The same month, 1667-8, Pepys revisits the Duke’s House to see Etherege’s new play, “She Would if She Could.” He was there by two o’clock, and yet already a thousand people had been refused at the pit. The fussy public-office man, not being able to find his wife, who was there, got into an eighteenpenny box, and could hardly see or hear. The play done, it being dark and rainy, Pepys stays in the pit looking for his wife and waiting for the weather to clear up. And there for an hour and a half sat also the Duke of Buckingham, Sedley, and Etherege talking; all abusing the play as silly, dull, and insipid, except the author, who complained of the actors for not knowing their parts.
In May 1668 Pepys is again at this theatre in the balcony box, where sit the shameless Lady Castlemaine and her ladies and women; on another occasion he sits below the same group, and sees the proud lady look like fire when Moll Davies ogles the king her lover. In another place he observes how full the pit is, though the seats are two shillings and sixpence a piece, whereas in his youth he had never gone higher than twelvepence or eighteenpence.[748]
Kynaston, the greatest of the “boy-actresses,” was chiefly on this stage from 1659 to 1699. Evadne was his favourite female part. Later in life he took to heroic characters. Cibber says of him: “He had something of a formal gravity in his mien, which was attributed to the stately step he had been so early confined to. But even that in characters of superiority had its proper graces; it misbecame him not in the part of Leon in Fletcher’s ‘Rule a Wife,’ which he executed with a determined manliness and honest authority. He had a piercing eye, and in characters of heroic life a quick imperious vivacity in his tone of voice that painted the tyrant truly terrible. There were two plays of Dryden in which he shone with uncommon lustre; in ‘Arungzebe,’ he played Morat, and in ‘Don Sebastian’ Muley Moloch. In both these parts he had a fierce lion-like majesty in his port and utterance that gave the spectator a kind of trembling admiration.”[749] Kynaston died in 1712, and left a fortune to his son, a mercer in Covent Garden, whose son became rector of Aldgate.
James Nokes was Kynaston’s contemporary in Portugal Street. Leigh Hunt calls him something between Liston and Munden. Dryden mentions him, in a political epistle to Southerne, as indispensable to a play. Cibber says, “The ridiculous solemnity of his features was enough to have set the whole bench of Bishops into a titter.” In his ludicrous distresses he sank into such piteous pusilanimity that one almost pitied him. “When he debated any matter by himself he would shut up his mouth with a dumb, studious pout, and roll his full eye into a vacant amazement.”[750] He died in 1692, leaving a fortune and an estate near Barnet.
But the great star of Portugal Street was Betterton, the Garrick of his age. His most admired part was Hamlet; but Steele especially dilates on his Othello. He acted his Hamlet from traditions handed down by Davenant of Taylor, whom Shakspere himself is said to have instructed. Cibber says that there was such enchantment in his voice alone that no one cared for the sense of the words; and he adds, “I never heard a line in tragedy come from Betterton wherein my judgment, my ear, and my imagination, were not fully satisfied.” This great man, who created no fewer than 130 characters, was a friend of Dryden, Pope, and Tillotson. Kneller’s portrait of him is at Knowle;[751] A copy of it by Pope is preserved in Lord Mansfield’s gallery at Caen Wood. When he died, in 1710, Steele wrote a “Tatler” upon him, in which he says “he laboured incessantly, and lived irreproachably. He was the jewel of the English stage.” He killed himself by driving back the gout in order to perform on his benefit night, and his widow went mad from grief. Betterton acted as Colonel Jolly in Colman’s “Cutter of Coleman Street,” as Jaffier in Otway’s chef d’œuvre, as fine gentlemen in Congreve’s vicious but gay comedies, as a hero in Rowe’s flatulent plays, and as Sir John Brute in Vanbrugh’s great comedy.
Mrs. Barry was one of the best actresses in Portugal Street. She was the daughter of an old Cavalier colonel, and was instructed for the stage by Rochester, whose mistress she became. Dryden pronounced her the best actress he had ever seen. Her face and colour varied with each passion, whether heroic or tender. “Her mien and motion,” says Cibber, “were superb and gracefully majestic, her voice full, clear, and strong.” In scenes of anger, defiance, or resentment, while she was impetuous and terrible, she poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony. She was so versatile that she played Lady Brute as well as Zara or Belvidera. For her King James II. originated the custom of actors’ benefits. After a career of thirty-eight years on the boards, she died at Acton in 1713. Kneller’s picture represents her with beautiful eyes, fine hair drawn back from her forehead, “the face full, fair, and rippling with intellect,”[752] but her mouth a little awry.[753]
Mrs. Mountfort also appeared in Portugal Street before the two companies united at Drury Lane in 1682. She was the best of male coxcombs, stage coquettes, and country dowdies, a vivacious mimic, and of the most versatile humour. Cibber sketches her admirably as Melantha in “Marriage à la Mode:”—“She is a fluttering, finished impertinent, with a whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motions. When the gallant recommended by her father brings his letter of introduction, down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions; then she launches into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls, and rising like a swan upon waving water; and to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit that she will not give her lover leave to praise it;[754] and at last she swims from him with a promise to return in a twinkling.”
The virtuous, good, and discreet Mrs. Bracegirdle was another favourite in Portugal Street. For her Congreve, who affected to be her lover, wrote his Araminta and Cynthia, his Angelica, his Almeria, and his Millamant in “The way of the world.” All the town was in love with her youth, cheerful gaiety, musical voice, the happy graces of her manner, her dark eyes, brown hair, and expressive, rosy-brown face. Her Statira justified Nat Lee’s frantic Alexander for all his rant; and “when she acted Millamant, all the faults, follies, and affectation of that agreeable tyrant were venially melted down into so many charms and attractions of a conscious beauty.” Mrs. Bracegirdle was on the stage from 1680 to 1707. She lived long enough to warn Cibber against envy of Garrick, and died in 1748.
Three of Congreve’s plays, “Love for Love,” “The Mourning Bride,” and “The Way of the World,” came out in Portugal Street. Steele, in the Tatler, No. 1, mentions “Love for Love” as being acted for Betterton’s benefit—Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Doggett taking parts. He describes the stage as covered with gentlemen and ladies, “so that when the curtain was drawn it discovered even there a very splendid audience.” “In Dryden’s time,” says Steele, “You used to see songs, epigrams, and satires in the hands of every person you met [at the theatre]; now you have only a pack of cards, and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of style and the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game.”
Poor Mountfort, the most handsome, graceful, and ardent of stage lovers, the most admirable of courtly fops, and the best dancer and singer of the day, strutted his little hour in Portugal Street till run through the body by Lord Mohun’s infamous boon companion. His career extended from 1682 to 1695. He was only thirty-three when he died.