“No, sir” (she replies).
“Have I ever behaved to you in an ungentlemanlike manner?”
“No, sir.”
“Have I ever kicked you?”
“Oh, no! sir!”
The audience applauds. Antony and Cleopatra assume their correct attitudes and (this prologue to Shakespeare successfully performed) proceed with their rôles.[2]
From time to time a great artist came forth, after three or four generations of mediocrities, from one of these theatrical nurseries. The others remained tied to their stake, revolving ceaselessly within the orbit of their chain. For them there was no question of glory or fortune. They lived simply and happily, if only they came to the end of the year without having gone to prison, and if only at the end of their life they saw their children growing up and getting educated. Their courage they derived in part from the bottle, in part from religion. A correspondence which has come to light through an unforeseen chance (a grandson who had become famous) revivifies for us the actor-manager on circuit. He is a good fellow, but a trifle sententious. He quotes from the works of his authors, tragic and comic (he has them at his finger-ends) axioms upon all the incidents and experiences of life. He quotes them just as Nehemiah Wallington or Colonel Hutchinson used to quote the Bible. He is as easily excited and as easily calmed as a child. A storm troubles him as a bad omen. A rainbow smiles on him as a promise. Providence may be trusted, he believes, to look after the takings of poor players. He is the Vicar of Wakefield become père noble.
Neither in this monotonous and easy-going phase of life, nor in the theatrical world of London, had anyone any idea of modifying the forms or the tendencies of the stage. Those whose duty it should have been to give the necessary impulse did not seem even to suspect that there was any such work for them to perform. The critics of the time, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, have achieved a permanent place in literature. And yet when one reads them one is disappointed. Except for a few pages of Lamb, one may look to them in vain for the expression of anything like a general idea. They are taken up almost altogether in discussing and comparing the different actors. It does not occur to them to attempt an appreciation or a classification of the plays, for these plays had already been definitively classified and pronounced upon. There was no drama, they seemed to think, except that of Shakespeare and his satellites; and as for comedy, it had said its last word when Goldsmith and Sheridan died. And they were quite content that this should be so. They saw no reason why they, their successors, and the general public, should not continue until the end of time to carp over an entry of Macbeth or an exit of Othello!—or why they should not sit out revivals without end of The School for Scandal or She Stoops to Conquer. There are eras which will have novelties at all cost, and eras which cling to antiquity.
Macready, with the instinct of a “realistic” and “modern” actor, kept on the lookout for authors. A former Irish schoolmaster, who also had been an actor, and whose name was Sheridan Knowles, brought him a tragedy entitled Virginius which he had written in three months. He made a good deal of this point, never having read, probably, the scene of the sonnet of Oronte. The piece was put into rehearsal and played at Covent Garden in the spring of 1820. Reynolds introduced the unknown author to the public in a carefully-written prologue. In it he ridiculed the drama of the period, which he described as “stories”—
“... piled with dark and cumbrous fate,
And words that stagger under their own weight.”