The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield

ate intervened he would now be enthralling the town with his Hamlet, Macbeth, or Othello, and that even yet he has not lost all hope of adorning the kingdom of Melpomene. But he is not to be be

oing. "I hate to have a page dragging my train about," she used to cry, with a pout of the pretty mouth; "why don't they give Porter those parts? She can put on a better tragedy face than I can." Yet whatever might be

it had a thousand charms for theatre-goers in the days when Mr. Philips frequented Button's coffee-house and there hung up a cane which he threatened to use upon the body of the great Mr. Pope.[A] Addison, w

ventured to sneer at

ess, though some days are passed since I enjoyed that entertainment, the passions of the several characters dwell strongly upon my imagination; and I congratulate the age, that they are at last to see truth and human life represented in the incidents which concern heroes and heroines. The style of the play is such as becomes those of the first education, and the s

, February 1, 1711-12. This ess

ne is tempted to suggest, albeit with bated breath, that the Spectator was indulging in a bit of good-natured exaggeration. Exaggeration did we say? The modern newspaper writer, who is always glad, when off duty, to call things by their

stes in Mr. Philips' tragedy, writing that the grief which he is required to portray

able to utter it. I was last night repeating a paragraph to myself, which I took to be an expression of rage, and in the middle of the sentence there was a stroke of self-pity which quite unmanned me. Be pleased, Sir, to print this l

aps you had as keen an eye to the value of advertisin

nal cast of the "Distr

ll (Orestes), Mills (

and Mrs. Porte

owell quite forget those lines which gave him such exquisite sorrow. It all came from the jealousy of Mrs. Rogers, she of more virtue on the stage

ers playing the same part, that of Lady Lurewell in the 'Trip to the Jubilee;' but though obstinacy seldom meets conviction, yet from this equitable trial the tumults in the house were soon quelled (by public authority) greatly to the honour of Mr. Wilks. I am, from my own knowledge thoroughly c

t as possible for her detested rival. Friends of the disappointed actress packed Drury Lane when the "Distressed Mother" was performed, and the appearance o

dred and fifty pounds, from a disturbance spirited up by obscure people, who never gave any better reason for it, than that it was their fancy to support the idle complaint of one rival actress against

must have been all that the troublous part suggested, but it was when she tripped on gaily and gave the humorous epilogue that the house found her most delightful. She, who could reign so imperially in tragedy, had glided back to her be

own, that wit

ame, and topp'd

man, could not l

odiously on w

lict, made at

cess, and you

who protract

rvants sigh whol

l would not on

oon upon her j

arriage to Hector's widow was being celebrated with royal pomp. As he fell, i

hing old-fashioned and inartistic, but never turn one solitary eyelash when Hamlet follows up his death by rushing before the curtain and grinning his thanks. Desdemonas who come forward, after the smother

ars, and was very anxious to know "who this distressed mother was; and upon hearing that she was Hector's widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man, and that when he was a schoolboy he had read his

: Spectator

y to myself, as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit, that he made a very proper centre to a tragic audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus, the knight told me, that he did not believe the king of France himself had a better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend's remarks, because I looked upon them

reatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his head, and muttered to himself, 'Ay, do if you can.' This part dwelt so much upon my friend's imagination, that at the close of the third act, as I was thinking of something else, he whispered me in my ear, 'These widows, sir, are the

fell a praising the widow. He made, indeed, a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom at his first entering he took for Astyanax; but quickly set himself right in that particular, though, at the same time he owned he should have been very glad to hav

ce of her reserve might some day melt; and the wits of the coffee-house were wont to say, not without a grain of truth, that when the poet wrote dramas to fit Bracegirdle as the heroine, the lovers therein always pleaded his own passion[A]. Now that the charmer had left the stage, Rowe was f

and two of them [Rowe and Congreve] when they gave her a lover in a play, seem'd palpably t

idea of securing from Lord Halifax a diplomatic position, and his reward for this energy was so intangible that he soon gave up hopes of foreign travel and turned hi

dy, when, despite her customary objections, the pages had to

dress or pomp of surroundings, the badge of greatness. Nowadays a few bars of romantic music, to usher these characters on the stage, will suf

teresting essay o

A: Spectat

chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his foot. One would believe that we thought a great man and a tall man the same thing. This very much embarrasses the actor, who is forced to hold his neck extremely stiff and steady all the while he speaks; and notwithstanding any anxieties which he pretends for his mistress,

ht, but I must confess my eyes are wholly taken up with the page's part; and, as for the queen, I am not so attentive to any thing she speaks, as to the right adjusting of her train, lest it should chance to trip up her heels, or incommode her, as she walks to and fro upon the stage. It is, in my opinion, a very odd spectacle to see a queen venting her passion in a disordered moti

alberts and battle-axes. Two or three shifters of scenes, with the two candle-snuffers, make up a complete body of guards upon the English stage; and by the addition of a few porters dressed in red coats, can represent above a dozen legions. I have sometimes seen a couple of armies drawn up together upon the stage, when the p

attle in a description, than if he actually saw them drawn up in squadrons and battalions, or engaged in the confusion of a fight. Our minds should be open to great conceptions, and inflamed with glorious sentiments by what the actor speaks, more than by what h

e renewal created a dangerous rival to Drury Lane, but it is not probable that the king worried over having planted such a thorn in the sides of Messrs. Steele, Booth, Wilks, and Cibber[A]. He remembered, he told Mr.

a house where she would no longer be overshadowed by the genius of Oldfield. As for Nance, she was faithful to the old theatre, and continued to be the fairest though perhaps the frailest of its pillars, notwithstanding the personal charms of Mrs. Horton. The latter was a strolling player recently admitted to the sacred precincts of Drury. She ha

ving us without notice, than they could do us good by remaining with us: For though the best of them could not support a pla

Doran's "Annals

rld with Nance as its

er way through a play;

ation of the audience,

windy tragedy by Dr. Y

ilks, as Memnon, also

naturally enough, far

could have been obtai

emi-savage Egyptian kin

Egypt for nine

ods, nor heaven

t length info

guests would kind

d, 'On thee the

est, the sacri

a most ung

same ill-fated compilation that Cibber had the distinction of being hissed off the stage. The latter, unlike Oldfield, had a sneaking fondness for tragedy, and when "Sophonisba" was first read in the green room he appropriated to his own use the dignified character of Scipio. His egotism and foolishness had their full reward. For two nights successively, as Davies tells us, "Cibber was as much exploded as any bad actor could be. Williams, by desire of Wilks, made himself master of the part;

the last parts in which she was ever seen) with a grandeur of effect that well earned the undying gratitude of the author.[A] In afte

ord of Carthage

ring at the asto

he fondness of an author, I could either wish or imagine. The grace, dignity, and happy

of dead and gone actors. Dead and gone? Nay, rather let it be said that they still live in the ever fresh and gra

he passions

e tears they

ld humours t

worlds to s

rath and Ju

whims and

amant an

ight go on

had the infinite satisfaction of her meridian lustre, a glow of charms not to

form'd it to the utmost length of perfection, and, after that, she seem'd much better reconcil'd to tragedy. What a majestical dignity in Cleopatra! and, indeed, in every part that r

atoms

r the vile dete

ying evidenc

atio into a mousehole. I almost gave him up for a troublesome puppy; and though Mr. Booth play'd the part of Lothario, I could hardly lug

*

en eloquent records of the past? Pray be lenient, therefore, thou kindly critic, if the most faded books of the theatrical library are taken down from the dusty shelf, and a few of the neglected pages are printed once aga

f Tartary, the "very glass and fashion of all conquerors." The play is prefaced by a fulsome "Epistle Dedicatory," addressed to the sacred person of the "Right Honourable William, Lord Marquis of Harrington," and showing, almost pathetically, how frequently the literary workers of Queen Anne's "golden age"

brought out in 1702, with B

knowledge." Then, after wasting a little necessary flattery on the noble marquis, he starts off into an unblushing eulogy of King William III., whose clemency was mirrored, supposedly, by the hero of the tragedy. "Some people [who do me a very great honour in it] have fancy'd, that in the person of Tamerlane, I have alluded to the greatest character of the present age. I d

expression which elicited such admiration from audiences of the old régime. (Do not laugh at it, reader; you tolerate an equal amount of absurdity

un! from whose

oldier's arms

he pomp o

cation of the groundlings. When Young wrote "Busiris," he paid so much attention to old Sol that Fielding burlesqued the learned doctor's weakness through the medium of "Tom Thumb," and wrote that "the au

e sun we hear something fulsome about the

le, the common

inspir'd by hot

th religion's

emp'rate courag

an injur'd pe

k one from the

d of war. And

unish, like re

lling to defa

characters drawing a parallel between T

ur of night, fr

o' the num'rou

eful eyes each s

is looks, as

ok presage, and

and our empe

and everla

rit of each age! Ima

g a play wherein the P

o such irreverent cont

ral years ago, at the funeral of a rich man's son, compared the poor boy to Christ. And

t, that ungrateful sovereign typifying Louis Quatorze, King of France, Prince of Gentlemen, and Right Royal Hater of Hi

night go o