Boz, on his travels, with his strong theatrical taste, was sure to have gone to the little theatre in Tacket Street, now a Salvation Army meeting-house. It is the same building, though much altered and pulled about, as that in which David Garrick made his first appearance on the stage, as Mr. Lyddal, about 150 years ago. I have before me now a number of Ipswich play bills, dated in the year 1838, just after the conclusion of “Pickwick,” and which, most appropriately, seem to record little but Boz’s own work. Pickwick, Oliver, Nickleby, and others, are the Bill of Fare, and it may be conceived that audiences would attend to see their own Great White Horse, and the spinster lady in her curl papers, and Mr. Nupkins, the Mayor, brought on the boards. These old strips of tissue paper have a strange interest; they reflect the old-fashioned theatre and audiences; and the Pickwickian names of the characters, so close after the original appearance, have a greater reality. Here, for instance, is a programme for Mr. Gill’s benefit, on
January 19, 1839, when we had “The Pickwickians at half-price.” This was “a comic drama, in three acts, exhibiting the life and manners of the present day, entitled—
“Pickwick, or the sayings and doings of Sam Weller!”
Adapted expressly for this Theatre from the celebrated Pickwick Papers,
by Boz!“The present drama of Pickwick has been honoured by crowded houses, and greeted by shouts of laughter and reiterated peals of applause upon every representation, and has been acknowledged by the public Press to be the only successful adaptation.
The Illustrations designed and executed by popular Phiz-es.
The new music by Mr. Pindar. The quadrilles under the direction of Mr. Harrison.”
All the characters are given.
“Mr. Pickwick,” founder of the Club, and travelling the counties of Essex and Suffolk in pursuit of knowledge.
“Snodgrass,” a leetle bit of a poet.
“Winkle,” a corresponding member also; and a something of a sportsman.
“Job Trotter,” thin plant o’ ooman natur; something between a servant and a friend to Jingle; a kind of perambulating hydraulic.
“Joe,” a fat boy, addicted to cold pudding and snoring.
“Miss Rachel Wardle,” in love with Jingle or anybody else that will have her.