on Killigrew by realizing his old pre-Civil War dream of music, dance, and spectacular visual effects on the public stage. During the autumn of 1660, while the Duke's Company was still seeking financing (mostly by means of the actors buying company shares) and having temporary quarters set up, the King's Company offered a string of well-received productions. Their new theatre in Vere Street was already fully operational. The devoted playgoer Samuel Pepys called it "the finest playhouse... that ever was in England" in his diary, a sentiment he would need to revise many times over the coming decade, and recorded his awe at seeing Michael Mohun, "who is said to be the best actor in the world", act on its stage. Davenant was far behind, but chose to put all his capital into the outfitting of a new superior playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields (simultaneously, with great foresight, prying loose the rising young star Thomas Betterton from the King's Company), which was received positively by the public. Changeable scenery Lincoln's Inn Fields opened on 28 June 1661, with the first "moveable" or "changeable" scenery used on the British public stage, (i.e., wings or shutters that ran in grooves and could be smoothly and mechanically changed between or even within acts). The production was a revamped version of Davenant's own five-year-old opera The Siege of Rhodes. It is not known who painted the scenes or shutters, or whether continental craftsmen were responsible for the technical construction, but the result was such a sensation that it brought Charles II to a public theatre for the first time. The competing King's Company suddenly found itself playing to empty houses, as Pepys notes on 4 July: I went to the theatre [in Vere Street] and there I saw Claracilla (the first time I ever saw it), well-acted. But strange to see this house, that used to be so thronged, now empty since the opera begun—and so will continue for a while I believe. The Siege of Rhodes "continued acting 12 days without interruption with great applause". This was a remarkable run for the limited potential audience of the time. As four more acclaimed Duke's Company productions "with scenes" followed at Lincoln's Inn Fields in the course of 1661 (including Hamlet), all highly admired by Pepys, the King's Company had no other recourse than to hastily commission a changeable-scenery playhouse of their own. Bowing to