Event Comment: LLondon Daily Post and General Advertiser, 17 March: This is to inform the Publick, that the new Tragi-Comedy, intitled The Free-Thinker; or, The Fox uncas'd, which was last Summer rehearsed and was to have been play'd at [lif], but by Mr Rich's letting that House to Mr Giffard, for that Season, was prevented, will be acted on the 14th of April next [at yb], by Mr Hallam's Company of Comedians. The Play is writ much in the same Stile and Manner of George Barnwell....The Author hopes that the Generous and Judicious will encourage the Performance, tho' the Company of Players are not dropt down from the Clouds, nor does the Play libel the Government. [No further announcement of the performance has been noted before 28 April.

Event Comment: LLondon Daily Post and General Advertiser, 11 July: Speedily will be sold by Auction, a Large Quantity of Theatrical Goods, viz. Cloaths, Scenes. (Late the Property of Mr Henry Giffard.

Event Comment: Benefit Laguerre, Prisoner in the King's Bench. [Tickets of Laguerre at John's Coffee-House, next door the King's-Bench, Southwark. In the London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 22 April, Laguerre expressed his thanks to Giffard for giving him this benefit and added that, it being term-time, he had "by the common Licence of a Day Rule," liberty to act on 23 April.

Event Comment: A notice had appeared announcing for this date a performance of Love Makes a Man, with Clodio-$Peterson, Cholerick-$Paget, and the rest of the parts by members of Giffard's Goodman's Fields Company (now of course at Lincoln's Inn Fields) and the Lying Valet, for the benefit of Paget, who states, in the notice, that he is out of work. The performance was not given, but see 25 Nov., by which date Paget was resting in Fleet prison

Event Comment: We are inform'd that Mr Giffard, as an Expedient to recover, in some Degree, the Loss he has sustained by his late Undertaking in [lif] has apply'd to the late Patentee of the Theatre@Royal in Drury@Lane, for the favour of his Appearance in the Character of Lothario (in which it is observable, he amus'd himself some years since to very numerous and polite Audiences) with which Request the said Gentleman has very generously complied

Event Comment: Benefit E. Giffard

Event Comment: Places for Boxes to be taken at the stage door of the theatre. Boxes 5s. Pit 3s. First Gallery 2s. Upper Gallery 1s. To begin exactly at 6 o'clock. [Customary notices repeated throughout the season.] Mr W. Giffard and Mrs Bland from the Theatre in Dublin, are arrived in London, and will shortly make their appearance at Covent Garden (General Advertiser 14 Sept.)

Event Comment: On Tuesday last died at Ealing in Middlesex at a very advanced age and much regretted by all who had the Pleasure of his Acquaintance, Henry Giffard, the Celebrated Manager of Goodman's Fields Theatre. This Gentleman was of a Genteel Family in the West of England (Public Advertiser). [Though him Garrick had come to the stage.

Event Comment: Representation in Parts, to be Habited, Sung, and Acted, as they have oftentimes with Great Applause performed before the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs of London. An Eclogue, or Representation in Four Parts, Composed for the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Allen, and Sung by the City Musick, December 18th, 1659

Event Comment: The edition of 1660, which has a Prologue and an Epilogue but no actors' names, was entered in the Stationers' Register, Aug. 1660, and apparently followed closely upon the return of Charles II. Edition of 1660: Acted Many Times with Great Applause, At the Private House in Dorset-Court

Event Comment: The Diurnal of Thomas Rugg, ed. Sachse, p. 127: Playes much in reques and great resort to them

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: I bought the play of Henry the Fourth, and so went to the new Theatre...and saw it acted; but my expectation being too great, it did not please me, as otherwise I believe it would; and my having a book, I believe did spoil it a little

Event Comment: See Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 117. The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: To the Theatre, and there sat in the pit among the company of fine ladys, &c.; and the house was exceeding full, to see Argalus and Parthenia, the first time that it hath been acted: and indeed it is good, though wronged by my over great expectations, as all things else are

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys, Diary: And so to Salisbury Court, where the house as full as could be; and it seems it was a new play, The Queen's Maske, wherein there are some good humours: among others, a good jeer to the old story of the Siege of Troy, making it to be a common country tale. But above all it was strange to see so little a boy as that was to act Cupid, which is one of the greatest parts in it

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 date of the first performance is not certainly known, but Pepys, on 2 July, saw Part II, stating that 2 July was the premiere of Part I and the opening of the Duke's Company's new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Downes (Roscius Anglicanus, pp. 20-21): His [Davenant's] Company Rehears'd the First and Second Part of the Siege of Rhodes...at Pothecaries-Hall: And in Spring 1662 [1661], Open'd his House with the said Plays, having new Scenes and Decorations, being the first that e're were Introduc'd in England....All Parts being Justly and Excellently Perform'd; it continu'd Acting 12 Days without Interruption with great Applause. Downes, p. 34: I must not forget my self, being Listed for an Acotr in Sir William Davenant's Company in Lincolns-Inn-Fields: The very first Day of opening the House there, with the Siege of Rhodes, being to Act Haly; (The King, Duke of York, and all the Nobility in the House, and the first time the King was in a Publick Theatre). The sight of that August presence, spoil'd me for an Actor too. HMC, 10th Report, Appendix, Part IV, p. 21: @For the Siege of Rhodes all say@It is an everlasting play@Though they wonder now Roxalana is gon@What shift it makes to hold out so long@For when the second part took, butt for Bully@The first did not satisfie so fully.@ [Presumably this verse was written after Mrs Davenport left the stage, in 1662(?).

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: To the Theatre, and saw the Antipodes, wherein there is much mirth, but no great matter else

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: Hence my wife and I to the Theatre, and there saw The Joviall Crew, where the King, Duke and Duchess, and Madame Palmer, were; and my wife, to her great content, had a full sight of them all the while. The play full of mirth

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: 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: My wife and I...to the Theatre, where we seated ourselves close by the King, and Duke of York, and Madame Palmer, which was great content; and, indeed, I can never enough admire her beauty. And here was Bartholomew Fayre, with the puppet-show, acted to-day, which had not been these forty years (it being so satyricall against Puritanism, they durst not till now, which is strange they should already dare to do it, and the King to countenance it), but I do never a whit like it the better for the puppets, but rather the worse

Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: And late after dinner took Mrs Martha out by coach, and carried her to the Theatre in a frolique, to my great expense, and there shewed her part of the Beggar's Bush, without much pleasure, but only for a frolique

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys, Diary: I...called my wife at my brother's where I left her, and to the Opera, where we saw The Bondman, which of old we both did so doat on, and do still; though to both our thinking not so well acted here (having too great expectations), as formerly at Salisbury-court. But for Betterton he is called by us both the best actor in the world

Event Comment: The King's Company. This play appears on Herbert's List, following the entry for 26 Oct. 1661. (See William VanLennep, "Thomas Killigrew prepares his Plays for Production," J. Q. Adams Memorial Studies (Washington, D. C., 1948, p. 803.) Pepys, Diary: W. Pen and I to the Theatre, but it was so full that we could hardly get any room, so he went up to one of the boxes, and I into the 18d. places, and there saw Love at first sight, a play of Mr Killigrew's and the first time that it hath been acted since before the troubles, and great expectation there was, but I found the play to be a poor thing, and so I perceive every body else do. BM Add. Mss. 34217, fol. 31b, in Hotson Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, p. 246: @First then to speake of his Majestys Theatre@Where one would imagine Playes should be better@Love att the first sight did lead the dance@But att second sight it had the mischance@To be so dash'd out of Countenance as@It never after durst shew itts face@All though its bashfullnesse as tis thought@Be far from being the Authors ffault.