What shape was the Blackfriars' auditorium? Those reconstructions that have been made to date are agreed that it was rectangular, the galleries following the line of the walls of the Upper Frater or Parliament Chamber, the large rectangular room in which the theatre was fitted up by James Burbage in 1596. Because the room was oblong, so was the auditorium. Yet the sparse material evidence about the playhouse is silent on this point, and no serious study has been made in an attempt to justify the usual interpretation. The matter is far from trivial, for a rectangular house suggests kinship with the routine fitting-out of the various halls at Court for the performance of plays and masques, while the alternative – that the Blackfriars had a segmental or U-shaped auditorium – would almost certainly indicate derivation from a European theatre tradition most readily available in the woodcut designs published by Sebastiano Serlio in the second book of his Architettura (Paris, 1545), and stemming originally from the rounded form of the ancient Roman theatre.

An interesting incident at one of the London theatres, which has been overlooked by theatre historians, is recorded in the Historical Collections of Nehemiah Wallington, a citizen and turner of London. Wallington (1598–1658) operated a small independent business in Eastcheap and, in common with many other contemporaries of middling station, had a very pious cast of mind. For thirty years he compiled a collection of memorabilia of men and affairs, and particularly of events which revealed the workings of Providence. Early in 1642 he recorded the following:

Mark the judgement of God upon one that stood in defence of plays, and to maintain them.

The importance of the actor benefit in the eighteenth-century London theatre is manifest. An actor's benefit was a key part of his or her contract, and the income it produced was a crucial supplement to the performer's ordinary salary. A benefit for a single performer could easily yield more than £50 (after expenses) early in the century – a. sum which might double the annual income of a second or third rank member of a company. The long string of benefits at both Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn.Fields each spring soon after 1700 (visible as soon as daily newspaper advertisements become customary) often total twenty or more at each house, and the actor benefit was to remain a basic feature of financial arrangements in London theatres throughout the eighteenth century.

‘Before attending the performance of Tragedy, it is easy to know what the Characters in it will be. If one expects to see appear a Tyrant, a Usurper, an unhappy Prince, a Princess who loves and hates; one will not be much mistaken. One does not at all fear being placed in the ranks of the plagiarists, when one gives to the Hero of a new Play, the same passions which have already served as subject for a hundred Tragedies …’ (Nougaret, 1979, I, p. 169). So wrote Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Nougaret in Paris, and indeed a feature of central importance in eighteenth-century tragedies is their use of idealized characters. The range of types from which the tragedian selected his cast was small and specialized – hero, heroine and villain or villainess with their confidants, noble elders who were often parents of the hero or heroine, forthright soldiers – and equally restricted was the range of passions proper to each role, in accordance with its bienséances. The choice of plot for the writer was similarly specialized. A well-known eighteenth-century writer on rhetoric remarked that ‘in tragedy it is necessary to be especially careful that the action of the hero who usually gives his name to the tragedy is not unfamiliar and drawn from the obscurity of an unknown tale’ (Jouvency, 1725, p. 75). Thus the eighteenth-century classical tragedian worked within strict bounds of form and content in accordance with the conventions of his time, in which the artistic proprieties were closely linked with those of everyday life and its rigid code of social deportment. Mercier, a well-known writer and dramatist, even went so far as to say: ‘…we have only one single Tragedy, that is to say, one same mould, one same tone, one same progress.’ (Mercier, 1778, p. 119)

The historic château of Fontainebleau was a favourite temporary residence of French kings from the twelfth century to the time of Napoleon. The château served as a place of rest and relaxation for the Jung and his court and at least one voyage was customarily made each autumn for the purposes of hunting and recreation. During the reign of Louis XV such voyages were carefully planned and the king set down the dates of arrival and departure on his calendar each New Year's day. Nothing was allowed to interrupt this schedule.