Chapter XIII: Part 13

Brave! there can be no question touching his bravery. And if he does really rust a little at home, and impose a little upon the weakness of the Hostess and other ladies, whom he weekly woos to marry, and who find his gallantry and saucy promises irresistible; he is ever ready for service. He does not look for unlimited absence from scenes of danger. If he led his company of three hundred and a half to death, and comes out scot-free himself, he is by no means prepared to hang about town, inactive for the remainder of the campaign. When he is appointed on perilous enterprise with Prince John of Lancaster, he simply remarks, with a complacency which is doubtless warranted by truth, “There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am thrust upon it. Well, I can not last for ever;” and, with this remark buckled on to some satirical wit which he points at the Lord Chief Justice, he sets forth cheerily on his mission, the gout in his toe, and in his purse not more than seven groats and twopence. He has a rouse and a riot at the Boar’s Head before he starts; but nothing more disreputable seems to have occurred than one might hear of at a modern club, before some old naval lion is hiccupped on to deeds of daring. Besides, the knight is no hypocrite; and he will not be accounted virtuous, like many of his contemporaries, by “making courtesy and saying nothing.” Not, on the other hand, that even in his moments of jolly relaxation, he would be unseemly noisy. He can troll a merry catch, but, as he says to a vulgarly roystering blade, “Pistol, I would be quiet.” It has been thought unseemly that he should quarrel with and even roughly chastise the “ancient” with whom he had been on such very intimate terms. But such things happen in the best society. At the famous Reform Club dinner, Sir James gave permission to Sir Charles to go and make war; but, since that time, Sir Charles, with words, instead of rapiers, has been poking his iron into the ribs of Sir James, after the fashion of Falstaff and Pistol.

And so, as I have said, Sir John girds him for the battle. If he did in his youth, hear the chimes at midnight, in company with Master Shallow, the lean, but light-living barrister of Clement’s Inn, he did not waste his vigor. So great indeed is his renown for this, and for the bravery which accompanies it, that no sooner does the doughty Sir John Colville of the Dale meet him in single combat, than Colville at once surrenders. The very idea of such a hero being face to face with him impels him to give up his sword at once. “I think you are Sir John Falstaff, and in that thought yield me.” Was ever greater compliment paid to mortal hero?

Of this achievement Prince John most ungenerously says, that it was more the effect of Colville’s courtesy than Falstaff’s deserving. But, as the latter remarks, the young sober-blooded boy of a prince does not love the knight; and “that’s no marvel,” exclaims Falstaff, “he drinks no wine.” The teetotaler of those days disparaged the deeds of a man who increased the sum of his country’s glory. He was like a sour Anglo-Quaker, sneering down the merit of a Crimean soldier. We do not, however, go so far as Falstaff in his enthusiasm, when he exclaims that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack. There is something in the remark, nevertheless, as there is when Sir John subsequently says in reference to his wits suffering by coming in dull contact with obtuse Shallow. “It is certain,” says he, “that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another; _therefore_ let men take care of their company.” Victor Hugo has manifestly condescended to plagiarize this sentiment, and has said in one of his most remarkable works, that “On devient vieux à force de regarder les vieux.”

And, to come to a conclusion, how unworthily is this gallant soldier, merry companion, and profound philosopher, treated at last by an old associate, Prince Hal, when king. Counting on the sacredness of friendship, Sir John had borrowed from Master Shallow a thousand pounds. He depended upon being able to repay it out of the new monarch’s liberality, but when he salutes the sovereign--very inopportunely, I confess--the latter, with a cold-hearted and shameless ingratitude, declares that he does not know the never-to-be-forgotten speaker. King Henry V. does indeed promise--

“For competence of life, I will allow you;
That lack of moans enforce yon not to evil;”

and departs, after intimating that the knight must not reside within ten miles of court, and that royal favor will be restored to the banished man, if merit authorize it.

“Be it your charge, my lord, to see performed the tenor of our word,” says the King to the Chief Justice; and Falstaff, though sorely wounded in feelings, is still not without hope. But see what a royal word, or what _this_ royal word is! The Monarch has no sooner passed on his way, than the Chief Justice fulfils its meaning, by ordering Sir John Falstaff and all his company to be close-confined in the Fleet! The great dignitary does this with as much hurried glee as we may conjecture Lord Campbell would have had, in rendering the same service to Miss Agnes Strickland, when the latter accused the judge of stealing her story of Queen Eleanor of Provence.

However this may be, the royal ingratitude broke the proud heart in the bosom of Sir John. He took to his bed, and never smiled again. “The King has killed his heart,” is the bold assertion of Dame Quickly, at a time when such an assertion might have cost her her liberty, if not her life. How edifying too was his end! He did not “babble o’ green fields.” Mr. Collier has proved this, to the satisfaction of all Exeter Hall, who would deem such light talk trifling. But he died arguing against “the whore of Babylon,” which should make him find favor even with Dr. Cumming, for it is a proof of the knight’s Protestantism--and “Would I were with him,” exclaims honest lieutenant Bardolph, with more earnestness than reverence--“Would I were with him, wheresome’er he is; either in heaven or in hell.” If this has a profane ring in it, let us think of the small education and the hard life of him who uttered it. There was more profanity and terrible blasphemy to boot, in the assertion of Prince Menschikoff, after the death of the Czar Nicholas, namely, “that his late august master might be seen in the skies blessing his armies on their way to victory!” Decidedly, I prefer Bardolph to Menschikoff, and Falstaff to both.

I am sorry that Queen Elizabeth had the bad taste to request Shakespeare to represent “Falstaff in love.” The result is only an Adelphi farce in five acts; in which the author, after all, has made the knight far more respectable than that sorry fool, Ford. The “Wives” themselves are not much stronger in virtue than Dorothea of Eastcheap, unless Sir John himself was mistaken in them. Of Mrs. Ford, who holds her husband’s purse-strings, he says, “I can construe the action of her familiar style,” and he tells us what that manner was, pretty distinctly. When he writes to Mrs. Page, he notices a common liking which exists in both, in the words, “You love sack, and so do I.” The “Wives,” for mere mischief’s sake, we will say, tempted the gallant old soldier. In their presence he had left off swearing, praised woman’s modesty, and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness, that Mrs. Page thought, perhaps, that drinking sack, and, in company with Mrs. Ford, talking familiarly with him, would not tempt him to turn gallant toward them. This consequence _did_ follow; and then the sprightly Wives, in place of bidding their ridiculous husbands cudgel him, come to the conclusion that “the best way was to entertain him with hope,” till his wickedly raised fire should have “melted him in his own grease.” A dangerous process, ladies, depend upon it!

Then, what a sorry cur is that Master Ford who puts Falstaff upon the way to seduce his own wife! Had other end come of it than what did result, is there a jury even in Gotham, that would have awarded Ford a farthing’s-worth of separation. Falstaff is infinitely more refined than Ford or Page. Neither of these noodles could have paid such sparkling compliments as the knight pays to the lady. “Let the court of France show me such another! I see how thine eyes would emulate the diamond; thou hast the right-arched bent of the brow, that becomes the ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance!” Why this is a prose Anacreontic! And if the speaker of it could offend once, he did not merit to be allured again by hope to a greater punishment than he had endured for his first offence.

For one of the great characteristics of Falstaff is his own sense of seemliness. When he was nearly drowned by being tossed from the buck-basket into the river, his prevalent and uneasy idea was, how disgusting he should look if he were to swell--a mountain of mummy! The Mantelini of Mr. Dickens borrowed from Falstaff this aversion to a “demmed damp body.” It is _not_ pleasant!

Once again, Sir John, though he could err, yet he was ashamed of his offence. Otherwise, would he have confessed, as he did, when recounting how the mock fairies had tormented him, “I was three or four times in the thought they were not fairies, but the _guiltiness of my mind_, the sudden surprise of my powers drove the grossness of the foppery into a received belief.” How exquisitely is this said! How does it raise the knight above the broad farce of most of the other characters! How infinitely superior is he to the two dolts of husbands who, after hearing the confession of guilty intention against the honor of their wives, invite him to spend a jolly evening in company with themselves and the ladies. And so they--

“Every one go home,
And laugh this sport o’er by a wintry fire,
Sir John and all.”

This may be accounted too gross for probability; but worse than this is in the memory of our yet surviving fathers. There was, within such a memory, a case tried before Sir Elijah Impey, in which Talleyrand was the defendant, against whom a husband brought an action, the great statesman having robbed him of his wife. The action was brought to the ordinary issue; and a few weeks subsequently, plaintiff, defendant, judge, and lady, dined together in the Prince’s residence at Paris.

Of Stage Falstaffs, Quin, according to all accounts, must have been the best, provided only that he had a sufficiency of claret in him, and the house an overflowing audience. Charles Kemble, I verily believe, must have been the worst of stage Falstaffs. At least, having seen him in the character, I can conscientiously assert that I can not imagine a poorer Sir John. He dressed the character well; but as for its “flavor,” it was as if you had the two oyster-shells, _minus_ the fat and juicy oyster. What a galaxy of actors have shined or essayed to shine in this joyous but difficult part! In Charles the Second’s days, Cartwright and Lacy, by their acting in the first part of Henry IV., made Shakespeare popular, when the fashion at Court was against him. Betterton acted the same part in 1700, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the Haymarket. Four years later, he played the Knight in the “Merry Wives;” and in 1730, at Drury Lane, he and Mills took the part alternately, and set dire dissension among the play-goers, as to their respective merits.

Popular as Betterton was in this character, after he had grown too stout for younger heroes, his manner of playing it was not original; and his imitation was at second-hand. Ben Jonson had seen it played in Dublin by Baker, a stone-mason. He was so pleased with the representation, that he described the manner of it, on his return to London, to Betterton, who, docile and modest as usual, acknowledged that the mason’s conception was better than his own, and adopted the Irish actor’s manner, accordingly.

Chetwood does not tell us how Baker played, but he shows us how he studied, namely in the streets, while overlooking the men who worked under him. “One day, two of his men who were newly come to him, and were strangers to his habits, observing his countenance, motion, gesture, and his talking to himself, imagined their master was mad. Baker, seeing them neglect their work to stare at him, bid them, in a hasty manner, mind their business. The fellows went to work again, but still with an eye to their master. The part Baker was rehearsing was Falstaff; and when he came to the scene where Sir Walter Blunt was supposed to be lying dead on the stage, gave a look at one of his new paviors, and with his eye fixed upon him, muttered loud enough to be heard, ‘Who have we here? Sir Walter Blunt! There’s honor for you.’ The fellow who was stooping, rose on the instant, and with the help of his companion, bound poor Baker hand and foot, and assisted by other people no wiser than themselves, they carried him home in that condition, with a great mob at their heels.”

Estcourt’s Falstaff was flat and trifling, yet with a certain waggishness. That of Harper was droll, but low and coarse. The Falstaff of Evans seems to have been in the amorous scenes, as offensive as Dowton in Major Sturgeon; and the humor was misplaced. Accordingly, when we read in old Anthony Aston, that “Betterton wanted the waggery of Estcourt, the drollery of Harper, and the lasciviousness of Jack Evans,” we are disposed to imagine that his Falstaff was none the worse for this trial of wants.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the character did not lack brilliant actors. In the first part of Henry IV., Mills played the character, at Drury, in 1716. Booth had previously played it for one night, in presence of Queen Anne. Bullock filled Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, with it, in 1721. Quin, in 1738, used to play the character in the two parts of Henry IV. on successive nights, and eight years later his Falstaff attracted crowds to “the Garden.” Barry played it against him at Drury, in 1743 and 1747; but Barry was dull and void of impulse as a school-boy repeating his task. In 1762, the part, at Drury, fell to Yates, for whom the piece was brought out, with the character of Hotspur omitted! To give more prominence to our knight, a scene was left out. The public did not approve of the plan, for in the same year Love, celebrated by Churchill for his humor, made his first appearance at Drury, as Sir John, when Holland, the baker of Chiswick, played Hotspur, with well-bred warmth. I will add, that though Quin drew immense houses, yet when Harper, some years previously, played the same part at Drury, with Booth in Hotspur, Wilks as the Prince, and Cibber as Glendower, the combined excellence drew as great houses for a much longer period. So that Harper’s Falstaff, although inferior to Quin’s, was, as was remarked, more seen, yet less admired by the town. Shuter played it almost too “jollily” at the Garden, in 1774. But all other Falstaffs were extinguished for a time, when Henderson, although not physically qualified for the part, astonished the town with his “old boy of the castle,” in 1777 at the Haymarket, and delighted them two years later, at Covent Garden. At the latter house, eight years subsequently, Ryder played it respectably, to Lewis’s Prince of Wales; and in 1791, when the Drury Lane company were playing at the Haymarket, Palmer represented Falstaff, and John Kemble mis-represented Hotspur. King tried the knight at the same “little house,” in 1792, but King, clever as he was, was physically incapable of representing Falstaff, and he soon ceased to pretend to do so. The next representative was the worst the world had yet seen--namely, Fawcett, who first attempted it at the Garden, in 1795. Blisset appeared in it in 1803, and disappeared also. From this time no new actor tried the Sir John, in the first part of Henry IV., till 1824, when Charles Kemble made the Ghost of Shakespeare very uneasy, by executing a part for which he was totally unfit. He persevered, however, but the success of Elliston in the part, two years later, settled the respective merits of two performers, to the advantage of Robert William, as effectually as Grisi showed the town that there was but one Norma, by playing it the night after the fatal attempt made on the Druidess, by Jenny Lind.

The succession of actors who represented Falstaff, in the second part of Henry IV., was as brilliant as that of the line of representatives above noticed. Ten years after Betterton and Mills, in 1720, we have Harper, and it is somewhat singular that when Mills resigned Falstaff to Harper, he took the part of the King. Hulett, two years subsequently played it at Covent Garden; and, after another two years, Quin made Drury ecstatic with his fun. He held the part without a real rival, and fifteen years later, in 1749, he was as attractive as ever in this portion of the knight’s character, at Covent Garden. Shuter succeeded him in the part at this theatre, in 1755; but in 1758, all London, that is the play-goers of London, might be seen hurrying once more to Drury, to witness lively Woodward’s _very_ old Falstaff played to Garrick’s King. The Garden can not be said to have found a superior means of attraction, when Shuter again represented Sir John, at the Garden, in 1761, on which occasion the parts of Shallow and Silence were omitted! The object, however, was to shorten the piece, and the main attraction was in the coronation pageant, at the conclusion, in honor of the then young King and Queen, who were well worthy of the honor thus paid to them.

Love and Holland, who played Falstaff and Hotspur, at Drury Lane, in 1762, played the Knight and the Prince of Wales, at the same house, two years subsequently. Nine years after this, the Garden found a Prince in Mrs. Lessingham, Shuter played Falstaff to her, but the travesty of the former character was only in a slight degree less incongruous than that made by Mrs. Glover, in the present century, who once, if not twice, played the fat knight, for her own benefit. For the next eight or nine years, the best Falstaff possessed by London was Henderson. He played the part first at Drury, and afterward at Covent Garden. Since Quin, there had been no better representative of Sir John; and even Palmer, in 1788, could not bring the town from its allegiance to “admirable Henderson.”

The Falstaffs of the present century, in the second part of this historical play, have not achieved a greater triumph than Henderson. Cooke, who played the obese cavalier, in 1804, was not equal to the part; and Fawcett, in 1821, when the play was revived, with another coronation pageant in honor of George IV., was farther from success than Cooke. The managers at this period were wiser than those who “got up” the play at the period of the accession of George III., for they retained Shallow and Silence, and never were the illustrious two so inimitably represented as, on this occasion, by Farren and Emery.

The chief Falstaffs of the “Merry Wives of Windsor” are Betterton (1704), Hulett (1732), Quin (1734), Delane, the young Irish actor (1743), of whom Garrick was foolish enough to be jealous; Shuter (1758), Henderson, who first played it at the Haymarket in 1777, and Lee Lewis in 1784. Bartley, Phelps, and a clever provincial actor, now in London, named Bartlett, have also played this character with great effect. The Falstaff of the last-named actor is particularly good.

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.

The satire in this piece against the Puritans is of a more refined character than in any other play of the period; and the contrast between the rash and ardent cavalier and the cautious Puritan is very fairly drawn. “Suppose I see not many vices,” says the Roundhead, Testimony, “morality is not the thing. The heathens had morality; and, forsooth, would you have your footman or your coachman to be no better than Seneca?” This is really complimentary to the Cromwellians; and there is but a good-natured dash of satire in the answer of Testimony, when asked what time of day it may be, that--“Truly, I do believe it is about four. I can not say it positively, for I would not tell a lie for the whole world.”

I find little worthy of notice in other dramatic pieces having knights for their heroes. Southeran produced one entitled, “Sir Anthony Love” at the Theatre Royal in 1691, for the purpose of showing off Mrs. Mountfort as an errant lady in male attire.

In the eighteenth century, the knights gave name to a few historical pieces not worth recording. The only exceptions are scarcely worthy of more notice. Dodsley’s “Sir John Cockle at Court” made our ancestors, of George the Second’s time, laugh at the sequel of the “King and the Miller of Mansfield;” and “Sir Roger de Coverley” was made the hero of a pantomime at Covent Garden in 1746. By this time, however, the fashion was extinct of satirizing living politicians under knightly names. To detail the few exceptions to the rule would only fatigue the perhaps already wearied reader.

To what a low condition knight and squire could fall may be seen in the Sir Joseph Wittol and Captain Bluffe, in Congreve’s comedy, the “Old Batchelor.” The only redeeming point about this disreputable pair is, that, cowards and bullies as they are, they have both read a little. The Captain has dipped into history, and he remarks that “Hannibal was a pretty fellow in his day, it must be granted; but, alas, sir! were he alive now, he would be nothing; nothing on the earth.” Sir Joseph, the knight, _in comitatu Bucks_, has also indulged in a little reading, but that of a lighter sort than the Captain’s. When the gallant Captain affects not to be frightened at the aspect of Sharper, and exclaims, “I am prepared for him now, and he shall find he might have safer roused a sleeping lion,” the knight remarks, “Egad, if he should hear the lion roar, he’d cudgel him into an ass, and his primitive braying. Don’t you remember the story in Æsop’s Fables, Bully? Egad, there are good morals to be picked out of Æsop’s Fables, let me tell you that; and ‘Reynard the Fox’ too;” to which the deboshed Captain can only reply, “D--n your morals!” as though he despised fiction when compared with history.

Some of the stage knights are wonderfully great boasters, yet exceedingly dull fellows. I do not know that in the mouth of any one of them there is put so spirited a remark as the great Huniades made to Ulderick, Count of Sicily. The latter asked for a conference with the great governor of Hungary. Huniades bade him come to the Hungarian camp. The offended Ulderick, in a great chafe, replied that it was beneath him to do such a thing, seeing that he was descended from a long line of princely ancestors; whereas Huniades was the first of his family who had ever been raised to honor. The Hungarian very handsomely remarked, “I do not compare myself with your ancestors; but _with you_!” This has always appeared to me as highly dramatic in spirit. There is nothing half so spirited in the knightly pieces brought on the stage during the reign of George III., and which caused infinite delight to very easily-pleased audiences. It is well known that the good-natured Sovereign of England, although unassuming in his domestic character, was exceedingly fond of display in public ceremonies. He used to arrange the paraphernalia of an installation of the Garter with all the energy and care of an anxious stage-manager. The people generally were as anxious to have an idea of the reality. On one occasion, in the preceding reign, they so nearly forced their way into the banqueting-room, where the knights were holding festival, that the troops fired over their heads in order to frighten them into dispersing. Under George III. they were more content to view these splendors through a dramatic lens.

In 1771, accordingly, the splendors of the then late installation of the Garter were reproduced on the stage, in a masque, called “The Institution of the Garter, or Arthur’s Round Table Restored.” The show was as good as the piece was bad. The former was got up to profit the managers, the latter to flatter or do homage to the King and Queen. It was at once cumbersome and comic. A trio of spirits opened the delectable entertainment by summoning other spirits from every nook and corner of the skies, the moon’s horns included, to the work of escorting the car of the Male Genius of England, the husband probably of Britannia, down to earth. Nothing can exceed the alacrity with which the spirits and bards of the empyreal heaven obey the summons. They descend with the car of the Genius, singing a heavy chorus, ponderous as the chariot they help to “waft down,”--in which, not the chariot, but the chorus, there is the assurance that

“The bliss that spotless patriots feel
Is kindred to the bliss above,”--

so that we may hope, though we can not feel certain, that there are some few persons here below, who are not unconscious of an ante-past of heaven.

The Genius is a civil and polished personage, who with due remembrance to metropolitan fogs, very courteously apologizes to the spirits, that he has been the cause of bringing them down

“To this grosser atmosphere awhile.”

After such celestial compliments as these, he despatches them to shed heavenly influences over Windsor, while he remains to hold a little colloquy with the Druids, “Britain’s old philosophers,” as he calls them. He adds an assertion that may, probably, have startled the Society of Antiquaries of that day, namely, that the aforesaid Druids--

“Still enamored of their ancient haunts,
Unseen of mortal eyes, do hover round
Their ruined altars and their sacred oaks,”

which may account for that loose heterodoxy which marked the period when Druids exercised these unseen influences.

The Genius requests the Druids to have the kindness to repair to Windsor, where the order is in the act of being founded by Edward, and there direct his choice in the selection of members. This is a very heathenish idea, but Druids and Bards are alike delighted at it; for, as the Genius remarks, Edward’s perspicuity, his intellectual eyes, needed charming

“from the mists
It haply hath contracted from a long
Unebbing current of prosperity.”

The heathen priests are flaming patriots, and express their eagerness to leave Heaven for England, seeing that the new order may be the means to propagate

“The sovereignty of England, and erect
Her monarchs into judges of mankind.”

As this expressed end has not been accomplished, and the order has not propagated the sovereignty of England, we may logically conclude that the Druids themselves hardly knew much of the subject upon which they were singing to their tuneless harps. Meanwhile, the first Bard, in a bass song, petitions the south gales to blow very mildly, and bring blue skies and sweet smells to the installation.

The ceremony of the installation then opens to the view when all the knights have been created, except the King’s son, Edward the Black Prince, who really was not created knight when the order was founded. How far the Druids have succeeded in influencing the choice of the King, there is no possibility of knowing. No one utters a word, save royal father and son: and the commonplace prose which they deliver does not give us a very exalted idea of the Druidic inspiration. The old sages themselves, however, are perfectly satisfied with the result; and in a noisy chorus, they make an assertion which might well have frightened the Archbishop of Canterbury--had he cared about the matter. After vaticinating that the name of the Prince should roll down through the tide of ages, they add, that glory shall fire him, and virtue inspire him,

“Till blessed and blessing,
Power possessing,
From earth to heaven he lifts his soul,”--

a feat which one would like to see put upon canvass by a Pre-Raphaelite.