Before1946 there was no subsidised theatre in Britain – at least not in the sense we understand it today – with virtually all of Britain’s theatres, and theatre companies, having to survive commercially unless of course they had private patronage, as was the case, for instance, with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, and the D’Oyly Cart Company operating from the Savoy Theatre in London – home of the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas – and founded by Richard D’Oyly Cart in 1881.

Only with the creation of the Arts Council in Britain (first set-up in South Wales) in those heady post-war years, did the new left wing Labour government finally decide to help fund theatre and playwrights, composers and concert halls, sculptors and painters, film-makers, poets, and the rest of the creative arts. It was a period of hope where anything was possible, but also a period where government was still seen as the great decision maker – five years of total war had seen to that.

And theatre, along with virtually every other artistic endeavour in Britain, became something the state could – should – have some control over, and by so doing bring theatre to a wider audience, who perhaps had little or no experience of its pleasures.

Today, state subsidised theatre is seen, by many, as an expensive, and on the whole a non-appreciative state of affairs, which is only of real benefit to a handful of theatrical organisations who, because of the subsidies and only because of the subsidies, continue to put on lavish productions.

If we go back four hundred years there was already a form of ’state’ subsidy for British, or perhaps more correctly, English theatre, in the guise of royal patronage. This patronage invariably took the form of a group of players operating under the title of either the ‘King’s Men’, or the ‘Queen’s Men’, who were retained at court to entertain the monarch with new, often court commissioned, pieces of drama that were usually about some foreign military foray, or courtly intrigue. Shakespeare is of course the most famous member of such a group. And these fledgling theatre companies didn’t just stay in London’s Royal Palaces, but were sent around the country – at the behest and expense of the monarch – to entertain and inform the populace of life back in the capital. It was a cheap, and enjoyable form of propaganda.

After the demise of Oliver Cromwell – who effectively closed the theatres – and the restoration of the monarchy, theatre took on a new lease of life.

In August 1660 Charles II honoured an old agreement between himself and the playwright Thomas Killigrew (who’d kept the King theatrically entertained during his exile in France), giving him a half share (the other half share went to entrepreneur William Devenant) in a new theatrical monopoly to be set-up by the monarch. The Royal Warrant gave exclusive rights to Killigrew, and Devenant to:

“…erect two companies of players’ and to purchase, build and erect or hire at their charge, two houses or theatres[as long as] they do not at any time hereafter cause to be acted or represented any play, interlude, opera, containing any matter of profanation, scurrility, or obscenity.”

As Charles probably knew that was like asking birds not to fly.

Although the King didn’t put any of his – or the country’s – money into the project the association with his name – the groups were inevitably called The King’s Companies – was enough to ensure its success, and of course one of the theatres that was eventually built, in 1674, was Drury Lane, which in the 18th century became the dramatic home of actor/manager David Garrick, the man responsible for re-introducing Shakespeare to play hungry audiences, and creating, almost single-handedly, the Shakespeare industry.

In the 19th century and early 20th century the state didn’t get involved in anything other than to collect taxes, defend the country, build schools to turn out semi-literate factory fodder, maintain Oxford and Cambridge Universities to ensure the top end of government was fully staffed, build barrack-like hospitals to ensure the working class, when they became ill, died in a tidy fashion, and were properly counted. It was invariably the responsibility of local, altruistic millionaire benefactors – made rich by the factory fodder of course – to finance art galleries, technical schools, concert halls, libraries, museums, and, where relevant, theatres. It is what they did, and in most cases they did it very well indeed.

Stratford-upon-Avon was, is, a good case in point, and plays an important part in the development of theatre as a whole.

The first Shakespeare Memorial Theatre that was completed in 1879 came about as a result of the boom in the brewing industry, for which Stratford was by this time both famous, and infamous. And of course the brewing industry only happened in Stratford because the town had been built, back in the 12th century, alongside a clear, fast flowing river, which was, by the late 18th century, an integral part of the new canal system that carried both consumer goods, and raw materials, from the newly industrialised north directly into the River Avon, where larger vessels could then ferry them south westward to Bristol, and the rest of the world. But it wasn’t until the 1830s, after the abolition of the tax on brewing, that a young man came to Stratford intent on making his fortune, and his name.

Charles Edward Flower, the founder of Flower’s Brewery, was a very cultured man who, as a young child in the early 19th century emigrated with his parents from Hertfordshire, in the south east of England, to a plot of farm land in the south west of Illinois. By 1827 the teenage Charles had had enough of the American dream and, leaving his family behind, headed back to England – via New York where he observed the brewing industry – settling into the prosperous little market town of Stratford where he married a local girl and set about making his fortune.

Some thirty years later, whilst reading The Times at breakfast, Charles discovered that Stratford’s most famous son, William Shakespeare, was now being hailed by many intellectuals as a genius. As he pondered this piece of news, and chewed another mouthful of toast and marmalade, the man who invented India Pale Ale – and persuaded the British government to buy millions of bottles of the stuff every year as a healthy drink for the troops serving in India – Charles called for his butler to make sure his carriage was ready.

“May I tell the driver where he is to take you, sir?” asked the butler.

“Indeed you may, Henry. Tell him I wish to visit my accountant. I am going to build a theatre.”

“Very good, sir.”

The idea of building a theatre in Stratford to honour the memory of the Bard was a high profile scheme that was, Charles reckoned, both laudable, and tax deductible.

During the first three years of the 1860s – after his visit to his accountant – Charles bought most of the land on the west side of the Avon – then extremely marshy – which he drained and landscaped. He also persuaded the council to buy the land on the other side of the river and turn it into recreational park land for the town. By 1863, the year before the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth, he also cleverly suggested that a huge, but temporary, wooden theatre – based upon the wooden Rotunda Pavilion Theatre built by Garrick in the town in 1769 to celebrate Shakespeare’s 205th birthday – be built on his side of the river bank ready for the Birthday Celebrations of the following April.

To stave off the inevitable,”but we can’t afford it”, he also stated he would fund virtually the whole cost of the venture as long as the local council contributed their support and named him head of the committee that would decide on the design of the theatre, and the eventual programme of events; they agreed.

Charles Edward Flower – five times mayor, and the single largest employer

in Stratford – effectively ran the town.

By the end of June, 1864, and after a hugely successful 300th Birthday Season, the wooden Tercentenary Pavilion Theatre – built on what is today the RSC’s Courtyard Theatre – had been dismantled, with the timber used to build not only the framework of a large new house for Charles Flower on a site close-by, but also a row of cottages along Waterside (opposite the RST) that are still owned by the RSC today, and which are now used to accommodate actors.

There must also be many houses in Stratford that have floorboards and roof beams made from that old temporary theatre. In a sense theatre in Stratford is, quite literarily, part of the very framework of the town.

There was no stopping Charles Edward Flower now, and by the early 1870s he’d bought more land along the river’s edge between his new home and Clopton Bridge. He then donated that land to the local council on the understanding that a permanent Shakespeare Memorial Theatre be build, as long as he headed the committee to chose the design and oversee the building, and head the theatre’s board of governors who were to run the place when it was completed. And to ensure that happened he announced that it was his intention to help finance the building of the theatre and also ensure that any shortfall in the theatres operating costs, once it was up and running, would be met by him.

Without Charles Edward Flower Stratford would never have had a theatre, and without his, and his family’s, continued financial subsidy there would certainly not have been a new theatre in Stratford after the 1926 fire, and consequently no theatre for Peter Hall to take over in 1961, when he created the RSC, and requested massive state funding.

With the creation of the RSC state subsidised theatre in Britain took on a whole new dimension.