Event Comment: Not Acted these Eight Years [see 24 April 1741]. Benefit
Cibber, Jr. Tickets
and places of
Hobson at the Stage door. Tickets ddliver'd out for
All's Well at
Covent Garden theatre will be taken to the above mentioned play this night. [
Mrs Clive's Prologue recommended the cause of Liberty to the Ladies of
Great Britain. Cibber had pleaded in his advance advertisement on 5 April in the General Advertiser.] As I have in justice to my creditors assigned over so much of my salary as reduces the remainder to a very small pittance, I very much depend on the encouragement
and indulgence of the town at my Benefit. [On the day of the benefit he inserted in the
General Advertiser a long, double column address to the Publick puffing his Benefit,
and scotching a rumor industriously
and invidiously spread that he came to
Drury Lane only to impede
Mrs Cibber in her performance there. In this he washes in public the linen of his domestic affairs at some length, professing his virtue, forbearance,
and generosity,
and Mrs Cibber's unfairness
and ingratitude, citing her salary as about #700 per year, not a penny of which would she afford for his relief from creditors, or to bail him out of the
Fleet prison where he languished six months. He alleges that she was instrumental in forming a cartel between the rival theatrical managers with precluded his employment by either house,
and that she refused to act a benefit for him when he was in debtor's prison.