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Updated: May 12, 2025
Shakespeare and Burbage, Betterton, Colley Cibber, the Kembles, the Keans, Phelps, Calvert and Henry Irving, as artists, recognised that there was but one way to treat the play of Henry VIII. It is pleasant to sin in such good company. I contend that Henry VIII. is essentially a realistic and not a symbolic play. Indeed, probably no English author is less "symbolic" than Shakespeare.
An imperfect elocution is apt to degenerate into a monotonous uniformity of tone. Some wholesome advice on this point we find in the Life of Betterton.
And so to the Duke's House; and there saw "Hamlett" done, giving us fresh reason never to think enough of Betterton. Who should we see come upon the stage but Gosnell, my wife's maid? but neither spoke, danced, nor sung; which I was sorry for. But she becomes the stage very well.
She was stage-struck, and endeavored to get even a minor part in a play; but Betterton, the famous actor, thrust her aside when she ventured to apply to him. It must be said that in everything that was external, except her beauty, she fell short of a fastidious taste. She was intensely ignorant even for that time. She spoke in a broad Cockney dialect.
So spoke Molière, so looked Lekain, so stepped Talma; therefore all the succeeding generations of players must so speak and look and walk. Let us imagine the process transferred to our English stage the shades of Burbage and Betterton prescribing how Hamlet and Richard III. should be played the manners of the seventeenth century forcibly transferred to our modern stage.
The original play was The Prophetess of Beaumont and Fletcher, straightforward Elizabethan stodge and fustian: and if Betterton, who chose to maltreat it, was bent on making the very worst play ever written, it must be conceded that his success was nearly complete. It gets down to the plane of pure and sparkling idiocy that the world admires in, say, "The Merry Widow."
Betterton never reproached his friend, he never murmured at his ill-luck. The friend's daughter was left unprovided for; but Betterton adopted the child, educated her for the stage, and she became an actress of merit, and married Bowman, the player, afterwards known as "The Father of the Stage." "My heart And limbs are still the same, my will as great, To do you service,"
Betterton, to whom his friend offered any share in the business he pleased, to think of so large a sum as eight-thousand pounds; but it was not for himself, as he had no such sum in his power: and whoever considers the situation of the stage at that time will need no other argument to convince him of it. Yet he had another friend whom, he was willing to oblige, which was the famous Dr.
Edmund Burke lived in Tothill Street, also Thomas Southerne, the dramatist, who was a constant attendant at the Abbey; and Thomas Betterton was born here about 1635. His father was an under-cook in the service of Charles I. Betterton wrote a number of plays, but is best remembered as an actor. The Aquarium, 600 feet in length, stands on the site of a labyrinth of small yards.
When we study the mad dramas of Nat Lee, we should remember Betterton; and properly to appreciate Thomas Otway, we must imagine the aspect and the voice of Elizabeth Barry.
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