Dramatick opera in the 1680s

It is impossible to know whether or not the Duke’s Company might have attempted another dramatick opera—using John Banister or perhaps an untested younger composer—in the spring of 1679, had not the political situation in England deteriorated so precipitously the previous autumn. The cessation of dramatick operas after Circe and what might be called the “regularization” of spectacle-tragedy from 1680 may reveal the extent of the change forced upon the proprietors of Dorset Garden by the advent of national crisis. In this new climate, it must have seemed as if the days of even the well-established precursor of the dramatick opera form were numbered. Three productions mounted by the Duke’s Company—John Crowne’s Henry the Sixth, The First Part (?January–March 1681 ¹ ), Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d (February 1682), and Dryden and Lee’s The Duke of Guise (November 1682)—offered brief spectacular trap effects, but unaccompanied by any flying or music, and hence they cannot be said to rise to the level of spectacle-tragedy. The last of these was presented by the newly created United Company after the Duke’s Men had absorbed their foundering competitors in the late spring: initially planned for a summer production, The Duke of Guise was banned in July for its alleged references to the Duke of Monmouth, and only appeared following its reauthorization in October, ² whereupon the amalgamated company had taken up primary residence at the newer, if somewhat less sophisticated, Drury Lane. In all three of the aforementioned cases, however, the venue would hardly have mattered, considering the relatively facile nature of the stage effects.