Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

ported, was a dissenting minister in Dublin, but on account of his situation, withheld the avowal. It was even put into Mr. Colman's possession, without the author's knowledge, by a friend who had fortunately saved the manuscript from the flames; for, like the manager, the writer himself was apprehensive that it was not suited to the English stage. He was, however, agreeably surprised when, not only informed of its great success, but likewise presented with the emolument arising from the farce, which the manager had transmitted to the gentleman from whom he had received it. Mr. Colman, at the same time, it is thought, purchased the copyright."

WALLEY CHAMRERLAINE OULTON, well remembered in the literary world, is the author of no less than nineteen dramatic pieces, all of a comic or farcical character, and some of which were very successful, although with the lapse of little more than half a century, the entire list has passed into oblivion. Oulton was born in Dublin, and received his education under Dr. Ball. While in very green youth, he produced several slight sketches at the Capel-street and Smock-alley theatres, which were well received, notwithstanding nume. rous puerilities. They were the hasty productions of school vacations, and written by stealth, as his grandfather, Dr. Walker, had a strong aversion to any thing connected with the stage. One of these, The Haunted Castle, had a run of thirty-six nights (a circumstance almost unique in Ireland), and was performed several times before any of his relatives knew who was the author. Intoxicated with this success, he neglected his studies and came to London, where he was introduced to Mr. John Palmer, by the then proprietor of a newspaper, who afterwards became Palmer's greatest enemy. For the Royalty Theatre he wrote the burletta of Hobson's Choice, or Thespis in Distress, the satire of which drew on him the resentment of all the other London managers. Finding himself thus excluded from the regular theatres, he had recourse to stratagem, and presented a comic piece to Mr. Colman (in a lady's name), entitled As it Should Be, which was immediately accepted and acted at the Haymarket in 1789. The plot is taken from the first number of a periodical paper of the time, called The Busy

Body. This is a pleasant trifle, and was received with applause. Oulton's female representative, who was not without address, procured Colman's acceptance of another piece, but the sudden illness of the manager prevented its representation. The younger Colman, who officiated as manager in the absence of his father, behaved to the lady with his usual politeness, though probably conscious of the deception. This gentleman not harbouring those petty resentments which are too common in all professional life, gave Mr. Oulton, when he discovered him to be the author, every encouragement, and accepted directly from him All in good Humour, a farce in one act, produced at the Haymarket in 1792.

In 1797, Oulton wrote a musical trifle for Jack Johnstone's benefit, called The Irish Tar, which was never printed, and a farce in 1798, called Botheration, or a Ten Years' Blunder, also for the benefit of his popular countryman. They were both of a most ephemeral character, and died with the occasions that called them into existence. He next tried his hand at two pantomimes, which were both acted at Birmingham

one on the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and the other founded on Hogarth's prints of The Two Apprentices, or Industry and Idleness Rewarded. In 1802, he produced the farce of the Sixty-Third Letter, which had a run of nineteen nights. The incidents are almost too extravagant even for farce, but the dialogue is lively and humorous, and the plot is not ill-contrived. Miss Metaphor, a blue-stocking, loses the sixty-third letter of the novel she is writing, and thus gives rise to the title of the piece. The music, which was considered rather above par, was composed by Mr. Samuel Arnold, a very

short time before his death. Oulton's last dramatic effort was a farce called The Middle Dish, or the Irishman in Turkey, acted only once, for Mrs. Jordan's benefit at Drury-lanc, on the 16th of April, 1804. In this piece, Mrs. Jordan had an Irish character as well as Johnstone; and although Bannister and R. Palmer were included in the cast, it was not sufficiently successful to be repeated. The story is supposed to arise out of a freak of the Grand Signor, who treats with great distinction an Irish footman and his wife, and compels their former master and mistress to wait upon them. The

name of The Middle Dish originates in an order of the Emperor, that his Hibernian guests should not uncover a tureen set in the middle of the table at one of the entertainments which he gave them, but which order they violated, from their curiosity to eat Turkish potatoes.

Oulton published a continuation of Victor's "History of the Theatres of London," and of Egerton's "Theatrical Remembrancer." In both these works he has supplied some valuable information, but has at the same time perpetuated rather more than the usual number of inaccuracies-some so very careless, that a moderate degree of attention would have sufficed to avoid them. He also wrote several anonymous tracts, and others under fictitious names, particularly Dr. Horne's pamphlets respecting the prophecies of the strange lunatic, Richard Brothers. Halhed, the celebrated oriental scholar, wasted ink and sophistry in defence of Brothers, and in condemnation of his imprisonment in Bedlam as a lunatic. But Halled on this point was nearly as mad as his protegé; and Oulton, in his replies, had clearly the best of the argument. Oulton furnished some of the chorusses in Pizarro, compiled "The Beauties of the Modern Dramatists," and "The Beauties of Kotzebue," and published a "Traveller's Guide," in two volumes, 12mo., 1805. His miscellaneous writings enjoyed considerable repute during a reasonable period of popularity; and on the whole we must repute him to have been a man of taste, judgment, and extensive reading.

WILLIAM PRESTON was a barristerat-law, and held the office of Commissioner of Appeals in Dublin, his native city. He died there on the 2nd of February, 1807. In 1793, he published two volumes of poetical works, which contain three tragedies — viz., Offa and Ethelbert, founded on a story in the first volume of "Hume's History of England;" Messene Freed, the plot of which may be seen in the Abbè Barthelemy's "Travels of Anacharsis;" and Rosmunda, or the Daughter's Revenge, taken from the history of Al

boinus, King of the Lombards, as detailed in Ancient Universal History," and touched upon in Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." None of these were intended, or are suited, for the stage; and their literary or poetical merit does not entitle them to rank in a high class. In the course of 1793, and not long after the catastrophe which furnished his subject, Preston wrote a fourth tragedy, entitled Democratic Rage, or Louis the Unfortunate, which was acted at the Crow-street Theatre, in Dublin, with great success. This play was not included in his published works. The author assigns as one reason for the omission, that he "did not think it sufficiently correct." He declares, however, that it met with "a reception beyond his most sanguine wishes," and that if ever he publishes a third volume, Democratic Rage shall not be forgotten. The play was printed separately, and the curious collector may stumble occa. sionally on a copy in Anglesea-street, or at the well-stocked book-stalls round the corner of the College, or in front of the Four Courts. Preston is also the author of two other tragedies, The Adopted Son, and The Siege of Ismael. We do not believe they were acted, and have never seen them in print.*

WILLIAM COOKE, a native of Cork, where he received his education, is well known as the author of "Elements of Criticism;" "The Art of Living in London," and "Conversation," poems, and the "Memoirs of Charles Macklin and Samuel Foote." On these his literary reputation is built, but he claims admission into the file of dramatists, from having made an indifferent alteration of a good play. In 1782, his version of Fletcher's Scornful Lady was acted at Covent Garden, under the title of the Cupricious Lady, and repeated several times with moderate applause. He has somewhat purified, although it can scarcely be said that he has improved the original. A more recent version has lately been produced, in which Miss Cushman sustained the heroine; but the play is

A Mr. Peter Lefanu has been mentioned in some catalogues as the author of a prelude, called Smock-alley Secrets, acted in Dublin, in 1778; and a Mr. John Macaulay, M.R.I.A., has been named as having written The Genius of Ireland, a masque, also acted in Dublin, and said to be an imitation of Comus.

not likely to take possession of the boards, or to become palatable to modern taste under any guise. Cooke died in 1824.

JOSEPH ATKINSON, a native of Ireland, and a captain in the army, is the author of three dramatic pieces. Mutual Deception, a comedy; A Match for a Widow, and Love in a Blaze; comic operas. All three were acted and printed in Dublin. Mutual Deception came out in 1795. The plot is taken (by the author's admission) from "Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hazard," by Marivaux, which appeared in 1730. It also bears a strong reresemblance to Love's Metamorphoses, by T. Vaughan; and the Double Deceit, by Governor Popple, of Bermuda. In 1786, Colman altered and curtailed Atkinson's play, and produced it, with tolerable success, at the Haymarket, under the title of Tit for Tat. The alteration improves the original, by the omission of a dull, serious underplot.

A Match for a Widow, or Frolics of Fancy, was acted at Crow-street, in 1786, and printed in 1788. It is quite as good as the generality of operas. The main plot is professedly founded on a little French comedy, from which Mrs. Inchbald borrowed her "Widow's Vow." Jonathan, a Yankee servant, in Atkinson's piece, is a very amusing character. In one of his songs he says—

"And once I stove a cask of beer,

Because it worked on Sunday."

Atkinson, in his dedication, compliments Daly, the patentee and manager, as having rescued the Irish theatre from neglect and degradation, and brought it to the highest pitch of respectability and magnificence.

Love in a Blaze came out at Crowstreet in 1800. The plot is the same as that of Gallic Gratitude, by Dr. James Solas Dodd,* acted at Covent Garden, in 1789, and subsequently in Dublin, under the title of the Funeral Pile. Both are taken from Le Naufrage, by Lafont, written in 1710; as is also The Widow of Malabar, a poor tragedy, by Mariana Starke, acted at Covent Garden, in

1790. Atkinson offered his plays in vain to the London managers, but he derived some satisfaction from seeing them received with considerable ap plause in his own country.

THE REV. HENRY BOYD, A.M., Vicar of Drumgath, and chaplain to Lord Charleville, a native of Ireland, printed a volume of poems in Dublin, in 1793. They are chiefly of a theatrical or lyrical character, and contain The Helots, a tragedy; The Temple of Vesta, a dramatic poem; The Rivals, a sacred drama; and The Royal Message, a dramatic pastoral. The latter is founded on the Scriptural history of David and Uriah. None of these were intended for representation. Boyd is better known as a translator of the "Inferno" of Dante, and of Vincenzo Monti's poem on the death of Hugh Basseville, the envoy from the French Republic, who was cruelly murdered in a popular insurrection at Rome, on the 14th of January, 1793.†

WILLIAM FRANCIS SULLIVAN, A.B., was the son of Dr. Francis Sullivan, LL.D., formerly senior fellow and royal professor of common law in the Dublin University. The younger Sullivan was born in the Irish metropolis, about the year 1756, received his education in Trinity College, and was intended for the Church; but he lost his father before he was nine, and his mother before he was nineteen years of age, and his prospects underwent a total change in consequence.

When

the American war broke out in 1776, he volunteered into the army, and continued to serve until the peace of 1783. Soon after that he married, and removed with his family to England, where he and his wife went on the stage, and performed at several of the leading provincial theatres. Not succeeding to his wishes, and being of a studious disposition, he relinquished the boards for literary pursuits, and produced some poems, which evinced genius, and a tolerable power of imagination. His dramatic pieces are two in number-viz., The Rights of Man, a farce; and The Test of Union and Loyalty.

The Rights of Man was acted at Buxton, in 1791, and afterwards printed

* Dodd, who we believe was an Irishman, lived to the great age of 104, and died in Mecklenburgh-street, Dublin, in March, 1805.

+"Basseville received a thrust of a bayonet in the abdomen; he was dragged into the streets, holding his bowels in his hands, and, at length, left on a field-bed in a guard-house where he expired."-Montholon.

in the first volume of The Thespian Magazine. This dramatic satire has considerable humour. Its tendency is, to expose those self-elected reformers, who, from a mere love of innovation and the craving after notoriety, adopt and spread political opinions which they have neither sense nor argument to support. It was once performed at the Haymarket, for Wilson's benefit. The Test of Union and Loyalty bore reference to the threatened French invasion.

ANDREW CHERRY was fortunate enough to achieve considerable reputation both as an actor and author. He was the eldest son of Mr. John Cherry, an eminent printer and bookseller at Limerick, and was born in that city, on the 11th of January, 1762. His father's ancestors possessed a considerable property, on which they resided for centuries, near Sheffield, in Yorkshire, and were of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, as they are commonly called. One of these, disclaiming the mild tenets of the primitive church, and being imbued with a thirst for martial glory, followed the fortunes of King William III., and fought under that renowned soldier as a cornet of horse, throughout the Irish wars. On the capitulation of Limerick, being left in garrison there, he married an Irish lady, and purchased an estate at a place called Croome, not far distant from the city, where the family resided for some generations, until the imprudence of Andrew Cherry's grandfather deprived him and his successors of a paternal inheritance, which, in the present day, yields an annual income of many thousands. Thus the representative of landed squires dwindled down into an itinerant actor.

The subject of this memoir received what is generally called a respectable school education, at a grammar school in his native city, which his father intended to have completed at the Irish University, as he designed his son for a member of the church; but worldly disappointments obliged him to abandon his favourite plan, and the study of theology was resigned for the printing-office. In the year 1773, at eleven years of age, his father placed him under the care of Mr. James Potts, a highly respectable and influential brother of his own craft, of Dame-steet, Dublin, and the young aspirant was by him initiated in his own art and mystery. About this time the rivalship

of the theatres in Smock-alley and Capel-street formed the subject of general conversation; and in Mr. Potts's printing-office the merits and demerits of the two companies were fully discussed, each house having its exclusive partisans amongst the typographical critics, who then, as now, comprised a most important section of the gallery, and were held in oracular reverence by their associate deities. From the ancient friendship which had subsisted between Potts and Cherry senior, the young Andrew was particularly favoured by his master, who made him his constant companion in all recreations. Amongst other amusements, Mr. Potts was extremely attached to theatrical exhibitions, and, perceiving that his pupil's inclination bent strongly to that point, he seldom visited the theatre without taking young Cherry with him. On the first occasion on which he was permitted to indulge his ardent desire, he witnessed the last appearance of that ill-starred but accomplished actor, Mossop, in his favourite part of Zanga. The performance of such a celebrated tragedian obtained an entire dominion over his fancy. He soon found his taste for business rapidly decline; the printingoffice lost its charms, and he began to loathe the drudgery of a mechanical employment. In conjunction with his brother apprentices and intimate companions, whose stage-struck propensities were not inferior to his own, he made his first appearance, at the age of fourteen, in the character of the fair Lucia, in Addison's tragedy of Cato, in a large room fitted up as a temporary theatre, at the Blackamoor's Head, James'sstreet, Dublin.

The applause which attended this juvenile essay greatly increased his prevailing passion, and in a short time after his first debût, a Mr. Martin, a country manager, hearing him recite, in company with other young men, whom he, Martin, had found means to assemble, with a view to delude them into engagements, invited him to join his sharing company. Cherry readily accepted the offer, without thought of consequences, and before he reached his seventeenth year, launched into a profession, perhaps, of all others, the most arduous, precarious, and envious. His first appearance as a public performer was at Naas, fourteen miles from Dublin, under the management of this Mr.

1

Martin, and in the prominent character of Colonel Feignwell in Mrs. Centlivre's comedy of A Bold Stroke for a Wife. It would have been impossible for a tyro to undertake a more difficult task, as the part requires a discrimination so various, and a flexibility of talent and execution such as is rarely met with even in the veterans of the stage. The applause was great, and the manager, after passing many eulogiums on his exertions, presented him with tenpence halfpenny, that handsome amount being his dividend of the profits of the night's performance. This, with a much more liberal allowance of praise, inspired his heart with hope and ambition. The words of "fair comfort and encouragement" were accompanied by golden promises, which proved abortive.

The towns that Martin visited were small; the diurnal receipts, therefore, scarcely furnished a miserable, half. starved existence for himself and his followers. Yet such was Cherry's enthusiasm for a theatrical life, that he endured a probation of ten months with this manager, constantly employed in the laborious study of almost all the principal characters in tragedy and comedy, without ever possessing a guinea during the whole of that period, and frequently without the means of obtaining common sustenance. So impoverished was he, and at the same time so industriously bent on what he had undertaken, that his greatest anxiety generally arose from his want of means to purchase candles, by the light of which he might study the characters that were daily allotted to him. In this situation, he endured more than the usual hardships peculiar to a strolling life. At one time he was actually in danger of starvation, having been without any kind of refreshment or food for more than three days. At Athlone, during an unexpected close of the theatre, in consequence of the total desertion of the public, his landlady, to whom he was in arrear for his lodging, seeing there was no prospect of payment, satisfied herself for the trifle already due, by seizing on the small remnant of what had once been his wardrobe, and knowing that she could dispose of the untiled garret he occupied to more advantage during the approaching races, turned him out to the mercy of the winter's wind, which he endured with the philosophy of a stoic. He

rambled carelessly about the streets, sometimes quoting passages to himself, both serious and comic, that bore analogy to his situation, but without forming one definite idea as to where he was to rest his houseless head. Towards the close of the evening he strolled by accident into the lower part of the theatre, which had formerly been an inn, and was then occupied by a female whose husband had been a sergeant of dragoons, for the purpose of retailing refreshments to those who visited the playhouse. After chatting until it was dark, the woman hinted that she wished to go to bed, and begged he might retire, upon which he replied, in the words of Don John in The Chances, "I was thinking of going home, but that I have no lodging." The good dame, taking the words literally, inquired into the cause, with which he acquainted her without disguise. Being the mother of a family, she felt severely for his forlorn situation. At that time he was not master of a single halfpenny in the world, nor had he the means of obtaining one. The poor creature shed tears of regret that she could not effectually alleviate his misfortune. He endeavoured to assume a careless gaiety, but the woman's unaffected sorrow brought the reflection of his own disobedience to his mind, and he shed tears in copious libation. In his grief he saw the sorrow of his parents, whom he had deserted to follow what he began to perceive was a mad career, in despite of the many unanswered remonstrances he had received, with a fair promise of forgiveness and restored affection, should he return to his business.

His

This philanthropic female lamented that she could not furnish him with a bed, but offered to lend him her husband's cloak, and to procure a bundle of dry hay, that he might find a sleeping corner in an empty room. heart was too full to pay his gratitude in words; his eyes thanked her, he wept bitterly, accepted her kind offer, and retired to rest. To intrude any further on her kindness was too painful for him, as she was struggling to maintain a numerous offspring. He, therefore, carefully shunned the house at meal times, and wandered through the fields or streets until he supposed their repasts were finished. At last, so overcome by fasting and fatigue, that he could not rest, he rose from

« ПредишнаНапред »