"Whether he was a copy or an original in Shallow, it is certain no audience was ever more fixed in deep attention, at his first appearance, or more shaken with laughter in the progress of the scene, than at Colley Cibber's exhibition of this ridiculous justice of peace. Some years after he had left the stage, he acted Shallow for his son's benefit. I believe in 1737, when Quin was the Falstaff, and Milward the King. Whether it was owing to the pleasure the spectators felt on seeing their old friend return to them again, though for that night only, after an absence of some years, I know not; but, surely, no actor or audience were better pleased with each other. His manner was so perfectly simple, his look so vacant, when he questioned his cousin Silence about the price of ewes, and lamented, in the same breath, with silly surprise, the death of Old Double, that it will be impossible for any surviving spectator not to smile at the remembrance of it. The want of ideas occasions Shallow to repeat almost every thing he says. Cibber's transition, from asking the price of bullocks, to trite, but grave reflections on mortality, was so natural, and attended with such an unmeaning roll of his small pigs-eyes, accompanied with an important utterance of tick! tick! tick! not much louder than the balance of a watch, that I question if any actor was ever superior in the conception or expression of such solemn insignificancy."
[ [250] I presume Cibber means 1695. The Company was self-governed from its commencement in 1695, and the disintegration seems to have begun in the next season. See what Cibber says of Dogget's defection a few pages on.
[ [251] In Lee's tragedy of "Cæsar Borgia," originally played at Dorset Garden in 1680. Borgia was Betterton's part, and was evidently one of those which Powell laid violent hands on.
[ [252] Among the Lord Chamberlain's Papers is a curious Decision, dated 26 Oct. 1696, regarding this desertion. By it, Dogget, who is stated to have been seduced from Lincoln's Inn Fields, is permitted to act where he likes.
[ [253] Genest's list of Dogget's characters shows that he was apparently not engaged 1698 to 1700, both inclusive; for the seasons 1706-7 and 1707-8; and for the season 1708-9. This would make the three occasions mentioned by Cibber.
[ [254] Dryden, in his Address to Granville on his tragedy of "Heroic Love" in 1698, says of the Lincoln's Inn Fields Company:—
"Their setting sun still shoots a glimmering ray,
Like ancient Rome, majestic in decay;
And better gleanings their worn soil can boast,
Than the crab-vintage of the neighbouring coast."