The squabble involving Pope, Gay, and Cibber must have begun with the latter's allusion to our play in the revival of _The Rehearsal_ on February 7, a couple of weeks after _Three Hours_ had closed. Cibber's version of how it happened may be read in the Letter (pp. 217-218 below); our female correspondent sympathized with him and deleted a few expressions indicative of animus on his part, but on the whole the quote as she gives it is a reasonable facsimile of what he had said in the _Letter to Pope_ (1742). His disclaimer of an intent to offend is believable in the light of what we have just seen as to how Plotwell should be read in the play; on the other side, Pope's anger at the gag--though not any visit by him to Cibber, that is true--is attested both by Breval and by "Timothy Drub" (_A Letter to Mr. John Gay_, 1717) who agree that Pope was the one principally offended and that it was he who sent Gay with instructions to trounce "that impudent Dog C----r" (this line from Drub's pamphlet). Why may not Pope have been angry enough to seek out Cibber himself on the impulse of the moment? It seems feeble to doubt Cibber's testimony on the grounds that he had not told the story prior to 1742; he had not previously told the tale of the youthful Pope in a bagnio, either, yet the authorities think there might be something to this--if to the one tale, why not to the other? As to the account the lady gives of the scuffle between Gay and Cibber, it was widely known at the time that there had been some sort of angry meeting between them; her story is highly colored but nonetheless may be substantially true.[7] [7] She says that the fracas occurred on the fourth evening of _The Rehearsal_, and at least this revival did have a fourth performance, five in fact: Emmett L. Avery in _The London Stage_ (1960) gives the dates as February 7, 8, 20, March 21, 28. There is a slight difficulty in assigning Gay's visit to the fourth of these, i.e., March 21: this is that the dates on which the two pamphlets that refer to it were advertised ("just before March 1" for Drub's, and March 30 for Breval's--Sherburn, p. 91) seem to rule out a March 21 fracas in the one case and to fall uncomfortably close in the other. But publication (of course) though announced, may have been delayed, and it is perhaps worth noticing that in each pamphlet Gay's visit is mentioned in an inorganic part of the work that could have been added late: the Dedication in Drub's, and, in Breval's, an ironical "congratulatory poem" printed after the epilogue, on the last two pages of the book.