Bannister's benefit. All the male parts were sustained by women and vice versa. Boaden, who considered the whole an atrocious violation of good taste, says: "Bannister, though he sang the airs of Polly chiefly in falsetto, spoke occasionally in the voice of Grimbald; and the feminine refinements of mamma and papa from such an organ exceeded all powers of face. Edwin, who was an accomplished singer, kept the music of Lucy from violation. . . . Mrs. Webb in Lockit was infinitely too true for burlesque; she looked as if she had never been out of either breeches or Newgate. My late friend, Major Topham, was at this time at the top of his bent of admiration of Mrs. Wells, and the journals teemed with his praises of her Macheath, which he pronounced, seriously, to be, by many degrees, the best that had ever been seen." Mrs. Lefevre was the Peachum ; Miss Morris (afterwards Mrs. Colman), Mat o' the Mint; and Mrs. Inchbald, the dramatist, Ben Budge. Almost exactly two years afterwards, at the same house, Mrs. Edwards, a débutante, made her bow in the somewhat inappropriate character of Macheath; and, as if to cap this achievement, Mrs. Webb thrust her bulky person into Falstaff's garb, and, with shocking effrontery, sustained the character, word for word, in all the grossness of the Fat Knight of "Henry IV.," Part I.

Strange to say, Mrs. Siddons, who, in the days of her ascendency, developed a squeamishness that led to the adoption of a ridiculous costume in Rosalind, is remarkable as the first female Hamlet. Writing to his friend Garrick from Worcester, in August 1775, the Rev. Henry Bate informs him that Mrs. Siddons is "a very good breeches figure," and sustains the Widow Brady admirably. "Nay, beware yourself, Great Little Man, for she plays Hamlet to the satisfaction of the Worcestershire critics." Less than two years later the great tragédienne was seen in the Melancholy Dane at Manchester, and subsequently at Dublin. But she never could be prevailed upon to act the part in the metropolis.

From that day to this the stage of Greater Britain has seldom been long without its female Hamlet. In England the part has been more or less effectively sustained, from time to time, by Mrs. Bulkley, Mrs. Powell, Mrs. Glover, Mrs. Bartley, Miss Marriott, Miss Julia Sloman, Mrs. Bandmann Palmer, and others. Judging by the formidable list furnished by America, Transatlantic playgoers must always have evinced a decided liking for these bizarre personations. It comprises Mrs. Barnes (1819) and her daughter, Charlotte (Mrs. Connor), Mrs. Battersby (1822), Mrs. Shaw (1839), Mrs. Brougham (1843), Fanny Wallack (1849), Charlotte Cushman (1851), Charlotte Crampton, Rachel Denvil,

Susan Denin, Mrs. F. B. Conway, Adele Belgarde, Sophie Miles, Anna Dickinson, Nellie Holbrook, Viola Whitcomb, and Eliza Warren. Australia has seen Louise Pomeroy and Mesdames Cleveland and Evans in the rôle. Only once has artistic propriety been outraged in this way in France: at the Gaieté in 1867, when Mme. Judith gave a weak and colourless impersonation of the young prince.

Few now can regret the decay of the time-honoured system of theatrical benefits. Of old, on such occasions, prominent performers frequently took unwarranted liberties with their patrons and with their art. Mrs. Abington, the original Lady Teazle, and most cultured of grandes dames, was rightly condemned for playing Scrub in "The Beaux Stratagem" for her benefit in February 1786, although it is claimed in mitigation of the offence that she did it to win a wager. Whimsically enough, she appeared in the character with her hair arranged in orthodox feminine style, so as to permit her to play Lady Racket in the afterpiece without re-dressing it. If, as Genest says, her portraits as Scrub faithfully preserve this incongruity, it is difficult to believe Mrs. Charles Matthews' assertion "that they might pass for tolerable likenesses of our inimitable Liston in the same character." Naturally the announcement drew a tremendous house; but the effect produced was in inverse ratio to the preliminary excitement. The younger Angelo, who viewed the performance from Mrs. Garrick's box, tells us that Mrs. Abington's "appearance en culottes, so preposterously padded, exceeded nature. Her gestures to look comical could not get the least hold of the audience, though they had seen her before in men's clothes, when playing Portia, where her figure, dressed as a lawyer in his gown, gave effect to her excellent delivery on mercy, and the audience had always been delighted." Boaden complains of "the metamorphosis of her person; the loss of one sex without approaching the other; the coarse but vain attempt to vulgarise her voice, which some of my readers remember to have been thin, sharp, and high-toned." Finally Peter Pindar:

The courtly Abington's untoward star
Wanted her reputation much to mar,
And sink the lady to the washing-tub-

So whisper'd," Mistress Abington, play SCRUB."

To folly full as great some imp may lug her,

And bid her slink in FITCH and ABEL DRugger.

One result of the hubbub created by Nosegay Fan's escapade was the hiring of the Brighton Theatre, in the October following, by the

"Honourable" George Hanger, that his mistress, the notorious Fanny Hill, might give her reading of Farquhar's coarse serving-man. This reduced the thing to uttermost absurdity, and nipped all embryonic female Scrubs in the bud.

At Belfast, late in December 1786, Mrs. Achmet, emboldened by her success as Sir Harry Wildair, appeared as Jessamy, the fop, in the comic opera of "Lionel and Clarissa." Two years later Mrs. Chalmers, one of the many female Macheaths, followed her in the same character in the same town. In Belfast also, in February 1787, Mrs. Ward sustained Henry in "The Deserter" for her benefit.

On August 15, 1792, Miss Decamp played Captain Macheath in Gay's undying opera at the Haymarket, and was rather comically supported by the elder Bannister and Johnstone in Polly and Lucy. Unsatisfied by her one great trespass upon male territory, Mrs. Powell, for the inevitable lunacy-breeding benefit-at Drury Lane, on May 2, 1795-ventured upon the character of Young Norval, to the superb Lady Randolph of Mrs. Siddons. In the provinces, actresses who were adequate representatives of "breeches parts" were in considerable demand. In 1803, when Mrs. Worthington deserted Norwich to strengthen the Bath company, a local paper, in announcing the engagement, laid stress on the fact that she was " particularly celebrated for the beautiful symmetry of her person in the male attire. Indeed, her breeches figure is allowed to be the most perfect and admirably proportioned of any upon the English stage."

Barn-storming there is, and barn-storming. About this very period a company of two, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Bond, were accustomed to visit the minor villages of Scotland, and by dint of adroit doubling, to give the yokels some fitful impression of the beauties of "Douglas," "Jane Shore," and other standard pieces. Owing to the numerical deficiencies of the troupe, the principal character in the piece was apt occasionally to go by the board; but on the whole things went swimmingly. This generally happened in Rowe's tragedy, in which, by the way, Mrs. Bond, according to an eye-witness, "acted Gloster, nature fitting her for the character, to look it at least, without aid from the wardrobe or property man. On one occasion a spectator, rather above the average in intelligence, complimented Mr. Bond on his acting, and inquired, "But what has become of Jane Shore ? We saw nothing of her." "Oh," answered Bond, whose cockney wit kept time with his cockney accent, "she was dead long, long ere you vas borned!"

In October 1805, Miss Wheatley, from Covent Garden, kept alive the Kennedy tradition by appearing as Patrick in "The Poor Soldier,"

at the New Theatre Royal, Bath. At Glasgow, nine months later, Miss Smith (afterwards Mrs. Bartley), in the course of a short starring engagement, sustained the character of Young Norval, and the titlepart in the drama of "Edgar, or Caledonian Feuds." Despite her strong penchant for male rôles, in neither did she succeed in setting the Clyde on fire.

In 1822, Mrs. Glover played Hamlet for her benefit at the Lyceum, and appears to have given general satisfaction to a large and very distinguished audience. Walter Donaldson, who was in the cast, tells us that Edmund Kean, in company with Munden, Michael Kelly, and Douglas Kinnaird, viewed the performance from a private box. "At the end of the first act Kean came behind the scenes, and shook Mrs. Glover, not by one, but by both hands, and exclaimed, ⚫ Excellent ! excellent!' The splendid actress, smiling, cried 'Away, you flatterer! you come in mockery to scorn and scoff at our solemnity!"" The whole performance, indeed, seems to have been something of an intellectual achievement, for the lady's face and figure rather suggested Falstaff than the pensive Dane. Eleven years later, when she was probably the cleverest-and fattest-woman on the stage, Mrs. Glover essayed burly Sir John in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," at the Haymarket. The late Mr. Henry Howe happened, as a boy, to see her in the part. "A great failure," he says, "for although the most unctuous of feminine comedians, she seemed like a weakly youth attempting the character."

In 1821, the London stage experienced a severe renewal of the Macheath epidemic. At Covent Garden, on January 7, a Miss Hollande appeared as the amorous highwayman to the Polly of the brilliant Kitty Stephens. Said the European Magazine: "Miss Hollande played Macheath as well as ladies usually do, and strutted, and sang, and vapoured with much more spirit than she usually does as a lady; still we were not pleased; several of the songs are beyond the compass of her voice; and though much applauded, it was 'the attempt and not the deed' which was thus honoured." In the October following, Miss Blake, a débutante, sustained the same character, and succeeded in arousing the latent enthusiasm of the Aristarchus of The Examiner. To his mind her voice was "possessed of much strength and sweetness in the lower tones, which are unusually deep and full for a female. This was as remarkable in speech as in song, and if it did not assist to a due notion of Gay's gallant robber of purses and of ladies' hearts it possessed the happy negative advantage of doing away something from the want of nature in the effort. . . . In the line, 'But hark! I hear the toll of the Bell,

a note was reached lower than we ever recollect to have heard from a woman." The palm, however, in Macheath at this period had been borne away by Madame Vestris, whose appearances in the part at Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket drew overflowing houses. Among other male characters in which she enjoyed considerable vogue were young Malcolm, in Rossini's "Lady of the Lake," Paul, Apollo, and Don Giovanni. The last mentioned character had been originally sustained by a masculine-minded woman named Mrs. Gould (neé Miss Burrell), who, from her propensities, was known in theatrical circles as "Joe Gould." Shortly after her debut in London the Vestris burst upon the town as the nauseous libertine, arousing the wrath of The Theatrical Inquisitor for swathing "her slender form in rolls and bandages, to fill out the garb of the character," and for testifying "altogether that sort of ease and gaiety against which, for the honour of the sex, we still deem it our duty to protest." Oxberry considered it useless to attempt to criticise this beautiful woman in any male character, “because her stature and her sex render it impossible that she should create any illusion in them. With all her boisterous gaiety, her fine spirit, and her powerful voice, Madame Vestris cannot disguise her sex half so successfully as many actresses less noted for the freedom of their manners. Miss Kelly, Mrs. Davison, and Miss Booth all exceed her in this qualification, if, indeed, it be a qualification. . . . Our heroine's assumption of the other sex has exactly the same effect upon us that a mistress's dressing in boy's clothes and gambolling in a drawing-room would have. We admire the symmetry of her figure, and the apparent ease with which she falls into habits with which we presume her to be unfamiliar. We say, 'What a pretty fellow she looks!' but we do not for an instant think that we could mistake her for a man ; and if we did so, we should be as instantaneously disgusted, and all the pleasurable portion of the frolic would be at an end." George Vandenhoff, on the other hand, says the Vestris "was admirably gifted, cut out, and framed to shine en petit maître ; she was remarkable for the symmetry of her limbs, especially of those principally called on to fill these parts; she had a fearless, off-hand manner, and a fine mezzo-soprano voice, the full contralto tones of which did her good service in Don Giovanni (a sort of burlesque on the opera), Captain Macheath, Carlos in 'The Duenna,' Apollo in 'Midas,' and other epicenes."

Oxberry's "Dramatic Biography for 1826" has a paragraph on Doubling," in which the writer says: "We have seen a lady play Mrs. Brulgruddery, John Burr, and Frank Rochdale [all in Colman's