The middle of the 19th century was to mean changes both within and without the theatre. In 1834, the actors, infuriated by a new system that replaced their percent of the theatre income by a set salary, went on strike, knowing they had succeeded with a similar action against an unpopular director in 1828. This time, however, the strike was broken by the government, which gave some of them raised salaries and fired the others with pensions. The fired actors founded a theatre company that performed all around town, and in 1842, the theatre monopoly was broken and a second theatre was founded in Stockholm; by the 1850s, there were several theatres in the city, and the Royal Dramatic Theatre experienced heavy competition, especially from the Svenska teatern (Swedish Theatre).