girl is allowed to marry the Captain and settles down, we may suppose, to the pleasures of domesticity and woman's gowns. The comedy was admirably acted throughout, Wilks, Cibber, and that prince of mimics, Dick Estcourt, being in the [cast, and the seal of popular approval was quickly put upon the production. At present such a seal should bring hundreds, perhaps thousands, of dollars into the pockets of the author, but it is possible that a few paltry pounds represented the profits of Farquhar.*

In the meantime the spirit of discontent was abroad among the members of the Drury Lane company. Well it might be when the manager of the house, as Cibber points out, "had no conception himself of theatrical merit either in authors or actors, yet his judgment was govern'd by a saving rule in both. He look'd into his receipts for the value of a play, and from common fame he judg'd of his actors. But by whatever rule he was govern'd, while he had prudently reserv'd to himself a power of not paying them more than their merit could get, he could not be much deceived by their being over or undervalued. In a word, he had with great skill inverted the constitution of the stage, and quite changed the channel of profits arising from it; formerly (when there was but one company) the proprietors punctually paid the actors their appointed sallaries, and took to themselves only the clear profits: But our wiser proprietor took first out of every day's receipts two shillings in the pound to himself; and left their

* The "Recruiting Officer" first saw the light in April 1706.

sallaries to be paid only as the less or greater deficiencies of acting (according to his own accounts) would permit. What seem'd most extraordinary in these measures was, that at the same time he had persuaded us to be contented with our condition, upon his assuring us that as fast as money would come in we should all be paid our arrears.”

Lawyer Rich lived too soon. How useful would he have been in these latter days, when irresponsible managers infest the profession and turn an honest penny by trading on the credulity and unbusinesslike qualities of many a deluded player. The average manager pays his debts and is quite as stable and upright in his dealings as one could desire, but what can be said of the man who take companies "on the road," after making all sorts of glowing promises, and finally elopes with the money-box, leaving his actors stranded in a strange city. Incidents of this kind, which to the victims have more of tragedy than any play in their repertoire, occur almost every day during the theatrical season, but nothing is done to prevent the ever-increasing scandal. The erstwhile proprietor of the company returns by Pullman car to New York, complains loudly about "poor business," a "sunken fortune," &c., and then prepares to take out another combination. As for his dupes, who are probably half-starving in some third class western town, they may walk home on the railroad ties.

Yes, Mr. Rich was evidently intended for a wider sphere and a more progressive age than those he had to adorn. But despite all his financial talents

some of the best players in Drury Lane were ready to desert from that house the moment the chance

came.

The chance did come, in the season of 1706-7, when Mrs. Oldfield, Wilks, Mrs. Rogers, and several others, went over to the handsome new theatre in the Haymarket, and were joined there later by Cibber. This imposing house was opened in the spring of 1705 by Congreve and Vanbrugh, and to it had gone Betterton and his associates at Lincoln's Inn Fields. But noble old Roscius, who had so long cast his welcome spell upon London theatre-goers, was getting old and feeble, and so were several of the other members; the spell was well-nigh broken, and not even a trial of that "newfangled" style of entertainment, Italian opera, * could make the management a success.

Now enters upon the scene the redoubtable Owen Swiney, who plays a short but brilliant part in the theatrical world, and next, with all his money gone, enters upon a twenty years' exile on the Continent. Then he will come home, to be made Keeper of the King's Mews, and presently our Colley will immortalise him in one of those pen-portraits which make

* How Italian opera was despised by certain critics of Queen Anne's reign has already been shown in "Echoes of the Playhouse." In his "Essay on the Operas after the Italian Manners," Dennis writes (1706): "If that is truly the most Gothic, which is the most oppos'd to Antick, nothing can be more Gothick than an Opera, since nothing can be more oppos'd to the ancient Tragedy, than the modern Tragedy in Musick, because the one is reasonable, the other ridiculous; the one is artful, the other absurd; the one beneficial, the other pernicious; in short, the one natural and the other monstrous."