Note (return) — The Duke's Theatre, Dorset Gardens.

The Duke's Theatre, as the engraving shows, had a handsome front towards the river, with a landing-place for visiters by water, a fashion which prevailed in the early age of the Drama, if we may credit the assertion of Taylor, the water poet, that about the year 1596, the number of watermen maintained by conveying persons to the theatres on the banks of the Thames, was not less than 40,000, showing a love of the drama at that early period which is very extraordinary.2 All we have left of this aquatic rage is a solitary boat now and then skimming and scraping to Vauxhall Gardens.