SEASON OF
1779-1780
iOc^His season was enlivened by few circumstances of any note.
With two exceptions no new plays were presented that attracted
much attention, nor were any new performers of repute
&4QRCKB6 brought forward. The “coalition” of the preceding season still
continued, although on a much smaller scale, and with the succeeding
season it was entirely abolished. The receipts at all the theatres were
unusually low, notably in November and December — a fact attributable
ln part to the rains and fogs that for many weeks plagued the city.
The first play referred to above was The Critic. It came out at Drury Lane
at the end of October, and was acted 48 times. This was Sheridan’s seventh
Production within a period of five years, and his seventh success. For the
stage he wrote nothing more ofimportance until, twenty years later, he brought
°ut a rifacimento, to-day unreadable, of a tragedy by Kotzebue. It was entitled
Pizarro and, financially at least, it was one of Sheridan’s greatest triumphs.
But the skill that has maintained his fame as a writer of comedy died out
as soon as he had finished work on The Critic.
On 21 April the playgoers at Drury Lane saw, for the first time since
December 1772, Hamlet “as originally written by Shakespeare.” For seven
years this theatre had performed the play only in an unpublished re¬
arrangement by David Garrick, who entirely omitted the gravediggers,
and made other changes seemingly intended to give to the play more
“regularity”.!
At Covent Garden Mrs Cowley’s comedy, The Belle’s Stratagem, was
Produced with considerable success. The strength of the company performing
Lo ^°r 1 account of Garrick’s alteration of this play see G. W. Stone, Jr., “Garrick’s
nS Lost Alteration of Hamlet PMLA, XLIX (1934), 890-921.
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