While each commands applause, and each your tears.
Then own this truth—well he performs his part
Who touches—even Garrick to the heart."
Drury Lane, in 1756-57, offers little for remark. Miss Pritchard appeared in Juliet—only to show that talent is not hereditary; and Garrick ventured King Lear, with a little less of Tate, and a little more of Shakspeare; he was as resolute, however, against introducing the Fool as he was with respect to the Gravediggers in Hamlet. On the other hand, he acted Don Felix. Gracefully as Garrick played the part, Walpole said "he was a monkey to Lord Henry Fitzgerald" (who played this character admirably in private). The Violante of Miss Macklin was acted with astonishing effect. When Garrick was weary, his parts were "doubled" by handsome Holland, the son of the Chiswick baker, and destined to carry grief to the honest heart of Miss Pope. The dramatic poets raised no new echoes in Drury this season—some farces excepted. One of these was the "Reprisal," by Smollet, who showed that if he could not write a good tragedy at nine-and-twenty, he could dash off a lively farce at seven-and-thirty. With this farce the ablest of novelists and harshest of critics closed his theatrical career. The second farce was Foote's "Author," in which he and Mrs. Clive acted Mr. and Mrs. Cadwallader, and the former exultingly held up to ridicule one of his most intimate friends, Mr. Apreece, taking care to have him among the audience on the first night!
At the other house, Barry failed in Richard III.; but the treasury recovered itself by the production, in March, of "Douglas," in which Barry, six feet high, and in a suit of white puckered satin, played Norval to the Lady Randolph of Mrs. Woffington. The originals of those parts, when the piece was first played in Edinburgh, in the previous December, were Digges and Mrs. Ward. This piece was the glory of the Scottish stage, and a scandal to great part of the community. Before the curtain rises let me say a few words on the growth of that stage.
There have been stringent rules in Scotland with regard to the theatre, but they have been accompanied by much general toleration. The Regent Murray cheerfully witnessed the performance of a drama; and the General Assembly, in 1574,[65] though they prohibited all dramas founded on Scripture, permitted the representation of "profane plays." The licensers were the Kirk Session, before which body the piece was first read; and if license was accorded for its being acted, stipulation was made that nothing should be added to the text which had been read, and that "nae swearing, banning, nor nae scurrility shall be spoken, whilk would be a scandal to our religion and for an evil example to others."
When, however, James VI. manifested a wish to see the English company which arrived in Edinburgh in 1599, by granting it a license to act, the General Kirk Session of the city denounced all players and their patrons—the former as unruly and immodest, the latter as irreligious and indiscreet. This opposition led to a conference between the Session and the angry King, at which the former were obliged to withdraw their denunciations, which had been made from all the pulpits; and they authorised all men "to repair to the said comedies and plays without any pain, reproach, censure, or slander, to be incurred by them." Individual ministers were sorely discontent with such proceedings of the Session; and this feeling increased, when a play, "Marciano, or the Discovery," was acted in 1662, "with great applause, before His Majesty's High Commissioner, and others of the nobility, at the Abbey of Holyrood House, on St. John's night." In the preface of this very play, the drama in Scotland was likened to a "drunken swaggerer in a country church!"
It does not appear that any regular theatre existed in Edinburgh previous to 1679, when the brothers Fountain held from Charles II. the patent of "Masters of the Revels, within the Kingdom of Scotland."[66] The Fountains not only erected a playhouse, but they subsequently sought to suppress all balls and entertainments held in the dancing-masters' schools, as discouraging to the playhouse, which "the petitioners had been at great charge in erecting." Accordingly, such balls, unless duly licensed, were suppressed. As Mr. Robert Chambers remarks in his Domestic Annals of Scotland, "It sounds strange to hear of a dancing-master's ball in our city, little more than a month after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and while a thousand poor men were lodging on the cold ground in the Greyfriars' Churchyard!"
There was no regular theatrical season,—players came and went according to the chances of profit afforded by the presence of great personages in the capital. In 1681, the Duke and Duchess of York were sojourning there; and just at that time, thirty joyous-looking folk were being detained by the Customs' authorities at Irvine, in Ayrshire, where they had landed, and where they were in difficulty, on questions of duties on the gold and silver lace of their wardrobe. Laced clothes were then highly taxed; but, said the gay fellows, who, in truth, were actors, with actresses from the theatre in Orange Street, Dublin, "these clothes, mounted with gold and silver lace, are not for our wear, but are necessary in our vocation, and are, therefore, exempt." They had to petition the Privy Council, which body, submitting to the plea of the actors, that "trumpeters and stage-players" were exempted from the Act, sent a certificate to the tax-collector at Irvine, to let them pass free, and come up and act "Agrippa, King of Alba, or the False Tiberinus," and other dramas, before all lieges in Edinburgh, who were inclined to listen to them.
This incident reminds me of an anecdote of Talma, which was communicated to me by a French actor. Talma was stopped, like the Irish players at Irvine, at the Custom-house on the Belgian frontier, as he was on his way to fulfil an engagement at Brussels. His theatrical costumes were undergoing examination, when an official irreverently spoke of them as "Habits de Polichinelle." The tragic actor was offended. "Habits de Polichinelle!" said he, "they are of the utmost value. That lace is worth fifty francs a yard, and I wear it constantly in private." "And must therefore pay for it," said the sharp Belgian official; "Punch's clothes might pass untaxed, but Mr. Talma's laced coats owe a duty to the King," which he was forced to acquit.