basic salary was her being forced to pay for her benefit. The extant
Clive-Garrick correspondence points to the pride she took in not only a
"clear" benefit but one held during that part of the month she dictated.
As is the case with salary, the basis for this complaint was
unreasonable manipulation by the managers, loss of freedom, and an
unjustified break with tradition: "I had had one [a benefit] clear of
all Expence for Nine Years before; an Advantage the first Performers had
been thought to merit for near Thirty Years, and had grown into a
Custom."

Mrs. Clive did not regularly play for Rich until December 1743, from
which time she "determined to stay there," doing all in her power to
please her audiences and him. Yet she "found, by his Behaviour to me, it
was designed I should not continue with him." Clive's specific
exposition of Rich's mistreatment of her is a portrait of an actress
aware of her worth and of a manager at his worst. Fired from Covent
Garden--against custom and justice--at the end of the season without
being told, Mrs. Clive could not arrange to play in Ireland, where she
was a great favorite,[19] for Rich's cheat did not become clear to her
until summer was too far advanced. Clive says it all when she observes
"it is unlawful to act any where but with them." Fleetwood was the only
alternative for the next season, and he still owed her £160. 12s. At the
time of Clive's Case (October, 1744) Fleetwood had not yet contacted her
for engagement at Drury Lane even though he could not "but know I am
disengag'd from the other Theatre." Nor could have Clive expected much
of a salary from him even if he did call on her since the last season he
offered her "not near half as much as he afterwards agreed to give
another Performer, and less than he then gave to some others in his
Company." Mrs. Clive could not but conclude that the managers were in
league to distress her.[20] In the final third of her essay, Mrs. Clive