66

AS

THOMAS KING.

PEREZ" IN BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'S RULE A WIFE AND HAVE A WIFE."

"Sad with the news, Thalia mourned;

The Graces joined her train;

And naught but sighs for sighs return'd,
Were heard at Drury Lane.

This was the Abington who delighted the audience that night, critics and laymen alike, by her performance of the elegant Lady Teazle. She had been a kitchen wench, a seller of flowers (did not a few persons with inconvenient memories recall her nickname of Nosegay Fan "*) and an errand girl to a French milliner, but she could play the country miss turned woman of fashion with a naturalness and sureness of touch that bespoke the Duchess, rather than the cobbler's daughter.

As the Lady Teazle proved so admirable, likewise did the Sir Peter of Thomas King, the intimate friend of Garrick, and a conservative actor whose epigrammatic, dryly amusing style must have seemed just suited to the part. How could it have been otherwise with a man of whom Charles Lamb wrote so picturesquely : His acting left a taste on the palate sharp and sweet like a quince; with an old, hard, rough, withered face, like a john-apple, puckered up into a thousand wrinkles; with shrewd hints and tart replies."

*Fanny Barton was her maiden name. Her father was sometimes a soldier in the Guards, and sometimes a cobbler.

Another of the dramatis persona who must have added strength to the cast was William Smith—

"Smith the genteel, the airy and the smart,"

as Churchill called him. To play Charles Surface one had to be a gentleman as well as a comedian, and Sheridan was peculiarly fortunate in having at hand an actor whose distinction of manner and good-breeding enabled him to give such realism to the character. Charles represented what would now be vulgarly termed a dress-suit" part, and those of us who have seen some talented but hopelessly outré comedian trying to look comfortable as the hero of a stage drawing-room can understand how difficult it is to procure the necessary combination in this respect. Even men who are gentlemen by birth and education cannot always appear graceful and at ease in so-called society plays. But "Gentleman Smith," with an elegance that never deserted him, either on or off the boards, played the careless Surface with a finish and air of fashionable ease that proved a delight to the audiences of his own generation, while it set the model for the players of a future one.

A fine group, these first exponents of The School for Scandal. There was Yates, so excellent as an humorous old man, who must have been an unctuous Sir Oliver; and we know that John Palmer's Joseph Surface was considered unapproachable. "So admirable a hypocrite has never yet been seen: his manners, his deportment, his address, combined to render him the

very man he desired to paint. His performance on the stage bore a very strong similarity to that he was famous for in private life. He was plausible, of pleasing address, of much politeness and even of great grace. He was fond of pleasure, which he pursued with so much avidity as to be generally very careless of his theatrical duties."* Then what a life-like Sir Benjamin was James Dodd, who has been pronounced the most perfect fopling ever seen upon the stage. took his snuff, or applied the quintessence of roses to his nose with an air of complacent superiority, such as won the hearts of all conversant with that style of affectation." Such was the man who was spoken of as the prince of pink heels and the Soul of empty emi

nence.

But there is no need to dwell on the individual virtues of the players who lent such éclat to the initial performance. It was a triumphant night for all concerned, from Sheridan down to the prompter,† and the applause was frequent and enthusiastic, as though prophetic of the reception this glittering work would meet with in after years. Frederick Reynolds, then a mere lad, quaintly relates how he was returning home from Lincoln's Inn about nine o'clock that evening, and passing through the Pit-passage, from Vinegar-Yard to Brydges Street, he heard such a tremendous noise over * Life of Sheridan.

† Hopkins, the father of the original Maria (Miss P. Hopkins). Miss Hopkins afterwards became the wife of John Philip Kemble.