The Production
PATENT THEATRES
Authors offered new plays to the managers, ofcourse, atany seas.fl
of the year, as tlie Garrick correspondence reveals. Yet tltey were smart t.
snhmit manuscript in tlie late spring, so their play migltt be considered'
;
where necessary, and set in rehearsal d tiring the opening montlrs of the
follotving season, to appear in December or January. Rich proffered Smollc’t
a sort of contract in this way when, accordiitg to Covent Garden Acco;;1‘!){
Books , lie advanced him00
د
"towards purchasing Mr Smollet’s copy
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but sometliing happened to break tlie agreement, for lie٢
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produced the play, even after paying for it.
LICENSING. Tlie first actual step in production of an
accepte
play, alter a pattern established in 1737, was to bid tlie promjiter prepar
copy for the licenser. Occasionally the prompter did tliis himself, but ni°r
often delegated tlie task to t
tinder-prompters or to actors ivlio could
a clear liand. Examination of the Larpent items reveals, by the various
؛
employed, that tlie division oflabor in this copying was customarily
assigne;
to ftom two to four persons. The Account Books inclutle numerous ite.n
pay to Ryan and others for such copying.
times reierring to a roiio sneet or roorscap containing aoout rorty-rwu j٠١
The term continued into the late eigliteenth century, although tlie
the Garrick period, were written in quarto-size notebooks. T
n٠
page contained about twenty-one lines, and two sides formed a leng ; /
One of John Brownsmith’s two useful books published in7
ل
rk
!*;;contained a !،catalogue ٥، several hundred parts in different p
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and farces
with the number of Lengths noted that each contained.’ •Spa'
91 L. M. Knapp, Tobias Smollet
(Princeton, N.
L, 1949), p. 89, quotes a letter fro. 1 1"
Carlyle stating that Smollct received f 300 for his
Alceste.
92 See w. w. Gregg, Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses (Oxford)
cs
the part 0
Orlando, p. 2
(polgcf
'93 See MS leHgth for Shylock, transcribed for Mr Ward, Doncaster, 25 Oct. 1772 (
Shakespeare Library).
clxxvi