[4] After the eleven-year-long Puritan Interregnum, which had seen the banning of pastimes regarded as frivolous, such as theatre, the English monarchy was restored to the throne with the return of Charles II in 1660.

[8][9] Imitating the innovations at Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Theatre Royal also featured moveable scenery with wings or shutters that could be smoothly changed between or even within acts.

[12] Killigrew's investment in the new playhouse put the two companies on a level as far as technical resources were concerned, but the offerings at the Theatre Royal nevertheless continued to be dominated by actor-driven "talk" drama, contrasting with William Davenant's baroque spectacles and operas at Lincoln's Inn Fields.

[13] Internal power structures were the main reason for this difference: while Davenant skilfully commanded a docile young troupe, Killigrew's authority over his veteran actors was far from absolute.

Such a division of power between the patentee, Killigrew, and his chief actors led to frequent conflicts that hampered the Theatre Royal as a business venture.

Actors such as Hart and Charles II's mistress Nell Gwyn developed and refined the famous scenes of repartee, banter and flirtation in Dryden's and Wycherley's comedies.

[17] With the appearance of actresses for the first time at Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields in the 1660s,[18] British playwrights wrote parts for outspoken female characters, daring love scenes and provocative breeches roles.

[23] Green baize cloth covered the benches in the pit and served to decorate the boxes (additionally ornamented with gold-tooled leather) and even the stage itself.

[30] Careful inspection of the drawing at All Souls' College, Oxford Library shows that it has one pencil inscription: "Play house" [sic], which may have been added by a librarian or by anyone else.

[31] Robert D. Hume of Penn State University explained that use of the drawing "rests almost entirely on the supposition that the so-called "Wren section" at All Souls represents this theatre.

The building was smaller than this, as reliable surveys and maps of the period show three passageways measuring between 5 and 10 ft (1.5 and 3.0 m) wide surrounding the Theatre Royal on three sides.

The cost of constructing the new theatre, replacing their costumes and scenery lost in the fire and competitive pressure from the rival Duke's Company contributed to its decline.

[39] An added difficulty for Killigrew and his sons Thomas and Charles was the political unrest of 1678–1684 with the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill crisis distracting potential audiences from things theatrical.

By 1695, the actors, including day-to-day manager and acting legend Thomas Betterton, were alienated and humiliated enough to walk out and set up a cooperative company of their own.

Nine men and six women departed, all of them established professional performers, including such draws as tragedian Elizabeth Barry and comedian Anne Bracegirdle, leaving the United Company – henceforth known as the "Patent Company" – in "a very despicable condition," according to an anonymous contemporary pamphlet: The disproportion was so great at parting, that it was almost impossible, in Drury Lane, to muster up a sufficient number to take in all the parts of any play; and of them so few were tolerable, that a play must of necessity be damned, that had not extraordinary favour from the audience.

No fewer than sixteen (most of the old standing) went away; and with them the very beauty and vigour of the stage; they who were left being for the most part learners, boys and girls, a very unequal match for them that revolted.

A lawyer named William Collier was briefly given the right to mount productions in Drury Lane, but by 1710 the troupe was in the hands of the actors Colley Cibber, Robert Wilks, and Thomas Doggett – a triumvirate that eventually found themselves sharply satirised in Alexander Pope's Dunciad.

Cibber was the de facto leader of the triumvirate, and he led the theatre through a controversial but generally successful period until 1733, when he sold his controlling interest to John Highmore.

It is likely that the sale was at a vastly inflated price and that Colley's goal was simply to get out of debts and make a profit (see Robert Lowe in his edition of Cibber's Apology).

[46] It was during this period that actor Charles Macklin (a native of Inishowen in County Donegal in Ulster) rose to fame, propelled by a singular performance as Shylock in an early 1741 production of The Merchant of Venice, in which he introduced a realistic, naturalistic style of acting, abandoning the artificial bombast typical of dramatic roles prior.

He is remembered as one of the great stage actors and is especially associated with advancing the Shakespearean tradition in English theatre – during his time at Drury Lane, the company mounted at least 24 of Shakespeare's plays.

Garrick shared the stage with company including Peg Woffington, Susannah Cibber, Hannah Pritchard, Kitty Clive, Spranger Barry, Richard Yates, and Ned Shuter.

Active management of the theatre was carried out by several parties during Sheridan's ownership, including himself, his father Thomas, and, from 1788 to 1796 and 1800 to 1802, the popular actor John Philip Kemble.

[53] Sheridan employed dozens of children as extras at Drury Lane including Joseph Grimaldi who made his stage debut at the theatre in 1780.

Various accounts from the period bemoan the mammoth size of the new theatre, longing for the "warm close observant seats of Old Drury," as one May 1794 theatregoer put it.

[68] The present Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, designed by Benjamin Dean Wyatt on behalf of the committee led by Whitbread, opened on 10 October 1812 with a production of Hamlet featuring Robert Elliston in the title role.

The 19th-century run of financial and artistic failures at Drury Lane was interrupted by four plays produced over a twenty-five-year period by the actor-playwright Dion Boucicault: The Queen of Spades (1851), Eugenie (1855), Formosa (1869), and The Shaughraun (1875).

[91] Using a team of specialists,[92] the detailed restoration has returned the public areas of the Rotunda, Royal Staircases and Grand Saloon, all of which were part of the 1810 theatre, to their original Regency style.

[108] Various people have reported seeing the ghost, including W. J. MacQueen-Pope, who described its usual path as starting at the end of the fourth row in the upper circle and then proceeding via the rear gangway to the wall near the royal box, where the remains were found.

Macklin appears backstage, wandering the corridor which now stands in the spot where, in 1735, he killed fellow actor Thomas Hallam in an argument over a wig ("Goddamn you for a blackguard, scrub, rascal!"