This design was given to Margaret Courtenay (1923-1996) as a Christmas present in 1955 by her friend, the costume designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch. Courtenay wore this costume as The Marchioness of Dorset in Shakespeare's Henry Vlll, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, that opened at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre on 15th July 1949. In a note on the back of the design the artist regrets that the design for Patience that Courtenay presumably also requested, has gone, and apologises for her spelling of Courtenay's surname on the design. The production starred Anthony Quayle as Henry as Diana Wynyard as Queen Katherine, and included Paul Hansard as Sir Thomas Lovell. Margaret Courtenay’s long career spanned 65 years, encompassing stage, television and film. Courtenay's obituary in The Independent described her as: ‘the grande dame of British comedy... a formidable exponent of both classical and modern drama, opera and musical comedy’, and noted her command of the stage as: ’a physical presence which demanded attention and a voice of all-embracing resonance.’

Courtenay’s early career included two seasons at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon, in 1947 and 1949, and three seasons at The Old Vic, where she played Goneril in King Lear and Queen Gertrude in Hamlet for the company’s 1959 Yugoslavian tour with Judi Dench as Ophelia. Courtenay starred alongside Vivien Leigh in The Lady of the Camellias and Duel of Angels on the Old Vic’s 1961/1962 tour of South and North America, Australia, and New Zealand, and her many West End roles include Vera Charles in Mame starring Ginger Rogers at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane (1969-1970); Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at the Old Vic Theatre (1972), and Muriel Wicksteed to Alan Guinness’s Arthur Wicksteed in the original production of Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus at the Lyric Theatre (1973).

Tanya Moiseiwitsch (1914-2003) was a prolific and innovative designer who produced both set and costumes for this production, staged on her interpretation of an Elizabethan stage. The critic Muriel St Clare Byrne wrote of it: 'When the audience entered the theatre, instead of seeing a curtain, they had before their eyes a lighted permanent set which remained unchanged and unhidden until the end. An excellent compromise between a platform and a picture-frame stage, it suggests a basic design which might well provide a happy and practicable solution to the problem of securing the effect of the Elizabethan stage within our modern theatres. Miss Tanya Moiseiwitsch is to be congratulated on the pleasing and dignified appearance as well as on the admirably functional qualities of this set, with its varied levels, its ample forestage, fifteen feet deep, and its well thought- out modifications and rearrangements of the gallery and the inner-stage.'