You know, when you hear the phrase gig economy,
you probably picture someone driving for a rideshare
app. Right. Or, you know, a freelance graphic
designer constantly hustling on a laptop at a
coffee shop. Yeah, exactly. Just juggling five
different clients just to make rent. It feels
like a very modern, very 21st century kind of
exhaustion. It does. It's really easy to think
of the side hustle as like an invention of the
smartphone era. But the truth is, the mechanics
of surviving gig to gig are centuries old. The
tools change, but the hustle remains exactly
the same. Completely the same. Which is why today,
for this deep dive, we're looking at a stack
of notes and research centered on a single really
fascinating Wikipedia article. It's about a man
who might just be the ultimate original gig worker.
We are diving into the life of an 18th century
English, or well, possibly Anglo -Irish figure
named William Rufus Chetwood. Such a great name,
by the way. It really is. And the mission for
this deep dive is to explore how this one man
who was constantly hustling at the absolute center
of literary and theatrical London actually shaped
the pop culture we still consume today. Yeah,
he really did. But, you know, his life also serves
as a fairly brutal cautionary tale about the
harsh economics of the creative world. Okay,
let's unpack this, because his resume defies
any normal career path. It's absurd, honestly.
We are talking about a guy who is simultaneously
a publisher, a bookseller, a theatrical prompter,
a playwright, a novelist, and a historian. And
that inability to be categorized, that's exactly
why you should care about him. Chetwood is essentially
the invisible glue of the 1700s entertainment
industry. Invisible glue. I like that. Yeah,
because when you understand his life, you are
getting a backstage pass to how pop culture was
actually manufactured, packaged and sold three
centuries ago. He's the man behind the curtain.
Exactly. Pulling all the levers of this rapidly
growing entertainment machine. So let's start
at the beginning. Or I mean, at least. what we
know of it, because chronologically, his origins
are totally opaque. Very murky. Right. We don't
have a definitive birth year. We barely have
a background, though there are strong hints he
might have spent an extended period of time at
sea early on. Which comes back to play a big
part later. Oh, absolutely. But he just sort
of washes ashore in the historical record. By
1714, he surfaces in Dublin. working as an assistant
manager to Joseph Ashbury's theater company.
Just jumping right into theater management. Right.
And then by 1715, he publishes a work called
The Life of Lady Jane Grey. But then in June
of 1715, he lands what becomes his real anchor
gig. The big one. Yeah. He becomes the prompter
at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London. And
he holds that job for nearly 20 years. Which,
I have to point out, holding any position in
the 18th century theater world for two decades
is an incredible feat of survival. In a notoriously
volatile industry. Highly volatile. I was actually
trying to visualize what a 1715 theater prompter
actually does. Because today, if we hear prompter,
we think of like a teleprompter. Right, or someone
sitting in a box just whispering a forgotten
line to an actor. Exactly. But based on the research,
this feels much closer to a modern -day live
TV showrunner. Or maybe, um, like an air traffic
controller. Oh, the air traffic controller analogy
is spot on. They aren't the stars wearing the
fancy costumes, but they are holding the entire
chaotic production together from the shadows.
What's fascinating here is, when you consider
the physical mechanics of an 18th century theater,
there were no headsets. There were no digital
displays. As the prompter at Drury Lane, Chetwood
held the master copy of the script. In fact,
he often held the only complete copy of the script.
Wait, really? The only copy? Yeah. Actors were
typically only given their specific lines and
their cues, not the whole play. Wait, so the
actors didn't even know the full story they were
performing? Often, no. They just knew, you know,
what they were supposed to say and when they
were supposed to walk on. That sounds like a
recipe for disaster. It could be. Which is why
Chetwood was so important. He was the one person
who saw the entire board. He organized the rehearsals.
He managed the entrances and exits. Wow. This
meant he had unparalleled intimate access. to
every single script that came through the doors,
every actor who walked on stage, and every major
playwright of the era. So he is sitting at the
absolute center of the cultural zeitgeist. Daily.
I mean, he is watching the crowd from the shadows
every single night. Zording it all. Exactly.
He sees which jokes make the audience roar with
laughter and which dramatic monologues just completely
put them to sleep. So he's getting a real time.
nightly education in consumer demand. Yes. A
master class in what the public actually wants.
Which explains his next move perfectly. Because
when you spend every night holding the master
script and watching the audience react, you are
going to recognize the commercial value of the
written word. It's inevitable. Right. It's a
logical leap for Chetwood to realize he can monetize
that access. Because he has his hands on literally
every new play, he starts moonlighting as a publisher
and a bookseller. the ultimate 18th century side
hustle. Exactly. He takes his inside knowledge
from the prompter's chair and leverages it. It's
a brilliant pivot, honestly. He uses the physical
access of his day job to fuel his own independent
enterprise. And it was the perfect time for it,
wasn't it? It was. You have to understand the
mechanics of the print market at this time. Literacy
rates were rapidly rising. Right. More people
could read than ever before. Exactly. You had
this brand new middle class with disposable income
and just an absolute hunger for reading material.
and Chetwood steps right in to feed them. Even
before he got to Drury Lane back in 1713, he
shows up as the publisher of a piece called A
Poem on the Memorable Fall of Chloe's P .S. Pot.
Which is quite the title. It is. And it's attributed
to Jonathan Swift. A huge name. Huge. But once
he's established a Drury Lane, he really scales
up. He starts partnering with the heavyweights
of the publishing world. Men like Barty B. Bernard
-Lintott, John Watts, William Mears, and James
Roberts. The big players at the time. Yeah, and
together they published several Shakespeare plays.
They published almost every new London play that
hits the stage between 1719 and 1722. That's
a massive market share. It's wild. And he even
publishes works by major novelists like Daniel
Defoe. Specifically, he puts out Moll Flanders
and Colonel Jack, as well as Eliza Haywood's
incredibly popular novel, Love in Excess. And
works by Theophilus Sibber, Thomas Durfey, Thomas
Doggett, and Richard Savage's memoirs too. He
is literally printing the foundation of the English
novel and modern theater. But okay, here's where
it gets really interesting. I want to challenge
the narrative here. Go for it. Looking at this
list. putting out a crude poem about a chamber
pot one day, and then publishing a foundational
novel like Mulflanders the Next. Was Chetwood
actually a visionary tastemaker who, you know...
discover these literary giants? Or was he just
a guy who happened to own a printing press, throwing
everything at the wall to see what's stuck in
a new consumer market? That is the crucial distinction
to make. Chetwood was definitely not a visionary
literary curator sitting in a mahogany office
trying to elevate high art. OK, so more of the
spaghetti on the wall approach. Totally. He was
a highly pragmatic opportunist in the best sense.
the 18th century print market was the Wild West.
Because there were no real copyright laws, right?
Copyright laws, as we think of them today, were
barely in their infancy and incredibly porous.
So it was just a free for all grab for content.
Exactly. He didn't draw a hard line between high
art and pulp fiction because the market didn't.
He published what would sell. And he knew it
would sell because he watched the Jewelry Lane
audiences every night. Yes. He understood that
people wanted scandal. They wanted adventure.
They wanted romance. And they wanted cheaply
and quickly. Exactly. He was taking the mass
market appeal he saw in the theater and applying
it directly to the printing press. Culturally
speaking, he was helping invent the concept of
the mass market paperback. Just giving the people
what they want. Yeah. But you know, the problem
with running a side hustle at that scale is the
sheer exhaustion of it. Oh, absolutely. He is
reading, prompting, publishing other people's
hits, and dealing with other people's flops.
After years of fixing other people's rough drafts,
it's inevitable that Chetwood would look at the
material crossing his desk and think, I can do
this myself. Why am I just publishing this when
I can write it? Exactly. And that brings us to
his transition into an original creator. He decides
to cross the footlights, which is always a dangerous
transition. Being a great editor or a great producer
does not automatically make you a great writer.
It reminds me of like a modern podcast audio
engineer, someone who spends a decade mixing
other people's tracks and cutting out their mistakes.
Right. And then they finally decide to drop their
own indie album or write their own novel. So
Chetwood starts writing his own And how did that
go for him? Well, his early attempts. They fail.
Ouch. Yeah, it works like South Sea or The Biter
Bit. And the stock drivers get published, but
they remain completely unperformed. The irony.
Right? The theater world, the very world he helped
run, rejected his original scripts. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, notice what he does
next. He doesn't stubbornly keep writing unstageable
plays. No, he reads the room. He adapts to the
market. He pivots completely. He leans into those
rumors we mentioned about his early life at sea,
and he starts writing adventure novels instead.
Using what he knows, or at least what people
think he knows. Exactly. He writes the voyages,
dangerous adventures, and imminent escapes of
Captain R. Falconer. And then he strikes gold.
The big hit. Yeah, he writes a massive hit. The
1726 novel, Voyages and Adventures of Captain
Robert Boyle. This book was so popular, it stayed
in print until at least the mid -19th century.
That's incredible. We even have records of an
1850 edition from Massachusetts. More than a
hundred years of relevance. For a guy throwing
spaghetti at the wall, that's a huge win. But
he never gives up on the sage. Eventually, he
cracks that code too. In 1729, he puts on The
Lover's Opera. Ah, yes. And this is where his
genius for recycling comes in. Because it wasn't
a wholly original idea, it was an adaptation
of an older 1718 play by Susanna St. Love called
A Bold Stroke for a Wife. He essentially repackaged
it into a new format. She did. It went through
at least three published editions and played
in Dublin. The format he chose is key here. He
adapted it into a ballad opera. I was actually
going to ask you about that, because the research
mentions ballad operas a few times. What actually
makes something a ballad opera, as opposed to
just a regular play with some music in it? So
a ballad opera was a wildly popular 18th century
format, where the playwright would take pre -existing
popular folk tunes. Like songs the audience already
knew. Exactly. Broadside ballads, stuff they
knew by heart. And they would write new satirical
lyrics for them, mixing those songs into the
spoken dialogue. Oh, that's clever. It was. It
was a direct reaction against the highbrow, elite
Italian operas that were so popular with the
aristocracy at the time. It's like pop music
theater. Very much so. The trend exploded in
1728 with a massive hit called The Beggar's Opera.
So Chetwood sees The Beggar's Opera making a
fortune and says, I can do that. Yep. He grabs
an older play by Susanna St. Leave, slaps some
popular tunes into it, and just rides the wave.
Precisely. He was a master recycler of cultural
trends. After The Lover's Opera, he followed
it up with The Stitch Coach Opera, The Generous
Freemason, and The Mock Mason in the 1730s. Just
churning them out. Oh, and an unpublished one
called The Emperor of China. He even drops another
novel in 1736, Captain W .O .G. Vaughan. His
output is relentless. Because he knows how to
adapt to exactly what the consumer wants at any
given moment. But, you know, despite being this
incredibly prolific guy, a prompter for two decades,
a publisher of major works like Malfoy... a hit
novelist and adaptive playwright, his story takes
a severe, really dark turn. It does. Because
the brutal reality of the 18th century gig economy
is that there were absolutely zero financial
safety nets. None at all. No residuals for plays
performed by other companies, no 401ks, no health
insurance. If you stopped working... You stopped
eating. It's terrifying, honestly. And a shift
in his personal life quickly catalyzed a massive
financial downward spiral. A house of cards built
on constant hustle collapses very quickly when
the hustler falters. Yeah, let's look at how
that collapse started. He had a first marriage
that produced a daughter, Richabella. She actually
followed him into the theater business and became
an actress. Married the Irish actor Tobias Gamaia,
right? Yes, exactly. But then Chetwood has a
fateful second marriage. On June 15, 1738, at
St. Benett's, he marries an actress named Anne
Brett. And Anne had some serious theater connections.
She did. She was the granddaughter of Collie
Sibber, who was essentially theater royalty at
the time, a massive actor, manager, and poet
laureate. So this should have been a great match
for him. It should have. They have two daughters
together. But tragically, Both of those little
girls die in early childhood in the 1740s. That
is just a profound personal tragedy. It completely
derailed him. The historical record indicates
this second marriage and the subsequent family
tragedies heavily contributed to his severe financial
difficulties. You can't just keep hustling through
grief like that. No, you can't. And the ruin
is incredibly swissed. By 1741, Chetwood is completely
broke. He is surviving solely because Covent
Garden threw him a benefit performance of William
Congreve's play, The Old Bachelor. We should
probably clarify what a benefit performance meant
in this context. Yeah, please do. Because was
it like a modern charity gala? Sort of, but much
more direct. It really highlights just how desperate
his situation was. In the 18th century theater,
a benefit performance meant that the proceeds
for that specific night after the basic house
expenses were deducted went entirely to one individual.
Oh, wow. It was usually a way to give an actor
a bonus at the end of a season. But in Chatwood's
case, it was a lifeline. It was the theatrical
community literally passing the hat so their
former prompter could afford to eat. And avoid
prison. To go from running the floor at Drury
Lane and publishing Defoe to relying on a single
night's charity. That is a staggering fall from
grace. It's heartbreaking. And from that point
on, he spends his final decades just scrambling.
In 1741, he publishes a collection called Five
New Novels. He leaves London entirely. Looking
for work wherever he can find it. Right. We see
him working in Dublin in 41 and 44 and up in
Belfast with his surviving daughter in 53. He
is writing anything he can sell. Anything. He
co -writes a tour through Ireland with Philip
Luckham. He writes a poem called Kilkenny. In
1750, he publishes a book called British Theatre.
And that 1750 book contains a really fascinating
detail about his desperation. The book notoriously
included a list of Shakespeare quartos, several
of which were completely spurious. OK, I need
you to translate that. What is a quarto? And
why does it matter if it's spurious? So a quarto
is simply a way of printing a book. You take
a large sheet of paper, fold it twice to create
four leaves or eight pages. OK. It was the standard,
relatively cheap format for printing single plays
in Shakespeare's time. Collectors in the 18th
century were already obsessed with finding early
original quartos of Shakespeare's work. Ah, so
when you say Chetwood included spurious quartos.
He faked the historical record. Wait, really?
Yes. He listed editions of Shakespeare plays
that never actually existed. Why would he do
that? Likely to pad out his book, make it seem
more comprehensive, and drive up sales. He was
inventing history to make a quick book. Wow.
He is literally faking it to survive. But even
that doesn't save him. No. After a lifetime of
relentless work, he dies on March 3, 1766, likely
in the Marshall C. Detter's prison in Dublin.
Which is a horrific way to end. It is. Because
a debtor's prison wasn't just a place where you
sat out your sentence. You were locked up until
your debts were paid off by family or friends.
And the cruelest irony of a debtor's prison was
that you were charged by the jailers for your
own room and board while inside. Exactly. If
you couldn't pay your debts outside, you certainly
couldn't afford to live inside. It was a financial
death spiral. So what does this all mean? How
does a man who published Maul Flanders ran the
stage at Drury Lane for 20 years and wrote sea
novels that stayed in print for a century end
up dying in a financial death spiral in Dublin?
Well, his immense personal output simply couldn't
outpace the brutal economics of his era. But
the ultimate tragic irony of Chetwood's life
culminates in his final major work. The 1749
one? Yes. During his absolute darkest financial
days, right at the end of the 1740s, Chet Wood
wrote a book called A General History of the
Stage. And he wrote it out of pure desperation,
right? Totally. Just trying to generate enough
capital to stay out of the Marshall Sea. A gig
worker taking on one last gig to pay the rent.
Exactly. But today, historians consider that
book to be a highly valuable primary account
of contemporary London and Dublin theater. Because
he was there. Because he had been the prompter.
Because he had held the master script for 20
years, he knew where all the bodies were buried.
He knew how the business actually operated. He
died broke, locked in a cell because he couldn't
pay his bills. But his desperate hustle to survive
ended up preserving the very history of the stage
that he had helped build. He wrote the history
book because he needed the cash. And in doing
so, he made sure we remembered his era. Yeah.
That is a sobering reality check. Think about
the journey we just went on. William Rufus Chetwood
was the ultimate connective tissue of his time.
He really was. His fingerprints are literally
all over Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Shakespeare
reprints, and the daily chaotic operations of
the greatest theater in London. He was everywhere.
He was everywhere. But his life proves... In
the starkest terms, the proximity to greatness
and even immense personal creative output does
not guarantee a happy ending when you are a worker
in a system with no safety nets. He built the
very stage he couldn't afford to live on. His
life is a testament to the fact that the people
who manufacture pop culture rarely get to keep
the profits it generates. Which leaves us with
a final thought to mull over as we wrap up this
deep dive. I want you to think about the invisible
Chet Woods. of our current digital era. Think
about the unseen algorithm tweakers, the ghost
writers padding out influencer blogs, the assistant
podcast producers, the gig workers keeping the
digital content machine churning 24 -7 without
health insurance or job security. If someone
were to write a definitive history of our modern
digital stage 200 years from now, it would be
written by the famous influencers you see smiling
on your screen. Probably not. Or would it be
written by the broke, exhausted behind -the -scenes
gig worker who is actually pushing the buttons
to publish it all? Think about who is really
holding the master script.