.
It’s something that doesn’t happen that often. Usually, shows that fail,
fail for one or more very good reasons. Mostly, they don’t even get a second
chance; mostly, in my experience, deservedly so. But it does happen, and one of
the most extreme examples came about in the London season of 1796. And one of
the tunes from this musical drama, The
Iron Chest, is the next item in my 200-year old collection of music.
The story of the production of The
Iron Chest has been often told, so I’ll just sketch it here. William Godwin
wrote a melodramatic novel Things as they
are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams. The well-known playwright and
manager, George Colman jr, took the bones of the tale and, as he said: ‘Much of Mr. Godwin’s story I
have omitted; much, which I have adopted, I have compressed; much I have added;
and much I have taken the liberty to alter’. Among the alterations were a comic
subplot and songs and music. Still, today, the usual way of making something
subtitled ‘the musical’ out of someone’s else tale.
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| George Colman jr |
The resultant
piece was produced at Drury Lane,12 March 1796, with John Kemble playing the
star dramatic role of Sir Edward Mortimer, who has a secret more deadly than even
Lady Audley, Jack Bannister as Wilford, the tenor who stumbles fatally on his Achilles
heel, Nancy Storace as Wilford’s sweetheart, and Dicky Suett and Mr Dodd in the
comic roles. Unfortunately, Colman was confined to his bed during rehearsals,
Kemble took over the staging, then got ill in time for opening night, when the
whole thing went across like a flat pavlova, got bad reviews (especially for
the miscast Kemble), was played four times, and resulted in some unfortunate
public howling by Colman which has gone down in theatrical history. But The Iron Chest itself was also to go
down in theatrical annals.
Mr
Colman jr was the manager of the Haymarket Little Theatre and he reproduced his
musical play there, with Elliston in the role of Sir Edward, and worked it –
and particularly the role – up into a decided success, and soon a solid unit in
the dramatic repertoire. In years to come, Alexander Rae, Charles Young, Edmund
Kean, Henry Irving and other theatrical pop stars would play the part of Sir
Edward, now regarded as a showpiece role of the tragic drama.
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| J B Booth as Mortimer |
And
the music in all this? It took a modest place, but it was one of the few things
praised at Drury Lane. And none of it belonged to Sir Edward. As usual, the
songs were sidewound into the parts of the juvenile lovers, Wilford and
Barbara, and the comics, most especially Dicky Suett as Barbara’s brother,
Samson. And Stephen Storace’s score turned out a lasting song. Alongside the
opening glee ‘Five times by taper’s light’, which itself became a best-seller, and
the billing and cooing of the juves (‘Sweet little Barbara’, ‘Down by the river
there grows a willow’), Suett delivered a simple little comic song about a
widow who kept an inn. She wasn’t very welcoming to an exceedingly ugly
traveller who stopped in for a bite until he put a bag of gold on the table… ‘A
Traveller stop’t at a Widow’s Gate’ went on to become a classic of the comic
song genre, and was included in all sorts of songsters and collections of verse
for a century.
My
copy of the song is not from Drury Lane. Nor even from the first Haymarket
production. Because, as you can see, it claims ‘sung by Mr Mathews’. Charles
Mathews took up the role of Samson Rawbold at the Haymarket in 1805. Poor Dicky
Suett had died. But this clue doesn’t date the music for me either, because
Mathews played the role and sang the song for something like a decade! And then
others after him. Many.
And
to think, that if George Colman hadn’t had his own theatre, it might have been
sung just four times.
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| A pirated copy of the script |
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