"Whether he trains for pleading, or essays
To practice law, or frame some graceful lays."
(Conington's Horace, Ep. I. iii. 23-4, adapted to suit Steele's modification of the original.)
[14] Wilks was Campley. In the Tatler (No. 182), Steele says: "To beseech gracefully, to approach respectfully, to pity, to mourn, to love, are the places wherein Wilks may be said to shine with the utmost beauty!" He had "a singular talent in representing the graces of nature" and "the easy frankness of a gentleman."
[15] Contemporary writers loudly complained of the neglect of ordinary plays at this time, owing to the importation of French tumblers and rope-dancers, performing animals, and Italian singers. "The town ran mad," says Gildon (Comparison between the two Stages), after some of these entertainments. The theatres in Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields tried to outdo each other in every new attempt made by either of them. The "Celebrated Virgin," in a machine, shining in a full zodiac, and "Harlequin and Scaramouch," with plenty of grimaces and table-jumping, were favourite amusements. The cleverest plays would rarely secure a reasonable audience unless they were accompanied by dances, songs, and clowns. Colley Cibber (Apology, chap. x), says that Rich paid "extraordinary prices to singers, dancers, and other exotic performers, which were as constantly deducted out of the sinking salaries of his actors." The majority of the people "could more easily apprehend anything they saw, than the daintiest things that could be said to them." Rich was only prevented bringing an elephant on to the stage by "the jealousy which so formidable a rival had raised in his dancers," and by the bricklayers assuring him that the safety of the building would be imperilled. The complaint that what pleases is "the skill of carpenter, not player," is exactly what we hear continually at the present day.
[16] An Order of the Lord Chamberlain to the Managers of the Haymarket and Drury Lane Theatres, dated 24 Dec., 1709, directed that all agreements with actors, &c., were to be submitted to the Lord Chamberlain; that all players were to be sworn in; that all new plays, &c., were to be re-licensed by the Master of the Revels; and "that from and after the first day of January next no new Representations be brought upon the Stage which are not Necessary to the better performance of Comedy or Opera, such as ladder-dancing, antic postures, &c., without my leave and approbation first had." (Lord Chamberlain's Records, Warrant Book No. 22, end). See Tatler, Nos. 12, 99. The author of a book called The Antient and Modern Stages surveyed (1699), attributed to Dr. James Drake, and written in reply to Collier's Short View, says (p. 99): "As for the dancing, which he calls bold, it may in one sense be allowed him; for it must be granted that he that ventures his neck to dance upon the top of a ladder is a very bold fellow."
[17] Pother.
[18] In a letter written in August, 1710, to her future husband, Mr. E. Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary Pierrepoint says: "People talk of being in love just as widows do of affliction. Mr. Steele has observed in one of his plays, 'the most passionate among them have always calmness enough to drive a hard bargain with the upholders.' I never knew a lover that would not willingly secure his interest as well as his mistress; or, if one must be abandoned, had not the prudence (among all his distractions) to consider that a woman was but a woman, and money was a thing of more real merit than the whole sex put together."
[20] In the first edition this speech reads, "Oh that Harriot! To fold these arms about the waist of that beauteous struggling—and at last yielding fair!" In the Spectator (No. 51), Steele condemned the passage as an offence to delicacy and modesty.