United Company (theater)

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The United Company was a London theater company that was formed from the merger of the King's Company with the Duke's Company in 1682 and temporarily held the theater monopoly of London.

history

The theater companies of the King's Company and the Duke's Company suffered a sharp decline in attendance during the unrest surrounding the Papist conspiracy , which lasted from 1678 to 1681. When the King's Company made financially disastrous management decisions regarding a new theater in Drury Lane , the Duke's Company offered to merge into the United Company in 1682 - under their leadership. The first performances under the new company name began in November 1682. The previous venue of the King's Company, the Theater Royal Drury Lane , was still used for plays and the technically equipped Dorset Garden Theater of the former Duke's Company for operas and spectacles.

When King Charles II died in February 1685 , the theater on Drury Lane was closed and only reopened in January 1688 under the patronage of James II. The line of succession from William III. and Maria II in 1689, however, did not result in royal patronage and interest in the theater waned.

The United Company formed a theater monopoly in London. This left both actors and playwrights in a weak negotiating position with the theater management. Diversity also became impoverished. When the two original societies previously competed against each other, many new pieces were performed every year. With the monopoly, however, their number decreased drastically. Between 1675 and 1678, the two competing companies together performed 68 new pieces; only 19 in the United Company's first four seasons.

The end

In 1693 Christopher Rich took over the management of the theater. His authoritarian style of leadership soon caused displeasure among the actors. He has been described as "as sly a Tyrant as ever was at the Head of a Theater" ("as cunning as a tyrant as he was ever at the head of a theater") . Tribal emblem members such as Elizabeth Barry , Thomas Betterton and Anne Bracegirdle left the United Company together with 12 other actors ( "the very beauty and vigor of the stage" ) to found their own theater company. Elizabeth Barry was one of the company's patent holders . Their first play, which they played on April 30, 1695 at the reopened Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater , was the premiere of "Love For Love" by William Congreve . So they now entered into competition with the noticeably thinned United Company, which now only appeared as a permanent ensemble under Rich in Drury Lane. The Dorset Garden Theater was hardly used and was demolished after the lease expired in 1709.

Beginning in 1705, the Bettertons company played in the new Queen's Theater, today's Her Majesty's Theater , on the Haymarket .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The Cambridge History of British Theater Jane Milling, Peter Thomson, Joseph W. Donohue (CUP 2004) ISBN 0-521-65040-2 ; limited preview in Google Book search
  • Fitzgerald, Percy Hetherington. A New History of the English Stage. London, Tinsley Brothers, 1882.
  • Milhous, Judith. Thomas Betterton and the Management of Lincoln's Inn Fields, 1696-1708. Carbondale, IL, Southern Illinois University Press, 1979.