Event Comment: The
King's Company.
Pepys, Diary: All alone to the King's playhouse,
and there did happen to sit just before
Mrs Pierce,
Mrs Knepp, who pulled me by the hair;
and so I addressed myself to them,
and talked to them all the intervals of the play,
and did give them fruit. The play is
Brenoralt, which I do find but little in, for my part. Here was many fine ladies--among others, the
German Baron, with his lady, who is envoye from the Emperour,
and their fine daughter, which hath travelled all
Europe over with them, it seems;
and is accordingly accomplished,
and indeed, is a wonderful pretty woman. Here
Sir Philip Frowde, who sat next to me, did tell me how
Sir H. Belasses is dead,
and that the quarrel between him
and Tom Porter, who is fled, did arise in the ridiculous fashion that I was first told it, which is a strange thing between two so good friends. The play being done, I took the women,
and Mrs Corbett, who was with them, by coach, it raining, to
Mrs Manuel's, the Jew's wife, formerly a player, who we heard sing with one of the
Italians that was there;
and, indeed, she sings mightily well,
and just after the
Italian manner, but yet do not please me like one of
Mrs Knepp's songs, to a good
English tune, the manner their ayre not pleasing me so well as the fashion of our own, nor so natural