ige'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 come safe home, and there, the girls being gone home, I to
the office, where a while busy, my head not being wholly free of my
trouble about my prize business, I home to bed. This evening coming home
I did put my hand under the coats of Mercer and did touch her thigh, but
then she did put by my hand and no hurt done