s proved a cause of numberless dissensions in future
years. Practically they reduced the London theatres to two. Before the
Civil War there had been six: the Blackfriars and the Globe, belonging
to the same company, called the King's Servants; the Cockpit or
Phoenix, in Drury Lane, the actors of which were called the Queen's
Servants; a theatre in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, occupied by the
Prince's Servants; and the Fortune, in Golden Lane, and the Red Bull
in St. John Street, Clerkenwell--establishments for the lower class,
"mostly frequented by citizens and the meaner sort of people." Earlier
Elizabethan theatres, the Swan, the Rose, and the Hope, seem to have
closed their career some time in the reign of James I.

The introduction of actresses upon the English stage has usually been
credited to Sir William Davenant, whose theatre, however, did not open
until more than six months after the performance of "Othello," with an
actress in the part of Desdemona, at Killigrew's establishment in Vere
Street. "Went to Sir William Davenant's opera," records Pepys, on July
2nd, 1661, "this being the fourth day it had begun, and the first that
I have seen it." Although regular tragedies and comedies were acted
there, Pepys constantly speaks of Davenant's theatre as the _opera_,
the manager having produced various musical pieces before the
Restoration. Of the memorable performance of "Othello" in Vere Street,
on December 10th, 1660, Pepys makes no mention. He duly chronicles,
however, a visit to Killigrew's theatre on the following 3rd January,
when he saw the comedy of "The Beggar's Bush" performed; "it being
very well done, and was the first time that ever I saw women come upon
the stage." He had seen the same play in the previous November, when
it was represented by male performers only. But even after the
introduction of actresses the heroines of the stage were still
occasionally impersonated by men. Thus in January, 1661, Pepys saw
Kynaston appear in "The Silent Woman," and pronounced the young actor
"the prettiest woman in the whole house." As Cibber states, the stage
"could not be so suddenly supplied with women but that there was still
a necessity to put the handsomest young men into petticoats."

Strange to say, the name of the actress who played Desdemona under
Killigrew's management in 1660 has not been discovered. Who, then, was
the first English actress, assuming that she was the Desdemona of the
Vere Street Thea