Event Comment: The King's Company.
Pepys, Diary: To
the King's playhouse, where
The Heyress, notwithstanding
Kinaston's being beaten, is acted: and
they say
the King is very angry with
Sir Charles Sedley for his being beaten, but he do deny it. But his part is done by
Beeston, who is fain to read it out of a book all
the while, and
thereby spoils
the part, and almost
the play, it being one of
the best parts in it; and though
the design is, in
the first conception of it, pretty good, yet it is but an indifferent play, wrote,
they say, by my
Lord Newcastle, But it was pleasant to see Beeston come in with o
thers, supposing it to be dark, and yet he is forced to read his part by
the light of
the candles. and this I observing to a gentleman that sat by me, he was mightily pleased
therewith, and spread it up and down. But that, that pleased me most in
the play is,
the first song that
Knepp sings, she singing three or four; and, indeed, it was very finely sung, so as to make
the whole house clap her.... My wife being in mighty ill humour all night, and in
the morning I found it to be from her observing Knepp to wink and smile on me, and she says I smiled on her; and, poor wretch! I did perceive that she did, and do on all such occasions, mind my eyes. I did, with much difficulty, pacify her, and were friends, she de
siring that hereafter, at that house, we might always sit ei
ther above in a box, or, if
there be [no] room, close up to
the lower boxes