All the above were honourable competitors; but there also appeared this season an actor, who became Garrick's personal enemy--namely, Foote. The latter commenced his career at the Haymarket, February 6, 1744, as Othello, to the Iago of Macklin, who had opened that house with a "scratch company," including "pupils"--while he was disengaged at Drury Lane. Foote also played Hamlet,[41] to the Ghost and First Gravedigger of Macklin; and did not find his vocation, as he thought, in such parts as Lord Foppington. At both patent houses the "Beggars' Opera" was produced; at Drury, the Macheath and Polly were Blakes and Miss Budgell, an illegitimate daughter of Eustace Budgell; at the Garden, Cashell's Macheath gave way to that of Beard, while the Polly and Lucy of Kitty Clive and Mrs. Pritchard, at the same theatre, charmed the auditors for a time, and gave them pleasant memories for a long period to come. The literature of the stage did not make progress this season. Classical Cooke selected an assize case of murder in Kent, and spoiled its terrible simplicity in his "Love the Cause." To Havard's cold, declamatory tragedy, "Regulus," Garrick gave warmth and natural eloquence; but even _his_ Zaphna, admirable as it was in "Mahomet," would not have saved the Rev. Mr. Miller's adaptation from Voltaire, had that part of the public who hated the adapter, known to whom they were indebted for it. Miller ended his uneasy life, during the run of the play, a representation of which, after his death, contributed a hundred pounds to the relief of his widow and children. In the season of 1744-45, the old opposition was feebly sustained on the part of Covent Garden, but with some novelty appended--especially in the case of a ballad-singer like Cashell, attempting Hamlet against Garrick![42] Further, the King John of the latter in Shakspeare's play was opposed to old Cibber's alteration of the same piece, produced at Covent Garden, as "Papal Tyranny," in which Quin played the King, and toothless, nerveless Cibber, Pandulph. The indulgent audience pitied the quavering old player. Garrick's King John was a fine, but not the most perfect of his performances; he was happy in such a Constance as Mrs. Cibber. Quin congratulated himself on having such a Hubert as Bridgewater, the ex-coal-dealer. The value of Cibber's mangling of Shakspeare, got up to abuse the Pope, because of the Pretender, may be conjectured by a single instance--that John is too shy to hint at the murder of Arthur till Hubert has "shut the window-shutters." The modesty of the mangler may be more than guessed at from the fact, that Cibber--in his own words--"endeavoured to make it more like a play than I found it in Shakspeare!"