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)