Page 64 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

STAGE-HISTORY lix
the theatrical world remained unmoved and the spurious
version held the field for twenty more years. Mr Hogan
has listed productions in each year but three (1702,
1707,1740) in the first half of the century, and in every
1
year but six (after 1774) in the second half; thereafter its
vogue steeply declined, till Macready in 18 3 8 dealt it its
quietus. Betterton was Lear each year till his death in
1710. Wilks and Mills were his chief Edgars and
Edmunds, and Cibber took Gloucester; Mrs Brace-
girdle, Mrs Bradshaw and Mrs Rogers were successively
Cordelia.
Between Betterton and Garrick the chief Lears were
Barton Booth, Boheme till 1730, Quin (in six of the
years 1731—39), and Delane (eight of the years 1733—
41). Quin had done 'excellently', Davies judged, as
2
Gloucester previously, but was 'a much inferior Lear'.
Both he and Delane overlapped their greater successor,
till 1748 and 1743 respectively; for young Garrick,
after his triumphant debut as Richard III at Goodman's
Fields five months before, made his first appearance as
Lear on 11 March 1742, and then on ten other nights
till 19 May. On 28 May and in October to December
he acted the part five times at Drury Lane. At Drury,
Lane he had his early flame, Peg Woffington, as his
Cordelia; at Goodman's Fields Mrs Giffard. Mrs Cib-
ber, his most frequent subsequent Cordelia, was render-
ing her to Quin's Lear at the Garden in December; but
from 1747 to 1763 Drury Lane saw her with Garrick.
Another of his Cordelias of note was George Anne
Bellamy in 1750-2, but in 1757 and 1764 she was with
Spranger Barry at Covent Garden. Such was Garrick's
initial success that most years when the play was on in
1
See Hogan, op. cit. 245-67; and his sequel, London,
ly51—1800 (1957), pp. 335-61. His lists include Garrick's,
Column's and Kemble's versions, primarily based on Tate's.
* Davies, op. cit. H, 277-8.