These constant changes are very confusing, and the recital of them is not very entertaining, but it is necessary to make the matter clear for the proper understanding of the history of the time. The plan of the old theatres, with their platform stage, was no longer of use for the altered arrangements introduced at the Restoration. Successive improvements in the form of the houses were made, but we learn from Pepys that it was some time before the roofing of the building was water-tight. The public theatres were open in the afternoon, three o'clock being the usual hour for performance, and the plays were therefore partly acted in the summer by daylight. It was thus necessary to have skylights, but these were so slight that heavy rain came and wetted those below. On June 1st, 1664, Pepys wrote:-- "Before the play was done it fell such a storm of hail that we in the middle of the pit were fain to rise, and all the house in a disorder." 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.