Event Comment: The Duke's Company.
Downes (p. 30): This Comedy in general was very well Perform'd.
Pepys, Diary: I alone to
the Duke of York's house, to see
the new play, called
The Man is the Master, where
the house was, it being not above one o'clock, very full. But my wife and
Deb. being
there before, with
Mrs Pierce and
Corbet and
Betty Turner, whom my Wife carried with her,
they made me room; and
there I sat, it costing me 8s. upon
them in oranges, at 6d. apiece. By and by
the King come; and we sat just under him, so that I durst not turn my back all
the play.
The play is a translation out of
French, and
the plot
Spanish, but not anything extraordinary at all in it, though translated by
Sir W. Davenant, and so I found
the King and his company did think meanly of it, though
there was here and
there something Pretty: but
the most of
the mirth was sorry, poor stuffe, of eating of sack posset and slabbering
themselves, and mirth fit for clownes;
the prologue but poor, and
the epilogue little in it but
the extraordinariness of it, it being sung by
Harris and ano
ther in
the form of a ballet
Performances
Mainpiece Title: The Man's The Master
Performance Comment: Edition of 1669: Prologue-; Epilogue in a Ballad-Two; [Downes (Roscius Anglicanus, p. 30): Master-Harris; The Man-Underhill; Singing the Epilogue [like two Street Ballad-Singers-Mr Harris, Mr Sandford. [According to the Catalogue of the MS Music, Christ Church, John Bannister set a song for this play.]According to the Catalogue of the MS Music, Christ Church, John Bannister set a song for this play.]