INSIDE OF THE DUKE’S THEATRE, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS
As it appeared in the reign of King Charles the Second. From a contemporary print.
In 1642 the Parliament commanded the cessation of plays on the ground “that public sports do not well agree with public calamities, nor public stage plays with the seasons of humiliation.” So the houses were closed. Then, as always happened, the law was timidly and tentatively broken; the theatres began again. In 1647, however, a second ordinance appeared calling upon the magistrates to enter houses where performances were going on and to arrest the performers. This ordinance proving of more effect, a third and more stringent law was passed denouncing stage plays, interludes, and common plays as the occasion of many and sundry great vices and disorders, tending to the high provocation of God’s wrath and displeasure, ordered the destruction of all galleries, seats, and stages of the theatre. This settled the question for the time. Most of the actors went off to fight for the King; a few remained and gave private performances at the residences of noblemen. In 1658 Davenant opened the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane for performances of declamation and music without being molested. Probably he ascertained beforehand what the Protector would do. On the Restoration a bookseller of dramatic propensities took possession of the Cockpit, where he played with his two apprentices, Betterton and Kynaston. Killigrew and Davenant obtained patents for opening theatres, Killigrew’s company to be called the King’s servants, Davenant’s to be called the Duke of York’s servants. Davenant associated with himself the dramatic booksellers, and after a season at the Phœnix went to the new theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and from there to the larger theatre in Dorset Garden, Fleet Street, a place more commodious because it was on the river, the great highway of London. Killigrew began at the Red Bull in St. John’s Street, going from that place, which seems to have been out of the way, to Gibbon’s Tennis Court in Clare Market. He then proceeded to build a new theatre in Drury Lane, not far from the Phœnix. The new theatre opened with Beaumont and Fletcher’s comedy of the Humourous Lieutenant on April 8, 1663. Ten of the company were in the Royal household, and had allowances of scarlet cloth and lace for liveries; did they wear the livery on the stage? It was here that Charles fell in love with Nell Gwynne; she was playing Valeria in Dryden’s Tyrannic Love. She died on the stage and then jumped up and spoke the epilogue:—
“O poet, damned dull poet! Who could prove
So senseless to make Nelly die for love?
Nay, what! yet worse, to kill me in the prime
Of Easter time, in tart and cheese-cake time!”
Here Pepys saw her, was presented to her, and kissed her, “and a mighty pretty soul she is.” And again he mentions how he saw her in a part called Florimell, “a comical part done by Nell that I never can hope to see the like done again by man or woman.”
It is sometimes stated that the theatres of the time were still without a roof. This appears to be incorrect. Pepys mentions the inconvenience of rain. “To the King’s house and saw the Silent Woman. Before the play was done it fell such a storm of hail that we in the pit were fain to rise and all the house in disorder.” A few years later, however, he notes (May 1, 1668) another visit to the same theatre, where he saw the Surprizall, and mentions “a disorder in the pit by its raining in from the cupola at top, it being a very foul day.” There was, therefore, some kind of dome or cupola open at the side.
