Event Comment: Benefit for Miss Leak. 1st piece: Never performed here. The Musick selected, with new Accompaniments and a Scottish Overture, by Dr Arnold. [Miss Andrews is identified in MS list in Kemble playbills of new performers for this season.] Morning Herald, 30 Apr.: Tickets to be had of Miss Leak, Upper Mews Gate, Castle-street, Leicester-square. Receipts: #155 11s. 6d. (84.2.0; 66.10.0; 0.17.0; tickets: none listed; odd money: 4.2.6) (charge: #213 0s. 7d.)

Event Comment: Benefit for Burton, Miss Heard, Miss Tidswell, & Mrs Bramwell. [2nd piece: With alterations by John Philip Kemble.] 3rd piece: Not acted these 6 years. "Of [Wroughton's] comedy something favourably must be said. His personations are usually natural, easy, and spirited; he is perhaps too locomotive: he cannot bear to stand still...To this peculiar bustle of his motion may be attributed much of his success in Sir John Restless [in All in the Wrong]...For the same reason, no man can play Ford with half the effect Wroughton does" (Monthly Mirror, Mar. 1796, p. 304). Morning Herald, 30 May: Tickets to be had of Miss Heard, No. 43, Haymarket [others not listed]. Receipts: #337 6s. 6d. (30.13.0; 40.16.6; 3.4.6; tickets: 260.10.0; odd money: 2.2.6) (charge: #202 11s.)

Event Comment: Benefit for Shade, Cameron, Woollams, Wood, Wilson, Dangerfield, Irish, Edwards, Griffiths, Nix, Wooldridge, Panchaud & Cole [box-keepers]. [This was Dodd's last appearance on the stage.] "Dodd was one of the most perfect actors that I have ever seen. He was the fopling of the drama rather than the age. I mean by this, that his own times rarely shewed us anything so highly charged with the vanity of personal exhibition. He was, to be sure, the prince of pink heels, and the soul of empty eminence. As he tottered rather than walked down the stage, in all the protuberance of endless muslin and lace in his cravats and frills, he reminded you of the jutting motion of the pigeon. He took his snuff, or his bergamot, with a delight so beyond all grosser enjoyments that he left you no doubt whatever of the superior happiness of a coxcomb" (Boaden, Kemble, I, 55). Receipts: #580 17s. 6d. (25.17.0; 37.3.6; 11.0.0; tickets: 503.4.0; odd money: 3.13.0) (charge: #211 17s. 6d.)

Event Comment: "Though not equal to Macklin [Palmer, whose 1st appearance as Shylock was at Liverpool, 2 July 1773] was respectable. He differed from the usual readings in some parts, particularly in the following: 'Many a time-and oft On the Rialto-you have rated me, &c.' This is certainly better...by uniting the oft with the Rialto, which is the most public place in Venice, it gives the observation additional force" (Monthly Magazine, June 1796, p. 408)