THE AUDIENCES OF 1700-1750.
Mr. Isaac Bickerstaffe has laid it down as a rule that it is the duty
of every person in a theatrical audience to show his "attention,
understanding, and virtue." To the insuperable difficulty of the task
may, perhaps, be attributed the carelessness of audiences on this
point. How is a man, for instance, to demonstrate his virtue in the
public assembly? Steele answers the query--by showing a regard for it
when exhibited on the stage. "I would undertake," he says, "to find
out all the persons of sense and breeding by the effect of a single
sentence, and to distinguish a gentleman as much by his laugh as his
bow. When we see the footman and his lord diverted by the same jest,
it very much turns to the diminution of the one or the honour of
the other. But," he adds, "though a man's quality may appear in his
understanding and taste, the regard to virtue ought to be the same in
all ranks and conditions of men, however they make a profession of it
under the names of honour, religion, or morality."
Steele was gratified by an audience who sympathised with the distress
of an honest but unlucky pair of lovers. He thinks that the Roman
audience which broke into an ecstasy of applause at the abnegation
of self displayed in the friendship of Pylades and Orestes, showed
qualities which justly made of the Roman people the leaders of
mankind. As if appreciation of the semblance of good were the same
thing as the exercise of it. The same people applauded as lustily
when they saw the life-blood spilt of the vanquished gladiator.
Again, he discovers a surpassing excellence in an Athenian
audience,--famed of old for applauding the virtues which the
Lacedemonians practised. That audience was roused to the utmost fury
by the speech of a man who professed to value wealth far above good
name, family, or natural affection. The uproar was so great that
the author was compelled to come forward and ask the forbearance
of the house till the last act of the piece, in which he promised
that this wretched fellow would be brought to condign punishment.
Mr. Bickerstaffe very much questions whether modern audiences would
be moved to such a laudable horror. It would be very undesirable
that they should: or that a person should swing out of the house in
disgust, as Socrates did when he attended the first representation
of a tragedy by his friend Euripides,--and was excited to anger by
a remark of Hippolitus, to the effect that he had "taken an oath
with his tongue but not with his heart." The maxim was indefensible,
but the action of the play required it; and Socrates had been truer
to his friend had he remained till the _dénouement_, and not have
hurried away while that friend's play was being applauded.
On the duties of audiences, Mr. Bickerstaffe is a little loose,
but we may readily acquiesce in one of his sentiments. "When we
see anything divert an audience, either in tragedy or comedy, that
strikes at the duties of civil life, or exposes what the best men in
all ages have looked upon as sacred and inviolable, it is the certain
sign of a profligate race of men, who are fallen from the virtue of
their forefathers, and will be contemptible in the eyes of their
posterity." This was said when audiences thought only of the quality
of the actor, and troubled not themselves with that of the maxims
uttered, unless these had some political tendency, or allusion to
well-known popular circumstance. The _Tatler_ lived before the time
when the stories of Regulus and Virginia were turned into burlesque,
and children received their first impressions of Alfred and of Tell
through the caricature of extravaganza.
But there was much that was illegitimate in those legitimate days.
If a play was not likely to attract, an audience was advertised,
in order to draw one. The promised presence of royalty, naturally
enough, helped to fill the house; but so would that of a leash of
savages, or a quack doctoress. Of the latter class, there was the
clever and impudent Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter, who came into town
daily from Epsom, in her own carriage, and set bones, or explained
her principle in doing so, at the Grecian Coffee House. The Lincoln's
Inn Field managers invited her to honour their house and the
performance with her presence, and the astute old lady was well aware
that her presence thus granted would be a profitable advertisement of
herself. That presence I find announced at the above theatre on the
16th October, 1736, with that of Taylor, the oculist, at Lincoln's
Inn Fields. The play was the "Husband's Relief," but the full house
was owing to Mrs. Mapp being there. In honour of this "bone-setter,"
near whom also sat Ward, the worm doctor, a song was sung on the
stage,--as the national anthem when a sovereign sanctions the doings
of the evening. Of this chant I give the first and last verses:--
"Ye surgeons of London, who puzzle your pates,
To ride in your coaches and purchase estates,
Give over, for shame, for your pride has a fall,
And the doctress of Epsom has outdone you all.
Derry down.
* * * * *
"Dame Nature has giv'n her a doctor's degree,
She gets all the patients and pockets the fee;
So if you don't instantly prove her a cheat,
She'll loll in her chariot, while you walk the street.
Derry down!"
Let us now glance at the example set to audiences by greater folk
than Mrs. Mapp.
George I. understood English better than he could speak it, and he
could make ready application of passages to contemporary events
connected with himself or others. Shakspeare's "Henry VIII." was
frequently played before him, both at Hampton Court and at Drury
Lane; and there was a speech in that play which never escaped his
marked notice. It is that addressed by Wolsey to his secretary,
Cromwell, after the King has ordered the Cardinal to write letters of
indemnity, into every county where the payment of certain heavy taxes
had been disputed. "A word with you," says the Cardinal:--
"Let there be letters writ to every shire,
Of the King's grace and pardon.--The grieved commons
Hardly conceive of me. Let it be noised,
That through _our_ intercession, this revokement
And pardon comes.--I shall, anon, advise you
Further in the proceeding."
Cibber, who narrates the incident, states that "the solicitude of
this spiritual minister in filching from his master the grace and
merit of a good action, and dressing up himself in it, while himself
had been author of the evil complained of, was so easy a stroke
of his temporal conscience that it seemed to raise the King into
something more than a smile whenever that play came before him. And
I had a more distinct occasion to observe this effect, because my
proper stand on the stage, when I spoke the lines, required me to
be near the box where the King usually sat. In a word, this play is
so true a dramatic chronicle of an old English court, and where the
character of Harry VIII. is so excellently drawn, even to a humorous
likeness, that it may be no wonder why His Majesty's particular taste
for it should have commanded it three several times in one winter."
So far Cibber; we hear from another source that on one occasion when
the above lines were spoken, the King said to the Prince of Wales,
who had not yet been expelled from Court, "You see, George, what you
have one day to expect."
When George I., wishing to patronise the English actors, in 1718,
ordered the great hall at Hampton Court to be converted into a
theatre, he desired that it might be ready by June, in order that
the actors in their summer vacation might play before him three
times a week. The official obstacles prevented the hall being ready
before September, when the actors had commenced their London season,
and were, therefore, enabled to play before the King only seven
times. The performances were under the direction of Steele, whose
political services had been poorly recompensed by granting him
certain theatrical privileges. The troop commenced on the 23rd of the
month with "Hamlet;" they subsequently played "Sir Courtly Nice," the
"Constant Couple," "Love for Money," "Volpone," and "Rule a Wife and
Have a Wife." The King could not have been an indifferent scholar
if he could readily apply passages, and quickly comprehend others,
in plays like these; or could follow Cibber in Sir Courtly, laugh at
the jokes of Pinkethman in Crack, feel the heartiness of Miller, in
Hothead, be interested in the Testimony of Johnson, sympathetic with
the Surly of Thurmond, enjoy the periods of Booth in Farewell, or
the aristocratic spirit of Mills in Lord Bellguard. The ladies, too,
in some of the plays acted before him,--Leonora, by Mrs. Porter, and
Violante, by Mrs. Younger,--had also some phrases to utter, which
might well puzzle one not to the matter born. But George I. must have
comprehended all, for he so thoroughly enjoyed all, that Steele told
Lord Sunderland, the grandson of Sacharissa, and the son-in-law of
Marlborough, that the King liked the entertainment "so terribly well,
my lord, that I was afraid I should have lost all my actors; for I
was not sure the King would not keep them to fill the place at Court,
which he saw them so fit for in the play."
In the old days, a play acted before the sovereign at Whitehall, cost
that sovereign but the poor fee of £20, the actors playing at their
own house, in the afternoon, previous to having the honour of acting
before the Court at night. To the performers at Hampton Court their
ordinary day's wage was given, with their travelling expenses, for
which they held themselves ready to act there at a day's warning. The
Lord Chamberlain found the wax-lights, and furnished the "household
music," while the players' wardrobe and "traps" generally were
conveyed from old Drury down to Hampton in a "_Chaise Marine_" at
his Majesty's expense. The cost of the seven plays amounted to £350;
but King George generously threw in a couple of hundred more, as a
guerdon to the managers, who had professed that the honour of toiling
to afford his Majesty pleasure was sufficient recompense in itself!
The King did not believe a word of it; and the Duke of Newcastle,
then Lord Chamberlain (and subsequently the original of Foote's
Matthew Mug, in the "Mayor of Garratt"), paid the money into the
hands of the delighted Cibber, who was astounded at the Chamberlain's
modesty, which kept him from arrogating to himself, like Cardinal
Wolsey, the merit which belonged to his royal master.
How things went between audience and actors in the Hampton Court
theatre is admirably told by Cibber himself:--"A play presented at
Court, or acted on a public stage," he says, "seem to their different
authors a different entertainment. In the common theatre the guests
are at home, where the politer forms of good breeding are not so
nicely regarded. Every one there falls to, and likes or finds fault,
according to his natural taste or appetite. At Court, where the
Prince gives the treat and honours the table with his own presence,
the audience is under the restraint of a circle where laughter or
applause raised higher than a whisper would be stared at. At a public
play they are both let loose, even till the actor is sometimes
pleased with his not being able to be heard for the clamour of them.
But this coldness, or decency of attention at Court, I observed,
had but a melancholy effect upon the impatient vanity of some of
our actors, who seemed inconsolable when their flashy endeavours to
please had passed unheeded. Their not considering where they were
quite disconcerted them, nor could they recover their spirits till,
from the lowest rank of the audience, some gaping _Joan_ or _John_,
in the fulness of their hearts, roared out their approbation."
These little ebullitions appear to have amused the grave King, for
Cibber hints that they raised a smile on the royal countenance, and
he suggests that such a fact was entirely natural and reasonable.
He adds, "that an audience may be as well too much reserved as too
profuse of their applause. For though it is possible a Betterton
would not have been discouraged from throwing out an excellence, or
elated into an error, by his auditors being too little or too much
pleased; yet as actors of his judgment are rarities, those of less
judgment may sink into a flatness in their performance for want of
that applause which, from the generality of judges, they might,
perhaps, have some pretence to; and the auditor, when not seeming to
feel what ought to affect him, may rob himself of something more that
he might have had, by giving the actor his due, who measures out his
power to please, according to the value he sets upon the hearer's
taste or capacity; but, however, as we were not here itinerant
adventurers, and had properly but one royal auditor to please, after
that honour was attained to, the rest of our ambition had little to
look after."
And now what of this George's successor as an "auditor?"
Among the unmerited censures which have been flung at Charles II.,
the most conspicuous and the least reasonable is that the grossness
of the dramas produced in his days was owing to his bad taste
exhibited in his fondness for French comedy. Had the poets of that
period imitated that comedy, they would not have offended as they
did, for, taken altogether, French comedy was remarkable for its
freedom from utter, abounding, and continual coarseness. I think that
George II. was more blameworthy than his predecessor Charles, for he
encouraged the representation of immoral dramas, and commanded the
restoration of scenes which actors had begun to deem too indecent
for acting or expression. For didactic plays the monarch had no
stomach; but he savoured Ravenscroft's beastly comedies--the very
worst of them did he the most delight in, and helped to keep them
on the stage when actors and audiences were alike disgusted with
them. This perverted taste was strong upon him from the first. When
Prince of Wales, he witnessed the acting of "Venice Preserved,"
but, discovering subsequently, on reading the old edition of the
play, there were scenes in it which are flattered by merely being
designated as "filthy," he sent for the "master" of one of the
houses, and commanded that the omitted scenes should be restored.
They are those which chiefly lie between Aquilia and Antonio,
characters which never take part in modern representations of Otway's
tragedy. The former part was given to Mrs. Horton, who, though she
was something of the quality of the creature she represented, was
not only young and beautiful, but was draped in a certain mantle of
modesty which heightened the charms of her youth and her beauty; and
she must have had a painful task, less than the younger Pinkethman
had who played Antonio, in thus gratifying the low predilections of
the graceless Prince, who then gave _ton_ to audiences.
George II., when Prince of Wales, found Bartholomew Fair as much
to his taste as the theatres. In 1725, he, and a gay posse of
companions, went down the Thames, in barges, to Blackfriars, and
thence to the fair. At the conclusion of the fun for the night,
they entered the old King's Arms Inn, joyously supped there, and
got back to St. James's by four o'clock in the morning. Some years
later, Prince Frederick, George II.'s son, who valued the stage in
much the same measure as his father did, also visited the fair by
night. He went amid a little army of yeomen of the guard, and under
a blaze of torches, and cries of "make way there for the prince,"
from a mob who were delighted to see among them the heir apparent,
in a bright ruby-coloured frock coat, thickly laced with gold. There
was a gallant company, too, of gentlemen, all coated and laced, and
besworded like the prince; but the finest and fussiest, and happiest
personage there, was the important little man who marshalled the
prince the way that he should go, and ushered him to and from the
booths, where short solemn tragedies were played, with a disjointed
farce between the acts. This important individual was Mr. Manager
Rich, and he was as happy at this night's doings, as if he had gained
something more substantial by them than empty honour.
On the 3d of May 1736,[56] the audience at Drury Lane, with the
Prince of Wales and his bride among them, witnessed some unexpected
addition to the entertainment promised them. The footmen chose that
night for an attempt to recover their old and abused privilege of
occupying the upper gallery, _gratis_. One body of them entered the
gallery by force, a second fought their way through the stage-door to
dictate terms to the manager, and an active corps in plush kept the
house in alarm by their shouts for a redress of grievances. Amid the
fighting that ensued the terrified part of the audience dispersed.
Colonel de Veil, with the "authorities," came to read the Riot Act,
but no respect was paid either to dignitary or document, whereupon a
battle-royal followed, in which plush was ingloriously defeated, with
a loss of eighteen finely-liveried and thickly-calved combatants,
who, battered, bruised, and bleeding, were clapped into Newgate for
safe keeping.
In the latter part of the life of George II., he took advantage of
his position to make loud remarks on the performances at which he was
present. One night, at Drury Lane, he commanded Farquhar's "Beaux'
Stratagem" and Fielding's "Intriguing Chambermaid." He was amused
with the Foigard of Yates, and the Cherry of Miss Minors. In the
second piece, Kitty Clive played her original part of Lettice--a part
in which she had delighted the town, which could then be delighted by
such parts, for seventeen years. Walpole, writing of this incident to
Mann, says: "A certain king that, whatever airs you may give yourself
you are not at all like, was last week at the play. The intriguing
chambermaid in the farce says to the old gentleman: 'You are
villainously old, you are sixty-six, you cannot have the impudence to
think of living above two years.' The old gentleman in the stage-box
turned about in a passion, and said, 'This is d----d stuff!' and the
royal critic was energetically right."
On some occasions there were more kings in the house than he of
England. Four were once there among the audience, and as far as their
majesties were concerned, rather against their will. These poor
majesties were American Indian chiefs, to whom the higher sounding
title of "kings" was given by way of courtesy. The Irish actor,
Bowen, had contrived to secure their presence at his benefit when
"Macbeth" was performed, and a dense mob was gathered, not so much
to hear Shakspeare as to see the "kings." The illustrious strangers
were placed in the centre box, and as they were invisible to the
occupants of the galleries an uproar ensued. Wilks blandly assured
the rioters that the kings were really present, as announced. The
galleries did not care; they had paid their money, they said, to see
them, and the kings they would have or there should be no play. After
some negotiating and great tumult the managers placed four chairs
upon the stage, to which the four Indian kings gravely descended from
their box amid a chorus of "hurrahs!" from the late dissentients,
with whose noisy enthusiasm the imperturbable gravity of the chiefs
contrasted strangely. They listened seriously to the play, and with
as much intelligence to the epilogue, which was specially addressed
to them, and in which they were told that as Sheba's queen once went
to adore Solomon, so they had been "winged by her example" to seek
protection on Britannia's shore. It then proceeded, with some abuse
of grammar, thus:--
"O princes, who have with amazement seen
So good, so gracious, and so great a queen;
Who from her royal mouth have heard your doom
Secur'd against the threats of France and Rome;
Awhile some moments on our scenes bestow;"
which was a singular request to make when the play was over!
One of the greatest honours ever rendered to a dramatist by royalty,
was conferred by Queen Caroline, wife of George II., on Mottley.
The poet was but a poet by courtesy; his two stilted tragedies
were soon forgotten, and a better fate has not attended his other
productions. What merit gained for him the favour of so great a queen
was never known. Mottley's father was an active Jacobite; but the
son was a seeker of places, for which he obtained more promises
than were realised. Yet for this obscure person, whose benefit
night was announced as to take place soon after the Queen's Drawing
Room had been held, that queen herself, in that very drawing room
(the occasion being the Prince of Wales's birthday), sold Mottley's
tickets, delivering them with her own royal hand to the purchasers,
and condescending to receive gold for them in return. The money was
handed over to that gravest of the Hanoverian officials, Colonel
Schurtz, privy-purse to the prince, who presented the same to the
highly-honoured, and, perhaps, much astonished poet, with a handsome
guerdon added to it by the prince himself.
It is due to the audiences at Oxford, where the actors played in
their brief season twice a day, that it should be said, that the
taste of the University was superior to that of the metropolis.
Whatever modern dramatists might assert with respect to Shakspeare,
and however the "more politely written comedies" might be acceptable
to a licentious London pit, Oxford asserted the superiority of
Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, "for whose masterly scenes," says Cibber,
"they seemed to have as implicit a reverence as, formerly, for the
ethics of Aristotle." The flash, and tinsel, and even the sterling
metal mixed up with the dross of the modern illustrative comedy, had
no attractions for an Oxford audience. Of modern tragedy they only
welcomed "Cato;" but that was written by an Oxford man, and after the
classic model, and to see this, the play goers clustered round the
doors at noon, and the death of Cato triumphed over the injuries of
Cæsar everywhere.
On the taste of English audiences generally, Dryden remarks, in his
_Essay on Dramatic Poesy_, that, "as we who are a more sullen people
come to be diverted at our plays, so the French, who are of an airy
and gay temper, come hither to make themselves more serious. And this
I conceive to be why comedies are more pleasing to us and tragedies
to them." This appears to me as false as his assertion that rhymed
plays were in their nature and fashion peculiarly English! A few
years later the "polite taste" of audiences was censured freely by
Edmund Curll, who was very irate that "nothing would go down but
ballad-opera and Mr. Lun's buffoonery;" but this taste was attributed
by him to an imperfect education. "As for breeding," that delicate
gentleman remarks, "our brewers are now arrived at such a height of
_finesse_ and _elegance_, that their children are sent into France
for education. But for this, as a lord mayor himself said, there
ought to be some grains of allowance."
Cibber relates an incident illustrative of the ferocity of enamoured
and rejected beaux among the audience. One of these, in the year
1717, had incurred the strongly-expressed contempt of a young
actress, whom Colley does not further designate, for some insulting
language addressed to her as she was seated in a box. This fellow
took his revenge by outraging the lady, on the stage, and, when she
appeared, he interrupted her performance "with such loud and various
notes of mockery, as other young Men of honour in the same place have
sometimes made themselves undauntedly merry with." This disappointed
beau, however, went further, and threw at the lady "such trash as
no person can be supposed to carry about him, unless to use on so
particular an occasion." A champion of the insulted actress called
her assailant "a fool, or a bully," whereupon the latter challenged
him to Hyde Park, and proved himself craven to boot, by asking for
his life. "Whether he mended it or not," says Cibber, "I have not
yet heard; but his antagonist, a few years after, died in one of the
principal posts of the Government."
The critics were not more tender to a new play, particularly when
provoked by sarcasms against their judgment in the prologue, than
the above offender was to a well-conducted actress. "They come to a
new play," Cibber tells us, "like hounds to a carcase, and are all
in a full cry, sometimes for an hour together, before the curtain
rises to throw it amongst them. Sure, those gentlemen cannot but
allow that a play, condemned after a fair hearing, falls with thrice
the ignominy, as when it is refused that common justice." This was a
new race of critics, unknown to earlier times, and their savageness
had the effect of deterring gentlemen from writing plays. "They seem
to me," says Colley, "like the lion whelps in the Tower, who are so
boisterously gamesome at their meals that they dash down the bowls of
milk brought for their own breakfasts."
We meet with one instance of forbearance being asked from the
critics, not on the ground that the piece had merit, but that, as a
prince of the blood was in the house, he should be allowed to listen
to the nonsense undisturbed. The piece was Cibber's pastoral opera,
"Love's Riddle," produced at Drury Lane, in January 1729. The public
were offended at the recent prohibition of the second part of the
"Beggar's Opera," Cibber was looked upon as having procured the
prohibition for the sake of his own piece, and a cabal of pit rioters
hooted the play, and were only momentarily silent while Miss Raftor
was singing, whose voice had well nigh saved this operatic drama.
On the second night, which was even more riotous than the first,
Frederick, Prince of Wales, was present, and it was in order that
he might be decently bored, and not deprived of what he had never
seen, the fun of a playhouse riot, that Cibber addressed the pit, and
undertook that the piece should be withdrawn after that night, if
they would only remember in whose presence they were, and allow the
drama to be quietly played out. With this understanding the rioters
withdrew, the piece went dully on, and, at the close of it, a lord
in waiting was sent behind the scenes to compliment Cibber and to
express the Prince's approval of his conduct on that night.
The pit was always the great court of appeal, and on one occasion
Cibber showed much courage and good sense, and a due appreciation of
his calling as an actor. At the theatre in Dorset Gardens, where the
Drury Lane Company occasionally played, and on an evening when he
was announced for one of his best parts, a set of rope-dancers were
advertised as about to make their first appearance. Cibber's scorn
was roused by this companionship, and what he did may be best told
in his own words. "I was hardy enough," he says, "to _go into the
pit_, and acquainted the spectators near me that I hoped they would
not think it a mark of my disrespect to them if I declined acting
upon any stage that was brought to so low a disgrace as ours was
like to be by that day's entertainment." In this he had the support
of his fellow-actors, and the public approved; and the acrobats were
dismissed by the reluctant manager.
The pit was at this period supreme and severe, and as the witlings
used to make remarks on, or exchange them with, the more audacious
beauties in the boxes, so now did they exercise a cruel humour in
making sarcastic application of the words of a part to the actress
who delivered them. By these they pointed out the flaws in her
character, her deficiency in beauty, or her effrontery in assuming
virtues which did not belong to her.
I do not find that any special evening was considered particularly
"fashionable" till towards the close of Cibber's managerial career
at Drury Lane, which, by good administration, had become so much
in fashion, he says, "with the _politer part_ of the town, that
our house, every Saturday, seemed to be the appointed assembly
of the first ladies of quality. Of this, too," he adds, "the
_common_ spectators were so well apprised, that, for twenty years
successively on that day, we scarcely ever failed of a crowded
audience, for which occasion we particularly reserved our best plays,
acted in the best manner we could give them."
From the Restoration till late in the reign of Queen Anne, those
"politer" folks, as Cibber,--or the "quality," as Chesterfield would
have called them, had been accustomed to arrogate to themselves the
privilege not merely of going behind the scenes but crowding at the
wings, and, at last, invading the stage itself, while the play was
being acted. Through this mob the players had to elbow their way; and
where all illusion was destroyed, difficult must have been the task,
but marvellous the triumph, of those actors who could make grief
appear sincere, and humour seem spontaneous and genuine. This mob
was not a civil and attentive crowd, but a collection of impertinent
persons, who buzzed and moved about, and changed salutations with the
audience, or addressed the players--the chief of whom they must often
have supremely exasperated. The "decency of a clear stage" was one
of Cibber's great objects, and when his importunity and the decree
of Queen Anne drove the erratic part of the audience back to their
proper position in the house, a change for the better was effected,
by which all parties were gainers. This decree was issued in January
1704, and it prohibited "the appearance of any of the public on the
stage whatever might be their quality, the wearing of masks in any
part of the house, entering the house without previous due payment,
and the acting of anything on the stage contrary to religion and good
manners." Previously to the appearance of this decree, persons were
employed to take down profane words uttered by the performers, who
were thereupon prosecuted, and, on conviction, fined. The authors
who penned the phrases, for omitting which the actor would have been
mulcted, were neither molested nor censured.
Cibber contrasts French and English audiences to the disadvantage
of the latter; but I think he is wrong in his conclusions. "At the
tragedy of 'Zaire,'" he says, "while the celebrated Mdlle. Gossin
was delivering a soliloquy, a gentleman was seized with a sudden fit
of coughing, which gave the actress some surprise and interruption,
and, his fit increasing, she was forced to stand silent so long
that it drew the eyes of the uneasy audience upon him; when a
French gentleman, leaning forward to him, asked him if this actress
had given him any particular offence, that he took so public an
occasion to resent it? The English gentleman, in the utmost surprise,
assured him, so far from it, that he was a particular admirer of her
performance; that his malady was his real misfortune, and that if
he apprehended any return of it, he would rather quit his seat than
disoblige either the actor or the audience." Colley adds, that he
had seen this "publick decency" of the French theatre carried so far
"that a gentleman in their _Second Loge_, or Middle Gallery, being
observed to sit forward himself, while a lady sat behind him, a
loud number of voices called out to him from the pit--_Place à la
Dame! Place à la Dame!_ when the person so offending, either not
apprehending the meaning of the clamour, or possibly being some John
Trot, who feared no man alive, the noise was continued for several
minutes; nor were the actors, though ready on the stage, suffered to
begin the play till this unbred person was laughed out of his seat,
and had placed the lady before him."
This, however, was but the mere arrogance of the pit, towards
which, had the lady stood for a moment, with her back turned, the
polite gentlemen there would have roared lustily, as under similar
circumstances they do at the present time, "_Face au parterre!_" And
as for the tenderness of the old French audiences for their actors,
I have already given some taste of its quality, and have only to add
here, that the French magistrates were once compelled to issue a
decree wherein "Every person is prohibited from doing any violence
in the Theatre de Bourgogne, in Paris, during the time any piece is
performing, as likewise from _throwing stones_, dust, or anything
which may put the audience into an uproar, or create any tumult."
The decree of 1704 for keeping the stage clear does not appear to
have been universally observed, for, on the opening of the first
theatre in Covent Garden, in December 1732, I find it announced
that, on account of the great demand for places, the pit and boxes
were laid together at 5_s._, the galleries at 2_s._ and 1_s._,
and to prevent the stage from being crowded, admission thereto
was raised to half a guinea. In the former year, to appear at the
theatre in a red coat and a laced hat, indicated a rural beau who
was behind his time, and had not yet laid aside a fashion as old as
the days of Great Nassau. Dress, however, was indispensable. Swift
writes to Stella, on the 31st of August 1711, "Dilly and I walked to
Kensington, to Lady Mountjoy, who invited us to dinner. He returned
soon to go to the play, it being the last that will be acted for
some time. He dresses himself like a beau, and no doubt makes a fine
figure." No doubt that Dillon Ashe was dressed in his best that
night, on which he went to Drury, and saw "Love's a Jest," with Pack
in Sam Gaymood, and Mrs. Porter as Lady Single.
As the government procured the passing of the Licensing Act less for
the sake of morality than to save administration from the shafts of
satire, so the public took it unkindly of them, but unreasonably
revenged themselves on innocent authors. No secret was made of the
determination of playgoers to damn the first piece that should be
stigmatised with the license of the Lord Chamberlain. That piece
happened to be the "Nest of Plays," by Hildebrand Jacob, represented
at Covent Garden, in January 1738, which was damned accordingly.
But the public sense of wrong was not yet appeased. The "Parricide"
subsequently was condemned, solely because it was a licensed
piece. "That my enemies," says William Shirley, the author, "came
resolved to execute before trial, may be gathered from their
behaviour ere the play began, for at five o'clock they engaged
and overthrew the candles in the music-room, and called a council
of war, whether they should attack the harpsichord or not; but to
your good fortune," he adds, addressing Rich, "it was carried in
the negative. Their expelling ladies from the pit, and sending for
wine to drink, were likewise strong indications of their arbitrary
and violent dispositions." It is to be observed, however, of a few
condemned pieces of this period, that the authors rather abused their
opportunity of ascribing their ill fortune solely to the unpopularity
of the Licensing Act.
The ushering of ladies out of the pit was one of the formal
indications that serious mischief was afoot. This was the first
ceremony observed at Drury Lane in January 1740, when the riot took
place consequent on the non-appearance of a French dancer, Madame
Chateauneuf. When the ladies had been sent home, a noble marquis
suggested, and warmly recommended, that it would be well and proper
to set fire to the house! This atrocious proposal was considered
but not adopted. The aristocratic rioters contented themselves with
destroying the musical instruments, fittings, and costly adornments,
sweeping down the panel partitions of the boxes, and finally pulling
down the royal arms. The offence, however, was condoned, on the most
noble marquis sending £100 to the manager, who submitted to defray
the remainder of the cost of reparation rather than further provoke
his excellent patrons.
The mixture of ferocity and gallantry in the audiences of these times
was remarkable. When Miller, most unlucky of clergymen, produced
his farce of the "Coffee-House," he caused the Temple to heave with
indignation. Under the temple gate there was a coffee-house, kept by
Mrs. Yarrow and her daughter, and as there was not only a similar
pair in Miller's piece, but a woodcut on the title-page of the
printed copy, which bore some likeness to the snug little place where
Templars loved to congregate, those gentlemen took offence as at an
insult levelled at their fair hostesses, and went down in a body to
the theatre, whence they procured the expulsion of the piece. Nor
did they ever suffer a subsequent play of Miller's to succeed. The
Templars never forgave him his unintentional caricature of the buxom
hostess, and Hebe her daughter, who presided over the aromatic cups
dispensed by them beneath the Temple gates. In contests like these,
where opposition was expected, it was no unusual thing for one or
both parties to hire a body of professional "bruisers." The side
which possessed the greatest number of these Bashi-Bazouks generally
carried the day. When the town took sides, in 1743, in the quarrel
between Garrick and Macklin, where the right was altogether with the
former, Dr. Barrowby headed a phalanx of sturdy Macklinites; but
Garrick, or Garrick's friends, sent against them a formidable band
of thirty boxers, who went in, cracked skulls, cleared the pit, and
established tranquillity!
It is curious to mark, at a time when audiences bore with gross
wit, and were accustomed, on slight provocation, to resort to acts
of violence, how sensitive they were on other points. Poor Hughes,
who died on the first night of the representation of his "Siege
of Damascus," in 1720, was compelled to remodel the character of
Phocyas, a Christian who turns Moslem, as the managers considered
that the audience would not tolerate the sight of him after his
apostasy. So Charles Killigrew, Master of the Revels, cut out the
whole of the first act from Cibber's adaptation of "Richard III." on
the ground that the Jacobite portion of the audience, in the distress
of King Henry, would be painfully or angrily reminded of the sorrows
of King James. After all, susceptible as audiences occasionally were,
the sensibilities of the gallery remained untouched, or evidence of
the fact was offered in an exaggerated form. When Dryden's Cleomenes,
or Rowe's Jane Shore, used to complain of the hunger under which they
suffered, it was the humour of the "gods" to fling bread down upon
the stage by way of showing their sympathy, or their want of it.
"All the parts will be played to the best advantage, the whole of
the company being now in town," was no unusual bait thrown out to
win an audience. Sometimes the house would fill to see, on great
occasions, the foremost folk in the land, fops and fine ladies
occupying the amphitheatre erected on the stage, and the players
acting between a double audience. What should we think now of an
author taking a benefit, obtaining at it the presence of the heir to
the throne, and delivering an oration on the condition and merits of
the royal family and the state of the nation as regarded foreign and
domestic relations? Yet this is what Durfey did, to the delight and
edification of his hearers, at Drury Lane, in 1715.
On other occasions plays were given "for the entertainment of the
new Toasts and several Ladies of Quality," whereat crowds flocked to
behold the pretty nymphs whose names consecrated the flowing bumpers
of the beaux, and the married ladies who had enjoyed that honour in
their earlier days.
"The boxes still the brighter circles were;
Triumphant toasts received their homage there."
At other times, there were less friendly and admiring gatherings;
and epilogues laudatory of Eugene and Marlborough filled the house
with friends and foes of those illustrious men, and furnished reasons
for very unreasonable conflicts. A flourish of the pen, too, in the
_Tatler_ or _Spectator_, could send half the town to fight for vacant
benches; and it was remarked that there was scarcely a comedian
of merit who had not been recommended to the public in the former
journal. But to see these, there often only thronged
"Poets free o' th' house, and beaux who never pay."
These non-paying beaux were as troublesome to players as to audience.
In vain were they warned off the stage, where, indeed, half-a-guinea
could always find admission for them, even after the managers had
decreed that the way should be barred, though Potosi itself were
offered for a bribe. In 1721, half-a-dozen tipsy beaux, with one
among them of the degree of an Earl, who was wont to be tipsy for a
week together, raised a riot, to avenge an affront, in the theatre in
Lincoln's Inn Fields. His lordship crossed the stage, while Macbeth
and his lady were upon it, to speak to a boon companion, who was
lolling at the opposite wing. There, too, stood Rich, the manager,
who told the peer that, after such an act of indecorum, he should
never be admitted behind the scenes again. The Earl looked up, and,
steadying himself, administered to Rich a smart slap on the face,
which Rich returned with interest. Swords flashed forth in a minute
from half-a-dozen scabbards, whose laced and lordly owners solemnly
decreed that Rich must die. But Quin, and Ryan, and Walker, rushed
to the rescue, with their own weapons naked in their hands. With aid
of some other members of the company, they, made front, charged the
coxcombs, and drove them headlong out at the stage door and into
the kennel. The beaux waxed wroth; but executing a great strategic
movement, they stormed the front of the house, and rushing into the
boxes, they cut and thrust right and left, broke the sconces, slashed
the hangings, and were proceeding to do further mischief,--"fire the
house!" was ever a favourite threat with these bullies--when doughty
Quin, and a body of constables and watchmen, flung themselves on
the rioters, and carried all they caught before the magistrates,
by whom they were committed for trial. Ultimately, the affair was
compromised; but there is evidence that the actors were intimidated,
inasmuch as they issued a declaration that they would "desist from
acting till proper care be taken to prevent the like disorders for
the future." The house was closed for nearly a week; and, to prevent
such outrages in future, the angry King, who took an interest in
theatrical matters, ordered that a guard should attend during the
performances at either house. This was the origin of the attendance
of soldiers,--a custom which ceased at the patent theatres only a few
years since.[57]
In the sight of an exceedingly "free" people, the guard was an
insult, which the mob, and not the beaux, resented. It was a popular
pastime to pelt them, till the terrors of the Prison-Gate House
terminated the folly. The mob, indeed, loved a riot quite as dearly
as the "quality," and were especially ungallant to the aspiring young
ladies on the stage. West's tragedy of "Hecuba" entirely failed at
Drury Lane, in 1726, through the Vandalism of the galleries, who,
as capricious as my lords below, hissed the "young actresses" from
beginning to end; and yet those "young actresses" were Mrs. Cibber,
and other "darlings" of the town.
Colley Cibber once pleaded the gracious presence of a prince in order
to win propriety of conduct from an audience; at other times, the
more gracious presence of a poet won respect. This was the case on
that hot night in June 1730,[58] when "George Barnwell" was first
played at Drury Lane. The audience had supplied themselves with the
old ballad on the subject of that famous apprentice lad,--intending
to make ludicrous contrast between the story there and that in the
tragedy; but Pope was present, serious and attentive, and the rough
critics, taking their cue from him, followed his example; at least,
they threw away their ballads, took out their handkerchiefs, and
wept over the fate of the wicked lad, so admirably played by that
prince of scamps, Theophilus Cibber. Such a warning did he hold out
to evildoers, that influential people of quality and reflecting city
merchants used occasionally, for years, to "command" the playing of
this tragedy, as wholesome instruction for apprentices in particular,
and a wicked young public, generally.
Among the influential part of the audience, may be numbered the
ladies. It was at their particular request that the part of Bookish,
in Fielding's "Old Man taught Wisdom," was omitted after the first
night, on account of some rude sentiments, touching the superiority
of man over woman,--or of Bookish over Lucy! Considering how women,
and audiences generally, were roughly handled in prologues and
epilogues, the deference otherwise paid to the latter seems singular.
For instance: the company at the Haymarket, in 1735, announced that
they would "continue to act on Tuesdays and Fridays, as long as they
shall deserve the favour of the town." The most exacting portion
of the audience, however, was to be found in the footmen. From the
earliest times, they had been famous for their "roaring;" and Dryden
speaks of them as a nuisance, than which there was no greater,
except "their unpaying masters." These masters had small chance of
hearing the play, unless their lacqueys gave permission. The plan of
opening the upper gallery to these fellows, _gratis_, in 1697, was an
aggravation rather than a palliative of the evil; but the privilege,
although at various times suspended, was not finally abolished till
about 1780. As many as three hundred of the party-coloured tribe
have been known to unite, armed, in support of the privilege which
they invariably abused. Of authors present at the condemnation of
their own pieces, and of the philosophy, or lack of it, with which
they bore their calamity, I shall have to speak presently; but I
am tempted to notice here, as illustrations of the audience side
of the theatre, the appearance of dramatists in state, witnessing
the triumphs of their pieces. When the "Conscious Lovers" was first
played at Drury Lane, in 1722, Steele sat in what was called Burton's
box,--an enclosed part in the centre of the first gallery, where
places were kept at pit prices. From this lofty elevation, Steele
enjoyed the success of a piece which respected decency throughout,
and he awarded approval to all the actors concerned, except Griffin,
who played Cimberton. Fielding laughed at this novel comedy, as
being "as good as a sermon;" and later writers have ridiculed the
author for preferring to show what manners ought to be, rather than
what they are; but Steele's play--a _leetle_ dull though it be--was
creditable to him, and a benefit to the stage.
Political application of passages in plays was frequently and
eagerly made by the audiences of those days,--though Walpole
records an incident of lack of observation in this respect, as
well as of readiness. When his father, Sir Robert, was threatened
with impeachment, in 1742, Horace ridiculed the want of frankness
on the part of the ministry. "The minds of the people grow much
more candid," he says; "at first, they made one of the actors at
Drury Lane repeat some applicable lines at the end of 'Henry IV.;'
but, last Monday, when his royal highness (the Prince of Wales)
had purposely bespoken 'The Unhappy Favourite,' for Mrs. Porter's
benefit, they never once applied the most glaring passages; as, where
they read the indictment against _Robert, Earl of Essex_, &c. &c."
We have seen kings at the play in presence of their people; and
poets were often there, receiving as warm welcome as kings. When
Thomson's "Agamemnon" was first played, Pope was present, and he
was received, we are told by Johnson, "with a general clap." This
shows how familiar London audiences were with their great men, and
that the same men must often have exhibited themselves to the same
audiences;--the Londoners being then the great playgoers. On the
same night, the author of the drama was himself seated, not near
Pope, but in the centre of the gallery, surrounded by some friends.
There, as soon as Mrs. Cibber and Mrs. Furnival entered and spoke, he
began to accompany them, by audible declamation, which his friends
had some difficulty in checking. Johnson, when "Irene" was played,
was more dignified and more calm. He sat forward in a conspicuous
side box, solemnly dressed for the occasion, his wig new curled, a
bright scarlet waistcoat--gold laced, purchased for the nonce,--and
a tranquil, majestic look about him, which the pit frequently
contemplated with approval. The poet was being judged by the people.
But poet and people were there to heed the players; and let us now
follow their example.
[Illustration: Mr. Macklin as Shylock.]
FOOTNOTES:
[56] Should be 5th of May 1737.
[57] It is occasionally revived.--_Doran MS._
[58] 1731.
[Illustration: QUIN AS CORIOLANUS.]