On an undated slip of paper preserved in the British Library with other documents relating to eighteenth-century English theatres, Richard Steele (1672-1729), the famous essayist, dramatist, and journalist, penned the following couplet:

In just a few words Steele captures much. He identifies corruption on the London stage of his day that is occasioned by “silent sins,” and he lays the blame squarely in the lap of John Weaver (1673-1760). Steele, of course, is referring to the hugely popular stage entertainments generally called pantomimes, a type of musical theatre that, until recently, has often been dismissed as trifling by historians, or ignored altogether. Steele's voice on the issue of pantomimes was but one of many who decried the rage for such entertainments, almost always presented as the concluding piece to an evening's performance. They featured commedia dell'arte characters and mimed action, but beyond those constants the range of stage activity and storyline was very wide. Like Steele, most commentators felt that the insatiable appetite for pantomimes among theatregoers signaled an era of unhappy decline in the London playhouses.

That Steele lays the blame on Weaver is of special interest to me here. Most critics of the time who rail against pantomimes, and who elect to name names find John Rich (1692-1761) at the scene of the crime, not Weaver. Rich, of course, was manager at the Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre, archrival to the Drury Lane house where Weaver worked when he was resident in London. Under his stage name, Lun, Rich was the most famous English Harlequin in the first half of the eighteenth century, taking the lead role himself in almost all his pantomime productions. But it was Weaver, Steele observes, “who first taught silent sins upon the stage.” This can only be a reference to Weaver's Essay towards an history of dancing (London, 1712), a comprehensive apology for dancing that Steele had encouraged Weaver to pursue.