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The Triple-Portrait of John Lacy: A Restoration Theatrical Portrait: History and Dispute
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The recent inclusion of the triple-portrait of John Lacy in Shakespeare Improved prompts the question: How certain is it that the picture shows a character from a Restoration “improvement” of Shakespeare? The identification of one of the figures as Sauny the Scot in the Restoration adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew must rest upon more than The Catalogue of Engraved Portraits in the British Museum and Wheatley's annotation of Evelyn. It must, as will be shortly apparent, rest upon a complete study of the history of the portrait and of the actor's rôles.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932
References
1 Hazelton Spencer, Shakespeare Improved (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927), p. xii and op. p. 274.
2 Ibid.
3 Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses, second edition, (London, 1721), ii, 519. The life of John Lacy has been investigated in my as yet unpublished dissertation, John Lacy, the Comedian: A Study in the Early Restoration Theatrical Tradition (University of California, 1931).
4 Indeed, it was sold more than a century ago, as is recorded in the following somewhat ambiguous note: “A copy of the painting in compartments at Windsor Castle was amongst Mr. Harris' theatrical portraits which were sold by the hammer of George Robins in 1819.” Quoted by James Maidment and W. H. Logan in the “Prefatory Memoir” to The Dramatic Works of John Lacy (Edinburgh, 1875), p. xv.
5 Handbook of the Public Galleries of Art in and near London (London, 1842), ii, 398.
6 Charles Dodd (pseud, of Hugh Tootell, 1672–1743), The Church History of England from the year 1500, to the year 1688, Chiefly with Regard to Catholics (Brussels, 1737–1742), iii, 263.—I am indebted to Dr. Tempe E. Allison for transcribing this reference from the copy of Dodd in the possession of the Union Theological Seminary, New York City.
7 R. V. Taylor in an article on Lacy in Old Yorkshire (new series, ed. William Smith, London, 1890, ii, 93) unhesitatingly assigns the Lacy portrait (which one, he does not say) to the painter Call.
8 Lord Archibald Campbell, Records of Argyll (Edinburgh, 1885), p. 454.
9 Dodd, loc. cit.
10 Report of the Manuscripts of the late Reginald Rawdon Hastings, Historical Manuscript Commission (1928), i, 403.
11 Dr. Doran, Annals of the English Stage (ed. R. W. Lowe) (London, 1888), i. 97.
12 So Mrs. Lillian A. Hall, the custodian, informs me.
13 Taylor, loc. cit.
14 A.L.A. Portrait Index (Washington, 1906), p. 819.
15 London, 1898, p. 146. I have not seen this reproduction.
16 Op. cit. op. p. 452.
17 J. R. Planché, A Cyclopedia of Costume (London, 1876–9), ii, op. p. 243.
18 John Aubrey, Brief Lives (Oxford, 1898), ii, 29.
19 Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (Oxford, 1691), p. 317.
20 Dodd, loc. cit.
21 Mrs. Jameson, loc. cit.
22 Planché, op. cit., ii, 243 n.
23 Cf. Spencer, op. cit., pp. 44 ff. and 274 ff. See The Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert, ed. J. Q. Adams (New Haven, 1917), p. 138. There is no evidence to show that Lacy had altered the play by 1663. Spencer's theory (p. 45) is reasonable, though his acceptance of the portrait as Sauny is unexplained and to me inexplicable.
24 See Allardyce Nicoli, A History of Restoration Drama, second edition (Cambridge, 1928), p. 365. He dates it “before Nov. 1662.” Evelyn saw it for the first recorded time on Nov. 27, 1662.
25 Planché, loc. cit.
26 Campbell, op. cit., pp. 452–454.
27 Cf. Nicoli, op. cit., pp. 199, 270.—The play is reprinted in The Dramatic Works of John Tatham (Edinburgh, 1879).
28 Leslie Hotson, The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (Harvard, 1928), p. 204.
29 Sir Henry Herbert (op. cit., p. 117) records a performance of “The Dancing Master” (doubtless Newcastle's The Varietie) in November, 1661, and of “The French Dancinge Master” (the name which Pepys uses for the play) on March 11, 1661/2. With the exception of Pepy's entry of May 21, 1662, no other performances of the play are recorded. Helen McAfee, Pepys on the Restoration Stage (New Haven, 1916), p. 205, accepts W. C. Hazlitt's identification of “The French Dancing Master” as the droll of that name. I believe that they are in error. Pepys went to “the Theatre” and saw a “play,” not a short playlet.
30 Langbaine, loc. cit.
31 The 1662 edition, of what is erroneously called “Kirkman's Drolls,” is exceedingly rare. It was published by Henry Marsh. The Henry E. Huntington Library possesses two copies of the 1662 edition and seven copies of the Kirkman editions, a 1672 and two 1673 editions. Mr. C. K. Edmonds, in charge of the Department of Early English Printed Books, informed me that Francis Kirkman took over Marsh's business. The 1672 is a very poor copy of the 1662 edition—careless in typography and spelling, printed upon inferior paper which time has tanned, with a frontispiece obviously copied from the Marsh edition and not printed from the same plate. Kirkman signed his name to Marsh's Preface.
32 The 1662 frontispiece, by far the better of the two, has been reproduced, for the first teme, in Dr. J. J. Elson's scholarly edition of The Wits (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1932). The inferior 1672 frontispiece has been frequently reproduced, as in McAfee, op. cit., op. p. 300, and Shakespeare's England (Oxford, 1916).
33 [John Genest], Some Account of the English Stage 1660–1830 (Bath, 1832), i, 25. For Cox' death see Hyder Rollins, “The Commonwealth Drama: Miscellaneous Notes” in Studies in Philology, xx, 59.
34 See the passages previously cited.
35 Genest, op. cit., i, 302.
36 Nicoli, op. cit., p. 376.
37 Quoted by Montague Summers in his edition of John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus (London, 1927), p. 144.
38 Pepys saw it on June 22, 1661, and again on Aug. 14, 1661. Herbert (op. cit., p. 117) noted a performance on Dec. 16, 1661.
39 Downes, op. cit., p. 4.