I have noticed the report that Booth and Wilks were jealous of each other; I think there was more of emulation than of envy between them. Booth could make sacrifices in favour of young actors as unreservedly as Betterton. I find, even when he was in possession, as it was called, of all the leading parts, that he as often played Laertes, or even Horatio, as the Ghost or Hamlet. His Laertes was wonderfully fine, and in a great actor's hands, may be made, in the fifth act, at least, equal with the princely Dane himself. Again, although his Othello was one of his grandest impersonations, he would take Cassio, in order to give an aspirant a chance of triumph in the Moor. In "Macbeth," Booth played, one night, the hero of the piece; on another, Banquo; and on a third, the little part of Lennox. He was quite content that Cibber should play Wolsey, while he captivated the audience by enacting the King. His Henry was a mixture of frank humour, dignity, and sternness. Theophilus Cibber says enough to convince us that Booth, in the King, could be familiar without being vulgar, and that his anger was of the quality that excites terror. He pronounced the four words, "Go thy ways, Kate," with such a happy emphasis as to win admiration and applause: and "when he said, 'Now, to breakfast with what appetite you may,' his expression was rapid and vehement, and his look tremendous."
The credit attached to the acting of inferior parts by leading players was shared with Booth by Wilks and Cibber. Of the latter, his son says, that "though justly esteemed the first comedian of his time, and superior to all we have since beheld, he has played several parts, to keep up the spirit of some comedies, which you will now scarcely find one player in twenty who will not reject as beneath his Mock-Excellence."
Booth could, after all, perhaps, occasionally be languid without the excuse of illness. He would play his best to a single man in the pit whom he recognised as a playgoer, and a judge of acting; but to an unappreciating audience he could exhibit an almost contemptuous disinclination to exert himself. On one occasion of this sort he was made painfully sensible of his mistake, and a note was addressed to him from the stage-box, the purport of which was to know whether he was acting for his own diversion or in the service and for the entertainment of the public?
On another occasion, with a thin house, and a cold audience, he was languidly going through one of his usually grandest impersonations, namely, Pyrrhus. At his very dullest scene he started into the utmost brilliancy and effectiveness. His eye had just previously detected in the pit a gentleman, named Stanyan, the friend of Addison and Steele, and the correspondent of the Earl of Manchester. Stanyan was an accomplished man and a judicious critic. Booth played to him with the utmost care and corresponding success. "No, no!" he exclaimed, as he passed behind the scenes, radiant with the effect he had produced, "I will not have it said at Button's, that Barton Booth is losing his powers!"
Some indolence was excusable, however, in actors who ordinarily laboured as Booth did. As an instance of the toil which they had to endure for the sake of applause, I will notice that in the season of 1712-13, when Booth studied, played, and triumphed in Cato, he within not many weeks studied and performed five original and very varied characters, Cato being the last of a roll, which included Arviragus, in the "Successful Pirate;" Captain Stanworth, in the "Female Advocates;" Captain Wildish, in "Humours of the Army;" Cinna, in an adaptation of Corneille's play, and finally, Cato.
No doubt Booth was finest when put upon his mettle. In May 1726, for instance, Giffard from Dublin appeared at Drury Lane, as the Prince of Wales, in "Henry IV." The debutant was known to be an admirer of the Hotspur of roaring Elrington. The Percy was one of Booth's most perfect exhibitions; and, ill as he was on the night he was to play it to Giffard's Harry, he protested that he would surprise the new comer, and the house too; and he played with such grace, fire, and energy, that the audience were beside themselves with ecstasy, and the new actor was profuse at the side-scenes, and even out of hearing of Booth, in acknowledgment of the great master and his superiority over every living competitor.
Betterton cared little if his audience was select, provided it also was judicious; Booth, however, loved a full house, though he could play his best to a solitary, but competent, individual in the pit. He confessed that he considered profit after fame, and thought that large audiences tended to the increase of both. The intercourse between audience and actor was, in his time, more intimate and familiar than it is now. Thus we see Booth entering a coffee-house in Bow Street, one morning after he had played Varanes, on the preceding night. The gentlemen present, all playgoers, as naturally as they were coffee-house frequenters, cluster round him, and acknowledge the pleasure they had enjoyed in witnessing him act. These pleasant morning critics only venture to blame him for allowing such unmeaning stuff as the pantomime of "Perseus and Andromeda" to follow the classical tragedy and mar its impression. But the ballet-pantomime draws great houses, and is therefore a less indignity in Booth's eye, than half empty benches. It was not the business of managers, he said, to be wise to empty boxes. "There were many more spectators," he said, "than men of taste and judgment; and if by the artifice of a pantomime they could entice a greater number to partake of a good play than could be drawn without it, he could not see any great harm in it; and that, as those pieces were performed after the play, they were no interruption to it." In short, he held pantomimes to be rank nonsense, which might be rendered useful, after the fashion of his explanation.
His retirement from the stage may be laid to the importunity of Mr. Theobald, who urged him to act in a play, for a moment attributed to Shakspeare, the "Double Falsehood." Booth struggled through the part of Julio, for a week, in the season of 1727-28, and then withdrew, utterly cast down, and in his forty-sixth year. Broxham, Friend, Colebatch, and Mead came with their canes, perukes, pills, and proposals, and failing to restore him, they sent him away from London. The sick player and his wife wandered from town to Bath, from the unavailing springs there to Ostend, thence to Antwerp, and on to Holland, to consult Boerhaave, who could only tell the invalid that in England a man should never leave off his winter clothing till midsummer-day, and that he should resume it the day after. From Holland the sad couple came home to Hampstead, and ultimately back to London, where fever, jaundice, and other maladies attacked Booth with intermitting severity. Here, in May 1733, a quack doctor persuaded him that if he would take "crude mercury" it would not only prevent the return of his fever but effectually cure him of all his complaints. As we are gravely informed that, within five days the poor victim "took within two ounces of two pounds weight of mercury," we are not surprised to hear that at the end of that time Booth was in extremis, and that Sir Hans Sloane was at his bedside to accelerate, as it would seem, the catastrophe.
To peruse what followed is like reading the details of an assassination. As if the two pounds, minus two ounces, of mercury were not enough, poor Booth was bled profusely at the jugular, his feet were plastered, and his scalp was blistered; he was assailed in various ways by cathartics, and mocked, I may so call it, by emulsions; the Daily Post announced that he lay a-dying at his house in Hart Street, other notices pronounced him moribund in Charles Street; but he was alive on the morning of the 10th of May 1733, when a triad of prescriptions being applied against him, Cato at length happily succumbed. But the surgeons would not let the dead actor rest; they opened his body, and dived into its recesses, and called things by strong names, and avoided technicalities; and, after declaring everything to be very much worse than the state of Denmark, as briefly described by Hamlet, Alexander Small, the especial examiner, signing the report, added a postscript thereto, implying that "There was no fault in any part of his body, but what is here mentioned." Poor fellow! We are told that he recovered from his fever, but that he died of the jaundice, helped, I think, by the treatment.
A few days subsequently the body was privately interred in Cowley Church, near Uxbridge, where he occasionally resided. A few old friends, and some dearer than friends, accompanied him to the grave. His will was as a kiss on either cheek of his beautiful widow, and a slap on both cheeks of sundry of his relations. To the former he left everything he had possessed, and for the very best of reasons. "As I have been," he says, "a man much known and talked of, my not leaving legacies to my relations may give occasion to censorious people to reflect upon my conduct in this latter act of my life; therefore, I think it necessary to declare that I have considered my circumstances, and finding, upon a strict examination, that all I am now possessed of does not amount to two-thirds of the fortune my wife brought me on the day of our marriage, together with the yearly additions and advantages since arising from her laborious employment on the stage during twelve years past, I thought myself bound by honesty, honour, and gratitude, due to her constant affection, not to give away any part of the remainder of her fortune at my death, having already bestowed, in free gifts, upon my sister, Barbara Rogers, upwards of thirteen hundred pounds, out of my wife's substance, and full four hundred pounds of her money on my undeserving brother, George Booth (besides the gifts they received before my marriage), and all those benefits were conferred on my said brother and sister, from time to time, at the earnest solicitation of my wife, who was perpetually entreating me to continue the allowance I gave my relations before my marriage. The inhuman return that has been made my wife for these obligations, by my sister, I forbear to mention." This was justice without vengeance, and worthy of the sage, of whom Booth was the most finished representative. The generosity of Hester Santlow, too, has been fittingly preserved in the will; the whole of which, moreover, is a social illustration of the times.