In the old days, a play acted before the sovereign at Whitehall, cost that sovereign but the poor fee of £20, the actors playing at their own house, in the afternoon, previous to having the honour of acting before the Court at night. To the performers at Hampton Court their ordinary day's wage was given, with their travelling expenses, for which they held themselves ready to act there at a day's warning. The Lord Chamberlain found the wax-lights, and furnished the "household music," while the players' wardrobe and "traps" generally were conveyed from old Drury down to Hampton in a "_Chaise Marine_" at his Majesty's expense. The cost of the seven plays amounted to £350; but King George generously threw in a couple of hundred more, as a guerdon to the managers, who had professed that the honour of toiling to afford his Majesty pleasure was sufficient recompense in itself! The King did not believe a word of it; and the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain (and subsequently the original of Foote's Matthew Mug, in the "Mayor of Garratt"), paid the money into the hands of the delighted Cibber, who was astounded at the Chamberlain's modesty, which kept him from arrogating to himself, like Cardinal Wolsey, the merit which belonged to his royal master. How things went between audience and actors in the Hampton Court theatre is admirably told by Cibber himself:--"A play presented at Court, or acted on a public stage," he says, "seem to their different authors a different entertainment. In the common theatre the guests are at home, where the politer forms of good breeding are not so nicely regarded. Every one there falls to, and likes or finds fault, according to his natural taste or appetite. At Court, where the Prince gives the treat and honours the table with his own presence, the audience is under the restraint of a circle where laughter or applause raised higher than a whisper would be stared at. At a public play they are both let loose, even till the actor is sometimes pleased with his not being able to be heard for the clamour of them. But this coldness, or decency of attention at Court, I observed, had but a melancholy effect upon the impatient vanity of some of our actors, who seemed inconsolable when their flashy endeavours to please had passed unheeded. Their not considering where they were quite disconcerted them, nor could they recover their spirits till, from the lowest rank of the audience, some gaping _Joan_ or _John_, in the fulness of their hearts, roared out their approbation."