thumb." The sovereigns and courtiers of Egypt gave little 
 trouble to be converted into Arthur and Dollabella, Noodle, Doo- 
 dle, the great Uttle prince, and lluncamunca. The travesty is 
 rich and facile ; not least so in that passage mimicking the vari- 
 ous addresses to the sun, who is bid to rise no more, but hide his 
 face and put the world in mourning. On these, Fielding remarks, 
 mat " the author of ' Busiris' is extremely anxious to prevent the 
 sun's blushing at any indecent object ; and, therefore, on all such 
 occasions, he addresses himself to the sun, and desires him to keep 
 out of the way." It was dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle, the 
 patron of Eusden, the laureate " because the late instances he had 
 received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon favor, in an 
 atiair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had taken from 
 him the privilege of choosing a patron." If this favor consisted 
 in rewarding Young for writing for the court, the favor may have 
 been " undeserved," but it was by no means " uncommon." 
 
 The concluding incident of this play — the double suicide of 
 Memnon (Wilks) and Mandane (Mrs. Oldfield), found such favor 
 in the author's own estimation, that he repeated it in his next two 
 tragedies, in each of which a couple of lovers make away with 
 themselves. This tripled circumstance reminds a critic of the re- 
 mark of Dryden : — " The dagger and the bowl are always at hand 
 to butcher a hero, when a poet wants the brains to save him." 
 
 Dr. Young was at this time thirty-eight years of age, but was 
 not yet " famous." Born when Charles II. was king and Dryden 
 laureat, the Hampshire godson of the Princess, Anne, was as yet 
 only known as having been the friend of the Duke of Wharton, 
 and of Tickell; as having first come before the public in 1713, 
 witli a poem to Granville, in which there is good dramatic criti- 
 cism ; and of having since written poems of promise rather than 
 of merit, the latest of which was a pai-aphrase on part of the book 
 of Job, which, curiously enough, abounds with phrases which show 
 the author's growing intercourse with the play house and theatrical 
 people. " Busiris" was written in the year that " Cato" was played, 
 but its performance was delayed till this yeai-, and its dramatic 
 death occurred long before " Cato" departed from the stage — to 
 be read, at least, as long as an admirer of Addison survives. 
 Vol. I.— 11
 
 242 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 fHE PROGRESS OF JAMES QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BARTON BOOTH. 
 
 QuiN made great advances in the public favor in the season of 
 1718-19, at Lincohi's Inn, where, however, as yet, he only shared 
 the leading business in tragedy and comedy with Ryan, and the 
 less distinguished Evans. Southwark Fair, a fashionable resort, 
 contributed to the company a new actor, Bohemia or Boheme, 
 with great comic power ; and Susan Mountfort replaced for a few 
 weeks Mrs. Rogers, who had held for a time the tragic parts once 
 acted by Mrs. Barry and Bracegirdle, and who died about this 
 time. Of Susan Mountfort's touching end I will speak in a future 
 page. Mrs. Rogers had been on the stage since 1692, and num- 
 bered among her original parts : — Imoinda, Oriana, Melinda, and 
 Isabinda, in " Oronooko," " Inconstant," " Recruiting Officer," and 
 " Busy Body." 
 
 During this season a French company acted for some time in 
 the Fields, where the " Tartuffe" was also played against the 
 " Nonjuror." The only novelty worthy of notice was the " Sir 
 Walter Raleigh" of poor Dr. Sewell, in which Quin played the 
 hero with indifferent success. The author was more remarkable 
 than his piece. He was of good family, and a pupil of Boer- 
 haave ; but, unsuccessful as a practitioner in London, he, curiously 
 enough, gained fortune and reputation in the smaller sphere of 
 Hampstead, until, as a singular biographical notice informs us, 
 "three other physicians settled at the same place, after which his 
 gains became very inconsiderable." He became a poor poet in- 
 stead of a rich physician ; "kept no house, but was a boarder; 
 was much esteemed, and so frequently invited to the tables of 
 gentlemen in the neighborhood, that he had seldom occasion to 
 dine at home." Seven years after Quin failed to lift him into 
 dramatic notoriety, this Tory opponent of the Whig Bishop of 
 Salisbury, and one of the minor contributors (it is said) to tb©
 
 PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 243 
 
 Spectator and Tatler, tliougli he is not included in Bissett's lives 
 of the writers in the first-named periodical, died, " and was sup- 
 posed," says the anonymous biographer already quoted, " at that 
 time to be in very indigent circumstances, as he was interred in 
 the meanest manner, his coffin being little better than those allot- 
 ted by the parish to their poor who are buried from the work- 
 houses, neither did a single friend or relation attend him to the 
 grave. No memorial was placed over his remains ; but they lie 
 just under a holly-tree, which formed part of a hedge-row, that 
 was once the boundary of the churchyard." Such was the end of 
 the poet, through whom Lincoln's Inn Fields hoped, in 1719, to 
 recover its ancient prosperity. 
 
 Eventful incidents marked the Drury Lane season of 1719-20. 
 It commenced in the middle of September, between which time, 
 and the last week of the following January, things went on pros- 
 perously as between players and public, but not so as between 
 patentees and the government. Within the period mentioned Miss 
 Santlow had made Booth happy — an union which helped to make 
 Susan Mountfort mad, and Dennis's " Invader of His Country," 
 and Southerne's "Spartan Dame," were produced. The former 
 was the second of three adaptations from Shakspeare's "Corio- 
 lanus." Forty years before, in 1682, Nahum Tate fancied there 
 was something in the times like that depicted in the days of Corio- 
 lanus. To make the parallel more striking, he pulled Shakspeare's 
 play to pieces, and out of the fragments built up his own " In- 
 gratitude of a Commonwealth." Nahum altered all for the worse; 
 and he wrote a new fifth act, which was still worse than the mere 
 verbal or semi-alterations. The impudence of the destroyer was 
 illustrated by his cool assurance in the prologue, that — 
 
 " Ho only ventures to make gold from ore, 
 And turn to money what lay dead before." 
 
 Tate was now followed by Dennis, who altered " Coriolanus" 
 for pc litical reasons, brought it out at Drury Lane, in the cause 
 of his country and sovereign, and perhaps thought to frighten the 
 Pretender by it. The failure was complete ; although Booth 
 played the principal male character, and Mrs. Porter Volumnia. 
 
 Southerne's " Spartan Dame" had been interdicted in the reign
 
 244 doran's ankals of the stage. 
 
 of William and Mary, as it was supposed that the part of Celonis 
 (Mrs. Oldlield), wavering between her duty to her father, Leoa- 
 idas, and that owing to her husband, Cleombrotus (Booth), would 
 have painfully reminded some, and joyfully reminded other, of the 
 spectators, of the position of Mary, between her royal sire and her 
 princely consort. But it would have been as reasonable to pro- 
 hibit "Othello" or "King Lear," because of the presence in them 
 (»f individuals so related. Southerne's play has no local color 
 about it, but abounds in anachronisms and incongruities, and it 
 survived but during a brief popularity. The author was now sixty 
 years of age, Dennis seven years his senior. The older and un- 
 luckier, and less courteous poet, gained nothing by his play to 
 compensate for the annuity he had purchased, but the term of 
 which he had outlived. Southerne gained £500 by his "author's 
 nights" alone ; for patronage and presence on which occasions, 
 the plausible poet personally solicited his friends. For the copy- 
 right he received an additional £120. 
 
 About six weeks after Southerne's play was produced — that is, 
 after the performance of the "Maid's Tragedy," January 23d, 
 1720, an order from the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Chamberlain, 
 suddenly closed the theatre ! The alleged cause was " information 
 of misbehavior on the part of the players." The real cause lay in 
 Sir Richard Steele, the principal man who held the patent ! 
 
 Since we last parted with the knight, he had been ungenerously 
 trying, in pamphlets, to hunt to the scaffold the last Tory ministers 
 of Queen Anne ; he had lost his second wife ; he had been projecting 
 an union of Church and Kirk ; he had invented a means of keep- 
 ing fish alive while being transported across sea; he had been 
 living extravagantly ; but he had also offended his patron, the 
 Duke of Newcastle, and therewith, the King, whose servant the 
 Duke was, and the Government, of which the Duke was a mem- 
 ber. Steele, in fact, had vehemently and successfully opposed, 
 by speech and pamphlet, Lord Sunderland's Peerage Bill, which 
 proposed to establish twenty-five hereditary peers of Scotland to sit 
 in the English House of Lords, in place of the usual election of 
 sixteen ; and to create six new English peerages, with the under- 
 standing that the Crown would never, in future, make a new peei 
 except on the extinction of an old family. Steele denounced, in
 
 PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 245 
 
 the Plebeian, the aristocratical tendency of the bill, and to such 
 purpose, that the theatre he governed was closed, and his name 
 struck out of the license ! 
 
 Steele appealed to the public, in a pamphlet, the Theatre ; and 
 showed, by counsel's opinion, how he had been wronged; he 
 estimated his loss at nearly £10,000, and finally sank into distress, 
 with mingled bitterness and wit. His old ducal patron had loudly 
 proclaimed he would ruin him. " This," said Steele, " from a man 
 in his circumstances, to one in mine, is as great as the humor of 
 Malagina, in the comedy, who valued himself for his activity in 
 ' tripping up cripples.' " 
 
 Dennis entered the lists against Sir Richard ; but the worst the 
 censor could say against the knight was, that he had a dark com- 
 plexion, and wore a black peruke. Dennis also attacked actors 
 generally, as rogues and vagabonds in the eye of the law, and 
 liable to be whipped at the King's porter's lodge. Such was the 
 testimony of this coarse Cockney, the son of a saddler, and a 
 fellow who, for his ill-doings, had been expelled from Cambridge 
 University. 
 
 Booth, Gibber, and Wilks were permitted to reopen Drury 
 under a license, after an interval of a few days, and the season 
 thus recommencing on the 28th of January, with the " Careless 
 Husband," Cibbfer playing Lord Foppington, ran on to August 
 23d, when the house closed with "Bartholomew Fair!" The 
 only novelty was Hughes's " Siege of Damascus," with false quan- 
 tities in its classical names, and much heaviness of treatment of an 
 apt stoiy. It was Hughes's first play, and he died unconscious 
 of its success. He was then but forty-three years of age. The old 
 school-fellow of Isaac Watts had begun his career by compliment- 
 ing King William and eulogizing Queen Anne. He had pub- 
 lished clever translations, composed very gentlemanlike music, 
 contributed to the Spectator, and obtained a place among the wits. 
 He wrote, in 1712, the words of the opera of " Calypso and Tel- 
 emachus," to prove how gracefully the English language might be 
 wedded to music. Two Lord Chancellors were among his patrons, 
 Cowper and Macclesfield, and that he held the Secretaryship to 
 the Commissioners of the Peace was a pleasant consequence 
 * bereof. His " Siege of Damascus" has for moral, that it is wrong
 
 246 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 to extend religious faith by means of the sword. The angry lover 
 who left the city he had saved, to assault it with the Arabians, 
 from whom he had saved it, and to meet the lady of his love full 
 of abhorrence for the traitor, might have produced some emotion ; 
 but loving, loved, living, and dying, they all talk, seldom act, and 
 never touch. Nevertheless, Booth, Wilks, Mills, and Mrs. Porter 
 had attentive listeners, if not ecstatic auditors, during a run of 
 ten nights. The long tirades and the ponderous similes gratified 
 the same audiences who took delight in Norris's Barnaby Brittle, 
 Shepherd's Sir Tunbelly Clumsey, and Mrs. Booth's Helena, in 
 the " Rover." Nevertheless, Hughes acquired no fame. When 
 Swift received a copy of his works, he wrote to Pope : — " I never 
 heard of the man in my life, yet I find your name as a subscriber. 
 He is too grave a poet for me ; and, I think, among the medio- 
 crists in prose as well as in verse." Pope sanctioned the judg- 
 ment; adding, that what Hughes wanted in genius, he made up 
 as an honest man. Hitherto, the great tragedy of this century 
 was " Cato." 
 
 At Lincoln's Inn, Quin played the King to Ryan's Hamlet, and 
 created Henri Quatre in young Beckingham's second, last, and 
 unsuccessful essay, " Henry IV. of France." What was the course 
 of the Merchant Tailors' pupil, and son of the Fleet Street linen- 
 draper, after this, I am unable to say, further than that he died in 
 obscurity some ten years later. A comedy, by " Handsome Leigh," 
 a moderately fair actor, called " Kensington Gardens, or the Pretend- 
 ers," showed some power of drawing character, especially an 
 effeminate footnian, Bardash, played by Bullock, but it did nothing 
 for a theatre which was now partly relying on subscriptions in 
 aid. At the head of the subscribers was the last Baron Brooke, 
 whose more famous son, the first Earl of Warwick, of the Fulk 
 Greville line, used to subscribe his political vote so singularly — 
 first for ministers, then for the opposition, and thirdly, not at all, 
 in undeviating regularity. 
 
 This piece failing, came Theobald's adaptation of Shakspeare'a 
 " Richard II.," very much for the worse, but so far to the profit 
 of the adapter, that the Earl of Orrery conferred on him an un- 
 usually liberal gift for the dedication, namely, a hundred pound 
 note, enclosed in a box of Egyptian pebble, which was worth a
 
 PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 247 
 
 score of pounds more. The original author was less munificently 
 remunerated, except in abiding glory. 
 
 Another attempt served the house as poorly, namely, the reap- 
 pearance of a Mrs. Vandervelt, not because she was a clever, but 
 that she was a very aged, actress, 85 years old, who had not 
 played since King Charles's time, but who had spirits enough to 
 act the Widow Rich in the " Half-Pay Officer," a vamped-up 
 farce, by MoUoy, the political writer, and strength enough to 
 dance a sprightly jig after it. As the hostess of a tavern in Tot- 
 tenham Court Road, Peg Fryer, as the old dame was called off 
 the stage, kept a merry and prosperous house. 
 
 Another adaptation was Griffin's comedy, " Whig and Tory," 
 which had nothing political in it but the name ; and by which 
 that excellent low comedian, who ought to have been in the 
 Church, and who would not be a glazier, did not add to his 
 fame. 
 
 The "Imperial Captives" was a more ambitious venture, by a 
 new author, Mottley. It was a tragedy, in which Quin played 
 Genseric, King of the Vandals, and in which there is much love 
 and a little murder, in the old thundering style, and all at cross- 
 purposes. Distress made a poet of Mottley. His father was a 
 Jacobite colonel, who followed James to France ; his mother, a 
 thorough-bred Whig, who stayed under William in England. Oc- 
 casionally, they settled their political diff'erences, and met. Mot- 
 tley was one of those men who depend on patrons. He had lost 
 a post in the Excise Office, and had not gained either of two 
 which had been promised him, one in the Wine License Office, 
 by Lord Halifax, and one in the Exchequer to which he had been 
 appointed, but from which he was immediately ousted by Sir 
 Robert Walpole. An estate, in which he had a reversionary 
 interest, was sold by his widowed and extravagant mother to pay 
 her debts ; and thus stripped of post and prospects, Mottley made 
 an essay as dramatic author, a career in which he was not des- 
 tined to be distinguished, although Queen Caroline patronized 
 him during a part of it — but so she did Stephen Duck ! " Cato" 
 was not superseded ; but Young was putting the finishing stroke 
 to his "Revenge." 
 
 That tragedy, which has been acted more frequently and more
 
 2-i8 DORAXS ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 recently than " Cato," was first played in the Drnry Lane season 
 of 1720-21. On the 18th of April, of the latter year, Zanga was 
 played bv Mills, while Booth took Alonzo, and Wilks, Carlos. 
 The secondary parts were thus played by the better actors. Mrs. 
 Porter played Leonora; Mrs. llorton, Isabella. This was a fine 
 cast, and the piece was fairly successful. A story in the Guar- 
 dian, and two plays, by Marlowe and Aphra Behn, are said to 
 have furnished Young with his materials, in handling which, one 
 of his biographers has described him as " superior even to Shak- 
 speare !" The action does not flag, the situations are dramatic, the • 
 interest is well sustained, and the language is expressive and 
 abounding in poetical beauty. The story of love, jealousy, and 
 murder is, however, a little marred by the puling lines of the 
 black lago — Zanga, at the close. Young obtained but £50 for 
 the copyright of this piece. 
 
 Young's " Revenge," if built upon other plays, has served the 
 turn of later authors. In Lord John Russell's " Don Carlos," the 
 reason given for the grovelling Cordoba's hatred of the Spanish 
 prince, reminds the reader of that of Zanga for Alonzo ; not less 
 in the fact itself, the blow believed to be forgotten, but in the ex- 
 pression. Any one, moreover, who remembers the avowal which 
 Artabanus makes of his guilt in the " Artaxerxes" of Metastasio, 
 will be inclined to think that the Italian had in his mind the simi- 
 lar speech of the Moor to his master. 
 
 Cibber's comedy, the " Refusal," skilfully built up from the 
 " Femmes Savantes" of Moliere and the South Sea mania, ran, 
 like the more famous tragedy, but six nights, a riot attending 
 each representation, and finally ending in driving a good play by 
 the author of the " Nonjuror" from the stage. The other inci- 
 dents of this season are confined to the appearance of Cibber's 
 son, Theophilus, who made his first essay in the Duke of Clarence 
 in the second part of " Henry IV.," as aiTangcd by Betterton. It 
 was a modest attempt on the part of him whose Pistol was to 
 serve, down to our day, as a tradition to be followed. As this 
 vagabond Theophilus appeared, there, on the other hand, depai-t- 
 ed the very pearl of chamber-maids, Mrs. Saunders, who retired 
 to become the friend and servant of Mrs. Oldfield. This last 
 lady played but rarely this year; but Mrs. Horton profited by
 
 PROGRESS OF QUIN", AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 249 
 
 the opportunity, and Mrs. Porter, as a tragic actress, drew the 
 town. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn was, at least, active in its corresponding season. 
 The progress of Quin is curiously marked. He played Glo'ster 
 to the Lear of Boheme ; Hector, in " Troilus and Cressida," Ryan 
 playing Troilus ; the Duke, in " Measure for Measure ;" Coriola- 
 nus ; Aumerle, in " Richard H. ;" Aaron, in " Titus Andronicus ;" 
 Lconato to Ryan's Benedick, &c., &c. Moreover, while in the 
 " Merry Wives," he played Falstaff with great effect to the Host 
 of Bullock, in the first part of " Henry IV." Bullock played the 
 Knight, and Quin the King. The season, remarkable for Shak- 
 spearian revivals, creditable to Rich, was also distinguished for the 
 failure of the original pieces produced. The " Chimaera" was a 
 satire by Odell, a Buckinghamshire squire, pensioned by Govern- 
 ment. It was aimed at the speculators in Change Alley, but it 
 smote them tenderly. The " Fair Captive" was an adaptation by 
 Mrs. Haywood, a lady who began by writing as loosely as Aphra 
 Behn, concluded by writing as decorously as Mrs. Chapone; and 
 left charge to her executors, in 1756, to give no aid to any biog- 
 raphy of her that might be attempted, oh the ground that the 
 least said was the soonest mended. 
 
 This comedy was only succeeded in dulness by the tragedy 
 which succeeded it, " Antiochus," by Mottley, who could not gain 
 fortune either as poet or placeman. In the play, Antiochus is in 
 love with his father's wife, Stratonice, who, on being surrendered 
 to his son, by her husband, Seleucus, is a little overjoyed, for she 
 loves the younger prince ; but she is also much shocked, and es- 
 capes from her embarrassment by suicide. 
 
 The next novelty was a tragedy in one act and with four char- 
 acters, " Fatal Extravagance," attributed to Miller, the son of a 
 Scottish stone-cutter. Miller was a sort of exaggerated Richard 
 Savage ; inferior to him as a poet, and in every respect a more in- 
 excusable vagabond. He had no redeeming traits of character, 
 and he destroyed health and fortune (both restored more than 
 once) as insanely as he did fame and the patience of his friends. 
 In " Fatal Extravagance," Belmour, played by Quin, kills a credi- 
 tor who holds his bond, of which he also robs the dead man ; 
 mixes a "cordial," administers it to his wife and three children (oflf 
 11*
 
 250 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 the stage), drinks and dies. The butchery is soon got through 
 in one act. Miller subsequently declared that the piece was a gift 
 to him from Aaron Hill. That busy and benevolent person ha'! 
 no money to give to a beggar ; so, he sat down and wrote a 
 tragedy for him. It was a piece of clever extravagance. 
 
 It was far more amusing than Ambrose Philips's tragedy, the 
 " Briton," which was the sole novelty of the Drury Lane season 
 1721-22. The tragedy lacked neither skill, poetical spirit, nor 
 incident ; indeed, of love incidents there is something too much. 
 But the amours of Yvor (Wilks) and Gwendolin (Mrs. Booth), 
 the infidelities of Queen Cartismund (Mrs. Porter) to Vanoc 
 (Booth), and the intervention of the Romans in these British do- 
 mestic matters, interested but for a few nights, if tlien, an audience 
 ill-read in their own primitive history. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields was scarcely more prolific in novelty ; this, 
 with the exception of a poor drama, the " Hibernian Friend," being 
 confined to Sturmy's tragedy, " Love and Duty ;" Lynceus, one 
 of the half-hundred sons of ^gyptus, by Quin. The love, is that 
 of Lynceus and his cousin, Hypermnestra ; the duty, that of kill- 
 ing her husband, on the bridal night, by command of her father. 
 The " Distressed Bride," which is the second name of this piece, 
 wisely disobeys her sire, who is ultimately slain ; after which, the 
 young people, sole survivors of fifty couple married yesterday 
 (the bridegrooms, all brothers; and sisters, all the brides), are 
 made happy by the hope of long life unembittered by feuds with 
 their kinsfolk. 
 
 The last two tragedies may be looked upon as a backsliding, 
 after " Cato," " Jane Shore," and the " Revenge ;" and in tragedy 
 there was little improvement for several years. Meanwhile, Lin- 
 coln's Inn Fields acquired Walker, from Drury Lane, and Tony 
 Aston, an itinerant actor, the first, perhaps, who travelled the 
 country with an entertainment in which he was the sole performer. 
 On the other hand, the house lost pretty Miss Stone, humorous 
 Kit Bullock (Wilks's son-in-law),^and busy George Pack ; the last, 
 the original Marplot, Lissardo, and many similar characters. Pack 
 turned vintner in Charing Cross. Qum's ability was nightly more 
 appreciated.
 
 PROGKESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 251 
 
 There was more "study" for theDrury Lane actors in 1V22-23. 
 Mrs. Centlivre's muse died calmly out with the comedy of the 
 " Artifice." In the good scenes there was an approach to senti- 
 mental comedy, more fully reached, in November, by Steele, in his 
 "Conscious Lovers," in which Booth played Young Bevil, and 
 Mrs. Oldfield Indiana. There was not an inferior performer in any 
 of the other parts of this comedy, which Fielding sneers at by 
 making Parson Adams declare that there were things in it that 
 would do very well in a sermon. Modern critics have called this 
 comedy dull, but decent ; perhaps because Steele affected to claim 
 it as at least moral in its tendency. The truth, however, is, that 
 it is excessively indecent. There is nothing worse in Aphra 
 Behn than the remarks made to Cimberton, the coxcomb with 
 reflection, on Lucinda. This fop, played by Griffin, is for winning 
 a beauty by the rules of metaphysics. There is more pathos than 
 humor in this comedy ; the author of which had now recovered 
 his share in the patent, by favor of Sir Robert Walpole ; and it is 
 by directing attention only to such scenes as those between Bevil 
 and Indiana, or between the former and his friend Myrtle (Wilks), 
 that critics have not correctly declared that the sentiments are 
 those of the most refined morality ! For the ver}' attempt to 
 render them so, even partially. Sir Richard has been sneered at, 
 very recently, by a writer who looks upon Steele as a fool for 
 preferring to make Bevil the portrait of what a man ought to be 
 rather than what man really was. The story of the piece is ad- 
 mirably manipulated and reformed from the " Andria" of Terence, 
 though Tom (Gibber) is but a soriy Davus. 
 
 On one night of the performance of this play, a general officer 
 was obsen^ed in the boxes, weeping at the distresses of Indiana, 
 The circumstance was noted to Wilks, who, with kindly feeling 
 ever ready, remarked, " I am certain the officer will fight none the 
 worse for it !" Steele must have had more than ordinary power, 
 if he could draw tears from martial eyes in those days. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that Pope set the author, as a writer, 
 below Crowne ; and yet, in the following lines, where the two 
 are mentioned, there is no very complimentary allusion to Sit 
 Richard :
 
 252 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 "When simple Macer, now of high renown, 
 First souglit a poet's fortune in the town, 
 'Twas all th' ambition his high soul could feel, 
 To wear red stockings and to dine with Steele. 
 Some ends of verse his betters might afford. 
 And gave tlie harmless fellow a good word : 
 Set up with these, he ventured on the town, 
 And with a borrowed play outdid poor Crowne. 
 There he stopped short, nor since has writ a tittle, 
 But has the wit to make the most of little." 
 
 Crowne, at least, found something of an imitator in Ambrose 
 Philips, whose tragedy, " Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester" (Duke, 
 Booth ; Beaufort, Gibber ; Margaret, Mrs. Oldficld ; Duchess of 
 Gloucester, Mrs. Porter), was produced in this season. It was the 
 last and worst of Philips's three dramatic essays. The insipid ad- 
 ditions in the scene of Beaufort's death are justly described by 
 Genest as being in Crowne's vapid and senseless fashion ; and the 
 public would not accept this cold, declamatory, conversational 
 play, as a substitute for the varied incidents which go to the ma- 
 king up of the second part of Shakspeare's " Henry VI." 
 
 Even in Dr. Johnson's time, " it was only remembered by its 
 title ;" we may, therefore, here take leave of the old secretary of 
 the Hanover Club, who found more fortune in place and pension 
 in Ireland, than he could derive from poetry and play-writing in 
 England. To the latter country he returned in 1748, to "enjoy 
 himself," in pursuit of which end he died the following year. 
 Addison once thought him vs^ell-enough provided for, by being 
 made a Westminster justice. " Nay," said Ambrose, like a virtu- 
 ous man in comedy, " though poetry be a trade I cannot live by, 
 yet I scorn to owe subsistence to another which I ought not to 
 live by ;" and he nobly gave up the justiceship — as soon as he was 
 otherwise provided for! 
 
 Philips was followed by an inferior author, but a greater man, 
 Sir Hildebrand Jacob, with a classical tragedy, " Fatal Constancy," 
 in which all the unities are preserved ; but that did not bring it 
 the nearer to " Cato." 
 
 Then followed, in the summer and less fashionable portion of 
 the season, Savage's tragedy, " Sir Thomas Overbitry," in which
 
 PEOGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 253 
 
 the author played, very indifferently, the hero. At this time, the 
 hapless young man was not widely known, except to those friends 
 on whose charity he lived while he abused it. Favored by Wilks 
 and patronized by Theophilus Gibber, the ragged, rakish fellow 
 slunk at nights into the theatre, and by day lounged where he 
 could, composing his tragedy on scraps of paper. In producing 
 it, ever-ready Aaron Hill assisted him ; and his profits, amounting 
 to about £200, gave him a temporary appearance of respectability. 
 Savage is said to have been deeply ashamed of having turned 
 actor ; but it seems to me that he was only ashamed of having 
 failed. He had neither voice, figure, nor any other qualification 
 for sucli a profession. The tragedy lived but three days. There 
 is something adroit in the conduct of the plot, and evidence of 
 corrrectness of conjecture as to the truth of the relations between 
 Overbury and Lady Somerset, — but there was no vitality therewith ; 
 and the poet gained no lasting fame by the effort. 
 
 Mrs. Haywood followed Savage's example, in acting in her own 
 comedy, " A Wife to be Let ;" but as this and other original 
 pieces or adaptations passed away unheeded or disgraced, I may 
 here conclude my notice of this season, by recording the death of 
 Mrs. Bicknell, a woman, or rather an actress of merit, and the 
 original representative of Cherry, in the " Beaux' Stratagem." 
 
 Against Drury, the liouse in the Fields long struggled in vain. 
 Audiences, of five or six pounds in value, discouraged the actors. 
 Egleton was not equal to Gibber ; yet the " Baron," as he was 
 called, from having assumed the title, w;hen squandering his little 
 patrimony in France, was next to Golley in fops. Quin, Ryan, 
 and Boheme, could not attract like Booth, Wilks, and Gibber ; and 
 Hippisley and others, acting " Julius Caesar," as a comic piece, 
 was not a happy idea. Not more so was that of turning the 
 story of "Cartouche," who had recently been broken on the 
 wheel, into a farce. The company lost their best actress, too, in 
 Mrs. Seymour, whom Boheme married and took off the stage, to 
 Ryan's great regret, as she acted admirably up to him. A prom- 
 ising actor, too, was lost to the troop, in young Rackstraw. In 
 the summer vacation he was playing Darius, in a booth in Moor- 
 fields, — no derogation in those days. In the scene in which 
 he is attacked by Bessus and Nabarzanes, one of the latter two
 
 254: doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 thrust his foil at the King so awkwardly, that it entered the eye 
 pierced his brain, and laid the actor, after a scream, dead upon 
 the hoards ! 
 
 With this season, it is to be noted that the fortune of Lincoln's 
 Inn mended — thanks to the impertinence of Colley Gibber. To 
 the latter, a tragedy had been presented by a modest gentleman, 
 of a good old Statlbrdshire family, named Fenton. He was forty 
 years of age at tins time. Gibber knew his antecedents, that his 
 Jacobite principles had been an obstacle to his ordination, for which 
 he was well qualified, and that, although he had been secretary 
 and tutor in the family of Lord Orrery, Fenton had also earned his 
 bread in the humble but honorable capacity of usher in a boarding- 
 school. Golley read the tragedy, " Mariamnc," and after keep- 
 ing it unnecessarily long, he returned it, with the advice that Fen- 
 ton should stick to some honest calling, and cease to woo the 
 Muses. Elijah Fenton, however, had friends who enabled him now 
 to live independently of labor, and by their counsel he took 
 " Mariamne" to Rich, who immediately brought it out, with Quin 
 as Sohemus, Boheme as Herod, and Mrs. Seymour as Mariamne 
 — her one, great creation. 
 
 Boheme, in Herod, played well up to the Mariamne of Mrs. 
 Seymour ; but he could not approach Mondory in that character, in 
 the French play by Tristan. Mondory used to have his audience on 
 this occasion, departing from him depressed, silent, wrapt in med- 
 itation. He surrendered himself entirely to the part, and died of 
 the consequences of his efforts. Herod was as truly the name 
 of the malady to which he succumbed, as Orestes was of that which 
 killed Montfleury, as he was playing Oreste, in Racine's tragedy 
 of " Andromaque." 
 
 The old story of Herod and Mariamne is so simple and natural, 
 .'' that it appeals to every heart, in every age. Fenton perilled it by ad- 
 ditions ; but the tragedy won a triumph, and the poet to whom Pope 
 paid about £250 for translating f©ur books of the Odyssey iov him, 
 netted four times that sum by this drama. He became famous, 
 and critics did not note the false quantity which the Gambridge man 
 gave to the penultimate of Salome. Fenton was rendered supreme- 
 ly happy, but his dramatic fame rests on this piece alone. He never 
 wooed Melpomene again, but lived calmly the brief seven years of
 
 PKOGKESS OF QUIN, AXD DECLINE OF BOOTH. 255 
 
 life which followed his success. Like Prior dying at Wimpole, the 
 honored guest of Harley, Fcnton died at Easthainpstead, the equally 
 esteemed guest of Sir William Trumbull, son of King William's 
 secretary of state. In Pope's well-known epitaph, Teuton's char- 
 acter is beautifully described in a few simple lines. 
 
 Aaron Hill was the exact opposite of quiet Fenton. His beech- 
 nut oil company having failed, he joined Sir Robert Montgomery 
 in a project for colonizing South CaroHna ; and this too provino- 
 unproductive, he turned to the stage, and brought out in the season 
 of 1723-4, at Drury Lane, his tragedy of " Henry V." — an "im- 
 provement" of Shakspeare's historical play of the same name. 
 Hill's additions comprise a Harriet (Mis. Thurmond), for whom 
 he invented a breeches part and some melo-dramatic situations — 
 especially between her and Henry (Booth). Hill cut out all Shak- 
 speare's comic characters ; but he was so anxious for the success of 
 the piece, that he spent £200 of his own on the scenery, of which 
 he made a present to the managers : after all, his play failed, despite 
 the brilliant Katherine of Mrs. Oldfield, and the Dauphin of Wilks. 
 
 More successful was the " Captives," by Gay. The ex-mercer 
 was now a poet, whom the "quality" petted; but he was not 
 yet at the summit of his fame. The "Captives" did not help 
 to raise him. The story was found unnatural, and the style 
 stilted. A Persian captive (Booth) is a Joseph, against whom the 
 Median Queen, whom he has offended, vows vengeance ; in pur- 
 suit of which, love and murder are extensively employed. Mrs. 
 Oldfield had one good scene in it as Cydene, captive wife of the 
 Persian Joseph, for whom she entertains a warm regard, of which 
 he is worthy ; yet these actors, well seconded, could only drag 
 the tragedy through seven representations, before it was consigned 
 to oblivion. But the company was strong enough to make their 
 old repertory, with Shakspeare in the van, attractive ; and they 
 had nothing to regret, when the season closed, but the death of 
 Pinkethman, who for two-and-thirty years, and chiefly at Drury 
 Lane, had been the most irresistible laughter-compeller of that 
 stage, on which he had originated Beau Clincher, Old Mirabel, and 
 a score of similar merry characters. 
 
 The company had not to complain ; yet the managers had found 
 it necessary to support their stock-pieces by a novelty — a ballet-pan-
 
 256 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 tomime, " The Necroniaiicer," by the younger Thurmond, a dan- 
 cing-master. Rich, at Lincoha's Inn, where " Edwin" could not have 
 drawn a shilling ; where Belisarius (Boheme) begged an obolus in 
 vain, and Hurst's " Roman Maid" (Paulina, Mrs. Moffat) repre- 
 sented a hermit as dwelling in a lone cave, near the Mount Aven- 
 tine — a hermit would be as likely to be found in a wood on Snow 
 Hill — Rich, I say, improved on Thurmond's idea, by producing on 
 the 20th of December, 1723, "The Necromancer, or the History 
 of Dr. Faustus," and thereby founded pantomime, as it has been 
 established among us, at least during the Christmas tide, for now 
 a hundred and forty years. 
 
 Rich, with his "Necromancer," conjuredall the town within the 
 ring of his little theatre. The splendor of the scenes, the vastness 
 of the machinery, and the grace and ability of Rich himself, raised 
 harlequinade above Shakspeare, and all other poets ; and Quin and 
 Ryan were accounted little of in comparison with the motley hero. 
 The pantomime stood prominently in the bills ; during the nights 
 of its attraction the prices of admission were raised by one-fourth, 
 and the weekly receipts advanced from six hundred (if the house 
 was full every night, which had been a rare case in the Fields) to 
 a thousand pounds. The advanced price displeased the public, with 
 whom ultimately a compromise was made, and a portion returned 
 to those who chose to leave the house before the pantomime com- 
 menced. 
 
 While the drama was thus yielding to the attractions of pan- 
 tomime, a new theatre invited the public. The little theatre in 
 the Haymarket opened its doors for the first time on the 12th of 
 September, 1723, with the "French Fop," of which the author, 
 Sandford, says, that he wrote it in a few weeks, when he was but 
 fifteen years of age. That may account for its having straightway 
 died; but it served to introduce to the stage the utility actor, 
 Milward. The theatre was only open for a few nights. 
 
 Of the season 1724-25, at Drury Lane, there is little to be said, 
 save that the inimitable company worked well and profitably in 
 sterling old plays. Wilks returned to Sir Harry Wildair, and the 
 public laughed at Gibber's quivering tragedy tones, when playing 
 Achonus, in his adaptation from Beaumont and Fletcher's " False 
 One." In "Caesar in Egypt," Anthony and Cleopatra were
 
 PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 257 
 
 played by Wilks and Mrs. Oldfield, who were never more happy 
 than when making love on the stage. This was the sole novelty 
 of the season. 
 
 In the Fields there was more of it, but that most relied on was 
 Rich's "Harlequin Sorcerer," produced on the 21st of January, 
 1725. The "Bath Unmasked" was the only original comedy 
 pi'oduced. It describes Bath as made up of very unprincipled 
 people, with a good lord to about a score of knaves and hussies. 
 It was the first and not lucky essay of miserable Gabriel Odingsell, 
 who, nine years later, in a fit of madness, hung himself in his 
 house. Thatched Court, Westminster. 
 
 Booth was more brilliant than he had ever yet been, in the 
 Drury Lane season of 1725-2G. In Shakspeare he shone con- 
 spicuously, and his Hotspur to the Prince of Wales of Giflfard, 
 from Dublin, charmed as much by its chivalry as Cato did by its 
 dignity. Mrs. Oldfield enjoyed, and Mrs. Gibber, first wife of 
 Theophilus, claimed the favor of the town ; and the elder Gibber 
 surrendered one or two old characters to a younger actor. Bridge- 
 water. Amid a succession of old dramas, one novelty only was 
 offered, a translation of the " Hecuba" of Euripides, with slight 
 variations. The author was Richard West, son-in-law of Bishop 
 Burnet, and father of young West, the early friend of Walpole 
 and Gray. His play was acted on the 3d of February, 1726, at 
 which time West was Lord Chancellor of Ireland. On the first 
 night a full audience would not listen to the piece, and on the 
 next two nights there was scarcely an audience assembled to 
 listen. Neither Booth as Polymnestor, nor Mrs. Porter as 
 Hecuba, could win the general ear. It did not succeed, wrote the 
 author, " because it was not heard. A rout of Vandals in the gal- 
 leries intimidated the young actresses, disturbed the audience, and 
 prevented all attention ; and, I believe, if the verses had been re- 
 peated in the original Greek, they would have been understood 
 and received in the same manner." The young actresses were 
 Mrs. Brett and Mrs. Gibber ; the latter was not the famous lady 
 of that name, destined to the highest walks of tragedy. Lord- 
 Chancellor West died in December of this year. 
 
 The above single play was, however, worth all the novelties 
 produced by Rich at Lincoln's Inn Fields. These were comedies
 
 258 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 of a farcical kind. In one of them, the "Capricious Lovers," by 
 Odingsell, there was an original character, Mrs. Mincemode (Mrs. 
 Bullock), who " grew sick at the sight of a man, and refines upon 
 the significancy of phrases, till she resolves common observa- 
 tions into indecency." In the " French Fortune-Tellcr," the pub- 
 lic failed to be regaled with a piece stolen from Ravenscroft, who 
 had stolen his from the French. The third play was " Money's 
 the Mistress," which the audience damned, in spite of the reputa- 
 tion of Southerne, who, with this failure, closed a dramatic career 
 which had commenced half a century earlier. In its course he had 
 written ten plays, the author of which had this in common with 
 Shakspeare — that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon. 
 
 With this year, 1726-7, came the first symptom of a "break- 
 up" in the hitherto prosperous condition of Drury Lane. It oc- 
 curred in the first long and serious illness of Booth, which kept 
 him from the theatre, three long and weary months to the town. 
 The season at Drury Lane, however, and that at Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, had this alike, that after Booth's welcome return, all Lon- 
 don was excited by expectations raised by comedies whose authors 
 were " gentlemen," in whose success the " quality," generally, 
 were especially interested. At Drury it was the " Rival Modes," 
 by Moore Smyth ; at Lincoln's Inn Fields, the " Dissembled 
 Wanton, or, my Son, get Money," by Leonard Welsted. In the 
 former piece, there is a gay lover, Bellamine (Wilks), wooing the 
 grave Melissa (Mrs. Porter), while the serious Sagely (Mills) pays 
 suit to the sprightly widow Amoret (Mrs. Oldfield). An old 
 beau of King William's time, Earl of Late Airs (Gibber), brings 
 his son to town (Lord Toupet, a modern beau, by Theopliilus 
 Gibber), in order that he may marry Melissa, with her father's 
 consent. Amoret contrives to upset this arrangement, and the 
 other lovers are duly united. The plot was good, the players un- 
 surpassable, the two Gibbers fooling it to the top of their bent, 
 and old and new fashions were pleasantly contrasted ; but the ac- 
 tion was languid, and the piece was hissed. 
 
 The incident lacking here, abounded in Welsted's intriguing 
 comedy, the " Dissembled Wanton," a character finely acted by 
 Mrs. Younger, — whose marriage with Beaufort (Walker) being 
 forbidden by lier father. Lord Severne (Quin), by whom she had
 
 PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 259 
 
 been sent to France, she reappears in her father's presence as Sir 
 Harry Trnelove, wliose real character is known only to Emilia 
 (Mrs. Bullock), Lord Severne's ward. Emilia's intimacy with Sir 
 Harry causes the rupture of her marriage with Colonel Severne, 
 and some coarse scenes have to be got through before all is ex- 
 plained ; the respective lovers are united, and Humphrey Staple 
 (Hall) finds it useless to urge his son Toby (W. Bullock) to get 
 money by espousing the rich ward Emilia. 
 
 Although Welsted's comedy was lively, it was found to be ill- 
 written. He had had time enough to polish it, for ten years pre- 
 vious to its production Steele had commended the plot, the moral, 
 and the style ; he had even praised its decency. Like Moore 
 Smyth's, it could not win tlie town. The respective authors, who 
 made so much ineffectual noise in their own day, would be un- 
 known to us in this, but for the censure of Pope. In the Dunciad 
 they enjoy notoriety with Theobald, or Gibber, Gildon, Dennis, 
 Centlivre, and Aaron Hill. Moore was an Oxford man, who as- 
 sumed his maternal grandfather's name — being his heir, and held 
 one or two lucrative posts under Government. His father, the 
 famous Arthur Moore, a wit, a politician, and a statesman, who 
 was long M. P. for Grimsby, had risen, by force of his talents, to 
 an eminent position, from a humble station. Pope stooped to 
 call Moore Smyth the son of a footman, and, when the latter name 
 was assumed on his taking his maternal grandfather's estate, the 
 Whigs lampooned him as born at " the paternal seat of his family 
 • — the tap-house of tlie prison-gate, at Monaghan." 
 
 Moore was on intimate terms with the Mapledurham ladies — 
 the Blounts, and with others of Pope's friends, as well as with 
 Pope himself. Some tags of the poet's lines he had introduced 
 into his unlucky comedy, and on this Pope supported a grossly-ex- 
 pressed and weakly-founded charge of plagiarism. Welsted, who 
 was of a good Leicestershire family, and of fair abilities, had 
 moved Pope's wrath by writing satirical verses against liim, and 
 the feeling was embittered when the two dramatists united in 
 addressing One Epistle to Pope, in which thc}^ touched him more 
 painfully than he cared to confess. Neither Moore nor Welsted 
 ever tempted fortune on the stage again. " Coestus artemque 
 repono," said the former, on the title-page of his comedy, as if he
 
 260 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 was rovenging liimsclf on society. Welstcd confined himself, after 
 some skirmishing with his critics, to his duties in the Ordnance 
 Office. His wives were women of some mark. The first was the 
 daughter of Purcell ; tlie second the sister of Walker, the great 
 defender of Londonderry, 
 
 A better gentleman than either, Philip Frowde, — scholar, wit, 
 poet, true man, friend of Addison, and a friend to all, — was praised 
 by tlie critics for his " Fall of Saguntum ;" but the pubUc voice 
 did not ratify the judgment, though Ryan, as Fabius, and Quin, 
 as Eurydamus, with Mrs. Berriman, as Candace, — an Amazonian 
 queen, with nothing very womanly about her, — exerted themselves 
 to the utmost. One other failure has to be recorded, — " Philip 
 of Macedon," by David Lewis, — the friend of Pope. With a dull 
 tragedy, Pope's friend had no more cliance of misleading the pub- 
 lic, than his foes, with weak comedies. The greater poet's com- 
 mendation so little influenced that public, that on the first night, 
 with Pope himself in the house, the audience was so numerically 
 small, — though Walker, Ryan, Quin, Mrs. Berriman, Mrs. Younger, 
 and others, were, in their " habits," as unlike Macedonians as they 
 could well be, — the managers deemed acting to such a house not 
 profitable, and dismissed it accordingly. The author's final con- 
 demnation was only postponed for a night or two, when he sank, 
 never to rise again. 
 
 With Booth's failing health, and the ill-success of novelties pro- 
 duced at either house, there was a gloom over theatrical matters. 
 But at this very time a sun was rising from behind the cloud. In 
 one of the irregular series of performances, held at the little thea- 
 tre in the Haymarket, in 1726, there appeared a young lady, in 
 the part of Monimia, in the " Orphan," and subsequently as 
 Cherry, in the " Beaux' Stratagem." She was pretty, clever, and 
 eighteen ; but she was not destined to become either the trag-ic 
 or the comic queen. Soon after, however, thanks to the judgment 
 of Rich, who gave her the opportunity, she was hailed as the 
 queen of English song. She was known as Lavinia Fenton, but 
 ehe was the daughter of a naval lieutenant, named Beswick. Her 
 widowed mother had married a coffee-house keeper in Charing 
 Cross, whose name of Fenton was assumed by his step-daughter. 
 Before we shall hear of her at Lincoln's Lm Fields, a licutenaat
 
 PEOGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 261 
 
 will be offering her every thing he possessed, except his name ; 
 but Lavinia, without being as discreet, was even more successful 
 than Pamela, and died a duchess. 
 
 Throughout the reign of George I., Barton Booth kept his 
 position as the first English tragedian, — undisturbed even by the 
 power of Quin. Associated with him, were comedians, — VVilks, 
 Gibber, Mrs. Oldfield, Porter, Horton, and others, who shed 
 splendor on the stage, at this period. The new dramatic poets of 
 that reign were few, and not more than one of those few can be 
 called distinguished. The name of Young alone survives in the 
 memory, and that but for one tragedy, the " Revenge." Of com- 
 edies, there is not one of the reign of George I. that is even read 
 for its merits. It is otherwise with the comedies of an actress 
 and dramatist who died in this reign, — Susanna Centlivre ; and yet 
 a contemporary notice of her death simply states that, as an 
 actress, " having a greater inclination to wear the breeches than 
 the petticoat, she struck into the men's parts ;" and that the 
 dramatist " had a small wen on her left eyelid, which gave her a 
 masculine air." 
 
 Eventful to both houses was the season of 172Y-8. It was the 
 last season of Booth, at Drury Lane ; and it was the first of the 
 "Beggars' Opera," at Lincoln's Inn Fields. After thirty years* 
 service, in the reigns of William, Anne, George I., and now in 
 that of George II., in which Garrick w^as to excel him, that 
 admirable actor was compelled, by shattered health, to withdraw. 
 For many nights he played Henry VIIL, and walked in the 
 coronation scene, which was tacked to various other plays, in 
 honor of the accession of George II., who, with the royal family, 
 went, on the Tth of November, to witness Booth enact the King. 
 On the 9th of January, Booth, after a severe struggle, played for 
 the sixth and last time, Julio, in the "Double Falsehood;" a play 
 which Theobald ascribed to Shakspeare ; Dr. Farmer, to Shirley ; 
 others, to Massinger ; but which was chiefly Theobald's own, 
 founded on a manuscript copy which, through Downes, the 
 prompter, had descended to him from Betterton ; and which served 
 Colman, who certainly derived his Octavian from Julio. 
 
 The loss in Booth was, in some degree, supplied by the " profit" 
 arising from a month's run of a new comedy by Vanbrugh and
 
 262 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Cibber, — the " Provoked Husband ;" in which the Lord and Lady 
 Townley were phiyed by these incomparable lovers, — Wilks and 
 Mrs. Oldfield. Cibber acted Sir Francis Wronghead, and young 
 Wethercll, Squire Richard. Vanbrugh was at this time dead — 
 in 1726, at his house in Whitehall, of quinsy. The critics and 
 enemies of Cibber were sadly at fault, on this occasion. Hating 
 him for his " Nonjuror," they hissed all the scenes of which they 
 supposed him to be the author ; and applauded those which they 
 were sure were by Vanbrugh. Cibber published the imperfect 
 play left by Sir John, and thereby showed that his adversaries 
 condemned and approved exactly in the wrong places. 
 
 Cibber enjoyed another triumph this season. Steele, abandon- 
 ing the responsibilities of management, to follow his pleasure, liad 
 submitted to a deduction of £l 13s. 4d., nightly, to each of his 
 partners, for performing his duties. Steele was at this time in 
 Wales, dying, though he survived till September, 1729. His 
 creditors, meanwhile, claimed the " five marks" as their own, and 
 tlie case went into the Rolls Court, before Sir Joseph Jekyll. 
 Cibber pleaded in person the cause of himself and active partners, 
 and so convincingly, that he obtained a decree in their favor. 
 
 In presence of this new audience, the old actor confesses he felt 
 fear. He carried with him the heads of what he was about to 
 urge ; but, says Colley, " when it came to the critical moment, 
 the dread and apprehension of what I had undertaken so discon- 
 certed my courage, that though I had been used to talk to above 
 fifty thousand people every winter, for upwards of thirty years 
 together, an involuntary and unexpected proof of confusion fell 
 from my eyes ; and as I found myself quite out of my element, I 
 seemed rather gasping for life, than in a condition to cope with 
 the eminent orators against me." Cibber, liowever, recovered 
 himself, and vanquished his adversaries, though two of them were 
 of the stuff that won for them, subsequently, the dignity of Lord 
 Chancellor. 
 
 The " Beggars' Opera" season at Lincoln's Inn Fields was the 
 most profitable ever known there. Swift's idea of a Newgate pas- 
 toral was adopted by Gay, who, smarting under disappointment of 
 preferment at court, and angry at the offer to make him gentle- 
 man-usher to the youngest of the royal children, indulged his
 
 PROGRESS OF QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BOOTH. 263 
 
 satirical humor against ministers and placemen, by writing a New 
 gate comedy, at which Swift and Pope shook their heads, and old 
 Congreve, for one of whose three sinecures Gay would have given 
 his ears, was sorely perplexed as to whether it would bring triumph 
 or calamity to its author. The songs were added, but Gibber, as 
 doubtful as Congreve, declined what Rich eagerly accepted, and 
 the success of which was first discerned by the Duke of Argyle, 
 from his box on the stage, who looked at the house, and " saw it 
 in the eyes of them." 
 
 Walker, who had been playing tragic parts, and very recently 
 Macbeth, was chosen for Macheath, on Quin declining the high- 
 wayman. Lavinia Fenton was the Polly ; Peachem, by Hippis- 
 ley; and Spiller made a distinctive character of Mat o' the Mint. 
 Walker " knew no more of music than barely singing in tune ; 
 but then his singing was supported by his inimitable action, by 
 his speaking to the eye and charming the ear." It was at the 
 close of a long run of the piece that Walker once tripped in his 
 words. " I wonder," said Rich, " that you should forget the 
 words of a part you have played so often !" — " Do you think," 
 asked Walker, with happy equivocation, "that a man's memory is 
 to last for ever ?" 
 
 Sixty-two nights in this season the " Beggars' Opera" drew 
 crowded houses. Highwaymen grew fashionable, and ladies not 
 only carried fans adorned with subjects from the Opera, but sang 
 the lighter, and hummed the coarser, songs. Sir Robert Walpole, 
 who was present on the first night, finding the eyes of the audience 
 turned on him as Lockit was singing his song touching courtiers 
 and bribes, was the first to blunt the point of the satire, by calling 
 encore. Swift says, " two great ministers were in a box together, 
 and all the world staring at them." At this time it was said that 
 the quarrel of Peachem and Lockit was an imitation of that of 
 Brutus and Cassius, but the public discerned therein Walpole and 
 his great adversary Townshend. 
 
 " The Beggars' Opera" hath knocked down Gulliver, wrote 
 Swift to Gay. " I hope to see Pope's ' Dulness' (the first name 
 of the Dunciad) knock down the ' Beggars' Opera,' but not till it 
 Lath fully done its job." But Gay had no " mission ;" he only 
 Bought to gratify himself and the town ; to satirize, not to teach
 
 264 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 or to warn ; the " opera" made " Gay rich, and Rich gay ;" the 
 former sufficiently so to make him forego earning a fee of 
 twenty guineas by a dedication, and the latter only so far sad, that 
 at the end of the season, Lavinia FentoTi, after two benefits, was 
 taken off the stage by tlie Duke of Bolton. The latter had from 
 his wedding-day hated his wife, daughter and sole heiress of the 
 Earl of Carbery ; but his love for Lavinia was so abounding, that 
 on his wife's death, he made a Duchess of "Polly;" but their 
 three sons were not born at a time that rendered either of them 
 heir to the ducal caronet, which, in 1754, passed to the Duke's 
 brother. Gay's author's night realized a gain to him of £700, 
 and enabled him to dress in "silver and blue." While he is 
 blazing abroad, the once great master. Booth, is slowly dying oat. 
 Let us tell his varied story as his life ebbs surely away.
 
 BARTON BOOTH. 265 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 BARTON BOOTH. 
 
 At this period it was evident that the stage was about to lose 
 Jts greatest tragedian since the death of Betterton, Booth was 
 stricken past recovery, and all the mirth caused by the " Beggars' 
 Opera" could not make his own peculiar public forget him. 
 Scarcely eight-and-thirty years had elapsed since the time when 
 in 1690, a handsome, well-bred lad, whose age did not then 
 amount to two lustres, sought admission into Westminster School. 
 Dr. Busby thought him too young ; but young Barton Booth was 
 the son of a gentleman, was of the family of Booth, Earl of 
 Warrington, and was a remarkably clever and attractive boy. The 
 Doctor, whose acting had been commended by Charles I., perhaps 
 thought of the school-plays, and recognized in little Barton the 
 promise of a lover in Terence's comedies. At all events, he ad- 
 mitted the applicant. 
 
 Barton Booth, a younger son of a Lancashire sire, was destined 
 for Holy Orders. He was a fine elocutionist, and he took to 
 Latin as readily as Erasmus ; but then he had Nicholas Rowe for 
 a school-fellow ; and, one day, was cast for Pamphilus in the 
 " Andria." Luckily, or unluckily, he played this prototype of 
 young Bevil in Steele's " Conscious Lovers" with such ease, per- 
 fection, and charming intelligence, that the old dormitory shook 
 with plaudits. The shouts of approbation changed the whole pur- 
 pose of his sire ; they deprived the Church of a graceful clergy- 
 man, and gave to the stage one of the most celebrated of our 
 actors. 
 
 He was but seventeen, when his brilliarit folly led him to run 
 away from home, and tempt fortune, by playing Oronooko, in 
 Dublin. The Irish audiences confirmed the judgment of the West- 
 minster critics, and the intelligent lad moved the hands *of the 
 men a: id the hearts of the women, without a check, during a 
 Vol. 1.-^12
 
 2G6 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 glorious three years of probation. And yet he narrowly escaped 
 failure, through a ridiculous accident, when in 1698, he made his 
 debut as Oronooko. It was a sultry night, in June. While wait- 
 ing to go on, before his last scene, he inadvertently wiped his 
 darkened face, and the lamp-black tliereon came ofl" in streaks. 
 On entering on the stage, unconscious of the countenance he 
 presented, he was saluted with a roar of laughter, and became 
 much confused. The generous laughers then sustained liim by 
 loud applause. But Booth was disturbed by this accident, and to 
 obviate its repetition, he went on, the next night in a crape mask, 
 made by an actress to fit close to his face. Unfortunately, in the 
 first scene the mask slipped, and the new audience were as hila- 
 rious as the old. " I looked like a magpie," said Barton ; " but 
 they lamp-blacked me for the rest of the night, and I was flayed 
 before I could get it off again." The mishap of the first night did 
 not affect his triumph ; this was so complete, that Ashbury, the 
 "master," made him a present of five guineas ; bright forerunners 
 of the fifty that were to be placed in his hands by delighted 
 Bolingbroke. 
 
 The hitherto penniless player was now fairly on the first step of 
 the ascent it was liis to accomplish. When he subsequently 
 passed through Lancashire to London, in lYOl, his fame had 
 gone before him ; he reached the capital with his manly beauty 
 to gain him additional fixvor, with a heavy purse, and a steady 
 conviction of even better fortune to come. AVith such a person- 
 age, his hitherto angry kinsmen were, of course, reconciled forth- 
 with. 
 
 One morning early in that year, 1701, he might have been seen 
 leaving Lord Fitzharding's rooms at St. James's, with Bowman, 
 the player, and making his way to Betterton's house in Great 
 Russell Street. From the lord in waiting to Prince George of 
 Denmark, he carries a letter of recommendation to the father of 
 the stage ; and generous old Thomas, jealous of no rival, de- 
 preciator of no talent, gave the stranger a hearty welcome ; heard 
 his story, asked for a t;istc of his quality, imparted good 
 counsel, took him into training, and ultimately brought him out 
 at Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1701, as Maximus, in Rochester's •' Val- 
 i»r>tinian." Betterton played vEtius, and Mrs. Barry, Lucina.
 
 BARTON BOOTH. 267 
 
 These two alone were enough to dannt so yonug an actor; but 
 Booth was not vain enough to be too modest, and the public at 
 once hailed in him a new charmer. His ease, grace, fire, and the 
 peculiar harmony of his voice, altogether distinct from that of 
 Betterton's, created a great impression. " Booth with the silver 
 tongue," gained the epithet before Barry was bom. Westminster 
 scbsequently celebrated him in one of her school prologues : 
 
 " Old Roscius to our Booth must bow, — 
 'Twas then but art, 'lis nature now." 
 
 and the district was proud of both players : of the young one of 
 gentle blood, educated in St. Peter's College ; and of the old one, 
 the royal cook's son, who was christened in St. Margaret's, August 
 12, 1635. 
 
 At first. Booth was thought of as a promising under-graduate 
 of the buskin, and he had faults to amend. He confessed to Gib- 
 ber that " he had been for some time too frank a lover of the bottle ;" 
 but having the tipsiness of Powell ever before him as a terrible 
 warning, he made a resolution of maintaining a sobriety of char- 
 acter, from which he never departed. Gibber pronounces this to 
 be " an uncommon act of philosophy in a young man ;" but he 
 adds, that " in his fame and fortune he afterwards enjoyed the 
 reward and benefit." 
 
 For a few years, then, Booth had arduous work to go through, 
 and every sort of " business" to play. The House in the Fields, 
 too, suffered from the tumblers, dancers, and sagacious animals, 
 added to the ordinary and well-acted plays at the House in the 
 Lane. Leisure he had also amid all his labor, to pay successful 
 suit to a young lady, the daughter of a Norfolk baronet, Sir 
 William Barkham, whom he married in 1704. The lady died 
 childless six years later. Till this last period — that, too, of the 
 death of Betterton — Booth may be said to have been in his minor- 
 ity as an actor, or, as Gibber puts it, " only in the promise of that 
 reputation," which he soon after happily arrived at. Not that 
 when that was gained he deemed himself perfect. The longest life, 
 he used to say, was not long enough to enable an actor to be per- 
 fect in his art. 
 
 Previous to 1710 he had created many new characters ; among
 
 268 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 others, Dick, in the " Confederacy ;" and he had played the Ghost 
 in " Hamlet," with such extraordinary power, such a supernatural 
 effect, so solemn, so majestic, and so affecting, that it was only 
 second in attraction to the Dane of Betterton. But PyiThus and 
 Cato wore yet to come. Meanwhile, soon after his wife's death, 
 he played Captain Worthy, in the " Fair Quaker of Deal," to the 
 Dorcas Zeal of Miss Santlow, destined to be his second wife — but 
 not just yet. 
 
 The two great characters created by him, between the year 
 when he played with Miss Santlow in Charles Shadwell's comedy, 
 and that in which he married her, were Pyrrhus, in the " Dis- 
 tressed Mother" (1712), and "Cato" (1713). Within the limits 
 stated. Booth kept household with poor Susan Mountfort, the 
 daughter of the abler actress of that name. At such arrangements 
 society took small objection, and beyond the fact, there was 
 nothing to carp at in Barton's home. The latter was broken up, 
 however — the lady being in fault, in 1718 — when Booth, who had 
 been the faithful vSteward of Susan's savings, consigned to her 
 £3,200, which were speedily squandered by her next "friend," 
 Mr. Minshull. The hapless young creature became insane ; in 
 which condition it is credibly asserted that she one night went 
 through the part of Ophelia, with a melancholy wildness which 
 rendered many of her hearers almost as distraught as herself; 
 soon after which she died. Meanwhile, her more faithful friend, 
 the acknowledged successor of Betterton, achieved his two great- 
 est triumphs — in characters originally represented by him — Pyr- 
 rhus and Cato. Those who have experienced the afBiction of see- 
 ing or reading the " Distressed Mother," may remember that the 
 heaviest part in that heavy play is that of Pyrrhus. But in acting 
 it. Booth set the Orestes of less careful Powell in the shade. 
 " His entrance," says Victor, " his walking and mounting to the 
 throne, his sitting down, his manner of giving audience to the 
 ambassador, his rising from the throne, his descending and leaving 
 the stage — though circumstances of a very common character in 
 theatrical performances, yet were executed by him with a grandem 
 not to be described." 
 
 But it is with " Cato" that Booth is identified. Fortunate it 
 was for him that the play Addison had kept so long in his desk
 
 BARTON BOOTH. 269 
 
 was not printed, according to Pope's advice, for readers only. 
 Fortunate, too, was the actor in the political coincidences of the 
 time. Marlborough, now a Whig, had asked to be appointed 
 " coramander-iu-chief for life." Harley, Bolingbroke, and the 
 other Tories, described this as an attempt to establish a perpetual 
 dictatorship. The action and the sentiment of " Cato" are antago- 
 nistic to such an attempt, and the play had a present political, as 
 well as a great dramatic interest. Common consent gave the part 
 of the philosopher of Utica to Booth ; Addison named young 
 Ryan, son of a Westminster tailor, as Marcus, and the young 
 fellow justified the nomination. Wilks, Gibber, and Mrs. Oldfield, 
 filled the other principal parts. Addison surrendered all claim to 
 profit, and on the evening of April 14th, 1Y13, there was excite- 
 ment and expectation on both sides of the curtain. 
 
 Booth really surpassed himself; his dignity, pathos, energy, 
 were all worthy of Betterton, and yet were in nowise after the 
 old actor's manner. The latter was forgotten on this night, and 
 Booth occupied exclusively the public eye, ear, and heart. The 
 public judgment answered to the public feeling. The Tories ap- 
 plauded every line in favor of popular liberty, and the Whigs 
 sent forth responsive peals to show that they, too, were advo- 
 cates of popular freedom. The pit was in a whirlwind of deli- 
 cious agitation, and the Tory occupants of the boxes were so 
 affected by the acting of Booth, that Bolingbroke, when the play 
 was over, sent for the now greatest actor of the day, and presented 
 him with a purse containing fifty guineas, the contributions of gen- 
 tlemen who had experienced the greatest delight at the energy 
 with which he had resisted a perpetual dictatorship, and main- 
 tained the cause of public liberty ! The managers paid the actor 
 a similar pecuniary compliment, and for five-and-thiity consecutive 
 nights " Cato" filled Drury Lane, and swelled the triumph of Bar- 
 ton Booth. There was no longer any thing sad in the old ex- 
 clamation of Steele, — " Ye gods ! what a part would Betterton 
 make of Cato !" The managers, Wilks, Cibber, and Doggett, 
 were as satisfied as the public, for the share of profit to each, at 
 the end of this eventful season, amounted to £1,350 ! 
 
 When Booth and his fellow-actors, after the close of the Lon- 
 don season, went to Oxford, to play " Cato," before a learned and
 
 270 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 critical audience, " our house was in a manner invested, and en- 
 trance demanded by twelve o'clock at noon ; and before one, it 
 was not wide enougb for many who came too late for places. 
 The same crowds continued for three days together (an uncom- 
 mon curiosity in that place), and the death of Cato triumphed 
 over the injuries of Caesar everywhere. At our taking leave, we 
 had the thanks of the Vice-Chancellor, ' for the decency and order 
 observed by our whole society ;' an honor," adds Gibber, proudly, 
 " which had not always been paid on the same occasion." Four 
 hundred and fifty pounds clear profit were shared by the mana- 
 gers, who gave the actors double pay, and sent a contribution of 
 £50 towards the repairs of St. Mary's Church. 
 
 The church, of which Booth was intended to be a minister, 
 added its approbation, through Dr. Smalridge, Dean of Carlisle, 
 who was present at the perfoi-mance in Oxford. " I heartily wish 
 all discourses from the pulpit were as instructive and edifying, as 
 pathetic and affecting, as that which the audience was then enter- 
 tained with fi'om the stage." This is a reproach to church-preach- 
 ers at the cost of a compliment to Booth ; and old Compton, ex- 
 dragoon, and now dying Bishop of London, would not have 
 relished it. Some of the metropolitan pulpits were, no doubt, 
 less " entertaining" than the stage, but many of them were held 
 to good purpose ; and, as for the Nonconformist chapels, of which 
 Smalridge knew nothing, — there, enthusiastic Pomfret and Mat- 
 thew Clarke were drawing as great crowds as Booth ; Bradbury, 
 that cheerful-minded patriarch of the Dissenters, was even more 
 entertaining ; while Neale was pathetic and earnest in Aldersgate 
 Street ; and John Gale, aflfecting and zealous, amid his eager 
 hearers in Barbican. There is no greater mistake than in suppo- 
 sing that at this time the whole London world was engaged in 
 resorting exclusively to the theatres, and especially to behold 
 Booth in Cato. 
 
 The grandeur of this piece has become somewhat dulled, but it 
 contains more true sayings constantly quoted than any other Eng- 
 lish work, save Gray's Elegy. It has been translated into French, 
 Italian, Latin, and Russian, and has been played in Italy and in 
 the Jesuits' College at St. Omer. Pope adorned it with a pro- 
 logue; Dr. Garth trimmed it with an epilogue; dozens of poets
 
 BARTOX BOOTH. 271 
 
 \», :>te testimonial verses ; tippling Eusden gave it his solemn sanc- 
 tion, while Dennis, with some " horseplay raillery," but with irre- 
 futable argument, inexorably proved that, despite beauties of dic- 
 tion, it is one of the most absurd, inconsistent, and unnatural plays 
 ever conceived by poet. But, Johnson remarks truly, "as we 
 love better to be pleased than to be taught, Cato is read, and the 
 critic is neglected." 
 
 Booth reaped no brighter triumph than in this character, in 
 which he has had worthy, but never equally able successors. Bo- 
 heme was respectable in it ; Quin imposing, and generally success- 
 ful ; Sheridan, conventional, but grandly eloquent ; Mossop, 
 heavy ; Walker, a failure ; Digges, stagy ; Kemble, next to the 
 original ; Pope, " mouthy ;" Cooke, altogether out of his line ; 
 Wright, weak ; Young, traditional but effective ; and Vandenhoff, 
 classically correct and statuesque. In Cato, the name of Booth 
 stands supreme ; in that, the kinsman of the Earls of Warrington 
 was never equalled. It was his good fortune, too, not to be ad- 
 mired less because of the affection for Betterton in the hearts of 
 6ur\'iving admirers. This is manifest from the lines of Pope — 
 
 " On Avon's bank where flowers eternal blow, 
 If I but ask, — if any weed can grow ? — 
 One tragic sentence if I dare deride, 
 "Which Betterton's grave action dignified, 
 Or well-mouthed Booth with emphasis proclaims, 
 (Though but perhaps a muster-roll of names) 
 How will our fathers rise up in a rage, 
 And swear all shame is lost in George's age I" 
 
 The performance of Cato raised Booth to fortune as well as to 
 fame ; and through Bolingbroke he was appointed to a share in 
 the profits of the management of Drury Lane, with Cibber, Wilks, 
 and Doggett. 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 £G00 for his share of the stock prop- 
 erty, " which was to be paid by such sums as should arise from 
 half his profits of acting, till the whole was discharged." This 
 incumbrance upon his share he discharged out of the income he 
 received in the first year of his joint management.
 
 272 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 His fame, liowever, by this time had cuhninated. He sustained 
 it well, but he cannot be said to have increased it. No other 
 such a creation as Cato fell to his lot. Young and Thomson 
 could not serve him as Addison and opportunity had done, and 
 if he can be said to have won additional laurels after Cato, it was 
 in the season of 1722-23, when he played Young Bevil, in Steele's 
 " Conscious Lovers," with a success which belied the assertion 
 that he was inefficient in genteel comedy. The season of 1725-26 
 was also one of his most brilliant. 
 
 Meanwhile, a success off the stage secured him as much happi- 
 ness 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 euphu- 
 ists called it, Booth had acted with remarkable generosity towards 
 the lady. In the year 1714, they bought several tickets in the 
 State Lottery, and agreed to share equally whatever fortune might 
 ensue. Booth gained nothing ; the lady won a prize of £5,000, 
 and kept it. His friends counselled him to claim half the sum, 
 but he laughingly remarked that there had never been any but a 
 verbal agreement on the matter ; and since the result had been 
 fortunate for his friend, she should enjoy it all. 
 
 A truer friend he found in Miss Santlow, the " Santlow famed 
 for dance," of Gay. From the ballet she had passed to the digni- 
 ty of an actress, and Booth had been enamored of her " poetry of 
 motion" before he had played Worthy to her Dorcas Zeal. He 
 described her, with all due ardor, 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 arras 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 I" 
 
 Her grace of motion effected more than eloquence, at least so
 
 BARTON LOOTH. 273 
 
 Booth thought, who thus sang the nymph in her more accelerated 
 gteps to conquest : — 
 
 " But now the flying fingers strike the lyre, 
 
 The sprightly notes the nymph inspire. 
 
 Slie whirls around I she bounds I she springs 1 
 
 As if Jove's messenger had lent ber wings. 
 Such Daplme was .... 
 Such were her lovely limbs, so flushed her charming face 
 
 So round her neck ! her eyes so fair I 
 So rose her swelling chest ! so flow'd her amber hair 1 
 
 While her swift feet outstript the wind, 
 And left the enamor'd God of Day behind." 
 
 Now, this goddess became to Booth one of the truest, most 
 charming, and most unselfish of mortal waves. But see of what 
 perilous stuff she was made who enraptured the generally unruffled 
 poet Thomson almost as much as she did Barton Booth. For 
 her smiles, Marlborough had given what he least cared to part 
 ■with — gold. Craggs, the Secretary of State, albeit a barber's son, 
 had made her spouse, in all but name, and their daughter was 
 mother to the first Lord St. Germains, and, by a second marriage, 
 of the first Marquis of Abercorn. The Santlow blood thus danced 
 itself into very excellent company ; but the aristocracy gave good 
 blood to the stage, as well as took gay blood from it. Contem- 
 porary with Booth and Mrs. Santlow were the sisters, frolic Mrs. 
 Bicknell and Mrs. Younger. They were nearly related to Keith, 
 Earl Marshal of Scotland. Their father had served in Flanders 
 under King William, " perhaps," says Mr. Carruthers, in his Life 
 of Pope, "rode by the side of Steele, whence Steele's interest in 
 Mrs. Bicknell, whom he praises in the Tatler and Spectator^ 
 Mrs. Younger, in middle age, married John, brother of the seventh 
 Earl of Winchelsea. 
 
 When Miss Santlow left the ballet for comedy, it was accounted 
 one of the lucky incidents in the fortune of Drury. Dorcas Zeal, 
 in the " Fair Quaker of Deal," was the first original part in which 
 Miss Santlow appeared. Cibber says, somewhat equivocally, " that 
 she was then in the full bloom of what beauty she might pretend 
 to," and he, not very logically, adds, that her reception as an 
 actress was, perhaps, owing to the admiration she had excited as 
 12*
 
 274 dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 a dancer. The part was suited to lier figure and capacity. " The 
 gentle softness of her voice, the composed innocence of her aspect, 
 the modesty of her dress, the reserved decency of her gesture, and 
 the simplicity of the sentiments that naturally fell from her, made 
 her seem the amiable maid she represented." 
 
 Many admirers, however, regretted that she had abandoned the 
 ballet for the drama. They mourned as if Terpsichore herself 
 had been on earth to charm mankind, and had gone never to 
 return. They remembered, longed for, and now longed in vain 
 for, that sight which used to set a whole audience half distraught 
 with delight, when in the very ecstasy of her dance, Santlow con- 
 trived to loosen her clustering auburn hair, and letting it fall 
 about such a neck and shoulders as Praxiteles could more readily 
 imagine than imitate, danced on, the locks flying in the air, and 
 half a dozen hearts at the end of every one of them. 
 
 The union of Booth and Miss Santlow was as productive of 
 happiness as that of Betterton and Miss Saunderson. Indeed, 
 with some few exceptions, the man-iages 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 himself by pro- 
 ducing domestic incidents of a stormy and aggravating nature, on 
 the stage. The status of the French players was even lower, in 
 one respect, than that of their English brethren. The French 
 ecclesiastical law did not allow of marrying or giving in marriage 
 amongst actors. They were excommunicated, by the mere fact 
 that they were stage-players. The Church refused them the 
 Sacrament of Marriage, and a loving couple who desired to be 
 honestly wed, were driven into lying. It was their habit to retire 
 from their profession, get married as individuals who had no vo- 
 cation, and the honeymoon over, to return again to the stage and their 
 impatient public. The Church was aware of the subterfuge, and 
 did its utmost to establish the concubinage of parties thus united ; 
 but civil law and royal influence invariably declared that these 
 marriages were valid, seeing that the contracting parties were not 
 excommunicated actors when the ceremony was performed, what- 
 ever they may have been a month before, or a month after. 
 
 No such difficulties as these had to be encountered by Booth
 
 BARTON BOOTH. • 275 
 
 aad 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 favorite Horace into English, he went into an original digres- 
 sion on the becomingness of a married life, and the peculiar feli- 
 city 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 I 
 
 The social virtues and the cheerful mind 
 
 Have ever crowned our days, be^fuiled 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 ordaina. 
 
 There we may dwell in peace. 
 
 There bless the rising morn, and flow'ry field, 
 
 Charm'd with the guiltless sports the woods and waters yield." 
 
 But neither the married nor the professional life of Booth was 
 destined to be of long continuance. His health began to give 
 way before he was forty. The managers hoped they had found a 
 fair substitute for him in the actor Elrington. Tom Elrington sub- 
 sequently became so great a favorite with the Dublin audience 
 that they remembered his Bajazet as preferable to that of Barry 
 or Mossop, on the ground that in that character his voice could be 
 heard beyond the Blind Quay, whereas that of the other named 
 actors was not audible outside the house ! Elrington had none of 
 the scholar-like training of Booth. He was originally apprentice 
 to an upholsterer in Covent Garden, was wont to attend plays un- 
 known to his master, and to act in them privately, and with equal 
 lack of sanction. His master was a vivacious Frenchman, who, 
 one day, came upon him as, under the instruction of Chetwood, 
 he was studying a part in some stilted and ranting tragedy. The 
 stage-struck apprentice, in his agitation, sewed his book up inside 
 the cushion, on which he was at Avork, " while he and Chetwood 
 exchanged many a desponding look, and every stitch went to both 
 their heart^j." The oftenders escaped detection ; but on another 
 oo.casion the Frenchman came upon his apprentice as he was
 
 276 DOR.'y^'S ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 enacting the Ghost in "Hamlet," when he laid the spirit with 
 irresistible effect of his good right arm. Elrington was, from 
 the beginning, a sort of " copper Booth." His first appearance on 
 the stage, at Drury Lane, in 1709, was in Oronooko, the character 
 in which Booth had made his coup d^essai in Dublin. He was 
 ambitious, too, and had influential support. When Gibber re- 
 fused to allow him to play Torrismond, while Elrington waa yet 
 young, a noble friend of the actor asked the manager to assign 
 cause for the refusal. Golley was not at a loss. " It is not with 
 us as with you, my Lord," said he ; " your Lordship is sensible 
 that there is no difficulty in filling places at court, you cannot be 
 at a loss for persons to act their parts there ; but I assure you, it 
 is quite 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 at- 
 tempted to take rank in London with Booth himself He began 
 the attempt in his favorite part of Bajazet, Bootli playing Tamer- 
 lane. The latter, we are told by Victor, " being in full force, and 
 perliaps animated by a spirit of emulation towards the new Baja- 
 zet, exerted all his powers ; and Elrington owned to his friends, 
 that never having felt the force of such an actor, be was not 
 aware that it was in the power of mortal to soar so much above 
 him and shrink him into nothing." Booth was quite satisfied 
 with his own success, for he complimented Elrington on his, add- 
 ing, 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 
 ctjualled in Oronooko. He undoubtedly excelled Mills in Zanga, 
 nf which the latter was the original repi'csentative. After Dr. 
 'N'oung had seen Elrington play it, he went round, shook hira cor- 
 dially by the hand, thanked him heartily, and declared he had 
 never seen the part done such justice to, as by hira : — " acknowl- 
 edging, with some regret," says Dr. Lewis, " that Mills did but 
 growl and mouth the character." Such was the actor who be- 
 came for a time Booth's " double," and might have become his 
 rivfU. During the illness of the latter, in 1728-9, Elrington, we
 
 BARTON BOOTH. 277 
 
 are told, was the principal support of ti'agedy in Drury Lane. At 
 that tune, says Davios, " the managers were so well-convinced of 
 their importance to them, that they oft'ered him his own condi- 
 tions, if he would engage with them for a term of years." Elring- 
 ton 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 gentle- 
 man's house to which I am not a welcome visitor." 
 
 Booth has been called indolent, but he never was so when in 
 health, and before a fitting audience. On one thin night, indeed, 
 he was enacting Othello rather languidly ; but he suddenly began 
 to exert himself to the utmost, in the great scene of the third act. 
 On coming otF the stage, he was asked the cause of this sudden 
 eflfort. " I saw an Oxford man in the pit," he answered, " for 
 whose judgment I had more respect than for that of the rest of 
 the audience ;" and he played the Moor to that one, but efficient, 
 judge. Some causes of languor, may, perhaps, be traced to the 
 too warm patronage he received, or rather friendship, at the hands 
 of the nobility. It was no uncommon thing for a " carriage and 
 six" to be in waiting for him — the equipage of some court friend 
 — which conveyed him, in what was then considered, the brief 
 period of three hours, to Windsor, and back again the next da) , 
 in time for play or rehearsal. This agitated sort of life seriously 
 affected his health ; and, on one occasion his recovery was de- 
 spaired of. But the public favorite was restored to the town ; and 
 learned Mattaire celebrated the event in a Latin ode, in which he 
 did honor to the memory of Betterton, and the living and invigo- 
 rated 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, — 
 J affier and Hastings, — and heard the applause which was awarded 
 to his efforts ; and the sound was ungrateful to the ears of the 
 philosophical and unimpassioned Cato. But Jaffier was one of 
 his triumphs ; and he whose tenderness, pity, and terror, had 
 touched the hearts of the whole audience, was painfully affected 
 at the triumph of another, though achieved by different means. 
 
 One of the secrets of his own success lay, undoubtedly, in his 
 education, feeling, and judgment. It may be readily seen, from
 
 278 doran's axnals of the stage. 
 
 Aaron Hill's rather elaborate criticism, that he was an actor who 
 made " points ;" '' he could soften and slide over, with an elegant 
 negligence, the improprieties of the part he acted ; while, on the 
 contrary, he could dwell with energ}' upon the beauties, as if he 
 exerted a latent spirit, which he kept back for such an occanion, 
 that h( might alarm, awaken, and transport, in those places only 
 which wore worthy of his best exertions." This was really to de- 
 pond on " points ;" and was, perhaps, a defect in a player of whom 
 it has been said, that he had learning to understand perfectly what 
 it was his part to speak, and judgment to know how it agreed or 
 disagreed with his character." The following, by Hill, is as 
 graphic as any thing in Gibber : — " Booth had a talent at dis- 
 covering 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 sound of his words gave propriety to every change in his 
 countenance. So that it was Mr. Booth's peculiar felicity to be 
 heard and seen the same ; whether as the pleased, the grieved, 
 the pitying, the reproachful, or the angr)\ 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 afiirm 
 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 unri- 
 valled, and even so extraordinary, as to be almost beyond the reach 
 of envy." His Othello, Cato, and his Polydore, in the " Orphan," 
 in which he was never equalled, were long the theme of admiration 
 to his survivors, as were in a less degree, his sorrowing and not 
 roaring Lear, his manly yet not blustering Hotspur. Dickey 
 Brass and Dorimant, Wildair and Sir Charles Easy, Pinchwife, 
 Mauley, and Young Bevil, were among the best of his essays in 
 comedy, — where, however, he was surpassed by Wilks. " But 
 then, I believe," says a critic, " no one will say he did not appear 
 the fine gentleman in the character of Bevil, in the ' Conscious 
 Lovers.' It is said that he once played Falstaff in the presence of 
 Queen Anne, ' to the delight of the whole audience.' "
 
 BARTON BOOTH. 279 
 
 Aaron Hill, curiously statistical, states, that by the peculiar de- 
 livery of certain sentiments in Cato, Booth was always sure of ob- 
 taining from eighteen to twenty rounds of applause during the 
 evening, — marks of approval, both of matter and manner. Like 
 Betterton, he abounded in feeling. There was nothing of the 
 stolidity of " Punch" in either of them. Betterton is said to have 
 sometimes turned as " white as his neck-cloth," on seeing his 
 father's ghost ; while Booth, when playing the Ghost to Better- 
 ton's Hamlet, was once so horror-stricken at his distraught aspect, 
 as to be too disconcerted to proceed, for a while, in his part. Either 
 actor, however, knew how far to safely yield themselves to feeling. 
 Judgment was always within call ; the head ready to control the 
 heart, however wildly it might be impelled by the latter. Baron, 
 the French actor, did not know better than they, that while rules 
 may teach the actor not to raise his arms above his head, he 
 will do well to break the rule, if passion carry him that way. 
 " Passion," as Baron remarked, " knows more than art." 
 
 I have noticed the report that Booth and Wilks were jealous of 
 each other ; I think there was more of emulation than of envy 
 between them. Booth could make sacrifices in favor of young 
 actors as unreservedly as Betterton. I find, even when he was in 
 possession, as it was called, of all the leading parts, that he as 
 often played Laertes, or even Horatio, as the Ghost or Hamlet. 
 His Laertes was wonderfully fine, and in a great actor's hands, 
 may be made, in the fifth act, at least, equal with the princely 
 Dane himself. Again, although his Othello was one of his grand- 
 est 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 
 humor, 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 terroi*. He pronounced the four words, " Go thy ways, 
 Kate," with such a happy emphasis as to win admiration and ap- 
 plause ; and " when he said, ' Now, to breakfast with what appetite
 
 280 DORA.N's AN]SALg OF THE STAGE. 
 
 you may,' his expression was rapid and vehement, and his Ioor 
 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 come- 
 dian of his time, and superior to all we have since beheld, he has 
 phiyed several parts, to keep up the spirit of some comedies, 
 which you will now scarcely find one player in twenty who will 
 not reject as beneath his Mock-Excellence." 
 
 Booth could, after all, perhaps, occasionally be languid without 
 the excuse of illness. He would play his best to a single man in 
 the pit whom he recognized as a playgoer, and a judge of acting; 
 but to an unappreciating audience he could exhibit an almost con- 
 temptuous 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 ser- 
 vice 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 impersona- 
 tions, namely, Pyrrhus. At his very dullest scene he started into 
 the utmost brilliancy and effectiveness. His eye had just prenous- 
 ly detected in the pit a gentleman, named Stanyan, the friend of 
 Addison and Steele, and the correspondent of the Earl of Manches- 
 ter. Stanyan was an accomplished man and a judicious critic. 
 Booth played to him, with the utmost care and corresponding suc- 
 cess. " 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 or- 
 dinarily labored 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 1V12-13, when Booth studied, played, and triumphec^ 
 in Cato, he within not many weeks studied and performed five ori 
 ginal 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 "Humors of the Ar 
 my;" Cinna, in an adaptation of Corneille's play ; and finally, Cato
 
 BARTON BOOTH. 281 
 
 No doubt Booth was finest when put upon his mottle. In May, 
 1726, for instance, Gitfard from Dublin appeared at Drury Lane, 
 as the Prince of Wales, in " Henry I\\" The debutant was known 
 to be an admirer of the Hotspur of roaring Elrington. The Perc-y 
 was one of Booth's most perfect exhibitions ; and ill as he was on 
 the night he was to play it to Giftard's Harry, he protested that 
 he would surprise the new comer, and the house too ; and he played 
 with such grace, fire, and energy, that the audience were beside 
 themselves with ecstasy, and the new actor was profuse at the side- 
 scenes, and even out of hearing of Booth, in acknowledgment of 
 the great master and his superiority over every living competitor. 
 
 Betterton cared little if his audience was select, provided it 
 also was judicious ; Booth, however, loved a full house, though 
 he could play his best to a solitary, but competent, individual in 
 the pit He confessed that he considered profit after fame, and 
 thought that large audiences tended to the increase of both. The 
 intercourse between audience and actor was, in his time, more in- 
 timate 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 play- 
 goers as naturally as they were coffee-house frequentei's, cluster 
 round him and acknowledge the pleasure they had enjoyed in 
 witnessing him act. These pleasant morning critics only venture 
 to blame him for allowing such unmeaning stuff as the pantomime 
 of " Perseus and Andromeda" to follow the classical tragedy and 
 mar its impression. But the ballet-pantomime draws great houses, 
 and is therefore a less indignity in Booth' s eye than half empty 
 benches. Tt 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 panto- 
 mime they could entice a greater number to partake of a good play 
 than could be drawn without it, he could not see any great harm 
 in it ; and that, as those pieces were performed after the play, they 
 were no interruption to it." In short, he held pantomimes to be 
 rank nonsense, which might be rendered useful, after the fashion of 
 his explanation. 
 
 His retirement from the stage may be laid to the importunity 
 of Mr. Theobald, who urged him to act in a play, for a moment
 
 282 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 attributed to Shakspeare, " the Double Falsehood." Booth stmg- 
 gled through the part of Julio, for a week, in the season of 1727-8, 
 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 Boer- 
 haave, who could only tell the invalid that in England a man 
 should never leave off his winter clothing till midsummer-day, 
 and that he should resume it the day after. From Holland 
 the sad couple came home to Hampstead, and ultimately back 
 to London, where fever, jaundice, and other maladies attacked 
 Booth with intermitting severity. Here, in May, 1733, a quack 
 doctor persuaded him that if he would take " crude mercury" 
 it would not only prevent the return of his fever, but effectually 
 cure him of all his complaints. As we are gravely informed 
 that within five days the poor victim " took within two ounces of 
 two pounds' weight of mercury," we are not surprised to hear 
 that at the end of that time Booth was in extremis, and that Sir 
 Hans Sloan e was at his bedside to accelerate, as it would seem, 
 the catastrophe. 
 
 To peruse what followed is like I'eading the details of an assassi- 
 nation. As if the two pounds, minus two ounces, of mercury were 
 not enough, poor Booth was bled profusely at the jugular, his 
 feet were plastered, and his scalp was blistered ; he was assailed in 
 various ways by cathartics, and mocked, I may so call it, by emul- 
 sions ; the Daili/ Post announced that he lay a-dying at his house 
 in Hart Street : other notices pronounced him moribund in 
 Charles Street; but he was alive on the morning of the 10th of 
 May, 1733, when a triad of prescriptions being applied against 
 him, Cato at length happily succumbed. But the surgeons would 
 not let the dead actor rest ; they opened his body, and dived into 
 its recesses, and called things by strong names, and avoided tech- 
 nicalities ; and after declaring every thing to be very much worse 
 than the state of Denmark, as briefly described by Hamlet, Alex- 
 ander Small, the especial examiner, signing the report, added a 
 postscript thereto, implying that " There was no fault in any part
 
 BARTON BOOTH. 283 
 
 of his body, but what is here mentioned." Poor fellow ! We 
 are toid 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 Curch, near Uxbridge, where lie occasionally resided. A 
 few old friends, and some dearer than friends, accompanied him to 
 the grave. His will was as a kiss on either cheek of his beautiful 
 widow, and a slap on both cheeks of sundry of his relations. To 
 the former he left every thing he had possessed, and for the veiy 
 best of reasons. " As I have been," he says, " a man much known 
 and talked of, my not leaving legacies to my relations may give 
 occasion to censorious people to reflect upon my conduct in this 
 latter act of my life ; therefore, I think it necessary to declare that 
 I have considered my circumstances, and finding, upon a strict 
 examination, that all I am now possessed of does not amount to 
 two-thirds of the fortune my wife brought me on the day of our 
 marriage, together with the yearly additions and advantages since 
 arising from her laborious employment on the stage during twelve 
 years past, I thought myself bound by honesty, honor and gratitude 
 due to her constant affection, not to give away any part of the re- 
 mainder 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 loife' 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 ear- 
 nest soUcitation of my wife, who was perpetually entreating me to 
 continue the allowance I gave my relations before my marriage. The 
 mhuman return that has been made my wife for these obligations, 
 by my sister, I forbear to mention." This was justice without ven- 
 geance, and worthy of the sage, of whom Booth was the most 
 finished representative. The generosity of Hester Santlow, too, ■ 
 has been fittingly preserved in the will ; the whole of which, more- 
 over, is a social illustration of the times. 
 
 In Westminster, "Booth Street" keeps up the actor's name ; and 
 " Cowley Street" the remembrance of his proprietorship of a coun- 
 try estate near Uxbridge. To pass through the former street is 
 like being transported to the times of Queen Anne. It is a
 
 284 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 quaint old locality, very little changed since the period in which 
 Barton built it. No gi-eat stretch of imagination is required to 
 fancy the original Pyrrhus and Cato gliding along the shady side, 
 with a smile on his lips and a certain fire in his eye. He is think- 
 ing of Miss Santlow ! 
 
 With Booth slowly dying, and Mrs. Oldfield often too ill to 
 act, the prospects of Drury began to wane in 1728-9. Elrington 
 could not supply the place of the former; nor Mrs. Porter and 
 Mrs. Horton combined, that of the latter. Gibber carefully instruct- 
 ed his son Theophilus in the part of Pistol, which became his one 
 great part, and the appearance of Miss Rafter as Doriiuhi, in Dry- 
 den's version of the " Tempest," on the 2d of January, 1729, marks 
 the first step in the bright and uncheckered career of one who is 
 better remembered as Kitty Clive, of whom, more hereafter. She 
 was not able to save Gibber's pastoral comedy, " Love in a Riddle," 
 from condemnation by an audience who had the ill-manners, as it 
 was considered, to hiss, despite a royal presence in the house. 
 
 As the new names rose the old ones fell off, and Gongreve and 
 Steele — the first rich and a gentleman, the second needy, but a 
 gentleman too — died in 1729, leaving no one but Gibber fit to 
 compete with them in comedy. Musical pieces, such as the 
 " Village Opera" and the " Lovers' Opera," born of Gay's 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 every thing, and growing in favor 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 Avas 
 five acts of flattery to the House of Hanover, some of whose mem- 
 bers yawned over it, ungratefully. But the "Beggars' Opera" 
 could always fill the house, whether Miss Gantrell warbled Polly,
 
 BARTON BOOTH. 285 
 
 witn the old cast, or children played all the parts — a foolish 
 novelty, not unattractive. Hawker, an actor, vainly tried to rival 
 Gay, with a serio-comic opera, the " Wedding," and Gay himself 
 was doomed to suft'er disappointment ; for the authorities sup- 
 pressed his " Polly," a vapid continuation of the fortunes of Mac- 
 beath and the lady, and thereby drove almost to the disaffection 
 of which he was accused, not only Gay, but his patrons, the Duke 
 and Duchess of Queensberry, who punished the Court by absent- 
 ing 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 silvei, all which he enjoyed beneath the ducal 
 roof, happiest of mercer's apprentices, found compensation in pub- 
 lishing his work by subscription, whereby he realized so large a 
 sum as to satisfy his utmoot wishes. 
 
 Drury Lane was not faitunate in any of its new pieces in the 
 season of 1729-30. It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Mrs. Old- 
 field, by her recommendation, and by her acting, obtained even 
 partial success for a comedy, by the Rev. James Millar, the 
 " Humors of Oxford." I'liis 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 furniture as they did Mills or Mrs. Porter. 
 Martyu, the author, had been a linen-draper, but his epitaph in 
 Lewisham Churchyard describes him as " one of the best bred 
 men in England." He was certainly well connected, but he ex- 
 liibited more efficiency in colonizing 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 wdiich 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. Old- 
 field) mo: e stern and patriotic, and less loving. The author himself
 
 286 doran's annals of the staoe. 
 
 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 Shakspoares yet may rouse the stage, 
 And other Otways melt another age." 
 
 " Sophonisba," which Thomson was not afi-aid to set above 
 the heroine of Corneille, abounds in platitudes, and it was fatal to 
 Gibber, who, never tolerable in tragedy, was fairly hissed out of 
 the character of Scipio, which he surrendered to a promising 
 player, Williams. The latter was violently hissed also on the fii"st 
 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 1" 
 
 Her grandeur of action, her stern expression, and her powerful 
 tone of voice, elicited the most enthusiastic applause. Exactly 
 two months later, on the 28th of April, IVSO, she acted Lady 
 Brute, and therewith suddenly terminated her thirty years of 
 service, dying exactly six months after illness compelled her to 
 withdraw. 
 
 Before noticing more fully the career of Mrs. Oldfield, let me 
 record here, that on the night she played Lady Brute in the 
 " Provoked Wife," the part of Mademoiselle was acted by Char- 
 lotte Charke, the wife of a good singer, but a worthless man, and 
 the youngest child of CoUey 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 rebellious ; self-taught as a boy might be, and with 
 nothing feminine in her character or pursuits. With self-asser- 
 tion too, she was weak enough to be won by a knave with a sweet 
 voice, whose cruel treatment drove his intractable wife to the 
 stage, where she failed to profit by her fine opportunities. 
 
 The corresponding season at Lincoln's Inn Fields was the usual 
 one of an unfashionable house : but Quin, Ryan, Walker, and 
 Boherac, were actors who made way against Wilks, Gibber, Mills,
 
 BARTON BOOTH 287 
 
 and Bridgewater. No new piece of any value was produced ; the 
 only incidents worth recording being the playing of Macheath by 
 Quin, for his benefit ; and the sudden death of Spiller, stricken by 
 apoplexy, as he was playing in the " Rape of Proserpine." He 
 was inimitable in old men, though he himself was young ; but 
 whatever he played, he so identified himself with his charactei, 
 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 Good- 
 man's Fields, and the little house in the Haymarket, were open 
 this season. At the former Giffard and his wife led in tragedy 
 and comedy ; but the company was generally weak. Not so the 
 authors who wrote for the house. First among them was Field- 
 ing, a young fellow of three and twenty ; bred to the law, but 
 driven to the drama by the inability of his father, the General, 
 to supply him with funds. His first play, " Love in Several 
 Masques," was acted at Drury Lane in 1728; liis second, and a 
 better, the " Temple Beau," was played at Goodman's Fields. 
 
 Ralph, who had been a sclioolmaster 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, sup- 
 plied a ballad-opera, the " Fashionable Lady," which was intended 
 to rival the " Beggars' Opera." To Macheath — Walker is as- 
 cribed a tragedy, the " Fate of Villany ;" and Mottley, the disap- 
 pointed 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 i*st and poorest of his 
 contributions to the stage. 
 
 For the Haymarket, Fielding wrote the only piece which has 
 come down to our times, his immortal burlesque-tragedy of " Tom 
 Thumb," in which the weakness and bombast of late or contem- 
 porary writers are copied with wonderful etfect. Young sutfered 
 severely by this;^and the "Oh, Huncaniunca! Huncamunca^ 
 oh !" was a dart at the " Oh, Sophonisba ! Sophonisba, oh !" o^ 
 Jamie Thomson. Of the other pieces I need not disturb the 
 Just. 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
 
 288 dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 CHAPTER XTX. 
 
 MRS. OLDFIELD. 
 
 Artists who have been wont to look into the Vicar of Wake' 
 field, Gil Bias, and last century comedies, for picturesque sub- 
 jects, would find account in referring to the lives of our actresses. 
 Here is not a bad picture of its class. Tlie time is at the close of 
 the seventeenth century ; the scene is at the Mitre Tavern in St. 
 James's Market, kept by one Mrs. Voss. It is a quiet summer eve- 
 ning, and after the fatigues of the day are over, and before the later 
 business of the night has commenced, that buxom lady is reclining 
 in an easy chair, listening to a fair and bright young creature, her 
 sister, who is reading aloud, and is enjoying what she reads. Her 
 eyes, like Kathleen's in the song, are beaming with light, her face 
 glowing with intelligence and feeling. Even an elderly lady, their 
 mother, turns away from the picture of her husband, who had 
 ridden in the Guards, and held a commission under James II. — 
 she turns from this and memories of old days, to gaze with tender 
 admiration on her brilliant young daughter ; who, be it said, at 
 this present reading, is only an apprentice to a seamstress in King 
 Street, Westminster. 
 
 But the soul of Thalia is under her bodice, into a neater than 
 which, Anadyomene could not have laced herself. She is rapt 
 in the reading, and with book held out, and face upraised, and figure 
 displayed at its very best, she enthrals her audience, unconscious 
 herself that this is more numerous than she might have supposed. 
 On the threshold of the open door stand a couple of guests ; one 
 of them has, to us, no name; the other is a gay, rollicking young 
 fellow, smartly dressed, a semi-military look about him, good hu- 
 mor rippling over his face, combined with an air of astonishment 
 and delight. This is Captain Farquhar. His sight and hearing 
 are wholly concentrated on that enchanted and enchanting girl^ 
 *vho, unmindful of aught but the " Scornful Lady," continues still
 
 MRS. OLDFIELD. 289 
 
 reading aloud that rattling comedy of Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 How the mother listened to it all is not to be told ; but nearly a 
 century later, Queen Charlotte could listen to her daughter's read- 
 ing " Polly Honeycombe," aud no harm done. We may fancy 
 the young reader at the Mitre, whose name is Anne Oldfield, in 
 that silvery voice for which she was famed, half in sadness and half 
 ill mirth, reading the lines in which the lady says: — 
 
 "All we that are call'd woman, know as well 
 As men, it were a far more noble thing 
 To grace where wo are graced, and give respect 
 There where we are respected ; yet we practise 
 A wilder course, and never bend our eyes 
 On men with pleasure, till they find the way 
 To give us a neglect. Then we too late 
 Perceive the loss of what we might have had, 
 And dote to death." 
 
 Captain Farquhar, at whatever passage in the play, betrayed 
 his presence by his involuntary applause. The girl looked toward 
 him more pleased than abashed ; and when the captain pronounced 
 that there was in her stuff for an exquisite actress, the fluttered 
 thing clasped her hands, glowed at the prophecy, and protested 
 in her turn, that of all conditions it was the one she wished most 
 ardently to fulfil. From that moment the glory and the mischief 
 were commenced. The tall girl stood up, her large eyes dilating, 
 the assured future Lady Betty Modish and Biddy Tipkin, Farqu- 
 har's own Sylvia and Mrs. Sullen, the Yiolante and the Lady 
 Townley that were to set the play-going world mad with delight; 
 the Andromache, Marcia, and Jane Shore, that were to wring 
 tears from them ; the supreme lady in all, but chiefest in comedy ; 
 and that " genteel," for which she seemed expressly born. 
 
 Farquhar talked of her to Vanbrugh, and Vanbrugh introduced 
 her to Rich, and Rich took her into his company, assigned her a 
 beginner's salary, fifteen shillings a week, and gave her nothing to 
 do. She had a better life of it at the seamstress's in King Street. 
 But she had time to spare and leisure to wait. She was barely 
 fifteen, when, in 1 TOO, she played AUnda, in Vanbrugh's adapta- 
 tion from Beaumont and Fletcher, the " Pilgrim." The next three 
 or four years were those of probation ; and when, in the season of 
 Vol. L— 13.
 
 290 doran's axxals of the stage. 
 
 1*704-5, Gibber assigned to her the paii of Lady Betty Modish, in 
 his " Careless Husband," the town at once recognized in her the 
 most finished actress of such difficult yet etiective parts, of her day. 
 
 Tlie gentle Alinda suited the years and inexperience of Mrs. 
 Oldfield ; her youth was in her favor, and her figure, but therewith 
 was such great diffidence, that she had not courage enough to 
 modulate her voice. Gibber watched her ; he could see nothing 
 to recommend her, save her graceful person. But there reached 
 his ear occasional silver tones, which seemed to assure him of the 
 rare excellence of the instrument. Still, like "the great Mrs. 
 Barry," her first appearances wei-e failures ; and such were those 
 of Sarah Siddons, in after years. Warmed by encouraging ap- 
 plause, however, the promise ripened, and with opportunity, the 
 perfection that came, was demonstrated both to watchful Gibber 
 and an expectant public. 
 
 In 1703, the company was at Bath, where Queen Anne might 
 have been seen in the Pump Room in the morning, — later in the 
 day, at the play. But the joyous and brilliant queen of comedy 
 was not there. Mrs. Verbruggen, the Mrs. Mountfort of earlier 
 days, was ill in town, nursing a baby, whose birth ultimately cost 
 the life of the mother. There was a scramble for her parts. Each 
 of the more influential actresses obtained several ; but to young 
 and unobtrusive Mrs. Oldfield, there fell but one, — the mediocre 
 part of Leonora, in " Sir Courtly Nice." Gibber reluctantly ran 
 over the scenes with her, at her request, in Avhich the Knight and 
 the Lady meet. He was careless, from lack of appreciation of the 
 actress ; she was piqued, and sullenly repeated the words set down 
 for her. There was, in short, a mutual distaste. But, when the 
 night came, Colley saw the almost perfect actress before him, and 
 as he says, — " she had a just occasion to triumph over the error 
 of my judgment, by the almost amazement that her unexpectc<l 
 performance awaked me to ; so sudden and forward a step into 
 nature I had never seen. And what made her performance more 
 valuable was, that I knew it all proceeded from her own under- 
 standing, — untaught and unassisted by any one more experienced 
 actor." Any other player but Gibber, in his place, would have 
 laid Anne Oldfield's success to the instruction he had given her at 
 rehearsal.
 
 MRS. OLDFIELD. 291 
 
 Colley Gibber had then in his desk the unfinished manuscript 
 of his " Careless Husband ;" it had long lain there, through the 
 author's hopelessness of ever finding an actress who would realize 
 his idea of Lady Betty Modish. He had no longer any doubt. 
 He at once finished the piece, brought it on the stage, and silent 
 as to his own share in the triumph, attributed it all, or nearly all, 
 to Mrs. Oldfield. " Not only to the uncommon excellence of her 
 action ; but even to her personal manner of conversing." I must 
 repeat what Gibber tells us, that many of the sentiments were 
 Mrs. Oldfield's, dressed up by him, " with a little more care than 
 when they negligently fell from her lively humor." Respecting 
 what Gibber adds, that " had her birth placed her in a higher 
 rank of life, she had certainly appeared to be, in reality, what in 
 the play she only excellently acted, — an agreeably gay wonian of 
 quality, a little too conscious of her natural attractions, I will 
 remark that, as she really appeared to be so, her birth (she was a 
 gentleman's daughter) could not prevent her from appearing so. 
 And Gibber avows, what the testimony of Walpole confirms, that 
 he had " often seen her in pi'ivate societies, where women of the 
 best rank might have borrowed some part of her behavior without 
 the least diminution of their sense or dignity." 
 
 In 1702, the merit of Mrs. Oldfield was not recognized by Gildon, 
 who, in his " Gomparison between the two Stages," classes her 
 among "the rubbish," of which the stage should be swept. Of 
 Mrs. Verbruggen (Mountfort), he speaks as " a miracle." He 
 could not see that Oldfield would be her successor, and would, in 
 some parts, even excel her. By the year 1706, however, she had 
 risen to be on an equality with such a brilliant favorite as Mrs. 
 Bracegirdle, whom, in the opinion of many, her younger com- 
 petitor surpassed. The salary of the latter then, and for some 
 years later, was not, however, a large one, if measured by modern 
 rule. Four pounds a week, with a benefit, — in all, little more 
 than £250 a year, cannot be called excessive guerdon. Her own 
 benefit was always profitable ; but I am sorry to add, that this 
 joyous-looking creature, apparently brimful of good nature, was very 
 reluctant to play for the benefit of her colleagues. Subsequently, 
 her revenue from the stage-salary and benefit averaged abouf. 
 £500 a year.
 
 292 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 A remark of her's to Gibber, shows how she entered into the 
 spirit of her pcarts. Gibber had replaced Dickey Norris, who was 
 ill, in the part of Barnaby Brittle, in the " Amorous Widow," in 
 which Mrs. Oldfield played Barnaby's wife. The couple are a 
 sort of George Dandin and his spouse. When the play was over, 
 Gibber asked her, in his familiar way, " Nancy, how did you like 
 your new husband ?" " Very well," said she ; " but not half so 
 well as Dickey Norris." " How so ?" asked Gibber. " You are 
 too important a figure," she answered ; " but Dickey is so dimin- 
 utive, and looks so sneaking, that he seems born to be deceived ; 
 and when he plays with me, I make him what a husband most 
 dislikes to be, with hearty good will." 
 
 Genest cites Gibber, Ghetwood and Davies, in order to describe 
 her adequately. " After her success in Lady Betty Modish," he 
 says, " all that nature had given her of the actress seemed to have 
 risen to its full perfection ; but the variety of her powers could 
 not be known till she was seen in variety of characters which, as 
 fast as they fell to her, she equally excelled in. In the wearing of 
 her person she was particularly fortunate ; her figure was always 
 improving, to her thirty-sixth year ; but her excellence in acting 
 was never at a stand. And Lady Townley, one of her last new 
 parts, was a proof that she was still able to do more, if more could 
 have been done for her." 
 
 Davies, after noticing her figure and expression, says of her 
 " large speaking eyes," that in some particular comic situations 
 she kept them half shut, especially when she intended to give effect 
 to some brilliant or gay thought. In sprightliness of air and 
 elegance of manner, she excelled all actresses, and was greatly su- 
 perior in the clear, sonorous, and harmonious tones of her voice. 
 
 How are Wilks and the inimitable She photographed for pos- 
 terity ? " Wilks's Gopper Gaptain was esteemed one of his best 
 characters. Mrs. Oldfield was equally happy in Estifania. When 
 she drew the pistol from her pocket, pretending to shoot Perez, 
 Wilks drew back, as if greatly terrified, and in a tremulous voice, 
 uttered, ' What, thine own husband !' To which she replied, with 
 archness of countenance and a half shut eye, ' Let mine own hus- 
 band then be in 's own wits,' in a tone of voice in imitation of his, 
 that the theatre was in a tumult of applause."
 
 MRS. OLDFIELD. 293 
 
 From Gibber, again, we learn that she was modest and un- 
 piesuming ; that in all the parts she undertook, she sought en- 
 lightenment and instruction from every quarter, " but it was a hard 
 matter to give her a hint that she was not able to improve." 
 With managers she was not exacting ; " she lost nothing by her 
 easy conduct; she had every thing she asked, which she took 
 care should be always reasonable, because she hated as much to 
 be grudged as to be denied a civility." 
 
 Like Mrs. Barry, she entered fully into the character slie had 
 to represent, and examined it closely, in order to grasp it effect- 
 ually. When the "Beaux' Stratagem" was in rehearsal (1707), 
 in which she played Mrs. Sullen, she remarked to Wilks, that she 
 thought the author had dealt too freely with Mrs. Sullen, in givino- 
 her to Archer, without such a proper divorce as would be a 
 security to her honor. Wilks communicated this to the author. 
 " Tell her," said poor Farquliar, who was then dying, " that for 
 her peace of mind's sake, I'll get a real divorce, marry her myself, 
 and give her my bond she shall be a real widow in less than a 
 fortnight." 
 
 Mrs. Oldfield was the original representative of sixty-five char- 
 acters. The gr'^^ater number of these belong to genteel comedy, 
 as it is called, a v^areer which she commenced as peculiarly her 
 own, in 1703, when chance assigned to her the part of Leonora, 
 in "Sir Courtly Nice." Her wonderful success in this, induced 
 Gibber to trust to her the part of Lady Betty Modish, in the 
 " Gareless Husband," the comedy which he had put aside in de- 
 spair of finding a lady equal to his conception of the character. 
 Her mere conversation in that play intoxicated the house. At a 
 later period, her audiences were even more ecstatic at her Lady 
 Townley, — an ecstasy in which the managers must have shared, for 
 they immediately added fifty guineas to her salary. It was just 
 the sum which the benevolent actress gave annually to that most 
 contemptibly helpless personage. Savage. Her highest salarv 
 never, I believe, exceeded three hundred guineas; but this was 
 exclusive of benefits, occasions on which gold was showered into 
 her lap. 
 
 Humor, grace, vivacity, — all were exuberant on the stage, when 
 she and Wilks were playing against each other. Indeed, one can
 
 294 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 hardly realize the idea of this supreme queen of comedy wearing 
 the robe and illustrating the sorrows of tragedy. She, for her own 
 part, disliked the latter vocation. She hated, as she said often, to 
 have a page dragging her tail about. " Why do not they give 
 these parts to Porter ? She can put on a better tragedy-face than 
 I can." Earnest as she was, however, in these characters before 
 the audience, she was fi"olicsome at rehearsal. When " Cato" was 
 in preparation, Mrs. Oldfield was cast for Marcia, the philosophical 
 statesman's daughter. Addison attended the rehearsals, and Swift 
 was at Addison's side, making suggestions, and marking the char- 
 acteristics of the lively people about him. He never had a good 
 word for woman, and consequently he had his usual coarse 
 epithet for Mrs. Oldfield, speaking of her as " the drab that played 
 Cato's daughter ;" and railing at her for her hilarity while rehear- 
 sing that passionate part, and, in her forgetful n ess, calling merrily 
 out to the prompter, " What next ? what next ?" 
 
 Yet this hilarious actress played Cleopatra with dignity, and 
 Calista with feeling. She accepted with great reluctance the part 
 of Semandra, in " Mithridates," when that tragedy was revived 
 in 1708 ; but Chetwood says she performed the part to perfection, 
 and became reconciled to tragedy, by reason of her success. In 
 these characters, however, she could be excelled by others, but in 
 Lady Betty Modish and Lady Townley, she was probably never 
 equalled. In the comedy of lower life, she was, perhaps, less ori- 
 ginal ; at least, Anthony Aston remarks, that in free comedy she 
 borrowed something from Mrs. Verbruggen's manner. When 
 Wilks, as Lord Townley, exclaimed " Prodigious !" in the famous 
 scene with his lady, played by Mrs. Oldfield, the house applied it 
 to her acting, and broke into repeated rounds of applause. 
 
 " Who should act genteel comedy, perfectly," asks Walpole, 
 *'but people of fashion that have sense? Actors and actresses 
 can only guess at the tone of high life, and cannot be inspired 
 with it. Why are there so few genteel comedies, but because 
 most comedies are written by men not of that sphere. Etherege, 
 Congreve, Vanbrugh and Gibber wrote genteel comedy, because 
 they lived in the best company ; and Mrs. Oldfield played it so 
 well, because she not only followed, but oft«n set the fashion. 
 General Burgoyne has writ the best modern comedy for the same
 
 MRS. OLDFIELD. 295 
 
 reason ; and Mis.s Farren is as excellent as Mrs. Oldfield, because 
 she has lived with the best style of men in England. Farquhar's 
 plays talk the language of a marching regiment in country-quarters. 
 Wycherley, Dryden, Mrs. Centlivre, &c., wrote as if they had only 
 lived in the Rose Tavern ; but then the Court lived in Drury Lane 
 too, and Lady Dorchester and Nell Gwyn were equally good com- 
 pany." 
 
 In this there is some injustice against Mrs. Centlivre, for whose 
 name should be supplied that of Aphra Behn. Walpole judges 
 more correctly of the comic writers of the seventeenth century, 
 when he places Moliere, " Scnor Moleiro," as Downes absurdly 
 calls him, at the head of them all. " Who upon earth," he says, 
 " has written such perfect comedies ? for the ' Careless Husband' 
 is but one ; the ' Nonjuror' was built on the ' TartufFe,' and if the 
 Man of Mode (Etherege) and Vanbrugh are excellent, they are too 
 indelicate ; and Congreve, who beat all for wit, is not always nat- 
 ural, still less, simple." 
 
 It has been said of Mrs. Oldfield, that she never troubled the 
 peace of any lady at the head of a household ; but I think she 
 may have marred the expectations of some who desired to reach 
 that eminence. She early captivated the heart of Mr. Mayn waring. 
 He was a bachelor, rich, connected with the government, and a 
 hard drinker, according to the prevailing fashion. He was Cymon 
 subdued by Iphigenia. He loved the lady's refinement, and she 
 kept his household as carefully as if she had been his wife, and 
 presided at his table with a grace that charmed \nm. There was 
 something of Beauty and the Beast in this connection, but the end 
 of the fable was Avanting ; the animal was never converted to an 
 Azor, and a marriage with Zemira was the one thing wanting. 
 
 When Mayn waring died, society almost looked upon her as an 
 honest widow. Indeed, it had never rejected her. The standard 
 of morals was low, and when the quasi widow accepted the pro- 
 posal of General Churchill to place her at the head of his establish- 
 ment, as she had been in that of Mr. Maynwaring, no one blamed 
 her. Marriage, indeed, seems to have been thought of, and 
 Queen Caroline, who did not at all disdain to stoop to little mat- 
 ters of gossip, one day remarked to Mrs. Oldfield, who had, I sup- 
 pose, been reading to a court circle, " I hear, Mrs. Oldfield, that
 
 296 dorain's annals of the stage. 
 
 you and the General are married ?" " Madam," said the actress, 
 playing her very best, "tlie General keeps his own secrets !" 
 
 The two love passages in the life of Anne Oldfield were, in 
 short, founded on sentiment, and not on interest. The Duke of 
 IJedford offered her more brilliant advantages than the General 
 or the Squire ; but the disinterested actress spurned them, and 
 kept sisterhood with duchesses. She was to be seen on the ter- 
 race at Windsor, walking with the consorts of dukes, and with 
 countesses, and wives of English barons, and the whole gay group 
 might be heard calling one another by their Christian names. In 
 later days, Kitty Clive called such fine folk " damaged quality ;" 
 and later still, the second Mrs. Barry did not value such com- 
 panionship at a "pin's fee ;" but Anne Oldfield drew from it many 
 an illustration, which she transported to the stage. 
 
 During her last season, her sufterings were often so acute that 
 when the applause was loudest, the poor actress turned aside to 
 hide the tears forced from her by pain. She never gave up till 
 the agony was too great to be endured, and then she refused to 
 receive a salary which, according to her articles, was not to be 
 discontinued in illness. She lingered a few months in her house 
 in Lower Grosvenor Street ; the details of her last moments, as 
 given by Pope, mingle a little truth with much error and exagge- 
 ration : — 
 
 " 'Odious I in woollen? 'twould a saint provoke I' 
 Were the last words that poor Narciss<a spoke. 
 ' No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace 
 Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face ; 
 One would not sure be frightful when one's dead.' 
 And, Betty, give this cheek a little red !" 
 
 Betty was the ex-actress, Mrs. Saunders, who resided with 
 Narcissa. She had quitted the stage in 1720, and, says Mr. 
 Urban, "attended Mrs. Oldfield constantly, and did the office of 
 priest to the last." Poor Narcissa, after death, was attired in a 
 Holland night-dress, with tucker and double ruffles of Brussels 
 lace, of which latter material she also wore a head-dress, and a 
 pair of "new kid gloves." This, another writer calls being 
 "buried in full dress^ The report seems to h4,ve been founded 
 on Mrs. Oldfield's natural good taste in costume. Flavia, such is
 
 MRS. OLDFIELD. 297 
 
 her name in the Tatler, " is ever well drest, and always the j^on- 
 teelest woman you meet ; her clothes are so exactly fitted that 
 they appear part of her person," 
 
 It was in the above described dress that the deceased actress 
 received such honor as actress never received before, nor has ever 
 received since. The lady lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, 
 a distinction not unfrequently, indeed, conceded to persons of high 
 rank and small merit, but which, nevertheless, seemed out of place 
 in the case of Anne Oldfield ; but had she been really a queen, the 
 public could not have thronged more eagerly to the spectacle. 
 
 The solemn lying in state of an English actress in the Jeru- 
 salem Chamber, the sorrow of the public over their lost favorite, 
 and the regret of friends in noble, or humble, but virtuous homes, 
 where Mrs. Oldfield had been ever welcome, contrast strongly 
 with the French sentiment towards French players. It has been 
 already said, that as long as Clairon exercised the power, when 
 she advanced to the foot-lights, to make the (then standing) pit 
 recoil several feet, by the mere magic of her eyes, the pit, who 
 enjoyed the terror as a luxury, flung crowns to her, and wept at 
 the thought of losing her ; but Clairon infirm was Clairon forgotten, 
 and to a decaying actor or actress a French audience is the most 
 merciless in the world. The brightest and best of them, as with 
 us, died in the service of the public. Monfleury, Mondory, and 
 Bricourt, died of apoplexy, brought on by excess of zeal. Mo- 
 liere, who fell in harness, was buried with less ceremony than 
 some favorite dog. The charming Lecouvi'eur, that Oldfield of 
 the French stage, whose beauty and intellect were the double 
 charm which rendered theatrical Fi-ance ecstatic, was hurriedly in- 
 terred within a saw-pit. Bishops might be exceedingly interested 
 in, and unepiscopally generous to, living actresses of wit and 
 beauty, but the prelates smote them with a " Maranatha !" and an 
 " Avaunt ye !" when dead. Even Bossuet would attend the 
 theatre to learn grace and elocution from them and their brethren ; 
 but when he had profited by the instruction, he denounced them 
 all as " children of the devil !" Louis XVIIL, however, put an 
 effectual check on the unseemly practice of treating as dead dogs 
 the geniuses who had been idiolized when living. When the 
 priests of the Church of St, Roch closed its doors against the 
 13*
 
 298 doran's annals of i'he stage. 
 
 body of Rancourt, brought there for a prayer and a blessing, 
 Paris rose against the insulters ; and the King, moved by Christian 
 charity, or dread of a Paris riot, sent his own chaplain to recite 
 the prayer, give the benediction, and to show that an honest 
 player was not a something less than a fellow-creature. 
 
 After the lying in state of Mrs. Oldfield, there was a funeral of 
 as much ceremony as has been observed at the obsequies of many 
 a queen. Among the supporters of the pall were Lord Ilervey, 
 Lord Delawarr, and Bubb Dodington, afterwards Lord Melcombe. 
 The first used to ride abroad with Mrs. Oldfield, as Mrs. Delaney 
 has recorded. Lord Delawarr was a soldier who became a great 
 " beau," and went a philandering. His wife and the Countess of 
 Burlington headed the Faustina party at the opera against the fac- 
 tion which supported Cuzzoni. There were anthems, and prayers, 
 and sermon ; and Dr. Parker, who ofliiciatcd, remarked, when all was 
 over, to a few particular friends, and with some equivocation, as it 
 seems to me, that he " buried her very willingly, and with much 
 satisfaction." Her sons Maynwaring and Churchill were present, 
 and the contemporary notices say that she had no other children. 
 Her friends were apt to express a different opinion ; and Mrs. Dela- 
 ney, in one of the very first passages in her Autobioffraphij, says : — 
 " At six years old I was placed under the care of Mdlle. Puelle, a 
 refugee of a very respectable character, and well qualified for her 
 business. She undertook but twenty scholars at a time, among 
 whom were Lady Catherine Knollys, daughter to the" (self- 
 styled) " Earl of Banbury, and great aunt to the present Lord ; 
 Miss Halsey, daughter to a very considerable brewer, and after- 
 wards married to Lord Temple, Earl of Cobham ; Lady Jane 
 Douglas, daughter of the Duke of Douglas, and Miss Dye Bertie, 
 a daughter of Mrs. Oldfield the actress, who, after leaving school, 
 was the pink of fashion in the beau monde, and married a noble- 
 man." Who did this mysterious Diana maiTy ? 
 
 This daughter is not mentioned in Mrs. Oldficld's will ; but to 
 the two sons Mrs. Oldfield becjueathed the bulk of a fortune 
 which she had amassed more by her exertions than by the gener- 
 osity of tlieir respective fathers. She was liberal, too, in leaving 
 memorials to numerous friends ; less so in her bequests to old 
 relations of her sempstress and coffee-house days. A very small
 
 MRS. OLDFIELD, 299 
 
 annuity was Narcissa's parting gift to her mother, who long sur- 
 vived her. 
 
 In such wise went her money ; but whither lias the blood of 
 Oldfield gone? When Winnifred, the dairy-maid, married into 
 the family of the Bickerstaffes, she is said to have spoiled their 
 blood, Avhile she mended their constitutions. The great actress 
 lierself was at least an honest man's daughter, a man of fair de- 
 scent. Her son. Colonel Churchill, once, unconsciously, saved Sir 
 Robert Walpole from assassination, through the latter riding home, 
 from the House, in the Colonel's chariot instead of alone in his 
 owu. Unstable Churchill man-ied a natural daughter of Sir 
 Robert, and their daughter Mary married, in 1777, Charles Sloane, 
 first Earl of Cadogan. The son of this Mary is the present Earl, 
 the great grandson of charming Anne Oldfield. When Churchill 
 and his wife were travelling in France, a Frenchman, knowing 
 he was connected with poets or plnyers, asked him if he was 
 Churchill the famous poet. " I am not," said Mrs. Oldfield's son. 
 " Ma foi !" rejoined the polite Frenchman, " so much the worse 
 for you !" 
 
 I have seen many epitaphs to her memory, but there is not one 
 which is so complete and beautiful as the following, which tells 
 the reader that she lies amid great poets, not less worthy of praise 
 than thty, whose works she has illustrated and ennobled. It re- 
 cords the apt universality of her talent, which made her seem not 
 made, but born for whatever she undertook. In tragedy, the glory 
 of her form, the dignity of her countenance, the majesty of her 
 walk, touched the rudest spectator. In comedy, her power, her 
 graceful hilarity, her singular felicity, were so irresistible, that the 
 eyes never wearied of gazing at her, nor the hands of applauding 
 her. 
 
 " Hie juxta requiescit 
 
 Tot inter poetarum laudata nomina, 
 
 ANNA OLDFIELD. 
 
 Nee ipsa minore laude digna, 
 
 Quippe qua? eorum opera. 
 
 In sccnara qnotidics prodivit, 
 
 lUustravit semper et nobilitavit. 
 
 Nunquam ingeniiuu idem ad partes diversissimaa 
 
 Habilius fuit.
 
 300 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Ita tamen ut ad singulas 
 
 Non facta sed nata esse videietur, 
 
 In tragsediis 
 
 Formre splendor, oris dignitas, incessus majestas, 
 
 Tanta vocis suavitate temperabantur. 
 
 Ut nemo esset tam agrestis, tarn durus spectator, 
 
 Qiiin in admirationem totus raperetur. 
 
 In comoedia autem 
 
 Tanta vis, tarn venusta hilaritas, tam curiosa felicitaa 
 
 Ut neque sufficerent spectando oculi, 
 
 Neque plaudendo manus." 
 
 I have said tliat lier last original part was Sophonisba. Among 
 the last words she uttered in it, when mortal illness was upon her, 
 were these : — 
 
 " And is the sacred moment then so near, 
 The moment when yon sun, these heavens, this earth 
 Shall sink at once, and straight another state, 
 New scenes, new joys, new faculties, new wonders, 
 Rise, on a sudden, round?" 
 
 These words were first spoken by her, on the last day of Feb- 
 ruary, 1730. On the 23d of the following October she died, in 
 her forty-seventh year. A week later. Dr. Parker " buried her, 
 very willingly, and with much satisfaction 1"
 
 1729 TO 1734. 301 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 FROM THE DEATH OF ANNE OLDFIELD TO THAT OF WILK8. 
 
 Between the season of 1729-30, and that of 1733-4, great 
 changes took place. It is correct to say, that the stage " de- 
 clined ;" but if we lose Mrs. Oldfield in the former period, we 
 find some compensation at the beginning of the latter, by first 
 meeting, in Fielding and Hippisley's booth, at Bartholomew and 
 Southwark fairs, with one who was destined to enthral the town, 
 — modest Mrs. Pritchard, playing Loveit, in a " Cure for Covet- 
 ousness." 
 
 Meanwhile, Mrs. Porter reigned supreme ; but the stage was 
 deprived, for more than a year, of the presence of her whom Mrs. 
 Oldfield loved to address as " mother," by an accident which dis- 
 located her thigh. Even after her recovery, the tragedy queen 
 was forced to walk the stage with a crutched stick, which, like a 
 true artist, she turned to account in her action. 
 
 Of actors of eminence, the greatest whom the stage lost was 
 Wilks, airy and graceful down to the last ; — of him, who died in 
 1732, I will speak more fully presently. Death also carried oflf 
 quaint, squeaking little Non-is, the excellent comic actor, popu- 
 larly known as " Jubilee Dicky." After Norris went Bohemc, 
 the pillar of the Lincoln's Inn Fields, a dignified and accomplished 
 tragedian, whose Lear was full of antique grandeur and pathos ; — 
 it was, perhaps, the only character in which the former young 
 sailor's quarter-deck-walk was not discernible. Colley Cibber, 
 too, must be reckoned among the departed, since he retired from 
 the stage at the end of the season 1732-3, — but occasionally re- 
 turned to it. He was disheartened by the break-up in the old 
 partnership, and the manifest close of a period of prosperity. 
 Booth had sold half of his share in the patent to a rich and silly 
 amateur actor, — Highmore. Wilks's widow, who inherited her 
 husband's share, was represented by attorney ; CoUev was uneasy
 
 302 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 at having to encounter new partners, and he ultimately sold hi$ 
 share to Highmore, for three thousand guineas. 
 
 While the stage foiled in players, it was not upheld by the 
 poets. The gentlemen of the inns of court hissed Charles John- 
 son's " Medea," and did not even applaud the satirical allusion, 
 contained in it, to Pope. The town was weary of classical pieces. 
 The " Eurydice," of Mallet, — who had been gate-keeper at the Edin- 
 burgh High School, and had picked up learning enough to enable 
 him to efficiently exercise the office of tutor in the Duke of Mon- 
 trose's family, — fared no better, despite Mrs. Porter. The piece 
 was as hard and as dry as granite ; but the author though it had 
 as much pathos as his ballad of " William and Margaret." 
 
 In the prologue, tragedy was especially recommended to the 
 patronage of ladies, because therein the character of woman is ex- 
 alted ; while in the comedies of the day it was debased. But the 
 epilogue, spoken by Miss Robinson, in boy's clothes, — " born for 
 this dapper age — pert, short, and clever," — showed that the poet 
 did not much care for the female character. 
 
 Jeffi-eys' " Merope" had no better success. His cousins of the 
 Chandos family may have laughed at the young collegian's bathos ; 
 but on the second night there was not audience enough to make 
 a laugh comfortable, and the curtain did not rise. Critics com- 
 plained, that all tragic action on our stage, turned on love ; and 
 Jeffi-eys contrived to make three couple of nymphs and swains 
 sigh or swear, in this story of mother and son ! " Who could be- 
 lieve," says Voltaire, " that love could have been introduced into 
 such a story ? But, since the time of Charles H., love has taken 
 possession of the English stage ; and one must acknowledge, that 
 no nation in the world has painted that passion so badly." But 
 Voltaire, you will remember, also said that Shakspeare was " a 
 savage !" 
 
 A Gloucestershire squire, named Tracy, tried his hand on " Peri- 
 ander," and failed, though he was guiltless of a false quantity ; 
 unlike Addison's learned friend, Frowde, who tripped in his pe- 
 nultimates, with the alacrity of Hughes ! 
 
 It was not altogether because our ancestors were weary of classi- 
 cal tragedies, that a short, fat, one-eyed, and well-to-do dissenter 
 and ieweller, of Moorgate Street, reaped such a triumph, with his
 
 1729 TO 173i. 303 
 
 modern and domestic tragedy, — " George Barnwell." Mr. Lillo 
 had previously written a ballad-opera, "Sylvia;" but now he 
 aimed to show the hideousness and consequence of vice. " George 
 Barnwell" was first acted at Drury Lane, at the beginning of the 
 Midsummer holidays of 1731. Theophilus Gibber played the 
 hero ; Mrs. Butler, Milwood. The audience looked for fun, and 
 took the old ballad, — there was the flutter of a thousand copies in 
 the house, to compare it with the play. Pope was present, and 
 expressed an opinion that the language was often too elevated for 
 the personages ; and the hearers thought only of the story, as illus- 
 trated by Lillo, and every eye was weeping. It was the first fairly 
 honest attempt made to amend, from the stage, the vices and 
 weaknesses of mankind; and it certainly, in some degree, suc- 
 ceeded. It enlisted the sympathies of honest women. " The dis- 
 tresses of great personages," says a lady, in the Oentlemari's Maga- 
 zine, " have ceased to afiect the town," and " none but a prostitute 
 could find fault with this tragedy." Fault, however, was found ; 
 
 but the objection was answered in this way; that "lowness of 
 
 action was disallowed in a tragedy, but not lowness of character : 
 the circumstances here are all important." One critic holds the 
 story to be improbable ; but contemporary journals furnish a paral- 
 lel. A mercer's apprentice, who sleeps in his master's shop, admits 
 a Milwood, who at a later hour refuses to leave, until he will cut 
 off satin enough to make her a robe. Great distress ! but, at a 
 happy moment, a virtuous porter arrives, who, on hearing the cir- 
 cumstances, and perhaps having seen the tragedy, lays hold of the 
 lady, who had no more drapery about her than Lady Godiva, claps 
 her into a sack, carries her off, and shoots her into a cart full of 
 grains, standing unguarded. The naughty person is suflfocated, if 
 I remember rightly ; but the honor of the apprentice is saved ! ! 
 
 " George Barnwell" brought domestic tragedy into fashion, 
 and Charles Johnson closed his dramatic career with " Ccelia, or 
 the perjured Lover," which was a warning to young ladies. Ca?lia 
 has a bad and a good lover, — warring principles ! She prefers the 
 former, with ruin for a consequence. He lodges her in a bagnio, 
 where she is swept up by the watch, in the arrest of all the 
 inmates, and taken to Bridewell. Thence her very heavy father 
 takes her home, while the good lover kills the bad one in a duel ;
 
 304r doran's axnals v^f the stage. 
 
 but the latter politely requests that the avenger will consider 
 Coelia as having been his lawful wife. The lady, however, dies 
 in her father's arms ; the curtain comes down with a " tag," and 
 — then on tripped the epilogue, to ridicule all those present who 
 were disposed to profit by the moral of the drama ! 
 
 Theophilus Gibber's " Lover" was a sort of pendant to the 
 " Nonjuror," — Granger being in the habit of going regularly to 
 church, and daily breaking the ten commandments. The only 
 enjoyment the audience had, — who fought for or against the 
 piece till blood flowed abundantly, — was in the epilogue, in which 
 Mrs. Theophilus Gibber smartly satirized the failings of her lord ! 
 The audience relished it amazingly. 
 
 These were the principal novelties of the period about which 
 I am treating ; but I must add, that at the Haymarket, and at 
 Goodman's Fields, where Gitfard had created in Ayliffe Street a 
 commodious theatre, far superior to the old throwster's shop, 
 which had served an early dramatic purpose, in Leman Street, 
 sterling old plays, with operettas and burlesques, were played at 
 irregular seasons. Fielding especially distinguished and sometimes 
 disgraced himself. He had not yet struck upon the vein which 
 made him the first and most philosophical of English novelists ; 
 but he rose from his squibs and farces to the achievement of the 
 " Miser," in itself an adaptation, but done by a master hand, and 
 with a double result of triumph, — to the author, and to GriflBn, 
 the clergyman's son, who played Lovegold. There were smaller 
 attempts by smaller men, but these I omit, to record the failure 
 of Quin in Lear, — a character which it was temerity to touch, so 
 soon after Boheme had ceased to be the King. Mills made as 
 great a mistake, when, at nearly sixty, he played for the first time 
 — Hamlet. The public cared more for the pantomimic " Harlot's 
 Progress," got up by Theophilus Gibber for Drury Lane, where 
 this piece, preceded by "George Barnwell," must have been as 
 edifying to both sexes as going to church, — a result in which 
 Hogarth had full share with Lillo. 
 
 I have noticed the actors departing and departed, and the 
 appearance in a booth of Mrs. Pritchard, a name yet to be famous 
 and respected — like Mrs. Betterton's. So during this period I 
 find a young player, Delane, at Goodman's Fields, who will
 
 1729 TO 1734. 305 
 
 advance to the first rank ; but also a greater than he, Mack- 
 lin, quietly playing any little part given him at Lincoln's Inn 
 Fields, and securing his firm standing ground by the ability with 
 which he acquitted himself at that house, when, in 1731, he was 
 suddenly called upon to play Brazencourt, in Fielding's " Cofiee 
 House Politicians." He had only four lines to speak ; but those 
 he spoke so well, that the true actor was at once discerned. One 
 may fancy the tone and manner in which the rascal exclaimed :- - 
 " I was forced to turn her off" for stealing four of my shirts, two 
 pairs of stockings, and my Common Prayer Book." With such 
 small opportunity, Mr, Maclean, as he was then called, led up to 
 Shylock and Sir Pertinax Macsycophant ! 
 
 Macklin was the last of the gi-eat actors who played at Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields ; and he did not leave Covent Garden until after the 
 appearance there of Braham, who was yet among us but yester- 
 day. The first-named house had never rivalled the success of 
 Drury Lane, but Rich had gained enough to enable him to build 
 a new house, and the last play acted in the Fields was Ravens- 
 croft's " Anatomist," one of the worst of a second-rate author of 
 King Charles's days. This was on December 5, 1732. Except 
 for a few nights, irregularly, the old house never opened again. 
 It was the third theatre which had occupied the site since 1662. 
 In 1756 it was converted into a barrack. As late as 1848, it was 
 Copeland's China Repository, when the old stage door and 
 passage, through which Quin had so often passed, still existed. 
 
 There had been a long expressed desire for a new theatre ; that 
 is, not merely a new edifice, but a new system. The proposal 
 embraced prospective delights for authors, such as they had 
 hitherto never dreamed of. In the published prospectus it was 
 stated that actors and authors should be excluded from the 
 management, which was to be intrusted to individuals, who, at 
 least, knew as little about it ; namely, men of quality, taste, figure, 
 and of a fortune varying from ten to twelve hundred pounds. A 
 committee was to be appointed, whose duty it would be, among 
 others, to provide for the efficient reading of new plays, and for 
 their being listened to with reverence and attention. It was 
 calculated that the annual profit of such a theatre would amount 
 to £3,000 a year, and that out of it an annuity of £100 might be
 
 306 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 set aside for every author who had achieved a certain amount of 
 success. In the following year, the Weekly Miscellany and the 
 Grub Street Journal were very eager on the subject of theatrical 
 reform. The former complained that high comedy and dignified 
 tragedy had deserted the stage ; remarked that plays were not 
 intended for tradesmen! and denounced pantomimes and harle- 
 quinades as infamous. The Journal was rather practical than re- 
 flective. Old Exeter Change was then to let, and the Journal 
 proposed that it should be converted into a theatre; adding a 
 suggestion, which required above a century and a quarter to be 
 carried into realization ; namely, that a college should be founded 
 for decayed actors. This college was to form the two wings of the 
 theatre ; which wings were to be inhabited respectively by the emeriti 
 among actors, and destitute actresses, whose new home was to be 
 within sound of the old stirring echoes of their joyous days. The 
 direction of the establishment was to be confided to a competent 
 governor and officers selected from among the decayed nobility 
 and gentry ; and the glory and profit resulting were calculated at 
 a very high figure indeed ! 
 
 On one result the Grub Street congratulated itself with 
 unctuous pride. If the stage were reformed, the universities and 
 inns of court would supply actors. Gentlemen, said Grub Street, 
 with some arrogance, were reluctant to go among the scamps on 
 the stage. Then, as for actresses. Grub rudely declared that every 
 charity school could supply a dozen wenches of more decent 
 education and character, of better health, brighter youth, more 
 brilliant beauty, and more exalted genius, than the common run 
 of hussies then on the stage ; and a season's training, he added, 
 would qualify them for business. This was a hard hit at men 
 among whom there were many well born ; and at women, who, 
 whatever they lacked, possessed the happy gifts of health, youth, 
 beauty, and genius ; but Grub Streets cynicism was probably 
 founded on the fact, that he was not invited by the men, nor 
 smiled on by the women. 
 
 A reform before the curtain was, however, now as loudly called 
 for as behind it. One of the greatest grievances complained of 
 this year was the insolence of the footmen. Occupying their 
 masters' places, they lolled about with their hats on, talked aloud,
 
 1729 TO 1734. 3UV 
 
 were insolent on rebuke from the audience, and when they with- 
 drew, on their masters' arrival, to their own gallery, they kept up 
 a continual tumult there, which rendered their presence intolerable. 
 What with the fine gentlemen on the stage, and their lacqueys, 
 selected for their size, personal good looks, or fine hair, in the gal- 
 lery, the would-be attentive audience in the pit were driven well 
 nigh to desperation. 
 
 Much of this last grievance was amended when Covent Garden 
 Theatre was opened, on the 7th of December, 17-32. The first 
 piece acted was Congreve's *' Way of the World ;" Fainall by 
 Quin, Mirabel by Ryan, who, with Walker, Hippisley, Milward, 
 Ohapman, and Neal, Mrs. Younger, Mrs. Bullock, and Mrs. Bu- 
 chanan, formed the principal niembers of the company. Gay was 
 not now alive to increase his own and Rich's fortune in this ele- 
 gant and well-appointed theatre ; but Rich produced Gay's opera- 
 tic piece " Achilles," which represented the hero when lying dis- 
 guised as a girl. By the treatment of the subject, Gay did not 
 manifest the innocency to which he laid claim, nor show himself 
 either in wit a man, or in simplicity a child. Theobald's adapta- 
 tion of Webster's "Duchess of Malfy" (Bosola, by Quin, the 
 Duchess, Mrs. Hallam), brought no credit on " King Log." 
 Generally, indeed, the novelties were failures, or unimportant. 
 The only incident worth recording is the debut of Miss Norsa, as 
 Polly. But before greeting new comers, let us say a word or two 
 of greater than they who have gone — of Wilks dead, and, by and 
 by, of Gibber withdrawn. The loss of such actors seemed irre- 
 parable ; but during this past season there had been a lad among 
 the audience at either house, who was to excel them all. Mean- 
 while, he studied them deeply, and after times showed that the 
 study had not been profitless to this boy of sixteen, whose name 
 was David Garrick. 
 
 Quin's most brilliant days lay between this period and the ripen 
 ing into manhood of this ardent boy. Before we accompany him 
 through that time of triumph, let us look back at the career of 
 Wilks.
 
 308 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 ROBERT WILKS. 
 
 In Mr. Secretary Southwell's office, in Dublin, there sits the 
 young son of one of the Pursuivants of the Lord Lieutenant ; he is 
 not writing a. precis, he is copying out the parts of a play to be 
 acted in private. His name is Robert Wilks, and the wise folk of 
 Rathfarnham, near Dublin, where he was born in 1665, shake 
 their heads and declare that he will come to no good. 
 
 The prophecy seemed fulfilled when the Irish wars between 
 James and William forced him, an unwilling volunteer, into the 
 army of the latter. As clerk to the camp he is exempt from mili- 
 tary duty ; but he tells a good story, sings a good song, and the 
 officers take him for a very pretty fellow. 
 
 Anon, he is back in the old Dublin office. At all stray leisure 
 hours he may, however, be seen fraternizing with the actors. He 
 most aftects one Richards ; he hears Richards repeat his parts, and 
 he speaks the intervening sentences of the other characters. This 
 he does with such effect that Richards swears he is made for an 
 actor, and the young Government clerk, fired by the fame of Bet- 
 terton, is eager to leap from the stool, which his father considered 
 the basis of his fortune, and to don sock and buskin. 
 
 His old comrades of the camp were then about to vary the mo- 
 notony of life at the Castle, by getting up a play to inaugurate the 
 new theatre, re-opened, like the Temple of Janus, at the restora- 
 tion of peace. Judicious and worthy Ashbury was the only pro- 
 fessional player. Young Wilks had privately acted with him as 
 the Coionel in the " Spanish Friar." Ashbury now offered to play 
 lago to his Othello, and the officers were well pleased to meet, 
 again with their old clerk of the camp. The tragedy was acted 
 accordingly. " How were you pleased ?" asked Richards, who 
 thought Wilks took it as a pastime. " I was pleased with all but 
 myself," answered the Government clerk, who was thoroughly in 
 earnest.
 
 ROBERT WILKS. 309 
 
 Wilks had gone through many months of prohation, watched 
 by good Joseph Ashbury and honest Richards, when one morning 
 the latter called on the young actor, with an introductory letter to 
 Betterton in his hand. Wilks accepted the missive with alacrity, 
 bade farewell to secretaries and managers, and in a brief space of 
 time was sailing over the waters, from the Pigeon House to Park- 
 gate, 
 
 The meeting of Wilks and Betterton, in the graceful costume of 
 those days, the young actor travel-worn, a little shabby, anxious, 
 and full of awe ; the elder richly attired, kind in manner, his face 
 bright with intellect, and his figure heightened by the dignity of 
 a lofty nature and professional triumpli, borne with a lofty mod- 
 esty, is another subject for a painter. 
 
 Betterton instructed the stranger as to the course he should 
 take, and, accordingly, one bright May morning of 1690, a hand- 
 some young fellow, with a slight Irish accent, presented himself to 
 Christopher Rich as a light comedian. He was a native of Dublin 
 county, he said, had left a promising Government clerkship, to try 
 his fortune on the Irish stage ; and, tempted by the renown of 
 Betterton, had come to London to see the great actor, and to be 
 engaged, if that were possible, in the same company. 
 
 Christopher Rich was no great judge of acting, but he thought 
 there was something like promise of excellence in the easy and 
 gentleman-like young fellow ; and he consented to engage him for 
 Drury Lane, at the encouraging salary of fifteen shillings a week, 
 from which half a-crown was to be deducted for instruction in 
 dancing ! This left Wilks thirteen and sixpence clear weekly in- 
 come ; and he had not long been enjoying it, when he married 
 Miss Knapton, daughter of the Town Clerk of Southampton. 
 Young couple never began life upon more modest means ; but 
 happiness, hard work, and good fortune came of it. 
 
 For a few years, commencing with 1690, Wilks labored unno- 
 ticed, at Drury Lane, by all save generous Betterton, who, seeing 
 the young actor struggling for fame, with a small salary and an 
 increasing family, recommended him to return to Ashbury, the 
 Dublin manager, who, at Betterton's word, engaged him at £50 
 a year, and a clear benefit. " You will be glad to have got him," 
 said Betterton to Ashbury. "You will be sorry you have lost
 
 310 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 him," said he, to Christopher Rich. Sorry ! In three or four 
 J ears more. Rich was imploring him to return, and offering him 
 Golconda, as salaries were then understood. But Wilks was now 
 the darling of the Dublin people, and, at a later period, so univer- 
 sal was the desire to keep him amongst them, that the Duke of 
 Ormond, Lord Lieutenant, issued a warrant to prohibit his leaving 
 the kingdom. But, on the other hand, £4 per week awaited him 
 in London. It was nearly as high a salary as Betterton's ! Wilks, 
 however, caring less for the terms than for the opportunity of 
 satisfying his inordinate thirst for fame, contrived to escape, with 
 his wife. With them came a disappointed actor, soon to be a 
 popular dramatist, Farquhar; who, in the year 1699, after opening 
 the season with his " Love and a Bottle," produced his " Constant 
 Couple," with Wilks as Sir Harry Wildair. On the night of 
 Wilks's first appearance, in some lines written for him by Farquhar, 
 and spoke by the debutant^ the latter said : — 
 
 " Void of offence, though not from censure free, 
 I left a distant isle, too kind to me ;" 
 
 and confessing a sort of supremacy in the London over the Dublin 
 stage, he added : — 
 
 " There I could please, but there my fame must end. 
 For hither none must come to boast — but mend." 
 
 This the young actor did apace. Applauded as the latter had been 
 the year before, in old parts, the approbation was as nothing com- 
 pared with that lavished on him in this his first original character. 
 From the first recognition of Vizard down to the "tag" with 
 which the curtain descends, and including even the absurd and 
 unnatural scene with Angelica, he kept the audience in a condition 
 of intermittent ecstasy. The piece established his fame, gave a 
 name to Norris, the frequently mentioned " Jubilee Dicky," and 
 made the fortune of Rich. It seems to have been played nearly 
 fifty times in the first season. In its construction and style it is 
 far in advance of the comedies of Aphra Behn and Ravenscroft ; 
 and yet it is irregular ; not moral ; as often flippant as witty ; im- 
 probable, and not really original. Madam Fickle is to be traced 
 in it, and the denouement, as far as Lurewell and Standard are 
 concerned, is borrowed from those of Plautus and Terence.
 
 KOEEKT WILKS. 311 
 
 Wilks, now tlie great favorite of the town, justified all Better- 
 ton's prognostications. Like Betterton, be was to the end con- 
 vinced that he might become more perfect by study and perseve- 
 rance. Taking the extant score of judgments recorded of him, I 
 find that Wilks was careful, judicious, painstaking in the smallest 
 trifles ; in comedy always brilliant, in tragedy always graceful and 
 natural. For zeal. Gibber had not known his equal for half-a- 
 century ; careful himself, he allowed no one else to be negligent ; 
 so careful, that he would recite a thousand lines without missing a 
 sintrle word. The result of all his labor was seen in an ease, and 
 grace, and gayety which seemed perfectly .spontaneous. His taste 
 in dress was irreproachable ; grave in his attire in the streets, on the 
 stage he was the glass of fashion. On the stage, even in his last 
 season, after a career of forty years, he never lost his buoyancy, or 
 his young graces. From first to last he was perfection in his 
 peculiar line. " Whatever he did upon the stage," says an emi- 
 nent critic, quoted by Genest, " let it be ever so trifling, whether 
 it consisted in putting on his gloves, or taking out his watch, 
 lolling on his cane, or taking snufi", every movement was marked 
 by such an ease of breeding and manner, every thing told so 
 strongly the involuntary motion of a gentleman, that it was impos- 
 sible to consider the character he represented in any other light 
 than that of reality ; but what was still more surprising, that per- 
 gon who could thus delight an audience, from the gayety and 
 sprightliness of his character, I met the next day in a street, 
 hobbling to a hackney-coach, seemingly so enfeebled by age and 
 infirmities, that I could scarcely believe him to be the same 
 man." 
 
 The grace and bearing of Wilks were accounted of as natural 
 in a man whose blood was not of the common tap. " His father, 
 Edward Wilks, Esq., was descended from Judge Wilks, a very 
 eminent lawyer, and a gentleman of great honor and probity. 
 During the unhappy scene of our civil wars he raised a troop of 
 horse, at his own expense, for the service of his royal master." A 
 brother of the judge was in Monk's army, with the rank of Col- 
 onel, and with more of honest intention than of common-place 
 discretion. The civil wars took many a good actor from the 
 stage, but they also contributed the sons and daughters of many
 
 312 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 ancient but impoverished families to the foremost rank among 
 distinguished players. Some of the daughters of these old and 
 decayed houses thought it no disparagement to wed vith these 
 players, or to take humble office in the theatre. Wilks' first wife, 
 Miss Knapton, was the daughter of the Town Clerk of Southamp- 
 ton, and Steward of the New Forest, posts of trust, and at one 
 time, of emolument. The Knaptons had been Yorkshire land- 
 holders, the estate being valued at £2,000 a year ; and now wo 
 find one daughter marrying Wilks, a second espousing Norris, 
 " Jubilee Dicky," and a third, Anne Knapton, filling the humble 
 office of dresser at Drury Lane, and probably not much flattered 
 by the legend on the family arms, " Meta coronat opus." 
 
 The greatest trouble to Wilks, during the period he was in 
 management, arose from the "' ladies" of the company. There waa 
 especially Mrs. Rogers, who, on the retirement of Mrs. Barry and 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle, played the principal serious parts. It was the 
 whim of this lady to act none but virtuous characters ; her pruder}' 
 would not admit of her studying others. In the epilogue to the 
 " Triumphs of Virtue," in which she played the innocent Bella- 
 mira, she pronounced with great efiect the lines, addressed to the 
 ladies, for whose smiles, she said, 
 
 " I'll pay this duteous gratitude; I'll do 
 Tliat which the play has done ; I'll copy you. 
 At your own virtue's shrine my vows 111 pay, 
 And strive to live the character I play." 
 
 In this, however, she did not succeed ; but Mrs. Rogers con- 
 gratulated herself by considering that her failure saved Wilks's life, 
 who, when a widower, protested that he should die of despair if 
 she refused to smile upon him ; but, as Gibber remarks, Mrs. 
 Rogers " could never be reduced to marry." 
 
 Her ambition was great, for she not only looked on herself as 
 the successor of Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle ; but when the 
 lively and graceful Mountfort (Mrs. Verbruggen) died, in giving 
 birth to an infant, Mrs. Rogers aspired to the succession of her 
 parts, also. Wilks, then in power, preferred Mrs. Oldfield. A 
 public clamor ensued ; but, says Victor, somewhat confusedly, 
 " Mr. Wilks soon reduced this clamor to demonstration, by an
 
 ROBERT WILKS. 313 
 
 experiment of Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Rogers playing the same 
 part, that of Lady Lurewell in the " Trip to the Jubilee ;' but 
 ihoiiyh obstinacy seldom meets conviction, yet from this equitable 
 tr. l1 the tumults in the house were soon quelled (by public author- 
 ity), greatly to the honor of Mr. Wilks. I am," adds the writer, 
 " from my own knowledge, thoroughly convinced that Mr. Wilks 
 had no other regard for Mrs. Oldfield but what arose from the 
 exr-ellency of her performances. Mrs. Rogers's conduct might be 
 censured by some for the earnestness of her passion towards Mr. 
 Wilks, but in the polite world the fair sex has always been privi- 
 leged from scandal." 
 
 As gi'eat a tumult ensued when Mrs. Oldfield was cast for 
 Andromache, a character claimed by her rival, who, being refused 
 by Wilks, " she raised a posse of profligates, fond of tumult and 
 riot, who made such a commotion in the house, that the Court 
 hearing of it, sent four of the royal messengers and a strong guard 
 to suppress all disorder." Gibber laments having " to dismiss an 
 audience of £150, fi-om a disturbance spirited up by obscure 
 people, who never gave any better reason for it than that it was their 
 fancy to support the idle complaint of one rival actress against 
 another in their several pretensions to the chief part in a new 
 tragedy." 
 
 A green-room scene, painted by Colley Gibber, reveals to us 
 something of the shadowy side of Wilk's character, while that of 
 Booth and Mrs. Oldfield stand out, as it were, " in the sun." 
 Court and city in 1725 had demanded the revival of Vanbrugh's 
 *' Provoked Wife," with alterations, to suit the growing taste for 
 refinement. These alterations had taken something from the 
 sprightliness of the part of Constant, which Wilks had been ac- 
 customed to play, and Gibber proposed to give it to Booth, for 
 whom its gravity rendered it suitable. W^ilks, who was eager to 
 play every night, at first looked grave, then frowned ; as Gibber 
 hinted, that if he were to play in every piece, a sudden indisposi- 
 tion on his part might create embarrassment, he sullenly stirred 
 the fire ; but when the chief manager suggested that as he had 
 accomplished all he could possibly aim at in his profession, 
 occasional repose would become him more than unremitting 
 bbor, he took Gibber's counsel and Booth's acquiescence for 
 Vol. I.— 14
 
 314 doean's annals of the stage. 
 
 satire, and retorted with a warmth of indignation which included 
 some strong expletives not to be found in the best poets. 
 
 Cibber then accused him of inconsistency, and expressed indif- 
 ference whether he accepted or rejected the part which he then 
 held in his hand, and which Wilks at once threw down on the 
 table whereupon the angry player sate, with crossed arms, and 
 " knocking his heel upon the floor, as seeming to threaten most 
 when he said least," Booth, good-naturedly, struck in with a 
 cheerful comment, to the effect, that " for his part, he saw no such 
 great matter in acting every day, for he believed it the whole- 
 somest exercise in the world; it kept the spirits in motion, and 
 always gave him a good stomach." 
 
 At this friendly advance Mrs. Oldfield was seen laughing behind 
 her fan, while Wilks, after a few hesitating remarks, which showed 
 some little jealousy of Booth, proposed that Mrs. Oldfield should 
 herself select which of the two she would have play with her. He 
 would be glad to be excused if she selected another. 
 
 " This throwing the negative upon Mrs. Oldfield," says Cibber, 
 "was indeed a sure way to save himself; which I could not help 
 taking notice of, by saying, it was making but an ill compliment 
 to the company, to suppose there was but one man in it fit to 
 play an ordinary part with her. Here Mrs. Oldfield got up, and 
 turning me half round, to come forward, said with her usual frank- 
 ness, ' Pooh ! you are all a parcel of fools to make such a rout 
 about nothing !' Rightly judging that the person most out of 
 humor would not be more displeased at her calling us all by the 
 same name." 
 
 Finally, Wilks accepted the part, at Mrs. Oldfield's suggestion, 
 and all went well. Irascible as he was, yet he was more remarka- 
 ble for his zeal and industry, for the carefulness with which he 
 superintended rehearsals, and for the elaborate pains-concealing 
 labor, which distinguished him on the public stage. Cibber ren- 
 ders him full measure of justice in this respect, and generously 
 confesses : " Had / had half his application I still think I might 
 have shown myself twice the actor that, in my highest state of 
 favor, I appeared to be." 
 
 Cibber, indeed, has painted his colleague Wilks with great 
 elaboration. From Colley we learn that Wilks excelled Powell,
 
 ROBERT WILKS. 315 
 
 and that hot-headed Powell challenged him to the duello in con- 
 sequence. So painstaking was the young Irishman, that in forty 
 years he was never once forgetful of a single word in any of his 
 parts. " In some new comedy he happened to complain of a 
 crabbed speech in his part which, he said, gave him more trouble 
 to study than all the rest of it had done." The good-natured 
 author cut the whole of the speech out ; but " Wilks thought it 
 such an indignity to his memory that any thing should be thought 
 too hard for it, that he actually made himself perfect in that 
 speech, though he knew it was never to be made use of." Gibber 
 praises his sober character, but hints at his professional conceit, 
 and somewhat overbearing temper ; and he calls him " bustle 
 master- general of the company." If he was jealous and impa- 
 tient, " to be employed on the stage was the delight of his life ;" 
 and of his unwearied zeal, unselfishly exercised for the general 
 good, Gibber cannot speak too highly. Nothing came amiss to 
 Wilks, that was connected with the stage. He even undertook 
 the office of writing the bills of performance ; but he charged £50 
 a year for the trouble. 
 
 In the plaintive and tender, this light comedian excelled even 
 Booth, who used to say that Wilks lacked ear and not voice to 
 make a great tragedian. 
 
 Wilks's greatest successes were in his friend Farquhar's heroes, 
 — Sir Harry Wildair, Mirabel, Gaptain Plume, and Archer. He 
 played equally well, but with less opportunity for distinction, the 
 light gentlemen of Gibber's comedies. In Don Felix, in Mrs, 
 Centlivre's " Wonder," he almost excelled the reputation he had 
 gained in Sir Harry. " When Wilks dies," Farquhar once re- 
 marked, " Sir Harry may go to the Jubilee." Of the above char- 
 acters, he was the original representative, as he was of some four- 
 score others of less note, — among them Dumont, in " Jane Shore," 
 for which he may be said to have been cast by Mrs. Oldfield. 
 " Nay !" she cried to him, in her pretty way ; " if you will not be 
 my husband, I will act Alicia, I protest." And accordingly, the 
 two most brilliant and gleesome actors of their day, enacted mar- 
 ried tribulation, and kept their wreathed smiles for the crowd 
 which clustered round them at the wings. 
 
 Few men ever loved acting for acting's sake more than Wilks.
 
 316 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 At the same time, no one ever warned others against ifc, with more 
 serious urgency. He had a nephew, who was in fair prospect of 
 such good fortune as could be built up in an attorney's office. 
 How little the young fcUuw merited the fortune, and how ill he 
 understood the duties and advantages of attorneyship he mani- 
 fested fully, by a madness for appearing on the stage. No counsel 
 availed against his resolution; and, in I7l4, Wilks dispatched 
 him to Dublin, with a letter to Ashbury, the manager. " He was 
 bred an attorney," wrote the uncle, despondlngly, "but is unhap- 
 pily fallen in love with that fickle mistress, the stage ; and no 
 arguments can dissuade him from it. I have refused to give him 
 any countenance, in hopes that time and experience might cure 
 him ; but since I find him determined to make an attempt, some- 
 where, no one, I am sure, is able to give him so just a notion of 
 the business as yourself. If you find my nephew wants either 
 geniufe or any other necessary qualification, I beg you will freely 
 tell him his disabilities', and then it is possible he may be more 
 easily persuaded to return to his friends and business, which I am 
 informed he understands perfectly well." 
 
 Young Wilks proved as poor an actor as he probably was an 
 attorney ; but his uncle received him at Drury Lane, after a year's 
 novitiate in Dublin, where he played, at first, better " business" 
 than Quin himself. But he never advanced a step, and died at 
 the age of thirty, having never obtained above that number of 
 shillings a week. And for that, he deserted his vocation as an 
 attorney, in the practice of which he might have gained, if not 
 earned, at a low estimate, twice that amount in a single morning. 
 
 There was a pious young Duke of Orleans, who, to keep a fair 
 character, was obliged to assume the fashionable vices of his day. 
 Wilks, with all his love of home, was a fine gentleman among the 
 fine gentlemen. His appreciation of matrimony was shown by 
 the haste with which he espoused the widow Fell, daughter of 
 Charles H.'s great gun-founder, Browne, in April, 1715, after losing 
 his first wife in the previous year. Daring the first union, he nuist 
 have trod the stage with many a heart-ache, while he was exciting 
 hilarity, for eleven of his children died early, and the airy player 
 was forever in mourning. His step-son. Fell, married the grand- 
 daughter of William Penn, and brought his bride to the altar of
 
 ROBERT WILKS. 317 
 
 St. Paul's, Covent Garden, not to be married, but christened. 
 Wilks and his wife were the gossips to the pretty Quakeress ; and 
 the former, probably, never looked more imposing than when he 
 pronounced the names of the fair Episcopalian, — GuUelma 
 Maria. 
 
 Betterton used to rusticate in Berkshire ; Booth, at Cowley ; 
 Gibber, at Twickenham ; his son, at Brook Green. Wilks, too, 
 had his villa, at Isleworth. He is said to have kept a well-regu- 
 lated and cheerful home. He had there seen so much of death, 
 that we are told he was always prepared to meet it with decency. 
 His generosity amounted almost to prodigality. " Few Irish 
 gentlemen," says his biographer, "are without indigent relatives." 
 Wilks had many, and they never appealed to him in vain. He 
 died, after a short illness and four doctors, in September, 1732, 
 leaving his share in the Drury Lane Patent, and what other pro- 
 perty he possessed, to his wife. Throughout his life, I can only 
 find one symptom of regret at having abandoned the Irish Secre- 
 tary's office for the stage. "My successor in Ireland," he once 
 said to Gibber, " made by his post £50,000." 
 
 Exceeding benevolence is finely exhibited in an incident con- 
 nected with Farquhar. When the latter was near the end of his gay 
 yet checkered career, in 1707, — death, the glory of his last suc- 
 cess, and the thought of his children, pressing hard upon him, — 
 he wrote this laconic, but perfectly intelligible, note to Wilks : — 
 
 " Dear Bob, — I have not any thing to leave thee, to perpetuate 
 my memory, but two helpless girls ; look upon them, sometimes ; 
 and think of him that was, to the last moment of his life, — 
 
 " George Farquhar." 
 
 Farquhar's confidence in his friend was like that of La Fontaine, 
 who, having lost a home, was met in the street by a friend who 
 invited him to his. "I was going there!" said the simple-minded 
 poet. Wilks did not disappoint Farquhar's expectations. 
 
 Wilks could be as modest as he was generous. After playing, 
 for the first time, the Ghost to Booth's Hamlet, the latter re- 
 marked, — "Why, Bob, I thought you were going to knock me 
 down. When I played the Ghost to Mr. Betterton's Hamlet 
 awe-stricken as he seemed, I was still more so of him.''
 
 318 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 " Mr. Betterton and Mr. Booth," said Wilks, — " noble actors, 
 could always play as they pleased. I can only play to the best 
 of my ability." 
 
 Once only do I find Wilks in close connection with royalty, — 
 namely, when he took, by command, the manuscript of " George 
 Barnwell" to St. James's, and read that lively tragedy to Queen 
 Anne. On some like occasion, King William once presented 
 Booth with five pounds for his reward, but history does not note 
 the guerdon with which Wilks retired from the presence of 
 « Great Anna 1"
 
 ENTER, GARRICK. ' 319 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 ENTER, GARRICK. 
 
 Great was the confusion in, and small the prosperity of, the 
 theatres after the death of Wilks, and withdrawal of Gibber. 
 Highmore, now chief patentee, opened Drury ; but Theophilus 
 Gibber, with all the principal Drury Lane performers, except Mrs. 
 Glive (for Miss Raftor was now the wife of Judge Glive's brother), 
 Mrs. Horton, and Mrs. Bridgewater, opened the Haymarket 
 against him, under the title of " Gomedians of His Majesty's 
 Revels." Highmore had recourse to the law to keep the seceders 
 to their engagements, and Harper, a deserter to the Haymarket, 
 was prosecuted as a stroller ; but the law acquitted him, after 
 solemn discussion. Highmore's chief actor was Macklin, who first 
 appeared as Captain Brazen, Gibber's old part in the " Recruiting 
 Officer," and he subsequently played Marplot, Clodio, Teague, 
 Brass, and similar characters, with success ; but he was cast aside 
 when the companies became reconciled. 
 
 There was no other actor of note in the Drury Lane company, 
 where good actresses were not wanting. Mrs. Clive alone fur- 
 nished perpetual sunshine, and Mrs. Horton warmed the thin houses 
 by the glow of her beauty. No piece of permanent merit was 
 produced, and, sad change in the Drury Lane annals, the patentee 
 was at a heavy weekly loss. 
 
 On the first night that the seceders opened the Haymarket, 
 21st September, 1733, with "Love for Love," Mrs. Pritchard 
 played Nell, in the after-piece (" Devil to Pay"). The Daily Post 
 had already extolled the " dawning excellence" she had exhibited 
 m a booth, and prophesied that she would charm the age. She 
 played light comic parts throughout the season ; but her powers 
 as a tragedian do not seem to have been suspected. Mrs. Prit- 
 chard thus entered on her long and honorable career, a married 
 woman, with a large family, and an excellent character, which she
 
 320 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 never tarnished. ("Jibber's daughter, Mrs. Charke, played a round 
 of male parts during the same season, Roderigo, in " Othello," 
 being one of them. In the March of 1734, the seceders closed 
 the Haymarket, and joined the wreck of the old company at Drury 
 Lane, on which Mrs. Pritchard, like Macklin, was laid aside for a 
 time. But while those eminent players were "under a cloud," 
 there appeared Miss Arne, whose voice charmed all hearers, whose 
 beauty subdued Theophilus Gibber, but who was not yet recog- 
 nized as the tragic actress, between whom and Mrs. Pritchard, 
 and Mrs. Yates, critics, and the town generally, were to go mad 
 with disputation. 
 
 Meantime, no new drama was produced at Covent Garden, 
 which lived in the public memory a month ; but Quin shed a glory 
 on the house, and quite eclipsed the careful, but heavy and decay- 
 ing actor. Mills, who aspired to the parts which Booth's death had 
 left unappropriated. In Macbeth and Othello, Thersites, Cato, 
 Apemantus, and Gonzales, in the " Mourning Bride," he had at 
 least no living rival. The contest for superiority had commenced 
 before Booth's death ; but Mills was never a match for Quin, and 
 his name has not been preserved among us as that of a great 
 actor. 
 
 As it is otherwise with Quin, let us recapitulate some details of 
 his previous career, before we accompany him over that period 
 which he filled so creditably, till he was rudely shaken by the 
 coming of Garrick. 
 
 The father of James Quin was a barrister, of a good Irish family, 
 and at one time resided in King Street, Covent Garden, where 
 James was born in 1693. Mrs. Quin happened to be the wife of 
 two husbands. The first, who had abandoned her, and who, after 
 years of absence, was supposed to be dead, re-appeared after 
 Quin's birth, and carried off the boy's mother as his own lawful 
 wife. Thereby, the boy himself was deprived of his inheritance; 
 the Quin property, which was considerable, passed to the heir at 
 law, and at the age of twenty-one, the young man, intelligent but 
 uneducated, his illusions of being a squireen in Ireland being all 
 dissipated, and being specially fitted for no vocation, went at once 
 upon the stage. His time of probation was first spent on the 
 Dublin boards, in 1714, where he played very small paits with
 
 ENTER, GARRIOK. 321 
 
 such great propriety, that in the following year, on the recommen- 
 dation of Chetwood, the prompter, he was received, still as a pro- 
 bationer, into the company then acting at Driiry Lane. Booth, 
 Gibber, Mills, and Wilks were the chief players at that theatre, 
 and the young actor was at least among noble professors. Among, 
 but not of them, he remained for at least two seasons, acting the 
 walking gentlemen, and fulfilling "general utility," without a 
 chance of reaching a higher rank. One night, however, in 1716, 
 when the run of the revived " Tamerlane" was threatened with in- 
 terruption by the sudden illness of the most ferocious of Bajazets, 
 Quin was induced, most reluctantly, on the foolish fellow's side, to 
 read the part. In doing this with conscientiousness and judg- 
 ment, he received such testimonials of approval, that he made 
 himself master of the words by the following night, and when the 
 curtain fell, found himself famous. The critics in the pit, and the 
 fine gentlemen who hung about the stage, united in acknowledg- 
 ing his merits; the coffee-houses tossed his name about pleasantly 
 as a novelty, and Mr. Mills paid him the compliment of speedily 
 getting well. 
 
 When Mr. Mills resumed Bajazet, young Quin sank down to the 
 Dervise ; and though, subsequently, his cast of characters was im- 
 proved, his patience was so severely tried, that in the succeeding 
 season he passed over to the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mod- 
 estly entering there in the part of Benducar, in " Don Sebastian," 
 he at once established himself in the public favor, and before the 
 close of the season 1718-19, the chivalry of his Hotspur, the 
 bluntness of his Clytus, the fire of his Bajazet, the grandeur of his 
 Macbeth, the calm dignity of his Brutus, the unctuousness of his 
 FalstafF, the duplicity of his Maskwell, and the coarse comedy of 
 his Sir John Brute, were circumstances of which the town talked 
 quite as eagerly as they did of the Quadruple Alliance, and the 
 musket-shot which had slain the royal Swede in the trenches be- 
 fore Frederickshall. 
 
 It was Quin's success in Bajazet at Drury Lane that really cost 
 Bowen his life. I have noticed the subject before, but it will ad- 
 mit of some further detail. Bowen had taunted Quin with being 
 tame in Bajazet, and Quin retorted by speaking disparagingly of 
 Bowen in Jacomo, in the " Libertine," preferring Johnson in that 
 14*
 
 322 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 part Bowen was the more deeply stung, as he prided himself on 
 his acting in Jacomo, and the company agreed with the adverse 
 critic. The quarrel, commenced by envy, was aggravated by poli- 
 tics. Bowen boasted of his honesty and consistency, a boast, the 
 worthlessness of which was speedily shown by Quin's remark, that 
 Bowen had as often drunk the Duke of Ormond's health as he 
 had refused it. The disputants parted angrily, only to meet more 
 incensed. They met, on the invitation of Bowen, and passed 
 from one tavern to another, till they could find a room which less 
 suited Quin's purpose than that of his irate companion — that of 
 " fighting it out." Indeed, the younger player seems to have been 
 hardly aware of his elder's definite purpose ; for when they entered 
 the room Bowen fastened the door, clapped his back to it, drew 
 his sword, and threatened to run Quin through the body, if he did 
 not out with his rapier and defend himself. Remonstrance fi'om 
 the latter was of no avail, and he drew, simply to keep Bowen off. 
 But the latter impetuously pressed forward till he ultimately fell, 
 mortally wounded. Before his death, however, which occurred 
 within three days, he justly and generously took the blame of the 
 whole transaction upon himself. This, with corroborative evi- 
 dence, secured the acquittal of Quin, on his trial for manslaughter. 
 So died poor, foolish Bowen, at the age of fifty-two, leaving a 
 widow, for whom the public had not sufficient sympathy to render 
 her " benefit" profitable, and a son, known in the London streets as 
 " Rugged-and-tough," and whose exploits, recorded in the Old 
 Bailey Calendar, sent him to the colonies, to found in another 
 hemisphere a line of Bowens more honest and less angry than the 
 latter scions of the race in England. 
 
 This was a transition period, terminated by the coming of 
 Garrick. Quin passed over to Drury Lane, tempted by the annual 
 £500 offered by Fleetwood, a wealthy personage, who had pur- 
 chased the chief share in the patent. " No actor," said Rich, " is 
 worth more than £300 a year," and declining to retain Quin at 
 the additional requirea outlay, he brought forward a " citizen," 
 named Stephens, to oppose him. Stephens had caught the exact 
 sound of Booth's cadences and much of his manner. For a time, 
 audiences were delighted, but the magic of mere imitation soon 
 ceased to attract ; and Quin decidedly led the town in old charao-
 
 ENTER, GARRICK. 323 
 
 ters, but with no opportunity yet offered him of a " creation." 
 Mrs. Clive enchanted her hearers at Drury Lane, while Mrs. Hor- 
 ton took her beauty and happy assurance to Covent Garden. A 
 greater than either, Mrs. Pritchard, plnyed mere walking hidies, and 
 made no step in advance till 1735, when she acted Lady Townley 
 at the Haymarket. Old Gibber, longing again for a smell of the 
 lamps, and a sound of applause, played a few of his best parts 
 dui'ing this season, and Macklin slowly made progress according 
 to rare opportunity. Govent Garden chiefly depended on Ryan ; 
 but suddenly lost his services when they could be least spared. 
 He was returning home, on the 15th of March, 1735, when he was 
 shot by a ruffian in Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, who robbed 
 him of his sword. " Friend," said the generous actor, who was 
 badly wounded in the face and jawbone, " you have killed me ; 
 but I forgive you !" In about six weeks, however, lie w;xs sufficiently 
 recovered to appear again, after a general sympathy had been 
 shown him, from the Prince of Wales down to the gallery visi- 
 tors. 
 
 Drury Lane, too, lost, but altogether, a useful actor, Hallam. 
 He and Macklin had quarrelled about a theatrical wig, and im- 
 petuous Macklin, raising his stick, thrust with it, in such blind 
 fury, that it penetrated through Hallam's eye to the brain, and 
 the unfortunate player died the next day. An old Bailey jury let 
 the rasher, but grief-stricken, man, lightly off under a verdict of 
 " Manslaughter." 
 
 From being a Queen of Song, Mrs. Gibber, the second wife of 
 Thoophilus, first took ground as an actress this season, at Drury 
 Lane, in Aaron Hill's adaptation of Voltaire's " Zara." Mrs. Gib- 
 ber was the sister of Dr. Thomas Arne, the composer of " Arta- 
 xerxes," and daughter of an upholsterer in the neighborhood of 
 Covent Garden. Handel thought so well of her that he arranged 
 one of his airs in the " Messiah" expressly to suit her voice. Her 
 tmbition, however, was to be a tragic actress, and GoUey Gibber, 
 who had sternly opposed her marriage with his son, overcome by 
 her winning ways, not only was reconciled to her, but instructed 
 her in her study for Zara, and some part of her success was owing 
 to so accomplished a teaclier. 
 
 Milward played Lusignan, a part in acting which a young actor.
 
 324 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 named Bond, overcome by liis feelings, died on the stage, while 
 blessing his children. This occurred at a private theatre, in 
 Great Villiers Street, where the tragedy was represented, by sanc- 
 tion of the author, or, as Read would have it, of the stealer of it 
 from Voltaire. Bond was not the only actor who died in harness 
 this year. Obese Hulett, rival of Quin, in Falstaff, proud of th« 
 strength of his lungs, which he was forever exercising to the terror 
 of those who suddenly experienced it, in making some extraordi- 
 nary effort of this sort, broke a blood-vessel, and straightway died, 
 when only thirty-five j'^ears of age ; and he was buried at the ex 
 pense of his stage-manager, Giffard, who rented Lincoln's Inn Fields 
 for a while, of Rich. 
 
 The success of Mrs. Gibber stirred Rich at Govent Garden, and 
 when she acted Ilermione, the old but able Mrs. Porter played 
 the part against her, at the latter house, as she also did Zara. Mrs. 
 Ilorton was opposed to her in the part of Jane Shore. In high 
 comedy, Mrs. Gibber attempted Indiana, in the " Gonscious Lovers," 
 and forthwith Govent Garden put up the same piece. But the 
 latter house was inferior in its company ; there was no one there 
 to shed sunshine like Mrs. Glive. Delane and Walker together 
 were not equal to Quin. Of novelty, Govent Garden produced 
 nothing. Giftard's young troop, on the other hand, in the east, 
 and afterwards at Lincoln's Inn Fields, produced much that was 
 worthless, not excepting another levy on Voltaire by Hill, in his 
 " Alzira." Indeed, the new authors of this period were more 
 remarkable than their pieces. Mrs. Gooper, now forgotten, was the 
 widow of an auctioneer ; and Stirling, author of the " Parricide," 
 is, perhaps, better remembered in Maryland, where he was a 
 " popular parson," than he is here. What is known of him 
 here, indeed, is not favorable. When he and Goncanen camo 
 together from Ireland, to live by their pens, as political writers, they 
 tossed up as to the " side" they should take. As it fell to Gon- 
 canen to support, and to Stirling to abuse the ministry, the formei 
 was enabled to acquire an ample fortune as Attorney-General oi 
 Jamaica, his seventeen years' tenure of which, Matthew owed to 
 the appreciation of him by the Duke of Newcastle. But Matthew 
 was a wit, and a gentlemanlike fellow ; whereas the Rev. Jack 
 Stirling, whose " Parricide" ^as hissed at Goodman's Fields, was
 
 ENTER, GARKICK. 325 
 
 an unsuccessful parson, who did very well for a transatlantic 
 minister. 
 
 The Haymarket was open in the spring and summer of 1736, 
 under Fielding, with his " Grand Mogul's Company of Comedians." 
 Fielding, greatly improved by many failures, found the town in 
 laughter; and Lillo drowned it in tears. At " Pasquin," that hot, 
 fierce, hard-hitting, mirth-moving satire, London "screamed," 
 night after night, for nearly two months ; and at the " Fatal Cu- 
 riosity," that most heart-rending of domestic dramas, the same 
 Loudon wept as if it had the tenderest feelings in the world. In 
 it Cibber's daughter, erratic Mrs, Charke, condescended to play a 
 female part ; and Davies, the bookseller and dramatic historian, 
 the part of her son, young Wilmot. By such means and appli- 
 ances did the stage support itself through this year, in which Mrs. 
 Pritchard is seldom heard of, and Yates and Woodward are only 
 giving promise of the Sir Bashful Constant and Mercutio, to 
 come. 
 
 And now we reach 1736-7, with Quin especially eminent in 
 Shakspeare's characters, Mrs. Cibbei-, stirring the town as Statira 
 Monimia, or Belvidera, and Mrs. Clive — who had quarrelled with 
 her as to the right to play PoUy — beaming like sunshine through 
 operatic farce and rattling comedy, as gayly as if her bi'ow had 
 never known a frown. 
 
 The old colleague of Quin, — Mills (the original representative 
 of characters so opposite as Zanga and Aim well, Py lades and Col- 
 onel Briton), died all but on the stage, which lost in him a heavy 
 "utility," whose will was better than his execution. A lady 
 " utility," too, withdrew after this season, — Mrs. Thurmond, the 
 original representative, also, of opposite characters, to wit — Myris. 
 in Young's " Busiris," and Lady Wronghead. 
 
 The same Drury to which these were lost, gained this season a 
 new author, in the person of Dodsley, — whose life is comprised in 
 the words, — footman, poet, bookseller, honest man. As yet, he 
 is only at the second step, — a poor poet ; when he published books 
 instead of writing them, he became a wealthy, but remained, as 
 ever, a worthy fellow. It is due to this ex-lackey to say, that in 
 his satirical piece, the " Toy-Shop," and in his hearty little drama, 
 the " King and the Miller of Mansfield," both helped towards the
 
 326 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 stage by Pope, Dodsley gave wholesome food to satisfy the public 
 appetite ; and the man who had not long before stripped off a 
 livery, showed more respect for decency than any wit or gallant 
 of them all. 
 
 He was the only successful author of the season at Drur)\ The 
 Rov. Mr. Miller broke a commandment, in his " Universal Pas- 
 sion," — stolen from Shakspeare and Moliere ; and classical Mr. 
 Cooke manifested no humor in converting Terence's " Eunuchus," 
 into a satirical farce, the " Eunuch, or the Derby Captain," — 
 levelled at those English emereti whose regiments were disbanded 
 after the peace of Utrecht, and who sipped their Derbyshire ale 
 at a famous tavern in Covent Garden. 
 
 The chief incident before the curtain was a riot, caused by the 
 footmen who had been excluded from their gallery, on the night 
 of Macklin's bencfit,-5th May, 1737. But of this incident I shall 
 speak in another page. Of Mrs. Pritchard there is barely an ap- 
 pearance ; her great opportunity had not yet arrived. 
 
 At Covent Garden there was no new piece, but something bet- 
 ter, — a revival of Shakspeare's " King John," in which Delane 
 played the King, and Walker, Falconbridge, — a character for 
 which he was personally and intellectually fitted, and in which, as 
 in Hotspur, he gained more laurels than he ever acquired by his 
 Macheath. 
 
 They who pursued novelty might find it with Giffard's company, 
 playing at the Lincoln's Inn Fields, where, however, the only suc- 
 cessful piece was " King Charles I.," a tragedy by Havard, a young 
 actor, already known by his " Scanderbeg," and who succeeded 
 to the place left vacant by Mills. Giffard played Charles, a char- 
 acter which is rather exaggerated by the author, who acted Juxon. 
 Chesterfield said, in reference to this piece, that " the catastrophe 
 was too recent, too melancholy, and of too solemn a nature to be 
 lieard of anywhere, but in the pulpit." However this may be, the 
 way in which the tragedy was composed was anything but solemn. 
 Desultory Havard had been commissioned by Giftard to write the 
 piece. It was done to order, and under constraint ; for the pa- 
 tron locked up the poet in a garret, near Lincoln's Inn, during a 
 cei-tam number of hours, daily, from which he was not suffered to 
 emerge till he had repeated, from behind the door, to Giffard, who
 
 ENTEK, GARRICK. 327 
 
 was on the landing, a certain number of newly-written lines, —till 
 the whole was completed, when the poet became free. 
 
 At the Ilaymarket, Fielding and satire reigned, but not supreme, 
 — for his pieces were as often hissed as applauded ; but the politi- 
 cal allusions in " Tumbledown Dick, or Pha3ton in the Suds," 
 pleased, and those in the "Historical Register, for 1736," made 
 the audience laugh, and Sir Robert Walpole, satirised as Quidnunc, 
 wince. The government had for some time contemplated a i-e- 
 striction of the license of the stage. Hitherto, the Lord Chamber- 
 lain could stop a play in its career. It was now proposed to 
 establish a licenser, according to whose report the Chamberlain 
 might prohibit the play from entering on a career at all. The 
 proposal arose out of an officious act of GifFard's, who took the 
 manuscript of a satirical piece, called the " Golden Rump," to the 
 minister, at which piece the latter was so shocked, that the bill for 
 gagging the stage was at once proceeded with. 
 
 It was indecorously hurried through the Commons and tossed 
 to the Lords, at the close of the session of 1737. There it met 
 the sturdy opposition of Chesterfield. He looked upon the bill 
 as an attempt, through restraining the license of the stage, to 
 destroy the liberty of the press; for what was seditious to act, it 
 would be seditious to print. And if the printing of a play could 
 be stopped, there would soon be a gag on pamphlets and other 
 works. 
 
 The very act of Giftard showed that the players were anxious 
 not to come in collision with government ; and the existing laws 
 could be applied against them if they offended. But those laws 
 were not applied, or Mr. Fielding would have been punished for 
 his " Pasquin," wherein the three great professions — religion, 
 physic and law — were represented as inconsistent with common 
 sense. Chesterfield thought that the same law might liave been 
 put in force against Havard, for his " King Charles I." 
 
 If ministers dreaded satire or censure, all they had to do, was so 
 to act as not to desei-ve it. If they deserved it, it would be as easy 
 to turn passages of old plays against them, as to make them, in 
 new. When the Roman actor, Diphilis, altered the words 
 " Nostra raiseria tu es magnus !" — a phrase from an old play — the 
 eyes of the audience were turned on Pompcius Magnus, who was
 
 328 doran's anxals of the stage. 
 
 present ; and the speaker was made to repeat the phrase a hun- 
 dred times. Augustus, indeed, subsequently restored " order" in 
 Rome ; but God forbid that order should be restored here, at such 
 a price as was paid for it in Rome ! 
 
 False accusations, too, could be lightly made. Moliere com- 
 plained, that " Tartufte" was prohibited on the ground of iU 
 ridiculing religion, which was done nightly on the Italian stage; 
 whereas he only satirized hypocrites. " It is true, Moliere," said 
 the Prince de Conti, " Harlequin ridicules heaven and exposes 
 religion; but you have done much worse: — you have ridiculed 
 tlie first minister of religion." 
 
 Against the power of prohibition being lodged in one single 
 man, Chesterfield protested, but in vain. One consequence, he 
 said, would be, that all vices prevalent at court would come to be 
 represented as virtues. He told the Lords, tliat they had no 
 right to put an excise upon wit : and said, finely, " Wit, my Lords, 
 is the property of those who have it, — and too often the only 
 property they have to depend on. It is, indeed, but a precarious 
 dependence. Thank God!" he said, "we, my Lords, have a de- 
 poidence of another kind /" 
 
 Such is the substance of his famous but unavailing remon- 
 strance. The bill, not to protect morality, but to spare the sus- 
 ceptibilities of statesmen and placemen, passed ; and the result 
 was a "job." In the ensuing spring, Chetwynd was appointed, 
 under the Chamberlain, licenser of plays, with a salary of £400 
 per annum ; and to help him in doing little, Odell was named a 
 deputy-licenser, with £200 yearly ; — and therewith the job was 
 consummated ; and the deputy-licenser began to break the law he 
 was appointed to see strictly observed. When the Act was 
 passed, his most sacred majesty, who commanded unsavory pieces 
 occasionally to be played before him, prorogued the parliament, 
 after lamenting the spirit of insubordination and licentiousness 
 which pervaded the community ! 
 
 The government made use of its authority, by prohibiting 
 plays, and the public took their revenge, by hissing those that 
 were licensed. Among the prohibited, were Brooke's " Gustavua 
 Vasa;" Thomson's " Edward and Eleanora ;" and Fielding's " Miss 
 Lucy in Town ;" — the first, as dangerous to public order ; the
 
 ENTER. OARKICK. 329 
 
 second, as too freely alluding to royal-family dissensions ; the 
 third (after it had been licensed) as satirizing " some man of 
 quality !" To these must be added " Ai'minius," by Paterson; 
 Thomson's deputy in his post of Surveyor of the Leeward Islands. 
 The deputy had copied out his principal's " Edward and Eloon- 
 ora;" and as " Arminius" was in the same hand, it was forbidden, 
 as being, probably, an equally objectionable piece by the same 
 author ! The prohibition applied to was profitable ; for he pub- 
 lished his play by subscription, and gained £1,000 by it, — not for 
 the reason that it was a good, but because it was a forbidden 
 drama. 
 
 Audiences amused themselves by hissing the permitted plays, 
 sometimes with the additional luxury of personal feeling against 
 the author, — as in the case of the Rev. Mr. Miller's " CofFee- 
 House," " Art and Nature," and " Hospital for Fools." Thomson 
 was fortunate in saving his " Agamemnon" from the censors, for it 
 is not unworthy of ranking with the " Iphigenia" of Racine ; and 
 its merit saved it. Mallet was still more lucky with his " Mus- 
 tapha;" and the audience were too pleased to hiss a piece, the 
 licensers of which were too dull to perceive that Sultan Solyman 
 and his vizier, Rustan, were but stage portraits of George II. and 
 Sir Robert Walpole. They liad no such tenderness for the 
 " Parricide" of William Shirley, — a gentleman who understood 
 the laws of trade better than those of the drama. A French com- 
 pany, at the Haymarket, were of course hissed out of the country. 
 There was no ill-will against them, personally. It was sufficient 
 that the Licensing Act authorized them to play, and the public 
 would not tolerate them, accordingly ! If they bore with Lillo's 
 " Marina," it was, perhaps, because it was a recast of " Pericles ;" 
 and if they applauded his licensed " Elmeric," the reason may have 
 been, that the old dissenting jeweller, who set so brave an example 
 in writing " moral" pieces, was then dead ; and the " author's 
 nights" might be of advantage to his impoverished family. 
 
 But there were licensed dramas at which the public laughed too 
 heartily, to have cared to hiss, or which so entranced them that 
 they never thought of it. Thus, Dodsley's merry pieces, " Sir 
 John Cockle," and the " Blind Beggar ;" Carey and Lampe's hila- 
 rious burlesque-opera, the " Dragon of Wantlev '' and 'ts sequel,
 
 330 doran's annals or the stage. 
 
 " Margery ;" witli " Orpheus and Eurydice," one of Rich's bur- 
 lesques and pantomimes — the comic operatic scenes not preceding, 
 but alternating with those of the harlequinade — in which, by the 
 way, the name of Grimaldi occurs as pantaloon, — rode riotously 
 triumphant through the seasons, which were otherwise especially 
 remarkable, by numerous revivals of Sliakspeare's plays, according 
 to tlie original text ; and not less so by that of IMilton's " Comus," 
 in which graceful Mrs. Gibber played and sang the Lady, and 
 sunny Kitty Olive gladdened every heart, as Euphrosyne. 
 
 As far as new pieces are concerned, thus stood the stajre till 
 Garrick came. In further continuing to clear it for his coming, 1 
 have to record the death of Bowman, the best dressed old man at 
 eighty-eight, and the cheeriest that could be seen. My readers, I 
 hope, remember him, in the chapter on Betterton, Miller is also 
 gone, — a favorite actor, in his day, whose merit in Irish characters 
 is set down in his not having a brogue, which, at that period, was 
 unintelligible to English ears. Miller played a wide range of 
 characters ; and he married for the very singular reason that, 
 being unable to read the manuscript copy he had to get by 
 heart, his wife might read it to, and beat it into, him. Bullock, 
 too, the original Boniface and Gibby ; and Harper, the original 
 Jobson ; and Ben Griffin, quaint in Simon Pure, comic and terrific 
 in Lovegold ; with Mihvard, the original Lusignan ; and Bcri Jon- 
 son, always correct and natural, — have now departed. With 
 them, has gone Mrs. Hallam, an actress of repute, — the original 
 Duchess of Malfy, in the revival of Webster's tragedy of horrors. 
 By her death, the boards of old Drury were relieved from a load 
 of fourteen stone weight I almost as great as that of Mademoiselle 
 Georges. 
 
 Of those that were left, Quin was the great chief; but he re- 
 ceived a rude shock from Macklin, when the latter, after playing 
 Roxana, in a burlesque of the " Rival Queens," achieved his first 
 triumph, by taking Shylock from low comedy, and playing it as a 
 serious character. The managers were as nervously afraid of a 
 riot as those of the Ambigu were, when Frederic Lemaitre, 
 making no impression as the villain, Robert Macaire, during the 
 first act of "L'Auberge des Adrets," played it through the rest of 
 the piece as a comic part ! In cither case, the greatest success
 
 ENTER, GARKICK. 331 
 
 ensued, but that of Macklin was most honestly earned ; and he 
 took rank, forthwith, as one of the noble actors of his time. 
 
 Turning to other players, I find Mrs. Pritchard progressing from 
 Lady Macduft' to Isabella, — from Lucy to Viola and Rosalind. 
 Walker meets a rival in the Macheath of mellifluous Beard. 
 Woodward and Yates are rising to fame. Young Mrs. Gibber 
 disappears for awhile, carrying with her the charms that strike the 
 sight, and the merit that A^ins the soul. There is a terrible 
 scandal in the cause of her disappearance. " Pistol," her worth- 
 less husband, has something more than pushed her into tempta- 
 tion, that he may make money by the offence to which he is 
 the prompter. The public voice condemns him ; a jury awards 
 him damt^-es, which show their contempt for his " sense of 
 honor;" and the lady, running away from the house in which he had 
 shut her up, while he was absent, playing that congenial character, 
 Scrub — took for her better friend the man who had fallen in love 
 with her, through her husband's contrivance. 
 
 As if to compensate for the loss of Mrs. Gibber's honeyed tones, 
 the stage was wakened to a new delight, by the presence of Mar- 
 garet Woffington. This L-ish actress made her first appearance at 
 Covent Garden, on the 6th of November, 1740, as Sylvia, in the 
 "Recruiting Officer;" and when, a few nights later, she played 
 Sir Harry Wildair, — the ecstatic town were ready to confess, that in 
 the new and youthful charmer they had at once recovered both Mrs. 
 Oldfield and Robert Wilks. And yet this enchantress, so gi-ace- 
 fiil, so winning, so natural, so refined, had commenced her public 
 career as one of the chikhen who were suspended by a rope ft'om 
 the ankles of Madame Violanti, when that wonder of her day ex- 
 hibited her powers, in Dublin, on the tight rope. 
 
 Loath to leave entirely, GoUey Gibber now and then, at £oO a 
 night, played a round of characters, always to crowded houses, but 
 most so when he enacted some of his old beaux and fops. His 
 Richard did not so well please ; and one night, when playing this 
 character, he whispered to Victor, that he would give £50 to be 
 in his easy chair again, by his fireside. 
 
 There was a Richard at hand who was likely to drive him 
 there, and keep all others from the stage. The season of 1741-2 
 opened at Drmy, on September 5, with " Love for Love," and the
 
 332 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 " Mock Doctor." The additions to the company, of note, were 
 Delane, Theophihis Gibber and Mrs. Woffington. Quin was 
 absent, starring in Ireland. Covent Garden opened on October 
 8th, with the "Provoked Wife." On the 19th of the latter 
 month, while Drury was giving "As You like It," and Covent 
 Garden was acting the same piece, the little theatre in AylifFc 
 Street, Goodman's Fields, announced the "Life and Death of 
 King Richard III.," " the part of King Richard by a gentleman, 
 •who never appeared on any stage." 
 
 At last ! the hour and the man had come. Throughout this 
 season no new piece was produced at either of the patent theatres, 
 so influenced were they by the consequences of this first appear- 
 ance of a nameless actor at Goodman's Fields. Of course, the 
 new actor was David Garrick.
 
 GARRICK. QUIX, MRS. PORTER. 333 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 OARRICK, (JUIN, MRS. PORTER. 
 
 He had selected the part of Richard HI., for reasons which 
 now appear singular. " He had often declared," says Davies, " he 
 would never choose a character that was not suitable to his 
 person ; for, said he, if I should come forth in a hero, or in any 
 part which is generally acted by a tall fellow, I shall not be offered 
 a larger salary than 40s. a week. In this," adds the biographer, 
 " he glanced at the follies of those managers who used to measure 
 an actor's merit by his size." 
 
 On that 19th of October, 1741, there was no very great nor 
 excitedly expectant audience at Goodman's Fields. The bill of 
 the day first promises a concert of vocal and instrumental music, 
 to begin exactly at six f)'clock ; admission by tickets " at three, 
 2s. and Is." Between the two parts of the concert, it is further 
 announced that the historical play of the " Life and Death of 
 Richard HI.," with the ballad-opera of " The Virgin Unmasked," 
 would be " performed gratis by Persons for their Diversion." The 
 part of King Richard, " by a gentleman who never appeared on 
 any stage," is an announcement, not true to the letter; but the 
 select audience were not troubled therewith. From the moment 
 the new actor appeared they were enthralled. They saw a Rich- 
 ard, and not an actor of that personage. Of the audience, he 
 seemed unconscious, so thoroughly did he identify himself with 
 the character. He surrendered himself to all its requirements, 
 was ready for every phase of passion, every change of humor, and 
 was as wonderful in quiet sarcasm as he was terrific in the hurri- 
 cane of the battle-scenes. Above all, his audience were delighted 
 with his " nature." Since Betterton's death, actors had fallen into 
 a rhythmical, mechanical, sing-song cadence. The style still lingers 
 amojig conservative French tragedians. Garrick spoke not as an 
 onrtor, but as King Richard himself might have spoken, in like
 
 334 poran's annals of the stage. 
 
 circumstances. The cliuckling exultation of his "So much for 
 Buckingham !" was long a tradition on the stage. His " points," 
 indeed, occurred in rapid succession. We are told that the rago 
 and rapidity with which he delivered 
 
 " Cold friends to me I What do they in the North, 
 When they should servo tlieir sovereign in the West?" 
 
 made a wonderful impression on the audience. Hogarth has 
 shown us how he looked, when starting from his dream ; und 
 critics tell us that his cry of " Give me another horse !" was the 
 cry of a gallant, fearless man ; but that it fell into one of distress 
 as he said, " Bind up my wounds," while the " Have mercy, 
 Heaven," was moaned piteously, on bended knee. The battle- 
 scene and death excited the utmost enthusiasm of an audience 
 altogether unused to acting like this. The true successor of Bet- 
 terton had, at last, appeared. Betterton was the great actor of 
 the days of Charles II., James II., William, and of Anne. Pow- 
 ell, Verbi-uggen, Mills, Quin, were unequal to the upholding of 
 such a task as Betterton had left them. Booth was more worthy 
 of the inheritance ; but after him came the true heir, David Gar- 
 rick, the first tragic actor who gave extraordinary lustre to the 
 Georgian Era. 
 
 And yet, for seven nights, the receipts averaged but about £30 
 a night; and Garrick only sloAvly made his way, at first. Then 
 suddenly the town was aroused. The western theatres were 
 abandoned. " Mr. Garrick," says Davies, " drew after him the in- 
 habitants of the most polite parts of the town. Goodman's Fields 
 were full of the splendor of St. James's and Grosvenor Square. 
 The coaches of the nobility filled up the space from Temple Bar 
 to Whitechapel." Among these, e . en bishops might have been 
 found. Pope came up from Twickenham and without disparaging 
 Betterton, as some old stagers were disposed to do, only " feared 
 the ■'lung man would be spoiled, for he would have no competi- 
 tor." Quin felt his laurels shaking on his brow, and declared that 
 if this young man was right, he and all the old actors must be wrong 
 But Quin took courage. Dissent was a-foot, and he compared 
 the attraction of Garrick to the attraction of Whitfield. The sheep 
 would go astray. The throwster's shop-tiieatrc was, in his eyes, a
 
 GARRICK, QUIN, MRS. PORTER. 335 
 
 sort of conventicle It would all come right by-and-by. The people, 
 he said, who go to chapel will soon corns to church again. 
 
 Meanwhile let us trace the new actor through his first and only 
 season in the far east. During that season, ii-oni the 19th of 
 October, 1741, to the 29th of May, 1742, Garrick acted" more 
 comic than tragic characters ; of the latter he played Richai-d 
 (eighteen times), Chamont, Lothario, the Ghost in " Uamlet" (Gif- 
 fard, the manager, playing the Dane), Aboan, King Lear, and 
 Pierre. In comedy, he played Cbdio (" Love Makes a Man"), 
 Fondlewife, Costar Pearmain, Witwond, Bayes, Master Johnny 
 (" School Boy"), Lord Foppington (" Careless Husband"), Dure- 
 tcte. Captain Brazen, and two characters in farces, of which he 
 was the original representative ; Jack Smatter in " Pamela," and 
 Sharp in the " Lying Valet." This is, at least, a singular selec- 
 tion. 
 
 The most important of his comic essays in his first busy season, 
 when he frequently played in tragedy and farce, on the same night, 
 •without affecting to be wearied, was in the part of Bayes. His 
 wonderful powers of mimicry, or imitation, wei'e not known till 
 then ; and in displaying them, his Bayes was a triumph, although 
 other actors excelled him in that part, as a whole. 
 
 His great scene was at the rehearsal of his play, when he cor- 
 rected the players, and instructing them how to act their parts, 
 he gave imitations of the peculiarities of several contemporary 
 actors. Garrick began with Delane, a comedian of merit, good, 
 presence, and agreeable voice, but, we are told, a " declaimer." 
 In taking him off, Garrick " retired to the upper part of the stage, 
 and drawing his left arm across his breast, rested his right elbow 
 upon it, raising a finger to his nose ; he then came forward in a 
 stately gait, nodding his head as he advanced, and in the exact 
 tone of Delane, spoke the famous simile of the " Boar and tl e 
 Sow." This imitation is said to have injured Delane in the 
 estimation of the town ; but it was enjoyed by no one more than 
 by tall and handsome Hale of Covent Garden, where his melodions 
 voice w^as nightly used in the character of lover. But when Hale 
 recognized himself in the soft, plaintive accents of a speech 
 delivered without feeling, he was as disgusted as Giffard, who was 
 so nettled by Garrick's close mimicry of his striking peculiarities,
 
 336 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 that he is said to have challenged the iniiuie, fought with him, and 
 wounded him in the sword-arm. Ryan, more wisely, let Garrick 
 excite what mirth he might from the imitation of the hoarse and 
 tremulous voice of the former; and Quin, always expecting to be 
 "tak6n off," was left untouched, salient as were his points, on the 
 ground, according to Murphy, of Quin's excellence in characters 
 suited to him. 
 
 From a salary of £l a night, Garrick went up at once to half 
 profits. The patent theatres remained empty when he played at 
 Goodman's Fields, and accordingly the patentees, threatening an 
 application to the law, in support of their privileges, shut up the 
 house, made terms with Giffard, and Garrick was brought over to 
 Drury Lane, where his salary was speedily fixed at £600 per 
 annum, being one hundred more tlian that of Quin, which hitherto 
 had been the higliest ever received by any player. 
 
 His first appearance at Drury Lane was on May 11, 1742, when 
 he played gratuitously for the benefit of Harper's widow, taking 
 what was then considered the inferior part of Chamont, in the 
 "Orphan," of which he made the principal character in the play. 
 With I^ayes, on the 29th, Lear and Richard, each part played 
 once, he brought his preliminary performances at Drury to a close. 
 In June, 1742, after playing triumphantly during the brief 
 remainder of the spring season at Drury Lane, Garrick, in com- 
 pany with Mrs. Woftington, crossed, by invitation, to Dublin. 
 During an unusually hot summer he drew such thickly-packed 
 audiences that a distemper became epidemic among those who 
 constantly visited the ill-ventilated theatre, which proved fatal to 
 many, and which received the distinction of being called the Gar- 
 rick fever. 
 
 Of course, Garrick had not equally affected all the judges. 
 Neither Gray nor Walpole allowed him to be the transcendent 
 actor, which the town generally held him to be, from the first 
 night of his appearance. " Did I tell you about Mr. Garrick, that 
 the town are horn-mad after ?" writes Gray to Chute ; " there are 
 a dozen dukes of a night at Goodman's Fields, sometimes ; and " 
 yet I am stiff in the opposition." In May, 1742, Walpole writes 
 in like strain to Mann : — " All the run is now after Garrick, a 
 wine-merchant, who is turned player at Goodman's Fields He
 
 GARRICK, QUIN, MRS. PORTER. 337 
 
 j-yays all parts, and is a very good mimic. His acting I have seen, 
 and may say to you, who will not toll it again here, I see nothing 
 wonderful in it ; but it is heresy to say so. The Duke of Argyll 
 says he is supei'ior to Betterton." The old Lord Cobham, who 
 was then at Stowe nui-sing Jemmy Hammond, the poet, who was 
 then dying for love of the incomparable Miss Dashwood, was of 
 the same opinion with the Duke ; but they could only contrast 
 Betterton in his decline with Garrick, in his young and vigorous 
 manhood. 
 
 In November of the last-named year, Mrs, Pendarves (Delany) 
 saw the new actor in Richard HI. " Garrick acted," she says, 
 " with his usual excellence ; but I think I won't go to any more 
 such deep tragedies, they shock the mind too much, and the 
 common objects of misery we daily meet with are sufficient morti- 
 fication." This lady, too, records the great dissensions that raged 
 among critics, with respect to his merits. 
 
 Before we accompany this great actor in his career of thirty 
 years and upwards, let us close the present chapter by looking 
 back over the path he has already passed, and which comes 
 towards us, singularly enough, from Versailles, and the cabinet of 
 the Great King ! 
 
 Yes ! When Louis XIV., on the 24th of October, 1685, signed 
 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he lost 800,000 Protestant 
 subjects, filled Spkalfields, Soho, St. Giles's, and other parts of 
 England, with 50,000 able artisans, and gave David Garrick to the 
 English stage ! 
 
 The grandfather of David was among the fugitives. That he 
 moderately prospered may be believed, since his son ultimately held 
 a captain's commission in the English array. Captain Garrick 
 married a lady named Clough, the daughter of a Lichfield vicar ; 
 and the most famous son of this marriage, David, was born at 
 Hereford, his father's recruiting quarters, in February, 1716. In 
 the same city was born Nell Gywn, if that, and not Margaret Sira- 
 cott, be her proper name. Her great-grandson, Lord James Beau- 
 clerk, was not yet bishop of the place when Garrick was born, but 
 a much more dramatic personage, Philip Bisse, was. This right 
 reverend gentleman was the audacious individual who, catching 
 the Duchess of Plymouth in the dark, kissed her, and theu 
 Vol L— 15
 
 338 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 apologized, on the ground that he had mistaken her for a Maid of 
 Honor. The Uvely duchess, who was then the widow of Charles 
 Fitz-Cliarles, natural son of" Charles II., hy Catherine Peg, married 
 the surpliced Corydon. Their life was a pleasant comedy ; and 
 under this very dramatic episcopate was Roscius born. 
 
 His boyhood was passed at Lichfield, where ho became more 
 remarkable for his mania for acting tlian for application to school 
 studies. At the age of eleven years, chief of a boyish company 
 of players, he acted Kite, in the " Recruiting Officer," in which 
 one of his sisters represented the chambermaid, and to which 
 Master Samuel Johnson refused to supply an introductory address. 
 From Lichfield he made a trip to Lisbon, and therewith an 
 attempt to fix himself in a vocation. His failure was no source of 
 regret to himself. His uncle, a wine-merchant in the Portuguese 
 capital, was not disposed to initiate the volatile lad into the 
 mysteries of his craft, and David returned to Lichfield, with such 
 increase of taste for the drama, that "several of his father's 
 acquaintances," says Davies, " who knew the delight which he felt 
 in the entertainment of the stage, often treated him with a journey 
 to London, that he miglit feast his appetite at the playhouse." 
 By this singularly liberality, the ardent youth was enabled to see 
 old Mills and Wilks, the two Gibbers, Ryan (of whose Richard, 
 Garrick always spoke with admiration), and Quin. Booth was 
 then stricken with the illness which ultimately killed him, and 
 Garrick thus failed to study the greatest of actors between the era 
 of Betterton and the coming time of Garrick himself. Of 
 actresses, the most important wliom he saw, were Mrs. Porter, 
 Mrs. Gibber, witli whom he was destined to rouse the passions of 
 many an audience, and Miss Raftor, who, as Mrs. Clive, was after- 
 wards to rouse and play with his own. 
 
 This ardent youth returned to Lichfield with more eager desire 
 than ever to achieve fame and fortune on the stage. To supply 
 what had been lacking in his education, he became the pupil of 
 Samuel Johnson ; but master and scholar soon wearied of it, and 
 they together left Lichfield for London, Garrick with small means 
 and great hopes, Johnson with means as small and his tragedy of 
 « Irene." 
 
 The resources of David were speedily increased by the death
 
 GARRICK, QUIN, MRS. PORTER. 339 
 
 of his uncle, who bequeathed him a thousand pounds, with the 
 interest of which David paid the cost of instruction whicli he re- 
 ceived from the Rev. Mr. Colson. Other opportunities faiUng, he 
 joined with his brother Peter in the wine trade, in Durham Yard, 
 where, said Foote, in after years, and with his characteristic ill- 
 nature, " Dav}^ lived, with three quarts of vinegar in the cellar, 
 calling himself a wine-merchant." Had the father of David been 
 at home, instead of on service at Gibraltar, the latter would 
 probably have been a Templar student ; but Garrick hated the 
 study of the law, and, out of deference to his mother, the vicar's 
 daughter, he refrained from appearing on the stage ; but when 
 both parents had passed away, within the same year, Garrick, who 
 had studied each living actor of mark, and even recorded his 
 judgment of them, anonymously and honestly, in the public 
 papers, left the stock in trade at Durham Yard to his senior 
 partner and brother. In 1741, a diffident young gentleman, 
 calling himself Lyddell, made his first appearance on the stage, at 
 Ipswich. He selected the part of Aboan, for two reasons ; that 
 it was a secondary character, and that Aboan was a "black." 
 The attempt presented less difficulty, for the first reason ; and 
 failure need not be followed by recognition, seeing that his 
 features would be half-concealed under " color." The attempt, 
 however, was fairly successful, but not a triumph. David went 
 earnestly into training. He played every species of character, 
 solemn tragedy heroes, high and low comedy, and even that in- 
 carnation of the monkey in man, as Alphonse Karr calls him, the 
 bustling, glittering, active, and potent Harlequin. 
 
 His career of a few months at Ipswich was as the preparatory 
 canter of the high-mettled racer over the course. All who 
 witnessed it, augured well of the young actor ; and Giffard, the 
 manager, agreed to bring him out in London in the autumn of 
 the same year, 1741, at that theatre, in Goodman's Fields, which 
 had been made, twelve years previously, out of a throwster's shop. 
 It had been opened, without competent license, by Odell, the 
 dramatist, and subsequently deputy licenser of plays under the 
 famous Act which Walpole introduced and Chesterfield opposed. 
 Odell was so conscientious, or so prudent, that in consequence of 
 a sermon preached against the theatre, in one of the Aldgate
 
 340 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 churches, he sold his interest to GiffarJ, who eahirged the house, 
 and opened it in 1732. After a struggle of three seasons' 
 duration, the determined opposition of the Eastern puritans drove 
 hira to Lincoln's Inn Fields. He returned, however, at the end of 
 two years ; and maintained his position with varying fortunes, till 
 at length, in 1741, he brought Mr. Lyddell, now Mr. Garrick, from 
 the banks of the Orwell to the neighborhood of the old gate, 
 where the statues of Love and Charity still stood, and near 
 which, crowds soon awoke such echoes as had not been heard in 
 the vicinity since the godlike effigies were first erected. 
 
 In the seasons of 1742-3, Garrick acted about eighty nights, — 
 Hamlet, thirteen times ; Richard and Bayes, eleven ; Archer, nine ; 
 Lear, six ; Fondlewife and Hastings, four ; Chamont, three ; Plume, 
 Clodio, and Pierre, twice ; Abel Drugger, once ; Wildair, created 
 by him in Fielding's " Wedding Day," Lothario, Millamour, and 
 Sharp, occasionally. Of these, Wildair was a decided failure. 
 
 Quin played against him at Covent Garden, Richard, Chamont, 
 Lear, and Pierre, but in these he proved no competitor. He fell 
 back on his general repertory, and, among many other characters, 
 played Falstaff", Macbeth, Othello, and Brutus, none of which Gar- 
 rick assumed this year. Garrick's Fondlewife was opposed by 
 that of Hippisley at Covent Garden, and that of Cibber, the 
 younger, at Lincoln's Inn Fields. His Hamlet was encountered by 
 that of Ryan, at Covent Garden, to Quin's Ghost ; and a counter- 
 attraction to his Lothario was set up in those of Ryan and of the 
 silly amateur, Highmore, the latter at Lincoln's Inn Fields. From 
 all competition, Garrick came out triumphant. 
 
 Of Lincoln's Inn Fields, this was the " positively final" season. 
 Gifiard managed the house with judgment, but he lost there some 
 of the wealth which he had acquired at Goodman's Fields, and out 
 of which he purchased the ground on which he built Coventry 
 Court, locality of gloomy reputation, near the Haymarket. Dul- 
 wich College was a wiser investment of money acquired in the 
 theatre. 
 
 Covent Garden lost, this year, a great actress in Mrs. Porter, who 
 commenced her theatrical career as theatrical attendant to Mrs. 
 Barry, and was one of the old players of King William's days. 
 Among the most marked of her original representations were
 
 GARRICK, QUIN, M^^S. PORTER. 341 
 
 Araminta, in the " Confederacy ;" Hermione, Lucia, in " Cato ;" 
 Alicia, in " Jane Shore ;" Lady Woodville, in the " Non-juror ;" 
 Leonora, in the " Revenge ;" and Lady Grace, in the " Provoked 
 Husband." Few details of her life are known. 
 
 Genest combines the testimonies of Victor and Davies in de- 
 scribing Mrs. Porter, as the genuine successor of Mrs. Barry, 
 to whom the former had long played the "confidantes" in 
 tragedy, and from the great mistress learned her noble art. We 
 are told that Mrs. Porter was tall and well made, of a fair com- 
 plexion, but far from handsome ; her voice, which was naturally 
 tender, was by labor and practice enlaiged into sufficient force to 
 fill the theatre, but by that means a tremor was contracted to 
 which nothing but custom could have reconciled the audience. 
 She elevated herself above all personal defects by an exquisite 
 judgment. Li comedy, her acting was somewhat cold and in- 
 eflBcient; but in those pai'ts of tragedy where the passions pre- 
 dominate, she seemed to be another person, and to be inspired 
 with that noble and enthusiastic ardor which was capable of 
 raising the coldest auditor to animation. She had a dignity iu 
 her mien, and a spirited propriety in all characters of rage ; but 
 when grief and tenderness possessed her, she subsided into the 
 most affecting softness. She acted the tragic parts of Hermione 
 and Belvidera with great applause. Booth, who was no admirer 
 of Mrs. Oldfield in tragedy, was in raptures with Mrs. Porter's 
 Belvidera. She excelled particularly in her agony, when forced 
 from Jaffier, in the second act, and in her madness. 
 
 After the dislocation of her limb, and in advanced age, she still 
 acted with vigor and success. In Queen Elizabeth ("Albion 
 Queens"), she turned the cane she used on account of her lame- 
 ness, to great advantage. After signing Mary's death-warrant, she 
 " struck the stage," says Davies, " with such characteristic vehe- 
 mence, that the audience reiterated applause." 
 
 On Valentine's night, 1743, the Prince and Princess of Wales 
 were present at her farewell benefit, when she played this Queen 
 Elizabeth, under august patronage. The fine old lady seems to 
 have fallen into some distress, for in 1758, she published, by five 
 shilling subscriptions, for her benefit, the comedy of " The Mis- 
 takes, or the Happy Resentment," which had been given to her
 
 342 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 by Pope's Lord Cornbury, the son, but not destined to be the 
 heir, of the last of the Hydes, who bore the title of Earls of 
 Clarendon. He was a dull writer, but so good a man, that Wal- 
 pole says, in reference to Pope's line — 
 
 " Disdain what Corubury disdains,"— 
 
 " it was a test of virtue to disdain what he disdained." After his 
 death, by falling from a horse in France, the decayed tragedy 
 queen published the play. The old and favored servant of the 
 public modestly says, that her " powers of contributing to their 
 amusement are no more," but that she " always retains a grateful 
 sense of the indulgence she had received from those who have 
 had the goodness to accept her inclination and endeavors to 
 please, as real merit." Nothing could be more modest, but the 
 truth is, that this was written/or Mrs. Porter, by Horace Walpole. 
 The subscription list was well filled, — the Countess Cowper, whose 
 letters figure in Mrs. Delany's memoirs, taking fourscore copies. 
 
 Let us now return to the renewed struggles of the rival houses, 
 made fiercer by the rise of a new actor
 
 RIVALRY ; AND ENTER. SPRANGER BARRY. 343 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 rivalry; and knter, spranger barry. 
 
 Hitherto, under the mismanagement of the lazy and reckless 
 patentee, Fleetwood, Drury Lane had fallen to a level with Sad- 
 lers Wells — tumblers and rope-dancers being put forward as the 
 chief attractions. Even after Garrick's accession, gross mismanage- 
 ment continued, and drove the principal actors, whose salaries 
 were often unpaid, into open rebellion. They sought permission from 
 the Lord Chamberlain, the Duke of Grafton, to open the theatre 
 in the Haymarket, on their own account. But the grandson of 
 Charles H. sneered at the fact of an actor earning £600 a year, 
 when a relative of his own, in the navy, repeatedly exposed his 
 life, in the king's service, for half that sum. The duke put con- 
 straint on them to return to their allegiance to Fleetwood. The 
 latter dictated hard terms to most of them, except to Garrick, and 
 he flatly refused to receive Macklin at all. This exclusion brought 
 on a remarkable theatrical riot. The confederate actors had 
 agreed to triumph or to fall together. To allow Macklin to be 
 sacrificed to the resentment of Fleetwood, was a betrayal on their 
 part, of the compact. Macklin appealed to the town, and Roscius 
 would have been driven from the stage, but for Fleetwood's hired 
 pugilists who pummelled one portion of the audience into silence, 
 and enabled the whole house to enjoy, after all, what they most 
 cared for — the acting of Garrick, undisturbed. In this season, 
 1743-4, Roscius did not appear till the 6th of December, when 
 he acted Bayes. Between that night, and the close of the season, 
 on the 31st of May, he played in all seventy times. His most 
 tnarked success was in Macbeth, in the tragedy "written by 
 Shakspeare," when he had Mrs. GifFard for his Lady ; he repeated 
 this part thirteen times. Covent Garden opposed to him, first 
 Quin, in Davenant's alteration of Shakspeare, and subsequently 
 Sheridan, who on the 31st of March, 1744, made his first appear 
 ance at Covent Garden, in opposition to Garrick, as Hamlet
 
 314: doran's anxals of the stage. 
 
 The force of the two theatres will be better understood, perhaps, 
 if I show the exact amount of the opposition brought to bear 
 against each other. Garrick's Richard was met by that of Ryan ; 
 the Lord and Lady Townley of Garrick and Mrs. Woffington, by 
 those of Ryan and Mrs. Ilorton ; the Hamlet and Ophelia of the 
 former two, by those of Ryan (and afterwards of Sheridan) and 
 Mrs. Clive. Garrick and Mrs. Giffard, in " Macbeth," were 
 opposed, first by Qnin, then by Sheridan and Mrs. Pritchard, who 
 played every thing, from the Thane's wife to Kitty Pry. To op- 
 pose to him an amateur, like Highmore, in Lothario, was absurd ; 
 Quin's Lear had no weight against the mad old king by his young 
 rival ; and Mrs. Charke's Plume, one of the many male characters 
 which Gibber's daughter loved to play, was pale, compared with 
 that of the universal actor. 
 
 All the above were honorable competitors; but there also 
 appeared this season an actor, who became Ganick's personal 
 enemy — namely, Foote. The latter commenced his career at the 
 Haymarket, February 6th, 1744, as Othello, to the lago of Mack- 
 lin, who had opened that house with a " scratch company," 
 including " pupils" — while he was disengaged at Drury Lane. 
 Foote also played Hamlet, to the Ghost and First Gi-avedigger of 
 Macklin ; and did not find his vocation, as he thought, in such 
 parts as Lord Foppington. 
 
 At both patent houses the " Beggars' Opera" was produced ; at 
 Drury, the Machcath and Polly were Blakes and Miss Budgell, 
 an illegitimate daughter of Eustace Budgell ; at the Garden, 
 Cashell's Macheath gave way to that of Beard, while the Polly and 
 Lucy of Kitty Clive and Mrs. Pritchard, at the same theatre, 
 charmed the auditors for a time, and gave them pleasant memories 
 for a long period to come. 
 
 The literature of the stage did not make progress this season, 
 (/lassical Cooke selected an assize case of murder in Kent, and 
 spoiled its terrible simplicity in his " Love the Cause." To 
 Havard's cold, declamatory tragedy, " Regulus," Garrick ga' e 
 warmth and natural eloquence ; but even his Zaphna, admirable as 
 it was in " Mahomet," would not have saved the Rev. Mr. Mil.'er'a 
 adaptation from Voltaire, had that part of the public who hated 
 the adapter, known to whom they were indebted for it. Miller
 
 RIVALRY ; AND ENTER, SPR^VNGER BARRY 3J:5 
 
 ended his uneasy life, during the run of the play, a represtntation 
 of which, after his death, contributed a hundred pounds to the 
 relief of his widow and children. 
 
 In the season of 17-44-5, the old opposition was feebly sustained 
 on the part of Covent Garden, but with some novelty appended — 
 especially in the case of a ballad-singer like Cashell, attempting 
 Hamlet against Garrick ! Further, the King John of the latter in 
 Shakspeare's play was opposed to old Gibber's alteration of the 
 same piece, produced at Covent Garden, as " Papal Tyranny," in 
 which Quin played the King, and toothless, nerveless Gibber, Pan- 
 dulph. The indulgent audience pitied the quavering old player. 
 
 Garrick's King John was a fine, but not the most perfect of his 
 performances ; he was happy in such a Constance as Mrs. Gibber. 
 Quin congratulated himself on having such a Hubert as Bridge- 
 water, the ex-coal-dealer. The value of Gibber's mangling of 
 Shakspeare, got up to abuse the Pope, because of the Pretender, 
 may be conjectured by a single instance — that John is too shy to 
 hint at the murder of Arthur till Hubert has " shut the window- 
 shutters." The modesty of the mangier may be more than 
 guessed at from the fact, that Gibber — in his own words — " en- 
 deavored to "j;ak^ it more like a play than I found it in Shak- 
 speare !" 
 
 Quin, to witness his rival's impersonation of Othello to the lago 
 of Macklin, w^ent to Drury, in company with Bishop Hoadley's 
 son, the doctor. Foote, in the previous February, had announced 
 that his Othello would " be new dressed, after the manner of his 
 country." Garrick, on his entrance, looked so ill in Quin's jealous 
 eyes, that he compared him to Hogarth's black boy, and said to 
 Hoadley, " Why doesn't he bring in the tea-kettle and lamp ?" 
 Great as Quin was in mere declamation, Garrick excelled him in 
 the address to the senate. Victor describes the falling into, and 
 the recovery from, the trance, as " amazingly beautiful ;" but he 
 honestly told Garrick, that the impersonation was short of per- 
 fection. Murphy states that Garrick had the passions at command, 
 and that in the sudden violence of their transitions he was with- 
 out a rival. 
 
 GaiTick attempted Scrub with less success, and Quin had no 
 reason to be disquieted by his rival's Sir John Brute. Quin'a 
 15*
 
 3iG doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Othello was a favorite with the town ; but in that part Gamck had 
 a more formidable rival in Sheridan, and the most formidable in 
 Barry. The only original character he played this season was 
 Tancred, in Thomson's "Tancred and Sigismunda," a play too 
 sentimental and stilted, too poor in incident, and too little varied 
 in character, in spite of its occasional richness and sweetness, to 
 interest an audience, in these days. It was otherwise, at the time 
 of its first appearance, when with Garrick, Tancred ; Sheridan, Sif- 
 fredi ; Delane, Osmond ; and Mrs. Gibber, Sigismunda ; — the town 
 sighed, wept, and moaned over the love trials of the celebrated 
 pair. Garrick's Tancred is warmly eulogized by Davies, who de- 
 scribes Garrick and Mrs. Gibber as "formed by nature for the 
 illustration of each other's talents. In their persons," he says, 
 " they were both somewhat below the middle size. He was, 
 though short, well-made ; she, though in her form not graceful, 
 and scarcely genteel, was, by the elegance of her manners and 
 symmetry of her features rendered very attractive. From similarity 
 of complexion, size, and countenance, they could have been easily 
 supposed brother and sister; but in the powerful expression of 
 the passions, they approached to a still nearer resemblance. He 
 was master of all the passions, but more particularly happy in the 
 exhibition of parts where anger, resentment, disdain, horror, de- 
 spair, and madness predominated. In love, grief, and tenderness, 
 she greatly excelled all competitors, and was also unrivalled in the 
 more ardent emotions of jealous love and frantic rage, which she 
 expressed with a degree of sensibility in voice, look, and action, 
 that she never failed to draw tears from the most unfeeling." 
 
 A change of proprietorship in the Drury Lane patent aftbrded 
 Garrick an excuse for repairing to Dublin. His rival, Sheridan, 
 invited him, not concealing his dislike, but professing readiness to 
 meet all his requirements. With some difficulty the terms were 
 arranged, and Gan-ick appeared in various characters, alternating 
 them with Sheridan, and playing frequently with a new actor, 
 young Barry, who was afterwards to become the most dreaded 
 and the most brilliant of his rivals. 
 
 For a long series of years the Irish stage had been, with rare ex- 
 ceptions, in a pitiable condition. At one time, three houses were 
 open, with a public only sufficient for one. Managing committees
 
 rivalry; and enter, spranger barry. 347 
 
 of noblemen made the confusion worse confounded, and seven 
 manao-ers, known as the " seven wise men," only exhibited their 
 folly and incapacity. There were performers of merit at from 
 twelve shillings to a guinea a week, who seldom obtained half 
 their salaries. On one occasion, we hear of the acting managers 
 coming down to the theatre, one evening, when, on comparing 
 notes, they were all found to be dinnerless, for want of cash and 
 of credit. With the first money that was paid at the doors, they 
 obtained a loin of mutton, with the next they sent for bread, and 
 with a third supply they procured the generous beverage they 
 most required ; and then dined behind the scenes while the per- 
 formance was in progress. 
 
 Sheridan's management produced a thorough reformation ; and 
 when Garrick appeared, on the 9th of December, 1745, as Ham- 
 let, the sensation was extraordinary ; but it was increased when 
 Garrick, Barry, and Sheridan acted in the same plays — tlae 
 " Orphan" and the " Fair Penitent." Then, the enthusiasm was 
 unbounded. In the latter play, Barry is said to have so distin- 
 guished himself in Altamont as to have raised that character to 
 a level with those of Lothario and Horatio, played respectively by 
 Garrick and Sheridan. This was the most successful season ever 
 known in Dublin. During its progress Garrick played but one 
 character he had never played before, — Orestes, and that he never 
 repeated in England. His objection to wear the old classical 
 costume, or what then passed for it, was extreme. His sojourn in 
 Dublin was otherwise not void of incident. There was one thin 
 house, and that by command of a leading lady of fashion, on the 
 night of his playing Falconbridge to Sheridan's King John. The 
 part of Constance belonged by right to that sparkling young 
 beauty, Mrs. Bellamy. Garrick thought her too youthful to en- 
 act the mother of Arthur, and he persuaded Sheridan to give the 
 part to an older actress, Mrs. Furnival. The angry Bellamy flew 
 to lay her wrongs before the most influential woman then in Dub- 
 lin, the Hon. Mrs. Butler, whose word, throughout the Irish world 
 of fashion, passed for law. Mrs. Butler espoused the suppliant's 
 case warmly, and issued her decree, prohibiting the world over 
 which she ruled from visiting the theatre on the night "King 
 John" was to be played. As she gave excellent dinners and ex-
 
 848 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 quisite balls, she was obeyed by all ages and both, sexes, and the 
 " quality," at least, left the actors to play to empty boxes. 
 
 Garrick had recovered from the attendant mortification, when 
 lie asked Mrs. Bellamy to play Jane Shore to his Hastings, for his 
 benefit. The lady declined. If she was too young for Constance, 
 she was too young for Jane Shore. Garrick applied to Mrs. But- 
 ler to use her influence, but it availed nothing. He addressed a 
 high-flown letter to Mrs. Bellamy : — " To my soul's idol, the beau- 
 tiful Ophelia;" but the epistle fell into wrong hands, and found 
 its way into the papers. 
 
 Roscius, before leaving Ireland, paid homage to the Hon. Mrs. 
 Butler, by taking leave of her in a formal visit. With equal for- 
 mality, as the visitor was about to depart, the lady placed in his 
 hands a small packet. It contained, she said, her own sentiments 
 and convictions, and, in presenting it to Mr. Garrick, all that she 
 requested was, that he would abstain from too curiously inquiring 
 into its contents until he had sailed out of Dublin Bay. The ac- 
 tor had vanity enough to lead him to think, that within the myste- 
 rious packet might be enclosed some token of affection, perhaps 
 an acknowledgment of love. He obeyed the lady's injunctions 
 till the ship, which was conveying him to Holyhead, had passed 
 the Hill of Howth, then, " by your leave, fair seal !" and he arrived 
 at the heart of the mystery. Carefully unfolded, he found a copy 
 of Wedetfs Hymns and of Swiff s Discourse on the Trinity. In 
 nis disappointment he is said to have flung both books into the 
 sea; but I think he may have had better taste, and that he took 
 Mrs. Butler's remembrances with him to London. 
 
 Before proceeding to chronicle the leading events of the next 
 London season, it remains to be stated that in the last season at 
 Covcnt Garden, there was one first appearance of note : that ot 
 George Anne Bellamy, on the 22d of November, 1744, as Nioni- 
 mia, in the " Orphan." Rich persuaded this gifted but self-willed 
 girl to become an actress, greatly to the displeasure of Quin, who 
 objected to perform Chamont, to such a child. In the first three 
 acts, her terrors rendered her so incapable, that old Quin's objec- 
 tions seemed justified ; but, recovering her power with her courage, 
 the brilliant young creature played with such eft'ect, that Quin 
 embraced her after the act-scene dropped, pronounced her " divine,"
 
 RIVALRY ; AXD ENTER, SPRANGER BARRY. 349 
 
 and declared that she was of tlie " true spirit." She sensibly 
 strengthened a company already strong, in Mrs. Pritchard, Mrh. 
 Clive, and Mrs. Horton. On the loth of April, 1745, Shuter, 
 from Richmond, appeared at Covent Garden, in the " Schoolboy," 
 under the designation of Master Shuter. 
 
 At the Haymarket, Theophilus Gibber revived some of Shak- 
 speare's plays, and produced his daughter Jane, in Juliet, and 
 other parts; but Colley compelled him to withdraw his daughter, 
 and the Lord Chamberlain forced him to close an unlicensed house, 
 which, however, his eccentric sister, Mrs. Charke, contrived to 
 keep open for a while, playing there Captain Macheath and other 
 male characters, before she attempted to pass herself off on the 
 world, or hide herself from it, as a man. 
 
 There is this irregularity in the season of 1745-6, that neither 
 Garrick, nor Quin, nor Mrs. Gibber was engaged at either house. 
 The public was more concerned with the Scottish Rebellion than 
 with the drama. Loyal Lacy, who had succeeded the incapable 
 Fleetwood in the patent, applied for leave to raise 200 men in de- 
 fence of King and Government ; and the whole company of Drury 
 Lane players expressed their willingness to engage in it. The 
 spirit which some hundred years before had animated the loyal 
 actors, now moved Delane ; and Luke, and Isaac Sparks, with 
 Barrington, all three newly come from Ireland, — Mills, with ortho- 
 dox Havard, Bridges, Giffiird, Yates, Macklin, Neale, and Foote. 
 The ladies, Clive, Woffington, Macklin, mother and daughter, Mrs. 
 Giffard, and the rest, applauded the loyal confederacy. The " Non- 
 juror" was revived, with Luke Sparks as Dr. Wolf, because of its 
 political allusions. Macklin, in six weeks, wrote his " Henry VII., 
 or the Popish Impostor," and distributed it, act by act, for study, 
 and he sent the Pretender, Perkin Warbeck, to execution, without 
 much succoring King George. Ford's ultra-monarchical piece, on 
 the same subject, was revived at Goodman's Fields, and Covent 
 Garden rehearsed another to no effect, as the Rebellion was over 
 before the piece could suppress it. The " Massacre at Paris," with 
 its story of the pretensions of the Duke de Guise (Ryan), and its 
 famous Protestant prologue, was among the Covent Garden revi- 
 vals. The Scottish rebellion being over, Theophilus Gibber con- 
 gratulated the audience thereon at Drury ; and Mrs. Pritchard, at
 
 350 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 the Garden, after acting Aspasla, in " Tamerlane," recited an exult- 
 ing prologue, which Dodsley printed in his best type. Both 
 houses gave benefits for the " Vetei'an Scheme" at Guildhall, for 
 which scheme Mrs. Gibber offered to play three nights, gratis, but 
 was snubbed, by a hyper-Protestant, in the papers. The handsome 
 Catholic actress indignantly replied, that her love for King George 
 was not diminished by her faith in the Romish religion. The 
 whole matter ended merrily, by George II., and the entire royal 
 family, repairing to Covent Garden, where " Macbeth" was per- 
 formed, and a rebel and regicide put to death, to the great satis- 
 faction of the royal, noble, gentle, and simple audience there con- 
 gregated. 
 
 I do not know which of the new-comers, named above, so 
 struck Lady Townshend, that she told Horace Walpole, in Sep- 
 tember, 1745, "she had seen anew fat player, who looked like 
 everybody's husband." Walpole replied, " I could easily believe 
 that, from seeing so many women who looked like everybody's 
 wives !" 
 
 In all other respects, there is little worthy of notice, save that, 
 at the close, when all was jubilee again, and Charles Edward no 
 longer an object of fear, Garrick reappeared in London. He 
 arrived in town in May, 1746. Rich and Lacy were both eager 
 to engage him, but the former succeeded, and Garrick closed the 
 season at Covent Garden, by playing six nights at £50 per night. 
 Thus he gained more in a week than Betterton, ere he was a 
 " master," had gained in a year. Lacy, meanwhile, had secured 
 Barry, and the town were eager to hear him of the silver tongue. 
 Gai'rick generously said of him, in answer to a query respecting 
 the meiits of the Irish actor, that he was the most exquisite lover 
 that had ever been seen on the stage. Bany proved the truth of 
 ' this criticism, by excelling Garrick in Romeo, in which the latter 
 was so fervent, the former so winning and so seductive. 
 
 Before we proceed to notice the coming struggle, let us cast 
 back a glance at the stage from whence this master came.
 
 THE OLD DUBLIN THEATEE. 351 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE OLD DUBLIN THEATRE. 
 
 But for a murder in the house of a Mrs. Bungy, Dublin would 
 not have had its famous old theatre in that locality, which the 
 popular voice would call by the name of Smock Alley (from the 
 handsome hussies who lived there), long after Mrs. Bungy's house 
 and those adjacent to it had been swept away, and the newer and 
 finer edifices were recorded as standing in " Orange Street." The 
 first theatre in this questionable locality was erected soon after 
 the Restoration ; but at the period named, this house and theat 
 ricals, generally, were opposed with as much bitterness in Dublin, 
 as in Edinburgh. 
 
 I learn from Gilbert's History of Dublin that, in 1662, the Chapter 
 of Christ church expressed its horror at " one of the stipendiaries of 
 the church having sung among the stage-players in the play-house, 
 to the dishonor of God's service and disgrace to the members and 
 ministers of the church." The ultra-religious portion of the Dub- 
 lin community hated the theatre, with all their hearts, and to such 
 persons two little ijicidents occurred to the playhouse in Smock 
 Alley, which must have been peculiarly pleasant to their humane 
 yet indignant hearts. One was, that in 1671, the gallery of the 
 above-mentioned house, being overcrowded, fell into the pit. The 
 consequences, of course, were lamentable, but, you see, those 
 godless players were acting Jonson 's " Bartholomew Fair," and 
 what could be expected when that satire on the super-righteous 
 was raising a laugh in the throats of the Philistines? Again, in 
 1701, a part of the same house fell in during a representation of 
 Shad well's " Libertine," and nothing could seem more natural than 
 this catastrophe, to the logical bosoms of the upright ; for at the 
 devil's jubilee, Satan himself was present, and carried home with 
 him the lost souls of his children. Even the play-going public
 
 352 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 grew a little suspicious of the stability of the building, but they 
 were reassured by the easy certificate of a " Surveyor-general," 
 who asserted that there was no chance of a failure in the hold- 
 fasts and supports of the edifice, /or several years ! Iji lialf-a-dozen 
 years, however, the house was down ; and, in seven months, the 
 new house was open to an eager public. The latter, however, 
 were not quite so eager to enter as the managers were to receive 
 them. " So eager were they to open, that they began to play 
 before the back part of the house was tiled in, which, the town 
 knowing, they had not half an audience the first night, but mend- 
 e(1 leisurely by degrees," It was in the old house that Elrington, 
 the great support of Drury Lane when Booth was indisposed, ruled 
 supreme in the hearts and houses of his enthusiastic Irish admirers. 
 His old patrons never forgot him. " I have known," says one al- 
 ready quoted, " Tom Elrington in the part of Bajazet to be heard 
 all over the Blind Quay ; and I do not believe you could hear Barry 
 or Mossop out of the house." 
 
 We are here, however, anticipating events. Let us return to 
 chronological order. In the old houses, heavy classical tragedy 
 seems to have been most popular ; and when Dublin was tired of 
 it, the company took it to Edinburgh. Rough times of war closed 
 the house ; but when William's authority was firmly established, 
 theatrical matters looked up again, and in March, 1692, Ashbury, 
 who, with Mr. and Mrs. Betterton, had instructed the Princess 
 Anne how to speak and act Semandra, in " Mithridates," when 
 that piece was played at Whitehall, opened the house with " Othel- 
 lo," playing lago to the Moor of Robert Wilks. Among this early 
 company are also to be noted Booth, Estcourt, Norris, Bowen, 
 and Trefusis, contributions from England, and the latter so admirable 
 for dancing the rustic clown, that General Ingoldsby once handed 
 him a £5 note from his box and gave him a second when Joe 
 went up to the Castle to thank him, — the General not recognizing 
 him till Trefusis imitated his dialect and action of the night 
 before. 
 
 The ladies were not in force ; Mrs. Knightly, Mrs. Ashbury, and 
 Mrs. Hook, were the principal under Ashbury, who added the 
 names of Quin and the two Ellingtons, and Mrs. Thurmond, to his 
 company, before he closed a management of about thirty years.
 
 THE OLD DUBLIN THEATKE. 353 
 
 In that period, Ashbury raised the Irish stage to a prosperous 
 and respectable position. His son-in-law, Thomas Ehington, suc- 
 ceeded him in the management. 
 
 Under Elrington's rule, young Stirling first awaked the Irish 
 muse to tragedy, and Charles Shadwell furnished the house with 
 half-a-dozen pieces of very inferior merit. Meanwhile, in 1727, 
 Madame Violanti opened a booth, with her wondrous rope-dancing 
 and her Lilliputian company, whose representation of the " Beg- 
 gars' Opera" excited a perfect sensation. The Macheath was a 
 Miss Betty Barnes ; Polly, Miss Woffington ; Peachem, Master 
 Isaac Sparks ; and Filch, Master Barrington, — all of these were, 
 subsequently, players of more or less renown. 
 
 Up to this time, the best native actor was Wilks, now we have 
 Peg Woffington; in 1728 appeared the handsome young Delane, 
 of Trinity College ; his graceful figure, full-toned voice, added to 
 his zeal and application (both too short-lived), rendered him an 
 unusual favorite. In the same company were Mr. and Mrs. Ward, 
 whose daughter, born at Clonrael, was the mother of " the 
 Kembles." 
 
 Elrington died in 1732. He was the first actor who played 
 Zanga, in Dublin ; much to the admiration of Dr. Young, who 
 thought Mills mouthed and growled the character overmuch. 
 After Elrington's death, disorder sprung up. Smock Alley was 
 opposed by a new theatre, erected in Rainsford Street, in the 
 " Earl of Meath's Liberty," and beyond the jurisdiction of the 
 mayor. At the former, the company, including, occasionally, some 
 of the best actors from London, was better than the house which was 
 so decayed, that a new, a much grander, but in every other way a 
 less efficient house, was erected in Aungier Street, at which the 
 tall, cold beauty, the ex-Quakeress, Mrs. Bellamy, mother of George 
 Anne Bellamy, was a principal actress. A committee of noble- 
 men managed this house, with the usual result of enormous loss. 
 Dublin having more theatres than could prove profitable, the 
 old theatre in Smock Alley was pulled down ; but a new one was 
 erected, which was opened in December, 1735, with "Love for 
 Love, in which Don Duart was played by Cashel, subsequently 
 a popular Macheath. He was one of the many actors who have 
 died, or received their death-stroke, on the stage. While acting
 
 354 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Frankly, in the "Suspicious Husband," at Norwich, in 1 748, he 
 was smitten by apoplexy, and died in a few hours. 
 
 The Theatre Royal in Aungier Street had its real opponent in 
 this house, opened by license of the Lord Mayor, in the more cen- 
 tral position, in Smock Alley. The house in Rainsford Street 
 was soon closed. London performers, who were sure of profitable 
 benefits, went over to both houses ; but I much prefer to remark 
 that, at Aungier Street, in February, 1737, Margaret Woffington, 
 her childhood being past, first appeared as an actress, in the 
 part of Ophelia. Her beauty, grace — her ease, simplicity — her 
 pretty singing, her coquetry, and the wonderful " finish" of the 
 male characters she afterwards assumed, gave a fortune to the 
 theatre, which was only checked by the famine of the severe winter 
 1739-40, during which the houses were closed for three months. 
 
 This theatre in Aungier Street had a company so powerful, in- 
 cluding Quin, Delane and Mrs. Gibber, at the close of the London 
 season, that, on its reopening, in 1741, Smock Alley, with Elring- 
 ton, Isaac Sparks, and Mrs. Furnival, could not successfully com- 
 pete with it ; but in June, 1742, Duval, the proprietor, by engaging 
 GifFard, Mrs. Wofiington, and Garrick, turned the scale, and during 
 three of the hottest months of the hottest summer ever known, 
 attracted crowds to Smock Alley, and spread fever over the city ! 
 
 After success, and when the great players had disappeared, 
 came reaction, empty houses, tumblers, rope-dancers, equestrian- 
 ism, — and nightly losses. On the 29th of January, 1743, however, 
 the town felt a new sensation, afl;brded by the acting of a " young 
 gentleman" in Richard, at Smock Alley. The Mithridates of the 
 debutant was as successful as Richard, and then the young actor 
 was known to be the son of Dr. Sheridan, a young man of three- 
 and-twenty, whose appearance on the stage brought great vexa- 
 tion to all his friends ; but also much reputation to himself, in 
 Richard, Brutus, Hamlet, Othello, Cato, and the highest walks 
 of comedy. 
 
 A curious incident carried Sheridan to the rival house in 
 Aungier Street. One night in July, 1743, his robe for Cato was 
 not forthcoming from the Smock Alley wardrobe, and Sheridao 
 refused to play without it. Theophilus Gibber was theie, among 
 the Ijondon birds of passage. He wns cast for Syphax, and hia
 
 THE OLD DUBLIN THEATRE. 355 
 
 offer to read the part of Cato and play his own was accepted. 
 Cato and Syphax are never on the stage together ; but in the 
 second act, Theophilus must have been put to it, for there, Syphax 
 enters close upon the heels of the retiring Cato. 
 
 How the " numerous and polite audience" enjoyed the piece 
 thus represented, 1 cannot say ; a paper war ensued, and Sheridan 
 passed to the other house. But two houses could not exist, and an 
 agreement was at length made to consolidate the two companies, 
 and to open at Aungier Street, whereupon the rejected actors, 
 of course, opened Smock Alley, and thence came confusion worse 
 confounded, till Sheridan, quarrelling with the proprietors at 
 Aungier Street, passed back to Smock Alley, and did something 
 towards retrieving its fortunes. But he was ill seconded, and in 
 March, ] 744, flushed by his new honors, he crossed the Channel, 
 and appeared at Covent Garden. 
 
 And now instead of two companies in one house, Dublin saw 
 one company alternately playing in two houses, with little profit, 
 till on the night of February 15th, 1744, "Othello" was given 
 at Smock Alley, the part of Othello by Spranger Barry (lago, 
 Wright; Desdemona, Mrs. Bailey). His noble person, his har- 
 monious voice, his transitions from love to jealousy, from tender- 
 ness to rage, enchanted the audience, though in some respects 
 the performance was unfinished. His principal characters were 
 Othello, Pierre, Hotspur, Lear, Henry V., Orestes, and that once 
 favorite comedy-character with young tragedians, Bevil, jun. 
 Barry filled the house every night he played ; but, I suppose, a 
 feature of Irish management, he played only occasionally. Foote, 
 in this his first Irish season, drew a few good houses ; but Barry 
 was the chief attraction. He was opposed by the old ejected 
 comedians, who opened a temporary house in Capel Street, which, 
 however, was soon closed. 
 
 Under mismanaging committees of noblemen, three dozen in 
 number, with seven wise men for a quorum, aftairs went ill, and 
 Sheridan was, at length, invited from England to take sole gov- 
 ernment, and restore order and profit where anarchy and poverty 
 reigned. This Sheridan effected, by degrees, aided by his judg- 
 ment, industry, zeal, perseverance, and unflinching honesty. 
 During his first season, 1745-6, he produced, first, Miss Bellamy,
 
 350 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 on November 11th, at Aungier Street, in the " Orphan," to the Cas- 
 talio of Barry, and his own Chamont ; and in the following month, 
 Garrick appeared as Hamlet. In the " Fair Penitent" Garrick, 
 Barry, and Sheridan played together to the Calista of Mrs. Furni- 
 val ; and " All for Love" was cast with Anthony, Barry ; Ventid- 
 iiis, Sheridan; Cleopatra, Miss Bellamy ; Octavia, Mrs. Furnival ; 
 * Jarrick and Sheridan played Richard and Hamlet alternately, and 
 each in turn played lago to Barry's Othello. The following sea- 
 son brought Barry to England, where he laid the foundations of 
 a great professional glory, which endured as long as Gairick's, 
 though it was somewhat tarnished and enfeebled, yet still second 
 only to Garrick's, towards its close.
 
 GARRICK AND QUIN , GARRICK AND BARRY. 357 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 GARRICK AND QUIN ; GARRICK AND BARRY. 
 
 This new actor, Spranger Barry, who has come to London to 
 wrestle, as it were, with Garrick, is now in his twenty-seventh 
 year, and has been but two years, brief novitiate, on the Irish 
 stage. He had previously followed, with some reluctance, the 
 vocation of his father, that of silversmith ; but, respectable and lu- 
 crative as it was, the stage had more attraction for him, and 
 thither he went in pursuit of fame and fortune, nor missed the 
 object he pursued so steadily. His success in Ireland was great 
 at a time when there was a body of players there, which for ability 
 has certainly never been surpassed. Spranger was very well con- 
 nected, and it was by the counsel of his kinsman. Sir Edward 
 Barry, that he turned his face towards London, and resolved to 
 try a fall there with David Garrick. 
 
 His first appearance was at Drury Lane, October 2, 1746, in 
 the character of Othello ; lago, Macklin ; Cassio, Mills ; Roderigo, 
 Yates ; Desdemona, Mrs. Ridout ; Emilia, Mrs. Macklin. What 
 aspirant entering on a struggle of a similar nature, now, would be 
 gratified with such notice as the press, in the General Advertiser, 
 awarded to the new actor, on this occasion ? " Barry performed 
 Othello before a numerous and polite audience, and met with as 
 great applause as could he expected.''^ 
 
 And the triumph was as great as the player could have hoped 
 for. In some things, Barry profited by the suggestions and 
 teaching of Macklin ; and the fact that for nearly eighty nights, 
 about half of which were given to Othello, Lord Townley, and 
 Macbeth, Barry drew crowded houses, will show that a new and 
 dangerous rival had sprung up in Garrick's path, at the moment 
 he was contending with a skilled and older rival at Covent Gar- 
 den. In the earlier part of the season, Garrick had played Ham- 
 let, King Lear, Richard, Archer, Bayes, and Chamont; Quin had
 
 358 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 played Richard, with no success ; Cato, Bajazet, and Sir Jotn 
 Brute. The two met together for the first time in the same piece, 
 on the 14th of November, 1746, in the " Fair Penitent ;" Horatio, 
 Quia ; Lothario, Garrick ; Altamont, Ryan ; Calista, Mrs. Gibber. 
 
 This was the greatest theatrical event that had occurred for 
 years ; and when the actor of the old school and he of the new 
 met on the stage, in the second act, the audience, who now first 
 saw them, as they had long wished to see them, face to face, ab- 
 solutely disconcerted them by a hui-ricane of greeting — a perfect 
 storm of gratulation, expressed in every way that applause can 
 be given, but in louder and longer peals than had ever been heard 
 by actors of that "generation." When it had passed, every word 
 was breathlessly listened to ; every action marked. Some were 
 won by the grand emphasis and the moral dignity of Quin ; others 
 by the grace, spirit, and happy wickedness of Garrick, Between 
 them, it was difficult to award the palm of supreme distinction to 
 either — and Mrs. Gibber was, for once, forgotten. They subse- 
 quently played together Falstaff and Hotspur ; and Hastings and 
 Glo'ster, repeatedly, in " Jane Shore." Glo'ster was one of Quin's 
 " strut and whisker parts," and Garrick had such advantage over 
 him in Hastings, that " the scale was now completely turned in 
 Garrick's favor." 
 
 Was it from fear that Garrick declined to play Jaffier to Quin's 
 Pierre? It could not have arisen from fatigue, as alleged, for 
 Garrick wrote a capital farce, " Miss in her Teens," and played 
 Fribble in it, and then created Ranger, in Dr. Hoadley's " Suspi- 
 cious Husband," in which Quin declined the part of Mr. Strick- 
 land, and gave to Bridgwater the one opportunity which he seized, 
 of being considered an actor. In Ranger, Garrick surpassed even 
 what old play-goers could recollect of comic excellence. His 
 " Neck or nothing ; up I go !" became a popular saying, and the 
 rendering it was a tradition on the stage, from his days to the 
 days of Elliston, the gentlemanly impudence, and the incompai'a- 
 ble grace of whose Ranger is still remembered by many among 
 us. 
 
 The originality of style and expression in this comedy dis- 
 pleased Quin. He was a conservative, and disliked innovation ; 
 contemptuously called the piece a speaking pantomime — forgetful
 
 GARRICK AND QUIN ; GARRICK AND BARRY. 359 
 
 that the old comedies were often much more farcical (which is what 
 he meant) in their incident, and when a name for it was being 
 discussed, suggested scornfully "The Hat and Ladder." Some 
 of Hoadley's friends kindly foretold failure, in order to afford con- 
 solation after a kind. Thence the epigram of one of them : — 
 
 " Dear doctor, if your comic muse don't please, 
 Turn to your tragic, and write recipes." 
 
 Not merely as a character piece, but for construction of plot, 
 simplicity and grace of style, and comparative purity of speech 
 and action, the " Suspicious Husband" is the best comedy the 
 eighteenth century had, up to this time, produced. It has a good 
 story clearly and rapidly developed, and the persons of the drama 
 are ladies and gentlemen, and not the dully-vivacious ruffians and 
 the unclean hussies of the Aphra Behn, the Etherege, and Sedley 
 period. The writer was a " royal physician," and son to the fa- 
 mous bishop, who, for his opposition to civil and ecclesiastical 
 tyranny, was treated as if he were an infidel. The bishop did not 
 go to witness his son's play ; but as all the Hoadleys had a the- 
 atrical turn, I feel sure he and his family read it, with many a 
 cheery laugh, in the old room at Chelsea. George H. certainly 
 did so at Windsor, and saw it, too, at the Garden, and was so 
 well pleased with his physician, the author, that he gratefully sent 
 him the handsome fee of £100. 
 
 Garrick came oft" so well in his contest with Quin, that he prob- 
 ably had no fears of trying the fall to which he was challenged, 
 with Barry. For this struggle Spranger Barry passed over to 
 Drury Lane, to wrestle with David on his own ground. Drury 
 may be called peculiarly his, for by purchasing a share in the 
 patent, he now commenced that career of management which 
 lasted during his theatrical life, and the brilliancy of which waa 
 spoken of in every part of the world where an interest was felt in 
 the intellectual enjoyments of the people. 
 
 The Drury Lane season of 1747-8 found Garrick joint-patentee 
 with Lacy ; Garrick directing the stage without interference, and 
 receiving between six and seven hundred a year, as an actor, ex- 
 clusive of his profits as part-proprietor. Gai'rick's company included 
 Barry, Macklin, Delane, Havard, Mills, Yates, Barrington, Sparks,
 
 3G0 DUliAN S ANXALo OF THE STAGE. 
 
 ho.ve; and Mrs. rritclKird, Mrs. Gibber, Mrs. Woffingtoii, Mrs. 
 Clive, and other bright, but lesser stars. 
 
 Ill this season the chief attractions were Macklin's Shylock, 
 Barry's Hamlet, Othello, and Pierre; and in less degree, his Baja- 
 zct, Henry V., and Orestes. Garrick drew full houses by Archer 
 and Abel Drugger, Lear and Richard, Sir John Brute and Plume, 
 Hamlet and Macbeth; but the greatest attraction of all was when 
 Garrick and Barry played together, as Chamont and Castalio 
 ("Orphan"), Hastings and Dumont (''Jane Shore"), Lothario 
 and Horatio (" Fair Penitent"), and Jaffier and Pierre. Against 
 such atti'actions as were here presented, with the addition of Mrs. 
 Woffington as Sir Harry AVildair, and Mrs. Clive, in all that was 
 light, airy, impertinent, and tuneful — Covent Garden was more 
 than usually weak. The latter, however, depended on the " Beg- 
 gars' Opera," on Ryan and Delane, the younger Gibber, the Gif- 
 fards, and especially Mrs. Horton ; Woodward was in Ireland. 
 Quin had withdrawn to Bath. Garrick's triumphs had soured 
 him. He desired to be asked back, but Rich would not humor 
 him. The one wrote, " I am at Bath; yours, James Quin:" and 
 
 the other answered, " Stay there and be d ; youns, John 
 
 Ptich." The old actor returned, however, to play Othello, without 
 fee, on occasion of a " charity benetit." Drury Lane alone pro- 
 duced a new piece, with new characters for Garrick and Barry, 
 namely, Moore's "Foundling," in which Garrick played Young 
 Belmont with great eclat ; Barry, Sir Gharles Raymond, with dig- 
 nity and tenderness; and Macklin, a knavish fop, Faddle, with 
 wonderful power. 
 
 Moore, like Gay, had originally served in a draper's shop, and 
 like Gay, wrote " Fables," — " for the female sex." His " Found- 
 ling" bears some resemblance to the "Gonscious Lovers ;" but 
 there is more art in the construction of the plot, and it is far purer 
 than that piece which was written to inaugurate an era of purity. 
 In the part of Faddle, he satirized a well-known individual named 
 Russell, who was the delight of ladies of ton, because of his good 
 looks, crowning impudence, and his " imitations" of opera-singers. 
 These qualities made him a guest, for whom ladies contended ; 
 and some displeasure arose, in aristocratic breasts, at Macklin's 
 close mimicry of the man, — who, after all, on being arrested for
 
 GARRICK AND QUIN; GARRICK AND BARRY. 361 
 
 a debt of £40, was left to pine, starve, and finally to die mad, 
 in the Fleet prison. Such was the fate of this once favorite of 
 fashioiv. 
 
 With the season of 1748-9, came increase of opposition between 
 the two houses. At Drm-y Lane, Garrick and Barry played alternate- 
 ly Hamlet and Macbeth, — the Hamlet of Garrick drawing by far the 
 greater crowds. In the same pieces, they played, — Barry, Henry 
 v., Garrick, the Chorus ; Garrick, Horatio, Barry, Lothario ; Gar- 
 rick, Othello, Barry, lago ; and Mahomet, by Barry, to the Deme- 
 trius of Garrick, in Johnson's " L-ene." Garrick also revived " A 
 New Way to pay Old Debts," in which King, springing from a 
 coffee-house, acted AUworth, with great spirit and delicacy. It is 
 strange that Garrick failed to perceive the golden opportunity he 
 might have had as Sir Giles ; he assigned the part to an inferior 
 actor, named Bridges, and preferred playing Fribble, in " Miss in 
 Her Teens." Garrick's greatest triumph this season was in play- 
 ing Benedict to the Beatrice of Mrs. Pritchard. The town had 
 not had so exquisite a delight for many a long day ; and Garrick's 
 happiness would have been supreme, but for the fact that Barry 
 and Mrs. Gibber produced as great a sensation, though of another 
 quality, in Romeo and Juliet. This last piece was not repeated, — 
 to the great annoyance of Barry ; and Garrick, at the close of the 
 season, married the pretty Violetta, to the intense disgust of Mrs. 
 Woffington, who now joined Rich. 
 
 At Covent Garden, Quin, Delane, Ryan, Mrs. Woffington, Mrs. 
 Horton, and Miss Bellamy, were the chief attractions. Quin 
 played many parts which Gai'rick would not attempt. Of those 
 played by both actors, Quin is said to have surpassed Garrick, in 
 Sir John Brute. But the most exciting event of this season, was 
 the abduction of Miss Bellamy, while playing Mrs. Fanciful, to 
 Quin's Brute. A gentleman, named Metham, begged to be al- 
 lowed to speak with her in the hall of the theatre, and thence 
 carried her off and bore her away, little loth, I think, in his car- 
 riage. Quin explained the matter to the audience, who enjoyed 
 it, as a good thing done and a pleasant thing to bear of. 
 
 While the houses were thus contending, Footc was filling the 
 little theatre in the Haymarket with an entertainment of his own; 
 but there were authors of a higher class offering more intellectual 
 Vol. L— 16
 
 362 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 pieces to the town. Fourteen years before, when Sanmel Johnson 
 was keeping school near Lichfield, he wrote his tragedy, " Irene," 
 which, in its rough state, he brought to London, when he and 
 Garrick came up together, in search of fortune. With poet, aa 
 with actor, the aspects of life had improved ; but most with the 
 latter. Johnson, now about forty, had been long known for hia 
 London, and had at this time put the finishing touches to hia 
 Vanity of Human Wishes. Garrick produced his friend's trage- 
 dy, and Johnson was present on the first night, in gala dress, but 
 not to be crowned, as Voltaire was, when the lively old French- 
 man attended the representation of his " Irene." For nine nights, 
 yielding the poet three benefits, — Garrick, Demetrius ; Barry, 
 Mahomet ; and Mrs. Gibber and Mrs. Pritchard, as Aspasia and 
 Irene, exerted themselves, — with indifferent success. There is no 
 local color in this Turkish piece ; the language and sentiment are 
 elevated, but they are never oriental in form or spirit. The unities 
 are strictly preserved, but not nature ; and therewith the piece was 
 set aside, — and Johnson never tried the drama again. 
 
 In this season, too, kindlj^ over-speculating, fanciful Aaron 
 Hill, brought his efforts to a close, with " Merope ;" and creditably, 
 although he challenged comparison with Corneille, and in some 
 things was allowed to have stood it with advantage. The piece 
 was successful, but the author did not live to profit by it. Hia 
 family were weeping for his death, while audiences were shedding 
 tears at the acting of Garrick, Dorilas ; and JSIrs. Pritchard, Merope. 
 Not only did this tragedy long hold the stage, but the subject of 
 a mother suffering because of a lost son, was so agreeable, it would 
 seem, that Browne, Whitehead, and Home, adopted it in " Bar- 
 barossa," " Creusa," and " Douglas." 
 
 Covent Garden, too, had its classical tragedy, in " Coriolanus," 
 brought forward by Quin, after his friend Thomson's death. Quin 
 played the hero of Thoinson's play ; Ryan, Tullius ; Delane, Gale- 
 sus ; Mrs. Wofl[ington, Veturia ; and Miss Bellamy, Volumnia. 
 This tragedy is Avorth reading, if it be only to see how very civil 
 and colloquial the hot leader of the Volsci could be made by the 
 Scottish poet in Kew Lane. In Shakspeare's tragedy, we have 
 the annals of a life put into action. In Thomson's, as in Laharpe's 
 " Coriolan," we have a single incident diluted through five acts; —
 
 GARRICK AND Ql'lN ; GARRICK AND BARRY. 363 
 
 the secession from Rome, and its consequences, forming the staple 
 of a play which ends with a tag of trotting rhymes, which are as 
 natural, and not half so amusing, as if the grave speaker of them 
 had danced a hornpipe in his cothirni. 
 
 In 1749-50, symptoms were discernible of a break-up in the 
 Drury Lane company. Mrs. Gibber, at odds with Garrick, with- 
 drew ; and Barry, not allowed to play Romeo, was often indis- 
 i)osed to act in other plays. So it was said ; but he publicly pro- 
 tested against any feigned indisposition. He repeated many of 
 his old parts with Garrick, and created Publius Iloratius to Gar- 
 rick's Horatius, in AVhitehead's " Roman Father," At Covent 
 Garden, Delane exerted his dying eft'orts fruitlessly against Barry ; 
 and Woffington opposed Woodward in Sir Harry Wildair. 
 
 The above tragedy, by the son of a Cambridge baker, and one 
 of Clare Hall's most honored Fellows, was not the only novelty 
 produced at Drury ;— whither William Shirley brought from Por- 
 tugal, where he had written it in his leisure hours, his " Edward, 
 the Black Piince." Garrick played Edward ; Barry, Rebemont ; 
 and Mrs. Ward, Marianne. It will suffice, as a sample of Shirley's 
 insight into the Prince's character, to say, that he makes Edward, 
 for love of Marianne, desert to the French side ! A more absurd 
 violation of history was never perpetrated by poet. In the way 
 of novelty, excepting pantomimic trifles, Covent Garden off'ered no 
 sign. 
 
 The latter house made no acquisitions such as Drury found in 
 King and in Palmer. Dyer, however, proved a useful actor, begin- 
 ning his career with Tom Errand, and bringing with him his wife, 
 the daughter of Mrs. Christopher Bullock, the daughter of Wilks. 
 On the other hand, the Garden lost Delane, whose first appear- 
 ance at Goodman's Fields, in 1730, was temporarily menacing to 
 the supreinacy of Quin, as Garrick's was permanently so, some 
 years later. He was a graceful and clever actor, but there was 
 only one character of note of which he was the original representa- 
 tive — Mahomet. 
 
 With this season also departed the actress whom Wilks and 
 Booth looked upon as the legitimate successor of Mrs. Oldfield, 
 namely, Mrs. Horton. Steele highly praised her for her actin<r 
 Lady Brampton in his " Funeral." Long after youth was passed
 
 364 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 she retained a luxuriant beauty, which was the envy of less richly 
 endowed ladies. She loved homage rendered to her charms, and 
 was grateful for it, however humble he who paid it. In her best 
 days all young London was sighing at her feet, and in the meridian 
 of her sunny time she invited adoration by the most exquisite 
 coquetry. About this time her powers began so to decay that 
 Rich only estimated her worth at £4 per week. Between Mrs. 
 Woffington and Mrs. Pritchard she suffered shipwreck. Mrs. 
 Horton was an artificial actress, the other two were of an opposite 
 quality ; Mrs. Pritchard especially captivated the public by her 
 natural and intelligible style of speaking. Davies says, — Mrs. 
 Horton had a small annuity, and that Garrick and Lacy added to 
 it by giving her a " part of a benefit." She had, however, other 
 resources. When Lord Orford patronized Lord Luxborough, 
 eldest son of Knight, of South Sea Company notoriety, people 
 could not account for it, but Horace Walpole could. " Lord 
 Luxborough," he writes to Mann, " keeps Mrs. Horton, the player ; 
 we (Orford) keep Miss Norsa, the player. Rich, the harlequin, 
 is an intimate of all ; and to cement the harlequinity, somebody's 
 brother (excuse me if I am not perfect in such genealogy) is to 
 marry the Jewess's sister." In this wise did the stage in those 
 days act upon politics. The Miss Norsa, above-named, had been 
 a singer of some repute, and Orford, then Lord Walpole, had 
 taken her off the stage with the concurrence of her parents, to 
 whom he gave a bond by which he engaged to marry her as soon 
 as his wife should die ! His wife, however, happily outlived him. 
 Horace Walpole, writing to Mann from Houghton, in 1743, says: 
 — " Lord Walpole has taken a dozen pictures to Stanno, a small 
 house, about four miles from hence, where he lives with my Lady 
 Walpole's vicegerent. You may imagine that her deputies are no 
 fitter than she is to come where there is a modest, unmarried 
 girl." This girl was Maria Walpole, daughter of Sir Robert., and 
 subsequently the wife of Colonel Churchill, one of Mrs. Oldficld's 
 sons. 
 
 Six-and-thirty years had Mrs. Horton been on the stage (1714- 
 1750), and in all that time she was the original representative of 
 only one character, Mariana, in the " Miser." 
 
 And now we come to the fainous Romeo and Juliet season.
 
 GARRICK AND QUIN ; GARRICK AND BARRY. 305 
 
 tliat of 1750-51, in which Ganick and Barry were the rival 
 Ronieos, Miss Bellamy and Mrs. Gibber the opposing Juliets. 
 Barry, by passing to Govent Garden, was enabled to play with 
 Quin, in "Othello," the "Orphan," "Jane Shore," "Henry V.," 
 "Julias Gicsar," "Distressed Mother," "Fair Penitent," "Tamer- 
 lane," and "King John." In these, Barry's Falconbridge was 
 alone a failure, and Quin held his own so well that his terms for 
 the season were £1,000, the largest sum ever yet received by Eng- 
 lish actor ; but his Richard was as little a success as Barry's Fal- 
 conbridge. Garrick, Mrs. Pritchard, and Miss Bellamy appeared 
 together in "Zara;" at the other house, Barry, Mrs. Gibber, and 
 Mrs. WofRngton, in the " Gonscious Lovers." Mrs. Gibber, as In- 
 diana, made a great point by her delivery of such simple words as 
 these : " Sir, if you will pay the money to a servant, it will do as 
 well." Barry and Mrs. WofEngton in Lord and Lady Townley, 
 and Quin and Mrs. Woffington in " Macbeth," were among the 
 attractions of Govent Garden, added to which was Rich's Harlequin ; 
 but for that also Garrick found a rival in Woodward, who played 
 the motley hero as he played every thing, with care and eifect. 
 
 But all these matters were as nothing when compared with the 
 rival Romeos and Juliets. They appeared on the same night, at 
 their respective houses, the 28th of September, 1750. At Go- 
 vent Gaixlen, the public had Romeo, Barry ; Mercutio, Macklin ; 
 Juliet, Mrs. Gibber. At Drury, Romeo, Garrick ; Mercutio, Wood- 
 ward ; Juliet, Miss Bellamy. On the first night Barry spoke a 
 poor prologue, in which it was insinuated that the arrogance and 
 selfishness of Garrick had driven him and Mrs. Gibber from Govent 
 Garden. Garrick, ready to repel assault, answered in a lively, 
 good-natured epilogue, delivered saucily by Mrs. Glive. 
 
 It was considered a wonderful circumstance that this play ran 
 for twelve nights successively ; Garrick played it thirteen, to show 
 that he was not beaten from the field ! At that period the Lon- 
 doners, who were constant play-goers, demanded a frequent 
 rhange of performance ; and the few country folk then in town felt 
 aggrieved that one play should keep the stage during the whole 
 fortnight they were in London. Thence the well-known epi-
 
 366 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 " * Well, what's to-night ?' says angry Ned, 
 As up from bed he rouses ; 
 ' Romeo again I' he shakes his head; 
 ' A plague on both your houses 1' " 
 
 Contemporary journals, indeed, affirm that the audiences grew 
 thin towards the end of the fortnight, but this seems doubtful, aa 
 Barry's twenty-third representation, in the course of the season, 
 was given expressly on account of the great number of persons 
 who were unable to obtain admission to his twenty-second 
 performance. 
 
 There is no doubt that Mrs. Gibber had the handsomer, more 
 silver-tongued, and tender lover. She seemed to listen to him in 
 a sort of modest ecstasy ; while Miss Bellamy, eager love in her 
 eyes, rapture in her heart, and amorous impatience in every ex- 
 pression, was ready to fling herself into Romeo's arms. In Barry's 
 Romeo, the critics laud his harmony of feature, his melting eyes, 
 and his unequalled plaintiveness of voice. In the garden scenes 
 of the second and fourth acts, and in the first part of the scene in 
 the tomb, were Barry's most eftective points. Garrick's great 
 scenes were with the Friar and the Apothecary. Miss Bellamy 
 declared that in the scene with the Friar, alone, was Garrick 
 superior to Barry ; Macklin swore that Barry excelled his rival, 
 in every scene. 
 
 The Juliets, too, divided the public judgment. Some were taken 
 by the amorous rapture, the loveliness, and the natural style of 
 Bellamy ; others were moved by the grander beauty, the force, 
 and the tragic expression of distress and despair which distin- 
 guished Mrs. Gibber. Perhaps, after all, the truest idea of the 
 two Romeos may be gathered from the remark of a lady who did 
 not pretend to be a critic, and who was guided by her feelings. 
 " Had I been Juliet," she said, " to Garrick's Romeo, — so ardent 
 and impassioned was he, I should have expected that he would 
 have come up to me in the balcony ; but had I been Juliet to 
 Barry's Romeo, — so tender, so eloquent, and so seductive was he, 
 I should certainly have ffone doion to him !" 
 
 Respectively, Barry acted Romeo twenty-three, Garrick, nme- 
 teen, times this season, — a season of which there is nothing more
 
 GAKRICK AND QUIN ; GARRICK AND BARRY, 367 
 
 to be said, save that Garrick created the part of Gil Bias, in 
 Moore's comedy of that name, and that he produced Mallet's ver- 
 sion of " Alfred," — playing the king. 
 
 At this time, the poets were not inspired, or managers conld 
 dispense with them, so attractive were the old actors in old pieces, 
 with new actors — -"Shuter, Palmer, and Miss Macklin — aiding 
 them. Thus, in the season 1751-2, Covent Garden, save in a 
 burletta, called the " Oracle," relied on its stock-pieces ; and Drury 
 only produced Foote's farce, — " Taste," in which Worsdale, the 
 painter, who kept, starved, beat, and lived upon Laetitia Pilking- 
 ton, played Lady Pcntweazle with humorous effect ; — and " Eu- 
 genia," a tragedy, by the Rev. Dr. Francis, the father of Sir 
 Philip, in which there was the coarseness of sentiment, but none 
 of the beauty of language or tenderness of feeling of Otway. Yet 
 it was approved by Chesterfield, who sneered at the pit and gal- 
 lery as " common people who must have objects that strike the 
 senses, and are only moved by the sufferings they see, and even 
 then, must be dyed with the blood." But this is untrue, although 
 my lord said it, for Johnson's " Irene" failed because of the stran- 
 gling of the heroine in presence of the audience ; and it was only 
 tolerated, during its brief run, after the killing was described and 
 not performed. 
 
 I have said that the managers relied on the actors and not on 
 the poets. In return, the actors exerted themselves to the very 
 utmost. Mrs. Gibber was as much stirred by Miss Bellamy, as 
 Barry by Garrick, and the reverse. In " Jane Shore," for in- 
 stance, Mrs. Gibber, who played Alicia to the Jane of pretty and 
 modest Miss Macklin, seemed, on the 25th of October, especially, 
 to be inspired " with something more than mortal." Though 
 Alicia had always been looked on as one of her very best charac- 
 ters, yet this night's performance she never equalled, before nor 
 since. 
 
 In this season, Barry acted Romeo twelve, Garrick only six, 
 times ; but the latter introduced a new opposition to his formida- 
 ble rival, in the persons of Mossop and Ross, both from Ireland. 
 Mossop first appeared in Richard, which he repeated seven times 
 with great applause. His Zanga was still more successful; in- 
 deed, he has never been excelled in that character. Six times
 
 3G8 doran's annals of the staPxE. 
 
 he played Horatio to Garrick's Lothario, and charmed the town 
 more frequently by his grand Theseus to Mrs. Pritchard's Phae- 
 dra. In Macbeth, Othello, Wolsey, and Orestes, he also displayed 
 great powers. Ross, a gentlemanlike actor, made his debut in 
 Young Bevil, by Garrick's advice, and acted Lord Townley, 
 Altamont, and Castalio, — the latter to Garrick's Chamont, with 
 great effect. Garrick, no doubt, would have reluctantly seen liim- 
 self eclipsed by either of those players ; but because inferior actors 
 sought to flatter him by calling Mossop a ranter, and Ross a sniv- 
 eller, and epigrammatists declared indifference to both, it is not 
 conclusive that the flattery pleased or the sneer delighted him. 
 Garrick had his own peculiar triumphs. His Kitely, to Wood- 
 ward's Bobadil, Yates's Brain worm, Shuter's Master Stephen, 
 Ross's Young Knowell, and Palmer's Wellbred gave new life to 
 Ben Jonsou's comedy of character. Thenceforward, was associa- 
 ted forever the name of Captain Bobadil with that of the scholar 
 from Merchant Tailors' — Harry Woodward. 
 
 But this has brought us into a new half-century. Let us pause 
 and look back at the audiences of that which has gone by.
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF 1700-1750. 369 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF lYOO-lVSO. 
 
 Mb. Isaac Bickerstaffe has laid it down as a rule that it is the 
 duty of every person in a theatrical audience to show his " atten- 
 tion, understanding, and virtue." To the insuperable difficulty of 
 the task may, perhaps, be attributed the carelessness of audiences 
 on this point. How is a man, for instance, to demonstrate his 
 virtue in the public assembly ? Steele answers the query, — by 
 showing a regard for it when exhibited on the stage. " I would 
 undertake," he says, "to find out all the persons of sense and 
 breeding by the effect of a single sentence, and to distinguish a 
 gentleman as much by his laugh as his bow. When we see the 
 footman and his lord diverted by the same jest, it very much 
 turns to the diminution of the one, or the honor of the 
 other. But," he adds, "though a man's quality may appear 
 in .his understanding and taste, the regard to virtue ought to be 
 the same in all ranks and conditions of men, however they make a 
 profession of it under the names of honor, religion, or moral- 
 ity." 
 
 Steele was gratified by an audience who sympathized with the 
 distress of an honest but unlucky pair of lovers. He thinks that 
 the Roman audience which broke into an ecstasy of applause at 
 the abnegation of self displayed in the friendship of Pylades and 
 Orestes, showed qualities which justly made of the Roman people 
 the leaders of mankind. As if appreciation of the semblance ot 
 good were the same thing as the exercise of it The same people 
 applauded as lustily when they saw the life-blood spilled of the 
 vanquished gladiator. 
 
 Again, he discovers a surpassing excellence in an Athenian au- 
 dience, — famed of old for applauding the virtues which the Lace- 
 demonians practised. That audience was roused to the utmost 
 fury by the speech of a man who professed to value wealth far
 
 370 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 above good nairie, family, or natural affection. The uproar was 
 so great that the author was compelled to come forward and ask 
 the forbearance of the house till the last act of the piece, in which 
 he promised that this wretched fellow would be brought to con- 
 dign punishment, Mr. Bickerstaffe very much questions whether 
 modern audiences would be moved to such a laudable horror. It 
 would be very undesirable that they should; or that a person 
 should swing out of the house in disgust, as Socrates did when he 
 attended the first representation of a tragedy by his friend Euripides, 
 — and was excited to anger by a remark of Hippolitus, to the effect 
 that he had "taken an oath with his tongue but not with his 
 heart." The maxim was indefensible, but the action of the play 
 required it ; and Socrates had been truer to his friend had he re- 
 mained till the denouement, and not have hurried away while that 
 friend's play was being applauded. 
 
 On the duties of audiences, Mr. Bickerstaffe is a little loose, 
 but we may readily acquiesce in one of his sentiments. " When 
 we see any thing divert an audience, either in tragedy or comedy, 
 that strikes at the duties of civil life, or exposes what the best 
 men in all ages have looked upon as sacred and inviolable, it is 
 the certain sign of a profligate race of men, who are fallen from 
 the virtue of their forefathers, and will be contemptible in the eyes 
 of their posterity." This was said when audiences thought only 
 of the quality of the actor, and troubled not itself with that of the 
 maxims uttered, unless these had some political tendency, or allu 
 sion to well-known popular circumstance. The Tatler lived be- 
 fore the time when the stories of Regulus and Virginia were 
 turned into burlesque, and children received their first impres- 
 sions of Alfred and of Tell through the caricature of extrava- 
 ganza. 
 
 But there was much that was illegitimate in those legitimate 
 days. If a play was not likely to attract, an audience was adver- 
 tised, in order to draw one. The promised presence of royalty, 
 naturally enough, helped to fill the house; but so would that of a 
 leash of savages, or a quack doctoress. Of the latter class, there 
 was the clever and hnpudent Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter, who 
 came into town daily from Epsom, in her own carriage, and set 
 bones, or explained her principle in doing so, at the Grecian Coffee-
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF 1700-1750. 371 
 
 House. The Lincoln's Inn Fields managers invited her to honor 
 their house and the performance with her presence, and the astute 
 old lady was well aware that her presence thus granted would be a 
 profitable advertisement of herself. That presence I find announced 
 at the above theatre on the 16th October, 1736, with that of 
 Taylor, the oculist, at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play was the 
 " Husband's Relief," but the full house was owing to Mrs. Mapp 
 being there. In honor of this " bone-setter," near whom also sat 
 Ward, the worm-doctor, a song was sung on the stage, — as the 
 national anthem when a sovereign sanctions the doings of the 
 evening. Of this chant, I give the first and last verses ; — 
 
 ' Te surgeons of London, who puzzle your pates, 
 To ride in your coaches and purchase estates, 
 Give over, for shame, for your pride has a fall, 
 And the doctress of Epsom has outdone you alL 
 
 Derry down. 
 
 ' Dame Nature has giv'n her a doctor's degree. 
 She gets all the patients and pockets the fee; 
 So if you don't instantly prove her a cheat, 
 She'll loll in her chariot, while you walk the street. 
 
 Derry down I 
 
 Let us now glance at the example set to audiences by greater 
 folk than Mrs. Mapp. 
 
 George I. understood English better than he could speak it, and 
 he could make ready application of passages to contemporary 
 events connected with himself or others. Shakspeare's " Henry 
 VIII." was frequently played before him, both at Hampton Court 
 and at Drury Lane ; and there was a speech in that play which 
 never escaped his marked notice. It is that addressed by Wolsey 
 to his secretary, Cromwell, after the King has ordered the Cardi- 
 nal to write letters of indemnity, into every county, where the 
 payment of certain heavy taxes had been disputed. "A word 
 with you," says the Cardinal : —
 
 372 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 " Let there be letters writ to every shire, 
 Of the King's grace and pardoa. The grieved commons 
 Hardly conceive of me. Let it be noised, 
 That through our intercession, this rovolcement 
 And pardon comes. — I shall, anon, advise you 
 Further in the proceeding." 
 
 Gibber, who narrates the incident, states that " the soUcitude of 
 this spiritual minister in filching from his master the grace and 
 niorit of a good action, and dressing up himself in it, while him- 
 self had been author of the evil complained of, was so easy a stroke 
 of his temporal conscience that it seemed to raise the King into 
 something more than a smile whenever that play came before him. 
 And I had a more distinct occasion to observe this effect, because 
 my proper stand on the stage, when I spoke the lines, required 
 me to be near the box where the King usually sat. In a word, 
 this play is so true a dramatic chronicle of an old English court, 
 and where the character of Harry VIII. is so e.Kcellently drawn, 
 even to a humorous likeness, that it may be no wonder why His 
 ]\Iajesty's particular taste for it should have commanded it three 
 several times in one winter." 
 
 So far Gibber ; we hear from another source that on one occa- 
 sion when the above lines were spoken, the King said to the 
 Prince of Wales, who had not yet been expelled from Court. 
 " You see, George, what you have one day to expect." 
 
 When George L, wishing to patronize the English actors, in 
 1718, ordered the great hall at Hampton Gourt to be converted 
 into a theatre, he desired that it might be ready by June, in order 
 that the actors in their summer vacation might play before him 
 tJiree times a week. The official obstacles prevented the hall being 
 ready before September, when the actors had commenced their 
 London season, and were, therefore, enabled to play before the 
 King: only seven times. The performances were under the direc- 
 tion of Steele, whose political services had been poorly recom- 
 pensed by granting him certain theatrical privileges. The troop 
 commenced on the 23d of the month with "Hamlet;" they sub- 
 sequently played "Sir Courtly Nice," the "Constant Couple," 
 " Love for Money," " Volpone," and " Rule a Wife and Have a 
 Wife." The King coul 1 not have been an indifferent scholar if
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF 17C0-1T50. 373 
 
 be could readily apply passages, and quickly comprehend others, 
 in plays like these; or could follow Gibber in Sir Courtly, laugh 
 at the jokes of Piakethraaa in Crack, feel the heartiness of Miller 
 iu Hothead, be interested in the testimony of Johnson, sympa- 
 thetic with the Surly of Thurmond, enjoy the periods of Booth in 
 Farewell, or the aristocratic spirit of Mills in Lord Bellguard. The 
 ladies, too, in some of the plays acted before him, — Leonora, by 
 Mrs, Porter, and Violante, by Mi's. Younger, — had also some 
 phrases to utter, which might well puzzle one not to the matter 
 born. But George L must have comprehended all, for he so thor- 
 oughly enjoyed all, that Steele told Lord Sunderland, the grand- 
 sou of Sacharissa, and the son-iu-laW of Marlborough, that the 
 King liked the entertainment " so terribly well, my lord, that I was 
 afraid I should have lost all my actors; for I was not sure the 
 King would not keep them to till the place at Court, which he saw 
 them so tit for in the play." 
 
 In the old days, a play acted before the sovereign at Whitehall, 
 cost that sovereign but the poor fee of £20, the actors playing at 
 their own house, in the afternoon, previous to having the honor 
 of acting before the Court at night. To the performers at Hamp- 
 ton Court their ordinary day's wage was given, with their travel- 
 ling expenses, for which they held themselves ready to act there 
 at a day's warning. The Lord Chamberlain found the wax-lights, 
 and furnished the " household music," while the players' ward- 
 robe and " traps" generally were conveyed from old Drury down 
 to Hampton in a ^'■Chaise Marine''' at his Majesty's expense. The 
 cost of the seven plays amounted to £350 ; but King George 
 generously threw in a couple of hundred more, as a guerdon to 
 the managers, who had professed that the honor of toiling to afford 
 his Majesty pleasure was sufficient recompense in itself! The 
 King did not believe a word of it ; and the Duke of Newcastle, 
 then Lord Chamberlain (and subsequently the original of Foote's 
 Matthew Mug, in the "Mayor of Garratt"), pai^ the money into 
 the hands of the delighted Cibber, who was astounded at the 
 Chamberlain's modesty, which kept him from arrogating to him- 
 self, like Cardinal Wolsey, the merit which belonged to his royal 
 master. 
 
 How things went between audience and actors in the Hampton
 
 374 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Court theatre is admirably told by Gibber Limself: — "A plaj 
 presented at Court, or acted on a public stage," he says, " seeni to 
 their different authors a different entertainment. In the common 
 tlieatre the guests are at home, where the politer forms of good 
 breeding are not so nicely regarded. Every one there falls to, 
 and likes or finds fault, according to his natural taste or appetite. 
 At Court, where the Prince gives the treat and honors the table 
 with his own presence, the audience is under the restraint of a 
 circle where laughter or applause raised higher than a whisper 
 would be stared at. At a public play they are both let loose, even 
 till the actor is sometimes pleased with his not being able to be 
 heard for the clamor of them. But this coldness, or decency of 
 attention at Court, I observed, had but a melancholy effect upon 
 the impatient vanity of some of our actors, who seemed inconso- 
 lable when their flashy endeavors to please had passed unheeded. 
 Their not considering where they were, quite disconcerted them, 
 nor could they recover their spirits till, from the lowest rank of 
 the audience, some gaping Joan or John^ in the fulness of their 
 hearts, roared out their approbation." 
 
 These little ebullitions appear to have amused the grave King, 
 for Cibber hints that they raised a smile on the royal countenance, 
 and he suggests that such a fact was entirely natural and reason- 
 able. He adds, " that an audience may be as well too much re- 
 served as too profuse of their applause. For though it is possible 
 a Betterton would not have been discouraged from throwing out 
 an excellence, or elated into an error, by his auditors being too 
 little or too much pleased ; yet as actors of his judgment are 
 rarities, those of less judgment may sink into a flatness in their 
 performance for want of that applause which, from the generality 
 of judges, they might, perhaps, have some pretence to; and the 
 auditor, when not seeming to feel what ouglit to affect him, may 
 rob himself of something more that he might have had, by giving 
 the actor his due, who measures out his power to please, a«cord- 
 ing to the value he sets upon the hearer's taste or capacity ; but, 
 however, as we were not here itinerant adventures, and had properly 
 but one royal auditor to please, after that honor was attained to, 
 the rest of our ambition had little to look after." 
 
 And now what of this Geortre's succe.ssor as an "auditor?"
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF 1700-1750. 375 
 
 Among the unmerited censures whicli have been flung at 
 Charles II., the most conspicuous and the least reasonable is that the 
 grossness of the dramas produced in his days was owing to his 
 bad taste exhibited in his fondness for French comedy. Had the 
 poets of that period imitated that comedy, they would not have 
 offended as they did, for, taken altogether, French comedy was 
 remarkable for its freedom from utter, abounding, and continual 
 coarseness. I think that George II. was more blameworthy than 
 his predecessor Charles, for he encouraged the representation of 
 immoral dramas, and commanded the restoration of scenes which 
 actors had begun to deem too indecent for acting or expression. 
 For didactic plays the monarch had no stomanh ; but he savored 
 Ravenscroft's beastly comedies — the veiy worst of them did he the 
 most delight in, and helped to keep them on the stage when 
 actors and audiences were alike disgusted with them. This per- 
 verted taste was strong upon him from the first. When Prince 
 of Wales, he witnessed the acting of " Venice Preserved," but dis- 
 covering, subsequently, on reading the old edition of the play, 
 there were scenes in it which are flattered by merely being 
 designated as " filthy," he sent for the " master" of one of the houses, 
 and commanded that the omitted scenes should be restored. 
 They are those which chiefly lie between Aquilia and Antonio, 
 characters which never take part in modern representations of 
 Otway's tragedy. The former part was given to Mrs. Horton, 
 who, though she was something of the quality of the creature she 
 represented, was not only young and beautiful, but was draped iu 
 a certain mantle of modesty which heightened the charms of her 
 youth and her beauty ; and she must have had a painful task, less 
 than the younger Pinkethman had who played Antonio, in thus 
 gratifying the low predilections of the graceless Prince, who then 
 gave ton to audiences. 
 
 George II., when Prince of Wales, found Bartholomew Fair aa 
 much to his taste as the theatres. In 1725, he, and a gay 
 posse of companions, went down the Thames, in barges, to Black- 
 friars, and thence to the fair. At the conclusion of the fun for the 
 night, they entered the old King's Arms Inn, joyously supped 
 there, and got back to St. James's by four o'clock in the morning, 
 Some years later. Prince Frederick, George II.'s son, who valued
 
 3T6 dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 the stage in much the same measure as his father did, also visited 
 the fair by night. He went amid a little army of the yeomen of 
 the guard, and under a blaze of torches, and cries of " make way 
 there for the prince," from a mob who were delighted to see 
 among them the heir apparent, in a bright ruby colored frock coat, 
 thickly laced with gold. There was a gallant comjmny, too, of 
 gentlemen, all coated and laced, and besworded like the prince ; 
 but the finest, and fussiest, and happiest personage there, was the 
 important little man who marshalled the Prince the way that he 
 should go, and ushered him to and from the booths, where short 
 solemn tragedies were played, with a disjointed farce between the 
 acts. This important individual was Mr. Manager Rich, and he 
 was as happy at this night's doings, as if he had gained something 
 more substantial by them than empty honor. 
 
 On the 3d of May, 1736, the audience at Drury Lane, with the 
 Prince of Wales and his bride among them, witnessed some \m- 
 expected addition to the entertainment promised them. The 
 footmen chose that night for an attempt to recover their old and 
 abused privilege of occupying the upper gnWery, r/)'atis. One body 
 of them entered the gallery by force, a second fought their 
 way through the stage-door to dictate terms to the manager, and 
 an active corps in plush kept the house in alarm by their shouts 
 for a redress of grievances. Amid the fighting that ensued, the 
 terrified part of the audience dispersed. Colonel De Veal, with 
 the " authorities," came to read the Riot Act, but no respect was 
 paid either to dignitary or document, whereupon a battle-royal 
 followed, in which plush was ingloriously defeated, with a loss of 
 eighteen finely-liveried and thickly-calved combatants, who, 
 battered, bruised, and bleeding, were clapped into Newgate for 
 safe keeping. 
 
 In the latter part of the life of George II., he took advantage 
 of his position to make loud remarks on the performances at which 
 he was present. One night, at Drury Lane, he commanded 
 Farquhar's " Beaux Stratagem," and Fielding's " Intriguing Cham- 
 bermaid." He was amused with the Foigard of Yates, and the 
 Cherry of Miss Minors. In the second piece, Kitty Clive played 
 her original part of Lettice — a part in which she had delighted 
 the town, which could then be delighted by such parts, for sevctt-
 
 THE AUDIEXCES OF 1700-1750. 377 
 
 tccn years. Walpole, writing of this incident to Matin, says : — 
 " A certain king that, whatever airs you may give yourself, you 
 are not at all like, was last week at the play. The intriguing 
 chambermaid in the fai'ce says to the old gentleman : — ' You are 
 villanously old, you are sixty-six, you cannot have the impudence 
 to think of living above two years.' Tlie old gentleman in the 
 stage-box turned about in a passion, and said, ' This is d — d stuff!' 
 and the royal critic wa^ energetically right." 
 
 On some occasions there were more kings in the house tlian he of 
 England. Four were once there among the audience, and, as far 
 as their majesties were concerned, rather against their will. These 
 poor majesties were American Indian chiefs, to whom the bigher 
 sounding title of " kings" was given by way of courtesy. The 
 Irish actor, Bowen, had contrived to secure their presence at his 
 benefit, Avhen " Macbeth" was performed, and a dense mob was 
 gathered, not so much to hear Shakspeare as to see the " kings." 
 The illustrious strangers were placed in the centre box, and as they 
 were invisible to the occupants of the galleries, an uproar ensued. 
 Wilks blandl)^ assured the rioters that tlie kings were really 
 present a-s announced. The galleries did not care ; they had paid 
 their money, they said, to see them, and the kings they would 
 have, or there should be no play. After some negotiating, and 
 great tumult, the managers placed four chairs upon the stage, to 
 which the four Indian kings gravely descended from their box, 
 amid a chorus of " hurrahs !" from the late dissentients, with whose 
 noisy enthusiasm the imperturbable gravity of the chiefs con- 
 trasted strangely. They listened seriously to the play, and with 
 as much intelligence to the epilogue, which was specially addressed 
 to them, and in which they were told that as Sheba's queen once 
 went to adore Solomon, so they had been " winged by ber 
 example," to seek protection on Britannia's shore. It then pro 
 ceeded, with some abuse of grammar, thus : — 
 
 " princes, who have with amazement seen 
 So good, so gracious, and so great a queen ; 
 Who from her royal mouth have heard your doom 
 Secur'd against the threats of Franco and Rome ; 
 Awhile some moments on our scenes bestow ; " 
 
 which was a singular request to make when the play was over!
 
 378 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 One of the greatest honors ever rendered to a dramatist by 
 royalty, was conferred by Queen Caroline, wife of George II., on 
 Mottley. The poet was but a poet by courtesy ; his two stilted 
 tragedies were soon forgotten, and a better fate has not attended 
 his other productions. What merit gained for him the favor of 
 so great a queen, was never known. Mottley's father was an 
 active Jacobite ; but the son was a seeker of places, for which he 
 obtained more promises than were realized. Yet for this obscure 
 person, whose benefit night was announced as to take place soon 
 after the Queen's Drawing Room had been held, that Queen hei*- 
 self, in that very drawing room (the occasion being the Prince of 
 Wales's birthday), sold Mottley's tickets, delivering them with her 
 own royal hand to the purchasers, and condescending to receive 
 gold for them in return. The money was handed over to that 
 gravest of the Hanoverian officials, Colonel Schurtz, privy-purse to 
 the prince, who presented the same to the highly-honored, and, 
 perhaps, much astonished poet, -with a handsome guerdon added 
 to it by the prince himself. 
 
 It is due to the audiences at Oxford, where the actors played 
 in their brief season twice a day, that it should be said, that the 
 taste of the University was superior to that of the metropolis. 
 Wliatever modern dramatists might assert with respect to Shaks- 
 peare, and however the " more politely written comedies" might 
 be acceptable to a licentious London pit, Oxford asserted the su- 
 periority of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, " for whose masterly 
 scenes," says Cibber, " they seemed to have as implicit a reverence 
 as, formerly, for the ethics of Aristotle." The flash, and tinsel, 
 and even the sterling metal mixed up with the dross of the modern 
 illustrative comedy, had no attractions for an Oxford audience. 
 Of modern tragedy they only welcomed " Cato ;" but that waa 
 written by an Oxford man, and after the classic model, and to 
 see this, the play-goers clustered round the doors at noon, and 
 the death of Cato triumphed over the injuries of Ca3sar every- 
 where. 
 
 On the taste of English audiences generally, Dryden remarks, 
 in his Essay on Dramatic Poesy, that, " as we who are a more 
 sullen people come to be diverted at our plays, so the French, who 
 are of an airy and gay temper, come hither to make themselves
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF 1700-1750. 379 
 
 more serious. And this I conceive to be why comedies are more 
 pleasing to us and tragedies to them." This appears to me as 
 false as his assertion that rhymed plays were in their nature and 
 fashion peculiarly English ! A few years later the " polite taste" 
 of audiences was censured freely by Edmund Curll, who was very 
 irate that " nothing would go down but ballad-opera and Mr. 
 Lun's buffoonery ;" but this taste was attributed by him to an 
 imperfect education. " As for breeding," that delicate gentleman 
 remarks, " our brewers are now arrived at such a height oi finesse 
 and elegance, that their children are sent into France for education. 
 But for this, as a lord mayor himself said, there ought to be some 
 grains of allowance." 
 
 Gibber relates an incident illustrative of the ferocity of enamored 
 and rejected beaux among the audience. One of these, in the 
 year 1717, had incurred the strongly-expressed contempt of a 
 young actress, whom Colley does not further designate, for some 
 insulting language addressed to her as she was seated in a box. 
 This fellow took his revenge by outraging the lady, on the stage, 
 and, when she appeared, he interrupted her performance " with 
 such loud and various notes of mockery, as other young Men of 
 honor in the same place have sometimes made themselves un- 
 dauntedly merry with." This disappointed beau, however, went fur- 
 ther, and threw at the lady " such trash as no person can be sup- 
 posed to carry about him, unless to use on so particular an occa- 
 sion." A champion of the insulted actress called her assailant " a 
 fool, or a bully," whereupon the latter challenged him to Hyde 
 Park, and proved himself craven to boot, by asking for his life. 
 " Whether he minded it or not," says Gibber, "I have not yet 
 heard, but his antagonist, a few years after, died in one of the 
 principal posts of the Government." 
 
 The critics were not more tender to a new play, particularly 
 when provoked by sarcasms against their judgment in the pro- 
 logue, than the above offender was to a well-conducted actress. 
 " They come to a new play," Gibber tells us, " like hounds to a 
 carcass, and are all in a full cry, sometimes for an hour together, 
 before the curtain rises to throw it amongst them. Sure, those 
 gentlemen cannot but allow that a play, condemned after a fair 
 hearing, falls with thrice the ignominy, as when it is refused tliat
 
 c<0 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 common justice." This was a new race of critics, unknown to 
 earlier times, and their savagcness had the effect of deterring gen- 
 tlemen fr^m writing plays. " They seem to me," says Colley, 
 " like tlie lion whelps in the Tower, who are so boisterously game- 
 some at their meals, that they dash down the bowls of milk brought 
 for their own breakfasts." 
 
 We meet with one instance of forbearance being asked from the 
 critics, not on the ground that the piece had merit, but that, as a 
 prince of the blood was in the house, he should be allowed to lis- 
 ten to the nonsense undisturbed. The piece was Gibber's pastoral 
 opera, " Love's Riddle," produced at Drury Lane, in January, 
 17::!9. The public were oftended at the recent prohibition of the 
 second part of the " Beggars' Opera," Gibber was looked upon as 
 having procured the prohibition for the sake of his own piece, and 
 a cabal of pit rioters hooted the play, and were only momentarily 
 silent wliilc Miss Rafter was singing, whose voice had well nigh 
 saved this operatic drama. On the second night, which was even 
 more riotous than the first, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was pres- 
 ent, and it was in order tliat he might be decently bored, and not 
 deprived of what he had never seen, the fun of a playhouse riot, 
 that Gibber addressed the pit, and undertook that the piece 
 sliould be withdrawn after that night, if they would only remem- 
 ber in whose presence they were, and allow the drama to be 
 quietly played out. With thi.s understanding, the rioters with- 
 drew, the piece went dully on, and, at the close of it, a lord in 
 waiting was sent behind the scenes to compliment Gibber, and to 
 express the Prince's approval of his conduct on that night. 
 
 The pit was always the great court of appeal, and on one occa- 
 sion Gibber showed much courage and good sense, and a due 
 appreciation of his calling as an actor. At the theatre in Dorset 
 Gardens, where the Drur}'^ Lane company occasionally played, and 
 on an evening when he was announced for one of his best parts, a 
 set of rope-dancers were advertised as about to make their first 
 appearance. Gibber's scorn was roused by this companionship, 
 and what he did may be best told in his own words. " I was 
 hardy enough," he says, " t(^ c/o into the pit, and acquainted the 
 .'ipectators near me that I hoped they would not think it a mark 
 of my disrespect to them if I declined acting upon any stage that
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF 1700-1750. 381 
 
 was brouo-lit to so low a disgrace as ours was like to be by that 
 day's entertainment." In this he had the support of his fellow- 
 actors, and the public approved ; and the acrobats were dismissed 
 by the reluctant manager. 
 
 The pit was at this period supreme and severe, and as the wit- 
 lings used to make remarks on, or exchange them with, the moro 
 audacious beauties in the boxes, so now did they exercise a cniel 
 humor in making sarcastic application of the words of a part to 
 the actress who delivered them. By these they pointed out the 
 flaws in her character, her deficiency in beauty, or her effrontery 
 in assuming virtues which did not belong to her. 
 
 I do not find that an}^ especial evening was considered particu- 
 larly " fashionable" till towards the close of Gibber's managerial 
 career at Drury Lane, which, by good administration, had become 
 so much in fashion, he says, " with the politer part of the town, 
 that our house, every Saturday, seemed to be the appointed as- 
 sembly of the first ladies of quality. Of this, too," he adds, "the 
 common spectators were so well appiised, that, for twenty years 
 successively on that day, we scarcely ever failed of a crowded au- 
 dience, for which occasion we particularly reserved our best plays, 
 acted in the best manner we could give them." 
 
 From the Restoration till late in the reign of Queen Anne, those 
 *' politer" folks, as Gibber — or the " quality," as Ghesterfield 
 would have called them, had been accustomed to arrogate to 
 themselves the privilege not merely of going behind the scenes, 
 but crowding at the wings, and, at last, invading the stage itself, 
 while the play was being acted. Through this mob the players 
 had to elbow their way ; and where all illusion was destroyed, dif- 
 ficult must have been the task, but marvellous the triumph, of 
 those actors who could make grief appear sincere, and humor 
 seem spontaneous and genuine. This mob was not a civil and 
 attentive crowd, but a collection of impertinent persons, who 
 buzzed and moved about, and changed salutations with the audi- 
 ence, or addressed the players — the chief of whom they must often 
 have supremely exasperated. The " decency of a clear stage" was 
 one of Gibber's great objects, and when his importunity and the 
 decree of Queen Anne drove the erratic part of the audience back 
 to their proper position in the house, a change for the better was
 
 382 DORAJsr's annals of the stage. 
 
 effected, by whicli all parties were gainers. This decree was issued 
 iu January, 1704, and ;t prohibited " the appearance of any of the 
 public on the stage whatever might be their quality, the wearing 
 of masks in any part of the house, entering the house without pre- 
 vious due payment, and the acting of any thing on the stage con- 
 trary to religion and good manners." Previously to the appear- 
 ance of this decree, persons were employed to take down profane 
 words uttered by the performers, who were thereupon prosecuted, 
 and, on conviction, fined. The authors who penned the phrases, 
 for omitting which the actor would have been mulcted, were neither 
 molested nor censured. 
 
 Gibber contrasts French and English audiences to the disadvan- 
 tage of the latter ; but I think he is wrong in his conclusions. "At 
 the tragedy of ' Zaire,' " he says, " while the celebrated Mdlle. Gos- 
 sin was delivering a soliloquy, a gentleman was seized Avith a sud- 
 den fit of coughing, which gave the actress some surprise and in- 
 terruption, and, his fit increasing, she was forced to stand silent so 
 long that it drew the eyes of the uneasy audience upon him ; when 
 a French gentleman, leaning forward to him, asked him if this ac- 
 tress had given him any particular offence, that he took so public 
 an occasion to resent it ? The English gentleman, in the utmost 
 surprise, assured him, so far from it, that he was a particular 
 admirer of her performance ; that his malady was his real misfor 
 tune, and that if he apprehended any return of it, he would rather 
 quit his seat than disoblige either the actor or the audience." 
 Colley adds, that he had seen this " publick decency" of the 
 French theatre carried so far " that a gentleman in their Second 
 Loge, or Middle Gallery, being observed to sit forward himself, 
 while a lady sat behind him, a loud number of voices called out to 
 him from the pit — Place d la Dame ! Place d la Dame ! when the 
 person so offending, either not apprehending the meaning of the 
 clamor, or possibly being some John Trot, who feared no man 
 alive, the noise was continued for several minutes ; nor were the 
 actors, though ready on the stage, suffered to begin the play, till 
 this unbred person was laughed out of his seat, and had placed the 
 lady before him." 
 
 This, however, was but the mere arrogance of the pit, towards 
 which, had the lady stood for a moment, with her back turned,
 
 THE AUDIEKCES OF lYOO-1750. 383 
 
 the polite gentlemen there would have roared lustily, as under sim- 
 ilar circumstances they do at the present time, '■'■Face au parterre /" 
 And as for the tenderness of the old French audiences for their 
 actors, I have already given some taste of its quality, and have 
 only to add here, that the French magistrates were once compelled 
 to issue a decree wherein "Every person is prohibited from doing 
 any violence in the Theatre de Bourgogne, in Paris, during the 
 time any piece is performing, as likewise from throwing stones, dust, 
 or any thing which may put the audience into an uproar, or 
 create any tumult." 
 
 The decree of iVO-i for keeping the stage clear does not appear 
 to have been universally observed, for, on the opening of the first 
 theatre iu Covent Garden, in December, 1732, I find it announced 
 that, on account of the great demand for places, the pit and boxes 
 were laid together at 5s., the galleries at 2s. and Is., and to pre- 
 vent the stage from being crowded, admission thereto was raised 
 to half a guinea. In the former year, to appear at the theatre in 
 a red coat and a laced hat, indicated a rural beau who was behind 
 his time, and had not yet laid aside a fashion as old as the days 
 of Great Nassau. Dress, however, was indispensable. Swift writes 
 to Stella, on the 31st of August, iVll, "Dilly and I walked to 
 Kensington, to Lady Mountjoy, who invited us to dinner. He re- 
 turned soon to go to the play, it being the last that will be acted 
 for some time. He dresses himself like a beau, and no doubt 
 makes a fine figure." No doubt that Dillon Ashe was dressed 
 in his best that night, on which he went to Drury, and saw 
 " Love's a Jest," with Pack in Sam Gaymood, and Mrs. Porter as 
 Lady Single. 
 
 As the government procured the passing of the Licensing Act 
 less for the sake of morality than to save administration from the 
 shafts of satire, so the public took it unkindly of them, but unrea- 
 sonably revenged themselves on innocent authors. No secret was 
 made of the determination of play-goers to damn the first piece 
 that should be stigmatized with the license of the Lord Chamber- 
 lain. That piece happened to be the " Nest of Plays," by HiJde- 
 brand Jacob, represented at Covent Garden, in January, 1738, 
 which was damned accordingly. But the public sense of wrong 
 was not yet appeased. The " Parricide" subsequently was con-
 
 884 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 (lemiu^d, soluly because it was a licensed piece. " That my enc 
 niies/' says William Shirley, the author, " came resolved to exe- 
 cute before trial, may be gathered from their beliavior ere the play 
 began, for at five o'clock they engaged and overthrew the caudles 
 in the nuisic-room, and called a council of war, whether they 
 should attack the harpsichord or not ; but to your good fortune," 
 he adds, addressing Rich, " it was carried in the negative. Their 
 expelling ladies from the pit, and sending for wine to drink, were 
 likewise strong indications of their arbitrary and violent disposi- 
 tions." It is to be observed, however, of a few condemned pieces 
 of this period, that the authors rather abused their opportunity of 
 ascribing their ill fortune solely to the unpopularity of the Licen- 
 sing Act. 
 
 The ushering of ladies out of the pit was one of the formal in- 
 dications that serious mischief was a-foot. This was the first cere- 
 mony observed at Drury Lane in January, 1740, when the riot 
 took place consequent on the non-appearance of a French dancer, 
 Madame Chateauneuf. When the ladies had been sent home, a 
 noble marquis suggested, and warmly recommended, that it would 
 be well and proper to set fire to the house ! This atrocious pro- 
 posal was considered, but not adopted. The aristocratic rioters 
 contented themselves with destroying the musical instruments, fit- 
 tings, and costly adornments, sweeping down the panel partitions 
 of the boxes, and finally pulling down the royal arms. The offence, 
 however, was condoned, on the most noble marquis sending £100 
 to the manager, who submitted to defray the remainder of the 
 cost of reparation rather than further provoke his excellent 
 patrons. 
 
 The mixture of ferocity and gallantry in the audiences of these 
 times was remarkable. When Miller, most unlucky of clergymen, 
 produced his farce of the " Coffee-House," he caused the Temple 
 to heave with indignation. Under the temple-gate there was a 
 coffee-house, kept by Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, and as there 
 was not only a similar pair in Miller's piece, but a woodcut on the 
 title-page of the printed copy, which bore some likeness to the 
 siuig little place where Templars loved to congregate, those gentle- 
 men took offence as at an insult levelled at their fair hostesses, and 
 went down in a body to the theatre, whence they procured the ex-
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF 1700 — ITc^O. 385 
 
 pulsion of the piece. Nor did tliey ever suffer a subsequent play of 
 Miller's to succeed. The Templars never forgave him his uninten- 
 tional caricature of the buxom hostess, and Hebe her daughter, 
 who presided over the aromatic cups dispensed by them beneath 
 the Temple gates. In contests like these, where opposition was 
 expected, it was no unusual thing for one or both parties to hiro 
 a body of professional " bruisers." The side which possessed the 
 greatest number of these Bashi-Bazouks, generally carried the day. 
 When the town took sides, in 1743, in the quarrel between Gar- 
 rick and Macklin, where the right was altogether with the former, 
 Dr. Barrowby headed a phalanx of sturdy Macklinites ; but Garrick 
 or Garrick's friends, sent against them a formidable band of thirty 
 boxers, who went in, cracked skulls, cleared the pit, and established 
 tranquillity ! 
 
 It is curious to mark, at a time when audiences bore with gross 
 wit, and were accustomed, on slight provocation, to resort to acts 
 of violence, how sensitive they were on other points. Poor 
 Hughes, who died on the first night of the representation of his 
 "Siege of Damascus," in 17'JO, was compelled to remodel the 
 character of Phocyas, a Christian who turns Moslem, as the mana- 
 gers considered that the audience would not tolerate the sight of 
 him after his apostacy. So Charles Killigrew, Master of the Rev- 
 els, cut out the whole of the first act from Gibber's adaptation of 
 *' Richard III.," on the ground that the Jacobite portion of the 
 audience, in the distress of King Henry, would be painfully, or 
 angrily, reminded of the sorrows of King James. After all, sus- 
 ceptible as audiences occasionally were, the sensibilities of the gal- 
 lery remained untouched, or evidence of the fact was offered in 
 an exaggerated form. When Dryden's Cleomenes, or Rowe's 
 Jane Shore, used to complain of the hunger under which tliey suf- 
 f(!red, it was the humor of the "gods" to fling bread down upon 
 the stage, by way of showing their sympathy, or their Avant of it. 
 
 " All the parts will be played to the best advantage, the whole 
 of the company being now in town," was no unusual bait thrown 
 out to win an audience. Sometimes the house would fill to see, 
 on great occasions, the foremost folk in the laud, fops and fine 
 ladies occupying the amphitheatre erected on the stage, and the 
 plavers acting between a double audience. What should we 
 Vol. T.— 17
 
 386 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 think now of an author taking a benefit, obtaining at it the presence 
 »">f the heir to the throne, and delivering an oration on the condition 
 and merits of the royal family and the state of the nation as re- 
 garded foreign and domestic relations ? Yet this is what Durfey did, 
 to the deliglit and edification of his hearers at Drury Lane, in 1715. 
 On other occasions, plays were given " for the entertainment of 
 the new Toasts and several Ladies of Quality," whereat crowds 
 flocked to behold the pretty nymphs whose names consecrated the 
 flowing bumpers of the beaux, and the married ladies who had 
 enjoyed that honor in their earlier days. 
 
 " The boxes still the brighter circles were ; 
 Triumphant toasts received their homage there." 
 
 At other times, there were less friendly and admiring gatherings ; 
 and epilogues laudatory of Eugene and Marlborough filled the 
 house with friends and foes of those illustrious nlen, and furnished 
 reasons for very unreasonable conflicts. A flourish of the pen, 
 too, in the Tatler or Spectator, could send half the town to fight 
 for vacant benches ; and it was remarked that there was scarcely 
 a comedian of merit who had not been recommended to the public 
 in the former journal. But to see these, there often only thronged 
 
 '• Poets free o' th' house, and beaux who never pay." 
 
 These non-paying beaux were as troublesome to players as to 
 audience. In vain were they warned off the stage, where, indeed, 
 halfa-guinea could always find admission for them, even after the 
 managers had decreed that the way should be barred, though 
 Potosi itself were offered for a bribe. In 1721, half-a-dozen tipsy 
 beaux, with one among them of the degree of an Earl, who was 
 wont to be tipsy for a week together, raised a riot, to avenge an 
 affront, in the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. His lordship 
 crossed the stage, while Macbeth and his lady were upon it, to 
 speak to a boon companion, who was lolling at the opposite wing. 
 There, too, stood Rich, the manager, who told the peer that, after 
 such an act of indecorum, he should never be admitted behind the 
 scenes again. The Earl looked up, and, steadying himself, ad- 
 ministered to Rich a smart slap on the face, which Rich returned
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF 1700-1750. 387 
 
 with interest. Swords flashed forth in a minute from half-a-dozen 
 scabbards, whose laced and lordly owners solemnly decreed that 
 Rich must die. But Quin, and Ryan, and Walker, rushed to the 
 rescue, with their own weapons naked in their hands. With aid 
 of some other members of the company, they made front, charged 
 the coxcombs, and drove them headlong out at the stage door and 
 into the kennel. The beaux waxed wroth ; but executing a great 
 strategic movement, they stormed the front of the house, and rush- 
 ing into the boxes, they cut and thrust right and left, broke the 
 sconces, slashed the hangings, and were proceeding to do further 
 mischief, — " fire the house !" was ever a favorite threat with these 
 bullies, when doughty Quin, and a body of constables and watch- 
 men, flung themselves on the rioters, and carried all they caught 
 before the magistrates, by whom they were committed for trial. 
 Ultimately, the affair was compromised ; but there is evidence 
 that the actors were intimidated, inasmuch as they issued a decla- 
 ration that they would " desist from acting till proper care be 
 taken to pi'event the like disorders for the future." The house 
 was closed for ncai'ly a week ; and, to prevent such outrages in 
 future, the angry King, who took an interest in theatrical matters, 
 ordered that a guard should attend during the performances at 
 either house. This was the origin of the attendance of soldiers, — 
 a custom which ceased at the patent theatres only a few years 
 eince. 
 
 In the sight of an exceedingly " free" people, the guard was an 
 insult, which the mob, and not the beaux, resented. It was a 
 popular pastime to pelt them, till the terrors of the Prison-Gate 
 House terminated the folly. The mob, indeed, loved a riot, quite 
 as dearly as the " quality," and were especially ungallant to the 
 aspiring young ladies on the gtage. West's tragedy of " Hecuba" 
 entirely failed at Drury Lane, in 1726, through the vandalism of 
 the galleries, who, as capricious as my lords below, hissed the 
 "young actresses" from beginning to end; and yet those "young 
 actresses" were Mrs. Gibber, and other " darlings" of the town. 
 
 Golley Gibber once pleaded the gracious presence of a prince in 
 order to win propriety of conduct from an audience ; at other 
 times, the more gracious presence of a poet won respect. This 
 was the case on that hot night in June, 1730, when "George
 
 3S8 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 Barnwell" was first played at Drury Lane. The audience bad sup- 
 plied themselves with the old ballad on the subject of that famous 
 apprentice lad, — intending to make ludicrous contrast between the 
 story there and that in the tragedy ; but Pope was present, serious 
 and attentive, aud the rough critics, taking their cue from him, 
 followed his example ; at least, they threw away their ballads, took 
 out their handkerchiefs, and wept over the fate of the wicked lad, 
 M) admirably played by that prince of scamps, Theophilus Gibber, 
 Such a warning did he hold out to evil doers, that influential 
 people of quality and reflecting city merchants used occasionally, 
 for years, to " command" the playing of this tragedy, as whole- 
 some instruction for apprentices in particular, and a wicked young 
 public, generally. 
 
 Among the influential part of the audience, may be numbered 
 the ladies. It was at their particular request that the pail of 
 Bookish, in Fielding's " Old Man taught Wisdom," was omitted 
 after the first night, on account of some rude sentiments, touching 
 the superiority of man over woman, — or of Bookish over Lucy ! 
 Considering how women, and audiences generally, were roughly 
 handled in prologues and epilogues, the deference otherwise paid 
 to the latter seems singular. For instance : the company at the 
 Haymarket, in 1735, announced that they would " continue to act on 
 Tuesdays and Fridays, as long as they shall deserve the favor of 
 the town." 
 
 The most exacting portion of the audience, however, was to be 
 found in the footmen. From the earliest times, they had been 
 famous for their " toaring ;" and Dryden speaks of them as a 
 nuisance, than which there was no greater, except "their unpaying 
 masters." These masters had small chance of hearing the play, 
 unless their lackeys gave permission. The plan of opening the 
 uj>per gallery to these fellows, gratis, in 1697, was an aggravation 
 rather than a palliative of the evil ; but the privilege, although at 
 various times suspended, was not finally abolished till about 1780. 
 As many as three hundred of the party-colored tribe have been 
 known to unite, armed, in support of the privilege which they 
 invariably abused. Of authors present at the condemnation of 
 their own piecps, and of the philosophy, or lack of it, with which 
 they bore their calamity, I shall have to speak presently ; but T am
 
 THE AUDIENCES OF 17oO-1750. 38» 
 
 tempted to notice here, as illustrations of the audience side of the 
 theatre, the appearance of dramatists in state, witnessing the 
 triumphs of their pieces. When the " Conscious Lovers" was first 
 played at Drury Lane, in 1722, Steele sat in what was called 
 IJurton's box, — an enclosed part in the centre of the first gallery, 
 where places were kept at pit prices. From this lofty elevation, 
 Steele enjoyed the success of a piece which respected decency 
 tliroughout, and he awarded approval to all the actors concerned, 
 except Griffin, who played Cimberton. Fielding laughed at this 
 novel comedy, as being " as good as a sermon ;" and later writers 
 liave ridiculed the author for preferring to show what manners 
 ought to be, rather than wliat they are ; but Steele's play — a leetle 
 dull though it be — was creditable to him, and a benefit to the 
 stage. 
 
 Political application of passages in plays was frequently and 
 eagerly made by the audiences of those days, — though Walpole 
 records an incident of lack of observation in this respect, as well 
 as of readiness. When his father. Sir Robert, was threatened with 
 impeachment, in 1742, Horace ridiculed the want of frankness on 
 the part of the ministry. " The minds of the people grow much 
 more candid," he says ; " at first, they made one of the actors at Drury 
 Lane repeat some applicable lines at the end of ' Henry IV. ;' 
 but, last Monday, when his royal highness (the Prince of Wales) 
 had purposely bespoken ' The Unhappy Favorite,' for Mrs. Porter's 
 benefit, they never once applied the most glaring passages ; as, 
 where they read the indictment against Robert Earl of Essex, 4fcc., 
 &c." 
 
 We have seen Kings at the play in presence of their people ; 
 and poets were often there, receiving as warm welcome as kings. 
 When Thomson's " Agamemnon" was first played. Pope was 
 present, and he was received, we are told by Johnson, " with a 
 general clap." This shows how familiar London audiences were 
 with their great men, and that the same men must often have ex 
 hibited themselves to the same audiences ; — the Londoners being 
 then the great play-goers. On the same night, the author of the 
 drama was himself seated, not near Pope, but in the centre of the 
 gallery, surrounded by some friends. There, as soon as Mrs. Gib- 
 ber and Mrs. Furnival entered and spoke, he began to accoii;pany
 
 390 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 tliein, by audible declamation, which his friends had some diflBculty 
 ill checking. Johnson, when " Irene" was played, was more dig 
 uified and more calm. He sat forward in a conspicuous side box, 
 solemnly dressed for the occasion, his wig new curled, a bright 
 scarlet waistcoat — gold laced, purchased for the nonce, — and a 
 tranquil, majestic look about him, which the pit frequently con- 
 templated with approval. The poet was being judged by the 
 people. But poet and people were there to heed the players ; and 
 let us now follow their example.
 
 EXIT, JAMES QUIN. 391 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 EXIT, JAMES QUIN. 
 
 The opposition between Garrick and Barry was well sustained 
 during the season of 1752-3. The former had a forcible second 
 and substitute in Mossop, and an attractive lady to woo in 
 comedy, or slay in tragedy, in Miss (or Mrs.) Bellamy ; but a more 
 accomplished still in Mrs. Pritchard. At the Garden, Barry was 
 at his very best in health and acting, and Mrs. Gibber in the full 
 bloom of her beauty and her powers. It was a pity that such a 
 pair of lovers should be separated, " for no two persons were so 
 calculated to assist each other, by voice, manner, and real feeling, 
 as they were ;" but, as Wilkinson records, " at the close of this 
 season they separated, never to meet again on the same stage." 
 Meanwhile, fashion patronized Garrick and Mrs. Pritchard, rather 
 more lavi'*hly than the rival pair. 
 
 - Each had their especial triumphs in new pieces. Garrick and 
 Mrs. Pritchard in Moore's " Gamester," first played on the 7th 
 February, 1753 (Beverley, Garrick ; Lewson, Mossop; Stukely. 
 Davies ; Mrs. Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard), and Barry and Mrs. Gib- 
 ber in Jones's " Earl of Essex," produced at the Garden, February 
 21st. Admirable as Garrick was in Beverley, Mrs. Pritchard 
 carried off the chief honors, so natural, so terribly real, and so ap- 
 parently unconscious of the audience was she in her acting. She 
 was quite " at home" in this prose tragedy ; the severe lesson in 
 which, however, after terrifjdng, began to displease hearers, who 
 did not relish the caustic laid to their darling vice. 
 
 Let me also mention here Young's tragedy, " The Brothers," 
 written thiity years before, previous to his ordination, amended 
 by Lady Wortley Montague, and now played in March, 1753. 
 
 As soon as Young surrendered this piece to the players, for the 
 benefit of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, he wa.s 
 immersed in the very thickest of theatrical squabbles, to the dis-
 
 '.3i;'2 l<okan's ais'nals of the stage. 
 
 grace of his clerical profession. George Anne Bellamy, that 
 capricious beauty on whom the delighted town showered fortune, 
 who rode one day in gilded chariots, and the next was lying on 
 the lowest of the steps at Westminster Bridge, wrapped in miser}', 
 and contemplating suicide ; the irresistible Bellamy was then the 
 idol of the world of fashion, and Young readily acceded to her 
 request that she might read " The Brothers" to the players. The 
 request rendered Garrick furious, although it was grounded on the 
 young lady's personal knowledge of the author. The green-rt oni 
 was in an uproar. Roscius claimed the principal part for Mrs. 
 Pritchard; and when George Anne poutingly offered to surrender 
 the character assigned her by the doctor, Young vehemently op- 
 posed it with an emphatic " No, no !" Mrs. Bellamy accordingly 
 read the piece, and assumed the liberty of criticising it. She ex- 
 pressly objected to the line, " I will speak to you in thunder," as 
 not being in a concatenation with the delicacy of the fine lady 
 who utters it. The reverend author protested that it was the 
 most forcible line in the piece ; but Mrs. Bellamy thought it 
 would be more so if it were improved by the introduction of 
 " lightning" as well as thunder. 
 
 The good doctor was something nettled at the lady's wit; and 
 he declared that " The Brothers" was the best piece he had 
 ever written. "I am afraid, doctor," rejoined the lady, pertly, 
 "that you will do with me as the Archbishop of Toledo did with 
 Gil Bias on a similar occasion. But I cannot help reminding you 
 of a tragedy called the ' Revenge !' " The author took the re- 
 mark in considerable dudgeon ; but the sparkling young actress, 
 who sincerely esteemed him, exerted all her powers to smooth the 
 plumage that her wit had ruffled ; and she did this with such 
 effect, that the doctor, after ofiering to cancel the line objected to, 
 invited himself to dine with her, and did so in company with 
 Garrick, and rough Quin. " Tlie IJrothers" was acted to tliin 
 houses for eight nights, and then quietly shelved. The author 
 realized £400 by it; to which adding from his private purse 
 =£600 more, he gave the handsome sum of £1,000 to the Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel. The author was displeased 
 alike with the town, and witli the players. The truth is, however, 
 tiia; the fiiult lay as much with himself as with either. The play
 
 EXIT, JAMES QUIN. 393 
 
 was not original, but taken without acknowledgment, from various 
 sources. A great portion is almost literally translated from the 
 French piece, Persee et Demetrius. Many of the speeches are 
 taken piecemeal from Livy. 
 
 The contest in the third act is splendidly phrased; but the de- 
 nouement is so confused and incomplete, that Young was obliged 
 to add an epilogue to explain what was supposed to take place at, 
 and after, the tall of the curtain ! Garrick substituted a coarse 
 epilogue, which was spoken by sprightly Kitty Clive, who loved 
 to give coarseness all its point ; but it could not save the piece ; 
 and it seriously offended the author. Since then " The Brothers" 
 has descended into that oblivion which fittingly enfolds nearly all 
 the classical tragedies of the last century. It is not without its 
 beauties ; bxit it does not picture the period it afiects to portray. 
 The " sir" and " madam" sound as harshly as the " citizen Agamem- 
 non,^'' which the French Republic introduced into Racine's plays ; 
 and the epithets are only one degree less absurd than the Oui, 
 Milor, which Voltaire's Beersheba addresses to King David. 
 
 Barry's Jaffier, played for the first time on the 21st of Novem- 
 ber, 1752, placed him on an equality with Garrick in that charac- 
 ter ; but he was not so great in this as in Jones's tragedy, the 
 " Earl of Essex," which he played on the 21st of Februaiy, to 
 Smith's Southampton, and the Countess of Rutland of Mrs. Gibber. 
 One sentence in this tragedy, uttered by Barry, seems to have had 
 an almost incredible effect. When the Earl, pointing to the Count- 
 ess of Rutland, in a savooh, exclaimed, " Oh, look there !" Barry's 
 attitude and pathetic expression of voice were such that " all the 
 critics in the pit burst into tears, and then shook the theatre with 
 repeated and unbounded applause." The bricklayer poet, whom 
 Chesterfield brought from Drogheda, only to ultimately die, half- 
 starved, in a garret near Covcnt Garden, attributed the success of 
 the piece to his own powers, whereas it was due to the wonderful 
 acting of Barry and Mrs. Gibber alone. 
 
 With tins season, James Quin disappeared from the stage. For 
 a year or two he had not acted. The triumphs of Garrick, fol- 
 lowed by those of Bariy, drove from the scene the old player wlio 
 for nearlv forty years, belonged to the now bygone school of Bet- 
 tcrton, but particularly of Booth, whose succession he worthily 
 17*
 
 "394 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 held, rather than of Garrick. James Quin stands, however, 
 worthily among, if not on a level with, those actors of two different 
 eras, having something of each, but yet distinct from either. 
 Such a man deserves a few words in addition to those I have 
 already wi'ltten. 
 
 The theatrical life of Quin embraces the following dates. James 
 Quin began his career in Dublin, in I7l4, and ended it at Bath, 
 in 1753. His first character was Able, in the "Committee," his 
 last, Hamlet, played at Bath (whither he had retired), not for hiKS 
 own benefit, but for that of his friend, Ryan. Of doing kindnesses 
 to friends, James Quin was never weary ; and if he did say that 
 Garrick, in Othello, looked like the black boy in Hogarth's picture, 
 he was only temporarily jealous of Koscius. Quin was a careless 
 dresser of his characters ; and ho liad a sharp sarcasm, but not a 
 lasting ill-feeling, for those who pretended to better taste and 
 gave it practical application. 
 
 I have already spoken of Quin's early life ; his English birth, 
 his Irish breeding, his disputed legitimacy, and his succession to 
 an estate, from which he was debarred by the rightful proprietors. 
 Necessity and some qualifications directed him to the Dublin 
 stage, where he played under Ashbury, Queen An-ae's old master 
 of elocution. Quin, then about onc-and-twenty, gave such prom- 
 ise that Chetwood, the prompter, recommended him " to try Lon- 
 don," where, at Drury Lane, during three seasons, he played what- 
 ever character he was cast for, and made use of opportunity 
 whenever that character happened to be a prominent one. 
 
 In 1718, Quia passed to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where, for four 
 years, he was the great support of that house. I have previously 
 noticed his misadventure with Bowen, the actor, whom he slew 
 in honest self-defence, under great provocation. It wa.s kind- 
 hearted, but hot-blooded Quin's hard fate to kill two actors. A 
 subordinate player, named Williams, was the Decius to Quin's 
 Cato. Williams, in delivering the line, " Caesar sends health to 
 Cato," pronounced the last name so affectedly — something like 
 " Keeto" — that Quin, in his impatience, could not help exclaiming, 
 " Would he had sent a better messenger !" This greatly irritated 
 the little Welsh actor, — the more that he had to repeat the name 
 in nearly every sentence of his scene with Cato, and Quin did not
 
 EXIT, JAMES QUIN, 3*J5 
 
 fail to look so hard at him when he pronounced the name, that 
 the secondary player's irritation was at the highest when the 
 spcne concluded ; and Decius turned away, with the remark, 
 
 " When I relate, hereafter, 
 The tale of this unhappy embassy, 
 All Rome will be in tears." 
 
 That tale, Williams went and told in the green-room, where he 
 waited for Quin, who came off at the end of the two scenes more, 
 after uttering the word, " death." It was what he brought, with- 
 out meaning it, to the irascible Welshman, who attacked him on 
 the not unreasonable ground that Quin had rendered him ridien- 
 lous in the eyes of the audience ; and he demanded the satisfac- 
 tion which gentlemen who wore swords were in the habit of giving 
 to each ©ther. Quin treated the affair as a mere joke, but the 
 Welsh actor would not be soothed. After the play, he lay in 
 wait for the offender in the Covent Garden Piazza, where much 
 malapert blood was often spilled. There Quin could not refuse to 
 defend himself, however ill-disposed he was to accept the combat, 
 and after a few passes, Williams lay lifeless on the flag-stones, and 
 Quin was arrested by the watch. Ultimately, he was absolved 
 from blame, and no further harm came of it than the lasting regret 
 of having shed the blood of a fellow-creature. 
 
 At a later period, Quin was well-nigh slaying a more ignoble 
 foe than Williams, namely, Theophilus Gibber, whose scoundrelly 
 conduct towards his beautiful and accomplished wife, Quin alluded 
 t-o, under a very forcible epithet applied to her husband. Out of 
 this incident arose a quarrel, and swords were again drawn in the 
 Piazza, where Quin and Gibber slashed each other across the arm 
 and fingers, till they were parted by the bystanders. 
 
 Tn 1732, Quin, with the company from the "Fields," established 
 himself in the new theatre in Covent Garden, whence, after two 
 seasons, he passed to Drury Lane, where he continued till 1741 ; 
 after which, with some intervals, he again enrolled himself at the 
 "Garden," where he remained till he quietly withdrew, in 1751. 
 Of his rivalry with (rarrick, I have already said something. If he 
 was vanquished in that contest, he was not humiliated, though I 
 think he was a little humbled in spirit. His great merit is,
 
 396 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 nevertheless, incontestable. His Cato and Brutus were good ; lie 
 was excellent in Henry VHL, Volpone, Glo'ster, Apeinantus, Ven- 
 tidius, the Old Bachelor, and "all the Falstafts." He was happy 
 only in a few speeches of Pierre, especially, "I could have hugged 
 the greasy rogues, they pleased me so !" and his execration of the 
 senate. His Plain Dealer is commended, and the soliloquies of Zan- 
 ga are eulogized. His Macheath and some other operatic parts, ho 
 played and sung extremely well. His failures were Macbeth, Othello, 
 Richard, Lear, Chamont, and Young Bevil. His continuing to play 
 these in opposition to Garrick and Barry censures his judgment. 
 Davies says, he often gave true weight and dignity to sentiment by 
 a well regulated tone of voice, judicious elocution, and easy deport- 
 ment. The expression of the tender, as well as of the violent, emo- 
 tions of the heart was beyond his reach. The plain and the familiar 
 rather than the striking and the vigorous became him whose action 
 was either forced or languid, and whose movements were ponderous 
 or sluggish. From the retirement of Booth till the coming of Gar- 
 rick, Quin can scarcely be said to have had a rival, unless it were the 
 clever but lazy Delane, whose self-indulgence was not accompanied 
 by the energy and industry which went with that of Quin. As De- 
 lane fell before Quin, so did Quin fall before the younger energy, 
 and power, and perseverance, of Garrick. James's prophecy that 
 the latter, in founding a new religion,— like Whitefield, would be 
 followed for a time, but that people would all come to church 
 again, was not fulfilled. 
 
 Nevertheless, it produced a very fair epigram : — 
 
 " Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own, 
 Complains that Heresy affects the town. 
 That Whitefield G-arrick now misleads the age. 
 And taints the sound religion of the stage. 
 ' Schism I' he cries, 'has turn'd the nation's brain;' 
 'But eyes will open, and to church again!' 
 Thou great Infallible, forbear to roar, 
 Thy bulls and errors are rever'd no more. 
 When doctrines meet with gen'ral approbation, 
 It is not Heresy, but Reformation." 
 
 (^uin has left some reputation as a humorist. Biographers give 
 the name of his tutor in Dublin, hut they add that Quin was
 
 EXIT, JAMES QUIN. 397 
 
 illiterate, a character which is hardly established by the best of his 
 t>ons mots. That he was not well read, even in the literature of 
 that profession, of which he was so distinguished a member, is 
 certain ; but he boasted that he could read men more readily 
 than books, and it is certain that his observation was acute, and the 
 application of what he learned thereby, electrically prompt. 
 
 If he was inexorable in enforcing the payment of what was due 
 to him, he was also nobly generous with the fortune he amassed. 
 Meanness was not among the faults of Quin. The greatest injury 
 has been done to his memory by the publication of jests, of a very 
 reprehensible character, and which were said to be his, merely to 
 quicken their sale. He lived in coarse times, and his jokes may 
 have been, now and then, of a coarse quality ; but he also said some 
 of the finest things that ever fell from the lips of an intellectual wit. 
 
 Of all Quin's jests, there is nothing finer than two which elicited 
 the warm approval of Horace Walpole. Bishop Warburton, in 
 company at Bath, spoke in support of prerogative. Quin said, 
 " Pray, my Lord, spare me ; you are not acquainted with my prin- 
 ciples. I am a republican ; and, perhaps, I even think that the 
 execution of Charles I. might be justified." "Ay!" said War- 
 burton, " by what law ?" Quin replied ; " by all the laws he had 
 left them." Walpole saw the sum of the whole controversy 
 couched in those eight monosyllables ; and the more he examined 
 the sententious truth the finer he found it. The Bishop thought 
 otherwise, and " would have got ofi" upon judgments." He bade 
 the player remember that all the regicides came to violent ends — 
 a lie, but no matter. " I would not advise your Lordship," said 
 Quia, " to make use of that inference, for, if I am not mistaken, 
 that was the case of the twelve apostles." Archbishop Whately 
 could not have more logically overthrown conclusions which discern 
 God's anger in individual afflictions. 
 
 There is little wonder, then, that Warburton disliked Quin ; 
 indeed, there was not much love lost between the two men, who 
 frequently met as guests in the house of Ralph Allen, of Prior 
 Park, Bath — the original of Fielding's Squire Allworthy, and the 
 uncle (Walpole says, the father) of Warburton's wife. The 
 Bishop, seldom courteous to any man, treated Quin with an oft'en- 
 sively patronizing air, and endeavored to make him feel the dis-
 
 398 dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 tance between them. There was only a difference in their voca- 
 tions, for Quin, by birth, was, perhaps, rather a better gentleman 
 than Warburton. The latter, once, at Allen's house, where the 
 prelate is said to have admonished the player on his too luxurious 
 way of living (the bishop, however, loving custard not less than 
 the actor did John Dory), requested him, as he could not see him 
 on the stage, to recite some passages from dramatic authors, in 
 presence of a large company then assembled in the drawing-room. 
 Quin made some little difficulty ; but after a well-simulated hesita- 
 tion consented, and stood up to deliver passages from " Venice 
 Preserved ;" but in reciting the lines 
 
 " Honest men. 
 Are the soft easy cushions on which knaves 
 Repose and fatten," 
 
 he so pointedly directed his looks, at "honest men" to Allen, and 
 at " knaves" to Warburton, that the company universally marked 
 the application, and the bishop never asked for a taste of the 
 actor's quality again. And yet he is reported to have imitated 
 this very act, with less warrant for it. When Dr. Terrick had been 
 recently (in 1764) promoted from Peterborough to the see of 
 London, a preferment coveted by Warburton, the latter preached 
 a sermon at the Chapel Royal, at which the new Bishop of London 
 was present, amid more august members of the congregation. 
 Warburton took occasion to say that a government which conferred 
 the high trusts of the church on illiterate and worthless objects 
 betrayed the interests of religion ; — and on saying so, he stared 
 Terrick full in the face. 
 
 There was no man for whom Quin had such distaste as this 
 unpleasant Bishop of Gloucester, who published an edition of 
 Shakspeare. When this was announced, the actor remarked in 
 the green-room of old Drury, •* He had better mind his own 
 Bible, and leave ours to us !" Quin was undoubtedly open to 
 censure on the score of his epicurism. He is said to have so loved 
 John Dory as to declare, that for the enjoyment of it, a man 
 " should have a swallow from here to the antipodes, and palate all 
 the way !" and we are told that if, on his servant calling him in 
 the morning, he heard that there was no John Dory in the market.
 
 EXIT, JAMES QUIN. 399 
 
 he would turn round, and lazily remark, " then call ine again to- 
 morrow." But these are tales more or less colored to illustrate 
 his way of life. There is one which has more probability in it, 
 which speaks of another incident at Bath. Lord Chesterfield saw 
 a couple of chairmen helping a heavy gentleman into a sedan, and 
 he asked his servant if he knew who that stout gentleman was? 
 " Only Mr. Quin, my lord, going home, as usual, from the ' Three 
 l\ins.' " " Nay, sir," answered my lord, " I think Mr. Quin is 
 taking one of the three home with him under his waistcoat !" 
 
 His capacity was undoubtedly great, but the overtesting it occa- 
 sionally aflfected his acting. An occasion on which he was play- 
 ing Balance, in the " Recruiting Officer," Mrs. "VVoffington acting 
 Sylvia, his daughter, affords an instance. In the second scene of 
 the second act he should have asked his daughter : " Sylvia, how 
 old were you when your mother died .^" instead of which he said 
 " married.'''' Sylvia laughed, and being put out of her cue, could 
 only stammer, " What, sir ?" " Pshaw !" cried the more confused 
 justice ; " I mean, how old were you when your mother was born ?" 
 Mrs. Woffington recovered her self-possession, and taking the 
 proper cue, said, " You mean, sir, Avhen my mother died. Alas ! 
 so young, that I do not remember I ever had one ; and you have 
 been so careful, so indulgent to me, ever since, that indeed I never 
 wanted one." 
 
 In his latest days, his powers of retort never failed him. He 
 was in that closing season when a fop condoled with him on grow- 
 ing old, and asked what the actor would give to be as young as 
 he was ? " I would almost be content to be as foolish !" was 
 Quin's reply. 
 
 Old llippisley, who, from a candle-snuffer became a favorite lew 
 comedian, owed much of his power of exdting mirth to a queer ex- 
 pression in his distorted face, caused by a scar from a severe burn. 
 Having some intention to put his son on the stage, he asked Quin's 
 advice as to the preparatory measures. " Hippy !" said Quin, " you 
 had better begin by burning him." 
 
 Nobody bore with his sharp sayings more cheerfully than Mrs. 
 Woffington. We all know his remark, when Margaret, coming off" 
 the stage as Sir Harry Wildair, declared that she believed one 
 half the house thought she was a man. Less known is his com-
 
 400 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 ment when, on asking lier why slie had been to Bath ? she 
 answered, saucily, — " Oh, for mere wantonness !" whereon, Quin 
 retorted with, " And have you been cured of it ?" 
 
 He was one of the few men who could stand a fall with Footc, 
 and come oft" the better man. Foote, who could not endure a joke 
 made on himself, broke friendship with Quin on account of such 
 offence. Ultimately they were reconciled ; but even then Foote 
 referred to the provocation. " Jemmy, you should not have said 
 that I had but one shirt, and that I lay a-bed while it was washed !" 
 " Sammy," replied Quin, " I never coidd have said so, for I never 
 knew that you had a shirt to wash !" 
 
 In the roughest of Quin's jests there was no liarm meant, and 
 many of his jokes manifested the kindliness of his heart. Here is 
 an obscure actor, Dick Winston, lying — hungry, weary, and disen- 
 gaged — on a truckle bed, in the neighborhood of Covent Garden. 
 He had wilfully forfeited an old engagement, turned itinerant, 
 starved, and had returned, only to find his old place occupied. 
 He is on his back, in utter despair, as Mr. Quin enters, followed 
 by a man carrying a decent suit of clothes ; and the great actor 
 hails him with a " Now, Dick, how is it you are not up and at 
 rehearsal?" Quin had heard of his distress, got him restored lo 
 his employment, and took this way of announcing it. Winston 
 dressed himself in a state of bewilderment; a new dress and anew 
 engagement — but no cash wherewith to obtain a breakfast ! " Mr. 
 Quin," said he, unhesitatingly, " what shall I do for a little ready 
 money, till Saturday arrives ?" " Nay !" replied Quin ; " I have 
 done all I can for you ; but as for money, Dick, you must put your 
 hand in your own pocket." Quin had put a £10 note there ! 
 
 Again ; when Ryan asked, in an emergency, for a loan, the 
 answer from Quin was, that he had nothing to lend ; but he had 
 left Ryan £1,000 in his will, and Ryan might have that, if he were 
 inclined to cheat the government of the legacy duty ! 
 
 Frederick, Prince of Wales, was not half such a practically 
 good patron to Thomson, as James Quin was. AVhen the bard 
 was in distress, Quin gave liiin a supper at a tavern, for half of 
 wliich the poet expected he would have to pay ; but the player 
 designed otherwise. " Mr. Thomson," said he, " I estimate the 
 pleasure I have had in perusing your works at £100 at least; and
 
 EXIT, JAMES QUIN. 401 
 
 vou must allow me to settle that account, by presenting you with 
 the money." What are the sinall or the great faults of this actor 
 of "all the FalstafFs," when we find his virtues so practical and 
 lively ? In return, the minsti'el has repaid the good deed with a 
 guerdon of song. In the Castle of Indolence, he says : 
 
 Here whilom ligg'd th' ^sopus of the age ; 
 But, call'd by Fame, iu soul ypricked deep, 
 A noble pride restored him to the stage, 
 And roused him like a giant from his sleep. 
 Even from his slumbers we advantage reap: 
 With double force th' enlivened scene he wakes, 
 Yet quits not Nature's bounds. He knows to keep 
 Each due decorum: now the heart he shakes, 
 And now with well-urged sense th' enlightened judgment takes." 
 
 The actor had a great regard for the poet, and was not onlv 
 active in bringing forward his posthumous tragedy, " Coriolanus," 
 in which Quin played the principal character, in 1749, but spoke 
 the Hon. George Lyttleton's celebrated prologue with such feeling, 
 that he could not restrain his tears ; and with such efiect, that the 
 audience were moved, it is said, in like manner ; — 
 
 " He loved his friends ; — forgive this gushing tear ; 
 Alas 1 I feel I am no actor here ;" 
 
 and Quin's eyes glistened, as he went through the noble eulogy 
 of a poet, whose 
 
 " Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre, 
 None but the noblest passions to inspire ; 
 Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, 
 One line, which, dying, he could wish to blot." 
 
 The last night Quin played as an engaged actor, was at Covenl 
 Garden, on the 15th of May, 1751 ; the play was the "Fair Peni- 
 tent," in which lie acted Horatio to the Lothario of Barry, and 
 the Calista of Mrs. Gibber. After this he quietly withdrew, without 
 leave-taking, returning only once or twice to play for the benefit of 
 a friend. In his later years, his professional income is said to have 
 reached £1,000 a year. He was the first English actor who 
 received £50 a night, during a part of his career. The characters
 
 402 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 he created were in pieces wliicli have died off the stage, save 
 Oomus, which he acted with effective dignity in the season of 
 1737-8; — a part, in which Mr. Macrcady distinguished himself, 
 during his memorable management of Drury Lane. 
 
 Quin's social position, after leaving the stage, was one congenial 
 to a map of his merits, taste, and acquirements. He was a welcome 
 guest at many noble hearths — from that of ducal Chatsworth to 
 that of modest Allen's, at Prior Park. At the former, he and 
 Garrick met. There had not been a cordial intimacy between the 
 two, as actors ; but as private gentlemen, they became friends. 
 This better state of things was owing to the kindly feeling of Quin. 
 The two men were left alone in a room at Chatsworth, and Quin 
 made the first step toward a reconciliation, by asking a question, 
 the most agreeable he could put, — inquiring after Mrs. Garrick's 
 health. In this scene, the two men come before me as distinct as 
 a couple of figures drawn by Meissonier — quaint in costume, full 
 of character and life, pleasant to look at and to remember. 
 
 Quin was Garrick's guest at Hampton, when he was stricken, in 
 1765, with the illness which ultimately proved ftUid. He died, 
 however, in his own house at Bath. " I could wish," he said, the 
 day before, " that the last tragic scene were over ; and I hope I 
 may be enabled to meet and pass through it with dignity." He 
 passed through it becomingly on the 21st of January, 1766 ; and 
 Garrick placed the following lines on the old actor's tomb, in the 
 Abbey — a pyramid of Sienna marble, bearing a medallion portrait 
 of Quin, resting on a sarcophagus, on which the inscription is en- 
 graved, supported by the mask of Thalia, and the dagger of 
 Melpomene. 
 
 " That tongue which set the table in a roar, 
 And charmed the pubhc ear, is heard no more; 
 Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit, 
 Which spake, before this tongue, what Shakspoare writ. 
 Cold was that hand whicli, living, was stretched forth 
 * At friendship's call, to succor modest worth. 
 
 Here hes James Quin. Deign, reader, to be taught, 
 Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought, 
 In Nature's happy mould however cast, 
 'To this complexion thou miLst corao at last.' "
 
 EXIT, JAMES QUIN. 403 
 
 Kind-hearted people have remarked that Garrick never said so 
 much to, or of, Quin when he was aUve. Perhaps not. He strug- 
 gled with Quin for niasterj^ — vanquished him ; became his friend, 
 and hung up over his grave a glowing testimony to his talent and 
 his virtues. This was in the spirit of old chivalry. What would 
 kind-hearted people have ? Was it not well in Garrick to speak 
 truthfully of one dead whom, when living, he thus with pleasant 
 satire described, as soliloquizing at the tomb of Duke Humphrey 
 at St. Albans : — 
 
 " A plague on Egypt's art, I say I 
 Embalm the dead! On senseless clay 
 Rich wines and spices waste 1 
 Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall I 
 Bound in a precious pickle lie, 
 
 Which I can never taste ? 
 Let me embalm this flesh of mine 
 With turtle fat, and Bordeaux wine, 
 And spoil th' Egyptian trade I 
 Than Humphry's Duke more happy I, 
 Embalm'd alive, old Quin shall die 
 
 A mummy ready made." 
 
 As a tail-piece to this sketch, I cannot, I think, do better than 
 subjoin Foote's portrait of Quin, which, I will hope, was not drawn 
 to disparage any of Quin's great survivors, but in all honesty and 
 sincerity. " Mr. Quin's deportment through the whole cast of his 
 characters is natural and unaffected, his countenance expressive 
 without the assistance of grimace, and he is, indeed, in every cir- 
 cumstance, so much the person he represents, that it is scarcely 
 possible for any attentive spectator to believe that the hypocritical, 
 intriguing Maskwell, the suspicious superannuated rake, the snarl- 
 ing old bachelor, and the jolly, jocose Jack Falstati" arc imitated, 
 not real persons. 
 
 " And here I wish I had room and ability to point out the 
 severe masterly strokes with which Mr. Quin has often entertained 
 my imagination, and satisfied my judgment, but, under my present 
 cor finement, I can only recommend the man who wants to see a 
 character perfectly played, to sec Mr. Quin in the part of Falstaff; 
 end if he does not express a desire of spending an evening with
 
 40* doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 that merry mortal, wliy, I would not spend one with him, if he 
 would pay my reckoning." 
 
 " With a bottle of claret and a full house," it may well he 
 concluded, from all concurrent testimony, Quin was, in fat Jack, 
 unapproachable. In the traditions of the stage, he still remains 
 the Falstaft", though Henderson was subsequently thought to have 
 ('i]ualled him in many of the points of that character. 
 
 Finally, Quin's will is not uninstructive as an illustration of the 
 actor's character. There is, perhaps, not a friend he had possessed, 
 or servant who had been faithful to him, who is forgotten in it. 
 Various are the bequests, from £50 to a cousin practising medicine 
 in Dublin, to £500 and a share of the residue to a kind-hearted 
 oilman in the Strand. To one individual he bequeaths his watch, 
 in accordance with an " imprudent promise" to that effect. James 
 Quin did not like the man, but he would not break his word 
 Requiescat in pace !
 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 405 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 
 
 In 1753-4 Mrs. Gibber returned to Drury; she played Juliet 
 to Garrick's Romeo, and with him in every piece that admitted of 
 their playing together. But Barry gained in Miss Nossiter a 
 Juliet, not, indeed, equal to Mrs. Gibber, but one who increased 
 his own ardor and earnestness in Romeo, his tenderness and anxi- 
 et)"^ in Jaffier, and his truth and playfulness as Florizel, inas- 
 much as that they were mutually in love, and all the house was in 
 the secret. 
 
 Miss Nossiter, however, did not realize her early promise. 
 Contemporary critics speak of the novice as being of a delicate 
 figure, graceful in the expression of distress, but requiring careful- 
 ness in the management of her voice, and a more simple elocu- 
 tion. One of her judges curiously remarks : — " She frequently 
 alarmed the audience with the most striking attitudes." The 
 critic recovers from his alarm when speaking of another debutante 
 (Mrs. Elmey), who acted Desdemona to Barry's Othello. " No 
 part," he says, " has been better represented in our memory," and 
 " we scarce know what it was before she acted it." 
 
 Of poor Miss Nossiter there is little more recorded, than that, 
 at the end of a brief career, she died, after bequeathing to Barry, 
 the Romeo, for whom more than Miss Nossiter professed to be 
 'lying,— £3,000. 
 
 Mossop succeeded Quin, at Drury Lane, with credit. Foote 
 left " entertaining" at the Haymarket to play the Gibber parts in 
 comedy, and he was ably seconded by Woodward, Mrs. Pritchard, 
 and Kitty Olive. Miss Bellamy and Shuter passed to the Garden, 
 the latter increasing in favor each night, as opportunity afforded. 
 With the exception of minor pieces, and a revival of " King John," 
 in which Garrick was an unlikely Falconbridgo, and Mossop a 
 superb tyrant, the audiences were taken back to heavy classical
 
 4-06 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 tragedies. Drury played Glover's " Boadicea," a criticism of wlii«.h 
 is amusingly given by Walpole. " There is a new play of Glover's 
 in which Boadicea (Pritchard) rants as much as Visconti screams ; 
 but, happily, you hear no more of her after the third act, till, in 
 the last scene, somebody brings a card with her compliments, and 
 she is very sorry she cannot wait upon you, but she is dead. 
 Then there is a scene between Lord Sussex and Lord Cathcart, 
 two captains" (JEnobarbus and Flaminius — Mossop and Ilavard), 
 " which is most incredibly absurd ; but yet the parts are so well 
 acted, the dresses so fine, and two or three scenes pleasing enough, 
 that it is worth seeing." Archbishop Herring thought the two 
 last acts admirable. " In the fifth particularly, I hardly ever felt 
 myself so strongly touched." 
 
 Of a second tragedy. Crisp's " Virginia," Walpole says it flour- 
 ished through Garrick's acting. Murphy states that the manner 
 in which Garrick uttered two words, crowned the play with suc- 
 cess ; when in a low tone of voice that spoke the fulness of a 
 broken heart, he pronounced, " Thou traitor !" the whole audience 
 was electrified, and testified their delight by a thunder of applause. 
 It was, however, a poor play, even for a custom-house officer, who, 
 by the way, made Appius (Mossop) propose to marry Virginia. 
 Marcia was played by a Mrs. Graham; Garrick did not think 
 much of her ; but we shall hear of her again as the great Mrs. 
 Yates. 
 
 The third classical tragedy was Whitehead's " Creusa," founded 
 on the Ion of Euripides. Walpole praises the interest, complexity, 
 yet clearness and natural feeling of the plot. " It is the only new 
 tragedy that I ever saw and really liked. The circumstance of 
 so much distress being brought on by characters, every one good, 
 yet acting consistently with their principles toward the misfortunes 
 of the drama, is quite new and pleasing." As a reading play, 
 I think " Creusa" is the greatest success Whitehead has achioved. 
 
 On the other hand, M'Namara Morgan's romantic tragedy, 
 " Philoclea," owed most of its ephemeral success to the fire, grace, 
 beauty, and expression of Barry and Miss Nossiter (Pyrocles and 
 Philoclea), the two lovers. The house literally " sighed like fur- 
 nace" for very sympathy. The Rev. Mr. Genest says truly, " that 
 the play is a poor play, but that the epilogue is not bad ;" — it is a
 
 ENGLAND 4ND SCOTLAND. 407 
 
 mass of unclcanncss, wortliy of the Ravenscroft whom Gencst 
 admired. As for Dr. Francis's " ConstantiT-ic," in which Barry 
 and Mrs. Bellamy played Constantine and Fulvia, it was a failure ; 
 but, therefore, Mrs. Bellamy recommended the author to the 
 patronage of Fox ; and it is certain that the father of Sir Philip 
 Francis owed his promotion to the Suffolk rectory of Barrow, to 
 Lord Holland. There is something amusing in the idea of George 
 Anne Bellamy indirectly nominating to Church benefices ! 
 
 In the season of 1754-5, Garrick was relieved by the absence 
 of BaiTy, who left Rich for Dublin, taking Miss Nossiter with him, 
 at a salary of £1,300 for both for the season, and predicting ruin 
 to Rich. The latter falsified the prediction, by biinging out 
 Sheridan in all his best parts against Garrick, and in " Coriolanus," 
 against Mossop, Sheridan and Dyer also played Romeo, greatly 
 to the benefit of Barry ; but Rich got well through his season 
 ■with the above, and in spite of a tragedy, called " Appius," the 
 ill success of which was reasonably attributed by the author, Mon- 
 crieffj to the fact that Sheridan had lopped oft" the fifth act ; pan- 
 tomime supplied its place. 
 
 Garrick, in addition to his old parts, ci-eated Achmet m " Bar- 
 barossa ;" Mossop playing the tyrant, and Mrs. Gibber Zaphira, 
 Ilis other novelties were the " Fairies," and the masque of " Bri- 
 tannia;" the latter apropos to the war. I do not know if Dr. 
 Browne, the ^'icar of Great Horkesley, could have civilized the yet 
 uncivilized dominion of Russia, as Catharine invited him to do ; 
 but he assuredly wrote a poor yet lucky tragedy, for it has lived 
 while better have sunk into oblivion. It is " Merope" recast and 
 dressed. " There is not one new thought in it," "wrote Walpole ; 
 " and, which is the next material want, but one line of perfect 
 nonsense. ' And rain down transports in the shape of sorrow !' 
 To complete it, the manners are so ill-observed, that a Mahometan 
 princess-royal is at full liberty to visit her lover in Newgate, like 
 the banker's daughter in ' George Barnwell.' " 
 
 Walpole's criticism on the " Fairies" is not less smart. " Gar- 
 rick has produced a detest-able English opera, which is crowded 
 by all true lovers of their country. To mark the opposite to Ital- 
 ian opera, it is sung by some cast singers, two Italians, a French 
 girl, and the chapel-boys ; and to regale us with sauce, it is Shak-
 
 4:08 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 spcare's ' Midsummer Night's Dream ;' which," he adds, as if he 
 inherited the feelings of Pepys with regard to this poetical play, 
 " is forty times more nonsensical than the worst translation of any 
 Italian opera books." 
 
 At the short summer season in the Haymarket, where Theophi- 
 lus Gibber and his eccentric sister, Mrs. Chai'ke, were at the head 
 of " Bayes's" new-raised company of comedians, there appeared 
 on the 21st of August, 1755, Miss Barton, in Miranda, to Gibber's 
 Marplot. Besides this, and other comic characters, Miss Barton 
 acted Desdemona. Not many years before this she was a shoeless 
 flower-girl, purer looking than any of her own roses, in St. James's 
 Park. We shall hear of her anon, under a name than which there 
 is not a brighter in theatrical annals — the name of Abington. 
 
 The season of 1755-6 was remarkable for the fact that Garrick 
 made three very absurd assaults on Shakspeare, by producing 
 emendations of the " Winter's Tale," " Taming of the Shrew," and - 
 the "Tempest," cutting, clipping, adding, taking away, and saying 
 the while : — 
 
 " 'Tis my chief wish, my joy, my only plan, 
 To lose no drop of that immortal man I" 
 
 This season was also remarkable for the riot consequent on his 
 producing the " Chinese Festival," when the public, hating the 
 French, with whom we were at war, insisted on his asking pardon 
 for the introduction of Swiss, Germans, and Italians ! Garrick 
 proudly answered, that if they would not allow him to go on with 
 his part (Archer), he would never, never, again set foot on the 
 stage ! It was, further, famous for the failure of " Athelstan," 
 by Dr. Browne, which fell, though it was a better tragedy than 
 " Barbarossa." The disappointed author, it will be remembered, 
 destroyed himself Still more famous was this season, for the 
 fray between the Rival Queens, Woffington — Koxana, and Bellamy 
 —Statira; when the superb dresses of the latter drove poor Peg 
 mto such fury, that she nearly stabbed her rival in downright 
 earnest. Failing in her attempt, she stabbed her with words, and 
 t:iunted Bellamy with having a minister (Henry Fox) who indulged 
 In r in such extravagances. " And you," retorted the other "gen-
 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 409 
 
 tie creature," " have half the town who do not !" But not for 
 these things, nor for Foote's satirical farces against Murphy, nor 
 for Murphy's against Foote, was the season so famous, as it was 
 for being that in which Barry, now returned to Covent Garden, 
 entered the lists once more against Garrick, after playing a round 
 of his most successful characters, by acting King Lear, with Miss 
 Nossiter as Cordelia, which part Mrs. Gibber played to Garrick's 
 King. 
 
 In this contest, Garrick carried away the palm. Barry was dig- 
 nified, impressive, pathetic, but unequal, failing principally in the 
 mad scenes, which appear to have been over-acted. It was pre- 
 cisely there where Garrick was most sublime, natural, and afl'ect- 
 ing. There was no rant, no violence, no grimacing. The feeble, 
 miserable, but still royal old man was there ; slow of motion, vague 
 of look, uncertain, forgetful of all things save of the cruelty of his 
 daughters. It was said for Barry that he was " every inch a king ;" 
 for Garrick, that he was " every inch King Lear." The wits 
 who admired the latter, repeated the epigram : — 
 
 " The town has found out diflTrent ways, 
 To praiso the difl'Vent Loars ; 
 To Barry they give loud huzzas I 
 To Garrick — only tears." 
 
 Others quoted the lines alluding to Garrick's jealousy : — 
 
 " Critics attend 1 and judge the rival Lears ; 
 While each commands applause, and each your tears. 
 Then own this truth — well he performs his part 
 Who touches — ev'n Garrick to the heart." 
 
 Drury Lane, in 1756-7, offers little for remark. Miss Pritchard 
 appeared in Juliet, — only to show that talent is not hereditary ; 
 and Ganick ventured King Lear with a little less of Tate, and a 
 little more of Shakspeare ; he was as resolute, however, against 
 introducing the Fool, as he was with respect to the Gravediggers, 
 in Hamlet. On the other hand, he acted Don Felix. Gracefully 
 as Garrick played the part, Walpole said " he was a monkey to 
 Lord Henry Fitzgerald" (who played this character admirably in 
 private). The Violaatc of Miss Macklin was acted with astonish- 
 VoL. I.--18
 
 410 DORAX'S ANNALS OF THE STAGE. 
 
 irig effect. Wbeu Garrick was weary, his parts were " doubled" 
 by handsome IloUand, the son of the Chiswick baker, and des- 
 tined to carry grief to the honest Iieart of Miss Pope. The 
 dramatic })oets raised no new echoes in Drury this season, — some 
 farces excepted. One of tliese was the " Reprisal," by Smollett, 
 who showed that if he could not write a good tragedy at nine-and- 
 twenty, he could dash off a lively farce at seven-and-thirty. With 
 this farce, the ablest of novelists and harshest of critics closed his 
 theatrical career. The second farce was Foote's " Author," in 
 which he and Mrs. Olive acted Mr. and Mrs. Cadwallader, and the 
 former exultingly held up to ridicule one of his most intimate 
 friends, Mr. Apreece, taking care to have him among the audience 
 on the tirst night ! 
 
 At the other house, Barry failed in Richard III.; but the treasury 
 recovered itself by the production, in March, of " Douglas," in 
 which liarry, six feet high, and in a suit of white puckered satin, 
 played Norval to the Lady Randolph of Mrs. Wotiington. The 
 originals of those parts, when the piece was lirst played in Edin- 
 burgh, in the previous December, were Digges and Mrs. Ward. 
 This piece was the glory of the Scottish stage, and a scandal to 
 great part of the community. Before the curtain rises, let me say 
 a few words on bhe growth of that stage. 
 
 There have been stringent rules in Scotland with regard to the 
 theatre, but they have been accompanied by much general tolera- 
 tion. The Regent, Murray, cheerfully witnessed the performance 
 of a drama ; and the General Assembly, in 1574, though they pro- 
 hibited all dramas founded on Scripture, permitted the represen- 
 tation of " profane plays." The licensers were the Kirk Session, 
 before which body the piece was lirst read ; and if license was 
 accorded for its being acted, stipulation was made that nothing 
 should be added to the text which had been read, and that " nao 
 swearing, banning, nor nae scurrility shall be spoken, whilk would 
 be a scandal to our religion, and for an evil example to others." 
 
 When, however, James VI. manifested a wish to see the 
 English company which arrived in Edinburgh in 1599, by grant- 
 ing it a license to act, the General Kirk Session of the city 
 denounced all players and their patrons, — the former as unruly and 
 immodest, the latter as irreligious aud indiscreet. This opposition
 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 411 
 
 led to a conference between the Session and the angry King, at 
 whiclj the former were obliged to withdraw their denunciations, 
 which liad been made from all the pulpits; and they authorized 
 all men " to repair to the said comedies and plays without any 
 pain, reproach, censure, or slander, to be incurred by them." 
 Individual ministers were sorely discontent with such proceedings 
 of the Session ; and this feeling increased, when a play, " Marciano, 
 or the Discovery," was acted in 1662, "with great applause, 
 before His Majesty's High Commissioner, and others of the 
 nobility, at the Abbey of Ilolyrood House, on St. John's night." 
 In the preface of this very play, the drama in Scotland was likened 
 to a " drunken swaggerer in a country chui'ch !" 
 
 It does not appear that any regular theatre existed in Edinburgh 
 previous to 1679, when the brothers Fountain held from Charles 
 II. the patent of " Masters of the Revels, within the kingdom of 
 Scotland." The Fountains not only erected a playhouse, but they 
 subsequently sought to suppress all balls and entertainments held 
 in the dancing-masters' schools, as discouraging to the playhouse, 
 which " the petitioners had been at great charge in erecting." 
 Accordingly, such balls, unless duly licensed, wei-e suppressed. As 
 Mr. Robert Chambers remarks in his Domestic Annals of Scotland, 
 " it sounds sti'ange to hear of a dancing-master's ball in our city, 
 little more than a month after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and 
 while a thousand poor men were lodging on the cold ground in 
 the Greyfriars' Churchyard I" 
 
 There was no regular theatrical season, — players came and went 
 according to the chances of profit atforded by the presence of 
 great personages in the capital. In 1681, the Duke and Duchess 
 of York were sojourning there ; and just at that time, thirty 
 joyous-looking folk were being detained by the Customs' authori- 
 ties at Irvine, in Ayrshire, where they had landed, and where they 
 wrre in difficulty, on questions of duties on the gold and silver 
 jji c of their wardrobe. Laced clothes were then highly taxed ; but 
 said the gay fellows, who, in truth, Avere actors, with actresses 
 from the theatre in Orange Street, Dublin, "these clothes, mount- 
 ed with gold and silver lace, are not for our wear, but are neces- 
 sary in our vocation, and arc, therefore, exempt." They had to 
 petition the Pri.y Council, which body, submitting to the plea of
 
 412 dokan's annals of the stage. 
 
 the actors, that " trumpeters and stage-players" were exempted 
 fropi the Act, sent a certificate to the tax-collector at Irvine, to let 
 them pass free, and come up and act " Agrippa, King of Alba, or 
 the False Tiberinus," and other dramas, before all lieges in Edin- 
 burgh, v-ho were inclined to listen to them. 
 
 This incident reminds me of an anecdote of Talma, which was 
 communicated to me by a French actor. Talma was stopped, 
 like the Irish players at Irvine, at the Custom-house on the Bel- 
 gian frontier, as he was on his way to fulfil an engagement at 
 Brussels. His theatrical costumes were undergoing examination, 
 when an official irreverently spoke of them as " Habits de Po- 
 Uchinelle." The tragic actor was offended. " Habits de Po- 
 Uchlnelle .'" said he, " they are of the utmost value. That lace is 
 worth fifty francs a yard, and I wear it constantly in private." 
 "And must therefore pay for it," said the sharp Belgian oflScial; 
 " Punch's clothes might pass untaxed, but Mr. Talma's laced 
 coats owe a duty to the King," which he was forced to acquit. 
 
 With the fall of the Stuarts and the establishment of Presby- 
 tery, a sour feeling against the stage prevailed in Scotland. Mr. 
 R. Chambers attributes a later improved feeling to the Southern 
 gentlemen who were sent northward to hold office, and who took 
 with them tastes which were gradually adopted ; at first by Epis- 
 copalians, and later by Presbyterians themselves. 
 
 There is a smith's shop near Holyrood, which, in 1715, was 
 part of a Tennis Court, which, in that year, and just before the 
 outbreak, was converted into a theatre. It was well attended, 
 and furiously denounced ; even solemn kirk folk flocked to listen 
 to the old and modern playwrights, despite the threats of their 
 ministers that, from all such, they would withhold the " tokens to 
 the Sacrament of the Supper." The presbytery of Edinburgh 
 fulminated every species of menace against the new stage and its 
 upholders, but the latter had a fatally amusing comment to make 
 on such fulminations. Only the year previously, three of these 
 very ministers, Mitchell, Kanisey and Hart, sent as a deputation 
 to congratulate George I. on his accession, rested on their way at 
 Kendal, where there was a little theatre, whither these good men 
 repaired to see Congreve's " Love for Love" acted, and thought 
 nobody would tell of their backsliding !
 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 413 
 
 The Scottish Tennis Court theatre did not prosper even so well 
 as that in Lincohi's Inn Fields. Eleven years after the above 
 date, although we hear of a performance of Otway's " Orphan," 
 with a prologue by Allan Ramsay, it is in "private;" but adverse 
 critics are informed, that they will have to support their opinions, 
 by the duello, in the King's Park. 
 
 In the same year, 1726, Anthony Aston, that erratic actor, 
 " after a circuit round the Queen of Isles," as another prologue 
 by Mr. Allan Ramsay said of him, reappeared in Edinburgh with 
 a theatrical company. 
 
 " The dastards said, ' He never will succeed ; 
 What 1 such a country look for any good in, 
 That does not relish plays, nor pork, nor pudding!" 
 
 Aston had to contend against the utmost efforts of the clergy 
 and magistracy. Nevertheless, ruling elders, who were peers of 
 the realm, Lords of Session and other amateurs, went and wept at 
 graceful Westcombe and handsome Mrs. Millar, in the " Mourning 
 Bride," and a son of Bishop Ross, and master of the Beaux' Cof- 
 fee-House, charged a commission of a penny on every playhouse 
 ticket sold in his establishment. Then, even Lord Grange, the 
 most profligate ruffian in all Scotland, was alarmed for Scottish 
 morals, when he heard that Allan Ramsay had founded a circula- 
 ting library, and was lending out English play-books. The magis- 
 trates, moved by that arch-villain. Grange, — than whom there was 
 not a man so given to drink, devilry, and devotion, — sent inspec- 
 tors to learn from Ramsay's books the names of his subscribers. 
 Allan had timely warning ; and he destroyed his list before the 
 obnoxious jurors presented themselves. The pulpits re-echoed 
 with denunciations against acting and episcopacy, and men who 
 were carried to the theatres in sedans, — oh ! what had come to 
 Scottish thews and sinews, when such a spectacle as this was to 
 be seen in old Edinburgh ! 
 
 In 1733 and 1734, Shakspeare was in the ascendant at the 
 theatre at the Tailors' Hall, in the Cowgate, varied by the works 
 of Gay, Congreve, and Mrs. Centlivre ; pantomime, ballet, and 
 farce •, with excellent scenery and machinery, — the troop occasion- 
 ally visiting Dundee, Montrose, and Aberdeen. Dramatic taste
 
 414 doran's annals of the stage. 
 
 spread to schools, where the pupils began to act plays. While 
 this was contined to "Gate," "Julius C;esar," and the like, there 
 was no harm done ; but when the Perth school-boys, at Candle- 
 mas, 1735, took to acting "George Barnwell," the Kirk session 
 once more bestirred itself, and shut up the house built by Allan 
 Ramsay, in Carubber's Close. Subsequently, Ryan, the actor, 
 laid the fii'st stone of a new theatre in the Canongate, which was 
 opened in 1746, but without sanction of law, which, however, was 
 not so rigorous as in earlier days, when Lord Somei-ville, to screen 
 a principal performer from stern pains and penalties, engaged him 
 in his household, as butler! To this theatre, in 1756, the Rev. 
 John Home, then thirty-two years of age, brought his tragedy of 
 "Douglas." He had been the successor of Blair (of the Grave), 
 in the living of Athelstanford ; and had left it, to fight against the 
 Pretender, at Falkirk, where he was captured. The reverend 
 warrior ultimately escaped to England. Collins dedicated to him 
 his Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands. Home returned 
 northward, full of the love of poetry, and powerful in the expres- 
 sion of it. His great dramatic essay was a grievous offence against 
 the laws of his church, to the practical duties of which he had 
 again surrendered himself. Had it not been that Sarah Ward 
 was willing to help author and friends, even the reading of 
 " Douglas" would never have come off. Sarah lent her sitting- 
 room in the Canongate, to Home ; and Digges was present and 
 silent, for once, with Mrs. Ward, to enact audience. The charac- 
 ters were thus cast ; and a finer gi'oup of intellectual persons, sit- 
 ting as they could best catch the light, in an obscure room of the 
 Canongate, cannot well be imagined. Lord Randolph (or Bai*- 
 nard, according to the original cast) was read by Robertson ; 
 Glenalvon, by the greater b:?tori an, David Hume; Old Norval, 
 by the famous Dr. Carlyle, the minister of Musselburgh ; and 
 Douglas, by Home, in right of authorship. Lady Randolph was 
 allotted to Professor Fergusson ; and the part of Anna was read by 
 Dr. Blair, the minister of the High Church, and author of the onco 
 popular sermons ! 
 
 But the Presbyteries of Edinburgh and Glasgow speedily de- 
 nounced author, play, dramatists, and dramas generally, as instru- 
 ments and children of Satan ; and excommunicated, not only
 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 415 
 
 Home, but actors and audiences, and all abettors and approvers ! 
 The triumph of the play compensated for every thing. The nation 
 confirmed the sentiment of the critic in the pit, whose voice was 
 heard in the ovation of the first night, exultingly exclaiming, 
 " Weel, lads, what do ye think o' WuUy Shakspeare, noo ?" The 
 tragrdy was offered to Garrick, who refused it. Mrs. Gibber, in 
 Lady Randolph, would extinguish Norval ! Rich accepted it, ns 
 .readily as Garrick had declined it; and in March, 1757, London 
 confirmed the judgment of the city in the north. Gray declared 
 that Home had retrieved the true language of the stage, which had 
 been lost for a century. The Prince of Wales conferred a pension 
 on this expelled minister, and Sheridan sent to Home a gold medal, 
 worth ten guineas. 
 
 Just a century before Home was denounced by the Presbytery, 
 Adam Seaton, dwelling near John O'Groats, where Cromwell's 
 troops were encamped, on their way to the Orkneys, was condemned 
 to make public confession in the Kirk, for " having masking 
 playes in his house for the Liglishe men." This extract from the 
 old Session record of the parish of Canisbay (quoted in Calder's 
 History of Caithness), shows how the drama " looked up," in re- 
 mote Scottish localities, in spite of the decree of 1647. A Pres- 
 byterian, lending his house to amateur, or professional, actors in 
 Cromwell's army, is a novel illustration in the history of the stage. 
 Much might be said, thereon ; but, Margaret Woffington, the origi- 
 nal Lady Randolph in England, now retires from the scene, and 
 waits the telling of her story. 
 
 XKD OF TOU I.
 
 INDEX TO VOL. I. 
 
 A. 
 
 " Achilles," Gay's, 307. 
 
 Actor, profession of, in Greece and Rome, 9, 
 10, it; in collision with clergy, IG; play- 
 ing under forged license, 17; authors, 127; 
 actors, how considered by Dennis, 245; in 
 difficulties at Custom-House, 411. 
 
 Actresses, French, M; iirst English, 51, 5S; 
 the dressing-rooms of, frequented by gen- 
 tlemen, 179. 
 
 Addison, his criticism on Shakspeare and 
 Lee, 159. 
 
 jEsopus, 11. 
 
 Albemarle, Duchess Dowager ot, introduced 
 in Burnaby's "Lady's Visiting Day," 189. 
 
 Alleyn, 88. 
 
 American Indians at the play, 377. 
 
 Anne, Queen, at Bath, 290; receives Wilks, 
 818; her decree for regulating stage and 
 audience, 382. 
 
 " Appias," by Moncrieff, 407. 
 
 Argyll, Duke of, on Garrick, 387. 
 
 Ashbury raises condition of Irish stage, 353. 
 
 Aston, Anthony, 93 ; on Mrs. Barry, 105, 107, 
 lOS ; the first actor of entertainments, 250. 
 
 " Athelstan," Dr. Browne's, 408. 
 
 Audiences, 79; French, 95, 102; of the sev- 
 enteenth century, 169-187, 239; laugh at 
 tragedies, 185; price of admission returned 
 to those who left the house before the 
 close of the first act, 178; before the cur- 
 tain rose, 181 ; chaplains amongst them, 
 184; an Oxford man in the pit, 277, 380; 
 and actors, 281 ; partisans, 813; footmen a 
 nuisance among, 307; how they treated 
 the first regularly licensed plays, 829; 
 audiences ofl 700-1750, 3G9-390; audience 
 on the stage, 381. 
 
 Aungier Street, Dublin, Theatre in, 353, 354. 
 
 "Author,' Foote's, 410. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bale, Bishop, his tragedy of " John, King of 
 England," 17. 
 
 Banbury, Lord, 75. 
 
 Bancroft, surgeon and playwright, 143. 
 
 Bancroft, Archbishop, private theatricals ut 
 houso of, 24. 
 
 " Barbarossa," the Eev. Dr. Browne's, 408. 
 
 Barford. playwright. 284. 
 
 Baron (French actor), 95. 
 
 ISaiTV, IJlizalieth, SO: pains taken to under- 
 stand her author, bC ; described by Cibber, 
 
 106; her life, 104-112; her original char- 
 acters, 106; her points, 108; her succes- 
 sors, 110; her acting in " Valentinian," 
 131. 
 Barry, Spranger, his first appearance in Dub- 
 lin, 355; in London, 357; critique on his 
 first appearance in London, 357 ; not al- 
 lowed to play Komeo, 363; plays with 
 Garrick in Whitbread's " Roman Father," 
 363 ; in " Edward, the Black Prince," 803 ; 
 plays in the same pieces with Quin, 365; 
 plays against Giirrick, 365; Barry and Gar- 
 rick rival Romeos, 365-367; Barry and 
 Garrick together in the same pieces in 
 London, 360 ; his success in the " E.arl of 
 Essex," -393. 
 Barton, Miss (Mrs. Abiugton), 408. 
 Beaux at the plav, 181, 182, 183; among the 
 
 audience, 879, 383, 385, 386, 387. 
 "Beaux' Stratagem," Farquhar's, produced 
 in 1707, 207 ; death of the author in 1707, 
 207. 
 Bedford, Duke of, and Mrs. Oldfield, 296. 
 Beckingham (of Merchant Tailors'), 238, 246. 
 " Beggars' Opera," original cast of, 263 ; dif- 
 ferent players of the principal characters 
 in, 344. 
 Behn, Ai)hra, 168, 164. 
 
 Bellamy, Mrs., and Garrick, 343; her first 
 appe.irance, 348; abduction of, 361; and 
 Dr. Young, 392. 
 Benefits, — the first, granted to Elizabeth 
 Barry, 110; Southerne's benefits profit- 
 able, 244; Oldfield, Mrs., disinclined to 
 play for the benefit of fellow-players, 291. 
 Berkshire, Earl of; his three literary sons, 
 
 136. 
 Bertie, Dye. daughter of Mrs. Oldfield, 29S. 
 Betterton, 42, 44, 45, 46; at Edge-hill, 52; 
 life of, 79-95; dramatic author, 128; his 
 Hamlet, 79-81; his benefit, 82 ; his illness, 
 82; last night, 83; early home, 84: his 
 character, 85; — with Cowley and Con- 
 greve, 86; Betterton and Mrs. Biirry, 86, 
 88; his adopted daughter, 87; number of 
 original characters, 8S; a country gentle- 
 man, 89: Betterton and Dryden,'89: Beb- 
 terton and Tillotsoii. 89; Betterton and 
 Pope. 90. 91 ; KnelUr's portrait of, SO, 91 ; 
 Pope's copy of his portrait, 91 ; the audi- 
 enct'O he j)referred, 9 1 ; his zeal and powers, 
 91; Bitterton and C'ibber. 92; Betterton 
 with Kiigs and Qiu-ens. 92; Aston's por- 
 traitinv of Betterton. 98; Cibber's pi/"- 
 tiaiUiri of Betterton, 94; Belterton's s«i- 
 uiy, 95.
 
 il8 
 
 TXDEX. 
 
 Botterton, Mrs., instructs the Princesses 
 Mary and Anne, 6S; at huino, SI. 
 
 Bills of the i>Iay, drawn up by Wilks. -SIo. 
 
 Bisse, Bisliop of Hereford, "when (iarricli 
 was born there, .337. 
 
 Blackfriars' Theatre, 18. 23, 27, 85, 36, 79. 
 
 " IJoadicea," Glover's. 406. 
 
 Boheme, his Lear, 301. 
 
 Booth, Barton, his life, 265-2S7; related to 
 the Earls of Warrington, 265; at West- 
 minster, 205; intended for the church, 
 265; first appears in Dublin, 265; his t?e'- 
 liiil in London, 266; his first marriage, 
 267; his second, 26S; his Pyrrhus, 273; 
 his Cato, 268; general ciirecr till his death, 
 269-237. 
 
 Booth and Kins William, 318. 
 
 Booth Street, 28.3. 
 
 Bowen, converted by Collier's book against 
 the stage, 120; killed by Quin, 12i ; his 
 oriarinal characters, 23S. 
 
 Bowman. S7; introduces Booth to Detter- 
 ton, 266; marries Betterton's adopted 
 dau;ihter, 87: Bowman's early vocation, 
 100; cause of retirement from the stase, 
 100. 
 
 Boxers employed to overawe audiences, 3S5. 
 
 Boyle, Charles, dramatist, 196. 
 
 Boys who played women's parts, 52, 53. 
 
 Bradshaw, Mrs., actress, marries Martin 
 Folkes, the antiquary, 220. 
 
 Bracegirdle. Mrs., 115-llS; tributes from her 
 lovers, 116. 
 
 "Briton," the, by Ambrose Philips. 250. 
 
 Brooke, his "Oustavus Vasa," 328. 
 
 "Brothers," the. Young's, 392; proceeds of, 
 given to the Soc. Prop. Gospel, 392. 
 
 Browne, Ilev. Dr., 407; commits suicide, 408. 
 
 Buckingham, Duke of, his dramatic works, 
 129. 
 
 Bullock, actor and author, 232, 234, 239, 380. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 85. 
 
 Burbage, 22, 25. 
 
 Burlesque, 234. 
 
 Burt, 8S, 52; his Cicero, 5-3. 
 
 Butler, Hon. Mrs., and Gai-rick. 348. 
 
 "Busiris," SToung's, 240 ; dedication of, 241. 
 
 c. 
 
 Caithness, plays acted before Croinwcllian 
 
 s<ddiers in, 415. 
 Cambridge, plav .at, 15, 19. 2.3. 
 Capel Street, Dublin, theatre in, 355. 
 "Cureless Husiiaiul," Gibber's, 199. 
 Carey, Lord Falkland, his wit, 1*3. 
 Carey, G. S., 329. 
 Carlile, Sir Ludovick, 138. 
 Carlisle (or CarliU). actor and soldier, slain 
 
 at Aghrim, 120; dramatic autlior, 127. 
 Caroline, CJiu'cm. and Mrs. Oldtield, 295. 
 Carroll — see Centlivre. 
 Cartwright, 70. 
 
 Caryll. Lord, dramatic works, 131. 
 Casbell (v<M-alisl), plays against Garrick, 345. 
 Castlemaino Lady, her conduct at the i)lav, 
 
 Catherine of Jiraganza at the play, 170. 
 "Cato,"' the ongiual cast, a. d." 1713, 224; 
 
 "Cato." 2CS-271; various actors of the 
 part, 271. 
 
 Centlivre, Mrs. (Miss Freeman, Mrs. Fox, 
 Mrs. Carroll), actress and authoress, 167; 
 played men's parts, 167; her plays, 167; 
 her death, 16S; personal appearance, 261, 
 88; source of her "Wonder," 131; origin 
 of her Marplot, 138; her "Bold Stroke for 
 a Wife," 239. 
 
 Chamberlain's (the L(u'd) servants, 35. 
 
 Chanipmesle, the French activss, lU. 
 
 Chaplain in the i)it, 184. 
 
 Charke, Charlotte, danghttr of CoJ ey CiU 
 ber, her character, 286; in a female part, 
 325; i)lays male characters, 320; playa 
 against Garriok, .344. 
 
 Charles IL at the play, 169. 
 
 Charlotte, Queen, and " Polly Honeycombe," 
 289. ^ 
 
 Chesteifield, Lord, his opposition to the Li- 
 censing Act. 327-8; on audiences, 367. 
 
 Chetwynd. the first "licenser of plays," 328. 
 
 "Chinese Festival," Garrick's, 408. 
 
 Christian Fathers, the, their view of .the 
 stage, 1 1. 
 
 Church chorister on the Dublin stage, 351. 
 
 Churchill, Colonel, son of Mrs. Oldfield, 299: 
 descendants of, 299. 
 
 Churchill, General, and Mrs. Oldfleld, 299. 
 
 Gibber, CoUey, his first characters, 113; his 
 tact and temper. 216; 89, 92, 94; occa- 
 sional nights of, 331 ; his audiences, 379- 
 8(t; the censorship and his Kichard, 385; 
 hissed, 286; the "Provoked Husband," 
 262; its cist, 262; Gibber at the bar, 262; 
 his generous testimony of Wilks, 314; 
 borrows Lord and Lady Townlev from 
 Charles -Tohnson's Sir Francis and Lady 
 t)mbre, 240; on audiences, 374. 
 
 Gibber, Jane, in Juliet. .349. 
 
 Gibber, 'I'heophilus, his first appearance, 
 24s ; liis Pistol. 248: instructed by his 
 father in Pistol, 284; orisinal George 
 Barnwell, 303; his "Lover," 803; his 
 " Harlot's Progress," 304. 
 
 Cibber, Mrs., (Susanna iMaria), first appear- 
 ance as an actress, 820; withdraws, 331. 
 
 Clergy, actors as well as authors, 15. 
 
 Clive, Mrs. (Miss Kaftor), first appearance 
 of, 284; on the "quality," 296. 
 
 "Ctclia," C. Johnson's, 303. 
 
 Clun, 52; his lago, 53; murdered, 53. 
 
 Cochin China, primitive theati-e in, 9. 
 
 Coekburn, Mns., 166; her defence of Locka, 
 166. 
 
 Cockpit, Drnry Lane, 45. 
 
 Collier, Jeremy, effect of his book on Bi>w- 
 en, 120; attacks Congreve and "VVychcr- 
 ley, 154. 
 
 Comedy, with a murder in it, 190, 198; a 
 pious one condemned, 198; qualified 
 writers of uenteel. 294. 
 
 " C'ointe do Bonrsoufle," alleged posthumous 
 comedy by Voltaire, edited at Paris, in 
 1862, translated from Vanbrngh's " lie- 
 lapse." 
 
 "Confederacy," Vanbrugh's, 204; Lord Gor- 
 denstonc on, 204. 
 
 Congreve, characters written by bim for 
 Mrs. Bracegirdle, IKJ; his lines lo " Bel- 
 inda," 117; gcntleinyi> -iiid author '4T
 
 INDEX. 
 
 419 
 
 153, 155; defence of his own plays, 155; 
 
 his disparaginieiil of Cibber, 201. 
 •'Conscious Loveis," Steele's, "251. 
 -Constantine," by l)r. Francis, 4UI. 
 Coolie, dramatist! 32t}, 'iU. 
 Cooper, Mrs., dramatist, 324. 
 "Coriolanus," Thomson's, 362. 
 Cornbiiry, Lord, 342. 
 Corye, author, 143. 
 Costume, Wilks as a dresser, 311. 
 (;o!irt, plays at, 14, 18, 23, 36, 57, 133, 176, 
 
 177, 373. 
 Coveut Garden, first opening of Theatre 
 
 Koyal, A. V. 1732, 3U7. 
 Cowley, 147; as a dramatic writer, 149-50; 
 
 appropriations -otn, 150. 
 Creation, pictorial rejiresentation of, 9. 
 "Creusa," Whitehe.id's, 406. 
 Crisp, author. 406. 
 Critics, at a new play, 379. 
 Curtain Theatre, the, 29. 
 Cuzzoni, 66. 
 
 D. 
 
 Durfey, 224. 
 
 Davenant. 43; actors in his company, 49; 
 buried like a gentleman, 100. 
 
 Davenport, Mrs., and the Earl of O.xford, 67. 
 
 l>avies. Miss, hor birth and descendants, 67. 
 
 Davys, Mrs., dramatic writer, 232. 
 
 Deaths of actors, peculiar, kobinson slain 
 in fight. 39; Uetterton, William, drowned, 
 50: Clun, murdered, 53; Uoodman, Car- 
 dell, in e.xile, 74; Medbourne, of rigorous 
 imprisonment, 101 ; Smith, of over-exer- 
 tion, 102; Mountfort, murdered, 119; Car- 
 lisle, slain at Aghrim, 120; Bowen, killed 
 by Quin, 121; Spiller, of apoplexy, on the 
 stage, 2S7; liricourt, of apoplexy, on the 
 French stage, 297; Hallam, killed by 
 Macklin, in the green room, 323; Bond dies 
 on the- stage, 324; Hulett, 324, Cashel, 
 of ai>oplexy, on the stjige, 353; Williams, 
 killed by Quin, 395; Mondory, ot apo- 
 jdexy, on the French stage, 254, 297 ; Mont- 
 fleury, of apoi)lexy, on the French stage, 
 254, 297; Peer, of grief, 121; Honlen, 
 killed by CaiiL-iin Burgess, 124; Keen, of 
 a broken heart, 240; Bowman, his death, 
 830. 
 
 Decree of 1556 against strollers, 17; of 1572, 
 22; of 1647. suppressing the plavers, 37, 
 38; effect of the decree, "39, 40, 41," 42. 
 
 Dedicatini) fee, 214, 218; from Karl of Orrery 
 to Theobald, 246. 
 
 Defresne, French actor, J98. 
 
 Dclane, at Goodman's Fields, 304 ; in Dublin, 
 354; plays against Barry, 363; the origi- 
 nal Mahomet, 363. 
 
 Delaney, .Mrs., on (Jarrick, 337. 
 
 Delawarr, Lord, 298. 
 
 Decius Laberius, a knight, — his fee for act- 
 ing. 11. 
 
 Dennis, 147, 14S; — , his "thunder" in " Ap- 
 pius anil Virginia," 211. 
 
 Descendants of players. — Of Margaret 
 Hughes and I'rince Kui)ert, 59; of Nell 
 Owyn aud Charles II. (Dukes of St. Al- 
 bans), 64; of Mary Davies and Charles 11. 
 (Lords I'etre), 68; of Miss Santlow and 
 
 Secrct.ary Craggs (Lords St. Gcrniains nnd 
 Marquis of Abercorn, 273; of Mrs. Old- 
 field and General Churchill (Earls of 
 Cadogan). 299. 
 
 Digbv, Earl of Bristol, his dramatic works, 
 131". 
 
 Dodsky, his dramatic pieces, 325, 329. 
 
 Doggelt, characters written for him, by Con- 
 greve, 122; illiterate, 122; his Whig i)rin- 
 ciples, 122; his "coat and badge,'' 122; 
 dramatic author, 127. 
 
 Dering, Charle.s, fights Mr. Vaughan on the 
 sUige, 179. 
 
 Dorset Gardens Theatre, 48. 
 
 Dorset, Marquis of, — his "servants,"' 16. 
 
 "Douglas" in London, 410; the great read- 
 ing of, in Scotland, 414. 
 
 Drake, Dr., dramatic author, 144. 
 
 Drama, origin of, in England, 12; religious 
 element in, 13. 
 
 "Drummer," Addison's, 231. 
 
 Dramatic College, pr(^ject for founding one 
 in the last century, 306. 
 
 Dramatic poets of the last half of the 17th 
 century, 127-102. 
 
 Dramatists, female, 163-168. 
 
 Drury Lane, Prince of Wales at, 370, 880. 
 
 Dryden. 88, 147, 154; buried like a poet, 100; 
 on audiences, 378; on Congreve, 155; hia 
 false quantities, 156; reply to a critic, 156; 
 protected by Charles II., 156. 
 
 Dutlet, inillinei- and poet, 144. 
 
 Duke and Duchess of York at the play, 171. 
 
 Duke's com|iany established, 47; — house, 
 actresses at, 66. 
 
 Dublin stage, ill-man.aged, 347; Sheridan's 
 management of, 347. 
 
 Dublin Theatre,— early history of, 351-356. 
 
 Duels, actors engaged in. — Quin and Bowen, 
 121,321-2; Horden and Captain Burgess, 
 124; "Mr. U.," of Linc(dn's Inn Fields, 
 and an ofiicer at Barne.s Elms, 236; Pow- 
 ell and Wilks, 316; Garrick and Gitfard, 
 386; Quin and Williams, 395; between 
 actors ami audience, 387; Quin and Theo 
 jihilus Cibber, 395. 
 
 Durfey, his speech to the audience, 380. 
 
 Dyer, his first appearance, 363; marries 
 Miss Bullock, grand-daughter of Wilks, 
 363. 
 
 E. 
 
 " Ear] of Essex," Jones's, 391, 393. 
 
 East India Company, play suppressed at 
 
 desire ol, 26. 
 Echard, the " Eunuchus," 233. 
 Egleton, actor. 253. 
 
 "Elizabeth's (The Lady) Servants," 34. 
 Elli.'-ton in Uauger, 35». 
 Elringlon, 275-7; actor, 362, 354. 
 "Encore!" introduction of. 214. 
 Estcoujt, author and actor, 194; his life, 195, 
 
 creates Kite and Sir Francis Gripe, 220; 
 
 Gibber's judgment on, 221 ; I'rvvidore of 
 
 the Beefsteak Club, 222. 
 Etherege, protects Elizabeth Barry, 110; 
 
 Sir G.. 173; life and works. 139-142. 
 " Eugenia," by Dr. Francis, 367. 
 "Eurydice," Mallet"s, 302. 
 Evelyn, on the drama, 176- 6k i
 
 420 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Fiilconbriilnre, Lady Mary, daughter ofCrom- 
 
 well.— itt, thf theatre, 171. 
 False quantities of poets. -Drydeu's, 156; 
 
 Fn.wde, 302; Hughes, 245. 
 "Fair Penitent." Kowe's, 196-7. 
 l'".ine. Sir Francis, piayw liglit, 138. 
 F:ir(|Hti;ir almsed hv Curve, 1S9; and Mrs. 
 
 Olilti.-ld, 2SS, 2i»3;" died," a. d. HOT, 207. 
 F.irren. Wni., as IJayes, 71. 
 •Faslnonalde evening.'' 381. 
 •• Faphionable night,"''fir8t, A. D. 1717, 233. 
 Faustina, 00. 
 F.nton. Elijah. 254. 
 Kenton, havinia, her first appear.ince in 
 
 tragedy and comedy, 260; in opera, 263; 
 
 marrii s Duke of Bolton, 264. 
 Fielding. S27. 828; notices of his plays, 287. 
 Filiner, Dr., dramatist, 144. 
 Fleetwood, of Drury Lane, .34.3. 
 Foote describes Garrick, .339 ; his costume, 
 
 in Othello, 345; his fust apjiearance, 344. 
 Footmen in the gallery, 183; blasphemers, 
 
 wit of, 183; their privileges from 1699 to 
 
 1780. .388. 
 Fortune Theatre, 28. 
 Foster, Chief Justice, his censure of Sidlev, 
 
 141. 
 '•Foundling," Moore's, .360. 
 Fountain (the brothers) erect playhouse in 
 
 Edinburgh, 411. 
 Fianeis. liev. Dr., dramatist, 367, 407. 
 Frederick, Prince of Wales, 375. 
 French actors, tr.iits of. — IS.aron, 9.5, 198; 
 
 Clairon, 297; Chuuipuiesle. Ill ; Defresne, 
 
 198; MonltU-nry, 2r4 ; Moutdory, 254; 
 
 Lafont, 234; IJejart, Mile., 274; Bricourt, 
 
 207; Lecouvreur, 297; Kaucourt, 298; 
 
 Gossin, Mile., 382. 
 Frowde, his "Fall of Saguntum," 260. 
 
 G. 
 
 Galleries, vandalism of, 387. 
 
 Gairick, tii-st appearance of, 332-334 ; attrac- 
 tion of, 334; his season at Goodman's 
 Fields, 836; first appearance at Drury 
 Lime, -336; at Dublin, 3.36; his critics, 336; 
 descent, birth, and early life, 337-339; 
 criticised by Victor and Murphy, 345; 
 portrayed by Davles. :346; Garrick and 
 Quin play together for the first time, 3.58; 
 creates Kanger, 358; Garrick and Barry 
 ))lay together in the same pieces, in Lon- 
 don, 360 ; and Barry, rival Komeos, 365-6. 
 
 Garrick in Dublin, 347-8; in the same pieces 
 with Barry and Sheridan, 856; salary for 
 occasional nights, 850. 
 
 Gay, ex-mercer and poet, 224; his "Cap- 
 tives," 255. 
 
 "Gamester," Moore's, original cast of, 891. 
 
 "George Barnwell," Lillo's, 303; audience 
 at, 388. 
 
 George I. as i)atron of the drama, 371-3. 
 
 George IL as patron of the drama, 87.5-7. 
 
 Gift'ard, his first a|)peurance witij Booth, 281. 
 
 Oihlon, 148, 149, 151. 
 
 Globe Theatre, 19, 28. 
 
 Glover's "Roadicea," 406. 
 
 Gloucester, Duke of, first prince who iC4i|k> 
 tained a company of players, 14; effc-Jiol 
 his exami)le, 14. 
 
 Godolphin, Mrs., 177. 
 
 Goffe, actor of women's parts, 43. 
 
 Goodman, Cardell, sketch of, 73-4. 
 
 Goodman's Fields, various Iheatres in, 804. 
 
 Gosson's "School of Abuse," 20, 32. 
 
 Gould, domestic servant and poet, 144. 
 
 Grafton, Imke of, 343. 
 
 Grange, Erskine of. 413. 
 
 Gray, on Garrick, 336. 
 
 Grillin (I5enjamin), actor and author, 280' 
 his "Whig and Tory," 247; the original 
 Lovegold, .304. 
 
 Grimaldi, 330. 
 
 Grindal, Archbishop, his counsel against 
 l)layers, 21. 
 
 Gwyn, Noll, — where bom, 61 ; early life of, 
 61-2; by whom taught and introduced to 
 the stage, 62; her intimacy with Hart and 
 Lord Buckhurst, 62; her career, 63; her 
 sons, 64; descendants of her and Charles 
 II. in the peerage, 64; her extravagance, 
 66; her gambling, 65; not the founder of 
 Chel.sea Hospital, 65; Bi.shop Kenn makes 
 way fur her, 65; Countess of Greenwich, 
 65; death, 65; alleged real name, 66. 
 
 H. 
 
 Haines, Joe; sketch of, 75-8; and Lord 
 Sunderland, 76; his original character, 76; 
 cause of dismissal, 77; his accomplish- 
 ments, 77 ; his wit, 78. 
 
 Halifax, Lord, ".\dvice to a Daughter," 186. 
 
 Hallam, killed by Macklin, 323. 
 
 Hatton, Christoiiher, Lord. 42. 
 
 Harlequin, described by Alphonse Karr, 339 
 
 Harris, 86, 96. 
 
 Hart, 38; his Alexander, 52; death of; .52. 
 
 Harvey, Lady, ridiculed on the stage, 178. 
 
 Harvey, Lord, and Mrs. Oldfield, 298. 
 
 Haymarket, King's Theatre, built, 82 
 opened by Fielding, 325; French com- 
 pany there, 329; opened, 256; opened by 
 Theophilus Cibber, 819. 
 
 Haywood, Mrs., her "Fair Captive," 249; 
 acts in her own play, " A Wife to be Let," ■ 
 2.')3; playwright, 2S4. 
 
 Herring, Archbishop, 406. 
 
 Higden, lawyer and poet, 144. 
 
 Highmore, an amateur, plays against Gar- 
 rick 344. 
 
 Hill, Aaron, 212; his "ElfVid," 21-3, 282; 
 project for making oil from beech nuts, 
 2.^)5; for colonizing South Carolina, 255; 
 his "Henry V.," 255; his criticism on 
 Booth, 27S-9. 
 
 Hill, Cajitain; — attempts to carry off Mrs. 
 Bracegirdic, lib; murders Will Mount- 
 fort, 119. 
 
 Hillingsley, Sir Thomas, 44. 
 
 Hijipisley, plays against Garrick, 840. 
 
 Holden, Mrs., — unrehearsed stage efloct by, 
 69 ; related to lietterton, 69. 
 
 Hcdiand House, Kensington ; private pla;a 
 at, 43. 
 
 Uolyrood, play at, 414.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 421 
 
 Home, 411. 
 
 Hope Theatre, Jonson's "Bartholomew 
 Fair" tirst playod at, 29. 
 
 Herbert, Wm., champion of Nell 'iwyn, 66. 
 
 Ilorden, the handsome actor slain by Cap- 
 tain Burges-s, 124. 
 
 Horton, Mrs., her tirst appearance, 228, 863 ; 
 protected by Lord Luxborough, 364, 876; 
 opposed to Mrs. Cibber, 324. 
 
 Havard, actor and playwright, 326; method 
 of writing his "Charles 1.," 326; -'Kegu- 
 lus," 344. 
 
 Howard, Edward, playwright, 136. 
 
 Howard, James, his play with a double di- 
 iioiument, 137; his "English Monsieur," 
 187. 
 
 Howard, Robert, caricatured by Shadwell, 
 137; his plays, 137. 
 
 Hughes, Margaret, 58; descendants of her 
 and Prince Rupert, through marriage of 
 their daughter with General Howe, 59. 
 
 Hughes, playwright, sketch of, 245; his 
 " Siege of Damascus." 245. 
 
 "Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester," by Phil- 
 lips, 252. 
 
 I. 
 
 Individuals represented or satirized on the 
 stage — Lady Harvey, by Mrs. Corey, 178. 
 Duchess Dowager of Albemarle, as Lady 
 Lovetov, in Burnaby's "Lady's Visiting 
 Day," 189. William IIL and Louis XIV., 
 as Tamerlane and Bajazet, 192; Sir Charles 
 Sedley, mimicked by Kvnaston, 54; Dave- 
 nant, Dryden, and Sir liobert Howard, as 
 Bayes, in the " Rehearsal," 130. Howard, 
 as Sir Positive Atall, in Shadwell's " Im- 
 pertinents," 137. Oliver Cromwell, as 
 Damocles; Hugh Peters, as Hugo de 
 Petra; and Monk, as Clemenes, in Edward 
 Howard's "Usurper," 136. Charles IL 
 and his Ladies, in Robert Howard's " Duke 
 of Lerma," 137. Charles and his Court, 
 in Fane's "Tamerlane," 139. Lady Castle- 
 maine and Churchill, in Sedley's "Bella- 
 mira;" Rochester, as Dorimant; Ethe- 
 rege, as Bellair; and Beau Hewitt, as Sir 
 Foplin^ Flutter, in Etherege's " Man of 
 Mode; Duke of Lauderdale, as Limber- 
 hams, in Dryden's "Kind Keeper;" Mr. 
 Russell, as i'addle, in Moore's "Found- 
 ling," 360. Mr. Apreece in Foote's "Au- 
 thor," 410. 
 
 "Irene," Johnson's, 362, 867. 
 
 Jacob, Sir Hildebrand, author, 252. 
 
 "Jane Shore," the original cast, a. d. 1714, 
 
 225. 
 Jcvon, his original vocation, 100; author 
 
 and actor 100; unrehearsed stage ettecta 
 
 by, 100. 
 Johnson, Charles, dramatist. 223. 227. 
 Tohnson, Sam, at Lichfield with Garrick, 
 
 838; — in state at his own play, 362. 
 'ones, his Earl of Esses, 391. 
 
 K. 
 
 Keeling, Chief Justice, his servilltj, 141. 
 
 Killigrew, actors in his company, 49. 
 
 Killigrew, Sir William, dramatic author, 13& 
 
 Killigrew, Thomas, author, 240. 
 
 King's company at Drurv Lane, 47. 
 
 Knapton, Miss, first wife of Wilks, 809. 
 ox-igin of her family, 312. 
 
 Knipp, Mrs., 59; her home, 59. 
 
 Knowle. theatrical portraits at, 91. 100-1. 
 
 Kynaston, 44, 53; in Hyde Park, 54; beatetc 
 by a bully, 54; his Leon, 54; his original 
 characters, 55; death and descendants, 6.^. 
 
 L 
 
 Lacy. 70; the original Bayes, 71 ; fracas with 
 
 Howard, 71. 
 "Lady Jane Grey," Rowe's, 228. 
 Lansdowne, Lord (Granville), his dramatic 
 
 works, 134. 
 Lampe, (" Dragon of Wantley"), 829. 
 Lear, Garrick and Barry in, 409. 
 Lee, his i-eply to a critic, 156; Mrs. Siddons' 
 
 estimation of, 159; death, 160; — fails aa 
 
 an actor, 100. 
 Leicester, Earl of, friend of players, 23. 
 Leigh, his "Kensington Gardens." 246; — 
 
 the original Spanish Friar, 100-1 ; merits 
 
 as an actor, 101. 
 Leanard, dramatic poet, 143. 
 Licensing Act, causes of, 327. 
 Lillo, his "Fatal Curiosity," 325 ; "Marina," 
 
 329 ; jeweller and dramatist, 303. 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, 48, 79, 230, 
 
 305, 340. 
 Locke, Matthew, 51 
 Lovelace, Lord, 116. 
 "Lover," the; Th. Gibber's, 304. 
 Lowen, 89. 
 
 Lyddell, Mr. Garrick's pseudonym at Ips- 
 wich, 840. 
 
 M. 
 
 Macklin, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, 305; first 
 plays Shylock, 330; kills Hallam, 828. 
 
 Masks at the play, 172, 182. 
 
 Madden, dramatic author, 284. 
 
 Maidwell, plavwright, 144. 
 
 Mallet, his " Mustapha," 329. 
 
 Manager, tlie original' English, — a monk, 12; 
 old name for " master," 84. 
 
 Manley, Mrs. 165. 
 
 Manning, diplomatist and dramatist, 195. 
 
 Mapp, Mrs., at the play, 371. 
 
 Marriages, theatrical — Wilks and Mrs. 
 Fell, daughter of Charles II.'s cannon- 
 founder, 816; Bowman and the daughter 
 of Sir Francis Watson, 87; Mrs. Seymour 
 and Boheme, 258; Booth and MissSai.. 
 low, 268; Mrs. Brudshaw with Manin 
 Folkcs, the anticjuarv, 226; Cibber. Theo- 
 philus. and Susaimu Maria Arne, 320. 328 
 Norris and Miss Knapton, (sister of Mra
 
 422 
 
 TXDEX. 
 
 Wilks), 312; Builock. Christopher, mar- 
 ries (liiughter of Wilks; Dy^T marries 
 daughter of Chr. Bullock, 363; Younger, 
 Mrs., and the Hon. John Finch, 273. 
 
 Marshall (Anne and Rebecca). 60; their 
 father, 60. 
 
 Marshall, Rebecca, fracas with Sir Hugh 
 Mi.ldleton, ISO. 
 
 Martyn, iilaywright, 285. 
 
 Mivynwaring and Mrs. Oldfield, 295. 
 
 Medbourne introduces Moliere's "Tartuffe" 
 (in the English stage, 101. 
 
 '• Medea," C. Johnson's, 302. 
 
 Merchant Tailors' pupils at the play, 289. 
 
 •■ Meroi)e," Hill's, 3G2. 
 
 '• Merope," Jeffreys', 302. 
 
 Middleton's "Game at Chess" suppressed, 
 26. 
 
 Middleton, Sir Hugh, fracas with Rebecca 
 Marshall, ISO. 
 
 Miller, Joseph. 287. 
 
 Miller, Scottish stone-cutter and playwright, 
 249. 
 
 Miller, Rev. Mr., dramatist, 326, 829; his 
 " Mahomet." 344. 
 
 Mills (John), his original characters, 124, 
 325. 
 
 " Miss in her Teens," Garrick's, 353. 
 
 Mohun. 39, 52; at Edgehill, 62; the orid- 
 nal Clytus, 72; his remark on Lee's Re.id- 
 ing, 73; Lord — , US; concerned with 
 Hill in the murder of Mountfort, 119; his 
 death, 119. 
 
 Moncrieff, dramatist, 407. 
 
 Monk, General, 44, 45. 
 
 Moore, draper and dramatist, 360 ; his 
 " Gamester," 391 ; Sir Thomas, dramatic 
 aiithor, 239. 
 
 Morgan M'Namara, 406. 
 
 Mossop, 405, 407. 
 
 Motteux, Peter, dramatist, 145. 
 
 Mottley and Queen Caroline. 878; his "Im- 
 perial Captives," 247; "Antioehus," 249. 
 
 Mountfort, Mrs., her portrait by Cibber, 
 113-14; the original Nell, 115. 
 
 Mountfort. Susan, her intimacy with Barton 
 Booth, 208. 
 
 M'mntfort, Will, llS-19; the original Sir 
 Courtly Nice, IIS; murdered, 119; his 
 dramatic works. 12S. 
 
 Murray, Regent, at the play, 410. 
 
 N. 
 
 Newcastle, Duke of, his dramatic works. 
 
 130-31. 
 Nokes. James. 55-6 ; merits as a comic ac- 
 tor, 56; described by Cibber, 56; death 
 
 and descendaiits, 57. 
 'Nonjuror," Gibber's, 236; the original cast. 
 
 2^}G; opposition to, 2;!6. 
 Norri.s, '-Jubilee Dicky," the original Scrub, 
 
 121. 
 Norsa, Miss (vocalist), and Lord Orford, 
 
 364. 
 Nossiter, Miss. 405; in love with Barry, 
 
 406; acts with Barry, 405-6, 409. 
 
 o. 
 
 Odell, the first deputy licenser of playa, 323, 
 his '•Chimera," '249. 
 
 Odingsell, Gabriel, dramatist, death of, 258; 
 his "Capricious Lovers," 258. 
 
 Oldfiel.l, Mrs., Sketch of her life, 288-300; 
 eng<iged bv Rich, '289; at first unsuccess- 
 ful, 290; Gibber's opinion of, 291 ; her va- 
 rious characters, 292-4; private life of, 
 295; her children, 298; and Wilks, 292, 
 313, 314, 31.5. 
 
 Opera, Italian, prices of admission in the 
 last century, 209, 210, 21.5, 22-2. 
 
 Opera, English, introduction of, 202. 
 
 Ormond, 1)uke ot, issues warrant to pro- 
 hibit Wilks leaving Ireland, 310. 
 
 Orrery, Lord (Broghill), life, 132; his plays, 
 133. 
 
 Otway, 159; death, 160; fulls as an actor, 
 100. 
 
 Overbury, Sir Thomas, on the " Actor," 80, 
 81, 95. 
 
 Owenson, Mr. (father of Lady Morgan), ap- 
 pears as Tamerlane, with an Irish accent 
 193. 
 
 Oxford audience, refinement of, 378 
 
 "Pammachns," a political tragedy, 15-16. 
 
 Pantomimes, "crutches to plays," 217; how 
 considered by Barton Booth. 281 ; Rich'* 
 " Necromancer, or the history of Dr 
 Faustus," 256. 
 
 Parker, Dr., on burying Mrs. Oldfield. 298. 
 
 " Parson's Wedding," acted by women, 51. 
 
 "Pasquin," Fielding's, 82.5. 
 
 Patent, the first, ^'ranted by Elizabeth, 22. 
 
 Paterson, dramatist, 329. 
 
 Patrick, Bishop, 77. 
 
 Pavne, Neville, playvvi-ight. 143. 
 
 Peer, the lean actor, died of grief at growing 
 fat. 121. 
 
 Pembroke, Mary, Countess of, 66. 
 
 Pep\ s, disparagement of Shakspeare, 152. 
 
 '• PeViander," Tracy's. 302. 
 
 " Pha-dra and Hippolytus," Smith's, played 
 as .a counter-.attraction against opera, A. D. 
 1707, 206. 
 
 jMiilips, .\mbrose, 2'20. 
 
 Philips. Mrs., the "matchless Orinda," 163. 
 
 "Pbiloelea," Morgan's, 406. 
 
 Pinkethman, 122; his manner and merits aa 
 an aetor, l'2:i; death of, and original char- 
 acters, '2.'i.i. 
 
 Piraii Round, a Cornish Theatre, 80. 
 
 Pit >r the olden time, 173; severity of, 881; 
 French, 3S2. 
 
 Pi.-^, Mrs,, dramatic authoress, 129; play 
 Wright. 166. 
 
 Plays at Scottish schools, 414. 
 
 Poets, deaths of various, 1(')0-61 ; early voca- 
 tions of, 147-S; professional, 147-162. 
 Pope, on (xarrick, 3:^4; his intimacy with 
 Betterlon. 90; coines Kneller's jiortraitof 
 the actor. 91. 
 
 Political Plays, 248-t.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 423 
 
 "Polly," Gay's sequel to the '• Beg;u'ars" 
 Dpeni" suppressed, "-iSo. 
 
 Porier. Majoi-, dnunatic f>oet, 139; kills Sir 
 llonry IJelhisys. 1B9. 
 
 l"oni-r. Mrs., oOl ; opposed to Mrs. Gibber, 
 A-'-l ; her retirement, 341. 
 
 Portsiiiouth, U.. chess of, fracas in theatre 
 on account of, 179. 
 
 Powell (George), U3, 9S-9; nearly killed on 
 th.1 stage, l>y Sandford. 2-M; death of, 22S. 
 
 Presbyters, Scottish, at the play, 412. 
 
 Press, the. and the stiise, 32-3. 
 
 Pritchard, Miss, 4l)9. 
 
 Pritchard, Mrs., oUl ; plays Nell at the Hay- 
 market, 319. 
 
 Prynjie, o(); hU /fixtrio-MaKtiec, 34-6; en- 
 try into London, 37. 
 
 Pureed, Henry, 51. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quarrels of players, 71. 109, 121. 124, 209, 210, 
 23s, 313, 39o, 40S. 
 
 Queen's Theatre. Haymarket, S2; first sea- 
 son at, A. D. 17U5-0, 202. 
 
 Quin, his criticism on the "Suspicii>ns Hus- 
 band," 359; his theatrical life, 394-404; 
 successes and failures, 396; his humor and 
 jests, 397-400 ; his generosity, 400 I ; death, 
 402; his will, 404; his coutesl against 
 Mills. 320; early career of, 32l>-2; laconic 
 correspondence with Kith, 360; plays 
 ag.iinst Garrick, 340, 343-4; plays Mac- 
 Leutb, 2S7; receives £1,000 u year, 305. 
 
 R. 
 
 Rafter, see CiiTe. 
 
 liainsford Street. Dublin, theatre in. 853. 
 
 '■ Ralph lioister Doister," earliest Knglish 
 comedy, 15. 
 
 Ram-ay, Allan, promotes Scottish theatri- 
 cals. 413. 
 
 Uavenscroft, 151. 
 
 Rawlins, playwright, 148. 
 
 Rcbellioii of 1745 — loyalty of the players 
 during, 349. 
 
 "Recruiting Officer," Farqnhar's, 203; the 
 event of the Drury Liine season, 1705-6 
 203. 
 
 "Relapse," Vanbrugh's, acted in Paris as a 
 IMisthumous comedy by Voltaire, 159. 
 
 " Revenge," Young's, original cast of, 24S. 
 
 Revet, playwright, \i:i. 
 
 Rhodes, playwright, 14-?. 
 
 •• Itichanl II." atKssex House. 20. 
 
 Rich, his estimation of the worth of an ac- 
 tor. 322. 
 
 Rich. .John, fails as an actor, 233 ; under the 
 name of Lun snoreeds as Harlequin, 233. 
 
 Robinson, Will, sl:dn by Harrison, 39. 
 
 Rochester, Lord, his " Valentini.in," 131: 
 the instructor of Elizabeth Harry, 105 
 
 Rr>gers, Mrs., will only play virtuous char- 
 acters, 312; the first night <d' the "Re- 
 lapse, 99 ; her original parts. 242. 
 
 " Rosamond,"' Addison's, played in 1707, 205. 
 
 Roscius, 10, 11. 
 
 Rowe, his failures, 202. 208, a Westminster 
 boy, 2C5. 
 
 Royal audience, I TO. 
 •• Royal Slave," Cui twright's, 37. 
 Ryan plays against tiarrick. 340, 344. 
 RymiT, his opinion of Shakspeare and Mil 
 'ton, 14S. 
 
 s. 
 
 Sandford, actor of villains, 101 ; his Richard, 
 102. 
 
 Santlow, .Miss, the daOcer, appears in the 
 resular drama »s the Eunuch, in " VaK-n- 
 tinian," and Dorcas Zeal, in the "hair 
 Quakeress, 213: described by Booth in 
 poetry, 272. 275; her career, 273; mar- 
 ri.iiie of her daughter, 273; her Dorcaa 
 Zeal. 273. 
 
 Saunders, boy-poet, 144. 
 
 Saunders, .Mrs., the actress, 248. 
 
 Sauuderson, Mrs., 79, si. 
 
 Savage, actor and author, his "Love in a 
 Veil," 2;35; and .Mrs. OldtVld, 293; his 
 •■ Sir Thomas Overbury," 2.52-3. 
 
 Scott, playwright, 144. 
 
 Seudainore, Jacobite actor, 97; his mar- 
 riage, 97; (actor and .lacobite agent), 97; 
 looked after by Lord Manchester, 97. 
 
 Sedley, Sir Charles, life and works, 140-42; 
 ftt the play, 173. 
 
 Settle, 147. 
 
 Seven Years' Rivalry, 1S8. 
 
 Sev>ell, Dr., poet and physician, 242. 
 
 Seymour, .Mrs., marries Boheme, 253; cre- 
 ates .Mariaiiine, 2.'>4. 
 
 Shall well attacks Dryden, 157; MacFlecnoe, 
 157; succeeds Dryden as Laureate, 1.57; 
 eulogized by Rochester, 153; burial, \iM; 
 his opivion of Sedley, 140. 
 
 Shakspeare, 197; and )iosture-master.s, 213; 
 — tinkers, 151. 243. 24(5, 255,345; an actor. 
 27. 49; portrait, 39; descent of portrait, 
 froiii Davenant to the Duke of Bucking- 
 ham and Cbanilos, lOS. 
 
 Shakspeare. t'harles, 49. 
 
 Shatterel, 38. 
 
 Sheridan, actor, his first api>earancc, 8.%4; 
 on the old dramatists, 155; plays against 
 G.irrick and Mossop, 407; plays against 
 Garrick. 343. 
 
 Shipman. (Irainatic author, 143. 
 
 Shirley. 147. 
 
 SliiiU-y. W., his Edward, the Black i'rinct, 
 SM; treatment of his " Parricide,'" 363. 
 
 Shrewsbury. Duke of, 222^ 3. 
 
 Shuter, his first a|)pearaiice. 349. 
 
 Slini:sby. Laily, actress, 103. 
 
 Smith, Edmund, his merits, failures, and 
 aliases. 206-7. 
 
 Smith, the Tory actor, l(»2-3; original of 
 Pierre, Sir Fopling Flutter, Chamont, &c., 
 — <iies of over-ai>plieaiion, 102; his fmcas 
 with a gentleman behin<l the scenes, lO^J. 
 
 Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin, 351 ; desti-uc- 
 tion of. 351 ; new theatre in, 352' ojjposed 
 by Rainsford Street theatre, 353. 
 
 Smyth. Moore, 2.58; assailed by Pope, 259. 
 
 Solon, hostile to the stage, 10. 
 
 Southerne. S5; the man and the poet, Id; 
 anticipates a maxim of Burns, 101 ; hi« 
 " Money's the Mistress" condemned, 25S, 
 
 South, oD the Stage, 185.
 
 42i 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 " Spanish Friar," how csteoiiied by Churls s 
 11., 156. 
 
 Pl>illor, actor <)f young men, 2;34; death of, 
 287. 
 
 Squires at the phiyhouse. 181. 
 
 Stige, condition of at the close of the 17th 
 citntury, 125; ut the heginiiiiii; of the ISth 
 century, 188; old Swttfsli, 410-15. 
 
 Staniiin;;. Sir Andrew, Icilled on his way 
 from the pla3'-hou8e, 125. 
 
 Stapyltoii, Sir Kobert, dramatic author, 135; 
 a Uou.ay student converted to protesUmt- 
 isiii, 135. 
 
 Statute of 1572, asainst "rogues and vagra- 
 bonds." 22 ; of 1W7, suppressing the l)lay- 
 ers. 37. 
 
 Steele, Sir Uichard, a private gentleman in 
 the Horse Guards. 190; his "Funeral," 
 191 : knighted, 227; included in the Drury 
 Lane Patent, 227; his quarrels with the 
 Government, 244-5; death of, 262; on 
 C' induct of audiences, 809-70; in Burton's 
 box, 3S9. 
 
 Still, IJlshop of Bath and Wells, his comedy 
 of ''(lainmer Gurton's Needle," 19. 
 
 Stirling, Uev. Mr., dramatist, 324, 35.3. 
 
 Strolling Companies, 88. 
 
 Strollers in monasteries, 12. 
 
 Sturniy, dramatist, 250. 
 
 "Suspicious Husband," Hoadley's, 359. 
 
 Sutton, preaches at St. Mary Overy's against 
 plays, 25. 
 
 Swanston, i)layer serving in the parliamen- 
 tary army, 39. 
 
 Svnicott. Margaret, alleged real name of Nell 
 'Gwyn, 66. 
 
 T. 
 
 Talma, in Manlius (misprinted " .\uguste"), 
 108,412. 
 
 "Tanered and Sigismunda," original east of, 
 S4(i. 
 
 Tate, Nahum, 151. 
 
 Tavf.rner, playwright, 223, 234. 
 
 Templars at the plav, 3S4. 
 
 "Tender Husband."" Steele's, 201. 
 
 Tennlson preaches funeral sermon of Nell 
 Gwyn, 65. 
 
 Theatre, the Shorediteh, 29. 
 
 Theobald, dramatic author, 211: steals a 
 play, 232; his "Double Falsehood," the 
 last piece in which Booth apiieared, 2G1 ; 
 his adaptation of Webster's "Duchess of 
 .Malfy," 307. 
 
 Thomson, his first play, " Sophonisb.a," con- 
 irastiil with Lee's, 285; his " Edward and 
 Leonora" prohibited, 328; cast of his 
 "Coriolanus, 362: his conduct on the first 
 niirht of his " .'Vgamemnon," 389; his 
 '■ Tancred and Sigismunda," 34G. 
 
 "'I'hree Hours after Marriage," i:i'o. 
 
 Tickell. Thomas, 205. 
 
 Tillotson. his intimacy with Betterton. 89: 
 studied by Dryden, 157 ; his preaching 
 improved bv Betterton, 157. 
 
 Tofts, .Mrs.. 202, 206. 
 
 TothlU Street, old inhabitants of, 85; West- 
 minst'ir, inhabitants of, s4. 
 
 TownshciKl, L»dy, description of a player. 
 
 Trapp, Dr.. pliywright, 199. 
 
 Tredenham, a conspirator and playwright 
 
 without a plot, 164. 
 Tuke, Sir Sainuel, dramatic author, 134. 
 
 u. 
 
 Udall, Uev. Nichol.is, his "Ralph Roister 
 Doister," 15. 
 
 Underbill, Cave, 97; his merits and charac- 
 teristics, 98. 
 
 Unrehearsed stage elTects, 69, 77, 86. 93, 100, 
 lUU, 144, 238, 266, 268, 394, 399, 408. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vanbrugh, on the stage in 1699, 186; — , his 
 various vocations," 158 ; his " Relapse" 
 passed off at Paris as a posthumous come- 
 dy by Voltaire, 159. 
 
 Vandervelt. Mrs., an aged actress, 247. 
 
 V'aughan, Mr., lights Charles Dering on the 
 stage, 179. 
 
 " Venice Preserved," burlesque on, 228. 
 
 Victim of Titus Oates, 101. 
 
 Verbruggen, 119; his original characters, 
 120; marries Mountfort's widow, 120. 
 
 " Virginia," Crisp's, 406. 
 
 Voltaire, on "Merope," and the English 
 st;ige, 302. 
 
 w. 
 
 Walker, cast for Macheath, on Quln decUn- 
 iug the character, 263. 
 
 Walker of Eton C(dlege, player and poet 199. 
 
 Walpole, on Garrick, 357 ; Sir Robert, at tho 
 " Beggars' Opera," 263. 
 
 Watson, Sir Frederick. 87. 
 
 Welsted. dranuitist, 259; his wives, 260. 
 
 West. Richard, his " Hecuba" opposed, 257. 
 
 Whitaker, author, 144. 
 
 Whitefriars Theatre, 28. 
 
 Whitehall, buffoonery at, 44. 
 
 Whitehead, his "Crcusa," 406; his "Roman 
 Father," 303. 
 
 Wilksj.lays Othello in Dublin, 352; sketch 
 of his life, 308-18; hero of Farquhar's 
 comedies, .315; his nephew, an actor, 316. 
 
 Will, Booth's curious, 2b3. 
 
 Williams, Bishop of Linc(dn, private theat- 
 ricals at house of. 27. 
 
 Wilson, dramatic author, 144 
 
 Wiseman, Mrs., pl.-iy wright and vintner, 193w 
 
 Wither. George, 174. 
 
 Woniiigion, .Mrs., first a[)pearance, 881. 
 
 " Wonder," the, Mrs. Cenllivre's, 225. 
 
 Woodward and Uobadil, 868. 
 
 Worsdale. ju'tor and artist, 367. 
 
 Wycherley, 152-3, 154. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yates, Mrs., 406. 
 
 Young, chief of the dramatic poets who aj*- 
 
 |)eared in the reign of George L, 261. 
 Young, Dr., accotmt of, 241. 
 Younger, Miss, first appearance, a. d 1706, 
 
 204.
 
 
 J,^r<^ \>»J^ 
 
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