It is due to the audiences at Oxford, where the actors played in their brief season twice a day, that it should be said, that the taste of the University was superior to that of the metropolis. Whatever modern dramatists might assert with respect to Shakspeare, and however the "more politely written comedies" might be acceptable to a licentious London pit, Oxford asserted the superiority of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, "for whose masterly scenes," says Cibber, "they seemed to have as implicit a reverence as, formerly, for the ethics of Aristotle." The flash, and tinsel, and even the sterling metal mixed up with the dross of the modern illustrative comedy, had no attractions for an Oxford audience. Of modern tragedy they only welcomed "Cato;" but that was written by an Oxford man, and after the classic model, and to see this, the play goers clustered round the doors at noon, and the death of Cato triumphed over the injuries of Cæsar everywhere.
On the taste of English audiences generally, Dryden remarks, in his Essay on Dramatic Poesy, that, "as we who are a more sullen people come to be diverted at our plays, so the French, who are of an airy and gay temper, come hither to make themselves more serious. And this I conceive to be why comedies are more pleasing to us and tragedies to them." This appears to me as false as his assertion that rhymed plays were in their nature and fashion peculiarly English! A few years later the "polite taste" of audiences was censured freely by Edmund Curll, who was very irate that "nothing would go down but ballad-opera and Mr. Lun's buffoonery;" but this taste was attributed by him to an imperfect education. "As for breeding," that delicate gentleman remarks, "our brewers are now arrived at such a height of finesse and elegance, that their children are sent into France for education. But for this, as a lord mayor himself said, there ought to be some grains of allowance."
Cibber relates an incident illustrative of the ferocity of enamoured and rejected beaux among the audience. One of these, in the year 1717, had incurred the strongly-expressed contempt of a young actress, whom Colley does not further designate, for some insulting language addressed to her as she was seated in a box. This fellow took his revenge by outraging the lady, on the stage, and, when she appeared, he interrupted her performance "with such loud and various notes of mockery, as other young Men of honour in the same place have sometimes made themselves undauntedly merry with." This disappointed beau, however, went further, and threw at the lady "such trash as no person can be supposed to carry about him, unless to use on so particular an occasion." A champion of the insulted actress called her assailant "a fool, or a bully," whereupon the latter challenged him to Hyde Park, and proved himself craven to boot, by asking for his life. "Whether he mended it or not," says Cibber, "I have not yet heard; but his antagonist, a few years after, died in one of the principal posts of the Government."
The critics were not more tender to a new play, particularly when provoked by sarcasms against their judgment in the prologue, than the above offender was to a well-conducted actress. "They come to a new play," Cibber tells us, "like hounds to a carcase, and are all in a full cry, sometimes for an hour together, before the curtain rises to throw it amongst them. Sure, those gentlemen cannot but allow that a play, condemned after a fair hearing, falls with thrice the ignominy, as when it is refused that common justice." This was a new race of critics, unknown to earlier times, and their savageness had the effect of deterring gentlemen from writing plays. "They seem to me," says Colley, "like the lion whelps in the Tower, who are so boisterously gamesome at their meals that they dash down the bowls of milk brought for their own breakfasts."
We meet with one instance of forbearance being asked from the critics, not on the ground that the piece had merit, but that, as a prince of the blood was in the house, he should be allowed to listen to the nonsense undisturbed. The piece was Cibber's pastoral opera, "Love's Riddle," produced at Drury Lane, in January 1729. The public were offended at the recent prohibition of the second part of the "Beggar's Opera," Cibber was looked upon as having procured the prohibition for the sake of his own piece, and a cabal of pit rioters hooted the play, and were only momentarily silent while Miss Raftor was singing, whose voice had well nigh saved this operatic drama. On the second night, which was even more riotous than the first, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was present, and it was in order that he might be decently bored, and not deprived of what he had never seen, the fun of a playhouse riot, that Cibber addressed the pit, and undertook that the piece should be withdrawn after that night, if they would only remember in whose presence they were, and allow the drama to be quietly played out. With this understanding the rioters withdrew, the piece went dully on, and, at the close of it, a lord in waiting was sent behind the scenes to compliment Cibber and to express the Prince's approval of his conduct on that night.
The pit was always the great court of appeal, and on one occasion Cibber showed much courage and good sense, and a due appreciation of his calling as an actor. At the theatre in Dorset Gardens, where the Drury Lane Company occasionally played, and on an evening when he was announced for one of his best parts, a set of rope-dancers were advertised as about to make their first appearance. Cibber's scorn was roused by this companionship, and what he did may be best told in his own words. "I was hardy enough," he says, "to go into the pit, and acquainted the spectators near me that I hoped they would not think it a mark of my disrespect to them if I declined acting upon any stage that was brought to so low a disgrace as ours was like to be by that day's entertainment." In this he had the support of his fellow-actors, and the public approved; and the acrobats were dismissed by the reluctant manager.
The pit was at this period supreme and severe, and as the witlings used to make remarks on, or exchange them with, the more audacious beauties in the boxes, so now did they exercise a cruel humour in making sarcastic application of the words of a part to the actress who delivered them. By these they pointed out the flaws in her character, her deficiency in beauty, or her effrontery in assuming virtues which did not belong to her.
I do not find that any special evening was considered particularly "fashionable" till towards the close of Cibber's managerial career at Drury Lane, which, by good administration, had become so much in fashion, he says, "with the politer part of the town, that our house, every Saturday, seemed to be the appointed assembly of the first ladies of quality. Of this, too," he adds, "the common spectators were so well apprised, that, for twenty years successively on that day, we scarcely ever failed of a crowded audience, for which occasion we particularly reserved our best plays, acted in the best manner we could give them."
From the Restoration till late in the reign of Queen Anne, those "politer" folks, as Cibber,—or the "quality," as Chesterfield would have called them, had been accustomed to arrogate to themselves the privilege not merely of going behind the scenes but crowding at the wings, and, at last, invading the stage itself, while the play was being acted. Through this mob the players had to elbow their way; and where all illusion was destroyed, difficult must have been the task, but marvellous the triumph, of those actors who could make grief appear sincere, and humour seem spontaneous and genuine. This mob was not a civil and attentive crowd, but a collection of impertinent persons, who buzzed and moved about, and changed salutations with the audience, or addressed the players—the chief of whom they must often have supremely exasperated. The "decency of a clear stage" was one of Cibber's great objects, and when his importunity and the decree of Queen Anne drove the erratic part of the audience back to their proper position in the house, a change for the better was effected, by which all parties were gainers. This decree was issued in January 1704, and it prohibited "the appearance of any of the public on the stage whatever might be their quality, the wearing of masks in any part of the house, entering the house without previous due payment, and the acting of anything on the stage contrary to religion and good manners." Previously to the appearance of this decree, persons were employed to take down profane words uttered by the performers, who were thereupon prosecuted, and, on conviction, fined. The authors who penned the phrases, for omitting which the actor would have been mulcted, were neither molested nor censured.