R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

The Theatre in the 'Seventies 151his hat on a peg with a fine flourish; but if there was nopeg upon the wall, he was at a loss.Charles I was produced at the Lyceum Theatre in 1872.That theatre was then under the management of H. L.Eateman, an American, and a showman of the Barnumtype. A stroke of good fortune had happened to Batemanwho, not many months before, had been at the end of histether. He had started management at the Lyceum toexploit his daughter Isabel, but his early ventures fellflat, and he was on the eve of closing the theatre doorswhen an actor in his company—one Henry Irving, towhom I have already alluded—pressed upon him a playcalled The Bells, a version of Le Juif Polonais of Erckmann-Chatrian,done by a down-at-heel solicitor of thename of Leopold Lewis. Bateman shrugged his shouldersand yielded to Irving's persuasion; it was the desperatemanager's last throw. The Bells was hurriedly rehearsedand cheaply put upon the stage; and on the morning afterits first performance Irving awoke—if he had been asleep,which is doubtful—to find himself famous, and LeopoldLewis, puffed with pride, for ever after posed as the actualauthor of a play that was hardly more than a bald translation,and accepted grants from Irving, and drinks fromall and sundry, till the end of his days. Wills's Charles Icame immediately after The Bells, Irving's noble presentationof the ' martyr king' forming a striking contrastto his tragic, guilt-haunted burgomaster in the previousplay. That Wills's piece owed much to Irving's wonderfulacting is undeniable, but Charles I, in spite of its beingdisfigured by a shocking travesty of history in the drawingof Cromwell, is a spirited and moving drama. Theremay be some here who can recall the pitiful final scene, sotenderly written by Wills—the interview between Charlesand Queen Henrietta Maria just before Charles is led outto execution.