It is needless to add that Garrick excelled in comedy as well as tragedy, and in the lowest comedy too—in Abel Drugger as well as Hamlet. He was first at Goodman's Fields; then appeared both at Covent Garden and Drury Lane; but in a short time settled for life at Drury Lane as actor, manager, and author. He was a sprightly dramatist, a man of wit, and no doubt a generous man, though the endless matters of business in which he was concerned, and the refusals of all kinds which he must have been often forced into, got him, with many, a character for the reverse. Johnson, who did not spare him, pronounced him generous. Fine as his tragedy must have been, we suspect his comedy must have been finer; because his own nature was one of greater sprightliness than sentiment. We hear nothing serious of him throughout his life; and his face, with a great deal of acuteness, has nothing in it profound or romantic.
Garrick has the reputation of improving the stage costume: but it was Macklin that did it. The late Mr. West, who was the first (in his picture of the "Death of Wolfe") to omit the absurdity of putting a piece of armour instead of a waistcoat upon a general officer, told us, that he himself once asked Garrick why he did not reform the stage in that particular. Garrick said the spectators would not allow it; "they would throw a bottle at his head." Macklin, however, persevered, and the thing was done. The other, with all his nature, seems to have had a hankering after the old dresses. He had first triumphed in them, and they suited his propensity to the airy and popular. Garrick had a particular dislike to appearing in the Roman costume. Probably in this there was a consciousness of his small person. There are many engravings of him extant, in which his tragic characters are seen in coats and toupees. His appearance as Hotspur, in a laced frock and Ramillie wig, was objected to, not as being unsuitable to the time, but as "too insignificant for the character."[268]
Of Barry, the most celebrated antagonist of Garrick, we shall speak at Covent Garden. King, according to Churchill, by the force of natural impudence as well as genius, excelled in "Brass;" and Churchill's opinions are worth attending to, though he expresses them with vehemence, and by wholesale. Gentleman Smith explains his character by his title. We should entertain a very high opinion of Mrs. Pritchard, even had she left us nothing but the face in her portraits. She seems to have been a really great genius, equally capable of the highest and lowest parts. The fault objected to her was, that her figure was not genteel; and we can imagine this well enough in an actress who could pass from Lady Macbeth to Doll Common. She seems to have thrown herself into the arms of sincerity and passion, not, perhaps, the most refined, but as tragic and comic as need be. As Churchill says,
"Before such merits all objections fly,
Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick six feet high."
Clive was an admirable comic actress, of the wilful and fantastic order, and a wit and virago in private life. She became the neighbour and intimate of Horace Walpole, and always seems to us to have been the man of the two. Mrs. Woffington was an actress of all work, but of greater talents than the phrase generally implies. Davies says she was the handsomest woman that ever appeared on the stage, and that Garrick was at one time in doubt whether he should not marry her. She was famous for performing in male attire, and openly preferred the conversation of men to women—the latter she said, talking of "nothing but silks and scandal." She was the only woman admitted into one of the beef-steak clubs, and is said to have been president of it. These humours, perhaps, though Davies praises her for feminine manners, as contrasted with her antagonist Mrs. Clive, frightened Garrick out of his matrimony.
We now pass at once to Covent Garden Theatre, which lies close by. Many old play-goers who are in the habit of associating the two theatres in their fancy, like twins, will be surprised to hear that the Covent Garden establishment is very young, compared with her sister, being little more than a hundred years old. It was first built by Rich, the harlequin, and opened in 1733 under the patent granted to the Duke's company. The Covent Garden company may therefore be considered as the representatives of the old companies of Davenant and Betterton; while those at Drury Lane are the successors of Killigrew, and more emphatically the King's actors. Indeed, they exclusively designate themselves as "his Majesty's servants;" and, we believe, claim some privileges on that account. Covent Garden theatre was partly rebuilt in 1772, and wholly so in 1809, having undergone the usual death by conflagration. The new edifice was a structure in classical taste, by Mr. Smirke, the portico being a copy from the Parthenon of Athens.[269]
Actors have seldom been confined to any one house; and those whom we are about to mention performed at Drury Lane as well as Covent Garden; but as they were rivals or opponents of Garrick, and may be supposed to have made the greatest efforts when they acted on a different stage, we shall speak of them apart under the present head. The first of them is Barry, who at one time almost divided the favour of of the town with Garrick, and in some characters is said to have excelled him, especially in love parts. How far this was owing to superiority of figure, and to a reputation for gallantry, it is impossible to say; and never were judgments more discordant than those which have been left us on the subject of Barry's merits. For instance, his character is thus summed up by Davies:—
"Of all the tragic actors who have trod the English stage for these last fifty years, Mr. Barry was unquestionably the most pleasing. Since Booth and Wilks, no actor had shown the public a just idea of the hero or the lover; Barry gave dignity to the one and passion to the other: in his person he was tall without awkwardness; in his countenance, handsome without effeminacy; in his uttering of passion, the language of nature alone was communicated to the feelings of an audience."