Theatre Royal

[The Theatre Royal, in Drury Lane.] Theatres ... are 3; The Queens, a strong built spacious one, situate in the Haymarket, of the Dorick Order: The Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, and the Dukes in Dorset Gardens; at the 2 former are acted Tragedies, Opera's, Commedies or Farces, except during Lent and the time of Bartholomew Fair.

[King's Theatre.] Bridges street, of great Resort for the King's Theatre there seated, but not in this [Covent Garden] Parish.

[Drury Lane house.] Theatres, there are only two theatres in this metropolis worthy of notice, and these have no fronts to the street. They are both under his Majesty's companies of comedians, and no new play can be acted in either without the approbation of the Lord Chamberlain, as well as the managers. Drury Lane house appears to be best calculated for the advantage of speaker and hearer, that of Covent Garden for splendor and magnificence. Besides these there is also a theatre for the exhibition of operas, call'd the Opera house, in the Hay-market.

Drury-Lane Theatre. This splendid Theatre Royal, is situated on the right hand of Bridges-street, Covent Garden, going up from Catherine-street, in the Strand, and extends along Little Russell-street into Drury-lane, which is at the back of the stage. The principal front next Bridges-street, is two hundred and thirty-one feet in length, and consists of a handsome elevation of the Ionic order. The interior is very splendid, and the theatrical entertainments are of the first order. The theatre was designed by Benjamin Wyatt, Esq., but the present interior is from the design of Samuel Beazley, Esq.

The first theatre upon this spot, was the Cock-pit, in Drury-lane, to which Sir William Davenant removed his company in 1658, where they performed till the restoration of Charles II., when he removed them to his new theatre in Lincoln's-inn-fields. The Cockpit was then engaged by a bookseller of the name of Rhodes, who had been wardrobe keep to the Blackfriars' Theatre. Davenant and Killegrew afterwards obtained patents from the king for more regular performances, and the latter built a new theatre in Drury-lane. Killegrew's company were called "the King's Servants," and Davenant's "the Duke's Servants." Davenant's theatre is now converted into the spacious warehouses of Mr. Alderman Copeland's China and Earthenware Factory.

In January 1672, Killegrew's theatre was burned down, and was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. This admirable theatre for seeing and hearing, was opened on the 26th of March 1674, and was the scene whereon flourished, in succession, Wilks, Cibber, Booth, Quin, Macklin, Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Pritchard. Within these walls also flourished that ornament of the British theatre, David Garrick, who on his dignified retirement from the stage, assigned his property to the late Richard Brinsley Sheridan and others. These gentlemen pulled down Wren's theatre in 1791, and rebuilt it on too large a scale. It was designed by Holland, in so light and elegant, and airy a style, that it may be considered the very beau-ideal of a metropolitan theatre. This theatre has also its grand reminiscences, for on its boards flourished the inimitable Siddons, and her able brothers, the Kembles. It was there that Bannister, Munden, Elliston, Dowton, Miss Farren, and their cotemporaries entertained and instructed millions, and there it was that the greatest tragedian of domestic life, Fanny Kelly, commenced her brilliant career.

On the night of the 24th of February, 1809, I was an eye witness to the destruction of this splendid pile, within five months after seeing its great rival, Covent Garden, consumed by a similar fate. The present theatre was built by subscription, in shares, and an excellent description of it may be found in a publication of its plans, &c., by the architect. I have also given much more detailed accounts of it, than there is room for in this work, in my London in the Nineteenth Century, wherein there is a well engraved view of its exterior, from a drawing by T.H. Shepherd, Esq., who made the whole series of elaborate architectural views for that work.

This theatre has been successively rented by Elliston, Mr. Price, and American manager, and at present, by Mr. Alexander Lee, the musical composer, who has begun his career with great prospects of success.

Drury Lane Theatre, Catherine Street (formerly Brydges Street) Covent Garden. The first theatre on the site of the present edifice was opened on April 8, 1663, by the King's company, under Thomas Killigrew, with Beaumont and Fletcher's play of The Humorous Lieutenant.¹ It cost £1500. In the Calendars of State Papers we have the following entries, but the reference in them is to the Cockpit, not to the theatre properly so called, which was not then in existence. [See Cockpit, Drury Lane.]

London, March 8, 1617.—Riots on Shrove Tuesday; Drury Lane Playhouse attacked; Finsbury prison broken open; houses at Wapping pulled down and injured.—Chamberlain to Carleton, Cal. State Papers, 1611-1618.

March 8, 1617.—Rising of the Apprentices who pulled down four houses at Wapping, and attacked Drury Lane Theatre, which they would have destroyed had they not been prevented.—Ibid.

The references to the first Drury Lane Theatre are pretty numerous:—

March 2, 1661.—A very large playhouse: the foundation of it laid this month on the back side of Brydges Street, in Covent Garden.—Rugge's Merc. Rediv.

May 8, 1663.—I took my wife and Ashwell to the Theatre Royal, being the second day of its being opened. The house is made with extraordinary good convenience, and yet hath some faults, as the narrowness of the passages in and out of the pit, and the distance from the stage to the boxes, which I am confident cannot hear; but for all other things is well; only, above all, the musique being below, and most of it sounding under the very stage, there is no hearing of the bases at all, nor very well of the trebles, which sure must be mended.—Pepys.

June 1, 1664.—To the King's House, and saw The Silent Woman. ... Before the play was done it fell such a storm of hail that we in the middle of the pit were fain to rise; and all the house in a disorder.—Pepys.

May 1, 1668.—To the King's playhouse, and there saw The Surprisal, and a disorder in the pit by its raining in from the cupola at top.—Pepys.

This house (of which Pepys supplies so uncomfortable a notion) was burnt down in January 1672. An anonymous correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine (May 1802, p. 422) says that the rebuilding of the theatre was assisted by a Brief, and gives the following extract (certified by the signatures of the then curate and churchwardens) from the Register of the church of Symondsbury, Dorsetshire:—

April 27, 1673.—Collected by brief for the Theatre Royal in London, being burnt, the sum of two shillings.

The new theatre was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and cost £4000, though it is called by Dryden in the prologue he wrote "On the Opening of the New House" "plain-built ... a bare convenience only," with "a mean ungilded stage;" and in the epilogue he wrote on the same occasion he speaks of "our homely house." Mr. Collier has printed an "Induction," which, among other things, establishes satisfactorily that the site then, as now, was "between Drury Lane and Bridges Street."² The principal entrance was in Playhouse Passage.³ The new theatre was opened March 26, 1674.

As there are not many spectators who may remember what form the Drury Lane Theatre stood in about forty years ago [1700], before the old Patentee, to make it hold more money, took it in his head to alter it, it were but justice to lay the original figure, which Sir Christopher Wren first gave it, and the alterations of it now standing, in a fair light. It must be observed then, that the area and platform of the old stage projected about four foot forwarder, in a semi-oval figure, parallel to the benches of the pit; and that the former lower doors of entrance for the actors were brought down between the two foremost (and then only) Pilasters; in the place of which doors, now the two stage-boxes are fixt. That where the doors of entrance now are, there formerly stood two additional side-wings, in front to a full set of scenes, which had then almost a double effect, in their loftiness and magnificence. By this original form the usual station of the actors, in almost every scene, was advanced at least ten foot nearer to the audience than they now can be.—Cibber, Apology, ed. 1740, p. 338.

Over the stage was "Vivitur Ingenio."⁴ Two theatres were thought sufficient for the whole of London in the time of Charles II., viz. the King's Theatre, under Killigrew, in Drury Lane, and the Duke's Theatre, under Davenant, first in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and secondly in Dorset Gardens. One was subsequently found sufficient, and on November 16, 1682, the two companies began to play together for the first time in Drury Lane.⁵ On December 1, 1716, a Mr. Freeman, a man of property in Surrey, attempted to shoot George II., then Prince of Wales, in this theatre, during his father's absence in Hanover. The attempt by the lunatic Hatfield on George III. on May 15, 1800, was made in the third Drury Lane theatre. In this house, whither he had gone to see The Island Princess acted for the benefit of his son, then newly entered to sing on the stage, died (1721), before the play began, Louis Laguerre, the painter immortalised by Pope. The Drury Lane of Wren was new-faced by the brothers Adam before Garrick parted with his shares. Horace Walpole has given an amusing account of the uproar occasioned by the introduction of pantomime on the stage of Old Drury, and his own share in it.

The town has been trying all this winter to beat Pantomimes off the stage. ... Fleetwood, the master of Drury Lane, has omitted nothing to support them, as they support his house. About ten days ago he let into the pit great numbers of Bear Garden bruisers (that is the term), to knock down everybody that hissed. The pit rallied their forces and drove them out: I was sitting very quietly in the side-boxes, contemplating all this. On a sudden the curtain flew up, and discovered the whole stage filled with blackguards, armed with bludgeons and clubs to menace the audience. This raised the greatest uproar; and among the rest, who flew into a passion but your friend the philosopher? In short, one of the actors, advancing to the front of the stage to make an apology for the manager, he had scarcely begun to say, "Mr. Fleetwood" when your friend, with a most audible voice and dignity of anger, called out, "He is an impudent rascal!" The whole pit huzzaed, and repeated the words. Only think of my being a popular orator! But what was still better, while my shadow of a person was dilating to the consistence of a hero, one of the chief ringleaders of the riot, coming under the box where I sat, and pulling off his hat, said, "Mr. Walpole, what would you please to have us do next?" It is impossible to describe to you the confusion into which this apostrophe threw me. I sank down into the box, and have never since ventured to set my foot into the playhouse. The next night the uproar was repeated with greater violence, and nothing was heard but voices calling out, "Where's Mr. W.? where's Mr. W.?" In short the whole town has been entertained with my prowess; and Mr. Conway has given me the name of Wat Tyler.—H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, November 26, 1744.

The same amusing writer relates how the House of Commons adjourned on the night of an important debate in order to attend a performance at Drury Lane Theatre, as the House would now for the Derby.

1751.—March the 7th was appointed for the Naturalisation Bill, but the House adjourned to attend at Drury Lane, where Othello was acted by a Mr. Debanal and his family, who had hired the theatre on purpose. The crowd of people of fashion was so great that the Footmans' Gallery was hung with blue ribbons.—Walpole's George II., vol. i. p. 61.

Lavinia is polite but not profane,
To Church as constant as to Drury Lane.
Young's Love of Fame, 6th Satire.

From a letter of Mr. Siddons to Dr. Whalley (4th April 1791) we learn the extreme capacity of the theatre as shown by the receipts on the night of Mrs. Siddons's benefit: "There were £60 more in the house than ever known, or was supposed Old Drury could have contained." A new house, the third (very beautiful, but too large either for sight or hearing), was built by Henry Holland, opened March 12, 1794. It was destroyed by fire on the night of February 24, 1809. Parliament was sitting at the time, and the lurid glare of the flames was visible inside the House of Commons. The cause was soon known. An important debate was in progress, and a motion was made to adjourn. But Sheridan (who was a principal shareholder in the theatre) said with the utmost carelessness that "whatever might be the extent of the present calamity, he hoped it would not interfere with the public business of the country."⁶ Speaker Abbot mentions in his Diary that "persons at Fulham could see the hour by their watches in the open air at twelve at night." A new theatre, the fourth, was forthwith erected, Mr. Benjamin Wyatt being the architect. The first stone was laid October 29, 1811; it was opened October 10, 1812, with a prologue by Lord Byron. This, the last and most memorable fire, together with the advertisement of the committee for an occasional prologue, gave rise to the Rejected Addresses, the famous jeux d'esprit of Messrs. James and Horace Smith, in imitation of the poets of the day. The portico towards Catherine Street was added during the lesseeship of Elliston (1819-1826), and the colonnade in (Little) Russell Street in 1831.

To allay the fears of the public the new theatre was fitted with an elaborate arrangement of perforated pipes by which every part of the house might be deluged with water on the outbreak of a fire. The "Lane," as it is familiarly called by members of the profession, is the oldest theatre in London with the exception of Sadlers' Wells.

Drury Lane Theatre, though not actually in Drury Lane, derives its name from the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane, where Killigrew acted before he removed to the site of the present theatre. The first Drury Lane Theatre (so called) was often described as the theatre in Covent Garden. Thus, under February 6, 1663, Pepys writes, "I walked up and down and looked upon the outside of the new theatre building in Covent Garden, which will be very fine." And thus Shadwell, in the preface to The Miser, "This play was the last that was acted at the King's Theatre in Covent Garden before the fatal fire there." There was no Covent Garden Theatre, commonly so called, before 1732.⁷ [See Playhouse Yard.]

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¹ Downes, p. 3. See also play-bill of this date in Collier, vol. iii. p. 384.

² Shakspere Society, Misc. Papers, vol. iv. p. 149.

³ Strype's Map of St. Clement's Danes.

⁴ Epilogue to Farquhar's Love and a Bottle.

⁵ Ibid., p. 120.

⁶ Moore's Life of Sheridan.

⁷ Of the exteriors of the early theatres we have unhappily no views. Of the new Catherine Street façade by the brothers Adam there is a large engraving by Begbie, and a small one by J.T. Smith. Of the interior there is a view in the Londina Illustrata. Views of Holland's Theatre are of common occurrence.