Tuesday 19 January 1668/69
Up, and at the office all the morning. At noon eat a mouthful, and so with my wife to Madam Turner’s, and find her gone, but The. staid for us; and so to the King’s house, to see “Horace;” this the third day of its acting — a silly tragedy; but Lacy hath made a farce of several dances — between each act, one: but his words are but silly, and invention not extraordinary, as to the dances; only some Dutchmen come out of the mouth and tail of a Hamburgh sow. Thence, not much pleased with the play, set them at home in the Strand; and my wife and I home, and there to do a little business at the Office, and so home to supper and to bed.
9 Annotations
First Reading
Jesse • Link
"some Dutchmen come out of the mouth and tail of a Hamburgh sow"
A "silly tragedy" indeed. Some sort of Trojan hog in the battle between the Horatii and the Curiatii? I'm guessing this is an unrelated inter-act amusement while the sets are being changed and the ladies visit the house of powder room.
Robert Gertz • Link
The stayed eh? Hmmn...
Take care, Sam...The's hinted at a certain disdain for Bess (the birdcage incident) and she always seems to be hanging around you when she visits. And if Bess wouldn't kill you, Jane Turner would.
***
Maybe those Dutchmen should bring along the English fleet through that sow...Har dee har har...
Robert Gertz • Link
Heaven...
"And they called it...Puppy lo...ve..."
"Shut up, Bess..."
Giggle...
Second Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
"so to the King’s house, to see “Horace;”"
L&M: By Pierre Corneille (1640); the first four acts translated by Mrs Katherine Philips, the last by Sir John Denham. This version was was first acted by amateurs at Court in 1668, after being published in Katherine Philipss Poems (1667).
Terry Foreman • Link
"Lacy hath made a farce of several dances — between each act, one"
L&M: Nell Gwynn assisted John Lacy in this entertainment.
Terry Foreman • Link
"a Hamburgh sow"
What might this be?
Mary K • Link
Two Dutchmen.
Could this possibly be a reference to the gentlemen's accents?
I recall that a 20th Century Dutch politician said, "Of all the noises in the animal kingdom, Dutch comes closest to human speech."
San Diego Sarah • Link
"a silly tragedy; but Lacy hath made a farce of several dances — between each act, one: but his words are but silly, and invention not extraordinary, as to the dances; only some Dutchmen come out of the mouth and tail of a Hamburgh sow."
I think Jesse called it.
First, "silly" was a more critical word than today. Think a "stupid" play, or a complete waste of time.
Second, "but Lacy hath made a farce of several dances" the "but" makes me think Lacy improved the entertainment by staging some genuinely funny dances between acts.
Third, a Hamburgh sow must mean a very large pig. Lacy had two comic dancers dressed as Dutchmen, one came out of the mouth and the other out of the butt, and do "silly" dances on stage so the audience could laugh at Dutchmen. Of course the Dutch were stupid ... they were winning the war at sea and in international trade (for now). National pride required them to be portrayed as idiots. (Remember "Hogan's Heroes"?)
San Diego Sarah • Link
Thank you, Phil ... the new layout of the preview-before-final-posting page is a vast improvement.
No excuse to post on the wrong page now!