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

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СКАЧАТЬ and she could deliver a prologue as deftly as she could either sing or dance, and with as much grace as she was wont to throw into manifestations of touching grief or tenderness. She disappears from the bills in 1678, after a fourteen years' service; and there is no further record of the life of Mistress Knipp.

      Anne and Rebecca Marshall are names which one can only reluctantly associate with that of Stephen Marshall the divine, who is said to have been their father. The Long Parliament frequently commanded the eloquent incumbent of Finchingfield, Essex, to preach before them. Cambridge University was as proud of him as a distinguished alumnus, as Huntingdonshire was of having him for a son. In affairs of religion he was the oracle of Parliament, and his advice was sought even in political difficulties. He was a mild and conscientious man, of whom Baxter remarked, that "if all the bishops had been of the spirit and temper of Usher, the Presbyterians of the temper of Mr. Marshall, and the Independents like Mr. Burroughs, the divisions of the Church would have been easily compromised." Stephen Marshall was a man who, in his practice, "preached his sermons o'er again;" and Firmin describes him as an "example to the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, and in purity." He died full of honours and understanding; and Westminster Abbey afforded him a grave, from which he was ruthlessly ejected at the Restoration. It is hardly possible to believe that such a saint was the father of the two beautiful actresses whom Nell Gwyn taunted with being the erring daughters of a "praying Presbyterian."

      On the other hand, we learn from Sir Peter Leicester's History of Cheshire, that the royalist, Lord Gerard of Bromley, retained this staunch Presbyterian in his house as his chaplain. Further, we are told, that this chaplain married a certain illegitimate Elizabeth, whose father was a Dutton of Dutton, and that of this marriage came Anne and Rebecca. As Sir Peter was himself connected with both the Gerards and Duttons by marriage, he must be held as speaking with some authority in this matter.

      Pepys says of Anne Marshall, that her voice was "not so sweet as Ianthe's," meaning Mrs. Betterton's. Rebecca had a beautiful hand, was very imposing on the stage, and even off of it was "mighty fine, pretty, and noble." She had the reputation of facilitating the intrigue which Lady Castlemaine kept up with Hart, the actor, to avenge herself on the King because of his admiration for Mrs. Davies. One of her finest parts was Dorothea, in the "Virgin Martyr;" and her Queen of Sicily (an "up-hill" part) to Nell Gwyn's Florimel, in Dryden's "Secret Love," was highly appreciated by the playgoing public.

      With the exception of Mrs. Corey, the mimic, and pleasing little Mrs. Boutel, who realised a fortune, with her girlish voice and manner, and her supremely innocent and fascinating ways, justifying the intensity of love with which she inspired youthful heroes, the only other actress of the King's company worth mentioning is Nell Gwyn; but Nell was the crown of them all, winning hearts throughout her jubilant career, beginning in her early girlhood with that of a link-boy, and ending in her womanhood with that of the king.

      Nell Gwyn is claimed by the Herefordshire people. In Hereford city, a mean house in the rear of the Oak Inn is pointed out as the place of her birth. The gossips there little thought that a child so humbly born would be the mother of a line of dukes, or that her great grandson23 should be the bishop of her native town, and occupy for forty years the episcopal palace in close proximity to the poor cottage in which the archest of hussies first saw the light.

      But the claims of Pipe Lane, Hereford, are disputed by Coal Yard, Drury Lane, and also by Oxford, where Nell's father, James Gwyn, a "captain," according to some, a fruiterer according to others, died in prison. The captain with his wife Helena,24 somewhile a resident in St. Martin's Lane, had two daughters, Nell and Rose. The latter married a Captain Capels, and, secondly, a Mr. Foster; little else is known of her, save that her less reputable sister left her a small legacy, and that she survived till the year 1697. Nelly was born early in 1650; and tradition states that she very early ran away from her country home to town, and studied for the stage by going every night to the play. I suspect Coal Yard was her first bower, that thence she issued to cry "fresh herrings!" and captivate the hearts of susceptible link-boys; and passed, from being hander of strong waters to the gentlemen who patronised Madame Ross's house, to taking her place in the pit, with her back to the orchestra, and selling oranges and pippins, with pertinent wit, gratis, to liberal fops who would buy the first and return the second with interest. As Rochester assures us, there was a "wondering pit" in presence of this smartest and most audacious of orange-girls. It was natural enough that she should attract the notice of the actors, that Lacy should give her instruction, and that from Charles Hart she should take that and all the love he could pay her. The latter two were spoken of in prologues, long after both were dead, as "those darlings of the stage."

      Under the auspices of Charles Hart, Nelly made her first appearance at the (King's) theatre, in a serious part, Cydaria, in the "Indian Emperor." She was then not more than fifteen, though some say seventeen years of age. For tragedy she was unfitted: her stature was low, though her figure was graceful; and it was not till she assumed comic characters, stamped the smallest foot in England on the boards, and laughed with that peculiar laugh that, in the excess of it, her eyes almost disappeared, she fairly carried away the town, and enslaved the hearts of city and of court. She spoke prologues and epilogues with wonderful effect, danced to perfection, and in her peculiar but not extensive line was, perhaps, unequalled for the natural feeling which she put into the parts most suited to her. She was so fierce of repartee that no one ventured a second time to allude sneeringly to her antecedents. She was coarse, too, when the humour took her; could curse pretty strongly if the house was not full, and was given, in common with the other ladies of the company, to loll about and talk loudly in the public boxes, when she was not engaged on the stage. She left both stage and boxes for a time, in 1667, to keep mad house at Epsom with the clever Lord Buckhurst – a man who for one youthful vice exhibited a thousand manly virtues. The story, that Lord Buckhurst separated from Mistress Gwyn for a money consideration and a title, can be disproved by the testimony of a character which all Peru could not have influenced, and of chronology, which sets the story at nought.

      They who would read Buckhurst's true character, will find it in the eloquent and graceful dedication which Prior made of his poems to Buckhurst's son, Lionel. Like the first Sackville, of the line of the Earls of Dorset, he was himself a poet; and, "To all you ladies now on land," although not quite the impromptu it is said to have been, is an evidence how gracefully he could strike the lyre on the eve of a great battle. In short, Buckhurst, who took Nelly from the stage, and who found Prior in a coffee-shop and added him to literature, was a "man," brave, truthful, gay, honest, and universally beloved. He was the people's favourite; and Pope assures us, when Buckhurst had become Earl of Dorset, that he was "the grace of courts, the muses' pride."

      After a year's absence,25 Mistress Gwyn returned to the stage. In all nature, there was nothing better than she, in certain parts. Pepys never hoped to see anything like her in Florimel, with her changes of sex and costume. She was little, pretty, and witty; danced perfectly, and with such applause, that authors would fain have appropriated the approbation bestowed on her "jig," to the play in which it was introduced. A play, without Nell, was no play at all to Mr. Pepys. When, in 1667, she followed Buckhurst to Epsom, and flung up her parts and an honestly-earned salary for a poor £100 a-year, Pepys exclaims, "Poor girl! I pity her; but more the loss of her at the King's house." The Admiralty-clerk's admiration was confined to her merry characters; he speaks of her Emperor's Daughter, in the "Indian Emperor," as "a great and serious part, which she does most basely."

      Her own party hailed her return; but she did not light upon a bed of roses. Lady Castlemaine was no longer her patroness – rather that and more of Nelly's old lover, Charles Hart, who flouted the ex-favourite of Buckhurst. That ex-favourite, however, bore with equal indifference the scorn of Charles Hart and the contempt of Charles Sackville; – she saw compensation for both, in the royal homage of Charles Stuart. Meanwhile, she continued to enchant the town in comedy, to "spoil" serious parts in Sir Robert Howard's mixed pieces, and yet to act with great success characters, in which natural emotion, СКАЧАТЬ