Event Comment: To begin exactly at 6:00 o'clock. Boxes 5s. Pit 3s. Gallery 2s. Upper Gallery 1s. Places for the Boxes to be had of
Mr Varney at the Stage door. [Repeated throughout the season.] Ye
Naturalizing Bill having made some Noise against the Jews, some people call'd out for ye
Merchant of Venice, & a Letter was thrown upon ye Stage de
siring that play instead of the Opera, but we took no Notice of it, some little hissing but it dy'd away (
Cross). [Sometime in the calendar year 1753,
Lacy and
Garrick drew up a mortgage on the
Drury Lane property for #10,000, to be amortized to
James Clutterbuck over a period of twenty-one years at the rate of #4 per acting night, and permission to grant free seats in any part of the theatre (except the stage, scenes and orchestra) to forty persons. These latter to be named and seats assigned ten days prior to the opening of any season. This thirteen-page document, which describes accurately the bounds of the 13,134 square feet of land on which the ten buildings comprising Drury Lane Theatre stood, contains protective clauses for Clutterbuck, to the effect that Garrick and Lacy will exhibit nowhere else in
London without the #4 nightly payment and for Garrick and Lacy, to the effect that arrears in payment could be collected solely from Drury Lane property, and not from the individual incomes of the mortgagees. It was not signed, so apprently was not executed. (See
Havard, Collection of Documents dealing with affairs of Drury Lane, No 2, fMS, Thr 12.)] Receipts: #150 (Cross)