In Mr. Planché’s professional autobiography, which makes us as discursive as the biographer himself, there is a seeming inclination to overpraise some actors of the present time at the expense of those whom we must consider their superiors in bygone days. As far as this may tend to show that there is no actor so good but that his equal may in time be discovered, we have no difference with the author of these ‘Recollections.’ It is wonderful how speedily audiences recover the loss of their greatest favourites. Betterton, who restored the stage soon after Monk had restored the monarchy, was called ‘the glory and the grief’ of that stage. The glory while he acted and lived in the memories of those who had seen him act. To the latter his loss was an abiding grief. For years after Betterton’s decease it was rank heresy to suppose that he might be equalled. Pope, in expressive, yet not the happiest of his verses, has alluded to this prejudice. The prejudice, nevertheless, was unfounded. Betterton remains indeed with the prestige of being an actor who has not been equalled in many parts, who has been excelled in none. Old playgoers, who could compare him in his decline with young Garrick in his vigour, were of different opinions as to the respective merits of these two great masters of their art. We may fairly conclude that Garrick’s Hamlet was as ‘great’ as Betterton’s; that the latter’s Sir John Brute was hardly equal to Garrick’s Abel Drugger; and that the Beverley of the later actor was as perfect an original creation as the Jaffier of Betterton.
When Wilks made the ‘Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee,’ a success by the spirit and ease with which he played the part of Sir Harry Wildair, Farquhar, the author of the comedy, said ‘That he made the part will appear from hence: whenever the stage has the misfortune to lose him Sir Harry Wildair may go to the Jubilee.’ Nevertheless, Margaret Woffington achieved a new success for that play by the fire and joyousness of her acting. When Wilks died, poets sang in rapturous grief of his politeness, grace, gentility, and ease; and they protested that a supernatural voice had been heard moaning through the air—
Farewell, all manly Joy!
And ah! true British Comedy, adieu!
Wilks is no more.
Notwithstanding this, British comedy did not die; Garrick’s Ranger was good compensation for Wilks’s Sir Harry.
When Garrick heard of Mrs. Cibber’s death, in 1766, he exclaimed, ‘Mrs. Cibber dead! Then tragedy has died with her!’ At that very time a little girl of twelve years of age was strolling from country theatre to country theatre, and she was destined to be an actress of higher quality and renown than even Mrs. Cibber, namely, Sarah Siddons. Mrs. Pritchard could play Lady Macbeth as grandly as Mrs. Siddons; and Mrs. Crawford (Spranger Barry’s widow), who laughed at the ‘paw and pause’ of the Kemble school, was a Lady Randolph of such force and pathos that Sarah feared and hated her. Not many years after Garrick had pronounced Tragedy and Cibber to have expired together, his own death was described as having eclipsed the harmless gaiety of nations, and Melpomene wept with Thalia for their common adopted son, and neither would be comforted. But as Siddons was compensation for Mrs. Cibber, so the Kembles, to use an old simile, formed the very fair small change for Garrick. When Kemble himself departed, his most ardent admirers or worshippers could not assert that his legitimate successor could not be found. Edmund Kean had already supplanted him. The romantic had thrust out the classic; the natural had taken place of the artificial; and Shakespeare, by flashes of the Kean lightning, proved more attractive than the stately eloquence of ‘Cato,’ or the measured cadences of ‘Coriolanus.’
Edmund Kean, however, has never had a successor in certain parts. Mrs. F. Kemble has justly said of him: ‘Kean is gone, and with him are gone Shylock, Richard, and Othello.’ Mrs. Siddons, at her first coming, did not dethrone the old popular favourites. After she had withdrawn from the stage, Miss O’Neill cast her somewhat under the shadow of oblivion; but when old Lady Lucy Meyrick saw Mrs. Siddons’s Lady Macbeth in her early triumph, she acknowledged the fine conception of the character, but the old lady, full of ancient dramatic memories, declared that, compared with Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Siddons’s grief was the grief of a cheesemonger’s wife. Miss Hawkins is the authority for this anecdote, the weak point in which is that in Lady Macbeth the player is not called upon to exhibit any illustration of grief.
We have said that Kean never had a superior in certain parts. Elliston considered himself to be superior in one point; and by referring to some particular shortcoming in other actors Elliston contrived to establish himself as facile princeps of dramatic geniuses—in his own opinion. This we gather from Moncrieff, whom Elliston urged to become his biographer. He would not interfere with Moncrieff’s treatment of the subject. ‘I will simply call your attention, my dear fellow,’ said Elliston, ‘to three points, which you may find worthy of notice, when you draw your parallels of great actors. Garrick could not sing; I can. Lewis could not act tragedy; I can. Mossop could not play comedy; I can. Edmund Kean never wrote a drama; I have.’ In the last comparison Elliston was altogether out. In the cheap edition of ‘Their Majesties’ Servants’ I have inserted a copy of a bill put up by Kean, in 1811, at York, in the ball-room of the Minster Yard of which city Edmund Kean and his young wife announced a two nights’ performance of scenes from plays, imitations, and songs, the whole enacted by the poor strolling couple. In that bill Mr. Kean is described as ‘late of the Theatres Royal, Haymarket and Edinburgh, and author of “The Cottage Foundling, or Robbers of Ancona,” now preparing for immediate representation at the theatre Lyceum.’ We never heard of this representation having taken place. Hundreds of French dramas once came into the cheap book market from the Lyceum, where they had been examined for the purpose of seeing whether any of them could be made useful in English dresses. Some of them undoubtedly were. Kean’s manuscript drama may still be lying among the Arnold miscellanies; if found, we can only hope that the owner will make over ‘The Cottage Foundling and the Robbers of Ancona’ to the Dramatic College. The manuscript would be treasured there as long as the College itself lasts. How long that will be we cannot say; probably as long as the College serves its present profitable purpose. We could wish that the emeriti players had a more lively lookout. A view from its doorway over the heath is as cheerful as that of an empty house to the actor who looks through the curtain at it on his benefit night!
Edmund Kean’s loss has not been supplied as Mrs. Siddons’s was, to a certain extent, and to that actress’s great distaste, by Miss O’Neill; but Drury Lane has flourished with and by its Christmas pantomimes. Audiences cannot be what they were in Mr. Planché’s younger days. They examine no coin that is offered to them. They take what glitters as real currency, and are content. When we were told the other day of a player at the Gaiety representing Job Thornberry in a moustache, we asked if the pit did not shave him clean out of the comedy? Job Thornberry in a moustache! ‘Well,’ was the rejoinder, ‘he only follows suit. He imitates the example of Mr. Sothern, who played Garrick in a moustache.’ We were silent, and thought of the days when actors dressed their characters from portraits, as William Farren did his Frederick and his Charles XII.