Event Comment: The United Company. This performance is on
the L. C. list, 5@151, p. 369:
Ye Q: a Box & a Box for ye Maids Honor
Amphitrion. See also
Nicoll, Restoration Drama, p. 352.
The date of
the first performance is not known, and it is doubtful that this one is
the first;
the premiere may have occurred early in October.
The Songs and Music were published in 1690 and again in 1691, and have been edited by
the Purcell Society, XVI (1906), iii-vi. Dedication, Edition of 1690: But what has been wanting on my part, has been abundantly supplied by
the Excellent Composition of
Mr Purcell; in whose person we have at length found an
English Man equal with
the best abroad. At least, my Opinion of him has been such, since his happy and judicious performances in
the late opera [
The Prophetess], and
the experience I have had of him, in
the setting my three Songs for this Amphitryon": To all which, and particularly to
the composition of
the Pastoral Dialogue,
the numerous Quire of Fair Ladies gave so just an Applause on
the Third Day.
Cibber, Apology, I, 113: As we have sometimes great Composers of Musick who cannot sing, we have as frequently great Writers that cannot read; and though without
the nicest Ear no Man can be Master of Poetical Numbers, yet
the best Ear in
the World will not always enable him to pronounce
them. Of this Truth
Dryden, our first great Master of Verse and Harmony, was a strong Instance: When he brought his Play of
Amphytrion to
the Stage, I heard him give it his first Reading to
the Actors, in which, though it is true he deliver'd
the plain Sense of every Period, yet
the whole was in so cold, so flat, and unaffecting a manner, that I am afraid of not being believ'd when I affirm it