In Rochester's London courtiers thronged to the theatre and, as the most conspicuous members of the audience and part of the spectacle, led the applause or derision. Occasionally a court wit would expose himself to the supreme risk of writing for the stage. In 1664 Sir George Etherege had a success with The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub, which when it was published was dedicated to Lord Buckhurst; this success was repeated in 1667 with She would if she could. In 1668 Sir Charles Sedley had his greatest success with The Mulberry Garden. In 1776 Etherege produced his masterpiece, The Man of Mode or Sir Fopling Flutter, in which the character Dorimant was said to be modelled on Rochester, which is probably as true as such assertions ever are.

Rochester's poetic imagination was essentially dramatic; even his most lyrical poems presuppose not only a speaker but a situation. The longer poems in heroic couplets are often theatrical, presenting one scene after another, or scenes within scenes. Rochester's voices are always colloquial, and often so sharply individual that an entire personality can be extrapolated from an idiom. As early as 1672 Dryden, reading Rochester's selfconsciously literary couplets in A Collection of Poems, Written upon Several Occasions, by Several Persons knew that they crackled with nervous energy. Not long afterwards he sought Rochester's help with his new comedy, Marriage A-la-Mode, which took the boards in March 1673. When the play was subsequently published, it was dedicated to Rochester. Dryden expressed his relief that Rochester had so far no ambition to write for the theatre.

In the spring of 1673 Rochester wrote a prologue for the second of the performances at court of Elkanah Settle's Empress of Morocco. (His enemy Mulgrave wrote the prologue for the first performance.) In 1674 Nathaniel Lee dedicated to Rochester his tragedy Nero and Sir Francis Fane his comedy Love in the Dark.