The building had been before used as a
theatre in the days of the Merry Monarch, and Tom Killegrew had acted
here some twenty years before; but it had again become a 'tennis-quatre
of the lesser sort,' says Cibber, and the new theatre was not very
grand in fabric. But Betterton drew to it all the best actors and
actresses of his former company; and Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle
remained true to the old man. Congreve, to his honour, espoused the same
cause, and the theatre opened with his play of 'Love for Love,' which
was more successful than either of the former. The veteran himself spoke
the prologue, and fair Bracegirdle the epilogue, in which the poet thus
alluded to their change of stage:
'And thus our audience, which did once resort
To shining theatres to see our sport,
Now find us tost into a tennis-court.
Thus from the past, we hope for future grace:
I beg it----
And some here know I have a _begging face_.'
The king himself completed the success of the opening by attending it,
and the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields might have ruined the older
house, if it had not been for the rapidity with which Vanbrugh and
Cibber, who wrote for Old Drury, managed to concoct their pieces; while
Congreve was a slower, though perhaps better, writer.
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