Event Comment: The
Duke's Company. This performance is on the
L. C. list, 5@141, p. 2. See also
Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 347. There is no certainty that this performance is the premiere, but it may well be. Two songs,
Ah false Amyntas, and
Amyntas led me to a grove, both set by
Robert Smith, are in
Choice Songs and Ayres, 1673. Preface to the edition of 1673: Good, Sweet, Honey, Sugar-candied Reader, ...Indeed that day 'twas Acted first, there comes into the Pit a long, lither, plegmatick, white, ill-favour'd, wretched Fop, an Officer in Masquerade newly transported with a Scarfe & Feather out of
France, a sorry Animal that has nought else to shield it from the uttermost contempt of all mankind, but that respect which we afford to Rats and Toads, which though we do not well allow to live, yet when considered as a part of God's Creation, we make honourable mention of them. A thing, Reader--but no more of such a Smelt: This thing, I tell ye, opening that which serves it for a mouth, out issued such a noise as this to those that state about it, that they were to expect a woful Play, God damn him, for it was a womans.... Reader, I have a complaint or two to make to you, and I have done; Know then that this Play was hugely injur'd in the Acting, for 'twas done so imperfectly as never any was before, which did more harm to this than it could have done to any of another sort; the Plot b
eing busie (though I think not intricate) and so requiring a continual attention, which b
eing interrupted by the intolerable negligence of some that acted in it, must needs much spoil the beauty on't. My
Dutch Lover spoke but little of what I intended for him, but supplied it with a great deal of idle stuff, which I was wholly unacquainted with until I heard it first from him. According to the Preface, the Prologue was lost