In the summer of 1671, after the court had left London and after his performance as Ladislaus in John Crowne's Juliana – a play thwarted, as the preface declared, by the fact that ‘the Dog-Star was near his Reign’ – Thomas Betterton made his way with Joseph Haines to Paris. What they, and particularly what Betterton, saw there helped to determine the form of the Dorset Garden Theatre which was then under construction, and which would open in November that year. When we compare what was happening on the French stage during and immediately after Betterton's visit with what we know of the Dorset Garden Theatre, however, it becomes clear that Betterton's experience was to have an effect on the form of the Dorset Garden Theatre not immediately, but in the years that followed its opening, and that the single most influential work was not one that Betterton saw on his visit to France in 1671, but one which was first performed two years later.

Eighteenth century Parisian theatres operated under strict theatrical regulations. While licensed to produce a particular type of entertainment, each theatrical manager was admonished to not infringe upon the theatrical specialities of his competitors. In the 1770s, Philip Astley, an Englishman considered by most theatre historians the ‘father of the modern circus’, began offering his unique equestrian performances to Parisian audiences (see Plate I). Although he spent most of his time performing in London, Astley returned to Paris on a fairly regular basis. His London performances usually included clowning, juggling and acrobatics as entr′actes to the equestrian exercises. In Paris, however, juggling, tight-rope acts and the like were among the licensed specialties of Jean-Baptiste Nicolet, a noted acrobat with a long and popular history of performance both at the fairs and on the Boulevard du Temple. Frustrated by the narrowness of the license granted him, Astley devised a unique means of circumventing the regulation.

A reviewer of a production of Edward Young's tragedy, The Revenge, in 1815, wrote:

Sound morality and good manners demand that this Play should either be greatly altered, or banished from the Stage. No character of Kotzebue is either so unnatural or so dangerous as Zanga. We may pronounce him a despicable coward by the surest test of cowardice – a vindictive spirit that knows not how to pardon…. Zanga is described as brave, heroic, and noble, yet forgiveness is not in his nature. He is more contemptibly mean – more desperately wicked than Iago. He is made more an object of esteem and pity than Othello…. Why did not the author make him the victim of his own contrivances? Why did he not exemplify in the disappointment of Zanga, the sure punishment of an indiscriminate revenge? … He is a fiend that gains our respect by forcing our admiration, and he does this when the real nature of his actions qualify him rather for the gibbit than for the honourable termination of his life.

The premature death of the Austrian actor Josef Kainz on 20 September 1910, was regarded by many of his contemporaries as the passing of an epoch in the history of the German and Austrian theatre. In obituary notices Kainz was described as the most representative actor of his generation, as the pioneer of a ‘modern’ style of acting which accurately and imaginatively communicated the experience of man during a period of transition and uncertainty, one ‘in which the old … was dead and the new not yet born’. Some notices included even more extravagant accolades; Kainz's death, it was claimed, had deprived the theatre of its most creative spirit and comparisons were made, somewhat indiscriminately, between Kainz and many of the greatest figures of Western civilization – Moses, Socrates, Molière, Voltaire, even Jesus Christ! In the years following his death writers continued to assert without qualification that Kainz had been the most important actor of his generation, the single giant among the moderns. Although some biographers, especially Helene Richter, denned precisely why this was so, others continued their flamboyant praises, one seeing him as the perpetuator of a ‘pythagorean’ tradition which included Giordano Bruno, Albrecht Dürer and Goethe. Kainz, it appeared, was more than just an actor, he was a great creator who profoundly influenced the art of acting in particular and the development of Western culture in general.