May be a fit companion o'er beef steaks.
His name may be to future times unrolled,
In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's made of gold."
Estcourt died in 1712, and was buried in the "yard" of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. Near him lie Kynaston and Wycherley, Susanna Centlivre, Wilks, Macklin, and other once vivacious stage celebrities of later times.
I have already had to notice, and shall have to do so again, the despotic power exercised by the Lord Chamberlain over theatrical affairs. One of the most remarkable instances presents itself this year, in connection with the Opera House, indeed, but still illustrative of my subject. John Hughes, who will subsequently appear as a dramatic author, of purer pretensions, had written the words for the composer of "Calypso and Telemachus." A crowd of the "quality," connoisseurs and amateurs, had attended the rehearsal, with which they were so satisfied that a subscription was formed to support the performance of the opera. This aroused the jealousy of the Italian company then in London, who appealed for protection to the Duke of Shrewsbury, the then Chamberlain.
This Duke was the Charles Talbot, in whose house it had been decided that William of Orange should be invited to England, and who, corresponding with James after William was on the throne, had been discovered, and forgiven. He had been loved, it is said, by Queen Mary and the Duchess of Marlborough; but this able, gentle, wayward, and one-eyed statesman, was at this present time the husband of an Italian lady, and on this fact, albeit she was not a dulcis uxor, the Italian singers founded their hopes. As the lady's brother was hanged at Tyburn, half a dozen years later, for murdering his servant, Shrewsbury had no great cause, ultimately, to be proud of the connexion. Nevertheless, it served the purpose of the foreign vocalists, it would seem, as the Chamberlain protected their interests, and issued an order for the suppression of the subscription, adding, that the doors must be opened at the lowest playhouse prices, or not at all. Even under this discouragement the opera was played with success, and was subsequently revived, with good effect, at Lincoln's Inn Fields.
Romantic drama, light, bustling comedy, with less vice and not much less wit than of old, and the severest classical tragedy, challenged the favour of the town in the Drury Lane season of 1712-13. Severe tragedy won the wreath from its competitors.
First on the list was fat Charles Johnson, who was even a more frequent lounger at Button's than Ambrose Philips, and who had a play ready for representation every year and a half. It is a curious fact, that his "Successful Pirate," a sort of melodrama, in five acts, the scene in Madagascar, and the action made up of fighting and wooing, aroused the ire of the virtuous Dennis. This censor wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, complaining that in such a piece as the above the stage was prostituted, villainy encouraged, and the theatre disgraced; that same theatre where, a few nights previously, had been acted the "Old Batchelor," and the "Committee," which some people, like Sir Roger, considered a "good Church of England comedy." The piece, however, made no impression; nor was much greater effected by that learned proctor, Taverner's "French Advocates,"[97] nor by the farcical "Humours of the Army," which the ex-soldier Charles Shadwell had partly constructed out of his own military reminiscences, as he sat at his desk in the Revenue Office at Dublin.
Equally indifferent were the public to a comedy called the "Wife of Bath," written by a young man who had been a mercer's apprentice in the Strand, and who was now house-steward and man of business to the widowed Duchess of Monmouth at her residence, no longer in the mansion on the south side of Soho Square, about to be turned into auction rooms, but in fresh, pure, rustic, Hedge Lane, which now, as Whitcombe Street, lacks all freshness, purity, and rusticity. The young man's name was Gay; but it was not on this occasion that he was to make it famous.