Note 202 — HIS LIFE

The Director of the Drury Lane Theatre, Colley Cibber, produced, a month later, a farce called The Contretemps, or The Rival Queens, where the two singers were depicted tearing their chignons, and Handel saying in anger to them, whom he wished to separate, “Leave them alone, when they are tired their fury will spend itself out,” and, in order that the strife might be definitely finished, he wound it up with great strokes on the drum. Handel’s friend, Dr. Arbuthnot, also published on this subject one of his best pamphlets, “The Devil let loose at St. James’s” (see Chrysander, Volume II).