Event Comment: Benefit for Mrs Pope. Mainpiece: Not acted these 4 years. [2nd piece 1st acted at cg, 3 May 1793, as To Arms; or, The British Recruit.] Morning Chronicle, 26 Feb.: Tickets to be had of Mrs Pope at her house, Half-moon-street, Piccadilly. Account-Book, 21 Apr.: Paid Mrs Pope for Dresses as per Bill #32 19s. 6d. Receipts: #293 18s. (138.5; 9.7; tickets: 146.6)

Event Comment: The United Company. The play is probably The Spanish Curate rather than Dryden's The Spanish Fryar, for the latter, on 8 Dec. 1686, was ordered not to be acted. The players received the customary fee of #20. See A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, ed. Inderwick, III, 244

Event Comment: The United Company. This performance is on the L. C. list, 5@149, p. 368: The Queene a Box, and a Box for the Maids of Honor at the Spanish Fryer. See also Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 352. A warrant, dated 8 June 1689, L. C. 5@149, p. 154 (see Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 356), calls for a payment of #25 to Mrs Barry and presumably represents payment for this performance. Daniel Finch, ca. June 1689: The only day Her Majesty gave herself the diversion of a play, and that on which she designed to see another, has furnished the town with discourse for a month. The choice of the play was the Spanish Fryar, the only play forbid by the late K@@. Some unhappy expressions, among which those that follow, put her in some disorder, and forc'd her to hold up her fan, and often look behind her and call for her palatine and hood, and any thing she could next think of, while those who were said. (Sir John Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain [London, 1771-88], in the pit before her, whenever their fancy led them to make any application of what was Volume II, Appendix, Part II, pp. 78-80.) Henry Purcell's new setting for whilst I with grief did on you look may have been made by this date. It is in Deliciae Musicae, 1695

Event Comment: Benefit W. Giffard. Mainpiece: Never acted there. From a New Edition, with many additions and Alterations by the Author. Tickets deliver'd for Saturday the 08th will be taken this day

Event Comment: Books of the Entertainment [i.e., of The Spanish Lady] to be had at the theatre. The Comedy of Man and Wife cannot be perform'd, on account of Mr Shuter's hoarsness. Receipts: #202 6s. 6d

Event Comment: Benefit for Hull. Mainpiece: Not acted this season. Charges #65 17s. Deficit to Hull #17, covered by #121 3s. from tickets (Box 233; Pit 280; Gallery 209). Paid Hull for The Garland, The Spanish Lady and Altering the Comedy of Errors #50. Paid Miss Mary Twist and Miss Charlotte Twist for walking 12 nights in Man and Wife #1 10s. apiece (Account Book). Receipts: #48 17s

Event Comment: Benefit for Bensley. Afterpiece: Not acted these 2 years. [See 26 May 1770.] Last time of performing till the Holidays. Charges #67 17s. 6d. Profit to Bensley #82 7s., plus #62 13s. from tickets (Box 244; Pit 11). Paid Palmer (wax chandler) #105 18s.; Whitefield for Cloaths made #57 10s.; Pattinson (tallow chandler) #32 10s. (Account Book). Receipts: #150 4s. 6d. (Account Book)

Event Comment: Pepys, Diary: Then my wife and I to Drury Lane to the French comedy, which was so ill done, and the scenes and company and everything else so nasty and out of order and poor, that I was sick all the while in my mind to be there. See also Boswell (Restoration Court Stage, p. 280). W. J. Lawrence (Early French Players in England, The Elizabethan Playhouse and Other Studies (1912), pp. 139-40) argues that the play was Chapoton's Le Mariage d'Orphee et d'Eurydice. See also The Description of the Great Machines of the Descent of Orpheus into Hell. Presented by the French Comedians at the cockpit in Drury Lane. The Argument Taken out of the Tenth and Eleventh Books of Ovid's Metamorphosis (1661). Rugg's Diurnal the French players (BM Add. Mss. 10116, f243v)

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys, Diary: To Whitefriars and saw The Spanish Curate, in which I had no great content

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: Seeing that the Spanish Curate was acted to-day, I...home again and sent to young Mr Pen and his sister to go anon with my wife and I to the Theatre...we went by coach to the play, and there saw it well acted, and a good play it is, only Diego the Sexton did overdo his part too much. [Sir Edward Browne seems to connect this play with the Duke's Company. See Introdutcion to 1661-1662.

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: To the King's playhouse, and there saw The Spanish Gypsys, the second time of acting, and the first that I saw it. A very silly play, only great variety of dances, and those most excellently done, especially one part by one Hanes [Jo. Haynes], only lately come thither from the Nursery, an understanding fellow, but yet, they say, hath spent #1,000 a-year before he come thither

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: To the King's playhouse, and saw The Spanish Curate revived, which is pretty good play, but my eyes troubled with seeing it, mightily

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. The date of the first production is not certain, particularly since an entry in L. C. 5@145, p. 120 (see also Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 349) lists this play for 8 March, the year uncertain. Since the entry follows one for The Souldier's Fortune which followed the premiere of The Female Prelate, 31 May 1680, the L. C. entry probably is one for 8 March 1680@1. That the premiere occurred near 1 Nov. 1680 is suggested by a letter of Anne Montague to Lady Hatton, 1 Nov. 1680: For I never see the towne fuller, for I was to see the new play, The Spanish Frier, and there was all the world, but the Court is a letell dull yet; the Queen being sick, there is noe drawing room (Hatton Correspondence, Camden Society, XXII [1878], 240). A song, Farewell ungratefull Traytor, with music by Captain Pack and sung by Mrs Crofts, is in Act V. For Leigh's and Nokes' acting, see Cibber, Apology, ed. Lowe, I, 143, 145-46. Downes (Roscius Anglicanus, p. 37): 'Twas Admirably Acted, and produc'd vast Profit to the Company

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. This play is on the L. C. list, 5@145, p. 120--see also Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 349--immediately following the 1 March listing for The Soldier's Fortune. Because The Spanish Fryar was apparently a newly acted play on 1 Nov. 1680, the performance on this L. C. list is assigned to 8 March 1680@1 rather than to 8 March 1679@80

Event Comment: The United Company. Lord Ashburnham's Diary: I came home at 8 of ye Clock after having look'd in at the Play, the Spanish Curate (Ashburnham MS 932; see 14 Dec. 1686)

Event Comment: Rich's Company. Lady Morley attended this performance: Lady Morley and one in the Box at Spanish Wives. 8s. See Hotson, Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, p. 377

Event Comment: We perform the Comedy Part of The Spanish Fryar only, on Account of the Length of the Opera

Event Comment: Benefit for Miss Falkner. We hear that the two young Africans will be at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden this night, to see the Spanish Fryar, for the Benefit of Miss Falkner. [Page missing from the General Advertiser with the Bill this day.

Event Comment: Benefit for Hull. Books of the afterpiece to be had at the Theatre. Afterpiece: Founded on the plan of the old Ballad of that name. The songs adapted to old English, Irish and Scotch tunes. [Shuter's Prologue is Larpent MS 218, wherein he enters in character of a Ballad singer, interrupting the music as the overture comes to a close. He sings snatches from some ten old ballads, stopping in the midst of each to comment on the superiority of modern circumstances which parallel those referred to in the old ballads. As the bell rings he introduces the afterpiece.

Event Comment: [Mainpiece in place of The Spanish Friar, announced on playbill of 16 June.

Event Comment: Afterpiece [1st time; MF 2, by Mark Londsale. Prologue by the author {London Chronicle, 10 Nov.)]: The Overture, new Airs and Accompaniments composed by [Thomas] Linley [Sen.]. Books of the Songs to be had at the Theatre. Public Advertiser, 18 Nov. 1784: This Day is published The Spanish Rivals (1s.). Receipts: #160 2s. 6d. (104/12/0; 54/18/0; 0/12/6)

Event Comment: Benefit Bencraft, Gibson, the French Boy and Girl. Tickets for Thomson and Lestrade also taken