11 minute read
ROMEO COATES
from The Chap Issue 112
by thechap
Theatre
With such a wealth of wonderful actors gracing ours screens and stages, Olivier Woodes-Farquharson plummets to the other end of the spectrum to explore the life and work of Robert Coates – very possibly the worst actor who ever lived
elf-awareness is a gift that some of us
Scould display a bit more. Our politicians, our entertainers, and so many other figures in public life contain among their tribes some who understand the impression that they give off to others with their words and deeds, and, by the same token, many who fundamentally do not. Robert Coates, an actor during the age of the great dandies two centuries ago, believed himself to be a transcendental genius when pounding the theatrical stages of London, interpreting Shakespeare in a way never before attempted and (thankfully) never replicated since.
But be under no illusions: Genius he was not. He was – and this really cannot be overstated – utterly dreadful.
“Coates’ crest, planted boldly at the front, took the form of a lifesize silver cockerel, wings outstretched, and surrounded by the words ‘While I live, I’ll crow’. If passers-by somehow missed seeing this unique sight, they would surely have heard it, as he was usually to be seen being followed by street urchins screaming Cock a Doodle Doo!”
Yet the origin of this delusion lay not in the West End but in the West Indies, for Coates was born in 1772 in Antigua to plantation owners who were perhaps never fully aware either of Coates’ suffocating devotion to the theatre, or of his stultifying take on the art form of acting. He had popped over to England as a teenager, developed a taste – if not an aptitude – for acting, and bided his time until his father dutifully passed away, passing on his estate and a huge £40,000 inheritance to his only surviving child. Coates hotfooted it straight back to England in 1808, armed with plenty of cash, a determination to make it as an actor and a unique taste in clothing.
These assets together made Coates glaringly stand out. He explored the London scene first, but was then quickly drawn to the handsome town of Bath, still a hub of fashion long after the glory days of uber-dandy Beau Nash. Breakfasting and lunching daily at George Street’s chic York House, he inevitably stumbled across theatre manager William Dimond and offered his services to play his favourite character, Romeo, at the Theatre Royal. An unsure Dimond saw a huge risk but also a man of considerable wealth who was basically offering to
The only notices Coates ever received in the press were satirical ones
bribe him to stage the play. Thus, in February 1809, Bath was privy to one of the most memorable performances ever of Romeo and Juliet, albeit for terrible reasons.
Coates’ Romeo – the actor’s favourite character – was nearly three times older than the 16-year-old that Shakespeare envisaged. But even putting aside this inconvenience, it was his attire that first forced jaws to drop. A member of the audience wrote the following day: ‘His dress was like nothing ever worn. In a cloak of sky-blue silk, profusely spangled, red pantaloons, a waistcoat of white muslin surmounted by an enormous cravat, a wig in the style of Charles II, capped with a plumed opera hat, he presented one of the most grotesque spectacles ever witnessed upon the stage.’ Speckled liberally throughout this monstrosity of an outfit were Coates’ favourite jewels: Diamonds. For good measure, the whole outfit was a size too small, perhaps to highlight its wearer’s masculinity in a Regency take of deliberate male ‘cameltoe’. This was a mistake. Deep into one speech, Coates bent over, bursting the seams of his breeches, displaying to all a “quantity of white linen sufficient to make a Bourbon flag.” Unlike Coates’ breeches, the audience was in stitches, not least as Coates himself remained oblivious throughout.
But Robert was only getting started. He loved Shakespeare, but to him the great playwright’s actual words were merely an indication of feeling rather than something to be recited verbatim. He often forgot his lines but cared little, for he preferred to improvise. On more than one occasion in rehearsals he was heard to misquote his lines, only to retort, on this being pointed out, “Aye, that is the reading I know . . . but I think I have improved upon it.” During the famed balcony scene, Coates thought nothing of pausing proceedings to get out his snuffbox and take a hearty pinch, even offering it to some of the more nonplussed members of the audience.
Mistaking the crowd’s roaring laughter for the desire for an encore, he proceeded to act out the entire death scene twice again. As baffled theatregoers started heckling ‘Why don’t you just die?’, his long-suffering Juliet miraculously came
back to life and hustled him off the stage, as Dimond quickly brought down the curtain. At that moment, Coates – never a man to be kept awake at night weighed down by the burden of self-doubt – was heard to utter ‘Haven’t I done it well?’
The gossip around Bath went into overdrive, for here was an actor who simply demanded to be seen, and whose accidental talents dwarfed those of the true comedians. He performed several more times in Bath to bulging crowds, before touring across England, including Brighton and Stratfordupon-Avon. His deep pockets satisfied not just the theatre managers but also his fellow actors, all of whom he had to pay handsomely to share a stage with him. Ever confident, Coates felt by 1811 that he was ready to grace the London stage with his stupefying talents. But was London ready for him? Perhaps his Caribbean upbringing had made him sensitive to the cold, as he pranced about the city always wearing thick luxurious furs, even in midsummer, forever drenched in his beloved diamonds.
And while others used more standard modes of transport, unsurprisingly Coates chose a different path. He made his way around the city in a small carriage known as a curricle, and there
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One of many caricatures of Robert Coates produced during his glittering career
was never any mistaking it for someone else’s. With a luxurious seat in the shape of a scallop shell, the carriage was bright vermillion, with the wheel spokes painted the colours of the rainbow, drawn by two white horses. With such splendour, thought Coates, it was only right that he should magic up a heraldic symbol and motto. His crest, planted boldly at the front, took the form of a life-size silver cockerel, wings outstretched, and surrounded by the words ‘While I live, I’ll crow’. If passers-by somehow missed seeing this unique sight, they would surely have heard it, as he was usually to be seen being followed by street urchins screaming ‘Cock a Doodle Doo!’
Yet this didn’t seem to put the ladies off, for Coates was meticulously polite, and his stand-out swarthy complexion seemed popular with ladies of higher breeding, who calculated – rightly – that there was absolutely no chance that they would be missed as he squired them through Hyde Park. Coates was a hit, too, with many of the dandies of the day, who all enjoyed his company, including the fabulously named Scrope Davies and Lumley Skeffington.
Later that year, Coates was itching to perform Romeo again, and the Theatre Royal in Richmond acceded, hoping perhaps that his ghastly attempts at acting would be more than outweighed by fat revenues coming from full houses of punters seeking a jolly good laugh. For some it was too funny, and several theatregoers laughed themselves so ill that they had to be escorted outside and treated by a doctor.
Nevertheless, this ‘success’ allowed the prestigious Haymarket Theatre to open up the possibility, in December 1811, of Coates playing his second favourite character: Lothario in Nicholas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent. To distinguish him from his incomparable Romeo, Coates chose to wear white satin breeches peppered with diamonds, a bright
red waistcoat and cloak, and a patently absurd hat almost resembling a sombrero, again with the obligatory ostrich feathers belching out of it. He truly believed himself to be God’s gift to greasepaint.
Over 1000 people were turned away on the first night, with the black market charging an enormous £5 a ticket for the honour and pleasure of seeing this terrifically appalling actor delude himself on stage – the Prince Regent himself being one of them. But the crowds loved it and the newspapers gleefully reported it. The Haymarket invited him back a few weeks later to play his beloved Romeo, which he proudly accepted, ensuring this time that, while his costume would be a size bigger, he would make up for it by lacing it with even more diamonds. Too many, perhaps, for on one night, as a scene ended with Coates needing to exit stage right, he instead got onto his knees and shuffled energetically around the stage like a bloodhound, for he had lost a diamond shoe buckle. Once the buckle was eventually found, a composed Coates turned to his guffawing audience to deliver his final line which was – and you couldn’t make it up – ‘O let me hence. I stand on sudden haste’.
To confirm both Coates’ high profile and his utter lack of self-consciousness, several pastiches of his legendary performances were now being performed across London – although Coates viewed them more as flattering homages. He attended one of these, with comic actor Charles Matthews playing ‘Romeo Rantall’, and the audience roared at all the right cues, including the farcical clothing, the meticulous preparation for the death scene and the ostentatious display of diamond shoe buckles, even when playing dead. When Matthews spotted Coates in the audience, he invited him on stage for a warm handshake, Coates enjoying it thoroughly, oblivious to the fact that the joke was squarely on him.
Although he carried on playing his two favourite characters, by 1815 audiences were gradually wearying of his dreadfulness, and theatre managers had to hire policemen at some performances to keep order. By the following year, they gave up supporting him altogether; Coates’ shooting-star acting career was effectively over. This downturn on the stage was mirrored by difficult circumstances at his Antigua plantation which, when coupled with his gentlemanly generosity of giving or lending money to all and sundry, left him on hard times. He moved to Boulogne in northern France to regroup his finances, along the way meeting the charming and fragrant Emma Anne Robinson, daughter of a British Naval officer. They returned to London in 1823, married and settled, this time with Coates, still a hugely popular member of society, attending many plays from the stalls rather than on the stage.
It was on one such occasion that tragedy truck. On 15th February 1848, the 76-year old Coates left Drury Lane Theatre, needing to retrieve his opera glasses in his curricle. A hansom cab came carelessly round the corner and crushed him between the two carriages. Six agonising days later he finally expired at his home in Montague Square. The comics of the day, perhaps in one of their darker moments, believed he would have secretly enjoyed such a dramatic and drawn out death scene. Sadly, he would perform it only once. n
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