As a victim of “Garrick fever” for all of my adult life I admit to having accepted most modern-day criticism which avers that Garrick's supremacy in his age was due to his superior acting, strict management, rigourous attention to rehearsals, and consequent superiority over his Covent Garden and Haymarket rivals. All this is surely valid, but I remain curious about the “quality” of his casting and ensembles. Could it be that our critics today prefer romanticism to the practical truths of everyday operation of a repertory company in eighteenth-century London? Let us explore the situation once again.

The Age of Reason brought with it a new faith in the future of humanity which evolved from abstract ideas into a tremendous social power. Nowhere is this more evident than in the increasing influence of Freemasonry in England throughout the eighteenth century. Almost fifty years ago Bernard Fäy gave an eloquent tribute to this phenomenon: “… It [the new faith] became a social force and a concrete fact through the agency of Freemasonry which at once accepted it and advocated it; the great historical importance of modern Freemasonry results from this attitude that it took then and to which it has since consistently adhered.…”

Shakespeare's romantic comedy The Winter's Tale was not popular during the first half of the eighteenth century. Audiences of that period affected to prefer plays that observed the Unities, and this play of Shakespeare's with its sixteen-year gap between the third and fourth acts appeared fatally flawed. Goodman's Fields Theatre revived it on 15 January 1741 and played it eight additional nights in 1740–41. The following season it was produced at Covent Garden on 11 November 1741 and played for a mere four performances. But by 1742 The Winter's Tale had been dropped from the repertoires of all London theatres.

Among the important collections of memorabilia concerning eighteenth-century London playhouses is that known as The Ms. Diaries of the Drury Lane Theatre, thirteen manuscript notebooks or theatrical calendars of quarto size among the holdings of The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. While there is a gap of two seasons, 1760–1762, and another of four seasons, 1764–1768, these documents are valued for their chronological record of theatrical seasons at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, throughout the management of David Garrick and his partner James Lacy, 1747–1776. Each night's reckoning is set down with the plays and entertainments produced, the box office receipts in round numbers, the numerical position of the performance in the particular season, and very often the prompter's notations concerning anything unusual about production, performers, the temper of the audience, or merely “the way things went” on a particular evening. Together with Course of Plays, 1740–1742, a similar calendar of the 1740–1741 season at Covent Garden Theatre and the 1741–1742 season at Drury Lane attributed to Richard Cross, these diaries have become known popularly as The Cross-Hopkins Diaries, after the two Drury Lane prompters, Richard Cross and William Hopkins, acknowledged compilers of the greater part of the series.

In the rich but little known manuscript collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania are six letters by or to the David Garricks which, as far as I have been able to discover, have not been published. Three are signed-autograph letters of David Garrick; one is written by Mrs. Garrick to her friend Hannah More; and two are addressed to Garrick by acquaintances. While the group adds little to the Garrick biography, the letters themselves are interesting and should find their proper place in the Correspondence. The original spelling and punctuation are reproduced, with due allowance for typographical limitations.