The Theatre of the English Restoration II: Theatre Spaces, Design, Performers, with a little surprise at the end

When we arrive at theatre in the English Restoration, more information is available, from records, drawings, diaries and so on, than ever before.  So, whereas I was hard pressed to tell you much about Elizabethan public theatres, for example, there is much more information on Restoration stages, and such information becomes even more available and more massive as we move into the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I took a full semester seminar in grad school on Restoration and eighteenth century English theatre. To get through the all information in the course we had to rush, and still only touched the surface.  Beginning with the Restoration, then, the information in these lectures is necessarily much more reliant on Dr Jack’s filtration process. As I choose what to relate to you and what not, my own biases are revealed even more than they have been, so you must be wary, you must question, and you must begin to form your own view of theatre history. Take what you want of Dr Jack’story and make it YOURstory.

      

That said (admitted, confessed) let’s examine theatrical companies in the Restoration.  When the king was restored the theatre was also restored, and immediately many people scrambled to show themselves worthy of producing theatre, as theatre had proved lucrative in the Elizabethan era.  We’re going to omit the scramble, and look only at the results (Dr Jack’s first filter!).  After much fuss the king handed out two permits or patents for the production of “legitimate” theatre in London. Any theatre that wasn’t done by the two patentees was NOT legitimate, and was stopped, at least in theory. 

So! Two companies were formed, one called The King’s Company led by Thomas Killigrew, the other called The Duke’s Company

Thomas Killigrew

 led by William Davenant.  Actors and even the plays that could be produced were given to one company or the other. Killigrew was given most of the older, established actors and many of the pre-1642 plays, but he ran his company poorly.  Davenant’s company depended on less seasoned actors and had to produce mostly new plays, but the Duke’s Men were younger and perhaps more eager.  The company was also closely supervised by Davenant, and became the more successful of the two.  When Davenant died in 1668 his actors, led by Thomas Betterton, assumed artistic direction of the Duke’s Company.  By 1682 Killigrew’s company found itself in such serious financial straits that it was forced to merge with the Duke’s Company.  Shortly after this merger, outside investors in the “unified” company sensed the money that could be made and in 1693 a lawyer/investor named Christopher Rich took over the company.  He had cash and legal abilities but no theatrical experience and made life miserable for the actors. One writer pronounced Rich “as sly a Tyrant as ever was at the Head of a Theatre.” In 1695 a group of performers led again by Thomas Betterton left the troupe and formed one of their own.  So in the approximate forty years we are looking at, first there were two legitimate companies, which in 1682 merged to become one, then in 1695 divided into two again, one run by Rich, the other by Betterton.

Theatrical entertainments in the Restoration were offered usually three times a week, in the early evening, from October to June.  The “bill” of fare consisted of a full-length play with singing and dancing between the acts, and the plays changed for each performance, creating a “rotating” repertoire. Popular plays were repeated according to the desires of the market, but not necessarily, or even usually, on consecutive nights.

 

This is a bit later that the Restoration period, but it was similar
to what would be presented - by this time "benefits" which had
usually benefitted the author (see below) were extended for
many reasons.

Business becoming increasingly important in this era, let’s look at how playwrights were paid.  A few theatrical writers such as John Dryden were attached to companies and received fixed salaries for their work, or were shareholders in the company and received a steady income in that way.  Most writers, however, were paid a lump sum, and not a very large lump. On the third night of a play’s repetition (if in fact it was popular enough to merit to three performances) the writer received a “benefit” which meant she or he took all the profits from that night’s performance.  If the play ran to six nights, on the sixth the writer again received the profits from that performance “to benefit her or himself.” This system of benefits extended gradually to actors and other members of a company and was used and extended well into the nineteenth century.

 

While the theatre is long gone, this is where Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre was located

Places of performance were largely, as they had been in France, created from tennis courts.  In 1660 Davenant leased Lisle’s tennis court for his Duke’s company and in 1661 he converted the tennis court permanently into what is known as Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre.  This was a tiny space, measuring only 30 by 75 feet.  It was replaced 10 years later by the Dorset Garden Theatre. The 

Dorset Garden was designed by Christopher Wren, the most famous architect of the era. He practically re-built London after the great fire of 1666,most famously re-inventing St Paul’s Cathedral.  The new Dorset Garden practically doubled the space of the old tennis court theatre: 57 by 140 feet.

      

Killigrew’s first space was Gibbons’ tennis court. Then in 1663 his Theatre Royal on Bridges Street was completed.  This theatre burned in 1672 (an early example of a theatrical nightmare that would become all too typical and deadly in the next few centuries), and Killigrew replaced it with another built on the same site and called The Drury Lane Theatre.  It measured 58 by 140 feet and it was used until 1791. One of the most famous theatres in the city, ever since 1672 a theatre called Drury Lane has been in use in London. 

After 1682, when the King’s and Duke’s companies combined, they used the Drury Lane Theatre, and in 1695, when Betterton and the actors formed their own company, they moved back to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. What did these three theatres so important to

This may or may not be a cross-section of
the Drury Lane - it was once thought designed by
Christopher Wren, but several scholars have
debunked that claim

 Restoration London look like? As you might guess much like the French tennis court theatres, but with a few significant differences:  The pits in the English theatres were raked and equipped with backless benches (whereas French pits, or parterres, were flat and benchless).  There were usually either two or three galleries, the first mostly or all divided into boxes, the second with some boxes, some amphitheatre style seating, the uppermost stadium-style amphitheatres only. The auditoriums were small.  At the Drury Lane, the distance from the front of the stage to the back of the auditorium was only 36 feet.  Imagine 650 people crammed into this intimate space. Henri Misson, a French visitor to London  in 1698, wrote in some detail about the theatre and the audience at Drury Lane: 

"The Pit is an Amphitheatre, fill'd with Benches without Backboards, and adorn'd and cover'd with green Cloth. Men of Quality, particularly the younger Sort, some Ladies of Reputation and Virtue, and abundance of Damsels that haunt for Prey, sit all together in this Place, Higgledy-piggledy, chatter, toy, play, hear, hear not. Farther up, against the Wall, under the first Gallery and just opposite to the Stage, rises another Amphitheatre, which is taken by persons of the best Quality, among whom are generally very few Men. The Galleries, whereof there are only two Rows, are fill'd with none but ordinary People..."

      

The stage was an interesting mix of old and new.  It was raked, but it was divided equally into a forestage and a scenic stage.  The stage depth at Drury lane was 34 feet.  The 17 feet closest to the audience was forestage, the other 17 feet was scenic stage.  There were two doors on each side of the forestage, from which the actors entered and exited.  The scenic stage was equipped with wings in grooves and a rear shutter, used solely for spectacle and framed by stage boxes, making a kind of proscenium opening.  These audience boxes on the sides of the stage looked out over the forestage. As they had in the Elizabethan public theares fops sat on the sides of the forestage as well, often blocking the view of those in the stage boxes. The scenic stage made possible Italian style scene changes when splendor and spectacle was called for. 

Stage lighting in the restoration was much like that of the French theatres. There were windows in the theatres to make use of natural sunlight during the performances, which began in the late afternoon, but there were also candles everywhere!  The auditorium as well as the stage was lit by candles, in chandeliers, and there were some attempts made to dim and color and focus the light on stage.  There was even a job associated with the candles. Someone had to light them and maintain them during the performances at intermissions, and afterwards to replace and repair them.  So it’s not surprising that paysheets for theatre companies include payment for “keepers of the candles” – I must admit that I’ve had worse gigs in the theatre!  By 1672 footlights began to be used in English theatres, which certainly heightened illumination on an actor, but which also gave off that weird shadowy effect characteristic of lighting from below. 

For costumes, as in France the English actors wore contemporary garments, with the occasional habit a la Romaine for classical roles, equally as unlike a Roman as they were in France.

      

Finally, the actors. Interestingly, this is one of the first eras (THE first in English-language theatre) from which we see sources on how to act. How did they act? Let's just say they were less than realistic. Emotion was portrayed physically, using certain stances, certain movements and positions of different body parts. Have a look below at how different emotions were to be read in positions of the hand:

 More importantly, for the first time in England, beginning in 1660 women finally were allowed to play women’s roles!  On the continent, remember, women had been playing women’s roles for approximately 70 to 80 years. In fact women on the continent had often performed in medieval religious and secular plays, and of course women were popular throughout Europe in commedia dell’arte troupes. 

      

Granted, theatres had been closed for nearly 20 years, but if you were a middle aged person chances were very good that you’d seen performances in the public theatres before the Commonwealth, and, because it was always this way, you’d never have questioned that men and boys played women’s roles. For early audiences in the Restoration it would have been surprising, even shocking, to see WOMEN play women’s roles. What begins to happen in the feelings of the audiences is a sexual pleasure, a titillation never before experienced; from love scenes more realistic and passionate than ever before. Low-cut bodices revealed heaving bosoms. Views of women’s rears, thighs and calves were very apparent in the immediately popular breeches roles (in which women disguised themselves as men). Body parts were revealed on stage that were never displayed in public.

      

One of the nasty side effects of this new titillation was that women in the theatre became fair game offstage as well as on for lords and gallants who felt free to wait around after the play and proposition, seduce, even on occasion abduct actresses for their own pleasure -- some of the women of course may have been willing, but athere is a very dark side to the beginnings of English actresses.  Of course this is hardly all a thing of the past.  Women on stage (or film or TV) in earlier eras as well as in our era have been and continue to be exploited in a sexual fashion.  It may not be surprising that women of quality in the audience began to wear masks to the theatre, so that they could see the play, as the diarist Pepys suggested “without the Risque of an Insult, to their Modesty.”  This situation became complicated when prostitutes began to wear masks as well, and “haunted for prey...” The situation became so confusing that Queen Anneplaced a ban on masks in the theatre in 1704.

      

As I noted at the beginning of this post, we know many, many more actors in this era than in earlier ones, but let’s limit our comments to a brief look at three of the most famous women on the Restoration stage:  Nell Gwynn, Elizabeth Barry, and Anne Bracegirdle.  Nell Gwynn began working in theatres as an orange wench (a job in which she most likely sold other...commodities 

...in addition to oranges). She became the mistress of a prominent actor, who also trained her to act. Nell became quite popular especially in comic roles and more specifically in breeches roles, and finally became the mistress of the king!  At this point she retired from the stage, and bore Charles II two bastard sons, one of which was made a duke.  When King Charles lay dying he presumably said “let not poor Nelly starve.” Whatever the truth of that statement, she was taken care of by the state until her death.

      

Elizabeth Barry was also successful in comedy, but was remembered primarily for her fine work in tragedy.  Her voice and acting were described, by actor/manager Colley Cibber as “full, clear and strong, so that no violence of passion could be too much for her; and when distress or tenderness possessed her, she 

subsided into the most affecting melody and softness.  In the art of exciting pity she had a power beyond all actresses I have yet seen, or what your imagination can conceive.”  Not a bad review! She was the usual leading lady to Thomas Betterton, about whom more in a bit, and she also had quite a reputation as a lover. A version of her story can be read in The Libertine, in which the playwright imagines her as a lover of the Earl of Rochester.  

In fact she was his lover, and there was an incident on stage between Barry and another actress, a Miss Boutel, during a scene in which Barry was to stab the other actress, One night Barry “struck with such force that though the point of the dagger was blunted, it made its way through Miss Boutel’s stays, and entered about a quarter of an inch in the flesh.”  Some said this had occurred because Barry was jealous of Rochester’s attentions to Miss Boutel; others say it was all about a veil, which Barry had wanted to wear on stage, but which was given to Miss Boutel instead. We’ll never be certain, darn it!

      

Anne Bracegirdle is remembered prmarily for her work in the comedies of manners, usually as the beautiful and witty heroine. 

Among other roles she created Millamant in Congreve’s The Way of the World.  Colley Cibber had this to say about Bracegirdle: “She was of a lovely Height, with dark-brown hair and eyebrows, black sparkling eyes, and a fresh blushy complexion; and whenever she exerted herself, had an involuntary flushing in her breast, neck and face, having continually a cheerful aspect, and a fine set of even white teeth...Genteel comedy was her chief essay, and that too when in men’s clothes, in which she far surmounted all the actresses of that and this age...” Yes, but could she act?  Didn’t seem to matter! Point taken, I hope, about the titillation factor in Restoration theatre.

      

Among the fine male actors, I have just mentioned Colley Cibber, who kept an important journal, and about whom we’ll learn more next semester. Charles Hart was one of the more popular actors of the period, but is best known today for his affair with Nell Gwynn

 and for bringing her into the theatre. And Edward Kynaston was, at the beginning of the Restoration, the finest player of women’s roles. He had been a boy actor in the late Caroline period, when he learned to cross dress, but his career was cut short by the advent of women on the stage.  Billy Crudup played him rather well in the recent film Stage Beauty, which was based, by the way, on a play.

Thomas Betterton was the most important actor of the era, impressive in both comedy and tragedy. He was the primary player

 of Hamlet in the Restoration; and he was also a bold and daring manager, among other deeds leading the actors in a revolt against their oppressive manager, and forming a new company. He is perhaps the first in a line of star actors/managers for whom an “age” is named. Insiders know that the Age of Betterton signifies the Restoration, and the Age of Garrick the 18th century. But more of that in the not so distant future.

Betterton is on the left here - this is the bedroom scene with the Queen and
the ghost of Hamlet's father. Note that in this and in the picture below Betterton
wears seventeenth century dress.

Before we leave the Restoration, brief notes on two other dramatic forms that began in England during this time. At the very beginning of the previous lecture I noted that English opera began in the home of William Davenant, with The Siege of Rhodes. But composer Henry Purcell really put English opera on the map, not long after that maiden voyage. He wrote several operas but his most important was The Fairie Queen, which used as its source A Midsummer Night's Dream. In fact it, and others of Purcell's operas, remain in the repertoire today. Just a few examples in pictures:

Jonathan Kent is the director who put the Almeida Theatre on the map - here you see
Bottom and Titania, observed by Oberon

Kent cleverly made use of seventeenth century techniques, such as flying machines

But he also moved into the surreal...what is the Fairie Queen, after all, but a dream!

Mark Morris of course has his own dance company, and is having fun with this production of Purcell at the English National Opera (ENO, in London

Even more briefly I want to point out another popular form that had its origins at this time. Read the words in the picture below:

And if you've ever strolled around Little Venice in London, you'll see that puppet theatre and the Punch and Judy show has not gone away!

Next time we leap across time and space to Asia, for an all too brief look at theatre in India, China and Japan!