the 21st of December, the company were again in New-York, and opened the theatre in John Street. On this occasion the managers announced that, "in compliance with the wish of many respectable patrons of the theatre, there would be only two nights' performance in a week." Since then we have had four large theatres, and a circus in which farces are performed, all open six nights in the week. The company now consisted of Messrs. Hallam, Henry, Biddle, Harper, Morris, Wignell, Wools, Heard, Macpherson, and Ryan, the prompter; Mesdames Henry, Morris, Harper, Sewell, and Miss Tuke. In April, the performers were again taking benefits, and the 7th of the month, Henry brought out for his wife's benefit a pageant entitled The Convention, or the Columbian Father, which had little other effect than to remind the public that two years before (March, 1785,) she had played under the denomination of "a gentlewoman" for Henry's benefit, and to draw forth a bitter remark in Greenleaf's Journal, that she had so done to serve a brother and lover. This person was the youngest of the four Miss Storers, and the second who enjoyed the name of Mrs. Henry. The older sisters, who had been on the stage in New-York, had disappeared from before the American public. Two of them afterwards reappeared as Mrs. Mechler and Mrs. Hogg. The three sisters came to America in the year 1767, having previously joined THE DOCTORS' MOB. 143 the company in Jamaica, with an elder sister, who was lost in the voyage to America (with the ship), as before-mentioned. They were passengers in a vessel from Jamaica, which took fire at sea: the crew and passengers, with the one exception, were saved by the boats, and landed at Newport, Rhode Island. Mr. Harper was a very useful man in the American company at this time, and personated characters of every description, from Charles Surface to Falstaff. In the latter part he gave great satisfaction. He was unrivalled, for there was no other and had been no other Falstaff seen on this side the Atlantic. About this time, April 14th, 1787, he had advertised the first part of Henry IV. for his benefit, but it was postponed from day to day in consequence of what has been called the Doctors' Mob. Some students of anatomy and young surgeons had incautiously left the windows of a dissecting-room at the Hospital in such a situation, that boys at play about the building, at that time out of town, saw the subjects in a mutilated state. They communicated their horror to others, and a mob of men and boys assembled, broke into the house, and were so inflamed by the objects they discovered and the inferences they drew from them, that they threatened destruction to all surgeons. The most obnoxious of the profession were sheltered from their fury by being placed in the jail, and even then could only be protected by the armed militia. It was several days before the tumult was appeased sufficiently to allow Falstaff and Hotspur to meet at Shrewsbury. The theatre was closed on the 28th of May, and the company proceeded to Philadelphia. The benefits had been unsuccessful. Even Wignell, the great favourite, was obliged to call upon a writer to plead for him, as one who was an object of commiseration from long-continued sickness. One of the company, Macpherson, either could not raise the wind for a voyage to Philadelphia, or had created some of those ties which are too strong to admit of change of place. He advertised lectures on heads, and endeavoured to excite the sympathy of the public as a father, who was unable to discharge the debts he had unavoidably contracted. Wignell appeared next year, restored to health and in the full tide of popular favour; of Macpherson, we never hear more. CHAPTER VII. Strollers Authorship for the Stage - Managers - Dubellamy Dramatis WHEN Kemble, or his sister Siddons, or his rival Cooke, went the round of the provincial theatres, were they not strollers? But they played in the theatres royal of Bath, or Liverpool, or Manchester. And the Douglasses and Hallams played in his majesty's theatres of the colonies by royal authority, delegated to the royal governors. If to be his majesty's servants gave dignity to the first, the same equivocal dignity belongs to the second. In the time of feudal barbarism, the musician, the poet, and the player, could only be protected from the violence of the robber-baron by becoming the servant of the baron-robber, or of his liege-lord the king. This is the origin of the honourable distinction enjoyed by the players of the London and other licensed English theatres. The barons no longer entertaining minstrels, or trouveurs, or histrions, or jongleurs (jugglers), or players, and the law considering the unpatronised artist as a vagabond, the king became sole master of the players, and all established theatres were theatres royal. Happily, the time is approaching when the painter, the musician, the poet, and the player, VOL. I. L may instruct or amuse the public without being called to account by the constable. It has not yet arrived in every part of the United States. The poems of Milton or Shakspeare, or the picture on which, as on the page of history, the painter has written lessons of eternal truth, teaching love to God and man, are all subjects of fine or tax, and are stigmatized as shows, and their exhibiters or reciters as showmen or strollers, in some portions of our country. If merely moving from place to place for the purpose of exercising a calling makes that calling disreputable, and remaining in one spot for its exercise is dignified, it would seem to follow that the judge who goes the circuit the lawyer who travels from court-house to courthouse, from county to county-the preacher who obeys the call of those who want a teacher the missionary who carries instruction to the ignorant who do not call for it, or the bishop who moves through his diocess to confirm and consecrate, are all in this respect as undignified as the player; and the cobbler, who sits from the first of January to the last of December in his stall, is the most dignified personage that can well be imagined. Let us return to players, plays, and the authors of plays. About the end of summer, in the year 1787, the writer returned home, after a residence of more than three years in London. These years were those which occur between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, a portion of life fraught with |