This quarrel, whether with both poets involved with Cibber or only one, doubtless cost the play a revival or two that it would otherwise have had; with such evidence of anger in the authors Cibber could well have wished to have done with them and their work. The use of the crocodile costume on April 2 in a dance at Drury Lane entitled _The Shipwreck_ suggests that so far as the management was concerned the play for which it had been devised would not be acted again. Thereafter, _Three Hours_ had only two revivals (Handlist of Plays in Nicoll, _Early Eighteenth-Century Drama_)--one in 1737 (two performances) the other in 1746 (three). A pity! But in any case the play could not have had much of a life on the stage, considering the climate into which the authors chose to introduce it. The type of wit that had flourished in the former age did still hold a place in the theatre in 1717, but only in such comedies as had already won a place in the repertory.[8] The older plays could be "corrected" (that is, the racier lines could be taken out) or the tender-minded could tolerate them as classics or in a pinch stay at home when a play known to be of this sort had been announced. A new play was in a more vulnerable position; it had to conform to what the reformers had for a couple of decades been telling audiences a play should be, or squalls could be expected. Sir Richard Blackmore was continuing the crusade against scapegrace wit--in the Preface to his _Essays_, 1717, he is explicitly severe upon _Three Hours_ and its authors--and the battle was going his way. Jeremy Collier had published nothing on the theatre for nearly a decade but it is interesting to see his methods applied to the play by Timothy Drub in his _Letter to Gay_ and Drub then clinching his remarks with a quote of two pages from "a very elegant author" whom he does not name but who--not too surprisingly--can be recognized as Collier himself.[9] (Could "Drub" have been, in fact, Collier, thus tempted by _Three Hours_ to return to the fray under this alias?) [8] During the year prior to the première of _Three Hours_ the following had been seen on the London stage twice each or more (selection only: based on Avery, op. cit.): _The Comical Revenge_, _Man of Mode_, _Country Wife_, _Plain-Dealer_, _London Cuckolds_, _Old Bachelor_, _Relapse_. _City Politicks_, a play from which our authors took some hints, was revived in the July after the closure of _Three Hours_; it ran three performances (i.e., successfully). But it should be recalled that the most recent of the eight plays here mentioned--Vanbrugh's--had been in the repertory twenty years. [9] The quote is from the _Short View_, pp. 7-8 in the 1698 edition, from "Obscenity in any Company is a rustick and increditable Talent" to "But here a Man can't be a Sinner without being a Clown."