Event Comment: TThe Platonic Wife published at 1s. 6d. Author's Night

Event Comment: Mainpiece: By Particular Desire. Neville MS Diary: I got a seat before the play began, which was the Jealous Wife, with the musical entertainment the Cunning Man. Oakly by Garrick...Never saw Garrick, Pritchard and Clive in Perfection before, & I think none of the characters were ill performed. Receipts: #246 11s. (Treasurer's Book)

Event Comment: MMrs Jeffries made her first appearance on this stage in Belinda.--not perfect.--was pretty well received.--is a little smart figure (Hopkins MS Notes). At 15 minutes past 4, took my place in the Pit at Drury Lane to see the Provok'd Wife. Mr Garrick is inimitable as Sir John Brute, Palmer does Heartfree, and Mrs Abington Lady Fanciful (with a song not printed in the play) very well. Constant by Cautherly, whose figure and manner I do not like, Vernon in Col. Bully sings a song (Neville MS Diary)

Event Comment: N.B. Those who were disappointed last week in seeing the above play [Widow'd Wife] and had no places for the seventh night are desir'd to send their servants by 12 o'clock to secure them

Event Comment: Paid Younger for a license for Man & Wife #2 2s. (Account Book). Receipts: #154 18s

Event Comment: Benefit for Hull. Mainpiece: Not acted this season. Charges #65 17s. Deficit to Hull #17, covered by #121 3s. from tickets (Box 233; Pit 280; Gallery 209). Paid Hull for The Garland, The Spanish Lady and Altering the Comedy of Errors #50. Paid Miss Mary Twist and Miss Charlotte Twist for walking 12 nights in Man and Wife #1 10s. apiece (Account Book). Receipts: #48 17s

Event Comment: [This New Comedy (by Mrs Elizabeth Griffith) seems not to have been performed this night, according to the author's Preface to her Edition of 1772. Shuter had been unattentive and absent from many rehearsals]: At length though late [in the season] a day was appointed for the representation, and on that morning Mr Shuter appeared at rehearsal, pretty much in the same state as before, and confessed himself incapable of performing his part, that night. Upon which the play was oblig'd to be further postponed, and handbills were sent about at noon, to advertise town of the disappointment....A further final day was afterwards determined on, but the audience being out of humour at their former disappointment, called Mr Shuter to account for it, on his first appearance; which threw him into such confusion, that he was not able to get the better of it, throughtout the whole performance...in the hurry of his spirits the actor not only forgot his part, the deficiency of which he endeavoured to supply with his own dialect, but also seemed to lose all idea of the character he was to perform; and made the Governor appear in a light which the author never intended: that of a mean, ridiculous buffoon. [Mrs Griffith concluded her preface by relating how her friends stood by the piece, but two or three in the gallery, when it was given out again objected and threw an apple at the chandeliers, which so perturbed the management that the play was withdrawn. She therefore published it by subscription, prefixing the names of about 440 subscribers, persons of the first quality, including James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Col. Burgoyne, the Duke of Devonshire, David Garrick, Mrs Montague, William Richardson, and a host of writers, players, and people of fashion. This list provides a pretty good roster of those who filled the boxes and part of the pit of both theatres at the time.] Paid Younger #2 2s. for the license for A Wife in the Right (Account Book). Receipts: #218 12s. (Account Book)

Event Comment: [The play was not allowed to conclude, nor was the afterpiece, All the World's a Stage, performed. "Yesterday evening, during the representation of...A Bold Stroke for a Wife, at China Hall, Rotherhithe, a party of the inhabitants, who had laid an information against the performers, rushed into the theatre, behind the scenes, and seized Mr Russell (who played the character of Colonel Feignwell), and carried him, in his stage dress, before Justice Smith, at the Rotation-Office, St Bennet's-hill, who committed him to the House of Correction, for further examination this morning" (Morning Chronicle, 24 July). What happened to Russell is not known, but because of this occurrence the theatre did not re-open until the following season, on 25 May 1778. See my article on the history of this unlucky playhouse, Theatre Notebook, VIII, 76-80.

Event Comment: 1st piece [1st time; CO I, by Charles Dibdin, based on Rose et Colas, by Michel Jean Sedaine]. 3rd piece [1st time; CO I, by Charles Dibdin, based on Les Femmes Vengees, by Michel Jean Sedaine]: With new Scenery [Public Advertiser, 19 Sept.: by Richards] and Decorations. Both the Musical Pieces, with new Overtures, composed by Dibdin. Books of the new Musical Pieces to be had at the Theatre. Places for the Boxes to be taken of Brandon (only) at the Stage Door. No Money to be taken at the Stage Door, nor any Money to be returned after the Curtain is drawn up. Boxes 5s. Pit 3s. 1st Gallery 2s. Upper Gallery 1s. The Doors to be opened at 5:15. To begin at 6:15 [see 21 Sept.]. Public Advertiser, 18 Sept.: This Afternoon at Three will be published Rose and Colin and The Wives Revenged (each 6d.). "At this season of the year the little company upon the Ton, who are in town, seldom rise from the table till after the beginning of the play; in order, therefore, to obviate the disturbance that the fracas in the boxes usually makes towards the close of the first act, or the beginning of the second, this comic opera [Rose and Colin] was prefaced. It at the same time affords these late comers an opportunity of seeing the play [i.e. the mainpiece] complete" (Town and Country Magazine, Sept. 1778, p.453)

Event Comment: Benefit for Fearon, L'Estrange, Thompson & Guard. Tickets for a Comedy, and The School for Wives will be taken. [In mainpiece the playbill retains Fearon as Justice Shallow, but on the Kemble playbill a MS annotation substitutes Waldron.] Receipts: #251 2s. 6d. (75/6/6; tickets: 175/16/0) (charge: #105)

Event Comment: [The playbill announces The Tender Husband, and Three Weeks after Marriage, but the former "was last night obliged to be deferred on account of the real or feigned Indisposition of Mrs Abington, of which was sent to the Theatre at Two o'clock. The Merry Wives of Windsor was substituted...Mrs Wells, to whom the part of Mrs Page belongs, could not or would not play...Mrs Bernard read the part. Bernard also supplied the place of Cubitt in Slender. The Farmer was substituted for Three Weeks after Marriage" (Public Advertiser, 27 Nov.).] Receipts: #158 18s. (151.8.6; 7.9.6)

Event Comment: [The playbill announces The Beggar's Opera (in place of The Maid of the Mill, advertised on playbill of 3 Dec., but "deferred on account of the Indisposition of Johnstone") and The Touchstone. But "Mrs Billington was taken ill & The Merry Wives of Windsor with The Deserter & Devil on Two Sticks were substituted for B. Opera & Touchstone" (MS annotation on BM bill: cg, Vol. VII). World, 5 Dec., states that The Mayor of Garratt was the afterpiece, but the Account-Book lists The Devil upon Two Sticks.] Receipts: #126 18s. (115.0.6; 11.17.6)

Event Comment: Benefit for King. Part of Pit laid into the Boxes. Mainpiece: Not performed for 10 years. [See 14 Oct. 1761. The Wishing Cap is Larpent MS 350. It discusses Fortunatus' Cap as King conceived several people would use it--the miser, the cit, the adolescent maid, the gossip, Hodge, &c.: "Thus in several spheres of life we find@Wishing appears the madness of Mankind." He closes with the Cap on his head wishing for applause.] Receipts: #207 6s. Charges: #64 9s. Profits to King: #142 15s. (Treasurer's Book)

Event Comment: Afterpiece: The Overture and the rest of the Music composed by Fisher. Receipts: #124 19s. 6d. (122/6/0; 2/13/6)

Event Comment: [Mainpiece in place of The First Part of King Henry the Fourth, announced on playbill of 22 Sept.] Afterpiece: The Overture and the rest of the music composed by Dr Fisher. Paid Music 22nd Inst. #7 15s. 4d.; Properties 22nd Inst. 9s. 8d.; Wardrobe #6 11s. 6d.; Supernumeraries #1 19s.; Chorus Singers #1 5s.; Guard [master carpenter] for Scene Men #10 19s. 5d. Receipts: #194 13s. 6d. (193.18.0; 0.15.6)

Event Comment: Mainpiece: Written by the late Mr Congreve, London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 2 Oct.: Last Night in the Entertainment of Dr Faustus...when the Machine wherein were Harlequin, the Miller's Wife, the Miller and his the Miller's Man, was got up to the full Extent of its flying, one of the Wires which held up the hind part of the Car broke first, and then the other broke, and the Machine, and all the People in it fell down Upon the Stage; by which unhappy Accident the young Woman who personated the Miller's Wife had her Thigh broke, and her Kneepan shatter'd, and was otherways very much bruised, the Harlequin had his Head bruised, and his Wrist strained; the Miller broke his Arm; and the Miller's Man had his Scull so fractured that his Life in despaired of. Thomas Gray to Horace Walpole, 6 Oct.: Covent Garden has given me a sort of surfeit of Mr Rich and his cleverness, for I was at [cg] when the machine broke t'other night; the house was in amaze for above a minute, and I dare say a great many in the galleries thought it very desterously performed, and that they screamed as naturally as heart could wish, till they found it was no jest, by their calling for surgeons, of whom several luckily happened to be in the pit. I stayed to see the poor creatures brought out of the house, and pity poor Mrs Buchanan not a little, whom I saw put into a chair in such a fright that as she is big with child, I question whether it may not kill her.-Horace Walpole's Correspondence with Thomas Gray, I, 113-14

Event Comment: Benefit for Noverre and Miss Bride. Afterpiece: By Desire. No Building on Stage. N.B. Burton and Packer have deferr'd their Benefit, which was to have been tomorrow, to Saturday the 15th of May, when The Jealous Wife will be perform'd, Oakly by Garrick

Event Comment: By Permission [of the Lord Chamberlain]. Mainpiece [1st time in London; C 5, by Robert Hitchcock, 1st acted at Hull, 14 Nov. 1775]. Afterpiece: Written by George Alexander Stevens. [This was not Charles Macklin's play, The True-Born Irishman, 1st published in Jones' British Theatre, 1795, but Stevens's The French Flogged; or, The British Sailors in America.] Tickets delivered for the 23rd of September and for the Evening will be admitted

Event Comment: Benefit Mrs Stevens. Receipts: money #81 10s. 6d.; seals #85 15s. (Account Book); #200 (Rylands MS.). [Mrs Stevens was charged #60 for her benefit.

Event Comment: Benefit Hall and Mrs Stevens. Receipts: money #28 12s. 6d.; tickets #110 1s. At the Desire of several Persons of Quality

Event Comment: Benefit Mrs Wright and Mrs Stevens

Event Comment: Benefit Mrs Stevens, Mrs Wright

Event Comment: At the Desire of several Ladies of Quality. Tickets for Mlle Roland and Mrs Stevens taken