Mary Cromwell, modestly masked, was a prettier sight than what Pepys on other occasion describes as "all the pleasure of the play;" meaning thereby, the presence of Lady Castlemaine, or of Miss Stewart, her rival in royal favour, but not her equal in peerless beauty. With these, but in less exalted company than they, we now meet with Nell Gwyn, in front of the house. She is seen gossiping with Pepys, who is ecstatic at the condescension; or she is blazing in the boxes, prattling with the young and scented fops, and impudently lying across any three of them, that she may converse as she pleases with a fourth. And there is Sir Charles Sedley looking on, smiling with or at the actors of these scenes, among the audience, or sharply and wittily criticising the players on the stage, and the words put into their mouths by the author, or flirting with vizard masks in the pit. Altogether, there is much confusion and interruption; but there is also, occasionally, disturbance of another sort, as when, in June 1664, a storm of hail and rain broke through the roof of the Kings House, and drove the half-drowned people from the pit in a disorder not at all admired.
Like Evelyn, Pepys was often at the Court plays, but, except with the spectacle of the Queen's ladies, and the King's too, for that matter, he found small delight there,--the house, although fine, being bad for hearing. This Court patronage, public and private, increased the popularity of the drama, as the vices of the King increased the fashion of being dissolute; and when Charles was sadly in need of a collecting of members of parliament to throw out a bill which very much annoyed him, and was carried against him, he bade the Lord Chamberlain to scour the play and other houses, where he knew his parliamentary friends were to be found, and to send them down to vote in favour of their graceless master.
Ladies of quality, and of good character, too, could in those days appear in masks in the boxes, and unattended. The vizard had not yet fallen to the disreputable. Such ladies as are above designated entered into struggles of wit with the fine gentlemen, bantering them unmercifully, calling them by their names, and refusing to tell their own. All this was to the disturbance of the stage, but this battle of the wits was so frequently more amusing than what might be passing for the moment on the stage, that the audience near listened to the disputants rather than to the actors. Sir Charles Sedley was remarkable as a disputant with the ladies, and as a critic of the players. That the overhearing of what was said by the most famous of the box visitors was a pleasant pastime of many hearers, is made manifest by Pepys, who once took his place on "the upper bench next the boxes," and described it as having "the advantage of seeing and hearing the great people, which may be pleasant when there is good store."