SIR RICHARD STEELE.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY.
The great players, by giving action to the poet's words, illustrated the quaintly expressed idea of the sweet singer who says:
"What Thought can think another Thought can mend."
Nevertheless, the theatres had not proved profitable. The public greeted acrobats with louder acclaim than any poet. King William cared more to see the feats of Kentish Patagonians than to listen to Shakspeare; and, for a time, Dogget, by creating laughter, reaped more glittering reward than Betterton, by drawing tears. The first season, however, of the eighteenth century was commenced with great spirit. Drury Lane opened with Cibber's "Love Makes a Man," an adaptation from Beaumont and Fletcher. Cibber was the Clodio; Wilks, Carlos; and Mrs. Verbruggen, Louisa. Five other new pieces were produced in this brief season. This was followed by the "Humour of the Age," a dull comedy, by Baker, who generally gave his audience something to laugh at, and showed some originality in more than one of his five pieces. He was an attorney's son, and an Oxford University man; but he took to writing for the stage, had an ephemeral success, and died early, in worse plight than any author, even in the days when authors occasionally died in evil condition. The third novelty was Settle's mad operatic tragedy, the "Siege of Troy,"[72] with a procession in which figured six white elephants! Griffin returned to the stage from the army, with "Captain" attached to his name, and played Ulysses. The dulness and grandeur of Settle's piece were hardly relieved by Farquhar's sequel to his "Constant Couple," "Sir Harry Wildair." The reputation of the former piece secured for the latter a run of nine nights, so were successes calculated in those early days. Wilks laid down Sir Harry to enact the distresses of Lorraine, in Mrs. Trotter's new play, "The Unhappy Penitent," which gave way in turn for Durfey's intriguing comedy, "The Bath, or the Western Lass," in which Mrs. Verbruggen's "Gillian Homebred," made her the darling of the town. In the same season, the company at Lincoln's Inn Fields produced a like number of new pieces. In the first, the "Double Distress," Booth, Verbruggen, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle wasted their talents. Mrs. Pix, the author, having failed in this mixture of rhyme and blank verse, failed in a greater degree in her next play in prose, the "Czar of Muscovy." Booth and Mrs. Barry could do nothing with such materials. The masters forthwith enacted the "Lady's Visiting Day," by Burnaby. In this comedy, Betterton played the gallant lover, Courtine, to the Lady Lovetoy of Mrs. Barry. The lady here would only marry a prince. Courtine wins her as Prince Alexander of Muscovy; and the audience laughed as they recognised therein the incident of the merry Lord Montagu wooing the mad Duchess-Dowager of Albemarle, as the Empress of China, and marrying her under that very magnificent dignity, to any inferior to which the Duchess had declared she would not stoop.
The hilarity of the public was next challenged by the production of Granville (Lord Lansdowne's) "Jew of Venice,"—"improved" from Shakspeare, who was described as having furnished the rude sketches which had been amended and adorned by Granville's new master-strokes![73]
Gildon's dull piece of Druidism, "Love's Victim, or the Queen of Wales," appeared and failed,[74] notwithstanding its wonderful cast; but Corye's "Cure for Jealousy" brought the list of novelties merrily to a close; for though the audience saw no fun in it, they did in the anger of the author—a little man, with a whistle of a voice, who abandoned the law for the stage, and was as weak an actor as he was an author. He attributed his failure to the absurd admiration of the public for Farquhar. He was absurd enough to say so in print, and to speak contemptuously of poor George's "Jubilee Farce." In those wicked days, literary men loved not each other!