The Case of Mrs. Clive | Page 4

it was only a cover hiding an underlying malaise.
Implying that the managers set out to ruin certain performers, including
herself, Mrs. Clive accuses them of putting on "a better Face to the
Town" by publishing (inaccurate) salary figures--a ploy to get public
sanction for lower salaries. Mrs. Clive alludes to salaries published
ostensibly by Fleetwood in the papers (e.g., _Gentleman's Magazine_,
XIII, October 1743, 553), where the pay of such lights as Garrick,
Macklin, Pritchard, and Clive in the 1742-1743 season is made to seem
higher than the salaries of such worthies as Wilks, Betterton, Cibber,
and Oldfield in the 1708-1709 season. The actors, in presenting their
case (_Gentleman's Magazine_, XIII, November 1743, 609), hit at
Fleetwood for citing 1708-1709 salaries, for "the Stage [then] both of
_Drury-Lane_ and the _Hay-market_, were in so wretched a
Condition ... as not to be worth any body's Acceptance." The players
use instead salaries of the 1729 players "to place the salaries of the
present Actors in a true light," since the stage in that year flourished. In
1729, Wilks, the highest paid actor, earned more than his later equal,
Garrick. All other principals' salaries were comparable.
The main complaint of Fleetwood's company, then, was not only base
salary but the "Fallacy" of the manager's account and his "setting down
besides the Manager's Charges, every benefit Night, what is got by the
Actor's own private Interests in Money and Tickets, as also the Article
of 50L for Cloaths, added to the Actresses Account, which is absolutely
an Advantage to the Manager, as they always lay out considerably
more." This evidence, if not in itself damning to Fleetwood's designs
toward his actors, at least indicates the internecine breach at Drury
Lane. (The inter-theater conflict, important for its effect on repertory
and morale, is adequately examined in theater histories and lies outside
my interests in this essay.)
Mrs. Clive admits, however, that reduced, unpaid, or "handled" salaries

were not the first fear of the actors; it was instead, she says, the fear of
what "would happen from an Agreement supposed to be concluded
betwixt the two Managers, which made 'em apprehend, that if they
submitted to act under such Agreements, they must be absolutely in the
Managers Power." As the writer of The Case Between the Managers (p.
11) presents it, a conversation between a personified Covent Garden
and Drury Lane would have gone like this: "Well, but, Brother Drury,
we can manage that matter [how to keep audiences]--Suppose you and I
make a Cartel; for instance, agree for every other Theatre, and oblige
ourselves by this Cartel to reduce by near one half the Salaries of our
principal Performers--I'gad, we may cramp 'em rarely this way--they
must serve us at any rate we tax their Merit at, for they'll then have no
where else to go to." Drury Lane responds, "D--n me, if that is not
divinely thought--my dear Friend, give me a Kiss."
Late in the summer of 1743, several months before the salary figures
described above, Garrick, Macklin, Clive, and Mrs. Pritchard among
the principal players attempted to obtain another license to set up their
own company in the Haymarket: shades of 1733. They applied to the
Chamberlain Grafton--who denied it, in part perhaps because put out
that Garrick commanded over L500 a year. There was no chance,
therefore, to sidestep the monopoly effected by the licensing act.
Leading the secession, Garrick agreed with his colleagues to stay out
until redress was forthcoming. Redress did not come, the defectors lost,
Fleetwood won. He starved them in not out, Garrick was persuaded to
return to Drury Lane (which he does in early December, 1743) by the
entreaties of several of the destitute seceded players who asked him to
accede to Fleetwood's terms. As Garrick explains to Macklin (see note
2), he did so because he had the economic welfare of his fellow actors
at heart. Macklin infuriated with him and Clive disappointed in him,
both refused to accept Garrick's decision, and hence became renegade.
Macklin, uninvited back by Fleetwood, admired Olive's decision to
have no part in signing a petition presented to her by her fellow
defectors who understood that the refusal of a separate license
dissolved their bond. Macklin writes in his Reply to _Mr. Garrick's
Answer_ (p. 27) that "it ought to be known that when this Letter was
carried to Mrs. Clive, and her Name to it desired, she had the Honour
and Spirit to refuse, upon any Consideration, to be made so ridiculous a

Tool to so base a Purpose."
Others were not so generous as Macklin. The author of _The Disputes
between the Director of D----y, and the Pit Potentates,_ one "B.Y.,"
champions the cause of the non-principal players against such as Mrs.
Clive, "for the low-salary'd Players are