Event Comment: The Countess of Derby to the Duchess de la Tremoille, 25 Feb. 1660@1: Plays are often acted at court, and the King and their Royal Highnesses have been present at two this evening, at the Duchess of Buckingham's (Madame Guizot de Witt, The Lady of Latham [London, 1869], p. 268)

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys: I to Whitefryars, and saw The Bondman acted; an excellent play and well done. But above all that ever I saw, Betterton, do the Bondman the best

Event Comment: Pepys, Diary: And then out to the red bull (where I had not been since plays come up again)...where I was led by a seaman that knew me, but is here as a servant, up to the tireing-room, where strange the confusion and disorder that there is among them in fitting themselves, especially here, where the clothes are very poor, and the actors but common fellows. At last into the pitt, where I think there was not above ten more than myself, and not one hundred in the whole house. And the play, which is called All's lost by Lust, poorly done; and with so much disorder, among others, that in the musique-room the boy that was to sing a song, not singing it right, his master fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put the whole house in an uprore. Nicoll (Restoration Drama, p. 309) argues that George Jolly probably occupied the red bull in St John's Street, Clerkenwell. When Richard Walden saw the red bull players at Oxford in July 1661, Anne Gibbs acted Dionysia in All's Lost by Lust. It is possible that she played that role on this day. See Walden's Io Ruminans, 1662

Event Comment: See Herbert (Dramatic Records, p. 117) for The Mayd in the Mill acted in May and A Wife for a Monthe and The Bondman acted by the King's Company at an unspecified time following May

Event Comment: On Sunday Charles, Duke of Cambridge, the son of the Duke of York, died. On 7 May 1661, Francis Newport wrote to Sir Richard Leveson: The Duke of Cambridge dyed on Sunday in the afternoon and was buryed yesternight without any solemnity, noe mourning in the Court for him (HMC, Sutherland MSS, 5th Report, Appendix, 1876, p. 151). If the theatres were closed because of this death, the closure was for not more than ten days

Event Comment: The Prologue, with the date of performance given as 28 May 1661, is in Thomas Jordan's A Royal Arbour of Loyal Poesie, 1664. See also Wiley, Rare Prologues and Epilogues, p. 326. This is possibly George Jolly's company. See also 23 March 1660@1

Event Comment: Sixtus Petri Arnoldinus saw bear-baiting and bull-baiting at "the playhouse standing in St John's Street." See 16 Aug.; Zwager, p. 288

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys, Diary: Walking through Lincoln's Inn Fields observed at the Opera a new play, Twelfth Night, was acted there, and the King there; so I, against my own mind and resolution, could not forbear to go in, which did make the play seem a burthen to me, and I took no pleasure at all in it; and so after it was done went home with my mind troubled for my going thither, after my swearing to my wife that I would never go to a play without her

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: Sir W. Pen, my wife and I to the Theatre, and there saw The Country Captain, the first time it hath been acted this twenty-five years, a play of my Lord Newcastle's, but so silly a play as in all my life I never saw, and the first that ever I was weary of in my life. Herbert (Dramatic Records, p. 118) lists Love's Mistress for this date for Vere St., but the item is out of the normal order of the entries. To move it to 26 Oct. 1662 would place it on a Sunday. The play had been given previously (2 March 1661, 11 March 1661, 25 March 1661) by both the Duke's Company and King's Company. Possibly Herbert entered it on the wrong day. On Herbert's list, following Love's Mistress, are two plays, The Contented Collinell [Brenoralt] and Love at First Sight, each listed without a date. The former, under the title Brenoralt, had been acted at Vere St. on 23 July 1661; the second was soon to be acted there on 29 Nov. 1661

Event Comment: See Calendar of the Middle Temple Records, ed. Hopwood, p. 169, for a fee of #20 paid to Sir William Davenant's@company, the receipt being signed by Richard Baddeley; and for #1 5s. for baize to cover the stage and scenes. The play may well have been Love and Honour

Event Comment: The King's Company. See Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 118. Pepys, Diary: And so home to Sir W. Pen, who with his children and my wife has been at a play to-day and saw D'Ambois, which I never saw