turn an honest penny by trading on the credulity and unbusinesslike
qualities of many a deluded player. The average manager pays his
debts and is quite as stable and upright in his dealings as one could
desire, but what can be said of the man who take companies "on the
road," after making all sorts of glowing promises, and finally elopes
with the money-box, leaving his actors stranded in a strange city.
Incidents of this kind, which to the victims have more of tragedy than
any play in their _repertoire_, occur almost every day during the
theatrical season, but nothing is done to prevent the ever-increasing
scandal. The erstwhile proprietor of the company returns by Pullman
car to New York, complains loudly about "poor business," a "sunken
fortune," &c., and then prepares to take out another combination. As
for his dupes, who are probably half-starving in some third class
western town, they may walk home on the railroad ties.

Yes, Mr. Rich was evidently intended for a wider sphere and a more
progressive age than those he had to adorn. But despite all his
financial talents some of the best players in Drury Lane were ready to
desert from that house the moment the chance came.

[Illustration: WILLIAM CONGREVE

By Sir GODFREY KNELLER, 1709]

The chance did come, in the season of 1706-7, when Mrs. Oldfield,
Wilks, Mrs. Rogers, and several others, went over to the handsome new
theatre in the Haymarket, and were joined there later by Cibber.
This imposing house was opened in the spring of 1705 by Congreve and
Vanbrugh, and to it had gone Betterton and his associates at Lincoln's
Inn Fields. But noble old Roscius, who had so long cast his welcome