" This is Pepys's ordinary attitude of mind to undiluted
poetry on the stage.
Pepys only saw _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ once. _Twelfth Night_, of
which he wrote in very similar strains, he saw thrice. On the first
occasion his impatience of this romantic play was due to external
causes. He went to the theatre "against his own mind and resolution."
He was over-persuaded to go in by a friend, with whom he was casually
walking past the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Moreover, he had just
sworn to his wife that he would never go to a play without her: all
which considerations "made the piece seem a burden" to him. He
witnessed _Twelfth Night_ twice again in a less perturbed spirit, and
then he called it a "silly" play, or "one of the weakest plays that
ever I saw on the stage."
Again, of _Romeo and Juliet_, Pepys wrote: "It is a play of itself the
worst I ever heard in my life." This verdict, it is right to add, was
attributable, in part at least, to Pepys's irritation at the badness
of the acting, and at the actors' ignorance of their words. It was a
first night.
The literary critic knows well enough that the merit of these three
pieces--_A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Twelfth Night_, and _Romeo and
Juliet_--mainly lies in their varied wealth of poetic imagery and
passion.
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