A Book of the Play. Dutton Cook
strange conduct. "You'll know before you have strutted in three more barns," said the "old hand." "In winter, managers are the most impudent fellows living, because they know we don't like to travel, don't like to leave our nests, fear the cold, and all that. But when I can put my foot upon three daisies—summer's near, and managers may whistle for me!"
The life was not dignified, perhaps, but it had certain picturesque qualities. The stroller toiling on his own account, "padding the hoof," as he called journeying on foot—a small bundle under his arm, containing a few clothes and professional appliances—wandered from place to place, stopping now at a fair, now at a tavern, now at a country-house, to deliver recitations and speeches, and to gain such reward for his labours as he might. Generally he found it advisable, however, to join a company of his brethren and share profits with them, parting from them again upon a difference of opinion or upon the receipts diminishing too seriously, when he would again rely upon his independent exertions. Sometimes the actor was able to hire or purchase scenes and dresses, the latter being procured generally from certain shops in Monmouth Street dealing in cast clothes and tarnished frippery that did well enough for histrionic purposes; then, engaging a company, he would start from London as a manager, to visit certain districts where it was thought that a harvest might be reaped. The receipts were divided among the troop upon a prearranged method. The impresario took shares in his different characters of manager, proprietor, and actor. Even the fragments of the candles that had lighted the representations were divided amongst the company. Permission had always to be sought of the local magnates before a performance could be given; and the best-dressed and most cleanly-looking actor was deputed to make this application, as well as to conciliate the farmer or innkeeper, whose barn, stable, or great room was to be hired for the occasion. Churchill writes:
The strolling tribe, a despicable race,
Like wandering Arabs, shift from place to place.
Vagrants by law, to justice open laid,
They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid;
And fawning, cringe for wretched means of life
To Madame Mayoress or his worship's wife.
"I'm a justice of the peace and know how to deal with strollers," says Sir Tunbelly, with an air of menace, in "The Relapse." The magistrates, indeed, were much inclined to deal severely with the wandering actor, eyeing his calling with suspicion, and prompt to enforce the laws against him. Thus we find in "Humphrey Clinker," the mayor of Gloucester eager to condemn as a vagrant, and to commit to prison with hard labour, young Mr. George Dennison, who, in the guise of Wilson, a strolling player, had presumed to make love to Miss Lydia Melford, the heroine of the story.
In truth, the stroller's life, with all its seeming license and independence, must always have been attended with hardship and privation. If the player had ever deemed his art the "idle calling" many declared it to be, he was soon undeceived on that head. There was but a thin partition between him and absolute want; meanwhile his labour was incessant. The stage is a conservative institution, adhering closely to old customs, manners, and traditions, and what strolling had once been it continued to be almost for centuries. "A company of strolling comedians," writes the author of "The Road to Ruin," who had himself strolled in early life, "is a small kingdom, of which the manager is the monarch. Their code of laws seems to have existed, with little variation, since the days of Shakespeare." Who can doubt that Hogarth's famous picture told the truth, not only of the painter's own time, but of the past and of the future? The poor player followed a sordid and wearisome routine. He was constrained to devote long hours to rehearsal and to the study of various parts, provided always he could obtain a sight of the book of the play, for the itinerant theatre afforded no copyist then to write neatly out each actor's share in the dialogues and speeches. Night brought the performance, and, for the player engaged as "utility," infinite change of dress and "making-up" of his face to personate a variety of characters. The company would, probably, be outnumbered by the dramatis personæ, in which case it would devolve upon the actor to assume many parts in one play. Thus, supposing Hamlet to be announced for representation, the stroller of inferior degree might be called upon to appear as Francisco, afterwards as a lord-in-waiting in the court scenes, then as Lucianus, "nephew to the king," then as one of the grave-diggers, then as a lord again, or, it might be, Osric, the fop, in the last act. Other duties, hardly less arduous, would fall to him in the after-pieces. "I remember," said King, the actor famous as being the original Sir Peter Teazle and Lord Ogleby, "that when I had been but a short time on the stage, I performed one night King Richard, sang two comic songs, played in an interlude, danced a hornpipe, spoke a prologue, and was afterwards harlequin, in a sharing company; and after all this fatigue my share came to threepence and three pieces of candle!" A strolling manager of a later period was wont to boast that he had performed the complete melodrama of "Rob Roy" with a limited company of five men and three women. Hard-worked, ill-paid, and, consequently, ill-fed, the stroller must have often led a dreary and miserable life enough. The late Mr. Drinkwater Meadows used to tell of his experiences with a company that travelled through Warwickshire, and their treasury being empty, depended for their subsistence upon their piscatorial skill. They lived for some time, indeed, upon the trout streams of the county. They plied rod and line, and learned their parts at the same time. "We could fish and study, study and fish," said the actor. "I made myself perfect in Bob Acres while fishing in the Avon, and committed the words to my memory quite as fast as I committed the fish to my basket."
The straits and necessities of the strollers have long been a source of entertainment to the public. In an early number of the "Spectator," Steele describes a company of poor players then performing at Epping. "They are far from offending in the impertinent splendour of the drama. Alexander the Great was acted by a fellow in a paper cravat. The next day the Earl of Essex seemed to have no distress but his poverty; and my Lord Foppington wanted any better means to show himself a fop than by wearing stockings of different colours. In a word, though they have had a full barn for many days together, our itinerants are so wretchedly poor that the heroes appear only like sturdy beggars, and the heroines gipsies." It is added that the stage of these performers "is here in its original situation of a cart." In the "Memoirs of Munden" a still stranger stage is mentioned. A strolling company performing in Wales had for theatre a bedroom, and for stage a large four-post bed! The spaces on either side were concealed from the audience by curtains, and formed the tiring-rooms of the ladies and gentlemen of the troop. On this very curious stage the comedian afterwards famous as Little Knight, but then new to his profession, appeared as Acres in "The Rivals," and won great applause. Goldsmith's Strolling Player is made to reveal many of the smaller needs and shifts of his calling, especially in the matter of costume. "We had figures enough, but the difficulty was to dress them. The same coat that served Romeo, turned with the blue lining outwards, served for his friend Mercutio: a large piece of crape sufficed at once for Juliet's petticoat and pall; a pestle and mortar from a neighbouring apothecary answered all the purposes of a bell; and our landlord's own family, wrapped in white sheets, served to fill up the procession. In short, there were but three figures among us that might be said to be dressed with any propriety; I mean the nurse, the starved apothecary, and myself." Of his own share in the representation the stroller speaks candidly enough: "I snuffed the candles, and, let me tell you, that without a candle-snuffer the piece would lose half its embellishments." But there has always been forthcoming a very abundant supply of stories of this kind, not always to be understood literally, however, concerning the drama under difficulties, and the comical side of the player's indigence, distresses, and quaint artifices to conceal his poverty.
A word should be said as to the courage and enterprise of our early strollers. Travelling is nowadays so easy a matter that we are apt to forget how solemnly it was viewed by our ancestors. In the last century a man thought about making his will as a becoming preliminary to his journeying merely from London to Edinburgh. But the strollers were true to themselves and their calling, though sometimes the results of their adventures were luckless enough. "Our plantations in America have been voluntarily visited by some itinerants, Jamaica in particular," writes Chetwood, in his "History of the Stage" (1749). "I had an account from a gentleman who was possessed of a large estate in the island that a company in the year 1733 came there and cleared a large sum of money, where they might have made moderate fortunes if they had not been too busy with the growth of the country. They received