CHAPTER VI.

JAMES QUIN.

Decline of the Stage-An Unfortunate Manager-The First English Harlequin and Inventor of Pantomimes-The Original Captain Macheath-Garrick's Prototype in Richard III.—The Romance of Quin's Parentage-His Success as Falstaff and Cato -His Artificial Style-His Picture in the Rosciad—At Leicester House-The "Mrs. Quins'"-His Duels-The Riot at Lincoln's Inn Fields-Anecdotes of his Wit and Benevolence.

FROM the deaths of Wilks and Booth, and the

retirement of Cibber until the appearance of Garrick, there was an interregnum, during which, the theatre, being in the hands of unprincipled or mercenary men, wholly indifferent to art, fell from the high position to which the triumvirate had raised it to the lowest depth of degradation; while the actors, destitute of original genius, were the mere echoes of their great predecessors, reproducing the faults and mannerisms, the strut and pompous cadences of the artificial school of Betterton and Booth without those flashes of greatness which illumined its dulness.

In 1732, Highmore, a gentleman of means, gave Booth £2,500 for half his share, while Cibber sold his

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whole share for £3000. After her husband's death, Mrs. Booth disposed of the remaining half for £1500. Mrs. Wilks retained hers. This Highmore, in partnership with Giffard, who had built the Goodman's Fields' Theatre, became possessed of two thirds of the patent. And a very bad bargain it proved to him. Taking advantage of a refusal of the management to increase the pay of the performers, Theophilus Cibber stirred up a revolt, and induced nearly all the principals to join him in opening the little theatre in the Haymarket, leaving to Highmore the mere dregs of the company. Colley, to his shame be it said, considering the large sum he had just pocketed from the manager, endeavoured to procure his roguish son a license, but failed. The deserters were ordered to return to Drury Lane within fourteen days, and one of them, Harper, a famous Falstaff, although a householder, was arrested under the Vagrancy Act; the theatre was closed and Theophilus came to grief, as he usually did in his rogueries. But the affair was Highmore's ruin, and he was soon glad to dispose of his shares to a wild young spendthrift of good family named Fleetwood, of whose management I shall have more to say by and bye.

Let us now take a glance at the other house. Christopher Rich died in 1714, just before the opening of the new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and his son John had succeeded him as

patentee. JOHN RICH, under the name of Lun, was the first and most famous of the English harlequins, and although something resembling that style of entertainment had been attempted as early as the year 1700, he might also be accredited as being the creator of pantomimes, "Harlequin Executed" produced by him in 1720, may be regarded as the first regular pantomime performed in this country. The Harlequin of Rich was a very different personage to the spangled nonentity of these degenerate days; he was the hero of the piece, and his love adventures with beautiful Columbine formed the plot; the clown was a very subordinate personage until the Grimaldi time. So fine was Rich's acting in dumb show, that he could draw as many tears as the most eloquent tragedian. He was an illiterate eccentric man who could not utter a line upon the stage, and yet believed that every success achieved in his theatre was owing to his instructions. We shall meet him frequently in the ensuing chapters, in situations where his eccentricities will be better developed than they could be by any description.

To return to the actors; MILLS, the original Zanga, in Young's "Revenge," and DELANE, two performers of the ponderous and mouthing school had succeeded to Booth's parts. WALKER was an admirable actor in juvenile tragedy and comedy, so fine in Hotspur and Faulconbridge, especially in the latter, that it was long ere his successor was found. Quin, by some

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extraordinary perversion of judgment, was originally cast for the dashing highwayman, Macheath, in Gay's Newgate Pastoral." He knew he could not play it, and hearing Walker humming one of the airs at rehearsal, he begged Gay to give him the part. Walker made in it almost as great a success as Lavinia Fenton did in Polly; but it was a fatal success for he was so much sought after in consequence, and fell into such excesses that he lived only a few years afterwards.

RYAN was a tragedian who might have risen above all his contemporaries, but for a peculiarity of delivery in consequence of a bullet hole in his cheek, which made him "whistle" his words, and a general slovenliness. Woodward told Tate Wilkinson that Garrick had borrowed some of his points in "Richard" from this actor. He and David went one night to see Ryan in the part prepared to ridicule the performance. "But Garrick was astonished at what he saw working in the mind of the ungraceful, slovenly, ill-dressed figure that Ryan made; which told him more than he knew before, and caused Garrick to bring to light, as his own, that unknown excellence which in Ryan had remained unnoticed and buried." Foote referred to this story in an occasional prologue he wrote and spoke for Ryan's farewell benefit.

"From him succeeding Richards took the clue;

And hence the style, if not the colour drew."

BOHEME who had been a sailor, flourished between 1718 and 1730; he was no imitator but a tragic actor of original powers, and excellent in several parts. He was the only Lear between Booth and Garrick.

But the most celebrated name of this era is the one which heads this chapter, JAMES QUIN. He was born in 1693 in King Street, Covent Garden. His mother had in early life been abandoned by her husband, and believing him to be dead had married again; but by-and-by the first husband returned, claimed her, and carried her off. James was the offspring of the second marriage. The Quins were a good Irish family, but the boy's birth being illegitimate, he was not likely to gain any advantage from them. He was educated for the law, had chambers in the Temple, but kept company with the players until he longed to become one of them. At the death of his father, finding himself without the means of pushing his way in his profession, he resolved to follow his inclinations, and take to the stage. Ryan introduced him at Drury Lane, where he was engaged for the season of 1717. One night "Tamerlane" was announced to be played; Mills, who was to perform Bajazet, was taken suddenly ill, and the management, after some persuasion, induced Quin, who had hitherto done little or nothing, to go on and read the part, an extremely difficult task for the most experienced actor; but he