In a Pantomime produced at Drury Lane in the following year, there were Macklin, Theo.  Cibber (who ultimately lost his life by shipwreck in the Irish Sea, in company with a troupe of Pantomimists), Mrs. Clive, and Mrs. Cibber.  At the performance it was announced that the money paid would be returned to anyone who went out before the overture; but no one availed themselves of the concession.  Commenting on the occurrence, a contemporary writer observes:—­“Happy is it that we live in an age of taste, when the dumb eloquence and natural wit and humour of Harlequin are justly preferred to the whining of Tragedy, or the vulgarity of Comedy.”

Garrick, at Drury Lane, finding his audience with no heart for tragedy, and that they must have Pantomime, very wisely said, “If you won’t come to ‘Lear’ and ‘Hamlet,’ I must give you Harlequin.”  And Harlequin he did give them, in the person of Woodward, one of the best of Harlequins that ever trod the stage.  A contemporary print of the time, represents Woodward being weighed in one scale, with all the great actors of the day in the other, and Woodward makes them all kick the beam.

To satirise the prevailing fashion, Garrick penned the following:—­

    They in the drama find no joys,
    But doat on mimicry and toys;
    Thus, when a dance is on my bill,
    Nobility my boxes fill;
    Or send three days before the time
    To crowd a new-made Pantomime.

Garrick’s success, however, was, I am of opinion, undoubtedly owing to his being such a clever Pantomimist.  “We saw him,” says Grimm, “play the dagger scene in ‘Macbeth’ in a room in his ordinary dress, without any stage illusion; and, as he followed with his eyes the air-drawn dagger, he became so grand that the assembly broke into a cry of general admiration.  Who would believe that this same man, a moment after, counterfeited, with equal perfection, a pastry cook’s boy, who, carrying a tray of tartlets on his head, and gaping about him at the corner of the street, lets his tray fall, and, at first stupified by the accident, bursts at last into a fit of crying?”

All our great actors have been good Mimics, and herein, doubtless, lies the secret of their success.  The mere intonation of words unaccompanied by a strict knowledge of “that dumb, silent language,” Pantomime, is only parroting.  Herein, therefore, lies the true imitativeness of the actor, and the natural form of acting.  The word actor “Is a name only given to the persons in a dramatic work, because they ought to be in continual action during the performance of it.”  It does not mean that the actor is to stand still, and to be in action only with his tongue when speaking his “lines.”  No! he bears the honoured name of actor, and he should bring the full power of gesture language—­Pantomime—­that he has at his control into play in order to be convincing in the character that, for the time being, he is.