human
Wild Gallant, 1663) utterly failed, he wrote eight others afterwards. On the 23d February, 1663, Pepys writes in his diary:
gpt
To Court, and there saw the 'Wild Gallant' performed by the king's house; but it was ill acted, and the play so poor a thing as I never saw in my life almost, and so little answering the name, that, from the beginning to the end, I could not, nor can at this time, tell certainly which was the Wild Gallant. The king did not seem pleased at all the whole play, nor anybody else. After some alteration, it was revived with more success. On its publication in 1669 Dryden honestly admitted its former failure, though with a kind of salvo for his self-love.
human
I made the town my judges, and the greater part condemned it. After which I do not think it my concernment to defend it with the ordinary zeal of a poet for his decried poem, though Corneille is more resolute in his preface before 'Pertharite,'[44] which was condemned more universally than this.... Yet it was received at Court, and was more than once the divertisement of his Majesty, by his own command.