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Off with his head: so much for Buckingham,

were so significant and important from his visible enjoyment of the incident, that several loud shouts of approbation proclaimed the triumph of the actor and satisfaction of the audience.’ A modern purist would have walked out of the playhouse when his ear was insulted by Cibber’s tag; but from a theatre point of view it is a good tag, and I have always thought it a pity that Shakespeare forgot to set it down himself, and left to Cibber the burden of finishing the line. The tag is certainly deserving of this recognition that it was the line with which Garrick first captured the Box Office, and it is interesting that the best Richard III. of my generation, Barry Sullivan, always used Cibber’s version, for the joy, as I take it, of bringing down the house with ‘so much for Buckingham.’ Shakespeare was so fond of improving other folk’s work himself, and was such a keen business man, that he would certainly have adopted as his own any line capable of such good Box Office results.