That lifts up hoof to show the pranks
Taught by magician styled Banks;
And ape led captive still in chain
Till he renounce the Pope and Spain;
All these on hoof now trudge from town
To cheat poor turnip-eating clown.’
About the middle of the seventeenth century, some of these wandering performers began to locate themselves permanently in the metropolis. Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, was scarcely less famous as an acrobat, being clever and alert in somersaults and flip-flaps, performing the former over naked rapiers and men’s heads, and through hoops. He is mentioned by contemporary memoir writers as the first lover of Nell Gwynne, who appears, however, in a short time to have transferred her favours to Harte, the actor. In 1683, one Sadler opened the music-house at Islington which, from the circumstance of a mineral spring being discovered on the spot, became known by the name of Sadler’s Wells, which it has retained to this day. It was not until after Sadler’s death, however, that rope-dancing and acrobats’ performances were added to the musical entertainments which, with the water, were the sole attraction of the place in its earliest days. The change was made by Francis Forcer, whose son was for several years the principal performer there. Forcer sold the establishment to Rosamond, the builder of Rosamond’s Row, Clerkenwell, who contrived, by judicious management, to amass a considerable fortune.
Of the nature of the amusements in Forcer’s time we have a curious account in a communication made to the European Magazine by a gentleman who received it from Macklin, the actor, whom he met at Sadler’s Wells towards the close of his life. ‘Sir,’ said the veteran comedian, ‘I remember the time when the price of admission here was threepence, except a few places scuttled off at the sides of the stage at sixpence, and which were usually reserved for people of fashion, who occasionally came to see the fun. Here we smoked and drank porter and rum-and-water as much as we could pay for, and every man had his doxy that liked; and, although we had a mixture of very odd company,—for I believe it was a good deal the baiting-place of thieves and highwaymen,—there was little or no rioting.’
During the period between Rosamond’s management and the conversion of the place into a theatre for dramas of the kind for which the Adelphi and the Coburg became famous at a later day, the entertainments at Sadler’s Wells consisted of pantomimes and musical interludes. In Forcer’s time, according to the account said to have been given by Macklin, they consisted of ‘hornpipes and ballad singing, with a kind of pantomime-ballet, and some lofty tumbling; and all done by daylight, with four or five exhibitions every day. The proprietors had always a fellow on the outside of the booth to calculate how many people were collected for a second exhibition; and when he thought there were enough, he came to the back of the upper seats, and cried out, “Is Hiram Fisteman here?” That was the cant word agreed upon between the parties to know the state of the people without: upon which they concluded the entertainment with a song, dismissed the audience, and prepared for a second representation.’
Joseph Clark, the posturer, was one of the wonders of London during the reigns of James II. and William III., obtaining mention even in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society, as having ‘such an absolute command of all his muscles and joints that he could disjoint almost his whole body.’ His exhibitions do not seem, however, to have been of a pleasing character, consisting chiefly in the imitation of every kind of human deformity. He could produce at will, and in a moment, without padding, the semblance of a Quasimodo or a Tichborne Claimant, his ‘fair round belly, with good capon lined,’ shift his temporary hump from one side to the other, project either hip, and twist his limbs into every conceivable complication. He could change his form so much as to defy a tailor to measure him, and imposed so completely on Molins, a famous surgeon of that time, as to be regarded by him as an incurable cripple. His portrait in Tempest’s collection shows him shouldering his leg, an antic which is imitated by a monkey.