as not to be worth any body's Acceptance." The players use instead
salaries of the 1729 players "to place the salaries of the present
Actors in a true light," since the stage in that year flourished. In
1729, Wilks, the highest paid actor, earned more than his later equal,
Garrick. All other principals' salaries were comparable.

The main complaint of Fleetwood's company, then, was not only base
salary but the "Fallacy" of the manager's account and his "setting down
besides the Manager's Charges, every benefit Night, what is got by the
Actor's own private Interests in Money and Tickets, as also the Article
of 50L for Cloaths, added to the Actresses Account, which is absolutely
an Advantage to the Manager, as they always lay out considerably more."
This evidence, if not in itself damning to Fleetwood's designs toward
his actors, at least indicates the internecine breach at Drury Lane.
(The inter-theater conflict, important for its effect on repertory and
morale, is adequately examined in theater histories and lies outside my
interests in this essay.)

Mrs. Clive admits, however, that reduced, unpaid, or "handled" salaries
were not the first fear of the actors; it was instead, she says, the
fear of what "would happen from an Agreement supposed to be concluded
betwixt the two Managers, which made 'em apprehend, that if they
submitted to act under such Agreements, they must be absolutely in the
Managers Power." As the writer of _The Case Between the Managers_ (p.
11) presents it, a conversation between a personified Covent Garden and
Drury Lane would have gone like this: "Well, but, Brother _Drury_, we
can manage that matter [how to keep audiences]--Suppose you and I make a
Cartel; for instance, agree for every other Theatre, and oblige
ourselves by this Cartel to reduce by near one half the Salaries of our
principal Performers--I'gad, we may cramp 'em rarely this way--they must