Chapter 3 explores how the letters patent authorizing the duopoly laid the groundwork for a theatre of lavishness and innovation, thereby affiliating the restored stage to the costly improvements sweeping London after the Great Fire of 1666. Theatrical amelioration bolstered national pride – England was finally catching up with continental stagecraft – and made available luxurious viewing conditions previously reserved for court audiences. To realize these ends, management chose newly developed, upmarket neighborhoods to site their equally expensive baroque playhouses. Despite these improvements, the companies risked disappointing the very consumer expectations aroused by the culture of improvement. They simply could not afford new scenes, machines, and special effects for every play. Moreover, their playhouses were ruinously costly to operate – they required enormous manpower compared to early modern stages – and personnel expenses skyrocketed further whenever the companies ventured upon a dramatic opera or spectacle-heavy production. Not until the 1690s were strategies finally devised to escape the culture of improvement.

The chapter first considers the potential effects generated for audiences who saw Robert Greene’s Alphonsus, before turning to the evidence of Henslowe’s Diary which indicates that the Admiral’s Men frequently performed a play by the name of ‘Mahamet’ before Tamburlaine, thereby encouraging audiences to see Tamburlaine after an imitator, rather than before. The chapter concludes by arguing that the early modern repertory system not only enabled but encouraged achronological playgoing in ways that challenge the standard tenets of theatre history.