More light (and some speculation) on Vanbrugh’s Haymarket Theatre project

Abstract

Abstract John Vanbrugh opened his new theatre in London’s Haymarket in April 1705. In 1976 Judith Milhous located (at the University of Nottingham) a list of subscribers to the project and (at the British Library) the contract between Vanbrugh and the Duke of Newcastle. This article reconsiders those discoveries by Milhous and considers several newly uncovered documents, which shed light on how such opera subscription projects were conducted. Political biographies of the subscribers to the Haymarket Theatre indicate it was primarily a Whig project, but not necessarily a Kit-Cat Club project. The contracts with the subscribers allowed them to use the theatre ten nights a year for their own use for plays or entertainments. It is speculated the Haymarket Theatre may have been intended to serve as a venue for a musical facet of the emerging Whig cultural programme, which is otherwise best known for literary productions.