Haunted London — Drury Lane Part 2

It would seem from subsequent notes in the _Diary_, that to a man who stopped only for one act at a theatre, and took no seat, no charge was made.

In February 1668 Pepys sees at Drury Lane “The Virgin Martyr,” by Massinger, which he pronounces not to be worth much but for Becky Marshall’s acting; yet the wind music when the angel descended “wrapped up” his soul so, that, remarkably enough, it made him as sick as when he was first in love, and he determined to go home and make his wife learn wind music.

May 1, 1668, he mentions that the pit was thrown into disorder by the rain coming in at the cupola.

May 7 of the same year, he calls for Knipp when the play is over, and sees “Nell in her boy’s clothes, mighty pretty.

” “But, Lord!

” he says, “their confidence!

and how many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage!

and how confident they are in their talk!

” On May 18, 1668, Pepys goes as early as twelve o’clock to see the first performance of that poor play, Sir Charles Sedley’s “Mulberry Garden,” at which the king, queen, and court did not laugh.

While waiting for the curtain to pull up, Pepys hires a boy to keep his place, slips out to the Rose Tavern in Russell Street, and dines off a breast of mutton from the spit.

On September 15, 1668, there is a play--“The Ladies à la Mode”--so bad that the actor who announced the piece to be repeated fell a-laughing, as did the pit.

Four days after Pepys sits next Shadwell, the poet, admiring Ben Jonson’s extravagant comedy, “The Silent Woman.

” In January 1669 he sat in a box near “that merry jade Nell,” who, with a comrade from the Duke’s House, “lay there laughing upon people.

” “Les Horaces” of Corneille he found “a silly tragedy.

” February 1669 Beetson, one of the actors, read his part, Kynaston having been beaten and disabled by order of Sir Charles Sedley, whom he had ridiculed.

The same month Pepys went to the King’s House to see “The Faithful Shepherdess,” and found not more than £10 in the house.

A great leader in the Drury Lane troop was Lacy, the Falstaff of his day.

He was a handsome, audacious fellow, who delighted the town as “Frenchman, Scot, or Irishman, fine gentleman or fool, honest simpleton or rogue, Tartuffe or Drench, old man or loquacious woman.

” He was King Charles’s favourite actor as Teague in “The Committee,” or mimicking Dryden as Bayes in “The Rehearsal.

” 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. Barton Booth, who was at Westminster School with Rowe the poet, identified himself with Addison’s Cato.

His dignity, pathos, and energy as that lover of liberty led Bolingbroke to present him on the first night with a purse of fifty guineas.

The play was translated into four languages; Pope gave it a prologue; Garth decked it with an epilogue; while Denis proved it, to his own satisfaction, to be worthless.

Aaron Hill tells us that statistics proved that Booth could always obtain from eighteen to twenty rounds of applause during the evening.

When playing the Ghost to Betterton’s Hamlet, Booth is said to have been once so horror-stricken as to be unable to proceed with his part.

He often took inferior Shaksperean parts, and was frequently indolent; but if he saw a man whose opinion he valued among the audience he fired up and played to him.

This petted actor and manager died in 1733. Colley Cibber, to judge from Steele’s criticisms, must have been admirable as a beau, whether rallying pleasantly, scorning artfully, ridiculing, or neglecting.

[566] Wilkes surpassed him in beseeching gracefully, approaching respectfully, pitying, mourning, and loving.

In the part of Sir Fopling Flutter in “The Fool of Fashion,” played in 1695, Cibber wore a fair, full-bottomed periwig which was so much admired that it used to be brought on the stage in a sedan and put on publicly.

To this wonder of the town Colonel Brett, who married Savage’s mother, took a special fancy.

“The beaux of those days,” says Cibber, “had more of the stateliness of the peacock than the pert of the lapwing.

” The colonel came behind the scenes, first praised the wig, and then offered to purchase it.

On Cibber’s bantering him about his anxiety for such a trifle, the gay colonel began to rally himself with such humour that he fairly won Cibber, and they sat down at once, laughing, to finish their bargain over a bottle.

Quin’s career began at Dublin in 1714, and ended at Bath in 1753. From 1736 to 1741 he was at Drury Lane.

From Booth’s retirement till the coming of Garrick, Quin had no rival as Cato, Brutus, Volpone, Falstaff, Zanga, etc. His Macbeth, Othello, and Lear were inferior.

Davies says, the tender and the violent were beyond his reach, but he gave words weight and dignity by his sensible elocution and well-regulated voice.

His movements were ponderous and his action languid.

Quin was generous, witty, a great epicure, and a careless dresser.

It was his hard fate, though a warm-hearted man, to be equally warm in temper, and to kill two adversaries in duels that were forced upon him.

Quin was a friend of Garrick and of Thomson the poet, and a frequent visitor at Allen’s house at Prior Park, near Bath, where Pope, Warburton, and Fielding visited.

Some of Quin’s jests were perfect.

When Warburton said, “By what law can the execution of Charles I. be justified?

” Quin replied, “By all the laws he had left them.

” No wonder Walpole applauded him.

The bishop bade the player remember that the regicides came to violent ends, but Quin gave him a worse blow.

“That, your lordship,” he said, “if I am not mistaken, was also the case with the twelve apostles.

” Quin could overthrow even Foote.

They had at one time had a quarrel, and were reconciled, but Foote was still a little sore.

“Jemmy,” said he, “you should not have said that I had but one shirt, and that I lay in bed while it was washed.

” “Sammy,” replied the actor, “I never _could_ have said so, for I never knew that you had a shirt to wash.

” Quin died in 1766, and Garrick wrote an epitaph on his tomb in Bath Abbey, ending with the line-- “To this complexion we must come at last.

” Garrick appeared first at Goodman’s Fields Theatre, in 1741, as King Richard.

In eight days the west flocked eastward, and, as Davies tells us, “the coaches of the nobility filled up the space from Temple Bar to Whitechapel.

” Pope came up from Twickenham to see if the young man was equal to Betterton.

Garrick revolutionised the stage.

Tragedians had fallen into a pompous “rhythmical, mechanical sing-song,”[567] fit only for dull orators.

Their style was overlaboured with art--it was mere declamation.

The actor had long ceased to imitate nature.

Garrick’s first appearance at Drury Lane was in 1742. Cumberland, then at Westminster School, describes his sight of Quin and Garrick, and the first impressions they produced on him.

Garrick was Lothario, Mrs. Cibber Calista, Quin Horatio, and Mrs. Pritchard Lavinia.

Quin, when the curtain drew up, presented himself in a green velvet coat, embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled square shoes.

[568] “With very little variation of cadence, and in a deep full tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action which had more of the senate than the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified indifference that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon him.

Mrs. Cibber, in a key high-pitched but sweet withal, sang or rather recitatived Rowe’s harmonious strains.

But when, after long and anxious expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young and light and alive in every muscle and every feature, come bounding on the stage and pointing at the wittol Altamont and heavy-paced Horatio, heavens!

what a transition!

--it seemed as if a whole century had been swept over in the passage of a single scene.

” And yet, according to fretful Cumberland, “the show of hands” was for Quin, though, according to Davies, the best judges were for Garrick.

And when Quin was slow in answering the challenge, somebody in the gallery called out, “Why don’t you tell the gentleman whether you will meet him or not?

” Garrick’s repertory extended to one hundred characters, of which he was the original representative of thirty-six.

Of his comic characters, Ranger and Abel Drugger were the best--one was irresistibly vivacious, the other comically stupid.

Garrick, who mutilated Shakespere and wrote clever verses and useful theatrical adaptations, was a vain, sprightly man, who got the reputation of reforming stage costume, although it was Macklin, pugnacious and courageous, who first dared to act Macbeth dressed as a Highland chief, and felt proud of his own anachronism.

Garrick had, in fact, a dislike to really truthful costume.

He dared to play Hotspur in laced frock and Ramillies wig.

[569] In truth, it was neither Garrick nor Macklin who originated this reform, but the change of public opinion and the widening of education.

West, in spite of ridicule and condemnation, dared to dress the soldiers in his “Death of Wolfe” in English uniform, instead of in the armour of stage Romans.

Burke said of Garrick that he was the most acute observer of nature he had ever known.

Garrick could assume any passion at the moment, and could act off-hand Scrub or Richard, Brute or Macbeth.

He oscillated between tragedy and comedy; he danced to perfection; he was laborious at rehearsals, and yet all that he did seemed spontaneous.

In Fribble he imitated no fewer than eleven men of fashion so that every one recognised them.

Garrick died in 1779, and was buried in _the_ Abbey.

“Chatham,” says Dr. Doran, the actor’s admirable biographer, “had addressed him living in verse, and peers sought for the honour of supporting the pall at his funeral.

”[570] That he was vain and over-sensitive there can be no doubt; but there can be also no doubt that he was generous, often charitable, delightful in society, and never, like Foote, eager to give pain by the exercise of his talent.

As an actor, Garrick has not since been equalled in versatility and equal balance of power; nor has any subsequent actor attained so high a rank among the intellect of his age.

Kitty Clive, born in 1711, took leave of the stage in 1769. She was one of the best-natured, wittiest, happiest, and most versatile of actresses, whether as “roguish chambermaid, fierce virago, chuckling hoyden, brazen romp, stolid country girl, affected fine lady, or thoroughly natural old woman.

”[571] Fielding, Garrick, and Walpole delighted in Kitty Clive.

After years of quadrille at Purcell’s, and cards and music at the villa at Teddington which Horace Walpole lent her, Kitty Clive died suddenly, without a groan, in 1785. Woodward was excellent in fops, rascals, simpletons, and Shakesperean light characters.

His Bobadil, Marplot, and Touchstone were beyond approach.

Shuter, originally a billiard-marker, came on the stage in 1744, and quitted it in 1776. His grimace and impromptu were much praised.

Samuel Foote, born at Truro in 1720, having failed in tragedy, and not been very successful in comedy, started his entertainments at the Haymarket in 1747. He died in 1777. His history belongs to the records of another theatre.

Spanger Barry in 1748-9 acted Hamlet and Macbeth alternately with Garrick.

Davies says that Barry could not perform such characters as Richard and Macbeth, but he made a capital Alexander.

“He charmed the ladies by the soft melody of his love complaints and the noble ardour of his courtship.

” Only Mrs. Cibber excelled him in the expression of love, grief, tenderness, and jealous rage.

Tall, handsome, and dignified, Barry undoubtedly ran Garrick close in the part of Romeo, artificial as Churchill in the _Rosciad_ declares him to have been.

A lady once said, “that had she been Juliet she should have expected Garrick to have stormed the balcony, he was so impassioned; but that Barry was so eloquent, tender, and seductive, that she should have come down to him.

”[572] In Lear, the town said that Barry “was every inch a king” but Garrick “every inch King Lear.

” Barry was amorous and extravagant.

He delighted in giving magnificent entertainments, and treated Mr. Pelham in so princely a style that that minister (with not the finest taste) rebuked him for his lavish hospitality.

The brilliant and witching Peg Woffington was the daughter of a small huckster in Dublin, and became a pupil of Madame Violante, a rope-dancer.

In 1740 she came out at Covent Garden, and soon won the town as Sir Harry Wildair.

She played Lady Townley and Lady Betty Modish with “happy ease and gaiety.

”[573] She rendered the most audacious absurdities pleasing by her beautiful bright face and her vivacity of expression.

Peg quarrelled with Kitty Clive and Mrs. Cibber, and detested that reckless woman George Anne Bellamy.

This witty and enchanting actress, as generous and charitable as Nell Gwynn with all her faults, was struck by paralysis while acting Rosalind at Covent Garden, and died in 1760. During his career from 1691 to his retirement in 1733, clever, careless Colley Cibber originated nearly eighty characters, chiefly grand old fops, inane old men, dashing soldiers, and impudent lacqueys.

His Fondlewife, Sir Courtly Nice, and Shallow were his best parts.

“Of all English managers,” says Dr. Doran, “Cibber was the most successful.

Of the English actors, he is the only one who was ever promoted to the laureateship or elected a member of White’s Club.

” Even Pope, who hated him and got some hard blows from him, praised “The Careless Husband;” Walpole, who despised players, praised Colley; and Dr. Johnson approved of his admirably written _Apology_.

Cibber’s daughter, Mrs. Clarke, led a wild and disreputable life, became a waitress at Marylebone, and died in poverty in 1760. Colley’s son Theophilus, the best Pistol ever seen on the stage, and the original George Barnwell, was drowned in crossing the Irish Sea.

His wife was a sister of Dr. Arne, the composer.

In tragedy she was remarkable for her artless sensibility and exquisite variety of expression.

As Ophelia she moved even Tate Wilkinson.

She was one of the first actresses to make the woes of the grand tragedy queen natural.

She died in 1766, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

Mrs. Pritchard, that “inspired idiot,” as Dr. Johnson called her in his contempt for her ignorance, seems to have been a virtuous woman.

She left the stage in 1768. Though plain, and in later years very stout, Mrs. Pritchard was admired in tragedy for her perfect pronunciation and her force and dignity as the Queen in “Hamlet,” and as Lady Macbeth.

She was also a good comedian in playful and witty parts.

She was, however, not very graceful, and inclined to rant.

When Mrs. Cibber died in 1765, Mrs. Yates succeeded to her fame, with Mrs. Barry for a rival, till Mrs. Siddons came from Bath and unseated both.

Mrs. Yates was wanting in pathos, but in pride and scorn as Medea, or in hopeless grief as Constance, she was unapproachable.

She died in 1787. George Anne Bellamy, the reckless and the unfortunate, was the daughter of a Quakeress, with whom Lord Tyrawley ran away from school.

Dr. Doran says, “What with the loves, caprices, charms, extravagances, and sufferings of Mrs. Bellamy, she excited the wonder, admiration, pity, and contempt of the town for thirty years.

”[574] Now she was squandering money like a Cleopatra; now she was crouching on the wet steps of Westminster Bridge, brooding over suicide.

“The Bellamy,” says the critic, was only equal to “the Cibber” in expressing the ecstasy of love.

This follower of the old school of intoners was the original Volumnia of Thomson, the Erixene of Dr. Young, and the Cleone of the honest footman poet and publisher Dodsley.

She took her farewell benefit in 1784. In 1778 Miss Farren appeared at Drury Lane.

She was the daughter of a poor vagabond strolling player.

Walpole says she was the most perfect actress he had ever seen; and he spoke well of her fine ladies, of whom he was a judge.

Adolphus, not easily appeased, praised her irresistible graces and “all the indescribable little charms which give fascination to the women of birth and fashion.

” She was gay as Lady Betty Modish, sentimental as Cecilia or Indiana, and playful as Rosara in the “Barber of Seville.

” In 1797 the little girl who had been helped over the ice to the lock-up at Salisbury, to hand up a bowl of milk to her father when a prisoner there,[575] took leave of the stage in the part of Lady Teazle, and married the Earl of Derby, who had buried his wife just six weeks before.

In 1798 Mrs. Abington, “the best affected fine lady of her time,” retired from the stage of Drury Lane.

She was the daughter of a common soldier, and as a girl was known as “Nosegay Fan,” and had sold flowers in St. James’s Park.

She first appeared at Drury Lane in 1756-7. Poor Mrs. Robinson, the “Perdita” so heartlessly betrayed by the Prince of Wales, was driven on to the stage in 1776 by her husband, a handsome scapegrace who had run through his fortune.

She passed from the stage in 1780, and died, forgotten, poor, and paralytic, in 1800. In 1767 Samuel Reddish, Canning’s stepfather, first appeared at Drury Lane as Lord Townley.

He was a reasonably good Edgar and Posthumus, but failed in parts of passion.

He went mad in 1779. In this group of minor actors we may include Gentleman Smith, a good Charles Surface, who retired from the stage in 1786; Yates, whose forte was old men and Shakspere’s fools (1736-1780); Dodd, who, from 1765 to 1796, was the prince of fops and old men (Master Slender and Master Stephen were said to die with him); and lastly, that great comic actor, John Palmer, who died on the stage in 1798, as he was playing the Stranger.

He was the original representative of plausible Joseph Surface.

“Plausible,” he used to say, “am I?

You rate me too highly.

The utmost I ever did in that way was that I once persuaded a bailiff who had arrested me to bail me.

” Once when making friends with Sheridan after a quarrel, Palmer said to the author, “If you could but see my heart, Mr. Sheridan!

” to which Sheridan replied, “Why, Jack, you forgot I wrote it.

” “Jack Palmer,” says Lamb, “was a gentleman with a slight infusion of the footman.

”[576] He had two voices, both plausible, hypocritical, and insinuating.

Henderson was engaged by Sheridan for Drury Lane in 1777. As Falstaff this humorous friend of Gainsborough was seldom equalled.

His defects were a woolly voice and a habit of sawing the air.

Dr. Doran says, “he was the first actor who, with Sheridan, gave public readings” at Freemasons’ Hall;

and his recitation of “John Gilpin” gave impetus to the sale of the narrative of that adventurous ride.

[577] Henderson died in 1785, aged only thirty-eight, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Mrs. Siddons, the daughter of an itinerant actor, was born in 1755. After strolling and becoming a lady’s-maid, she married a poor second-rate actor of Birmingham.

She appeared first at Drury Lane in 1775 as Portia.

Her first real triumph was in 1780, as Isabella in Southerne’s tragedy.

The management gave her Garrick’s dressing-room, and some legal admirers presented her with a purse of a hundred guineas.

Soon afterwards, as Jane Shore, she sent many ladies in the audience into fainting fits.

This great actress closed her career in 1812 with Lady Macbeth, her greatest triumph.

She is said to have made King George III.

shed tears.

He admired her especially for her repose.

“Garrick,” he used to say, “could never stand still.

He was a great fidget.

” No actress received more homage in her time than Mrs. Siddons.

Reynolds painted his name on the hem of her garment in his portrait of her as the Tragic Muse.

Dr. Johnson kissed her hand and admired her genius.

In comedy Mrs. Siddons failed; her rigorous Grecian face was not arch.

“In comedy” says Colman, “she was only a frisking grig.

” “Those who knew her best,” says Dr. Doran, “have recorded her grace, her noble carriage, divine elocution and solemn earnestness, her grandeur, her pathos, her correct judgment.

” Erskine studied her cadences and tones.

According to Campbell, she increased the heart’s capacity for tender, intense, and lofty feelings.

This lofty-minded actress, as Young calls her, died in 1831. Her elder brother, John Kemble, first appeared at Drury Lane, in 1783, as Hamlet.

In 1788-9 he succeeded King as manager of the theatre, and continued so till 1801. In Coriolanus and Cato, Kemble was pre-eminent, but his Richard and Sir Giles were inferior to Cook’s and Kean’s. In comedy he failed, except in snatches of dignity or pathos.

As an actor Kemble was sometimes heavy and monotonous.

He had not the fire or versatility of Garrick, or the wild passion of Edmund Kean.

As Hamlet he was romantic, dignified, and philosophic.

In his Rolla he delighted Sheridan and Pitt; in Octavian he drew tears from all eyes.

He excelled also in Cœur de Lion, Penruddock, and the Stranger.

In private life he was always majestic and gravely convivial.

When Covent Garden was burnt down in 1808, he bore the loss bravely, and on the night of the opening the generous Duke of Northumberland sent him back his bond for £10,000 to be committed to the flames.

Walpole, who saw Kemble, preferred him to Garrick in Benedick, and to Quin in Maskwell.

Kemble took his solemn farewell of the stage in 1817 as Coriolanus, and died at Lausanne in 1823. Leigh Hunt, an excellent dramatic critic, paints the following picture of Kemble: “A figure of melancholy dignity, dealing out a most measured speech in sepulchral tones and a pedantic pronunciation, and injuring what he has made you feel by the want of feeling it himself.

”[578] John Kemble’s brother Charles acted well in Mercutio, Young Mirabel, and Benedick.

He remained on the stage till 1836. George Frederick Cooke, whose life was one perpetual debauch, and whose career on the stage extended from 1801 to 1812, when he died at Boston, did not, I think, appear at Drury Lane.

His laurels were won chiefly at Covent Garden.

Master Betty, born in 1791 at Shrewsbury, elegant, and quick of memory, appeared at Drury Lane in 1804, fretted his little hour upon the stage, and earned a fortune with which he prudently retired in 1808. He lived till 1876. King, the original representative of Sir Peter Teazle, Lord Ogleby, Puff, and Dr. Cantwell, began his London career at Drury Lane in 1748. He left the stage in 1802. His best characters were Touchstone and Ranger, and in these parts he was always arch, rapid, and versatile.

Hazlitt discourses on King’s old, hard, rough face, and his shrewd hints and tart replies.

Dickey Suett was a favourite low comedian from 1780 to 1805, when he died.

He was a tall, thin, ungainly man, too much addicted to grimace, interpolations, and practical jokes.

He drank hard, and suffered from mental depression.

Hazlitt calls him “the delightful old croaker, the everlasting Dickey Gossip of the stage.

”[579] Lamb describes his “Oh, la!

” as irresistible; “he drolled upon the stock of those two syllables richer than the cuckoo.

” Shakspere’s jesters “have all the true Suett stamp--a loose and shambling gait, and a slippery tongue.

”[580] Miss Pope, who left the stage in 1808, had played with Garrick and Mrs. Clive.

She was the original Polly Honeycomb, Miss Sterling, Mrs. Candour, and Tilburina.

In youth she played hoydens, chambermaids, and half-bred ladies, with a dash and good-humour free from all vulgarity, and in old age she took to duennas and Mrs. Heidelburg.

In 1761 Churchill mentions her as “lively Pope,” and in 1807 Horace Smith describes her as “a bulky person with a duplicity of chin.

” In 1741 the theatre, which had been rebuilt by Wren in 1674, in a cheap and plain manner, became ruinous, and was enlarged and almost rebuilt by the Adams.

In 1747 Garrick became the manager, and Dr. Johnson, as a friend, wrote the celebrated address beginning with the often-quoted lines-- “When Learning’s triumph o’er her barbarous foes First reared the stage, immortal Shakspere rose.

* * * * * Each change of many-coloured life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new;

Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toiled after him in vain.

” In 1775, the year in which “The Duenna” was brought out at Covent Garden, Garrick made known his wish to sell a moiety of the patent of this theatre.

In June 1776 a contract was signed, Mr. Sheridan taking two-fourteenths of the whole for £10,000, Mr. Linley the same, and Dr. Ford three-fourteenths at £15,000. [581] How Sheridan raised the money no one ever knew.

Sheridan’s first contribution to this new stage was an alteration of Vanbrugh’s licentious comedy of “The Relapse,” which he called “A Trip to Scarborough,” and brought out in 1777. The same year the brilliant manager, then only six-and-twenty, produced the finest and most popular comedy in the English language, “The School for Scandal.

” On the last slip of this miracle of wit and dramatic construction Sheridan wrote--“Finished at last, thank God!

--R.

B.

SHERIDAN.

” Below this the prompter added his devout response--“Amen.

--W.

HOPKINS.

”[582] Garrick was proud of the new manager, and boasted of his budding genius.

[583] In 1778 Sheridan bought out Mr. Lacy for more than £45,000, and Dr. Ford for £77,000. In 1779 Garrick died, and Sheridan wrote a monody to his memory, which was delivered by Mrs. Yates after the play of “The West Indian.

” Slander attributed the finest passage in this monody to Tickell, just as it had before attributed Tickell’s bad farce to Sheridan.

Dowton, who appeared in 1796 as Sheva, was felicitous in good-natured testy old men, and also in crabbed and degraded old villains.

His Dr. Cantwell and Sir Anthony Absolute were in the true spirit of old comedy.

Leigh Hunt praises Dowton’s changes from the irritable to the yielding, and from the angry to the tender.

Willy Blanchard was natural and unaffected, but mannered.

Mathews first appeared in London in 1803. He excelled in valets and old men, and drew tears as M. Mallet, the poor emigré who is disappointed about a letter.

Liston made his début at the Haymarket in 1805 as Sheepface.

Leigh Hunt praises his ignorant rustics, and condemns his old men.

He sets him down as a painter of emotions, and therefore more intellectual than Fawcett and less farcical than Munden.

Liston was a hypochondriac; below his fun there was always an under-current of melancholy, “as though,” says Dr. Doran, mysteriously, “he had killed a boy when, under the name of Williams, he was usher at the Rev. Dr. Burney’s at Gosport.

”[584] In 1807 Jones and Young made their first appearances, but not at Drury Lane.

Young originated Rienzi, and played Hamlet, Falstaff, and Captain Macheath.

Jones was a stage rake of great excellence.

Among the actresses before Kean, we may mention Miss Brunton, afterwards Countess of Craven, and Mrs. Davison, a good Lady Teazle.

Lewis, who left the stage in 1809, was a draper’s son.

He died in 1813, and out of part of his fortune the new church at Ealing was erected.

He played Young Rapid and Jeremy Diddler, and created the Hon. Tom Shuffleton in “John Bull.

” His restless style suited Morton and Reynolds’s comedies, and he succeeded in “all that was frolic, gay, humorous, whimsical, eccentric, and yet elegant.

” He was manager of Covent Garden for twenty-one years, and made everyone do his duty by kindness and good treatment.

Leigh Hunt sketches Lewis admirably, with his “easy flutter,”[585] short knowing respiration, and complacent liveliness.

Lewis played the gentleman with more heart than Elliston.

He seemed polite, not from vanity, but rather from a natural irresistible wish to please.

He had all the laborious carelessness of action, important indifference of voice, and natural vacuity of look that are requisite for the lounger.

[586] His defects were a habit of shaking his head and drawing in of the breath.

His “flippant airiness,” “vivacious importance,” and “French flutter” must have been in their way perfect.

“Gay, fluttering, hair-brained Lewis!

” says Hazlitt; “nobody could break open a door, or jump over a table, or scale a ladder, or twirl a cocked hat, or dangle a cane, or play a jockey-nobleman or a nobleman’s jockey like him.

”[587] Here a moment’s pause for an anecdote.

When a riot took place at Drury Lane in 1740 about the non-appearance of a French dancer, the first symptoms of the outbreak were the ushering of ladies out of the pit.

A

noble marquis gallantly proposed to fire the house.

The proposal was considered, but not adopted.

The bucks and bloods then proceeded to destroy the musical instruments and fittings, to break the panels and partitions, and pull down the royal arms.

The offence was finally condoned by the ringleading marquis sending £100 to the manager.

Charles Lamb describes Drury Lane in his own delightful way.

The first play he ever saw was in 1781-2, when he was six years old.

“A portal, now the entrance,” he writes, “to a printing-office, at the north end of Cross Court was the pit entrance to old Drury; and I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play.

The afternoon was wet: with what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles!

“It was the custom then to cry, ‘’Chase some oranges, ’chase some nonpareils, ’chase a bill of the play?

’ But when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, the breathless anticipations I endured!

The boxes, full of well-dressed women of quality, projected over the pit.

The orchestra lights arose--the bell sounded once--it rang the second time--the curtain drew up, and the play was ‘Artaxerxes;’ ‘Harlequin’s Invasion’ followed.

” The next play Lamb went to was “The Lady of the Manor,” followed by a pantomime called “Lunn’s Ghost.

” Rich was not long dead.

His third play was “The Way of the World” and “Robinson Crusoe.