The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield

exing conditions they are, marking as they do a transition between the brilliant but generally filthy period of the Restoration-a period in which some of the worst and som

ieved in the honesty of man nor the virtue of frail woman. The playwrights are recovering too, yet, if anything, more tardily than the people; for when a nast

ll pointed out that while the Puritans had brought Republican principles and religious zeal into public odium, this light-hearted monarch seemed expressly born to dispel all respect for the kingly dignity. "England was inundated with the foreign follies and vices in his train. The Court set the fashion of the most undisguised immorality, and this example was the more extensiv

nity, and no man ventured to attack what was honourable, though his own actions might not exactly coincide with it. The English played a part which was altogether unnatural to them; they gave themselves heavily up to levit

n fashions and inventions of luxury. They neither felt a true want of poetry, nor had any relish for it; they merely wished to be entertained in a brilliant and light manner. The theatre, which in its former simplicity had attracted

to what may be styled a comparative decency, need not be described here. Suffice it to explain that such a change is taking place, and let us accordingly sing, rejoice and give than

ne "towards the defraying the charge of repairing and fitting up the chapel in Russell Court," said performance to be given "with singing by Mr. Hug

ole thing done to the secular accompaniment of singing and dancing. For an instant the town was scandalised

ouse have such a claim to its establishment as to say the Church is beholden to her.... Can our Church be in danger? How is it possible? The whole nation is solicitous and at work for her safety and prosperity. The Parliament address, the Queen consults, the Ministr

ised here be employed to re-edify this chapel, I would have it, as is very frequent, in like cases, written over the door in capital letters: 'This church was re-edified anno 1706, at the expense and b

,| and | Churchwardens."[A]

Review, Jun

of them have done since, and will continue so to do until the arrival of the Millennium. Oftentimes the criticisms of these well-meaning gentlemen had more than a grain of truth to make them half justifiable. The stage was still far from pure, in spite of the improvement which was going on steadily enough, and there is no denying the fact that s

ight depart from the stony path of virtue, or an actor give himself up to wine and the dodging of bailiffs, yet the attending scandals were not flaunted in the face of the public. In other words, there were The

ged." Even in the enlightened reign of Queen Anne, there existed among many intelligent persons the vague idea that one who trod the boards was nothing more or less than a vagabond, and we are

f their ilk, before and since. Good-natured, poverty-stricken barnstormers they doubtless were, living from-hand-to-mouth, and quite willing to go through the whole gamut of tragedy, from

y wearing stockings of different colours.[A] In a word, though they have had a full barn for many days together, our itinerants are still so wretchedly poor, that without you can prevail to send us the furniture you forbid at the playhouse, the heroes appear only like sturdy beggars, and the heroines gypsies. We have had but one part which was performed and dressed with propriety, and that was Justice Clodpate. This was so well done, that it offended Mr. Justice Overdo, who, in the midst of our whole audience, was (like Quixote in the

e hear of Spranger Barry playing Othello in a gold-laced scarlet suit, small cocked hat, and knee-breeches, with silk stockings. Think of it, ye sticklers for realism! Dr. Doran narrates how Garrick dressed Hamlet in a court suit of black coat, "waistcoat and knee-breeches

the barns for the bridges and church-porches. Perhaps the same change would suit the wandering players who are to be found in these last years of the nineteenth cent

have Licenses from Noblemen,[A] and presume under that pretence to avoid the Master of the Revels, his Correcting their Plays, Drolls, Farces, and Interludes: which being against Her Majesty's Intentions and Directions to the said Master: These are to signifie That such Licenses are not of any Force or authority. There are likewise several Mountebanks

had their own companies of actors, and were empowered

nd Judy. Are matters so much better now that we can afford to laugh at the incongruity? Do not theatres devoted to the "legitimate" and dime museums, the homes of triple-pated men, human corkscrews and other intellectual freaks, come under the same police supervision, and rank one and all within the same classification as "places of amusement?" Nay, to go further and

g outside of his booth, he was put into a flutter of excitement by the approach of the mighty Betterton, in company with a country friend. The actor offered several shillings for himself and rustic as they were about to enter the show, but this was too much for Crawley. He saw the chance of his life, and took a

qualling of catcalls and penny trumpets." Nor could the sense of smell have been much better catered to than that of hearing, owing to the "singeing of pigs and burnt crackling of over-roasted pork." Once within the enclosure he saw all sorts of remarkable things, including the actors, "strutting round their balconies in their tinsey robes and golden leather buskins;" the rope-dancers, and the dirty eating-places, where "cooks stood dripping at their doors,

n's "Social Life in th

s and the like with the stage, and then deliberately devote space to the mysteries of Bartholomew Fair? It is more to the purpose to speak of the

II. were styled, and then of the combined forces formed in 1682 by the union of this organisation and the "Duke of York's Company." This was the house

ected about four feet forwarder (sic), in a semi-oval figure, parallel to the benches of the pit; and that the former lower doors of entrance for the actors were brought down between the two foremost (and then only) pilasters; in the place of

ell from the weakest utterance. All objects were thus drawn nearer to the sense; every painted scene was stronger; every grand scene and dance more extended; every rich or fine-coloured habit had a more lively lustre. Nor was the minutest motion of a feature (properly changing from the passion or humour it suited) ever lost, as they frequently must be in the obscurity of too great a distance. And how valuable an advantage the facility of hearing distinctly is to every well-acted scene, every common spectator is a judge. A voice scarce raised above the tone of a whisper, either in tenderness, resignation, innocent distress, or jeal

he sensitive effects of dialogue and action are swallowed up in the immensity of stage and auditorium. There is nothing more dispiriting, indeed, both to performers and spect

surrounded by what would now be called the Promenade. The latter, as Misson informs us,[A] was taken up for the most part by ladies of quality. In addition to these quarters

"Memoirs and Observations in

re occasional lapses into unpunctuality, may be inferred from th

all'd 'Love Makes a Man, or the Fop's Fortune.'[A] With singing and dancing. And whereas the audiences have been incommoded by the Plays usually beginning too late,

ne of Cibber's

n "Social Life in the

of the day is not hard to relate. The men of fashion rose tardily, feeling none the better, as a rule, for a night at club or tavern, and then lounged about as best they could, visiting, sauntering in the Mall,[A] or otherwise trying to pass the time until dinner. This solid

g fops, that could bear cuckoldom with patience, make a jest of an affront, and swear themselves very faithful and humble servants to the petticoat; creeping and cringing in dishonor to themselves, to

and frittered away the greater number of the twenty-four hours in a mode that the fashionable woman of 1898 would consider positively scandalous.

urite liquor, scandal must be the after draught to make it sit easy on their stomach, till the half hour's past, and they

A: Thoma

. Women in the boxes talking away for dear life, beaux walking about the house, chattering, ogling and laughing, or even sitting on the stage w

this wretched custom of allowing a few spectators to sit on the

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?), and many a hard struggle would take place before the artificial restraint and decorum of the Georgian era would triumph over the mocking spirit of Charles Stuart and his professional idlers. In the meantime, as Shadwell relates, the rakes "live as much by their wits as ever; and to avoid the clinking dun of a boxkeeper, at the end of one act they sneak to the opposite side 'till the end of another; the

ir masters or mistresses should arrive. They created so much disturbance, however, that a stop had to be put

that was beginning to tire of the favourite players and to betray a fondness for operatic and spectacular productions rather than the "legitimate." Christopher Rich, the manager of the theatre, was, like many of his kind, more given to considering the weight of his purse than the scant supply of sentiment with which nature might originally have endowed him, and so he tried to do two characteristic things. The salaries of his faithful employé

ct one. Thus, in the "Unhappy Favourite," she played Queen Elizabeth, and in the scene of the crowning she wore the coronation robe

balance their expense as to keep them out of a large debt, which it was publicly known was about this time contracted.... Every branch of the theatrical trade had been sacrificed to the necessary fitting out those tall ships of burthen that were to brin

er Davenant, Charles

hen, if when these great pillars were at once remov'd the building grew weaker and the audiences very much abated. Now in this distress, what more natural remedy could be found than to incite and encourage (tho' with some hazard) the industry of the surviving actors? But the pat

rry's chief parts to be given to young Powel and Mrs. Bracegirdle. In this they committed two palpable errors; for while the best actors are

rs. Bracegirdle had a different way of thinking, and desir'd to be excused from those of Mrs. Barry; her good sense was not to be misled by the insidious favour of the patentees; she knew the s

e. What an audience it must have been, with William, stiff, uncomfortable, and unintentionally repellant, confronted by the greatest of living "Hamlets" and a group of other players made brilliant by the presence of the imperial but not too moral Mistress Barry, the lovely Bracegirdle, breathing the perfume of virtue, real or assumed, and the fascinating Verbruggen.[A] Perhaps the King found them an interesting lot, perhaps he merely regarded them with the same good-natured curiosity he might have exhibited for a pack of mountebanks, but in either case he was determined, with that sombre seriousness so typical of him, to do his duty

d Joseph Williams seceded from

dertakers were at variance. I therefore made it a point while it was possible upon tolerable terms, to keep the valuable actors in humour with their station; and tho' I was as jealous of their encroachments as any of my co-partners could be, I alway

and the man who can rule over them with ease should be snapped up by an appreciative government to conduct its most diplomatic of missions. With the theatrical stars of his own day Cibber seems to have been firm but prudent. "I do not remember," he te

un on garrulously, describing the doings of Betterton in the new theatre, and then wandering off to speak of the establi

till shoots a

Rome, majes

e rising sun, in the per