cause. It fared better in the eighteenth century than it does now; but we can see that in Cibber's day the time had come when it was not to have things all its own way, as in the days of Shakespeare and Pepys. The more generally popular the theatre became, the sooner it was obliged to cater for all forms of popular taste, and popular taste responded joyfully when it opened its doors to elephants, rope-dancers, and Italian warblers. The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, and Cibber, and Garrick after him, found themselves, as managers, obliged to sandwich the legitimate drama between opera and pantomime. They did so with reluctance; but managers such as Christopher Rich and his son John, men utterly unsympathetic towards actors, threw themselves with ardour into the development of spectacular entertainments. In 1732 John Rich moved his company of players from the old theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields to the new playhouse in Covent Garden, and from this date Covent Garden and Drury Lane became the two principal London theatres. It was at Covent Garden that John Rich, under the name of “ Mr. Lun," made himself famous as the first and greatest of English harlequins. Says Churchill, See from afar, The hero seated in fantastic car, Wedded to novelty, his only arms Are wooden swords, wands, talismans, and charms; On one side Folly sits, by some called Fun, And on the other his arch-patron Lun. Behind, for liberty athirst in vain, Sense, helpless captive! drags the galling chain. Pope, Dr. Johnson, Cibber, and Churchill might satirise or denounce these trivial exhibitions, and lament that the stage should be given over to flying chariots, grinning dragons, and practicable eggs, but they were powerless to confine the public appetite to the plain fare of tragedy and comedy, unable to persuade them To chase the charms of sound, the pomp of show, For useful mirth and salutary woe. It was in a magnificent attempt to outdo the spectacular triumphs of John Rich at Covent Garden, called the Chinese Festival, that Garrick brought on his head riotous demonstrations of indignation at Drury Lane. He had engaged for this pantomime some French performers, and, as England was at the time at war with France, the Jingoes of the day thought they could not better display their rampant patriotism than by inflicting a thousand pounds' worth of damage on the property of a manager who had dared to engage a handful of French artists. A riot and the demolition of the front of his house were contingencies that a theatrical manager in the eighteenth century had to be prepared to face; instances of such proceedings abound in the theatrical memoirs of the time; an alteration in prices, an unpopular regulation by the managers, the employment of foreigners, the non-appearance of an artist, the reported ill-usage of a popular actor, the resentment of a player at some act of aristocratic impertinence, all these trivial causes on different occasions led to violent tumults, the tearing up of seats, the wanton destruction of furniture and decorations. Resolute men like Quin and Beard, the managers of Covent Garden, would withstand the rioters; the more timorous Garrick would bend before the storm; but it was on very rare occasions that the managers received any compensation for their loss. Apart from the fact that the punishment of having his theatre gutted was quite out of proportion to the offence the manager might have committed, this riotous disposition of certain portions of the audience was sometimes made use of by some mean and worthless individual to gratify-as in the case of the rascally Fitzpatrick-some private spite. Quarrels and controversies of any kind in the eighteenth century, literary or theatrical, were fought out with a vigour, an absence of decorum, and an unscrupulousness of attack that enliven, if they do not always edify, the reader. One who bore himself stoutly on all such occasionsa sturdy and hard-hitting adversary, who killed two of his fellow-actors in duels, not, be it said, of his own seeking, was James Quin. He fills the most prominent place in the theatrical history of those nine years that elapsed between the retirement of Cibber in 1732 and the first appearance of David Garrick in 1741. The son of an Irish barrister, himself intended for the Bar, lack of means and consciousness of ability sent Quin on to the stage. He made his first success in 1720, when he persuaded Christopher Rich to allow him to appear as Falstaff in the Merry Wives of Windsor. After Booth's death he advanced still further in public esteem by what he modestly described on the play-bill as "his attempt" to follow that tragedian in his greatest part of Cato. He so delighted the audience by his attempt that, after his delivery of the line: Thanks to the gods-my boy has done his duty! 66 they cried "Booth outdone! Booth outdone!" and after he had spoken the then famous soliloquy on the immortality of the soul, the enthusiasm reached such a pitch that, in answer to a vociferous demand for an encore," Quin was obliged to repeat the speech. From this night Quin, as an actor, reigned supreme for ten years. It was a solemn reign, dignified, weighty, traditional; he was unsurpassed in such characters as Falstaff and Sir John Brute, but in tragedy he did no more than uphold, with fine elocution, ponderous majesty, and rugged independence, that solemn unreality of speech and action which, both in England and France, was then considered the appropriate expression of tragic sentiment. As in France Le Kain was the first to restore nature to tragic acting, so did Garrick in England, by a similar return to nature, expose the dulness, the lifelessness of the settled methods of the actors of the type of Quin. And Quin had too much good sense not to see it himself, for as a man he was the rather coarse embodiment of that rough but ready-witted, prejudiced but generous and warm-hearted disposition which we admire and respect in Dr. Johnson. The few of Quin's sayings preserved to us almost make one regret that he had no Boswell by his side. Lords and bishops, clergy and gentry, all were represented in the circles of Quin's many friends who delighted in his wit and conversation. He could hold his own in argument with any man. One instance must suffice. At some gathering Bishop Warburton, dictatorial and overbearing, was arguing in support of royal prerogative. Quin said he was a republican, and thought that perhaps even the execution of Charles I. by his subjects might be justified: "Ay," asked the indignant Warburton, "by what law?" "By all the laws he had left them," answered Quin. The shocked Bishop then cited the wrath of the divine judgment as visited upon the regicides; they all, he said (though it is not strictly true) had come to violent ends. "I would not advise your lordship," said Quin, "to make use of that inference, for, if I am not mistaken, that was the case with the twelve apostles." Horace Walpole greatly admired this instance of the player's readiness and aptness of retort. 66 Quin's kindness and generosity to Thomson, the poet, and the unfortunate Mrs. Bellamy, eloquently attest the real worth of the vigorous, downright, resolute old actor, who said, on his deathbed, after drinking a bottle of claret, "I could wish that the last tragic scene was over; and I hope I may be enabled to meet and pass through it with dignity." Quin had retired from the stage some fifteen years before his death; he had become the warm friend of his rival, Garrick, who wrote the epitaph engraved on his monument in the Abbey church at Bath: That tongue which set the table in a roar, And charmed the public ear, is heard no more! Which spake before the tongue what Shakespeare writ: To this complexion thou must come at last. If the period of Quin's popularity had reared no great actors, four actresses, who were to contribute in no slight degree to the splendour of the reign of Garrick, had, in those ten years, been advancing rapidly to the very front of their profession. Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Clive, and Margaret Woffington, all these ladies had already established their artistic reputations when, in the year 1741, a young man of twenty-three, who, said the play-bill, had never appeared on any stage before, leapt into fame by his performance of Richard III. at a secondrate London theatre. Mrs. Cibber was a sister of Dr. Arne, the celebrated musician. Charmed by her singing voice, her brother had sent her into opera. Colley Cibber heard her; he was disappointed with her singing, but convinced that her speaking voice would, if properly trained, carry her far in the legitimate drama. He set about instructing her, was astonished at her rapid progress, and permitted her to make her first appearance at Drury Lane in 1736, in the character of Zara in an adaptation of Voltaire's Zaire. Before this event, Miss Arne had had the misfortune to marry her teacher's son, Theophilus. Than this Theophilus Cibber a more despicable scoundrel has seldom disgraced any calling; mean and contemptible to the last degree, a bully and a coward, the younger Cibber has only |