Event Comment: Benefit for
Mrs Cibber. Afterpiece: A Dramatic piece of one act taken from the
French. Never perform'd before. The characters in it to be newdress'd. Pit
and boxes laid together
and amphitheatre on stage. Tickets deliver'd for 3 March will be taken. [See, 20 March. The note in
Have at you all; or, The Drury Lane Journal (19 March) seems to comment on this performance: Those heroic full-bottomed perukes, whose bushy expanse is spread over the whole back of the wearer, have lately been exploded on the stage,
and a more natural, I mean a less enormous covering for the head substituted in its stead. Unfortunately
Mr Barry this night chose to appear in one of the most curiously frizzled out
and of the fullest tragical flow I ever saw: When in the last act it was our heroes turn to be kill'd, honest
Ryan being eager to dispatch him, just as he was to plump down upon the carpet, entangled his h
and in the vast profusion of
Macbeth's hair;
and by jerking back his sword after the concluding stab, away came poor periwig along with it, while our hero was left expos'd, in the last agonies of death-bare headed. Ryan in the meanwhile with some confuconfusion contemplated Full-Bottom, which he held dangling in his h
and, but sadly tumbled out of curl; at length he good naturedly adjusted it on the bald pate of the tyrant, who was then enabled to make his dying speech with proper regularity
and decorum."