If Mr. Planché’s book had not been as suggestive as it is purely historical we should not have been so long coming to it. But he records a fact or makes a reflection, and straightway a reader, who has long memories of books or men, goes far back into older records in search of contrasts or of parallels. We come to him now definitely, and do not again mean to let him go, as far as his dramatic experiences are concerned. Mr. Planché makes even his birth theatrical; he says, ‘I believe I made my first appearance in Old Burlington Street on the 27th of February, 1796, about the time the farce begins’ (used to begin?) ‘at the Haymarket, that is, shortly after one o’clock in the morning.’ The Haymarket season, however, ran at that time only from June to September. In spite of ourselves, Mr. Planché’s record of his birth leads us to a subject that is, however, in connection with the record. We find that Mr. Planché was not only of the Kemble and Kean periods, since which time the stage has been ‘nothing’ especial, but that he was born under both. On the night of his birth John Kemble played Manly in ‘The Plain Dealer,’ with a cast further including Jack Bannister, the two Palmers, Dodd, Suett, and Mrs. Jordan! Think of the dolls and puppets and groups of sticks whom people are now asked to recognise as artists, and who gain more in a night than the greatest of the above-named players earned in a week. A few nights later Edmund Kean, if he himself is to be credited rather than theatrical biographers, made his first appearance on any stage as the ‘Robber’s Boy’ on the first night the ‘Iron Chest’ was acted—a play in which the boy was destined to surpass, in Sir Edward Mortimer, the original representative, John Kemble. At the other house little Knight, the father of the present secretary of the Royal Academy, made his début in London; and the father of Mr. Macready was playing utility with a finish that, if he were alive to do it now, would entitle him to a name on ‘posters’ three feet high, and to the sarcasm of managers, who readily pay comedians who ‘draw’ and laugh at them and at the public who are drawn by them. But here is Mr. Planché waiting.
Well! he seems to have been backward in speaking; though he says, as a proof to the contrary, that he spoke Rolla’s speech to his soldiers shortly after he had found his own. ‘Pizarro,’ we will observe, was not produced till 1799, and was not printed then. But, on the other hand, Mr. Planché, like Pope, seems to have lisped in numbers, for at ten he wrote odes, sonnets, and particularly an address to the Spanish patriots, which he describes as ‘really terrible to listen to.’ When he passed into his teens, the serious question of life turned up. He could not be made to be a watchmaker, the calling of his good father, a French refugee. Barrister, artist, geometrician, cricketer, were vocations which were considered and set aside. His tutor in geometry died before the pupil could discover the quadrature of the circle; and the other callings not seeming to give him a chance, Mr. Planché bethought himself that, as he was fond of writing, he was especially qualified to become a bookseller. It was while he was learning this métier that his dramatic propensities were further developed. They had begun early; he had been ‘bribed to take some nasty stuff when an urchin, on one occasion, by the present of a complete harlequin’s suit, mask, wand, and all, and on another by that of a miniature theatre and strong company of pasteboard actors,’ in whose control he enjoyed what Charles Dickens longed to possess—a theatre given up to him, with absolute despotic sway, to do what he liked with, house, actors and pieces, monarch of all he surveyed. Mr. Kent has published this ‘longing’ in his ‘Charles Dickens as a Reader,’ and added one shadow on Dickens’s character to the many which Mr. Forster has made public, and which thoughtful biographers ought to have suppressed. We allude particularly to where Dickens describes his mother as advertising to receive young ladies as pupils in a boarding school, without having the means to make preparations for their reception; also his showing-up of his own father as Micawber; and above all, his recording that he never had forgiven and never would forgive his mother for wishing him to go back to his humble work at the blacking-maker’s instead of to school. The light which thoughtless worshippers place before their favourite saint often blackens him at least as much as it does him honour.
While under articles with the bookseller Mr. Planché amused himself as amateur actor at the then well-known private theatres in Berwick Street, Catherine Street, Wilton Street, and Pancras Street. The autobiographer says he there ‘murdered many principal personages of the acting drama in company with several accomplices who have since risen to deserved distinction upon the public boards.’ He adds, the probability, had he continued his line of art, of his becoming by this time ‘a very bad actor, had not “the sisters three and such odd branches of learning” occasioned me by the merest accident to become an indifferent dramatist.’ He says jocosely that finding nothing in Shakespeare or Sheridan worthy of him, he wrote for amateurs the burlesque entitled ‘Amoroso, King of Little Britain,’ which one of the company showed to Harley, who at once put it on the stage of Drury Lane in April 1818. There, night after night, Queen Coquetinda stabbed Mollidusta, King Amoroso stabbed the Queen, Roastando stabbed Amoroso, who however stabbed his stabber, the too amorous cook—all to excellent music and capitally acted, whether in the love-making, the killing, or the recovery. Drury Lane Theatre is described by Mr. Planché as being at the time ‘in a state of absolute starvation.’ Yet it was a season in which Kean led in tragedy and Elliston in comedy, and David Fisher played Richard and Hamlet as rival to the former, and little Clara Fisher acted part of Richard the Third in ‘Lilliput.’ Drury Lane had not had so good a company for years; and besides revived pieces of sterling merit it brought out ‘Rob Roy the Gregarach,’ and the ‘Falls of Clyde;’ and Kean played Othello and Richard, Hamlet and Reuben Glenroy, Octavian and Sir Giles, Shylock and Luke, Sir Edward Mortimer and King John, Oroonoko, Richard Plantagenet (‘Richard Duke of York’), and Selim (‘Bride of Abydos’); Barabbas (‘Jew of Malta’), Young Norval, Bertram, and, for his benefit, Alexander the Great, Sylvester Daggerwood, and Paul in ‘Paul and Virginia.’ Nevertheless the success of ‘Amoroso’ was the popular feature of that Drury Lane season. It made Mr. Planché become a dramatist in earnest. ‘At this present date,’ he says, ‘I have put upon the stage, of one description and another, seventy-six pieces.’
A LINE OF FRENCH ACTRESSES.
The English stage has not been wanting in an illustrious line of right royal queens of tragedy. Mrs. Barry is the noble founder, and perhaps the noblest queen of that brilliant line. Then came Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Spranger Barry (Mrs. Crawford), Mrs. Siddons (who hated Mrs. Crawford for not abdicating), and Miss O’Neill, whom Mrs. Siddons equally disliked for coming after her.
With all these the lovers of dramatic literature are well acquainted. Of the contemporary line of French tragedy queens very little is known in this country; nevertheless the dynasty is one of great brilliancy, and the details are not without much dramatic interest.
In the year 1644, in the city of Rouen, there lived a family named Desmares, which family was increased in that year by the birth of a little girl who was christened Marie. Corneille, born in the same city, was then eight-and-thirty years of age. Rouen is now proud of both of them—poet and actress. The actress is only known to fame by her married name. The clever Marie Desmares became the wife of the player, Champmeslé. Monsieur was to Madame very much what poor Mr. Siddons was to his illustrious consort. Madame, or Mademoiselle, or La Champmeslé, as she was called indifferently, associated with Corneille by their common birth-place, was more intimately connected with Racine, who was her senior by five years. La Champmeslé was in her twenty-fifth year when she made her début in Paris as Hermione, in Racine’s masterpiece, ‘Andromaque.’ For a long time Paris could talk of nothing but the new tragedy and the new actress. The part from which the piece takes its name was acted by Mdlle. Duparc, whom Racine had carried off from Molière’s company. The author was very much interested in this lady, the wife of a M. Duparc. Madame was, when a widow, the mother of a very posthumous child indeed. The mother died. She was followed to the grave by a troop of the weeping adorers of her former charms, ‘and,’ says Racine, alluding to himself, ‘the most interested of them was half dead as he wept.’
The poet was aroused from his grief by a summons from the king, who, in presence of the sensitive Racine’s bitterest enemy, Louvois, accused him of having robbed and poisoned his late mistress. The accusation was founded on information given by the infamous woman, Voisin, who was a poisoner by passion and profession, and was executed for her devilish practices. The information was found to be utterly false, and Racine, absolved, soon found consolation and compensation.