her [my punctuation].[6]

Mrs. Clive's stature as a comic actress would, then, seemingly make her
a prize for Rich or Fleetwood, but they did their best to thwart her
career and happiness at their theaters.

I suspect that their motivation in so doing was fear that her temper,
her influence with other actors and her audiences, and her strong
loyalty to her profession would hinder their legislated power to control
absolutely London theaters, players, and audiences in 1743. Not much
investigation is required to see Mrs. Clive at her clamoring best, at
various times head to head with Susannah Cibber, Peg Woffington,
Woodward, Shuter, or Garrick. Her letters to Garrick show that as late
as the sixties she was quite capable of vitriol when she felt that she
or her friends were unjustly treated. Tate Wilkinson was surely correct
in describing her as "a mixture of combustibles; she was passionate,
cross, and vulgar," often simultaneously.[7] If this were the case in
mere greenroom tiffs or casual correspondence, how the ire of "the
Clive" must have been excited by the cartelists, who did their utmost to
keep her out of joint and almost out of sight.

In 1733, Fielding, who furthered Mrs. Clive's career by writing and
editing parts of his plays for her and publicly praising her as a woman
and as an actress, wrote the following encomium on her professional
integrity in his "Epistle to Mrs. Clive," prefatory to _The Intriguing
Chambermaid_:

The part you have maintained in the present dispute between the
players and the patentees, is so full of honour, that had it been
in higher life, it would have given you the reputation of the