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Covent Garden Theatre, 1732

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2010

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

It has long been known that details of the design of John Rich's Covent Garden theatre of 1732 are contained in the Chancery bill of complaint that he entered against the builder, Edward Shepherd, in Shepherd's lengthy answer, and his counter-complaint. These documents, written on the usual great membranes and now rather scuffed and rubbed, are difficult to work with because of their physical characteristics and their interminable repetitiveness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , May 1992 , pp. 32 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1992

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References

1 Public Record Office (PRO) C11'2662'1 (Rich's complaint and Shepherd's answer, dated 15 March 1733'4 and 3 May 1734) and C11'2732'81 (Shepherd's complaint, dated 24 May 1734).

2 Survey of London 35, The Theatre Royal Drury Lane and The Royal Opera House Covent Garden (London: Athlone Press, 1970), 86–8.

3 Scouten, Arthur H., ed., The London Stage 1660–1800, Part 3: 1729–1747 (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1961), 1: xxvii–xxxii.Google Scholar

4 “John Rich and the First Covent Garden Theatre,” ELH 17 (1950): 296–306.

5 In his complaint Shepherd says that he “drew several Draughts and designs for the said John Rich.”

6 A comparable set of Articles of Agreement concerning Shepherd's work in Grosvenor Square is extant in PRO C105'32'1, dated 6 April 1728.

7 Dumont, Gabriel Pierre Martin, Parallele de plans des plus belles salles de spectacles… (Paris, 1774; reprint, New York: Blom, 1968)Google Scholar, unpaginated.

8 Internal evidence in Dumont's section suggests that the upper gallery and its ceiling, as well as the pit ceiling, had been altered after Shepherd's original completion, in order to provide more seating space.

9 Mistranscribed by Vincent, 299 as “Joyner,” and therefore unidentified.

10 A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 (London: J. Murray, 1978), 477.

11 The length of Morris's absence is unknown. Colvin, p. 560, reports that it was “between June 1731 and November 1732,” but during much of this period Morris was being paid by Sir Michael Newton for work at Old Burlington Street.

12 Illustrated in Summerson, John, Georgian London, 3rd. ed. (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1978), plate 11.Google Scholar

13 Shepherd's design of No. 19 Grosvenor Square, with its sophisticated quotation from Palladio's Palazzo Thiene in Vicenza and Webb's drawings based on Jones's Star Chamber design of 1617, is an important essay in the neo-Palladian movement. See Survey of London, 40, The Grosvenor Estates in Mayfair, Part 2 (London, 1977), 133–36.

14 The foundations apparently included timber piles. Rich complained that he had contributed valuable timber to the project without compensation; Shepherd in his answer grudgingly admitted that “some small quantity of the Complainants Old Oak might be made use of in Sills and in piles for the foundation.”

15 In the Harvard Theatre Collection. Transcribed by Vincent, 300–301, note 12.

16 PRO C33/370/part II, 254v. Jobs listed include “Mending a hole in the Tiling of the New Playhouse,” “Lathing up hole over the stage,““Mending the piers next the Fields,” “About the cross walls and drains.”

17 Compare Shepherd's complaint, with its slight change of phrasing: the builder “hath put Kribs of Timber to tie the Building together all round the same.” Bonding timbers were finally outlawed as a fire risk by the Building Act of 1765. See Cruikshank, Dan and Wyid, Peter, London: The Art of Georgian Building (London: Architectural Press, 1977), 29.Google Scholar

18 “The Carpenters putting Joyce from The partition wall of the lobby to the foundation wall of the Boxes wich Joyce they had began To lay only 4 Inches into the wall but have Wth Much adoe laid them Quite through Its to be Observad that on this foundation wall the Gallery will be Supported therefore Care ought To be taken Accordingly-.” Vincent, 300, note 12.

19 London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 15 September 1740, cited in Nicoll, Allardyce, The Garrick Stage: Theatres and Audience in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Rosenfeld, Sybil (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1980), 52–4.Google Scholar

20 “Satturday ye 28th [August 1731]: The Carpenters at work on the Frameing of the Roof at Mr Theobalds yard”; “Wednesday ye 3d [November 1731]: The Carpenters raising the Principals Which fell Yesterday…”; “Tuesday ye 9th: the Bricklayers bringing up the Gable ends 3 bricks thick, which shold be but 2, I think it's Adding weight were it may very likely Doe Prejudice to the Building, but Can be of no Service, the reason Induceing them to Doe It I Iudge To be. they have fram'd the roof to Short by 9 Inches…“Vincent, 301, note 12. James Theobald's woodyard was in Lambeth, and Theobald himself a business associate of Edward Shepherd as well as the friend of several notable Palladian architects. In 1727 he had succeeded William Stukeley as Secretary of the Society of Antiquarians: Evans, Joan, A History of the Society of Antiquarians (London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 1956), 78.Google Scholar

21 PRO C11/2732/81.

22 Described by Leacroft, Richard, The Development of the English Playhouse (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), 140–1.Google Scholar Holland's scheme included, according to his own MS account, “four very large resevoirs of Water, distributed from them all over the House, intended to extinguish fire.” Survey of London 35 SO.

23 Shepherd's complaint. A similar claim in his answer omits the reference to the painters’ and carpenters’ rooms.

24 B. L. Add. MS. 12201, fol. 61, printed in Thomas, David and Hare, Arnold (romps.), Restoration and Georgian England, 1660–1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 317.Google Scholar

25 At the British Museum. The drawing is printed by Rosenfeld, Sybil, Georgian Scene Painters and Scene Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, frontispiece and 10–11.

26 Strapped flies and a ceiling are illustrated by Dumont in a section of the stage-end trusses at the Versailles Opera House made in 1769.

27 Vincent, 300–301, note 12.

28 At LIF there were “Columns of Pier glass, rais'd for the better illuminating the Stage and other Parts of the House” (Daily Journal, 27 September 1725). Rich may have intended to repeat the effect at Covent Garden.

29 The Palazzo Thiene is illustrated in the second book of the Quastro Libri (Venice, 1570); the Grosvenor Square houses may be seen in a view by Edward Dayes reproduced in Summerson, John, Architecture in Britain 1530–1830 (Harmondsworth, 1970), plate 319.Google Scholar The swagged subfrieze became a favorite motif of the provincial Palladians, especially of both the John Woods in Bath: see Mowl, Tun and Earnshaw, Brian, John Wood, Architect of Obsession (Bath: Millstream Books, 1988)Google Scholar, especially 151, 166 and 176.

30 “The surveyor's room has something of the proportions and breathes something of the spirit of Vitruvius's Egyptian Hall. Its Corinthian half-columns against the walls correspond to the Ionic pilasters in the room below, but here there is a deep frieze filled with bounteous plaster swags between the capitals …” Survey of London, 40: 12. Shepherd was by trade a plasterer, and his early Georgian interiors are among the most accomplished extant from the period in London.

31 Mackintosh, Ian and Ashton, Geoffrey, The Georgian Playhouse: Actors, Artists, Audiences and Architecture 1730–1830 (London: Arts Council, 1975), no. 265.Google Scholar

32 For the pigeon holes see The London Stage, Part 2: 1700–1729, 1: lix.

33 Reproduced by Nicoll, , The Garrtck Stage, 55.Google Scholar

34 By Vandergucht, Gerard. Reproduced in Survey of London, 35 plate 41b.Google Scholar

35 The scrolls at the corners of the stage are illustrated in the print mentioned above, note 33, as are the spikes across the orchestra partition. The scrolls without the orchestra spikes appear in the “Fitzgiggo riot” print of 1763: Nicoll, 28. In addition the prints show spikes on the stage box fronts; they do not record the “Iron Scroles which encompass each Stage Box.” The scrolls and spikes were gilded, by Rich rather than Shepherd, who was required merely to finish them “that they might be in some readiness for the Gilding.”

36 Reproduced in Thomas and Hare, 82.

37 “Wren's Drury Lane,” Architectural Review 110 (1950): 43–6; Leacroft's position is revised somewhat in The Development of the English Playhouse, 92–4.

38 Dumont does show the “canted” partitions of the front boxes in his section; he would presumably have indicated a similar canting in the gallery if it had existed.

39 Adam fitted extensions of the kind envisioned here to the side box fronts at Drury Lane in 1775. They are visible in the engraved view of the Drury Lane auditorium contained in The Works in Architecture of Robert and James Adam (London, 1779), II. set v, plate vii.