The Lying Valet: 'Wonders will never cease''

The Lying Valet by David Garrick

David Garrick was today’s equivalent of a celebrity actor who could also write, produce, manage, and all of it based on prodigious talents.  His career dramatically changed the course of what acting was, introducing a realistic style that was quickly imitated by almost everyone.

With his talents as a director, writer and theatre management, together with an ear for what the fickle audience wanted, he helped the Drury Lane Theatre become, and remain, one of the leading theatres in Europe.

His adaptations of Shakespeare were very well regarded, and his own original writing also found an audience. In addition, he adapted many older plays in the theatrical repertoire that were slipping into insignificance. These included many from the Restoration era. In essence while influencing the theatre towards a higher standard he also gained am enhanced reputation for theatre people and their careers.

Index of Contents

INTRODUCTION

HISTORY OF THE PLAY

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

THE LYING VALET

ACT I

SCENE I—Gayless’s Lodgings

SCENE II—Melissa’s Lodgings

ACT II

EPILOGUE

DAVID GARRICK – A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

DAVID GARRICK – A CONCISE BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

David Garrick, born in 1717, came up to London from Lichfield with Samuel Johnson in the year 1737. Four years later he broke away from the trade of wine merchant, in which he had engaged with his brother Peter, and, on October 19th, 1741, startled the spectators in the theatre in Goodman's Fields with his acting of Richard III. Not only were the natives of Lichfield, then resident in London, loyal in their support and enthusiastic in their praise of this fellow townsman, but the elite of Grosvenor-Square hurried their footmen four miles to reserve places for them at the obscure theater in Goodman's Fields, in order to see the young Roscius of the age. Since the theatre in Goodman's Fields was not regularly licensed, the playbills, to evade the law, announced the performance of Richard III as a part of a ‘A Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Music’ to be given ‘At the late Theatre in Goodman's Fields. . . . Tickets at three, two and one shilling.’ For the same reason. ‘The Lying Valet’, the next month, was announced as performed ‘gratis.’ Such crowds flocked to Goodman's Fields that the managers of the two regularly patented theaters effected the closing of that house, but so great had been the triumphs of Garrick that he was engaged for the season of 1742-1743 at Drury-Lane at a salary of six hundred guineas, the largest yet paid to an actor.

His successes at Drury Lane, his assumption of the duties of manager there in 1747, his subsequent retirement in 1776 before his abilities had declined, and his death on January 20th, 1779, are the chief events of Garrick's career.

But Garrick was more than the pre-eminent actor of his age and the most successful of theatrical managers. He undoubtedly merits consideration as a writer of farce. Besides his Shakespearean and other adaptations in the field of regular drama, he wrote seventeen farces and dramatic entertainments of greater or less originality and of marked popularity. The cynical Horace Walpole furnishes a kind of negative evidence for the popularity of these productions, when he deplores contemporary taste in this vein: When Garrick's . . . farces, and the comedies of the fools that pay court to him are the delight of the age, it does not deserve anything better. And again: Garrick is treating the town as it deserves and likes to be treated, with scenes, fireworks, and his own writing. Yet Walpole had to admit that his pieces . . . delight the mob in the boxes as well as in the footman's gallery.

Garrick was thoroughly acquainted with French drama; and, indeed, the influence of French farce is openly avowed by him