This may be accounted too gross for probability; but worse than this is in the memory of our yet surviving fathers. There was, within such a memory, a case tried before Sir Elijah Impey, in which Talleyrand was the defendant, against whom a husband brought an action, the great statesman having robbed him of his wife. The action was brought to the ordinary issue; and a few weeks subsequently, plaintiff, defendant, judge, and lady, dined together in the Prince’s residence at Paris.
Of Stage Falstaffs, Quin, according to all accounts, must have been the best, provided only that he had a sufficiency of claret in him, and the house an overflowing audience. Charles Kemble, I verily believe, must have been the worst of stage Falstaffs. At least, having seen him in the character, I can conscientiously assert that I can not imagine a poorer Sir John. He dressed the character well; but as for its “flavor,” it was as if you had the two oyster-shells, minus the fat and juicy oyster. What a galaxy of actors have shined or essayed to shine in this joyous but difficult part! In Charles the Second’s days, Cartwright and Lacy, by their acting in the first part of Henry IV., made Shakespeare popular, when the fashion at Court was against him. Betterton acted the same part in 1700, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the Haymarket. Four years later, he played the Knight in the “Merry Wives;” and in 1730, at Drury Lane, he and Mills took the part alternately, and set dire dissension among the play-goers, as to their respective merits.
Popular as Betterton was in this character, after he had grown too stout for younger heroes, his manner of playing it was not original; and his imitation was at second-hand. Ben Jonson had seen it played in Dublin by Baker, a stone-mason. He was so pleased with the representation, that he described the manner of it, on his return to London, to Betterton, who, docile and modest as usual, acknowledged that the mason’s conception was better than his own, and adopted the Irish actor’s manner, accordingly.
Chetwood does not tell us how Baker played, but he shows us how he studied, namely in the streets, while overlooking the men who worked under him. “One day, two of his men who were newly come to him, and were strangers to his habits, observing his countenance, motion, gesture, and his talking to himself, imagined their master was mad. Baker, seeing them neglect their work to stare at him, bid them, in a hasty manner, mind their business. The fellows went to work again, but still with an eye to their master. The part Baker was rehearsing was Falstaff; and when he came to the scene where Sir Walter Blunt was supposed to be lying dead on the stage, gave a look at one of his new paviors, and with his eye fixed upon him, muttered loud enough to be heard, ‘Who have we here? Sir Walter Blunt! There’s honor for you.’ The fellow who was stooping, rose on the instant, and with the help of his companion, bound poor Baker hand and foot, and assisted by other people no wiser than themselves, they carried him home in that condition, with a great mob at their heels.”
Estcourt’s Falstaff was flat and trifling, yet with a certain waggishness. That of Harper was droll, but low and coarse. The Falstaff of Evans seems to have been in the amorous scenes, as offensive as Dowton in Major Sturgeon; and the humor was misplaced. Accordingly, when we read in old Anthony Aston, that “Betterton wanted the waggery of Estcourt, the drollery of Harper, and the lasciviousness of Jack Evans,” we are disposed to imagine that his Falstaff was none the worse for this trial of wants.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the character did not lack brilliant actors. In the first part of Henry IV., Mills played the character, at Drury, in 1716. Booth had previously played it for one night, in presence of Queen Anne. Bullock filled Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, with it, in 1721. Quin, in 1738, used to play the character in the two parts of Henry IV. on successive nights, and eight years later his Falstaff attracted crowds to “the Garden.” Barry played it against him at Drury, in 1743 and 1747; but Barry was dull and void of impulse as a school-boy repeating his task. In 1762, the part, at Drury, fell to Yates, for whom the piece was brought out, with the character of Hotspur omitted! To give more prominence to our knight, a scene was left out. The public did not approve of the plan, for in the same year Love, celebrated by Churchill for his humor, made his first appearance at Drury, as Sir John, when Holland, the baker of Chiswick, played Hotspur, with well-bred warmth. I will add, that though Quin drew immense houses, yet when Harper, some years previously, played the same part at Drury, with Booth in Hotspur, Wilks as the Prince, and Cibber as Glendower, the combined excellence drew as great houses for a much longer period. So that Harper’s Falstaff, although inferior to Quin’s, was, as was remarked, more seen, yet less admired by the town. Shuter played it almost too “jollily” at the Garden, in 1774. But all other Falstaffs were extinguished for a time, when Henderson, although not physically qualified for the part, astonished the town with his “old boy of the castle,” in 1777 at the Haymarket, and delighted them two years later, at Covent Garden. At the latter house, eight years subsequently, Ryder played it respectably, to Lewis’s Prince of Wales; and in 1791, when the Drury Lane company were playing at the Haymarket, Palmer represented Falstaff, and John Kemble mis-represented Hotspur. King tried the knight at the same “little house,” in 1792, but King, clever as he was, was physically incapable of representing Falstaff, and he soon ceased to pretend to do so. The next representative was the worst the world had yet seen—namely, Fawcett, who first attempted it at the Garden, in 1795. Blisset appeared in it in 1803, and disappeared also. From this time no new actor tried the Sir John, in the first part of Henry IV., till 1824, when Charles Kemble made the Ghost of Shakespeare very uneasy, by executing a part for which he was totally unfit. He persevered, however, but the success of Elliston in the part, two years later, settled the respective merits of two performers, to the advantage of Robert William, as effectually as Grisi showed the town that there was but one Norma, by playing it the night after the fatal attempt made on the Druidess, by Jenny Lind.
The succession of actors who represented Falstaff, in the second part of Henry IV., was as brilliant as that of the line of representatives above noticed. Ten years after Betterton and Mills, in 1720, we have Harper, and it is somewhat singular that when Mills resigned Falstaff to Harper, he took the part of the King. Hulett, two years subsequently played it at Covent Garden; and, after another two years, Quin made Drury ecstatic with his fun. He held the part without a real rival, and fifteen years later, in 1749, he was as attractive as ever in this portion of the knight’s character, at Covent Garden. Shuter succeeded him in the part at this theatre, in 1755; but in 1758, all London, that is the play-goers of London, might be seen hurrying once more to Drury, to witness lively Woodward’s very old Falstaff played to Garrick’s King. The Garden can not be said to have found a superior means of attraction, when Shuter again represented Sir John, at the Garden, in 1761, on which occasion the parts of Shallow and Silence were omitted! The object, however, was to shorten the piece, and the main attraction was in the coronation pageant, at the conclusion, in honor of the then young King and Queen, who were well worthy of the honor thus paid to them.
Love and Holland, who played Falstaff and Hotspur, at Drury Lane, in 1762, played the Knight and the Prince of Wales, at the same house, two years subsequently. Nine years after this, the Garden found a Prince in Mrs. Lessingham, Shuter played Falstaff to her, but the travesty of the former character was only in a slight degree less incongruous than that made by Mrs. Glover, in the present century, who once, if not twice, played the fat knight, for her own benefit. For the next eight or nine years, the best Falstaff possessed by London was Henderson. He played the part first at Drury, and afterward at Covent Garden. Since Quin, there had been no better representative of Sir John; and even Palmer, in 1788, could not bring the town from its allegiance to “admirable Henderson.”
The Falstaffs of the present century, in the second part of this historical play, have not achieved a greater triumph than Henderson. Cooke, who played the obese cavalier, in 1804, was not equal to the part; and Fawcett, in 1821, when the play was revived, with another coronation pageant in honor of George IV., was farther from success than Cooke. The managers at this period were wiser than those who “got up” the play at the period of the accession of George III., for they retained Shallow and Silence, and never were the illustrious two so inimitably represented as, on this occasion, by Farren and Emery.
The chief Falstaffs of the “Merry Wives of Windsor” are Betterton (1704), Hulett (1732), Quin (1734), Delane, the young Irish actor (1743), of whom Garrick was foolish enough to be jealous; Shuter (1758), Henderson, who first played it at the Haymarket in 1777, and Lee Lewis in 1784. Bartley, Phelps, and a clever provincial actor, now in London, named Bartlett, have also played this character with great effect. The Falstaff of the last-named actor is particularly good.