"
Dogget, the old comedian of Queen Anne's time--to whom we owe an
annual boat-race upon the Thames for a "coat and badge," and,
inferentially, the popular burletta of "The Waterman"--was remarkably
skilful, according to Colley Cibber, "in dressing a character to the
greatest exactness ... the least article of whatever habit he wore
seemed to speak and mark the different humour he represented; a
necessary care in a comedian, in which many have been too remiss or
ignorant." This is confirmed by another critic, who states that Dogget
"could with the greatest exactness paint his face so as to represent
the ages of seventy, eighty, and ninety, distinctly, which occasioned
Sir Godfrey Kneller to tell him one day at Button's Coffee House, that
'he excelled him in painting, for that he could only paint from the
originals before him, but that he (Dogget) could vary them at
pleasure, and yet keep a close likeness.'" In the character of
Moneytrap, the miser, in Vanbrugh's comedy of "The Confederacy,"
Dogget is described as wearing "an old threadbare black coat, to which
he had put new cuffs, pocket-lids, and buttons, on purpose to make its
rusticness more conspicuous.
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