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

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СКАЧАТЬ unfavourable, and careless players grew accustomed to be hissed, without being the more careful for it. To remedy this, Mercier proposed the appointment of a writer who should watch the theatres and register the insults inflicted on the public by incompetent or indifferent actors, and by incapable poets. It was a proposition, in fact, for the establishment of a theatrical critic, whose judgments were to be recorded in the journals. There was public criticism of all other arts, but up to this time the art of acting was exempt from the censure of the French journals. So, at least, says Mercier, who seems, however, to have forgotten that when the Abbé Raynal conducted the Mercure some thirty years previously, the merits of actors were occasionally discussed.

      French sentinels grew careless, or French individuals waxed bolder. Our own gallery was once famous for the presence of a trunkmaker, whose loud applause or shrill censure used to settle the destiny of authors. The house followed, according as the trunkmaker howled or hammered. I know nothing in French audiences to compare with this, except the notorious Swiss in the days of towering feathers and broad headdresses – a double fashion, which he succeeded in suppressing. When seated in the back row of a box, unable to see the stage for the fashionable impediments in front, it was his custom to produce a pair of shears and cut away all the obstructions between him and the delights for which he had paid, but could not enjoy. It was probably only a demonstration of destruction which he made, but the result was effectual. At first the ladies made way for him to come to the front; but ultimately they took down their feathers, and narrowed their head-gear, and the Swiss, shorn of his grievance, was soon forgotten.

      This intruder must have often marred the efforts of the best actor; but I remember a case in which the best actor of his day was entirely discountenanced by the quietest and most attentive auditor in the house. John Kemble was playing Mark Antony, in Dublin, when his eye happened to fall on a sedate old gentleman, who was eagerly listening to him through an ear-trumpet. The first sight caused the actor to smile, and that at an inappropriate moment, for he was surrounded by his wife Octavia (Mrs. Inchbald) and her children, the play being Dryden's "All for Love," and the situation affecting. The more John Kemble endeavoured to suppress his inclination to smile, the less he was able to control himself; as his agitation increased, the ear-trumpet was directed towards him more pertinaciously; seeing which the actor broke forth into a peal of laughter, and rushed in confusion from the stage. The audience had discovered the cause, and laughed with him; while the deaf gentleman, unconscious of his own part in the performance, and marking the hilarious faces around him, dropped his trumpet with the vexed air of a man who had lost a point, and could not account for it.

      Then, if there were infirm, so were there sentimental, auditors. In the Morning Post, of September 27, 1776, we are told that: – "A gentleman, said to be a captain in the army, was so very much agitated on Miss Brown's appearance on Wednesday night, that it was imagined it would be necessary to convey him out of the house; but a sudden burst of tears relieved him, and he sat out the farce with tolerable calmness and composure. The gentleman is said to have entertained a passion for that lady last winter, and meant to have asked her hand as a man of honour, but – !" There were other curiosities in front, besides this sentimental captain. The famous Lady Hamilton drew large audiences to Drury Lane towards the close of the century, when it was announced that the performance would be honoured by the attendance of herself and her husband, Sir William, our minister to the Neapolitan court. The house gazed upon the beauty, and the beauty was deeply interested in the acting of Mrs. Powell, who, in her turn, was as deeply interested in my lady. Between the two women a connection existed which was little suspected by the audience. The ambassador's wife and the tragedy queen had first met under very different circumstances, in the house of Dr. Budd, in Blackfriars, where Jane Powell filled the office of housemaid, and Emma Harte, as she was then called, was employed as under maid in the nursery.

      At this period I do not know that our galleries at least were more civilised than they were in earlier days – that is, our provincial galleries: that of Liverpool, for instance – as the obese, little low comedian, Hollingsworth, once experienced. He was looking at the house through the aperture in the curtain, when the twinkle of his eye being detected by a ruffian aloft, the latter, running a penknife through an apple, hurled it, perhaps at random, but so fatally true, that the point of the knife struck the unoffending actor so close to the eye that for some time his sight was despaired of. The gallery patrons of the drama in London were as rude, but less cruel, in their ruffianism. An orange, flung at a lady in court dress, seems to have been a favourite missile for a favourite pastime. I meet with one of these ruffians in presence of a magistrate, who solemnly assures him, that if he is ever guilty of a similar outrage, he will be taken on to the stage and compelled to ask pardon of the house – an honour at which the fellow would, probably, have been exceedingly gratified.

      We have a sample of the coolness of an Irish debutant and the patience of an audience of the last century; the first, in the person of Dexter, whom Garrick, on the secession of Barry from his company, brought over, with Ross and Mossop, from Dublin. Dexter, on the night of his first appearance, in "Oroonoko", was comfortably seated in the pit, where he remained chatting with his friends and supporters until the "second music" commenced. This music, in the old days, was ordinarily played half an hour before the curtain rose. This was a long period for an audience to be kept further waiting; but it was a short period wherein a tragedian might prepare and deck himself for a sort of solemn ordeal. The début proved successful; and Garrick generously expressed great admiration and hopefulness of the young actor, who, nevertheless, soon fell out of estimation of the audience, as might have been expected, from the cool and careless proceeding of his first night, when he walked out of a crowded pit to hastily dress himself for an arduous part.

      This was a sort of liberty which a French pit would not have tolerated. It bore, however, with other freedoms. When it laughed, as the children were brought in, in "Inez de Castro," Madame Duclos, who was the weeping Inez, turned suddenly round, and exclaimed, "Fools! it is the most touching part of the piece!" and then resumed weeping. Again: Du Fresne, acting Sévère, in "Polyeucte," speaking low as he was confiding a perilous secret to a friend, was interrupted by cries of "Louder! louder!" "And you, sirs, not so loud!" cried the calmly-angry actor, to a pit which took the rebuke meekly; – as meekly as our public took the verdict of Foote, who says, in his Treatise on the Passions, – "There are twelve thousand playgoers in London; but not the four and twentieth part of them can judge correctly of the merits of plays or players."

      Then, considering the measure of respect which actors used to profess that they entertained for audiences, the liberties which the former occasionally took with the latter was remarkable. When Mrs. Griffiths's "Wife in the Right" was coldly received, she laid the blame on Shuter (Governor Andrews), who had neglected to attend rehearsal. On a succeeding night, accordingly, the audience hissed Shuter as soon as he appeared. He defended himself by asserting that illness had kept him from rehearsal; "but, gentlemen," said he, "if there is any one here who wants to know if I had been drunk three days before, I acknowledge that I had, and beg pardon for that." The audience forgave the rude actor and condemned the play.

      Again: a few years subsequently, at York, Mrs. Montagu was cast for the Queen in Hull's romantic play, "Henry II." She was a great favourite; and she claimed the more agreeable part of Rosamond, which had been taken by Mrs. Hudson, – the play being acted for her benefit. Mrs. Montagu refused to study the part of Queen Eleanor; and under the plea of illness preventing study, she sent an actor forward to state that she would read the part. Mrs. Hudson's friends insisted on Mrs. Montagu appearing, to explain her own case; and then the imperious lady swept on to the stage, with the saucy exclamation, "Who's afraid?" and the equally saucy intimation that she would read the part, for she had not had time to learn it. This excited the wrath of the house; and some one cried out that the audience would rather hear it read by the cook-wench at the next ale-house than by her. Then, dame Montagu, as she was called, fired by the remark, and by cries forbidding her to read and commanding her to act, looked scornfully at the pit, flung the book which she held into the centre of the crowd, and with a "There! – curse you all!" swept off the stage, amid the mingled hisses and laughter of the house. But she was not permitted to act again.

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