' However, before being put on the stage it was submitted to
Dryden, and by him and others prepared for representation, so that it
was well fathered. It was successful enough, and Congreve thus found his
vocation. In his dedication--a regular piece of flummery of those days,
for which authors were often well paid, either in cash or interest--he
acknowledges a debt of gratitude to Lord Halifax, who appears to have
taken the young man by the hand.
The young Templar could do nothing better now than write another play.
Play-making was as fashionable an amusement in those days of Old Drury,
the only patented theatre then, as novel-writing is in 1860; and when
the young ensign, Vanbrugh, could write comedies and take the direction
of a theatre, it was no derogation to the dignity of the Staffordshire
squire's grandson to do as much. Accordingly, in the following year he
brought out a better comedy, 'The Double Dealer,' with a prologue which
was spoken by the famous Anne Bracegirdle. She must have been eighty
years old when Horace Walpole wrote of her to that other Horace--Mann:
'Tell Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me this
morning. As she went out and wanted her clogs, she turned to me and
said: "I remember at the playhouse they used to call, Mrs.
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