The second Blackfriars playhouse (the first had been a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal in the 1570s and 1580s) was initially the home of the Children of the Chapel from about 1600 onwards until the King's Men took it over around 1608 and staged plays there right up to the outbreak of the English Civil War. This indoor theatre gained a reputation for cutting-edge drama and innovative theatre practice and attracted work from the top playwrights of the day, including Jonson, Middleton, Marston, Shakespeare and Chapman. It is a fascinating exercise to consider how particular plays written with the Blackfriars space in mind as at least one likely site of performance reflect and respond to the challenges and opportunities of the indoor playhouse with its smaller audience and therefore its greater intimacy, and with its candlelit interior and use of music between the acts to enable the trimming of the wax on the aforesaid candles.

The Induction that Webster is believed to have added to the performance script of Marston's The Malcontent when it was adapted for playing by the King's Men in an open-air amphitheatre, having initially been a children's company play, suggests that the use of music between the acts in the so-called ‘private’ or indoor theatres was an innovation that those older outdoor arenas could not match: