Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3)

Fielding published his play, "as it was damned," but he did not add, "as it deserved to be." He was less candid than Bernard Saurin, a French dramatist of the last century. Saurin's comedy, the "Trois Rivaux," was pitilessly hissed. The author printed it, not to shame the critics, but to confess the justice of their verdict. "Authors who have been humiliated," he says, "are not always the more humble on that account. Self-love supports itself." After enumerating many instances, he adds: "There are few unlucky playwrights who do not look beyond their piece for the cause of an effect which their play alone has produced. After wearying the public by their insipidity, they disgust it by their pride, displayed in some haughty preface to their drama. Perhaps there is a refinement of self-love in what I am myself now doing, when I candidly confess, that my comedy of the 'Three Rivals' thoroughly merited its fate."

Less reasonable than Saurin was Anthony Brown, the Templar, who produced his "Fatal Retirement," at Drury Lane, in 1739. This conversational tragedy, in which nobody is excited much above the level of every-day talk, fell at the first representation. Anthony Brown attributed the failure to Quin, who, after selecting one part, chose another, and finally threw up both. This conduct, according to Brown, rendered the other players indifferent, and brought on a catastrophe, which the condemned poet, of course, held to be unmerited. Accordingly, down went Templars and the Templars' friends, night after night, to hiss the offending Quin. He was commanded to make an apology, and he did so in his characteristic way. Addressing the audience, he said, blandly, that he had read "Fatal Retirement," at the author's request, and, under like impulse, had given him his sincere opinion of the tragedy, namely, that it was the very worst he had ever read, and that he could not possibly take a part in it. The audience were amused at the apparent frankness of this communication, and the Templars, allowing Anthony Brown to be non-suited, satisfied their indignation by visiting it upon poor Parson Miller, who had been so ungallant to Mistress Yarrow and her daughter. The "Hospital for Fools" was not brought out in Miller's name, but the Templar champions of the fair knew it to be his, and hissed it from the stage accordingly, despite the acting of Yates, Woodward, and Mrs. Clive, and that part of the audience who would fain have listened, if the noisy Templars would only have allowed them. Out of Miller's fiasco, Garrick subsequently made a success, and on the "Hospital for Fools" founded his "Lethe," in which he was famous in the character of Lord Chalkstone.

There is one anonymous author who exhibited a strange humour in his protest against the condemnation of his tragedy, the plot of which had been pronounced improbable. "You (critics)," says the dolorous author, "harp eternally on my improbabilities. You deal rigorously with inferior dramatists, on the score of their delinquencies as to the probable; but when the same fault is found in some great master, like Shakspeare, oh! then you give the word probability quite a liberal and kindly latitude of interpretation. And is not improbability as great a sin in the richest as it is in the poorest dramatic genius?" Campbell's just reply is, "No: we forgive the fault, in proportion as it is redeemed by wit and genius."

This author, so angry at being damned, should not have ventured his plays on the stage. He would have done well to imitate Thomas Powell, who wrote dramas, but did not wish the public to know it. So fearful of condemnation was he, that when a friend, who thought well of a tragedy he had written, called "Edgar," on the same subject as Ravenscroft's and Rymer's, offered to present it to Garrick, in order to its being acted, – "No, no!" exclaimed sensitive Powell, "by no means would I wish even to be known as an author, attackable by all." The mere pleasure of writing was enough for him. He fancied his triumphs; and they were thus never marred by hiss from the pit, or howl from adverse critic.

Some have taken their fate swaggeringly, with a protestation that the public were not so enlightened as they might be. Others have whistled, some have sung, a few have reasoned over it, one or two have acknowledged the condemnation; not one, except Bentley, has confessed that it was just. When the best scenes in the "Good-natured Man" were bringing down hisses and imperilling the comedy, Goldsmith fell into a tremor, from which the bare success of the play could not relieve him. But he concealed his torture, and went to the club and talked loud and sang his favourite songs, but neither ate nor drank, though he affected to do both. He sate out the whole of the company save Johnson, and when the two were alone, the disappointed author burst into tears, and swore, something irreverently, that he would never write again. Johnson behaved like a true man, for he comforted Goldsmith, and never betrayed his friend's weakness. That, of course, Goldsmith was sure to do for himself. Long after, when they were dining with Percy, at the chaplain's table at St. James's, Goldsmith referred to the dreadful night, the hisses, his sufferings, and his feigned extravagance. Johnson listened in astonishment. "I thought it had all been a secret between you and me, Doctor," said he, "and I am sure I would not have said anything about it for the world."

Some poets thought the players had the better time of the two; but if poets incurred one peril, the players of this period incurred another. For instance, in 1777, the Edinburgh company going to Aberdeen by sea, were snapped up by an American privateer, and carried off captives to Nantz. How they were ransomed, I am unable to show.

Walpole may be registered, if not among the damned, yet among the discontented authors of this half century. Chute might be pleased, and even Gray approve; but Garrick seems to have had small esteem for Horace as a dramatic poet. Hence was Garrick, in Walpole's eyes, but a poor writer of prologues and epilogues, a worse writer of farces, and a patron of fools who wrote bad comedies, which they allowed Garrick to make worthless; but yet worthy of the town which had a taste for them! Walpole wished to see his "Mysterious Mother" acted, although he well knew that the story, and the inefficient way in which he had treated it, would have insured its failure. Indisposed to be numbered among the condemned, he ascribed his reluctance to venture, to two causes: Mrs. Pritchard was about to retire, and she alone could have played his Countess; "nor am I disposed," he says, "to expose myself to the impertinences of that jackanapes, Garrick, who lets nothing appear but his own wretched stuff, or that of creatures still duller, who suffer him to alter their pieces as he pleases." In this strain Walpole was never weary of writing. Of Garrick's "Cymon" the disappointed Horace was especially jealous, and he sneered at its pleasing "the mob in the boxes as well as the footman's gallery," which privileged locality was not yet abolished in 1772. Garrick might be the best actor, but, said Walpole, he is "the worst author in the world!"

I have noticed the mirthful dénouement of Cumberland's tragedy, the "Carmelite." Such dénouements were approved by some part of the French public.

When the "Gamester" was adapted to the French stage, under the title of "Beverley, a tragedy of Private Life," the adapter was the Saurin of whom I have spoken, and his attempt excited the critics, and divided the town. The poisoning fascinated some and revolted others. One French poet protested against the "horrible" in tragedy, and exclaimed: —

"Laissons à nos voisins ces excès sanguinaires,Malheur aux nations que le sang divertie,Ces exemples outrés, ces farces mortuairesNe satisfont ni l'âme ni l'esprit.Les Français ne sont point des tigres, des ferocesQu'on ne peut amouvoir que par des traits atroces."

The ladies united with the poet, and Saurin found himself compelled to give two fifth acts, and, as the piece was attractive, the public were informed whether the dénouement on that particular night would be deathless, or otherwise! In the former case, as Beverley was about to take the poison, his wife, friend, and old servant rushed in just in time to save him, and, in common phrase, to assure him that things were "made comfortable," in spite of his follies, his weakness, and rascality. Grimm jokes over plots admitting of double dénouements, and alludes to the Norman vicar of Montchauvet, who wrote a tragedy on the subject of Belshazzar. The vicar thought that dramatic catastrophes depended on how the poet started. In his tragedy everything turned upon whether Belshazzar should sup or not, in the fifth act. If he does not sup, there can be no hand on the wall, and so "good-night" to the piece. Accordingly, the poet says, in the first act, that the king will sup; in the second, that he will not; in the third, that he will; in the fourth, that he will not; and, consequently, in the fifth, that he must, and will. Had the vicar intended otherwise, he would have begun, he says, in different order!

Ducis adapted Shakspeare's "Othello" to the French stage, for which he furnished two versions. In the first, he killed Desdemona according to tradition. At this, ladies fainted away, and gentlemen protestingly vociferated. Ducis altered the catastrophe, whereat Paris became divided into two parties, who supported the happy or the tragic conclusion, as their feelings prompted them. Talma played the Moor; and, bred as he had been in the shadow and the sunlight of the English stage, he was disgusted with the liberty taken with Shakspeare. One night, when the piece was to end as merrily as a comedy, and the last act was about to begin, Ducis heard Talma muttering at the wing, "I will kill her. The pit will not suffer it, I am sure; well, I will make them endure, and enjoy it. She shall be killed!" Ducis tremblingly acquiesced, and Talma restored the old catastrophe. There was some opposition, and a little fainting on the part of the susceptible, but, in presence of the marvellous talent of the actor, all antagonism gave way, and Talma, with reasonable pride, notified to his friends on the English stage the successful effort he had made in support of the integrity of the Shakspeare catastrophe.

Some authors have altogether refused to despair of the success of their piece, however adverse or indifferent the audience may have been. Take, as a sample, the case of Joseph Mitchell, the Scottish stonemason, but "University-bred." Towards the middle of the last century, the public sat, night after night, quite incapable of comprehending the mysteries and allusions of his "Highland Fair, or the Union of the Clans." At length, on the fourth night, the audience took to laughing at the nonsense served up to them, and as the last act proceeded, the louder did the hilarity become. Poor Mitchell took it all for approval, and going up to Wilks, with an air of triumph, he exclaimed, "De'il o' my saul, sare, they begin to taak the humour at last!"

Hoole, another of the stage-damned, was less self-deluding. When his "Cleonice" was about to be played, a publisher gave him a liberal sum for the copyright, Hoole's reputation, as a poetical translator from the Italian, being then very great. The play, however, was condemned, and Hoole was the first to acknowledge the unwelcome truth. He accordingly returned a portion of the sum he had received to the publisher. He had intended, he said, that the tragedy should be equally profitable to both, and now that it had failed, he would not allow the chief loss to fall on him who had bought the copyright. The watchmaker's son was a gentleman.

Hoole was as indifferent to condemnation as the French dramatist, Hardy, with less greed for money than influenced the latter, who, however, was moved by the proper sense of the value of labour. This French author, Hardy, who died about the year 1630, saw his plays damned with as much indifference as he wrote them. He composed between six and eight hundred, published forty of them, and did not see one live a fortnight. A couple of thousand lines a day were nothing to this ready dramatist, who furnished the players for whom he composed, with a new drama every third day. And it was a day when French dramas were full of incident. We hear of princesses who are married in the first act; the particular heroine is mother of a son in the second, whose education occupies the third; in the fourth he is a warrior and a lover; and in the fifth he marries a nymph who was not in existence when the play began. Hardy was the best of these inferior poets, and was original in this; he was the first who introduced the custom of getting paid for his pieces, a thing unknown till then, and which the poets, his successors, have not failed, says a French writer, "to observe very regularly ever since."

Mrs. Siddons's Bath friend, Dr. Whalley, was not so indifferent to the success of his muse as Monsieur Hardy; but he ranks among damned authors who have accepted condemnation or neglect with a joke. His "Castle of Montval" was yawned at rather than hissed; but as it was acted beyond the third night, the Doctor went down to Mr. Peake, the treasurer, to know what benefit might have accrued to him. It amounted to nothing. "I have been," said the author, an old picquet player, to an inquiring friend, "I have been piqued and re-piqued;" and therewith he went quietly back to Bath, where he lived upon a private fortune, and the rich stipend from an unwholesome Lincolnshire living, which a kind-hearted bishop had given him on condition he never resided on it!

The tragedy of the other friend of Mrs. Siddons, Mr. Greatheed (the "Regent"), was not much, if any, more successful, than Dr. Whalley's; but the author was so satisfied with his escape, that he gave a supper – that famous banquet, which was followed by a drinking bout at the Brown Bear, in Bow Street, at which a subordinate actor, named Phillimore, was sufficiently tipsy to have courage to fight his lord and master, John Kemble; who was elevated enough to defend himself, and generous enough to forget the affair next morning.

Sheridan kept his self-possession under merrier control than this. His "Rivals" was at first a failure. Cumberland, the most sensitive author in the world, under condemnation, declared that he could not laugh at Sheridan's comedy. "That is ungrateful of him," said Sheridan, to whom the comment was reported by a particular friend – "for I have laughed at a tragedy of his from beginning to end!" But this not having been said in Cumberland's hearing, was less severe than a remark made by Lord Shelburne, who could say the most provoking things, and yet appear quite unconscious of their being so. In the House of Lords he referred to the authorship of Lord Carlisle. "The noble lord," said he, "has written a comedy." "No, no!" interrupted Lord Carlisle, "a tragedy! a tragedy!" "Oh! I beg pardon," resumed Lord Shelburne, "I thought it was a comedy!" The piece thus adjudged of was the "Father's Revenge," an adaptation from Boccaccio, of "Tancred and Sigismunda," never played and seldom read.

Cumberland, who bore his own reverses with impatience, and was ever resolute in blaming the lack of taste on the part of the public, rather than ready to acknowledge his own shortcomings, endured the triumphs of his fellow-dramatists with little equanimity. During the first run of the "School for Scandal," he was present, with his children, in a stage-box, sitting behind them. Each time they laughed at what was going on, on the stage, he pinched them playfully, and asked them at what they were laughing. "There is nothing to laugh at, my angels," he was heard to say; and if the juvenile critics laughed on, he less playfully bade them be silent – the "little dunces!"

The dramatists whom he "adapted," declined to be involved in his reverses. After his "Joanna," an adaptation from Kotzebue, had been damned, the German author took care to record in the public papers that the passages hissed by the English public were not his, but additions made by Cumberland. Sir Fretful found consolation. "If I did not succeed," says this frequently damned author, "in entertaining the audience, I continued to amuse myself… I never disgraced my colours by abandoning legitimate comedy, to whose service I am sworn, and in whose defence I have kept the field for nearly half a century – till at last I have survived all true national taste, and lived to see buffoonery, spectacle, and puerility so effectually triumph, that now to be repulsed from the stage is to be recommended to the closet; and to be applauded by the theatre is little less than a passport to the puppet-show." This spirit of self-satisfaction, and depreciation of the public taste, was nothing new. The author or adapter of "Richard II." (Nahum Tate), finding his piece prohibited by authority, published it with a self-congratulatory preface; but he had already done more in the epilogue; mindful of past reverses, and anticipatory of present condemnation, he made Mrs. Cook say: —

"And ere of you, my sparks, my leave I take,For your unkindness past these prayers I make —Into such dulness may your poets tire,Till they shall write such plays as you admire!"

This was thoroughly in the old spirit of Flecknoe; but of samples of the spirit of "damn-ed authors," having given enough, let us pass among the audiences of the last half of the eighteenth century, whose "censure," in the old signification of the term, was challenged by the playwrights.

CHAPTER II

THE AUDIENCES OF THE LAST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

In the first half of the above century, if a quiet man in the pit ventured on making a remark to his neighbour, who happened to be a "nose-puller," and who disagreed with the remark, the speaker's nose was sure to be painfully wrung by the "puller." In the same period, those very nose-pullers sat quietly, merely grimacing, when the great people in the boxes found it convenient to spit into the pit! But, sometimes the house, pit and all, was full of great people. Thus, on the night of the 7th March 1751, Drury presented a strange appearance. The theatre had been hired by some noble amateurs, who acted the tragedy of "Othello," thus cast in the principal characters. Othello, Sir Francis Delaval; Iago, by John, subsequently (1786) Lord Delaval; Cassio, E. Delaval; Roderigo, Captain Stephens; Desdemona, Mrs. Quon (sister of Sir Francis, and later, the wife of Lord Mexborough); Emilia, Mrs. Stephens. Macklin superintended the rehearsals, and Walpole was present; for he says of the amateurs, in his characteristic way: "They really acted so well, that it is astonishing they should not have had sense enough not to act at all!.. The chief were a family of Delavals, the eldest of which was married by one Foote, a player, to Lady Nassau Poulett, who had kept the latter. The rage was so great to see this performance, that the House of Commons literally adjourned at three o'clock on purpose. The footman's gallery was strung with blue ribands. What a wise people! what an august senate! Yet my Lord Granville once told the prince, I forget on occasion of what folly: 'Sir, indeed your royal highness is in the wrong to act thus; the English are a grave nation.'"

The prince, and other members of the royal family, were present in the stage-box on this occasion; and the presence of blue ribands, in place of livery tags, in the footman's gallery, was owing to the circumstance that tickets were issued numerously enough to completely fill the house, but without indicating to what part of the house the bearers would be admitted. The first who arrived took the best places; and tardy peers, knights of the garter, their wives and ladies, were content to occupy the gallery, for once, rather than have no places at all. Such an audience was never seen there before, and has never been seen there since.

At this time swords were still worn, and evil results followed, to others, as well as to the wearers. On the night of Saturday, September 21, 1751, as the "Way of the World" was being played at Drury, a quarrel, and then a fight with swords took place, between two gallants in the box-lobby. From some cries which arose, the audience thought the house was on fire, and fearful confusion, with fierce struggling, and terrible injury ensued. Many women attempted in their terror to drop from the gallery to the pit. This was not so frightful as it might at present seem, for in those days the front of the lower gallery came down to the roof of the lower boxes. The occupants were a recognised power in the house, often appealed to, and were of very great intelligence and respectability, in one especially favourite locality, the Old Haymarket, as long as the house lasted. Professional men, and poets, and merchants and their wives, sat there to see, hear, and enjoy, whose grand-daughters now sail into stalls, unconscious that there is a gallery in the house, and ignorant that they are of a race who once condescended to sit in it.

In those days royalty's presence formed a great attraction at the theatre; and royalty enjoyed a "row" as heartily as the most riotous there.

When Garrick, in 1754, found that he could not fill Drury Lane, – notwithstanding the ability of his company of actors, unless he played himself, and that his own strength was not equal to the task of playing without intermission, – he brought forward a magnificent ballet-pantomime, called the "Chinese Festival." It was composed by Noverre, – who had treated of his art, dancing, as a branch of philosophy! As many competent English dancers as could be found, were engaged; and there was a supplementary, but prominent and able body of foreign dancers. Little would have been thought of this but for the circumstance, that when the gorgeous show was set before the public, in the autumn of 1754,4 war had recently broken out between England and France. Thereupon, John Bull was aroused in a double sense, – his patriotism would not allow of his tolerating the enemy on the English stage; and his sense of religious propriety, not otherwise very remarkable at that time, was shocked at the idea of his condescending to be amused by Papists.

His offended sense was further irritated by the circumstance, that George II., by his presence, on the first night, seemed to sanction favouritism of the enemy and the hostile church. Aggravated by that presence, which they did not at all respect, the pit heaved into a perfect storm, which raged the more as the old King sat and enjoyed, – nay, laughing at the tempest! The Brunswick dynasty was included within the aim of the hisses and execrations which prevailed. Had Garrick followed Lacy's counsel, he would have withdrawn the piece; but Davy was reluctant to lose his outlay, striving to save which, he lost hundreds more. As the "spectacle" was repeated, so was the insurrection against it; but the "quality" interfering, – as they deemed it the ton to uphold what great Brunswick approved, – a new element of bitterness was superadded. The boxes pronounced pit and galleries "vulgar;" and those powers waged war the more intensely, because of the arrogance of the boxes, whose occupants were assailed with epithets as unsavoury as any flung at the dancers. Then ensued strange scenes and encounters. Gentlemen in the boxes drew their swords, leaped down into the pit, pricked about them in behalf of "gentility," and got terribly mauled for their pains. The galleries looked on, shouting approbation, and indiscriminately pelting both parties. Not so the fair, who occupied the boxes. They, on seeing the champions of propriety and of themselves, being menaced or overpowered in the pit, pointed the offenders out to the less eager beaux who tarried in their vicinity, and who, for their very honour's sake, felt themselves compelled to out with their bodkins, drop into the surging pit, and lay about them, stoutly or faintly, according to their constitutions. The stronger arms of the plebeians carried the day; and when these had smitten their aristocratic opponents, they celebrated their victory with the accustomed Vandalism. They broke up benches, tore down hangings, smashed mirrors, crashed the harpsichords (always the first of the victims in the orchestra); and finally, charging on to the stage, cut and slashed the scenery in all directions. Some evidence of the improved civilisation of the audiences of this half of the century is afforded by the circumstance that no one suggested that the house should be set on fire. But, the pious and patriotic rioters rushed out to Mr. Garrick's house, in Southampton Street (now Eastey's hotel), and broke every window they could reach with missile, from basement to garret. The hired soldiery could not protect him; nor on their bayonets could he prop up the "Chinese Festival," wooden shoes and popery. This affair cost him a sum of money, the loss of which made his heart ache for many a day.