Advertising
THE PATENT HOUSES
Close to the nerve center of success in theatrical operation lies ad-
vertising. The principal modes during the Garrick period were those
which had proved successful earlier: playbill, newspaper notice, and vocal
announcement of the next niglit’s play at the close of a performance.
Until the spring of 1763, managers instructed the prompter to prepare
notices for the daily papers, as well as for tlie printer retained by the theatre
to print handbills. After 14 March 1763, however, the managers inform US
that authentic advertisements for plays will be found only in the Public
Advertiser. But the Daily Gazetteer continued occasionally to carry brief
notices, when the managers advertised in otlier papers tliey had to pay for
insertion of special notices, as, for example, when Covent Garden, 26 October
1766 "Paid for the paragraph of the Royal Family’s coming in the Ledger
and the Gazetteer 6r.,” or, again, 8 November 1766 "Paitl for a paragrapli of
the Pantomime, Dr Faustus in the Ledger and Gazetteer, 6;.” 46
Extant sources for advertising information are the files of playbills in the
Huntington Library, Harvard Theatre Collection, and Folger Shakespeare
Library. Those printed before 1766 customarily omit the date of the year,
and must be identified with some care. Those printed after 1766 include full
dating by day of the week, day of the month and year, and may easily be
filed sequentially. Sources for newspaper notices lie in the full files of the
General Advertiser in the Burney Collection of the British Museum, as well as
in many volumes of news-cuttings scattered tlrroughout other libraries. The
latter are generally difficult to use witli accuracy because they liave become
detached from their identifying dates.
Some ten items of information appear both on bills and in newspaper
notices: (!) name of theatre and date of performance; (2) titles of play and
afterpiece; (3) casts, or lists of actors playing the principal parts; (4) the
entr’acte entertainments and their performers; (5) prices and restrictive
comments about collections and forbidden areas ("No money can be return d
after the curtain is drawn up, and on account of the macltines it is hoped no
gentleman will take offense that he cannot possibly be admitted into the
46 Entries in the Covent Garden Account Book (British Museum, Egerton 2272).
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