It opened on 9 November 1671 and was almost twice the size of the Duke's Company's former theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It became the principal playhouse in London when the Theatre Royal burned down in January 1672, soon to be rivalled however by the new Theatre Royal, which opened in March 1674. After the Duke's Company merged with the King's Company in 1682 to form the United Company, the theatre in Dorset Garden was used mainly for opera, music, and spectaculars, and from the 1690s it was also used for other entertainments, such as weight lifting, until it was demolished in 1709.