Doran John
Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 3 of 3)
CHAPTER X
MASTER BETTY
William Henry West Betty was born at Shrewsbury, in 1791, – a Shropshire boy, but of Irish descent. His father, a man of independent means, taught him fencing and elocution, and was unreasonably surprised to find that a histrionic affection came of this double instruction.
"I shall certainly die, if I do not become an actor!" said the boy, when residing near Belfast, and after seeing Mrs. Siddons in the ungrateful part of Elvira, in "Pizarro." Ho was then ten years old; was a boy with a will and decision of character; and, in his twelfth year, he made his first appearance at Belfast, on the 11th of August 1803, as Osmyn, in "Zara." The judgment of the Irish manager, Atkins, was that he was an "Infant Garrick."
Master Betty also played Douglas, Rolla, and Romeo; and he went up to Dublin, in November, with the testimony of the Belfast ladies that he was "a darling." In the Irish capital, he acted Douglas, Frederick, Prince Arthur, Romeo, Tancred, and Hamlet. As he is said to have learned and played the last part within three days, I have small respect for his precocious cleverness and do not wonder that the Dublin wits showered epigrams upon him.
"The public are respectfully informed that no person coming from the theatre will be stopt till after eleven o'clock." Such was the curious announcement on the Irish playbill which invited the public to go and see Master Betty, and advised them to get home early, if they would not be taken for traitors. Those days were the days of United Irishmen, when Ireland was divided into factions, and Dublin not quite at unity as to Master Betty's merits.
The majority, however, worshipped the idol, before which Cork, Waterford, Londonderry, and other cities, bowed the knee. The popular acclaim wafted him to Scotland. In Glasgow, there was one individual who was not mad, and would criticise; but in return for "a severe philippic" administered by him, the wretch "was compelled to leave the city!"
If he went to Edinburgh, he found more excess of dotage than he had left in Glasgow. It was not merely that duchesses and countesses caressed the boy, but there was Home himself, at the representation of his own "Douglas," blubbering in the boxes,79 and protesting that never till then had young Norval been acted as he had conceived it! And he had seen West Digges, the original, in Edinburgh; and Spranger Barry, the original, in London. Critics said the Infant Roscius excelled Kemble; and Lords of the Court of Session presented him with books, and gave him old men's blessings!
Birmingham next took him up, and the English town confirmed the verdicts of Ireland and Scotland. Miss Smith (afterwards Mrs. Bartley) played mother to him one night, and maid beloved the next; and at the close of a dozen performances, the Infant Roscius was celebrated by a Bromwicham poet as having crushed the pride of all his predecessors, and being "Cooke, Kemble, Holman, Garrick, all in one!"
"Theatrical coach to carry six insides, to see the young Roscius," was the placard on many a vehicle which carried an impatient public from Doncaster races to Sheffield, where crowds of amateurs from London fought with the country-folk for admission to the theatre, and a poetic Templar, rather loose in his Italian, remarked in a long poem in his praise: —
"Would Sculpture form Apollo Belvidere,
She need not roam to France, the model's here!"
Liverpool, Chester, Manchester, Stockport, all caught the frenzy, and adored the boy, – to whom Charles Young played subordinate parts! Occasionally, Master Betty played twice in the same day, and netted about £500 a week! Royal dukes expressed their delight in him, grateful managers loaded him with silver cups, and John Kemble wrote to Mr. Betty père, to express the happiness he and Mr. Harris would have in welcoming the tenth Wonder to Covent Garden Theatre, – at £50 per night and half a clear benefit.80
Accordingly, on Saturday, the 1st of December 1804, at ten in the morning, gentlemen were "parading" under the Piazza. By two o'clock serried crowds possessed every avenue, and when the doors were opened, there was a rush which ultimately cost some persons their lives. "The pit was two-thirds filled from the boxes. Gentlemen who knew that there were no places untaken in the boxes, and who could not get up the pit avenues, paid for admission into the lower boxes, and poured from them into the pit, in twenties and thirties at a time." Contemporary accounts speak in detail of the terrible sufferings not only of women, but men. "The ladies in one or two boxes were occupied almost the whole night in fanning the gentlemen who were beneath them in the pit… Upwards of twenty gentlemen, who had fainted, were dragged up into the boxes… Several more raised their hands as if in the act of supplication for mercy and pity." As for the play, "Barbarossa," the sensible public would have none of it before the scene in the second act, in which Selim (Master Betty) first makes his appearance. When that arrived, he was not disturbed by the uproar of applause which welcomed him; and he answered the universal expectation. "Whenever he wished to produce a great effect he never failed." He was found to be "a perfect master." His whisper was "heard in every part of the house," says a newspaper critic; "there is something in it like the undernotes of the Kembles; but it has nothing sepulchral in it… The oldest actor is not equal to him, he never loses sight of the scene… His judgment seems to be extremely correct… Nature has endowed him with genius which we shall vainly attempt to find in any of the actors of the present day;" – after which last sweeping judgment comes the qualifying line, "If he be not even now the first, he is in the very first line; and he will soon leave every other actor of the present day, at an immeasurable distance behind him."
The critics evidently had small confidence in their own judgments, but princes led the applause; their Majesties were charmed with their new "servant;" royalty received him in its London palace, and to the Count d'Artois (future King of France) and an august party at Lady Percival's, the small-eyed and plump-faced boy shook his luxuriant auburn curls, and acted Zaphna, in French.
The philosophers went as mad as the "quality" and critics. Quid noster Roscius egit was given by Cambridge University as the subject for Sir William Brown's prize-medal. Old "Gentleman Smith," the original Charles Surface, came up from Bury St. Edmunds, and presented him with a seal bearing the likeness of Garrick, and which Garrick, in his last illness, had charged him to keep only till he should "meet with a player who acted from nature and from feeling." Having found such actor, Smith consigned to him the keeping of the precious relic.
Then, if the overtaxed boy fell ill, as he did more than once, the public forgot the general social distress, the threats of invasion, war abroad and sedition at home, and evinced such painful anxiety, that bulletins were daily issued, as though the lad were king-regnant or heir-apparent.
Subsequently, Drury Lane and Covent Garden shared him between them. In twenty-three nights,81 at the former house, he drew above £17,000, and this double work so doubled his popularity, that on one night, having to play Hamlet, the House of Commons, on a motion by Pitt, adjourned, and went down to the theatre to see him! This flattery from the whole Senate was capped by that of a single legislator; Charles Fox read Zanga to the little actor, and commented on Young's tragedy, with such effect, that the young gentleman never undertook the principal character.82
Except John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, there was scarcely an actor of celebrity who did not play in the same piece with him, including Suett and Joey Grimaldi, who were the Gravediggers to his Hamlet. At the close of the season he passed through the provinces, triumphant, and returned to Drury Lane in 1805, to find "garlick amid the flowers," and a strong sibilant opposition, which he, however, surmounted, and again played the usual round of tragic heroes, carrying heaps of gold away with him to the country, where he easily earned large additions to the heap.83
But the London furore henceforth subsided. The provinces continued their allegiance for a year or two, but the metropolis no longer asked for, or thought of him. His last season was at Bath, in 1808; in the July of which year he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, as a Fellow Commoner; subsequently hunted in the vicinity of the Shropshire estate, purchased for him by his father, and became Captain Betty of the North Shropshire Yeomanry Cavalry.
So ended Master Betty! But, in 1812, his father being dead, Mr. Betty longed again for the incense of the lamps and the dear homage of applause, and he went through a course of provincial theatres, ending with a month at Covent Garden, with questionable success. His old admirers would have it that he was the English, as he had been the Infant, Roscius; but the treasury account told another tale, and Mr. Betty could only take rank as a respectable actor.
His name, however, was still a tower of strength beyond the metropolis; and, in country towns, the intelligent young man drew audiences still. In Edinburgh, Mr. Macready played Edward to Mr. Betty's Warwick; in which last character, after fitful appearances in the country, and acting for a single night now and then in London, as an additional attraction for a benefit, Mr. Betty took his final farewell of the stage, at Southampton, on August the 9th, 1824, being then but thirty-two years of age.
There can be no doubt of Master Betty having been the most "promising" young actor that ever delighted his contemporaries, and disappointed those that were to be so hereafter. His wonderful memory, his self-possession, his elegance of manner, his natural and feeling style of acting – all but his habit of dropping his h's, were parts of a promise of excellence. But his early audiences took these for a whole and complete performance. He was master of words but not of ideas, and in his boyhood was imperfectly educated. He could learn Hamlet in three or four days, and, no doubt, he played it prettily; but to play prettily and to act masterly, are different things. Hamlet is no matter for a boy to handle. Betterton acted it for fifty years, and, to his own mind, had not thoroughly fathomed the profoundest depths of its philosophy even then. Master Betty commenced too early to learn by rote; and the habits he then formed never permitted him to study as well as learn, by heart. The feeling and the nature, for which he was once praised, were those of a boy; they kept by him, and they were found weak and nerveless in the man. But therewith he reaped a large fortune, and he has prudently kept that too. May the old man long enjoy what the young boy, between natural abilities and the madness of "fashion," earned with happy facility.
There remains but one name more of exceeding greatness to be mentioned, – that of Edmund Kean; but, ere we let our curtain fall on him, I have to notice something of the manners, customs, sayings, and doings of a past time, which differed greatly from that in which Kean was reared, flourished, and fell. Let us glance at that olden period before we summon him to occupy our final scene.
CHAPTER XI
STAGE COSTUME AND STAGE TRICKS
In the journals of 1723 I find various complaints of the deficiencies in the theatrical wardrobe. The shabbiness of the regal robes is especially dwelt upon, though those were splendid enough which were worn by a leading actor. Duncan and Julius Cæsar, at the above date, had worn the same robes for a century; and it was suggested that monarchy was brought into contempt by poorly-clad representatives.
It is said of Betterton, in Hamlet, that when he first beheld his father's spirit, he turned as white as his own neckcloth. Betterton wore the laced kerchief then in fashion. There was a worse fashion in part of Garrick's time. That actor dressed the young Dane in a court suit of black, – coat, waistcoat, and kneebreeches, short wig with queue and bag, buckles in the shoes, ruffles at the wrists, and flowing ends of an ample cravat hanging over his chest. Then, Woodward as Mercutio! This young nobleman of Verona, kinsman to a prince, and friend to the love-sick Montagu, did not walk his native city capped, plumed, and bemantled, according to the period, but in the dress of a rakish squire of Woodward's own days. On the top of a jaunty peruke was cocked one of those three-cornered hats, popularly known as an "Egham, Staines, and Windsor," from the figure of the finger-post on Hounslow Heath pointing to those three towns. The hat was profusely gold-laced at the borders. Round the neck of the Veronese gentleman was negligently wound a Steinkirk cravat of muslin with point of Flanders ends. The rest of the attire was that of a modern state coachman on a drawing-room day, save that the material was chiefly of velvet, and that Woodward wore high heels to his gold-buckled shoes. The waistcoat descended over the thighs, and into its pocket Woodward thrust one hand, as, with a finger of the other knowingly laid to his nose, he began the famous lines, "Oh! then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you!"
Booth's dress for Cato was not more or less absurd than Betterton's in "Hamlet." The Cato of Queen Anne's days wore a flowered gown and an ample wig!
Garrick's Macbeth was a modern Scottish serjeant-major,84 his Romeo "a beau in a new birthday embroidery." His Richard, fancifully but more correctly decked, is preserved to us in Hogarth's picture; but when the King was thus attired, all the other persons of the drama wore court suits, powdered wigs, bags, cocked hats, and drawing-room swords! And yet the grandeur of the performance seems to have been in no way marred. When we smile at these things, we should remember that all managers who allow our old comedies to be played in modern costume, offend equally against good sense. I would have Ranger acted in a wig, as Garrick, and not in the dress of the actor's time, as Elliston played it. The chronology of costume is worthy of every manager's notice, however accustomed the eye may become to anachronisms, – as with the dress worn in 1806, by Matthews, as Old Foresight, in "Love for Love," which was the very famous and fashionable suit, worn for many a season by the graceful Wilks in that most airy of his parts, the youthful rake and gentleman, Sir Harry Wildair.
In Macklin's Macbeth, there was nothing of antiquity about the costume, which was a semi-military uniform of no, or of several periods, with a masquerade look about a good portion of it. His Hamlet was a modern gentleman in a black suit, such as might have been seen any day in the Mall. John Kemble dressed the sad young Dane, whose father had just been murdered by Hamlet's worst enemy, one who stood between him and his inheritance, in a fancy suit defying chronology, a carefully curled and powdered wig, such as never sat on Scandinavian head, and a blaze of jewelled orders – on the breast of him who courted seclusion! Altogether, there were strange things done on the stage in those days, not the least, perhaps, were comic solo dances, or compound hornpipes of a score of "merry sailors," with Highland reels, danced between the acts of the most solemn of Shakspeare's tragedies!
Reddish played Hamlet in a bag-wig, which Whitfield, as Laertes, once carried off on the point of his sword! Henderson, who acted the Dane so well, dressed him ill, – in a three-cornered cock and flap hat, like my uncle Toby! Why not? since Lewis as Hippolitus, attired that hapless young man, of the era of Neptune and sea-calves, in knee breeches, a jaunty silk jacket, tight-fitting boots, and a little court bodkin on his thigh – the thigh of the son of Theseus!
As for the ladies, they were as careless on the subject as the men, whether it was Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth, or Miss Younge as Zara, or Mrs. Yates as Cleopatra, they were all decked alike, court skirts over huge hoops, and trains tucked up to the waist, with powdered hair surmounted by a forest of feathers. Mrs. Siddons, when she made her first appearance in 1775, in Portia, played the part in a salmon-coloured sack and coat; and her Euphrasia, to judge from her portrait, more nearly resembled an English than a Grecian matron, in the costume. But she soon improved in taste, or was able to exercise her own without interference; and Sir Joshua approved of her innovation of appearing in her natural hair, without marischal powder – of a reddish brown tint, then in fashion, and worn with abundance of pomatum in the tubular curls of the ladies' head-dresses. She braided her locks into a small compass, in accordance with the size and shape of the head; and when long stiff stays and hoop petticoats were universally worn by stage heroines, as well as ladies in general, Mrs. Siddons had the courage to appear in a dress far from ample, with a waist of the very shortest; and King George III. himself warned Mrs. Siddons against using white paint (blanc d'Espagne, I suppose) on her neck, as dangerous to health.
Mrs. Esten depended for effect almost entirely on her dresses, and a languishing manner. Her success, when she first appeared in Belvidera, was attributed to "the picturesque and elegant manner" in which she dressed the character. This lady was the daughter of Mrs. Bennett, the author of Juvenile Indiscretions, and could have afforded her mother with matter for a dozen more volumes, had not the older lady been indiscreet enough to possess abundant material in her own experiences.
I think that the custom of noblemen presenting their cast-off court-suits to great players (Betterton played Alexander the Great in one), went out before the middle of the last century. A better custom prevailed in France. Not only princes of the house of Bourbon, but noblemen at court, sent theatrical costumes to Lekain – according to the stage fashion of the period – but the actor never wore any other. There was as little variety in this actor's wardrobe as in the style of his acting, which was very circumscribed. With two or three tunics and a turban, one expression and a single attitude, he carried about with him "French tragedy."
In France, not only Hamlet, as once with us, but Orestes, wore powder! But in this there was nothing more absurd than was to be found in Quin's Chamont, a young Bohemian nobleman of a remote romantic era. At the age of sixty, Quin played this youthful lover "in a long, grisly, half-powdered wig, hanging low down on each side the breast, and down the back; a heavy scarlet coat and waistcoat, trimmed with broad gold lace, black velvet breeches, a black silk neckcloth, black stockings, a pair of square-toed shoes, with an old-fashioned pair of stone buckles, and a pair of stiff, high-topped white gloves, with a broad, old scolloped hat. Were the youthful, fiery Chamont," adds the anonymous biographer, "to appear on the stage in such a dress now, the tragedy would cause more laughter than tears." Absurd as this may seem in Quin, it was not more absurd than the dress worn by Hale, an actor of Garrick's time, who, playing Charles I. in Havard's tragedy, wore a full-bottomed wig of the reign of Queen Anne – of the lightest colour, and flowing over back and shoulders; in short, a perfect "cataract peruke!" Hale always fancied himself fascinating in this head-piece, as Mrs. Hamilton thought herself irresistible in jewels, with which she used so to load her dark hair, that they were compared to glow-worms in a furze-bush.
That there is much in a wig beyond the head it covers is, however, certain. No actor ever had such a wonderful collection of them as Suett, or looked so comic in them; though his horrible depression, and his terrific and painful dreams, nearly drove him mad. Such importance was attached to these wigs, that when the entire collection was burnt in the fire that destroyed the Birmingham Theatre, a friendly writer expressed a hope, that "until Mr. Suett can replace them, – the public will make an allowance for the great drawback their loss must be upon his comic abilities."
In some theatres, one coat has served successive generations of actors. It was not so with the dress which Garrick wore when he first appeared at Goodman's Fields, as Richard. This fell into the keeping of a man named Carr, who, when a strolling manager, used to act in it – let the character he had to represent be what it might! Greater actors than Carr were as negligent with respect to costume. Gentleman Smith, for instance, I meet with, complaining of the shabbiness of his Richard III.'s hat, and asking if he cannot have that which Powell wore as King John!
The Morning Chronicle for November 14, 1783, after extolling Mrs. Crawford's Lady Randolph as a triumph of acting which no competitor could reach, assails the costumes. "Lord Randolph and Glenalvon were as fine as if they were designed for the soft service of Venus, and meant to be present in an Eastern ballroom; and yet the whole scene of the play lies in the hardy region of the North, &c., &c. Old Norval's dress," it is added, "had not the most distant semblance of the ordinary habit of a Scotch shepherd."
Of John Kemble's anachronisms in Hamlet, I may add to the record, that in that play, the period of which is before the Norman conquest, he wore the order of the Elephant, which was not instituted till the middle of the fifteenth century! In Hotspur, too, he always wore the order of the Garter, even after proof was laid before him that young Harry Percy had never been a member of the order. Elliston imitated Kemble; but when he heard that Hotspur did not belong to that chivalrous fraternity, he took the garter from his knee, as he was one night at the wing, ready to go on.
Originally, Kemble even acted Hamlet with the order of the Garter beneath his knee! He also wore the riband and star, with a black velvet court-dress, diamond buckles; and his powdered hair dishevelled, in the mad scene. The Vandyke dress, with black bugles, and dark, curled wig, – a dress which knew but little change till Mr. Fechter introduced a portrait-costume more appropriate from Albert Durer, – was first worn by John Kemble during his own management of Drury Lane. In one respect, the latter actor was the exact reverse of Henderson, who was so careless in the matter of costume, that he once boasted of having played ten different characters, in one season, in the same dress! Lewis was nearly as negligent as Henderson. His Earl Percy, for instance, was a marvel of anachronism and indifference. The noble Northumbrian was attired in a light summer attire of no possible age, and suited to no possible people. His hair was flowing, but profusely powdered; and these pendant locks were prettily tied up in a cluster of light blue streamers, which his airiness made flutter in the breeze. But those were days in which everything was borne with and nothing questioned. The beautiful Mrs. Crouch, for example, acted one of the Witches in "Macbeth," in a killing, fancy hat, her hair superbly powdered, rouge laid on with delicate effect, and her whole exquisite person enveloped in a cloud of point lace and fine linen.
In 1791 Bensley acted Mortimer in the Hon. Frank North's jumble of tragedy, comedy, and opera, at the Haymarket, – the "Kentish Barons." The date of the piece was of the period of Richard II., but the costume was of an earlier time; and the figure which solemn Bensley cut, when skating through a scene in shoes with the peaks so long that they were turned up and fastened to his girdle, must have been one provocative of fun. Other players have been as incorrect, and infinitely more absurd. Take, for example, Edmund Kean himself in Orestes. He had seen Talma in that part, in Paris, and the excellence of the French actor fired Kean to attempt the same character. But Edmund imitated him neither in correctness of costume, nor in having the part correct, by heart. Kean played Orestes only in Bath and Edinburgh. His dress, and that of his faithful Pylades (Ward) at the first place, were covered with ribbons. Neither of the ancient heroes had seen such silken manufacture in his life; but both of the actors had frequently seen ribbons, and that was enough. Defective in costume, Kean was also deficient in memory. At Bath he stumbled through the character; at Edinburgh he improvised a good deal of it; and in the mad scene substituted fragments from any other mad character he had in his mind for the moment, particularly Sir Giles Overreach! All this flustered the Pyrrhus especially, and his embarrassment was so marked that the Edinburgh critics took care to tell him that he ought to have exercised more industry in mastering the words of his part, when he had to play with so great a master as Mr. Kean!
A taste for mere finery in costume was long prevalent; and I have seen Young's dress for Macbeth, and that for Hamlet, censured as "too finical." In the latter part, not contented with the order of the Elephant, he sometimes wore a thick golden cord round his waist, with heavy bullion tassels. In Coriolanus and Brutus, Young introduced the toga, for the first time, in a perfect form on the English stage. But it was found that a perfect toga was not always the most proper dress, and Talma's senatorial robes were adopted by Charles Young, who, taught to wear them by the great French player, instructed in his turn, the ever-willing-to-learn Charles Kemble. The latter dressed Charles Surface in the costume of his own day. It looked well enough, no doubt, but now, in Deighton's portrait, its absurdity is striking.
In my younger days of playgoing there was a certain action of the hand and wrist on the part, especially, of actresses playing chambermaids, and rather lively young ladies, which was a trick of Mrs. Abington's, and had become, perhaps still is, a tradition. O'Keeffe says: "Mrs. Abington's manner was charmingly fascinating, and her speaking voice melodious. She had peculiar tricks in acting, one was turning her wrist, and seeming to stick a pin in the side of her waist. She was also very adroit in the exercise of her fan; and though equally capital in fine ladies and hoydens, was never seen in low or vulgar characters! On her benefit night the pit was always railed into the boxes; her acting shone brightest when doing Estifania to Brown's Copper Captain." This refers to the season 1759-60, when she was in Dublin, and before she had received "the stamp of a London audience." Her Kitty in "High Life Below Stairs" created a sort of infatuation for her at the Smock Alley Theatre. Her name was, so to speak, on the public lip, "and in ten days her cap was so much the fashion that there was not a milliner's shop but what was adorned with it, and 'Abington' appeared in large letters to attract the passers-by." The men "toasted" and adored her, the women paid her the highest homage by imitating her style in dress and carriage.
With old costumes, the actors of bygone days had quaint tricks and ideas, – as strange to us now as their dresses. I may class with the former one circumstance of Quin's Falstaff in his later days. After the fight, when Falstaff, somewhat wearied and disposed to moralise, used to seat himself on the stump of a tree and give way to philosophising, Quin calmly sank down into a crimson velvet chair with gold claws and blue fringe, conveniently pitched on the field of battle!
There used to be an old stage-trick for effect, employed in "Venice Preserved." Pierre, railing at the conspirators in defence of Jaffier, addresses himself, among the rest, to a pale, lean, haggard fellow, who, in such a picture, should be kept in the shade. But in the old days this fellow, – all exaggerated ghastliness and horror, used to stand forth and exhibit his caricature of fright and famine, by sundry actions, the applause for which was even less reasonably given than that to the Gravedigger in "Hamlet," when he deliberately doffed some score of waistcoats before he took to digging.
Mossop, too, had his trick in tragedy, which was sometimes akin to pantomime. In Macbeth, when with his truncheon he smote that white-livered loon of a messenger, he invariably broke in two the symbol of authority over the unlucky envoy's skull. People applauded the earnestness of the tragedian as thus displayed; but the fact was, that Mossop always carried a truncheon made to fly in two when dealt on a victim's head. The absurdity of the act never struck himself.
More unmeaning, but much more costly; more pantomimic, and much more improbable, was Barry's great trick in Alexander. He never, indeed, tried it in London; and I cannot account for its toleration by so refined and critical an audience as that of Dublin a century ago. In the triumphal entry into Babylon he was drawn down the stage in his car by unarmed soldiers. When he alighted to address them, each man placed his hand on some portion of the chariot, the machinery of which broke up into war accoutrements; the wheels into bucklers, the axles into sheaves of spears, the body of the vehicle into swords, javelins, lances, standards, and so forth. All which likely work having been accomplished, and the soldiers having arranged themselves in battle array, Alexander addressed his easily provided army amid a hurricane of applause; and O'Keeffe protests that it was not only beautiful, but that he "never saw anything to equal it, for simplicity!" Oh, sancta Simplicitas!
And this "simplicity" reminds me of the three separate ways in which Cibber, John Kemble, and Young, used to suit, or not suit, the action to the word in a passage of Wolsey: —
"This candle burns not clear. 'Tis I must snuff it;
Then, out it goes."
Cibber's trick, to gain applause, was to fairly snuff the candle out. John Kemble, taking this in the light of an accomplished fact, was wont to look as one offended by the stink. Young, finding nothing more to do, always crossed his arms at this passage, smiled, and did nothing.
