to light bonfires ;" how they were put to the rout by the watch and the populace; "the tavern where they had feasted was sacked by the mob; the ringleaders were apprehended, tried, fined, and imprisoned, but regained their liberty in time to bear a part in a far more criminal design."1 Drury Lane lost its aristocratic character early in the reign of William III., and rapidly acquired a reputation of the worst description. Steele, in The Tatler (No. 46), describes it as a long course of building divided into particular districts or "ladyships," after the manner of "lordships" in other parts, over which matrons of known abilities preside." "The purlieus of Drury Lane," wrote Dennis, "are called familiarly the Hundreds of Drury."2 Gay calls up all our caution and virtue in this place : O may thy virtue guard thee through the roads Of Drury's mazy courts and dark abodes! The harlots' guileful paths, who nightly stand Where Catherine Street descends into the Strand.-TRIVIA. In Drury Lane Lord Mohun made his unsuccessful attempt to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle, the actress. [See Howard Street.] Captain Carlo Fantom, a Croatian, spake thirteen languages, was a Captain under the Earle of Essex. He had a world of cuts about his body with swords, was very quarrelsome, and a great ravisher. He met coming late at night out of the Horseshoe Tavern in Drury Lane, with a Lieutenant of Colonel Rossiter, who had great jingling spurs on. Said he, "The noise of your spurres doe offend me; you must come over the kennel and give me satisfaction." They drew and passed at each other, and the Lieutenant was runne through, and died in an hour or two, and 'twas not known who kill'd him.—Aubrey, Anecd. and Trad., p. iii. At a tavern in Drury Lane where was held a club of virtuosi, Laguerre (immortalised by Pope) painted in chiaroscuro round the room a bacchanalian procession, and made them a present of his labour. South of the theatre was the chapel of the famous preacher Daniel Burgess, and which he had to quit on the building being bought for the church. His chapel in New Court, Drury Lane, was wrecked, March 1, 1710, by the Sacheverell mob, who carried the fittings to Lincoln's Inn Fields and made a great bonfire of them.3 Where the tall Maypole once o'erlook'd the Strand, A Church collects the saints of Drury Lane.-POPE. Where Calvert's butt, and Parsons' black champaigne, Regale the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane; There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug, The Muse found Scroggen stretch'd beneath a rug.-GOLDSMITH. 1 Hist. of England, chap. xxi. 2 Dennis on Pope's Rape of the Lock, p. viii. 3 Wilson, Hist. of the Dissenting Churches in London, vol. iii. p. 497, etc. "All this is taken from nature," wrote Goldsmith to his brother. In our own day Barley Court and other courts and purlieus of Drury Lane have been stigmatised by experienced police officers as containing some of the vilest and most dangerous dens in London. Much has been done under the Artisans' Dwellings Act towards clearing away some of the worst of the streets, and more is now (1889) being done. Drury Lane Theatre, CATHERINE STREET (formerly Brydges Street) COVENT GARDEN. The first theatre on the site of the present edifice was opened on April 8, 1663, by the King's company, under Thomas Killigrew, with Beaumont and Fletcher's play of The Humorous Lieutenant.1 It cost £1500. In the Calendars of State Papers we have the following entries, but the reference in them is to the Cockpit, not to the theatre properly so called, which was not then in existence. [See Cockpit, Drury Lane.] London, March 8, 1617.—Riots on Shrove Tuesday; Drury Lane Playhouse attacked; Finsbury prison broken open; houses at Wapping pulled down and injured.-Chamberlain to Carleton, Cal. State Papers, 1611-1618. March 8, 1617.-Rising of the Apprentices who pulled down four houses at Wapping, and attacked Drury Lane Theatre, which they would have destroyed had they not been prevented.-Ibid. The references to the first Drury Lane Theatre are pretty numerous :March 2, 1661.-A very large playhouse: the foundation of it laid this month on the back side of Brydges Street, in Covent Garden.-Rugge's Merc. Rediv. May 8, 1663.-I took my wife and Ashwell to the Theatre Royal, being the second day of its being opened. The house is made with extraordinary good convenience, and yet hath some faults, as the narrowness of the passages in and out of the pit, and the distance from the stage to the boxes, which I am confident cannot hear; but for all other things is well; only, above all, the musique being below, and most of it sounding under the very stage, there is no hearing of the bases at all, nor very well of the trebles, which sure must be mended.-Pepys. June 1, 1664.-To the King's House, and saw The Silent Woman. Before the play was done it fell such a storm of hail that we in the middle of the pit were fain to rise; and all the house in a disorder.—Pepys. May 1, 1668.-To the King's playhouse, and there saw The Surprisal, and a disorder in the pit by its raining in from the cupola at top.-Pepys. This house (of which Pepys supplies so uncomfortable a notion) was burnt down in January 1672. An anonymous correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine (May 1802, p. 422) says that the rebuilding of the theatre was assisted by a Brief, and gives the following extract (certified by the signatures of the then curate and churchwardens) from the Register of the church of Symondsbury, Dorsetshire : April 27, 1673.-Collected by brief for the Theatre Royal in London, being burnt, the sum of two shillings. The new theatre was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and cost £4000, though it is called by Dryden in the prologue he wrote "On the Opening of the New House" "plain-built . . . a bare convenience only," with "a mean ungilded stage ;" and in the epilogue he wrote on the same occasion he speaks of "our homely house." Mr. Collier 1 Downes, p. 3. See also play-bill of this date in Collier, vol. iii. p. 384. has printed an "Induction," which, among other things, establishes satisfactorily that the site then, as now, was between Drury Lane and Bridges Street." The principal entrance was in Playhouse Passage.2 The new theatre was opened March 26, 1674. As there are not many spectators who may remember what form the Drury Lane Theatre stood in about forty years ago [1700], before the old Patentee, to make it hold more money, took it in his head to alter it, it were but justice to lay the original figure, which Sir Christopher Wren first gave it, and the alterations of it now standing, in a fair light. It must be observed then, that the area and platform of the old stage projected about four foot forwarder, in a semi-oval figure, parallel to the benches of the pit; and that the former lower doors of entrance for the actors were brought down between the two foremost (and then only) Pilasters; in the place of which doors, now the two stage-boxes are fixt. That where the doors of entrance now are, there formerly stood two additional side-wings, in front to a full set of scenes, which had then almost a double effect, in their loftiness and magnificence. By this original form the usual station of the actors, in almost every scene, was advanced at least ten foot nearer to the audience than they now can be.—Cibber, Apology, ed. 1740, p. 338. Over the stage was "Vivitur Ingenio." 3 Two theatres were thought sufficient for the whole of London in the time of Charles II., viz. the King's Theatre, under Killigrew, in Drury Lane, and the Duke's Theatre, under Davenant, first in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and secondly in Dorset Gardens. One was subsequently found sufficient, and on November 16, 1682, the two companies began to play together for the first time in Drury Lane. On December 1, 1716, a Mr. Freeman, a man of property in Surrey, attempted to shoot George II., then Prince of Wales, in this theatre, during his father's absence in Hanover. The attempt by the lunatic Hatfield on George III. on May 15, 1800, was made in the third Drury Lane theatre. In this house, whither he had gone to see The Island Princess acted for the benefit of his son, then newly entered to sing on the stage, died (1721), before the play began, Louis Laguerre, the painter immortalised by Pope. The Drury Lane of Wren was new-faced by the brothers Adam before Garrick parted with his shares. Horace Walpole has given an amusing account of the uproar occasioned by the introduction of pantomime on the stage of Old Drury, and his own share in it. The town has been trying all this winter to beat Pantomimes off the stage. Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they support his house. About ten days ago he let into the pit great numbers of Bear Garden bruisers (that is the term), to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out: I was sitting very quietly in the side-boxes, contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards, armed with bludgeons and clubs to menace the audience. This raised the greatest uproar; and among the rest, who flew into a passion but your friend the philosopher? In short, one of the actors, advancing to the front of the stage to make an apology for the manager, he had scarcely begun to say, "Mr. Fleetwood"—when your friend, with a most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out, "He is an impudent rascal !" The whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the 1 Shakspere Society, Misc. Papers, vol. iv. p. 149. 2 Strype's Map of St. Clement's Danes. 3 Epilogue to Farquhar's Love and a Bottle. 4 Ibid., p. 120. words. Only think of my being a popular orator! But what was still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the consistence of a hero, one of the chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his hat, said, "Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next?" It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down The into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse. next night the uproar was repeated with greater violence, and nothing was heard but voices calling out, "Where's Mr. W.? where's Mr. W.?" In short the whole town has been entertained with my prowess; and Mr. Conway has given me the name of Wat Tyler.-H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, November 26, 1744. The same amusing writer relates how the House of Commons adjourned on the night of an important debate in order to attend a performance at Drury Lane Theatre, as the House would now for the Derby. 1751.-March the 7th was appointed for the Naturalisation Bill, but the House adjourned to attend at Drury Lane, where Othello was acted by a Mr. Debanal and his family, who had hired the theatre on purpose. The crowd of people of fashion was so great that the Footmans' Gallery was hung with blue ribbons.-Walpole's George II., vol. i. p. 61. Lavinia is polite but not profane, To Church as constant as to Drury Lane. Young's Love of Fame, 6th Satire. From a letter of Mr. Siddons to Dr. Whalley (4th April 1791) we learn the extreme capacity of the theatre as shown by the receipts on the night of Mrs. Siddons's benefit: "There were £60 more in the house than ever known, or was supposed Old Drury could have contained." A new house, the third (very beautiful, but too large either for sight or hearing), was built by Henry Holland, opened March 12, I794. It was destroyed by fire on the night of February 24, 1809. Parliament was sitting at the time, and the lurid glare of the flames was visible inside the House of Commons. The cause was soon known. An important debate was in progress, and a motion was made to adjourn. But Sheridan (who was a principal shareholder in the theatre) said with the utmost carelessness that "whatever might be the extent of the present calamity, he hoped it would not 'interfere with the public business of the country."1 Speaker Abbot mentions in his Diary that "persons at Fulham could see the hour by their watches in the open air at twelve at night." A new theatre, the fourth, was forthwith erected, Mr. Benjamin Wyatt being the architect. The first stone was laid October 29, 1811; it was opened October 10, 1812, with a prologue by Lord Byron. This, the last and most memorable fire, together with the advertisement of the committee for an occasional prologue, gave rise to the Rejected Addresses, the famous jeux d'esprit of Messrs. James and Horace Smith, in imitation of the poets of the day. The portico towards Catherine Street was added during the lesseeship of Elliston (1819-1826), and the colonnade in (Little) Russell Street in 1831. To allay the fears of the public the new theatre was fitted with an elaborate arrangement of perforated pipes by which every part of the 1 Moore's Life of Sheridan. house might be deluged with water on the outbreak of a fire. The "Lane," as it is familiarly called by members of the profession, is the oldest theatre in London with the exception of Sadlers' Wells. Drury Lane Theatre, though not actually in Drury Lane, derives its name from the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, where Killigrew acted before he removed to the site of the present theatre. The first Drury Lane Theatre (so called) was often described as the theatre in Covent Garden. Thus, under February 6, 1663, Pepys writes, "I walked up and down and looked upon the outside of the new theatre building in Covent Garden, which will be very fine." And thus Shadwell, in the preface to The Miser, "This play was the last that was acted at the King's Theatre in Covent Garden before the fatal fire there." There was no Covent Garden Theatre, commonly so called, before 1732.1 [See Playhouse Yard.] Duchess Street, PORTLAND PLACE, so called after Margaret Harley, Duchess of Portland (married to the duke, July 11, 1734). The mansion of Thomas Hope, the author of Anastasius, is often referred to as belonging to this street. [See Mansfield Street.] The gallery attached to Mr. Hope's house is in Duchess Street; it was built by his brother, Mr. Philip Henry Hope. Duchy of Lancaster, a liberty in the Strand, so called after John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. [See the Savoy.] This liberty begins without Temple Bar, and runs as far as Cecil Street, it included Picket Street and part of old Butcher Row. Duck Island, ST. JAMES'S PARK, a small island at the south-east end of the canal, of which place the chevalier de St. Evremond was appointed governor by Charles II. July 25, 1673.-These two days we have expected something from the Fleet, the King himself, as he thinks, hearing the guns on Wednesday morning in the Island in the Park.-Williamson, Letters, vol. i. p. 130. In 1739 General Churchill was made Deputy Ranger of the Park, and Sir Hanbury Williams wrote in his name an Address to Venus, calling upon her to Quit Paphos and the Cyprian Isle, And reign in my Duck Island.-Work, vol. i. p. 235. February 9, 1751.—My Lord Pomfret is made Ranger of the Parks, and by consequence my Lady is Queen of Duck Island.—Walpole to Sir H. Mann. Duck Island, SOUTHWARK. The Isle of Ducks, St. Olave's, Southwark, was granted (51 Geo. III.) by St. John's parish to Magdalen College, Oxford. Most of the land (as well as the Isle of Ducks) on this spot once belonged to Sir John Fastolfe, and was given through his executor, Bishop Wainflete, for founding the college.2 1 Of the exteriors of the early theatres we have unhappily no views. Of the new Catherine Street façade by the brothers Adam there is a large engraving by Begbie, and a small one by J. T. Smith. Of the interior there is a view in the Londina Illustrata. Views of Holland's Theatre are of common occurrence. 2 Information from Mr. Rendle. |