Event Comment: W. S. Clark (Works of Orrery, 1, 40-41) believes that this is Thomas Middleton's play, not one by Orrery. Henry Savile to George Savile: I am come newly from my Lord of Orrery's new play called The Widow, whose character you will receive from better hands. I will only say that one part of it is the humour of a man that has great need to go to the close stool, where there are such indecent postures as would never be suffered upon any stage but ours, which has quite turn'd the stomach of so squeamish a man as I am, that am used to see nothing upon a theatre that might not appear in the ruelle of a fine lady (Savile Correspondence, ed. W. D. Cooper, Camden Society, LXXI [1858], 4)

Event Comment: The King's Company. This performance is on the L. C. list, 5@141, p. 359. See also Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 346. There is no certainty that this performance is the premiere, but as the play was licensed for printing on 9 Jan. 1676@7, this performance may well be the first one. Downes (Roscius Anglicanus, pp.9-10) lists the same cast except for the ommission of Letice. It is not certain which Mrs Knight played Letice. Possibly it was Frances Maria Knight (see Wilson, All the King's Ladies, where she is tentatively listed for that role), but the presence of Mrs Ursula Knight on an undated L. C. list, 3@24, with the date of her swearing into the company given as 12 March 1676@7, it is quite likely that she played this role. (I owe this reference to Ursula Knight to Professor John Harold Wilson.) John Dennis: And when upon the first representations of the Plain Dealer, the Town, as The Authour has often told me, appeard Doubtful what Judgment to Form of it; the foremention'd gentlemen [The Duke of Buckingham, Earl of Rochester, Earl of Dorset, Earl of Mulgrave, Savil, Buckly, Sir John Denham, Waller] by their loud aprobation of it, gave it both a sudden and a lasting reputation (Defense and Defects of Dramatick Poetry, 1725, in The Works of John Dennis, ed. Hooker, II, 277)