Calling Up Genius: Purcell, Roger North, and Charlotte Butler

Abstract How did Dioclesian go down at its premiereã ‘It gratify’d the Expectation of Court and City.’ And King Arthurã ‘The Play and Musick pleas’d the Court and City.’ What about The Fairy-Queenã ‘The Court and Town were wonderfully satisfy’d with it.’ If we can believe John Downes, who was Dorset Garden Theatre prompter at the time, patrons in pit, box and, quite possibly, gallery as well hugely enjoyed the new ‘semi-operas’ of the early 1690s for which Purcell provided the music. That is good to know; but we know next to nothing about what it was those courtiers and citizens specifically and especially relished, or how they ‘read’ what they saw and heard. How illuminating it would be if just a dozen relevant letters, diary jottings, and memos survived to supplement the evidence of playbook, press-puff, theatre score, songsheet, act-tune collection, and the recollections of Downes himself when one is trying to call up the particular genius of those shows. One joins the band of mourners lamenting that Samuel Pepys had given up writing his shorthand diary so long before; after all, he was still alive, well, and living in Westminster in Purcell’s last years.