Event Comment: The tragedy of the Revenge is in rehearsal at Covent Garden in which the part of Zanga will be attempted by the Gentleman who appeared in the character of Osman in Zara, will be performed someday this week, as are also the plays of King Lear and Alexander the Great, revis'd and alter'd in which the parts of Lear and Alexander will be played by Barry

Event Comment: The United Company. The date of the first performance is not certain, but Luttrell acquired his copy of the separately-printed Prologue and Epilogue on 18 Aug. 1684. (Bindley Collection, William Andrews Clark@Jr@Library), and the play was probably first performed on that day or in the preceding week. The Prologue and Epilogue are reprinted in Wiley, Rare Prologues and Epilogues, pp. 221-23. In the broadside the speaker of the Prologue is identified as Jevon. A sofg, Ah poor Oliver never boast, the verse by a Lady, and the music by R. King, is in A Collection of Twenty-Four Songs, 1685. Another, Damon if you wilt believe me, the verse by a Person of Quality and the music by Alexander Damascene, is in The Banquet of Musick, The Fifth Book, 1691. Two songs, Tell me no more I am deceived, the verse by Sir George Etherege and the music by J. B. Draghi, and Who can resist my Celia's charms, the music by J. B. Drahgi, and the verse by A Person of Quality, are in the printed play. This cast contains the last new role certainly assigned to John Wiltshire, who, according to (Cibber, Apology, ed. Lowe, I, 84-85), entered the army and was killed in action

Event Comment: John Dryden to Sir George Etherege, 16 Feb. 1686@7: The Coffee-house stands certainly where it did, & angry men meet in the square sometimes, as Abercomy, & Goodman lately did, where they say Alexander the Great was wounded in the arme (The Letters of John Dryden, ed. Ward, p. 27). See 27 Oct. 1686

Event Comment: The United Company. On this evening William Mountfort, the actor, was killed by Lord Mohun and Captain Hill, but the name of the play given that night seems not to have been mentioned in the testimony at the trial. In a novel based on the event, The Player's Tragedy; or, Fatal Love (1693), Mrs Bracegirdle acted the Wife of Essex in The Unhappy Favourite, and the fiction may have been based on fact. Luttrell, A Brief Relation, II, 637, 10 Dec. 1692: Last night lord Mohun, captain Hill of collonel Earles regiment, and others, pursued Mountfort the actor from the playhouse to his lodgings in Norfolk Street, where one kist him while Hill run him thro' the belly: they ran away, but his lordship was this morning seized and committed to prison. Mountfort died of nis wounds this afternoon. The quarrell was about Bracegirdle the actresse, whom they would have trapan'd away, but Mountfort prevented it, wherefore they murthered him thus. [See also HMC, 14th Report, Appendix, Portland MSS., III, 509; The Ladies Lamentation for their Adonis, 16@2, a poem on Mountfort's death; The Player's Tragedy; or, Fatal Love, 1693, a fictional treatment of the affair; and, particularly, Borgman, The Life and Death of William Mountfort, pp. 123-69. See also Cibber, Apology, I, 108, for an account of Betterton's taking the role of Alexander after Mountfort's death.

Event Comment: The Queen's Birthday Ode, Come, Ye Sons of Art, the music by Henry Purcell, the author of the words not known; and Strike the Viol, sung by Alexander? Damascene, are in Gentleman's Journal, May 1694. See also Purcell's Works, Purcell Society, XXIV (1926), ii