 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| |
 |
 |
|
||
|
JAMES
HENRY LEIGH
HUNT (1784–1859)
CHAPTER VII DRURY LANE takes its name from “the habitation of the great family of the Druries,” built, “I believe,” says Pennant, “by Sir William Drury, knight of the garter, a most able commander in the Irish wars, who unfortunately fell in a duel with Sir John Boroughs, in a foolish quarrel about precedency. Sir Robert, his son, was a great patron of Dr Donne, and assigned to him apartments in his house. I cannot learn into whose hands it passed afterwards. During the time of the fatal discontents of the favourite, Essex, it was the place where his imprudent advisers resolved on such counsels as terminated in the destruction of him and his adherents.” [ 1] Drury House stood at the corner of Drury Lane and Wych Street, upon the ground now included in Craven Buildings in the one thoroughfare, and the Olympic Pavilion in the other. Pennant proceeds to say, that it was occupied in the next century by “the heroic William Lord Craven, afterwards Earl Craven,” who rebuilt it in the form standing in his time. He describes it as “a large brick pile”—a public-house with the sign of the Queen of Bohemia—a head which still mystifies people in some parts of the country. The remains were taken down in 1809, and the Olympic Pavilion built on part of the site. But the public-house was only a portion of it.
“Sir Robert Drury,” says Walton, “a gentleman of a very noble estate, and a more liberal mind, assigned him and his wife an useful apartment in his own large house in Drury Lane, and not only rent free, but was also a cherisher of his studies, and such a friend as sympathised with him and his, in all their joy and sorrows. “At this time of
Mr Donne’s and his wife’s living in Sir Robert’s house, the Lord
Hay was, by King James, sent upon a glorious embassy to the then
French King, Henry IV., and Sir Robert put on a sudden resolution
to accompany him to the French court, and to be present at his audience
there. And Sir Robert put on a sudden resolution to solicit Mr Donne
to be his companion in that journey. And this desire was suddenly
made known to his wife, who was then with child, and otherwise under
so dangerous a habit of body as to her health, that she professed
an unwillingness to allow him any absence from her; saying, ‘her
divining soul boded her some ill in his absence;’ and, therefore,
desired him not to leave her. This made Mr Donne lay aside all thoughts
of his journey, and really to resolve against it. But Sir Robert
became restless in his persuasions for it, and Mr Donne was so generous
as to think he had sold his liberty when he received so many charitable
kindnesses from him, and told his wife so; who did, therefore, with
an unwillingness, give a faint consent to the journey, which was
proposed to be but for two months; for about that time they determined
their return. Within a few days after this resolve, the ambassador,
Sir Robert, and Mr Donne, left London; and were the twelfth day
got all safe to Paris. Two days after their arrival there, Mr Donne
was left alone in that room, in which Sir Robert, and he, and some
other friends had dined together. To this place Sir Robert returned
within half an hour; and as he left, so he found Mr Donne alone;
but in such an ecstacy and so altered in his looks, as amazed Sir
Robert to behold him; insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr Donne
to declare what had befallen him in the short time of his absence.
To which Mr Donne was not able to make a present answer; but, after
a long and perplexed pause, did at last say, ‘I have seen a dreadful
vision since I saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me
in this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead
child in her arms: this I have seen since I saw you.’ To which Sir
Robert replied, ‘Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you; and
this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you
to forget, for you are now awake.’ To which Mr Donne’s reply was,
‘I cannot be surer that I now live, than that I have not slept since
I saw you; and am as sure, that at her second appearing she stopped
and looked me in the face, and vanished.’ Rest and sleep had not
altered Mr Donne’s opinion the next day; for he then affirmed this
vision with a more deliberate, and so confirmed a confidence, that
he inclined Sir Robert to a faint belief that the vision was true.
It is truly said, that desire and doubt have no rest; and it proved
so with Sir Robert; for he immediately sent a servant to Drewry
House, with a charge to hasten back, and bring him word, whether
Mrs Donne were alive; and, if alive, in what condition she was in
as to her health. The twelfth day the messenger returned with this
account:—That he found and left Mrs Donne very sad, and sick in
her bed; and that, after a long and dangerous labour, she had been
delivered of a dead child. And, upon examination, the abortion proved
to be the same day, and about the very hour, that Mr Donne affirmed
he saw her pass by him in his chamber. “This is a relation,” continues Walton, “that will beget some wonder, and it well may; for most of our world are at present possessed with an opinion, that visions and miracles are ceased. And, though it is most certain, that two lutes being both strung and tuned to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the other that is not touched, being laid upon a table at a fit distance, will —like an echo to a trumpet—warble a faint audible harmony in answer to the same tune; yet many will not believe that there is any such thing as the sympathy of souls; and I am well pleased that every reader do enjoy his own opinion. But if the unbelieving will not allow the believing reader of this story a liberty to believe that it may be true, then I wish him to consider, that many wise men have believed that the ghost of Julius Caesar did appear to Brutus, and that both St. Austin, and Monica, his mother, had visions in order to his conversion. And though these, and many others—too many to name—have but the authority of human story, yet the incredible reader may find in the sacred story, that Samuel, etc.” [ 2] We may here break off with the observation of Mr Chalmers, that “the whole may be safely left to the judgment of the reader.” [3] Walton says he had not this story from Donne himself, but from a “Person of Honour,” who “knew more of the secrets of his heart than any person then living,” and who related it “with such circumstance and asseveration,” that not to say anything of his hearer’s belief, Walton did “verily believe,” that the gentleman “himself believed it.” The biographer then presents us with some verses which “were given by Mr Donne to his wife at the time he then parted from her,” and which he “begs leave to tell us” that he has heard some critics, learned both in languages and poetry, say, that “none of the Greek or Latin poets did ever equal.” These lines are full
of the wit that Dryden speaks of, horribly misused to obscure the
most beautiful feelings. Some of them are among the passages quoted
in Dr Johnson to illustrate the faults of the metaphysical school.
Mr Chalmers and others have thought it probable, that it was upon
this occasion Donne wrote a set of verses, which he addressed to
his wife, on her proposing to accompany him abroad as a page; but
as the writer speaks of going to Italy, which appears to have been
out of the question in this two months’ visit to Paris, they most
probably belong to some other journey or intended journey, the period
of which is unknown. The numbers of these verses are sometimes rugged,
but they are full of as much nature and real feeling, as sincerity
ever put into a true passion. There is an awfulness in the commencing
adjuration:—
Drury House, when
rebuilt by Lord Craven, took the name of Craven House. To this abode,
at the restoration of Charles II., his lordship brought his royal
mistress, the Queen of Bohemia, to whose interest he had devoted
his fortunes, and to whom he is supposed to have been secretly wedded.
She was daughter to James I., and, with the reluctant consent of
her parents (particularly of her mother, who used to twit her with
the title of Goody Palsgrave), was married to Frederic, the Elector
Palatine, for whom the Protestant interest in Germany erected Bohemia
into a kingdom, in the vain hope, with the assistance of his father-in-law,
of competing with the Catholic Emperor. Frederic lost every thing,
and his widow’ became a dependent on the bounty of this Lord Craven,
a nobleman of wealthy commercial stock, who had fought in her husband’s
cause, and helped to bring up her children. It is through her that
the family of Brunswick succeeded to the throne of this kingdom,
as the next Protestant heirs of James I. James’s daughter, being
a woman of lively manners, a queen, and a Protestant leader, excited
great interest in her time, and received more than the usual portion
of flattery from the romantic. Donne wrote an epithalamium on her
marriage, in which are those preposterous lines beginning—
Sir Henry Wotton had permission to call her his “royal mistress,” which he was as proud of as if he had been a knight of old. And when she lost her Bohemian kingdom, it was said that she retained a better one, for that she was still the “Queen of Hearts.” Sir Henry wrote upon her his elegant verses beginning—
in which he gives a new turn to the commonplaces of stars and roses, and calls her
It is doubtful, nevertheless, whether she was ever handsome. None of the Stuarts appear to have been so, with the exception of Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, who resembled, perhaps, her mother. Pepys, who saw the Queen of Bohemia at the Restoration, “thought her a very debonaire, but plain lady.” This, it is true, was near her death; but Pepys was given to admire, and royalty did not diminish the inclination. Had her charms ever been as great as reported, he would have discovered the remains of them. It has been beautifully said by Drayton, that
Pepys saw the queen
afterwards two or three times at the play, and does not record any
alteration of his opinion. Her Majesty did not survive the Restoration
many months. She quitted Craven House for Leicester House (afterwards
Norfolk House, in the Strand), seemingly for no other purpose than
to die there; which she did in February 1661-62. Whether Lord Craven
attended her at this period does not appear; but she left him her
books, pictures, and papers. Sometimes he accompanied her to the
play. She and her husband, King Frederic, appear to have been lively,
good-humoured persons, a little vain of the royalty which proved
such a misfortune to them. The queen had the better sense, though
it seems to have been almost as much over-rated as her beauty. But
all the Stuarts were more or less clever, with the exception of
James II. The author of a History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven in Yorkshire, gives it as a tradition, that Lord Craven’s father, a lord-mayor, was born of such poor parents that they sent him when a boy by a common carrier to London, where he became a mercer or draper. His son was a distinguished officer under Gustavus Adolphus, was ennobled, attached himself to the King and Queen of Bohemia, and is supposed, as we have seen, to have married the king’s widow. He was her junior by twelve years. He long resided in Craven House, became colonel of the Coldstream regiment of foot guards, and was famed for his bustling activity. He so constantly made his appearance at a fire, that his horse is said to have “smelt one as soon as it happened.” Pepys, during a riot against houses of ill-fame (probably the houses in Whetstone Park, as well as in Moor-fields, for he talks of going to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to see the ’prentices), describes his lordship as riding up and down the fields, “like a madman,” giving orders to the soldiery. It was probably in allusion to this military vivacity that Lord Dorset says, in his ballad on a mistress,—
When there was a talk in his old age of giving his regiment to somebody else, Craven said, that “if they took away his regiment they had as good take away his life, since he had nothing else to divert himself with.” The next king, however, William III., gave it to General Talmash; yet the old lord is said to have gone on, busy to the last. He died in 1697, aged nearly 89 years. He was intimate with Evelyn, Ray, and other naturalists, and delighted in gardening. The garden of Craven House ran in the direction of the present Drury Lane; so that where there is now a bustle of a very different sort, we may fancy the old soldier busying himself with his flower-beds, and Mr Evelyn discoursing upon the blessings of peace and privacy. [ 4] The only other personage of celebrity whom we know of as living in Drury Lane, is one of another sort; to wit, Nell Gwynn. The ubiquitous Pepys speaks of his seeing her there on a May-morning. “May 1st, 1667. To
Westminster, in the way meeting many milkmaids with garlands upon
their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them; and saw pretty
Nelly standing at her lodging’s door in Drury Lane in her smock
sleeves and bodice, looking upon one. She seemed a mighty pretty
creature.” Lodgings in this quarter, though Nell lived there, must have been of more decent reputation than they became afterwards. It is curious that the old English word Drury, or Druerie, should be applicable to the fame we allude to. It has more or less deserved it for a long period, though we believe the purlieus rather warrant it now, than the lane itself. Pope and Gay speak of it. Pope describes the lane also as a place of residence for poor authors:—
The existence of a theatre in Drury Lane is as old as the time of Shakspeare. It was then called the Phoenix; was “a private,” or more select house, like that of Blackfriars; and had been a cock-pit, by which name it was also designated. Poenix generally implies that a place has been destroyed by fire, a common fate with theatres; but the first occasion on which we hear of the present one is the destruction of it by a Puritan mob. This took place in the year 1617, in the time of James; and was doubtless caused by the same motives that led to the demolition of certain other houses, which it was thought to resemble in fame. In Howe’s Continuation of Stowe, it was called a “new play-house”; so that it had lately been either built or rebuilt. This theatre stood opposite the Castle tavern. There is still in existence a passage, called Cockpit Alley, into Great Wild Street; and there is a Phoenix alley, leading from Long Acre into Hart Street. The Phoenix was soon
rebuilt: and the performances continued till 1648, when they were
again stopped by the Puritans who then swayed England, and who put
an end to playhouses for some time. In the interval, some of the
most admired of our old dramas were produced there, such as Marlowe’s
“Jew of Malta”; Heywood’s “Woman killed with Kindness”; “The Witch
of Edmonton,” by Rowley, Decker, and Ford; Webster’s “White Devil,”
or “Vittoria Corombona,” Massinger’s “New Way to Pay Old Debts,”
and indeed many others. [5] It does not appear that Shakspeare or his
immediate friends had any pieces performed there. He was a performer
in other theatres; and the pressure of court, as well as city, lay
almost exclusively in their direction, till the growth of the western
part of the metropolis divided it. The Phoenix known in his time
was probably nearly as select a house as the Blackfriars. The company
had the title of Queen’s Servants (James’s Queen), and the servants
of the Lady Elizabeth (Queen of Bohemia). A few years before the Restoration, Davenant, supported by some of the less scrupulous authorities, ventured to struggle back something like the old entertainments, under pretence of accompanying them with music; a trick understood in our times where a license is to be encroached upon. In 1656, he removed with them from Aldersgate street to this house; and, after the fluctuation of different companies hither and thither, the Cockpit finally resumed its rank as a royal theatre, under the direction of the famous Killiegrew, whose set of players were called the King’s company, as those under Sir William Davenant had the title of the Duke’s. Killiegrew, dissatisfied with the old theatre at the Cockpit, built a new one nearly on the site of the present, and opened it in 1663. This may be called the parent of Drury Lane theatre as it now stands. It was burnt in 1671–72, rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, and opened in 1674, with a prologue, from the pen of Dryden, from which time it stood till the year 1741. There had been some alterations in the structure of this theatre, which are said to have hurt the effect contemplated by Sir Christopher Wren, and perhaps assisted its destruction; for seventy years is no great age for a public building. Yet old Drury, as it was called, was said to have died of a “gradual decline.” It was rebuilt, and became Old Drury the second; underwent the usual fate of theatres, in the year 1809; and was succeeded by the one now standing.
The era of Restoration,
or second era of the Stuarts, is that of the popularity of Ben Jonson’s
and Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, compared with Shakspeare’s, though
Davenant tried hard to revive him; of the plays of Dryden, Lee,
and Otway; and finally of the rise of comedy, strictly so called,
in those of Wycherly, Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh. All these
writers had to do with Drury Lane theatre, some of them almost exclusively.
Nineteen out of Dryden’s twenty-seven plays were produced there;
seven out of Lee’s eleven; all the good ones of Wycherly (that is
to say, all except the “Gentleman Dancing-Master”); two of Congreve’s
(the “Old Bachelor” and “Double Dealer”), and all Farquhar’s, except
the “Beaux’ Stratagem.” Otway’s best pieces came out at the Duke’s
theatre; and Vanbrugh’s in the Haymarket. [6] This may be called the second era of Drury
Lane, or rather the second and third; the former, which is Dryden’s
and Lee’s, having for its principal performers Hart, Mohun, Lacy,
Goodman, Nell Gwynn, and others; the latter, which was that of Congreve
and Farquhar, presenting us with Cibber, Wilks, Booth, Mrs Barry,
and Mrs Bracegirdle. The two, taken together, began with the Restoration
and ended with George II. Sir Richard Steele and the sentimental comedy came in at the close of the third era, and may be said to constitute the fourth; which, in his person, did not last long. Steele, admirable as an essayist, and occasionally as humorous as any dramatist in a scene or two, was hampered in his plays by the new moral ambition now coming up, which induced him to show, not so much what people are, as his notions of what they ought to be. This has never been held a legitimate business of the stage, which, in fact, is nothing else than what its favourite metaphor declares it, a glass of men and manners, in which they are to see themselves as they actually exist. It is the essence of the wit and dialogue of society brought into a focus. Steele was manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and made as bad a one as improvidence and animal spirits could produce. The sentimental comedy continued into the next or fifth Drury Lane era, which was that of Garrick, famous for his great reputation as an actor, and for his triumphant revival of Shakspeare’s plays, which have increased in popularity ever since. Not that he revived them in the strictest sense of the word; for the attempt was making when he came to town; but he hastened and exalted the success of it. The last era before the present one was that of Sheridan, who, though he began with Covent Garden, produced four out of his seven pieces at this theatre; where he showed himself a far better dramatist, and a still worse manager than Steele. We shall now endeavour to possess our readers with such a sense of these different periods, as may enable them to “live o’er each scene,” not indeed of the plays, but of the general epochs of old Drury; to go into the green-room with Hart and Nell Gwynn; to see Mrs Oldfield swim on the stage as Lady Betty Modish; to revive the electrical shock of Garrick’s leap upon it, as the lively Lothario;—in short, to be his grandfather and great-grandfather before him, and make one of the successive generations of play-goers, now in his peruke à la Charles II., and now in his Ramillie wig, or the bobs of Hogarth. Did we introduce him to all this ourselves, we should speak with less confidence; but we have a succession of play-goers for his acquaintance, who shall make him doubt whether he really is or is not his own ancestor, so surely shall they place him beside them in the pit. And first, for the
immortal and most play-going Pepys. To the society of this jolliest
of government officers, we shall consign our reader and ourselves
during the reign of Charles II.; and if we are not all three equally
intimate with old Drury at that time, there is no faith in good
company. By old Drury, we understand both the theatres; the Cockpit
or Phoenix and the new one built by Killiegrew, which took the title
of “King’s Theatre.” There was a cockpit at Whitehall, or court
theatre, to which Pepys occasionally alludes; but, after trying
in vain to draw a line between such of his memorandums as might
be retained and omitted, we here give up the task as undesirable,
the whole harmonizing in one mass of theatrical gossip, and making
us acquainted collaterally, even with what he is not speaking of.
We have not, indeed, retained everything, but we have almost. We now, therefore, pass Drury House, proceed up the lane by my Lord Craven’s garden, and turn into Russell Street amongst a throng of cavaliers in flowing locks, and ladies with curls à la Valliere. Some of them are in masks, but others have not put theirs on. We shall see them masquing as the house grows full. It is early in the afternoon. There press a crowd of gallants, who have already got enough wine. Here, as fast as the lumbering coaches of that period can do it, dashes up to the door my lord Duke of Buckingham, bringing with him Buckhurst and Sedley. There comes a greater, though at that time a humbler man, to wit, John Dryden, in a coat of plain drugget, which by and by his fame converted into black velvet. He is somewhat short and stout, with a roundish dimpled face and a sparkling eye; and, if scandal says true, by his side is “Madam” Reeves, a beautiful actress; for the ladies of the stage were so entitled at that time. Horses and coaches throng the place, with here and there a sedan; and, by the pulling off of hats, we find that the king and his brother James have arrived. The former nods to his people as if he anticipated their mutual enjoyment of the play; the latter affects a graciousness to match, but does not do it very well. As soon as the king passes in, there is a squeeze and a scuffle; and some blood is drawn, and more oaths uttered, from which we hasten to escape. Another scuffle is silenced on the king’s entrance, which also makes the gods quiet; otherwise, at no period were they so loud. The house is not very large, nor very well appointed. Most of the ladies masque themselves in the pit and boxes, and all parties prepare for a play that shall render it proper for the remainder to do so. The king applauds a new French tune played by the musicians. Gallants, not very sober, are bowing on all sides of us to ladies not very nice; or talking to the orange girls, who are ranged in front of the pit with their backs to the stage. We hear criticisms on the last new piece, on the latest panegyric, libel, or new mode. Our friend Pepys listens and looks everywhere, tells all who is who, or asks it; and his neighbours think him a most agreeable fat little gentleman. The curtain rises: enter Mistress Marshall, a pretty woman, and speaks a prologue which makes all the ladies hurry on their masks, and convulses the house with laughter. Mr Pepys “do own” that he cannot help laughing too, and calls the actress “a merry jade;” “but, lord!” he says, “to see the difference of the times, and but two years gone.” And then he utters something between a sigh and a chuckle, at the recollection of his Presbyterian breeding, compared with the jollity of his expectations. But let us hear our friend’s memorandums:— “29th (September 1662). To the King’s Theatre, where we saw ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. [The gods certainly had not made Pepys poetical, except on the substantial side of things.] “5th (January 1662–3).
To the Cockpit, where we saw ‘Claracilla,’ a poor play, done by
the King’s house; but neither the king nor queen were there, but
only the duke and duchess. “23rd (February 1662–3). We took coach and to court, and there we saw ‘The Wilde Gallant,’ performed by the King’s house, but it was ill acted. The king did not seem pleased at all, the whole play, nor anybody else. My Lady Castlemaine was all worth seeing to-night, and little Stewart. [This is Miss, or as the designation then was, Mrs Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond. ‘The Wild Gallant’ was Dryden’s first play, and was patronised by Lady Castlemaine, afterwards not less notorious as Duchess of Cleveland. Miss Stewart and she were rival beauties.] “1st (February 1663–4). To the King’s Theatre, and there saw the ‘Indian Queen’ (by Sir Robert Howard and Dryden); which indeed is a most pleasant show, and beyond my expectation the play good, but spoiled with the rhyme, which breaks the sense. But above my expectation most, the eldest Marshall did do her part most excellently well as I have heard a woman in my life; but her voice is not so sweet as Ianthe’s: but, however, we come home mightily contented. “1st (January 1664). To the King’s house, and saw ‘The Silent Woman’ (Ben Jonson’s); but methought not so well done or so good a play as I formerly thought it to be. Before the play was done, it fell such a storm of hayle, that we in the middle of the pit were fain to rise, and all the house in a disorder. “2nd (August 1664). To the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘Bartholomew Fayre’(Ben Jonson’s), which do still please me; and is, as it is acted, the best comedy in the world, I believe. I chanced to sit by Tom Killigrew, who tells me that he is setting up a nursery; that is, is going to build a house in Moorfields, wherein we will have common plays acted. But four operas it shall have in the year, to act six weeks at a time: where we shall have the best scenes and machines, the best musique, and everything as magnificent as in Christendome, and to that end hath sent for voices and painters, and other persons from Italy. “4th (August 1664).
To play at the King’s house, ‘The Rivall Ladies’ (Dryden’s), a very
innocent and most pretty, witty play. I was much pleased with it,
and it being given me, I look upon it as no breach of my oath. [Pepys
means that he had made a vow not to spend money on theatres, but
that he was now treated to a play.] Here we hear that Clun, one
of their best actors, was, the last night, going out of town after
he had acted the Alchymist (wherein was one of his best parts that
he acts), to his country house, set upon and murdered; one of the
rogues taken, an Irish fellow. It seems most cruelly butchered and
bound. The house will have a great miss of him. [Clun’s body was
found at Kentish Town in a ditch. Pepys went to see the place]. “11th (October 1664). Luellin tells me what an obscene loose play this ‘Parson’s Wedding’ is (by Tom Killigrew), that is acted by nothing but women at the King’s house. “14th (January 1664–5). To the King’s house, there to see ‘Vulpone,’ a most excellent play (Ben Jonson’s); the best, I think, I ever saw, and well acted. “19th (March 1666). After dinner we walked to the King’s playhouse, all in dirt, they being altering of the stage to make it wider. But God knows when they will begin to act again; but my business here was to see the inside of the stage, and all the tiring-rooms and machines; and, indeed, it was a sight worthy seeing. But to see their clothes, and the various sorts, and what a mixture of things there was; here a wooden leg, there a ruff; here a hobby-horse, there a crown, would make a man split himself to see with laughing; and particularly Lacy’s wardrobe and Shotrell’s. But then again to think how fine they show on the stage by candlelight, and how poor things they are to look at too near hand, is not pleasant at all. The machines are fine, and the paintings very pretty. “7th (December 1666). To the King’s playhouse, where two acts were almost done when I came in; and there I sat with my cloak about my face, and saw the remainder of ‘The Mayd’s Tragedy’; a good play, and well acted, especially by the younger Marshall, who is become a pretty good actor; and is the first play I have seen in either of the houses, since before the great plague, they having acted now about fourteen days publickly. But I was in mighty pain, lest I should be seen by anybody to be at the play. [The plague seems to have made it an indecorum to resume visits to the theatre very speedily. Pepys had been educated among the Commonwealth-men, for whom he never seems to have got rid of a respect. The contrast aggravated his festivity]. “8th (December 1666). To the King’s playhouse, and there did see a good part of ‘The English Monsieur’ (by James Howard), which is a mighty pretty play, very witty and pleasant. And the women do very well; but above all, little Nelly. [Nell Gwynn, not long entered upon the stage]. “27th (December 1666). By coach to the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘The Scornful Lady’ (Beaumont and Fletcher’s), well acted; Doll Common doing Abigail most excellently, and Knipp the widow very well (and will be an excellent actor, I think). In other parts the play not so well done as need be by the old actors. “3rd (January 1666–7).
Alone to the King’s house, and there saw ‘The Custome of the Country’
(Beaumont and Fletcher’s), the second time of its being acted, wherein
Knipp does the widow well; but of all the plays that ever I did
see, the worst, having neither plot, language nor anything on the
earth that is acceptable; only Knipp sings a song admirably. [Mistress
Knipp was a particular acquaintance of our friends]. “23rd (January 1666–7). To the King’s house, and there saw the ‘Humourous Lieutenant’ (Beaumont and Fletcher’s), a silly play, I think; only the spirit in it that grows very tall, and then sinks again to nothing, having two heads breeding upon one, and then Knipp’s singing did please us. Here in a box above we spied Mrs Pierse; and going out they called us; and so we staid for them; and Knipp took us all in and brought us to Nelly (Nell Gwynn), a most pretty woman, who acted the great part of Cœlia to-day very fine, and did it pretty well: I kissed her, and so did my wife; and a mighty pretty soul she is. We also saw Mrs Ball, which is my little Roman-nose black girl, that is mighty pretty; she is usually called Betty. Knipp made us stay in the box, and see the dancing preparatory to to-morrow for the ‘Goblins,’ a play of Suckling’s, not acted these twenty years; which was pretty. “5th (February 1666–7). To the King’s house to see ‘The Chances’(Beaumont and Fletcher’s). A good play I find it, and the actors most good in it. And pretty to hear Knipp sing in the play very properly. ‘All night I weepe’; and sung it admirably. The whole play pleases me well: and most of all, the sight of many fine ladies; among others my lady Castlemaine and Mrs Middleton: the latter of the two hath also a very excellent face and body, I think. And so home in the dark over the ruins with a link. [The ruins are those of the city, occasioned by the fire. Mr Pepys lived in Creed Lane, where the Navy Office then was, in which he had an appointment]. “18th (February 1666–7). To the King’s house, to ‘The Mayd’s Tragedy’ (Beaumont and Fletcher’s); but vexed all the while with two talking ladies and Sir Charles Sedley; yet pleased to hear the discourse, he being a stranger. And one of the ladies would and did sit with her mask on all the play, and being exceedingly witty as ever I heard a woman, did talk most pleasantly with him; but was, I believe, a virtuous woman and of quality. He would fain know who she was, but she would not tell; yet did give him many pleasant hints of her knowledge of him, by that means setting his brains at work to find out who she was, and did give him leave to use all means to find out who she was, but pulling off her mask. He was mighty witty, and she also making sport with him mighty inoffensively, that more pleasant rencontre I never heard. But by that means lost the pleasure of the play wholly, to which now and then Sir Charles Sedley’s exceptions against both words and pronouncing were very pretty. [This is the famous wit and man of pleasure. We have him before us, as if we were present together with a curious specimen of the manners of these times. The pit, though subject to violent scuffles, greatly occasioned by the wearing of swords, seemed to have contained as good company as the opera pit does now]. “2nd (March 1666–7).
After dinner with my wife to the King’s house, to see ‘The Mayden
Queen,’ a new play of Dryden’s, mighty commended for the regularity
of it, and the strain and wit: and the truth is, there is a comical
part, played by Nell, which is Florimell, that I never can hope
to see the like done again by man or woman. The King and the Duke
of York were at the play. But so great performance of a comical
part was never, I believe, in the world before as Nell do this,
both as a mad girl, then most and best of all when she comes in
like a young gallante; and hath the motions and carriage of a spark
the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, admire
her. “25th (March 1666–7). To the King’s playhouse, and by and by comes Mr Lowther and his wife and mine, and into a box, forsooth, neither of them being dressed, which I was almost ashamed of. Sir W. Pen and I in the pit, and here saw the ‘Mayden Queen’ again; which, indeed, the more I see the more I like, and is an excellent play, and so done by Nell her merry part, as cannot be better done in nature. “9th (April 1667). To the King’s house, and there saw the ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ which hath some very good pieces in it, but generally is but a mean play; and the best part ‘Sawny,’ done by Lacy; and hath not half its life, by reason of the words, I suppose, not being understood, at least by me. [This was one of the rifacimentos of Shakspeare, by which he was to be rendered palatable.] “15th (April 1667). To the King’s house, by chance, where a new play: so full as I never saw it; I forced to stand all the while close to the very door till I took cold, and many people went away for want of room. The King and Queene and Duke of York and Duchesse there, and all the court, and Sir W. Coventry. The play called ‘The Change of Crownes;’ a play of Ned Howard’s, the best that I ever saw at that house, being a great play and serious; only Lacy did act the country gentleman come up to court with all the imaginable wit and plainness about the selling of places, and doing everything for money. The play took very much. “16th (April 1667). Knipp tells me the King was so angry at the liberty taken by Lacy’s part to abuse him to his face, that he commanded they should act no more, till Moone (Mohun) went and got leave for them to act again, but not in this play. The King mighty angry; and it was bitter indeed, but very fine and witty. I never was more taken with a play than I am with this ‘Silent Woman’ (Ben Jonson’s) as old as it is, and as often as I have seen it. [Ned Howard, the author of ‘The Change of Crownes,’ was one of the sons of the Earl of Berkshire, and though of a family who helped to bring in the King, was probably connected with the Presbyterians, and disgusted, like many of the royalists on that side, by the disappointments they had experienced in church and state. Dryden, who married one of his sisters, was of a Presbyterian stock. Ned, however, who afterwards became the butt of the wits, was not very nice, and might have ‘committed himself,’ as the modern phrase is, in his mode of conducting his satire.] “20th (April 1667).
Met Mr Rolt, who tells me the reason of no play to-day at the King’s
house—that Lacy had been committed to the porter’s lodge, for his
acting his part in the late new play; and being thence released
to come to the King’s house, he there met with Ned Howard, the poet
of the play, who congratulated his release; upon which Lacy cursed
him, as that it was the fault of his nonsensical play that was the
cause of his ill-usage. Mr Howard did give him some reply, to which
Lacy answered him that he was more a fool than a poet; upon which
Howard did give him a blow on the face with his glove; on which
Lacy, having a cane in his hand, did give him a blow over the pate.
Here Rolt and others, that discoursed of it in the pit, did wonder
that Howard did not run him through, he being too mean a fellow
to fight with. But Howard did not do anything but complain to the
King; so the whole house is silenced: and the gentry seem to rejoice
much at it, the house being become too insolent. “1st (May 1667). Thence away to the King’s playhouse, and saw ‘Love in a Maze’: but a sorry play; only Lacy’s clown’s part, which he did most admirably indeed; and I am glad to find the rogue at liberty again. Here was but little, and that ordinary company. We sat at the upper bench, next the boxes; and I find it do pretty well, and have the advantage of seeing and hearing the great people, which may be pleasant when there is good store. “15th (August 1667). And so we went to the King’s house, and there saw ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor;’ which did not please me at all, in no part of it. “17th (August 1667). To the King’s playhouse, where the house extraordinary full; and there the King and Duke of York to see the new play, ‘Queene Elizabeth’s Troubles, and the History of Eighty-eight.’ I confess I have sucked in so much of the sad story of Queene Elizabeth from my cradle, that I was ready to weep for her sometimes; but the play is the most ridiculous that sure ever came upon stage, and, indeed, is merely a show, only shows the true garb of the Queene in those days, just as we see Queene Mary and Queene Elizabeth painted; but the play is merely a puppet play, acted by living puppets. Neither the design nor language better; and one stands by and tells us the meaning of things: only I was pleased to see Knipp dance among the milkmaids, and to hear her sing a song to Queene Elizabeth, and to see her come out in her nighte-gown with no lockes on, but her bare face, and hair only tied up in a knot behind; which is the comeliest dress that ever I saw her in to her advantage. “22nd (August 1667). With my lord Brouncker and his mistress to the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘The Indian Emperour;’ where I find Nell come again, which I am glad of; but was most infinitely displeased with her being put to act the Emperour’s daughter, which is a great and serious part, which she does most basely. “14th (September 1667). To the King’s playhouse, to see ‘The Northerne Castle (quære Lasse, by Richard Brome?), which I think I never did see before. Knipp acted in it, and did her part very extraordinary well; but the play is but a mean, sorry play. “——, my wife, and Mercer, and I, away to the King’s playhouse, to see ‘The Scornful Lady’ (Beaumont and Fletcher’s), but it being now three o’clock, there was not one soul in the pit; whereupon, for shame, we could not go in; but against our wills, went all to see ‘Tu Quoque’ again (by John Cooke), where there was pretty store of company. Here we saw Madame Morland, who is grown mighty fat, but is very comely. Thence to the King’s house, upon a wager of mine with my wife, that there would be no acting there to-day, there being no company: so I went in and found a pretty good company there, and saw their dance at the end of the play. [There is a confusion in the memorandum under this date.] “20th (September
1667). By coach to the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘The Mad
Couple’ (by Richard Brome), my wife having been at the same play
with Jane in the 18d. seat. “25th (September 1667). I to the King’s playhouse, my eyes being so bad since last night’s straining of them, that I am hardly able to see, besides the pain that I have in them. The play was a new play; and infinitely full; the King and all the court almost there. It is ‘The Storme,’ a play of Fletcher’s; which is but so-so, me-thinks; only there is a most admirable dance at the end, of the ladies, in a military manner, which indeed did please me mightily. “5th (October 1667). To the King’s house; and there going in met with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing-rooms; and to the women’s shift, where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought. And into the scene-room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit; and here I read the questions to Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part of ‘Flora’s Figarys,’ which was acted to-day. But, lord! to see how they were both painted, would make a man mad, and did make me loath them, and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk. And how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a show they make on the stage by candle-light, is very observable. But to see how Nell cursed, for having so few people in the pit, was strange; the other house carrying away all the people at the new play, and is said now-a-days to have generally most company, as having better players. By and by into the pit, and there saw the play, which is pretty good. “19th (October 1667). Full of my desire of seeing my Lord Orrery’s new play this afternoon at the King’s house, ‘The Black Prince,’ the first time it is acted; where, though we came by two o’clock, yet there was no room in the pit, but were forced to go into one of the upper boxes at 4s. a piece, which is the first time I ever sat in a box in my life. And in the same box came by and by, behind me, my Lord Barkely and his lady; but I did not turn my face to them to be known, so that I was excused from giving them my seat. And this pleasure I had, that from this place the scenes do appear very fine indeed, and much better than in the pit. The house infinite full, and the King and Duke of York there. The whole house was mightily pleased all along till the reading of a letter, which was so long and so unnecessary, that they frequently began to laugh, and to hiss twenty times, that had it not been for the King’s being there, they had certainly hissed it off the stage. “23rd (October 1667). To the King’s playhouse, and saw ‘The Black Prince;’ which is now mightily bettered by that long letter being printed, and so delivered to everybody at their going in, and some short reference made to it in the play. [This is in the style of what Buckingham called “insinuating the plot into the boxes.”] “1st (November 1667). To the King’s playhouse, and there saw a silly play and an old one, ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’ “2nd (November 1667).
To the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘Henry the Fourth;’ and,
contrary to expectation, was pleased in nothing more than in Cartwright’s
speaking of Falstaffe’s speech about ‘What is honour?’ The house
full of parliament-men, it being holyday with them: and it was observable
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, being
choked; but with much ado Orange Moll did thrust her finger down
his throat, and brought him to life again. “26th (December 1667). With my wife to the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘The Surprizall’ by Sir Robert Howard, brother of Ned; which did not please me to-day, the actors not pleasing me; and especially Nell’s acting of a serious part, which she spoils. “28th (December 1667). To the King’s house, and there saw ‘The Mad Couple,’ which is but an ordinary play; but only Nell’s and Hart’s mad parts are most excellent done, but especially hers: which makes it a miracle to me to think how ill she do any serious part, as, the other day, just like a fool or changeling; and, in a mad part, do beyond all imitation almost. It pleased us mightily to see the natural affection of a poor woman, the mother of one of the children brought on the stage; the child crying, she by force got upon the stage, and took up her child, and carried it away off the stage from Hart. Many fine faces here to-day. “7th (January 1667–8). To the Nursery [qy. in Barbican, for children performers?], but the house did not act to-day; and so I to the other two playhouses, into the pit to gaze up and down, and there did, by this means, for nothing, see an act in ‘The Schoole of Compliments’ at the Duke of York’s house, and ‘Henry the Fourth’ at the King’s house; but not liking either of the plays, I took my coach again, and home. [It would here seem, that a man who did not choose to pay for a seat, might witness a play for nothing.] “11th (January 1667–8). To the King’s house, to see ‘The Wild-Goose Chase’ (Beaumont and Fletcher’s). In this play I met with nothing extraordinary at all, but very dull inventions and designs. Knipp came and sat by us, and her talk pleased me a little, she telling me how Miss Davies is for certain going away from the Duke’s house, the King being in love with her; and a house is taken for her, and furnishing; and she hath a ring given her already worth £600: that the King did send several times for Nelly, and she was with him; and I am sorry for it, and can hope for no good to the state from having a prince so devoted to his pleasure. She told me also of a play shortly coming upon the stage, of Sir Charles Sedley’s, which, she thinks, will be called ‘The Wandering Ladys,’ a comedy that she thinks will be most pleasant; and also another play called ‘The Duke of Lorane;’ besides ‘Cataline,’ which she thinks, for want of the clothes which the King promised them, will not be acted for a good while. “20th (February 1667–8).
Dined, and by one o’clock to the King’s house; a new play, ‘The
Duke of Lerma,’ of Sir Robert Howard’s: where the king and court
was; and Knipp and Nell spoke the prologue most excellently, especially
Knipp, who spoke beyond any creature I ever heard. The play designed
to reproach our King with his mistresses, that I was troubled for
it, and expected it should be interrupted; but it ended all well;
which salved me. “27th (February 1667–8). With my wife to the King’s house, to see ‘The Virgin Martyr’ (by Massinger), the first time it hath been acted a great while: and it is mighty pleasant; not that the play is worth much, but it is finely acted by Beck Marshall. But that which did please me beyond anything in the world, was the wind-musique when the angel comes down; which is so sweet that it ravished me, and, indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife; that neither then, nor all the evening going home, and at home, I was able to think of anything, but remained all night transported, so as I could not believe that ever any musique hath that real command over the soul of a man, as this did upon me; and makes me resolve to practise wind-musique, and to make my wife do the like. [Pepys’s use of the word ‘sick,’ and his resolution to make his wife practise the hautboy, are very ludicrous. His love of music, however, is genuine. He was an amateur composer. On the 23rd February 1666, he has the following memorandum: ‘Comes Mrs Knipp to see my wife, and I spent all the night talking with this baggage, and teaching her my song of “Beauty retire,” which she sings and makes go most rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be.’] “6th (March 1667–8). After dinner to the King’s house, and there saw part of the ‘Discontented Colonell’ (Sir John Suckling’s ‘Brennoralt’). “7th (April 1668). To the King’s house, and there saw ‘The English Monsieur’ (sitting for privacy sake in an upper box): the play hath much mirth in it, as to that particular humour. After the play done, I down to Knipp, and did stay her undressing herself; and there saw the several players, men and women, go by; and pretty to see how strange they are all, one to another, after the play is done. Here I hear Sir W. Davenant is just now dead, and so, who will succeed him in the mastership of the house is not yet known. The eldest Davenport is, it seems, gone from this house to be kept by somebody; which I am glad of, she being a very bad actor. Mrs Knipp tells me that my Lady Castlemaine is mighty in love with Hart of their house, and he is much with her in private, and she goes to him and do give him many presents; and that the thing is most certain, and Beck Marshall only privy to it, and the means of bringing them together: which is a very odd thing; and by this means she is even with the King’s love to Mrs Davies. “28th (April 1668). To the King’s house, and there did see ‘Love in a Maze’ (the author is not mentioned in Baker); wherein very good mirth of Lacy the clown, and Wintershell, the country-knight, his master. “1st (May 1668).
To the King’s playhouse, and there saw the ‘Surprizall’; and a disorder
in the pit by its raining in from the cupola at top. “7th (May 1668). To the King’s house; where going in for Knipp, the play being done, I did see Beck Marshall come dressed off of the stage, and look mighty fine, and pretty and noble; and also Nell in her boy’s clothes mighty pretty. But, lord! their confidence, and how many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage, and how confident they are in their talk. Here was also Haynes, the incomparable dancer of the King’s house. “16th (May 1668). To the King’s playhouse, and there saw the best part of ‘The Sea Voyage’ (Beaumont and Fletcher), where Knipp did her part of sorrow very well. “18th (May 1668). It being almost twelve o’clock, or little more, to the King’s playhouse, where the doors were not then open; but presently they did open, and we in, and find many people already come in by private ways into the pit, it being the first day of Sir Charles Sedley’s new play so long expected ‘The Mulberry Garden,’ of whom, being so reputed a wit, all the world do expect great matters. I having sat here a while and eat nothing today, did slip out, getting a boy to keep my place; and to the Rose Tavern (Will’s, in Russell Street), and there got half a breast of mutton off the spit, and dined all alone. And so to the playhouse again, where the King and Queene by and by come, and all the court, and the house infinitely full. But the play, when it come, though there was here and there a pretty saying, and that not very many neither, yet the whole of the play had nothing extraordinary in it at all, neither of language nor design; insomuch that the King I did not see laugh nor pleased from the beginning to the end, nor the company; insomuch that I have not been less pleased at a new play in my life, I think. “30th (May 1668). To the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘Philaster’; where it is pretty to see how I could remember almost all along, ever since I was a boy, Arethusa, the part which I was to have acted at Sir Robert Cooke’s; and it was very pleasant to me, but more to think what a ridiculous thing it would have been for me to have acted a beautiful woman. “22nd (June 1668). To the King’s playhouse, and saw an act or two of the new play, ‘Evening Love’ again (Dryden’s) but like it not. “11th (July 1668). To the King’s playhouse, to see an old play of Shirley’s, called ‘Hyde Parke,’ the first day acted; where horses are brought upon the stage; but it is but a very moderate play, only an excellent epilogue spoken by Beck Marshall. “31st (July 1668).
To the King’s house, to see the first day of Lacy’s ‘Monsieur Ragou,’
now new acted. The King and court all there, and mighty merry: a
farce. “15th (September 1668). To the King’s playhouse to see a new play, acted but yesterday, a translation out of French by Dryden, called ‘The Ladys à la Mode’ [probably the Precieuses, but not translated by Dryden]: so mean a thing as when they came to say it would be acted again to-morrow, both he that said it (Beeston) and the pit fell a-laughing. “19th (September 1668). To the King’s playhouse, and there saw the ‘Silent Woman’; the best comedy, I think, that ever was wrote: and sitting by Shadwell the poet, he was big with admiration of it. Here was my Lord Brouncker and W. Pen and their ladies in the box, being grown mighty kind of a sudden; but, God knows, it will last but a little while, I dare swear. Knipp did her part mighty well. “28th (September 1668). To the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘The City Match’ (by Jasper Maine), not acted these thirty years, and but a silly play; the king and court there; the house, for the women’s sake, mighty full. “14th (October 1668). To the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘The Faithful Shepherdess’ (Fletcher’s), that I might hear the French eunuch sing; which I did to my great content; though I do admire his actions as much as his acting, being both beyond all I ever saw or heard. “2nd (December 1668). So she (Mrs Pepys) and I to the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘The Usurper’; a pretty good play in all but what is designed to resemble Cromwell and Hugh Peters, which is mighty silly. [The Usurper was by Ned Howard, who seems to have wished to show how impartial he could be.] “19th (December 1668). My wife and I by hackney to the King’s playhouse, and there, the pit being full, sat in the box above, and saw ‘Cataline’s Conspiracy’ (Ben Jonson’s), yesterday being the first day: a play of much good sense and words to read, but that do appear the worst upon the stage, I mean the least diverting, that ever I saw any, though most fine in clothes; and a fine scene of the senate and of a fight as ever I saw in my life. We sat next to Betty Hall, that did belong to this house, and was Sir Philip Howard’s mistress; a mighty pretty wench. “7th (January 1668–9). My wife and I to the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘The Island Princesse’ (Beaumont and Fletcher’s), the first time I ever saw it; and it is a pretty good play, many good things being in it, and a good scene of a town on fire. We sat in an upper box, and the merry Jade Nell came in and sat in the next box; a bold slut, who lay laughing there upon people, and with a comrade of hers, of the Duke’s house, that came to see the play. “11th (January 1668–9).
Abroad with my wife to the King’s playhouse, and there saw ‘The
Joviall Crew’ (by Richard Brome), ill acted to what it was in Clun’s
time; and when Lacy could dance. “19th (January 1668–9). To the King’s house to see ‘Horace’ (translated from Corneille by Charles Cotton); this is the third day of its acting; a silly tragedy; but Lacy hath made a farce of several dances—between each act one; but his words are but silly, and invention not extraordinary as to the dances. [Pepys adds, with seeming approbation, an instance of satire on the Dutch, too gross to extract, and highly disgraceful to that age of “fine ladies and gentlemen.”] “2nd (February 1668–9). To dinner at noon, where I find Mr Sheres; and there made a short dinner, and carried him with us to the King’s playhouse, where ‘The Heyresse,’ notwithstanding Kynaston’s being beaten, is acted: and they say the King is very angry with Sir Charles Sedley for his being beaten, but he do deny it. But his part is done by Beetson, who is fain to read it out of a book all the while, and thereby spoils the part, and almost the play, it being one of the best parts in it: and though the design is, in the first conception of it, pretty good, yet it is but an indifferent play; wrote, they say, by my Lord Newcastle. But it was pleasant to see Beeston come in with the others, supposing it to be dark, and yet forced to read his part by the light of the candles; and this I observing to a gentleman, that sat by me, he was mightily pleased therewith and spread it up and down. But that that pleased me most in the play, is the first song that Knipp sings (she sings three or four); and indeed it was very finely sung, so as to make the whole house clap her. “6th (February 1668-9).—To the King’s playhouse, and there in an upper box (where come in Colonel Poynton and Doll Stacey, who is very fine, and by her wedding-ring I suppose he hath married her at last), did see the ‘Moor of Venice’: but ill acted in most parts, Moon (which did a little surprise me) not acting Iago’s part by much so well as Clun used to do: nor another Hart’s, which was Cassio’s; nor indeed Burt doing the Moor’s so well as I once thought he did. 9th (February 1668–9). To the King’s playhouse, and there saw the ‘Island Princesse,’ which I like mighty well as an excellent play; and here we find Kynaston to be well enough to act again; which he do very well, after his beating by Sir Charles Sedley’s appointment. [Kynaston is generally supposed to have been taken for Sedley, and beaten for some offence of the baronet’s. He affected to be Sedley’s double.] “26th (February 1668–9).
To the King’s playhouse, and saw the ‘Faithful Shepherdesse.’ But,
lord! what an empty house, there not being, as I could see the people,
so many as to make up above £10 in the whole house! But I plainly
discern the musick is the better, by how much the house the emptier.”
[The same thing was said by the great Handel, to console himself
once, when he found a spare audience.] Of the performers mentioned in this curious theatrical gossip, one of them, Hart, had been a captain in the civil wars; another, Mohun. a major; and there was a third a quarter-master; all on the royal side. Hart and Mohun were old actors, when Betterton was young; and they lived to see him reckoned superior to either. The two were accustomed to act together, Hart generally in the superior character, as Brutus to the other’s Cassius; and both, like Betterton, acted in comedy as well as tragedy. They performed,. for instance, Manly and Horner in “The Country Wife,” and there appears to have been less distinction in their styles of acting than is customary. If Hart shone in the Dorimant of “Sir Fopling Flutter,” Mohun was highly applauded in Davenant’s Valentine, in “Wit without Money.” Mohun, however, appears to have excelled in the more ferocious parts of tragedy, as Catiline; and Hart in the mixture of gaiety with boldness, as in Hotspur and Alexander. His Alexander was particularly famous. Upon the whole, we should conclude, Mohun’s to have the more artificial acting of the two, more like “the actor,” in Partridge’s sense of the word, but very fine nevertheless, otherwise Rochester would hardly have admired him, as he is said to have done; unless, indeed, it was out of spite to some other actor; for he was much influenced by feelings of that kind. Perhaps, however, it was out of some chance predilection. The Duke of Buckingham is said to have preferred Ben Jonson to Shakspeare, for no other reason than his having been introduced to him when a boy. The best compliment ever known to have been paid to Hart, is an anecdote recorded of Betterton. Betterton acted Alexander after Hart’s time; and “being at a loss,” says Davies, “to recover a particular emphasis of that performer, which gave a force to some interesting situation of the part, he applied for information to the players who stood near him. At last, one of the lowest of the company repeated the line exactly in Hart’s key. Betterton thanked him heartily, and put a piece of money into his hand, as a reward for so acceptable a service.” [7] Hart had the reputation of being the first lover of Nell Gwynn, and one of the hundreds of the Duchess of Cleveland. Goodman was another
of the favoured many. He was one of the Alexanders of his time,
but does not appear to have been a great actor. He was a dashing
impudent fellow, who boasted of his having taken “an airing” on
the road to recruit his purse. He was expelled from Cambridge for
cutting and defacing the portrait of the Duke of Monmouth, Chancellor
of the University, but not loyal enough to his father to please
Goodman. James II. pardoned the loyal highwayman, which Goodman
(in Cibber’s hearing) said “was doing him so particular an honour,
that no man could wonder if his acknowledgement had carried him
a little further than ordinary into the interest of that prince.
But as he had lately been out of luck in backing his old master,
he had now no way to get home the life he was out, upon his account,
but by being under the same obligations to King William.” [
8] The meaning of this is understood to be, that Goodman offered
to assassinate William, in consequence of his having had a pardon
from James; but the plot not succeeding, he turned king’s evidence
against James, in order to secure a pardon from William. This “pretty
fellow” was latterly so easy in his circumstances, owing, it is
supposed, to the delicate Cleveland, that he used to say he would
never act Alexander the Great, but when he was certain that “his
duchess” would be in the boxes to see him. The stage in that day was certainly not behind-hand with the court; and as it had less conventional respectability in the eyes of the world, its private character was never so low. But we must do justice and not confound even the disreputable. Poor Nell Gwynn, in a quarrel with one of the Marshalls, who reproached her with being the mistress of Lord Buckhurst, said she was mistress but of one man at a time, though she had been brought up in a bad house “to fill strong waters to the gentlemen”; whereas her rebuker, though a clergyman’s daughter, was the mistress of three. This celebrated actress, who was as excellent in certain giddy parts of comedy as she was inferior in tragedy, was small of person, but very pretty, with a good-humoured face, and eyes that winked when she laughed. She is the ancestress of the ducal family of St. Albans, who are thought to have retained more of the look and complexion of Charles II. than any other of his descendants. Beauclerc, Johnson’s friend, was like him; and the black complexion is still in vigour. The King recommended her to his brother with his last breath, begging him “not to let poor Kelly starve.” Burnet says she was introduced to the King by Buckingham, to supplant the Duchess of Cleveland; but others tell us, he first noticed her in consequence of a hat of the circumference of a coach-wheel, in which Dryden made her deliver a prologue, as a set off to an enormous hat of Pistol’s at the other house, and which convulsed the spectators with laughter. If Nelly retained a habit of swearing, which was probably taught her when a child (and it is clear enough from Pepys that she did), the poets did not discourage her. One of her epilogues by Dryden began in the following startling manner. It is entitled “An Epilogue spoken by Mrs Ellen, when she was to be carried off dead by the Bearers.”
The poet makes her
say of herself, in the course of the lines, that she was “a harmless
little devil,” and that she was slatternly in her dress. Lely painted
her with a lamb under her arm. Mr Pegge discovered that Charles
made her a lady of the chamber to his queen. Pennant seems to think
this was only a title; but it is plain from Evelyn’s Memoirs
that she had apartments in Whitehall. [9]
She died a few years after the King, at her house in Pall Mall.
Nell was much libelled in her time, and among others by Sir George
Etherege; [ 10] very likely
out of some personal pique or rejection, for such revenges were
quite compatible with the “loves” of that age. [11] But she was a general favourite, nevertheless,
owing to a natural good-heartedness which no course of life could
overcome. Burnet’s character of her is well known. “Guin,” says
he, “the indiscreetest and wildest creature that ever was in a court,
continued, to the end of that king’s life, in great favour and was
maintained at a vast expense. The Duke of Buckingham told me that
when she was first brought to the King, she asked only five hundred
pounds a-year; and the King refused it. But when he told me this,
about four years after, he said, she had got of the King above sixty
thousand pounds. She acted all persons in so lively a manner, and
was such a constant diversion to the King, that even a new mistress
could not drive her away. But after all he never treated her with
the decencies of a mistress.” [12] Nell Gwynn is said to have suggested to
her royal lover the building of Chelsea Hospital, and to have made
him a present of the ground for it. Upon the whole the dramatic taste during the greater part of Charles’s reign was false and artificial, particularly in tragedy. Etherege produced one good comedy, the precursor of Wycherly and Congreve; but Dryden, the reigning favourite, was not as great in dramatic as he was in other writing; his heroic plays, and Lee’s “Alexander,” were admired, not so much for the beauties mixed with their absurdity, as for the improbable air they gave to a serious passion; and the favourite plays of deceased authors were those of the most equivocal writers of the time of James, not the pure and profound nature of Shakspeare and his fellows. Otway flourished, but was not thought so great as he is now; and even in Otway there is a hot bullying smack of the tavern, very different from the voluptuousness in Shakspeare. Towards the close of this reign comedy came to its height with Wycherly, who, almost as profligate in point of dialogue as any of his contemporaries, nevertheless hit the right vein of satire. Wycherly lived at the other end of Russell Street, in Bow Street, where we shall see him shortly. We are now come to the time of Congreve, Mrs Bracegirdle, and others; Betterton remaining. Of these individually we have spoken before; and therefore shall only observe that by the more serious examples of James II. and King William, the manners of the day were reforming, and those of the stage with them. We now find ourselves among audiences more composed, and witness plays less coarse, though with an abundance of double meaning and exuberantly witty. Coquetry and fashion are now the reigning stage goddesses, as mere wantonness was that of the age preceding. Farquhar and Vanbrugh succeeded, together with Cibber, Wilkes, Booth, and latterly Steele and Mrs Oldfield. Vanbrugh does not belong to Drury Lane, but Farquhar does, with the rest; and a lively place he made of it. He is Captain Farquhar, has a plume in his hat, and prodigious animal spirits, with invention at will, and great good nature. Captains abounded among the wits and adventurers of those days down to Captains Macheath and Gibbet. Vanburgh was a captain; Steele at one time was Captain Steele; and Mrs Oldfield’s father, though the son of a vintner, became Captain Oldfield, and genteelly ran out an estate. This is still the age of genuine comedy, and the stage is worthy of it. The tragedy was proportionably bad. Booth, indeed, was a good tragic actor, but he suited the age in being declamatory. He was the hero of Addison’s Cato, once the favourite tragedy of the critics, now of nobody. Rowe was another artificial writer of tragedy, but not without a vein of feeling. It seems to have been thought in those times, as we may see by these authors, and by the tragedies of Banks and Lillo, that to be natural, an author was to be prosaical; while, if he had any pretensions to be poetical, it was his business to—
The gradual approach, also, of this period to our own times, which are more critical in costume, and the pictures left to us of favourite performers in Hamlet and Hermione, dressed in wigs and hoop petticoats, render those outrages upon propriety still stranger to one’s imagination. They set tragedy in a mock-heroical light. Cato wore a long peruke; Alexander the Great a wig and jack-boots; and it was customary, down to Garrick’s time, to dress Macbeth and other tragic general-officers in a suit of brick-dust. “Booth enters,” says Pope:—
The stare was not that of ridicule, but of admiration. All this makes the comedy of that period shine out the more as the only truth extant. Cherry, and Archer, and Sir Harry Wildair, and Sir John Brute, and my Lady Betty Modish, were like the age, and like the performers. To return to these. Wilks was the fine gentleman of that period. He was a friend of Farquhar’s, and came to London with him from Dublin. Cibber, though he wrote a good comedy, would appear, by some accounts of him, to have been little more on the stage than a mimic of past actors. Steele, however, has a criticism on him and Wilks, in which he speaks of them both as perfect actors in their kinds. “Wilks,” he tells us, “has a singular talent in representing the graces of nature; Cibber the deformity in the affectation of them. Were I a writer of plays, I should never employ either of them in parts which had not their bents this way. This is seen in the inimitable strain and run of good humour which is kept up in the character of Wildair, and in the nice and delicate abuse of understanding in that of Sir Novelty. Cibber, in another light, hits exquisitely the flat civility of an affected gentleman usher, and Wilks the easy frankness of a gentleman. . . . To beseech gracefully, to approach respectfully, to pity, to mourn, to love, are the places wherein Wilkes may be made to shine with the utmost beauty. To rally pleasantly, to scorn artfully, to flatter, to ridicule, and to neglect, are what Cibber would perform with no less excellence.” [13] This criticism produced
a letter to Steele from two inferior actors of that time, Bullock
and Penkethman, who, rather than not be noticed at all, were willing
to be bantered. They knew it would be done good-naturedly. Accordingly
the Tatler says, “For the information of posterity I shall comply with this letter, and set these two great men in such a light as Sallust has placed his Cato and Caesar. Mr William Bullock and Mr William Penkethman are of the same age, profession, and sex. They both distinguish themselves in a very particular manner under the discipline of the crab tree, with this only difference, that Mr. Bullock has the more agreeable squall, and Mr Penkethman the more graceful shrug. Penkethman devours cold chick with great applause; Bullock’s talent lies chiefly in asparagus. Penkethman is very dexterous at conveying himself under a table; Bullock is no less active at jumping over a stick. Mr Penkethman has a great deal of money; but Mr Bullock is the taller man.” [14] Off the stage, and behind the scenes, Cibber performed the part of a coxcomb of the first order. We shall not properly acquainted with Drury Lane at this period if we do not repeat his story of the wig. This was a peruke of his, famous in the part of Sir Fopling Flutter. It was so much admired, that Cibber used to have it brought upon the stage in a sedan, and put it on publicly, to the great content of the beholders. A set of curls so applauded was the next thing to a toast; and accordingly Colonel, then Mr Brett, whom the toasts admired, could not rest till he had taken possession of it. “The first view,”
says Colley, “that fires the head of a young gentleman of this modish
ambition, just broke loose from business, is to cut a figure (as
they call it) in a side box at the play, from whence their next
step is to the green-room behind the scenes, sometimes their non
ultra. Hither at last, then, in this hopeful quest of his fortune,
came this gentleman-errant not doubting but the fickle dame, while
he was thus qualified to receive her, might be tempted to fall into
his lap. And though, possibly, the charms of our theatrical nymphs
might have their share in drawing him thither; yet, in my observation,
the most visible cause of his first coming was a more sincere passion
he had conceived for a fair full-bottomed periwig, which I then
wore in my first play of the ‘Fool in Fashion,’ in the year 1695.
For it is to be noted that the beaux of those days were of
a quite different cast to the modern stamp, and had more of the
stateliness of the peacock in their mein, than (which now seems
to be their highest emulation) the pert of a lapwing. Now, whatever
contempt philosophers may have for a fine periwig, my friend, who
was not to despise the world, but to live in it, knew very well,
that so material an article of dress upon the head of a man of sense,
if it became him, could never fail of drawing to him a more partial
regard and benevolence than could possibly be hoped for in an ill-made
one. This, perhaps, may soften the grave censure which so youthful
a purchase might otherwise have laid upon him. In a word, he made
his attack upon this periwig, as your young fellows generally do
for a lady of pleasure; first, by a few familiar praises of her
person, and then a civil inquiry into the price of it. But on his
observing me a little surprised at the levity of his question about
a fop’s periwig, he began to rally himself with so much wit and
humour upon the folly of his fondness for it, that he struck me
with an equal desire of granting anything in my power to oblige
so facetious a customer. This singular beginning of our conversation,
and the mutual laughs that ensued upon it, ended in an agreement
to finish our bargain that night over a bottle.” [15] Colonel Brett, being a man of “bonnes fortunes,” married Savage’s mother! Mrs Oldfield made such an impression in her day, and has been noticed by so many writers, that she must have a passage to herself. She was the daughter of Captain Oldfield above-mentioned, and went to live with her aunt, who kept the Mitre tavern in St. James’s Market. Here, we are told, Captain Fanquhar, overhearing Miss Nancy read a play behind the bar, was so struck “with the proper emphasis and agreeable turn she gave to each character, that he swore the girl was cut out for the stage.” As she had always expressed an inclination for that way of life, and a desire of trying her fortune in it, her mother, on this encouragement, the next time she saw Captain Vanbrugh (afterwards Sir John), who had a great respect for the family, acquainted him with Captain Farquhar’s opinion, on which he desired to know whether her bent was most tragedy or comedy. Miss, being called in, informed him that her principal inclination was to the latter, having at that time gone through all Beaumont and Fletcher’s comedies; and the play she was reading when Captain Fanquhar dined there having been “The Scornful Lady.” Captain Vanbrugh, shortly after, recommended her to Mr Christopher Rich, who took her into the house at the allowance of fifteen shillings per week. However, her agreeable figure and sweetness of voice soon gave her the preference, in the opinion of the whole town, to all the young actresses of that time; and the Duke of Bedford, in particular, being pleased to speak to Mr Rich in her favour, he instantly raised her to twenty shillings per week. After which her fame and salary gradually increased, till at length they both attained that height which her merit entitled her to. [ 16] The new actress had a silver voice, a beautiful face and person, great good-nature, sprightliness, and grace, and became the fine lady of the stage in the most agreeable sense of the word. She also acted heroines of the sentimental order, and had an original part in every play of Steele. But she was particularly famous in the part of Lady Betty Modish, in “The Careless Husband.” The name explains the character. Cibber tells us that he drew many of the strokes in it from her lively manner. “Had her birth,”
he says, “placed her in a higher rank of life, she had certainly
appeared in reality what in this play she only excellently acted,
an agreeable gay woman of quality, a little too conscious of her
natural attractions. I have often seen her in private societies,
where women of the best rank might have borrowed some part of their
behaviour, without the least diminution of their sense or dignity.
And this very morning, where I am now writing, at the Bath, November
11th, 1738, the same words were said of her by a lady of condition,
whose better judgment of her personal merit in that light has emboldened
me to repeat them. After her success in this character of higher
life, all that nature had given her of the actress seemed to have
risen to its full perfection: but the variety of her power could
not be known till she was seen in a variety of characters, which,
as fast as they fell to her, she equally excelled in. Authors had
much more from her performance than they had reason to hope for,
from what they had written for her; and none had less than another,
but as their genius, in the parts they allotted her, was more or
less elevated. “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 the last new character she shone in (Lady Townly) was a proof that she was still able to do more, if more could have been done for her. She had one mark of good sense, rarely known in any actor of either sex but herself. I have observed several, with promising dispositions, very desirous of instruction at their first setting out; but no sooner had they found their best account in it, than they were as desirous of being left to their own capacity, which they then thought would be disgraced by their seeming to want any further assistance. But this was not Mrs Oldfield’s way of thinking; for to the last year of her life she never undertook any part she liked, without being importunately desirous of having all the helps in it that another could possibly give her. By knowing so much herself, she found how much more there was of nature yet needful to be known. “Yet it was a hard matter to give her any hint, that she was not able to take or impove. With all this merit she was tractable, and less presuming in her station than several that had not half her pretensions to be troublesome. But she lost nothing by her easy conduct; she had everything she asked, which she took care should be always reasonable, because she hated as much to be grudged as denied a civility. Upon her extraordinary action in the ‘Provoked Husband,’ the managers made her a present of fifty guineas more than her agreement, which never was more than a verbal one; for they knew she was above deserting them to engage upon any other stage, and she was conscious they would never think it their interest to give her cause of complaint. In the last two months of her illness, when she was no longer able to assist them, she declined receiving her salary, though by her agreement she was entitled to it. Upon the whole she was, to the last scene she acted, the delight of her spectators.” [17] This charming actress
(Mrs Oldfield) is said to have been the Flavia of The Tatler
(No. 212), The catch-penny writer of her memoirs equivocally speaks
of it as her “vera effigies,” and on his authority the assertion
has been repeated. But as a Flavia mentioned in the same work (No.
239) turns out to be Miss Osborne, afterwards the wife of Bishop
Atterbury (upon whom he wrote the lines on a fan there inserted,
beginning
and as the first Flavia is praised for her quality and the extreme simplicity of her manners (which, according to Cibber, was not exactly one of the charms of Mrs Oldfield), the supposition, we think, falls to the ground. We need have less hesitation in admitting that Steele, who knew her well, alludes to her in another paper under her favourite title of Lady Betty Modish. Speaking of the effects of love upon a generous temper, in refining the manners, he says, “There is Colonel Ranter, who never spoke without an oath until he saw the Lady Betty Modish, now never gives his man an order, but it is, ‘Pray, Tom, do it.’ The drawers where he drinks live in perfect happiness. He asked Will at the George the other day, how he did? Where he used to say, ‘Damn it, it is so’; he now ‘believes there is some mistake; he must confess, he is of another opinion; but, however, he will not insist.’” [18] This Colonel Ranter is supposed by the commentators to have been Brigadier-General Churchill, one of the Marlborough family, who lived with Mrs Oldfield after the death of Mr Maynwaring. Steele elsewhere speaks of a “General” (supposed to be the same) “weeping for her, in the character of Indiana in his ‘Conscious Lovers’”; upon which he said Mr Wilks observed (for he had made all the fine gentlemen tender) that the General “would fight ne’er the worse for that.” Mrs Oldfield’s position in life was singular. With all her beauty and attraction, and the license of stage manners, she is understood to have attached herself but to two persons successively, and on the footing of a wife. The first was Mr Maynwaring, a celebrated Whig writer, to whom one of the volumes of The Spectator is dedicated, and by whom she had a son; and, after his death, she lived with General Churchill, by whom she had a son also. “She left,” says The General Biography, “the bulk of her substance to her son Maynwaring, from whose father she had received it; without neglecting, however, her other son Churchill, and her own relations.” During the period
of these two connections, Mrs Oldfield appears to have been received
into the first circles, where she is described as being a pattern
of good behaviour; and yet the feeling of Mr Maynwaring’s friends
against the connexion was so strong, that she herself, though she
is understood to have had a sincere affection for him, is said to
have often remonstrated with him against it as injurious to his
interest. Marriage with an actress, though the example had been
set by a duke, appears in neither case to have been thought of.
The feeling of society seems to have been this:—“Here is a woman
bred up to the stage, and passing her life upon it. It is therefore
impossible she should marry a gentleman of family; and yet, as her
behaviour would otherwise deserve it, and the examples of actresses
are of no authority for any one but themselves, some licence may
be allowed to a woman who diverts us so agreeably, who attracts
the society of the wits, and is so capital a dresser. We will treat
her profession with contempt, but herself with consideration.” Upon
these curious grounds Mrs Oldfield lived in every respect like a
woman of fashion, and as she became rich (which was, perhaps, not
the least of her recommendations), she was admitted into the best
society, and went to court. The pretence among her visitors during
both her connexions probably was, that she was privately married;
but she was too sincere to warrant the deception. The Princess of
Wales (afterwards queen of George II.) asked her one day at a levee
if her marriage with General Churchill was true. “So it is said,
may it please your highness, but we have not owned it yet.”—“It
may appear singular,” says Mr Chalmers, who tells us this story,
“to quote the late pious Sir James Stonhouse for anecdotes of Mrs
Oldfield; yet in one of his letters we are informed, that she always
went to the house in the same dress she had worn at dinner in her
visits to the houses of great people; for she was much caressed
on account of her professional merit and her connexion with Mr Churchill,
the Duke of Marlborough’s brother; that she used to go to the playhouse
in a chair, attended by two footmen; that she seldom spoke to any
one of the actors; and was allowed a sum of money to buy her own
clothes.” [19] Mrs Oldfield’s
generosity was much admired in giving a pension to Savage, which
he received regularly as long as she lived. This is what has given
posterity a liking for her. When she died she lay in state in the
Jerusalem Chamber, and her funeral in Westminster Abbey was attended
by several noblemen, among others, as pall-bearers. Mr Chalmers
has repeated, with other biographers, that, “at her own desire,”
she was elegantly dressed in her coffin; on which account, it is
added, Pope introduced her in the character of Narcissa:
But it does not appear that there is any authority for this speech, except the poet’s. A letter written to her first biographer by an attendant during her last illness says, that “although she had no priest,” she “prayed without ceasing,” which does not look like an attention to dress; but the biographer adds, that “as the nicety of dress was her delight when living, she was as nicely dressed after her decease; being, by Mr Saunders’ direction, thus laid in her coffin.” The nicety here mentioned was, to be sure, “mortal fine.”—“She had on,” says the writer, “a very fine Brussels lace-head, a Holland shift with tucker, and double ruffles of the same lace; a pair of new kid gloves, and her body wrapt up in a winding-sheet.” [ 20] Yet we are of Montaigne’s opinion, and know not why death should be rendered more melancholy than it is. When a tomb was opened in Greece, supposed to be that of Aspasia, there was found in it a sprig of myrtle in gold. The next batch of players, with Garrick at their head, are Quin, Macklin, Barry, King, Woodward, Gentleman Smith, and others; with Mrs Clive, Pritchard, Cibber, and Woffington. Garrick’s later contemporaries are Parsons, Dodd, Quick, the Palmers, Miss Pope, Mrs Abingdon, and others, who bring us down to Mrs Siddons, Miss Farren, etc., the commencers of our own time. Of Steele and the sentimental comedy we need say no more. Goldsmith belongs to Covent Garden; Foote to the Haymarket; and Cumberland, though an elegant writer, does not call for any particular mention in an abstract like this. When Garrick first
appeared, a declamatory grandeur prevailed in tragedy, which we
conceive to have arisen in the time of Charles II. It was probably
handed down by Booth; and imitated, with the usual deterioration,
from Betterton, who, though a true genius and a universal one, may
not have been uncorrupted by the taste of the times; not to mention
that it is doubtful, till Garrick appeared, whether the art of acting
was not identified with something too much of an art, and the delicacy
of verses expected to partake more of recitation and musical accompaniment
than we now look for. Our suspicion to this effect arises from the
traditional habits of the stage, one generation handing down the
manner of another, and Betterton himself having been educated in
the school of those who were bred up in the recollection of Burbage
and Condell. Shakspeare himself, from custom, or even from some
subtlety of reason, might have approved of something of this kind;
though, on the other hand, in the celebrated directions of Hamlet
to the players, there appears to be a secret dissatisfaction with
the most applauded actors of that time, as not being exactly what
was desirable. If this notion is just, and the great poet of nature
was as much advanced beyond his time in this as in other respects,
he might indeed have hailed such an actor as Garrick, however hyperbolically
they have been sometimes put together. The best performers whom
Garrick found in possession of public applause, though some of them
are described as excelling in all the varieties of passion (as Mrs
Cibber, for instance, notwithstanding the different impression given
of her in the following quotation), appear to have been more or
less of the old declamatory school. Quin in particular, then at
the head of the profession, was an avowed declaimer, having the
same notions of tragedy in the delivery which his friend Thomson
had in the composition. Posterity respects Quin as the friend of
Thomson, and laughs with him as an epicure and a wit. Garrick and
he ultimately became friends. Of the first reception of the new
style introduced by Garrick, its electrical effects upon some, and
the natural hesitation of others to give up their old favourites,
a lively picture has been left us by Cumberland. Speaking of himself, who was then at Westminster school, he says,— “I was once or twice allowed to go, under proper convoy, to the play, where, for the first time in my life, I was treated by the sight of Garrick in the character of Lothario. Quin played Horatio; Ryan, Altamont; Mrs Cibber, Calista; and Mrs Pritchard condescended to the humble part of Lavinia. I enjoyed a good view of the stage from the front row of the gallery, and my attention was rivetted to the scene. I have the spectacle even now, as it were, before my eyes. Quin presented himself, upon the rising of the curtain, in a green velvet coat, embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled, square-toed shoes. With very little variation of cadence, and in a deep, full tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action, which had more of the senate than of the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified indifference, that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon him. Mrs Cibber, in a key high pitched, but sweet withal, sung, or rather recitatived, Rowe’s harmonious strain, something in the manner of the improvisatores; it was so extremely wanting in contrast, that, though it did not wound the ear, it wearied it; when she had once recited two or three speeches, I could anticipate the manner of every succeeding one; it was like a long, old, legendary ballad of innumerable stanzas, everyone of which is sung to the same tune, eternally chiming in the ear without variation or relief. Mrs Pritchard was an actress of a different cast, had more nature, and, of course, more change of tone, and variety both of action and expression: in my opinion the comparison was decidedly in her favour; but when, after long and eager expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young and light and alive in every muscle and in every feature, come bounding on the stage, and pointing at the wittol Altamont and heavy-paced Horatio—heavens, what a transition!—it seemed as if a whole century had been swept over in the transition of a single scene; old things were done away and a new order at once brought forward, bright and luminous, and clearly destined to dispel the barbarisms and bigotry of a tasteless age, too long attached to the prejudices of custom, and superstitiously devoted to the illusions of imposing declamation. This heaven-born actor was then struggling to emancipate his audience from the slavery they were resigned to; and though, at times, he succeeded in throwing in some gleams of new-born light upon them, yet, in general they seemed to love darkness better than light, and, in the dialogue of altercation between Horatio and Lothario, bestowed far the greater show of hands upon the master of the old school than upon the founder of the new. I thank my stars, my feelings in those moments led me right; they were those of nature, and therefore could not err.” [21] It is needless to
add that Garrick excelled in comedy as well as tragedy, and in the
lowest comedy too—in Abel Drugger as well as Hamlet. He was first
at Goodman’s Fields; then appeared both at Covent Garden and Drury
Lane; but in a short time settled for life at Drury Lane as actor,
manager and author. He was a sprightly dramatist, a man of wit,
and no doubt a generous man, though the endless matters of business
in which he was concerned, and the refusals of all kinds which he
must have been often forced into, got him, with many, a character
for the reverse. Johnson, who did not spare him, pronounced him
generous. Fine as his tragedy must have been, we suspect his comedy
must have been finer; because his own nature was one of greater
sprightliness than sentiment. We hear nothing serious of him throughout
his life; and his face, with a great deal of acuteness, has nothing
in it profound or romantic. Garrick has the reputation of improving the stage costume: but it was Macklin that did it. The late Mr West, who was the first (in his picture of the “Death of Wolfe “) to omit the absurdity of putting a piece of armour instead of a waistcoat upon a general officer, told us, that he himself once asked Garrick why he did not reform the stage in that particular. Garrick said the spectators would not allow it; “they would throw a bottle at his head.” Macklin, however, persevered, and the thing was done. The other, with all his nature, seems to have had a hankering after the old dresses. He had first triumphed in them, and they suited his propensity to the airy and popular. Garrick had a particular dislike to appearing in the Roman costume. Probably in this there was a consciousness of his small person. There are many engravings of him extant, in which his tragic characters are seen in coats and toupees. His appearance as Hotspur, in a laced frock and Ramillie wig, was objected to, not as being unsuitable to the time, but as “too insignificant for the character.” [ 22] Of Barry, the most celebrated antagonist of Garrick, we shall speak at Covent Garden. King, according to Churchill, by the force of natural impudence as well as genius, excelled in “Brass”; and Churchill’s opinions are worth attending to, though he expresses them with vehemence, and by wholesale. Gentleman Smith explains his character by his title. We should entertain a very high opinion of Mrs Pritchard, even had she left us nothing but the face in her portraits. She seems to have been a really great genius, equally capable of the highest and lowest parts. The fault objected to her was, that her figure was not genteel; and we can imagine this well enough in an actress who could pass from Lady Macbeth to Doll Common. She seems to have thrown herself into the arms of sincerity and passion, not, perhaps, the most refined, but as tragic and comic as need be. As Churchill says,
Clive was an admirable
comic actress, of the wilful and fantastic order, and a wit and
virago in private life. She became the neighbour and intimate of
Horace Walpole, and always seems to us to have been the man
of the two. Mrs Woffington was an actress of all work, but of greater
talents than the phrase generally implies. Davies says she was the
handsomest woman that ever appeared on the stage, and that Garrick
was at one time in doubt whether he should not marry her. She was
famous for performing in male attire, and openly preferred the conversation
of men to women—the latter, she said, talking of “nothing but silks
and scandal.” She was the only woman admitted into one of the beefsteak
clubs, and is said to have been president of it. These humours,
perhaps, though Davies praises her for feminine manners, as contrasted
with her antagonist Mrs Clive, frightened Garrick out of his matrimony. We now pass at once to Covent Garden Theatre, which lies close by. Many old play-goers who are in the habit of associating the two theatres in their fancy, like twins, will be surprised to hear that the Covent Garden establishment is very young, compared with her sister, being little more than a hundred years old. It was first built by Rich, the harlequin, and opened in 1733 under the patent granted to the Duke’s company. The Covent Garden company may therefore be considered as the representatives of the old companies of Davenant and Betterton; while those at Drury Lane are the successors of Killigrew, and more emphatically the King’s actors. Indeed, they exclusively designate themselves as “his Majesty’s servants”; and, we believe, claim some privileges on that account. Covent Garden theatre was partly rebuilt in 1772, and wholly so in 1809, having undergone the usual death by conflagration. The new edifice was a structure in classical taste, by Mr Smirke, the portico being a copy from the Parthenon of Athens. Actors have seldom been confined to any one house; and those whom we are about to mention performed at Drury Lane as well as Covent Garden; but as they were rivals or opponents of Garrick, and may be supposed to have made the greatest efforts when they acted on a different stage, we shall speak of them apart under the present head. The first of them is Barry, who at one time almost divided the favour of the town with Garrick, and in some characters is said to have excelled him, especially in love parts. How far this was owing to superiority of figure, and to a reputation for gallantry, it is impossible to say; and never were judgments more discordant than those which have been left us on the subject of Barry’s merits. For instance, his character is thus summed up by Davies:— “Of all the tragic actors who have trod the English stage for these last fifty years, Mr Barry was unquestionably the most pleasing. Since Booth and Wilks, no actor had shown the public a just idea of the hero or the lover; Barry gave dignity to the one and passion to the other: in his person he was tall without awkwardness; in his countenance, handsome without effeminacy; in his uttering of passion, the language of nature alone was communicated to the feelings of an audience.” Davies proceeds to
tell us, that Barry could not perform such characters as Richard
and Macbeth, though he made a capital Alexander. “He charmed the
ladies by the soft melody of his love-complaints, and the noble
ardour of his courtship. There was no passion of the tender kind
so truly pathetic and forcible in any actor as in Barry, except
in Mrs Cibber, who, indeed, excelled, in the expression of love,
grief, tenderness, and jealous rage, all I ever knew. Happy it was
for the frequenters of the theatre, when these two genuine children
of nature united their efforts to charm an attentive audience. Mrs
Cibber, indeed, might be styled the daughter or sister of Mr Garrick,
but could be only the mistress or wife of Barry.” [23] Our author afterwards calls him the “Mark Antony of the
stage,” whether his amorous disposition was considered, or his love
of expense. He delighted in giving magnificent entertainments, and
treated Mr Pelham, who once invited himself to sup with him, in
a style so princely, that the Minister rebuked him for it; which
was not very civil. An actor has surely as much right to do absurd
things as a statesman. Now, as a contrast to this romantic portrait by Davies, take the following from the severer but masterly hand of Churchill:—
The probability,
we fear, is that Barry was one of the old artificial school, who
made his way more by person than by genius. Davies, who was a better
gossip than critic, though he affected literature, was an actor
himself of the mouthing order, if we are to believe Churchill; and
his criticisms show him enough inclined to lean favourably to that
side. We have spoken of Quin, who acted much at this house in opposition to Garrick. It was here that he delivered the prologue to the memory of his friend Thomson; and affected the audience by shedding real tears. [25] Macklin was celebrated in Shylock; and in some other sarcastic parts, particularly that of Sir Archy, in his comedy of “Love-à-la-Mode.” We take him to have been one of those actors whose performances are confined to the reflection of their own personal peculiarities. The merits of Shuter, Edwin, Quick, and others who succeeded one another as buffoons, were perhaps a good deal of this sort; but pleasant humours are rare and acceptable. Macklin was a clever satirist in his writing, and embroiled himself, not so cleverly, with a variety of his acquaintances. He foolishly attempted to run down Garrick; and once, in a sudden quarrel, poked out a man’s eye with his stick and killed him; for which he narrowly escaped hanging. However, he was sorry for it; and he is spoken of, by the stage historians, as kind in his private relations, and liberal of his purse. A curious specimen of his latter moments we reserve for our mention of the house where he died. Woodward seems to have been a caricature anticipation of Lewis, and was a capital harlequin. But nobody in harlequins beat Rich, the manager of this theatre. His pantomimes and spectacles produced a re-action against Garrick, when nothing else could; and Covent Garden ever since has been reckoned the superior house in that kind of merit,—“the wit,” as Mr Ludlow Holt called it, “of goods and chattels.” However, a considerable degree of fancy and observation may be developed in pantomime: it is the triumph of animal spirits at Christmas, for the little children; and for the men there is occasionally some excellent satire on the times, reminding one, in its spirit, of what we read of the comic buffoonery of the ancients. Grimaldi, in his broad and fugitive sketches, often showed himself a shrewder observer than many a comic actor who can repeat only what is set down for him. Covent Garden has, perhaps, been superior also in music, at least since the existence of the two houses together: for Purcell was before its time. Many of Arne’s pieces came out here; and the famous Beard, a singer as manly as his name, the delight both of public and private life, was one of the managers. Among the Covent
Garden actors must not be forgotten Cooke, who came out there in
Richard III. For some time he was the greatest performer of this
and a few other characters. He was a new kind of Macklin, and, like
him, excelled in Shylock and Sir Archy M‘Sarcasm; a confined actor,
and a wayward man, but highly impressive in what he could do. His
artful villains have been found fault with for looking too artful
and villanous; but men of that stamp are apt to look so. The art
of hiding is a considerable one; but habit will betray it after
all, and stand foremost in the countenance. They who think otherwise
are only too dull to see it. Besides, Cooke had generally to represent
bold-faced, aspiring art; and to hug himself in its triumph. This
he did with such a gloating countenance, as if villany was pure
luxury to him, and with such a soft inward retreating of his voice—a
wrapping up of himself, as it were, in velvet—so different from
his ordinary rough way, that sometimes one could almost have wished
to abuse him. John Kemble, who, like the whole respectable family of that name, contributed much to maintain the rising character of the profession, may be considered the last popular actor of the declamatory school. His sister was a far greater performer, a true theatrical genius, especially for the stately and dominant; and had a great effect in raising the character of the profession. The growth of liberal opinion is nowhere more visible than in the different estimation in which actors and actresses are now held, compared with what it was. Individuals, it is true, always made their way into society by dint of the interest they excited; but still they were upon sufferance. Anybody could insult an actor, could even beat him, without its being dreamt that he had a right to retaliate; and the most amiable and lady-like actresses were thought unfit for wives, as we have seen in the case of Mrs Oldfield. Things are now upon a different footing. Talent is allowed its just pretensions, whether coming from author or performer, and actresses have taken such a step, in ascension, that nobility almost seems to look out for a wife among them, as in a school that will inevitably furnish it with some kind of grace and intellect. The famous Lord Peterborough, who was the first nobleman that married an actress, kept the union concealed as long as he could, and only owned it just before his death. The Duke of Bolton, who married Miss Fenton, the Polly of Gay’s opera, had first had several children by her as his mistress; so that this is hardly a case in point; and the marriage of Beard, the singer, with a lady of the Waldegrave family, though he was one of the most excellent of men, was looked upon as such a degradation, that they have contrived to omit the circumstance in the peerage-books to this day! Martin Folkes’s marriage with Mrs Bradshaw probably made the world consider the case a little more rationally, as he was a clever man; but Lord Derby’s marriage with Miss Farren, who was eminently the gentlewoman, as well as of spotless character, seems to have been the first that rendered such unions compatible with public opinion. Lord Craven’s with Miss Brunton followed, though at a considerable interval; and since that time, the town are so far from being surprised at the marriages of actresses with people of rank or fashion, that they seem to look for them. Lord Thurlow, not long afterwards, married Miss Bolton; another noble lord was lately the husband of an eminent singer; and several other favourites of the town, Miss Tree, Miss O’Neill, etc., have become the wives of men of fortune. We remember even a dancer, Miss Searle (but she was of great elegance, and had an air of delicate self-possession), who married into a family of rank. The whole entertainment
of a theatre has been rising in point of accommodation and propriety
for the last fifty years. The scenery is better, the music better—we
mean the orchestra—and last, not least, the audiences are better.
They are better behaved. Garrick put an end to one great nuisance—the
occupation, by the audience, of part of the stage. Till his time,
people often sate about a stage as at the sides of a room, and the
actor had to make his way among them, sometimes with the chance
of being insulted; and scuffles took place among themselves. Dr
Johnson, at Lichfield, is said to have pushed a man into the orchestra
who had taken possession of his chair. The pit, also, from about
Garrick’s time, seems to have left to the galleries the vulgarity
attributed to it by Pope. There still remains, says he—
This would now be hardly a fair description of the galleries; and yet modern audiences are not reckoned to be of quite so high a cast as they used, in point of rank and wealth; so that this is another evidence of the general improvement of manners. Boswell, in an ebullition of vivacity, while sitting one night in the pit by his friend Dr Blair, gave an extempore imitation of a cow! The house applauded, and he ventured upon some attempts of the same kind which did not succeed. Blair advised him in future to “stick to the cow.” No gentleman now-a-days would think of a freak like this. There is one thing, however, in which the pit have much to amend. Their destitution of gallantry is extraordinary, especially for a body so ready to accept the clap-traps of the stage, in praise of their “manly hearts,” and their “guardianship of the fair.” Nothing is more common than to see women standing at the sides of the pit benches, while no one thinks of offering them a seat. Room even is not made, though it often might be. Nay, we have heard women rebuked for coming without securing a seat, while the reprover complimented himself on his better wisdom, and the hearers laughed. On the other hand, a considerate gentleman one night, who went out to stretch his legs, told a lady in our hearing that she might occupy his seat “till he returned!” A friend of ours
knew a lady who remembered Dr Johnson in the pit taking snuff out
of his waistcoat pocket. He used to go into the green-room to his
friend Garrick, till he honestly confessed that the actresses excited
too much of his admiration. Garrick did not much like to be seen
by him when playing any buffoonery. It is said that the actor once
complained to his friend that he talked too loud in the stage box,
and interrupted his feelings: upon which the doctor said, “Feelings!
Punch has no feelings.” It was Johnson’s opinion (speaking of a
common cant of critics), that an actor who really “took himself”
for Richard III., deserved to be hanged; and it is easy enough to
agree with him; except that an actor who did so would be out of
his senses. Too great a sensibility seems almost as hurtful to acting
as too little. It would soon wear out the performer. There must
be a quickness of conception, sufficient to seize the truth of the
character, with a coolness of judgment to take all advantages; but
as the actor is to represent as well as conceive, and to be the
character in his own person, he could not with impunity give way
to his emotions in any degree equal to what the spectators suppose.
At least, if he did, he would fall into fits, or run his head against
the wall. As to the amount of talent requisite to make a great actor,
we must not enter upon a discussion which would lead us too far
from our main object; but we shall merely express our opinion, that
there is a great deal more of it among the community than they are
aware. Goldsmith was a frequenter of the theatre; Fielding and Smollett, Sterne, but particularly Churchill. “His observatory,” says Davies, “was generally the first row of the pit, next the orchestra.” His “Rosciad,” a criticism on the most known performers of the day, made a great sensation among a body of persons who, as they are in the habit of receiving applause to their faces, and in the most victorious manner, may be allowed a greater stock of self-love than most people;—a circumstance which renders an unexacting member of their profession doubly delightful. “The writer,” says Davies, “very warmly, as well as justly, celebrated the various and peculiar excellencies of Mrs Pritchard, Mrs Cibber, and Clive; but no one has, except Garrick, escaped his satirical lash.” Poor Davies is glad to say this, because of the well-known passage in which he himself is mentioned:—
We will make one more quotation from this poem, because it describes a class of actors, who are now extinct, and who carried the artificial school to its height:—
Mr Barrymore (of
whom we have no unpleasing recollection) had something of this manner
with him; but the extremity of the style is now quite gone out. The only capital performers we remember, that are now dead and gone, with the exception of two or three already mentioned, were Mrs Jordan, a charming cordial actress, on the homely side of the agreeable, with a delightful voice; and Suett, who was the very personification of weak whimsicality, with a laugh like a peal of giggles. Mathews gives him to the life. We shall conclude this chapter with some delightful playgoing recollections of the best theatrical critic now living; [26] —the best, indeed, so far as we know, that this country ever saw. He is one who does not respect criticism a jot too much, nor any of the feelings connected with humanity, or the imitation of it, too little. We here have him giving us an account of the impression made upon him by the first sight of a play, and concluding with a good hint to those older children, who, because they have cut their drums open, think nothing remains in life to be pleased with. A child may like a theatre, because he is not thoroughly acquainted with it; but if he become a wise man, he will find reason to like it, because he is. Life always flows with a certain freshness in these quarters; nor, with all their drawbacks, have we more agreeable impressions from any neighbourhood in London, than what we receive from the district containing the great theatres. It is one of the most social and the least sordid. “At the north end of Cross Court,” says Mr Lamb, “there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance to old Drury—Garrick’s Drury—all of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation. I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it. * * * * * * * * * *
“I had dabbled a little in the ‘Universal History’—the ancient part of it—and here was the court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I understood not its import; but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princes, passed before me—I knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has ever since visited me but in dreams. Harlequin’s invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldames seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys. “The next play to
which I was taken was the ‘Lady of the Manor,’ of which, with the
exception of some scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory.
It was followed by a pantomime called ‘Lun’s Ghost’—a satiric touch,
I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead—but to my apprehension
(too sincere for satire) Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity
as Lud—the father of a line of harlequins—transmitting his dagger
of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval
Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patch-work,
like the apparition of a dead rainbow. So harlequins (thought I)
look when they are dead. “My third play followed in quick succession. It was ‘The Way of the World.’ I think I must have sat at it as grave as a judge; for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic passion. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ followed, in which Crusoe, Man Friday, and the Parrot were as good and authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that gape and grin, in stone, around the inside of the old round church (my church) of the Templars. “I saw these plays in the season of 1781–2, when I was from six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven years (for at school all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes’ evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost! At the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all—
I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there materially; but the emblem, the reverence was gone! The green curtain was no longer a veil drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages, to present a ‘royal ghost,’ but a certain quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights—the orchestra lights—came up, a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter’s bell, which had been like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at, which ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many centuries—of six short twelvemonths—had wrought in me. Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might have interfered with the genuine emotions with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appearance, to me, of Mrs Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful of recreations.” —Elia, p. 221.
1. P. 160. 2. Lives of Dr John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Hooker, etc., by Izaac Walton, 1825, p. 22. 3. Life of Donne, in Chalmers’s British Poets. 4. For complete particulars of the history of James’s daughter and son-in-law, and their gallant adherents, see Memoirs of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, by Miss Benger, and Collins’s Peerage, by Sir Egerton Brydges, vol. v., p. 446. Miss Benger is as romantic as if she had lived in the queen’s time, but she is diligent and amusing. The facts can easily be separated from her colouring. 5. See Baker’s Biographia Dramatica, vol. ii. 6. See Baker, passim. 7. Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii., chap. 24. Most of the above particulars respecting Hart and Mohun have been gathered from that work. There are scarcely any records of them elsewhere. 8. Cibber’s Apology, ut supra, p. 226. 9. “1st March (1671). I thence walked with him through St. James’ Parke to the garden, where I both saw and heard a very familiar discourse between . . . and Mrs Nellie, as they called an impudent comedian, she looking out of her garden on a terrace at the top of the wall, and . . . standing on ye greene walke under it. I was heartily sorry at this scene. Thence the King walked to the Duchess of Cleveland, another lady of pleasure, and curse of our nation.”—Evelyn’s Memoirs, ut supra, vol ii., p. 339. It would be curious to know how Mr Evelyn conducted himself during this time, if he and the King saw one another. 10. Miscellaneous Works of the Duke of Buckingham and others,
1704, vol. i., p. 34. 11. The verses are attributed to Etherege; but from a Scotch rhyme in them of trull and will, are perhaps not his. 12. History of His own Times, Edin. 1753, vol. i., p. 387. 13. Tatler, No. 182. 14. Ibid., No. 188. See also No. 7. 15. Apology, p. 303. 16. Baker’s Biographia Dramatica Art. Farquhar, vol. i., p. 155. Faithful Memoirs, etc., of Mrs Anne Oldfield, by Egerton, p. 76. 17. Apology, p. 250. 18. Tatler, No. 10. 19. Letters from the Rev. J. Orton and the Rev. Sir John Stonhouse, quoted in the General Biographical Dictionary, vol. xxiii., p. 326. 20. Memoirs, p. 144. 21. Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, written by himself, 4to. p. 59. Davies, in his Life of Garrick, vol. i., p. 136, gives us a different idea of the preference awarded by the audience. To be sure, upon his knowledge, he says only that Quin was defeated “in the opinion of the best judges”; but he adds, from report, an anecdote that looks as if the general feeling also was against him. “When Lothario,” he says, “gave Horatio the challenge, Quin, instead of accepting it instantaneously, with the determined and unembarrassed brow of superior bravery, made a long pause, and dragged out the words, ‘I’ll meet thee there!’ in such a manner as to make it appear absolutely ludicrous. He paused so long before he spoke, that somebody, it was said, called out from the gallery, ‘Why don’t you tell the gentleman whether you will meet him or not’?” 22. Davies’s Miscellanies, ut supra, vol. i., p. 126. 23. Alluding to her performance of Cordelia, etc., with the one, and of Juliet, Belvidera, etc., with the other. 24. The Rosciad. 25. “He (Thomson) left behind him the tragedy of ‘Coriolanus,’ which was, by the zeal of his patron, Sir George Lyttleton, brought upon the stage for the benefit of his family, and recommended by a prologue, which Quin, who had long lived with Thomson in fond intimacy, spoke in such a manner as showed him ‘to be,’ on that occasion, ‘no actor.’ The commencement of this benevolence is very honourable to Quin; who is reported to have delivered Thomson, then known to him only for his genius, from an arrest, by a very considerable present; and its continuance is honourable to both; for friendship is not always the sequel of obligation.” Life, by Dr Johnson, in Chalmers’s Poets, p. 409.
|
Last modified,
19-Jan-2004
.
This site is maintained by Anthony
Mandal.