oints and turns of wit in both, and in this very same play often
repeated, but in excellent language, and were so excellent that the
whole house was mightily pleased with it all along till towards the end
he comes to discover the chief of the plot of the play by the reading
of along letter, which was so long and some things (the people being set
already to think too long) so unnecessary that they frequently begun to
laugh, and to hiss twenty times, that, had it not been for the King's
being there, they had certainly hissed it off the stage. But I must
confess that, as my Lord Barkeley says behind me, the having of that
long letter was a thing so absurd, that he could not imagine how a man
of his parts could possibly fall into it; or, if he did, if he had but
let any friend read it, the friend would have told him of it; and, I
must confess, it is one of the most remarkable instances that ever I did
or expect to meet with in my life of a wise man's not being wise at
all times, and in all things, for nothing could be more ridiculous than
this, though the letter of itself at another time would be thought an
excellent letter, and indeed an excellent Romance, but at the end of the
play, when every body was weary of sitting, and were already possessed
with the effect of the whole letter; to trouble them with a letter a
quarter of an hour long, was a most absurd thing. After the play done,
and nothing pleasing them from the time of the letter to the end of the
play, people being put into a bad humour of disliking (which is another
thing worth the noting), I home by coach, and could not forbear laughing
almost all the way home, and all the evening to my going to bed, at the
ridiculousness of the letter, and the more because my wife was angry
with me, and the world, for laughing, because the King was there,
though she cannot defend the length of the letter. So after having done
business at the office, I home to supper and to bed.

20th (Lord's day). Up, and put on my new tunique of velvett; which is
very plain, but good. This morning is brought to me an order for the
presenting the Committee of Parliament to-morrow with a list of the
commanders and ships' names of all the fleetes set out since the war,
and particularly of those ships which were divided from the fleete with
Prince Rupert;

[This question of the division of the fleet in May, 1666, was one
over which endless controversy as to responsibility was raised.