Restoration spectacular

The spectacular is defined by a large number of sets and performers required, the vast sums of money invested, the potential for great profits, and the long preparation time needed.

[5] Previous generations of theatre historians have criticized the operatic spectaculars, such as John Dryden's comments about expensive and tasteless "scenes, machines, and empty operas".

The first, The State of Innocence (1677), was never staged, as his designated company, the King's, had neither the capital nor the machinery for it: a dramatization of John Milton's Paradise Lost, it called for "rebellious angels wheeling in the air, and seeming transfixed with thunderbolts" over "a lake of brimstone or rolling fire".

When the two companies merged in the 1680s and Dryden had access to Dorset Garden, he wrote one of the most visual and special-effects-laden machine plays of the entire Restoration period, Albion and Albanius (1684–85): The Cave of PROTEUS rises out of the Sea; it consists of several arches of Rock-work adorned with mother-of-pearl, coral, and abundance of shells of various kinds.

[citation needed] There are no extant drawings or descriptions of machinery and sets for the Restoration theatre, although some documentation exists for court masques from the first half of the 17th century, notably the work of Inigo Jones and his pupil John Webb.

Milhous concludes from a review of Dorset Garden performances that "at a conservative estimate" the theatre was equipped to fly at least four people independently and had some very complex floor traps for "transformations" such as that of Proteus.

[citation needed] There are scarcely any descriptions or reactions preserved from the "golden era" of the machine play in the 1670s–90s, although a general idea of its technology can be gathered from the better-documented French and Italian opera scenery which inspired Thomas Betterton at Dorset Garden Theatre.

[citation needed] In William Davenant's Salmacida Spolia (1640), the last of the court masques before the Civil War, Queen Henrietta Maria (who was pregnant at the time) makes her entrance "descending by a theatrical device from a cloud.

"[citation needed] As early as 1639, Davenant had obtained a royal patent authorizing the construction of a large new public theatre with technology that would allow such effects and accommodate music, scenery, and dancing.

[10] The public stage ban from 1642 to 1660 imposed by the Puritan regime represented a long and sharp break in dramatic tradition but was never completely successful in suppressing the theatre industry.

[citation needed] The competition, Davenant's "Duke's Company", was relegated to a secondary position due to its young, scratched-together troupe and scarcely any performance rights.

The devoted playgoer Samuel Pepys called it "the finest playhouse... that ever was in England" in his diary, a sentiment he would need to revise many times over the coming decade, and recorded his awe at seeing Michael Mohun, "who is said to be the best actor in the world", act on its stage.

[citation needed] Davenant was far behind, but chose to put all his capital into the outfitting of a new superior playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields (simultaneously, with great foresight, prying loose the rising young star Thomas Betterton from the King's Company), which was received positively by the public.

[citation needed] Lincoln's Inn Fields opened on 28 June 1661, with the first "moveable" or "changeable" scenery used on the British public stage, (i.e., wings or shutters that ran in grooves and could be smoothly and mechanically changed between or even within acts).

The competing King's Company suddenly found itself playing to empty houses, as Pepys notes on 4 July: I went to the theatre [in Vere Street] and there I saw Claracilla (the first time I ever saw it), well-acted.

Audiences appreciated both luxury and appropriateness of décor and costume: Pepys was quite capable of going several times to see a play that, as such, he disliked, purely for the pleasure of viewing striking and innovative scenery like "a good scene of a town on fire".

[citation needed] The companies struggled to outdo each other in catering to these expensive tastes, with precarious finances and the ever-present consciousness that the investments could literally burn to the ground in a few hours.

Although the Dorset Garden Theatre quickly became a famous and glamorous venue, very little is concretely known about its construction, though a vague and undocumented tradition ascribes its design to Christopher Wren.

The King's Company, all but bankrupt after the crushing blow of the fire in Bridges Street, invited the French musician Robert Cambert to perform his opera Ariadne as one of the first productions at their new playhouse in Drury Lane.

In this street is a large triumphal arch, with columns of the Doric order, adorned with the statues of Fame and Honour, &c. beautified with festoons of flowers, all the enrichments of gold.

The many highly paid dancers would have been busy in many roles, returning as townspeople after the scene change of Act 3 with most of the gold paint hastily washed off, and entranced looking upwards to see "Mars and Venus meet in the air in their chariots, his drawn by horses, and hers by doves".

In 1682, the companies merged, making Dorset Garden's technical resources available to Dryden, who rapidly overcame his principled objection to the superficiality of "spectacle" and "empty operas".

[25] Unusual visual allegory in this Tory panegyric of Charles II and the House of Stuart includes a figure representing the radical Whig leader Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury "with fiend's wings, and snakes twisted round his body; he is encompassed by several fanatical rebellious heads, who suck poison from him, which runs out of a tap in his side.

[26][27] While the United Company's takings were being bled off by Davenant's sons, one of whom, Alexander, was forced to flee the country in 1693[28] and other predatory investors, Thomas Betterton continued to act as de facto day-to-day manager and producer, enjoying a budget on the scale of Cecil B.

[29] In the early 1690s, he staged the three real operas of the Restoration spectacular genre, or the shows usually so designated: Dioclesian (1689–90) by Massinger/Fletcher/Betterton; King Arthur (1690–91) by John Dryden; and The Fairy-Queen (1691–92), adapted from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream by perhaps Elkanah Settle, all of them featuring music by Henry Purcell.

[31] The spectacular play saw a sharp decline during the Restoration period, but spectacle would continue on the English stage as the splendors of Italian grand opera hit London in the early 18th century.

[citation needed] There have been a small number of attempts to resurrect the Restoration spectacular as a background to modern cinema: Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen features at its start perhaps the most accurate reconstruction, with painted scenery, mechanisms and lighting effects typical of the period.