The Petition of the Grave-digger in ‘Hamlet’,
to command the Pioneers in the Expedition of Alexander.
Granted.
The Petition of William Bullock, to be Hephestion
to Penkethman the Great. [4]
Granted.
* * * *
*
The caricature here, and in
following lines, is of a passage in Sir
Robert Stapylton’s ‘Slighted
Maid’: ’I am the Evening, dark as
Night,’ &c.
In the ‘Spectator’s’
time the Rehearsal was an acted play, in which Penkethman
had the part of the gentleman Usher, and Bullock was
one of the two Kings of Brentford; Thunder was
Johnson, who played also the Grave-digger in Hamlet
and other reputable parts.
* * * *
*
[Footnote 1: ‘March’ was written
by an oversight left in the first reprint uncorrected.]
[Footnote 2: No. 31.]
[Footnote 3: Mr. Bayes, the poet, in the Duke
of Buckingham’s ‘Rehearsal’, after
showing how he has planned a Thunder and Lightning
Prologue for his play, says,
Come out, Thunder and
Lightning.
[Enter Thunder and Lightning.]
‘Thun’. I am
the bold ‘Thunder’.
‘Bayes’. Mr.
Cartwright, prithee speak that a little louder, and
with a hoarse voice. I am the bold
Thunder: pshaw! Speak
it me in a voice that thunders it out
indeed: I am the
bold ‘Thunder’.
‘Thun’. I am
the bold ‘Thunder’.
‘Light’. The
brisk Lightning, I.’]
[Footnote 4: William Bullock was a good and popular
comedian, whom some preferred to Penkethman, because
he spoke no more than was set down for him, and did
not overact his parts. He was now with Penkethman,
now with Cibber and others, joint-manager of a theatrical
booth at Bartholomew Fair. When this essay was
written Bullock and Penkethman were acting together
in a play called ‘Injured Love’, produced
at Drury Lane on the 7th of April, Bullock as ‘Sir
Bookish Outside,’ Penkethman as ‘Tipple,’
a Servant. Penkethman, Bullock and Dogget were
in those days Macbeth’s three witches.
Bullock had a son on the stage capable of courtly parts,
who really had played Hephestion in ‘the Rival
Queens’, in a theatre opened by Penkethman at
Greenwich in the preceding summer.]
* * * *
*
A Widow Gentlewoman, wellborn both
by Father and Mother’s Side, being the
Daughter of Thomas Prater, once an eminent
Practitioner in the Law, and of Letitia Tattle,
a Family well known in all Parts of this
Kingdom, having been reduc’d by Misfortunes
to wait on several great Persons, and for some time
to be Teacher at a Boarding-School of young
Ladies; giveth Notice to the Publick, That she
hath lately taken a House near Bloomsbury- Square,
