Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3). Doran John
pass for a man of weak intellects), that he could give them but little light into their inquiries; and all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station, was the faint, general, and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sung a song." This description applies to old Adam, in "As You Like It;" and he who feebly shadowed it forth, formed a link which connected the old theatre with the new.
The principal actors in Killigrew's Company, from which that of Drury Lane is descended, were Bateman, Baxter, Bird (Theophilus), Blagden, Burt, Cartwright, Clun, Duke, Hancock, Hart, Kynaston, Lacy, Mohun, the Shatterels (William and Robert), and Wintersel. Later additions gave to this company Beeston, Bell, Charleton, "Scum" Goodman, Griffin, Hains, Joe Harris, Hughes, Lyddoll, Reeves, and Shirley.
The "ladies" were Mrs. Corey, Eastland, Hughes, Knep, the Marshalls (Anne and Rebecca), Rutter, Uphill, whom Sir Robert Howard too tardily married, and Weaver. Later engagements included those of Mrs. Boutel, Gwyn (Nell), James, Reeves, and Verjuice. These were sworn at the Lord Chamberlain's Office to serve the King. Of the "gentlemen," ten were enrolled on the Royal Household Establishment, and provided with liveries of scarlet cloth and silver lace. In the warrants of the Lord Chamberlain they were styled "Gentlemen of the Great Chamber;" and they might have pointed to this fact as proof of the dignity of their profession.
The company first got together by Rhodes, subsequently enlarged by Davenant, and sworn to serve the Duke of York, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, was in some respects superior to that of Drury Lane. Rhodes's troop included the great Betterton, Dixon, Lilliston, Lovel, Nokes (Robert), and six lads employed to represent female characters – Angel, William Betterton, a brother of the great actor (drowned early in life, at Wallingford), Floid, Kynaston (for a time), Mosely, and Nokes (James). Later, Davenant added Blagden, Harris, Price, and Richards; Medbourn, Norris, Sandford, Smith, and Young. The actresses were Mrs. Davenport, Davies, Gibbs, Holden, Jennings, Long, and Saunderson, whom Betterton shortly after married.
This new fashion of actresses was a French fashion, and the mode being imported from France, a French Company, with women among them, came over to London. Hoping for the sanction of their countrywoman, Queen Henrietta Maria, they established themselves in Blackfriars. This essay excited all the fury of Prynne, who called these actresses by very unsavoury names; but who, in styling them "unwomanish and graceless," did not mean to imply that they were awkward and unfeminine, but that acting was unworthy of their sex, and unbecoming women born in an era of grace.
"Glad am I to say," remarks as stout a Puritan as Prynne, namely, Thomas Brand, in a comment addressed to Laud, "glad am I to say they were hissed, hooted, and pippin-pelted from the stage, so that I do not think they will soon be ready to try the same again." Although Brand asserts "that all virtuous and well-disposed persons in this town" were "justly offended" at these women "or monsters rather," as Prynne calls them, "expelled from their own country," adds Brand, yet more sober-thinking people did not fail to see the propriety of Juliet being represented by a girl rather than by a boy. Accordingly, we hear of English actresses even before the Restoration, mingled, however, with boys, who shared with them that "line of business." "The boy's a pretty actor," says Lady Strangelove, in the "Court Beggar," played at the Cockpit, in 1632, "and his mother can play her part. The women now are in great request." Prynne groaned at the "request" becoming general. "They have now," he writes, in 1633, "their female players in Italy and other foreign parts."
Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" was privately acted19 by amateurs, including Matthew Locke and Henry Purcell; the parts of Ianthe and Roxalana were played by Mrs. Edward Coleman and another lady. The piece is so stuffed with heroic deeds, heroic love, and heroic generosity, that none more suitable could be found for ladies to appear in. Nevertheless, when Rhodes was permitted to reopen the stage, he could only assemble boys about him for his Evadnes, Aspasias, and the other heroines of ancient tragedy.
Now, the resumption of the old practice of "women's parts being represented by men in the habits of women," gave offence, and this is assigned as a reason in the first patents accorded to Killigrew and Davenant why those managers were authorised to employ actresses to represent all female characters. Killigrew was the first to avail himself of the privilege. It was time. Some of Rhodes's "boys" were men past forty, who frisked it as wenches of fifteen; even real kings were kept waiting because theatrical queens had not yet shaved; when they did appear, they looked like "the guard disguised," and when the prompter called "Desdemona" – "enter Giant!" Who the lady was who first trod the stage as a professional actress is not known; but that she belonged to Killigrew's Company is certain. The character she assumed was Desdemona, and she was introduced by a prologue written for the occasion by Thomas Jordan. It can hardly be supposed that she was too modest to reveal her name, and that of Anne Marshal has been suggested, as also that of Margaret Hughes. On the 3d of January 1661, Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush" was performed at Killigrew's Theatre, "it being very well done," says Pepys, "and here the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage." Davenant did not bring forward his actresses before the end of June 1661, when he produced the second part of the "Siege of Rhodes," with Mrs. Davenport as Roxalana, and Mrs. Saunderson as Ianthe; both these ladies, with Mrs. Davies and Mrs. Long, boarded in Davenant's house. Killigrew abused his privilege to employ ladies. In 1664, his comedy, the "Parson's Wedding," wherein the plague is made a comic incident of, connected with unexampled profligacy, was acted, "I am told," are Pepys's own words, "by nothing but women, at the King's house."
By this time the vocation of the "boy-actresses" had altogether passed away; and there only remains for me to briefly trace the career of those old world representatives of the gentle or truculent heroines depicted by our early dramatists.
There were three members of Killigrew's, or the King's Company, who were admirable representatives of female characters before the Civil Wars. These were Hart, Burt, and Clun – all pupils of luckless Robinson, slain in fight, who was himself an accomplished "actress." Of the three, Hart rose to the greatest eminence. His Duchess, in Shirley's "Cardinal," was the most successful of his youthful parts. After the Restoration, he laid down Cassio to take Othello, from Burt, by the King's command, and was as great in the Moor as Betterton, at the other house, was in Hamlet. His Alexander, which he created, always filled the theatre; and his dignity therein was said to convey a lesson even to kings. His Brutus was scarcely inferior, while his Catiline was so unapproachable, that when he died, Jonson's tragedy died with him.20 Rymer styles him and Mohun the Æsopus and Roscius of their time. When they acted together (Amintor and Melantius) in the "Maid's Tragedy," the town asked no greater treat. Hart was one of Pepys's prime favourites. He was a man whose presence delighted the eye, before his accents enchanted the ear. The humblest character intrusted to him was distinguished by his careful study. On the stage he acknowledged no audience; their warmest applause could never draw him into a moment's forgetfulness of his assumed character. In Manly, "The Plain Dealer," as in Catiline, he never found a successor who could equal him. His salary was, at the most, three pounds a week, but he is said to have realised £1000 yearly after he became a shareholder in the theatre. He finally retired in 1682, on a pension amounting to half his salary, which he enjoyed, however, scarcely a year. He died of a painful inward complaint in 1683, and was buried at Stanmore Magna.
There is a tradition that Hart, Mohun, and Betterton fought on the King's side at Edgehill, in 1642. The last-named was then a child, and some things are attributed to Charles Hart which belonged to his father. If Charles was but eighteen when his namesake, the King, returned in 1660, it must have been his father who was at Edgehill with Mohun, and who, perhaps, played female characters in his early days.
Burt, after he left off the women's gear, acted Cicero, with rare ability, in "Catiline," for the getting up of which piece Charles II. contributed £500 for robes. Of Clun, in or out of petticoats, the record is brief. His Iago was superior to Mohun's, but Lacy excelled him in the "Humourous Lieutenant;" but as Subtle, in the "Alchymist," he was the admiration of all playgoers. After acting this comic part, Clun made a tragic end on the night
Mr. Knight, in the Preface before mentioned, quotes some lines from the Prologue to this performance, showing that it was a public performance for money. This being so settles the question in the next paragraph as to the identity of the first professional actress.
Very questionable. Langbaine (1691) says, "This play is still in vogue on the stage, and always presented with success."