Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3)

On the duties of audiences, Mr. Bickerstaffe is a little loose, but we may readily acquiesce in one of his sentiments. "When we see anything divert an audience, either in tragedy or comedy, that strikes at the duties of civil life, or exposes what the best men in all ages have looked upon as sacred and inviolable, it is the certain sign of a profligate race of men, who are fallen from the virtue of their forefathers, and will be contemptible in the eyes of their posterity." This was said when audiences thought only of the quality of the actor, and troubled not themselves with that of the maxims uttered, unless these had some political tendency, or allusion to well-known popular circumstance. The Tatler lived before the time when the stories of Regulus and Virginia were turned into burlesque, and children received their first impressions of Alfred and of Tell through the caricature of extravaganza.

But there was much that was illegitimate in those legitimate days. If a play was not likely to attract, an audience was advertised, in order to draw one. The promised presence of royalty, naturally enough, helped to fill the house; but so would that of a leash of savages, or a quack doctoress. Of the latter class, there was the clever and impudent Mrs. Mapp, the bone-setter, who came into town daily from Epsom, in her own carriage, and set bones, or explained her principle in doing so, at the Grecian Coffee House. The Lincoln's Inn Field managers invited her to honour their house and the performance with her presence, and the astute old lady was well aware that her presence thus granted would be a profitable advertisement of herself. That presence I find announced at the above theatre on the 16th October, 1736, with that of Taylor, the oculist, at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play was the "Husband's Relief," but the full house was owing to Mrs. Mapp being there. In honour of this "bone-setter," near whom also sat Ward, the worm doctor, a song was sung on the stage, – as the national anthem when a sovereign sanctions the doings of the evening. Of this chant I give the first and last verses: —

"Ye surgeons of London, who puzzle your pates,To ride in your coaches and purchase estates,Give over, for shame, for your pride has a fall,And the doctress of Epsom has outdone you all.Derry down.* * * * *"Dame Nature has giv'n her a doctor's degree,She gets all the patients and pockets the fee;So if you don't instantly prove her a cheat,She'll loll in her chariot, while you walk the street.Derry down!"

Let us now glance at the example set to audiences by greater folk than Mrs. Mapp.

George I. understood English better than he could speak it, and he could make ready application of passages to contemporary events connected with himself or others. Shakspeare's "Henry VIII." was frequently played before him, both at Hampton Court and at Drury Lane; and there was a speech in that play which never escaped his marked notice. It is that addressed by Wolsey to his secretary, Cromwell, after the King has ordered the Cardinal to write letters of indemnity, into every county where the payment of certain heavy taxes had been disputed. "A word with you," says the Cardinal: —

"Let there be letters writ to every shire,Of the King's grace and pardon. – The grieved commonsHardly conceive of me. Let it be noised,That through our intercession, this revokementAnd pardon comes. – I shall, anon, advise youFurther in the proceeding."

Cibber, who narrates the incident, states that "the solicitude of this spiritual minister in filching from his master the grace and merit of a good action, and dressing up himself in it, while himself had been author of the evil complained of, was so easy a stroke of his temporal conscience that it seemed to raise the King into something more than a smile whenever that play came before him. And I had a more distinct occasion to observe this effect, because my proper stand on the stage, when I spoke the lines, required me to be near the box where the King usually sat. In a word, this play is so true a dramatic chronicle of an old English court, and where the character of Harry VIII. is so excellently drawn, even to a humorous likeness, that it may be no wonder why His Majesty's particular taste for it should have commanded it three several times in one winter."

So far Cibber; we hear from another source that on one occasion when the above lines were spoken, the King said to the Prince of Wales, who had not yet been expelled from Court, "You see, George, what you have one day to expect."

When George I., wishing to patronise the English actors, in 1718, ordered the great hall at Hampton Court to be converted into a theatre, he desired that it might be ready by June, in order that the actors in their summer vacation might play before him three times a week. The official obstacles prevented the hall being ready before September, when the actors had commenced their London season, and were, therefore, enabled to play before the King only seven times. The performances were under the direction of Steele, whose political services had been poorly recompensed by granting him certain theatrical privileges. The troop commenced on the 23rd of the month with "Hamlet;" they subsequently played "Sir Courtly Nice," the "Constant Couple," "Love for Money," "Volpone," and "Rule a Wife and Have a Wife." The King could not have been an indifferent scholar if he could readily apply passages, and quickly comprehend others, in plays like these; or could follow Cibber in Sir Courtly, laugh at the jokes of Pinkethman in Crack, feel the heartiness of Miller, in Hothead, be interested in the Testimony of Johnson, sympathetic with the Surly of Thurmond, enjoy the periods of Booth in Farewell, or the aristocratic spirit of Mills in Lord Bellguard. The ladies, too, in some of the plays acted before him, – Leonora, by Mrs. Porter, and Violante, by Mrs. Younger, – had also some phrases to utter, which might well puzzle one not to the matter born. But George I. must have comprehended all, for he so thoroughly enjoyed all, that Steele told Lord Sunderland, the grandson of Sacharissa, and the son-in-law of Marlborough, that the King liked the entertainment "so terribly well, my lord, that I was afraid I should have lost all my actors; for I was not sure the King would not keep them to fill the place at Court, which he saw them so fit for in the play."

In the old days, a play acted before the sovereign at Whitehall, cost that sovereign but the poor fee of £20, the actors playing at their own house, in the afternoon, previous to having the honour of acting before the Court at night. To the performers at Hampton Court their ordinary day's wage was given, with their travelling expenses, for which they held themselves ready to act there at a day's warning. The Lord Chamberlain found the wax-lights, and furnished the "household music," while the players' wardrobe and "traps" generally were conveyed from old Drury down to Hampton in a "Chaise Marine" at his Majesty's expense. The cost of the seven plays amounted to £350; but King George generously threw in a couple of hundred more, as a guerdon to the managers, who had professed that the honour of toiling to afford his Majesty pleasure was sufficient recompense in itself! The King did not believe a word of it; and the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain (and subsequently the original of Foote's Matthew Mug, in the "Mayor of Garratt"), paid the money into the hands of the delighted Cibber, who was astounded at the Chamberlain's modesty, which kept him from arrogating to himself, like Cardinal Wolsey, the merit which belonged to his royal master.

How things went between audience and actors in the Hampton Court theatre is admirably told by Cibber himself: – "A play presented at Court, or acted on a public stage," he says, "seem to their different authors a different entertainment. In the common theatre the guests are at home, where the politer forms of good breeding are not so nicely regarded. Every one there falls to, and likes or finds fault, according to his natural taste or appetite. At Court, where the Prince gives the treat and honours the table with his own presence, the audience is under the restraint of a circle where laughter or applause raised higher than a whisper would be stared at. At a public play they are both let loose, even till the actor is sometimes pleased with his not being able to be heard for the clamour of them. But this coldness, or decency of attention at Court, I observed, had but a melancholy effect upon the impatient vanity of some of our actors, who seemed inconsolable when their flashy endeavours to please had passed unheeded. Their not considering where they were quite disconcerted them, nor could they recover their spirits till, from the lowest rank of the audience, some gaping Joan or John, in the fulness of their hearts, roared out their approbation."

These little ebullitions appear to have amused the grave King, for Cibber hints that they raised a smile on the royal countenance, and he suggests that such a fact was entirely natural and reasonable. He adds, "that an audience may be as well too much reserved as too profuse of their applause. For though it is possible a Betterton would not have been discouraged from throwing out an excellence, or elated into an error, by his auditors being too little or too much pleased; yet as actors of his judgment are rarities, those of less judgment may sink into a flatness in their performance for want of that applause which, from the generality of judges, they might, perhaps, have some pretence to; and the auditor, when not seeming to feel what ought to affect him, may rob himself of something more that he might have had, by giving the actor his due, who measures out his power to please, according to the value he sets upon the hearer's taste or capacity; but, however, as we were not here itinerant adventurers, and had properly but one royal auditor to please, after that honour was attained to, the rest of our ambition had little to look after."

And now what of this George's successor as an "auditor?"

Among the unmerited censures which have been flung at Charles II., the most conspicuous and the least reasonable is that the grossness of the dramas produced in his days was owing to his bad taste exhibited in his fondness for French comedy. Had the poets of that period imitated that comedy, they would not have offended as they did, for, taken altogether, French comedy was remarkable for its freedom from utter, abounding, and continual coarseness. I think that George II. was more blameworthy than his predecessor Charles, for he encouraged the representation of immoral dramas, and commanded the restoration of scenes which actors had begun to deem too indecent for acting or expression. For didactic plays the monarch had no stomach; but he savoured Ravenscroft's beastly comedies – the very worst of them did he the most delight in, and helped to keep them on the stage when actors and audiences were alike disgusted with them. This perverted taste was strong upon him from the first. When Prince of Wales, he witnessed the acting of "Venice Preserved," but, discovering subsequently, on reading the old edition of the play, there were scenes in it which are flattered by merely being designated as "filthy," he sent for the "master" of one of the houses, and commanded that the omitted scenes should be restored. They are those which chiefly lie between Aquilia and Antonio, characters which never take part in modern representations of Otway's tragedy. The former part was given to Mrs. Horton, who, though she was something of the quality of the creature she represented, was not only young and beautiful, but was draped in a certain mantle of modesty which heightened the charms of her youth and her beauty; and she must have had a painful task, less than the younger Pinkethman had who played Antonio, in thus gratifying the low predilections of the graceless Prince, who then gave ton to audiences.

George II., when Prince of Wales, found Bartholomew Fair as much to his taste as the theatres. In 1725, he, and a gay posse of companions, went down the Thames, in barges, to Blackfriars, and thence to the fair. At the conclusion of the fun for the night, they entered the old King's Arms Inn, joyously supped there, and got back to St. James's by four o'clock in the morning. Some years later, Prince Frederick, George II.'s son, who valued the stage in much the same measure as his father did, also visited the fair by night. He went amid a little army of yeomen of the guard, and under a blaze of torches, and cries of "make way there for the prince," from a mob who were delighted to see among them the heir apparent, in a bright ruby-coloured frock coat, thickly laced with gold. There was a gallant company, too, of gentlemen, all coated and laced, and besworded like the prince; but the finest and fussiest, and happiest personage there, was the important little man who marshalled the prince the way that he should go, and ushered him to and from the booths, where short solemn tragedies were played, with a disjointed farce between the acts. This important individual was Mr. Manager Rich, and he was as happy at this night's doings, as if he had gained something more substantial by them than empty honour.

On the 3d of May 1736,56 the audience at Drury Lane, with the Prince of Wales and his bride among them, witnessed some unexpected addition to the entertainment promised them. The footmen chose that night for an attempt to recover their old and abused privilege of occupying the upper gallery, gratis. One body of them entered the gallery by force, a second fought their way through the stage-door to dictate terms to the manager, and an active corps in plush kept the house in alarm by their shouts for a redress of grievances. Amid the fighting that ensued the terrified part of the audience dispersed. Colonel de Veil, with the "authorities," came to read the Riot Act, but no respect was paid either to dignitary or document, whereupon a battle-royal followed, in which plush was ingloriously defeated, with a loss of eighteen finely-liveried and thickly-calved combatants, who, battered, bruised, and bleeding, were clapped into Newgate for safe keeping.

In the latter part of the life of George II., he took advantage of his position to make loud remarks on the performances at which he was present. One night, at Drury Lane, he commanded Farquhar's "Beaux' Stratagem" and Fielding's "Intriguing Chambermaid." He was amused with the Foigard of Yates, and the Cherry of Miss Minors. In the second piece, Kitty Clive played her original part of Lettice – a part in which she had delighted the town, which could then be delighted by such parts, for seventeen years. Walpole, writing of this incident to Mann, says: "A certain king that, whatever airs you may give yourself you are not at all like, was last week at the play. The intriguing chambermaid in the farce says to the old gentleman: 'You are villainously old, you are sixty-six, you cannot have the impudence to think of living above two years.' The old gentleman in the stage-box turned about in a passion, and said, 'This is d – d stuff!' and the royal critic was energetically right."

On some occasions there were more kings in the house than he of England. Four were once there among the audience, and as far as their majesties were concerned, rather against their will. These poor majesties were American Indian chiefs, to whom the higher sounding title of "kings" was given by way of courtesy. The Irish actor, Bowen, had contrived to secure their presence at his benefit when "Macbeth" was performed, and a dense mob was gathered, not so much to hear Shakspeare as to see the "kings." The illustrious strangers were placed in the centre box, and as they were invisible to the occupants of the galleries an uproar ensued. Wilks blandly assured the rioters that the kings were really present, as announced. The galleries did not care; they had paid their money, they said, to see them, and the kings they would have or there should be no play. After some negotiating and great tumult the managers placed four chairs upon the stage, to which the four Indian kings gravely descended from their box amid a chorus of "hurrahs!" from the late dissentients, with whose noisy enthusiasm the imperturbable gravity of the chiefs contrasted strangely. They listened seriously to the play, and with as much intelligence to the epilogue, which was specially addressed to them, and in which they were told that as Sheba's queen once went to adore Solomon, so they had been "winged by her example" to seek protection on Britannia's shore. It then proceeded, with some abuse of grammar, thus: —

"O princes, who have with amazement seenSo good, so gracious, and so great a queen;Who from her royal mouth have heard your doomSecur'd against the threats of France and Rome;Awhile some moments on our scenes bestow;"

which was a singular request to make when the play was over!

One of the greatest honours ever rendered to a dramatist by royalty, was conferred by Queen Caroline, wife of George II., on Mottley. The poet was but a poet by courtesy; his two stilted tragedies were soon forgotten, and a better fate has not attended his other productions. What merit gained for him the favour of so great a queen was never known. Mottley's father was an active Jacobite; but the son was a seeker of places, for which he obtained more promises than were realised. Yet for this obscure person, whose benefit night was announced as to take place soon after the Queen's Drawing Room had been held, that queen herself, in that very drawing room (the occasion being the Prince of Wales's birthday), sold Mottley's tickets, delivering them with her own royal hand to the purchasers, and condescending to receive gold for them in return. The money was handed over to that gravest of the Hanoverian officials, Colonel Schurtz, privy-purse to the prince, who presented the same to the highly-honoured, and, perhaps, much astonished poet, with a handsome guerdon added to it by the prince himself.

It is due to the audiences at Oxford, where the actors played in their brief season twice a day, that it should be said, that the taste of the University was superior to that of the metropolis. Whatever modern dramatists might assert with respect to Shakspeare, and however the "more politely written comedies" might be acceptable to a licentious London pit, Oxford asserted the superiority of Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, "for whose masterly scenes," says Cibber, "they seemed to have as implicit a reverence as, formerly, for the ethics of Aristotle." The flash, and tinsel, and even the sterling metal mixed up with the dross of the modern illustrative comedy, had no attractions for an Oxford audience. Of modern tragedy they only welcomed "Cato;" but that was written by an Oxford man, and after the classic model, and to see this, the play goers clustered round the doors at noon, and the death of Cato triumphed over the injuries of Cæsar everywhere.

On the taste of English audiences generally, Dryden remarks, in his Essay on Dramatic Poesy, that, "as we who are a more sullen people come to be diverted at our plays, so the French, who are of an airy and gay temper, come hither to make themselves more serious. And this I conceive to be why comedies are more pleasing to us and tragedies to them." This appears to me as false as his assertion that rhymed plays were in their nature and fashion peculiarly English! A few years later the "polite taste" of audiences was censured freely by Edmund Curll, who was very irate that "nothing would go down but ballad-opera and Mr. Lun's buffoonery;" but this taste was attributed by him to an imperfect education. "As for breeding," that delicate gentleman remarks, "our brewers are now arrived at such a height of finesse and elegance, that their children are sent into France for education. But for this, as a lord mayor himself said, there ought to be some grains of allowance."

Cibber relates an incident illustrative of the ferocity of enamoured and rejected beaux among the audience. One of these, in the year 1717, had incurred the strongly-expressed contempt of a young actress, whom Colley does not further designate, for some insulting language addressed to her as she was seated in a box. This fellow took his revenge by outraging the lady, on the stage, and, when she appeared, he interrupted her performance "with such loud and various notes of mockery, as other young Men of honour in the same place have sometimes made themselves undauntedly merry with." This disappointed beau, however, went further, and threw at the lady "such trash as no person can be supposed to carry about him, unless to use on so particular an occasion." A champion of the insulted actress called her assailant "a fool, or a bully," whereupon the latter challenged him to Hyde Park, and proved himself craven to boot, by asking for his life. "Whether he mended it or not," says Cibber, "I have not yet heard; but his antagonist, a few years after, died in one of the principal posts of the Government."

The critics were not more tender to a new play, particularly when provoked by sarcasms against their judgment in the prologue, than the above offender was to a well-conducted actress. "They come to a new play," Cibber tells us, "like hounds to a carcase, and are all in a full cry, sometimes for an hour together, before the curtain rises to throw it amongst them. Sure, those gentlemen cannot but allow that a play, condemned after a fair hearing, falls with thrice the ignominy, as when it is refused that common justice." This was a new race of critics, unknown to earlier times, and their savageness had the effect of deterring gentlemen from writing plays. "They seem to me," says Colley, "like the lion whelps in the Tower, who are so boisterously gamesome at their meals that they dash down the bowls of milk brought for their own breakfasts."

We meet with one instance of forbearance being asked from the critics, not on the ground that the piece had merit, but that, as a prince of the blood was in the house, he should be allowed to listen to the nonsense undisturbed. The piece was Cibber's pastoral opera, "Love's Riddle," produced at Drury Lane, in January 1729. The public were offended at the recent prohibition of the second part of the "Beggar's Opera," Cibber was looked upon as having procured the prohibition for the sake of his own piece, and a cabal of pit rioters hooted the play, and were only momentarily silent while Miss Raftor was singing, whose voice had well nigh saved this operatic drama. On the second night, which was even more riotous than the first, Frederick, Prince of Wales, was present, and it was in order that he might be decently bored, and not deprived of what he had never seen, the fun of a playhouse riot, that Cibber addressed the pit, and undertook that the piece should be withdrawn after that night, if they would only remember in whose presence they were, and allow the drama to be quietly played out. With this understanding the rioters withdrew, the piece went dully on, and, at the close of it, a lord in waiting was sent behind the scenes to compliment Cibber and to express the Prince's approval of his conduct on that night.

The pit was always the great court of appeal, and on one occasion Cibber showed much courage and good sense, and a due appreciation of his calling as an actor. At the theatre in Dorset Gardens, where the Drury Lane Company occasionally played, and on an evening when he was announced for one of his best parts, a set of rope-dancers were advertised as about to make their first appearance. Cibber's scorn was roused by this companionship, and what he did may be best told in his own words. "I was hardy enough," he says, "to go into the pit, and acquainted the spectators near me that I hoped they would not think it a mark of my disrespect to them if I declined acting upon any stage that was brought to so low a disgrace as ours was like to be by that day's entertainment." In this he had the support of his fellow-actors, and the public approved; and the acrobats were dismissed by the reluctant manager.

The pit was at this period supreme and severe, and as the witlings used to make remarks on, or exchange them with, the more audacious beauties in the boxes, so now did they exercise a cruel humour in making sarcastic application of the words of a part to the actress who delivered them. By these they pointed out the flaws in her character, her deficiency in beauty, or her effrontery in assuming virtues which did not belong to her.