Event Comment: t the chapel of the Foundling Hospital. Above 100 voices in performance. Tickets, 10s. 6d. [There] were present their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales....and a prodigious Concourse of the Nobility and Gentry (Deutsch, Handel, pp. 671, 672, from London Evening Post). 1,300 Tickets printed (Deutsch, Handel, p. 668, from Minutes of Hospital). Audience above a thousand (Deutsch, Handel, p. 670, from Gentleman's Magazine for May).

Event Comment: Mainpiece: Not acted these 3 years. [See 29 Feb. 1748.] Containing the distresses and death of King Henry VIv; the Artful acquisition of the Crown by King Richardv; The cruel Murder of Prince Edward and his brother in the Towerv; the landing of the Earl of Richmond, and the death of King Richardv in the Memorable battle of Bosworth Fieldv, being the last that was fought between the Houses of York and Lancaster. [Customary advertisement for this play this season. It will not be repeated further.] This month was published Characters in Dancing; with a Rhapsody (Gentleman's Magazine). Receipts: #164 13s

Event Comment: By Ye King's Command but not (by order) in ye Bills (Cross). Present His Majesty, 2nd time this season. [The George Garrick Drury Lane MS Treasurer's Book makes its first entry Mon. 30 Oct. 1749, indicating an expenditure to date of #1,733 2s. 7d. as against an income of #3,455 6s. 6d. and that Mon. was the twenty-ninth night of performance. The Treasurer's Book carries full entries until the 165th night, Sat. 28 April 1750. First itemizing of expenditures begins Wed. 1 Nov. 1749 as follows: Paid to Pipe & Tabor to Sat., 10s. 6d.; to 2 French Horns and a Kettle Drum, 15s.; to 12 1!2 lbs. Wax Candles, #1 11s. 3d.; To Properties and King's servants, #3 2s. 5d. [N.B. The use of extra musical instruments (horns, flutes, cymbols, kettle drum) averaged 6s. per night for the 165 nights. The season extended to 174 nights; so the approximate total cost for instruments came to #52 4s. Properties expense averaged 5s. per night. The approximate total cost was #43 11s. No further itemization of these will be made.] This month was publish'd The Rosciad; a Poem, by Charles Churchill (Gentleman's Magazine, Register of Books). Receipts: #70 (Cross); #73 2s. 6d. (Treasurer's Book)

Event Comment: Paid Norton 4 Chorus #1 (Treasurer's Book). This month publish'd An Impartial Statement of the case of the French Players. Printed for Spavan (Gentleman's Magazine, Register of Books). Receipts: #160 (Cross); #126 10s. 6d. (Treasurer's Book)

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."

Event Comment: To begin at 12 noon at the Foundling Hospital. There were above 500 Coaches and the tickets amounted to above 700 guineas (Gentleman's Magazine, May 1751)

Event Comment: Benefit the Gentleman who acts the part of Glaud

Event Comment: Benefit for the Gentleman and Gentlewoman who act the Parts of Jenny and Bauldy

Event Comment: At the Chapel, Foundling Hospital (Deutsch, Handel, p. 725). The number of Tickets was 1,200 (Gentleman's Magazine, April)

Event Comment: By Particular Desire of several Ladies of Quality. Positively the last Night. [Intended as satire on the Reverend John Henley's Oratory (eccentric preacher, 1692-1756) and as a puff for The Midwife or Old Woman's Magazine, edited by Christopher Smart and John Newberry, 1751-53. The Old Woman's Oratory written and produced by Smart. See the Gentleman's Magazine, 1752, p. 43; and Horace Walpole's letter to Montagu 12 May 1752, as follows: It appeared the lowest buffoonery in the world, even to me who am used to my uncle Horace. There is a bad oration to ridicule, what is too like, Orator Henley; all the rest is perverted music. There is a man who plays so nimbly on the kettle drums, that he has reduced that noisy instrument to be an object of sight; for if you don't see the tricks with his hands, it is no better than ordinary. Another play on a violin and trumpet together; another mimics a bagpipe with a German flute, and makes it full if disagreeable. There is an admired dulcimer, a favourite saltbox and a really curious Jew's Harp. Two or three men intend to persuade you that they play on a broomstick, which is drolly brought in, carefully shrouded in a case, so as to be mistaken for a bassoon or bass viol, but they succeed in nothing but the action. The last fellow imitates farting and curtseying to a French horn. There are twenty medley overtures, and a man who speaks a prologue and epilogue, in which he counterfeits all the actors and singers upon earth' (The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, IX, p. 131). [See 3 Dec. 1751.

Event Comment: [This month was publish'd another pamphlet in the Woodward-Hill controversy, A Lick at Them All, or the Moderator, (16 pages) "being a candid consideration of the present controversy between the Inspector and his opposers" (Gentleman's Magazine).] Receipts: #200 (Cross)

Event Comment: As my Monkeys and me and my Dogs am promised to go to L'Haye and Vienna after some Days more, the grand Noblemans and Gentlemans of this Nation England do desire me to perform every Night, and so me shall do with Mrs Midnight at the Haymarket Playhouse this Thursday Night. Ballard Mango, my big Monkey, will talk the Prologue

Event Comment: Benefit for Ryan. Quin did Falstaff for Ryan (Cross). The Nobility and Gentry at Bath gave Quin 100 guineas, and desir'd him to send them down so many tickets for this benefit (Gentleman's Magazine, 1753, p. 147). Pit and Boxes together at 5s. [with an Amphitheatre on stage]