Event Comment: Rich's Company. The date of the premiere is not knwon, but the Dedication is dated February 1699@1700, the play was entered in the
Term Catalogues in February 1699@1700, and advertised in the
Flying Post, 16 March 1699@1700. The latest likely date for the first production is January 1700, but the play may have appeared in late December as a rival to
lif's production of
I Henry IV early in January 1700.
Cibber, Apology, I, 275: But the
Master of the Revels, who then licens'd all Plays for the Stage, assisted this Reformation [of the morality of the stage] with a more zealous Severity than ever. He would strike out whole Scenes of a vicious or immoral Character, tho' it were visibly shewn to be reform'd or punish'd; a severe Instance of this kind falling upon my self may be an Excuse for my relating it: When
Richard the Third (as I alter'd it from
Shakespear) came from his Hands to the Stage, he expung'd the whole first Act without sparing a Line of it. This extraordinary Stroke of a
Sic volo occasion'd my applying to him for the small Indulgence of a Speech or two, that the other four Acts might limp on with a little less Absurdity! no! he had no leisure to consider what might be separately inoffensive. [Cibber continues with an explanation of the censor's argument for cutting the act.] Preface to Cibber's
Ximena, 1719:
Richard the Third, which I alter'd from Shakespear, did not raise me Five Pounds on Third Day