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3 unusual facts about Rutland House


Rutland House

Rutland House on Aldersgate Street, near Charterhouse Square in the City of London, close to Smithfield Market, was leased by the playwright and impresario Sir William Davenant (1606–1668).

Davenant established at least two other "private performance houses" in Lincoln's Inn Fields and Drury Lane.

The reason for Rutland House being used rather than a conventional theatre was to overcome the laws of censorship which operated in all public places following the closures of all public theatres by the Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell.


1656 in literature

May - Performance of The Siege of Rhodes, Part I, by Sir William Davenant, the "first English opera" (under the guise of a recitative), in a private theatre at his home, Rutland House, in the City of London.


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