stry of the surviving actors? But the
patentees, it seems, thought the surer way was to bring down their pay
in proportion to the fall of their audiences. To make this project
more feasible they propos'd to begin at the head of 'em, rightly
judging that if the principals acquiesc'd, their inferiors would
murmur in vain.

"To bring this about with a better grace, they, under pretence of
bringing younger actors forward, order'd several of Betterton's
and Mrs. Barry's chief parts to be given to young Powel and Mrs.
Bracegirdle. In this they committed two palpable errors; for while
the best actors are in health, and still on the stage, the public is
always apt to be out of humour when those of a lower class pretend to
stand in their places."

And with a bit more of this timely philosophy--to which, let it be
hoped, he ever lived up to himself--Colley goes on to say that,
"tho' the giddy head of Powel accepted the parts of Betterton, Mrs.
Bracegirdle had a different way of thinking, and desir'd to be excused
from those of Mrs. Barry; her good sense was not to be misled by the
insidious favour of the patentees; she knew the stage was wide enough
for her success, without entering into any such rash and invidious
competition with Mrs. Barry, and, therefore, wholly refus'd acting any
part that properly belong'd to her."

Then came the revolt, which the astute Betterton ("a cunning old fox"
Gildon once dubbed him) seems to have managed with all the diplomacy
of a Machiavelli. "Betterton upon this drew into his party most of the
valuable actors, who, to secure their unity, enter'd with him into a
sort of association to stand or fall together." In the meantime he
pushed the war into Africa, or, to change the simile, determined to
lead his people out of the land of bondage, as exemplified by Drury
Lane, and settle down in a new theatre. Nay, the "cunning old fox"
even went so far as to secure an interview with his most august
sovereign, William of Orange. What an audience it must have been,
with William, stiff, uncomfortable, and unintentionally repellant,
confronted by the greatest of living "Hamlets" and a group of other
players made brilliant by the presence of the imperial but not too
moral Mistress Barry, the lovely Bracegirdle, breathing the perfume of
virtue, real or assumed, and the fascinating Verbruggen.[A] Perhaps
the King found them an interesting lot, perhaps he merely regarded
them with the same good-natured curios