ABSTRACT
Charles Davenant’s introduction of the shutter and groove system which he may have aimed to do in his projected public theatre of 1639, turned into a significant innovation in the Restoration public theatre. Before the Restoration, British public theatres had had open stages without pictorial or scenic elements. It is rarely realised just how much music there was in the Restoration playhouse. The lighting in Restoration theatre was important. Dances of all sorts feature in almost every Restoration play–country dances, social dances, jigs, masked dances, clown dances; and there are many full-blown masques, which may take up a quarter of an hour or more during the play. Though those acting specialised characters, like the kings in white and the fiddlers in green in the spectacular scene from The Rehearsal, might be given their costumes, most plays were set contemporaneously, and actors provided many parts of their costume themselves.
