Event Comment: AA Compleat List (1747), pp. 182-83: [After some resentment at
Quin's refusing a part in
Fatal Retirement, 12 Nov.]. When coming on one Night to play the Part of
Pierre...
and he was treated in the same
Manner, he came forward,
and speaking to the Audience said, 'That he had met with Insults of that kind for several Nights past,
and that he judged they came from the Friends of the Author of a Play lately acted at that House, called Fatal Retirement; that the Author of it desired him to read it before it was acted, which he did, at his Requests,
and likewise, at his Request, gave him his sincere Opinion of it, which was, that it was the very worst Play he had read in his Life;
and therefore he had refused to act a Part in it, &c.' After his Speech was ended, he found a thundering Applause from the Audience,
and went thro' the whole Play without any farther Disturbance. But we ought not entirely to form out Judgment of its being the very worst Play, from what this Gentleman was pleased to say of it, in the Heat of his Resentment for being ill-treated; nor wonder that an Audience should applaud a Sentence which condemned an Author, at a Time when it was the Fashion to condemn them all, right or wrong, without being heard;
and when Parties were made to go to new Plays to make Uproars, which they called by the odious Name of
The Funn of the first Night. For the Afterpiece,
A Compleat List, p. 183:
And on the very Night I am speaking of it, at the End of the Play, was acted for the first [second] Time a new Farce, called,
An Hospital for Fools, of which one single Word was not heard that the Actors spoke, the Noise of these First-Night Gentlemen was so great; however, the Actors went thro' it,
and the Spectatbrs might see their Mouths wag,
and that was all