(1704), Hulett (1732), Quin (1734), Delane, the young Irish actor
(1743), of whom Garrick was foolish enough to be jealous; Shuter
(1758), Henderson, who first played it at the Haymarket in 1777, and
Lee Lewis in 1784. Bartley, Phelps, and a clever provincial actor, now
in London, named Bartlett, have also played this character with great
effect. The Falstaff of the last-named actor is particularly good.
I have said that Quin was the greatest of Falstaffs, but the _greatest_
in the physical acceptation of the term, was undoubtedly Stephen
Kemble. This actor was born almost upon the boards. His clever, but not
very gentle-tempered mother, had just concluded her performance of Anne
Bullen, in a barn, or something like it, at Kingstown, Herefordshire
(1758), when Stephen was born, about the period when, according to the
action of the play, the Princess Elizabeth is supposed to first see
the light. Stephen when he had grown to manhood, weighed as much as
all his sisters and brothers put together; and on the 7th of October,
1802, he made his appearance at Drury, in the character of Falstaff.
This was nearly twenty years after he had made his _début_ in London,
at Covent Garden, in Othello. Bannister junior prefaced his performance
of the companion of Prince Hal, by some humorous lines, joking on the
heaviness of the actor. As Pope played Hotspur, I should fancy, if Pope
then was anything like what he was some fifteen or sixteen years later,
that Hotspur was even heavier than Sir John. The lines alluded to were
accounted witty; and I will conclude my record of the principal actors
who have represented the knight, by reproducing them.
A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made,
Lends to your fav’rite bard his pond’rous aid;
No man in buckram, he! no stuffing gear,
No feather bed, nor e’en a pillow here!
But all good honest flesh and blood, and bone,
And weighing, more or less, some thirty stone.
Upon the northern coast by chance we caught him,
And hither, in a broad-wheeled wagon, brought him:
For in a chaise the varlet ne’er could enter,
And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture.
Blessed with unwieldiness, at least his size
Will favor find in every critic’s eyes.
And should his humor and his mimic art
Bear due proportion to his outward part,
As once was said of Macklin in the Jew,
“This is the very Falstaff Shakespeare drew.”
To you, with diffidence, he bids me say,
Should you approve, you may command his stay,
To lie and swagger here another day.
If not, to better men he’ll leave his sack,
And go, as ballast, in a collier back.
In concluding this section of my gossiping record, I will add that
the supposition of Shakespeare having intended to represent Sir
John Oldcastle under the title of Sir John Falstaff, is _merely_ a
supposition. It has never been satisfactorily made out. Far otherwise
is the case with that gallant Welsh man-at-arms, _Fluellin_. The
original of this character was a David Gam of Brecknock, who having
killed a cousin with an unpronounceable name, in the High Street of
Brecknock, avoided the possibly unpleasant consequences by joining the
Lancastrian party. _Gam_ was merely a nickname, having reference to an
obliquity of vision in the doughty and disputative David. The real name
was Llewellyn; and if Shakespeare disguised the appellation, it was
from notions of delicacy, probably, as the descendants of the hero were
well known and respected at the English court in Shakespeare’s time.
Jones, in his “History of Brecknockshire,” identifies the personage in
question in this way: “I have called Fluellin a burlesque character,
because his pribbles and prabbles, which were generally out-heroded,
sound ludicrously to an English as well as a Welsh ear; yet, after all,
Llewellyn is a brave soldier and an honest fellow. He is admitted into
a considerable degree of intimacy with the King, and stands high in
his good opinion, which is a strong presumptive proof, notwithstanding
Shakespeare, the better to conceal his object, describes the death of
Sir David Gam, that he intended David Llewellyn by his portrait of the
testy Welshman, for there was no other person of that country in the
English army, who could have been supposed to be upon such terms of
familiarity with the King.” It is singular that the descendants of the
Welsh knight subsequently dropped the proud old name with more l’s in
it than syllables, and adopted the monosyllabic _soubriquet_. Squinting
David, who fought so well at Agincourt, would have knocked down any
man who would have dared to address him personally as “Gam,” that is,
“game,” or “cock-eyed.” His posterity proved less susceptible; and Mr.
Jones says of them, in a burst of melancholy over fallen greatness:
“At different periods between the years 1550 and 1700, I have seen
the descendants of the hero of Agincourt (who lived like a wolf and
died like a lion) in the possession of every acre of ground in the
county of Brecon; at the commencement of the eighteenth century, I
find one of them common bellman of the town of Brecknock, and before
the conclusion, two others, supported by the inhabitants of the parish
where they reside; and even the name of Gam is, in the legitimate line,
extinct.” Mr. Jones might have comforted himself by remembering that
as the Gams went out, the Kembles came in, and that the illustrious
Sarah dignified by her birth the garret of that “Shoulder of Mutton”
public-house, which stood in the street where chivalrous but squinting
Davy had slain his cousin with the unpronounceable name.
John Kemble occasionally took some unwarrantable liberties with
Shakespeare. When he produced the “Merry Wives of Windsor” at Covent
Garden, in April, 1804 (in which he played Ford to Cooke’s Falstaff),
he deprived Sir Hugh Evans of his knightly title, out of sheer
ignorance, or culpable carelessness. Blanchard was announced for
“Hugh Evans,” without the _Sir_. Hawkins, quoting Fuller, says that
“anciently in England, there were more Sirs than Knights;” and as I
have noticed in another page, the monosyllabic Sir was common to both
clergymen and knights. To the first, however, only by courtesy, when
they had attained their degree of B. A. In a “New Trick to cheat the
Devil,” Anne says to her sire, “Nay, sir;” to which the father replies--
“Sir me no sirs! I am no knight nor churchman.”
But John Kemble was complimentary to Shakespeare, compared with poor
Frederick Reynolds, who turned the “Merry Wives of Windsor” into an
opera, in 1824; and although Dowton did not sing Falstaff, as Lablache
subsequently did, the two wives, represented by Miss Stephens and Miss
Cubitt, warbled, instead of being merry in prose, and gave popularity
to “I know a bank.” At the best, Fenton is but an indifferent part,
but Braham was made to render it one marked especially by nonsense.
Greenwood had painted a scene representing Windsor under _a glowing
summer sky_, under which _Fenton_ (Braham) entered, and remarked, very
like Shakespeare: “How I love this spot where dear Anne Page has often
met me and confessed her love! Ha! I think the _sky is overcast_--the
wind, too, blows like an approaching storm. Well, let it blow on! I
am prepared to brave its fury.” Whereupon the orchestra commenced the
symphony, and Mr. Braham took a turn up the stage, according to the
then approved plan, before he commenced his famous air of “Blow, blow,
thou _winter_ wind!” And the fun-anent Falstaff and the Fords was kept
waiting for nonsense like this!
While on the subject of the chivalrous originals of the mock knights of
the Stage, I may be permitted to mention here, that Jonson’s Bobadil
was popularly said to have been named after, if not founded upon,
a knight in the army of the Duke of Alva, engaged in subduing the
Netherlands beneath the despotism of Philip II. According to Strada,
after the victory at Giesen, near Mons, in 1570, Alva sent Captain
Bobadilla to Spain, to inform Philip of the triumph to his arms. “The
ostentation of the message, and still more of the person who bore it,
was the origin of the name being applied to any vain-glorious boaster.”
The Bobadilla family was an illustrious one, and can hardly be supposed
to have furnished a member who, in any wise, resembles Jonson’s
swashbuckler. On the other hand, there was Boabdil, the last sultan of
Granada, who had indeed borne himself lustily, in his early days, in
the field, but who at last cried like a child at losing that Granada
which he was not man enough to defend. But it would be injustice even
to the son of Muley Abel Hassan, to imagine that Jonson only took his
name to distinguish therewith the knight of huge words and weapons who
lodged with Oliver Cob the Water-bearer.
The few other Stage Knights whom I have to name, I will introduce them
to the reader in the next chapter.
STAGE KNIGHTS.
“The stage and actors are not so contemptful
As every innovating puritan,
And ignorant swearer, out of jealous envy,
Would have the world imagine.”--GEORGE CHAPMAN.
The Commonwealth had no admiration for the stage, and no toleration
for actors. When theatricals looked up again, the stage took its
revenge, and seldom represented a puritan who was not a knave. There
is an instance of this in the old play, entitled “The Puritan, or the
Widow of Watling Street.” “Wilt steal me thy master’s chain?” quoth
Captain Idle to Nicholas St. Antlings, the puritan serving-man. “Steal
my master’s chain!” quoth Nicholas; “no, it shall ne’er be said that
Nicholas St. Antlings committed bird-lime. Anything else that I can
do,” adds the casuist in a serge jerkin, “had it been to rob, I would
ha’ done it; but I must not steal, that’s the word, the literal, _Thou
shalt not steal_; and would you wish me to steal then?” “No, faith,”
answers Pyeboard, the scholar; “that were too much;--but wilt thou
nim it from him?” To which honest St. Nicholas, so anxious to observe
the letter of the law, so careless about its spirit, remarks, with
alacrity, “_That_, I will!”
I have said in another page, that ridicule was especially showered
down upon some of those whom Oliver delighted to honor. As late as the
era of Sir George Etherege, we find “one of Oliver’s knights” figuring
as the buffoon of that delicate gentleman’s comedy, “The Comical
Revenge.” It is hardly creditable to the times, or to the prevailing
taste, that the theatre in Lincoln’s-inn Fields cleared one thousand
pounds, in less than a month, by this comedy; and that the company
gained more reputation by it, than by any preceding piece represented
on the same stage. The plot is soon told. Two very fine and not very
profligate gentlemen, Lord Beaufort and Colonel Bruce, are in love
with a tolerably-refined lady, Graciana. The lord wins the lady, and
the philosophical soldier accepts a certain Aurelia, who has the
singular merit of being in love with the Colonel. The under-plot has
“Oliver’s knight” for its hero. The latter is a Sir Nicholas Cully who
is cheated out of a promissory note for one thousand pounds, by two
gentlemen-sharpers, Wheadle and Palmer. Sir Nicholas is partly saved by
the gay, rather than moral, Sir Frederick Frolick. The latter recovers
the note, but he passes off his mistress on Sir Nicholas as his sister,
and induces him to marry her. The only difference between the sharpers
and the “Knight baronet,” Sir Frederick, is this:--Wheadle had dressed
up _his_ mistress, Grace, as Widow Rich; and Sir Nicholas had engaged
to marry her, under certain penalties, forced on him by Wheadle and his
friend. Sir Frederick, at the conclusion, marries the Widow, to oblige
a lady who is fond of him, and the curtain falls upon the customary
indecent jokes, and the following uneasy and metrical maxim:--
“On what small accidents depends our Fate,
While Chance, not Prudence, makes us fortunate.”
What the two Bettertons made of Lord Beaufort and Graciana, I do not
pretend to say, but Nokes is said to have been “screamingly farcical,”
to adopt an equivalent modern phrase, in Sir Nicholas Cully. His
successor, Norris, fell short of the great original in broad humor, but
Nokes himself was surpassed by Dogget, who played “Oliver’s Knight”
with all the comic effect which he imparted to the then low comedy
part of Shylock. It is inexplicable to me how any actor would ever
have extracted a laugh from the audience at anything he had to say, or
chose to do, when enacting the “Cavalier of the Commonwealth.” There is
not a humorous speech, nor a witty remark, nor a comic situation for
the knight to profit by. In 1664, however, people could laugh heartily
at seeing one of the Protector’s knights swindled, and beaten on the
stage. The knight is represented as a thirsty drunkard, “all the drier
for the last night’s wetting,” with a more eager desire to attack the
ladies of cavaliers than cavaliers themselves, and no reluctance to
cheat any man who will undertake to throw a main with him at dice. He
has, however, great reluctance to pay his losses, when he unconsciously
falls into the hands of a greater knave than himself, and bodily
declares--
“I had been a madman to play at such a rate,
If I had ever intended to pay.”
He had less boldness in accepting the results of such a declaration,
and in meeting his antagonist at the end of a rapier. He is brought
to the sticking-point, just as Acres is, by an assurance that his
adversary is an arrant coward. The scene of “the Field” is worth
quoting in part, inasmuch as it is not only an illustration of the
spirit of chivalry, as imputed to Oliver’s knights by cavalier-poets,
but also as it will, perhaps, serve to show that when Sheridan sat
down at his table in Orchard Street, Portman Square, to bring Acres
and Beverley together in mortal combat, he probably had a copy of
Etherege’s play before--or the memory of it strong within--him.
Wheadle and Cully are on the stage:--
_W._ What makes you so serious?
_C._ I am sorry I did not provide for both our safeties.
_W._ How so?
_C._ Colonel Hanson is my neighbor, and very good friend. I might
have acquainted him with the business, and got him, with a file of
musketeers, to secure us all.
_W._ But this would not secure your honor. What would the world have
judged.
_C._ Let the world have judged what it would! Have we not had many
precedents of late? and the world knows not what to judge.
It may be observed here, that Sir Nicholas may be supposed to be
alluding to such men as Hans Behr, who was much addicted to firing
printed broadsides at his adversaries, who advertised him as
“_poltroon_” in return. There are some placards having reference to
this matter, in the British Museum, which admirably display the caution
of the wordsmen and the spirit of the swordsmen of that day. But to
resume. Cully, observing that his adversary has not arrived, suggests
that his own duty has been fulfilled, and that he “will be going,” the
more particularly, says the knight, as “the air is so bleak, I can no
longer endure it.”
_W._ Have a little patience. Methinks I see two making toward us in
the next close.
_C._ Where? Where? ’Tis them!
_W._ Bear up bravely, now, like a man.
_C._ I protest I am the worst dissembler, now, in cases of this nature.
_W._ _Allons!_ Look like a man of resolution. Whither, whither go you?
_C._ But to the next house to make my will, for fear of the worst.
Tell them I’ll be here again, presently.
The provident knight is, however, detained, and on Palmer and that
gentleman’s second appearing, the swords are measured, “and all strip
but Cully, who fumbles with his doublet.”
_P._ Come, sir! are you ready for this sport?
_C._ By-and-by, sir. I will not rend the buttons from my doublet for
no man’s pleasure.
And so “Oliver’s Knight” continues to procrastinate; he can not be
either pricked or pinked into action; and at length, pleading that his
conscience will not let him fight in a wrong cause, he purchases a
whole skin, at the price of a promissory note for a thousand pounds.
I have said that there is no comic situation for the actor who
represents Sir Nicholas, but the scene from which the above passages
are taken may, perhaps, be an exception to the rule. That Sheridan has
profited by it, will be clear to any reader who will take the trouble
to compare this scene with the fighting scene in the “Rivals.” The
latter is far richer in humor, and while we care very little what
becomes of Sir Nicholas, we should regret that any harm should befall
poor Acres--although he prefers fighting at forty paces, would stand
sidewise to be shot at, feels that he would be horribly afraid if he
were alone, and confesses that valor oozes out at the palms of his
hands when his adversary appears in sight, with pistols for two.
Sir Nicholas is in spirits again when making love to one whom he
considers a woman of rank and fortune. No cavalier could then vie
with him in finery. “I protest,” he says, “I was at least at sixteen
brokers, before I could put myself exactly in the fashion.” But with
all this, he is a craven again when he is called upon to enter and
address her who awaits the wooing with impatience. “Come!” he exclaims,
“I will go to the tavern and swallow two whole quarts of wine
instantly; and when I am drunk, ride on a drawer’s back, to visit her.”
Wheadle suggests that “some less frolic will do, to begin with.”--“I
will cut three drawers over the pate, then,” says the knight, “and
go with a tavern-lanthorn before me at noonday;”--just as very mad
gallants were wont to do.
The liquor has not the effect of rendering Oliver’s knight decent,
for in proposing the health of “my lord’s sister,” he does it in the
elegant form of “Here’s a brimmer to her then, and all the fleas about
her;” offers to break the windows to show his spirit, and in the lady’s
very presence exclaims, “Hither am I come to be drunk, that you may see
me drunk, and here’s a health to your flannel petticoat.” The latter
_gentillesse_ is by way of proof of the knight’s quality, for it was
of the very essence of polite manners, when a spirited gentleman drank
to a spirited lady, to strain the wine through what the Chesterfields
and Mrs. Chapones of that day, if such were to be found, would not have
blushed to call “their smocks.”
But enough of the way in which the stage represented “one of Oliver’s
knights.” He is not worse than the courtiers and gentlemen by whom he
is swindled out of his money and into a wife. Nay, nearly the last
sentence put into his mouth is, at least, a complimentary testimony
to the side of which Sir Nicholas is but an unworthy member. “If I
discover this,” he remarks, “I am lost. I shall be ridiculous even to
our own party.”--The reader will, probably, not require to be reminded
that before Etherege drew Cully, Jonson had depicted Sogliardo, and
that the latter, in the very spirit of Oliver’s knight, remarks:--“I do
not like the humor of challenge; it may be accepted.”
The stage, from about the middle of the seventeenth century to nearly
the middle of the succeeding century, was uncommonly busy with knights
as heroes of new plays. The piece which brought most money to the
theatrical treasury, after the “Comical Revenge,” was the “Sir Martin
Mar-all,” an adaptation by Dryden, from the “Etourdi” of Molière. Such
adaptations were in fashion, and the heroes of the French author were
invariably knighted on their promotion to the English stage. Such was
the case with “Sir Solomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb,” adapted by
Carill, from Molière’s “Ecole des Femmes.” The same course was adopted
by Mrs. Behn when she transferred Molière’s “Malade Imaginaire” to the
stage at Dorset Gardens, and transformed _Argon_ into _Sir Patient
Fancy_. One of the characters in this intolerably indecent play
instructs the city knight’s lady how to divide her time according to
the fashion set by “the quality.” “From eight to twelve,” he says, “you
ought to employ in dressing. Till two, at dinner. Till five, in visits.
Till seven, at the play. Till nine, in the park; and at ten, to supper
with your lover.”
In the “Sir Barnaby Whig, or No Wit like a Woman’s,” one of D’Urfey’s
comedies, and produced in 1681, we have again a hero who is described
as one of Oliver’s knights. The play is avowedly a party piece, and the
author, in his prologue, remarks,
“That he shall know both parties now, he glories;
By hisses, Whigs; and by their claps, the Tories.”
The audience at the “Theatre Royal,” in the days of Charles II., was
made especially merry by this poor jest. Sir Barnaby is represented as
a Cromwellian fanatic, who will not drink the King’s health; is in an
agony of terror at hearing that an army of twenty thousand men is about
to sweep every rebel from the land; turns traitor; sings a comic song
against the Roundheads; is saluted as Rabbi Achitophel; offers to turn
Roman Catholic or Mohammedan; and is finally consigned to Newgate.
Mrs. Behn, in the same year, had _her_ political knight as well as
D’Urfey. In this lady’s more than usually licentious play, the “City
Heiress,” performed at Dorset Gardens, she has a Sir Timothy Treat-all
for her comic hero. She boasts in her introduction that her play is
political, loyal, true Tory all over; and as “Whiggism has become
a jest,” she makes a caricature of Sir Timothy, an old, seditious,
Oliverian knight, who keeps open house for commonwealth-men and
true-blue Protestants. He is contrasted with two Tory knights, Sir
Anthony and Sir Charles Meriwill, and a Tory gentleman, named Wilding.
The old Whig knight, however, is by far the least disreputable fellow
of the lot. The Tory knights and their friends are rogues, perjurers,
and something worse. When they are not on the stage, Mrs. Behn is not
afraid to tell what they are about, and _that_ in the very plainest
language. “D--n the City!” exclaims the courtly Sir Charles. “Ay, ay!”
adds his uncle, Sir Anthony, “and _all_ the Whigs, Charles, d--n all
the Whigs!”--And in such wise did Mrs. Afra Behn take vengeance upon
political enemies, to the infinite delight of loyal audiences. How the
Whig knights ever kept their own against the assaults made on them in
plays, prologues, and epilogues, is, as Mr. Slick says, “a caution!”
It is a fact, however, that these political plays were far more highly
relished than those which merely satirized passing social follies.
Audiences roared at the dull jokes against the Oliverian knights, but
they had no relish for the rhyme-loving Sir Hercules Buffoon, of Lacy.
For one stage knight we may be said to be indebted to Charles II.
himself. It was from a hint from him that Crowne wrote his “Sir Courtly
Nice,” produced at the Theatre Royal shortly after the death of
Charles. Sir Courtly alludes to the death of one, and the accession of
a new, king, in very flattering terms:--
“What nation upon earth, besides our own,
But by a loss like ours had been undone?
Ten ages scarce such royal worth display
As England lost and found in one strange day.”
Of all the comedies with knights for their heroes, this one of Sir
Courtly Nice retained a place longest on the stage. The hero was
originally played by handsome, but hapless Will Mountfort. Cibber
played it at the Haymarket in Queen Anne’s time, 1706, and again at
Drury Lane, and before George I. at Hampton Court. Foote and Cibber,
jun., and Woodward, were there presentatives of the gallant knight, and
under George II. Foote played it, for the first time, at Drury Lane,
and the younger Cibber at Covent Garden, in 1746, and Woodward, at
the latter house, in 1751. The last-named actor was long the favorite
representative of the gentlemanly knight, retaining the character as
his own for full a quarter of a century, and being succeeded, but not
surpassed in it, by sparkling Lewis, at Covent Garden, in 1781.
The satire in this piece against the Puritans is of a more refined
character than in any other play of the period; and the contrast
between the rash and ardent cavalier and the cautious Puritan is very
fairly drawn. “Suppose I see not many vices,” says the Roundhead,
Testimony, “morality is not the thing. The heathens had morality; and,
forsooth, would you have your footman or your coachman to be no better
than Seneca?” This is really complimentary to the Cromwellians; and
there is but a good-natured dash of satire in the answer of Testimony,
when asked what time of day it may be, that--“Truly, I do believe it is
about four. I can not say it positively, for I would not tell a lie for
the whole world.”