Background
After years of being banned during the Interregnum, theatre performances were again permitted on the Restoration of Charles II with the grant of Letters Patent to two companies to perform "legitimate drama" in London. The Duke's Company was patronised by the Duke of York (later James II); the other patent theatre company, the King's Company enjoyed the patronage of his brother, Charles II. Both companies were briefly based, from 1660, in an old Jacobean theatre, the Cockpit Theatre (also known as the Phoenix Theatre) in Drury Lane. After a short period in the Salisbury Court Theatre, the Duke's Company moved in 1662 to Lincoln's Inn Fields, to a building on Portugal Street that was formerly Lisle's Tennis Court. The company remained there until 1671. Meanwhile, the King's Company moved to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where they stayed.
Following the death of the founder of the Duke's Company, the Poet Laureate, Sir William Davenant, in 1668, Thomas Betterton, a leading actor of the Duke's Company, took control. He and the Davenant family decided to create a new purpose-built theatre, at a cost of some £9,000. By 1670, the Duke's Company was ready to build. It leased a site in Dorset Garden for a period of 39 years (i.e. till 1709) at an annual rent of £130. Betterton had been to Paris and studied the grand baroque tragédies en musique with their spectacular staging, using perspective scenery and many machines that were then the sensation of the French theatrical scene. The new theatre was designed to be a "machine house", capable of staging Restoration spectaculars.
Read more about this topic: Dorset Garden Theatre
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