After the division of the company into two, in 1695, the following new actors appeared between that period and the close of the century. At Drury Lane, Hildebrand Horden, Mrs. Cibber,[47] Johnson, Bullock, Mills, Wilks; and, as if the century should expire, reckoning a new glory,—Mrs. Oldfield. At Lincoln's Inn Fields,—Thurmond, Scudamore, Verbruggen, who joined from Drury Lane, leaving his clever wife there, Pack; and, that this house might boast a glory something like that enjoyed by its rival, in Mrs. Oldfield,—in 1700 Booth made his first appearance, with a success, the significance of which was recognised and welcomed by the discerning and generous Betterton.
Mrs. Oldfield, Wilks, and Booth, like Colley Cibber, though they appeared towards the close of the seventeenth, really belong to the eighteenth century, and I shall defer noticing them till my readers and I arrive at that latter period. The rest will require but a few words. Young Horden was a handsome and promising actor, who died of a brawl at the Rose Tavern, Covent Garden. He and two or three comrades were quaffing their wine, and laughing, at the bar, when some fine gentlemen, in an adjacent room, affecting to be disturbed by the gaiety of the players, rudely ordered them to be quiet. The actors returned an answer which brought blood to the cheek, fierce words to the lips, hand to the sword, and a resulting fight, in which the handsome Hildebrand was slain by a Captain Burgess. The captain was carried to the Gate-house, from which, says the Protestant Mercury, he was rescued at night, "by a dozen or more of fellows with short clubs and pistols." So ended, in 1696, Hildebrand Horden, not without the sympathy of loving women, who went in masks, and some without the vizard, to look upon and weep over his handsome, shrouded corpse. A couple of paragraphs in Luttrell's Diary conclude Horden's luckless story: "Saturday, 17th October, Mr. John Pitts was tried at the session for killing Mr. Horden, the player, and acquitted, he being no ways accessary thereto, more than being in company when 'twas done." On Tuesday, 30th November 1697, the diarist writes: "Captain Burgess, who killed Mr. Horden, the player, has obtained his Majesty's pardon."
Of Mrs. Cibber, it can only be said that she was the wife of a great, and of Bullock, that he was the father of a good, actor. To Johnson no more praise can be awarded than to Bullock.[48] William[49] Mills deserves a word or two more of notice than these last. He was on the stage from 1696 to 1737,[50] and though only a "solid" actor, he excelled Cibber, in Corvino, in Jonson's "Volpone;" surpassed Smith in the part of Pierre, and was only second to Quin, in Volpone himself. His Ventidius, in Dryden's tragedy, "All for Love," to Booth's Anthony, is praised for its natural display of the true spirit of a rough and generous soldier. Of his original parts, the chief were Jack Stanmore, in "Oroonoko;" Aimwell, in the "Beaux Stratagem;" Charles, in the "Busy Body;" Pylades, in the "Distressed Mother;" Colonel Briton, in the "Wonder;" Zanga, in the "Revenge;" and Manly, in the "Provoked Husband." That some of these were beyond his powers is certain; but he owed his being cast for them to the friendship of Wilks, when the latter was manager. To a like cause may be ascribed the circumstance of his having the same salary as Betterton, £4 per week, and £1 for his wife; but this was not till after Betterton's death.
At Lincoln's Inn Fields, Thurmond, though a respectable actor, failed to shake any of the public confidence in Betterton. Of Scudamore, I have already spoken. Pack was a vivacious comic actor, whose "line" is well indicated in the characters of Brass, Marplot, and Lissardo, of which he was the original representative. He withdrew from the stage in 1721, a bachelor; and, in the meridian of life, opened a tavern in Charing Cross. I have now named the principal actors and actresses who first appeared between the Restoration and the year 1701, Betterton and Mrs. Barry being the noblest of the players of that half century; Cibber, Booth, and Mrs. Oldfield, the bright promises of the century to come. It is disappointing, however, to find that in the very last year of the seventeenth century "the grand jury of Middlesex presented the two play-houses, and also the bear-garden, as nuisances and riotous and disorderly assemblies." So Luttrell writes, in December 1700, at which time, as contemporary accounts inform us, the theatres were "pestered with tumblers, rope-dancers, and dancing men and dogs from France." Betterton was then in declining health, and appeared only occasionally; the houses, lacking other attraction, were ill attended, and public taste was stimulated by offering the "fun of a fair," where Mrs. Barry had drowned a whole house in tears. The grand jury of Middlesex did not see that with rude amusements the spectators grew rude too. The jury succeeded in preventing play-bills from being posted in the city, and denounced the stage as a pastime which led the way to murder. The last denunciation was grounded on the fact, that Sir Andrew Slanning had been killed just before, on his way from the play-house. When men wore swords and hot tempers these catastrophes were not infrequent. In 1682, a coffee-house was sometimes turned into a shambles by gentlemen calling the actors at the Duke's House "Papists." What was the cause of the fray in which Sir Andrew fell I do not know. Whatever it was, he was run through the body by Mr. Cowlan; and that the latter took some unfair advantage is to be supposed, since he was found guilty of murder, and in December 1700 was executed at Tyburn, with six other malefactors, who, on the same day, in the Newgate slang of the period, went Westward Hoe!
On the poor players fell all the disgrace; but I think I shall be able to show, in the next chapter, that the fault lay rather with the poets. These, in their turn, laid blame upon the public; but it is the poet's business to elevate, and not to pander to a low taste. The foremost men of the tuneful brotherhood, of the period from the Restoration to the end of the century, have much to answer for in this last respect.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Mountfort seems to have acted as early as 1678.
[41] Norris does not appear in the bills till 1699.
[42] Dr. Doran spells "Oroonoko" wrong throughout. In this he follows Genest; but the latter corrects his blunder in his "errata."
[43] The trial of Mohun and Warwick took place seven years after Mountfort's death—that is, in 1699.