[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
1. George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Strategem, London, 1707; The Ladies’ Frolick, London, 1770, by James Love, pseudonym for James Dance ( ; 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.
1. Love à la Mode, London, 1793, by Charles Macklin, first produced in 1760 ( ; ).
Saturday. Decr. 6th. 1783.
Dined at Mr. W. Vassal’s1 at Clapham.
1. William 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” ( , 9:349–359; , 10:214–215).