Note 6 — INTRODUCTION

To charge him, as one authority has done, with "an arbitrary withdrawal of Three Hours after a far from unsuccessful week ... an invidious, if not unwarrantable, decision on his part" betrays an imperfect understanding of how a theater had to be managed in the early 18th century when the number of patrons upon which it could rely was limited. A play would run as long as it continued to draw; when the house began to fall off a new bill would have to be announced. The intermitting of Three Hours should be most naturally read as suggesting that at least in the judgment of the managers its initial vogue had passed. It would have been brought back when they thought patrons were ready to see it again—say, in a couple of months.