Event Comment: The
Duke's Company.
Downes (p. 30): This Comedy in general was very well Perform'd.
Pepys, Diary: I alone to the Duke of York's house, to see the new play, called
The Man is the Master, where the house was, it being not above one o'clock, very full. But my wife and
Deb. being there before, with
Mrs Pierce and
Corbet and
Betty Turner, whom my Wife carried with her, they made me room; and there I sat, it costing me 8s. upon them in oranges, at 6d. apiece. By and by
the King come; and we sat just under him, so that I durst not turn my back all the play. The play is a translation out of
French, and the plot
Spanish, but not anything extraordinary at all in it, though translated by
Sir W. Davenant, and so I found the King and his company did think meanly of it, though there was here and there something Pretty: but the most of the mirth was sorry, poor stuffe, of eating of sack posset and slabbering themselves, and mirth fit for clownes; the
prologue but poor, and the
epilogue little in it but the extraordinariness of it, it being sung by
Harris and another in the form of a ballet
Performances
Mainpiece Title: The Mans The Master
Performance Comment: Edition of 1669: Prologue-; Epilogue in a Ballad-Two; [Downes (Roscius Anglicanus, p. 30): Master-Harris; The Man-Underhill; Singing the Epilogue [like two Street Ballad-Singers-Mr Harris, Mr Sandford. [According to the Catalogue of the MS Music, Christ Church, John Bannister set a song for this play.]According to the Catalogue of the MS Music, Christ Church, John Bannister set a song for this play.]