Christopher Rich (theatre manager)

Christopher Rich (1657–1714) was a lawyer and theatrical manager in London in the late 17th and early 18th century.

Originally an attorney, Rich purchased, on 24 March 1688, from Alexander D'Avenant, who was co-patentee with Charles Killigrew, a share in the management of the Theatre Royal. D'Avenant retired, while Killigrew allowed Rich to become the active partner. With the management of the Drury Lane theatre was combined that of the subordinate house in Dorset Garden. From the first Rich was involved in continual lawsuits and difficulties with the actors, the proprietors, and the lord chamberlain, but his legal training fitted him to cope.

Christopher Rich managed the monopoly United Company from 1693, with such autocratic methods that the senior actors including Thomas Betterton, Elizabeth Barry, and Anne Bracegirdle rebelled.

His difficulties were at their height in 1695, when Betterton obtained a patent for a new theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and successfully opened it on 30 April with William Congreve's Love for Love. Rich would not listen to any suggestion of accommodation between the rival companies. He busied himself, according to Colley Cibber, in tinkering with alterations at Drury Lane, and prophesied failure for the other house. In 1705 Betterton transferred his company to the new theatre in the Haymarket, which had been planned by John Vanbrugh for opera during the previous year, but of which the projector had wearied. In October 1706 Vanbrugh leased the Haymarket Theatre to Rich's agent, Owen Swiney; who took with him a small detachment of actors from Drury Lane. The three London playhouses (Drury Lane, Dorset Garden, and Haymarket) were thus alike for a short while under Rich.

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