"When Mrs.Oldfield was nominated as a joint sharer in our new agreement to be made with Swiney [again is the quotation from Cibber], Dogget, who had no objection to her merit, insisted that our affairs could never be upon a secure foundation if there was more than one sex admitted to the management of them." Beastly, unchivalrous, narrow-minded Dogget.

Were you alive to-day, how the New Woman would champ with rage.

"He therefore hop'd that if we offer'd Mrs.Oldfield a _Carte Blanche_ instead of a share, she would not think herself slighted." And Oldfield, with the affability which sat so well upon her, did not think herself in the least slighted.

She "receiv'd it rather as a favour than a disobligation.

Her demands therefore were two hundred pounds a year certain, and a benefit clear of all charges, which were readily sign'd to." In the meantime Drury Lane is closed by order of the Lord Chamberlain,[A] on the ground that in seeking to take from the actors one-third of their benefit receipts the management have proceeded illegally.