FOOTNOTES:
[66] "Marcelia."
[67] Her father never resided at Surinam. He died on the voyage out.
[68] The Biographia Dramatica gives 1709 as the year of Mrs. Pix's last play; but this is certainly an error, as Mrs. Bracegirdle, who retired in 1707, is in the cast.
[69] Genest states in strong terms his utter disbelief in this story. It is stated in the Biog. Dram. that Wilks used this strong expression regarding "A Bold Stroke for a Wife."
PRYNNE.
[CHAPTER XII.]
THE AUDIENCES OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Speedily after the Restoration, there was no more constant visitor at the theatre than Charles II., with a gay, and what is called a gallant, gathering. Thus we are arrested by a crowd at the Temple Gate. On the 15th of August 1661, Charles and the Duke and Duchess of York are leaving the apartments of the Reader, Sir Henry Finch, with whom they have been dining, and an eager audience is awaiting them in the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, where "The Wits" is to be represented,—a piece "never yet acted," says Pepys, "with scenes." Two nights later, the same piece is playing, and the Queen of Bohemia is there, "brought by my Lord Craven," whom some do not scruple to speak of as the ex-Queen's husband. A week later, Charles and "Madame Palmer" were at the theatre in Drury Lane, with the Duke of York and his wife. "My wife," says Pepys, "to her great content had a full sight of them all the while." The King's Madame Palmer became, in fact, an attraction; seated between Charles and his brother, Pepys beheld her a few weeks later, when he and his wife escorted Lord Sandwich's young daughters to the theatre, and obtained places close to Madame and her double escort. The play was Johnson's "Bartholomew Fair," with the puppets, and all its virulent satire against the Puritans. As Pepys listened and remembered that no one had dared to bring forward this slashing play for the last forty years, he wondered at the audacity of managers now, and grieved that the King should countenance it. But what recked the laughing King, when Puritanism was in the dust, and troops of cavaliers were singing, "Up go we?"
Occasionally, if Pepys witnesses a play ill-acted, he finds compensation in sitting near some "pretty and ingenious lady." At that time oranges were more costly than pines are now, and to offer one of the former, even to an unknown fair neighbour, was an intimation of a readiness on the part of the presenter to open a conversation. To behold his most sacred Majesty seated in his box was for ever, with Pepys, even a stronger attraction than the eyes or the wit of the fairest and sprightliest of ladies. Again and again, he registers a vow to refrain from resorting to the theatre during a certain period, but he no sooner hears of the presence there of his religious and gracious King, than he breaks his vow, rushes to the play, perjures himself out of loyal courtesy, and next morning writes himself down an ass.
At the Cockpit in Drury Lane, Charles's consort, Catherine, was exhibited to the English people for the first time on an autumn afternoon of 1662, when Shirley's "Cardinal" was represented. Pepys, of course, was there too, and reproduces the scene: "By very good fortune, I did follow four or five gentlemen who were carried to a little private door in a wall, and so crept through a narrow place, and came into one of the boxes next the King's, but so as I could not see the King or Queen, but many of the fine ladies, who are not really so handsome generally, as I used to take them to be, but that they are finely dressed. The company that come in with me into the box were all Frenchmen that could speak no English; but, Lord, what sport they made to ask a pretty lady that they got among them, that understood both French and English, to make her tell them what the actors said!"
Soon after this, in dreary November, there is again a crowded audience to greet the King and Queen, with whom now appears the Castlemaine, once more, and near her Lucy Walter's boy, the Duke of Monmouth, all beauty and pretty assurance; and Pepys sees no harm in a company who have come together to witness a comedy whose name might well describe the look and bearing of the outraged Queen, namely, the "Scornful Lady." No wonder that, in December, at the tragedy of "The Valiant Cid," she did not smile once during the whole play.[70] But nobody present on that occasion seemed to take any pleasure but what was in the greatness and gallantry of the company.
That greatness and that gallantry were the idols of the diarist. With what scorn he talks of the audience at the Duke's Theatre a few days later, when the "Siege of Rhodes" was represented. He was ill-pleased. The house was "full of citizens!" "There was hardly," says the fastidious son of an honest tailor, "a gallant man or woman in the house!" So, in January 1663, at the same theatre, he records that "it was full of citizens, and so the less pleasant." The Duke's House was less "genteel" than the Cockpit; but the royal visitors at the latter were not much more refined in their manners than the audience in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or Salisbury Court. Early in January 1663, the Duke of York and his wife honoured a play of Killigrew's by their presence, and did not much edify the spectators by their conduct. "They did show," writes the immortal journalist, "some impertinent and methought unnatural dalliances there, before the whole world, such as kissing of hands, and leaning upon one another."
But there were worse scenes than these conjugal displays at the King's House. When Pepys was dying to obtain the only prize in all the world he desired, Lady Castlemaine's picture, that bold person was beginning to lose, at once, both her beauty and her place of favour with the King. Pepys was immensely grieved, for she was always more to him than the play and players to boot. He had reason, however, to be satisfied that she had not lost her boldness. In January, 1664, the "Indian Queen" was played at the King's House, in Drury Lane. Lady Castlemaine was present before the King arrived. When he entered his box, the Countess leaned over some ladies who sat between her and the royal box, and whispered to Charles. Having been thus bold in face of the audience, she arose, left her own box and appeared in the King's, where she deliberately took a place between Charles and his brother. It was not the King alone but the whole audience with him who were put out of countenance by this cool audacity, exhibited to prove that she was not so much out of favour as the world believed.
What a contrast is presented by the appearance of Cromwell's daughter, Lady Mary, in her box at this same theatre, with her husband, Viscount Falconbridge! Pepys praises her looks and her dress, and suggests a modest embarrassment on her part, as the house began to fill, and the admiring spectators began to gaze too curiously on Oliver's loved child; "she put on her vizard, and so kept it on all the play, which of late has become a great fashion among the ladies, which hides their whole face."
Mary Cromwell, modestly masked, was a prettier sight than what Pepys on other occasion describes as "all the pleasure of the play;" meaning thereby, the presence of Lady Castlemaine, or of Miss Stewart, her rival in royal favour, but not her equal in peerless beauty. With these, but in less exalted company than they, we now meet with Nell Gwyn, in front of the house. She is seen gossiping with Pepys, who is ecstatic at the condescension; or she is blazing in the boxes, prattling with the young and scented fops, and impudently lying across any three of them, that she may converse as she pleases with a fourth. And there is Sir Charles Sedley looking on, smiling with or at the actors of these scenes, among the audience, or sharply and wittily criticising the players on the stage, and the words put into their mouths by the author, or flirting with vizard masks in the pit. Altogether, there is much confusion and interruption; but there is also, occasionally, disturbance of another sort, as when, in June 1664, a storm of hail and rain broke through the roof of the Kings House, and drove the half-drowned people from the pit in a disorder not at all admired.
Like Evelyn, Pepys was often at the Court plays, but, except with the spectacle of the Queen's ladies, and the King's too, for that matter, he found small delight there,—the house, although fine, being bad for hearing. This Court patronage, public and private, increased the popularity of the drama, as the vices of the King increased the fashion of being dissolute; and when Charles was sadly in need of a collecting of members of parliament to throw out a bill which very much annoyed him, and was carried against him, he bade the Lord Chamberlain to scour the play and other houses, where he knew his parliamentary friends were to be found, and to send them down to vote in favour of their graceless master.
Ladies of quality, and of good character, too, could in those days appear in masks in the boxes, and unattended. The vizard had not yet fallen to the disreputable. Such ladies as are above designated entered into struggles of wit with the fine gentlemen, bantering them unmercifully, calling them by their names, and refusing to tell their own. All this was to the disturbance of the stage, but this battle of the wits was so frequently more amusing than what might be passing for the moment on the stage, that the audience near listened to the disputants rather than to the actors. Sir Charles Sedley was remarkable as a disputant with the ladies, and as a critic of the players. That the overhearing of what was said by the most famous of the box visitors was a pleasant pastime of many hearers, is made manifest by Pepys, who once took his place on "the upper bench next the boxes," and described it as having "the advantage of seeing and hearing the great people, which may be pleasant when there is good store."
To no man then living in England did fellowship with people of quality convey such intense delight as to Pepys. "Lord!" he exclaims, in May 1667, "how it went against my heart to go away from the very door of the Duke's playhouse, and my Lady Castlemaine's coach, and many great coaches there, to see 'The Siege of Rhodes.' I was very near making a forfeit," he adds, "but I did command myself."
He was happiest with a baronet like Sir Philip Frowd at his side, and behind him a couple of impertinently pretty actresses, like Pierce and Knipp, pulling his hair, drawing him into gossiping flirtations, and inducing him to treat them with fruit. The constant presence of lively actresses in the front of the house was one of the features of the times, and a dear delight to Pepys, who was never weary of admiring their respective beauties.
Proud as he was of sitting, for the first time in his life, in a box, at four shillings, he still saw the pit occupied by greater men than any around him, particularly on the first night of a new piece. When Etherege's comedy, "She Would if She Could," was first played, in February 1668, to one of the most crowded, critical, and discontented audiences that had ever assembled in the Duke's House, the pit was brilliant with peers, gallants, and wits. There, openly, sat Buckingham, and Buckhurst, and Sedley, and the author, with many more; and there went on, as the audience waited till the pelting rain outside had ceased to fall, comment and counter-comment on the merits of the piece and of the actors. Etherege found fault with the players, but the public as loudly censured the piece, condemning it as silly and insipid, but allowing it to possess a certain share of wit and roguishness.
From an entry in the Diary for the 21st of December 1668, we learn that Lady Castlemaine had a double, who used to appear at the theatre to the annoyance of my lady and the amusement of her royal friend. Indeed, here is a group of illustrations of the "front of the stage;" the house is the Duke's, the play "Macbeth." "The King and Court there, and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine, and close to a woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose gossip that pretends to be like her, and is so, something. The King and Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me, but it vexed me to see Moll Davies, in a box over the King's and my Lady Castlemaine's, look down upon the King, and he up to her; and so did my Lady Castlemaine once, to see who it was; but when she saw Moll Davies, she looked like fire, which troubled me."
To these audiences were presented dramatic pieces of a very reprehensible quality. Charles II. has been more blamed than any other individual because of this licentiousness of the stage. I have before ventured to intimate, that the long-accepted idea that the court of Charles II. corrupted English society, and that it did so especially through patronising the licentiousness of poets and the stage, seems to me to be untenable. From of old there had been a corrupt society, and a society protesting against the corruption. Before Charles made his first visit to the theatre, there was lying in Newgate the ex-Royalist, but subsequently Puritan poet, George Wither. In the dedication of his Hallelujah, in 1641, he thus describes the contemporary condition of society:—"So innumerable are the foolish and profane songs now delighted in, to the dishonour of our language and religion, that hallelujahs and pious meditations are almost out of use and fashion; yea, not at private only, but at our public feasts, and civil meetings also, scurrilous and obscene songs are impudently sung, without respecting the reverend presence of matrons, virgins, magistrates or divines. Nay, sometimes in their despite they are called for, sung, and acted, with such abominable gesticulations, as are very offensive to all modest hearers and beholders, and fitting only to be exhibited at the diabolical assemblies of Bacchus, Venus, or Priapus."
In the collection of hymns, under this title of Hallelujah, there is a hymn for every condition in and circumstance of life, from the King to the Tailor; from a hymn for the use of two ardent lovers, to a spiritual song of grateful resignation "for a Widower or a Widow deprived of a troublesome Yokefellow!" There is none for the player; but there is this hit at the poets, who supplied him with unseemly phrases, and the flattering friends who crowned such bards:—
"Blasphemous fancies are infused,
All holy new things are expell'd,
He that hath most profanely mused,
Is famed as having most excelled:
Such are those poets in these days,
Who vent the fumes of lust and wine,
Then crown each others' heads with bays,
As if their poems were divine."
Against the revived fashion of licentious plays, some of the wisest men among theatrical audiences protested loudly. No man raised his voice with greater urgency than Evelyn. Within six years of the Restoration, he, who was in frequency of playgoing only second to Pepys, but as sharp an observer and a graver censor than the Admiralty clerk, addressed a letter to Lord Cornbury on this important subject. The letter was written a few weeks previous to the Lent season of 1665, and the writer mourns over a scandal less allowed in any city of Christendom, than in the metropolis of England, namely—"the frequency of our theatrical pastimes during the indiction of Lent. Here in London," he says, "there were more wicked and obscene plays permitted than in all the world besides. At Paris three days, at Rome two weekly, and at the other cities, Florence, Venice, &c., only at certain jolly periods of the year, and that not without some considerable emolument to the public, while our interludes here are every day alike; so as the ladies and the gallants come reeking from the play late on Saturday night" (was Saturday then a fashionable day for late performances?) "to their Sunday devotions; and the ideas of the farce possess their fancies to the infinite prejudice of devotion, besides the advantages it gives to our reproachful blasphemers." Evelyn, however, does not pursue his statement to a logical conclusion. He proposes to close the houses on Friday and Saturday, or to represent plays on these nights only for the benefit of paupers in or out of the workhouses. Remembering rather the actresses who disgraced womanhood, than such an exemplary and reproachless pair as Betterton and his wife, he recommends robbery of the "debauched comedians," as he calls them, without scruple. What if they be despoiled of a hundred or so a year? They will still enjoy more than they were ever born to; and the sacrifice, he quaintly says, will consecrate their scarce allowable impertinences. He adds, with a seriousness which implies his censure of the royal approval of the bad taste which had brought degradation on the stage—"Plays are now with us become a licentious excess, and a vice, and need severe censors, that should look as well to their morality as to their lines and numbers."
This grave and earnest censor, however, allowed himself to be present at stage representations which he condemns. He objects but does not refrain. He witnesses masques at Court, and says little; enjoys his play, and denounces the enjoyment, in his diary, when he reaches home. He has as acute an eye on the behaviour of the ladies, especially among the audience, as for what is being uttered on the stage. "I saw the tragedy of 'Horace,'" he tells us, in February 1668, "written by the virtuous Mrs. Phillips, acted before their Majesties. Betwixt each act a masque and antique dance." Then speaking of the audience, where the King's "lady" was wont to outblaze the King's "wife," he adds:—"The excessive gallantry of the ladies was infinite: those especially on that ... Castlemaine, esteemed at £40,000 and more, far outshining the Queen." Later in the year he is at a new play of Dryden's, "with several of my relations." He describes the plot as "foolish, and very profane. It afflicted me," he continues, "to see how the stage was degenerated and polluted by the licentious times."
When forming part of the audience, by invitation of the Lord Chamberlain, at the Court plays, at Whitehall, in September 1666, Evelyn uses as freely his right of judgment. He sat ill at ease in the public theatres, because they were abused, he says, "to an atheistical liberty." The invitation to see Lord Broghill's "Mustapha" played before the King and Queen, in presence of a splendid court, was a command. Evelyn attended; but as he looked around, he bethought him of the London that was lying in charred ruins, and he sorrowingly records his disapproval of "any such pastime in a time of such judgments and calamities." With better times come weaker censures on these amusements; and the representation of the "Conquest of Granada," at Whitehall in 1671, wins his admiration for the "very glorious scenes and perspectives, the work of Mr. Streeter, who well understands it." In the following year, although not frequenting court plays, he takes a whole bevy of maids of honour from court to the play. Among them was one of whom he makes especial mention, on account of her many and extraordinary virtues, which had gained his especial esteem. This grave maid, among the two vivacious ladies whom Evelyn 'squired to an afternoon's play, was Mistress Blagg, better known to us from Evelyn's graceful sketch of her life, as Mrs. Godolphin.
Mrs. Blagg was herself not the less a lovely actress for being a discreet and virtuous young lady. In 1675[71] Evelyn saw her act in Crowne's masque-comedy, "Calisto, or the Chaste Nymph." His friend acted in a noble but mixed company—all ladies—namely, the Ladies Mary and Anne, afterwards Queens of England, the Lady Henrietta Wentworth, afterwards the evilly-impelled favourite of the Duke of Monmouth, and Miss Jennings, subsequently the sharp-witted wife of the great Duke of Marlborough. There were others of less note, with professional actresses to aid them, while a corps-de-ballet of peers and nymphs of greater or less repute, danced between the acts. For the piece, or for the interludes, Evelyn had less admiration than he had for Mrs. Blagg's splendour. She had about her, he informs us, £20,000 worth of jewels, of which she had lost one worth about £80, borrowed of the Countess of Suffolk. "The press was so great," he adds, "that it is a wonder she lost no more;" and the intimation that "the Duke" (of York) "made it good," shows that Mrs. Blagg was fortunate in possessing the esteem of that not too liberal prince. The entire stage arrangements at Whitehall were not invariably of a liberal character, and the audiences must have had, on some occasions, an uncourtly aspect; "people giving money to come in," he writes in this same year 1675, "which was very scandalous, and never so before at Court-diversions."
Of the turbulence of audiences in those days, there are many evidences on record. It was sometimes provoked, at others altogether unjustifiable, and always more savage than humorous. In 1669, Mrs. Corey gratified Lady Castlemaine, by giving an imitation of Lady Harvey, throughout the whole of the part of Sempronia, in "Catiline's Conspiracy." Lady Harvey, much excited, had influence enough with her brother, Edward Montagu, Lord Chamberlain, to induce him to lock Mrs. Corey up, for her impertinence. On the other hand, Lady Castlemaine had still greater influence with the King; and not only was Mrs. Corey released, but she was "ordered to act it again, worse than ever." Doll Common, as the actress was called, for her ability in playing that part in the "Alchymist," repeated the imitation, with the required extravagance, but not without opposition; for Lady Harvey had hired a number of persons, some of whom hissed Doll, while others pelted her with fruit, and the King looked on the while, amazed at the contending factions, whose quarrels subsequently brought him much weariness in the settling.
Then, again, much disturbance often arose from noisy, financial squabbles. It was a custom to return the price of admission to all persons who left the theatre before the close of the first act. Consequently, many shabby persons were wont to force their way in without paying, on the plea that they did not intend to remain beyond the time limited. Thence much noisy remonstrance on the part of the door-keepers, who followed them into the house; and therewith such derangement of the royal comfort, that a special decree was issued, commanding payment to be made on entering; but still allowing the patron of the drama to recover his money, if he withdrew on or before the close of the first act.
But there were greater scandals than these. On the 2d of February 1679, there is a really awful commotion, and imminent peril to house and audience, at the Duke's Theatre. The King's French favourite, the Duchess of Portsmouth, is blazing with rouge, diamonds, and shamelessness, in the most conspicuous seat in the house. Some tipsy gentlemen in the street hard by, hear of her wit and handsome presence, and the morality of these drunkards is straightway incensed. The house is panic-stricken at seeing these virtuous Goths rushing into the pit, with drawn swords in one hand—flaming, smoking, ill-smelling torches, in the other; and with vituperative cries against "the Duchess of Portsmouth, and other persons of honour." The rioters, not satisfied with thrusting their rapiers at the arms, sides, and legs of the affrighted people in the pit, hurl their blazing torches among the astounded actors on the stage! A panic and a general flight ensue. The house is saved from destruction; but as it is necessary to punish somebody, the King satisfies his sense of justice by pressing hard upon the innocent actors, and shutting up the house during the royal pleasure!
Much liquor, sharp swords, and angry tempers, combined to interrupt the enjoyment of many a peaceful audience. An angry word, passed, one April evening of 1682, between Charles Dering, the son of Sir Edward, and the hot-blooded young Welshman, Mr. Vaughan, led to recrimination and sword-drawing. The two young fellows, not having elbow-room in the pit, clambered on to the stage, and fought there, to the greater comfort of the audience, and with a more excited fury on the part of the combatants. The stage was that of the Duke's Company, then playing in Dorset Gardens. The adversaries fought on, till Dering got a thrust from the Welshman which stretched him on the boards; whereupon the authorities intervened, as there was no more mischief to be done, and put Master Vaughan under restraint, till Dering's wound was declared not to be mortal.
The 'tiring rooms of the actresses were then open to the fine gentlemen who frequented the house. They stood by at the mysteries of dressing, and commented on what they beheld and did not behold, with such breadth and coarseness of wit, that the more modest or least impudent ladies sent away their little handmaidens. The dressing over, the amateurs lounged into the house, talked loudly with the pretty orange girls, listened when it suited them, and at the termination of the piece crowded again into the 'tiring room of the most favourite and least scrupulous of the actresses. Among these gallants who thus oscillated between the pit and the dressing bowers of the ladies, was a Sir Hugh Middleton, who is not to be confounded with his namesake of the New River. On the second Saturday of February 1667, Sir Hugh was among the joyous damsels dressing for the play, behind the stage of old Drury. The knight was so unpleasantly critical on the nymphs before him, that one of them, sharp-tongued Beck Marshall, bade him keep among the ladies of the Duke's House, since he did not approve of those who served the King. Sir Hugh burst out with a threat, that he would kick, or what was worse, hire his footman to kick, her. The pretty but angry Rebecca nursed her wrath all Sunday; but on Monday she notified the ungallant outrage to the great champion of insulted dames, the King. Nothing immediately came of it; and on Tuesday, there was Sir Hugh, glowering at her from the front of the house, and waylaying her, as she was leaving it with a friend. Sir Hugh whispers a ruffianly-looking fellow, who follows the actress, and presses upon her so closely, that she is moved by a double fear—that he is about to rob, and perhaps stab her. A little scream scares the bravo for a minute or so. He skulks away, but anon slinks back; and, armed with the first offensive missile he could pick up in a Drury Lane gutter, he therewith anoints the face and hair of the much-shocked actress, and then, like the valiant fellows of his trade, takes to his heels. The next day, sweet as Anadyomene rising from the sea, the actress appeared before the King, and charged Sir Hugh with being the abettor of this gross outrage. How the knight was punished, the record in the State Paper Office does not say; but about a fortnight later a royal decree was issued, which prohibited gentlemen from entering the 'tiring rooms of the ladies of the King's Theatre. For some nights the gallants sat ill at ease among the audience; but the journals of the period show that the nymphs must have been as little pleased with this arrangement as the fine gentlemen themselves, who soon found their way back to pay the homage of flattery to the most insatiable of goddesses.
Not that all the homage was paid to the latter. The wits loved to assemble, after the play was done, in the dressing-rooms of the leading actors with whom they most cared to cultivate an intimacy. Much company often congregated here, generally with the purpose of assigning meetings, where further enjoyment might be pursued.
Then, when it was holiday with the legislature, the house was filled with parliament-men. On one of these occasions, Pepys records, "how a gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead; but with much ado, Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him to life again." This was an incident of the year 1667.
Returning to the front of the stage, we find the ladies in the boxes subjected to the audible criticisms of "the little cockerells of the pit," as Ravenscroft calls them, with whom the more daring damsels entered into a smart contest of repartees. As the "play-house" was then the refuge of all idle young people, these wit-combats were listened to with interest, from the town fops to the rustic young squires, who came to the theatre in cordivant gloves, and were quite unconscious of poisoning the affected fine ladies with the smell of them. The poets used to assert that all the wit of the pittites was stolen from the plays which they read or saw acted. It seemed the privilege of the box-loungers to have none, or to perform other services; namely, to sit all the evening by a mistress, or to blaze from "Fop's corner," or to mark the modest women, by noting those who did not use their fans through a whole play, nor turn aside their heads, nor, by blushing, discover more guilt than modesty. Thrice happy was she who found the greatest number of slaves at the door of her box, waiting obsequiously to hand or escort her to her chair. These beaux were hard to fix, so erratic were they in their habits. They ran, as Gatty pertinently has it, "from one play-house to the other play-house; and if they like neither the play nor the women, they seldom stay any longer than the combing of their perriwigs, or a whisper or two with a friend, and then they cock their caps, and out they strut again." With fair and witty strangers these gay fellows, their eyebrows and perriwigs redolent of the essence of orange and jasmine, entered into conversation, till a gentleman's name, called by a door-keeper in the passage, summoned him to impatient companions, waiting for him outside; when he left the "censure" of his appearance to critical observers, like those who ridiculed the man of mode for "his gloves drawn up to his elbows and his perriwig more exactly curled than a lady's head newly dressed for a ball."
Of the vizard-masks, Cibber tells the whole history in a few words: "I remember the ladies were then observed to be decently afraid of venturing bare-faced to a new comedy, till they had been assured they might do it without insult to their modesty; or if their curiosity were too strong for their patience, they took care at least to save appearances, and rarely came in the first days of acting but in masks, which custom, however, had so many ill consequences attending it, that it has been abolished these many years."
The poets sometimes accused the ladies of blushing, not because of offence, but from constraint on laughter. Farquhar's Pindress says to Lucinda, "Didn't you chide me for not putting a stronger lace in your stays, when you had broke one as strong as a hempen-cord with containing a violent ti-hee at a —— jest in the last play?"
Cibber describes the beaux of the seventeenth century as being of quite a different stamp from the more modern sort. The former "had more of the stateliness of the peacock in their mien," whereas the latter seemed to place their highest emulation in imitating "the pert air of a lapwing." The greatest possible compliment was paid to Cibber by the handsome, witty, blooming young fop, Brett, who was so enchanted with the wig the former wore as Sir Novelty Fashion, in "Love's Last Shift," that fancying the wearing it might ensure him success among the ladies, he went round to Cibber's dressing-room, and entered into negotiations for the purchase of that wonderful cataract perriwig. The fine gentlemen among the audience had, indeed, the credit of being less able to judge of a play than of a peruke; and Dryden speaks of an individual as being "as invincibly ignorant as a town-sop judging of a new play."
Lord Foppington, in 1697, did not pretend to be a beau; but he remarks, "a man must endeavour to look wholesome, lest he make so nauseous a figure in the side-box, the ladies should be compelled to turn their eyes upon the play." It was the "thing" to look upon the company, unless some irresistible attraction drew attention to the stage; and the curtain down, the beau became active in the service of the ladies generally. "Till nine o'clock," says Lord Foppington, "I amuse myself by looking on the company, and usually dispose of one hour more in leading them out."
Some fine gentlemen were unequal to such gallantry. At these, Southerne glances in his "Sir Anthony Love," where he describes the hard drinkers who "go to a tavern to swallow a drunkenness, and then to a play, to talk over their liquor." And these had their counterparts in
"the youngsters of a noisy pit,
Whose tongues and mistresses, outran their wit."
It was, however, much the same in the boxes, where the beaux' oath was "zauns," it being token of a rustic blasphemer to say "zounds;" and where, though a country squire might say, "bless us!" it was the mark of a man of fashion to cry, "dem me!"
With such personages in pit and boxes, we may rest satisfied that there was a public to match in the gallery—a peculiar as well as a general public.
A line in a prologue of the year 1672, "The stinking footman's sent to keep your places," alludes to a custom by which the livery profited. Towards the close of the century, the upper gallery of Drury Lane was opened to footmen, gratis. They were supposed to be in attendance on their masters, but these rather patronised the other house, and as Drury could not attract the nobility, it courted the favour of their not very humble servants. Previously, the lacqueys were admitted after the close of the fourth act of the play. They became the most clamorous critics in the house. It was the custom, when these fellows passed the money-taker, to name their master, who was supposed to be in the boxes; but many frauds were practised. A stalwart, gold-laced, thick-calved, irreverent lacquey swaggered past money and check-taker one afternoon, and named "the Lord ——," adding the name which the Jews of old would never utter, out of fear and reverence. "The Lord ——!" said the money-taker to his colleague, after the saucy footman had flung by, "who is he?" "Can't say," was the reply; "some poor Scotch lord, I suppose!" Such is an alleged sample of the ignorance and the blasphemy of the period.
Returning to the pit, I find, with the critics and other good men there, a sprinkling of clerical gentlemen, especially of chaplains; their patrons, perhaps, being in the boxes. In the papers of the day, in the year 1697, I read of a little incident which illustrates social matters, and which, probably, did not much trouble the theatrical cleric who went to the pit so strangely provided. "There was found," says the paragraph, "in the pit of the playhouse, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, on Whitsun Eve, a qualification, signed by the Right Honourable the Lord Dartmouth to the Reverend Mr. Nicholson, to be his Chaplain Extraordinary; the said qualification being wrapped up in a black taffety cap, together with a bottle-screw, a knotting needle, and a ball of sky-colour and white knotting. If the said Mr. Nicholson will repair to the pit-keeper's house, in Vinegar Yard, at the Crooked Billet, he shall have the moveables restored, giving a reasonable gratitude."
Probably Mr. Nicholson did not claim his qualification. His patron was son of the Lord Dartmouth who corresponded with James II. while expressing allegiance to William III., and was subsequently Queen Anne's Secretary of State, and the annotator of Burnet's History of his Own Times.
The audiences of King William's time were quick at noticing and applying political allusions; and Government looked as sharply after the dramatic poets as it did after the Jacobite plotters. When much intercourse was going on between the exiled king at St. Germains and his adherents in this country, a Colonel Mottley (of whose son, as a dramatist, I shall have occasion to speak in a future page) was sent over by James with despatches. The Earl of Nottingham laid watch for him at the Blue Posts, in the Haymarket, but the Secretary's officers missed the Colonel, seizing in his place a Cornish gentleman, named Tredenham, who was seated in a room, surrounded by papers, and waiting for the Colonel.
Tredenham and the documents were conveyed in custody before the Earl, to whom the former explained that he was a poet, sketching out a play, that the papers seized formed portion of the piece, and that he had nothing to do with plots against his Majesty de facto. Daniel Finch, however, was as careful to read the roughly-sketched play, as if it had been the details of a conspiracy; and then the author was summoned before him. "Well, Mr. Tredenham," said he, "I have perused your play, and heard your statement, and as I can find no trace of a plot in either, I think you may go free."
The sincerity of the audiences of those days is something doubtful, if that be true which Dryden affirms, that he observed, namely, that "in all our tragedies the audience cannot forbear laughing when the actors are to die: 'tis the most comic part of the whole play." He says, all our tragedies; but we know that such was not the case when the heroes of Shakspeare, represented by Betterton, Hart, or Harris, suffered mimic dissolution, and it is but a fair suggestion that it was only in the bombast and fustian tragedies, in which death was the climax of a comic situation, and treated bombastically, that the audiences were moved to laughter.
Sincere or not, the resident Londoners were great playgoers, and gadders generally. I have already quoted Bishop Hackett on this matter. Sermons thus testify to a matter of fashion. It appears from a play, Dryden's "Sir Martin Marall," that if Londoners were the permanent patrons, the country "quality" looked for an annual visit. At the present time it is the visitors and not the residents in London who most frequent the theatre. "I came up, as we country gentlewomen use, at an Easter Term, to the destruction of tarts and cheesecakes, to see a new play, buy a new gown, take a turn in the park, and so down again to sleep with my forefathers."
This resort to the theatres displeased better men than non-juring Collier. Mirthful-minded South, he who preached to the Merchant Tailors of the remnant that should be saved, calls theatres "those spiritual pest-houses, where scarce anything is to be heard or seen but what tends to the corruption of good manners, and from whence not one of a thousand returns, but, infected with the love of vice, or at least with the hatred of it very much abated from what it was before. And that, I assure you, is no inconsiderable point gained by the tempter, as those who have any experience of their own hearts sufficiently know. He who has no mind to trade with the devil, should be so wise as to keep away from his shop." South objects to a corrupt, not to a "well-trod stage."
Yet South, like Collier later, laid to the scene much of the sin of the age.
If we were to judge of the character of women by the comedies of the last half of the seventeenth century, we might conclude that they were all, without exception, either constantly at the play, or constantly wishing to be there. But the Marquis of Halifax, in his Advice to a Daughter, shows that they were only a class. "Some ladies," he says, "are bespoke for merry meetings, as Bessus was for duels. They are engaged in a circle of idleness, where they turn round, for the whole year, without the interruption of a serious hour. They know all the players' names, and are intimately acquainted with all the booths at Bartholomew Fair. The spring, that bringeth out Flies and Fools, maketh them inhabitants in Hyde Park. In the winter, they are an encumbrance to the play-house, and the ballast of the drawing-room."
We may learn how the playhouse, encumbered by the fast ladies of bygone years, stood, and what were the prospects of the stage at this time, by looking into a private epistle. A few lines in a letter from "Mr. Vanbrook" (afterwards Sir John Vanbrugh) to the Earl of Manchester, and written on Christmas Day, 1699, will show the position and hopes of the stage as that century was closing. "Miss Evans," he writes, "the dancer at the new play-house, is dead; a fever slew her in eight and forty hours. She's much lamented by the town, as well as by the house, who can't well bear her loss; matters running very low with 'em this winter. If Congreve's play don't help 'em they are undone. 'Tis a comedy, and will be played about six weeks hence. Nobody has seen it yet." The same letter informs us that Dick Leveridge, the bass singer of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, was tarrying in Ireland, rather than face his creditors in England, and that Dogget (of whom there is no account, during the years 1698, 1699, 1700), had been playing for a week at the above theatre, for the sum of £30! This is the first instance I know of, of the "starring" system; and it is remarkable that the above sum should have been given for six nights' performances, when Betterton's salary did not exceed £5 per week.
The century closed ill for the stage. Congreve's play, "The Way of the World," failed to give it any lustre. Dancers, tumblers, strong men, and quadrupeds, were called in to attract the town; and the Elephant at the Great Mogul, in Fleet Street, "drew" to such an extent that he would have been brought upon the stage, but for the opinion of a master-carpenter, that he would pull the house down. There was an empty treasury at both the theatres. There was ill-management at one, and ill-health (the declining health of Betterton) to mar the other. And so closes the half century.
Note.—In the second edition, after the words, "This is the first instance of the 'starring' system," Dr. Doran adds:—If Dogget was the first star, he was also an early stroller, and head of a strolling company. Each member wore a brocaded waistcoat, rode his own horse, and was everywhere respected, as a gentleman. So says Aston, reminding one of Hamlet's "Then came each actor on his ass."
Steele, in the Tatler (No. 12), speaks of the manager, MacSwiney, as "little King Oberon," who mortgaged his whole empire (the theatre) to Divito (Christopher Rich), whom Steele thus describes: "He has a perfect skill in being unintelligible in discourse, and uncomeatable in business. But he, having no understanding in this polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money, ladder-dancers, rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakspeare's heroes and Jonson's humorists."