In the season of 1703, Drury Lane produced seven, and Lincoln's Inn Fields six, pieces. The first, at Drury, was Baker's "Tunbridge Walks," the manners of which smack of the old loose times. Then came Durfey's "Old Mode and the New," a long, dull, satirical comedy, on the fashions of Elizabeth's days and those of Anne. Durfey was then at his twenty-eighth comedy, and in the decline of his powers. Little flourished about him save that terrific beak which served for a nose, and also for an excuse for his dislike to have his likeness taken. In other respects, the wit, on whose shoulder Charles had leaned, to whose songs William had listened, and at them Anne even then laughed, was in vogue, but not with the theatrical public. A new author tempted that public, in April, with a comedy, entitled "Fair Example, or the Modish Citizens," by Estcourt, a strolling player, but soon afterwards a clever actor in this company, a man whom Addison praised, and a good fellow, whom Steele admired. His career had, hitherto, been a strange one. He ran away from a respectable home at Tewkesbury, when fifteen, to play Roxalana with some itinerants, and fled from the company, on being pursued thither by his friends, in the dress lent him by a kind-hearted girl of the troop. In this dress, Estcourt made his way on foot to Chipping Norton, at the inn of which place the weary supposed damsel was invited to share the room of the landlord's daughter. Then ensued a scene as comic as any ever invented by dramatist, but from which the parties came off with some perplexity, and no loss of honour. The young runaway was caught and sent home, and thence he was despatched to Hatton Garden, and bound by articles to learn there the apothecary's mystery. It is not known when he broke from these bonds; but it is certain that he again--some say after he had himself failed in the practice of the mystery he had painfully learned, took to the joys and sorrows, trials, triumphs, and temptations of a wandering player's life till 1698, or about that period, when he appeared in Dublin, with success. He was between thirty and forty years of age, when he came to London with the "Fair Example," an adaptation, like the "Confederacy," of Dancour's "Modish Citizens," but not destined to an equal success, despite the acting of Cibber and Norris, and that brilliant triad of ladies, Verbruggen, Oldfield, and Powell. In June, Mrs. Carroll served up Molière's "Médecin malgré lui," in the cold dish called "Love's Contrivance;" and, in the same month, Wilkinson and his sole comedy, "Vice Reclaimed," appeared; and are now forgotten.