But he, unmov'd, cried, ——'s blood! we'll stand it all!"
In the theatre itself the opposition to the piece was confined, Cibber says, to "a few smiles of silent contempt. As the satire was chiefly employed on the enemies of the Government, they were not so hardy as to own themselves such, by any higher disapprobation or resentment." They made up for this constrained silence, as above noted, and Mist's Journal, for fifteen years, lost no opportunity of mauling the detested offender. With the editor of that paper, says Cibber, "though I could never persuade my wit to have an open account with him (for, as he had no effects of his own, I did not think myself obliged to answer his bills), notwithstanding, I will be so charitable to his real manes, and to the ashes of his paper, as to mention one particular civility he paid to my memory after he thought he had ingeniously killed me. Soon after the 'Nonjuror' had received the favour of the town, I read in one of his journals the following short paragraph:—'Yesterday died Mr. Colley Cibber, late comedian of the Theatre Royal, notorious for writing the Nonjuror.' The compliment, in the latter part, I confess," adds Cibber, "I did not dislike, because it came from so impartial a judge."
The stage lost this year an excellent actor, Irish Bowen, who, at the age of fifty-two, was slain in duel by young Quin.[104] Hitherto the sword had dealt lightly with actors. In 1692, indeed, Sandford nearly killed Powell, on the stage. On the 13th of October they were acting together, in "Œdipus, King of Thebes," when the former, to whom a real dagger had been delivered by the property-man, instead of a weapon, the blade of which run up, when the point was pressed, into the handle, gave poor Powell a stab three inches deep; the wound was, at first, thought to be mortal, but Powell recovered. Five years later, in July 1697, I find brief mention in the papers of a duel between an actor and an officer. The initials only of the principals are given: "Mr. H., an actor, of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, fought Mr. D., an officer, at Barnes Elms." Whether the former was young Hodgson or young Harris is not now to be determined, nor the grounds of the quarrel. The issue of it was that the player dangerously wounded the soldier; and it is added, that both parties exhibited brilliant courage. Bowen was the original representative of Sir Joshua[105] Wittol ("Old Batchelor"), Jeremy ("Love for Love"), and Foigard ("Beaux' Stratagem").
Quin passed over to Lincoln's Inn Fields in this season of 1717-18, where he played Hotspur, Tamerlane, Morat ("Aurungzebe"), Mark Antony, and created the part of Scipio, in the "Scipio Africanus," written by young Beckingham, the pride of Merchant Tailors' School. Beckingham must also have been the pride of Fleet Street, and especially of the craft of linen-drapers, of which his father was a worthy and well-to-do member. The piece was played on the 18th of February 1718. The author was then but nineteen years of age, and was full of bright promise. A tragedy by one so young, excited the public, and most especially the juvenile public, at Merchant Tailors', where Dr. Smith was head-master. The Doctor and sub-masters held the stage in abhorrence till now, when a brilliant alumnus was likely to shed lustre on the corporation of "Merchant Tailors and Linen Armourers." Now they proclaimed high jubilee, gave the lads a half-holiday on the author's night, and joyfully saw the whole school swarming to the pit of Lincoln's Inn, to uphold the tragedy by this honoured condiscipulus. The masters, in this, acted against their own former precept and example; but they made amends for it by religious zeal, and by expelling all the Jewish pupils from the school! Israel was the scapegoat, and the Christian sense of propriety was gratified. But Quin's Scipio established a taste for theatricals at Merchant Tailors', where classical plays were acted, for some years, as at Westminster. Beckingham's tragedy exhibits a romantic story, or stories, in a classical costume. There is severity enough to gratify rigid tastes, with a little of over-warmth of action on the part of one of three lovers, which shows that the young poet was not unread in the older masters.
But there were worse and better plays than "Scipio" brought out on the same stage this season. Taverner failed in a pendant to his "Artful Husband," the "Artful Wife." Bullock did little for the credit of the stage by his farce of the "Perjuror," and Sir Thomas Moore justly criticised his own tragedy of "Mangora, King of the Timbusians," when he called it a "trifle." It is a very noisy trifle, concerned with love, battle, murder, and worse, between the Spaniards and South American Indians. Rich thought its bustle might carry its absurdities successfully through, and Sir Thomas stimulated the actors, when at rehearsal, by inviting them to supper, at which Leigh, the two Bullocks, Williams, Ogden, Knapp, and Giffard, Mistresses Knight, Bullock, and Kent, made a joyous party, as hilarious as the audience was, whose laughter alone prevented them from hissing down the nonsense of an obscure man who was knighted for some forgotten service—certainly not for any rendered to the Muses.
The piece of this season which had stuff in it to cause it to live to our own times, was Mrs. Centlivre's "Bold Stroke for a Wife." Sprightly Mrs. Centlivre was as fervent a Whig as Cibber, and had written verses enough in praise of Brunswick to entitle her to be Poetess-Laureate, had the Princess Caroline had a voice in the matter, when Rowe died this very year, and Newcastle recommended tipsy Eusden for the office of "birthday fibber." The "Bold Stroke," laughed at and denounced by Wilks, and taken reluctantly in hand by the actors, is a fair specimen of that lighter comedy which borders upon farce, but in which the fun is genuine, and the incidents not so improbable but that they may be accepted, or, by the rapidity of their succession, laughed at and forgotten.
This season, withal, was not successful. It broke the heart of Keen, actor and sharer. In the former capacity, though Savage thought his life worth narrating, he won few laurels,—but his wreath was not entirely leafless. He was loved, too, by his brethren of both houses, whose subscriptions defrayed the expenses of a funeral, at which upwards of two hundred persons walked in deep mourning.[106]
At this time, Drury, with its old, strong company, was patronised by court and town. Plays, acted at Hampton Court, before the King, were repeated in the public theatre. Of the former, I shall speak in a future page. Two new comedies proved, indeed, inferior to Mrs. Centlivre's "Bold Stroke," at the other house. Charles Johnson's "Masquerade," borrowed a little from Shirley, and more from Molière, furnished, in Ombre and Lady Frances Ombre, some ideas, probably, to Cibber, when he placed a similar pair on the stage, in Lord and Lady Townley. A worse piece was more successful,—the rambling comedy, "Chit Chat," by a Mr. Thomas Killigrew, a gentleman who, like his namesake, had a place at court, but not his namesake's wit. The courtiers, with the Duke of Argyle at their head, carried the piece through eleven representations, and enriched the treasury by £1000.
The great effort of the season was made in bringing out "Busiris," a tragedy, by the Rev. Dr. Young, author of Night Thoughts. It was played on March 7, 1719, by Booth, Elrington, Wilks, Mills, Walker and Thurmond, Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Thurmond.
"Busiris" was Young's earliest tragedy. It is written in a stilted and inflated style, and bears all the marks of a juvenile production. The plot of the piece is void of all ingenuity; but there is little that is borrowed in it, save the haughty message sent by Busiris to the Persian Ambassador, which is the same as that returned by the Ethiopian prince to Cambyses, in the third book of Herodotus. Of the phrasing, and indeed of the incidents of this tragedy, Fielding made excellent fun, in his mock tragedy of "Tom Thumb." The sovereigns and courtiers of Egypt gave little trouble to be converted into Arthur and Dollalolla, Noodle, Doodle, the great little prince, and Huncamunca. The travestie is rich and facile; not least so in that passage mimicking the various addresses to the sun, who is bid to rise no more, but hide his face and put the world in mourning, On these, Fielding remarks, that "the author of 'Busiris' is extremely anxious to prevent the sun's blushing at any indecent object; and, therefore, on all such occasions, he addresses himself to the sun, and desires him to keep out of the way." It was dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle, the patron of Eusden, the laureat, "because the late instances he had received of his grace's undeserved and uncommon favour, in an affair of some consequence, foreign to the theatre, had taken from him the privilege of choosing a patron." If this favour consisted in rewarding Young for writing for the court, the favour may have been "undeserved," but it was by no means "uncommon."