a line to the effect that players and poets will be ruined
Unless you're pleased to smile upon Count Haines.
The prologue to the ‘Commonwealth of Women’ was spoken by Haines with a western scythe in his hand in reference to the defeat of Monmouth. Haines's name next appears to the character of Depazzi in a reprint of the ‘Traytor,’ 1692. In 1693 he was Captain Bluffe in Congreve's ‘Old Batchelor.’ Next year he was Gines de Passamonte in the first part of D'Urfey's ‘Don Quixote,’ in 1697 was Syringe in the ‘Relapse,’ Roger in ‘Æsop,’ and Rumour in Dennis's ‘Plot and no Plot.’ The character of Baldernæ, called in the dramatis personæ a Player in Disguise, in the piece last named, Haines says in the prologue, was intended for himself. In 1699 he was Pamphlet, a bookseller, and Rigadoon, a dancing-master, in Farquhar's ‘Love and a Bottle.’ The prologue and epilogue to this were written and spoken by himself. He was in the same year Tom Errand in Farquhar's ‘The Constant Couple.’ He also played the Clown in ‘Othello,’ Jamy in ‘Sawney the Scot,’ and other parts. In 1700 he played the Doctor in Burnaby's ‘Reformed Wife,’ the cast of which piece Genest had not seen. He died next year. As an actor Haines acquired little reputation. Aston, however, says that there were two parts, Noll Bluff in the ‘Old Batchelor’ and Roger in ‘Æsop,’ which none ever touched but Joe Haines, and owns to having copied him in the latter. His fame was due to the delivery of prologues and epilogues, often of his own composition. Many of these he delivered under strange conditions or with the most curious environment. Thus the epilogue to ‘Neglected Virtue, or the Unhappy Conquerour,’ was spoken as a madman. The epilogue to ‘Unhappy Kindness’ he spoke in the habit of a horse-officer mounted on an ass. This epilogue is assigned to Haines. It appears, however, in the 1730 edition of Tom Brown's ‘Works,’ iv. 313, with a print representing Haines and the ass on the front of the stage. This performance was imitated by succeeding actors. ‘A Fatal Mistake, or the Plot Spoiled,’ 4to, 1692 and 1696, is, according to Gildon, attributed to Haines. Genest, who declares it a wretched tragedy, supposes Haines responsible only for the prologue and epilogue, and the editors of the ‘Biographia Dramatica’ hold that, though the first edition alludes to its having been acted, the statement is scarcely credible. Aston says that Haines kept a droll-booth at Bartholomew fair, at which in 1685 he produced a droll called ‘The Whore of Babylon, the Devil, and the Pope.’ Haines has a reputation for wit, which his prologues and epilogues hardly justify. His vivacity and animal spirits commended him to aristocratic society, both in England and in France. Innumerable stories, one or two of them of indescribable nastiness, are told concerning him. He personated a peer in France, ran into debt three thousand livres, and narrowly escaped being confined in the Bastille; was arrested for debt in England, and through a trick obtained the payment of the amount by the Bishop of Ely. Cibber in his ‘Apology’ calls Haines ‘a fellow of wicked wit’ (i. 273, ed. Lowe). He appears to have been popular among his fellows and at the Covent Garden coffee-houses. Tom Brown, in his ‘Letters from the Dead to the Living,’ gives three letters from Haines, whom he calls ‘Signior Giusippe Hanesio, high German Doctor in Brandipolis,’ to ‘his friends at Wills's coffee-house’ (Brown, Works, ed. 1707, vol. ii. passim). During the reign of James II Haines turned catholic. Quin declares that Lord Sunderland sent for the actor, and questioned him as to his conversion. Haines said, ‘As I was lying in my bed, the Virgin appeared to me and said, “Arise, Joe!”’ ‘You lie, you rogue,’ said the earl; ‘if it had really been the Virgin herself, she would have said Joseph, if it had only been out of respect for her husband’ (Davies, Dramatic Miscellany, iii. 267). As Bayes Haines subsequently spoke in a white sheet a recantation prologue, written for him by Brown, two lines in which were:
I own my crime of leaving in the lurch
My mother-playhouse; she's my mother church
(ib. iii. 290). Dryden, in consequence, it is supposed, of an imaginary dialogue between himself and Haines, written by Brown, says in his epilogue to his version of Fletcher's ‘Pilgrim’ (some of the last lines he wrote):
But neither you, nor we, with all our pains
Can make clean work; there will be some remains,
While you have still your Oates and we our Haines.
He assumed the title of count when travelling in France with a gentleman, who, to enjoy his society, paid his expenses. After a short illness he died 4 April 1701 at his lodgings in Hart Street, Long Acre, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden.
[Works cited; Genest's Account of the Stage; Colley Cibber's Apology, ed. Lowe; Life of the famous Comedian, Jo Haynes, 1701, 8vo; Aston's Brief Supplement to Colley Cibber; Baker,
