"Not one base word of Carthage—on thy soul!"
Her grandeur of action, her stern expression, and her powerful tone of voice, elicited the most enthusiastic applause. Exactly two months later, on the 28th of April 1730, she acted Lady Brute, and therewith suddenly terminated her thirty years of service, dying exactly six months after illness compelled her to withdraw.
Before noticing more fully the career of Mrs. Oldfield, let me record here, that on the night she played Lady Brute in the "Provoked Wife," the part of Mademoiselle was acted by Charlotte Charke, the wife of a good singer, but a worthless man, and the youngest child of Colley Cibber.[134] There seems to have been a touch of insanity, certainly there was no power of self-control in this poor woman. From her childhood she had been wild, wayward, and rebellious; self-taught as a boy might be, and with nothing feminine in her character or pursuits. With self-assertion, too, she was weak enough to be won by a knave with a sweet voice, whose cruel treatment drove his intractable wife to the stage, where she failed to profit by her fine opportunities.
The corresponding season at Lincoln's Inn Fields was the usual one of an unfashionable house; but Quin, Ryan, Walker, and Boheme were actors who made way against Wilks, Cibber, Mills, and Bridgewater. No new piece of any value was produced; the only incidents worth recording being the playing of Macheath by Quin, for his benefit: and the sudden death of Spiller, stricken by apoplexy, as he was playing in the "Rape of Proserpine." He was inimitable in old men, though he himself was young; but whatever he played, he so identified himself with his character that Spiller disappeared from the eyes and the thoughts of an audience, unconsciously deluded by the artist.
As the town grew, so also did theatres increase; that in Goodman's Fields, and the little house in the Haymarket, were open this season. At the former Giffard and his wife led in tragedy and comedy; but the company was generally weak. Not so the authors who wrote for the house. First among them was Fielding, a young fellow of three and twenty; bred to the law, but driven to the drama by the inability of his father, the General, to supply him with funds. His first play, "Love in Several Masques," was acted at Drury Lane in 1728; his second, and a better, the "Temple Beau," was played at Goodman's Fields.
Ralph, who had been a schoolmaster in Philadelphia, and came to England to thrive by political, satirical, or dramatic writings, and to live for ever in the abuse lavished on him by Pope, supplied a ballad-opera, the "Fashionable Lady," which was intended to rival the "Beggar's Opera." To Macheath-Walker is ascribed a tragedy, the "Fate of Villany;" and Mottley, the disappointed candidate for place, and the compiler of Joe Miller's Jests—Miller being a better joker than he was an actor—wrote for this house his "Widow Bewitched," the last and poorest of his contributions to the stage.
For the Haymarket, Fielding wrote the only piece which has come down to our times, his immortal burlesque-tragedy of "Tom Thumb," in which the weakness and bombast of late or contemporary writers are copied with wonderful effect. Young suffered severely by this;—and the "Oh, Huncamunca! Huncamunca, oh!" was a dart at the "Oh, Sophonisba! Sophonisba, oh!" of Jamie Thomson. Of the other pieces I need not disturb the dust. Let me rather, contemplating that of Mrs. Oldfield, glance at the career of that great actress, who living knew no rival, and in her peculiar line has never been excelled.
