*p1676 12 11 dl The Plain Dealer. Edition of 1677: Prologue-; Epilogue-Widow-Blackacre; Manly-Hart; Freeman-Kynaston; Vernish-Griffin; Novell-Clark; Major Oldfox-Cartwright; Lord Plausible-Haines; Jerry Blackacre-Charlton; Olivia-Mrs Marshall; Fidelia-Mrs Boutell; Eliza-Mrs Knep; Letice-Mrs [Ursula or Frances] Knight (see below); Widow Blackacre-Mrs Cory.*c1676 12 11 dl The <i>King's Company</i>. This performance is on the <i>L. C. list</i>, 5@141, p. 359. See also <i>Nicoll, Restoration Drama</i>, p. 346. There is no certainty that this performance is the premiere, but as the play was licensed for printing on 9 Jan. 1676@7, this performance may well be the first one. $Downes= (<i>Roscius Anglicanus</i>, pp.9-10) lists the same cast except for the ommission of <i>Letice</i>r. It is not certain which $Mrs Knight= played Letice. Possibly it was $Frances Maria Knight= (see Wilson, <i>All the King's Ladies</i>, where she is tentatively listed for that role), but the presence of $Mrs Ursula Knight= on an undated <i>L. C. list</i>, 3@24, with the date of her swearing into the company given as 12 March 1676@7, it is quite likely that she played this role. (I owe this reference to Ursula Knight to $Professor John Harold Wilson=.) $John Dennis=: And when upon the first representations of the <i>Plain Dealer</i>, the Town, as The Authour has often told me, appeard Doubtful what Judgment to Form of it; the foremention'd gentlemen [$The Duke of Buckingham=, $Earl of Rochester=, $Earl of Dorset=, $Earl of Mulgrave=, $Savil=, $Buckly=, $Sir John Denham=, $Waller=] by their loud aprobation of it, gave it both a sudden and a lasting reputation (<i>Defense and Defects of Dramatick Poetry</i>, 1725, in <i>The Works of John Dennis</i>, ed. $Hooker=, II, 277).