Dorset Garden Theatre

The founder of the Duke's Company (and Poet Laureate) Sir William Davenant, was a proponent of changeable scenery and theatrical machinery, which he is credited with introducing to the English public stage.

[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).

"[13] The site for the new theatre, by Dorset Stairs in Whitefriars on the Thames, was slightly upstream from the outlet of the New Canal, part of the Fleet River.

Its position on the Thames permitted the patrons to travel to the theatre by boat, avoiding the nearby crime-ridden neighbourhood of Alsatia.

[16] A foreign visitor reported in 1676 that it contained a central "pit", in the form of an amphitheatre, two tiers of seven boxes each holding twenty people, and an upper gallery.

[19] The forestage provided actors, singers and dancers with a sizeable downstage, a well-illuminated performance space, free of grooves.

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).

It was designed for staging Restoration spectaculars, and was the only playhouse in London capable of all the effects these exuberant spectacles required.

South façade of the Dorset Garden Theatre, as it was pictured in the libretto of The Empress of Morocco (1673). With 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 Duke's Theatre at Dorset Garden: a 19th-century artist's impression
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.