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 whe
ther 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 E
therege 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 o
ther 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)