Their Majesties' Servants (Volume 3 of 3)

youth, of twenty years of age, born no one can well tell where, but it is said, in a barrack, of an English se

bitious youth for more than twenty years; then he came to Covent Garden to dethrone John Kemble; and he disquieted that actor for awhile. In ten years more, his English race was done, and while Kemble

part in petticoats,[74]-win more applause than his schoolfellow's Cato. School-time over, the wayward boy went to sea, and came back with small liking for the vocation; turned to "business," only to turn from it in disgust; inherited some property, and swiftly spent it; and then we find him in that i

all the heavy trials through which most of the vocation have to pass. He strolled through villages, thence to provincial towns, and I think, when in 1786, he played Baldwin to the I

llery-work, and worse!-he who had played the Moor in presence of a vice-regal court! If his friends had not purchased his discharge, Miss Campion would certainly soon have heard that her Othello had hanged himself. The

st to Kemble's Hamlet, Henry to his Richard, Edmund to his Lear, and a similar disposition of characters. What Kemble then thought of his acting, I cannot say, but he complained of being disturbed by Mr. Cooke's tips

e Richmond of his brother Charles,-Henry, Wroughton; Queen, Mrs. Powell; Lady Anne, Miss Biggs. I fancy he was satisfied that in the new and well-trained actor there was a dangerous rival. Kemble acted Shylock and one or two other characters against him. They stood opposed in some degree as Quin and Garrick were, at Covent Garden

this triumphant season. Long after he said, when referring to having played with and also against John Kemble: "He is an actor. He is my superior, though they did not thi

oke, who, in his turn, set all competition at defiance in his Iago, in which, says Dunlap, "the quickness of his action, and the strong natural expression of feeling, which were so peculiarly his own, identified him with

is previous biographers have registered the character. Consequently, on the night he was announced to appear, to open his second season of anticipated triumph-September 14th, 1801-as Richard, a crowded audience had collected about the doors, to welcome him, as early as f

to Cooke's Zanga, Hotspur to Cooke's Falstaff, and Ford to the other's Sir John, in the "Merry Wives." Cooke's criticism on his own performance was, that having acted all the Falstaffs, he had never been able to please himself, or to come up to his own ideas in any of them. His great failure was Hamlet, in which even

f Kemble. Perhaps his Peregrine, in "John Bull," of which he was the original representative, would have been a more finished performance but for-not the actor, but the author's indiscretion. "We got 'John Bull' from Colman," said Cooke to Dunlap, "act by act, as he wanted money, but the last act did not come, and Harris refused to make any further advances. At last necessity drove Colman to make

e "Fair Penitent" had not had for many years! John Kemble further played Jaffier to Cooke's Pierre; Antonio to his Shylock; the Duke, in "Measure for Measure," to his Angelo; Macbeth, with George Frederick for Macduff; Henry IV. to Cooke's Falstaff; Othello to his Iago; King John, with Cooke as Hubert, and Charles Kemble as Faulconbridge-Mrs. Siddons being, of course, the Constance; Kemble also pl

ed his vast powers even in these; and recklessness reduced this genius to penury. After receiving ￡400 in banknotes, the proceeds of a benefit at Manchester, in one of his summer tours, he thrus

on his return. When he reappeared at Covent Garden, as Sir Pertinax, in March 1808, after a long confinement, it was to "the greate

Scottish dialect, if he could speak at all, and his part require it. Once, when playing Sir Archy Macsarcasm, he forgot his name, called himse

udience. Liverpool merchants had much fattened, then, by a fortunate pushing of the trade in human flesh. "Apology! from George Frederic

had played "God Save the King;" and then he insisted, with tipsy gravity, that the audience should be "upstanding." In seventeen nights following the 21st of November 1810, when he first appeared in New York, as Richard, the treasury was the richer by twenty-one thousand five hundred and

ooke, who have acted before the Majesty of Britain, play before your Yankee Pre

royal master, George III., and received his imperial approbation ... it is degradation enough to play before

me of Behn, who became his second wife; but his condition was little improved thereby

fore the lights and the receipts are secure.' Within the wonted time Cooke entered on his part, the Duke of Gloster. The public were unanimous in their decision, that he never performed with greater satisfaction. As he left the house he whispered, 'Have I not pleased the Yankee-doodles?' Hardly twenty-four hours after this memorable night, he scattered some 400 dollars among the needy and the solicitous, and took refreshment in a sound sleep. A striking peculiarity often marked the conduct of Cooke: he was the most indifferent of mortals to the results which might be attendant on his folly and his recklessness. When his society was solicited by the highest in

kind of mental intoxication; some, I believe, would call it insanity. I believe it is allied to it. I then can imagine myself in strange situations and strange places. This humour, whatever it is, comes uninvited, but it is neverthe

ary for a circulating library, as for dramatic productions intended for representation; especially when it is considered how young people, particularly girls, often procure, and sometimes in a secret manner, books of so evil a tendency, that not only their t

ving society, and diatribes against drinking, in his diary, his constitution recovered all its vigour, and started refreshed for a new struggle against drunkenness and death. The former, however, gave it a mortal fall, in July 1812, when Death grasped his victim, for ever. Cooke wa

ord here, that Cooke was of the middle size, strongly and stoutly built, with a face capable of every expression, and an eye which was as grand an interpreter of the poets, as the tongue. He was free from gesticulation and

the precedence; but in Iago, and especially in Richard, Cooke has been adjudged very superior in voice, expression, and style; "his manner being more quick, abrupt, and impetuous, and his attitudes better, as having less the appearance of study." Off the stage, during the progress of a play, he did not, like Betterton, preserve the character he was acting; nor

y of his ill-fated predecessor. On that occasion, "tears fell from Kean's eyes in abundance," says Dr. Francis; but those eyes would have flashed lightning, had Kean been aware that there was a headless trunk beneath the

the Cooper Club, the circumstance becoming known to several of the members, and a general desire being expressed to investigate, phrenologically, the head of the great tragedian, the article was again released from its privacy, when Daniel Webster, Henry Wheaton, and many others who enriched the meeting of that night, applied t

s inscription:-"Erected to the memory of George Frederick Cooke, by Edmund Kean, of the Thea

gdoms clai

eres pronoun

not been stolen of what was mortal of one amon

e a boy, who still survives, rich with the fortune rapidl

ody as

TNO

after his becoming bound to a pri

be 31st Oc

een times. See note

. Dunlap does not say, or imply, that he was taken ill specia

August 1874,

ER B