ABSTRACT
The new Mrs Booth was first billed under her married name for her appearance as Ophelia, when Drury Lane opened for business as usual on 12 September 1719. Before Christmas, past events caught up with the company. Complaints about the Drury Lane managers, who avoided presenting new plays and frequently raised prices, and Steele’s failure to reform the stage as he had promised when he received his patent, drew the Lord Chamberlain’s attention. When Steele opposed him politically in 1719, and was vociferously supported by Cibber, the Lord Chamberlain saw his opportunity and took it. He wrote to Steele, Wilks and Booth on 19 December 1719, directing them to dismiss Cibber as an actor and a manager. After the performance on 23 January 1720, a proclamation was read from the Drury Lane stage announcing that acting had been suspended there; the King had revoked the licence of 1714. This was followed on 25 January by a written order of silence, which ignored Steele’s patent. Those actors who remembered the 1709 closure must have feared the worst. In the event, the theatre remained dark for only three nights, for the Lord Chamberlain issued a new licence to Cibber, Wilks and Booth which enabled Drury Lane to reopen on 28 January. His real quarrel was with Steele who, despite strenuous efforts, only regained the use of his patent on 2 May 1721.1
On 2 February 1720, the Lord Chamberlain ordered that ‘no benefit might be Allowed for the future to any Actor before Mrs Oldfield and Mrs Porters benefitt Night and that the prizes [sic] of the House be never raised without my leave first had’.2 Throughout the 1720s, Mrs Booth’s benefit was invariably the third to be taken by an actress, following those of Mrs Oldfield and Mrs Porter. The Drury Lane company were formally sworn to ‘act subservient to the Lord Chamberlain’ at his Whitehall office on 4 March 1720.3
Although Lincoln’s Inn Fields avoided the Lord Chamberlain’s scrutiny, Rich also had his troubles. He had resumed his managerial responsibilities by 1719-20, but he was still unable to make his theatre profitable. On 6 August 1720, Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal reported ‘Two Executions having seiz’d the New PlayHouse in Lincolns Inn Fields on violent Presumptions of Debt, the Company is dissolv’d, and the Playing suspended till they have compos’d the Matter’.4 Somehow,
Rich was able to survive; Lincoln’s Inn Fields opened as usual in October 1720, and continued to compete with Drury Lane for audiences in the following seasons.
