The Spectator Volume I Part 21

Camilla: And my Life scarce of late--

Linco: You need not repeat.

Prenesto: Help me! oh help me!

[A wild Boar struck by Prenesto.]

Huntsman: Lets try to a.s.sist him.

Linco: Ye G.o.ds, what Alarm!

Huntsman: Quick run to his aid.

[Enter Prenesto: The Boar pursuing him.]

Prenesto: O Heavns! who defends me?

Camilla: My Arm.

[She throws a Dart, and kills the Boar.]

Linco: Dorinda of nothing afraid, Shes sprightly and gay, a valiant Maid, And as bright as the Day.

Camilla: Take Courage, Hunter, the Savage is dead.

Katherine Tofts, the daughter of a person in the family of Bishop Burnet, had great natural charms of voice, person, and manner. Playing with Nicolini, singing English to his Italian, she was the first of our 'prime donne' in Italian Opera. Mrs. Tofts had made much money when in 1709 she quitted the stage with disordered intellect; her voice being then unbroken, and her beauty in the height of its bloom. Having recovered health, she married Mr. Joseph Smith, a rich patron of arts and collector of books and engravings, with whom she went to Venice, when he was sent thither as English Consul. Her madness afterwards returned, she lived, therefore, says Sir J. Hawkins,

'sequestered from the world in a remote part of the house, and had a large garden to range in, in which she would frequently walk, singing and giving way to that innocent frenzy which had seized her in the earlier part of her life.'

She identified herself with the great princesses whose loves and sorrows she had represented in her youth, and died about the year 1760.]

[Footnote 4: The 'Emperor of the Moon' is a farce, from the French, by Mrs. Aphra Behn, first acted in London in 1687. It was originally Italian, and had run 80 nights in Paris as 'Harlequin I'Empereur dans le Monde de la Lune'. In Act II. sc. 3,

'The Front of the Scene is only a Curtain or Hangings to be drawn up at Pleasure.'

Various gay masqueraders, interrupted by return of the Doctor, are carried by Scaramouch behind the curtain. The Doctor enters in wrath, vowing he has heard fiddles. Presently the curtain is drawn up and discovers where Scaramouch has

'plac'd them all in the Hanging in which they make the Figures, where they stand without Motion in Postures.'

Scaramouch professes that the noise was made by putting up this piece of Tapestry,

'the best in Italy for the Rareness of the Figures, sir.'

While the Doctor is admiring the new tapestry, said to have been sent him as a gift, Harlequin, who is

'placed on a Tree in the Hangings, hits him on the 'Head with his Truncheon.'

The place of a particular figure in the picture, with a hand on a tree, is that supposed to be aspired to by the 'Spectator's' next correspondent.]

[Footnote 5: 'The Fortune Hunters, or Two Fools Well Met,' a Comedy first produced in 1685, was the only work of James Carlile, a player who quitted the stage to serve King William III. in the Irish Wars, and was killed at the battle of Aghrim. The crowning joke of the second Act of 'the Fortune Hunters' is the return at night of Mr. Spruce, an Exchange man, drunk and musical, to the garden-door of his house, when Mrs.

Spruce is just taking leave of young Wealthy. Wealthy hides behind the pump. The drunken husband, who has been in a gutter, goes to the pump to clean himself, and seizes a man's arm instead of a pump-handle. He works it as a pump-handle, and complains that 'the pump's dry;' upon which Young Wealthy empties a bottle of orange-flower water into his face.]

[Footnote 6: In the third act of Fletcher's comedy of the 'Pilgrim', Pedro, the Pilgrim, a n.o.ble gentleman, has shown to him the interior of a Spanish mad-house, and discovers in it his mistress Alinda, who, disguised in a boy's dress, was found in the town the night before a little crazed, distracted, and so sent thither. The scene here shows various shapes of madness,

Some of pity That it would make ye melt to see their pa.s.sions, And some as light again.

One is an English madman who cries, 'Give me some drink,'

Fill me a thousand pots and froth 'em, froth 'em!

Upon which a keeper says:

Those English are so malt-mad, there's no meddling with 'em.

When they've a fruitful year of barley there, All the whole Island's thus.

We read in the text how they had produced on the stage of Drury Lane that madman on the previous Sat.u.r.day night; this Essay appearing on the breakfast tables upon Monday morning.]

[Footnote 7: horse]

[Footnote 8: King Latinus to Turnus in Act II., sc. 10, of the opera of 'Camilla'. Posterity will never know in whose person 'Latinus, king of Latium and of the Volscians,' abdicated his crown at the opera to take the Queen of England's shilling. It is the only character to which, in the opera book, no name of a performer is attached. It is a part of sixty or seventy lines in tyrant's vein; but all recitative. The King of Latium was not once called upon for a song.]

ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT.

For the Good of the Publick.

Within two Doors of the Masquerade lives an eminent Italian Chirurgeon, arriv'd from the Carnaval at Venice, of great Experience in private Cures.

Accommodations are provided, and Persons admitted in their masquing Habits.

He has cur'd since his coming thither, in less than a Fortnight, Four Scaramouches, a Mountebank Doctor, Two Turkish Ba.s.sas, Three Nuns, and a Morris Dancer.