Talk:Theatre Royal, Drury Lane/Archive 1

Archive 1

Little Theatre, Haymarket vs. Queen's Theatre Haymarket

Oooh. We also need someone to figure out the Little Theatre, Haymarket vs. Queen's Theatre Haymarket. As for this one, I can probably find a contemporary discussion from Robert Gould, although it would be of the post-fire theater. A reputation/background would be a large section, as well as theatrical management (and that I think has to exist) and, to some degree, the patent system, since this was one of only two official theaters. Covent Garden was a rough place, apparently. I don't know the geography well, so a map of London from the 18th c. showing where the thing was would help. (Gould suggests that Navy men fresh off the boat would hand around in Covent Garden looking for the prostitutes who apparently were thick as flies in the neighborhood, and they would accost theater-goers as they went home. To prove to their "girlfriend" how tough they were, they'd beat up some innocent patron. (This from The Play-house a Satyr.)) Geogre 12:25, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Haymarket Theatres? What those?

Rereading ye olde Restoration spectacular, I also see that this article now creates the false impression that Drury Lane was the King's Company's first theater, when in fact they were up and running in some pedestrian venue on Vere Street for a while before they were forced into building a Proscenim-arch-and-moving-shutters type of place thanks to the competition from the Duke's Company's Lincoln's Inn Fields. Of course my only source right now for all that is the Restoration spectacular article, so I guess I have some work to do there. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 22:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but bear in mind that your subject is Drury Lane, not the King's Company! There were a number of older theatres in London in 1660, but do you really care? OK, if you do: the theatre in Vere Street was pretty new in 1660, and as so many venues throughout the period, it was a refurbished tennis court. Only the big expensive Wren theatres that I mention in RS were built from scratch for dramatic purposes, as far as I can remember, and even they tended, architecturally, to imitate tennis courts. Davenant had started doing operas and various stuff well before 1660, as you know (yes, you do! RS!) and he had probably outfitted Vere Street and used it from 1658 (speculation: public playacting was a criminal activity, so it's vague). This is the theatre that Pepys, with a touching lack of prescience, thought so fine, when the King's Company used it from November 1660 till 7 May 1663, while Bridges Street was being built.

Do you happen to have access to a library that enjoys possession of The London Stage 1660-1800, btw? Because everything of this nature is collected there. The somewhat unmanageable copy of the 1660—1700 volume now on my desk [caresses it fervently] belongs to my uni library--they keep trying to get it back from me--but it's my precioussss....! [weeps]. I sleep with it under my pillow. I'll bet you good money it's Beauclerk's source, if he's serious about what he's doing. If it was possible to buy it second-hand or from the publisher, I'd sell my son to a cotton plantation and buy it, and charter the Queen Elizabeth II to take it to Stockholm for me, and have my own copy, and be happy for ever. But I digress. If there's a copy near you, you'll find it useful, is what I mean to say.

Haymarket is just a place, a square. "The" theatre in /the/ Haymarket (some of them the "Queens Theatre in Haymarket") is one of those messes, with a vast number of theatres through the centuries on different sites along the sides of the Haymarket square. Geogre, why are you doing that to nice Bunchofgrapes, what did he ever do to you? He's not writing London playhouses. Haymarket is nothing to do with Drury Lane. Bishonen talk 23:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC).

Well, I knew Geogre was trying to trick me! <raspberries> While I'm here, what's the source for Wren having designed the 1663 theatre? Or did I make that up? Or Beauclerk? I'm seeing a lot of stuff that's pretty sure Wren designed 1674, but very little regarding him and 1663. (Library? Outside of academia, I don't think we are allowed useful libraries in America anymore.) —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 00:08, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I reckon you made it up out of whole cloth. :-( They didn't care much who designed what, it looks like. That Wren designed the 1674 house is just a rumour--maybe based on that very same longitudinal section, I dunno--the London Stage doesn't say anything about the architect of either of those buildings. But I agree Wren is likely for the 1674, and that there's not a whisper for Bridges Street. Would it make you feel better to have a fine quote about the interior of Bridges Street that's not even by Pepys, but by Prince Cosmo III of Tuscany? Remind me to transcribe it tomorrow... zZzZzZzZ...it's only short, but today is o-ver...zzzzz. Goodnight, Geogre. Bishonen talk 00:44, 29 March 2006 (UTC).

Ah-hah! Somebody might have made it up but it wasn't me; I was just going along with the misstatements that were in the article before I got there. [1] There was a factual error in Wikipedia! Geogre, you call Britannica, I'll get on the horn with Seigenthaler's people, Bishonen, drop Nature a note telling them they had it all wrong, and ALoan, if you're listening, perhaps you could drop by the offices of The Register and let them know what's up. Thanks all. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 02:53, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Me? I'm hardly even here. See, I'm working on Henry Carey (writer), on a conference paper. Now, it seems from the various passing accounts I get, that "the little theatre in the Haymarket" was Fielding's theater. That's important. In fact, that's very, very important. It's important because it's non-patent, and it was where dissident plays went to be performed (imagine it as Off Broadway). So, Haymarket becomes the place where Patriot Plays were put on in the 1730's -- and Carey's there -- which is to say Patriot Whigs plays, which is to say anti-Walpolean plays. In my micro-narrative of the death of the Augustan Stage, capitalist control and market pressures make the two patent theatres toothless -- they have to run soft plays and "butts in the seats" plays -- while the daring Haymarket can take big risks, both with Nancy and with Pasquin. However, there is this other creature that appears almost as soon as the Haymarket was demolished by the Licensing Act of 1737: The Queen's Theatre at the Haymarket. Now this is important because the "queen" in question is Caroline of Ansbach, and that means something -- it means Walpole. So, Charlotte Charke flees her father to little theatre Haymarket, and Susannah Centlivre uses that theatre to give the finger to Fielding by altering his play to make a happy reconciliation scene between Tom Thumb and the Queen and then goes on to official Whig support. See? I did have a reason for asking. (No, my library doesn't have The London Stage, but my last library had it on microfiche (bleh).) Geogre 03:00, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Now Bishonen will worry once more that I will attempt to incorporate some of that irrelevantly into this article. What she fails to appreciate is that I'm too dim to understand anything you just said there. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:46, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I was just trying to get someone else to do my work for me again. I don't like theater, you see, and yet that's not really an option for anyone who specializes in 1660-1750. No matter how I feel about the theater, the authors themselves were interested in theatrical pay days, and they thought (even when it was too late) that the theater was the best place to make a timely and incendiary political statement, so the politics of the houses (which was a big worry of theirs) becomes a thing I need to know, and the basic rule is that, if there is a living arts institution, there must always be a place for the weird and dissenting. By 1730, it looks like there is no such thing in Covent Garden or Drury Lane, which only means that something else had to be the pressure valve. I just want someone to tell me (without my doing the research) whether the Little Theatre at the Haymarket was it so that I can allude to it properly in my upcoming paper. Geogre 11:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

When you say someone, of course you don't mean me; you know I only do the 1695—96 season! :-). Sorry, Geogre, you know more about that stuff than I do. Bunch, here's Price Cosmo visiting Bridges Street on 15 April 1669 and commenting on the liberated English gender roles: "This theatre is nearly of a circular form, surrounded, in the inside, by boxes separated from each other, and divided into several rows of seats, for the better accommodation of the ladies and gentlemen, who, in conformity with the freedom of the country, sit together indiscriminately; a large space being left on the ground-floor for the rest of the audience" (quoted from the LS, part 1, xxxvii). What, no galleries, or did Prince Cosmo classify galleries as really big boxes? Bishonen talk 17:51, 29 March 2006 (UTC).

I believe the first and second galleries were both divided into boxes; the first gallery (and/or the side boxes, which seem often confused with or perhaps seamlessly wrapped into the first gallery) being reserved for the court. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 18:12, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Info that won't fit

I'm compiling a Guide to the Drury Lane Wildlife according to Robert Gould. Who you meet in the box, who in the pit, who in the middle gallery, who you meet ducking out of the play early (and, given that it's Robert Gould, every section seems to have whores in it). The problem is that the information won't fit here, and Restoration Playgoing would be a bad idea for an article. It also won't warrant an entry for the Gould poem itself, since virtually no one has heard of it. Oh, well. It's still interesting. Geogre 02:27, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

It's a satire, too, right, not a factual account? So its difficult to tease out those elements that reveal a deep social truth from those that just mean Gould was having a bad day while writing it? —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 02:49, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Geogre, who cares if anybody's heard of the Playhouse poem? This isn't the kind of encyclopedia where article size, or even existence, is proportionate to some kind of instrinsic importance, as you know only too well. Write about what you like. Don't go being so purist, in a place full of would-be (and actual, too) FA's about individual pop songs, create The Play-House a Satyr already! It's a very attractive article title, much more tempting than the name of a person nobody ever heard of either (er, Robert Gould, sorry, yes). Oh, yes, and I will check if I can find your annotated text in the frozen depths of my classic-Mac-version Word files. Or the swamp, rather. Right away. Bunch, you're going like a train, excellent work! Bishonen | talk 10:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC).

Thanks, Bishonen! —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 15:52, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

It's a satire, but it would have been a flop had it not represented a reality. I.e. it only works because the readers go, "Oh-ho! He's going to talk about those guys who think they're witty because they flirt with the orange girl!" It was a successful poem. So we can regard it as dyspeptic, but not invented. (E.g. when Swift makes fun of the "projectors" trying to get sunlight out of cucumbers or who try to inflate dogs to make them speak (by means of a bellows up the anus), you can think it's too outlandish to be true, but it isn't. He picks the most obviously outlandish examples, but those were real projects only presented in Gulliver's Travels without their reasoning.) Bish, I suppose you're right, but being a purist is the way I've been going since I got here. I don't know. The thing is that we would do well with something like "the Restoration playhouse" or "the pit" and "the middle gallery" and the like. ...I don't know. An article on the poem would be full, with reception notes, and I really wanted to illustrate the people who go to the theater (which is why Montagu Somers included the poem in London Stage, I think). Well, maybe I'll just compile this and use it for some real life purpose. Geogre 11:34, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Obviously an article on the poem would be an absolutely fine article, but I see where the article you want to write isn't quite that one. I believe you should write Restoration playhouse. It would serve a useful purpose, describing physical and especially social elements which were largely similar between the various theatres of the two companies. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 15:52, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Redlink in intro

I would not object anywhere else, and I am certain patent theatres deserve an article, but IMHO either stub it or unlink it (and the latter is probably prefereable since a stub linked in the intro is not much of an improvement over a redlink.) KillerChihuahua^?!? 19:04, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've unlinked it for now (and gotten rid of the word "patent" there, since without a link, it's a fairly obscure term. One day I hope there's a decent patent theatre article though. Britannica has one ;-) —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 19:47, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

How nice it must be for you to have your next project all lined up!!! (said in annoying cheerful chipper voice, in case that wasn't clear from the context) KillerChihuahua^?!? 20:09, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

hem hem -- ALoan (Talk) 18:12, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

THANKS, ALoan! Have a cranberry-walnut muffin! —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 20:17, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Items from the Oxford Companion

BOG, if you haven't seen my note regarding this on the perr review page, check that out first. I'll put these items in chronological order to aid adding them to the article. Add what you think is necessary.

• The first structure was hemmed in by buildings and could only be reached by a narrow passage.
• Nell Gwynn's stage debut in John Dryden's The Indian Emperor occured at Drury Lane, 1665.
• Ah ha! I did find the info about the name...it was the second theatre that was called the Theatre Royal, not the first.
  • Could you give me an exact quote here? I've seen a lot of sources calling it "Theatre Royal in Bridges Street". —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Let me throw in a compliment here...your description of the theatre interiors far exceed anything that Oxford provides!
  • Yeah, too bad it's half wrong! (see below.) —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 15:06, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I saw that after I had posted this...but the compliment still stands, even with part missing you still have better architectural coverage than Oxford. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 15:54, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
• You may note that while audiences did "mount" the stage during performances, they also outright sat onstage. It was common for audiences to sit on Elizabethan stages and men could even purchase the wiles of certain boy players. (this is not from Oxford and I can provide a source if need be).
• The first play to open the 1674 theatre was Fletcher's The Beggar's Bush.
• After opening, the theatre was successful, but only briefly. The Duke's Men at the Dorset Garden Theatre atrracted many of the younger actors from the company forcing the closure of Drury Lane (DL) in 1676. Oxford doesn't state when the DL reopened, but it was sometime prior to 1682 when the United Company was created.
• Under Fleetwood there was rioting on 5 May 1737 when he abolished the Footman's Gallery. This was the upper gallery and under Fleetwood the footmen of audience members could be admitted free at the end of the fourth act. Under Rich's earlier management, however, the gallery was open for free to the footmen from the beginning of the play. Thus the name "Footman's Gallery." In 1737, Fleetwood abolished the practice completely due to the noise and ruckus coming from the gallery. This led to the rioting. Fleetwood proceeded to drive the theatre into financial straits with his gambling.
• During this period one of the most notable performances was Macklin's performance of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, 11 Jan. 1741. This introduced the public to his more realistic style of acting that abandoned the bombast of preceeding eras. It may also be noted that Macklin coached Garrick for his debut performance at Goodman's Fields, later that year in Richard III.
• Garrick's first appearance at DL, 11 May 1742, in Thomas Otway's The Orphan.
• The first show under Garrick's management was Merchant of Venice with Maklin as Shylock but included many of the leading lights of the British stage including Peg Woffington, Susannah Cibber, Hannah Pritchard, Kitty Clive, Spranger Barry, Richard Yates and Ned Shuter.
• Garrick was also responsible for major alterations done by Robert Adam, 1776.
• The first production under Sheridan's management was his School for Scandal, 8 May 1777.
• The theatre was damaged in 1780 during the Gordon riots and guards were posted nightly outside the theatre. They remained until 1896.
• The third theatre opened with Kemble and Siddons in Macbeth after which the iron safety curtain was lowered to prove that the theatre was fire-proof.
  • That proved it :-) —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:49, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Edmund Kean made his first appearance as Shylock, 26 Jan 1814 and he played there until 1820.
• Elliston was succeeed by American impresario Stephen Price (1783-1840). He managed from 1826-1830.
• The period following Price's management included a number of failures both artistically and financially including Macready's performances in the '40s. This period ended in 1878 with the resignation of manager F. B. Chatterton who is quoted as saying "Shakespeare spells ruin, and Byron bankruptcy."
• Harris instituted an annual pantomime that became exceedingly popular and starred Dan Leno in 1889.
• Other prominent events during Collins' tenure include Henry Irving's final London season (1905), Ellen Terry's 1905 Jubilee and Johnston Forbes-Robertson's farewell appearance in 1913.
• Shakespeare's tercentenary (1916) was celebrated with a performance by Frank Benson in Julius Caesar after which George V knighted him with a prop sword in the royal box.
• Ivor Novello presented his musicals there from 1931 until the theatre were closed in 1939.
• During WWII, the theatre became the headquarters for Entertainments National Service Association under Basil Dean.
• The theatre re-opened with Noel Coward's Pacific 1860 in 1946.
• Many of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musicals made their London debuts there including Oklahoma! (1946), South Pacific (1951), The King and I (1953) and My Fair Lady (1958) which ran for five years.
• Other notable modern shows include A Chorus Line and Sweeney Todd.

So those are my notes. I would have included them myself, but I figure you can fit them in more easily since you wrote most of the article. The citation should read: Hartnoll, Phyllis, ed. The Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 4th edition. London:Oxford UP, 1983. pps. 230-232. I hope this is useful, if you have any questions, please leave them here or my talk page. Cheers! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 05:57, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I promise I'll start incorporating soon. Thanks for the work. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 22:14, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

My Fair Lady...something told me that wasn't right, but it was 2:30 AM when I was writing that and I didn't care. Another mistake in Oxford! I've found a few rather interesting ones throughout. I'm glad you caught the error! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 03:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering if I should blame Oxford or you, Gan! Always nice when Wikipedia's links give a little internal fact-checking of their own. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:02, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Noo, Druly Lane didn't close in 1676. Both The Man of Mode and The Plain Dealer premièred in that annus mirabilis. They had difficulties, though. Supersource The London Stage says of the 76—77 season:

Disagreement between Thomas Killigrew and his son Charles prompted the Lord Chamberlain, on 9 Sept. 1676, to appoint Charles Hart, Michael Mohun, Edward Kynaston [that's the Stage Beauty guy, Ganymead], and William Cartright to function as managers. This decree was modified on 22 Feb. 1676/77 to allow Hart to have full authority. By 30 July 1677, however, dissatisfaction was so widespread within the company that the players sought and secured a degree of autonomy, by which they might govern themselves, with the provision that Killigrew's rights and profits be protected. (LS, p. 247.)

There was only a little-documented very short period of closure sometime in 1678 or 79 (LS p. 271); not worth mentioning. They hobbled on until the 1682 merger , with much evidence of serious problems. The agreement as to who should run day-to-day affairs and on what conditions was changed from time to time. An order from the L. C. in April 1678 forbade the actors from removing costumes from the theatre, some of the actors were accused of embezzlement... there was a "steady deterioration of morale". Compare the mutual trust and loyalty under Thomas Betterton's inofficial leadership at Dorset Garden, and you see in a nutshell why the Duke's prospered and the King's faltered. (Well, mutual trust and loyalty among the actors, united against Davenant's crooked sons.) And still it was the King's that put on the good plays!

This is the reference for the Restoration volume of the LS:

Van Lennep, William (ed.) (1965). The London Stage 1660—1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments and Afterpieces Together with Casts, Box-Receipts and Contemporary Comment Compiled from the Playbills, Newspapers and Theatrical Diaries of the Period, Part 1: 1660–1700. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. Bishonen | talk 12:41, 20 April 2006 (UTC).

Weeping and Gnashing of teeth

Hmmm hmm hm... Latham and Matthew's 2001 Diary of Samuel Pepys Companion volume says on page 436 (google books link) that "It used to be thought that a description of the circular shape of the theatre visited by Cosimo III of Tuscany referred to the Theatre Royal, but in fact it referred to the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields." (With an endnote indicator the other side of which I haven't tracked down.) —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:33, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

FYI

I just created an article for Charles Fleetwood (theatre manager), please add anything if you see fit. Cheers! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 18:10, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Aphra Behn and The Rover

Bishonen, where are you getting that The Rover played at Drury Lane in 1677? All the sources I've seen (for instance The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn) say it was at Dorset Garden. In fact, Behn's association with Drury Lane seems minimal, at least as far as premiers go - this page if it can be believed lists The Lucky Chance in 1686 and a posthumous 1689 production of The Widow Ranter. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 00:09, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, no, ruining my beautiful theory about Drury Lane carrying the flag of quality with even more facts! I was already somewhat devastated to have discovered that Etherege was a Duke's writer. As for where I got it, well, from carelessly reading the London Stage's notation "DG" as "DL". Simple. Bishonen | talk 00:47, 23 April 2006 (UTC).

I'll have to rephrase the whole thing a bit. To....mor...zzzzz.....row. Bishonen | talk 00:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC).

All right. G'night. I'll just ungently yank out the bit about Behn for now to keep it factual. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 00:54, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Meaning of shutter in theatre terminology

Hi there. I just delinked the word shutter that is used in this article. If there is a specific meaning for the word 'shutter' in theatre terminology, could you please link to that and add a definition at the disambiguation page for shutter. Otherwise just leaving it without a link may be best (there is already a link to Stage (theatre)#Proscenium stage). Thanks. Carcharoth 00:46, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Leaving it without a link seems fine to me. You might want to try out the same change in Restoration spectacular, which is where that sentence actually originated. Thanks! —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 02:54, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd be very surprised if that's the only link inserted in Restoration spectacular by somebody "helping" Wikipedia by typing square brackets round all the nouns in sight (and never checking where, or whether those links lead). It's a disease in this place. Grumble ... grumble... linkomania ... grumble ... soon as I turn my back ... grumble ...:-( Bishonen | talk 03:27, 20 May 2006 (UTC).

Not every noun, but it would be helpful to have a link to an article explaining what a shutter is in this context, no? -- ALoan (Talk) 10:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. My point was that it's not helpful when that article doesn't exist. Bishonen | talk 11:34, 21 May 2006 (UTC).

Add the "Muffin Man" reference?

"Drury Lane" is mentioned in a nursery rhyme. I don't know the correct title of the rhyme, but it goes, "Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man. Do you know the muffin man who lives on Drury Lane?" Then, "Yes I know...." and so on.

Should this reference be added to the article? Is the Drury Lane in the nursery rhyme the same as this theatre?

The theatre is in Drury Lane, which has an article itself, where The Muffin Man is mentioned. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 17:43, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The theatre is not actually in Drury Lane- it's just close. (Incidentally, there are theatres on Drury Lane).

missed reference

One of these went to Thomas Killigrew, whose company would become known as the King's Company, and who would build a new theatre in Drury Lane. The Letters Patent also granted the two companies a shared monopoly on the public performance of legitimate drama in London;

The other company is no longer named, so either it needs to be named (dont know what it was called myself or would add it), or the paragraph could be reworked to avoid the implied reference to the missing text I guess. --86.128.252.182 19:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)