Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3)

That tragedy, which has been acted more frequently and more recently than "Cato," was first played in the Drury Lane season of 1720-21. On the 18th of April, of the latter year, Zanga was played by Mills, while Booth took Alonzo, and Wilks, Carlos. The secondary parts were thus played by the better actors. Mrs. Porter played Leonora, Mrs. Horton, Isabella. This was a fine cast, and the piece was fairly successful. A story in the Guardian, and two plays, by Marlowe and Aphra Behn, are said to have furnished Young with his materials, in handling which, one of his biographers has described him as "superior even to Shakspeare!" The action does not flag, the situations are dramatic, the interest is well sustained, and the language is expressive and abounding in poetical beauty. The story of love, jealousy, and murder is, however, a little marred by the puling lines of the black Iago, – Zanga, at the close. Young obtained but £50 for the copyright of this piece.

Young's "Revenge," if built upon other plays, has served the turn of later authors. In Lord John Russell's "Don Carlos," the reason given for the grovelling Cordoba's hatred of the Spanish prince, reminds the reader of that of Zanga for Alonzo; not less in the fact itself, the blow believed to be forgotten, but in the expression. Any one, moreover, who remembers the avowal which Artabanus makes of his guilt in the "Artaxerxes" of Metastasio, will be inclined to think that the Italian had in his mind the similar speech of the Moor to his master.

Cibber's comedy, the "Refusal," skilfully built up from the "Femmes Savantes" of Molière and the South Sea mania, ran, like the more famous tragedy, but six nights, a riot attending each representation, and finally ending in driving a good play by the author of the "Nonjuror" from the stage. The other incidents of this season are confined to the appearance of Cibber's son, Theophilus, who made his first essay in the Duke of Clarence, in the second part of "Henry IV.," as arranged by Betterton. It was a modest attempt on the part of him whose Pistol was to serve, down to our day, as a tradition to be followed. As this vagabond Theophilus appeared, there, on the other hand, departed the very pearl of chambermaids, Mrs. Saunders, who retired to become the friend and servant of Mrs. Oldfield. This last lady played but rarely this year; but Mrs. Horton profited by the opportunity, and Mrs. Porter, as a tragic actress, drew the town.

Lincoln's Inn was, at least, active in its corresponding season. The progress of Quin is curiously marked. He played Glo'ster to the Lear of Boheme; Hector, in "Troilus and Cressida," Ryan playing Troilus; the Duke in "Measure for Measure;" Coriolanus; Aumerle, in "Richard II.;" Aaron, in "Titus Andronicus;" Leonato to Ryan's Benedick, &c. &c. Moreover, while in the "Merry Wives" he played Falstaff with great effect to the Host of Bullock, in the first part of "Henry IV." Bullock played the Knight, and Quin the King. The season, remarkable for Shakspearian revivals, creditable to Rich, was also distinguished for the failure of the original pieces produced. The "Chimæra" was a satire by Odell, a Buckinghamshire squire, pensioned by Government. It was aimed at the speculators in Change Alley, but it smote them tenderly. The "Fair Captive" was an adaptation by Mrs. Haywood, a lady who began by writing as loosely as Aphra Behn, concluded by writing as decorously as Mrs. Chapone, and left charge to her executors, in 1756, to give no aid to any biography of her that might be attempted, on the ground that the least said was the soonest mended.

This comedy111 was only exceeded in dulness by the tragedy which succeeded it, "Antiochus," by Mottley, who could not gain fortune either as poet or placeman. In the play, Antiochus is in love with his father's wife, Stratonice, who, on being surrendered to his son, by her husband, Seleucus, is a little overjoyed, for she loves the younger prince; but she is also much shocked, and escapes from her embarrassment by suicide.

The next novelty was a tragedy in one act and with four characters, "Fatal Extravagance," attributed to Miller,112 the son of a Scottish stone-cutter. Miller was a sort of exaggerated Richard Savage; inferior to him as a poet, and in every respect a more inexcusable vagabond. He had no redeeming traits of character, and he destroyed health and fortune (both restored more than once), as insanely as he did fame and the patience of his friends. In "Fatal Extravagance," Belmour, played by Quin, kills a creditor who holds his bond, of which he also robs the dead man, mixes a "cordial," administers it to his wife and three children (off the stage), drinks and dies. The butchery113 is soon got through, in one act. Miller subsequently declared that the piece was a gift to him from Aaron Hill. That busy and benevolent person had no money to give to a beggar; so he sat down and wrote a tragedy for him. It was a piece of clever extravagance.

It was far more amusing than Ambrose Philip's tragedy the "Briton," which was the sole novelty of the Drury Lane season 1721-22. The tragedy lacked neither skill, poetical spirit, nor incident; indeed, of love incidents there is something too much. But the amours of Yvor (Wilks) and Gwendolin (Mrs. Booth), the infidelities of Queen Cartismand (Mrs. Porter) to Vanoc (Booth), and the intervention of the Romans in these British domestic matters, interested but for a few nights, if then, an audience ill-read in their own primitive history.

Lincoln's Inn Fields was scarcely more prolific in novelty; this, with the exception of a poor drama, the "Hibernian Friend,"114 being confined to Sturmy's tragedy, "Love and Duty;" Lynceus, one of the half hundred sons of Ægyptus, by Quin. The love is that of Lynceus and his cousin, Hypermnestra; the duty, that of killing her husband, on the bridal night, by command of her father. The "Distressed Bride," which is the second name of this piece, wisely disobeys her sire, who is ultimately slain; after which, the young people, sole survivors of fifty couples married yesterday (the bridegrooms, all brothers; and sisters, all the brides), are made happy by the hope of long life unembittered by feuds with their kinsfolk.

The last two tragedies may be looked upon as a backsliding, after "Cato," "Jane Shore," and the "Revenge;" and in tragedy there was little improvement for several years. Meanwhile, Lincoln's Inn Fields acquired Walker, from Drury Lane, and Tony Aston, an itinerant actor, the first, perhaps, who travelled the country with an entertainment in which he was the sole performer. On the other hand, the house lost pretty Miss Stone, humorous Kit Bullock (Wilks's son-in-law), and busy George Pack; the last, the original Marplot, Lissardo, and many similar characters. Pack turned vintner in Charing Cross. Quin's ability was nightly more appreciated.

There was more "study" for the Drury Lane actors in 1722-23. Mrs. Centlivre's muse died calmly out with the comedy of the "Artifice." In the good scenes there was an approach to sentimental comedy, more fully reached, in November, by Steele, in his "Conscious Lovers," in which Booth played Young Bevil, and Mrs. Oldfield, Indiana. There was not an inferior performer in any of the other parts of this comedy, which Fielding sneers at, by making Parson Adams declare that there were things in it that would do very well in a sermon. Modern critics have called this comedy dull, but decent; perhaps because Steele affected to claim it as at least moral in its tendency. The truth, however, is, that it is excessively indecent. There is nothing worse in Aphra Behn than the remarks made by Cimberton, the "coxcomb with reflection," on Lucinda. This fop, played by Griffin, is for winning a beauty by the rules of metaphysics. There is more pathos than humour in this comedy; the author of which had now recovered his share in the patent, by favour of Sir Robert Walpole; and it is by directing attention only to such scenes as those between Bevil and Indiana, or between the former and his friend Myrtle (Wilks), that critics have not correctly declared that the sentiments are those of the most refined morality! For the very attempt to render them so, even partially, Sir Richard has been sneered at, very recently, by a writer who looks upon Steele as a fool for preferring to make Bevil the portrait of what a man ought to be rather than what man really was. The story of the piece is admirably manipulated and reformed from the "Andria," of Terence, though Tom (Cibber) is but a sorry Davus.

On one night of the performance of this play, a general officer was observed in the boxes, weeping at the distresses of Indiana. The circumstance was noted to Wilks, who, with kindly feeling ever ready, remarked, "I am certain the officer will fight none the worse for it!" Steele must have had more than ordinary power, if he could draw tears from martial eyes in those days.

It is not to be supposed that Pope set the author, as a writer, below Crowne; and yet, in the following lines, where the two are mentioned, there is no very complimentary allusion to Sir Richard: —

"When simple Macer, now of high renown,First sought a poet's fortune in the town,'Twas all th' ambition his high soul could feel,To wear red stockings and to dine with Steele.Some ends of verse his betters might afford,And gave the harmless fellow a good word.Set up with these, he ventured on the town,And with a borrow'd play outdid poor Crowne.There he stopt short, nor since has writ a tittle,But has the wit to make the most of little."

Crowne, at least, found something of an imitator in Ambrose Philips, whose tragedy, "Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester" (Duke, Booth; Beaufort, Cibber; Margaret, Mrs. Oldfield; Duchess of Gloucester, Mrs. Porter), was produced in this season. It was the last and worst of Philips' three dramatic essays. The insipid additions in the scene of Beaufort's death are justly described by Genest as being in Crowne's vapid and senseless fashion; and the public would not accept this cold, declamatory, conversational play as a substitute for the varied incidents which go to the making up of the second part of Shakspeare's "Henry VI."

Even in Dr. Johnson's time, "it was only remembered by its title;" we may, therefore, here take leave of the old secretary of the Hanover Club, who found more fortune in place and pension in Ireland, than he could derive from poetry and play writing in England. To the latter country he returned in 1748, to "enjoy himself," in pursuit of which end he died the following year. Addison once thought him well enough provided for, by being made a Westminster justice. "Nay," said Ambrose, like a virtuous man in comedy, "though poetry be a trade I cannot live by, yet I scorn to owe subsistence to another which I ought not to live by;" and he nobly gave up the justiceship – as soon as he was otherwise provided for!

Philips was followed by an inferior author, but a greater man, Sir Hildebrand Jacob, with a classical tragedy, "Fatal Constancy," in which all the unities are preserved; but that did not bring it the nearer to "Cato."

Then followed, in the summer and less fashionable portion of the season, Savage's tragedy, "Sir Thomas Overbury," in which the author played, very indifferently, the hero. At this time, the hapless young man was not widely known, except to those friends on whose charity he lived while he abused it. Favoured by Wilks and patronised by Theophilus Cibber, the ragged, rakish fellow, slunk at nights into the theatre, and by day lounged where he could, composing his tragedy on scraps of paper. In producing it, ever ready Aaron Hill assisted him; and his profits, amounting to about £200, gave him a temporary appearance of respectability. Savage is said to have been deeply ashamed of having turned actor; but it seems to me that he was only ashamed of having failed. He had neither voice, figure, nor any other qualification for such a profession. The tragedy lived but three days. There is something adroit in the conduct of the plot, and evidence of correctness of conjecture as to the truth of the relations between Overbury and Lady Somerset, – but there was no vitality therewith; and the poet gained no lasting fame by the effort.

Mrs. Haywood followed Savage's example, in acting in her own comedy, "A Wife to be Let;"115 but as this and other original pieces or adaptations passed away unheeded or disgraced, I may here conclude my notice of this season, by recording the death of Mrs. Bicknell, a woman, or rather an actress of merit, and the original representative of Cherry in the "Beaux' Stratagem."

Against Drury, the house in the Fields long struggled in vain. Audiences, of five or six pounds in value, discouraged the actors. Egleton was not equal to Cibber; yet the "Baron," as he was called, from having assumed the title, when squandering his little patrimony in France, was next to Colley in fops. Quin, Ryan, and Boheme could not attract like Booth, Wilks, and Cibber; and Hippisley and others, acting "Julius Cæsar," as a comic piece, was not a happy idea.116 Not more so, was that of turning the story of "Cartouche," who had recently been broken on the wheel, into a farce. The company lost their best actress, too, in Mrs. Seymour, whom Boheme married and took off the stage, to Ryan's great regret, as she acted admirably up to him. A promising actor, too, was lost to the troop, in young Reakstraw. In the summer vacation he was playing Darius, in a booth in Moorfields, – no derogation in those days. In the scene in which he is attacked by Bessus and Nabarzanes, one of the latter two thrust his foil at the King so awkwardly, that it entered the eye, pierced his brain, and laid the actor, after a scream, dead upon the boards!

With this season, it is to be noted that the fortune of Lincoln's Inn mended – thanks to the impertinence of Colley Cibber. To the latter, a tragedy had been presented by a modest gentleman, of a good old Staffordshire family, named Fenton. He was forty years of age at this time. Cibber knew his antecedents, that his Jacobite principles had been an obstacle to his ordination, for which he was well qualified, and that although he had been secretary and tutor in the family of Lord Orrery, Fenton had also earned his bread in the humble, but honourable, capacity of usher in a boarding-school. Colley read the tragedy, "Mariamne," and after keeping it unnecessarily long, he returned it, with the advice that Fenton should stick to some honest calling, and cease to woo the Muses. Elijah Fenton, however, had friends who enabled him now to live independently of labour, and by their counsel he took "Mariamne" to Rich, who immediately brought it out, with Quin as Sohemus, Boheme as Herod, and Mrs. Seymour as Mariamne – her one great creation.

Boheme, in Herod, played well up to the Mariamne of Mrs. Seymour; but he could not approach Mondory in that character, in the French play by Tristan. Mondory used to have his audience, on this occasion, departing from him, depressed, silent, wrapt in meditation. He surrendered himself entirely to the part, and died of the consequences of his efforts. Herod was as truly the name of the malady to which he succumbed, as Orestes was of that which killed Montfleury, as he was playing Oreste, in Racine's tragedy of "Andromaque."

The old story of Herod and Mariamne is so simple and natural that it appeals to every heart, in every age. Fenton perilled it by additions; but the tragedy won a triumph, and the poet to whom Pope paid about £250 for translating four books of the Odyssey for him, netted four times that sum by this drama. He became famous, and critics did not note the false quantity which the Cambridge man gave to the penultimate of Salome. Fenton was rendered supremely happy, but his dramatic fame rests on this piece alone. He never wooed Melpomene again, but lived calmly the brief seven years of life which followed his success. Like Prior dying at Wimpole, the honoured guest of Harley, Fenton died at Easthampstead, the equally esteemed guest of Sir William Trumbull, son of King William's secretary of state. In Pope's well-known epitaph, Fenton's character is beautifully described in a few simple lines.

Aaron Hill was the exact opposite of quiet Fenton. His beech-nut oil company having failed, he joined Sir Robert Montgomery in a project for colonising South Carolina; and this too proving unproductive, he turned to the stage, and brought out in the season of 1723-24, at Drury Lane, his tragedy of "Henry V." – an "improvement" of Shakspeare's historical play of the same name. Hill's additions comprise a Harriet (Mrs. Thurmond), for whom he invented a breeches part, and some melodramatic situations – especially between her and Henry (Booth). Hill cut out all Shakspeare's comic characters; but he was so anxious for the success of the piece, that he spent £200 of his own on the scenery, of which he made a present to the managers; and, after all, his play failed, despite the brilliant Katherine of Mrs. Oldfield, and the Dauphin of Wilks.

More successful was the "Captives," by Gay. The ex-mercer was now a poet, whom the "quality" petted; but he was not yet at the summit of his fame. The "Captives" did not help to raise him. The story was found unnatural, and the style stilted. A Persian captive (Booth) is a Joseph, against whom the Median Queen, whom he has offended, vows vengeance; in pursuit of which, love and murder are extensively employed. Mrs. Oldfield had one good scene in it as Cydene, captive wife of the Persian Joseph, for whom she entertains a warm regard, of which he is worthy; yet these actors, well seconded, could only drag the tragedy through seven representations, before it was consigned to oblivion. But the company was strong enough to make their old repertory, with Shakspeare in the van, attractive; and they had nothing to regret, when the season closed, but the death of Pinkethman, who for two and thirty years, and chiefly at Drury Lane, had been the most irresistible laughter-compeller of that stage, on which he had originated Beau Clincher, Old Mirabel, and a score of similar merry characters.

The company had not to complain; yet the managers had found it necessary to support their stock-pieces by a novelty – a ballet-pantomime, "The Necromancer,"117 by the younger Thurmond, a dancing-master. Rich, at Lincoln's Inn, where "Edwin" could not have drawn a shilling; where Belisarius (Boheme) begged an obolus in vain; and Hurst's "Roman Maid" (Paulina, Mrs. Moffat), represented a hermit as dwelling in a lone cave, near the Mount Aventine – a hermit would be as likely to be found in a wood on Snow Hill – Rich, I say, improved on Thurmond's idea, by producing on the 20th of December 1723, "The Necromancer, or the History of Dr. Faustus," and thereby founded pantomime, as it has been established among us, at least during the Christmas-tide, for now a hundred and forty years.

Rich, with his "Necromancer," conjured all the town within the ring of his little theatre. The splendour of the scenes, the vastness of the machinery, and the grace and ability of Rich himself, raised harlequinade above Shakspeare, and all other poets; and Quin and Ryan were accounted little of in comparison with the motley hero. The pantomime stood prominently in the bills; during the nights of its attraction the prices of admission were raised by one-fourth, and the weekly receipts advanced from six hundred (if the house was full every night, which had been a rare case in the Fields), to a thousand pounds. The advanced price displeased the public, with whom ultimately a compromise was made, and a portion returned to those who chose to leave the house before the pantomime commenced.

While the drama was thus yielding to the attractions of pantomime, a new theatre invited the public. The little theatre in the Haymarket opened its doors for the first time on the 12th of September118 1723, with the "French Fop," of which the author, Sandford, says, that he wrote it in a few weeks, when he was but fifteen years of age. That may account for its having straightway died; but it served to introduce to the stage the utility actor, Milward. The theatre was only open for a few nights.

Of the season 1724-5, at Drury Lane, there is little to be said, save that the inimitable company worked well and profitably in sterling old plays. Wilks returned to Sir Harry Wildair, and the public laughed at Cibber's quivering tragedy tones, when playing Achoreus, in his adaptation from Beaumont and Fletcher's "False One." In "Cæsar in Egypt," Antony and Cleopatra were played by Wilks and Mrs. Oldfield, who were never more happy than when making love on the stage. This was the sole novelty of the season.

In the Fields there was more of it, but that most relied on was Rich's "Harlequin Sorcerer," produced on the 21st of January 1725. The "Bath Unmasked" was the only original comedy produced. It described Bath as made up of very unprincipled people, with a good lord to about a score of knaves and hussies. It was the first and not lucky essay of miserable Gabriel Odingsell, who, nine years later, in a fit of madness, hung himself in his house, Thatched Court, Westminster.

Booth was more brilliant than he had ever yet been, in the Drury Lane season of 1725-26. In Shakspeare he shone conspicuously, and his Hotspur to the Prince of Wales of Giffard, from Dublin, charmed as much by its chivalry as Cato did by its dignity. Mrs. Oldfield enjoyed, and Mrs. Cibber, first wife of Theophilus, claimed the favour of the town; and the elder Cibber surrendered one or two old characters to a younger actor, Bridgewater. Amid a succession of old dramas, one novelty only was offered, a translation of the "Hecuba" of Euripides, with slight variations. The author was Richard West, son-in-law of Bishop Burnet, and father of young West, the early friend of Walpole and Gray. His play was acted on the 3d119 of February 1726, at which time West was Lord Chancellor of Ireland. On the first night a full audience would not listen to the piece, and on the next two nights there was scarcely an audience assembled to listen. Neither Booth as Polymnestor, nor Mrs. Porter as Hecuba, could win the general ear. It did not succeed, wrote the author, "because it was not heard. A rout of Vandals in the galleries intimidated the young actresses, disturbed the audience, and prevented all attention; and, I believe, if the verses had been repeated in the original Greek, they would have been understood and received in the same manner." The young actresses were Mrs. Brett and Mrs. Cibber; the latter was not the famous lady of that name, destined to the highest walks of tragedy. Lord Chancellor West died in December of this year.

The above single play was, however, worth all the novelties produced by Rich at Lincoln's Inn Fields. These were comedies of a farcical kind. In one of them, the "Capricious Lovers," by Odingsell, there was an original character, Mrs. Mincemode (Mrs. Bullock), who "grows sick at the sight of a man, and refines upon the significancy of phrases, till she resolves common observations into indecency." In the "French Fortune-teller,"120 the public failed to be regaled with a piece stolen from Ravenscroft, who had stolen his from the French. The third play was "Money the Mistress," which the audience damned, in spite of the reputation of Southerne, who, with this failure, closed a dramatic career which had commenced half a century earlier. In its course he had written ten plays, the author of which had this in common with Shakspeare – that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon.

With this year, 1726-27, came the first symptom of a "break-up" in the hitherto prosperous condition of Drury Lane. It occurred in the first long and serious illness of Booth, which kept him from the theatre, three long and weary months to the town. The season at Drury Lane, however, and that at Lincoln's Inn Fields, had this alike, that after Booth's welcome return, all London was excited by expectations raised by comedies whose authors were "gentlemen," in whose success the "quality," generally, were especially interested. At Drury it was the "Rival Modes," by Moore Smythe; at Lincoln's Inn Fields, the "Dissembled Wanton, or, my Son, get Money," by Leonard Welsted. In the former piece there is a gay lover, Bellamine (Wilks), wooing the grave Melissa (Mrs. Porter), while the serious Sagely (Mills) pays suit to the sprightly widow Amoret (Mrs. Oldfield). An old beau of King William's time, Earl of Late Airs (Cibber), brings his son to town (Lord Toupet, a modern beau, by Theophilus Cibber), in order that he may marry Melissa, with her father's consent. Amoret contrives to upset this arrangement, and the other lovers are duly united. The plot was good, the players unsurpassable, the two Cibbers fooling it to the top of their bent, and old and new fashions were pleasantly contrasted; but the action was languid, and the piece was hissed.