Aphra Behn Stages the Social Scene in the Restoration Theatre By ...

Moreover, so far as this study is concerned, Pepys’s diary parallels almost exactly the time during which Davenant was concerned with the management of Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre; during which the scenic stage was introduced in the public theatres for a general audience; during which the playwrights who immediately preceded Behn were learning how to cope with a different style of staging; and during which Behn herself must have been absorbing knowledge and nuances from the same theatrical sources with which Pepys was in contact. His diary, then, can be used as at least an indication of the ways in which one person was changing his attitudes and ideas, especially towards the theatre, over that period of time, and to give pointers towards the ways others of his contemporaries may have been affected by events. In addition, Pepys bought plays to read, and his reactions to plays in text and in performance give valuable insights into the ways one man responded to the plays that preceded Behn’s debut on the stage, those plays that must have been forming her ideas of theatre.

Witness Pepys

It is clear from the diary that Pepys did not deny himself a theatre visit at times because of any moral objections to the plays, but rather because he felt he was too inclined to waste his time and money at an enjoyable occasion.²⁴ Evelyn displays a similar attitude when on 11 November 1661 he wrote in his diary that ‘I was so idle as to go and see a play call’d Love and Honour’.²⁵

While Pepys’s reasons were partially financial, there is also an element of the hair shirt in his attitude, of self-denial for its own sake. There is a sense of an uncomfortably zealous psychological set of self-abnegation apparent in some entries. However, if the diary is read chronologically, it is possible to discern unconscious changes in Pepys’s attitudes, especially during 1660 and 1661.

The diary begins as a factual account of where he went and what he did when there; ‘then’ and ‘after that’ figure largely. It is not until 24 January that he comments on any one else’s behaviour, and that with disapproval: