AN ENTRE-ACTE
While Anne Oldfield is resting from her first triumph and preparing
for another, let us glance for a moment at the theatrical conditions
which surround her. Curious, perplexing conditions they are, marking
as they do a transition between the brilliant but generally filthy
period of the Restoration--a period in which some of the worst and
some of the best of plays saw the light--and the time when the
punctilio and artificial decency of the age will cast over the stage
the cold light of formality and restraint. The nation is but slowly
recovering from the licentiousness which characterised the merry reign
of Charles II., that witty, sceptical sovereign, who never believed in
the honesty of man nor the virtue of frail woman. The playwrights are
recovering too, yet, if anything, more tardily than the people; for
when a nasty cynicism, like that pervading the old comedies, is once
boldly cultivated, many a long day must elapse ere it can be replaced
by a cleaner, healthier spirit.
Charles has surely had much to answer for at the bar of public opinion
(a bar for which he evidently felt a profound contempt), and the evil
influence which he and his Court exerted on the drama supplies one of
the greatest blots on his moral 'scutcheon. Augustus William Schlegel,
that foreigner who studied the literature of the English stage as few
Britons have ever done, well pointed out that while the Puritans had
brought Republican principles and religious zeal into public odium,
this light-hearted monarch seemed expressly born to dispel all respect
for the kingly dignity. "England was inundated with the foreign
follies and vices in his train. The Court set the fashion of the most
undisguised immorality, and this example was the more extensively
contagious, as people imagined that they showed their zeal for the
new order of things by an extravagant way of thinking and living.
The fanaticism of the Republicans had been accompanied with true
strictness of manners, and hence nothing appeared more convenient than
to obtain the character of Royalists by the extravagant inclination
for all lawful and unlawful pleasures.
"The age of Louis XIV. was nowhere imitated with greater depravity.
The prevailing gallantry at the Court of France was not without
reserve and tenderness of feeling; they sinned, if I may so speak,
with some degree of dignity, and no man ventured to attack what was
honourable, though his own actions might not exactly coincide with it.
The English played a part which was altogether unnatural to them; they
gave themselves heavily up to levity; they everywhere confounded
the coarsest licentiousness with free mental vivacity, and did not
perceive that the sort of grace which is still compatible with
depravity, disappears with the last veil which it throws off."
As Schlegel goes on to say, we can easily imagine into what direction
the tastes of the English people drifted under such auspices. "They
possessed no real knowledge of the fine arts, and these were merely
favoured like other foreign fashions and inventions of luxury. They
neither felt a true want of poetry, nor had any relish for it; they
merely wished to be entertained in a brilliant and light manner. The
theatre, which in its former simplicity had attracted the spectators
solely by the excellence of the dramatic works and the actors, was now
furnished out with all the appendages with which we are at this
day familiar; but what is gained in external decoration is lost in
internal worth."
In other words, the theatrical life and literature of the Restoration
was morally rotten to the core. How that rottenness has been giving
way, during the childhood of Nance Oldfield, to what may be styled a
comparative decency, need not be described here. Suffice it to explain
that such a change is taking place, and let us accordingly sing,
rejoice and give thanks for small mercies. Thalia has ceased to be a
wanton; she is fast becoming quite a respectable young woman, and as
to Melpomene--well, that severe Muse is actually waxing religious.
Religious? Yes, verily, for will not all good Londoners read in the
course of a year or two that there will be a performance of "Hamlet"
at Drury Lane "towards the defraying the charge of repairing and
fitting up the chapel in Russell Court," said performance to be given
"with singing by Mr. Hughes, and entertainment of dancing by Monsieur
Cherier, Miss Lambro his scholar, and Mr. Evans. Boxes, 5s.; pit, 3s.;
gallery, 2s.; upper gallery, 1s."
Here was an ideal union of church and stage with a vengeance, the one
being served by the other, and the whole thing done to the secular
accompaniment of singing and dancing. For an instant the town was
scandalised, but Defoe, that perturbed spirit for whom there was no
such word as rest, saw the humour of the situation.
"Hard times, gentlemen, hard times these are indeed with the Church,"
he informs the promoters of this ecclesiastical benefit, "to send her
to the playhouse to gather pew-money. For shame, gentlemen! go to the
Church and pay your money there, and never let the playhouse have
such a claim to its establishment as to say the Church is beholden to
her.... Can our Church be in danger? How is it possible? The whole
nation is solicitous and at work for her safety and prosperity. The
Parliament address, the Queen consults, the Ministry execute, the
Armies fight, and all for the Church; but at home we have other heroes
that act for the Church. Peggy Hughes sings, Monsieur Ramandon plays,
Miss Santlow dances, Monsieur Cherier teaches, and all for the Church.
Here's heavenly doings! here's harmony!"
"In short," concludes the author of "Robinson Crusoe," "the
observations on this most preposterous piece of Church work are so
many, they cannot come into the compass of this paper; but if the
money raised here be employed to re-edify this chapel, I would have
it, as is very frequent, in like cases, written over the door in
capital letters: 'This church was re-edified anno 1706, at the expense
and by the charitable contribution of the enemies of the reformation
of our morals, and to the eternal scandal and most just reproach of
the Church of England and the Protestant religion. Witness our hands,
"LUCIFER, Prince of Darkness,|
and | _Churchwardens_."[A]
HAMLET, Prince of Denmark, |
[Footnote A: _Review_, June 20, 1706.]
The "enemies of the reformation of our morals!" Defoe used the
expression satirically, but how well it suited the minds of many pious
persons, ranging all the way from bishops to humble laymen, who could
see nothing in the theatre excepting the prospective flames of the
infernal regions. Clergymen preached against the playhouse then, just
as some of them have done since, and will continue so to do until
the arrival of the Millennium. Oftentimes the criticisms of these
well-meaning gentlemen had more than a grain of truth to make them
half justifiable. The stage was still far from pure, in spite of
the improvement which was going on steadily enough, and there is no
denying the fact that several of the worst plays of the Restoration
could still claim admirers. Even "Sir Courtly Nice," wherein occurs
one of the most indecent passages ever penned, and one of the most
suggestive of songs, was received without a murmur. Congreve was
pardoned for his breaches of decorum, and Dryden was looked upon as
quite proper enough for all purposes.
The _morale_ of the players could hardly be called unimpeachable, at
least in some instances, but the violations of social rules were not
so open as they had been in the old days. Here and there a frail
actress might depart from the stony path of virtue, or an actor give
himself up to wine and the dodging of bailiffs, yet the attending
scandals were not flaunted in the face of the public. In other words,
there were Thespians of doubtful reputation then, just as there are
now, and these black sheep helped materially to keep up against their
white brethren that remarkable prejudice which has endured even unto
the present decade.
As a class, the players had no social position of any kind, although
the great ones of the earth, the men of rank, never hesitated to
hobnob with them when, like Mrs. Gamp, they felt "so dispoged." Even
in the enlightened reign of Queen Anne, there existed among many
intelligent persons the vague idea that one who trod the boards was
nothing more or less than a vagabond, and we are not surprised to
learn, therefore, that in a royal proclamation of the period, "players
and mountebanks" are mentioned in the same sentence, as though there
was little difference between them.
Perhaps, the "artists" to whom the title of vagabond might be applied
with a certain degree of justice were the strolling players, who seem
to have been much after the fashion of others of their ilk, before
and since. Good-natured, poverty-stricken barnstormers they doubtless
were, living from-hand-to-mouth, and quite willing to go through the
whole gamut of tragedy, from Shakespeare to Dryden, for the sake of
a good supper. Here is a graphic picture of such a band of dramatic
ne'er-do-wells, drawn by Dick Steele in the forty-eighth issue of the
_Spectator_:
"We have now at this place [this is a letter of an imaginary
correspondent to 'Mr. Spectator'] a company of strollers, who are very
far from offending in the impertinent splendor of the drama. They are
so far from falling into these false gallantries, that the stage is
here in his original situation of a cart. Alexander the Great was
acted by a fellow in a paper cravat. The next day, the Earl of Essex
seemd to have no distress but his poverty; and my Lord Foppington the
same morning wanted any better means to show himself a fop than by
wearing stockings of different colours.[A] In a word, though they have
had a full barn for many days together, our itinerants are still so
wretchedly poor, that without you can prevail to send us the furniture
you forbid at the playhouse, the heroes appear only like sturdy
beggars, and the heroines gypsies. We have had but one part which was
performed and dressed with propriety, and that was Justice Clodpate.
This was so well done, that it offended Mr. Justice Overdo, who, in
the midst of our whole audience, was (like Quixote in the puppet show)
so highly provoked, that he told them, if they would move compassion,
it should be in their own persons and not in the characters of
distressed princes and potentates. He told them, if they were so good
at finding the way to people's hearts, they should do it at the end of
bridges or church porches, in their proper vocation as beggars. This,
the justice says, they must expect, since they could not be contented
to act heathen warriors, and such fellows as Alexander, but must
presume to make a mockery of one of the Quorum."
[Footnote A: It must be remembered that theatrical costumes, as we see
them to-day, did not exist. The art of dressing correctly, according
to the nature of the character and the period in which the play was
supposed to occur, was practically unknown. Even in after years we
hear of Spranger Barry playing Othello in a gold-laced scarlet suit,
small cocked hat, and knee-breeches, with silk stockings. Think of
it, ye sticklers for realism! Dr. Doran narrates how Garrick dressed
Hamlet in a court suit of black coat, "waistcoat and knee-breeches,
short wig with queue and bag, buckles in the shoes, ruffles at the
wrists, and flowing ends of an ample cravat hanging over his chest."
Barton Booth's costume for Cato was even more of an anachronism. "The
Cato of Queen Anne's day wore a flowered gown and an ample wig."]
Poor strollers. There was a bit of stern philosophy in the advice
of the justice, for they would probably have led a merrier and more
luxurious life had they deserted the barns for the bridges and
church-porches. Perhaps the same change would suit the wandering
players who are to be found in these last years of the nineteenth
century, travelling from one third-class hotel to another, and
wondering whether they will ever make enough money to return home and
sun themselves on the New York Rialto.
Humble as they were in the time of Queen Anne, her Government saw fit
to subject the strollers to what might be called police regulation,
and the Master of the Revels, who was a censor of plays and a
supervisor-in-general of theatrical matters, had to issue an imposing
order setting forth that whereas "several Companies of Strolling
Actors pretend to have Licenses from Noblemen,[A] and presume under
that pretence to avoid the Master of the Revels, his Correcting
their Plays, Drolls, Farces, and Interludes: which being against Her
Majesty's Intentions and Directions to the said Master: These are to
signifie That such Licenses are not of any Force or authority. There
are likewise several Mountebanks Acting upon Stages, and Mountbanks
on Horseback, Persons that keep Poppets, and others that make Shew
of Monsters, and strange Sights of Living Creatures, who presume to
Travel without the said Master of the Revels' Licence," &c. &c. The
whole pronunciamento went to show that the despised strollers were not
beneath the notice of a lynx-eyed Government.
[Footnote A: A survival of the days when noblemen often had their own
companies of actors, and were empowered to regulate the performances
of these dramatic servants.]
It is curious that the functionary to whom was assigned the important
critical duty of revising plays should also be obliged to concern
himself with the doings of puppets and country "side shows." Yet
before the law there was very little if any difference between a
performance of "Hamlet" by the great Betterton, and an exhibition of
the marital infelicities of Punch and Judy. Are matters so much better
now that we can afford to laugh at the incongruity? Do not theatres
devoted to the "legitimate" and dime museums, the homes of
triple-pated men, human corkscrews and other intellectual freaks, come
under the same police supervision, and rank one and all within the
same classification as "places of amusement?" Nay, to go further and
fare worse, do not some of these very freaks regard themselves as
fellow-workers in the dramatic vineyard made so fertile through the
toil of a Booth, a Mansfield or a Terry? The writer has himself heard
the manipulator of a marionette troupe (whose wife, by-the-way, posed
in a curio hall as a "Babylonian Princess") speak of Sir Henry Irving
as "a brother professional."
This complacent individual had his prototype during the very period
which we are considering. He was an artistic gentleman named Crawley,
the happy manager of a puppet show which used to bring joy into the
hearts of the merry people thronging the famous Bartholomew Fair. One
fine day, as the manager was standing outside of his booth, he was put
into a flutter of excitement by the approach of the mighty Betterton,
in company with a country friend. The actor offered several shillings
for himself and rustic as they were about to enter the show, but this
was too much for Crawley. He saw the chance of his life, and took
advantage of it. "No, no, sir," he said to "Old Thomas," with quite
the patronising air of an equal, "we never take money of one another!"
Betterton did not see the matter in the same light, and, indignantly
throwing down the silver, stalked into the booth without so much as
thanking the proprietor of the puppets.
What a Bedlam of a place Bartholomew must have been, with its noise,
its gew-gaws, bad beer, cheap shows, and riotous visitors. Ned Ward,
to whose descriptions modern readers are indebted, partly through the
aid of John Ashton,[A] for many a glimpse of old-time London life,
has left us a vivid picture of the fair as it appeared to him. The
entrance to it, he says, was like unto a "Belfegor's concert," with
its "rumbling of drums, mixed with the intolerable squalling of
catcalls and penny trumpets." Nor could the sense of smell have been
much better catered to than that of hearing, owing to the "singeing
of pigs and burnt crackling of over-roasted pork." Once within the
enclosure he saw all sorts of remarkable things, including the actors,
"strutting round their balconies in their tinsey robes and golden
leather buskins;" the rope-dancers, and the dirty eating-places, where
"cooks stood dripping at their doors, like their roasted swine's
flesh." Ward also looked on at several comedies, or "droles," being
enacted in the grounds, and, after coming to the conclusion that they
were like "State fireworks," and "never do anybody good but those that
are concerned in the show," he repaired to a dancing booth. Here he
had the privilege of watching a woman "dance with glasses full of
liquor upon the backs of her hands, to which she gave variety of
motions, without spilling."
[Footnote A: See Ashton's "Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne."]
All this may have a curious interest, but it looks a trifle
inconsistent, does it not, to lament the unjustness of connecting
puppet entertainments and the like with the stage, and then
deliberately devote space to the mysteries of Bartholomew Fair? It is
more to the purpose to speak of the two theatres which claimed the
attention of London playgoers in the year 1703--the Theatre Royal,
Drury Lane, and the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Of the two, Drury Lane was the more important in an historical sense,
having been the house of the famous "King's Company," as the players
of Charles II. were styled, and then of the combined forces formed
in 1682 by the union of this organisation and the "Duke of York's
Company." This was the house into which Nance Oldfield came as a
modest _débutante_. It had been built from the designs of Wren, to
replace the old theatre destroyed by fire in 1672.
Cibber has sketched for us the second Drury Lane's interior, as it
appeared in its original form, before the making of changes intended
to enlarge the seating capacity. "It must be observed then, that the
area or platform of the old stage projected about four feet forwarder
(_sic_), in a semi-oval figure, parallel to the benches of the pit;
and that the former lower doors of entrance for the actors were
brought down between the two foremost (and then only) pilasters; in
the place of which doors now the two stage boxes are fixt. That where
the doors of entrance now are, there formerly stood two additional
side-wings, in front to a full set of scenes, which had then almost a
double effect in their loftiness and magnificence.
"By this original form, the usual station of the actors, in almost
every scene, was advanc'd at least ten foot nearer to the audience
than they now can be; because, not only from the stage's being
shorten'd in front, but likewise from the additional interposition of
those stage boxes, the actors (in respect to the spectators that fill
them) are kept so much more backward from the main audience than they
us'd to be. But when the actors were in possession of that forwarder
space to advance upon, the voice was then more in the centre of the
house, so that the most distant ear had scarce the least doubt or
difficulty in hearing what fell from the weakest utterance. All
objects were thus drawn nearer to the sense; every painted scene was
stronger; every grand scene and dance more extended; every rich or
fine-coloured habit had a more lively lustre. Nor was the minutest
motion of a feature (properly changing from the passion or humour it
suited) ever lost, as they frequently must be in the obscurity of
too great a distance. And how valuable an advantage the facility
of hearing distinctly is to every well-acted scene, every common
spectator is a judge. A voice scarce raised above the tone of a
whisper, either in tenderness, resignation, innocent distress, or
jealousy suppress'd, often have as much concern with the heart as
the most clamorous passions; and when on any of these occasions
such affecting speeches are plainly heard, or lost, how wide is the
difference from the great or little satisfaction received from them?
To all this the master of a company may say, I now receive ten pounds
more than could have been taken formerly in every full house. Not
unlikely. But might not his house be oftener full if the auditors were
oftener pleas'd? Might not every bad house, too, by a possibility of
being made every day better, add as much to one side of his account as
it could take from the other."
The latter portion of Colley's remarks will be echoed by our own
audiences, which are so often doomed to see the most delicate of plays
acted in barns of theatres where all the sensitive effects of dialogue
and action are swallowed up in the immensity of stage and auditorium.
There is nothing more dispiriting, indeed, both to performers and
spectators, than the presentation of some comedy like the "School for
Scandal" in a house far better suited to the picturesque demands of
the "Black Crook" or the "County Circus."
The theatre in Drury Lane, as Oldfield knew it, had a not
over-cheerful interior, the most noticeable features of which included
the pit, provided with backless benches, and surrounded by what would
now be called the Promenade. The latter, as Misson informs us,[A] was
taken up for the most part by ladies of quality. In addition to these
quarters and the boxes, there were two galleries reserved for the
common herd, but into which, no doubt, impecunious beaux, down in the
heels and at the mouth, would frequently stray.
[Footnote A: Henre Misson's "Memoirs and Observations in his Travels
over England."]
The performances generally began at 5 o'clock, but that there were
occasional lapses into unpunctuality, may be inferred from the
following advertisement in the _Daily Courant_ of October 5, 1703:
"Her Majesty's Servants of the Theatre Royal being return'd from the
Bath, do intend, to-morrow, being Wednesday, the sixth of this instant
October to act a Comedy call'd 'Love Makes a Man, or the Fop's
Fortune.'[A] With singing and dancing. And whereas the audiences have
been incommoded by the Plays usually beginning too late, the Company
of the said Theatre do therefore give notice that they will constantly
begin at Five a Clock without fail, and continue the same Hour all the
Winter."[B]
[Footnote A: One of Cibber's earlier plays.]
[Footnote B: Quoted in "Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne."]
To the _fin de siècle_ playgoer the idea of beginning a performance
at so strange an hour seems nothing short of startling, until it be
remembered that people of quality were then wont to dine between three
and four o'clock of the afternoon. How they spent the earlier portion
of the day is not hard to relate. The men of fashion rose tardily,
feeling none the better, as a rule, for a night at club or tavern, and
then lounged about as best they could, visiting, sauntering in the
Mall,[A] or otherwise trying to pass the time until dinner. This solid
meal over they were ready for the theatre, where they occasionally
arrived in a state of unpleasant exhilaration, damning the play,
ogling the women and making themselves as obnoxious as possible to
the unfortunates who cared more for the stage than the commonplace
audience.
[Footnote A: "It seem'd to me as if the World was turn'd top-side
turvy; for the ladies look'd like undaunted heroes, fit for government
or battle, and the gentlemen like a parcel of fawning, flattering
fops, that could bear cuckoldom with patience, make a jest of an
affront, and swear themselves very faithful and humble servants to the
petticoat; creeping and cringing in dishonor to themselves, to what
was decreed by Heaven their inferiours; as if their education had been
amongst monkeys, who (as it is said) in all cases give the preeminence
to their females."--"The Mall as described by Ned Ward."]
And the women: what of them? They played cards, often for highly
respectable(?) stakes, or went to the theatre when there was nothing
better to do, and frittered away the greater number of the twenty-four
hours in a mode that the fashionable woman of 1898 would consider
positively scandalous. Sometimes the dear creatures went for a stroll
in the Mall, there to meet the English coxcombs with French manners,
or else they paid a few visits.
"Thus they take a sip of tea, then for a draught or two of scandal
to digest it, next let it be ratafia, or any other favourite liquor,
scandal must be the after draught to make it sit easy on their
stomach, till the half hour's past, and they have disburthen'd
themselves of their secrets, and take coach for some other place to
collect new matter for defamation."[A]
[Footnote A: Thomas Brown.]
Drury Lane must have presented an animated but none the less
disorderly scene any evening during the season when a popular play
was to be given. Women in the boxes talking away for dear life, beaux
walking about the house, chattering, ogling and laughing, or even
sitting on the stage while the performance was in progress,[A] and the
orange girls running around to sell their wares and, not infrequently,
their own souls as well.
[Footnote A: Owing in great part to the efforts of Queen Anne, this
wretched custom of allowing a few spectators to sit on the stage was
practically abolished before the close of the reign.]
"Now turn, and see where loaden with her freight,
A damsel stands, and orange-wench is hight;
See! how her charge hangs dangling by the rim,
See! how the balls blush o'er the basket-brim;
But little those she minds, the cunning belle
Has other fish to fry, and other fruit to sell;
See! how she whispers yonder youthful peer,
See! how he smiles and lends a greedy ear.
At length 'tis done, the note o'er orange wrapt
Has reach'd the box, and lays in lady's lap."
These lines by Nicholas Rowe form a graphic but unsavoury picture
of the demoralisation to be found in an early eighteenth century
audience. Affairs were much better than they used to be in the
_laissez-faire_ Restoration period, but, as may be imagined, there
was still room for improvement. The rake, the cynic and the
loosely-moraled women were still abroad in the land (have we quite
done with them even yet?), and many a hard struggle would take place
before the artificial restraint and decorum of the Georgian era would
triumph over the mocking spirit of Charles Stuart and his professional
idlers. In the meantime, as Shadwell relates, the rakes "live as much
by their wits as ever; and to avoid the clinking dun of a boxkeeper,
at the end of one act they sneak to the opposite side 'till the end
of another; then call the boxkeeper saucy rascal, ridicule the poet,
laugh at the actors, march to the opera, and spunge away the rest of
the evening." And he goes on to say that "the women of the town take
their places in the pit with their wonted assurance. The middle
gallery is fill'd with the middle part of the city, and your high
exalted galleries are grac'd with handsome footmen, that wear their
master's linen."[A]
[Footnote A: The footmen were sometimes sent, early in the afternoon,
to keep places in the theatre until their masters or mistresses should
arrive. They created so much disturbance, however, that a stop had to
be put to the practice, and the servants were relegated to the upper
gallery. To this they were given free admission.]
And now for a few pages about Drury Lane's rival, the theatre within
the walls of the old tennis court in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was
the home of the company headed by the noble Betterton, the "English
Roscius," who had, in 1695, headed the revolt against the management
of the other house. At that time the tide of popular success at Drury
Lane had reached a rather low ebb, a painful circumstance due, no
doubt, to the fickleness of a public that was beginning to tire of
the favourite players and to betray a fondness for operatic and
spectacular productions rather than the "legitimate." Christopher
Rich, the manager of the theatre, was, like many of his kind, more
given to considering the weight of his purse than the scant supply of
sentiment with which nature might originally have endowed him, and so
he tried to do two characteristic things. The salaries of his faithful
employés should be reduced and the older members of the company
retired into the background as much as possible. Younger faces must
occupy the centre of the stage; even Betterton, the greatest actor of
his time, should be supplanted in some of his parts by the dissolute
George Powell, and the genius of Mrs. Barry,[A] whom Dryden thought
the greatest actress he had ever seen, was to give way to the less
matured charms of the lovely Anne Bracegirdle.
[Footnote A: Mrs. Barry is said to have been a very elegant dresser;
but, like most of her contemporaries, she was not a very correct one.
Thus, in the "Unhappy Favourite," she played Queen Elizabeth, and in
the scene of the crowning she wore the coronation robes of James II.'s
Queen; and Ewell says she gave the audience a strong idea of the
first-named Queen.--DORAN'S "Annals of the Stage."]
Cibber relates the story in a sympathetic vein. "Though the success of
the 'Prophetess' and 'King Arthur' (two dramatic operas in which the
patentees[A] had embark'd all their hopes) was in appearance very
great, yet their whole receipts did not so far balance their expense
as to keep them out of a large debt, which it was publicly known was
about this time contracted.... Every branch of the theatrical trade
had been sacrificed to the necessary fitting out those tall ships
of burthen that were to bring home the Indies. Plays of course were
neglected, actors held cheap, and slightly dress'd, while singers and
dancers were better paid, and embroider'd. These measures, of course,
created murmurings on one side, and ill-humour and contempt on the
other."
[Footnote A: Alexander Davenant, Charles Killigrew, and Rich.]
"When it became necessary therefore to lessen the charge, a resolution
was taken to begin with the salaries of the actors; and what seem'd
to make this resolution more necessary at this time was the loss of
Nokes, Montfort and Leigh, who all dy'd about the same year. No wonder
then, if when these great pillars were at once remov'd the building
grew weaker and the audiences very much abated. Now in this distress,
what more natural remedy could be found than to incite and encourage
(tho' with some hazard) the industry of the surviving actors? But the
patentees, it seems, thought the surer way was to bring down their pay
in proportion to the fall of their audiences. To make this project
more feasible they propos'd to begin at the head of 'em, rightly
judging that if the principals acquiesc'd, their inferiors would
murmur in vain.
"To bring this about with a better grace, they, under pretence of
bringing younger actors forward, order'd several of Betterton's
and Mrs. Barry's chief parts to be given to young Powel and Mrs.
Bracegirdle. In this they committed two palpable errors; for while
the best actors are in health, and still on the stage, the public is
always apt to be out of humour when those of a lower class pretend to
stand in their places."
And with a bit more of this timely philosophy--to which, let it be
hoped, he ever lived up to himself--Colley goes on to say that,
"tho' the giddy head of Powel accepted the parts of Betterton, Mrs.
Bracegirdle had a different way of thinking, and desir'd to be excused
from those of Mrs. Barry; her good sense was not to be misled by the
insidious favour of the patentees; she knew the stage was wide enough
for her success, without entering into any such rash and invidious
competition with Mrs. Barry, and, therefore, wholly refus'd acting any
part that properly belong'd to her."
Then came the revolt, which the astute Betterton ("a cunning old fox"
Gildon once dubbed him) seems to have managed with all the diplomacy
of a Machiavelli. "Betterton upon this drew into his party most of the
valuable actors, who, to secure their unity, enter'd with him into a
sort of association to stand or fall together." In the meantime he
pushed the war into Africa, or, to change the simile, determined to
lead his people out of the land of bondage, as exemplified by Drury
Lane, and settle down in a new theatre. Nay, the "cunning old fox"
even went so far as to secure an interview with his most august
sovereign, William of Orange. What an audience it must have been,
with William, stiff, uncomfortable, and unintentionally repellant,
confronted by the greatest of living "Hamlets" and a group of other
players made brilliant by the presence of the imperial but not too
moral Mistress Barry, the lovely Bracegirdle, breathing the perfume of
virtue, real or assumed, and the fascinating Verbruggen.[A] Perhaps
the King found them an interesting lot, perhaps he merely regarded
them with the same good-natured curiosity he might have exhibited for
a pack of mountebanks, but in either case he was determined, with that
sombre seriousness so typical of him, to do his duty in the premises.
So he listened patiently to their complaints, and the result of it all
was that by the advice of the Earl of Dorset, the Lord Chamberlain, a
royal licence, allowing the revolters to act in a separate theatre,
was duly issued. A subscription for the erection of the new house was
immediately opened, people of quality paid in anywhere from twenty to
forty guineas a piece, and the whole affair assumed permanent shape.
Poor, tired, pre-occupied William had done what was expected of him,
lifting his eyes for the nonce from the real world, as represented by
the map of Europe, to gaze upon his subjects of the mimic boards.
[Footnote A: Mrs. Verbruggen and Joseph Williams seceded from the new
company almost at once.]
"My having been a witness of this unnecessary rupture," writes Cibber,
"was of great use to me when, many years after, I came to be a menager
myself. I laid it down as a settled maxim, that no company could
flourish while the chief actors and the undertakers were at variance.
I therefore made it a point while it was possible upon tolerable
terms, to keep the valuable actors in humour with their station; and
tho' I was as jealous of their encroachments as any of my co-partners
could be, I always guarded against the least warmth in any
expostulations with them; not but at the same time they might see I
was perhaps more determin'd in the question than those that gave a
loose to their resentment, and when they were cool were as apt to
recede."
Colley was shrewd enough in dealing with players, and, as any one who
has ever had aught to do with them knows, the majority of Thespians
must be treated with the greatest tact. They are sensitive and
high-strung, yet often as unreasonable as children, and the man who
can rule over them with ease should be snapped up by an appreciative
government to conduct its most diplomatic of missions. With the
theatrical stars of his own day Cibber seems to have been firm but
prudent. "I do not remember," he tells us, "that ever I made a promise
to any that I did not keep, and, therefore, was cautious how I made
them." A fine sentiment, dear sir, eminently fit for a copy book, but
we can well believe that your promises never erred on the side of
extravagance.
It is a fascinating subject, this study of old-time stage
life--fascinating, at least for the writer, who is tempted to run on
garrulously, describing the doings of Betterton in the new theatre,
and then wandering off to speak of the establishment of Italian opera
in England. But the limits of the chapter are reached; let us bid
good-bye to "Old Thomas," whose
"Setting sun still shoots a glimmering ray,
Like ancient Rome, majestic in decay,"
and hasten to worship the rising sun, in the person of Mistress
Oldfield.