Part 28
I have said that Quin was the greatest of Falstaffs, but the _greatest_ in the physical acceptation of the term, was undoubtedly Stephen Kemble. This actor was born almost upon the boards. His clever, but not very gentle-tempered mother, had just concluded her performance of Anne Bullen, in a barn, or something like it, at Kingstown, Herefordshire (1758), when Stephen was born, about the period when, according to the action of the play, the Princess Elizabeth is supposed to first see the light. Stephen when he had grown to manhood, weighed as much as all his sisters and brothers put together; and on the 7th of October, 1802, he made his appearance at Drury, in the character of Falstaff. This was nearly twenty years after he had made his _début_ in London, at Covent Garden, in Othello. Bannister junior prefaced his performance of the companion of Prince Hal, by some humorous lines, joking on the heaviness of the actor. As Pope played Hotspur, I should fancy, if Pope then was anything like what he was some fifteen or sixteen years later, that Hotspur was even heavier than Sir John. The lines alluded to were accounted witty; and I will conclude my record of the principal actors who have represented the knight, by reproducing them.
A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made, Lends to your fav’rite bard his pond’rous aid; No man in buckram, he! no stuffing gear, No feather bed, nor e’en a pillow here! But all good honest flesh and blood, and bone, And weighing, more or less, some thirty stone. Upon the northern coast by chance we caught him, And hither, in a broad-wheeled wagon, brought him: For in a chaise the varlet ne’er could enter, And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture. Blessed with unwieldiness, at least his size Will favor find in every critic’s eyes. And should his humor and his mimic art Bear due proportion to his outward part, As once was said of Macklin in the Jew, “This is the very Falstaff Shakespeare drew.” To you, with diffidence, he bids me say, Should you approve, you may command his stay, To lie and swagger here another day. If not, to better men he’ll leave his sack, And go, as ballast, in a collier back.
In concluding this section of my gossiping record, I will add that the supposition of Shakespeare having intended to represent Sir John Oldcastle under the title of Sir John Falstaff, is _merely_ a supposition. It has never been satisfactorily made out. Far otherwise is the case with that gallant Welsh man-at-arms, _Fluellin_. The original of this character was a David Gam of Brecknock, who having killed a cousin with an unpronounceable name, in the High Street of Brecknock, avoided the possibly unpleasant consequences by joining the Lancastrian party. _Gam_ was merely a nickname, having reference to an obliquity of vision in the doughty and disputative David. The real name was Llewellyn; and if Shakespeare disguised the appellation, it was from notions of delicacy, probably, as the descendants of the hero were well known and respected at the English court in Shakespeare’s time. Jones, in his “History of Brecknockshire,” identifies the personage in question in this way: “I have called Fluellin a burlesque character, because his pribbles and prabbles, which were generally out-heroded, sound ludicrously to an English as well as a Welsh ear; yet, after all, Llewellyn is a brave soldier and an honest fellow. He is admitted into a considerable degree of intimacy with the King, and stands high in his good opinion, which is a strong presumptive proof, notwithstanding Shakespeare, the better to conceal his object, describes the death of Sir David Gam, that he intended David Llewellyn by his portrait of the testy Welshman, for there was no other person of that country in the English army, who could have been supposed to be upon such terms of familiarity with the King.” It is singular that the descendants of the Welsh knight subsequently dropped the proud old name with more l’s in it than syllables, and adopted the monosyllabic _soubriquet_. Squinting David, who fought so well at Agincourt, would have knocked down any man who would have dared to address him personally as “Gam,” that is, “game,” or “cock-eyed.” His posterity proved less susceptible; and Mr. Jones says of them, in a burst of melancholy over fallen greatness: “At different periods between the years 1550 and 1700, I have seen the descendants of the hero of Agincourt (who lived like a wolf and died like a lion) in the possession of every acre of ground in the county of Brecon; at the commencement of the eighteenth century, I find one of them common bellman of the town of Brecknock, and before the conclusion, two others, supported by the inhabitants of the parish where they reside; and even the name of Gam is, in the legitimate line, extinct.” Mr. Jones might have comforted himself by remembering that as the Gams went out, the Kembles came in, and that the illustrious Sarah dignified by her birth the garret of that “Shoulder of Mutton” public-house, which stood in the street where chivalrous but squinting Davy had slain his cousin with the unpronounceable name.
John Kemble occasionally took some unwarrantable liberties with Shakespeare. When he produced the “Merry Wives of Windsor” at Covent Garden, in April, 1804 (in which he played Ford to Cooke’s Falstaff), he deprived Sir Hugh Evans of his knightly title, out of sheer ignorance, or culpable carelessness. Blanchard was announced for “Hugh Evans,” without the _Sir_. Hawkins, quoting Fuller, says that “anciently in England, there were more Sirs than Knights;” and as I have noticed in another page, the monosyllabic Sir was common to both clergymen and knights. To the first, however, only by courtesy, when they had attained their degree of B. A. In a “New Trick to cheat the Devil,” Anne says to her sire, “Nay, sir;” to which the father replies--
“Sir me no sirs! I am no knight nor churchman.”
But John Kemble was complimentary to Shakespeare, compared with poor Frederick Reynolds, who turned the “Merry Wives of Windsor” into an opera, in 1824; and although Dowton did not sing Falstaff, as Lablache subsequently did, the two wives, represented by Miss Stephens and Miss Cubitt, warbled, instead of being merry in prose, and gave popularity to “I know a bank.” At the best, Fenton is but an indifferent part, but Braham was made to render it one marked especially by nonsense. Greenwood had painted a scene representing Windsor under _a glowing summer sky_, under which _Fenton_ (Braham) entered, and remarked, very like Shakespeare: “How I love this spot where dear Anne Page has often met me and confessed her love! Ha! I think the _sky is overcast_--the wind, too, blows like an approaching storm. Well, let it blow on! I am prepared to brave its fury.” Whereupon the orchestra commenced the symphony, and Mr. Braham took a turn up the stage, according to the then approved plan, before he commenced his famous air of “Blow, blow, thou _winter_ wind!” And the fun-anent Falstaff and the Fords was kept waiting for nonsense like this!
While on the subject of the chivalrous originals of the mock knights of the Stage, I may be permitted to mention here, that Jonson’s Bobadil was popularly said to have been named after, if not founded upon, a knight in the army of the Duke of Alva, engaged in subduing the Netherlands beneath the despotism of Philip II. According to Strada, after the victory at Giesen, near Mons, in 1570, Alva sent Captain Bobadilla to Spain, to inform Philip of the triumph to his arms. “The ostentation of the message, and still more of the person who bore it, was the origin of the name being applied to any vain-glorious boaster.” The Bobadilla family was an illustrious one, and can hardly be supposed to have furnished a member who, in any wise, resembles Jonson’s swashbuckler. On the other hand, there was Boabdil, the last sultan of Granada, who had indeed borne himself lustily, in his early days, in the field, but who at last cried like a child at losing that Granada which he was not man enough to defend. But it would be injustice even to the son of Muley Abel Hassan, to imagine that Jonson only took his name to distinguish therewith the knight of huge words and weapons who lodged with Oliver Cob the Water-bearer.
The few other Stage Knights whom I have to name, I will introduce them to the reader in the next chapter.
STAGE KNIGHTS.
“The stage and actors are not so contemptful As every innovating puritan, And ignorant swearer, out of jealous envy, Would have the world imagine.”--GEORGE CHAPMAN.
The Commonwealth had no admiration for the stage, and no toleration for actors. When theatricals looked up again, the stage took its revenge, and seldom represented a puritan who was not a knave. There is an instance of this in the old play, entitled “The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street.” “Wilt steal me thy master’s chain?” quoth Captain Idle to Nicholas St. Antlings, the puritan serving-man. “Steal my master’s chain!” quoth Nicholas; “no, it shall ne’er be said that Nicholas St. Antlings committed bird-lime. Anything else that I can do,” adds the casuist in a serge jerkin, “had it been to rob, I would ha’ done it; but I must not steal, that’s the word, the literal, _Thou shalt not steal_; and would you wish me to steal then?” “No, faith,” answers Pyeboard, the scholar; “that were too much;--but wilt thou nim it from him?” To which honest St. Nicholas, so anxious to observe the letter of the law, so careless about its spirit, remarks, with alacrity, “_That_, I will!”
I have said in another page, that ridicule was especially showered down upon some of those whom Oliver delighted to honor. As late as the era of Sir George Etherege, we find “one of Oliver’s knights” figuring as the buffoon of that delicate gentleman’s comedy, “The Comical Revenge.” It is hardly creditable to the times, or to the prevailing taste, that the theatre in Lincoln’s-inn Fields cleared one thousand pounds, in less than a month, by this comedy; and that the company gained more reputation by it, than by any preceding piece represented on the same stage. The plot is soon told. Two very fine and not very profligate gentlemen, Lord Beaufort and Colonel Bruce, are in love with a tolerably-refined lady, Graciana. The lord wins the lady, and the philosophical soldier accepts a certain Aurelia, who has the singular merit of being in love with the Colonel. The under-plot has “Oliver’s knight” for its hero. The latter is a Sir Nicholas Cully who is cheated out of a promissory note for one thousand pounds, by two gentlemen-sharpers, Wheadle and Palmer. Sir Nicholas is partly saved by the gay, rather than moral, Sir Frederick Frolick. The latter recovers the note, but he passes off his mistress on Sir Nicholas as his sister, and induces him to marry her. The only difference between the sharpers and the “Knight baronet,” Sir Frederick, is this:--Wheadle had dressed up _his_ mistress, Grace, as Widow Rich; and Sir Nicholas had engaged to marry her, under certain penalties, forced on him by Wheadle and his friend. Sir Frederick, at the conclusion, marries the Widow, to oblige a lady who is fond of him, and the curtain falls upon the customary indecent jokes, and the following uneasy and metrical maxim:--
“On what small accidents depends our Fate, While Chance, not Prudence, makes us fortunate.”
What the two Bettertons made of Lord Beaufort and Graciana, I do not pretend to say, but Nokes is said to have been “screamingly farcical,” to adopt an equivalent modern phrase, in Sir Nicholas Cully. His successor, Norris, fell short of the great original in broad humor, but Nokes himself was surpassed by Dogget, who played “Oliver’s Knight” with all the comic effect which he imparted to the then low comedy part of Shylock. It is inexplicable to me how any actor would ever have extracted a laugh from the audience at anything he had to say, or chose to do, when enacting the “Cavalier of the Commonwealth.” There is not a humorous speech, nor a witty remark, nor a comic situation for the knight to profit by. In 1664, however, people could laugh heartily at seeing one of the Protector’s knights swindled, and beaten on the stage. The knight is represented as a thirsty drunkard, “all the drier for the last night’s wetting,” with a more eager desire to attack the ladies of cavaliers than cavaliers themselves, and no reluctance to cheat any man who will undertake to throw a main with him at dice. He has, however, great reluctance to pay his losses, when he unconsciously falls into the hands of a greater knave than himself, and bodily declares--
“I had been a madman to play at such a rate, If I had ever intended to pay.”
He had less boldness in accepting the results of such a declaration, and in meeting his antagonist at the end of a rapier. He is brought to the sticking-point, just as Acres is, by an assurance that his adversary is an arrant coward. The scene of “the Field” is worth quoting in part, inasmuch as it is not only an illustration of the spirit of chivalry, as imputed to Oliver’s knights by cavalier-poets, but also as it will, perhaps, serve to show that when Sheridan sat down at his table in Orchard Street, Portman Square, to bring Acres and Beverley together in mortal combat, he probably had a copy of Etherege’s play before--or the memory of it strong within--him.
Wheadle and Cully are on the stage:--
_W._ What makes you so serious?
_C._ I am sorry I did not provide for both our safeties.
_W._ How so?
_C._ Colonel Hanson is my neighbor, and very good friend. I might have acquainted him with the business, and got him, with a file of musketeers, to secure us all.
_W._ But this would not secure your honor. What would the world have judged.
_C._ Let the world have judged what it would! Have we not had many precedents of late? and the world knows not what to judge.
It may be observed here, that Sir Nicholas may be supposed to be alluding to such men as Hans Behr, who was much addicted to firing printed broadsides at his adversaries, who advertised him as “_poltroon_” in return. There are some placards having reference to this matter, in the British Museum, which admirably display the caution of the wordsmen and the spirit of the swordsmen of that day. But to resume. Cully, observing that his adversary has not arrived, suggests that his own duty has been fulfilled, and that he “will be going,” the more particularly, says the knight, as “the air is so bleak, I can no longer endure it.”
_W._ Have a little patience. Methinks I see two making toward us in the next close.
_C._ Where? Where? ’Tis them!
_W._ Bear up bravely, now, like a man.
_C._ I protest I am the worst dissembler, now, in cases of this nature.
_W._ _Allons!_ Look like a man of resolution. Whither, whither go you?
_C._ But to the next house to make my will, for fear of the worst. Tell them I’ll be here again, presently.
The provident knight is, however, detained, and on Palmer and that gentleman’s second appearing, the swords are measured, “and all strip but Cully, who fumbles with his doublet.”
_P._ Come, sir! are you ready for this sport?
_C._ By-and-by, sir. I will not rend the buttons from my doublet for no man’s pleasure.
And so “Oliver’s Knight” continues to procrastinate; he can not be either pricked or pinked into action; and at length, pleading that his conscience will not let him fight in a wrong cause, he purchases a whole skin, at the price of a promissory note for a thousand pounds.
I have said that there is no comic situation for the actor who represents Sir Nicholas, but the scene from which the above passages are taken may, perhaps, be an exception to the rule. That Sheridan has profited by it, will be clear to any reader who will take the trouble to compare this scene with the fighting scene in the “Rivals.” The latter is far richer in humor, and while we care very little what becomes of Sir Nicholas, we should regret that any harm should befall poor Acres--although he prefers fighting at forty paces, would stand sidewise to be shot at, feels that he would be horribly afraid if he were alone, and confesses that valor oozes out at the palms of his hands when his adversary appears in sight, with pistols for two.
Sir Nicholas is in spirits again when making love to one whom he considers a woman of rank and fortune. No cavalier could then vie with him in finery. “I protest,” he says, “I was at least at sixteen brokers, before I could put myself exactly in the fashion.” But with all this, he is a craven again when he is called upon to enter and address her who awaits the wooing with impatience. “Come!” he exclaims, “I will go to the tavern and swallow two whole quarts of wine instantly; and when I am drunk, ride on a drawer’s back, to visit her.” Wheadle suggests that “some less frolic will do, to begin with.”--“I will cut three drawers over the pate, then,” says the knight, “and go with a tavern-lanthorn before me at noonday;”--just as very mad gallants were wont to do.
The liquor has not the effect of rendering Oliver’s knight decent, for in proposing the health of “my lord’s sister,” he does it in the elegant form of “Here’s a brimmer to her then, and all the fleas about her;” offers to break the windows to show his spirit, and in the lady’s very presence exclaims, “Hither am I come to be drunk, that you may see me drunk, and here’s a health to your flannel petticoat.” The latter _gentillesse_ is by way of proof of the knight’s quality, for it was of the very essence of polite manners, when a spirited gentleman drank to a spirited lady, to strain the wine through what the Chesterfields and Mrs. Chapones of that day, if such were to be found, would not have blushed to call “their smocks.”
But enough of the way in which the stage represented “one of Oliver’s knights.” He is not worse than the courtiers and gentlemen by whom he is swindled out of his money and into a wife. Nay, nearly the last sentence put into his mouth is, at least, a complimentary testimony to the side of which Sir Nicholas is but an unworthy member. “If I discover this,” he remarks, “I am lost. I shall be ridiculous even to our own party.”--The reader will, probably, not require to be reminded that before Etherege drew Cully, Jonson had depicted Sogliardo, and that the latter, in the very spirit of Oliver’s knight, remarks:--“I do not like the humor of challenge; it may be accepted.”
The stage, from about the middle of the seventeenth century to nearly the middle of the succeeding century, was uncommonly busy with knights as heroes of new plays. The piece which brought most money to the theatrical treasury, after the “Comical Revenge,” was the “Sir Martin Mar-all,” an adaptation by Dryden, from the “Etourdi” of Molière. Such adaptations were in fashion, and the heroes of the French author were invariably knighted on their promotion to the English stage. Such was the case with “Sir Solomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb,” adapted by Carill, from Molière’s “Ecole des Femmes.” The same course was adopted by Mrs. Behn when she transferred Molière’s “Malade Imaginaire” to the stage at Dorset Gardens, and transformed _Argon_ into _Sir Patient Fancy_. One of the characters in this intolerably indecent play instructs the city knight’s lady how to divide her time according to the fashion set by “the quality.” “From eight to twelve,” he says, “you ought to employ in dressing. Till two, at dinner. Till five, in visits. Till seven, at the play. Till nine, in the park; and at ten, to supper with your lover.”
In the “Sir Barnaby Whig, or No Wit like a Woman’s,” one of D’Urfey’s comedies, and produced in 1681, we have again a hero who is described as one of Oliver’s knights. The play is avowedly a party piece, and the author, in his prologue, remarks,
“That he shall know both parties now, he glories; By hisses, Whigs; and by their claps, the Tories.”
The audience at the “Theatre Royal,” in the days of Charles II., was made especially merry by this poor jest. Sir Barnaby is represented as a Cromwellian fanatic, who will not drink the King’s health; is in an agony of terror at hearing that an army of twenty thousand men is about to sweep every rebel from the land; turns traitor; sings a comic song against the Roundheads; is saluted as Rabbi Achitophel; offers to turn Roman Catholic or Mohammedan; and is finally consigned to Newgate.
Mrs. Behn, in the same year, had _her_ political knight as well as D’Urfey. In this lady’s more than usually licentious play, the “City Heiress,” performed at Dorset Gardens, she has a Sir Timothy Treat-all for her comic hero. She boasts in her introduction that her play is political, loyal, true Tory all over; and as “Whiggism has become a jest,” she makes a caricature of Sir Timothy, an old, seditious, Oliverian knight, who keeps open house for commonwealth-men and true-blue Protestants. He is contrasted with two Tory knights, Sir Anthony and Sir Charles Meriwill, and a Tory gentleman, named Wilding. The old Whig knight, however, is by far the least disreputable fellow of the lot. The Tory knights and their friends are rogues, perjurers, and something worse. When they are not on the stage, Mrs. Behn is not afraid to tell what they are about, and _that_ in the very plainest language. “D--n the City!” exclaims the courtly Sir Charles. “Ay, ay!” adds his uncle, Sir Anthony, “and _all_ the Whigs, Charles, d--n all the Whigs!”--And in such wise did Mrs. Afra Behn take vengeance upon political enemies, to the infinite delight of loyal audiences. How the Whig knights ever kept their own against the assaults made on them in plays, prologues, and epilogues, is, as Mr. Slick says, “a caution!” It is a fact, however, that these political plays were far more highly relished than those which merely satirized passing social follies. Audiences roared at the dull jokes against the Oliverian knights, but they had no relish for the rhyme-loving Sir Hercules Buffoon, of Lacy.
For one stage knight we may be said to be indebted to Charles II. himself. It was from a hint from him that Crowne wrote his “Sir Courtly Nice,” produced at the Theatre Royal shortly after the death of Charles. Sir Courtly alludes to the death of one, and the accession of a new, king, in very flattering terms:--
“What nation upon earth, besides our own, But by a loss like ours had been undone? Ten ages scarce such royal worth display As England lost and found in one strange day.”
Of all the comedies with knights for their heroes, this one of Sir Courtly Nice retained a place longest on the stage. The hero was originally played by handsome, but hapless Will Mountfort. Cibber played it at the Haymarket in Queen Anne’s time, 1706, and again at Drury Lane, and before George I. at Hampton Court. Foote and Cibber, jun., and Woodward, were there presentatives of the gallant knight, and under George II. Foote played it, for the first time, at Drury Lane, and the younger Cibber at Covent Garden, in 1746, and Woodward, at the latter house, in 1751. The last-named actor was long the favorite representative of the gentlemanly knight, retaining the character as his own for full a quarter of a century, and being succeeded, but not surpassed in it, by sparkling Lewis, at Covent Garden, in 1781.