The greatest rascal in the company was Goodman—“Scum Goodman,” as he was called—admirable as Alexander and Julius Cæsar. He was a dashing, shameless, impudent rogue, who used to boast that he had once taken “an airing” on the road to recruit his purse. He was expelled Cambridge for slashing a picture of the Duke of Monmouth. He hired an Italian quack to poison two children of his mistress, the infamous Duchess of Cleveland, joined in the Fenwick plot to kill King William, and would have turned traitor against his fellow conspirators had he not been bought off for £500 a year, and sent to Paris, where he disappeared.
Haines, one of Killigrew’s band, was an impudent but clever low comedian. In Sparkish, in “The Country Wife,” he was the very model of airy gentlemen. His great successes were as Captain Bluff in Congreve’s “Old Bachelor,” Roger in “Æsop,” and “the lively, impudent, and irresistible Tom Errand” in Farquhar’s “Constant Couple,” “that most triumphant comedy of a whole century.”[561]
The stories told of Joe Haines are good. He once engaged a simple-minded clergyman as “chaplain to the Theatre Royal,” and sent him behind the scenes ringing a big bell to call the actors to prayers. “Count” Haines was once arrested by two bailiffs on Holborn Hill at the very moment that the Bishop of Ely passed in his carriage. “Here comes my cousin, he will satisfy you,” said the ready-witted actor, who instantly stepped to the carriage window and whispered Bishop Patrick—“Here are two Romanists, my lord, inclined to become Protestants, but yet with some scruples of conscience.” The anxious bishop instantly beckoned to the bailiffs to follow him to Ely Place, and Joe escaped; the mortified bishop paying the money out of sheer shame. Haines died in 1701.
Amongst the actresses at this house were pretty but frail Mrs. Hughes, the mistress of Prince Rupert, and Mrs. Knipp, Pepys’s dangerous friend, who acted rakish fine ladies and rattling ladies’-maids, and came on to sing as priestess, nun, or milkmaid. Anne Marshall, the daughter of a Presbyterian divine, acquired a reputation as Dorothea in “The Virgin Martyr,” and as the Queen of Sicily in Dryden’s “Secret Love.”
But Nell Gwynn was the chief “toast” of the town. Little, pretty, impudent, and witty, she danced well, and was a good actress in comedy and in characters where “natural emotion bordering on insanity” was to be represented.[562] Her last original part was that of Almahide in Dryden’s “Conquest of Granada,” where she spoke the prologue in a straw hat as large as a waggon-wheel.
Leigh Hunt says that “Nineteen out of twenty of Dryden’s plays were produced at Drury Lane, and seven out of Lee’s eleven; all the good plays of Wycherly, except ‘The Gentleman Dancing Master;’ two of Congreve’s—‘The Old Bachelor’ and ‘The Double Dealer;’ and all Farquhar’s, except ‘The Beau’s Stratagem.’”[563] Dryden’s impurity and daring bombast were the attractions to Drury Lane, as Otway’s sentimentalism and real pathos were to the rival house. Lee’s splendid bombast was succeeded by Farquhar’s gay rakes and not too virtuous women.
Doggett, who was before the public from 1691 to 1713, was a little lively Irishman, for whom Congreve wrote the characters of Fondlewife, Sir Paul Pliant, and Ben. He was partner in the theatre with Cibber and Wilkes from 1709 to 1712, but left when Booth was taken into the firm. He was a staunch Whig, and left an orange livery and a badge to be rowed for yearly by six London watermen.
The queen of comedy, Mrs. Oldfield, flashed upon the town first as Lady Betty Modish in Cibber’s “Careless Husband,” in 1704-5. When quite a girl she was overheard by Farquhar reading “The Scornful Lady” of Beaumont and Fletcher to her aunt, who kept the Mitre Tavern in St. James’s Market. Farquhar introduced her to Vanbrugh, and Vanbrugh to Rich. “She excelled all actresses,” says Davies, “in sprightliness of wit and elegance of manner, and was greatly superior in the clear, sonorous, and harmonious tones of her voice.” Her eyes were large and speaking, and when intended to give special archness to some brilliant or gay thought, she kept them mischievously half shut. Cibber praises Mrs. Oldfield for her unpresuming modesty, and her good sense in not rejecting advice—“A mark of good sense,” says the shrewd old manager, “rarely known in any actor of either sex but herself. Yet it was a hard matter to give her any hint that she was not able to take or improve.”[564] With all this merit, she was tractable and less presuming in her station than several that had not half her pretensions to be troublesome. This excellent actress was not fond of tragedy, but she still played Marcia in “Cato;” Swift, who attended the rehearsals with Addison, railed at her for her good-humoured carelessness and indifference; and Pope sneered at her vanity in her last moments. It is true that she was buried in kid gloves, tucker, and ruffles of best lace. Mrs. Oldfield lived first with a Mr. Maynwaring, a rough, hard-drinking Whig writer, to whom Addison dedicated one of the volumes of the Spectator; and after his death with General Churchill, one of the Marlborough family. Nevertheless, she went to court and habitually associated with ladies of the highest rank. Society is cruel and inconsistent in these matters. Open scandal it detests, but to secret vice it is indifferent.
Mrs. Oldfield died in 1730, lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and when she was borne to her grave in the Abbey, Lord Hervey (Pope’s “Sporus”), Lord Delawarr, and that toady Bubb Doddington, supported her pall. The late Earl of Cadogan was the great-grandson of Anne Oldfield.[565] This actress, so majestic in tragedy, so irresistible in comedy, was generous enough to give an annuity to poor, hopeless, scampish Savage.
Robert Wilkes, a young Irish Government clerk, obtained great successes as Farquhar’s heroes, Sir Harry Wildair, Mirabel, Captain Plume, and Archer. He played equally well the light gentlemen of Cibber’s comedies. Genest describes him as buoyant and graceful on the stage, irreproachable in dress, his every movement marked by “an ease of breeding and manner.” This actor also excelled in plaintive and tender parts. Cibber hints, however, at his professional conceit and overbearing temper. Wilkes on one occasion read “George Barnwell” to Queen Anne at the Court at St. James’s. He died in 1732.