affect the eye and ear extremely. This first brought
scenes in fashion in England; before at plays was only a hanging."
Thus the Cockpit had the distinction of being the first English
playhouse in which scenery was employed, and, one should add, the
first English home of the opera.[616]

[Footnote 616: For a discussion of Davenant's attempts to introduce
the opera into England, see W.J. Lawrence, _The Elizabethan Playhouse_
(Second Series), pp. 129 ff.]

Later in the same year, 1658, Davenant exhibited at the Cockpit _The
Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru_; but this performance excited the
suspicion of the authorities, who on December 23 sent for "the poet
and the actors" to explain "by what authority the same is exposed to
public view."[617]

[Footnote 617: Malone, _Variorum_, III, 93; Collier, _The History of
English Dramatic Poetry_ (1879), II, 48.]

"In the year 1659," writes John Downes in his _Roscius Anglicanus_,
"General Monk marching then his army out of Scotland to London, Mr.
Rhodes, a bookseller, being wardrobe-keeper formerly (as I am
informed) to King Charles the First's company of commedians in
Blackfriars, getting a license from the then governing state,[618]
fitted up a house then for acting, called the _Cockpit_, in Drury
Lane, and in a short time completed his company." If this statement is
correct, the time must have been early in the year 1659-60, and the
company must have attempted at first to play without a proper license.
From the _Middlesex County Records_ (III, 282), we learn that one of
their important actors, Thomas Lilleston, was held under bond for
having performed "a public stage-play this present 4th of February
[1659-60] in the Cockpit in Drury Lane in the parish of St.
Giles-in-the-Fields, contrary to the law in that case made"; and in
the Parish Book[619] of St. Giles we find the entry: "1659. Received
of Isack Smith, which he received at the Cockpit playhouse of several
offenders, by order of the justices, L3 8_s._ 6_d._" Shortly after
this, it is to be presumed, the company under Rhodes's management
secured the "license of the then governing state" mentioned by Downes,
and continued thereafter without interruption. The star of this
company was Betterton, whose splendid acting at once captivated
London. Pepys went often to the theatre, and has left us some
interesting notes of his experiences there. On August 18, 1660, he
writes:

Captain Ferrers, my Lord's Cornet, comes t