William Charles Macready, the son of a Dublin upholsterer, appeared in London first in 1816. Kean approved his Orestes, and he soon advanced to Rob Roy, Virginius, and Coriolanus. He then removed to Drury Lane, and distinguished himself as Caius Gracchus and William Tell, in two of Mr. Sheridan Knowles’s plays. He reappeared at Drury Lane in 1826. The critics said that he failed in Rolla and Hamlet, but excelled in Rob Roy, Coriolanus, and Richard. He himself preferred his own Hamlet. They complained that he had a burr in his enunciation, and a catching of the breath—that he was too fond of declamation and violent transitions; others thought him too heavy and colloquial. In 1826 he went to America, where the fatal riot of Forrest’s partisans occurred, and twenty-two men were killed. His season closed at Drury Lane in 1843. His benefit took place in 1851, and he then retired from the stage to live the life of a quiet, useful country gentleman in the west of England. He died in 1873, and lies buried at Kensal Green.
Mr. Charles Kean, struggling with a bad voice and a mean figure, had a hard fight for success, and won it only by the most dauntless perseverance. Born in 1811, he appeared for the first time upon the boards as Norval, in 1827. After repeated failures in London and much success in the provinces and America, Mr. Kean accepted an engagement at Drury Lane in 1838—Mr. Bunn offering him £50 a night. He succeeded in Hamlet, and was presented with a silver vase of the value of £200. In Richard and Sir Giles Overreach he also triumphed. In 1843 Mr. Kean renewed his engagement with Mr. Bunn. Before retiring from the stage and starting for Australia, Mr. and Mrs. Kean performed for many nights at Drury Lane. Charles Kean died in 1868.
Miss Ellen Tree first performed at Drury Lane as Violante in “The Wonder.” She married Mr. C. Kean in 1842, and aided him in those antiquarianly-correct spectacles that for a time rendered a scholarly, careful, but scarcely first-rate actor popular in the metropolis.
We have room in this brief and imperfect résumé of theatrical history for only two pictures of Drury Lane. One is in 1800, when George III. was fired at by Hatfield as he entered the house to witness Cribber’s comedy of “She Would and She Would Not.” When the Marquis of Salisbury would have drawn him away, the brave, obstinate king said—“Sir, you discompose me as well as yourself: I shall not stir one step.” The queen and princesses were in tears all the evening, but George III. sat calm and collected, staring through his single-barrel opera-glass. In 1783 the king, queen, and Prince of Wales went to Drury Lane to see Mrs. Siddons play Isabella. They sat under a dome of crimson velvet and gold. The king wore a Quaker-coloured dress with gold buttons, while the handsome scapegrace prince was adorned in blue Genoa velvet.
Mr. Planché, the accomplished writer of extravaganzas and the Somerset Herald, brought out his burlesque of “Amoroso, King of Little Britain,” at Drury Lane in 1818. He afterwards wrote the libretto of “Maid Marian” for Mr. Bishop, and that of “Oberon” for Weber. In 1828 his “Charles XII.” was produced at Drury Lane.
On Mr. Falconer’s clever imitative experiments we have no room to dilate. The “Peep o’ Day,” a piece which reproduced all the “Colleen Bawn” effects, was the best.
And now leaving the theatres for meaner places, we pass on to the district of the butchers. Clare Market stands on a spot formerly called Clement’s Inn Fields, and was built by the Earl of Clare, who lived close by, in 1657. The family names, Denzil, Holles, etc., are retained in the neighbouring streets.
This market became notorious in Pope’s time for the buffoonery, noisy impudence, and extravagances of Orator Henley, a sort of ecclesiastical outlaw of a not very religious age, who tried to make his impudence and conceit pass for genius. This street-orator, the son of a Leicestershire vicar, was born in 1692. After going to St. John’s College, Cambridge, he returned home, kept a school, wrote a poem called “Esther,” and began a Universal Grammar in ten languages. Heated by an itch for reforming, and tired of the country, or driven away, as some say, by a scandalous embarrassment, he hurried to London, and for a short time did duty at a chapel in Bedford Row. During this time, under the Earl of Macclesfield’s patronage, he translated Pliny’s epistles, Vertot’s works, and Montfaucon’s Italian travels. He then competed for a lecturership in Bloomsbury, but failed, the parishioners not disliking his language or his doctrine, but complaining that he threw himself about too much in the pulpit.
Now, “regular action” was one of Henley’s peculiar prides. The rejection hurt his vanity and nearly drove him crazy. Losing his temper, he rushed into the vestry-room. “Blockheads!” he roared, “are you qualified to judge of the degree of action necessary for a preacher of God’s Word? Were you able to read, or had got sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to understand the renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you almost the only requisite of a public speaker was ACTION, ACTION, ACTION. But I despise and defy you: provoco ad populum; the public shall decide between us.” He then hurried from the room, soon afterwards published his probationary discourse, and taking a room in Newport Market, started as quack divine and public lecturer.
But he first consulted the eccentric and heretical Whiston, whom Swift bantered so ruthlessly—Whiston being, like Henley, a Leicestershire man—as to whether he should incur any legal penalties by officiating as a separatist from the Church of England. Whiston, himself an expelled professor, tried to dissuade the Orator from his wild project. Disagreement and abuse followed, and the correspondence ended with the following final bomb-shell from the violent demagogue:—