Note (return) — Chapter XXVII · BENEFITS.

"In Dryden's time," writes Dr. Johnson, explaining that with all his diligence in play-writing the poet could not greatly improve his fortune,2 "the drama was very far from that universal approbation which it has now obtained. The playhouse was abhorred by the Puritans, and avoided by those who desired the character of seriousness or decency. A grave lawyer would have debased his dignity, and a young trader would have impaired his credit by appearing in those mansions of dissolute licentiousness. The profits of the theatre, when so many classes of the people were deducted from the audience, were not great, and the poet had, for a long time, but a single night. The first that had two nights was Southern; and the first that had three was Rowe. There were, indeed, in those days, arts of improving a poet's profit, which Dryden forbore to practise; but a play seldom produced him more than a hundred pounds by the accumulated gain of the third night, the dedication, and the copy."