poems, dedicated to the loose Countess of Portsmouth. One night, after acting a Judge, he took to the road, robbed a man of a watch and £7, and was hanged for it, to the great indignation of the town; but "Mat did not go dead, like a sluggard to bed, But boldly in his shoes, died of a noose, That he found under Tyburn tree." At the head of the Duke's company, to which we now pass, was Thomas Betterton, whose merits claim a chapter for himself. CHAPTER IV. THOMAS BETTERTON. Ox a December night, 1661, there is a crowded house at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The play is " Hamlet," with young Mr. Betterton, who has been two years on the stage, in the part of the Dane. The Ophelia is the real object of the young fellow's love, charming Mistress Saunderson. Old ladies and gentlemen, repairing in capacious coaches to this representation, remind one another of the lumbering and crushing of carriages about the old playhouse in the Blackfriars, causing noisy tumults which drew indignant appeals from the Puritan housekeepers, whose privacy was sadly disturbed. But what was the tumult there to the scene on the south side of the “Fields,” when "Hamlet," with Betterton, was offered to the public! The Jehus contend for place, with the eagerness of ancient Britons in a battle of chariots. And see, the mob about the pit-doors have just caught a bailiff attempting to arrest an honest playgoer. They fasten the official up in a tub, and roll the trembling wretch all round the square. They finish by hurling him against a carriage, which sweeps from a neighbouring street, at full gallop. Down come the horses over the barrelled bailiff, with sounds of hideous ruin; and the young lady lying back in the coach is screaming like mad. This lady is the dishonest daughter of brave, honest, and luckless Viscount Grandison. As yet, she is only Mrs. Palmer; next year she will be Countess of Castlemaine, bye and bye, Duchess of Cleveland. In At length, the audience are all safely housed and eager. different enough, however, they are, during the opening scenes. The fine gentlemen laugh loudly and comb their periwigs in the "best rooms." The fops stand erect in the boxes, to show how folly looks in clean linen; and the orange nymphs, with their PEPYS' OPINION OF BETTERTON. 33 costly entertainment of fruit from Seville, giggle and chatter, as they stand on the benches below, with old and young admirers, proud of being recognised in the boxes. The whole court of Denmark is before them; but not till the words, ""Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother," fall from the lips of Betterton. is the general ear charmed, or the general tongue arrested. Then, indeed, the vainest fops and pertest orange girls look round and listen too. The voice is so low, and 66 sad, and sweet; the modulation so tender, the dignity so natural, the grace so consummate, the intelligence in the attitude and aspect so striking, that all yield themselves to the delicious enchantment. It's beyond imagination," whispers Mr. Pepys to his neighbour, who only answers with a long and low drawn Hush!' How grand the head, how lofty the brow, what eloquence and fire in the eyes, how firm the mouth, how manly the sum of all! How is the whole audience subdued almost to tears, at the mingled love and awe which he displays in presence of the spirit of his father! Betterton fulfilled all that Overbury laid down with regard to what best graced an actor. "Whatsoever is commendable to the grave orator, is most exquisitely perfect in him; for by a full and significant action of the body he charms our attention. Sit in a full theatre, and you will think you see so many lines drawn from the circumference of so many ears, while the actor is the centre." This was especially the case with Betterton; and now, as Hamlet's first soliloquy closes, and the charmed but silent audience "feel music's pulse in all their arteries," Mr. Pepys exclaims in his ecstasy, "It's the best acted part ever done by man." And the audience think so, too; there is a hurricane of applause; after which the fine gentlemen renew their prattle with the fine ladies, and the orange girls beset the Sir Foplings, and Pepys is heard saying to a critic, "I only know that Mr. Betterton is the best actor in the world." But here comes the gentle Ophelia. The audience took an interest in this lady and the royal Dane, for there was not one in the house who was ignorant of the love passages between them, or of the coming marriage by which they were to receive additional warrant. Mistress Saunderson was worthy of the homage here implied. There was mind in her acting; and she not only possessed personal beauty, but the richer beauty of a virtuous life. They were a well-matched couple on and off the stage; and their mutual affection was based on a mutual respect and esteem. People thought of them as inseparable, and young ladies wondered how Mr. Betterton could play Mercutio, and leave Mistress Saunderson as Juliet, to be adored by the not ineffective Mr. Harris, as Romeo! The whole house, as long as the incomparable pair were on the stage, were in a dream of delight. Their grace, perfection, good looks, the love they had so cunningly simulated. and that which they were known to mutually entertain, formed the theme of all tongues. Fifty years after these early triumphs, an aged couple resided in one of the best houses in Russell Street, Covent Garden, the walls of which were covered with pictures, prints, and drawings, selected with taste and judgment. They were still a handsome pair. The venerable lady, indeed, looks pale and somewhat saddened. The gleam of April sunshine which penetrates the apartment cannot win her from the fire. She is Mrs. Betterton, and ever and anon she looks with a sort of proud sorrow on her aged husband. His fortune, nobly earned, has been diminished by "speculation," but the means whereby he achieved it are his still, and Thomas Betterton, in the latter years of Queen Anne, is the chief glory of the stage, even as he was in the first year of King Charles. The lofty column, however, is a little shaken. It is not a ruin, but is beautiful in its decay. Yet that it should decay at all is a source of so much tender anxiety to the actor's wife, that her senses suffer disturbance, and there may be seen in her features something of the distraught Ophelia of half a century ago. He It is the 13th of April, 1710-his last benefit night; and the tears are in the lady's eyes, and a painful sort of smile on her trembling lips, for Betterton kisses her as he goes forth that afternoon to take leave, as it proved, of the stage for ever. is in such pain from gout that he can scarcely walk to his carriage, and how is he to enact the noble and fiery Melantius in that ill-named drama of horror, "The Maid's Tragedy?" Hoping for the best, the old player is conveyed to the theatre, built by Vanbrugh, in the Haymarket. Through the stage door he is carried in loving arms to his dressing room. At the end of an hour, Wilks is there, and Pinkethman, and Mrs. Barry, all dressed for their parts, and agreeably disappointed to find Melantius robed, armoured, and besworded, with one foot in a buskin and the other in a slipper. To enable him even to wear the latter, he had first thrust his inflamed foot into water; but stout as he seemed, trying his strength to and fro in the room, the hand of Death was at that moment descending on the grandest of English actors. 66 FAREWELL APPEARANCE. 35 The house rose to receive him who had delighted themselves, their sires, and their grandsires. The audience were packed like Norfolk biffins." The edifice itself was only five years old, and when it was a-building, people laughed at the folly which reared a new theatre in the country, instead of in London ;-for in 1705 nearly all beyond the Haymarket was open field, straight away westward and northward. That such a house could ever be filled was set down as an impossibility; but the achievement was accomplished on this eventful benefit night; when the popular favourite was about to utter his last words, and to belong thenceforward only to the history of the stage he had adorned. There was a shout which shook him, as Lysippus uttered the words, "Noble Melantius," which heralded his coming. Every word which could be applied to himself was marked by a storm of applause, and when Melantius said of Amintor— "His youth did promise much, and his ripe years a murmuring comment ran round the house, that this had been effected by Betterton himself. Again, when he bids Amintor "hear thy friend, who has more years than thou," there were probably few who did not wish that Betterton were as young as Wilks but when he subsequently thundered forth the famous passage, "My heart will never fail me," there was a very tempest of excitement, which was carried to its utmost height, in thundering peal on peal of unbridled approbation, as the great Rhodian gazed full on the house, exclaiming No one doubted more than a fractional part of this assertion, and Betterton, acting to the end under a continued fire of bravos!" may have thrown more than the original meaning into the phrase "That little word was worth all the sounds Few were the words he was destined ever to hear again; and the subsequent prophecy of his own certain and proximate death, on which the curtain slowly descended, was fulfilled very speedily after they were uttered. Wycherley, writing to Pope, April 27th, |