I suspect that their motivation in so doing was fear that her temper, her influence with other actors and her audiences, and her strong loyalty to her profession would hinder their legislated power to control absolutely London theaters, players, and audiences in 1743. Not much investigation is required to see Mrs. Clive at her clamoring best, at various times head to head with Susannah Cibber, Peg Woffington, Woodward, Shuter, or Garrick. Her letters to Garrick show that as late as the sixties she was quite capable of vitriol when she felt that she or her friends were unjustly treated. Tate Wilkinson was surely correct in describing her as "a mixture of combustibles; she was passionate, cross, and vulgar," often simultaneously.[[7]] If this were the case in mere greenroom tiffs or casual correspondence, how the ire of "the Clive" must have been excited by the cartelists, who did their utmost to keep her out of joint and almost out of sight.
In 1733, Fielding, who furthered Mrs. Clive's career by writing and editing parts of his plays for her and publicly praising her as a woman and as an actress, wrote the following encomium on her professional integrity in his "Epistle to Mrs. Clive," prefatory to The Intriguing Chambermaid:
The part you have maintained in the present dispute between the players and the patentees, is so full of honour, that had it been in higher life, it would have given you the reputation of the greatest heroine of the age. You looked on the cases of Mr. Highmore and Mrs. Wilks with compassion, nor could any promises or views of interest sway you to desert them; nor have you scrupled any fatigue ... to support the cause of those whom you imagine injured and distressed; and for this you have been so far from endeavouring to exact an exorbitant reward from persons little able to afford it, that I have known you to offer to act for nothing, rather than the patentees should be injured by the dismission of the audience.[[8]]
Fielding is, of course, referring to the 1733 dispute in which Mrs. Clive (and Macklin) among the principal players stayed with the ineffective proprietor of Drury Lane, John Highmore. Jealous that Highmore and not he gained control of Drury Lane after former shareholders either died or sold out, Theophilus Cibber demanded, among other things, that Highmore share profits with his players rather than pay fixed salaries. He then led the Drury Lane players in revolt in the autumn of 1733 to the New Haymarket where they played without a license until March of the 1733-1734 season, at which time they returned to Drury Lane under the new management of Fleetwood. The actors at least partially won this battle, and although Highmore tried to have the vagrant act enforced, the players returned to Drury Lane unscathed. With Highmore gone, a period of uneasy peace obtained. The players, however, were not to win so easily the next dispute, the one that took place after the passage of the licensing act.[[9]]
Mrs. Clive's decision to stay with Highmore rather than defect was probably made because "two women—Mrs. Wilks, the widow of her [Kitty's] old theatrical idol, and Mrs. Booth—were in he[* the? her?] direction" of the theater.[[10]] But in light of Fielding's words and her actions and statements in regard to the welfare of Drury Lane and its actors throughout her career, I believe that Mrs. Clive, although not pleased with aspects of Highmore's reign, also refused to defect because she felt that the manager was basically in the right, that her fellow players would be destitute or at least open to hardship without employment there, and that the audiences would take offense at such unprofessional and selfish behavior from their "servants." The "Town," as her own play The Rehearsal (I.i. 159-170) shows, was always her judge in matters professional.
Fielding's prologue to his revised Author's Farce (1734), spoken by Mrs. Clive, compares the settled, prosperous former days at Drury Lane with those of 1734, when "... alas! how alter'd is our Case!/ I view with Tears this poor deserted Place."[[11]] With few exceptions, the "place" continued strangely in decline even with a competent company and often with a full house. The falling-off continued until the advent of Garrick, who with Lacy in 1747 co-managed the theater into a new era.
From the mid-thirties until 1743, Mrs. Clive appears in roles she had made famous as well as those newly written with her particular talents in mind. Fielding, turning more and more to political satire and soon to another literary form, had little need of her services;[[12]] but others did, and the years between the licensing act and 1743 find Mrs. Clive in demand as the affected lady of quality, speaker of humorous epilogues, performer in Dublin, and singer of such favorites as "Ellen-a-Roon," "The Cuckoo," and "The Life of a Beau." This period is also marked by Mrs. Clive's first professional venture with David Garrick, in his Lethe, the beginning of a relationship to become one of the most tempestuous and fruitful in all theater history.
As I intimated at the outset, the licensing act mainly troubled the London players because of the power of monopoly it invested in Fleetwood and Rich. Not only were the forums for dramatic presentation now restricted, but so was professional freedom. The problem, therefore, was as much philosophical as it was geographical. From the sixteenth century to 1737, English players had some freedom (albeit limited) to rebel from intolerable authority and to form their own company.[[13]] This freedom, this choice, as Lord Chesterfield pointed out in his speech against the act, was severely attenuated in 1737, and was to remain so in varying degrees until the monopoly the act allowed was legislated dead in 1843. But it was a cartel between the managers that the players most feared, and there is evidence in the pamphlets growing out of the struggle of 1743 that such a fear was well-founded.
The playing conditions at Drury Lane in the early forties were not good, a situation directly attributable to the ineptitude and highhandedness of Fleetwood (and his treasurer Pierson) and his refusal to pay salaries in full and on time. The manager's accommodating side-show performers in his company did not help. Macklin, as Fleetwood's lieutenant, had to try to pacify actors, workmen, creditors; as actor he commiserated with the players. With the coming of Garrick from Goodman's Fields to Drury Lane late in the 1741-1742 season and with a progressively disgruntled Clive all the principals in the revolt are under one—leaky—roof.
In light of the number and variety of the published commentary which accompanied the revolt, perhaps a highlighting of Clive's Case would be the most efficient way to elucidate some of the major difficulties involved. After addressing herself to "the Favour of the Publick," with encouragement from her friends,[[14]] Mrs. Clive strikes the key note of her essay: injustice and oppression, specifically seen in the cartel's threat to "Custom," an iterative word throughout the essay. Mrs. Clive first speaks of salary, a matter obviously important to her "Liberty and Livelihood."[[15]] One writer on the dispute, in a quasi-satirical tract, denounces the managers in this regard and in so doing echoes Mrs. Clive: "When there are but two Theatres allowed of, shall the Masters of those two Houses league together, and oblige the Actors either to take what Salary or Treatment they graciously vouchsafe to offer them, and to be parcelled out and confined to this House or t'other, just as they in their Wisdoms think meet; or else to be banished the Kingdom for a Livelihood? This is Tyranny with a Vengeance—but perhaps these generous noble-spirited Masters may intend their Performers a Compliment in it, and by thus fixing them to one Place, effectually wipe off that odious Appellation of Vagabonds, which has been sometimes given them."[[16]] The licensing act, subsequent cartel, and mistreatment of players were then not only in the mind of Mrs. Clive. Treated in most of the arguments for or against the players was salary, but it was only a cover hiding an underlying malaise.