TENNIS COURT.

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Early Theatricals—The Canongate Theatre—Digges and Mrs Bellamy—A Theatrical Riot.

‘Just without the Water-gate,’ says Maitland, ‘on the eastern side of the street, was the Royal Tennis Court, anciently called the Catchpel [from Cache, a game since called Fives, and a favourite amusement in Scotland so early as the reign of James IV.].’ The house—a long, narrow building with a court—was burned down in modern times, and rebuilt for workshops. Yet the place continues to possess some interest as connected with the early and obscure history of the stage in Scotland, not to speak of the tennis itself, which was a fashionable amusement in Scotland in the seventeenth century, and here played by the Duke of York, Law the financial schemer, and other remarkable persons.

The first known appearance of the post-reformation theatre in Edinburgh was in the reign of King James VI., when several companies came from London, chiefly for the amusement of the Court, including one to which Shakespeare is known to have belonged, though his personal attendance cannot be substantiated. There was no such thing, probably, as a play acted in Edinburgh from the departure of James in 1603 till the arrival of his grandson, the Duke of York, in 1680.

Threatened by the Whig party in the House of Commons with an exclusion from the throne of England on account of his adherence to popery, this prince made use of his exile in Scotland to conciliate the nobles, and attach them to his person. His beautiful young wife, Mary of Modena, and his second daughter, the Lady Anne, assisted by giving parties at the palace—where, by the bye, tea was now first introduced into Scotland. Easy and obliging in their manners, these ladies revived the entertainment of the masque, and took parts themselves in the performance. At length, for his own amusement and that of his friends, James had some of his own company of players brought down to Holyrood and established in a little theatre, which was fitted up in the Tennis Court. On this occasion the remainder of the company playing at Oxford apologised for the diminution of their strength in the following lines written by Dryden:

‘Discord and plots, which have undone our age,
With the same ruin have o’erwhelmed the stage.
Our house has suffered in the common woe;
We have been troubled with Scots rebels too.
Our brethren have from Thames to Tweed departed,
And of our sisters, all the kinder-hearted
To Edinburgh gone, or coached or carted.
With bonny Blew cap there they act all night,
For Scotch half-crowns—in English threepence hight.
One nymph to whom fat Sir John Falstaff’s lean,
There, with her single person, fills the scene.
Another, with long use and age decayed,
Died here old woman, and there rose a maid.
Our trusty door-keeper, of former time,
There struts and swaggers in heroic rhyme.
Tack but a copper lace to drugget suit,
And there’s a hero made without dispute;
And that which was a capon’s tail before,
Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.
But all his subjects, to express the care
Of imitation, go like Indians bare.
Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing,
It might perhaps a new rebellion bring;
The Scot who wore it would be chosen king.’

We learn from Fountainhall’s Diary that on the celebration of the king’s birthday, 1681, the duke honoured the magistrates of the city with his presence in the theatre—namely, this theatre in the Tennis Court.

No further glimpse of our city’s theatrical history is obtained till 1705, when we find a Mr Abel announcing a concert in the Tennis Court, under the patronage of the Duke of Argyll, then acting as the queen’s commissioner to the Parliament. It is probable that the concert was only a cloak to some theatrical representation. This is the more likely from a tradition already mentioned of some old members of the Spendthrift Club who once frequented the tavern of a Mrs Hamilton, whose husband recollected having attended the theatre in the Tennis Court at Holyrood House, when the play was The Spanish Friar, and many members of the Union Parliament were present in the house.

Theatrical amusements appear to have been continued at the Tennis Court in the year 1710, if we are to place any reliance upon the following anecdote: When Mrs Siddons came to Edinburgh in 1784, the late Mr Alexander Campbell, author of the History of Scottish Poetry, asked Miss Pitcairn, daughter of Dr Pitcairn, to accompany him to one of the representations. The old lady refused, saying with coquettish vivacity: ‘Laddie, wad ye ha’e an auld lass like me to be running after the play-actors—me that hasna been at a theatre since I gaed wi’ papa to the Canongate in the year ten?’ The theatre was in those days encouraged chiefly by such Jacobites as Dr Pitcairn. It was denounced by the clergy as a hotbed of vice and profanity.

After this we hear no more of the theatre in the Tennis Court. The next place where the drama set up its head was in a house in Carrubber’s Close, under the management of an Italian lady styled Signora Violante, who paid two visits to Edinburgh. After her came, in 1726, one Tony Alston, who set up his scenes in the same house, and whose first prologue was written by Ramsay: it may be found in the works of that poet. In 1727 the Society of High Constables, of which Ramsay was then a member, endeavoured to ‘suppress the abominable stage-plays lately set up by Anthony Alston.’[263] Mr Alston played for a season or two, under the fulminations of the clergy and a prosecution on their part in the Court of Session.

CANONGATE THEATRE.

From a period subsequent to 1727 till after the year 1753, the Tailors’ Hall in the Cowgate[264] was used as a theatre by itinerating companies, who met with some success notwithstanding the incessant hostility of the clergy.[265] It was a house which in theatrical phrase, could hold from £40 to £45. A split in the company here concerned led to the erection, in 1746-7, of a theatre at the bottom of a close in the Canongate, nearly opposite to the head of New Street. This house, capable of holding about £70—the boxes being half-a-crown and pit one and sixpence—was for several years the scene of good acting under Lee, Digges, Mrs Bellamy, and Mrs Ward. We learn from Henry Mackenzie that the tragedy of Douglas, which first appeared here in 1756, was most respectably acted—the two ladies above mentioned playing respectively Young Norval and Lady Randolph.[266] The personal elegance of Digges—understood to be the natural son of a man of rank—and the beauty of Mrs Bellamy were a theme of interest amongst old people fifty years ago; but their scandalous life was of course regarded with horror by the mass of respectable society. They lived in a small country-house at Bonnington, between Edinburgh and Leith. It is remembered that Mrs Bellamy was extremely fond of singing-birds, and kept many about her. When emigrating to Glasgow, she had her feathered favourites carried by a porter all the way that they might not suffer from the jolting of a carriage. Scotch people wondered to hear of ten guineas being expended on this occasion. Persons under the social ban for their irregular lives often win the love of individuals by their benevolence and sweetness of disposition—qualities, it is remarked, not unlikely to have been partly concerned in their first trespasses. This was the case with Mrs Bellamy. Her waiting-maid, Annie Waterstone, who is mentioned in her Memoirs, lived many years after in Edinburgh, and continued to the last to adore the memory of her mistress. Nay, she was, from this cause, a zealous friend of all kinds of players, and never would allow a slighting remark upon them to pass unreproved. It was curious to find in a poor old Scotchwoman of the humbler class such a sympathy with the follies and eccentricities of the children of Thespis.

Tailors’ Hall, Cowgate.

While under the temporary management of two Edinburgh citizens extremely ill-qualified for the charge—one of them, by the bye, a Mr David Beatt, who had read the rebel proclamations from the Cross in 1745—a sad accident befell the Canongate playhouse. Dissensions of a dire kind had broken out in the company. The public, as usual, was divided between them. Two classes of persons—the gentlemen of the bar and the students of the university[267]—were especially zealous as partisans. Things were at that pass when a trivial incident will precipitate them to the most fearful conclusion. One night, when Hamlet was the play, a riot took place of so desperate a description that at length the house was set on fire. It being now necessary for the authorities to interfere, the Town-guard was called forth, and marched to the scene of disturbance; but though many of that veteran corps had faced the worst at Blenheim and Dettingen, they felt it as a totally different thing to be brought to action in a place which they regarded as a peculiar domain of the Father of Evil. When ordered, therefore, by their commander to advance into the house and across the stage, the poor fellows fairly stopped short amidst the scenes, the glaring colours of which at once surprised and terrified them. Indignant at their pusillanimity, the bold captain seized a musket, and placing himself in an attitude equal to anything that had ever appeared on those boards, exclaimed: ‘Now, my lads, follow me!’ But just at the moment that he was going to rush on and charge the rioters, a trap-door on which he trod gave way, and in an instant the heroic leader had sunk out of sight, as if by magic. This was too much for the excited nerves of the guard; they immediately vacated the house, leaving the devil to make his own of it; and accordingly it was completely destroyed. It is added that when the captain by-and-by reappeared, they received him in the quality of a gentleman from the other world; nor could they all at once be undeceived, even when he cursed them in vigorous Gaelic for a pack of cowardly scoundrels.

Old Playhouse Close.

The Canongate theatre revived for a short time, and had the honour to be the first house in our city in which the drama was acted with a license. It was opened with this privilege by Mr Ross on the 9th December 1767, when the play was The Earl of Essex, and a general prologue was spoken, the composition of James Boswell. Soon after, being deserted for the present building in the New Town,[268] it fell into ruin; in which state it formed the subject of a mock elegy to the muse of Robert Fergusson. The reader will perhaps be amused with the following extract from that poem:

‘Can I contemplate on those dreary scenes
Of mouldering desolation, and forbid
The voice elegiac, and the falling tear!
No more from box to box the basket, piled
With oranges as radiant as the spheres,
Shall with their luscious virtues charm the sense
Of taste or smell. No more the gaudy beau,
With handkerchief in lavender well drenched,
Or bergamot, or [in] rose-waters pure,
With flavoriferous sweets shall chase away
The pestilential fumes of vulgar cits,
Who, in impatience for the curtain’s rise,
Amused the lingering moments, and applied
Thirst-quenching porter to their parched lips.
Alas! how sadly altered is the scene!
For lo! those sacred walls, that late were brushed
By rustling silks and waving capuchines,
Are now become the sport of wrinkled Time!
Those walls that late have echoed to the voice
Of stern King Richard, to the seat transformed
Of crawling spiders and detested moths,
Who in the lonely crevices reside,
Or gender in the beams, that have upheld
Gods, demigods, and all the joyous crew
Of thunderers in the galleries above.’

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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