FOOTNOTES:
[102] Should be August.
[103] Quin can hardly be said to have been even near the head of this company.
[104] See [page 175] for some curious facts relating to this.
[105] Sir Joseph.
[106] He was buried at St. Clement's. Six actors held the pall.—Doran MS.
[107] 1712.
THE NEW AND OLD THEATRES ROYAL, HAYMARKET.
[CHAPTER XVII.]
THE PROGRESS OF JAMES QUIN, AND DECLINE OF BARTON BOOTH.
Quin made great advances in the public favour in the season of 1718-19, at Lincoln's Inn, where, however, as yet, he only shared the leading business in tragedy and comedy with Ryan, and the less distinguished Evans. Southwark Fair, a fashionable resort, contributed to the company a new actor, Bohemia or Boheme, with great comic power; and Susan Mountfort replaced for a few weeks Mrs. Rogers, who had held for a time the tragic parts once acted by Mrs. Barry and Bracegirdle, and who died about this time. Of Susan Mountfort's touching end I will speak in a future page. Mrs. Rogers had been on the stage since 1692, and numbered among her original parts:—Imoinda, Oriana, Melinda, and Isabinda, in "Oroonoko," "Inconstant," "Recruiting Officer," and "Busy Body."
During this season a French company acted for some time in the Fields, where the "Tartuffe" was also played against the "Nonjuror." The only novelty worthy of notice was the "Sir Walter Raleigh" of poor Dr. Sewell, in which Quin played the hero with indifferent success. The author was more remarkable than his piece. He was of good family, and a pupil of Boerhaave; but, unsuccessful as a practitioner in London, he, curiously enough, gained fortune and reputation in the smaller sphere of Hampstead, until, as a singular biographical notice informs us, "three other physicians settled at the same place, after which his gains became very inconsiderable." He became a poor poet instead of a rich physician; "kept no house, but was a boarder; was much esteemed, and so frequently invited to the tables of gentlemen in the neighbourhood, that he had seldom occasion to dine at home." Seven years after Quin failed to lift him into dramatic notoriety, this Tory opponent of the Whig Bishop of Salisbury, and one of the minor contributors (it is said) to the Spectator and Tatler, though he is not included in Bissett's lives of the writers in the first-named periodical, died, "and was supposed," says the anonymous biographer already quoted, "at that time to be in very indigent circumstances, as he was interred in the meanest manner, his coffin being little better than those allotted by the parish to their poor who are buried from the workhouses, neither did a single friend or relation attend him to the grave. No memorial was placed over his remains; but they lie just under a holly-tree, which formed part of a hedge-row, that was once the boundary of the churchyard." Such was the end of the poet, through whom Lincoln's Inn Fields hoped, in 1719, to recover its ancient prosperity.
Eventful incidents marked the Drury Lane season of 1719-20. It commenced in the middle of September, between which time, and the last week of the following January, things went on prosperously as between players and public, but not so as between patentees and the government. Within the period mentioned Miss Santlow had made Booth happy—an union which helped to make Susan Mountfort mad,[108] and Dennis's "Invader of His Country," and Southerne's "Spartan Dame," were produced. The former was the second of three adaptations[109] from Shakspeare's "Coriolanus." Forty years before, in 1682, Nahum Tate fancied there was something in the times like that depicted in the days of Coriolanus. To make the parallel more striking, he pulled Shakspeare's play to pieces, and out of the fragments built up his own "Ingratitude of a Commonwealth." Nahum altered all for the worse; and he wrote a new fifth act, which was still worse than the mere verbal or semi-alterations. The impudence of the destroyer was illustrated by his cool assurance in the prologue, that—
"He only ventures to make gold from ore,
And turn to money what lay dead before."
Tate was now followed by Dennis, who altered "Coriolanus" for political reasons, brought it out at Drury Lane, in the cause of his country and sovereign, and perhaps thought to frighten the Pretender by it. The failure was complete; although Booth played the principal male character, and Mrs. Porter Volumnia.
Southerne's "Spartan Dame" had been interdicted in the reign of William and Mary, as it was supposed that the part of Celonis (Mrs. Oldfield), wavering between her duty to her father, Leonidas, and that owing to her husband, Cleombrotus (Booth), would have painfully reminded some, and joyfully reminded other, of the spectators, of the position of Mary, between her royal sire and her princely consort. But it would have been as reasonable to prohibit "Othello" or "King Lear," because of the presence in them of individuals so related. Southerne's play has no local colour about it, but abounds in anachronisms and incongruities, and it survived but during a brief popularity. The author was now sixty years of age, Dennis seven years his senior.[110] The older and unluckier, and less courteous poet, gained nothing by his play to compensate for the annuity he had purchased, but the term of which he had outlived. Southerne gained £500 by his "author's nights" alone; for patronage and presence on which occasions, the plausible poet personally solicited his friends. For the copyright he received an additional £120.
About six weeks after Southerne's play was produced—that is, after the performance of the "Maid's Tragedy," January 23, 1720, an order from the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Chamberlain, suddenly closed the theatre! The alleged cause was "information of misbehaviour on the part of the players." The real cause lay in Sir Richard Steele, the principal man who held the patent!
Since we last parted with the knight, he had been ungenerously trying, in pamphlets, to hunt to the scaffold the last Tory ministers of Queen Anne; he had lost his second wife; he had been projecting an union of Church and Kirk; he had invented a means of keeping fish alive while being transported across sea; he had been living extravagantly; but he had also offended his patron, the Duke of Newcastle, and therewith, the King, whose servant the Duke was, and the Government, of which the Duke was a member. Steele, in fact, had vehemently and successfully opposed, by speech and pamphlet, Lord Sunderland's Peerage Bill, which proposed to establish twenty-five hereditary peers of Scotland to sit in the English House of Lords, in place of the usual election of sixteen; and to create six new English peerages, with the understanding that the Crown would never, in future, make a new peer except on the extinction of an old family. Steele denounced, in the Plebeian, the aristocratical tendency of the bill, and to such purpose, that the theatre he governed was closed, and his name struck out of the licence!
Steele appealed to the public, in a pamphlet, the Theatre; and showed, by counsel's opinion, how he had been wronged; he estimated his loss at nearly £10,000, and finally sank into distress, with mingled bitterness and wit. His old ducal patron had loudly proclaimed he would ruin him. "This," said Steele, "from a man in his circumstances, to one in mine, is as great as the humour of Malagene, in the comedy, who valued himself for his activity in 'tripping up cripples.'"
Dennis entered the lists against Sir Richard; but the worst the censor could say against the knight was, that he had a dark complexion, and wore a black peruke. Dennis also attacked actors generally, as rogues and vagabonds in the eye of the law, and liable to be whipped at the King's porter's lodge. Such was the testimony of this coarse Cockney, the son of a saddler, and a fellow who, for his ill-doings, had been expelled from Cambridge University.
Booth, Cibber, and Wilks were permitted to reopen Drury under a licence, after an interval of a few days, and the season thus recommencing on the 28th of January, with the "Careless Husband," Cibber playing Lord Foppington, ran on to August 23rd, when the house closed, with "Bartholomew Fair!" The only novelty was Hughes's "Siege of Damascus," with false quantities in its classical names, and much heaviness of treatment of an apt story. It was Hughes's first play, and he died unconscious of its success. He was then but forty-three years of age. The old school-fellow of Isaac Watts had begun his career by complimenting King William and eulogising Queen Anne. He had published clever translations, composed very gentlemanlike music, contributed to the Spectator, and obtained a place among the wits. He wrote, in 1712, the words of the opera of "Calypso and Telemachus," to prove how gracefully the English language might be wedded to music. Two Lord Chancellors were among his patrons, Cowper and Macclesfield, and that he held the Secretaryship to the Commissioners of the Peace was a pleasant consequence thereof. His "Siege of Damascus" has for moral, that it is wrong to extend religious faith by means of the sword. The angry lover who left the city he had saved, to assault it with the Arabians from whom he had saved it, and to meet the lady of his love full of abhorrence for the traitor, might have produced some emotion; but loving, loved, living, and dying, they all talk, seldom act, and never touch. Nevertheless, Booth, Wilks, Mills, and Mrs. Porter had attentive listeners, if not ecstatic auditors, during a run of ten nights. The long tirades and the ponderous similes gratified the same audiences who took delight in Norris's Barnaby Brittle, Shepherd's Sir Tunbelly Clumsey, and Mrs. Booth's Helena, in the "Rover." Nevertheless, Hughes acquired no fame. When Swift received a copy of his works, he wrote to Pope:—"I never heard of the man in my life, yet I find your name as a subscriber. He is too grave a poet for me; and, I think, among the mediocrists in prose as well as in verse." Pope sanctioned the judgment; adding, that what Hughes wanted in genius, he made up as an honest man. Hitherto, the great tragedy of this century was "Cato."
At Lincoln's Inn, Quin played the King to Ryan's Hamlet, and created Henri Quatre in young Beckingham's second, last, and unsuccessful essay, "Henry IV. of France." What was the course of the Merchant Tailors' pupil, and son of the Fleet Street linen-draper, after this, I am unable to say, further than that he died in obscurity some ten years later. A comedy, by "Handsome Leigh," a moderately fair actor, called "Kensington Gardens, or the Pretenders," showed some power of drawing character, especially an effeminate footman, Bardach, played by Bullock, but it did nothing for a theatre which was now partly relying on subscriptions in aid. At the head of the subscribers was the last Baron Brooke, whose more famous son, the first Earl of Warwick, of the Fulke Greville line, used to subscribe his political vote so singularly—first for ministers, then for the opposition, and thirdly, not at all, in undeviating regularity.
This piece failing, came Theobald's adaptation of Shakspeare's "Richard II.," very much for the worse, but so far to the profit of the adapter that the Earl of Orrery conferred on him an unusually liberal gift for the dedication, namely, a hundred pound note, enclosed in a box of Egyptian pebble, which was worth a score of pounds more. The original author was less munificently remunerated, except in abiding glory.
Another attempt served the house as poorly namely, the re-appearance of a Mrs. Vandervelt, not because she was a clever, but that she was a very aged actress, eighty-five years old, who had not played since King Charles's time, but who had spirits enough to act the Widow Rich, in the "Half-pay Officers," a vamped-up farce, by Molloy, the political writer, and strength enough to dance a sprightly jig after it. As the hostess of a tavern in Tottenham Court Road, Peg Fryer, as the old dame was called off the stage, kept a merry and prosperous house.
Another adaptation was Griffin's comedy, "Whig and Tory," which had nothing political in it but the name; and by which that excellent low comedian, who ought to have been in the Church, and who would not be a glazier, did not add to his fame.
The "Imperial Captives" was a more ambitious venture, by a new author, Mottley. It was a tragedy, in which Quin played Genseric, King of the Vandals, and in which there is much love and a little murder, in the old thundering style, and all at cross-purposes. Distress made a poet of Mottley. His father was a Jacobite colonel, who followed James to France; his mother, a thorough-bred Whig, who stayed under William in England. Occasionally, they settled their political differences, and met. Mottley was one of those men who depend on patrons. He had lost a post in the Excise Office, and had not gained either of two which had been promised him, one in the Wine Licence Office, by Lord Halifax, and one in the Exchequer to which he had been appointed, but from which he was immediately ousted by Sir Robert Walpole. An estate, in which he had a reversionary interest, was sold by his widowed and extravagant mother to pay her debts, and thus stripped of post and prospects, Mottley made an essay as dramatic author, a career in which he was not destined to be distinguished, although Queen Caroline patronised him during a part of it—but so she did Stephen Duck! "Cato" was not superseded; but Young was putting the finishing stroke to his "Revenge."
That tragedy, which has been acted more frequently and more recently than "Cato," was first played in the Drury Lane season of 1720-21. On the 18th of April, of the latter year, Zanga was played by Mills, while Booth took Alonzo, and Wilks, Carlos. The secondary parts were thus played by the better actors. Mrs. Porter played Leonora, Mrs. Horton, Isabella. This was a fine cast, and the piece was fairly successful. A story in the Guardian, and two plays, by Marlowe and Aphra Behn, are said to have furnished Young with his materials, in handling which, one of his biographers has described him as "superior even to Shakspeare!" The action does not flag, the situations are dramatic, the interest is well sustained, and the language is expressive and abounding in poetical beauty. The story of love, jealousy, and murder is, however, a little marred by the puling lines of the black Iago,—Zanga, at the close. Young obtained but £50 for the copyright of this piece.
Young's "Revenge," if built upon other plays, has served the turn of later authors. In Lord John Russell's "Don Carlos," the reason given for the grovelling Cordoba's hatred of the Spanish prince, reminds the reader of that of Zanga for Alonzo; not less in the fact itself, the blow believed to be forgotten, but in the expression. Any one, moreover, who remembers the avowal which Artabanus makes of his guilt in the "Artaxerxes" of Metastasio, will be inclined to think that the Italian had in his mind the similar speech of the Moor to his master.
Cibber's comedy, the "Refusal," skilfully built up from the "Femmes Savantes" of Molière and the South Sea mania, ran, like the more famous tragedy, but six nights, a riot attending each representation, and finally ending in driving a good play by the author of the "Nonjuror" from the stage. The other incidents of this season are confined to the appearance of Cibber's son, Theophilus, who made his first essay in the Duke of Clarence, in the second part of "Henry IV.," as arranged by Betterton. It was a modest attempt on the part of him whose Pistol was to serve, down to our day, as a tradition to be followed. As this vagabond Theophilus appeared, there, on the other hand, departed the very pearl of chambermaids, Mrs. Saunders, who retired to become the friend and servant of Mrs. Oldfield. This last lady played but rarely this year; but Mrs. Horton profited by the opportunity, and Mrs. Porter, as a tragic actress, drew the town.
Lincoln's Inn was, at least, active in its corresponding season. The progress of Quin is curiously marked. He played Glo'ster to the Lear of Boheme; Hector, in "Troilus and Cressida," Ryan playing Troilus; the Duke in "Measure for Measure;" Coriolanus; Aumerle, in "Richard II.;" Aaron, in "Titus Andronicus;" Leonato to Ryan's Benedick, &c. &c. Moreover, while in the "Merry Wives" he played Falstaff with great effect to the Host of Bullock, in the first part of "Henry IV." Bullock played the Knight, and Quin the King. The season, remarkable for Shakspearian revivals, creditable to Rich, was also distinguished for the failure of the original pieces produced. The "Chimæra" was a satire by Odell, a Buckinghamshire squire, pensioned by Government. It was aimed at the speculators in Change Alley, but it smote them tenderly. The "Fair Captive" was an adaptation by Mrs. Haywood, a lady who began by writing as loosely as Aphra Behn, concluded by writing as decorously as Mrs. Chapone, and left charge to her executors, in 1756, to give no aid to any biography of her that might be attempted, on the ground that the least said was the soonest mended.
This comedy[111] was only exceeded in dulness by the tragedy which succeeded it, "Antiochus," by Mottley, who could not gain fortune either as poet or placeman. In the play, Antiochus is in love with his father's wife, Stratonice, who, on being surrendered to his son, by her husband, Seleucus, is a little overjoyed, for she loves the younger prince; but she is also much shocked, and escapes from her embarrassment by suicide.
The next novelty was a tragedy in one act and with four characters, "Fatal Extravagance," attributed to Miller,[112] the son of a Scottish stone-cutter. Miller was a sort of exaggerated Richard Savage; inferior to him as a poet, and in every respect a more inexcusable vagabond. He had no redeeming traits of character, and he destroyed health and fortune (both restored more than once), as insanely as he did fame and the patience of his friends. In "Fatal Extravagance," Belmour, played by Quin, kills a creditor who holds his bond, of which he also robs the dead man, mixes a "cordial," administers it to his wife and three children (off the stage), drinks and dies. The butchery[113] is soon got through, in one act. Miller subsequently declared that the piece was a gift to him from Aaron Hill. That busy and benevolent person had no money to give to a beggar; so he sat down and wrote a tragedy for him. It was a piece of clever extravagance.
It was far more amusing than Ambrose Philip's tragedy the "Briton," which was the sole novelty of the Drury Lane season 1721-22. The tragedy lacked neither skill, poetical spirit, nor incident; indeed, of love incidents there is something too much. But the amours of Yvor (Wilks) and Gwendolin (Mrs. Booth), the infidelities of Queen Cartismand (Mrs. Porter) to Vanoc (Booth), and the intervention of the Romans in these British domestic matters, interested but for a few nights, if then, an audience ill-read in their own primitive history.
Lincoln's Inn Fields was scarcely more prolific in novelty; this, with the exception of a poor drama, the "Hibernian Friend,"[114] being confined to Sturmy's tragedy, "Love and Duty;" Lynceus, one of the half hundred sons of Ægyptus, by Quin. The love is that of Lynceus and his cousin, Hypermnestra; the duty, that of killing her husband, on the bridal night, by command of her father. The "Distressed Bride," which is the second name of this piece, wisely disobeys her sire, who is ultimately slain; after which, the young people, sole survivors of fifty couples married yesterday (the bridegrooms, all brothers; and sisters, all the brides), are made happy by the hope of long life unembittered by feuds with their kinsfolk.
The last two tragedies may be looked upon as a backsliding, after "Cato," "Jane Shore," and the "Revenge;" and in tragedy there was little improvement for several years. Meanwhile, Lincoln's Inn Fields acquired Walker, from Drury Lane, and Tony Aston, an itinerant actor, the first, perhaps, who travelled the country with an entertainment in which he was the sole performer. On the other hand, the house lost pretty Miss Stone, humorous Kit Bullock (Wilks's son-in-law), and busy George Pack; the last, the original Marplot, Lissardo, and many similar characters. Pack turned vintner in Charing Cross. Quin's ability was nightly more appreciated.
There was more "study" for the Drury Lane actors in 1722-23. Mrs. Centlivre's muse died calmly out with the comedy of the "Artifice." In the good scenes there was an approach to sentimental comedy, more fully reached, in November, by Steele, in his "Conscious Lovers," in which Booth played Young Bevil, and Mrs. Oldfield, Indiana. There was not an inferior performer in any of the other parts of this comedy, which Fielding sneers at, by making Parson Adams declare that there were things in it that would do very well in a sermon. Modern critics have called this comedy dull, but decent; perhaps because Steele affected to claim it as at least moral in its tendency. The truth, however, is, that it is excessively indecent. There is nothing worse in Aphra Behn than the remarks made by Cimberton, the "coxcomb with reflection," on Lucinda. This fop, played by Griffin, is for winning a beauty by the rules of metaphysics. There is more pathos than humour in this comedy; the author of which had now recovered his share in the patent, by favour of Sir Robert Walpole; and it is by directing attention only to such scenes as those between Bevil and Indiana, or between the former and his friend Myrtle (Wilks), that critics have not correctly declared that the sentiments are those of the most refined morality! For the very attempt to render them so, even partially, Sir Richard has been sneered at, very recently, by a writer who looks upon Steele as a fool for preferring to make Bevil the portrait of what a man ought to be rather than what man really was. The story of the piece is admirably manipulated and reformed from the "Andria," of Terence, though Tom (Cibber) is but a sorry Davus.
On one night of the performance of this play, a general officer was observed in the boxes, weeping at the distresses of Indiana. The circumstance was noted to Wilks, who, with kindly feeling ever ready, remarked, "I am certain the officer will fight none the worse for it!" Steele must have had more than ordinary power, if he could draw tears from martial eyes in those days.
It is not to be supposed that Pope set the author, as a writer, below Crowne; and yet, in the following lines, where the two are mentioned, there is no very complimentary allusion to Sir Richard:—
"When simple Macer, now of high renown,
First sought a poet's fortune in the town,
'Twas all th' ambition his high soul could feel,
To wear red stockings and to dine with Steele.
Some ends of verse his betters might afford,
And gave the harmless fellow a good word.
Set up with these, he ventured on the town,
And with a borrow'd play outdid poor Crowne.
There he stopt short, nor since has writ a tittle,
But has the wit to make the most of little."
Crowne, at least, found something of an imitator in Ambrose Philips, whose tragedy, "Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester" (Duke, Booth; Beaufort, Cibber; Margaret, Mrs. Oldfield; Duchess of Gloucester, Mrs. Porter), was produced in this season. It was the last and worst of Philips' three dramatic essays. The insipid additions in the scene of Beaufort's death are justly described by Genest as being in Crowne's vapid and senseless fashion; and the public would not accept this cold, declamatory, conversational play as a substitute for the varied incidents which go to the making up of the second part of Shakspeare's "Henry VI."
Even in Dr. Johnson's time, "it was only remembered by its title;" we may, therefore, here take leave of the old secretary of the Hanover Club, who found more fortune in place and pension in Ireland, than he could derive from poetry and play writing in England. To the latter country he returned in 1748, to "enjoy himself," in pursuit of which end he died the following year. Addison once thought him well enough provided for, by being made a Westminster justice. "Nay," said Ambrose, like a virtuous man in comedy, "though poetry be a trade I cannot live by, yet I scorn to owe subsistence to another which I ought not to live by;" and he nobly gave up the justiceship—as soon as he was otherwise provided for!
Philips was followed by an inferior author, but a greater man, Sir Hildebrand Jacob, with a classical tragedy, "Fatal Constancy," in which all the unities are preserved; but that did not bring it the nearer to "Cato."
Then followed, in the summer and less fashionable portion of the season, Savage's tragedy, "Sir Thomas Overbury," in which the author played, very indifferently, the hero. At this time, the hapless young man was not widely known, except to those friends on whose charity he lived while he abused it. Favoured by Wilks and patronised by Theophilus Cibber, the ragged, rakish fellow, slunk at nights into the theatre, and by day lounged where he could, composing his tragedy on scraps of paper. In producing it, ever ready Aaron Hill assisted him; and his profits, amounting to about £200, gave him a temporary appearance of respectability. Savage is said to have been deeply ashamed of having turned actor; but it seems to me that he was only ashamed of having failed. He had neither voice, figure, nor any other qualification for such a profession. The tragedy lived but three days. There is something adroit in the conduct of the plot, and evidence of correctness of conjecture as to the truth of the relations between Overbury and Lady Somerset,—but there was no vitality therewith; and the poet gained no lasting fame by the effort.
Mrs. Haywood followed Savage's example, in acting in her own comedy, "A Wife to be Let;"[115] but as this and other original pieces or adaptations passed away unheeded or disgraced, I may here conclude my notice of this season, by recording the death of Mrs. Bicknell, a woman, or rather an actress of merit, and the original representative of Cherry in the "Beaux' Stratagem."
Against Drury, the house in the Fields long struggled in vain. Audiences, of five or six pounds in value, discouraged the actors. Egleton was not equal to Cibber; yet the "Baron," as he was called, from having assumed the title, when squandering his little patrimony in France, was next to Colley in fops. Quin, Ryan, and Boheme could not attract like Booth, Wilks, and Cibber; and Hippisley and others, acting "Julius Cæsar," as a comic piece, was not a happy idea.[116] Not more so, was that of turning the story of "Cartouche," who had recently been broken on the wheel, into a farce. The company lost their best actress, too, in Mrs. Seymour, whom Boheme married and took off the stage, to Ryan's great regret, as she acted admirably up to him. A promising actor, too, was lost to the troop, in young Reakstraw. In the summer vacation he was playing Darius, in a booth in Moorfields,—no derogation in those days. In the scene in which he is attacked by Bessus and Nabarzanes, one of the latter two thrust his foil at the King so awkwardly, that it entered the eye, pierced his brain, and laid the actor, after a scream, dead upon the boards!
With this season, it is to be noted that the fortune of Lincoln's Inn mended—thanks to the impertinence of Colley Cibber. To the latter, a tragedy had been presented by a modest gentleman, of a good old Staffordshire family, named Fenton. He was forty years of age at this time. Cibber knew his antecedents, that his Jacobite principles had been an obstacle to his ordination, for which he was well qualified, and that although he had been secretary and tutor in the family of Lord Orrery, Fenton had also earned his bread in the humble, but honourable, capacity of usher in a boarding-school. Colley read the tragedy, "Mariamne," and after keeping it unnecessarily long, he returned it, with the advice that Fenton should stick to some honest calling, and cease to woo the Muses. Elijah Fenton, however, had friends who enabled him now to live independently of labour, and by their counsel he took "Mariamne" to Rich, who immediately brought it out, with Quin as Sohemus, Boheme as Herod, and Mrs. Seymour as Mariamne—her one great creation.
Boheme, in Herod, played well up to the Mariamne of Mrs. Seymour; but he could not approach Mondory in that character, in the French play by Tristan. Mondory used to have his audience, on this occasion, departing from him, depressed, silent, wrapt in meditation. He surrendered himself entirely to the part, and died of the consequences of his efforts. Herod was as truly the name of the malady to which he succumbed, as Orestes was of that which killed Montfleury, as he was playing Oreste, in Racine's tragedy of "Andromaque."
The old story of Herod and Mariamne is so simple and natural that it appeals to every heart, in every age. Fenton perilled it by additions; but the tragedy won a triumph, and the poet to whom Pope paid about £250 for translating four books of the Odyssey for him, netted four times that sum by this drama. He became famous, and critics did not note the false quantity which the Cambridge man gave to the penultimate of Salome. Fenton was rendered supremely happy, but his dramatic fame rests on this piece alone. He never wooed Melpomene again, but lived calmly the brief seven years of life which followed his success. Like Prior dying at Wimpole, the honoured guest of Harley, Fenton died at Easthampstead, the equally esteemed guest of Sir William Trumbull, son of King William's secretary of state. In Pope's well-known epitaph, Fenton's character is beautifully described in a few simple lines.
Aaron Hill was the exact opposite of quiet Fenton. His beech-nut oil company having failed, he joined Sir Robert Montgomery in a project for colonising South Carolina; and this too proving unproductive, he turned to the stage, and brought out in the season of 1723-24, at Drury Lane, his tragedy of "Henry V."—an "improvement" of Shakspeare's historical play of the same name. Hill's additions comprise a Harriet (Mrs. Thurmond), for whom he invented a breeches part, and some melodramatic situations—especially between her and Henry (Booth). Hill cut out all Shakspeare's comic characters; but he was so anxious for the success of the piece, that he spent £200 of his own on the scenery, of which he made a present to the managers; and, after all, his play failed, despite the brilliant Katherine of Mrs. Oldfield, and the Dauphin of Wilks.
More successful was the "Captives," by Gay. The ex-mercer was now a poet, whom the "quality" petted; but he was not yet at the summit of his fame. The "Captives" did not help to raise him. The story was found unnatural, and the style stilted. A Persian captive (Booth) is a Joseph, against whom the Median Queen, whom he has offended, vows vengeance; in pursuit of which, love and murder are extensively employed. Mrs. Oldfield had one good scene in it as Cydene, captive wife of the Persian Joseph, for whom she entertains a warm regard, of which he is worthy; yet these actors, well seconded, could only drag the tragedy through seven representations, before it was consigned to oblivion. But the company was strong enough to make their old repertory, with Shakspeare in the van, attractive; and they had nothing to regret, when the season closed, but the death of Pinkethman, who for two and thirty years, and chiefly at Drury Lane, had been the most irresistible laughter-compeller of that stage, on which he had originated Beau Clincher, Old Mirabel, and a score of similar merry characters.
The company had not to complain; yet the managers had found it necessary to support their stock-pieces by a novelty—a ballet-pantomime, "The Necromancer,"[117] by the younger Thurmond, a dancing-master. Rich, at Lincoln's Inn, where "Edwin" could not have drawn a shilling; where Belisarius (Boheme) begged an obolus in vain; and Hurst's "Roman Maid" (Paulina, Mrs. Moffat), represented a hermit as dwelling in a lone cave, near the Mount Aventine—a hermit would be as likely to be found in a wood on Snow Hill—Rich, I say, improved on Thurmond's idea, by producing on the 20th of December 1723, "The Necromancer, or the History of Dr. Faustus," and thereby founded pantomime, as it has been established among us, at least during the Christmas-tide, for now a hundred and forty years.
Rich, with his "Necromancer," conjured all the town within the ring of his little theatre. The splendour of the scenes, the vastness of the machinery, and the grace and ability of Rich himself, raised harlequinade above Shakspeare, and all other poets; and Quin and Ryan were accounted little of in comparison with the motley hero. The pantomime stood prominently in the bills; during the nights of its attraction the prices of admission were raised by one-fourth, and the weekly receipts advanced from six hundred (if the house was full every night, which had been a rare case in the Fields), to a thousand pounds. The advanced price displeased the public, with whom ultimately a compromise was made, and a portion returned to those who chose to leave the house before the pantomime commenced.
While the drama was thus yielding to the attractions of pantomime, a new theatre invited the public. The little theatre in the Haymarket opened its doors for the first time on the 12th of September[118] 1723, with the "French Fop," of which the author, Sandford, says, that he wrote it in a few weeks, when he was but fifteen years of age. That may account for its having straightway died; but it served to introduce to the stage the utility actor, Milward. The theatre was only open for a few nights.
Of the season 1724-5, at Drury Lane, there is little to be said, save that the inimitable company worked well and profitably in sterling old plays. Wilks returned to Sir Harry Wildair, and the public laughed at Cibber's quivering tragedy tones, when playing Achoreus, in his adaptation from Beaumont and Fletcher's "False One." In "Cæsar in Egypt," Antony and Cleopatra were played by Wilks and Mrs. Oldfield, who were never more happy than when making love on the stage. This was the sole novelty of the season.
In the Fields there was more of it, but that most relied on was Rich's "Harlequin Sorcerer," produced on the 21st of January 1725. The "Bath Unmasked" was the only original comedy produced. It described Bath as made up of very unprincipled people, with a good lord to about a score of knaves and hussies. It was the first and not lucky essay of miserable Gabriel Odingsell, who, nine years later, in a fit of madness, hung himself in his house, Thatched Court, Westminster.
Booth was more brilliant than he had ever yet been, in the Drury Lane season of 1725-26. In Shakspeare he shone conspicuously, and his Hotspur to the Prince of Wales of Giffard, from Dublin, charmed as much by its chivalry as Cato did by its dignity. Mrs. Oldfield enjoyed, and Mrs. Cibber, first wife of Theophilus, claimed the favour of the town; and the elder Cibber surrendered one or two old characters to a younger actor, Bridgewater. Amid a succession of old dramas, one novelty only was offered, a translation of the "Hecuba" of Euripides, with slight variations. The author was Richard West, son-in-law of Bishop Burnet, and father of young West, the early friend of Walpole and Gray. His play was acted on the 3d[119] of February 1726, at which time West was Lord Chancellor of Ireland. On the first night a full audience would not listen to the piece, and on the next two nights there was scarcely an audience assembled to listen. Neither Booth as Polymnestor, nor Mrs. Porter as Hecuba, could win the general ear. It did not succeed, wrote the author, "because it was not heard. A rout of Vandals in the galleries intimidated the young actresses, disturbed the audience, and prevented all attention; and, I believe, if the verses had been repeated in the original Greek, they would have been understood and received in the same manner." The young actresses were Mrs. Brett and Mrs. Cibber; the latter was not the famous lady of that name, destined to the highest walks of tragedy. Lord Chancellor West died in December of this year.
The above single play was, however, worth all the novelties produced by Rich at Lincoln's Inn Fields. These were comedies of a farcical kind. In one of them, the "Capricious Lovers," by Odingsell, there was an original character, Mrs. Mincemode (Mrs. Bullock), who "grows sick at the sight of a man, and refines upon the significancy of phrases, till she resolves common observations into indecency." In the "French Fortune-teller,"[120] the public failed to be regaled with a piece stolen from Ravenscroft, who had stolen his from the French. The third play was "Money the Mistress," which the audience damned, in spite of the reputation of Southerne, who, with this failure, closed a dramatic career which had commenced half a century earlier. In its course he had written ten plays, the author of which had this in common with Shakspeare—that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon.
With this year, 1726-27, came the first symptom of a "break-up" in the hitherto prosperous condition of Drury Lane. It occurred in the first long and serious illness of Booth, which kept him from the theatre, three long and weary months to the town. The season at Drury Lane, however, and that at Lincoln's Inn Fields, had this alike, that after Booth's welcome return, all London was excited by expectations raised by comedies whose authors were "gentlemen," in whose success the "quality," generally, were especially interested. At Drury it was the "Rival Modes," by Moore Smythe; at Lincoln's Inn Fields, the "Dissembled Wanton, or, my Son, get Money," by Leonard Welsted. In the former piece there is a gay lover, Bellamine (Wilks), wooing the grave Melissa (Mrs. Porter), while the serious Sagely (Mills) pays suit to the sprightly widow Amoret (Mrs. Oldfield). An old beau of King William's time, Earl of Late Airs (Cibber), brings his son to town (Lord Toupet, a modern beau, by Theophilus Cibber), in order that he may marry Melissa, with her father's consent. Amoret contrives to upset this arrangement, and the other lovers are duly united. The plot was good, the players unsurpassable, the two Cibbers fooling it to the top of their bent, and old and new fashions were pleasantly contrasted; but the action was languid, and the piece was hissed.
The incident lacking here, abounded in Welsted's intriguing comedy, the "Dissembled Wanton," a character finely acted by Mrs. Younger[121]—whose marriage with Beaufort (Walker) being forbidden by her father, Lord Severne (Quin), by whom she had been sent to France, she reappears in her father's presence as Sir Harry Truelove, whose real character is known only to Emilia (Mrs. Bullock), Lord Severne's ward. Emilia's intimacy with Sir Harry causes the rupture of her marriage with Colonel Severne, and some coarse scenes have to be got through before all is explained; the respective lovers are united, and Humphrey Staple (Hall) finds it useless to urge his son Toby (W. Bullock) to get money by espousing the rich ward Emilia.
Although Welsted's comedy was lively, it was found to be ill-written. He had had time enough to polish it, for ten years previous to its production Steele had commended the plot, the moral, and the style; he had even praised its decency. Like Moore Smyth's, it could not win the town. The respective authors, who made so much ineffectual noise in their own day, would be unknown to us in this, but for the censure of Pope. In the Dunciad they enjoy notoriety with Theobald, or Cibber, Gildon, Dennis, Centlivre, and Aaron Hill. Moore was an Oxford man, who assumed his maternal grandfather's name—being his heir—and held one or two lucrative posts under Government. His father, the famous Arthur Moore, a wit, a politician, and a statesman, who was long M.P. for Grimsby, had risen, by force of his talents, to an eminent position from a humble station. Pope stooped to call Moore Smyth the son of a footman, and, when the latter name was assumed on his taking his maternal grandfather's estate, the Whigs lampooned him as born at "the paternal seat of his family—the taphouse of the prison-gate, at Monaghan."
Moore was on intimate terms with the Mapledurham ladies—the Blounts, and with others of Pope's friends, as well as with Pope himself. Some tags of the poet's lines he had introduced into his unlucky comedy, and on this Pope supported a grossly-expressed and weakly-founded charge of plagiarism. Welsted, who was of a good Leicestershire family, and of fair abilities, had moved Pope's wrath by writing satirical verses against him, and the feeling was embittered when the two dramatists united in addressing One Epistle to Pope, in which they touched him more painfully than he cared to confess. Neither Moore nor Welsted ever tempted fortune on the stage again. "Cœstus artemque repono," said the former, on the title-page of his comedy, as if he was revenging himself on society. Welsted confined himself, after some skirmishing with his critics, to his duties in the Ordnance Office. His wives were women of some mark. The first was the daughter of Purcell; the second the sister of Walker, the great defender of Londonderry.
A better gentleman than either, Philip Frowde—scholar, wit, poet, true man, friend of Addison, and a friend to all,—was praised by the critics for his "Fall of Saguntum;" but the public voice did not ratify the judgment, though Ryan, as Fabius, and Quin, as Eurydamas, with Mrs. Berriman, as Candace,—an Amazonian queen, with nothing very womanly about her,—exerted themselves to the utmost. One other failure has to be recorded—"Philip of Macedon," by David Lewis, the friend of Pope. With a dull tragedy, Pope's friend had no more chance of misleading the public, than his foes, with weak comedies. The greater poet's commendation so little influenced that public, that on the first night, with Pope himself in the house, the audience was so numerically small,—though Walker, Ryan, Quin, Mrs. Berriman, Mrs. Younger, and others, were, in their "habits" as unlike Macedonians as they could well be,—the managers deemed acting to such a house not profitable, and dismissed it accordingly. The author's final condemnation was only postponed for a night or two, when he sank, never to rise again.[122]
With Booth's failing health, and the ill-success of novelties produced at either house, there was a gloom over theatrical matters. But at this very time a sun was rising from behind the cloud. In one of the irregular series of performances, held at the little theatre in the Haymarket, in 1726, there appeared a young lady, in the part of Monimia, in the "Orphan," and subsequently as Cherry, in the "Beaux' Stratagem." She was pretty, clever, and eighteen; but she was not destined to become either the tragic or the comic queen. Soon after, however, thanks to the judgment of Rich, who gave her the opportunity, she was hailed as the queen of English song. She was known as Lavinia Fenton, but she was the daughter of a naval lieutenant, named Beswick. Her widowed mother had married a coffee-house keeper in Charing Cross, whose name of Fenton was assumed by his step-daughter. Before we shall hear of her at Lincoln's Inn Fields, a lieutenant[123] will be offering her everything he possessed except his name; but Lavinia, without being as discreet, was even more successful than Pamela, and died a duchess.
Throughout the reign of George I., Barton Booth kept his position as the first English tragedian,—undisturbed even by the power of Quin. Associated with him, were comedians,—Wilks, Cibber, Mrs. Oldfield, Porter, Horton, and others, who shed splendour on the stage, at this period. The new dramatic poets of that reign were few, and not more than one of those few can be called distinguished. The name of Young alone survives in the memory, and that but for one tragedy, the "Revenge." Of comedies, there is not one of the reign of George I. that is even read for its merits. It is otherwise with the comedies of an actress and dramatist who died in this reign,—Susanna Centlivre; and yet a contemporary notice of her death simply states that, as an actress, "having a greater inclination to wear the breeches than the petticoat, she struck into the men's parts;" and that the dramatist "had a small wen on her left eyelid, which gave her a masculine air." Eventful to both houses was the season of 1727-28. It was the last season of Booth, at Drury Lane; and it was the first of the "Beggars' Opera," at Lincoln's Inn Fields. After thirty years' service, in the reigns of William, Anne, George I., and now in that of George II., in which Garrick was to excel him, that admirable actor was compelled, by shattered health, to withdraw. For many nights he played Henry VIII., and walked in the coronation scene, which was tacked to various other plays, in honour of the accession of George II., who, with the royal family, went, on the 7th of November, to witness Booth enact the King. On the 9th of January, Booth, after a severe struggle, played, for the sixth and last time, Julio, in the "Double Falsehood;" a play which Theobald ascribed to Shakspeare; Dr. Farmer, to Shirley; others, to Massinger; but which was chiefly Theobald's own, founded on a manuscript copy which, through Downes, the prompter, had descended to him from Betterton, and which served Colman, who certainly derived his Octavian from Julio.
The loss in Booth was, in some degree, supplied by the "profit" arising from a month's run of a new comedy by Vanbrugh and Cibber—the "Provoked Husband;" in which the Lord and Lady Townley were played by these incomparable lovers—Wilks and Mrs. Oldfield. Cibber acted Sir Francis Wronghead, and young Wetherell, Squire Richard. Vanbrugh was at this time dead—in 1726, at his house in Whitehall, of quinsey. The critics and enemies of Cibber were sadly at fault on this occasion. Hating him for his "Nonjuror," they hissed all the scenes of which they supposed him to be the author; and applauded those which they were sure were by Vanbrugh. Cibber published the imperfect play left by Sir John, and thereby showed that his adversaries condemned and approved exactly in the wrong places.
Cibber enjoyed another triumph this season. Steele, abandoning the responsibilities of management, to follow his pleasure, had submitted to a deduction of £1, 13s. 4d. nightly, to each of his partners, for performing his duties. Steele was at this time in Wales, dying, though he survived till September 1729. His creditors, meanwhile, claimed the "five marks" as their own, and the case went into the Rolls Court, before Sir Joseph Jekyll. Cibber pleaded in person the cause of himself and active partners, and so convincingly, that he obtained a decree in their favour.
In presence of this new audience, the old actor confesses he felt fear. He carried with him the heads of what he was about to urge; but, says Colley, "when it came to the critical moment, the dread and apprehension of what I had undertaken so disconcerted my courage, that though I had been used to talk to above fifty thousand people every winter, for upwards of thirty years together, an involuntary and unexpected proof of confusion fell from my eyes; and as I found myself quite out of my element, I seemed rather gasping for life, than in a condition to cope with the eminent orators against me." Cibber, however, recovered himself, and vanquished his adversaries, though two of them were of the stuff that won for them, subsequently, the dignity of Lord Chancellor.
The "Beggar's Opera" season at Lincoln's Inn Fields was the most profitable ever known there. Swift's idea of a Newgate pastoral was adopted by Gay, who, smarting under disappointment of preferment at Court, and angry at the offer to make him gentleman-usher to the youngest of the royal children, indulged his satirical humour against ministers and placement, by writing a Newgate comedy, at which Swift and Pope shook their heads, and old Congreve, for one of whose three sinecures Gay would have given his ears, was sorely perplexed as to whether it would bring triumph or calamity to its author. The songs were added, but Cibber, as doubtful as Congreve, declined what Rich eagerly accepted, and the success of which was first discerned by the Duke of Argyle, from his box on the stage, who looked at the house, and "saw it in the eyes of them."
Walker, who had been playing tragic parts, and very recently Macbeth, was chosen for Macheath, on Quin declining the highwayman. Lavinia Fenton was the Polly; Peachum, by Hippisley; and Spiller made a distinctive character of Mat o' the Mint. Walker "knew no more of music than barely singing in tune; but then his singing was supported by his inimitable action, by his speaking to the eye and charming the ear." It was at the close of a long run of the piece that Walker once tripped in his words. "I wonder," said Rich, "that you should forget the words of a part you have played so often!" "Do you think," asked Walker, with happy equivocation, "that a man's memory is to last for ever?"
Sixty-two nights in this season the "Beggar's Opera" drew crowded houses.[124] Highwaymen grew fashionable, and ladies not only carried fans adorned with subjects from the opera, but sang the lighter, and hummed the coarser, songs. Sir Robert Walpole, who was present on the first night, finding the eyes of the audience turned on him as Lockit was singing his song touching courtiers and bribes, was the first to blunt the point of the satire, by calling encore. Swift says, "two great ministers were in a box together, and all the world staring at them." At this time it was said that the quarrel of Peachum and Lockit was an imitation of that of Brutus and Cassius, but the public discerned therein Walpole and his great adversary Townshend.
"The Beggar's Opera" hath knocked down Gulliver, wrote Swift to Gay. "I hope to see Pope's 'Dulness' (the first name of the Dunciad) knock down the 'Beggar's Opera,' but not till it hath fully done its job." But Gay had no "mission;" he only sought to gratify himself and the town; to satirise, not to teach or to warn; the "opera" made "Gay rich, and Rich gay;" the former sufficiently so to make him forego earning a fee of twenty guineas by a dedication, and the latter only so far sad, that at the end of the season, Lavinia Fenton, after two benefits, was taken off the stage by the Duke of Bolton. The latter had from his wedding-day hated his wife, daughter and sole heiress of the Earl of Carberry; but his love for Lavinia was so abounding, that on his wife's death, he made a Duchess of "Polly;" but their three sons were not born at a time that rendered either of them heir to the ducal coronet, which, in 1754, passed to the Duke's brother. Gay's author's night realised a gain to him of £700, and enabled him to dress in "silver and blue." While he is blazing abroad, the once great master, Booth, is slowly dying out. Let us tell his varied story as his life ebbs surely away.
Mr. Foote as the Doctor.