So important a role did politics play in this first performance of “Cato” that to many in the house the merits of the actors must have passed unrecognised.  And yet those merits were striking.  Who could have made a lovlier Marcia than did Nance; and how thoroughly she must have justified the passion of that most virtuous of princes, the sententious Juba.  The character was not worthy of her genius, but that did not prevent this true artist from giving to it all manner of dignity and beauty.  Who could help pitying her lover when Marcia first repelled his amorous advances: 

  “I should be griev’d, young Prince, to think my presence
  Unbent your thoughts, and slacken’d ’em to arms,
  While, warm with slaughter, our victorious foe
  Threatens aloud, and calls you to the field.”

And when Marcia, having sent away the youth, explained: 

  “His air, his voice, his looks, and honest soul
  Speak all so movingly in his behalf,
  I dare not trust myself to hear him talk,”

the apology came with such delicious grace and plaintiveness that the house forgot her coldness in sorrow for her woes.

And Barton Booth?  His superb acting of Cato raised him to such an airy pinnacle of fame that he soon became one of the managers of Drury Lane.  The other players were evidently all more or less effective, barring Cibber, whose Syphax (the Numidian warrior who seeks the downfall of Cato), must have made the judicious grieve.  Indeed we can easily believe that he used so many grotesque motions and spoke his lines with such a cracked voice as to win only ridicule and “a loud laugh of contempt.”

Lord Bolingbroke’s gift of fifty guineas had a disturbing effect not only on the Whigs but on Manager Dogget as well.  That worthy feared the success of “Cato” would cause Booth to claim a share in the direction of Drury Lane, as he did, of course, in a very short time.  In the hopes of shutting off all pretensions to this honour by a paltry expedient Dogget thought that Cibber, Wilks and himself, as joint managers, could relieve themselves of every obligation by duplicating the generosity of the Tory statesman.

“He insinuated to us (for he was a staunch Whig)” relates Colley, “that this present of fifty guineas was a sort of Tory triumph which they had no pretence to; and that for his part he could not bear that so redoubted a champion for liberty as Cato should be bought off to the cause of a contrary party.  He therefore, in the seeming zeal of his heart, proposed that the managers themselves should make the same present to Booth which had been made him from the boxes the day before.  This, he said, would recommend the equality and liberal spirit of our management to the town, and might be a means to secure Booth more firmly in our interest, it never having been known that the skill of the best actor had received so round a reward or gratuity in one day before.

“Wilks, who wanted nothing but abilities to be reduc’d to tell him that it was my opinion that Booth would never be made easy by anything we could do for him, ’till he had a share in the profits and management; and that, as he did not want friends to assist him, whatever his merit might be before, every one would think since his acting of Cato, he had now enough to back his pretentions to it.”