Sites for Music in purcell's Dorset Garden Theatre

Abstract

During the Commonwealth era, most of London's theaters and playhouses were demolished by order of the Puritan Parliament. When theatrical entrepreneurs resumed activity upon the return of Charles II to the throne in 1660, the buildings that they used were either improvised or newly built.1 The Vere Street Theatre and Lisle's Tennis Court Theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields were both converted from tennis courts. Among the newly built theaters, the old Drury Lane Theatre at Bridges Street, which operated from 1662 until its destruction by fire in 1672, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, successor of the former and in operation from 1674 until beyond the end of the century, and the Dorset Garden Theatre, which opened in November of 1671, merit special notice.2