Page:As You Like It (1919) Yale.djvu/141

As You Like It represented at Wilton House upon this occasion of the visit of the King's Players.

On January 9, 1723, Charles Johnson, poetaster and tavern-keeper in Bow Street, brought out at Drury Lane an adaptation entitled Love in a Forest (published the same year), which ran for six nights. Colley Cibber played Jaques; Wilks, Orlando, and Mrs. Booth, Rosalind. This version was wretched stuff. It is chiefly notable for the omission of Touchstone, for making Jaques fall in love with Celia, and for introducing, into the fifth act, the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude from A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1739 there was published an even more disguised form of the comedy called The Modern Receipt; or A Cure for Love, by one 'J. C (James Carrington, according to Halliwell). This was a modernized paraphrase with the scene laid at Liège and environs. The names of the characters were altered. Nothing seems to be known about a stage performance of this adaptation.

It was not until December 20, 1740, that Shakespeare's As You Like It was revived. This production was at Drury Lane. The obscurity concerning the earlier history of the comedy is well illustrated by the two entries in Genest, the accurate historian of the stage, concerning the revival. In one place he states that it was 'not acted after Charles II until 1740,' and under the entry for 1740, he notes 'not acted 40 years.' During the season of its revival in 1740, however, it was played about twenty-five times. Quin was the Jaques, Mrs. Pritchard, Rosalind, and the sprightly Kitty Clive, Celia. From this time on to the present, the history of the stage lists performances as often at least as once in four years, and, in many instances, in successive seasons.

The eighteenth century productions were characterized by well-balanced casts in which the rôles of Jaques, Orlando, Touchstone, Rosalind, and Celia