him to stop keeping a diary. Thomas Betterton, though formally a minority shareholder, continued to run the Duke's Company, and, in the spirit of Davenant, commissioned the most elaborate of the Restoration playhouses, the theatre at Dorset Garden (or Dorset Gardens), with a flat for himself on top. Although the Dorset Garden Theatre quickly became a famous and glamorous venue, very little is concretely known about its construction, though a vague and undocumented tradition ascribes its design to Christopher Wren. The absence of Pepys' record means that performance data for the next decades are only patchily known. French influence The machines at Dorset Garden and their flamboyant productions were strongly influenced by the French opera and tragédie en machines. Paris was home to some of the most elaborate visual and musical stage productions in Europe, and Betterton travelled to Paris in the summer of 1671 to learn from the sensation of the season, the comédie-ballet Psyché by Molière, Corneille, and Quinault, to music by Lully. "For several things concerning the decoration of the play, I am obliged to the French", acknowledged Thomas Shadwell in the introduction to his own Psyche in 1674. Even more directly influential were the French operatic visits to London, which sparked off a new interest in opera among London audiences. The King's Company, all but bankrupt after the crushing blow of the fire in Bridges Street, invited the French musician Robert Cambert to perform his opera Ariadne as one of the first productions at their new playhouse in Drury Lane. The Duke's Company responded to this guest appearance with a Shakespearean extravaganza at Dorset Garden: Shadwell's adaptation of Davenant's and Dryden's version of Shakespeare's Tempest, a piece designed to show off the new machinery: The Front of the Stage is open'd, and the Band of 24 Violins, with the Harpsicals and Theorbo's which accompany the Voices, are plac'd between the Pit and the Stage. While the Overture is playing, the Curtain rises, and discovers a new Frontispiece, joyn'd to the great Pylasters, on each side of the Stage... Behind this is the Scene, which represents a thick Cloudy Sky, a very Rocky Coast, and a Tempestuous Sea in perpetual Agitation. This Tempest (suppos'd to be rais'd by Magick) has many dreadful Objects in it, as several Spirits in horrid shapes flying down amongst the Sailers, then rising and crossing in the Air. And when the Ship