COMPETITION, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
"Augustus," as it was the fashion to call George I., by performing
a justifiable act, inflicted some injury this year, by restoring
the Letters Patent of Charles II. to Christopher Rich, of which the
latter had been deprived, and under which his son, John, opened the
revived theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, on the 18th December 1714,
with the "Recruiting Officer." The enlarged stage was "superbly
adorned with looking-glasses on both sides;" a circumstance which
Quin said "was an excellent trap to such actresses who admired
their own persons more than they attended to the duties of their
profession." Some good actors left Drury for the Fields;--Keen,
the two Bullocks, Pack, Spiller, Cory, Knap, Mrs. Rogers, and Mrs.
Knight. Cibber rather contemptuously says of such of the above as he
names, that "they none of them had more than a negative merit,--being
able only to do us more harm by leaving us without notice, than they
could do us good by remaining with us; for, though the best of them
could not support a play, the worst of them, by their absence, could
maim it,--as the loss of the least pin in a watch may obstruct its
motion."
John Rich's company in the Fields either played old pieces, or
adaptations from them, or "from the French"; none of which deserved
even a passing word, except a roaring farce--pieces which now grew
popular--called "Love in a Sack," by Griffin, whom I notice not as
an indifferent author, but as an excellent comedian, who made his
first appearance in a double capacity. Griffin may also be noticed
under a double qualification. He was a gentleman and a glazier. His
father was a Norfolk rector, and had been chaplain to the Earl of
Yarmouth,--that gallant Sir Robert Paston, who was in France and
Flanders with James, Duke of York. In the Paston Free School, at
North Walsham, Griffin learnt his "rudiments," having done which
his sire apprenticed him to the useful but not dignified calling of
a glazier. The "'prentice lad," disgusted at the humiliation, ran
away, took to strolling, found his way, after favourable report, to
Rich's theatre, and there proved so good an actor, that the Drury
Lane management ultimately lured him away to a stage where able
competitors polished him into still greater brilliancy. The season
concluded on the last day of July[102] 1715 with a "benefit for Tim
Buck, to release him out of prison."
In the following October, Drury commenced a season which, save a
few days of summer vacation, extended to the close of August 1716.
During this time, Shakspeare's best plays were frequently acted,
old comedies revived with success, and obscure farces played and
consigned to oblivion. The great attempt, if not success, of the
season, was the comedy of the "Drummer, or the Haunted House," first
played in March 1716, and not known to be Addison's till Steele
published the fact after the author's death. Tonson, however, knew
or suspected the truth, for he gave £50 for the copyright. Wilks,
Cibber, Mills, and Mrs. Oldfield could not secure a triumph for the
play--which Steele thought was more disgraceful to the stage than
to the comedy. There is a novel mixture of sentiment, caricature,
and farcical incident in this piece. Warton describes it as "a just
picture of life and real manners; where the poet never speaks in
his own person, or totally drops or forgets a character, for the
sake of introducing a brilliant simile or acute remark; where no
train is laid for wit, no Jeremys or Bens are suffered to appear."
More natural, it was less brilliant than the artificial comedies
of Congreve; but its failure probably vexed the author, as it
certainly annoyed the publisher. Tickell omitted it from his edition
of Addison's works, but Steele gave these reasons for ascribing it to
the latter; they are a little confused, but they probably contain the
truth:--"If I remember right, the fifth act was written in a week's
time.... He would walk about his room, and dictate in language with
as much freedom and ease as any one could write it down.... I have
been often thus employed by him.... I will put all my credit among
men of wit, for the truth of my averment, when I presume to say,
that no one but Mr. Addison was in any other way the writer of the
'Drummer.' ... At the same time, I will allow that he has sent for me
... and told me, that 'a gentleman, then in the room, had written a
play that he was sure I would like; but it was to be a secret; and he
knew I would take as much pains, since he recommended it, as I would
for him.'"
At Lincoln's Inn Fields, the season of 1715-16 had this of remarkable
in it, that John Rich revived the "Prophetess," as it enabled him to
display his ability in the introduction and management of machinery,
and his success in raising the prices of admission. Bullock's farce,
the "Cobbler of Preston," was begun on a Friday, finished the next
day, and played on the Tuesday following--in order to anticipate
Charles Johnson's farce,--like this, derived from the introduction to
the "Taming of the Shrew," at Drury Lane. Of the other plays--one,
the "Fatal Vision," was written by Aaron Hill, who, having lost
property and temper in a project how to extract olive oil from
beech-nuts, endeavoured to inculcate in his piece the wrongfulness of
giving way to rash designs and evil passions. This play he dedicated
to the two most merciless critics of the day, Dennis and Gildon.
Then of the "Perfidious Brother," it is only to be stated that it
was a bad play stolen by young Theobald from Mestayer, a watchmaker,
who had lent him the manuscript. That an attorney should have the
reprehensible taste to steal a worthless play seemed a slur upon
the lawyer's judgment. Another new play, the "Northern Heiress," by
Mrs. Davys, a clergyman's widow, but now the lively Irish mistress
of a Cambridge coffee-house, reminds me of the five-act farces of
Reynolds, with its fops, fools, half-pay officers, fast gentlemen,
and flippant ladies. There are ten people married at the end, a
compliment to matrimony, at the hands of the widow; but there is a
slip in poetical justice; for, a lover who deserts his mistress, when
he finds, as Lord Peterborough did of Miss Moses, that her fortune
was not equal to his expectations, marries her, after discovering
that he was mistaken.
Herewith we come to the Drury Lane season of 1716-17. Booth, Wilks,
and Cibber had a famous company, in which Quin quietly made his way
to the head,[103] and Mrs. Horton's beauty acted with good effect
on Mrs. Oldfield. In the way of novelty, Mrs. Centlivre produced
a tragedy, the "Cruel Gift," in which nobody dies, and lovers are
happily married. The most notable affair, however, was the comedy,
"Three Hours after Marriage," in which Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot,
three grave men, who pretended to instruct and improve mankind,
insulted modesty, virtue, and common decency, in the grossest way,
by speech or inuendo. There is not so much filth in any other comedy
of this century, and the trio of authors stand stigmatised for their
attempt to bring in the old corruption. In strange contrast we have
Mrs. Manley, a woman who began life with unmerited misfortune, and
carried it on with unmitigated profligacy, producing a highly moral,
semi-religious drama, "Lucius."
But while moral poets were polluting the stage, and immoral women
undertaking to purify it, a reverend Archdeacon of Stowe, the
historian, Lawrence Echard, in conjunction with Lestrange, put on
the stage of Drury Lane, a translation of the "Eunuchus" of Terence.
It did not survive the third night; but the audience might have
remarked how much more refinedly the Carthaginian of old could treat
a delicate subject than the Christian poets of a later era--or, to
speak correctly, than the later poets of a Christian era.
In this season I find the first trace of a "fashionable night," and
a later hour for beginning the play than any of subsequent times. I
quote from Genest:--"18 June, 1717. By particular desire of several
Ladies of Quality. 'Fatal Marriage.' Biron, Booth; Villeroy, Mills;
Isabella, Mrs. Porter; Victoria, Mrs. Younger. An exact computation
being made of the number which the Pit and Boxes will hold, they are
laid together; and no person can be admitted without tickets. By
desire, the play is not to begin till nine o'clock, by reason of the
heat of the weather--nor the house to be opened till eight." What a
change from the time when Dryden's Lovely exclaimed:--
"As punctual as three o'clock at the playhouse!"
The corresponding season (1716-17) at Lincoln's Inn requires but
brief notice. Rich, who had failed in attempting Essex, played,
as Mr. Lun, Harlequin, in the "Cheats, or the Tavern Bilkers," a
ballet-pantomime--the forerunner of the line of pantomime which,
notwithstanding our presumed advance in civilisation, still has
its admirers. In novelty, Dick Leveridge, the singer, produced
the burlesque of "Pyramus and Thisbe"--those parts being played
by himself and Pack, with irresistible comic effect, especially
when caricaturing the style of the Italian opera, where your hero
died in very good time and tune. English opera was not altogether
neglected in the Fields, but little was accomplished in the way of
upholding the drama. Bullock produced a comedy, which he was accused
of stealing from a manuscript by Savage--"Woman's a Riddle." It is a
long, coarse farce, in which the most decent incident is the hanging
of Sir Amorous Vainwit, from a balcony, as he is trying to escape
in woman's clothes, which are caught by a hook, and beneath which a
footman stands with a flambeau. We learn, too, from this comedy, that
young ladies carried snuff-boxes in those days.
Taverner, the proctor, also produced a comedy quite as extravagant,
and not a whit less immoral than Bullock's--the "Artful Husband."
It had, however, great temporary success, quite enough to turn the
author's head, and by his acts to show that there was nothing in it.
The "Artful Husband," however, brought into notice a young actor
who had but a small part to play,--Stockwell. His name was Spiller.
The Duke of Argyle thought, and spoke well of him before this. On
the night in question, Spiller, who dressed his characters like
an artist, went through his first scenes exquisitely, and without
being recognised by his patron, who came behind the scenes, and had
recommended him warmly to the notice of Rich. Genest says he hopes
this story is true. I am sure it is not improbable; and for this
reason. I once saw Lafont acting the Son in "Père et Fils." Opposite
to the side on which he made his exit an aged actor, who represented
the father, passed me. I was delighted with the truth and beauty
of his acting, and at the end of the scene asked who he was. To my
astonishment, I heard that Lafont, whom I had well known as an actor
for more than twenty years, was playing both parts. This identifying
power was Spiller's distinguishing merit. Riccoboni saw the young
actor play an old man with a perfectness not to be expected but from
players of the longest experience. "How great was my surprise," says
Riccoboni, "when I learnt that he was a young man, about the age
of twenty-six. I could not believe it; but owned that it might be
possible, had he only used a broken and a trembling voice, and had
only an extreme weakness possessed his body, because I conceived
that a young actor might, by the help of art, imitate that debility
of nature to such a pitch of excellence; but the wrinkles of his
face, his sunk eyes, and his loose yellow cheeks, the most certain
marks of age, were incontestable proofs against what they said to me.
Notwithstanding all this, I was forced to submit to truth, because I
was credibly informed that the actor, to fit himself for the part of
this old man, spent an hour in dressing himself, and disguised his
face so nicely, and painted so artificially a part of his eyebrows
and eyelids, that at the distance of six paces it was impossible not
to be deceived."
In the next season, at Drury (1717-18), the only remarkable piece
produced was Cibber's adaptation of "Tartuffe," under the name of
the "Nonjuror." In the lustre of the "Nonjuror" paled and died out
the first play by Savage, "Love in a Veil." Not twenty years had
elapsed since this luckless and heartless young vagabond was born,
in Fox Court, Gray's Inn Lane, his unknown mother, but not that
light lady, the Countess of Macclesfield, wearing a mask. Savage
had passed from a shoemaker's shop to the streets, had written a
poem on the Bangorian Controversy, had adapted a play translated
from the Spanish, by the wife of Mr. Baron Price, and which Bullock
re-adapted and produced at Drury Lane before Savage could get his own
accepted. "Love in a Veil" seems to have been founded on an incident
in the Spanish comedy; but however this may be, it failed to obtain
the public approval. The author, however, did not altogether fail;
generous Wilks patronised the boy, and Steele, befriending a lad of
parts, designed to give him £1000, which he had not got, with the
hand of a natural daughter, whom the young and wayward poet did not
get. The "Nonjuror" alone survives as a memorial of the Drury season
of 1717-18.
We owe the piece to fear and hatred of the Pope and the Pretender.
It addressed itself to so wide a public that Lintot gave the liberal
sum of a hundred guineas for the copyright, and it was so acceptable
to the King that he gave a dedication fee of twice that number of
guineas to the author, who addressed him as "dread Sir," and spoke
of himself as "the lowest of your subjects from the theatre."
Cibber adds, "Your comedians, Sir, are an unhappy society, whom
some severe heads think wholly useless, and others, dangerous to
the young and innocent. This comedy is, therefore, an attempt to
remove that prejudice, and to show what honest and laudable uses
may be made of the theatre, when its performances keep close to the
true purposes of its institution." Cibber goes on to remark, that
perhaps the idly and seditiously inclined may cease to disturb their
brains about embarrassing the government, if "proper amusements" be
provided for them. For such his play is rather a chastisement than an
amusement, and he thinks _that_ would have been all the better taken
had it not been administered by a comedian. The Nonjurors, whose
allegiance was paid to the Pretender, were perhaps not worthy of a
more exalted scourger; but he fears that truth and loyalty demanded
a nobler champion. He flatteringly alludes to the small number of
malcontents. His piece had either crushed them, or their forces were
not so great as supposed, "there being no assembly where people are
so free, and apt to speak their minds, as in a crowded theatre, of
which," says the courtly fellow, "your Majesty may have lately seen
an instance in the insuppressible acclamations that were given on
your appearing to honour this play with your royal presence."
On the night of representation, Rowe, in a prologue--he was now Poet
Laureate and Land Surveyor of the Customs in the Port of London,
deprecated the piece being considered unjustifiably discourteous.
"Think not our colours may too strongly paint
The stiff non-juring separation saint.
Good breeding ne'er commands us to be civil
To those who give the nation to the devil!"
The play was admirably acted by Booth, Colonel Woodvil; Mills, Sir
John; Wilks, Heartley; Cibber, Dr. Wolf (the Cantwell of the modern
arrangement); and Walker (soon to be famous as Captain Macheath),
Charles. Mrs. Porter played Lady Woodvil, and Mrs. Oldfield turned
the heads and touched the hearts of all lively and susceptible folks
by her exquisite coquetry, in Maria. The play was not a servile
imitation of, but an excellent adaptation to modern circumstances of,
the "Tartuffe." Thoroughly English, it abounds with the humour and
manner of Cibber, and despite some offences against taste, it was at
this time the purest comedy on the stage. There was farce enough for
the gallery, maxim and repartee, suggestions and didactic phrases for
the rest of the house. The success surpassed even expectation. It
raised against Cibber a phalanx of implacable foes--foes who howled
at everything of which he was, afterwards, the author; but it gained
for him his advancement to the poet-laureateship, and an estimation
which caused some people to place him, for usefulness to the cause of
true religion, on an equality with the author of "The Whole Duty of
Man!" Cibber foresaw the tempest, and, probably, also the prosperous
gales which were to follow, to which there is some allusion in the
Epilogue spoken by Mrs. Oldfield, which, of course, had a fling
against marriage:--
"Was't not enough that critics might pursue him?
But must he rouse a party to undo him?
These blows, I told him, on his plays would fall:
But he, unmov'd, cried, ----'s blood! we'll stand it all!"
In the theatre itself the opposition to the piece was confined,
Cibber says, to "a few smiles of silent contempt. As the satire was
chiefly employed on the enemies of the Government, they were not so
hardy as to own themselves such, by any higher disapprobation or
resentment." They made up for this constrained silence, as above
noted, and _Mist's Journal_, for fifteen years, lost no opportunity
of mauling the detested offender. With the editor of that paper,
says Cibber, "though I could never persuade my wit to have an open
account with him (for, as he had no effects of his own, I did not
think myself obliged to answer his bills), notwithstanding, I will
be so charitable to his real _manes_, and to the ashes of his paper,
as to mention one particular civility he paid to my memory after he
thought he had ingeniously killed me. Soon after the 'Nonjuror' had
received the favour of the town, I read in one of his journals the
following short paragraph:--'Yesterday died Mr. Colley Cibber, late
comedian of the Theatre Royal, notorious for writing the _Nonjuror_.'
The compliment, in the latter part, I confess," adds Cibber, "I did
not dislike, because it came from so impartial a judge."
The stage lost this year an excellent actor, Irish Bowen, who, at
the age of fifty-two, was slain in duel by young Quin.[104] Hitherto
the sword had dealt lightly with actors. In 1692, indeed, Sandford
nearly killed Powell, on the stage. On the 13th of October they were
acting together, in "OEdipus, King of Thebes," when the former, to
whom a real dagger had been delivered by the property-man, instead
of a weapon, the blade of which run up, when the point was pressed,
into the handle, gave poor Powell a stab three inches deep; the wound
was, at first, thought to be mortal, but Powell recovered. Five years
later, in July 1697, I find brief mention in the papers of a duel
between an actor and an officer. The initials only of the principals
are given: "Mr. H., an actor, of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, fought
Mr. D., an officer, at Barnes Elms." Whether the former was young
Hodgson or young Harris is not now to be determined, nor the grounds
of the quarrel. The issue of it was that the player dangerously
wounded the soldier; and it is added, that both parties exhibited
brilliant courage. Bowen was the original representative of Sir
Joshua[105] Wittol ("Old Batchelor"), Jeremy ("Love for Love"), and
Foigard ("Beaux' Stratagem").
Quin passed over to Lincoln's Inn Fields in this season of 1717-18,
where he played Hotspur, Tamerlane, Morat ("Aurungzebe"), Mark
Antony, and created the part of Scipio, in the "Scipio Africanus,"
written by young Beckingham, the pride of Merchant Tailors' School.
Beckingham must also have been the pride of Fleet Street, and
especially of the craft of linen-drapers, of which his father was
a worthy and well-to-do member. The piece was played on the 18th
of February 1718. The author was then but nineteen years of age,
and was full of bright promise. A tragedy by one so young, excited
the public, and most especially the juvenile public, at Merchant
Tailors', where Dr. Smith was head-master. The Doctor and sub-masters
held the stage in abhorrence till now, when a brilliant _alumnus_
was likely to shed lustre on the corporation of "Merchant Tailors
and Linen Armourers." Now they proclaimed high jubilee, gave the
lads a half-holiday on the author's night, and joyfully saw the
whole school swarming to the pit of Lincoln's Inn, to uphold the
tragedy by this honoured _condiscipulus_. The masters, in this, acted
against their own former precept and example; but they made amends
for it by religious zeal, and by expelling all the Jewish pupils from
the school! Israel was the scapegoat, and the Christian sense of
propriety was gratified. But Quin's Scipio established a taste for
theatricals at Merchant Tailors', where classical plays were acted,
for some years, as at Westminster. Beckingham's tragedy exhibits a
romantic story, or stories, in a classical costume. There is severity
enough to gratify rigid tastes, with a little of over-warmth of
action on the part of one of three lovers, which shows that the young
poet was not unread in the older masters.
But there were worse and better plays than "Scipio" brought out
on the same stage this season. Taverner failed in a _pendant_ to
his "Artful Husband," the "Artful Wife." Bullock did little for
the credit of the stage by his farce of the "Perjuror," and Sir
Thomas Moore justly criticised his own tragedy of "Mangora, King of
the Timbusians," when he called it a "trifle." It is a very noisy
trifle, concerned with love, battle, murder, and worse, between
the Spaniards and South American Indians. Rich thought its bustle
might carry its absurdities successfully through, and Sir Thomas
stimulated the actors, when at rehearsal, by inviting them to supper,
at which Leigh, the two Bullocks, Williams, Ogden, Knapp, and
Giffard, Mistresses Knight, Bullock, and Kent, made a joyous party,
as hilarious as the audience was, whose laughter alone prevented them
from hissing down the nonsense of an obscure man who was knighted for
some forgotten service--certainly not for any rendered to the Muses.
The piece of this season which had stuff in it to cause it to live
to our own times, was Mrs. Centlivre's "Bold Stroke for a Wife."
Sprightly Mrs. Centlivre was as fervent a Whig as Cibber, and had
written verses enough in praise of Brunswick to entitle her to be
Poetess-Laureate, had the Princess Caroline had a voice in the
matter, when Rowe died this very year, and Newcastle recommended
tipsy Eusden for the office of "birthday fibber." The "Bold Stroke,"
laughed at and denounced by Wilks, and taken reluctantly in hand by
the actors, is a fair specimen of that lighter comedy which borders
upon farce, but in which the fun is genuine, and the incidents not
so improbable but that they may be accepted, or, by the rapidity of
their succession, laughed at and forgotten.
This season, withal, was not successful. It broke the heart of Keen,
actor and sharer. In the former capacity, though Savage thought his
life worth narrating, he won few laurels,--but his wreath was not
entirely leafless. He was loved, too, by his brethren of both houses,
whose subscriptions defrayed the expenses of a funeral, at which
upwards of two hundred persons walked in deep mourning.[106]
At this time, Drury, with its old, strong company, was patronised
by court and town. Plays, acted at Hampton Court, before the King,
were repeated in the public theatre. Of the former, I shall speak
in a future page. Two new comedies proved, indeed, inferior to Mrs.
Centlivre's "Bold Stroke," at the other house. Charles Johnson's
"Masquerade," borrowed a little from Shirley, and more from Molière,
furnished, in Ombre and Lady Frances Ombre, some ideas, probably, to
Cibber, when he placed a similar pair on the stage, in Lord and Lady
Townley. A worse piece was more successful,--the rambling comedy,
"Chit Chat," by a Mr. Thomas Killigrew, a gentleman who, like his
namesake, had a place at court, but not his namesake's wit. The
courtiers, with the Duke of Argyle at their head, carried the piece
through eleven representations, and enriched the treasury by £1000.
The great effort of the season was made in bringing out "Busiris," a
tragedy, by the Rev. Dr. Young, author of _Night Thoughts_. It was
played on March 7, 1719, by Booth, Elrington, Wilks, Mills, Walker
and Thurmond, Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Thurmond.
"Busiris" was Young's earliest tragedy. It is written in a stilted
and inflated style, and bears all the marks of a juvenile production.
The plot of the piece is void of all ingenuity; but there is little
that is borrowed in it, save the haughty message sent by Busiris to
the Persian Ambassador, which is the same as that returned by the
Ethiopian prince to Cambyses, in the third book of Herodotus. Of the
phrasing, and indeed of the incidents of this tragedy, Fielding made
excellent fun, in his mock tragedy of "Tom Thumb." The sovereigns
and courtiers of Egypt gave little trouble to be converted into
Arthur and Dollalolla, Noodle, Doodle, the great little prince, and
Huncamunca. The travestie is rich and facile; not least so in that
passage mimicking the various addresses to the sun, who is bid to
rise no more, but hide his face and put the world in mourning, On
these, Fielding remarks, that "the author of 'Busiris' is extremely
anxious to prevent the sun's blushing at any indecent object; and,
therefore, on all such occasions, he addresses himself to the sun,
and desires him to keep out of the way." It was dedicated to the Duke
of Newcastle, the patron of Eusden, the laureat, "because the late
instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon
favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had
taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron." If this favour
consisted in rewarding Young for writing for the court, the favour
_may_ have been "undeserved," but it was by no means "uncommon."
The concluding incident of this play,--the double suicide of
Memnon (Wilks) and Mandane (Mrs. Oldfield), found such favour in
the author's own estimation, that he repeated it in his next two
tragedies, in each of which a couple of lovers make away with
themselves. This tripled circumstance reminds a critic of the remark
of Dryden:--"The dagger and the bowl are always at hand to butcher a
hero, when a poet wants the brains to save him."
Dr. Young was at this time thirty-eight years of age, but was not
yet "famous." Born when Charles II. was king and Dryden laureat,
the Hampshire godson of the Princess Anne, was as yet only known as
having been the friend of the Duke of Wharton, and of Tickell; as
having first come before the public in 1713,[107] with a poem to
Granville, in which there is good dramatic criticism; and of having
since written poems of promise rather than of merit, the latest of
which was a paraphrase on part of the book of Job, which, curiously
enough, abounds with phrases which show the author's growing
intercourse with the playhouse and theatrical people. "Busiris" was
written in the year that "Cato" was played, but its performance was
delayed till this year, and its dramatic death occurred long before
"Cato" departed from the stage,--to be read, at least, as long as an
admirer of Addison survives.
[Illustration: Mr. Garrick as Hamlet.]
FOOTNOTES:
[102] Should be August.
[103] Quin can hardly be said to have been even near the head of this
company.
[104] See page 175 for some curious facts relating to this.
[105] Sir Joseph.
[106] He was buried at St. Clement's. Six actors held the
pall.--_Doran MS._
[107] 1712.
[Illustration: THE NEW AND OLD THEATRES ROYAL, HAYMARKET.]