Wednesday 5 December 1660

This morning the Proposal which I wrote the last night I showed to the officers this morning, and was well liked of, and I wrote it fair for Sir. G. Carteret to show to the King, and so it is to go to the Parliament.

I dined at home, and after dinner I went to the new Theatre and there I saw “The Merry Wives of Windsor” acted, the humours of the country gentleman and the French doctor very well done, but the rest but very poorly, and Sir J. Falstaffe as bad as any.

From thence to Mr. Will. Montagu’s chamber to have sealed some writings tonight between Sir R. Parkhurst and myself about my Lord’s 2000l., but he not coming, I went to my father’s and there found my mother still ill of the stone, and had just newly voided one, which she had let drop into the chimney, and looked and found it to shew it me.1 From thence home and to bed.

22 Annotations

First Reading

vincent  •  Link

"..I went to the new Theatre and there I saw 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' acted, the humours of the country gentleman and the French doctor very well done, but the rest but very poorly, and Sir J. Falstaffe t as bad as any…”
For those that have had the pleasure , here are two reading sites:
http://www.literaturepage.com/rea…
http://www.shakespeare-literature…
for A synopsis
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakesp…

z…Their main point is that wives can be merry and faithful at the same time—that is, that they can lead boisterous, vivid lives without betraying their duties to their husbands—…” not my review.

vincent  •  Link

I missed the "...have NOT had ..."

vincent  •  Link

Good hard work appears to have paid off. I beleive it always does, when you save the "CO." money. The reward was to see some pointers in Female logic.

steve h  •  Link

Playgoing afternoons

Note that plays were performed in the afternoon after the mid-day dinner, not in the evening, and that Pepys willoften go back to work after. It's sort like us sneaking out to a movie in the middle of the work day, except without guilt.

Mary  •  Link

Matinee performances

These apparently began at 3 p.m. In summer, the whole play would have been performed during hours of daylight, but in mid-winter, with sunset before 4 p.m., it must have been very difficult for spectators at the rear of the theatre to see much of what was happening on stage, even with the beneit of wax, rather than tallow, candles.

Mary House  •  Link

It appears that Pepys attends these plays without his wife. Was it not customary at the time for women to attend the theater? Or is it simply the case that she would have been otherwise occupied in the middle of the day.

J A Gioia  •  Link

had just newly voided one, which she had let drop into the chimney, and looked and found it to shew it me

i think we can file this one under: Mother; too much information.

vincent  •  Link

"..into the chimney...." the fireplace and [grate] I presume.

Charlezzzzz  •  Link

"..into the chimney".- the fireplace and [grate] I presume.

There was a time (I forget the date) when Pepys found no chamber pot in his room. He reported that he pissed in the chimney.

Aqua  •  Link

new info to help "into the chimney"
From Ian Evans http://www.pepysdiary.com/about/a…

The corrected portion of the text for 5 December 1660 is as follows:
…..I went to my father’s. And there found my mother still ill of the stone and hath just voided one, which she hath let drop into the Chimny; and could not find it to show it me. From thence home and to bed.

Second Reading

Phil Gyford  •  Link

I've now added a note to the entry pointing out this discrepancy.

meech  •  Link

A very late response to Mary House regarding SP not taking his wife to the play...

I think it is more that it is either the lifestyle at this point in time or at least Sam's lifestyle not to take his wife with him. As I'm sure you've noticed he takes her very few places. He goes to taverns and drinks with men, (although a few times there's been a wife present), to people's homes, including his family, and dines with them without her, to plays, to promenade Westminster Hall and get the latest gossip, etc., while Elizabeth is presumably at home. As I've said before, he lives as if he were single most of the time, and goes and does as he pleases. I can only hope she also has another life going for her. Or is she at home doing the wash and other household chores all the time?

meech  •  Link

AND...although he does sometimes take her with him, he often leaves her somewhere, like his or her parents, and then goes off on his own. But there may be a perfectly good reason for all this. Just not sure what it could be.

Annie B  •  Link

Yes, I wonder about this as well. Elizabeth seems sometimes to be more similar to Jane than Sam. Doing the wash... cooking... I wonder how much he shares with her at the end of a long day...

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"Elizabeth seems sometimes to be more similar to Jane than Sam. Doing the wash... cooking... I wonder how much he shares with her at the end of a long day..."

This is very complicated. Many things occur in the course of each day that Pepys does not record but, as it were, to use a theatrical image familiar to him, go on in the background, occur offstage, or elsewhere, are unknown to him, are insignificant to the diarist or are assumed, such as his wife's name, which appears nowhere in the diary.

We do not know what Samuel does not know, or knows but does not record about the details of Elizabeth's daily life, So we assume, conjecture, confabulate the whole from the fragments we are given, etc., yet wonder.

Some days he will tell us some of what he tells her. Stay tuned!

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"I went to the new Theatre and there I saw “The Merry Wives of Windsor” acted"

L&M: Shakespeare's comedy was written c. 1600 and published in 1602 (in a garbled form) and in the 1623 Folio. Unlike so many others of his plays, this one was nor altered for presentation on the Restoration stage.

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"This morning the Proposal which I wrote the last night I showed to the officers this morning, and was well liked of, and I wrote it fair for Sir. G. Carteret to show to the King, and so it is to go to the Parliament."

L&M: A statement of the navy debts was recorded in the Commons' Journals for 5 December (viii. 243-4), but this proposal is not mentioned.

Third Reading

MartinVT  •  Link

A nice journal entry that typifies the worlds that Sam is straddling these days. In the morning, as an officer of the Navy, he is writing legislation to be reviewed by the King and voted on by Parliament. At night he is visiting the humble household of his father, a taylor, and helping his mother look for a gallstone she chucked into the smoldering ashes of the fireplace.

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

"... the humble household of his father, a taylor, ..."

I agree the senior Pepys were not wealthy, but sometimes I think we take the humble and poor story a tad too far.
John Pepys lives in a house in Salisbury Court (where some wealthy people also lived) which was big enough for a family of 5.
They sent 2 sons to University, on scholarships yes, but nevertheless that was years of schooling when the boys could have been earning and contributing money to the famly.
Just a few months ago at least one of Sandwich's servants was living with them -- not enough room for everyone at Whitehall apparently.
In a couple of years about three of Sandwich's daughters (presumably with maids) are sent to stay with John for the summer at Brampton -- sorry, a very minor spoiler -- when smallpox breaks out at Hinchingbrooke.
So although we do not hear of mum and dad Pepys going to lunch with M'Lord, they were clearly part of the extended Sandwich network in good standing.

John Sr. belongs to the Merchant Tailors Company, which cost money. Annotators have presumed Pepys doesn't always have his clothes made by his father was because John was a mediocre tailor -- maybe he was so good he was too busy to accommodate his son's quick-turn-around demands?

Were they wealthy? No. But John Sr. hasn't asked Sam for any money either, beyond being paid for the work he performed. He sounds like a proud father to me.

And Mrs. Pepys Sr. sounds like she has done some scrimping and saving to educate her boys -- e.g. used daughter Pall instead of hiring a live-in maid -- and was somewhat disappointed in her life, so she turned to Puritanism for answers. She also had rich relatives, and consequently unmet aspirations.

They could afford the coal to make those smoldering ashes. Many could not.

MartinVT  •  Link

Thanks Sarah, I will not call it a humble household anymore! Still, I enjoy that Sam is drafting papers for the King and Parliament in the morning, and hunting for a kidney stone (or bladder stone; I should not have said gallstone) at night. A nice story arc.

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