THE DRAMA UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
For such a triumph as fanaticism enjoyed over the fine arts in England
during and for some time after the great Civil War, no parallel can be
found in the history of any other nation. And it was not, be it
remembered, the work of a capricious and cruel despot; it was the
tyranny of a solemn legislative assembly. Hypocrisy had some share in
the proceeding, very likely; but in the main the Puritanism of the
time was sincere even to its frenzies of intolerance. Good men and
true held that they were doing only what was sound, and wise, and
right, when they made ruthless war upon poetry, and painting, and all
the refinements and graces of life, denouncing them as scandals and
sins, ungodly devices, pernicious wiles of the author of all evil;
when they peremptorily closed the doors of the theatres, and dismissed
actors, authors, managers, and all concerned, to absolute starvation.
In the England of that time, no doubt, Puritanism obtained supporters
out of respect for superior power; just as in France, at a later date,
Republicanism gained converts by means of terror. The prudent, when
conflict and tumult are at hand, will usually side with the stronger
combatant. Thus it was with little resistance that there passed
through both Houses of Parliament, in 1647, the ordinance by virtue of
which the theatres were to be dismantled and suppressed; all actors of
plays to be publicly whipped; and all spectators and playgoers, for
every offence, condemned to forfeit five shillings. This was the
_coup de grâce;_ for the stage had already undergone many and severe
assaults. The player's tenure of his art had become more and more
precarious, until acting seemed to be as a service of danger. The
ordinance of 1647 closed the theatres for nearly fourteen years; but
for some sixteen years before the stage had been in a more or less
depressed condition. Scarcely any new dramatists of distinction had
appeared after 1630. The theatres were considerably reduced in number
by the time 1636 was arrived at. Then came the arbitrary closing of
the playhouses--professedly but for a season. Thus in 1636 they were
closed for ten months; in 1642 for eighteen months. In truth
Puritanism carried on its victorious campaign against the drama for
something like thirty years; while even at an earlier date there had
been certain skirmishing attacks upon the stage. With the first
Puritan began the quarrel with the players. As Isaac Disraeli has
observed, "we must go back to the reign of Elizabeth to comprehend an
event which occurred in that of Charles I." A sanctimonious sect urged
extravagant reforms--at first, perhaps, in all simplicity--founding
their opinions upon cramped and literal interpretations of divine
precepts, and forming views of human nature "more practicable in a
desert than a city, and rather suited to a monastic order than to a
polished people." Still, these fanatics could scarcely have dreamed
that power would ever be given them to carry their peculiar theories
into practice, and to govern a nation as though it were composed
entirely of precisians and bigots. For two generations--from the
Reformation to the Civil War--the Puritans had been the butt of the
satirical, the jest of the wits--ridiculed and laughed at on all
sides. Then came a time, "when," in the words of Macaulay, "the
laughers began to look grave in their turn. The rigid ungainly zealots
... rose up in arms, conquered, ruled, and, grimly smiling, trod down
under their feet the whole crowd of mockers."
Yet from the first the Puritans had not neglected the pen as a weapon
of offence. In 1579 Stephen Gosson published his curious pamphlet
bearing the lengthy title of "The Schoole of Abuse, containing a
pleasant Invective against Poets, Pipers, Jesters, and such like
Catterpillars of a Commonwealth; setting up the Flag of Defiance to
their mischievous exercise, and overthrowing their Bulwarks, by
Profane Writers, natural reason, and common experience: A Discourse
as pleasant for gentlemen that favour learning as profitable for all
that will follow virtue." Gosson expresses himself with much quaint
force, but he is not absolutely intolerant. He was a student of Oxford
University, had in his youth written poems and plays, and even
appeared upon the scene as an actor. Although he had repented of these
follies, he still viewed them without acrimony. To his pamphlet we are
indebted for certain interesting details in regard to the manners and
customs of the Elizabethan playgoers. A further attack upon the
theatre was led by Dr. Reynolds, of Queen's College, who was greatly
troubled by the performance of a play at Christchurch, and who
published, in 1593, "The Overthrow of Stage Plays," described by
Disraeli as "a tedious invective, foaming at the mouth of its text
with quotations and authorities." Reynolds was especially severe upon
"the sin of boys wearing the dress and affecting the airs of women;"
and thus unconsciously helped on a change he would have regarded as
still more deplorable--the appearance of actresses upon the stage. But
a fiercer far than Reynolds was to arise. In 1633 Prynne produced his
"Histriomastix; or, The Player's Scourge," a monstrous work of more
than a thousand closely-printed quarto pages, devoted to the most
searching indictment of the stage and its votaries. The author has
been described as a man of great learning, but little judgment; of
sour and austere principles, but wholly deficient in candour. His book
was judged libellous, for he had unwittingly aspersed the Queen in his
attack upon the masques performed at Court. He was cited in the Star
Chamber, and sentenced to stand in the pillory, to lose both ears, to
pay a heavy fine, and to undergo imprisonment for life. This severe
punishment probably stimulated the Puritans, when opportunity came to
them, to deal mercilessly with the actors by way of avenging Prynne's
wrongs, or of expressing sympathy with his sufferings.
And it is to be noted that early legislation in regard to the players
had been far from lenient. For such actors as had obtained the
countenance of "any Baron of this Realme," or "any other honourable
personage of greater degree," exception was to be made; otherwise, all
common players in interludes, all fencers, bearwards, and minstrels,
were declared by an Act passed in the 14th year of Elizabeth to be
rogues and vagabonds, and, whether male or female, liable on a first
conviction "to be grievously whipped and burned through the gristle of
the right ear with an hot iron of the compass of an inch about,
manifesting his or her roguish kind of life;" a second offence was
adjudged to be felony; a third entailed death without benefit of
clergy or privilege of sanctuary. Meanwhile, the regular companies of
players to whom this harsh Act did not apply, were not left
unmolested. The Court might encourage them, but the City would have
none of them. They had long been accustomed to perform in the yards of
the City inns, but an order of the Common Council, dated December,
1575, expelled the players from the City. Thereupon public playhouses
were erected outside the "liberties" or boundaries of the City. The
first was probably the theatre in Shoreditch; the second, opened in
its immediate neighbourhood, was known as the Curtain; the third,
built by John Burbadge and other of the Earl of Leicester's company of
players, was the famous Blackfriars Theatre. These were all erected
about 1576, and other playhouses were opened soon afterwards. Probably
to avoid the penalties of the Act of Elizabeth, all strolling and
unattached players made haste to join regular companies, or to shelter
themselves under noble patronage. And now the Church raised its voice,
and a controversy which still possesses some vitality touching the
morality or immorality of playhouses, plays and players, was fairly
and formally entered upon. A sermon preached at Paul's Cross,
November, 1577, "in the time of the plague," by the Rev. T. Wilcocks,
denounced in strong language the "common plays" in London, and the
multitude that flocked to them and followed them, and described "the
sumptuous theatre houses" as a continual monument of London's
prodigality and folly. Performances, it seems, had for a while been
forbidden because of the plague. "I like the policy well if it hold
still," said the preacher; "for a disease is but bodged and patched up
that is not cured in the cause, and the cause of plague is sin, if you
look to it well; and the cause of sin are playes; therefore, the cause
of plagues are playes." It is clear, too, that the clergy had become
affected by a certain jealousy of the players, the sound of whose
trumpet attracted more attention than the ringing of the church-bells,
and brought together a larger audience. John Stockwood, schoolmaster
of Tunbridge, who preached at Paul's Cross on St. Bartholomew's Day,
1578, demanded, "will not a filthy play, with the blast of a trumpet,
sooner call thither a thousand than an hour's tolling bring to the
sermon a hundred?" It was, moreover, an especial grievance to the
devout at this period that plays were represented on a Sunday, the
church and the theatre being thus brought into positive rivalry and
antagonism. The clergy saw with dismay that their own congregations
were thin and listless, while crowded and excited audiences rewarded
the exertions of the players. Mr. Stockwood, declining to discuss
whether plays were or not wholly unlawful, yet protested with good
reason that in a Christian commonwealth they were intolerable on the
seventh day, and exclaimed against the "horrible profanity" and
"devilish inventions" of the lords of misrule, morrice, and May-day
dancers, whom he accused of tripping about the church, even during the
hours of service, and of figuring in costumes which, by their texture
and scantiness, outraged ordinary notions of decency.
But notwithstanding this old-established opposition to the theatres on
the part of both Churchmen and Puritans, and the severe oppression of
the players by the authorities, it is yet indisputable that the
English were essentially a playgoing people; proud, as well they might
be, of the fact that they possessed the finest drama and the best
actors in the world. And, allowing for the licence and grossness which
the times permitted if they did not encourage, and a certain liberty
of speech and action allowed time out of mind to the clowns of the
stage, the drama suppressed by the Puritans was of sound and wholesome
constitution, rich in poetry of the noblest class. It is sufficient to
say, indeed, that it was the drama of Shakespeare and his
contemporaries. To a very large class, therefore, the persecution of
the players and the suppression of the stage must have been grave
misfortune and real privation. To many the theatre still supplied not
merely recreation but education and enlightenment as well. That there
was any rising of the public on behalf of the players does not appear.
Puritanism was too strong for opposition; and besides, the playgoer,
by the nature of his favourite pursuit, almost avows himself a man of
peace and obedient to the law. The public had to submit, as best it
could, to the tyranny of fanaticism. But that bitter mortification was
felt by very many may be taken for granted.
The authors were deprived of occupation so far as concerned the stage;
they sought other employment for their pens; printing a play, however,
now and then, by way of keeping their hands in as dramatists. The
managers, left with nothing to manage, perhaps turned to trade in
quest of outlet for their energies--the manager has been always
something of the trader. But for the actors, forbidden to act, what
were they to do? They had been constituted Malignants or Royalists
almost by Act of Parliament. The younger players promptly joined the
army of King Charles. Mohun acquired the rank of captain, and at the
close of the war, served in Flanders, receiving the pay of a major.
Hart became a lieutenant of horse, under Sir Thomas Dallison, in the
regiment of Prince Rupert. In the same troop served Burt as cornet,
and Shatterel as quartermaster. Allen, of the Cockpit, was a major and
quartermaster-general at Oxford. Robinson, serving on the side of the
King, was long reputed to have lost his life at the taking of Basing
House. The story went that the Cromwellian General Harrison had, with
his own hands, slain the actor, crying, as he struck him down: "Cursed
is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently." Chalmers
maintains, however, that an entry in the parish register of St.
Anne's, Blackfriars, of the death and burial of "Richard Robinson, a
player," in March, 1647, negatives this account of the actor's fate.
Possibly there were two actors bearing the not uncommon name of
Robinson. These were all players of note, who had acquitted themselves
with applause in the best plays of the time. Of certain older actors,
unable to bear arms for the king, Lowin turned innkeeper, and died, at
an advanced age, landlord of the Three Pigeons at Brentford. He had
been an actor of eminence in the reign of James I.; "and his poverty
was as great as his age," says one account of him. Taylor, who was
reputed to have been taught by Shakespeare himself the correct method
of interpreting the part of Hamlet, died and was buried at Richmond.
These two actors, as did others probably, sought to pick up a little
money by publishing copies of plays that had obtained favour in
performance, but had not before been printed. Thus, in 1652, Beaumont
and Fletcher's "Wild Goose Chase" was printed in folio, "for the
public use of all the ingenious, and the private benefit of John Lowin
and Joseph Taylor, servants to his late Majesty, and by them dedicated
to the honoured few lovers of dramatic poesy: wherein they modestly
intimate their wants, and that with sufficient cause, for whatever
they were before the wars, they were afterwards reduced to a
necessitous condition." Pollard, possessed of some means, withdrew to
his relatives in the country, and there ended his days peacefully.
Perkins and Sumner lodged humbly together in Clerkenwell, and were
interred in that parish. None of these unfortunate old actors lived to
see the re-opening of the theatres or the restoration of the monarchy.
But one actor is known to have sided with the Parliament and against
the King. He renounced the stage and took up the trade of a jeweller
in Aldermanbury. This was Swanston who had played Othello, and had
been described as "a brave roaring fellow, who would make the house
shake again." "One wretched actor only," Mr. Gifford writes, in the
introduction to his edition of Massinger, "deserted his sovereign."
But it may be questioned whether Swanston really merited this
reprehension. He was a Presbyterian, it seems, and remained true to
his political opinions, even though these now involved the abandonment
of his profession. If his brother-players fought for the King, they
fought no less for themselves, and for the theatre the Puritans had
suppressed. Nor is the contrast Mr. Gifford draws, between the conduct
of our actors at the time of the Civil War, and the proceedings of the
French players during the first French Revolution, altogether fair. As
Isaac Disraeli has pointed out, there was no question of suppressing
the stage in France--it was rather employed as an instrument in aid of
the Revolution. The actors may have sympathised sincerely with the
royal family in their afflicted state, but it was hardly to be
expected that men would abandon, on that account, the profession of
their choice, in which they had won real distinction, and which seemed
to flourish the more owing to the excited condition of France. The
French Revolution, in truth, brought to the stage great increase of
national patronage.
The Civil War concluded, and the cause of King Charles wholly lost,
the actors were at their wits' end to earn bread. Certain of them
resolved to defy the law, and to give theatrical performances in spite
of the Parliament. Out of the wreck of the companies of the different
theatres they made up a tolerable troop, and ventured to present some
few plays, with as much caution and privacy as possible, at the
Cockpit, in Drury Lane. This was in the winter of 1648. Doubtless
there were many to whom the stage was dear, who were willing enough to
encourage the poor players. Playgoing had now become as a vice or a
misdemeanour, to be prosecuted in secret--like dram-drinking. The
Cockpit representations lasted but a few days. During a performance of
Fletcher's tragedy of "Rollo, Duke of Normandy," in which such
excellent actors as Lowin, Taylor, Pollard, Burt, and Hart were
concerned, a party of troopers beset the house, broke in about the
middle of the play, and carried off the players, accoutred as they
were in their stage dresses, to Hatton House, then a prison, where,
after being detained some time, they were plundered of their clothes
and dismissed. "Afterwards, in Oliver's time," as an old chronicler of
dramatic events has left upon record, "they used to act privately,
three or four miles or more out of town, now here, now there,
sometimes in noblemen's houses--in particular Holland House, at
Kensington--where the nobility and gentry who met (but in no great
numbers) used to make a sum for them, each giving a broad-piece or the
like." The widow of the Earl of Holland who was beheaded in March,
1649, occupied Holland House at this time. She was the granddaughter
of Sir Walter Cope, and a stout-hearted lady, who doubtless took pride
in encouraging the entertainments her late lord's foes had tried so
hard to suppress. Alexander Goffe, "the woman-actor at Blackfriars,"
acted as "Jackal" on the occasion of these furtive performances. He
had made himself known to the persons of quality who patronised plays,
and gave them notice of the time when and the place where the next
representation would "come off." A stage-play, indeed, in those days
was much what a prize-fight has been in later times--absolutely
illegal, and yet assured of many persistent supporters. Goffe was
probably a slim, innocent-looking youth, who was enabled to baffle the
vigilance of the Puritan functionaries, and to pass freely and
unsuspected between the players and their patrons. At Christmas-time
and during the few days devoted to Bartholomew Fair, the actors, by
dint of bribing the officer in command of the guard at Whitehall, and
securing in such wise his connivance, were enabled to present
performances at the Red Bull in St. John Street. Sometimes the Puritan
troopers were mean enough to accept the hard-earned money of these
poor players, and, nevertheless, to interrupt their performance,
carrying them off to be imprisoned and punished for their breach of
the law. But their great trouble arose from the frequent seizure of
their wardrobe by the covetous soldiers. The clothes worn by the
players upon the stage were of superior quality--fine dresses were of
especial value in times prior to the introduction of scenery--and the
loss was hard to bear. The public, it was feared, would be loath to
believe in the merits of an actor who was no better attired than
themselves. But at length it became too hazardous, as Kirkman relates,
in the preface to "The Wits, or Sport upon Sport," 1672, "to act
anything that required any good cloaths; instead of which painted
cloath many times served the turn to represent rich habits." Kirkman's
book is a collection of certain "scenes or parts of plays ... the
fittest for the actors to represent at this period, there being little
cost in the cloaths, which often then were in great danger to be
seized by the soldiers." These "select pieces of drollery, digested
into scenes by way of dialogue, together with variety of humours of
several nations, fitted for the pleasure and content of all persons,
either in court, city, county, or camp," were first printed in 1662,
by H. Marsh, and were originally contrived by Robert Cox, a comic
genius in his way, who exhibited great ingenuity in evading the
ordinances of Parliament, and in carrying on dramatic performances in
spite of the Puritans. He presented at the Red Bull what were
professedly entertainments of rope-dancing, gymnastic feats, and such
coarse practical fun as may even now be seen in the circus of
strolling equestrian companies; but with these he cunningly
intermingled select scenes from the comedies of the best English
dramatists. From Kirkman's book, which is now highly prized from its
rarity, it appears that the "drollery" entitled "The Bouncing Knight,
or the Robbers Robbed," is, in truth, a famous adventure of Sir John
Falstaff's, set forth in close accordance with the original text;
while the comedy of "Rule a Wife and have a Wife" is reduced to a
brief entertainment called "The Equal Match." Other popular plays are
similarly dealt with. But Cox, it seems, invented not less than he
borrowed. Upon the foundation of certain old-established farces, he
raised up entertainments something of the nature of the extemporary
comedy of Italy: characters being devised or developed expressly with
a view to his own performance of them. "All we could divert ourselves
with," writes Kirkman, "were these humours and pieces of plays, which,
passing under the name of a merry conceited fellow called Bottom the
Weaver, Simpleton the Smith, John Swabber, or some such title, were
only allowed us, and that by stealth too ... and these small things
were as profitable and as great get-pennies to the actors as any of
our late famed plays." He relates, moreover, that these performances
attracted "a great confluence of auditors," insomuch that the Red
Bull, a playhouse of large size, was often so full, that "as many went
back for want of room as had entered;" and that meanly as these
"drolls" might be thought of in later times, they were acted by the
best comedians "then and now in being." Especially he applauds the
actor, author, and contriver of the majority of the farces--"the
incomparable Robert Cox." Isaac Disraeli gives him credit for
preserving alive, as it were by stealth, the suppressed spirit of the
drama. That he was a very natural actor, or what would now be called
"realistic," may be judged from the story told of his performance of a
comic blacksmith, and his securing thereby an invitation to work at
the forge of a master smith, who had been present among the audience.
"Although your father speaks so ill of you," said the employer of
labour, "if you will come and work with me, I will give you
twelvepence a-week more than I give any other journeyman." As Kirkman
adds: "Thus was he taken for a smith bred, that was, indeed, as much
of any trade."
It seems certain that for some few years prior to the Restoration
there had been far less stringent treatment of the players than in the
earlier days of the triumph of Puritanism. Cromwell, perhaps, rather
despised the stage than condemned it seriously on religious grounds;
the while he did not object to indulge in buffoonery and horseplay,
even in the gallery of Whitehall. Some love of music he has been
credited with, and this, perhaps, induced him to tolerate the operatic
dramas of Sir William Davenant, which obtained representation during
the Commonwealth: such as "The History of Sir Francis Drake,"
"represented by instrumental and vocal music, and by art of
Perspective in Scenes," and "The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru."
According to Langbaine, the two plays called "The Siege of Rhodes"
were likewise acted _"in stilo recitativo"_ during the time of the
Civil Wars, and upon the Restoration were rewritten and enlarged for
regular performance at the Duke of York's Theatre, in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. It seems to have been held that a play was no longer a play if
its words were sung instead of spoken--or these representations of
Davenant's works may have been altogether stealthy, and without the
cognisance of the legal authorities of the time. Isaac Disraeli,
however, has pointed out that in some verses, published in 1653, and
prefixed to the plays of Richard Brome, there is evident a tone of
exultation at the passing away of power from the hands of those who
had oppressed the actors. The poet, in a moralising vein, alludes to
the fate of the players as it was affected by the dissolution of the
Long Parliament:
See the strange twirl of times! When such poor things
Outlive the dates of parliaments or kings!
This revolution makes exploded wit
Now see the fall of those that ruined it;
And the condemned stage hath now obtained
To see her executioners arraigned.
There's nothing permanent; those high great men
That rose from dust to dust may fall again;
And fate so orders things that the same hour
Sees the same man both in contempt and power!
For complete emancipation, however, the stage had to wait some years;
until, indeed, it pleased Monk, acting in accordance with the desire
of the nation, to march his army to London, and to restore the
monarchy. Encamped in Hyde Park, Monk was visited by one Rhodes, a
bookseller, who had been formerly occupied as wardrobe-keeper to King
Charles I.'s company of comedians in Blackfriars, and who now applied
to the general for permission to reopen the Cockpit in Drury Lane as a
playhouse. Monk, it seems, held histrionic art in some esteem; at any
rate the City companies, when with his council of state he dined in
their halls, were wont to entertain him with performances of a
theatrical kind: satirical farces, dancing and singing, "many shapes
and ghosts, and the like; and all to please His Excellency the Lord
General," say the newspapers of the time. Rhodes obtained the boon he
sought, and, promptly engaging a troop of actors, reopened the
Cockpit. His chief actor was his apprentice, Thomas Betterton, the son
of Charles I.'s cook. For some fifty years the great Mr. Betterton
held his place upon the stage, and upon his death was interred with
something like royal honours in Westminster Abbey.
Of the fate of Rhodes nothing further is recorded. He was the first to
give back to Londoners a theatre they might visit legally and safely;
and that done, he is heard of no more. Killigrew and Davenant were
soon invested with patent rights, and entitled to a monopoly of
theatrical management in London; probably they prospered by displacing
Rhodes--but so much cannot be positively asserted.
The drama was now out of its difficulties. Yet the influence and
effect of these did not soon abate. Upon them followed indeed a sort
of after-crop of troubles, seriously injurious to the stage. The
Cavaliers engendered a drama that was other than the drama the
Puritans had destroyed. The theatre was restored, it is true, but with
an altered constitution. It was not only that the old race of poets
and dramatists had died out, and that writing for the stage was as a
new profession, almost as a lost art. Taste had altered. As Evelyn
regretfully notes in 1662, after witnessing a performance of
Hamlet--to which, perhaps, the audience paid little heed, although the
incomparable Betterton appeared in the tragedy--"but now the old plays
begin to disgust this refined age, since his Majesty's being so long
abroad." Shakespeare and his brother-bards were out of fashion. There
was a demand for tragedies of the French school--with rhyming lines
and artificial sentiment--for comedies of intrigue and equivoque,
after a foreign pattern, in lieu of our old English plays of wit,
humour, and character. Plagiarism, translation, and adaptation took up
a secure position on the stage. The leading playwrights of the
Restoration--Dryden, Shadwell, Durfey, Wycherley--all borrowed freely
from the French. Dryden frankly apologised--he was required to produce
so many plays all could not be of his own inventing. The King
encouraged appropriation of foreign works. He drew Sir Samuel Tuke's
attention to an admired Spanish comedy, advising its adaptation to
the English stage: the result was "The Adventures of Five Hours," a
work very highly esteemed by Mr. Pepys. The introduction of scenery
was due in a great measure to French example, although "paintings in
perspective" had already been seen in an English theatre. But now
scenery was imperatively necessary to a dramatic performance, and a
sort of passion arose for mechanical devices and decorative appliances
of a novel kind. Dryden was no reformer--in truth, to suit his own
purposes, he pandered laboriously to the follies and caprices of his
patrons; nevertheless, he was fully sensible of the errors of the
time, and often chronicles these in his prologues and epilogues. He
writes:
True wit has run its best days long ago,
It ne'er looked up since we were lost in show,
When sense in doggrel rhymes and clouds was lost,
And dulness nourished at the actor's cost.
Nor stopped it here; when tragedy was done,
Satire and humour the same fate have run,
And comedy is sunk to trick and pun.
* * * * *
Let them who the rebellion first began
To wit, restore the monarch if they can;
Our author dares not be the first bold man.
And upon another occasion:
But when all failed to strike the stage quite dumb,
Those wicked engines, called machines, are come.
Thunder and lightning now for wit are played,
And shortly scenes in Lapland will be laid.
* * * * *
Fletcher's despised, your Jonson out of fashion.
And wit the only drug in all the nation.
Actresses, too, were introduced upon the stage in pursuance of
continental example. But for these there was really great necessity.
The boys who, prior to the Civil War, had personated the heroines of
the drama, were now too mature, both in years and aspect, for such an
occupation.
Doubting we should never play agen,
We have played all our women into men!
says the prologue, introducing the first actress. Hart and Mohun,
Clun, Shatterel and Burt, who were now leading actors, had been
boy-actresses before the closing of the theatres. And even after the
Restoration, Mohun whose military title of major was always awarded
him in the playbills, still appeared as Bellamante, one of the
heroines of Shirley's tragedy of "Love's Cruelty." But this must have
been rather too absurd. At the time of the Restoration Mohun could
hardly have been less than thirty-five years of age. It is to be
noted, however, that Kynaston, a very distinguished boy-actress, who,
with Betterton, was a pupil of Rhodes, arose after the Restoration. Of
the earlier boy-actresses, their methods and artifices of performance,
Kynaston could have known nothing. He was undoubtedly a great artist,
winning extraordinary favour both in male and female characters, the
last and perhaps the best of all the epicene stage-players of the
past.
But if the stage, after the Restoration, differed greatly from what it
had been previously, it yet prospered and gained strength more and
more. It was most fortunate in its actors and actresses, who lent it
invaluable support. It never attained again the poetic heights to
which it had once soared; but it surrendered gradually much of its
grossness and its baser qualities, in deference to the improving
tastes of its patrons, and in alarm at the sound strictures of men
like Jeremy Collier. The plagiarist, the adapter, and the translator
did not relax their hold upon it; but eventually it obtained the aid
of numerous dramatists of enduring distinction. The fact that it again
underwent decline is traceable to various causes--among them, the
monopoly enjoyed by privileged persons under the patents granted by
Charles II.; the bungling intervention of court officials invested
with supreme power over the dramatic literature of the nation; and
defective copyright laws, that rendered justice neither to the native
nor to the foreign writer for the theatre. And something, too, the
stage of later years has been affected by a change in public taste,
which has subordinated the play to the novel or poem, and converted
playgoers into the supporters of circulating libraries.