Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 2 (of 2)Tregellas, Walter H. (Walter Hawken)
History
Cornish Worthies: Sketches of Some Eminent Cornish Men and Families, Volume 2 (of 2)
Tregellas, Walter H. (Walter Hawken)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography
Not all of the plays were performed; though 'The Parson's Wedding'
certainly was, at the King's House, and Luellin told Pepys that it was
'an obscene, loose play.' 'Claracilla,' a 'tragi-comedy,' Pepys himself
went to see on 4th July, 1661; he merely says, however, that when he
first saw it, it was 'well acted.' On a second occasion, when he saw
it performed at the Cockpit, he thought it 'a poor play.' He might, in
my opinion, have said the same of them all; but they were nevertheless
sumptuously printed. King Charles II.'s own copy is in the British
Museum (644, m. 11), and a portrait of the author contemplating the
huge pile of his precious productions is prefixed to the volume. The
original of this portrait was painted by W. Sheppard, and splendidly
engraved by William Faithorne; another portrait (also by Sheppard,
according to Redgrave) is in the possession of Mr. J. Buller East, to
whom it was presented, shortly before her death in 1819, by Frances
Maria Killigrew, the last of her name. There is yet another portrait
of Thomas Killigrew, which represents him, not, as Walpole says in his
'Anecdotes of Painting,' 'in a studious posture,' but stooping, worn
out with his vicious life, with a gibbering monkey at his side, and
clad in a tawdry dressing-gown, on which are represented the portraits
of a host of the wantons of his acquaintance. The lines at the foot of
this rare engraving by Bosse (British Museum, {669. f. 4}/90) are an
even more savage caricature than the picture itself.
Of Tom Killigrew's early fondness for plays, Pepys' story will serve
as an illustration. 'I would not forget,' he writes, 'two passages of
Sir J. Minne's at yesterday's dinner, one being Thomas Killigrew's
way of getting to see plays when he was a boy. He would go to the Red
Bull, and when the man cried to the boys, "Who will go and be a devil,
and he shall see the play for nothing?" then would he go in, and be a
devil upon the stage, and so get to see plays.' Would it be going too
far to say that throughout his connection with the stage he stuck to
his youthful part? He talked, however, much better than he wrote; with
Cowley the case was the reverse; hence Denham's epigram:
'Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killigrew ne'er writ,
Combined in one they'd make a matchless wit.'
Pepys describes him as 'a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem
with the King; he told us many merry stories;' again, that Killigrew
was 'a great favourite with the King on account of his uncommon vein
of humour;' though on one occasion, when the King went to the Tower
of London, to see the Dunkirk money, the conversation of Killigrew
and the others was but 'poor and frothy.' More than once, however,
Tom Killigrew, to his credit, spoke out, and to the point, in a tone
of which we have already heard something; and Pepys himself has thus
chronicled it:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account