Saturday 18 January 1667/68

At the office all the morning busy sitting. At noon home to dinner, where Betty Turner dined with us, and after dinner carried my wife, her and Deb. to the ’Change, where they bought some things, while I bought “The Mayden Queene,” a play newly printed, which I like at the King’s house so well, of Mr. Dryden’s, which he himself, in his preface, seems to brag of, and indeed is a good play. So home again, and I late at the office and did much business, and then home to supper and to bed.


7 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

Brodrick to Ormond
Written from: London
Date: 18 January 1668

Mr Secretary Wren [Secretary of the Admiralty] will submit to his Grace a particular account of the late transactions with Dr Gorges [concerning land-claims of the Duke of York]. ... His Royal Highness' Commissioners have not admitted the writer to their public debate. ... He never imagined that their "insolence would have transported them so far" [as to make a certain appeal, from decisions of the Court of Claims at Dublin to the Privy-Council in England]. Lord Cornbury assures the writer that ... "my Lord Chief Baron, and all H.R.H.'s Council, advised the appeal". ... The design goes to the subversion of the [Parliamentary] settlement of Ireland [in MS.: "of that Kingdom"] ... "upon which many attempts have been made, in Parliament, & many more designed by the Duke of Buckingham's confidants here". ... He cannot, he adds, now enlarge, "because the Duchess of York [ Anne Hyde http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclo… ] having undertaken to manage much of those affairs, expects an attendance of such as are to inform". ... Is not of that number, however, having left, with her father, all [care], save his prayers, for that family.

http://www.rsl.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwm…

JWB  •  Link

"Be this poem, then, sacred to
him(his majesty), without the tedious form of a dedication, and without presuming
to interrupt those hours which he(his majesty) is daily giving to the peace and
settlement of his people." I could not get past this last sentence of the first paragraph of the above mentioned preface. Stronger stomachs can get it all here: http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Work…
Scroll ~ half way down.

Robert Gertz  •  Link

Hmmn...Did Dryden have Sam's help on that dedication?

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"I have only to add, that the play is founded on a story in the "Cyrus," which he calls the Queen of Corinth; in whose character, as it has been affirmed to me, he represents that of the famous Christina, queen of Sweden. This is what I thought convenient to write by way of preface to "The Maiden Queen;" in the reading of which I fear you will not meet with that satisfaction, which you have had in seeing it on the stage; the chief parts of it, both serious and comic, being performed to that height of excellence, that nothing but a command, which I could not handsomely disobey, could have given me the courage to have made it public."
http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Work…

The referenced "Queen of Corinth"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_…

Terry Foreman  •  Link

“I have only to add, that the play is founded on a story in the “Cyrus,” which he calls the Queen of Corinth;...."

See “Gerard Langbaine's 'View Of Plagiaries' The Rhetoric Of Dramatic Appropriation In The Restoration” By Paulina Kewls (The Review of English Studies New Serin, Vol XLV11I No 189 OUP (1997) http://res.oxfordjournals.org/con…

Langbaine expressed concerns from the consumer’s POV that what they were buying (a book or a ticket to a play) was newly written by the author named and not a “plagiary” -- a mere adaptation of an older work -- in his *Momus Trtumphans* (1687) properly titled *A New Catalogue of English Plays* (1688) and *An Account of the English Dramatick Poets* (1691) http://is.gd/Qh7key .

(Langbaine's Catalogue was first published in November 1687 under a false title, Momus Triumphans: or The Plagiaries of the English Stage — which mocked what others considered Langbaine's obsessive concern with plagiarism. In the correct edition that followed, Langbaine complained that "My friends may think me Lunatick." He blamed John Dryden for the trick, and became a determined enemy of the poet/dramatist.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gera…

Second Reading

David G  •  Link

As an aside, and others may know a lot more about this than I, but I believe that Professor Robert Matthews, the co-editor of the L&M edition, was at UCLA and the University of California Press published the modern version of the diary. I recall visiting UCLA on an open house day when I was about ten, so that would have been in the early sixties. A professor cornered me to tell me about the University's plans to publish a definitive version of Dryden's work (not an author I knew much about when I was ten), which I understand in fact was published by the University of California Press in the mid-to-late 1960s. So it's interesting to find Sam talking about "Mr. Dryden," as if they know each other, if but very casually, which means that their paths crossed in London in the 1660s and in Los Angeles in the 1960s.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"At the office all the morning busy sitting."
A look at what could have been on the Commissioners' agenda today:

Jan. 18. 1668
Woolwich.
Wm. Hannam, master attendant, to the Navy Commissioners.
Understands that his Royal Highness has lent the vessels lately employed for weighing the King's ships at Woolwich to weigh Jeremy Keeble's ship, sunk near Barking.
Could continue weighing ships here;
2 spring tides have been lost.
Brookes, who should perform that service, pretends the neglect is for want of money to satisfy those he employs.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 232, No. 164.]

Jan. 18. 1668
John Runting, master of the St. Peter, to the Navy Commissioners.
The ship is ready;
waits orders whether to go to Chatham or Harwich.
Desires that the master attendant at Woolwich may supply 3 or 4 shrouds for the foremast.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 232, No. 165.]

Jan. 18. 1668
Gosport.
Edw. Silvester to the Navy Commissioners.
His contract for the chain was to receive 200l. for every 10 tons as he made it;
has a bill of imprest for the first sum, which remain unpaid;
was put upon other work more needful than the chain, the bills for which are also unpaid, which disables him.
If they will furnish him with 300l., shall go on with the chain according to contract, and finish it time enough to save the new moorings.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 232, No. 166.]

Jan. 18. 1668
Certificate by Jonas Shish and two others
that John Sherwood has been employed many years in the yards, and is fit for a purveyor for felling and converting timber.
[S.P. Dom., Car. II. 232, No. 167.]

@@@
There are informative annotations on how to lift a scuttled ship at
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/…

Despite there being no real money for a new fleet, and all the suppliers being very worried about extending credit, Pepys and Company are doing their best to rescue what they can.
There are lots more examples of their efforts in the January 1667-68 archives:
https://www.british-history.ac.uk…

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