ABSTRACT

Our identification of a coherent set of musical and technical principles that can be applied to the theatrical productions of the Protectorate makes it all the more curious that the rich tradition of dramatic music established, in particular, in Davenant’s operatic venture is so little in evidence in the years immediately after the Restoration. While the notion of English opera may have persisted in the public consciousness, the three leading London impresarios of the early 1660s-Davenant, Thomas Killigrew, and George Jolly-devoted their attention to the performance of straight plays in which (as we have seen in the cases of Rhodes, Part 2 and Mustapha) music had little if any currency. Indeed, after the production of The History of Sir Francis Drake, a full quarter of a century was to elapse before through-sung opera in English would be heard again on the London stage. This fact would appear to fly in the face of inclusive language used in those all-important documents that established the institutions of the post-Restoration theatre, namely, the licenses and patents that created at first three, and then ultimately two, companies whose virtual monopoly over the performance of “legitimate” theatre would remain in force in England for over 300 years.1 That language is exemplified in the formal patents issued to Killigrew on 25 April 1662 and to Davenant on 15 January 1663, as well as that given to one William Legge on 31 March 1664 for the erection of the jointly controlled “Nursery” for the training up of young actors: all three stipulate that theatres may be erected “wherein tragedies, comedies, plays, operas, music, scenes, and all other entertainments of the stage whatsoever may be showed and presented.”2 Indeed, the provocative reference to “operas” recurs in a number of

1 The terms of the 1660 arrangement, codified in the Licensing Act of 1737 (10 Geo. II, cap. 28) and its successor, the Theatres Act of 1843 (6 & 7 Vict., cap. 68), were finally repealed with the passage of the Theatres Act of 1968 (1968, cap. 54).