| The purpose of these volumes is to provide brief biographical notices of all persons who were members of theatrical companies or occasional performers or were patentees or servants of the patent theatres, opera houses, amphitheatres, pleasure gardens, theatrical taverns, music rooms, fair booths, and other places of public entertainment in London and its immediate environs from the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 until the end of the season 17991800. |
| The authors recognize the impossibility of achieving this end. No one knows precisely how many people were engaged in entertaining the London public during these 140 years. We have found at least some information on probably more than 8,500 individuals. We hope that this information will be augmented when our entries are seen by specialists in eighteenth-century theatre and drama; but it is not likely that the number of persons now known surely or conjectured fairly to have been connected with theatrical enterprises in this period will ever be increased considerably. |
| We have included actors and actresses, dancers, singers, instrumental musicians, scene painters, machinists, management officials, prompters, acrobats, contortionists, pyrotechnists, magicians, dwarfs, freaks, animal trainers, strong men, public orators, mimics, dressers, callers, concessionaires, and also members of certain trades operating on salary and within the physical confines of the theatressuch employees as tailors, carpenters, and barbers. |
| Our definition excludes the hordes of amateur actors stricken with the cacoethes ludendi, declaiming in the "spouting clubs" and posturing in private theatricals (though we record the involvement of professionals in these entertainments). Neither have we admitted the many dramatic authors who, for pelf and publicity, acted in their own plays, unless they were at some time bona fide actors in addition to being playwrights. (Non-acting authors as a theatrical class have been denied admission for reasons obvious to anyone who will consider the bibliographical and critical implications of their inclusion.) Finally, we have excluded a few amateurs who were allowed to play prominent roles at benefits given them in compassion to some distressbeing widowed, orphaned, or threatened with debtors' gaol, rendered destitute by acts of God, or being physically disabled. It will suffice to give one rather striking example, that of "Dr. Clancy, who is Blind," as the playbill announced, and who played Tiresias, the blind prophet in Oedipus, King of Thebes at Drury Lane on 2 April 1744: |
 | | | This Gentleman being deprived of the Advantages of following his profession, and as the writing he had produced for the stage could not be brought out this season, the Master of the Playhouse has been so kind as to favour him with a Benefit Night: It is therefore hoped, that as this will be the first instance of any person laboring under so heavy a deprivation, performing on the stage, the Novelty, as well as the Unhappyness of his case, will engage the favour and protection of a BRITISH AUDIENCE. |
| There were also professionals among the dancers and musicians who were very closely related to the life of the theatres but |
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