John Essex, in the preface of The Dancing Master (1728), his translation of Pierre Rameau's Le Maître à danser, writes: WE have had a great many Women attempt to be Theatrical Dancers, but none ever arrived to that Height and Pitch of Applause as the incomparable Mrs. Booth, in whom Art and Nature are so beautifully wove together, that the whole Web is of a Piece so exquisitely formed to Length and Breadth, that the Produce of the many different Characters she represents is the Wonder and Admiration of the present Age, and will scarce be credited by the Succeeding.

This indifference was so offensive to his high heart, that he began to change the Tender into the Terrible, and, in short, proceeded at last to treat her in a style too grossly insulting for the meanest female ear to endur unresented.

There, in one of her best parts, wherein she drew a favourable regard and approbation from the audience, he, dispensing with the respect which some people think due to a polite assembly, began to interrupt her performance with such loud and various notes of mockery, as other young men of honour in the same place had sometimes made themselves undauntedly merry with.

"A gentlemen then behind the scenes, [James Craggs the Younger], being shock'd at his unmanly behaviour, was warm enough to say, that no man but a fool or a bully could be capable of insulting an audience or a woman in so monstrous a manner.

"To conclude, their dispute was ended the next morning in Hyde Park, where the determin'd combatant who first ask'd for satisfaction was obliged afterwards to ask his life too; whether he mended it or not, I have not yet heard; but his antagonist in a few years afterwards died in one of the principal posts of the Government.