From as far back as the early 17th century there were groups of players moving around the west country; some of these came to Blandford, gave their performances and then moved on. In 1603 John Cleves was the Town Steward of Blandford, who had the job of arranging entertainments for visitors coming to the town for a race meeting. There is a record of his hiring a company of strolling players and an entry in his accounts reads: “Recd. By the play, six nights £11.7s.1d.
In 1788 an Act of Parliament came into force requiring managers of play companies to obtain a licence from the town where they wished to perform. At the Easter Quarter Sessions of 1789 James Biggs, the manager of a company of players based at Taunton, obtained leave “to perform Tragedies, Comedies, Interludes, Opera, Plays or Farces within the borough of Blandford Forum” over a period of sixty days.
Thomas Bower attended one of those performances and described it in a letter to his future son-in-law: “We dined Wednesday last at Bryanston, and in the evening all of us went to the Play at Blandford, which was, by desire of Captain Bingham, ‘Jane Shore and Thre Weeks After Marriage. ‘ The house was very full indeed and the Play Bills announced a Song between the Play and the Farce BY Mr James Mahon, but after waiting for it an hour, one of the performers came and lamented that a Very Sudden Indisposition prevented Mr Mahon from singing that evening, so I suppose he was very drunk.”
The company would arrive with their scenery and property wagons, then unload before retiring to their lodgings. Usually the performances would be held in a barn type of building that had been converted into a theatre by the addition of a stage and a curtained-off area for dressing-rooms. Sometimes a range of boxes would be added for the local gentry and hard wooden benches in the pit for others. Their stay would last for between eight and twelve weeks before they moved on to their next engagement; it might have been two or three years before they returned to the town and in that time the ‘theatre’ would return to its usual use as a barn, stables or even a carpenter’s workshop. There is no record of James Biggs and his company of players returning to Blandford after 1789 but they did visit Wimborne and Sherborne twice during the following five years.
Early in 1790 James Shatford, a 37-year-old son of a Gloucestershire doctor, took over the management of a Salisbury based company of players and the following year he went into partnership with one of the players: 25-year-old Henry Lee.
The first time they appeared in Blandford was 1793 . They fitted up a ‘New Theatre’ and opened on the 7th of June with performances of How to Grow Rich and No Song No Suppe. They put on performances four evenings a week throughout their stay in the town. On the 24th of June they performed The Rivals and Rosina; on Wednesday 26th of June Hamlet and the pantomime Don Juan were staged.
The 17th of July was a big night for the company. “By desire of Lady Amelia Trenchard, for the benefit of Mr and Mrs Shatford, ‘Wild Oats’ and ‘The Midnight Hour’, in which Mr Cornellys from the Theatre Royal, Dublin and Haymarket, will make his first appearance.”
The names of Mr Lee and Miss Keys appeared on the cast list of the early performances during the company’s stay but this was to change, for on Tuesday 16th of July there is an entry in the register of the parish church that reads: “ Henry Lee, sojourner in this parish, bachelor, married spinster Sarah Jane Keys.” Friday, 1st of August was billed as “positively the last night of the season” and was for the benefit of Mr and Mrs Lee. The play was As You Like It and Mrs Lee took the part of Rosalind.
In 1791 the playwright John O’Keeffe had travelled down from London with his three children to spend a holiday at Lulworth and stopped for a night at the Greyhound in Blandford. On his return to London O’Keeffe wrote a comedy, The London Hermit or Rambles in Dorsetshire all the characters in the play were based on people he had met during his holiday. First performed in London, the play was a great success.
Shatford and Lee’s company of players performed O’Keeffe’s play at Blandford on Tuesday 29th of July and though this clashed with the first day of the Blandford Race Meeting and a Grand Ball at the Crown Hotel, the Salisbury and Winchester Journal reported “that not withstanding there was a very full Ball on Tuesday evening, the ‘Dorsetshire Rambles’ proved so attractive that numbers were not able to squeeze in.” They returned several times until their last visit in 1812.