of Shakespeare’s tragedy.  The gentleman’s name was David Garrick.  Had he failed the theatre might have lived on.  But his success was fatal to it.  The public went in crowds from all parts of the town to see the new actor.  “From the polite ends of Westminster the most elegant company flocked to Goodman’s Fields, insomuch that from Temple Bar the whole way was covered with a string of coaches.”  The patentees of Drury Lane and Covent Garden interfered, “alarmed at the deficiency of their own receipts,” and invoked the aid of the Lord Chamberlain.  The Goodman’s Fields Theatre was closed, and Garrick was spirited away to Drury Lane, with a salary of 600 guineas a-year, a larger sum than had ever before been awarded to any performer.

It will be seen that the Chamberlain had deemed it his mission to limit, as much as possible, the number of places of theatrical entertainment in London.  Playgoers were bidden to be content with Drury Lane and Covent Garden; it was not conceivable to the noblemen and commoners occupying the Houses of Parliament, or to the place-holders in the Chamberlain’s office, or in the royal household, that other theatres could possibly be required.

Still attempts were occasionally made to establish additional places of entertainment.  In 1785, John Palmer, the actor famous as the original Joseph Surface, laid the first stone of a new theatre, to be called the East London, or Royalty, in the neighbourhood of the old Goodman’s Fields Theatre, which had been many years abandoned of the actors and converted into a goods warehouse.  The building was completed in 1787.  The opening representation was announced; when the proprietors of the patent theatres gave warning that any infringement of their privileges would be followed by the prosecution of Mr. Palmer and his company.  The performances took place, nevertheless, but they were stated to be for the benefit of the London Hospital, and not, therefore, for “hire, gain, or reward;” so the actors avoided risk of commitment as rogues and vagabonds.  But necessarily the enterprise ended in disaster.  Palmer, his friends alleged, lost his whole fortune; it was shrewdly suspected, however, that he had, in truth, no fortune to lose.  In any case he speedily retired from the new theatre.  It was open for brief seasons with such exhibitions of music, dancing, and pantomime, as were held to be unaffected by the Act, and permissible under the license of the local magistrates.  From time to time, however, the relentless patentees took proceedings against the actors.  Delpini, the clown, was even committed to prison for exclaiming “Roast Beef!” in a Christmas pantomime.  By uttering words without the accompaniment of music he had, it appeared, constituted himself an actor of a stage play.