THOMAS BETTERTON.
The diaries, biographies, journals, and traditions of the time will
enable us, with some little aid from the imagination, not only
to see the actor, but the social aspects amid which he moved. By
aid of these, I find that, on a December night, 1661, there is a
crowded house at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is
"Hamlet," with young Mr. Betterton, who has been two years on the
stage, in the part of the Dane. The Ophelia is the real object of the
young fellow's love, charming Mistress Saunderson. Old ladies and
gentlemen, repairing in capacious coaches to this representation,
remind one another of the lumbering and crushing of carriages about
the old playhouse in the Blackfriars, causing noisy tumults which
drew indignant appeals from the Puritan housekeepers, whose privacy
was sadly disturbed. But what was the tumult there to the scene
on the south side of the "Fields," when "Hamlet," with Betterton,
as now, was offered to the public! The Jehus contend for place
with the eagerness of ancient Britons in a battle of chariots.
And see, the mob about the pit-doors have just caught a bailiff
attempting to arrest an honest playgoer. They fasten the official
up in a tub, and roll the trembling wretch all "round the square."
They finish by hurling him against a carriage, which sweeps from a
neighbouring street at full gallop. Down come the horses over the
barrelled bailiff, with sounds of hideous ruin; and the young lady
lying back in the coach is screaming like mad. This lady is the
dishonest daughter of brave, honest, and luckless Viscount Grandison.
As yet she is only Mrs. Palmer; next year she will be Countess of
Castlemaine.
At length the audience are all safely housed and eager. Indifferent
enough, however, they are during the opening scenes. The fine
gentlemen laugh loudly and comb their periwigs in the "best rooms."
The fops stand erect in the boxes to show how folly looks in clean
linen; and the orange nymphs, with their costly entertainment of
fruit from Seville, giggle and chatter, as they stand on the benches
below with old and young admirers, proud of being recognised in the
boxes.
The whole court of Denmark is before them; but not till the words,
"'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother," fall from the lips
of Betterton, is the general ear charmed, or the general tongue
arrested. Then, indeed, the vainest fops and pertest orange girls
look round and listen too. The voice is so low, and sad, and sweet;
the modulation so tender, the dignity so natural, the grace so
consummate, that all yield themselves silently to the delicious
enchantment. "It's beyond imagination," whispers Mr. Pepys to his
neighbour, who only answers with a long and low drawn "_Hush!_"
I can never look on Kneller's masterly portrait of this great player,
without envying those who had the good fortune to see the original,
especially in Hamlet. How grand the head, how lofty the brow, what
eloquence and fire in the eyes, how firm the mouth, how manly the
sum of all! How is the whole audience subdued almost to tears, at
the mingled love and awe which he displays in presence of the spirit
of his father! Some idea of Betterton's acting in this scene may be
derived from Cibber's description of it, and from that I come to the
conclusion, that Betterton fulfilled all that Overbury laid down with
regard to what best graced an actor. "Whatsoever is commendable to
the grave orator, is most exquisitely perfect in him; for by a full
and significant action of body he charms our attention. Sit in a full
theatre, and you will think you see so many lines drawn from the
circumference of so many ears, while the actor is the centre." This
was especially the case with Betterton; and now, as Hamlet's first
soliloquy closes, and the charmed but silent audience "feel music's
pulse in all their arteries," Mr. Pepys almost too loudly exclaims
in his ecstasy, "It's the best acted part ever done by man." And the
audience think so, too; there is a hurricane of applause; after which
the fine gentlemen renew their prattle with the fine ladies, and the
orange girls beset the Sir Foplings, and this universal trifling is
felt as a relief after the general emotion.
Meanwhile, a critic objects that young Mr. Betterton is not
"original," and intimates that his Hamlet is played by tradition come
down through Davenant, who had seen the character acted by Taylor,
and had taught the boy to enact the Prince after the fashion set by
the man who was said to have been instructed by Shakspeare himself;
amid which Mr. Pepys remarks, "I only know that Mr. Betterton is the
best actor in the world."
As Sir Thomas Overbury remarked of a great player, his voice was
never lower than the prompter's nor higher than the foil and target.
But let us be silent, here comes the gentle Ophelia. The audience
generally took an interest in this lady, and the royal Dane, for
there was not one in the house who was ignorant of the love-passages
there had been between them, or of the coming marriage by which
they were to receive additional warrant. Mistress Saunderson was a
lady worthy of all the homage here implied. There was mind in her
acting; and she not only possessed personal beauty, but also the
richer beauty of a virtuous life. They were a well-matched couple on
and off the stage; and their mutual affection was based on a mutual
respect and esteem. People thought of them together, as inseparable,
and young ladies wondered how Mr. Betterton could play Mercutio,
and leave Mistress Saunderson as Juliet, to be adored by the not
ineffective Mr. Harris as Romeo! The whole house, as long as the
incomparable pair were on the stage, were in a dream of delight.
Their grace, perfection, good looks, the love they had so cunningly
simulated, and that which they were known to mutually entertain,
formed the theme of all tongues. In its discussion, the retiring
audience forgot the disinterring of the regicides, and the number of
men killed the other day on Tower Hill, servants of the French and
Spanish ambassadors, in a bloody struggle for precedency, which was
ultimately won by the Don!
Fifty years after these early triumphs, an aged couple resided in one
of the best houses in Russell Street, Covent Garden,--the walls of
which were covered with pictures, prints, and drawings, selected with
taste and judgment. They were still a handsome pair. The venerable
lady, indeed, looks pale and somewhat saddened. The gleam of April
sunshine which penetrates the apartment cannot win her from the fire.
She is Mrs. Betterton, and ever and anon she looks with a sort of
proud sorrow on her aged husband. His fortune, nobly earned, has been
diminished by "speculation," but the means whereby he achieved it are
his still, and Thomas Betterton, in the latter years of Queen Anne,
is the chief glory of the stage, even as he was in the first year of
King Charles. The lofty column, however, is a little shaken. It is
not a ruin, but is beautiful in its decay. Yet that it should decay
at all is a source of so much tender anxiety to the actor's wife,
that her senses suffer disturbance, and there may be seen in her
features something of the distraught Ophelia of half a century ago.
It is the 13th of April, 1710--his benefit night; and the tears are
in the lady's eyes, and a painful sort of smile on her trembling
lips, for Betterton kisses her as he goes forth that afternoon to
take leave, as it proved, of the stage for ever. He is in such pain
from gout that he can scarcely walk to his carriage, and how is he
to enact the noble and fiery Melantius in that ill-named drama of
horror, "The Maid's Tragedy"? Hoping for the best, the old player
is conveyed to the theatre, built by Sir John Vanbrugh, in the
Haymarket, the site of which is now occupied by the "Opera-house."
Through the stage-door he is carried in loving arms to his
dressing-room. At the end of an hour Wilks is there, and Pinkethman,
and Mrs. Barry, all dressed for their parts, and agreeably
disappointed to find the Melantius of the night robed, armoured, and
be-sworded, with one foot in a buskin and the other in a slipper. To
enable him even to wear the latter, he had first thrust his inflamed
foot into water; but stout as he seemed, trying his strength to and
fro in the room, the hand of Death was at that moment descending on
the grandest of English actors.
The house rose to receive him who had delighted themselves, their
sires, and their grandsires. The audience were packed "like Norfolk
biffins." The edifice itself was only five years old, and when it was
a-building, people laughed at the folly which reared a new theatre in
the country, instead of in London;--for in 1705 all beyond the rural
Haymarket was open field, straight away westward and northward. That
such a house could ever be filled was set down as an impossibility;
but the achievement was accomplished on this eventful benefit night;
when the popular favourite was about to utter his last words, and to
belong thenceforward only to the history of the stage he had adorned.
There was a shout which shook him, as Lysippus uttered the words
"Noble Melantius," which heralded his coming. Every word which could
be applied to himself was marked by a storm of applause, and when
Melantius said of Amintor--
"His youth did promise much, and his ripe years
Will see it all performed,"
a murmuring comment ran round the house, that this had been effected
by Betterton himself. Again, when he bids Amintor "hear thy friend,
who has more years than thou," there were probably few who did not
wish that Betterton were as young as Wilks: but when he subsequently
thundered forth the famous passage, "My heart will never fail me,"
there was a very tempest of excitement, which was carried to its
utmost height, in thundering peal on peal of unbridled approbation,
as the great Rhodian gazed full on the house, exclaiming--
"My heart
And limbs are still the same: my will as great
To do you service!"
No one doubted more than a fractional part of this assertion, and
Betterton, acting to the end under a continued fire of "_bravoes!_"
may have thrown more than the original meaning into the phrase--
"That little word was worth all the sounds
That ever I shall hear again!"
Few were the words he was destined ever to hear again; and the
subsequent prophecy of his own certain and proximate death, on which
the curtain slowly descended, was fulfilled eight and forty hours
after they were uttered.
Such was the close of a career which had commenced fifty-one years
before! Few other actors of eminence have kept the stage, with the
public favour, for so extended a period, with the exception of Cave
Underhill, Quin, Macklin, King, and in later times, Bartley and
Cooper, most of whom at least accomplished their half century. The
record of that career affords many a lesson and valuable suggestion
to young actors, but I have to say a word previously of the
Bettertons, before the brothers of that name, Thomas and the less
known William, assumed the sock and buskin.
Tothill Street, Westminster, is not at present a fine or a fragrant
locality. It has a crapulous look and a villainous smell, and petty
traders now huddle together where nobles once were largely housed.
Thomas Betterton was born here, about the year 1634-5.[29] The
street was then in its early decline, or one of King Charles's cooks
could hardly have had home in it. Nevertheless, there still clung
to it a considerable share of dignity. Even at that time there was
a Tothill Fields House of Correction, whither vagabonds were sent,
who used to earn scraps by scraping trenchers in the tents pitched
in Petty France. All else in the immediate neighbourhood retained
an air of pristine and very ancient nobility. I therefore take the
father of Betterton, cook to King Charles, to have been a very good
gentleman, in his way. He was certainly the sire of one, and the
circumstance of the apprenticeship of young Thomas to a bookseller
was no evidence to the contrary. In those days, it was the custom
for greater men than the _chefs_ in the King's kitchen, namely, the
bishops in the King's church, to apprentice their younger sons, at
least, to trade, or to bequeath sums for that especial purpose. The
last instance I can remember of this traditionary custom presents
itself in the person, not indeed of a son of a bishop, but of the
grandson of an archbishop, namely, of John Sharp, Archbishop of
York from 1691 to 1714. He had influence enough with Queen Anne to
prevent Swift from obtaining a bishopric. His son was Archdeacon of
Northumberland, and of this archdeacon's sons one was Prebendary
of Durham, while the other, the celebrated Granville Sharp, the
"friend of the Negro," was apprenticed to a linen-draper, on Tower
Hill. The early connection of Betterton, therefore, with Rhodes, the
Charing Cross bookseller, is not to be accepted as a proof that his
sire was not in a "respectable" position in society. That sire had
had for his neighbour, only half-a-dozen years before Thomas was
born, the well-known Sir Henry Spelman, who had since removed to
more cheerful quarters in Barbican. A very few years previously, Sir
George Carew resided here, in Caron House, and his manuscripts are
not very far from the spot even now. They refer to his experiences as
Lord Deputy in Ireland, and are deposited in the library at Lambeth
Palace. These great men were neighbours of the elder Betterton, and
they had succeeded to men not less remarkable. One of the latter was
Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, the friend of Spenser, and the Talus
of that poet's "Iron Flail." The Greys, indeed, had long kept house
in Tothill Street, as had also the Lords Dacre of the South. When
Betterton was born here, the locality was still full of the story of
Thomas Lord Dacre, who went thence to be hanged at Tyburn, in 1541.
He had headed a sort of Chevy-chase expedition into the private park
of Sir Nicholas Pelham, in Sussex. In the fray which ensued, a keeper
was killed, of which deed my lord took all the responsibility, and,
very much to his surprise, was hanged in consequence. The mansion
built by his son, the last lord, had not lost its first freshness
when the Bettertons resided here, and its name, _Stourton_ House,
yet survives in the corrupted form of Strutton Ground.
Thus, the Bettertons undoubtedly resided in a "fashionable" locality,
and we may fairly conclude that their title to "respectability"
has been so far established. That the street long continued to
enjoy a certain dignity is apparent from the fact that, in 1664,
when Betterton was rousing the town by his acting, as Bosola, in
Webster's "Duchess of Malfy," Sir Henry Herbert established his
office of Master of the Revels, in Tothill Street. It was not till
the next century that the decline of this street set in. Southern,
the dramatist, resided and died there, but it was in rooms over an
oilman's shop; and Edmund Burke lived modestly at the east end,
before those mysterious thousands were amassed by which he was
enabled to establish himself as a country gentleman.
Galt, and the other biographers of Betterton, complain of the paucity
of materials for the life of so great an actor. Therein is his life
told; or rather Pepys tells it more correctly in an entry in his
diary for October 1662, in which he says--"Betterton is a very sober,
serious man, and studious, and humble, following of his studies;
and is rich already with what he gets and saves." _There_ is the
great and modest artist's whole life--earnestness, labour, lack of
presumption, and the recompense. At the two ends of his career, two
competent judges pronounced him to be the best actor they had ever
seen. The two men were Pepys, who was born in the reign of Charles
I., and Pope, who died in the reign of George II. This testimony
refers to above a century, during which time the stage knew no
such player as he. Pope, indeed, notices that old critics used to
place Hart on an equality with him; this is, probably, an error for
Harris, who had a party at court among the gay people there who were
oppressed by the majesty of Betterton.[30] Pepys alludes to this
partisanship in 1663. "This fellow" (Harris), he remarks, "grew very
proud of late, the King and everybody else crying him up so high, and
that above Betterton, he being a _more aery man_, as he is, indeed."
From the day of Betterton's bright youth to that of his old age, the
sober seriousness of the "artist," for which Pepys vouches, never
left him. With the dress he assumed, for the night, the nature of
the man--be it "Hamlet" or "Thersites," "Valentine" or "Sir John
Brute," of whom he was to be the representative. In the "green-room,"
as on the stage, he was, for the time being, subdued or raised to
the quality of him whose likeness he had put on. In presence of
the audience, he was never tempted by applause to forget his part,
or himself. Once only, Pepys registers, with surprise, an incident
which took place at the representation of "Mustapha," in 1667. It was
"bravely acted," he says, "only both Betterton and Harris could not
contain from laughing, in the midst of a most serious part, from the
ridiculous mistake of one of the men upon the stage; which I did not
like."
Then for his humility, I find the testimony of Pepys sufficiently
corroborated. It may have been politic in him, as a young man, to
repair to Mr. Cowley's lodgings in town, and ask from that author his
particular views with regard to the Colonel Jolly in the "Cutter of
Coleman Street," which had been intrusted to the young actor; but the
politic humility of 1661 was, in fact, the practised modesty of his
life. In the very meridian of his fame, he, and Mrs. Barry also, were
as ready to take instruction respecting the characters of Jaffier and
Belvidera, from poor battered Otway, as they subsequently were from
that very fine gentleman, Mr. Congreve, when they were cast for the
hero and heroine of his comedies. Even to bombastic Rowe, who hardly
knew his own reasons for language put on the lips of his characters,
they listened with deference; and, at another period, "Sir John and
Lady Brute" were not undertaken by them till they had conferred with
the author, solid Vanbrugh.
The mention of these last personages reminds me of a domestic
circumstance of interest respecting Betterton. He and Mrs. Barry
acted the principal characters in "The Provoked Wife;" the part of
Lady Fancyfull was played by Mrs. Bowman. This young lady was the
adopted child of the Bettertons, and the daughter of a friend (Sir
Frederick Watson, Bart.) whose indiscretion or ill-luck had scattered
that fortune the laying of the foundation of which is recorded by
Pepys. To the sire Betterton had intrusted the bulk of his little
wealth as a commercial venture to the East Indies. A ruinous failure
ensued, and I know of nothing which puts the private life of the
actor in so pleasing a light, as the fact of his adopting the child
of the wholly ruined man who had nearly ruined _him_. He gave her all
he had to bestow, careful instruction in his art; and the lady became
an actress of merit. This merit, added to considerable personal
charms, won for her the homage of Bowman, a player who became, in
course of time, the father of the stage, though he never grew,
confessedly, old. In after years, he would converse freely enough
of his wife and her second father, Betterton; but if you asked the
carefully-dressed Mr. Bowman anything with respect to his age, no
other reply was to be had from him than--"Sir, it is very well!"
From what has been previously stated, it will be readily believed
that the earnestness of Betterton continued to the last. Severely
disciplined, as he had been by Davenant, he subjected himself to the
same discipline to the very close; and he was not pleased to see it
disregarded or relaxed by younger actors whom late and gay "last
nights" brought ill and incompetent to rehearsal. Those actors might
have reaped valuable instruction out of the harvest of old Thomas's
experience and wisdom, had they been so minded.
Young actors of the present time--time when pieces run for months
and years; when authors prescribe the extent of the run of their
own dramas, and when nothing is "damned" by a patient public--our
young actors have little idea of the labours undergone by the
great predecessors who gave glory to the stage and dignity to the
profession. Not only was Betterton's range of characters unlimited,
but the number he "created" was never equalled by any subsequent
actor of eminence--namely, about one hundred and thirty! In some
single seasons he studied and represented no less than eight original
parts--an amount of labour which would shake the nerves of the
stoutest among us now.
His brief relaxation was spent on his little Berkshire farm, whence
he once took a rustic to Bartholomew Fair for a holiday. The master
of the puppet-show declined to take money for admission--"Mr.
Betterton," he said, "is a brother actor!" Roger, the rustic, was
slow to believe that the puppets were not alive; and so similar in
vitality appeared to him, on the same night, at Drury Lane, the
Jupiter and Alcmena in "Amphitryon," played by Betterton and Mrs.
Barry, that on being asked what he thought of them, Roger, taking
them for puppets, answered, "They did wonderfully well for rags and
sticks."
Provincial engagements were then unknown. Travelling companies, like
that of Watkins, visited Bath, a regular company from town going
thither only on royal command; but magistrates ejected strollers
from Newbury; and Reading would not tolerate them, even out of
respect for Mr. Betterton. At Windsor, however, there was a troop
fairly patronised, where, in 1706, a Mistress Carroll, daughter of
an old Parliamentarian, was awakening shrill echoes by enacting
Alexander the Great. The lady was a friend of Betterton's, who had
in the previous year created the part of Lovewell in her comedy of
the "Gamester." The powers of Mrs. Carroll had such an effect on
Mr. Centlivre, one of the cooks to Queen Anne, that he straightway
married her; and when, a few months later, Betterton played Sir
Thomas Beaumont, in the lady's comedy, "Love at a Venture,"[31] his
friend, a royal cook's wife, furnished but an indifferent part for a
royal cook's son.
In other friendships cultivated by the great actor, and in the
influences which he exerted over the most intellectual men who were
his friends, we may discover proofs of Betterton's moral worth and
mental power. Glorious Thomas not only associated with "Glorious
John," but became his critic,--one to whom Dryden listened with
respect, and to whose suggestions he lent a ready acquiescence.
In the poet's "Spanish Friar," there was a passage which spoke of
kings' bad titles growing good by time; a supposed fact which was
illustrated by the lines--
"So, when clay's burned for a hundred years,
It starts forth china!"
The player fearlessly pronounced this passage "_mean_," and it was
forthwith cancelled by the poet.
Intimate as this incident shows Betterton to have been with Dryden,
there are others which indicate a closer intimacy of the player with
Tillotson. The divine was a man who placed charity above rubrics,
and discarded bigotry as he did perukes. He could extend a friendly
hand to the benevolent Arian, Firmin, and welcome, even after he
entered the archiepiscopal palace at Lambeth, such a visitor as
the great actor Betterton. Did objection come from the rigid and
ultra-orthodox?--the prelate might have reminded them that it was
not so long since a bishop was hanged, and that the player was a far
more agreeable and, in every respect, a worthier man than the unlucky
diocesan of Waterford. However this may be questioned or conceded, it
is indisputable that when Tillotson and Betterton met, the greatest
preacher and the greatest player of the day were together. I think,
too, that the divine was, in the above respect, somewhat indebted
to the actor. We all remember the story how Tillotson was puzzled
to account for the circumstance that his friend the actor exercised
a vaster power over human sympathies and antipathies than he had
hitherto done as a preacher. The reason was plain enough to Thomas
Betterton. "You, in the pulpit," said he, "only tell a story: I, on
the stage, show facts." Observe, too, what a prettier way this was
of putting it than that adopted by Garrick when one of his clerical
friends was similarly perplexed. "I account for it in this way," said
the latter Roscius: "You deal with facts as if they were fictions; I
deal with fictions as if I had faith in them as facts." Again, what
Betterton thus remarked to Tillotson was a modest comment, which
Colley Cibber has rendered perfect in its application, in the words
which tell us that "the most a Vandyke can arrive at is to make his
Portraits of Great Persons seem to _think_. A Shakspeare goes farther
yet, and tells you _what_ his Pictures thought. A Betterton steps
beyond 'em both, and calls them from the grave, to breathe and be
themselves again in Feature, Speech, and Motion." That Tillotson
profited by the comment of Betterton--more gracefully than Bossuet
did by the actors, whom he consigned, as such, to the nethermost
Gehenna--is the more easily to be believed, from the fact that he
introduced into the pulpit the custom of preaching from notes.
Thenceforth, he left off "telling his story," as from a book, and,
having action at command, could the nearer approach to the "acting of
facts."
"_Virgilium tantum vidi!_" Pope said this of Dryden, whom he once
saw when a boy. He was wont to say of Betterton, that he had known
him from his own boyhood upwards, till the actor died, in 1710, when
the poet was twenty-two years of age. The latter listened eagerly to
the old traditions which the player narrated of the earlier times.
Betterton was warrant to him, on the authority of Davenant, from whom
the actor had it, that there was no foundation for the old legend
which told of an ungenerous rivalry between Shakspeare and Old Ben.
The player who had been as fearless with Dryden as Socrates was with
his friend Euripides--"judiciously lopping" redundant nonsense or
false and mean maxims, as Dryden himself confesses--was counsellor,
rather than critic or censor, with young Pope. The latter, at the
age of twelve years, had written the greater portion of an imitative
epic poem, entitled _Alcander, Prince of Rhodes_. I commend to
artists in search of a subject the incident of Pope, at fifteen or
sixteen, showing this early effort of his Muse to Betterton. It was
a poem which abounded in dashing exaggerations, and fair imitations
of the styles of the then greater English poets. There was a dramatic
vein about it, however, or the player would not have advised the bard
to convert his poem into a play. The lad excused himself. He feared
encountering either the law of the drama or the taste of the town;
and Betterton left him to his own unfettered way. The actor lived to
see that the boy was the better judge of his own powers, for young
Pope produced his _Essay on Criticism_ the year before Betterton
died. A few years later the poet rendered any possible fulfilment
of the player's counsel impossible, by dropping the manuscript of
_Alcander_ into the flames. Atterbury had less esteem for this work
than Betterton. "I am not sorry your _Alcander_ is burnt," he says;
"but had I known your intentions I would have interceded for the
first page, and put it, with your leave, among my curiosities."
Pope remembered the player with affection. For some time after
Betterton's decease the print-shops abounded with mezzotinto
engravings of his portrait by Kneller. Of this portrait the poet
himself executed a copy, which still exists. His friendly intercourse
with the half-mad Irish artist, Jervas, is well known. When alone,
Pope was the poet; with Jervas, and under his instructions, he
became an artist--in his way, but yet an artist--if a copier of
portraits deserves so lofty a name. In 1713, he writes to Gay:--"You
may guess in how uneasy state I am, when every day the performances
of others appear more beautiful and excellent, and my own more
despicable. I have thrown away three Dr. Swifts, each of which
was once my vanity, two Lady Bridgewaters, a Duchess of Montague,
half-a-dozen Earls, and one Knight of the Garter." He perfected,
however, and kept his portrait of Betterton, from Kneller, which
passed into the collection of his friend Murray, and which is now in
that of Murray's descendant, the Earl of Mansfield.
Kneller's portrait of Betterton is enshrined among goodly company at
princely Knole--the patrimony of the Sackvilles. It is there, with
that of his fellow-actor, Mohun, his friend Dryden, and his great
successor Garrick--the latter being the work of Reynolds. The grand
old Kentish Hall is a fitting place for such a brotherhood.
This master of his art had the greatest esteem for a _silent_ and
_attentive_ audience. It was easy, he used to say, for any player
to rouse the house, but to subdue it, render it rapt and hushed to,
at the most, a murmur, was work for an artist; and in such effects
no one approached him. And yet the rage of Othello was more "in his
line" than the tenderness of Castalio; but he touched the audience
in his rage. Harris competed with him for a brief period, but if he
ever excelled him it was only in very light comedy. The dignity
and earnestness of Betterton were so notorious and so attractive,
that people flocked only to hear him speak a prologue, while brother
actors looked on, admired, and despaired.
Age, trials, infirmity, never damped his ardour. Even angry and
unsuccessful authors, who railed against the players who had brought
their dramas to grief, made exception of Betterton. He was always
ready, always perfect, always anxious to effect the utmost within his
power. Among the foremost of his merits may be noticed his freedom
from all jealousy, and his willingness to assist others up the
height which he had himself surmounted. That he played Bassanio to
Dogget's Shylock is, perhaps, not saying much by way of illustration;
but that he acted Horatio to Powell's Lothario; that he gave up
Jupiter (Amphitryon) and Valentine, two of his original parts, to
Wilks, and even yielded Othello, one of the most elaborate and
exquisite of his "presentments," to Thurmond, _are_ fair instances
in point. When Bowman introduced young Barton Booth to "old Thomas,"
the latter welcomed him heartily, and after seeing his Maximus,
in "Valentinian," recognised in him his successor. At that moment
the town, speculating on the demise of their favourite, had less
discernment. They did not know whether Verbruggen, with his voice
like a cracked drum, or idle Powell, with his lazy stage-swing,
might aspire to the sovereignty; but they were slow to believe in
Booth, who was not the only young actor who was shaded in the setting
glories of the sun of the English theatre.
When Colley Cibber first appeared before a London audience he was a
"volunteer" who went in for practice; and he had the misfortune, on
one occasion, to put the great master out by some error on his own
part. Betterton subsequently inquired the young man's name and the
amount of his salary; and hearing that the former was Cibber, and
that, as yet, he received nothing, "Put him down ten shillings a
week," said Betterton, "and forfeit him five." Colley was delighted.
It was placing his foot on the first round of the ladder; and his
respect for "Mr. Betterton" was unbounded. Indeed there were few
who did not pay him some homage. The King himself delighted to
honour him. Charles, James, Queen Mary, and Queen Anne, sent him
assurances of their admiration; but King William admitted him to a
private audience, and when the patentees of Drury Lane were, through
lack of general patronage, suggesting the expediency of a reduction
of salaries, great Nassau placed in the hands of Betterton the
licence which freed him from the thraldom of the Drury tyrants, and
authorised him to open the second theatre erected in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. Next to his most sacred Majesty, perhaps the most formidable
personage in the kingdom, in the eyes of the actors, was the Lord
Chamberlain, who was master of the very lives of the performers,
having the absolute control of the stage whereby they lived. This
potentate, however, seemed ever to favour Betterton. When unstable,
yet useful, Powell suddenly abandoned Drury Lane, to join the company
in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Chamberlain did not deign to notice the
offence; but when, all as suddenly, the capricious and unreliable
Powell abandoned the house in the Fields, and betook himself again
to that in the Lane--the angry Lord Chamberlain sent a "messenger"
after him to his lodgings, and clapped the unoffending Thespian, for
a couple of days, in the Gate House.
While Powell was with Betterton, the latter produced the "Fair
Penitent," by Rowe, Mrs. Barry being the Calista. When the dead
body of Lothario was lying decently covered on the stage, Powell's
dresser, Warren, lay there for his master, who, requiring the
services of the man in his dressing-room, and not remembering
where he was, called aloud for him so repeatedly, and at length so
angrily, that Warren leapt up in a fright, and ran from the stage.
His cloak, however, had got hooked to the bier, and this he dragged
after him, sweeping down, as he dashed off in his confusion, table,
lamps, books, bones, and upsetting the astounded Calista herself.
Irrepressible laughter convulsed the audience, but Betterton's
reverence for the dignity of tragedy was shocked, and he stopped the
piece in its full career of success, until the town had ceased to
think of Warren's escapade.
I know of but one man who has spoken of Betterton at all
disparagingly--old Anthony Aston. But even that selfish cynic is
constrained so to modify his censure as to convert it into praise.
When Betterton was approaching threescore years and ten, Anthony
could have wished that he "would have resigned the part of Hamlet
to some young actor who might have _personated_, though," mark the
distinction, "_not have acted it better_." Aston's grounds for his
wish are so many justifications of Betterton; "for," says Anthony,
"when he threw himself at Ophelia's feet, he appeared a little too
grave for a young student just from the University of Wittenberg."
"His repartees," Anthony thinks, "were more those of a philosopher
than the sporting flashes of young Hamlet;" as if Hamlet were not the
gravest of students, and the most philosophical of young Danes! Aston
caricatures the aged actor only again to commend him. He depreciates
the figure which time had touched, magnifies the defects, registers
the lack of power, and the slow sameness of action; hints at a little
remains of paralysis, and at gout in the now thick legs, profanely
utters the words "fat" and "clumsy," and suggests that the face is
"slightly pock-marked." But we are therewith told that his air was
serious, venerable, and majestic; and that though his voice was "low
and grumbling, he could turn it by an artful climax which enforced
an universal attention even from the fops and orange-girls." Cibber
declares that there was such enchantment in his voice alone, the
multitude no more cared for sense in the words he spoke, "than our
musical connoisseurs think it essential in the celebrated airs of
an Italian Opera." Again, he says, "Could _how_ Betterton spoke be
as easily known as _what_ he spoke, then might you see the Muse of
Shakspeare in her triumph." "I never," says honest Colley, "heard a
line in tragedy come from _Betterton_, wherein my judgment, my ear,
and my imagination were not fully satisfied, which, since his time,
I cannot equally say of any one actor whatsoever." This was written
in 1740, the year before little David took up the rich inheritance
of "old Thomas"--whose Hamlet, however, the latter actor could
hardly have equalled. The next great pleasure to seeing Betterton's
Hamlet is to read Cibber's masterly analysis of it. A couple of
lines reveal to us the leading principle of his Brutus. "When the
Betterton-Brutus," says Colley, "was provoked in his dispute with
Cassius, his spirit flew only to his eye; his steady look alone
supplied that terror which he disdained an intemperance in his voice
should rise to." In his least effective characters, he, with an
exception already noted, excelled all other actors; but in characters
such as Hamlet and Othello he excelled himself. Cibber never beheld
his equal for at least two-and-thirty years after Betterton's
death, when, in 1741, court and city, with doctors of divinity and
enthusiastic bishops, were hurrying to Goodman's Fields, to witness
the Richard of the gentleman from Ipswich, named Garrick.
During the long career of Betterton he played at Drury Lane, Dorset
Gardens, Lincoln's Inn Fields (in both theatres), and at the
Opera-house in the Haymarket. The highest salary awarded to this
great master of his art was £5 per week, which included £1 by way of
pension to his wife, after her retirement in 1694. In consideration
of his merits, he was allowed to take a benefit in the season of
1708-9, when the actor had an ovation. In money for admission, he
received, indeed, only £76; but in complimentary guineas, he took
home with him to Russell Street £450 more. The terms in which the
_Tatler_ spoke of him living,--the tender and affectionate, manly
and heart-stirring passages in which the same writer bewailed him
when dead,--are eloquent and enduring testimonies of the greatness
of an actor, who was the glory of our stage, and of the worth of a
man whose loss cost his sorrowing widow her reason.[32] "_Decus et
Dolor._" "The grace and the grief of the theatre." It is well applied
to him who laboured incessantly, lived irreproachably, and died in
harness, universally esteemed and regretted. He was the jewel of the
English stage; and I never think of him, and of some to whom his
example was given in vain, without saying, with Overbury, "I value a
worthy actor by the corruption of some few of the quality, as I would
do gold in the ore; I should not mind the dross, but the purity of
the metal."
The feeling of the English public towards Betterton is in strong
contrast with that of the French towards their great actor, Baron.
Both men grew old in the public service, but both were not treated
with equal respect in the autumn of that service. Betterton, at
seventy, was upheld by general esteem and crowned by general
applause. When Baron, at seventy, was playing Nero, the Paris pit
audience, longing for novelty, hissed him as he came down the stage.
The fine old player calmly crossed his arms, and looking his rude
assailants in the face, exclaimed, "Ungrateful pit! 'twas I who
taught you!" That was the form of Baron's _exit_; and Clairon was as
cruelly driven from the scene when her dimming eyes failed to stir
the audience with the old, strange, and delicious terror. In other
guise did the English public part with their old friend and servant,
the noble actor, fittingly described in the licence granted to him by
King William, as "Thomas Betterton, Gentleman."
[Illustration: Mr. Garrick as King Lear.]
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Malone gives the date of his baptism as 11th August 1635.
[30] I see no reason to doubt that Hart rather than Harris was the
rival in question. Hart was an older actor than Betterton, and he
and Mohun were the supports of the old school, which its admirers
pronounced infinitely superior to that of Betterton. See, for
instance, the _Historia Histrionica_.
[31] Should be Sir Thomas Beaumont in "The Platonic Lady."
[32] It is generally implied, if not stated outright, that Mrs.
Betterton never recovered her reason after her husband's death; but
this seems an error, because she made a Will, which is dated 10th
March 1711-12, when she was presumably sane.
[Illustration: THE DUKE'S THEATRE, DORSET GARDEN.]