Curiosities of Impecuniosity Part 7

THE IMPECUNIOSITY OF ACTORS.

There is a letter extant, written to Sir Francis Walsingham in 1586, in which the writer speaks "with pious indignation of overcrowded playhouses and deserted churches;" and says "it was a wofull sight to see two hundred proude players jett in their silks where fyve hundred pore people sterve in the streetes." From this and many similar allusions we glean that actors were not in the infancy of our English dramatic art the shabby impecunious cla.s.s they afterwards became. They were on the whole well to do, and highly respectable men of college education, who were in most cases poets as well as players, patronised and encouraged by all cla.s.ses, except those who were so bitterly jealous of their extraordinary influence--the clergy. A special Act of Parliament was pa.s.sed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth for their encouragement and protection, and they had that which many of the well-born and wealthy envied them--the right of wearing the badges of royal and n.o.ble families, ensuring them respect, hospitality, and protection, wherever they went. The profession of the player was not then open to all comers, and those who dared to adopt it without licence from "any baron, or person of high rank, or two justices of the peace," were "deemed and treated as rogues and vagabonds;" prison and the whipping-post, or cart-tail, stocks, and the pillory, being but the milder forms of that treatment promised them in the often quoted, commonly misrepresented, Act of "good Queen Bess."

Some of the dramatic poets and players, plunging headlong into dissipation and debauchery, were at length abandoned by their fellows, and sank into the depths of misery and extreme poverty; but the majority prospered, and went about in their silks and velvets, with roses in their shoes, and swords by their sides, no longer the poor scholars they had been in their college days--the licensed beggars, who, when they came into a town, set all the dogs barking--but prosperous gentlemen of fair repute, such as were Shakespeare, and Edward Alleyn, the founder of the Hospital and College at Dulwich.

But a great change was at hand when the rebellion broke out, and civil war gave the Puritans dominant power. Their stage-plays and interludes were abolished, and the players' occupation was gone. Worse still, the very Act of Parliament which had been created for their protection was turned against them, and they were cla.s.sed with the rogues and vagabonds against whom it had formerly protected them. Then the whipping and imprisonment, and even selling into slavery, became the poor players' miserable ill-fortune, and the reign of impecuniosity began in all its rigorous severity and terror. The London playhouses, which, between the years 1570 and 1629, had grown from one (the Theatre in Sh.o.r.editch) to seventeen, were shut up, and had all their stages, chambers (boxes, we call them), and galleries pulled down. Small wonder was it, therefore, that the players, almost to a man, drew their swords for the King, and fought stoutly under the royal banner. In the 'Historia Histrionica,' printed in 1699, we read the following dialogue:

"Lovewit. 'Prythee, Trueman, what became of these players when the stage was put down, and the rebellion raised?'

"Trueman. 'Most of 'em, except Lown, Taylor, and Pollard, who were superannuated, went into the King's army, and, like good men and true, served their old master, though in a different, yet more honourable, capacity. Robinson was killed at the taking of a place (I think Basing House) by Harrison (he that was after hanged at Charing Cross), who refused him quarter, and shot him in the head after he had laid down his arms, abusing Scripture at the same time in saying, "Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently." Mohun was a captain (and after the wars were ended here served in Flanders, where he received pay as a major); Hart was a lieutenant of horse under Sir Thomas Dathson, in Prince Rupert's regiment; Burt was cornet in the same troop, and Shatterd, quarter-master. Allen, of the c.o.c.kpit, was a major, and quarter-master-general at Oxford. I have not heard of one of these players of note who sided with the other party, but only Swanston, and he professed himself a Presbyterian, took up the trade of a jeweller, and lived in Aldermanbury, within the territory of Father Calamy: the rest either lost, or exposed, their lives for their King. When the wars were over, and the Royalists wholly subdued, most of 'em who were left alive gathered to London, and for a subsistence endeavoured to revive their old trade privately. They made up one company out of all the scattered members of several; and in the winter before the King's murder, 1648, they ventured to act some plays, with as much caution and privity as could be, at the c.o.c.kpit (now Drury Lane Theatre). They continued undisturbed for three or four days; but at last, as they were representing the tragedy of 'The b.l.o.o.d.y Brother' (in which Lowin acted Aubrey; Taylor, Rolla; Pollard, the cook; Burt, Latorch; and, I think, Hart, Otto), a party of foot-soldiers beset the house, surprised 'em about the middle of the play, and carried them away in their habits, not permitting them to s.h.i.+ft, to Hatton House, then a prison, where, having detained them some time, they plundered them of their clothes and let 'em loose again. Afterwards, in Oliver's time, they used to act privately, three or four miles, or more, out of town, now here, now there, sometimes in n.o.blemen's houses, in particular Holland House, at Kensington, where the n.o.bility and gentry who met--but in no great numbers--used to make up a sum for them--each giving a broad piece, or the like--and Alexander Goffe (the woman-actor at Blackfriars) used to be jackall, and give notice of the time and place. At Christmas and Bartholomew Fair they used to bribe the officer who commanded at Whitehall, and were thereupon connived at, to act, for a few days, at the "Red Bull," but were sometimes, notwithstanding, disturbed by soldiers. Some picked up a little money by publis.h.i.+ng the copies of plays never before printed, but kept up in MS.; for instance, in the year 1652, Beaumont and Fletcher's 'Wild Goose Chase' was printed in folio, for the public use of all the ingenious, as the t.i.tle-page says, and the private benefit of Jown Lowin and Joseph Taylor, servants to his late Majesty; and by them dedicated to the honoured few lovers of dramatic poetry: wherein they modestly intimate their wants, and with sufficient cause; whatever they were before the wars, they were afterwards reduced to a necessitous condition.'"

Hard times these for the poor wandering players.

It is curious to note that a reputed natural son of Oliver Cromwell became an actor. This was Joe Trefusis, nicknamed "Honest Joe," described as a person of "infinite humour and shrewd conceits." On one occasion, driven, we presume, by impecuniosity, Joe volunteered as a seaman, and served under the Duke of York. This was just before the memorable sea-fight between the duke and the Dutch admiral, Van Tromp, in which Joe took part, as he confessed, with great fear, which was not, you may be sure, decreased when one of the sailors, grimly preparing for the strife, said to him "Now, master play-actor, you're a-going to take part in one of the deepest and bloodiest tragedies you ever heard of."

Another player of Puritan descent was the famous American actress, Charlotte Cushman, the name of her ancestor, Robert Cushman, being one that figures honourably and prominently as a leader amongst the Pilgrim Fathers. She tells us many anecdotes of the impecuniosity which afflicted her in the early days of her career. It was decided that she should abandon singing, and commence acting, and her first essay was to be in--of all parts--"Lady Macbeth"! She was then a tall, thin, fair-skinned, country girl, and being unable to procure a suitable costume, Madame Closel, a short, fat, dark-complexioned French woman, was applied to, and laughed heartily at the ludicrous idea of her clothes being worn by Miss Cushman, who says,--

"By dint of piecing out the skirt of one dress it was made to answer for an under-skirt, and then another dress was taken in in every direction to do duty as an over-dress, and so make up the costume. And thus I essayed for the first time the part of Lady Macbeth."

At that time her only place for study was an empty garret in the house in which she lodged, and her practice was to shut herself up in it alone, and sitting on the floor commit her "lines" to memory.

Miss Cushman was not the only actress whom impecuniosity and consequent vocal efforts led to the stage. The famous Kitty Clive, whose maiden name was Rafter, was originally maid-of-all-work to Miss Knowles, who lodged at Mrs. Snells, a well-known fan-painter, in Church Row, Hounsditch. The Bell Tavern immediately opposite this house, was kept by a Drury Lane box-keeper, named Watson, at which house an actor's beef-steak club was held. One morning, when Harry Woodward, Dunstall, and other well-known London actors were in their club-room, they heard a girl singing very sweetly and prettily in the street outside, and going to the window found that the cheerful notes emanated from the throat of a charming little maid-servant, who was scrubbing the street-door step at Mrs. Snell's house. The actors looked at each other and smiled, as they crowded the open window to listen, and the final result was, in 1728, the introduction of the poor singer to the stage. She afterwards married Counsellor Clive, and being not a little of the shrew, it is said, quarrelled with him so seriously, that before the honeymoon was fairly out, the "happy pair"

agreed to separate. It must not, however, be supposed that Kitty Clive was born to a menial position: she was the daughter of an Irish gentleman, ruined, as so many Irish gentlemen were, by their adherence to the cause of James II.

Amongst those so ruined was the father of the ill.u.s.trious actor and dramatic author, Charles Macklin, who on one occasion, when about to insure some property, was asked, "How the clerk should designate him?"

"Call me," replied the actor, "Charles Macklin, a vagabond by Act of Parliament"--the old law of Queen Elizabeth, which the Puritans had extended to all players, being then unrepealed.

There was doubtless a tinge of bitterness in the joke; for Macklin's early experience had been a severe and trying one, in the gaunt school of poverty and hards.h.i.+p.

When in his twenty-sixth year, being ashamed of depending upon his poor old mother for his living, he left home, and travelling as a steerage pa.s.senger from Dublin to Bristol, arrived in that opulent city when a third-cla.s.s company of players were performing there. He took lodgings over a mean little snuff and tobacco shop, next door but one to the theatre, and there became acquainted with a couple of the players, a man and a woman, who introduced him behind the scenes. To this he owed his introduction to the stage; for the manager detecting signs of histrionic taste and ambition in the young Irishman, engaged him, despite his strongly p.r.o.nounced brogue, to play Richmond in Shakespeare's 'Richard III.'

James Kirkman, said to have been a natural son of Macklin's, writing of his _debut_, said, "Considering the strong vernacular accent with which Mr. Macklin (then MacLaughlin) spoke, the reader would be at a loss to account for the applause which he met with on his first appearance, if he was not told that Bristol has always been so much inhabited by the Irish that their tones in speaking have become familiar there."

The young Irish enthusiast afterwards travelled with this little company, making himself generally useful, by writing the playbills and distributing them--printing was too costly for poor strollers in those days--by carpentery when the stage had to be set up in some barn or inn-yard, by writing on occasions prologue or epilogue, without which no play was then considered complete, by composing and singing topical songs, "complimentary and adulatory to the village in which they happen to play,"

to use his fist, which he did with great skill and strength, when the vulgar rustic audiences were disturbed by the quarrelsome, or were rude and coa.r.s.ely offensive to his professional sisters and brethren. Kirkman says, "His circle of acting was more enlarged than Garrick's; for in one night he played Antonia, and Belvidera in 'Venice Preserved,' harlequin in the interlude, or entertainment, sang three comic songs between the acts, and between the play and the entertainment indulged the audience with an Irish jig"; often doing this when his share of the profits (for the original sharing system of Shakespeare's day then prevailed among strollers) was not more than four or five pence per night, to which was usually added a share of the candle-ends, candles being in use for lighting the stage, affixed round hoops to form chandeliers for the auditorium, in the making of which Macklin displayed peculiar skill.

There is a good story told by Kirkman of a time when Macklin was with a company of strollers in Wales. One night they had the misfortune to arrive in Llangadoc, a little place in Carmarthens.h.i.+re, so late that neither shelter, beds, nor food enough for all could be obtained, and Macklin, who, "from the high rank he held in the company was ent.i.tled to the first choice," resigned his claim in favour of a member of the corps who was too sick and weak to pa.s.s the night in the open air.

Kirkman, telling the story, says: "After supping with 'Lady Hawley,'

Macklin made his bow and retired to the room where the luggage was stored.

Here he undressed himself and adopted the following humorous expedient: He instantly arrayed himself in the dress of Emilia in the 'Moor of Venice'

(a part he occasionally played), tied up a small bundle in a handkerchief and slipped out of the house unperceived. In about a quarter of an hour he returned, apparently much fatigued, and addressing the landlady in the most piteous terms, recounted a variety of misfortunes that had befallen 'her,' and concluded the speech with a heart-moving request that 'she'

might have shelter for the night, as 'she' was a total stranger in that part of the country. The supposed young woman was informed by the unsuspecting landlady that all her beds were full, but that in pity for her distressed condition some contrivance would be made to let her have part of a bed. Charles now hugged himself at the success of his scheme, and, after he had partaken of some refreshment, was, to his great astonishment, conducted by the servant to the bedroom of the landlady herself, where he was left alone to undress. In this dilemma he scarcely knew how to act. To retreat he knew not how without risking discovery.

However, into bed he went, convulsed with silent laughter. He had not been in bed many minutes before Mrs. 'Boniface,' who was upwards of sixty years, but completely the character in size and shape, made her appearance. Charles struggled hard with himself for some moments, but the comic scene had such an effect on him at last that he could contain himself no longer, and at the instant the old lady got into bed burst into a fit of laughter."

Mrs. Boniface, believing "the poor young girl was in a fit," got up as fast as she could, and roared out so loudly and effectually for help that everybody in the house was alarmed, and the itinerant actresses coming into the chamber discovered, to their intense astonishment, who it was that the landlady had given half of her bed to. The laughter spread, was taken up on the stairs, and echoed from room to room, until the whole house rang with it. The anger of the landlady was appeased. This occurred in 1730 or 1731.

An old friend of mine, who in his time has been actor, artist, journalist, dramatist, and novelist, and is now a well-known London editor, once told me the following story of his first connection with the stage.

He was a feeble, consumptive lad of sixteen, when the drunkenness and cruelty of a worthless step-father drove him penniless from home. All through one long, wretched, and utterly hopeless day he had been wandering through the streets of London seeking employment. Naturally shy, reserved, and timid, his awkward mode of addressing a stranger while perplexed what account to give of himself, together with the hesitation, stammering, and blus.h.i.+ng which accompanied it, had brought upon him nothing but scornful treatment, insulting suspicions, and failure after failure. He found himself at the close of a long, hot day, with burning feet and aching limbs, hungry, faint, and plunged into the very lowest depths of despair, on the banks of the New River, where he had often been before to fish. His desire was to escape observation, and he dragged himself along, pa.s.sed fishermen and boys, until, finding their line stretched out from one to another still far ahead, he sat down in the long gra.s.s completely exhausted, and turning on his face, wept silently.

Now it so happened that a tall, lank, sallow-faced young fisherman, with a beard of a fortnight's growth, and clothes of a once fas.h.i.+onable cut, but then threadbare, discoloured, ill-fitting, and very greasy at the cuffs and collar, particularly noted the tall, thin boy, and presently strolled up to, and sat down beside him.

"Hallo, guv'nor," said he; "what's up?"

The poor boy had no voice and no heart to reply, so he pretended to be asleep.

"Wat's yer been a doin' on? Run away from home?"

After a pause, and without moving, the poor lad said,--

"I've got no home now."

"Where do you come from?"

"Not very far."

"Where are you going to?"

"Don't know."

"Have you got any money?"

"None."

"Where's your father and mother?"

"Father's dead."

"And yer mother? Can't she keep yer? Ain't she got no home neither?"

The boy felt that any attempt to reply would betray his violent emotion.

He got up silently and walked away.

The stranger followed, overtook him, and walked beside him.

"You've come from a long way off, young un--ain't yer?"

The runaway nodded, although he was really within about a mile and a half of his starting-point.

"Yer seems awfully tired. Why I do b'lieve as yer a crying. Wot's the matter?"

There was an expression of sincere sympathy in the man's face, and my young friend answered in a low faint voice, broken with sobs,--

"I've no home, and no relatives or friends to go to; and I don't know what to do."

The man eyed him very curiously before he replied,--