Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3). Doran John
consisting of royal and noble personages. The most play-loving of the lords followed the example afforded by the lawyers, and the King himself assumed the buskin, and turned actor, for the nonce. Tom Carew was busy with superintending the rehearsals of his "Cœlum Britannicum," and in urging honest and melodious Will Lawes to progress more rapidly with the music. Cavalier Will was not to be hurried, but did his work steadily; and Prynne might have heard him and his brother Harry humming the airs over as they walked together across the park to Whitehall. When the day of representation arrived, great was the excitement and intense the delight of some, and the scorn of others. Among the noble actors who rode down to the palace was Rich, Earl of Holland. All passed off so pleasantly that no one dreamed it was the inauguration of a struggle in which Prynne was to lose his estate, his freedom, and his ears; the King and the earl their heads; while gallant Will Lawes, as honest a man as any of them, was, a dozen years after, to be found among the valiant dead who fell at the siege of Chester.
Ere this dénouement to a tragedy so mirthfully commenced had been reached, there were other defiances cast in the teeth of audacious, but too harshly-treated Prynne. There was a reverend playwright about town, whom Eton loved and Oxford highly prized; Ben Jonson called him his "son," and Bishop Fell, who presumed to give an opinion on subjects of which he was ignorant, pronounced the Rev. William Cartwright to be "the utmost that man could come to!" For the Christ Church students at Oxford, Cartwright wrote the "Royal Slave," one of three out of his four plays which sleep under a righteous oblivion. The King and Queen went down to witness the performance of the scholastic amateurs; and, considering that a main incident of the piece comprises a revolt in order to achieve some reasonable liberty for an oppressed people, the subject may be considered more suggestive than felicitous. The fortunes of many of the audience were about to undergo mutation, but there was an actor there whose prosperity commenced from that day. All the actors played with spirit, but this especial one manifested such self-possession, displayed such judgment, and exhibited such powers of conception and execution, that King, Queen, and all the illustrious audience showered down upon him applauses – hearty, loud, and long. His name was Busby. He had been so poor that he received £5 to enable him to take his degree of B.A. Westminster was soon to possess him, for nearly three-score years the most famous of her "masters." "A very great man!" said Sir Roger de Coverley; "he whipped my grandfather!"
When Prynne, and Bastwick, and Burton – released from prison by the Long Parliament – entered London in triumph, with wreaths of ivy and rosemary round their hats, the players who stood on the causeway, or at tavern windows, to witness the passing of the victims, must have felt uneasy at their arch-enemy being loose again. Between politics, perverse parties, the plague, and the parliament, the condition of the actors fell from bad to worse. In a dialogue which professedly passed at this time between Cane of the "Fortune" and Reed of the "Friers," one of the speakers deplores the going-out of all good old things, and the other, sighingly, remarks that true Latin is as little in fashion at Inns of Court as good clothes are at Cambridge. At length arrived the fatal year 1647, when, after some previous attempts to abolish the vocation of the actors, the parliament disbanded the army and suppressed the players. The latter struggled manfully, but not so successfully, as the soldiery. They were treated with less consideration; the decree of February 164714 informed them that they were no better than heathens; that they were intolerable to Christians; that they were incorrigible and vicious offenders, who would now be compelled by whip, and stocks, and gyves, and prison fare, to obey ordinances which they had hitherto treated with contempt. Had not the glorious Elizabeth stigmatised them as "rogues," and the sagacious James as "vagabonds?" Mayors and sheriffs, and high and low constables were let loose upon them, and encouraged to be merciless; menace was piled upon menace; money penalties were hinted at in addition to corporeal punishments – and, after all, plays were enacted in spite of this counter-enactment.
But these last enactors were not to be trifled with; and the autumn saw accomplished what had not been effected in the spring. The Perfect Weekly Account for "Wednesday, Oct. 20, to Tuesday, Oct. 26," informs its readers that on "Friday an ordinance passed both Houses for suppressing of stage-plays, which of late began to come in use again." The ordinance itself is as uncivil a document as ever proceeded from ruffled authority; and the framers clearly considered that if they had not crushed the stage for ever, they had unquestionably frozen out the actors as long as the existing government should endure.
At this juncture, historians inform us that many of the ousted actors took military service – generally, as was to be expected, on the royalist side. But, in 1647, the struggle was virtually over. The great fire was quenched, and there was only a trampling out of sparks and embers. Charles Hart, the actor – grandson of Shakspeare's sister – holds a prominent place among these players turned soldiers as one who rose to be a major in Rupert's Horse. Charles Hart, however, was at this period only seventeen years of age, and more than a year and a half had elapsed since Rupert had been ordered beyond sea, for his weak defence of Bristol. Rupert's major was, probably, that very "jolly good fellow" with whom Pepys used to take wine and anchovies to such excess as to make it necessary for his "girl" to rise early, and fetch her sick master fresh water, wherewith to slake his thirst, in the morning.
The enrolment of actors in either army occurred at an earlier period, and one Hart was certainly among them. Thus Alleyn, erst of the Cockpit, filled the part of quartermaster-general to the King's army at Oxford. Burt became a cornet, Shatterel was something less dignified in the same branch of the service – the cavalry. These survived to see the old curtain once more drawn; but record is made of the death of one gallant player, said to be Will Robinson, whom doughty Harrison encountered in fight, and through whom he passed his terrible sword, shouting at the same time: "Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently!" This serious bit of stage business would have been more dramatically arranged had Robinson been encountered by Swanston, a player of Presbyterian tendencies, who served in the Parliamentary army. A "terrific broadsword combat" between the two might have been an encounter which both armies might have looked at with interest, and supported by applause. Of the military fortunes of the actors none was so favourable as brave little Mohun's, who crossed to Flanders, returned a major, and was subsequently set down in the "cast" under his military title. Old Taylor retired, with that original portrait of Shakspeare to solace him, which was to pass by the hands of Davenant, to that glory of our stage, "Incomparable Betterton." Pollard, too, withdrew, and lusty Lowen, after a time, kicked both sock and buskin out of sight, clapped on an apron, and appeared, with well-merited success, as landlord of the Three Pigeons, at Brentford.
The actors could not comprehend why their office was suppressed, while the bear-baiters were putting money in both pockets, and non-edifying puppet-shows were enriching their proprietors. If Shakspeare was driven from Blackfriars and the Cockpit, was it fair to allow Bel and the Dragon to be enacted by dolls, at the foot of Holborn Bridge? The players were told that the public would profit by the abolition of their vocation. Loose young gentlemen, fast merchant-factors, and wild young apprentices were no longer to be seen, it was said, hanging about the theatres, spending all their spare money, much that they could not spare, and not a little which was not theirs to spend. It was uncivilly suggested that the actors were a merry sort of thieves, who used to attach themselves to the puny gallants who sought their society, and strip them of the gold pieces in their pouches, the bodkin on their thighs, the girdles buckled to give them shape, and the very beavers jauntily plumed to lend them grace and stature.
In some of the streets by the river-side a tragedy-king or two found refuge with kinsfolk. The old theatres stood erect and desolate, and the owners, with hands in empty pockets, asked how they were to be expected to pay ground-rent, now that they earned nothing? whereas their afternoon-share used to be twenty – ay, thirty shillings, sir! And see, the flag is still flying above the old house over the water, and a lad who erst played under it, looks up at the banner with a proud sorrow. An elder actor puts his hands on the lad's shoulder, and cries: "Before the old scene is on again, boy, thy face will be as battered as the flag there on the roof-top!" And as this elder actor passes on, he has a word with a poor fellow-mime who has been less provident than he, and whose present necessities he relieves according to his means. Near them stand a couple of deplorable-looking "door-keepers," or, as we should call them now, "money-takers," and the well-to-do ex-actor has his allusive joke at their old rascality, and affects to condole
February 1647-48: that is, February 1648. This act succeeded the one mentioned in the next paragraph.