IT was not all work for the visiting Tsar. Peter also toured London’s sights, including the Tower and Westminster Abbey, and watched Thomas Betterton’s staging of John Fletcher’s ‘The Prophetess’, to music by Purcell.* He was quite smitten with Letitia Cross in John Vanbrugh’s play ‘The Relapse’ at Drury Lane,** but was disappointed to be turned away from an exotic Venetian-style gambling entertainment in the Strand, because the police were raiding the venue.
The Tsar had his portrait painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, discussed Christianity with the Bishop of Salisbury through an interpreter, and talked astronomy with Edmund Halley in German. King William visited him twice, though Peter’s pet monkey made the second occasion rather uncomfortable by employing His Majesty as a kind of gymnastic apparatus.
The Tsar left on April 21st, having learnt much but failed to secure his anti-Ottoman alliance. John Evelyn returned to Sayes Court to find it in utter chaos, which cost £133 2s 6d to repair. He billed the Government.
‘The Prophetess: or, The History of Dioclesian’ (1690) was a musical version of an earlier play, dating from 1622, by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. The semi-operatic revival was staged by Thomas Betterton with music by Henry Purcell (1659-1695), and choreographed by Josias Priest.
** ‘The Relapse, or, Virtue in Danger’ was premiered in 1696: Letitia played Miss Hoyden. John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) was both a dramatist and an architect, the designer of Blenheim Palace, Castle Howard and Seaton Delaval Hall. He played a key part in bringing King William III to England in 1688, and spent five years in the Bastille for his pains.