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The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a theatre in the West End area of London, officially situated on Catherine Street, but backing onto Drury Lane just to the east of Covent Garden. The current theatre opened in 1812, the most recent in a line of theatres that opened in 1663 (burned down in 1672), 1674 (demolished in 1791) and 1794 (burned down in 1809).

For its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre" and thus one of the most important theatres in the English-speaking world. Through most of that time it was one of a small handful of theatres granted monopoly rights to the production of legitimate drama in London.

First theatre: 1663

After the decade-long Puritan Interregnum, which had seen the banning of pastimes seen as frivolous, including theatre, the English monarchy was restored to the throne with the return of Charles II in 1660. Soon after, Charles issued Letters Patent to two parties licensing the formation of new acting companies. One of these went to Thomas Killigrew, whose company would become known as the King's Company, and who would build a new theatre in Drury Lane. The Letters Patent also granted the two companies a shared monopoly on the public performance of legitimate drama in London; this monopoly would be challenged in the 18th century by new venues and by a certain slipperiness in the definition of "legitimate drama", but remained legally in place until 1843. The new playhouse, architect unknown, opened on May 7 1663 and was known from the placement of the entrance as the "Theatre Royal in Bridges Street". It was a three-tiered wooden structure, 112 feet long and 59 feet wide; it could hold an audience of 700. The King himself was a not infrequent attendee of the theatre's productions, as was Samuel Pepys, whose private diaries provide much of what we know of the London theatre scene in the 1660s. The day after the Theatre Royal opened, Pepys attended a performance of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher's The Humorous Lieutenant. He has this to say in his diary:

The house is made with extraordinary good contrivance, and yet hath some faults, as the narrowness of the passages in and out of the Pitt, and the distance from the stage to the boxes, which I am confident cannot hear; but for all other things it 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.

Performances usually began at 3pm to take advantage of the daylight: the main floor for the audience, the pit, had no roof in order to let in the light. A glazed dome was built over the opening, but, judging from another one of Pepys' diary entries, the dome was not entirely effective at keeping out the elements: he and his wife were forced to leave the theatre to take refuge from a hail storm.

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. The backless green benches in the pit were in a semi-circular arrangement facing the stage, according to a May 1663 letter from one Monsieur de Maonconys: "All benches of the pit, where people of rank also sit, are shaped in a semi-circle, each row higher than the next." The three galleries formed a semi-circle around the floor seats; both the first and second galleries were divided up into boxes.

This theatre and the one built in Lincoln's Inn Fields by the Duke's Company (the other acting company to receive royal Letters Patent) were innovative in several ways. They were the first public theatres in England to feature "moveable" or "changeable" scenery, with wings or shutters that could be smoothly changed between or even within acts. When not in use, the shutters rested out-of-sight behind the sides of the proscenium arch, which also served as a visual frame for the onstage happenings. This picture-frame-like separation between audience and performance was a new phenomenon in English theatre, though it had been found on the Continent earlier. However, theatre design in London remained ambivalent about the merits of the "picture-box" stage, and for many decades to come London theatres including Drury Lane would have large forestages protruding beyond the arch, oftentimes including the thrust stages found in the Elizabethan theatres. The players could still step forward and bridge the distance between performer and audience, and more than that, it was not unusual for audience members to mount the stage itself. Not until the mid-1700s, under the management of David Garrick, were spectators to be completely barred from the stage.

The Great Plague of London struck in the summer of 1665, and the Theatre Royal, along with all other public entertainment, was shut down by order of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London on 5 June. It remained closed for 18 months, until the autumn of 1666, during which time it received at least a little interior renovation, including widening of the stage. Although the theatre survived the Great Fire of London, which raged through the city in September 1666 (and probably hastened the end of the plague), it was to burn down six years later, on January 25 1672.

Second theatre: 1674

The theatre was succeeded on the same site by a larger and more elaborate building designed by Christopher Wren, which housed an audience of 2,000. Its opening was attended by Charles II on March 26 1674. The new theatre retained the green cloth of the first, but seems to have been built according to a more rectilinear plan. Henri Misson, a visitor from France, offers a description of the theatre in 1698:

The Pit is an Amphitheatre, fill'd with Benches without Backboards, and adorn'd and cover'd with green Cloth. Men of Quality, particularly the younger Sort, some Ladies of Reputation and Virtue, and abundance of Damsels that haunt for Prey, sit all together in this Place, Higgledy-piggledy, chatter, toy, play, hear, hear not. Farther up, against the Wall, under the first Gallery and just opposite to the Stage, rises another Amphitheatre, which is taken by persons of the best Quality, among whom are generally very few Men. The Galleries, whereof there are only two Rows, are fill'd with none but ordinary People, particularly the Upper one.

The image to the right shows a cross-section of a playhouse drawn by Wren, and is thought to be a plan for the 1674 Theatre Royal. The second Amphitheatre mentioned by Misson, in the rear, is the lower gallery.

With active management carried out by his sons Thomas and Charles, Killigrew continued as head of the theatre until 1682, when, after years of financial difficulties, the King's Company was taken over by its rival, the Duke's Company. Led at the time by Thomas Betterton, the United Company, as it was now called, chose Drury Lane as their production house, leaving the Duke's Company's theatre in Dorset Garden closed for a time. In 1688, Betterton was removed from managerial control by Alexander Davenant, son of William Davenant, the original patent holder for the Duke's Company. Davenant's management (with Charles Killigrew) proved brief and disastrous, and by 1693 he was fleeing to the Canary Islands in the wake of embezzlement charges. The Theatre Royal would find itself in the hands of lawyer Christopher Rich for the next 16 years.

Rich's tenure is generally seen as one of cost-cutting tyranny, pitting actor against actor, all the while slashing salaries. Thomas Betterton remained at Drury Lane only until 1695, when he succeeded in obtaining a license from King William III to start a separate drama company, and left with many other United Company players to reopen the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields. After this split, the Drury Lane troupe was generally called the "Patent Company". Christopher Rich would continue as its head until 1709, when the patent in question was actually revoked amid a complex tangle of political machinations. 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 would eventually find themselves sharply satirized in Alexander Pope's Dunciad. In 1713, Barton Booth replaced Doggett.

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). Members of the troupe at the time were most displeased; an actor's revolt was organized and executed; Charles Fleetwood came to control the theatre.

In 1747, Fleetwood's playhouse patent expired. The theatre and a patent renewal were purchased by actor David Garrick and partner James Lacy. Garrick served as manager and lead actor of the theatre until roughly 1766, and continued on in the management role for another ten years after that. 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. Some of Shakespeare's surge in popularity during this period can be traced to the Licensing Act of 1737, which mandated governmental approval of any play before it could be performed and thereby created something of a vacuum of new material to perform.

1776 saw Garrick leaving the stage with a series of farewell performances and selling his shares in the theatre to the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Sheridan and his partners would complete their purchase of Drury Lane two years later, and Sheridan would own it until 1809. Active management of the theatre was carried out by a number of parties during Sheridon's ownership, including himself, his father Thomas, and, from 1788–96 and 1800–2, the popular actor John Philip Kemble.

Third theatre: 1794

The theatre was in need of updating by the end of the 18th century and was demolished in 1791. A third theatre was designed by Henry Holland and opened on March 12 1794. This was a cavernous theatre, accommodating more than 3600 spectators. The motivation behind building on such a large scale? In the words of one owner:

I was aware of the very popular notion that our theatres ought to be very small; but it appeared to me that if that very popular notion should be suffered to proceed too far it would in every way deteriorate our dramatic performances depriving the proprietors of that revenue which is indispensable to defray the heavy expenses of such a concern.

New technology facilitated the expansion: iron columns replaced bulky wood, supporting five tiers of galleries. The stage was large too: 83 feet wide and 92 deep. Holland, the architect, said it was "on a larger scale than any other theatre in Europe". Except for churches, it was the tallest building in London.

The "very popular notion that our theatres ought to be very small" proved hard to overcome, however. 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 theatre-goer put it. Actress Sarah Siddons, then part of the Drury Lane company, called it "a wilderness of a place" (and would leave Drury Lane along with her brother John Philip Kemble in 1803). Not only was any sense of intimacy and connection to the company on stage lost, but the very size of the theatre put a great deal of the audience at a such a distance from the stage so as to make hearing a player's voice quite difficult. To compensate, the productions mounted in the new theatre tended more toward spectacle than the spoken word.

An example of such a spectacle is a 1794 production that featured real water flowing down a rocky stream into a lake large enough on which to row a boat. This water issued from tanks in the attics above the house, which were installed — along with a much-touted iron safety curtain — as proof against fire. Despite these precautions, the building lasted for only 15 years before burning down on February 24 1809.

Richard Sheridan continued as theatre owner during the entire lifetime of this third building. He had grown in stature as a statesman during this time, but troubled finances were to be his undoing. The 1794 rebuilding had cost double the original estimate of £80,000, and Sheridan bore the entirity of the debt. Productions were more expensive to mount in the larger structure, and increased audience revenues failed to make up the difference. Already on the shakiest financial ground, Sheridan was ruined entirely by the 1809 fire. He turned to brewer Samuel Whitbread, an old friend, for help. Whitbread agreed to head a committee that would manage the company and oversee the rebuilding of the theatre, but asked Sheridan to withdraw from management himself, which he did entirely by 1811.

Modern theatre

The present Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, designed by Benjamin Wyatt on behalf of the committee led by Whitbread, opened on October 10 1812 with a production of Hamlet featuring Robert Elliston in the title role. The new theater made some concessions toward intimacy, seating 3060 people, about 550 fewer than the earlier building. In 1820, the portico that still stands at the theater's front entrance on Catherine Street was added, and in 1822, five years after gas lighting was installed, the interior underwent a significant remodelling. The colonnade running down the Russell Street side of the building was added in 1831.

Productions relying more on scenery and effects than on dialogue and acting remained commonplace in the new facility. The 1823 production of Cataract of the Ganges had a finale featuring a horseback escape up a flowing cataract "with fire raging all around". Effects for an 1829 production were produced by hydraulic apparatus that reportedly could discharge 39 tons of water.

There were those concerned that the theatre was failing in its role as one of the very few permitted to show legitimate drama. Management of the theatre after it reopened in 1813 fell to Samuel Arnold, overseen by an amateur board of directors and a subcommittee focusing on the theatre as a center for national culture. (Lord Byron was briefly on this subcommittee, from June 1815 until leaving England in April 1816.) The committee-led efforts to appeal to culture, or to simply stop the theatre from losing money, eventually proved a failure, and in 1819 the theatre and all its accompanying rights were leased to Robert Elliston. Elliston was bankrupt and unable to renew his lease in 1826. Through most of the remainder of the 19th century, Drury lane passed quickly from one set of hands to another, and even well-remembered efforts like William Charles Macready's 1841–43 seasons were financial disasters.

The theatrical monopoly first bestowed by Royal Letters Patent 183 years earlier was abolished by Parliament in 1843. Productions relying on spectacle became even more the norm at Drury lane in the later parts of the century, particulary under the managements of Augustus Harris (1879–96) and Arthur Collins (1896–1923). Examples include the successful 1909 The Whip, which featured not only a train crash complete with hissing steam, but also a horserace: twelve real horses jockeying on an on-stage treadmill.

The last major interior renovation was in 1922, leaving a four-tiered theatre able to seat between 2,200 and 2,300 people. Today the theatre is part of the West End theatre scene, generally staging popular musical productions. It is owned and managed by Really Useful Theatres, a division of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Really Useful Group. Long-running recent productions include 42nd Street (1984–89) and Miss Saigon (1989–99). It is currently showing a revival of Mel Brooks' musical The Producers.

Ghosts

Drury Lane has been called one of the world's most haunted theatres. The appearance of almost any one of the handful of ghosts that are said to frequent the theatre signals good luck for an actor or production. The most famous ghost is the "Man in Grey", who appears dressed as a nobleman of the late 18th century: powdered hair beneath a tricorne hat, a dress jacket and cloak or cape, riding boots and a sword. Legend says that the Man in Grey is the ghost of a knife-stabbed man whose skeletal remains were found within a walled-up side passage in 1848.

The ghosts of actor Charles Macklin and comedian Joe Grimaldi are supposed to haunt the theatre. Macklin appears backstage, wandering the corridor which now stands in the spot where, in 1735, he killed his fellow actor Thomas Hallam in an argument over a wig. ("Goddamn you for a blackguard, scrub, rascal!" he shouted, thrusting a cane into Hallam's face and piercing his left eye.) Joe Grimaldi is a helpful apparition, purportedly guiding nervous actors skillfully about the stage on more than one occasion.

References

• Auburn, Mark S. (1995). "Theatre in the age of Garrick and Sheridan". In James Morwood, David Crane eds. (ed.). Sheridan Studies. Cambridge University Press. pp. 7–46. ISBN 0521464668. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
• Bradby, David; Jame, Louis; Sharratt, Bernard (1981). Performance and Politics in Popular Drama. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521285240.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Mackintosh, Iain (1993). Architecture, Actor and Audience. Routledge UK. ISBN 0415031834.
• Nagler, Alois M (1959). A Source Book in Theatrical History. Courier Dover. ISBN 0486205150.
• Spiers, Rupert (2002). "Restoration Theatre". Retrieved April 13. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
• Thomson, Peter (1995). "Drury Lane, Theatre Royal". In Banham, Martin (ed.). The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge University Press. pp. 309–311. ISBN 0521434378.

Notes

1. Thomson p. 309
2. The single roadway now named Catherine street was for most of its history named Catherine Street in its southern portion and Bridges (or Brydges) street in its northern.
3. Beauclerk, Charles (2005). Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King. Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 0-87113-926-X. pp 59–60.
4. Pepys diary for May 1663. From www.pepys.info.
5. Beauclerk p. 60
6. Spiers, Theatres
7. Ibid, citing David Thomas, Theatre in Europe: A Documentary: History Restoration and Georgian England 1660-1788, ed. David Thomas, Cambridge University Press 1989, p.66.
8. Mackintosh p. 20
9. Pepys' March 19 diary entry reports this, also bemoaning "but God knows when they will begin to act again".
10. Later theatre manager Colley Cibber writing in 1740 states that Wren was the designer. (Nagler p. 207)
11. Nagler p. 208.
12. Spiers, Companies
13. Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition
14. Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition
15. Auburn p. 42
16. Thomson p. 310 specifies 3611.
17. Mackintosh p. 34
18. ibid.
19. John Byng, later Viscount Torrington. (Mackintosh p. 35)
20. Mackintosh p. 34
21. Bradby et al p. 92.
22. Auburn p. 44
23. Auburn p. 45
24. All details in this paragraph are from Thomson p. 310.
25. Bradby et al, pp. 103–104
26. Bradby et al, p. 103
27. Bone, Drummond ed. (2004). The Cambridge Companion to Byron. Cambridge University Press. pp. p. 135. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); |pages= has extra text (help); Text "ISBN 0521786762" ignored (help)
28. Thomson p. 310
29. ibid
30. http://www.show-and-stay.co.uk/the-producers-drury-lane.html
31. All haunting details from Ogden, Tom (1999). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ghosts and Hauntings. Alpha Books. pp. pp 232–33. ISBN 0028636597. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
32. http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~pcraddoc/macklin.html

External links

• Theatre homepage. Includes Java-based 360° "virtual tours" of interior.
• 19th Century Spectacle from PeoplePlay UK's Theatre Museum. Features photographs of and information about the technology and machinery that produced the theatrical effects at Drury Lane in the late 19th and early 20th century.

• Christopher Wren buildings
• Westminster
• Theatres in London