Event Comment: Palmer and Parsons Sal[ar]y raised #1 per full week [of 6 nights]. Receipts: #235 18s. 6d. (207.18.0; 26.11.0; 1.9.6)

Event Comment: "Palmer's Stukely was exactly infamous, his Scene with Mrs Beverley was just on both hands, each seemed to gain Spirit by the Nature and Exactness of the other-it was inimitable. Kemble's Beverley was all we could wish; his Manner, peculiar as it is, gave us home Sensations" (Public Advertiser, 9 Dec). Receipts: #226 13s. 6d. (202/6/0; 23/10/0; 0/2/6; tickets not come in: 0/15/0)

Event Comment: Palmer having relapsed, and being incapable of performing, The School for Scandal [announced on playbill of 10 Feb.] is obliged to be deferred. [Afterpiece in place of The First Floor, announced as above.] Receipts: #152 2s. 6d. (118.7.0; 26.16.0; 5.9.6; tickets not come in: 1.10.0)

Event Comment: Thomas Lilleston, one of Rhodes' actors, was brought before the Middlesex Sessions, charged with acting a play on this date. (See Hotson, Commonwealth and Restoration Stage, p. 197.)

Event Comment: Thomas Shadwell, the Poet Laureat, presented an Ode on the King's Birth-Day, which was published in 1692

Event Comment: Thomas Gray to Horace Walpole, 3 Jan.: I went to King Arthur last night, which is exceeding fine; they have a new man to supply Delane's place, one Johnson, with ye finest person & face in the world to all appearance; but as awkward, as a Button-maker; in short, if he knew how to manage his Beauties to advantage, I should not wonder, if all the Women run mad for him: the inchanted part of the play, is not Machinery, but actual magick: the second scene is a British temple enough to make one go back a thousand years, & really be in ancient Britain: the Songs are all Church-musick, & in every one of ye Chorus's Mrs Chambers sung ye chief part, accompanied with Roarings, Squawlings & Squeakations dire. Mrs Giffard is by way of Emmeline, & should be blind, but, heaven knows! I would not wish to see better than she does, & seems to do; for when Philidel restores her to sight, her eyes are not at all better than before; she is led in at first, by a Creature, yet was more like a Devil by half, than Grimbald himself; she took herself for Madame la Confidente, but every body else took her to be in the Circumstances of Damnation: when Emmeline comes to her sight, she beholds this Mrs Matilda first, & cries out Are Women all like thee? such glorious Creatures! which set the people into such a laugh, as lasted the whole Act: the Frost Scene is excessive fine; the first Scene of it is only a Cascade, that seems frozen: with the Genius of Winter asleep & wrapt in furs, who upon the approach of Cupid, after much quivering, & shaKing sings the finest song in the Play: just after, the Scene opens, & shows a view of arched rocks covered with Ice & Snow to ye end of ye Stage; between the arches are upon pedestals of Snow eight Images of old men & women, that seem frozen into Statues, with Icicles hanging about them & almost hid in frost, & from ye end come Singers, viz: Mrs Chambers, &: & Dancers all rubbing their hands & chattering with cold with fur gowns & worsted gloves in abundance. Gray, Correspondence, I, 36-37