Three Hours after Marriage

Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles Lawrence Clark Powell, Clark Memorial Library
John Butt, University of Edinburgh James L. Clifford, Columbia University Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago Louis A. Landa, Princeton University Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles James Sutherland, University College, London H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Edna C. Davis, Clark Memorial Library
Thus it boiled down to a choice between the two earlier Dublin printings; 1761, it seemed, would not need to be checked. The kindness of the Harvard College Library made it possible to compare its copy of 1757 with the Clark Library's copy of 1758, and in the light of the data furnished by the Clark's Supervising Bibliographer, Mr. William E. Conway, the Clark copy could be settled upon; the differences, though slight—there was little resetting from 1757 to 1758, and none in the play proper—were in its favor.
That in all this sweetness and light there should have been a plan to make Cibber ridiculous, and he too stupid to realize this until he had trod the stage as Plotwell and felt the impact of the lines directed at him personally, is unbelievable on the face of it. How could the alleged plotters have been sure that when Colley came to cast the play he would not frustrate their deep-laid plan by assigning Plotwell to some other actor, if only by mere chance?
This quarrel, whether with both poets involved with Cibber or only one, doubtless cost the play a revival or two that it would otherwise have had; with such evidence of anger in the authors Cibber could well have wished to have done with them and their work. The use of the crocodile costume on April 2 in a dance at Drury Lane entitled The Shipwreck suggests that so far as the management was concerned the play for which it had been devised would not be acted again. Thereafter, Three Hours had only two revivals (Handlist of Plays in Nicoll, Early Eighteenth-Century Drama )—one in 1737 (two performances) the other in 1746 (three).