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

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СКАЧАТЬ was the publicly furnishing of a house for her, and the presentation of a ring worth £600, and much scandal to good men and honest women. Thereupon Miss Davies grew an "impertinent slut," and my Lady Castlemaine waxed melancholy, and meditated mischief against her royal and fickle lover. The patient Queen herself was moved to anger by the new position of Miss Davies, and when the latter appeared in a play at Whitehall, in which she was about to dance, her Majesty rose and left the house. But neither the offended dignity of the Queen, nor Lady Castlemaine "looking fire," nor the bad practical jokes of Nell Gwyn, could loose the King from the temporary enchantment to which he surrendered himself. Their daughter was that Mary Tudor, who married the second Earl of Derwentwater, whose son, the third earl, was the gallant young fellow who lost his head for aid afforded to his cousin, the first Pretender, in 1715. Before his death, a request was made to the Duke of Richmond, son of Charles II., by Madlle. de Querouaille, to present a memorial to the Lords in order to save the young earl's life. The Duke presented the memorial, but he added his earnest hope that their lordships would reject the prayer of it! In such wise did the illegitimate Stuarts play brother to each other! Through the marriage of the daughter of Lord Derwentwater with the eighth Lord Petre, the blood of the Stuart and of Moll Davies still runs in their lineal descendant, the present and twelfth lord.

      Happy are the women who have no histories! Such is the case with Miss Saunderson, better known to us as Mrs. Betterton. For about thirty years she played the chief female characters, especially in Shakspeare's plays, with great success. She created as many new parts as she played years; but they were in old-world pieces, which have been long forgotten. In the home which she kept with her husband, charity, hospitality, and dignity abided. So unexceptionable was Mrs. Betterton's character, that when Crowne's "Calisto" was to be played at court in 1674, she was chosen to be instructress to the Lady Mary and the Lady Anne. These princesses derived from Mrs. Betterton's lessons the accomplishment for which both were distinguished when queens, of pronouncing speeches from the throne in a distinct and clear voice, with sweetness of intonation, and grace of enunciation. Mrs. Betterton subsequently instructed the Princess Anne in the part of Semandra, and her husband did the like office for the young noblemen who also played in Lee's rattling tragedy of "Mithridates." Two individuals, better qualified by their professional skill and their moral character, to instruct the young princesses and courtiers, and to exercise over them a wholesome authority, could not then have been found on or off the stage. After Betterton's death, Queen Anne settled on her old teacher of elocution a pension of £500 a year.

      Of the remainder of the actresses who first joined Davenant, there is nothing recorded, except their greater or less efficiency. Of Mrs. Holden, Betterton's kinswoman, the only incident that I can recall to mind is, that once, by the accidental mispronunciation of a word, when playing in "Romeo and Juliet," and giving it "a vehement action, it put the house into such a laughter, that London Bridge at low water was silence to it!" Under its echoes let us pass to the "gentlemen of the King's Company."

      CHAPTER IV

      THE GENTLEMEN OF THE KING'S COMPANY

      Of the King's Company, under Killigrew – Hart, Burt, and Clun have already been noticed as players who commenced their career by acting female parts. Of the other early members of this troop, the first names of importance are those of Lacy, and little Major Mohun, the low comedian, and the high tragedian. Of those who precede them alphabetically, but little remains on record. We only know of Theophilus Bird, that he broke his leg when dancing in Suckling's "Aglaura," probably when the poet changed his tragedy, in which the characters killed each other, into a sort of comedy, in which they all survived. Cartwright, on the other hand, has left a lasting memorial. If you would see how the kind old fellow looked, go down to Dulwich College – that grand institution, for which actors have done so much and which has done so little for actors – and gaze on his portrait there. It is the picture of a man who bequeathed his books, pictures, and furniture to the College which Alleyn, another actor, had founded. In early life, Cartwright had been a bookseller, at the corner of Turnstile, Holborn; and in his second vocation his great character was Falstaff.

      Lacy was a great Falstaff, too; and his portrait, a triple one, painted by Wright and etched by Hopkins, one of the Princess Elizabeth's pages, is familiarly known to Hampton Court visitors. Lacy had been first a dancing-master, then a lieutenant in the army, before he tried the stage. In his day he had no equal; and his admirers denied that the day to come would ever see his equal. Lacy was handsome, both in shape and feature, and is to be remembered as the original performer of Teague, in the "Committee;" a play of Howard's, subsequently cut down to the farce of "The Honest Thieves." And eight years later (1671), taught by Buckingham, and mimicking Dryden, he startled the town with that immortal Bayes, in the "Rehearsal;" a part so full of happy opportunities that it was coveted or essayed for many years, not only by every great actor, whatever his line, but by many an actress, too; and last of all by William Farren, in 1819.

      There was nothing within the bounds of comedy that Lacy could not act well. Evelyn styles him "Roscius." Frenchman, or Scot, or Irishman, fine gentleman or fool, rogue or honest simpleton, Tartuffe or Drench, old man or loquacious woman, – in all, Lacy was the delight of the town for about a score of years. The King ejected the best players from parts, considered almost as their property, and assigned them to Lacy. His wardrobe was a spectacle of itself, and gentlemen of leisure and curiosity went to see it. He took a positive enjoyment in parts which enabled him to rail at the rascalities of courtiers. Sometimes this Aristophanic licence went too far. In Howard's "Silent Woman," the sarcasms reached the King, and moved his majesty to wrath, and to locking up Lacy himself in the Porter's Lodge. After a few days' detention, he was released; whereupon Howard, meeting him behind the scenes, congratulated him. Lacy, still ill in temper, abused the poet for the nonsense he had put into the part of Captain Otter, which was the cause of all the mischief. Lacy further told Howard he was "more a fool than a poet." Thereat the honourable Edward, raising his glove, smote Lacy smartly with it over the face. Jack Lacy retaliated by lifting his cane and letting it descend quite as smartly on the pate of a man who was cousin to an earl. Ordinary men marvelled that the honourable Edward did not run Jack through the body. On the contrary, without laying hand to hilt, Howard hastened to the King, lodged his complaint, and the house was thereupon ordered to be closed. Thus, many starved for the indiscretion of one; but the gentry rejoiced at the silencing of the company, as those clever fellows and their fair mates were growing, as that gentry thought, "too insolent."

      Lacy, soon after, was said to be dying, and altogether so ill-disposed, as to have refused ghostly advice at the hands of "a bishop, an old acquaintance of his," says Pepys, "who went to see him." Who could this bishop have been who was the old acquaintance of the ex-dancing-master and lieutenant? Herbert Croft, or Seth Ward? – or, Isaac Barrow, of Sodor-and-Man, whose father, the mercer, had lived near the father of Betterton? But, whoever he may have been, the King's favour restored the actor to health; and he remained Charles's favourite comedian till his death, in 1681.

      When Lacy's posthumous comedy, "Sir Hercules Buffoon," was produced in 1684, the man with the longest and crookedest nose, and the most wayward wit in England – Tom Durfey – furnished the prologue. In that piece he designated Lacy as the standard of true comedy. If the play does not take, said lively Tom —

      "all that we can say on't

      Is, we've his fiddle, but not his hands to play on't!"

      Genest, a critic not very hard to please, says that Lacy's friends should have "buried his fiddle with him."

      Michael Mohun is the pleasantest and, perhaps, the greatest name on the roll of the King's Company. When the players offended the King, Mohun was the peacemaker.

      One cannot look on Mohun's portrait, at Knowle, without a certain mingling of pleasure and respect. That long-haired young fellow wears so frank an aspect, and the hand rests on the sword so delicately yet so firmly! He is the very man who might "rage like Cethegus, or like Cassius die." Lee could never willingly write a play without a part for Mohun, who, with Hart, was accounted among the good actors that procured profitable "third СКАЧАТЬ