the walls of the old tennis court in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was
the home of the company headed by the noble Betterton, the "English
Roscius," who had, in 1695, headed the revolt against the management
of the other house. At that time the tide of popular success at Drury
Lane had reached a rather low ebb, a painful circumstance due, no
doubt, to the fickleness of a public that was beginning to tire of
the favourite players and to betray a fondness for operatic and
spectacular productions rather than the "legitimate." Christopher
Rich, the manager of the theatre, was, like many of his kind, more
given to considering the weight of his purse than the scant supply of
sentiment with which nature might originally have endowed him, and so
he tried to do two characteristic things. The salaries of his faithful
employés should be reduced and the older members of the company
retired into the background as much as possible. Younger faces must
occupy the centre of the stage; even Betterton, the greatest actor of
his time, should be supplanted in some of his parts by the dissolute
George Powell, and the genius of Mrs. Barry,[A] whom Dryden thought
the greatest actress he had ever seen, was to give way to the less
matured charms of the lovely Anne Bracegirdle.

[Footnote A: Mrs. Barry is said to have been a very elegant dresser;
but, like most of her contemporaries, she was not a very correct one.
Thus, in the "Unhappy Favourite," she played Queen Elizabeth, and in
the scene of the crowning she wore the coronation robes of James II.'s
Queen; and Ewell says she gave the audience a strong idea of the
first-named Queen.--DORAN'S "Annals of the Stage."]

Cibber relates the story in a sympathetic vein. "Though the success of
the 'Prophetess' and 'King Arthur' (two dramatic operas in which the
patentees[A] had embark'd all their hopes) was in appearance very