on behalf of the players does not appear. Puritanism was too strong for opposition. The public had to submit, as best it could, to the tyranny of fanaticism. But that bitter mortification was felt by very many may be taken for granted. sought to pick up a little money by publishing copies of plays that had obtained favour in performance, but had not before been printed. Thus, in 1652, Beaumont and Fletcher's Wild Goose Chase was printed in folio, "for the public use of all the ingenious, and the private benefit of John Lowin and Joseph Taylor, servants to his late Majesty, and by them dedicated to the honoured few lovers of dramatic poesy: wherein they modestly intimate their wants, and that with sufficient cause, for whatever they were before the wars, they were afterwards reduced to a necessitous condition." Pollard, possessed of some means, withdrew to his relatives in the country, and there ended his days peacefully. Perkins and Sumner lodged humbly together in Clerkenwell, and were interred in that parish. None of these unfortunate old actors lived to see the re-opening of the theatres, or the restoration of the monarchy. with But one actor is known to have sided the Parliament and against the He renounced the stage, and took trade of a jeweller in AldermanThis was Swanston, who had "One The authors were deprived of occupation so far as concerned the stage; they sought other employment for their pens; printing a play, however, now and then, by way of keeping their hands in as dramatists. The managers, left with nothing to manage, perhaps turned to trade in quest of outlet for their energies-the manager has been always something of the trader. But for the actors, forbidden to act, what were they to do? They had been constituted Malignants, or Royalists, almost by Act of Parliament. The younger players promptly joined the army of King Charles. Mohun acquired the rank of captain, and, at the close of the war, served in Flanders, receiving the pay of a major. Hart became a lieutenant of horse, under Sir Thomas Dallison, in the regiment of king. Prince Rupert. In the same troop served up the Burt as cornet, and Shatterel as quarter- bury. master. Allen, of the Cockpit, was played Othello, and been described as a major and quartermaster-general at "a brave, roaring fellow, who would Oxford. Robinson, serving on the side make the house shake again." of the king, was long reputed to have lost his life at the taking of Basing House. The story went that the Cromwellian General Harrison had, with his own hands, slain the actor, crying, as he struck him down, "Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently." Chalmers maintains, however, that an entry in the parish register of St. Anne's, Blackfriars, of the death and burial of "Richard Robinson, a player," in March, 1647, negatives this account of the actor's fate. Possibly there were two actors bearing the not uncommon name of Robinson. These were all players of note, who had acquitted themselves with applause in the best plays of the time. Of certain older actors unable to bear arms for the king, Lowin turned innkeeper, and died, at an advanced age, landlord of the Three Pigeons at Brentford. He had been an actor of eminence in the reign of James the First; "and his poverty was as great as his age," says one account of him. Taylor, who was reputed to have been taught by Shakespeare himself the correct method of interpreting the part of Hamlet, died and was buried at Richmond. These two actors, as did others probably, wretched actor," Mr. Gifford writes in the introduction to his edition of Massinger, "only, deserted his sovereign." But it may be questioned whether Swanston really merited this reprehension. He was a Presbyterian, it seems, and remained true to his political opinions, even though these now involved the abandonment of his profession. If his brother players fought for the king, they fought no less for themselves, and for the theatre the Puritans had suppressed. Nor is the contrast Mr. Gifford draws, between the conduct of our actors at the time of the civil war, and the proceedings of the French players during the first French revolution, altogether fair. As Isaac Disraeli has pointed out, there was no question of suppressing the stage in France-it was rather employed as an instrument in aid of the revolution. The actors may have sympathised sincerely with the royal family in their afflicted state, but it was hardly to be expected that men would abandon, on that account, the profession of their choice, in which they had won real distinction, and which seemed to flourish the more owing to the excited condition of France. The French revolution, in truth, brought to the stage great increase of national patronage. The civil war concluded, and the cause of King Charles wholly lost, the actors were at their wits' end, to earn bread. Certain of them resolved to defy the law, and to give theatrical performances in spite of the Parliament. Out of the wreck of the companies of the different theatres they made up a tolerable troop, and ventured to present some few plays, with as much caution and privacy as possible, at the Cockpit in Drury-lane. This was in the winter of 1648. Doubtless there were many to whom the stage was dear, who were willing enough to encourage the poor players. Playgoing had now become a vice or a misdemeanour - to be prosecuted in secret, like dram-drinking. The Cockpit representations lasted but a few days. During a performance of Fletcher's tragedy of Rollo, Duke of Normandy, in which such excellent actors as Lowin, Taylor, Pollard, Burt, and Hart were concerned, a party of troopers beset the house, broke in about the middle of the play, and carried off the players, accoutred as they were in their stage dresses, to Hatton House, then a prison, where, after being detained some time, they were plundered of their clothes and dismissed. "Afterwards, in Oliver's time," as an old chronicler of dramatic events has left upon record, they used to act privately, three or four miles or more out of town, now here, now there, sometimes in noblemen's houses in particular Holland House, at Kensington-where the nobility and gentry who met (but in no great numbers) used to make a sum for them, each giving a broad piece or the like." The widow of the Earl of Holland, who was beheaded in March, 1649, occupied Holland House at this time. She was the grand-daughter of Sir Walter Cope, and a stout-hearted lady, who, doubtless, took pride in encouraging the entertainments her late lord's foes had tried so hard to suppress. Alexander Goffe, "the woman-actor at Blackfriars,' acted as "Jackall" on the occasion of these furtive performances. He had made himself known to the persons of quality who patronised plays, and gave them notice of the time when and the place where the next representation would "come off." A stage play, indeed, in those days was much what a prize-fight has been in later times absolutely illegal, and yet assured of many persistent supporters. Goffe was probably a slim, innocent-looking youth, who was enabled to baffle the vigilance of the Puritan functionaries, and pass freely and unsuspected between the players and their patrons. At Christmas-time and during the few days devoted to Bartholomew Fair, the astors, by dint of bribing the officer in command of the guard at Whitehall, and securing in such wise his connivance, were enabled to present performances at the Red Bull in St. John-street. Sometimes the Puritan troopers were mean enough to accept the hard-earned money of these poor players, and, nevertheless, to interrupt their performance, carrying them off to be imprisoned and punished for their breach of the law. But their great trouble arose from the frequent seizure of their wardrobe by the covetous soldiers. The clothes worn by the players upon the stage were of superior quality-fine dresses were of especial value in times prior to the introduction of scenery-and the loss was hard to bear. The public, it was feared, would be loath to believe in the merits of an actor who was no better attired than themselves. But at length it became too hazardous, as Kirkman relates in the preface to The Wits; or, Sport upon Sport, 1672, "to act anything that required any good cloaths; instead of which painted cloath many times served the turn to represent rich habits." Kirkman's book is a collection of certain "scenes or parts of plays . . . . the fittest for the actors to represent at this period, there then being little cost in the cloaths, which often were in great danger to be seized by the soldiers." These "select pieces of drollery, digested into scenes by way of dialogue, together with variety of humours of several nations, fitted for the pleasure and content of all persons, either in court, city, county, or camp," were first printed in 1662, by H. Marsh, and were originally contrived by Robert Cox, a comic genius in his way, who exhibited great ingenuity in evading the ordinances of Parliament, and in carrying on dramatic performances in spite of the Puritans. He presented at the Red Bull what were professedly entertainments of rope-dancing, gymnastic feats, and such coarse, practical fun as may even now be seen in the circus of strolling equestrian companies; but with these he cunningly intermingled select scenes from the comedies of the best English dramatists. From Kirkman's 66 Puritanism. Cromwell, perhaps, rather despised the stage than condemned it seriously on religious grounds; the while he did not object to indulge in buffoonery and horseplay, even in the gallery of Whitehall. Some love of music he has been credited with, and this, perhaps, dramas of Sir William Davenant, which obtained representation during the Commonwealth: such as The History of Sir Francis Drake, "represented by instrumental and vocal music, and by art of Perspective in Scenes," and The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru. According to Langbaine, the two plays called The Siege of Rhodes, were likewise acted "in stilo recitativo," during the time of the civil wars, and upon the restoration were rewritten and enlarged for regular performance at the Duke of York's Theatre, in Lincoln's - inn - fields. It seems to have been held that a play was no longer a play, if its words were sung instead of spoken-or these representations of Davenant's works may have been altogether stealthy, and without the cognisance of the legal authorities of the time. Isaac Disraeli, however, has pointed out that in some verses, published in 1653, and prefixed to the plays of Richard Brome, there is evident a tone of exultation at the passing away of power from the hands of those who had oppressed the actors. The poet, in a moralising vein, alludes to the fate of the players as it was affected by the dissolution of the Long Parliament: book, which is now highly prized from its rarity, it appears that the "drollery entitled The Bouncing Knight; or, The Robbers Robbed, is, in truth, a famous adventure of Sir John Falstaff's, set forth in close accordance with the original text; while the comedy of Rule a Wife and Have a Wife is reduced to a brief enter-induced him to tolerate the operatic tainment called The Equal Match. Other popular plays are similarly dealt with. But Cox, it seems, invented not less than he borrowed. Upon the foundation of certain old-established farces, he raised up entertainments something of the nature of the extemporary comedy of Italy: characters being devised or developed expressly with a view to his own performance of them. "All we could divert ourselves with," writes Kirkman, were these humours and pieces of plays, which, passing under the name of a merry, conceited fellow called Bottom the Weaver, Simpleton the Smith, John Swabber, or some such title, were only allowed us, and that by stealth too. . . . and these small things were as profitable and as great getpennies to the actors, as any of our late famed plays." He relates, moreover, that these performances attracted "a great confluence of auditors," insomuch that the Red Bull, a playhouse of large size, was often so full, that " as many went back for want of room as had entered;" and that meanly as these "drolls" might be thought of in later times, they were acted by the best comedians "then and now in being." Especially he applauds the actor, author, and contriver of the majority of the farces "the incomparable Robert Cox." Isaac Disraeli gives him credit for preserving alive, as it were by stealth, the suppressed spirit of the drama. That he was a very natural actor, or what would now be called "realistic," may be judged from the story told of his performance of a comic blacksmith, and his securing thereby an invitation to work at the forge of a master-smith, who had been present among the audience. Although your father speaks so ill of you," said the employer of labour, "if you will come and work with me, I will give you twelve pence a week more than I give any other journeyman." As Kirkman adds: "Thus was he taken for a smith bred, that was, indeed, as much of any trade." It seems certain that, for some few years prior to the Restoration, there had been far less stringent treatment of the players than in the earlier days of the triumph of See the strange twirl of times! When such poor outlive the dates of parliaments or kings! seems, held histrionic art in some esteem; at any rate the City companies, when with his council of state he dined in their halls, were wont to entertain him with performances of a theatrical kind, satirical farces, dancing and singing, "many shapes and ghosts, and the like; and all to please His Excellency the Lord General," say the newspapers of the time. Rhodes obtained the boon he sought, and, promptly engaging a troop of actors, re-opened the Cockpit. His chief actor was his apprentice, Thomas Betterton, the son of Charles the First's cook. For some fifty years the great Mr. Betterton held his place upon the stage, and upon his death was interred with something like royal honours in Westminster Abbey. Of the fate of Rhodes nothing further is recorded. He was the first to give back to Londoners a theatre they might visit legally and safely; and that done, he is heard of no more. Killigrew and Davenant were soon invested with patent rights, and entitled to a monopoly of theatrical management in London; probably they prospered by displacing Rhodes, but so much cannot be positively asserted. The drama was now out of its difficulties. Yet the influence and effect of these did not soon abate. Upon them followed indeed a sort of after-crop of troubles, seriously injurious to the stage. The Cavaliers engendered a drama that was other than the drama the Puritans had destroyed. The theatre was restored, it is true, but with an altered constitution. It was not only that the old race of poets and dramatists had died out, and that writing for the stage was almost a lost art. Taste had altered. As Evelyn regretfully notes in 1662, after witnessing a performance of Hamlet-to which, perhaps, the audience paid little heed, although the incomparable Betterton appeared in the tragedy-" but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age, since his Majesty's being so long abroad." Shakespeare and his brotherbards were out of fashion. There was a demand for tragedies of the French school -with rhyming lines and artificial sentiment-for comedies of intrigue and equivoque, after a foreign pattern, in lieu of our old English plays of wit, humour, and character. Plagiarism, translation, and adaptation took up a secure position on the stage. The leading playwrights of the Restoration-Dryden, Shadwell, Durfey, Wycherley-all borrowed freely from the French. Dryden frankly apologised-he was required to produce so many plays that all could not be of his own inventing. The king encouraged appropriation of foreign works. He drew Sir Samuel Tuke's attention to an admired Spanish comedy, advising its adaptation to the English stage: the result was The Adventures of Five Hours, a work very highly esteemed by Mr. Pepys. The introduction of scenery was due in a great measure to French example, although "paintings in perspective" had already been seen in an English theatre. But now scenery was imperatively necessary to a dramatic performance, and a sort of passion arose for mechanical devices and decorative appliances of a novel kind. Dryden was no reformer; in truth, to suit his own purposes, he pandered laboriously to the follies and caprices of his patrons; nevertheless, he was fully sensible of the errors of the time, and often chronicles these in his prologues and epilogues. He writes: True wit has run its best days long ago, It ne'er looked up since we were lost in show, When sense in doggerel rhymes and clouds was lost Nor stopped it here; when tragedy was done, Satire and humour the same fate have run, And comedy is sunk to trick and pun. Let them who the rebellion first begun To wit, restore the monarch if they can; Our author dares not be the first bold man. And upon another occasion: And dulness flourished at the actor's cost. * Actresses, too, were introduced upon the stage, in pursuance of continental example. But for these there was really great necessity. The boys who, prior to the civil war, had personated the heroines of the drama, were now too mature both in years and aspect for such an occupation. Doubting we should never play agen, We have played all our women into men! says the prologue, introducing the first actress. Hart and Mohun, Clun, Shatterel and Burt, who were now leading actors, had been boy-actresses before the closing of the theatres. And even after the Restoration, Mohun, whose military title of major was always awarded him in the play bills, still appeared as Bellamante, one of the heroines of Shirley's tragedy of Love's Cruelty. But this must have been rather too absurd. At the time of the Restoration, Mohun could hardly have been less than thirty-five years of age. It is to be noted, however, that Kynaston, a very distinguished boy-actress, who, with Betterton, was a pupil of Rhodes, arose after the Restoration. Of the earlier boy-actresses, their methods and artifices of performance, Kynaston could have known nothing. He was undoubtedly a great artist, winning extraordinary favour both in male and female characters, the last and perhaps the best of all the epicene performers of the theatre of the past. But if the stage, after the Restoration, differed greatly from what it had been previously, it yet prospered and gained strength more and more. It was most fortunate in its actors and actresses, who lent it invaluable support. It never attained again the poetic heights to which it had once soared; but it surrendered gradually much of its grossness and its baser qualities, in deference to the improving tastes of its patrons, and in alarm at the sound strictures of men like Jeremy Collier. The plagiarist, the adapter, and the translator did not relax their hold upon it; but eventually it obtained the aid of numerous dramatists of enduring distinction. The fact that it again underwent decline is traceable to various causesamong them, the monopoly enjoyed by privileged persons under the patents granted by Charles the Second; the bungling intervention of court officials invested with supreme power over the dramatic literature of the nation; and defective copyright laws, that rendered justice neither to the nation nor to the foreign writer for the theatre. And something, too, the stage of later years has been affected by a change in public taste, which has subordinated the play to the novel or the poem, and, to a great extent, converted playgoers into the supporters of circulating libraries. CLOSER THAN A BROTHER. IN TWO PARTS. PART II. ESTHER and her mother went away from us next morning to stay with an aunt of the latter. It was quite a sudden arrangement, though Mrs. Hume had never before in my recollection left her quaint rooms in the palace for more than a quiet stroll on sunny mornings with her daughter, or a quiet tea-drinking on summer evenings with us. She could not be induced to listen to my entreaties that they would at least delay their departure till next day, so that they might dine with us to meet Colonel Dalton. Esther was looking very ill. She was always pale, as I have said; but to-day her face was white with the whiteness of moonlight upon snow; and there were dark rings drawn heavily round the sweet patience of her eyes. It made me unhappy even to look at her, unhappy and penitent too; for though she assured me again and again that her faint was nothing, that she was rather over-tired and feeling the heat, &c., I could not but remember that it was I who tired her, and that my idle chatter on the previous day might, perchance, have touched on that old wound in my darling's heart, and set it bleeding again. Long ago-nearly ten years, I think, and ten years seem very long to a girl of nineteen-Esther had been engaged to a young man who was reading with her father; had been deserted by him, and had never got over it; for the simple reason that the honest contempt, that most good women must ere long learn to feel for such dishonest treachery, never came to her. When, at the end of his residence with Mr. Hume, this young man went up to Oxford to take his degree, he exacted from Esther a vow of unswerving trust in his love and faith; a trust which was to remain firm even if their engagement lasted for years, if his affection seemed to cool, or if they never saw one another till he came to claim her-a trust such as he would place in her, he said. And Esther not only gave the pledge, she kept it! He took his degree, and was sent by his father to travel on the Continent before settling down into any profession; and there he remained nearly a year. Esther stayed at home, trusted in him, and was happy. His father died, and he came home, but did not write to her for some time, and then only brief notes to excuse himself for not being able to come and see her. He had "loads of business" to attend to; had chosen the army-always his favourite idea, but one negatived by his father-for his profession, and was trying for the purchase of a commission. He got his commission at last, and was gazetted to a regiment under orders for India; and Esther never knew it till he ran down to the village to bid her and her parents a hurried farewell. Mrs. Hume thought his manner much altered, and grown constrained and cold. Esther thought it the natural effect of his grief at parting, and loved him the better for it. |