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Scenes and Machines at the Cockpit, Drury Lane

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

John Orrell
John Orrell
Affiliation:
Professor of English at the University of Alberta
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Extract

Colin Visser's recent article, “The Descent of Orpheus at the Cockpit, Drury Lane,” performed a valuable service by calling attention to the presence of technically sophisticated French “Machine” drama in London as early as 1661. Visser bases his argument on a pamphlet in the Malone collection at the Bodleian, “The Description of the Great Machines, of the DESCENT of ORPHEUS Into Hell. Presented by the French Commedians at the Cock-pit in Drury-lane.” This libretto, printed in both English and French, does not identify the French troupe, but Chapoton's Descente d'Orphée was in the repertory of les comédiens de Mademoiselle d'Orléans, a touring company whose name disappears from the Continental records for most of the period of French activity at the Cockpit.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , November 1985 , pp. 103 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1985

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References

NOTES

1 Theatre Survey, 24 (1983), 35–53.Google Scholar

2 14 September 1933, p. 61.

3 For Salvetti see my article “A New Witness of the Restoration Stage, 1660–1669,” Theatre Research International, n.s. 2 (1976–1977), 16–28.Google Scholar

4 The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Volume II, 1661, edited by Latham, Robert and Matthews, William (London, 1970), pp. 165–66.Google Scholar

5 Calendar of Treasury Books, 1660–1667, p. 311, and C.S.P. (Domestic) 1661–2, p. 174 (warrant docquet dated 10 December).

6 Municipal Archives, the Hague, dossier 514, dated 5 November 1663; a further document is signed by Channouveau on 7 November, cited by Fransen, J., Les Comédiens Français en Hollande (Paris, 1925), p. 112 n. 2Google Scholar. The full name is Jean Godart, sieur de Champnouveau.

7 Printed by Faber, Frédéric, Histoire du Théâtre Français en Belgique, 5 vols. (Brussels and Paris, 1878–1880), IV, 225–26.Google Scholar

8 Seaton, Ethel, Literary Relations of England and Scandinavia in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1935), pp. 333–4Google Scholar: on Monday 30 January 1662 (20 January old style) Jacques Thierry and Will Schellinks saw “de France Comedij Andromeda.”

9 Relations Véritables, cited by Visser, p. 46.

10 Fransen, p. 108 and Liebrecht, Henri, Histoire du Théâtre Français à Bruxelles (Paris, 1923), pp. 64–65.Google Scholar

11 Notariat Général du Brabant, liasse 1320, dated 23 January 1662, cited by Liebrecht, p. 64 n. 5.

12 Colin Visser, p. 48, believes that when Pepys saw the French scenic play at the Cockpit on 30 August it cannot have been staged by the Mademoiselle troupe, who had, he says, returned to Brussels after their season at Rouen was completed, and passed on to England thereafter, arriving in September or later. Visser cites as his source Deierkauf-Holsboer, Wilma, Le Théâtre du Marais (Paris, n.d. [1954]), II, 142Google Scholar, but I find no evidence there for this journey via Brussels. Dorimond, one of the leaders of the troupe, signed a document at Rouen on 13 August o.s. (23 August n.s.) and the company is not heard of again among the Continental records until 28 December o.s. at Brussels. It could easily have been at work in Drury Lane by 30 August, though doubtless not well rehearsed in the house, Pepys finding their offering “nasty and out of order and poor.”

13 Mackintosh, Iain, “Inigo Jones — Theatre Architect,” TABS 31, no. 3 (1973), 99–105Google Scholar, and Orrell, John, “Inigo Jones at the Cockpit,” Shakespeare Survey 30 (1977), pp. 157–68.Google Scholar

14 Reproduced in Orgel, Stephen and Strong, Roy. Inigo Jones: the Theatre of the Stuart Court, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1973), 11, 786, drawing no. 443.Google Scholar

15 At Chatsworth. It is reproduced by Keith, William Grant, “The Designs for the First Movable Scenery on the English Public Stage,” Burlington Magazine, 25 (1914), 87.Google Scholar

16 B.L. LansdowneMS. 1171, fols llb and 12.

17 “To the Reader,” in The Siege of Rhodes (London, 1659), sig. A2a.Google Scholar

18 See Hotson, Leslie, The Commonwealth and Restoration Stage (Cambridge, Mass., 1928), p. 96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 PRO, SP 128/108, dated June 1656.

20 The Cruelly of the Spaniards in Peru (London, 1658), t.p. and sig. A2a.

21 Sig. A2a.

22 At Chatsworth. They are reproduced by Keith, pp. 87, 90 and 93.

23 The contract is printed by Faber, IV. 225–6.

24 Visser, though he cites this document (p. 53 n. 23), does not quote it, giving space instead to Liebrecht's somewhat fanciful conflation of similar contracts for the Gracht jeu de paume made with four different companies over some 30 years. Only the document of 7 January 1662 (n.s.) concerns the Mademoiselle players and their machine plays.

25 Notariat Général du Brabant, liasse 226, dated 14 October 1680.

26 Liebrecht, p. 77.

27 About 18 ft. 1½. in. in English measure. The document uses pieds du roy, a little larger than English feet.

28 Faber, IV, 227.

29 See Bentley, G.E., The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols (Oxford, 1941–1968), VI, 304–9.Google Scholar

30 Le Théâtre du Marais, 1, 108–13.

31 (London, 1663), sig. b1a−b. Ostensibly the Prologue refers to the Duke's Theatre, at which the Second Part had recently been performed, but the play was entered in the Stationers' Register on 30 May 1659 at a time when it was probably acted at the Cockpit.