Event Comment: Benefit for Mrs Warrell and Darley. 1st piece: Not acted these 10 years [never previously acted at this theatre. Warrell was from the Bath theatre]. Receipts: #216 12s. (76.18; 4.15; tickets: 134.19)

Event Comment: Benefit for Mrs Kemble. 1st piece: Never [previously] acted here. 2nd piece [1st time; INT i, by Henry Siddons. Prologue by John Taylor (see text)]. Gazetteer, 28 Aug. 1790: This Day is published Modern Breakfast (1s.)

Event Comment: Mainpiece: Not acted these 3 years. [acted 21 Jan. 1789. Mrs Esten has 1st acted Belvidera at Bath in the season of 1786-87]. Afterpiece [1st time; M. INT 2, by John Cartwright Cross. Larpent MS 883; not published. Prologue by John Taylor (his Taylor, Poems, I, 43). Rees' 1st appearance at this theatre was on 14 May 1788]: The Overture and the whole of the Music by Dibdin. Books of the Songs to be had at the Theatre. [Most of these songs had originally appeared in Dibdin's "table entertainment," The Oddities, 1st performed at the Lyceum, 7 Dec. 1789.] Receipts: #244 18s. 6d. (234.8.0; 10.10.6)

Event Comment: Mainpiece: Not acted these 2 years. A new and accurate Edition of the Tragedy to be had at the Theatre. "[Mrs Siddons's] eyes possess a peculiar brilliancy and animation...Her voice is sonorous and variable" (Candid Strictures, 33). Receipts: #311 13s. (296.3; 13.0; 2.10)

Event Comment: Benefit for Quick. 1st piece: Written by Mrs Inchbald. 2nd piece: For that night only. 3rd piece: Written by Foote; 1st time at that Theatre. Morning Herald, 28 Mar.: Tickets to be had of Quick, No. 98, High Holborn. Receipts: #325 4s. 6d. (152.3.0; 5.10.6; tickets: 167.11.0) (charge: #105)

Event Comment: Benefit for Mrs Bannister, being her Last Appearance on the Stage. [Address by George Colman, ynger (Thespian Magazine, Oct. 1792, p. 102.

Event Comment: Mainpiece: Not acted these 3 years. [acted 21 Jan. 1789. Mrs Esten has 1st acted Belvidera at Bath in the season of 1786-87]. Afterpiece [1st time; M. INT 2, by John Cartwright Cross. Larpent MS 883; not published. Prologue by John Taylor (his Taylor, Poems, I, 43). Rees' 1st appearance at this theatre was on 14 May 1788]: The Overture and the whole of the Music by Dibdin. Books of the Songs to be had at the Theatre. [Most of these songs had originally appeared in Dibdin's "table entertainment," The Oddities, 1st performed at the Lyceum, 7 Dec. 1789.] Receipts: #244 18s. 6d. (234.8.0; 10.10.6)

Event Comment: Mainpiece: Not acted these 2 years. A new and accurate Edition of the Tragedy to be had at the Theatre. "[Mrs Siddons's] eyes possess a peculiar brilliancy and animation...Her voice is sonorous and variable" (Candid Strictures, 33). Receipts: #311 13s. (296.3; 13.0; 2.10)

Event Comment: Mainpiece [1st time; C 5, by John O'Keeffe. Prologue by John Taylor (see text). Address by John Wolcot (Pocket Magazine, supra)]: With new Dresses and Decorations. [Mrs Lee was from the Salisbury theatre.] Morning Chronicle, 11 May 1795: This Day is published Life's Vagaries (2s.). Receipts: #268 3s. 6d. (259.19.6; 8.4.0)

Event Comment: Last Night of the Company's performing this Season. Account-Book: Tickets delivered by Mrs Shotter, Wyatt, Waller, Gawdrey, Ratchford, the Band, Coombes, Page, Wilkins, Robson (door-keeper), Warwhick, Dosel, Paskin, Wells, Ansell, King will be admitted. Receipts: #467 13s. 6d. (67.10.0; 3.14.0; tickets: 396.9.6)

Event Comment: Mainpiece [1st time; T 5, by William Henry Ireland; incidental music by William Linley. Prologue by Sir James Bland Burges; Epilogue by Robert Merry (see text)]: With new Scenes, Dresses & Decorations. The Scenes designed and excuted by Greenwood and Capon. The Dresses by Johnston, Gay & Miss Rein. Printed slip attached to Kemble playbill: A malevolent and impotent attack on the Shakspeare MSS. [i.e. those forged by W. H. Ireland, of which this play was one] having appeared, on the Eve of representation of Vortigern, evidently intended to injure the interest of the Proprietor of the MSS., Mr Samuel? Ireland [W. H. Ireland's father] feels it impossible, within the short space of time that intervenes between the publishing and the representation, to produce an answer to the most illiberal and unfounded assertions in Mr Malone's enquiry [i.e. Edmond Malone, An Inquiry into the Authenticity of certain Papers attributed to Shakspeare, Queen Elizabeth, and Henry, Earl of Southampton, 1796]. He is therefore induced to request that Vortigern may be heard With that Candour that has ever distinguished a British Audience. The Play is now at the Press, and will in a very few days be laid before the Public. [But it was not issued until 1799 (see below). See also Bernard Grebanier, The Great Shakespeare Forgery, London, 1966.] 4 Apr., states that the first three acts were listened to with patience, but beginning with the fourth act the play was damned, when "one tremendous yell of indignation from the pit burst simultaneously." "At four o'clock the doors of the theatre were besieged; and, a few minutes after they were opened, the pit was crowded solely with gentlemen. Before six not a place was to be found in the boxes, and the passages were filled...The audience betrayed symptoms of impatience early in the representation; but, finding its taste insulted by bloated terms, which heightened the general insipidity, its reason puzzled by discordant images, false ornaments, and abortive efforts to elevate and astonish, pronounced its sentence of condemnation at the conclusion of the play" (Gentleman's Magazine, Apr. 1795, pp. 346-47). "Irelands play of Vortigern I went to. Prologue spoken at 35 minutes past 6 [see 29 Mar.]: Play over at 10. A strong party was evidently made to support it, which clapped without opposition frequently through near 3 acts, when some ridiculous passages caused a laugh, mixed with groans-Kemble requested the audience t o hear the play out abt. the end of 4th act and prevailed.-The Epilogue was spoken by Mrs Jordan who skipped over some lines which claimed the play as Shakespeares. Barrymore attempted to give the Play out for Monday next but was hooted off the stage. Kemble then came on, & after some time, was permitted to say that "School for Scandal would be given," which the House approved by clapping. Sturt of Dorsetshire was in a Stage Box drunk, & exposed himself indecently to support the Play, and when one of the stage attendants attempted to take up the green cloth [i.e. a carpet which, by custom, was laid on the stage during the concluding scene of a tragedy], Sturt seized him roughly by the head. He was slightly pelted with oranges" (Joseph Farington, Diary, 1922, I, 145). Account-Book, 4 Apr.: Paid Ireland his share for the 1st Night of Vortigern #102 13s. 3d. Morning Chronicle, 29 Mar. 1799: This Day is published Vortigern and Henry the Second (4s.). Receipts: #555 6s. 6d. (528.6.0; 26.9.6; 0.11.0)

Event Comment: [as Miss Mahon Mrs Second has sung in the cg oratorios in 1789 and 1790.] Receipts: #189 5s. (187.5.6; 1.19.6)

Event Comment: Mainpiece: Not acted these 4 years. [In mainpiece the playbill assigns Acasto to Murray, but "An apology was made for Murray, who was prevented by illness from playing Acasto, which, at a short notice, was taken by Hull" (True Briton, 14 Oct.).] "This whole of [Mrs Spencer's] performance was marked by such unaffected simplicity that it was almost impossible to consider it as the mere fiction of the scene. This lady is really a great aquisition to the house" (True Briton, ibid). Receipts: #254 6s. 6d. (244.18.6; 9.8.0)

Event Comment: By Authority of the Lord Chamberlain. Benefit for Lacy, formerly of the Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane. Tickets to be had of Fosbrook, at the Box Office of the Drury Lane Theatre, and Rice, at the Box Office of the Theatre-Royal, Haymarket, where Places for the Boxes may be taken. [Address by John Taylor (Monthly Mirror, Dec. 1798, p. 370). On this night the following appeared both at dl and at the hay: Hollingsworth, Caulfield, Bannister Jun., Suett, Miss Pope, Mrs Bland.

Event Comment: By Permission of the Lord Chamberlain. Benefit for an Infant Orphan Family. Tickets to be had at No. 17, Tufton-street, Westminster; of Appleby, Hosier, Parliament-street; Mrs Cleaver, Cannon-row, Parliament-street; Newcomb, Confectioner, Bridge-street, Westminster; Taylor, Linen-draper, Whitehall; Thomas, Butcher, Charing-cross; Medhurst, Pastry Cook, Russel-court, Drury-lane; Rice, at the Theatre, where Places for the Boxes may be taken

Event Comment: [Extra night] Benefit for the General Lying-In Hospital, Bayswater, Under the Patronage of Her Majesty. Tickets to be had at the Hospital; of Longman and Wilkinson, Cheapside; Broderip andCo., Haymarket; and of Brandon at the Theatre, where Places for the Boxes may be taken. Many of the Re-Renters have generously relinquished their Privilege upon this Night. [Faulkner had acted at dl on 21 Dec. 1796, and Mrs Johnstone at cg on 4 Jan. 1798.] Receipts: none listed

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

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys does not indicate that this performance is the premiere, and Summers, The Playhouse of Pepys, p. 137, states, without offering his evidence, that the play first appeared on 11 Aug. 1664. The play also appears in Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 138. If Pepys saw the premiere, the play was possibly given on 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24 Aug. Pepys, Diary: Mr Creed dining with me I got him to give my wife and me a play this afternoon, lending him money to do it, which is a fallacy that I have found now once, to avoyde my vowe with, but never to be more practised I swear, and to the new play, at the Duke's house, of Henry the Fifth; a most noule play, writ by my Lord Orrery; wherein Betterton, Harris, and Ianthe's parts are most incomparably wrote and done, and the whole play the most full of height and raptures of wit and sense, that ever I heard; having but one incongruity, or what did not please me in it, that is, that King Harry promises to plead for Tudor to their Mistresse, Princesse Katherine of France, more than when it comes to it he seems to do; and Tudor refused by her with some kind of indignity, not with a difficulty and honour that it ought to have been done in to him. Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, pp. 27-28: This Play was Splendidly Cloath'd: The King, in the Duke of York's Coronation Suit; Owen Tudor, in King Charle's: Duke of Burgundy, in the Lord of Oxford's, and the rest all New. It was Excellently Perform'd, and Acted 10 Days Successively

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. This apparently was not the first performance, but the time of premiere is not known. Pepys, Diary: My wife and I and Mercer to the Duke's house, and there saw The Rivalls, which is no excellent play, but good acting in it; especially Gosnell comes and sings and dances finely, but, for all that, fell out of the key, so that the musique could not play to her afterwards, and so did Harris also go out of the tune to agree with her. Downes (p. 23): The Rivals, A Play, Wrote by Sir William Davenant; having a very Fine Interlude in it, of Vocal and Instrumental Musick, mixt with very Diverting Dances: M Price introducing the Dancing, by a short Comical Prologue, gain'd him an Universal Applause of the Town....And all the Womens Parts admirably Acted; chiefly Celia, a Shepherdess being Mad for Love; especially in Singing several Wild and Mad Songs

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Downes (p. 29): It took well, but Inferior to Love in a Tub. Pepys, Diary: I to the Duke of York's playhouse; where a new play of Etherige's called She Would if she Could; and though I was there by two o'clock, there was 1000 people put back that could not have room in the pit: and I at last, because my wife was there, made shift to get into the 18d. box, and there saw; but, Lord! how full was the house, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased in it. The King was there; but I sat mightily behind, and could see but little, and hear not all. The play being done...here was the Duke of Buckingham to-day openly sat in the pit; and there I found him with my Lord Buckhurst, and Sidly, and Etherige, the poet; the last of whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were out of humour, and had not their parts perfect, and that Harris did do nothing, nor could so much as sing a ketch in it; and so was mightily concerned: while all the rest did, through the whole pit, blame the play as a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish and witty; but the design of the play, and end, mighty insipid. Thomas Shadwell, Preface to The Humorists (1671): The last (viz.) imperfect Action, had like to have destroy'd She Would if she could, which I think (and I have the Authority of some of the best Judges in England for't) is the best Comedy that has been written since the Restauration of the Stage: And even that, for the imperfect representation of it at first, received such prejudice, that, had it not ben for the favour of the Court, in all probability it had never got up again; and it suffers for it, in a great measure, to this very day

Event Comment: [The Young Gentleman who played Zaphna was Wroughton. "His real name was Rottan, but altered euphonia gratia. He was designed for a surgeon and served his apprenticeship at Bath. The following playbills show that he met with approbation on the stage. He remained with Covent Garden from this time till the end of the season 1785-86. He then played in Ireland one Winter, and was engag'd at Drury Lane Theatre in the beginning of the season 1787-88. This was the occasion of Mr Wroughton's leaving Covent Garden, I mean it was thus conjectured. Mr Lewis had been appointed manager of that theatre for Mr Harris. Mr Lewis and Mr Wroughton lived next door neighbors in Broad Court at the top of Bow Street, and were sworn friends:--they laughed together, lived together--In the season 1784-85 two new performers Mr Holman and Mr Pope, appeared on the Covent Garden Stage--these young men were great favorites with Mr Harris; Mr Holman, attracting at this time very crowded audiences, stood so particularly high in his regard, that his partiality made him guilty of some injustice to older and abler actors in the theatre. Mr Henderson had really cause to complain of neglect; and Mr Wroughton thought himself equally oppressed. At this time we had a Club and met every Wednesday fortnight during Lent at the Long Room in Hamstead at dinner. Our Club consisted of a certain number of us belonging indifferently to either theatre, and two or three other gentlemen who were not actors. Mr King, Mr Quick, Mr Farren, Mr Mattocks, myself, etc., etc. When the bottle had a little warmed Mr Wroughton he threw out some sarcasms on his Friend Mr Lewis's management; Mr Lewis retorted; Their tempers grew hot, their words grew aggravating; Mr Wroughton struck Mr Lewis; Mr Lewis returned the blow. They were parted; all the pleasures of the day were over, and the Club broke up in confusion. I was not present this day, but have related what Mr Siddons told me of this Quarrel, and I imagine that Mr Wroughton's attack on Mr Lewis sprang from a suspicion that he was too willing to execute Mr Harris's designs in favour of Mr Holman. Be this as it may, Mr Wroughton was discharged from cg at the expiration of his Articles with Mr Harris."--Hopkins MS Notes.] Receipts: #186 3s. (Account Book)

Event Comment: [The Duke's Company. For Harris' role, see Pepys, 11 May 1668. For Angel as Stephano, see An Elegy Upon...Mr Edward Angell, reprinted in A Little Ark, pp. 38-39: @Who shall play Stephano now? your Tempest's gone@To raise new Storms i' th' hearts of every one.@ For Underhill as Trincalo, note his nickname of Prince Trincalo. (For Mary Davis as Ariel and Mrs Long as Hypolito, see J. H. Wilson, All the King's Ladies, pp. 140, 166.) Downes (Roscius Anglicanus, p. 33): The Tempest...Acted in Lincolns-Inn-Fields...alter'd by Sir William Davenant and Mr Dryden before 'twas made into an Opera. Pepys, Diary: At noon resolved with Sir W. Pen to go see The Tempest, an old play of Shakespeare's, acted, I hear, the first day; and so my wife, and girl, and W. Hewer by themselves, and Sir W. Pen and I afterwards by ourselves; and forced to sit in the side balcone over against the musique-room at the Duke's house, close by my Lady Dorset and a great many great ones. The house mighty full; the King and Court there: and the most innocent play that ever I saw; and a curious piece of musique in an echo of half sentences, the echo repeating the former half, while the man goes on the latter, which is mighty pretty. The play [has] no great wit, but yet good, above ordinary plays. Thence home with Sir W. Pen, and there all mightily pleased with the play

Event Comment: Benefit for Fox and Barrington. Tickets deliver'd by Mas. Harris will be taken

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys, Diary: Against my judgment and conscience (which God forgive, for my very heart knows that I offend God in breaking my vows therein) to the Opera, which is now newly begun to act again, after some alteracion of their scene, which do make it very much worse; but the play, Love and Honour, being the first time of their acting it, is a very good plot, and well done. Downes (pp. 21-22): This Play was Richly Cloath'd; The King giving Mr Betterton his Coronation Suit;...The Duke of York giving Mr Harris his...and my Lord of Oxford gave Mr Joseph Price his...and all the other Parts being very well done: The Play having a great run, Produc'd to the Company great Gain and Estimation from the Town

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys, Diary: With my wife and Mercer to the Duke's house, and there saw The Rivalls, which I had seen before; but the play not good, nor anything but the good acting of Betterton and his wife and Harris