The upper part of the front will be admired for its characteristic taste;
as the figures of Comedy and Tragedy surmounting the balustrade, the
emblematic flame, and the wreathed arms of the founder.

Operas were first introduced on the English stage, at Dorset Gardens, in
1673, with "expensive scenery;" and in Lord Orrery's play of Henry V.,
performed here in the year previous, the actors, Harris, Betterton, and
Smith, wore the coronation suits of the Duke of York, King Charles, and
Lord Oxford.

The names of Betterton and Kynaston bespeak the importance of the Duke's
Theatre. Cibber calls Betterton "an actor, as Shakspeare was an author,
both without competitors;" in his performance of _Hamlet_, he profited by
the instructions of Sir William Davenant, who embodied his recollections
of Joseph Taylor, instructed by SHAKSPEARE to play the character! What
a delightful association--to see Hamlet represented in the true vein in
which the sublime author conceived it! Kynaston's celebrity was of a more
equivocal description. He played _Juliet_ to Betterton's _Romeo_, and was
the Siddons of his day; for women did not generally appear on the stage
till after the Restoration. The anecdote of Charles II. waiting at the
theatre for the stage _queen_ to be _shaved_ is well known.

Pepys speaks of Harris, in his interesting _Diary_ as "growing very proud,
and demanding 20_l_. for himself extraordinary more than Betterton, or
any body else, upon every new play, and 10_l_. upon every revive; which,
with other things, Sir William Davenant would not give him, and so he
swore he would never act there more, in expectation of his being received
in the other house;" (this was in 1663, at the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's
Inn Fields.) "He tells me that the fellow grew very proud of late, the