Adams Papers

[December 1783]

Monday Decr. 1st. 1783.

This evening I went with Mr. West to the Academy of Painting &c. and had the same entertainment as that of which I spoke last Monday.

Tuesday Decr. 2d.

This day my father dined out; in the evening I went to the Drury Lane Theatre, had the Beaux Stratagem with the Ladies Frolick.1

1George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Strategem, London, 1707; The Ladies’ Frolick, London, 1770, by James Love, pseudonym for James Dance (Biographia Dramatica description begins David Erskine Baker and others, eds., Biographia Dramatica; Or, A Companion to the Play House ..., London, 1764-1812; 3 vols, in 4. description ends ; Allardyce Nicoll, A History of English Drama, 1600–1900, 6 vols., Cambridge, Eng., 1952–1959, 2:322; 3:283).

Friday Decr. 5th. 1783.

In the evening I went to the Covent Garden Theatre, and saw the Merchant of Venice, with Love a la Mode;1 a young Lady appeared for the first Time she play’d upon any Stage in the part of Portia.

1Love à la Mode, London, 1793, by Charles Macklin, first produced in 1760 (Biographia Dramatica description begins David Erskine Baker and others, eds., Biographia Dramatica; Or, A Companion to the Play House ..., London, 1764-1812; 3 vols, in 4. description ends ; Hogan, ed., London Stage, 1660–1800 description begins Charles Beecher Hogan, ed., The London Stage, 1660-1800, Carbondale, 111., 1968. description ends ).

Saturday. Decr. 6th. 1783.

Dined at Mr. W. Vassal’s1 at Clapham.

1William Vassall, once a prominent Bostonian, now a loyalist refugee, whom JA later described as “one of my old friends and clients ... a man of letters and virtues, without one vice that I ever knew or suspected, except garrulity” (Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates description begins John Langdon Sibley and Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge and Boston, 1873- . description ends , 9:349–359; JA, Works description begins The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, ed. Charles Francis Adams, Boston, 1850-1856; 10 vols. description ends , 10:214–215).

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