Like Evelyn, Pepys was often at the Court plays, but, except with the spectacle of the Queen's ladies, and the King's too, for that matter, he found small delight there,--the house, although fine, being bad for hearing. This Court patronage, public and private, increased the popularity of the drama, as the vices of the King increased the fashion of being dissolute; and when Charles was sadly in need of a collecting of members of parliament to throw out a bill which very much annoyed him, and was carried against him, he bade the Lord Chamberlain to scour the play and other houses, where he knew his parliamentary friends were to be found, and to send them down to vote in favour of their graceless master. Ladies of quality, and of good character, too, could in those days appear in masks in the boxes, and unattended. The vizard had not yet fallen to the disreputable. Such ladies as are above designated entered into struggles of wit with the fine gentlemen, bantering them unmercifully, calling them by their names, and refusing to tell their own. All this was to the disturbance of the stage, but this battle of the wits was so frequently more amusing than what might be passing for the moment on the stage, that the audience near listened to the disputants rather than to the actors. Sir Charles Sedley was remarkable as a disputant with the ladies, and as a critic of the players. That the overhearing of what was said by the most famous of the box visitors was a pleasant pastime of many hearers, is made manifest by Pepys, who once took his place on "the upper bench next the boxes," and described it as having "the advantage of seeing and hearing the great people, which may be pleasant when there is good store." To no man then living in England did fellowship with people of quality convey such intense delight as to Pepys. "Lord!" he exclaims, in May 1667, "how it went against my heart to go away from the very door of the Duke's playhouse, and my Lady Castlemaine's coach, and many great coaches there, to see 'The Siege of Rhodes.' I was very near making a forfeit," he adds, "but I did command myself." He was happiest with a baronet like Sir Philip Frowd at his side, and behind him a couple of impertinently pretty actresses, like Pierce and Knipp, pulling his hair, drawing him into gossiping flirtations, and inducing him to treat them with fruit. The constant presence of lively actresses in the front of the house was one of the features of the times, and a dear delight to Pepys, who was never weary of admiring their respective beauties.