for their heroes. Southeran produced one entitled, “Sir Anthony Love”
at the Theatre Royal in 1691, for the purpose of showing off Mrs.
Mountfort as an errant lady in male attire.
In the eighteenth century, the knights gave name to a few historical
pieces not worth recording. The only exceptions are scarcely worthy of
more notice. Dodsley’s “Sir John Cockle at Court” made our ancestors,
of George the Second’s time, laugh at the sequel of the “King and the
Miller of Mansfield;” and “Sir Roger de Coverley” was made the hero
of a pantomime at Covent Garden in 1746. By this time, however, the
fashion was extinct of satirizing living politicians under knightly
names. To detail the few exceptions to the rule would only fatigue the
perhaps already wearied reader.
To what a low condition knight and squire could fall may be seen in the
Sir Joseph Wittol and Captain Bluffe, in Congreve’s comedy, the “Old
Batchelor.” The only redeeming point about this disreputable pair is,
that, cowards and bullies as they are, they have both read a little.
The Captain has dipped into history, and he remarks that “Hannibal was
a pretty fellow in his day, it must be granted; but, alas, sir! were
he alive now, he would be nothing; nothing on the earth.” Sir Joseph,
the knight, _in comitatu Bucks_, has also indulged in a little reading,
but that of a lighter sort than the Captain’s. When the gallant Captain
affects not to be frightened at the aspect of Sharper, and exclaims, “I
am prepared for him now, and he shall find he might have safer roused a
sleeping lion,” the knight remarks, “Egad, if he should hear the lion
roar, he’d cudgel him into an ass, and his primitive braying. Don’t
you remember the story in Æsop’s Fables, Bully? Egad, there are good
morals to be picked out of Æsop’s Fables, let me tell you that; and
‘Reynard the Fox’ too;” to which the deboshed Captain can only reply,
“D--n your morals!” as though he despised fiction when compared with
history.
Some of the stage knights are wonderfully great boasters, yet
exceedingly dull fellows. I do not know that in the mouth of any one
of them there is put so spirited a remark as the great Huniades made
to Ulderick, Count of Sicily. The latter asked for a conference with
the great governor of Hungary. Huniades bade him come to the Hungarian
camp. The offended Ulderick, in a great chafe, replied that it was
beneath him to do such a thing, seeing that he was descended from
a long line of princely ancestors; whereas Huniades was the first
of his family who had ever been raised to honor. The Hungarian very
handsomely remarked, “I do not compare myself with your ancestors;
but _with you_!” This has always appeared to me as highly dramatic
in spirit. There is nothing half so spirited in the knightly pieces
brought on the stage during the reign of George III., and which caused
infinite delight to very easily-pleased audiences. It is well known
that the good-natured Sovereign of England, although unassuming in
his domestic character, was exceedingly fond of display in public
ceremonies. He used to arrange the paraphernalia of an installation of
the Garter with all the energy and care of an anxious stage-manager.
The people generally were as anxious to have an idea of the reality.
On one occasion, in the preceding reign, they so nearly forced their
way into the banqueting-room, where the knights were holding festival,
that the troops fired over their heads in order to frighten them into
dispersing. Under George III. they were more content to view these
splendors through a dramatic lens.
In 1771, accordingly, the splendors of the then late installation of
the Garter were reproduced on the stage, in a masque, called “The
Institution of the Garter, or Arthur’s Round Table Restored.” The show
was as good as the piece was bad. The former was got up to profit the
managers, the latter to flatter or do homage to the King and Queen.
It was at once cumbersome and comic. A trio of spirits opened the
delectable entertainment by summoning other spirits from every nook
and corner of the skies, the moon’s horns included, to the work of
escorting the car of the Male Genius of England, the husband probably
of Britannia, down to earth. Nothing can exceed the alacrity with which
the spirits and bards of the empyreal heaven obey the summons. They
descend with the car of the Genius, singing a heavy chorus, ponderous
as the chariot they help to “waft down,”--in which, not the chariot,
but the chorus, there is the assurance that
“The bliss that spotless patriots feel
Is kindred to the bliss above,”--
so that we may hope, though we can not feel certain, that there are
some few persons here below, who are not unconscious of an ante-past of
heaven.
The Genius is a civil and polished personage, who with due remembrance
to metropolitan fogs, very courteously apologizes to the spirits, that
he has been the cause of bringing them down
“To this grosser atmosphere awhile.”
After such celestial compliments as these, he despatches them to shed
heavenly influences over Windsor, while he remains to hold a little
colloquy with the Druids, “Britain’s old philosophers,” as he calls
them. He adds an assertion that may, probably, have startled the
Society of Antiquaries of that day, namely, that the aforesaid Druids--
“Still enamored of their ancient haunts,
Unseen of mortal eyes, do hover round
Their ruined altars and their sacred oaks,”
which may account for that loose heterodoxy which marked the period
when Druids exercised these unseen influences.
The Genius requests the Druids to have the kindness to repair to
Windsor, where the order is in the act of being founded by Edward, and
there direct his choice in the selection of members. This is a very
heathenish idea, but Druids and Bards are alike delighted at it; for,
as the Genius remarks, Edward’s perspicuity, his intellectual eyes,
needed charming
“from the mists
It haply hath contracted from a long
Unebbing current of prosperity.”
The heathen priests are flaming patriots, and express their eagerness
to leave Heaven for England, seeing that the new order may be the means
to propagate
“The sovereignty of England, and erect
Her monarchs into judges of mankind.”
As this expressed end has not been accomplished, and the order has not
propagated the sovereignty of England, we may logically conclude that
the Druids themselves hardly knew much of the subject upon which they
were singing to their tuneless harps. Meanwhile, the first Bard, in a
bass song, petitions the south gales to blow very mildly, and bring
blue skies and sweet smells to the installation.
The ceremony of the installation then opens to the view when all the
knights have been created, except the King’s son, Edward the Black
Prince, who really was not created knight when the order was founded.
How far the Druids have succeeded in influencing the choice of the
King, there is no possibility of knowing. No one utters a word, save
royal father and son: and the commonplace prose which they deliver does
not give us a very exalted idea of the Druidic inspiration. The old
sages themselves, however, are perfectly satisfied with the result;
and in a noisy chorus, they make an assertion which might well have
frightened the Archbishop of Canterbury--had he cared about the matter.
After vaticinating that the name of the Prince should roll down through
the tide of ages, they add, that glory shall fire him, and virtue
inspire him,
“Till blessed and blessing,
Power possessing,
From earth to heaven he lifts his soul,”--
a feat which one would like to see put upon canvass by a Pre-Raphaelite.
While the Knights are supposed to be preparing to pass to the hall,
the scene takes us to the front of the castle, where crowds of liege
and loyal people are assembled. First Citizen, “very like a whale
indeed,” sings a comic song, which, as a specimen of the homage offered
to monarch and consort, more than fourscore years ago, is worth
transcribing--for both its imagery and syntax:--
“Oh, the glorious installation!
Happy nation!
You shall see the King and Queen:
Such a scene!
Valor he, sir;
Virtue she, sir;
Which our hearts will ever win.
Sweet her face is,
With such graces
Show what goodness dwells within.
“Oh, the glorious installation!
Happy nation!
You shall see the noble knights:
Charming sights!
Feathers wagging,
Velvet dragging,
Trailing, sailing, on the ground;
Loud in talking,
Proud in walking,
Nodding, ogling, smirking round.”
The banquet over, and more comic business, as dreary as the song above
quoted, being concluded, King Edward walks forth into the garden for
refreshment--and there the Genius of England takes him by the hand.
Edward, we are sorry to say, knows so little of this Genius, that
he boldly asks him, “What art thou, stranger?” We should, only with
reluctance, trouble our readers with all this unrecognised Genius says
in reply to the royal inquirer, but one passage may be transcribed to
show what the popular spirit was thought to be in the last century.
“Know that those actions which are great and good,
Receive a nobler sanction from the free
And universal voices from all mankind,
Which is the voice of Heaven, than from the highest,
The most illustrious act of royal power.”
This maxim of the Genius of England further shows that the individual
in question not only passed off prose for blank verse, but stole the
phrase of “Vox populi vox Dei,” and tried to render it unrecognisable
by indefinite extension.
That the sentiment is not very much to the taste of the Monarch may
be conjectured from the fact that he sulkily lets it pass without any
comment, and very naturally falls asleep of being talked-at by so
heavily-pinioned a Genius. The latter avails himself of the opportunity
to exhibit to the slumbering Monarch a vision of the future of England,
down to the era of George and Charlotte. The spectacle soothes him
still less than the speech, though oppressive ecstacy may be sweet, and
Edward springs into wakefulness, and loudly exclaiming that
“This is too much for human strength to bear,”
the loquacious Genius flies at him again with some remarkable
figures of speech, to which the worn-out Edward answers nothing. The
Genius, unwilling to attribute his taciturnity to rudeness, finds a
satisfactory solution in the conclusion that
“Astonishment seals up his lips.”
The founder of the “Garter” will not provoke the eloquence of the
heavenly visiter by unsealing the lips which astonishment is supposed
to have sealed up, and the remainder of the piece is left to Genius and
chorus, who unite in a musical asseveration, to the effect that the
reigning Sovereign of England is
“The great miracle on earth, a patriot king,”
and so terminates, amid the most vociferous plaudits, the scenic story
of the Garter, enacted in celebration of the great installation of 1771.
The real installation was, by far, a more cheerful matter than its
theatrical counterfeit. It took place on the 25th of July. At this
ceremony the King raised to the dignity of Knights of the illustrious
order, his sons the Prince of Wales and the Bishop of Osnaburg,
his brother the Duke of Cumberland, with the Queen’s brother, the
Duke of Mecklenburgh, and Prince Henry of Brunswick, the Dukes of
Marlborough and Grafton, and the Earls of Gower and Albermarle. The
festival occupied the entire day. Four mortal hours in the morning
were consumed in making the Knights, after which Sovereign and chapter
dined together in St. George’s Hall. While the banquet was progressing,
Queen Charlotte sat in a gallery, looking on. She was brilliantly
surrounded, and had at her right side the pretty Princess Royal, and
the infant Prince Ernest at her left. One of her Majesty’s brothers
stood by each royal child. On the right of the canopy under which the
King dined, was a long table, at which were seated all the Knights, in
full view of the occupants of raised seats and a gallery in front. At
the end of the first course, the good-natured Monarch was determined
to make a Knight Bachelor of some deserving individual present, and he
rendered good Mr. Dessac (clerk of the check, belonging to the band
of Gentlemen Pensioners) supremely happy by selecting _him_. As soon
as the other courses had been served, and the banquet was concluded,
which was not till between six and seven o’clock, the whole of the
cavaliers and company separated in haste, hurrying to their respective
rooms or hotels, to dress for the ball which was to be held in the
Great Guard-Room. When all the guests were there assembled, the
King and Queen entered the apartment about nine o’clock. Whereupon
the Duke of Gloucester danced a couple of minuets with a brace of
duchesses--Grafton and Marlborough. The minuets were continued till
eleven o’clock. No one seemed to tire of the stately, graceful dance,
and it was only during the hour that followed, that any young lady,
as anxious as the elegant American belle, who told Mr. Oliphant at
Minnesota that “she longed to shake the knots out of her legs,” had a
chance of indulging in her liveliness. During one hour--from eleven to
midnight--country dances were accomplished. I say accomplished, for
only three were danced--and each set procured twenty minutes of very
active exercise. Midnight had scarcely been tolled out by the castle
clock when the festive throng separated--and thus closed one of the
most brilliant installations that Windsor had ever seen, since Edward
first became the founder of the order. If there was any drawback to the
gratification which the King felt on this occasion, it was at beholding
Wilkes and his daughter conspicuously seated among the spectators in
the courtyard; whither the man whom the King hated had penetrated by
means of a ticket from Lord Tankerville. It was at this period that
Mr. Fox revived, for a few court-days, the fashion of appearing at the
drawing-room in red-heeled shoes. To the public, these matters were
far more comic than the comic portion of the “Installation,” in which
(setting aside the Edward III. of Aikin, and the Genius of England,
played by Reddish) King enacted Sir Dingle, a court fool knighted;
Parsons, Nat Needle; and Weston, Roger. Never was foolish knight played
by an actor so chivalrous of aspect as King.
I will avail myself of this opportunity to state that at solemn
ceremonies, like that above named, four of our kings of England were
knighted by their own subjects. These were Edward III., Henry VI. and
VII., and Edward VI. The latter was dubbed by the Lord Protector,
who was himself empowered to perform the act by letters patent,
under the great seal. At a very early period, priests, or prelates
rather, sometimes conferred the honor on great public occasions. The
Westminster Synod deprived them of this privilege in 1102.
It has been said that English knights wearing foreign orders, without
permission of their own sovereign, are no more knights in reality than
those stage knights of whom I have been treating. This, however, is
questionable, if so great an authority as Coke be not in error. That
great lawyer declares that a knight, by whomsoever created, can sue
and be sued by his knightly title, and that such is not the case with
persons holding other foreign titles, similar to those of the English
peerage. Let me add that, among other old customs, it was once common
in our armies for knighthood to be conferred previous to a battle, to
arouse courage, rather than afterward, as is the case now--after the
action, in order to reward valor. Even this fashion is more reasonable
than that of the Czar, who claps stars and crosses of chivalry on the
bosoms of beaten generals, to make them pass in Muscovy for conquerors.
In connection with the stage, knights have figured sometimes before, as
well as behind the curtain. Of all the contests ever maintained, there
was never, in its way a fiercer than that which took place between Sir
William Rawlings, and young Tom Dibdin. The son of “tuneful Charlie,”
born in 1771, and held at the font, as the “Lady’s Magazine” used to
say, by Garrick, was not above four years of age when he played Cupid
to Mrs. Siddons’ Venus, in Shakespeare’s Jubilee. It was hardly to be
expected that after this and a course of attendance as choir-boy at
St. Paul’s, he would settle down quietly to learn upholstery. This
_was_ expected of him by his very unreasonable relatives, who bound him
apprentice to the city knight, Sir William Rawlings, a then fashionable
upholsterer in Moorfields. The boy was dull as the mahogany he had to
polish, and the knight could never make him half so bright in business
matters. “Tom Dibdin,” thus used to remark the city cavalier--“Tom
Dibdin is the stupidest hound on earth!” The knight, however, changed
his mind when his apprentice, grown up to man’s estate, produced
“The Cabinet.” Sir William probably thought that the opera was the
upholstery business set to music. But before this point was reached,
dire was the struggle between the knight and the page, who would not
“turn over a new leaf.” When work was over, the boy was accustomed
to follow it up with a turn at the play--generally in the gallery of
the Royalty Theatre. On one of these occasions the knight followed
him thither, dragged him out, gave him a sound thrashing, and, next
morning, brought him before that awfully squinting official, John
Wilkes. The struggle ended in a drawn battle, and Tom abandoned trade:
and instead of turning out patent bedsteads, turned out the “English
Fleet,” and became the father of “Mother Goose.” He would have shown
less of his relationship to the family of that name, had he stuck to
his tools; in the latter case he might have taken his seat as Lord
Mayor, in a chair made by himself, and in those stirring times he might
have become as good a knight as his master.
As it was, the refuse of knighthood had a hard time of it. He was
actor of all work, wrote thousands of songs, which he sold as cheap
as chips, and composed four pieces for Astley’s Theatre, for which he
received fourteen pounds--hardly the price of a couple of arm-chairs.
How he flourished and fell after this, may be seen in his biography.
He had fortune within his grasp at one time, but he lost his hold
when he became proprietor of a theatre. The ex-apprentice of the old
knight-upholder could not furnish his own house with audiences, and the
angry knight himself might have been appeased could his spirit have
seen the condition into which “poor Tom” had fallen just previous to
his death, some twenty years ago.
But I fear I have said more than enough about stage knights; may I
add some short gossip touching real knights with stage ladies? Before
doing so, I may just notice that the wedded wife of a _bona fide_
knight once acted on the English boards under the chivalric name--and a
time-honored one it is in Yorkshire--of her husband, Slingsby. Dame, or
Lady Slingsby, who had been formerly a Mrs. Lee, was a favorite actress
in the days of James II. She belonged to the Theatre Royal, resided
in St. James’s parish, and was buried in Pancras church-yard in March
1693-4. In the list of the Slingsbys, baronets, of Scriven, given in
Harborough’s “History of Knaresborough,” Sir Henry Slingsby, who died
in 1692, is the only one of whose marriage no notice is taken. But to
our stage ladies and gallant lovers.
STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY.
“Our happy love may have a secret church,
Under the church, as Faith’s was under Paul’s,
Where we may carry on our sweet devotion,
And the cathedral marriage keep its state,
And all its decencies and ceremonies.”
CROWNE, _The Married Beau_.
After the loose fashion of Master Crowne’s Married Beau, it was no
uncommon thing for gallants once to woo the mimic ladies of the scene.
From the time that ladies first appeared upon the stage, they seem to
have exercised a powerful attraction upon the cavaliers. Under date
of the 18th October, 1666, Evelyn says in his Diary: “This night was
acted my Lord Broghill’s tragedy, ‘Mustapha,’ before their majesties
at court, at which I was present, very seldom going to the public
theatres, for many reasons, now, as they are abused to an atheistical
liberty, foul and undecent women now (and never till now) permitted to
appear and act, who, inflaming several young noblemen and gallants,
became their misses, and to some their wives; witness the Earl of
Oxford, Sir R. Howard, Prince Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another
greater person than any of them, who fell into their snares, to the
reproach of their noble families, and ruin of both body and soul. I was
invited by my Lord Chamberlain to see this tragedy, exceedingly well
written, though in my mind I did not approve of any such pastime in a
time of such judgments and calamities.”
A year and a half earlier than the date of the above entry, namely,
April 3, 1665, Pepys notices the same play, with some allusions to
the ladies: “To a play at the Duke’s of my Lord Orrery’s, called
‘Mustapha,’ which being not good, made Betterton’s part and Ianthe’s
but ordinary too. All the pleasure of the play was, the king and
my Lady Castlemaine were there; and pretty witty Nell of the
King’s House, and the younger Marshall sat next us, which pleased
me mightily.” The play, however, is not so poor a one as Pepys
describes it, and the cast was excellent. Betterton played Solyman the
Magnificent. Mustapha and Zanga, the sons of Solyman, were played by
Harris and Smith; and Young made a capital Cardinal. Mrs. Betterton
was the Roxalana; and Mrs. Davies, one of those ladies who, like her
sisters, the two Marshalls, Hughes and Nelly, exercised the fatal
attraction over young noblemen and gallants, deplored by Evelyn, was
the magnificent Queen of Hungary. Mustapha continued to be the favorite
play until the theatre closed, when the plague began to spread. Pepys’s
“Ianthe” was Mrs. Betterton, of whom he says, on the 22d October, 1662,
“the players do tell me that Betterton is not married to Ianthe, as
they say; but also that he is a very sober, serious man, studious and
humble, following of his studies, and is rich already with what he gets
and saves.” Betterton, however, married the lady, Miss Saunderson,
in 1663. She had been famous for her Ianthe in Davenant’s “Siege of
Rhodes;” and she played Shakespeare’s heroines with great effect. Pepys
rightly designates the author of the play, Lord Orrery. Lord Broghill
was made Earl of Orrery, five years before Evelyn saw his play. I may
add that Mustapha has appeared in half-a-dozen different versions on
the stage. Probably the worst of these was Mallet’s; the latter author
created great amusement by one of his passages, in which he said:--
“_Future_ sultans
_Have_ shunned the marriage tie;”--
a confusion of tenses which has been compared with a similar error in
the sermons of so correct a writer as Blair (vol. v., third edition,
page 224), “in _future_ periods the light _dawned_ more and more.”
Although Evelyn, in 1666, says that “never till now” were women
admitted to assume characters on the stage, he is not quite correct in
his assertion. There were actresses full thirty years previous to that
period. Thus, in 1632, the “Court Beggar” was acted at the Cockpit.
In the last act, Lady Strangelove says:--“If you have a short speech
or two, the boy’s a pretty actor, and his mother can play her part:
women-actors now grow in request.” Our ancestors wisely followed a
foreign fashion when they ceased to employ boys in female characters.
Prynne says, in 1633, “They have now their female players in Italy
and other foreign parts;” and in Michaelmas 1629, they had French
women-actors in a play personated at Blackfriars, to which there was
a great resort. Geneste quotes Freshwater as writing thus of French
actresses in Paris, in 1629: “Yet the women are the best actors; they
play their own parts, a thing much desired in England.”