David Garrick Presents The Padlock: An 18th-Century “Hit”

Abstract

The importance of the afterpiece in David Garrick's managerial scheme is generally acknowledged, though most grant too casually, perhaps, that the “English Roscius” was also a practical and clever theatrical entrepreneur. He understood the popular taste and, even as he attempted to improve that taste, he catered to it for obvious financial reasons. Had a Londoner visited Drury Lane on the night of 3 October 1768, therefore, and dutifully witnessed the “prisons, racks, and death” of The Earl of Warwick, Dr. Thomas Francklin's patriotic exercise in pseudo-istorical, blank verse tragedy, he would have been rewarded with the premiere of The Padlock, a delightful afterpiece by Isaac Bickerstaffe and Charles Dibdin.