The Theatre Royal, Southampton was a theatre in Southampton, Hampshire, England. It opened in 1803 and was located near the Medieval Merchant's House on French Street.

Venue: Theatre Royal
Town: Southampton, GB

The Theatre Royal, Southampton was a theatre in Southampton, Hampshire, England. It opened in 1803 and was located near the Medieval Merchant's House on French Street. Jane Austen and her family visited the theatre in 1807. The building was later renovated and expanded, and reopened as New Theatre Royal in 1880. It was destroyed by a fire in 1884. In 1766, a disused silk mill on French Street was converted into a theatre, which came under the management team of Thomas Collins and James Davies in the 1770s. Collins, an actor who also ran theatres in Chichester and Salisbury, subsequently acquired the site of the old St John's Hospital on French Street in 1798, a year after Davies' death. He built a new theatre, designed by an architect named Mr Slater, which finally opened five years later on 12 September 1803. Billed as the "Southampton New Theatre, Built on the exact Model of the Theatre-Royal Drury-Lane", the opening was well attended and well received. The Hampshire Chronicle applauded "the liberal and spirited manner" in which the building had been decorated, adding that "a more elegant, convenient, and brilliant Theatre is not to be met out of London." After Collins's death in 1807, the theatre was run by his son Stephen and son-in-law Henry Kelly. In early 1807, Jane Austen and her family moved to Castle Square, not far from the theatre. On 14 September of that year, they went to the theatre to see John Bannister in The Way to Keep Him by Arthur Murphy. In Jane Austen and the Theatre, historian Penny Gay writes that the theatre on French Street in Southampton was "smaller and less prestigious than Bath's Orchard Street Theatre", and mainly featured performances by provincial companies. Charles Kemble and Maria Theresa Kemble played at the theatre in August 1808. Until the 1860s, the Theatre Royal on French Street changed management frequently. According to A History of Southampton, the house managed to attract crowds intermittently. One of the most well attend