Event Comment: Rich's Company. The date of the first production is not known, but
A Comparison between the Two Stages (1702) (pp. 21-23) implies that this work preceded
Rinaldo and Armida (per
formed at
lif probably in November 1698).
The Island Princess was not published until 1699 (the Masque being advertised in the
Post Boy, 7-9 Feb. 1698@9, and the Opera in the
Flying Post, 7-9 March 1698@9).
A Comparison between the Two Stages (1702), pp. 21-22:
Sullen: The old House have a Bawble offer'd 'em, made out of
Fletcher's
Island Princess, sometime after alter'd by
Mr Tate, and now erected into an Opera by
Motteux: The Actors labour at this like so many Galley Slaves at an Oar, they call in the Fiddle, the Voice, the Painter, and the Carpenter to help 'em; and what neither the Poet nor the Player cou'd do, the Mechanick must do
for him:...but as I was saying-the Opera now possesses the Stage, and after a hard struggle, at length it prevail'd, and something more than Charges came in every Night: The Quality, who are always Lovers of good Musick, flock hither, and by almost a total revolt from the other House, give this new Life, and set it in some eminency above the New; this was a sad mortification to the old Stagers in
Lincolns-Inn-fields.
For a poem,
The Confederates; or the first Happy Day of the Island Princess, see
Poem on Affairs of State, 1703, II, 248-50