THE "BOY ACTRESSES," AND THE "YOUNG LADIES."
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is the "sacred ground" of the English
drama since the restoration of monarchy. At the Cockpit (Pit Street
remains a memory of the place), otherwise called the Phoenix, in the
"lane" above-named, the old English actors had uttered their last
words before they were silenced. In a reconstruction of the edifice
near, rather than on, the old site, the young English actors, under
Rhodes, built their new stage, and wooed the willing town.
There was some irregularity in the first steps made to re-establish
the stage, which, after an uneasy course of about four years, was
terminated by Charles II., who, in 1663,[15] granted patents for two
theatres, and no more, in London. Under one patent, Killigrew, at
the head of the King's Company (the Cockpit being closed), opened at
the new theatre in Drury Lane, in August[16] 1663, with a play of
the olden time--the "Humourous Lieutenant" of Beaumont and Fletcher.
Under the second patent, Davenant and the Duke of York's Company
found a home--first at the old Cockpit, then in Salisbury Court,
Fleet Street, the building of which was commenced in 1660, on the
site of the old granary of Salisbury house, which had served for a
theatre in the early years of the reign of Charles I. This little
stage was lapped up by the great tongue of fire, by which many a
nobler edifice was destroyed, in 1666. But previous to the fire,
thence went Davenant and the Duke's troop to the old Tennis Court,
the first of the three theatres in Portugal Row, on the south side of
Lincoln's Inn Fields, from which the houses took their name.
In 1671, Davenant being dead, the company, under the nominal
management of his widow, migrated to a house designed by Wren, and
decorated by Grinling Gibbons. This was the Duke's Theatre, in Dorset
Gardens. It was in close vicinity to the old Salisbury Court Theatre,
and it presented a double face--one towards Fleet Street, the other
overlooking the terrace which gave access to visitors who came by
the river. Later, this company was housed in Lincoln's Inn Fields
again; but it migrated, in 1732, to Covent Garden, under Rich. Rich's
house was burnt down in 1808, and its successor, built by Smirke, was
destroyed in 1856. On the site of the latter now stands the Royal
Italian Opera, the representative, in its way, of the line of houses
wherein the Duke's Company struggled against their competitors of the
King's.
The first house of those competitors in Drury Lane was burnt in 1672,
but the King's Company took refuge in the "Fields" till Wren built
the new house, opened in 1674. The two troops remained divided, yet
not opposed, each keeping to its recognised stock pieces, till 1682,
when Killigrew, having "shuffled off this mortal coil,"[17] the
two companies, after due weeding, formed into one, and abandoning
Lincoln's Inn to the tennis-players, Dorset Gardens to the wrestlers,
and both to decay, they opened at the New Drury, built by Sir
Christopher, on the 16th of November 1682. Wren's theatre was taken
down in 1791; its successor, built by Holland, was opened in 1794,
and was destroyed in 1809. The present edifice is the fourth which
has occupied a site in Drury Lane. It is the work of Wyatt, and was
opened in 1812.
Thus much for the edifice of the theatres of the last half of the
seventeenth century. Before we come to the "ladies and gentlemen" who
met upon the respective stages, and strove for the approval of the
town, let me notice that, after the death of Oliver,[18] Davenant
publicly exhibited a mixed entertainment, chiefly musical, but which
was not held to be an infringement of the law against the acting of
plays. Early in May 1659, Evelyn writes:--"I went to see a new opera,
after the Italian way, in recitative music and scenes, much inferior
to the Italian composure and magnificence; but it was prodigious,
that in a time of such public consternation, such a vanity should
be kept up or permitted." That these musical entertainments were
something quite apart from "plays," is manifest by another entry in
Evelyn's diary, in January 1661:--"After divers years since I had
seen any play, I went to see acted 'The Scornful Lady,' at a new
theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields."
Of Shakspeare's brother Charles, who lived to this period, Oldys
says:--"This opportunity made the actors greedily inquisitive into
every little circumstance, more especially in Shakspeare's dramatic
character, which his brother could relate of him. But he, it seems,
was so stricken in years, and possibly his memory so weakened by
infirmities (which might make him the easier pass for a man of weak
intellects), that he could give them but little light into their
inquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother
_Will_ in that station, was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas
he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies,
wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard,
and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was
forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at
which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of
them sung a song." This description applies to old Adam, in "As You
Like It;" and he who feebly shadowed it forth, formed a link which
connected the old theatre with the new.
The principal actors in Killigrew's Company, from which that of Drury
Lane is descended, were Bateman, Baxter, Bird (Theophilus), Blagden,
Burt, Cartwright, Clun, Duke, Hancock, Hart, Kynaston, Lacy, Mohun,
the Shatterels (William and Robert), and Wintersel. Later additions
gave to this company Beeston, Bell, Charleton, "Scum" Goodman,
Griffin, Hains, Joe Harris, Hughes, Lyddoll, Reeves, and Shirley.
The "ladies" were Mrs. Corey, Eastland, Hughes, Knep, the Marshalls
(Anne and Rebecca), Rutter, Uphill, whom Sir Robert Howard too
tardily married, and Weaver. Later engagements included those of Mrs.
Boutel, Gwyn (Nell), James, Reeves, and Verjuice. These were sworn at
the Lord Chamberlain's Office to serve the King. Of the "gentlemen,"
ten were enrolled on the Royal Household Establishment, and provided
with liveries of scarlet cloth and silver lace. In the warrants of
the Lord Chamberlain they were styled "_Gentlemen_ of the Great
Chamber;" and they might have pointed to this fact as proof of the
dignity of their profession.
The company first got together by Rhodes, subsequently enlarged
by Davenant, and sworn to serve the Duke of York, at Lincoln's
Inn Fields, was in some respects superior to that of Drury Lane.
Rhodes's troop included the great Betterton, Dixon, Lilliston,
Lovel, Nokes (Robert), and six lads employed to represent female
characters--Angel, William Betterton, a brother of the great actor
(drowned early in life, at Wallingford), Floid, Kynaston (for a
time), Mosely, and Nokes (James). Later, Davenant added Blagden,
Harris, Price, and Richards; Medbourn, Norris, Sandford, Smith, and
Young. The actresses were Mrs. Davenport, Davies, Gibbs, Holden,
Jennings, Long, and Saunderson, whom Betterton shortly after married.
This new fashion of actresses was a French fashion, and the mode
being imported from France, a French Company, with women among them,
came over to London. Hoping for the sanction of their countrywoman,
Queen Henrietta Maria, they established themselves in Blackfriars.
This essay excited all the fury of Prynne, who called these actresses
by very unsavoury names; but who, in styling them "unwomanish
and graceless," did not mean to imply that they were awkward and
unfeminine, but that acting was unworthy of their sex, and unbecoming
women born in an era of grace.
"Glad am I to say," remarks as stout a Puritan as Prynne, namely,
Thomas Brand, in a comment addressed to Laud, "glad am I to say they
were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage, so that I do
not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Although
Brand asserts "that all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this
town" were "justly offended" at these women "or monsters rather," as
Prynne calls them, "expelled from their own country," adds Brand,
yet more sober-thinking people did not fail to see the propriety of
Juliet being represented by a girl rather than by a boy. Accordingly,
we hear of English actresses even before the Restoration, mingled,
however, with boys, who shared with them that "line of business."
"The boy's a pretty actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the "Court
Beggar," played at the Cockpit, in 1632, "and his mother can play
her part. The women now are in great request." Prynne groaned at the
"request" becoming general. "They have now," he writes, in 1633,
"their female players in Italy and other foreign parts."
Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" was privately acted[19] by amateurs,
including Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell; the parts of Ianthe
and Roxalana were played by Mrs. Edward Coleman and another lady.
The piece is so stuffed with heroic deeds, heroic love, and heroic
generosity, that none more suitable could be found for ladies to
appear in. Nevertheless, when Rhodes was permitted to reopen the
stage, he could only assemble boys about him for his Evadnes,
Aspasias, and the other heroines of ancient tragedy.
Now, the resumption of the old practice of "women's parts being
represented by men in the habits of women," gave offence, and this
is assigned as a reason in the first patents accorded to Killigrew
and Davenant why those managers were authorised to employ actresses
to represent all female characters. Killigrew was the first to avail
himself of the privilege. It was time. Some of Rhodes's "boys" were
men past forty, who frisked it as wenches of fifteen; even real kings
were kept waiting because theatrical queens had not yet shaved; when
they did appear, they looked like "the guard disguised," and when the
prompter called "Desdemona"--"enter GIANT!" _Who_ the lady was who
first trod the stage as a professional actress is not known; but that
she belonged to Killigrew's Company is certain. The character she
assumed was Desdemona, and she was introduced by a prologue written
for the occasion by Thomas Jordan. It can hardly be supposed that
she was too modest to reveal her name, and that of Anne Marshal has
been suggested, as also that of Margaret Hughes. On the 3d of January
1661, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush" was performed at
Killigrew's Theatre, "it being very well done," says Pepys, "and here
the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." Davenant
did not bring forward _his_ actresses before the end of June 1661,
when he produced the second part of the "Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs.
Davenport as Roxalana, and Mrs. Saunderson as Ianthe; both these
ladies, with Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Long, boarded in Davenant's house.
Killigrew abused his privilege to employ ladies. In 1664, his comedy,
the "Parson's Wedding," wherein the plague is made a comic incident
of, connected with unexampled profligacy, was acted, "I am _told_,"
are Pepys's own words, "by nothing but women, at the King's house."
By this time the vocation of the "boy-actresses" had altogether
passed away; and there only remains for me to briefly trace the
career of those old world representatives of the gentle or truculent
heroines depicted by our early dramatists.
There were three members of Killigrew's, or the King's Company,
who were admirable representatives of female characters before the
Civil Wars. These were Hart, Burt, and Clun--all pupils of luckless
Robinson, slain in fight, who was himself an accomplished "actress."
Of the three, Hart rose to the greatest eminence. His Duchess,
in Shirley's "Cardinal," was the most successful of his youthful
parts. After the Restoration, he laid down Cassio to take Othello,
from Burt, by the King's command, and was as great in the Moor
as Betterton, at the other house, was in Hamlet. His Alexander,
which he _created_, always filled the theatre; and his dignity
therein was said to convey a lesson even to kings. His Brutus was
scarcely inferior, while his Catiline was so unapproachable, that
when he died, Jonson's tragedy died with him.[20] Rymer styles him
and Mohun the Æsopus and Roscius of their time. When they acted
together (Amintor and Melantius) in the "Maid's Tragedy," the town
asked no greater treat. Hart was one of Pepys's prime favourites.
He was a man whose presence delighted the eye, before his accents
enchanted the ear. The humblest character intrusted to him was
distinguished by his careful study. On the stage he acknowledged no
audience; their warmest applause could never draw him into a moment's
forgetfulness of his assumed character. In Manly, "The Plain Dealer,"
as in Catiline, he never found a successor who could equal him.
His salary was, at the most, three pounds a week, but he is said
to have realised £1000 yearly after he became a shareholder in the
theatre. He finally retired in 1682, on a pension amounting to half
his salary, which he enjoyed, however, scarcely a year. He died of a
painful inward complaint in 1683, and was buried at Stanmore Magna.
There is a tradition that Hart, Mohun, and Betterton fought on the
King's side at Edgehill, in 1642. The last-named was then a child,
and some things are attributed to Charles Hart which belonged to
his father. If Charles was but eighteen when his namesake, the King,
returned in 1660, it must have been his father who was at Edgehill
with Mohun, and who, perhaps, played female characters in his early
days.
Burt, after he left off the women's gear, acted Cicero, with rare
ability, in "Catiline," for the getting up of which piece Charles II.
contributed £500 for robes. Of Clun, in or out of petticoats, the
record is brief. His Iago was superior to Mohun's, but Lacy excelled
him in the "Humourous Lieutenant;" but as Subtle, in the "Alchymist,"
he was the admiration of all playgoers. After acting this comic part,
Clun made a tragic end on the night of the 3d of August 1664. With
a lady hanging on his arm, and some liquor lying under his belt, he
was gaily passing on his way to his country lodgings in Kentish Town,
when he was assailed, murdered, and flung into a ditch, by rogues,
one of whom was captured, "an Irish fellow, most cruelly butchered
and bound." "The house will have a great miss of him," is the epitaph
of Pepys upon versatile Clun.
Of the boys belonging to Davenant's Company, who at first appeared
in woman's boddice, but soon found their occupation gone, some
were of greater fame than others. One of these, Angel, turned from
waiting-maids to low comedy, caricatured Frenchmen and foolish lords.
We hear nothing of him after 1673. The younger Betterton, as I have
said, was drowned at Wallingford. Mosely and Floid represented a
vulgar class of women, and both died before the year 1674; but
Kynaston and James Nokes long survived to occupy prominent positions
on the stage.
Kynaston made "the loveliest lady," for a boy, ever beheld by Pepys.
This was in 1660, when Kynaston played Olympia, the Duke's sister,
in the "Loyal Subject;" and went with a young fellow-actor to
carouse, after the play, with Pepys and Captain Ferrers. Kynaston
was a handsome fellow under every guise. On the 7th of January 1661,
says Pepys, "Tom and I, and my wife, to the theatre, and there saw
'The Silent Woman.' Among other things here, Kynaston, the boy, had
the good turn to appear in three shapes. First, as a poor woman,
in ordinary clothes, to please Morose; then, in fine clothes, as a
gallant--and in them was clearly the prettiest woman in the whole
house; and lastly, as a man--and then likewise did appear the
handsomest man in the house." When the play was concluded, and it was
not the lad's humour to carouse with the men, the ladies would seize
on him, in his theatrical dress, and, carrying him to Hyde Park in
their coaches, be foolishly proud of the precious freight which they
bore with them.
Kynaston was not invariably in such good luck. There was another
handsome man, Sir Charles Sedley, whose style of dress the young
actor aped; and his presumption was punished by a ruffian, hired
by the baronet, who accosted Kynaston in St. James's Park, as "Sir
Charles," and thrashed him in that character. The actor then mimicked
Sir Charles on the stage. A consequence was, that on the 30th of
January 1669,[21] Kynaston was waylaid by three or four assailants,
and so clubbed by them, that there was no play on the following
evening; and the victim, mightily bruised, was forced to keep his
bed. He did not recover in less than a week. On the 9th of February
he reappeared, as the King of Tidore, in the "Island Princess," which
"he do act very well," says Pepys, "after his beating by Sir Charles
Sedley's appointment."
The boy who used to play Evadne, and now enacted the tyrants of the
drama, retained a certain beauty to the last. "Even at past sixty,"
Cibber tells us, "his teeth were all sound, white, and even as one
would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty." Colley attributes
the formal gravity of Kynaston's mien "to the stately step he had
been so early confined to in a female decency." The same writer
praises Kynaston's Leon, in "Rule a Wife and have a Wife," for its
determined manliness and honest authority. In the heroic tyrants, his
piercing eye, his quick, impetuous tone, and the fierce, lion-like
majesty of his bearing and utterance, "gave the spectator a kind of
trembling admiration."
When Cibber played Syphax, in "Cato," he did it as he thought
Kynaston would have done, had he been alive to impersonate the
character. Kynaston roared through the bombast of some of the
dramatists with a laughable earnestness; but in Shakspeare's monarchs
he was every inch a king--dignified and natural. The true majesty
of his Henry IV. was so manifest, that when he whispered to Hotspur,
"Send us your prisoners, or you'll hear of it," he conveyed, says
Cibber, "a more terrible menace in it than the loudest intemperance
of voice could swell to." Again, in the interview between the
dying King and his son--the dignity, majestic grief, the paternal
affection, the injured, kingly feeling, the pathos and the justness
of the rebuke--were alike remarkable. The actor was equal to the task
assigned him by the author--putting forth "that peculiar and becoming
grace which the best writer cannot inspire into any actor that is not
born with it."
Kynaston remained on the stage from 1659 to 1699. By this time
his memory began to fail and his spirit to leave him. These
imperfections, says the generous Colley, "were visibly not his own,
but the effects of decaying nature." But Betterton's nature was not
thus decaying; and his labour had been far greater than that of
Kynaston, who created only a score of original characters, the best
known of which are, Harcourt, in the "Country Wife;" Freeman, in
the "Plain Dealer;" and Count Baldwin, in "Isabella, or the Fatal
Marriage." His early practice in representing female characters
affected his voice in some disagreeable way. "What makes you feel
sick?" said Kynaston to Powell--suffering from a too riotous "last
night." "How can I feel otherwise," asked Powell, "when I hear your
voice?"
Edward Kynaston died in 1712, and lies buried in the churchyard of
St. Paul's, Covent Garden. If not the greatest actor of his day,
Kynaston was the greatest of the "boy-actresses." So exalted was
his reputation, "that," says Downes, "it has since been disputable
among the judicious, whether any woman that succeeded him so sensibly
touched the audience as he."
In one respect he was more successful than Betterton, for he not only
made a fortune, but kept what he had made, and left it to his only
son. This son improved the bequest by his industry as a mercer in
Covent Garden; and, probably remembering that he was well-descended
from the Kynastons of Oteley, Salop, he sent his own son to college,
and lived to see him ordained. This Reverend Mr. Kynaston purchased
the impropriation of Aldgate; and, despite the vocations of his
father and grandfather, but in consequence of the prudence and
liberality of both, was willingly acknowledged by his Shropshire
kinsmen.
Kynaston's contemporary, James Nokes, was as prudent and as fortunate
as he; but James was not so well-descended. His father (and he
himself for a time) was a city toyman--not so well to do, but he
allowed his sons to go on the stage, where Robert was a respectable
actor, and James, after a brief exercise of female characters, was
admirable in his peculiar line. The toyman's son became a landholder,
and made of his nephew a lord of the soil. Thus, even in those days
of small salaries, players could build up fortunes; because the more
prudent among them nursed the little they could spare with care, and
of that little made the very utmost.
Nokes was, to the last night of his career, famous for his
impersonation of the Nurse in two plays; first, in that strange
adaptation by Otway of "Romeo and Juliet" to a Roman tragedy, "Caius
Marius;" and secondly, in Nevil Payne's fierce, yet not bombastic
drama, "Fatal Jealousy." Of the portraits to be found in Cibber's
gallery, one of the most perfect, drawn by Colley's hand, is that of
James Nokes. Cibber attributes his general excellence to "a plain
and palpable simplicity of nature, which was so utterly his own,
that he was often as accountably diverting in his common speech as
on the stage." His very conversation was an unctuous acting; and, in
the truest sense of the word, he was "inimitable." Cibber himself,
accomplished mimic as he was, confessedly failed in every attempt
to reproduce the voice and manner of James Nokes, who identified
himself with every part so easily, as to reap a vast amount of fame
at the cost of hardly an hour's study. His range was through the
entire realm of broad comedy, and Cibber thus photographs him for the
entertainment of posterity.
"He scarce ever made his first entrance in a play but he was received
with an involuntary applause, not of hands only, for those may be,
and have often been, partially prostituted and bespoken, but by a
general laughter, which the very sight of him provoked, and nature
could not resist; yet the louder the laugh the graver was his look
upon it; and sure the ridiculous solemnity of his features were
enough to have set a whole bench of bishops into a titter, could he
have been honoured (may it be no offence to suppose it) with such
grave and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous distresses which
by the laws of comedy folly is often involved in, he sunk into such
a mixture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consternation so ruefully
ridiculous and inconsolable, that when he had shook you to a fatigue
of laughter, it became a moot point whether you ought not to have
pitied him. When he debated any matter by himself, he would shut up
his mouth with a dumb, studious pout, and roll his full eye into such
a vacant amazement, such a palpable ignorance of what to think of it,
that his silent perplexity (which would sometimes hold him several
minutes) gave your imagination as full content as the most absurd
thing he could say upon it."
This great comic actor was naturally of a grave and sober
countenance; "but the moment he spoke, the settled seriousness of his
features was utterly discharged, and a dry, drolling, or laughing
levity took such full possession of him, that I can only refer the
idea of him to your imagination." His clear and audible voice better
fitted him for burlesque heroes, like Jupiter Ammon, than his middle
stature; but the pompous inanity of his travestied pagan divinity,
was as wonderful as the rich stolidity of his contentedly ignorant
fools.
There was no actor whom the City so rejoiced in as Nokes; there
was none whom the Court more delighted to honour. In May 1670,
Charles II., and troops of courtiers, went down to Dover to meet the
Queen-mother, and took with them the Lincoln's-Inn-Fields comedians.
When Henrietta Maria arrived, with her suite of French ladies and
gentlemen, the latter attired, according to the prevailing fashion,
in very short blue or scarlet laced coats, with broad sword belts,
the English comedians played before the royal host and his guests
the play founded on Molière's "Ecole des Femmes," and called "Sir
Solomon." Nokes acted Sir Arthur Addel, in dressing for which part
he was assisted by the Duke of Monmouth. In order that he might the
better ape the French mode, the duke took off his own sword and
belt, and buckled them to the actor's side. At his first entrance on
the stage, King and Court broke into unextinguishable laughter, so
admirably were the foreign guests caricatured; at which outrage on
courtesy and hospitality, the guests, naturally enough, "were much
chagrined," says Downes. Nokes retained the duke's sword and belt to
his dying day, which fell in the course of the year 1692. He was the
original representative of about forty characters, in plays which
have long since disappeared from the stage. Charles II. was the first
who recognised, on the occasion of his playing the part of Norfolk,
in "Henry VIII.," the merit of Nokes as an actor.[22]
James Nokes left to his nephew something better than the sword and
belt of the Duke of Monmouth, namely, a landed estate at Totteridge,
near Barnet, of the value of £400 a year. Pepys may have kissed
that nephew's mother, on the August day of 1665, when he fell into
company near Rochester with a lady and gentleman riding singly, and
differing as to the merits of a copy of verses, which Pepys, by his
style of reading aloud, got the husband to confess that they were as
excellent as the wife had pronounced them to be. "His name is Nokes,"
writes the diarist, "over against Bow Church.... We promised to meet,
if ever we come both to London again, and at parting, I had a fair
salute on horseback, in Rochester streets, of the lady."
Having thus seen the curtain fall upon the once "boy-actresses," I
proceed to briefly notice the principal ladies in the respective
companies of Killigrew and Davenant, commencing with those of the
King's House, or Theatre Royal, under Killigrew's management, chiefly
in Drury Lane. The first name of importance in this list is that of
Mrs. Hughes, who, on the stage from 1663 to 1676, was more remarkable
for her beauty than for her great ability. When the former, in
1668, subdued Prince Rupert, there was more jubilee at the Court of
Charles II., at Tunbridge Wells, than if the philosophic Prince had
fallen upon an invention that should benefit mankind. Rupert, whom
the plumed gallants of Whitehall considered as a rude mechanic, left
his laboratory, put aside his reserve, and wooed in due form the
proudest, perhaps, of the actresses of her day. Only in the May of
that year Pepys had saluted her with a kiss, in the green-room of
the Kings House. She was then reputed to be the intimate friend and
favourite of Sir Charles Sedley. "A mighty pretty woman," says Pepys,
"and seems, but is not, modest." The Prince enshrined the frail
beauty in that home of Sir Nicholas Crispe, at Hammersmith, which was
subsequently occupied by Bubb Doddington, the Margravine of Anspach,
and Queen Caroline of Brunswick. She well-nigh ruined her lover, at
whose death there was little left beside a collection of jewels,
worth £20,000, which were disposed of by lottery, in order to pay
his debts. Mrs. Hughes was not unlike her own Mrs. Moneylove in "Tom
Essence," a very good sort of person till temptation beset her. After
his death she squandered much of the estate which Rupert had left to
her, chiefly by gambling. Her contemporary, Nell Gwyn, purchased a
celebrated pearl necklace belonging to the deceased Prince for £4520,
a purchase which must have taken the appearance of an insult, in the
eyes of Mrs. Hughes. The daughter of this union, Ruperta, who shared
with her mother the modest estate bequeathed by the Prince, married
General Emanuel Scrope Howe. One of the daughters of this marriage
was the beautiful and reckless maid of honour to Caroline, Princess
of Wales, whom the treachery of Nanty Lowther sent broken-hearted
to the grave, in 1726. Through Ruperta, however, the blood of her
parents is still continued in the family of Sir Edward Bromley.
Mrs. Knipp (or Knep) was a different being from Margaret Hughes.
She was a pretty creature, with a sweet voice, a mad humour, and
an ill-looking, moody, jealous husband, who vexed the soul and
bruised the body of his sprightly, sweet-toned, and wayward wife.
Excellent company she was found by Pepys and his friends, whatever
her horse-jockey of a husband may have thought of her, or Mrs. Pepys
of the philandering of her own husband with the minx, whom she did
not hesitate to pronounce a "wench," and whom Pepys himself speaks
of affectionately as a "jade" he was always glad to see. Abroad he
walks with her in the New Exchange to look for pretty faces; and of
the home of an actress, in 1666, we have a sketch in the record of a
visit in November, "To Knipp's lodgings, whom I find not ready to go
home with me; and there staid reading of Waller's verses, while she
finished dressing, her husband being by. Her lodging very mean, and
the condition she lives in; yet makes a show without doors, God bless
us!"
Mrs. Knipp's characters embraced the rakish fine ladies, the rattling
ladies'-maids, one or two tragic parts; and where singing was
required, priestesses, nuns, and milkmaids. As one of the latter,
Pepys was enchanted at her appearance, with her hair simply turned up
in a knot, behind.
Her intelligence was very great, her simple style of dressing much
commended; and she could deliver a prologue as deftly as she could
either sing or dance, and with as much grace as she was wont to
throw into manifestations of touching grief or tenderness. She
disappears from the bills in 1678, after a fourteen years' service;
and there is no further record of the life of Mistress Knipp.
Anne and Rebecca Marshall are names which one can only reluctantly
associate with that of Stephen Marshall the divine, who is said to
have been their father. The Long Parliament frequently commanded
the eloquent incumbent of Finchingfield, Essex, to preach before
them. Cambridge University was as proud of him as a distinguished
_alumnus_, as Huntingdonshire was of having him for a son. In
affairs of religion he was the oracle of Parliament, and his advice
was sought even in political difficulties. He was a mild and
conscientious man, of whom Baxter remarked, that "if all the bishops
had been of the spirit and temper of Usher, the Presbyterians of the
temper of Mr. Marshall, and the Independents like Mr. Burroughs, the
divisions of the Church would have been easily compromised." Stephen
Marshall was a man who, in his practice, "preached his sermons o'er
again;" and Firmin describes him as an "example to the believers in
word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, and in purity." He died
full of honours and understanding; and Westminster Abbey afforded him
a grave, from which he was ruthlessly ejected at the Restoration. It
is hardly possible to believe that such a saint was the father of the
two beautiful actresses whom Nell Gwyn taunted with being the erring
daughters of a "praying Presbyterian."
On the other hand, we learn from Sir Peter Leicester's _History of
Cheshire_, that the _royalist_, Lord Gerard of Bromley, retained this
staunch Presbyterian in his house as his chaplain. Further, we are
told, that this chaplain married a certain illegitimate Elizabeth,
whose father was a Dutton of Dutton, and that of this marriage came
Anne and Rebecca. As Sir Peter was himself connected with both the
Gerards and Duttons by marriage, he must be held as speaking with
some authority in this matter.
Pepys says of Anne Marshall, that her voice was "not so sweet as
Ianthe's," meaning Mrs. Betterton's. Rebecca had a beautiful hand,
was very imposing on the stage, and even off of it was "mighty fine,
pretty, and noble." She had the reputation of facilitating the
intrigue which Lady Castlemaine kept up with Hart, the actor, to
avenge herself on the King because of his admiration for Mrs. Davies.
One of her finest parts was Dorothea, in the "Virgin Martyr;" and
her Queen of Sicily (an "up-hill" part) to Nell Gwyn's Florimel,
in Dryden's "Secret Love," was highly appreciated by the playgoing
public.
[Illustration: (Nell Gwyn.)]
With the exception of Mrs. Corey, the mimic, and pleasing little
Mrs. Boutel, who realised a fortune, with her girlish voice and
manner, and her supremely innocent and fascinating ways, justifying
the intensity of love with which she inspired youthful heroes, the
only other actress of the King's company worth mentioning is Nell
Gwyn; but Nell was the crown of them all, winning hearts throughout
her jubilant career, beginning in her early girlhood with that of
a link-boy, and ending in her womanhood with that of the king.
Nell Gwyn is claimed by the Herefordshire people. In Hereford city,
a mean house in the rear of the Oak Inn is pointed out as the place
of her birth. The gossips there little thought that a child so humbly
born would be the mother of a line of dukes, or that her great
grandson[23] should be the bishop of her native town, and occupy
for forty years the episcopal palace in close proximity to the poor
cottage in which the archest of hussies first saw the light.
But the claims of Pipe Lane, Hereford, are disputed by Coal Yard,
Drury Lane, and also by Oxford, where Nell's father, James Gwyn, a
"captain," according to some, a fruiterer according to others, died
in prison. The captain with his wife Helena,[24] somewhile a resident
in St. Martin's Lane, had two daughters, Nell and Rose. The latter
married a Captain Capels, and, secondly, a Mr. Foster; little else is
known of her, save that her less reputable sister left her a small
legacy, and that she survived till the year 1697. Nelly was born
early in 1650; and tradition states that she very early ran away
from her country home to town, and studied for the stage by going
every night to the play. I suspect Coal Yard was her first bower,
that thence she issued to cry "fresh herrings!" and captivate the
hearts of susceptible link-boys; and passed, from being hander of
strong waters to the gentlemen who patronised Madame Ross's house,
to taking her place in the pit, with her back to the orchestra, and
selling oranges and pippins, with pertinent wit, gratis, to liberal
fops who would buy the first and return the second with interest. As
Rochester assures us, there was a "wondering pit" in presence of this
smartest and most audacious of orange-girls. It was natural enough
that she should attract the notice of the actors, that Lacy should
give her instruction, and that from Charles Hart she should take that
and all the love he could pay her. The latter two were spoken of
in prologues, long after both were dead, as "those darlings of the
stage."
Under the auspices of Charles Hart, Nelly made her first appearance
at the (King's) theatre, in a serious part, Cydaria, in the "Indian
Emperor." She was then not more than fifteen, though some say
seventeen years of age. For tragedy she was unfitted: her stature
was low, though her figure was graceful; and it was not till she
assumed comic characters, stamped the smallest foot in England on the
boards, and laughed with that peculiar laugh that, in the excess of
it, her eyes almost disappeared, she fairly carried away the town,
and enslaved the hearts of city and of court. She spoke prologues
and epilogues with wonderful effect, danced to perfection, and in
her peculiar but not extensive line was, perhaps, unequalled for the
natural feeling which she put into the parts most suited to her.
She was so fierce of repartee that no one ventured a second time to
allude sneeringly to her antecedents. She was coarse, too, when the
humour took her; could curse pretty strongly if the house was not
full, and was given, in common with the other ladies of the company,
to loll about and talk loudly in the public boxes, when she was not
engaged on the stage. She left both stage and boxes for a time, in
1667, to keep mad house at Epsom with the clever Lord Buckhurst--a
man who for one youthful vice exhibited a thousand manly virtues.
The story, that Lord Buckhurst separated from Mistress Gwyn for a
money consideration and a title, can be disproved by the testimony
of a character which all Peru could not have influenced, and of
chronology, which sets the story at nought.
They who would read Buckhurst's true character, will find it in the
eloquent and graceful dedication which Prior made of his poems to
Buckhurst's son, Lionel. Like the first Sackville, of the line of the
Earls of Dorset, he was himself a poet; and, "To all you ladies now
on land," although not quite the impromptu it is said to have been,
is an evidence how gracefully he could strike the lyre on the eve of
a great battle. In short, Buckhurst, who took Nelly from the stage,
and who found Prior in a coffee-shop and added him to literature, was
a "man," brave, truthful, gay, honest, and universally beloved. He
was the people's favourite; and Pope assures us, when Buckhurst had
become Earl of Dorset, that he was "the grace of courts, the muses'
pride."
After a year's absence,[25] Mistress Gwyn returned to the stage.
In all nature, there was nothing better than she, in certain parts.
Pepys never hoped to see anything like her in Florimel, with her
changes of sex and costume. She was little, pretty, and witty; danced
perfectly, and with such applause, that authors would fain have
appropriated the approbation bestowed on her "jig," to the play in
which it was introduced. A play, without Nell, was no play at all to
Mr. Pepys. When, in 1667, she followed Buckhurst to Epsom, and flung
up her parts and an honestly-earned salary for a poor £100 a-year,
Pepys exclaims, "Poor girl! I pity her; but more the loss of her at
the King's house." The Admiralty-clerk's admiration was confined to
her merry characters; he speaks of her Emperor's Daughter, in the
"Indian Emperor," as "a great and serious part, which she does most
basely."
Her own party hailed her return; but she did not light upon a bed
of roses. Lady Castlemaine was no longer her patroness--rather
that and more of Nelly's old lover, Charles Hart, who flouted the
ex-favourite of Buckhurst. That ex-favourite, however, bore with
equal indifference the scorn of Charles Hart and the contempt of
Charles Sackville;--she saw compensation for both, in the royal
homage of Charles Stuart. Meanwhile, she continued to enchant the
town in comedy, to "spoil" serious parts in Sir Robert Howard's
mixed pieces, and yet to act with great success characters, in which
natural emotion, bordering on insanity, was to be represented. Early
in 1668, we find her among the loose companions of King Charles;
"and I am sorry for it," says Pepys, "and can hope for no good to
the state, from having a Prince so devoted to his pleasure." The
writers for the stage were of a like opinion. Howard wrote his "Duke
of Lerma," as a vehicle of reproof to the King, who sat, a careless
auditor, less troubled than Pepys himself, who expected that the play
would be interrupted by royal authority. The last of her original
characters was that of Almahide, in Dryden's "Conquest of Granada,"
the prologue to which she spoke in a straw hat as broad as a cart
wheel, and thereby almost killed the King with laughter. In this
piece, her old lover, Hart, played Almanzor; and his position with
respect to King Boabdelin (Kynaston) and Almahide (Nelly) corresponds
with that in which he stood towards King Charles and the actress. The
passages reminding the audience of this complex circumstance threw
the house into "convulsions."
From this time, Ellen Gwyn disappears from the stage. A similar
surname appears in the play-bills from 1670 to 1682; but there is no
ground for believing that the "Madam Gwyn" of the later period was
the Mrs. Ellen of the earlier, poorer, and merrier times. Nelly's
first son, Charles Beauclerc, was born in her house, in Lincoln's
Inn Fields, in May 1670; her second, in the following year, at her
house in Pall Mall, the garden terrace of which overlooked the then
green walk in the park, from which Evelyn saw, with shame, the King
talking with the impudent "comedian." This younger son, James, died
at Paris, 1680. The elder had Otway for a tutor. In his sixth year
he was created Earl of Burford, and in his fourteenth was created
a duke. His mother had addressed him, in the King's hearing, by an
epithet referring to his illegitimacy, on the plea that she did not
know by what title to call him. Charles made him an earl. Accident
of death raised him to a dukedom. Harry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans,
of whom report made the second husband of Henrietta Maria, had just
died. Blind as he had been, he had played cards to the last--some
one sitting near him to tell him the points. At an age approaching
to ninety years, he had passed away. Charles gave the name of St.
Albans, with the title of duke, to Nell Gwyn's eldest son, adding
thereto the registrarship of the High Court of Chancery, and the
office (rendered hereditary) of Master Falconer of England. The
present and tenth Duke of St. Albans is the lineal descendant of
Charles Stuart and Ellen Gwyn.
The King had demurred to a request to settle £500 a year on this
lady, and yet within four years she is known to have exacted from
him above £60,000. Subsequently, £6000, annually, were tossed to
her from the Excise,--that hardest taxation of the poor,--and £3000
more were added for the expenses of each son. She blazed publicly
at Whitehall, with diamonds out-flashing those usually worn, as
Evelyn has it, "by the like cattle." At Burford House, Windsor, her
gorgeous country residence, she could gaily lose £1400[26] in one
night at basset, and purchase diamond necklaces the next day, at
fabulous prices. Negligent dresser as she was, she always looked
fascinating; and fascinating as she was, she had a ready fierceness
and a bitter sarcasm at hand, when other royal favourites, or sons of
favourites, assailed or sneered at her. With the King and his brother
she bandied jokes as freely as De Pompadour or Du Barry with Louis
XV. By impulse, she could be charitable; but by neglecting the claims
of her own creditors she could be cruel. Charles alluded to her
extravagance when, on his deathbed, he recommended those shameless
women, Cleveland and Portsmouth, to his brother's kindness, and hoped
he would "not let Nelly starve." An apocryphal story attributes the
founding of Chelsea Hospital to Nelly's tenderness for a poor old
wounded soldier who had been cheated of his pay. The dedications to
her of books by such people as Aphra Behn and Duffet are blasphemous
in their expressions, making of her, as they do, a sort of divine
essence, and becoming satirical by their exaggerated and disgusting
eulogy. For such a person, the pure and pious Bishop Ken was once
called upon to yield up an apartment in which he lodged, and the
peerage had a narrow escape of having her foisted upon it as Countess
of Greenwich. This clever actress died in November 1687 of a fit of
apoplexy, by which she had been stricken in the previous March.
She was then in her thirty-eighth year. She had been endowed like a
princess, but she left debts, and died just in time to allow James to
discharge them out of the public purse. Finally, she was carried to
old St. Martin's-in-the-Fields to be buried, and Tennison preached
her funeral sermon. When this was subsequently made the ground of
exposing him to the reproof of Queen Mary, she remarked, that the
good doctor, no doubt, had said nothing but what the facts authorised.
In the time of Nelly's most brilliant fortunes, the people who
laughed at her wit and impudence publicly contemned her. In February
1680 she visited the Duke's Theatre, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, on
which occasion a person in the pit called her loudly by a name
which, to do her justice, she never repudiated. The affront, which
she herself could laugh at, was taken up by William Herbert, brother
of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who had married the younger sister of
another of the King's favourites, Henrietta de Querouaille. The
audience took part, some with the assailant, others with the champion
of Nelly. Many swords were drawn, the sorrows of the "Orphan" were
suspended, there was a hubbub in the house, and more scratches given
than blood spilt. That Nelly found a knight in Thomas Herbert only
proves that a hot-headed young gentleman may become a very sage as
years grow upon him. This Thomas, when Earl of Pembroke, was "first
plenipotentiary" at the making of the treaty of Ryswick, and Chief
Commissioner in establishing the Union of England and Scotland. His
excellent taste and liberality laid the foundations of the collection
of antiques which yet attracts visitors to Wilton. But love for
leading play-house factions did not die out in his family. Four and
forty years after he had drawn sword for the reputation of Nell
Gwyn, his third Countess, Mary, sister of Viscount Howe, headed the
Cuzzoni party at the Opera-house against the Faustina faction, led
by the Countess of Burlington and Lady Delawar. Whenever Faustina
opened her mouth to sing, Lady Pembroke and her friends hissed the
singer heartily; and as soon as Cuzzoni made a similar attempt, Lady
Burlington and her followers shrieked her into silence. Lord Pembroke
sat by, thinking, perhaps, of the young days when he was the champion
of Nell Gwyn, or of Margaret Symcott, if an old tradition be true
that such was Nelly's real name.
Of the ladies who played at the Duke's House, under Davenant, the
principal were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Gibbs, Mrs. Holden,
Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Long, and Mrs. Norris. Chief among these were
Mistresses Davenport, Davies, Saunderson, and Long. Mrs. Davenport
is remembered as the Roxalana of Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes," which
she played so well that Pepys could not forget her in either of
her successors, Mrs. Betterton or Mrs. Norton. She is still better
remembered in connection with a story of which she is the heroine,
although that character in it has been ascribed to others.
Aubrey de Vere, the twentieth Earl of Oxford, was the last of his
house who held that title, but the one who held it the longest,
namely, seventy years, from 1632 to 1702. Aubrey de Vere despised
the old maxim, "Noblesse oblige." He lived a roystering life, kept a
roystering house, and was addicted to hard drinking, rough words, and
unseemly brawling and sword-slashing in his cups. The young earl made
love, after the fashion of the day and the man, to Mrs. Davenport,
but he might as well have made love to Diana; and it was not till
he proposed marriage that the actress condescended to listen to his
suit. The lovers were privately married, and the lady was, in the
words of old Downes, "erept the stage." The honeymoon, however, was
speedily obscured; Lord Oxford grew indifferent and brutal. When the
lady talked of her rights, he informed her that she was not Countess
of Oxford at all. The apparent reverend gentleman who had performed
the ceremony of marriage was a trumpeter, who served under this very
noble Lord in the King's own regiment of cavalry. The forlorn fair
one, after threatening suicide, sought out the King, fell at his
feet, and demanded justice. The award was made in the shape of an
annuity of £300 a year, with which "Lord Oxford's Miss," as Evelyn
calls her, seems to have been satisfied and consoled; for Pepys, soon
after, being at the play, "saw the old Roxalana in the chief box, in
a velvet gown, as the fashion is, and very handsome, at which I was
glad."
As for Miss Mary Davies, it is uncertain whether she was the
daughter of a Wiltshire blacksmith, or the less legitimate offspring
of Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Berkshire, or of the earl's
son--not the poet, but the colonel. However this may be, Mary Davies
was early on the stage, where she danced well, played moderately ill,
announced the next afternoon's performance with grace, and won an
infamous distinction at the King's hands, by her inimitable singing
of the old song, "My lodging is on the cold ground." Then there was
the publicly furnishing of a house for her, and the presentation of
a ring worth £600, and much scandal to good men and honest women.
Thereupon Miss Davies grew an "impertinent slut," and my Lady
Castlemaine waxed melancholy, and meditated mischief against her
royal and fickle lover. The patient Queen herself was moved to anger
by the new position of Miss Davies, and when the latter appeared in a
play at Whitehall, in which she was about to dance, her Majesty rose
and left the house. But neither the offended dignity of the Queen,
nor Lady Castlemaine "looking fire," nor the bad practical jokes of
Nell Gwyn, could loose the King from the temporary enchantment to
which he surrendered himself. Their daughter was that Mary Tudor, who
married the second Earl of Derwentwater, whose son, the third earl,
was the gallant young fellow who lost his head for aid afforded to
his cousin, the first Pretender, in 1715. Before his death, a request
was made to the Duke of Richmond, son of Charles II., by Madlle. de
Querouaille, to present a memorial to the Lords in order to save the
young earl's life. The Duke presented the memorial, but he added his
earnest hope that their lordships would reject the prayer of it! In
such wise did the illegitimate Stuarts play brother to each other!
Through the marriage of the daughter of Lord Derwentwater with the
eighth Lord Petre, the blood of the Stuart and of Moll Davies still
runs in their lineal descendant, the present and twelfth lord.
Happy are the women who have no histories! Such is the case with
Miss Saunderson, better known to us as Mrs. Betterton. For about
thirty years she played the chief female characters, especially in
Shakspeare's plays, with great success. She created as many new parts
as she played years; but they were in old-world pieces, which have
been long forgotten. In the home which she kept with her husband,
charity, hospitality, and dignity abided. So unexceptionable was Mrs.
Betterton's character, that when Crowne's "Calisto" was to be played
at court in 1674, she was chosen to be instructress to the Lady Mary
and the Lady Anne. These princesses derived from Mrs. Betterton's
lessons the accomplishment for which both were distinguished when
queens, of pronouncing speeches from the throne in a distinct and
clear voice, with sweetness of intonation, and grace of enunciation.
Mrs. Betterton subsequently instructed the Princess Anne in the
part of Semandra, and her husband did the like office for the young
noblemen who also played in Lee's rattling tragedy of "Mithridates."
Two individuals, better qualified by their professional skill
and their moral character, to instruct the young princesses and
courtiers, and to exercise over them a wholesome authority, could not
then have been found on or off the stage. After Betterton's death,
Queen Anne settled on her old teacher of elocution a pension of £500
a year.
Of the remainder of the actresses who first joined Davenant, there
is nothing recorded, except their greater or less efficiency. Of
Mrs. Holden, Betterton's kinswoman, the only incident that I can
recall to mind is, that once, by the accidental mispronunciation of a
word, when playing in "Romeo and Juliet," and giving it "a vehement
action, it put the house into such a laughter, that London Bridge at
low water was silence to it!" Under its echoes let us pass to the
"gentlemen of the King's Company."
FOOTNOTES:
[15] The second and final patents were dated--Killigrew's, 25th April
1662; Davenant's, 15th January 1663.
[16] April (2d edition). The exact date is 8th April, as given by
Downes.
[17] Killigrew died after, not before, the union of the two
companies. Chalmers expressly says that he lived to see them united,
and gives March 1683 as the time of his death.
[18] Davenant performed "The Siege of Rhodes" two years before
Cromwell's death, namely, in 1656. [See Mr. Joseph Knight's Preface
to his recent edition of the "Roscius Anglicanus."] Cromwell also
permitted the entertainment named "The Cruelty of the Spaniards in
Peru" to be represented, from political motives.
[19] Mr. Knight, in the Preface before mentioned, quotes some lines
from the Prologue to this performance, showing that it was a public
performance for money. This being so settles the question in the next
paragraph as to the identity of the first professional actress.
[20] Very questionable. Langbaine (1691) says, "This play is still in
vogue on the stage, and always presented with success."
[21] Dr. Doran misreads Pepys, who gives the date as 31st January
1669.
[22] I doubt whether _James_ Nokes ever played the part. Genest
evidently approves of Davies's suggestion that Robert Nokes was the
actor of it.
[23] This should be grandson.
[24] Or Eleanor.
[25] She was absent only about six weeks; Pepys chronicles her
departure under July 13, 1667, and her return under August 22, 1667.
[26] Peter Cunningham says, "1400 guineas, or £5000 at least of our
present money."
[Illustration: THE FORTUNE THEATRE.]