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Dryden had formerly with the king's; and the first play they acted was Congreve's Comedy of Love for Love. The king honoured it with his presence, there was a large and splendid audience, Mr. Betterton spoke a Prologue, and Mrs.
It is said, that going frequently to the stage about his mailer's business, gave Betterton the first notion of it, who shewed such indications of a theatrical genius, that Sir William readily accepted him as a performer.
Barry performed that of Frail. The epilogue was written by Mr. Rowe. Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Barry, and Mr. Betterton, appeared on the stage together, and the ladies taking hold of him, represented his infirmities of age, and pleaded his ancient merit, in a very natural and moving manner: This epilogue is exquisite in its kind. The profits arising from that benefit, we are told, amounted to 500 l.
The salaries of his faithful employés should be reduced and the older members of the company retired into the background as much as possible. Younger faces must occupy the centre of the stage; even Betterton, the greatest actor of his time, should be supplanted in some of his parts by the dissolute George Powell, and the genius of Mrs.
The whitewash of the walls, and the prints thereon of the actors in their mime-robes, and stage postures, actors as far back as their own lost Augustan era, when the stage was a real living influence on the manners and the age! There was Betterton, in wig and gown, as Cato, moralizing on the soul's eternity, and halting between Plato and the dagger.
"It is rather generous in you than just," said the poet; "and, though I hate to speak ill of any person's production nay, I never do it, nor will but yet, to do justice to the actors, what could Booth or Betterton have made of such horrible stuff as Fenton's Mariamne, Frowd's Philotas, or Mallet's Eurydice; or those low, dirty, last-dying-speeches, which a fellow in the city of Wapping, your Dillo or Lillo, what was his name, called tragedies?"
Thus he encounters Colonel Reames, "a man," says he, "who understands and loves a play as well as I, and I love him for it." And again, when he and his wife had seen a most ridiculous insipid piece, "Glad we were," he writes, "that Betterton had no part in it." It is by such a zeal and loyalty to those who labour for his delight that the amateur grows worthy of the artist.
Betterton. Long have we turn'd the point of our just Rage On the half Wits, and Criticks of the Age. Oft has the soft, insipid Sonneteer In Nice and Flutter, seen his Fop-face here. Well was the ignorant lampooning Pack Of shatterhead Rhymers whip'd on Craffey's back; But such a trouble Weed is Poetaster, The lower 'tis cut down, it grows the faster.
Here comes Harris, and first told us how Betterton is come again upon the stage: whereupon my wife and company to the house to see "Henry the Fifth;" while I to attend the Duke of York at the Committee of the Navy at the Council, where some high dispute between him and W. Coventry about settling pensions upon all flag-officers while unemployed: W. Coventry against it, and, I think, with reason.
In 1670 Mr. Betterton married a gentlewoman on the same stage, one Mrs. Saunderson, who excelled as an actress, every thing but her own conduct in life. In her, he was compleatly happy, and by their joint endeavours even in those days, they were able not only to acquire a genteel subsistence, but also to save what might support them in an advanced age .
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