That history began in earnest, so Charles Gildon claimed, with a social call. Summer 1709 or thereabouts, and Gildon is travelling through Berkshire with that hardy signifier of narratorial unreliability, a ‘friend’. They reach Reading, with its remnants of a wool industry, farmers coming and going, and churches still under repair after the Civil War, when the royalist garrison had fought bitterly. It is cheap, at least, for the famous couple who keep a ‘country house’ there, ruing an investment which had devoured their savings years ago, but enjoying the contrast with Covent Garden.

‘Being hospitably receiv’d’, one day after dinner Gildon follows the semi-retired Thomas Betterton into the garden. They talk theatre; Gildon has written plays and shared the acquaintance of Steele and Dryden, Wycherley and Behn. It is a warm evening. Betterton has long suffered from stones and gout – a particular trouble in recent performances – so they sit in the shade and grumble. Ignorant audiences, incompetent managers, wretched playwrights, but above all, showy, lazy, greedy, vain, ill-disciplined actors: ‘Much was said by my Friend against the present Players, and in praise of those of his younger Days.’ What was to be done?

On cue, Betterton goes into his house, and ‘after a little stay return’. He is clutching some papers. h e wine goes round and the excitement mounts. Betterton says that another ‘friend’ has written out the manuscript for him but he is being typically modest: Gildon recognises the handwriting as Betterton’s. It is a view of ‘everything necessary for the Action and Utterance of the Pulpit and Bar, as well as on the Stage’. This is how he has supposedly spent the quieter months that have come since 1707, when he began to hand over roles to younger actors ‘systematically, not casually’; his summer breaks were lengthening. He still had sufficient involvement in the theatre to write from first-hand knowledge.