Event Comment: The
King's Company.
Pepys, Diary: It being almost twelve o'clock, or a little more,
and carried [
Mercer,
Mrs Horsfield,
and Mrs Gayet] to the King's playhouse, where the doors were not then open; but presently they did open;
and we in,
and find many people already come in, by private ways, into the pit, it being the first day of
Sir Charles Sidly's new play, so long expected,
The Mulberry Garden, of
whom, being so reputed a wit, all the world do expect great matters. I having sat here awhile,
and eat nothing to-day, did slip out, getting a boy to keep my place...
And so to the play again, where
the King and Queen, by
and by, come,
and all the
Court;
and the house infinitely full. But the play, when it come, though there was, here
and there, a pretty saying,
and that not very many neither, yet the whole of the play had nothing extraordinary in it, at all, neither of language nor design; insomuch that the King I did not see laugh, nor pleased the whole play from the beginning to the end, nor the company; insomuch that I have not been less pleased at a new play in my life, I think.
And which made it the worse was, that there
never was worse musick played--that is, worse things composed, which made me
and Captain Rolt, who happened to sit near me, mad. So away thence, very little satisfied with the play, but pleased with my company. [For
Bannister's setting a song for
Mrs Knepp for this play, see 7 May 1668.