The Diary of Samuel Pepys

As the year opens, Pepys is again concerned about his frequent playgoing and vows to go to plays less often.

On January 4, Pepys watches the king play tennis at the Tennis Court and is dismayed at the empty flattery with which the courtiers treat him as a player. This scene is typical of Pepys’s tendency in the Diary to reduce important figures to life size.

On January 19 Pepys reports experiencing eye trouble, which he attributes to “sitting up late writing and reading by candlelight” (199). Pepys’s eyesight will worsen in the coming years and will eventually force him to stop keeping the diary.

On February 3, Pepys goes to a coffeehouse near Covent Garden at which the poet John Dryden, who would become England’s first Poet Laureate in just five years’ time, and other “wits of the town” (201) gather. This episode illustrates the fact that Pepys moved in high circles of London society and that his lifetime coincided with a major period of English literature and culture.

Pepys’s entry for February 17 seems to record his activities in real time. He writes of how he is working late at his office until four in the morning; he then goes home “weary, sleepy, cold, and my head akeing” (202).