The long stage life of A Midsummer Night's Dream as a leafy Victorian valentine, with all the traditions our era has so strained to be rid of, is all but gone—with few questions ever having been asked about its origins and development. That Victorian stage image of the play, still familiar to us, owes the most to the production of the remarkable Madame Lucia Elizabeth Vestris. Her A Midsummer Night's Dream opened on 16 November 1840, in the second of her three season management of Covent Garden with her new husband and lessee, Charles James Mathews. As well as restoring the text, for which Odell duly credited her, Vestris set many precedents in staging, casting, costuming, and music. Her production has never been studied in detail, either for itself or its considerable influence.

The drama critic for the Saturday Review began his column of 7 January 1882 by alluding to the "new and curious chapter" which was then being "added to the 'Calamities and Quarrels of Authors.'" He was referring to the furor which followed the production a week earlier of Arthur Wing Pinero's new play The Squire at the St. James's Theatre in London, and which was fast becoming the most publicized literary wrangle in years. Within hours of the fall of the curtain on opening night Pinero found himself accused by a number of newspaper reviewers of having stolen his plot, situations, and main characters from Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (1874).

One of the commonly propagated and accepted myths in 19th century theatre history relates to the origin of the box set. The impulse to name Madame Vestris and the first production of Dion Boucicault's London Assurance originates from broadly disseminated misinformation. Two contemporary American theatre historians have written extensively and with seeming authority on the origins of the box set: John H. McDowell and Orville K. Larson. McDowell in his article, “Historical Development of the Box Set,” established the basis for the wide acceptance of the Madame Vestris myth and is commonly quoted in support of that argument.

At 12:30 P.M. on Monday, 30 April 1764, the curtain parted on the stage of the Little Theatre in the Hay-Market in London and revealed George Alexander Stevens about to begin his celebrated Lecture on Heads. For the remainder of the century this presentation became a staple in the English speaking theatre. It amassed a fortune for its creator, was copied and adapted by dozens of performers, and went through 30 published editions, authentic and spurious.

William Gillette spent more than sixty of his eighty-three years on the American stage as an active playwright, actor, designer, and producer. A major figure between 1880 and 1910, the Age of Melodrama in American theatre, Gillette is remembered primarily for his portrayal of the master sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, and as the author of melodramas such as Held by the Enemy and Secret Service.

Love's Mistress, or The Queen's Masque, first produced in 1634, marks the triumphant conclusion to Thomas Heywood's prolific career as a dramatist. It is fitting, after Heywood's thirty-eight years of service to the London stage as both actor and playwright, that this play should have been "three times presented before their two excellent Majesties within the space of eight days."