Haymarket
theatres when the
Spectator
first appeared.
Drury Lane
had entered upon a long season of greater prosperity than it had enjoyed for thirty years before. Collier, not finding the
Haymarket
as prosperous as it was fashionable, was planning a change of place with Swiney, and he so contrived, by lawyer's wit and court influence, that in the winter following 1711 Collier was at Drury Lane with a new license for himself, Wilks, Dogget, and Cibber; while Swiney, transferred to the Opera, was suffering a ruin that caused him to go abroad, and be for twenty years afterwards an exile from his country.