Davenant was the original planner of the modern stage and its scenery, but Killigrew did his part in the improvement carried out. He was somewhat jealous of his brother manager, and on one occasion he explained to Pepys what he himself had done:—
"Feb. 12th, 1666-67. The stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore. Now, wax candles, and many of them; then not above 3 lbs. of tallow: now all things civil, no rudeness anywhere; then as in a bear garden: then two or three fiddlers, now nine or ten of the best: then nothing but rushes upon the ground, and everything else mean; and now all otherwise; then the Queen seldom and the King never would come; now, not the King only for State but all civil people do think they may come as well as any."
Killigrew complained that "the audience at his house was not above half as much as it used to be before the late fire," but in the following year (February 6th, 1667-8) there were crowds at the other house. Pepys relates:—
"Home to dinner, and my wife being gone before, I to the Duke of York's playhouse; where a new play of Etheridge's called 'She Would if she Could,' and though I was there by two o'clock, there were 1,000 people put back that could not have room in the pit."
Pepys's criticisms on the plays he saw acted at these theatres were not always satisfactory, and often they were contradictory. At the same time he was apparently judicious in the disposal of praise and blame on the actors he saw. Betterton was his ideal of the perfect actor, and, so far as it is possible to judge as to one who lived so long ago, public opinion formed by those capable of judging from contemporary report seems to be in agreement with that of Pepys.
Pepys was a great frequenter of taverns and inns, as were most of his contemporaries. There are about one hundred and thirty London taverns mentioned in the Diary, but time has swept away nearly all of these houses, and it is difficult to find any place which Pepys frequented.
These taverns may be considered as a link between the Court end of London and the city, for Pepys distributed his favours between the two places. King Street, Westminster, was full of inns, and Pepys seems to have frequented them all. Two of them—the "Dog" and the "Sun"—are mentioned in Herrick's address to the shade of "Glorious Ben":—
"Ah, Ben!
Say how or when
Shall we thy guests
Meet at these feasts
Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the Triple Tunne?
Where we such clusters had
As made us nobly wild, not mad!
And yet such verse of thine
Outdid the meate, outdid the frolic wine."
The "Three Tuns" at Charing Cross, visited by Pepys, was probably the same house whose sign Herrick changes to "Triple Tun."
Among the Westminster taverns may be mentioned "Heaven" and "Hell," two places of entertainment at Westminster Hall; the "Bull Head" and the "Chequers" and the "Swan" at Charing Cross; the "Cock" in Bow Street and the "Fleece" in York Street, Covent Garden; the "Canary" house by Exeter Change; and the "Blue Balls" in Lincoln's Inn Fields.