edition of De Grammont through the press. After disposing of Mrs. Marshall's claim, Malone makes a very near guess when he names Mrs. Frances Davenport instead:—
"The person seduced probably was Mrs. Frances Davenport, an eminent actress in the Duke of York's company, who was celebrated for her performance of Roxolana in Davenant's Siege of Rhodes, 1662, and in another Roxolana in Lord Orrery's Mustapha in 1665. She acted in Dryden's Maiden Queen in 1668, but her name is not found in any of the plays performed by the Duke of York's servants after they removed to Dorset Gardens in 1671, and Downes, the prompter of that playhouse, mentions it in his quaint language, that she was before that time 'by force of love erept from the stage.'"
The editor of the last English edition[1] has had some idea glimmering in his mind that Roxolana, and not Roxana, was the lady seduced by the founder of the regiment still distinguished from his colonelcy as the Oxford Blues. He inserts, without remark, the following extract from Evelyn:—
"9 Jan. 1661-2.—I saw the third part of the Siege of Rhodes. In this acted ye faire and famous comedian, called Roxolana, from ye part she perform'd; and I think it was the last, she being taken to be the Earl of Oxford's misse, as at that time they began to call lewd women."
To this I must add that Pepys, as usual, comes in to support the accuracy of his friend and fellow memorialist:—
- ↑ That of Bohn in 1846.
