Then, in June 1772, the Haymarket Theatre, just off Piccadilly Circus, mounted a play, The Nabob, newly written by the Haymarket’s proprietor, Samuel Foote. In this bawdy satire, Sir Matthew Mite is an obnoxious India-returned parvenu ‘Nabob’ hoping to use his Bengal loot to marry into an ancient family and corruptly buy election to Parliament for the constituency of Bribe ’em.
