Sixty-two nights in this season the "Beggar's Opera" drew crowded houses.[124] Highwaymen grew fashionable, and ladies not only carried fans adorned with subjects from the opera, but sang the lighter, and hummed the coarser, songs. Sir Robert Walpole, who was present on the first night, finding the eyes of the audience turned on him as Lockit was singing his song touching courtiers and bribes, was the first to blunt the point of the satire, by calling _encore_. Swift says, "_two_ great ministers were in a box together, and all the world staring at them." At this time it was said that the quarrel of Peachum and Lockit was an imitation of that of Brutus and Cassius, but the public discerned therein Walpole and his great adversary Townshend. "The Beggar's Opera" hath knocked down _Gulliver_, wrote Swift to Gay. "I hope to see Pope's 'Dulness' (the first name of the _Dunciad_) knock down the 'Beggar's Opera,' but not till it hath fully done its job." But Gay had no "mission;" he only sought to gratify himself and the town; to satirise, not to teach or to warn; the "opera" made "Gay rich, and Rich gay;" the former sufficiently so to make him forego earning a fee of twenty guineas by a dedication, and the latter only so far sad, that at the end of the season, Lavinia Fenton, after two benefits, was taken off the stage by the Duke of Bolton. The latter had from his wedding-day hated his wife, daughter and sole heiress of the Earl of Carberry; but his love for Lavinia was so abounding, that on his wife's death, he made a Duchess of "Polly;" but their three sons were not born at a time that rendered either of them heir to the ducal coronet, which, in 1754, passed to the Duke's brother. Gay's author's night realised a gain to him of £700, and enabled him to dress in "silver and blue." While he is blazing abroad, the once great master, Booth, is slowly dying out. Let us tell his varied story as his life ebbs surely away. [Illustration: Mr. Foote as the Doctor.] FOOTNOTES: [108] Very imaginative. Mrs. Mountfort lived with another lover, Mr. Minshull, for a year before Booth's marriage. [109] There are adaptations of "Coriolanus" by Tate, Dennis, Sheridan, and Kemble. [110] Dennis born 1657; Southerne 1660. [111] Tragedy. [112] Should be Mitchell. [113] But the wife and children do not die; the poisoned cup having been emptied, and refilled with a harmless potion. [114] Should be "Hibernia Freed." [115] "By reason of the indisposition of an actress." [116] This is a most strange mistake. It is evidently caused by the entry in Genest on 10th January 1723, which is:--"Julius Cæsar. Comic characters--Hippisley, &c." This of course means that the characters in the tragedy which were, according to theatrical usage, played by comedians (the _Plebeians_, for instance), were played by Hippisley, &c., not that all the characters were made comic. [117] Thurmond's piece appears to have been called "Harlequin Doctor Faustus."