PosterCo Ltd

Theatre Royal Drury Lane - Framed Print - 14"H x 11"W

£25.00

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End Grade I listed theatre

The building is the most recent in a line of four theatres which were built at the same location, the earliest of which dated back to 1663, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use.

The first theatre on the site was built at the behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early 1660s, when theatres were allowed to reopen during the English Restoration. Initially known as "Theatre Royal in Bridges Street", the theatre's proprietors hired a number of prominent actors who performed at the theatre on a regular basis, including Nell Gwyn and Charles Hart.

Spooky Fact:

The author Tom Ogden calls the Theatre Royal one of the world's most haunted theatres. The appearance of almost any one of the handful of ghosts that are said to frequent the theatre signals good luck for an actor or production.

The most famous ghost is the "Man in Grey". Legend says that the Man in Grey is the ghost of a knife-stabbed man whose skeletal remains were found within a walled-up side passage in 1848. Various people have reported seeing the ghost, including W. J. MacQueen-Pope, who described its usual path as starting at the end of the fourth row in the upper circle and then proceeding via the rear gangway to the wall near the royal box, where the remains were found.

The ghosts of actor Charles Macklin and clown Joseph Grimaldi are also supposed to haunt the theatre. Macklin appears backstage, wandering the corridor which now stands in the spot where, in 1735, he killed fellow actor Thomas Hallam in an argument over a wig ("Goddamn you for a blackguard, scrub, rascal!" he shouted, thrusting a cane into Hallam's face and piercing his left eye).

Grimaldi is reported to be a helpful apparition, purportedly guiding nervous actors skilfully about the stage on more than one occasion.

The comedian Stanley Lupino claimed to have seen the ghost of Dan Leno