The History of Sir Francis Drake was a hybrid theatrical entertainment, a masque or "operatic tableau" with an English libretto written by Sir William Davenant and music by Matthew Locke. The masque was most likely first performed in 1659 and produced by Davenant. As with his earlier The Siege of Rhodes (1656) and The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658), Davenant cast The History of Sir Francis Drake as a musical drama to avoid the Puritan prohibition of stage plays during the English Commonwealth era. The three Davenant works were important in the evolution of English opera and musical theatre, and heralded the coming revival of drama with the Restoration of 1660.
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