The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume IV Part 90

William G.o.dwin's tragedy "Faulkener" was produced at Drury Lane, December 16, 1807, with some success. Lamb's letters to G.o.dwin of September 9 and 17, 1801, suggest that he had a share in the framing of the plot. Later the play was taken in hand by Thomas Holcroft and made more dramatic.

According to G.o.dwin's preface, 1807, the story was taken from the 1745 edition of Defoe's _Roxana_, which contains the episode of Susannah imagining herself to be Roxana's daughter and throwing herself in her mother's way. G.o.dwin transformed the daughter into a son. Lamb, however, seems to have believed this episode to be in the first edition, 1724, and afterwards to have been removed at the entreaty of Southerne, Defoe's friend (see Lamb's letters to Walter Wilson, Defoe's biographer, of December 16, 1822, and February 24, 1823). But it is in reality the first edition which lacks the episode, and Mr. G.A. Aitken, Defoe's latest editor, doubts Southerne's interference altogether and considers Susannah's curiosity an alien interpolation. For Lamb's other remarks on Defoe see also the "Ode to the Tread Mill," page 72 of this volume, and "Estimate of Defoe's Secondary Novels" (Vol. I.). Writing to Walter Wilson on November 15, 1829, on the receipt of his memoirs of Defoe, Lamb exclaims: "De Foe was always my darling."

Page 140. _Epilogue to "Time's a Tell-Tale."_

A play by Henry Siddons (1774-1815), Mrs. Siddons' eldest son. It was produced in 1807 at Drury Lane, with Lamb's prologue, which was, however, received so badly that on the second night another was subst.i.tuted for it.

Page 142. _Prologue to "Remorse."_

Coleridge's tragedy "Remorse," a recasting of his "Osorio" (written at Sheridan's instigation in 1797), was produced with success on January 23, 1813; and was printed, with the prologue, in the same year. Lamb's prologue, "spoken by Mr. Carr," was (according to Mr. d.y.k.es Campbell) a recasting of some verses composed for the prize offered by the Drury Lane Committee in the previous year, 1812, in response to their advertis.e.m.e.nt for a suitable poem to be read at the reopening of the new building after the fire of 1809. It was, of course, this compet.i.tion which brought forth the _Rejected Addresses_ (1812) of the brothers James and Horace Smith.

The prologue as printed is very different from that which was spoken at the theatre by Mr. Carr. A writer in the _Theatrical Inquisitor_ for February, 1813, in his contemptuous criticism, refers to several pa.s.sages that are no longer extant. I quote from an account of the matter by the late Mr. d.y.k.es Campbell in the _Ill.u.s.trated London News_, October 22, 1892:--

I am afraid the true text of Lamb's "Rejected Address," even as modified for use as a prologue, has not come down to us. This is how the severe and suspicious _Inquisitor_ describes it and its twin brother the epilogue--

The Prologue and Epilogue were among the most stupid productions of the modern muse; the former was, in all probability, a Rejected Address, for it contained many eulogiums on the beauty and magnificence of the "dome"

of Drury; talked of the waves being not quite dry, and expressed the happiness of the bard at being the first whose muse had soared within its limits. More stupid than the doggerel of Twiss, and more affected than the pretty verses of Miles Peter Andrews, the Epilogue proclaimed its author and the writer of the Prologue to be par n.o.bile fratrum, in rival dulness both pre-eminent.

The reader of Lamb's prologue will find little of all this in it, but there is no reason for doubting the critic's account of what he heard at the theatre. It is not at all unlikely that it was this paragraph which suggested to Lamb the advisability of still further revising the "Rejected Address." In the prologue there is a good deal about the size of the theatre, as compared with "the Lyceum's petty sphere," and of how pleased Shakspere would have been had he been able to hear--

When that dread curse of Lear's Had burst tremendous on a thousand ears:

rather an anti-climax, by the way, for it means an audience of but five hundred, which would have been a beggarly account for the new Drury.

There is nothing either about its "dome," or about the scenery, except commonplaces so flat that one doubts if it be quite fair to quote them--

The very use, since so essential grown, Of painted scenes, was to his [Shakspere's] stage unknown.

This is not an improvement on the "waves not yet quite dry," a Lamb-like touch which could not have been invented by the critic, and may go far to convince us of his veracity.

Above all, there is no trace of that splendidly audacious suggestion that Coleridge was the first "whose muse had soared" within the new dome--unless we find a blind one in the closing lines, supposing them to have been converted by the simple process of inversion. Instead of Coleridge being the first whose muse had soared in the new Drury, Drury was the first place in which his dramatic muse had soared.

Lamb was not among the writers parodied by the "sneering brothers" (as he called them later), but Coleridge was. Lamb's turn came in 1825, when P.G. Patmore, afterwards his friend and the father of Coventry Patmore, wrote _Rejected Articles_, in which was a very poor imitation of Elia.

Line 9. _Betterton or Booth._ Thomas Betterton, born probably in 1635, acted for the last time in 1710, the year in which he died. Barton Booth (1681-1733) left the stage in 1728. Betterton was much at the Little Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields; also at Sir John Vanbrugh's theatre in the Haymarket.

Line 11. _Quin_. James Quin (1693-1766) of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, Garrick's great rival, famous as Falstaff. His last appearance was in 1753.

Line 12. _Garrick._ Garrick's Drury Lane, in which Lamb saw his first play, was that built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1674. It lasted, with certain alterations, including a new face by the brothers Adam, nearly 120 years. The seating capacity of this theatre was modest. In 1794 a new Drury Lane Theatre, the third, was opened--too large for comfortable seeing or hearing. This was burned down in 1809; and the new one, the fourth, and that in which "Remorse" was produced, was opened in 1812.

This is the building (with certain additions) that still stands.

Lines 13-16. _Garrick in the shades._ Many years later Lamb used the same idea in connection with Elliston (see "To the Shade of Elliston,"

Vol. II.).

Line 20. _Ben and Fletcher._ Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) and John Fletcher (1579-1625), Beaumont's collaborator. Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour" was produced at the Globe in 1598, Shakspeare being in the caste; but in the main he wrote for Henslowe, who was connected with the Rose and the Swan, on Bankside, and with the theatre in Newington b.u.t.ts, and who built, with Alleyn, in 1600, the Fortune in Golden Lane, Cripplegate Without. Beaumont and Fletcher's plays went for the most part to Burbage, who owned the Globe at Southwark and the Blackfriars'

Theatre. Shakspeare also wrote for Burbage.

Page 143. _Epilogue to "Debtor and Creditor."_

"Debtor and Creditor" was a farce by James Kenney (1780-1849), Lamb's friend, with whom he stayed at Versailles in 1822. The play was produced April 20, 1814. Gosling's experiences as a dramatic author seem to have been curiously like Lamb's own. See note to "Mr. H." on page 392.

Line 12. _They never bring the Spanish._ Spanish, old slang for money.

Line 40. _Polito's._ Polito at one time kept the menagerie in Exeter Change.

Line 42. _Larry Whack._ Larry Whack is referred to in the play. Says Sampson, on one occasion: "Who be I? Come, that be capital! Why, ben't I Sampson Miller? Didn't I bang the Darby Corps at York Races ... and durst Sir Harry Slang bring me up to town to fight Larry Whack, the Irish ruffian?..."

Page 145. _Epilogue to an Amateur Performance of "Richard II."_

This epilogue, says Canon Ainger, who first printed it, was written for a performance given by the family of Barren Field in 1824. The family of Henry Field, Barron's father, would perhaps be more accurate; for Barron Field was childless. The verses, which I print by permission of Miss Kendall, Miss Field's residuary legatee, were given to Canon Ainger by the late Miss M.L. Field, of Hastings. In his interesting note he adds of this lady (to whom Lamb addressed the verses on page 106), "she told me that she (then a girl of 19) sat by the side of Lamb during the performance. She remembered well, she said, that in course of the play a looking gla.s.s was broken, and that Lamb turned to her and whispered 'Sixpence!' She added that before the play began, while the guests were a.s.sembling, the butler announced 'Mr. Negus!'--upon which Lamb exclaimed, 'Hand him round!'"

Lamb refers in the opening lines to Edmund Kean and John Philip Kemble.

In this connection it may be interesting to state that Lamb told Patmore that he considered John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, the grandest name in the world.

Page 146. _Prologue to "The Wife."_

The original form of the prologue to James Sheridan Knowles' comedy, not hitherto collected in any edition of Lamb's writings, is preserved in the Forster collection in the South Kensington Museum. It was sent to Moxon, for Knowles, in April, 1833, and differs considerably. See the large edition of this work. It is curious that the prologue was not attributed to Lamb when the play was printed. Knowles wrote in the preface: "To my early, my trusty and honoured friend, Charles Lamb, I owe my thanks for a delightful Epilogue, composed almost as soon as it was requested. To an equally dear friend, I am equally indebted for my Prologue."

Page 147. _Epilogue to "The Wife."_

This epilogue was spoken by Miss Ellen Tree.

Page 149. JOHN WOODVIL.