men of wealth or title, but he had, if he describes himself truly,
perfect reverence for true genius, wheresoever found. He was oppressed
with his own comparative littleness and his seeming inability to cope
with men better endowed, intellectually, than himself. And yet, we
find him, when he must have felt that he was great, was assured he
was so by his most intimate admirers, and counted amongst them some of
the foremost literary men and critics of the day--we find him, we say,
moodily complaining that he was not sought for by ‘society,’ and not
invited into it. There was no real ground for the complaint. He who
made it was an honour to the society of which he was a part. Every page
of this record, not least so those inscribed with confession of his
faults, will raise him in the esteem of all its readers. He went to his
rest in 1873, and he is fortunate in the friend to whom he confided the
task of writing his life. The work, edited with modesty and judgment,
is a permanent addition to our dramatic literature.
_PRIVATE THEATRICALS._
As in Greece a man suffered no disparagement by being an actor there
was no disposition to do in private what was not forbidden in public.
The whole profession was ennobled when an actor so accomplished as
Aristodemus was honoured with the office of ambassador.
In Rome a man was dishonoured by being a player. Accordingly noble
Roman youths loved to act in private, excusing themselves on the ground
that no professional actor polluted their private stage. Roman youths,
however, had imperial example and noble justification when a Roman
emperor made his first appearance on the public stage, and succeeded,
as a matter of course.
Nero and Louis XIV. were the two sublime monarchs who were most
addicted to private theatricals; but the Roman outdid the Frenchman. We
know that persons of the Senatorial and Equestrian orders, and of both
sexes, played the parts, but we do not know how they liked or disliked
what they dared not decline. One can fancy, however, the figure and
feelings of the Roman knight when he began to practise riding on an
elephant that trotted swiftly along a rope. What strong expletives he
must have muttered to himself!--any one of which, uttered audibly,
would have cost him his head as a fine levied by his imperial manager.
As to Nero’s riding, and racing, and wrestling, and charioteering, as
an amateur, among professionals who always took care to be beaten by
him, these things were nothing compared with his ardour as a private
player, and especially as what would now be called an opera singer.
After all, Nero was more like an amateur actor who plays in public
occasionally than an actor in strictly private theatricals. There is no
doubt of his having been fond of music; he was well instructed in the
art and a skilful proficient. His first great enjoyment after becoming
emperor was in sitting up night after night playing with or listening
to Terpnus the harper. Nero practised the harp as if his livelihood
depended on it; and he went through a discipline of diet, medicine,
exercise, and rest, for the benefit of his voice and its preservation,
such as, it is to be hoped, no vocalist of the present day would submit
himself to. Nero’s first appearance on any stage was made at Naples.
The _débutant_ was not at all nervous, for, though an earthquake made
the house shake while he was singing, he never ceased till he had
finished his song. Had any of the audience fled at the earthquake,
they probably would have been massacred for attending more to the
natural than the imperial phenomenon. But we can fancy that, when some
terrified Drusus got home and his Drusilla asked him about the voice of
the _illustrissimo_ Signor Nerone, Drusus looked at her and answered,
‘Never heard such a shake in all my life!’
What an affable fellow that otherwise terrible personage was! How
gracious he must have seemed as he dined in the theatre and told those
who reverently looked on that by-and-by he would sing clearer and
deeper! Our respect for this august actor is a little diminished by
the fact that he not only invented the _claque_, but taught his hired
applauders how they were to manifest approbation. He divided them
into three classes, constituting several hundreds of individuals. The
_bombi_ had to hum approval, the more noisy _imbrices_ were to shower
applause like heavy rain upon the tiles, and the _testas_ were to
culminate the effect by clapping as if their hands were a couple of
bricks. And, with reputation thus curiously made at Naples, he reached
Rome to find the city mad to hear him. As the army added their sweet
voices of urgency, Nero modestly yielded. He enrolled his name on the
list of public singers, but so far kept his imperial identity as to
have his harp carried for him by the captain of his Prætorian Guard,
and to be half surrounded by friends and followers--the not too
exemplary Colonel Jacks and Lord Toms of that early time.
Just as Bottom the weaver would have played, not only Pyramus, but
Thisbe and the Lion to boot, so Nero had appetite for every part,
and made the most of whatever he had. Suetonius says that, when Nero
sang the story of Niobe, ‘he held it out till the tenth hour of the
day;’ but Suetonius omits to tell us at what hour the imperial actor
first opened his mouth. ‘The Emperor did not scruple,’ says a quaint
translation of Suetonius’s ‘Lives of the Twelve Cæsars,’ ‘done into
English by several hands, A.D. 1692,’ ‘in private Spectacles to Act his
Part among the Common Players, and to accept of a present of a Million
of Sesterces from one of the Prætors. He also sang several tragedies
in disguise, the Visors and Masks of the Heroes and the Gods, as also
of the Heroesses and the Goddesses, being so shap’d as to represent
his own Countenance or the Ladies for whom he had the most Affection.
Among other things he sang “Canace in Travail,” “Orestes killing his
Mother,” “Œdipus struck blind,” and “Hercules raging mad.” At what time
it is reported that a young Soldier, being placed sentinel at the Door,
seeing him drest up and bound, as the Subject of the Play required, ran
in to his Assistance as if the thing had been done in good earnest.’
(Here we have the origin of all those soldiers who have stood at the
wings of French and English stages, and who have interfered with the
action of the play, or even have fainted away in order to flatter some
particular player). Nero certainly had his amateur-actor weaknesses.
He provided beforehand all the bouquets that were to be spontaneously
flung to him, or awarded as prizes in the shape of garlands. French
actresses are said to do the same thing, and this pretty weakness is
satirised in the duet between Hortense, the actress, and Brillant, the
fine gentleman, in the pretty vaudeville of ‘Le Juif’ (by A. Rousseau,
Désaugiers, and Mesnard), brought out at the Porte St.-Martin fifty odd
years ago. Hortense is about to appear at Orleans, and she says, or
sings:
Je suis l’idole dont on raffole.
Après demain mon triomphe est certain!
‘Oui,’ rejoins Brillant,
Oui! de tous les points de la salle,
Je prédis que sur votre front,
Trente couronnes tomberont.
And Hortense replies confidentially:
Elles sont dans ma malle!
This is a custom, therefore, which French actresses derive from no less
a person than Nero. This gentleman, moreover, invariably spoke well of
every other actor to that actor’s face, but never at any other time.
If this custom has survived--which is, of course, hardly possible--he
who practises it can justify himself, if he pleases, by this Neronic
example.
Although it was death to leave the theatre before the imperial amateur
had finished his part, there were some people who could not ‘stand it,’
but who must have handsomely tipped the incorruptible Roman guard to
be allowed to vanish from the scene. There were others who insisted
on being on the point of death, but it is not to be supposed that
they were carried home without being munificently profuse in their
recompense. There was no shamming on the part of the indefatigable
Roman ladies, who, it is said, sometimes added a unit to the audience
and a new member to the roll of Roman citizens, before they could
be got away. And, when a man ran from the theatre, dropped from the
walls of the town, and took to his heels across country, he must have
been even more disgusted with the great amateur than you are, my dear
reader, with, let us say, your favourite worst actor on any stage.
_Exit Nero, histrio et imperator._
Some one has said that the Italians had not the necessary genius for
acting. Ristori has wiped out that reproach. Private theatricals may be
said to have been much followed by them. Plays were acted before popes
just as they used to be (and on Sundays too) before our bishops. It is
on record that the holiest of Holy Fathers have held their sides as
they laughed at the ‘imitations’ of English archbishops given to the
life by English bishops on mission to Rome; and, on the other hand,
there is no comedy so rich as that to be seen and heard in private,
acted by a clever, joyous Irish priest, imitating the voice, matter,
and manner of the street preachers in Italy. Poliziano’s ‘Orfeo,’ which
inaugurated Italian tragedy, was first played in private before Lorenzo
the Magnificent. Italian monks used to act Plautus and Terence, and
the nuns of Venice were once famous for the perfection with which they
acted tragedy in private to select audiences.
Altogether, it seems absurd for anyone to have said that the Italians
had not the genius for acting. Groto, the poet--‘the blind man of
Adria’--played Œdipus, in Palladio’s theatre at Vicenza, in the most
impressive style. Salvator Rosa, the grandest of painters, was the most
laughable of low comedians; and probably no Italian has played Saul
better than Alfieri, who wrote the tragedy which bears that name.
In France, private theatricals may be said to date from the seventeenth
century; but there, as in England, were to be found, long before,
especial ‘troops’ in the service of princes and nobles. We are pleased
to make record of the fact that Richard III., so early as the time
when he was the young Duke of Gloucester, was the first English
prince who maintained his own private company of actors, of whom he
was the appreciating and generous master. No doubt, after listening
to them in the hall of his London mansion, he occasionally gave them
an ‘outing’ on his manor at Notting Hill. We have more respect for
Duke, or King, Richard, as patron of actors, than we have for Louis
XIV. turning amateur player himself, and not only ‘spouting’ verses,
but acting parts, singing in operas, and even dancing in the ballets
of Benserade and the _divertissements_ of Molière. Quite another type
of the amateur actor is to be found in Voltaire. On the famous private
stage of the Duchess of Maine, Voltaire acted (in ‘Rome sauvée’) Cicero
to the Lentulus of the professional actor, Lekain. If we may believe
the illustrious actor himself, nothing could be more truthful, more
pathetic, more Roman, than the poet, in the character of the great
author.
Voltaire prepared at least one comedy for private representation on
the Duchess’s stage, or on that of some other of his noble friends. A
very curious story is connected with this piece. It bore the title of
‘Le Comte de Boursoufle.’ After being acted by amateurs, in various
noble houses, it gave way to other pieces, the manuscript was put by,
and the play was forgotten. Eleven years ago, however, the manuscript
of the comedy, in Voltaire’s handwriting, was discovered, and ‘Le
Comte de Boursoufle’ was produced at the Odéon. M. Jules Janin and all
the French theatrical critics were in a flutter of convulsive delight
at the recovery of this comedy. Some persons there were who asked if
there was any doubt on the matter, or was the piece by any other clever
Frenchman. They were laughed to scorn. The comedy was so full of wit
and satire that it could only be the work of the wittiest and most
satirical of Frenchmen. ‘If it is not Voltaire’s,’ it was asked, ‘whose
could it possibly be?’ This question was answered immediately by the
critics in this country, who pointed out that ‘Le Comte de Boursoufle,’
which Voltaire had prepared for a company of private actors, was
neither more nor less than an exact translation of Sir John Vanbrugh’s
‘Relapse.’
Private theatricals in France became a sort of institution. They
not only formed a part, often a very magnificent part, of the noble
mansions of princes, dukes, marquesses, _et tout ça_, but the theatre
was the most exquisite and luxurious portion of the residences of
the most celebrated and prodigal actresses. Mademoiselle Guimard, to
surpass her contemporaries, possessed two; one in her magnificent house
in the Chaussée d’Antin, the other in her villa at Pantin. The one in
Paris was such a scene of taste, splendour, extravagance, and scandal,
that private boxes, so private that nobody could be seen behind the
gilded gratings, were invented for the use and enjoyment of very great
ladies. These, wishing to be witnesses of what was being acted on and
before the stage, without being supposed to be present themselves, were
admitted by a private door, and after seeing all they came to see, and
much more, perhaps, than they expected, these high and virtuous dames,
wrapped their goodly lace mantles about them, glided down the private
staircase to their carriages, and thought La Guimard was the most
amiable hussey on or off the stage.
Voltaire’s private theatre, at Monrepos, near Lausanne, has been for
ever attached to history by the dignified pen of Gibbon. The great
historian’s chief gratification, when he lived at Lausanne, was in
hearing Voltaire in the Frenchman’s own tragedies on his own stage. The
‘ladies and gentlemen’ of the company were not geniuses, for Gibbon
says of them in his ‘Life,’ that ‘some of them were not destitute of
talents.’ The theatre is described as ‘decent.’ The costumes were
‘provided at the expense of the actors,’ and we may guess how the stage
was stringently managed, when we learn that ‘the author directed the
rehearsals with the zeal and attention of paternal love.’ In his own
tragedies, Voltaire represented Lusignan, Alvarez, Benassur, Euphemon,
&c. ‘His declamation,’ says Gibbon, ‘was fashioned to the pomp and
cadence of the old stage; and he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry
rather than the feelings of nature.’ This sing-song style, by which
diversified dramas, stilted rather than heroic, horribly dull rather
than elevated and stirring, had an effect on Gibbon such as we should
never have expected in him, or in any Englishman, we may say on any
created being with common sense, in any part of the civilised world.
His taste for the French theatre became fortified, and he tells us,
‘that taste has perhaps abated my idolatry for the gigantic genius
of Shakespeare, which is inculcated in our infancy as the first duty
of Englishmen.’ This is wonderful to read, and almost impossible to
believe. We may give more credit to the assertion that ‘the wit and
philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre, refined in a visible
degree the manners of Lausanne.’ It is worthy of note that a tragedy
of Voltaire’s is now rarely, if ever, acted. We question if one of
his most popular pieces, ‘Adélaïde Du Guesclin,’ has ever been played
since it was given at the Théâtre Français (spectacle gratis), 1822, on
occasion of the baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux, whom we now better know
as the Comte de Chambord, and who knows himself only as ‘Henry V., Roi
de France et de Navarre.’
One of Voltaire’s favourite stage pupils was an actor named Paulin,
who played a tyrant in the Lausanne company. Voltaire had great hopes
of him, and he especially hoped to make much of him as Polifonte,
in Voltaire’s tragedy ‘Mérope.’ At the rehearsals, Voltaire, as was
customary with him, overwhelmed the performers with his corrections. He
sat up one night, to re-write portions of the character of the tyrant
Polifonte, and at three in the morning he aroused his servant and bade
him carry the new manuscript to Paulin. ‘Sir,’ said the man, ‘at such
an unseasonable hour as this M. Paulin will be fast asleep, and there
will be no getting into his house.’ ‘Go! run!’ exclaimed Voltaire, in
tragic tones. ‘Know that tyrants never sleep!’
Some of the French private theatres of the last century were
singular in their construction. We know that the theatre of Pompey
was so constructed that, by ingenious mechanism, it could form two
amphitheatres side by side or could meet in one extensive circus. On
a smaller scale, the salon of the celebrated dancer D’Auberval could
be instantaneously turned into a private theatre, complete in all its
parts. Perhaps the most perfect, as regards the ability of the actors,
as well as the splendour of the house, audience and stage, were the two
private theatres at Saint-Assise and Bagnolet, of the Duke of Orleans
and Madame de Montesson. None but highly-gifted amateurs trod those
boards. The Duke himself was admirable in peasants and in characters
abounding in sympathies with nature. Madame de Montesson was fond of
playing shepherdesses and young ladies under the pleasures, pains, or
perplexities of love; but, with much talent, the lady was far too stout
for such parts. It might be said of her, as Rachel said of her very fat
sister, whom she saw dressed in the costume of a shepherdess; ‘Bergère!
tu as l’air d’une bergère qui a mangé ses brebis!’
Out of the multitude of French private theatres there issued but one
great actress, by profession, the celebrated Adrienne Lecouvreur; and
_she_ belonged, not to the gorgeous temple of Thespis in the palaces
of nobles, but to a modest stage behind the shop of her father, the
hatter; and latterly, to one of more artistic pretensions in the
courtyard attached to the mansion of a great lawyer whose lady had
heard of Adrienne’s marvellous talent, and, to encourage it, got up
a theatre for her and her equally young comrades, in the _cour_ of
her own mansion. The acting of the hatter’s daughter, especially as
Pauline, in Corneille’s ‘Polyeucte,’ made such a sensation that the
jealous Comédie Française cried ‘_Privilège!_’ and this private theatre
was closed, according to law.
We have less interest in recalling the figure of Madame de Pompadour,
playing and warbling the chief parts in the sparkling little operettas
on the stage of her private theatre at Bellevue, than we have in
recalling the figure of the young Dauphine, Marie-Antoinette, with the
counts of Provence and Artois (afterwards Louis XVIII. and Charles
X.), with their wives, and clever friends, playing comedy especially,
with a grace and perfection which were not always to be found in the
professional actor. But what the old king Louis XV. had encouraged
in the Pompadour he and his rather gloomy daughters discouraged in
Marie-Antoinette. It was not till she was queen, and had profited by
the lessons of the singer Dugazon, that the last royal private theatre
in France commenced its career of short-lived glory, at Choisy and
the Trianon. Louis XVI. never took kindly to these representations.
He went to them occasionally, but he disliked seeing the queen on the
stage. It is even said that he once directed a solitary hiss at her,
as she entered dressed as a peasant. It is further stated that the
royal actress stepped forward, and with a demure smile informed the
house that the dissatisfied individual might have his money returned
by applying at the door. It is a pretty story, but it is quite out
of character with the place and the personages, and it may be safely
assigned to that greatest of story-tellers, Il Signor Ben Trovato.
Adverse critics have said of Marie-Antoinette’s Rosine, that it was
‘_royalement mal jouée_.’ Perhaps they opposed the whole system of
private acting. This amusement had the advocacy of Montaigne, who was
himself a good amateur actor. Of course, the thing may be abused.
It was not exemplary for French bishops to go to hear Collé’s gross
pieces in private. There was more dignity in Louis XIV. and Madame
de Maintenon listening to ‘Esther’ and ‘Athalie,’ acted by the young
ladies of Saint-Cyr; and there was less folly in the princes and nobles
who began the French Revolution by acting the ‘Mariage de Figaro’ in
private, than there was in the Comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.)
learning to dance on the tight rope, with a view of giving amateur
performances to his admiring friends.
Mercier, in his ‘Tableau de Paris,’ under the head ‘Théâtre bourgeois,’
states that in the last quarter of the last century there was a perfect
rage for private theatricals in France, and that it extended from the
crown to the humblest citizen. He thought that the practice had its
uses, but its abuses also; and he counselled simple country-townsmen to
leave acting to the amateurs in large cities, where people were not too
nice upon morals; where lovers gave additional fire to Orosmane, and
the timidest young ladies found audacity enough to play Nanine. Mercier
had seen the private theatricals at Chantilly, and he praises the care,
taste, and simple grace which distinguished the acting of the Prince
of Condé and the Duchess of Bourbon. It is very clear that if they had
not been cast for the genteelest comedy in the drama of life, they
would have got on very well in the world as players. So the Duke of
Orleans, at his private theatre at Saint-Assise, pleased Mercier by the
care and completeness of his acting. ‘The Queen of France,’ he adds,
‘has private theatricals, in her own apartments, at Versailles. Not
having had the honour to see her I can say nothing on the subject.’
With these players of lofty social quality, Mercier contrasts the
amateurs in humble society. These were given to act tragedy--or
nothing. He cites, from ‘Le Babillard,’ the case of a shoemaker,
renowned for his skill in gracefully fitting the most gracefully
small feet of the beauties of the day. On Sundays, Crispin drew on
his own legs the buskins which he himself or his journeymen had made;
and he acted, in his own house, the lofty tragedy then in vogue. It
happened once that his manager, with whom he had quarrelled, had to
provide a dagger to be deposited on an altar, for the amateur player’s
suicidal use. Out of spite, the fellow placed there the shoemaker’s
professional cutting-knife. The amateur, in the fury of his acting,
and not perceiving the trick, snatched up the weapon, and gave himself
the happy despatch with the instrument which helped him to live. This
stage business excited roars of laughter, which brought the tragedy to
an end as merrily as if it had been a burlesque. The shoemaker could
find nothing to say, by which he might turn the laughter from himself.
He was not as witty as the English shoemaker’s apprentice whom his
master seized, about this time, on the private stage in Berwick Street,
acting no less a character than Richard III., in a very dilapidated
pair of buskins. As the angry master pointed to them in scorn, the
witty lad sustained his royal quality in his reply: ‘Oh! shoes are
things we kings don’t stand upon!’
In England, private theatricals are to be traced back to an early
date. We go far enough in that direction, however, by referring to
Mary Tudor, the solemn little daughter of Henry VIII., who, with
other children, acted before her royal sire, in Greenwich Palace, to
the intense delight of her father and an admiring court. Henrietta
Maria, Queen of Charles I., is remembered in court and theatrical
annals for the grace with which she played in pretty pastoral French
pieces, assisted by her ladies, on the private stages at Whitehall
and Hampton Court. The private theatricals of the Puritan days were
only those which took place surreptitiously, and at the risk of the
performers being arrested and punished. Holland House, Kensington, was
occasionally the place where the players found refuge and gave a taste
of their quality. The ‘good time’ came again; and that greatest of
actors, Betterton, with his good and clever wife, taught the daughters
of James II. all that was necessary to make those ladies what they both
were, excellent actors on their private stage. So Quin taught the boy
to speak, who afterwards became George III., and who was a very fair
private player, but perhaps not equal with his brothers and sisters,
and some of the young nobility who trod the stage for pastime, and gave
occupation to painters and engravers to reproduce the mimic scene and
the counterfeit presentments of those who figured therein.