The Duke's Theatre, Dorset Garden, ca. 1671, published for the Encyclopaedia Londinensis, 13 May 1825.

The Dorset Garden Theatre opened in 1671. It was built on the banks of the River Thames in the grounds of Dorset House, which had been destroyed in 1666 during the Great Fire of London. The theatre was the home of the Duke’s Company, whose patron was the Duke of York (later King James II), and was sometimes known as the Duke’s or Duke of York’s Theatre and, from 1685, the Queen’s Theatre, after James’s second wife , Mary of Modena. The company was founded in 1660 by dramatist and Poet Laureate William Davenant. Though Davenant died three years before the theatre opened, the building was the culmination of his vision for a state-of-the-art English playhouse to rival continental theatre for the latest scenery and stage machinery. It was known for its spectacular productions, which included versions of Shakespeare’s plays adapted to appeal to the popular taste for scenic effects and music. Both Macbeth (1673) and The Tempest (1674) were given elaborate operatic stagings at Dorset Garden.