Event Comment: The
United Company. T
his play was in rehearsal before the death of
Charles II-see 6 Feb. 1684@5-and was staged shortly after the playhouse reopened.
Luttrell's date of acquisition of the separately-printed
Prologue and
Epilogue is 9 May 1685 (in possession of
Pickering and Chatto, Ltd., 1938), and the play may have been first given on that date or during the week preceding Saturday 9 May 1685. For
Cibber's account of
Mountfort as
Sir Courtly, see
Cibber, Apology, ed.
Lowe, I, 129. The separately-printed Prologue and Epilogue are reprinted in
Wiley,
Rare Prologues and Epilogues, pp. 228-30. A separately-printed
Three New Songs in Sir Courtley Nice (1685) contains three songs, with the music by
Samuel Ackroyde and an unknown composer. In addition, two songs,
As I grazed unaware and
O be kind my dear be kind, both composed by
R. King, are in
The Theater of Music, Second Book, 1685.
Downes (
Roscius Anglicanus, pp. 40-41): The first new Comedy after
King James came to the Crown, was
Sir Courtly Nice, wrote by
Mr Crown:...The Comedy being justly Acted, and the Characters in't new, Crown'd it with a general Applause: Sir Courtly was so nicely Perform'd, that not any succeeding, but Mr Cyber has Equall'd him. Note,
Mr Griffin so Excell'd in
Surly,
Sir Edward Belfond,
The Plain Dealer, none succeeding in the 2 former have Equall'd him, except
his Predecessor
Mr Hart in the latter.
The Lover's Session; In Imitation of Sir John Suckling's Session of Poets (in
Poems on Affairs of State, II [1703], 162): @Montrath was in Foppery conceiv'd another@Of Whitehall true Breed, Sir Nices Twin Brother:@None could tell, so alike all their Follies did seem,@Whether he acted Mumford, or Mumford him.