"The house was crowded from the opening of the doors, and the curtain rose amidst the most dreadful of all awful silence, the stillness of a multitude. The Jew enters in the third scene, and from that point, to the famous scene with Tubal, all passed off with considerable applause. Here, however, and in the trial scene, the actor was triumphant, and in the applause of a thousand voices the curtain dropped. The play was repeated for nineteen successive nights with increased success. On the third night of representation all eyes were directed to the stage-box, where sat a little deformed man; and whilst others watched his gestures, as if to learn his opinion of the performers, he was gazing intently upon Shylock, and as the actor panted, in broken accents of rage, and sorrow, and avarice—'Go, Tubal, fee me an officer, bespeak him a fortnight before: I will have the heart of him, if he forfeit; for were he out of Venice, I can make what merchandise I will: go, Tubal, and meet me at our synagogue; go, good Tubal; at our synagogue, Tubal.'—the little man was seen to rise, and leaning from the box, as Macklin passed it, he whispered,—
'This is the Jew,
That Shakspeare drew.'
The speaker was Alexander Pope, and, in that age, from his judgment in criticism there was no appeal."
No reference to cotemporary testimony is given by these historians.
Galt, in his Lives of the Players, Lond. 1831, does not notice the story.
Pope was at Bath on the 4th of February, 1741, as appears from his letter to Warburton of that date; but as he mentions his intention to return to London, he may have been there on the 14th. That he was not in the pit we may be confident; that he was in the boxes is unlikely. His health was declining in 1739. In his letter to Swift, quoted in Croly's edition, vol. i. p. lxxx., he says:
"Having nothing to tell you of my poetry, I come to what is now my chief care, my health and amusement; the first is better as to headaches, worse as to weakness and nerves. The changes of weather affect me much; the mornings are my life, in the evenings I am not dead indeed, but sleepy and stupid enough. I love reading still better than conversation, but my eyes fail, and the hours when most people indulge in company, I am tired, and find the labour of the past day sufficient to weigh me down; so I hide myself in bed, as a bird in the nest, much about the same time, and rise and chirp in the morning."
I hope I have said enough to stop the farther growth of this story; but before laying down my pen, I wish to call attention to the practice of giving anecdotes without authorities. This is encouraged by the newspapers devoting a column to "varieties," which are often amusing, but oftener stale. A paragraph is now commencing the round, telling how a lady took a linendraper to a barber's, and on pretence of his being a mad relative, had his head shaved, while she absconded with his goods. It is a bad version of an excellent scene in Foote's Cozeners.
H. B. C.
Garrick Club.