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2 - The life cycle of the Restoration play

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2014

David Roberts
David Roberts
Affiliation:
Birmingham City University
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Summary

Managerial revolutions

In the midst of political regime change, theatre people contended with their own upheavals of leadership and culture. Competing managerial ideologies and practices, and financial success and failure, made Restoration Drama rich in allusions to what was, for all the comforts of royal patronage, a cut-throat business environment. 1660 saw the restoration not just of monarchy but of state-sponsored theatre, which had languished since the outbreak of civil war. A surprising amount of semi-official theatre survived during the 1650s amid the demolition of playhouses and army raids on unlicensed performances, but it was not until Charles II’s return that actors could work again under the sort of protection they had enjoyed during his father’s reign. Even so, opportunities were restricted, and deliberately.

Two licensed companies operating under the names of the king and the Duke of York maximized the chances of official control, and the managers who ran them did not flinch from using their duopoly to suppress unofficial competition. Sir William Davenant of the Duke’s Company (see below, pp. 93–6) and Thomas Killigrew of the King’s (see below, pp. 96–9) were genial rivals, charged with implementing Charles II’s Francophile tastes in theatre, but equally concerned with making their businesses profitable at a time when the total audience for London theatre probably numbered fewer than 30,000.

Type
Chapter
Information
Restoration Plays and Players
An Introduction
 , pp. 29 - 66
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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