Actors and Acting
Further consideration of actors and their acting might profitably be
made, after this bird’s eye view of the make-up of the whole company. One
feels relieved of the necessity of repeating tire commentary, so ably put
forward by Dr Burney, about the remarkable singers who came ftom tire
continent in constant procession to entertain lovers of the opera. Dr Scouten
in his Introduction to Part 3 of this Work has told the fascinating story of
the passage of actor, actress, and dancer ftom the minor theatres in the
1730’s and early 1740’s to tire major tlreatres and back again, showiirg the
importance of the small houses as training grounds for the young, and
receiving stations for those older actors and actresses who coitld not keep up
the pace at the major houses. I shall dwell therefore upon actors wlrose
careers were in large part associated with tire patent houses, and shall say
something about their art.
The scandals, the gossip (both innocent and malicious), the feuds, the
personalities and social life of the more picturesque of these httndreds of
entertainers were subjects for endless conversation as well as for volitnrinous
writings during the period— an output which had steadily increased from
the beginning of the century. Evidence for tire conversations is abundant in
such letters as those of Horace Walpole and Eady Hertford, as well as in
Boswell’s Journals. No bibliography has yet been compiled of the printed
statemerrts about the actors. A complete one would include everything from
single sentences in the newspapers, “Mr Garrick set out this morning fof
Bath,” or (on 17 May 1766), "Mr King fell ftom his horse and broke his
thigh,” or (on 17 March 1770), “A duel with pistols between George Garrick
and the actor Baddeley, on account of Mr Garrick’s remonstrating with
Mr Baddeley on receiving his wife’s salary— Baddeley fir’d, tlien Mr Garrick
fired in the air, and a reconciliation took place,” through paragraplis on
weddings, keepings, and deaths, to Churcliill’s Rosciad, and to the full"
length novel-like Ifandering Patentee, of Tate Wilkinson, the Apology for
the Li( 0
Mrs George Anne Bellamy, arxd tk Memoirs oj Mrs Sophia5١
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in four, five, and six volumes each. Such a bibliography would run into
thousands of items, and would show these actors as entertaining the public