I am told he gave thirty guineas to have it acted on the fifth night."[2] When it was published, Gay prefaced it with the following dedication:-- TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCESS OF WALES.
"Madam, "The honour I received from your Royal Highness in being permitted to read this play to you before it was acted, made me more happy than any other success that could have happened to me.

If it had the good fortune to gain your Royal Highness's approbation, I have often been reflecting to what to impute it, and I think it must have been the catastrophe of the fall, the rewarding virtue and the relieving the distressed.

For that could not fail to give some pleasure in fiction, which, it is plain, gives you the greatest in reality, or else your Royal Highness would not (as you always have done) make it your daily practice.
"I am, Madam, "Your Royal Highness's most dutiful and most humbly devoted servant, "JOHN GAY." Of what Gay did, or where he went during 1724, next to nothing is known.
Presumably he spent most of his time in his apartment at Whitehall, eating much and drinking more than was good for him, and, to judge by results, writing nothing.

The only trace of him during 1724 is in the following letter:-- JOHN GAY TO THE HON.MRS.

HOWARD.
[Bath, 1724.] "Since I came to the Bath I have written three letters; the first to you, the second to Mr.Pope, and the third to Mr.Fortescue.Every post gives me fresh mortification, for I am forgot by everybody.