Inn Fields, which he opened with the play of "the Siege of Rhodes,"
written by himself. The above company performed here till 1671, when
another "Duke's Theatre." was built in Dorset Gardens,[1] by Sir
Christopher Wren, in a similar style of architecture to that in Lincoln's
Inn Fields. The company removed thither, November 9, in the same year, and
continued performing till the union of the Duke and the King's Companies,
in 1682; and performances were continued occasionally here until 1697. The
building was demolished about April, 1709, and the site is now occupied by
the works of a Gas Light Company.


[1] At the end of Dorset-street, now communicating with Fleet-street,
through Salisbury-square and Salisbury-court.


The Duke's Theatre, as the engraving shows, had a handsome front towards
the river, with a landing-place for visiters by water, a fashion which
prevailed in the early age of the Drama, if we may credit the assertion of
Taylor, the water poet, that about the year 1596, the number of watermen
maintained by conveying persons to the theatres on the banks of the
Thames, was not less than 40,000, showing a love of the drama at that
early period which is very extraordinary.[2] All we have left of this
aquatic rage is a solitary boat now and then skimming and scraping to
Vauxhall Gardens.


[2] The _Globe_, the _Rose_, and the _Swan_, were on Baukside;
besides which there were, either then or after, six other
theatres on the Middlesex bank of the Thames.