In the next season, at Drury (1717-18), the only remarkable piece produced was Cibber's adaptation of "Tartuffe," under the name of the "Nonjuror." In the lustre of the "Nonjuror" paled and died out the first play by Savage, "Love in a Veil." Not twenty years had elapsed since this luckless and heartless young vagabond was born, in Fox Court, Gray's Inn Lane, his unknown mother, but not that light lady, the Countess of Macclesfield, wearing a mask. Savage had passed from a shoemaker's shop to the streets, had written a poem on the Bangorian Controversy, had adapted a play translated from the Spanish, by the wife of Mr. Baron Price, and which Bullock re-adapted and produced at Drury Lane before Savage could get his own accepted. "Love in a Veil" seems to have been founded on an incident in the Spanish comedy; but however this may be, it failed to obtain the public approval. The author, however, did not altogether fail; generous Wilks patronised the boy, and Steele, befriending a lad of parts, designed to give him £1000, which he had not got, with the hand of a natural daughter, whom the young and wayward poet did not get. The "Nonjuror" alone survives as a memorial of the Drury season of 1717-18.
We owe the piece to fear and hatred of the Pope and the Pretender. It addressed itself to so wide a public that Lintot gave the liberal sum of a hundred guineas for the copyright, and it was so acceptable to the King that he gave a dedication fee of twice that number of guineas to the author, who addressed him as "dread Sir," and spoke of himself as "the lowest of your subjects from the theatre." Cibber adds, "Your comedians, Sir, are an unhappy society, whom some severe heads think wholly useless, and others, dangerous to the young and innocent. This comedy is, therefore, an attempt to remove that prejudice, and to show what honest and laudable uses may be made of the theatre, when its performances keep close to the true purposes of its institution." Cibber goes on to remark, that perhaps the idly and seditiously inclined may cease to disturb their brains about embarrassing the government, if "proper amusements" be provided for them. For such his play is rather a chastisement than an amusement, and he thinks _that_ would have been all the better taken had it not been administered by a comedian. The Nonjurors, whose allegiance was paid to the Pretender, were perhaps not worthy of a more exalted scourger; but he fears that truth and loyalty demanded a nobler champion. He flatteringly alludes to the small number of malcontents. His piece had either crushed them, or their forces were not so great as supposed, "there being no assembly where people are so free, and apt to speak their minds, as in a crowded theatre, of which," says the courtly fellow, "your Majesty may have lately seen an instance in the insuppressible acclamations that were given on your appearing to honour this play with your royal presence."