And all its decencies and ceremonies.”
Crowne, The Married Beau.
After the loose fashion of Master Crowne’s Married Beau, it was no uncommon thing for gallants once to woo the mimic ladies of the scene.
From the time that ladies first appeared upon the stage, they seem to have exercised a powerful attraction upon the cavaliers. Under date of the 18th October, 1666, Evelyn says in his Diary: “This night was acted my Lord Broghill’s tragedy, ‘Mustapha,’ before their majesties at court, at which I was present, very seldom going to the public theatres, for many reasons, now, as they are abused to an atheistical liberty, foul and undecent women now (and never till now) permitted to appear and act, who, inflaming several young noblemen and gallants, became their misses, and to some their wives; witness the Earl of Oxford, Sir R. Howard, Prince Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another greater person than any of them, who fell into their snares, to the reproach of their noble families, and ruin of both body and soul. I was invited by my Lord Chamberlain to see this tragedy, exceedingly well written, though in my mind I did not approve of any such pastime in a time of such judgments and calamities.”
A year and a half earlier than the date of the above entry, namely, April 3, 1665, Pepys notices the same play, with some allusions to the ladies: “To a play at the Duke’s of my Lord Orrery’s, called ‘Mustapha,’ which being not good, made Betterton’s part and Ianthe’s but ordinary too. All the pleasure of the play was, the king and my Lady Castlemaine were there; and pretty witty Nell of the King’s House, and the younger Marshall sat next us, which pleased me mightily.” The play, however, is not so poor a one as Pepys describes it, and the cast was excellent. Betterton played Solyman the Magnificent. Mustapha and Zanga, the sons of Solyman, were played by Harris and Smith; and Young made a capital Cardinal. Mrs. Betterton was the Roxalana; and Mrs. Davies, one of those ladies who, like her sisters, the two Marshalls, Hughes and Nelly, exercised the fatal attraction over young noblemen and gallants, deplored by Evelyn, was the magnificent Queen of Hungary. Mustapha continued to be the favorite play until the theatre closed, when the plague began to spread. Pepys’s “Ianthe” was Mrs. Betterton, of whom he says, on the 22d October, 1662, “the players do tell me that Betterton is not married to Ianthe, as they say; but also that he is a very sober, serious man, studious and humble, following of his studies, and is rich already with what he gets and saves.” Betterton, however, married the lady, Miss Saunderson, in 1663. She had been famous for her Ianthe in Davenant’s “Siege of Rhodes;” and she played Shakespeare’s heroines with great effect. Pepys rightly designates the author of the play, Lord Orrery. Lord Broghill was made Earl of Orrery, five years before Evelyn saw his play. I may add that Mustapha has appeared in half-a-dozen different versions on the stage. Probably the worst of these was Mallet’s; the latter author created great amusement by one of his passages, in which he said:—
“Future sultans
Have shunned the marriage tie;”—
a confusion of tenses which has been compared with a similar error in the sermons of so correct a writer as Blair (vol. v., third edition, page 224), “in future periods the light dawned more and more.”
Although Evelyn, in 1666, says that “never till now” were women admitted to assume characters on the stage, he is not quite correct in his assertion. There were actresses full thirty years previous to that period. Thus, in 1632, the “Court Beggar” was acted at the Cockpit. In the last act, Lady Strangelove says:—“If you have a short speech or two, the boy’s a pretty actor, and his mother can play her part: women-actors now grow in request.” Our ancestors wisely followed a foreign fashion when they ceased to employ boys in female characters. Prynne says, in 1633, “They have now their female players in Italy and other foreign parts;” and in Michaelmas 1629, they had French women-actors in a play personated at Blackfriars, to which there was a great resort. Geneste quotes Freshwater as writing thus of French actresses in Paris, in 1629: “Yet the women are the best actors; they play their own parts, a thing much desired in England.”
In Davenant’s patent for opening Lincoln’s-inn Fields, in 1661, permission was given for the engaging of women as actresses, on the ground that the employment of men in such parts had given great offence. I more particularly notice this matter, because it was a knight who first opened a theatre with a regular female troupe added to the usual number of male actors. Sir William’s ladies were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Saunderson, Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Long, Mrs. Gibbs, Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Holden, and Mrs. Jennings. The first four were Sir William’s principal actresses, and these were boarded in the knight’s own dwelling-house. Their title of “Mistress” does not necessarily imply that they were married ladies, but rather that they were old enough to be so.