Wednesday 27 November 1661

Annotations

• N Bradford on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 12:00am

  Wonderment! A play by Mr. Shakespeare that Sam likes! Wonder just what version of “Hamlet” he saw; as with “King Lear,” &c., at certain periods it was furnished with a happy ending. Work that out.

• N Pauline on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 02:28am

  Bradford, you can work it out here:
  http://prodigi.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/record.asp

• N dirk on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 02:36am

  Hamlet

  Strangely enough, on the 26th (yesterday) John Evelyn wrote this in his diary:

  “26: I saw Hamlet Pr: of Denmark played: but now the old playe began to disgust this refined age; since his Majestie being so long abroad:”

• N vicente on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 03:21am

  “MaDame, I be upstairs, not be in the basement?’ [just a thought?] “…which though she be a wench for her tongue not to be borne with, yet I was loth to part with her…” [Oh! such pretty ankles, she be a having too.?}[FROM THE MALE OF THE SPECIES]

• N Joe on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 07:21am

  is this the pretty maid they just hires?

• N Mary on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 11:16am

  The pretty maid is Sarah.

  See yesterday’s annotations.

• N allan russell on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 04:26pm

  More interesting than Sam on maids is the fact that he has a sitting for a portrait today, does that still exist

• N Pauline on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 05:53pm

  “a sitting for a portrait today, does that still exist”
  Allan, I haven’t found any reference to the Savill portrait still being around. This from Project Gutenburg:

  “Pepys was partial to having his portrait taken, and he sat to Savill,
  Hales, Lely, and Kneller. Hales’s portrait, painted in 1666, is now in
  the National Portrait Gallery, and an etching from the original forms the
  frontispiece to this volume. The portrait by Lely is in the Pepysian
  Library. Of the three portraits by Kneller, one is in the hall of
  Magdalene College, another at the Royal Society, and the third was lent
  to the First Special Exhibition of National Portraits, 1866, by the late
  Mr. Andrew Pepys Cockerell. Several of the portraits have been engraved,
  but the most interesting of these are those used by Pepys himself as
  book-plates. These were both engraved by Robert White, and taken from
  paintings by Kneller.”
  

• N RexLeo on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 07:06pm

  “…Captain Ferrers and Mr. Moore and I to the Theatre,… and so I home, and found that my wife had been with my aunt Wight and Ferrers to wait on my Lady to-day this afternoon”

  Where was Ferrers? with Sam at the Theatre or with Liz waiting on my Lady?

• N Josh on Sun 28 Nov 2004, 11:50pm

  Pursuant to Pauline’s page above, which links to the 1st Quarto (1603) of “Hamlet,” here is a page from the same site specifically about the Restoration:
  http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/restoration.html
  which reminds us that in 1660 “Sir William Davenant [was] granted a warrant to act several of Shakespeare

• N Robert Gertz on Mon 29 Nov 2004, 10:09am

  Wonder how Beth reacted to find Sam had gone off to see “Hamlet” without her, though perhaps he’d had the care not to tell my Lady where he was off to.

  Perhaps Sam meant Mrs. Ferrers had gone with Aunt Wight and Beth? Though he usually is careful to give women their titles.

• N Glyn on Mon 29 Nov 2004, 04:31pm

  You’re right, RG - didn’t Pepys recently promise Elizabeth that he wouldn’t go to the theatre unless with her?

  Ferrers is definitely a bachelor (he had a date with Madame Le Blanc a few days ago). As he is part of the Montagu’s household, he is as likely to wait on Lady Montagu as often as Pepys himself does.

  The fact that we don’t know the whereabouts of the paintings of Elizabeth and Samuel Pepys doesn’t mean that they still don’t exist, of course.

• N Paul Chapin on Tue 30 Nov 2004, 02:03am

  “The fact that we don

• N Australian Susan on Tue 30 Nov 2004, 11:53pm

  The portrait destroyed by the maid was not one of the ones being referred to in the diary at the moment - it was speculated that these, (by Savill) were destroyed in the Navy Office Fire in the ’70s. But they may not have been.