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, li
ther, plegmatick, white, ill-favour'd, wretched Fop, an Officer in Masquerade newly transported with a Scarfe & Fea
ther 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 ano
ther sort;
the Plot being busie (though I think not intricate) and so requiring a continual attention, which being 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