"Their Majesties' Servants." Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3)

"One Foote, a player," is Walpole's contemptuous reference to him who was otherwise designated as the "British Aristophanes." But, as often happens, the player was as good a man...

Mr. Isaac Bickerstaffe has laid it down as a rule that it is the duty of every person in a theatrical audience to show his "attention, understanding, and virtue." To the insuper...

When Garrick commenced his career as actor, he was twenty-five years of age, and, according to Pond's portrait, a very handsome fellow. In the first burst of his triumph, Cibber...

In the year 1671, the coffee-house politicians, the fine gentlemen, the scholars, and the gossips generally, were in no lack of themes for discussion. In Bow Street, the quidnun...

Great was the confusion in, and small the prosperity of, the theatres after the death of Wilks, and withdrawal of Cibber. Highmore, now chief patentee, opened Drury; but Theophi...

The opposition between Garrick and Barry was well sustained during the season of 1752-53. The former had a forcible second and substitute in Mossop, and an attractive lady to wo...

Artists who have been wont to look into the _Vicar of Wakefield_, _Gil Blas_, and last century comedies, for picturesque subjects, would find account in referring to the lives o...

Outside the five-and-thirty years of Barry's professional life, little is known of him. As of Betterton, it may be said, he laboured, loved, suffered losses, and died. It is the...

This new actor, Spranger Barry, who has come to London to wrestle, as it were, with Garrick, is now in his twenty-seventh year, and has been but two years, brief noviciate, on t...

In Mr. Secretary Southwell's office, in Dublin, there sits the young son of one of the Pursuivants of the Lord Lieutenant; he is not writing a _précis_, he is copying out the pa...

As Mr. Wilks passes along, to or from rehearsal, there are two young girls of about sixteen years of age who gaze at him admiringly. Day after day the graceful actor remarks thi...

In 1753-4 Mrs. Cibber returned to Drury; she played Juliet to Garrick's Romeo, and with him in every piece that admitted of their playing together. But Barry gained in Miss Noss...

He had selected the part of Richard III., for reasons which now appear singular. "He had often declared," says Davies, "he would never choose a character that was not suitable t...

Perhaps the last of the players who had been contemporary with Betterton, died when Richard Ryan[87] departed this life, at his house in Crown Court, Westminster, in August 1760...

That good-tempered woman, who is looking with admiration at the pretty and delicate child who is drawing water from the Liffey, is Madame Violante. She is mistress of a booth fo...

During the remainder of the period that Garrick and Barry continued at the same house, the stage seemed to languish as their career drew to a close. Barry's energies slackened,...

Hitherto, under the mismanagement of the lazy and reckless patentee, Fleetwood, Drury Lane had fallen to a level with Sadler's Wells--tumblers and rope-dancers being put forward...

The season of 1757-58 was the last of the series during which Barry opposed Garrick. At the close of it, Spranger proceeded to Dublin, taking with him, from Drury Lane, versatil...

After playing some nights at the Opera House, in 1766, and with Foote at the little house in the Haymarket, where Thalia and Melpomene reigned on alternate nights, in 1767, Barr...

Between the season of 1729-30, and that of 1733-34, great changes took place. It is correct to say, that the stage "declined;" but if we lose Mrs. Oldfield in the former period,...

"Mrs. Cibber dead!" said Garrick, "then tragedy has died with her!"[91] When he uttered this, on the 31st of January 1766, he little knew that a young girl, named Sarah Kemble,...

But for a murder in the house of a Mrs. Bungy, Dublin would not have had its famous old theatre in that locality, which the popular voice _would_ call by the name of _Smock Alle...