Event Comment: Benefit for Miss Farren. 2nd piece: Altered [by Henry Bate] from Prior's Nut Brown Maid, with new Airs and Chorusses composed by Shield. Receipts: #226 5s. (105.1.0; 29.3.6; 1.2.6; tickets: 90.18.0) (charge: #108.14)

Event Comment: The United Company. As 9 Nov. 1692 is known to be the second day, it is assumed that 8 Nov. 1692 represents the first performance. (See entry for 9 Nov. 1692.) The authorship is uncertain; William Mountfort signed tne Dedication, but its authorship is linked with that of Edward III (November 1690), which may have been by Bancroft. Gentleman's Journal, October 1692 (not issued until November): Henry the Second, King of England, A new Play, by the Author of that call'd Edward the Third, which gave such universal satisfaction, hath been acted several times with applause. It is a Tragedy with a mixture of Comedy....Had you seen it acted, you would own that an Evening is pass'd very agreeably, when at a Representation of that pleasing Piece. [Alfred Harbage, Elizabethan-Restoration Palimpsest, Modern Language Review, XXXV (1940), 312-18, argues that this play is the Elizabethan Henry II once in the possession of Moseley. A song, In vain 'gainst Love I strove, composed by Henry Purcell and sung by Mrs Dyer, not in the printed play, is in Comes Amoris, 1693, and Joyful Cuckoldom 1695. See Purcell's Works, Purcell Society, XX (1916), vii

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys, Diary: Here comes Harris, and first told us how Betterton is come again upon the stage: whereupon my wife and company to the [Duke's] house to see Henry the Fifth.... Thence I to the playhouse, and saw a piece of the play, and glad to see Betterton

Event Comment: By the Great Mogul's Company of English Comedians, Newly Imported. [By Henry Fielding.] N.B. Mr Pasquin intending to lay about him with great Impartiality, hopes the Town will all attend, and very civilly give their Neighbours what they find belong to 'em. N.B. The Cloaths are old, but the Jokes intirely new. N.B. All Ladies that intend to be present during the first Run, cannot take Places too early. To prevent any Interruption in the Movement of the Persons in the Drama (some of whom are Machines) no Person whatever can possibly be admitted behind the Scenes. Boxes 4s. Pit 2s. 6d. Gallery 1s

Event Comment: Mainpiece [1st time; T 5, by Henry James Pye. Prologue by William Sotheby; Epilogue by John Taylor (see text)]: With new Dresses and Decorations. "From the first drawing up of the curtain, till its final fall, we could not discover one single flight of fancy, one solitary scene of woe...It is but justice to add that for a first night the performers, with the exception of Barrymore, were very perfect in their respective parts [and see 27 Jan.]" (Dramatic Censor, I, 175, 181). Receipts: #309 13s. (246.4.6; 61.0.6; 2.8.0)

Event Comment: Full Prices. There will not be room behind the Scenes for more than the persons acting in the coronation, [Others] cannot possibly be admitted. The coronation of their Majesties was followed by a stage representation of it at both houses...Garrick knew that Rich would spare no expense in the presentation of his show; he knew too that he had a taste in the ordering, dressing, and setting out these pompous processions, superior to his own; he therefore was contented with the old dresses which had been occasionally used from 1721-1761. This show he repeated for near forty nights successively, sometimes at the end of a play, and at other times after a farce. The exhibition was the meanest, and the most unworthy of a theatre, I ever saw. The stage was...opened into Drury Lane; and a new and unexpected sight surprised the audience, of a real bonfire, and the populace huzzaing and drinking porter to the health of Queen Anne Bullen. The Stage in the meantime, amidst the parading of Dukes, duchesses, archbishops, peeresses, heralds &c. was covered with a thick fog from the smoke of the fire, which served to hide the tawdry dresses of the processionalists. During this idle piece of mockery, the actors, being exposed to the suffocations of smoke, and the raw air from the open street, were seized with colds, rheumatisms, and swelled faces. At length the indignation of the audience delivered the comedians from this wretched badge of nightly slavery, which gained nothing to the managers but disgrace and empty benches. Tired with the repeated insult of a show which had nothing to support it but gilt copper and old rags, they fairly drove the exhibitors of it from the stage by hooting and hissing, to the great joy of the whole theatre....Rich...fully satisfied [the publick's] warmest imaginations (Davies, Life of Garrick, I, 365 ff.)

Event Comment: Mainpiece: Not acted these 20 years. [See 16 April 1751.] With the Decorations prescribed by Shakespeare. The Characters new Dressed in the Haibts of the Times. [The reviewer for Town and Country Magazine preferred Mrs Hartley's acting in Jane Shore to that in Henry VIII, where she frequently sunk into a whining monotony which from the length of some of the speeches became very disagreeable.' She did, however, he thought, do the last scene well.] Receipts: #223 13s. 6d. (Account Book)

Event Comment: Rich's Company. Lady Morley attended this performance. Hotson, Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, p. 377: Lady Morley and two in the Box at King Arthur 18s. [In The Female Wits--see September 1696--in Act I is a reference to the enlivening of King Arthur created by the Pudding and Dumbling Song.

Event Comment: Rich's Company. Lady Morley attended this performance. Hotson, Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, p. 377: Lady Morley and one in the Box att King Arthur 10s

Event Comment: Rich's Company. Lady Morley attended this performance. Hotson, Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, p. 377: Lady Morley and one in the Box att King Arthur 10s

Event Comment: Rich's Company. Lady Morley attended this performance: Lady Morley in the Box at Earle of Essex. 4s. See Hotson, Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, p. 378

Event Comment: At the particular Desire of several Ladies of Quality. Written by Shakespear. Daily Journal, 28 Oct.: The same Night [Thursday 26] a Gentlewoman fancying she saw Smoke issue from under the Stage, as she sat in the Pit, during the Play Time,...and at the same time believing she smelt Fire, declared her Opinion so loud, and by her precipitate Endeavours to get out, gave such an Alarm all over the House, as was attended with the fatal Consequence of one Woman big with Child being press'd to Death, and several others Persons were very much bruised. [See also Daily Post, 27 Oct. A reward of #20 was offered by John Rich for the apprehension of the malicious ill designing Persons" who presumably occasioned the incident.-Daily Journal, 31 Oct.

Event Comment: Mainpiece: Not acted these 2 years. [See 11 April 1771.] Paid Mrs Rich the balance of the Benefit for the Dispensary #36 11s. 6d., and paid Garton the balance due the Theatrical Fund #143 3s. (Account Book). [The Westminster Magazine this month comments upon the revival of the pantomime and the new scene of the Pantheonv: "This thought evidently was borrowed from the ludicrous situations of the Macaroni in the pantomime of the Pigmy Revels at the other theatre; but no one in the world borrows with less ceremony than Mr Colman, especially from Mr Garrick."] Receipts: #126 2s. 6d

Event Comment: At the Desire of several Persons of Quality. Mainpiece: Written by Shakespear, and since revis'd with several Alterations. Admission: 5s., 3s., 2s. Benefit John and Christopher Rich. Receipts. #61 8s

Event Comment: Benefit J. and Ch. Rich. Afterpiece: With all the Scenes, Machines, and other Decorations proper. Receipts: #56 8s. 6d

Event Comment: [K+King Henry VIII] Containing the Death of the Duke of Buckinghamv; the Tryal and Divorce of Queen Catherinev; the Death of Cardinal Wolseyv; the Christening of Queen Elizabethv; and many other Historical Passages. [A customary notice for all Henry VIII bills this season. It will not be repeated below.] Receipts: #140 (Cross)

Event Comment: Mainpiece: In Act I The Cardinal's Banquet. In Act II The Court for the Trial of Queen Katharine. In Act V a Grand Procession to the Christening of Princess Elizabeth. Paid Charles Smith on Acct. of Upholders Work at Drury Lane Theatre #400. Powell: Henry VIII rehearsed at 10 (for Packer, lame, and Mrs Siddons); Siege of Belgrade music at 12 (for Storace, Bannister Jun., Crouch, Davis, Danby). The Iron Curtain being finish'd was this Evening exhibited for the first Time with the Epilogue [and see 21 Apr.]. "On the 24th February, 1809, this theatre was burnt down . . . Every care had been taken to guard against such a calamity. Two large reservoirs for water, on the top of the house, happened, unfortunately, at this crisis to be empty; and an iron curtain, intended to separate the auditory from the stage, for the purpose of saving a part of the edifice in case of conflagration, was, with its machinery, so much out of order as to be useless; it was, in fact, utterly immoveable" (Brayley, p. 8). Receipts: #451 8s. 6d. (389/4/0; 56/5/0; 4/6/6; tickets not come in: 1/13/0)

Event Comment: The Duke's Company. Pepys does not indicate that this performance is the premiere, and Summers, The Playhouse of Pepys, p. 137, states, without offering his evidence, that the play first appeared on 11 Aug. 1664. The play also appears in Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 138. If Pepys saw the premiere, the play was possibly given on 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24 Aug. Pepys, Diary: Mr Creed dining with me I got him to give my wife and me a play this afternoon, lending him money to do it, which is a fallacy that I have found now once, to avoyde my vowe with, but never to be more practised I swear, and to the new play, at the Duke's house, of Henry the Fifth; a most noule play, writ by my Lord Orrery; wherein Betterton, Harris, and Ianthe's parts are most incomparably wrote and done, and the whole play the most full of height and raptures of wit and sense, that ever I heard; having but one incongruity, or what did not please me in it, that is, that King Harry promises to plead for Tudor to their Mistresse, Princesse Katherine of France, more than when it comes to it he seems to do; and Tudor refused by her with some kind of indignity, not with a difficulty and honour that it ought to have been done in to him. Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, pp. 27-28: This Play was Splendidly Cloath'd: The King, in the Duke of York's Coronation Suit; Owen Tudor, in King Charle's: Duke of Burgundy, in the Lord of Oxford's, and the rest all New. It was Excellently Perform'd, and Acted 10 Days Successively