Source: William Bray (ed.), Memoirs of John Evelyn … comprising his diary, from 1641-1705-6, and a selection of his familiar letters, to which is subjoined, the private correspondence between King Charles I. and Sir Edward Nicholas; also between Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, and Sir Richard Browne, ambassador to the Court of France, in the time of King Charles I. and the usurpation, Vol. 2 (London : H. Coburn, 1827), p. 185
Production: William Davenant, The Siege of Rhodes, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, 9 January 1662
Text: I saw acted “The Third Part of the Siege of Rhodes.” In this acted yº faire and famous comedian call’d Roxalana from ye part she perform’d; and I think it was the last, she being taken to be the Earle of Oxford’s Misse (as at this time they began to call lewd women). It was in recitativa musiq.
Comments: John Evelyn (1620-1706) was an English writer and horticulturalist, who kept a diary from 1640 to 1706, though for its first twenty years or so the entries were composed from notes some time after the relevant dates. Roxalana was the actress Hester Davenport, mistress of the Earl of Oxford, and nicknamed after the part she played in William Davenant‘s The Siege of Rhodes, generally held to be the first British opera. ‘Recitativa musiq’ indicates that it was sung rather than spoken. The work was in two parts, of which this was the second, not a third.
Links: Copy at Hathi Trust
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