In his introduction to the excellent Revels edition of The Duchess of Malfi John Russell Brown provides a brief, updated stage history of John Webster's best known tragedy. Although Brown does much to correct the impression that Samuel Phelps' nineteenth-century revival was unsuccessful, even he does not fully indicate the Duchess' popularity during the twenty-five years following the Sadler's Wells performance of November 20, 1850. Nor does the statement of Don D. Moore in John Webster and His Critics 1617–1964 that “only in the mid-twentieth century—and then infrequently— has Webster on the stage been acceptable” help to correct the traditional misconception.

The Union of the Companies that had brought the theatre of London under the one roof of Drury Lane in 1682 degenerated under the mis-management of Christopher Rich into open rebellion in 1695. In that year Betterton and a group of followers abandoned the Theatre Royal to set up a rival company in the old theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. This new group managed quite successfully for several seasons, but a decline soon set in, partly due to the shabby old theatre itself, but mainly due to internal bickering and poor management. By the first years of the eighteenth century the company was in such straits that a revitalization was understood to be necessary if the players were to survive.

The equipping of theaters with fire-prevention devices is generally considered to be a relatively recent concern. For example, Barnard Hewitt writes of the American theater: “No one concerned himself with prevention until Steele MacKaye made a nuisance of himself with buckets, hoses, and fireproofing of scenery.” It is true that the prevention of fires in theaters did not become a significant public issue until the latter half of the nineteenth century. MacKaye was responding to increased public concern for the safety of theatergoers. Fires in theaters were indeed tragically common during that century. Gas lighting created a considerable fire hazard, and after its introduction in the first quarter of the century the incidence of fires in theaters increased alarmingly.

Paralleling in time, though not in power, the national expansion and concentration in finance, transportation, and manufacturing, the American theatre entered the 1860's as primarily a stock-company operation, but emerged from the decade as a traveling theatre with a central concentration in New York City. Circuits and booking agencies organized by managers and producers during the seventies and eighties led eventually to the virtual monopoly of the American theatre established by the Theatrical Syndicate in 1896.