EARLY THEATRICALS—THE CANONGATE THEATRE—DIGGES AND MRS
BELLAMY—A THEATRICAL RIOT.
‘Just without the Water-gate,’ says Maitland, ‘on the eastern side of
the street, was the Royal Tennis Court, anciently called the Catchpel
[from Cache, a game since called _Fives_, and a favourite amusement
in Scotland so early as the reign of James IV.].’ The house—a long,
narrow building with a court—was burned down in modern times, and
rebuilt for workshops. Yet the place continues to possess some interest
as connected with the early and obscure history of the stage in
Scotland, not to speak of the tennis itself, which was a fashionable
amusement in Scotland in the seventeenth century, and here played by
the Duke of York, Law the financial schemer, and other remarkable
persons.
The first known appearance of the post-reformation theatre in Edinburgh
was in the reign of King James VI., when several companies came from
London, chiefly for the amusement of the Court, including one to which
Shakespeare is known to have belonged, though his personal attendance
cannot be substantiated. There was no such thing, probably, as a play
acted in Edinburgh from the departure of James in 1603 till the arrival
of his grandson, the Duke of York, in 1680.
Threatened by the Whig party in the House of Commons with an exclusion
from the throne of England on account of his adherence to popery, this
prince made use of his exile in Scotland to conciliate the nobles, and
attach them to his person. His beautiful young wife, Mary of Modena,
and his second daughter, the _Lady Anne_, assisted by giving parties
at the palace—where, by the bye, tea was now first introduced into
Scotland. Easy and obliging in their manners, these ladies revived
the entertainment of the masque, and took parts themselves in the
performance. At length, for his own amusement and that of his friends,
James had some of his own company of players brought down to Holyrood
and established in a little theatre, which was fitted up in the Tennis
Court. On this occasion the remainder of the company playing at Oxford
apologised for the diminution of their strength in the following lines
written by Dryden:
‘Discord and plots, which have undone our age,
With the same ruin have o’erwhelmed the stage.
Our house has suffered in the common woe;
We have been troubled with Scots rebels too.
Our brethren have from Thames to Tweed departed,
And of our sisters, all the kinder-hearted
To Edinburgh gone, or coached or carted.
With bonny _Blew cap_ there they act all night,
For Scotch half-crowns—in English threepence hight.
One nymph to whom fat Sir John Falstaff’s lean,
There, with her single person, fills the scene.
Another, with long use and age decayed,
Died here old woman, and there rose a maid.
Our trusty door-keeper, of former time,
There struts and swaggers in heroic rhyme.
Tack but a copper lace to drugget suit,
And there’s a hero made without dispute;
And that which was a capon’s tail before,
Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.
But all his subjects, to express the care
Of imitation, go like Indians bare.
Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing,
It might perhaps a new rebellion bring;
The Scot who wore it would be chosen king.’
We learn from Fountainhall’s _Diary_ that on the celebration of the
king’s birthday, 1681, the duke honoured the magistrates of the city
with his presence in the theatre—namely, this theatre in the Tennis
Court.
No further glimpse of our city’s theatrical history is obtained till
1705, when we find a Mr Abel announcing a concert in the Tennis Court,
under the patronage of the Duke of Argyll, then acting as the queen’s
commissioner to the Parliament. It is probable that the concert was
only a cloak to some theatrical representation. This is the more
likely from a tradition already mentioned of some old members of the
Spendthrift Club who once frequented the tavern of a Mrs Hamilton,
whose husband recollected having attended the theatre in the Tennis
Court at Holyrood House, when the play was _The Spanish Friar_, and
many members of the Union Parliament were present in the house.
Theatrical amusements appear to have been continued at the Tennis Court
in the year 1710, if we are to place any reliance upon the following
anecdote: When Mrs Siddons came to Edinburgh in 1784, the late Mr
Alexander Campbell, author of the _History of Scottish Poetry_, asked
Miss Pitcairn, daughter of Dr Pitcairn, to accompany him to one of the
representations. The old lady refused, saying with coquettish vivacity:
‘Laddie, wad ye ha’e an auld lass like me to be running after the
play-actors—me that hasna been at a theatre since I gaed wi’ papa
to the Canongate in the year _ten_?’ The theatre was in those days
encouraged chiefly by such Jacobites as Dr Pitcairn. It was denounced
by the clergy as a hotbed of vice and profanity.
After this we hear no more of the theatre in the Tennis Court. The next
place where the drama set up its head was in a house in Carrubber’s
Close, under the management of an Italian lady styled Signora Violante,
who paid two visits to Edinburgh. After her came, in 1726, one Tony
Alston, who set up his scenes in the same house, and whose first
prologue was written by Ramsay: it may be found in the works of that
poet. In 1727 the Society of High Constables, of which Ramsay was then
a member, endeavoured to ‘suppress the abominable stage-plays lately
set up by Anthony Alston.’[263] Mr Alston played for a season or two,
under the fulminations of the clergy and a prosecution on their part in
the Court of Session.