[1] They were a professional, respected and comfortably-off band with better than average wages and popular headquarters at the White Swan inn.
Unusually, a good relationship had matured between the Norwich Theatre manager and the local magistrates, who under normal circumstances had little time for players.
For a decade, they went by the name of "The Duke of Grafton's Servants", a patron of the company in the early eighteenth century.
In 1736 they assumed the cumbersome title of "The Norwich Company of Comedians, Servants to His Grace, the Duke of Grafton, Lord Chamberlain to His Majesty's Household".
John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, new to London in January 1728, was performed to Norwich audiences three months later, and taken soon after to Bury St Edmunds, Colchester and Ipswich.