Event Comment: The
United Company. This performance is on the
L. C. list, 5@147, p. 361:
The King at
ye Mistress. See also
Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 351. There is no indication as to whether this performance was the premiere. As the play was licensed on 24 May 1687, the premiere may have been as late as 12 May, but possibly was earlier.
Sir George Etherege to
Will Richards, 19 May 1687: I have heard of the success of
The Eunuch, and am very glad the town has so good a taste to give the same just applause to
Sir Charles Sedley's writing, which his friends have always done to his conversation (
Letterbook, ed.
Rosenfeld, p. 212). Sir George Etherege to
Middleton, 2O June 1687: I saw a play about ten years ago Called the
Eunuch, so heavy a lump the players durst not charge themselves with the dead weight, but it seems Sir Charles Sedley has animated the mighty mass and now it treads the stage lightly (ibid., p. 227). [See also 26 March 1687 and season of 1676-77.]
Thomas Shadwell,
The Tenth Satyr of Juvenal (licensed, 25 May 1687.) Dedication to Sir Charles Sedley: Your late great obligation in giving me the advantage [presumably the third day's gain] of your comedy, call'd
Bellamira, or the Mistress, has given me a fresh subject for my Thanks; and my Publishing this Translation affords me a new opportunity of owning to the world my grateful resentments to you. I am heartily glad that your Comedy (as I never doubted) found such success, that I never met with any Man of Sence but applauded it: And that there is abundance of Wit in it, your Enemies have been forced to confess....For the Judgment of some Ladies upon it that it is obscene, I must needs say they are Ladies of a very quick apprehension, and did not find their thoughts lye very much that way, they could not find more obscenity in that than there is in every other Comedy. A song,
Thyrsis unjustly you complain, headed A Song in
Bellamira, or, the Mistress. Set by
Mr Tho. Shadwell, is in
Vinculum Societatis, 1687 (licensed 8 June 1687)