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 far
ther 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