Event Comment: The
United Company. This performance is on the
L. C. list, 5@151, p. 369:
Ye Q: a Box & a Box for ye Maids Honor
Amphitrion. See also
Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 352. The date of the first performance is not known, and it is doubtful that this one is the first; the premiere may have occurred early in October. The Songs and Music were published in 1690 and again in 1691, and have been edited by the
Purcell Society, XVI (1906), iii-vi. Dedication, Edition of 1690: But what has been wanting on my part, has been abun
dantly supplied by the Excellent Composition of
Mr Purcell; in whose person we have at length found an
English Man equal with the best abroad. At least, my Opinion of him has been such, since his happy and judicious performances in the late opera [
The Prophetess], and the experience I have had of him, in the setting my three Songs for this Amphitryon": To all which, and particularly to the composition of the Pastoral Dialogue, the numerous Quire of Fair Ladies gave so just an Applause on the Third Day.
Cibber, Apology, I, 113: As we have sometimes great Composers of Musick who cannot sing, we have as frequently great Writers that cannot read; and though without the nicest Ear no Man can be Master of Poetical Numbers, yet the best Ear in the World will not always enable him to pronounce them. Of this Truth
Dryden, our first great Master of Verse and Harmony, was a strong Instance: When he brought his Play of
Amphytrion to the Stage, I heard him give it his first Reading to the Actors, in which, though it is true he deliver'd the plain Sense of every Period, yet the whole was in so cold, so flat, and unaffecting a manner, that I am afraid of not being believ'd when I affirm it