In this season Dick Estcourt made his first appearance in London as Dominic, in the "Spanish Friar." Of Shakspeare's plays, "Hamlet," "Henry IV.," and "Macbeth," were frequently repeated during the season.
"Arsinoe," which I have mentioned above, merits a special word in passing, as being the first attempt to establish opera in England, after the fashion of that of Italy. "If this attempt," says Clayton, the composer, who understood English no better than he did music, "shall be a means of bringing this manner of music to be used in my native country, I shall think my study and pains very well employed." The principal singer was Mrs. Tofts, who for two years had been singing, after the play, at Lincoln's Inn Fields, against Marguerite de l'Epine, the pupil of Greber, and subsequently the ill-favoured but happy wife of Dr. Pepusch, who fondly called her Hecate--she answering good-humouredly to the name. The Earl of Nottingham (son of Lord Chancellor Finch), and the Duke of Bedford, who lost by dice more than his father made by the "Bedford Level," patronised and went into ecstasy at the song and shake of "the Italian lady," as Marguerite was called. The proud Duke of Somerset, who was as mean as he was proud, and, according to Lord Cowper, as cowardly as he was arrogant, supported native talent, in Mrs. Tofts; as did also that Duke of Devonshire, whom Evelyn wonderingly saw lose, with calmness, at Newmarket, £1600, and who was afterwards the munificent lover, and heart-stricken mourner, of another beautiful vocalist, Miss Campion. Mrs. Tofts had another supporter in her too zealous servant, Anne Barwick, who one night went to Drury Lane, and assailed Marguerite with hisses and oranges, to the great disgust of her honest mistress. In such discord did opera commence among us. "Arsinoe," however, had a certain success, towards which the composer, Clayton, contributed little; and he was destined to do less subsequently.
The season of the rival company was passed in two houses:--at Lincoln's Inn Fields, from October till the April of 1705, when the company with the "four capital B.'s," Betterton, Booth, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle, removed to the house in the Haymarket, built for them by Vanbrugh, under a subscription filled by thirty persons of quality, at £100 each, for which they received free admissions for life. Under his licence at Lincoln's Inn Fields, Betterton produced nothing of note this season but Rowe's "Biters," a satirical comedy, which failed. At the end of the season he consigned his licence to Vanbrugh, under whom he engaged as leading tragedian. Vanbrugh opened on the 9th of April, with an opera, the "Triumph of Love." It failed, as did old plays inadequately filled, and new pieces, by Mrs. Pix, Swiney, and one or two other obscure writers, including Chaves, author of a condemned comedy, the "Cares of Love." Baker describes Chaves as a person of no consideration, on the ground that he dedicated his play "to Sir William Read, the Mountebank," who, I think, could very well afford to pay the usual fee. With these poor aids, and many mischances, the first season at the Queen's Theatre, on the site of our present Opera House, came to an unsatisfactory conclusion.