Colley Cibber (actor), Mrs. Trotter (Cockburn), Gould, Mrs. Pix, Mrs. Manley, Norton, Scott, Dogget (actor), Dryden, jun., Lord Lansdowne (Granville), Dilke, Sir John Vanbrugh, Gildon, Drake, Filmer, Motteux, Hopkins, Walker, W. Phillips, Farquhar, Boyer, Dennis, Burnaby, Oldmixon, Mrs. Centlivre (Carroll), Crauford, and Rowe.
In the above list there are above a hundred names of authors, none of whose productions can now be called stock-pieces; though of some four or five of these writers a play is occasionally performed, to try an actor's skill or tempt an indifferent audience.
Of the actors who became authors, Cibber alone was eminently successful, and of him I shall speak apart. The remainder were mere adapters. Of Betterton's eight plays, I find one tragedy borrowed from Webster; and of his comedies, one was taken from Marston; a second raised on Molière's "George Dandin"; a third was never printed; his "Henry the Fourth" was one of those unhallowed outrages on Shakspeare, of which the century in which it appeared was prolific; his "Bondman" was a poor reconstruction of Massinger's play, in which Betterton himself was marvellously great; and his "Prophetess" was a conversion of Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedy into an opera, by the efficient aid of Henry Purcell, who published the music in score, in 1691. There was noble music wedded to noble words, and for the recreation of those who could appreciate neither; there was a dance of quaint figures from whom, when about to sit down, the chairs slipped under them, took up the measure, and concluded by dancing it out.
Medbourne produced only his translation of the "Tartuffe," Jevon only one comedy. Mountfort, like Betterton, was an indifferent author. His "Injured Lovers" ends almost as tragically as the apocryphal play in which all the characters being killed at the end of the fourth act, the concluding act is brought to a close by their executors. In Mountfort's loyal tragedy all the principal personages receive their quietus, and the denouement is left in the hands of a solitary and wicked colonel, with a contented mind. "Edward the Third" is so much more natural than the above, that it is by some assigned to Bancroft, while "Zelmane" is only hypothetically attributed to Mountfort, on the ground, apparently, of its absurdities. In the preface to his "Successful Strangers," Mountfort modestly remarks, "I have a natural inclination to poetry, which was born and not bred in me." He showed small inventive power in his bustling comedy, "Greenwich Park," and less respect for a master in minstrelsy, when he turned poor Kit Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" into an impassioned sort of burlesque, with the addition of Harlequin and Scaramouch to give zest to the buffoonery!
Carlisle, the actor who fell at Aghrim, was the author of the "Fortune Hunters;" and Joseph Harris, who was a poor comedian, and the marrer of four adapted and unsuccessful plays, resumed under Queen Anne his original vocation of engraver to the Mint. The age was one of adapters, whose cry was that Shakspeare would not attract, and accordingly George Powell combined authorship with acting, and borrowed from Shirley, from Brome, and from Middleton. Mrs. Pix, and the romancers, produced a few plays, from one of which a recent dramatist has stolen as boldly as George himself was wont to steal. I allude to the "Imposture Defeated," in which Artan (a demon) enables Hernando, a physician, to foretell the fate of each patient, according as Artan takes his stand at the foot or at the head of the bed. One word will suffice for Dogget's contribution to stage literature. He was the author of one lively, but not edifying, piece, entitled the "Country Wake," in which he provided himself with a taking part called Hob, and one for Mrs. Bracegirdle—Flora. In a modified form, this piece was known to our grandfathers as "Flora;" or, "Hob in the Well."
The actors themselves, then, were not efficient as authors. Let us now see what the noble gentlemen, the amateur rather than professional poets, contributed towards the public entertainment, and their own reputation, during the last half of the seventeenth century.
They may be reckoned at a dozen and a half, from dukes to knights. Of the two dukes, Buckingham and Newcastle, the former is the more distinguished dramatic writer. He was a man of great wit and no virtue; a member of two universities, but no honour to either. He was one who respected neither his own wife nor his neighbour's, and was faithful to the King only as long as the King would condescend to obey his caprices. From 1627, when he was born, to April 1688, the year of his death, history has placed no generous action of his upon record, but has registered many a crime and meanness. He lived a profligate peer, in a magnificence almost oriental; he died a beggar; bankrupt in everything but impudence. Dryden and Pope have given him everlasting infamy; the latter not without a touch of pity, felt not at all by the former. Historians have justified the severity of the poets; Gilbert Burnet has dismissed him with a sneer, and Baxter has thrown in a word on behalf of his humanity.
His play of the "Chances" was a mere adaptation of the piece so named, by Beaumont and Fletcher. Plays which were attributed to him, but of which he was not the author, need not be mentioned. The Duke's dramatic reputation rests on his great burlesque tragedy, the "Rehearsal;" but even in this he is said to have had the assistance of Butler, Martin Clifford, and Dr. Sprat. Written to deride the bombastic tragedies then in vogue, Davenant, Dryden, and Sir Robert Howard are, by turns, struck at, under the person of the poet Bayes; and the irritability of the second, under the allusions, are perhaps warrant that the satire was good. The humour is good, too; the very first exhibition of it excited the mirth which afterwards broke into peal upon peal of laughter. The rehearsed play commences with a scene between the royal usher and the royal physician, in a series of whispers; for, as Mr. Bayes remarks, the two officials were plotting against the King; but this fact it was necessary, as yet, to keep from the audience!
Mr. Cavendish, whose services in the royal cause deservedly earned for him that progress through the peerage which terminated in his creation as Duke of Newcastle, was the opposite of Buckingham in most things save his taste for magnificence, in which he surpassed Villiers. Two thousand pounds were as cheerfully spent on feasting Charles I., as the Duke's blood was vainly shed for the same monarch in the field. He lived like a man who had the purse of Fortunatus; but in exile at Antwerp, he pawned his best clothes and jewels, that he and his celebrated wife might have the means of existence. He was the author of a few plays, two of which were represented after the Restoration. The "Country Captain," and "Variety," were composed in the reign of Charles I. The "Humourous Lovers," and the "Triumphant Widow," subsequently. These are bustling but immoral comedies, suiting, but not correcting the vices of the times; and singular, in their slip-shod style, as coming from the author of the pompous treatise on horses and horsemanship. Pepys ascribes the "Humourous Lovers" to the Duchess. He calls it a "silly play; the most silly thing that ever came upon a stage. I was sick to see it, but yet would not but have seen it, that I might the better understand her." Pepys is equally severe against the "Country Captain." The Duke seems to have aimed at the delineation of character, particularly in "Variety," and the "Triumphant Widow, or, the Medley of Humours." Johnson grieves over the oblivion which, in his time, had fallen on these works, and later authors have declared that the Duke's comedies ought not to have been forgotten. They have at least been remembered by some of our modern novelists in want of incident.