Event Comment: The
Duke's Company.
Downes (p. 29): It took well, but Inferior to
Love in a Tub.
Pepys, Diary: I to the Duke of York's playhouse; where a new play of
Etherige's called
She Would if she Could;
and though I was there by two o'clock, there was 1000 people put back that could not have room in the pit:
and I at last, because my wife was there, made shift to get into the 18d. box,
and there saw; but, Lord! how full was the house,
and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in it,
and few people pleased in it.
The King was there; but I sat mightily behind,
and could see but little,
and hear not all. The play being done...here was the
Duke of Buckingham to-day openly sat in the pit;
and there I found him with my
Lord Buckhurst,
and Sidly,
and Etherige, the poet; the last of whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were out of humour,
and had not their parts perfect,
and that
Harris did do nothing, nor could so much as sing a ketch in it;
and so was mightily concerned: while all the rest did, through the whole pit, blame the play as a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish
and witty; but the design of the play,
and end, mighty insipid.
Thomas Shadwell, Preface to
The Humorists (1671): The last (viz.) imperfect Action, had like to have destroy'd
She Would if she could, which I think (
and I have the Authority of some of the best Judges in
England for't) is the best Comedy that has been written since the
Restauration of the Stage:
And even that, for the imperfect representation of it at first, received such prejudice, that, had it not ben for the favour of the
Court, in all probability it had never got up again;
and it suffers for it, in a great measure, to this very day