The new grants did not differ much from the old ones, except that the powers vested in the patentees were more fully declared.  No other companies but those of the two patentees were to be permitted to perform within the cities of London and Westminster; all others were to be silenced and suppressed.  Killigrew’s actors were styled the “Company of his Majesty and his Royal Consort;” Davenant’s the “Servants of his Majesty’s dearly-beloved brother, James, Duke of York.”  The better to preserve “amity and correspondence” between the two theatres, no actor was to be allowed to quit one company for the other without the consent of his manager being first obtained.  And forasmuch as many plays formerly acted contained objectionable matter, and the women’s parts therein being acted by men in the habits of women, gave offence to some, the managers were further enjoined to act no plays “containing any passages offensive to piety and good manners, until they had first corrected and purged the same;” and permission was given that all the women’s parts to be acted by either of the companies for the time to come might be performed by women, so that recreations which, by reason of the abuses aforesaid, were scandalous and offensive, might by such reformation be esteemed not only harmless delights, but useful and instructive representations of human life to such of “our good subjects” as should resort to see the same.

These patents 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,