’Tis a strange truth but the piece made a kind of artlessness the fashion, doubtless aided by Polly’s kind simple looks, and for awhile—awhile only, ladies tried to drop the modish jargon that Mr. Congreve and Captain Farquhar had made fashionable in their wicked comedies and to look up innocently and protest a taste in primroses, syllabubs and other country delights. ’Tis hard to unravel, but so ’twas. Indeed Mr. Pope himself composed a madrigal—
“My Polly as a primrose fair,”
set to the air of “Haycock of June,” and had Dr. Swift not laughed him out of countenance it had been gave to the town.
The playhouse was beset by fine gentlemen shouldering for a word with the beauty, and Mr. Rich, divided between fear of offending them and terror of losing his Polly, became a perfect Cerberus, and would bark furiously when so much as a harmless haberdasher left a posy for the goddess. ’Twas remarkable how this gentleman, known for his own easy living and morals, might, so far as Diana knew, have been a bishop for the austere regard in which he held her personally and the manner in which from the first he softened his somewhat gross tongue to her ear. She had a grateful regard for him in return, and ’twas not a negligible element in her triumph that she knew it so valuable to him.
It chanced that, standing at the wings during a performance, he noted the scene where Lucy Lockit in her jealous rage (which Mrs. Bishop played to the life, he thought) presses upon Polly a glass of poisoned wine. Polly, on the alert, drinks not from it but drops it as hastily as she may. Revolving the by-play, Rich, when the house was cleared and he chatting with the ladies, recalled it.
“I know not, Mrs. Fenton and Mrs. Bishop, that ever I saw a scene better played, if so well. It does the two of you infinite credit—I know not which is more true to the passions. But one amendment occurs to me, and if I name it ’tis with diffidence, so well is all now.”
Mrs. Bishop immediately besought his correction and Diana followed suit. She knew, none better, how much she owed to his tutoring.
“How would you have it, Sir?”
“Why thus. At present the audience is held in no suspense. There is no anxiety for Polly. She suspects too soon—she drops the glass, and the attempt might as well not be made for all the effect got from it. Now I hold that no effect but must have its full value on the stage. I would have Polly’s face innocent as a daisy for the moment. She knows—suspects nothing. The audience, knowing, trembles for her.”
“I see your drift. Thus!” says Polly, and instantly her expression changed to what he desired.