THE

ROMANCE OF THE AMERICAN

THEATRE

CHAPTER I

PLAYERS AND PLAYHOUSES OF THE EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY

"LAST week I buried Mrs. Nance Oldfield very willingly and with much satisfaction." It was in these somewhat equivocal words that the Reverend Dr. Parker of the Established Church recorded his relation to the then recent obsequies of England's best-beloved actress. Nance Oldfield was not a virtuous woman as we of to-day count virtue, yet Queen Caroline was on intimate and friendly terms with her. Nance Oldfield had no proper social standing, as do many of our present-day actresses, yet on the terrace at Windsor she was often to be seen walking with the respectable consorts of dukes and calling countesses and the wives of English barons by their Christian names. Moreover, when Nance Oldfield died, she received, by burial

within the walls of Westminster Abbey, such honour as no actress had ever received before nor has been accorded since.1 The public could not have thronged more eagerly to her funeral had she been a real queen instead of a mimic one, nor could she have had men of greater distinction for her pall-bearers. All of which is of interest to us, as showing that in England of the eighteenth century a great actress who chanced to be also a lovable woman was not held too closely to account for little lapses from the standard of Caesar's wife.

Nance Oldfield's father had been a gentleman, but she was the humble apprentice of a seamstress when Captain Farquhar, a London man-about-town, discovered her at her aunt's inn, on a quiet summer evening late in the seventeenth century, reading aloud to her mother from a rattling comedy of Beaumont and Fletcher. The smart captain promptly assured the girl that she was a born actress, and she as promptly retorted, amid blushes of delight, that to go upon the stage had long been the dream of her life. Then Farquhar talked of her to a friend who had the ear of Rich, the famous manager, and soon she found herself a member of the company at Drury Lane, with an assured salary of fifteen shillings a week. Four years later (1696) Colley Cibber himself assigned to her the rôle of

1 The custodian of the Abbey informs me, however, that Mrs. Garrick, who was a dancer before her marriage, lies in the south transept with her husband and that in the Abbey cloisters no less than three actresses are buried: Mrs. Betterton, wife of Thomas Betterton of Drury Lane Theatre, Mrs. Bracegirdle (d. 1748), and Ann Crawford (d. 1801).

Lady Betty Modish in his "Careless Husband," and for the first time in the history of the English stage the part of a lady of fashion was appropriately played.

It was then not so very long since women were a startling novelty on the English-speaking stage. The female parts were always taken by boys until after the Restoration, credit being due to Sir William Davenant for opening to women, in 1662, the economic opportunity represented by the profession of the actor. The place which marked this interesting development was Sir William's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and the "vehicle" employed, a drama called the "Siege of Rhodes," in which Mrs. Saunderson, as "the first fe- ! male actress that ever played for hire before the public in England," took the part of the heroine. That the public was by no means of one mind concerning this innovation is very clear from various comments to be found in the books of the period. Tom Nash in his "Pierce Penilesse" highly commends the English stage in that it has not had "courtesans or women actors "such as were then to be found abroad. But, on the other hand, there are extant the ravings of a certain Dr. Reynolds, who had published in 1593 a foaming invective against stage plays, one reason for his objections being that the boys who wore the dress of women on the stage were wont to ape the airs of women off the stage.

A classic case which is often cited in this connection is that of Edward Kynaston, the last beautiful youth who figured in petticoats on the stage. Colley Cibber

relates that Kynaston was still playing the woman— both off the stage and on—even after King Charles II had begun to lend his royal support to the theatre. Once, he tells us, his Majesty, "coming a little before the usual time to a tragedy, became impatient that the play did not at once begin. Whereupon the stage manager, rightly judging that the best excuse for their default would be the true one, fairly told his Majesty that the queen was not shaved yet. The King, whose good humour loved to laugh at a jest as well as to make one, accepted the excuse, which served to divert him until the male queen could be effeminated. In a word, Kynaston at that time was so beautiful a youth that the ladies of quality prided themselves on taking him with them in their coaches to Hyde Park in his theatrical habit, after the play; which, in those days, they might have sufficient time to do, because the plays then were used to begin at four o'clock."

The real reason why women were given parts in the plays of the Restoration period seems to have been not a moral one at all, however, but was attributable, as Disraeli hints, to the fact that "the boys who had been trained to act female characters before the Restoration had grown too masculine during the suspension of the theatre to resume their tender office." In any case, women were now on the stage to stay, and it was in large measure due to their presence there that the obscenity of the early English comedies gradually became unacceptable to the public.

A beautiful girl, like Nance Oldfield, playing with

spirit yet without exaggeration the part of a clever, high-mettled woman, was a distinct novelty, therefore. "Who should act genteel comedy perfectly," asks Walpole, "but people of fashion who have sense? Actors and actresses can only guess at the tone of high life, and cannot be inspired with it. Why are there so few genteel comedies, but because most comedies are written by men not of that sphere. Etherege, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Cibber wrote genteel comedy because they lived in the best company; and Mrs. Oldfield played it so well because she not only followed but often set the fashion."

Cibber had despaired, indeed, of ever finding an actress who could realize his idea of Lady Betty Modish, when good fortune threw Nance Oldfield in his way. Then he no longer had any qualms but finished the piece at once. When he brought it out, he had the almost unprecedented generosity to declare that he owed the success of the play wholly to the gay and brilliant girl who was cast for its leading part. "And not only to the uncommon excellence of her acting," as he explained, "but even to her personal manner of conversing." Many of the most effective sentiments in the play, he insisted, were Mrs. Oldfield's own, simply dressed up by him "with a little more care than when they negligently fell from her lively humour."

As time passed, Nance Oldfield became the original creator of no less than sixty-five comedy characters. Her salary at the height of her career reached three hundred guineas, exclusive of benefits, on which occa