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

Even these have pity to spare for a lower class than themselves, – the journeymen playwrights, whom the managers once retained at an annual stipend and "beneficial second nights." The old playwrights were fain to turn pamphleteers, but their works sold only for a penny, and that is the reason why those two shabby-genteel people, who have just nodded sorrowfully to the fiddlers, are not joyously tippling sack and Gascony wine, but are imbibing unorthodox ale and heretical small beer. "Cunctis graviora cothurnis!" murmurs the old actor, whose father was a schoolmaster; "it's more pitiful than any of your tragedies!"

The distress was severe, but the profession had to abide it. Much amendment was promised, if only something of the old life might be pursued without peril of the stocks or the whipping-post. The authorities would not heed these promises, but grimly smiled – at the actors, who undertook to promote virtue; the poets, who engaged to be proper of speech; the managers, who bound themselves to prohibit the entrance of all temptations into "the sixpenny rooms;" and the tobacco-men, who swore with earnest irreverence to vend nothing but the pure Spanish leaf, even in the threepenny galleries.

But the tragedy which ended with the killing of the King gave sad hearts to the comedians, who were in worse plight than before, being now deprived of hope itself. One or two contrived to print and sell old plays for their own benefit; a few authors continued to add a new piece, now and then, to the stock, and that there were readers for them we may conjecture from the fact of the advertisements which began to appear in the papers – sometimes of the publication of a solitary play, at another of the entire dramatic works of that most noble lady the Marchioness of Newcastle. The actors themselves united boldness with circumspection. Richard Cox, dropping the words play and player, constructed a mixed entertainment, in which he spoke and sang; and on one occasion so aptly mimicked the character of an artisan, that a master in the craft kindly and earnestly offered to engage him. During the suppression, Cowley's "Guardian" was privately played at Cambridge. The authorities would seem to have winked at these private representations, or to have declined noticing them until after the expiration of the period within which the actors were exposed to punishment. Too great audacity, however, was promptly and severely visited from the earliest days after the issuing of the prohibitory decree. A first-rate troop obtained possession of the Cockpit for a few days, in 1648. They had played unmolested for three days, and were in the very midst of "The Bloody Brother" on the fourth, when the house was invaded by the Puritan soldiery, the actors captured, the audience dispersed, and the seats and the stage righteously smashed into fragments. The players (some of them among the most accomplished of their day) were paraded through the streets in all their stage finery, and clapped into the Gate House and other prisons, whence they were too happy to escape, after much unseemly treatment, at the cost of all the theatrical property which they had carried on their backs into durance vile.

This severity, visited in other houses as well as the Cockpit, caused some actors to despair, while it rendered others only a little more discreet. Rhodes, the old prompter at Blackfriars, turned bookseller, and opened a shop at Charing Cross. There he and one Betterton, an ex-under-cook in the kitchen of Charles I., who lived in Tothill Street, talked mournfully over the past, and, according to their respective humours, of the future. The cook's sons listened the while, and one of them especially took delight in hearing old stories of players, and in cultivating an acquaintance with the old theatrical bookseller. In the neighbourhood of the ex-prompter's shop, knots of very slenderly-built players used to congregate at certain seasons. A delegate from their number might be seen whispering to the citizen captain in command at Whitehall, who, as wicked people reported, consented, for a "consideration," not to bring his red-coats down to the Bull or other localities where private stages were erected – especially during the time of Bartholomew Fair, Christmas, and other joyous tides. To his shame, be it recorded, the captain occasionally broke his promise, or the poor actors had fallen short in their purchase-money of his pledge, and in the very middle of the piece, the little theatre would be invaded, and the audience be rendered subject to as much virtuous indignation as the actors.

The cause of the latter, however, found supporters in many of the members of the aristocracy. Close at hand, near Rhodes's shop, lived Lord Hatton, first of the four peers so styled. His house was in Scotland Yard. His lands had gone by forfeiture, but the proud old Cheshire landowner cared more for the preservation of the deed by which he and his ancestors had held them, than he did for the loss of the acres themselves. Hatton was the employer, so to speak, of Dugdale, and the patron of literary men and of actors, and, it must be added, of very frivolous company besides. He devoted much time to the preparation of a Book of Psalms and the ill-treatment of his wife; and was altogether an eccentric personage, for he recommended Lambert's daughter as a personally and politically suitable wife for Charles II., and afterwards discarded his own eldest son for marrying that incomparable lady. In Hatton, the players had a supreme patron in town; and they found friends as serviceable to them in the noblemen and gentlemen residing a few miles from the capital. These patrons opened their houses to the actors for stage representations; but even this private patronage had to be distributed discreetly. Goffe, the light-limbed lad who used to play women's parts at the "Blackfriars," was generally employed as messenger to announce individually to the audience when they were to assemble, and to the actors the time and place for the play. One of the mansions, wherein these dramatic entertainments were most frequently given, was Holland House, Kensington. It was then held and inhabited by the widowed countess of that unstable Earl of Holland, whose head had fallen on the scaffold in March 1649; but this granddaughter of old Sir Walter Cope, who lost Camden House at cards to a Cheapside mercer, Sir Baptist Hicks, was a strong-minded woman, and perhaps found some consolation in patronising the pleasures which the enemies of her defunct lord so stringently prohibited. When the play was over, a collection was made among the noble spectators, whose contributions were divided between the players according to the measure of their merits. This done they wended their way down the avenue to the high road, where probably, on some bright summer afternoon, if a part of them prudently returned afoot to town, a joyous but less prudent few "padded it" to Brentford, and made a short but glad night of it with their brother of the "Three Pigeons."

At the most this was but a poor life; but such as it was, the players were obliged to make the best of it. If they were impatient, it was not without some reason, for though Oliver despised the stage, he could condescend to laugh at, and with, men of less dignity in their vocation than actors. Buffoonery was not entirely expelled from his otherwise grave court. At the marriage festival of his daughter Frances and his son-in-law Mr. Rich, the Protector would not tolerate the utterance of a line from Shakspeare, expressed from the lips of a player; but there were hired buffoons at that entertainment, which they well-nigh brought to a tragical conclusion. A couple of these saucy fellows seeing Sir Thomas Hillingsley, the old gentleman-usher to the Queen of Bohemia, gravely dancing, sought to excite a laugh by trying to blacken his face with a burnt cork. The high-bred, solemn old gentleman was so aroused to anger by this unseemly audacity, that he drew his dagger, and, but for swift interference, would have run it beneath the fifth rib of the most active of his rude assailants. On this occasion, Cromwell himself was almost as lively as the hired jesters; snatching off the wig of his son Richard, he feigned to fling it in the fire, but suddenly passing the wig under him, and seating himself upon it, he pretended that it had been destroyed, amid the servile applause of the edified spectators. The actors might reasonably have argued that "Hamlet" in Scotland Yard or at Holland House was a more worthy entertainment than such grown-up follies in the gallery at Whitehall.

Those follies ceased to be; Oliver had passed away, and Richard had laid down the greatness which had never sat well upon him. Important changes were at hand, and the merry rattle of Monk's drums coming up Gray's Inn Road, welcomed by thousands of dusty spectators, announced no more cheering prospect to any class than to the actors. The Oxford vintner's son, Will Davenant, might be seen bustling about in happy hurry, eagerly showing young Betterton how Taylor used to play Hamlet, under the instruction of Burbage, and announcing bright days to open-mouthed Kynaston, ready at a moment's warning to leap over his master's counter, and take his standing at the balcony as the smooth-cheeked Juliet.

Meanwhile, beaming old Rhodes, with a head full of memories of the joyous Blackfriars' days, and the merry afternoons over the water, at the Globe, leaving his once apprentice, Betterton, listening to Davenant's stage histories, and Kynaston, not yet out of his time, longing to flaunt it before an audience, took his own way to Hyde Park, where Monk was encamped, and there obtained, in due time, from that far-seeing individual, licence to once more raise the theatrical flag, enrol the actors, light up the stage, and, in a word, revive the English theatre. In a few days the drama commenced its new career in the Cockpit, in Drury Lane; and this fact seemed so significant, as to the character of General Monk's tastes that, subsequently, when he and the Council of State dined in the city halls, the companies treated their guests, after dinner, with satirical farces, such as "Citizen and Soldier," "Country Tom," and "City Dick," with, as the newspapers inform us, "dancing and singing, many shapes and ghosts, and the like; and all to please his Excellency the Lord General."

The English stage owes a debt of gratitude to both Monk and Rhodes. The former made glorious summer of the actors' winter of discontent; and the latter inaugurated the Restoration by introducing young Betterton. The son of Charles I.'s cook was, for fifty-one years, the pride of the English theatre. His acting was witnessed by more than one old contemporary of Shakspeare, – the poet's younger brother being among them, – he surviving till shortly after the accession of Charles II. The destitute actors warmed into life and laughter again beneath the sunshine of his presence. His dignity, his marvellous talent, his versatility, his imperishable fame, are all well known and acknowledged. His industry is indicated by the fact that he created one hundred and thirty new characters! Among them were Jaffier and Valentine, three Virginiuses, and Sir John Brute. He was as mirthful in Falstaff as he was majestic in Alexander; and the craft of his Ulysses, the grace and passion of his Hamlet, the terrible force of his Othello, were not more remarkable than the low comedy of his Old Bachelor, the airyness of his Woodville, or the cowardly bluster of his Thersites. The old actors who had been frozen out, and the new who had much to learn, could not have rallied round a more noble or a worthier chief; for Betterton was not a greater actor than he was a true and honourable gentleman. Only for him, the old frozen-outs would have fared but badly. He enriched himself and them, and, as long as he lived, gave dignity to his profession. The humble lad, born in Tothill Street, before monarchy and the stage went down, had a royal funeral in Westminster Abbey, after dying in harness almost in sight of the lamps. He deserved no less, for he was the king of an art which had well-nigh perished in the Commonwealth times, and he was a monarch who probably has never since had, altogether, his equal. Off as on the stage, he was exemplary in his bearing; true to every duty; as good a country gentleman on his farm in Berkshire as he was perfect actor in town; pursuing with his excellent wife the even tenor of his way; not tempted by the vices of his time, nor disturbed by its politics; not tippling like Underhill; not plotting and betraying the plotters against William, like Goodman, nor carrying letters for a costly fee between London and St. Germains, like Scudamore. If there had been a leading player on the stage in 1647, with the qualities, public and private, which distinguished Betterton, there perhaps would have been a less severe ordinance than that which inflicted so much misery on the actors, and which, after a long decline, brought about a fall; from which they were, however, as we shall see, destined to rise and flourish.

CHAPTER III

THE "BOY ACTRESSES," AND THE "YOUNG LADIES."

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is the "sacred ground" of the English drama since the restoration of monarchy. At the Cockpit (Pit Street remains a memory of the place), otherwise called the Phœnix, in the "lane" above-named, the old English actors had uttered their last words before they were silenced. In a reconstruction of the edifice near, rather than on, the old site, the young English actors, under Rhodes, built their new stage, and wooed the willing town.

There was some irregularity in the first steps made to re-establish the stage, which, after an uneasy course of about four years, was terminated by Charles II., who, in 1663,15 granted patents for two theatres, and no more, in London. Under one patent, Killigrew, at the head of the King's Company (the Cockpit being closed), opened at the new theatre in Drury Lane, in August16 1663, with a play of the olden time – the "Humourous Lieutenant" of Beaumont and Fletcher. Under the second patent, Davenant and the Duke of York's Company found a home – first at the old Cockpit, then in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, the building of which was commenced in 1660, on the site of the old granary of Salisbury house, which had served for a theatre in the early years of the reign of Charles I. This little stage was lapped up by the great tongue of fire, by which many a nobler edifice was destroyed, in 1666. But previous to the fire, thence went Davenant and the Duke's troop to the old Tennis Court, the first of the three theatres in Portugal Row, on the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, from which the houses took their name.

In 1671, Davenant being dead, the company, under the nominal management of his widow, migrated to a house designed by Wren, and decorated by Grinling Gibbons. This was the Duke's Theatre, in Dorset Gardens. It was in close vicinity to the old Salisbury Court Theatre, and it presented a double face – one towards Fleet Street, the other overlooking the terrace which gave access to visitors who came by the river. Later, this company was housed in Lincoln's Inn Fields again; but it migrated, in 1732, to Covent Garden, under Rich. Rich's house was burnt down in 1808, and its successor, built by Smirke, was destroyed in 1856. On the site of the latter now stands the Royal Italian Opera, the representative, in its way, of the line of houses wherein the Duke's Company struggled against their competitors of the King's.

The first house of those competitors in Drury Lane was burnt in 1672, but the King's Company took refuge in the "Fields" till Wren built the new house, opened in 1674. The two troops remained divided, yet not opposed, each keeping to its recognised stock pieces, till 1682, when Killigrew, having "shuffled off this mortal coil,"17 the two companies, after due weeding, formed into one, and abandoning Lincoln's Inn to the tennis-players, Dorset Gardens to the wrestlers, and both to decay, they opened at the New Drury, built by Sir Christopher, on the 16th of November 1682. Wren's theatre was taken down in 1791; its successor, built by Holland, was opened in 1794, and was destroyed in 1809. The present edifice is the fourth which has occupied a site in Drury Lane. It is the work of Wyatt, and was opened in 1812.

Thus much for the edifice of the theatres of the last half of the seventeenth century. Before we come to the "ladies and gentlemen" who met upon the respective stages, and strove for the approval of the town, let me notice that, after the death of Oliver,18 Davenant publicly exhibited a mixed entertainment, chiefly musical, but which was not held to be an infringement of the law against the acting of plays. Early in May 1659, Evelyn writes: – "I went to see a new opera, after the Italian way, in recitative music and scenes, much inferior to the Italian composure and magnificence; but it was prodigious, that in a time of such public consternation, such a vanity should be kept up or permitted." That these musical entertainments were something quite apart from "plays," is manifest by another entry in Evelyn's diary, in January 1661: – "After divers years since I had seen any play, I went to see acted 'The Scornful Lady,' at a new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields."

Of Shakspeare's brother Charles, who lived to this period, Oldys says: – "This opportunity made the actors greedily inquisitive into every little circumstance, more especially in Shakspeare's dramatic character, which his brother could relate of him. But he, it seems, was so stricken in years, and possibly his memory so weakened by infirmities (which might make him the easier pass for a man of weak intellects), that he could give them but little light into their inquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station, was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sung a song." This description applies to old Adam, in "As You Like It;" and he who feebly shadowed it forth, formed a link which connected the old theatre with the new.

The principal actors in Killigrew's Company, from which that of Drury Lane is descended, were Bateman, Baxter, Bird (Theophilus), Blagden, Burt, Cartwright, Clun, Duke, Hancock, Hart, Kynaston, Lacy, Mohun, the Shatterels (William and Robert), and Wintersel. Later additions gave to this company Beeston, Bell, Charleton, "Scum" Goodman, Griffin, Hains, Joe Harris, Hughes, Lyddoll, Reeves, and Shirley.

The "ladies" were Mrs. Corey, Eastland, Hughes, Knep, the Marshalls (Anne and Rebecca), Rutter, Uphill, whom Sir Robert Howard too tardily married, and Weaver. Later engagements included those of Mrs. Boutel, Gwyn (Nell), James, Reeves, and Verjuice. These were sworn at the Lord Chamberlain's Office to serve the King. Of the "gentlemen," ten were enrolled on the Royal Household Establishment, and provided with liveries of scarlet cloth and silver lace. In the warrants of the Lord Chamberlain they were styled "Gentlemen of the Great Chamber;" and they might have pointed to this fact as proof of the dignity of their profession.

The company first got together by Rhodes, subsequently enlarged by Davenant, and sworn to serve the Duke of York, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, was in some respects superior to that of Drury Lane. Rhodes's troop included the great Betterton, Dixon, Lilliston, Lovel, Nokes (Robert), and six lads employed to represent female characters – Angel, William Betterton, a brother of the great actor (drowned early in life, at Wallingford), Floid, Kynaston (for a time), Mosely, and Nokes (James). Later, Davenant added Blagden, Harris, Price, and Richards; Medbourn, Norris, Sandford, Smith, and Young. The actresses were Mrs. Davenport, Davies, Gibbs, Holden, Jennings, Long, and Saunderson, whom Betterton shortly after married.

This new fashion of actresses was a French fashion, and the mode being imported from France, a French Company, with women among them, came over to London. Hoping for the sanction of their countrywoman, Queen Henrietta Maria, they established themselves in Blackfriars. This essay excited all the fury of Prynne, who called these actresses by very unsavoury names; but who, in styling them "unwomanish and graceless," did not mean to imply that they were awkward and unfeminine, but that acting was unworthy of their sex, and unbecoming women born in an era of grace.

"Glad am I to say," remarks as stout a Puritan as Prynne, namely, Thomas Brand, in a comment addressed to Laud, "glad am I to say they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage, so that I do not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Although Brand asserts "that all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this town" were "justly offended" at these women "or monsters rather," as Prynne calls them, "expelled from their own country," adds Brand, yet more sober-thinking people did not fail to see the propriety of Juliet being represented by a girl rather than by a boy. Accordingly, we hear of English actresses even before the Restoration, mingled, however, with boys, who shared with them that "line of business." "The boy's a pretty actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the "Court Beggar," played at the Cockpit, in 1632, "and his mother can play her part. The women now are in great request." Prynne groaned at the "request" becoming general. "They have now," he writes, in 1633, "their female players in Italy and other foreign parts."

Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" was privately acted19 by amateurs, including Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell; the parts of Ianthe and Roxalana were played by Mrs. Edward Coleman and another lady. The piece is so stuffed with heroic deeds, heroic love, and heroic generosity, that none more suitable could be found for ladies to appear in. Nevertheless, when Rhodes was permitted to reopen the stage, he could only assemble boys about him for his Evadnes, Aspasias, and the other heroines of ancient tragedy.

Now, the resumption of the old practice of "women's parts being represented by men in the habits of women," gave offence, and this is assigned as a reason in the first patents accorded to Killigrew and Davenant why those managers were authorised to employ actresses to represent all female characters. Killigrew was the first to avail himself of the privilege. It was time. Some of Rhodes's "boys" were men past forty, who frisked it as wenches of fifteen; even real kings were kept waiting because theatrical queens had not yet shaved; when they did appear, they looked like "the guard disguised," and when the prompter called "Desdemona" – "enter Giant!" Who the lady was who first trod the stage as a professional actress is not known; but that she belonged to Killigrew's Company is certain. The character she assumed was Desdemona, and she was introduced by a prologue written for the occasion by Thomas Jordan. It can hardly be supposed that she was too modest to reveal her name, and that of Anne Marshal has been suggested, as also that of Margaret Hughes. On the 3d of January 1661, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush" was performed at Killigrew's Theatre, "it being very well done," says Pepys, "and here the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." Davenant did not bring forward his actresses before the end of June 1661, when he produced the second part of the "Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs. Davenport as Roxalana, and Mrs. Saunderson as Ianthe; both these ladies, with Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Long, boarded in Davenant's house. Killigrew abused his privilege to employ ladies. In 1664, his comedy, the "Parson's Wedding," wherein the plague is made a comic incident of, connected with unexampled profligacy, was acted, "I am told," are Pepys's own words, "by nothing but women, at the King's house."

By this time the vocation of the "boy-actresses" had altogether passed away; and there only remains for me to briefly trace the career of those old world representatives of the gentle or truculent heroines depicted by our early dramatists.

There were three members of Killigrew's, or the King's Company, who were admirable representatives of female characters before the Civil Wars. These were Hart, Burt, and Clun – all pupils of luckless Robinson, slain in fight, who was himself an accomplished "actress." Of the three, Hart rose to the greatest eminence. His Duchess, in Shirley's "Cardinal," was the most successful of his youthful parts. After the Restoration, he laid down Cassio to take Othello, from Burt, by the King's command, and was as great in the Moor as Betterton, at the other house, was in Hamlet. His Alexander, which he created, always filled the theatre; and his dignity therein was said to convey a lesson even to kings. His Brutus was scarcely inferior, while his Catiline was so unapproachable, that when he died, Jonson's tragedy died with him.20 Rymer styles him and Mohun the Æsopus and Roscius of their time. When they acted together (Amintor and Melantius) in the "Maid's Tragedy," the town asked no greater treat. Hart was one of Pepys's prime favourites. He was a man whose presence delighted the eye, before his accents enchanted the ear. The humblest character intrusted to him was distinguished by his careful study. On the stage he acknowledged no audience; their warmest applause could never draw him into a moment's forgetfulness of his assumed character. In Manly, "The Plain Dealer," as in Catiline, he never found a successor who could equal him. His salary was, at the most, three pounds a week, but he is said to have realised £1000 yearly after he became a shareholder in the theatre. He finally retired in 1682, on a pension amounting to half his salary, which he enjoyed, however, scarcely a year. He died of a painful inward complaint in 1683, and was buried at Stanmore Magna.