Thus Nance played on, sometimes in comedy, and again in tragedy, when, despite her customary objections, the pages had to drag her train about. It was a train that swept all before it.
The speaking of trains and pages suggests the fact that in old times the heroes and heroines of tragedy always wore, either in peculiarity of dress or pomp of surroundings, the badge of greatness. Nowadays a few bars of romantic music, to usher these characters on the stage, will suffice. But things were different then; our ancestors insisted that the aforesaid dramatis personnae should be labelled, frilled and furbelowed.
Addison has an interesting essay on the subject.[A]
[Footnote A: Spectator, No. 42.]
"But among all our tragic artifices," he says, "I am the most offended at those which are made use of to inspire us with magnificent ideas of the persons that speak. The ordinary method of making an hero, is to clap a huge plume of feathers upon his head which rises so very high, that there is often a greater length from his chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his foot. One would believe that we thought a great man and a tall man the same thing. This very much embarrasses the actor, who is forced to hold his neck extremely stiff and steady all the while he speaks; and notwithstanding any anxieties which he pretends for his mistress, his country, or his friends, one may see by his action, that his greatest care and concern is to keep the plume of feathers from falling off his head. For my own part, when I see a man uttering his complaints under such a mountain of feathers, I am apt to look upon him rather as an unfortunate lunatic, than a distressed hero.
"As these superfluous ornaments upon the head make a great man, a princess generally receives her grandeur from those additional encumbrances that fall into her tail; I mean the broad sweeping train that follows her in all her motions, and finds constant employment for a boy who stands behind her to open and spread it to advantage. I do not know how others are affected at this sight, but I must confess my eyes are wholly taken up with the page's part; and, as for the queen, I am not so attentive to any thing she speaks, as to the right adjusting of her train, lest it should chance to trip up her heels, or incommode her, as she walks to and fro upon the stage. It is, in my opinion, a very odd spectacle to see a queen venting her passion in a disordered motion, and a little boy taking care all the while that they do not ruffle the tail of her gown. The parts that the two persons act on the stage at the same time are very different. The princess is afraid lest she should incur the displeasure of the king her father, or lose the hero, her lover, whilst her attendant is only concerned lest she should entangle her feet in her petticoat."
In a succeeding paragraph the reader finds that a cherished nineteenth-century custom—the representing of a vast army by the employment of half-a-dozen ill-fed, unpainted supers—has at least the sanction of age: "Another mechanical method of making great men, and adding dignity to kings and queens, is to accompany them with halberts and battle-axes. Two or three shifters of scenes, with the two candle-snuffers, make up a complete body of guards upon the English stage; and by the addition of a few porters dressed in red coats, can represent above a dozen legions. I have sometimes seen a couple of armies drawn up together upon the stage, when the poet has been disposed to do honour to his generals. It is impossible for the reader's imagination to multiply twenty men into such prodigious multitudes, or to fancy that two or three hundred thousand soldiers are fighting in a room of forty or fifty yards in compass. Incidents of such a nature should be told, not represented."
Addison remarks that "the tailor and painter often contribute to the success of a tragedy more than the poet," a trite saying which holds good now, and he ends his essay with the belief that "a good poet will give the reader a more lively idea of an army or a battle in a description, than if he actually saw them drawn up in squadrons and battalions, or engaged in the confusion of a fight. Our minds should be open to great conceptions, and inflamed with glorious sentiments by what the actor speaks, more than by what he appears. Can all the trappings or equipage of a king or hero give Brutus half the pomp and majesty which he receives from a few lines in Shakespeare?" Which is all very true, yet "the tailor and painter" will continue popular, no doubt, until the crack of doom.
The month of December 1714 saw the reopening of the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, under letters patent originally granted by Charles II. to Christopher Rich, and restored by his broken-English Majesty George I. The renewal created a dangerous rival to Drury Lane, but it is not probable that the king worried over having planted such a thorn in the sides of Messrs. Steele, Booth, Wilks, and Cibber[A]. He remembered, he told Mr. Craggs, "when he had been in England before, in King Charles his time, there had been two theatres in London; and as the patent seemed to be a lawful grant, he saw no reason why two playhouses might not be continued."
[Footnote A: On the death of Queen Anne the old licence or patent of Drury Lane lapsed, and when the new one was issued Steele was named therein as a partner.] Several useful players left Drury Lane to go over into Lincoln's Inn Fields,[A] chief among them being Mrs. Rogers, who felt greatly relieved in transferring her affectations of virtue to a house where she would no longer be overshadowed by the genius of Oldfield. As for Nance, she was faithful to the old theatre, and continued to be the fairest though perhaps the frailest of its pillars, notwithstanding the personal charms of Mrs. Horton. The latter was a strolling player recently admitted to the sacred precincts of Drury. She had been in the habit of "ranting tragedy in barns and country towns, and playing Cupid in a booth, at suburban fairs. The attention of managers was directed towards her; and Booth, after seeing her act in Southwark, engaged her for Drury Lane, where her presence was more agreeable to the public than particularly pleasant to dear Mrs. Oldfield."[B]