There has long existed a need for a full and definitive calendar of theatrical performances in London during the eighteenth century. If the modern scholar does not have access to the original sources—the theatrical advertisements, the playbills, and manuscript diaries and account books—he must turn to a number of modern histories, of the eighteenth century stage, no one of which is complete and all of which combined do not offer a full listing of day-to-day performances. The account of the stage published in 1832 by John Genest is still the most comprehensive for the entire century, but Genest made a selection, not a complete listing, of performances, and that fact alone makes it impossible to find in his pages the stage history of a play or its casting or the vogue of the works of a single dramatist. The handlists in Allardyce Nicoll's works are also very valuable, but they too have the limitation of recording only selected performances, primarily those of plays first performed in the century. Dougald MacMillan's calendar of Drury Lane offerings from 1747 to 1776 is a more complete listing, but it is a record of only one theater, and although it offers the casts, it does not reflect the rôle of the entertainments in the theatrical programs.