Chapter III: Part 3

“Thank you, sir. I know how to take your fine speeches. Don’t think they deceive me.”

“I’m rather a poor hand at compliments,” replied Effingham; “but, really, it is hard to do you the injustice, my fair cousin, of withholding them. Come, no reply, for I see my Cousin Clara is going to say something more flattering than what you are about to utter.”

“Oh, no,” says Clara, slightly blushing; “I was only going to say that _Shylock_ really frightened me.”

“It was very well done; much like Shuter at Castle Garden. How did you like it, Cousin Henrietta? Come, your criticism.”

“Oh, what could you expect from a country girl like me?” and broke off the conversation by announcing the approach of a fox-hunter, who was an admirer.

“How I envy them,” he says to Clara, applying to his nostrils, with a listless air, a delicate kind of snuff, “they are so gay.”

Then after some conversation with Clara preparatory to making her the proffer of his hand, he describes his condition as “out of sorts,” as “rusting.”

“Yes, more than rusting--I take interest in scarcely anything; I am wearied to death--with everything. What is life worth? Here are some hundreds of persons and they all seem delighted with the play, which tires me to death. I take no interest in it. _Shylock_ and _Antonio_ strut and spout without amusing me. I am already weary and everybody else seems to be impatient for the reappearance of the wonders. Why are they so much amused? For my part I am sick of all this and only stay because you stay. The nearest approach to happiness I make is in your presence,” at which, of course, the young lady blushes, and after this near approach he follows it up by declaring “how beautiful she is,” that he really thinks that she could charm away his melancholy if she desired, upon which she asks:

“How, pray?”

“By smiling at me.”

Clara smiled and said:

“Be merry then; indeed, Cousin, you could become so again if you chose. Do not determine to find fault with everything and think everything means you. Seek novelty; you say that all here seem to take pleasure in the play while you do not. They are pleased because it is new to them. I have never seen a play, and I am highly pleased. If you have been often to the theater there is nothing strange in your thinking this poor one excellent, though it seems beautiful to me. But you will find usually an interest in other things. Try it, and see if my philosophy is not true.”

His response is that he knew but one means.

“What is that?”

“To have a companion.”

The meaning suddenly flashed upon her, and she turned away.

“Clara, dearest Clara, if you take such an interest in my welfare why--”

Sh-h-h-h came in a loud murmur from the audience, the curtain having risen, which Effingham recognizes, and ejaculates:

“How ridiculous, here in the theater.” Upon which his eye suddenly fell upon one of the actresses, and he almost uttered an exclamation. It was the unknown lady of the wood.

The novelist continues:

The unknown lady was no gentle Virginia maiden, no “lady,” as she had said with perfect calmness at their meeting--only one of the company of comedians. Her singular expression when she uttered the words,

“I think you will see me again,” occurred to the young man, and he wondered that this easy solution of the riddle had not occurred to him at once.

“What was her name?” Mr. Effingham drew forth his bill and saw opposite the name of _Portia_, Miss Beatrice Hallam.

“Ah, yes,” he said, carelessly, “the same we were speculating upon this morning. Let us see how _Portia_ looks, and what change the footlights work in her face.”

He sat down in the corner of the stage upon a wicker chair and scanned _Portia_ critically. Her costume was faultless. It consisted of a gown and underskirt of fawn-colored silk trimmed with silver, and a single band of gold encircled each wrist, clearly relieved against the white, finely-rounded arm. Her hair, which was a beautiful chestnut, had been carried back from the temples and powdered after the fashion of the time, and around her beautiful, swan-like neck the young woman wore a necklace of pearls of rare brilliancy. Thus the costume of the character defied criticism, and Mr. Effingham passed on to the face and figure. These we have already described. The countenance of Beatrice Hallam wore the same simple, yet firm and collected expression, which Mr. Effingham had observed in their first interview, and her figure had the same indefinable grace and beauty. Every movement which she made might have suited a royal palace, and in her large, brilliant eyes Mr. Effingham sought the least trace of confusion. She surveyed the audience, whilst the _Prince of Morocco_ was uttering his speech, with perfect simplicity, but her eyes not for a single moment rested on the young men collected at the corner of the stage. For her they seemed to have no existence, and she turned to the _Prince_ again. That gentleman having uttered his prescribed number of lines, _Portia_ advanced graciously towards him and addressed him. Her carelessness was gone. She no longer betrayed either indifference or coldness; she was the actress, with her rôle to sustain. She commenced in a voice of noble and queen-like courtesy, a voice of pure music and clear utterance, so to speak, such as few lips possess the power of giving forth. Every word rang and told; there was no hurry, no slurring, no hesitation. It was not an actress delivering a set speech, but the noble _Portia_, doing the honors of her beautiful palace at Belmont. The scene ended with great applause--the young woman had evidently produced a most favorable impression on the audience. But she seemed wholly unconscious of this compliment, and made her exit quite calmly.

A buzz ran through the theater; the audience were discussing the merits of _Portia_. On the stage, too, she was the subject of many comments, and this continued until _Lancelot_ made his appearance and went through his speech; then _Portia_ reappeared with the _Prince_, and was greeted with great applause.

Mr. Effingham leaned forward and touched the young woman’s sleeve.

“Come,” he said with easy carelessness, and scarcely moderating his voice; “come, fair _Portia_, while that tiresome fellow is making his speech, and talk to me a little. We are old acquaintances, and you are indebted to me for directing you home.”

“Yes, sir,” said Beatrice, turning her head slightly; “but pardon me--I have my part to attend to.”

“I don’t care.”

“Excuse me, sir; but I do.”

“Really, madame, you are very stiff for an actress. Is it so very unusual a thing to ask a moment’s conversation?”

“I know that it is the fashion in London and elsewhere, sir, but I dislike it. It destroys my conception of the character,” she said, calmly.

Mr. Effingham laughed. “Come here again, and talk to me,” he said. “Did you not say we should meet again?”

“Yes, sir; and I also said I was not a lady.”

“Well, what is the meaning of that addition?”

“It means, sir, that being an actress I am not at liberty to amuse myself here as I might were I a lady in a drawing room. Pardon me, sir,” she added, calmly, “I am neglecting what I have engaged to do--play _Portia_.”

And the young woman, quietly disengaging her sleeve from Mr. Effingham’s fingers, moved away to another part of the stage.

“Here is a pretty affair,” said Mr. Effingham to himself, as he fell back languidly into the chair from which, however, he had not deigned to rise wholly when addressing the young actress. “What are things coming to when an actress treats a gentleman in this manner. I really believe the girl thinks I am not good enough for her. ‘Pardon me, sir,’ was there ever such insufferable prudery and affectation. No doubt she wishes to catch me, and commences with this piquant piece of acting, or, perhaps,” added the elegant young gentleman, smoothing his frill, “she fell in love with me the other day when we met and is afraid she will betray herself. Not talk when I desire to talk with her, indeed, and yonder all of these people have seen her careless treatment of me and are laughing at me. Fortunately I am proof against these jeers. Come, come, let us see if Miss Portia will treat me as badly next time.”

_Portia_ entered next with the _Prince of Arragon_, and while that gentleman was addressing the caskets, Mr. Effingham again applied himself to the task of forcing the young woman to converse with him.

“Why did you treat me so just now?” he said, with abrupt carelessness.

“How, sir.”

“You refused to talk to me.”

“I had my part to perform.”

“That is no excuse.”

“Besides, sir,” added the young woman, surveying Mr. Effingham with an indifferent glance, “I know you only very slightly.”

“Know me only slightly!” said Mr. Effingham affecting surprise.

“A chance meeting is very slight acquaintance, sir; but I offer this as no apology for refusing to do what I am now doing, converse with you on the stage.”

“Really, one would say you were a queen speaking to a subject instead of an actress--”

“Honored with the attentions of a gentleman, you would add, sir,” she interrupted, quite calmly.

“As you please.”

“Pray speak to me no more, sir. I forget my part, and the audience are looking at you.”

“Let them.”

“I see some angry faces,” said the young woman; “they do not understand the fashions of London, sir.”

“What care I.”

“Please release my sleeve, sir--that is my line.”

The gallery uttered a prolonged hiss as _Portia_ disengaged her arm. Mr. Effingham turned around and looked up to the gallery from which the hiss came; this glance of haughty defiance might have provoked another exhibition of the same sort, but _Portia_ at that moment commenced her speech.

Thereafter the young woman came no more near Mr. Effingham, and treated that gentleman’s moody glances with supreme disregard. What was going on in Mr. Effingham’s mind, and why did he lose some of his careless listlessness, when, clasping her beautiful hands, the lovely girl, raising her eyes to heaven like one of the old Italian pictures, uttered that sublime discourse on the “quality of mercy”; and how did it happen that she sobbed, almost, in that tender, magical voice:

But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself.

How did it chance that Mr. Effingham led the enthusiastic applause and absolutely arose erect in the excess of his enthusiasm?

As she passed him in going out he made her a low bow and said, “Pardon me! You are a great actress.”

The play proceeded and ended amid universal applause. Mr. Hallam led out _Portia_ in response to uproarious calls, and thanked the audience for their kindness to his daughter. Beatrice received the applause with her habitual calmness, inclining her head slightly as she disappeared, and the audience separated, rolling well pleased to their homes.[21]

In 1886 a large quarto volume was published entitled “A History of the American Theatre before the Revolution,” by George O. Seilhamer. There appeared to be no occasion for a special history of this particular period of twenty-nine years, that is from 1749 to the Revolution, as Dunlap’s history extended from 1752 to about 1817, and what was known at the time of Mr. Seilhamer’s publication respecting the theater in North America before 1752 had already been published in Ireland’s “History of the New York Stage,” and in the paper here reprinted, except one item to be referred to hereafter.

There were some further corrections to be made to Dunlap’s history, but they were not very important or numerous, and some additional information to be added respecting theatrical performances in Maryland and Pennsylvania that was new and interesting. This was included in this special history, which, in addition to what had been previously published, was largely made up of the full casts, as they are called in theatrical parlance, of plays given at particular dates during the Colonial period; that is, the name of the performer of each part, taken from the small play-bills that are printed for the use of the audience. As it is the custom in theaters for the prompter to keep a file of these bills each season, and the habit of some persons to keep the play-bill of any performance they have seen, considerable collections of these small play-bills have been preserved, and exist in private collections or in institutions or clubs, of which Mr. Seilhamer has made copious use, and has also inserted in this volume long lists of the performances given at particular dates and tabulated statements of the leading parts of actors and actresses, and the statements of performances, culled from the Colonial newspapers, by all of which insertions the volume is augmented to the magnitude of a large quarto.

Dunlap, while stating that play-bills and theatrical advertisements are of assistance, or, as he expressed it, “throw light” (that is, they may assist the historian in the construction of his narrative), evidently thought that this minute information, or detail, of this kind was not, save in exceptional instances, to be inserted bodily in a history, for he apologizes to his readers for inserting three full casts of plays that were performed in the years 1752, 53, and 54, in these words: “Particularity of this kind would be unnecessary in regard to events of more recent date and _out of place in a history of a theatre_, but in this early stage of the work before us, we think a play-bill a valuable source of information and gladly insert it,”[22] and in this respect we incline to the opinion of Dunlap.

But Seilhamer does not. In this age of many books, the aim of able historical writers is condensation with clearness, but with him it appears to have been expansion with plenty of material; for while Dunlap, in a history extending over sixty-five years, inserts but three full casts of plays, Seilhamer, in one extending over only twenty-nine, years, inserts 253, and adds also one-fifth of that number of theatrical advertisements and numerous lists of performances at different dates, and tables of prominent performers’ leading parts, which are all incorporated with the text, and form a part of the narrative. I apprehend that it was the chief material that he had; that he meant to supplant Dunlap as the future historian of the American Theater, and that the amount of other information that was new, that is, that had not previously been published, would have been for such a purpose so insufficient that it was necessary to swell the book out to the dimension of a large quarto with material of this kind, connected together by a slight thread of narrative; material of which there was an abundant supply, for he followed up this publication by two more of the same kind in the years 1889 and 1891, each, however, distinguished from the other by a different title, the whole ending in 1797.

To his manifest desire to supplant Dunlap there could be no objection, if he had the ability to produce a better and more interesting book. On the contrary, a history of the American Stage from the earliest knowledge we have of it to the time of publication, by a writer who had the leisure to make the necessary research, and the art so to arrange his material as to make the work reliable and readable, would be a contribution to literature. Seilhamer’s opinion of what he could do, and had done, is subsequently shown by his constant abuse of Dunlap throughout these three volumes, for Dunlap’s name rarely, if ever, occurs without his applying to it some derogatory, contemptuous, or other abusive epithet. Such as the “marvelous chronicler,” “the quality of blundering for which he was remarkable,” or some like term or phrase to belittle him. He says in respect to his history, that “never was a book written to throw light upon a subject that so completely confused it.” “His dates are always wrong.” “He presents to the world the remarkable example of a man who wrote the annals of the American Stage from some scattered memoranda, and out of his own head,” and refers to the “readiness of assumption he was apt to resort to in the absence of facts,” “the consequences of which are” he says, “that the stream of American theatrical history was poisoned at its source”; that “his inaccuracies are so many and so unreasonable that it is impossible not to wonder at the mental equipment of a man that could be guilty of them.” “His statements of facts are” declared to be “always misstatements in whole or in part.” He finds him “inexcusable for not knowing the date of the first appearance of a certain actress and for his want of knowledge of an early American play.” He is declared to have been a failure in everything; as an historian, a novelist, an artist, a theatrical manager, and as a dramatist. A drama of his is a failure for the want of skill in the management of the plot, and the insufficiency of the characters and the incidents; another is disposed of as a “turgid melodrama without action”; all his plays and adaptations of plays are condemned as having passed into deserved oblivion; but as regards the history something had to be conceded, and it is therefore said that, “full of mistakes as it is--mistakes for which it is impossible to forgive him,” it has some features that commend it; such as the account he was able to give from personal knowledge of the players that were on the American stage in the first quarter of the century after the Revolution, which it is conceded “the world could ill afford to lose,” and might well be conceded, as it is more interesting than anything in Seilhamer’s three volumes. But even this is qualified by his saying, in respect to the Dunlap Society being named after him, that “there probably never was a writer less deserving of such an honor than Dunlap,” that his plays were “without merit, either for stage representation or as literary productions,” and that his history was “at once dull and inaccurate,” with the further observation that he “might have been looked upon as an interesting character, had he not been at once jealous and abusive of every one outside of his circle of friends, ignoring the efforts of others not inferior to his own.”

It may be said of this array of accusations against Dunlap that, except in some matters of little importance, they are merely Seilhamer’s own conclusions or assumptions, and derive no additional weight from any facts stated in his volumes. It is a literary mistake for an historical writer to indulge in such continued abuse as this of a previous writer on the same subject. If the first historian has made errors or mistakes, it is sufficient quietly to correct them; but to constantly abuse and belittle him is objectionable and offensive on the part of the second, for it is continually reiterating his own superiority and importance as an historian.

It is especially so in this writer, for he is as prone to indulge in conjectures or assumptions that afterward prove to be unfounded, as he asserts Dunlap is, and in matters quite as important; with this difference, that, when he refers to anything of this kind on the part of Dunlap, it is stigmatized as “the blunder of an ignorant historian,” one example of which will suffice. When Dunlap stated that it was the Hallam Company that first introduced the drama in America, he also stated that this was communicated to him by one of that company, Lewis Hallam, Jr., and which he might reasonably suppose to be true, coming, as it did, from one of that company; but when Seilhamer states that “the history of the drama in this country may be said to begin with the production of Addison’s ‘Cato’ in Philadelphia in August, 1749,” he does so upon the authority only of the item before referred to, which is an entry in a manuscript journal kept by one John Smith of Philadelphia, of the date of August 12, 1749, recording that Smith had been at a friend’s house whose daughter was going, as one of a company, to hear the tragedy of “Cato,” which at that time was the earliest reference known to the performance of a play in the American Colonies, and which Seilhamer assumed to have been the commencement of the drama in this country. Now it had been previously shown in the paper here reprinted, that there was a play-house in New York in 1733, sixteen years before. This interfered with such a conclusion, and as he could not avoid referring to this fact, he did so very boldly, declaring that “as an attempt to transplant the drama to the Colonies, it had no effect upon the development of the American stage,” giving this opinion respecting a period of which he knew nothing, for we now know that many years before this performance of “Cato” in Philadelphia, there were play-houses in New York, Virginia, and South Carolina; that a play was acted in the Colonies in 1718, and that plays may have been performed there as early as 1702.

It appears from “Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia” that there were theatrical performances in Philadelphia in January, 1749, seven months before this performance of “Cato” mentioned in Smith’s journal, and Dunlap also refers to theatrical performances there in 1749; and Watson and Dunlap were of opinion that these were performances by amateurs, for which Seilhamer takes Dunlap to account for, as he calls it, “a snap judgment” and “asserting what he knew nothing about”; “who,” he proceeds to say, “had made up his mind that the drama in America should begin with the Hallam Company, and so contemptuously ignored all previous theatrical efforts”; whilst he, Seilhamer, on the contrary was of the opinion that this performance of “Cato,” in August, 1749, was by Kean & Murray’s Company, who, it is known, came from Philadelphia to New York a year and a half afterwards; which may have been the fact, but there is no certainty about it, and for all that appears to the contrary, Dunlap and Watson may have been right; but Seilhamer evidently determined to dethrone Dunlap, and he therefore not only assumed this, but went much further, by stating that it was “certain” that Thomas Kean was the first actor to attempt _Richard III._ on the American stage. As Colley Cibber’s alteration of “Richard III.” was produced at Drury Lane in 1700, more than half a century before Thomas Kean played the character in New York, and as Cibber’s “Richard III.” was from the beginning and for more than a century afterwards one of the most popular plays that was during that period produced upon the English stage, it is as likely to have been played at Williamsburg or Charlestown or in New York in 1733 as any other; a period when we know that they had theaters at these places, but have very little information as to what plays were performed in them. And in both these erroneous assertions, that is, that the history of the American theater began in 1749, and that Kean was the first to play _Richard III._ in the Colonies, Seilhamer appears to have been unconscious that he was doing the very thing for which he so severely censured Dunlap, that is, giving a “snap judgment by asserting what he knew nothing about.”

Dunlap was, it is true, not remarkable as a dramatist or otherwise as a writer, but he was quite equal to the average literary man in this country at that time. It was a period that gave rise to the query in the “Edinburgh Review,” “Who reads an American book?” Cooper, to whom Dunlap dedicated his history, had not yet appeared, nor Halleck, Drake, or Bryant as poets; and in what might be called American dramatic literature, such as it was, Dunlap was then the most prominent and the most industrious. He wrote, including adaptations from Kotzebue and others, no less than eighty-seven plays. The writer of the article in the “New-York Times,” from which I have quoted, respecting the theater in Charleston in 1736, mentions Dunlap as the “first and most painstaking of the historians of the American stage”; which is true, for if it had not been for exertions of this nature on his part, a large portion of the early history of the American theater which is interesting would have been lost. He was also the historian of the arts of design in this country, which embraced an account of our painters, from William Watson in 1715 to William Page in 1832, which is full of material not elsewhere found, and which no one was so competent to gather as himself. He wrote a history of the State of New York, which, in the continuation of the narrative to the time of publication, supplied a want that it still continues to supply; and while, as a portrait painter, he was neither a Stuart nor a Jarvis, he was at least a respectable limner, and the statement of Seilhamer that “he painted numerous portraits with sketches of his theatrical contemporaries, most of them wretched caricatures,” is but an exhibition of the writer’s ignorance or of his malevolence.

The Dunlap Society was formed for the printing of papers connected with the history of the American theater, or reprinting what had become scarce upon that subject and was worth preserving. Societies of a like general nature have been formed in England and in this country, which have usually been named after some individual who at an early period was prominently identified with the subject matter in which the society is interested; and when what has been here stated respecting Dunlap is considered, with the fact that he was the first historian of the American theater, and the purpose for which the Dunlap Society was formed, it appears to me that the choice of his name for it was as appropriate, if not more so, than that of any other American of that period.

The concluding illustration is a facsimile of the oldest American play-bill as far as known, the original of which is in the possession of Mr. Thomas J. McKee of New York. It is thought worthy of insertion as a curiosity, and not as approving Mr. Seilhamer’s extensive use of such material, which, he says, is “introduced as a part of the record which it is the aim of this work to preserve with as much completeness as possible,” and again, that “the monument of the actors is the record of their work in the newspapers,” and it is due in justice to him to state that in the two later volumes, and especially in the third, there is much information that is new and interesting, the result, evidently, of a very thorough examination of the Colonial and other newspapers until within a few years of the commencement of the present century.

By a Company of COMEDIANS,

At the New-Theatre, in _Nassau-Street_,

This Evening, being the 12th of _November_, will be presented,

_(By particular Desire)_

An _Historical Play_, call’d,

King RICHARD III.

CONTAINING

The Distresses and Death of King _Henry_ the VIth; the artful Acquisition of the Crown by _Crook-back’d Richard_; the Murder of the two young Princes in the Tower; and the memorable Battle of _Bosworth-Field_, being the last that was fought between the Houses of _York_ and _Lancaster_.

_Richard_, by Mr. _Rigby_.
King _Henry_, by Mr. _Hallam_.
Prince _Edward_, by Master _L. Hallam_.
Duke of _York_, by Master _A. Hallam_.
Earl of _Richmond_, by Mr. _Clarkson_.
Duke of _Buckingham_, by Mr. _Malone_.
Duke of _Norfolk_, by Mr. _Miller_.
Lord _Stanley_, by Mr. _Singleton_.
_Lieutenant_, by Mr. _Bell_.
_Catesby_, by Mr. _Adcock_.
Queen _Elizabeth_, by Mrs. _Hallam_.
Lady _Anne_, by Mrs. _Adcock_.
Duchess of _York_, by Mrs. _Rigby_.

To which will be added,

A Ballad FARCE call’d,

The _DEVIL TO PAY_.

Sir _John Loverule_, by Mr. _Adcock_.
_Jobson_, by Mr. _Malone_.
_Butler_, by Mr. _Miller_.
_Footman_, by Mr. _Singleton_.
_Cook_, by Mr. _Bell_.
_Coachman_, by Mr. _Rigby_.
_Conjurer_, by Mr. _Clarkson_.
Lady _Loverule_, by Mrs. _Adcock_.
_Nell_, by Mrs. _Becceley_.
_Lettice_, by Mrs. _Clarkson_.
_Lucy_, by Miss _Love_.

_PRICES_: BOX, 6_s._ PIT, 4_s._ GALLERY, 2_s._

No Persons whatever to be admitted behind the Scenes.

_N. B. Gentlemen and Ladies that chuse Tickets, may have them at Mr._ Parker’_s and Mr._ Gaine’_s Printing-Offices._

Money will be taken at the DOOR.

To begin at 6 o’Clock.]

FOOTNOTES:

[5] 3 Bancroft’s “History,” n. s., chap. 19.

[6] “Caribbeana,” Vol. i, p. 380. London, 1741.

[7] Spottiswood’s Letters, collections of the Virginia Historical Society, Vol. ii, p. 284.

[8] “History of the United States of North America,” Vol. iii, p. 146, 147: London, 1836.

[9] Cookes “History of the People of Virginia,” Boston, 1890.

[10] Graham’s “History of the United States of North America,” Vol. i, p. 145, and note 1: London, 1836.

[11] Graham, p. 146.

[12] Part III, ch. 6.

[13] “The Drama in New Orleans,” by John Gaisford, etc., pp. 7, 8. New Orleans, 1849.

[14] Davies, “Dramatic Miscellanies,” Vol. iii, ch. 17.

[15] Smith’s “History of New York” with a continuation, pp. 239, 240, 271: Albany, 1814.

[16] This is an error in the writer, they were Norris and Fairbank, and the original _Sergeant Kite_ was Estcourt.

[17] Life of Cibber, by Bell, Chambers ed., 105, 106.

[18] A MS. volume, small 4°, Pp. (xvii), I-CXXX; Appendix, pp. XVI. Handsomely engrossed, with ornamental or fancy lettering for the title, the whole apparently the work of a professional clerk. Bound in old mottled calf, with gilt border, stamped back once gilt and lettered.

POEMS BY A. H. ESQR MS.

Bought from a London dealer in 1890, by William Nelson, of Paterson, New Jersey.

[19] “New-York Times,” Sunday, December 15, 1895.

[20] Dunlap, p. 16.

[21] Dunlap gives the full cast of the “Merchant of Venice,” the first play enacted by the Hallam Company in America, at Williamsburg, September 5, 1752, as he received it from Lewis Hallam, Jr., by which it appears that Mrs. Hallam, the manager’s wife, was the _Portia_, that Miss Hallam represented _Jessica_, “her first appearance on any stage,” and an actor named Malone played _Shylock_. The author of the novel states that his wish was simply to depict some Virginia scenes and personages ten years before the Revolution, or the Virginia of 1765, and trusts that his picture is at least truthful as far as it goes, which it probably is, with the anachronism of the appearance, in the year 1765, of Miss Hallam, a young girl of about eighteen, as _Portia_, thirteen years after she had made her first appearance on the stage in the same play as _Jessica_. But liberties of this kind are pardonable in a novelist. They are taken by great authors. Scott, in his novel of Kenilworth, the scene of which romance is laid in the year 1575, represents Lord Leicester, in passing through the court-rooms, stopping to compliment Shakespeare on the success of his recent poem of Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare being then eleven years of age. The poem was printed in 1593, eighteen years after the event described by the novelist, or when Shakespeare was twenty-nine years of age.

[22] 2 Dunlap, 24, 48: London ed.

A CONSIDERATION OF THE OBJECTIONS MADE TO THE STAGE.

This supplement began with the statement that among the earliest information that we possess respecting the drama in America, is a passage in a letter objecting to the performance of a play, and it may be appropriately closed by a brief enumeration of the objections generally made to the theater, and the conclusion that seems to follow from a review of them.

It is a characteristic of those who object to the theater altogether that they rarely, if ever, give any consideration to the origin of the drama, to its long continuance, or appreciate that it will continue as long as civilization continues, and this applies as well to those who have written elaborate treatises against it, like Jeremy Collier, as to those who object to it generally. The briefest form of stating this consideration is that the theater has its origin in human nature. In the researches made as to its origin it is found that it has sprung up spontaneously among different peoples, and has not been transmitted by one people more advanced in civilization to another that was less so. Thus the rise of the drama, such as it is, in India and in China has in no way been influenced by the Greeks, who carried the cultivation of it to a higher degree than any other people of antiquity. The oldest civilization with which we are acquainted is that of Egypt. Whether it existed among the Egyptians, whether they had what we call a theater, the extensive researches that have been made within the present century so far as I have been able to ascertain do not indicate,[23] but that it existed at a very early period in China, in Persia, and in India we have ample evidence, and in China and India it has from its beginning been a recreation greatly enjoyed by the people; to which may be added as a general observation that certain races have more aptitude for the enjoyment of it than others, and greater natural capacity either as a gift from nature or for acquiring what is requisite in the actor or dramatist. That some men are endowed by nature in a higher degree than others with the qualities that make a man eminent as a dramatist or an actor is sufficiently indicated in the one case by Shakespeare, and in the other by Garrick, of the latter of whom it may be said, in the language of Mr. Baker, the historian of the London stage, that “without any previous apprenticeship, preparation, or drudgery, at a remote end of the town that had hitherto been as unknown to fashion as the wilds of Africa, without preliminary puffing of any kind, he took the whole play-going public by storm, made men old in prejudice forget the idols of their youth and like Pope confess that he never had his equal. * * * From “Richard III.” to “Abel Drugger,” from “King Lear” to “Don Felix,” from “Macbeth” to “Bayes,” his tragic force, his keen sense of humor, his marvelous genius carried everything before it;” and this combination of equal excellence, and in the highest degree, in both tragedy and comedy is the more remarkable, for the two great Roman actors, Roscius in comedy and Æsopus in tragedy, never crossed the limits of their respective branches, and both reached the preëminence they attained by the most careful and assiduous study. It is said of Roscius that, in the very height of his reputation, he did not even venture upon a gesture that he did not carefully consider and practise in private, and yet, notwithstanding this elaborate study, there was no mannerism or affectation in his acting, but everything he did seemed natural to the character he represented; and having referred to these two great Roman actors, it may be mentioned, as an example of being endowed like Garrick with qualities that enable him who possesses them to soar easily and at once to the highest reach of his art, that Terence, the most elegant, subtle, and felicitous in expression of the Roman comic dramatists, is supposed, his biography being but imperfectly known, to have been born a slave, who at the age of twenty-seven offered his first play, the “Andria,” to the conductors of the theatrical exhibitions, who referred him to an eminent playwright of Rome for its examination, where, unknown and meanly clad, he read, seated upon a low stool, his opening scene, afterwards declared by Cicero to be a model of narrative, and his genius was at once recognized.[24]

Cæsar called him a half Menander, who was the Greeks’ ideal of a perfect comic dramatist, regarding him in comedy, as they did Sophocles in tragedy, as the most complete and finished; whose judgment we accept, as no play of Menander, though he is said to have written about a hundred comedies, has come down to us, but only fragments. And Plautus, the other distinguished Roman dramatist, should also be mentioned as a further illustration, for he left the humble employment of turning a mill to become a writer of plays, and surpassed Terence in native comic force, his gift in that direction being as great as Shakespeare’s or Molière’s.

There is one pervading feature of the drama to which those who have written against it seldom refer, and some of the most prominent not at all, that the stage is, what the age is, or, as Shakespeare has succinctly expressed it in _Hamlet’s_ speech to the players, “that the purpose of playing, both at the first and now, was and is, as ’twere, to hold the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the _very age_ and body of the time his form and _pressure_,” and to _Polonius_, in respect to the players, that “they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.”

If a people are alike brave and greatly cultivated, as the Athenians were when the drama reached to its highest attainment among them, they witness with pleasure the reproduction of noble deeds, and listen with delight to the inculcation of noble sentiments from such masters of the dramatic art as Euripides and Sophocles, and realize with great enjoyment the power that lies in ridicule as a means of reforming public abuses and correcting deformities in the character of individuals when it comes from such a satirist and wit as Aristophanes. But when a nation is sinking into decay or deteriorating, the stage deteriorates with it; or when a people find their highest enjoyment in amusements that are coarse or brutal, like the Romans, who thronged the amphitheater to witness the sanguinary combat of gladiators, the “maddening excitement of the circus”;[25] or found pleasure in such a spectacle as beholding the arena filled with wild beasts, tearing each other to pieces--the performances of the theater, though of a different kind, became, in time, of the like degraded character, and stirred up against the drama its greatest, longest, and most unrelenting enemy--the Christian Church. A warfare against it, at that time, on the part of the Church, that was necessary for the preservation of society; for in the period which Gibbon, in his great contribution to English literature, distinguishes as the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the stage sank lower than it ever was before, or has ever been since.

St. Augustine, writing in the beginning of the fourth century, in an article of great severity against the theater, with whose abuses he was no doubt thoroughly familiar in his wild youth, says: “The theaters, those cages of uncleanliness and public schools of debauchery, are tumbling almost everywhere,” which was the fact, as stationary places of amusement in cities or towns. And Tertullian, who wrote at the end of the second century, says even the very magistrates who abet the stage discountenance the players, stigmatize their character, and cramp their freedom. “The whole tribe of them,” he says, “is thrown out of all power and privilege. They are neither suffered to be lords or gentlemen, to come within the Senate, or to harangue the people.”[26] And yet the Church, with all its efforts and all the power the law gave it, could not suppress the players, for so deeply implanted is the love for the dramatic art, alike in those whose vocation it is to represent it and those who find enjoyment in seeing it, that it continued thereafter, in some form or other, under the names of mimes, masques, drolls, and other titles, to be exhibited throughout the different countries of Europe by a strolling class of itinerants, under the various names of gleemen, minstrels, joculators, and other titles, on the village green, in the hall or courtyard of the castle, in the city street,--a movable stage for the players being all that was necessary,--and especially at the fairs, those gatherings of the Middle Ages for commercial purposes, when amusement was one of the attractions, whether it was a local fair in a town, or one of those gatherings of people from many countries as at Beaucaire, in France.

But while the Church did not and could not suppress the practitioner, as he was then called, of the “gay science,” it made him, for more than a thousand years, a wanderer and a vagabond. The consolation which religion affords to support us in our trials, cares, and troubles in this life was denied him, except so far as he could find it solely within himself; for he could participate in none of those rites or acts of religious observance which the Church administers, and the believer relies on, for securing a happy life hereafter. Upon his death-bed no mark was made upon his forehead as the Church’s signet of his repentance and hope of redemption, nor could he lie in consecrated ground. If a woman who had been baptized married a player, she was excommunicated; and so were any of the laity who went to any such performances on a Sunday or a holiday, these being the only days when the working classes, after doing their duty by attending mass, had leisure for recreation.

After several centuries the Church, with a sagacity it has frequently shown, finding that it could not suppress the players--that in all countries they had the countenance and support of the common people, who, unable to acquire knowledge by reading, except in very rare instances, quickly comprehended a dramatic representation, and that it made a great impression upon them,--determined to make use of the very thing it had continued to denounce for centuries,--a play, as an instrument in the hands of the Church for spreading and more deeply impressing religion upon the unlettered classes, who then constituted the great bulk of the community, by a representation, through its instrumentality, of the miracles that had been wrought for the faith. This afterwards was extended to the representation of the passion of Christ and religious subjects generally, not only what appertained to the history of the Church but to what was theological, under the titles of miracle plays, mysteries, and moralities, to which a recent writer has felicitously given the general name of the monastic drama.[27] This resort to plays as a means of religious teaching was especially the case from the tenth to the twelfth century. Monasteries and convents, where the name of a play had been previously an abomination, now became active centers in the production, preparation, and representation of these mysteries and moralities on the part of monks and nuns. They were written and acted by ecclesiastics, and when they were given--as they frequently were--in churches, a bishop presided at the performance, with his miter on and pastoral staff in hand. Even nuns wrote plays, the Benedictine nun Hrotsvith, of Saxony, in the tenth century, being celebrated for her plays, which were distinguishable for their purity in respect to religion and morals, her knowledge of human nature, and the dramatic interest she could impart to a scene. As the object was to attract the common people as much as possible, and to do this it was necessary to amuse and interest as well as to instruct them, these representations were not limited to the serious or solemn, but were freely interspersed with what was comic or amusing. When the devil, and his attendant, named Vice, two characters that were frequently represented in the action of the play, were confounded by some witty retort, made ridiculous by a happy thrust of humor, or were outwitted in their design by some clever trick, it may be assumed that the sleek friar and the kindly nun laughed as heartily as any of the audience. In the tenth century a miracle play called “The Deluge” was performed, in which Noah’s wife refuses to go into the ark,--being represented, as it would appear, as regarding it only as a shower,--and boxes her husband’s ears when he attempts to compel her to; this display of feminine pertinacity being what in theatrical parlance is regarded as a hit. And in the twelfth century the Merchant Drapers’ Company of London represented in a miracle play the Creation, and, that the representation might be exact, our first parents appeared on the stage without any covering whatever, which the Drapers’ Company, I suppose, regarded as appropriately illustrating the necessity for that which the merchant draper supplies; for I remember that at the celebration in 1825 in New York of the completion of the Erie Canal the tailors marched in that great procession with a huge banner, in which Adam and Eve were represented in a like condition, with the words beneath, “Ye were naked and we clothed you.”

The first theater in modern times, by which I mean a permanent structure for such a purpose, in a fixed place, was erected in Paris about the year 1400, by a body known as the Confraire de la Passion de N. S., for the representation of the Scriptural mysteries. But solemn as was the name given by the founders and their purpose in building this theater, it would appear that in the course of time it had to yield to the comic and the amusing, as much, and probably more than the miracle plays, mysteries and moralities that had been long established, for in the middle of the next century, that is in 1547, it was suppressed by the Parliament for the scandal it created by what Hallam calls “this devout buffoonery.”

These religious plays, however limited, extended, or different they may have been, it appears to be conceded, gave rise to the modern drama, and I think it very possible that the existence of the comic and the tragic in the same play, which we find so marked in Shakespeare, and which is so much nearer to what takes place in life than the French classical drama of Corneille and Racine, may have been suggested to Shakespeare by these early religious plays in which both were combined, which he may frequently have witnessed, and probably did, as a boy.

But although this use of the drama was an aid to the Church, that circumstance in no way affected or lessened the Church’s attitude toward the players who acted profane plays, farces, interludes, or gave any kind of dramatic entertainment of that description. It was right to employ it on behalf of the Church, but to make any other use of it was sinful and unlawful. So the player, or common player, as he was called, to distinguish him from the histrionic assistant of the Church, remained as he was before. So late even as the thirty-ninth year of Elizabeth’s reign, a statute was passed declaring that common players should be taken and adjudged to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, etc., etc., and be subject to the penalties therein provided, which Jeremy Collier declares were “infamous to the last degree, and capital, too, unless they give over,” that is, were punishable with death. But a reservation was made in favor of players that belonged to a baron or other personage of high degree, who were authorized to play under his signature and seal, by which an opening was left for the rise and development of the great era in the dramatic history of England that followed.

Notwithstanding, however, the persecution, penalties, hardships, and sufferings to which the common players were subject, they clung to their vocation with a tenacity that showed how strong was their affection for it; that it was not only a means of livelihood, but the one of all others they preferred, for to impart pleasure is as much of an enjoyment as to receive it. But persistent as was this degradation of the players, the Church and the law had to yield at last to the inevitable. But how long this was in coming about, or how long the effect of it prevented the player from being recognized as on the same level with the rest of his fellow-men, may be illustrated by the well-known anecdote of Garrick, when a chimney-sweep called out to his fellow, “There goes Garrick the player,” and his companion responded, “Hush, you don’t know what you may come to yourself.”

When we examine those treatises that have been written against the stage, the material upon which they rely is almost invariably derived from its abuse, without considering that that abuse is not due to the theater as an institution, but to the state of society that gives rise to it. Some writers are broad-minded enough to make this discrimination; but the bulk of them do not, which this contrast will sufficiently illustrate. Tertullian, writing about the beginning of the third century, writes thus of the stage: “What, though the performance may be in some measure pretty and entertaining--what, though innocence, yes, and virtue, too, shines through some part of it! It is not the custom to prepare poison unpalatable, nor make up ratsbane with rhubarb and senna. No, to have the mischief speed, they must oblige the senses and make the dose pleasant. Thus, the devil throws in a cordial drop to make the draught go down, and steals some ingredients from the dispensary of heaven. In short, look upon all the engaging sentences of the stage--their flights of fortitude and philosophy, the loftiness of their style, the music of the cadence, and the fineness of the conduct! Look upon it only, I say, as honey dropping from the bowels of a toad, or the bag of a spider.”[28] And fourteen hundred years afterward a discrimination was made in a sermon by Archbishop Tillotson, one of the most eminent of English divines, denouncing the licentiousness of the English stage as it then existed, and the plays that were acted, as a reproach to the nation, which was true; but in which he says that to denounce the stage in general would not be just or reasonable; for, he continues, “it is very possible that they” (the plays) “might be so framed, and governed by such rules as not only to be innocently diverting, but instructing and useful; to put some vices and follies out of countenance, which cannot, perhaps, be so decently reproved nor so effectually exposed and corrected in any other way.” But examples like Tillotson’s, at least in England, have been rare. Even the great Bossuet, as he has been called, one of, if not the most distinguished of, French pulpit orators, and a prominent theological writer, was an example of the opposite. An actor having some scruples of conscience respecting his continuing in his profession, consulted a priest named Caffaro, who, by his reasoning, appears not only to have removed the actor’s scruples, but wrote a defense of the stage, which, not being desirous of being known as the author, he published anonymously; and when it was ascertained that he was the writer of it, the Archbishop of Paris threatened to suspend him; and Bossuet wrote a pastoral letter exhorting him to repent his mistake, and rescind his mischievous opinions, which the priest accordingly did.[29]

While the stage may and does much to maintain a healthy moral feeling in society, in the powerful effect that is produced by the dramatic representation of virtuous deeds and of guilty actions, and the consequences that attend the latter, as an institution the theater does not retard society in its downward course, but may be said rather to accelerate it. The players depend for their support upon public patronage, and therefore court public favor, as when a nation through luxury, or those causes that bring about national decay and the consequences that follow it, or where a reaction takes place, as it did in England from the reign of puritanism to the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II., and from the example set by the restored monarch, society, or rather what is called high society, as a class, becomes corrupt and licentious, the theater caters to the taste of those who are its chief patrons, as the theaters did then by the production and representation mainly of comedies in which, as Dr. Johnson expressed it, “the plot was an intrigue, and the wit indecency,” and, as respects some of these comedies, indecency might be extended to the word filth.