quitted the theatre after the first piece, without waiting to see the pantomime.  He denied that he had ever had any intention to insult the audience.  The arrest of the gentleman in the upper boxes was not in consequence of his orders, nor was he in anyway acquainted with the fact until after the discharge of the prisoner.  There had been a quarrel in the theatre and much confusion consequent upon some persons flinging the candles and sconces on the stage.  He denied that he had employed “bruisers” to coerce the audience.  The peace-officers, carpenters, and scenemen (which last, on account of the pantomime, were very numerous), and other servants of the theatre, had not appeared until the tumult was at its height.  The benches were being torn up, and there were threats of storming the stage and demolishing the scenes.  If any “bruisers” were in the pit, the manager presumed that they must have entered the house with the multitude who came in after the doorkeepers had been driven from their posts.  Finally, he appealed to the public to pronounce whether, after the concession he had made, and the injury he had sustained, to the extent of several hundred pounds, they would persist in a course which would only deprive them of their diversions, the players of subsistence, and compel him to resign his property.

This appeal had its effect:  the disturbance ceased:  although there was some discontent that an arrangement so profitable to the manager had been agreed to.  It was found that in practice, when people were once comfortably seated, “very few ever went out to demand their advanced money; and those few very soon grew tired of doing so; until at last it settled in the quiet payment of the advanced prices.”  Mr. Fleetwood, however, did not long continue in the management.

In the year 1763 there occurred another disturbance.  An adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” by Mr. Benjamin Victor, had been produced at Drury Lane Theatre.  It was played five nights with success, but, on the sixth, when, according to the old theatrical custom, the receipts went to the author of the adaptation, the performance was interrupted.  “A set of young men,” writes Mr. Victor, “who called themselves ‘The Town,’ had consulted together and determined to compel the manager to admit them at the end of the third act at half-price to every performance except in the run of a new pantomime; and they chose to make that demand on the sixth night of ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ though it was printed on the playbills ‘for the benefit of the author of the alterations.’” The performance of the play was actually forbidden.  One Mr. Fitzpatrick, who was the avowed ringleader of the reformers, harangued the audience from the boxes, and set forth in very warm language the impositions of the managers, vehemently pleading the right of the public to fix the price of their bill of fare.  Garrick came forward to address the house, but was received with a storm of disapprobation, and refused a hearing.  The uproar continued; the benches were torn up, and the lustres and girandoles broken.  Ultimately, the money taken at the doors was returned to the audience, and the theatre cleared.