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 E
therige,
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