"Virgilium tantum vidi!" Pope said this of Dryden, whom he once saw when a boy. He was wont to say of Betterton, that he had known him from his own boyhood upwards, till the actor died, in 1710, when the poet was twenty-two years of age. The latter listened eagerly to the old traditions which the player narrated of the earlier times. Betterton was warrant to him, on the authority of Davenant, from whom the actor had it, that there was no foundation for the old legend which told of an ungenerous rivalry between Shakspeare and Old Ben. The player who had been as fearless with Dryden as Socrates was with his friend Euripides—"judiciously lopping" redundant nonsense or false and mean maxims, as Dryden himself confesses—was counsellor, rather than critic or censor, with young Pope. The latter, at the age of twelve years, had written the greater portion of an imitative epic poem, entitled Alcander, Prince of Rhodes. I commend to artists in search of a subject the incident of Pope, at fifteen or sixteen, showing this early effort of his Muse to Betterton. It was a poem which abounded in dashing exaggerations, and fair imitations of the styles of the then greater English poets. There was a dramatic vein about it, however, or the player would not have advised the bard to convert his poem into a play. The lad excused himself. He feared encountering either the law of the drama or the taste of the town; and Betterton left him to his own unfettered way. The actor lived to see that the boy was the better judge of his own powers, for young Pope produced his Essay on Criticism the year before Betterton died. A few years later the poet rendered any possible fulfilment of the player's counsel impossible, by dropping the manuscript of Alcander into the flames. Atterbury had less esteem for this work than Betterton. "I am not sorry your Alcander is burnt," he says; "but had I known your intentions I would have interceded for the first page, and put it, with your leave, among my curiosities."
Pope remembered the player with affection. For some time after Betterton's decease the print-shops abounded with mezzotinto engravings of his portrait by Kneller. Of this portrait the poet himself executed a copy, which still exists. His friendly intercourse with the half-mad Irish artist, Jervas, is well known. When alone, Pope was the poet; with Jervas, and under his instructions, he became an artist—in his way, but yet an artist—if a copier of portraits deserves so lofty a name. In 1713, he writes to Gay:—"You may guess in how uneasy state I am, when every day the performances of others appear more beautiful and excellent, and my own more despicable. I have thrown away three Dr. Swifts, each of which was once my vanity, two Lady Bridgewaters, a Duchess of Montague, half-a-dozen Earls, and one Knight of the Garter." He perfected, however, and kept his portrait of Betterton, from Kneller, which passed into the collection of his friend Murray, and which is now in that of Murray's descendant, the Earl of Mansfield.
Kneller's portrait of Betterton is enshrined among goodly company at princely Knole—the patrimony of the Sackvilles. It is there, with that of his fellow-actor, Mohun, his friend Dryden, and his great successor Garrick—the latter being the work of Reynolds. The grand old Kentish Hall is a fitting place for such a brotherhood.
This master of his art had the greatest esteem for a silent and attentive audience. It was easy, he used to say, for any player to rouse the house, but to subdue it, render it rapt and hushed to, at the most, a murmur, was work for an artist; and in such effects no one approached him. And yet the rage of Othello was more "in his line" than the tenderness of Castalio; but he touched the audience in his rage. Harris competed with him for a brief period, but if he ever excelled him it was only in very light comedy. The dignity and earnestness of Betterton were so notorious and so attractive, that people flocked only to hear him speak a prologue, while brother actors looked on, admired, and despaired.
Age, trials, infirmity, never damped his ardour. Even angry and unsuccessful authors, who railed against the players who had brought their dramas to grief, made exception of Betterton. He was always ready, always perfect, always anxious to effect the utmost within his power. Among the foremost of his merits may be noticed his freedom from all jealousy, and his willingness to assist others up the height which he had himself surmounted. That he played Bassanio to Dogget's Shylock is, perhaps, not saying much by way of illustration; but that he acted Horatio to Powell's Lothario; that he gave up Jupiter (Amphitryon) and Valentine, two of his original parts, to Wilks, and even yielded Othello, one of the most elaborate and exquisite of his "presentments," to Thurmond, are fair instances in point. When Bowman introduced young Barton Booth to "old Thomas," the latter welcomed him heartily, and after seeing his Maximus, in "Valentinian," recognised in him his successor. At that moment the town, speculating on the demise of their favourite, had less discernment. They did not know whether Verbruggen, with his voice like a cracked drum, or idle Powell, with his lazy stage-swing, might aspire to the sovereignty; but they were slow to believe in Booth, who was not the only young actor who was shaded in the setting glories of the sun of the English theatre.
When Colley Cibber first appeared before a London audience he was a "volunteer" who went in for practice; and he had the misfortune, on one occasion, to put the great master out by some error on his own part. Betterton subsequently inquired the young man's name and the amount of his salary; and hearing that the former was Cibber, and that, as yet, he received nothing, "Put him down ten shillings a week," said Betterton, "and forfeit him five." Colley was delighted. It was placing his foot on the first round of the ladder; and his respect for "Mr. Betterton" was unbounded. Indeed there were few who did not pay him some homage. The King himself delighted to honour him. Charles, James, Queen Mary, and Queen Anne, sent him assurances of their admiration; but King William admitted him to a private audience, and when the patentees of Drury Lane were, through lack of general patronage, suggesting the expediency of a reduction of salaries, great Nassau placed in the hands of Betterton the licence which freed him from the thraldom of the Drury tyrants, and authorised him to open the second theatre erected in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Next to his most sacred Majesty, perhaps the most formidable personage in the kingdom, in the eyes of the actors, was the Lord Chamberlain, who was master of the very lives of the performers, having the absolute control of the stage whereby they lived. This potentate, however, seemed ever to favour Betterton. When unstable, yet useful, Powell suddenly abandoned Drury Lane, to join the company in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Chamberlain did not deign to notice the offence; but when, all as suddenly, the capricious and unreliable Powell abandoned the house in the Fields, and betook himself again to that in the Lane—the angry Lord Chamberlain sent a "messenger" after him to his lodgings, and clapped the unoffending Thespian, for a couple of days, in the Gate House.
While Powell was with Betterton, the latter produced the "Fair Penitent," by Rowe, Mrs. Barry being the Calista. When the dead body of Lothario was lying decently covered on the stage, Powell's dresser, Warren, lay there for his master, who, requiring the services of the man in his dressing-room, and not remembering where he was, called aloud for him so repeatedly, and at length so angrily, that Warren leapt up in a fright, and ran from the stage. His cloak, however, had got hooked to the bier, and this he dragged after him, sweeping down, as he dashed off in his confusion, table, lamps, books, bones, and upsetting the astounded Calista herself. Irrepressible laughter convulsed the audience, but Betterton's reverence for the dignity of tragedy was shocked, and he stopped the piece in its full career of success, until the town had ceased to think of Warren's escapade.
I know of but one man who has spoken of Betterton at all disparagingly—old Anthony Aston. But even that selfish cynic is constrained so to modify his censure as to convert it into praise. When Betterton was approaching threescore years and ten, Anthony could have wished that he "would have resigned the part of Hamlet to some young actor who might have personated, though," mark the distinction, "not have acted it better." Aston's grounds for his wish are so many justifications of Betterton; "for," says Anthony, "when he threw himself at Ophelia's feet, he appeared a little too grave for a young student just from the University of Wittenberg." "His repartees," Anthony thinks, "were more those of a philosopher than the sporting flashes of young Hamlet;" as if Hamlet were not the gravest of students, and the most philosophical of young Danes! Aston caricatures the aged actor only again to commend him. He depreciates the figure which time had touched, magnifies the defects, registers the lack of power, and the slow sameness of action; hints at a little remains of paralysis, and at gout in the now thick legs, profanely utters the words "fat" and "clumsy," and suggests that the face is "slightly pock-marked." But we are therewith told that his air was serious, venerable, and majestic; and that though his voice was "low and grumbling, he could turn it by an artful climax which enforced an universal attention even from the fops and orange-girls." Cibber declares that there was such enchantment in his voice alone, the multitude no more cared for sense in the words he spoke, "than our musical connoisseurs think it essential in the celebrated airs of an Italian Opera." Again, he says, "Could how Betterton spoke be as easily known as what he spoke, then might you see the Muse of Shakspeare in her triumph." "I never," says honest Colley, "heard a line in tragedy come from Betterton, wherein my judgment, my ear, and my imagination were not fully satisfied, which, since his time, I cannot equally say of any one actor whatsoever." This was written in 1740, the year before little David took up the rich inheritance of "old Thomas"—whose Hamlet, however, the latter actor could hardly have equalled. The next great pleasure to seeing Betterton's Hamlet is to read Cibber's masterly analysis of it. A couple of lines reveal to us the leading principle of his Brutus. "When the Betterton-Brutus," says Colley, "was provoked in his dispute with Cassius, his spirit flew only to his eye; his steady look alone supplied that terror which he disdained an intemperance in his voice should rise to." In his least effective characters, he, with an exception already noted, excelled all other actors; but in characters such as Hamlet and Othello he excelled himself. Cibber never beheld his equal for at least two-and-thirty years after Betterton's death, when, in 1741, court and city, with doctors of divinity and enthusiastic bishops, were hurrying to Goodman's Fields, to witness the Richard of the gentleman from Ipswich, named Garrick.
During the long career of Betterton he played at Drury Lane, Dorset Gardens, Lincoln's Inn Fields (in both theatres), and at the Opera-house in the Haymarket. The highest salary awarded to this great master of his art was £5 per week, which included £1 by way of pension to his wife, after her retirement in 1694. In consideration of his merits, he was allowed to take a benefit in the season of 1708-9, when the actor had an ovation. In money for admission, he received, indeed, only £76; but in complimentary guineas, he took home with him to Russell Street £450 more. The terms in which the Tatler spoke of him living,—the tender and affectionate, manly and heart-stirring passages in which the same writer bewailed him when dead,—are eloquent and enduring testimonies of the greatness of an actor, who was the glory of our stage, and of the worth of a man whose loss cost his sorrowing widow her reason.[32] "Decus et Dolor." "The grace and the grief of the theatre." It is well applied to him who laboured incessantly, lived irreproachably, and died in harness, universally esteemed and regretted. He was the jewel of the English stage; and I never think of him, and of some to whom his example was given in vain, without saying, with Overbury, "I value a worthy actor by the corruption of some few of the quality, as I would do gold in the ore; I should not mind the dross, but the purity of the metal."