The patent for Drury Lane being renewed, Mr. Booth, who found his health decline, began to think it was time to dispose of his share and interest in the theatre. The purchaser was John Highmore, Esq., a gentleman who had unhappily contracted an attachment to the stage, from having one night performed the part of Lothario for a wager.[106] He gave Booth £2500 for half his share in the property, and his whole right in the management. Mr. Wilkes had previously appointed Ellis his deputy; and Colley Cibber, extremely displeased that two strangers should be thus empowered to interfere, authorized his son to act for him in everything that concerned his share in the management. The first season ended with some profit to the new patentees; but Mr. Highmore being disgusted by the impertinence of young Cibber, determined to exonerate himself from his interference, and, for the sum of three thousand guineas, purchased the elder Cibber's right in the theatre. Two years had hardly passed before the principal actors, encouraged by Theophilus Cibber, determined to revolt from the patentee; and as the little theatre in the Haymarket was then unoccupied, agreed to rent it from the proprietor, and opened their campaign with the comedy of _Love for Love_, at which they were attended by an elegant and crowded audience. The patentees, though weakened by this desertion, began to act at the usual time. To supply the place of those who had left their service, they had recourse to such actors as could be procured from the itinerant companies. With all the help they could obtain, their performances were inferior to those exhibited at the Haymarket, and losses came so heavy upon Mr. Highmore, that he was under the necessity of giving up the contest, and sold the whole property to Mr. Charles Fleetwood for about half the sum he had originally paid for it.' Upon this circumstance is built the print from which the show-cloth was copied; it probably announces the performance of a farce entitled "_The Stage Mutineers_, a tragi-comic farcical ballad opera, acted at Covent Garden in 1733;" which is a burlesque on the whole contest. Theophilus Cibber, who was the leader of the malcontents, is in this farce characterized by the name of Ancient Pistol, all his speeches being in that high-flown mock-heroic style with which Shakspeare has marked that boasting coward. The scene is supposed to be in the playhouse, and the time, during a rehearsal.