Event Comment: The King's Company. Pepys, Diary: Sir W. Pen, my wife and I to the Theatre, and there saw The Country Captain, the first time it hath been acted this twenty-five years, a play of my Lord Newcastle's, but so silly a play as in all my life I never saw, and the first that ever I was weary of in my life. Herbert (Dramatic Records, p. 118) lists Love's Mistress for this date for Vere St., but the item is out of the normal order of the entries. To move it to 26 Oct. 1662 would place it on a Sunday. The play had been given previously (2 March 1661, 11 March 1661, 25 March 1661) by both the Duke's Company and King's Company. Possibly Herbert entered it on the wrong day. On Herbert's list, following Love's Mistress, are two plays, The Contented Collinell [Brenoralt] and Love at First Sight, each listed without a date. The former, under the title Brenoralt, had been acted at Vere St. on 23 July 1661; the second was soon to be acted there on 29 Nov. 1661

Event Comment: This play is in Herbert, Dramatic Records p. 118: Cornelia a New Play, sir W. Bartleys. The date in Herbert is 1 June, a Sunday in 1662, with another play in the same group falling on Sunday. Nevertheless, the verse comment (see below) written, apparently, before the summer of 1662 points toward 2 June 1662 rather than 1 June 1663. Edward Browne also lists it as one of the plays he attended. The play was not printed. BM Add. Mss. 34217, in Hotson, Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, p. 246: @For Cornelia they all doe say@There was abundance of witt in the play@Indeed t'had soe much t' was the worse for 't@For t' was to witty for the vulgar sort@And they who'd have poetts their Benefactors@Say witt without mony's naught for the Actors.

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

Event Comment: See Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 116. The King's Company. It is surprising to see a Davenant play acted by the King's Company. Edward Gower to Sir R. Leveson, 20 Nov. 1660: Yesternight at the Fleece Tavern...The gentlemen were discussing the play which they then came from, by name The Unfortunate Lover; at the latter end of the play there was a duel upon the stage; which, they, discounting upon, drew their swords in jest to show wherein they failed (HMC, 5th Report, 1876, p. 200)

Event Comment: The King's company. On 31 Aug. or 1 Sept. 1664 Orrery wrote to Sir Henry Bennett: Ther was noe Play of myne Acted, they are now but Studyinge it; I hope within less then a Fortnight twill be on ye Theater And if you are not surfetted, with what of mine you have already seene [Henry V], I will beg ye honour to wait on you when tis Acted (see The Dramatic Works of Roger Boyle, ed. W. S. Clark@II [Cambridge, Mass., 1937], 1, 102). The play is also on the list of Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 138. Boswell, Restoration Court Stage, p. 281, lists it among the plays given at court, but Sir Heneage Finch's note (see below) seems to indicate an afternoon performance. Sir Heneage Finch to Sir Edward Dering, 15 Sept. 1664: Yesterday was acted, in the Greatest and noblest presence wch ye Court can make, before ye fullest Theatre, & with the highest applause imaginable, my Lo Orerys new play calld ye Generall formerly acted in Ireland by the name of Altamira, but much altered & improved. From thence the whole Court went to Wallingford house, where the Earl of Arran and the Lady Mary Stuart were that night before Supper marryd in the Gallery (Dramatic Works of Roger Boyle, I, 103, from Stowe MS 744 f. 81)

Event Comment: On Herbert's list (Dramatic Records, p. 138) appears at the end Eluira [Elvira] which is characterised as "the last" of the sequence which begins with Floras Figarys on 3 Nov. 1663. As Henry V, The Generall, Parsons Wedding, and Macbeth were acted after that date-Macbeth on 5 Nov. 1664--it is possible that Elvira; or, The Worst Not Always True may have appeared in late November. Langbaine (English Dramatick Poets, p. 530) attributes it to Lord Digby

Event Comment: [Music by Ariosti, Bononcini, Handel. Text by P. A. Rolli.] Admission as 19 Nov. 1720. De Fabrice to Flemming, 21 April (in Deutsch, Handel, p. 126): The Princess of Wales was safely delivered of a son last Saturday. The news was taken to the King by Lord Herbert during...Mutius Scevola, where there was a particularly large audience on account of its being the first performance. The audience celebrated the event with loud applause and huzzas. Each act of this opera is by a different composer, -the first by a certain Pipo, the second by Bononcini, and the third by Hendell, who easily triumphed over the others

Event Comment: See Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 116. This was the King's Company (under Killigrew), split off from the United Company. According to Downes (Roscius Anglicanus, p. 2) the roster included: Theophilus Bird, Hart, Mohun, Lacy, Burt, Cartwright, Clun, Baxter, Robert Shatterel, William Shatterrel, Duke [Marmaduke Watson], Hancock, Kynaston, Wintersel, Bateman, Blagden. (But see also Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 295.) According to the articles of agreement, 5 Nov. 1660 (Herbert, Dramatic Records, pp. 96-100), the Duke's Company (under Davenant) included Thomas Batterton, Thomas Sheppey, Robert Noakes, James Noakes, Thomas Lovell, John Moseley, Cave Underhill, Robert Turner, Thomas Lilleston

Event Comment: According to M. Summers (A Bibliography of Restoration Drama, p. 13) Love's Mystery was entered into but erased from Herbert's original manuscript under his date. (See Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 116.) The King's Company

Event Comment: See Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 118, where this play appears under date of 6 July, a Sunday in 1662; it is the second of the plays on this list to fall on Sunday in 1662 (see 2 June 1662). Following The Brothers on Herbert's list is Antipodes (by Richard Brome), without a date, between 6 and 23 July

Event Comment: The Faithful Virgins (MS Bodleian Rawl. Poet. 195, ff. 49-78) bears a permit to be acted by the Duke's Company, a permit signed by Henry Herbert. Since Herbert retired in July 1663, the play, if performed, can be dated from about 1661 to June 1663

Event Comment: Flora's Figarys appears in Herbert, Dramatic Records, p. 148, under this date. As Flora's Vagaries, it had been acted at Christ Church, Oxford, on 8 Jan. 1663. The play was not published before 1670, and the entry in Herbert's list has sometimes been regarded as the date of licensing, sometimes as the date of a performance in London. Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 427, assigned it to ca. January 1662@3 at Vere St, presumably because "Mr Bird" in the cast in the quarto of 1670 referred to Theophilus Bird, who died before 3 Nov. 1663. But the cast in the edition of 1670 is presumably that for 5 Oct. 1667, when Pepys saw the play and referred to Nell Gwyn and Mrs Knepp as acting in it; they, too, are listed in the quarto of 1670 but could hardly have played in it in 1663. If the cast in the 1670 edition is not that for 3 Nov. 1663 and if the "Mr Bird" is Theophilus Bird Jr, then the obstacles to consiuering 3 Nov. 1663 as the date of a performance rather than of licensing are less formidable. [I am indebted to professor John Harold Wilson for much of this argument.