ABSTRACT
These two excellent Companies were both prosperous for some few Years, ’till their Variety of Plays began to be exhausted. Then of course the better Actors (which the King’s seem to have been allow’d) could not fail of drawing the greater Audiences. Sir William D’Avenant, therefore, Master of the Duke’s Company, to make Head against their Success was forc’d to add Spectacle and Musick to Action and to introduce a new Species of Plays, since call’d Dramatick Opera’s, of which kind were the Tempest, Psyche, Circe, and others, all set off with the most expensive Decorations of Scenes and Habits, with the best Voices and Dancers.
