Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/115

 policy towards the actors, reducing their pay and interfering with their benefits; the latter, under Rich's management, had become the chief article in every actor's agreement. The agreements of the actors were only verbal, and were disregarded by the patentees, who arbitrarily refused any actor his benefit until he had signed a paper signifying his voluntary acceptance of it on condition of paying one-third to the patentees, any clauses from custom to the contrary notwithstanding. The actors applied to the lord chamberlain for redress, and the patentees were directed to satisfy their claims. The patentees demurred, and the theatre was reduced to silence (6 June 1709), no performances being allowed. Rich then published an advertisement, showing the sums the principal actors who were loudest in complaint had received. Wilks, Betterton, Estcourt, Cibber, Mills, and Mrs. Oldfield were stated to have received among them 1,957l. 3s. 2d. The statement was signed by the treasurer. Rich, with other patentees, including Charles Killigrew, Charles D'Avenant, William Collier, M.P. for Truro, Lord Guilford, Lord Harvey, and Ann Shadwell, in a petition to the queen, stated their grievances against the lord chamberlain, who refused them any redress. A second petition was sent by a few of the silenced actors, members of Drury Lane. Wilks, Dogget, Cibber, and Mrs. Oldfield did not join in the petition, for they had formed a confederation to join Swiney at the Haymarket, where they opened with ‘Othello’ on 15 Sept. 1709.

Rich, imagining that the order of silence, like others by which it had been preceded, would be withdrawn after a time, kept together Booth and such other actors as had not transferred their services to the Haymarket. The order, however, remained in force, and Collier, one of the proprietors of the patents, applied for and obtained a license, and ultimately succeeded in obtaining a lease of Drury Lane. Now that no performances were given, Rich was paying no rent, but he sought to retain the theatre in his hands. He stripped it of everything worth moving, except scenery. In the ‘Tatler,’ on 15 July, No. 42, Steele gave a mock catalogue of the contents of ‘the palace in Drury Lane, of Christopher Rich, Esquire, who is breaking up housekeeping.’ There are such things as a rainbow, a little faded; Roxana's nightgown, Othello's handkerchief, the imperial robes of Xerxes, never worn but once, a basket-hilted sword, very convenient to carry milk in, and the like. But at length, by means of a hired crew, Collier obtained, on 22 Nov. 1709, possession of the house. A humorous account of these proceedings is given in the ‘Tatler,’ No. 99, 26 Nov. 1709, in which Rich, depicted under the name of Divito, is said to ‘have wounded all adversaries with so much skill that men feared even to be in the right against him.’ Collier claimed to have the consent of a majority of the other renters for what he had done, and was joined by the actors previously in the service of Rich. As these had no rag of stage clothing, they made but a sorry show. Rich, however, finally lost his hold upon Drury Lane. Cibber wrote of him: ‘He seems in his public capacity of patentee and manager to have been a despicable character, without spirit to bring the power of the lord chamberlain to a legal test, without honesty to account to the other proprietors for the receipts of the theatre, without any feeling for his actors, and without the least judgment as to players and plays’ (ii. 430).

Rich had already, at a low rent, acquired a lease, with the patent granted by Charles II, of the deserted theatre erected by Sir William D'Avenant in Little Lincoln's Inn Fields. On the strength of this he erected a new theatre on about the same site in Portugal Row, his architect being James Shepherd, who had also built the playhouse in Goodman's Fields. Before this was quite finished Rich died, 4 Nov. 1714, leaving the building to be opened by his sons, John Rich [q. v.] and Christopher Mosyer Rich.

Colley Cibber, whose ‘Apology’ is largely occupied with Rich's doings, gives some insight into his curiously unamiable character. Gildon, in ‘A Comparison between two Stages’ (1702), speaking of him, says: ‘In the other House there's an old snarling Lawyer Master and Sovereign; a waspish, ignorant pettifogger in Law and Poetry; one who understands Poetry no more than Algebra; he would sooner have the Grace of God than do every body Justice. What a P … has he to do so far out of his way? Can't he pore over his Plowden and Dalton, and let Fletcher and Beaumont alone?’ (pp. 15–16). He, again, says that Rich ‘is a monarch of the stage, tho' he knows not how to govern one Province in his Dominion but that of Signing, Sealing, and something else that shall be nameless’ (p. 16). Genest, condensing Colley Cibber, declares that ‘Rich appears to have been a man of great cunning, and intimately acquainted with all the quirks of law; he was as sly a tyrant as was ever at the head of a theatre, for he gave the actors more liberty and fewer days' pay than any of his predecessors; he would laugh with them over a bottle and bite them in their bargains; he kept them poor, that they might not be able