Vere Street Theatre, certain traces have been discovered. In Brome's
comedy of "The Court Beggar," acted at the Cockpit Theatre, in 1632,
one of the characters observed: "If you have a short speech or two,
the boy's a pretty actor, and his mother can play her part;
women-actors now grow in request." Was this an allusion merely to the
French actresses that had been seen in London some few years before,
or were English actresses referred to? Had these really appeared, if
not at the public theatres, why, then, at more private dramatic
entertainments? Upon such points doubt must still prevail. It seems
certain, however, that a Mrs. Coleman had presented herself upon the
stage in 1656, playing a part in Sir William Davenant's tragedy of
"The Siege of Rhodes"--a work produced somehow in evasion of the
Puritanical ordinance of 1647, which closed the theatres and forbade
dramatic exhibitions of every kind; for "The Siege of Rhodes,"
although it consisted in a great measure of songs with recitative,
explained or illustrated by painted scenery, did not differ much from
an ordinary play. Ianthe, the heroine, was personated by Mrs. Coleman,
whose share in the performance was confined to the delivery of
recitative. Ten years later the lady was entertained at his house by
Mr. Pepys, who speaks in high terms both of her musical abilities and
of herself, pronouncing her voice "decayed as to strength, but mighty
sweet, though soft, and a pleasant jolly woman, and in mighty good
humour."

If this Mrs. Coleman may be classed rather as a singer than an
actress, and if we may view Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes" more as a
musical entertainment than as a regular play, then no doubt the claim
of the Desdemona of Clare Market to be, as Mr. Thomas Jordan described
her, "the first woman that came to act on the stage," is much
improved. And here we may say something more relative to the Vere
Street Theatre. It was first opened in the month of November, 1660;
Thomas Killigrew, its manager, and one of the grooms of the king's
bedchamber, having received his patent in the previous August, when a
similar favour was accorded to Sir William Davenant, who, during
Charles I.'s reign, had been possessed of letters patent. King Charles
II., taking it into his "princely consideration" that it was not
necessary to suppress the use of theatres, but that if the evil and
scandal in the plays then acted were taken away, they might serve "as
innocent and harmless