He is a man of emphatic opinions, calling A Midsummer Night's Dream 'the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life' and Twelfth Night 'silly'. The energy of Pepys's diary adds to the sense of high-speed costume drama, starring a man rarely bored, who dashes from his work as an administrator for the Navy to the theatre, or to dancing lessons, or to the pub, where he drinks 'a great Quantity of Sack', and falls into a ditch on the way home. An irresistible air of bedroom farce clings to him.' At the other end of the century, a later biographer, Richard Ollard, recorded much the same popular impression of Pepys: 'The randy bewigged figure whose name, as a symbol of a slightly risque conviviality, has been appropriated by this wine-shipper or that restaurant.
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