Event Comment: Benefit for ye Author (no more Noise) (Cross). Tickets as of 5 Feb. Tickets deliver'd out for the third
and sixth Nights will be taken. Receipts: #140 (
Cross).
Gentleman's Magazine, Feb. 1751, pp. 77-78, concerning
Gil Blas: To animadvert upon a piece which is almost universally condemned is unneccessary,
and to defend this is impossible. There is not one elegant expression or moral sentiment in the dialogue; nor indeed one character in the drama, from which either could be expected. It is however, to be wished that the Town, which opposed this play with so much zeal, would exclude from the theatre every other in which there is not more merit; for partiality
and prejudice will be suspected in the treatment of new plays, while such pieces as the
London Cuckolds,
and the
City Wives Confederacy, are suffered to waste time
and debauch the morals of society....Upon the whole the Author appears to have intended rather entertainment than instruction,
and to have disgusted the Pit by adapting his comedy to the taste of the Galleries....Perhaps the ill success of this comedy is chiefly the effect of the author's having so widely mistaken the character of
Gil Blas whom he has degraded from a man of sense, discernment, true humor,
and great knowledge of mankind...to an impertinent silly, conceited coxcomb, a mere
Lying Valet, with all the affectation of a Fop,
and all the insolence of a coward. [
Thomas Gray wrote to
Horace Walpole 3 March 1751, "
Gil Blas is the
Lying Valet in five acts. The fine lady has half-a-dozen good lines dispersed in it."