out your last day as you please. Where's the young monkey gone to? I'll send him to you. Good-bye till dinner," and again warmly but hurriedly shaking the curate's hand, he left the room. Fervent and sincere were the thanksgivings of Mr. Meadows' grateful heart to "the Giver of all good things" during the brief interval that elapsed before he was joined by his young friend, whose delight was visible in every feature as he exclaimed, "Oh, I am so glad that papa and I are going with you! travelling always does him so much good. You cannot think the difference it makes in him. You will hardly know him. He is always kind to me; but somehow he never has any time to spare at home, and so-well, you'll see. But talking of time, we must make the best of ours, and I've thought of a walk that will please you!" “Thank you," said the tutor; "let us go, then, by all means directly, for I feel a little something like the headach, which no doubt the open air will remove," and forthwith they went their way together and passed a wandering morning, during which all was exceedingly pleasant save one casual encounter. It took place in Bond Street, where Mr. Meadows recognised the young baronet (who had so kindly sent him to his inn), in company with another gentleman, walking slowly towards him. Delighted to have an opportunity of expressing his gratitude, and not displeased at the idea of removing any prejudice that his quondam shabby appearance might have created, the unsuspicious curate approached him respectfully, and was about to speak, when the young man astonished him by the superb performance of what is called "cutting him dead." Though he looked him full in the face for a moment, and then raised his eyes and threw back his head haughtily as he walked on, he seemed to have no more recollection or consciousness of the then uncovered clergyman's presence than if the object he was passing had been a post. In reality, however, he was much annoyed, and and it was not the only annoyance he was doomed to undergo from the same cause; for, a few days after, mansion, accompanied by Conky Bob, and asked certain very plain questions, for which any other man would have been kicked out into the street; but he stuck to his point till he had heard every particular of the affair at the public-house, proving the intimacy between Downer and the furniture-buyer, as well as of the subsequent rencontre in Bond Street, which only threw additional mystery on the character and movements of the suspected individual. It was a mortifying interview, however, for the young aristocrat, and caused a temporary resolution of taking care in future with what company he associated. The "cutting" process was alto gether so new both to tutor and pupil, that they neither of them could tell what to make of it; but, after awhile, the elder almost reasoned himself into the charitable conclusion that he had not been re cognised on account of the great change in his dress. Still he could not help looking upon such conduct towards an utter stranger as a very indifferent specimen of the manners of the day, and the scene clung to his memory with disagreeable tenacity. Pass we now on to the following morning. The son had augured truly of the change that would take place in his father. It seemed almost magical. They had scarcely got beyond the smoke of London ere he declared that he had left all care behind, and jocosely rallied his clerical friend on his recent experi ence in the art of" keeping it up," and altogether conducted himself more like a schoolboy at the "breaking up" day, than a gentleman learned in the law. But this extreme effervescence gradually subsided into a more equal mood of cheerfulness, His fund of anecdote seemed inex haustible. Towns, villages, and mansions (as they passed merrily along), successively brought to his recollection something worth relating that had occurred or been revealed to him during his long professional career, and all was told with a rapid fluency and command of language that excited admiration and even a little of envy in one of the hearers. The fact was, that the man of studi the elderly quiet man came to his ously acquired and long-practised 1 да eloquence was playing with words as a first-rate artist may amuse himself with a pencil, sketching, in the presence of his pupils, as if at random, but leaving at every stroke the evidence of a master-hand. With similar feelings to those of a pupil on such an occasion, our curate continued to listen to his entertainer, till the latter, frolicking as a bird in the air, suddenly dropped from a somewhat lofty descriptive flight, and exclaimed, "I really owe you some apology, my dear sir, for all this rattling. I have surprised you, no doubt, but, perhaps, you will understand me when I ask if you have ever seen a yard-dog released from his chain, or a long-stabled horse turned out to grass. They really know not what to do with themselves for joy. Their case is mine, and my gambols like theirs at first, ridiculous enough, no doubt. You and Charles have loosened my collar, and given me courage to shake it off, and I thank adage runs, you heartily; but, as the old Latin 'Qui fugitant labores optant dies festos;' and, though I do not call either of you exactly idle fellows, methinks your habitual quiet leisure likely to incapacitate you from entering fully into my enjoyment of even temporary freedom." Mr. Meadows, referring to his former studies, professed to be of a different opinion, and declared that no man more than himself felt the truth of "Dulce est desipere in loco." "Say you so, most reverend signor?" exclaimed the counsellor, gaily; "then, as your quondam bibulous friend says, Let us keep it up!'" EARLY ENGLISH ACTRESSES. WE are very much in want of a history of our stage. It would be, if well done, an amusing and instructive work, illustrative of the social condition of our forefathers, and of manners and customs, the majority of which are wholly extinct - a history, in short, of our dramatic literature of popular predilections, and the fashions and caprices of several generations. The materials are ample and at hand; but it would require no common writer to mould them into shape, and give grace, symmetry, and proportion, to the scattered stories of five hundred volumes. Mr. Malone's Historical Account of the English Stage is admirable in its way, and the Annals of Mr. Collier full, painstaking, and satisfactory. Both, however, leave off at the outbreak of the civil war under Charles I., when the stage was. suppressed by the Puritans in power, and men were committed to prison for the least infringement of the parliamentary ordinance. There is, however, a history from this period to within the last fifteen years, in ten octavo volumes, by the late Mr. Genest of Bath. Genest has done much, but has left a great deal more to do. In the history of the stage under Charles II., Mr. while making constant use of Pepys, he has wholly overlooked the entertaining Memoirs of the admirable Evelyn. But it is not our intention to characterise on this occasion the long catalogue of books about the stage. Cibber's Apology, and the little volume by Leigh Hunt on the actors of the early part of the present century, have the freshness of novelty, and the charm of old acquaintanceship at the fiftieth reading, while Downes is always curious, and Davies not unoften entertaining. But Galt—our old friend John Galt-and his Lives of the Players, that bad two-volume book,-but we shall pass it by for the sake of his other works, and introduce our readers as soon as possible, to Nell, and Knipp, and the Desdemonas, and Doll Commons of the Restoration period of our drama. There were three distinct attempts made in the year 1629 to introduce female performers, for the first time, on a public stage. "Some Frenchwomen, or monsters rather," writes Prynne, "in Michaelmas term, 1629, attempted to act a French play at the playhouse in the Blackfriars, an impudent, shameful, unwomanish, graceless, if not more than whorish attempt." "But the attempt was un * Histriomastix, 1633, p. 414. successful. "Glad I am to say," writes a spectator, "they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage, so as I do not thinke they will soone be ready to trie the same again." But the writer of the letter in the Lambeth library was mistaken in his supposition, that they would be deterred from renewing their attempt elsewhere. The women allowed a fortnight to elapse, and then tried their fortune again at the Red Bull, in St. John Street, but with what success no one has told us. Their third and last attempt was at the Fortune, in Golding Lane, a fortnight later; and the master of the revels (the brother of Holy Mr. Herbert) has recorded their reception there : "For allowing of a French companie att the Fortune to play one afternoone, this 14th day of December, 1629, 1l. "I should have had another piece; but in respect of their ill-fortune, I was content to bestow a piece back."+ Prynne, as we have seen, was violent at this outrage upon public decency; so far, indeed, did he carry his language on this subject that, in his Histriomastix of the year 1633, he describes "women actors" as "notorious whores." Henrietta Maria, the queen of Charles I., had performed in a pastoral at Somerset House only two days before its publication; and the passage was shewn to Laud, and construed into a direct allusion to the queen. The offence was too great to escape altogether unpunished; Prynne was, therefore, fined 5000l., and set twice in the pillory, with the loss of an ear on each occasion. On the 13th May, 1634 (only three days after Prynne's last appearance in the pillory), the queen went to the Blackfriars theatre, to see Massinger's Cleander. This is the only notice we have of a royal visit to a public theatre before the Restoration; and Sir Henry Herbert, from whom we derive the information, does not speak of it as any thing unusual, as rence of a nature worthy of more than an accidental notice. Mr. Col an occur lier thinks us justified in supposing from this, that the visits of royalty Collier, vol. ii. p. 23. to our public theatres were far from infrequent. But this is not the case; the king, Killigrew told Pepys, never went, and the queen but seldom. Nor was there occasion, so long as a royal cockpit existed, for stage entertainments at court, and scenery was confined to a printed title, or a common piece of moveable machinery. The Restoration witnessed the revival of the drama; "but what a revival!" says Southey, "Samson waking in the lap of Dalilah after he had been shorn of his strength is but a feeble similitude." Two patents were granted by the king for two distinct companies of actors,Tom Killigrew got one, and Sir William Davenant the other; Killigrew's was called the king's, and Davenant's the duke's. The king's company acted for a time at the Cockpit in Drury Lane (now Pitt Place), and at the Red Bull, in St. John Street. On the 8th November, 1660, they removed to a temporary house in Gibbon's Tennis Court, Vere Street, Clare Market; and on the 8th of April, 1663, to the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, on the site of the present theatre called Drury Lane. Davenant acted for a time in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, till such time as the theatre in Portugal Row, Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, was ready for his reception; but the date of his removal is unknown. He was dead two years before the company removed to Dorset Gardens. Literature suffered at the Restora tion, in receiving rant and rhyme for Shakspeare and sense; but the stage gained in scenery, comfort, and size. Killigrew, in a conversation with Pepys, contrasted the two stages of the first and second Charles: "This done, T. Killigrew and I to talk; and he tells me how the audience at his house is not above half so much as it used to be before the late fire. That the stage is now, by his pains, & thousand times better, and more glorious than was heretofore. Now, wax-candles, and many of them; then, not above three pounds of tallow: Now, all things civil, no rudeness any where; then, as in a three fiddlers, now, nine or ten of the best; then, no. Sir Henry Herbert's Office book, in vol. iii, of Shakspeare by Boswell. thing but rushes upon the ground, and every thing else mean; now, all otherwise; then, the queen seldom, and the king never would come; now, not the king only for state, but all civil people do think that they may come as well as any." The two patentees were both writers for the stage; but Killigrew, finding himself unequal to compete with Davenant, called in Dryden to his aid. The two houses were pretty well matched at this time; the king's, it is true, had the better actors, Hart and Mohun, Kynaston and Lacy; but Betterton, at the duke's house, was an universal genius, and Nokes was a match for Lacy in many ways. The women were pretty equally divided. The two Marshalls, and Knep, and Nell, at the king's house, found rivals at the duke's, in the wife of Betterton, the two Davenports, Mrs. Jennings, and Moll Davis. If Eleanor Gwynn played a mad part at the king's, to draw thousands to admire her; Mary Davis could sing a song, or dance a jig, at the duke's, to balance the popularity of the rival houses. When Cromwell found himself secure in his seat-feared at home and respected abroad--he thought he might relax the laws a little, and bring back people to the consideration of other subjects than the government they were under. The stage found favour in his eyes; and, by the interposition of Whitelocke, Davenant, then a prisoner at large, was permitted to perform an opera for his own benefit, at Rutland House, in Aldersgate Street. The piece was constructed to suit, what he calls in his letter to Whitelocke, the nicety of the times, The Siege of Rhodes, made a Representation by the Act of Prospective in Scenes; and the Story sung in Recitative Musick. The performance was popular; and more than one singer acquired distinction in the parts of Roxolana and Ianthe. The first Ianthe at Rutland House was a Mrs. Coleman :— "About nine at night," says Pepys, "I come home, and anon comes Mrs. Coleman and her husband; and she sung very finely, though her voice is decayed as to strength, but mighty sweet, though soft; and a pleasant, jolly woman, and * Pepys, under 31st October, 1665. Pepys, under 7th January, 1560-1. in mighty good humour. She sung part of the opera, though she would not own she did get any of it without book, in order to the stage." The second Ianthe was the wife of Betterton; but the name of the first Roxolana is unknown. At the Restoration, when the piece was revived with all the additions which court patronage could give it, the new Roxolana became the subject of common conversation. Women came permanently on the stage in England in the year 1660. But our theatres were not supplied at once; and Killigrew was occasionally compelled to put Kynaston in petticoats, to complete a caste. Downes, the old prompter at the duke's, and the author of a very entertaining tract, called Roscius Anglicanus, commends Kynaston as a complete female stage beauty, and adds, "that it has since been disputable among the judicious, whether any woman that succeeded him so sensibly touched the audience as he:" and Pepys, who saw him in The Loyal Subject, of Beaumont and Fletcher, says, that he made the loveliest lady he ever saw in his life.† Pepys saw him soon after in The Silent Woman, and records the gratification he felt, in language such as Pepys alone can use : 'Among other things," he says, "Kynaston, the boy, had the good turn to ap pear in three shapes: first, as a woman in ordinary clothes, to please Morose; then, in fine clothes, as a gallant; and in them was clearly the prettiest woman in the whole house; and lastly, as a man; and then likewise did appear the handsomest man in the house." "In a word," says Cibber, "Kynaston, at that time, was so beautiful a youth, that the ladies of quality prided themselves in taking him with them in their coaches to Hyde Park, in his theatrical habit, after the play. Of this truth, I had the curiosity to inquire, and had it confirmed from his own mouth in his advanced age. And, indeed, to the last of him, his handsomeness was very little abated: even at past sixty, his teeth were all sound, white, and even, as one would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty."§ Tom Davies was curious in his inquiries about Kynaston, but could + Pepys, under 18th Aug., 1660. learn very little about him, except that he died wealthy, and that his only son, a mercer, in Covent Garden, was buried by the side of his father, in the church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. "The Reverend Mr. Kynaston, the grandson, I have seen," writes Davies; "but this gentleman thought it no honour to be the descendant of a player, and would not communicate any anecdotes of his ancestor."* The ridiculous distress to which managers of theatres were driven, at a time when female performers were new upon the stage, is well illustrated in a story of King Charles II., and the master of a company of actors,--T. Killigrew, perhaps; for the story savours a good deal of Tom's facetious manner. The king, it appears, had come to a tragedy little before his usual time, and be a fore the players were ready to begin. He grew tired, at length, of waiting, and sent to know the meaning of the delay. The master of the company came to the box, and rightly judging that the best excuse for their delay would be the true one, fairly told his majesty that the queen was not shaved yet. The king, says Cibber, accepted the excuse, which served to divert him till the male queen was ready to appear. In an old and scarce collection of miscellaneous poems, called, A Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie,† Malone discovered the prologue that was spoken before the performance of Othello, "to introduce the first woman that came to act on the stage." Is it not possible, says the prologue, that― "A virtuous woman may Abhor all sorts of looseness, and yet play; Play on the stage,-where all eyes are upon her: Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour. * For to speak truth, men act that are be tween Forty and fifty wenches of fifteen, Malone conjectured that the elder * Dram. Mis., vol. iii. p. 337. Marshall played Desdemona on this occasion; and that, consequently, she was the first English actress who appeared in any regular drama on a public stage. But Mrs. Hughes's name is found appended to the part of Desdemona in Downes's list; and Othello, when the old plays were divided by Davenant and Killigrew, fell to the duke's house, and not to the king's, where the elder Marshall was then acting. Mr. Pepys saw women on the stage, for the first time, on the 3d January, 1660-1. "To the theatre," he says, i. e., the king's house," where was acted Beggar's Bush, it being very well done; and here for the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." Pepys was pleased with their appear ance; not so his friend Evelyn, who speaks of the "fowle and indecent women now (and never till now) permitted to appeare and act."‡ The earliest English actresses at the king's house were Mrs. Corey, Mrs. Ann Marshall, Mrs. Eastland, Mrs. Weaver, Mrs. Uphill, Mrs. Knep, and Mrs. Hughes. To these were added, "some few years after," Mrs. Boutel, Mrs. Rebecca Marshall, Mrs. Rutter, Mrs. Verjuice, Mrs. Reeve, Mrs. Knight, and Nell Gwynne. One and all were unmarried; for the word Miss implied a lewd woman at this time, and for some time after: "Misses, there were, but modestly con• cealed." Dryden calls Anne Killigrew the Vestal and virgin daughter of the skies. The first actress who had Miss before her name on a playbill was Miss Cross, the original Miss Hoy den in Vanbrugh's Relapse. Sir William Davenant's "womenactresses," were, Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Saunderson, Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Long, Mrs. Ann Gibbs, Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Holden, and Mrs. Jennings. They were all unmarried; and the four first being his principal actresses, "he boarded them," says Downes, "at his own house." Mrs. Corey at the King's House, was the original Widow Blackacre, in Wycherley's play of The Plain Dealer. She is, what is more, the By Thomas Jordan, 1664. |