Event Comment: Mainpiece [1st time; MD 3, by George Colman, ynger]: The Scenery and Dresses are entirely new. The Musick composed by Storace.The Scenes designed and executed by Greenwood and Capon [the Gothic library was painted by Capon (Oracle, 21 Mar. 1796)]. The Dresses by Johnston, Gay and Miss Rein. Books of the Songs to be had in the Theatre. [When Colman published his play he prefaced it with an acrimonious attack on Kemble, in which he accused him of deliberately trying to make the play a failure. But almost without exception the contemporary reviews excused Kemble's performance on the grounds of his obvious indisposition, and agreed that the play itself was unsatisfactory. "The play failed, and we are sorry to say did not merit to succeed...Kemble, who was tormented With an incessant cough, said he could not but be sensible that much of the displeasure of the house proceeded from his deficiency in a principal character...The whole audience with one voice cried out, 'No, no, Kemble-it is not your fault'" (Oracle, 14 Mar.). "The dialogue is extremely heavy, and there is little or no incident to relieve the tedium of more than four hours representation...Sir Edward Mortimer is a being distracted, with no adequate cause; a prey to remorse, which he of all men was the last to feel from the principles that make up his being. This therefore is the radical moral defect of the piece. But there is another which, though not equally strong, is equally fatal: there is no progression of interest, there is no involution of plot, there is no development of character" (Star, 14 Mar.). Other notices of the opening night were much in the same vein. Subsequently Colman revised the play, and it held the stage for many years. "The curtailments which have been made shorten the representation near an hour and a half, and the alterations are many and judicious" (Morning Herald, 21 Mar. 1796). Morning Herald, 23 July 1796: This Day is published The Iron Chest (2s.). Receipts: #471 9s. (468.13; 2.16)

Event Comment: [In mainpiece the playbill retains Wroughton as Richmond, but on the Kemble playbill his name is deleted, and a MS annotation substitutes Kemble's.] Receipts: #226 1s. (221/12; 4/9)

Event Comment: Mainpiece: [With alterations by John Philip Kemble] Not acted these 4 years. [In his prompt copy (1808) now in Harvard Theatre Collection Kemble's annotation lists the following as needed in the opening scene: 10 principals, Captain of the Guard, 3 Knights, 2 Pages, 2 Gentlemen with Crown, 2 Gentlemen with Map, Physician, Herald, 2 Ladies with Goneril, 2 Ladies with Regan, 2 Standard Bearers, 12 Guards. Nearly every scene opens or closes with drums and trumpets. In the storm scene, "Thunder and lightning; lamps down," i.e. the footlights lowered out of sight into a shallow trough. It is not unlikely that these arrangements were adhered to in this present revival.] "Kemble said that, however singular it might be, in Lear an audience quite unsettled him; the noise of the box-doors caught his ear, and routed all his meditated effects; and he found it absolutely impossible to do that at night which he had thrown out during the rehearsal in the morning" (Boaden, Siddons, II, 376). Receipts: #350 9s. 6d. (310.9.6; 38.12.0; 1.8.0)

Event Comment: Benefit for Mrs Kemble. Afterpiece: The [first] and only time of performing it [this season] at this theatre. Morning Herald, 31 July: Tickets to be had of Mrs Kemble, No. 24, corner of Panton-street, Haymarket