[CHAPTER V.]
THOMAS BETTERTON.
The diaries, biographies, journals, and traditions of the time will enable us, with some little aid from the imagination, not only to see the actor, but the social aspects amid which he moved. By aid of these, I find that, on a December night, 1661, there is a crowded house at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is "Hamlet," with young Mr. Betterton, who has been two years on the stage, in the part of the Dane. The Ophelia is the real object of the young fellow's love, charming Mistress Saunderson. Old ladies and gentlemen, repairing in capacious coaches to this representation, remind one another of the lumbering and crushing of carriages about the old playhouse in the Blackfriars, causing noisy tumults which drew indignant appeals from the Puritan housekeepers, whose privacy was sadly disturbed. But what was the tumult there to the scene on the south side of the "Fields," when "Hamlet," with Betterton, as now, was offered to the public! The Jehus contend for place with the eagerness of ancient Britons in a battle of chariots. And see, the mob about the pit-doors have just caught a bailiff attempting to arrest an honest playgoer. They fasten the official up in a tub, and roll the trembling wretch all "round the square." They finish by hurling him against a carriage, which sweeps from a neighbouring street at full gallop. Down come the horses over the barrelled bailiff, with sounds of hideous ruin; and the young lady lying back in the coach is screaming like mad. This lady is the dishonest daughter of brave, honest, and luckless Viscount Grandison. As yet she is only Mrs. Palmer; next year she will be Countess of Castlemaine.
At length the audience are all safely housed and eager. Indifferent enough, however, they are during the opening scenes. The fine gentlemen laugh loudly and comb their periwigs in the "best rooms." The fops stand erect in the boxes to show how folly looks in clean linen; and the orange nymphs, with their costly entertainment of fruit from Seville, giggle and chatter, as they stand on the benches below with old and young admirers, proud of being recognised in the boxes.
The whole court of Denmark is before them; but not till the words, "'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother," fall from the lips of Betterton, is the general ear charmed, or the general tongue arrested. Then, indeed, the vainest fops and pertest orange girls look round and listen too. The voice is so low, and sad, and sweet; the modulation so tender, the dignity so natural, the grace so consummate, that all yield themselves silently to the delicious enchantment. "It's beyond imagination," whispers Mr. Pepys to his neighbour, who only answers with a long and low drawn "Hush!"
I can never look on Kneller's masterly portrait of this great player, without envying those who had the good fortune to see the original, especially in Hamlet. How grand the head, how lofty the brow, what eloquence and fire in the eyes, how firm the mouth, how manly the sum of all! How is the whole audience subdued almost to tears, at the mingled love and awe which he displays in presence of the spirit of his father! Some idea of Betterton's acting in this scene may be derived from Cibber's description of it, and from that I come to the conclusion, that Betterton fulfilled all that Overbury laid down with regard to what best graced an actor. "Whatsoever is commendable to the grave orator, is most exquisitely perfect in him; for by a full and significant action of body he charms our attention. Sit in a full theatre, and you will think you see so many lines drawn from the circumference of so many ears, while the actor is the centre." This was especially the case with Betterton; and now, as Hamlet's first soliloquy closes, and the charmed but silent audience "feel music's pulse in all their arteries," Mr. Pepys almost too loudly exclaims in his ecstasy, "It's the best acted part ever done by man." And the audience think so, too; there is a hurricane of applause; after which the fine gentlemen renew their prattle with the fine ladies, and the orange girls beset the Sir Foplings, and this universal trifling is felt as a relief after the general emotion.
Meanwhile, a critic objects that young Mr. Betterton is not "original," and intimates that his Hamlet is played by tradition come down through Davenant, who had seen the character acted by Taylor, and had taught the boy to enact the Prince after the fashion set by the man who was said to have been instructed by Shakspeare himself; amid which Mr. Pepys remarks, "I only know that Mr. Betterton is the best actor in the world."
As Sir Thomas Overbury remarked of a great player, his voice was never lower than the prompter's nor higher than the foil and target. But let us be silent, here comes the gentle Ophelia. The audience generally took an interest in this lady, and the royal Dane, for there was not one in the house who was ignorant of the love-passages there had been between them, or of the coming marriage by which they were to receive additional warrant. Mistress Saunderson was a lady worthy of all the homage here implied. There was mind in her acting; and she not only possessed personal beauty, but also the richer beauty of a virtuous life. They were a well-matched couple on and off the stage; and their mutual affection was based on a mutual respect and esteem. People thought of them together, as inseparable, and young ladies wondered how Mr. Betterton could play Mercutio, and leave Mistress Saunderson as Juliet, to be adored by the not ineffective Mr. Harris as Romeo! The whole house, as long as the incomparable pair were on the stage, were in a dream of delight. Their grace, perfection, good looks, the love they had so cunningly simulated, and that which they were known to mutually entertain, formed the theme of all tongues. In its discussion, the retiring audience forgot the disinterring of the regicides, and the number of men killed the other day on Tower Hill, servants of the French and Spanish ambassadors, in a bloody struggle for precedency, which was ultimately won by the Don!
Fifty years after these early triumphs, an aged couple resided in one of the best houses in Russell Street, Covent Garden,—the walls of which were covered with pictures, prints, and drawings, selected with taste and judgment. They were still a handsome pair. The venerable lady, indeed, looks pale and somewhat saddened. The gleam of April sunshine which penetrates the apartment cannot win her from the fire. She is Mrs. Betterton, and ever and anon she looks with a sort of proud sorrow on her aged husband. His fortune, nobly earned, has been diminished by "speculation," but the means whereby he achieved it are his still, and Thomas Betterton, in the latter years of Queen Anne, is the chief glory of the stage, even as he was in the first year of King Charles. The lofty column, however, is a little shaken. It is not a ruin, but is beautiful in its decay. Yet that it should decay at all is a source of so much tender anxiety to the actor's wife, that her senses suffer disturbance, and there may be seen in her features something of the distraught Ophelia of half a century ago.