Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3). Doran John
of him, that I can only refer the idea of him to your imagination." His clear and audible voice better fitted him for burlesque heroes, like Jupiter Ammon, than his middle stature; but the pompous inanity of his travestied pagan divinity, was as wonderful as the rich stolidity of his contentedly ignorant fools.
There was no actor whom the City so rejoiced in as Nokes; there was none whom the Court more delighted to honour. In May 1670, Charles II., and troops of courtiers, went down to Dover to meet the Queen-mother, and took with them the Lincoln's-Inn-Fields comedians. When Henrietta Maria arrived, with her suite of French ladies and gentlemen, the latter attired, according to the prevailing fashion, in very short blue or scarlet laced coats, with broad sword belts, the English comedians played before the royal host and his guests the play founded on Molière's "Ecole des Femmes," and called "Sir Solomon." Nokes acted Sir Arthur Addel, in dressing for which part he was assisted by the Duke of Monmouth. In order that he might the better ape the French mode, the duke took off his own sword and belt, and buckled them to the actor's side. At his first entrance on the stage, King and Court broke into unextinguishable laughter, so admirably were the foreign guests caricatured; at which outrage on courtesy and hospitality, the guests, naturally enough, "were much chagrined," says Downes. Nokes retained the duke's sword and belt to his dying day, which fell in the course of the year 1692. He was the original representative of about forty characters, in plays which have long since disappeared from the stage. Charles II. was the first who recognised, on the occasion of his playing the part of Norfolk, in "Henry VIII.," the merit of Nokes as an actor.22
James Nokes left to his nephew something better than the sword and belt of the Duke of Monmouth, namely, a landed estate at Totteridge, near Barnet, of the value of £400 a year. Pepys may have kissed that nephew's mother, on the August day of 1665, when he fell into company near Rochester with a lady and gentleman riding singly, and differing as to the merits of a copy of verses, which Pepys, by his style of reading aloud, got the husband to confess that they were as excellent as the wife had pronounced them to be. "His name is Nokes," writes the diarist, "over against Bow Church… We promised to meet, if ever we come both to London again, and at parting, I had a fair salute on horseback, in Rochester streets, of the lady."
Having thus seen the curtain fall upon the once "boy-actresses," I proceed to briefly notice the principal ladies in the respective companies of Killigrew and Davenant, commencing with those of the King's House, or Theatre Royal, under Killigrew's management, chiefly in Drury Lane. The first name of importance in this list is that of Mrs. Hughes, who, on the stage from 1663 to 1676, was more remarkable for her beauty than for her great ability. When the former, in 1668, subdued Prince Rupert, there was more jubilee at the Court of Charles II., at Tunbridge Wells, than if the philosophic Prince had fallen upon an invention that should benefit mankind. Rupert, whom the plumed gallants of Whitehall considered as a rude mechanic, left his laboratory, put aside his reserve, and wooed in due form the proudest, perhaps, of the actresses of her day. Only in the May of that year Pepys had saluted her with a kiss, in the green-room of the Kings House. She was then reputed to be the intimate friend and favourite of Sir Charles Sedley. "A mighty pretty woman," says Pepys, "and seems, but is not, modest." The Prince enshrined the frail beauty in that home of Sir Nicholas Crispe, at Hammersmith, which was subsequently occupied by Bubb Doddington, the Margravine of Anspach, and Queen Caroline of Brunswick. She well-nigh ruined her lover, at whose death there was little left beside a collection of jewels, worth £20,000, which were disposed of by lottery, in order to pay his debts. Mrs. Hughes was not unlike her own Mrs. Moneylove in "Tom Essence," a very good sort of person till temptation beset her. After his death she squandered much of the estate which Rupert had left to her, chiefly by gambling. Her contemporary, Nell Gwyn, purchased a celebrated pearl necklace belonging to the deceased Prince for £4520, a purchase which must have taken the appearance of an insult, in the eyes of Mrs. Hughes. The daughter of this union, Ruperta, who shared with her mother the modest estate bequeathed by the Prince, married General Emanuel Scrope Howe. One of the daughters of this marriage was the beautiful and reckless maid of honour to Caroline, Princess of Wales, whom the treachery of Nanty Lowther sent broken-hearted to the grave, in 1726. Through Ruperta, however, the blood of her parents is still continued in the family of Sir Edward Bromley.
Mrs. Knipp (or Knep) was a different being from Margaret Hughes. She was a pretty creature, with a sweet voice, a mad humour, and an ill-looking, moody, jealous husband, who vexed the soul and bruised the body of his sprightly, sweet-toned, and wayward wife. Excellent company she was found by Pepys and his friends, whatever her horse-jockey of a husband may have thought of her, or Mrs. Pepys of the philandering of her own husband with the minx, whom she did not hesitate to pronounce a "wench," and whom Pepys himself speaks of affectionately as a "jade" he was always glad to see. Abroad he walks with her in the New Exchange to look for pretty faces; and of the home of an actress, in 1666, we have a sketch in the record of a visit in November, "To Knipp's lodgings, whom I find not ready to go home with me; and there staid reading of Waller's verses, while she finished dressing, her husband being by. Her lodging very mean, and the condition she lives in; yet makes a show without doors, God bless us!"
Mrs. Knipp's characters embraced the rakish fine ladies, the rattling ladies'-maids, one or two tragic parts; and where singing was required, priestesses, nuns, and milkmaids. As one of the latter, Pepys was enchanted at her appearance, with her hair simply turned up in a knot, behind.
Her intelligence was very great, her simple style of dressing much commended; 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
I doubt whether