SEASON OF
1791-1792
the conclusion of the preceding season, on 4 June, the old
Drury Lane Theatre was permanently closed. Its acting
manager, John Kemble, and its principal patentee, R. B. Sheridan,
Pi& thereupon decided to transfer the company’s activities to the
recently built King’s Theatre in the Haymarket.
This theatre, having no patent for the performance of opera, was
standing unoccupied. Furthermore, its legal affairs at this time were in
a state of inextricable confusion: trustees, creditors, debtors, leases both
expired and unexpired, reversions, claims on the premises by the descendants
°f Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect of the original building, were all
intermingled to a degree that “In the history of property, there has probably
been no parallel instance wherein the legal labyrinth has been so difficult
to thread. ”1 But at this juncture it chanced that Sheridan was a
member of a committee established for the purpose of attempting to
straighten matters out. Eventually this committee was not unsuccessful,
and it had the blessing of the Lord Chamberlain. In any event,
Sheridan was in a position to ask for, and to obtain the use of the
theatre, pending the settlement of its legal difficulties, for his Drury Lane
company.
A considerable amount of reorganization of the auditorium and the
stage had to be undertaken. The stage itself was too big for the scenery
owned by its new tenants; hence “a second frontispiece [i.e. false proscenium]
18 to come down to the top of the low scenery of Drury.”2 The auditorium
1 Benjamin Lumley, Reminiscences of the Opera , 1864, 3. A detailed account of this “labyrinth”
as indeed it was — is set forth in Survey of London , xxix, 233-36.
2 Orach, 2 August 1791.
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