ibber was not above looking at the practical side of things, but he
had no patience, nevertheless, with the Philistianism of Rich, who
had that fatal fondness for "paying extraordinary prices to singers,
dancers, and other exotick performers, which were as constantly
deducted out of the sinking sallaries of his actors."[A]

[Footnote A: Operatic singers and dancers, mostly recruited from the
Continent, were fast becoming fashionable, and, as their appearance
on the scene interfered with the profits of the actors, it may be
imagined that the latter held the strangers in much contempt.]

For it seems that Master Rich had not bought his share of the Drury
Lane patent to elevate the stage, but rather to get a fortune
therefrom. "And to say truth, his sense of everything to be shown
there was much upon a level with the taste of the multitude, whose
opinion and whose money weigh'd with him full as much as that of the
best judges. [Colley was evidently thinking of himself as one of these
judges.] His point was to please the majority who could more easilly
comprehend anything they _saw_ than the daintiest things that could be
said to them."

Nay, Christopher actually went so far that he once sought the
services of an elephant to add to the strength of his company, thus
anticipating the realism of our own time, when a few cows, a horse or
two, a lot of chickens and some real straw will cover a multitude
of sins in the construction of a play.[A] Yet, sad to relate, the
elephant was never allowed to lend weight to the drama, as "from the
jealousy which so formidable a rival had rais'd in his dancers, and by
his bricklayer's assuring him that if the walls were to be open'd wide
enough for its entrance it might endanger the fall of the house [the
old theatre in Dorset Garden, which Rich wished to use] he gave up his
project, and with it so hopeful a prospect of making the receipts of
the stage run higher than all the wit and force of the best writers
had ever yet rais'd them to."

[Footnote A: Apropos to the appearance of elephants on the stage, a
capital anecdote is told by Colman in his "Random Records." Johnstone,
a machinist employed at Drury Lane during the latter portion of the
eighteenth century, was celebrated for his superior taste and skill
in the construction of flying chariots, triumphal cars, palanquins,
banners, wooden children to be tossed over battlements, and straw
heroes and heroines to be hurled down a preci