Britain to show his courage and his zeal by finishing his design.” Yet he deliberated and vacillated, and at last announcing his inability to complete the play, applied to his friend Mr. John Hughes to write a fifth act for him. Hughes had published poems on the “Peace of Ryswick” and the “Court of Neptune,” on the return of King William, and a Pindaric ode on the death of the king, called the “House of Nassau.” How little Hughes must have known Addison! He thought his request quite serious, and in a few days had written several supplementary scenes, and submitted them for the play-writer’s examination. Meanwhile, of course, Addison had gone to work and produced half an act. So there was an end to Mr. Hughes’s labours. In due course Mr. Addison finished his play, “but,” says his biographer, “with brevity irregularly disproportionate to the foregoing parts, like a task performed with reluctance and hurried to its conclusion.” Many of his literary friends, Pope amongst them, still counselled him to be content with printing the play, and not run the risk of a stage representation; it was hinted to him that the audience might grow tired even of the very best rhetoric; that he had written a poem, not a play; a book for students, not groundlings, and so on; while his political associates were urging the importance of his work as a party manifesto. The audience, he was assured, would recognise a Tory in Cæsar, an apostate Whig in Sempronius, and an analogy between Cato struggling to the death for Roman liberties and the patriotic Whigs rallying round Halifax and Wharton. Addison yielded to the wishes of his party with an apparent reluctance. He was charged, however, with having only affected coyness, while his mind was thoroughly made up to give his play to the actors. It is noteworthy that the most savage attack upon him came from his own side. Dennis, a zealous Whig, in his “Remarks on Cato,” written with a cleverness only equalled by its coarseness, charged him with “raising prejudices in his own favour by false positions of preparatory criticism, and with poisoning the town by contradicting in the ‘Spectator’ the established rule of poetical justice, because his own hero, with all his virtues, was to fall before a tyrant.”
“Cato” came upon the boards in April; a time of the year when it had been usual to devote three nights a week for the benefit plays of particular actors. However, it was decided that the benefits should be postponed to make way for Mr. Addison’s great tragedy. Wilks, Dogget, and Cibber were the managers. Addison read his play to the actors in the green-room. Perhaps his bashfulness marred his eloquence. On the occasion of the second reading he begged Mr. Cibber to take his place, and was so delighted with his intelligent elocution, that he requested him to undertake the part of Cato. Probably Addison was carried away by the excitement of the scene, or he would have been less pressing that a comic actor should represent the chief character in a tragedy. Cibber was vain enough, but he was shrewd also. He knew his own forte. He did not care to risk his comedy laurels, the triumphs of Lord Foppington, Fondlewife, and Sir Novelty Fashion, for any philosophic glories to be gained in the toga of Cato. He preferred the part of Syphax; Wilks chose that of Juba. There must have been a sort of notion that Cato was what actors call an “uphill” part. They both agreed that Booth was the best representative of Cato that could be secured, while yet there was a fear that Booth, being quite a young man, might decline to appear in so solemn and severe, and—to use the professional term—“heavy” a character. So Wilks took the part to Booth’s lodgings, pressed upon him its importance, and persuaded him to accept it. Booth waived all discussion as to the importance of the character, and admitted his willingness to play it, if the managers so desired, reserving entirely his own opinion in regard to it. “This condescending behaviour,” we are told, “together with his performance of the part so much to the delight and admiration of the audience, gave both Wilks and Cibber the greatest pleasure.”
All hands at the theatre were busied in the production of Mr. Addison’s play. “As the author had made us a present of whatever profits he might have claimed from it, we thought ourselves obliged to spare no cost in the proper decoration of it.” This must be understood with limitations. Mise en scène was in an early state of existence. The scenery, dresses, and decorations were rather more splendid than appropriate. There were strange conventions then insisted on in regard to stage costume. Addison, writing in the “Spectator,” gives us frequent glimpses of the dresses and decorations of the drama of his day. “The ordinary method of making an hero is to clap a huge plume of feathers upon his head, which rises so very high that there is often a greater length from his chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his feet. This very much embarrasses the actor, who is forced to hold his neck extremely stiff and steady all the while he speaks, and notwithstanding any anxieties which he pretends for his mistress, his country, or his friends, one may see by his action that his greatest care and concern is to keep the plume of feathers from falling off his head.” Whether Mr. Booth, as Cato, wore a plume is not ascertained, but it is highly probable that he did. Certainly he wore a full-bottomed wig, value fifty guineas; certainly Marcia appeared in a hoop and brocaded satin, and others of the performers were loudly applauded for their magnificent gold-laced waistcoats. Mrs. Betty Lizard, in the “Guardian,” we find, “overlooked the whole drama, but acknowledged the dresses of Syphax and Juba were very prettily imagined.” Her sister, Mary Lizard, writes, “My brother Tom waited upon us all last night to Cato; we sat in the first seats of the box of the eighteen-penny gallery. You must come hither this morning, for we shall be full of debates about the characters. I was for Marcia last night, but find that partiality was owing to the awe I was under in her father’s presence; but this morning Lucia is my woman,” &c.
Every care was taken to secure a success. As in the case of Ambrose Philips’s “Distressed Mother” (Racine’s “Andromaque”), the house was filled with the author’s friends, determined upon the
