The theory has fed on some misreadings of the play that must have an end put to them if this ghost is to be laid. If the reader, then, will pardon the obviousness of the following, it is true that Cibber wrote plays, but the name Plotwell should not be taken in this sense, but merely as suggesting the gallant skilled in the stratagems which, in the older comedies, males of this class had been accustomed to use in their cuckolding operations. Plotwell in the play has never set pen to paper except for notes sent to wives, and he is not an "actor-manager" or the like. He and Underplot are simply gentlemen who spend so much of their time in intrigues in real life that they would have no time for play-writing.[5] In the part of _Three Hours_ that has led scholars down this false path--the scene in which the manuscript is judged by Sir Tremendous and the players--it must be kept in mind that the actual author of the work being dismembered is Phoebe Clinket, not Plotwell, who, since he is merely fronting for her, is enabled to meet such strictures as "Between you and I, this gentleman knows nothing of poetry" with perfect sang-froid; it is Phoebe whose withers are comically wrung. Thus there was nothing in the part to offend Cibber, much less can resentment on his part be deduced from the intermission of the play after the seventh night.[6] [5] See the excellent comment on the pair in our Key, p. 212. [6] To charge him, as one authority has done, with "an arbitrary withdrawal of _Three Hours_ after a far from unsuccessful week ... an invidious, if not unwarrantable, decision on his part" betrays an imperfect understanding of how a theater had to be managed in the early 18th century when the number of patrons upon which it could rely was limited. A play would run as long as it continued to draw; when the house began to fall off a new bill would have to be announced. The intermitting of _Three Hours_ should be most naturally read as suggesting that at least in the judgment of the managers its initial vogue had passed. It would have been brought back when they thought patrons were ready to see it again--say, in a couple of months.