Event Comment: Betterton's Company. There may have been a revival of Oedipus in the summer of 1696. In Francis Manning's Poems upon Several Occasions and to Several Persons (1701) there is a poem To Mr Betterton, Acting Oedipus King of Thebes. The first stanza describes the splendor of the installation of the Duke of Gloucester as a Knight of the Garter, an event which occurred at Windsor Castle in July 1696; but there is no certainty that Betterton's performance occurred before that date. It should be noted also that the play was reprinted in 1696

Event Comment: Robert Jennens to Thomas Coke, 19 Nov. 1696: There has been for four or five days together at the play house in Lincolns Inn Fields acted a new farce translated out of the French by Mr Monteux called the Shame Sham? Doctor or the Anatomist, with a great concert of music, representing the loves of Venus and Mars, well enough done and pleases the town extremely. The other house has no company at all, and unless a new play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation, they must break (HMC, 12th Report, Appendix, Part II, Cowper MSS., II, 367)

Event Comment: Betterton's Company. This performance is known from a playbill in the Folger Shakespeare Library: Not Acted these 16 Years. At the New Theatre, in Little Lincolns-Inn Fields, Tomorrow being Thursday the 28th of October, will be Reviv'd, A Play call'd Troilus and Cressida; or, Truth Found too late. No Person to stand on the Stage. Nor any Money to be after Return'd [sic] the Curtain is Drawn up. By His Majesties Servants. Vivat Rex

Event Comment: Edition of 1697: Mr Dryden's Ode In Honour of St Cecilia's Day, Perform'd at Stationers-Hall, on Monday, November 22, 1697. [See Dryden's letter, 3 Sept. 1697.] The music was by Jeremiah Clark. See also 9 and 16 Dec. 1697

Event Comment: Betterton's Company. The date of the premiere is not known, but the Preface indicates that it appeared during the run of The Constant Couple, which apparently was most frequently acted during November, December, and January

Event Comment: [[By William Congreve. Premiere.] Congreve wrote on 26 March: I wished particularly for you on Friday last, when Eccles his music for the prize was performed in Dorset Garden, and universally admired. Mr Finger's is to be to-morrow; and Russel and Weldon's follow in their turn....The number of performers, besides the verse-singers, was 85. The front of the stage was all built into a concave with deal boards; all which was faced with tin, to increase and throw forwards the sound. It was all hung with sconces of wax-candles, besides the common branches of lights usual in the playhouses. The boxes and pit were all thrown into one; so that all sat in common; and the whole was crammed with beauties and beaux, not one scrub being admitted. The place where formerly the music used to play, between the pit and the stage, was turned into White's chocolate-housev....Our friend Venus performed to a miracle; so did Mrs Hodgson Juno. Mrs Boman was not quite so well approved in Pallas.-Congreve to Keally, in Congreve, I, 71-72