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The Origins of the Actor Benefit in London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Robert D. Hume
Robert D. Hume
Affiliation:
Professor of English, The Pennsylvania State University
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Extract

The importance of the actor benefit in the eighteenth-century London theatre is manifest. An actor's benefit was a key part of his or her contract, and the income it produced was a crucial supplement to the performer's ordinary salary. A benefit for a single performer could easily yield more than £50 (after expenses) early in the century – a. sum which might double the annual income of a second or third rank member of a company. The long string of benefits at both Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn.Fields each spring soon after 1700 (visible as soon as daily newspaper advertisements become customary) often total twenty or more at each house, and the actor benefit was to remain a basic feature of financial arrangements in London theatres throughout the eighteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Summer 1984 , pp. 99 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1984

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References

Notes

1. In July 1709 the Drury Lane treasurer Zachary Baggs published some figures for the season of 1708–9. In 100 nights of acting Wilks is said to have earned £168 in salary, plus £130 by a benefit (£90 certain plus £40 estimated). Estcourt in 52 nights made £112 in salary plus £251 (£51 certain, £200 estimated). Cibber in 71 nights made £111 in salary plus £101 (£51 certain, £50 estimated). Mills in an unspecified number of nights made £112 in salary plus £78 (£58 certain, £20 estimated). See Advertisement Concerning the Poor Actors, who under Pretence of hard Usage from the Patentees, are about to desert their Service (London: no publisher, 1709).Google Scholar These figures cannot be taken as typical. They include only principal performers, and the theatres were closed for seven weeks of mourning following the death of Prince George. Nonetheless, the importance of a benefit to an actor's income even before 1710 is obvious.

2. An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, ed. Lowe, Robert W., 2 vols. (1889; rpt. New York: AMS, 1966), II, 67.Google Scholar

3. Apology, I, 161.Google Scholar

4. Troubridge, St. Vincent, The Benefit System in the British Theatre (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1967)Google Scholar; McKenty, David Edward, ‘The Benefit System in Augustan Drama’, unpub. diss. (Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1966).Google Scholar

5. The London Stage, 1660–1800, Part 1: 1660–1700, ed. Van Lennep, William, Avery, Emmett L., and Scouten, Arthur H. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1965), Introduction, pp. lxxix–lxxxiii.Google Scholar Avery's account of eighteenth-century benefit practices in the Introduction to Part 2 (1960), pp. xcvi–cii, is sound and helpful.

6. A benefit – a percentage of receipts at the second or third performance – had become a customary part of the playwright's remuneration by the beginning of the seventeenth century, even for writers who worked for a single company under a ‘sharing’ agreement. See Bentley, Gerald Eades, The Profession of Dramatist in Shakespeare's Time (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971), Chapter 5.Google Scholar

7. The smaller Vere Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields theatres must have yielded considerably less. No maximum can be calculated for a benefit since playwrights and actors often persuaded friends and patrons to take tickets at well above list price. This explains how Estcourt could net £250 out of a theatre whose greatest recorded take at ‘single prices’ was about £160. See Downes, John, Roscius Anglicanus (London: H. Playford, 1708), p. 41.Google Scholar (Shadwell received £130, presumably after the deduction of about £30 house charges.)

8. Southerne states in his Epistle Dedicatory that he received both third and sixth night profits for Sir Anthony Love. Whether this was a special concession or common practice by 1690 we cannot be certain.

9. Cited in The London Stage, Part 1, p. 433.Google Scholar

10. Printed by Gildon, Charles in The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton (London: Robert Gosling, 1710), p. 8.Google Scholar This comment may allude to Lenten performances.

11. The London Stage, Part 1, pp. 84, 194–5.Google Scholar

12. The fullest discussion of this custom is by Gray, Philip H. Jr., ‘Lenten Casts and the Nursery: Evidence for the Dating of Certain Restoration Plays’, PMLA, 53 (1938), 781–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. For a discussion of daily and incident charges, see Milhous, Judith, ‘United Company Finances, 1682–1692’, Theatre Research International, 1 (1981–1982), 37–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There is some evidence that by the end of the century house rent was no longer paid by the hirelings. The Drury Lane treasurer, Zachary Baggs, testified in 1702 that ‘it hath been a Custome for the Young people to have two Day's in Every Lent on Wednesday's and Friday's to act for their owne benefitt Gratis without paying any rent’, and that summer companies had sometimes been permitted to act rent-free or at a reduced rent. See P.R.O. C5/284/40.

14. See Milhous, Judith, Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1695–1708 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1979), p. 72.Google Scholar

15. Preserved in P.R.O. LC 7/3. For a transcription, see Milhous, , Thomas Betterton, p. 227.Google Scholar

16. The special payments are as follows:

(1) £40 for unspecified ‘plays acted before the King’, LC 5/147, p. 136, warrant dated 8 May 1686. [This replaces a cancelled warrant of 10 April (LC 5/147, p. 112) ‘to pay unto Mrs Barry the Comedian forty pounds as a guift from his Majesty’.]

(2) £20 for The Emperor of the Moon, LC 5/148, p. 59, dated 20 12 1687.Google Scholar [Mrs Barry is not known to have had a role in this play.]

(3) £25 for The Spanish Fryar, LC 5/149, p. 154, dated 8 06 1689.Google Scholar

(4) £25 for Circe, LC 5/150, p. 170, dated 7 11 1690.Google Scholar

(5) £25 for The Orphan, LC 5/151, p. 30, dated 3 03 1692.Google Scholar

(6) £25 for Cains Marius, LC 5/151, p. 242, dated 10 06 1693.Google Scholar

(7) £25 for The Old Batchelour, LC 5/151, p. 352, dated 16 04 1694.Google Scholar

17. See, for example, Highfill, Philip H. Jr., Burnim, Kalman A., and Langhans, Edward A., A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers, and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, 16 vols. in progress (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1973– ), I, 318.Google Scholar

18. For a convenient reprint of the relevant Lord Chamberlain's warrants, see Nicoll, Allardyce, A History of English Drama, 1660–1900, 6 vols., rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1952–1959), I, Appendix B.Google Scholar

19. See P.R.O. LC 5/149, p. 368, and LC 5/151, p. 369.

20. LC 5/147, p. 52.

21. LC 5/150, p. 306; LC 5/148, pp. 64, 195.

22. ‘Elizabethan-Restoration Palimpsest’, Modern Language Review, 35 (1940), 287–319.Google Scholar ‘It almost appears that a new variety of “benefit” had been devised, wherein a particular actor was to have “author's rights” to the performance and publication of a particular play, regardless of how he had established possession.’ (p. 312)

23. See Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., ‘Attribution Problems in English Drama, 1660–1700’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 31 (1983), 5–39.Google Scholar

24. Milhous, , Thomas Betterton, pp. 53, 239.Google Scholar

25. See Rosenfeld, Sybil, The Theatre of the London Fairs in the 18th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1960).Google Scholar

26. Roscius Anglicanus, p. 52.Google Scholar

27. See Milhous, Judith, ‘Thomas Betterton's Playwriting’, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 11 (1974), 375–92, esp. pp. 386–8.Google Scholar

28. See Milhous, , Thomas Betterton, pp. 130–1.Google Scholar

29. P.R.O. LC 7/3, ff. 64–7. Nicoll prints a summary, I, 382–3.

30. LC 7/3, ff. 71–2. There is a summary in Nicoll, I, 383.

31. P.R.O. C8/599/74. Smith's figure of sixty benefits per annum may be meant to include both companies.

32. Preserved in LC 7/1, pp. 44–7. Transcription printed by Milhous, Thomas Betterton, Appendix D.

33. The London Stage, Part 1, pp. 489–97.Google Scholar

34. Milhous, , Thomas Betterton, pp. 111–12.Google Scholar

35. See Nicoll, , I, 384Google Scholar; Milhous, Judith, ‘The Date and Import of “Verbruggen's Petition”Google Scholar in Public Record Office L.C. 7/3’, Anhiv, 217 (1980), 355–9.Google Scholar The full text is printed by Milhous, Thomas Betterton, Appendix E.

36. See Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., ‘The Silencing of Drury Lane in 1709’, Theatre Journal, 32 (1980), 427–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. See ‘An Establishment for ye Company’, P.R.O. LC 7/3, f. 161; text printed by Nicoll, II, 276–8 (dated 1707). For the 1703 date see Milhous, Judith, ‘The Date and Import of the Financial Plan for a United Theatre Company in P.R.O. LC 7/3’, Maske und Kothurn, 21 (1975), 81–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. Evidence of another attempt to do away with benefits – including authors' benefits – is to be found in a set of draft ‘Regulations for the directors of the playhouse’ (LC 7/3, ff. 5–6). No such scheme was ever put into effect. For most of the text, see Nicoll, II, 279–80. For discussion of the date and other problems see Milhous, Judith and Hume, Robert D., ‘An Annotated Guide to the Theatrical Documents in P.R.O. LC 7/1, 7/2, and 7/3’, Theatre Notebook, 35 (1981), Part 2, p. 78.Google Scholar