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 o
ther 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