He played _Juliet_ to Betterton's _Romeo_, and was
the Siddons of his day; for women did not generally appear on the stage
till after the Restoration. The anecdote of Charles II. waiting at the
theatre for the stage _queen_ to be _shaved_ is well known.
Pepys speaks of Harris, in his interesting _Diary_ as "growing very proud,
and demanding 20_l_. for himself extraordinary more than Betterton, or
any body else, upon every new play, and 10_l_. upon every revive; which,
with other things, Sir William Davenant would not give him, and so he
swore he would never act there more, in expectation of his being received
in the other house;" (this was in 1663, at the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's
Inn Fields.) "He tells me that the fellow grew very proud of late, the
King and every body else crying him up so high," &c. Poor Sir William, he
must have been as much worried and vexed as Mr. Ebers with the Operatics,
or any Covent Garden manager, in our time; whose days and nights are not
very serene, although passed among the _stars_,
In one of Pepys's notices of Hart, he tells us "It pleased us mightily
to see the natural affection of a poor woman, the mother of one of the
children brought upon the stage; the child crying, she, by force, got upon
the stage, and took up her child, and carried it away off the stage from
Hart.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25