[7] She says that the fracas occurred on the fourth evening of _The Rehearsal_, and at least this revival did have a fourth performance, five in fact: Emmett L. Avery in _The London Stage_ (1960) gives the dates as February 7, 8, 20, March 21, 28. There is a slight difficulty in assigning Gay's visit to the fourth of these, i.e., March 21: this is that the dates on which the two pamphlets that refer to it were advertised ("just before March 1" for Drub's, and March 30 for Breval's--Sherburn, p. 91) seem to rule out a March 21 fracas in the one case and to fall uncomfortably close in the other. But publication (of course) though announced, may have been delayed, and it is perhaps worth noticing that in each pamphlet Gay's visit is mentioned in an inorganic part of the work that could have been added late: the Dedication in Drub's, and, in Breval's, an ironical "congratulatory poem" printed after the epilogue, on the last two pages of the book.
This quarrel, whether with both poets involved with Cibber or only one, doubtless cost the play a revival or two that it would otherwise have had; with such evidence of anger in the authors Cibber could well have wished to have done with them and their work. The use of the crocodile costume on April 2 in a dance at Drury Lane entitled _The Shipwreck_ suggests that so far as the management was concerned the play for which it had been devised would not be acted again. Thereafter, _Three Hours_ had only two revivals (Handlist of Plays in Nicoll, _Early Eighteenth-Century Drama_)--one in 1737 (two performances) the other in 1746 (three).
A pity! But in any case the play could not have had much of a life on the stage, considering the climate into which the authors chose to introduce it. The type of wit that had flourished in the former age did still hold a place in the theatre in 1717, but only in such comedies as had already won a place in the repertory.[8] The older plays could be "corrected" (that is, the racier lines could be taken out) or the tender-minded could tolerate them as classics or in a pinch stay at home when a play known to be of this sort had been announced. A new play was in a more vulnerable position; it had to conform to what the reformers had for a couple of decades been telling audiences a play should be, or squalls could be expected. Sir Richard Blackmore was continuing the crusade against scapegrace wit--in the Preface to his _Essays_, 1717, he is explicitly severe upon _Three Hours_ and its authors--and the battle was going his way. Jeremy Collier had published nothing on the theatre for nearly a decade but it is interesting to see his methods applied to the play by Timothy Drub in his _Letter to Gay_ and Drub then clinching his remarks with a quote of two pages from "a very elegant author" whom he does not name but who--not too surprisingly--can be recognized as Collier himself.[9] (Could "Drub" have been, in fact, Collier, thus tempted by _Three Hours_ to return to the fray under this alias?)