Event Comment: Benefit for Lewis. Mainpiece: Not acted these 7 years. 3rd piece [1st time; F 3, author unknown. Not in Larpent MS; not published]: Taken from Dryden's Spanish Fryar. Public Advertiser, 20 Mar.: Tickets to be had of Lewis, Bow-street, Covent Garden. Receipts: #246 18s. (164.3; tickets: 82.15) (charge: #66 10s.)

Event Comment: Mainpiece: The Characters dressed in Spanish Habits. [Henderson's 1st recorded appearance as Leon was at Bath, 4 Feb. 1777.

Event Comment: Parsons not being sufficiently recovered The Spanish Barber and The Tailors [both announced on playbill of 7 June] are deferred till Friday. Afterpiece: A Modern Operatical, Sentimental, Crying Comedy

Event Comment: [Extra night] By Permission of the Lord Chamberlain. Benefit for Mrs Jewell. [Mainpiece in place of The Spanish Barber, announced on playbill of 16 Sept.

Event Comment: [2nd piece in place of The Spanish Barber; 3rd piece of The Mayor of Garratt, both announced on playbill of 22 June.

Event Comment: [Mainpiece in place of The Spanish Barber, announced on playbill of 14 Sept.] The last Time of performing this Season

Event Comment: [Mainpiece in place of The Spanish Barber, announced on playbill of 27 June.]

Event Comment: [1st piece in place of The Spanish Barber; 2nd of The Mayor of Garratt, both advertised on playbill of 7 July.

Event Comment: [Mainpiece in place of The Spanish Barber; afterpiece of The Mayor of Garratt, both advertised on playbill of 8 July.

Event Comment: Afterpiece: To conclude with the Representation of an Engagement between the English and Spaniards, and the Storming of Fort Omoa, on the Spanish Main. Account-Book: Paid Chorus to 11th Inclusive #7 10s.; Poor Rate 1@2 Year #45 17s. 10d.; Thompson on Acct. Supernumeraries #10. Receipts: #212 3s. 6d. (179.13.0; 30.13.6; 1.17.0)

Event Comment: Afterpiece: Not acted these 2 years. To conclude with the Glorious Defeat of the Spanish Armada, and a Grand Procession. [These were included in all subsequent performances.] Receipts: #265 14s. (217.12; 45.10; 2.12)

Event Comment: 3rd piece [1st time; F 2, by Charles Stuart, "from the Spanish"; on 2 Sept. reduced to 1 act. Prologue by the author (see text)]. "The Piece, we understand, was originally founded on some topics that have of late engrossed the conversation of much of the fashionable world...The Lord Chamberlain thought [it] too delicate a nature to appear with the allusions and title it then bore, She would be a Duchess. The consequence was that the offensive bits were expunged and the piece re-christened...It would be unfair to make any observations...in the mutilated stage it was presented" (Public Advertiser, 15 Aug.). "Some part of the plot was supposed to allude to the late occurrences in the family of General John? Gunning, who was indulged with the privilege of erasing [from the MS] that which he disliked, and who reduced it to its present feeble and unconnected form" (Gazetteer, 15 Aug.). [The reference in the original title is to the simultaneous flirtation of Miss Elizabeth Gunning, the General's daughter, with the eldest sons of the Dukes of Marlborough and Argyll (see dnb, under Susannah Gunning). She would be a Duchess: in Larpent MS 915.

Event Comment: [In 2nd piece the playbill assigns Orlando to Kemble, but "On account of indisposition, Barrymore last night performed Orlando for Kemble" (Oracle, 4 Oct.).] 3rd piece: To conclude with the Glorious Defeat of the Spanish Armada, and a Grand Procession. "Equal to any actor I ever saw, as far as his line extends, is Mr Parsons; his conception and expression of Sir Fretful Plagiary, in Mr Sheridan's Critic, are as strong and masterly as were Garrick's in Kitely [in Every Man in his Humour]; and his 'laughing without mirth' therein equally admirable" (Jonson, ed. Waldron, 171). Receipts: #251 4s. 6d. (213.6.6; 37.0.0; 0.18.0)

Event Comment: Benefit for Martini [i.e. Martin y Soler]. Afterpiece: A New Comic Intermezzo [1st time] in I Act; the music by Martini, the words by DaPonte; in which some new Music in the Spanish stile. Tickets to be had of Martini, No. 17, Sherrard-street, Golden-square

Event Comment: 1st piece: In one Act. [2nd piece in place of The Spanish Barber, advertised on playbill of 16 July.

Event Comment: Edward Gower to Sir R. Leveson, 20 Nov. 1660: Yesternight the King, Queen, Princess, &c. supped at the Duke of Albemarle's, where they had the Silent Woman acted in the cockpit (HMC, 5th Report, 1876, p. 200). The King's Company. Pepys, Diary, 20 Nov. 1660: This morning I found my Lord in bed late, he having been with the King, Queen, and Princess, at the cockpit all night, where General Monk treated them; and after supper a play, where the King did put a great affront upon John? Singleton's musique, he bidding them stop and bade the French musique play, which, my Lord says, do much outdo all ours. The prologue was printed in 1660: The Prologue to His Majesty at the first Play presented at the cock-pit in Whitehall, Being part of that Noble Entertainment which Their Majesties received Novemb. 19. from his Grace the Duke of Albemarle. [The Prologue has been reprinted by Wiley, Rare Prologues and Epilogues, pp. 11-12. Bodleian Wood 398 has a MS note: By Sir Jo. Denham.

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: After dinner I went to the new Theatre and there I saw The Merry Wives of Windsor acted, the humours of the country gentleman and the French doctor very well done, but the rest but very poorly, and Sir J. Falstaffe as bad as any