Dorset Garden Theatre

Coordinates: 51°30′51″N 0°6′29″W / 51.51417°N 0.10806°W / 51.51417; -0.10806
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

51°30′51″N 0°6′29″W / 51.51417°N 0.10806°W / 51.51417; -0.10806

Hollar’s rendering of the exterior, published in 1681/82,[1] it is the only primary source as to what the exterior looked like. Several other pictures exist (see below), but as they are from the early nineteenth century, more than a hundred years after the theatre had been demolished,[2]
they cannot be considered to be reliable sources.

The Dorset Garden Theatre in London, built in 1671, was in its early years also known as the Duke of York's Theatre, or the Duke's Theatre. In 1685,

Mary II
came to the throne in 1689.

It was the fourth home of the

Restoration
London, and after 1682 continued to be used by the company's successor, the United Company.

It was demolished in 1709.[3]

Background

After years of being banned during the

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,[4]
where they stayed.

The founder of the Duke's Company (and

Sir William Davenant, was a proponent of changeable scenery and theatrical machinery, which he is credited with introducing to the English public stage.[5] He died before ground was broken on the new theatre in 1670, and so Dorset Garden was built under the auspices of the Davenant family who was running the Duke's Company with aid of a leading actor of the company, Thomas Betterton. The shareholders agreed to raise the funds, which ultimately amounted to some £9,000.[6] They leased a site in Dorset Garden for a period of 39 years (i.e. until 1709) at an annual rent of £130.55.[7] Just before the opening of the Dorset Garden (probably in the summer of 1671) the leading actor of the Duke's Company, Thomas Betterton, took a trip to France. It is believed that the purpose of this trip was to see the latest in French scenic technology to import it to the English stage.[8] This assumption is largely based on the fact that Betterton, serving as William Davenant's deputy, had gone to France for that purpose at the behest of Charles II in 1661 and would go again in 1683 on the king's behalf to bring back an opera and a troupe of dancers for the court's entertainment.[9] After Betterton's return to England in 1671 the Dorset Garden produced a number of increasingly elaborate spectacles, including operatic adaptations of William Shakespeare's Macbeth (1673) and The Tempest (1674), and Thomas Shadwell's Psyche (1675).[10] Characterizing these Restoration spectaculars was the use of changeable perspective scenery; theatrical machinery for moving scenery and flying actors and objects, instrumental and vocal music, dancing, and large casts.)[11]

The building

The Duke's Theatre at Dorset Garden: a 19th-century artist's impression

The theatre was built in the former grounds of Dorset House, London seat of the Sackville

Alsatia
.

It opened on 9 November 1671 and was almost twice the size of the Duke's Company's former theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It became the principal playhouse in London when the Theatre Royal burned down in January 1672, soon to be rivalled however by the new Theatre Royal, which opened in March 1674. After the Duke's Company merged with the King's Company in 1682 to form the United Company, the theatre in Dorset Garden was used mainly for opera, music, and spectaculars, and from the 1690s it was also used for other entertainments, such as weight lifting,[14] until it was demolished in 1709.

Apart from the illustrations in the libretto of The Empress of Morocco, no contemporary pictures of the interior are known. The rivalry between the two companies led to descriptions of the Dorset Garden theatre in prologues and other verse of the period, thus providing us with some evidence as to what the theatre was actually like.

Thomas Betterton lived in an apartment on an upper floor on the south side. A number of eminent people lived nearby: Aphra Behn in Dorset Street; John Dryden in Salisbury Square from 1673 to 1682; and John Locke in Dorset Court in 1690.

It is not known who designed the new theatre building, though tradition ascribes it to

proscenium arch had carvings by Grinling Gibbons
.

The stage

Inside the Dorset Garden Theatre: part of the forestage with doors and balconies on both sides, the proscenium arch with the music box above it and one of the scenes for Elkanah Settle's The Empress of Morocco, performed in 1673. Settle's play included numerous spectacular stage effects.

The Dorset Garden theatre had a large forestage, a typically English feature. Edward Langhans in his reconstruction calculated the forestage to be 19 feet 6 inches (5.94 m) deep and 30 feet 6 inches (9.30 m) wide at the proscenium arch .[19] The forestage provided actors, singers and dancers with a sizeable downstage, a well-illuminated performance space, free of grooves. When a locale was depicted by the scenery, the forestage was understood to be an extension of that place. It served as a vital link between the audience and the performers, the auditorium and the stage, the playgoers and the play.[20] Primary access to the forestage was by permanent proscenium doors, probably two on each side of the stage. Above the doors were balconies, acting spaces that could also serve for seating.

The scenic stage was probably some 50 feet 0 inches (15.24 m) deep and 30 feet 0 inches (9.14 m) high. The proscenium arch may have been some 30 feet 0 inches (9.14 m) wide and at least 25 feet 0 inches (7.62 m) high to accommodate the scenery in operas such as Dioclesian,[21] The Fairy-Queen,[22] or The World in the Moon. Both the forestage and the scenic stage were raked. The music box above the proscenium arch could hold perhaps 8 to 10 musicians, to provide incidental music. A full orchestra would be sitting in the pit, just in front of the stage.

The Duke's Company had already been using moveable

scenery to good effect in their previous playhouses. It was first employed by Davenant at Rutland House
, using shutters in grooves, which could be quickly slid open or closed to reveal a new scene, but Dorset Garden was also equipped to fly at least four separate people and large objects like a cloud covering the full width of the stage and carrying a large group of musicians (Psyche 1675). There were also numerous floor traps. It was designed for staging Restoration spectaculars, and was the only playhouse in London capable of all the effects these exuberant spectacles required.

Notes

  1. ^ Morgan & Ogilby Map of London, 1681/2.
  2. ^ Edward Langhans, 1965.
  3. ^ The London Stage (part 2), p.194, quoting The Daily Courant of 1 June 1709. By that time a new Queen's Theatre had been built (1705) in the Haymarket.
  4. ^ then called Bridges Street theatre, as the entrance was in that street
  5. ^ Downes, John (1987) [1708]]. Judith Milhous; Robert D. Hume (eds.). Roscius Anglicanus. London: Society for Theatre Research. p. 51.
  6. ^ van Lennep, William; Emmett L. Avery; Arthur Scouten (1965). The London Stage 1660–1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments and Afterpieces Together with Casts, Box-Receipts and Contemporary Comment, part 1, 1660–1700. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. p. xxix.
  7. ^ van Lennep, William; Emmett L. Avery; Arthur Scouten (1965). The London Stage 1660–1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainments and Afterpieces Together with Casts, Box-Receipts and Contemporary Comment, part 1, 1660–1700. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. p. xxix.
  8. ^ Highfill Jr., Philip H.; Kalman A. Burnim; Edward A. Langhans (1973). A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, vol. 1, Belfort to Byzand. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. p. 79.
  9. ^ Highfill Jr., Philip H.; Kalman A. Burnim; Edward A. Langhans (1973). A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800, vol. 1, Belfort to Byzand. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 76, 82.
  10. ^ Milhous, Judith (1984). ""The Multimedia Spectacular on the Restoration Stage"". In Shirley Strum Kenny (ed.). British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660–1800. Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library. pp. 41–66.
  11. ^ Milhous, Judith (1984). ""The Multimedia Spectacular on the Restoration Stage"". In Shirley Strum Kenny (ed.). British Theatre and the Other Arts, 1660–1800. Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library. pp. 41–66.
  12. JSTOR 3206223
    .
  13. ^ Letter of Sir George Gresley to Sir Thomas Puckering, 24 October 1629, quoted in Brownstein 1977:232.
  14. ^ Judith Milhous, 1979, p.70.
  15. ^ Diana de Marly, 1975
  16. ^ Morgan & Ogilby's map of London, 1677.
  17. ^ Edward Langhans, 1972, quoting François Brunet (1676)
  18. ^ Robert Hume, 1979, calculation based on box office receipts.
  19. ^ Edward Langhans, 1972
  20. ^ Edward Langhans, 2000
  21. ^ Frans Muller, 1993, including a reconstruction of the stage and the scenery for the final masque in Dioclesian,
  22. ^ Frans & Julie Muller, 2005, including a reconstruction of the stage and the scenery for the final masque in The Fairy-Queen.

References

External links

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