Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Just as Bottom the weaver would have played, not only Pyramus, but Thisbe and the Lion to boot, so Nero had appetite for every part, and made the most of whatever he had. Suetonius says that, when Nero sang the story of Niobe, ‘he held it out till the tenth hour of the day;’ but Suetonius omits to tell us at what hour the imperial actor first opened his mouth. ‘The Emperor did not scruple,’ says a quaint translation of Suetonius’s ‘Lives of the Twelve Cæsars,’ ‘done into English by several hands, A.D. 1692,’ ‘in private Spectacles to Act his Part among the Common Players, and to accept of a present of a Million of Sesterces from one of the Prætors. He also sang several tragedies in disguise, the Visors and Masks of the Heroes and the Gods, as also of the Heroesses and the Goddesses, being so shap’d as to represent his own Countenance or the Ladies for whom he had the most Affection. Among other things he sang “Canace in Travail,” “Orestes killing his Mother,” “Œdipus struck blind,” and “Hercules raging mad.” At what time it is reported that a young Soldier, being placed sentinel at the Door, seeing him drest up and bound, as the Subject of the Play required, ran in to his Assistance as if the thing had been done in good earnest.’ (Here we have the origin of all those soldiers who have stood at the wings of French and English stages, and who have interfered with the action of the play, or even have fainted away in order to flatter some particular player). Nero certainly had his amateur-actor weaknesses. He provided beforehand all the bouquets that were to be spontaneously flung to him, or awarded as prizes in the shape of garlands. French actresses are said to do the same thing, and this pretty weakness is satirised in the duet between Hortense, the actress, and Brillant, the fine gentleman, in the pretty vaudeville of ‘Le Juif’ (by A. Rousseau, Désaugiers, and Mesnard), brought out at the Porte St.-Martin fifty odd years ago. Hortense is about to appear at Orleans, and she says, or sings:

Je suis l’idole dont on raffole.
Après demain mon triomphe est certain!

‘Oui,’ rejoins Brillant,

Oui! de tous les points de la salle,
Je prédis que sur votre front,
Trente couronnes tomberont.

And Hortense replies confidentially:

Elles sont dans ma malle!

This is a custom, therefore, which French actresses derive from no less a person than Nero. This gentleman, moreover, invariably spoke well of every other actor to that actor’s face, but never at any other time. If this custom has survived--which is, of course, hardly possible--he who practises it can justify himself, if he pleases, by this Neronic example.

Although it was death to leave the theatre before the imperial amateur had finished his part, there were some people who could not ‘stand it,’ but who must have handsomely tipped the incorruptible Roman guard to be allowed to vanish from the scene. There were others who insisted on being on the point of death, but it is not to be supposed that they were carried home without being munificently profuse in their recompense. There was no shamming on the part of the indefatigable Roman ladies, who, it is said, sometimes added a unit to the audience and a new member to the roll of Roman citizens, before they could be got away. And, when a man ran from the theatre, dropped from the walls of the town, and took to his heels across country, he must have been even more disgusted with the great amateur than you are, my dear reader, with, let us say, your favourite worst actor on any stage. _Exit Nero, histrio et imperator._

Some one has said that the Italians had not the necessary genius for acting. Ristori has wiped out that reproach. Private theatricals may be said to have been much followed by them. Plays were acted before popes just as they used to be (and on Sundays too) before our bishops. It is on record that the holiest of Holy Fathers have held their sides as they laughed at the ‘imitations’ of English archbishops given to the life by English bishops on mission to Rome; and, on the other hand, there is no comedy so rich as that to be seen and heard in private, acted by a clever, joyous Irish priest, imitating the voice, matter, and manner of the street preachers in Italy. Poliziano’s ‘Orfeo,’ which inaugurated Italian tragedy, was first played in private before Lorenzo the Magnificent. Italian monks used to act Plautus and Terence, and the nuns of Venice were once famous for the perfection with which they acted tragedy in private to select audiences.

Altogether, it seems absurd for anyone to have said that the Italians had not the genius for acting. Groto, the poet--‘the blind man of Adria’--played Œdipus, in Palladio’s theatre at Vicenza, in the most impressive style. Salvator Rosa, the grandest of painters, was the most laughable of low comedians; and probably no Italian has played Saul better than Alfieri, who wrote the tragedy which bears that name.

In France, private theatricals may be said to date from the seventeenth century; but there, as in England, were to be found, long before, especial ‘troops’ in the service of princes and nobles. We are pleased to make record of the fact that Richard III., so early as the time when he was the young Duke of Gloucester, was the first English prince who maintained his own private company of actors, of whom he was the appreciating and generous master. No doubt, after listening to them in the hall of his London mansion, he occasionally gave them an ‘outing’ on his manor at Notting Hill. We have more respect for Duke, or King, Richard, as patron of actors, than we have for Louis XIV. turning amateur player himself, and not only ‘spouting’ verses, but acting parts, singing in operas, and even dancing in the ballets of Benserade and the _divertissements_ of Molière. Quite another type of the amateur actor is to be found in Voltaire. On the famous private stage of the Duchess of Maine, Voltaire acted (in ‘Rome sauvée’) Cicero to the Lentulus of the professional actor, Lekain. If we may believe the illustrious actor himself, nothing could be more truthful, more pathetic, more Roman, than the poet, in the character of the great author.

Voltaire prepared at least one comedy for private representation on the Duchess’s stage, or on that of some other of his noble friends. A very curious story is connected with this piece. It bore the title of ‘Le Comte de Boursoufle.’ After being acted by amateurs, in various noble houses, it gave way to other pieces, the manuscript was put by, and the play was forgotten. Eleven years ago, however, the manuscript of the comedy, in Voltaire’s handwriting, was discovered, and ‘Le Comte de Boursoufle’ was produced at the Odéon. M. Jules Janin and all the French theatrical critics were in a flutter of convulsive delight at the recovery of this comedy. Some persons there were who asked if there was any doubt on the matter, or was the piece by any other clever Frenchman. They were laughed to scorn. The comedy was so full of wit and satire that it could only be the work of the wittiest and most satirical of Frenchmen. ‘If it is not Voltaire’s,’ it was asked, ‘whose could it possibly be?’ This question was answered immediately by the critics in this country, who pointed out that ‘Le Comte de Boursoufle,’ which Voltaire had prepared for a company of private actors, was neither more nor less than an exact translation of Sir John Vanbrugh’s ‘Relapse.’

Private theatricals in France became a sort of institution. They not only formed a part, often a very magnificent part, of the noble mansions of princes, dukes, marquesses, _et tout ça_, but the theatre was the most exquisite and luxurious portion of the residences of the most celebrated and prodigal actresses. Mademoiselle Guimard, to surpass her contemporaries, possessed two; one in her magnificent house in the Chaussée d’Antin, the other in her villa at Pantin. The one in Paris was such a scene of taste, splendour, extravagance, and scandal, that private boxes, so private that nobody could be seen behind the gilded gratings, were invented for the use and enjoyment of very great ladies. These, wishing to be witnesses of what was being acted on and before the stage, without being supposed to be present themselves, were admitted by a private door, and after seeing all they came to see, and much more, perhaps, than they expected, these high and virtuous dames, wrapped their goodly lace mantles about them, glided down the private staircase to their carriages, and thought La Guimard was the most amiable hussey on or off the stage.

Voltaire’s private theatre, at Monrepos, near Lausanne, has been for ever attached to history by the dignified pen of Gibbon. The great historian’s chief gratification, when he lived at Lausanne, was in hearing Voltaire in the Frenchman’s own tragedies on his own stage. The ‘ladies and gentlemen’ of the company were not geniuses, for Gibbon says of them in his ‘Life,’ that ‘some of them were not destitute of talents.’ The theatre is described as ‘decent.’ The costumes were ‘provided at the expense of the actors,’ and we may guess how the stage was stringently managed, when we learn that ‘the author directed the rehearsals with the zeal and attention of paternal love.’ In his own tragedies, Voltaire represented Lusignan, Alvarez, Benassur, Euphemon, &c. ‘His declamation,’ says Gibbon, ‘was fashioned to the pomp and cadence of the old stage; and he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry rather than the feelings of nature.’ This sing-song style, by which diversified dramas, stilted rather than heroic, horribly dull rather than elevated and stirring, had an effect on Gibbon such as we should never have expected in him, or in any Englishman, we may say on any created being with common sense, in any part of the civilised world. His taste for the French theatre became fortified, and he tells us, ‘that taste has perhaps abated my idolatry for the gigantic genius of Shakespeare, which is inculcated in our infancy as the first duty of Englishmen.’ This is wonderful to read, and almost impossible to believe. We may give more credit to the assertion that ‘the wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre, refined in a visible degree the manners of Lausanne.’ It is worthy of note that a tragedy of Voltaire’s is now rarely, if ever, acted. We question if one of his most popular pieces, ‘Adélaïde Du Guesclin,’ has ever been played since it was given at the Théâtre Français (spectacle gratis), 1822, on occasion of the baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux, whom we now better know as the Comte de Chambord, and who knows himself only as ‘Henry V., Roi de France et de Navarre.’

One of Voltaire’s favourite stage pupils was an actor named Paulin, who played a tyrant in the Lausanne company. Voltaire had great hopes of him, and he especially hoped to make much of him as Polifonte, in Voltaire’s tragedy ‘Mérope.’ At the rehearsals, Voltaire, as was customary with him, overwhelmed the performers with his corrections. He sat up one night, to re-write portions of the character of the tyrant Polifonte, and at three in the morning he aroused his servant and bade him carry the new manuscript to Paulin. ‘Sir,’ said the man, ‘at such an unseasonable hour as this M. Paulin will be fast asleep, and there will be no getting into his house.’ ‘Go! run!’ exclaimed Voltaire, in tragic tones. ‘Know that tyrants never sleep!’

Some of the French private theatres of the last century were singular in their construction. We know that the theatre of Pompey was so constructed that, by ingenious mechanism, it could form two amphitheatres side by side or could meet in one extensive circus. On a smaller scale, the salon of the celebrated dancer D’Auberval could be instantaneously turned into a private theatre, complete in all its parts. Perhaps the most perfect, as regards the ability of the actors, as well as the splendour of the house, audience and stage, were the two private theatres at Saint-Assise and Bagnolet, of the Duke of Orleans and Madame de Montesson. None but highly-gifted amateurs trod those boards. The Duke himself was admirable in peasants and in characters abounding in sympathies with nature. Madame de Montesson was fond of playing shepherdesses and young ladies under the pleasures, pains, or perplexities of love; but, with much talent, the lady was far too stout for such parts. It might be said of her, as Rachel said of her very fat sister, whom she saw dressed in the costume of a shepherdess; ‘Bergère! tu as l’air d’une bergère qui a mangé ses brebis!’

Out of the multitude of French private theatres there issued but one great actress, by profession, the celebrated Adrienne Lecouvreur; and _she_ belonged, not to the gorgeous temple of Thespis in the palaces of nobles, but to a modest stage behind the shop of her father, the hatter; and latterly, to one of more artistic pretensions in the courtyard attached to the mansion of a great lawyer whose lady had heard of Adrienne’s marvellous talent, and, to encourage it, got up a theatre for her and her equally young comrades, in the _cour_ of her own mansion. The acting of the hatter’s daughter, especially as Pauline, in Corneille’s ‘Polyeucte,’ made such a sensation that the jealous Comédie Française cried ‘_Privilège!_’ and this private theatre was closed, according to law.

We have less interest in recalling the figure of Madame de Pompadour, playing and warbling the chief parts in the sparkling little operettas on the stage of her private theatre at Bellevue, than we have in recalling the figure of the young Dauphine, Marie-Antoinette, with the counts of Provence and Artois (afterwards Louis XVIII. and Charles X.), with their wives, and clever friends, playing comedy especially, with a grace and perfection which were not always to be found in the professional actor. But what the old king Louis XV. had encouraged in the Pompadour he and his rather gloomy daughters discouraged in Marie-Antoinette. It was not till she was queen, and had profited by the lessons of the singer Dugazon, that the last royal private theatre in France commenced its career of short-lived glory, at Choisy and the Trianon. Louis XVI. never took kindly to these representations. He went to them occasionally, but he disliked seeing the queen on the stage. It is even said that he once directed a solitary hiss at her, as she entered dressed as a peasant. It is further stated that the royal actress stepped forward, and with a demure smile informed the house that the dissatisfied individual might have his money returned by applying at the door. It is a pretty story, but it is quite out of character with the place and the personages, and it may be safely assigned to that greatest of story-tellers, Il Signor Ben Trovato.

Adverse critics have said of Marie-Antoinette’s Rosine, that it was ‘_royalement mal jouée_.’ Perhaps they opposed the whole system of private acting. This amusement had the advocacy of Montaigne, who was himself a good amateur actor. Of course, the thing may be abused. It was not exemplary for French bishops to go to hear Collé’s gross pieces in private. There was more dignity in Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon listening to ‘Esther’ and ‘Athalie,’ acted by the young ladies of Saint-Cyr; and there was less folly in the princes and nobles who began the French Revolution by acting the ‘Mariage de Figaro’ in private, than there was in the Comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.) learning to dance on the tight rope, with a view of giving amateur performances to his admiring friends.

Mercier, in his ‘Tableau de Paris,’ under the head ‘Théâtre bourgeois,’ states that in the last quarter of the last century there was a perfect rage for private theatricals in France, and that it extended from the crown to the humblest citizen. He thought that the practice had its uses, but its abuses also; and he counselled simple country-townsmen to leave acting to the amateurs in large cities, where people were not too nice upon morals; where lovers gave additional fire to Orosmane, and the timidest young ladies found audacity enough to play Nanine. Mercier had seen the private theatricals at Chantilly, and he praises the care, taste, and simple grace which distinguished the acting of the Prince of Condé and the Duchess of Bourbon. It is very clear that if they had not been cast for the genteelest comedy in the drama of life, they would have got on very well in the world as players. So the Duke of Orleans, at his private theatre at Saint-Assise, pleased Mercier by the care and completeness of his acting. ‘The Queen of France,’ he adds, ‘has private theatricals, in her own apartments, at Versailles. Not having had the honour to see her I can say nothing on the subject.’

With these players of lofty social quality, Mercier contrasts the amateurs in humble society. These were given to act tragedy--or nothing. He cites, from ‘Le Babillard,’ the case of a shoemaker, renowned for his skill in gracefully fitting the most gracefully small feet of the beauties of the day. On Sundays, Crispin drew on his own legs the buskins which he himself or his journeymen had made; and he acted, in his own house, the lofty tragedy then in vogue. It happened once that his manager, with whom he had quarrelled, had to provide a dagger to be deposited on an altar, for the amateur player’s suicidal use. Out of spite, the fellow placed there the shoemaker’s professional cutting-knife. The amateur, in the fury of his acting, and not perceiving the trick, snatched up the weapon, and gave himself the happy despatch with the instrument which helped him to live. This stage business excited roars of laughter, which brought the tragedy to an end as merrily as if it had been a burlesque. The shoemaker could find nothing to say, by which he might turn the laughter from himself. He was not as witty as the English shoemaker’s apprentice whom his master seized, about this time, on the private stage in Berwick Street, acting no less a character than Richard III., in a very dilapidated pair of buskins. As the angry master pointed to them in scorn, the witty lad sustained his royal quality in his reply: ‘Oh! shoes are things we kings don’t stand upon!’

In England, private theatricals are to be traced back to an early date. We go far enough in that direction, however, by referring to Mary Tudor, the solemn little daughter of Henry VIII., who, with other children, acted before her royal sire, in Greenwich Palace, to the intense delight of her father and an admiring court. Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I., is remembered in court and theatrical annals for the grace with which she played in pretty pastoral French pieces, assisted by her ladies, on the private stages at Whitehall and Hampton Court. The private theatricals of the Puritan days were only those which took place surreptitiously, and at the risk of the performers being arrested and punished. Holland House, Kensington, was occasionally the place where the players found refuge and gave a taste of their quality. The ‘good time’ came again; and that greatest of actors, Betterton, with his good and clever wife, taught the daughters of James II. all that was necessary to make those ladies what they both were, excellent actors on their private stage. So Quin taught the boy to speak, who afterwards became George III., and who was a very fair private player, but perhaps not equal with his brothers and sisters, and some of the young nobility who trod the stage for pastime, and gave occupation to painters and engravers to reproduce the mimic scene and the counterfeit presentments of those who figured therein.

It was in the reign of George III., and in the year 1777, that the year itself was inaugurated on the part of the fashionable amateurs by a performance of ‘The Provoked Husband.’ Lord Villiers was at the cost of getting it up, but that was nothing to a man who was the prince of macaronies, and who, as Walpole remarks, had ‘fashioned away’ all he possessed. The play, followed by a sort of _pose plastique_, called ‘Pygmalion and the Statue,’ was acted in a barn, expensively fitted up for the occasion, near Henley. Lord Villiers and Miss Hodges were Lord and Lady Townley. Walpole says, on hearsay, that ‘it went off to admiration.’ Mrs. Montagu, also on report, says: ‘I suppose the merit of this entertainment was, that people were to go many miles in frost and snow, to see in a barn what would have been every way better at the theatre in Drury Lane or Covent Garden.’ Walpole speaks of M. Texier’s Pygmalion as ‘inimitable.’ The Frenchman was at that time much patronised in town for his ‘readings.’ Miss Hodges acted the Statue. Mrs. Montagu’s sharp criticism takes this shape: ‘Modern nymphs are so warm and yielding that less art than that of M. Texier might have animated the nymph. My niece will never stand to be made love to before a numerous audience.’ The Lady Townley and Galatea of these gay doings sacrificed herself, we suppose, to these important duties. ‘Miss Hodges’ father,’ writes Mrs. Montagu, ‘is lately dead: her mother is dying. How many indecorums the girl has brought together in one _petite pièce_!’ The play was not all the entertainment of the night, which was one of the most inclement of that pitiless winter. ‘There was a ball,’ says the lady letter-writer, ‘prepared after the play, but the barn had so benumbed the vivacity of the company, and the beaux’ feet were so cold and the noses of the belles were so blue, many retired to a warm bed at the inn at Henley, instead of partaking of the dance.’ Walpole gives play to his fancy over these facts. ‘Considering,’ he says, ‘what an Iceland night it was, I concluded the company and audience would all be brought to town in waggons, petrified, and stowed in a statuary’s yard in Piccadilly.’

We have heard over and over again of such private theatres as Winterslow, near Salisbury, which was burnt down on the night after a performance in which Fox and similar spirits had acted with equal vivacity in tragedy and farce. Other incidents are to be found in Walpole and similar gossiping chroniclers of the time. None of those private theatres, however, can match with Wargrave, in Berkshire, where, in the last century, Lord Barrymore held sway during his brief and boisterous life. When Lord Barrymore succeeded to the lordship of himself, that ‘heritage of woe,’ he came before the world with a splendour so extravagant in its character that the world was aghast at his recklessness. Wild and audacious as was the character of this wayward boy’s life, he was in some sort a gentleman in his vices. He was brave and generous and kindly hearted. Since his time we have had a line (now extinct, or effete in the infirmity and imbecility of a surviving member or two) of gentlemen who plunged into blackguardism as a relief from the burden of life. They would play loosely at cards, swindle a dear friend at horse-dealing, and half a dozen of them together would not be afraid to fall upon some helpless creature and beat him into pulp by way of a ‘lark.’ Lord Barrymore was simply a ‘rake,’ and he injured no man but himself. He came into the hunting field more like a king of France and Navarre than an English gentleman, and his negro trumpeters played fantasias in the woods, to the infinite surprise, no doubt, of the foxes. He kept perpetual open house, and Mrs. Delpini superintended it for him. What he most prided himself upon was his taste for the drama, and the way he carried it into effect made Wargrave brilliant and famous in its little day.

This noble youth began modestly enough. His first private theatre was in one of his own barns. The first piece played in it was ‘Miss in her Teens,’ in which he acted Flash; and no one of the illustrious performers, youth or maiden, was over seventeen years of age. Noble by birth, as all the amateur Thespians were, this performance was not given to an exclusively aristocratic audience, but to all the villagers and the peasantry in the vicinity of the village who cared to come. All came, and there was a pit of red cloaks and smock frocks, and ample provision of creature comforts for the whole barn. From this modest origin sprang the noble theatre which Cox of Covent Garden Theatre built for the earl at a cost of 60,000_l._ It was a marvellous edifice. For pantomimic performances it had traps and springs and other machinery that might satisfy the requirements of Mr. George Conquest himself, who practised gymnastics, for exercise, when he was a student at a German university, and who is now the first of gymnastic performers instead of being the profoundest of philosophers--though there is no reason why he may not be both.

The Wargrave theatre lacked nothing that could be wanted for its completeness. The auditorium was splendid. There was a saloon quite as superb, wherein the audience could sup like kings and the invited could afterwards dance. Between the acts of performance pages and lackeys, in scarlet and gold, proffered choice refreshments to the spectators, who were not likely to be hard upon players under a management of such unparalleled liberality. The acting company was made up of professional players--Munden, Delpini, and Moses Kean, among the men, with the best and prettiest actresses of the Richmond Theatre. Lord Barrymore and Captain Walthen were the chief amateurs. Low comedy and pantomime formed the ‘walk’ of my lord, who on one occasion danced a celebrated _pas Russe_ with Delpini as it was then danced at the opera. Now and then the noble proprietor would stand disguised as a check-taker, and promote ‘rows’ with the farmers and their wives, disputing the validity of their letters of invitation. It was also his fond delight to mingle with them, in disguise again, as they wended homeward, listening to or provoking their criticism. He probably heard some unwelcome truths, for he could not have long escaped detection. Within doors the night’s pleasures were not at an end with the play. Dancing, gambling, music, and folly to its utmost limits succeeded; and he, or _she_, was held in scorn who attempted to go to bed before 5 A.M. Indeed, such persons were not allowed to sleep if they did withdraw before the appointed hour. From five o’clock to noon was the Wargrave season for sleep. The company were consigned to the ‘upper and lower barracks,’ as the two divisions were called where the single and the married, or those who might as well have been, were billeted for the night.

Lord Barrymore did not confine himself to acting on a private stage. In August, 1790, he ‘was so humble as to perform a buffoon dance and act scaramouch in a pantomime at Richmond for the benefit of Edwin _junior_, the comedian; and I,’ writes Walpole, ‘like an old fool, but calling myself a philosopher that loves to study human nature in all its disguises, went to see the performance!’ Walpole used to call the earl ‘the strolling player.’ On the above occasion, however, there is one thing to be remembered: Lord Barrymore, invited to play the fool, condescended to that degradation in order to serve young Edwin, whose affection and filial duty towards a sick and helpless mother had won the noble amateur’s regard.

Lord Barrymore married in 1792, in which year the splendid theatre at Wargrave was pulled down. In March, 1793, he was, as captain of militia, escorting some French prisoners through Kent. On his way he halted at an inn to give them and his own men refreshment; which being done, he kissed the handsome landlady and departed in his phaeton, his groom mounting the horse Lord Barrymore had previously ridden. The man put a loaded gun into the carriage, and Lord Barrymore had not ridden far when it exploded and killed him on the spot. Thus ended, at the age of twenty-four years, the career of the young earl, who was the most indefatigable, if not the most able, amateur actor of his day.

Such examples fired less noble youths, who left their lawful callings, broke articles and indentures, and set up for themselves by representing somebody else. Three of our best bygone comedians belong to this class, and may claim some brief record at our hands.

Oxberry, who was distinguished for the way in which he acted personages who were less remarkable for their simplicity than for their silliness, was a pupil of Stubbs, the animal painter, and subsequently was in the house of Ribeau, the bookseller. The attractions of the private theatres in Queen Anne Street and Berwick Street were too much for him. Oxberry’s first appearance was made at the former place, as Hassan, in the ‘Castle Spectre.’ The well-known players, Mrs. W. West and John Cooper, acted together as Alonzo and Leonora in ‘The Revenge,’ at a private theatre in Bath, to the horror of their friends and the general scandalising of the city of which they were natives. The Bath manager looked on the young pair with a business eye, and the youthful amateurs were soon enrolled among the professionals. In their first stages, professionals scarcely reckon above amateurs. They play what they can, and such comic actors as Wilkinson and Harley are not the only pair of funny fellows upon record who played the most lofty tragedy in opposition to each other. Little Knight, as he used to be called, was, like Long Oxberry, intended for art, but he too took to private acting, and passed thence to the stage, where he was supreme in peasants, and particularly rustics, of sheer simplicity of character. His Sim in ‘Wild Oats’ was an exquisite bit of acting, and this is said without any disparagement of Mr. D. James, who recently acted the part at Mr. Belmore’s benefit with a natural truthfulness which reminded old play-goers of the ‘real old thing.’ If Mr. Knight did not succeed in pictorial art, he left a son who did--the gentleman who so recently retired from the secretaryship of the Royal Academy. The two names of Knight and Harley were, for a long time, pleasant in the ears of the patrons of the drama. John Pritt Harley was intended for many things, but amateur acting made a capital comedian of him. His father was a reputable draper and mercer--and jealous actors used to say that he sold stays and that his son helped to make them. The truth is that he was first devoted to surgery, but Harley ‘couldn’t abide it.’ Next he tried the law, and sat on a stool with the edge of a desk pressing into him till he could bear it no longer. There was, at the time, a company of amateurs who performed in the old Lyceum, and there, and at other private theatres, Harley worked away as joyously as he ever played; and worked harder still through country theatres, learning how to starve as well as act, and to fancy that a cup of tea and a penny loaf made a good dinner--which no man could make upon them. His opportunity came when, in 1815, Mr. Arnold, who had watched some part of his progress, brought him out at the Lyceum--his old amateur playing ground--as Marcelli, in ‘The Devil’s Bridge.’ Harley lived a highly-esteemed actor and a most respectable bachelor. Some little joking used to be pointed at him in print, on account of an alleged attachment between him and Miss Tree, the most graceful of dancers and of columbines. But Miss Tree was a Mrs. Quin--though she had scarcely seen her husband, since she was compelled to marry him in her childhood. The nicest pointed bit of wit was manufactured in a hoaxing announcement of a benefit to be taken by both parties. The pieces advertised were ‘A Tale of _Mystery_,’ and a ‘Harley-Quinade.’ The names of the parties could not have been more ingeniously put together in sport. Harley, though a mannerist, was an excellent actor to the last. When he was stricken with apoplexy, while playing Bottom, in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ at the Princess’s Theatre, in Charles Kean’s time, he was carried home, and the last words he uttered were words in his part: ‘I feel an exposition to sleep coming over me.’ And straightway the unconscious speaker slept--for aye!

We must not add to the grievances of Ireland by altogether overlooking Erin’s private theatricals. From the day in 1544, when Bale’s ‘Pammachius’ was acted by amateurs at the market cross of Kilkenny, to the last recent record of Irish amateur acting, in the ‘Dublin Evening Mail,’ this amusement has been a favourite one among the ‘West Britons.’ The practice did not die out at the Union. Kilkenny, Lurgan, Carton, and Dublin had their private stages. When the amateur actors played for charity’s sake everybody took private boxes and nobody paid for them. In 1761, the ‘Beggars’ Opera’ was played at the Duke of Leinster’s (Carton). Dean Marly played Lockit, and wrote and spoke the prologue, in which the reverend gentleman thus alluded to himself:

But when this busy mimic scene is o’er
All shall resume the worth they had before;
Lockit himself his knavery shall resign,
And lose the Gaoler in the dull Divine.

The above was not quite as dignified as Milton’s ‘Arcades,’ played by the children of the Dowager Countess of Derby, at her house, Harefield Place; or as ‘Comus,’ acted by the young Egertons before the Earl of Bridgewater, at Ludlow Castle. Perhaps it was more amusing.

One of our own best amateur actresses was the Princess Mary of Cambridge (now Duchess of Teck). This excellent lady had once to commence the piece (a musical piece, written for the occasion by an amateur) on a private stage in one of the noblest of our country mansions. An illustrious audience was waiting for the curtain to go up; but the kindly-hearted princess was thinking of some less illustrious folks, who were not among that audience and whom she desired to see there, namely, the servants of the household--as many as could be spared. They had had much trouble, and she hoped they would be allowed to share in the amusement. There was some difficulty; but it was only when she was informed that the servants were really ‘in front,’ that the ‘Queen of Hearts’ (her part in the piece) answered that she was ready to begin the play. She never acted better than on this occasion.

_THE SMELL OF THE LAMPS._

As we look at the two volumes of Mr. Planché’s autobiography we experience a sensation of delight. They remind us of a story told of Maria Tree, long after she had become Mrs. Bradshaw, and was accustomed to luxuries unknown in her early and humble life. She was one night crossing the stage behind the curtain, on a short way to a private box, when she stopped for a moment, and, as she caught the well-known incense of the foot-lights, joyously exclaimed, ‘The smell of the lamps! How I love it!’ Therewith she spoke of the old times, when she worked hard--that is, ‘played,’ for the support of others as well as for her own support; and what a happy time it was, and how she wished it could all come over again! The noble peer who had the honour of escorting her, looked profoundly edified, smiled good-humouredly, and then completed his duty as escort. Here we open Mr. Planché’s book, and catch from it a ‘smell of the lamps.’ Yes, there must have been--must be--something delicious in it to those who have achieved success. To old play-goers there is a similar delight in books of stage reminiscences which include memories of great actors whom those play-goers have seen in their youth. A few of these still survive to talk of the old glories and to prove by comparison of ‘cast’ that for the costly metal of other days we have nothing now but pinchbeck. We have heard one of the old gentlemen of the _ancien régime_ talk, with unfeigned emotion, of the way in which ‘The Gamester’ used to be acted by Mrs. Siddons, John Kemble, Charles Kemble, and George Frederick Cooke. How ladies sobbed and found it hard to suppress a shriek; how gentlemen veiled their eyes to hide the impertinent tears, and tried to look as if nothing were the matter; and, how people who had seen the dreadful tragedy more than once, and dreaded to witness it again, were so fascinated that they would stand in the box-passages gazing through the glass panels of the box doors, beholding the action of the drama, but sparing themselves the heartbreaking utterances of the chief personages. Within a few weeks we have heard a veteran play-goer give imitations of John Kemble in ‘Coriolanus,’ which he last played more than half a century ago! It had the perfect enunciation which was the chief merit of the Kemble school; it was dignified; it gave an idea of a grand actor, and it was a pleasure conferred on the hearers such as Charles Mathews the elder used to confer on his audiences ‘At Home,’ when he presented them with Tate Wilkinson, and they were delighted to make acquaintance with the famous man who had so long before got, as the old Irishwoman said at Billy Fullam’s funeral, his ‘pit order at last.’

While we wait for a paper-cutter to open the closed pages of Mr. Planché’s book, we will just remark that those were days when audiences were differently arranged to what they are now. In the little summer-house in the Haymarket, when stalls were not yet invented, the two-shilling gallery was the rendezvous of some of the richest tradesmen in Pall Mall and the neighbourhood around. At that period, London tradesmen lived and slept at their places of business. They did not pass their nights at a country house. London audiences were made up almost entirely of London people. In the present day, they are largely made up of visitors from the country. In proportion as travelling companies of actors of merit increase and continue to represent plays sometimes better than they are represented in London, country visitors will cease to go to ‘the play,’ as it is called, in the metropolis, and will find some other resort where they can shuffle off the mortal coil of tediousness which holds them bound during their absence from home.

In good old times the pit was the place, not only for the critics, but for the most eminent men of the day. Indeed, not only eminent men, but ladies also, whose granddaughters, as they sweep into the stalls, would think meanly of their grandmothers and grandfathers, and would shudder at the thought of themselves, being in that vulgar part of the house. It is an excellent vulgarity that sits there. Nineteen out of twenty, perhaps ninety out of a hundred, of persons in the pit are the truest patrons of the drama; they pay for the places; and, generally speaking, the places are made as uncomfortable as if the occupiers were intruders of whom the managers would be glad to get rid.

The best proof of the quality of the old pittites is to be found in the diary of the Right Hon. William Windham (1784-1810). One of the entries in the first-named year records a breakfast with Sir Joshua Reynolds, a visit to Miss Kemble, and ‘went in the evening to the pit with Mrs. Lukin.’ The play was ‘The Gamester.’ A day or two afterwards the great statesman went with Steevens and Miss Kemble to see ‘Measure for Measure.’ ‘After the play,’ writes Windham, ‘went with Miss Kemble to Mrs. Siddons’s dressing-room; met Sheridan there.’ What interest Windham took in that actress is illustrated in another entry: ‘Feb. 1, 1785. Drove to Mrs. Siddons in order to communicate a hint on a passage in Lady Macbeth, which she was to act the next night. Not finding her at home, went to her at the play-house.’ Well might Mrs. Siddons write, on inviting Windham to tea: ‘I am sure you would like it; and you can’t be to learn that I am truly sensible of the honour of your society.’

The pits in the London theatres have undergone as great a change, though a different one, as the pit at the opera, which now only nominally exists, if it exist at all. It is now an area of stalls; the old price for admission is doubled, and the entertainment is not worth an eighth of what charged for it compared with that of the olden time, when for an eight-and-sixpenny pit ticket you had Grisi, Mario, Lablache, and Tamburini, with minor vocalists, thorough artists, in the same opera. What a spectacle was the grand old house! The old aristocracy had their boxes for the season, as they had their town and country houses. You got intimate with them by sight; it was a pleasure to note how the beautiful young daughters of each family grew in gracefulness. You took respectful part in the marriages. At each opening season you marked whether the roses bloomed or paled upon the young cheeks, and you sympathised accordingly. You spoke of Lord Marlshire’s look with a hearty neighbourly feeling, and you were glad that Lady Marlshire really seemed only the eldest sister of a group of beauties who were her daughters. As for the sons of those great families, they were in full dress, sauntering or gossiping in that Elysium ill-naturedly called ‘Fops’ Alley’; they were exchanging recognitions with friends and kinsmen in all parts of the house. If you heard a distant laugh--loud enough where the laughers were moved to it--you might be sure it was caused by Lord Alvanley, who was telling some absurdly jocose story to a group of noble Young Englanders in the pit passage under the boxes. We have seen the quiet entry of a quiet man into a private box make quite a stir. Every stranger felt that the quiet man was a man of mark; he came to snatch a momentary joy, and then away to affairs of state again; he was the prime minister. Dozens of opera-goers have recorded their _souvenirs_ of the old glorious days when the opera, as they say, was an institution, opened only twice a week: whereas each house is merely an ordinary theatre, with audiences that are never, two nights running, chiefly made up of the same _habitués_. They have told what friendly interest used to be aroused when the Duchess of Kent and her daughter, the Princess Victoria, took their seats every opera night. We seem again to hear a ringing laugh, and we know it comes from the sparkling English lady with an Italian title, the Countess St. Antonio. We seem again to see that marvellously audacious-looking pair, Lady Blessington and Count D’Orsay, gauging the house and appearing to differ as to conclusions. The red face of the Duchess of St. Albans and the almost as ruddy vessel from which her tea was poured have been described over and over again; and, in the records of other chroniclers we fancy that once more there come upon us the voices of two gentlemen who talked so above the singers that a remonstrant ‘Hush!’ went round the building. The offenders were the Duke of Gloucester and Sir Robert Wilson. The soldier would draw out of sight, and the prince would make a sort of apologetic remark in a voice a little higher than that which had given offence. These are reminiscences chronicled in the memoirs, diaries, and fugitive articles of old opera-goers.

Mr. Planché must have been among those ancient lovers of music and of song, and that he should record his experiences is a thing to be grateful for, especially as he writes of the battle and joys of life while he is still in harness and the wreathed bowl is in his hand. In 1818, he began with burlesque--‘Amoroso, King of Little Britain,’ written for amateurs, and taken by Harley, unknown to the author, to Drury Lane. In 1872, after fifty-four years of work, Mr. Planché executed the better portion of ‘Babil and Bijou,’ which, compared with ‘Amoroso,’ is as the _Great Eastern_ steamer to a walnut-shell. We heartily welcome all chroniclers of an art that lives only in the artist, and never survives him in tradition. Our own collection begins with Downes, and Mr. Planché’s emerald-green volumes will find room there. Scores of biographies are ‘squeezing’ room for him. Fred Reynolds’s portrait seems to say, ‘Let Planché come next to me.’ As we look at those dramatic historians we are struck with their usefulness as well as their power of entertaining. For example, a paragraph in one of the most ancient of dramatic chronicles--the ‘Roscius Anglicanus,’ by old Downes, the prompter--is of infinite use to the reputation of Shakespeare. Dryden, who produced _his_ version of ‘The Tempest’ to show how Shakespeare _ought_ to have written it, maintained that after the Restoration our national poet was not much cared for by the people, and that for a long time two plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were acted for one of Shakespeare. In Downes’s record the prompter registers the revival of ‘Hamlet;’ and, without any reference to Dryden, or knowledge, indeed, of his depreciation of Shakespeare, he states that the tragedy in question brought more money to the house and more reputation to the players than any piece by any other author during a great number of years.

To some nameless chronicler we owe a knowledge of the fact that Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ was played on board ship, in Shakespeare’s time, by sailors. Why was this left unnoticed when the royal captain of the _Galatea_ took the chair at the last Theatrical Fund dinner? But for the chroniclers we should be ignorant that, just six hundred years ago, the Chester mysteries and passion-plays were at their highest point of attraction. Indeed, they could never have been unattractive; for all those who undertook to witness the performance during about a month’s season were promised to be relieved from hundreds of years of the fire of purgatory. What a delicious feeling to the earnest play-goer, that the more regularly he went to the play on these occasions, the more pleasantly he would work out his salvation! The different dramatic scenes were represented by the best actors in the Chester trading companies. One would like to know on what principle the distribution of parts was made by the manager. Why should the Tanners have been chosen to play the ‘Fall of Lucifer’? What virtue was there in the Blacksmiths, that they should be especially appointed to enact ‘The Purification’? or, in the Butchers, that they should represent ‘The Temptation’? or, in the Bakers, that they should be deemed the fittest persons to illustrate ‘The Last Supper’? One can understand the Cooks being selected for ‘The Descent into Hell,’ because they were accustomed to stand fire; but what of angelical or evangelical could be found exclusively in the Tailors, that they should be cast for ‘The Ascension’? Were the Skinners, whose mission it was to play ‘The Resurrection,’ not deemed worthy of going higher? Or, were the Tailors lighter men, and more likely to rise with alacrity?

We are inclined to think that the idea of plays being naughty things and players more than naughty persons in the early days is a vulgar error. Plays must have been highly esteemed by the authorities, or Manningtree in Essex (and probably many another place) would not have enjoyed its privilege of holding a fair by tenure of exhibiting a certain number of stage plays annually.

There was undoubtedly something Aristophanic in many of the early plays. There was sharp satire, and sensitive ribs which shrank from the point of it. When the Cambridge University preachers satirised the Cambridge town morals the burgesses took the matter quietly; but when the Cambridge University players (students) caricatured the town manners in 1601, exaggerating their defects on the University stage, there was much indignation.

The presence of Queen Elizabeth at plays in London, and the acting of them in the mansions which she honoured by a visit, are proofs of the dignity of the profession. We have her, in the year last named, at one of the most popular of London theatres, with a bevy of fair listening maids of honour about her. This was in her old age. ‘I have just come,’ writes Chamberlain to Charlton, ‘from the Blackfriars, where I saw her at the play with all her _candida auditrices_.’ At Christmas time, Carlile writes to Chamberlain, ‘There has been such a small court this Christmas, that the guard were not troubled to keep doors at the plays and pastimes.’

And if the name of Elizabeth should have a sweet savour to actors generally, not less delicious to dramatic memories should be the mayor of Abingdon, in that queen’s time, who invited so many companies of players to give a taste of their quality in that town for fee and reward. If any actor to whom the history of the stage be of interest should turn up at Abingdon, let him get the name of this play-loving mayor, and hang it over the fire-place of the best room of the Garrick, or rather of the club that _will_ be--the social, cosey, comfortable, professional, not palatial nor swellish, but homelike house, that the Garrick was in its humbler and happier days.

Now the companies the Mayor had down to Abingdon included the Queen’s players, the Earl of Leicester’s players, the players of the Earl of Worcester, of Lord Sussex, of the Earl of Bath, of Lord Berkely, of Lord Shrewsbury, of Lord Derby, and of Lord Oxford. Is there no one who can get at the names of these actors, and of the pieces they played--played for rewards varying from twenty pence to twenty shillings? Will that thoroughly English actor, one of the few accomplished comedians of the well-trained times now left to us, be the more successfully urged to the task, if we remind him that, in 1573, his professional namesake, Mr. Compton, took his players to Abingdon, and earned four shillings by the exercise of their talents?

The Elizabethan time was a very lively one. It had its theatrical cheats and its popular riots. We learn from State records that on the anniversary of the Queen’s accession, November, 1602, ‘One Verner, of Lincoln’s Inn, gave out bills of a play on Bankside, to be acted by persons of account; price of entry, 2_s._ 6_d._ or 1_s._ 6_d._ Having got most of the money he fled, but was taken and brought before the Lord Chief Justice, who made a jest of it, and bound him over in 5_l._ to appear at the sessions. The people, seeing themselves deluded, revenged themselves on the hangings, chairs, walls, &c., and made a great spoil. There was much good company, and many noblemen.’

The Queen died in March, 1603. There were the usual ‘blacks,’ but the court and stage were brilliant again by Christmas. Early in January of the following year people were talking of the gay doings, the brilliant dresses, the noble dramas, the grand bear-baitings, the levity, dancing, and the golden play, which had solemnised the Christmas just ended. Thirteen years later Shakespeare died, and in little more than half a century small spirits whispered that he was not such a great spirit himself after all.