Reforms of Drury Lane Theatre of David Garrick

In April of 1747 friends in the city helped Garrick to raise £8,000, his share of the purchase money for the lease and furnishings of Drury Lane Theatre and renewal of the patent, in partnership with one James Lacy, a failed actor with a flair for the entertainment trade, who had been stage manager at Covent Garden. Garrick was to perform and to choose plays and players; Lacy, assisted by a weakish, devoted younger Garrick, “Brother George,” dealt with the business side. Drury Lane, redecorated, reopened in September 1747 with Macklin as Shylock and a prologue by Johnson that set forth Garrick’s principles, as a producer, of devotion to Shakespeare and reform of plays and players and ending with the famous appeal:

The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give,

For we, who live to please, must please to live.

…’Tis yours this night to bid the reign commence

Of rescued nature and reviving sense.

Garrick was unwell, however. He had endured many minor ailments, indicative of overstrain, in the past months, during which he had never acted more poignantly. The infidelities and extravagance of Peg Woffington had convinced him that they had better not marry. He had announced to his brilliant new troupe that they would find his rule stricter than any to which they were accustomed. Among his stars were Macklin, Woffington, and Kitty Clive, the only actress of whom he was said to be afraid, but one who was to become a dear friend.

He had made plans for reforming audiences as well as actors. He tried refusing admittance behind the scenes and on the stage and attempted to discontinue the practice of reduced entry fees for those who left early or came late, but these changes resulted in riots. He planned to bring down the orchestra from the gallery and to enlarge the auditorium. The apron—a forestage in front of the curtain onto which players marched, struck a pose, and took up their stances for lengthy soliloquies—became less prominent with the new, natural style of acting. Garrick hoped to introduce new lighting, but not until 1765 did he get his footlights and sidelights, which were oil lamps with reflectors.

Most important was to be his choice of plays and manner of production. He was going to produce much more Shakespeare, purged of the coarse language and effects of Restoration drama: the name of Garrick should be remembered with that of Shakespeare. He would add a death scene between Romeo and Juliet but restore much of the original text lost in adaptations by the Restoration playwrights, Thomas Otway and Colley Cibber. He would present Nahum Tate’s 1681 adaptation of King Lear, without the Fool and with a happy ending, and give The Fairies (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) without the clownish artisans and Hamlet without the gravediggers and the tragic fate of Ophelia. Florizel and Perdita (adapted from The Winter’s Tale) and Dryden’s version of The Tempest would make charming light operas. He would rewrite The Taming of the Shrew, adapting the role of Katharina for Kitty Clive. In general, his audiences, accustomed to rewritings of Shakespeare, accepted his “improvements” with docility: they at least had the merit of keeping the plays on the stage by suiting them to the taste of the time. Moreover, Garrick’s acting and casting often succeeded in interpreting character in a way closer to Shakespeare and new to the audience.

On June 22, 1749, Garrick married Eva Maria Veigel, a Viennese opera dancer who spoke little English and was a devout Roman Catholic. Under the stage name of La Violette, she had enchanted audiences at the Opera House in the Haymarket in 1746, and, although she had refused to dance for Garrick at Drury Lane in 1748, the following year she consented to retire. The marriage, though childless, was happy, and the Garricks’ hospitality became famous.

Successes and setbacks

At Drury Lane, Garrick went from strength to strength. He had already appeared in most of the parts in which he was best liked, and he realized with good humour that, as he was slightly below middle height and had put on weight, he had better give up youthful characters and add to his fame in the more mature roles—Abel Drugger, King Lear, Macbeth, Richard III. His mobile features, dark complexion, and eyes—widely praised for their lustre, expressiveness, and piercing brilliance—were famous on and off stage. In search of “copy,” he frequented the law courts and House of Commons and would even visit the scene of a family tragedy. Critics disagreed as to whether he excelled in tragedy or comedy. He himself once told a young aspirant that comedy called for the greater skill.

Though he raised Drury Lane Theatre from penury to astounding financial success and, by his improvements in 1747–48 and 1762 and by the acting of his company, had made it London’s most flourishing theatre, he had his setbacks. He burdened his players with some deadly historical and classical tragedies. He could turn disaster to success, however. When his theatre was wrecked by hooligans in November 1755, he faced a hostile house with courage. When in 1769 preternaturally wet weather washed out his cherished Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon, he refurbished both costumes and script for London, played The Jubilee to packed houses, and emerged with a profit. He was accused of avarice—though his inconspicuous charities were many—and was laughed at for his vanity and love of staying at great houses. He was involved in a succession of “paper wars” with touchy and even slanderous disappointed writers and players, such as Charles Churchill, who praised and attacked him, and Samuel Foote, who ridiculed the extravagant Shakespeare Jubilee. Garrick’s caricatures of fellow actors in the Duke of Buckingham’s The Rehearsal in his early days gave wide offense. His rivalry with Rich, at Covent Garden, was sometimes acrimonious; sometimes it led to new success. Rich had prided himself on his Christmas pantomimes; Garrick’s, with superb effects and lighting by Philip James de Loutherbourg, a young expert in scenic design who came to Garrick from Paris, far surpassed them. For his own spectacular “Christmas gambol,” Harlequin’s Invasion (1759), with music by William Boyce, he wrote the patriotic song, “Heart of Oak.”

Though “Heart of Oak” is perhaps the only poem by which he is remembered, his quality as a poet is shown by songs added to plays and by verses to Peg Woffington (the early ones those of a young man deeply in love, the bitter “Epistle to Mrs. Woffington” of 1745 exposing “the naked truth”) and to his wife. As a dramatist (he wrote more than 20 plays and “entertainments” and adapted many more), he suffers from having written for a particular company and audience; and his farces and burlesques, though lively, have not held the stage. Only The Clandestine Marriage (1766), written with George Colman the Elder, is still successfully revived. His letters, however, have lasting interest. All of his life a prolific letter writer, he wrote as he acted, with ease, spontaneity, and versatility. His letters are a valuable source for the details of his busy life, the tangled theatrical history of his time, and his character and outlook.

Last years

In 1763 the Garricks departed for a continental tour. They enjoyed sightseeing in Italy in aristocratic company, but Mrs. Garrick suffered agonies from what was, apparently, a slipped disk, and Garrick contracted typhoid in Venice and nearly died in Munich. They wintered in Paris, where Garrick enlarged his acquaintance with French literary and theatrical celebrities, Shakespearean enthusiasts, and the philosophes. After returning (spring 1765), he appeared in no new parts, but 10 years passed before he prepared to sell his share of the Drury Lane patent. A series of farewell performances included four Shakespearean parts—Benedick, Hamlet, Richard III, and Lear—as well as Abel Drugger, Sir John Brute from Sir John Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife, Archer from The Beaux’ Stratagem, and, for his last performance, Don Felix from Susannah Centlivre’s The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret.

Garrick’s retirement was happy. In London he was a member of Johnson’s Literary Club and Brooks’s. At Hampton he had his duties as squire, his library and garden, his dogs, and his nieces and nephews. All of his life a sufferer from kidney trouble, he was taken ill while staying with his old friends Lord and Lady Spencer at Althorp Park, Northamptonshire, for the New Year, 1779, and died at his house in Adelphi Terrace shortly thereafter.

Garrick was buried in the Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey; a monument in Lichfield cathedral bears Johnson’s famous “I am disappointed by that stroke of death that has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.”