Event Comment: Benefit for Mrs Kemble. Public Advertiser, 14 May: Tickets to be had of Mrs Kemble, No. 22, Great Queen-street, Lincoln's-inn-fields. Tickets delivered for Friday the 14th Inst, will be admitted. Receipts: #142 13s. (63/14; tickets: 78/19) (charge: #105)

Event Comment: Benefit for Miss Pope. [In 2nd piece the playbill retains Kemble as Doricourt, and Whitfield as Villers, but "I was ill; Whitfield played my Part" (Kemble Mem.). For Phillimore as Villers see 27 May.] Gazetteer, 7 Apr.: Tickets to be had of Miss Pope, Great Queen-street. Receipts: #262 9s. 6d. (108.2.0; 20.11.6; 0.15.0; tickets: 133.1.0) (charge: #116 6s. 4d.)

Event Comment: [The playbill for this night announces as mainpiece MUCH ADO ABOUT NOT HING, but "The Publick are most respectfully informed that, on account of the sudden indisposition of a Principal Performer, MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING cannot be acted. This Evening will be presented AS YOU LIKE IT" (printed slip attached to BM playbill, Harris, Vol. IV). "Mrs Kemble being ill, Miss Collins play'd Celia for Mrs Kemble and Miss Heard Phebe for Miss Collins" (Powell). Since Powell mentions no other changes, it may be assumed that the cast was otherwise the same as on 25 Apr.] Receipts: #208 8s. (127/1/6; 77/0/0; 4/6/6)

Event Comment: EEgmont, Diary, II, 364: I went to the new play called 'King Charles the First,' acted with approbation at [lif]. The Characters are as the historians represent them, the language good and the sentiments fine, but the players are bad, he who represented General Fairfax and Cromwell excepted

Event Comment: Benefit Mr Charles. 7 p.m. 5s

Event Comment: The United Company. This performance is on the L. C. list, 5@147, p. 361: The King at ye Mistress. See also Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 351. There is no indication as to whether this performance was the premiere. As the play was licensed on 24 May 1687, the premiere may have been as late as 12 May, but possibly was earlier. Sir George Etherege to Will Richards, 19 May 1687: I have heard of the success of The Eunuch, and am very glad the town has so good a taste to give the same just applause to Sir Charles Sedley's writing, which his friends have always done to his conversation (Letterbook, ed. Rosenfeld, p. 212). Sir George Etherege to Middleton, 2O June 1687: I saw a play about ten years ago Called the Eunuch, so heavy a lump the players durst not charge themselves with the dead weight, but it seems Sir Charles Sedley has animated the mighty mass and now it treads the stage lightly (ibid., p. 227). [See also 26 March 1687 and season of 1676-77.] Thomas Shadwell, The Tenth Satyr of Juvenal (licensed, 25 May 1687.) Dedication to Sir Charles Sedley: Your late great obligation in giving me the advantage [presumably the third day's gain] of your comedy, call'd Bellamira, or the Mistress, has given me a fresh subject for my Thanks; and my Publishing this Translation affords me a new opportunity of owning to the world my grateful resentments to you. I am heartily glad that your Comedy (as I never doubted) found such success, that I never met with any Man of Sence but applauded it: And that there is abundance of Wit in it, your Enemies have been forced to confess....For the Judgment of some Ladies upon it that it is obscene, I must needs say they are Ladies of a very quick apprehension, and did not find their thoughts lye very much that way, they could not find more obscenity in that than there is in every other Comedy. A song, Thyrsis unjustly you complain, headed A Song in Bellamira, or, the Mistress. Set by Mr Tho. Shadwell, is in Vinculum Societatis, 1687 (licensed 8 June 1687)

Event Comment: "Mrs Siddons' 'O Jaffier'--'Remember twelve'--'Aye, but that husband trusted her'--and, above all, the narrative of the night with Renault--were given with the most miraculous organs of varied emphasis, modulation, delicacy and propriety . . . Kemble's Jaffier was a perfect performance" (Public Advertiser, 14 Feb.). Receipts: #251 15s. (226/15; 23/6; 1/4; tickets not come in: 0/10)