Colley Cibber mentions:--About this time the patentee (Rich) having very near finished his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, began to think of forming a new company; and, in the meantime, found it necessary to apply for leave to employ them. By the weak defence he had always made against the several attacks upon his interests, and former Government of the theatre (Drury Lane), it might be a question, if his house had been ready, in the Queen's (Anne) time, whether he would then have had the spirit to ask, or interest enough to obtain leave to use it; but in the following reign, as it did not appear he had done anything to forfeit the right of his patent, he prevailed with Mr. Craggs, the younger, to lay his case before the king, which he did in so effectual a manner that (as Mr. Craggs himself told me) his Majesty was pleased to say upon it, "That he remembered when he had been in England before, in King Charles's time, there had been two theatres in London; and as the patent seemed to be a lawful grant, he saw no reason why two play-houses might not be continued." The suspension of the patent being thus taken off, the younger multitude seemed to call aloud for two play-houses! Many desired another, from the common notion, that two would always create emulation, in the actors. Others too were as eager for them, from the natural ill-will that follows the fortunate or prosperous in any undertaking. Of this low malevolence we had, now and then, remarkable instances; we had been forced to dismiss an audience of a hundred and fifty pounds, from a disturbance spirited up, by obscure people, who never gave any better reason for it than that it was their fancy to support the idle complaint of one rival actress against another, in their several pretensions to the chief part in a new tragedy. But as this tumult seemed only to be the wantonness of English liberty, I shall not presume to lay any further censure upon it. Now, notwithstanding this public desire of re-establishing two houses; and though I have allowed the former actors greatly our superiors; and the managers I am speaking of not to have been without their private errors, yet under all these disadvantages, it is certain, the stage, for twenty years before this time, had never been in so flourishing a condition. But, in what I have said, I would not be understood to be an advocate for two play-houses; for we shall soon find that two sets of actors, tolerated in the same place, have constantly ended in the corruption of the theatre; of which the auxiliary entertainments, that have so barbarously supplied the defects of weak action, have, for some years past, been a flagrant instance; it may not, therefore, be here improper to shew how our childish Pantomimes first came to take so gross a possession of the stage.