Event Comment: Full Prices. There will not be room behind the Scenes for more than the persons acting in the coronation, [Others] cannot possibly be admitted. The coronation of
their Majesties was followed by a stage representation of it at both houses...
Garrick knew that
Rich would spare no expense in the presentation of
his show; he knew too that he had a taste in the ordering, dressing,
and setting out these pompous processions, superior to
his own; he therefore was contented with the old dresses which had been occasionally used from 1721-1761. T
his show he repeated for near forty nights successively, sometimes at the end of a play,
and at other times after a farce. The exhibition was the meanest,
and the most unworthy of a theatre, I ever saw. The stage was...opened into
Drury Lane;
and a new
and unexpected sight surprised the audience, of a real bonfire,
and the populace huzzaing
and drinking porter to the health of
Queen Anne Bullen. The Stage in the meantime, amidst the parading of
Dukes,
duchesses, archbishops, peeresses, heralds &c. was covered with a thick fog from the smoke of the fire, which served to hide the tawdry dresses of the processionalists. During t
his idle piece of mockery, the actors, being exposed to the suffocations of smoke,
and the raw air from the open street, were seized with colds, rheumatisms,
and swelled faces. At length the indignation of the audience delivered the comedians from t
his wretched badge of nightly slavery, which gained nothing to the managers but disgrace
and empty benches. Tired with the repeated insult of a show which had nothing to support it but gilt copper
and old rags, they fairly drove the exhibitors of it from the stage by hooting
and hissing, to the great joy of the whole theatre....Rich...fully satisfied [the publick's] warmest imaginations (
Davies,
Life of Garrick, I, 365 ff.)