The fifth century BC was the only period of theatre history when plays were created for a single performance. The sense of immediacy that this suggests in terms of the theatrical potential of the plays is frequently overlooked, as is the corresponding freedom from commercial pressures enjoyed by the playwrights. To think of the theatre of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes as entirely free from the ‘taint’ of other than sublime artistic and religious motives, however, is to underestimate both the practicality of the Athenians in organisational matters and the constant dependance of the theatre as an institution on its patrons.

Between 1657 and 1680 the Florentine agent in London was Giovanni Salvetti. His weekly reports to Florence include many references to the Restoration stage, some of which I published in Vol. II, No. 1 of Theatre Research International. The present article gives translations of passages of interest to the theatre historian taken from the dispatches of the decade 1670–1680. The original letters are in the Archivio Mediceo, held at the Archivio di Stato in Florence, but they are accurately transcribed in B.L. Additional MS 27962 A-W, and it is from these transcripts that I have made the translations. Each of the following entries begins with the volume and folio reference to the British Library transcript; then comes the date of the dispatch as given by Salvetti in the new style, followed by the old-style date (in brackets) then in use in England. All the letters from which I have quoted are addressed to the secretariat in Florence.

Surveys of nineteenth-century drama and theatre in England fall approximately into two categories: an examination of the development of the drama itself – tragedy, comedy, melodrama, farce, etc. – with some theatrical context provided, and a study of changing theatrical conditions, with some reference to the drama. In both cases what we are told about the theatre relates to acting, architecture, methods of production, lighting, costuming, company organisation, the actor-manager, and so forth. Never, or hardly ever, are we told anything about audiences: what kind of audiences went to what theatres, what their class was, what jobs they did, how much they got paid, what their non-theatrical tastes were, how often they went to the theatre, where they lived and under what conditions. Such information, however, is essential if we are fully to understand the repertory or style of a particular theatre at a particular time in history, and ultimately the character and content of the drama itself.

Ten-year intervals are well known to have been of special significance in the international history of staging Peer Gynt. The play was written in Southern Italy in 1866–7; it was first staged in Kristiania in 1876, and produced for the second time in Copenhagen in 1886. The Paris performance at the Théâtre de 1'Oeuvre with Lugné-Poë as The Old Man of the Dovre in 1896 marked the beginning of its becoming internationally known.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, 25 October 1893, a well-dressed young woman alighted at the terminal station of the Great North of Scotland Railway line to Ballater. A discerning London playgoer, seeing her in the unlikely setting of this remote Scots village, would have recognised the stranger as Elizabeth Robins, one of the three most ‘interesting’ and advanced actresses of the day. American by birth and early stage training, she had passed through London in the summer of 1888 on her way to and from a Norwegian holiday and, encouraged by Oscar Wilde, she had remained to try her luck in the English theatre. Her moment had come in April 1891 when she had triumphantly created Hedda Gabler on the British stage, and early in 1893 – a year she afterwards referred to as ‘outstanding’ – she had won a still greater triumph when she acted Hilda Wangel in her own presentation of The Master Builder. Pioneering matinées, however, could not in themselves support an independent, impecunious and expatriate actress, and Miss Robins, who was now thirty-one, had appeared in two Adelphi melodramas as well as for fashionable actor–managers. In May of this very year she had magnanimously yielded the dazzling part of Paula in Pinero's new and adult drama The Second Mrs Tanqueray to her friend Mrs Patrick Campbell and so had lost, perhaps for ever, the chance of becoming a celebrated and modish actress.

I went to see Robert Aron in the summer of 1972. He was then seventy-four years old, a tall, striking man in an apartment of stuffed furniture overrun by books. In all my meetings that summer with former surrealists, people who had made avant-garde theatre in Paris in the 1920s, there was always a sense of trembling at reaching out to touch cobwebbed memories. Forty-five years had passed since the events we talked about. Tristan Tzara, recalled by Gide as a charming man with a young wife who was ‘even more charming’, had since fought with the French Resistance during World War II and later joined the Communist Party. André Breton, when he died in 1966, was accompanied to his grave by ‘waves of young men and young girls often in couples, with arms entwined’. They had come from all over France to pay him tribute. Philippe Soupault is a respected editor, critic and radio commentator, Louis Aragon is at the forefront of the French Communist Party and dislikes talking about his days as a Surrealist, Roger Vitrac is an acknowledged and produced playwright while Artaud is a cult figure. There are moments when in looking back, the whole Dada-Surrealist performance world looks like some great Dada swindle perpetrated on the only too fallible researcher and critic. Robert Aron does nothing to dispel this feeling. The man who sent a telegram to Breton warning him that he would stop at no measures to keep the fervent Surrealist claque from disturbing the performance of Strindberg's A Dream Play at the Théâtre Alfred Jarry, was elected a member of the French Academy before his death.

During the German occupation, theatres in France had never been so full; the reasons for this phenomenon are not difficult to understand: other traditional leisure-time activities were seriously curtailed – restaurants were closed, films were either out of date or impossibly pro-German and there was no petrol for motor-cars. One of the very few areas of French life which was not seriously affected was the theatre; of course the theatre had its difficulties – materials for scenery, costumes and make-up were difficult to come by, and the activities of the censor reduced the number of plays which could be produced.