Event Comment: Doors open at 5 o'clock. Play to begin at 6 o'clock. Prices: Boxes 5s. Pit 3s. Gallery 2s. Upper Gallery 1s. Places to be had of
Mr Johnston at the Stage door. [Customary note, repeated.] Rec'd
Mrs Groath's one year's rent to
Xmas last #3; Paid Renters #8 (Treasurer's Book). This regular expenditure was made nightly for the 189 acting nights of the season, as well as for the 11 nights on which Oratorio's were given in the Spring. The total amount came to #1600. No further note will be made of this item this season. The
Westminster Magazine this month, reiterated its doleful cry "that the stage is on its decline." In a
long article on "Stage Effect, or Dramatic Cookery," it concluded that our "Theatrical managers and even our Theatrical Critics seem to have resolved all the merit of dramatic composition into stage trick, and rest their criterion of Dramatic Genius on the knowledge of what they are pleased to call Stage effect." The "Theatre" article for the month remarked upon the boldness of Garrick's opening with the
Beggar's Opera, "notwithstanding he was requested by the
Bench of Justices at
Bow-Street, to suppress it, as they were of opinion it had done a great deal of mischief among the low class of people."
Lloyd's Evening Post, 17 Sept., included extracts from letters against playing the
Beggar's Opera, "because every performance makes from one two twenty thieves."
Sir John Fielding and his associates had addressed a letter to Garrick requesting him not to perform the opera for the same reason. The
Morning Chronicle, 23 Sept., praised Garrick for not complying with the Justices' request.
Wm Augustus Miles published a
Letter to Sir John Fielding occasioned by his extraordinary Request to
Mr Garrick for the suppression of the Beggar's Opera (44 pp.). In this he vindicated the moral effect of the opera.] Receipts: #158 (Treasurer's Book). [Note: For perform ance at hay 18 and 20 September, see Season of 1772-1773, p. 1740