Covent Garden, too, had its classical tragedy, in "Coriolanus," brought forward by Quin, after his friend Thomson's death. Quin played the hero of Thomson's play; Ryan, Tullius; Delane, Galesus; Mrs. Woffington, Veturia; and Miss Bellamy, Volumnia. This tragedy is worth reading, if it be only to see how very civil and colloquial the hot leader of the Volsci could be made by the Scottish poet in Kew Lane. In Shakspeare's tragedy, we have the annals of a life put into action. In Thomson's, as in Laharpe's "Coriolan," we have a single incident diluted through five acts;--the secession from Rome, and its consequences, forming the staple of a play which ends with a tag of trotting rhymes, which are as natural, and not half so amusing, as if the grave speaker of them had danced a hornpipe in his _cothurni_. In 1749-50, symptoms were discernible of a break up in the Drury Lane company. Mrs. Cibber, at odds with Garrick, withdrew; and Barry, not allowed to play Romeo, was often indisposed to act in other plays. So it was said: but he publicly protested against any feigned indisposition. He repeated many of his old parts with Garrick, and created Publius Horatius to Garrick's Horatius, in Whitehead's "Roman Father." At Covent Garden, Delane exerted his dying efforts fruitlessly against Barry; and Woffington opposed Woodward in Sir Harry Wildair. The above tragedy, by the son of a Cambridge baker, and one of Clare Hall's most honoured Fellows, was not the only novelty produced at Drury;--whither William Shirley brought from Portugal, where he had written it in his leisure hours, his "Edward, the Black Prince." Garrick played Edward; Barry, Ribemont; and Mrs. Ward, Marianne. It will suffice, as a sample of Shirley's insight into the Prince's character, to say, that he makes Edward, for love of Marianne, desert to the French side! A more absurd violation of history was never perpetrated by poet.[53] In the way of novelty, excepting pantomimic trifles, Covent Garden offered no sign. The latter house made no acquisitions such as Drury found in King and in Palmer. Dyer, however, proved a useful actor, beginning his career with Tom Errand, and bringing with him his wife, the daughter of Mrs. Christopher Bullock, the daughter of Wilks. On the other hand, the Garden lost Delane, whose first appearance at Goodman's Fields, in 1730,[54] was temporarily menacing to the supremacy of Quin, as Garrick's was permanently so, some years later. He was a graceful and clever actor, but there was only one character of note of which he was the original representative--Mahomet.