Event Comment: By Command of Her Majesty. [This was the first time that members of the royal family had appeared in public since the beginning of the King's illness (his first attack of insanity) in November 1788. See also 21, 24 Apr.] The drop curtain with the King's arms on it shown when the front curtain first rose was the "original curtain exhibited on the opening of Lincoln's Inn Fields theatre [in 1714]...It has lain by in the scene-room of Covent-Garden theatre nearly seventy years, but was rescued from oblivion, retouched, and the appropriate ornaments added for the occasion" (Public Advertiser, 16 Apr.). On the Queen's entrance "the house called for God save the King, and the theatre being prepared, the song was immediately sung by Bannister, Johnstone, and Darley, the house joining in the chorus. It was encored...At the end of the play [it] was again called for, and again sung twice. At the end of the pantomime it was again called for; and the theatre not sending forward the performers, the audience cheerfully sung it for themselves; and having sung, they encored themselves; so that altogether it was sung six times in the course of the evening. Her Majesty had a bandeau of black velvet, on which were set in diamonds the words 'Long live the king.' The princesses had bandeaus of white satin, and 'Long live the king' in gold" (Universal Magazine, Apr. 1789, p. 218). Receipts: #388 16s. 6d. (385.12.0; 3.4.6)

Event Comment: Pepys, Diary, 6 June 1660: My letters tell me...that the two Dukes do haunt the Park much, and that they were at a play, Madam Epicene, the other day

Event Comment: On this day (L. C. 5@137,p. 343) Davenant was granted a warrant to act the following plays: Tempest, Measures for Measures, Much Adoe About Nothing, Romeo? and Juliet, Twelfe Night, The Life of King Henry the Eyght, The Sophy, Kinge Lear, The Tragedy of Mackbeth, The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, and The Dutchesse of Malfy. In addition, he was to have exclusive right for two months to The Mad Lover, The Mayde in Ye Mill, The Spanish Curate, The Loyall Subject, Rule a Wife and have a Wife, and [Pericles] Persiles Prince of Tyre. Davenant also received the right to act his own plays

Event Comment: The Countess of Derby to the Duchess de la Tremoille, 25 Feb. 1660@1: Plays are often acted at court, and the King and their Royal Highnesses have been present at two this evening, at the Duchess of Buckingham's (Madame Guizot de Witt, The Lady of Latham [London, 1869], p. 268)

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: With my Lady Batten, Mrs Rebecca Allen, Mrs Thompson, &c., two coaches of us, we went and saw Bartholomew Fayre, acted very well

Event Comment: Pepys, Diary: At noon comes Luellin to me, and he and I to the tavern and after that to Bartholomew fair, and there upon his motion to a pitiful alehouse, where we had a dirty slut or two come up that were whores, but my very heart went against them, so that I took no pleasure but a great deal of trouble in being there and getting from thence in fear of being seen. From hence he and I walked towards Ludgate and parted. I back to the fair all alone , and there met with the ladies Jemimah and Paulina, with Mr Pickering and Madamoiselle, at seeing the monkeys dance, which was much to see, when they could be brought to do so, but it troubled me to sit among such nasty company

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: Sir W. Pen, my wife and I to the Theatre, and there saw The Country Captain, the first time it hath been acted this twenty-five years, a play of my Lord Newcastle's, but so silly a play as in all my life I never saw, and the first that ever I was weary of in my life. Herbert (Dramatic Records, p. 118) lists Love's Mistress for this date for Vere St., but the item is out of the normal order of the entries. To move it to 26 Oct. 1662 would place it on a Sunday. The play had been given previously (2 March 1661, 11 March 1661, 25 March 1661) by both the Duke's Company and King's Company. Possibly Herbert entered it on the wrong day. On Herbert's list, following Love's Mistress, are two plays, The Contented Collinell [Brenoralt] and Love at First Sight, each listed without a date. The former, under the title Brenoralt, had been acted at Vere St. on 23 July 1661; the second was soon to be acted there on 29 Nov. 1661

Event Comment: This performance was attended by Jacques Thierry and Will Schellinks, who stated: Judged to be their best play (Seaton, Literary Relationships, pp. 334-36). This performance may have been the premiere. The Duke's Company. BM Add. Mss. 34217, in Hotson (Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, p. 247): @Then came the Knight agen with his Lawe@Against Lovers the worst that ever you sawe@In dressing of which he playnely did shew it@Hee was a far better Cooke then a Poet@And only he the Art of it had@Of two good Playes to make one bad.

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys, Diary: [Mr Herbert] and I and the two young ladies and my wife to the playhouse, the Opera, and saw The Mayde in the Mill, a pretty good play

Event Comment: Edition of 1662: Being a True Relation of the Honourable the City of Londons Entertaining Their Sacred Majesties Upon the River of Thames, and Welcoming them from Hampton-Court to White-Hall. Expressed and set forth in several Shews and Pageants, the 23 day of August 1662. According to the printed version, the management of the pageant was under the care of Peter Mills, Surveyor; Malin, Water Bayliff; Thomas Whiting, Joyner; Richard Cleere, Carver. The songs were set by John Gamble, one of His Majesty's Servants. Evelyn, Diary: I this day was spectator of the most magnificent Triumph that certainly ever floted on the thames, considering the innumerable number of boates & Vessels, dressed and adorned with all imaginable Pomp: but above all, the Thrones, Arches, Pageants, & other representations, stately barges of the Lord Major, & Companies, with various Inventions, musique, & Peales of Ordnance both from the vessels & shore, going to meete & Conduct the new Queene from Hampton Court to White-hall, at the first time of her Coming to Towne.... his Majestie & the Queene, came in an antique-shaped open Vessell, convered with a State or Canopy of Cloth of Gold, made in forme of a Cupola, supported with high Corinthian Pillars, wreathd with flowers, festoones & Gyrlands: Pepys, Diary: We got into White Hall garden, and so to the Bowling-green, and up to the top of the new Banqueting House there, over the thames, which was a most pleasant place as any I could have got; and all the show consisted chiefly in the number of boats and barges; and two pageants, one of a King, and another of a Queen, with her Maydes of Honour sitting at her feet very prettily; and they tell me the Queen is Sir Richard Ford's daughter. Anon come the King and Queen in a barge under a canopy with 10,000 barges and boats, I think, for we could see no water for them, nor discern the King nor Queen. And so they landed at White Hall Bridge, and the great guns on the other side went off

Event Comment: Pepys, Diary: And there took up my wife and Ashwell to the Theatre Royall, being the second day of its being opened. The house is made with extraordinary good contrivance, and yet hath some faults, as the narrowness of the passages in and out of the pitt, and the distance from the stage to the boxes, which I am confident cannot hear; but for all other things it is well, only, above all, the musique being below, and most of it sounding under the very stage, there is no hearing of the bases at all, nor very well of the trebles, which sure must be mended. The play was The Humerous Lieutenant, a play that hath little good in it, nor much in the very part which, by the King's command, Lacy now acts instead of Clun. In the dance, the tall devil's actions was very pretty....I am resolved to deny myself the liberty of two plays at court, which are in arreare to me for the months of March and April, which will more than countervail this excess, so that this month of May is the first that I must claim a liberty of going to a Court play according to my oath

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys, Diary: My wife and I by coach to The Duke's house, where we say The Unfortunate Lovers; but I know not whether I am grown more curious than I was or no, but I was not much pleased with it, though I know not where to lay the fault, unless it was that the house was very empty, by reason of a new play at the other house. Yet here was my Lady Castlemaine in a box. In An Elegy on the Death of Edward Angel, 1673, two lines suggest that Angel acted Friskin: @Adieu, dear Friskin: Unfort'nate Lover weep,@Your mirth is fled, and now i' th' Grave must sleep.

Event Comment: This play was presumably acted by the Duke's Company. In the preface to Heraclius, Emperour of the East, published in 1664, the author, Lodowick Carlell, complains that he had submitted his translation of Corneille, only to have it returned the very day that this version appeared on the stage. See also the letter by Katherine Philips, under Pompey the Great, Jan. 1663@4. Pepys, Diary: We made no long stay at dinner; for Heraclius being acted, which my wife and I have a mighty mind to see, we do resolve, though not exactly agreeing with the letter of my vowe, yet altogether with the sense, to see another this month, by coming hither instead of that at court, there having ueen none conveniently since I made my vowe for us to see there, nor like to be this Lent, and besides we did walk home on purpose to make this going as cheap as that would have been, to have seen one at Court, and my conscience knows that it is only the saving of money and the time also that I intend by my oaths....The play hath one very good passage well managed in it, about two persons pretending, and yet denying themselves, to be son to the tyrant Phocas, and yet heire of Mauricius to the crowne. The garments like Romans very well. The little girle is come to act very prettily, and spoke the epilogue most admirably. But at the beginning, at the drawing up of the curtaine, there was the finest scene of the Emperor and his people about him, standing in their fixed and different postures in their Roman habitts, above all that ever I yet saw at any of the theatres

Event Comment: Evelyn, Diary: Saw a fine Mask at court perform'd by 6 Gent: & 6 Ladys surprizing his Majestie, it being Candlemas day. Pepys, Diary, 3 Feb.: Then Mrs Pickering...did, at my Lady's command, tell me the manner of a masquerade before the King and Court the other day. Where six women (my Lady Castlemayne and Duchesse of Monmouth being two of them) and six men (the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Arran and Monsieur Blanfort, being three of them) in vizards, but most rich and antique dresses, did dance admirably and most gloriously. God give us cause to continue the mirthe!