The Sans Pareil Theatre Seasonal Digest for 1811-1812
Ed. Frank McHugh
In 1811-12, the Sans Pareil excelled at pantomime. As in the preceding season, a pantomime was given virtually every evening. The casting, however, was less stable than in 1810-11. Auld played Harlequin for the entire season, and Miss Ruggles returned as Columbine for all but the last six evenings, when Miss Wells replaced her. Miss Ruggles, who had performed at the Sans Pareil since the summer of 1808, was an accomplished dancer. A review of the 1817 Olympic pantomime mentions the "known graces and agility" of her Columbine (Theatrical Inquisitor, November, 1817, p. 229). Miss Ruggles left the Sans Pareil after the 1811-12 season. James Barnes opened as Pantaloon, but stayed only until Christmas, when he left and made a great hit in The White Cat; or, Harlequin in Fairy Wood, with the Drury Lane company, then at the Lyceum. Pantaloon was thereafter played by Montignani, Swan, Edwards or Daly. Lover was most frequently Edwards (late of Glasgow), but sometimes Swan or Montignani. "The celebrated Young Jones," played Clown most of the season. The forceful, "leather-lunged" James Jones, "the noisiest biped our critical ears ever encountered" (Theatrical Inquisitor, November, 1817, p. 389) was, the British Stage and Literary Cabinet said, "the quintessence of trick, roguery, grimace" (January, 1817, p. 32) and "one of the best clowns we ever encountered" (February, 1818, p. 51).
Jane M. Scott's new pantomime dramatizing the legend of the poison tree and titled The Poison Tree; or, Harlequin in Java, ran the longest and was the most timely of her pieces this year, playing sixty-five times successively, beginning the first evening of the season. It celebrated the British expedition against Java, 4 August to 18 September 1811, in which 9,000 men under Lord Minto and Sir Stanford Raffles conquered a Franco-Dutch army of 17,000. This pantomime was perhaps as elaborate as the Scotts could make it, with fifty-eight major and minor roles and fifteen scenes. It surely gratified the audience's patriotic impulses. A sign of this nationalism was the new patriotic song (announced on a 23 December bill) by Miss Scott and orchestra leader, Michael Parnell, which was apparently added as the piece gained momentum. The pantomime offered spectacle--a bridal procession with an incidental dance by the corps de ballet, and it provided both information and fantasy, presenting several views of Batavia and of a "superb orangerie and garden of Asiatic plants" and The Poison Tree concluded its run 4 February 1812. The pantomime that had opened the preceding season, The Magic Pipe; or, Dancing Mad, returned on 10 February for forty performances.
If Jane Scott did well by her pantomime performers with the openings she wrote for them, she seems to have done at least as well by her acting company, with such varied pieces as The Vizier's Son, The Merchant's Daughter and the Ugly Woman of Bagdad, a comic opera which ran sixty-two evenings and returned in the next season. Mary, the Maid of the Inn; or The Bough of Yew, a romantic verse melodrama was submitted to the Lord Chamberlain in 1811 but first given in some form in 1809. John Scott, proprietor, manager, machinist, specialist in magic lanterns and fireworks must have devised some powerful effects for such a Gothic piece as this.
The performers’ roster swelled from the forty-four names of 1810-11 to fifty-eight this season. Signor Montignani, "from the Lisbon Opera," the new ballet master was active as composer and performer. James Villiers, better known for his many years as a Sadler's Wells actor, appeared here for the first of nine seasons. Mrs. Nathan E. Garrick (earlier in her career Sarah Jane Gray), actor and singer, joined the company for one season, as did James Pack, agilest and equilibrist, who performed in the two pantomimes and in variety acts. Pack, touted in an 1812 Sadler's Wells advertisement as "The Protean Prodigy," later converted to Christianity and wrote a pamphlet (1819) denouncing the theatres and circuses of his time.
The most notable incidental entertainments of 1811-12 included the dancing of Montignani, the singing of Sarah Jane Garrick, and the contortions of Pack, who sometimes played musical instruments "with head downwards," but more often made springs and somersets [somersaults], "the whole in a neat and chaste manner" (23 January bill).
John Peter "Jack" Bologna (1781-1846), popular as Harlequin to Grimaldi's Clown at Sadler's Wells and Covent Garden, but also known for his Lyceum Phantascopia and various other conjuring, hydraulic and fireworks exhibitions, engaged the theatre for Lenten entertainments. He gave twelve one-man shows in 1811-12.
Eleven pieces were presented in the 120 evenings of this season, which began on 18 November 1811 and concluded on 9 April 1812. Jane Scott enjoyed a benefit on 24 February, Pack on 3 March, Misses Stubbs and Ruggles on 5 March, and Simpson on 19 March.
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The Sans Pareil Theatre Seasonal Digest for 1812-1813
Ed. Frank McHugh
In its two preceding seasons, the Sans Pareil had featured the knockabout comedy of pantomime. In 1812-13, the tone changed somewhat. Leigh Hunt has said, "there is something real in Pantomime: there is animal spirit in it" (Examiner, 15 January 1817). In the 1812-13 season, a different spirit pervaded the graceful dances of Gabriel Giroux and his four daughters and the melodramas and farces of the acting company, which included James Villiers, Stebbing, R. H. Widdicomb, the Mintons, Mrs. Daly and the newly arrived Meredith and Huckel.
The season opened with spectacle rather than pantomime. Jane M. Scott's Asgard the Demon Hunter; or, Le Diable a la Chasse, as violent and funny in its own way as a pantomime, was a Gothic fantasy which gave the audience plenty of lurid situations and stage effects. At the climax of the piece the dissolute Baron Wildgrave, hard-pressed by the forces of the Inquisition who are closing in on him, takes the peasant Lilla, his victim, to a secret cavern beneath his castle. On the stroke of midnight, exactly as a hermit murdered that day by Wildgrave prophesied, the cavern "assumes the hue of fire." Wildgrave's mysterious confidant, Asgard, appears now in his true guise as a Demon of Darkness. Infernal hounds (acted by La Croix, Gardell, Florio and Solnar) attack the Baron and he falls into the arms of Asgard, "who descends with him in flames." At the moment of the Baron's descent (impressive enough to be featured on some of the playbills), the ghost of the hermit appears in the background "enveloped by celestial light." Westmacott Molloy was the company's new machinist, but it is quite possible John Scott assisted in the lighting of this melodrama.
The return of the Giroux family was very important. Gabriel Giroux had managed the Sans Pareil in 1807 and tutored the young Jane Scott. Prior to that, he had been ballet master at the Paris Opera, and he danced at the Haymarket and some minor London theatres. In his five-week stay this season, he contributed six ballets or divertissements and choreographed Asgard and The Bashaw; or Midnight Adventures of Three Spaniards. He and his daughters acted in several pieces in addition to dancing. Their acting did not please everybody: "If the Giroux' consult their interest they will speak as little as possible. As dancers, they certainly are of the first consequence to this theatre" (Theatrical Inquisitor, December 1812, 239).
A Giroux ballet was given every evening of the family's engagement. The Giroux benefit, 21 December 1812, was a festival of dances, including two ballets performed for the first time at the Sans Pareil. In the course of these and two other pieces there were danced an allemande pas de trois, a dance from "The Sultan," a castanet dance, a Russian dance, two hornpipes, a Cossack, a minuet de la cour, a gavotte and a medley finale by all members of the family.
Perhaps influenced by Gabriel Giroux's return, Miss Scott gave two recitations similar to those of her early Sans Pareil years, "Music, Poetry and Painting," and "Marian the Constant and the Knight with His Visor Closed." She acted in nine of her own pieces, six of them new this season. As usual, she was indebted to other writers for some of the work she produced. For example, Love in the City was "founded on The Romp and written into verse by Miss Scott" (bill of 7 February 1814). Love, Honor and Obey was based on the "petite comedie of M. Patrat, L'Hereuse Erreur" (bill of 19 January 1815).
David Mayer notes that the character Black-Eyed Susan appeared in pantomime soon after Jerrold's melodrama of 1829, but that she had appeared much earlier--in fact in the Sans Pareil pantomime of 1812-13, Davy Jones's Locker; or, Black-Eyed Susan. Mayer says, "A summary of the pantomime in the playbill of the 1813 Davy Jones suggests how extensively the character of Black Eyed Susan belonged to the theatre, equally suitable to pantomime arrangers and to such serious dramatists as Jerrold" (Harlequin in His Element, 82-3). The arranger of the Sans Pareil pantomime was Jane Scott. Black-Eyed Susan, afterwards Columbine, was Miss Browne. William, afterwards Harlequin, was Swan. Pantaloon was Daly, and Clown was Young Jones (James Jones). The Theatrical Inquisitor was not much taken with this piece; "Miss Scott's industry has produced Black-Eyed Susan; or, Davy Jones' Locker" (February 1813, p. 68). So little, apparently, did the pantomime's plot control the harlequinade that in a special performance of Davy Jones on 16 March 1813, several scenes were withdrawn and replaced by scenes from the two popular pantomimes of the preceding season, The Magic Pipe and The Necromancer. Such medleys, however, were not unusual in the pantomimes of the time.
Incidental entertainment this season included much dancing by the Girouxs, Swan and other members of the company. Mezzia (Messiah) and Miss Acres were very popular singers. Young Jones did his "wonderful tricks on a ladder" and Signor Rivolta gave Pandean performances on five or six musical instruments at the same time. There were three benefits, one each for the Giroux family, Miss Scott and Miss Acres. There were also eleven mechanical exhibitions by Bologna, Jr. during Lent and three presentations of Lloyd's Orrery.
Approximately 110 evening performances were given in the regular season which began 17 November 1812, and ended 24 April 1813.
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