Event Comment: Not Acted
these Eight Years [see 24 April 1741]. Benefit
Cibber, Jr. Tickets and places of
Hobson at
the Stage door. Tickets ddliver'd out for
All's Well at
Covent Garden theatre will be taken to
the above mentioned play this night. [
Mrs Clive's Prologue recommended
the cause of Liberty to
the Ladies of
Great Britain. Cibber had pleaded in his advance advertisement on 5 April in
the General Advertiser.] As I have in justice to my creditors assigned over so much of my salary as reduces
the remainder to a very small pittance, I very much depend on
the encouragement and indulgence of
the town at my Benefit. [On
the day of
the benefit he inserted in
the General Advertiser a long, double column address to
the Publick puffing his Benefit, and scotching a rumor industriously and invidiously spread that he came to
Drury Lane only to impede
Mrs Cibber in her performance
there. In this he washes in public
the linen of his domestic affairs at some length, professing his virtue, forbearance, and generosity, and Mrs Cibber's unfairness and ingratitude, citing her salary as about #700 per year, not a penny of which would she afford for his relief from creditors, or to bail him out of
the Fleet prison where he languished six months. He alleges that she was instrumental in forming a cartel between
the rival
theatrical managers with precluded his employment by ei
ther house, and that she refused to act a benefit for him when he was in debtor's prison.