On 29 August 1636, King Charles I and his Queen, Henrietta Maria, paid a royal visit to the University of Oxford at the invitation of Archbishop Laud, Chancellor of the University. They lodged in Christ Church, a royal foundation and the largest of the Oxford colleges, which was to become the seat of their court during the Civil War. During the two days they spent in Oxford on this occasion, the King and Queen and their entourage were entertained with three plays: William Strode's The Floating Island, in Christ Church hall on the night of 29 August; George Wilde's Love's Hospital, in St. John's College hall on the afternoon of 30 August; and William Cartwright's The Royal Slave, again in Christ Church hall on the night of 30 August.

William Charles Macready was, except for Edmund Kean, the greatest and most influential actor of his time. He was distinguished not only for the energy, design, and command of his own acting, but also for the introduction of thorough rehearsal procedures and a concern for all aspects of production: a policy which led to the carefully unified production work of his disciple Samuel Phelps and the lavish Shakespearian productions of Henry Irving at the end of the century. Macready was demanding, disciplined, outspoken, and widely admired. He in fact helped to establish the actor-manager/company relationship typical of the period. In his youth, relationships between leading actors had been typically combative and coercive, and actors who had developed successful individual styles exacted company submission as their due. Kean, when he could, had refused to act with other men of quality, and Macready himself had been kept from Shakespearian roles at Covent Garden by Charles Mayne Young, J. B. Booth, and Charles Kemble. In the face of such divisive factors, Macready, with continual hard work and a bustling dictatorial manner, rose to a position of such power and respect that twice he was able to gather around him some of the most respected actors of his time to form a company unequalled for the beauty and finish of its productions.

In the great suffrage campaign waged in the decade preceding the First World War, women established a multitude of organizations in order to exert collective pressure upon a reluctant House of Commons. Some, such as the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), which was founded by Emmeline Pankhurst, favored confrontational tactics and resorted to occasional violence against property, as a means of attracting notice to the cause. Others, most notably the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) over which Mrs Millicent Fawcett presided, defined themselves as ‘constitutional’ and utilized the classic methods of persuasion and lobbying, in preference to the more dramatic tactics of their ‘militant’ sisters. Between the extremes of the WSPU and the NUWSS were numerous organizations composed of women activists of varying backgrounds, occupations, and views, sharing nonetheless a common dedication to the principle of female enfranchisement and caught up in the excitement and pageantry of a campaign which at times appeared almost religious in tone and character.

The sun was beginning to set in a muted pastel wash over Hollywood. In a nervous daze, I approached the ‘theatre’, Studio 9, a converted sound-stage which had never before been used as a space for live theatre. I had prepared assiduously for the performance by re-reading the play, Shakespeare's Richard II, the night before, and practicing French conjugations on the long drive through heavy traffic to Hollywood. The idea of listening to Shakespeare in French for four hours threatened to be incredibly taxing. My first sensations on entering Studio 9 were tactile. A spongy beige carpet was beneath my feet, providing an unfamiliar but distinctly pleasant odour. This carpet extended throughout the theatre space – underneath the bleachers where the audience sat, continuing to the raised stage and the ramps thrusting to the walls right and left. Black bands ran vertically from the back wall of the studio across the immense carpet up to the top of the bleachers.