Now, notwithstanding this public desire of re-establishing two houses; and though I have allowed the former actors greatly our superiors; and the managers I am speaking of not to have been without their private errors, yet under all these disadvantages, it is certain, the stage, for twenty years before this time, had never been in so flourishing a condition.

But, in what I have said, I would not be understood to be an advocate for two play-houses; for we shall soon find that two sets of actors, tolerated in the same place, have constantly ended in the corruption of the theatre; of which the auxiliary entertainments, that have so barbarously supplied the defects of weak action, have, for some years past, been a flagrant instance; it may not, therefore, be here improper to shew how our childish Pantomimes first came to take so gross a possession of the stage.

I have upon several occasions, already observed, that when one company is too hard for another, the lower in reputation has always been forced to exhibit fine newfangled foppery, to draw the multitude after them; of these expedients, singing and dancing had formerly been most effectual; but, at the time I am speaking of, our English music had been so discountenanced since the taste of Italian Operas prevailed, that it was to no purpose to pretend to it.  Dancing, therefore, was now the only weight, in the opposite scale, and as the new theatre sometimes found their account in it, it could not be safe for us wholly to neglect it.

Cibber’s antagonistical views towards Pantomime were shared, as we shall see, by a good many others.

Booth, however, a greater actor than Cibber, and a tragedian to boot, took a more business-like view of the proceedings, thinking thin houses the greatest indignity the stage could suffer.  “Men of taste and judgment (said he) must necessarily form but a small proportion of the spectators at a theatre, and if a greater number of people were enticed to sit out a play because a Pantomime was tacked to it, the Pantomime did good service to all concerned.  Besides, if people of position and taste could, if so minded, leave before the nonsense commenced—­an opportunity they do not seem to have embraced since Booth reminded the opponents of Pantomime how Italian opera had drawn the nobility and gentry away from the play-houses, as appeared by the melancholy testimony of their receipts, until Pantomime came to the rescue when pit and gallery were better filled, and the boxes too put on a nobler appearance.”

CHAPTER XV.

John Rich and his Pantomimes—­Rich’s Miming—–­Garrick, Walpole, Foote—­Anecdotes of Rich—­Pope—­The dance of infernals in “Harlequin Sorcerer”—­Drury Lane—­Colley Cibber—­Henry Fielding, the Novelist—­Contemporary Writers’ opinion of Pantomime—­Woodward, the Harlequin—­The meaning of the word Actor—­Harlequins—­“Dr. Faustus,” a description—­William Rufus Chetwood—­Accidents—­Vandermere, the Harlequin—­“Orpheus and Eurydice” at Covent Garden—­A description—­Sam.  Hoole, the machinist—­Prejudice against Pantomime—­Mrs. Oldfield—­Robert Wilks—­Macklin—­Riot at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre—­Death of Rich.