Part 20 (1/2)
The distinction is necessary in order that there may be no confusing the works of nature with the achievements of the property-maker. Not that this indispensable dramatic artist shrinks from compet.i.tion. But he would not have ascribed to him the production of another manufactory, so to say. His business is in counterfeits; he views with some disdain a genuine article. When the famous elephant Chunee stepped upon the stage of Covent Garden, the chief performer in the pantomime of ”Harlequin and Padmanaba, or the Golden Fish,” the creature was but scornfully regarded by Mr. Johnson, the property-man of Drury Lane. ”I should be very sorry,” he cried, ”if I could not make a better elephant than that!” And it would seem that he afterwards justified his pretensions, especially in the eyes of the playgoers prizing imitative skill above mere reality. We read in the parody of Coleridge, in ”Rejected Addresses”:
Amid the freaks that modern fas.h.i.+on sanctions, It grieves me much to see live animals Brought on the stage. Grimaldi has his rabbit, Laurent his cat, and Bradbury his pig; Fie on such tricks! Johnson, the machinist, Of former Drury, imitated life Quite to the life! The elephant in Blue Beard, Stuffed by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis As spruce as he who roared in Padmanaba.
But no doubt an artificial elephant is more easily to be fabricated than an artificial horse. We do not encounter real elephants at every turn with which to compare the counterfeit. The animal is of bulky proportions and somewhat ungainly movements. With a frame of wicker-work and a hide of painted canvas, the creature can be fairly represented. But a horse is a different matter. Horses abound, however, and have proved themselves, time out of mind, apt pupils.
They can readily be trained and taught to perform all kinds of feats and antics. So the skill of the property-maker is not taxed. He stands on one side, and permits the real horse to enter upon the mimic scene.
When Don Adriano de Armado, the fantastical Spaniard of ”Love's Labour's Lost,” admits that he is ”ill at reckoning,” and cannot tell ”how many is one thrice told,” his page Moth observes ”how easy it is to put years to the word three, and study three years in two words, the dancing horse will tell you.” This is without doubt an allusion to a horse called Marocco, trained by its master, one Banks, a Scotchman, to perform various strange tricks. Marocco, a young bay nag of moderate size, was exhibited in Shakespeare's time in the courtyard of the Belle Sauvage Inn, on Ludgate Hill, the spectators lining the galleries of the hostelry. A pamphlet, published in 1595, and ent.i.tled ”Maroccos Exstaticus, or Bankes Bay Horse in a Traunce; a Discourse set down in a Merry Dialogue between Bankes and his Beast,” contains a wood-print of the performing animal and his proprietor. Banks's horse must have been one of the earliest ”trained steeds” ever exhibited.
His tricks excited great amazement, although they would hardly now be accounted very wonderful. Marocco could walk on his hind legs, and even dance the Canaries. At the bidding of his master he would carry a glove to a specified lady or gentleman, and tell, by raps with his hoof, the numbers on the upper face of a pair of dice. He went through, indeed, much of what is now the regular ”business” of the circus horse. In 1600 Banks amazed London by taking his horse up to the vane on the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. Marocco visited Scotland and France, and in these countries his accomplishments were generally attributable to witchcraft. Banks rashly encouraged the notion that his nag was supernaturally endowed. An alarm was raised that Marocco was possessed by the Evil One. To relieve misgivings and escape reproach, Banks made his horse pay homage to the sign of the cross, and called upon all to observe that nothing satanic could have been induced to perform this act of reverence. A rumour at one time prevailed that the horse and his master had both, as ”subjects of the Black Power of the world,” been burned at Rome by order of the Pope.
More authentic accounts, however, show Banks as surviving to Charles I.'s time, and thriving as a vintner in Cheapside. But it is to be gathered from Douce's ”Ill.u.s.trations of Shakespeare,” that of old certain performing horses suffered miserably for their skill. In a little book, ”Le Diable Bossu,” Nancy, 1708, allusion is made to the burning alive at Lisbon, in 1707, of an English horse, whose master had taught him to know the cards; and Grainger, in his ”Biographical History of England,” 1779, states that, within his remembrance, ”a horse, which had been taught to perform several tricks, was, with its owner, put into the Inquisition.”
Marocco was but a circus horse; there is no evidence to show that he ever trod the stage or took any part in theatrical performances. It is hard to say, indeed, when horses first entered a regular theatre.
Pepys chronicles, in 1668, a visit ”to the King's Playhouse, to see an old play of s.h.i.+rley's, called 'Hide Park,' the first day acted [revived], where horses are brought upon the stage.” He expresses no surprise at the introduction of the animals, and this may not have been their first appearance on the scene. He is content to note that ”Hide Park” is ”a very moderate play, only an excellent epilogue spoken by Beck Marshall.” The scene of the third and fourth acts of the comedy lies in the Park, and foot and horse races are represented.
The horses probably were only required to cross the stage once or twice.
A representation of Corneille's tragedy of ”Andromeda,” in 1682, occasioned great excitement in Paris, owing to the introduction of a ”real horse” to play the part of Pegasus. The horse was generally regarded as a kind of Roscius of the brute creation, and achieved an extraordinary success. Adorned with wings and hoisted up by machinery, he neighed and tossed his head, pawed and pranced in mid-air after a very lively manner. It was a mystery then, but it is common enough knowledge now, that the horse's histrionic skill is founded upon his appet.i.te. Kept without food for some time the horse becomes naturally moved at the sight of a sieve of corn in the side-wings. His feats, the picking up of gloves and handkerchiefs, even the pulling of triggers, originate but in his efforts to find oats. By-and-by his memory is exercised, and he is content to know that after the conclusion of his ”business” he will be rewarded with oats behind the scenes. The postponement of his meals attends his failure to accomplish what is required of him. Of old, perhaps, some cruel use of whip and spur may have marked the education of the ”trick-horse.” But for a long time past the animal's fears have not been appealed to, but simply his love of food. Horses are very sagacious, and their natural timidity once appeased, they become exceedingly docile. An untrained horse has often shown himself equal to the ordinary requirements of the equestrian manager after only four days of tuition.
Pope satirised the introduction of horses in Shakespeare's ”Henry VIII.,” revived with great splendour in 1727, when a representation was given of the coronation of Anne Bullen, and the royal champion, duly mounted and caparisoned, proclaimed his challenge. But for many years the appearances on the stage of equine performers were only of an occasional kind. It was not until the rebuilding of Astley's, in 1803, that the equestrian drama became an established entertainment.
An extensive stage was then added to the circus, and ”horse spectacles,” as they were called, were first presented. A grand drama called ”The Blood-Red Knight,” produced in 1810, resulted in a profit to the proprietors of 18,000, a handsome sum, seeing that the season at that time only extended from Easter to the end of September.
The triumphs of Astley's excited the envy of the Covent Garden managers. Colman's drama of ”Blue Beard” was reproduced, with Mr.
Johnson's imitation elephant and a troop of real horses. The performance was presented on forty-four nights, a long run in those days. There was, of course, much wrath excited by this degradation of the stage. A contemporary critic writes: ”A novel and marked event occurred at this theatre on this evening (18th of February, 1811), which should be considered as a black epocha for ever by the loyal adherents to wit and the Muses. As the Mussulmen date their computation of years from the flight of Mahomet, so should the hordes of folly commence their triumphant register from the open flight of common-sense on this memorable night, when a whole troop of horses made their first appearance in character at Covent Garden.” The manager was fiercely denounced for his unscrupulous endeavours ”to obtain money at the expense of his official dignity.” Another critic, alleging that ”the dressing-rooms of the new company of comedians were under the orchestra,” complained that ”in the first row of the pit the stench was so abominable, one might as well have sitten in a stable.”
Still the ”equestrian drama” delighted the town. ”Blue Beard” was followed by Monk Lewis's ”Timour the Tartar,” in which more horses appeared. Some hissing was heard at the commencement of the new drama, and placards were exhibited in the pit condemning the horses; but in the end ”Timour” triumphed over all opposition, and rivalled the run of ”Blue Beard.” It is to be remembered, especially by those who insist so much on the degeneracy of the modern theatre, that these ”horse spectacles” were presented in a patent house during the palmy days of the drama, while the Kemble family was still in possession of the stage of Covent Garden.
These equestrian doings were satirised at the Haymarket Theatre in the following summer. ”The Quadrupeds of Quedlinburgh, or the Rovers of Weimar,” was produced, being an adaptation by Colman of a burlesque, attributed to Canning, in ”The Anti-Jacobin.” It was designed to ridicule not merely the introduction of horses upon the stage, but also the then prevailing taste for morbid German dramas of the Kotzebue school. The prologue was in part a travestie of Pope's prologue to ”Cato,” and contained references to the plays of ”Lovers'
Vows” and ”The Stranger.”
To lull the soul by spurious strokes of art, To warp the genius and mislead the heart, To make mankind revere wives gone astray, Love pious sons who rob on the highway, For this the foreign muses trod our stage, Commanding German schools to be the rage.
Dear Johnny Bull, you boast much resolution, With, thanks to Heaven, a glorious const.i.tution; Your taste, recovered half from foreign quacks, Takes airings now on English horses' backs.
While every modern bard may raise his name, If not on lasting praise, on stable fame.
Think that to Germans you have given no check, Think bow each actor horsed has risked his neck; You've shown them favour. Oh, then, once more show it To this night's Anglo-German horse-play poet.
In the course of the play the sentimental sentinel in ”Pizarro” was ridiculed, and the whole concluded with a grand battle, in which the last scene of ”Timour the Tartar” was imitated and burlesqued.
”Stuffed ponies and donkeys frisked about with ludicrous agility,”
writes a critic of the time. The play was thoroughly successful, and would seem to have retrieved the fortunes of the theatre, which had been long in a disastrous condition.
Drury Lane also struck a blow at the ”horse spectacles” of the rival house. In 1812 was produced ”Quadrupeds; or, The Manager's Last Kick.”
This was only a revised version of the old burlesque of ”The Tailors, a Tragedy for Warm Weather,” usually ascribed to Foote. In the last scene an army of tailors appeared, mounted on a.s.ses and mules, and much fun of a pantomimic kind ensued. Some years later, however, Drury Lane was content to derive profit from a drama in which ”real horses”
appeared, with the additional attraction of ”real water.” This was Moncrieff's play of ”The Cataract of the Ganges.” Indeed, Drury Lane was but little ent.i.tled to vaunt its superiority in the matter. In 1803 its treasury had greatly benefited from the feats of the ”real dog” in Reynolds's melodrama ”The Caravan.” ”Real water,” indeed, had been brought upon the stage by Garrick himself, who owed his prosperity, not more to his genius as an actor than to his ingenuity as a purveyor of pantomime and spectacles. One of his addresses to his audience contains the lines--
What eager transport stares from every eye, When pulleys rattle and our genii fly, When tin cascades like falling waters gleam, Or through the canvas bursts the real stream, While thirsty Islington laments in vain Half her New River rolled to Drury Lane.
Of late years a change has come over the equestrian drama. The circus flourishes, and quadrupeds figure now and then upon the stage, but the ”horse spectacle” has almost vanished. The n.o.ble animal is to be seen occasionally on the boards, but he is cast for small parts only, is little better than a four-footed supernumerary. He comes on to aid the pageantry of the scene; even opera does not disdain his services in this respect. A richly-caparisoned charger performs certain simple duties in ”Masaniello,” in ”Les Huguenots,” ”L'Etoile du Nord,”
”Martha,” ”La Juive,” and some few other operas. The late M. Jullien introduced quite a troop of cavalry in his ”Pietro il Grande,” but this homage to horseflesh notwithstanding, the world did not greatly prize the work in question. The horse no longer performs ”leading business.” Plays are not now written for him. He is no longer required to evince the fidelity and devotion of his nature by knocking at street-doors, rescuing a prisoned master, defending oppressed innocence, or dying in the centre of the stage to slow music.
Something of a part seemed promised him when the popular drama of ”Flying Scud” was first represented; at least, he supplied that work with its t.i.tle. But it was speedily to be perceived that animal interests had been subordinated to human. More prominent occupation by far was a.s.signed to the rider than to the horse. A different plan of distributing parts prevailed when ”The High-mettled Racer” and kindred works adorned the stage. A horse with histrionic instincts and acquirements had something like a chance then. But now he can only lament the decline of the equestrian drama. True, the circus is still open to him; but in the eyes of a well-educated performing horse a circus must be much what a music-hall is in the opinion of a tragedian devoted to five-act plays.