SOURCE: “A Puritan at the Theater,” in Samuel Pepys: Updated Edition, Twayne Publishers, 1989, pp. 83-100.

[In the essay that follows, Taylor examines how the tension between Pepys's Puritan beliefs and his delight in attending performances is reflected in his views on Restoration theater.]

Pepys's round of pleasures included not only music but also the theater. He dearly loved the theater and sometimes could be found there for several succeeding days. He went to see plays, good and bad, almost every time there was a change on the boards. He went for all sorts of reasons, and he reports countless fascinating facts. Indeed, no one can make a satisfactory study of the Restoration stage without consulting the Diary.

But Pepys had a very strong Puritan streak, despite his conduct that may seem to the contrary. The young clerk of the acts also harbored a feeling that it was downright sinful to attend plays. He had learned well the antitheater Puritan strictures that had kept theaters closed by law from 1642 until 1660: they were dens of iniquity, the Bible forbade men's wearing women's clothing, theaters were fire hazards, and diseases lurked in them.

PEPYS'S ANTITHEATER VOWS

All these strictures and others he remembered. But the stresses and strains of daily living, the temptations of the flesh, and the mercurial ways of London gradually weakened his puritanical resolutions. Truth to tell, he enjoyed looking at the actresses and he loved the audiences, especially when the king was there with a little female moth or two fluttering around him and when Pepys rather self-consciously felt eyes turned on him. What he went to the theater for mainly, though, was to see the drama; otherwise, he would never have left such a careful account of so many plays. His conscience worried him, nevertheless, to the extent that he made vows as to deadlines within which he simply would not go to the theater; when he broke his vows, he paid money into the poor box. His moral reservations of 21 October 1661, though a little more pointed than usual, express definitely how he felt: “so against my judgment and conscience (which God forgive, for my heart knows that I offend God in breaking my vows herein) to the opera, which is now newly begun to act again, after some alteration of their Scene, which do make it very much worse, but the play Love and honour, being the first time of their acting it, is a very good plot, and well done.” He went to see the same play three times within a week: on 21, 23, and 25 October. On the twenty-sixth he saw the duke of Newcastle's The Country Captain, “but so silly a play as in all my life I never saw,” he complained.

After he listened to a dull sermon lasting more than an hour in Spital Square on 2 April 1662, Pepys sought diversion at the Opera, the Duke's Theater. There, with Elizabeth, he enjoyed a favorite play, Philip Massinger's The Bondman. He made a resolution afterward to see no more plays until Whitsuntide, some fifty days past Easter. He broke his resolution on 7 May when he stepped into the King's Theater, no doubt without paying, in time to catch the last act of Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

After Whitsuntide passed on 18 May, Pepys went to see John Fletcher's comedy The Night Walker, or the Little Thief on 19 May, the second part of Sir William Davenant's heroic The Siege of Rhodes the following night, the duke of Newcastle's The French Dancing Master on the next night, and James Shirley's The Changes, or Love in a Maze the night after that. Four nights in a row he saw four different plays, and his enthusiasm was only whetted by the famous comedian John Lacy's acting in the last two. On the very next night, Pepys admitted, “my Lord [Sandwich] and I slunk away to the Opera, where we saw Witt in a Constable,” but found it so silly a play as he had ever seen in his life. He rejoined Elizabeth, and they went to see a puppet play in Covent Garden, finding it very pleasant. He had seen two performances in a single day (D [Diary], 23 May 1662).

At Michaelmas 1662, he escorted his wife and Margaret Penn to the King's Theater to see Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (D, 29 September 1662). Some good dancing and the sight of some handsome women were all the pleasure that he conceded it gave him. The next day, at a visit to the Duke's Theater especially to see the great actor Thomas Betterton in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, Pepys easily reverted to his love of plays, and he vowed to quit them until Christmas. Cheating on his vows a little and pardonably, he fell into step on 2 October with a group of gentlemen going through a private door into the Cockpit. He had heard that the king and queen and other fine folk would be there to see James Shirley's The Cardinal, but he did not think much of the performance.

Tom Porter's new play The Villain was being much talked about—Thomas Killigrew,¹ Captain William Ferrers,² and Dr. Timothy Clarke all praised it highly within twenty-four hours. Pepys went to the Duke's Theater to see it on 20 October; he confessed to the Diary that he was never less pleased with a play in his life. He added that, although there was good singing and dancing, there was no “fancy” in the play. He loved fancy—sparks of imagination and clever contrivance—as well as heightened language to match the action and good, proper acting. Pepys was having other worries on 20 October, however—his conscience was bothering him: “I ought not to have gone by my vow, and, besides, my business commanded me elsewhere.” As soon as he came home, he paid five shillings into the poor box, according to his vow, and soothed his conscience with the thought, “I thank God these pleasures are not sweet to me now in the very enjoying of them.”

For some time thereafter he kept his antitheater vows quite well. He was tempted, heard news of the theater, and even bought and read part of George Chapman's Bussy d’Ambois on 15 November. When he went to the Cockpit two days later, he shifted the responsibility for his going to John Creed's shoulders, saying that Creed “carried” Elizabeth and him. What had really attracted him, however, was the fact that a royal party was going there to see Beaumont and Fletcher's The Scornful Lady that day. “We had excellent places, and saw the King, Queen, Duke of Monmouth, his son, and my Lady Castlemaine,³ and all the fine ladies,” purred Pepys, adding that the play was well performed. He did not mind that the performance lasted until eleven o’clock, “it being fine moonshine.”

The theater continually tempted him. He read Fletcher's A Wife for a Month on 19 December, and on 26 December mused, “But, Lord! to consider how my natural desire is to pleasure, which God be praised that he has given me the power by my late oaths to curb so well as I have done, and will do again after two or three plays more.” The occasion for this rationalizing was his visit that day to the Duke's Theater to see Thomas Porter's The Villain. He had seen it once before and had condemned it; he had paid for seeing it by a contribution to the poor box. Pepys seems to have liked the play no better this time, but he observed that he ought not see a play without taking his wife.

He kept this half-hearted resolution by taking Elizabeth to see the second part of Davenant's Siege of Rhodes the following day. But the Duke's Theater “was full of citizens, there hardly being a gentleman or woman in the house”; moreover, apprentices were jostling the few pretty ladies present. Of the two or three plays that he had promised to see before resuming his vows, one was The Villain, which he had recently condemned. After seeing it (for a third time) on New Year's Day 1663, Pepys admitted chagrin at having undervalued it before. He found it this time to be good and pleasant and “an allowable tragedy.” Once again, however, the house was full of citizens, not aristocracy; hence the occasion was less pleasant for him. Pepys promised to stop his “gaddings” and stick to business for the upcoming year, but he broke this New Year's resolution four days later when he went to see Thomas Killigrew's Claracilla (“a poor play”) at the King's Theater.

Twelfth Day, 6 January 1663, an important ending-date for the Christmas holidays, seemed to Pepys an appropriate day to go to see Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. On 8 January he saw and praised Sir Samuel Tuke's old play The Adventures of Five Hours at the Duke's Theater, then resolved to see no more plays until Easter or, perhaps, until Whitsuntide. But he left himself a loophole: “excepting plays at court.” The Adventures of Five Hours once again tempted him to the theater on 17 January, nevertheless; though he was out of sorts, he still thought the play very fine. Perhaps his trifling with his vows on 23 February 1663 was induced by a birthday mood, since he observed that he was thirty years of age. He saw two plays: Sir Robert Stapylton's The Slighted Maid and John Dryden's Wild Gallant. In the former, he enjoyed the little girl's fine legs, which only “bends in the hams.” And although the second play was well acted, he regarded it as poor, especially since there was little in it that substantiated the title. He was somewhat mollified, nevertheless, by satisfying views of the king; of Lady Castlemaine, whose reputation was becoming precipitately notorious; and of other court ladies, including Mrs. Wells, who had returned to court after surviving the vile experience a few days before of being believed to have given birth to a child during a court ball.

Closeness to king and court always thrilled Pepys. When he saw the king and his courtiers going to the Duke's Theater to see Shakespeare's Henry VIII, he almost joined them—but he would have broken his oath, “or run the hazard of 20s losse” to the poor box (D, 22 December 1663). He was tempted again to see the play on Christmas Eve, but resisted until New Year's Day 1664.

His New Year's resolution that year included a carefully hedged vow regarding the theater. He would see no more than one play a month at any public theater and would not spend more than fifty shillings; when that was spent, he would see no plays before the next New Year's Day. But in such matters of conscience-plus-money Pepys always left a loophole; in this instance, the loophole was “unless that I do become worth 1000 sooner than then, and then am free to come to some other terms.” These vows made, he went on 2 January to see Edward Howard's The Usurper, which, said he, was not a good play but was better than the one he had seen the day before, Shakespeare's Henry VIII. During this same month, Pepys was going through old papers and found the pages of a play that he had once started to write, Love a Cheat (30 January 1667). He had started it ten years before at Cambridge. Reading it now, he liked it very much but doubted that he could do as well now.

When he saw Sir William Davenant's The Unfortunate Lovers at the Duke's Theater on 7 March, he thought that he was perhaps becoming more critical of plays than formerly or that the nearly empty theater had dampened his enthusiasm. He struggled with his conscience, too, for the next day he found it necessary to justify going to the theater to see Ludovic Carlell's translation of Corneille's Heraclius, or the Emperor of the East. Pepys argued with his conscience that there would be no plays at court during the Lenten season; continuing, he stated that he had made his vows only for the saving of time and money. He vanquished his conscience on this occasion by resolving to pay a forfeit to the poor box and concluded, “I do not find myself in the least apprehensive that I have done any violence to my oaths.” Thus defying his conscience, Pepys enjoyed the play.

So often did he break his vows against theatergoing that Sir Richard Browne criticized him for going so often to see plays. Sir Richard told him that he was surprised to see a man of so much business at the theater. Pepys grumbled to himself that, indeed, he deserved his reputation as a busy man, but he had now come to be censured along with his fellow navy officials as a man of negligence (D, 28 November 1667). This censure did not keep him away from the theater, however; for he saw Shakespeare's The Tempest at the Duke's Theater on 12 December. But he would not look around “for fear of being seen.” He commented, nevertheless, on a scantily clad French lady who did not look decent.

Pepys continued to go to the theater and to enjoy himself, despite all. He had an amusing encounter with the woman who sold oranges at the duke of York's playhouse on 11 May 1668, between acts of The Tempest. She out-talked him, claiming that recently at a night play he had ordered her to deliver oranges to some ladies in a box, but he had not paid for them. To quiet the hoyden, he purchased four shillings' worth of oranges on the spot. Between Sir Richard Browne's soft indictment on 28 November 1667 and this encounter with the orange-seller, Pepys had seen at least thirty-nine performances in the theater and had suffered but an occasional prick of conscience.

Hoping to find him at the King's Theater, Elizabeth and the maid, Deborah Willet, went there on 19 June 1668. They did not find him at the theater, nor did Elizabeth approve of John Dryden's play An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer. Pepys took her alone to see the play next day, but he too criticized it for “being very smutty,” and not as good as the same playwright's heroic play, The Indian Emperor, and tragicomedy The Maiden Queen.⁴

Despite his vows, Pepys patronized theaters for the remaining summer days. He went to the King's or to the Duke's Theater as the play, the quest for sport, or other inducement led him. He saw Thomas Shadwell's The Sullen Lovers, or the Impertinents⁵ at the Duke's Theater on 24 June; Dryden's heroic tragedy The Indian Queen at the King's Theater on the twenty-seventh. And he noted that in James Shirley's Hyde Park at the King's Theater on 11 July, horses were brought upon the stage.

There is evidence that one reason for Pepys's fervid theatergoing at this time was that Deborah Willet, Elizabeth's maid, usually went with them, and he was currently fondling her. In any event, he saw plays on 17, 29, and 31 July; 1 and 5 August; and at the Duke's Theater on 12 August he saw Shakespeare's Macbeth, “to our great content,” he reported. Having seen other plays betweentimes, he reported that on 31 August he, Elizabeth, Deb, and others saw Shakespeare's Hamlet and were “mightily pleased with it.” On 4 September he saw an old favorite, Ben Johnson's Bartholomew Fair, “with puppets”; and he observed the currently shifting political winds with the statement that he objected to anti-Puritan strictures in the play: “the business of abusing the Puritans begin to grow stale, and of no use, they being the people that at last will be found the wisest.” The rise of the Puritans was indeed a political reality in the seventeenth century.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE CAVALIER PLAYWRIGHTS

Pepys did not entirely approve of Shakespeare as a playwright; they belonged to the same century, and idolatrous regard of “the Bard” was far in the future. He generally approved of Hamlet, and when he saw it performed at the Opera, the duke of York's theater in Lincoln's Inn Fields, he thought it was “done with Scenes very well”; “but above all,” he added, “Betterton did the prince's part beyond imagination” (D, 24 August 1661). Pepys inadvertently started to list the famous actors who had starred in the role of Hamlet. Seeing Hamlet again at the King's Theater on 27 November, he conceded that the play was very well done. During the years of the Diary he also saw the famous tragedy at other times: on 5 December 1661, 28 May 1663, and 31 August 1668. The famous actor Thomas Betterton made the play succeed, for Pepys, who always praised him, stated on 31 August that he was mightily pleased with the play: “but, above all, with Betterton, the best part, I believe, that ever man acted.” Pepys no doubt was one of the first to commit to memory Hamlet's soliloquy. One Sunday he spent all afternoon indoors with Elizabeth committing “‘To bee or not to bee’ without book” (13 November 1664).

He did not have an exalted opinion of the other Shakespeare plays that he saw at the theaters or read at home. He recorded that he bought Henry IV (Part I) at Paul's Churchyard (D, 31 December 1660); then he went to the New Theater to see it acted, but his expectation being too great, it did not please him as he had thought it would. And he added that he believed that having the book did spoil the play a little; during the play, Pepys was probably following the action on stage by reading from his newly bought copy.

He admitted on 4 June 1661, nevertheless, that the “Harry the 4th,” which he saw at the King's Theater that day, was “a good play.” His opinion of the play had declined sharply by 1667, however, for in the intervening year he had seen scores of plays, and his critical opinion of Shakespeare's play had declined. He confessed that in Henry IV, contrary to his earlier view, he was pleased about nothing more than Falstaff's speech about “What is honour?” (D, 2 November 1667). He saw parts of Henry IV again on 7 January and on 8 September 1668; on the former date he did not like what he saw, and on the latter he expressed no opinion, probably because he had stepped into the King's Theater only at the end of the performance, hoping to go out with the actress Mrs. Knepp. (It was too late, however, and she had to study her part in Ben Jonson's Epicene for next day's performance.)

His critical estimate of Shakespeare's Henry VIII, although not high, followed the opposite course of his views on Henry IV; for his estimate seemed to improve, if not by much. On 10 December 1663 Wooten the shoemaker told Pepys that Henry VIII “with all his wives, a rare play,” would be acted that week; and on 22 December Pepys observed that the king, the duke of York, and the court were going to the Duke's Theater to see the performance, “which is said to be an admirable play.” Because of his antitheater vows, this would be his first play in six months. He went on 1 January 1664 to see “the much cried up play of Henry the Eighth” with the resolution to like the play. But it turned out to be “so simple a thing made up of a great many patches, that, besides the shows and processions in it, there [was] nothing in the world good or well done” in the performance. He commented casually on Henry VIII on 27 January that public opinion was that John Dryden's new play The Indian Queen was better than Henry VIII. By 30 December 1668, however, Pepys's evaluation of Shakespeare's play had improved. Seeing it at the Duke's Theater, he was more highly pleased with its history and pageantry than he had expected.

Shakespeare's native scenes in The Merry Wives of Windsor should have pleased him, but it was the acting that he seemed to disapprove. When he saw the play on 5 December 1660, he stated that the parts of the country gentleman and of the French doctor were very well done, “but the rest but very poorly and Sir J. Falstaffe as bad as any.” His opinion of the play did not improve when he saw it again on 25 September 1661, when he found it “ill done”; nor again on 15 August 1667, when he stated that no part of the play pleased him.

While walking through Lincoln's Inn Fields on 11 September 1661, Pepys learned that Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was being presented at the Opera and that the king was there. Against his will, he went into the theater and found no pleasure at all in the play. When he saw it again on 6 January 1663, he called it silly and pointed out that there was no relationship between its title and the action. And seeing it again at the Duke's Theater in 1669, he still judged it one of the weakest plays he had ever seen (D, 20 January 1669).

Shakespeare's The Tempest fared somewhat better in his judgment because of an item in the play that caught his fancy: the Echo Song, in which Ferdinand sings to himself and Ariel echoes him. When he saw the play on 7 November 1667, Pepys commented on “this curious piece of music in an echo of half sentences, the echo repeating the former half.”

During a performance of The Tempest on 11 May 1668, Pepys tried to write down the words of the song, but his copy was blurred. After the performance, Henry Harris, the actor, dictated the words to him. From a somewhat tentative judgment that The Tempest had “no great wit, but yet good, above ordinary plays” on 7 November 1667, Pepys proceeded on 13 November to a more favorable evaluation, that the play was very pleasant and so full of good variety that he could not be more pleased with a comedy. He felt nevertheless that the seamen's part was a little too tedious. Variety—the Echo Song, the seamen's dance, the actors in their several costumes, the droll situations—all helped make The Tempest one of the better plays of Shakespeare, in Pepys's judgment; and he saw it on nine occasions between 7 November 1667 and 21 January 1669.

Maintaining no steady admiration for Shakespeare as a playwright, Pepys went to the theater to see many of his plays nevertheless: Hamlet, Henry IV (Part I), Henry VIII, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, the altered versions of Measure for Measure and The Taming of the Shrew. He recorded his opinion of these plays, and he saw most of them more than once. The one he liked least was A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he saw at the King's Theater on 29 September 1662; he concluded that it was “the most insipid ridiculous play” that he had ever seen. His early opinion of Romeo and Juliet was hardly more favorable. When he saw the play at the Opera on 1 March 1662, he decided that it was the worst play that he had ever heard in his life and the worst acted. He resolved never again to see a play on opening night.

As the years passed, Pepy's critical judgment became more discriminating, and he gave Shakespeare higher—if often grudging—praise. Audience, acting, contrivance, theme, and the interplay of fancy molded Pepys's opinion of a play. All led him to value Shakespeare's Macbeth, which he went to see at the Duke's Theater on 7 January 1667, as “a most excellent play in all respects.”

When Pepys saw Othello at the Cockpit on 11 October 1660, he admitted that it was “well done.” Burt played Othello, and “a pretty lady who sat by me called out to see Desdimona smothered.” Comparing Othello to Sir Samuel Tuke's The Adventures of Five Hours, Pepys writes that Othello “seems a mean thing.” On 11 February 1669 his estimate of the play was tentative at best, for the performance was ill-acted in most parts.

Ben Jonson fared better than Shakespeare in Pepys's judgment. He thought Jonson's Epicene, or the Silent Woman, which he saw at the King's Theater on 7 January 1661, “an excellent play.” On 1 June 1664, one of the many later occasions that he saw it at the King's Theater, Pepys complained that it was not as well acted nor as good a play as he had formerly thought it; but in fact, it was one of his favorites. Thinking no doubt of Jonson's theory of “humours,” Pepys thought that his own “humour” had caused his disaffection.

Jonson's The Alchemist, in Pepys's judgment, was “a most incomparable play”; he saw it at the King's Theater on 22 June 1661. He evaluated Jonson's Bartholomew Fair in similar language. Observing that the play was being acted for the first time since the theaters had been reopened, Pepys stated on 8 June 1661 that the play was “most admirable.” He objected nevertheless that it was “too much prophane and abusive.” When he saw it again at the King's Theater on 7 September 1661, he objected to the introduction of puppets and to the harsh anti-Puritan strictures in the play. He observed, further, that no one had dared to present the play during the forty-year rise of the Puritans, and he wondered that even now the king countenanced its performance. Bartholomew Fair was “the best comedy in the world,” Pepys thought when he saw it at the King's Theater on 2 August 1664; despite an occasional objection, he always enjoyed it thereafter. High in his estimate also stood Jonson's Volpone, or the Fox; seeing it at the King's Theater on 14 January 1665, he thought that it was “a most excellent play … and well-acted.”

When he read Jonson's tragedy Catiline on Sunday, 18 December 1664, he called it “a very excellent piece”; he was glad to hear three years later, on 7 December 1667, that the play would soon be acted. Some difficulties intervened in assembling a sufficiently impressive company of actors, adequate scenery, and the magnificent costumes that the play required. When the performance finally opened at the King's Theater on 19 December 1668, he gave approval to certain scenes but concluded that the play “is only to be read.”

“Propriety of speech” was one of Pepys's dramatic criteria, and he was satisfied with Jonson's fulfillment of it in Every Man in His Humour, which Pepys read on 9 February 1667. Jonson's comedy of “humours” was more in style on the Restoration stage than was Shakespeare's comedy of fanciful invention. The comedy of manners that came into vogue in the Restoration theater was an outcome of Jonsonian “humour,” and at the theater Pepys felt more comfortable in Jonson's presence than in Shakespeare's.

The plays most readily available for the reopening of the theaters in 1660 were, obviously, those written for the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage. Plays written or reworked by such theater entrepreneurs as Sir William Davenant and Thomas Killigrew, or by the aging cavaliers, including Sir Samuel Tuke and Sir William Killigrew were also available, as were adaptations from the playwrights Corneille, Molière, and others of the thriving Théâtre Française; plays written while the theaters were presumably closed, such as Abraham Cowley's Cutter of Coleman Street, which was written in 1658 against the day when the theaters would legally reopen, surely; and whatever drolls, recitatives, and interludes were showing in the newly opened theaters. Pepys went to see them all and established many plays as his favorites. Beaumont and Fletcher's plays were among those he saw most frequently—at least twenty, and most of them many times over.

On almost every occasion when he saw a play, Pepys gave a thoughtful appraisal of it. As his critical judgment developed, he increasingly wrote in the Diary statements more than a mere statement of approval or disapproval. A few instances from Beaumont and Fletcher's plays suffice to demonstrate his development as a critic. He liked The Mad Lover “pretty well” on 9 February 1661; he thought A King and No King “well acted” on 14 March and “very well done” on 26 September. He found that Philaster fell far short of his expectations on 18 November, and “little good” in The Humorous Lieutenant on 8 May 1663. His critical judgment sharpening, he saw the then-famous The Wildgoose Chase for the first time on 11 January 1668. With such an intriguing title and with such fame, the play, he thought, should have been better contrived and more pertinently developed. He condemned it: “for in this play I met with nothing extraordinary at all, but very dull inventions and designs.”

PEPYS AS CRITIC

Quite reasonably, Pepys thought that the most important requirement for a successful play was good acting, and he commented frequently on actors and their performances. “A good play and well-performed” was his entry in the Diary on 18 February 1662, after he had seen Sir William Davenant's The Law Against Lovers. Moreover, good acting could improve even a mediocre play, he stated, for Davenant's The Rivals was “no excellent play but [had] good acting in it.” On 1 May 1667 he saw James Shirley's The Changes, or Love in a Maze at the King's Theater and called it “a sorry play” but commended John Lacy's acting as “most admirable, indeed.” Conversely, Pepys condemned many plays for poor acting and many actors for their behavior.

When he went to the Duke's Theater with Elizabeth to see Corneille's Heraclius on 5 September 1667, he was disgusted by the actors’ beastly laughing, clowning, and forgetting their parts; he thought that their behavior had been induced by the scanty but noisy audience. Pepys, who respected the theater as an institution, was ashamed of the way it was being debased.

He admired a well-written play and praised the “extraordinary good contrivance” of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Humorous Lieutenant, which he saw at the Theater Royal on 8 May 1663. One of his highly favored plays was Philip Massinger's tragedy The Bondman; when Pepys stated on 28 July 1664 that “there is nothing more taking in the world with me than that play,” he meant that in his judgment it was well written. He had bought a copy of the play at Paul's Churchyard on 25 May 1661; stated on 21 November that the more often he read it the better he liked it; called it on 1 March “an excellent play and well done”; praised it highly again on 19 March; caught the last act at the Opera on 25 November; and again on 2 April 1662. He praised the play by stating that at the Opera he saw it most excellently acted and that he had never liked it better.

Although Pepys was an amateur theater critic and never aspired to be a professional, he followed a procedure that any critic in any age should adopt. As in the case of The Bondman, he bought the play, read it many times, saw it at the theater on numerous occasions, and drew his conclusions concerning the play on the basis of this intimate knowledge.

FAVORITE ACTORS AND ACTRESSES

The actors performing in a play often induced Pepys to a favorable critical conclusion. He had his special favorites, and none exceeded Thomas Betterton. He stated on 1 March 1661, “but above all that I ever saw Betterton do, the The Bondman the best”; he praised his acting in the same play on 19 March and on 4 November, calling him “the best actor in the world.” Betterton played the Prince in Hamlet “beyond imagination” at the Opera on 24 August 1661; playing the same part on 28 May 1663, at the Duke's Theater, the actor gave Pepys “fresh reason never to think enough of Betterton.” On 16 October 1667, when Pepys went to the Duke's Theater to see Betterton in Macbeth, he was “vexed to see Young (who is but a bad actor at best) act Macbeth in the room of Betterton, who poor man! is sick.” He continued, “but, Lord what a prejudice it wrought in me against the whole play, and everybody else agreed in disliking this fellow.” Betterton, who regained his health, continued to delight his audience. His acting in many plays thrilled Pepys, who stated his belief that Betterton, playing the lead in Hamlet at the Duke's Theater on 31 August 1668, played “the best part that ever man acted.”

Henry Harris came near to Thomas Betterton in reputation as an actor. He came to be a close dining friend and musical companion of Pepys, for, like Pepys, he had a good singing voice. On 20 July 1664 Pepys saw Harris at the Duke's Theater in the earl of Bristol's Worse and Worse and conceded that he was beginning to admire him more than ever as an actor. Teamed with Betterton and with Mrs. Betterton playing Ianthe, Harris played the part of King Henry in Lord Orrery's Henry V at the Duke's Theater on 13 August 1664, and his acting, the acting of his distinguished partners, and the entire performance earned Pepys's high critical praise: “a most noble play … wherein Betterton, Harris, and Ianthes parts are most incomparably wrote and done, and the whole play the most full of height; and raptures of wit and sense, that ever I heard.” Acting in Davenant's The Rivals at the Duke's Theater on 2 December 1664, Betterton, his wife, and Harris won Pepys's commendation again, and Harris's performances and friendship continued to delight him.

Although no actors besides Betterton and Harris won such a high place in Pepys's esteem, others did please him on occasion. Young Edward Kynaston, playing the part of the duke's sister in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Loyal Subject at the Cockpit on 18 August 1660, delighted Pepys; Kynaston pleased him in other plays as well. Michael Mohun, who arrived from France with a great reputation and whose acting in James Shirley's The Traitor on 22 November 1660 at the new theater in Lincoln's Inn Fields, also won Pepys's high rating. And Charles Hart played “most excellently” in James Howard's The Mad Couple at the King's Theater on 28 December 1667, in what Pepys thought “but an ordinary play.”

John Lacy was Pepys's favorite comedian. Pepys concluded after seeing James Shirley's The Changes, or Love in a Maze at the Royal Theater on 10 June 1663, “The play is pretty good, but the life of the play is Lacy's part, the clown, which, is most admirable.” Lacy played the comic part of the Irish footman in Sir Robert Howard's anti-Puritan play The Committee “beyond imagination” at the same theater two days later; and the comedian delighted Pepys when he played the same part on other occasions and acted in comic parts in many other plays.

The introduction of actresses to the Restoration stage delighted Pepys. Many won his critical approval: Mrs. Betterton, Mrs. Coleman, the musician's wife; Anne and Rebecca Marshall, sisters; Mary Davis, who took Charles's fancy; and Mrs. Knepp, who took Pepys's and became his intimate friend. These and others won his praise on occasion, and in his critical judgment, women playing female parts were more convincing.

The best known and probably the best Restoration actress was Eleanor Gwyn, whom rumor and some evidence assign a prominent place among Charles's many mistresses. Pepys left abundant contributions in the Diary to Nell Gwyn's reputation both on- and offstage. No doubt about it, she was a convincing performer, especially in comic parts. Pepys stated after seeing her on 2 March 1667 at the King's Theater in the part of Florimell in Dryden's play The Maiden Queen, “I never can hope ever to see the like done again, by man or woman … so great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before as Nell do this.” With an occasional exception, she continued to draw superlatives from Pepys for many roles.

THE PLAY OFF-STAGE

Almost every time that Pepys went to the theater, something interesting happened to him offstage. The average theatergoer bought his ticket, took his place in the theater, and looked at the performance; Pepys did these things, but he also gazed at his aristocratic betters, especially king, the court, and the court ladies. He flirted with the ladies about him and paid other attentions to them; he cocked his ear to catch current gossip; and he often witnessed incidents that happen once in a lifetime—if then—in an average man's presence. At the Cockpit on 20 April 1661 to see Beaumont and Fletcher's tragicomedy The Humorous Lieutenant, Pepys records a typical reaction: “But my pleasure was great to see the manner of it, but above all Mrs. Palmet, with whom the King do discover a great deal of familiarity.” Pepys also noticed that the duke of York's new duchess, Lord Chancellor Clarendon's daughter, was as plain in looks as her mother.

Mrs. Palmer—later Lady Castlemaine—fascinated Pepys both inside the theater and out. It did him good, he admits on 21 May 1662, to see Lady Castlemaine's fine smocks and linen petticoats, “laced with lace at the bottom,” hanging in the privy garden and to follow the gossip and scandals that attended her name; but it was in the theater that she sat still for his scrutiny. Lady Castlemaine sat in the box next to the king's on 1 February 1664 at the King's Theater when Dryden's The Indian Queen was being presented, “and leaning over other ladies awhile to whisper with the King, she ris out of that box and went into the King's, and sat herself on the King's right hand.”

On many occasions at the theater, Lady Castlemaine and the action off-stage provided better entertainment than the play itself, as on 3 April 1665, when Pepys reported, “All the pleasure of the play was, the King and my Lady Castlemaine were there.” And although Pepys complained at the Duke's Theater on 4 February 1667, he was really delighted with a young lady whom he described as “the likest my Lady Castlemayne that ever I saw anybody like another.” He continued, “but she is a whore, I believe, for she is acquainted with every fine fellow, and called them by their name, Jacke, and Tom and before the end of the play fished [frisked] to another place.”

At the same performance (of Carlell's translation of Corneille's Heraclius), other offstage situations pleased him: the fine court ladies in their new hairstyles “done up with puffs,” and the impecunious Lord Rochester, on whom Mrs. Mallet conferred favor by marrying him after a long ado. “But it was pleasant,” observed Pepys “to see how everybody rose up when my Lord John Butler, the Duke of Ormond's son, come into the pit towards the end of the play, who was a servant to Mrs. Mallet, and now smiled upon her, and she on him.”

At the King's Theater on 18 February 1667, his eavesdropping caused Pepys to miss most of the action of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy. Sir Charles Sedley, playwright and notorious man-about-town, was sitting next to a talkative masked lady and trying to guess who she was. She baited and encouraged him but would not unmask. The flirtation titillated Pepys, for Sir Charles was “mighty witty, and she also sport with him very inoffensively.”

Pepys often participated in offstage action. At the King's Theater on 22 May Mrs. Knepp played a minor part in Sir John Suckling's The Goblins, and Pepys reported, “but here Knipp spied me out of the tiring-room, and come to the pit door, and I out to her, and kissed her, she only coming to see me … so we parted and I into the pit again till it was done.” When Pepys, his wife, and Deborah Willet went to see Thomas Serfe's new play The Coffee House at the Duke's Theater on 5 October 1667, the house was so full that they could not get in.

They went instead to the King's Theater, where Pepys had a good time offstage: Mrs. Knepp took the party up into the attiring room “and to the women's shift, where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready.” Pepys found the famous Nell Gwyn prettier than he had thought. He inspected the quarters above the stage, stepped down into the scene room, accepted fruit from Mrs. Knepp, and held the prompter's copy while she read her part from Richard Rhodes's Flora's Vagaries, which was currently playing. Closeup, the actresses amused him: “But Lord! to see how they were both painted would make a man mad—and did make me loath them; and what base company of men comes among them—and how lewdly they talk—and how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a show they make on the stage by candle-light.” He marveled at Nell's cursing “for having so few people in the pit.”

His reports in the Diary of his part in plays offstage are quite as sprightly as those of the action behind the footlights, for Pepys was a participant in this action. When he went to the King's Theater on 19 October to see Lord Orrery's new tragicomedy The Black Prince, the house was full and the only seat he could get was in a four-shilling box; he observed that this was the only time that he had ever sat in a box in his life. Aristocrats usually occupied the boxes, and Lord and Lady Berkeley stepped into the box behind Pepys. There is simply no way to improve on the report of his reaction: “but I did not turn my face to them to be known, so that I was excused from giving them my seat.”

He noted that the view of the stage from a box was much better than from the pit and that as a playwright, Lord Orrery had imitated himself, there being much the same scenes and contrivances in this play as in his Henry V and Mustapha. The audience became bored and restless during the reading of a long letter—part of the action—and hooted and hissed; Pepys believed that, had the king not been present, the audience would have hissed the play off the stage. He descanted at length on the fifteen-minute-long letter, noted Lord Berkeley's standing comments on the playwright's stupidity, and laughed all the way home and until bedtime, especially when Elizabeth expressed anger that he and the audience had laughed at a play in the king's presence.

The action offstage was really dramatic on 2 November: “a gentleman of good habit, sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of the play, did drop down as dead, being choked; but with much ado Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him to life again.” The action offstage involved Pepys directly at the King's Theater on 28 January 1661; “and here I sitting behind in a dark place, a lady spat backward upon me by a mistake, not seeing me. But after seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it at all.”

THEATER HISTORIAN

Since Pepys went to the theater for many reasons, he reported countless fascinating facts. He commented frequently on the general improvement in dress in the Restoration audience. On 8 May 1663, for example, he was a little ashamed that Elizabeth and her attendant had been “in such a pickle” at the theater while all the ladies were finer and better dressed in the pit than they used to be. He also commented often on the continuing bad manners in the theater—the buzzing conversation, the fidgeting, the soliciting by prostitutes, the hawking of fruit by the orange girls, and the reintroduction of masks, which probably lent mystery and suggestiveness to the ladies who wore them. On 12 June 1663, Lady Mary Cromwell, daughter of the protector, came to the theater well dressed; when the house began to fill, she put on her mask. Pepys observed that masking had of late “become a great fashion among the ladies, which hides their whole face.”

Seeing Beaumont and Fletcher's Beggar's Bush on 3 January 1661, Pepys reported that he had seen women come upon the stage for the first time. He would see them in practically all female parts thereafter, but prior to the reopening of the theaters in 1660, all female parts had been played by males, usually boys before their piping voices changed; boys continued to play some female parts on the Restoration stage. Pepys returned a few days later but withheld comment on the actresses, probably because the comedy—The Widow by Jonson, Fletcher, and Middleton—was “an indifferent play, but wronged by the women being to seek in their parts” (D, 8 January 1661). This comment on the ladies is cryptic, but on February 12 Pepys gave full approval, saying that the title role in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Scornful Lady at the King's Theater, “now done by a woman,” made the play appear much better than before. A play that had displeased him previously, Henry Glapthorne's Argalus and Parthenia, won his approval at the King's Theater on 28 October 1661, “where a woman acted Parthenia, and came afterwards on the stage in men's clothes, and had the best legs that ever I saw, and I was very well pleased with it.” Actresses continued to win Pepys's critical approval.

Many Diary entries attest to Pepys's interest in theater construction and contain keen and generally sound comments on theater architecture. Attending the newly opened Royal Theater in Drury Lane, he observed its architectural faults, such as the narrowness of the passages in and out of the pit and the distance from the stage to the boxes, which would make it difficult for box-seat holders to hear the actors. Above all, he was displeased because the orchestra was located too far below the stage: “most of it sounding under the very stage, and the basses could not be heard at all nor the trebles very well” (D, 8 May 1663). These comments indicate that Pepys knew not only plays and their contents but also whatever contributed to an effective theatrical performance.

Scenery in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theater was sparse; at best, it was symbolic or representational. Scenery was also sparse on the early Restoration stage. Pepys recorded, however, substantial improvements in scenery. Noting that it was the fourth day since the opening of Sir William Davenant's new theater, the Opera, he observed that upon the arrival of Charles and the queen of Bohemia, the scene at the opening of the play was “very fine and magnificent” (D, 2 July 1661). And on 15 August, at the same theater, he saw Davenant's comedy The Wits, “never acted yet with scenes.” Again, on 24 August at the same theater, he remarked that Hamlet was performed “with scenes very well.”

Scenery, which was rapidly becoming integral to Restoration staging, continued to draw Pepys's notice: he commented on “the shows and processions” in Shakespeare's Henry VIII at the Duke's Theater on 1 January 1664, and referred again on 30 December 1668 to the “shows” in the play—no doubt meaning scenery. It was only for “the scenes' sake which is very fine indeed and worth seeing” that he went to see John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess at the Royal Theater (D, 13 June 1663); and the “good scene of a town on fire” delighted him in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Island Princess, staged at the King's Theater (D, 7 January 1689). Moreover, he indirectly observed the introduction of scenery and other novelties on the occasion of a conversation with the king's jester and playwright Thomas Killigrew, who mentioned plans for a new theater, “where,” Pepys recorded, “we shall have the best Scenes and Machines … as is in Christendome” (D, 2 August 1664).

Costumes were also elaborated on the Restoration stage, and Pepys often recorded his impressions of them in the Diary. He did not think very highly of Ben Jonson's tragedy Catiline as a play to be acted; but when he saw it at the King's Theater on 19 December 1668, he observed the fine costumes and the splendid scene of the senate. As for Corneille's Heraclius, or the Emperor of the East, he thought the scene with “the garments like Romans very well,” and quite worthwhile, he specified that what was the finest of all was the tableau of “the Emperor and his people about him, standing in their fixed and different postures in their Roman habits, above all that ever yet I saw at any of the Theatres” (D, 8 March 1664).

Pepys nevertheless noticed that backstage the costumes lost much of the shine and glory that theater lights gave them. This fact and others concerning the bustling Restoration stage drew his amazed response on 19 March 1666: “to the King's playhouse, all in dirt, they being altering of the Stage to make it wider. … But my business here was to see the inside of the Stage and all the tiring-rooms and Machines; and, endeed, it was a sight worthy seeing. But to see their clothes and the various sorts, and what a mixture of things there was, here a wooden leg, there a ruff, here a hobby horse, there a Crowne, would make a man split himself to see with laughing.” Indeed, he was shocked at how poor the costumes seemed when bereft of footlights. Candlelight was currently being used, Pepys recorded. He observed, too, how fine the machines were and how very pretty the paintings backstage. Another novelty in the Restoration theater that Pepys noticed was the curtain; he observed when he saw Heraclius that at the beginning of the play, the curtain was drawn up (D, 8 March 1664).

After fighting a losing battle with his conscience and his vows, Pepys finally devoted himself to the Restoration theater. He left a vivid account of the plays presented, of actors and actresses, of audiences, of the appurtenances, and of his own part in the play of life offstage in the bustling theater of his day.

Notes

1. Killigrew, a longtime favorite and attendant of Charles II, was an outstanding playwright.

2. Captain Ferrers, frequently mentioned in the Diary, was the earl of Sandwich's master of horse.

3. Lady Castlemaine—the wife of Roger Palmer, created earl of Castlemaine in 1661—is generally recognized as having been Charles's favorite mistress, exercising considerable political influence at court. Among the titles that the king conferred upon her were Baroness Nonsuch, countess of Southampton, and duchess of Cleveland. She is said to have borne him six children.

4. Dryden's use of the heroic couplet in these plays set off a sharp controversy with his playwriting brother-in-law, Sir Robert Howard. Howard's positive views on all matters occasioned Shadwell's lampooning him as Sir Positive-at-all in the play The Sullen Lovers, or the Impertinents.

5. Thomas Shadwell suffers from the reputation of being “prince of dullness,” a title fastened on him by Dryden in the poem “Macflecknoe” as a result of their bitter controversy over the succession to Charles's throne. Actually, Shadwell's plays are quite as well written as the average Restoration play.