The Drury Lane Cockpit at War, 1646–49

The military contest between King and Parliament in the 1640s created daunting challenges for the London playing business. Political allegiance drew many of the city's actors into the wider theater of war; new legislation sought to outlaw public performances; and by the time of the regicide in 1649 only three prewar playhouses remained operational in the capital—the Drury Lane Cockpit among them. How did the Cockpit weather this storm of civil war? The intractability of its players clearly frustrated Parliament's effort to proscribe theatrical activity altogether; but as the evidence assembled in this article demonstrates, other circumstances favored the West End's first playhouse as well. Of critical significance was the building's physical location in St Giles-in-the-Fields, a suburban parish accessible to sizeable constituencies of ideologically like-minded patrons. No less important was the apparent failure of local magistrates to fully enforce Parliament's repressive anti-theatrical ordinances—a dereliction of duty, this essay argues, symptomatic of broader political dysfunction in 1647 and 1648, when trust and cooperation between the Long Parliament and the City of London broke down, redrawing factional alignments among Presbyterians, Independents, and declared Royalists.