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for the knowledge that those above him have their human sympathies. Sir Thomas Overbury held a somewhat strong opinion as to this: thinking the playhouse more necessary in a well-governed commonwealth than the school, because men were better taught by example than by precept: and it seems at any rate, however light the disregard it has fallen into now, of at least equal importance with many of the questions which in these days form and dissolve governments, whether a high and healthy entertainment, the nature of which, conservative of all kindly relations between man and man, is to encourage, refine, and diffuse humanity, might not claim, in some degree, the care and countenance of the State.

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This grave remark occurs to me here, because grave disappointments in connection with it will occur hereafter; and already even Garrick's fame and strength had been shaken by his difficult relations with men of letters. 'I am as much an admirer of Mr. Garrick,' said Mr. Ralph, in his Case of Authors by Profession, published in 1758, ' and his excellences, as I ought to be; and I envy him no part of his good fortune. But then, though I am 'free to acknowledge he was made for the stage, I cannot 'be brought to think the stage was made only for him; 'or that the fate of every dramatic writer ought either 'to be at his mercy, or that of any other manager what'ever; and the single consideration that there is no alter'native but to fly from him, in case of any neglect or contempt, to Mr. Rich, is enough to deter any man in his

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'senses from embarking a second time on such a hopeless 'voyage.' Manifestly, however, this was neither the fault of Rich nor of Garrick, but of the system which left both to shift as they could, and made self-protection the primary law. The manager,' he continues, admitting the whole question at issue in his complaints, whether player or 'harlequin, must be the sole pivot on which the whole 'machine is both to move and rest; there is no drawback on the profit of the night in old plays; and any access ' of reputation to a dead author, carries no impertinent 'claims and invidious distinctions along with it. When 'the playhouse is named,' he added bitterly, 'I make it a 'point to pull off my hat, and think myself obliged to the ' lowest implement belonging to it. I am ready to make my best acknowledgments to a harlequin, who has con'tinence enough to look upon an author in the green'room, of what consideration soever, without laughing ' at him.' Other pamphlets followed in the cry; and poor Ned Purdon drew up a number of anonymous suggestions as to 'how Mr. Garrick ought to behave.'

It was employment of this tone which introduced needless elements of bitterness. The charge was a simple one, and might have been stated simply. No doubt Garrick, in common with every manager-actor before or since his time, was fairly exposed to it. I have turned to the playbills of the season directly preceding the appearance of Mr. Ralph's pamphlet, and find, amidst revivals of Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, and Shirley's

comedy of The Gamester, and Shakspeare's Tempest as an opera and Taming of a Shrew as a farce, but one original production: Lilliput, played by children. It is not immaterial to the question, however, to recount the highest tragic claimants, thus affronted by Shakspeare, Fletcher, Shirley, and Lilliput. They were Whitehead, Crisp, Francis, Francklin, Glover, Brown, Mallet, Murphy, and Dodsley: for denying whose higher attractiveness to the Shakspeares and Fletchers, nay, for preferring even the comic to that tragic Lilliput, the public seems a better object of attack than the manager. When Walpole joined the cry, this had sarcastic admission.

'ing the town as it deserves,' he said,

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Garrick is treat

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and likes to be 'treated with scenes, fireworks, and his own writing. A ' good new play I never expect to see more; nor have seen 'since the Provoked Husband, which came out when I was at school.' Was it Garrick's crime, without good new plays, to make the venture of good old ones?

In truth, looking fairly at his theatrical management, with the light his published Correspondence has thrown upon it, it was a great improvement, in all generous and liberal points, on those which preceded it. Booth treated writers of Anne much more scurvily, than the writers of George the Second were treated by Garrick. 'Booth often 'declared,' says his biographer, 'in public company, that 'he and his partners lost money by new plays; and that, 'if he were not obliged to it, he would seldom give his 'consent to perform one of them.' Garrick transposed and

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altered often; but he never forced upon the unhappy author of a tragedy a change in the religion of his hero, nor told a dramatist of good esteem that he had better have turned to an honest and laborious calling, nor complacently prided himself on choaking singing birds, when his stern negative had silenced a young aspirant. Those were the achievements of manager Cibber. He was at all times fonder than needful of his own importance, it is true: but society has no right to consent to even the nominal depression in the so-called social scale, of a man whose calling exacts no common accomplishments, and then resent the self-exaggeration unwholesomely begotten on its own injustice. When Junius took offence at the player whom dukes and duchesses tolerated at their table, it was not a matter to waste wit upon, or sarcasm, or scathing eloquence he simply told the Vagabond to stick to his pantomimes. Even men of education were known to have pursued Garrick, when on country visits to noblemen of his acquaintance, with dirty, clumsily-folded notes, passed amid the ill-concealed laughter of servants to the great man's guest, with the address of Mr. David Garrick, Player. It asked a strength which Garrick had not, to disregard this vulgar folly; it wounded him where he was known to be weak; it tempted him to those self-assertions which imply the failure of self-reliance; it poisoned his entire and constant faith in all who were not solely governed by his will; and it blinded him to the ridicule with which even dependents listened to his public distress

on the mornings of crowded rehearsals, that to decline some Ambassador's proffered courtesies made him wretched, but prior promises to Countess Dowagers must be kept.

A satisfaction of this kind was afforded to Mr. Ralph, when, in the season (57-58) of this the appearance of his pamphlet, the outraged manager, laughing heartily at all authors' complaints and attacks, and tearing up their rebellious pamphlets carelessly as he would the card of a lord, duke, judge, or bishop, to strike awe and admiration into bystanders, did yet, most laboriously and most clumsily, bring out Doctor Smollett, in a piece altogether unworthy of his genius. The concession was appropriately followed by production of the Agis of Mr. Home; not without reason cried over, for its exclusively modern Greek, by Douglas-loving Gray, and compared to 'an antique statue, 'painted white and red, frizzed and dressed in a negligée 'made by a Yorkshire mantua-maker.' Then, failure and laughter repaying this pains and warmth, the cold fit came violently back; and in the season of '58 and '9 the wrongs of Arthur Murphy and Dodsley, the bereaved Cleone and deserted Orphan of China, were the talk of the town. The topic seemed to force itself on one who was delivering in a protest against the wrongs of men of letters; and with the Essay on Polite Learning appeared these remarks, in a chapter devoted to the stage.

'Our poet's performance must undergo a process truly 'chemical, before it is presented to the public. It must be 'tried in the manager's fire, strained through a licenser,

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