The Case of Mrs. Clive Part 1

The Case of Mrs. Clive.

by Catherine Clive.

INTRODUCTION

Among other things, the licensing act of 1737 stipulated that Covent Garden and Drury Lane exclusively were the patented and licensed theaters (respectively) in London, a fact directly related to the revolt of prestigious players six years later. Although there were sporadic performances of "legitimate" drama in unlicensed playhouses between 1737 and 1743, full-time professional actors and actresses were in effect locked into the approved theaters during the regular theatrical season.

Suspecting a cartel directed against them personally and professionally by the "Bashas" Rich at Covent Garden and Fleetwood at Drury Lane,[1]

the players from Drury Lane in the summer of 1743 banded together and refused to perform the next season until salaries and playing conditions improved. Tardy and partial payment of salary was the surface sore point, unprincipled and unwarranted manipulation by the managers the underlying one. As the Macklin-Garrick quarrel attests,[2] the conflict was not only between labor and management; but the latter confrontation is central to the conflict in 1743 and the subject of _The Case of Mrs.

Clive Submitted to the Publick_, published in October, 1744, by which time Catherine (Kitty) Clive had established herself as not only first lady of comedy but also as somewhat of a patriot of the acting profession and the Drury Lane company.

Coming to Drury Lane in 1728 while still in her teens, Kitty Rafter (1711-1785) quickly became a favorite of the town by virtue of her singing voice, vivacity, and gift for mimicry. Admired first as a singing actress, Miss Rafter in 1731 gave unequivocal notice of her considerable talent as a comic actress in the role of Nell in Coffey's _The Devil to Pay_, one of several hundred she mastered. Her specialties: Flora in _The Wonder_, Lady Bab in _High Life Below Stairs_, Lappet in _The Miser_, Catherine in _Catherine and Petruchio_, Mrs. Heidelberg in _The Clandestine Marriage_, and the Fine Lady in _Lethe_. Mrs. Clive's (on 4 Oct. 1733, Miss Rafter married George Clive, a barrister) popularity as comedienne and performer of prologues and epilogues is indicated by the frequency of her performances and long tenure at Drury Lane (she retired in 1769) and doc.u.mented by the panegyrics of Fielding, Murphy, Churchill, Garrick, Dr. Johnson, Horace Walpole, Goldsmith, fellow players, contemporary memoir writers, and audiences who admired her.[3] Dr. Johnson, I feel, gives the most balanced, just contemporary appraisal of Mrs. Clive the actress: "What Clive did best, she did better than Garrick; but could not do half so many things well; she was a better romp than any I ever saw in nature."[4] Part of the half she could not do well were tragedy roles, attested to by Thomas Davies, who comments on her performances as Ophelia in _Hamlet_ and Zara in _The Mourning Bride_: "Of Mrs. Clive's Ophelia I shall only say, that I regret that the first comic actress in the world should so far mistake her talents as to attempt it." And on Zara, "for her own benefit, the comic Clive put on the royal robes of Zara: she found them too heavy, and, very wisely, never wore them afterwards."[5] Part of the half she could do well is noticed, once again, by Davies: particularly adroit and distinguished in chambermaid parts, Mrs. Clive

excelled also in characters of caprice and affectation, from the high-bred Lady Fanciful to the vulgar Mrs. Heidelberg; in country girls, romps, hoydens and dowdies, superannuated beauties, viragos and humourists; she had an inimitable talent in ridiculing the extravagant action and impertinent consequence of an Opera-singer--of which she gave an excellent specimen in _Lethe_.

Her mirth was so genuine that whether it was restrained to the arch sneer, and suppressed half-laugh, or extended to the downright honest burst of loud laughter, the audience was sure to accompany her [my punctuation].[6]

Mrs. Clive's stature as a comic actress would, then, seemingly make her a prize for Rich or Fleetwood, but they did their best to thwart her career and happiness at their theaters.

I suspect that their motivation in so doing was fear that her temper, her influence with other actors and her audiences, and her strong loyalty to her profession would hinder their legislated power to control absolutely London theaters, players, and audiences in 1743. Not much investigation is required to see Mrs. Clive at her clamoring best, at various times head to head with Susannah Cibber, Peg Woffington, Woodward, Shuter, or Garrick. Her letters to Garrick show that as late as the sixties she was quite capable of vitriol when she felt that she or her friends were unjustly treated. Tate Wilkinson was surely correct in describing her as "a mixture of combustibles; she was pa.s.sionate, cross, and vulgar," often simultaneously.[7] If this were the case in mere greenroom tiffs or casual correspondence, how the ire of "the Clive" must have been excited by the cartelists, who did their utmost to keep her out of joint and almost out of sight.

In 1733, Fielding, who furthered Mrs. Clive's career by writing and editing parts of his plays for her and publicly praising her as a woman and as an actress, wrote the following encomium on her professional integrity in his "Epistle to Mrs. Clive," prefatory to _The Intriguing Chambermaid_:

The part you have maintained in the present dispute between the players and the patentees, is so full of honour, that had it been in higher life, it would have given you the reputation of the greatest heroine of the age. You looked on the cases of Mr.

Highmore and Mrs. Wilks with compa.s.sion, nor could any promises or views of interest sway you to desert them; nor have you scrupled any fatigue ... to support the cause of those whom you imagine injured and distressed; and for this you have been so far from endeavouring to exact an exorbitant reward from persons little able to afford it, that I have known you to offer to act for nothing, rather than the patentees should be injured by the dismission of the audience.[8]

Fielding is, of course, referring to the 1733 dispute in which Mrs.

Clive (and Macklin) among the princ.i.p.al players stayed with the ineffective proprietor of Drury Lane, John Highmore. Jealous that Highmore and not he gained control of Drury Lane after former shareholders either died or sold out, Theophilus Cibber demanded, among other things, that Highmore share profits with his players rather than pay fixed salaries. He then led the Drury Lane players in revolt in the autumn of 1733 to the New Haymarket where they played without a license until March of the 1733-1734 season, at which time they returned to Drury Lane under the new management of Fleetwood. The actors at least partially won this battle, and although Highmore tried to have the vagrant act enforced, the players returned to Drury Lane unscathed. With Highmore gone, a period of uneasy peace obtained. The players, however, were not to win so easily the next dispute, the one that took place after the pa.s.sage of the licensing act.[9]

Mrs. Clive's decision to stay with Highmore rather than defect was probably made because "two women--Mrs. Wilks, the widow of her [Kitty's]

old theatrical idol, and Mrs. Booth--were in he direction of the theater.[10] But in light of Fielding's words and her actions and statements in regard to the welfare of Drury Lane and its actors throughout her career, I believe that Mrs. Clive, although not pleased with aspects of Highmore's reign, also refused to defect because she felt that the manager was basically in the right, that her fellow players would be dest.i.tute or at least open to hards.h.i.+p without employment there, and that the audiences would take offense at such unprofessional and selfish behavior from their "servants." The "Town,"

as her own play _The Rehearsal_ (I.i. 159-170) shows, was always her judge in matters professional.

Fielding's prologue to his revised _Author's Farce_ (1734), spoken by Mrs. Clive, compares the settled, prosperous former days at Drury Lane with those of 1734, when "... _alas! how alter'd is our Case!/ I view with Tears this poor deserted Place_."[11] With few exceptions, the "place" continued strangely in decline even with a competent company and often with a full house. The falling-off continued until the advent of Garrick, who with Lacy in 1747 co-managed the theater into a new era.

From the mid-thirties until 1743, Mrs. Clive appears in roles she had made famous as well as those newly written with her particular talents in mind. Fielding, turning more and more to political satire and soon to another literary form, had little need of her services;[12] but others did, and the years between the licensing act and 1743 find Mrs. Clive in demand as the affected lady of quality, speaker of humorous epilogues, performer in Dublin, and singer of such favorites as "Ellen-a-Roon,"

"The Cuckoo," and "The Life of a Beau." This period is also marked by Mrs. Clive's first professional venture with David Garrick, in his _Lethe_, the beginning of a relations.h.i.+p to become one of the most tempestuous and fruitful in all theater history.

As I intimated at the outset, the licensing act mainly troubled the London players because of the power of monopoly it invested in Fleetwood and Rich. Not only were the forums for dramatic presentation now restricted, but so was professional freedom. The problem, therefore, was as much philosophical as it was geographical. From the sixteenth century to 1737, English players had some freedom (albeit limited) to rebel from intolerable authority and to form their own company.[13] This freedom, this choice, as Lord Chesterfield pointed out in his speech against the act, was severely attenuated in 1737, and was to remain so in varying degrees until the monopoly the act allowed was legislated dead in 1843.

But it was a cartel between the managers that the players most feared, and there is evidence in the pamphlets growing out of the struggle of 1743 that such a fear was well-founded.

The playing conditions at Drury Lane in the early forties were not good, a situation directly attributable to the inept.i.tude and highhandedness of Fleetwood (and his treasurer Pierson) and his refusal to pay salaries in full and on time. The manager's accommodating side-show performers in his company did not help. Macklin, as Fleetwood's lieutenant, had to try to pacify actors, workmen, creditors; as actor he commiserated with the players. With the coming of Garrick from Goodman's Fields to Drury Lane late in the 1741-1742 season and with a progressively disgruntled Clive all the princ.i.p.als in the revolt are under one--leaky--roof.

In light of the number and variety of the published commentary which accompanied the revolt, perhaps a highlighting of Clive's _Case_ would be the most efficient way to elucidate some of the major difficulties involved. After addressing herself to "the Favour of the Publick," with encouragement from her friends,[14] Mrs. Clive strikes the key note of her essay: injustice and oppression, specifically seen in the cartel's threat to "Custom," an iterative word throughout the essay. Mrs. Clive first speaks of salary, a matter obviously important to her "Liberty and Livelihood."[15] One writer on the dispute, in a quasi-satirical tract, denounces the managers in this regard and in so doing echoes Mrs. Clive: "When there are but two Theatres allowed of, shall the Masters of those two Houses league together, and oblige the Actors either to take what Salary or Treatment they graciously vouchsafe to offer them, and to be parcelled out and confined to this House or t'other, just as they in their Wisdoms think meet; or else to be banished the Kingdom for a Livelihood? This is Tyranny with a Vengeance--but perhaps these generous n.o.ble-spirited Masters may intend their Performers a Compliment in it, and by thus fixing them to one Place, effectually wipe off that odious Appellation of Vagabonds, which has been sometimes given them."[16] The licensing act, subsequent cartel, and mistreatment of players were then not only in the mind of Mrs. Clive. Treated in most of the arguments for or against the players was salary, but it was only a cover hiding an underlying malaise.

Implying that the managers set out to ruin certain performers, including herself, Mrs. Clive accuses them of putting on "a better Face to the Town" by publis.h.i.+ng (inaccurate) salary figures--a ploy to get public sanction for lower salaries. Mrs. Clive alludes to salaries published ostensibly by Fleetwood in the papers (e.g., _Gentleman's Magazine_, XIII, October 1743, 553), where the pay of such lights as Garrick, Macklin, Pritchard, and Clive in the 1742-1743 season is made to seem higher than the salaries of such worthies as Wilks, Betterton, Cibber, and Oldfield in the 1708-1709 season. The actors, in presenting their case (_Gentleman's Magazine_, XIII, November 1743, 609), hit at Fleetwood for citing 1708-1709 salaries, for "the Stage [then] both of _Drury-Lane_ and the _Hay-market_, were in so wretched a Condition ...

as not to be worth any body's Acceptance." The players use instead salaries of the 1729 players "to place the salaries of the present Actors in a true light," since the stage in that year flourished. In 1729, Wilks, the highest paid actor, earned more than his later equal, Garrick. All other princ.i.p.als' salaries were comparable.

The main complaint of Fleetwood's company, then, was not only base salary but the "Fallacy" of the manager's account and his "setting down besides the Manager's Charges, every benefit Night, what is got by the Actor's own private Interests in Money and Tickets, as also the Article of 50L for Cloaths, added to the Actresses Account, which is absolutely an Advantage to the Manager, as they always lay out considerably more."

This evidence, if not in itself d.a.m.ning to Fleetwood's designs toward his actors, at least indicates the internecine breach at Drury Lane.

(The inter-theater conflict, important for its effect on repertory and morale, is adequately examined in theater histories and lies outside my interests in this essay.)

Mrs. Clive admits, however, that reduced, unpaid, or "handled" salaries were not the first fear of the actors; it was instead, she says, the fear of what "would happen from an Agreement supposed to be concluded betwixt the two Managers, which made 'em apprehend, that if they submitted to act under such Agreements, they must be absolutely in the Managers Power." As the writer of _The Case Between the Managers_ (p.

11) presents it, a conversation between a personified Covent Garden and Drury Lane would have gone like this: "Well, but, Brother _Drury_, we can manage that matter [how to keep audiences]--Suppose you and I make a Cartel; for instance, agree for every other Theatre, and oblige ourselves by this Cartel to reduce by near one half the Salaries of our princ.i.p.al Performers--I'gad, we may cramp 'em rarely this way--they must serve us at any rate we tax their Merit at, for they'll then have no where else to go to." Drury Lane responds, "D--n me, if that is not divinely thought--my dear Friend, give me a Kiss."

Late in the summer of 1743, several months before the salary figures described above, Garrick, Macklin, Clive, and Mrs. Pritchard among the princ.i.p.al players attempted to obtain another license to set up their own company in the Haymarket: shades of 1733. They applied to the Chamberlain Grafton--who denied it, in part perhaps because put out that Garrick commanded over L500 a year. There was no chance, therefore, to sidestep the monopoly effected by the licensing act. Leading the secession, Garrick agreed with his colleagues to stay out until redress was forthcoming. Redress did not come, the defectors lost, Fleetwood won. He starved them in not out, Garrick was persuaded to return to Drury Lane (which he does in early December, 1743) by the entreaties of several of the dest.i.tute seceded players who asked him to accede to Fleetwood's terms. As Garrick explains to Macklin (see note 2), he did so because he had the economic welfare of his fellow actors at heart.

Macklin infuriated with him and Clive disappointed in him, both refused to accept Garrick's decision, and hence became renegade. Macklin, uninvited back by Fleetwood, admired Olive's decision to have no part in signing a pet.i.tion presented to her by her fellow defectors who understood that the refusal of a separate license dissolved their bond.

Macklin writes in his Reply to _Mr. Garrick's Answer_ (p. 27) that "it ought to be known that when this Letter was carried to Mrs. Clive, and her Name to it desired, she had the Honour and Spirit to refuse, upon any Consideration, to be made so ridiculous a Tool to so base a Purpose."

Others were not so generous as Macklin. The author of _The Disputes between the Director of D----y, and the Pit Potentates,_ one "B.Y.,"

champions the cause of the non-princ.i.p.al players against such as Mrs.

Clive, "for the low-salary'd Players are always at the labouring Oar, and at constant Expence, while the rest are serv'd up once or twice in a Week each, as very fine Dishes," one of whom, he says, is Mrs. Clive, an "avaritious" person whom he is confident "has found, and feels, her Error by this Time."[17] The writer then details the particular hards.h.i.+ps of Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. Horton, and Mr. Mills, hards.h.i.+ps caused by such greedy princ.i.p.als as Clive. B.Y. obviously chose to ignore the compa.s.sion of Mrs. Clive for the low-salaried players expressed in her Case.

Evidence that Mrs. Clive was in no position to be avaricious and that a debilitating cartel in fact existed is found in her own essay. When the defected players returned to Drury Lane (except Macklin, whom Fleetwood considered the cause of the theater's troubles) late in 1743, Fleetwood offered Mrs. Clive a salary incompatible with her talent and lower than his previous "agreements" with her. Clive says, "They were such as I was advis'd not to accept, because it was known they were proposed for no reason but to insult me, and make me seek for better at the other Theatre; for I knew it had been settled, by some dark Agreement, that Part of the Actors were to go to Covent-Garden Theatre, and others to Drury-Lane."

Led to believe that she would find comfort and acceptance at Covent Garden based on previous encouragement by Rich to have her join his company,[18] Mrs. Clive realized that the dark agreement was a fact, for "When I apply'd to him, he offered me exactly the same which I had refused at the other Theatre." She managed a bit more salary, however, and out of necessity agreed to play. More rankling to Mrs. Clive than basic salary was her being forced to pay for her benefit. The extant Clive-Garrick correspondence points to the pride she took in not only a "clear" benefit but one held during that part of the month she dictated.

As is the case with salary, the basis for this complaint was unreasonable manipulation by the managers, loss of freedom, and an unjustified break with tradition: "I had had one [a benefit] clear of all Expence for Nine Years before; an Advantage the first Performers had been thought to merit for near Thirty Years, and had grown into a Custom."

Mrs. Clive did not regularly play for Rich until December 1743, from which time she "determined to stay there," doing all in her power to please her audiences and him. Yet she "found, by his Behaviour to me, it was designed I should not continue with him." Clive's specific exposition of Rich's mistreatment of her is a portrait of an actress aware of her worth and of a manager at his worst. Fired from Covent Garden--against custom and justice--at the end of the season without being told, Mrs. Clive could not arrange to play in Ireland, where she was a great favorite,[19] for Rich's cheat did not become clear to her until summer was too far advanced. Clive says it all when she observes "it is unlawful to act any where but with them." Fleetwood was the only alternative for the next season, and he still owed her 160. 12s. At the time of Clive's Case (October, 1744) Fleetwood had not yet contacted her for engagement at Drury Lane even though he could not "but know I am disengag'd from the other Theatre." Nor could have Clive expected much of a salary from him even if he did call on her since the last season he offered her "not near half as much as he afterwards agreed to give another Performer, and less than he then gave to some others in his Company." Mrs. Clive could not but conclude that the managers were in league to distress her.[20] In the final third of her essay, Mrs. Clive presents a rather touching account of the personal costs of a piece of legislation which was itself manipulated and "interpreted in the narrow sense of forming the legal safeguard to the patent monopoly."[21]

The "Ladies" who had promised their protection to Mrs. Clive obviously were influential in convincing Rich to re-hire her, for less than one month after the appearance of Clive's Case the Prince of Wales and his Princess sponsored at the Haymarket a concert for her benefit,[22] and her name is regularly listed in the Covent Garden playbills soon after.

The absence of publicity from Mrs. Clive, or about her, suggests that her second short year at Covent Garden was fairly acceptable to all concerned, although Portia in _The Merchant of Venice_ was hardly her forte.

The next season finds her back at Drury Lane, where she reigns uncontested queen of comedy for more than twenty years. In addition to the return of Clive, the 1745-1746 season (one poor in attendance and new plays) at Drury Lane is noteworthy because of a reinstated Macklin, a de-throned Fleetwood, a new manager (Lacy), a well-balanced company soon to be augmented by player-manager Garrick, prospects for a bright future--and a theatrical monopoly stronger than ever.[23] In the latter regard Mrs. Clive's case is revealing in that it gives a new emphasis to the epithet His Majesties' Servants.[24]

Indiana State University Terre Haute

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[1] _The Dramatic Congress_ (London, 1743). Throughout I use short t.i.tles.

[2] Three major doc.u.ments concerning this quarrel are published under the t.i.tle _Mr. Macklin's Reply to Mr. Garrick's Answer_ (London, 1743).

[3] Mrs. Clive's four afterpieces, with their allusions to her personality and career, are equally revealing. I treat this subject in "An Edition of the Afterpieces of Kitty Clive," Diss. Duquesne Univ.

1968, and "The Textual Relations.h.i.+p and Biographical Significance of Two Pet.i.te Pieces by Mrs. Catherine (Kitty) Clive," RECTR, 9 (May 1970), 51-58, and "Kitty Clive as Dramatist," _DUJ_, N.S., 32 No. 2 (March 1971), 125-132.

[4] James Boswell, _Boswell's Life of Johnson_, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, rev. L.F. Powell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934-1950), IV, 243.

[5] _Dramatic Miscellanies_ (London, 1785), III, 131, 376.

[6] Quoted by [John Genest], _Some Account of the English Stage_ (Bath: H.E. Carrington, 1832), V, 230.

[7] _Memoirs of His Own Life_ (York, 1790), II, 257. See _Theatrical Correspondence in Death. An Epistle from Mrs. Oldfield_ (London, 1743), p. 7.