playhouse; where a new play of Etherige's, called "She Would if she
Could;" and though I was there by two o'clock, there was 1000 people put
back that could not have room in the pit: and I at last, because my wife
was there, made shift to get into the 18d. box, and there saw; but, Lord!
how full was the house, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the
world good in it, and few people pleased in it. The King was there; but I
sat mightily behind, and could see but little, and hear not all. The play
being done, I into the pit to look (for) my wife, and it being dark and
raining, I to look my wife out, but could not find her; and so staid going
between the two doors and through the pit an hour and half, I think, after
the play was done; the people staying there till the rain was over, and to
talk with one another. And, among the rest, here was the Duke of
Buckingham to-day openly sat in the pit; and there I found him with my
Lord Buckhurst, and Sidly, and Etherige, the poet; the last of whom I did
hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were out of humour,
and had not their parts perfect, and that Harris did do nothing, nor could
so much as sing a ketch in it; and so was mightily concerned while all the
rest did, through the whole pit, blame the play as a silly, dull thing,
though there was something very roguish and witty; but the design of the
play, and end, mighty insipid. At last I did find my wife staying for me
in the entry; and with her was Betty Turner, Mercer, and Deb. So I got a
coach, and a humour took us, and I carried them to Hercules Pillars, and
there did give them a kind of a supper of about 7s., and very merry, and
home round the town, not through the ruines; and it was pretty how the
coachman by mistake drives us into the ruines from London-wall into
Coleman Street: and would persuade me that I lived there. And the truth
is, I did think that he and the linkman had contrived some roguery; but it
proved only a mistake of the coachman; but it was a cunning place to have
done us a mischief in, as any I know, to drive us out of the road into the
ruines, and there stop, while nobody could be called to help us. But we