The history of the Théâtre du Marais is linked indissolubly with the name of Mme S. Wilma Deierkauf-Holsboer, the Dutch theatre historian whose archival researches brought to light some thirty years ago such a wealth of unsuspected new documentation about the theatre itself, the actors who worked there and the plays they presented. In 1954, in the first of her two-volume Théâtre du Marais, she published the central document for any understanding of the theatre's physical disposition in the early part of its life: the mémoire de ce qu'il faut faire au jeu de paume des Marais, a carpenters' contract which describes the reconstruction work to be carried out after the theatre had been destroyed by fire in January 1644. Historians were quick to pay tribute, not only to the thoroughness of Deierkauf-Holsboer's research, but also to the validity of her interpretation of the new evidence. In 1957 the late Tom Lawrenson established what soon became the general attitude:

The indefatigable researches of Mme Deierkauf-Holsboer have finally dragged this house, after centuries of neglect, into the light of day. We now have a very good idea of the aspect it must have presented after its rebuilding … in October 1644. We can do no better than to give the main details of her interpretation of her discovery, Mémoire de ce qu'il faut faire.…

The Age of Reason brought with it a new faith in the future of humanity which evolved from abstract ideas into a tremendous social power. Nowhere is this more evident than in the increasing influence of Freemasonry in England throughout the eighteenth century. Almost fifty years ago Bernard Fäy gave an eloquent tribute to this phenomenon: “… It [the new faith] became a social force and a concrete fact through the agency of Freemasonry which at once accepted it and advocated it; the great historical importance of modern Freemasonry results from this attitude that it took then and to which it has since consistently adhered.…”

In the second half of the eighteenth century many members of English provincial theatre companies acquired a high level of social acceptability. Influential citizens ranging from the aristocracy to the military and from the high sheriff to members of various social and civic clubs began to lend their patronage to country theatre performances and to particular performers. “So they became quite respectable members of local society … [and their] old reputations as shiftless and untrustworthy fitted only the poorest members of the profession.”

A Victorian actress who undertook the part of Shakespeare's Juliet was faced with a paradoxical situation typical of her age: the role offered her a chance to create two effects that had tremendous appeal to her audience — ecstatic love and gothic horror — yet she could not take full advantage of her opportunities without risking some critical condemnation. Among the actresses who successfully exploited the possibilities without being caught in the pitfalls was Helen Faucit, who chose Juliet for her “first appearance on any stage” in 1833 and continued to act it until her last professional engagement in 1871. Because Miss Faucit was particularly skillful in resolving the problems I have mentioned, her Juliet offers an interesting study in technique. I propose, first, to discuss the problems themselves, then to describe two closely-related methods by which Helen Faucit dealt with them, and, finally, to illustrate her use of these methods in several major scenes.

After a century-long attack from the Puritan progeny of nineteenth-century America, the theatre by 1860 had long since come to accept as a way of life the religious public's antipathy to the stage. The story of the war between church and theatre is an old but, understandably, not a very popular one with theatre historians; nevertheless, some of the most surprising ironies in American cultural history lie in the dynamics — the death of a president, the death and burial of a respected actor, and an ultimate concession on both fronts — which by the turn of the twentieth century brought a winding down of clerical attacks against the stage and a qualified victory for the comparatively poor, scorned, unorganized theatrical forces over their powerful adversary.

For twenty years beginning in 1857, James West Lanergan owned and operated his own Dramatic Lyceum on King Square in uptown Saint John, New Brunswick. Each summer, with regularity, he returned with a dramatic company to produce the legitimate drama for an audience whose appreciation was shown in its faithful patronage. The result was a widespread and increasing enthusiasm for dramatic entertainment that, in 1872, spawned two more theatres: Bishop's Opera House for variety, and the far more elegant Academy of Music, whose well-equipped stage could accommodate the most modern requirements for spectacle. Lanergan's success in Saint John is undeniable. Appreciated as an artist by his audiences and by the press, and as a public-spirited gentleman by the citizenry, he made money as well as friends while he enlivened the cultural life of a city that was then enjoying unprecedented material prosperity.

Having secured production rights to Joaquin Miller's The Danites; or, The Heart of the Sierras, actor-manager Arthur McKee Rankin presented it in the United States, Canada, and the British Isles during the years 1877–1881. Rankin's method of operation typified an important phase of a period Alfred Bernheim refers to as “the industrial revolution in the theatre.” In this phase the dominance of the combination system over the stock company evolved. Although the combination system was firmly established by the early 1870's, it was not until the end of the 1870's that disbandment of nearly all remaining provincial stock companies signaled the close of a theatrical era — the end of isolation and local independence — and stimulated a momentous increase in the number of combination companies on the road.