The century closed ill for the stage. Congreve's play, "The Way of the World," failed to give it any lustre. Dancers, tumblers, strong men, and quadrupeds, were called in to attract the town; and the Elephant at the _Great Mogul_, in Fleet Street, "drew" to such an extent that he would have been brought upon the stage, but for the opinion of a master-carpenter, that he would pull the house down. There was an empty treasury at both the theatres. There was ill-management at one, and ill-health (the declining health of Betterton) to mar the other. And so closes the half century. NOTE.--In the second edition, after the words, "This is the first instance of the 'starring' system," Dr. Doran adds:--If Dogget was the first _star_, he was also an early stroller, and head of a strolling company. Each member wore a brocaded waistcoat, rode his own horse, and was everywhere respected, as a gentleman. So says Aston, reminding one of Hamlet's "Then came each actor on his ass." Steele, in the _Tatler_ (No. 12), speaks of the manager, MacSwiney, as "little King Oberon," who mortgaged his whole empire (the theatre) to Divito (Christopher Rich), whom Steele thus describes: "He has a perfect skill in being unintelligible in discourse, and uncomeatable in business. But he, having no understanding in this polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money, ladder-dancers, rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakspeare's heroes and Jonson's humorists." FOOTNOTES: [70] Pepys certainly means on account of the dulness of the play. [71] Should be 15th and 22d December 1674. [Illustration: SIR RICHARD STEELE.] CHAPTER XIII. A SEVEN YEARS' RIVALRY. The great players, by giving action to the poet's words, illustrated the quaintly expressed idea of the sweet singer who says: "What Thought can think another Thought can mend."