The company had not to complain; yet the managers had found it necessary to support their stock-pieces by a novelty—a ballet-pantomime, "The Necromancer,"[117] by the younger Thurmond, a dancing-master. Rich, at Lincoln's Inn, where "Edwin" could not have drawn a shilling; where Belisarius (Boheme) begged an obolus in vain; and Hurst's "Roman Maid" (Paulina, Mrs. Moffat), represented a hermit as dwelling in a lone cave, near the Mount Aventine—a hermit would be as likely to be found in a wood on Snow Hill—Rich, I say, improved on Thurmond's idea, by producing on the 20th of December 1723, "The Necromancer, or the History of Dr. Faustus," and thereby founded pantomime, as it has been established among us, at least during the Christmas-tide, for now a hundred and forty years.
Rich, with his "Necromancer," conjured all the town within the ring of his little theatre. The splendour of the scenes, the vastness of the machinery, and the grace and ability of Rich himself, raised harlequinade above Shakspeare, and all other poets; and Quin and Ryan were accounted little of in comparison with the motley hero. The pantomime stood prominently in the bills; during the nights of its attraction the prices of admission were raised by one-fourth, and the weekly receipts advanced from six hundred (if the house was full every night, which had been a rare case in the Fields), to a thousand pounds. The advanced price displeased the public, with whom ultimately a compromise was made, and a portion returned to those who chose to leave the house before the pantomime commenced.
While the drama was thus yielding to the attractions of pantomime, a new theatre invited the public. The little theatre in the Haymarket opened its doors for the first time on the 12th of September[118] 1723, with the "French Fop," of which the author, Sandford, says, that he wrote it in a few weeks, when he was but fifteen years of age. That may account for its having straightway died; but it served to introduce to the stage the utility actor, Milward. The theatre was only open for a few nights.
Of the season 1724-5, at Drury Lane, there is little to be said, save that the inimitable company worked well and profitably in sterling old plays. Wilks returned to Sir Harry Wildair, and the public laughed at Cibber's quivering tragedy tones, when playing Achoreus, in his adaptation from Beaumont and Fletcher's "False One." In "Cæsar in Egypt," Antony and Cleopatra were played by Wilks and Mrs. Oldfield, who were never more happy than when making love on the stage. This was the sole novelty of the season.
In the Fields there was more of it, but that most relied on was Rich's "Harlequin Sorcerer," produced on the 21st of January 1725. The "Bath Unmasked" was the only original comedy produced. It described Bath as made up of very unprincipled people, with a good lord to about a score of knaves and hussies. It was the first and not lucky essay of miserable Gabriel Odingsell, who, nine years later, in a fit of madness, hung himself in his house, Thatched Court, Westminster.
Booth was more brilliant than he had ever yet been, in the Drury Lane season of 1725-26. In Shakspeare he shone conspicuously, and his Hotspur to the Prince of Wales of Giffard, from Dublin, charmed as much by its chivalry as Cato did by its dignity. Mrs. Oldfield enjoyed, and Mrs. Cibber, first wife of Theophilus, claimed the favour of the town; and the elder Cibber surrendered one or two old characters to a younger actor, Bridgewater. Amid a succession of old dramas, one novelty only was offered, a translation of the "Hecuba" of Euripides, with slight variations. The author was Richard West, son-in-law of Bishop Burnet, and father of young West, the early friend of Walpole and Gray. His play was acted on the 3d[119] of February 1726, at which time West was Lord Chancellor of Ireland. On the first night a full audience would not listen to the piece, and on the next two nights there was scarcely an audience assembled to listen. Neither Booth as Polymnestor, nor Mrs. Porter as Hecuba, could win the general ear. It did not succeed, wrote the author, "because it was not heard. A rout of Vandals in the galleries intimidated the young actresses, disturbed the audience, and prevented all attention; and, I believe, if the verses had been repeated in the original Greek, they would have been understood and received in the same manner." The young actresses were Mrs. Brett and Mrs. Cibber; the latter was not the famous lady of that name, destined to the highest walks of tragedy. Lord Chancellor West died in December of this year.
The above single play was, however, worth all the novelties produced by Rich at Lincoln's Inn Fields. These were comedies of a farcical kind. In one of them, the "Capricious Lovers," by Odingsell, there was an original character, Mrs. Mincemode (Mrs. Bullock), who "grows sick at the sight of a man, and refines upon the significancy of phrases, till she resolves common observations into indecency." In the "French Fortune-teller,"[120] the public failed to be regaled with a piece stolen from Ravenscroft, who had stolen his from the French. The third play was "Money the Mistress," which the audience damned, in spite of the reputation of Southerne, who, with this failure, closed a dramatic career which had commenced half a century earlier. In its course he had written ten plays, the author of which had this in common with Shakspeare—that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon.
With this year, 1726-27, came the first symptom of a "break-up" in the hitherto prosperous condition of Drury Lane. It occurred in the first long and serious illness of Booth, which kept him from the theatre, three long and weary months to the town. The season at Drury Lane, however, and that at Lincoln's Inn Fields, had this alike, that after Booth's welcome return, all London was excited by expectations raised by comedies whose authors were "gentlemen," in whose success the "quality," generally, were especially interested. At Drury it was the "Rival Modes," by Moore Smythe; at Lincoln's Inn Fields, the "Dissembled Wanton, or, my Son, get Money," by Leonard Welsted. In the former piece there is a gay lover, Bellamine (Wilks), wooing the grave Melissa (Mrs. Porter), while the serious Sagely (Mills) pays suit to the sprightly widow Amoret (Mrs. Oldfield). An old beau of King William's time, Earl of Late Airs (Cibber), brings his son to town (Lord Toupet, a modern beau, by Theophilus Cibber), in order that he may marry Melissa, with her father's consent. Amoret contrives to upset this arrangement, and the other lovers are duly united. The plot was good, the players unsurpassable, the two Cibbers fooling it to the top of their bent, and old and new fashions were pleasantly contrasted; but the action was languid, and the piece was hissed.
The incident lacking here, abounded in Welsted's intriguing comedy, the "Dissembled Wanton," a character finely acted by Mrs. Younger[121]—whose marriage with Beaufort (Walker) being forbidden by her father, Lord Severne (Quin), by whom she had been sent to France, she reappears in her father's presence as Sir Harry Truelove, whose real character is known only to Emilia (Mrs. Bullock), Lord Severne's ward. Emilia's intimacy with Sir Harry causes the rupture of her marriage with Colonel Severne, and some coarse scenes have to be got through before all is explained; the respective lovers are united, and Humphrey Staple (Hall) finds it useless to urge his son Toby (W. Bullock) to get money by espousing the rich ward Emilia.
Although Welsted's comedy was lively, it was found to be ill-written. He had had time enough to polish it, for ten years previous to its production Steele had commended the plot, the moral, and the style; he had even praised its decency. Like Moore Smyth's, it could not win the town. The respective authors, who made so much ineffectual noise in their own day, would be unknown to us in this, but for the censure of Pope. In the Dunciad they enjoy notoriety with Theobald, or Cibber, Gildon, Dennis, Centlivre, and Aaron Hill. Moore was an Oxford man, who assumed his maternal grandfather's name—being his heir—and held one or two lucrative posts under Government. His father, the famous Arthur Moore, a wit, a politician, and a statesman, who was long M.P. for Grimsby, had risen, by force of his talents, to an eminent position from a humble station. Pope stooped to call Moore Smyth the son of a footman, and, when the latter name was assumed on his taking his maternal grandfather's estate, the Whigs lampooned him as born at "the paternal seat of his family—the taphouse of the prison-gate, at Monaghan."