Behind City Walls: Restoration Actors in the Drapers' Company

Abstract

In 1934, Louis B. Wright wrote, “All the world knows since the publication of studies by Professors Graves, Rollins, and Hotson that . . . [the drama's] light never went out completely.” Yet in a 2001 reference book, a contributor writes, “After an eighteen year hiatus. . . .” No wonder that Dale Randall could legitimately write in 1995, “We are asked to believe that little or nothing happened in English drama for the next eighteen years” beginning in 1642. His Winter Fruit is an important survey of dramatic activity during the Interregnum, and scholars continue to document the varieties of theatrical activities in the period. My essay is a modest contribution to the accumulation of details about a lingering, integral puzzle: how two London companies with experienced actors and new stars came into existence so quickly in 1660. It also shows that the Old City of London was not as inhospitable to drama as it is often portrayed. The piece of this puzzle that I can supply is the picture of John Rhodes and the Drapers' Company. Of Rhodes, John Downes wrote that in the winter of 1659–60 he “fitted up a House then for Acting call'd the Cock-Pit in Drury-Lane, and in a short time Compleated his Company.” Downes supplies a list of plays acted there beginning in February and comments that one of these new actors, Thomas Betterton, then “but 22 Years Old, was highly Applauded for his Acting . . . ; his Voice being then as Audibly strong, full and Articulate, as in the Prime of his Acting.”