'SIR EDWARD: I saw the "Children of Paul's" last night, and troth, they pleased me prettie, prettie well. The apes in time will do it handsomely.
'PLANET: I like the audience that frequenteth there with much applause. A man shall not be choked with the stench of garlick, nor be passed to the barmy jacket of a beer brewer.'
The stage did not attain a dignified position till the time of Shakespeare. He and his fellow-actors—Burbage, Heminge, Condell, Taylor, Kemp, Sly—ennobled it, and since then the roll of English actors who have gained distinction on the boards is very long, and our limited space allows us to refer to but a few of them, and then only to some characteristic traits.
Let us commence with a defence of Garrick's conduct towards Johnson. When the latter was preparing his edition of 'Shakespeare,' Garrick offered him the use of his choice library. But, entering the room, he found Johnson, according to his usual habit, pulling the books off the shelves, breaking their backs, more easily to read them, and throwing them carelessly on the floor. Garrick naturally grew very angry, for which he has been much abused, charged with 'having acted in abominably bad taste ... without any true gentlemanly feeling ... that knowing his friend's character ... Garrick ought to have been prepared for any slight unfavourable consequences. He ought to have known that much might be excused in so great a man,' etc. Now, this is most undeserved censure on a man of greater parts than Johnson ever could boast of. The only thing he ever wrote which will live is his Dictionary. As to his greatness, if unabashed bounce and a dictatorial jaw constitute greatness, he certainly, judging him by Bozzy's account, could lay claim to such. Garrick's generosity induced him to offer a bear the use of his books. Still, he had a right to expect that even a bear, who professed to admire and practise literature, would know how to treat books. But the bear remained a bear everywhere. He treated Mr. Thrale's books no better. But Garrick was generous in other ways. He was often visited at his villa, near Sunbury, by a gentleman with whom he used to have long and violent arguments on various matters, the visitor generally differing from, and contradicting, his host. One day Garrick, at the gentleman's request, readily lent him £100. Their discussions continued, but the visitor was no longer so violent in his arguments, nor did he contradict Garrick as he had done formerly. On one occasion, when Garrick had reintroduced an argument his friend had always violently combated, but now mildly conceded, Garrick, who liked a lively discussion, jumped up and exclaimed: 'Pay me my hundred pounds, or contradict me!' Garrick's generous nature broke forth in that exclamation, and he did not wish his friend to feel under an obligation. That his character was gentle and chivalrous is proved by the fact that his wife and he were considered the fondest pair ever known, though the lady was a woman with plenty of spirit. Her letter of remonstrance against Kean's Abel Drugger was brief: 'DEAR SIR,—You don't know how to play Abel Drugger.' To which Kean courteously, yet wittily, replied: 'DEAR MADAM,—I know it.' She must have been very sprightly, too, for when at the age of ninety-eight, and about two months before her death (November, 1822), she visited Westminster Abbey, she asked the clergyman who attended her if there would be room for her by the side of her David—'not,' she said, 'that I think I am likely soon to require it, for I am yet a mere girl!' She was a Viennese danseuse, Madame Violette, when Garrick married her, and Horace Walpole reports that it was whispered at the time that she had been sent over to England by no less a person than the Empress-Queen, Maria Theresa, to be out of the way of that somewhat jealous lady's husband. Apprehensive that he might be ridiculed for marrying a dancer, Garrick got some friend to satirize him publicly beforehand. But we have seen that the marriage turned out a very happy one. Garrick had been the pupil of Johnson, when the latter kept, or attempted to keep, a school near Lichfield, and he and his two fellow-pupils (he never had more than two) used to peep through the keyhole of his bedroom that they might turn into ridicule the doctor's awkward fondness for Mrs. Johnson, who was by many years her husband's senior, and elephantine in her figure, with swollen cheeks and a red complexion, produced by paint and the liberal use of cordials. In after-years Garrick used to exhibit her, by his exquisite talent of mimicry, so as to excite the heartiest bursts of laughter. This may seem ungenerous, but Johnson paid Garrick back in the same coin. Vexed at Garrick's great success in his profession, he made it his business always to express the greatest contempt for actors.
Quin, the contemporary of Garrick, and his rival, was employed by Prince Frederick to instruct the Royal children in elocution, and when he was informed of the graceful manner in which George III. had delivered his first speech from the throne, he proudly said: 'Aye, it was I who taught the boy to speak.' Quin could be witty. Disputing concerning the execution of Charles I., and his opponent asking, 'But by what laws was he put to death?' Quin replied: 'By all the laws he had left them.' When playing at Bath, he was at an evening party, where the transmigration of souls was being discussed. A lady, remarkable for the whiteness of her neck and bust, asked him what animal he would wish to be transformed into. Quin, looking sharply at a fly then travelling over her white neck, with an arch glance at her, said: 'A fly!' On another occasion to Lady Berkeley, a celebrated beauty, he said: 'Why, your ladyship is looking as charming as the spring.' The season was spring, but the day was raw and cold, and Quin, seeing he had paid the lady but a poor compliment, corrected himself by adding: 'Or, rather, I wish the spring would look a little more like your ladyship.'
In Clare Street, Clare Market, there is a public-house called the Sun. John Rich, the harlequin and lessee of the Duke's Theatre in Portugal Street (long since taken down), returning from the theatre in a hackney-coach, ordered to be driven to the Sun. On arriving there, he jumped out of the coach, and through the window into the public-house. The coachman thought his fare was a 'bilk'; but whilst he was still looking up and down the street, Rich again jumped into the coach, and told the driver to take him to another public-house. On reaching it, Rich offered to pay the coachman, but the latter refused the money, saying: 'No, none of your money, Mr. Devil; though you wear shoes, I can see your hoofs'; and he drove off as quickly as possible. The theatre called the Duke's Theatre, in Portugal Street, was rebuilt by Christopher Rich, the father of the above-mentioned John, but he died before the building was quite finished, and it was opened by John; and it is in this theatre that the modern stage took its rise, and here the earliest Shakespearian revivals took place. Quin was one of the performers there; and there the 'Beggar's Opera' was first produced, and acted on sixty-two nights in one season, causing the saying that it made Gay rich and Rich gay. The opera was written under the auspices of the Duchess of Queensberry, who agreed to indemnify Rich in all expenses if the daring speculation should fail.
Rich, in 1731, built himself a new theatre—the Covent Garden Theatre—on a site granted by the Duke of Bedford, at a ground-rent of £100 per annum. When a new lease was granted, in 1792, the ground-rent was raised to £940 per annum. When Thomas Killigrew was manager of the theatre in Bear Yard, Clare Market, he was a great favourite with Charles II. This King at times showed great indifference to the business of the State, and refused to attend the Council. One day, when he had been long expected, Lord Lauderdale went to his apartments, but was refused admission. His lordship complained to Nell Gwynne, upon which she wagered him £100 that the King would that evening attend the Council. Then she sent for Killigrew, and asked him to dress as if for a journey, and to enter the King's rooms without ceremony, with further instructions what he was to do then. As soon as the King saw him, he said:
'What, Killigrew! Where are you going? Did I not give orders that I was not to be disturbed?'
'I don't mind your orders, and I am going as fast as I can.'
'Why, where are you going?'