her in the reading of it, and she never failed to move her audience to tears by her mimic sufferings and sorrows. During the last act, bread was wont to be thrown down from the gallery as a tribute to the realism of her hunger, and no attaché of the theatre ever interfered. This was a slight interruption compared to a riot, or to that incident recorded by Pepys when " a gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating some fruit in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead; but, with much ado, Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him to life again.”

The ability to play "Jane Shore" acceptably remained for several generations the test of a successful actress; and it is conceded by all writers of the period that in this rôle Peg Woffington "did not admit of competition with Mrs. Oldfield." But in most parts Peg Woffington shone as the bright particular star of the eighteenth century stage. Not to understand her relation to the players and plays of the time would be to fail to comprehend the hold which the theatre had on Englishmen of that day.

Margaret Woffington and David Garrick! What names to conjure with, though here we may not do more than touch very briefly on their romantic personal histories, merely mention in passing the enduring impetus that they gave to the traditions of good acting, Duke of Queensberry, he studied Spanish in hope of obtaining a foreign appointment through Halifax. The latter, however, only congratulated him on being able to read Don Quixote in the original! Jane Shore" was brought out February 2, 1714. Its author died in December, 1718, and was buried in the poets' corner of Westminster Abbey, opposite Chaucer.

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to the somewhat arid history of the early theatres in America.

Peg Woffington made her stage début about 1725 at a variety theatre of Dublin, in a basket carried by Madame Violante, a tight-rope dancer, as she made her perilous passage across the stage and caused delicious cold shivers to run down the spines of her gaping auditors. Peg was the child of a journeyman bricklayer, then dead, and of a vigorous mother, still living. The mother took in washing for the support of the family. Between the fair Margaret's début and a later day, when she actually acted for Madame Violante in a Lilliputian troupe, her profession was that of selling "halfpenny salads" about the streets of Dublin. Thus she found it easy to play hoyden parts, when these fell to her lot. But, being a natural-born actress, she acquitted herself with no less success as Ophelia when, on February 12, 1734, she first essayed this rôle at the Dublin Theatre Royal. Though only fifteen at this time, Peg is affirmed to have been well-grown and tall. Already, too, she was a stunning beauty, with splendid dark eyes under strongly marked brows, and an expression of archness which was well set off by her unpowdered hair and the lace cap or flat garden hat to be seen in her numerous portraits. Moreover, she had in some way or other learned to bear herself like a lady, and could use a fan with great dexterity, or make in most impressive fashion the sweeping courtesy of the "manners" comedy. In

addition to which she had a wit equal to the best of the gallants who flocked to her tiring-room.

It was Peg Woffington's wit and the dash with which she set it off that enabled her to act with tremendous success the "breeches " part of Sir Harry Wildair in Farquhar's "Constant Couple." And it was the prodigious drawing power of Woffington in the rôle of this lively rake which gained for her a hearing with the allpowerful John Rich (1740), then manager of the Covent Garden in London.1 That season she played Sir Harry Wildair no fewer than twenty times and always to crowded houses. Which meant much more then than it would now, inasmuch as the Londoners of that day required a constantly changing bill, theatre-going at that period being confined to a comparatively small section of the population. This is the time when we find Walpole declaring Peg "much in vogue," and Conway asserting that "all the town is in love with her."

Yet it is with Drury Lane rather than with Covent Garden that we chiefly associate Peg Woffington, for

1 A writer in the Dublin Review has pictured very graphically their first meeting. "The great manager, when Woffington first saw him, was lolling in ungraceful ease on a sofa, holding a play in one hand and in the other a teacup, from which he sipped frequently. Around him were seven and twenty cats of all sizes, colours and kinds. Peg Woffington was astounded at the sight. Rich, to her mind, had for years been the greatest man in the world. The menagerie of grimalkins, amid which he lay so carelessly, was so different an environment from her conception of the study of the Covent Garden theatre-manager, that she was embarrassed into silence. Rich, in his turn, was equally confused by the beauty of his visitor, and lay staring at her for a long time before he recollected his courtesy and offered her a chair. Standing before him was a woman whom he afterward declared to be the loveliest creature he had ever seen."

it was there that she fell in with David Garrick, then just rising to fame. Garrick's boyhood had been passed at Lichfield, where his mania for acting had seriously interfered with his application to school studies. His father (of French descent) was a captain in the English army, who had married the daughter of a Lichfield vicar. Because of this church connection, David's stage mania was frowned down from the first. It was considered vastly more respectable for him to go into the business of wine-selling, of which one of his uncles had made a great success. Yet the lad was not starved on his playloving side, for his father's friends, knowing his passion for the theatre, often treated him to a journey to London on purpose that he might feast at the playhouse. Thus the lad had been enabled to see all the great players of the time from the gallery, long before he had the opportunity to mingle with them on the stage.

In time, however, that opportunity came also. For, leaving Lichfield and its cramping influences behind him, young Garrick set out, in 1737, in the company of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had been his tutor, to try his fortune in the great city. Garrick's resources were increased about this time by the death of an uncle, who bequeathed to him a thousand pounds; but Johnson, who had only his tragedy of " Irene " as a means of advance, long worshipped comfort from afar. Later, Garrick was able to produce this tragedy for his old friend.

David's début on the professional stage was made in

His first

the provinces and under an assumed name. London engagement was in the fall of 1741 at the theatre in unfashionable Goodman's Fields. He came on between two parts of a concert in what the playbills announced as The Life and Death of Richard III.” Yet from the moment the new actor appeared," says Doran, "his auditors were enthralled. They saw a Richard and not an actor of that personage. Of spectators he seemed unconscious, so thoroughly did he identify himself with the character. He surrendered himself to all the requirements, was ready for every phase of passion, every change of humour, and was as wonderful in his quiet sarcasm as he was terrific in the hurricane of the battle-scenes. Above all, his audiences were delighted with his 'nature.' Garrick spoke not as an orator, but as King Richard himself might have spoken in like circumstances. The chuckling exultation of his So much for Buckingham!' was long a tradition on the stage. His points, indeed, occurred in rapid succession." At the beginning Garrick drew a pound a night for all this, but soon he was sharing profits equally with the management, and his salary, when he went to Drury Lane, in May, 1742, was fixed at £600 per annum.

Garrick was twenty-six at this time and Peg Woffington two years younger. Their mutual attraction was inevitable. He had not been a month at Drury Lane, playing (among other things) Lear to her Cordelia, when he found himself deeply in love with the Irish beauty and inditing to her such verses as: