Mrs. Oldfield received fresh cause for nervousness, had she been of a timid temperament, when, some years later, during the season of 1717-18, Cibber's political play of "The Non-Juror" was brought out. The comedy was a blow aimed at the Jacobites and the Pretender, who had met with such disastrous treatment in the rebellion of 1715, and was a skilfully-wrought laudation of the Hanoverian dynasty.[A]
[Footnote A: The piece was published and dedicated to George I., who acknowledged his sense of the honour by paying to Cibber the sum of two hundred guineas. That the good old prejudice against the stage was still in full force, despite the march of liberal ideas, is clearly shown in the author's address to the King: "Your comedians, Sir, are an unhappy society, whom some severe heads think wholly useless, and others, dangerous to the young and innocent. This comedy is, therefore, an attempt to remove that prejudice, and to show what honest and laudable uses may be made of the theatre, when its performances keep close to the true purposes of its institution." Cibber also referred to himself as "the lowest of your subjects from the theatre," and thus mirrored the servility of the golden Georgian era.]
"About this time," writes Cibber, telling of the play's presentation, "Jacobitism had lately exerted itself by the most unprovoked rebellion that our histories have handed down to us since the Norman Conquest; I therefore thought that to set the authors and principles of that desperate folly in a fair light, by allowing the mistaken consciences of some their best excuse, and by making the artful Pretenders to Conscience as ridiculous as they were ungratefully wicked, was a subject fit for the honest satire of comedy, and what might, if it succeeded, do honour to the stage by showing the valuable use of it. And considering what numbers at that time might come to it as prejudiced spectators, it may be allow'd that the undertaking was not less hazardous than laudable."
And hazardous the project certainly seemed; for, while the uprising in the interests of the Pretender had been ostensibly crushed, the spirit of "divine right" was as strong as ever; there were many worthy gentlemen who drank secret bumpers to the King—"over the water"—and the Hanoverian throne had as yet a precarious lodgment on English soil. It was expected, therefore, that these malcontents would have anything but an appetite for the theatrical feast set before them in the shape of the "Non-Juror," and would prove none the less disgusted because the play happened to be an adaptation of Molière's "Tartuffe." As the latter comedy depicts a self-indulgent, crawling hypocrite of the worst type, and is an eloquent sermon against sham, it may be imagined that the Jacobites were not over enthusiastic when they learned that the moral of "Tartuffe" was to be applied to them.[A]
[Footnote A: Tartuffe, according to French tradition, is a caricature of the famous Père la Chaise (Confessor to Louis Quatorze), who had a weakness for the pleasures of the table, including truffles (tartuffes). After Cibber's day, Molière's play was again adapted into English, under the title of "The Hypocrite.">[
"Upon the hypocrisy of the French character," explains Cibber (who probably looked upon France, Papacy, and the Pretender as a threefold combination of sin), "I engrafted a stronger wickedness, that of an English Popish priest lurking under the doctrine of our own Church to raise his fortune upon the ruin of a worthy gentleman, whom his dissembled sanctity had seduc'd into the treasonable cause of a Roman Catholick outlaw. How this design, in the play, was executed, I refer to the readers of it; it cannot be mended by any critical remarks I can make in its favour. Let it speak for itself."
The "Non-juror" did speak for itself, too, and that in decided terms.[A] The production entailed the scorn of the disaffected, and made for Cibber some lasting enemies, but the friends of government were strong, Cibber was lauded for his loyalty, and the comedy achieved a triumph. The vivacity of Oldfield's acting, as Maria, delighted all beholders, and it was further agreed that the performance was well given throughout. In the cast were Booth, Mills, Wilks, Cibber, Mrs. Porter, Mrs. Oldfield, and Walker. The Walker here mentioned was at that time a very young man, not over seventeen or eighteen years of age, and made his first hit in the "Non-juror." When the "Beggars' Opera" was subsequently brought out, the mighty Quin refused to play the highwayman, Macheath, and Walker willingly took the part and made therein the reputation of his life. But success turned his unsteady head. "He follow'd Bacchus too ardently, insomuch that his credit was often drown'd upon the stage, and, by degrees, almost render'd him useless." Ungrammatical, but to the point, Mr. Chetwood.
[Footnote A: The success surpassed even expectation. It raised against Cibber a phalanx of implacable foes—foes who howled at everything of which he was afterwards the author; but it gained for him his advancement to the poet-laureateship, and an estimation which caused some people to place him, for usefulness to the cause of true religion, on an equality with the author of "The Whole Duty of Man."—DR. DORAN.]
This Walker was a genius in a small fashion. He possessed an expressive face and manly figure, with a native buoyancy and humour which stood him in good stead in the character of Macheath, while he had the further gift of dominating a tragic scene with an assumption of tyrannic fire which must have been greatly admired by the theatre-goers of his time. He could not sing, to be sure, when he graced the "Beggars' Opera," but the audiences took the will for the deed, applauded his gaiety of action, and quickly pardoned his lyric short-comings. We are equally lenient nowadays to many a comic-opera comedian, so called. Chetwood tells us that Walker was the supposed author of two pieces, "The Quakers' Opera," and a tragedy styled "The Fate of Villainy." The latter, it appears, "he brought to Ireland in the year 1744, and prevailed on the proprietors (of the Dublin theatre) to act it, under the title of 'Love and Loyalty.' The second night was given out for his benefit; but not being able to pay in half the charge of the common expences, the doors were order'd to be kept shut."
"But, I remember," laconically adds Chetwood, "few people came to ask the reason. However, I fear this disappointment hasten'd his death; for he survived it but three days; dying in the 44th year of his age, a martyr to what often stole from him a good understanding."