Page 167, same line. Miss Farren … Mrs. Abingdon. Elizabeth Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby, played Lady Teazle for the last time in 1797. Mrs. Abingdon had retired from Drury Lane in 1782.
Page 167, line 10 from foot. Smith. "Gentleman" Smith took his farewell of the stage, as Charles Surface, in 1788.
Page 168, end of essay. Fashionable tragedy. See page 328, line 21, for the continuation of this essay in the London Magazine.
* * * * *
Page 168. ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.
See note to the essay "On Some of the Old Actors" above. Lamb lifted this essay into the London Magazine from The Examiner, where it had appeared on November 7 and 8, 1819, with slight changes.
Page 168, title. Munden. Joseph Shepherd Munden (1758-1832) acted at Covent Garden practically continuously from 1790 to 1811. He moved to Drury Lane in 1813, and remained there till the end. His farewell performance was on May 31, 1824. We know Lamb to have met Munden from Raymond's Memoirs of Elliston.
Page 168, line 2 of essay. Cockletop. In O'Keeffe's farce "Modern Antiques." This farce is no longer played, although a skilful hand might, I think, make it attractive to our audiences. Barry Cornwall in his memoir of Lamb has a passage concerning Munden as Cockletop, which helps to support Lamb's praise. Support is not necessary, but useful; it is one of the misfortunes of the actor's calling that he can live only in the praise of his critics.
In the Drama of "Modern Antiques," especially, space was allowed him for his movements. The words were nothing. The prosperity of the piece depended exclusively on the genius of the actor. Munden enacted the part of an old man credulous beyond ordinary credulity; and when he came upon the stage there was in him an almost sublime look of wonder, passing over the scene and people around him, and settling apparently somewhere beyond the moon. What he believed in, improbable as it was to mere terrestrial visions, you at once conceived to be quite possible,—to be true. The sceptical idiots of the play pretend to give him a phial nearly full of water. He is assured that this contains Cleopatra's tear. Well; who can disprove it? Munden evidently recognised it. "What a large tear!" he exclaimed. Then they place in his hands a druidical harp, which to vulgar eyes might resemble a modern gridiron. He touches the chords gently: "pipes to the spirit ditties of no tone;" and you imagine Æolian strains. At last, William Tell's cap is produced. The people who affect to cheat him, apparently cut the rim from a modern hat, and place the scull-cap in his hands; and then begins the almost finest piece of acting that I ever witnessed. Munden accepts the accredited cap of Tell, with confusion and reverence. He places it slowly and solemnly on his head, growing taller in the act of crowning himself. Soon he swells into the heroic size; a great archer; and enters upon his dreadful task. He weighs the arrow carefully; he tries the tension of the bow, the elasticity of the string; and finally, after a most deliberate aim, he permits the arrow to fly, and looks forward at the same time with intense anxiety. You hear the twang, you see the hero's knitted forehead, his eagerness; you tremble;—at last you mark his calmer brow, his relaxing smile, and are satisfied that the son is saved!—It is difficult to paint in words this extraordinary performance, which I have several times seen; but you feel that it is transcendent. You think of Sagittarius, in the broad circle of the Zodiac; you recollect that archery is as old as Genesis; you are reminded that Ishmael, the son of Hagar, wandered about the Judæan deserts and became an archer.
Page 169, line 16. Edwin. This would probably be John Edwin the Elder (1749-1790). But John Edwin the Younger (1768-1805) might have been meant. He was well known in Nipperkin, one of Munden's parts.