THE AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Speedily after the Restoration, there was no more constant visitor
at the theatre than Charles II., with a gay, and what is called a
gallant, gathering. Thus we are arrested by a crowd at the Temple
Gate. On the 15th of August 1661, Charles and the Duke and Duchess
of York are leaving the apartments of the Reader, Sir Henry Finch,
with whom they have been dining, and an eager audience is awaiting
them in the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, where "The Wits" is to be
represented,--a piece "never yet acted," says Pepys, "with scenes."
Two nights later, the same piece is playing, and the Queen of
Bohemia is there, "brought by my Lord Craven," whom some do not
scruple to speak of as the ex-Queen's husband. A week later, Charles
and "Madame Palmer" were at the theatre in Drury Lane, with the
Duke of York and his wife. "My wife," says Pepys, "to her great
content had a full sight of them all the while." The King's Madame
Palmer became, in fact, an attraction; seated between Charles and
his brother, Pepys beheld her a few weeks later, when he and his
wife escorted Lord Sandwich's young daughters to the theatre, and
obtained places close to Madame and her double escort. The play was
Johnson's "Bartholomew Fair," with the puppets, and all its virulent
satire against the Puritans. As Pepys listened and remembered that
no one had dared to bring forward this slashing play for the last
forty years, he wondered at the audacity of managers now, and grieved
that the King should countenance it. But what recked the laughing
King, when Puritanism was in the dust, and troops of cavaliers were
singing, "Up go we?"
Occasionally, if Pepys witnesses a play ill-acted, he finds
compensation in sitting near some "pretty and ingenious lady."
At that time oranges were more costly than pines are now, and to
offer one of the former, even to an unknown fair neighbour, was an
intimation of a readiness on the part of the presenter to open a
conversation. To behold his most sacred Majesty seated in his box was
for ever, with Pepys, even a stronger attraction than the eyes or
the wit of the fairest and sprightliest of ladies. Again and again,
he registers a vow to refrain from resorting to the theatre during a
certain period, but he no sooner hears of the presence there of his
religious and gracious King, than he breaks his vow, rushes to the
play, perjures himself out of loyal courtesy, and next morning writes
himself down an ass.
At the Cockpit in Drury Lane, Charles's consort, Catherine, was
exhibited to the English people for the first time on an autumn
afternoon of 1662, when Shirley's "Cardinal" was represented. Pepys,
of course, was there too, and reproduces the scene: "By very good
fortune, I did follow four or five gentlemen who were carried to a
little private door in a wall, and so crept through a narrow place,
and came into one of the boxes next the King's, but so as I could
not see the King or Queen, but many of the fine ladies, who are not
really so handsome generally, as I used to take them to be, but that
they are finely dressed. The company that come in with me into the
box were all Frenchmen that could speak no English; but, Lord, what
sport they made to ask a pretty lady that they got among them, that
understood both French and English, to make her tell them what the
actors said!"
Soon after this, in dreary November, there is again a crowded
audience to greet the King and Queen, with whom now appears the
Castlemaine, once more, and near her Lucy Walter's boy, the Duke of
Monmouth, all beauty and pretty assurance; and Pepys sees no harm in
a company who have come together to witness a comedy whose name might
well describe the look and bearing of the outraged Queen, namely,
the "Scornful Lady." No wonder that, in December, at the tragedy of
"The Valiant Cid," she did not smile once during the whole play.[70]
But nobody present on that occasion seemed to take any pleasure but
what was in the greatness and gallantry of the company.
That greatness and that gallantry were the idols of the diarist.
With what scorn he talks of the audience at the Duke's Theatre a
few days later, when the "Siege of Rhodes" was represented. He was
ill-pleased. The house was "full of _citizens_!" "There was hardly,"
says the fastidious son of an honest tailor, "a gallant man or
woman in the house!" So, in January 1663, at the same theatre, he
records that "it was full of citizens, and so the less pleasant."
The Duke's House was less "genteel" than the Cockpit; but the royal
visitors at the latter were not much more refined in their manners
than the audience in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or Salisbury Court. Early
in January 1663, the Duke of York and his wife honoured a play of
Killigrew's by their presence, and did not much edify the spectators
by their conduct. "They did show," writes the immortal journalist,
"some impertinent and methought unnatural dalliances there, before
the whole world, such as kissing of hands, and leaning upon one
another."
But there were worse scenes than these conjugal displays at the
King's House. When Pepys was dying to obtain the only prize in all
the world he desired, Lady Castlemaine's picture, that bold person
was beginning to lose, at once, both her beauty and her place of
favour with the King. Pepys was immensely grieved, for she was
always more to him than the play and players to boot. He had reason,
however, to be satisfied that she had not lost her boldness. In
January, 1664, the "Indian Queen" was played at the King's House, in
Drury Lane. Lady Castlemaine was present before the King arrived.
When he entered his box, the Countess leaned over some ladies who
sat between her and the royal box, and whispered to Charles. Having
been thus bold in face of the audience, she arose, left her own box
and appeared in the King's, where she deliberately took a place
between Charles and his brother. It was not the King alone but the
whole audience with him who were put out of countenance by this cool
audacity, exhibited to prove that she was not so much out of favour
as the world believed.
What a contrast is presented by the appearance of Cromwell's
daughter, Lady Mary, in her box at this same theatre, with her
husband, Viscount Falconbridge! Pepys praises her looks and her
dress, and suggests a modest embarrassment on her part, as the
house began to fill, and the admiring spectators began to gaze too
curiously on Oliver's loved child; "she put on her vizard, and so
kept it on all the play, which of late has become a great fashion
among the ladies, which hides their whole face."
Mary Cromwell, modestly masked, was a prettier sight than what Pepys
on other occasion describes as "all the pleasure of the play;"
meaning thereby, the presence of Lady Castlemaine, or of Miss
Stewart, her rival in royal favour, but not her equal in peerless
beauty. With these, but in less exalted company than they, we now
meet with Nell Gwyn, in front of the house. She is seen gossiping
with Pepys, who is ecstatic at the condescension; or she is blazing
in the boxes, prattling with the young and scented fops, and
impudently lying across any three of them, that she may converse
as she pleases with a fourth. And there is Sir Charles Sedley
looking on, smiling with or at the actors of these scenes, among
the audience, or sharply and wittily criticising the players on the
stage, and the words put into their mouths by the author, or flirting
with vizard masks in the pit. Altogether, there is much confusion and
interruption; but there is also, occasionally, disturbance of another
sort, as when, in June 1664, a storm of hail and rain broke through
the roof of the Kings House, and drove the half-drowned people from
the pit in a disorder not at all admired.
Like Evelyn, Pepys was often at the Court plays, but, except with the
spectacle of the Queen's ladies, and the King's too, for that matter,
he found small delight there,--the house, although fine, being bad
for hearing. This Court patronage, public and private, increased
the popularity of the drama, as the vices of the King increased the
fashion of being dissolute; and when Charles was sadly in need of a
collecting of members of parliament to throw out a bill which very
much annoyed him, and was carried against him, he bade the Lord
Chamberlain to scour the play and other houses, where he knew his
parliamentary friends were to be found, and to send them down to vote
in favour of their graceless master.
Ladies of quality, and of good character, too, could in those days
appear in masks in the boxes, and unattended. The vizard had not
yet fallen to the disreputable. Such ladies as are above designated
entered into struggles of wit with the fine gentlemen, bantering
them unmercifully, calling them by their names, and refusing to tell
their own. All this was to the disturbance of the stage, but this
battle of the wits was so frequently more amusing than what might be
passing for the moment on the stage, that the audience near listened
to the disputants rather than to the actors. Sir Charles Sedley was
remarkable as a disputant with the ladies, and as a critic of the
players. That the overhearing of what was said by the most famous
of the box visitors was a pleasant pastime of many hearers, is made
manifest by Pepys, who once took his place on "the upper bench next
the boxes," and described it as having "the advantage of seeing and
hearing the great people, which may be pleasant when there is good
store."
To no man then living in England did fellowship with people of
quality convey such intense delight as to Pepys. "Lord!" he exclaims,
in May 1667, "how it went against my heart to go away from the very
door of the Duke's playhouse, and my Lady Castlemaine's coach, and
many great coaches there, to see 'The Siege of Rhodes.' I was very
near making a forfeit," he adds, "but I did command myself."
He was happiest with a baronet like Sir Philip Frowd at his side, and
behind him a couple of impertinently pretty actresses, like Pierce
and Knipp, pulling his hair, drawing him into gossiping flirtations,
and inducing him to treat them with fruit. The constant presence of
lively actresses in the front of the house was one of the features
of the times, and a dear delight to Pepys, who was never weary of
admiring their respective beauties.
Proud as he was of sitting, for the first time in his life, in a
box, at four shillings, he still saw the pit occupied by greater
men than any around him, particularly on the first night of a new
piece. When Etherege's comedy, "She Would if She Could," was first
played, in February 1668, to one of the most crowded, critical, and
discontented audiences that had ever assembled in the Duke's House,
the pit was brilliant with peers, gallants, and wits. There, openly,
sat Buckingham, and Buckhurst, and Sedley, and the author, with many
more; and there went on, as the audience waited till the pelting
rain outside had ceased to fall, comment and counter-comment on the
merits of the piece and of the actors. Etherege found fault with the
players, but the public as loudly censured the piece, condemning it
as silly and insipid, but allowing it to possess a certain share of
wit and roguishness.
From an entry in the _Diary_ for the 21st of December 1668, we learn
that Lady Castlemaine had a _double_, who used to appear at the
theatre to the annoyance of my lady and the amusement of her royal
friend. Indeed, here is a group of illustrations of the "front of the
stage;" the house is the Duke's, the play "Macbeth." "The King and
Court there, and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine, and
close to a woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose gossip
that pretends to be like her, and is so, something. The King and Duke
of York minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me,
but it vexed me to see Moll Davies, in a box over the King's and my
Lady Castlemaine's, look down upon the King, and he up to her; and
so did my Lady Castlemaine once, to see who it was; but when she saw
Moll Davies, she looked like fire, which troubled me."
To these audiences were presented dramatic pieces of a very
reprehensible quality. Charles II. has been more blamed than any
other individual because of this licentiousness of the stage. I have
before ventured to intimate, that the long-accepted idea that the
court of Charles II. corrupted English society, and that it did so
especially through patronising the licentiousness of poets and the
stage, seems to me to be untenable. From of old there had been a
corrupt society, and a society protesting against the corruption.
Before Charles made his first visit to the theatre, there was lying
in Newgate the ex-Royalist, but subsequently Puritan poet, George
Wither. In the dedication of his HALLELUJAH, in 1641, he thus
describes the contemporary condition of society:--"So innumerable are
the foolish and profane songs now delighted in, to the dishonour of
our language and religion, that hallelujahs and pious meditations
are almost out of use and fashion; yea, not at private only, but at
our public feasts, and civil meetings also, scurrilous and obscene
songs are impudently sung, without respecting the reverend presence
of matrons, virgins, magistrates or divines. Nay, sometimes in their
despite they are called for, sung, and acted, with such abominable
gesticulations, as are very offensive to all modest hearers and
beholders, and fitting only to be exhibited at the diabolical
assemblies of Bacchus, Venus, or Priapus."
In the collection of hymns, under this title of HALLELUJAH, there
is a hymn for every condition in and circumstance of life, from the
King to the Tailor; from a hymn for the use of two ardent lovers, to
a spiritual song of grateful resignation "for a Widower or a Widow
deprived of a troublesome Yokefellow!" There is none for the player;
but there is this hit at the poets, who supplied him with unseemly
phrases, and the flattering friends who crowned such bards:--
"Blasphemous fancies are infused,
All holy new things are expell'd,
He that hath most profanely mused,
Is famed as having most excelled:
Such are those poets in these days,
Who vent the fumes of lust and wine,
Then crown each others' heads with bays,
As if their poems were divine."
Against the revived fashion of licentious plays, some of the wisest
men among theatrical audiences protested loudly. No man raised his
voice with greater urgency than Evelyn. Within six years of the
Restoration, he, who was in frequency of playgoing only second
to Pepys, but as sharp an observer and a graver censor than the
Admiralty clerk, addressed a letter to Lord Cornbury on this
important subject. The letter was written a few weeks previous
to the Lent season of 1665, and the writer mourns over a scandal
less allowed in any city of Christendom, than in the metropolis of
England, namely--"the frequency of our theatrical pastimes during
the indiction of Lent. Here in London," he says, "there were more
wicked and obscene plays permitted than in all the world besides.
At Paris three days, at Rome two weekly, and at the other cities,
Florence, Venice, &c., only at certain jolly periods of the year, and
that not without some considerable emolument to the public, while
our interludes here are every day alike; so as the ladies and the
gallants come reeking from the play _late on Saturday night_" (was
Saturday then a fashionable day for late performances?) "to their
Sunday devotions; and the ideas of the farce possess their fancies
to the infinite prejudice of devotion, besides the advantages it
gives to our reproachful blasphemers." Evelyn, however, does not
pursue his statement to a logical conclusion. He proposes to close
the houses on Friday and Saturday, or to represent plays on these
nights only for the benefit of paupers in or out of the workhouses.
Remembering rather the actresses who disgraced womanhood, than such
an exemplary and reproachless pair as Betterton and his wife, he
recommends robbery of the "debauched comedians," as he calls them,
without scruple. What if they be despoiled of a hundred or so a
year? They will still enjoy more than they were ever born to; and the
sacrifice, he quaintly says, will consecrate their scarce allowable
impertinences. He adds, with a seriousness which implies his censure
of the royal approval of the bad taste which had brought degradation
on the stage--"Plays are now with us become a licentious excess, and
a vice, and need severe censors, that should look as well to their
morality as to their lines and numbers."
This grave and earnest censor, however, allowed himself to be
present at stage representations which he condemns. He objects but
does not refrain. He witnesses masques at Court, and says little;
enjoys his play, and denounces the enjoyment, in his diary, when
he reaches home. He has as acute an eye on the behaviour of the
ladies, especially among the audience, as for what is being uttered
on the stage. "I saw the tragedy of 'Horace,'" he tells us, in
February 1668, "written by the _virtuous_ Mrs. Phillips, acted before
their Majesties. Betwixt each act a masque and antique dance."
Then speaking of the audience, where the King's "lady" was wont to
outblaze the King's "wife," he adds:--"The excessive gallantry of
the ladies was infinite: those especially on that ... Castlemaine,
esteemed at £40,000 and more, far outshining the Queen." Later in the
year he is at a new play of Dryden's, "with several of my relations."
He describes the plot as "foolish, and very profane. It afflicted
me," he continues, "to see how the stage was degenerated and polluted
by the licentious times."
When forming part of the audience, by invitation of the Lord
Chamberlain, at the Court plays, at Whitehall, in September 1666,
Evelyn uses as freely his right of judgment. He sat ill at ease
in the public theatres, because they were abused, he says, "to
an atheistical liberty." The invitation to see Lord Broghill's
"Mustapha" played before the King and Queen, in presence of
a splendid court, was a command. Evelyn attended; but as he
looked around, he bethought him of the London that was lying in
charred ruins, and he sorrowingly records his disapproval of "any
such pastime in a time of such judgments and calamities." With
better times come weaker censures on these amusements; and the
representation of the "Conquest of Granada," at Whitehall in 1671,
wins his admiration for the "very glorious scenes and perspectives,
the work of Mr. Streeter, who well understands it." In the following
year, although not frequenting court plays, he takes a whole bevy of
maids of honour _from_ court to the play. Among them was one of whom
he makes especial mention, on account of her many and extraordinary
virtues, which had gained his especial esteem. This grave maid, among
the two vivacious ladies whom Evelyn 'squired to an afternoon's play,
was Mistress Blagg, better known to us from Evelyn's graceful sketch
of her life, as Mrs. Godolphin.
Mrs. Blagg was herself not the less a lovely actress for being a
discreet and virtuous young lady. In 1675[71] Evelyn saw her act in
Crowne's masque-comedy, "Calisto, or the Chaste Nymph." His friend
acted in a noble but mixed company--all ladies--namely, the Ladies
Mary and Anne, afterwards Queens of England, the Lady Henrietta
Wentworth, afterwards the evilly-impelled favourite of the Duke of
Monmouth, and Miss Jennings, subsequently the sharp-witted wife of
the great Duke of Marlborough. There were others of less note, with
professional actresses to aid them, while a corps-de-ballet of peers
and nymphs of greater or less repute, danced between the acts. For
the piece, or for the interludes, Evelyn had less admiration than
he had for Mrs. Blagg's splendour. She had about her, he informs
us, £20,000 worth of jewels, of which she had lost one worth about
£80, borrowed of the Countess of Suffolk. "The press was so great,"
he adds, "that it is a wonder she lost no more;" and the intimation
that "the Duke" (of York) "made it good," shows that Mrs. Blagg was
fortunate in possessing the esteem of that not too liberal prince.
The entire stage arrangements at Whitehall were not invariably
of a liberal character, and the audiences must have had, on some
occasions, an uncourtly aspect; "people giving money to come in," he
writes in this same year 1675, "which was very scandalous, and never
so before at Court-diversions."
Of the turbulence of audiences in those days, there are many
evidences on record. It was sometimes provoked, at others altogether
unjustifiable, and always more savage than humorous. In 1669, Mrs.
Corey gratified Lady Castlemaine, by giving an imitation of Lady
Harvey, throughout the whole of the part of Sempronia, in "Catiline's
Conspiracy." Lady Harvey, much excited, had influence enough with
her brother, Edward Montagu, Lord Chamberlain, to induce him to
lock Mrs. Corey up, for her impertinence. On the other hand, Lady
Castlemaine had still greater influence with the King; and not only
was Mrs. Corey released, but she was "ordered to act it again, worse
than ever." Doll Common, as the actress was called, for her ability
in playing that part in the "Alchymist," repeated the imitation,
with the required extravagance, but not without opposition; for Lady
Harvey had hired a number of persons, some of whom hissed Doll, while
others pelted her with fruit, and the King looked on the while,
amazed at the contending factions, whose quarrels subsequently
brought him much weariness in the settling.
Then, again, much disturbance often arose from noisy, financial
squabbles. It was a custom to return the price of admission to all
persons who left the theatre before the close of the first act.
Consequently, many shabby persons were wont to force their way in
without paying, on the plea that they did not intend to remain beyond
the time limited. Thence much noisy remonstrance on the part of the
door-keepers, who followed them into the house; and therewith such
derangement of the royal comfort, that a special decree was issued,
commanding payment to be made on entering; but still allowing the
patron of the drama to recover his money, if he withdrew on or before
the close of the first act.
But there were greater scandals than these. On the 2d of February
1679, there is a really awful commotion, and imminent peril to
house and audience, at the Duke's Theatre. The King's French
favourite, the Duchess of Portsmouth, is blazing with rouge,
diamonds, and shamelessness, in the most conspicuous seat in the
house. Some tipsy gentlemen in the street hard by, hear of her
wit and handsome presence, and the morality of these drunkards is
straightway incensed. The house is panic-stricken at seeing these
virtuous Goths rushing into the pit, with drawn swords in one
hand--flaming, smoking, ill-smelling torches, in the other; and with
vituperative cries against "the Duchess of Portsmouth, and other
persons of honour." The rioters, not satisfied with thrusting their
rapiers at the arms, sides, and legs of the affrighted people in the
pit, hurl their blazing torches among the astounded actors on the
stage! A panic and a general flight ensue. The house is saved from
destruction; but as it is necessary to punish somebody, the King
satisfies his sense of justice by pressing hard upon the innocent
actors, and shutting up the house during the royal pleasure!
Much liquor, sharp swords, and angry tempers, combined to interrupt
the enjoyment of many a peaceful audience. An angry word, passed, one
April evening of 1682, between Charles Dering, the son of Sir Edward,
and the hot-blooded young Welshman, Mr. Vaughan, led to recrimination
and sword-drawing. The two young fellows, not having elbow-room in
the pit, clambered on to the stage, and fought there, to the greater
comfort of the audience, and with a more excited fury on the part
of the combatants. The stage was that of the Duke's Company, then
playing in Dorset Gardens. The adversaries fought on, till Dering
got a thrust from the Welshman which stretched him on the boards;
whereupon the authorities intervened, as there was no more mischief
to be done, and put Master Vaughan under restraint, till Dering's
wound was declared not to be mortal.
The 'tiring rooms of the actresses were then open to the fine
gentlemen who frequented the house. They stood by at the mysteries
of dressing, and commented on what they beheld and did not behold,
with such breadth and coarseness of wit, that the more modest or
least impudent ladies sent away their little handmaidens. The
dressing over, the amateurs lounged into the house, talked loudly
with the pretty orange girls, listened when it suited them, and at
the termination of the piece crowded again into the 'tiring room of
the most favourite and least scrupulous of the actresses. Among these
gallants who thus oscillated between the pit and the dressing bowers
of the ladies, was a Sir Hugh Middleton, who is not to be confounded
with his namesake of the New River. On the second Saturday of
February 1667, Sir Hugh was among the joyous damsels dressing for the
play, behind the stage of old Drury. The knight was so unpleasantly
critical on the nymphs before him, that one of them, sharp-tongued
Beck Marshall, bade him keep among the ladies of the Duke's House,
since he did not approve of those who served the King. Sir Hugh burst
out with a threat, that he would kick, or what was worse, hire his
footman to kick, her. The pretty but angry Rebecca nursed her wrath
all Sunday; but on Monday she notified the ungallant outrage to the
great champion of insulted dames, the King. Nothing immediately came
of it; and on Tuesday, there was Sir Hugh, glowering at her from the
front of the house, and waylaying her, as she was leaving it with a
friend. Sir Hugh whispers a ruffianly-looking fellow, who follows
the actress, and presses upon her so closely, that she is moved by a
double fear--that he is about to rob, and perhaps stab her. A little
scream scares the bravo for a minute or so. He skulks away, but anon
slinks back; and, armed with the first offensive missile he could
pick up in a Drury Lane gutter, he therewith anoints the face and
hair of the much-shocked actress, and then, like the valiant fellows
of his trade, takes to his heels. The next day, sweet as Anadyomene
rising from the sea, the actress appeared before the King, and
charged Sir Hugh with being the abettor of this gross outrage. How
the knight was punished, the record in the State Paper Office does
not say; but about a fortnight later a royal decree was issued, which
prohibited gentlemen from entering the 'tiring rooms of the ladies
of the King's Theatre. For some nights the gallants sat ill at ease
among the audience; but the journals of the period show that the
nymphs must have been as little pleased with this arrangement as the
fine gentlemen themselves, who soon found their way back to pay the
homage of flattery to the most insatiable of goddesses.
Not that all the homage was paid to the latter. The wits loved to
assemble, after the play was done, in the dressing-rooms of the
leading actors with whom they most cared to cultivate an intimacy.
Much company often congregated here, generally with the purpose of
assigning meetings, where further enjoyment might be pursued.
Then, when it was holiday with the legislature, the house was filled
with parliament-men. On one of these occasions, Pepys records, "how a
gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating of some fruit
in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead; but with much ado,
Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him to
life again." This was an incident of the year 1667.
Returning to the front of the stage, we find the ladies in the boxes
subjected to the audible criticisms of "the little cockerells of the
pit," as Ravenscroft calls them, with whom the more daring damsels
entered into a smart contest of repartees. As the "play-house" was
then the refuge of all idle young people, these wit-combats were
listened to with interest, from the town fops to the rustic young
squires, who came to the theatre in cordivant gloves, and were quite
unconscious of poisoning the affected fine ladies with the smell
of them. The poets used to assert that all the wit of the pittites
was stolen from the plays which they read or saw acted. It seemed
the privilege of the box-loungers to have none, or to perform other
services; namely, to sit all the evening by a mistress, or to blaze
from "Fop's corner," or to mark the modest women, by noting those
who did not use their fans through a whole play, nor turn aside their
heads, nor, by blushing, discover more guilt than modesty. Thrice
happy was she who found the greatest number of slaves at the door of
her box, waiting obsequiously to hand or escort her to her chair.
These beaux were hard to fix, so erratic were they in their habits.
They ran, as Gatty pertinently has it, "from one play-house to the
other play-house; and if they like neither the play nor the women,
they seldom stay any longer than the combing of their perriwigs, or a
whisper or two with a friend, and then they cock their caps, and out
they strut again." With fair and witty strangers these gay fellows,
their eyebrows and perriwigs redolent of the essence of orange
and jasmine, entered into conversation, till a gentleman's name,
called by a door-keeper in the passage, summoned him to impatient
companions, waiting for him outside; when he left the "censure" of
his appearance to critical observers, like those who ridiculed the
man of mode for "his gloves drawn up to his elbows and his perriwig
more exactly curled than a lady's head newly dressed for a ball."
Of the vizard-masks, Cibber tells the whole history in a few words:
"I remember the ladies were then observed to be decently afraid of
venturing bare-faced to a new comedy, till they had been assured they
might do it without insult to their modesty; or if their curiosity
were too strong for their patience, they took care at least to save
appearances, and rarely came in the first days of acting but in
masks, which custom, however, had so many ill consequences attending
it, that it has been abolished these many years."
The poets sometimes accused the ladies of blushing, not because of
offence, but from constraint on laughter. Farquhar's Pindress says
to Lucinda, "Didn't you chide me for not putting a stronger lace in
your stays, when you had broke one as strong as a hempen-cord with
containing a violent _ti-hee_ at a ---- jest in the last play?"
Cibber describes the beaux of the seventeenth century as being of
quite a different stamp from the more modern sort. The former "had
more of the stateliness of the peacock in their mien," whereas the
latter seemed to place their highest emulation in imitating "the
pert air of a lapwing." The greatest possible compliment was paid to
Cibber by the handsome, witty, blooming young fop, Brett, who was so
enchanted with the wig the former wore as Sir Novelty Fashion, in
"Love's Last Shift," that fancying the wearing it might ensure him
success among the ladies, he went round to Cibber's dressing-room,
and entered into negotiations for the purchase of that wonderful
cataract perriwig. The fine gentlemen among the audience had, indeed,
the credit of being less able to judge of a play than of a peruke;
and Dryden speaks of an individual as being "as invincibly ignorant
as a town-sop judging of a new play."
[Illustration: Colley Cibber.)]
Lord Foppington, in 1697, did not pretend to be a beau; but he
remarks, "a man must endeavour to look wholesome, lest he make so
nauseous a figure in the side-box, the ladies should be compelled to
turn their eyes upon the play." It was the "thing" to look
upon the company, unless some irresistible attraction drew attention
to the stage; and the curtain down, the beau became active in the
service of the ladies generally. "Till nine o'clock," says Lord
Foppington, "I amuse myself by looking on the company, and usually
dispose of one hour more in leading them out."
Some fine gentlemen were unequal to such gallantry. At these,
Southerne glances in his "Sir Anthony Love," where he describes the
hard drinkers who "go to a tavern to swallow a drunkenness, and
then to a play, to talk over their liquor." And these had their
counterparts in
"the youngsters of a noisy pit,
Whose tongues and mistresses, outran their wit."
It was, however, much the same in the boxes, where the beaux' oath
was "zauns," it being token of a rustic blasphemer to say "zounds;"
and where, though a country squire might say, "bless us!" it was the
mark of a man of fashion to cry, "dem me!"
With such personages in pit and boxes, we may rest satisfied that
there was a public to match in the gallery--a peculiar as well as a
general public.
A line in a prologue of the year 1672, "The stinking footman's
sent to keep your places," alludes to a custom by which the livery
profited. Towards the close of the century, the upper gallery of
Drury Lane was opened to footmen, _gratis_. They were supposed to be
in attendance on their masters, but these rather patronised the other
house, and as Drury could not attract the nobility, it courted the
favour of their not very humble servants. Previously, the lacqueys
were admitted after the close of the fourth act of the play. They
became the most clamorous critics in the house. It was the custom,
when these fellows passed the money-taker, to name their master, who
was supposed to be in the boxes; but many frauds were practised. A
stalwart, gold-laced, thick-calved, irreverent lacquey swaggered
past money and check-taker one afternoon, and named "the Lord ----,"
adding the name which the Jews of old would never utter, out of
fear and reverence. "The Lord ----!" said the money-taker to his
colleague, after the saucy footman had flung by, "who is he?" "Can't
say," was the reply; "some poor Scotch lord, I suppose!" Such is an
alleged sample of the ignorance and the blasphemy of the period.
Returning to the pit, I find, with the critics and other good men
there, a sprinkling of clerical gentlemen, especially of chaplains;
their patrons, perhaps, being in the boxes. In the papers of the
day, in the year 1697, I read of a little incident which illustrates
social matters, and which, probably, did not much trouble the
theatrical cleric who went to the pit so strangely provided. "There
was found," says the paragraph, "in the pit of the playhouse, Drury
Lane, Covent Garden, on Whitsun Eve, a qualification, signed by the
Right Honourable the Lord Dartmouth to the Reverend Mr. Nicholson, to
be his Chaplain Extraordinary; the said qualification being wrapped
up in a black taffety cap, together with a bottle-screw, a knotting
needle, and a ball of sky-colour and white knotting. If the said Mr.
Nicholson will repair to the pit-keeper's house, in Vinegar Yard, at
the Crooked Billet, he shall have the moveables restored, giving a
reasonable gratitude."
Probably Mr. Nicholson did not claim his qualification. His patron
was son of the Lord Dartmouth who corresponded with James II. while
expressing allegiance to William III., and was subsequently Queen
Anne's Secretary of State, and the annotator of Burnet's _History of
his Own Times_.
The audiences of King William's time were quick at noticing and
applying political allusions; and Government looked as sharply after
the dramatic poets as it did after the Jacobite plotters. When much
intercourse was going on between the exiled king at St. Germains and
his adherents in this country, a Colonel Mottley (of whose son, as a
dramatist, I shall have occasion to speak in a future page) was sent
over by James with despatches. The Earl of Nottingham laid watch for
him at the Blue Posts, in the Haymarket, but the Secretary's officers
missed the Colonel, seizing in his place a Cornish gentleman, named
Tredenham, who was seated in a room, surrounded by papers, and
waiting for the Colonel.
Tredenham and the documents were conveyed in custody before the Earl,
to whom the former explained that he was a poet, sketching out a
play, that the papers seized formed portion of the piece, and that
he had nothing to do with plots against his Majesty _de facto_.
Daniel Finch, however, was as careful to read the roughly-sketched
play, as if it had been the details of a conspiracy; and then the
author was summoned before him. "Well, Mr. Tredenham," said he, "I
have perused your play, and heard your statement, and as I can find
no trace of a plot in either, I think you may go free."
The sincerity of the audiences of those days is something doubtful,
if that be true which Dryden affirms, that he observed, namely, that
"in all our tragedies the audience cannot forbear laughing when the
actors are to die: 'tis the most comic part of the whole play." He
says, _all_ our tragedies; but we know that such was not the case
when the heroes of Shakspeare, represented by Betterton, Hart, or
Harris, suffered mimic dissolution, and it is but a fair suggestion
that it was only in the bombast and fustian tragedies, in which death
was the climax of a comic situation, and treated bombastically, that
the audiences were moved to laughter.
Sincere or not, the resident Londoners were great playgoers, and
gadders generally. I have already quoted Bishop Hackett on this
matter. Sermons thus testify to a matter of fashion. It appears
from a play, Dryden's "Sir Martin Marall," that if Londoners were
the permanent patrons, the country "quality" looked for an annual
visit. At the present time it is the visitors and not the residents
in London who most frequent the theatre. "I came up, as we country
gentlewomen use, at an Easter Term, to the destruction of tarts and
cheesecakes, to see a new play, buy a new gown, take a turn in the
park, and so down again to sleep with my forefathers."
This resort to the theatres displeased better men than non-juring
Collier. Mirthful-minded South, he who preached to the Merchant
Tailors of the remnant that should be saved, calls theatres "those
spiritual pest-houses, where scarce anything is to be heard or seen
but what tends to the corruption of good manners, and from whence
not one of a thousand returns, but, infected with the love of vice,
or at least with the hatred of it very much abated from what it was
before. And that, I assure you, is no inconsiderable point gained by
the tempter, as those who have any experience of their own hearts
sufficiently know. He who has no mind to trade with the devil,
should be so wise as to keep away from his shop." South objects to a
corrupt, not to a "well-trod stage."
Yet South, like Collier later, laid to the scene much of the sin of
the age.
If we were to judge of the character of women by the comedies of
the last half of the seventeenth century, we might conclude that
they were all, without exception, either constantly at the play,
or constantly wishing to be there. But the Marquis of Halifax, in
his _Advice to a Daughter_, shows that they were only a class.
"Some ladies," he says, "are bespoke for merry meetings, as Bessus
was for duels. They are engaged in a circle of idleness, where
they turn round, for the whole year, without the interruption of a
serious hour. They know all the players' names, and are intimately
acquainted with all the booths at Bartholomew Fair. The spring, that
bringeth out Flies and Fools, maketh them inhabitants in Hyde Park.
In the winter, they are an encumbrance to the play-house, and the
ballast of the drawing-room."
We may learn how the playhouse, encumbered by the fast ladies of
bygone years, stood, and what were the prospects of the stage at this
time, by looking into a private epistle. A few lines in a letter
from "Mr. Vanbrook" (afterwards Sir John Vanbrugh) to the Earl
of Manchester, and written on Christmas Day, 1699, will show the
position and hopes of the stage as that century was closing. "Miss
Evans," he writes, "the dancer at the new play-house, is dead; a
fever slew her in eight and forty hours. She's much lamented by the
town, as well as by the house, who can't well bear her loss; matters
running very low with 'em this winter. If Congreve's play don't
help 'em they are undone. 'Tis a comedy, and will be played about
six weeks hence. Nobody has seen it yet." The same letter informs
us that Dick Leveridge, the bass singer of Lincoln's Inn Fields
Theatre, was tarrying in Ireland, rather than face his creditors in
England, and that Dogget (of whom there is no account, during the
years 1698, 1699, 1700), had been playing for a week at the above
theatre, for the sum of £30! This is the first instance I know of, of
the "starring" system; and it is remarkable that the above sum should
have been given for six nights' performances, when Betterton's salary
did not exceed £5 per week.
The century closed ill for the stage. Congreve's play, "The Way
of the World," failed to give it any lustre. Dancers, tumblers,
strong men, and quadrupeds, were called in to attract the town; and
the Elephant at the _Great Mogul_, in Fleet Street, "drew" to such
an extent that he would have been brought upon the stage, but for
the opinion of a master-carpenter, that he would pull the house
down. There was an empty treasury at both the theatres. There was
ill-management at one, and ill-health (the declining health of
Betterton) to mar the other. And so closes the half century.
NOTE.--In the second edition, after the words, "This is the first
instance of the 'starring' system," Dr. Doran adds:--If Dogget was
the first _star_, he was also an early stroller, and head of a
strolling company. Each member wore a brocaded waistcoat, rode his
own horse, and was everywhere respected, as a gentleman. So says
Aston, reminding one of Hamlet's "Then came each actor on his ass."
Steele, in the _Tatler_ (No. 12), speaks of the manager, MacSwiney,
as "little King Oberon," who mortgaged his whole empire (the
theatre) to Divito (Christopher Rich), whom Steele thus describes:
"He has a perfect skill in being unintelligible in discourse,
and uncomeatable in business. But he, having no understanding
in this polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money,
ladder-dancers, rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut
in the place of Shakspeare's heroes and Jonson's humorists."
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Pepys certainly means on account of the dulness of the play.
[71] Should be 15th and 22d December 1674.
[Illustration: SIR RICHARD STEELE.]