# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/"Irene" at Drury Lane

“IRENE” AT DRURY LANE.
An advertisement which appeared in the “Gentleman's Magazine" for June and July, 1736, and set forth that “at Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen were boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by Samuel Johnson,” did not attract very much attention, certainly did not produce many pupils. Captain Garrick, residing at Lichfield, placed two of his sons, George and David, at the new academy. Another pupil was a Mr. Offely, "a young gentleman of good fortune, who died early." It is doubtful if there were any others who benefited by Dr. Johnson's instruction, though Dr. Hawkesworth has been mentioned as a student under him, and David Garrick used afterwards to imply that there were more.
It must have been a strange school. Johnson was about twenty-seven years old—seven years or so older than his pupil, David Garrick. Bishop Percy defends the schoolmaster's personal appearance, which has been often enough attacked. Much misrepresentation has prevailed on the subject he declares. Johnson’s countenance, when in a good humour, was not disagreeable. Many ladies, the bishop avers, thought his person might not have been unattractive when he was young, “his face clear, his complexion good, and his features not ill-formed.” His step-daughter, however, informed Boswell that when Johnson “was first introduced to her mother, his appearance was very forbidding; he was then lean and lank, so that his immense structure of bones was hideously striking to the eye.” His hair was worn straight and stiff, separated at the back. He had convulsive starts and gesticulations, “which tended to excite surprise and ridicule.” That these were sufficiently remarkable is evident from the fact that he failed in his application for the mastership of the Grammar School at Solihull, in Warwickshire, because it was alleged, “that he was a very haughty and ill-natured gent,” and that he had “such a way of distorting his face, which (though he can't help it), it was feared might affect some of the young lads." An attempt to obtain the situation of assistant in Mr. Budworth’s school at Brewood, had been attended with a like result, ​from an apprehension “that the paralytic affection under which Johnson laboured might become the object of imitation or ridicule amongst his pupils.” The appearance of the master’s wife must have been equally remarkable. “Tetty,” or “Tetsey,” as he called her, using the provincial contraction for her Christian name, Elizabeth, was twenty years his senior, and David Garrick was accustomed to describe her as extremely fat, with very red cheeks, the result of paint and the free use of cordials, “flaring and fantastic in her dress, and affected both in her speech and her general manner.” Both husband and wife presented points of singularity enough to excite the merriment of the pupils; especially when such an arch-mimic and jester as young Mr. David Garrick was on the spot to avail himself of their peculiarities, and burlesque and aggravate them at every possible opportunity.
A strange school, having a preceptor so uncouth, possessed of so little faculty for tuition, and with so much impetuosity and irritableness, want of forbearance, and difficulty of regarding anything, save from his individual point of view. And yet, kindly and large-hearted, too; lifting up all near him to the position of his friends, when it was commonly possible to do so, and holding to them afterwards with a tenacity that had something tremendous about it. The pupil, Da gd, was soon the constant companion and friend. Not raised to that post, however, by his assiduity as a scholar. While he should have been preparing exercises or studying the classics, he was busy with the scenes of a comedy. Did the example of the pupil affect the teacher? Johnson about this time commenced to write a tragedy.
He borrowed from Mr. Peter Garrick, an elder brother of David, Knolles’s “History of the Turks,” of which he wrote afterwards in the “Rambler”:—“It displays all the excellencies that narration can admit, and nothing could have sunk its author in obscurity, but the remoteness and barbarity of the people whose story he relates.” He selected for the subject of his play, the story of Irene. Was he aware that he was travelling on trodden ground?
In 1664, was published “Irena,” a tragedy, with a prologue and epilogue, but it seems not to have been acted. “It is, indeed,” says an authority, “too worthless a performance in every particular to deserve representation.” In 1708, appeared “Irene, or the Fair Greek,” a tragedy, by Charles Goring, acted at Drury Lane. This could have made little impression either, but both plays are on the same subject as Dr. Johnson’s. To his old friend, Mr. Gilbert Walmesley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court of Lichfield, he read portions of his work, as he proceeded with it. Mr. Walmesley apprehended that he had brought the heroine into great distress at too early a period of the play.
“How can you possibly contrive to plunge her into deeper calamity?”
“Sir,” answers the author, unwilling to reveal the plan of his plot, “I can put her into the Spiritual Court!”
A sly allusion, as Boswell remarks, “to the supposed oppressive proceedings of the Court, of which Mr. Walmesley was Registrar.” But Mr. Walmesley thought highly of the work, and when, very soon afterwards, Johnson gave up all idea of his school, and with Garrick set out for London, he gave the travellers letters of introduction to his friend, the Reverend Mr. Colson, an eminent mathematician, who resided at Rochester.
“The present occasion of my writing is a favour I have to ask of you. My neighbour, Captain Garrick, who is an honest, valuable man, has a son, who is a very sensible young man, and a good scholar, and whom the Captain hopes, in some two or three years, he shall send to the Temple, and breed to the bar; but at present his pocket will not hold out for sending him to the University. I have proposed your taking him, if you like well of it, and your boarding him and instructing him in the mathematics, philosophy, and human learning. He is now nineteen, of sober and good disposition, and is as ingenious and promising a young man, as ever I knew in my life. Few instructions on your side will do, and in the intervals of study he will be an agreeable companion for you.”
And afterwards he wrote further:
“He and another neighbour of mine, one Mr. S. Johnson, set out this morning for London together. Davy Garrick is to be with you early the next week; and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed in some translation, either from the Latin, or the French. Johnson is a very good scholar and poet, and I have great hopes will turn out a fine tragedy writer. If it should anyways lay in your way, I doubt not but you would be ready to recommend and assist your countryman.”
With three acts of “Irene” in his trunk, and “two-pence halfpenny in his pocket,” as he would sometimes jestingly declare, he came up to London. Unquestionably he was poor enough, and compelled to live in the cheapest way possible. He took lodgings at the house of Mr. Norris, a staymaker, in Exeter Street, Strand, and dined daily for eightpence at the Pine Apple, in New Street. At this time, he drank only water. “A cut of meat for sixpence, and bread a penny, and a penny for the waiter; so that,” as he declared, “I was quite well served; nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter nothing,” though their dinners cost them a shilling a-piece, as they drank wine. He is stated to have lived for some time at even a cheaper rate—“fourpence-half penny a day!” He worked for Cave, the publisher; probably also for Lintot. He took lodgings at Greenwich, and used to walk in the park, composing his last two acts. But these were slowly produced. It was not until he gave himself a holiday, and paid a summer visit to Lichfield, where he had left his wife, that he was able to complete the work.
On the 9th March, 1736, Mr. Garrick was entered as a student of Lincoln’s Inn. It is not to be supposed, however, that he embraced the profession chosen for him with. any extraordinary ardour. On the death of his father he closed his law-books—if, indeed, he had ever really opened them. He entered into partnership with his brother Peter, and they engaged in the wine trade.
​Foote used to declare, jestingly, that he remembered Garrick living in Durham Yard (now the Adelphi), with three quarts of vinegar in the cellar, calling himself a wine-merchant. A memorandum has been seen, dated October, 1739, acknowledging the receipt from Mr. Robinson, in the Strand, of payment “for two dozen of red port, value thirty-six shillings), signed. For Self and Co—D. Garrick.” The firm did not long exist: Peter, the senior partner, was a steady, quiet, methodical man of business; David was impetuous, volatile, gay. Perhaps he perverted too much of the stock in trade to his own use. He kept the company of actors, was ever indulging his talent for mimicry, writing verses, plays, and publishing criticisms on the players. To put an end to endless altercations between the brothers, their friends interposed, and the partnership was eventually dissolved by mutual consent. David Garrick was soon on the stage, appearing at Ipswich, in 1741, in the part of Aboan, in the play of “Oroonoko;” he himself selected the character for his débût, because he hoped, under the disguise of a black face, to escape recognition should he fail to please his audience. But his success was undoubted, and he then undertook a variety of parts—Chamont, in the “Orphan,” Captain Brazen, in the “Recruiting Officer,” Sir Harry Wildair, &c.; he even danced and leapt as Harlequin. In the same year he startled London by acting Richard the Third, for the first time, at the theatre in Goodman’s Fields.
Meanwhile the author was toiling at his tragedy. He had not then the rapidity of composition which distinguished him later in life. His work was the result of slow and close study and application. He wrote and rewrote many parts of it, made many alterations and additions, kept copious notes of the speeches to be made, with a number of hints for illustration borrowed from Greek, Roman, and modern writers. He jotted down roughly in prose the matter which was to be subsequently polished into verse. Shortly before his death he gave to Mr. Langton a rough draft of the tragedy as it originally stood. This manuscript was presented to the King, and ultimately was lodged in the British Museum. “The hand-writing,” says Boswell, “is very difficult to be read, even by those who were best acquainted with Johnson’s mode of penmanship, which at all times was very particular.” A speech of Mahomet to Irene appears thus in prose in the draft:—
I have tried thee, and joy to find that thou deservest to be loved by Mahomet—with a mind great as his own. Sure thou art an error of nature, and an exception to the rest of thy sex, and art immortal; for sentiments like thine were never to sink into nothing. I thought all the thoughts of the fair had been to select the graces of the day, dispose the colours of the flaunting (flowing) robe, tune the voice and roll the eye, choose the dress and add new roses to the fading cheek,—but sparkling.
From this raw material the following manufactured article is produced:—
Illustrious maid, new wonders fix me thine; Thy soul completes the triumphs of thy face; I thought, forgive, my fair, the noblest aim, The strongest effort of a female love Was but to choose the graces of the day, To tune the tongue, to teach the eyes to roll, Dispose the colours of the flowing robe, And add new roses to the fading cheek.
He read the completed tragedy over to Mr. Peter Garrick at the Fountain. Afterwards he solicited Mr. Fleetwood, the patentee of Drury Lane, to produce it; but the manager declined. It may be because the work was not patronised by any person of rank or influence. For ten years the play remained on his hands—the cause, one would imagine, of much mortification to him. Lord Macaulay has called attention to the fact that Johnson came to London at a particularly unfortunate time. There was a very limited public. “The condition of a man of letters was most miserable and degraded. It was a dark night between two sunny days. The age of patronage had passed away, the age of general curiosity and intelligence had not arrived.” But this, after all, has reference to Johnson’s general literature rather than to his one dramatic effort.
He was so poor that it was a serious object with him to receive money for his play. In 1741, Cave, the publisher, wrote:—“I have put Mr. Johnson’s play into Mr. Gray’s hands”—(a bookseller at the Cross Keys in the Poultry, who became a dissenting minister, and afterwards entered the Church)—“in order to sell it to him, if he is inclined to buy it; but I doubt whether he will or not. He would dispose of the copy and whatever advantages may be made by acting it. Would your society, or any gentleman or body of men that you know, take such a bargain? He and I are unfit to deal with theatrical persons,” This was addressed to Dr. Birch, a member of a “Society for the Encouragement of Learning,” the object of which was to assist authors in printing their books. It did not avail itself of Mr. Cave’s offer, and after an existence of ten years the society was bankrupt and dissolved. The result, all things considered, was perhaps not greatly to be marvelled at.
Johnson’s old pupil and companion, David Garrick, carried all before him. There was some opposition at first. “There are great divisions amongst the critics concerning Garrick’s acting,” wrote Mrs. Delany, in 1742; “I am glad I am not such a critic as to find any fault with him. I have seen him act once, and like him better than I did last year; but, as he is a year older, and the grace of novelty a little abated, he must, of course, have less merit with the generality of people.” There was early opposition to him of course; he upset all preconceived notions; he ran counter to stage traditions; he made war upon the old declamatory school of acting; he was all quickness, surprise, passion; he was emotional, rapid in action, vehement, yet natural. The conventional method had reached a climax of artificialness. Quin was the incarnation of this method of performance. Cumberland gives a good picture of him, as Horatio, in the “Fair Penitent”:—
Quin presented himself, upon the rising of the curtain, in a green velvet coat, embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled square-toed shoes. With very ​little variation of cadence, and in a deep full tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action, which had more of the senate than of the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified indifference that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed on him.
It may be supposed that Quin was not greatly pleased at the advent of Garrick, and the rush of the town to his feet. “Garrick is a new religion,” he said, mockingly; “Whitfield was followed for a time, but the people will all come to church again!” But they never did. Once in the magic circle of Garrick’s art there was no breaking away again. He attracted and kept his public. His fame grew and strengthened every day. The town flocked from the court end to Goodman’s Fields. In 1745 he was playing at Drury Lane. He visited Dublin, receiving an extraordinary welcome. The title of the English Roscius was first bestowed upon him there. In 1747, in conjunction with Mr. Lacy, he was manager of Drury Lane Theatre.
Johnson must have been more than mortal to have felt no envy at his pupil’s brilliant triumph. He was entitled to rate his intellect and talents at a higher rate than Garrick’s, yet he found himself suffering often the severest privations while the actor was in the receipt of an enormous income. His own poverty, however, seemed more easily borne than the prosperity of his friend. He could not but be jealous. He took to undervaluing the abilities of Garrick, to scoffing at his profession. In his life of Savage, published in 1744, writing complimentarily of Wilks, the actor, he could not refrain from violent reflections upon other players. “A man,” he wrote, “who, whatever were his abilities or skill as an actor, deserves at least to be remembered for his virtues, which are not often to be found in the world, and perhaps less often in his profession than in any other. To be humane, generous and candid is a very high degree of merit in any case; but those qualities deserve still greater praise when they are found in that condition which makes almost every other man for whatever reason contemptuous, insolent, petulant, selfish, and brutal.” These are strong words. Indeed his pupil’s success was hard to forgive. Throughout his life Johnson was steadily consistent in his abuse of the actors; both before and after the production of “Irene” his tone was the same. “Players, sir! I look upon them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint-stools to make faces and produce laughter like dancing dogs!” “A player!—a showman!—a fellow who exhibits himself for a shilling.” “To talk of respect for a player! Do you respect a rope-dancer or a ballad-singer? A fellow who claps a hump on his back and a lump on his leg, and cries ‘I am Richard the Third!’ Nay sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things—he repeats and he sings; there is both recitation and music in his performance; the player only recites.”
“Who can repeat Hamlet’s soliloquy, ‘To be or not to be,’ as Garrick does it?” Boswell asks.
“Anybody may,” is the answer. “Jemmy there”—(a boy about eight years old who was in the room)—“will do as well in a week.”
Boswell. “No, no, sir! and, as a proof of the merit of great acting, and of the value which mankind sets upon it, Garrick has got a hundred thousand pounds!”
Johnson. “Is getting a hundred thousand pounds a proof of excellence? That has been done by a scoundrel commissary!”
“You two talk so loud,” says Garrick, playing King Lear, to Johnson and Murphy, conversing in the wings of Drury Lane; “you destroy all my feelings.”
“Prithee!” cries Johnson, “don’t talk of feelings! Punch has no feelings!”
Garrick, manager, generously offered to produce his old master’s tragedy. But there were great difficulties in the way, proceeding chiefly, it must be said, from the author. Garrick suggested the alterations he thought necessary. These Johnson refused to make. He would not suffer that the work he “had been obliged to keep more than the nine years of Horace should be revised and altered at the pleasure of a player.” A violent dispute ensued, and Garrick called upon the Rev. Dr. Taylor to interpose.
“Sir!” cried the author, in a rage, “the fellow wants me to make Mahomet run mad, that he may have an opportunity of tossing his hands and kicking his heels!”
A compromise was effected: certain of the suggested changes were made, others were abandoned.
The subject of the tragedy is very hard and grim. It is undramatic—it is uninteresting—without pathos, or feeling, or emotion. It is a story of one incident. The Sultan Mahomet, charged by his ministers with over-fondness for his Greek mistress Irene, to the neglect of his state affairs and the ruin of his empire, puts her to death as an atonement for his fault. What can be done with such materials? Are we to sympathise with the sultan murderer or with his seraglio victim? Where is the poetical justice of the story? And certainly Johnson had no power to invest the fable with any tenderness or sentiment it did not possess in itself. His characters are simply grand automata, who walk about and wave their hands and utter musical but pompous blank verse. Nature is carefully hammered out of the hues; they pertain to Art solely. All is brain-work; there is no heart in the play. The verses scan perfectly, they are as smooth as ice, and as cold; while there is something cloying and oppressive about the monotonous march of the music, which seems to be almost the more somniferous where it should be the more stirring. There is not a broken line in the play; no emotion nor excitement ever disturbs the rhythm, and Irene does not forget the melody of her lines even in the throes of strangulation.
Garrick had engaged a strong company, He desired to give “Irene” the benefit of this. To secure the aid of his rival, Spranger Barry, “the silver-toned,” the manager made a merit of ceding to him the part of Mahomet, taking himself that of Demetrius. It is probable, however, that he deemed this character afforded him better opportunities; and, certainly, the most dramatic scenes in the play are those in which the Greek lover appears, though his influence upon the story is not ​important. The greatest applause on the first night, was awarded to his speech of “to-morrow,” which, however, is too long to quote. It contains the most vivid and vigorous lines of the tragedy, though these incline to the inflated. Irene was played by Mrs. Pritchard, who was then about thirty-seven. She would seem to have been a woman of genius, who pleased alike in parts of high tragedy, or low comedy; was at home both in Lady Macbeth and in Doll Common. Churchill wrote of her:
Pritchard by nature for the stage design’d, In person graceful, and in sense refined, Her art as much as nature’s friend became, Her voice as free from blemish as her fame, Who knows so well in Majesty to please, Attemper’d by the graceful charms of ease.
Mrs. Cibber was the Aspasia. “I think she got more reputation than she deserved,” said Johnson,” as she had great sameness, though her expression was undoubtedly very fine. Mrs. Clive was the best player I ever saw. Mrs. Pritchard was a very good one, but she had something affected in her manner. I imagine that she had some player of the former age in her eye which occasioned it.” Havard (who wrote the tragedies of “Scanderbeg,” “Charles the First,” and “Regulus”), Berry, Sowdon, and Burton were entrusted with the subordinate characters. The play was most carefully rehearsed, the dresses were magnificent, if incorrect. The scene we are told—there was only one, the play was of classical pattern, and the unities of time, place, and action most rigidly regarded—“was splendid and gay; well adapted to the inside of a Turkish seraglio; the view of the gardens belonging to it was in the taste of eastern elegance.”
In his character of dramatic author, Johnson considered that he was bound to appear more gaily attired than was his custom. He discarded his ordinary snuff-brown suit, and appeared in a scarlet waistcoat, trimmed with rich gold lace, and a gold-laced hat. He showed his new magnificence behind the scenes of the theatre, and also in one of the side boxes, on the night of the production of “Irene.” Perhaps he desired to assume for the occasion a pose of extreme dignity, for he informed Mr. Langton, “that when in that dress he could not treat people with the same ease as when in his usual plain clothes.” Dr. Adams has described the first performance when the house would seem to have been crowded. “Before the curtain drew up there were cat-calls whistling, which alarmed Johnson’s friends. The prologue, which was written by himself, in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went on tolerably, till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs. Pritchard, the heroine of the piece, was to be strangled upon the stage, and was to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck. The audience cried out ‘Murder! murder!’ She several times attempted to speak, but in vain. At last, she was obliged to go off the stage alive.” Malone complained that the audience took offence at an incident they were in the habit of applauding in Rowe’s “Tamerlane.” But, in fact, they had restrained their impatience as long as possible. It boiled over at last. They would not have been offended at the bowstring business, had they been pleased at what had preceded it. They were not—they were dreadfully wearied. The loud condemnation that is heard at particular points in doomed plays is generally the residt of pent-up displeasure rather thau a sudden ebullition of antagonism. “Irene” was a decided failure. After the first performance the catastrophe, which it was said had been made to transpire on the stage at the instance of Garrick, who hoped probably to crown a heavy play with an effective conclusion, was transferred to behind the scenes. Irene was carried out to execution. She screams:
Guilt and despair! PUnutterable anguish! Guilt and despair! Pale spectres grin around me, And stun me with the yellings of damnation! O, hear my prayers! Accept, all-pitying Heaven, These tears, these pangs, these last remains of life, Nor let the crimes of this detested day Be charged upon my soul. O, mercy, mercy!
After which the stage direction runs. “Mutes force her out.”
But the alteration had little effect upon the subsequent audiences. In fact, the objections were not only to the end of the day, but also to the beginning and the middle. Burney mentions that Johnson in his side box was observed during the representation to be dissatisfied with some of the speeches, and the conduct of the play; and even expressed his disapprobation aloud. Garrick, for his friend’s sake and his own, did all he could to achieve a success. He kept the play on the boards and the public out of the boxes for nine nights. After that he was compelled to withdraw it, and “Irene” was never played again.
Johnson was remunerated by the receipts of the third, sixth, and ninth nights of performance. These, after deducting expenses, amounted to 195l. 17s. From Dodsley he received one hundred pounds for the copyright. Aaron Hill wrote to Mr. Mallet, “I was at the anomalous Mr. Johnson’s benefit, and found the play his proper representative; strong sense, ungraced by sweetness or decorum.” When asked as to how he felt upon the ill success of his tragedy, Johnson replied: “Like the monument.” Whether he was altogether conscious of the extent of its failure is questionable; but he seldom referred to the subject, and he never repeated the attempt. Perhaps Garrick would have been reluctant enough to try his public with a second tragedy from the pen of Doctor Johnson.
For a time, Johnson availed himself of his entrée to the green room, and seemed to find pleasure in the sprightly gossip of the players. At last, he said:
“No, David. I’ll come no more behind your scenes,” and he went on to explain that “the silk stockings and white bosoms of the actresses” disturbed his philosophical serenity.
Of some of the performers ho seemed to think highly. He valued Mrs. Clive’s comic powers, and enjoyed conversation with her.
“Clive, sir, is a good thing to sit by, she always understands what you say.”
The lady reciprocated his regard.
​“I love to sit by Doctor Johnson,” she said, “he always entertains me.”
He was often a guest at Garrick’s house, when Mrs. Peg Woffington presided, and he was there on the night when Garrick,—who like all men who have ever known the want of money, had occasional fits of penuriousness,—grumbled at the strength of the tea, and cried out:
“Why it’s as red as blood!”
Perhaps he never wholly forgave Garrick’s success. Yet he could speak of it temperately, and almost generously, at times.
“Sir, it is wonderful how little Garrick assumes; a man who has advanced the dignity of his profession. Garrick has made a player a high character, and all supported by great wealth of his own acquisition. If all this had happened to me, I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me to knock down everybody that stood in the way. Consider, if all this had happened to Cibber, or Quin, they’d have jumped over the moon. Yet (smiling), Garrick speaks to us!”
Dutton Cook.