During his career from 1691 to his retirement in 1733, clever, careless Colley Cibber originated nearly eighty characters, chiefly grand old fops, inane old men, dashing soldiers, and impudent lacqueys. His Fondlewife, Sir Courtly Nice, and Shallow were his best parts. “Of all English managers,” says Dr. Doran, “Cibber was the most successful. Of the English actors, he is the only one who was ever promoted to the laureateship or elected a member of White’s Club.” Even Pope, who hated him and got some hard blows from him, praised “The Careless Husband;” Walpole, who despised players, praised Colley; and Dr. Johnson approved of his admirably written Apology.

Cibber’s daughter, Mrs. Clarke, led a wild and disreputable life, became a waitress at Marylebone, and died in poverty in 1760. Colley’s son Theophilus, the best Pistol ever seen on the stage, and the original George Barnwell, was drowned in crossing the Irish Sea.

His wife was a sister of Dr. Arne, the composer. In tragedy she was remarkable for her artless sensibility and exquisite variety of expression. As Ophelia she moved even Tate Wilkinson. She was one of the first actresses to make the woes of the grand tragedy queen natural. She died in 1766, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

Mrs. Pritchard, that “inspired idiot,” as Dr. Johnson called her in his contempt for her ignorance, seems to have been a virtuous woman. She left the stage in 1768. Though plain, and in later years very stout, Mrs. Pritchard was admired in tragedy for her perfect pronunciation and her force and dignity as the Queen in “Hamlet,” and as Lady Macbeth. She was also a good comedian in playful and witty parts. She was, however, not very graceful, and inclined to rant.

When Mrs. Cibber died in 1765, Mrs. Yates succeeded to her fame, with Mrs. Barry for a rival, till Mrs. Siddons came from Bath and unseated both. Mrs. Yates was wanting in pathos, but in pride and scorn as Medea, or in hopeless grief as Constance, she was unapproachable. She died in 1787.

George Anne Bellamy, the reckless and the unfortunate, was the daughter of a Quakeress, with whom Lord Tyrawley ran away from school. Dr. Doran says, “What with the loves, caprices, charms, extravagances, and sufferings of Mrs. Bellamy, she excited the wonder, admiration, pity, and contempt of the town for thirty years.”[574] Now she was squandering money like a Cleopatra; now she was crouching on the wet steps of Westminster Bridge, brooding over suicide. “The Bellamy,” says the critic, was only equal to “the Cibber” in expressing the ecstasy of love. This follower of the old school of intoners was the original Volumnia of Thomson, the Erixene of Dr. Young, and the Cleone of the honest footman poet and publisher Dodsley. She took her farewell benefit in 1784.

In 1778 Miss Farren appeared at Drury Lane. She was the daughter of a poor vagabond strolling player. Walpole says she was the most perfect actress he had ever seen; and he spoke well of her fine ladies, of whom he was a judge. Adolphus, not easily appeased, praised her irresistible graces and “all the indescribable little charms which give fascination to the women of birth and fashion.” She was gay as Lady Betty Modish, sentimental as Cecilia or Indiana, and playful as Rosara in the “Barber of Seville.” In 1797 the little girl who had been helped over the ice to the lock-up at Salisbury, to hand up a bowl of milk to her father when a prisoner there,[575] took leave of the stage in the part of Lady Teazle, and married the Earl of Derby, who had buried his wife just six weeks before.

In 1798 Mrs. Abington, “the best affected fine lady of her time,” retired from the stage of Drury Lane. She was the daughter of a common soldier, and as a girl was known as “Nosegay Fan,” and had sold flowers in St. James’s Park. She first appeared at Drury Lane in 1756-7.

Poor Mrs. Robinson, the “Perdita” so heartlessly betrayed by the Prince of Wales, was driven on to the stage in 1776 by her husband, a handsome scapegrace who had run through his fortune. She passed from the stage in 1780, and died, forgotten, poor, and paralytic, in 1800.

In 1767 Samuel Reddish, Canning’s stepfather, first appeared at Drury Lane as Lord Townley. He was a reasonably good Edgar and Posthumus, but failed in parts of passion. He went mad in 1779. In this group of minor actors we may include Gentleman Smith, a good Charles Surface, who retired from the stage in 1786; Yates, whose forte was old men and Shakspere’s fools (1736-1780); Dodd, who, from 1765 to 1796, was the prince of fops and old men (Master Slender and Master Stephen were said to die with him); and lastly, that great comic actor, John Palmer, who died on the stage in 1798, as he was playing the Stranger. He was the original representative of plausible Joseph Surface. “Plausible,” he used to say, “am I? You rate me too highly. The utmost I ever did in that way was that I once persuaded a bailiff who had arrested me to bail me.” Once when making friends with Sheridan after a quarrel, Palmer said to the author, “If you could but see my heart, Mr. Sheridan!” to which Sheridan replied, “Why, Jack, you forgot I wrote it.” “Jack Palmer,” says Lamb, “was a gentleman with a slight infusion of the footman.”[576] He had two voices, both plausible, hypocritical, and insinuating.

Henderson was engaged by Sheridan for Drury Lane in 1777. As Falstaff this humorous friend of Gainsborough was seldom equalled. His defects were a woolly voice and a habit of sawing the air. Dr. Doran says, “he was the first actor who, with Sheridan, gave public readings” at Freemasons’ Hall; and his recitation of “John Gilpin” gave impetus to the sale of the narrative of that adventurous ride.[577] Henderson died in 1785, aged only thirty-eight, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Mrs. Siddons, the daughter of an itinerant actor, was born in 1755. After strolling and becoming a lady’s-maid, she married a poor second-rate actor of Birmingham. She appeared first at Drury Lane in 1775 as Portia. Her first real triumph was in 1780, as Isabella in Southerne’s tragedy. The management gave her Garrick’s dressing-room, and some legal admirers presented her with a purse of a hundred guineas. Soon afterwards, as Jane Shore, she sent many ladies in the audience into fainting fits. This great actress closed her career in 1812 with Lady Macbeth, her greatest triumph. She is said to have made King George III. shed tears. He admired her especially for her repose. “Garrick,” he used to say, “could never stand still. He was a great fidget.” No actress received more homage in her time than Mrs. Siddons. Reynolds painted his name on the hem of her garment in his portrait of her as the Tragic Muse. Dr. Johnson kissed her hand and admired her genius. In comedy Mrs. Siddons failed; her rigorous Grecian face was not arch. “In comedy” says Colman, “she was only a frisking grig.” “Those who knew her best,” says Dr. Doran, “have recorded her grace, her noble carriage, divine elocution and solemn earnestness, her grandeur, her pathos, her correct judgment.” Erskine studied her cadences and tones. According to Campbell, she increased the heart’s capacity for tender, intense, and lofty feelings. This lofty-minded actress, as Young calls her, died in 1831.

Her elder brother, John Kemble, first appeared at Drury Lane, in 1783, as Hamlet. In 1788-9 he succeeded King as manager of the theatre, and continued so till 1801. In Coriolanus and Cato, Kemble was pre-eminent, but his Richard and Sir Giles were inferior to Cook’s and Kean’s. In comedy he failed, except in snatches of dignity or pathos. As an actor Kemble was sometimes heavy and monotonous. He had not the fire or versatility of Garrick, or the wild passion of Edmund Kean. As Hamlet he was romantic, dignified, and philosophic. In his Rolla he delighted Sheridan and Pitt; in Octavian he drew tears from all eyes. He excelled also in Cœur de Lion, Penruddock, and the Stranger. In private life he was always majestic and gravely convivial. When Covent Garden was burnt down in 1808, he bore the loss bravely, and on the night of the opening the generous Duke of Northumberland sent him back his bond for £10,000 to be committed to the flames. Walpole, who saw Kemble, preferred him to Garrick in Benedick, and to Quin in Maskwell. Kemble took his solemn farewell of the stage in 1817 as Coriolanus, and died at Lausanne in 1823. Leigh Hunt, an excellent dramatic critic, paints the following picture of Kemble: “A figure of melancholy dignity, dealing out a most measured speech in sepulchral tones and a pedantic pronunciation, and injuring what he has made you feel by the want of feeling it himself.”[578] John Kemble’s brother Charles acted well in Mercutio, Young Mirabel, and Benedick. He remained on the stage till 1836.

George Frederick Cooke, whose life was one perpetual debauch, and whose career on the stage extended from 1801 to 1812, when he died at Boston, did not, I think, appear at Drury Lane. His laurels were won chiefly at Covent Garden.

Master Betty, born in 1791 at Shrewsbury, elegant, and quick of memory, appeared at Drury Lane in 1804, fretted his little hour upon the stage, and earned a fortune with which he prudently retired in 1808. He lived till 1876.

King, the original representative of Sir Peter Teazle, Lord Ogleby, Puff, and Dr. Cantwell, began his London career at Drury Lane in 1748. He left the stage in 1802. His best characters were Touchstone and Ranger, and in these parts he was always arch, rapid, and versatile. Hazlitt discourses on King’s old, hard, rough face, and his shrewd hints and tart replies.

Dickey Suett was a favourite low comedian from 1780 to 1805, when he died. He was a tall, thin, ungainly man, too much addicted to grimace, interpolations, and practical jokes. He drank hard, and suffered from mental depression. Hazlitt calls him “the delightful old croaker, the everlasting Dickey Gossip of the stage.”[579] Lamb describes his “Oh, la!” as irresistible; “he drolled upon the stock of those two syllables richer than the cuckoo.” Shakspere’s jesters “have all the true Suett stamp—a loose and shambling gait, and a slippery tongue.”[580]

Miss Pope, who left the stage in 1808, had played with Garrick and Mrs. Clive. She was the original Polly Honeycomb, Miss Sterling, Mrs. Candour, and Tilburina. In youth she played hoydens, chambermaids, and half-bred ladies, with a dash and good-humour free from all vulgarity, and in old age she took to duennas and Mrs. Heidelburg. In 1761 Churchill mentions her as “lively Pope,” and in 1807 Horace Smith describes her as “a bulky person with a duplicity of chin.”

In 1741 the theatre, which had been rebuilt by Wren in 1674, in a cheap and plain manner, became ruinous, and was enlarged and almost rebuilt by the Adams. In 1747 Garrick became the manager, and Dr. Johnson, as a friend, wrote the celebrated address beginning with the often-quoted lines—

“When Learning’s triumph o’er her barbarous foes
First reared the stage, immortal Shakspere rose.
******
Each change of many-coloured life he drew,
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new;
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toiled after him in vain.”

In 1775, the year in which “The Duenna” was brought out at Covent Garden, Garrick made known his wish to sell a moiety of the patent of this theatre. In June 1776 a contract was signed, Mr. Sheridan taking two-fourteenths of the whole for £10,000, Mr. Linley the same, and Dr. Ford three-fourteenths at £15,000.[581] How Sheridan raised the money no one ever knew.

Sheridan’s first contribution to this new stage was an alteration of Vanbrugh’s licentious comedy of “The Relapse,” which he called “A Trip to Scarborough,” and brought out in 1777. The same year the brilliant manager, then only six-and-twenty, produced the finest and most popular comedy in the English language, “The School for Scandal.” On the last slip of this miracle of wit and dramatic construction Sheridan wrote—“Finished at last, thank God!—R. B. Sheridan.” Below this the prompter added his devout response—“Amen.—W. Hopkins.”[582] Garrick was proud of the new manager, and boasted of his budding genius.[583]

In 1778 Sheridan bought out Mr. Lacy for more than £45,000, and Dr. Ford for £77,000. In 1779 Garrick died, and Sheridan wrote a monody to his memory, which was delivered by Mrs. Yates after the play of “The West Indian.” Slander attributed the finest passage in this monody to Tickell, just as it had before attributed Tickell’s bad farce to Sheridan.

Dowton, who appeared in 1796 as Sheva, was felicitous in good-natured testy old men, and also in crabbed and degraded old villains. His Dr. Cantwell and Sir Anthony Absolute were in the true spirit of old comedy. Leigh Hunt praises Dowton’s changes from the irritable to the yielding, and from the angry to the tender.

Willy Blanchard was natural and unaffected, but mannered.

Mathews first appeared in London in 1803. He excelled in valets and old men, and drew tears as M. Mallet, the poor emigré who is disappointed about a letter.

Liston made his début at the Haymarket in 1805 as Sheepface. Leigh Hunt praises his ignorant rustics, and condemns his old men. He sets him down as a painter of emotions, and therefore more intellectual than Fawcett and less farcical than Munden. Liston was a hypochondriac; below his fun there was always an under-current of melancholy, “as though,” says Dr. Doran, mysteriously, “he had killed a boy when, under the name of Williams, he was usher at the Rev. Dr. Burney’s at Gosport.”[584]

In 1807 Jones and Young made their first appearances, but not at Drury Lane. Young originated Rienzi, and played Hamlet, Falstaff, and Captain Macheath. Jones was a stage rake of great excellence.

Among the actresses before Kean, we may mention Miss Brunton, afterwards Countess of Craven, and Mrs. Davison, a good Lady Teazle.

Lewis, who left the stage in 1809, was a draper’s son. He died in 1813, and out of part of his fortune the new church at Ealing was erected. He played Young Rapid and Jeremy Diddler, and created the Hon. Tom Shuffleton in “John Bull.” His restless style suited Morton and Reynolds’s comedies, and he succeeded in “all that was frolic, gay, humorous, whimsical, eccentric, and yet elegant.” He was manager of Covent Garden for twenty-one years, and made everyone do his duty by kindness and good treatment. Leigh Hunt sketches Lewis admirably, with his “easy flutter,”[585] short knowing respiration, and complacent liveliness. Lewis played the gentleman with more heart than Elliston. He seemed polite, not from vanity, but rather from a natural irresistible wish to please. He had all the laborious carelessness of action, important indifference of voice, and natural vacuity of look that are requisite for the lounger.[586] His defects were a habit of shaking his head and drawing in of the breath. His “flippant airiness,” “vivacious importance,” and “French flutter” must have been in their way perfect. “Gay, fluttering, hair-brained Lewis!” says Hazlitt; “nobody could break open a door, or jump over a table, or scale a ladder, or twirl a cocked hat, or dangle a cane, or play a jockey-nobleman or a nobleman’s jockey like him.”[587]

Here a moment’s pause for an anecdote. When a riot took place at Drury Lane in 1740 about the non-appearance of a French dancer, the first symptoms of the outbreak were the ushering of ladies out of the pit. A noble marquis gallantly proposed to fire the house. The proposal was considered, but not adopted. The bucks and bloods then proceeded to destroy the musical instruments and fittings, to break the panels and partitions, and pull down the royal arms. The offence was finally condoned by the ringleading marquis sending £100 to the manager.

Charles Lamb describes Drury Lane in his own delightful way. The first play he ever saw was in 1781-2, when he was six years old. “A portal, now the entrance,” he writes, “to a printing-office, at the north end of Cross Court was the pit entrance to old Drury; and I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon was wet: with what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles!

“It was the custom then to cry, ‘’Chase some oranges, ’chase some nonpareils, ’chase a bill of the play?’ But when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, the breathless anticipations I endured! The boxes, full of well-dressed women of quality, projected over the pit. The orchestra lights arose—the bell sounded once—it rang the second time—the curtain drew up, and the play was ‘Artaxerxes;’ ‘Harlequin’s Invasion’ followed.”

The next play Lamb went to was “The Lady of the Manor,” followed by a pantomime called “Lunn’s Ghost.” Rich was not long dead. His third play was “The Way of the World” and “Robinson Crusoe.” Six or seven years after he went (with what changed feelings!) to see Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. “Comparison and retrospection,” he says, “soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene, and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful of all recreations.”[588]

Handsome Jack Bannister, who played in youth with Garrick, and in later years with Edmund Kean, was the model for the Uncle Toby in Leslie’s picture. Natural, honest, as Hamlet, he was also good as Walter in “The Children of the Wood.” Inimitable “in depicting heartiness,” says Dr. Doran, “ludicrous distress, grave or affected indifference, honest bravery, insurmountable cowardice, a spirited young or an enfeebled yet impatient old fellow, mischievous boyishness, good-humoured vulgarity, there was no one of his time who could equal him.”[589] Bannister left the stage with a handsome fortune. Hazlitt says finely of him that his “gaiety, good-humour, cordial feeling, and natural spirits shone through his characters and lighted them up like a transparency.”[590] His kind heart and honest face were as well known as his good-humoured smile and buoyant activity. “Jack,” says Lamb, “was beloved for his sweet, good-natured moral pretensions.” He gave us “a downright concretion of a Wapping sailor, a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar.”

Mrs. Jordan’s mother was the daughter of a Welsh clergyman who had eloped with an officer. The débutante came out at Drury Lane in 1785 as the heroine of “The Country Girl.” In 1789 she became the mistress of the Duke of Clarence. Good-natured, and endowed with a sweet clear voice, she played rakes with the airiest grace, and excelled in representing arch, buoyant girls, spirited, buxom, lovable women, and handsome hoydens. The critics complained of her as vulgar. Late in life she retired to France, and died in 1815. “Her wealth,” says Dr. Doran, “was lavished on the Duke of Clarence, who left her to die untended; but when he became king he ennobled all her children, the eldest being made Earl of Munster.” Hazlitt, speaking of Mrs. Jordan, says eloquently, her voice “was a cordial to the heart, because it came from it full, like the luscious juice of the rich grape. To hear her laugh was to drink nectar. Her smile was sunshine; her talking far above singing; her singing was like the twanging of Cupid’s bow. Her body was large, soft, and generous like the rose. Miss Kelly, if we may accept the judgment of Hazlitt, was in comparison a mere dexterous, knowing chambermaid. Jordan was all exuberance and grace. It was her capacity for enjoyment, and the contrast she presented to everything sharp, angular, and peevish, that delighted the spectator. She was Cleopatra turned into an oyster wench.”[591] Charles Lamb praises Mrs. Jordan for her tenderness in such parts as Ophelia, Helena, and Viola, and for her “steady, melting eye.”[592]

Robert William Elliston was the son of a Bloomsbury watchmaker, and was born in 1774. He appeared in London first in 1797, and obtained a triumph as Sir Edward Mortimer, a part in which Kemble had failed. He is praised by Dr. Doran as one of the best of stage gentlemen, not being so reserved and languid as Charles Kemble. All the qualities that go to the making of a gallant were conspicuous in his Duke Aranza—self-command, kindness, dignity, good-humour, a dash of satire, and true amatory fire; but then his voice was too pompously deep in soliloquy, and he was too genteel in low comedy. As a stage lover he was impassioned, tender, and courteous, yet he would persist in one uniform dress—blue coat, white waistcoat, and white knee-breeches. Yet, though a self-deceiving and pompous humbug, Charles Lamb reverenced him and Leigh Hunt admired his acting. In turn proprietor of the Olympic, the Surrey, and Drury Lane theatres, Elliston outlived his fame and fortune. When acting George IV. in a sham coronation procession, having taken too much preliminary wine, he became so affected at the delight of the audience that he gave them his grandest benediction in these affecting words, “Bless you, my people!” When Douglas Jerrold saved the Surrey Theatre by his “Black-eyed Susan,” Elliston declared such services should be acknowledged by a presentation of plate—not by himself, however, but by Jerrold’s own friends. Elliston’s last appearance was in 1826, and he died in 1831.

Hull, a heavy, useful, and intelligent actor, left the stage in 1807. Holman, an exaggerating actor, had a career that lasted from 1784 to 1800. Munden, the broadest of farceurs and drollest of grimacers, appeared first in 1790 as Sir Francis Gripe, and last, in 1823, as Sir Robert Bramble and Dozey. His Crack in “The Turnpike Gate” was one of his greatest parts; but I am afraid he would be now thought too much of the buffoon. Charles Lamb devotes a whole essay to the subject of Munden’s acting as Cockletop, Sir Christopher Curry, Old Dornton, and the Cobbler of Preston. He says of him: “When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks in unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He, and he alone, makes faces. In the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as single and unaccompanied as Hogarth. Can any man wonder like him, any man see ghosts like him, or fight with his own shadow?”[593]

Lamb praises Dodd for a face formally flat in Foppington, frothily pert in Fattle, and blankly expressive of no meaning in Acres and Fribble.[594]

In 1792 Sheridan’s affairs began to get entangled. The surveyors reported the theatre unsafe and incapable of repair, and it was therefore resolved to build a new one at a cost of £150,000 by means of 300 shares at £500 each. In the meantime, while Sheridan was paying interest for his loan, the company was playing at an enormous expense on borrowed stages; and the careless and profuse manager, his prudent wife now dead, was maintaining three establishments—one at Wanstead, one at Isleworth, and one in Jermyn Street. In 1794 a new Theatre was built by Henry Holland.

In 1798 that masterpiece of false, hysterical German sentiment, “The Stranger” (translated from Kotzebue), was rewritten by Sheridan, and brought out at his own theatre. This was one of the earliest importations of the Germanism that Canning afterwards, for political purposes, so pungently denounced in the Anti-Jacobin. The great success of “The Stranger,” and the false taste it had implanted, induced Sheridan, in 1799, to bring out the play of “Pizarro.” He wrote scarcely anything in it but the speech of Rolla, which is itself an amplification of a few lines of the original.

The new theatre was to have cost £75,000, and the £150,000 subscribed for was to have paid the architect and defrayed the mortgage debts. The theatre, however, cost more than £150,000; only part of the debt was paid off, and a claim of £70,000 remained upon the property.[595]

On the 24th of February 1809, while the House of Commons was occupied with Mr. Ponsonby’s motion on the conduct of the war in Spain, the debate was interrupted by a great glare of light through the windows. When the cause was ascertained, so much sympathy was felt for Sheridan that it was proposed to adjourn; but Sheridan calmly rose and said, “that whatever might be the extent of his private calamity, he hoped it would not interfere with the public business of the country.” He then left the house, and is said to have reached Drury Lane just in time to find all hope of saving his property abandoned. According to one story he coolly proceeded to the Piazza Coffee-house and discussed a bottle of wine, replying to a friend who praised his philosophic calmness, “Why, a man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine at his own fireside.”[596] He is said to have been most grieved at the loss of a harpsichord that had belonged to his wife.

Encouraged by the opening presented, and at the tardiness of shareholders to rebuild, speculators now proposed to erect a third theatre; but this design Sheridan and his friends defeated, and Mr. Whitbread, the great brewer of Chiswell Street, Finsbury, who afterwards destroyed himself, exerted his energies in the rebuilding of it.

By the new agreement of 1811, Sheridan was to receive for his moiety £24,000, and an additional sum of £4000 for the property of the fruit-offices and the reversion of boxes and shares; his son also receiving his quarter of the patent property. Out of this sum the claims of the Linley family and other creditors were to be satisfied.

Overwhelmed with debt, dogged by bailiffs, hurried to and from sponging-houses, Sheridan, now a broken-down man, died in 1816, reproaching the committee with his last breath for refusing to lend him more money.

The new theatre, built by Mr. B. Wyatt, had been opened in October 1812, the performances consisting of “Hamlet” and “The Devil to Pay.” The house held 800 persons less than its predecessor. The proprietors being anxious to have an opening address equal to that of Dr. Johnson, advertised for a suitable poem, and professed a desire for an open and free competition. The verses were, like Oxford competition poems, to be marked with a word, number, or motto, and the appended sealed paper containing the name of the writer was not to be opened unless the poem was successful. They offered twenty guineas as the prize, and extended the time for sending in the poems. The result was an avalanche of mediocrity, till the secretary’s desk and the treasury-office ran over with poems. The proprietors were in despair, when Lord Holland prevailed on Lord Byron to write an address, at the risk, as the poet feared, “of offending a hundred rival scribblers and a discerning public.” The poem was written and accepted, and delivered on the special night by Mr. Elliston, who performed the part of Hamlet. The address was voted tame by the newspapers, with the exception of the following passage—

“As soars this fane to emulate the last,
Oh, might we draw our omens from the past?
Some hour propitious to our prayers, may boast
Names such as hallow still the dome we lost.
On Drury first your Siddons’ thrilling art
O’erwhelmed the gentlest, stormed the sternest heart;
On Drury Garrick’s latest laurels grew;
Here your last tears retiring Roscius drew,
Sigh’d his last thanks, and wept his last adieu.”

The brothers Smith eagerly seized this fine opportunity for parody, and the “Rejected Addresses” made all London shake with laughter.

The leaden statue of Shakspere over the entrance of old Drury Lane was executed by Cheere of Hyde Park Corner—“the leaden figure man” formerly so celebrated—from a design by Scheemakers, a native of Antwerp and the master of Nollekens. When this sculptor first went to Rome to study, he travelled on foot, and had to sell his shirts by the way in order to procure funds. Mr. Whitbread, one of Sheridan’s creditors, gave the figure to the theatre.[597]

Mr. Whitbread and a committee had erected the house and purchased the old patent rights by means of a subscription of £400,000. Of this £20,000 was paid to Sheridan, and a like sum to the other holders of the patent. The creditors of the old house took a quarter of what they claimed in full payment, and the Duke of Bedford abandoned a claim of £12,000. The company consisted of Elliston, Dowton, Bannister, Rae, Wallack, Wewitzer, Miss Smith, Mrs. Davison, Mrs. Glover, Miss Kelly, and Miss Mellon. Mr. C. Kemble and Grimaldi were at the other house, that the next season boasted a strong company—John and Charles Kemble, Conway, Terry, and Matthews. At Drury Lane no new piece was brought out except Coleridge’s “Remorse.” At Covent Garden there was played “Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp.”

At Drury Lane, says Dr. Doran, neither new pieces nor new players succeeded, till on the 20th of January 1814, the play-bills announced the first appearance of an actor from Exeter, whose coming changed the evil fortunes of the house, scared the old correct, dignified, and classical school of actors, and brought again to the memories of those who could look back as far as Garrick the fire, nature, impulse, and terrible earnestness—all, in short, but the versatility, of that great master in his art. This player was Edmund Kean.

Kean was born in 1787. He was the son of a low and worthless actress, whose father, George Saville Carey, a poor singer, reciter, and mimic, hanged himself. The father of Carey was a dramatist and song-writer, the natural son of the great Lord Halifax, who died in 1695. Kean’s father is unknown: he may have been Aaron Kean the tailor, or Moses Kean the builder. In early life the genius was cabin-boy, strolling player, dancer on the tight-rope, and elocutionist at country fairs. His first appearance, as Shylock, in 1814, was a triumph. That night he came home and promised his wife a carriage, and his son Charles (then in his cradle) an education at Eton. In Richard III. he soon attained great triumphs. He was audacious, sneering, devilish, almost supernatural in his cruelty and hypocrisy. His Hamlet, though graceful and earnest, was inferior to his Othello; but Kemble thought that the latter was a mistake, Othello being palpably “a slow man.” When Southey saw Kean and Young, he said, “It is the arch-fiend himself.” When Kean played Sir Giles Overreach, and removed it from Kemble’s repertory, his wife received him on his return from the theatre with the anxious question, “What did Lord Essex think of it?” The triumphant reply is well known: “D—— Lord Essex, Mary! the pit rose at me.”

In 1822, after a visit to America, Kean appeared with his rival Young in a series of characters, though he never liked “the Jesuit,” as he used to call Young. In 1827, Kean’s son Charles appeared as Norval at Drury Lane, while his father, now sinking fast, was acting at Covent Garden. In 1833 Kean, shattered and exhausted, played Othello to his son’s Iago, and died two months after.

Hazlitt has a fine comparison between Kean and Mrs. Siddons. Mrs. Siddons never seemed to task her powers to the utmost. Her least word seemed to float to the end of the stage; the least motion of her hand commanded obedience. “Mr. Kean,” he says, “is all effort, all violence, all extreme passion; he is possessed with a fury and demon that leaves him no repose, no time for thought, nor room for imagination.[598] Mr. Kean’s imagination appears not to have the principles of joy or hope or love in it. He seems chiefly sensible to pain and to the passion that springs from it, and to the terrible energies of mind or body which are necessary to grapple with or to avert it.”[599]

The new theatre had small success under its committee of proprietors, and soon became involved in debt and unable to pay the performers. In 1814 it was let to the highest bidder, Elliston, who took it at the yearly rental of £10,300, and expended £15,000 on repairs. Captain Polhill afterwards became the lessee, and sunk in it large sums of money. The two next lessees, Messrs. Bunn and Hammond, became bankrupts. Towards the middle of 1840 the house was reopened, after a closing of some months, for the then new entertainments of promenade concerts.

Grimaldi, the son of Queen Charlotte’s dentist, was born in 1779. He made his début at Drury lane in a “Robinson Crusoe” pantomime in 1781, and retired from the stage in 1828. His first part of any importance was Orson. He remained at Drury Lane for nearly five-and-twenty years, and then played alternately at Covent Garden and Sadler’s Wells every night. “He was the very beau-ideal of thieves,” says a critic of the time: “robbery became a science in his hand; you forgave the larceny from the humour with which Joe indulged his irresistible weakness.”[600] He was famous for his rich ringing laugh, his complacent chuckle, the roll of his eyes, the drop of his chin, and his elongated respiration. But we must go back to the singers.

Mrs. Crouch, the great singer, and the daughter of a Gray’s Inn Lane attorney, was articled to Mr. Linley, patentee of Drury Lane, in 1779, and in 1780 made her début as Mandane. In 1785 she married a lieutenant in the navy, but returned to the stage in 1786, to be eclipsed by Mrs. Billington. In 1787 she acted with Kelly at Drury Lane in the opera of “Richard Cœur de Lion,” and in the same year, in the character of Selima, sang the once popular song of “No Flower that blows is like the Rose.” In 1788 she played Lady Elinor in “The Haunted Tower” at Drury Lane. She died in 1804.

Mrs. Billington, the daughter of a German musician, was born in London in 1765. In 1801-2 she sang alternately at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. She died in 1818. Bianchi wrote for this lady the opera of “Inez de Castro.” She is said to have played and sung at sight Mozart’s “Clemenza di Tito;” her voice ranged from D to G in altissimo. She indulged too much in ornament, but was especially celebrated for her “Soldier tired of War’s Alarms.”

John Braham, a Jew pencil-boy—so the musical on dit goes—was brought up by a singer at the Duke’s Place Synagogue. He made his début in 1787. He appeared first, in 1796, in Storace’s opera of “Mahmoud,” at Drury Lane. The compass of his song, “Let Glory’s Clarion,” extended over seventeen notes. He died in 1856.

Storace, born in 1763, died in 1796. He was the son of an Italian double-bass player, was engaged by Linley to compose for Drury Lane, and for that theatre wrote the following operas:—“The Siege of Belgrade,” 1792: “Lodoiska,” 1794; and “The Iron Chest,” 1796. This brilliant young man wrote chiefly for Braham and Kelly.

Madame Storace made her début at Drury Lane, in 1789, in her brother’s comic opera of “The Haunted Tower.”

Bishop, who was born about 1780, produced his opera of “The Mysterious Bride” at Drury Lane in 1808. In 1809, the night preceding the fire, Bishop produced his first great success, “The Circassian Bride,” the score of which was burnt. After being long at Covent Garden, Bishop, in 1826, produced his “Aladdin” at Drury Lane to compete with Weber’s “Oberon” at Covent Garden. In 1827 he adapted Rossini’s “Turco in Italia;” and in 1830, for Drury Lane, he adapted Rossini’s “William Tell.”

Michael Kelly, born in 1762, made his first appearance at Drury Lane in 1787. In his jovial career Kelly composed “The Castle Spectre,” “Blue Beard” (the march in which is very pompously oriental and fine), “Of Age To-morrow,” “Deaf and Dumb,” etc. He also wrote many Italian, English, and French songs, and had a good tenor voice. He became superintendent of music at the Drury Lane Theatre, and died in 1826. He was an agreeable man, and much esteemed by George IV. Parkes accuses him of a want of knowledge of harmony, and of stealing from the Italians.

In May 1836 Madame Malibran (de Beriot) appeared at Drury Lane as Isolina in Balfe’s “Maid of Artois,” which was a great success. At the close of the season she went abroad. Returned in September, she sang at the Manchester Festival, and after a duet with Madame Caradori Allen, was taken ill, and died a few days after. This gifted woman, the daughter of a Spanish Jew (an opera-singer), was born in 1808.

To return to our last batch of actors. James Wallack, born in 1792, began to be known about 1816, and in 1820 was principal tragedian at Drury Lane. His Hamlet, Rolla, and Romeo were very manly and bearable. He afterwards became stage-manager at Drury Lane, and was praised for his light comedy.

Charles Young, who played with Kean at Drury Lane, was a dignified but rather cold actor. Booth appeared also with Kean in 1817, and again in 1820 with Wallack and Cooper.

Mrs. Mardyn (the supposed mistress of Lord Byron) appeared on the Drury Lane stage in 1815. She was boisterous, but so full of girlish gaiety and reckless wildness that she became for a short time the favourite of the town. She failed, however, when she reappeared in 1833 in a tragic part.

Charming Mrs. Nisbett, “that peach of a woman,” as Douglas Jerrold used to call her, died in 1858, aged forty-five. The daughter of a drunken Irish officer who took to the stage, she married an officer in the Life Guards in 1831; but on the death of her husband by an accident, she returned to her first love in 1832, and reappeared at Drury Lane. Her great triumph was “The Love Chase,” which was produced at the Haymarket in 1837, and ran for nearly one hundred nights. It was worth going a hundred miles to hear Mrs. Nisbett’s merry, ringing, silvery laugh.

Irish Johnstone, who died in 1828, is described by Hazlitt as acting at Drury Lane, “with his supple knees, his hat twisted round in his hand, his good-humoured laugh, his arched eyebrows, his insinuating leer, and his lubricated brogue curling round the ear like a well-oiled moustachio.”[601]

Oxberry quitted Drury Lane with Elliston in 1820. In 1821 he took the Craven’s Head Chop-house in Drury Lane, where he used to say to his guests, “We vocalise on a Friday, conversationalise on a Sunday, and chopise every day.” His best characters were Leo Luminati, Slender, and Abel Day. Emery surpassed him in Tyke, Little Knight, and Robin Roughhead.

Farren, who was born about 1787, made his début at Covent Garden in 1818. He was for some time at Drury Lane, and latterly manager of the Olympic. In old men he took the place of Dowton. His finest performance was Lord Ogleby, but in his prime he excelled also in Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Fretful Plagiary, and the Bailie Nicol Jarvie.

John Pritt Harley was the son of a silk-mercer, and originally a clerk in Chancery Lane. He was born in 1786 or 1790. He made his début at the Lyceum in 1815, in “The Devil’s Bridge.” His first appearance at Drury Lane was in 1815, as Lissardo in “The Wonder.” In farce he was good-humoured, bustling, and droll; and he excelled in Caleb Quotem, Peter Fidget, Bottom, and many Shaksperean characters. He died only a year or two ago, repeating, it is said, this line of one of his old parts: “I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.”

Miss Kelly, born in 1790, was at the Lyceum in 1808, and went from thence to Drury Lane. She sang in operas, and was admirable in genteel comedy and domestic tragedy. Her romps were scarcely inferior to Mrs. Jordan’s; her waiting-maids were equal to Mrs. Orger’s. Charles Lamb, writing in 1818, says of her—

“Your tears have passion in them, and a grace,
A genuine freshness which our hearts avow;
Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace,
That vanish and return we know not how.”

Miss Kelly was twice shot at while acting. In both cases the cruel assailants were rejected admirers.

In 1850 Mrs. Glover took her farewell benefit at Drury Lane; Farren and Madame Vestris taking parts in the performance—Mrs. Glover playing Mrs. Malaprop. She was born in 1779, and had made her first appearance as Elvina in good Hannah More’s dull tragedy, at Covent Garden, in 1797. Beautiful in youth, Mrs. Glover had gracefully passed from sighing Juliets and maundering Elvinas into Mrs. Heidelbergs, Mrs. Candours, and the Nurse in “Romeo and Juliet.”

Robert Keeley, who was brought up a compositor, was born in Grange Court, Carey Street, in 1794. He acted at Drury Lane as early as 1819, and at the Adelphi as early as 1826 as Jemmy Green in “Tom and Jerry.” In 1834 we find the critics ranking him below Liston and Reeve, but he was very popular in his representations of cowardly fear and stupid chuckling astonishment. He left the stage for several years before his death. Miss Helen Faucit, born in 1816, was the original heroine of Sir Bulwer Lytton’s and Mr. Browning’s plays. Her Beatrice, Imogen, and Rosalind were admirable, and her Antigone was a great success. She retired from the stage in 1851, when she married Mr. Theodore Martin, the accomplished translator of Horace and Catullus, and the joint author with Professor Aytoun of those admirable burlesque ballads of “Bon Gaultier.”

William Charles Macready, the son of a Dublin upholsterer, appeared in London first in 1816. Kean approved his Orestes, and he soon advanced to Rob Roy, Virginius, and Coriolanus. He then removed to Drury Lane, and distinguished himself as Caius Gracchus and William Tell, in two of Mr. Sheridan Knowles’s plays. He reappeared at Drury Lane in 1826. The critics said that he failed in Rolla and Hamlet, but excelled in Rob Roy, Coriolanus, and Richard. He himself preferred his own Hamlet. They complained that he had a burr in his enunciation, and a catching of the breath—that he was too fond of declamation and violent transitions; others thought him too heavy and colloquial. In 1826 he went to America, where the fatal riot of Forrest’s partisans occurred, and twenty-two men were killed. His season closed at Drury Lane in 1843. His benefit took place in 1851, and he then retired from the stage to live the life of a quiet, useful country gentleman in the west of England. He died in 1873, and lies buried at Kensal Green.

Mr. Charles Kean, struggling with a bad voice and a mean figure, had a hard fight for success, and won it only by the most dauntless perseverance. Born in 1811, he appeared for the first time upon the boards as Norval, in 1827. After repeated failures in London and much success in the provinces and America, Mr. Kean accepted an engagement at Drury Lane in 1838—Mr. Bunn offering him £50 a night. He succeeded in Hamlet, and was presented with a silver vase of the value of £200. In Richard and Sir Giles Overreach he also triumphed. In 1843 Mr. Kean renewed his engagement with Mr. Bunn. Before retiring from the stage and starting for Australia, Mr. and Mrs. Kean performed for many nights at Drury Lane. Charles Kean died in 1868.

Miss Ellen Tree first performed at Drury Lane as Violante in “The Wonder.” She married Mr. C. Kean in 1842, and aided him in those antiquarianly-correct spectacles that for a time rendered a scholarly, careful, but scarcely first-rate actor popular in the metropolis.

We have room in this brief and imperfect résumé of theatrical history for only two pictures of Drury Lane. One is in 1800, when George III. was fired at by Hatfield as he entered the house to witness Cribber’s comedy of “She Would and She Would Not.” When the Marquis of Salisbury would have drawn him away, the brave, obstinate king said—“Sir, you discompose me as well as yourself: I shall not stir one step.” The queen and princesses were in tears all the evening, but George III. sat calm and collected, staring through his single-barrel opera-glass. In 1783 the king, queen, and Prince of Wales went to Drury Lane to see Mrs. Siddons play Isabella. They sat under a dome of crimson velvet and gold. The king wore a Quaker-coloured dress with gold buttons, while the handsome scapegrace prince was adorned in blue Genoa velvet.

Mr. Planché, the accomplished writer of extravaganzas and the Somerset Herald, brought out his burlesque of “Amoroso, King of Little Britain,” at Drury Lane in 1818. He afterwards wrote the libretto of “Maid Marian” for Mr. Bishop, and that of “Oberon” for Weber. In 1828 his “Charles XII.” was produced at Drury Lane.

On Mr. Falconer’s clever imitative experiments we have no room to dilate. The “Peep o’ Day,” a piece which reproduced all the “Colleen Bawn” effects, was the best.

And now leaving the theatres for meaner places, we pass on to the district of the butchers. Clare Market stands on a spot formerly called Clement’s Inn Fields, and was built by the Earl of Clare, who lived close by, in 1657. The family names, Denzil, Holles, etc., are retained in the neighbouring streets.

This market became notorious in Pope’s time for the buffoonery, noisy impudence, and extravagances of Orator Henley, a sort of ecclesiastical outlaw of a not very religious age, who tried to make his impudence and conceit pass for genius. This street-orator, the son of a Leicestershire vicar, was born in 1692. After going to St. John’s College, Cambridge, he returned home, kept a school, wrote a poem called “Esther,” and began a Universal Grammar in ten languages. Heated by an itch for reforming, and tired of the country, or driven away, as some say, by a scandalous embarrassment, he hurried to London, and for a short time did duty at a chapel in Bedford Row. During this time, under the Earl of Macclesfield’s patronage, he translated Pliny’s epistles, Vertot’s works, and Montfaucon’s Italian travels. He then competed for a lecturership in Bloomsbury, but failed, the parishioners not disliking his language or his doctrine, but complaining that he threw himself about too much in the pulpit.

Now, “regular action” was one of Henley’s peculiar prides. The rejection hurt his vanity and nearly drove him crazy. Losing his temper, he rushed into the vestry-room. “Blockheads!” he roared, “are you qualified to judge of the degree of action necessary for a preacher of God’s Word? Were you able to read, or had got sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to understand the renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you almost the only requisite of a public speaker was ACTION, ACTION, ACTION. But I despise and defy you: provoco ad populum; the public shall decide between us.” He then hurried from the room, soon afterwards published his probationary discourse, and taking a room in Newport Market, started as quack divine and public lecturer.

But he first consulted the eccentric and heretical Whiston, whom Swift bantered so ruthlessly—Whiston being, like Henley, a Leicestershire man—as to whether he should incur any legal penalties by officiating as a separatist from the Church of England. Whiston, himself an expelled professor, tried to dissuade the Orator from his wild project. Disagreement and abuse followed, and the correspondence ended with the following final bomb-shell from the violent demagogue:—