This was a transition period, terminated by the coming of Garrick. Quin passed over to Drury Lane, tempted by the annual £500 offered by Fleetwood, a wealthy personage, who had purchased the chief share in the patent. "No actor," said Rich, "is worth more than £300 a year," and declining to retain Quin at the additional required outlay, he brought forward a "citizen," named Stephens, to oppose him. Stephens had caught the exact sound of Booth's cadences and much of his manner. For a time audiences were delighted, but the magic of mere imitation soon ceased to attract; and Quin decidedly led the town in old characters, but with no opportunity yet offered him of a "creation." Mrs. Clive enchanted her hearers at Drury Lane, while Mrs. Horton took her beauty and happy assurance to Covent Garden. A greater than either, Mrs. Pritchard, played mere walking ladies, and made no step in advance till 1735, when she acted Lady Townley at the Haymarket. Old Cibber longing again for a smell of the lamps, and a sound of applause, played a few of his best parts during this season, and Macklin slowly made progress according to rare opportunity. Covent Garden chiefly depended on Ryan; but suddenly lost his services when they could be least spared. He was returning home, on the 15th of March 1735, when he was shot by a ruffian in Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, who robbed him of his sword. "Friend," said the generous actor, who was badly wounded in the face and jaw-bone, "you have killed me; but I forgive you!" In about six weeks, however, he was sufficiently recovered to appear again, after a general sympathy had been shown him, from the Prince of Wales down to the gallery visitors.

Drury Lane, too, lost, but altogether, an useful actor, Hallam. He and Macklin had quarrelled about a theatrical wig, and impetuous Macklin, raising his stick, thrust with it, in such blind fury, that it penetrated through Hallam's eye to the brain, and the unfortunate player died the next day. An Old Bailey jury let the rasher, but grief-stricken man, lightly off under a verdict of "Manslaughter."

From being a Queen of Song, Mrs. Cibber, the second wife of Theophilus, first took ground as an actress this season,24 at Drury Lane, in Aaron Hill's adaptation of Voltaire's "Zara." Mrs. Cibber was the sister of Dr. Thomas Arne, the composer of "Artaxerxes," and daughter of an upholsterer in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. Handel thought so well of her that he arranged one of his airs in the "Messiah" expressly to suit her voice. Her ambition, however, was to be a tragic actress, and Colley Cibber, who had sternly opposed her marriage with his son, overcome by her winning ways, not only was reconciled to her, but instructed her in her study for Zara, and some part of her success was owing to so accomplished a teacher.

Milward played Lusignan, a part in acting which a young actor, named Bond, overcome by his feelings, died on the stage, while blessing his children.25 This occurred at a private theatre, in Great Villiers Street, where the tragedy was represented, by sanction of the author, or, as Reed would have it, of the stealer of it from Voltaire. Bond was not the only actor who died in harness this year. Obese Hulett, rival of Quin, in Falstaff, proud of the strength of his lungs, which he was for ever exercising to the terror of those who suddenly experienced it, in making some extraordinary effort of this sort, broke a blood-vessel, and straightway died, when only thirty-five years of age; and he was buried at the expense of his stage-manager, Giffard, who rented Lincoln's Inn Fields, for awhile, of Rich.

The success of Mrs. Cibber stirred Rich at Covent Garden, and when she acted Hermione, the old but able Mrs. Porter played the part against her, at the latter house, as she also did Zara.26 Mrs. Horton was opposed to her in the part of Jane Shore.27 In high comedy, Mrs. Cibber attempted Indiana, in the "Conscious Lovers," and forthwith Covent Garden put up the same piece. But the latter house was inferior in its company; there was no one there to shed sunshine like Mrs. Clive. Delane and Walker together were not equal to Quin. Of novelty, Covent Garden produced nothing. Giffard's young troop, on the other hand, in the east, and afterwards at Lincoln's Inn Fields, produced much that was worthless, not excepting another levy on Voltaire by Hill, in his "Alzira." Indeed, the new authors of this period were more remarkable than their pieces. Mrs. Cooper, now forgotten, was the widow of an auctioneer; and Stirling, author of the "Parricide," is, perhaps, better remembered in Maryland, where he was a "popular parson," than he is here. What is known of him here, indeed, is not favourable. When he and Concanen came together from Ireland, to live by their pens, as political writers, they tossed up as to the "side" they should take. As it fell to Concanen to support, and to Stirling to abuse the ministry, the former was enabled to acquire an ample fortune as Attorney General of Jamaica, his seventeen years' tenure of which, Matthew owed to the appreciation of him by the Duke of Newcastle. But Matthew was a wit, and a gentlemanlike fellow; whereas the Rev. Jack Stirling, whose "Parricide" was hissed at Goodman's Fields,28 was an unsuccessful parson, who did very well for a transatlantic minister.

The Haymarket was open in the spring and summer of 1736, under Fielding, with his "Great Mogul's Company of Comedians." Fielding, greatly improved by many failures, found the town in laughter; and Lillo drowned it in tears. At "Pasquin," that hot, fierce, hard-hitting, mirth-moving satire, London "screamed," night after night, for nearly two months; and at the "Fatal Curiosity," that most heart-rending of domestic dramas, the same London wept as if it had the tenderest feelings in the world. In it Cibber's daughter, erratic Mrs. Charke, condescended to play a female part; and Davies, the bookseller and dramatic historian, the part of her son, young Wilmot. By such means and appliances did the stage support itself through this year, in which Mrs. Pritchard is seldom heard of, and Yates and Woodward are only giving promise of the Sir Bashful Constant and Mercutio, to come.

And now we reach 1736-7, with Quin especially eminent in Shakspeare's characters, Mrs. Cibber, stirring the town as Statira, Monimia, or Belvidera, and Mrs. Clive – who had quarrelled with her as to the right to play Polly – beaming like sunshine through operatic farce and rattling comedy, as gaily as if her brow had never known a frown. The old colleague of Quin – Mills (the original representative of characters so opposite as Zanga and Aimwell, Pylades and Colonel Briton), died all but on the stage, which lost in him a heavy "utility," whose will was better than his execution. A lady "utility," too, withdrew after this season, – Mrs. Thurmond, the original representative, also, of opposite characters, to wit – Myris, in Young's "Busiris," and Lady Wronghead.

The same Drury to which these were lost, gained this season a new author, in the person of Dodsley, – whose life is comprised in the words, – footman, poet, bookseller, honest man. As yet, he is only at the second step, – a poor poet; when he published books instead of writing them, he became a wealthy, but remained, as ever, a worthy fellow. It is due to this ex-lacquey to say, that in his satirical piece, the "Toy Shop," and in his hearty little drama, the "King and the Miller of Mansfield," both helped towards the stage by Pope, Dodsley gave wholesome food to satisfy the public appetite; and the man who had not long before stripped off a livery, showed more respect for decency than any wit or gallant of them all.

He was the only successful author of the season at Drury. The Rev. Mr. Miller broke a commandment, in his "Universal Passion," – stolen from Shakspeare and Molière; and classical Mr. Cooke manifested no humour in converting Terence's "Eunuchus," into a satirical farce, the "Eunuch, or the Derby Captain," – levelled at those English emeriti whose regiments were disbanded after the peace of Utrecht, and who sipped their Derbyshire ale at a famous tavern in Covent Garden.

The chief incident before the curtain was a riot, caused by the footmen who had been excluded from their gallery, on the night of Macklin's benefit, – 5th May 1737. But of this incident I shall speak in another page. Of Mrs. Pritchard there is barely an appearance; her great opportunity had not yet arrived.

At Covent Garden there was no new piece, but something better, – a revival of Shakspeare's "King John," in which Delane played the King, and Walker, Falconbridge, – a character for which he was personally and intellectually fitted, and in which, as in Hotspur, he gained more laurels than he ever acquired by his Macheath.

They who pursued novelty might find it with Giffard's company, playing at the Lincoln's Inn Fields, where, however, the only successful piece was "King Charles I.," a tragedy by Havard, a young actor, already known by his "Scanderbeg," and who succeeded to the place left vacant by Mills. Giffard played Charles, a character which is rather exaggerated by the author, who acted Juxon. Chesterfield said, in reference to this piece, that "the catastrophe was too recent, too melancholy, and of too solemn a nature to be heard of anywhere but in the pulpit." However this may be, the way in which the tragedy was composed was anything but solemn. Desultory Havard had been commissioned by Giffard to write the piece. It was done to order, and under constraint; for the patron locked up the poet in a garret, near Lincoln's Inn, during a certain number of hours, daily, from which he was not suffered to emerge till he had repeated, from behind the door, to Giffard, who was on the landing, a certain number of newly-written lines, – till the whole was completed, when the poet became free.

At the Haymarket, Fielding and satire reigned, but not supreme, – for his pieces were as often hissed as applauded; but the political allusions in "Tumble-down Dick, or Phaeton in the Suds," pleased, and those in the "Historical Register for 1736," made the audience laugh, and Sir Robert Walpole, satirised as Quidnunc,29 winced. The government had for some time contemplated a restriction of the licence of the stage. Hitherto, the Lord Chamberlain could stop a play in its career. It was now proposed to establish a licenser, according to whose report the Chamberlain might prohibit the play from entering on a career at all. The proposal arose out of an officious act of Giffard's, who took the manuscript of a satirical piece, called the "Golden Rump," to the minister, at which piece the latter was so shocked, that the bill for gagging the stage was at once proceeded with.

It was indecorously hurried through the Commons and tossed to the Lords, at the close of the session of 1737. There it met the sturdy opposition of Chesterfield. He looked upon the bill as an attempt, through restraining the licence of the stage, to destroy the liberty of the press; for what was seditious to act, it would be seditious to print. And, if the printing of a play could be stopped, there would soon be a gag on pamphlets and other works.

The very act of Giffard showed that the players were anxious not to come in collision with government; and the existing laws could be applied against them if they offended. But those laws were not applied, or Mr. Fielding would have been punished for his "Pasquin," wherein the three great professions – religion, physic, and law – were represented as inconsistent with common sense. Chesterfield thought that the same law might have been put in force against Havard, for his "King Charles I."

If ministers dreaded satire or censure all they had to do was so to act as not to deserve it. If they deserved it, it would be as easy to turn passages of old plays against them, as to make them, in new. When the Roman actor, Diphilus, altered the words "Nostrâ miseriâ tu es magnus!" – a phrase from an old play – the eyes of the audience were turned on Pompeius Magnus, who was present; and the speaker was made to repeat the phrase a hundred times. Augustus, indeed, subsequently restored "order" in Rome; but God forbid that order should be restored here, at such a price as was paid for it in Rome!

False accusations, too, could be lightly made. Molière complained that "Tartuffe" was prohibited on the ground of its ridiculing religion, which was done nightly on the Italian stage; whereas he only satirised hypocrites. "It is true, Molière," said the Prince de Conti, "Harlequin ridicules heaven and exposes religion; but you have done much worse, – you have ridiculed the first minister of religion."

Against the power of prohibition being lodged in one single man, Chesterfield protested, but in vain. One consequence, he said, would be, that all vices prevalent at court would come to be represented as virtues. He told the Lords that they had no right to put an excise upon wit; and said, finely, "Wit, my Lords, is the property of those who have it, – and too often the only property they have to depend on. It is, indeed, but a precarious dependence. Thank God!" he said, "we, my Lords, have a dependence of another kind!"

Such is the substance of his famous but unavailing remonstrance. The bill, not to protect morality, but to spare the susceptibilities of statesmen and place-men, passed; and the result was a "job." In the ensuing spring, Chetwynd was appointed, under the Chamberlain, licenser of plays, with a salary of £400 per annum; and to help him in doing little, Odell was named a deputy-licenser, with £200 yearly; – and therewith the job was consummated; and the deputy-licenser began to break the law he was appointed to see strictly observed. When the Act was passed, his most sacred majesty, who commanded unsavoury pieces occasionally to be played before him, prorogued the parliament, after lamenting the spirit of insubordination and licentiousness which pervaded the community!

The government made use of its authority, by prohibiting plays, and the public took their revenge, by hissing those that were licensed. Among the prohibited, were Brooke's "Gustavus Vasa;" Thomson's "Edward and Eleanora;" and Fielding's "Miss Lucy in Town;"30– the first, as dangerous to public order; the second, as too freely alluding to royal family dissensions; the third (after it had been licensed) as satirising "some man of quality!" To these must be added "Arminius," by Paterson, Thomson's deputy in his post of Surveyor of the Leeward Islands. The deputy had copied out his principal's "Edward and Eleanora;" and as "Arminius" was in the same hand, it was forbidden, as being, probably, an equally objectionable piece by the same author! The prohibition applied to it was profitable; for he published his play by subscription, and gained £1000 by it, – not for the reason that it was a good, but because it was a forbidden drama.31

Audiences amused themselves by hissing the permitted plays, sometimes with the additional luxury of personal feeling against the author, – as in the case of the Rev. Mr. Miller's "Coffee House," "Art and Nature," and "Hospital for Fools." Thomson was fortunate in saving his "Agamemnon" from the censors, for it is not unworthy of ranking with the "Iphigenia" of Racine; and its merit saved it. Mallet was still more lucky with his "Mustapha;" and the audience were too pleased to hiss a piece, the licensers of which were too dull to perceive that Sultan Solyman and his vizier, Rustan, were but stage portraits of George II. and Sir Robert Walpole. They had no such tenderness for the "Parricide" of William Shirley, – a gentleman who understood the laws of trade better than those of the drama. A French company, at the Haymarket, were of course hissed out of the country. There was no ill-will against them, personally. It was sufficient that the Licensing Act authorised them to play, and the public would not tolerate them, accordingly! If they bore with Lillo's "Marina," it was, perhaps, because it was a re-cast of "Pericles;" and if they applauded his licensed "Elmeric," the reason may have been, that the old dissenting jeweller, who set so brave an example in writing "moral" pieces, was then dead; and the "author's nights" might be of advantage to his impoverished family.

But there were licensed dramas at which the public laughed too heartily, to have cared to hiss, or which so entranced them that they never thought of it. Thus, Dodsley's merry pieces, "Sir John Cockle," and the "Blind Beggar;" Carey and Lampe's hilarious burlesque-opera, the "Dragon of Wantley," and its sequel, "Margery;" with "Orpheus and Eurydice," one of Rich's burlesques and pantomimes – the comic operatic scenes not preceding, but alternating with those of the harlequinade – in which, by the way, the name of Grimaldi occurs as pantaloon, – rode riotously triumphant through the seasons, which were otherwise especially remarkable, by numerous revivals of Shakspeare's plays, according to the original text; and not less so by that of Milton's "Comus," in which graceful Mrs. Cibber played and sang the Lady, and sunny Kitty Clive gladdened every heart, as Euphrosyne.

As far as new pieces are concerned, thus stood the stage till Garrick came. In further continuing to clear it for his coming, I have to record the death of Bowman, the best dressed old man at eighty-eight, and the cheeriest that could be seen. My readers, I hope, remember him, in the chapter on Betterton. Miller is also gone, – a favourite actor, in his day, whose merit in Irish characters is set down in his not having a brogue, which, at that period, was unintelligible to English ears. Miller played a wide range of characters; and he married for the very singular reason that, being unable to read the manuscript copy he had to get by heart, his wife might read it to, and beat it into, him. Bullock, too, the original Boniface and Gibby; and Harper, the original Jobson; and Ben. Griffin, quaint in Simon Pure, comic and terrific in Lovegold; with Milward, the original Lusignan; and Ben Jonson, always correct and natural, – have now departed. With them has gone Mrs. Hallam, an actress of repute, – the original Duchess of Malfy, in the revival of Webster's tragedy of horrors. By her death, the boards of old Drury were relieved from a load of fourteen stone weight! – almost as great as that of Mademoiselle Georges.

Of those that were left, Quin was the great chief; but he received a rude shock from Macklin, when the latter, after playing Roxana, in a burlesque of the "Rival Queens," achieved his first triumph, by taking Shylock from low comedy, and playing it as a serious character.32 The managers were as nervously afraid of a riot as those of the Ambigu were, when Frederic Lemaître, making no impression as the villain, Robert Macaire, during the first act of "L'Auberge des Adrets," played it through the rest of the piece as a comic part! In either case, the greatest success ensued, but that of Macklin was most honestly earned; and he took rank forthwith as one of the noble actors of his time.

Turning to other players, I find Mrs. Pritchard progressing from Lady Macduff to Isabella, – from Lucy to Viola and Rosalind. Walker meets a rival in the Macheath of mellifluous Beard. Woodward and Yates are rising to fame. Young Mrs. Cibber disappears for awhile, carrying with her the charms that strike the sight, and the merit that wins the soul. There is a terrible scandal in the cause of her disappearance. "Pistol," her worthless husband, has something more than pushed her into temptation, that he may make money by the offence to which he is the prompter. The public voice condemns him; a jury awards him damages, which show their contempt for his "sense of honour;" and the lady, running away from the house in which he had shut her up, while he was absent, playing that congenial character, Scrub – took for her better friend the man who had fallen in love with her through her husband's contrivance.

As if to compensate for the loss of Mrs. Cibber's honied tones, the stage was wakened to a new delight, by the presence of Margaret Woffington. This Irish actress made her first appearance at Covent Garden, on the 6th of November, 1740, as Sylvia, in the "Recruiting Officer;" and when, a few nights later, she played Sir Harry Wildair, – the ecstatic town were ready to confess, that in the new and youthful charmer they had at once recovered both Mrs. Oldfield and Robert Wilks. And yet this enchantress, so graceful, so winning, so natural, so refined, had commenced her public career as one of the children who were suspended by a rope from the ancles of Madame Violanti, when that wonder of her day exhibited her powers in Dublin on the tight-rope.

Loth to leave entirely, Colley Cibber now and then, at £50 a night, played a round of characters, always to crowded houses, but most so when he enacted some of his old beaux and fops. His Richard did not so well please; and one night, when playing this character, he whispered to Victor that he would give £50 to be in his easy chair again, by his fireside.

There was a Richard at hand who was likely to drive him there, and keep all others from the stage. The season of 1741-42 opened at Drury, on September 5, with "Love for Love," and the "Mock Doctor." The additions to the company, of note, were Delane, Theophilus Cibber, and Mrs. Woffington. Quin was absent starring in Ireland. Covent Garden opened on October 8th with the "Provoked Wife." On the 19th of the latter month, while Drury was giving "As You Like It," and Covent Garden was acting the same piece, the little theatre in Ayliffe Street, Goodman's Fields, announced the "Life and Death of King Richard III.," "the part of King Richard by a gentleman who never appeared on any stage."

At last! the hour and the man had come. Throughout this season no new piece was produced at either of the patent theatres,33 so influenced were they by the consequences of this first appearance of a nameless actor at Goodman's Fields. Of course, the new actor was David Garrick.

CHAPTER V

GARRICK, QUIN, MRS. PORTER

He had selected the part of Richard III., for reasons which now appear singular. "He had often declared," says Davies, "he would never choose a character that was not suitable to his person; for, said he, if I should come forth in a hero, or in any part which is generally acted by a tall fellow, I shall not be offered a larger salary than 40s. a week. In this," adds the biographer, "he glanced at the follies of those managers who used to measure an actor's merit by his size."

On that 19th of October 1741, there was no very great nor excitedly expectant audience at Goodman's Fields. The bill of the day first promises a concert of vocal and instrumental music, to begin exactly at six o'clock; admission by tickets "at 3s., 2s., and 1s." Between the two parts of the concert, it is further announced that the historical play of the "Life and Death of Richard III.," with the ballad-opera of "The Virgin Unmasked," would be "performed gratis by Persons for their Diversion." The part of King Richard, "by a gentleman who never appeared on any stage," is an announcement, not true to the letter; but the select audience were not troubled therewith. From the moment the new actor appeared they were enthralled. They saw a Richard and not an actor of that personage. Of the audience, he seemed unconscious, so thoroughly did he identify himself with the character. He surrendered himself to all its requirements, was ready for every phase of passion, every change of humour, and was as wonderful in quiet sarcasm as he was terrific in the hurricane of the battle-scenes. Above all, his audience were delighted with his "nature." Since Betterton's death, actors had fallen into a rhythmical, mechanical, sing-song cadence. The style still lingers among conservative French tragedians. Garrick spoke not as an orator, but as King Richard himself might have spoken in like circumstances. The chuckling exultation of his "So much for Buckingham!" was long a tradition on the stage. His "points," indeed, occurred in rapid succession. We are told that the rage and rapidity with which he delivered

"Cold friends to me! What do they in the North,When they should serve their sovereign in the West?"

made a wonderful impression on the audience. Hogarth has shown us how he looked, when starting from his dream; and critics tell us that his cry of "Give me another horse!" was the cry of a gallant, fearless man; but that it fell into one of distress as he said, "Bind up my wounds," while the "Have mercy, Heaven," was moaned piteously, on bended knee. The battle-scene and death excited the utmost enthusiasm of an audience altogether unused to acting like this. The true successor of Betterton had, at last, appeared. Betterton was the great actor of the days of Charles II., James II., William, and of Anne. Powell, Verbruggen,34 Mills, Quin, were unequal to the upholding of such a task as Betterton had left them. Booth was more worthy of the inheritance; but after him came the true heir, David Garrick, the first tragic actor who gave extraordinary lustre to the Georgian Era.

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