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NOTE.--_Three Hundred copies of this Edition printed on fine
deckle-edge Royal 8vo paper. The fifty Portraits are given in
duplicate, one on Japanese and the other on plate paper, as India
proofs._
_Each of these copies is numbered._
_No._ ........
"Their Majesties' Servants"
DR. DORAN, F.S.A.
VOLUME THE THIRD
Ballantyne Press
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
[Illustration: (Frontispiece, Mrs. Siddons)]
"_THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS_"
ANNALS
OF
THE ENGLISH STAGE
FROM
THOMAS BETTERTON TO EDMUND KEAN
BY
DR. DORAN, F.S.A.
_EDITED AND REVISED BY ROBERT W. LOWE_
With Fifty Copperplate Portraits and Eighty Wood Engravings
_IN THREE VOLUMES_
VOLUME THE THIRD
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND
MDCCCLXXXVIII
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
OF AUTHORS, AND PARTICULARLY OF CONDEMNED AUTHORS 1
CHAPTER II.
THE AUDIENCES OF THE LAST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY 30
CHAPTER III.
CHARLES MACKLIN 63
CHAPTER IV.
A BEVY OF LADIES;--BUT CHIEFLY, MRS. BELLAMY, MISS
FARREN, MRS. ABINGTON, AND "PERDITA" 84
CHAPTER V.
A GROUP OF GENTLEMEN 115
CHAPTER VI.
JOHN HENDERSON 144
CHAPTER VII.
SARAH SIDDONS 153
CHAPTER VIII.
JOHN KEMBLE 189
CHAPTER IX.
GEORGE FREDERICK COOKE 223
CHAPTER X.
MASTER BETTY 239
CHAPTER XI.
STAGE COSTUME AND STAGE TRICKS 248
CHAPTER XII.
PROLOGUE, EPILOGUE; DEDICATIONS AND BENEFITS 273
CHAPTER XIII.
OLD STAGERS DEPARTING 301
CHAPTER XIV.
NEW IDEAS; NEW THEATRES; NEW AUTHORS; AND THE
NEW ACTORS 331
CHAPTER XV.
EDMUND KEAN 358
CHAPTER XVI.
EDMUND KEAN--CONTINUED 395
LIST OF COPPERPLATE PORTRAITS.
VOLUME III.
ENGRAVED BY MESSRS. ANNAN AND SWAN, LONDON.
PAGE
I. MRS. SIDDONS Painted by Gainsborough _Frontispiece_
II. MRS. INCHBALD From a rare Engraving 8
III. JOHN BANNISTER From a picture by J. Russell, R.A. 36
IV. MISS FARREN (Countess of Derby) By T. Lawrence, R. A. 96
V. MRS. ABINGTON From a Mezzotint 102
VI. JOHN HENDERSON Painted by Gainsborough 146
VII. MRS. SIDDONS AS THE TRAGIC MUSE By Reynolds 156
VIII. MRS. JORDAN AS ISABELLA From a picture by George Morland 178
IX. JOHN KEMBLE AS PENRUDDOCK By M. A. Shee, R.A. 200
X. CHARLES KEMBLE 212
XI. FANNY KEMBLE The last work of Sir Thomas Lawrence 218
XII. GEORGE F. COOKE From a picture by J. Corbett 230
XIII. MASTER BETTY AND HIS VARIOUS CHARACTERS 242
XIV. RICHARD SUETT From a painting by De Wilde 254
XV. WILLIAM LEWIS From a painting by H. R. Cooke 304
XVI. R. W. ELLISTON From a painting by G. H. Harlowe,
in the Garrick Club 320
XVII. EDMUND KEAN From an engraving by S. W.
Reynolds 360
XVIII. EDMUND KEAN AS SHYLOCK Painted from life by W. H. Watt,
March 1814 374
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ON WOOD.
VOLUME III.
ENGRAVED BY DEL ORME & BUTLER, LONDON, AND PRINTED ON JAPANESE PAPER
BY ED. BADOUREAU, LONDON.
PAGE
1. MR. PARSONS AND MISS POPE IN "THE DRUMMER" 1
2. MR. KING IN "RULE A WIFE" 30
3. MR. MACKLIN AS SHYLOCK 63
4. MR. SMITH AND MRS. YATES IN THE "PROVOKED HUSBAND" 84
5. MR. PALMER AS TAG 115
6. MR. HENDERSON AS ROLLA 144
7. MRS. SIDDONS AS MRS. HALLER 153
8. JOHN P. KEMBLE 189
9. INTERIOR OF DRURY LANE THEATRE, 1792 223
10. MASTER BETTY, THE YOUNG ROSCIUS 239
11. NORWICH THEATRE 248
12. MILWARD'S BENEFIT TICKET--Drawn by Hogarth 273
13. BURNING OF DRURY LANE THEATRE, 1809 301
14. COVENT GARDEN THEATRE 331
15. MR. KEAN AS SIR GILES OVERREACH 358
16. J. B. BOOTH 395
LIST OF TAILPIECES ON WOOD.
VOLUME III.
PAGE
1. MR. FOOTE AS THE DEVIL UPON TWO STICKS 83
2. MR. BEARD AS HAWTHORNE 114
3. MR. DUNSTALL AS HODGE 143
4. MR. MOODY AS SIMON 238
5. MR. FOOTE AS MRS. COLE 247
6. MR. DIBDIN AS MUNGO 272
7. MR. WESTON AS DR. LAST 394
8. MR. FOOTE AS SIR THOMAS LOFTY 420
[Illustration: MR. PARSONS AND MISS POPE IN "THE DRUMMER."]
CHAPTER I.
OF AUTHORS, AND PARTICULARLY OF CONDEMNED AUTHORS.
A glance at the foregoing list[1] will serve to show that, from the
retirement of Garrick to the close of the eighteenth century, tragic
literature made no progress. It retrograded. It did not even reach
the height of Fenton and Hughes, in whom Walpole discerned some faint
sparkling of the merit of the older masters. After Shakspeare's
time, "Theatric genius," says Walpole, "lay dormant;" but he adds,
that "it waked with some bold and glorious, but irregular and
often ridiculous flights, in Dryden; revived in Otway; maintained a
placid, pleasing kind of dignity in Rowe, and even shone in 'Jane
Shore.' It trod in sublime and classic fetters in 'Cato;' but was
void of nature, or the power of affecting the passions. In Southerne
it seemed a genuine ray of nature and Shakspeare, but falling on an
age still more Hottentot, was stifled in those gross and barbarous
productions, tragi-comedies. It turned to tuneful nonsense in the
'Mourning Bride;' grew stark mad in Lee, whose cloak, a little
the worse for wear, fell on Young, yet in both was still a poet's
cloak. It recovered its senses in Hughes and Fenton, who were afraid
it should relapse, and accordingly kept it down with a timid, but
amiable, hand; and then it languished."
And continued to languish; I cannot more fully show to what
extent, than by remarking that the century which opened with Rowe
concluded with Pye--both Poets Laureate, but of different qualities.
"Tamerlane" and "Jane Shore" have not yet dropped from the list of
acting plays; but who knows anything more of "Adelaide" than that it
was insipid, possessed not even a "tuneful nonsense," and was only
distinguished for having made Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble appear
almost as insipid as the play. Godwin's "Antonio," played in 1800,
was as complete a failure as Pye's "Adelaide."
For the tragic poets who occupy the period between Garrick's
retirement and the coming of Pye and Godwin, a few words will
suffice. Mason's "Caractacus" was a noble effort, but it produced
less effect than D'Egville's ballet on the same subject in the
succeeding century. Cumberland's "Battle of Hastings" was as near
Shakspeare as Ireland's "Vortigern" was; and Home's "Alfred" died,
three days old.
Jephson was, after all, the favourite playwright of Walpole, who says
of his "Law of Lombardy," that it was even "too rich" in language!
but then Jephson always improved the passages to which Walpole
objected. Walpole gave orders for alterations in Jephson's plays,
as he might for the repairs of a cabinet. Sometimes his criticism
is excellent, and at others, it involves a social illustration, as
in that on the "Count of Narbonne." Raymond, in the last scene,
says, "Show me thy wound; oh, hell! 'tis through her heart!" "This
line," says Walpole, "is quite unnecessary, and infers an obedience
in displaying her wound, which would be shocking; besides, as there
is often a buffoon in an audience, at a new tragedy, it might be
received dangerously. The word 'Jehovah!' will certainly not be
suffered on the stage." Walpole praises Miss Younge's acting, and
says, "the applause to one of her speeches lasted a minute, and
recommenced twice before the play could go on." Jephson, however,
wrote fair acting pieces, which is more than can be said for
Bentley's "Philodamus," which, in spite of being pronounced by Gray
the best dramatic poem in the language,[2] was hilariously laughed
off the stage. It was at least original, which can hardly be said
of any of Cumberland's plays, except the "Carmelite," a tragedy that
terminates merrily! Cumberland was as much out of his line in tragedy
as Reynolds, whose "Werter" and "Eloisa" brought him eight pounds!
"And very good pay too, sir!" said Macklin, "so go home, and write
two more tragedies, and if you gain £4 by each of them, why, young
man! the author of _Paradise Lost_ will be a fool to you!"
Hayley, of whom Walpole said, "That sot Boswell is a classic in
comparison;" and Murphy, with undeniable powers, failed in their
attempts at tragedy during this period. Boaden may be said to have
been below the level of Pye himself. On the former's "Aurelio and
Miranda" some criticism was made before it was acted. The author
was reading his play to the actors, when he remarked, that he knew
nothing so terrible as having to read it before so critical an
audience. "Oh, yes!" exclaimed Mrs. Powell, "there is something much
more terrible." "What can that be?" asked Boaden foolishly. "To be
obliged to sit and hear it," was the reply of Lady Emma Hamilton's
old fellow-servant.
But if tragedy languished miserably, comedy was vivacious and
triumphant. This period gave us the "School for Scandal," perhaps
the most faultless comedy of the whole century. It gave us Murphy's
"Know your own Mind;" the "Critic," that admirable offspring of the
"Rehearsal;" Macklin's "Man of the World," the most muscular of
comedies, which contrasts so forcibly with the sketchy sentimental,
yet not nerveless comedies of Holcroft; General Burgoyne's "Heiress,"
which is not only superior to General Conway's "False Appearances"
(a translation from a comedy by Boissy), but is, perhaps, the
second best comedy of the period; Cumberland's "Jew" and "Wheel of
Fortune;" Colman's serio-comic "Mountaineers," and the rattling
"five-act farces" of Reynolds. At the head of all these, and of many
others, stood Sheridan's immortal comedy. He may, as he said, have
spoiled Vanbrugh's "Relapse," in converting it into the "Trip to
Scarborough;" but the "School for Scandal"[3] has been accepted as
the best comedy of the English stage. In its dazzling brilliancy,
the labour expended to effect it is all forgotten. Garrick took the
greatest interest in its success, and when a flatterer remarked
to him that its popularity would only be ephemeral, and that
with Garrick himself the Atlas of the stage had departed, the
latter calmly replied that, in Mr. Sheridan, his successor in the
management, the stage had a Hercules equal to any labour it might
require at his hands.
I turn, less to newspapers than to private contemporary sources, to
see what was thought of this comedy on its first appearance. Walpole
was present at the acting, and he says: "To my great astonishment,
there were more parts performed admirably in the 'School for
Scandal,' than I almost ever saw in any play. Mrs. Abington was
equal to the first of her profession; Yates, Parsons, Miss Pope and
Palmer, all shone. It seemed a marvellous resurrection of the stage.
Indeed, the play had as much merit as the actors. I have seen no
comedy that comes near it, since the 'Provoked Husband.'" The chief
characters were thus represented: Sir Peter, King; Sir Oliver, Yates;
Backbite, Dodd; Charles Surface, Smith; Joseph Surface, Palmer;
Crabtree, Parsons; Lady Teazle, Mrs. Abington; Mrs. Candour, Miss
Pope; and Maria, by Miss P. Hopkins, daughter of the prompter,--soon
to be the wife of Brereton, and subsequently that of John Kemble.
Walpole objected, that the comedy was too long, despite great wit and
good situations; and that there were two or three bad scenes that
might be easily omitted, and which, to his thinking, wanted truth of
character. He does not specify the scenes, and he acknowledges that
he had not read the play, and that he "sat too high to hear it well."
When he had read it, he came to the conclusion that it was "rapid and
lively, but far from containing the wit he had expected, on seeing it
acted."
To Walpole, the "Heiress," by Burgoyne, was "the _genteelest_ comedy"
in the English language. Of Macklin's "Man of the World," the same
writer says:--"Boswell pretended to like it, which would almost
make one suspect that he knows a dose of poison had already been
administered; though, by the way, I hear there is little good in the
piece, except the likeness of Sir Pertinax to twenty thousand Scots."
It was the great merit of nearly all these writers, that while they
caricatured folly, they scourged vice; and not only showed society
what it was, but instructed it in what it should be. Cumberland wrote
his "Jew" expressly to create a feeling of sympathy for a despised
people. Howard, the philanthropist, walked, under fictitious names,
through more than one piece,--inculcating the duties of love and
charity; and the too fashionable or foolish people of the day, by
being rendered ridiculous, served to demonstrate, merrily, their own
defects. In this application of dramatic literature, the ladies, whom
I have not yet mentioned, were as busily engaged as the gentlemen.
If we glance at the ladies who wrote for the stage during the latter
half of the last century, and some of them before, we shall find
a marked contrast between them and their sisters of the preceding
century. There is Hannah More, who introduces into "Percy" a sermon,
of which the first part denounces war, and the second draws a
character of the Saviour. Of Mrs. Cowley, kinswoman to Gay--the
unknown Anna Matilda who corresponded with Della Crusca (Merry), the
fastidious Walpole unjustly declared that she was as freely spoken
as Aphra Behn. She was the first lady who held an "At Home day," on
which to receive her friends. She affected, like Congreve, to despise
being an "author," and showed skill in shaping old characters into
new, in comedies which still survive; as well as in defending herself
against the acute people who had "a good nose for inuendo." In
tragedy, she was not so successful; and she winced at the epigram of
Parsons, on her "Fate of Sparta," which said:--
"Ingenious Cowley! while we view'd
Of Sparta's sons the lot severe,
We caught the Spartan fortitude,
And saw their woes, without a tear."
Of Mrs. Griffith's plays not one is now remembered; but the author
and actress is remarkable for having published, as guides to young
people, the correspondence of herself and husband, before marriage,
under the title of _The Letters of Harry and Frances_; and if they
describe all the love making, the lady was not likely to have
resembled the Platonic Wife, in her own play so called, who laments,
throughout, that her husband will not be exactly what he was when he
was her lover. An incident, connected with this play, will show how
ungallant players could be to female poets, and how free they could
be with their audience. In the third act, when Powell and Holland
were on the stage, the hissing was universal; and at the end of it
the two actors thrust their heads out from behind the drop curtain,
and implored the house to damn the piece at once, and release them
from having to utter any more nonsense!
[Illustration: (Mrs. Inchbald)]
The gentle Frances Brooke's novels are better than her dramas,--save
the pretty musical farce, "Rosina," in which she has so cleverly
secularised the scriptural story of Ruth and Boaz. Unlike Mrs.
Brooke, Elizabeth Inchbald's plays are as good as her novels;--in
both, the romantic daughter of a Suffolk farmer exhibited a
skill and refinement, the latter of which she must have acquired
after the period when, a wayward and beautiful girl of sixteen, she
ran away from home, and manifested wonderful ability in framing
stories of her own, to mislead the curious. After the death of her
husband,--the "Garrick of Norwich,"--whose marriage with her was as
romantically begun as it singularly ended, she took to writing for
the stage, on which she was a respectable actress. In her plays, the
virtues are set in action; and there is much elegance in her style.
She was so successful, that a friend accused her of inculcating
sedition in "Every One Has His Fault." Sometimes, her success was
owing more to the actors than herself. King and Mrs. Jordan, as Sir
Adam and Lady Contest, in the "Wedding Day," were such a pair as have
never been _quite_ approached by their successors.
Petulant Sophia Lee, daughter of a country actor, excelled all the
foregoing ladies in one point,--the skill with which she mingled
broad comedy with natural pathos,--as in her "Chapter of Accidents."
The Lady Wallace was a thousand times more petulant than Miss Lee,
without even a thousandth part of her ability. She resembled the
female writers of the last century only in her vulgarity, and not
in their poor wit. Then, there was Hannah Brand, school-mistress,
like Hannah More; poet and actress, mad with much learning,--or
with very little, of which she thought very much; and proud as an
_artchangel_, as she pronounced the word! The great feat of imperious
Miss Brand was in her "Huniades," which, on its failure, she
altered, by leaving the whole part of Huniades out! She called the
incomprehensible fragment "Agmunda," and heard it hissed (she playing
the heroine), to her great disgust.
The century was within a year of its close, when Miss De Camp taught
parents not to cross the first love of their children, in "First
Faults." Then Joanna Baillie finished one and began another century,
with her series of Plays of the Passions; none of which was intended
for the stage, or succeeded when it was represented. The old Scots,
who shuddered at "Douglas" being written by a minister, must have
been stricken with awe, at the idea of the daughter of the divinity
professor at Glasgow composing three profane tragedies in a single
year.
In the supplement to the last chapter, indications will be found of
the progress of Opera on the English stage. Music and singing were
not uncommonly introduced into our early plays, and they ranked among
the chief attractions of our masques, down to the reign of Charles
I. Under the Commonwealth, and in the reign of Charles II., we had
pieces sung in recitative, till Locke awoke melodious echoes by his
music for the operas of "Psyche," "Macbeth," and the "Tempest;" and
Purcell excelled Lawes in vigour and in harmony, and composed music
to the words of Dryden.
Our first English male stage-singers were simply actors, with good,
but not musically trained voices. Walker, the original Macheath,
could "sing a good song," but he was a tragedian; and some of our
songstresses might be similarly described. Mrs. Tofts, at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, and Miss Campion, were trained
vocalists. In Beard and Miss Brent--he, living to marry an earl's
daughter, and realise a large fortune; _she_, to want bread, and (as
Mrs. Pinto) to thank the elder Fawcett for a shilling--Garrick found
his most dangerous opponents. The "Beggar's Opera" and "Artaxerxes,"
mark epochs; and after Arne arose Linley, Jackson, Arnold, Dibdin,
and Shield, as composers; and Leoni and Miss Browne--the former
sweeter than Vernon, and the lady rich in expression, secured rare
laurels for themselves and the "Duenna," in which opera they played
the principal characters. Jackson's music in "The Lord of the Manor,"
brought Mrs. Crouch, then Miss Phillips, into notice; but it was not
till Stephen Storace began his career, that concerted pieces and
grand finales were introduced by him, and English opera rendered more
complete. With his operas are most associated the names of Crouch,
Kelly, and Braham--which last name, and that of Mrs. Billington, are
the brightest in the operatic annals of the close of the eighteenth,
and opening of the nineteenth century.
With operas and musical entertainments, the romantic drama greatly
flourished for awhile. Indeed, the beautiful and hapless Mrs. Cargill
made a romantic hero of Macheath; her tremor, when the bell sounded
for execution, was a bit of natural tragedy which excited tears.
But of real romantic drama, the most successful was the sensational
"Castle Spectre," the merit of which was pointed out by a joke of
Sheridan's. In a dispute with Lewis, the author, the latter offered,
in support of his opinion, to bet all the money which that drama had
brought into the treasury. "No," said Sheridan, "I'll not do that;
but I don't mind betting all it's worth!"
So few of the plays in the preceding list have survived even in
memory, that there must necessarily have been much suffering among
disappointed authors. But it was not merely those of this half
century who incurred disappointment. I have incidentally mentioned
some of these before. I may add one more sample of the condemned in
Flecnoe, who was among the worst of the writers of the seventeenth
century, and was also the most independent, or the most truculent, in
denouncing his critics. When the managers rejected his "Demoiselles à
la Mode," he printed the piece with a preface, in which he remarked
that:--"For the acting this comedy, those who have the government
of the stage, have their humour, and would be entreated; and I have
mine, and won't entreat them; and were all dramatic writers of my
mind, the Masters should wear their old plays threadbare ere they
should have any new, till they better understood their own interest,
and how to distinguish between good and bad."
But poets better skilled than this ex-Jesuit had to endure
disappointment. Rowe ranks among the condemned (the hilarious
condemned), by his failure in comedy. His idea was good. In the
early part of the century, society was beset by the "Biters." These
were the would-be jokers of the day, who, on hoaxing their friends,
exclaimed "bite!" and exposed the trick they had played. An instance
is afforded in the _Spectator_, of a condemned felon, who sold
his body to a surgeon, but who, on receiving the purchase-money,
called out "bite! I'm to be hung in chains!" Rowe took one of these
humorists for the hero of his bustling three-act comedy or farce,
entitled the "Biter." This part, Pinch, was played by Pack, at
Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1704; but that clever actor rattled through
it in vain. The jokes fell lifeless, to the great disgust of Rowe,
who was in the pit. As the audience would not, or could not laugh,
but rather yawned or hissed, the author set them the example he would
have them follow, and at every jest he led the way with an explosion
of laughter, which must have become the more lugubrious on every
repetition. A good man struggling against evil destiny is said to be
a sublime spectacle to gods and men; but a dramatic author, known to
half the audience, upholding his own piece, and striving to rescue
it from ruin by a convulsive hilarity, must have been a sight as
astonishing to his foes as to his friends. The poor fellow laughed
vehemently; but the house could not be tempted to sympathise with
him, and the "Biter" was condemned under the applause and laughter of
its hysterical author.
Aaron Hill took his failures more calmly. The public of 1710, at
Drury Lane, would not tolerate his "Elfrid." Aaron shared the public
opinion, and devoted _twenty years_ to re-writing his tragedy,
which was subsequently produced under the title of "Athelwold."
Mrs. Centlivre was not equally patient with _her_ public; from whom,
a month earlier, she withdrew in pique her coolly-received comedy,
"The Man's Bewitched." Elkanah Settle was so systematically visited
with damnation, that he was at last compelled to bring out his plays
under fictitious names, and during the long vacation, lest when the
town was full, some enemy should discover him. Pope was as sensitive
as Settle, if the story be true that he was one of the authors of
"Three Hours after Marriage," and that the cool reception of this
piece caused him to express dislike for the players. Dennis, however,
was perhaps the most irritable of his race. When his adaptation of
"Coriolanus" ("The Invader of his Country") failed, in 1719, to draw
£100 to the house, and was consequently shelved by the management,
Dennis thundered against the insolence, incapacity, and disloyalty of
Cibber and his colleagues, and invoked against them the vengeance of
the Duke of Newcastle, the Lord Chamberlain! Theobald took another
course; and when the pit hissed his pieces, he abused the "little
critics," in a preface, scorned their "ill nature," and appealed to
"better judges."
Gay, considering his dramatic failures in tragedy, found more
consolation than most damned authors. The public of 1724 had no
sympathy for his "Captives;" which, despite Booth, Wilks, and Mrs.
Oldfield, soon disappeared from the stage. To console the author,
the Princess of Wales requested him to read this play in presence
of herself and little court. On being ushered into the august
company, Gay, nervous from long waiting, tragedy in hand, bashful
and blundering, fell over a stool, thereby threw down a screen,
and set his illustrious audience in a comical sort of confusion,
which, notwithstanding the kindness of the princess, marred the
self-possession of the poet. The piece, however, went off more
merrily at Leicester House than it had done at Drury Lane.
More touching than this was the way in which the aged Southerne,
in 1726, took the condemnation of his "Money, the Mistress," at
Lincoln's Inn Fields. The audience refused the request made in the
prologue to protect the man who had filled their mothers' eyes with
tears. They had no particular reverence for "the last of Charles's
bards;" nor especial regard for "great Otway's peer and greater
Dryden's friend." The audience hissed mercilessly. The old man was
standing at a wing with Rich, who asked him, if "he heard what they
were doing." "No, sir," said Southerne, calmly, "I am very deaf!" So
quietly did he see fall from his grey head, the wreath "for half a
century with honour worn."
But "Money" was not more unequivocally damned on the first night than
was the "Provoked Husband," in 1728, at Drury Lane. The difference
was that the last piece suffered shipwreck, on political grounds, but
survived the storm. All the Jacobites in town united to condemn a
play, by the author of the "Nonjuror," with Vanbrugh for colleague.
Cibber played Sir Francis Wronghead, in the face of the hurricane,
and never forgot his part, though he gave up all as lost when, in the
fourth act, the play was brought to a "stand-still," by the fierce
antagonism of the house. Nevertheless, Colley persevered, and the
comedy went on to the end. The critics acknowledged or boasted that
it had been a miserable failure, but Cibber would not confess himself
beaten. The "Provoked Husband" ran for eight-and-twenty successive
nights, and on the last of those nights drew £140, "which happened,"
says the naturally-exulting Cibber, "to be more than in fifty years
before could be said of any play whatsoever."
Gay read his tragedy, after it had been consigned to the limbo of
such pieces, to a court circle; Tracy read his heavy "Periander"
before it was damned at Lincoln's Inn Fields, in 1731, to a circle
of friends, who were regaled on the occasion with a magnificent
supper. Dr. Ridley spoke on behalf of himself and brother critics,
and assured the author that they had been exceedingly well-pleased
with the entertainment provided; he alluded particularly, he said, to
the supper. This was held for wit, but it was not so neat, so happy,
or so friendly as Carl Vernet's reply to the author of the _Maison
à Vendre_. As the curtain fell, Carl remarked, "J'ai cru voir une
Maison à Vendre, et je ne vois qu'une pièce à louer!"
Fielding took disapprobation with infinite indifference. In 1743, his
"Wedding Day" was produced at Drury Lane, with Garrick as Millamour,
and Macklin as Stedfast. Garrick had asked the author to suppress a
scene which, he thought, would imperil the piece. Fielding refused.
"If the scene is not a good one," said he, "let 'em find it out."
This scene _did_ excite violent hissing; and Garrick left the stage
for the green-room, as violently disturbed. "There," says Murphy,
"the author was indulging his genius, and solacing himself with a
bottle of champagne. He had, at this time, drunk pretty plentifully;
and cocking his eye at the actor, while streams of tobacco trickled
down from the corner of his mouth, 'What's the matter, Garrick?' said
he; 'what are they hissing now?' 'Why, the scene I begged you to
retrench. I knew it wouldn't do; and they have so frightened me, that
I shall not be able to collect myself the whole night.' 'Oh! d----
'em!' replies the author, 'they _have_ found it out, have they?'"
Fielding suffered as severely as most authors at the hands of the
critics, but he was bold enough to publish one unlucky play, not
"as it was acted," but "as it was damned at the Theatre Royal." He
accounted, however, for such failures, in himself and others, through
Fustian, his tragic poet, in "Pasquin." "One man," says Fustian,
"hisses out of resentment to the author; a second, out of dislike to
the house; a third, out of dislike to the actor; a fourth, out of
dislike to the play; a fifth, for the joke's sake; a sixth, to keep
the rest in company;--enemies abuse him; friends give him up; the
play is damned; and the author goes to the devil." Fielding might
have given another illustration,--such as that of the Frenchman who
clapped and hissed at the same moment, and explained his apparent
inconsistency, by stating that he had received a free ticket from
the author, and that he clapped out of gratitude to the donor, but
that he hissed for the satisfaction of his own conscience. Again,
there was one French critic who took a more singular way still of
expressing his opinion. In the tragedy of "Antony and Cleopatra," a
mechanical asp was introduced, which hissed as "dusky Egypt" took it
up to apply to her bosom. The Parisian critic, on hearing the sound,
arose and said to the pit--"Gentlemen, I am of the same opinion as
the asp!"
Fielding published his play, "as it was damned," but he did not add,
"as it deserved to be." He was less candid than Bernard Saurin, a
French dramatist of the last century. Saurin's comedy, the "Trois
Rivaux," was pitilessly hissed. The author printed it, not to shame
the critics, but to confess the justice of their verdict. "Authors
who have been humiliated," he says, "are not always the more humble
on that account. Self-love supports itself." After enumerating many
instances, he adds: "There are few unlucky playwrights who do not
look beyond their piece for the cause of an effect which their play
alone has produced. After wearying the public by their insipidity,
they disgust it by their pride, displayed in some haughty preface to
their drama. Perhaps there is a refinement of self-love in what I
am myself now doing, when I candidly confess, that my comedy of the
'Three Rivals' thoroughly merited its fate."
Less reasonable than Saurin was Anthony Brown, the Templar, who
produced his "Fatal Retirement," at Drury Lane, in 1739. This
conversational tragedy, in which nobody is excited much above the
level of every-day talk, fell at the first representation. Anthony
Brown attributed the failure to Quin, who, after selecting one part,
chose another, and finally threw up both. This conduct, according
to Brown, rendered the other players indifferent, and brought on
a catastrophe, which the condemned poet, of course, held to be
unmerited. Accordingly, down went Templars and the Templars' friends,
night after night, to hiss the offending Quin. He was commanded to
make an apology, and he did so in his characteristic way. Addressing
the audience, he said, blandly, that he had read "Fatal Retirement,"
at the author's request, and, under like impulse, had given him his
sincere opinion of the tragedy, namely, that it was the very worst he
had ever read, and that he could not possibly take a part in it. The
audience were amused at the apparent frankness of this communication,
and the Templars, allowing Anthony Brown to be non-suited, satisfied
their indignation by visiting it upon poor Parson Miller, who had
been so ungallant to Mistress Yarrow and her daughter. The "Hospital
for Fools" was not brought out in Miller's name, but the Templar
champions of the fair knew it to be his, and hissed it from the stage
accordingly, despite the acting of Yates, Woodward, and Mrs. Clive,
and that part of the audience who would fain have listened, if the
noisy Templars would only have allowed them. Out of Miller's fiasco,
Garrick subsequently made a success, and on the "Hospital for Fools"
founded his "Lethe," in which he was famous in the character of Lord
Chalkstone.
There is one anonymous author who exhibited a strange humour in his
protest against the condemnation of his tragedy, the plot of which
had been pronounced improbable. "You (critics)," says the dolorous
author, "harp eternally on my improbabilities. You deal rigorously
with inferior dramatists, on the score of their delinquencies as
to the probable; but when the same fault is found in some great
master, like Shakspeare, oh! then you give the word probability
quite a liberal and kindly latitude of interpretation. And is not
improbability as great a sin in the richest as it is in the poorest
dramatic genius?" Campbell's just reply is, "No: we forgive the
fault, in proportion as it is redeemed by wit and genius."
This author, so angry at being damned, should not have ventured
his plays on the stage. He would have done well to imitate Thomas
Powell, who wrote dramas, but did not wish the public to know it. So
fearful of condemnation was he, that when a friend, who thought well
of a tragedy he had written, called "Edgar," on the same subject as
Ravenscroft's and Rymer's, offered to present it to Garrick, in order
to its being acted,--"No, no!" exclaimed sensitive Powell, "by no
means would I wish even to be known as an author, attackable by all."
The mere pleasure of writing was enough for him. He fancied his
triumphs; and they were thus never marred by hiss from the pit, or
howl from adverse critic.
Some have taken their fate swaggeringly, with a protestation that
the public were not so enlightened as they might be. Others have
whistled, some have sung, a few have reasoned over it, one or two
have acknowledged the condemnation; not one, except Bentley, has
confessed that it was just. When the best scenes in the "Good-natured
Man" were bringing down hisses and imperilling the comedy, Goldsmith
fell into a tremor, from which the bare success of the play could not
relieve him. But he concealed his torture, and went to the club and
talked loud and sang his favourite songs, but neither ate nor drank,
though he affected to do both. He sate out the whole of the company
save Johnson, and when the two were alone, the disappointed author
burst into tears, and swore, something irreverently, that he would
never write again. Johnson behaved like a true man, for he comforted
Goldsmith, and never betrayed his friend's weakness. _That_, of
course, Goldsmith was sure to do for himself. Long after, when they
were dining with Percy, at the chaplain's table at St. James's,
Goldsmith referred to the dreadful night, the hisses, his sufferings,
and his feigned extravagance. Johnson listened in astonishment. "I
thought it had all been a secret between you and me, Doctor," said
he, "and I am sure I would not have said anything about it for the
world."
Some poets thought the players had the better time of the two; but
if poets incurred one peril, the players of this period incurred
another. For instance, in 1777, the Edinburgh company going to
Aberdeen by sea, were snapped up by an American privateer, and
carried off captives to Nantz. How they were ransomed, I am unable to
show.
Walpole may be registered, if not among the damned, yet among the
discontented authors of this half century. Chute might be pleased,
and even Gray approve; but Garrick seems to have had small esteem for
Horace as a dramatic poet. Hence was Garrick, in Walpole's eyes, but
a poor writer of prologues and epilogues, a worse writer of farces,
and a patron of fools who wrote bad comedies, which they allowed
Garrick to make worthless; but yet worthy of the town which had a
taste for them! Walpole wished to see his "Mysterious Mother" acted,
although he well knew that the story, and the inefficient way in
which he had treated it, would have insured its failure. Indisposed
to be numbered among the condemned, he ascribed his reluctance to
venture, to two causes: Mrs. Pritchard was about to retire, and
she alone could have played his Countess; "nor am I disposed," he
says, "to expose myself to the impertinences of that jackanapes,
Garrick, who lets nothing appear but his own wretched stuff, or that
of creatures still duller, who suffer him to alter their pieces as
he pleases." In this strain Walpole was never weary of writing. Of
Garrick's "Cymon" the disappointed Horace was especially jealous,
and he sneered at its pleasing "the mob in the boxes as well as the
footman's gallery," which privileged locality was not yet abolished
in 1772. Garrick might be the best actor, but, said Walpole, he is
"the worst author in the world!"
I have noticed the mirthful _dénouement_ of Cumberland's tragedy, the
"Carmelite." Such _dénouements_ were approved by some part of the
French public.
When the "Gamester" was adapted to the French stage, under the title
of "Beverley, a tragedy of Private Life," the adapter was the Saurin
of whom I have spoken, and his attempt excited the critics, and
divided the town. The poisoning fascinated some and revolted others.
One French poet protested against the "horrible" in tragedy, and
exclaimed:--
"Laissons à nos voisins ces excès sanguinaires,
Malheur aux nations que le sang divertie,
Ces exemples outrés, ces farces mortuaires
Ne satisfont ni l'âme ni l'esprit.
Les Français ne sont point des tigres, des feroces
Qu'on ne peut amouvoir que par des traits atroces."
The ladies united with the poet, and Saurin found himself compelled
to give two fifth acts, and, as the piece was attractive, the public
were informed whether the _dénouement_ on that particular night would
be deathless, or otherwise! In the former case, as Beverley was
about to take the poison, his wife, friend, and old servant rushed
in just in time to save him, and, in common phrase, to assure him
that things were "made comfortable," in spite of his follies, his
weakness, and rascality. Grimm jokes over plots admitting of double
_dénouements_, and alludes to the Norman vicar of Montchauvet, who
wrote a tragedy on the subject of Belshazzar. The vicar thought
that dramatic catastrophes depended on how the poet started. In his
tragedy everything turned upon whether Belshazzar should sup or not,
in the fifth act. If he does not sup, there can be no hand on the
wall, and so "good-night" to the piece. Accordingly, the poet says,
in the first act, that the king will sup; in the second, that he will
not; in the third, that he will; in the fourth, that he will not;
and, consequently, in the fifth, that he must, and will. Had the
vicar intended otherwise, he would have begun, he says, in different
order!
Ducis adapted Shakspeare's "Othello" to the French stage, for
which he furnished two versions. In the first, he killed Desdemona
according to tradition. At this, ladies fainted away, and gentlemen
protestingly vociferated. Ducis altered the catastrophe, whereat
Paris became divided into two parties, who supported the happy or
the tragic conclusion, as their feelings prompted them. Talma played
the Moor; and, bred as he had been in the shadow and the sunlight
of the English stage, he was disgusted with the liberty taken with
Shakspeare. One night, when the piece was to end as merrily as a
comedy, and the last act was about to begin, Ducis heard Talma
muttering at the wing, "I will kill her. The pit will not suffer it,
I am sure; well, I will make them endure, and enjoy it. She shall be
killed!" Ducis tremblingly acquiesced, and Talma restored the old
catastrophe. There was some opposition, and a little fainting on the
part of the susceptible, but, in presence of the marvellous talent
of the actor, all antagonism gave way, and Talma, with reasonable
pride, notified to his friends on the English stage the successful
effort he had made in support of the integrity of the Shakspeare
catastrophe.
Some authors have altogether refused to despair of the success of
their piece, however adverse or indifferent the audience may have
been. Take, as a sample, the case of Joseph Mitchell, the Scottish
stonemason, but "University-bred." Towards the middle of the last
century, the public sat, night after night, quite incapable of
comprehending the mysteries and allusions of his "Highland Fair, or
the Union of the Clans." At length, on the fourth night, the audience
took to laughing at the nonsense served up to them, and as the last
act proceeded, the louder did the hilarity become. Poor Mitchell took
it all for approval, and going up to Wilks, with an air of triumph,
he exclaimed, "De'il o' my saul, sare, they begin to taak the humour
at last!"
Hoole, another of the stage-damned, was less self-deluding. When his
"Cleonice" was about to be played, a publisher gave him a liberal sum
for the copyright, Hoole's reputation, as a poetical translator from
the Italian, being then very great. The play, however, was condemned,
and Hoole was the first to acknowledge the unwelcome truth. He
accordingly returned a portion of the sum he had received to the
publisher. He had intended, he said, that the tragedy should be
equally profitable to both, and now that it had failed, he would not
allow the chief loss to fall on him who had bought the copyright.
The watchmaker's son was a gentleman.
Hoole was as indifferent to condemnation as the French dramatist,
Hardy, with less greed for money than influenced the latter, who,
however, was moved by the proper sense of the value of labour. This
French author, Hardy, who died about the year 1630, saw his plays
damned with as much indifference as he wrote them. He composed
between six and eight hundred, published forty of them, and did not
see one live a fortnight. A couple of thousand lines a day were
nothing to this ready dramatist, who furnished the players for whom
he composed, with a new drama every third day. And it was a day when
French dramas were full of incident. We hear of princesses who are
married in the first act; the particular heroine is mother of a son
in the second, whose education occupies the third; in the fourth
he is a warrior and a lover; and in the fifth he marries a nymph
who was not in existence when the play began. Hardy was the best of
these inferior poets, and was original in this; he was the first who
introduced the custom of getting paid for his pieces, a thing unknown
till then, and which the poets, his successors, have not failed, says
a French writer, "to observe very regularly ever since."
Mrs. Siddons's Bath friend, Dr. Whalley, was not so indifferent to
the success of his muse as Monsieur Hardy; but he ranks among damned
authors who have accepted condemnation or neglect with a joke. His
"Castle of Montval" was yawned at rather than hissed; but as it was
acted beyond the third night, the Doctor went down to Mr. Peake,
the treasurer, to know what benefit might have accrued to him. It
amounted to nothing. "I have been," said the author, an old picquet
player, to an inquiring friend, "I have been piqued and re-piqued;"
and therewith he went quietly back to Bath, where he lived upon
a private fortune, and the rich stipend from an unwholesome
Lincolnshire living, which a kind-hearted bishop had given him on
condition he never resided on it!
The tragedy of the other friend of Mrs. Siddons, Mr. Greatheed (the
"Regent"), was not much, if any, more successful, than Dr. Whalley's;
but the author was so satisfied with his escape, that he gave a
supper--that famous banquet, which was followed by a drinking bout at
the Brown Bear, in Bow Street, at which a subordinate actor, named
Phillimore, was sufficiently tipsy to have courage to fight his lord
and master, John Kemble; who was elevated enough to defend himself,
and generous enough to forget the affair next morning.
Sheridan kept his self-possession under merrier control than this.
His "Rivals" was at first a failure. Cumberland, the most sensitive
author in the world, under condemnation, declared that he could
not laugh at Sheridan's comedy. "That is ungrateful of him,"
said Sheridan, to whom the comment was reported by a particular
friend--"for I have laughed at a tragedy of his from beginning to
end!" But this not having been said in Cumberland's hearing, was
less severe than a remark made by Lord Shelburne, who could say the
most provoking things, and yet appear quite unconscious of their
being so. In the House of Lords he referred to the authorship of Lord
Carlisle. "The noble lord," said he, "has written a comedy." "No,
no!" interrupted Lord Carlisle, "a tragedy! a tragedy!" "Oh! I beg
pardon," resumed Lord Shelburne, "I thought it was a comedy!" The
piece thus adjudged of was the "Father's Revenge," an adaptation from
Boccaccio, of "Tancred and Sigismunda," never played and seldom read.
Cumberland, who bore his own reverses with impatience, and was ever
resolute in blaming the lack of taste on the part of the public,
rather than ready to acknowledge his own shortcomings, endured the
triumphs of his fellow-dramatists with little equanimity. During
the first run of the "School for Scandal," he was present, with his
children, in a stage-box, sitting behind them. Each time they laughed
at what was going on, on the stage, he pinched them playfully, and
asked them at what they were laughing. "There is nothing to laugh at,
my angels," he was heard to say; and if the juvenile critics laughed
on, he less playfully bade them be silent--the "little dunces!"
The dramatists whom he "adapted," declined to be involved in his
reverses. After his "Joanna," an adaptation from Kotzebue, had
been damned, the German author took care to record in the public
papers that the passages hissed by the English public were not his,
but additions made by Cumberland. Sir Fretful found consolation.
"If I did not succeed," says this frequently damned author, "in
entertaining the audience, I continued to amuse myself.... I never
disgraced my colours by abandoning _legitimate comedy_, to whose
service I am sworn, and in whose defence I have kept the field for
nearly half a century--till at last I have survived all true national
taste, and lived to see buffoonery, spectacle, and puerility so
effectually triumph, that now to be repulsed from the stage is to
be recommended to the closet; and to be applauded by the theatre
is little less than a passport to the puppet-show." This spirit
of self-satisfaction, and depreciation of the public taste, was
nothing new. The author or adapter of "Richard II." (Nahum Tate),
finding his piece prohibited by authority, published it with a
self-congratulatory preface; but he had already done more in the
epilogue; mindful of past reverses, and anticipatory of present
condemnation, he made Mrs. Cook say:--
"And ere of you, my sparks, my leave I take,
For your unkindness past these prayers I make--
Into such dulness may your poets tire,
Till they shall write such plays as you admire!"
This was thoroughly in the old spirit of Flecknoe; but of samples of
the spirit of "damn-ed authors," having given enough, let us pass
among the audiences of the last half of the eighteenth century, whose
"censure," in the old signification of the term, was challenged by
the playwrights.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Vol. ii., pp. 398-406.
[2] "One of the most capital poems in the English language" is what
Gray is reported to have said.
[3] Produced 8th May 1777.
[Illustration: MR. KING IN "RULE A WIFE."]