Royal Dramatic Theatre founded by Gustav III of Sweden
History
17th and 18th century
The first Swedish theatre opened in Bollhuset and Lejonkulan in 1667 and employed only foreign companies.  While the plays were sometimes open to the public, it remained more or less a court theatre.  The first Swedish play, Den Svenska Sprätthöken, was performed in 1737 by the first Swedish theatre company.  The Swedish theatre was turned out of their playhouse by Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia after the 1753–54 season, and the playhouse was given to a French company.  In 1771, king Gustav III fired the French company and encouraged Swedish talents, and thus, the Royal Swedish Opera was founded in Bollhuset.  A theatre of spoken drama was founded by Fredrik Ristell in the same building in 1787, but was not to last long.  In 1788 Ristell fled the country to escape his creditors. The actors formed a company and asked for the king's protection, which led to the establishment of the national theatre.
Sweden's national stage for dramatic art (spoken drama) was established by King Gustav III in 1788. It was then that the Royal Theatre (Kungliga Teatern) in Sweden was officially split in two, and the Royal Theatre (today known as the Royal Swedish Opera) became thereafter solely an opera stage. For spoken drama a new theatre was built specifically, called Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern—the Royal Dramatic Theatre, to distinguish it from the Royal Theatre (the opera stage).
The king became the formal director and placed the theatre under Royal protection, to be ruled by the actors themselves by votes every fourteenth day under the supervision of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts.  This rule was quite chaotic, and the voting is described as capricious and temperamental: "The male actors arguing with each other, one of the ladies voting yes because another lady voted no, others of them counting their buttons and letting fate decide", and in 1803, the actors themselves asked for the system to be replaced by a director.
The Royal Dramatic Theatre was located in the old premises at Bollhuset during its first years, but in 1792, the old building was deemed to be to run down, and 1 November 1793, the theatre was opened in the Palace of Makalös, also called Arsenalen, where the theatre was to be located for the next thirty years; it was now often commonly called the Arsenal Theatre. In 1798, the theatres and operas of Stockholm were united by a royal monopoly, and the "Two Stages" ruled uncontested over the city for over forty years.