The great night of this season was that in which Philips' version of Racine's "Andromaque" was played,--the 17th of March, 1712. Of the "Distressed Mother," the following was the original cast:--Orestes, Powell; Pyrrhus, Booth; Pylades, Mills; Andromache, Mrs. Oldfield; Hermione, Mrs. Porter. The English piece is even duller than the French one; but there is great scope in it for good declamatory actors, and Booth especially led the town on this night to see in him the undoubted successor of Betterton. All that could be done to render success assured, was done on this occasion, not only by the poet, but by his friends. Before the tragedy was acted, the _Spectator_ informed the public that a masterpiece was about to be represented. On the first night, there was a packed audience of hearty supporters. During the run of the play,[95] the _Spectator_ related the effect the tender tale had had on Sir Roger de Coverley. We learn from Addison, in the puff preliminary, that at the reading of the "Distressed Mother," by one of the actors,--the players, who listened, were moved to tears, and that the reader, in his turn, was so overcome by his emotions, "that he was frequently obliged to lay down the book, and pause, to recover himself and give vent to the humanity which rose in him at some irresistible touches of the imagined sorrow." On the first night of its being played, the performance was said to be "at the desire of several ladies of quality." Sir Roger de Coverley, with Will Honeycombe and Captain Sentry, backed by two or three old servants,--the Captain wearing the sword he had wielded at Steinkirk, are described as being in the pit, early--four o'clock--before the house was full and the candles were lighted. There was access then for the public for a couple of hours before the curtain rose. The Knight thought the King of France could not strut it more imposingly than Booth in Pyrrhus. He found the plot so ingeniously complicated, that he could not guess how it would end, or what would become of Pyrrhus. His sympathies oscillated between the ladies, with a word of smart censure now and then for either; calling Andromache a perverse widow, and anon, Hermione "a notable young baggage." Turgid as this English adaptation now seems,--to Addison, its simplicity was one of its great merits. "Why!" says Sir Roger, "there is not a single sentence in the play that I don't know the meaning of!" It was listened to with a "very remarkable silence and stillness," broken only by the applause; and a compliment is paid to Mills who played Pylades, in the remark, "though he speaks but little, I like the old fellow in whiskers as well as any of them."