ABSTRACT
Around 1800 probably in excess of twelve thousand people visited the theatre weekly. When, in 1805, in obedience to a new decree from the Bishop of London, the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket brought the curtain down at midnight in the middle of a ballet, the audience screamed their dissent. Before the building was anything like complete, however, in February 1809, the other patent theatre, Drury Lane, was also razed to the ground by fire. When the theatre reopened the protests continued with greater ferocity. The patent theatres’ devotion to classical drama loosened, as the ‘minor’ theatres boomed. The patent houses’ answer was to go ‘downmarket’ and stage extravaganzas and pantomimes of their own and reduce their productions of Shakespeare, new drama and other work which their patents gave them the rights to.
