Colman was succeeded in his management by his son, whose first season commenced in 1790, and who, fifteen years later, sold half his share to Messrs. Morris and Winston. Later, the well-known Thomas Dibdin took over the concern, and it was during his management that, on August 15th, 1805, occurred a great riot here, organised by members of the sartorial trade, who took exception to the performance of a piece entitled “The Tailors, a Tragedy for Warm Weather,” as reflecting on their calling. To such a height, indeed, did matters come that special constables and a company of the Life Guards were requisitioned to assist the regular Bow Street officers. Some years later--to be precise, in 1820--the present play-house, whose historian is the well-known actor-manager, Mr. Cyril Maude--was erected, from the designs of Nash, at a cost of £18,000; the earlier theatre remained open until the larger house was finished, when it closed, on October 14th, 1820, with a performance of “King Lear.” I may remind the reader that such great exponents of the Thespian art, as Mrs. Abington, Miss Farren, Edwin, Elliston, Bannister, Henderson, and “Gentleman Lewis” have all acted at the original house; while the great names of Macready, Webster, and Buckstone, besides Sothern, the Bancrofts, Mr. Tree, and Mr. Cyril Maude in our own days, are among those closely associated with the present theatre. It was of the Haymarket Theatre that the story is told that that inveterate punster H. J. Byron was once asked (I believe by Lady--then Mrs.--Bancroft) to give a motto to be placed over the pay-office, when he immediately suggested “So much for Booking ’em” as an appropriate heading! [Sidenote: SUFFOLK STREET.] Suffolk Street, running partly behind the play-house, is one of the older streets in this neighbourhood, having been formed in 1664, on the site once occupied by the town house of the Earls of Suffolk. Although the present street is relatively modern, its lines follow those of the older one. At its Pall Mall eastern corner stands the United University Club in its stately rebuilt magnificence, but the street is connected more intimately with Art than Letters, being the home of the Society of British Artists. Once it echoed to the tread of Swift, when he came to visit Vanessa, who for a time lodged here with her mother. Adam Smith was a former resident, as was Moll Davis, for whom the King furnished a house here, before her apotheosis in St. James’s Square hard by, as Pepys tells us; and when the Italian Corticelli had his town house here, frequented, in the days of George I., for raffles and assignations, the little thoroughfare must have presented a gay and gallant sight, with which its present-day solemn respectability cannot have much in common.