“What nation upon earth, besides our own,
But by a loss like ours had been undone?
Ten ages scarce such royal worth display
As England lost and found in one strange day.”
Of all the comedies with knights for their heroes, this one of Sir Courtly Nice retained a place longest on the stage. The hero was originally played by handsome, but hapless Will Mountfort. Cibber played it at the Haymarket in Queen Anne’s time, 1706, and again at Drury Lane, and before George I. at Hampton Court. Foote and Cibber, jun., and Woodward, were there presentatives of the gallant knight, and under George II. Foote played it, for the first time, at Drury Lane, and the younger Cibber at Covent Garden, in 1746, and Woodward, at the latter house, in 1751. The last-named actor was long the favorite representative of the gentlemanly knight, retaining the character as his own for full a quarter of a century, and being succeeded, but not surpassed in it, by sparkling Lewis, at Covent Garden, in 1781.
The satire in this piece against the Puritans is of a more refined character than in any other play of the period; and the contrast between the rash and ardent cavalier and the cautious Puritan is very fairly drawn. “Suppose I see not many vices,” says the Roundhead, Testimony, “morality is not the thing. The heathens had morality; and, forsooth, would you have your footman or your coachman to be no better than Seneca?” This is really complimentary to the Cromwellians; and there is but a good-natured dash of satire in the answer of Testimony, when asked what time of day it may be, that—“Truly, I do believe it is about four. I can not say it positively, for I would not tell a lie for the whole world.”
I find little worthy of notice in other dramatic pieces having knights for their heroes. Southeran produced one entitled, “Sir Anthony Love” at the Theatre Royal in 1691, for the purpose of showing off Mrs. Mountfort as an errant lady in male attire.
In the eighteenth century, the knights gave name to a few historical pieces not worth recording. The only exceptions are scarcely worthy of more notice. Dodsley’s “Sir John Cockle at Court” made our ancestors, of George the Second’s time, laugh at the sequel of the “King and the Miller of Mansfield;” and “Sir Roger de Coverley” was made the hero of a pantomime at Covent Garden in 1746. By this time, however, the fashion was extinct of satirizing living politicians under knightly names. To detail the few exceptions to the rule would only fatigue the perhaps already wearied reader.
To what a low condition knight and squire could fall may be seen in the Sir Joseph Wittol and Captain Bluffe, in Congreve’s comedy, the “Old Batchelor.” The only redeeming point about this disreputable pair is, that, cowards and bullies as they are, they have both read a little. The Captain has dipped into history, and he remarks that “Hannibal was a pretty fellow in his day, it must be granted; but, alas, sir! were he alive now, he would be nothing; nothing on the earth.” Sir Joseph, the knight, in comitatu Bucks, has also indulged in a little reading, but that of a lighter sort than the Captain’s. When the gallant Captain affects not to be frightened at the aspect of Sharper, and exclaims, “I am prepared for him now, and he shall find he might have safer roused a sleeping lion,” the knight remarks, “Egad, if he should hear the lion roar, he’d cudgel him into an ass, and his primitive braying. Don’t you remember the story in Æsop’s Fables, Bully? Egad, there are good morals to be picked out of Æsop’s Fables, let me tell you that; and ‘Reynard the Fox’ too;” to which the deboshed Captain can only reply, “D—n your morals!” as though he despised fiction when compared with history.
Some of the stage knights are wonderfully great boasters, yet exceedingly dull fellows. I do not know that in the mouth of any one of them there is put so spirited a remark as the great Huniades made to Ulderick, Count of Sicily. The latter asked for a conference with the great governor of Hungary. Huniades bade him come to the Hungarian camp. The offended Ulderick, in a great chafe, replied that it was beneath him to do such a thing, seeing that he was descended from a long line of princely ancestors; whereas Huniades was the first of his family who had ever been raised to honor. The Hungarian very handsomely remarked, “I do not compare myself with your ancestors; but with you!” This has always appeared to me as highly dramatic in spirit. There is nothing half so spirited in the knightly pieces brought on the stage during the reign of George III., and which caused infinite delight to very easily-pleased audiences. It is well known that the good-natured Sovereign of England, although unassuming in his domestic character, was exceedingly fond of display in public ceremonies. He used to arrange the paraphernalia of an installation of the Garter with all the energy and care of an anxious stage-manager. The people generally were as anxious to have an idea of the reality. On one occasion, in the preceding reign, they so nearly forced their way into the banqueting-room, where the knights were holding festival, that the troops fired over their heads in order to frighten them into dispersing. Under George III. they were more content to view these splendors through a dramatic lens.