All the entries in the “Diary” relating to the stage require more investigation than they have yet received, as the notes of the editors are quite insufficient. We have seen how the allusions to the “Cockpit” in the years 1660–62, might either refer to the Duke’s theatre or to the Court theatre, and the same confusion might easily be made in respect to the Lincoln’s Inn theatre. Pepys says that on November 20th, 1660, he and Mr. Shepley went “to the new play-house near Lincoln’s Inn Fields (which was formerly Gibbon’s tennis-court).” This was the home of the King’s company from 1660 till 1663, when they went to Drury Lane. As already stated, the Duke’s company removed to Portugal Street in 1662, so that for a short period the two rival theatres were close together in the neighbourhood of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Pepys visited all parts of the house, and did not much care where he sat so that he got in: thus on November 7, 1667, he was “forced to sit in the side balcony over against the music-room, close by my Lady Dorset and a great many great ones;” and some years before he was somewhat troubled to be seen by two or three of his clerks, who were in the half-crown box, while he was in an eighteenpenny place.[380] The price of a pit seat was 2_s._ 6_d._, and in spite of the inconvenience of the place in wet weather, it was frequented by people of fashion; for instance, the Duke of Buckingham sat there, and was surrounded by Lord Buckhurst, Sir Charles Sedley, Sir George Etherege, and other poets;[381] and “a company of fine ladies” was not absent.[382] But even at that time “citizens, ’prentices and others” jostled their betters. Pepys writes: “I do not remember that I saw so many, by half, of the ordinary ’prentices and mean people in the pit at 2_s._ 6_d._ apiece as now; I going for several years no higher than the 12_d._ and then the 18_d._ places, though I strained hard to go in when I did.”[383] The theatres were generally crowded, and on special occasions it was difficult to find a place. When Etherege’s “She Would if She Could” was first acted, 1,000 persons were turned away because there was no room in the pit an hour before the performance commenced.[384] An ingenious plan for keeping seats which was in vogue for many subsequent years is mentioned by Pepys. On May 2, 1668, he writes: “To the Duke of York’s play house at a little past twelve, to get a good place in the pit for the new play, and there setting a poor man to keep my place, I out and spent an hour at Martin’s, my bookseller’s, and so back again, where I find the house quite full. But I had my place.”