Sir William Davenant was the only professional dramatist permitted to stage plays commercially and publicly in the entire period 1642–60. His Protectorate plays and operas came into existence at the border between government policy and commercial success (which was dependent upon the audience's pleasure). Therefore this chapter, in examining the circumstances of these performed plays, is a study in contradictions. It continues the work of chapter 5 in analysing the politics of opera as a genre, but extends its focus to discuss the politics of the kind of narrative which Davenant was staging, and to provide cultural and political contexts for his plays.

Prevailing critical assumptions about Davenant's theatre staged between 1656 and 1659 are based on the work of Harbage, and Nethercot's characterisation of Davenant's Protectorate drama as participating fairly completely in a ‘royalist’ ideology. Even his most recent biographer, Mary Edmond, seems to see Davenant as a kind of royalist undercover agent attempting to restore the theatre.