The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Elizabethan Stage (Vol 2 of 4), by E. K. Chambers

Title: The Elizabethan Stage (Vol 2 of 4)

Author: E. K. Chambers

Release Date: February 17, 2022 [eBook #67423]

Language: English

Produced by: Tim Lindell, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE
VOL. II

London  Edinburgh  Glasgow  Copenhagen
New York  Toronto  Melbourne  Cape Town
Bombay  Calcutta  Madras  Shanghai

Humphrey Milford Publisher to the University

FROM THE ENGRAVING BY WENCESLAUS HOLLAR IN DUGDALE’S

St. Paul’s 1658

THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE
BY E. K. CHAMBERS. VOL. II

OXFORD: AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M.CMXXIII

NOTE ON SYMBOLS

I have found it convenient, especially in Appendix A, to use the symbol < following a date, to indicate an uncertain date not earlier than that named, and the symbol > followed by a date, to indicate an uncertain date not later than that named. Thus 1903 < > 23 would indicate the composition date of any part of this book. I have sometimes placed the date of a play in italics, where it was desirable to indicate the date of production rather than publication.

A. INTRODUCTION

The present chapter contains detailed chronicles—too often, I fear, lapsing into arid annals of performances at Court or in the provinces—of all the companies traceable in London during any year between 1558 and 1616. The household and other establishments to which the companies were attached are taken as the basis of classification. This principle is open to criticism. Certainly it has not always the advantage of presenting economic units. It is improbable that there was any continuity as regards membership between the bodies of actors successively appearing, often after long intervals, under the names of Sussex or Hunsdon or Derby. On the other hand, particular associations of actors can sometimes be discerned as holding together under a change of patrons. Thus between 1571 and 1583 Laurence and John Dutton seem to have led a single company, which earned the nickname of the Chameleons, first in the service of Sir Robert Lane and then, turn by turn, in that of the Earls of Lincoln, Warwick, and Oxford. The real successors, again, of the Derby’s men of 1593 are less the Derby’s men of 1595–1618 than the Hunsdon’s men of 1594–1603, who in course of time became the King’s men without any breach of their unity as a trading association. Nevertheless, an arrangement under patrons is a practicable one, since companies nearly always appear under the names of their patrons in official documents, while an arrangement under trading associations is not. Actors are a restless folk, and the history of the Admiral’s men, or the Queen’s Revels, or the Lady Elizabeth’s men, will show how constantly their business organizations were disturbed by the coming and going of individuals, and by the breaking and reconstruction of the agreements on which they were based. It is but rarely that we have any clue to these intricacies; and I have therefore followed the households as the best available guides, indicating breaches of continuity and affiliations, where these appear to exist, and adopting as far as possible an order which, without pretence of being scientific, will bring each household under consideration roughly at the point at which its servants become of the greatest significance to the general history of the stage. The method may perhaps be described as that of a λαμπαδηφορία.

[4]

A study of the succession of the companies gives rise to a few general considerations. During the earlier years of Elizabeth’s reign the drama is under the domination of the boy companies. This may be in part due to the long-standing humanistic tradition of the Renaissance, although the lead is in fact taken not so much by schoolboys in the stricter sense, as by the trained musical establishments of the royal chapels and still more that of the St. Paul’s choir under Sebastian Westcott. More important points perhaps are, that the Gentlemen of the Chapel, who had been prominent under Henry VIII, had ceased to perform, that the royal Interluders had been allowed to decay, and that the other professional companies had not yet found a permanent economic basis in London, while their literary accomplishment was still upon a popular rather than a courtly level. Whatever the cause or causes, the fact is undeniable. Out of seventy-eight rewards for Court performances between 1558 and 1576, twenty-one went to the Paul’s boys, fifteen to the royal chapels, and ten to schoolboys, making a total of forty-six, as against only thirty-two paid to adult companies. And if the first half of this period only be taken, the disproportion is still greater, for by 1567 the Paul’s boys had received eleven rewards, other boys two, and the adult companies six. A complete reversal of this position coincides rather markedly with the building of the first permanent theatres in 1576. Between 1576 and 1583 the adult companies had thirty-nine rewards and the boys only seventeen. There is also a rapid growth in the number of companies. Before 1576 the Earl of Leicester’s men and the Duttons were alone conspicuous. After 1576 the entertainment of a London company seems to become a regular practice with those great officers the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Admiral, as well as with special favourites of the Queen, such as the Earl of Leicester himself or the Earl of Oxford. Stockwood in 1578 speaks of ‘eighte ordinarie places’ in the City as occupied by the players. A Privy Council order of the same year limits the right to perform to six companies selected to take part in the Court festivities at Christmas, namely Leicester’s men, Warwick’s, Sussex’s, Essex’s, and the Children of the Chapel and St. Paul’s. Gabriel Harvey, writing to Edmund Spenser of the publication of his virelays in the following summer, says:

Doubtless many of this mushroom brood of ‘freshe starteupp comedanties’ never succeeded in making good their permanent footing in the metropolis. Lord Vaux’s men, whom Harvey mentions, were never fortunate enough to be summoned to Court; and the same may be said of Lord Arundel’s men, Lord Berkeley’s, and Lord Abergavenny’s. Such men, after their cast for fortune, had to drift away into the provinces, and pad the hoof on the hard roads once more.

The next septennial period, 1583–90, witnessed the extinction, for a decade or so, of the boy companies, in spite of the new impulse given to the latter by the activity as a playwright of John Lyly. Of forty-five Court payments made during these years, thirty apparently went to men and only fifteen to boys. This ultimate success of the professional organizations may largely have been due to their employment of such university wits as Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lodge, and Nashe in the writing of plays, with which Lyly could be challenged on his own ground before the Court, while a sufficient supply of chronicle histories and other popular stuff could still be kept on the boards to tickle the ears of the groundlings. The undisputed pre-eminence lay during this period with the Queen’s men, who made within it no less than twenty-one appearances at Court. This company enjoyed the prestige of the royal livery, transferred to it from the now defunct Interluders, which had a ready effect in the unloosing of municipal pockets. And at its foundation in 1583 it incorporated, in addition to Tarlton, whose origin is unknown, the leading members of the pre-existing companies: Wilson and Laneham from Leicester’s, Adams from Sussex’s, and John Dutton from Oxford’s. The former fellows of these lucky ones were naturally hardly able to maintain their standing. In January 1587 Leicester’s, Oxford’s, and the Admiral’s were still setting up their bills side by side with those of the Queen’s.[2] But the first two are not heard of at Court again, and even the Admiral’s were hardly able to make a show except by coalition with other companies. Thus we find the Admiral’s combining with Hunsdon’s in 1585, and with Strange’s perhaps from 1589 onwards, and it became the destiny of this last alliance,[6] under the leadership of Edward Alleyn, to dispossess the Queen’s men, after the death of Tarlton in 1588, from their pride of place. The fall of the Queen’s men was sudden. In 1590–1 they gave four Court plays to two by their rivals; in 1591–2 they gave one, and their rivals six. In their turn they appear to have been reduced to forming a coalition with Lord Sussex’s men.

The plague-years of 1592–4 brought disaster, chaos, and change into the theatrical world. Only the briefest London seasons were possible. The necessities of travelling led to further combinations and recombinations of groups, one of which may have given rise to the ephemeral existence of Lord Pembroke’s men. And, by the time the public health was restored, the Queen’s had reconciled themselves to a provincial existence, and continued until 1603 to make their harvest of the royal name, as their predecessors in title had done, without returning to London at all. The combination of which Alleyn had been the centre broke up, and its component elements reconstituted themselves as the two great companies of the Chamberlain’s and the Admiral’s men. Between these there was a vigorous rivalry, which sometimes showed itself in lawsuits, sometimes in the more legitimate form of competing plays on similar themes. Thus a popular sentiment offended by the Chamberlain’s men in 1 Henry IV was at once appealed to by the Admiral’s with Sir John Oldcastle. And when the Admiral’s scored a success by their representation of forest life in Robin Hood, the Chamberlain’s were quickly ready to counter with As You Like It. I think the Chamberlain’s secured the better position of the two. They had their Burbadge to pit against the reputation of Alleyn; they had their honey-tongued Shakespeare; and they had a business organization which gave them a greater stability of membership than any company in the hands of Henslowe was likely to secure. If one may once more use the statistics of Court performances as a criterion, they are found to have appeared thirty-two times and their rivals only twenty times from 1594 to 1603. Between them the Chamberlain’s and the Admiral’s enjoyed for some years a practical monopoly of the London stage, which received an official recognition by the action of the Privy Council in 1597. But this state of things did not long continue. Ambitious companies, such as Pembroke’s, disregarded the directions of the Council. Derby’s men, Worcester’s, Hertford’s, one by one obtained at least a temporary footing at Court, and in 1602 the influence of the Earl of Oxford was strong enough to bring about the admission to a permanent home in London[7] of a third company made up of his own and Worcester’s servants. Even more dangerous, perhaps, to the monopoly was the revival of the boy companies, Paul’s in 1599 and the Chapel in 1600. The imps not only took by their novelty in the eyes of a younger generation of play-goers. They began a warfare of satire, in which they ‘berattled the common stages’ with a vigour and dexterity that betray the malice of the poets against the players which had been a motive in their rehabilitation.[3]

No material change took place at the coming of James. The three adult companies, the Chamberlain’s, the Admiral’s, Worcester’s, passed respectively under the patronage of James, Prince Henry, and Queen Anne.[4] On the death of Prince Henry in 1612 his place was taken by the Elector Palatine. The Children of the Chapel also received the patronage of Queen Anne, as Children of the Queen’s Revels. The competition for popular favour continued severe. Dekker refers to it in 1608 and the preacher Crashaw in 1610.[5] It is to be noticed, however, that Dekker speaks only of ‘a deadly war’ between ‘three houses’, presumably regarding the boy companies as negligible. And in fact these companies were on the wane. By 1609 the Queen’s Revels, though still in existence, had suffered from the wearing off of novelty, from the tendency of boys to grow older, from the plague-seasons of 1603–4 and 1608–9, which they were less well equipped than the better financed adults to withstand, from the indiscretions and quarrels of their managers, and from the loss of the Blackfriars, of which the King’s men had secured possession.[6] The Paul’s boys had been bought off by the payment of a ‘dead rent’ or blackmail to the Master. A third company, the King’s Revels, had been started, but had failed to establish itself.[7] The three houses were not, indeed, left[8] with an undisputed field. Advantage was taken of the predilection of the younger members of the royal family for the drama, and patents were obtained, in 1610 for a Duke of York’s company, and in 1611 for a Lady Elizabeth’s company. These also had but a frail life. In 1613 the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Queen’s Revels coalesced under the dangerous wardenship of Henslowe. In 1615 the Duke of York’s, now Prince Charles’s, men joined the combination. And finally in 1616 the Prince’s men were left alone to make up the tale of four London companies, and the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Queen’s Revels disappeared into the provinces. The list of men summoned before the Privy Council in March 1615 to account for playing in Lent contains the names of the leaders of the four companies, the King’s, the Queen’s, the Palsgrave’s, and the Prince’s. The King’s played at the Globe and Blackfriars, the Queen’s at the Red Bull, whence they moved in 1617 to the Cockpit, the Palsgrave’s at the Fortune, and the Prince’s at the Hope. The supremacy of the King’s men during 1603–16 was undisputed. Of two hundred and ninety-nine plays rewarded at Court for that period, they gave one hundred and seventy-seven, the Prince’s men forty-seven, the Queen’s men twenty-eight, the Duke of York’s men twenty, the Lady Elizabeth’s men nine, the Queen’s Revels boys fifteen, and the Paul’s boys three. Their plays, moreover, were those usually selected for performance before James himself. It is possible, however, that the Red Bull and the Fortune were better able to hold their own against the Globe when it came to attracting a popular audience.

B. THE BOY COMPANIES

i. THE CHILDREN OF PAUL’S

Mr. Leach has succeeded in tracing the grammar school, as part of the establishment of St. Paul’s Cathedral, to the beginning of the twelfth century. It was then located in the south-east corner of the churchyard, near the bell-tower, and here it remained to 1512, when it was rebuilt, endowed, and reorganized on humanist lines by Dean Colet, and thereafter to 1876, when it was transferred to Horsham in Sussex. Originally the master was one of the canons; but by the beginning of the thirteenth century this officer had taken on the name of chancellor, and the general supervision of the actual schoolmaster, a vicar choral, was only one of his functions. Distinct from the grammar school was the choir school, for which the responsible dignitary was not the chancellor, but the precentor, in whose hands the appointment of a master of the song school rested.[8] There was, however, a third branch of the cathedral organization also concerned with the training of boys. The almonry or hospital, maintained by the chapter for the relief of the poor, seems to have been established at the end of the twelfth century,[10] and statutes of about the same date make it the duty of a canon residentiary to assist in the maintenance of its pueri elemosinarii, and prescribe the special services to be rendered them at their great annual ceremony of the Boy Bishop on Innocents’ Day.[9] In the thirteenth century the supervision of these boys was in the hands of another subordinate official, appointed by the chapter and known as the almoner. The number of the boys was then eight; it was afterwards increased, apparently in 1358, to ten.[10] The almoner is required to provide for their literary and moral education, and their liturgical duties are defined as consisting of standing in pairs at the corners of the choir and carrying candles.[11] A later version of the statutes provides for their musical education, and it is clear that these pueri elemosinarii were in fact identical with or formed the nucleus of the boys of the song school.[12] During the sixteenth century the posts of almoner and master of the song school, although technically distinct, were in practice held together, and the holder was ordinarily a member of the supplementary cathedral establishment known as the College of Minor Canons.[13] To this college had been appropriated the parish church of St. Gregory, on the south side of St. Paul’s, just west of the Chapter or Convocation House, and here the song school was already[11] housed by the twelfth century.[14] The college had also a common hall on the north of the cathedral, near the Pardon churchyard; and hard by was the almonry in Paternoster Row.[15] The statutes left the almoner the option of either giving the boys their literary education himself, or sending them elsewhere. It naturally proved convenient to send them to the grammar school, and the almoners claimed that they had a right to admission without fees.[16] On the other side we find the grammar school boys directed by Colet to attend the Boy Bishop ceremony and make their offerings.[17] Evidently there was much give and take between song school and grammar school.

As early as 1378 the scholars of Paul’s are said to have prepared a play of the History of the Old Testament for public representation at Christmas.[18] Whether they took a share in the other miracles recorded in mediaeval London, it is impossible to say. A century and a half later the boys of the grammar school, during the mastership of John Ritwise, are found contributing interludes, in the humanist fashion, to the entertainment of the Court. On 10 November 1527 they gave an anti-Lutheran play in Latin and French before the King and the ambassadors of Francis I, and in the following year the Phormio before Wolsey, who also saw them, if Anthony Wood can be trusted, in a Dido written by Ritwise[12] himself.[19] There is no evidence that Ritwise’s successors followed his example by bringing their pupils to Court; and the next performances by Paul’s boys, which can be definitely traced, began a quarter of a century later, and were under the control of Sebastian Westcott, master of the song school, and were therefore presumably given by boys of that school. Westcott in 1545 was a Yeoman of the Chamber at Court.[20] He was ‘scolemaister of Powles’ by New Year’s Day 1557, when he presented a manuscript book of ditties to Queen Mary.[21] Five years earlier, he had brought children to Hatfield, to give a play before the Princess Elizabeth; and the chances are that these were the Paul’s boys.[22] With him came one Heywood, who may fairly be identified with John Heywood the dramatist; and this enables us, more conjecturally, to reduce a little further the gap in the dramatic history of the Paul’s choir, for some years before, in March 1538, Heywood had already received a reward for playing an interlude with ‘his children’ before the Lady Mary.[23] There is nothing beyond this phrase to suggest that Heywood had a company of his own, and it is not probable that he was ever himself master of the choir school.[24] But he may very[13] well have supplied them with plays, both in Westcott’s time and also in that of his predecessor John Redford. Several of Heywood’s verses are preserved in a manuscript, which also contains Redford’s Wyt and Science and fragments of other interludes, not improbably intended for performance by the boys under his charge.[25] A play ‘of childerne sett owte by Mr. Haywood’ at Court during the spring of 1553 may also belong to the Paul’s boys.[26] Certain performances ascribed to them at Hatfield, during the Princess Elizabeth’s residence there in her sister’s reign, have of late fallen under suspicion of being apocryphal.[27]

From the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign Westcott’s theatrical enterprise stands out clearly enough. On 7 August 1559 the Queen was entertained by the Earl of Arundel at Nonsuch with ‘a play of the chylderyn of Powlles and ther Master Se[bastian], Master Phelypes, and Master Haywod’.[28] If ‘Master Phelypes’ was the John Philip or Phillips who wrote Patient Grissell (c. 1566), this play may also belong[14] to the Paul’s repertory. Heywood could not adapt himself again to a Protestant England, and soon left the country. Sebastian Westcott was more fortunate. In 1560 he was appointed as Head of the College of Minor Canons or Sub-dean.[29] Shortly afterwards, being unable to accept the religious settlement, he was sentenced to deprivation of his offices, which included that of organist, but escaped through the personal influence of Elizabeth, in spite of some searchings of the heart of Bishop Grindal as to his suitability to be an instructor of youth.[30] In fact he succeeded in remaining songmaster of Paul’s for the next twenty-three years, and during that period brought his boys to Court no less than twenty-seven times, furnishing a far larger share of the royal Christmas entertainment, especially during the first decade of the reign, than any other single company. The chronicle of his plays must now be given. There was one at each of the Christmases of 1560–1 and 1561–2, one between 6 January and 9 March 1562, and one at the Christmas of 1562–3.[31] During the next winter the plague stopped London plays. At the Christmas of 1564–5 there were two by the Paul’s boys, of which the second fell on 2 January, and at that of 1565–6 three, two at Court and one at the Lady Cecilia’s lodging in the Savoy. There were two again at each of the Christmases of 1566–7 and 1567–8, and one on 1 January 1569. During the winter of 1569–70 the company was, exceptionally, absent from Court. They reappeared on 28 December 1570, and again at Shrovetide (25–7 February) 1571. On 28 December 1571 they gave the ‘tragedy’ of Iphigenia, which Professor Wallace identifies with the comedy called The Bugbears, but which might, for the matter of that, be Lady Lumley’s translation from the Greek of Euripides. At the Christmas of 1572–3 they played before 7 January.[15] On 27 December 1573 they gave Alcmaeon. They played on 2 February 1575, and a misfortune which befell them in the same year is recorded in a letter of 3 December from the Privy Council, which sets out that ‘one of Sebastianes boyes, being one of his principall plaiers, is lately stolen and conveyed from him’, and instructs no less personages than the Master of the Rolls and Dr. Wilson, one of the Masters of Requests, to examine the persons whom he suspected and proceed according to law with them.[32] Five days later the Court of Aldermen drew up a protest against Westcott’s continued Romish tendencies.[33] The next Court performance by the boys was on 6 January 1576. On 1 January 1577 they gave Error, and on 19 February Titus and Gisippus. They played on 29 December 1577, and one wonders whether it was anything amiss with that performance which led to an entry in the Acts of the Privy Council for the same day that ‘Sebastian was committid to the Marshalsea’.[34] Whether this was so or not, the Paul’s boys were included in the list of companies authorized to practise publicly in the City for the following Christmas. On 1 January 1579 they gave The Marriage of Mind and Measure, on 3 January 1580 Scipio Africanus, and on 6 January 1581 Pompey. A play on 26 December 1581 is anonymous, but may possibly be the Cupid and Psyche mentioned as ‘plaid at Paules’ in Gosson’s Playes Confuted of 1582.[35]

In the course of 1582 Sebastian Westcott died, and this event led to an important development in the dramatic activities of the boys.[36] Hitherto their performances, when not[16] at Court, had been in their own quarters ‘at Paules’, although the notice of 1578, as well as Gosson’s reference, suggests that the public were not altogether excluded from their rehearsals. Probably they used their singing school, which may have been still, as in the twelfth century, the church of St. Gregory itself.[37] This privacy, even if something of a convention, had perhaps enabled them to utilize the services of the grammar school when they had occasion to make a display of erudition.[38] After Westcott’s death, however, they appear to have followed the example of the Chapel, who had already[17] in 1576 taken a step in the direction of professionalism, by transferring their performances to Farrant’s newly opened theatre at the Blackfriars. Here, if the rather difficult evidence can be trusted, the Paul’s boys appear to have joined them, and to have formed part of a composite company, to which Lord Oxford’s boys also contributed, and which produced the Campaspe and Sapho and Phao of the earl’s follower John Lyly. Lyly took these plays to Court on 1 January and 3 March 1584, and Henry Evans, who was also associated with the enterprise, took a play called Agamemnon and Ulysses on 27 December. On all three occasions the official patron of the company was the Earl of Oxford. In Agamemnon and Ulysses it must be doubtful whether the Paul’s boys had any share, for in the spring of 1584 the Blackfriars theatre ceased to be available, and the combination probably broke up.[39] This, however, was far from being the end of Lyly’s connexion with the boys, for the title-pages of no less than five of his later plays acknowledge them as the presenters. They had, indeed, a four years’ period of renewed activity at Court, under the mastership of Thomas Giles, who, being already almoner, became Master of the Song School on 22 May 1584, and in the following year received a royal commission to ‘take up’ boys for the choir, analogous to that ordinarily granted to masters of the Chapel Children.[40] There is no specific mention of plays in[18] the document, but its whole basis is in the service which the boys may be called upon to do the Queen in music and singing. Under Giles the company appeared at Court nine times during four winter seasons; on 26 February 1587, on 1 January and 2 February 1588, on 27 December 1588, 1 January and 12 January 1589, and on 28 December 1589, 1 January and 6 January 1590. The title-pages of Lyly’s Endymion, Galathea, and Midas assign the representation of these plays at Court to a 2 February, a 1 January, and a 6 January respectively. Endymion must therefore belong to 1588 and Midas to 1590; for Galathea the most probable of the three years is 1588. Mother Bombie and Love’s Metamorphosis can be less precisely dated, but doubtless belong to the period 1587–90. At some time or other, and probably before 1590, the Paul’s boys performed a play of Meleager, of which an abstract only, without author’s name, is preserved. It is not, I think, to be supposed that Lyly, although he happened to be a grandson of the first High Master of Colet’s school, had any official connexion either with that establishment or with the choir school. It is true that Gabriel Harvey says of him in 1589, ‘He hath not played the Vicemaster of Poules and the Foolemaster of the Theatre for naughtes’.[41] But this is merely Harvey’s jesting on the old dramatic sense of the term ‘vice’, and the probabilities are that Lyly’s relation as dramatist to Giles as responsible manager of the company was much that which had formerly existed between John Heywood and Sebastian Westcott. Nevertheless, it was this connexion which ultimately brought the Paul’s plays to a standstill. Lyly was one of the literary men employed about 1589 to answer the Martin Marprelate pamphleteers in their own vein, and to this end he availed himself of the Paul’s stage, apparently with the result that, when it suited the government to disavow its instruments, that stage was incontinently suppressed.[42] The reason may[19] be conjectural, but the fact is undoubted. The Paul’s boys disappear from the Court records after 1590. In 1591 the printer of Endymion writes in his preface that ‘Since the Plaies in Paules were dissolved, there are certaine Commedies come to my handes by chaunce’, and the prolongation of this dissolution is witnessed to in 1596 by Thomas Nashe, who in his chaff of Gabriel Harvey’s anticipated practice in the Arches says, ‘Then we neede neuer wish the Playes at Powles vp againe, but if we were wearie with walking, and loth to goe too farre to seeke sport, into the Arches we might step, and heare him plead; which would bee a merrier Comedie than euer was old Mother Bomby’.[43]

A last theatrical period opened for the boys with the appointment about 1600 of a new master. This was one Edward Pearce or Piers, who had become a Gentleman of the Chapel on 16 March 1589, and by 15 August 1600, when his successor was sworn in, had ‘yealded up his place for the Mastership of the children of Poules’.[44] I am tempted to believe that in reviving the plays Pearce had the encouragement of Richard Mulcaster, who had become High Master of the grammar school in 1596, and during his earlier mastership of Merchant Taylors had on several occasions brought his boys to Court. Pearce is first found in the Treasurer of the Chamber’s Accounts as payee for a performance on 1 January 1601, but several of the extant plays produced during this section of the company’s career are of earlier date, and one of them, Marston’s I Antonio and Mellida, can hardly be later than 1599. A stage direction of this play apparently records the names of two of the performers as Cole and Norwood.[45] The Paul’s boys, therefore, were[20] ‘up again’ before their rivals of the Chapel, who cannot be shown to have begun in the Blackfriars under Henry Evans until 1600.[46] This being so, they were probably also responsible for Marston’s revision in 1599 of Histriomastix, which by giving offence to Ben Jonson, led him to satire Marston’s style in Every Man Out of His Humour, and so introduced the ‘war of the theatres’.[47] Before the end of 1600 they had probably added to their repertory Chapman’s Bussy d’Ambois, and certainly The Maid’s Metamorphosis, The Wisdom of Dr. Dodipoll, and Jack Drum’s Entertainment, all three of which were entered on the Stationers’ Register, and the first two printed, during that year. Jack Drum’s Entertainment followed in 1601 and contains the following interesting passage of autobiography:[48]

The criticism, being a self-criticism, must not be taken too seriously. So far as published plays are concerned, Histriomastix is the only one to which it applies. In Marston, Chapman, and Middleton the company had enlisted vigorous young playwrights, who were probably not sorry to be free from the yoke of the professional actors, and appear to have followed the exceptional policy of printing some at least of their new plays as soon as they were produced.

On 11 March 1601, two months after the boys made their first bow at Court, the Lord Mayor was ordered by the Privy Council to suppress plays ‘at Powles’ during Lent. It is to be inferred that they were, as of old, acting in their singing school. Confirmation is provided by a curious note appended by William Percy to his manuscript volume of[21] plays, presumably in sending them to be considered with a view to production by the boys. The plays bear dates in 1601–3, but it can hardly be taken for granted that they were in fact produced by the Paul’s or any other company. The note runs:

Both parts of Marston’s Antonio and Mellida were entered on the Stationers’ Register in the autumn of 1601 and printed in 1602. The second part may have been on the stage during 1601, and in the same year the boys probably produced John Marston’s What You Will, and certainly played ‘privately’, as the Chamberlain’s men did ‘publicly’, Satiromastix in which Dekker, with a hand from Marston, brought his swashing blow against the redoubtable Jonson. This also was registered in 1601 and printed in 1602. There is no sign of the boys at Court in the winter of 1601–2. In the course of 1602 their play of Blurt Master Constable, by Middleton, was registered and printed. They were at Court on 1 January 1603, for the last time before Elizabeth, and on 20 February 1604, for the first time before James. Either the choir school or the grammar school boys took part in the pageant speeches at the coronation triumph on 15 March 1604.[50] To the year 1604 probably belongs Westward Ho! which introduced to the company, in collaboration with Dekker, a new writer, John Webster. Northward Ho! by the same authors, followed in 1605. The company was not at Court for the winter of 1604–5, but during that of 1605–6 they gave two plays before the Princes Henry and Charles. For these the payee was not Pearce, but Edward Kirkham, who is described in the Treasurer of the Chamber’s account as ‘one of the Mr^es of the Childeren of Pawles’. Kirkham, who was Yeoman of the Revels, had until recently been a manager of the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars. It may[22] have been the disgrace brought upon these by Eastward Ho! in the course of 1605 that led him to transfer his activities elsewhere.[51] With him he seems to have brought Marston’s The Fawn, probably written in 1604 and ascribed in the first of the two editions of 1606 to the Queen’s Revels alone, in the second to them ‘and since at Poules’. The charms of partnership with Kirkham were not, however, sufficient to induce Pearce to continue his enterprise. The last traceable appearance of the Paul’s boys was on 30 July 1606, when they gave The Abuses before James and King Christian of Denmark.[52] Probably the plays were discontinued not long afterwards. This would account for the large number of play-books belonging to the company which reached the hands of the publishers in 1607 and 1608. The earlier policy of giving plays to the press immediately after production does not seem to have endured beyond 1602. Those now printed, in addition to Bussy D’Ambois, What You Will, Westward Ho! and Northward Ho! already mentioned, included Middleton’s Michaelmas Term, The Phoenix, A Mad World, my Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One, together with The Puritan, very likely also by Middleton, and The Woman Hater, the first work of Francis Beaumont. The Puritan can be dated, from a chronological allusion, in 1606. The title-pages of The Woman Hater, A Mad World, my Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One specify them to have been ‘lately’ acted. It is apparent from the second quarto of A Trick to Catch the Old One that the Children of the Blackfriars took it over and presented it at Court on 1 January 1609. This was probably part of a bargain as to which we have another record. Pearce may have had at the back of his mind a notion of reopening his theatre some day. But it is given in evidence in the lawsuit of Keysar v. Burbadge in 1610 that, while it was still closed, he was approached on behalf of the other ‘private’ houses in London, those of the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars, and offered a ‘dead rent’ of £20 a year, ‘that there might be a cessation of playeinge and playes to be acted in the said howse neere S^t. Paules Church’.[53] This must have been in the winter of 1608–9, just as the[23] Revels company was migrating from the Blackfriars to the Whitefriars. The agent was Philip Rosseter who, with Robert Keysar, was financially interested in the Revels company. When the King’s men began to occupy the Blackfriars in the autumn of 1609, they took on responsibility for half the dead rent, but whether the arrangement survived the lawsuit of 1610 is unknown.

ii. THE CHILDREN OF THE CHAPEL AND OF THE QUEEN’S REVELS

[24]

The Chapel was an ancient part of the establishment of the Household, traceable far back into the twelfth century.[54] Up to the end of the fourteenth, we hear only of chaplains and clerks. These were respectively priests and laymen, and the principal chaplain came to bear the title of Dean.[55] Children of the Chapel first appear under Henry IV, who appointed a chaplain to act as Master of Grammar for them in 1401.[56] In 1420 comes the first of a series of royal commissions authorizing the impressment of boys for the Chapel service, and in 1444 the first appointment of a Master of the Children, John Plummer, by patent.[57] It is probably to the known tastes of Henry VI that the high level of musical accomplishment, which had been reached by the singers of the Chapel during the next reign was due.[58] The status and duties of the Chapel are set out with full detail in the Liber Niger about 1478, at which date the establishment consisted of a Dean, six Chaplains, twenty Clerks, two Yeomen or Epistolers, and eight Children. These were instructed by a Master of Song, chosen by the Dean from ‘the seyd felyshipp of Chapell’, and a Master of Grammar, whose services were also available for the royal Henchmen.[59] There is no further record of the Master of Grammar; but with this exception the establishment continued to exist on much the same footing, apart from[25] some increase of numbers, up to the seventeenth century.[60] Although subject to some general supervision from the Lord Chamberlain and to that extent part of the Chamber, it was largely a self-contained organization under its own Dean. Elizabeth, however, left the post of Dean vacant, and the responsibility of the Lord Chamberlain then became more direct.[61] It probably did not follow, at any rate in its full numbers, a progress, but moved with the Court to the larger ‘standing houses’, except possibly to Windsor where there was a separate musical establishment in St. George’s Chapel.[62] It does not seem, at any rate in Tudor times, to have had any relation to the collegiate chapel of St. Stephen in the old palace of Westminster.[63] The number of Children varied between eight and ten up to 1526, when it was finally fixed by Henry VIII at twelve.[64] The chaplains and clerks were collectively known in the sixteenth century[26] as the Gentlemen of the Chapel, and the most important of them, next to one who acted as subdean, was the Master of the Children, who trained them in music and, as time went on, also formed them into a dramatic company. The Master generally held office under a patent during pleasure, and was entitled in addition to his fee of 7½d. a day or £91 8s. 1½d. a year as Gentleman and his share in the general ‘rewards’ of the Chapel, to a special Exchequer annuity of 40 marks (£26 13s. 4d.), raised in 1526 to £40, ‘pro exhibicione puerorum’, which is further defined in 1510 as ‘pro exhibicione vesturarum et lectorum’ and in 1523 as ‘pro sustencione et diettes’.[65] To this, moreover, several other payments came to be added in the course of Henry VIII’s reign. Originally the Chapel dined and supped in the royal hall; but this proved inconvenient, and a money allowance from the Cofferer of the Household was substituted, which was fixed in 1544 at 1s. a day for each Gentleman and 2s. a week for each Child.[66] The allowance for the Children was afterwards raised to 6d. a day.[67] Long before this, however, the Masters had succeeded in obtaining an exceptional allowance of 8d. a week for the breakfast of each Child, which was reckoned as making £16 a year and paid them in monthly instalments of 26s. 8d. by the Treasurer of the Chamber. The costs of the Masters in their journeys for the impressment of Children were also recouped by the Treasurer of the Chamber. And from him they also received rewards of 20s. when Audivi vocem was sung on All Saints’ Day, £6 13s. 4d. for the Children’s feast of St. Nicholas on 6 December, and 40s. when Gloria in Excelsis was sung on Christmas and St. John’s Days. These were, of course, over and above any special rewards received for dramatic performances.[68] In the provision of vesturae the Masters were helped by the issue from the Great Wardrobe of black and tawny camlet gowns, yellow satin coats, and Milan bonnets, which presumably constituted[27] the festal and penitential arrays of the choir.[69] The boys themselves do not appear to have received any wages but, when their voices had broken, the King made provision for them at the University or otherwise, and until this could be done, the Treasurer of the Chamber sometimes paid allowances to the Master or some other Gentleman for their maintenance and instruction.[70]

The earlier Masters were John Plummer (1444–55), Henry Abyngdon (1455–78), Gilbert Banaster (1478–83?), probably John Melyonek (1483–5), Lawrence Squier (1486–93), and William Newark (1493–1509).[71] Some of these have left[28] a musical or literary reputation, and Banaster is said to have written an interlude in 1482.[72] But until the end of this period only occasional traces of dramatic performances by the Chapel can be discerned. An alleged play by the Gentlemen at the Christmas of 1485 cannot be verified.[73] The first recorded performance, therefore, is one of the disguisings at the wedding of Prince Arthur and Katharine of Spain in 1501, in which two of the children were concealed in mermaids ‘singing right sweetly and with quaint hermony’.[74]

Towards the end of Henry VII’s reign begins a short series of plays given at the rate of one or two a year by the Gentlemen, which lasted through 1506–12.[75] Thereafter there is no other play by the Gentlemen as such upon record until the Christmas of 1553, when they performed a morality of which[29] the principal character was Genus Humanum.[76] This had been originally planned for the coronation on the previous 1 October, and as a warrant then issued states that a coronation play had customarily been given ‘by the gentlemen of the chappell of our progenitoures’, it may perhaps be inferred that Edward VI’s coronation play of ‘the story of Orpheus’ on 22 February 1547 was also by the Gentlemen.[77] In the meantime the regular series of Chapel plays at Court had been broken after 1512, and when it was taken up again in 1517 it was not by the Gentlemen, but by the Children.[78] This is, of course, characteristic of the Renaissance.[79] But an immediate cause is probably to be found in the personality of William Cornish, a talented and energetic Master of the Children, who succeeded William Newark in the autumn of 1509, and held office until his death in 1523.[80] Cornish appears to have come of a musical family.[81] He took part[30] in a play given by the Gentlemen of the Chapel shortly before his appointment as Master. And although it was some years before he organized the Children into a definite company, he was the ruling spirit and chief organizer of the elaborate disguisings which glorified the youthful court of Henry VIII from the Shrovetide of 1511 to the visit of the Emperor Charles V in 1522, and hold an important place in the story, elsewhere dealt with, of the Court mask.[82] In these revels both the Gentlemen and the Children of the Chapel, as well as the King and his lords and ladies took a part, and they were often designed so as to frame an interlude, which would call for the services of skilled performers.[83]

In view of Cornish’s importance in the history of the stage at Court, it is matter for regret that none of his dramatic writing has been preserved, for it is impossible to attach any value to the fantastic attributions of Professor Wallace, who credits him not only with the anonymous Calisto and Meliboea, Of Gentleness and Nobility, The Pardoner and the Frere, and Johan Johan, but also with The Four Elements and The Four P. P., for the authorship of which by John Rastell and John Heywood respectively there is good contemporary evidence.[84][31] Cornish was succeeded as Master of the Children by William Crane (1523–45) and Crane by Richard Bower, whose patent was successively renewed by Edward VI, presumably by Mary, and finally by Elizabeth on 30 April 1559.[85] His service was almost certainly continuous, and it is therefore rather puzzling to be told that a commission to take up singing children for the Chapel, similar to that of John Melyonek in 1484, was issued in February 1550 to Philip van Wilder, a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.[86] Neither the full text nor a reference to the source for the warrant is given, and I suspect the explanation to be that it was not for the Chapel at all. Philip van Wilder was a lutenist, one of a family of musicians of whom others were in the royal service, and he may not improbably have had a commission to recruit a body of young minstrels with whom other notices suggest that he may have been connected.[87] Bower himself had a commission for the Chapel on 6 June 1552.[88] Although the Children continued to give performances at Court both under[32] Crane and under Bower, it may be doubted whether they were quite so prominent as they had been in Cornish’s time. Certainly they had to contend with the competition of the Paul’s boys. Crane himself is not known to have been a dramatist. It has been suggested that Bower’s authorship is indicated by the initials R. B. on the title-page of Apius and Virginia (1575), but, in view of the date of the publication, this must be regarded as very doubtful. The chief Marian producer of plays was Nicholas Udall, but it remains uncertain whether he wrote for the Chapel Children. Professor Wallace has no justification whatever for his confident assertions that John Heywood ‘not only could but did’ write plays for the Chapel, that he ‘had grown up in the Chapel under Cornish’, and that ‘as dramatist and Court-entertainer’ he ‘was naturally associated with the performances of the Chapel’.[89] There is no proof whatever that Heywood began as a Chapel boy, and although he certainly wrote plays for boys, they are nowhere said or implied to have been of the Chapel company. There are scraps of evidence which indicate that they may have been the Paul’s boys.[90] It is also conceivable that they may have been Philip van Wilder’s young minstrels.

When Elizabeth came to the throne, then, the Chapel had already a considerable dramatic tradition behind it. But for a decade its share in the Court revels remains somewhat obscure. The Treasurer of the Chamber records no payments for performances to its Masters before 1568.[91] A note in a Revels inventory of 1560 of the employment of some white sarcenet ‘in ffurnishinge of a pley by the children of the Chapple’ may apparently refer to any year from 1555 to 1560, and it is therefore hazardous to identify the Chapel with the anonymous players of the interlude of 31 December 1559 which contained ‘suche matter that they wher commondyd to leyff off’.[92] Bower may of course have retained[33] Catholic sympathies, but he died on 26 July 1561, and it is difficult to suppose that the high dramatic reputation of his successor Richard Edwardes was not based upon a greater number of Court productions than actually stand to his name.[93] Edwardes had been a Gentleman of the Chapel from 1556 or earlier. His patent as Master is dated on 27 October 1561, and on the following 10 December he received a commission the terms of which served as a model for those of the next two Masterships:[94]

At Christmas 1564–5 the boys appeared at Court in a tragedy by Edwardes, which may have been his extant Damon and Pythias.[95] On 2 February 1565 and 2 February 1566 they gave performances before the lawyers at the Candlemas feasts of Lincoln’s Inn.[96] There is nothing to show that the Chapel had any concern with the successful play of Palamon and Arcite, written and produced by Edwardes for Elizabeth’s visit to Oxford in September 1566. Edwardes died on the following 31 October, and on 15 November William Hunnis was appointed Master of the Children.[97] His formal patent of appointment is dated 22 April 1567, and the bill for his commission, which only differs from that of Edwardes in minor points of detail, on 18 April.[98] Hunnis had been a Gentleman at least since about 1553, with an interval of disgrace under Mary, owing to his participation in Protestant plots. He was certainly himself a dramatist, but none of his plays are known to be extant, and a contemporary eulogy speaks of his ‘enterludes’ as if they dated from an earlier period than that of his Mastership. It is, however, natural to suppose that he may have had a hand in some at least of the pieces which his Children produced at Court. The first of these was a tragedy at Shrovetide 1568. In the following year is said to have been published a pamphlet entitled The Children of the Chapel Stript and Whipt, which apparently originated in some gross offence given by the dramatic activities of the Chapel to the growing Puritan sentiment. ‘Plaies’, said the writer, ‘will never be supprest, while her maiesties unfledged minions flaunt it in silkes and sattens. They had as well be at their Popish service, in the deuils garments.’ And again, ‘Even in her maiesties chappel do these pretty upstart youthes profane the Lordes Day by the[35] lascivious writhing of their tender limbs, and gorgeous decking of their apparell, in feigning bawdie fables gathered from the idolatrous heathen poets’. I should feel more easy in drawing inferences from this, were the book extant.[99] But it seems to indicate either that the controversialist of 1569 was less careful than his successors to avoid attacks upon Elizabeth’s private ‘solace’, or that the idea had already occurred to the Master of turning his rehearsals of Court plays to profit by giving open performances in the Chapel. That the Court performances themselves took place in the Chapel is possible, but not very likely; the usual places for them seem to have been the Hall or the Great Chamber.[100] But no doubt they sometimes fell on a Sunday.

The boys played at Court on 6 January 1570 and during Shrovetide 1571. On 6 January 1572 they gave Narcissus, and on 13 February 1575 a play with a hunt in it.[101] On all these occasions Hunnis was payee. An obvious error of the clerk of the Privy Council in entering him as ‘John’ Hunnis in connexion with the issue of a warrant for the payment of 1572 led Chalmers to infer the existence of two Masters of the name of Hunnis.[102] During the progress of 1575 Hunnis contributed shows to the ‘Princely Pleasures’ of Kenilworth, and very likely utilized the services of the boys in these.[103] And herewith his active conduct of the Chapel performances appears to have been suspended for some years. A play of Mutius Scaevola, given jointly at Court by the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Windsor on 6 January 1577, is the first of a series for which the place of Hunnis as payee is taken by Richard Farrant. To this series belong unnamed plays on 27 December 1577 and 27 December 1578, Loyalty and Beauty on 2 March 1579, and Alucius on 27 December[36] 1579.[104] Farrant, who is known as a musician, had been a Gentleman of the Chapel in 1553, and had left on 24 April 1564, doubtless to take up the post of Master of the Children of Windsor, in which capacity he annually presented a play at Court from 1566–7 to 1575–6.[105] But evidently the two offices were not regarded as incompatible, for on 5 November 1570, while still holding his Mastership, he was again sworn in as Gentleman of the Chapel ‘from Winsore’.[106] A recent discovery by M. Feuillerat enables us to see that his taking over of the Chapel Children from Hunnis in 1576 was part of a somewhat considerable theatrical enterprise. Stimulated perhaps by the example of Burbadge’s new-built Theatre, he took a lease of some of the old Priory buildings in the Blackfriars; and here, either for the first time, or in continuation of a similar use of the Chapel itself, which had provoked criticism, the Children appeared under his direction in performances open to the public.[107] The ambiguous relation of the Blackfriars precinct to the jurisdiction of the City Corporation probably explains the inclusion of the Chapel in the list of companies whose exercises the Privy Council instructed the City to tolerate on 24 December 1578. It is, I think, pretty clear that, although Farrant is described as Master of the Chapel Children by the Treasurer of the Chamber from 1577 to 1580, and by Hunnis himself in his petition of 1583,[108] he was never technically Master, but merely acted as deputy to Hunnis, probably even to the extent of taking all the financial risks off his hands. Farrant was paid for a comedy at Lincoln’s Inn at Candlemas 1580 and is described in the entry as ‘one of the Queen’s chaplains’.[109] On 30 November 1580 he died and Hunnis then resumed his normal functions.[110] The Chapel played at Court on 5 February 1581, 31 December 1581, 27 February 1582, and 26 December[37] 1582. One of these plays may have been Peele’s Arraignment of Paris; that of 26 December 1582 was A Game of Cards, possibly the piece which, according to Sir John Harington, was thought ‘somewhat too plaine’, and was championed at rehearsal by ‘a notable wise counseller’.[111] On the first three of these occasions the Treasurer merely entered a payment to the Master of the Children, without giving a name, but in the entry for the last play Hunnis is specified. It is known, moreover, that Hunnis, together with one John Newman, took a sub-lease of the Blackfriars from Farrant’s widow on 20 December 1581. They do not seem to have been very successful financially, for they were irregular in their rent, and neglected their repairs. It was perhaps trepidation at the competition likely to arise from the establishment of the Queen’s men in 1583, which led them to transfer their interest to one Henry Evans, a scrivener of London, from whom, when Sir William More took steps to protect himself against the breach of covenant involved in an alienation without his consent, it was handed on to the Earl of Oxford and ultimately to John Lyly.[112] In November 1583, therefore, Hunnis found himself much dissatisfied with his financial position, and drew up the following memorial, probably for submission to the Board of Green Cloth of the royal household:[113]

The actual request made by Hunnis seems a modest one. He seems to have thought that for his boys to have the run of their teeth at the tables of Whitehall would be a better bargain than the board-wages of 6d. a day. Doubtless he knew their appetites. I do not think that the Green Cloth met his views, for in the next reign the 6d. was still being paid and was raised to 10d. for the benefit of Nathaniel Giles.[114] Possibly Hunnis did get back the £16 a year for breakfasts, which seems to be the fee described by him as 1s. a day, although that in fact works out to £18 5s. a year, and the £9 13s. 4d. for largess, if that also had been withdrawn, since these are included in fee lists for 1593 and 1598.[115] The ‘perticuler ffees’ to which he refers are presumably the allowances occasionally paid by Henry for the maintenance of boys whose voices had changed. In any case Hunnis’s personal grievance must have been fully met by liberal grants[39] of Crown lands which were made him in 1585.[116] It will be observed that he says nothing of any profits derived by him from the dramatic activities of the Children; whether in the form of rewards at Court or in that of admission fees to public performances. Plays were no part of the official functions of the Chapel, although it is consistent with the general policy of the reign towards the London stage to suppose that Elizabeth and her economical ministers were well enough content that the deficiencies of her Chapel maintenance should be eked out, and her Christmas ‘solace’ rendered possible, out of the profits of public exercise. So far, however, as the Chapel was concerned, this convenient arrangement was, for the time, nearly at an end. The facts with regard to the boy companies during 1584 are somewhat complicated. The Treasurer of the Chamber paid the Master of the Chapel Children, without specifying his name, for plays on 6 January and 2 February 1584. He also paid John Lyly for plays by the Earl of Oxford’s ‘servants’ on 1 January and 3 March 1584, and Henry Evans for a play by the Earl of Oxford’s ‘children’ on 27 December 1584. Were this all, one would naturally assume that Oxford had brought to Court the ‘lads’ who appeared under his name at Norwich in 1580, and that these formed a company, quite distinct from the Chapel, of which the Earl entrusted the management either jointly or successively to Lyly and Evans. Lyly, of course, is known to have been at one time in the Earl’s service.[117] One would then be left to speculate as to which company played at the Blackfriars during 1584 and where the other played. But the real puzzle begins when it is realized that in the same year 1584 two of Lyly’s plays, Campaspe and Sapho and Phao, were for the first time printed, that these have prologues ‘at the Blackfriars’, that their title-pages indicate their performance at Court, not by Oxford’s company, but by the Chapel and the Paul’s boys, of which latter the Treasurer of the Chamber makes no mention, and that the title-pages of the two issues of Campaspe further specify, in the one case Twelfth Night, and in the other, which is apparently corrected, New Year’s Day, as the precise date of performance, while that of Sapho and Phao similarly specifies Shrove Tuesday. But New Year’s Day and Shrove Tuesday of 1584 are the days which the Treasurer of the Chamber assigns not to the Chapel, but to Oxford’s company; and even if you accept Professor Feuillerat’s rather far-fetched assumption that the days referred to in the title-pages were[40] not necessarily those falling in the year of issue, you will not find a New Year’s Day, or for the matter of that a Twelfth Night, since the opening of the Blackfriars, which, if a play-day at all, is not occupied either by some Chapel or Paul’s play of which the name is known, or by some other company altogether.[118] The conjecture seems inevitable that, when he found himself in financial straits and with the rivalry of the Queen’s men to face in 1583, Hunnis came to an arrangement with the Paul’s boys, who had recently lost Sebastian Westcott, on the one hand, and with the Earl of Oxford and his agents Lyly and Evans on the other, and put the Blackfriars at the disposal of a combination of boys from all three companies, who appeared indifferently at Court under the name of the Master or that of the Earl. In the course of 1584 Sir William More resumed possession of the Blackfriars. Henry Evans must have made some temporary arrangement to enable the company to appear at Court during the winter of 1584–5.[119] But for a year or two thereafter there were no boys acting in London until in 1586 an arrangement with Thomas Giles, Westcott’s successor at St. Paul’s, afforded a new opportunity for Lyly’s pen.[120]

The Chapel had contributed pretty continuously to Court drama for nearly a century. They now drop out of its story for about seventeen years.[121] In addition to the two plays of Lyly, one other of their recent pieces, Peele’s Arraignment of Paris, was printed in 1584. Two former Children, Henry Eveseed and John Bull, afterwards well known as a musician, became Gentlemen on 30 November 1585 and in January 1586 respectively.[122] Absence from Court did not entail an absolute cessation of dramatic activities. Performances by the Children are recorded at Ipswich and Norwich in 1586–7 and at Leicester before Michaelmas in 1591. There is, however, little to bear out the suggestion that the Chapel[41] furnished the boys who played at Croydon, probably in the archbishop’s palace, during the summers of 1592 and 1593, other than the fact that the author of the play produced in 1593, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, was Thomas Nashe, who was also part author with Marlowe of Dido, one of two plays printed as Chapel plays in 1594. The extant text of the other play, The Wars of Cyrus, seems to be datable between 1587 and 1594. Hunnis died on 6 June 1597, and on 9 June 1597 Nathaniel Giles, ‘being before extraordinary’, was sworn as a regular Gentleman of the Chapel and Master of the Children. Giles, like Farrant, came ‘from Winsore’. Born about 1559, he was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and was appointed Clerk in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and Master of the Children on 1 October 1595. He earned a considerable reputation as a musician, and died in possession of both Masterships at the age of seventy-five on 24 January 1634.[123] His patent of appointment to the Chapel Royal is dated 14 July and his commission 15 July 1597.[124] They closely follow in terms those granted to Hunnis.[125]

Three years later the theatrical enterprise which had been dropped in 1584 was renewed by Giles, in co-operation with Henry Evans, who had been associated with its final stages. The locality chosen was again the Blackfriars, in the building reconstructed by James Burbadge in 1596, and then inhibited, on a petition of the inhabitants, from use as a public play-house. Of this, being ‘then or late in the tenure or occupacion of’ Henry Evans, Richard Burbadge gave him on 2 September 1600 a lease for twenty-one years from the following Michaelmas[42] at a rent of £40.[126] According to Burbadge’s own account of the matter, Evans ‘intended then presentlye to erect or sett vp a companye of boyes ... in the same’, and knowing that the payment of the rent depended upon the possibility of maintaining a company ‘to playe playes and interludes in the said Playhowse in such sort as before tyme had bene there vsed’, he thought it desirable to take collateral security in the form of a bond for £400 from Evans and his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins.[127] Long after, the Blackfriars Sharers Papers of 1635 describe the lease as being to ‘one Evans that first sett vp the boyes commonly called the Queenes Majesties Children of the Chapell’.[128] I find nothing in this language to bear out the contention of Professor Wallace that Evans’s occupation of the Blackfriars extended back long before the date of his lease, and that, as already suggested by Mr. Fleay, the Chapel plays began again, not in 1600, but in 1597.[129] Burbadge speaks clearly of the setting up of the company as still an intention when the lease was drawn, and the reference to earlier plays in the house may either be to some use of it unknown to us between 1596 and 1600, or perhaps more probably to the performances by Evans and others before the time of James Burbadge’s reconstruction. Mr. Fleay’s suggestion rested, so far as I can judge, upon the evidence for the existence of Jonson’s Case is Altered as early as January 1599 and its publication as ‘acted by the children of the Blacke-friers’. But this publication was not until 1609 and represents a revision made not long before that date; and as will be seen the company did not use the name Children of the Blackfriars until about 1606. There is no reason to suppose that they were the original producers of the play. A confirmatory indication for 1600 as the date of the revival may be found in the appearance of the Chapel at Court, for the first time since 1584, on 6 January and 22 February 1601. On both occasions Nathaniel Giles was payee. The performance of 6 January, described by the Treasurer of the Chamber as ‘a showe with musycke and speciall songes’ was probably Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels,[43] which that description well fits; that of 22 February may have been the anonymous Contention between Liberality and Prodigality. Both of these were published in 1601. Jonson has preserved for us in his Folio of 1616 the list of the principal actors of Cynthia’s Revels, who were ‘Nat. Field, Sal. Pavy, Tho. Day, Ioh. Underwood, Rob. Baxter and Ioh. Frost’. The induction of the play is spoken by ‘Iacke’ and two other of the Children, of whom one, impersonating a spectator, complains that ‘the vmbrae, or ghosts of some three or foure playes, departed a dozen yeeres since, haue bin seene walking on your stage heere’. Liberality and Prodigality may be one of the old-fashioned plays here scoffed at, but it is probable that Jonson also had in mind Lyly’s Love’s Metamorphosis, which was published in 1601 as ‘first playd by the Children of Paules, and now by the Children of the Chappell’, and there may have been other revivals of the same kind. The company was included in the Lenten prohibition of 11 March 1601. Later in the year they produced Jonson’s Poetaster, containing raillery of the common stages, which stimulated a reply in Dekker’s Satiromastix, and which, together with their growing popularity, sufficiently explains the reference to the ‘aerie of children, little eyases’ in Hamlet.[130] The Poetaster was published in 1602 and the actor-list of the Folio of 1616 contains the names of ‘Nat. Field, Sal Pavy, Tho. Day, Ioh. Underwood, Wil. Ostler and Tho. Marton’. The full name of Pavy, who died after acting for three years, is given as Salathiel in the epigram written to his memory by Jonson; it appears as Salmon in a document which adds considerably to our knowledge both of the original constitution of the company and of the lines on which it was managed. This is a complaint to the Star Chamber by one Henry Clifton, Esq., of Toftrees, Norfolk, against a serious abuse of the powers of impressment entrusted under the royal commission to Nathaniel Giles.[131] Clifton alleged that Giles, in confederacy with Evans, one James Robinson and others, had set up a play-house for their own profit in the Blackfriars, and under colour of the commission had taken boys, not for the royal service in the Chapel Royal, but employment in acting interludes. He specified as so taken, ‘John Chappell, a gramer schole scholler of one Mr. Spykes schole neere Criplegate, London; John Motteram, a gramer scholler in the free schole at Westmi[n]ster; Nathan ffield, a scholler of a gramer[44] schole in London, kepte by one Mr. Monkaster; Alvery Trussell, an apprentice to one Thomas Gyles; one Phillipp Pykman and Thomas Grymes, apprentices to Richard and Georg Chambers; Salmon Pavey, apprentice to one Peerce’. These were all children ‘noe way able or fitt for singing, nor by anie the sayd confederates endevoured to be taught to singe’. Finally they had made an attempt upon Clifton’s own son Thomas, a boy of thirteen, who had been seized by Robinson in Christ Church cloister on or about 13 December 1600, as he went from Clifton’s house in Great St. Bartholomew’s to the grammar school at Christ Church, and carried off to the play-house ‘to exercyse the base trade of a mercynary enterlude player, to his vtter losse of tyme, ruyne and disparagment’. Clifton went to the Blackfriars, where his son was ‘amongste a companie of lewde and dissolute mercenary players’, and made a protest; but Giles, Robinson, and Evans replied that ‘yf the Queene would not beare them furth in that accion, she should gett another to execute her comission for them’, that ‘they had aucthoritie sufficient soe to take any noble mans sonne in this land’, and that ‘were yt not for the benefitt they made by the sayd play howse, whoe would, should serve the Chappell with children for them’. Then they committed Thomas Clifton to the charge of Evans in his father’s presence, with a threat of a whipping if he was not obedient, and ‘did then and there deliuer vnto his sayd sonne, in moste scornefull disdaynfull and dispightfull manner, a scrolle of paper, conteyning parte of one of theire sayd playes or enterludes, and him, the sayd Thomas Clifton, comaunded to learne the same by harte’. Clifton appealed to Sir John Fortescue and got a warrant from him for the boy’s release after a day and a night’s durance. It was not, however, until a year later, on 15 December 1601, that he made his complaint.[132] During the following Christmas Giles brought the boys to Court on 6 and 10 January and 14 February 1602, and then with the hearing of the case in the Star Chamber during Hilary Term troubles began for the syndicate. Evans was censured ‘for his vnorderlie[45] carriage and behauiour in takinge vp of gentlemens childeren against theire wills and to ymploy them for players and for other misdemeanors’, and it was decreed that all assurances made to him concerning the play-house or plays should be void and should be delivered up to be cancelled.[133] Evans, however, had apparently prepared himself against this contingency by assigning his lease to his son-in-law Alexander Hawkins on 21 October 1601. This at least is one explanation of a somewhat obscure transaction. According to Evans himself, the assignment was to protect Hawkins from any risk upon the bond given to Burbadge. On the other hand, there had already been negotiations for the sale of a half interest in the undertaking to three new partners, Edward Kirkham, William Rastall, and Thomas Kendall, and it was claimed later by Kirkham that the assignment to Hawkins had been in trust to reassign a moiety to these three, in return for a contribution of capital variously stated at from £300 to £600. No such reassignment was, however, carried out.[134] But although the lease from Burbadge was certainly not cancelled as a result of the Star Chamber decree, it probably did seem prudent that the original managers of the theatre should remain in the background for a time. Nothing more is heard of James Robinson, while the partnership between Evans and Hawkins on the one side and Kirkham, Rastall, and Kendall on the other was brought into operation under articles dated on 20 April 1602. For the observance of these Evans and Hawkins gave a bond of £200.[135] Kirkham, Rastall, and Kendall in turn gave Evans a bond of £50 as security[46] for a weekly payment of 8s., ‘because after the said agreements made, the complainant [Kirkham] and his said parteners would at their directions haue the dieting and ordering of the boyes vsed about the plaies there, which before the said complainant had, and for the which he had weekely before that disbursed and allowed great sommes of monie’.[136]

Of the new managers, Rastall was a merchant and Kendall a haberdasher, both of London.[137] Kirkham has generally been assumed to be the Yeoman of the Revels, but of this there is not, so far as I know, any definite proof. The association did not prove an harmonious one. According to Evans, Kirkham and his fellows made false information against him to the Lord Chamberlain, as a result of which he was ‘comaunded by his Lordship to avoyd and leave the same’, had to quit the country, and lost nearly £300 by the charge he was put to and the negligence of Hawkins in looking after his profits.[138] This seems to have been in May 1602. Meanwhile the performances continued. The company did not appear at Court during the winter of 1602–3, but Sir Giles Goosecap and possibly Chapman’s Gentleman Usher were produced by them before the end of Elizabeth’s reign; and on 18 September 1602 a visit was paid to the theatre by Philipp Julius, Duke of Stettin-Pomerania, of which the following account is preserved in the journal of Frederic Gerschow, a member of his suite:[139]

This report of a foreigner must not be pressed as if it were precise evidence upon the business organization of the Blackfriars. Yet it forms the main basis of the theory propounded by Professor Wallace that Elizabeth personally financed the Chapel plays and personally directed the limitation of the number of adult companies allowed to perform in London, as part of a deliberate scheme of reform, which her ‘definite notion of what the theatre should be’ had led her to plan—a theory which, I fear, makes his Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars misleading, in spite of its value as a review of the available evidence, old and new, about the company.[140] Professor Wallace supposes that Edward Kirkham, acting officially as Yeoman of the Revels, was Elizabeth’s agent, and that, even before he became a partner in the syndicate, he dieted the boys and supplied them with the ‘köstlichen Kleidern zum Ueberfluss’ mentioned by Gerschow, accounting for the expenditure either through the Revels Accounts or through some other unspecified accounts ‘yet to be discovered’.[141] Certainly no such expenditure appeared in the Revels Accounts, and no other official account with which Kirkham was concerned is known. It may be pointed out that, if we took Gerschow’s account as authoritative, we should have to suppose that Elizabeth provided the theatre building, which we know she did not, and I think it may be taken for granted that her payments for the Chapel were no more than those with which we are already quite familiar, namely the Master’s fee of £40 ‘pro exhibicione puerorum’, the board-wages of 6d. a day for each of twelve children,[48] possibly the breakfast allowance of £16 a year and the largess of £9 13s. 4d. for high feasts, and the occasional rewards for actual performances. None of these, of course, passed through the Revels Office, and although this office may, as in the past, have helped to furnish the actual plays at Court, the cost of exercising in public remained a speculation of the Master and his backers, who had to look for recoupment and any possible profits to the sums received from spectators. If it is true, as Gerschow seems to say, that performances were only given on Saturdays, the high entrance charge of 1s. is fully explained. The lawsuits, of course, bear full evidence to the expenditure by the members of the syndicate upon the ‘setting forward’ of plays.[142] Nor is there any ground for asserting, as Professor Wallace does, that there were two distinct sets of children, one lodged in or near the palace for chapel purposes proper, and the other kept at the Blackfriars for plays.[143] It is true that Clifton charged Giles with impressing boys who could not sing, but Gerschow’s account proves that there were others at the Blackfriars who could sing well enough, and it would be absurd to suppose that there was one trained choir for the stage and another for divine service. Doubtless, however, the needs of the theatre made it necessary to employ, by agreement or impressment, a larger number of boys than the twelve borne on the official establishment.[144] And that boys whose voices had broken were retained in the theatrical company may be inferred from the report about 1602 that the Dowager Countess of Leicester had married ‘one of the playing boyes of the chappell’.[145] I cannot, finally, agree with Professor Wallace in assuming that the play attended by Elizabeth at the Blackfriars on 29 December 1601 was necessarily a public one at the theatre; much less that it was ‘only one in a series of such attendances’. She had dined with Lord Hunsdon at his house in the Blackfriars. The play may have been in his great chamber, or he may have borrowed the theatre next door for private use on an off-day. And the actors may even more probably have been his own company than the Chapel boys.[146]

The appointment of a new Lord Chamberlain by James I seems to have enabled Evans to return to England. He found[49] theatrical affairs in a bad way, owing to the plague of 1603, and ‘speach and treatie’ arose between him and Burbadge about a possible surrender of his lease.[147] By December, however, things looked brighter. Evans did some repairs to the Blackfriars, and the enterprise continued.[148] Like the adult companies, the partners secured direct royal protection under the following patent of 4 February 1604:[149]

Apparently it was still thought better to keep the name of Evans out of the patent, and he was represented by Hawkins; of the nature of Payne’s connexion with the company I know[50] nothing. The adoption of the name of Children of the Queen’s Revels should perhaps be taken as indicating that, as the boy-actors grew older, the original connexion with the Chapel became looser. The use of Giles’s commission as a method of obtaining recruits was probably abandoned, and there is no evidence that he had any further personal association with the theatre.[150] The commission itself was, however, renewed on 13 September 1604, with a new provision for the further education of boys whose voices had changed;[151] and in December Giles was successful in getting the board-wages allowed for his charges raised from 6d. to 10d. a day.[152]

The Revels children started gaily on the new phase of their career, and the Hamlet allusion is echoed in Middleton’s advice to a gallant, ‘if his humour so serve him, to call in at the Blackfriars, where he should see a nest of boys able to ravish a man’.[153] They were at Court on 21 February 1604 and on 1 and 3 January 1605. Their payees were Kirkham for the first year and Evans and Daniel for the second. Evidently Daniel was taking a more active part in the management than that of a mere licenser. Their play of 1 January 1605 was Chapman’s All Fools (1605), and to 1603–5 may also be assigned his Monsieur d’Olive (1606), and possibly his Bussy d’Ambois (1607), and Day’s Law Tricks (1608). I venture to conjecture that the boys’ companies were much more under the influence of their poets than were their adult rivals; it is noteworthy that plays written for them got published much more rapidly than the King’s or Prince’s men ever permitted.[154] And it is known that one poet, who now began for the first time to work for the Blackfriars, acquired a financial interest in the undertaking. This was John Marston, to whom Evans parted, at an unspecified date, with a third of the moiety which the arrangement of 1602 had left on his hands.[155] Marston’s earliest contributions were probably The Malcontent (1604) and The Dutch Courtesan (1605). From[51] the induction to the Malcontent we learn that it was appropriated by the King’s men, in return for the performance by the boys of a play on Jeronimo, perhaps the extant I Jeronimo, in which the King’s claimed rights. Marston’s satirical temper did not, however, prove altogether an asset to the company; and I fear that the deference of its directors to literary suggestions was not compatible with that practical political sense, which as a rule enabled the professional players to escape conflicts with authority. The history of the next few years is one of a series of indiscretions, which render it rather surprising that the company should throughout have succeeded in maintaining its vitality, even with the help of constant reconstructions of management and changes of name. The first trouble, the nature of which is unknown, appears to have been caused by Marston’s Dutch Courtesan. Then came, ironically enough, the Philotas of the company’s official censor, Samuel Daniel. Then, in 1605, the serious affair of Eastward Ho! for which Marston appears to have been mainly responsible, although he saved himself by flight, whereas his fellow authors, Jonson and Chapman, found themselves in prison and in imminent danger of losing their ears.[156] I do not think that the scandal arose on the performance of the play, but on its publication in the late autumn.[157] The company did not appear at Court during the winter of 1605–6, but the ingenious Kirkham seems to have succeeded in transferring one of its new plays, Marston’s Fawn, and possibly also Bussy D’Ambois, to Paul’s, and appeared triumphantly before the Treasurer of the Chamber’s paymaster the following spring as ‘one of the Masters of the Children of Pawles’. Meanwhile the Blackfriars company went on acting, but it is to be inferred from the title-pages of its next group of plays, Marston’s Sophonisba (1606), Sharpham’s The Fleir (1607), and Day’s Isle of Gulls (1606), that its misdemeanour had cost it the direct patronage of the Queen, and that it was now only entitled to call itself, not Children of the Queen’s Revels, but Children of the Revels.[158] Possibly the change of name also[52] indicates that thereafter, not Daniel, but the Master of the Revels, acted as its censor. Anne herself, by the way, must have felt the snub, for it was probably at the Blackfriars that, if the French ambassador may be trusted, she had attended representations ‘to enjoy the laugh against her husband’.[159] The alias, whatever it connoted, proved but an ephemeral one. By February 1606 one of the plays just named, the Isle of Gulls, had given a new offence. Some of those responsible for it were thrown into Bridewell, and a fresh reconstruction became imperative.[160] It was probably at this date that one Robert Keysar, a London goldsmith, came into the business. Kirkham, like Evans before him, discreetly retired from active management, and the Children, with Keysar as ‘interest with them’, became ‘Masters themselves’, taking the risks and paying the syndicate for the use of the hall.[161] Kirkham claims that under this arrangement the moiety of profits in which he had rights amounted to £150 a year, as against £100 a year previously earned.[162] Shortly afterwards the dissociation of the Chapel from the Blackfriars was completed by a new commission issued to Giles on 7 November 1606, to which was added the following clause:

It is presumably to this pronouncement that Flecknoe refers in 1664, when he speaks of the Chapel theatre being converted to the use of the Children of the Revels, on account of the growing precision of the people and the growing licentiousness[53] of plays.[164] It is, however, curious to observe that the abandoned titles of the company tended to linger on in actual use. Evans in 1612 speaks of the syndicate as ‘the coparteners sharers, and Masters of the Queenes Maiesties Children of the Revells (for so yt was often called)’ in 1608;[165] while the name Children of the Chapel is used in the Stationers’ Register entry of Your Five Gallants in 1608, at Maidstone in 1610, and even in such official documents as the Revels Accounts for 1604–5 and the Chamber Accounts for 1612–13.

Under Keysar the name was Children of the Blackfriars. For a couple of years the company succeeded in keeping clear of further disaster. But on 29 March 1608 the French ambassador, M. de la Boderie, reported that all the London theatres had been closed, and were now threatened by the King with a permanent inhibition on account of two plays which had given the greatest offence.[166] Against one of these, which dealt with the domestic affairs of the French king, he had himself lodged a protest, and his description leaves no doubt that this was one of the parts of Chapman’s Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron, which was published, without the offending scene, later in the year, as ‘acted at the Black-Friars’. The other play was a personal attack upon James himself. ‘Un jour ou deux devant’, says La Boderie, ‘ilz avoient dépêché leur Roi, sa mine d’Escosse, et tous ses favorits d’une estrange sorte; car aprés luy avoir fait dépiter le ciel sur le vol d’un oyseau, et faict battre un gentilhomme pour avoir rompu ses chiens, ils le dépeignoient ivre pour le moins une fois le jour.’ This piece is not extant, but I have recently come across another allusion to it in a letter of 11 March 1608 to Lord Salisbury from Sir Thomas Lake, a clerk of the signet in attendance upon the King at Thetford.[167]

Sir Thomas Lake appears to have been under the impression that two companies were concerned, and that the ‘matters of France’ were not played by the Children of Blackfriars. If so, we must suppose that Byron was originally produced elsewhere, perhaps by the King’s Revels, and transferred to the Blackfriars after ‘reformation’ by the Council. M. de la Boderie, however, writes as if the same company were responsible for both plays, and perhaps it is on the whole more probable that Sir Thomas Lake misunderstood the situation. I feel very little doubt that the maker of the play on the mines was once more Marston, who was certainly summoned before the Privy Council and committed to Newgate, on some offence not specified in the extant record, on 8 June 1608.[168] And this was probably the end of his stormy connexion with the stage. He disappeared from the Blackfriars and from literary life, leaving The Insatiate Countess unfinished, and selling the share in the syndicate which he had acquired from Evans about 1603 to Robert Keysar for £100. Before making his purchase, Keysar, who tells us that he put a value of £600 on the whole of the enterprise, got an assurance, as he thought, from the King’s men that they would not come to any arrangement with Henry Evans which would prejudice his interests.[169] This the King’s men afterwards denied, and as a matter of fact the negotiations, tentatively opened as far back as 1603, between Evans and Burbadge for a surrender of the lease were now coming to a head, and its actual surrender took place about August 1608.[170] On the ninth of that month Burbadge executed fresh leases of the theatre to a new syndicate representing the King’s men.[171] The circumstances leading up to Evans’s part in this transaction became subsequently the subject of hostile criticism by Kirkham, who asserted that the lease, which Alexander Hawkins held in trust, had been stolen from his custody by Mrs. Evans, and that the surrender was effected with the fraudulent intention of excluding Kirkham from the profits to which he was entitled under the settlement of 1602.[172] According to Evans, however, Kirkham was at least implicitly[55] a consenting party, for it was he who, after the King’s inhibition had brought the profits to an end, grew weary of the undertaking and initiated measures for winding it up. On or about 26 July 1608 he had had the ‘apparells, properties and goods’ of the syndicate appraised and an equitable division made. When some of the boys were committed to prison he had ‘said he would deale no more with yt, “for”, quoth he, “yt is a base thing”, or vsed wordes to such, or very like effect’. And he had ‘delivered up their commission, which he had vnder the greate seale aucthorising them to plaie, and discharged divers of the partners and poetts’. In view of this, Evans claimed that he was fully justified in coming to terms with Burbadge.[173]

After all, the King’s anger proved only a flash in the pan. Perhaps the company travelled during the summer of 1608, if they, and not the King’s Revels, were ‘the Children of the Revells’ rewarded at Leicester on 21 August.[174] But by the following Christmas they were in London, and with Keysar as their payee gave three plays at Court, where they had not put in an appearance since 1604–5. Two of these were on 1 and 4 January 1609. As they still bore the name of Children of Blackfriars, they had presumably remained on sufferance in their old theatre, which the King’s men may not have been in a hurry to occupy during a plague-stricken period.[175] But when a new season opened in the autumn of 1609, new quarters became necessary. These they found at Whitefriars, which had been vacated by the failure of the short-lived King’s Revels company, and it was as the Children of Whitefriars that Keysar brought them to Court for no less than five plays during the winter of 1609–10. He had now enlisted a partner in Philip Rosseter, one of the lutenists of the royal household, who carried out a scheme, with the co-operation of the King’s men, for buying off with a ‘dead rent’ the possible competition of the Paul’s boys, who had closed their doors about 1606, but might at any moment open[56] them again.[176] More than this, through the influence of Sir Thomas Monson, Rosseter was successful in obtaining a new patent, dated on 4 January 1610, by which the Children once more became entitled to call themselves Children of the Queen’s Revels.[177] It ran as follows:

Of the new syndicate Browne and Jones were old professional actors who had belonged to the Admiral’s men a quarter of a century before, and had since been prominent, Browne in particular, as organizers of English companies for travel in Germany. Daborne was or became a playwright. Of Tarbock I know nothing; he may have been a nominee of Keysar,[57] whose own name, perhaps for reasons of diplomacy, does not appear in the patent. He may, of course, have retired, but a lawsuit which he brought in 1610 suggests that his connexion with the company was not altogether broken. The Whitefriars had not the tradition of the Blackfriars, and Keysar was aggrieved at the surrender of the Blackfriars lease by Evans over his head. On 8 February 1610 he laid a bill in the Court of Requests against the housekeepers of the King’s men, claiming a share in their profits since the date of surrender, which he estimated at £1,500, on the strength of the one-sixth interest in the lease assigned by Evans to Marston and by Marston to him.[178] He asserted that he had kept boys two years in the hope of playing ‘vpon the ceasing of the generall sicknes’, and had spent £500 on that and on making provision in the house, and had now, at a loss of £1,000, had to disperse ‘a companye of the moste exparte and skilful actors within the realme of England to the number of eighteane or twentye persons all or moste of them trayned vp in that service, in the raigne of the late Queene Elizabeth for ten yeares togeather and afterwardes preferred into her Maiesties service to be the Chilldren of her Revells’.[179] Burbadge and his fellows denied that they had made £1,500, or that they had attempted to defraud Keysar either about the surrender of the lease or, as he also alleged, the ‘dead rent’ to Paul’s, and they pointed out that his losses were really due to the plague. He could recover his share of the theatrical stock from Evans. Evans had had no legal right to assign his interest under the lease. As only the pleadings in the case and not the depositions or the order of the court are extant, we do not know what Evans, who was to be a witness, had to say.[180] The fact that one of the new Blackfriars leases of 1608 was to a Thomas Evans leaves the transaction between Henry Evans and Burbadge not altogether free from a suspicion of bad faith. Kirkham also found that he had been either hasty or outwitted in 1608, and as the deaths of Rastall and Kendall in that year had left him the sole claimant to any interest under the arrangement of 1602, he had recourse to litigation. In the course of 1611 and 1612 he brought a ‘multiplicitie of suites’ against Evans and Hawkins, and was finally non-suited in the King’s Bench.[181] Then, in May 1612, Evans in his turn brought a Chancery action against[58] Kirkham, in the hope of getting his bond of 1602 cancelled, and thus securing himself against any further persecution for petty breaches of the articles of agreement. The result of this is unknown, but in the course of it many of the incidents of 1600–8 were brought into question, and Kirkham claimed that not merely had Evans shut him out in 1604 from certain rooms in the Blackfriars which he was entitled to use, but that by the surrender of the lease in 1608 he had lost profits which he estimated at £60 a year.[182] Finally in July 1612 Kirkham brought a Chancery action against Evans, Burbadge, and John Heminges, and also against the widow of Alexander Hawkins and Edward Painton, to whom she was now married, for reinstatement in his moiety of the lease. In this suit much of the same ground was again traversed, but the Court refused to grant him any relief.

It is not altogether easy to disentangle the plays produced at the Blackfriars under Keysar from those produced immediately afterwards at the Whitefriars. The only title-page which definitely names the Children of the Blackfriars is that of Jonson’s The Case is Altered (1609). But Chapman’s Byron (1608) and May Day (1611) and Middleton’s Your Five Gallants (n.d.?1608) also claim to have been acted at the Blackfriars. The Q₁ of Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608) assigns it to Paul’s; the Q₂ both to Paul’s and Blackfriars, with an indication of a Court performance on New Year’s Day, which can only be that of 1 January 1609. This play, therefore, must have been taken over from Paul’s, when that house closed in 1606 or 1607. As Middleton is not generally found writing for Blackfriars, Your Five Gallants may have been acquired in the same way. It is also extremely likely that Chapman’s Bussy d’Ambois passed from Paul’s to Blackfriars on its way to the King’s men. No name of company or theatre is attached to Beaumont and Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle (1613) or to The Faithful Shepherdess (c. 1609). But the K. B. P. was published with an epistle to Keysar as its preserver and can be securely dated in 1607–8; it refers to the house in which it was played as having been open for seven years, which just fits the Blackfriars. The Faithful Shepherdess is of 1608–9 and a boys’ play; the commendatory verses by Field, Jonson, and Chapman justify an attribution to the company with which they had to do. Chapman’s The Widow’s Tears (1612) had been staged both at Blackfriars and at Whitefriars before publication, and was probably therefore produced shortly before the[59] company moved house. The greatest difficulty is Jonson’s Epicoene (S. R. 20 September 1610). No edition is known to be extant earlier than the Folio of 1616, in which Jonson ascribed the production to ‘1609’ and to the Children of the Revels. According to the system of dating ordinarily adopted by Jonson in this Folio, ‘1609’ should mean 1609 and not 1609–10. Yet the Children were not entitled to call themselves ‘of the Revels’ during 1609. Either Jonson’s chronology or his memory of the shifting nomenclature of the company has slipped. The actor-list of Epicoene names ‘Nat. Field, Gil. Carie, Hug. Attawel, Ioh. Smith, Will. Barksted, Will. Pen, Ric. Allin, Ioh. Blaney’. Amongst these Field is the sole direct connecting link with the Chapel actor-lists of 1600 and 1601. Keysar’s pleading shows us that from 1600 to 1610 the company had maintained a substantial identity throughout all its phases, as successively Children of the Chapel, Children of the Queen’s Revels, Children of the Blackfriars, Children of the Whitefriars; but part of his grievance is its dispersal, and possibly the continuity with the second Children of the Revels may not have been quite so marked. ‘In processe of time’, say the Burbadges in the Blackfriars Sharers Papers of 1635, ‘the boyes growing up to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were taken to strengthen the King’s service’.[183] This, which is written in relation to the acquisition of the Blackfriars, is doubtless accurate as regards Ostler and Underwood, and their transfer may reasonably be placed in the winter of 1609–10. But it was not until some years later that Field joined the King’s men.

The career of the second Queen’s Revels, but for the temporary suppression of Epicoene owing to a misconstruction placed on it by Arabella Stuart, was comparatively uneventful. They are recorded at Maidstone as the Children of the Chapel about March 1610. They made no appearance at Court during the following winter, and were again travelling in the following autumn, when they came to Norwich under the leadership of one Ralph Reeve, who showed the patent of 4 January 1610, and at first claimed to be Rosseter, but afterwards admitted that he was not. As he could show no letters of deputation, he was not allowed to play, although he received a reward on the following day, which was recorded, not quite correctly, as paid to ‘the master of the children of the King’s Revells’. By 29 August Barksted and Carey had left the company to[60] join the newly formed Lady Elizabeth’s men. We may therefore place at some time before this date Barksted’s completion of Marston’s Insatiate Countess, which was published in 1613 as ‘acted at Whitefriars’. The entry in the Stationer’s Register of Field’s A Woman is a Weathercock (1612) on 23 November 1611 shows that he also had begun to experiment in authorship. As this had been acted at Court, as well as by the Queen’s Revels at Whitefriars, it probably dates back to the winter of 1609–10. The company returned to court on 5 January 1612 with Beaumont and Fletcher’s Cupid’s Revenge, and the Clerk of the Revels entered them as the Children of Whitefriars.[184] The travels of 1612 were under the leadership of Nicholas Long, and on 20 May another contretemps occurred at Norwich. The instrument of deputation was forthcoming on this occasion, but the mayor chose to interpret the patent as giving authority only to teach and instruct children, and not to perform with them; and so once again ‘the Master of the Kings Revells’ got his reward of 20s., but was not allowed to play. Between Michaelmas and Christmas ‘the queens maiesties revellers’ were at Bristol, and at some time during 1612–13 ‘two of the company of the childeren of Revells’ received a reward at Coventry. Conceivably the provincial company of Reeve and Long was a distinct organization from that in London. Rosseter was payee for four performances at Court during the winter of 1612–13. On the first occasion, in the course of November, the play was Beaumont and Fletcher’s Coxcomb; on 1 January and again on 9 January it was Cupid’s Revenge; and on 27 February it was The Widow’s Tears. In one version of the Chamber Accounts the company appears this year as the Children of the Queen’s Revels, but in another under the obsolete designation of Children of the Chapel. In addition to the plays already named, Chapman’s Revenge of Bussy had been on the Whitefriars stage before it was published in 1613; and it is conceivable that Chapman’s Chabot and Beaumont and Fletcher’s Monsieur Thomas and The Nightwalker may be Queen’s Revels plays of 1610–13. They may also, indeed, be Lady Elizabeth’s plays of 1613–16, but during this period the Lady Elizabeth and the Queen’s Revels appear to have been practically amalgamated, under an arrangement made between Henslowe and Rosseter in March 1613 and then modified, first in 1614, and again on the addition of Prince Charles’s men to the ‘combine’ in 1615. Yet in some way[61] the Children of the Revels maintained a separate individuality, at least in theory, during these years, as may be seen from the patent of 3 June 1615, which licensed Rosseter and Reeve, together with Robert Jones and Philip Kingman, to build a new Blackfriars theatre in the house known as Porter’s Hall.[185] The main purpose of this undertaking was expressed to be the provision of a new house for the Children of the Queen’s Revels instead of the Whitefriars, where Rosseter’s lease was now expired, although it was also contemplated that use might be made of it by the Prince’s and the Lady Elizabeth’s players. Porter’s Hall only stood for a short time before civic hostility procured its demolition, and the single play, which we can be fairly confident that the Children of the Revels gave in it, is Beaumont and Fletcher’s Scornful Lady. This presumably fell after the amalgamation under Henslowe broke up about the time of his death early in 1616. Field appears to have joined the King’s men about 1615. The Queen’s Revels dropped out of London theatrical life. Their provincial travels under Nicholas Long had apparently terminated in 1612, as in 1614 he is found using the patent of the Lady Elizabeth’s men (q. v.) in the provinces. But some members of the company seem to have gone travelling during the period of troubled relations with Henslowe, and are traceable at Coventry on 7 October 1615, and at Nottingham in February 1616 and again later in 1616–17. On 31 October 1617 a new Queen’s Revel’s company was formed by Rosseter, in association with Nicholas Long, Robert Lee of the Queen’s men, and William Perry of the King’s Revels.[186]

iii. THE CHILDREN OF WINDSOR

The Chapel Royal at Windsor was served by an ecclesiastical college, which had been in existence as far back as the reign of Henry I, and had subsequently been resettled as St. George’s Chapel in connexion with the establishment of the Order of the Garter by Edward III, finally incorporated under Edward IV, and exempted from dissolution at the Reformation. Edward III had provided for a warden, who afterwards came to be called dean, 12 canons, 13 priest vicars, 4 clerks, 6 boy choristers, and 26 ‘poor knights’. The boys were to be ‘endued with clear and tuneable voices’, and to succeed the clerks as their voices changed. Their number was[62] altered from time to time; during the greater part of Elizabeth’s reign it stood at 10. Each had an annual fee of £3 6s. 8d. They were lodged within the Castle, in a chamber north of the chapel, and next to a building founded by James Denton in 1520, known as the ‘New Commons’. This is now merged in the canons’ houses, but a doorway is inscribed ‘Edes pro Sacellaenorum et Choristarum conviviis extructae A. D. 1519’. There were also an epistoler and a gospeller.[187] The music was ‘useyd after ye order and maner of ye quenes chappell’.[188] One of the clerks, whose position corresponded to that of the Gentlemen of the household Chapel Royal, was appointed by the Chapter of the College to act as Organist and Master of the Children. The College was privileged, like the Chapel Royal itself, to recruit its choir by impressment. A commission for this purpose, issued on 8 March 1560, merely repeats the terms of one granted by Mary, which itself had confirmed earlier grants by Henry VIII and Edward VI.[189]

The Master at Elizabeth’s accession was one Preston.[190] But he was deprived, as unwilling to accept the new ecclesiastical settlement; and the first Master under whom the choristers appear to have acted at Court was Richard Farrant. He had been a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal from about 1553, but was replaced on 24 April 1564, doubtless on his appointment as Master at Windsor.[191] On the following 30 September the[63] Chapter assigned a chantry to the teacher of the choristers for an increase of his maintenance.[192] On 5 November 1570, Farrant was reappointed a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, but evidently did not resign his Mastership.[193] On 11 February 1567 he began a series of plays with the ‘Children of Windsor’ at Court, which was continued at Shrovetide 1568, on 22 February and 27 December 1569, at Shrovetide 1571, on 1 January 1572, when he gave Ajax and Ulysses, on 1 January 1573, on 6 January 1574, when he gave Quintus Fabius, on 6 January 1575, when he gave King Xerxes, and on 27 December 1575. With the winter of 1576–7 the entries of his name in the accounts of the Treasurer take a new form; he is no longer ‘M^r of the children of the Chappell at Wyndsore’ but ‘M^r of the children of the Chappell’. The Revels Accounts for the same season record that on 6 January 1577 Mutius Scaevola was played at Court by ‘the Children of Windsore and the Chappell’, and it is a fair inference that Farrant, in addition to exercising his own office, was now also acting as deputy to William Hunnis, the Master by patent of the Children of the Chapel Royal, and had made up a combined company from both choirs for the Christmas delectation of the Queen.[194] This interpretation of the facts was confirmed when Professor Feuillerat was able to show from the Loseley archives that in 1576 Farrant had taken a lease of rooms in the Blackfriars from Sir William More and had converted them into the first Blackfriars theatre.[195] Whether boys from Windsor continued to take a share in the performances by the Chapel during 1577–8, 1578–9, and 1579–80, for all of which Farrant was payee, we do not know; there is no further mention of them as actors in the Court accounts, although they accompanied the singing men from Windsor to Reading during the progress of 1576.[196] Farrant died on 30 November 1580, leaving a widow Anne, who in 1582 obtained the reversion of a small lease from the Crown, and was involved in controversies with Sir William More over the Blackfriars tenement at least up to 1587.[197] He had acquired some reputation as a musician, and amongst his surviving compositions are a few which may have been intended for use in plays.[198] Farrant was succeeded at Windsor[64] by Nathaniel Giles, but only after an interval of either five or fifteen years. Ashmole reports Giles’s monument as crediting him with forty-nine years’ service as Master of St. George’s before his death in 1634.[199] There must be an inaccuracy, either here or in the date of 1 October ’37 Eliz.’ (1595) upon a copy of his indenture of appointment by the Windsor chapter, which is amongst Ashmole’s papers.[200] This recites that the chapter ‘are now destitute of an experte and cunnynge man’, and that Giles ‘is well contented to come and serve’ them. He is granted from the previous Michaelmas to the end of his life ‘the Roome and place of a Clerk within the said ffree Chappell and to be one of the Players on the Organes there, and also the office of Instructor and Master of the ten Children or Choristers of the same ffree Chappell, And the office of tutor, creansor, or governor of the same tenn Children or Coristers’. He is to have an annuity of £81 6s. 8d. and ‘tholde comons howse’, wherein John Mundie lately dwelt, which he is to hold on the same terms as ‘one Richarde ffarrante enjoyed the same’ at a rent of £1 6s. 8d. His fee is to be ‘over and besides all such giftes, rewardes or benevolences as from time to time during the naturall lief of him the said Nathanaell Gyles shall be given bestowed or ymployed to or upon the Choristers for singinge of Balattes, playes or for the like respects whatsoever’. He is to maintain the children and to supply vacancies, ‘her Maiesties comission for the taking of Children which her highnes hath alredie graunted to the said Dean and Canons being allowed vnto him the said Nathanaell Gyles for that purpose’. Evidently the door was left open for a resumption of theatrical activities, such as was afterwards brought about at the London Chapel Royal during the Mastership of Giles there; but there is no proof that such a resumption ever took place at Windsor. It is perhaps a fanciful conjecture that the boys may have helped with The Merry Wives of Windsor about 1600.[201]

iv. CHILDREN OF THE KING’S REVELS

Masters:—Martin Slater and others.

[65]

The accident of litigation brings into light a company of boys, who appear to have acted for a brief and troubled period, which probably ended in 1608 or early in 1609. The story is told by one George Androwes a silk-weaver of London, and begins in February 1608. At that date a part of the dissolved Whitefriars monastery was held, in contemplation of a lease from Lord Buckhurst, by Michael Drayton and Thomas Woodford. The lease was actually executed about the following March, and was for six years, eight months, and twenty days, at a rent of £50. Woodford had assigned his interest to one Lording Barry; and Barry in turn persuaded Androwes to take over a third of it, and to join a syndicate, of which the active manager was Martin Slater, who is described as a citizen and ironmonger of London, but is, of course, well known as an actor in the Admiral’s and other companies. The bill incorporates the terms of Articles of Agreement entered into on 10 March 1608 by Slater on the one hand and Barry, Androwes, and Drayton, together with William Trevell, William Cooke, Edward Sibthorpe, and John Mason, all of London, gentlemen, on the other. They throw a good deal of light upon the business organization of a theatrical enterprise. Slater is to have a sixth part of the net profits of ‘any playes, showes, interludes, musique, or such like exercises’ in the Whitefriars play-house or elsewhere, together with lodging for himself and his family on the premises, and any profits that can be made in the house ‘either by wine, beere, ale, tobacco, wood, coales, or any such commoditie’. When the ‘pattent for playinge’ shall be renewed, Slater’s name is to be joined in it with Drayton’s, because ‘if any restrainte of their playinge shall happen by reason of the plague or other wise, it shalbe for more creditt of the whole company that the said Martyn shall travel with the children, and acquainte the magistrates with their busines’. During any such travel his allowance is to be increased to a share and a half, no apparel, books, or other property of the company is to be removed without the consent of the sharers, and none of them is to print any of the play-books, ‘except the booke of Torrismount, and that playe not to be printed by any before twelve monthes be fully expired’. In order to avoid debt, a sixth part is to be taken up each day of the ‘chardges of the howse’ for the week, including ‘the gatherers, the wages, the childrens bourd, musique, booke keeper, tyreman, tyrewoman, lights, the Maister of the revells’ duties, and all other things needefull and necessary’. The children are to be ‘bound’ for three years to Slater, who undertakes[66] not to part with ‘the said younge men or ladds’ during their apprenticeship except on the consent of his fellow sharers.

The theatrical experience of the syndicate presumably rested with Slater and Drayton. Of Trevell, Cooke, and Sibthorpe I know nothing, except that Trevell, like Woodford, seems still to have had an interest in the lease of the Whitefriars (cf. ch. xvii) in 1621. But Mason and Barry were the authors respectively of The Turk (1610, S. R. 10 March 1609), and Ram Alley (1611, S. R. 9 November 1610), the title-pages of which ascribe them to the children of the King’s Revels, and thereby enable us to give a more definite title to the boys, who are only described in the Chancery pleadings as ‘the Children of the revells there beinge’, that is to say, at the Whitefriars. And we can trace the King’s Revels a little farther back than February 1608 with the aid of the earliest of similar entries on the title-pages of other plays, which are, in the chronological order of publication, Sharpham’s Cupid’s Whirligig (1607, S. R. 29 June 1607), Middleton’s Family of Love (1608, S. R. 12 October 1607), Day’s Humour Out Of Breath (1608, S. R. 12 April 1608), Markham’s (and Machin’s) The Dumb Knight (1608, S. R. 6 October 1608), and Armin’s Two Maids of Moreclack (1609). If Lewis Machin was the author of the anonymous Every Woman In Her Humour (1609), it is possible that this ought to be added to the list. Clearly the boys were playing at least as early as the first half of 1607 and the agreement of 1608 must represent a reconstruction of the original business organization. I do not find anything in the plays to prove an earlier date than 1607, but it is quite conceivable that the King’s Revels may have come into existence as early as 1606, perhaps with the idea of replacing the Queen’s Revels after their disgrace over The Isle of Gulls. But if so, the Queen’s Revels managed to hold together under another name, and in fact proved more enduring than their rivals. Mr. Fleay, however, suggests that the King’s Revels were a continuation of the Paul’s boys, and played at the singing-school, and apparently also that they were themselves continued as the Duke of York’s men (H. of S. 152, 188, 202, 206). He did not, I think, know of Androwes v. Slater, but Androwes v. Slater does not indicate that the King’s Revels were at Whitefriars before 1608; rather the contrary.[202] The dates render Mr. Fleay’s conjectures tempting, although it must be admitted that there is not much evidence. But The Family of Love was played in a round theatre and the Paul’s house was round.[67] The curious description of the Duke of York’s men at Leicester in 1608 as ‘of the White Chapple, London’, might conceivably be a mistake for ‘of the Whitefriars’, but more probably indicates that they came from the Boar’s Head (cf. ch. xvi). ‘The Children of the Revells’ followed them at Leicester on 21 August 1608, but these may have been the Blackfriars children under a not quite official name. A complete search through the Patent Rolls for 1606–8 might disinter the patent for the King’s Revels, which is referred to in the Articles of Agreements; I find no obvious clue to it in the printed index of signet bills. It seems possible that William Barksted (cf. ch. xv) may have belonged to the King’s Revels.

The syndicate did not hold together long. It will be noticed that, in spite of the attempt in the articles to bar the printing of plays, these had begun to reach the stationers again as early as April 1608. The inhibition of 1608 hardly gave the company a chance, and then came the plague. They were probably broken before the end of 1608, and although Mason and Barry had at least the consolation that they had got their own plays staged, other members of the syndicate could only reflect that they had lost their money. And when dissensions broke out, and Slater sued Androwes on a bond of £200 given by the sharers for observance of the articles, and this for defaults which Androwes himself had not committed, it is not surprising that Androwes drew the conclusion that he had been a gull. He took Slater to Chancery, and alleged that he had been asked £90 and paid £70 for his share in the expectation of a profit of £100 a year, and on the understanding that the apparel was worth £400 when it was not worth £5, that he had been led into building and other expenses to the tune of £300, that the lease had been forfeited for non-payment of rent before any assignation had been made to him, and that he had been clearly told by Slater that his obligation was not to extend beyond any breaches of covenant that he might himself commit. Slater denied any responsibility for Androwes’s misunderstandings, and pointed out that he had himself been the principal sufferer by the breakdown of the enterprise, since he and his family of ten had been illegally turned out of the rooms to which they were entitled under the articles of agreement, and were now driven to beg their bread. The view taken by the court is not upon record.

The company which was described as the King’s Revels at Norwich in 1611 and 1612 was travelling under the Queen’s Revels patent of 1610, and was therefore clearly misnamed. But a second King’s Revels company did in fact come into[68] existence through a licence given to William Hovell, William Perry, and Nathan May under the royal signet on 27 February 1615. It performed only in the provinces, and is traceable at Norwich, Coventry, and Leicester. Its warrant was condemned and withdrawn by an order of the Lord Chamberlain on 16 July 1616 (Murray, ii. 343), and in the following year the company seems to have amalgamated with the provincial relics of the Queen’s Revels.

v. CHILDREN OF BRISTOL

A signet bill for a patent for a company of Children of Bristol under the patronage of Queen Anne was passed in June 1615, perhaps as a result of her visit to that city in 1613.[203] On 10 July Sir George Buck wrote to John Packer, the Earl of Somerset’s secretary, to say that the grant had been made through the Queen’s influence on behalf of Samuel Daniel, and that he was prepared to assent to it, without prejudice to his rights as Master of the Revels.[204] The actual patent, dated 13 July, is made out to Daniel’s brother John.[205]

The company is not traceable in London, but Daniel brought it to Norwich in 1616–17. By April 1618 he had assigned his privilege to Martin Slater, John Edmonds and Nathaniel Clay, who obtained, presumably from the Privy Council, supplementary letters of assistance in which they are described as ‘her Maiesties servants’, and are authorized to play as ‘her Maiesties servants of her Royall Chamber of Bristoll’.[206] From a complaint sent in the following June by the Mayor of Exeter to Sir Thomas Lake, it emerges that, although the patent was for children, the company consisted of five youths and several grown men.[207] Slater and Edmonds still held their status as Queen’s men (q.v.) in 1619.

vi. WESTMINSTER SCHOOL

There is no trace of any grammar school in the abbey of Westminster until the fourteenth century. The Customary of 1259–83 (ed. E. M. Thompson for Henry Bradshaw Soc.) only contemplates education for the novices, and in the earliest almoner’s accounts, which begin with 1282, entries of 1317 ‘in maintaining Nigel at school for the love of God’ (Leach, 80) and 1339–40, ‘pro scholaribus inueniendis ad scolas’ (E. H. Pearce, The Monks of Westminster Abbey, 79), need only refer to the support of scholars at a University. But from 1354–5 there were almonry boys (pueri Elemosinariae) under the charge of the Sub-Almoner, and these are traceable up to the dissolution. To them we may assign the ludus of the Boy Bishop on St. Nicholas’ day, mentions of which have been noted in 1369, 1388, 1413, and 1540 (Mediaeval Stage, i. 360; Leach, 80). They had a school house near ‘le Millebank’, and from 1367 the Almoner paid a Magister Puerorum. From 1387 he is often called Magister Scolarum and in the fifteenth century Magister Scolarium. From 1510 the boys under the Magister become pueri grammatici, and may be distinct from certain pueri cantantes for whom since 1479–80 the Almoner had paid a separate teacher of singing. The first of these song-masters was William Cornish, doubtless of the family so closely connected with the Chapel Royal (q.v.). In 1540 the pueri grammatici were reorganized as the still existing College of St. Peter, Westminster, which is therefore generally regarded as owing its origin to Henry VIII, who on the surrender of the abbey in 1540 turned it into a college of secular canons, and provided for a school of forty scholars. This endured in some form through the reactionary reign of Mary, whose favourite dramatist Nicholas Udall became its Head Master, although the date of his appointment on 16 December 1555 (A. F. Leach in Encycl. Brit., s.v. Udall) makes it probable that, if he wrote his Ralph Roister Doister for a school at all, it was for Eton (q.v.) rather than Westminster. His predecessor Alexander Nowell is said by Strype to have ‘brought in the reading of Terence for the better learning the pure Roman style’, and, as the Sub-Almoner paid ‘xvid. for wryting of a play for the chyldren’ as early as 1521 (Observer), the performance of Latin comedies by the boys may have been pre-Elizabethan. It is provided for in the statutes drafted by Dean Bill (c. 1560) after the restoration of her father’s foundation by Elizabeth. These statutes also contemplate a good deal of interrelation between[71] the choir school and the grammar school. They are printed in the Report of the Cathedral Commission (App. I, 80). The personnel of the foundation was to include (a) ‘clerici duodecim’, of whom ‘unus sit choristarum doctor’, (b) ‘decem pueri symphoniaci sive choristae’, presumably in continuation of the former singing boys, (c) ‘praeceptores duo ad erudiendam iuventutem’, (d) ‘discipuli grammatici quadraginta’. The ‘praeceptores’ are distinguished later in the document as ‘archididascalus’ and ‘hypodidascalus’, and the former is also called ‘ludimagister’. By c. 5 the choristers are to have a preference in elections to the grammar school. The following section ‘De Choristis et Choristarum Magistro’ forms part of c. 9:

The following section ‘De Comoediis et Ludis in Natali Domini exhibendis’ comes in c. 10:

The statutes appear never to have been confirmed by the Crown, and their practical adoption was subject to certain exceptions. Thus, it is stated in the report of the Public Schools Commission in 1864 (i. 159) that there is no reason to believe that the provision giving a preference to choristers in elections for the grammar school was ever attended to.

Of plays and the like, however, there are various records. The first since 1521 is at the Lord Mayor’s Day of 1561, when the Merchant Taylors’ expenses for their pageant included items ‘to John Tayllour, master of the Children of the late monastere of Westminster, for his children that sung and played in the pageant’, and ‘to John Holt momer in reward for attendance given of the children in the pageant’. Similar payments were made to Taylor as ‘M^r of the quirysters’ for the services of the children on the Ironmongers’ pageant of 1566.[208] In 1562 the choristers of Westminster Abbey performed a goodly play before the Society of Parish Clerks after their annual dinner.[209] In 1564–5 comes the first of a series of Court performances, which received assistance from the Revels office. To this occasion belongs a memorandum of ‘Thexpenses of twoo playes viz. Heautontimoroumenos Terentii and Miles Gloriosus Plauti plaied by the children of the grammer schoole in the colledge of Westminster and before the Quenes maiestie anno 1564’.[210] The items include, ‘At ye rehersing before Sir Thomas Benger for pinnes and suger candee vjd.’, ‘For a lynke to bring thapparell from the reuells iiijd.’, ‘At the playing of Miles Glor: in M^r. Deanes howse for pinnes half a thousand vjd.’, ‘Geuen to M^r. Holte yeoman of the reuells xs.’, ‘To M^r. Taylor his man’, ‘For one Plautus geven to ye Queenes maiestie and fowre other vnto the nobilitie xjs.’ It is not quite clear whether the Heautontimorumenus, as well as the Miles Gloriosus, was given before the Queen, but I think not. In 1565–6 Elizabeth was again present at the play of Sapientia Solomonis, and there were payments ‘For drawing the city and temple of Jerusalem and paynting towers’, ‘To a woman that brawght her childe to the stadge and there attended uppon it’, and for a copy of the play bound ‘in vellum with the Queenes Ma^tie hir armes and sylke ribben strings’, almost certainly that still extant as Addl. MS. 20061 (cf.[73] App. K), which shows that Elizabeth was accompanied by Cecilia of Sweden.[211] Whether these plays were at the school or at Court is not quite clear. I should, on the whole, infer the latter, but no rewards were paid for them by the Treasurer of the Chamber. John Taylor was, however, paid for plays by the Children of Westminster during the Shrovetide of 1566–7 and the Christmas of 1567–8; John Billingesley for their Paris and Vienna on 19 February 1572; and William Elderton for their Truth, Faithfulness, and Mercy on 1 January 1574. In 1567 also the boys are recorded (Observer) to have played at Putney before Bishop Grindal. I suppose that Billingesley and Elderton succeeded Taylor as Magistri Choristarum. Taylor himself is probably the same who on 8 September 1557 was Master of the singing children at the hospital of St. Mary Woolnoth. Elderton is presumably the same who brought the Eton boys to Court in 1573. Whether he is also the bibulous balladist of the pamphleteers (cf. ch. xv) is more doubtful. The absence of a payment for Miles Gloriosus may suggest that this was given by the grammar school who, like the Inns of Court, did not expect a reward, and that the English plays were given by the choristers, who were on the same footing as the choristers of Paul’s. I am not sure, however, that the wording of the statutes quite implies such a sharp distinction between the two sets of boys, and it will be noticed that Taylor, or his man, was in some way concerned with the Latin play. Very possibly grammar boys and choristers acted together. With 1574 the Court performances end, but expenses of plays are traceable in the college accounts in 1604–5, 1605–6, 1606–7, and 1609–10, and up to about 1640, when they stop for sixty-four years.[212]

vii. ETON COLLEGE

The King’s College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor was founded by Henry VI in 1441. The Statutes of 1444 provide for a Boy Bishop (Mediaeval Stage, i. 365), but the custom was discontinued before 1559–61, when William Malim prepared a Consuetudinarium for a Royal Commission appointed to visit the college. By this time, however, Christmas plays by the boys had become the practice, and Malim writes:[213]

There are ‘numerous’ entries of expenditure on these plays in the Audit Books from 1525–6 to 1572–3, of which a few only have been printed.[214] There is also an inventory, apparently undated, of articles in ‘M^r. Scholemasters chamber’, which includes ‘a great cheste bound about with yron to keepe the players coats in’, and a list of the apparel, beards, and properties. The Eton boys played under Udall before Cromwell in 1538 (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 196, 451), and it is possible that Ralph Roister Doister may belong to his Eton mastership.[215] The only Court performance by Eton boys on record was one on 6 January 1573, for which the payee was Elderton, presumably the William Elderton who was payee for the Westminster boys in the following year.

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viii. MERCHANT TAYLORS SCHOOL

The London school of the Merchant Taylors was founded in 1561, and its first master was Richard Mulcaster, or Moncaster, as his name is spelt in some of the earlier records.[216] He was a student of King’s, Cambridge and Christ Church, Oxford, who had been teaching in London since 1559. The first performances by his boys, of which record remains, were in 1572–3. In that and the following year they played before the Merchant Taylors Company at the Common Hall.[217] Unfortunately the audience, who had paid for their seats, and very likely Mulcaster himself, paid more attention to the plays than to the dignitaries in whose hall they were given. The plays were therefore stopped, and the following pleasing example of civic pomposity inserted in the archives of the Company on 16 March 1574:[218]

Mulcaster, however, found more tolerant critics than his own employers. His first appearance at Court was on[76] 3 February 1573.[219] On 2 February 1574 he presented Timoclia at the Siege of Thebes and on 23 February Percius and Anthomiris; at Shrovetide 1575 and on 6 March 1576 plays unnamed; and on 12 February 1583 Ariodante and Geneuora. A reminiscence of these performances has been left us by the seventeenth-century judge, Sir James Whitelocke, who entered the school in 1575 and left for St. John’s, Oxford, in 1588:

In 1586 Mulcaster quarrelled with the Merchant Taylors and resigned. In 1596 he became High Master of St. Paul’s grammar school, but it is only conjecture that his influence counted for anything in the revival of plays by the choir master, Edward Pearce. Regular plays at Merchant Taylors probably ceased on his withdrawal. When Sir Robert Lee, one of the Company, became Lord Mayor in 1602, a payment was made to Mr. Haines, the Schoolmaster, for a wagon and the apparel of ten scholars, who represented Apollo and the Muses in Cheapside. But when James came to dine at the hall on 16 July 1607, it was thought best to apply for help to Heminges of the King’s men and Nathaniel Giles of the Chapel, on the ground that the Schoolmaster and children were not familiar with such entertainments.[221]

ix. THE EARL OF LEICESTER’S BOYS

Vide ch. xiii (Earl of Leicester’s men).

x. THE EARL OF OXFORD’S BOYS

Vide ch. xiii (Earl of Oxford’s men).

xi. MR. STANLEY’S BOYS

Vide ch. xiii (Earl of Derby’s men).

i. THE COURT INTERLUDERS

The doyen of the Court companies, when Elizabeth came to the throne, was the royal company of Players of Interludes. This had already half a century of history behind it. Its beginnings are probably traceable in the reign of Henry VII. Richard III had entertained a company, as Duke of Gloucester, in 1482; but nothing is known of it during his short reign from 1583 to 1585.[222] Nor is a royal company discoverable[78] amongst the earlier records of Henry VII himself.[223] But from 1493 onwards Exchequer documents testify to the continuous existence of a body of men under the style of Lusores Regis, or in the vulgar tongue, Players of the King’s Interludes. In 1494 there were four of them, John English, Edward May, Richard Gibson, and John Hammond, and each had an annual fee, payable out of the Exchequer, of £3 6s. 8d. In 1503 there were five, William Rutter and John Scott taking the place of Hammond, but the total Exchequer payment to the company of £13 6s. 8d. a year, seems to have remained unaltered to the end of the reign.[224] They received, however, additional sums from time to time, as ‘rewards’ for performances, which were charged to the separate account of the Chamber.[225] In 1503, under the leadership of John English, they attended the Princess Margaret to Edinburgh, for her wedding with James IV of Scotland. Here they ‘did their devoir’, both on the day of the wedding, 8 August, and on the following days. On 11 August they played after supper, and on 13 August they played ‘a Moralite’ after dinner.[226]

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The royal company continued under Henry VIII, who appears to have increased its numbers, and doubled the charge upon the Exchequer.[227] The financial records are, however, a little complicated. The Exchequer officials presumably continued to regard the establishment as consisting of four members drawing fees of ten instead of five marks each.[228] But the individual members were in fact paid on different scales. John English, the leader, got £6 13s. 4d. Others got £3 6s. 8d. as before, and others again only two-thirds of this amount, £2 4s. 5d. By this arrangement, it was possible to maintain an actual establishment of from eight to ten within the limits of the Exchequer allowance. It seems also to have been found convenient to transfer the responsibility for some at least of the payments from the Exchequer to the Treasurer of the Chamber.[229] The same distinction between players of different grades is also reflected in the annual rewards paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber for Christmas performances. These were increased in amount, and for a time the general reward to the players as a whole was supplemented by an additional sum to the ‘old’ players. Ultimately an amalgamated sum of £6 13s. 4d. became the customary reward for the company.[230] Details of a performance of Henry Medwall’s Finding of Truth on 6 January 1514 are related by Collier from a document which cannot be[80] regarded as free from suspicion.[231] The name of Richard Gibson now disappears from the notices of the company. He may, likely enough, have given up playing on his appointment to be Porter and Yeoman Tailor of the Great Wardrobe.[232] But in his capacity of officer in charge of the Revels he must have maintained close relations with his former fellows, and his Account for 1510 records the delivery to John English of a ‘red satin ladies garment, powdered, with tassels of silver of Kolen’.[233] English remained at the head of the company, and is traceable in the Chamber Accounts up to 1531. John Scott died in 1528–9, in singular circumstances which are detailed by a contemporary chronicler.[234] Other names which come in succession before us are those of Richard Hole, George Maylor, George Birch, John Roll or Roo (d. 1539), Thomas Sudbury or Sudborough (d. 1546), Robert Hinstock, Richard Parrowe, John Slye, and John Young.[235] Some interesting information is disclosed by two lawsuits, in both of which George Maylor figured. The first of these was a dispute between John Rastell and Henry Walton as to the dilapidations of certain playing garments, during which[81] George Mayler, merchant tailor, aged 40, and George Birch, coriar, aged 32, were called to give evidence as to the value of the garments and their use for a royal banquet at Greenwich in 1527.[236] In the second Mayler was himself a party. He is here described as a glazier, and an agreement of November 1528 is recited between him and one Thomas Arthur, tailor, whom he took as an apprentice for a year, promising to teach him to play and to obtain him admission into the King’s company and the right to the privileges (libertatem) thereof and ‘the Kinges bage’. According to Mayler, he found Arthur meat and drink and 4d. a day, but after seven weeks Arthur left him, beguiling away three of his covenant servants upon a playing tour in the provinces, out of which they made a profit of £30. He was, adds Mayler, ‘right harde and dull too taike any lernynge, whereby he was nothinge meate or apte too bee in service with the Kinges grace too maike any plaiez or interludes before his highnes’. Arthur, on the other hand, alleged that it was Mayler who had broken the indentures, and sued him before the sheriffs of London for £26 damages. Owing to the accident of Mayler’s being in Ludgate prison and unable to defend himself, the jury found against him for £4, and he appealed to Chancery to remove the action to that court.[237] The King’s men, even apart from their other occupations as Household servants or tradesmen, were not wholly dependent on the royal bounty. The reward at Christmas was supplemented by minor gifts from the Princess Mary, or from lords and ladies of the Court, such as the Duke of Rutland and the Countess of Devon;[238] and the glamour of the King’s badge doubtless added to the liberality of the company’s reception in many a monastery, country mansion, and town hall. They are found during the reign at the priories of Thetford, Dunmow (1531–2), and Durham (1532–3), at the house of the Lestranges at Hunstanton (23 October 1530), at New Romney (1526–7), Shrewsbury (1527, 1533, 1540), Leicester (1531), Norwich (1533), Bristol (1535, 1536, 1537, 1541), Cambridge (1537–8), Beverley (1540–1), and Maldon (1546–7).[239] A private performance by the King’s men forms an episode in the Elizabethan play of Sir Thomas More, although the Mason there named cannot be traced amongst their number.

No important change in the status of the company is to[82] be observed under Edward VI. Some of the existing members seem to have retired, and four new ones, Richard Coke, John Birch, Henry Heryot, and John Smyth, were appointed.[240] The first three of these, together with two others, Richard Skinner and Thomas Southey, received a warrant to the Master of the Great Wardrobe on 15 February 1548, for the usual livery assigned to yeomen officers of the household, which consisted of three yards of red cloth, with an allowance of 3s. 4d. for the embroidering thereon of the royal initials.[241] The fees of these five, and of George Birch and Robert Hinstock, who were survivors from Henry VIII’s time, are traceable, as well as the annual reward of £6 13s. 4d., in the Chamber Accounts.[242] Each now got £3 6s. 8d. a year, under a warrant of 24 December 1548. The same names appear in a list of 30 September 1552, with the exception of Robert Hinstock, whose place had probably been taken by John Browne, appointed as from the previous Christmas by a warrant of 9 June 1552, which introduced the innovation of granting him a livery allowance of £1 3s. 4d. a year instead of the actual livery.[243] If we suppose that John Smith and John Young continued to be borne on the Exchequer pay-roll, the total number of eight interlude-players provided for in fee-lists of Edward’s reign is made up.[244] John Smith is probably to be identified with the ‘disard’ or jester of that name who took part in George Ferrers’s Christmas gambols of 1552–3.[245] John Young may be the ‘right worshipful esquire John Yung’ to whom William Baldwin dedicated his Beware the Cat in 1553. He certainly survived into Elizabeth’s reign and was still drawing an annuity of £3 6s. 8d. as ‘agitator comediarum’ in 1569–70.[246] I have not noticed any provincial performances by the company during 1547–53, except at[83] Maldon in 1549–50, but they are referred to more than once in the archives of the Revels. The Revels Office made them an oven and weapons of wood at Shrovetide 1548 and a seven-headed dragon at Shrovetide 1549. At Christmas 1551–2 the Privy Council gave them a warrant to borrow ‘apparell and other fornyture’ from the Master, and Lord Darcy gave John Birch and John Browne another for garments to serve in an interlude before the King on 6 January 1552.[247] William Baldwin, in his Beware the Cat, relates that during the Christmas of 1552–3, they were learning ‘a play of Esop’s Crowe, wherin the moste part of the actors were birds’.[248] Their only other play of which the name is known is that of Self Love, for which Sir Thomas Chaloner gave them 20s. on a Shrove Monday in 1551–3.[249]

The company no doubt took their share in Court revels during the earlier part of Mary’s reign. But when the eclipse of gaiety came upon her later years they travelled. They are noted as the King and Queen’s men in 1555–6 at Ipswich and Gloucester, in 1557 at Bristol, and in 1558 at Barnstaple, and as the Queen’s men in 1555 at Leicester, in 1555–6 at Beverley, in 1556–7 at Beverley, Oxford, Norwich and Exeter, and in 1557–8 at Beverley, Leicester, Maldon, Dover, Lyme Regis, and Barnstaple. The nominal establishment continued to be eight.[250] But Heriot disappears after 1552 and John Birch, Coke, and Southey after 1556, and their vacancies do not seem to have been filled.[251]

Under Elizabeth the interlude players were certainly a moribund folk. They were reappointed ‘during pleasure’ under a warrant of 25 December 1559, and apparently Edmund Strowdewike and William Reading took the place of George Birch and Skinner.[252] They drew their fees of £3 6s. 8d. and livery allowances of £1 3s. 4d. from the Treasurer of the Chamber. The eight posts figure on the fee-lists long after there were no holders left.[253] The last ‘reward’ to the[84] company, not improbably for the anti-papal farce of 6 January 1559, is to be found in the Chamber Account for 1558–60. It may be inferred that they never again played at Court. They were allowed to dwindle away. Browne and Reading died in 1563, Strowdewike on 3 June 1568, and Smith survived in solitary dignity until 1580.[254] Up to about 1573 he kept up some sort of provincial organization, doubtless with the aid of unofficial associates, and the Queen’s players are therefore traceable in many municipal Account-books. In October 1559 they were at Bristol and before Christmas at Leicester, in 1559–60 at Gloucester, in 1560–1 at Barnstaple, in 1561 at Faversham,[255] in October–December 1561 at Leicester, in 1561–2 at Gloucester, Maldon, and Beverley, in July 1562 at Grimsthorpe, and on 4 October at Ipswich, in August 1563 at Bristol, in 1563–4 at Maldon, on 12 and 20 March 1564 at Ipswich again, and on 2 August at Leicester, in 1564–5 at Abingdon, Maldon, and Gloucester, in 1565–6 at Maldon, Oxford, and Shrewsbury, in July 1566 at Bristol, before 29 September at Leicester, and on 9 October at Ipswich, in July 1567 at Bristol, in 1567–8 at Oxford and Gloucester, in 1568–9 at Abingdon, Ipswich, and Stratford-upon-Avon,[85] in August 1569 at Bristol, and on 7 December at Oxford, in 1569–70 at Gloucester and Maldon, before 29 September 1570 at Leicester, in 1570–1 at Winchester, and during October-December 1571 at Leicester, in 1571–2 at Oxford, on 23 May 1572 at Nottingham, and on 20 November at Maldon, in 1572–3 at Ipswich, on 7 January 1573 at Beverley, and in 1573 at Winchester. This list is not exhaustive.[256] A reward to ‘the Queens Majesty’s men’ in the Doncaster accounts for 1575 can hardly be assumed to refer to actors.

ii. THE EARL OF LEICESTER’S MEN

The earliest mention of Lord Robert Dudley’s players is in a letter which he wrote in June 1559 to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord President of the North, as Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire, asking licence for them to perform in that county, in accordance with the proclamation of 16 May 1559.[257] The terms of the letter suggest that the company may already have played in London, but it is probable, as nothing is said of a hearing by the Queen, that they had not been at Court. They were there at each Christmas from 1560–1 to 1562–3, and then not for a decade. They were in 1558–9 at Norwich, in 1559–60 at Oxford, Saffron Walden, and Plymouth, in July 1560 at Bristol, in October 1561 at Grimsthorpe, in 1561–2 at Oxford, Maldon, and Ipswich, in September 1562 at Bristol, where they are called ‘Lord Dudley’s’ players, on 12 November 1563 at Leicester, and on 17 November at Ipswich, in 1563–4 at Maldon, on 2 January 1564 at Ipswich, and on 1 July at Leicester. They are also found, as the Earl of Leicester’s, in 1564–5 at Maldon, on 6 April 1565 at York, on 11 August 1569 at Nottingham, in January 1570 at Bristol, on 4 May 1570 at Oxford, and in October-December at Leicester, in 1570–1 at Abingdon, Barnstaple, and Gloucester, on 9 August 1571 at Saffron Walden,[258] in October–December[86] at Leicester, in the same year at Beverley, on 15 July 1572 at Ipswich, and on 20 August at Nottingham. The gap in my records between 1565 and 1569 is bridged in the fuller list covering other towns given by Mr. Murray.[259] Information as to the company in 1572 is derived from the signatures to a letter asking for appointment by Leicester, not merely as liveried retainers but as household servants, in order to meet the terms of the proclamation of 3 January in that year.[260]

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Several of these men were to achieve distinction in their ‘quality’; of none of them is there any earlier record, unless John Perkin is to be identified with the Parkins who had been in 1552–3 one of the train of the Lord of Misrule.[261] By 6 December 1571 the company were in London.[262] Three years later they obtained a very singular favour in the patent of 10 May 1574, the general bearings of which have already been discussed.[263]

The names in this patent only differ from those in the letter of 1572 by the omission of Thomas Clarke. By the time of its issue Leicester’s men were again a Court company. They had made their reappearance at the Christmas of 1572–3 with three plays, all given before the end of December. They continued to appear in every subsequent year until the formation of the Queen’s men in 1583. The building of the Theatre by James Burbadge in 1576 gave them a valuable head-quarters in London[264]; but they are still found from time to time about the provinces. Their detailed adventures are as follows. In 1572–3 they were at Stratford-on-Avon, on 8 August 1573 at Beverley, on 1 September at Nottingham, and in October at Bristol. On 26 December they played Predor and Lucia at Court, on 28 December Mamillia, and on 21 February 1574 Philemon and Philecia. In 1573–4 they were at Oxford and Leicester, on 13 June 1574 at Maldon, on 3 December at Canterbury. In 1574 they were also at Doncaster, where they played in the church. For the Court they rehearsed Panecia, and this was probably either their play of 26 December in which ‘my Lord of Lesters boyes’ appeared, or that of 1 January 1575, in which there were chimney-sweepers. From 9 to 27 July 1575 Elizabeth paid her historic visit to Kenilworth, and there is no proof, but much probability, that the company were called upon to take their part in her entertainment. Its chronicler, Robert Laneham, may well have been a kinsman of the player. I have not come across them elsewhere this year, except at Southampton. They played at Court on 28 December 1575 and 4 March 1576, and are described in the account for their payment as ‘Burbag[89] and his company’. A record of them at Ipswich in 1575–6 as ‘my Lorde Robertes’ men is probably misdated. On 30 December 1576 they acted The Collier at Court. In 1576–7 they were at Stratford-on-Avon, in September 1577 at Newcastle, and between 13 and 19 October at Bristol, where they gave Myngo.[265] In 1577–8 they were also at Bath. They were at Court on 26 December 1577 and were to have performed again on 11 February 1578, but were displaced for Lady Essex’s men. They may have been at Wanstead in May 1578 when Leicester entertained Elizabeth with Sidney’s The May Lady. On 1 September they were at Maldon, on 9 September at Ipswich, and on 3 November at Lord North’s at Kirtling. They played A Greek Maid at Court on 4 January 1579.[266] Their play on 28 December 1579 fell through because Elizabeth could not be present, but they played on 6 January 1580. In 1579–80 they were at Ipswich and Durham, and from 15 to 17 May 1580 at Kirtling. Vice-Chancellor Hatcher’s letter of 21 January 1580 to Burghley about Oxford’s men (vide infra) shows that Leicester’s had then recently been refused leave to play at Cambridge. They played Delight at Court on 26 December and appeared again on 7 February 1581. That Wilson was still a member of the company in 1581 is shown by the reference to him in the curious Latin letter written by one of Lord Shrewsbury’s players on 25 April of that year.[267] In the following winter they did not come to Court, but on 10 February 1583 they returned with Telomo.[268]

The best of Leicester’s men, including Laneham, Wilson, and Johnson, appear to have joined the Queen’s company on its formation in March 1583. Probably the Queen’s also took over the Theatre. James Burbadge himself may have given up acting. Nothing more is heard of Leicester’s men until 1584–5, when players under his name visited Coventry, Leicester, Gloucester, and Norwich. They were at Dover in June 1585, and at Bath as late as August. These may have been either the relics of the old company, or a new one formed to attend the Earl in his expedition to aid the States-General in the Low Countries. He was appointed to the command of the English forces on 28 August, and reached Flushing on[90] 10 December. The pageants in his honour at Utrecht, Leyden, and the Hague were remarkable. Stowe records festivities at Utrecht on St. George’s Day, 23 April 1586. These included an after-dinner show of ‘dauncing, vauting, and tumbling, with the forces of Hercules, which gave great delight to the strangers, for they had not seene it before’.[269] It is a reasonable inference that the performers in The Forces of Hercules were English.[270] And on 24 March 1586 Sir Philip Sidney, writing to Walsingham from Utrecht, says:

That the ‘jesting plaier’ was William Shakespeare is on the whole less likely than that he was the famous comic actor, William Kempe; and this theory is confirmed by a mention in an earlier letter of 12 November 1585 from Thomas Doyley at Calais to Leicester himself of ‘Mr. Kemp, called Don Gulihelmo’, as amongst those remaining at Dunkirk.[272] Leicester returned to England in November 1586. ‘Wilhelm Kempe, instrumentist’ and his lad ‘Daniell Jonns’ were at the Danish Court at Helsingör in August and September of the same year; and so, from 17 July to 18 September, were five ‘instrumentister och springere’ whose names may evidently be anglicized as Thomas Stevens, George Bryan, Thomas King, Thomas Pope, and Robert Percy (cf. ch. xiv). Some or all of these men are evidently the company of English comedians referred to by Thomas Heywood as commended by the Earl of Leicester to Frederick II of Denmark. Stevens and his fellows, but not apparently[91] Kempe, went on to Dresden. Some of them ultimately became Lord Strange’s men. But it seems to me very doubtful whether, as is usually suggested, they passed direct into his service from that of Leicester.[273] They did not leave Dresden until 17 July 1587. But Leicester’s were at Exeter on 23 March 1586. They played at Court on 27 December 1586, and were in London about 25 January 1587. They were at Abingdon, Bath, Lathom, Coventry, Leicester, Oxford, Stratford-on-Avon, Dover, Canterbury, Marlborough, Southampton, Exeter, Gloucester, and Norwich during 1586–7. Kempe may, of course, have been with them on these occasions; but if Stevens and the rest passed as Leicester’s in the Low Countries, it is likely that they ceased to do so when they went to Denmark.

Finally, Leicester’s men were at Coventry, Reading, Bath, Maidstone, Dover, Plymouth, Gloucester, York, Saffron Walden, and probably Exeter in 1587–8.[274] On 4 September they were at Norwich, and here William Stonage, a cobbler, was committed to prison at their suit, ‘for lewd words uttered against the ragged staff’.[275] As late as 14 September they did not yet know that the lord in whose name they wore this badge was dead, for on that day, unless the records are again in error, they were still playing at Ipswich.[276]

iii. LORD RICH’S MEN

The company was at Ipswich on 3 May 1564, Saffron Walden in 1563–4, Maldon in 1564–5, York on 6 April 1565,[92] and Ipswich on 31 July 1567. Then it secured a footing in London, and appeared at Court during the Christmas of 1567–8, on 26 December 1568, and on 5 February 1570. On 2 February 1570 it played at the Lincoln’s Inn Candlemas ‘Post Revels’.[277] It was also at Canterbury in 1569, Saffron Walden in 1569–70, and Maldon in 1570. Presumably it was a later company to which Gabriel Harvey referred in 1579 (cf. p. 4), and the death of Lord Rich in 1581 might naturally have led to its disbandment or change of service.

iv. LORD ABERGAVENNY’S MEN

The only London record of this company is a civic licence for it of 29 January 1572 (App. D, No. xxi), but it is found in provincial records at Dover, Canterbury, Leicester, Bristol, and Faversham in 1571 and 1572, and at Ludlow in 1575–6.

v. THE EARL OF SUSSEX’S MEN

The third Earl of Sussex had a company, which proved one of the most long-lived of the theatrical organizations of Elizabeth’s time and held together, now in London and now in the provinces, under no less than three earls. It first makes its appearance at Nottingham on 16 March 1569, at Maldon in 1570, on 28 January 1571, and on 20 August 1572, at Ipswich in 1571–2, at Canterbury and Dover in 1569 and 1570, and in 1569–70 at Bristol, Gloucester, and Ludlow, where it was of six men. Sussex became Chamberlain in July 1572 and in the following winter his company came to the Court, whose Christmases it helped to enliven pretty regularly until the death of its first patron in 1583. As I have shown elsewhere (ch. vi), Sussex seems to have had occasional[93] deputies in Lord Howard of Effingham and Lord Hunsdon during his term of office, but it is probably justifiable to assume that, when the Chamberlain’s men are referred to at any time during 1572–83, Sussex’s men are meant, and in 1577 and 1581 there is clear evidence that the names are used synonymously. Oddly enough, Howard’s men are also referred to in one record of 1577 (cf. p. 134) as the Chamberlain’s, but that is probably a slip. The detailed history of the company during this period is as follows. In 1572–3 they were at Bath, in July 1573 at Leicester, on 14 September at Nottingham, in 1573–4 at Coventry, in 1574, on some date before 29 September, at Leicester again, on 13 July at Maldon, and in September at Wollaton (Francis Willoughby’s). They rehearsed two Court plays for Christmas on 14 December, Phedrastus and Phigon and Lucia, but in the end did not give a performance. In 1574–5 they were at Gloucester, in 1575 at Maldon, and before 29 September at Leicester. They played at Court on 2 February 1576. Their payee was John Adams, the only actor whose name is recorded in connexion with the company. In 1575–6 they were at Ipswich, on 27 July 1576 at Cambridge, and between 29 July and 5 August at Bristol, where they played The Red Knight. On 2 February 1577 they played The Cynocephali at Court. In 1576–7 they were at Coventry and Bath, on 30 May 1577 at Ipswich, and on 31 August at Nottingham. On 2 February 1578 they played at Court. In 1577–8 they were at Bath, on 15 July 1578 at Maldon, in the same year at Bristol, and in 1578–9 at Bath. Thereafter their activities seem to have been mainly confined to London. They were named by the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor among the Court companies for the Christmas of 1578–9 (App. D, No. xl), and played The Cruelty of a Stepmother on 28 December 1578, The Rape of the Second Helen on 6 January, and Murderous Michael on 3 March 1579. In the following winter their pieces were The Duke of Milan and the Marquess of Mantua on 26 December, Portio and Demorantes on 2 February, and Sarpedon on 16 February 1580.[278] The names of their Court plays on 27 December 1580 and 2 February 1581 are unfortunately not recorded. On 14 September they recur in the provinces, at Nottingham.[279] They missed the next winter at Court, and made their last appearance there for a decade in Ferrar on 6 January 1583.

[94]

Either the death of their patron in June 1583, or possibly the formation of the Queen’s men in the previous March, eclipsed them, but in 1585 they reappear as a provincial company, visiting Dover on 15 May, Bath on 22 July and in May 1586, Coventry twice in 1585–6, Ipswich in 1586–7, York in 1587, Leicester before Michaelmas of the same year, and Coventry in September. Here they were playing under the name of the Countess of Sussex. In 1587–8 they were at Coventry and Bath, on 18 April 1588 at Ipswich, on 17 February 1589 at Leicester, on 1 March at Ipswich, on 19 November at Leicester again, in the course of 1589 at Faversham, and in 1588–9 at Aldeburgh. On 17 February 1590 they were at Ipswich. In the spring of 1591 they appear to have made a temporary amalgamation with a group of the Queen’s men (q.v.) and appeared with them on 14 February at Southampton, on 24 March at Coventry, and during 1590–1 at Gloucester. This arrangement probably terminated in May, and on 11 August Sussex’s were alone at Leicester.[280]

They enter the charmed London circle again with a Court performance on 2 January 1592.[281] It is possible that they had attracted the services of Marlowe, for Kyd in a letter, probably to be dated in 1593, speaks of himself as having been in the service of a lord for whose players Marlowe was writing, and there are some traces of connexion between Kyd and the house of Radcliffe. During the plague of 1593 the company were obliged to travel again, and on 29 April the Privy Council Register records the issue of

The company were at Ipswich, Newcastle, and York in 1592–3. They were at Winchester on 7 December 1593; then came to London under the patronage of the fifth Earl, and, although not at Court, had a season of about six weeks, beginning on 26 December and ending on 6 February, with Henslowe, probably at the Rose. The names and dates of their plays and sums received at each, probably by himself as owner of the theatre, are noted by Henslowe in his diary. The company performed on thirty nights, in twelve plays.[95] Henslowe’s receipts averaged £1 13s., amounting to £3 1s. on the first night and £3 10s. on each of the next two, and thereafter fluctuating greatly, from a minimum of 5s. to a maximum of £3 8s. This last was at the production of the one ‘new’ play of the season, Titus Andronicus, on 24 January. The enterprise was brought to an abrupt termination by a renewed alarm of plague, and a consequent inhibition of plays by the Privy Council on 3 February. Titus Andronicus was played for the third and last time on 6 February, and on the same day the book was entered for copyright purposes in the Stationers’ Register. The edition published in the same year professes to give the play as it was played by ‘the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their Servants’. I suppose it to have passed, probably in a pre-Shakespearian version, from Pembroke’s to Sussex’s, when the former were bankrupt in the summer of 1593 (cf. infra), and to have been revised for Sussex’s by the hand of Shakespeare. If so, it is a plausible conjecture that certain other plays, which were once Pembroke’s and ultimately came to the Chamberlain’s men, also passed through the hands of Sussex’s. Such were The Taming of A Shrew, The Contention of York and Lancaster, and perhaps the Ur-Hamlet, 1 Henry VI, and Richard III. There is no basis for determining whether any of Shakespeare’s work on the York tetralogy was done for Sussex’s; but it is worth noting that one of their productions was Buckingham, a title which might fit either Richard III or that early version of Henry VIII, the existence of which, on internal grounds, I suspect. Of Sussex’s other plays in this season, one, George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, was published as theirs in 1599; another, Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, probably belonged to Henslowe, as it was acted in turn by nearly every company which he financed; and of the rest, God Speed the Plough, Huon of Bordeaux, Richard the Confessor, William the Conqueror, Friar Francis, Abraham and Lot, The Fair Maid of Italy, and King Lud, nothing is known, except for the entry of God Speed the Plough in 1601 and an edifying tale related about 1608 by Thomas Heywood in connexion with an undated performance of Friar Francis by the company at King’s Lynn.[283]

At Easter 1594 Henslowe records another very brief season of eight nights between 1 and 9 April, during which the Queen’s and Sussex’s men played ‘together’. This suggests to Dr. Greg that the companies appeared on different nights, but to me rather that they combined their forces, as they seem to have already done at Coventry in 1591. Henslowe’s[96] receipts averaged £1 17s. The repertory included, besides The Fair Maid of Italy and The Jew of Malta, King Leare, doubtless to be identified with King Leire and his Three Daughters (1605), The Ranger’s Comedy, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. The latter was published in 1594 as a Queen’s play. Both it and The Ranger’s Comedy were played at a later date by the Admiral’s, and may have belonged to Henslowe. Strange’s had played Friar Bacon in 1592–3.

Thereafter Sussex’s men vanish from the annals; they may have been absorbed in the Queen’s men for travelling purposes. Later players under the same name are recorded at Coventry in 1602–3, Dover in 1606–7, Canterbury in 1607–8, Bristol, Norwich, and Dunwich in 1608–9, Leicester on 31 August 1615, and Leominster in 1618, and it may be these to whom Heywood alludes as visiting King’s Lynn. If so, their possession of Friar Francis suggests some affiliation to the earlier company.

vi. SIR ROBERT LANE’S MEN

I have not come across Sir Robert Lane’s men except at Bristol in August 1570, and at Court during the Christmas of 1571–2. On 27 December 1571 they played Lady Barbara and on 17 February 1572 Cloridon and Radiamanta. The first performance was paid for by a warrant of 5 January to Laurence Dutton; the second by a warrant of 26 February, in which, according to the entry in the Privy Council Register, Dutton was again named.[284] But the Treasurer of the Chamber records the payment as made to John Greaves and Thomas Goughe. Probably this company is identical with that found next year in the service of the Earl of Lincoln.

vii. THE EARL OF LINCOLN’S (LORD CLINTON’S) MEN

Players serving the Lord Admiral were at Winchester in 1566–7. A company under the name of the Earl of Lincoln and led by Laurence Dutton played at Court during the Christmas of 1572–3, and a company under that of Lord Clinton, and also led by Dutton, in Herpetulus the Blue Knight and Perobia on 3 January 1574, and on 27 December 1574 and 2 January 1575. For 1574–5 they rehearsed three plays, one of which was Pretestus. Probably these are the same company transferred by the Lord Admiral to his son. Dutton was with Sir Robert Lane’s men in 1571–2 and with the Earl of Warwick’s in 1575–6. The whole company may have taken service with Lincoln instead of Lane as a result of the statute of 1572 (App. D, No. xxiv), but it does not seem to have been altogether absorbed in Warwick’s, as Lord Clinton’s men are found at Southampton on 24 June 1577, when they were six in number, at Bristol in July, and at Coventry in 1576–7. A later company under the name of the Earl of Lincoln has a purely provincial record in 1599–1604. There is an isolated notice at Norwich in 1608–9.

viii. THE EARL OF WARWICK’S MEN

Dudley seems to have had players in London in January 1562, when they were rewarded by the Duchess of Suffolk.[285] They are also found in 1559–64 at Oxford, Gloucester, Bristol, Plymouth, Winchester, Dover, Canterbury, and Norwich. Their only Court performances upon record were two during the Christmas of 1564–5. In 1564–5 they were apparently at Canterbury.[286]

After an interval of ten years there are Warwick’s men at Court on 14 February 1575 and also at Stratford in the course of 1574–5, at Lichfield between 27 July and 3 August during the progress,[287] and at Leicester before 29 September 1575. At the following Christmas they gave three plays at Court,[98] on 26 December 1575 and 1 January and on 5 March 1576. John and Laurence Dutton and Jerome Savage were their payees. Laurence Dutton and possibly others of the company had been, a year before, in Lord Clinton’s service. During the next four winters they appeared regularly at Court, and are recorded at Leicester in 1576 and Nottingham on 1 September 1577. On 26 December 1576 they played The Painter’s Daughter, and on 18 February 1577 The Irish Knight. The names of their plays on 28 December 1577 and 6 January and 9 February 1578 are not preserved. They were notified by the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor as one of the Court companies for the Christmas of 1578–9 (App. D, No. xl), and played The Three Sisters of Mantua on 26 December and The Knight in the Burning Rock on 1 March. A play intended for 2 February was not performed, but payment was made to Jerome Savage. Gabriel Harvey (cf. p. 4) mentions them as a London company in the summer of 1579. On 1 January 1580 they played The Four Sons of Fabius. A Winchester record of ‘Lord Ambrose Dudley’s’ men in 1581–2 must be an error.

The Duttons were evidently a restless folk, and the disappearance of Warwick’s men and the appearance of Oxford’s men in 1580 is to be explained by another transfer of their services. This is referred to in the following verses:[288]

In 1587–8 tumblers were at Bath under Warwick’s name. I do not understand the entry of his men in the Ipswich accounts, as playing on 10 March 1592. Ambrose Dudley died in 1590, and his doubtfully legitimate nephew, Sir Robert Dudley, does not seem even to have claimed the title until 1597. The Ipswich records are unreliable, but possibly Lady Warwick maintained a company for a while. The Corporation of London were considering some ‘cause’ of hers as to plays in May 1594 (App. D, No. xcviii).

ix. THE EARL OF OXFORD’S MEN

The Earls of Oxford had their players as far back as 1492.[289] A company belonging to the 16th Earl caused a scandal by playing in Southwark at the moment when a dirge was being sung for Henry VIII in St. Saviour’s on 6 February 1547.[290] It is probably the same company which is traceable in 1555–6 at Dover, in 1557–8 at Ipswich, in 1559–60 and[100] 1560–1 at Maldon, and in 1561–2 at Barnstaple, Maldon, and Ipswich. Murray (ii. 63) adds a few notices. There is no sign of it at Court, and it is likely that the 17th Earl discontinued it soon after his succession. The last notices of it are at Leicester, Plymouth, and Ipswich in 1562–3.

At a later date, however, this Earl was clearly interested in things dramatic. He took part in a Shrovetide device at Court in 1579, and is recorded in Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia (1598) to have been himself a playwright and one of ‘the best for comedy amongst us’ (App. C, No. lii). In 1580 the Duttons and the rest of the Earl of Warwick’s men transferred themselves to his service, and thereby laid themselves open to satire upon their fickleness (cf. supra). I do not know whether it was their resentment at this that brought them into trouble, but on 12 April 1580 the Lord Mayor wrote to Sir Thomas Bromley, the Lord Chancellor, about a disorder at the Theatre two days before, which he understood to be already before the Privy Council; and on 13 April we find the Council committing Robert Leveson and Laurence Dutton, servants of the Earl of Oxford, to the Marshalsea for a fray with the Inns of Court. On 26 May the matter was referred to three judges for examination, and on 18 July Thomas Chesson, sometime servant to the Earl, was released on bail (App. D, Nos. xliii, xliv). These notices suggest that the company had arranged, possibly during the absence of Leicester’s men from town, to occupy the Theatre. In view of their disgrace, it was no doubt better for them to travel, and on 21 June John Hatcher, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, wrote to Lord Oxford’s father-in-law, Lord Burghley, to acknowledge recommendations received from him, as well as from the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chamberlain Sussex, that Oxford’s men should be allowed to ‘show their cunning in several plays already practised by them before the Queen’s majesty’, and to explain that, in view of pestilence, the need for industry at commencement, a previous refusal to Leicester’s men, and a Privy Council order of 1575 against assemblies in Cambridge, he had thought it better to give them 20s., and send them away unheard.[291] They are traceable provincially in 1580–3.[292] At Norwich (1580–1) the payment was made to ‘the Earle of Oxenfordes lads’, and at Bristol (Sept. 1581) there were nine boys and a man. These were probably[101] boys of the Earl’s domestic chapel, travelling either with the Duttons or as a separate company.

The Duttons joined the Queen’s company, John on its first establishment in 1583. It is in the following winter, however, that an Oxford’s company first appears at Court. Here the Earl’s ‘servauntes’ performed on 1 January and 3 March 1584. Their payee was John Lyly, who had probably been for some years in the Earl’s service. Provincial performances continue during 1583–5, and in the records the company are always described as ‘players’ or ‘men’.[293] On 27 December 1584 Agamemnon and Ulysses was played at Court by the Earl of Oxford’s ‘boyes’. For this the payee was Henry Evans, probably the same who in 1600 set up the Chapel plays. I do not feel much doubt that the companies under Lyly and Evans were the same, or that in 1583–4 they in fact consisted of a combination of Oxford’s boys, Paul’s and the Chapel, working under Lyly and Evans at the Blackfriars theatre.[294] This arrangement had, no doubt, to be modified when Sir William More recovered possession of the premises in the spring of 1584, and after the performance of December 1584 Oxford perhaps ceased to maintain boy players and contented himself with another company of his servants, who made an appearance at Court on 1 January 1585, under John Symons, in feats of activity and vaulting. These tumblers had apparently been Lord Strange’s men in 1583, and by 1586 had returned into the service of the Stanley family.

An Oxford’s company did not again perform at Court, but his ‘plaiers’ were at Norwich in 1585–6, and Ipswich in 1586–7,[295] and players under his name were notified to Walsingham amongst others setting up their bills in London on 25 January 1587 (App. D, No. lxxviii). They were at York in June 1587 and Maidstone in 1589–90. Finally, at the end of the reign, comes a letter from the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor on 31 March 1602, which informs him that at the Earl’s suit the Queen has tolerated a new company formed by a combination of his servants and those of the Earl of Worcester, and that they are to play at the Boar’s Head (App. D, No. cxxx). Oxford’s men had probably then[102] been established for some little time, as they are indicated as having played The Weakest Goeth to the Wall (1600, S. R. 23 October 1600) by the title-page, and The History of George Scanderbarge by the entry in the Stationers’ Register (3 July 1601). Meres’s reference to Oxford in 1598 suggests that they may have been in existence still earlier, as it is natural to suppose that he wrote comedies for his own men. Some of the writers, however, with whom Meres groups him belong to the early years of the reign, although others are contemporary. From 1602 the company was no doubt merged in Worcester’s, which in its turn became Queen Anne’s.

x. THE EARL OF ESSEX’S MEN

The Bourchiers, Earls of Essex, whom the Devereux succeeded through an heiress, had their players well back into the fifteenth century. In fact, the earliest household troop on record is that of Henry Bourchier, first earl of the senior creation, which is found at Maldon in 1468–9 and at Stoke-by-Nayland on 9 January 1482.[296]

Walter Devereux had a company, which visited Bath, Bristol, Gloucester, and Nottingham in 1572–3, Wollaton (Francis Willoughby’s) in July 1574, Coventry on 29 August, and Leicester before 29 September 1574, Gloucester, Dover, and Coventry in 1574–5, Coventry and Leicester in 1575–6, Nottingham in September 1576, and Bristol in September 1577. On the Earl’s death the Countess retained the company, and under her name it appeared at Coventry and Oxford in 1576–7. On 11 February 1578 it gave its only performance at Court, taking the place of Leicester’s men, to whom that day had originally been assigned. It was included in the list of Court companies sent to the Lord Mayor in December[103] 1578 (App. D, No. xl), but gave no play that winter. The Privy Council described it as the Earl of Essex’s men, and it played under that name at Coventry in 1577–8 and at Ipswich in 1579–80; but at Oxford, Coventry, and Stratford-on-Avon in 1578–9, and at Oxford in 1579–80, it is still called the Countess of Essex’s. It could hardly have borne that name after August 1579, when the Countess’s secret marriage with Leicester was revealed to Elizabeth, and doubtless her disgrace debarred it from any further Court favour.

Robert Earl of Essex had a provincial company from 1581 to 1596. In 1581–2 it was at Exeter, in July 1584 at Ludlow, in 1583–4 at Leicester, Stratford-on-Avon, and Ipswich, and in 1584–5 at Bath. On 26 June 1585 it played at Thorpe in Norwich, in spite of a prohibition by the Corporation, and was sentenced to be excluded from civic reward in future. In 1585–6 it was at Coventry and Ipswich, in 1586 before 29 September at Leicester, and possibly about May at Oxford, on 27 February 1587 at York, on 16 July at Leicester, and in the course of the year at Stratford-on-Avon. In 1587–8 it was at Coventry, Ipswich, Saffron Walden, and Leicester, in 1588–9 at Bath, Saffron Walden, and Reading, on 7 September 1589 at Knowsley, on 31 October at Ipswich, and in the same year at Faversham. It was also at Coventry and Faversham in 1589–90, at Maldon in 1590, and twice at Faversham in 1590–1, and is last recorded at Ludlow in April 1596. Murray adds some intermediate dates. A company of Essex’s men which appeared at Coventry in 1600–1 is probably distinct. The execution of Essex on 25 February 1601 must have brought it to a premature end.

xi. LORD VAUX’S MEN

These companies are extremely obscure. Gabriel Harvey mentions the first in 1579 (cf. p. 4); the second was at Leicester in October-December 1601, Coventry in 1603–4 and 1608, and Skipton in 1609.

xii. LORD BERKELEY’S MEN

The only London record of this company is in July 1581, when some of them, including Arthur King and Thomas[104] Goodale, were committed to the Counter after a brawl with Inns of Court men. Lord Berkeley apologized to the Lord Mayor on their behalf, and said that they would go to the country (App. D, Nos. xlix, l). Their other appearances are all in the country, at Bristol between 6 and 12 July 1578, where they played What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man, at Bath on 11 July 1578 and on another day in 1578–9, at Abingdon in 1579–80, Stratford-on-Avon in 1580–1, Maldon in 1581, Stratford-on-Avon in 1582–3, Barnstaple in 1583–4, and Bath in 1586–7. Long after they, or a later company under the same name, reappear at Coventry in 1597–8, at Leicester in 1598 before Michaelmas, at Saffron Walden in 1598–9, and at Coventry and elsewhere in 1603–10. Lord Berkeley’s name is sometimes misspelt in the account-books as ‘Bartlett’.[297]

xiii. QUEEN ELIZABETH’S MEN

The origin of this company, the most famous of all the London companies during the decade of the ’eighties, can be dated with an extreme minuteness.[298] The Revels Accounts for 1582–3 record an expenditure of 20s. in travelling charges by

The date then was 10 March 1583, and the business was in the hands of Sir Francis Walsingham. Lord Chamberlain Sussex, to whom it would naturally have fallen, was ill in the previous September[300] and died on the following 9 June. Walsingham’s agency in the matter is confirmed in the account of the formation of the company inserted by Edmund Howes in the 1615 and 1631 editions of Stowe’s Annales:

Howes is not altogether accurate. ‘Thomas’ is obviously a mistake for ‘Robert’ Wilson. Elizabeth had maintained players before, the Interluders, although they had cut little figure in the dramatic history of the reign, and the last of them had died in 1580. Dr. Greg thinks that the players were not appointed as grooms of the Chamber, on the ground that their names do not appear in a list of these officers appended to a warrant of 8 November 1586.[302] But Tarlton is described as ‘ordenary grome off her majestes chamber’ in the record of his graduation as a master of fence in 1587, and both he and his ‘fellow’, William Johnson, are described as ‘grooms of her majesties chamber’ in his will of 1588. Their absence from Dr. Greg’s list is probably due to their treatment as a special class of grooms of the chamber in ordinary without fee, who were not called upon to perform the ordinary duties of the office, such as helping to watch the palace.[303] That they had liveries, which were red coats, is borne out by the particular mention of the fact that they were not wearing them, in the depositions concerning a very untoward event which took place in the first few months of their service. On the afternoon of 15 June 1583 they were playing at the Red Lion in Norwich. A dispute as to payment arose between a servant of one Mr. Wynsdon and Singer, who, in a black doublet and with a player’s beard on, was acting as gatekeeper. Tarlton and Bentley, who was playing the duke, came off the stage, and Bentley broke the offender’s head with the hilt of his sword. The man fled, pursued by Singer with an arming-sword which he took off the stage, and by Henry Browne, a servant of Sir William Paston. Both of them struck him, and one of the blows, but it was not certain whose, proved mortal.[304]

Several other places, besides Norwich, received a visit from the Queen’s men during the first summer of their existence. In April they were at Bristol, on 9 July at Cambridge, and between 24 July and 29 September at Leicester.[106] Their travels also extended to Gloucester, Aldeburgh, Nottingham, and Shrewsbury.[305] In the winter they returned to London, and on 26 November the Privy Council wrote to the Lord Mayor to bespeak for them permission to play in the City and the liberties upon week-days until Shrovetide. The City accordingly licensed them to play at the Bull and the Bell, but with unwelcome limitations, for on 1 December it was necessary for Walsingham to write a personal letter, explaining that it was not the intention of the Council that the licence to play should be confined to holidays. The City record gives the names of the twelve members of the company as Robert Wilson, John Dutton, Richard Tarlton, John Laneham, John Bentley, Thobye Mylles, John Towne, John Synger, Leonall Cooke, John Garland, John Adams, and William Johnson. The company made its initial appearance at Court on 26 December, and played again on 29 December, and on 3 March 1584. Their public performances probably continued through the spring, but in June there were disturbances in and around the Middlesex theatres, and the City obtained leave from the Council to suppress plays. The Queen’s submitted to an injunction from William Fleetwood, the Recorder; and their leader advised him to send for the owner of the Theatre, who was Lord Hunsdon’s man, and bind him. They travelled again, and are found in 1583–4 at Bath and Marlborough, and in October or November at Dover. When the winter came on, they once more approached the Council and requested a renewal of the previous year’s privilege, submitting articles in which they pointed out that the time of their service was drawing near, and that the season of the year was past to play at any of the houses outside the City. They also asked for favourable letters to the Middlesex justices. The City opposed the concession, and begged that, if it were granted, the number and names of the Queen’s men might be set out in the warrant, complaining that in the previous year, when toleration was granted to this company alone, all the playing-places were filled with men calling themselves the Queen’s players. The records do not show whether the Council assented.[306] The company appeared four times at Court, giving Phillyda and Corin on 26 December, Felix and Philiomena on 3 January 1585, Five Plays in One on 6 January, and an antic play and a comedy on 23 February. They had prepared a fifth performance, of Three Plays in One, for 21 February, but it was not called for. Mr. Fleay has conjectured that the Five Plays in One and the Three[107] Plays in One may have been the two parts of Tarlton’s Seven Deadly Sins.[307] The payment for this winter’s plays was made to Robert Wilson.

There is no evidence that the company were travelling in 1585. They were at Court again on 26 December and on 1 January and 13 February 1586. During 1586 they were at Maidstone, in July at Bristol, on 22 August and later at Faversham, and before 29 September at Leicester. In 1585–6 they were also at Coventry. On 26 December 1586 and on 1 and 6 January and 28 February 1587 they were at Court, and in the same January a correspondent of Walsingham’s names them amongst other companies then playing regularly in the City (App. D, No. lxxviii). During 1586–7 they were at Bath, Worcester, Canterbury, and Stratford-on-Avon, whence Malone thought that they might have enlisted Shakespeare.[308] They were at Bath again on 13 July 1587, and at Aldeburgh on 20 May and 19 July. Before 29 September they were at Leicester, on 9 September at York, where it is recorded that they ‘cam in her Majesties lyvereys’, twice in September at Coventry, and at Aldeburgh on 16 December. They were at Court on 26 December 1587 and on 6 January and 18 February 1588.

A subsidy list of 30 June 1588 shows that Tarlton, Laneham, Johnson, Towne, Adams, Garland, John Dutton, Singer, and Cooke were then still household players.[309] It can, perhaps, hardly be assumed that the whole of the company is here represented. Mills, Wilson, and Bentley may have dropped out since 1583. But one would have expected to find the name of Laurence Dutton beside that of John, as he was certainly a Queen’s man by 1589. Knell also acted with Tarlton in The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, and must have belonged to the company. He also may have been dead by 1588. And this must certainly be the case if he is the William Knell whose widow Rebecca John Heminges married on 10 March 1588. There is some reason to suppose that Heminges himself joined the Queen’s men, perhaps in right of his wife. The composition of the list of 1583 generally bears out the statement of Howes, that the Queen’s men were selected as the best out of the companies of divers great lords, for Wilson, Laneham, and Johnson belonged to Leicester’s in 1572, Adams to Sussex’s in 1576, and Dutton, after a chameleon past, to Oxford’s in 1580. Mr. Fleay, who did not know either the list of 1583 or that of 1588, declares that the original members of the[108] company included James Burbadge and William Slaughter, and probably John Perkyn.[310] Of these William Slaughter is merely what the philologists would call a ‘ghost’-name, for there is no evidence that any such actor ever existed.[311] Evidently James Burbadge did not join the Queen’s men. Probably Mr. Fleay was biased by his knowledge that these men acted at the Theatre, which was Burbadge’s property. But this could prove nothing, as the relations between particular companies and particular theatres were much less permanent than Mr. Fleay is apt to suppose. The Queen’s seem to have been acting at the Theatre when Fleetwood suppressed them in June 1584, but the owner of the house, who can hardly be any other than James Burbadge, is specifically described as Lord Hunsdon’s man, which of course does not necessarily signify that he was a player at all. Moreover, it is clear from the official correspondence of the following autumn, not only that, as we know from other sources, the companies regularly moved in from the suburban houses to the City inn-yards at the approach of winter, but also that the Queen’s in particular had in the winter of 1583 dispersed themselves for their public performances over various play-places. The view that they did not exclusively[109] attach themselves to Burbadge’s, or to any other one theatre, is further borne out by the indications in the Jests of Tarlton, which there is no reason to reject, however apocryphal they may be in detail, as evidence of the theatrical conditions under which the famous mime appeared. The Jests frequently speak of Tarlton as a Queen’s man and never mention any other company in connexion with him.[312] And, as it happens, they record performances at the Curtain,[313] the Bell,[314] and the Bull,[315] but none at the Theatre. Nashe, however, tells us that Tarlton made jests of Richard Harvey and his Astrological Discourse of 1583 there;[316] and an entry in the Stationers’ Register makes it possible to add that shortly before his death he appeared at the Bel Savage.[317] The stage-keeper in Bartholomew Fair (1614), Ind. 37, gives us a reminiscence of a scene between Tarlton and John Adams, ‘I am an Asse! I! and yet I kept the Stage in Master Tarletons time, I thanke my starres. Ho! and that man had liu’d to haue play’d in Bartholmew Fayre, you should ha’ seene him ha’ come in, and ha’ beene coozened i’ the Cloath-quarter, so finely! And Adams, the Rogue, ha’ leap’d and caper’d vpon him, and ha’ dealt his vermine about, as though they had cost him nothing. And then a substantiall watch to ha’ stolne in vpon ’hem, and taken ’hem away, with mistaking words, as the fashion is, in the Stage-practice.’

Tarlton’s own talent probably ran more to ‘jigs’ and ‘themes’ than to the legitimate drama. But the palmy days of the Queen’s company were those that intervened between its foundation in 1583 and his death on 3 September 1588. To it belonged the men whom such an actor of the next generation as Thomas Heywood could remember as the[110] giants of the past,[318] and whose reputation Edward Alleyn’s friends were ready to back him to excel.[319] From 1588 the future of the stage lay with Alleyn and the Admiral’s men and Marlowe, and it may reasonably be supposed that the Queen’s men were hard put to it to hold their own against their younger rivals. Adams probably survived Tarlton, and his name appears to be traceable as that of the clowns in A Looking Glass for London and England (c. 1590) and James IV (c. 1591). In 1587–8 the Queen’s visited Coventry and Exeter, and in 1588 Dover, and on two occasions Faversham. On 19 July and 14 August they were at Bath. The Bath accounts for this year also show a payment ‘to the quenes men that were tumblers’. Owing to Tarlton’s death or to some other reason, the Queen’s men prolonged their travels far into the winter. On 31 October they were at the Earl of Derby’s house at New Park, Lancashire; on 6 November ‘certen of’ them were at Leicester; on 10 December they were at Norwich and on 17 December at Ipswich. But they reached the Court in time for the performance on 26 December, with which they seem to have had the prerogative of opening the Christmas season, and appeared again on 9 February. They must have had some share in the Martin Marprelate controversy, which raged during 1589. In the previous year, indeed, Martin was able to claim Tarlton as an ally who had ‘taken’ Simony ‘in Don John of London’s cellar’, and was himself accused of borrowing his ‘foolery’ from Laneham. But when the bishops determined to meet the Puritans with literary weapons like their own, they naturally turned to the Queen’s men amongst others. About April 1589 A Whip for an Ape bids Martin’s grave opponents to ‘let old Lanam lash him with his rimes’, and although it cannot be assumed that, if the Maygame of Martinism was in fact played at the Theatre, it was the Queen’s men who played it, Martin’s Month’s Minde records in August the chafing of the Puritans at players ‘whom, saving their liveries (for indeed they are hir Majesty’s men ...) they call rogues’. Influence was brought to bear to suppress the anti-Martinist plays. A pamphlet of October notes that Vetus Comoedia has been ‘long in the country’; and this accords with the fact that the provincial performances of the Queen’s men began at an unusually early date in 1589. They are found at Gloucester on 19 April, at Leicester on 20 May, at Ipswich on 27 May, at Aldeburgh on 30 May, and at Norwich on[111] 3 June. On 5 July they were at the Earl of Derby’s at Lathom, and on 6 and 7 September at another house of the Earl’s at Knowsley. On 22 September Lord Scrope wrote from Carlisle to William Asheby, the English ambassador in Scotland, that they had been for ten days in that town. He had heard from Roger Asheton of the King’s desire that they should visit Scotland, and had sought them out from ‘the furthest parte of Langkeshire’.[320] One would be glad to know whether they did in fact visit Scotland. In any case they were back in England and at Bath by November. During 1588–9 they were also at Reading, at Nottingham, and twice at Coventry. Both the Nottingham records and those of Leicester furnish evidence that for travelling purposes they divided themselves into two companies. At Leicester the town account for 1588–9 shows ‘certen of her Maiests playars’ as coming on 6 November, and ‘others moe of her Mayestyes playars’ as coming on 20 May; that of Nottingham for the same year has an entry of ‘Symons and his companie, being the Quenes players’ and another of ‘the Quenes players, the two Duttons and others’. The arrangement was of course natural enough, seeing that even in London the Queen’s men were sufficiently numerous to occupy more than one inn-yard. Laurence Dutton was evidently by now a member of the company with his brother John. It is to be presumed that Symons is the John Symons who on not less than five occasions presented ‘activities’ at Court, in 1582–3 with Strange’s (q.v.), in 1585 with Oxford’s, in 1586 with ‘Mr. Standleyes boyes’, in 1587–8 with a company under his own name, and in 1588–9 either with the Admiral’s or possibly with the Queen’s itself.

Doubtless the incorporation of Symons into the Queen’s service explains the appearance of the Queen’s tumblers at Bath in 1589. Performances at Court, for which John Dutton and John Laneham received payment, took place on 26 December 1589 and 1 March 1590. During 1589–90 the company were at Coventry, Ludlow, Nottingham, Bridgnorth, and Faversham, on 22 April 1590 at Norwich, on 24 June under the leadership of ‘Mr. Dutton’ at Knowsley, and on 30 October at Leicester. Acrobatic feats still formed a part of their repertory, and in these they had the assistance of a Turkish rope-dancer.[321] There were further Court performances on 26 December and on 1, 3, and 6 January, and 14 February 1591. It is to be noted that payment was made for the play of 1 January to ‘John Laneham and his companye her maiesties players’ and for the rest by a separate warrant[112] to ‘Lawrence Dutton and John Dutton her maiesties players and there companye’; and that this distinction indicates some further development of the tendency to bifurcation already observed may be gathered from a study of the provincial records for 1590–1. On the very day of the performance of 14 February Queen’s men were also at Southampton, and the form of the entry indicates that they were there playing in conjunction with the Earl of Sussex’s men. This was the case also at Coventry on 24 March and at Gloucester during 1590–1.[322] At Ipswich during the same year there are two entries, of ‘the Quenes players’ on 15 May 1591 and of ‘another company of the Quenes players’ on 18 May. Obviously two groups were travelling this year and one had strengthened itself by a temporary amalgamation with Sussex’s. Perhaps the normal combination was restored when the two groups found themselves on the same road at the end of May, for Queen’s men are recorded alone at Faversham on 2 June 1591, at Wirkburn on 18 August, and at Coventry on 24 August and 20 October.

It was probably during this summer that Greene, having sold Orlando Furioso to the Queen’s men for twenty nobles, resold it ‘when they were in the country’ to the Admiral’s for as much more. The winter of 1591–2 marks a clear falling-off in the position of the company at Court, since they were only called upon to give one performance, on 26 December, as against six assigned to Lord Strange’s men, with whom at this date Alleyn and the Admiral’s men appear to have been in combination. Yet it was still possible for the City, writing to Archbishop Whitgift on 25 February 1592, to suggest that Elizabeth’s accustomed recreation might be sufficiently served, without the need for public plays, ‘by the privat exercise of hir Ma^ts own players in convenient place’.[323] That they were again making use of the Theatre may perhaps be inferred from a passage in Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament of the following autumn, in which a Welshman is said to ‘goe ae Theater, and heare a Queenes Fice, and he make hur laugh, and laugh hur belly-full’.[324] During 1591–2 they were at Nottingham, Coventry, Stratfordon-Avon,[113] twice at Aldeburgh, and twice at Bath. In 1592 they were at Rochester, on 27 May at Norwich, before 29 September at Leicester, and early in September at Chesterton close to Cambridge. Here they came into conflict with the authorities of Cambridge University, who were apprehensive of infection from the crowds assembled at Sturbridge fair, and forbade them to play. Encouraged by Lord North and by the constables of Chesterton, they disobeyed, set up their bills upon the college gates, and gave their performance. It is interesting to note that ‘one Dutton’ was ‘a principale’, and to remember that, twelve years before, the Duttons had gone to Cambridge as Lord Oxford’s men and had been refused permission to play by the University authorities.[325] The outcome of the present encounter was a formal protest by the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses to the Privy Council for which they requested Burghley’s support as Chancellor of the University. After a further appeal about a year later, they succeeded in obtaining a confirmation of their privileges.[326] Another letter from the University to their Chancellor, written on 4 December 1592, is of a different character. Its object is to excuse themselves from accepting an invitation conveyed through the Vice-Chamberlain to present an English comedy before Elizabeth at Christmas. Sir Thomas Heneage appears to have given it as a reason for his request ‘that her Maiesties owne servantes, in this time of infection, may not disport her Highnes w^th theire wonted and ordinary pastimes’.[327]

On 11 October 1592 the Queen’s men were at Aldeburgh, on the same day as, and conceivably in association with, Lord Morley’s men, although the payments are distinct. They did not in fact appear at Court during the Christmas of 1592–3, although both Lord Pembroke’s and Lord Strange’s did. They were at Coventry and Stratford-on-Avon in the course of 1592–3, at Leicester in June 1593 and again after Michaelmas, at Bath on 22 August, and at York in September. On 6 January 1594 they returned to Court and gave what proved to be their last performance there. On 1 April they began to play at one of Henslowe’s[114] theatres ‘to geather’—that is to say, either alternately or in combination—with Sussex’s men, who had already performed there for the six weeks between Christmas and Lent. Possibly this was a renewal of an earlier alliance of 1591. Only eight performances are recorded, and of the five plays given only King Leire can very reasonably be assigned to the repertory of the Queen’s men. The others were The Jew of Malta and The Fair Maid of Italy, which Sussex’s men had been playing in the winter, Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which was played for Henslowe by other companies both before and after, and was probably his property, and The Ranger’s Comedy, the performances of which were being continued by the Admiral’s men in the following autumn, but which it is possible that they or Henslowe may have acquired from the Queen’s. For there can be no doubt that the Queen’s men, whether because they had ceased to be modish, or because their finances had proved unable to stand the strain of the plague years, were now at the end of their London career. On 8 May 1594 the significant entry occurs in Henslowe’s diary of a loan of £15 to his nephew Francis Henslowe ‘to lay downe for his share to the Quenes players when they broke & went into the contrey to playe’.[328] This by itself would not perhaps be conclusive, as there are other years in which the company began its provincial wanderings as early as May. But from the present journey there is nothing to show that they ever returned, and it may fairly be reckoned as another sign of defeat that while The Troublesome Reign of King John (1591) was the only play certainly theirs which was printed before 1594, no less than nine found their way into the publishers’ hands during that and the following year. These were, besides Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1594, S. R. 14 May 1594), with which they probably had only a recent connexion, A Looking Glass for London and, England (1594, S. R. 5 March 1594), King Leire (1594, S. R. 14 May 1594), James IV and The Famous Victories of Henry V (1598, S. R. 14 May 1594), The True Tragedy of Richard III (1594, S. R. 19 June 1594), Selimus (1594), Peele’s Old Wive’s Tale (1595, S. R. 16 April 1595), and Valentine and Orson (S. R. 23 May 1595), of which no copy is known to be extant. Somewhat later came Sir Clyomon and Clamydes (1599).

The Queen’s men were at Coventry on 4 July 1594, at[115] Bristol in August, and at Bath and Barnstaple, where they were unlucky enough to break down the ceiling in the Guildhall, during 1593–4, and thereafter they are traceable right up to the end of the reign, at Coventry, Oxford, and Bath in 1594–5, at Leicester both before and after Michaelmas 1595, twice at Coventry and at Ludlow in 1595–6, at Stratford-on-Avon on 16 and 17 July 1596, at Bristol in August, at Leicester between October and December 1596, and at Faversham and Bridgnorth in the same year, at Coventry, at Dunwich, and twice at Bath in 1596–7, at Bristol again about Christmas 1597, at Nottingham on 8 July 1597, at Bristol about 25 July, at Bath in 1597–8, at Leicester on 9 January 1598, at Maldon in 1598, at Ipswich and Reading in 1598–9, at Maldon in 1599, at Dunwich in 1599–1600, at Ipswich on 2 June 1600, and at Leicester before 29 September in the same year, at Coventry and Bath in 1600–1, at York in July 1602, at Leicester on 30 September 1602, at Belvoir in August or September of the same year, and at Coventry in 1602–3. But little, naturally enough, is known of the personnel of the company during this period of its decay. On 1 June 1595 Francis Henslowe borrowed another £9 from his uncle ‘to laye downe for his hallfe share w^th the company w^ch he dothe playe w^th all’,[329] and I see no particular reason to suppose that this was another company than the Queen’s. The loan is witnessed by William Smyght, George Attewell, and Robert Nycowlles, each of whom is described as ‘player’. It is likely enough that these were now fellows of Francis Henslowe. Attewell had been payee for Lord Strange’s men in 1591. The earlier loan was witnessed by John Towne, Hugh Davis, and Richard Alleyn. Davis and Alleyn appear elsewhere in connexion with Henslowe, but Towne was certainly a Queen’s man. He is in the 1588 list and is described as ‘one of her Majesties plears’ when on 8 July 1597 he obtained a release of debts due to Roger Clarke of Nottingham.[330] The other men of 1588 had nearly all vanished. John Singer had joined the Admiral’s by the autumn of 1594. I should not be surprised, however, to find that John Garland was still with the Queen’s. He was an associate of Francis Henslowe in the Duke of Lennox’s men in 1604, and was then ‘owld’ Garland. Indeed, it seems probable that, when the Queen’s men lost their last shred of claim to a livery on Elizabeth’s death, they made an attempt still to hold together under the patronage of Lennox. John Shank was once a Queen’s man.

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xiv. THE EARL OF ARUNDEL’S MEN

The Earls of Arundel had players as far back as the fifteenth century.[331] The 12th Earl entertained Elizabeth with a mask at Nonsuch on 5 August 1559. He had players, who were rewarded by the Duchess of Suffolk, apparently during a London visit, in December 1561. The 13th Earl had a company in 1584. It was in London when plays were suppressed in June, and obediently submitted. It seems to have been located at the Curtain. It can be traced at Ipswich on 1 July, at Leicester before 29 September, at Aldeburgh in 1583–4, at Norwich in 1585–6, and thereafter no more.

xv. THE EARL OF HERTFORD’S MEN

These are among the most obscure of the companies. They appeared at Canterbury in 1582, Faversham in 1586, Newcastle in October 1590, Leicester on 22 November 1590, and Bath, Marlborough, and Southampton in 1591–2. During the progress of 1591 Elizabeth was entertained from 20 to 24 September by the Earl at Elvetham in Hampshire ‘beeing none of the Earles chiefe mansion houses’ (cf. ch. xxiv). This was really a visit of reconciliation, for much of Hertford’s life had been spent in disgrace, owing to his first marriage with the heiress, under Henry VIII’s will, to Elizabeth’s throne. The entertainment was very elaborate, and at its close Elizabeth protested to the Earl that it was so honourable ‘as hereafter he should find the rewarde thereof in her especiall favour’. No doubt Hertford’s players took a part, and shared the ‘largesse’ which she[117] bestowed upon the ‘actors’ of the pastimes before she departed. I think it must have also been their success on this occasion which earned them their only appearance at Court, on the following 6 January 1592. I have elsewhere tried to show that there is a special connexion between this Elvetham entertainment and A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,[332] and if any special company is satirized in Bottom and his fellows, I feel sure that it must have been the Earl of Hertford’s and not, as Mr. Fleay thinks, the Earl of Sussex’s.[333]

Probably the company went under in the plague of 1592–4, and in 1595 Hertford was again in disgrace for presuming so far upon his favour as to claim a declaration of the validity of his first marriage. But there were players under his name at Coventry in 1596–7, at Ipswich in 1600–1, and on 8 May 1602, at Norwich in 1601, and at Bath in 1601–2, and this company appeared at Court on 6 January 1603. Their payee was Martin Slater, formerly of the Admiral’s, and since then, possibly, an associate of Laurence Fletcher in his Scottish tours. In 1604–5 they were at Norwich. In 1606 they visited Leicester, on 9 July Oxford, and on 2 December the Earl of Derby wrote to the Mayor of Chester to bespeak for them the use of the town-hall. In 1606–7 they were at Coventry.

xvi. MR. EVELYN’S MEN (1588)

Collier gives no authority for the following rather puzzling statement:[334]

The date intended must be 1588, as in 1587 Shrovetide fell in March. But there is probably some misunderstanding, as no such payment occurs in the Treasurer of the Chamber’s accounts, and the sum named is too small for a reward. Moreover, private gentlemen do not seem to have entertained Court companies at so late a date. The Revels Account for 1587–8 only records seven plays. Of these the Treasurer of the Chamber paid for six, and the seventh was presented by Gray’s Inn.

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xvii. THE EARL OF DERBY’S (LORD STRANGE’S) MEN

The companies connected with the great northern house of Stanley present a history perhaps more complicated than that of any other group, partly because it seems to have been not unusual for the heir of the house to entertain players during his father’s lifetime. The 3rd Earl had a company in Henry the Eighth’s reign. His successor had one as Lord Strange, which is only recorded in the provinces, in 1563–70.[335] Four years later he had again a company as Earl of Derby. The earliest mention of it is at Coventry in 1573–4. It was at Dover and Coventry in 1577–8, at Ipswich on 28 May 1578, at Nottingham on 31 August 1578, at Bristol in the same year, and at Bath in 1578–9. In the last three months of 1579 it was at Leicester; and during the following Christmas it made its first appearance at Court with a performance of The Soldan and the Duke of —— on 14 February 1580. In 1579–80 it was at Stratford-on-Avon, Exeter, and Coventry, on 1 January 1581 at Court, in 1580–1 at Bath, Leicester, Nottingham, Exeter, and Winchester, in 1581–2 at Nottingham, Winchester, and Abingdon, in October to December 1582 at Leicester, and in 1582–3 at Bath, Norwich, and Southampton. Its last appearance at Court was in Love and Fortune on 30 December 1582.

I think that the Earl of Derby’s players must be taken to be distinct from another company, which was performing during much the same period of years under the name of Lord Strange. These men are found in 1576–7 at Exeter, in 1578–9 at Bath, Ipswich, Rochester, Nottingham, Coventry, and Stratford-on-Avon. They also made their first appearance at Court in the winter of 1579–80. Their performance was on 15 January 1580, and they are spoken of, not as players, but as tumblers. On the other hand they appear as players[119] at Bath, side by side with Derby’s men, in 1580–1 and 1582–3, and as players also at Bristol, Canterbury, and Gloucester in 1580–1, Plymouth in 1581–2, and Barnstaple in 1582–3 and 1583–4. With the tumbling at Court in 1580 begins a rather puzzling series of records. There are further Court entries of feats of activity by Lord Strange’s men on 28 December 1581, and of feats of activity and tumbling on 1 January 1583. For this last occasion the payee of the company was John Symons. Two years later Symons and his ‘fellows’ were again at Court with feats of activity and vaulting, but they were then under the patronage, not of Lord Strange, but of the Earl of Oxford. There would be nothing extraordinary about such a transference of service, were it not that during the following Christmas, on 9 January 1586, tumbling and feats of activity are ascribed to John Symons and ‘Mr. Standleyes boyes’, and that by ‘Mr. Standley’ one can hardly help assuming either Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, or some other member of his family to be intended. This inference is confirmed by a mention of Lord Strange’s men at Faversham in 1585–6, and it becomes necessary to assume that, after attaching himself for a year to the Earl of Oxford, Symons thought better of it, and returned to his original master. Symons and his company again showed feats of activity on 28 December 1587. No patron is named on this occasion, but as Strange’s men are traceable at Coventry during 1587–8, it is natural to assume that they were still holding together. Now a new complication comes in. There were activities again at Court in the winter of 1588–9, and Symons certainly took part in them.[336] But the only men companies to whom payments were made were the Queen’s and the Admiral’s, who now reappear at Court after absence during two winters, and it is only in the case of the Admiral’s that the payment is specified to be for activities. If the restless Symons had joined the Admiral’s men, it cannot have been for long, since in the course of 1588–9 he was leading one section of the Queen’s men to Nottingham. Nor had Strange’s yet entirely broken up, for on 5 November 1589, both they and the Admiral’s, evidently playing as distinct companies, were suppressed by the Lord Mayor in the City.[337] Strange’s, who were then at the Cross Keys, played contemptuously, and some of them were imprisoned.[120] A year later, the Admiral’s were with Burbadge at the Theatre, and there I conceive that the residue of Strange’s, deserted by Symons, had joined them. If they were too many for the house, we know that the Curtain was available as an ‘easer’. After the quarrel with Burbadge in May 1591, the two companies probably went together to the Rose. The main evidence for such a theory is that, while the Privy Council record of play-warrants include two for the Admiral’s men in respect of plays and feats of activity on 27 December 1590 and 16 February 1591, the corresponding Chamber payments are to George Ottewell on behalf of Strange’s men.

This amalgamation of Strange’s and the Admiral’s, tentative perhaps in 1588–9, and conclusive, if not in 1589–90, at any rate in 1590–1, lasted until 1594. So far as Court records are concerned, the company seems to have been regarded as Strange’s. But the leading actor, Edward Alleyn, kept his personal status as the Lord Admiral’s servant, and it is to be observed that, for whatever reason, both the Admiral’s and Strange’s continue to appear, not only in combination, but also separately in provincial documents.[338] Of this various explanations are conceivable. One is that the municipal officials were not very precise in their methods, and when an amalgamated[121] company came before them, sometimes entered the name of one lord, sometimes of the other, sometimes of both. Another is that a few of the Admiral’s men may have been left out of the amalgamation and have travelled separately under that name. We know, of course, that Richard Jones and others went abroad in 1592, but they may have spent some time in the provinces first. And thirdly, it is possible that, while the combined company performed as a whole in London, they found it more economical to take their authorities from both lords with them, when they went to the country in the summer, and to unite or divide their forces as convenience prompted. I am the more inclined to this third conjecture, in that the ‘intollerable’ charge of travelling with a great company and the danger of ‘division and separacion’ involved were explicitly put forward by Lord Strange’s men in a petition to the Privy Council for leave to quit Newington Butts, where they had been commanded to play during a long vacation, and return to their normal quarters, doubtless at the Rose, on the Bankside. They particularly wanted to avoid going to the country, but Newington Butts did not pay, and they were backed by the Thames watermen, who lost custom when the Rose was not open. It is not clear whether this petition belongs to 1591 or 1592.[339] The provincial records show that the company probably travelled during 1592, but not 1591. If the petition belongs to 1592, it is obvious that the plague intervened, and I strongly suspect that the company’s fears proved justified, and that the reorganization for provincial work did in fact lead to a ‘division and separacion’, by the splitting off of some members of the combine as Pembroke’s men (q.v.).

This, however, anticipates a little. To Alleyn’s talent must be attributed the remarkable success of the company in the winter of 1591–2, during which they were called upon to give six performances at Court, on 27 and 28 December, 1 and 9 January, and 6 and 8 February, as against one each allotted to the Queen’s, Sussex’s, and Hertford’s men. On 19 February 1592 the company began a season with Philip Henslowe, probably at the Rose, and played six days a week for a period of eighteen weeks, during which they only missed Good Friday and two other days. Henslowe records in his diary the name of the play staged at each of the hundred and five performances, together with a sum of money which probably represents his share of the takings.[340] If so, his[122] average receipts were £1 14s. 0d.; but the daily amounts fluctuated considerably, sometimes falling to a few shillings and again rising to twice the average on the production of a new or popular play or during the Easter or Whitsun holiday. Twenty-three plays in all were given, for any number of days from one to fifteen; the same play was rarely repeated in any one week. Five of the plays are marked in the diary with the letters ne, which are reasonably taken to indicate the production of a new piece. These were ‘Harey the vj’, probably Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI, Titus and Vespasian, probably the play on which was based Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, the Second Part of Tamar Cham, The Tanner of Denmark, and A Knack to Know a Knave. The eighteen old plays included Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, Greene’s Orlando Furioso and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Greene and Lodge’s A Looking Glass for London; also Muly Mollocco which might be Peele’s Battle of Alcazar, Four Plays in One, which is conjectured to be a part of Tarlton’s Seven Deadly Sins, and Jeronimo, which is almost certainly Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. There was also a play, sometimes given on the day before this last, under the varying titles of Don Horatio, the Comedy of Jeronimo, or The Spanish Comedy, which does not appear to have been preserved.[341] The same fate has befallen the other ten plays, of which the names were Sir John Mandeville, Henry of Cornwall, Clorys and Orgasto, Pope Joan, Machiavel, Bindo and Richardo, Zenobia, Constantine, Jerusalem, and Brandimer. From the financial point of view, the greatest successes were Titus and Vespasian, The Jew of Malta, 2 Tamar Cham, 1 Henry VI, and The Spanish Tragedy. These averaged respectively for Henslowe £2 8s. 6d. for seven days, £2 3s. 6d. for ten days, £2 1s. 6d. for five days, £2 0s. 6d. for fifteen days, and £1 17s. 0d. for thirteen days. The Seven Deadly Sins and perhaps also the Looking Glass must have passed in some way into the hands of Strange’s or the Admiral’s, or into Henslowe’s, from the Queen’s.

The performances came to an end on 23 June, for on that day the Privy Council inhibited all plays until Michaelmas. Whether the Newington Butts episode and the watermen’s petition followed or not, at any rate plague intervened in the course of the summer, and the company had to face the disadvantages of travelling. They were afoot by 13 July and still on 19 December. Ten days later, Henslowe resumed[123] his account, and the resemblance of the list of plays to that of the previous spring renders it reasonable to suppose that the actors were the same.[342] The season lasted to the end of January 1593, and a play was given on each of the twenty-six week-days of this period. Muly Mollocco, The Spanish Tragedy, A Knack to Know a Knave, The Jew of Malta, Sir John Mandeville, Titus and Vespasian, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 1 Henry VI, and 2 Tamar Cham all made their appearance again. In addition, there were a comedy called Cosmo, and two new plays, The Jealous Comedy, which may, I think, be The Comedy of Errors, and The Tragedy of the Guise, which is usually accepted as Marlowe’s Massacre of Paris. The first representation of the former yielded Henslowe £2 4s. 0d., that of the latter £3 14s. 0d.; as in the spring, his daily takings averaged £1 14s. 0d. Besides their public performances, Strange’s men were called upon for three plays at Court, on the evenings of 27 and 31 December 1592 and 1 January 1593.

The plague made a new inhibition of plays necessary on 28 January, but it does not seem to have been for some months that Strange’s men made up their minds to travel. A special licence issued in their favour by the Privy Council on 6 May is registered in the following terms:

The importance of this document is in the information which it gives as to the composition of the company. Presumably only the leaders are named, and of these Alleyn alone[124] is specially designated as an Admiral’s man. Kempe, at any rate, and probably also Pope and Bryan, were in Leicester’s service in the Low Countries during 1586, and all three were together during the same year in Denmark. Whether they had belonged, as has sometimes been supposed, to Leicester’s long-enduring company of Court players is less certain. Pope and Bryan passed from Denmark to Germany, and may have joined the Admiral’s or Strange’s on their return. They also were acrobats as well as players.[344] Kempe, however, seems to have parted company from the others in Denmark, and may have joined Strange’s independently, presumably before 10 June 1592, when A Knack to Know a Knave, in which he played ‘merrimentes’, was produced. Heminges may possibly have been a Queen’s man.

Some details of the 1593 tour and the names of two or three more members of the company are found in the familiar correspondence of Alleyn with his wife, whom he had married on 22 October 1592, and with Philip Henslowe, who was her step-father.[345] On 2 May he writes from Chelmsford, and on 1 August from Bristol. Here he had received a letter by Richard Cowley and he sends his reply by a kinsman of Thomas Pope. At the moment of writing he is ready to play Harry of Cornwall. He asks that further letters may be sent to him by the carriers to Shrewsbury, West Chester, or York, ‘to be keptt till my Lord Stranges players com’. He does not expect to be home until All Saints’ Day. A reply from Henslowe and Mrs. Alleyn on 14 August is in fact addressed to ‘Mr. Edwarde Allen on of my lorde Stranges players’. This mentions an illness of Alleyn at Bath during which one of his fellows had had to play his part. With these letters is one written to Mrs. Allen on behalf of a ‘servant’ of Alleyn’s, whose name was Pige or Pyk, by the hand of Mr. Doutone, possibly Edward Dutton, but perhaps more probably Thomas Dowten or Downton, who was later a sharer among the Admiral’s men. The provincial records, subject to the confusion of company nomenclature already noted, appear to confirm the visits to Bath, Shrewsbury, and York, to indicate others to Southampton, Leicester, Coventry, Ipswich, and Newcastle, and to show that some temporary alliance had been entered into with the purely provincial company of Lord Morley.[346] After 25 September 1593 Strange’s men of course became Derby’s men.

[125]

I now come to a difficult point. There exists amongst the Dulwich papers a ‘plott’ or prompter’s abstract of a play called The Second Part of the Seven Deadly Sins, which an ingenious conjecture of Mr. Fleay has identified on internal evidence with the Four Plays in One included in the Strange’s repertory of 1592.[347] In this leading parts were taken, not only by ‘Mr. Pope’, ‘Mr. Phillipps’, and ‘Mr. Brian’, but also by ‘Richard Burbadge’; lesser ones by Richard Cowley, John Duke, Robert Pallant, John Sincler, Thomas Goodale, William Sly, J. Holland, and three others described only as Harry, Kitt, and Vincent; and female parts by Saunder, Nick, Robert, Ned, Will, and T. Belt, who may be presumed to have been boys.[348] Alleyn, Kempe, and Heminges are not named, but there are several parts to which no actors are assigned. What, however, is the date of the ‘plott’? Not necessarily 1592, for the performance of Four Plays in One in that year was only a revival. The authorship of the Seven Deadly Sins is ascribed to Tarlton, and therefore the original owners were probably the Queen’s men. They are not very likely to have parted with it before Tarlton’s death in 1588 brought the first shock to their fortunes, but clearly it may have come into the possession of Strange’s or the Admiral’s or the combined company before ever they reached the Rose. And surely the appearance of Richard Burbadge suggests that the ‘plott’ was brought from the Theatre, and represents a performance there. He is very unlikely to have joined at the Rose the company which had just been driven there by a quarrel with his father. It is true that in the ‘plott’ of Dead Man’s Fortune, which also probably dates from the sojourn of the Admiral’s (q.v.) at the Theatre, he was apparently not playing leading parts but only a messenger. But the wording is obscure, and after all the absence of the prefix ‘Mr.’ from his name in the ‘plott’ of the Sins may indicate, in accordance with the ordinary usage of the Dulwich documents,[126] that he was not yet a sharer when it was drawn up. Apparently, then, at least four of Strange’s men, as we find them in 1593, besides Alleyn, had been playing at the Theatre about 1590–1. These were Pope, Phillips, Bryan, and Cowley. Obviously we cannot say whether it was to the original Admiral’s or the original Strange’s that they belonged. One other point of personnel must not be overlooked. Shakespeare contributed to the repertory of Strange’s in 1592 and perhaps also in 1593. Greene calls him a Shake-scene, but neither the ‘plott’ of 1590, nor the licence of 1593, nor the Alleyn correspondence of the same year, yields his name.[349]

Derby’s men did not appear at Court during the winter of 1593–4. On 16 April 1594 Lord Derby died. On 16 May the company used the Countess’s name at Winchester. It seems clear that during the summer there was some reshuffling of the companies, that Alleyn took the leadership of a new body of Admiral’s men, that several other members of the old combination, including Pope, Heminges, Kempe, and Phillips, joined with Burbadge, Shakespeare, and Sly, under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Lord Hunsdon, and that, after a short period of co-operation with each other and Henslowe, the two companies definitely parted. In the course of 1594 the name of Derby’s men appeared upon the title-page of Titus Andronicus, probably because they had played it in its earlier form of Titus and Vespasian in 1592–3, before it passed to Pembroke’s and from them to Sussex’s. In the same year was published A Knack to Know a Knave (S. R. 7 January 1594) as played ‘by Ed. Allen and his companie’ and with ‘merrimentes’ by Kemp. This also belongs to the 1592–3 repertory, of the other plays in which 1 Henry VI, like Titus Andronicus, passed ultimately to the Chamberlain’s men, and a considerable number, either as their own property or that of Henslowe, to the Admiral’s. These included Tamar Cham, The Battle of Alcazar, The Spanish Tragedy, The Jew of Malta, The Massacre of Paris, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and probably Orlando Furioso, of Orlando’s part in which a transcript, with alterations in Alleyn’s hand, is preserved at Dulwich.[350] The only play not named in Henslowe’s diary which can be traced to the company is Fair Em, which bears the name of Lord Strange’s men on its title-page, but of which the first edition is undated.

It is possible that those of the fifth Earl of Derby’s men who did not take service with the Lord Chamberlain, passed into a provincial period of existence under his successor,[127] the sixth Earl. A company bearing his name was at Norwich on 15 September 1594, at Dunwich in 1594–5 and 1595–6, at Coventry, Bath, and Stratford in 1595–6, at Leicester between October and December 1596, at Bath in 1596–7, at Maldon in 1597, at Coventry twice in 1597–8, at Leicester in 1597–8, and between October and December 1598, at Wollaton (Percival Willoughby’s) on 7 October 1599, and at Leicester again on 16 October 1599. Letters of 30 June 1599 relate that the Earl of Derby was then ‘busy penning comedies for the common players’, and it is perhaps natural to suppose that his own company were chosen as the exponents of his art.[351] This perhaps explains its appearance at Court during the winters of 1599–1600 and 1600–1. Four performances were given, on 3 and 5 February 1600 and 1 and 6 January 1601, and for these Robert Browne, who had been both with Worcester’s men and the Admiral’s, but much of whose dramatic career had been spent in Germany, was the payee. In an undated letter to Sir Robert Cecil, Lady Derby writes, ‘Being importuned by my Lord to intreat your favor that his man Browne, with his companye, may not be bared from ther accoustomed plaing, in maintenance wherof they have consumde the better part of ther substance, if so vaine a matter shall not seame troublesum to you, I could desier that your furderance might be a meane to uphold them, for that my Lord taking delite in them, it will kepe him from moer prodigall courses’.[352] To this company are doubtless to be assigned Edward IV, perhaps by Heywood (1600, S. R. 28 August 1599), and the anonymous Trial of Chivalry (1605, S. R. 4 December 1604), both of which are credited to Derby’s men on their title-pages. It again becomes provincial and is traceable at Norwich on 27 February and 9 June 1602, at Ipswich on 4 June 1602, and thereafter up to 1618, chiefly at Coventry and at Gawthorpe Hall, the house of Derby’s neighbours, the Shuttleworths.[353]

John Taylor, the water-poet, returned from his journey to Scotland in 1618 at the Maidenhead Inn, Islington, and here after supper on 14 October ‘we had a play of the Life and Death of Guy of Warwick, played by the Right Honourable the Earl of Derby his men’. Presumably this was Day and Dekker’s play entered on the Stationers’ Register in 1619, which Mr. Bullen declines to identify with the Guy of Warwick published as ‘by B. J.’ in 1661.[354]

[128]

xviii. THE EARL OF PEMBROKE’S MEN

There is an isolated record of a Pembroke’s company at Canterbury in 1575–6, hardly to be regarded as continuous with that which makes its appearance in the last decade of the century. Fleay, 87, puts the origin of the latter in 1589, and supposes it to be a continuation of Worcester’s men after the death of their original patron in 1589, and to be the company ridiculed by Nashe (iii. 324) for playing Delphrigus and The King of the Fairies, in his preface to Greene’s Menaphon (1589). But this Worcester’s company is not in fact traceable during 1585–9, and Fleay’s theory is only based on the allusion to Hamlet in the same preface (iii. 315), and the assumption that the Ur-Hamlet, like some other plays, passed to the Chamberlain’s from Pembroke’s, whereas it may just as well have passed to them from Strange’s. As a matter of fact, there is no mention of Pembroke’s before 1592 and no reason to suppose that it had an earlier existence. It will be well to detail the few facts of its history before attempting anything in the nature of conjecture. It was at Leicester in the last three months of 1592 and made its only appearances at Court on 26 December 1592 and 6 January 1593. In the following summer it travelled, and is found at York in June, at Rye in July, and in 1592–3 at Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Coventry, Bath, and Ipswich. But it had little success. Henslowe wrote to Alleyn on 28 September, ‘As for my lorde a Penbrockes w^ch you desier to knowe wheare they be they ar all at home and hausse ben this v or sixe weackes for they cane not saue ther carges w^th trauell as I heare & weare fayne to pane ther parell for ther carge’.[355] About the same time three of their plays came to the booksellers’ hands. These were Marlowe’s Edward the Second (1594, S. R. 6 July 1593), The Taming of A Shrew[129] (1594, S. R. 2 May 1594), and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (1595). Probably the play to which this last is a sequel, 1 Contention of York and Lancaster (1594, S. R. 12 March 1594) was also theirs, although the name of the company is not on the title-page. It is on the title-page of Titus Andronicus (1594), and its position suggests that the play passed to them from Strange’s and from them before publication to Sussex’s. All these plays, with the exception of Edward II, seem to have been worked upon by Shakespeare, and probably they ultimately became part of the stock of the Chamberlain’s men. These men were playing Titus Andronicus and The Taming of The Shrew in June 1594, and that they also owned The Contention in its revised form of 2, 3 Henry VI is suggested both by its inclusion in the First Folio and by the reference in the Epilogue to Henry V not only to the loss of France but also to the bleeding of England ‘which oft our stage hath shown’.

I now enter a region of conjecture. It seems to me, on the whole, likely that the origin of Pembroke’s men is to be explained by the special conditions of the plague-years 1592–3, and was due to a division for travelling purposes of the large London company formed by the amalgamation of Strange’s and the Admiral’s. Such a division had been foreshadowed as likely to be necessary in the petition sent by Strange’s men to the Privy Council during the summer of 1592 or earlier, and may actually have become necessary when, after all, the plague rendered travelling imperative. If this suggestion is well founded, it becomes not difficult to explain some of the transferences of acting rights in certain plays which seem to have taken place. Thus Strange’s may have handed over Titus Andronicus in its earlier form of Titus and Vespasian to Pembroke’s for the travels of 1593, and may also have handed over The Contention of York and Lancaster, if that was originally theirs, as is suggested by their production of 1 Henry VI, which belongs to the same closely related series. This opens up a more important line of speculation. It is usual to assume that one of the members of Strange’s from 1592 or earlier until its reconstitution as the Chamberlain’s in 1594 was William Shakespeare, and there is no reason to doubt his authorship at any rate of the Talbot scenes, which we know from Nashe to have been staged as part of 1 Henry VI in 1592. At the same time, the names of at least seventeen of Strange’s and the Admiral’s men in 1590–3 are otherwise known, and his is not one of them, and in particular his prominence amongst the Chamberlain’s men from the very beginning renders it extremely[130] unlikely that, if he had been a member of the company in 1593, he would not have been mentioned in the Privy Council warrant of 6 May. Further, it seems to me impossible to resist the inference that the attribution to him of Titus Andronicus both by Francis Meres in 1598 and in the First Folio of 1623 can only be explained by his revision under that name of Titus and Vespasian, and that this was for the second production of the play as ‘ne’ for Henslowe by Sussex’s men on 24 January 1594. There is, therefore, really some basis for the suggestion made long ago by Halliwell-Phillipps that he is to be looked for during these years in Pembroke’s company until its collapse and then in Sussex’s, and that it was from this rather than directly from Strange’s that he went to the Chamberlain’s.[356] On the other hand, it may be that for a time he was not attached as an actor to any company at all. It is possible that he took advantage of the plague-interval to travel in Italy and only resumed the regular exercise of his profession when the Chamberlain’s company was formed. In any event, it must have been he who revised The Contention as 2, 3 Henry VI, and the close stylistic relation of these plays to 1 Henry VI makes it probable that the work on all three belongs to about the same date. The limitations of conjecture on so intricate a question are obvious, but I can conceive the order of events as being somewhat as follows. Shakespeare’s first dramatic job, which earned him the ill will of Greene, was the writing or re-writing of 1 Henry VI for Strange’s, in the early spring of 1592. During the winter of 1592–3 he revised The Contention for Pembroke’s and completed the series of his early histories with Richard III, and, as I am inclined to suspect, also an Ur-Henry VIII. He also wrote The Jealous Comedy or Comedy of Errors for Strange’s. In the summer of 1593 Sussex’s took over the plays of the bankrupt Pembroke’s, including the Shakespearian histories Titus and Vespasian and The Taming of A Shrew. Some at least of these Pembroke’s had themselves derived in 1592 or 1593 from Strange’s. During the winter of 1593–4 Sussex’s played either Richard III or Henry VIII as Buckingham, and also Titus and Vespasian revised for them by Shakespeare as Titus Andronicus. Alarmed at the further inhibition of plays in February, they allowed the revised Titus and unrevised texts of The Taming of A Shrew and The Contention to get into the hands of the booksellers. Whether Shakespeare had already revised A Shrew or did so later for the Chamberlain’s (q.v.) I am[131] uncertain. Finally, by the transfer of their plays to the Chamberlain’s men, who at once revived A Shrew and Titus Andronicus, and by the incorporation of Strange’s men in the same company, the original stock of Strange’s plays, as distinct from the Admiral’s, came together in the same hands once more. On the assumption that Shakespeare never left Strange’s, it is difficult to explain either the fortunes of Titus Andronicus, or the absence from the lists of Strange’s plays in Henslowe’s diary of Richard III, which must have been written about 1592–4. The silence as regards Strange’s both of the Court records and of Henslowe’s diary during the winter of 1593–4 makes it unlikely that they were in London, and they would surely not produce a new play in the country.

Nothing further is heard of a Pembroke’s company for three or four years.[357] But in 1597 one appeared in London about which we have rather full information, recently increased by Mr. Wallace’s discovery of a Court of Requests suit in which they were concerned. Towards the end of February in that year Robert Shaw, Richard Jones, Gabriel Spencer, William Bird alias Borne, and Thomas Downton, who describe themselves in a suit of the following November as Pembroke’s servants, together with others their ‘accomplices and associates’, entered into an agreement with Francis Langley to play for twelve months ending on 20 February 1598 at the Swan. Each man gave a bond of £100, which was apparently to safeguard Langley against any failure by the company as a whole or of Robert Shaw or a sufficient substitute in particular to perform during this period, or against any performance elsewhere, otherwise than ‘in private places’, within five miles of London. Langley found £300 for apparel and, as he claimed, making ready of the play-house, and was to receive a moiety of the takings of the galleries and to be repaid for the apparel out of the other moiety. Of the men concerned, Jones and Downton had been Admiral’s men during 1594–7, and their transference coincides with a three weeks’ break in the performances of the Admiral’s at the Rose from 12 February onwards. Mr. Wallace (E. S. xliii. 357) says that Shaw, Spencer, and Bird were also of the Admiral’s, but of this there is no evidence. If Pembroke’s had any continued life during 1594–7, they may have shared it. But this seems improbable, and on the whole I am inclined to think that they came from the Chamberlain’s (q.v.). Plays were given at the Swan for some months, and Langley took £100 from the galleries, and £100 more for[132] apparel. Then came an inhibition of plays near London on 28 July 1597, caused by the production of The Isle of Dogs, as a result of which one of the authors, Nashe, fled, and the other, Jonson, together with Shaw and Spencer, was committed to the Marshalsea. The definite evidence that Shaw and Spencer were Pembroke’s men at the Swan, now produced by Mr. Wallace, confirms my conjecture (M. L. R. iv. 411, 511) that The Isle of Dogs was an adventure of that house and not, as has sometimes been thought, of the Rose. Either in anticipation of a prolonged closing of the house or for some other reason, the company now desired to shake off their relations with Langley. Early in August Jones returned to Henslowe and made a new covenant with him. His example was followed by Shaw, Spencer, and Bird, and early in October by Downton. Their prescience was justified, for when in the course of October the chief offenders were released, and the inhibition, which was nominally terminable on 1 November, was in practice relaxed, it proved that, while Henslowe was able to get a new licence for the Rose, Langley could get none for the Swan. He urged them to try their fortunes without a licence, as others of their company were willing to do, but they not unnaturally refused, and Henslowe (i. 54) records, ‘The xj of October begane my lord Admerals and my lord of Penbrockes men to playe at my howsse 1597’. He describes the company under the double name again on 21 and 23 October and 5 November, but on 1 December and thereafter as the Lord Admiral’s (i. 68–70). A study of the Admiral’s repertory for 1597–8 suggests that some or all of the plays Black Joan, Hardicanute, Bourbon, Sturgflattery, Branholt, Friar Spendleton, Alice Pierce, and Dido and Aeneas may have been brought in by Pembroke’s men.

The five seceders had not heard the last of Langley. He sued them at common law on the bonds given not to play in a rival house. They successfully applied to have the case transferred to the Court of Requests, and in the course of the pleadings maintained, firstly, that they were prevented from playing at the Swan by the restraint and Langley’s failure to get a licence; secondly, that Langley had orally assented to their transfer to Henslowe; thirdly, that they could not appear at the Swan as a company, since Langley had ‘procured from them’ two (or, as they afterwards said, three) of their associates, to whom he had returned their obligations; and fourthly, that Langley had suffered no damage, since other men were occupying his house. They also complained that Langley had never handed over the apparel for which they had recouped him out of their gallery[133] takings. The negotiations with Langley which they describe seem to have taken place during October. About the covenants entered into with Henslowe as far back as the beginning of August they said nothing, and whether either Langley or the court ever found out about these, and what the ultimate decision of the court on the main issue was, must remain uncertain. But certain loans entered in Henslowe’s diary suggest that in March 1598 Langley was in a position to arrest Bird, and that in September of the same year some kind of agreement was arrived at, under which Langley received £35, as well as £19 or more for a rich cloak (i. 63, 72, 73, 95, 96). It is possible that a ‘sewt agenste Thomas Poope’ of the Chamberlain’s, for which Henslowe (i. 72) made a personal advance of 10s. to William Bird on 30 August 1598, may also have been connected with the shiftings of companies in 1597.

The names of the two or three members of the company to whom Langley gave back their bonds are not stated in the pleadings. Perhaps one was Jonson, and the other two might conceivably have been Humphrey and Anthony Jeffes, since the name of ‘Humfrey’ stands with that of ‘Gabriel’ in stage-directions to 3 Henry VI, and Henslowe’s list of the reconstituted Admiral’s company as it stood in October 1597–January 1598 contains ‘the ij Geffes’, who are not traceable in the 1594–7 company and may well have come in with the five Pembroke’s men. Langley tells us that certain ‘fellows’ of his opponents had taken a more reasonable line than theirs and returned to the Swan. How long these men remained there we do not know, but probably they secured Pembroke’s patronage after the five had been definitely merged in the Admiral’s, for by the end of 1597 there was clearly a distinct Pembroke’s company again. Provincial records yield the name, not only at Bath in 1596–7 and at Bristol in September 1597, which may point to a tour of the undivided Swan company during the period of restraint, but also at Bath in 1598–9, at Bristol in July 1598, at Leicester between October and December, at Dover on 7 October, at Coventry on 12 December, and at Bewdley on 22 December. They were at Norwich in April 1599, at Coventry on 4 July, and at Bristol in July. They were at York on 21 January 1600, Bristol in April, Marlborough in May, and Leicester before Michaelmas. In October they were in relationship with Henslowe, who notes ‘my Lordes of Penbrockes men begane to playe at the Rosse’, and records performances of Like Unto Like and Roderick on 28 and 29 October respectively.[358] The former[134] brought him 11s. 6d. and the latter 5s., and there apparently the experiment ended, and with it, so far as is known, the career of Pembroke’s men. It is just possible that they were merged in Worcester’s company, which arose shortly afterwards. Mr. Fleay expands this possibility into a definite theory that Kempe, Beeston, Duke, and Pallant left the Chamberlain’s men for Pembroke’s in 1599, and ultimately passed from these to Worcester’s. This is improbable as regards Kempe, and unproved as regards the rest.[359]

xix. THE LORD ADMIRAL’S (LORD HOWARD’S, EARL OF NOTTINGHAM’S), PRINCE HENRY’S, AND ELECTOR PALATINE’S MEN

It was perhaps his employment as deputy to the Earl of Sussex in the office of Lord Chamberlain which led Lord Howard to encourage players. A company, under the name of Lord Howard’s men, appeared at Court for the first time at the Christmas of 1576–7. On 27 December they played Tooley, and on 17 February The Solitary Knight.[360] They came again for the last time in the following winter, and performed[135] on 5 January 1578. They were also at Kirtling on 3 December 1577, Saffron Walden in 1577–8, Ipswich on 24 October 1577, in 1578–9, and perhaps on 8 October 1581, Bristol, where they gave The Queen of Ethiopia, between 31 August and 6 September 1578, Nottingham on 19 December 1578, and Bath and Coventry in 1578–9.

Howard again had players at Court, after he became Admiral in 1585. The first record of them is at Dover in June 1585. Later in the year they were playing in conjunction with the Lord Chamberlain’s (Lord Hunsdon’s). ‘The Lorde Chamberlens and the Lord Admirall’s players’ were rewarded at Leicester in October-December 1585, and ‘the servants of the lo: admirall and the lo: Chamberlaine’ for a play at Court on 6 January 1586.[361] During the same Christmas, however, the Admiral’s played alone on 27 December 1585, and as Hunsdon’s survived in the provinces, the two organizations may have been amalgamated for one performance only. The Admiral’s were at Coventry, Faversham, Ipswich, and Leicester in 1585–6. They were reported to Walsingham amongst other London companies on 25 January 1587 (App. D, No. lxxviii), although they did not appear at Court during this winter. In 1586–7 they were at Cambridge, Coventry, Bath, York, Norwich, Ipswich, Exeter, Southampton, and Leicester. By November they were back in London, and on the 16th an accident at their theatre is thus related by Philip Gawdy to his father:[362]

Possibly the company went into retirement as a result of this disaster; at any rate nothing more is heard of them[136] until the Christmas of 1588–9. They then came to Court, and were rewarded for two interludes and ‘for showinge other feates of activitye and tumblinge’ on 29 December 1588 and 11 February 1589.[363] On 6 November 1589 they were playing in the City, and were suppressed by the Lord Mayor, because Tilney, the Master of the Revels, misliked their plays. Probably they had been concerning themselves with the Marprelate controversy. Strange’s men, who were evidently performing as a separate company, shared their fate. It may have been this misadventure which led the Admiral’s to seek house-room with James Burbadge at the Theatre (q.v.), where some evidence by John Alleyn, who, with James Tunstall, was of their number, locates them in November 1590 and May 1591. A relic of this period may be presumed to exist in the ‘plot’ of Dead Man’s Fortune, preserved with other plots belonging to the company at Dulwich, in which Burbadge, doubtless Richard Burbadge, then still a boy, appeared. Certainly there is nothing to connect Burbadge with the company at any other date. Other actors in the piece were one Darlowe, ‘b[oy?] Samme’, and Robert Lee, later of Anne’s men. The Admiral’s again showed ‘feats of activitie’ at Court on 28 December 1589, and a play on 3 March 1590. In 1589–90 they were at Coventry, Ipswich, Maidstone, Marlborough, Winchester, and Gloucester, and in 1590–1 at Winchester and Gloucester. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine was published in 1590 as ‘shewed upon stages in the City of London’ by the Admiral’s men. The Court records for the following winter present what looks at first sight like a curious discrepancy. The accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber include payments for plays and activities on 27 December 1590 and 16 February 1591 to Lord Strange’s men. The corresponding warrants, however, were made out, according to the Privy Council Register, for the Admiral’s. Probably there is no error here, and the entries are evidence of an amalgamation between the two companies, which possibly dated from as far back as the winter of 1589, and which seems to have endured until the summer of 1594. Technically, it would seem that it was the Admiral’s who were merged in Strange’s men. It is the latter and not the former who generally appear in official documents during this period. I have therefore dealt with its details for both companies, with the question of the precise date of the amalgamation, and with the possibility that the plot of The Seven Deadly Sins and its list of actors also belong to a Theatre performance of about 1590, in my account of Strange’s men,[137] and need only remark here that the name of the Admiral’s does not altogether fall into disuse, especially in provincial records, and that the leading actor, Edward Alleyn, in particular, is shown by an official document to have retained his personal status as an Admiral’s servant.

It is a question of some interest how early Alleyn’s connexion with the Admiral’s may be supposed to have begun. Was he, for example, the original Tamburlaine of 1587, and was it as an Admiral’s man that Nashe referred to him, if it was he to whom Nashe referred, as the Roscius of the contemporary players in his Menaphon epistle of 1589? He is known to have been a member of Worcester’s company in 1583. Dr. Greg is disposed to think that he remained with them until the death of the third Earl of Worcester on 22 February 1589, and then joined the Admiral’s.[364] It is, however, to be observed that there is no trace of Worcester’s men between 1584 and 1590, and that it is in 1585 that the Admiral’s men begin to appear at Court. On the whole, it commends itself to me as the more probable conjecture that the first Earl of Worcester’s company passed into Howard’s service, when he became Admiral in 1585, and that the players of the fourth Earl of Worcester between 1590 and 1596 were distinct from those of his father. The issue concerns others besides Edward Alleyn himself. Amongst the members of Worcester’s company in 1583 were Robert Browne, James Tunstall, and Richard Jones; and all three of these are found concerned with Alleyn in matters of theatrical business during 1589–91. The most important document is a deed of sale by ‘Richarde Jones of London yoman’ to ‘Edwarde Allen of London gent’ for £37 10s. of ‘all and singuler suche share parte and porcion of playinge apparrelles, playe bookes, instrumentes, and other comodities whatsoeuer belonginge to the same, as I the said Richarde Jones nowe haue or of right ought to haue joyntlye with the same Edwarde Allen, John Allen citizen and inholder of London and Roberte Browne yoman’.[365] This is dated 3 January 1589. There are also three deeds of sale to Edward and John Alleyn of theatrical apparel between 1589 and 1591, and to two of these James Tunstall was a witness.[366] On Dr. Greg’s theory as to the date at which Alleyn took service with the Lord Admiral, the organization in whose properties Richard Jones had an interest would naturally be Worcester’s men; on mine it would be the Admiral’s, and it would follow that Jones and Browne, as well as Alleyn, had joined that company.[138] We have seen that James Tunstall had done so by 1590–1. John Alleyn was an elder brother of Edward. There is nothing to connect him with Worcester’s men. He was a servant of Lord Sheffield in November 1580 and of the Lord Admiral in 1589.[367] A letter of one Elizabeth Socklen to Edward Alleyn refers to a time ‘when your brother, my lovinge cozen John Allen, dwelt with my very good lord, Charles Heawarde’, and this rather suggests that his service was in some household capacity, and not merely as player.[368] If so, it may have been through him that Edward Alleyn and his fellows became Admiral’s men. The first period of their activity seems to have lasted from 1585 to 1589, and it was no doubt Edward Alleyn’s genius, and perhaps also his business capacity, which enabled them to offer a serious rivalry to the Queen’s company. I suspect that in 1589 or 1590 they were practically dissolved, and this view is confirmed by the fact that their most important play was allowed to get to the hands of the printers. Alleyn, with the help of his brother, bought up the properties, and allied himself with Lord Strange’s men, and so far as the Admiral’s continued to exist at all for the next few years, it was almost entirely in and through him that it did so. After a financial quarrel with James Burbadge in May 1591, the combined companies moved to the Rose. There is nothing to show whether the Alleyns bought up Robert Browne’s interest as well as that of Richard Jones. At any rate Browne began in 1590 that series of continental tours which occupied most of the rest of his career (cf. ch. xiv). Jones joined him in one of these adventures in 1592, and it is possible that John Bradstreet and Thomas Sackville, who went with them, were also old Admiral’s men. But I do not think that it is accurate to regard this company, as Dr. Greg seems to be inclined to do, as being itself under the Admiral’s patronage. It is true that they obtained a passport from him, but this was probably given rather in his capacity as warden of the seas than in that of their lord. His name is not mentioned in any of the foreign records of their peregrinations. It is not possible to say which, other than Alleyn, of the members of the 1592–3 Strange’s and Admiral’s company, whose names have been preserved, came from each of the two contributing sources. They do not include either John Alleyn or James Tunstall, or Edward Browne, a Worcester’s man of 1583, who reappears with Tunstall among the Admiral’s after 1594. Nor is it possible to say how far the repertory of Strange’s men, as disclosed by the[139] 1592–3 entries in Henslowe’s diary, included plays drawn from the Admiral’s stock. This may have been the case with The Battle of Alcazar, which was printed as an Admiral’s play in 1594, and with Orlando Furioso, which contemporary gossip represents Greene as selling first to the Queen’s and then to the Admiral’s. And it may have been the case with 1 Tamar Cham, which passed to the later Admiral’s. Neither Tamburlaine nor The Wounds of Civil War, printed like The Battle of Alcazar as an Admiral’s play in 1594, is recorded to have been played by Strange’s.

When the companies settled down again to a London life after the conclusion of the long plague in 1594, the Admiral’s men reconstituted themselves as an independent company with Alleyn at its head, leaving the greater number of their recent comrades of the road to pass, as the Lord Chamberlain’s men, under the patronage of Lord Hunsdon. The personal alliance between Alleyn and Henslowe, whose step-daughter, Joan Woodward, he had married on 22 October 1592, led to the institution of close business relations between the company and the pawnbroker, and the record of these in the famous diary enables us to follow with a singular minuteness the almost daily fortunes of the Admiral’s men during the course of some nine or ten years, broken into two periods by a reconstruction of the company in 1597 and finally closing about the time of their conversion into Prince Henry’s men in 1604. The precise nature of the position occupied by Henslowe has been carefully investigated by Dr. Greg,[369] and has already been briefly considered in these pages (ch. xi). He was not a member of the company, but its landlord, and, probably to an increasing extent, its financier. In the former capacity he received, after every day’s performance, a fluctuating sum, which seems to have represented half the amount received for admission to the galleries of the house; the other half, with the payments for entrance to the standing room in the yard, being divided amongst such of the players as had a share in the profits. Out of this, of course, they had to meet all expenditure other than by way of rent, such as the wages of hired men, payments for apparel and play-books, fees to the Master of the Revels for the licensing of plays, and the like. In practice it became convenient for Henslowe, who was a capitalist, while many of the players lived from hand to mouth, to advance sums to meet such expenditure as it fell due, and to recoup himself from time to time out of the company’s profits. It seems likely that,[140] when the system was in full working, the moiety of the gallery money, which remained after the deduction of the rent, was assigned for the purpose of these repayments. During the period 1597–1604 Henslowe’s entries in his diary are mainly in the nature of a running account of these advances and of the receipts set off against them; for 1594–7 similar entries occur irregularly, but the principal record is a daily list, such as Henslowe had already kept during his shorter associations with Strange’s, the Queen’s, and Sussex’s companies in the course of 1592–4, of each performance given, with the name of the play and of the amount accruing to Henslowe himself in the form of rent. This list renders possible a very interesting analysis, both of the repertory of the company and of some at least of the financial conditions of their enterprise.

The entries start with the heading, ‘In the name of God Amen begininge the 14 of Maye 1594 by my lord Admeralls men’. After three days, during which The Jew of Malta, Cutlack, and The Ranger’s Comedy, all of which are found in the later repertory of the company, were given, they stop abruptly.[370] To about the same date may be assigned a fragmentary account, headed ‘Layd owt for my Lorde Admeralle seruantes as ffoloweth 1594’, and recording expenditure for coming and going to Court and to Somerset House, the residence of the Lord Chamberlain, ‘for mackinge of our leater twise’, and ‘for drinckinge with the jentellmen’, all evidently concerned with the initial business of forming and licensing the company.[371] On 5 June the account of performances is resumed with a fresh heading, ‘In the name of God Amen begininge at Newington my Lord Admeralle men and my Lorde Chamberlen men as ffolowethe 1594’.[372] Henslowe’s takings only averaged 9s. for the first ten days, probably on account of the distance of Newington Butts from London.[373] The takings for the three days in May averaged 41s., and it may perhaps be inferred that these May performances were at the Rose, and that some fear of renewed plague on the part of the authorities led to their being relegated to a safer quarter. The tentative character of these early performances is shown by the fact that the Admiral’s were still sharing a theatre with the Chamberlain’s. To the repertory of the latter it seems safe to assign three of the seven plays produced, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, and The Taming of A Shrew, and probably also a fourth, Hester and Ahasuerus, as there is no later sign of this amongst the Admiral’s plays. This leaves[141] three others to be regarded as the Admiral’s contribution, The Jew of Malta and Cutlack, which they had played in May and were often to play again, and Belin Dun, to which are attached the letters ‘ne’, Henslowe’s normal indication of a new play.[374] There is nothing in the order in which the plays were taken to indicate an alternation of the two companies, and it is likely enough that neither was yet fully constituted, and that they actually joined forces in the same performances.

After the tenth play on 15 June, Henslowe drew a line across the page, and although the entries continue without any indication of a change in the conditions under which the performances were given, I can only concur in the conjecture of Mr. Fleay and Dr. Greg that at this point the Admiral’s plays were transferred to the Rose, and the combination with the Chamberlain’s ceased.[375] A sudden rise in the amount of Henslowe’s takings, and the absence from the rest of the list of the four plays named above and of any other attributable to the Chamberlain’s repertory, are alike strongly in favour of this view, which may be treated as a practical certainty. Henceforward the fortunes of the company seem to have followed a smooth course for the space of three years. Their proceedings may be briefly summed up as follows. They played for thirty-nine consecutive weeks from 15 June 1594 to 14 March 1595, appearing at Court during this season on 28 December, 1 January, and 6 January. After a break of thirty-seven days during Lent, opportunity of which was taken to repair the Rose, they played again for ten weeks from Easter Monday, 21 April, to 26 June 1595. Then came a vacation of fifty-nine days, with visits to Bath and Maidstone. They began again in London on 25 August 1595 and played for twenty-seven weeks to 28 February 1596, giving Court performances on 1 January, 4 January, and 22 and 24 February. This took them to the end of the first week in Lent. After forty-three days’ interval, they played for fifteen weeks, from Easter Monday, 12 April, to 23 July 1596. Their summer vacation lasted for ninety-five days, and they are noted during 1595–6 at Coventry, Bath, Gloucester, and Dunwich. In the autumn they started playing on 27 October, but the receipts were low, and if the record is complete, they suspended performances between 15 and 25 November, and then went on to 12 February 1597, making up a season of about fourteen weeks in all. They do not seem to have played at Court at all this winter. This year they[142] rather disregarded Lent, stopping for eighteen days only, during a reconstruction of the company, and then playing three days a week until Easter, and then regularly until the end of July, in all twenty-one weeks. To certain irregularities at the close of this season it will be necessary to refer later. During the three years, then, there were three winter and three summer seasons of London playing, covering about a hundred and twenty-six weeks. Except in Lent or at the beginning or end of a season, or occasionally, probably for climatic reasons, at other times, especially in December, plays were given upon every week-day. It emerges from Dr. Greg’s re-ordering of Henslowe’s very inaccurate dates that there were no plays on Sundays.[376] On the other hand, a summons to play at Court in the evening did not necessarily entail a blank day in the afternoon. The total number of performances during the three years was seven hundred and twenty-eight. It is reasonable to assume that Henslowe’s takings varied roughly with those of the company, although the reserve must be made that different plays might prove the most attractive to the galleries and to the yard respectively. The amounts entered range from a minimum of 3s. to a maximum of 73s. Dr. Greg calculates the average over ‘certain typical periods of 1595’ as 30s.;[377] during the first half of 1597 it was 24s. The fluctuations are determined, partly by the popularity or novelty of the plays presented, partly by the season of the year, and doubtless the weather and the competition of other amusements. There were generally some high receipts during Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun weeks. Unfortunately there is no means of estimating the proportion which Henslowe’s share bore to that which fell for division among the players. Some light is thrown upon the expenses by the subsidiary accounts of advances, which Henslowe began to keep from time to time in 1596. In May of that year he lent Alleyn ‘for the company’ a total amount of £39 in several instalments, and recovered it by small sums of £1 to £3 at a time during the next three months.[378] A longer account extending from October 1596 to March 1597 reaches, with the aid of a miscalculation, a total of £52. Of this £22 was repaid during the same period, chiefly by deductions from the profits of first nights, and an acknowledgement given for the balance of £30.[379] The advances were made through various members of the company, and the purposes specified include apparel for three new plays, travelling expenses, and fees to playwrights. A third account, if I am[143] right in the interpretation of some very disputable figures, shows an expenditure at the average rate of 31s. a day during the six months from 24 January to 28 July 1597, of which, however, nearly half was in fact incurred during the first twenty-four days of the period. In this case only the sums and not the purposes for which they were advanced are entered.[380]

During the three years the Admiral’s men produced new plays to the total number of fifty-five, and at the average rate of one a fortnight. The productions were not at regular intervals, and often followed each other in successive weeks. There is, however, no example of two new productions in the same week.[381] These are the names and dates of the new plays:

• Belin Dun (10 June 1594).
• Galiaso (28 June 1594).
• Philipo and Hippolito (9 July 1594).
• 2 Godfrey of Bulloigne (19 July 1594).
• The Merchant of Emden (30 July 1594).
• Tasso’s Melancholy (13 Aug. 1594).
• The Venetian Comedy (27 Aug. 1594).
• Palamon and Arcite (18 Sept. 1594).
• The Love of an English Lady (26 Sept. 1594).
• A Knack to Know an Honest Man (23 Oct. 1594).
• 1 Caesar and Pompey (8 Nov. 1594).
• Diocletian (16 Nov. 1594).
• The Wise Man of West Chester (3 Dec. 1594).
• The Set at Maw (15 Dec. 1594).
• The French Comedy (11 Feb. 1595).
• The Mack (21 Feb. 1595).
• Olympo (5 Mar. 1595).[382]
• 1 Hercules (7 May 1595).[144]
• 2 Hercules (23 May 1595).
• 1 The Seven Days of the Week (3 June 1595).
• 2 Caesar and Pompey (18 June 1595).
• Longshanks (29 Aug. 1595).
• Crack me this Nut (5 Sept. 1595).
• The New World’s Tragedy (17 Sept. 1595).
• The Disguises (2 Oct. 1595).
• The Wonder of a Woman (16 Oct. 1595).
• Barnardo and Fiammetta (30 Oct. 1595).
• A Toy to Please Chaste Ladies (14 Nov. 1595).
• Henry V (28 Nov. 1595).
• Chinon of England (3 Jan. 1596).
• Pythagoras (16 Jan. 1596).
• 2 The Seven Days of the Week (23 Jan. 1596).
• The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (12 Feb. 1596).
• Julian the Apostate (29 Apr. 1596).
• 1 Tamar Cham (7 May 1596).
• Phocas (20 May 1596).
• 2 Tamar Cham (11 June 1596).
• Troy (25 June 1596).
• The Paradox (1 July 1596).
• The Tinker of Totnes (23 July 1596).
• Vortigern, Valteger, or Hengist (4 Dec. 1596).
• Stukeley (10 Dec. 1596).
• Nebuchadnezzar (18 Dec. 1596).
• That Will Be Shall Be (30 Dec. 1596).
• Jeronimo (7 Jan. 1597).
• Alexander and Lodowick (14 Jan. 1597).[383]
• Woman Hard to Please (27 Jan. 1597).
• Guido (21 Mar. 1597).
• Five Plays in One (7 Apr. 1597).
• A French Comedy (18 Apr. 1597).
• Uther Pendragon (29 Apr. 1597).
• The Comedy of Humours (11 May 1597).
• The Life and Death of Henry I (26 May 1597).
• Frederick and Basilea (3 June 1597).
• The Life and Death of Martin Swart (30 June 1597).

Oblivion has overtaken the great majority of these plays. Longshanks is possibly Peele’s Edward I, and Jeronimo certainly Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. The title of The Wise Man of West Chester agrees with the subject of Munday’s John a Kent and John a Cumber, the manuscript of which is dated December 1595. One would be more willing to[145] identify Henry V with The Famous Victories, if the latter had not been printed in 1598 with the name of the Queen’s men on its title-page. A Knack to Know an Honest Man was printed, as acted ‘about the Citie of London’, but without any company name, in 1596 (S. R. 26 November 1595). Stukeley was also printed without a name, as The Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley, in 1605 (S. R. 11 August 1600). 1 Tamar Cham and Frederick and Basilea are extant in ‘plots’ alone, and Belin Dun, or Bellendon, as Henslowe writes it, was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 24 November 1595 as The true tragicall historie of Kinge Rufus the first with the life and deathe of Belyn Dun the first thief that ever was hanged in England, but is not known to be extant. The list also contains two of the early works of George Chapman, The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1598, Admiral’s, S. R. 15 August 1598), and The Comedy of Humours, which can be safely identified with A Humorous Day’s Mirth (1599, Admiral’s). Ingenious attempts have been made to trace in some of the remaining titles other plays by Chapman, or by Heywood, Dekker, and the like, or presumed early drafts of these, or the English originals of plays or titles preserved in German versions; but in most cases the material available is so scanty as to render the game a hazardous one.[384] It appears, however, from Henslowe’s notes of advances during 1596–7 that payment was made to Heywood for a book, from which it may be inferred that his activity as a dramatist for the company had already began. Payments to ‘marcum’ and ‘Mr. porter’ perhaps indicate the same of Gervase Markham and Henry Porter.[385]

It is evident that some of the plays marked ‘ne’ by Henslowe cannot have been new in the fullest sense. This applies to Jeronimo, which had been played by Strange’s[146] men as an old play during 1592–3, and to 2 Tamar Cham, which had been produced by the same company on 28 April 1592, and on that occasion also marked ‘ne’ by Henslowe. It applies also to Longshanks and Henry V, if these are really the same as Edward I and The Famous Victories. And it may, of course, apply also in other cases, which cannot now be distinguished. Two explanations are possible. One is that plays were treated as new, for the purpose of Henslowe’s entries, which were only new to the repertory of the particular company concerned, having been purchased by them or by Henslowe from the stock of some other company. There is, however, no indication that Henslowe received any special financial advantage from the production of a new play, such as would give point to such an arrangement. The other, and perhaps the most plausible, is that an old play was marked ‘ne’ if it had undergone any substantial process of revision before revival. But it must be admitted that the problem set is one that we have hardly the means to solve.

In addition to their new and revised plays, the Admiral’s had a considerable stock of old ones. Some of these they were playing, when they began their first season in June 1594. Several others were revived in the course of that season, and a few at later dates. The only new play of the repertory which reached the stage of revival during the three years was Belin Dun, which was originally produced on 10 June 1594, played to the end of the year, then dropped, and afterwards revived for a single performance on 11 July 1596, and for a series in the spring of 1597. But it is not likely that many new plays were written during the plague years, and probably most of the revived plays of 1594–5 were a good deal more than two or three years old. A list of the plays not marked ‘ne’ by Henslowe, nineteen in number, follows. It is, however, possible that some of them are only plays in the list already given, masquerading under different names.

• Cutlack.
• The Ranger’s Comedy.
• The Guise, or, The Massacre of Paris.
• The Jew of Malta.
• Mahomet.
• 1 Tamburlaine.
• Dr. Faustus.
• The Love of a Grecian Lady, or, The Grecian Comedy.[386]
• The French Doctor.
• Warlamchester.
• 2 Tamburlaine.
• The Siege of London.[147]
• Antony and Valia.[387]
• 1 Long Meg of Westminster.[388]
• The Welshman.[389]
• 1 Fortunatus.
• Osric.
• Time’s Triumph and Fortune’s.
• The Witch of Islington.

Five plays of Marlowe’s are conspicuous in the list. Mahomet might be either Greene’s Alphonsus, King of Arragon or Peele’s lost Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek. Fortunatus, as revised by Dekker in 1599, is extant, but it is doubtful whether Dekker was writing early enough to have been the author of the original play. Conjectural identifications of some of the other titles have been attempted.[390] There is, perhaps, a natural inclination to eke out our meagre knowledge of the repertory of the earlier Admiral’s men, as it was constituted before 1590, by the assumption that the old and the revised new plays of 1594–7 belong to that stock. But this can only be proved to be so in the case of 1 and 2 Tamburlaine, where the title-page of the 1590 edition comes to our assistance. There is no trace between 1594 and 1597 of any of the other three plays, The Battle of Alcazar, The Wounds of Civil War, and Orlando Furioso, which there is independent evidence for connecting with the Admiral’s. And it must be borne in mind that there were several other sources from which a supply of old plays might be drawn. Alleyn seems to have bought up the books and properties of the pre-1590 men, and we do not know how far he also retained rights in some or all of the plays produced during his alliance with Strange’s. Moreover, there were plenty of opportunities for either Alleyn, Henslowe, or the Admiral’s men as a whole, to acquire copies from one or more of the companies, Pembroke’s, the Queen’s, Sussex’s, which went under in the plague years. Henry V, if identical with The Famous Victories, had certainly been a Queen’s play; The Ranger’s Comedy had been played for Henslowe by the Queen’s and Sussex’s in April 1594; Jeronimo and The Guise had been similarly played by Strange’s in 1592–3; and the fact that Strange’s, the Queen’s, Sussex’s, and the[148] Admiral’s, all in turn played The Jew of Malta leads to a strong suspicion that it was Henslowe’s property and placed by him at the disposal of any company that might from time to time be occupying his theatre.

The Rose was what is now known as a ‘repertory’ house. A very successful play might be repeated on the night after its first production or revival, or in the course of the same week. But as a rule one performance a week was the limit, and after a play had been on the boards a few weeks, the intervals between its appearances rapidly became greater. The Wise Man of West Chester, which was presented thirty-two times between December 1594 and July 1597, had a longer life than any other new play during the three years. Next came A Knack to Know an Honest Man, with twenty-one performances in two years, 1 Seven Days of the Week, with twenty-one performances in fifteen months, and The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, with twenty-two performances in fourteen months. Belin Dun, although not continuously upon the stage for long together, achieved with the aid of its revival a total of twenty-four performances. The only other new plays, that outlived a year, were 2 Godfrey of Bulloigne and A Toy to Please Chaste Ladies. Even such highly successful plays as 1 and 2 Hercules ceased to be heard of after six months. The usual run of a play was anything from six to seventeen nights, but sixteen plays failed to obtain even such a run, and several plays, which apparently did well enough on the first night, were not repeated at all. As a rule the first night of a play brought Henslowe the highest returns; but this was by no means invariably the case, and the success of any play, which held the boards for as many as six nights, can perhaps best be measured by its average returns. By far the most fortunate was The Comedy of Humours which averaged 53s. for the eleven nights available before the summer season of 1597 closed. Next came 1 and 2 Hercules with 42s. and 43s. respectively, 1 Seven Days of the Week with 35s., and The Wise Man of West Chester with 34s. On the other hand the average of Henry I was no more than 19s. and that of the second French Comedy no more than 16s. The highest individual returns were those from the first nights of 1 and 2 Hercules, 2 Godfrey of Bulloigne, and 1 Seven Days of the Week, which yielded 73s., 70s., 71s., and 70s. respectively, and that from the sixth night of the Comedy of Humours, which was also 70s. The booking for this play shows a curious progress, being 43s., 55s., 58s., 64s., 66s., 70s., for the first six nights. Similarly The Wise Man of West Chester, which began with a bad first night of 33s.,[149] rose to a good average, while 2 Godfrey of Bulloigne, for all its start of 70s., ended with an average of only 28s. The worst first night taking was the 22s. of Nebuchadnezzar, and this affords another curious example of box-office fluctuations, for, though it achieved no higher average than 22s., it rose on its third night to 68s. The worst takings, on other than first nights, were 3s. for Chinon of England,[391] 4s. for Vortigern, and for Olympo, and 5s. twice over for A Woman Hard to Please. Probably these were due to weather or other accidents, as each play averaged enough to justify a reasonable run. The success of the old plays followed much the same lines as that of the new ones. They ran for anything from one night to twenty-four, this total being reached by Dr. Faustus. The best average returns were the 32s. and 38s. of 1 and 2 Tamburlaine, the 30s. of Mahomet, the 29s. of 1 Long Meg of Westminster, the 27s. of The Guise, and the 26s. of The Jew of Malta; the best individual returns the 72s. and 71s. yielded by the respective first nights of Dr. Faustus and 1 Tamburlaine. The persistent popularity of Marlowe’s work comes out quite clearly from the statistics; and the success of Chapman’s first attempts is also not to be overlooked.

The personnel of the Admiral’s men during 1594–7 can be determined with some approach to certainty. They were Edward Alleyn, John Singer, Richard Jones, Thomas Towne, Martin Slater, Edward Juby, Thomas Downton, and James Donstone. Their names are found in a list written in the diary, without any explanation of its object, amongst memoranda of 1594–6.[392] There can be little doubt that it represents the principal members of the company, and in most cases corroborative evidence is available. The books of the Treasurer of the Chamber indicate Alleyn, Jones, and Singer as payees for the Court money of 1594–5, and Alleyn and Slater for that of 1595–6. Alleyn, Slater, Donstone, and Juby are noted in Henslowe’s subsidiary accounts for 1596 as responsible for advances made by him on behalf of the company.[393] Another advance was made to Stephen the tireman, and he is doubtless the Stephen Magett who also appears in personal financial relations with Henslowe during 1596.[394] Transactions by way of loan, sale, or pawn are also noted by Henslowe during 1594–7 with Slater, Jones, Donstone, Singer, and Towne, and also with Edward Dutton and[150] Richard Alleyn.[395] These latter were probably not sharers in the company, but can be traced with others amongst its subordinate members by means of the ‘plot’ of Frederick and Basilea, which it is reasonable to connect with the performances of the play in June and July 1597, since it was a new play on 3 June, and it is recorded in the diary that Martin Slater, who figures in the ‘plot’, left the company on 18 July. It is to be inferred from the plot that the principal parts in Frederick and Basilea were taken by Mr. Alleyn, Mr. Thomas Towne, Mr. Martin [Slater], Mr. Juby, Mr. Donstone, and R. Alleyn; that minor male parts were taken by Edward Dutton, Thomas Hunt, Robert Ledbetter, Black Dick, Pigge, Sam, Charles, and the ‘gatherers’ or money-takers and other ‘attendants’; and that female parts were taken by Edward Dutton’s boy Dick and two other boys known as Will and Griffen. Apparently the play, although not employing all the principal actors, made considerable demands on the minor staff. Dr. Greg may be right in identifying Sam and Charles with the Samuel Rowley and Charles Massey who became members of the company at a later date.[396] It will be seen that the only name in Henslowe’s undated list which cannot be verified as that of a member of the company during 1594–7 is that of Thomas Downton; but it may safely be accepted. Downton had accompanied Alleyn on the provincial tour with Strange’s men in 1593. So had Pigge or Pyk. Jones and Donstone, who is the same as Tunstall, had belonged to Worcester’s men in 1583, and probably to the Admiral’s men before 1590; Jones had been abroad, as we have seen, during the plague years. John Singer had been a member of the Queen’s men in 1588. The other names now come into the story for the first time. Henslowe’s advances for 1596 included sums ‘to feache Fletcher’ and ‘to feache Browne’.[397] It can only be matter of conjecture whether there is evidence here of negotiations for the incorporation in the company of Robert Browne and of Laurence Fletcher, at a later date a colleague of Slater’s, and if so, whether they led to any fruitful result.

The departure of Martin Slater on 18 July 1597 was only one of several changes which profoundly modified the composition of the company in the course of that year.[398] In February[151] Richard Jones and Thomas Downton went to the Swan as Pembroke’s men, and the disturbance thereby caused probably accounts for the three weeks’ cessation of playing during Lent. The Swan enterprise was brought to a disastrous conclusion after five months by the production of The Isle of Dogs, which not only brought personal trouble on the chief offenders, but also led to a restraint of plays at all the theatres. This event synchronizes with the first appearance in the diary of Nashe’s collaborator in The Isle of Dogs, Ben Jonson. On 28 July Henslowe lent him no less a sum than £4, and took Alleyn and Singer as witnesses. On the same day he opened an account headed ‘℞ of Bengemenes Johnsones share as ffoloweth’ with a first instalment of 3s. 9d.[399] On this very day of 28 July the Privy Council’s inhibition fell, and Jonson went to prison and paid no more instalments. It is impossible to say whether his ‘share’ was in the Admiral’s company or in Pembroke’s. In any event, although he continued to write for the Admiral’s men after 1597, there is no further sign that he was either a ‘sharer’, or indeed an actor in any capacity.

One result of the restraint was that Jones and Downton not merely returned to the Rose, but brought at least three other of Pembroke’s men, Robert Shaw, Gabriel Spencer, and William Bird, known also by the alias of Borne, with them. Henslowe was thus enabled, almost immediately after playing stopped, to set about the reconstitution of his company, and the memoranda of agreement which he noted in his diary during the next fourteen months are so interesting for the light which they throw upon his relations with the actors, that I think it well, before discussing them, to transcribe them in full. There are in all eleven of them, as follows:[400]

i. (Thomas Hearne)

[152]

ii. (John Helle)

iii. (Richard Jones)

iv. (Robert Shaw)

v. (William Borne)

vi. (Thomas Downton)

vii. (William Kendall)

viii. (James Bristow)

ix. (Richard Alleyn)

x. (Thomas Heywood)

[154]

xi. (Charles Massey and Samuel Rowley)

Evidently the position of James Bristow is distinct from that of the other players. He was a ‘boy’ or apprentice, whose indentures had been transferred to Henslowe for a consideration by his former master. In the rest of the cases, the essence of the agreement appears to be the undertaking by the player under bond to play only with the Admiral’s men at Henslowe’s house. It is interesting to notice that in the agreement with Hearne Henslowe calls the company ‘my company’; and the fact that its members were constituted Henslowe’s covenant servants seems to argue a closer personal relation between the organization and its financier, than might on other grounds have been inferred. Dr. Greg, indeed, draws a distinction between the agreements with Jones, Shaw, Borne, and Downton, whom he regards as merely ‘binding themselves to play at Henslowe’s house like other sharers’, and those with the rest, whom he regards as ‘placing themselves in the position of covenant servants to him, which would seem to imply that they were merely hired men’.[401] But I do not think that there is any justification for this theory in the terms of the documents, and it immediately gets Dr. Greg into difficulties about Massey and Rowley, who, as we shall see, were in fact on the footing of full members of the company even before the date of their agreement. I do not mean that I deny the distinction between sharers and hired men, which is of course important, but that I do not think that it is relevant to the contractual relations set up by the agreements. I am not quite clear whether Henslowe’s memoranda, which are written throughout, including the names of the witnesses, in his own hand or Alleyn’s, constitute the formal instruments under which the agreements were effected, or are merely notes for his own information. But in either event their terminology is loose. They are not always expressed as being agreements of hiring, or for service, even in the cases of those men whom Dr. Greg does not suppose to have been sharers, and they are not careful to[155] specify the considerations, other than the formal 2d. or 3d., which the actors were to receive. Wages are, in fact, provided for only in the agreements with Hearne and Kendall, and it is quite possible that, if we had the full terms before us, we should find that, while some of the others were also to receive wages, some were to find their recompense in a share of such profits as the company might make. It is probable that, even where Henslowe undertook to pay wages, the general agreement between him and the company provided for the shifting of that liability to them. They certainly had to pay him, at the rate of 3s. a week, for the services of his boy Bristow.[402] To a slightly later date belongs an agreement with an unnamed actor, in which the hirer is not Henslowe but Thomas Downton, and this I add in order to complete the series.[403]

xii.

The appearance of Jones as guarantee for Shaw is due to the fact that, as a result of The Isle of Dogs, the latter was languishing with Gabriel Spencer and Ben Jonson in the Marshalsea. Meanwhile some at least of the company travelled. Henslowe lent Alleyn 40s. for John Singer and Thomas Towne ‘when they went into the contrey’ and noted that this was ‘at ther last cominge’. There is another entry of a small loan to Singer on 9 August, so they cannot have started before that; and they must have been back by 6 October, when Singer witnessed the agreement with Thomas Downton. Possibly Edward Dutton and Richard Alleyn, who also borrowed money from Henslowe, went with them.[404] The Privy Council warrants for the release of the prisoners in the Marshalsea were signed on 3 October,[405] and a few days later Henslowe, more successful than Langley of the Swan in getting the licence for his house renewed, even before the formal expiration of the restraint on 1 November, was in a position to resume his play list with the heading, ‘The xj of Octobe begane my lord Admerals & my lorde of Penbrockes men to play at my howsse 1597’.[406] The entries of plays are few and irregular up to 5 November, and then stop.[156] A note is appended that on 26 November the Master of the Revels was paid for four weeks. The performances included one new play, Friar Spendleton, and five old ones, Jeronimo, The Comedy of Humours, Dr. Faustus, Hardicanute, and Bourbon, of which the last two do not belong to the 1594–7 repertory, and may have been contributed by Pembroke’s men. The diary also contains an account of weekly receipts running from 21 October 1597 to 4 March 1598, under the heading, ‘A juste a cownte of all suche monye as I haue receyed of my lord Admeralles & my lord of Penbrocke men as foloweth be gynynge the 21 of October 1597’, and some notes of individual advances and repayments, mainly through Robert Shaw and Thomas Downton, on behalf of the company, from 23 October to 12 December.[407] In the course of these the company is again described on 23 October and 5 November as ‘the company of my lord Admeralles men & my lord Penbrockes’, but on 1 December as ‘the companey of my lord Admeralles men’; and the substance of the whole of these advances is set out again, without any reference to Pembroke’s men, at the beginning of a continuous account from 21 October onwards, which is headed, ‘A juste a cownt of all suche money as I haue layd owt for my lord Admeralles players begynyng the xj of October whose names ar as foloweth Borne Gabrell Shaw Jonnes Dowten Jube Towne Synger & the ij Geffes’.[408] Nothing very certain is known of the previous career of Humphrey and Anthony Jeffes, but if the former is the ‘Humfrey’ who appears with ‘Gabriel’ [Spencer] in the stage-directions to 3 Henry VI it is most likely that these men also came from Pembroke’s.[409]

The responsible members of the Admiral’s company at the beginning of the third period of their existence were, then, so far as their relations to Henslowe were concerned, Thomas Downton, Richard Jones, Edward Juby, Thomas Towne, John Singer, Robert Shaw, William Borne, who seems to have had the regular alias of William Bird, Gabriel Spencer, Humphrey Jeffes, and Anthony Jeffes. To these must probably be added a number of hired men, including Thomas Hearne, John Helle, William Kendall, Richard Alleyn, Thomas Heywood, and probably Charles Massey, Samuel Rowley, Thomas Hunt, and Stephen Maget the tireman, and of apprentices, including James Bristow and Pigge. Of the sharers Downton, Jones, Juby, Towne, and Singer had alone belonged to the earlier Admiral’s men. Slater’s departure involved the company in a lawsuit, the nature of which is[157] not stated in the diary. Professor Wallace, however, has found an independent record of a Queen’s Bench action by Thomas Downton to recover £13 6s. 8d., the value of a playbook which Downton had lost in the parish of St. Mary le Bow on 1 December 1597, and Slater had ‘found’, refused to surrender, and was alleged to have disposed of for his own profit. Damages of £10 10s. were awarded on 3 November 1598.[410] Donstone also seems to have dropped out or may have been dead; he witnessed Helle’s agreement on 3 August 1597, and thereafter no more is heard of him. But incomparably the greatest loss was that of Edward Alleyn, who now retired from the stage and did not return to it for a period of three years.[411] From 29 December 1597 to 8 November 1598 Henslowe made notes of playing goods bought ‘sence my sonne Edward Allen leafte [p]laynge’, and it would appear that the company acknowledged a debt of £50 in respect of his interest on retirement.[412] In place of Alleyn, it would seem that the lead was taken by Robert Shaw and Thomas Downton, perhaps as representing the two elements of which the company was made up. These two were joint payees for the Court money of both 1597–8 and 1598–9. For 1599–1600 Shaw was sole payee. It was, moreover, most often, although by no means always, to one or other of these men that Henslowe’s advances on behalf of the company were made. It must be added that some of the new-comers appear to have sought private assistance from Henslowe in order to enable them to take up their shares. On 14 January 1598, he opened an account of sums received ‘of Humfreye Jeaffes hallfe share’, entered seven instalments up to 4 March, amounting to a total of 60s. 6d., and then noted, ‘This some was payd backe agayne vnto the companey of my lord Admeralles players the 8 of Marche 1598, & they shared yt amonste them’. There is a later account, running from 29 April to 21 July 1598, and amounting by small instalments to 35s., of ‘all such money as I dooe receue for Umfrey Jeaffes and Antoney Jeaffes ... of the companey’.[413] Possibly the brothers only held a single share between them. A similar transaction took place with Gabriel Spencer. On 20 April 1598 this actor gave an acknowledgement for £4 and between 6 April and 24 June Henslowe carried to an account headed ‘℞ of Gabrell Spencer at severall tymes of his share in the gallereyes’ a total of 25s. 6d., of which 5s. 6d. was paid over to Downton.[414] In addition, personal loans were negotiated[158] from time to time by various members of the company, and the reasons given for these indicate that in the course of 1598, besides the dispute of the ex-Pembroke’s men with Langley, Bird and perhaps the company as a whole were engaged in litigation with Thomas Pope, presumably the actor in the Chamberlain’s company.[415]

There does not seem to have been much further change in the composition of the Admiral’s men during 1597–1600. An acknowledgement of the state of their account with Henslowe between 8 and 13 March 1598 bears the signatures of ‘J. Singer, Thomas Downton, William Birde, Robt Shaa, Richard Jones, Gabriell Spenser, Thomas Towne, Humfry Jeffes, Charles Massye, and Samuell Rowlye’.[416] The last two had evidently become sharers in the course of the year. Juby and Anthony Jeffes do not sign, but this is probably due to an accident, as they were certainly sharers both in 1597 and in 1600.[417] Gabriel Spencer was killed by Ben Jonson (cf. ch. xxiii) on 22 September 1598. On 26 September Henslowe wrote to Alleyn at the Brill in Sussex, ‘Now to leat you vnderstand newes I will teall you some but yt is for me harde & heavey. Sence you weare with me I haue loste one of my company which hurteth me greatley; that is Gabrell, for he is slayen in Hogesden fylldes by the handes of Bengemen Jonson bricklayer’.[418] No doubt Henslowe wrote from the heart. Probably Spencer’s share was not yet paid for, and in addition small personal loans to the amount of 66s. stand undischarged against him in the diary, of which the last was on 19 May ‘to bye a plume of feathers which his mane Bradshawe feched of me’. Richard Bradshaw was an actor and may have played as a hired man with the company. A fragmentary ‘plot’ of Troilus and Cressida, probably to be dated in April 1599, yields the names of ‘Mr. Jones’ and his ‘boy’, Thomas Hunt, Stephen, Proctor, and Pigge. Mr. Jones’s boy is shown by a note of 17 November 1599 in the diary to have been called James.[419] Of Proctor no more is known. Stephen is probably Stephen Magett, the tireman, and Pigge was with Alleyn on the tour of Strange’s men in[159] 1593. He is also mentioned, with Dobe, Whittcombe, and Anderson, who may have been actors, in some inventories of properties belonging to Alleyn or to the company in March 1598.[420] Thomas Downton also had in June 1600 a ‘boye’ who played in Cupid and Psyche.[421] Another acknowledgement of account, dated on 10 July 1600, only differs from the former one by the omission of Spencer’s name and the inclusion of those of Juby and Anthony Jeffes.[422] The alleged manuscript notes to a copy of Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday (q.v.), produced in January 1600, which are discredited by Dr. Greg, give the cast as composed of ‘Jones, H. Jeffes, Rowley, Shawe, Massy, Dowton, Singer, Jewby, Towne, A. Jeffes, Birde, Wilson, Flower, Price, Day, Dowton’s boy Ned and Alleine’; the last for a female part. Certainly nothing is known of Day or Wilson as actors for the Admiral’s, or of Price at any such early date, or of Flower at all. But if the document is a forgery, it is a very pointless, and at the same time a very cautious one. And how did the forger, unless he were Collier or Cunningham, know that Day was an actor at all?

The records kept by Henslowe for the period 1597–1600 differ considerably in character from those for 1594–7. The diurnal list of plays performed and of rent-takings disappears altogether. On the other hand, the records of advances made, for the books and licensing of plays, for costumes and properties, and for certain miscellaneous items of expenditure, become full and systematic. A per contra account is also kept of weekly sums received by Henslowe in repayment of such advances, and from time to time a balance is struck, and the hands of the company taken to a settlement or acknowledgement of debt. Henslowe’s book-keeping, however, if not exactly faulty, is not always sufficiently lucid to make the whole of the financial transactions perfectly clear. In the absence of the daily entries of performances, the weekly records of repayments make it possible to determine roughly the periods covered by the theatrical seasons.[423] The company played for twenty continuous weeks from 11 October 1597 to about 4 March 1598, apparently with some irregularity at the beginning and again about Christmas time. Their Court plays were on 27 December and 28 February. In Lent they had a three weeks’ interval, during the course of which they met to read a book in New Fish Street, and ‘played in Fleatstreet pryuat’.[424] Playing was resumed about 25 March and lasted for some fifteen weeks, until about 8 July, making[160] thirty-five weeks in all for the year 1597–8. The company only took two weeks’ vacation in the summer and are not likely to have travelled, although on 27 September, after the new season had begun, Borne is found riding to the Lord Admiral at Croydon at the time of the Queen’s visit there.[425] They played for thirty-one weeks from about 22 July to 24 February 1599, with performances at Court on 27 December, 6 January and 18 February, and stopped for three weeks in Lent. The summer season lasted for eleven weeks from about 19 March to 3 June, making forty-four weeks playing for 1598–9. On Easter Eve Towne and Richard Alleyn went to Court for some unspecified purpose. About the same time Anthony Jeffes was making purchases against St. George’s Day.[426] The interval of this summer was seventeen weeks, but I have no evidence of any travelling. The next season was one of nineteen weeks from about 29 September 1599 to 10 February 1600, with Court performances on 27 December and 1 January, and was followed by a Lenten interval of about four weeks. At the beginning of February they bought a drum and trumpets ‘when to go into the contry’.[427] Whether these were for use during the short break in Lent or not until the following summer must remain uncertain; at any rate the purchase confirms the view that there had been no provincial tour since 1596.[428] Finally they played for nineteen weeks from about 2 March to 13 July, thus completing thirty-six weeks for 1599–1600. Apparently the summer season was diversified by a visit to Windsor for the Garter installation of Henri IV of France on 27 April.[429] In all they seem to have played for about 115 weeks or something under 690 days in 1597–1600, as compared with 728 days in 1594–7.

The entries of sums paid for plays usually give the names of the authors as well as those of the plays, and therefore furnish a good deal of material for reconstituting the literary side of the company’s activity. Henslowe’s terminology is neither precise nor uniform, but it is clear that, while the payments were always entered as loans to the company, they were often made direct by him to the playwrights, on the ‘appointment’ of one or more of its members. Sometimes they are[161] expressed as being ‘to bye a boocke of’ a play; that is to say, for the purchase outright of an old or even a new manuscript. But a new play was generally commissioned, upon the strength of a sample or of an outline of the plot, and in such cases payment was made by instalments, of which the earlier ones were ‘lent upon’ or ‘in earneste of’ or ‘in parte paymente of’, and the last ‘in full paymente of’ the book. Portions of the manuscript were handed over as security for the earlier payments. Production was very rapid, and a play put together in two or three weeks often represented the collaboration of as many as four or even five or six authors. The procedure, which prevailed during the whole of the period covered by the diary, is illustrated by a small group of letters preserved amongst the miscellaneous papers found at Dulwich. Thus on 8 November 1599 Shaw writes with regard to 2 Henry Richmond, ‘Mr. Henshlowe, we haue heard their booke and lyke yt. Their pryce is eight poundes, which I pray pay now to Mr. Wilson, according to our promysse’; and accordingly Henslowe includes in his account, by an entry written and signed by Wilson, a sum of £8 ‘by a note vnder the hand of Mr. Rob: Shaw’.[430] On 14 June 1600 Shaw writes again, ‘I pray you, Mr. Henshlowe, deliuer vnto the bringer hereof the some of fyue & fifty shillinges to make the 3^ll fyue shillinges which they receaued before full six poundes in full payment of their booke called the fayre Constance of Roome, whereof I pray you reserue for me Mr. Willsons whole share which is xj^s. which I to supply his neede deliuered him yesternight.’ The diary duly records the payment to Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Dekker ‘at the a poyntment of Roberte Shawe’ of 44s.[431] Similarly Samuel Rowley writes on 4 April 1601, ‘Mr. Hinchloe, I haue harde fyue shetes of a playe of the Conqueste of the Indes & I dow not doute but it wyll be a verye good playe; tharefore I praye ye delyuer them fortye shyllynges in earneste of it & take the papers into your one hands & on Easter eue thaye promyse to make an ende of all the reste’. The earnest and several supplementary earnests were paid to Day, Haughton, and Smith, but the completion of the play lagged until the following September.[432] An undated letter of Rowley’s relates to the withdrawal of a play, ‘Mr. Hynchlo, I praye ye let Mr. Hathwaye haue his papars agayne of the playe of John a Gante & for the repayement of the monye back agayne he is contente to gyue ye a byll of his hande to be payde at some[162] cartayne tyme as in your dyscressyon yow shall thinke good; which done ye may crose it oute of your boouke & keepe the byll; or else wele stande so much indetted to you & kepe the byll our selues’. Henslowe appears to have thought it safer to adopt the second alternative, as incomplete payments to the amount of £1 19s. 0d. for The Conquest of Spain by John of Gaunt still stand in his ‘boouke’.[433] Other letters of the same kind concern Six Yeomen of the West, and Too Good to be True.[434] The normal price for a new play during 1597–1601 seems to have been £6, but sometimes it fell to £5 or possibly even £4, and sometimes the playwrights succeeded in squeezing out a few shillings more. One or two of them, notably Chapman, were able to secure a higher rate from the beginning; and about 1599 a general tendency towards a higher scale of prices becomes discernible. The ‘book’ of an old play could generally be purchased for about £2.

In attempting to estimate the actual ‘output’ of the company, one is faced by the difficulty that some of the plays commissioned are not shown by the diary to have reached the stage of payment in full, and that it must, therefore, remain doubtful whether they were ever completed. It is possible that, as Dr. Greg thinks,[435] some of the payments were made direct by the company, instead of through Henslowe. But the correspondence just quoted rather suggests that any such arrangement would be exceptional; and it would not be inconsistent with human nature, if the extremely out-at-elbows men of letters who hung about the Rose occasionally found it profitable to take their ‘earnest’ for a play, and then to find plausible reasons for indefinitely delaying its completion. Probably in the long run they had to account for the advance, but the example of The Conquest of Spain shows that such a repayment would not necessarily find its way into Henslowe’s account. This view is borne out by an examination of the affairs of one of the most impecunious of them all, Henry Chettle, during 1598–9. During the first six months of the year, he had a hand in half a dozen plays, all of which were completed and paid for in full. But on one of these, 1 Black Bateman of the North, Henslowe appears, perhaps by an oversight, to have paid him £1 too much. At the beginning of May £1 was lent to Chettle upon this play, and the loan does not appear to have been considered when, on 22 May, a further sum of £6 was laid out upon ‘a boocke called Blacke Battmane of the North ... which coste sixe powndes’. On 24 June Chettle borrowed 10s., not apparently on any[163] particular play, and Henslowe seems then to have recalled the overpayment, and noted against Chettle’s name in the diary, ‘All his parte of boockes to this place are payde which weare dew unto hime & he reastes be syddes in my deatte the some of xxx^s.’ Chettle collaborated in several other plays, which got completed during the year, but no deduction seems to have been made from his share of the fees in respect of this debt. In addition he had £5 upon A Woman’s Tragedy, upon condition ‘eather to deliver the playe or els to paye the mony with in one forthnyght’; he had 5s. in earnest upon Catiline’s Conspiracy; and he had £1 14s. 0d. in earnest upon Brute, probably a continuation of an older 1 Brute bought by the company. When the last payment on Brute was made on 16 September Henslowe noted, ‘Hary Cheattell vntell this place owes vs viij^li ix^s dew al his boockes & recknynges payd’. This amount is precisely made up of the 30s. due on 24 June and the sums paid on account of these three plays. By 22 October Chettle had completed 2 Brute and managed somehow to get £6 for it in full. On the same day he gave Henslowe an acknowledgement of a debt, not of £8 9s. 0d., but of £9 9s. 0d. In November he got an earnest of £1 for Tis no Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver, and £1 for ‘mending’ Robin Hood, and in January 1599 30s. ‘to paye his charges in the Marshallsey’. Small loans of a shilling or two are also noted in the margin of the book, and appear to be quite distinct from the company’s account with him, and to indicate private generosities of Henslowe. In February 1599 Chettle had finished Polyphemus, and it is recorded that in full payment of £6 he got £2 10s. down, ‘& strocken of his deatte which he owes vnto the companey fyftye shelenges more’. A separate entry in the diary indicates that he paid off yet another 10s. out of his fee for The Spencers in March.[436] Material is not available for the further tracing of this particular chain of transactions, but the inference that credit obtained for an unfinished play had sometimes to be redeemed out of the profits of a finished one is irresistible. Chettle, at least, does not seem to have been hardly treated, but obviously the unbusinesslike methods of the playwrights kept down the price of plays, and a familiar device of the modern Barabbas was anticipated when Henry Porter was obliged, on the receipt of an earnest, to give Henslowe ‘his faythfulle promysse that I shold haue alle the boockes which he writte ether him sellfe or with any other’.[437] Whatever Henslowe’s precise financial relations with the[164] company may have been, by the way, he seems to have been in a position to pose as paymaster, so far as the poets were concerned.

On the whole, I think it must be concluded that, if the diary fails to record payments to the amount of at least £5 for a new play, there is prima facie evidence that that play never got itself finished. Occasionally, of course, apparently incomplete payments may be explained by the fact that the same play is entered under more than one name. Occasionally, also, a particular play may have been tacitly debited with payments not specifically expressed in the diary to have been made in respect of that play. Thus a sum of £2 paid on 4 February 1598 ‘to dise charge Mr. Dicker owt of the cownter in the Powltrey’ was probably treated as an instalment of the price of Phaethon on which Dekker was then working, and for which otherwise only £4 is entered. Another sum of £3 10s. paid on 30 January 1599 ‘to descarge Thomas Dickers frome the a reaste of my lord Chamberlens men’ seems similarly to have gone towards The First Introduction of the Civil Wars of France. And Haughton probably got 10s. less than he would otherwise have done for Ferrex and Porrex, because he had required a loan of that amount on 10 March 1600, ‘to releace him owt of the Clyncke’.[438] The record, again, for a few plays is most likely rendered imperfect by the loss of a leaf or two from the manuscript, which once contained entries for the end of April and beginning of May 1599.[439] When these factors have been taken into consideration, the resultant total of possibly unfinished plays is not a very large one, amounting for 1597–1600 on my calculation to not more than twenty as against fifty-six new plays duly completed and paid for in full. Of these twenty it is very likely that some were in fact finished, either for other companies, or for the Admiral’s men themselves, later than the period covered by the diary. It is, however, consonant with the literary temperament to suppose that some at least remained within the category of unrealized projects. The most puzzling problem is that of Haughton’s A Woman will have her Will. For this it is impossible to trace payments beyond £2 10s., and these are not stated to be in full. Yet the play is not only now extant but was certainly extant in 1598. In this case I see no alternative to Dr. Greg’s theory of direct payments by the company.

Henslowe’s notes of advances to authors are not the sole material which is available for drawing up an account of[165] the repertory of the Admiral’s men. There are also entries of the purchase of costumes and properties for certain plays, and of fees for the licensing of plays by the Master of the Revels. And there is a valuable series of inventories, formerly preserved at Dulwich, and dating from 1598, which record respectively the stock of apparel and properties in the hands of the Admiral’s men during the second week of March, their play-books at the same date, and the additions made out of Henslowe’s purchases up to about the following August.[440] The theory that some of the plays recorded in the diary were never finished receives confirmation from the absence of any corroborative proof of their existence in these subsidiary entries and documents, whereas such evidence exists in the case of a very large proportion of the plays for which the diary records payment in full. It must not, however, be assumed, either that every play completed necessarily got produced, although it is not likely that many were withheld, or that a play was necessarily not produced, because no special apparel or properties were bought for it, since it may have been quite possible to mount some plays out of the company’s existing stock. The number of fees paid for licensing is so small in proportion to the number of plays certainly produced, that these fees cannot all be supposed to have passed through Henslowe’s hands.

Subject to the difficulties discussed in the foregoing paragraphs, I think that the following is a fairly accurate account of the repertory of the company for the three years now in question.[441] During 1597–8 they purchased seventeen[166] new plays. These, with the names of their authors, were:

• Mother Redcap (Drayton and Munday).
• Phaethon (Dekker).
• 1 Robin Hood (Munday).
• 2 Robin Hood (Chettle and Munday).
• The Triangle of Cuckolds (Dekker).[442]
• The Welshman’s Prize, or, The Famous Wars of Henry I and the Prince of Wales (Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton).[443]
• 1 Earl Godwin and his Three Sons (Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• 2 Earl Godwin and his Three Sons (Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• King Arthur (Hathway).
• Love Prevented (Porter).[444]
• A Woman will have her Will (Haughton).
• 1 Black Bateman of the North (Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• 2 Black Bateman of the North (Chettle and Wilson).
• The Madman’s Morris (Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• The Funeral of Richard Cœur de Lion (Chettle, Drayton, Munday, and Wilson).
• Hannibal and Hermes (Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).[445]
• Valentine and Orson (Hathway and Munday).

There is evidence of the actual performance of Mother Redcap, Phaethon (January), 1 and 2 Robin Hood (March), 1 Earl Godwin (April), King Arthur (May), 2 Earl Godwin (June), 1 Black Bateman (June). Properties were bought for The Madman’s Morris in July, and the next season probably opened with it. To the new plays must be added Friar Spendleton, produced as ‘ne’ on 31 October, and Dido and Aeneas. A loan of 30s. on 8 January ‘when they fyrst played Dido at nyght’ suggests a supper, not a night performance. Either play may have been purchased at the end of 1596–7, or may have come from Pembroke’s stock. The same applies to Branholt and Alice Pierce, which were probably new when properties were purchased for them in November and December. The company also bought on 12 December two jigs[167] from two young men, for which they paid 6s. 8d. Hardly any of the 1597–8 new plays are extant. The two parts of Robin Hood are The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, printed without Munday’s name as Admiral’s plays in 1601. Haughton’s A Woman will have her Will was entered on the Stationers’ Register on 3 August 1601, and printed with the alternative title of Englishmen for my Money in 1616. Phaethon probably underlies Dekker and Ford’s The Sun’s Darling, and it is a plausible conjecture of Mr. Fleay’s that Love Prevented may be 1 The Two Angry Women of Abingdon, printed as an Admiral’s play in 1599, and not to be traced elsewhere in the diary. The payments for four plays during the year, besides the puzzling A Woman will have her Will, were incomplete. I take it that the £2 paid to Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson for Pierce of Exton was transferred to the account for 2 Earl Godwin, which otherwise lacks just that amount of the full £6; that Chettle failed to deliver A Woman’s Tragedy; that Chapman’s Isle of a Woman was held over until 1598–9; and that a projected tragedy of Ben Jonson’s was similarly held over, and then indefinitely postponed owing to the tragedy in real life of Spencer’s death. There are two entries with regard to this. On 3 December 1597, Henslowe lent Jonson 20s. ‘vpon a boocke which he showed the plotte vnto the company which he promysed to deliver vnto the company at Cryssmas next’. On 23 October 1598, a month after the duel, not Jonson, but Chapman, received £3 ‘one his playe boocke & ij ectes of a tragedie of Bengemenes plotte’. I think that Chapman’s own play was The Four Kings and that he finished it in 1599; but I see no sign that he ever did anything with ‘Bengemenes plotte’.

Of older plays the Admiral’s revived at the beginning of the year Chapman’s success of the previous spring, The Comedy of Humours; also the perennial Dr. Faustus, and two pieces which, as they formed no part of the 1594–7 repertory, may have been brought in by Pembroke’s men, Hardicanute and Bourbon. They bought for £8 from Martin Slater 1 and 2 Hercules, Phocas, Pythagoras, and Alexander and Lodowick, all of which had been produced between May 1595 and January 1597, and had evidently been retained by Slater when he left the company. These books presumably do not include that which became the subject of the lawsuit between Slater and the Admiral’s men, and as they had afterwards to buy back some of their old books in a precisely similar way from Alleyn, it is probable that a retiring member[168] of the company had a right to claim a partition of the repertory. They also bought The Cobler of Queenhithe,[446] and from Robert Lee, formerly of the Admiral’s men and afterwards of Queen Anne’s, The Miller. But of these seven purchased plays, the only one that they can be proved to have revived is one of the Hercules plays, for which they bought properties in July. The book-inventory shows that they had plays called Black Joan and Sturgflattery,[447] also possibly from Pembroke’s stock; and the property-inventories that they had properties and clothes, if not in all cases books,[448] for The Battle of Alcazar[449] and for a number of pieces staged during 1594–7, including Mahomet,[450] Tamburlaine,[451] The Jew of Malta,[452] 1 Fortunatus,[453] The Siege of London,[454] Belin Dun,[455] Tasso’s Melancholy,[456] 1 Caesar and Pompey,[457] The Wise Man of West Chester,[458] The Set at Maw,[459] Olympo,[460] Henry V,[461] Longshanks,[462] Troy,[463] Vortigern,[464] Guido,[465] Uther Pendragon.[466] To these must be added Pontius Pilate,[467] revived in 1601 and perhaps from the Pembroke’s stock, and others now unidentifiable.[468] As the company revived The Blind Beggar of Alexandria in 1601 they probably had this also.[469]

[169]

The new plays purchased in 1598–9 were twenty-one in number:

• Pierce of Winchester (Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
• Hot Anger Soon Cold (Chettle, Jonson, and Porter).
• Chance Medley (Chettle or Dekker, Drayton, Munday, and Wilson).[470]
• Worse Afeared than Hurt (Dekker and Drayton).[471]
• 1 Civil Wars of France (Dekker and Drayton).
• The Fount of New Fashions (Chapman).[472]
• 2 The Conquest of Brute, or, Brute Greenshield (Chettle).[473]
• Connan, Prince of Cornwall (Dekker and Drayton).
• 2 Civil Wars of France (Dekker and Drayton).
• 3 Civil Wars of France (Dekker and Drayton).
• The Four Kings (Chapman).[474]
• War without Blows and Love without Suit (Heywood).[475]
• First Introduction of the Civil Wars of France (Dekker).
• 2 Two Angry Women of Abingdon (Porter).
• Joan as Good as my Lady (Heywood)
• Friar Fox and Gillian of Brentford (Anon.).
• The Spencers (Chettle and Porter).
• Troy’s Revenge and the Tragedy of Polyphemus (Chettle).
• Troilus and Cressida (Chettle and Dekker).
• Agamemnon, or, Orestes Furious (Chettle and Dekker).[476]
• The World Runs on Wheels, or, All Fools but the Fool (Chapman).[477]

The property and licence entries only make it possible to trace the actual performance during the year of Pierce of[170] Winchester (October), 1 and 2 Civil Wars of France (October and November), The Fount of New Fashions (November), 2 Angry Women of Abingdon (February), 2 Conquest of Brute (March), The Four Kings (March), The Spencers (April), and Agamemnon (June). Probably, in view of the extant fragment of a ‘plot’ Troilus and Cressida should be added. The production of Troy’s Revenge was deferred until the following October. No one of this year’s new plays is extant, unless, as is possible, All Fools but the Fool was an early form of Chapman’s All Fools.[478] Earnests were paid in the course of 1598–9 for Catiline’s Conspiracy (Chettle), Tis no Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver (Chettle), William Longsword[479] (Drayton), Two Merry Women of Abingdon (Porter), and an unnamed pastoral tragedy by Chapman, but there is no reason to suppose that any one of these was ever finished. On 9 August 1598 Munday had 10s. in earnest of an unnamed comedy ‘for the corte’ and Drayton gave his word for the book to be done in a fortnight, but the project must have been dropped, as the entry was cancelled. Of old plays the company revived in August Vayvode, in November The Massacre at Paris, in which Bird played the Guise,[480] in December 1 The Conquest of Brute, bought from John Day, and in March Alexander and Lodowick, bought from Martin Slater in the preceding year. As to Vayvode, the entries are rather puzzling. In August Chettle received £1 ‘for his playe of Vayvode’, and the purchase of properties show that the production took place. But in the following January there was a payment of £2 to Alleyn ‘for the playe of Vayvod for the company’. Possibly Alleyn had some rights in the manuscript, which were at first overlooked. On 25 November Chettle had 10s. ‘for mendinge of Roben Hood for the corte’. Either 1 or 2 Robin Hood was therefore probably the play given on 6 January 1599. At the beginning of the year the company bought Mulmutius Dunwallow from William Rankins and another old play called Tristram of Lyons, but it must be uncertain whether they played them. A reference in Guilpin’s Skialetheia suggests that The Spanish Tragedy may have been on the boards of the Rose not long before September 1598.[481]

[171]

The new plays completed during 1599–1600, twenty in all, were:

• The Gentle Craft (Dekker).[482]
• Bear a Brain (Dekker).[483]
• Page of Plymouth (Dekker and Jonson).
• Robert II, or, The Scot’s Tragedy (Chettle, Dekker, Jonson, and Marston).[484]
• The Stepmother’s Tragedy (Chettle and Dekker).
• 1 Sir John Oldcastle (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson).
• Cox of Collumpton (Day and Haughton).
• 2 Henry Richmond (Wilson).
• 2 Sir John Oldcastle (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson).
• Patient Grissell (Chettle, Dekker, and Haughton).
• The Whole History of Fortunatus (Dekker).
• Thomas Merry, or, Beech’s Tragedy (Day and Haughton).
• Jugurtha (Boyle).[485]
• The Seven Wise Masters (Chettle, Day, Dekker, and Haughton).
• Ferrex and Porrex (Haughton).
• Cupid and Psyche, or, The Golden Ass (Chettle, Day, and Dekker).
• Damon and Pythias (Chettle).
• Strange News out of Poland (Haughton and Pett).
• 1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (Chettle and Day).
• 1 Fair Constance of Rome (Dekker, Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson).

[172]

It is possible to verify the actual performance of Page of Plymouth (September), 1 Sir John Oldcastle (November),[486] Fortunatus (December), The Gentle Craft (January), Thomas Merry (January), Patient Grissell (January), 2 Sir John Oldcastle (March), The Seven Wise Masters (March), Ferrex and Porrex (May), Damon and Pythias (May), Strange News out of Poland (May), Cupid and Psyche (June). Sir John Oldcastle must of course be regarded as a counterblast to the Henry IV plays of the Chamberlain’s men, in which the character of Falstaff originally bore the name of the Lollard hero. One infers that it had a considerable success, for the company gave 10s. for ‘Mr. Mundaye and the reste of the poets at the playnge of Sr John Oldcastell the ferste tyme’, and Henslowe notes in the margin that this was ‘as a gefte’. It is with some hesitation that I have included Fortunatus in the list of new plays, because it is impossible to suppose that it was not based upon the earlier Fortunatus, already an old play in 1596, of the properties of which the Admiral’s men certainly retained possession. But Dekker was paid on the scale of a new play, for he got a full £6 in the course of November for the book, together with an additional £1 ‘for the altrenge of the boocke’ and £2 a fortnight later ‘for the eande of Fortewnatus for the corte’. I take it that this was the Court play of 27 December. That of 1 January was another of Dekker’s, The Gentle Craft, also called The Shoemaker’s Holiday, which was published in the year ‘1600’ as played before the Queen ‘on New Year’s Day at night last’ by the Admiral’s men. Fortunatus, 1 Sir John Oldcastle,[486] Patient Grissell, and 1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green have also been preserved, while the publication, also in the course of the twelve months ending on 24 March 1601, of Look About You as an Admiral’s play must surely render plausible the hypothesis, rejected by Dr. Greg, of its identity with Bear a Brain. It would seem that Thomas Merry furnishes one of the two parallel plots of Robert Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies, and a notice by Simon Forman suggests that Cox of Collumpton was ultimately finished.[487] An outline of the opening scenes of 2 Henry Richmond is among the Dulwich papers.[488] Publication was a form of popularity which the actors were apt to resent. The Admiral’s men spent £2 on 18 March 1600 ‘to geue vnto the printer to staye the[173] printing of Patient Gresell’. This did not prevent the play being entered on the Stationers’ Register on 28 March, but does perhaps explain why the earliest known edition is dated 1603. The unfinished plays of 1599–1600 were The Poor Man’s Paradise (Haughton), The Orphans’ Tragedy (Chettle),[489] an unnamed Italian tragedy by Day, The Arcadian Virgin (Chettle and Haughton), Owen Tudor (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson), Truth’s Supplication to Candlelight (Dekker),[490] The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy (Day, Dekker, and Haughton),[491] The English Fugitives (Haughton), The Devil and his Dame (Haughton),[492] The Wooing of Death (Chettle), Judas (Haughton),[493] 2 Fair Constance of Rome (Hathway), and an unnamed play by Chettle and Day.[494] Except in so far as Fortunatus was an old play, I find no trace of a revival during 1599–1600, but it may be assumed that some of the productions of the last two years still held the boards.

The year 1600 was another turning-point in the history of the company. Probably at some date between 14 August, when the first entry in a fresh account was made, and 28 October, when Pembroke’s men were in occupation of the Rose, they crossed the river, and took up their quarters at Alleyn’s recently built Fortune, on the north-west boundary of the City. A more important event still was the return of Alleyn himself to the stage, from which he had been absent for three years. It is suggested in the Privy Council letter of 8 April 1600 to the Middlesex justices in favour of the Fortune project, that this step was determined by the personal wish of the Queen to see the great actor at Court with his fellows again.[495] It is not quite clear on what terms he rejoined the[174] company. There was a ‘composicion’ or agreement, in connexion with which a payment of £4 was made to him on 11 November. The next entry, which is undated, runs, ‘P^d vnto my sonne Alleyn for the firste weckes playe the xj parte of xvij^ll ix^s which came to therti & ij shellinges’. There are no further entries of the same kind until the date of a reckoning in February 1602, when Henslowe paid Alleyn 27s. 6d. ‘dew to my sone out of the gallery money’. Probably this was a share of some small residue, the origin of which cannot now be traced. The earlier payment suggests that Alleyn received one full share of the actors’ takings, for, if I am right in supposing that the brothers Jeffes only held half a share each, there would have been just ten sharers besides himself. Or possibly his share may have been limited to the actors’ moiety of the gallery takings, and the outgoings may all have been charged to the receipts from the yard. Certainly Alleyn does not seem to have had any responsibility for these outgoings. His name is never put with those of other sharers to Henslowe’s periodical reckonings, and if his play-books were used, they were bought from him. On the other hand, he sometimes, although not so often as some of his fellows, ‘appointed’ payments, and he received the Court money for the company, alike in 1601, 1602, and 1603. That his share did not pass through Henslowe’s hands after the date of the first instalment is perhaps explained by the assumption that, as the owner and joint occupier with Henslowe of the Fortune, the appointment of a ‘gatherer’ for the gallery money may naturally have fallen to him.

Some such change in the financial arrangements may also account for the fact that, while Henslowe’s record of advances continues on the same lines as that for 1597–1600, the notes of weekly repayments are now discontinued. As a result it is no longer possible to determine with any exactness the length of the theatrical seasons, since, naturally enough, the outgoings did not altogether stop while the house was closed. Their course, however, suggests intervals in February and March 1601, February to April 1602, August 1602 and January and February 1603. It is possible, although not very likely, that there was no cessation of playing during the summer of 1601. I find no evidence of further provincial travels before the end of the reign. These were, I think, years of prosperity. The players still required small personal[175] advances from time to time, and Thomas Towne was reduced to pawning a pair of stockings on 13 March 1602.[496] But it is noticeable that about the previous June Henslowe opened an account under the heading, ‘Begininge to receue of thes meane ther privet deates which they owe vnto me’, and was able to enter in it a series of repayments by Jones, Downton, Bird, and Shaw.[497] Bird, however, still owed £10 10s. on 12 March 1602, and Henslowe noted, ‘He is cleere of all debtes & demaundes except theis debtes and such stocke & covenentes as I maie clayme & challendge of him by reason of his coniunction with the companie’.[498] Whether the playwrights reaped any benefit may be doubted. The tendency to a rise of prices which showed itself in 1599 was hardly maintained. Some of them were still impecunious enough. The company had, on more than one occasion to redeem a play which the unfortunate Chettle had pawned with one Bromfield, a mercer; and in March 1602 he seems to have followed Porter’s example and put his hand, for a consideration of £3, to an instrument binding him to write for them alone.[499] There were some legal troubles in the course of 1601. A sum of £21 10s. had to be paid on a bond to a Mr. Treheren during March, and in August there were fees to a jury and a clerk of assizes. The company had also to find 10s. in May ‘to geatte the boye into the ospetalle which was hurt at the Fortewne’.[500] Information as to the composition of the company at some time between Alleyn’s return and February 1602 is given by the ‘plot’ of The Battle of Alcazar, although, as this is mutilated, it must not be treated as negative evidence, and in particular the names of W. Borne and John Singer are missing.[501] All the other sharers, however, are found in it—‘Mr. Ed. Allen, Mr. Doughton, Mr. Juby, Mr. Shaa, Mr. Jones, Mr. Towne, Antony Jeffes, H. Jeffes, Mr. Charles [Massey], and Mr. Sam [Rowley]’. There are also Mr. Rich. Allen and Mr. Hunt, who were not sharers, but whose long service had apparently earned them the[176] dignity of the ‘Mr.’, W. Kendall, Jeames, who was possibly Henslowe’s apprentice James Bristow and possibly Jones’s boy of the same name, and Dob, who was probably the Dobe of the 1598 inventory. The remaining names, all of which are new, are those of W. Cartwright, who, however, had witnessed a loan for Henslowe as far back as 21 April 1598,[502] Dick Jubie, Ro. Tailor, George Somerset, Tho. Drum, [Thomas] Parsons, Harry, and the ‘boys’ of Mr. Allen and Mr. Towne. The only important woman’s part, that of Callipolis, is assigned by the ‘plot’ to Pisano, which does not look like an actor’s name and may be a mistake. The services of Bristow were evidently leased out by Henslowe to the company or some one of its members, at a rate of 3s. a week. Antony Jeffes paid two weeks’ arrears ‘for my boyes Jeames wages’ in August 1600, and Henslowe charged the company £6 10s. on the same account in the following February.[503] Another boy attached to the company about the same time must have been ‘Nick’, for whom hose ‘to tumbell in be fore the quen’ were bought on 25 December 1601. Hugh Davis, for the mending of whose tawny coat ‘which was eatten with the rattes’ 6s. 7d. was paid in November 1601, was perhaps a hired man. A list of the responsible members of the company is attached by Henslowe to a reckoning cast between 7 and 23 February 1602. They were then ‘John Singer, Thomas Downton, William Byrd, Edward Juby, Thomas Towne, Humphrey Jeffs, Anthony Jeffs, Samuel Rowley, and Charles Massy’.[504] A note is added that £50 had been advanced ‘to geve vnto Mr. Jonnes & Mr. Shaw at ther goinge a waye’. This departure must have been quite recent. Shaw had been agent for the company on the previous 21 January, and the list of continuing members is in fact in his handwriting. The last instalment of Jones’s private debt had been paid off on 1 November. His three years’ agreement with Henslowe had expired at Michaelmas 1600. Richard Alleyn must have died in September 1602, for on the 19th of that month his widow borrowed £5 10s. to take her mantle and sheet and face-cloth out of pawn.[505] Neither Shaw nor Jones nor Richard Alleyn is in the plot of 1 Tamar Cham, which may reasonably be assigned to a date in the vicinity of the purchase of the book from Alleyn on 2 October 1602. This is of interest, partly because it is complete, and partly because there was a procession in the play, and the number of supernumeraries required must have tried the resources[177] of the establishment to their utmost. All the principal members of the company appeared—‘Mr. Allen, Mr. Denygten, Mr. Boorne, Mr. Towne, Mr. Singer, Mr. Jubie, H. Jeffs, A. Jeffs, Mr. Charles [Massey], and Mr. Sam [Rowley]’; and in addition Dick Jubie, W. Cart[wright], George [Somerset], Tho. Parsons, and Jeames [Bristow], who were in The Battle of Alcazar, and W. Parr, Tho. Marbeck, Jack Grigorie, Gedion, Gibbs, Tho. Rowley, Rester, ‘old Browne’, Ned Browne, ‘the red fast fellow’ and several boys, described, perhaps in some cases twice over, as Jack Jones, ‘little Will’, ‘little Will Barne’, who do not seem to be identical, ‘Gils his boy’, ‘Mr. Denyghtens little boy’, perhaps the same already recorded in 1600, and ‘the other little boy’. ‘Old Browne’ can hardly be Robert Browne, who seems to have been in Germany; but Ned Browne may be the Edward Browne who, like Robert, was a member of Worcester’s company in 1583. Little is added by the only other extant ‘plot’, the fragmentary one of 2 Fortune’s Tennis. This is difficult to date, but it must be later than Dekker’s 1 Fortune’s Tennis of September 1600, and may not improbably be Munday’s Set at Tennis of December 1602. The few names which it contains—Mr. Singer, Sam, Charles, Geo[rge Somerset], R. Tailor, W. Cartwright, Pavy—suggest proximity to The Battle of Alcazar and 1 Tamar Cham. The only fresh one is that of Pavy, who may or may not be connected with the Salathiel Pavy of Ben Jonson’s epitaph. Both 1 Tamar Cham and 2 Fortune’s Tennis must be earlier than January 1603, a month which saw the retirement of the old Queen’s man, John Singer. So at least may be inferred from the fact that he makes no further appearance in the diary after 13 January, when he received £5 ‘for his play called Syngers Vallentarey’. I take ‘vallentarey’ to mean ‘valediction’. His name is absent from the next list of the company, which belongs to 1604. He probably left to become an ordinary Groom of the Chamber in the royal household, a post which he is found occupying at the time of Elizabeth’s funeral.[506]

The succession of new plays was not quite so rapid during 1600–3 as in previous periods. I can only trace thirty-one in all, as against fifty-five in 1594–7 and sixty-two in 1599–1600. It may well have been the case that Alleyn, who had ‘created’ parts in the ’eighties and early ’nineties, had a tendency towards revivals. For 1600–1 the company bought only seven new books. These were:

• 1 Fortune’s Tennis (Dekker).
• Hannibal and Scipio (Hathway and Rankins).[178]
• Scogan and Skelton (Hathway and Rankins).
• All is not Gold that Glisters (Chettle).
• 2 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (Day and Haughton).
• The Six Yeomen of the West (Day and Haughton).
• King Sebastian of Portugal (Chettle and Dekker).

None of these plays is extant, but the purchase of properties testifies to the performance of 2 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green in April and The Six Yeomen of the West in July. Moreover, Day received a bonus of 10s. between 27 April and 2 May ‘after the playinge of’ the former piece. Only £1 was paid for 1 Fortune’s Tennis, but the existence of a ‘plot’ for 2 Fortune’s Tennis suggests that it must have been completed. Probably it was a short topical overture designed to celebrate the opening of the Fortune.[507] Unfinished plays were Robin Hood’s Pennyworths (Haughton)[508] and The Conquest of Spain by John of Gaunt (Hathway and Rankins). The revivals included Phaethon (January), The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (May), and The Jew of Malta (May). Dekker had £2 for ‘alterynge of’ Phaethon for the Court, and this was therefore the Admiral’s play of 6 January 1601. They also appeared on 28 December and 2 February. Dr. Faustus was entered on 7 January; the earliest print (1604) bears their name. The new books of 1601–2 were fourteen in number, as follows:[509]

• The Conquest of the West Indies (Day, Haughton, and Smith).
• 3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (Day and Haughton).
• The Life of Cardinal Wolsey (Chettle).[510]
• 1 The Six Clothiers (Hathway, Haughton, and Smith).
• The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey (Chettle, Drayton, Munday, and Smith).
• Friar Rush and the Proud Woman of Antwerp (Chettle, Day, and Haughton).
• Judas (Bird and Rowley).[511][179]
• Too Good to be True (Chettle, Hathway, and Smith).
• Malcolm King of Scots (Massey).
• Love Parts Friendship (Chettle and Smith).
• Jephthah (Dekker and Munday).
• Tobias (Chettle).
• The Bristol Tragedy (Day).
• Caesar’s Fall, or, The Two Shapes (Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, Munday, and Webster).

At least ten of these appear to have been played: 2 Cardinal Wolsey (August), 3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (September), Judas (January), The Conquest of the West Indies (January), Malcolm King of Scots (April), Love Parts Friendship (May), 1 Cardinal Wolsey (June), Jephthah (July), and at uncertain dates, Tobias and probably The Bristol Tragedy.[512] None is now extant. The unfinished plays were The Humorous Earl of Gloucester with his Conquest of Portugal (Wadeson), 2 Tom Dough[513] (Day and Haughton), The Orphan’s Tragedy (Chettle),[514] 2 The Six Clothiers (Hathway, Haughton, and Smith),[515] The Spanish Fig (Anon.),[516] Richard Crookback (Jonson),[517] A Danish Tragedy (Chettle),[518] and A Medicine for a Curst Wife (Dekker).[519] There was considerable activity of revival during the year. Six old plays belonging to the 1594–7 repertory, for some of which the company already held the properties,[520] were bought[180] from Alleyn at £2 each, Mahomet in August, The Wise Man of West Chester in September, Vortigern in November, and The French Doctor, The Massacre at Paris, and Crack Me this Nut in January. The first and the last three of these certainly were played, and the revival of The Massacre at Paris appears to have caused annoyance to Henri IV.[521] In addition, properties were bought for one of the Hercules plays in December, Dekker got 10s. for a prologue and epilogue to Pontius Pilate[522] in January, and Jonson wrote additions to The Spanish Tragedy, possibly those now extant, in September, although it may be doubted whether the further additions contemplated in the following June were ever made. There is nothing to show what was selected, other than Nick’s tumbling, for the Admiral’s only Court play of 1601–2, which took place on 27 December.

The season of 1602–3 was, of course, shortened by the death of Elizabeth and the outbreak of plague. The new plays numbered nine. They were:

• Samson (Anon.).
• Felmelanco (Chettle and Robinson).
• Joshua (Rowley).
• Randal Earl of Chester (Middleton).
• Merry as May Be (Day, Hathway, and Smith).
• The Set at Tennis (Munday).
• 1 The London Florentine (Chettle and Heywood).
• Singer’s Voluntary (Singer).
• The Boss of Billingsgate (Day, Hathway, and another).[523]

It must be added that in September properties were bought for a ‘new playe’ called The Earl of Hertford, which it seems impossible to identify with any of the pieces bought. This looks like one of the rare cases in which payment did not pass through Henslowe’s hands. This and Samson are the only new plays of the year, the actual performance of which can be verified; and none of these plays is extant.[524] I suspect, however, that Munday’s Set at Tennis is the 2 Fortune’s Tennis of which a ‘plot’ survives. The payment, of only £3, was ‘in full’, and it may, like 1 Fortune’s Tennis, have been a short piece of some exceptional character, motived by the name of the theatre in which it was presented. Unfinished[181] plays at the end of the season were The Widow’s Charm (Munday or Wadeson),[525] William Cartwright (Haughton), Hoffman (Chettle),[526] 2 London Florentine (Chettle and Heywood), The Siege of Dunkirk and Alleyn the Pirate (Massey). The revival of old plays continued. Costumes for Vortigern, one of those bought from Alleyn in the previous year, were in preparation during September, and Alleyn’s stock yielded three more, Philip of Spain and Longshanks in August and Tamar Cham, probably the second part, as the extant ‘plot’ testifies, in October. The last two of these belonged to the Admiral’s repertory of 1594–7, but the origin of Philip of Spain is unknown. A book of The Four Sons of Aymon, for which £2 was paid to Robert Shaw, was probably also old, and was bought on condition that Shaw should repay the £2, unless the play was used by the Admiral’s or some other company with his consent by Christmas 1604. Bird and Rowley had £4 in September for additions to Dr. Faustus. Dekker completed some alterations of Tasso’s Melancholy, another 1594–7 play, in December, and in the same month Middleton wrote ‘for the corte’ a prologue and epilogue to Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which I should suppose to have been Henslowe’s property, as it was played by Strange’s men in 1592–3 and the Queen’s and Sussex’s in 1594. This probably served for the first of the three appearances made by the Admiral’s at Court, on 27 December. The other two were on 6 March and on a date unspecified. For one of these occasions Chettle was writing a prologue and epilogue at the end of December, but the play is not named.[527] One of the new plays, Merry as May Be, was intended for Court, when the first payment on account of it was made on 9 November.

On 12 March 1603 Henslowe practically closes the detailed record which he had kept continuously in his diary since October 1597 of his financial transactions, otherwise than by way of rent, with the Admiral’s men. A brief review of these is not without interest.[528] His advances from 21 October 1597 to 8 March 1598 amounted to £46 7s. 3d., and to this he took the signatures of the company, with the note, ‘Thes men dothe aknowlege this deat to be dewe by them by seatynge[182] of ther handes to yette’. By 28 July a further amount of £120 15s. 4d. had been incurred, making a total of £166 17s. 7d. for 1597–8.[529] During the same period he entered weekly receipts from the company to a total of £125. These must have gone to an old debt, for he did not balance them with the payments for the year, but carried on the whole debit of £166 17s. 7d. to 1598–9. Apparently, however, he was not satisfied with the way in which expenditure was outstripping income, for he headed a new receipts account, ‘Here I begyne to receue the wholle gallereys frome this daye beinge the 29 of July 1598’, and the weekly entries become about double what they were during 1597–8. On the other hand, there is also a considerable increase in the rate of expenditure. It is an ingenious and, I think, sound conjecture of Dr. Greg’s, that throughout 1594–1603 Henslowe was taking half the gallery money for rent, and that, at different times, he also took either the other half, or another quarter only, to recoup himself for his advances.[530] The outgoings entered during 1598–9 reach £435 7s. 4d., but some items for March and April 1599 are probably missing, owing to a mutilation of the manuscript.[531] The receipts for the same period were £358 3s. On 13 October 1599, about a fortnight after the beginning of the 1599–1600 season, a balance was struck. Henslowe credited the company with the £358 received from the gallery money, and debited them with £632 advanced by him. This includes £166 17s. 7d. for 1597–8, £435 7s. 4d. for 1598–9, and £29 15s. 1d., which may reasonably be taken as the sum of the missing entries for March and April 1599. The balance of £274 remained as a debt from the company. They did not, however, set their hands to a reckoning until the end of the next year, on 10 July 1600. During 1599–1600 a fresh account had been running, on which Henslowe’s receipts were £202 10s. and his payments £222 5s. 6d. At the reckoning the company’s indebtedness is calculated at £300, and is admitted by the formula, ‘which some of three hundred powndes we whose names are here vnder written doe acknowledge our dewe debt & doe promyse payment’. To this their signatures are appended. There is, however, an unexplained discrepancy of £6 4s. 6d., as the[183] old debt of £274 and the 1599–1600 debit balance of £19 15s. 6d. only make up £293 15s. 6d.

From 1600 onwards there are no records of receipts. A continuous account of payments is kept up to 7 February 1602. The total amounts to £304 10s. 4d., but Henslowe sums it in error as £308 6s. 4d., and notes, ‘Frome ther handes to this place is 308^ll-06^s-04^d dewe vnto me & with the three hundred of owld is £608-06-04^d’. He then adds the £50 paid to Jones and Shaw on retirement, ‘which is not in this recknynge’. Above this summary comes a list of names, said by Dr. Greg to be in Shaw’s hand, of those sharers who were continuing in the company, headed by the figures ‘211. 9. 0.’ I think the interpretation is that £386 17s. 4d. of the £608 6s. 4d. was paid out of gallery money or other sources, leaving £211 9s., together with the £50 for Jones and Shaw, chargeable on the company. This is borne out by the remnant of the accounts, which is headed, ‘Begininge with a new recknyng with my lord of Notingames men the 23 daye of Febreary 1601 as foloweth’. The expenditure on this new reckoning up to 12 March 1603 was, as calculated by Henslowe, £188 11s. 6d., and he adds to this total a sum of £211 9s. ‘vpon band’, being evidently the residue of the debt as it stood at the close of the old reckoning, and makes a total of £400 0s. 6d. This, with the £50 for Jones and Shaw, was no doubt what the company owed when the detailed account in the diary closed. There was, however, an unstated amount of gallery receipts during 1602–3 to set against it; and in fact a retrospect of the whole series of figures shows that there would have been a pretty fair equivalence of gallery money and advances throughout, but for the exceptionally heavy expenditure of 1598–9, £465 2s. 5d. in all, which left the company saddled with an obligation which they never quite overtook. This expenditure was more than half the total expenditure of £854 5s. 6d. for the triennium 1597–1600, and nearly as much as the whole expenditure of £493 1s. 10d. for the triennium 1600–3, during which it may be suspected that the business capacities of Alleyn brought about considerable economies.

The accounts may be looked at from another point of view. If the unanalysable sum of £29 15s. 1d. for the missing items of March and April 1599 be neglected, there was a total expenditure for the six years of £1,317 11s. 3d. Of this £652 13s. 8d., being about half, went in payments in respect of play-books; £561 1s. 1d. for properties and apparel; and £103 16s. 6d. in miscellaneous outgoings, such as licensing fees, legal charges, musical instruments, travelling expenses,[184] merry-makings and the like. Thus, if the company supped together at Mr. Mason’s of the Queen’s Head, or met to read a ‘book’ at the Sun in New Fish Street, Henslowe would put his hand into his pocket to pay the score, and would not forget afterwards to debit the company with the amount in his diary.[532] It must, of course, be borne in mind that only part of this miscellaneous expenditure was incurred through Henslowe. He certainly did not, for example, pay all the fees for the licensing of new plays by the Master of the Revels. And of course there were many matters, in particular the wages of hired actors and servitors, for which the company had regularly to find funds in other ways. It is probable that only play-books, properties, and apparel were normally charged to his account, although the convenience of an occasional extension of his functions can readily be understood. Dr. Greg may be right in thinking that his position as agent for the company in its purchases was a natural development of his pawnbroking business.[533] But during the period under review he did not, as a rule, supply them with goods himself. A sale of ‘A shorte velluett clocke wraght with bugell & a gearcken of velluet layd with brade coper sylver lace’ for £4 on 28 November 1598 was exceptional. Usually the payments are to tradesmen, to the mercers Stone, Richard Heath, and Robert Bromfield, to ‘him at the Eagell and Chylld’ for armour, to Mrs. Gosson for head-tires, and for wigs to one Father Ogle, who is mentioned also in the Revels Accounts and in the play of Sir Thomas More. Sometimes ready-made garments, new or second-hand, were bought. A doublet and hose of sea-water green satin cost £3 and a doublet and ‘venesyons’ of cloth of silver wrought with red silk £4 10s. But often stuffs were obtained in piece and made up by tailors, of whom the company employed two, Dover and Radford, the latter known, for the sake of distinction, as ‘the little tailor’. These and William White, who made the crowns, probably worked at the theatre, in the tiring-house. The company gave 6s. a yard for russet broadcloth and the same for murrey satin, 12s. for other satins, 12s. 6d. for taffeties, and no less than £1 for ‘ij pylle velluet of carnardyn’. Laces cost 1d. each; copper lace anything from 4s. a pound to 1s. 2d. an ounce. Of this they used quantities, and in the summer of 1601 they had run up a considerable ‘old debt’ to the copper lace-man, as well as another to Heath the mercer, which had to be paid off by degrees. The more expensive garments,[185] such as a rich cloak bought of Langley for £19, were, of course, an investment on the part of the company, and were worn in their time by many sharers and hired men in different parts. But the principal actors had also, as Alleyn’s inventory shows, their private wardrobes. Henslowe was prepared to furnish these on the instalment system. Thus Richard Jones bought in 1594 ‘a manes gowne of pechecoler in grayne’ for £3 payable in weekly sums of 5s., and Thomas Towne in 1598 ‘a blacke clothe clocke layd with sylke lace’ for 26s. 8d. at 1s. weekly. It was as hard to keep these glories as to procure them. On one occasion the company came to the rescue and lent Thomas Downton £12 10s., to fetch out of pawn two cloaks, ‘which they exsepted into the stock’. The one was ‘ashecolerd velluet embradered with gowld’, the other ‘a longe black velluet clocke layd with sylke lace’.[534]

The termination of the record of advances after 12 March 1603 indicates an interruption of performances, probably due to the increasing illness of Elizabeth, who died on the following 24 March. Thereafter there are only a few winding-up entries in the diary. The company must have immediately begun to travel under the leadership of Thomas Downton, who in the course of 1602–3 received a gift for them from the Corporation of Canterbury, ‘because it was thought fitt they should not play at all, in regard that our late Queene was then very sicke or dead as they supposed’. London playing, if resumed at all, must have very soon been stopped again by the plague. There was some further small expenditure, of which the details are not given, before Henslowe noted that, in addition to the bond for £211 9s., ‘Ther reasteth dew vnto me to this daye beinge the v daye of Maye 1603 when we leafte of playe now at the Kynges cominge all recknynges abated the some of a hundred fowerscore & sevntenepowndes & thirteneshellynges & fowerpence I saye dew—£197 13s. 4d. the fyftye powndes which Jonnes & Shawe had at ther goinge a way not reconed’. The company travelled again during the plague, being traceable as the Admiral’s men in 1602–3 at Bath and York and on 18 August 1603 at Leicester, and as the Earl of Nottingham’s in 1602–3 at Coventry. The tour was over by 21 October, on which date Joan Alleyn wrote to her husband at the house of Mr. Chaloner in Sussex, telling him amongst other things that ‘all of your owne company ar well at theyr owne houses’, that all the other companies had returned, that[186] ‘Nicke and Jeames be well’, and that ‘Browne of the Boares head’ had not gone into the country at all, and was now dead, ‘& dyed very pore’. This might be either Edward Browne, or the ‘old Browne’ who appeared with him in 1 Tamar Cham in the previous autumn. In any case, it is clear from the reference to him that he was not a regular member of Alleyn’s company. ‘Jeames’ is no doubt James Bristow, who, as Henslowe’s apprentice, would be likely to form part of his household; and ‘Nicke’, who seems to have been in the same position, may be supposed to be the Nick who tumbled before the Queen at Christmas 1601.

The Jacobean records of the company seem meagre in the absence of Henslowe’s detailed register of proceedings. About Christmas 1603 they were taken into the service of Prince Henry, and are hereafter known as the Prince’s players.[535] They are entered amongst other ‘Officers to the Prince’ as receiving four and a half yards of red cloth apiece as liveries for the coronation procession on 15 March 1604, and their names are given as ‘Edward Allen, William Bird, Thomas Towne, Thomas Dowton, Samuell Rowley, Edward Jubie, Humfry Jeffes, Charles Massey, and Anthony Jeffes’.[536] Alleyn, even if not a ‘sharer’, was therefore a member of the company in its official capacity. He is also named as the Prince’s servant, both in the printed account of the entertainment at which, dressed as a Genius, he delivered a speech, and in Stowe’s description of a bear-baiting which formed part of the festivities.[537] It may, however, be inferred that he took an early opportunity of leaving a profession to which he had only been recalled by the personal whim of the late Queen.[538] He was joint payee with Juby in the warrant of 19 February, but Juby’s name stands alone in another of 17 April and in those of all subsequent years up to 1615. And when the company received a formal licence by patent on 30 April 1606, Alleyn’s name was omitted, and does not appear in any further list of its members. It is true that as late as 11 May 1611 he is still described in a formal document as the Prince’s servant, but he may have held some other appointment, actual or honorific, in the household.[539] A note of his resources about 1605, however,[187] includes ‘my share of aparell, £100’.[540] And he certainly remained interested in the company. They were his tenants at the Fortune, although an unexecuted draft of a lease to Thomas Downton dated in 1608 suggests that he may have taken steps to transfer the whole or a share of his direct interest to them. Under this lease Downton was to receive during thirteen years a thirty-second part of the daily profits accruing to Henslowe and Alleyn, and in return to pay £27 10s., a rent of 10s. annually and his proportionate share of repairs, and to bind himself to play in the house and not elsewhere without consent.[541] On 11 April 1612 Robert Browne is found writing to Alleyn on behalf of one Mr. Rose, lately ‘entertayned amongst the princes men’, to request his interest as one ‘who he knowes can strike a greter stroke amongst them then this’ to procure him a ‘gathering place’ for his wife.[542] Another letter from Bird to Alleyn, also about a gatherer, is amusing enough to quote in full. It is undated.

With the exception of Alleyn, all the players of the 1604 list and no others appear in the patent of 1606, the text of which follows:[544]

Between 1606 and 1610 it seems to have been thought desirable to strengthen the composition of the company by the introduction of new blood. A list of ‘Comedyanes and Playores’, included in the establishment book drawn up when Henry formed his own Household as Prince of Wales in 1610, contains six names in addition to the eight of the patent.[545] They are ‘Edward Colbrande, Wm. Parre, Rychard Pryore, William Stratford, Frauncys Grace, and John Shanke’. Of these William Parr, who is in the plot of 1 Tamar Cham in 1602, is alone traceable in the earlier records of the company. Shank had been of Pembroke’s and Queen Elizabeth’s men.

Henslowe entered two more advances in his diary, one for ‘facynge of a blacke grogren clocke with taffytye’, the other[189] to Dekker and Middleton in earnest of The Patient Man and the Honest Whore. This was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 9 November 1604, and printed as The Honest Whore during the year. The name of Towne is in a stage-direction. On 14 March ‘1604’, which may have been either 1604 or 1605, Henslowe had a final reckoning with the company and noted ‘Caste vp all the acowntes frome the begininge of the world vntell this daye beinge the 14 daye of Marche 1604 by Thomas Dowghton & Edward Jube for the company of the prynces men & I Phillipe Henslow so ther reasteth dew vnto me P Henslow the some of xxiiij^li all reconynges consernynge the company in stocke generall descarged & my sealfe descarged to them of al deates’.[546] With this, so far as the extant book goes, the record of his transactions with the company practically ceases. The only exception is a note of receipts at the Fortune during the three days next after Christmas in 1608, which amounted to 25s., 45s., and 44s. 9d. respectively.[547] Something of the career of the Prince’s men may be gleaned from other sources. They played at Court before James on 21 January and 20 February 1604, and before Henry on 4, 15, and 22 January; and during the following Christmas before Anne on 23 November 1604 and before Henry on 24 November, 14 and 19 December, and on 15 and 22 January and 5 and 19 February 1605. On 8 February 1605 their play of Richard Whittington, of which nothing further is known, was entered on the Stationers’ Register.[548] In the same year Samuel Rowley’s When You See Me, You Know Me, was printed as played by them. During the Christmas of 1605–6 they gave three plays before James and three before Henry.[549] In 1604–5 they were at Maidstone and Winchester, in 1605–6 at Bath, on 17 July 1606 at Oxford, and on 17 October at Ipswich. During the Christmas of 1606–7 they gave six plays before James. Dekker’s Whore of Babylon was entered on the Stationers’ Register on 20 April 1607 and printed as theirs in the same year. In 1606–7 they were at Bath. During the Christmas of 1607–8 they gave four plays before James and Henry. In 1607–8 they were[190] at Maidstone and Saffron Walden, and on 1 October 1608 they were at Leicester; but a visit of the same year from ‘the Princes players of the White Chapple, London’ is rather to be assigned to the Duke of York’s men (q.v.). They gave three plays before James and Henry during the Christmas of 1608–9, four before James during that of 1609–10, and four before James during that of 1610–11. Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl was printed in 1611 as lately played by them at the Fortune, and Field’s Amends for Ladies (c. 1610–11) names ‘Long Meg and the Ship’ as in their repertory. Presumably their Long Meg of Westminster of 1595 still held the boards.[550] In 1608–9 they were at Shrewsbury and Saffron Walden, in 1609–10 at Shrewsbury and Hereford, in 1610–11 at Shrewsbury and Winchester.

They played at Court before James on 28 and 29 December 1611, giving on the second night The Almanac, and before Henry in February and Elizabeth in April 1612. On 1 October 1612 the lewd jigs, songs, and dances at the Fortune are recited in an order of the Middlesex justices as tending to promote breaches of the peace. One of these may have been the occasion on which an obscure actor, Garlick by name, made himself offensive to the more refined part of his audience.[551] On the following 7 November Henry died and on 7 December his players figured in his funeral procession.[552]

They found a new patron in the Elector Palatine, then in England, and on entering his service got a new patent, which bears date 11 January 1613 and closely follows in its terms that of 1606.[553] The house specified for them was again the Fortune, which they had no doubt continuously occupied since its opening in 1600. The players named were ‘Thomas Downton, William Bird, Edward Juby, Samuell Rowle, Charles Massey, Humfrey Jeffs, Frank Grace, William Cartwright, Edward Colbrand, William Parr, William Stratford, Richard Gunnell, John Shanck, and Richard Price’. Possibly Price may be the Pryor of the 1610 list. Cartwright and Gunnell are new since that list, but Cartwright had been in The Battle of Alcazar and 1 Tamar Cham plots of 1601 and 1602. These two must be supposed to have taken the places of Thomas Towne and Antony Jeffes. Thomas Towne had enjoyed an annuity of £12 out of Alleyn’s manor of Dulwich from[191] 28 October 1608 to 15 January 1612, but on 5 November 1612 ‘widow Towne’ is mentioned,[554] and further evidence of his death is supplied by a letter from Charles Massey to Alleyn, not dated, but from internal evidence written not very long after the prince’s death, to which reference is made. Massey is in debt and wants £50. He offers two things as security. One is ‘that lyttell moete I have in the play hovsses’; from which it may be inferred that, like Downton, he had obtained an interest in the Fortune, although what the second house may have been can hardly be conjectured. The other is his interest under ‘the composisions betwene ovre compenye that if any one give over with consent of his fellowes, he is to receve three score and ten poundes (Antony Jefes hath had so much) if any on dye his widow or frendes whome he appoyntes it tow reseve fyfte poundes (M^res Pavie and M^res Tovne hath had the lyke)’. In order to be in a position to repay the loan at the end of the year he undertakes to get Mr. Jube to reserve ‘my gallery mony and my quarter of the hovse mony’ for the purpose, and should it prove at the end of six months that this will be insufficient, he will be prepared to surrender his whole share, with the exception of 13s. 4d. a week for household expenses.[555] From this letter it may also be gathered that Antony Jeffes had retired, and apparently that Pavy, whose name is found in the plot of 2 Fortune’s Tennis, which I assign to 1602–3, had at some time become a sharer in the company. One other player, originally in 1597 a hired man, had evidently reached some prominence between that date and 1614. William Fennor, in the course of a rhyming controversy with John Taylor, makes the following boast of his histrionic talent:

[192]

As the Elector Palatine’s men the company played at Court during the winter of 1613–14, twice before James and once before Charles. They were amongst the companies which performed irregularly in the Lent of 1615, and Humphrey Jeffes and Thomas Downton were summoned before the Privy Council to account for their misdoing. One of the irregular licences condemned by the Lord Chamberlain on 16 July 1616 was an exemplification of the patent of 1613, taken out by Charles Marshall, Humphrey Jeffes, and William Parr for provincial purposes.

xx. THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S (LORD HUNSDON’S) AND KING’S MEN

A company of Lord Hunsdon’s men was at Leicester in the last three months of 1564, at Norwich and Maldon in 1564–5, at Plymouth before Michaelmas in 1565, at Canterbury in the autumn of 1565, at Gloucester and Maldon in 1565–6, at Bristol in July 1566, and at Canterbury in the spring of 1567. Another makes its appearance at Ludlow on 13 July 1581, and at Doncaster in 1582. In the winter Lord Hunsdon was apparently deputy for the Earl of Sussex as Lord Chamberlain, and took occasion to bring his men to Court, where they acted Beauty and Housewifery on 27 December 1582. They did not again appear at Court, but when plays were temporarily suppressed on 14 June 1584 the owner of the Theatre, presumably James Burbadge, made a claim to be Lord Hunsdon’s man. Meanwhile ‘my L. Hunsdouns and my Lords Morleis players being bothe of one companye’ are recorded at Bristol in March 1583, and Lord[193] Hunsdon’s alone at Norwich in 1582–3, Bath in June 1583, and Exeter in July 1583. Hunsdon became Lord Chamberlain on 4 July 1585. Between October and December of that year, a visit was paid to Leicester by ‘the Lord Chamberlens and the Lord Admiralls players’, and on 6 January 1586 ‘the servants of the lo: Admirall and the lo: Chamberlaine’ gave a play at Court. These entries suggest an amalgamation of Hunsdon’s men with those of Lord Admiral Howard, both of whom had perhaps been weakened by the formation of the Queen’s men in 1583. But if so, it was only a partial or temporary one, for while the Admiral’s men established themselves in London, the Chamberlain’s are traceable in the provinces, at Coventry in 1585–6, at Saffron Walden in 1587–8, and at Maidstone in 1589–90.

An interval of four or five years renders improbable any continuity between this company and the famous Lord Chamberlain’s company, which first emerged on the resorting of the plague-stricken mimes in 1594, passed under royal patronage in 1603, and prolonged an existence illumined by the genius of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and Shirley, until the closing of the theatres in 1642. The first notice of the new organization is in June 1594, when ‘my Lord Admeralle men and my Lorde Chamberlen men’ played from the 3rd to the 13th of the month, either in combination or separately on allotted days, for Henslowe at Newington Butts.[557] Some of the plays given during this period can be traced to the subsequent repertory of the Admiral’s men; others, which cannot, may be assigned to the Chamberlain’s. They are Hester and Ahasuerus, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, and Taming of A Shrew, which, although so described, may of course have been really the Taming of The Shrew, Shakespeare’s adaptation of the older play entered in the Stationers’ Register on the previous 2 May. It is ingeniously, and I think rightly, inferred from a line drawn in Henslowe’s account after 13 June, that from that date all the performances recorded are by the Admiral’s men, probably at the Rose, and that his relations with the Chamberlain’s men had ceased. The company is found at Marlborough about September, and on 8 October Lord Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor, asking permission for ‘my nowe companie’ to continue an occupation of the Cross Keys,[558] on which it seems to have already entered.[194] Henceforward the company was regularly established in London, took the lead annually at Court, and except for brief periods of inhibition in 1596, 1597, and possibly 1601, does not appear to have travelled during the remainder of Elizabeth’s reign. Whether Hunsdon’s men got the Cross Keys for the winter or not, they probably had from the beginning the use of the Theatre for the summer seasons, for Richard Burbage, the son of the owner, was one of their leading members, and on 15 March 1595 appears as joint payee with William Kempe and William Shakespeare for two plays given at Court on 26 and 28 December 1594. These plays cannot be identified, but Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost and Romeo and Juliet may well have been produced this winter.[559] Most likely the date 28 December was entered in the payment warrant by mistake for 27 December, for the Admiral’s men are also recorded as playing at Court on 28 December, and on the same night ‘a company of base and common fellows’, with whom one is bound to identify the Chamberlain’s men, played ‘a Comedy of Errors’ as part of the Christmas revels of the Prince of Purpoole at Gray’s Inn.[560] There seems to be some echo of Romeo and Juliet in the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, which may very well have been given at Greenwich or Burghley House for the wedding of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, and Elizabeth Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, on 26 January 1595. Another possible occasion for the production, however, is the wedding of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George Carey and grand-daughter of Lord Hunsdon, to Thomas, son of Henry Lord Berkeley on 19 February 1596. This took place at Blackfriars, presumably in Sir George Carey’s house there.[561]

To 1595 or thereabouts I also assign Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona and King John and Richard II.[562] The company played at Court on 26, 27, and 28 December 1595[195] and 6 January and 22 February 1596. In the warrant for their fees, dated on 21 December 1596, and made payable to John Heminges and George Bryan, they are described as ‘servauntes to the late Lord Chamberlayne and now servauntes to the Lorde Hunsdon’. It is clear that, when the first Lord Hunsdon died on 22 July 1596, the players had been retained by his son and heir, Sir George Carey. The Lord Chamberlainship passed to Lord Cobham; but he died on 5 March 1597, and on 17 March the post was given to the second Lord Hunsdon. The company, then, was properly known as Lord Hunsdon’s men from 22 July 1596 to 17 March 1597; before and after that period it was the Lord Chamberlain’s men.

To 1596 I assign Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Evidence of the occupation of the Theatre about this time by the company is to be found in Lodge’s allusion to a revival of Hamlet there, for this play is not likely to have been in other hands.[563] It is not an unreasonable conjecture that James Burbadge destined to their use the play-house in the Blackfriars, which he purchased in February, and had converted for ‘publique’ use by November of this year. If so, he and they were disappointed, for a petition of the inhabitants, amongst the signatories to an alleged copy of which Lord Hunsdon himself is somewhat oddly found, led to an intervention of the Privy Council, who forbade plays to be given within the liberty.[564] At this time also the Corporation seem to have succeeded in finally and permanently expelling the players from the City inns which had long been their head-quarters, and Nashe connects this persecution with the loss of ‘their old Lord’, by whom he doubtless means Henry Lord Hunsdon. It is possible that plays were inhibited altogether during the summer of 1596, although no formal order to that effect is preserved, for Hunsdon’s went to Faversham, and Nashe himself was disappointed of ‘an after harvest I expected by writing for the stage and for the presse’.[565]

In the following winter the company played at Court on[196] 26 and 27 December 1596 and on 1 and 6 January and 6 and 8 February 1597. Their payees, for this and for the next two years, were Thomas Pope and John Heminge. In 1597 began the printing of plays written by Shakespeare for this company, with a ‘bad’ quarto of Romeo and Juliet, bearing on its title-page the name of Lord Hunsdon’s men and ‘good’ quartos of Richard II and Richard III, bearing that of the Lord Chamberlain’s.[566] From the text of Richard II was omitted the deposition scene, which did not appear in print until after the death of Elizabeth. The only Shakespearian productions that can be plausibly ascribed to this year are those of the two parts of Henry IV. The presentation of Sir John Oldcastle in the original versions of these seems to have led to a protest, and the character was renamed Sir John Falstaff. It is not improbable that the offence taken was by Lord Chamberlain Cobham, whose ancestress, Joan Lady Cobham, Oldcastle had married.[567] It is impossible to say whether either this scandal or any possible interpretation of disloyalty put upon Richard II contributed to the inhibition of plays on 28 July, of which the main exciting cause was certainly the performance of The Isle of Dogs at the Swan on the Bankside.[568] For the second time since their formation in 1594 the company had to travel. They are traceable at Rye in August, at Dover between 3 and 20 September, at Marlborough, Faversham, and Bath during 1596–7, and at Bristol about 29 September. This inhibition was removed early in October. There is some reason to believe that, when the Chamberlain’s men resumed playing, it was not at the Theatre, as to the renewal of the lease of which the Burbadges were disputing with their ground landlord, but at the Curtain. Marston, in one and the same passage of his Scourge of Villainy, entered in the Stationers’ Register on 8 September 1598, alludes to the acting of Romeo and Juliet and to ‘Curtaine plaudeties’, while almost simultaneously Edward Guilpin in his Skialetheia, entered on 15 September, speaks of ‘the unfrequented Theater’. The transfer may, however, not have taken place until 1598.[569]

The company played at Court on 26 December 1597 and[197] on 1 and 6 January and 26 February 1598. It is conceivable that one of these plays may have been a revised version of Love’s Labour’s Lost, which was printed as ‘newly corrected and augmented’ and ‘as it was presented before her Highnes this last Christmas’ in 1598. On the other hand, it is also possible that this print may have been intended to replace an earlier ‘bad’ quarto, not now preserved, and if so, the reference to the representation may have been carried on from the earlier title-page. In 1598 were also printed 1 Henry IV, and the anonymous Mucedorus, which may have already belonged to the Chamberlain’s repertory, as it was certainly revised for them about 1610. The Merchant of Venice was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 22 July, but with a proviso that it must not be printed ‘without lycence first had from the Right honorable the lord chamberlen’. On 7 September 1598 was entered in the Stationers’ Register the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres, with its list of Shakespeare’s plays up to date, including the mysterious Love’s Labours Won, which I incline to identify with the Taming of the Shrew.[570] The earliest play not mentioned by Meres is probably Much Ado about Nothing, which may belong to 1598 itself. Another production of this year was Jonson’s Every Man In his Humour, which was still a new play about 20 September, when an Almain in the audience lost 300 crowns. Possibly John Aubrey has this period in mind when he says that Jonson ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the suburbes, I thinke towardes Shoreditch or Clarkenwell’.[571] Jonson, however, was in prison soon after the production of the play for the manslaughter of Gabriel Spencer on 22 September in Hoxton Fields, and there is no other evidence that he ever acted with the Chamberlain’s men. His own name is not in the list of the original ‘principall Comoedians’ affixed to the text of Every Man In his Humour in the folio of 1616. This is of great value, as being the earliest extant list of the company. The ten names given are:

• Will. Shakespeare.
• Aug. Philips.
• Hen. Condel.
• Will. Slye.
• Will. Kempe.
• Ric. Burbage.
• Joh. Flemings.
• Tho. Pope.
• Chr. Beeston.
• Joh. Duke.

[198]

It must not, of course, be assumed, either that the list is in itself quite complete, or that there had been no changes amongst the Chamberlain’s men between 1594 and 1598; but as those named include five out of the six payees for that period, they may perhaps be taken, with the sixth payee, George Bryan, who does not reappear after 1596, and was by 1603 an ordinary groom of the Chamber of the royal Household, as fairly representing the original constitution of the company.[572] And an inference to its origin at once becomes possible, for of these eleven men five (Kempe, Pope, Heminges, Phillips, and Bryan) formed, with Edward Alleyn, the company of Lord Strange’s men to whom Privy Council letters of assistance were granted in 1593, and at least six (Pope, Phillips, Bryan, Burbadge, Duke, and Sly) are to be found in the cast of 2 Seven Deadly Sins as performed by Strange’s or the Admiral’s or the two together about 1590–1. It will be remembered that the Strange’s company of 1593, known as the Earl of Derby’s after 25 September 1593, was apparently formed by a combination of the earlier Strange’s and Admiral’s men somewhere near the time of this performance, if not earlier, and that its composite character never wholly disappeared, Alleyn in particular, who was its leading member, retaining his personal status as an Admiral’s man. It seems clear that in 1594 the combination broke up, that Alleyn became the nucleus of a new Admiral’s company at the Rose, and that the group with whom he had been travelling took fresh service with the Lord Chamberlain. It is not, I think, quite accurate to treat this transaction as a mere continuance of Lord Derby’s men under the style of Lord Chamberlain’s, entailing no reconstruction other than a change of patron following upon Lord Derby’s death on 16 April 1594. On the one hand a Derby’s company continued in existence, and is traceable under the sixth earl from 1594 to 1617. On the other hand, while we do not know what business reconstruction there may have been, a very fundamental change is involved in the replacement of Alleyn as principal actor by Richard Burbadge, who is not at all likely to have played with Strange’s men after the break between the Admiral’s and his father at the Theatre in 1591. Except for Alleyn, all the more important members of the company, as it existed in 1593, seem to have been included[199] in the transfer to Lord Hunsdon. It is, however, little more than conjecture that finds Henry Condell and Christopher Beeston in the ‘Harry’ and ‘Kitt’, or Alexander Cooke, Nicholas Tooley, and Robert Gough, who were numbered amongst the King’s men at a later date, in the ‘Saunder’, ‘Nick’, and ‘R. Go.’ of the 2 Seven Deadly Sins plot. Alleyn’s correspondence of 1593 adds Richard Cowley to the list of Lord Strange’s men, and, as we shall find him acting as a payee for the Chamberlain’s men in 1601, he may have been one of them from the beginning. In any case he had joined them by 1598, as the stage-directions of Much Ado about Nothing show that he played Verges to Kempe’s Dogberry.[573]

There is, of course, one conspicuous Chamberlain’s man who is not discoverable either in the Privy Council letter of 1593 or in the 2 Seven Deadly Sins of 1590–1. Even the audacity of Mr. Fleay has not attempted to identify the ‘Will’ of the plot with Will Shakespeare. Some relations, if only as author, Shakespeare must have had with Lord Strange’s men, when they produced 1 Henry VI on 3 March 1592, and Greene’s satire of him as a ‘Shake-scene’ in the same year must indicate that he was an actor as well as an author.[574] He may have stood aside altogether during the period of the provincial tours, and devoted himself to poetry, and perhaps, although this is very conjectural, to travel abroad. Or he may, as I have already suggested, have joined Lord Pembroke’s men (q.v.), whom I suspect to have been an offshoot for provincial purposes of the Strange’s combination, and have passed from them to Lord Sussex’s, ultimately rejoining his old fellows in 1594. The possibility of identifying certain minor members of the Chamberlain’s company is also affected by this somewhat obscure problem of Pembroke’s men. The most obvious of these is John Sincler or Sincklo, who was in the cast of 2 Seven Deadly Sins as played by the Admiral’s or Strange’s about 1590–1, and must have ultimately joined the Chamberlain’s, as his name occurs in a stage-direction to Q₁ of 2 Henry IV (1600), and in the induction to The Malcontent (1604). It also occurs in stage-directions to 3 Henry VI and the Taming of The Shrew in the Folio of 1623.[575] These both happen to be plays which passed through the hands of Pembroke’s, and the inference may be that Sincler[200] had also passed through this company. But this is far from being conclusive. It is the revised and not the unrevised texts that yield the name, and although I think it likely, on stylistic grounds, that the revision of 3 Henry VI was done for Pembroke’s (q.v.), it is probable from the reference in Henry V, epil. 12, to the loss of France and the civil wars, ‘which oft our stage hath shown’, that the play was revived by the Chamberlain’s, and it may have been in such a revival that Sincler took part. As to the Shrew, it is impossible to say whether Shakespeare’s work upon it was before or after its transfer to the Chamberlain’s. In any case the Chamberlain’s were playing it in some form on 13 June 1594, so that here again the appearance of Sincler’s name cannot ear-mark him as Pembroke’s. We can now go a step farther. The stage-directions to 3 Henry VI contain not only Sincler’s name, but those of a certain ‘Gabriel’ and a certain ‘Humfrey’, not common Elizabethan names even separately, and certainly suggesting, when found in combination, the Gabriel Spencer and Humphrey Jeffes, who were fellows of the Admiral’s in 1597. Now Spencer, and very likely also Jeffes, had come from Pembroke’s, the short-lived Pembroke’s of 1597 at the Swan. Had they been Pembroke’s men ever since 1593? If so, it would be difficult to resist the conclusion that the performance which brought their names into the text of 3 Henry VI, and with theirs John Sincler’s, was one by Pembroke’s about that date. The obstacle is that there is no known evidence, in provincial records or elsewhere, for any continuous existence of Pembroke’s between 1593 and 1597. Pending the discovery of any such evidence, it seems better to assume that Sincler, Spencer, and Jeffes were all Chamberlain’s men before 1597, and that it was from a combination of discontented elements in that company and in the Admiral’s that the Pembroke’s of the Swan arose. If so, the rest of the Pembroke’s men not traceable as coming from the Admiral’s, namely Robert Shaw, William Bird alias Borne, and probably Anthony Jeffes, may also have come from the Chamberlain’s; and such an origin might explain the suit with Thomas Pope in which Bird was entangled in 1598.[576] Two other minor actors in the company about 1597 were probably Harvey and Rossill, whose names appear to have got into the text of 1 Henry IV in place of those of Bardolph and Peto, whom they represented.[577] The list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays given by the editors of the First Folio includes Samuel Crosse, of whom nothing[201] more is known except that he was of an early generation. As the list in the Folio appears to be limited to Chamberlain’s and King’s men, excluding for example Alleyn, who certainly acted in Shakespearian plays, e.g. 1 Henry VI, it may be that Crosse was for a short time a member of the company soon after 1594.

It is hardly possible to carry the analysis of origins any further with profit, or to assume that the groups which segregated themselves from the Strange-Admiral’s combination in 1594 bore any close correspondence to the respective contributions of Strange’s and the Admiral’s to that combination in 1589 or 1590. The only name that can be connected with Strange’s men before 1588 is John Symons and neither he nor George Attewell, their payee in 1591, became a Chamberlain’s man. Hypotheses have been framed, mainly in the hope of affiliating Shakespeare to Lord Leicester’s men, who are supposed to have carried him away from Stratford-on-Avon when they visited it in 1586–7, and ultimately to have become Lord Strange’s men.[578] So far as Shakespeare is concerned, the first record of him on the boards is in 1592, and the interval since his hegira from Stratford may have been quite otherwise spent. The proof of continuity between Leicester’s men and Strange’s altogether fails, since the latter made their appearance a decade before the former came to an end. The only member of the Lord Chamberlain’s company of 1594 who can be traced to Leicester’s service was Kempe, and he had left Leicester’s men by the summer of 1586 and was in Denmark. With him were Bryan and Pope, who afterwards spent a year in Germany, and may have joined either Strange’s or the Admiral’s on their return. The only other Chamberlain’s man, who can be assigned to an earlier company than Strange’s, is Heminges, who was probably at some time a Queen’s man.

The Chamberlain’s men evidently started business in 1594 with something of a repertory derived by inheritance or purchase from antecedent companies. Our knowledge of this is mainly confined to plays with which Shakespeare was concerned as author or reviser. They certainly did not get all the plays produced by Strange’s men at the Rose during 1592 and 1593. Some of these were Henslowe’s property; others passed with Alleyn to the Admiral’s men. But they got The Jealous Comedy, if I am right in identifying this with The Comedy of Errors. They probably got 1 Henry VI, for although the appearance of a Shakespearian play in the 1623[202] Folio is not perhaps, in view of the composition of the 1647 ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’ Folio, absolute proof that the King’s men possessed the copy, their stage had often shown both the loss of France and the bleeding of England before Henry V was produced in 1599.[579] And they got Titus and Vespasian, as revised, after passing through the hands of Pembroke’s men, for production by Sussex’s under the title of Titus Andronicus. Three other of Pembroke’s men’s plays came to them, The Taming of A Shrew and 2 and 3 Henry VI, and probably Hamlet belongs to the same group. It is of course only a guess of mine that these also went with Shakespeare to Sussex’s men and came thence with him. Titus Andronicus and A Shrew, indeed, became available in print during 1594, but not Hamlet, and not Henry VI, except in the obsolete version called The Contention of York and Lancaster. I think Shakespeare must also have brought Richard III and possibly an early version of Henry VIII, and that one or other of these had already been played by Sussex’s as Buckingham. Of the provenance of Hester and Ahasuerus nothing can be said. It is not necessary to suppose that the Chamberlain’s acquired any plays from the stock of the Queen’s men. It is true that Shakespeare subsequently made some use of The Troublesome Reign of King John, The Famous Victories of Henry V, and King Leire, but these were all in print before he needed them.[580] Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany, published in 1654 as a play the King’s men at the Blackfriars is believed by some to be an early play, possibly by Peele, and if so, may belong to the repertory of 1594.

I now return to the chronicle of the Chamberlain’s men from 1598 onwards. The restriction of the London companies by the action of the Privy Council to two had left them in direct rivalry with the Admiral’s at the Rose. Disputes broke out. Henslowe made a loan to William Bird of the Admiral’s on 30 August 1598 to follow a ‘sewt agenste Thomas Poope’, and another to Thomas Downton on 30 January 1599, ‘to descarge Thomas Dickers [Dekker] from the areaste of my lord chamberlens men’.[581] The company played at Court on 26 December 1598 and 1 January and 20 February 1599. During this winter they undertook the enterprise of finding a new head-quarters on the Bankside. The disputes between[203] landlord and tenants as to the lease of the Theatre had reached a crisis, and in December or January the Burbadges removed the timber of the house across the Thames, to serve as material for the construction of the Globe. The lease of the new site was signed on 21 February 1599. Under it one moiety of the interest was retained by Richard Burbadge and his brother Cuthbert, who was not himself an actor; the other was assigned to Shakespeare, Pope, Phillips, Heminges, and Kempe.[582] Shortly afterwards Kempe made over his share to the other four. Presumably he now quitted the company, having first, as a stage-direction shows, played Peter in the revised version of Romeo and Juliet printed in 1599. His place was probably taken by Robert Armin, formerly of Lord Chandos’s men, who describes himself in two successive issues of his Fool upon Fool (1600 and 1605), first as ‘clonnico del Curtanio’, and then as ‘clonnico del Mondo’, and who had therefore probably joined the Chamberlain’s men before their actual transfer to the Globe. As the Theatre had to be built, this is not likely to have taken place until the autumn of 1599, and it must therefore remain doubtful which house was the ‘wooden O’ of Henry V, produced during the absence of Essex in Ireland between 27 March and 28 September 1599. It was, however, certainly at the Globe that Thomas Platter saw Julius Caesar on 21 September.[583] ‘This fair-filled Globe’, too, is named in the epilogue to Jonson’s Every Man Out of his Humour, which is ascribed in the Folio of 1606 to 1599, although if this be correct, an apparent allusion to Kempe’s journey to Norwich in the spring of 1600 must, on the assumption that it is a real allusion, be an interpolation. The ‘principall Comoedians’ in this play were Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Condell, Sly, and Pope. Four of the 1598 names are missing. Shakespeare evidently stood aside. Kempe had gone. Beeston and Duke may have gone also, although it is only a conjecture of Mr. Fleay’s that they and Kempe now seceded to Pembroke’s men at the Rose, and they are not definitely heard of again until they are found with Worcester’s men in August 1602.[584] Mr. Fleay thinks that another Worcester’s man, Robert Pallant, had accompanied them; but, although Pallant was with Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590, there is no[204] evidence that he was ever a Chamberlain’s man. Conceivably he may have joined the King’s men about 1619, but that is another matter.[585] About November 1599 was published A Warning for Fair Women, which belonged to the company.

The Court plays called for from the Chamberlain’s men during the following winter were on 26 December 1599 and on 6 January and 3 February 1600. Heminges was sole payee, and occupied the same position in every subsequent year, up to and beyond 1616, except in 1600–1, when Richard Cowley was associated with him, and for a special payment made to Burbadge in 1604. On 6 March 1600 the company had an opportunity of rendering direct service to their patron Lord Hunsdon, by playing Henry IV, still oddly called Sir John Oldcastle, after a dinner which he gave to the Flemish ambassador, Ludovic Verreyken, presumably at his house in the Blackfriars.[586] To 1600 I assign Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, not improbably prepared for performance, with the aid of the boys of Windsor Chapel, at the Garter Feast on 23 April, and also As You Like It. This was a year of some activity among the publishers and, as in 1598, the company had to take steps to protect their interests. In May John Roberts was prevented from printing their moral of Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose, until he could bring proper authority, and in August a note was made in the Stationers’ Register to stay the printing of As You Like It, Henry V, and Much Ado about Nothing.[587] The last two of these, but not the first, were in fact printed during the year, and so were A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, 2 Henry IV, Every Man Out of his Humour, and An Alarum for London, all plays belonging to the company.

The Chamberlain’s men played at Court on 26 December 1600 and on 6 January and 24 February 1601. Shortly before this last performance, they had been involved in one of the tragedies of history. This was the abortive coup d’état of 8 February 1601 in which the Earl of Essex, smarting under the disgrace which his failure in Ireland had brought upon him, attempted to secure his position and get rid of Sir Walter Raleigh and other enemies by taking forcible possession of the person of Elizabeth and the palace of Whitehall. Some of his followers seem to have conceived the idea of predisposing the mind of the populace to their cause by a dramatic representation of the dangers of evil counsellors and the possible remedy of a deposition, as illustrated in the case of Elizabeth’s predecessor Richard II, in whom for some[205] obscure reason the political thought of the time was fond of finding an analogue to the Queen. Saturday, 7 February, the day before the outbreak, was chosen for the performance, and the players applied to were the Chamberlain’s. A deposition by Augustine Phillips, taken before Chief Justice Popham and Justice Fenner during the subsequent inquiries, records the transaction.[588]

The fact that Phillips speaks of the play as old and long out of use, which becomes in the narrative of Camden ‘exoleta tragoedia’, hardly justifies the suggestion that it was something earlier than Shakespeare’s Richard II. This, if produced in 1596, may well have been off the boards by 1601.

A good deal of misunderstanding has gathered round the connexion of the Chamberlain’s men with this affair. Mr. Fleay is responsible for the theory that they fell into disgrace, had to travel, and were excluded from the Court festivities of the following Christmas.[589] As a matter of fact they played four times during that winter. This Mr. Fleay did not know, as he only had before him Cunningham’s incomplete extracts from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber. But he ought to have noticed that their last performance for 1600–1 was itself some days later than the examination of Augustine Phillips. Nor is any evidence that the company travelled in 1601 forthcoming from the provincial archives. Mr. Fleay’s identification of them with Laurence Fletcher’s[206] Scottish company of that year merely rests upon the presence of Fletcher’s name in the patent of 1603, and this will not bear the strain of the argument.[590] Thus remains, however, the possibly autobiographical passage in Hamlet, ii. 2. 346, which assigns an ‘inhibition by the means of the late innovation’ as a cause of the travelling of players to Elsinore. The date of Hamlet may well be 1601, since the same passage refers to the theatrical competition set up by the establishment of boy companies at St. Paul’s in 1599 and at the Chapel Royal in 1600. But it must be borne in mind that this competition is the only reason given for the travelling in the 1603 edition of the play. In the 1604 edition the only reason is the inhibition, while in the text of the 1623 Folio both reasons stand somewhat inconsistently side by side.[591] No doubt the text of 1603 is an imperfect piratical reprint. On the other hand that of 1604 almost certainly represents a revised version of the play, and the ‘inhibition’ cited, if it had an historical existence at all, may be that of 1603, during which certainly the company travelled. I suppose that ‘innovation’ might mean the accession of a new sovereign, although it does not seem a very obvious term. But then it does not seem a very obvious term for a seditious rising either.[592] On the whole, there is no reason to suppose that any serious blame was attached to the Chamberlain’s men for lending themselves to Sir Gilly Meyrick’s intrigue. It is certainly absurd to suggest, as has been suggested, that the ‘adorned creature’, whose ingratitude instigated the comparison between Elizabeth and Richard, was not Essex but Shakespeare.[593] At the same time the company may, of course, have been told to leave London for a few weeks. At some time, as the 1603 title-page tells us, they took Hamlet both to Oxford and to Cambridge, and it is at least tempting to find a reminiscence of the Cambridge visit in the scene from 2 Return from Parnassus cited below. It is possible that[207] Phillips and his fellows, and even their relation to the Essex crisis itself, may be glanced at in the satirical picture of the Roman actors in Jonson’s Poetaster, produced by the Chapel boys in the course of 1601.[594] Certainly the play betrays its author’s knowledge of a counter-attack which the Chamberlain’s men were already preparing for him in Dekker’s Satiromastix. This play, in which Dekker may have had some help from Marston, was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 11 November 1601, and had probably been on the stage not long before. It is noteworthy that it was produced by the Paul’s boys, as well as by the Chamberlain’s men. It was actually published in 1602. Another play which may reasonably be assigned to 1601 is Twelfth Night.

In the following winter the company played at Court on 26 and 27 December 1601 and on 1 January and 14 February 1602. They also gave Twelfth Night at the Middle Temple feast on 2 February;[595] and I have very little doubt that it was they who furnished the play at which Elizabeth and her maids of honour were present in the Blackfriars after dining with Lord Hunsdon on 31 December.[596] The alleged production of Othello before the Queen when Sir Thomas Egerton entertained her at Harefield from 31 July to 2 August 1602 rests on a forgery by Collier.[597] It is possible that, as Professor Wallace conjectures, the play was on the capture of Stuhl-Weissenburg, seen by the Duke of Stettin on 13 September 1602, may have been a Globe production.[598] Sir Thomas Cromwell, a play of unknown authorship belonging to the company, was published in the course of 1602, with an ascription on the title-page to W. S., and to this year I assign Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida. If so, the portrait of Ajax in the latter play cannot very well have been the ‘purge’ administered by Shakespeare to Jonson, to which reference is made in 2 Return from Parnassus. This is a Cambridge Christmas piece, probably of 1601–2, and in it Burbadge and Kempe are introduced as in search of scholars to write for them. Perhaps the Cambridge author did not know that Kempe had ceased to be the ‘fellow’ of Burbadge and Shakespeare in 1599, and was at the time playing with Worcester’s men at the Rose. It is, however, just possible that after returning from his continental tour and before throwing in his lot with Worcester’s, he may have rejoined the Chamberlain’s for a while, and may[208] have accompanied them to Cambridge, if they did travel in 1601.[599]

The last performances of the company before Elizabeth took place on 26 December 1602 and 2 February 1603, and on the following 24 March the Queen died. Playing immediately ceased in London. Strictly speaking, the Chamberlain’s men must have again become Lord Hunsdon’s men for a month or so, for the Household appointments naturally lapsed with the death of the sovereign, and Hunsdon, being in failing health, was relieved of his duties on 6 April. On 9 September he died.[600] The company, however, had already passed under royal patronage.

A contemporary panegyrist records the graciousness of James in ‘taking to him the late Lord Chamberlaines servants, now the Kings acters’.[601] The appointment was by letters patent dated 19 May 1603, of which the text follows.[602]

Of the nine players named, eight are recognizable as the principal members of the Lord Chamberlain’s company as it stood at the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Only Thomas Pope is not included. He was near his end. He made his will on 22 July 1603, and it was proved on 13 February 1604. In it he names none of his fellows, unless Robert Gough, who has a legacy, was already of the company; his interest in the house of the Globe passed to legatees and was thus alienated from the company. Laurence Fletcher, on the other hand, whose name heads the list in the patent, is not discernible as a Chamberlain’s man. His inclusion becomes readily intelligible, when it is recalled that he had headed English actors on tour in Scotland, and had already been marked by the personal favour of James.[603] Whether he ever joined the company in the full sense, that is to say, the association of actors as distinct from the body of royal servants, seems to me very doubtful. His name is not in the Sejanus list, or in the Folio list of Shakespearian players, and that he was described as a ‘fellow’ by Phillips in 1605 hardly takes the matter further. He may have held a relation to the King’s men analogous to that of Martin Slater to Queen Anne’s men. After 1605 nothing is heard of him.[604]

The terms of the patent imply that it was issued during a suspension of playing through plague. Probably this had followed hard upon the suspension at Elizabeth’s death. The company travelled, being found at Bath, Coventry, and Shrewsbury in the course of 1602–3. A misplaced Ipswich entry of 30 May 1602 may belong to 1603. The visits to Oxford and Cambridge referred to on the title-page of the 1603 edition of Hamlet must also have taken place in this year, if they did not take place in 1601. On 2 December 1603 the company were summoned from Mortlake to perform before the King at Lord Pembroke’s house of Wilton.[605]

[210]

During the winter of 1603–4 the company gave eight more plays at Court, a larger number than Elizabeth had ever called for. They took place on 26, 27, 28, and 30 December 1603 and on 1 January and 2 and 19 February 1604. On New Year’s Day there were two performances, one before James, the other before Prince Henry. The plague had not yet subsided by 8 February, and James gave his men £30 as a ‘free gifte’ for their ‘mayntenaunce and releife’ till it should ‘please God to settle the cittie in a more perfecte health’. One of the plays of this winter was The Fair Maid of Bristow. Another, produced before the end of 1603, was probably Ben Jonson’s Sejanus. For alleged popery and treason in this play Jonson was haled before the Privy Council by the Earl of Northampton, but there is nothing to show that the players were implicated. The principal actors in Sejanus were Burbadge, Shakespeare, Phillips, Heminges, Sly, Condell, John Lowin, and Alexander Cooke. This is Shakespeare’s last appearance in the cast of any play. He may have ceased to act, while remaining a member of the company and its poet. The names of Lowin and Cooke are new. Lowin had been with Worcester’s men in 1602–3. Cooke had probably begun his connexion with the company as an apprentice to Heminges. The identification of him with the ‘Sander’ of Strange’s men in 1590 is more than hazardous. The Induction to Marston’s Malcontent, published in 1604, records the names of Burbadge, who played Malevole, Condell, Sly, Lowin, Sincler, and a Tire-man. Sincler was probably still only a hired man. Nothing further is heard of him. This Induction seems to have been written by John Webster to introduce the presentation by the King’s men of The Malcontent, which was really a Chapel play. The transaction is thus explained:[606]

The play of Jeronimo, which the Chapel are here accused of taking, cannot be The Spanish Tragedy, which was an Admiral’s play, and is not very likely to have been the ‘comedy of Jeronimo’ which Strange’s men had in 1592, and which was evidently related to The Spanish Tragedy and may be expected to have remained with it. It might be the extant First Part of Jeronimo, written perhaps for the Chamberlain’s men[211] about 1601–2, when Jonson was revising The Spanish Tragedy for the Admiral’s. A reference in T. M.’s Black Book shows that The Merry Devil of Edmonton, which belonged to the company, was already on the stage by 1604.[607]

The coronation procession of James, deferred on account of the plague, went through London on 15 March 1604, and the Great Wardrobe furnished each of the King’s players with four and a half yards of red cloth. The same nine men are specified in the warrant as in the patent of 1603, and their names stand next those of various officers of the Chamber. They did not, however, actually walk in the procession.[608] From 9 to 27 August 1604, they were called upon in their official capacity as Grooms of the Chamber to form part of the retinue assigned to attend at Somerset House upon Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Duke of Frias and Constable of Castile, who was in England as Ambassador Extraordinary for the negotiation of a peace with Spain. The descriptions of his visit, which have been preserved, do not show that any plays were given before him.[609]

The company were at Oxford between 7 May and 16 June 1604. About 18 December they had got into trouble through the production of a tragedy on Gowry, always a delicate subject with James.[610] But this did not interfere with a long series of no less than eleven performances which they gave at Court between 1 November 1604 and 12 February 1605, and of which the Revels Accounts fortunately preserve the names.[611] The series included one play, The Spanish Maze, of which nothing is known; two by Ben Jonson, Every Man In his Humour and Every Man Out of his Humour; and seven by Shakespeare, Othello, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, Henry V, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Merchant of Venice, which was given twice. Othello and Measure for Measure had probably been produced for the first time during 1604, but[212] the rest of the list suggests that opportunity was being taken to revive a number of Elizabethan plays unknown to the new sovereigns. This is borne out by the terms of a letter from Sir Walter Cope to Lord Southampton with regard to the performance of Love’s Labour ’s Lost.[612]

Between 4 May 1605, when he made his will, and 13 May, when it was proved, died Augustine Phillips. Unlike Pope, he was full of kindly remembrances towards the King’s men. He appointed Heminges, Burbadge, and Sly overseers of the will. He left legacies to his ‘fellows’ Shakespeare, Condell, Fletcher, Armin, Cowley, Cooke, and Nicholas Tooley; to the hired men of the company; to his ‘servant’ Christopher Beeston; to his apprentice James Sands, and to his late apprentice Samuel Gilburne. We have here practically a full list of the company. The name of Nicholas Tooley is new, unless indeed he was the ‘Nick’ of Strange’s men in 1592. He speaks of Richard Burbadge in his will as his ‘master’ and may have been his apprentice. The use of the term ‘fellow’ suggests that Tooley and Cooke were now sharers in the company. On the other hand Lowin, who is not named among the ‘fellows’, may still have been only a hired man. Beeston’s legacy is doubtless in memory of former service as hired man or apprentice; he was in 1605 and for long after with the Queen’s men. Samuel Gilburne is recorded as a Shakespearian actor in the 1623 Folio, but practically nothing is known of him or of James Sands. The exact legal disposal of the interest held by Phillips in the Globe subsequently became matter of controversy, but in effect it remained from 1605 to 1613 with his widow and her second husband, and was thus alienated from the company.

On some date before Michaelmas in 1605 the King’s men visited Barnstaple, and on 9 October they were at Oxford. This year saw the publication of The Fair Maid of Bristow and of The London Prodigal, which was assigned on its title-page to Shakespeare. To it I also assign Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear.

Ten Court plays were given in the winter of 1605–6, but the dates are not recorded. Three more were given in the summer of 1606 during the visit of the King of Denmark to James, which lasted from 7 July to 11 August, and then the company seem to have gone on tour. They were at Oxford between 28 and 31 July, at Leicester in August, at Dover between 6 and 24 September, at Saffron Walden and Maidstone during 1605–6, and at Marlborough in 1606. To[213] this year I assign Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, and to the earlier part of it Ben Jonson’s Volpone, in which the principal actors were Burbadge, Condell, Sly, Heminges, Lowin, and Cooke.

Nine Court plays were given during the winter of 1606–7, on 26 and 29 December 1606, and on 4, 6, and 8 January and 2, 5, 15, and 27 February 1607. The entry in the Stationers’ Register for King Lear and the title-page of Barnes’ The Devil’s Charter, both dated in 1607, show these to have been the plays selected for 26 December and 2 February respectively. In the same year were also published Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy and Wilkins’ The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, and to it I assign the production of Timon of Athens. On 16 July 1607 Heminges lent his boy John Rice to appear as an angel of gladness with a taper of frankincense, and deliver an eighteen-verse speech by Ben Jonson as part of the entertainment of James by the Merchant Taylors at their hall.[613] During the summer the company travelled to Barnstaple, to Dunwich, to Oxford, where they were on 7 September, and possibly to Cambridge. Volpone had probably been given in both Universities before its publication about February 1607 or 1608.

During the winter of 1607–8 the company gave thirteen Court plays, on 26, 27, and 28 December 1606, and on 2, 6, 7, 9, 17, and 26 January, and 2 and 7 February 1607. On each of the nights of 6 and 17 January there were two plays. In 1608 was published A Yorkshire Tragedy, with Shakespeare’s name on the title-page, and to it I assign the production of Pericles, in which Shakespeare probably had Wilkins for a collaborator. About May the company had to find their share of the heavy fine necessary to buy off the inhibition due to the performance of Chapman’s Duke of Byron by the Queen’s Revels.[614] The year was in many ways an eventful one for the King’s men. They had, I suspect, to face a growing detachment of Shakespeare from London and the theatre; and the loss was perhaps partly supplied by the establishment of relations with Beaumont and Fletcher, whose earliest play for the company, Philaster, may be of any date from 1608 to 1610. About 16 August died William Sly, leaving his interest in the Globe to his son Robert and legacies to Cuthbert Burbadge and James Sands. Both he and Henry Condell had been admitted to an interest at some date subsequent to[214] November 1606, the moiety of the lease not retained by the Burbadges having been redistributed into sixths to allow of this. The deserts of Pope, Phillips, and Sly are all commemorated in the Apology of Thomas Heywood, which, though not published until 1612, was probably written in 1608.[615] Sly’s death complicated an important transaction in which the King’s men were engaged. This was the acquisition of the Blackfriars, of which the freehold already belonged to the Burbadges, but which had been leased since 1600 to Henry Evans and occupied by the Children of the Revels. About July 1608 Evans was prepared to surrender his lease, and the Burbadges decided to take the opportunity of providing the King’s men with a second house on the north side of the Thames, suitable for a winter head-quarters. As in the case of the Globe, they shared their interest as housekeepers with some of the leading members of the company. New leases were executed on 9 August 1608, by which the house was divided between a syndicate of seven, of whom five were Richard Burbadge, Shakespeare, Heminges, Condell, and Sly, while the other two, Cuthbert Burbadge and Thomas Evans, were not King’s men. When Sly’s death intervened, his executrix surrendered his interest and the number of the syndicate was reduced to six. Probably, however, the King’s men did not enter upon the actual occupation of the Blackfriars until the autumn of the following year.[616] In fact the plague kept the London theatres closed from July 1608 to December 1609. The King’s men were at Coventry on 29 October 1608 and at Marlborough in the course of 1607–8. The plague did not prevent them from appearing at Court during the winter of 1608–9, and they gave twelve plays on unspecified dates. But their difficulties are testified to by a special reward ‘for their private practise in the time of infeccion’, which had rendered their Christmas service possible.

The plague led to an early provincial tour. The company were at Ipswich on 9 May, at Hythe on 16 May, and at New Romney on 17 May 1609. Their winter season was again interfered with, and a further grant was made in respect of six weeks of private practice. Amongst the plays so practised may, I think, have been Cymbeline. They gave thirteen plays at Court on unspecified dates during the holidays of 1609–10.[617] One of these may have been Mucedorus, the edition of which with the imprint[215] 1610 represents a revised version performed at Court on the previous Shrove Sunday. This might be either 18 February 1610 or 3 February 1611. The epilogue contains an apology for some recent indiscretion of the company in a play of which no more is known, but which might conceivably be Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, since this certainly brought its players into some disgrace. By April the company were at the Globe, playing Macbeth on 20 April, Cymbeline probably shortly before, and Othello on 30 April.[618] To this year I assign The Winter’s Tale and Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy. It also saw the production of Jonson’s Alchemist, with a cast including Burbadge, Lowin, Condell, Cooke, Armin, Heminges, William Ostler, John Underwood, Tooley, and William Ecclestone. This is the last mention of Armin in connexion with the King’s men, but it is sufficient to show that the production of his Two Maids of Moreclack by the King’s Revels about 1608 did not involve any breach with his old company. Of Ecclestone’s origin nothing is known.[619] Ostler and Underwood came from the Queen’s Revels, probably when the Blackfriars was taken over in 1609. In fact an account of the transaction given by the Burbadges in 1635 suggests that the desire to acquire these boys was its fundamental motive. They say:

This narrative seems, however, to have antedated matters as regards Field. Or, if he did come to the King’s men in 1609, he almost immediately returned to the Queen’s Revels at Whitefriars, joining the King’s again about 1616.[620]

About 8 May 1610 some superfluous apparel of the company was sold by Heminges on their behalf to the Duke of York’s[216] men (q.v.). On 31 May Burbadge and Rice were employed by the City to make speeches on fish-back at the civic pageant of welcome to Prince Henry.[621] The autumn travelling took the company to Dover between 6 July and 4 August 1610, to Oxford in August, and to Shrewsbury and Stafford in 1609–10. During the following winter they gave fifteen Court plays on unspecified days. They were playing a piece on the story of Richard II, not now extant, at the Globe on 30 April 1611, and A Winter’s Tale on 15 May.[622] During 1611 Jonson’s Catiline was produced, with a cast similar to that of The Alchemist, except that Armin was replaced by Richard Robinson, whose earlier history is unknown. Robinson, playing a female part, and Robert Gough also appear in the stage directions of The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, licensed for the stage by Sir George Buck on 31 October 1611. Gough was probably one of Strange’s men in 1592. He appears in the wills of Pope in 1603 and of Phillips, who was his brother-in-law, in 1605, but with no indication that he belonged to the King’s men. Beaumont and Fletcher’s A King and No King was also licensed by Buck in 1611, and to this year I assign Shakespeare’s Tempest. On 25 August 1611 the interest in the Blackfriars originally intended for Sly was assigned to Ostler. Ecclestone, on the other hand, later in the year than the production of Catiline, but before 29 August, left the company for the Lady Elizabeth’s men.

The only provincial visit by the King’s men recorded in 1610–11 was to Shrewsbury. They gave twenty-two plays at Court during a rather prolonged winter season extending from 31 October 1611 to 26 April 1612. Two of these, on 12 and 13 January, were joint performances with the Queen’s men, and the plays used, Heywood’s Silver Age and Rape of Lucrece, were from the repertory of the latter.[623] The King’s men also gave The Tempest and A Winter’s Tale, A King and No King, Tourneur’s The Nobleman, and The Twins’ Tragedy. On 20 February 1612 the actors’ moiety of the Globe was again redistributed, into sevenths, so as to allow of the admission as a housekeeper of Ostler, who had married a daughter of Heminges. From the statement of the interests held by the parties to this transaction, it is to be inferred that Heminges and Condell had between them bought out since 1608 the representatives of Sly. On 21 April 1612 the company was at New Romney and at some date during 1611–12[217] at Winchester. Heminges received a payment for services to the Lord Mayor’s pageant of this year, which was Dekker’s Troja Nova Triumphans.[624]

The actor-list attached to The Captain in the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1679 probably belongs to the original production of the play between 1609 and 1612. It names Burbadge, Condell, Cooke, and Ostler. It was one of the plays selected for the Court season of 1612–13, during which, on 14 February, took place the wedding of the Elector Palatine Frederick and the Princess Elizabeth, and which was therefore singularly rich in plays, notwithstanding the interruption of the festivities due to the death of Prince Henry on 7 November 1612. Heminges lent a boy for Chapman’s mask on 15 February. The twenty plays given this winter by the King’s men, the exact dates of which are not upon record, were Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing (performed twice), The Tempest, A Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar, Othello, and 1 and 2 Henry IV, Jonson’s Alchemist, Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster (also performed twice), The Maid’s Tragedy, A King and No King, The Captain and the lost play of Cardenio, Tourneur’s Nobleman, and four plays of unknown authorship, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Knot of Fools, The Twins’ Tragedy, and A Bad Beginning Makes a Good Ending. On 8 June there was a special performance of Cardenio for the Savoyan ambassador. Some unknown cause seems to have brought Shakespeare back in 1613 to the assistance of his fellows, and he collaborated with Fletcher in The Two Noble Kinsmen and in Henry VIII or All is True, possibly a revision of the Buckingham which formed part of the repertory of Sussex’s men in 1594. During a performance of Henry VIII, on 29 June 1613, the Globe was burnt to the ground. Some contemporary verses mention Burbadge, Heminges, and Condell as present on this occasion. A levy was called for from the housekeepers to meet the cost of rebuilding, and owing to the inability of the representatives of Augustine Phillips to meet the call upon them, Heminges was enabled to recover one of the alienated interests, which he divided with Condell.

The company was at Oxford before November in 1613, and also visited Shrewsbury, Stafford, and Folkestone during 1612–13. They played sixteen times at Court in the winter of 1613–14, on 1, 4, 5, 15, and 16 November and 27 December 1613, and on 1, 4, and 10 January, 2, 4, 8, 10, and 18 February and 6 and 8 March 1614. The rebuilding of the Globe was[218] complete by 30 June 1614, and in the course of 1613–14 the company visited Coventry. Cooke died in February 1614, being then a sharer. Ostler died on 16 December, and his interests in the Globe and Blackfriars became matter of dispute between his widow and her father, John Heminges. The ascertained dates of Ostler’s career render it possible to assign to 1609–14, the period of his connexion with the King’s men, three plays in which he took part. These are Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, at the first production of which, if the actor-list of the 1623 edition is rightly interpreted, the parts of Ferdinand, the Cardinal, and Antonio were played respectively by Burbadge, Condell, and Ostler, Fletcher’s Valentinian, played by Burbadge, Condell, Lowin, Ostler, and Underwood, and his Bonduca, played by Burbadge, Condell, Lowin, Ostler, Underwood, Tooley, Ecclestone, and Robinson. Bonduca must be either earlier than Ecclestone’s departure for the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1611, or after he quitted that company and presumably rejoined the King’s in 1613.

The King’s men gave eight plays at Court on unspecified days during the winter of 1614–15. On 29 March 1615 they were in trouble with other companies for playing in Lent, and Heminges and Burbadge appeared on their behalf before the Privy Council. In April 1615 they were at Nottingham. They gave fourteen plays at Court between 1 November 1615 and 1 April 1616, and again the precise dates are not specified. They also appeared before Anne at Somerset House on 21 December 1615.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, and with this event I must close my detailed chronicle of the fortunes of the company. A new patent was issued to them on 27 March 1619, probably to secure their right to perform in the Blackfriars, which was being challenged by the action of the City.[625] Since 1603 Shakespeare, Phillips, Sly, Cowley, Armin, and Fletcher have dropped out of the list, and are replaced by Lowin, Underwood, Tooley, Ecclestone, Gough, and Robinson, together with Nathan Field, Robert Benfield, and John Shank, who now appear for the first time as members of the company.[626] Benfield and Field are last traceable with the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1613 and 1615 respectively, Shank with the Palsgrave’s men in 1613. The only names common to both patents are those of Burbadge, Heminges, and Condell.[219] But in fact Burbadge died on 13 March 1619, while the patent was going through its stages, and his place was almost immediately taken by Joseph Taylor, from Prince Charles’s men. About the same time Field left the company.[627] Heminges, described as ‘stuttering’ in 1613, cannot be shown to have acted since the Catiline of 1611. He had probably devoted himself to the business management of the company, in which he always appears prominent. Condell also seems to have given up acting about 1619, and during the rest of the history of the company up to its extinction in 1642, its mainstays were Lowin and Taylor, who became depositaries of the tradition of the great Shakespearian parts. John Downes, who was prompter to the Duke of York’s men after the Restoration, relates how, when Betterton played Hamlet, ‘Sir William [Davenant] (having seen Mr. Taylor of the Black-Fryers Company Act it, who being instructed by the Author Mr. Shakespear) taught Mr. Betterton in every Particle of it’; and how Davenant was similarly able to act as Betterton’s tutor for Henry the Eighth, for he ‘had it from Old Mr. Lowen, that had his Instructions from Mr. Shakespear himself’.[628] When Heminges and Condell came to print Shakespeare’s plays in 1623, they prefixed ‘the names of the principall Actors in all these playes’ as follows: ‘William Shakespeare, Richard Burbadge, John Hemmings, Augustine Phillips, William Kempt, Thomas Poope, George Bryan, Henry Condell, William Slye, Richard Cowly, John Lowine, Samuell Crosse, Alexander Cooke, Samuel Gilburne, Robert Armin, William Ostler, Nathan Field, John Underwood, Nicholas Tooley, William Ecclestone, Joseph Taylor, Robert Benfield, Robert Goughe, Richard Robinson, John Shancke, John Rice.’ The order is a little puzzling. The first ten entries may be those of the original members of the Chamberlain’s company in 1594; and if so, their order does not matter. But it is difficult to believe that the other sixteen can represent either the order in which the men began to play for the company, or the order in which they became sharers. Of course, there may have been comings and goings known to Heminges and Condell, but not now traceable. Thus Field and even Taylor may have come for a short while and gone again before 1611. But it seems impossible that Tooley, who was ‘fellow’ to Phillips in 1605, could really have been junior to the recruits from the Queen’s Revels in 1609. On the whole, one must suppose that, if Heminges and Condell[220] aimed at an exact chronology, their memory occasionally failed them. The omission from the Folio of Duke, Beeston, Sincler, and Sands may indicate that the list is confined to sharers. It is probable that Fletcher, who is also omitted, was not a sharer and did not act in any Shakespearian play.

xxi. THE EARL OF WORCESTER’S AND QUEEN ANNE’S MEN

The first company under the patronage of this house had a long and wholly provincial career.[629] The earliest record of it is at Barnstaple in 1555. On 10 October 1563 it was at Leicester. On 13 and 14 January 1565 it was at Sir George Vernon’s, Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, under the leadership of one Hamond.[630] It is further traceable in December 1565 at Newcastle, before Michaelmas 1566 at Leicester, in 1567–8 at Gloucester, in 1568–9 at Ipswich, Stratford-on-Avon, and Bath, on 11 August 1569 at Nottingham, in 1569–70 and 1570–1 at Gloucester and Barnstaple, in 1571 at Leicester and Beverley, on 9 January 1572 at Nottingham, before Michaelmas at Leicester, on 31 December 1572 at Wollaton, Notts. (Francis Willoughby’s), on 6 January 1573 at Nottingham, in 1572–3 at Bath, in 1573–4 at Abingdon, and in January 1574 at Wollaton again. As the Earl of Worcester’s[221] eldest son bore the courtesy title of Lord Herbert, it is probably the same company which appeared at Leicester, after Michaelmas in 1574, as ‘Lorde Harbards’. But it is named as Worcester’s again in 1574–5 at Stratford-on-Avon, on 28 April 1575 at Nottingham, and after Michaelmas in the same year at Leicester, in 1575–6 at Coventry, in 1576–7 at Stratford-on-Avon and Bath, and on 14 June 1577 at Southampton, where it consisted of ten men. On 19 January 1578 it was at Nottingham, in 1577–8 at Coventry, in 1580–1 and 1581–2 at Stratford-on-Avon, in 1581–2 at Abingdon, on 15 June 1582 at Ipswich, in the same year at Doncaster.

Two incidents in successive years suggest that Worcester’s men were not always quite so amenable, as vagrants should have been, to municipal discipline. The first was at Norwich on 7 June 1583. Here there was a fear of plague, and the company were given 26s. 8d., on a promise not to play. In spite of this they played in their host’s house. The Corporation ordered ‘that their lord shall be certified of their contempt’, and that they should never again receive reward in Norwich, and should presently depart the town on pain of imprisonment. It was afterwards agreed, however, on submission and earnest entreaty, not to report the misdemeanour to the Earl of Worcester. The second occasion was in the following March in Leicester, and the entries in the Corporation archives are so interesting as to deserve reproduction in full.[631]

Tuesdaie the third daie of Marche, 1583, certen playors whoe said they were the seruants of the Quenes Maiesties Master of the Revells, who required lycence to play & for there aucthorytye showed forth an Indenture of Lycense from one M^r Edmonde Tylneye esquier M^r of her Maiesties Revells of the one parte, and George Haysell of Wisbiche in the Ile of Elye in the Countie of Cambridge, gentleman on the other parte.

The which indenture is dated the vj^th daie of Februarye in the xxv^th yere of her Maiesties raign &c.

In which Indenture there ys one article that all Justices, Maiores, Sherifs, Bayllyfs, Constables, and all other her officers, ministers & subiects whatsoeuer to be aydinge & assistinge vnto the said Edmund[222] Tilneye, his Deputies & Assignes, attendinge & havinge due regard vnto suche parsons as shall disorderly intrude themselves into any the doings and actions before mencioned, not beinge reformed, qualifyed & bound to the orders prescribed by the said Edmund Tyllneye. These shalbee therefore not only to signifye & geve notice vnto all & euery her said Justices &c. that none of there owne pretensed aucthoritye intrude themselves & presume to showe forth any suche playes, enterludes, tragedies, comodies, or shewes in any places within this Realm, withoute the orderlye allowance thereof vnder the hand of the sayd Edmund.

Nota. No play is to bee played, but suche as is allowed by the sayd Edmund, & his hand at the latter end of the said booke they doe play.

The forsed Haysell is nowe the chefe playor &c.

Fridaye the 6 of Marche.

Certen players came before M^r Mayor at the Hall there beinge present M^r John Tatam, M^r George Tatam, M^r Morton & M^r Worship: who sayed they were the Earle of Wosters men: who sayd the forsyd playors were not lawfully aucthorysed, & that they had taken from them there commyssion, but it is untrue, for they forgat there box at the Inne in Leicester, & so these men gat yt & they sed the syd Haysell was not here hymself and they sent the same to Grantom to the syd Haysell who dwellith there.

William Earle of Worcester &c. hath by his wrytinge dated the 14 of Januarye Anno 25^o Eliz. Reginae licensed his Seruants viz. Robert Browne, James Tunstall, Edward Allen, William Harryson, Thomas Cooke, Rychard Johnes, Edward Browne, Rychard Andrewes to playe & goe abrode, vsinge themselves orderly &c. (in theise words &c.) These are therefore to require all suche her Highnes offycers to whom these presents shall come, quietly & frendly within your severall presincts & corporacions to permytt & suffer them to passe with your furtherance vsinge & demeanynge themselves honestly & to geve them (the rather for my sake) suche intertaynement as other noble mens players haue (In Wytnes &c.)

• M^r Mayor
• M^r Jo. Heyrycke
• M^r Noryce
• M^r Ja. Clarke
• M^r George Tatam
• M^r Morton
• M^r Rob^t Heyrycke
• M^r Ellys
• M^r Newcome.

Memorandum that M^r Mayor did geve the aforesaid playors an angell towards there dinner & wild them not to playe at this present: being Fryday the vj^th of Marche, for that the tyme was not conveynyent.

The foresaid playors mett M^r Mayor in the strete nere M^r Newcomes housse, after the angell was geven abowte a ij howers, who then craived lycense ageyne to play at there inn, & he told them they shold not, then they went away & seyd they wold play, whether he wold or not, & in dispite of hym, with dyvers other evyll & contemptyous words: Witness here of M^r Newcome, M^r Wycam, & William Dethicke.

[223]

More, these men, contrary to M^r Mayors comandment, went with their drum & trumppytts thorowe the Towne, in contempt of M^r Mayor, neyther wold come at his comandment, by his offycer, viz. Worship.

William Pateson my lord Harbards man		these ij
Thomas Powlton my lord of Worcesters man

were they which dyd so much abuse M^r Mayor in the aforesayd words.

Nota. These sayd playors have submytted them selves, & are sorye for there words past, & craved pardon, desyeringe his worship not to write to there Master agayne them, & so vpon there submyssyn, they are lycensed to play this night at there inn, & also they have promysed that vppon the stage, in the begynyng of there play, to shoe vnto the hearers that they are licensed to playe by M^r Mayor & with his good will & that they are sory for the words past.

The latter part of this record is intelligible enough; evidently there was a repetition of the misrule at Norwich. But the earlier part, which refers to a different matter altogether, is distinctly puzzling. The ‘theys’ in the first sentence of the Corporation minute of 6 March are complicated, and it has sometimes been supposed that there was really a company of Master of the Revels’ men, and that it was Worcester’s men who questioned the licence of these.[632] On the whole, I think that a different interpretation of the documents is the more natural one. No doubt Worcester’s men had found it necessary, as a result of the powers granted to Tilney as Master of the Revels by the patent of 24 December 1581, to renew the authority under which they travelled. In addition to a fresh warrant from their lord licensing them to travel as his household servants, and dated 14 January 1583, they obtained on the following 6 February a further licence from Tilney, issued under the clause of his commission which appointed him to ‘order and reforme, auctorise and put downe’ all players in any part of England, whether they were ‘belonginge to any noble man’ or otherwise.[633] This licence, but not the other, they left at their inn in Leicester, while passing through on some previous occasion; and here it was found by some unlicensed players, who appropriated it, and either through misunderstanding or through fraud, imposed it upon the Corporation as an instrument constituting a Master of the Revels’ company. There are two difficulties in this theory. One is that George Haysell, to whom Tilney’s licence was issued, is not one of the actors named in the Earl of Worcester’s warrant. But there are other cases in which the constitution of a company in the[224] eyes of its lord was not quite the same as its constitution from the point of view of business relations, and I should suppose that Haysell, who was evidently not himself acting at the time, was the financier of the enterprise, and gave the bonds which Tilney would probably require for the satisfaction of the covenants of his indenture of licence. The other difficulty is that Leicester is not the only place in which the presence of a Master of the Revels’ company is recorded. Such a company was at Ludlow on 7 December 1583 and at Bath in 1583–4.[634] But, after all, this need mean no more than that the bogus company kept up their fraud for two or three months before they were exposed. If Tilney had really started a company of his own, it might have been expected to have a longer life. The establishment in 1583 of the Queen’s men makes it the less probable that he did so.

The list of this provincial company, as it stood in January 1583, is interesting, because at least four of its members, Robert Browne, Richard Jones, James Tunstall, and above all Edward Alleyn, then only a lad of sixteen, were destined to take a considerable share in the stage history of the future. Edward Browne, too, was afterwards one of the Admiral’s men. Of the rest, William Harrison, Thomas Cooke, Richard Andrewes, as well as of George Haysell (cf. ch. xv) and of the two players who were not named in the warrant, Thomas Powlton and William Pateson, Lord Herbert’s man, nothing or practically nothing further is known.[635] It is possible that the escapades of the company at Norwich and Leicester came, after all, to Worcester’s ears and aroused his displeasure. Visits are recorded to Coventry and Stratford in 1583–4, to Maidstone in 1584–5, to York in March 1585, and thereafter no more. It is also possible that the company passed from Worcester’s service into that of Lord Howard, when the latter became Lord Admiral in 1585. If so, a conveyance by Richard Jones to Edward Alleyn on 3 January 1589 of his share in a stock of apparel, play-books, and so forth, held jointly with Edward and John Alleyn and Robert Browne, must relate, not to a break up of Worcester’s men shortly before the death of the third earl, but to some internal change in the organization of the Admiral’s men.[636] In any case Mr. Fleay’s theory that Worcester’s men, other than Alleyn, became Pembroke’s in 1589 and only joined the[225] Admiral’s in 1594 is quite gratuitous, as there is no evidence of the existence of Pembroke’s men before 1592.[637] Whether there was a Worcester’s company or not from 1585 to 1589, there was certainly one after the accession of the fourth earl. It is traceable at Coventry in 1589–90, at Newcastle in October 1590, at Leicester during the last three months of the same year, at Coventry and Faversham in 1590–1, at Leicester on 26 June 1591 and again in the last three months of the year, at Coventry and Shrewsbury in 1591–2, at Ipswich in 1592–3, twice at Leicester in 1593, both before and after Michaelmas, twice at Bath in 1593–4, at Leicester before Michaelmas in 1595, at Ludlow on 3 December 1595, at Bath in 1595–6, at Leicester on 1 August 1596, at Bristol in August 1598, at York in April 1599, and at Coventry on 3 January 1600 and in 1600–1 and 1601–2.[638]

By the end of 1601 the Earl of Worcester was holding the Mastership of the Horse and other important offices at Court, and may have thought it consonant with his dignity to have London players under his patronage. On 3 January 1602 his company was at Court. On 31 March the Privy Council, after attempting for some years to limit the number of London companies to two, made an order that Oxford’s and Worcester’s men, ‘beinge ioyned by agrement togeather in on companie’, should be allowed to play at the Boar’s Head and nowhere else.[639] In the course of 1602 How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad was published as played by Worcester’s men. By 17 August the company were in relations, under the style of ‘my lorde of Worsters players’, with Henslowe, who opened an account of advances made for their play-books and apparel, on the same lines as that which he kept during 1597–1603 with the Admiral’s men.[640] An early entry is of 9s. for a supper ‘at the Mermayd when we weare at owre a grement’. The account was continued until the spring of 1603, when Henslowe’s famous diary was disused. No theatre is named, but it is probable that, with or without leave from the Privy Council, the company moved to the Rose, which had been vacated by the Admiral’s men on the opening of the Fortune[226] in 1600. Certainly this was so by May 1603, when an acquittance for an advance entered in the account refers to a play to be written for ‘the Earle of Worcesters players at the Rose’.[641] There is no complete list of the company in the diary. The names of those members incidentally mentioned, as authorizing payments or otherwise, are John Duke, Thomas Blackwood, William Kempe, John Thare, John Lowin, Thomas Heywood, Christopher Beeston, Robert Pallant, and a Cattanes whose first name is not preserved. The payees for the performance of 1601–2 were Kempe and Heywood. One Underell was in receipt of wages from the company, together with a tireman, who made purchases of stuffs for them. It is impossible to say which of these men had been with Worcester’s and which with Oxford’s before the amalgamation. Heywood, who was playwright as well as actor, had written for the Admiral’s from 1596 to 1599, and had bound himself to play in Henslowe’s house for two years from 25 March 1598. Pallant had been with Strange’s or the Admiral’s in 1590–1, and Duke, Kempe, and Beeston with the Chamberlain’s in 1598. Since then Kempe had travelled abroad, returning in September 1601. It is little more than a guess that some of these men may have played with Henslowe as Pembroke’s.[642] Several members of the company borrowed money from Henslowe, in some cases before their connexion with the Rose began. Duke had a loan as early as 21 September 1600, and Kempe on 10 March 1602.[643] Blackwood and Lowin borrowed on 12 March 1603 to go into the country with the company.[644] This was, no doubt, when playing in London was suspended owing to the illness of Elizabeth. A loan for a similar purpose was made on the same day to Richard Perkins, and suggests that he too was already one of Worcester’s men. There is, indeed, an earlier note of 4 September 1602 connecting him with one Dick Syferweste, whose fellows were then in the country, while Worcester’s were, of course, at the Rose. But this itself makes it clear that he was interested in a play of Heywood’s, which can hardly be other than that then in preparation at the Rose, and perhaps Syferwest was an unfortunate comrade in Oxford’s or Worcester’s, who had been left out at the reconstruction.[645]

[227]

During the seven months of the account Worcester’s men bought twelve new plays. These were:

• A Medicine for a Curst Wife (Dekker).
• Albere Galles (Heywood and Smith).
• Marshal Osric (Heywood and Smith).
• The Three Brothers (Smith).[646]
• 1 Lady Jane, or, The Overthrow of Rebels[647] (Chettle, Dekker, Heywood, Smith, and Webster).
• Christmas Comes but Once a Year (Chettle, Dekker, Heywood, and Webster).
• 1 The Black Dog of Newgate (Day, Hathaway, Smith, and another).
• The Blind Eats Many a Fly (Heywood).
• The Unfortunate General (Day, Hathaway, and Smith).
• 2 The Black Dog of Newgate (Day, Hathaway, Smith, and another).
• A Woman Killed with Kindness (Heywood).
• The Italian Tragedy (Smith).

As a rule the price was £6 a play; occasionally £1 or £2 more. Dekker had 10s. ‘over & above his price of’ A Medicine for a Curst Wife. This had originally been begun for the Admiral’s and was evidently transferred to Worcester’s by arrangement. After buying 2 Black Dog of Newgate for £7, the company apparently did not like it, and paid £2 more for ‘adycyones’. It is possible to verify from the purchase of properties the performance of nine of the twelve plays. These are Albere Galles (September), The Three Brothers (October), Marshal Osric (November), 1 Lady Jane (November), Christmas Comes but Once a Year (December), 1 Black Dog of Newgate (January), The Unfortunate General (January), 2 Black Dog of Newgate (February), and A Woman Killed with Kindness (March). The production of this last may, however, have been interfered with by Elizabeth’s death. Two plays of the series are extant, A Woman Killed with Kindness, printed in 1607 and described in 1617 as a Queen’s play, and 1 Lady Jane, which may be reasonably identified with Sir Thomas Wyatt, also printed in 1607 as a Queen’s play, and by Dekker and Webster. Dr. Greg regards Mr. Fleay’s identification of Albere Galles with Nobody and Somebody as ‘reasonable’; but it appears to rest on little, except the fact that the latter was also printed as a Queen’s play (S. R. 12 March 1606) and the conjecture that the title of the former might[228] be a corruption of Archigallo. Payments were made in respect of a few contemplated plays, which apparently remained incomplete at the end of the season. These were 2 Lady Jane (Dekker), an unnamed tragedy by Chettle, an unnamed play by Middleton, and another unnamed play by Chettle and Heywood. The company also produced some plays of earlier date. Sir John Oldcastle was presumably transferred to them from the Admiral’s men, for Dekker had £2 10s. in respect of new additions to it in August and September. Heywood also had £1 in September for additions to a play called Cutting Dick, as to the origin of which nothing is known; and properties were bought in October for Byron[648] and for Absalom. Possibly the latter is identical with The Three Brothers. Worcester’s men did not perform at Court in 1602–3, but they must have expected a summons, as on 1 January they bought head-tires of one Mrs. Calle ‘for the corte’. Amongst their tradesmen were also Goodman Freshwater, who supplied ‘a canvas sewt and skenes’, apparently for a stage dog, and John Willett, mercer, on whose arrest John Duke found himself in the Clink at the end of the season. Their expenditure was at a fairly high rate, amounting to a total of £234 11s. 6d. for the seven months. Unlike the Admiral’s men, they spent more on apparel and properties than on play-books. Some of their purchases were costly enough, ‘a grogren clocke, ij veluet gerkens, ij dubletes and ij hed tyres’ from Edward Alleyn for £20, ‘a manes gowne of branshed velluet & a dublett’ from Christopher Beeston for £6, and ‘iiij clothe clockes layd with coper lace’ from Robert Shaw, formerly of the Admiral’s, for £16. On this last transaction they had to allow Henslowe £1 as interest on his money. A ‘flage of sylke’, no doubt for the theatre roof, cost them £1 6s. 8d.[649] In summing his account, Henslowe made various errors, whereby he robbed himself of £1 1s. 3d., and presented a claim to the company for £140 1s. It may be inferred that they had already repaid him £93 12s. 3d., but of this there is no record in the diary. He prepared an acknowledgement to be signed by all the members of the company, but the only signature actually attached is Blackwode’s.

On 9 May 1603 Henslowe notes ‘Begininge to playe agayne by the Kynges licence & layd out sense for my lord of Worsters men as folowethe’; but the only entry is one of £2 paid in earnest to Chettle and Day for a play of Shore’s Wife.[229] If playing was actually resumed, it was not long before the plague drove the companies out of London again, and there is nothing more of Worcester’s men in the diary. Two visits from them are recorded at Leicester in the course of 1603, and two at Coventry and one at Barnstaple, whence they departed without playing, during 1602–3. Early in the new reign the company was taken into the patronage of Queen Anne.[650] This change was probably effected by Christmas, and certainly by 19 February 1604, when John Duke obtained a warrant on account of plays performed before Prince Henry by ‘the Queenes Majesties players’ on the previous 2 and 13 January. The Queen’s men are named in the Privy Council letter permitting the resumption of playing on 9 April 1604, which indicates their house as the Curtain. A list of players is found amongst other ‘officers to the Queene’ receiving four and a half yards of red cloth apiece for the coronation procession of 15 March 1604.[651] The names given are ‘Christopher Beeston, Robert Lee, John Duke, Robert Palante, Richard Purkins, Thomas Haward, James Houlte, Thomas Swetherton, Thomas Grene, and Robert Beeston’. Evidently several leading members had left the company. Kempe was probably dead.[652] Thare and Blackwood were on tour in Germany; Lowin seems to have joined the King’s men. Of Cattanes and Underell no more is known. The same ten names are found in a draft patent for a royal licence to the Queen’s men, of which the text follows:[653]

This draft is undated. But it was prepared during a plague, and located the Queen’s men at the Boar’s Head; and as they may reasonably be supposed to have exchanged the Boar’s Head for the Red Bull (q.v.) before the plague of 1606 began, it may be conjecturally assigned to that of 1603–4. Probably it never passed the Great Seal, for if it had there would have been no necessity, so far as one can judge, for a later patent of 15 April 1609, which is on the rolls, and which closely follows the earlier draft in its terms, except that it omits the reference to the plague, names the Red Bull instead of the Boar’s Head as one of the company’s regular houses, and adds a saving clause for the rights of the Master of the Revels. Here is the text:[654]

[231]

It will be observed that the documents quoted disclose no change in the composition of the Queen’s official servants[232] between 1604 and 1609. But the question of personnel is not really quite so simple as this, since the members of a company under a trade agreement were not always the same as those named in the authority under which it performed. Before discussing this complication, it will be simplest first to set out separately the notices of the Queen’s men, which have been preserved in London and in provincial records respectively.

Queen’s men played at Court on 30 December 1605, in Heywood’s How to Learn of a Woman to Woo, which is not extant. They played also on 27 December 1606. For both years their payee was, as in 1604, John Duke. During 1607 Dekker and Webster’s Sir Thomas Wyatt and Day, Wilkins, and Rowley’s Travels of Three English Brothers were printed with their name on the title-pages. The latter play, according to the entry of 29 June 1607 in the Stationers’ Register, was acted at the Curtain. But it is shown by a passage in The Knight of the Burning Pestle to have been also on the stage of the Red Bull. In this house Thomas Swinnerton, one of the men named in the patents, acquired an interest between 24 March 1605 and 23 March 1606, and all the evidence is in favour of a continuous sojourn of Queen’s men there until 1617. The first quarto of Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, also printed in 1607, does not bear their name, but it is on that of the ‘third edition’ of 1617. They are not named as playing at Court during the winter of 1607–8, but in the course of 1608 Heywood’s Rape of Lucrece was printed, as played by them at the Red Bull. They gave five plays at Court in the winter of 1608–9, one on 27 December 1609, three on 10 and one on 27 December 1610. Heywood’s Golden Age was printed, as played by them at the Red Bull, in 1611. The Court records of 1611–12 are a little confused.[655] But they appear to have played Cooke’s City Gallant on 27 December, his Tu Quoque, which is in fact the same play, on 2 February, to have joined with the King’s men in performances of Heywood’s Silver Age and Rape of Lucrece on 12 and 13 January, and to have played unnamed pieces on 21 and 23 January. From 1609 to 1612 their payee was Thomas Greene. Webster’s White Devil and Dekker’s If It be not Good, the Devil is in It, were printed as theirs in 1612, the former with a laudation of the acting of ‘my freind Maister Perkins’, the latter as played at the Red Bull. They did not play at Court during the winter of 1612–13, but did on 24 December 1613 and 5 January 1614. Tu Quoque was printed as theirs in 1614. In the winter of 1614–15 they gave three plays at Court. Heywood’s[233] Four Prentices of London was printed in 1615 as played by them at the Red Bull, and their name is also on The Honest Lawyer, registered on 14 August 1615 and printed in 1616. They gave four plays at Court during the winter of 1615–16. For all their Court plays from 1613–16 Robert Lee was payee, but Ellis Worth replaces him for a Somerset House performance before Queen Anne on 17 December 1615. When they were called with other companies before the Privy Council on 29 March 1615 to answer for playing in Lent, they were represented by Lee and Christopher Beeston. The records of the Middlesex justices contain a note of 4 October 1616 that Beeston and the rest of the players at the Red Bull were in arrears to the extent of £5 on an annual rate of £2 agreed to by them for the repair of the highways.

Provincial visits of Queen’s men are recorded in November 1605 at Dover; in 1605 at Leicester; in 1605–6 at Bath, Coventry, Saffron Walden, and Weymouth; on 25 July 1606 at Ipswich; on 4 September 1606 at Ludlow; in 1606 at York; in 1606–7 at Bath (twice), Coventry, Exeter, and Ipswich; on 14 August 1607 at Oxford; on 12 September 1607 at Belvoir (Earl of Rutland’s);[656] in 1607 at Barnstaple, Leicester, and Reading; in 1607–8 at Coventry, Oxford, Reading, and Shrewsbury; on 6 June and 26 September 1608 at Leicester;[657] in 1608–9 at Coventry,[658] Marlborough, and Shrewsbury; between 8 July and 9 August 1609 at Dover; on 15 October 1609 at Norwich; in 1609 at Canterbury; in 1609–10 at Shrewsbury and Stafford; about 23 March 1610 at Maidstone; on 2 November 1610 at Ipswich; on 31 December 1610 at Leicester; in 1610–11 at Shrewsbury and Southampton; on 27 February 1611 (for a week) at Norwich; between 11 April and 9 May and between 29 August and 29 September 1612 at Dover; on 14 June and 26 October 1612 at Leicester; in 1611–12 at Saffron Walden; in 1612–13 at Barnstaple, Coventry (perhaps twice), and Ipswich; on 18 February 1613 at Marlborough; on 16 March 1613 at Leicester; between 13 April and 15 May 1613 at Dover; on 2 November 1613 at Marlborough; on 22 December 1613 at Leicester; in 1613–14 at Saffron Walden, Marlborough, Oxford, and Shrewsbury; on 27 April 1614 (for three days) at[234] Norwich;[659] between 3 and 29 September 1614 at Dover; in 1614–15 at Barnstaple and Doncaster (perhaps twice); on 15 April 1615 at Coventry; in April or May 1615 at Leicester; on 6 May 1615 at Norwich;[660] on 16 October 1615 and again later in 1615 and on 22 February 1616 at Leicester;[661] on 7 November 1615 at Marlborough; in 1615–16 at Barnstaple, Dunwich (thrice), Southampton, and Weymouth; in January 1616 at Nottingham; between 20 January and 17 February 1616 and between 11 May and 8 June at Dover; on 17 February 1616 at Coventry; on 22 February 1616 at Leicester; between 1 and 6 April (four days) and on 29 May 1616 at Norwich;[662] on 26 October 1616 at Marlborough; and on 6 February 1617 and again later in 1617 at Leicester.[663]

There were thus tours in each year, which sometimes extended over periods during which the London theatres must have been open. The Leicester notices of 1608, 1615, and 1617 suggest that more than one company was at work, and the explanation certainly is that some of the players named in the patent, instead of joining the London organization, had recourse to making up companies of their own for provincial purposes. Of this there is further evidence. The Southampton archives contain a copy of the following warrant from Queen Anne herself, dated on 7 March 1606:[664]

[235]

Of these three men, Lee, and Lee alone, appears in the London lists of 1603, 1604, and 1609. Of Barfield’s career nothing more is known. Martin Slater, whose name can be divined under that of Statier, had left the Admiral’s in 1597. He was probably in Scotland during 1599, and if so his patronage by Anne may be analogous to the patronage by James, which brought Laurence Fletcher’s name into the King’s men’s patent. In 1603 he was payee for Hertford’s men. Presumably the enterprise of 1606 did not last long, for in the spring of 1608 Slater became manager for the King’s Revels. His place in the provinces may have been taken by Thomas Swinnerton, who was leading a company of Queen’s men at Coventry in 1608–9, and whose departure from the London company is perhaps indicated by the fact that at about the same time he sold a share, which he had held in the house of the Red Bull. Swinnerton was travelling again in 1614–16 and using an exemplification of the patent of 1609. In 1616 he was accompanied by Robert Lee, who for two years before had been acting as payee for the London company. Lee came again with the exemplification to Norwich on 31 May 1617, and it was then noted to have been taken out on 7 January 1612. A few days later, on 4 June 1617, a copy was entered in the Norwich court books of a warrant by the[236] Lord Chamberlain of 16 July 1616, condemning the use of such exemplifications, and specifying amongst others two taken out by Thomas Swinnerton and Martin Slater, ‘beinge two of the Queens Maiesties company of Playors hauing separated themselves from their said Company’.[665] Slater had, therefore, returned to the provincial field, and there were now two travelling companies of Queen’s men. I take it that in 1617 the Lord Chamberlain succeeded in suppressing them, and that the Queen’s men who continued to appear in the provinces up to Anne’s death on 2 March 1619 were the London company.[666] Lee joined the Queen’s Revels as reorganized under a licence of 31 October 1617. Slater, about the same time, joined the Children of Bristol, for whom, with John Edmonds and Nathaniel Clay, he got letters of assistance in April 1618. In these all three are described as her Majesty’s servants. Swinnerton apparently succeeded in keeping on foot a company of his own, which visited Leicester in 1619.[667] The Bristol company was in fact under Anne’s patronage, but Lee and Swinnerton, no less than Slater and Edmonds, remained technically the Queen’s servants, and are included with the London men in a list of the players who received mourning at her funeral on 13 May 1619.[668] These were Robert Lee, Richard Perkins, Christopher Beeston, Robert Pallant, Thomas Heywood, James Holt, Thomas Swinnerton, Martin Slater, Ellis Wroth, John Comber, Thomas Basse, John Blaney, William Robinson, John Edmonds, Thomas Drewe, Gregory Sanderson, and John Garret.

The list of seventeen names includes seven of the ten patentees of 1609. I do not know what had become of John Duke and Robert Beeston. Thomas Greene had died in August 1612, having made on 25 July a will, amongst the witnesses to which were Christopher Beeston, Heywood, and Perkins. The disposal of his property led many years afterwards to a lawsuit, which gives valuable information as to both the personnel and the organization of the London company. After providing for his family and making some small legacies, including one to John Cumber, and 40s. to ‘my fellowes of the house of the Redd Bull, to buy gloves for them’, he left the residue to his widow and executrix, Susanna Greene, formerly wife of one Browne.[669] In June 1613 she took a third[237] husband, James Baskervile. The following is her account in 1623 of certain transactions with the company. Shortly before Greene’s death had died George Pulham, a ‘half sharer’ in the company, which is described as being in 1612 ‘the companie of the actors or players of the late queenes majestie Queene Anne, then vsuallie frequentinge and playinge att the signe of the Redd Bull in St. Johns Street, in Clerkenwell parishe, in the county of Middlesex’. His representatives received £40 from the company in respect of his half-share. This was under an agreement formerly made amongst the company ‘concerninge the part and share of euerie one of the sharers and half sharers of the said companie according to the rate and proporcion of their shares or half shares in that behalfe’. Under the same agreement Susanna Greene, whose husband was ‘one of the principall and cheif persons of the said companie, and a full adventurer, storer and sharer of in and amongst them’, claimed £80, together with £37 laid out by him before his death in ‘diuers necessarie prouisions’ for the company. In order to get satisfaction she had to appeal to Viscount Lisle, Chamberlain of the Queen’s Household, ‘who hadd a kind of gouernment and suruey ouer the said players’. It was arranged that Mrs. Greene should receive a half-share in the profits until the debt was paid. By the time, however, of her marriage with Baskervile, she had only received £6. In June 1615 negotiations took place between the Baskerviles and the company, who then included Worth, Perkins, and Christopher Hutchinson, alias Beeston, by which the Baskerviles agreed to invest £57 10s. in the enterprise and to accept in discharge of their claims a pension for their joint lives of 1s. 8d. a day ‘for euerye of sixe daies in the weeke wherin they should play’. The company defaulted, and in June 1616 a second settlement was made, whereby the Baskerviles invested another £38, a further pension of 2s. a day was established, and the life of Susan’s son, Francis Browne (or Baskervile), was substituted for her husband’s. The players were Christopher Beeston, Thomas Heywood, Ellis Worth, John Cumber, John Blaney, Francis Walpole, Robert Reynolds, William Robins, Thomas Drewe, and Emanuel Read.[670] Again they defaulted, and moreover fell into arrear for the wages of[238] another of Susan Baskervile’s sons, William Browne, who played with them as a hired man. A third settlement, reassuring the pensions, and substituting William Browne for Francis, who was now dead, was made on 3 June 1617, when the company were ‘now comme, or shortlie to comme from the said Playhowse called the Redd Bull to the Playhowse in Drurie Lane called the Cockpitt’; and to this the parties, so far as the company were concerned, were Beeston, Heywood, Worth, Cumber, Walpole, Blaney, Robins, and Drewe. Apparently Reynolds and Read, and also Perkins and Thomas Basse, although their names were recited in the deed, refused to seal. Some further light is thrown on this by allegations of Worth, Cumber, and Blaney, in opposition to those of Mrs. Baskervile in 1623. The company of 1617 contained some members ‘new come into’ it, ‘which were of other companyes at the tyme of graunting the first annuity’. The terms of the agreement were carefully looked into, and were found to bind the company to procure the subscription of any future new members to its terms. This was inconsistent with a proviso of 1616 that the pensions should only last so long as four of those then signing should play together; and therefore, while some of the company signed and gave bonds by way of security on an oral promise by Mrs. Baskervile that this proviso should in fact hold good, others refused to do so. These were the wiser, for in 1623, when Worth, Cumber, and Blaney were the only three of the 1617 signatories who still held together, Mrs. Baskervile sued them on their bonds, and although they applied to Chancery for equitable enforcement of the alleged oral promise, Chancery held that the agreement, being made between players, was ‘vnfitt to be releeued or countenaunced in a courte of equitie’. In some other respects the players’ account of the transactions differs from Mrs. Baskervile’s, and in particular they alleged that the Baskerviles had secured their interest by bribing Beeston, to whom ‘your oratours and the rest of thier fellowes at that tyme and long before and since did put the managing of thier whole businesses and affaires belonging vnto them ioyntly as they were players in trust’, so that she knew well that whatever he promised the rest ‘would allowe of the same’. This Mrs. Baskervile repudiates as regards the bribe, and does not wholly accept as regards Beeston’s position in the company, although she admits that both before and after her husband’s death they ‘did putt much affiance in the said Huttchinson alias Beeston, concerninge the managing of their affaires’.

I am afraid that Beeston’s character does not come[239] altogether unstained out of another suit brought by one John Smith in the Court of Requests during 1619 for a sum of £46 5s. 8d. in respect of ‘tinsell stuffes and other stuffe’ delivered on Beeston’s order to Worth, Perkins, Cumber, and others at the Red Bull between 27 June 1612 and 23 February 1617, since when they had ‘fallen at variance and strife amongst themselves and separated and devided themselves into other companies.’ He accuses these four men of conspiring to keep him out of payment. Worth, Perkins, and Cumber asserted that the liability was Beeston’s. The company had ‘required divers officers and that every of the said actors should take vpon them some place & charge’. Beeston was charged with the provision of furniture and apparel, which needed ‘a thriueing man & one that was of abilitie & meanes’. He was to ‘defaulke outt of the colleccions and gatheringes which were made continually when-soeuer any playe was acted a certen some of money as a comon stock.’ to pay for purchases out of this, and to account to the company for the balance. No one else was privy to his transactions. The arrangement lasted for seven or eight years, and they believe that he ‘much enritched himself and rendered a false account for expenditure of £400. He is now conspiring with Smith and hoping for a chance to ‘exclayme on’ them. If he incurred debt, he had certainly taken funds to meet it. From the beginning he had ‘a greater care for his owne privatt gaine’. Now he has ‘of late given over his coate & condicion & separated and devided himself’ from the company, carrying away all the furniture and apparel. Beeston says that he has long been ill. On Queen Anne’s death he left the company and joined Prince Charles’s men. The Queen’s had ten sharers, and sometimes one, sometimes another, provided the clothes. He denies liability. Several witnesses, including William Freshwater, merchant tailor and ‘a workman to the said company’, spoke to Beeston’s liability.[671] One John King says that the company allowed Beeston ‘one half of the profitt that came of the gallyryes’, and that they began to break up about three years ago. At a hearing on 16 June 1620 Beeston got the case deferred on the ground that Emanuel Read, a material witness, was in Ireland until Michaelmas. Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Perkins, said that Read had been there for two or three years, was over at Easter, and was not expected again. Smith got in a blow at Beeston’s credit with an affidavit that he had said ‘it was[240] nothing for him to put in a false answere into the Court of Requestes, for that it was not punishable’. The result of the suit is unknown.

We may perhaps reach the following conclusions as to the composition of the London company after the deaths in 1612 of Pulham, presumably a recent comer since 1609, and Greene. Their nucleus consisted of two of the patented men, Christopher Beeston and Heywood, who probably remained with them throughout. Of the other patentees, Swinnerton kept to the provinces. Lee had rejoined them from the provinces by 1613 or 1614, and went back to the provinces about May 1616. Perkins was apparently not of their number in June 1616, but was in June 1617. Holt is not traceable; perhaps he also went to the provinces. Pallant joined the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1614 and had passed to Prince Charles’s by 1616. All these five men, however, appear with Beeston and Heywood as Anne’s servants at her funeral. Here too are Slater and Edmonds, then of the Bristol, and apparently never of the London company; also Worth, Cumber, Blaney, Drewe, and Robinson, presumably identical with Robins, all of whom had joined the London company by June 1616, Basse, formerly of the Lady Elizabeth’s, who joined it between June 1616 and June 1617, and Gregory Sanderson and John Garret, who, if they belonged to the London company at all, must have joined it after June 1617.[672] The list does not contain the names of two men who belonged to the company in 1616 and 1617. One was Emanuel Read, who joined it from the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1613 or later; the other, Robert Reynolds, whose attachment to the company must have been rather loose, as he was travelling in Germany in July 1616 and again in 1618. Evidently, as the lawsuits suggest, the organization of the Queen’s men during its later years was rather unstable. Into its attempts to hold together after Anne’s death and the after-careers of its members, it is not necessary to go.

In June 1617 the Queen’s were come, or shortly to come, from the Red Bull to the Cockpit. In fact they were at the Cockpit, then a new house, on 4 March 1617, when it was sacked by prentices in a Shrovetide riot.[673] But they may have returned to the Red Bull for a time, while the Cockpit was being repaired, as they did again after they lost it on the separation from Christopher Beeston, who seems to have been its owner, in 1619.

[241]

xxii. THE DUKE OF LENNOX’S MEN

The first notice of Lennox’s men is on 13 October 1604, when he gave an open warrant of assistance in their behalf addressed to mayors, justices, and other local officers, some of whom had apparently refused the company permission to play (App. D, no. cxxxvii). On 16 March 1605 Francis Henslowe gave his uncle Philip a bond of £60 to observe articles of an agreement he had entered into with John Garland and Abraham Savere ‘his ffellowes, servantes to the most noble Prince the duke of Lennox’; and on 1 March 1605 Savere had given Francis Henslowe a power of attorney to recover £40 on a forfeited bond from John Garland of ‘the ould forde’, securing delivery of a warrant made to Savere by Lennox (Henslowe Papers, 62). Some other traces point to a connexion between Savere and Francis Henslowe, which was ended by the latter’s death in the middle of 1606 (Henslowe, ii. 277), and an undated loan of £7 by Philip Henslowe to his nephew ‘to goyne with owld Garlland and Symcockes and Saverey when they played in the duckes nam at ther laste goinge owt’ (Henslowe, i. 160) makes it possible to add one more to the list of the company. It does not seem to have played in London, but is traceable at Canterbury in 1603–4, Barnstaple, Coventry, and Norwich in 1604–5, and Coventry again in 1607–8. Both Garland and Henslowe had been Queen Elizabeth’s men, and it is possible that, when these men were left stranded by her death in 1603, they found a new patron in Lennox. John Garland had joined the Duke of York’s men by 1610, and it has been suggested that this company may have been a continuation of Lennox’s.

xxiii. THE DUKE OF YORK’S (PRINCE CHARLES’S) MEN
The Duke of York’s Men (1608–12); The Prince’s Men (1612–16)

A company under the patronage of Prince Charles, then Duke of York, first makes its appearance during 1608, and in the provinces. A visit of ‘the younger princes’ men to Ipswich is recorded on 20 October. During 1608–9 the company was also at Bath, and it is at least possible that it was ‘the Princes players of the White Chapple London’ rewarded at Leicester in 1608. The Boar’s Head (q.v.) may have been roughly spoken of as in Whitechapel, and although there is no proof that the Duke of York’s men occupied it after the Queen’s moved to the Red Bull, there is nothing to connect them during the earlier years of their career with any of the better-known London houses. On 30 March 1610 they received, like other London companies, a patent, of which the following are the terms:[674]

The only member of the Duke of York’s men, of whose previous history anything is known, is John Garland. He was of the Duke of Lennox’s men in 1605. Perhaps the whole company was taken over from the Duke of Lennox. Mr. Fleay says that the Duke of York’s men arose ‘immediately after the disappearance of the King’s Revels Children’,[675] and appears to suggest a continuity between the two companies; but he must have overlooked the fact that the Duke of York’s were already performing in the provinces, while the King’s Revels were in all probability still at Whitefriars.[676]

Some reconstruction doubtless took place about the date of the issue of the patent, for the pleadings in the equity suit of Taylor v. Hemynges in 1612 recites an agreement of 15 March 1610, which provided for the continuance of fellowship during three years and the forfeiture of the interest in a common stock of ‘apparrell goodes money and other thinges’ of any member, who left without the consent of the rest. It was made between Garland on the one side and Taylor, Rowley, Dawes, and Hobbes on the other, and these four gave Garland a bond of £200 as security. On 8 May the five bought some ‘olde clothes or apparrell which formerly weare players clothes or apparrell’ from John Heminges of the King’s men for £11, and gave a bond of £20 for payment. Apparently payment had not been made by Easter 1611, when Taylor ‘by the licence and leave of his said Master the Duke vpon some speciall reason ... did give over and leave to play in the company’. Under the agreement the apparel passed to his fellows, and according to Taylor they paid Heminges the £11 or otherwise satisfied him, and then ‘havinge conceaued some vndeserued displeasure’ against Taylor for leaving them, conspired with Heminges to defraud him of £20 on the bond. According to Heminges no payment[244] was made, and he sued Taylor as ‘the best able to paye and discharge the same’. Taylor was arrested and in February 1612 brought his suit in equity to stay the common law proceedings. The result is unknown.

The company frequently played at Court, but, as it would seem, only before the younger members of the royal family. Their first appearance was before Charles and Elizabeth on 9 February 1610. In 1610–11 they were at Saffron Walden. They came before Charles and Elizabeth on 12 and 20 December 1610 and 15 January 1611, and before Henry, Charles, and Elizabeth on 12 and 28 January and 13 and 24 February 1612. On this last occasion they played William Rowley’s Hymen’s Holiday, or Cupid’s Vagaries. After Henry’s death, on 7 November 1612, they became entitled to the designation of the Prince’s players. In 1612–13 they were at Barnstaple and Ipswich. On 2 and 10 March 1613 they gave the two parts of The Knaves, perhaps by Rowley, before Charles, Elizabeth, and the Palsgrave. In 1613–14 they were at Barnstaple, Dover, Saffron Walden, and Coventry. They were not at Court for the winter of 1613–14. In November 1614 they were at Oxford, Leicester, and Nottingham. At the Christmas of 1614–15 they gave six plays before Charles, and on 11 February they were at Youghal in Ireland. Ten days later R. A.’s The Valiant Welshman was entered and in the course of the year published as theirs. Their leader seems to have been Rowley. He both wrote plays for them and acted as payee for all their court rewards from 1610 to 1614. In 1611 they lost Taylor and in 1614 Dawes to the Lady Elizabeth’s men; and these transferences seem to have led to a temporary amalgamation of the two companies, which Mr. Fleay and Dr. Greg place in 1614, but for which their distinct appearances at Court in the following winter suggest 1615 as the more likely date.[677] On 29 March 1615 William Rowley and John Newton were called with representatives of other companies before the Privy Council to answer for playing in Lent. No separate representation of the Lady Elizabeth’s is indicated by the list. In 1614–15 the Prince’s were at Norwich, Coventry, Winchester, and Barnstaple. In the winter of 1615–16 they gave four plays before Prince Charles, and the payee was not Rowley, but Alexander Foster, formerly[245] of the Lady Elizabeth’s. Rosseter’s patent of 3 June 1615 for a second Blackfriars theatre contemplates its use by the Prince’s men and the Lady Elizabeth’s, as well as by the Queen’s Revels, and Field’s Amends for Ladies was actually played in the Blackfriars, probably in this house before it was suppressed, by the two first-named companies. After Henslowe’s death on 6 January 1616, the combination, whatever its nature, was probably broken up, and separate companies of Prince’s men and Lady Elizabeth’s men were again formed. But both of the original companies continued to be represented in one which remained at the Hope. This is shown by an agreement entered into with Alleyn and Meade on 20 March 1616, and signed in the presence of Robert Daborne and others by William Rowley, Robert Pallant, Joseph Taylor, Robert Hamlen, John Newton, William Barksted, Thomas Hobbes, Antony Smith, William Penn, and Hugh Attwell.[678] This recites that the signatories and others had given bonds to Henslowe and Meade for the repayment of sums lent them by Henslowe, for a stock of apparel worth £400, and for the fulfilment of certain Articles of Agreement; and that at their entreaty Alleyn had agreed to accept £200 in discharge of their full liabilities. They covenant to pay the £200 by making over to Alleyn one-fourth of the daily takings of the whole galleries at the Hope or any house in which they may play, and to carry out the Articles with Alleyn and Meade by so playing. Alleyn and Meade agree to cancel the bonds when the £200 is paid, except any which may relate to private debts of any of the men to Henslowe, and also to make over to them any apparel which they had received from Henslowe, Alleyn, or Meade. The rights of Alleyn and Meade against any bondsmen not taking part in the new agreement are to remain unaffected. That the signatories to this document used the name of Prince Charles’s men seems pretty clear from the reappearance of several of their names in two later lists of the Prince’s men, one in Rowley and Middleton’s Mask of Heroes (1619), the other in the records of King James’s funeral on 20 May 1625.[679] This last contains also the name of Gilbert Reason, who is not one of the signatories of 1616, but was in that year travelling the provinces with an irregularly obtained exemplification of[246] the 1610 patent.[680] An undated letter from Pallant, Rowley, Taylor, Newton, Hamlen, Attwell, and Smith to Alleyn, which may belong to some time in 1616 or 1617, shows that, in spite of the easy terms which the company seem to have received by the agreement, the subsequent relations were not altogether smooth. They write to excuse their removal from the Bankside, where they had stood the intemperate weather, until ‘more intemperate Mr. Meade thrust vs over, taking the day from vs w^ch by course was ours’. They ask Alleyn to find them a house and in the meantime to lend them £40, on the security that ‘we haue to receiue from the court (w^ch after Shrouetide wee meane to pursue w^th best speede) a great summe of monie’, amounting to more than twice the loan desired.[681] It is to be presumed that the ‘course’ to which they refer was some distribution of days between playing and bear-baiting. In 1619 the company was joined by Christopher Beeston, formerly of the Queen’s, and his house of the Cockpit became available for their use.

xxiv. THE LADY ELIZABETH’S MEN

This company seems to have come into existence in 1611 under the following patent of 27 March:[682]

The company is first traceable in the country, at Bath during 1610–11 and at Ipswich on 28 May 1611. The names of Moore and Townsend render possible its identification with an unnamed company, which on 29 August 1611 gave duplicate bonds of £500 to Henslowe for the observance of certain articles of agreement of the same date. Unfortunately the articles themselves are not preserved, but it is likely that they contained an arrangement for the housing and financing of the company by Henslowe.[683] The signatories to both bonds include John Townsend, Joseph Taylor, William Ecclestone, Thomas Hunt, John Rice, Robert Hamlen, Joseph Moore, William Carpenter, Thomas Basse, and Alexander Foster. To these one adds Giles Gary and William Barksted and the other Francis Waymus. The names recited in the bodies of the documents agree with the signatures, except that Gary appears in both. Several of these men now come into London theatrical history for the first time, but Gary is probably the Giles Cary who with Barksted played in Epicoene for the Queen’s Revels in 1609, Taylor came from the Duke of York’s, and Rice from the King’s. One Hunt, whose Christian name is unknown, was with the Admiral’s[248] in 1601. Alexander Foster received payment on behalf of the Lady Elizabeth’s men for three plays given at Court during the Christmas of 1611–12. The first was on 19 January 1612 before Elizabeth and Henry; the second was The Proud Maid’s Tragedy, on 25 February before James; and the third was on 11 March, again before Elizabeth and Henry. In 1611–12 the company were at Dover and Coventry, and on 30 July 1612 at Leicester. On 20 October they played before Elizabeth and the Palsgrave, shortly after the latter’s arrival in England, in the Cockpit. This was perhaps the play paid for out of the private funds of Elizabeth, as the result of a wager with Mr. Edward Sackville.[684] During Christmas they played twice before Charles, Elizabeth, and the Palsgrave, showing Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan on 25 February and Raymond Duke of Lyons on 1 March. For 1612–13 Joseph Taylor was payee.

The names of Taylor and Ecclestone are found in another document in the Dulwich collection, which pretty clearly belongs to the Lady Elizabeth’s men, and which shows that about the spring of 1613 their business relations with Henslowe entered upon a somewhat troubled phase. This is shown by internal evidence to have been written in the course of 1615. It is here reproduced:[685]

Articles of oppression against M^r. Hinchlowe.

It is not quite possible to trace all the five breakings of companies referred to in the closing sentence; but the statement is sufficient to give a fairly clear outline of the history of the Lady Elizabeth’s men during the years which it covers, and, as it happens, there is a good deal of other evidence from which to supplement it. It appears that in March 1613 Henslowe joined companies with Rosseter; that is to say, that an amalgamation took place between the Lady Elizabeth’s men and the Children of the Queen’s Revels, who had been acting at the Whitefriars under the patent to Rosseter[251] and others of 4 January 1610. One of these children was Robert Baxter, if he is the Baxter named in the Articles of Grievance as a fellow of the company with Taylor between March 1613 and March 1614.[686] During the same period it appears that William Ecclestone left the company. He afterwards joined the King’s men. But, before he went, he took a part in The Honest Man’s Fortune, which is stated in the Dyce MS. to have been played in 1613, while its ‘principal actors’ are named in the 1679 folio of Beaumont and Fletcher as ‘Nathan Field, Robert Benfield, Emanuel Read, Joseph Taylor, Will. Eglestone and Thomas Basse’. This particular combination seems to point clearly to the Lady Elizabeth’s men as the original producers of the play. A very similar cast is assigned in the same folio to The Coxcomb, namely, ‘Nathan Field, Joseph Taylor, Giles Gary, Emanuel Read, Richard Allen, Hugh Atawell, Robert Benfeild, and William Barcksted’; and I think that this also must belong to a performance by the Lady Elizabeth’s men about 1613. The Coxcomb had certainly been played at Court by the Queen’s Revels in 1612, but it seems impossible that Taylor can then have been a member of that company.[687] The new blood brought in from Rosseter’s company will, then, have included Field, Attwell, Richard Allen, Benfield, Reade, and perhaps Robert Baxter, of whom the first three had played in Jonson’s Epicoene for the Revels in 1609. When it is remembered that Cary and Barksted had been in the same cast, it will be realized that the Lady Elizabeth’s men, as constituted in 1613, were very much the Queen’s Revels over again.

I think there can be no doubt that the Lady Elizabeth’s men was the company principally referred to in the long series of letters from Robert Daborne to Henslowe, which runs from 17 April 1613 to 31 July 1614.[688] Daborne had been[252] one of the patentees for the Queen’s Revels in 1609, and some letters apparently belonging to the same series show Field as interested, either as writer or actor, in some of the plays which Henslowe was purchasing from Daborne, with a view to reselling them to this company. Further confirmation is to be obtained for this view from the signature of Hugh Attwell as witness to one of Henslowe’s advances to Daborne,[689] and from the mention of Benfield,[690] of Pallant who, as will be seen, joined the company in 1614,[691] and of Eastward Ho! which their repertory had inherited from that of the Queen’s Revels.[692] That ‘Mr. Allin’ was hearing Daborne’s plays with Henslowe in May 1613 need cause no difficulty.[693] It is true that Edward Alleyn is not known to have had any relations with the Lady Elizabeth’s men, but John Alleyn, a nephew of Edward, is amongst Henslowe’s witnesses about this time,[694] and Richard Allen, who may not have belonged to the same family, was himself one of the Lady Elizabeth’s men, and perhaps served as their literary adviser. The correspondence makes it possible to recover the names of a series of plays on which Daborne was engaged, either alone or in collaboration with others, during the period over which it extends, and all of which seem to have been primarily meant for the Lady Elizabeth’s men, although he occasionally professes, as an aid to his chaffering, to have an alternative market with the King’s men.[695] From April to June 1613 he was writing a tragedy of Machiavel and the Devil, and this is probably the ‘new play’, of which he suggests the performance on Wednesday in August, to follow one of Eastward Ho! on the Monday.[696][253] For this Henslowe covenanted to pay him £20. In June he was also completing The Arraignment of London, of which he had given an act to Cyril Tourneur to write; and to this The Bellman of London, for which he and a colleague, perhaps again Tourneur, asked no more than £12 and ‘the overplus of the second day’ in August, was probably a sequel.[697] This may be the play which he had delivered to Henslowe about the beginning of December. About July he seems also to have been occupied upon a play in collaboration with Field, Fletcher, and Massinger. This is not named, and Mr. Fleay’s identification of it with The Honest Man’s Fortune is rather hazardous.[698] In December he began The Owl, for which his price fell to £10; and on 11 March 1614 he had finished this, and was beginning The She Saint and asking ‘but 12^l a play till they be playd.’ The correspondence has a gap between the middle of August and the middle of October 1613. Probably the company were on tour; they are found at Coventry, Shrewsbury, and Marlborough in 1612–13, Canterbury on 4 July 1613, Dover between 12 July and 7 August, and Leicester on 13 October. In the spring they had been at Bristol and Norwich. On 12 December they repeated one of their plays of the preceding winter, Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan, before Charles, and on 25 January 1614 gave Eastward Ho! which they had been playing in public during the summer, before James. Taylor was again their payee for this Christmas.

The statement of grievances indicates another reconstruction of the company in March 1614. In this transaction, which apparently involved the buying out of Rosseter’s interest, Meade was in partnership with Henslowe, and Field was presumably in some position of authority on behalf of the players, as it is alleged that Henslowe bribed him, in order to obtain his assent to the modification of a covenant under which he was to make an allowance for a withdrawal of the theatre once a fortnight for baiting. The terms recited agree with those of an undated and mutilated agreement between Henslowe and Jacob Meade on one side and Field on behalf of an unnamed company of players on the other. The text of this follows:[699]

[254]

Mr. Fleay and Dr. Greg think that at the time of this reconstruction the company was further strengthened by the incorporation of the Duke of York’s, now the Prince’s, men.[700] This I doubt, as the Prince’s men continued to play at Court, as a company quite distinct from the Lady Elizabeth’s, during the winter of 1614–15. It is true that Robert Dawes, who had been one of the Duke of York’s in 1610, joined the Lady Elizabeth’s, but it was precisely one of the grievances that this man and Robert Pallant were introduced by Henslowe, by means of a financial adjustment unfavourable to the sharers, in June 1614. Pallant had passed through several companies, and is traceable with Queen Anne’s men in 1609. He was still technically a servant of the Queen at her death in 1619.[701] A letter from Daborne on 28 March 1614 shows that he was then expecting an answer to some proposal made to Henslowe, which the latter had neglected.[702] Articles between Robert Dawes and Henslowe and Meade are on record, and bear the date 7 April 1614.[703] The following is the text:

It must be mainly matter of conjecture at what theatres the Lady Elizabeth’s had played from 1611 to 1614. Possibly they may have begun at the Swan. Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside was published as ‘often acted at the Swan on the Bankeside by the Lady Elizabeth her Seruants’, and although this publication was not until 1630, it is rather tempting to identify the play with The Proud Maid of 1611–12. Probably the association of the company with Henslowe led to a transfer to the Rose; and after the joining of forces with Rosseter in March 1613, the Whitefriars must have been available for the combination. That there were alternatives open in 1613 is shown by two passages in Daborne’s letters.[704] On 5 June he says that the company were expecting Henslowe to conclude ‘about thear comming over or goinge to Oxford’, and by ‘comming over’ may most naturally be understood crossing the Thames. On 9 December he claims that a book he is upon will ‘make as good a play for your publique howse as ever was playd’, and the inference[258] is that at the time Henslowe was interested in a ‘private’ as well as in a ‘public’ house. Certainly the Watermen’s complaint in the spring of 1614 indicates that there were then no plays on Bankside, and both the Swan and the Rose must therefore have been deserted. But by the autumn the Lady Elizabeth’s men were in the Clink, occupying the newly built Hope on the site of the old Bear-garden; and that the use of this theatre was contemplated in the agreements of the previous spring is shown both by the presence of Meade, who is not known to have been interested in any other house, as a party, and by the reservation of one day in fourteen for the purpose of baiting.[705] It was at the Hope that William Fennor failed to appear to try his challenge with John Taylor on 7 October, and the Lady Elizabeth’s men were presumably the players—

who came to the rescue and saved the occasion from fiasco. And it was at the Hope and by the Lady Elizabeth’s men, as the Induction and the title-page show, that Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair was produced on 31 October. There is a reference in the text of the play to Taylor’s adventure,[706] and a compliment to Field, which puts him on a level with Burbadge of the King’s men.[707] Bartholomew Fair was presented on the very next day before James at Court. This performance, for which Field was payee on 11 June, was the only one by the company during the winter festivities of 1614–15. In February 1615 there was a breach between Henslowe and the company, as a result of which the Articles of Grievance were drawn up. According to the Articles Henslowe ‘brooke the companie’; but it is not quite clear what exactly took place. In some form the Lady Elizabeth’s men certainly continued to exist. They visited Nottingham in March 1615, and a letter from Lord Coke to the Mayor of Coventry shows that they also contemplated a visit to that town in the same month.[708] My impression is that they subsequently patched up another reconstruction with Henslowe, and that on this occasion the process did entail some[259] kind of amalgamation with Prince Charles’s men. Field, however, probably now joined the King’s men. The Lady Elizabeth’s do not appear to have been separately represented when the Privy Council called the London companies before them for a breach of Lent on 29 March 1615. It is true that they may have been alone in not offending, but it is more probable that William Rowley and John Newton, who were summoned, answered for the amalgamation. The Prince’s men are recorded as playing at Court during the Christmas of 1615–16 and the Lady Elizabeth’s men are not. Yet the payee for their four plays, of which the dates are not specified, was Alexander Foster, who had been a Lady Elizabeth’s man and not a Prince’s man. But it is probable that both this amalgamation and the earlier one between the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Queen’s Revels, although effective as a business operation from Henslowe’s point of view, did not amount to a complete merging of identities, such as would entail a surrender of one or other of the official patents. Certainly the Lady Elizabeth’s, the Prince’s and the Revels were in some sense distinct, and yet in the closest relationship in 1615. So much is clear from Rosseter’s patent of 3 June to build in the Blackfriars, which contemplated that all three companies would share in the use of the new house. That the joint user extended also to plays is suggested by the title-page of Field’s Amends for Ladies (1618) which declares it to have been ‘acted at the Blacke-Fryers, both by the Princes Seruants and the Lady Elizabeths’. Perhaps this indicates alternative rather than combined playing. Whatever the arrangement, it was probably altered again on or before Henslowe’s death on 6 January 1616.[709] A company containing many of the former Lady Elizabeth’s men remained at the Hope. But they went under Prince Charles’s patronage, and it is not until 1622, when we find them at Christopher Beeston’s house of the Cockpit or Phoenix, that we can be sure of the presence of Lady Elizabeth’s men in London once more.[710] But they had held together in the provinces. Possibly the nucleus of the provincial company had been formed of men left out by the Henslowe-Rosseter negotiations of 1613–14. They first appear at Norwich on 2 March 1614 under Nicholas Long, who in 1612 had been travelling with Queen’s Revels boys. They came again on 27 May 1615 with an exemplification of the 1611 patent dated 31 May 1613, and again on 5 June 1616 under John Townsend, and again[260] on 7 June 1617 under Henry Sebeck. In the same year Joseph Moore was acting as an agent of the Lord Chamberlain and Master of the Revels in clearing the provinces of irregularly licensed players, not improbably in the interests of the Lady Elizabeth’s themselves, whose original patent was now set free, through changes in London, for provincial use in place of a mere exemplification.[711] The company is also traceable at Leicester, Coventry, Nottingham, Marlborough, and elsewhere from 1614,[712] and on 11 July 1617 Townsend and Moore received a warrant for £30 in respect of three plays given before James during his journey to Scotland.[713] On 20 March 1618 Townsend and Moore, with Alexander Foster and Francis Waymus, obtained a new licence under the royal signet.[714] This authorized them to play in London, and their actual return there may have been earlier than 1622.

i. ITALIAN PLAYERS IN ENGLAND

The England of Elizabeth and James was a lender rather than a borrower of players. No records have been disinterred of French actors in this country between 1495 and 1629;[715] and although there are a few of Italian actors, their visits seem to have been confined to a single brief period.[716] The head-quarters of Italian comedy during the middle of the sixteenth century was at the Court of Mantua, and when Lord Buckhurst went as ambassador to congratulate Charles IX of France on his wedding, it was by Louis Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers and brother of the Duke of Mantua, that he was entertained on 4 March 1571 ‘with a comedie of Italians that for the good mirth and handling thereof deserved singular comendacion’.[717] In the following year the Earl of Lincoln was at Paris from 8 to 22 June in order to conclude a treaty, and letters relate how he saw at the Louvre ‘an Italian playe, and dyvers vauters and leapers of dyvers sortes verie excellent’, and how later, when he visited the King at the Chateau de Madrid, ‘he had some pastyme showed him by Italian players, which I was at with hym’.[718] It may perhaps have been encouragement from one or both of these nobles, which led an Italian company not long afterwards to make its way across the Channel. The first notice of it is at Nottingham[262] in September 1573, when a reward was ‘gevin to the Italyans for serteyne pastymes that they shewed before Maister Meare and his brethren’.[719] In 1574 the Revels Accounts include expenditure ‘for the Italyan players that ffollowed the progresse and made pastyme fyrst at Wynsor and afterwardes at Reading’. Elizabeth was at Windsor on 11 and 12 July; on 15 July she removed to Reading and remained there to 22 July. At Windsor the Italians used ‘iij devells cotes and heades & one olde mannes fries cote’; at Reading, where they performed on 15 July, the provisions included staves, hooks, and lambskins for shepherds, arrows for nymphs, a scythe for Saturn, and ‘horstayles for the wylde mannes garment’. Professor Feuillerat appears to suggest that they may have been playing Tasso’s Aminta, produced at Ferrara on 31 July 1573. But there were other pastorals.[720] The Italians are probably the comedians commended to the Lord Mayor on 22 July, and in November Thomas Norton calls special attention to ‘the unchaste, shamelesse and unnaturall tomblinge of the Italian weomen’. How long this company remained in England is unknown. There was an Italian acrobat at the Kenilworth festivities on 14 July 1575, but the description suggests that he was a solitary performer.[721] The Treasurer of the Chamber paid ‘Alfruso Ferrabolle and the rest of the Italian players’ for a play at Court on 27 February 1576, to the consideration of which I shall return. In April 1577 there was an Italian play before the Council at Durham Place.[722] Finally, on 13 January 1578, the Privy Council addressed a letter to the Lord Mayor, requiring him to permit ‘one Drousiano, an Italian, a commediante and his companye’, to play until the first week of the coming Lent. I take it that the company was also at Court, since the Chamber Accounts for 1577–8 include an item ‘for a mattres hoopes and boardes with tressells for the Italian Tumblers’. The company to which the visit of 1573–4 was due cannot be identified with any certainty. Presumably it came through France, and ought to have left signs there. There seem to have been three Italian companies in France during 1571. The first, in February, was that of Giovanni Tabarin. The second, that seen by Lord Buckhurst in Paris, was the famous Compagnia de’ Gelosi, of which one Signora Vittoria, of Ferrara, known on the stage as Fioretta, was the prima donna. This, however, had returned to Milan by the spring of 1572 and its subsequent movements hardly render a visit to England in 1573 plausible. A third[263] company, that of Alberto Ganassa, a Zanni or clown from Bergamo, reached Paris in the autumn of 1571.[723] It was sent away by the Parlement on account of its high charges for admission, but returned in 1572 and played at the wedding of Henri of Navarre and Marguerite of Valois on 18 August. Nothing is heard of Ganassa in France after October 1572, but during the summer of 1574 he seems to have been in Madrid; so he also is not available for the English visit. It may very likely have been his company which the Earl of Lincoln saw. But it may also have been that led by Soldino of Florence and Anton Maria of Venice, which was performing ‘commedies et saults’ before Charles IX at Blois on 25 March 1572, and subsequently made its way to Paris. My authorities say nothing further about Soldino and Anton Maria, so we are at liberty to believe that Lincoln invited them to try their fortune across the sea.[724]

The ‘Drousiano’ of 1578 offers less difficulty. He must have been Drusiano, son of Francisco Martinelli, of Mantua, who in after years won a considerable reputation, although less than that of his brother Tristano Martinelli, as Arlecchino in the commedia dell’ arte.[725] There is no other notice of him before 1580, when he subscribes himself as ‘marito di M^a Angelica’, who appears to have been one Angelica Alberghini, and the company with which he was associated in 1578 is not known.[726] But it may very well have been the Gelosi. This company paid in 1577 their second visit to France, upon the invitation of Henri III, and remained there at least until July. They seem to have been in Florence fairly early in 1578, but some or all of them may have found time for an English trip in the interval. Direct proof that Drusiano Martinelli ever belonged to the Gelosi is lacking. But they are the only Italian company known to have been in France in the summer of 1577, and players are not likely to have passed from Italy to England without leaving some traces of their presence in France.[727]

[264]

The professional Italian actors of the second half of the sixteenth century played both the popular commedia dell’ arte and the literary commedia erudita, or commedia sostenuta. The former, with its more or less improvised dialogue upon scenarii, which revolved around the amorous and ridiculous adventures of the zanni, the arlecchino, the dottore, and other standing types, was probably best adapted to the methods of wandering mimes in an alien land.[728] The latter was common to professionals and amateurs. And I suspect that the Court play of 27 February 1576, although it earned its reward from the Treasurer of the Chamber, was an amateur performance. The ‘Alfruso Ferrabolle’ of the account-book can hardly be other than a clerical perversion of the name of Alfonso Ferrabosco, the first of three generations of that name, father, son, and grandson, who contributed in turn to the gaiety of the English Court. The eldest Ferrabosco was certainly in this country by 1562 when he was granted an annuity of 100 marks. His service terminated after various interruptions in 1578.[729] He is doubtless the ‘Mr. Alphonse’ who took part in the preparation of a mask in June 1572.[730] In connexion with the same mask, a reward was paid to one ‘Petrucio’, while for a later mask of 11 January 1579 ‘Patruchius Ubaldinas’ was employed to translate speeches into Italian and write them out fair in tables.[731] This was Petruccio Ubaldini, another of Elizabeth’s Italian pensioners, who was both a literary man and an illuminator, and made his residence in England from 1562 to 1586.[732] It is quite possible that the performance of 1576 may be referred to in the following undated letter from Ubaldini to the Queen, in which he makes mention of Ferrabosco.[733] If so, it came off after all.

[265]

Of Claudio Cavallerizzo I regret to say that I know nothing.

A statement that Venetian actors were in England in 1608 rests upon a misreading of a record.[734]

ii. ENGLISH PLAYERS IN SCOTLAND

The interlude players of Henry VII, under John English, accompanied the Princess Margaret to Scotland for her wedding with James IV in 1503, and ‘did their devoir’ before the Court at Edinburgh.[735] It is the best part of a century before any similar adventure is recorded. In the interval came the Scottish reformation, which was no friend to courtly pageantry. Yet in Scotland, as elsewhere, Kirk discipline had to make some compromise with the drama. In 1574 the General Assembly, while utterly forbidding, not for the first time, ‘clerk playes, comedies or tragedies maid of ye cannonicall Scriptures’, went on to ordain ‘an article to be given in to sick as sitts upon ye policie yat for uther playes comedies tragedies and utheris profaine playes, as are not maid upon authentick pairtes of ye Scriptures, may be considerit before they be exponit publictlie and yat they be not played uppon ye Sabboth dayes’.[736] It was once more a royal wedding that led to a histrionic courtesy between England and Scotland. In the autumn of 1589 James VI was expecting the arrival of his bride Anne of Denmark, a sensuous and spectacle-loving lady, who had already had experience of English actors at her father’s Court in 1586.[737] And being then, two years after his mother’s execution, actively engaged in promoting friendly relations with[266] Elizabeth, he sent a request through one Roger Ashton to Lord Scrope, the Warden of the English West Marches, ‘for to have her Majesties players for to repayer into Scotland to his grace’. In reply Scrope wrote from Carlisle on 20 September to William Ashby, the English ambassador at Edinburgh, begging him to notify the King, that he had sent a servant to them, ‘wheir they were in the furthest parte of Langkeshire, whervpon they made their returne heather to Carliell, wher they are, and have stayed for the space of ten dayes’.[738] After all, the Lapland witches and their winds delayed Anne’s crossing for some months, and James had himself to join her in Denmark. It is, I think, only a conjecture that the players whose ‘book’ was submitted on 3 June 1589 for the licence of the Kirk Session at Perth, in accordance with the order of 1574, were Englishmen.[739] But certainly ‘Inglis comedianis’ were in Scotland in 1594, probably for the baptism of Henry Frederick on 30 August, and received from James the generous gift of £333 6s. 8d. out of ‘the composicioun of the escheit of ye laird of Kilcrewch and his complices’.[740] Probably Laurence Fletcher was at the head of this expedition, for on 22 March 1595 George Nicolson, the English agent at Edinburgh, wrote to Robert Bowes, treasurer of Berwick, that, ‘The King heard that Fletcher, the player, was hanged, and told him and Roger Aston so, in merry words, not believing it, saying very pleasantly that if it were true he would hang them also’.[741] In any case, Fletcher appears to have been the leader of a company whose peregrinations in Scotland a few years later, much favoured by James, were also much embarrassed by the critical relations which then existed between the Sovereign and the Kirk. It is only a conjecture that this was the company which was refused leave to play at St. Andrews on 1 October 1598.[742] But of greater troubles, which took place[267] at Edinburgh a year later, we are very well informed. They are detailed from the Kirk point of view in the more or less contemporary chronicle of David Calderwood.[743]

[269]

Several other documents confirm this narrative. The Privy Council register contains an order of 8 November for an officer at arms to call upon the sessions by proclamation to rescind their resolution and a further proclamation of 10 November reciting the submission made by the sessions.[744] The Lord High Treasurer’s accounts contain payments to Walter Forsyth, the officer employed, as well as gifts to ‘ye Inglis comedianis’ of £43 6s. 8d. in October, of £40 in November ‘to by tymber for ye preparatioun of ane house to thair pastyme’, and of a further £333 6s. 8d. in December.[745] It is George Nicolson, in a letter of 12 November forwarding the proclamation of 8 November to Sir Robert Cecil, who identifies the players for us as ‘Fletcher and Mertyn with their company’.[746] The bounty of James, although it must be borne in mind that the sums were reckoned in pounds Scots, probably left them disinclined to quit Edinburgh in a hurry. Another gift of £400 reached them through Roger Ashton in 1601;[747] and on 9 October in the same year they visited Aberdeen with a letter of recommendation from the King, and with the style of his majesty’s servants, and the town council gave them £22 and spent £3 on their supper ‘that nicht thaye plaid to the towne’. Nay, more, another entry in the burgh register tells us that the players came in the train of ‘Sir Francis Hospital of Haulszie, Knycht, Frenschman’, and one of those ‘admittit burgesses’ with the foreign visitor was ‘Laurence Fletcher, comediane to his Majesty’.[748]

Laurence Fletcher’s name stands first in the English patent of 1603 to the King’s men, and the inferences have been drawn that the company at Aberdeen was the Chamberlain’s men, that their visit was due to a proscription from London on account of their participation in the Essex ‘innovation’, that Shakespeare was with them, and that he picked up local colour, to the extent of ‘a blasted heath’ for Macbeth.[749] To this it may be briefly replied that, as the[270] Chamberlain’s men were at Court as usual in the winter of 1602, any absence from London, which their unlucky performance of Richard II may have rendered discreet, can only have been of short duration; that the most plausible reading of the Scottish evidence is that Fletcher’s company were in the service of James as Court comedians from 1599 to 1601; and that there is nothing whatever to indicate that Fletcher ever belonged to the Chamberlain’s company at all. In fact, very little is known of him outside Scotland, although it is just possible that he may have been the object of two advances made by Henslowe to the Admiral’s men about October 1596, and described respectively as ‘lent vnto Martyne to feache Fleatcher’ and ‘lent the company to geue Fleatcher’.[750] If Fletcher was the King’s man in Scotland, it was not unnatural that he should retain that status when James came to England; and it is very doubtful whether the insertion of his name in the patent in any way entailed his being taken into business relations with his ‘fellows’. I strongly suspect that his companion at Edinburgh, Martin, was put into a precisely similar position amongst Queen Anne’s men, for who can Martin be but Martin Slater, who is often, as in the passage quoted above, called Martin tout court in Henslowe’s Diary, and who certainly left the Admiral’s men in 1597?

iii. ENGLISH PLAYERS ON THE CONTINENT

Thomas Heywood records, about 1608, that ‘the King of Denmarke, father to him that now reigneth, entertained into his service a company of English comedians, commended unto him by the honourable the Earl of Leicester’.[751] This King of Denmark was Frederick II (1559–88), father of Christian IV (1588–1648), and of Queen Anne of England. English[272] ‘instrumentister’, Johann Krafftt, Johann Personn, Johann Kirck or Kirckmann, and Thomas Bull, were at the Danish Court as early as 1579–80, and in 1585 certain unnamed English played (lechte) in the courtyard of the town-hall at Elsinore, when the press of folk was such that the wall broke down. These may be the same men who played and vaulted at Leipzig on 19 July 1585, and are the earliest English players yet traced in Germany.[752] But the particular comedians referred to by Heywood were probably another company who had accompanied Leicester to Holland, when he took the command of the English forces in 1585, and had given a show, half dramatic, half acrobatic, of The Forces of Hercules at Utrecht on 23 April 1586. Certainly Leicester had in his train one Will, a ‘jesting plaier’, who is now usually identified with William Kempe, and in August and September 1586 the Household Accounts of the Danish Court record the presence of ‘Wilhelm Kempe instrumentist’, and of his boy Daniell Jonns. It is not clear what were the precise relations between Kempe and five other ‘instrumentister och springere’, Thomas Stiwens, Jurgenn Brienn, Thomas Koning, Thomas Pape, and Robert Persj, who were at Court from 17 June to 18 September 1586, and for whom the same accounts record a payment to Thomas Stiuens of six thalers a month apiece, at the end of that period. If he had, as is probable, been their fellow up to that point, he did not accompany them in their further peregrinations.[753] These took them to the Court of Frederick’s nephew, Christian I, Elector of Saxony (1586–91), as a result of correspondence, still extant, between the sovereigns, in which the offer of salaries at the annual rate of 100 thalers overcame the reluctance of the Englishmen to face the perils of an unknown tongue. They started with an interpreter on 25 September, and shortly after their arrival at Waidenhain on 16 October received instructions from Christian to follow him with mourning clothes to Berlin, where he was then sojourning. Christian’s own capital was Dresden, and here they held a formal appointment in his service, under which they were bound to follow him in his travels, and to entertain him with performances after his banquets, and with music and ‘Springkunst’, and were entitled, beyond their pay, to[273] board, livery, and travelling expenses, and a lodging allowance of forty thalers each. The Dresden archives give their names as Tomas Konigk, Tomas Stephan or Stephans, George Beyzandt, Tomas Papst, and Rupert Persten. Their departure from Court is recorded on 17 July 1587.[754] In all these notices music and acrobatic feats are to the fore, but that the men were actors there can be no doubt, for two of them, Thomas Pope and George Bryan, reappear amongst Strange’s men, and thereafter as fellows of Shakespeare in the Chamberlain’s company. Of Stevens, King, and Percy no more is known. Kempe was abroad again, in Italy and Germany, during 1601, and returned to England on 2 September. It is not certain whether he took a company with him, or went as a solitary morris dancer. But it is noteworthy that on the following 26 November an English company, under one Johann Kemp, reached Münster, after a tour which had taken them to Amsterdam, Cologne, Redberg, and Steinfurt. They played in English, and had a clown who pattered in German between the acts.[755]

The man, however, who did most to acclimatize the English actors in Germany was Robert Browne, who paid several visits to the country, and spent considerable periods there between 1590 and 1620. With him he took relays of actors, some of whom split off into independent associations, and account for most, although not all, of the groups of ‘Engländer’ who became familiar figures at the Frankfort spring and autumn fairs and even in out-of-the-way corners of northern Europe. Of some of these groups the wanderings can be traced in outline, although the frequent failure of the archives to record individual names is responsible for many lacunae, which the conjectural ingenuity of literary historians has done its best to fill. Many of these anonymous performances I must pass over in silence.

Robert Browne first appears as one of Worcester’s men, with Edward Alleyn, in 1583, and in 1589 these two, probably as Admiral’s men, still held a common stock of apparel with John Alleyn and Richard Jones.[756] His career abroad begins with a visit to Leyden in October 1590.[757] This was[274] perhaps only tentative, for in February 1592 he was preparing to cross the seas again, and to this end obtained for himself, John Bradstreet, Thomas Sackville, and Richard Jones, the following passport to the States-General of the Netherlands from the Lord Admiral:

Presumably the Lord Admiral gave this passport in his official capacity, as responsible for the high seas, and it is not necessary to infer that the travellers were in 1592 his servants.[759]

There are not many clear notices of Browne and his company during this tour. They were at Arnhem, with a licence from Prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau, in 1592.[760] Thereafter they may have gone into residence at some Court, Wolfenbüttel or another. They can hardly have been the English ‘comoedianten und springer’ who came to Nyköping in Sweden for the wedding of Duke Karl of Sweden and Princess Christina of Holstein on 28 August 1592[761]; for it was only two days later that Browne approached the Frankfort magistrates for leave to play at the autumn fair, where they gave Gammer Gurton’s Needle and some of Marlowe’s plays.[762] It was on this occasion that Fynes Moryson, the traveller, visited the fair and noted the great vogue of the[275] English actors amongst the merchants.[763] Englishmen played at Cologne in October and November 1592,[764] and at Nuremberg in August 1593;[765] but in view of the Nyköping company it can hardly be assumed that these were Browne and his fellows, and indeed the leader at Nuremberg is called ‘Ruberto Gruen’, which may, but on the other hand may not, be a blunder for Browne’s name. The Cologne players are anonymous. At any rate ‘Robert Braun, Thomas Sachsweil, Johan Bradenstreit und consorten’ were all at Frankfort in August 1593,[766] where they played scriptural dramas, including Abraham and Lot and The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha. Thereafter the company seems to have broken up. Richard Jones certainly went home before 2 September 1594, when he bought a gown ‘of pechecoler in grayne’ from Henslowe.[767] He had doubtless already joined the Admiral’s men.

Thomas Sackville and John Bradstreet probably went to Wolfenbüttel. This was the capital of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1589–1613), himself the author of plays, mostly printed during 1593 and 1594, in which an English influence is perceptible. The Duke married Elisabeth, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark, and his wedding at Copenhagen in February 1590 was attended by his brother-in-law, afterwards James I of England. It is possible that his earliest play, Susanna, was written either for this occasion or for the repetition of his wedding ceremony at Wolfenbüttel. In this piece the jester, a conventional personage, bears the name ‘Johan Clant’, in the later plays ‘Johan Bouset’; and in the Ehebrecherin (1594) Bouset says, quite irrelevantly to his dramatic character, ‘Ich bin ein Englisch Mann’. Both names are in fact of English origin, from the words ‘clown’ and ‘posset’ respectively. Evidently the Duke must in some way have been in touch with the English stage at a date even earlier than Browne’s second German visit in 1592. It is not, therefore, necessary to conjecture, as has been conjectured, that Wolfenbüttel was the first objective of this visit.[768] Unfortunately the Brunswick household accounts for 1590–1601 are missing, and with them all direct evidence of the first formation of his English company by the Duke has probably gone. The company existed by 1596, when[276] the ‘furstelige comoedianten och springers’ of the Duke paid a month’s visit to Copenhagen for the coronation of his brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, on 29 August.[769] In the following year we find ‘Jan Bosett und seine Gesellen’ at Nuremberg, ‘Thomas Sackfeil und Consorten’ at Augsburg in June, ‘Johann Busset’ and Jakob Behel at Strassburg in July and August, and ‘Thomas Sackville, John Bouset genannt’, Johann Breitenstrasse and Jacob Biel at the Frankfort autumn fair.[770] The identity of this company with the Wolfenbüttel court comedians may perhaps be inferred from Sackville’s use of John Bouset as a stage name, and from a reference, in this same year 1597, to ‘Thomas Sackefiel, princely servant at Wolfenbüttel’. Another member of the company may have been Edward Wakefiel, with whom Sackville, also in 1597, had a brawl in a Brunswick tavern.[771] No more is heard of them until 1601, when John Bouset was expected to join his old friend Robert Browne for the Frankfort Easter fair.[772] The Brunswick household accounts are extant for 1602 and 1608, and from 1614 onwards. Thomas Sackville appears frequently. On 30 August 1602 he took a payment for the English comedians. Later references to him from 1 October 1602 to 1617 are mainly in connexion with purchases for the ducal wardrobe. It seems clear that, while remaining a ducal servant, and possibly even an actor, he went into business and prospered therein.[773] He is said to have been selling silk at Frankfort in 1604, and in 1608 Thomas Coryat, the Odcombian traveller and oddity, records:

John Bradstreet’s name appears in 1604 with that of Sackville in the album of Johannes Cellarius of Nuremberg. He died in 1618 and Sackville in 1628, leaving a library of theology and English literature. Edward Wakefield reappears in the Brunswick accounts for 1602, not specifically as a player. But certainly the playing company continued to exist. The accounts mention it in 1608, and Thomas Heywood notes its existence about the same date. There were English players at Wolfenbüttel in May 1615 and at Brunswick in 1611 and 1617, but no names are recorded, and it can hardly be assumed that these were the original ducal company. Henry Julius himself died in 1613.[775]

Robert Browne’s own movements are uncertain after the break-up of his company in 1593. He is not traceable for a year or so either in Germany or in England, where his wife and all her children and household died of plague in Shoreditch about August 1593.[776] But sooner or later he found his way to Cassel. This was another of the literary courts of Germany, the capital of Maurice the Learned, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel (1592–1627). Maurice himself wrote an ‘Anglia Comoedia’ and other plays in Terentian Latin, which were performed by the pupils of the Collegium Mauritianum, but are unfortunately not preserved. He also composed music and, like the Duke of Brunswick, gave a welcome to John Dowland on one of his several foreign tours.[777] Possibly Dowland was one of the two lutenists who are recorded to have spent fifteen weeks at Cassel in 1594.[778] In the following year there were performances by players and acrobats at Maurice’s castle of Wilhelmsburg at Schmalkalden, and in the same year Maurice wrote to his agent at Prague to give assistance to his comedians in the event of their visiting that city.[779] To 1594 or 1595 may, therefore, be plausibly ascribed undated warrants by which Robert Browne and Philip Kiningsmann receive appointments from the Landgrave, undertaking to do him service with their company in vocal[278] and instrumental music and in plays to be supplied either by Maurice or by themselves, and not to leave Cassel without his permission.[780] Certainly Browne was the Landgrave’s man by 16 April 1595, when a warrant was issued allowing the export of a consignment of bows and arrows which he had been sent over to bring from England to Cassel.[781] The ‘fürstlich hessische Diener und Comoetianten’ were at Nuremberg on 5 July 1596, and a company under Philip Konigsman were at Strassburg in the following August.[782] Festivities were now in preparation at Cassel for the christening of Maurice’s daughter, one of whose godmothers was Queen Elizabeth, on 24 August 1596. Brown and one John Webster were on duty at Cassel during the visit of the Earl of Lincoln, who came from England to stand proxy for Elizabeth.[783] Payments to the English comedians and performances by them at Melsungen, Weissenstein, and Rothenburg, in the Landgrave’s territory, are recorded in the Cassel archives during 1597 and 1598. A proposed loan of them in 1597 to Landgrave Louis of Marburg seems to have fallen through, but in 1598 they left Cassel for the Court of the Palsgrave Frederic IV at Heidelberg, with a liberal Abfertigung or vail of 300 thalers and a travelling allowance of 20 thalers, which was entrusted to George Webster.[784] From Heidelberg they went to Frankfort towards the end of 1599, but were refused leave to play, owing to the prevalence of plague.[785] Robert Browne, Robert Kingman, and Robert Ledbetter were then of the company. Ledbetter must have recently joined them, as he is in the cast of Frederick and Basilea as played by the Admiral’s men in 1597. Frankfort having failed them, they fell back upon Strassburg, and here they seem to have remained until the spring of 1601.[786] Browne was their leader at their arrival, but he then seems to have left them and returned to England, where he came to Court as manager of the Earl of Derby’s men during the winters of[279] 1599–1600 and 1600–1.[787] By Easter 1601, however, he had started on his fourth tour, and appeared once more at Frankfort, possibly in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. With him were Robert Kingmann and Robert Ledbetter, and they were expecting to be joined by ‘Johannen Buscheten und noch andere in unsere Companie gehörige Comödianten’. The old association of 1592 between Robert Browne and Thomas Sackville was, therefore, still in some sense alive.[788]

Meanwhile, Maurice of Hesse had not been wholly without English actors, since Browne and his fellows left Cassel in 1598. It would seem that George Webster returned from Heidelberg, or perhaps from Strassburg, to his service. The ‘fürstlich-hessischen Komödianten und Musikanten’ were at Frankfort in March, at Nuremberg in April 1600, and at Frankfort again at Easter 1601. The names recorded are those of George Webster, John Hill or Hüll, Richard Machin, and at Nuremberg Bernhardt Sandt.[789] Upon his second visit to Frankfort Webster would have met his old leader, now become his rival, Robert Browne. The Hessian company were for a third time at Frankfort in the autumn of 1601.[790] In the following year they left the Landgrave’s service, not altogether to the regret of some of his subjects, who resented a patronage of foreign arts at the cost of their pockets.[791] Webster and Machin, with whom was then one Ralph Reeve, were still using their former master’s name when they visited Frankfort at Easter 1603.[792] Thereafter they dropped it. Of Webster no more is heard. Machin is conjectured to have joined for a short time an English company in the service of Margrave Christian William, a younger son of the Elector Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg, which came to Frankfort for the Easter and autumn fairs of 1604.[793] The Margrave was administrator of the diocese of Magdeburg, and kept his[280] Court at Halle. His company is traceable from 1604 to 1605, but I do not find any evidence of Machin’s connexion with it. In May 1605 he appeared at Strassburg, and there claimed as his credentials only his four years’ service with Maurice of Hesse.[794] Shortly before, he had been at the Frankfort Easter fair with Reeve, and the two returned to Frankfort in the autumn, and again at Easter 1606.[795]

Robert Browne, for some years after the opening of his fourth tour at Frankfort in the spring of 1601, does not appear to have attached himself to any particular Court. He is found at Frankfort, with Robert Jones, in September 1602, at Augsburg in the following November and December, at Nuremberg in February 1603, and at Frankfort for the Easter fair of the same year.[796] With him were then, but it would seem only temporarily, Thomas Blackwood and John Thare, late of Worcester’s men, who had doubtless just come out from England, when Elizabeth’s illness and death closed the London theatres.[797] He is probably the ‘alte Komödiant’, whose identity seems to have been thought sufficiently described by that term at Frankfort in the autumn of 1604.[798] He returned to Frankfort on 26 May 1606, and was at Strassburg in the following June and July.[799] Here he was accompanied by John Green. On this or some other visit to Strassburg, the company probably lost Robert Kingman, who, like Thomas Sackville, found business more profitable than strolling. He became a freeman of Strassburg in 1618, and in that year was able to befriend his old ‘fellow’ Browne, and in 1626 other actors on their visits to the city.[800] In the course of 1606 Browne seems to have entered the service of Maurice of Hesse, who in the previous year had built a permanent theatre, the Ottonium, at Cassel, and had now again an English company for the first time since 1602. This is to be inferred from an application for leave to play submitted to the Frankfort town council on 26 August 1606, and signed by ‘Robert Braun’, ‘Johann Grün’, and ‘Robert Ledbetter’ as ‘Fürstlich Hessische Comödianten’. Earlier[281] in August the same men had been at Ulm.[801] They visited Nuremberg with a letter of recommendation from their lord in November, and then settled down at Cassel for the winter.[802] But their service did not last long. On 1 March 1607 a household officer wrote to the Landgrave that the English found their salaries inadequate, and after performing the comedy of The King of England and Scotland had declared, either in jest or earnest, that it was their last play in Cassel.[803] Probably they were in earnest. Browne and Green went to Frankfort, for the last time as the Hessian comedians, on 17 March.[804] Browne’s name now disappears from German records for a decade. In 1610 he was a member of the Queen’s Revels syndicate in London, and on 11 April 1612 he wrote a letter to Edward Alleyn from Clerkenwell.[805] But whether Browne left them or not, the company held together for a while longer. Green was at Danzig and Elbing in the course of 1607.[806] Thereafter it seems probable that he tried a bold flight, and penetrated to the heart of Catholic Germany in Austria. In November 1607 an English company was with the archducal court of Ferdinand and Maria Anna at Gräz in Styria. A performance by them of The King of England and the Goldsmith’s Wife is recorded.[807] They followed Ferdinand to Passau, where they gave The Prodigal Son and The Jew, and possibly also to the Reichstag held in January 1608 at Regensburg. By 6 February they were back at Gräz, and a letter from Ferdinand’s sister, the Archduchess Maria Magdalena, then just betrothed to the Grand Duke Cosimo II of Florence, gives a lively account of their performances and of the assistance which they rendered in the revels danced at Court.[808] Their repertory included The Prodigal Son, A Proud Woman of Antwerp, Dr. Faustus, A Duke of Florence and a Nobleman’s Daughter, Nobody and Somebody, Fortunatus, The Jew, King Louis and King Frederick of Hungary, A King of Cyprus and a Duke of Venice, Dives and Lazarus.[809] It is not absolutely certain that the company referred to in these notices was Green’s. No name is in fact mentioned. But the probability suggested by the resemblance of the above[282] play-list to those of 1620 and 1626, with which Green was certainly connected, is confirmed by the existence of a German manuscript of Nobody and Somebody with a dedication by Green to Ferdinand’s brother the Archduke Maximilian, who was certainly present at the Gräz performances, and by a letter which tells us that a company visiting Austria in 1617 was the same as that which had played at Gräz in the lifetime of the Archduchess Maria, who died in 1608. Unfortunately the identification of this company of 1617 with Green’s is itself a matter of high probability, rather than of absolute certainty.[810] The end of the visit to Gräz was marked by a duel in which one of the English actors, ‘the man with long red hair, who always played a little fiddle’, killed a Frenchman.[811] Green now, like Browne, drops for some years out of the German records.

The Court functions at Cassel surrendered by Browne in 1607 were resumed by his predecessors, in whose leadership Reeve had now succeeded Machin; and the appearance of the Hessian company is recorded at Frankfort during both the fairs of 1608 and 1609, the Easter fair of 1610, the autumn fair of 1612, and the Easter fair of 1613. A proposed appearance for the coronation of the Emperor Mathias in June 1612 was prohibited, because the mourning for his predecessor Rudolph II was not yet over.[812] It is perhaps something of an assumption that the company was the same one throughout all these years. Reeve was in charge up to the autumn of 1609; after that no individual name is mentioned. The intervals between the fairs were presumably spent in the main at Cassel. In the summer of 1609 the company visited Stuttgart and Nuremberg and possibly other places, with a letter of recommendation from their lord.[813] In the autumn[283] of the same year John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg (1608–19), who often entertained a company of his own, but appears to have been temporarily without one, wrote to Maurice to borrow them for the wedding of his brother at Berlin.[814] In April 1610 they may not improbably, though there is no evidence of the fact, have followed Maurice to the Diet at Prague.[815] In 1611 they are said to have been at Darmstadt.[816] They certainly played at the wedding of the Margrave Joachim Ernest, uncle of the Elector of Brandenburg, at Anspach in October 1612, and later in the same month paid a visit to Nuremberg.[817] No more is heard of them, or of any other English actors in the service of Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, after 1613.[818] Reeve was a member of Rosseter’s syndicate for the building of the Porter’s Hall theatre at Blackfriars in 1615, and with him were associated Philip Kingman and Robert Jones, the last notices of whom in Germany are as ‘fellows’ of Robert Browne in 1596 and 1602 respectively.

The appearance of Blackwood and Thare, late of Worcester’s men, in company with Browne at the Frankfort Easter fair of 1603, has already been noted. The only further record of either of them is of Thare at Ulm and Augsburg in the following December.[819] But by a series of conjectures, to which I hesitate to subscribe, they have been identified with a company which came to Stuttgart in September 1603 in the train of Lord Spencer and Sir William Dethick, ambassadors from England carrying the insignia of the Garter to Frederick Duke of Württemberg, and there gave a play of Susanna[820]; with a company which visited Nördlingen and other places in January 1604 under the leadership of one Eichelin, apparently a German, but with a repertory which included a Romeo and Juliet and a Pyramus and Thisbe[821]; with a company[284] which held letters of recommendation from the Duke of Würtemberg at Nuremberg in February 1604;[822] and with a company which took a repertory closely resembling the Nördlingen one to Rothenburg in 1604 and 1606.[823] This is all very ingenious guesswork.[824]

All trace of John Green is lost for several years after 1608. An isolated notice at Utrecht in November 1613 suggests that he may have spent part of this interval in the Netherlands.[825] A year or two later he returned to Germany. He was at Danzig in July 1615 and again, with Robert Reinolds, late of Queen Anne’s men, in July 1616, having paid an intermediate visit to Copenhagen.[826] In 1617 he was at Prague for the coronation of the Archduke Ferdinand as King of Bohemia, and in July of the same year at Vienna.[827] The comparative infrequency with which English actors visited Austrian territory perhaps justifies the assumption that his is the company mentioned in a letter of recommendation sent by Ferdinand’s brother, the Archduke Charles, at Neiss to the Bishop of Olmütz on 18 March 1617, as having played at Gräz before his mother the Archduchess Maria, who died in 1608, and having recently spent some months at the Court of Poland in Warsaw.[828] In 1618 Green’s old leader, the indefatigable veteran Robert Browne, came out with a new company on his fifth and last visit to the Continent. He is first noted at Nuremberg on 28 May.[829] My impression is that the two men joined forces. Green’s name does not appear in the records for a couple of years. But Reinolds, who had been with him at Danzig in 1616, was with Browne at Strassburg[285] in June and July 1618.[830] Later in the year Browne was at the autumn fair at Frankfort.[831] There is no definite mention of him during the next twelve months, but it is not improbable that the combined company was that which visited Rostock in May and Danzig in July 1619.[832] At any rate Browne appeared at Cologne in October;[833] and then went for the winter to Prague, where the Elector Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth of England, now King and Queen of Bohemia, had set up their Court.[834] They were but a winter King and Queen. In 1620 the Thirty Years’ War broke out, and Germany had other things to think of than English mumming. Browne was at Nuremberg in February and at Frankfort for the Easter fair.[835] That is the last we hear of him. But Green reached Cologne and Utrecht later in April, and was probably discreetly taking the company home.[836] In 1626 he came out again with Robert Reinolds, who made a reputation as a clown under the name of Pickleherring.[837] The details of this later tour lie beyond the scope of the present inquiry. Pickleherring is the clown-name also in a volume of Engelische Comedien und Tragedien, printed in 1620, which probably represents an attempt of Browne and Green to turn to profit with the printers their repertory of 1618–20, now rendered useless by their return to England.[838] The plays contained in this volume, in addition to two farces and five jigs, in most of which Pickleherring appears, are Esther and Haman, The Prodigal Son, Fortunatus, A King’s Son of England and a King’s Daughter of Scotland, Nobody and Somebody, Sidonia and Theagenes, Julio and Hyppolita, and Titus Andronicus.[839] The first five of these reappear in a list of plays forming the repertory of Green at Dresden during the visit of 1626 referred to above. If the titles can be trusted, two of the plays in this list had already been played by Browne at Frankfort and Cassel in 1601 and 1607, three by an unknown company, possibly that of Blackwood and Thare, at Nördlingen and[286] Rothenburg in 1604 and 1606, and eight by Green himself at Passau and Gräz in the winter of 1607–8.[840] They number thirty in all, as follows: Christabella, Romeo and Juliet,[841] Amphitryo,[842] The Duke of Florence,[843] The King of Spain and the Portuguese Viceroy,[844] Julius Caesar, Crysella,[845] The Duke of Ferrara,[846] Nobody and Somebody,[847] The Kings of Denmark and Sweden,[848] Hamlet,[849] Orlando Furioso,[850] The Kings of England and Scotland,[851] Hieronymo the Spanish Marshal,[852] Haman and Esther,[853] The Martyr Dorothea,[854] Doctor Faustus,[855] The King of Arragon,[856] Fortunatus,[857] Joseph the Jew of Venice,[858] The Clever Thief,[859] The Duke of Venice,[860] Barabbas Jew of Malta, The Dukes of Mantua and Verona, Old Proculus, Lear King of England, The Godfather, The Prodigal Son,[861] The Count of Angiers, The Rich Man.[862]

The lists of 1620 and 1626 do not bear out Fleay’s assumption that the repertories they represent were wholly made up of plays taken out by Browne in 1592.[863]

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Another member of Browne’s last expedition can perhaps be identified. With him in 1592 had been Richard Jones, who afterwards became one of the Admiral’s men in 1594 and left that company in 1602. He was again associated with Browne in Rosseter’s Queen’s Revels syndicate of 1610. The following undated letter to Edward Alleyn is preserved at Dulwich:[864]

This has generally been dated 1592. But Alleyn’s first recorded marriage was in October of that year, and the reference to Browne as not going with the company has always been a puzzle. I suspect that it was written in or near 1615, and that Jones was one of the actors who started in advance of Browne under John Green. That he did travel about this time is shown by two other letters to Alleyn about a lease of the Leopard’s Head in Shoreditch held by his wife.[865] The first, from Jones himself, is not dated, but a mention of Henslowe shows that it was written before the latter’s death on 6 January 1616, or at least before Jones had heard of that event. The writer and his wife were then out of England. The second, from Harris Jones, was written from Danzig on 1 April 1620. Mrs. Jones was then expecting to join her husband, who was with ‘the prince’, whoever this may have been. If Jones had travelled with Browne’s men, he cut himself adrift from them on their return, for in 1622 he entered as a musician the service of Philip Julius,[288] Duke of Wolgast in Pomerania (1592–1625), who had twice visited England, and whose presence at more than one London theatre is recorded in 1602.[866] Two petitions from Jones are in the Stettin archives.[867] On 30 August 1623 he asked permission, with his fellows Johan Kostrassen and Robert Dulandt (Dowland?), to return from Wolgast to England. Behind them they appear to have left Richard Farnaby, son of the better-known composer Giles Farnaby.[868] On 10 July 1624 Jones wrote to the Duke that his hopes of profitable employment under the Prince in England had been disappointed, and asked to be taken back into his service.

All the groups of actors hitherto dealt with seem to have had their origin, more or less directly, in the untiring initiative of Robert Browne. There is, however, another tradition, almost as closely associated with the houses of Brandenburg and Saxony, as the former with those of Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick. Some give and take between Cassel and the Courts of some of the Brandenburg princes has from time to time been noted.[869] But Berlin, where the successive Electors of Brandenburg, Joachim Frederick (1598–1608) and John Sigismund (1608–9), had their capital, was during a long period of years the head-quarters from which an Englishman, John Spencer, undertook extensive travels, both in Protestant and in Catholic Germany. Of Spencer’s stage-career in London, if he ever had one, nothing is known. Possibly he betook himself to the Brandenburg Court during the English plague-year of 1603. At any rate, comedians holding a recommendation given by the Elector on 10 August 1604 and confirmed by the Stadtholder of the Netherlands, Maurice Prince of Orange Nassau, in the following December, were at Leyden in January and The Hague in May 1605.[870] It is reasonable to identify them with the company under John Spencer, who received a recommendation from the Electress Eleonora of Brandenburg to the Elector Christian II of Saxony (1591–1611) in the same year.[871] At Dresden they possibly remained for some time, for although there are several anonymous appearances, including the famous ones at Gräz in the winter of 1607–8, which can be conjecturally assigned to them,[872] they do not clearly emerge until April 1608, when a visit of the Electoral players of Saxony is recorded at[289] Cologne.[873] Subsequently they waited upon Francis, Duke of Stettin and by him were recommended to the new Elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismund, who passed them on once more to the Elector of Saxony on 14 July 1609.[874] Being in need of comedians for his brother’s wedding in the same year, he applied, as has been noted, for a loan of those of Maurice of Hesse.[875] Dresden remained the head-quarters of Spencer’s men again during the next two years, but in 1611 they were back in John Sigismund’s service. Christian II of Saxony died in this year. In July and August they visited Danzig and Königsberg, and in October and November they attended the Elector to Ortelsburg and Königsberg for the ceremonies in connexion with the acknowledgement of him as heir to his father-in-law, Duke Albert Frederick of Prussia. On this occasion Spencer was at the head of not less than nineteen actors and sixteen musicians, and produced an elaborate Turkish ‘Triumph-comedy’.[876] In April 1613 Spencer left Berlin on a tour which was to take him to Dresden once more.[877] The company were at Nuremberg in June, still using the name of the Elector of Brandenburg and playing Philole and Mariana, Celinde and Sedea, The Fall of Troy, The Fall of Constantinople, and The Turk.[878] In July and August they were at Augsburg, and in September they returned to Nuremberg, now describing themselves as the Elector of Saxony’s company.[879] This Elector was John George I (1611–56), the third of his house to entertain an English company. In October they played The Fall of Constantinople at the Reichstag held by the Emperor Mathias at Regensburg. Spencer was their leader, but they no longer claimed any courtly status.[880] After an unsuccessful attempt to pay a third visit for the year to Nuremberg, they went to Rothenburg, and so to Heidelberg, whither the Elector Palatine Frederick V had just brought his English bride. Here they spent the winter, and left to attend the Frankfort fair of Easter 1614.[881] In May their service with the Elector of Brandenburg, although[290] now none of the most recent, helped them to get a footing in Strassburg, where they stayed until July and again played The Fall of Constantinople, as well as a play of Government.[882] In August they were at Augsburg and possibly Ulm.[883] In October they projected a return visit to Strassburg, but were rejected, ‘so dies Jar hie lang genug super multorum opinionem gewessen’.[884] Possibly they fell back upon Stuttgart.[885] In February 1615 they were in Cologne, and here a queer thing happened. The whole company, with Spencer’s wife and children, was converted to Catholicism by the eloquence of a Franciscan friar. The event is recorded in the town archives and also in a manuscript Franciscan chronicle preserved in the British Museum:[886]

It need hardly be said that in so Catholic a city as Cologne this singular act of grace gave the performances of the English comedians an extraordinary vogue. In June and July 1615 Spencer was at Strassburg, in company with one Christopher Apileutter, who may have been the Germanian or the Dutchman of the Cologne notice.[887] He attended the autumn fair at Frankfort, using an imperial patent, perhaps given him at Regensburg in 1613.[888] During the winter of 1615–16 he was again in Cologne, still profiting by his conversion.[889] This, however, had not made of him such a bigot, as to be unable to render acceptable duty in the Protestant courts where his earliest successes had been won. For a year his movements became obscure. But in August 1617 he was playing before the Elector of Saxony and the Emperor Matthias at Dresden.[890] And in the following year he once more entered the Brandenburg service. During the interval which had elapsed since[291] 1613, John Sigismund had entertained another company. Early in 1614 he engaged William, Abraham, and Jacob Pedel, Robert Arzschar, Behrendt Holzhew, and August Pflugbeil.[891] The names hardly sound English; but Jacob Pedel is probably the Jacob Behel or Biel who was travelling with Sackville in 1597, William Pedel appeared as an English pantomimist at Leyden in November 1608, and Arzschar, whose correct name was doubtless Archer, is also described as an Englishman at Frankfort in the autumn of 1608.[892] He was then in company with Heinrich Greum and Rudolph Beart. A Burchart Bierdt appeared as ‘Englischer Musicant’ at Cologne in December 1612.[893] Archer perhaps came from Nuremberg. He was at Frankfort again in the autumn of 1610, and at the Reichstag held by the Emperor Matthias at Regensburg in September 1613.[894] It must have been this new company under Archer which visited Wolfenbüttel in September 1614 and Danzig in 1615, styling themselves the Brandenburg comedians.[895] The only names given at Danzig are Johann Friedrich Virnius and Bartholomeus Freyerbott, and in fact the Pedels, Holzhew, and Pflugbeil left Berlin at Easter 1615. Archer himself remained with the Elector until May 1616. The field, then, was clear at Berlin for the enterprise of Spencer. On 17 March 1618 John Sigismund made a payment ‘to one Stockfisch’ for bringing the English comedians from Elbing. Further payments to the English are recorded in the following November, and in June 1619 for plays at Königsberg and Balge in Prussia, of which the Elector had become Duke on the death of his father-in-law Albert Frederick in the preceding August.[896] In July 1619 the Elector of Brandenburg’s comedians are heard of at Danzig.[897] On 23 December 1619 John Sigismund himself died, and in 1620 Hans Stockfisch addressed an appeal for certain arrears of salary to Count Adam von Schwartzenberg, an officer at the court of the new Elector George William (1619–40), in which he claimed to have enjoyed the Count’s protection for more than fifteen years. In reply George William describes the petitioner as ‘den Englischen Junkher Hans Stockfisch, wie er sich nennet’.[898] There can be little doubt that Hans Stockfisch was none other than John Spencer, for the period of fifteen years precisely takes us back to his first appearance as a Brandenburg comedian in 1605. His fish name corresponds[292] to, and was perhaps motived by, that of Pickleherring adopted by Robert Reinolds of the chief rival English company about the same date. Both had their prototype in Sackville’s John Bouset.[899] The Elector George William was no friend to actors, and to Spencer, as to others, the Thirty Years’ War closed many doors. In February 1623 he came to Nuremberg with Sebastian Schadleutner, but was not allowed to play.[900] And that is the last that is heard of him.

A few isolated records indicate the presence from time to time in northern Europe of players not yet mentioned, and not obviously connected either with the Browne or with the Spencer tradition. An English company under Peter de Prun of Brussels visited Nuremberg in April 1594. The name of the leader does not sound very English, and a company, not improbably the same, is described as ‘niederländische’ at Ulm in the following August. Heywood, however, speaks of an English company as in the pay of the Cardinal and Archduke Albert, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, about 1608.[901] Maurice of Orange-Nassau, Stadtholder of the Dutch Netherlands (1584–1625), who gave a recommendation to Spencer in 1605, had also an English company of his own, which visited Frankfort at Easter 1611, and then claimed to be strange in Germany.[902] To Augsburg in June 1602 came Fabian Penton and his company;[903] to Leyden in September 1604 John Woods and his company,[904] and to Leipzig in April 1613 Hans Leberwurst with his boys.[905] Of none of these is anything further known, nor of William Alexander Blank, a Scottish dancer, who performed at Cologne in April 1605.[906]

Traces of English players in southern Europe are few and far between. That Kempe’s travels of 1601 took him to Italy has already been noted.[907] There were some English acrobats at Madrid in January 1583.[908] On 25 May 1598 the Confrères de la Passion leased their theatre in Paris,[293] the Hôtel de Bourgogne, to ‘Jehan Sehais comédien Anglois’, and on 4 June obtained judgement in the court of the Châtelet, ‘tant pour raison du susdit bail que pour le droit d’un écu par jour, jouant lesdits Anglais ailleurs qu’audit Hôtel’.[909] I do not know whether I am justified in finding under the French disguise of ‘Jehan Sehais’ the name of one John Shaa or Shaw, conceivably related to Robert Shaw of the Admiral’s men, who witnessed an advance by Henslowe to Dekker on 24 November 1599.[910] In 1604 another English company was in France, and gave a performance on 18 September in the great hall at Fontainebleau, the effect of which upon the imagination of the future Louis XIV, then a child of four, is minutely described in the singular diary of his tutor and physician, Jean Héroard.[911]

On 28 September, Louis was playing at being an actor, and on 29 September, says Héroard:

Finally, on 3 October:

‘Il dit, “Habillons-nous en comédiens,” on lui met son tablier coiffé sur la tête; il se prend à parler, disant: “Tiph, toph, milord” et marchant à grands pas.’

It has been suggested on rather inadequate grounds that the play seen by Louis may have been 2 Henry IV. Possibly the princely imagination had merely been smitten by some comic rough and tumble.[912] But it is also conceivable that the theme may have been the execution of John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, at the restoration of Henry VI in 1470.[913]

[294]

It would be rash to assume that these records of 1598 and 1604 represent all the visits of English actors to France during the Elizabethan period; and it is not improbable that a search in the municipal archives of Picardy and Normandy, as thorough as that which has been carried out for Germany, might yield notable results. Some general evidence that tours in France did take place can be cited. John Green, dedicating his version of Nobody and Somebody to the Archduke Maximilian about 1608, says that he had been in that country.[914] His, indeed, so far as dates go, might have been the company of 1604. And France, no less than Germany, is referred to as scoured by the English comedians about 1613.[915]

[296]

ABYNGDON, HENRY. Master of Chapel, 1455–78.

ADAMS, JOHN. Sussex’s, 1576; Queen’s, 1583, 1588. He possibly played the clown Adam in A Looking Glass and Oberon in James IV.. It would hardly be justifiable to conjecture that he lived to join Hunsdon’s and play Adam in A. Y. L.

ALDERSON, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1509–13.

ALLEYN, EDWARD, was born on 1 September 1566 in the parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate.[916] His father was Edward Alleyn of Willen, Bucks, Innholder and porter to the Queen, who died in 1570; his mother, Margaret Townley, for whom he claimed a descent from the Townleys of Lancashire which modern genealogists hesitate to credit, re-married with one John Browne, a haberdasher, between whom and other Brownes who appear in theatrical annals no connexion can be proved. Edward Alleyn is said by Fuller in his Worthies to have been ‘bred a stage player’. In formal deeds he is generally described as ‘yeoman’ or ‘gentleman’, and once, in 1595, as ‘musician’.[917] In January 1583 he was one of Worcester’s players; at some later date he joined the Admiral’s men, and had as ‘fellow’ his brother John, with whom during 1589–91 he was associated in purchases of apparel. On 22 October 1592 he married Joan Woodward, step-daughter of Philip Henslowe, with whom he appears ever after in the closest business relations. A Dulwich tradition that he was already a widower probably rests on a mention of ‘Mistris Allene’ in an undated letter about a German tour by Richard Jones, which is commonly assigned to February 1592, but is more probably of later date.[918] Alleyn is specifically described as the Admiral’s servant in the Privy Council letter of assistance to Strange’s men (q.v.), with whom he travelled during the plague of 1593. Some of the letters passing between him and his wife and father-in-law during this tour are preserved at Dulwich, and are full of interesting domestic details about his white waistcoat and his orange tawny woollen stockings, the pasturing of his horse, his spinach bed, and the furnishing of his house.[919] His ‘tenants’ are mentioned and his ‘sister Phillipes & her husband’. He had by this time a high reputation as an actor, as[297] witnessed by Nashe in his Pierce Penilesse of 1592, where he classes him with Tarlton, Knell, and Bentley, and says, ‘Not Roscius nor Aesope, those admyred tragedians that haue liued euer since before Christ was borne, could euer performe more in action than famous Ned Allen’; and in his Strange Newes of the same year, where he says of Edmund Spenser that ‘his very name (as that of Ned Allen on the common stage) was able to make an ill matter good’.[920] An undated letter at Dulwich, written to him by an admirer who signs himself W. P., offers a wager in which ‘Peele’s credit’ was also in some way concerned, and in which Alleyn was to have the choice of any one of Bentley’s or Knell’s plays, and promises that, even if he loses, ‘we must and will saie Ned Allen still’.[921] In 1594 The Knack to know a Knave is ascribed, quite exceptionally, on its title-page, not to the servants of a particular lord, but to ‘Ed. Allen and his Companie’. From 1594 to 1597 Alleyn was one of the Admiral’s men (q.v.) at the Rose. He then ‘leafte playnge’, but resumed at the request of the Queen, although apparently without becoming a full sharer of the company, when the Fortune (q.v.), which he had built for them, was opened in the autumn of 1600. He became a servant of Prince Henry with the rest of his fellows in 1604, and at the coronation procession on 15 March appeared as the Genius of the City and delivered a ‘gratulatory speech’ to James ‘with excellent action and a well-tun’de, audible voyce’.[922] Further testimonies to his talent are rendered by John Weever;[923] by Ben Jonson, Epigram lxxxix (1616), who equals him to Aesop and Roscius, and himself to Cicero, who praised them; by Heywood, who says, ‘Among so many dead let me not forget one yet alive, in his time the most worthy, famous Maister Edward Allen’;[924] and by Fuller, who says, ‘He was the Roscius of our age, so acting to the life that he made any part (especially a majestic one) to become him.’[925] Of his parts are recorded Faustus,[926] Tamburlaine, Barabas in The Jew of Malta,[927] and Cutlack in a[298] play of that name revived by the Admiral’s men in 1594 and now lost,[928] while that of Orlando in Greene’s Orlando Furioso is amongst the papers at Dulwich.[929] Heywood, writing about 1608, speaks of Alleyn’s playing in the past. He probably retired finally soon after the beginning of the new reign. In 1605 he valued his ‘share of aparell’ at £100; but his name is not in the patent to the Prince’s men of 30 April 1606, although as late as 1611 he still retained his personal rank as servant to the prince. It is difficult to give much credit to the legend that his withdrawal was due to remorse, or, as one version has it, to an apparition of the devil when he was playing Faustus.[930] Certainly he continued to hold an interest in the Fortune, and conceivably in the Red Bull (q.v.) also. And certainly remorse did not prevent him from continuing to exercise the functions of Master of the Game of Paris Garden, a post which he acquired jointly with Henslowe in 1604, having already been interested in the Bear-garden itself since 1594. At this after it became the Hope (q.v.) he was still about 1617 entertaining players. But the time of his retirement synchronizes with the first beginnings of his foundation of a school and hospital by the name of the College of God’s Gift at Dulwich. By 1605 he was a wealthy man, with income from substantial investments in leasehold property as well as the profits from his enterprises, and on 25 October he took the first step in the purchase of the manor of Dulwich, which was completed by 1614 at a total cost of nearly £10,000. Here about 1613 he made his residence, moving from Southwark, where he had been churchwarden of St. Saviour’s in 1610. In 1613 also he began the building of the college, which was opened in 1617. Alleyn himself acted as manager and was in a position to spend upon the college and his own household some £1,700 a year. The endowment of the college included, besides house property in London, the freehold of the Fortune. Henslowe had died in January 1616 and his widow in the following year, and his papers passed to Alleyn and remain at Dulwich. Here, too, is Alleyn’s own diary for 1617–22, and this and his correspondence show him as a friend of persons of honour, and the patron of writers and the members of his own former profession. Alleyn’s wife Joan died on 28 June 1623 and on the following 3 December he married Constance, daughter of John Donne, dean of St. Paul’s, settling on her £1,500. A letter of 23 July 1624 indicates that he was then desirous of obtaining ‘sum further dignetie’. He died on 25 November 1626.

ALLEYN, JOHN. Admiral’s, 1589–91. Edward Alleyn had an elder brother John, who was born in 1556–7, and is described as servant to Lord Sheffield and an Innholder in 1580, and as servant to the Lord[299] Admiral in 1589. He died about May 1596, being then of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, and left a widow Margaret and son John. Presumably he was the Admiral’s player. But there was also an Allen family of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, one of whom, John, was a player. Here a John was baptized on 17 October 1570, a Lowin, son of John, baptized on 15 December 1588, a Joan buried on 13 May 1593, and a John on 18 May 1593. On 26 July 1596 is this curious baptismal entry: ‘Bennett, reputed daughter of J^no Allen, which J^no went with S^r Fr. Drake to the Indians in which time the child was got by a stage-player.’ Finally, on 18 October 1597, ‘Jone uxor Joh^is Allen player was buried with a still born child’ (H. ii. 239; Bodl.)

ALLEYN, RICHARD. Queen’s, (?) 1594; Admiral’s, 1597–1600. His daughters Anna and Elizabeth were baptized at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 13 May 1599 and 17 May 1601 respectively. Here he is traceable in the token-books during 1583–1601, and was buried on 18 November 1601, leaving a widow (Rendle, Bankside, xxvi; H. ii. 239; Bodl.).

ALLEYN (ALLEN), RICHARD. Revels, 1609; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1613.

ANDREWE, HENRY. Chapel, 1509.

ANDREWES, RICHARD. Worcester’s, 1583.

ANDROWES, GEORGE. Whitefriars lessee, 1608.

APILEUTTER, CHRISTOPHER. Germany, 1615.

ARCHER, RICHARD. Vide Arkinstall.

ARCHER? (ARZSCHAR, ERTZER), ROBERT. Germany, 1608–16.

ARKINSTALL, JOHN. A common player of interludes under licence, with Richard Archer, Barker, and Anthony Ward as his fellows. He was at Hastings on 25 March 1603, and on 30 March laid an information of the proclamation of Lord Beauchamp as king by Lord Southampton (Hist. MSS. xii. 4. 126).

ARMIN, ROBERT, is said to have been apprentice to a goldsmith in Lombard Street, and to have been encouraged as a ‘wag’ by Tarlton (ob. 1588), who prophesied that he should ‘enjoy my clownes sute after me’. He ‘used to’ Tarlton’s plays, and in time became himself a player ‘and at this houre performes the same, where, at the Globe on the Banks side men may see him’.[931] But his earliest reputation was as a writer. He wrote a preface to A Brief Resolution of the Right Religion (1590) and probably other things now unknown, for he is referred to as a son of Elderton in Nashe’s Foure Letters Confuted of 1592 (Works, i. 280). R. A. wrote verses to Robert Tofte’s Alba (1598), and R. A. compiled England’s Parnassus (1600); the latter is generally taken to be Robert Allot. The first dramatic company in which Armin can be traced is Lord Chandos’s men. In an epistle to Mary, widow of William Lord Chandos (1594–1602) prefixed to his kinsman Gilbert Dugdale’s True Discourse of the Practises of Elizabeth Caldwell, &c. (1604), he says, ‘Your good honor knowes Pinck’s poor heart, who[300] in all my services to your late deceased kind lord, never savoured of flatterie or fixion.’ In his Foole upon Foole, or Six Sortes of Sottes (1600) he tells an incident which took place at Pershore in Worcestershire, during a tour of ‘the Lord Shandoyes players’, at which he was himself present, not improbably playing the clown ‘Grumball’.[932] By 1599, however, he had probably joined the Chamberlain’s men, for in the first edition of Foole upon Foole he describes himself as ‘Clonnico de Curtanio Snuffe’. In a later edition of 1605 this becomes ‘Clonnico del Mondo Snuffe’. Both issues are anonymous, but Armin put his name to an enlargement entitled A Nest of Ninnies (1608).[933] ‘Clunnyco de Curtanio Snuffe’ is also on the title-page of Quips upon Questions (1600), which must therefore be by Armin and not by J. Singer, whose autograph Collier (Bibl. Cat. ii. 203) said that he found on a copy. This is a book of quatrains on stage ‘themes’ (cf. ch. xviii). It was written, as a reference to 28 December as on a Friday shows, in 1599. The author serves a master at Hackney (A ij). Later editions of 1601 and 1602 are said to have been in the Harley collection, and there is a reprint by F. Ouvry (1875). His name is in the 1603 licence for the King’s men and in the Coronation list of 1604. In 1605 Augustine Phillips left him 20s. as his ‘fellow’. Collier’s statement that in the same year he and Kempe (q.v.) were in trouble for libelling aldermen cannot be verified. He is a King’s man on the title-page of his Two Maids of Moreclacke (1609), produced by the King’s Revels, and on the title-page and in the S. R. entry on 6 February 1609 of his Phantasma, the Italian Tailor and his Boy. This is a translation from Straparola and is dedicated to Lord and Lady Haddington. In it he claims to have been ‘writ down an ass in his time’ and refers to ‘his constableship’, from which it is inferred that he played Dogberry in Much Ado about Nothing. Fleay, L. of S. 300, finds a pun on ‘armine’ (= wretch) in London Prodigal (c. 1603), v. i. 179, and suggests that Armin played Matthew Flowerdale. There is a clown Robin in Miseries of Enforced Marriage (1607), and a clown Grumball in If it be not Good (1610–12), but this was a play of Anne’s men. He is in the actor-list of Jonson’s Alchemist (1610). An epigram on ‘honest gamesome Robert Armin’ is in John Davies of Hereford’s Scourge of Folly (S.R. 8 October 1610). He is not in the actor-list of Jonson’s Catiline (1611), nor has any later notice of him been found. That Armin is the R. A. whose play The Valiant Welshman was published in 1615 is only a conjecture. He is in the Folio list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays. It is possible that a woodcut on the title-page of the Two Maids (q.v.) gives his portrait.

ARTHUR, THOMAS. Interluders, 1528.

ATTEWELL (OTTEWELL, OTWELL), GEORGE. Strange’s, 1591; Queen’s, (?) 1595. ‘M^r Otwell’ lived in St. Saviour’s Close in 1599. He is perhaps [301]more likely than the following to be the author or singer of ‘M^r Attowel’s Jigge: betweene Francis, a Gentleman; Richard, a farmer; and their wives’, printed in A. Clark, Shirburn Ballads, lxi (H. ii. 240; B. 147).

ATTWELL (OTTEWELL), HUGH. Revels, 1609; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1613; Charles’s, 1616–21; ob. 25 September 1621.

AUGUSTEN (AGUSTEN), WILLIAM. A ‘player’, from whom Henslowe bought his ‘boy’ Bristow in 1597 (H. ii. 240).

AYNSWORTH, JOHN. A ‘player’ buried at St. Leonard’s 28 September 1581 (B. 153).

BAKER, HARRY. Performer of Vertumnus in Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 1567.

BANASTER, GILBERT. Master of Chapel, 1478–83 (?).

BARFIELD, ROGER. Anne’s, 1606. His d. Isabell was baptized at St. Giles’s on 2 January 1611, and his d. Susan buried there on 3 July 1614 (B. 157).

BARKER. Vide Arkinstall.

BARKSTED (BACKSTEAD), WILLIAM. King’s Revels (?), 1607; Revels, 1609; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1613; Charles’s, 1616; also a dramatist (cf. ch. xxiii) and a poet. His Poems, edited by A. B. Grosart as Part II of Choice Rarities of Ancient English Poetry (1876), were Myrrha (1607), which has commendatory verses by his kinsman Robert Glover and I. W., Lewes Machin, and William Bagnall, and Hiren (1611), which has sonnets to Henry Earl of Oxford, and Elizabeth Countess of Derby. On the title-page he describes himself as ‘one of the servants of his Maiesties Revels’. The surmise of Fleay, i. 29, that this was repeated from an earlier edition of c. 1607 now lost may receive some confirmation from the connexion of Machin with the King’s Revels; but it must also be remembered that the Whitefriars Revels’ company appears to be occasionally described as the King’s Revels in provincial records of c. 1611. A trivial anecdote of him is in J. Taylor, Wit and Mirth (1629).

BARNE, WILLIAM. Admiral’s, 1602.

BARRY, DAVID (LORD). Whitefriars lessee, 1608, and dramatist.

BARTLE (?). Alexander Bartle, son of ‘—— a player’, was baptized at St. Saviour’s on 27 February 1603 (B. 165).

BARTON, ONESIPHORUS. A ‘player’, buried at St. Giles’s on 9 March 1608 (B. 167).

BASSE, THOMAS. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1613; Anne’s, 1617–19.

BAXTER, ROBERT. Chapel, 1601; Lady Elizabeth’s (?), 1613. Greg, H. P. 58, 87, however, thinks that the ‘Baxter’ of 1613, whose Christian name is not given, may be Barksted. Neither man is likely to have written the ‘Baxsters tragedy’ of 1602 (H. P. 58).

BAYLYE, THOMAS. Shrewsbury’s (provincial), 1581. J. Hunter, Hallamshire 80, and Murray, ii. 388, print from College of Arms, Talbot MS. G. f. 74, a Latin letter written by him to Thomas Bawdewin from Sheffield on 25 April 1581, in which he mentions a brother William, thanks him for a tragedy played by the company on St. George’s day, and begs him to procure ‘librum aliquem brevem, novum, iucundum, venustum, lepidum, hilarem, scurrosum, nebulosum,[302] rabulosum, et omnimodis camificiis, latrociniis et lenociniis refertum ... qua in re dicunt quod Wilsonus quidam Leycestrii comitis servus (fidibus pollens) multum vult et potest facere’.

BAYLYE. Paul’s chorister, >1582.

BEART, RUDOLF. Germany, 1608.

BEESTON, CHRISTOPHER, has been conjectured to be the ‘Kit’ who played a Lord and a Captain in 2 Seven Deadly Sins for Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1. The actor-list of Every Man in his Humour shows that he belonged to the Chamberlain’s men in 1598. He is not, however, named as a performer of Shakespeare’s plays in the Folio of 1623. Probably he was at one time the hired man of Augustine Phillips who left him 30s. as his ‘servant’ in 1605. By 1602 he had passed to Worcester’s men, and with this company, afterwards Queen Anne’s, he remained until it was reconstituted on the Queen’s death in 1619, taking a prominent part in the management of the company, after the death of Thomas Greene in 1612. He seems to have built or acquired the Cockpit theatre, and to have successively housed there Queen Anne’s men (1617–19), Prince Charles’s men (1619–22), Lady Elizabeth’s men (1622–5), Queen Henrietta’s men (1625–37), and ‘the King’s and Queen’s young company’, also known as ‘Beeston’s boys’ (1637). By 1639 he had been succeeded as ‘Governor’ of this company by his son William Beeston, and was doubtless dead. The Cockpit had passed by June 1639 to ‘Mrs. Elizabeth Beeston, alias Hutcheson’.[934] It appears from the lawsuit of 1623, in which Queen Anne’s men were concerned, that Christopher Beeston also bore the alias of Hutcheson or Hutchinson. But if Elizabeth was his widow, she must have been a second wife, for the records of the Middlesex justices for 1615–17 record several true bills for recusancy as brought against a wife Jane. In these records Beeston, whose alias is also given, is described as a gentleman or yeoman, and as ‘late of St. James-at-Clerkenwell’, or in one case ‘of Turmil streete’. In 1617 his house was burgled by Henry Baldwin and others.[935] The registers of St. James’s, Clerkenwell, record the baptism of a daughter Anne on 15 September 1611, and the burial of a servant on 1 July 1615.[936] But at an earlier date Beeston lived in St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, where his sons Augustine, Christopher, and Robert were baptized, and the first two buried between 16 November 1604 and 15 July 1610. Robert also was buried there on 26 December 1615, but Christopher was then described in the register as of Clerkenwell. Possibly he afterwards returned to Shoreditch, as Collier states that his name is traceable in the register up to 1637.[937] His son William, also a suspected recusant, was living in Bishopsgate Without just before his death in 1682.[938] An earlier William Beeston, with whom Christopher may have had some connexion, is the ‘Maister Apis Lapis’ and ‘Gentle M. William’, to whom Nashe addressed his Strange Newes (1592).[939]

[303]

BEESTON, ROBERT. Anne’s, 1604, 1609.

BEESTON. A player at Barnstaple in 1560–1 (Murray, ii. 198).

BELT, T. Strange’s (?), 1590–1.

BENFIELD, ROBERT, is first named in the actor-lists of Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Coxcomb and The Honest Man’s Fortune, both of which probably represent performances by the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1613. Subsequently he joined the King’s men, but at what date is uncertain. It may have been upon the death on 16 December 1614 of William Ostler, whom he succeeded in the part of Antonio in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi. He is in the actor-list of The Knight of Malta (1616–19) and in the patent of 1619. He seems to have been a member of the company to the end, as he signed the dedication of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio in 1647. He is in the Folio list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays. Collier found some late records of his family (B. 181).

BENTLEY, JOHN. Queen’s, 1583. He is named by Heywood as before his time, lauded by Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (1592) (Works, i. 215) with Tarlton, Alleyn, and Knell, coupled with Knell in the undated challenge to Alleyn (q.v.) to play one of their parts, and placed by Dekker in A Knight’s Conjuring (1607) in the company of the poets, Watson, Kyd, and Achelow, ‘tho he had ben a player molded out of their pennes, yet because he had been their louer and register to the muse, inimitable Bentley’. He may be the John Bentley whose poems are mentioned by Ritson, Bibliographia Poetica (1802), 129.

BIERDT, BURCHARD. Germany, 1612.

BILLINGESLY, JOHN. Payee for Westminster boys, 1572.

BIRCH, GEORGE. Interluders, 1538–59.

BIRCH, JOHN. Interluders, 1547–56.

BIRD, alias BORNE, WILLIAM. Chamberlain’s (?), 1597; Pembroke’s, 1597; Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1597–1622. Many personalia of his family and debts are recorded in Dulwich manuscripts and church registers (H. ii. 241; B. 204).

‘BLACK DICK.’ Admiral’s, 1597.

BLACKWOOD, THOMAS. Worcester’s, 1602–3; Germany, 1603–6(?). The conjecture of Fleay, i. 290, that an earlier German tour is referred to in How to Choose a Good Wife from a Bad (1602) is baseless (H. ii. 244).

BLANEY, JOHN. Revels, 1609; Anne’s, 1616–19. He lived near the Red Bull in St. John’s Street in 1623 (J. 347).

BLANK, WILLIAM ALEXANDER. A Scottish dancer in Germany, 1605.

BOONE, WILLIAM. A ‘player’ mentioned in books of St. Saviour’s, c. 1600 (Rendle, Bankside, xxvi). Possibly an error for Borne.

BORNE, WILLIAM. Vide Birde.

BOWER, RICHARD. Master of Chapel, 1545–61, and possibly author of Apius and Virginia (1575); cf. ch. xxiv.

BOWRINGE, GREGORY. Paul’s chorister, >1582.

BRADSHAW, RICHARD. Edward, Lord Dudley’s (provincial),[304] 1595. He was Gabriel Spencer’s ‘man’ in 1598, and concerned in financial transactions with Henslowe during 1598–1601. He may be the same Richard Bradshaw who had a provincial company, with a licence to which his title was dubious, in 1630–33 (H. ii. 245; Murray, ii. 42, 106, 163).

BRADSTREET, JOHN. Germany, 1592–7, 1604. He ob. in 1618.

BRETTEN, WILLIAM. Chapel, >1546.

BRISTOW, JAMES. Augusten’s boy, 1597; Admiral’s, 1597–1602 (H. ii. 245).

BROMEHAM. Paul’s, >1582.

BROWNE, EDWARD. Worcester’s, 1583; Admiral’s, 1602. He was a witness for Henslowe in 1599 (H. ii. 246).

BROWNE, JOHN. Interluders, 1551–63.

BROWNE, JOHN. Revels (?), 1608.

BROWNE, ROBERT. Worcester’s, 1583; Holland, 1590; Germany, 1592–3, 1594 (?)-9; Derby’s, 1599–1601; Germany, 1601–7; Revels patentee, 1610; Germany, 1618–20. His wife and family died at Shoreditch in the plague of 1593, but a son Robert and daughter Elizabeth were baptized at St. Saviour’s on 19 October 1595 and 2 December 1599. On 11 April 1612 he wrote to Alleyn from Clerkenwell (H. P., 37, 63; B. 229; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi).

BROWNE, WILLIAM. Anne’s, c. 1616.

BROWNE. It is not safe to identify the Browne whom Henslowe paid to ‘feach’ for the Admiral’s in 1596 (H. i. 45), or the ‘old Browne’ who, as well as Edward, played in 1 Tamar Cham for the Admiral’s in 1602 (H. P. 148), or ‘Browne of the Boares head’ who, according to Alleyn’s wife on 21 Oct. 1603, ‘is dead & dyed very pore, he went not into the countrye at all’ (H. P. 59). The last may be the man whose widow married Thomas Greene (q.v.).

BRYAN, GEORGE, was one of the English company which visited Helsingör in Denmark and Dresden in Germany during 1586–7. He is one of the three actors distinguished as ‘Mr.’ in the plot of Tarlton’s The Seven Deadly Sins as played by Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1, and is named in the Privy Council warrant for the travelling of Strange’s in 1593. He was payee for the Chamberlain’s men on 21 December 1596, but is not in the Every Man in his Humour actor-list of 1598 or traceable at any later date amongst the Chamberlain’s or King’s men. Probably he left to take up duty as an ordinary Groom of the Chamber, as he is found holding this post at Elizabeth’s funeral in 1603 and still held it (Chamber Accounts) in 1611–13. His son George was baptized at St. Andrew’s Wardrobe on 17 February 1600.[940] He is in the Folio list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays.

BUCKE, PAUL. A ‘player’ whose d. Sara was buried on 23 July 1580 and his bastard son Paul buried on 23 July 1599 at St. Anne’s (B. 237). It is apparently his name which, for whatever reason, appears at the end of Wilson’s Three Ladies of London (1584). ‘Paule Bucke’s praier for Sir Humfrey Gilberte’ was entered in S. R. on 17 July 1578.

[305]

BUGBY, JOHN. Grammar Master of Chapel, 1401.

BULL, JOHN. Chapel, 1572 (?)->1586.

BULL, THOMAS. Denmark, 1579–80.

BURBADGE, JAMES. The Shakespearo-centric tendencies of literary historians have led them to suggest a regional connexion between the dramatist and the family of his most famous interpreter.[941] There was a Warwickshire family of Burbadge, of whom John was bailiff of Stratford-on-Avon in 1555, and Malone was thus led (Var. iii. 187) to ‘suspect’ that James Burbadge was Shakespeare’s countryman. Collier (iii. 258) having learnt that the arms claimed by Cuthbert Burbadge at the London visitation of 1634, ‘crest, a boar’s head; and three boars’ heads on a shield’ (Harleian Soc. xv), were those of a Hertfordshire family, attempted the explanation that the two families ‘were in some way related’. He committed himself deeply by publishing in 1835 (New Facts, 32; cf. Ingleby, 256) a forged letter from H. S. to Sir Thomas Egerton, containing the statement that Shakespeare and Richard Burbadge are ‘both of one countie, and indeede almost of one towne’. Burbadges are traceable in various parts of England, including Somerset, Oxfordshire, and Durham (Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 344; Stopes, 134, 243), and the conjecture has about as much value as Malone’s derivation of the name (Var. iii. 182) from ‘Borough-bridge’, or Chalmers’s from ‘Boar’s badge’. Nor is any connexion known between James Burbadge and various other Burbadges—Robert, John, and Edward—who appear in contemporary documents (Collier, iii. 282; Stopes, 152), although A. Wood (Fasti Oxon. i. 303) makes himself responsible for the statement that one John Burbadge, of Lincoln College, was nearly related to the actor. The name is indifferently spelt Burbadge, Burbage, or Burbege by contemporaries, but usually Burbadge in family signatures (Wallace, 61, 63 ‘James Burbage’, 252; Collier, iii. 294; Malone Soc. Coll. ii. 69, 76). James sealed the Blackfriars indentures of 1596 with a griffin.

James was about sixty on 16 February 1591 (Wallace, 61) and was therefore born in 1530–1. He was ‘by occupacion a joyner and reaping but a small lyving by the same, gave it over and became a commen player in playes’ (Wallace, 141). He was one of Leicester’s men in 1572, 1574, and 1576, and apparently continued a ‘fellow’ of this or some other company for a year or two after he established the Theatre in 1576 (Wallace, 142). In this year he was a poor man, and of small credit, not worth above 100 marks (Wallace, 134, 141, 153), but he had enlisted the capital of John Brayne, whose sister Ellen he had married (Wallace, 40, 139). His business history thereafter is bound up with that of the Theatre (q.v.) and of the Blackfriars, which he planned, but probably never used, during the last years of his life. Cuthbert Burbadge says of him (Blackfriars Sharers Papers, 1635)[306] that he ‘was the first builder of playhowses, and was himselfe in his younger yeeres a player’. He was described as ‘joyner’ in the lease of the Theatre site in 1576, but in later years usually as ‘yeoman’ or ‘gentleman’. Presumably he went to live in Shoreditch in 1576, as entries for his family then begin in the registers of St. Leonard’s (Stopes, 139). They testify to the baptism (17 March 1576) of a daughter Alice, mentioned as Alice Walker in the will of Nicholas Tooley (q.v.) in 1623, and the burial (18 August 1582) of a daughter Joan. Another daughter, Helen, was buried at St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, on 15 December 1595 (Bodl.). Besides Alice and Helen he had in 1588 (Wallace, 39) two sons, Cuthbert and Richard, who would both have been born before 1576. James himself was buried at Shoreditch on 2 February 1597 and his widow on 8 May 1613. The registers generally give the family residence as ‘Halliwell Street’, and the ‘Halliwell’ which appears in 1597 and 1601 is perhaps an accidental variant. But the lawsuits suggest that James had built himself a house in the old inner cloister yard of the priory, which lay a little north of Halliwell Street, if that is the same as Holywell Lane (Wallace, 232, 236). They also represent him as a man of violent temper and not over-honest, while an independent record (App. D, No. lxxiv) refers to him as ‘a stubburne fellow’. Before his death he seems to have made over his interest in the Blackfriars to his son Richard, while that in the Theatre had passed by redemption of a mortgage to Cuthbert (Wallace, 55, 73, 108, 145, 278).

Cuthbert Burbadge, the elder son of James, was not an actor, although as holder of the leases of the Theatre and afterwards of the Globe (q.v.) he was concerned during the greater part of his life with theatrical management. On 16 February 1591 he was servant to Walter Cope, gentleman usher to Lord Burghley. He was then twenty-four, and must have been born in 1566–7. He was then probably living in the Strand (Stopes, 152), but the subsidy rolls for 1597 (Stopes, 195) show him as assessed at 10s. 8d. in Holywell Street, and the registers of St. Leonard’s have the records of his children, Walter (bapt. 22 June 1595), James (bur. 15 July 1597), and Elizabeth (bapt. 30 December 1601). Of these only Elizabeth, the wife first of Amias Maxey and secondly of George Bingley, was alive in 1634 and her son Amias had been adopted by his grandfather. Cuthbert himself was buried at Shoreditch on 17 September 1636, and his widow Elizabeth, daughter of John Cox, on 1 October 1636 (Stopes, 134, 140). His friendship with members of the King’s company is commemorated by notices in the wills of William Sly (1608), Richard Cowley (1618), and Nicholas Tooley, who died in his house in 1623. Collier (iii. 285) identified him with Cuthbert Burby the stationer, but Burby was in fact the son of Edmund Burby of Beds., husbandman (Arber, ii. 127). Possibly, however, the families were related, since Burby’s name is given at least once in the Stationers’ Register (Arber, ii. 612) as ‘Burbidge’.

BURBADGE, RICHARD, makes his first appearance, picturesquely enough, in the brawl at the Theatre which followed upon the Chancery[307] Order of 13 November 1590, restoring a moiety of the profits of the house to the widow Brayne (cf. p. 392). John Alleyn deposed (Wallace, 101) that he ‘found the foresaid Ry. Burbage the yongest sone of the said James Burbage there, w^t a broome staff in his hand, of whom when this deponente asked what sturre was there, he answered in laughing phrase hew they come for a moytie. But quod he (holding vppe the said broomes staff) I haue, I think, deliuered him a moytie with this & sent them packing.’ Nicholas Bishop (Wallace, 98, 115), one of Mrs. Brayne’s agents, adds the confirmatory detail that ‘the said Ry. Burbage scornfully & disdainfullye playing with this deponentes nose, sayd, that yf he delt in the matter, he wold beate him also, and did chalendge the field of him at that tyme’. Very possibly Richard was then playing with the Admiral’s men at the Theatre. His exact age is unknown, but he was younger than Cuthbert, born in 1566–7, and as Cuthbert, long after, spoke of the ‘35 yeeres paines, cost, and labour’ out of which his brother ‘made meanes to leave his wife and children some estate’ in 1619 (Sharers Papers), it may perhaps be inferred that his histrionic career began as early as 1584. The ‘plot’ of The Dead Man’s Fortune, wherein the doubtful direction (cf. p. 125) ‘Burbage a messenger’ suggests that he played a minor part, may belong to a performance by the Admiral’s c. 1590. It is a little more difficult to suppose that at a date when the Queen’s men were still active the Admiral’s or Strange’s had already acquired Tarlton’s Seven Deadly Sins, in the ‘plot’ of which ‘R. Burbadg’ is cast for the important characters of Gorboduc and Terens. But perhaps it is even less probable that, after the breach of the Admiral’s with his father in 1591, he took part in the performances of the same play by the amalgamated Admiral’s and Strange’s men at the Rose in 1592. His name does not appear amongst those of the Strange’s men who were travelling in 1593. But when the amalgamation broke up, and the Chamberlain’s company was formed, with some of its elements as a nucleus, in 1594, he joined that company, and became a prominent member, often acting as its representative or payee, both before and after its metamorphosis into the King’s men, and to the end of his own life. His name is constant in its lists (cf. ch. xiii), and his personal relations with his fellows are reflected in the wills of Augustine Phillips in 1605, Shakespeare in 1616, and Nicholas Tooley, whose ‘master’ he had been, in 1623. It would appear that in the somewhat irregular disposition of James Burbadge’s theatrical interests the Blackfriars freehold fell primarily to Richard. The leases of 1608 were made by him as lessor to his brother and other members of the King’s men’s syndicate as lessees. This, however, was doubtless a mere family arrangement, for Cuthbert spoke of the Blackfriars in 1635 as ‘our inheritance’, and the two brothers shared in the supplementary transactions which rounded off the original purchase (cf. ch. xvii). At the Globe, on the other hand, Cuthbert and Richard held in common a moiety of the housekeepers’ interest under the lease from Nicholas Brend (cf. ch. xvi). They continued to live as close neighbours in Halliwell Street, Shoreditch, where they shared the misfortune of[308] having their houses burgled in 1615 (Jeaffreson, ii. 108) and where the registers of St. Leonard’s (Stopes, 139) record Richard’s children: Richard (bur. 16 August 1607), Julia or Juliet (bapt. 2 January 1603, bur. 12 September 1608), Frances (bapt. 16 September and bur. 19 September 1604), Anne (bapt. 8 August 1607), Winifred (bapt. 10 October 1613, bur. 14 October 1616), a second Julia (bapt. 26 December 1614, bur. 15 August 1615), William (bapt. 6 November 1616), and a posthumous Sara (bapt. 5 August 1619, bur. 29 April 1625). ‘Richard Burbadge, player’ was himself buried on 16 March 1619. He had died, not as Camden records in his Annals on 9 March, but on 13 March, after making the day before a nuncupative will (Collier, iii. 293), witnessed by his brother and by Nicholas Tooley and Richard Robinson of the King’s men, in which he left his wife Winifred sole executrix. She subsequently married Richard Robinson, and was still alive, as was Burbadge’s son William, in 1635 (Sharers Papers). According to the gossip of the day he left ‘better than £300 land to his heirs’ (Collier, iii. 297).

Burbadge had a high reputation as a player, both in life and after death. A note of 13 March 1602 by John Manningham (Diary, 39) records how his impersonation of Richard III touched the heart of a citizen’s wife, and how Shakespeare prevented him at a resultant assignation. John Davies of Hereford coupled him with Shakespeare in 1603 (Microcosmos) among players whom he loved ‘for painting, poesie’, and in 1609 (Civile Warres of Death and Fortune) amongst those whom Fortune ‘guerdond not, to their desarts’. He is introduced in propria persona into 2 Return from Parnassus (1602) and into Marston’s induction to The Malcontent (1604). Probably he is the ‘one man’ of the London stage with whom the player in Ratseis Ghost (1605; cf. ch. xviii) is advised ‘to play Hamlet for a wager’. Jonson, in Bartholomew Fair (1614), v. iii, makes Cokes ask the master of the puppets, ‘which is your Burbage now?... your best Actor. Your Field?’ He was apparently the model for the Character of an Actor in the Characters of 1615 (App. C, No. lxi). And other evidences of his fame can be traced down to Restoration days in Richard Corbet’s Iter Boreale, in Sir Richard Baker’s Chronicle and Theatrum Redivivum, and in Richard Flecknoe’s Short Discourse of the English Stage and his Euterpe Restored (cf. Collier, iii. 279; Stopes, 121; Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse, N.S.S., 128, 250).

Shortly after Burbadge’s death, on 20 May 1619, the Earl of Pembroke wrote to Lord Doncaster in Germany of a great supper given the same night by the Duke of Lennox to the French ambassador, and adds that the company were now at the play, ‘which I being tender-harted could not endure to see so soone after the loss of my old acquaintance Burbadg’ (E. J. L. Scott in Athenaeum (1882), i. 103). Several epitaphs and elegies upon Burbadge are preserved. The shortest—‘Exit Burbadge’—was printed in Camden’s Remaines (1674), 541. Another is by Middleton (Collier, iii. 280, 296). A third, which begins

[309]

has been the subject of much controversy (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 88; C. M. Ingleby, The Elegy on Burbadge, in Shakespeare, the Man and the Book, ii. 169). It exists in two versions, one of 86 lines, the other of 124 lines. Of the shorter version several undoubtedly genuine manuscripts are known, and it is probably only by accident that one of these omits ll. 2–5 of the following passage, which is given completely by all the rest:

In the longer version ll. 2–5 are not only omitted, but are replaced by an interpolation of many lines, detailing a number of parts, some of which belonged to other companies than the King’s, and are not likely to have been played by Burbadge. No manuscript of this version is forthcoming, and there can be little doubt that the interpolation is due to Collier, who referred to the version in his New Particulars (1836), 27, and published it in his Memoirs of the Actors (1846), 52, professedly from a manuscript in the possession of Richard Heber. Of the shorter version I can add to what has been recorded by others that in Stowe MS. 962, f. 62^v, I have found a copy of it, with the title ‘An Elegie on the death of the famous actor Rich: Burbage, who died 13 Martij A^o. 1618’, and an ascription to ‘Jo ffletcher’. Other copies also give the date of Burbadge’s death, or refer, as do the opening lines themselves, to the fact that he was skilled not only as an actor but as a limner. John Davies testifies to this in the verses of 1603 already cited. The accounts of the Earl of Rutland for the birthday tilt of 1613 contain the entry, ‘31 Martij, To M^r. Shakspeare in gold, about my Lordes impreso, 44^s. To Richard Burbage for paynting and makyng yt, in gold, 44^s’; and those for the tilt of 1616, ‘25 Martij, 1616, paid given Richard Burbidg for my Lordes shelde and for the embleance, 4^li 18^s’ (H. M. C. Rutland MSS. iv. 494, 508). The gallery at Dulwich contains a picture presented by William Cartwright, which is described in his catalogue as ‘a womans head on a boord done by M^r. Burbige y^e actor’. The inveterate tendency of mankind to guess has led to suggestions that he may have painted the portrait of himself in the same gallery, the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, or the original of the Droeshout print.

One other record of Burbadge, apart from his company, may be noted. On 31 May 1610 he was employed by the City, with his fellow James Rice, to deliver a speech to Prince Henry at a water-pageant on[310] the Thames (cf. ch. iv). Presumably he represented Amphion, ‘a grave and judicious Prophet-like personage’, and Rice Corinea.

BURGES, ROBERT. A ‘player’ buried at St. Bennet’s, Gracechurch, 14 April 1559 (B. 251).

CANDLER, JAMES. Leader of a company at Ipswich, 1569–70 (Hist. MSS. ix. 1. 248).

CARIE (GARY), GILES. Revels, 1609; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1613.

CARLETON, NICHOLAS. Paul’s, >1582.

CARPENTER, WILLIAM. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611; Charles’s, 1619, 1625. He was apparently porter at the Marshalsea in 1623 (J. 347).

CARTWRIGHT, WILLIAM. Admiral’s-Henry’s, 1598–1622 (H. ii. 247). He lived at the upper end of White Cross Street in 1623 (J. 347).

CASTLE, THOMAS. A ‘player’, whose son Nicholas and daughter Hester were baptized at St. Giles’s on 9 October 1608 and 15 April 1610 (B. 262).

CATTANES. Worcester’s, 1602 (H. ii. 248).

CAVALLERIZZO, CLAUDIO. Italians, 1576 (?).

CHAPPELL, JOHN. Chapel, 1600–1.

CHESSON, THOMAS. Oxford’s (?), 1580.

CLARK, SILL. Prince’s, 1603< >1641.

CLARKE, ROBERT. A ‘player’ whose son Ezekiel was buried at St. Giles’s, 7 November 1617 (B. 268).

CLARKE, THOMAS. Leicester’s, 1572.

CLAY, NATHANIEL. Anne’s, 1618; Chamber of Bristol, 1618.

CLEMENT, WILLIAM. London player, 1550 (App. D, No. v).

CLIFTON, THOMAS. Kidnapped for Chapel, 1600.

COBORNE, EDWARD. A ‘player’ whose son John was baptized at St. Giles’s on 23 Nov. 1616. Of other family entries, 1613–25, some are for Edward Coborne ‘gentleman’ (Bodl.). He may be identical with Colbrand.

COKE, RICHARD. Interluders, 1547–56.

COLBRAND, EDWARD. Palsgrave’s, 1610–13.

COLE. Paul’s, 1599.

COLMAN, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1509.

CONDELL, HENRY, has been conjectured to be the ‘Harry’ cast for Ferrex and a Lord in the ‘plot’ of The Seven Deadly Sins, as played by Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1. The first definite notice of him is in the cast of Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour, as played by the Chamberlain’s men in 1598. Thereafter he appears in all formal lists of the Chamberlain’s and King’s men, up to the Caroline patent of 1625, including the list in the First Folio of 1623, of which, with Heminges, he acted as editor. He is also in all the casts up to The Humourous Lieutenant (c. 1619). About this date he presumably ceased to play; his part of the Cardinal in The Duchess of Malfi had passed to Richard Robinson by 1623. The fact that he took this part somewhat discredits the conjecture of John Roberts (Answer to Pope, 1729) that he was a comedian; nor can the statement of the same writer that he was a printer be verified. He is staged with other members of the company in Marston’s Malcontent (1604), and appears[311] as ‘Henry Condye’ in the verses on the burning of the Globe in 1613. He is assigned 26s. 8d. to buy a ring as Shakespeare’s ‘fellowe’ in his will of 1616, and appears also as a legatee in the will of Augustine Phillips in 1605, as trustee in that of Alexander Cooke in 1614, as executor and joint residuary legatee in that of Nicholas Tooley in 1623, under which also his wife and his daughter Elizabeth receive legacies, and as executor in that of John Underwood in 1625. By 1599 he was married and apparently settled in St. Mary Aldermanbury, where he held various parochial offices during 1606–21, and the register records his children: Elizabeth (bapt. 27 February 1599, bur. 11 April 1599), Anne (bapt. 4 April 1601, bur. 16 July 1610), Richard (bapt. 18 April 1602), Elizabeth (bapt. 14 April 1603, bur. 22 April 1603), Elizabeth (bapt. 26 October 1606), Mary (bapt. 30 January 1608, bur. from Hoxton at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, 24 March 1608), Henry (bapt. 6 May 1610, bur. 4 March 1630), William (bapt. 26 May 1611), Edward (bapt. 22 August 1614, bur. 23 August 1614).[942] Subsequently he had a ‘country house’ at Fulham, at which on 10 September 1625 a pamphlet written by certain players on their travels during the plague, as a reply to Dekker’s A Rod for Run-awayes, under the title of The Run-awayes Answer, was addressed to him, with an expression of gratitude for a ‘free and noble farewell’ which he had given the writers. At Fulham, too, on 13 December 1627, he made his will, leaving to his widow Elizabeth, his sons Henry and William, and his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Herbert Finch, much household property at Aldermanbury and elsewhere in London, including ‘rents and profits’ by ‘leases and terms of years’ of ‘messuages houses and places’ in Blackfriars and on the Bankside, which were to pass for a time to William and ultimately to the widow.[943] Condell had not been an original sharer in the house of the Globe, but by 1612 had acquired an interest jointly with Heminges; of the Blackfriars house he was an original sharer in 1608. The Sharers Papers of 1635 indicate that Mrs. Condell had held four-sixteenths of the Globe and one-eighth of the Blackfriars, but had transferred two-sixteenths of the Globe when Taylor and Lowin were admitted as sharers. A minor legacy in Condell’s will is to his old servant, Elizabeth Wheaton, of her ‘place or priviledge’ in the Globe and Blackfriars. Heminges and Cuthbert Burbadge are named as overseers. Condell was buried on 29 December 1627, and his widow on 3 October 1635, both at St. Mary Aldermanbury.[944]

COOKE, ALEXANDER, has been conjectured to be the ‘Sander’ who is cast in the ‘plot’ of The Seven Deadly Sins as played by Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1, for the parts of Videna in Envy and Progne in Lechery. But, as far as this goes, he might just as well be the ‘San.’ who took the part of a player in Taming of a Shrew (1594), ind. 1, which was a Pembroke’s play. Malone ‘presumes’, with some[312] rashness, that he performed ‘all the principal female characters’ in Shakespeare’s plays.[945] It must be doubtful whether he was on the stage as early as 1592. He is traceable as a member of the King’s men in the casts of Sejanus (1603), Volpone (1605), Alchemist (1610), Catiline (1611), and The Captain (1612–13). The fact that in the first two of these his name occurs at the end of the lists has been somewhat hazardously accepted as an indication that he played women’s parts. He is also in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. Augustine Phillips left him a legacy as his ‘fellow’ in 1605.

‘Mr. Cooke and his wife’ commend themselves to Alleyn in his wife’s letter of 21 October 1603.[946] The token-books of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, show an Alexander Cooke in Hill’s Rents during 1604, 1607, 1609, and 1610; and the parish register, recording the baptism of Francis Cooke, son of Alexander, ‘a player’, on 27 October 1605, makes an identification possible. There were three more children, Rebecca (bapt. 11 October 1607), Alice (bapt. 3 November 1611), Alexander (bapt. 20 March 1614). This last was posthumous; the register records Alexander Cooke’s burial on 25 February 1614.[947] His will, dated 3 January 1614, leaves £50 each to Francis, Rebecca, and the unborn child, and the residue to his wife.[948] He owned £50 ‘which is in the hand of my fellowes, as my share of the stock’. He appoints ‘my master Hemings’, to whom he had presumably been apprenticed, and Condell trustees for his children, and mentions brothers Ellis and John, of whom the latter is conjectured by Collier to be the author of Greene’s Tu Quoque.

COOKE, EDWARD. Chapel, 1509.

COOKE, LIONEL. Queen’s, 1583, 1588.

COOKE, THOMAS. Worcester’s, 1583.

COOKE, WILLIAM. Whitefriars lessee, 1608.

CORNISH, JOHN. Gentleman of Chapel, and pageant-master at wedding of Arthur in 1501.

CORNISH, KIT. A ‘ghost-name’ in Chapel records.

CORNISH, WILLIAM. Master of Song School, Westminster, 1479–80.

CORNISH, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1509–23. Conceivably identical with the last, and in any case probably of the same family.

COWLEY, RICHARD, was of Strange’s men in 1593. He had played minor parts with that company or the Admiral’s in The Seven Deadly Sins of 1590–1, and is mentioned in Alleyn’s correspondence as travelling with the company. He joined the Chamberlain’s men, probably on their formation in 1594, and was payee for the company in 1601. The stage-directions to the Quarto (1600) and Folio texts of Much Ado about Nothing, IV. ii, show that he played Verges. He is in the 1603 and 1604 lists of the King’s men, and received a legacy from Augustine Phillips as his ‘fellow’ in 1605, but does not appear to have been a sharer in the houses of the Globe or Blackfriars. He is in the Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. He dwelt in[313] Holywell, or for a short period in Alleyn’s Rents, both in the parish of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, whose register records his children, Robert (bapt. 8 March 1596, bur. (?) 20 March 1597), Cuthbert (bapt. 8 May 1597), Richard (bapt. 29 April 1598, bur. 26 February 1603), Elizabeth (bapt. 2 February 1602), as well as the funeral of his wife Elizabeth on 28 September 1616, and his own on 12 March 1619.[949] His will, dated on 13 January 1618, appoints his daughter Elizabeth Birch executrix and is witnessed by Heminges, Cuthbert Burbadge, Shank, and Thomas Ravenscroft, perhaps the madrigalist.[950]

CRANE, JOHN. A London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v).

CRANE, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1523–45.

CROSSE, SAMUEL, is named amongst the performers of Shakespeare’s plays in the First Folio, but in no list of the Chamberlain’s or King’s men. Probably, therefore, he belongs to the very beginning of Shakespeare’s career, and is to be identified with the Crosse named by Heywood amongst famous actors of a generation before his time.[951]

CUMBER, JOHN. Anne’s, 1616–19. He lived in Aldermanbury in 1623, and died in that year (J. 347; Fleay, 279).

CURTEYS, JAMES. Chapel, 1509.

CUTLER, JAMES. Chapel, > 1605.

DABORNE, ROBERT. Revels patentee, 1610, and dramatist.

DANIEL, JOHN. Chamber of Bristol patentee, 1615–17.

DANIEL, SAMUEL. Allower of Revels’ plays, 1604, and dramatist.

DARLOWE. Admiral’s, >1590.

DAVIES, HUGH. Admiral’s (?), 1601 (H. ii. 255).

DAWES, ROBERT. Duke of York’s, 1610; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1614.

DAY, JOHN. Admiral’s (?), c. 1600. John, son of John Day, ‘player’, was baptized at St. Saviour’s, 3 June 1604 (B. 308; cf. ch. xxiii).

DAY, THOMAS. Chapel, 1601, 1602.

DOB. Admiral’s, 1598–1601.

DOWNTON (DOWTON, DOUTON (?), DOWTEN, DOWGHTON, DENYGTEN, DOUBTON), THOMAS. Strange’s, 1593; Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1594–c. 1618. The St. Saviour’s registers record various family events, including the baptism of Christopher, son of Thomas Dowton ‘musycyon’ on 27 December 1592 and that of Thomas Dowton ‘baseborne, the supposed son of Thomas Dowton, a player’, 25 May 1600. He apparently married a vintner’s widow on 15 February 1618, became a vintner, and was still alive on 18 August 1622 (B. 316; H. ii. 262, 265). Dr. Greg regards him as one of the Dutton family.

DRAKE, ROBERT. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

DRAYTON, MICHAEL. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, and dramatist.

DREWE, BARTHOLOMEW. A ‘player’, whose son George was baptized at St. Saviour’s on 12 November 1614 (B. 314).

DREWE, THOMAS. Anne’s, 1616–19.

DROM, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1601.

[314]

DRUSIANO. Vide Martinelli.

DUKE, JOHN. Strange’s (?), 1590–1; Chamberlain’s, 1598; Worcester’s-Anne’s, 1602–9. Four children were baptized at St. Leonard’s, where he lived in Holywell Street, from July 1604 to January 1609 (H. ii. 265; Collier, Actors, xxxi).

DULANDT (DOWLAND?), ROBERT. Musician in Germany, 1623.

DUTTON, EDWARD. Admiral’s, 1597, with a boy ‘Dick’. Children of his were baptized at St. Saviour’s during 1600–2 (B. 326).

DUTTON, JOHN. Warwick’s, 1575–6; Oxford’s, 1580; Queen’s, 1583, 1588–91. Lincoln’s Inn paid him for musicians in 1567–8 (Walker, i. 362). There are family records of a John Dutton at St. Botolph’s, who is called ‘player’ in the entry of a daughter Elizabeth’s baptism of 3 July 1586 (B. 328).

DUTTON, LAURENCE. Lane’s, 1571–2; Clinton’s, 1572–5; Warwick’s, 1575–6; Oxford’s, 1580; Queen’s, 1589–91. It is curious that a John and a Laurence Dutton also appear as Court Messengers. I find a payment on 23 May 1578 to John for carrying letters to Antwerp (Pipe Office, Chamber Declared Account 541, m. 211^v), and Laurence was paid for ‘sondry jorneys’ in 1561–2 (ibid. m. 39) and was during 1576–82 one of the regular Messengers of the Chamber in attendance on the Privy Council (Dasent, ix. 223, x. 223, 228, xi. 437, xii. 23, xiii. 135, 392, etc.). The ‘Edward’ Dutton of the last entry may be an error. In 1592 the Council (xxii. 493) recommended John the son of Laurence who had ‘of long tyme served her Majestie’ as Messenger, for admission as a Queen’s Scholar at Westminster. But this Laurence can hardly have been the actor, for he was acting as Messenger on 20 May 1580, while the affray for which Laurence the actor had been committed to the Marshalsea on 13 April was still uninquired into. Somewhat earlier a Thomas Dutton was employed as a post between Edward VI’s Council and Thomas Gresham in Antwerp, and was Gresham’s agent in Hamburg, c. 1571 (Burgon, Gresham, i. 109; ii. 421). It is easier again to conjecture than to prove a connexion between the actors and the house of Dutton, which had a hereditary jurisdiction over minstrelsy in Cheshire (cf. ch. ix), although in this the names John and Laurence both appear. It is perhaps an accident that two of the recorded visits of the Queen’s men to Lord Derby’s northern seats in 1588–90 synchronize with visits by a Mr. Dutton (Murray, ii. 296).

ECCLESTONE, WILLIAM, appears as a King’s man in the casts of The Alchemist (1610) and Catiline (1611). Mr. Fleay’s statement that he joined the company from the Queen’s Revels in 1609 rests upon a confusion with Field.[952] In 1611 he became a member of the Lady Elizabeth’s men, but left them in 1613 after playing in The Honest Man’s Fortune during that year. He returned to the King’s, and his name is found in the official lists of the company for 1619 and 1621 and in most of the casts of their plays, from Bonduca in 1613–14 to The Spanish Curate in 1622, as well as in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. Nicholas Tooley forgave him a debt[315] in his will of 3 June 1623. As he is not in the Caroline patent of 1625, he had probably died or retired by that date. He may be the W. E. who writes commendatory verses to The Wild-goose Chase in 1652. If he is also the ‘William Eglestone’ whose marriage to Anne Jacob is recorded in the register of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 20 February 1603, he lived to be an old man.[953]

EDMONDS, JOHN. Globe lessee, 1612; Chamber of Bristol, 1618–19. The St. Saviour’s registers record the marriage of a John Edmonds to Margaret Goodyere on 22 February 1600 and the baptism of children of John Edmonds, ‘player’, from 6 January 1605 to 17 July 1615 (B. 334). Probably the two are not identical and the player is the John Edmans who seems to have married his fellow-legatee, Mary Clarke, of the will of Thomas Pope (q.v.) in 1604.

EDWARDES, RICHARD. Master of Chapel, 1561–6, and dramatist.

EICHELIN. Germany, 1604.

ELDERTON, WILLIAM. One Elderton, dressed as a fool, played the part of one of the Lord of Misrule’s sons in George Ferrers’s Christmas revel of 1552–3 (Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 120; cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 407). Conjecture may identify him with the Elderton who brought the Eton boys to Court on 6 January 1573 and the William Elderton who brought the Westminster boys on 1 January 1574, and with the rhyming William Elderton, some of whose ballads are preserved and reprinted in Collier, Old Ballads from Early Printed Copies (1842, Percy Soc.), 25, 45; H. Huth, Ancient Ballads and Broadsides (1867, Philobiblon Soc.); and H. L. Collman, Ballads and Broadsides (1912, Roxburghe Club); or recorded, with ballads against him, in the Stationers’ Register (Arber, i. 179, 180, 181, 199, 384, 403, 439; ii. 338, 363, 369, 388, 396, 399; cf. v. lxxvi), while his ‘ale-crammed nose’ and ‘rymes lying a steepe in ale’ are subject for much humour among the pamphleteers (Lyly, iii. 398; Nashe, i. 197, 256, 280; iii. 123, 133, 177, 354). Stowe (Survey, i. 272) makes him an attorney in the sheriff’s courts at the Guildhall about 1568, but he can hardly be the ‘master Elderton’ who sat as a justice at the Guildhall in a coining case of 1562 (Machyn, 290). He appears to have been dead by 1592 (Harvey, i. 163; Nashe, i. 280). A recent paper on Elderton by H. E. Rollins is in S. P. xvii (1920), 199.

ENGLISH, JOHN. Interluders, 1494–1531.

EVANS, HENRY. Blackfriars lessee, 1583, 1600–8; payee for Oxford’s, 1584; manager of Chapel, 1600–3. He was a scrivener, and overseer to the will of Sebastian Westcott, Master of Paul’s, in 1582.

EVANS, THOMAS. Blackfriars lessee, 1608.

EVESEED, HENRY. Chapel, >1585.

FARNABY, RICHARD. Musician in Germany, 1623.

FARRANT, RICHARD. Master of Children of Windsor, 1564–80; Acting Master of Chapel and Blackfriars lessee, 1576–80.

FERRABOSCO, ALFONSO. Italians, 1576, and Court musician (cf. ch. ii).

[316]

FETHERSTON, WILLIAM. Of Danby, Yorks., unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

FIDGE, WILLIAM. H. R. Plomer (3 Library, ix. 252) cites from a Canterbury record of 1571, ‘William Fidge and Whetstone owe the said [Robert] Bettes [a painter] for their portions in buying of certen playebookes 35s. 4d.’

FIELD, NATHAN, was the son of John Field, preacher and castigator of the stage (cf. App. C, No. xxxi), and was baptized at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, on 17 October 1587 (Collier, iii. 425). His name is always spelt Nathan in formal contemporary documents, although he was familiarly known as Nat or Nid. But he appears in many reputable modern works of learning as Nathaniel. This error perhaps originated with the compilers of the 1679 Folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, who in four out of the six actor-lists in which his name is found used the form Nathan and in two (Loyal Subject and Mad Lover) Nathanael. It was certainly encouraged by a muddle of Collier, who finding in the Cripplegate registers that another son of John Field had been baptized Nathaniel on 13 June 1581, and not realizing that a cranky theological father might quite well use the names as distinct, thought it necessary to assume that this Nathaniel had died before 1587. As a matter of fact, he survived, was apprenticed to a stationer at Michaelmas 1596, took up his freedom on 3 June 1611, and between 1624 and 1627 published some books, including two sermons by a third brother, Theophilus Field, Bishop of Llandaff (McKerrow, Dict. 101). I need hardly linger over the suggestion that Nathan Field lived a double life as actor and bookseller. At this time of the apprenticeship he was not yet nine years old, and he was still a scholar of St. Paul’s Grammar School when, not earlier than 1600, he was impressed by Nathaniel Giles and his deputies to serve as one of the Children of the Chapel (Clifton v. Robinson in Fleay, 128). His education was not entirely interrupted, for he fell into the hands of Ben Jonson, who told Drummond in 1619 that ‘Nid Field was his schollar, and he had read to him the Satyres of Horace, and some Epigrames of Martiall’ (Laing, 11). Field remained a member of the Chapel and the Queen’s Revels throughout the vicissitudes of the company from 1600 to 1613. He is in the actor-lists of Cynthia’s Revels (1600), The Poetaster (1601), and Epicoene (1609), and presumably played Humfrey in K. B. P. (1607).[954] With his fellows he became absorbed into the Lady Elizabeth’s in March 1613, contracted with Henslowe and Meade on behalf of this company (Henslowe Papers, 23), acted as their payee in 1615, and appears in the actor-lists of The Coxcomb, The Honest Man’s Fortune, and Bartholomew Fair (1614), in the text of which Jonson compliments him (v. 3) as follows:

He seems to have been suspected by the company of taking bribes from Henslowe to connive at transactions contrary to their interest[317] (Henslowe Papers, 88). Certainly he was in financial straits and on more than one occasion appealed to Henslowe to secure his release from an arrest (Henslowe Papers, 66, 67). Perhaps it was as a result of this friction with his fellows that he abandoned their amalgamation with Prince Charles’s men in 1615. Instead he joined, at or about this date, the King’s men, and appears as one in the actor-lists of The Loyal Subject, The Knight of Malta, The Queen of Corinth, and The Mad Lover. It must, I think, have been by a slip that Cuthbert Burbadge, in the Sharers Papers of 1635, spoke of him as joining the King’s with Ostler and Underwood in 1608 or 1609. It seems probable that Field brought with him to the King’s a share of the plays which had formed the repertory of the joint Lady Elizabeth’s and Queen’s Revels, including Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois, in which a King’s prologue vaunts his success as Bussy. He did not stay with the company very long, for though he is in the patent of 27 March and the livery list of 19 May 1619, he is replaced by John Rice in the livery list of 7 April 1621. And as he does not appear and Rice does appear amongst the actors named in the stage-directions to Sir John von Olden Barnevelt in August 1619, it is probable that he had left in the course of the summer (M. L. R. iv. 395). If so, his departure synchronizes with a scandal which attached itself to his name. His moral character was hardly becoming to the son of a preacher. More than one manuscript commonplace book (e. g. Ashm. MS. 47, f. 49, which appears from the spelling of the name to be a late copy) contains an epigram with some such heading as On Nathaniell Feild suspected for too much familiarity with his M^ris Lady May. And on 5 June 1619 Sir William Trumbull wrote from Brussels to Lord Hay (E. J. L. Scott in Athenaeum (1882), i. 103) that he was told that the Earl of Argyll had paid for the nursing of a child, ‘which the world sayes is daughter to my lady and N. Feild the Player’. Lady Argyll was Anne, daughter of Sir William Cornwallis of Brome. Field’s later life is obscure. There is an unimportant jest about him in John Taylor’s Wit and Mirth (1629). He was married to a wife Anne, and had children baptized and buried at St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, during 1619–25. If another epigram, printed by Collier, iii. 437, can be trusted, he very properly suffered from jealousy. In relevant register entries the name is given as Nathan. The Blackfriars registers give children both of Nathan and of Nathaniel Field, and on 20 February 1633 occurs the burial of Nathaniel Field, whom, if the entry does not indicate that the confusion of persons had already begun, we are bound to take to be the bookseller. There is no reason why both brothers should not have resided in Blackfriars.

Field was dramatist, as well as actor. In addition to the two plays published under his single name, he collaborated with Massinger in The Fatal Dowry, which was a King’s play and not likely, therefore, to fall outside the dates 1616–19. And as the Henslowe correspondence (Henslowe Papers, 65, 84) show him as collaborating also with Fletcher, Massinger, and Daborne for the Lady Elizabeth’s, he has been conjectured as a possible sharer in the authorship of several of the plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher series. He also, about the time of his[318] joining the King’s, wrote a defence of the stage, in the form of a remonstrance to Mr. Sutton, a preacher of St. Mary Overies (App. C, No. lxiii). A portrait of Field is at Dulwich.

FLETCHER, LAWRENCE. Scotland, 1595, 1599, 1601; Admiral’s (?), 1596; King’s, 1603. Although included as a King’s man in the royal patent, there is no reason to suppose that Fletcher ever joined the company acting at the Globe; the absence of his name from the actor-list in the Shakespeare F₁ of 1623 is strong evidence that he did not. He lived in St. Saviour’s, where he had a homonym, a victualler, who survived him. One of the two is shown by the token-books as housed in Hunt’s Rents, Maid Lane, during 1605–7; probably this was the actor, who was buried on 12 September 1608. The description ‘Lawrence Fletcher, a man: in the church’ of the register is amplified in a fee-book to ‘Lawrence Fletcher, a player, the King’s servant, buried in the church, with an afternoon’s knell of the great bell, 20s.’ (Collier, Memoirs of the Actors¹, x; Rendle, Bankside, xxvii).

FLOWER. Admiral’s (?), c. 1600.

FOSTER, ALEXANDER. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1618; Charles’s, 1616.

FREYERBOTT, BARTHOLOMEUS. Germany, 1615.

FRITH, MOLL. It appears to be suggested in the Epilogue to The Roaring Girl (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Dekker) that this lady was to appear in person on the Fortune stage, c. 1610.

FROST, JOHN. Chapel, 1601.

GARLAND, JOHN. Queen’s, 1583, 1588; Lennox’s, 1605; Duke of York’s, 1610. He appears to have dwelt in 1605 at ‘the ould forde’ (H. ii. 267).

GARLICK. In I. H., This World’s Folly (1615), an actor of this name is apparently said to have personated himself on the Fortune stage, ‘behung with chaynes of Garlicke’ (App. C, No. lix); cf. Dekker, If This be not a Good Play (1610–12), sc. x (ed. Pearson, iii. 325), ‘Fortune fauours no body but Garlicke, nor Garlike neither now, yet she has strong reason to loue it; for tho Garlicke made her smell abhominably in the nostrills of the gallants, yet she had smelt and stuncke worse but for garlike’; H. Parrot, Laquei Ridiculosi (1613), Epig. 131, ‘Greene’s Tu Quoque and those Garlicke Jigs’; in Tailor, Hog Hath Lost his Pearl (1614, ed. Dodsley⁴, p. 434), a jig will draw more whores ‘than e’er Garlic had’.

GARRET, JOHN. Anne’s, 1619.

GEDION. Admiral’s, 1602.

‘GERRY.’ King’s Revels, 1607.

GEW. A blind player, referred to in 1 Ant. Mellida (1599), ind. 142, ‘’t had been a right part for Proteus or Gew. Ho! blind Gew would ha’ done ’t rarely, rarely’; E. Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598), Sat. v, ‘One that for ape tricks can put Gue to schoole’, and Epig. xi, ‘Gue, hang thy selfe for woe, since gentlemen Are now grown cunning in thy apishness’; Jonson, Epig. cxxix, ‘Thou dost out-zany Cokely, Pod; nay, Gue.’ Pod was a puppet-showman.

GIBBS. Admiral’s, 1602.

[319]

GIBSON, RICHARD. Interluders, 1494–1508; afterwards Yeoman of the Revels.

GILBURNE, SAMUEL, is recorded in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. All that is known of him beyond this is that Augustine Phillips left him as his ‘late apprentice’ in his will of 1605 the sum of 40s., various garments, and a bass viol. Collier’s inference that he could play on the viol is a fairly harmless example of biographical conjecture.[955] The identification of him with the ‘b[oy?] Sam’ of the ‘plot’ of The Dead Man’s Fortune, a play probably belonging to the Admiral’s, and of a date not later than 1591, is more dangerous.[956]

GILES, NATHANIEL. Master of Windsor Choir, 1595–1634; Master of Chapel, 1597–1634.

GILES, THOMAS. Master of Paul’s, 1585–1590 <; Instructor in Music to Henry, 1606, and Charles, 1613.

GOODALE, BAPTISTE. ‘Ghost-name’ (?) in Queen’s list (1589) forged by Collier, New Facts, ii.

GOODALE, THOMAS. Berkeley’s, 1581; Strange’s (?), 1590–1; Chamberlain’s (?) at date of Sir Thomas More (cf. ch. xxiv). If he is the Thomas Goodale, mercer, who entered with John Alleyn and Robert Lee into a bond to Edward Alleyn on 18 May 1593 (H. ii. 295, from Dulwich MS. iv. 29), he was not improbably connected with the Admiral’s >1590.

GOUGHE or GOFFE, ROBERT, was probably the ‘R. Go.’ entered in the ‘plot’ of The Seven Deadly Sins, as playing Aspasia in Sloth for the Admiral’s or Strange’s men about 1590–1. Probably he belonged at an early date to the King’s men. He is a legatee in Thomas Pope’s will of 22 July 1603, and witnessed that of Augustine Phillips on 4 May 1605, in which Phillips names a sister Elizabeth Goughe, doubtless the Elizabeth —— recorded in the register of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, as marrying Robert Gough on 13 February 1603. The token-books of St. Saviour’s indicate Gough’s residence in Hill’s Rents during 1604, Samson’s Rents during 1605 and 1606, and Austin’s Rents in 1612–22; and the registers, which generally call him a ‘player’, record his children Elizabeth (bapt. 30 May 1605), Nicholas (bapt. 24 November 1608), Dorothy (bapt. 10 February 1611, bur. 12 January 1613), Alexander (bapt. 7 August 1614), and his own burial on 19 February 1624.[957] His son Alexander became in his turn a player. A stage-direction to l. 1723 of The Second Maiden’s Tragedy (1611) shows that he played Memphonius. He also played Leidenberch in Sir John von Olden Barnevelt in 1619, and appears in the official lists of the King’s men for 1619 and 1621 and in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays.

GOUGHE, THOMAS. Lane’s, 1572.

GRACE, FRANCIS. Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1610–22. He lived at George Alley, Golden Lane, in 1623 (J. 347).

GRAUNGER, JOHN. Chapel, 1509.

[320]

GREAVES, JOHN. Lane’s, 1572.

GREEN, JOHN. Germany, 1608; France, >1608; Holland, 1613; Germany, 1615–20, 1626. On his verses and portrait, 1608, cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. Nobody and Somebody. He may have been brother of the following.

GREENE, THOMAS. Anne’s, 1604–12. In R. Braithwaite, Remains after Death (1618) are four epigrams on him, one of which says that he ‘new come from sea, made but one face and dide’. A couplet on his death, signed W. R., is in Cooke’s Greene’s Tu Quoque. I. H., World’s Folly (1615), mentions his performance of a baboon (cf. App. C, No. lix). He was of St. James’s, Clerkenwell, in 1612, when he made his will (Fleay, 192), naming his wife Susan, daughter Honor, sons-in-law (i.e. stepsons) Robert and William Browne, daughters-in-law Susanna, Elizabeth, and Anne Browne, brothers John and Jeffery Greene, and sister Elizabeth Barrett. A conjecture that he was of Stratford origin has no foundation (Lee, 54).

GREUM, HENRY. Germany, 1608.

GRIFFEN. Admiral’s, 1597.

GRIGORIE, JACK. Admiral’s, 1602.

GRYMES, THOMAS. Chapel, 1600–1.

GUNNELL, RICHARD. Palsgrave’s, 1613–22. Family notes appear in the registers of St. Giles’s, 1614–30 (B. 409).

GYLLOME, FOKE. Player (?) to Alexander Houghton, 1581 (cf. ch. ix, p. 280).

GYRKE, RICHARD. A London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v).

HALLAWAIE, ‘the younger’. Paul’s, 1580.

HAMLEN (HAMLETT), ROBERT. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611–13; Charles’s, 1616, 1625.

HAMMOND, JOHN. Interluders, 1494.

HAMOND. Worcester’s, 1565.

HARRISON, JOHN. A ‘player’ whose daughter Suzanna by wife Anne was baptized at St. Helen’s on 10 January 1602.

HARRISON, WILLIAM. Worcester’s, 1583.

HARVEY. Chamberlain’s, 1597.

HAWKINS, ALEXANDER. Blackfriars lessee, 1601; Revels patentee, 1604.

HAYNE, WILLIAM. Head Master of Merchant Taylors’, 1599–1625.

HAYSELL, GEORGE. Worcester’s, 1583. For a possible notice of the same man, cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. Misogonus.

HEARNE, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1597.

HELLE, JOHN. Admiral’s, 1597.

HEMINGES, JOHN, whose name is variously spelt, appearing, for example, as ‘Heminge’ in his signature to the dedication of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, and as ‘Hemmings’ in the actor-list in the same volume, is known to have had a wife Rebecca, and may fairly be identified with the ‘John Hemminge, gent.’ of St. Mary Cornhill, who was married on 10 March 1588 to Rebecca Knell, widow, relict of William Knell, gent., late of St. Mary Aldermanbury. In the same parish William Knell had married Rebecca Edwards on[321] 30 January 1586, and an older William Knell had been buried on 24 September 1578.[958] One of these was not improbably the early actor celebrated by Heywood. Malone found a family of Heming at Shottery, and conjectured that of this family John was born at some date earlier than the opening of the Stratford-on-Avon register in 1558.[959] But this is rendered improbable by a confirmation of arms in 1629 to ‘John Hemings of London Gent. of long tyme Servant to Queen Elizabeth of happie Memory, also to King James hir Royal Successor and to King Charles his Sonne’, in which he is described as ‘Sonne and Heire of George Hemings of Draytwiche in the Countye of Worcester Gent.’[960] There seems little reason to doubt that this John Hemings is the player. He very probably began his theatrical career with the Queen’s company, to which also Knell had belonged. By May 1593, however, he had joined Strange’s men, from whom he passed to the Chamberlain’s men, probably on the original formation in 1594. Of this company, afterwards the King’s men, he remained a member to the end of his career. He appears in all the official lists of the company up to 1629, and regularly acted as their payee for Court performances, generally with a colleague from 1596 to 1601, and thereafter alone. This and his prominence in the negotiations of the company and the lawsuits arising out of them, suggest that he acted as their business manager. As an actor he appears in all the casts up to Catiline in 1611, but not thereafter; possibly he may have resigned acting, and devoted himself to business. The unreliable John Roberts, Answer to Pope (1729), conjectures that he was a ‘tragedian’. Malone had seen a statement in some tract of which he had forgotten the title, that he was the original performer of Falstaff.[961] The lines on the burning of the Globe in 1613 thus describe him:

He is ‘old Master Hemings’ in Jonson’s Masque of Christmas (1616). He lent his ‘boy’ John Rice (q.v.) to the Merchant Taylors for their entertainment of James on 16 July 1607, and another ‘boy’ for Chapman’s mask of 1613. He is named as a legatee and overseer in the will of Augustine Phillips in 1605, and as executor in the event of the widow’s re-marriage; also as a trustee in the will of Alexander Cooke, who calls him his ‘master’, in 1614; as a witness in that of Richard Cowley in 1618; as a legatee in that of Shakespeare in 1616; and as a legatee and overseer in those of Underwood in 1624 and of Condell in 1627. He was appointed a trustee for Shakespeare’s Blackfriars property in 1613,[962] and acted with Condell as editor of the First Folio of the plays in 1623. This fact is probably the origin of the statement of Roberts that he was engaged with Condell in business as a printer. He filled various parochial posts from 1608 to 1619 in St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, and the registers contain records of the[322] following children: Alice (bapt. 10 November 1590, married John Atkins 11 February 1612), Mary (bapt. 26 May 1592, bur. 9 August 1592), Judith (bapt. 29 August 1593), Thomasine (bapt. 15 January 1595), Joan (bapt. 2 May 1596), John (bapt. 12 August 1599), Beavis (bapt. 24 May 1601), William (bapt. 3 October 1602), George (bapt. 12 Feb. 1604), Rebecca (bapt. 4 February 1605), Elizabeth (bapt. 6 March 1608), Mary (bapt. 21 June 1611, bur. 23 July 1611).[963] In the same parish ‘John Heminge, player’ was himself buried on 12 October 1630, beside his wife Rebecca, who preceded him on 2 September 1619. He is registered as a ‘stranger’ and was therefore probably residing elsewhere. In his will, made on 9 October, he describes himself as ‘citizen and grocer of London’, appoints his son William executor and trustee for his unmarried and unadvanced children, and Cuthbert Burbadge and ‘Mr. Rice’, possibly the actor, overseers, and leaves legacies to his daughters Rebecca, wife of Captain William Smith, Margaret, wife of Mr. Thomas Sheppard, who is not mentioned in the register, Elizabeth, and Mrs. Merefield, and to his son-in-law Atkins ‘and his now wife’, and his grandchild Richard Atkins. He also leaves 10s. for a ring ‘unto every of my fellows and sharers, his majesties servants.[964] William Heminges went to Westminster and Christ Church, and became a playwright.[965] Unnamed in the will is Thomasine, who may have been dead, but certainly had quarrelled seriously with her father. She had married William Ostler of the King’s men in 1611 and her son Beaumont was baptized at St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, on 18 May 1612. Ostler died intestate on 16 December 1614 in possession of shares in the leases both of the Globe and the Blackfriars. These passed of right to Thomasine as his administratrix, and formed all the provision left for her maintenance and her husband’s debts. The leases, however, passed into the hands of Heminges, who retained them and asserted that Ostler had created a trust, of which Thomasine declared that she knew nothing. On 20 September 1615 she entered a bill in Chancery against her father, and subpœnaed him to appear during the coming Michaelmas term. On 26 September Heminges promised that if she would withdraw her suit, and would also ‘doe her dutie’ to him and to her mother Rebecca, he would satisfy her to the value of the shares. Thomasine states that on the same day kneeling and in tears she made her submission at her father’s house in Aldermanbury. She also stayed her suit, but Heminges, although called upon to fulfil his promise on 5 October, failed to do so, and on 9 October Thomasine brought a common law action against him for damages to the amount of £600, which she estimated to be the value of the shares.[966] The issue of the case is unknown, but it would seem probable from the Sharers Papers of 1635 that Heminges succeeded in retaining the shares, and that at his death they passed[323] to his son William. Professor Wallace states that in 1616 Thomasine Ostler was involved in another lawsuit with Walter Raleigh, son of Sir Walter, and obtained a verdict of £250 against him for insult and slander. One way and another, Heminges seems to have acquired a considerable financial interest in the Globe and Blackfriars. He had an original seventh of a moiety of the Globe lease in 1599, and an original seventh of the Blackfriars lease in 1608. But as executor to Phillips (q.v.) and otherwise he had opportunities of adding to these holdings. The Sharers Papers show that at his death he had four sixteenths of the Globe and probably two eighths of the Blackfriars; and these, or some of them, he had enjoyed ‘thirty yeeres without any molestacion, beeing the most of the sayd yeeres both player and houskeeper, and after hee gave over playing diverse yeeres’. In Witter v. Heminges and Condell he is described as being in 1619 of ‘greate lyveinge wealth and power’.[967] The play-house shares seem to have been the chief part of the property left by his will. They passed to William Heminges as his executor. He seems to have gradually disposed of them, first selling one share in the Globe by arrangement with the company to Taylor and Lowin, and later, by transactions which some of his fellows resented, one share in each house to John Shank during 1633 for £156, and the remaining shares also to John Shank during 1634, for £350. He was then in difficulties, and Shank disbursed additional small sums to him in prison. It was these sales to Shank which brought about the petition to the Lord Chamberlain recorded in the Sharers Papers.

HENSLOWE, FRANCIS. Queen’s, 1594; Lennox’s, 1605. He was son of Richard and nephew of Philip Henslowe, and various entries in the diary and other Dulwich MSS. record his imprisonments, more than once on criminal charges, his employment during 1593–4 in his uncle’s pawnbroking, and his loans, one of which on 1 June 1595 was of £9 ‘to laye downe for his hallfe share with the company which he dothe playe with all’ (H. i. 6), conceivably, as Dr. Greg suggests, some company other than the Queen’s, in which he had already acquired a half share in 1594. He dwelt in the Clink in 1594, took a house called the Upper Ground on Bankside in 1597, and was of St. George’s, Southwark, in 1606, in which year, between 30 March and 6 October, both he and his wife died (H. ii. 277).

HENSLOWE, PHILIP. Owner of Rose, Fortune, Hope, and perhaps lessee of Whitefriars; cf. ch. xi.

HERIOT, HENRY. Interluders, 1547–52.

HEYWOOD, JOHN. For his possible connexion with Paul’s, cf. ch. xii, s.v. Chapel.

HEYWOOD, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1598; Worcester’s Anne’s, 1602–19, and dramatist.

HINSTOCK, ROBERT. Interluders, 1538–51.

HOBBES, THOMAS. Charles’s, 1610, 1616–25. He lived at the upper end of Shoreditch in 1623 (J. 348).

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HOLE, RICHARD. Interluders, 1526–30.

HOLLAND, J. Strange’s (?), 1590–1.

HOLT, JAMES. Anne’s, 1604–19.

HOLT, JOHN. A ‘momer’, who helped the Westminster boys in 1561, probably identical with the Yeoman of the Revels of that name (cf. ch. iii), who helped them in 1564–5.

HOLZHEW, BEHRENDT. Germany, 1614–15.

HOVELL, WILLIAM. Licensee for 2 King’s Revels, 1615.

HOWARD, THOMAS. A ‘player’ named in St. Saviour’s records c. 1600 (Rendle, Bankside, xxvi).

HUDSON, RICHARD. Weaver of Hutton Bushell, Yorks, unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

HÜLL, JOHN. Germany, 1600–1.

HUNNIS, JOHN. A ‘ghost-name’ by an error for the following.

HUNNIS, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1566–97, and dramatist.

HUNT (HONTE), THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1599, 1602; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611 (H. ii. 285).

HUNTLEY, DICK. Actor in Summer’s Last Will and Testament (vide l. 14).

HUSE, RICHARD. Paul’s chorister, >1582.

IVY, NICHOLAS. Chapel, 1509.

JEFFES, ANTHONY. Chamberlain’s (?), 1597; Pembroke’s, 1597; Admiral’s-Henry’s, 1597–>1613. Anthony, son of Richard Jeffes, baptized at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 14 December 1578, may be the same who married Faith Jones there on 19 February 1601. Children of Anthony Jeffes ‘player’ are recorded in the registers of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, from 11 June 1602 to 1 May 1609; in later entries from 30 May 1610 to 30 October 1616, Anthony is called ‘brewer’ (H. ii. 286; Bodl.).

JEFFES, HUMPHREY. Chamberlain’s (?), 1597; Pembroke’s, 1597; Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1597–1616<. He was buried at St. Giles’s, 21 August 1618. A daughter Mary was baptized at St. Saviour’s, 25 January 1601 (H. ii. 287; Collier, Actors, xxx).

JOHNSON, WILLIAM. Leicester’s, 1572–4; Queen’s, 1583, 1587–8. The baptismal entries at St. Giles’s include on 10 February 1587 ‘Comedia, baseborne daughter of Alice Bowker, and, as she saithe, the father’s name is William Johnson, one of the Queen’s plaiers’, and the burials on 3 March 1593 ‘Comedia, daughter of William Johnson, player’. Is he the William Johnson, vintner, who was trustee of Shakespeare’s Blackfriars property 1613–18 (Lee, 459, 493)?

JONES, RICHARD. Worcester’s, 1583; Admiral’s (?), >1589; Germany, 1592–3; Admiral’s, 1594–6; Pembroke’s, 1597; Admiral’s, 1597–1602; Revels patentee, 1610; Germany (?), 1615; Germany, 1620, 1622–4. His wife Harris inherited a lease of the Leopard’s Head in Shoreditch from her father in 1620. A Richard Jones is traceable in the Southwark token-books from 1588 to 1607 and may or may not be the same who married Anne Jube there on 14 February 1602 (H. ii. 288; H. P. 94; Bodl.).

JONES, ROBERT. Germany, 1602; Porter’s Hall patentee, 1615.

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JONNS, DANIEL. Denmark, 1586.

JONSON, BENJAMIN. Pembroke’s (?), 1597; Chamberlain’s (?), c. 1598; and dramatist.

JUBY, EDWARD. Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1594–1618, Fortune lessee, 1618. An Edward Juby is traceable during 1598 to 1619 in the token-books of St. Saviour’s, Southwark. In the last year he is marked ‘dead’, and his burial was registered on 20 November 1618. In 1610 and 1614 he filled parish offices. He may fairly be identified with the ‘player’ whose children occur in the registers from 3 June 1599 to 15 September 1614. His widow Francis held his share of the Fortune lease in 1622 (H. ii. 290; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi; Bodl.).

JUBY, RICHARD. Admiral’s, 1602. His son Richard was baptized at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 1 May 1602 (Bodl.).

JUBY, WILLIAM (?). Admiral’s, 1599–1602 (H. ii. 290).

JUGLER, RICHARD. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

KEMP, JOHN. Germany, 1601.

KEMPE, WILLIAM, cannot be securely identified or connected with any one of various homonyms who have been traced in D. N. B. and elsewhere.[968] He probably emerges as one of Leicester’s men in the Low Countries during 1585–6 and thence made his way to Denmark. He was in London and had already won a comic reputation by 1590 when the dedication of An Almond for a Parrat (Nashe, iii. 341), ‘To that most Comicall and conceited Caualeire Monsieur du Kempe, Jestmonger and Vice-gerent generall to the Ghost of Dicke Tarlton,’ tells how the anonymous author, possibly Nashe, had been asked by ‘that famous Francatrip’ Harlicken’ at Bergamo in the previous summer, whether he knew ‘any such Parabolano here in London as Signior Chiarlatano Kempino’ of whose ‘pleasance’ Harlicken had heard ‘report’. In Four Letters Confuted (1592) Nashe says of an action of Harvey’s, ‘Will Kempe, I mistrust it will fall to thy lot for a merriment, one of these dayes’ (i. 287). An example of Kempe’s merriments is to be found in sc. xii of A Knack to Know a Knave (1594) played by Strange’s men, to whom Kempe belonged by 1593. He was also famous for his jigs. Four of these are entered in the Stationers’ Register during 1591–5 (cf. ch. xviii) but are not preserved, and ‘Kemps jiggs’ is the heading to some music collected by John Dowland and preserved in Camb. Univ. Libr. MS. Dd. ii. 11 (cf. Halliwell, MS. Rarities, 8). Marston (iii. 372), Scourge of Villainy (1598), sat. xi. 30, ‘the orbs celestial Will dance Kempe’s jig,’ and E. Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598), sat. v, ‘Whores, bedles, bawdes, and sergeants filthily Chaunt Kemps Jigge, or the Burgonians tragedy,’ show his vogue.[326] In 1594–5 he was one of the recently constituted Chamberlain’s men and the intrusion of his name into stage-directions to R. J. iv. 5. 102 (Q₂) and M. Ado, iv. 2, shows that he played Peter in the one play and Dogberry in the other. Oddly enough, one of his speeches (iv. 2. 4) in M. Ado is assigned to ‘Andrew’, possibly a generic name for a clown or ‘merry-Andrew’. He is in the actor-list of Every Man in his Humour (1598) but not in that of Every Man out of his Humour (1599), and this fact, together with his sale of his share in the Globe soon after the lease of 21 February 1599 was signed, points to his leaving the company. ‘Would I had one of Kemps shooes to throw after you,’ says a speaker in E. M. O. IV. v (q.v.). This may be an allusion to some clownery by Kempe, perhaps in a performance with some other company at the Curtain in the autumn of 1599 after the Chamberlain’s left that house; or, less probably, to Kempe’s famous morris-dance for a wager from London to Norwich, at the end of which he hung his buskins in the Guildhall, for this began on 11 February 1600 and ended on 11 March, the year being fixed by the mayoralty (1599–1600) of Roger Weld at Norwich. Another allusion to ‘Kemps morice’ is in Jack Drum’s Entertainment (1600), i. 45. Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain on 13 October 1600 (S. P. D. Eliz. cclxxv. 93) that on his way from Witham to Englefield ‘we met a company of mad wenches, whereof M^rs. Mary Wroughton and young Stafford were ringleaders, who travelled from house to house, and to some places where they were little known, attended with a concert of musicians, as if they had undertaken the like adventure as Kemp did from London to Norwich’. Kempe’s own account of his adventure was entered in the Stationers’ Register as ‘Kemps morris to Norwiche’ on 22 April 1600 (Arber, iii. 160). In the Epistle to Anne Fitton, whom, possibly by confusion with her sister Mary, he describes as maid of honour to Elizabeth, he refers to unentered ballads on the subject, and when he says that ‘I haue daunst my selfe out of the world’ is not improbably jesting on his departure from the Globe. At the end he foreshadows crossing to Calais, which he no doubt did. A John Kemp, who was in charge of a touring company, which had been in Holland and reached Münster by November 1601, may have been a relative. But William Kempe had returned to England, after visiting Italy as well as Germany, on 2 September 1601, as is shown by the following interpolation in a diary of one William Smith of Abingdon, in Sloane MS. 414, f. 56 (wrongly cited by Halliwell, Ludus Coventriae 410, as Sloane MS. 392, f. 401; cf. F. J. Furnivall in N.S.S. Trans. 1880–6, 65):

Possibly Kempe rejoined the Chamberlain’s for a while. In 3 Parnassus (? January 1602), iv. 3, he is introduced as a fellow of Burbadge and Shakespeare, and greeted with allusions to his ‘dancing the morrice ouer the Alpes’ and ‘the Emperour of Germany’. But on 10 March[327] 1602 he had a loan from Henslowe, and during the winter of 1602–3 he was certainly one of Worcester’s men. The dates do not lend support to the suggestion of Fleay, ii. 20, that he had already in 1599–1600 been at the Rose with Pembroke’s men. After the end of Elizabeth’s reign he is not traceable, and he is mentioned as dead in Heywood, Apology (c. 1608), and dead or retired in Dekker, Gull’s Hornbook (1609), 11, ‘Tarlton, Kemp, nor Singer, nor all the litter of fools that now come drawling behind them, never played the clown more naturally.’ A William Kempe is recorded in token-books of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, as living in Samson’s Rents in 1595, 1596, 1598, and 1599, in Langley’s New Rents in 1602, and later near the old play-house (Collier, iii. 351, and Bodl.; Rendle, Bankside, xxvi). Collier, but not Rendle, gives the date ‘1605’ for the last entry, probably with a view to supporting his notice of Kempe, as playing with Armin at the Blackfriars (q.v.) in 1605, which is doubtless a fabrication. On the other hand, though the date is plausible, the notice of ‘Kempe a man’ as buried at St. Saviour’s on 2 November 1603 (Rendle, xxvii) is not so worded as to be absolutely conclusive. The name was a common one, and Collier, Actors, xxxvi, gives notices of it from other parishes. In T. Weelkes, Ayres on Phantasticke Sprites (1608), it is said of Kempe that ‘into France He took pains to skip it’. His visit to Venice and meeting with Sherley are dramatized in Travels of Three English Brothers (1607) and apparently misdated after the Englands Joy of November 1602. Finally, an epitaph upon him is in R. Braithwaite, Remains after Death (1618), sig. F 8^v, which suggests that he died not long after his morris.

KENDALL, THOMAS. Blackfriars manager, 1602; Revels patentee, 1604. He died in 1608.

KENDALL, WILLIAM. Admiral’s, 1597–8; Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, >1614. His son John was baptized at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 5 January 1615 (Bodl.).

KEYSAR, ROBERT. Revels manager, 1606–10 (?); Blackfriars lessee, 1606–8. To him was written the epistle to K. B. P.

KING, ARTHUR. Berkeley’s, 1581.

KING, THOMAS. Denmark-Germany, 1586–7.

KINGMAN (KINGSMAN), PHILIP. Germany, 1596; Porter’s Hall patentee, 1615. ‘M^r Kyngman the elder’ was a witness for Henslowe on 16 April 1599 (H. i. 205).

KINGSMAN, ROBERT. Germany, 1599, 1601; afterwards a tradesman in Strassburg, 1606 (?), 1618, 1626.

KIRCK (KIRCKMANN), JOHN. Denmark, 1579–80.

KIRKHAM, EDWARD. Chapel manager, 1602; Revels patentee, 1604–6. He is probably the Yeoman of the Revels (cf. ch. iii).

KITE, JOHN. Gentleman of Chapel, 1508; afterwards Abp. of Armagh.

KNAGGES, RICHARD. Of Moorsham, Yorks, unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

KNELL, WILLIAM (?). Queen’s, >1588. A Rebecca, widow of William Knell, married John Heminges (q.v.), 10 March 1588.[328] Heywood notes Knell as before his time. Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (1592, Works, i. 215), names him with Tarlton, Alleyn, and Bentley, and he is coupled with Bentley in the undated challenge to Alleyn (q.v.) to play one of their parts.

KNIGHT, ROBERT. Paul’s chorister, >1582.

KOSTRESSEN, JOHAN, musician. Germany, 1623.

KRAFFT, JOHN. Denmark, 1579–80.

LANEHAM, JOHN. Leicester’s, 1572–4; Queen’s, 1583, 1588–91. Heywood notes him as before his time. Was he related to Robert Laneham, Keeper of the Council Chamber door, who described the Kenilworth entertainment (cf. ch. xxiv) in 1575?

LANMAN, HENRY. Owner of Curtain, 1581–92. Adams, 80, suggests, apparently from the similarity of the names, that he was a brother of John Laneham.

LEBERWURST, HANS. Germany, 1613.

LEDBETTER, ROBERT. Admiral’s, 1597; Germany, 1599, 1601, 1606.

LEE, ROBERT. Admiral’s (?), >1591; Anne’s, 1604–19; Revels Company, 1622. He had a business transaction with Edward and John Alleyn and Thomas Goodale (q.v.) in 1593. He lived in Clerkenwell Close in 1623 (H. ii. 294; J. 347; Murray, i. 198).

LEEKE, DAVID. Possibly an actor at Canterbury, c. 1571 (3 Library, ix. 253).

LEVESON, ROBERT. Oxford’s, 1580.

LISTER, EDWARD. Weaver of Allerston, Yorks, unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

LONG, NICHOLAS. Revels (provincial) manager, 1612, 1617; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1614–15. For his later career, cf. Murray, i. 192, 361; ii. 101. He was buried at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, on 21 January 1622 (Bodl.).

LOVEKYN, ARTHUR. Chapel, 1509–13.

LOWIN, JOHN, was a member of Worcester’s company during their season of 1602–3 with Henslowe at the Rose. On 12 March 1603 Henslowe lent him money to go into the country with the company, but during the course of the year he must have transferred his services to the King’s men, presumably as a hireling, since, although in the cast of Sejanus (1603) and the Induction to Malcontent (1604) he is not in the official lists of 1603 and 1604. A portrait of him in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, has the inscription ‘1640, Aetat. 64’, and he may therefore be identified with the John, son of Richard Lowen, baptized at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, on 9 December 1576. If so, his father seems to have been a carpenter, and he had a sister Susan and a brother William.[969] He remained through a long life with the King’s men, appearing in most of the casts, in the actor-list of the First Folio, and in the official lists from 1619 onwards. He played Bosola in The Duchess of Malfi. A pamphlet entitled Conclusions upon Dances (1607) has a dedication to Lord Denny, dated 23 November 1606, and signed[329] ‘I. L. Roscio’. Collier claims to have found in a copy of this the note ‘By Jhon Lowin. Witnesseth Tho. D. 1610’.[970] A John Lowen married Joan Hall, widow, by licence, in St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, on 29 October 1607.[971] Shortly afterwards a John Lowin was paying a poor-rate of 2d. weekly in the liberty of the Clink. The Southwark token-books attest his residence ‘near the play-house’ and in other parts of the parish at various dates from 1601 to 1642.[972] He was overseer of Paris Garden in 1617–18.[973] But in 1623 he lived in Lambeth (J. 348). He is named as a legatee and overseer in the will of his ‘fellow’ John Underwood in 1624. It appears from the Sharers Papers that he had no interest in the play-houses until after the death of Heminges in 1630, when he was admitted to purchase two sixteenths of the Globe and one eighth of the Blackfriars. From this time onwards he seems to have shared the business responsibilities of the company with Joseph Taylor. He was also prominent as an actor.[974] Wright enumerates amongst his parts Shakespeare’s Falstaff; but when Roberts adds Hamlet and Henry VIII, he is presumably guessing that Lowin was ‘fat and scant of breath’. He may have been the original Henry VIII, for Downes reports that Betterton was instructed in the part by Sir William Davenant, ‘who had it from old Mr. Lowen, that had his instructions from Mr. Shakespeare himself’.[975] Wright tells us that at the outbreak of civil war he was ‘superannuated’, and ‘in his latter days kept an inn (the Three Pigeons) at Brentford, where he dyed very old (for he was an actor of eminent note in the reign of King James the First), and his poverty was as great as his age’.[976] He signed with Taylor the dedication to Fletcher’s The Wild-goose Chase in 1652, the publication of which was an attempt to relieve their necessities. A ‘John Lewin’ who left a widow Martha, was buried at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields on 18 March 1659, and a ‘John Lowen’ at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, on 16 March 1669.[977] Probably a G. Lowin who played Barnaveldt’s daughter to Lowin’s Barnaveldt in 1619 was his son.

LYLY, JOHN. Blackfriars lessee, 1583; Oxford’s payee, 1584; and dramatist.

MACHIN, RICHARD. Germany, 1600–3, 1605–6.

MAGETT, STEPHEN. Admiral’s tireman, 1596, 1599 (?) (H. ii. 295).

MARBECK, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1602.

MARSHALL, CHARLES. Palsgrave’s (provincial), 1616.

MARSTON, JOHN. Blackfriars lessee, 1603–8, and dramatist.

MARTINELLI (?), ANGELICA. Italians, >1598.

MARTINELLI, DRUSIANO. Italians, 1578.

MARTON, THOMAS. Chapel, 1602.

MARTYN, WILLIAM. Payee for a company at Ipswich, 20 February 1572 (Murray, ii. 290).

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MASON, JOHN. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, and dramatist.

MASSEY (MASSYE), CHARLES. Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1597–>1635 (?); Fortune lessee, 1618–>1635; and dramatist (cf. ch. xxiii). He is probably the Charles Marcy or Mercy, variously described as ‘player’, ‘gentleman’, and ‘yeoman’ in the registers of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, from 30 December 1610 to 20 July 1625. He died before 6 December 1635, leaving a widow Elianor, and had a cousin Ned Collins (H. ii. 296; Bodl.).

MAXE, ROBERT. Chapel, 1509–>1513.

MAY, EDWARD. Interluders, 1494–1503.

MAY, NATHAN. Licensee for 2 King’s Revels, 1615. Possibly the name, as given in Murray, ii. 340, may be a mistake for Clay (q.v.).

MAYLER, GEORGE. Interluders, 1525–40.

MEADE, JACOB. Keeper of the Bears, by 1599, and partner with Henslowe in the Bear Garden and Hope. He was buried at St. Saviour’s on 9 July 1624 (Bodl.).

MELYONEK, JOHN. Master of Chapel (?), 1483–5.

MERYELL, HENRY. Chapel, 1509.

MILS (MYLLES), TOBIAS. Queen’s, 1583. Heywood notes him as before his time. He was buried as ‘one of the Queenes Maiesties players’ at St. Olave’s, Southwark, on 11 July 1585, and his sons William and Toby were baptized on 3 January 1584 and 5 September 1585 (Bodl.). Probably, therefore, ‘one Myles, one of my lord of Summersettes players’, whose testimony to the value of Bath waters for the gout is cited in a hydropathic treatise of 1557 (Collier, i. 139), was of an older generation. Somerset was beheaded on 22 January 1552. Robert Cecil had a Secretary Milles, whose son Tobias was buried at Chelsea on 9 April 1599 (R. Davies, Chelsea Old Church, 296).

MOON, PETER. Payee for a company of players at Ipswich, 1562 (Murray, ii. 287).

MOORE, JOSEPH. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611; 1616–29. He lived at the Harrow in Barbican in 1623 (Murray, i. 252; J. 347).

MOTTERAM, JOHN. Chapel, 1600–1.

MUFFORD, JOHN. Beauchamp’s, 10 June 1590 (Murray, ii. 337).

MULCASTER (MONCASTER), RICHARD. Head Master of Merchant Taylors, 1561–86; of St. Paul’s Grammar School, 1596–1608.

MUNDAY, ANTONY. A player before 1582, according to a contemporary pamphlet, possibly with Oxford’s, whose ‘servant’ he was in 1580, and dramatist (cf. ch. xxiii).

NASION. Paul’s chorister, >1582.

‘NED.’ Musician (?) in Summer’s Last Will and Testament, prol. 7.

‘NED.’ Strange’s (?), 1590–1.

NETHE, JOHN. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

NETHERSALL, JOHN. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

NEWARK, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1493–1509.

NEWMAN, JOHN. Blackfriars lessee, 1581–3.

NEWTON, JOHN. Charles’s, 1610, 1616, 1619, 1625.

‘NICK.’ Admiral’s, 1601–3. See also Tooley.

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NILL, JOHN. A ‘player’ whose daughter Alice was baptized at St. Saviour’s on 13 August 1601 (Bodl.).

NORWOOD. Paul’s, 1599.

NYCOWLLES, ROBERT. A ‘player’ who witnessed a loan to Francis Henslowe on 1 June 1595 (H. i. 6).

OFFLEY, THOMAS. Paul’s, c. 1522.

OSTLER, WILLIAM, began his career as a boy actor in the Chapel company. He took a part in Jonson’s Poetaster in 1601. From the Sharers Papers we learn that on growing up he was, like Field and Underwood, ‘taken to strengthen the King’s service’.[978] He first appears amongst the King’s men in the cast of Jonson’s The Alchemist in 1610, and played also in Catiline, The Captain, The Duchess of Malfi, in which he took the part of Antonio, Valentinian, and Bonduca. The following epigram in John Davies, Scourge of Folly (c. 1611), attests his fame and his participation in some forgotten brawl:

Ostler married Thomasine, daughter of John Heminges, in 1611. His son Beaumont was baptized at St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, on 18 May 1612.[979] He acquired shares in the Blackfriars on 20 May 1611, and the Globe on 20 February 1612, and died on 16 December 1614, leaving his shares a subject for litigation between his widow and Heminges (q.v.).

PAGE, OLIVER. A London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v).

PALLANT, ROBERT. Strange’s (?), 1590–1; Worcester’s-Anne’s, 1602–19; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1614; Charles’s, 1616; King’s, 1619, unless, indeed, the R. Pallant who played the female part of Cariola in Duchess of Malfi was of a younger generation. This is not unlikely, for while the St. Saviour’s registers record the burial of Robert Pallant, ‘a man,’ on 4 September 1619, the token-books give the name in 1621 as well as in 1612 and 1616. Ephraim and Hanburye, sons of Robert Pallant ‘player’, were baptized there on 1 January 1611 and 3 July 1614 respectively. There were others earlier. Pallant wrote commendatory verses for Heywood’s Apology (1612), and is noted as visiting Henslowe on his death-bed on 6 January 1616 (H. ii. 20, 300; Bodl.).

PANT, THOMAS. Unlicensed player, 1607–10 (cf. ch. ix, p. 304).

PARR, WILLIAM. Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1602–20.

PARROWE (PARLOWE), RICHARD. Interluders, 1538–45.

PARSELEY, RICHARD. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

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PARSONS, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1597, 1602 (H. ii. 301).

PATESON, WILLIAM. Worcester’s, 1584.

PAVY. Admiral’s, 1602.

PAVY, SALATHIEL (SALMON). Chapel, 1600–3. An epitaph on him is in Jonson’s Epigrams (1616), cxx, which gives his age at death, after three years of playing, as 13. He was ‘apprentice to one Peerce’, when he was pressed for the Chapel. This is not likely to have been the Master of Paul’s, from whom it would have been rash to take a boy.

PAYNE, ROBERT. Revels patentee, 1604.

PEACOCKE, ROBERT. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

PEARCE (PIERS), EDWARD. Gentleman of Chapel, 1589; Master of Paul’s, 1600.

PEDEL, ABRAHAM. Germany, 1614–15; Palsgrave’s, 1623. He lived at George Alley in Golden Lane in 1623 (J. 348, 350).

PEDEL (BEHEL, BIEL), JACOB. Germany, 1597, 1614–15.

PEDEL, WILLIAM. Holland, 1608; Germany, 1614–15. Children of a William Peadle, variously described as ‘tumbler’ and ‘gentleman’, were baptized at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in 1610, 1617, and 1629 (Bodl.).

PENN, WILLIAM. Revels, 1609; Charles’s, 1616, 1625. He lived at George Alley, Golden Lane, in 1623 and had children baptized and buried at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, in 1636 (J. 347; Bodl.).

PENTON, FABIAN. Germany, 1602.

PEPEREL, GILES. Possibly an actor in the Bugbears of John Jeffere (cf. ch. xxiii).

PERKIN, JOHN. Leicester’s, 1572–4. Is he the Parkins who assisted George Ferrers as Lord of Misrule in 1552–3 (Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 120)?

PERKINS, RICHARD. Worcester’s-Anne’s, 1602–19; for his later history, cf. Murray, i. 198, 200, 266. He wrote commendatory verses for Heywood’s Apology (1612), and Webster praises his acting in The White Devil (1612) in a note at the end of the print. His portrait is at Dulwich. He lived at the upper end of St. John’s Street in 1623 (H. ii. 301; J. 347).

PERRY, WILLIAM. Licensee for 2 King’s Revels, 1615; Queen’s Revels manager, 1617.

PERSJ (PERSTEN), ROBERT (RUPERT). Denmark-Germany, 1586–7.

PERSONN, JOHANN. Denmark, 1579–80.

PERY, ROBERT. Chapel, 1529–31.

PERY, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1530.

‘PETER’ (?). King’s. At Taming of the Shrew, iv. 4. 68, F₁ has the s.d. ‘Enter Peter’, apparently a servant of Tranio, who does not speak.

PFLUGBEIL, AUGUST. Germany, 1614–15.

PHILIP, ROBERT. Chapel, 1514.

PHILLIPPE, ROBERT. A ‘momer’, buried at St. Leonard’s, on 9 April 1559 (Collier, Actors, 79). He might be identical with the foregoing.

[333]

PHILLIPS, AUGUSTINE, is included in the 1593 list of Strange’s men, and played for them or the Admiral’s in 2 Seven Deadly Sins about 1590–1 as ‘Mr. Phillipps’. Probably he joined the Chamberlain’s men on their formation in 1594. He appears in the actor-lists of 1598 and 1599, was one of the original Globe shareholders of 1599, and on 18 February 1601 gave evidence as to the performance of Richard II by the company before the Essex rising. He is also in the official lists of the King’s men in 1603 and 1604, in the actor-list of Sejanus in 1603, and in that of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays. ‘Phillips his gygg of the slyppers’ was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 26 May 1595 (cf. p. 552). It has been conjectured that Phillips was a brother-in-law of Alleyn, to whom Henslowe wrote on 28 September 1593, ‘Your sister Phillipes & her husband hath leced two or thre owt of ther howsse, yt they in good health & doth hartily comend them unto you.’ If so, his wife was probably Elizabeth Woodward. But it is also possible that the family in question was that of one Edward Phillipes, who was also in relations with Henslowe and Alleyn.[980] An Augustine Phillipps buried at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, in 1592, was probably a relative of the actor, whose children the register of the same parish records as Magdalen (bapt. 29 September 1594), Rebecca (bapt. 11 July 1596), and Austen or Augustine (bapt. 29 November 1601, bur. 1 July 1604). The father is designated histrio, ‘player,’ or ‘player of interludes’. The parish token-books show that he dwelt in Horseshoe Court during 1593 and 1595, thereafter near the Swan in Paris Garden, in Montagu Close during 1601, in ‘Bradshaw’s Rents’ during 1602, and in Horseshoe Court again during 1604.[981] But by 4 May 1605, when he made his will, he was of Mortlake, Surrey, where he had a house and land of which he had lately purchased the lease.[982] Doubtless he had prospered. A note of heraldic irregularities delivered by William Smith, Rouge dragon, to the Earl of Northampton as commissioner for the Earl Marshal states that ‘Phillipps the player had graven in a gold ring the armes of S^r W^m Phillipp, Lord Bardolph, with the said L. Bardolph’s cote quartred, which I shewed to M^r. York at a small gravers shopp in Foster Lane’.[983] The will mentions Phillips’s wife, whose name was not Elizabeth but Anne, his daughters Magdalen, Rebecca, Anne, and Elizabeth, his mother Agnes Bennett, his brothers William and James Webb, his sister Margery Borne, and her sons Miles and Philipps, and his sister Elizabeth Gough. Elizabeth had been married at St. Saviour’s in 1603, to Robert Gough (q.v.) of the King’s men, who witnesses the will.[984] Margery Borne may have been the wife of William Borne alias[334] Bird (q.v.) of the Prince’s men. Presumably the Webbs were his brothers-in-law, in which case his wife was obviously not a Woodward. There are legacies of £5 to ‘the hyred men of the company which I am of’, of 30s. pieces to his ‘fellows’ William Shakespeare and Henry Condell, and his ‘servant’ Christopher Beeston, of 20s. pieces to his ‘fellows’ Laurence Fletcher, Robert Armin, Richard Cowley, Alexander Cook and Nicholas Tooley, of silver bowls to John Heminges, Richard Burbadge, and William Sly, and of £20 to Timothy Whithorne. Samuel Gilburne, ‘my late apprentice’ is to have 40s. and ‘my mouse colloured velvit hose and a white taffety dublet, a blacke taffety sute, my purple cloke, sword, and dagger, and my base viall’. James Sands ‘my apprentice’ is to have 40s. and ‘a citterne, a bandore and a lute’. The widow is appointed executrix, but if she re-marries she is to have ‘no parte or porcion of my goods or chattells’, and is to be replaced by the overseers of the will, Heminges, Richard Burbadge, Sly, and Whithorne. After proving the will on 13 May 1605, the widow did in fact re-marry, with John Witter, and it was proved again by John Heminges on 16 May 1607. His share in the Globe was subsequently the subject of litigation.[985] Heywood (c. 1608) praises his deserts with those of other dead actors.

PICKERING, JAMES. Mason of Bowlby, Yorks, unlicensed player, 1612 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

PLUMMER, JOHN. Master of Chapel, 1444–55.

POKELEY, RICHARD. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

POLE. Gate-keeper at Paul’s, 1582.

POPE, THOMAS, was one of the English players, who visited Denmark and Germany in 1586 and 1587. He is in the 1593 list of Strange’s men and played as ‘Mr. Pope’ for them or the Admiral’s in 2 Deadly Sins about 1590–1. He joined the Chamberlain’s men, probably on their foundation in 1594, was joint payee for them with Heminge from 1597–9, and appears in the actor-lists of 1598 and 1599. On 30 August 1598, William Bird borrowed 10s. of Henslowe, ‘to folowe the sewt agenst Thomas Poope’.[986] In 1600 he is mentioned, with Singer of the Admiral’s, by Samuel Rowlands in The Letting of Humour’s Blood in the Head-Vein, sat. iv:

He had an original fifth share of a moiety of the Globe, increased to a fourth on the retirement of Kempe. But he does not appear in the lists of the King’s men, and had therefore probably retired by 1603. On 22 July of that year he made his will, which was proved on 13 February 1604.[987] He leaves his interests in the Globe and Curtain to Mary Clark, alias Wood, and Thomas Bromley, and legacies to Robert Gough and John Edmans. He mentions the house in Southwark,[335] in which he dwelt, held with other tenements of the late Francis Langley; also his brothers John and William Pope, and his mother Agnes Webbe. This hardly justifies Collier in connecting him with the Webbes of Snitterfield, Shakespeare’s kin. Bazell Nicholl, scrivener, and John Wrench, are left executors. As in 1612 a sixth of the Globe was in the hands of Basil Nicoll and John and Mary Edmonds, it is probable that John Edmonds married Mary Clark. It appears from the Southwark token-books that one Pope lived in Blamer’s Rents during 1593, in Wrench’s Rents during 1595, and in Mr. Langley’s New Rents during 1596, 1598, 1600, and 1602.[988] Dr. Greg thinks that Thomas Pope, rather than a Morgan Pope who also had interests in Southwark, was the ‘Mr. Pope’ with whom Henslowe had an interview on 25 June 1603, ‘at the scryveners shope wher he lisse’, concerning the renewal of the lease of the Rose.[989] But Thomas Pope clearly lived in his own house. Collier (Actors, xxxvi) gives a marriage of a Thomas Pope and Elizabeth Baly at St. Botolph’s on 20 December 1584, but the indications of the will do not suggest a married man. William Smith complains that ‘Pope the player would have no other armes but the armes of Sir Thomas Pope, Chancelor of y^e Augmentations’.[990] Heywood mentions the ‘deserts’ of Pope in his Apology. He is included in the actor-list of the First Folio Shakespeare.

POWLTON, THOMAS. Worcester’s, 1584.

PRICE, JOHN. Musician in Germany, 1609.

PRICE (PRYOR?), RICHARD. Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1600 (?), 1610, 1613, 1622. He lived in White Cross Street in 1623, and records of his children are in the registers of St. Giles, Cripplegate, from 1620 to 1627, where he is variously entered as ‘gentleman’, ‘yeoman’, and ‘player’ (J. 348; Bodl.).

PROCTOR. Admiral’s, 1599.

PRUN, PETER DE. Germany, 1594. He was of Brussels.

PUDSEY, EDWARD. Germany, 1626. He was presumably the owner of the manuscript note-book from which extracts are given in R. Savage, Stratford-upon-Avon Notebooks (1888), i; cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Chapman, Blind Beggar of Alexandria.

PULHAM, GEORGE. Anne’s, 1612.

PYE, JOHN. A ‘momer’, whose son Samuel was baptized at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, on 28 May 1559 (Bodl.).

PYK (PIK, PYGE, PIGGE), JOHN. Strange’s, 1593; Admiral’s, 1597–9 (H. ii. 303).

PYKMAN, PHILIP. Chapel, 1600–1.

RADSTONE, JOHN. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

RASTALL, WILLIAM. Chapel manager, 1602. He died in 1608.

RAWLYNS, JOHN. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

READE, EMANUEL. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1613; Anne’s, 1613 (?)-17.

READING, WILLIAM. Interluders, 1559–63 (cf. App. D, No. v).

REASON, GILBERT. Charles’s, 1610, 1616, 1625.

[336]

REDFORD, JOHN. Master of Paul’s, c. 1540, and dramatist (cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 454).

REEVE, RALPH. Germany, 1603–9; Revels manager (provincial), 1611; Porter’s Hall patentee, 1615.

REYNOLDS, ROBERT. Anne’s, 1616–17; Germany, 1616, 1618–20, 1626. He was known in Germany by the clown-name Pickleherring. He and his wife Jane were indicted for non-attendance at church in 1616 and 1617 (Jeaffreson, ii. 120, 127).

RICE, JOHN, was ‘boy’ to Heminges when he delivered a speech in Merchant Taylors’ hall on 16 July 1607, and must have been still with the King’s men when he took part as Corinea with Burbadge in the water-pageant of 31 May 1610. He became one of the original Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1611, and seems to have joined the King’s men again in 1619. The Southwark token-books indicate a John Rice as a resident in 1615, 1619, 1621, and 1623, with an ‘uxor’ in 1621, and another record names John Rice ‘of the Bankside’ amongst players in 1623.[991] He is not in the official list of May of that year, but played in Sir John van Olden Barnavelt about August, and is in the official list of 1621. He is traceable up to the list of 1625, but is not in that of 1629. It is not improbable that he retired, and went into Orders, for Heminges, in his will of 1630, leaves 20s. to ‘John Rice, clerk, of St. Saviour’s in Southwark’, and also names ‘Mr. Rice’ as overseer. Rice is in the actor-list of the First Folio Shakespeare.

‘ROBIN.’ Chapel, 1518.

ROBINS (ROBINSON), WILLIAM. Anne’s, 1616–19. He lived on Clerkenwell Hill in 1623 (J. 348).

ROBINSON, JAMES. Chapel manager, 1600.

ROBINSON, RICHARD, first appears in the Catiline actor-list of the King’s men in 1611, and as playing the Lady in a stage direction (l. 1929) to The Second Maiden’s Tragedy of the same year. In The Devil is an Ass (1616), ii. 8. 64, Merecroft describes ‘Dicke Robinson’ as a lad, and as masquerading ‘drest like a lawyer’s wife’. I think it not impossible that he was a son of James Robinson, who was a member of the Children of the Chapel syndicate in 1600. If so, he may have been a Blackfriars boy. He played in Bonduca (c. 1613), is in the 1619 patent to the King’s men, and in the actor-list of the First Folio Shakespeare, and is traceable as a King’s man up to the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647. He may have married Richard Burbadge’s widow, who held shares in the Globe and Blackfriars as Mrs. Robinson in 1635. He owed Tooley £29 13s. when the latter made his will in 1623. According to Wright he was a comedian. The same author states that he took up arms for the King, and was killed by Major Harrison at the taking of Basing House, on 14 October 1645. A contemporary report of this event by Hugh Peters confirms the death of ‘Robinson, the player, who, a little before the storm, was known to be mocking and scorning the Parliament’. There were, however, other actors named Robinson, and probably this was one of them. If[337] Richard had been killed in 1645, he could not have signed the dedication of the Beaumont and Fletcher plays in 1647. Moreover, the register of St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, records the burial of ‘Richard Robinson, a player’ on 23 March 1648.[992] He seems to have lived at the upper end of Shoreditch in 1623 (J. 347).

ROBINSON, THOMAS. Germany, 1626.

ROLL (ROE), JOHN. Interluders, 1530. He died in 1539.

RONNER, JOHN. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

ROSE. Henry’s, 1612, where his wife became (?) a gatherer (H. P. 63).

ROSSETER, PHILIP. Whitefriars lessee, 1609–15; Revels patentee, 1610; Porter’s Hall patentee, 1615; Revels manager, 1617. He was one of the royal lutenists from Midsummer 1604 to Easter 1623, and published A Booke of Ayres (1601) with Campion, who left him his property in 1620. He died on 5 May 1623 (D. N. B.; Chamber Accounts).

ROSSILL. Chamberlain’s, 1597.

ROWLEY, SAMUEL. Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1597–1624 (?), and dramatist (cf. ch. xxiii; H. ii. 307).

ROWLEY, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1602.

ROWLEY, WILLIAM. Charles’s, 1610–19; King’s, 1623–5. But he remained technically a Prince’s man until the death of James in 1625 (Murray, i. 162, 172, table).

RUSSELL, JOHN. Gatherer for Palsgrave’s, c. 1617 (H. P. 28, 29, 85).

RUTTER, WILLIAM. Interluders, 1503.

SACKVILLE, THOMAS. Germany, 1592–3, 1597–1602. He used the clown-name Johannes Bouset, was a merchant in Frankfort, 1604–17, and died in 1628.

‘SAM.’ Admiral’s, >1591.

SANDERSON, GREGORY. Anne’s, 1617–19.

SANDS, JAMES. King’s, 1605; Anne’s, c. 1617? He received legacies from Augustine Phillips (q.v.), to whom he was apprentice, in 1605 and from William Sly (q.v.) in 1608. A James Sands appears in the Southwark token-books in 1596, 1598, and 1612 (Bodl.).

SANDT, BERNHARDT. Germany, 1600–1.

SAUNDERS, WILLIAM. Chapel, >1517.

SAUSS, EVERHART. Netherlands, 1592.

SAVAGE, JEROME. Warwick’s, 1575–9.

SAVEREY, ABRAHAM. Lennox’s, 1605.

SCHADLEUTNER, SEBASTIAN. Germany, 1623.

SCARLETT, JOHN. A ‘player’ whose son Richard was baptized at St. Giles’s on 1 September, and buried on 19 September 1605 (Bodl.).

SCARLETT, RICHARD. A ‘player’, buried on 23 April 1609 at St. Giles’s, where his daughter Susan had been baptized on 11 February 1607 and his wife Marie buried on 12 February 1607. Several Scarletts were royal trumpeters—Edward, William, and William the younger in 1483, John in 1509, Arthur in 1559–1603, John in 1677–9 (Bodl.; Chamber Accounts; Lafontaine, 1, 3, 325, 341).

[338]

SCOTT, JOHN. Interluders, 1503–28.

SEBECK, HENRY. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1617.

SEHAIS, JEHAN. France, 1598. Possibly the John Shaa, who witnessed an Admiral’s payment to Dekker, 24 November 1599 (H. i. 114). ‘John’ appears for ‘Robert’ Shaw, probably by an error, in a play warrant of 1600 as given in the P. C. Acts (cf. App. B).

SHAKESPEARE, EDMOND. The burials at St. Saviour’s include, on 31 December 1607, ‘Edmond Shakespeare, a player: in the church,’ which is expanded in a fee-book as ‘Edmund Shakespeare, a player, buried in the church, with a forenoone knell of the great bell, 20s. (Collier, Actors, xiv). Presumably this is the brother of William.

SHAKESPEARE, EDWARD. The baptisms at St. Giles’s include, on 12 August 1607, ‘Edward, sonne of Edward Schackspeere, Player: base borne’ (Collier, Actors, xv; J. Hunter in Addl. MS. 24589, f. 24).

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM. Strange’s, 1592; Pembroke’s (?), 1593; Sussex’s (?), 1594; Chamberlain’s-King’s, 1594–1616; and dramatist.

SHAKSHAFTE, WILLIAM. Player (?) to Alexander Houghton, 1581 (cf. ch. ix, p. 280).

SHANBROOKE, JOHN. A ‘player’ buried on 17 Sept. 1618 at St. Giles’s, where his children appear in the registers from 10 June 1610 to 4 June 1618 (Bodl.).

SHANK, JOHN, or SHANKS, for the name is variously spelt, describes himself to Lord Chamberlain Pembroke in the Sharers Papers of 1635 as ‘beeing an old man in this quality, who in his youth first served your noble father, and after that the late Queene Elizabeth, then King James, and now his royall Majestye’.[993] Presumably the Pembroke’s company in question was that of 1597–1600, and the Queen Elizabeth’s men the travelling company of the latter years of the reign. Shank’s account of his own career may be amplified from the records of his name in the 1610 list of Prince Henry’s men and in the patent issued to the same company when they became the Elector Palatine’s men in 1613. He lived in Rochester Yard, Southwark, in 1605, but the register of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, shows him later in Golden Lane, and records several baptisms and burials of his children between 1610 and 1629.[994] He had joined the King’s men between 1613 and 1619, as his name is in the patent of the latter year. It recurs in the official lists of the company up to 1629, but occasionally only in actor-lists up to 1631, including that of the First Folio Shakespeare. Amongst his ‘boyes’ or apprentices were Thomas Pollard, John Thompson, John Honiman, and Thomas Holcome. Thompson cost him £40; for other boys he had spent by 1635 as much as £200. After the death of John Heminges, Shank bought from his son William, surreptitiously, as his fellows averred, two shares in the Blackfriars and three in the Globe, for a total sum of £506. It was these transactions, which took place between 1633 and 1635, that led to the petition of Benfield, Swanston, and Pollard to the Lord Chamberlain recorded in the Sharers Papers.[339] As a result Shank was directed to transfer one share in each house to the petitioners. He, however, complained that he could not get satisfactory terms from them, and that they restrained him from the stage. The Cripplegate register records Shank’s burial on 27 January 1636.[995] James Wright calls him a ‘comedian’,[996] and the following verses, signed W. Turner, and quoted by Collier from Turner’s Dish of Stuff, or a Gallimaufry, may perhaps be taken as confirming this[997]:

The verses are dated 1662, but the theatres named indicate a much earlier date.

SHAW (SHAA, autograph), ROBERT. Chamberlain’s (?), 1597; Pembroke’s, 1597; Admiral’s, 1597–1602. John, son of Robert Shaw, ‘player’, was baptized on 10 April 1603, at St. Saviour’s, and Robert Shaw, ‘a man’, buried on 12 September 1603 (H. ii. 309; Bodl.).

SHEALDEN. A ‘player’, who witnessed a loan for Henslowe on 24 August 1594 (H. i. 76).

SHEPARD. Paul’s door-keeper, 1582.

SHEPPARD, WILLIAM. A ‘player’, whose son Robert by his wife Johane was baptized at St. Helen’s, 26 November 1602.

SIBTHORPE, EDWARD. Whitefriars lessee, 1608.

SIMPSON, CHRISTOPHER. Shoemaker of Egton, Yorks, recusant and unlicensed player in 1610–12 (cf. ch. ix, p. 305).

SIMPSON, CUTHBERT. Of Egton, recusant and unlicensed player, 1616 (ibid.).

SIMPSON, JOHN. Of Egton, recusant and unlicensed player, 1616 (ibid.).

SIMPSON, RICHARD. Of Egton, recusant and unlicensed player, 1616 (ibid.).

SIMPSON, ROBERT. Shoemaker of Staythes, Yorks, recusant and unlicensed player, 1612, 1616 (ibid.).

SINCLER (SINKLO, SINCKLO), JOHN. Strange’s (?), 1590–1; Pembroke’s (?), 1592–3; Chamberlain’s, 1594 (?)-1604.

SINGER, JOHN. Queen’s, 1583, 1588; Admiral’s, 1594–1603. He became an ordinary Groom of the Chamber in 1603. A John Singer in 1571 owed money to a Canterbury citizen, who had also debts from players (H. R. Plomer in 3 Library, ix. 253). Children of John Singer, ‘player’, appear in the St. Saviour’s register from 1 August 1597 to 5 October 1609, and his name is in the token-books from 1596 to 1602 (Bodl.). The Quips upon Questions (1600) of Armin (q. v.) has been ascribed to Singer in error. Rowlands couples him as a clown with Pope (q. v.) in 1600, and Dekker, Gull’s Horn Book[340] (1609), says, ‘Tarlton, Kemp, nor Singer, nor all the litter of fooles that now come drawling behind them, never played the clowns more naturally than the arrantest sot of you all shall’. Heywood praised him as dead in the same year (H. ii. 310).

SKINNER, RICHARD. Interluders, 1547–58.

SLATER (SLAUGHTER), MARTIN. Admiral’s, 1594–7; Scotland, 1599; Hertford’s, 1603; Anne’s, 1606; King’s Revels manager, 1608; Chamber of Bristol, 1618–19. He is sometimes recorded by his Christian name only. He had a wife on 22 July 1604, and is described as a citizen and ironmonger in 1608. His name is in the Southwark token-books from 1595 to 1602, and Martin Slawter, ‘a servant’, was buried there on 4 August 1625 (H. ii. 310; Bodl.).

SLAUGHTER, WILLIAM. ‘Ghost-name’ evolved by Mr. Fleay for a supposed Queen’s man.

SLEE (SLYE), JOHN. Queen Jane’s, >1537; Interluders, 1539–40.

SLY, WILLIAM, was doubtless of Strange’s men or the Admiral’s about 1590–1, when he played in 2 Seven Deadly Sins. On 11 October 1594 Henslowe sold him ‘a jewell of gowld seat with a whitte safer’ for 8s. to be paid for at the rate of 1s. weekly.[998] But apparently he never paid more than 6s. 6d. An inventory of garments belonging to the Admiral’s men on 13 March 1598 includes ‘Perowes sewt, which W^m Sley were’.[999] Presumably this had come from Strange’s men, as Sly is never traceable as a member of the Admiral’s company. Probably he joined the Chamberlain’s men on their formation in 1594. He is in all the lists of this company from 1598 to 1605, and in the Induction to The Malcontent (1604). He is also in the actor-list of the First Folio Shakespeare. The fact that ‘Christopher Sly, old Sly’s son of Burton Heath’ is the name given to the beggar in The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1594), led Collier to suggest that he migrated from Warwickshire about the same time as Shakespeare. But the beggar in A Shrew is already Sly, and the name occurs in various parts of London. The Southwark token-books show a William Sly in Norman’s Rents during 1588, in Horseshoe Court during 1593, and in Rose Alley during 1595 and 1596.[1000] In 1605 he was named as one of the overseers and residuary executors, with a legacy, in the will of Augustine Phillips. The register of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, records the baptism on 24 September and the burial on 4 October 1606 of John, base-born son of William Sly, player, by Margaret Chambers; and the register of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, records his own burial on 16 August 1608, from Halliwell Street. His nuncupative will was made on 4 August 1608. He left legacies to Cuthbert Burbadge, and James Sandes, and the rest of his property to Robert and Cecily Browne and their daughter Jane. Robert is to have his part of the Globe, and Cecily is appointed executrix. The will was witnessed by several illiterate women, and disputed by a relative named William Sly, but proved on 24 August.[1001] He was not one of the original shareholders in the Globe, but was[341] admitted to a share in 1605 or later. On 9 August 1608, between the date of his will and that of his death, he was granted a lease of a seventh share in the Blackfriars, and this his executrix afterwards surrendered to Richard Burbadge.[1002] Heywood names Sly (c. 1608) amongst other dead players, whose ‘deserts’ he commemorates.

SMITH, ANTONY. Charles’s, 1616, 1625.

SMITH, JOHN. Interluders, c. 1547–80. Is he the John Smith who assisted George Ferrers as Lord of Misrule in 1552–3 (Feuillerat, Edw. and Mary, 120)?

SMITH, JOHN. Revels, 1609.

SMYGHT, WILLIAM. A ‘player’ who witnessed a loan from Philip to Francis Henslowe on 1 June 1595 (H. i. 6; ii. 312).

SOMERSET, GEORGE. Admiral’s, 1601–2. See also John Wilson.

SOUTHEY, THOMAS. Interluders, 1547–56.

SOUTHYN, ROBERT. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

SPENCER, GABRIEL. Chamberlain’s (?), 1597; Pembroke’s, 1597; Admiral’s, 1598. He was slain by Ben Jonson (cf. ch. xxiii) on 22 September 1598, and was buried on the next day but one at St. Leonard’s, where the register records him as from Hogge Lane (Collier, Actors, xxii). On 3 December 1596 a coroner’s inquest found that he had himself slain James Feake with a rapier in the house of Richard East, barber, in St. Leonard’s (Jeaffreson, i. xlv, 234). Henslowe sometimes describes him merely as ‘Gabriel’, and under this name Heywood praises him (H. ii. 312).

SPENCER, JOHN. Germany, 1605–23. He was known by the clown-name of Hans Stockfisch.

SQUIRE, LAWRENCE. Master of Chapel, 1486–93.

STEVENS, THOMAS. Denmark-Germany, 1586–7.

STOKEDALE, EDMUND. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

STRATFORD, WILLIAM. Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1610–23. He lived at the upper end of White Cross Street in 1623. His children appear in the St. Giles’s register in that year, and he was buried as a ‘player’ there on 27 August 1625 (J. 348, 350; Bodl.).

STROWDEWIKE, EDMUND. Interluders, 1559–68.

SUDBURY, THOMAS. Interluders, 1530.

SUTTON, ROBERT. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).

SWANSTON, ELIARD. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1622; King’s, 1624–42 (Murray, i. 172, 255).

SWINNERTON (SWETHERTON), THOMAS. Anne’s, 1604–19; for his later career cf. Murray, ii. 101, 105.

SYFERWESTE, RICHARD. Worcester’s (?), 1602 (H. ii. 314).

SYMCOCKES. Lennox’s, 1605.

SYMONS, JOHN. A tumbler. Strange’s, 1583; Oxford’s, 1585; Strange’s, 1586–8 (?); Queen’s, 1588 (?)-9.

TAILOR, ROBERT. Admiral’s, 1601–2.

[342]

TARBUCK, JOHN. Revels patentee, 1610.

TARLTON, RICHARD, first appears in the ‘Q^d Richard Tarlton’ at the end of a ballad called A very lamentable and wofull discours of the fierce fluds ... the 5. of October, 1570 (Arber, i. 440).[1003] This is preserved (Halliwell, 126; Collier, Old Ballads, 78; H. L. Collman, Ballads and Broadsides, 265). The Stationers’ Registers also record in 1576 ‘a newe booke in Englishe verse intituled Tarltons Toyes’ (Arber, ii. 306), in 1578 ‘Tarltons Tragical Treatises conteyninge sundrie discourses and pretie conceiptes bothe in prose and verse’ (Arber, ii. 323), and in 1579 ‘Tarltons devise upon this unlooked for great snowe’ (Arber, ii. 346); but these are all lost. Tarltons Jigge of a horse loade of Fooles (Halliwell, xx) should, if it is genuine, date from about 1579, as the jest at the Puritan fool ‘Goose son’ is obviously aimed at Stephen Gosson; but it reads to me like a fake, and Halliwell took it from a manuscript belonging to Collier, who had already quoted it in his tainted New Facts, 18. It is improbable that Richard is the ‘one Tarlton’ whose house in Paris Garden is included in a list of suspected papist resorts sent by Richard Frith to Alderman Martin at some date not earlier than 1585 (Wright, Eliz. ii. 250). The first mention of him is by Gabriel Harvey (cf. p. 4) in 1579, when he had already acquired some reputation. He became an original member of the Queen’s men (q. v.) in 1583, and remained their principal comedian until his death in 1588. For this company he wrote The Seven Deadly Sins (q. v.) in 1585. Music for some of his jigs is in existence (Halliwell, Cambridge Manuscript Rarities, 8) and his facility as a jester made him, until he pushed it too far, a persona grata in Elizabeth’s presence. Bohun, 352, says that the Queen admitted ‘Tarleton, a famous comedian, and a pleasant talker, and other such like men, to divert her with stories of the town and the common jests or accidents, but so that they kept within the bounds of modesty and chastity’. He adds, ‘Tarleton, who was then the best comedian in England, had made a pleasant play, and when it was acting before the Queen, he pointed at Sir Walter Raleigh and said “See, the Knave commands the Queen”, for which he was corrected by a frown from the Queen; yet he had the confidence to add that he was of too much and too intolerable a power; and going on with the same liberty, he reflected on the overgreat power and riches of the Earl of Leicester, which was so universally applauded by all that were present, that she thought best to bear these reflections with a seeming unconcernedness. But yet she was so offended, that she forbad Tarleton and all her jesters from coming near her table, being inwardly displeased with this impudent and unseasonable liberty.’ An anecdote of Tarlton ‘playing the God Luz with a flitch of bacon at his back’, fighting the Queen’s little dog Perrico de Faldes with sword and long staff, and exchanging chaff with the Earl of Sussex (Halliwell, Death-bed, 30, from S. P. Dom. Eliz. ccxv, 89) might have some point[343] if Luz was a take-off of Leicester. On 27 October 1587 Tarlton was allowed as a Master of Fence, and is described as an ‘ordenary grome off her majestes chamber’ (Sloane MS. 2530, f. 6). The same description recurs in his will, which was signed on 3 September 1588, the actual day of his burial at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, from Halliwell Street. He left his property to his son Philip, as whose guardians he appointed his mother Katharine, then a widow, his friend Robert Adams, and his fellow of the Queen’s men, William Johnson. One of the witnesses, Charles Barnard, was his sister’s husband. This will was disputed by Katharine Tarlton, who brought a bill in Chancery, alleging that after signing it and making over property worth £700 to Adams, Tarlton repented, tried in vain to recall the will, and made another. A rejoinder by Adams accuses Katharine of acting under the influence of another son-in-law, Thomas Lee, a butcher, and describes how Adams was called to Tarlton’s death-bed in the house of one Emma Ball in Shoreditch, ‘of a very bad reputacion’. Some colour is given to his mother’s complaint by a death-bed petition from Tarlton to Walsingham, begging his protection for Philip, who was Sidney’s godson, against ‘a sly fellow, on Addames’ (S. P. Dom. Eliz. ccxv. 90). There is no mention of Tarlton’s wife; the boy was six years old. Robert Adams was apparently a lawyer, and to be distinguished from John Adams of the Queen’s men, who is referred to as a fellow of Tarlton’s by the stage keeper in Bartholomew Fair (Induction 38), ‘I kept the Stage in Master Tarletons time, I thanke my starres. Ho! and that man had liu’d to haue play’d in Bartholmew Fayre, you should ha’ seene him ha’ come in, and ha’ beene coozened i’ the Cloath-quarter, so finely. And Adams, the Rogue, ha’ leap’d and caper’d vpon him, and ha’ dealt his vermine about, as though they had cost him nothing.’ After Tarlton’s death, several pamphlets, ascribed to him or otherwise exploiting his popularity, came to the press; in 1588 ‘a ballad intituled Tarltons Farewell’ (Arber, ii. 500); in 1589 ‘a sorowfull newe sonnette, intituled Tarltons Recantacon uppon this theame gyven him by a gentleman at the Bel savage without Ludgate (nowe or ells never) beinge the laste theame he songe’ (Arber, ii. 526); in 1589 ‘Tarltons repentance of his farewell to his frendes in his sicknes a little before his deathe’ (Arber, ii. 531); in 1590 ‘a pleasant dyttye dialogue wise betwene Tarltons ghost and Robyn Good Fellowe’ (Arber, ii. 559). These are lost, unless, indeed, Tarltons Farewell is identical with ‘A pretie new ballad, entituled Willie and Peggie, to the tune of Tarlton’s Carroll’, printed in Archiv. cxiv. 341, and A. Clark, Shirburn Ballads, 351, from Rawl. Poet. MS. 185, f. 10. This ends ‘qd. Richard Tarlton’, but it is in fact a lament over the death of Tarlton under the name of Willie, as is clearly shown by lines 23 ‘None would be wery to see him one stage’, 41 ‘A groome of her chamber my Willie was made’, 55 ‘To singe them their themes he never denied’. These verses support the theory, based upon a contemporary note in a copy of Spenser (cf. 6 N. Q. xi. 417; Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 394), that Tarlton is the ‘pleasant Willy’ mourned as dead in the Tears of the Muses (1591), 208, and if he is also the Yorick[344] of Hamlet, v. 1. 201, he was sufficiently honoured. Another ballad in the same manuscript on the Armada (Archiv. cxiv. 344; Ballads from MS. ii. 92) also claims to be to the tune of Tarlton’s ‘carroll’; the ‘Carroll’ itself is unknown. ‘Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie. Onelye such a jest as his Jigge, fit for Gentlemen to laugh at an houre, &c. Published by an old companion of his, Robin Goodfellow’ (n.d., but entered in S. R. 26 June 1590; Arber, ii. 553) is a volume of novelle, put into the mouth of Tarlton’s ghost. The writer describes him as ‘only superficially seene in learning, having no more but a bare insight into the Latin tung’, and physically as ‘one attired in russet, with a buttond cap on his head, a great bag by his side, and a strong bat in his hand’. Similarly, Henry Chettle, who put into his mouth a defence of plays forming a section of Kind-hartes Dreame (1592; cf. App. C, No. xlix), knew him in a dream ‘by his sute of russet, his buttond cap, his taber, his standing on the toe, and other tricks’. The Cobler of Caunterburie or an Invective against Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie (1590) is also a volume of novelle, and has practically nothing about Tarlton. On the other hand, Tarltons Jests at least claims to be biographical, although its material, like that of Peele’s Jests, largely consists of the flotsam and jetsam of all the jest-books. The earliest extant edition is of 1611. But it was transferred from one publisher to another in 1609 (Arber, iii. 402), the second of its three parts, which mentions the Globe (Halliwell, 23), was entered in S. R. on 4 August 1600 (Arber, iii. 168), and probably therefore the first part was already in print in the sixteenth century. It speaks of Tarlton as a Queen’s man (Halliwell, 13, 27, 29, 30, 33), as playing at the Bull in Bishopsgate (13, 24), where he did both the clown and the judge in ‘Henry the Fifth’ (The Famous Victories) to Knell’s Harry, the Curtain (16), and the Bell in Gracechurch Street (24), as singing themes (16, 27, 28, 40), and as jesting in clown’s apparel in the royal presence or in the Great Chamber at Court (7, 8). It also tells us, for what the statements are worth, that his father lived at Ilford (40), that he had a wife Kate of light character (17, 19), that he kept the Saba tavern in Gracechurch Street, where he was scavenger of the ward (15, 21, 22), and an ordinary in Paternoster Row (21, 26), and that he had a squint (12) and a flat nose (28). A woodcut on the title-page confirms these peculiarities of feature, and represents a short, broad-faced, cunning-looking man, with curly hair, an elaborate moustache and a starved beard, wearing a cap, and a bag or moneybox slung at his side, and playing on a tabor and a pipe. This appears to be taken from a drawing by John Scottowe in an initial letter to some verses on Tarlton’s death in Harl. MS. 3885, f. 19. Nashe, Pierce Penilesse (1592, Works, i. 188), gives us a hint of his stage methods in describing how at a provincial performance, as the Queen’s men ‘were now entring into their first merriment (as they call it) the people began exceedingly to laugh, when Tarlton first peeped out his head’, and how a ‘cholericke wise Iustice’ laid his staff about their pates, ‘in that they, being but Farmers & poore countrey Hyndes, would presume to laugh at the Queenes men, and make no more account of her cloath[345] in his presence’. According to Fuller (Worthies, iii. 139) Tarlton was born at Condover in Shropshire, and kept his father’s swine there, until a servant of the Earl of Leicester, struck with his witty replies, brought him to Court. On the other hand, in the Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1590), by his fellow Robert Wilson, Simplicity produces his picture, and says he was ‘a prentice in his youth of this honorable city: ... when he was yoong he was leaning to the trade ... waterbearing: I wis he hath tossed a tankard in Cornehil er now’ (sign. C^v). Halliwell (xxx) has collected a large number of allusions to Tarleton and his humours, lasting well into the middle of the seventeenth century. Taverns were named after him, and one is said to have still stood in Southwark in 1798. Much of the action of W. Percy’s Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants (q. v.) takes place at the Tarlton Inn, Colchester, of which he is said to have been the ‘quondam controller and induperator’. Tarlton himself speaks the prologue to the play. George Wilson, The Commendation of Cockes and Cock-fighting (1607), records that on 4 May 1602 there fought at Norwich ‘a cocke called Tarleton, who was so intituled, because he alwayes came to the fight like a drummer, making a thundering noyse with his winges, which cocke fought many batels with mighty and fierce adversaries’.

TAWYER, WILLIAM. At M. N. D. v. 1. 128, F₁ has the s. d. ‘Tawyer with a Trumpet before them’. The St. Saviour’s burials give in June 1625, ‘William Tawier, M^r Heminges man’.

TAYLOR, JOHN. Choir Master at St. Mary’s, Woolnoth, 1557; at Westminster, 1561–7.

TAYLOR, JOSEPH, is conjectured by Collier to be the Joseph Taylor who was baptized at St. Andrew’s by the Wardrobe in Blackfriars on 6 February 1586, the Joseph Taylor who married Elizabeth Ingle, widow, at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 2 May 1610, and the Joseph Taylor who is shown by the Southwark token-books as dwelling in ‘M^r Langley’s new rents, near the play-house’ during 1607, in Austen’s Rents during 1612 and 1615, as ‘gone’ in 1617, and as dwelling ‘near the play-house’ in 1623 and 1629, ‘on the Bankside’ in 1631, and in Gravel Lane during 1633. ‘Joseph Taylor, player,’ is entered in the St. Saviour’s registers as the father of Elsabeth (bapt. 12 July 1612), Dixsye and Joseph (bapt. 21 July 1614), Jone (bapt. 11 January 1616), Robert (bapt. 1 June 1617), and Anne (bapt. 24 August 1623).[1004] On the other hand, a Joseph Taylor, not improbably a player, was living in Bishopsgate near the Spittle in 1623 (J. 347). He was a member of the Duke of York’s company in 1610, but left them without the consent of his fellows for the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1611, and thereby involved himself during the same year in a lawsuit with John Heminges.[1005] He is in the actor-lists of The Honest Man’s Fortune (1613) and of The Coxcomb, as played by the Lady Elizabeth’s men about the same date, and is also named in the text of their Bartholomew Fair (1614). There seems to have been some sort of amalgamation between the[346] Duke of York’s, now Prince Charles’s, and the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1615, and when this terminated in the following year, Taylor became again a member of the Prince’s company. He was still with them between 6 January and 2 February 1619, when he appeared as Dr. Almanac in Middleton and Rowley’s Mask of Heroes, but on 19 May 1619 he appears in a livery warrant issued for the King’s men. As he is not in their patent of the previous 27 March, it is to be supposed that he joined them to replace Burbadge, who had died on 13 March.[1006] The rest of his stage career was spent with the King’s men. He succeeded Burbadge in several of his characters, including Ferdinand in the Duchess of Malfi and Hamlet, although the incidence of dates must cast some doubt upon the statement of Downes that he was instructed in the part ‘by the Author M^r Shakespear’.[1007] Wright says that he played it ‘incomparably well’, and praises him also as Iago in Othello, Truewit in Epicoene, and Face in The Alchemist.[1008] He is included in the First Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. In 1623 Nicholas Tooley left him £10 to pay a debt for which Tooley had become his surety. With Lowin he seems to have assumed the leadership of the company in succession to Heminges and Condell, and after Heminges’s death in 1630 he was admitted to two shares in the ‘house’ of the Globe and one in that of the Blackfriars, which he still held in 1635. About 1637 he petitioned for a waiter’s place in the Custom House of London,[1009] and on 11 November 1639 he obtained the post of Yeoman of the Revels, probably through the influence of Sir Henry Herbert, with whom he had been in frequent contact as representative of his company.[1010] After the closing of the theatres he joined his fellows of the King’s men in publishing the First Folio of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays in 1647, and for his benefit and Lowin’s The Wild-goose Chase was added in 1652. He died at Richmond and was there buried on 4 November 1652.[1011] The ascription to his brush of the ‘Chandos’ portrait of Shakespeare is now discredited.

THARE (THAYER), JOHN. Worcester’s, 1602–3; Germany, 1603–6 (?).

TILBERY, JOHN. Chapel, 1405.

TOMSONE, JOHN. A ‘player’ who borrowed 5s. from Henslowe on 22 December 1598 (H. i. 40).

TOOLEY, NICHOLAS, appears in the 1619 patent to the King’s men, but not in that of 1603. He probably joined the company about 1605, as he received a legacy under the will of Phillips on 4 May as his ‘fellow’. He is not in the actor-list of Volpone in that year, but is in most of the later actor-lists from The Alchemist (1610) to The Spanish Curate (1622), and in that of the First Folio Shakespeare. In 1619 he witnessed Richard Burbadge’s will. He made his own will as Nicholas Tooley, Gentleman, on 3 June 1623. After legacies to charity, to the families of ‘my good friend Mr. Cuthbert Burbadge (in whose house[347] I do now lodge)’, of ‘my late Mr. Richard Burbadge deceased’, and of ‘my good friend Mr. Henry Condell’, and to Joseph Taylor, and remissions of debt to John Underwood and William Ecclestone, but not to Richard Robinson, he ends by making Burbadge and Condell his executors and residuary legatees. By a codicil of the same date, signed as Nicholas Wilkinson alias Tooley, he guards against any danger of invalidity due to his failure to use the name of Wilkinson.[1012] Presumably, therefore, Wilkinson, and not Tooley, was his original name. The name of Tooley was fairly common in London, and more than one Nicholas Wilkinson has been traced. He may have been the Nicholas, son of Charles Wilkinson, baptized at St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, on 3 February 1575.[1013] There seems no reason to connect him with a Nicholas Tooley found on the Warwickshire muster-book in 1569.[1013] His reference to Richard Burbadge as his ‘master’ suggests that he was his apprentice. It is tempting, but arbitrary, to identify him with the ‘Nick’ who played with Strange’s men in 2 Seven Deadly Sins about 1592, or the ‘Nycke’ who tumbled before Elizabeth for the Admiral’s in 1601 and is commended by Joan to Edward Alleyn on 21 October 1603.[1014] The register of St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, records the burial of ‘Nicholas Tooley, gentleman, from the house of Cuthbert Burbidge, gentleman’, on 5 June 1623.[1015]

TOTTNELL, HARRY. A ‘player’ whose daughter Joan was baptized at St. Saviour’s on 20 March 1591 (Bodl.).

TOWNE, JOHN. Queen’s, 1583, 1588, 1594–7. Greg (H. ii. 315) rather arbitrarily suggests that Henslowe’s note of him as a witness to a loan to Francis Henslowe of the Queen’s on 8 May 1593 (H. i. 4) is by an error for Thomas (q. v.).

TOWNE, THOMAS. Admiral’s-Henry’s, 1594–1610. His name is in a s. d. to 1 Honest Whore (1604). Alleyn’s papers record a widow Agnes. Towne’s name is in the Southwark token-books during 1600–7, and Thomas Towne ‘a man’ was buried on 9 August 1612. Towne’s will of 4 July 1612 names his wife, whom he calls Ann, and his brother John, of Dunwich in Suffolk (‘if he be still living’) and leaves £3 to his fellows Borne, Downton, Juby, Rowley, Massey, and Humphrey Jeffes, ‘to make them a supper when it shall please them to call for it’ (H. ii. 316; Bodl., citing will in P. C. C.).

TOWNSEND, JOHN. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1616–32 (?); for his later career, cf. Murray, i. 252–60; ii. 8.

TOY. The performer of Will Summer in Summer’s Last Will and Testament.

TREVELL, WILLIAM. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, 1621.

TRUSSELL, ALVERY. Chapel, 1600–1.

TUNSTALL (DONSTALL, DONSTONE), JAMES. Worcester’s, 1583; Admiral’s, 1590–1, 1594–7. Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598), refers to him in conjunction with Alleyn (q. v.). The variation in his name is made more, rather than less, puzzling by the baptism at St. Botolph’s of Dunstone Tunstall on 20 August 1572 (H. ii. 261).

[348]

UBALDINI, PETRUCCIO. Italians, 1576 (?).

UNDERELL. Worcester’s, 1602. A Thomas Underell was a royal trumpeter in 1609–24 (Chamber Accounts).

UNDERWOOD, JOHN, was a Chapel boy in the year 1601, and continued at Blackfriars until, as the Sharers Papers state, on growing up to be a man, he was taken to strengthen the King’s service. This was in 1608 or a little later. He is not in the Queen’s Revels actor-list of Epicoene (1609), and is in the King’s men’s actor-list of The Alchemist (1610), and thereafter in the official lists and most of the actor-lists of the company, including that of the First Folio Shakespeare, up to 1624. Tooley in his will of 1623 forgave him a debt. His own will was made on 4 October 1624 and has a codicil appended on 10 October, doubtless from his oral directions, but after his death. He describes himself as ‘of the parish of Saint Bartholomew the Less, in London, gent.’, and leaves his shares in the Blackfriars, Globe, and Curtain to his executors, of whom Henry Condell is one, in trust for his five children, all under twenty-one—John, Elizabeth, Burbage, Thomas, and Isabel. The executors and his ‘fellowes’, Mr. John Heminges and John Lowin, who are appointed overseers, have 11s. each for rings.[1016] The baptism of his son John on 27 December 1610 is in the register of Saint Bartholomew the Less, West Smithfield.[1017] The trust was still unexpired at Condell’s death in 1627, and was handed on by him to his wife. The Sharers Papers of 1635 show one share in the Blackfriars still in the hands of an Underwood; but apparently a third of it had been parted with about 1632 to Eliart Swanston.[1018]

VINCENT. Strange’s (?), 1590–1.

VIRNIUS, JOHANN FRIEDRICH. Germany, 1615.

WAKEFIELD, EDWARD. Germany, 1597, 1602.

WALPOLE, FRANCIS. Anne’s, 1616–17.

WARD, ANTHONY. Vide Arkinstall.

WAYMUS (WAMBUS), FRANCIS. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1617–24.

WEBSTER, GEORGE. Germany, 1598, 1600–3.

WEBSTER, JOHN. Germany, 1596. Is he identical with the dramatist?

WESTCOTT, SEBASTIAN. Master of Paul’s, 1557–82. He is sometimes described by his Christian name alone.

WHETSTONE, c. 1571. Cf. s.v. Fidge. Plomer suggests that he might be George Whetstone (cf. ch. xxiii).

WHITELOCKE, JAMES, afterwards Sir James. Merchant Taylors, 1575–86.

WILDER, PHILIP VAN. Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and lutenist, commissioned to raise a royal company of young minstrels in 1550; cf. ch. xii, s.v. Chapel.

‘WILL.’ Strange’s, 1590–1.

‘WILL.’ Admiral’s, 1597.

WILLIAMS, JOHN. Chapel, 1509.

[349]

WILSON, JOHN. In Much Ado, ii. 3. 38, for the ‘Enter Balthaser with musicke’ of Q₁, F₁ has ‘Enter ... Iacke Wilson’, who therefore, at some date before 1623, sang ‘Sigh no more, ladies!’ He is probably the son of Nicholas Wilson, ‘minstrel’, baptized at St. Bartholomew’s the Less on 24 April 1585. He had an elder brother Adam, and buried a wife Joan on 17 July 1624, and an unnamed son on 3 September 1624 at St. Giles’s from the house of George Sommerset, musician (Collier, Actors, xviii). He seems to have become a city ‘wait’ about 1622 and to have still held his post in 1641, and has been confused (Collier in Sh. Soc. Papers, ii. 33; E. F. Rimbault, Who was Jacke Wilson?, 1846) with another John Wilson, born in 1595, a royal lutenist and musician of distinction (cf. D. N. B.). One or other of them was concerned with a performance of M. N. D. in the house of John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, on 27 September 1631, which gave offence to the Puritans (Murray, ii. 148).

WILSON, ROBERT, was one of Leicester’s men in 1572, 1574, and 1581. A reference in Gabriel Harvey’s correspondence of 1579 suggests that he was conspicuous amongst the actors of the day, and Lodge’s praise about the same date in the Defence of Plays of his Shorte and Sweete, ‘the practice of a good scholler,’ shows that he was also a playwright. This piece Lodge compares with Gosson’s Catiline’s Conspiracies, and it may have been on the same theme. Further evidence of his reputation is in the letter of 1581 from T. Baylye (q. v.). In 1583 he joined the Queen’s men, and is described by Howes in his account of the formation of that company as a ‘rare’ man ‘for a quicke, delicate, refined, extemporall witt’. He is not in the Queen’s list of 1588. This may not be quite complete; on the other hand he may by then have left the company. I see no solid foundation for the conjectures of Fleay, ii. 279, that he was the player of Greenes Groatsworth of Wit (cf. App. C, No. xlviii) who penned the Moral of Man’s Wit and the Dialogue of Dives, that he wrote Fair Em, that he left the Queen’s for Strange’s in 1590 and thereby incurred Greene’s hostility, that he is the Roscius of Nashe’s Menaphon epistle, that he died of the plague in 1593. It is extremely unlikely that he died in 1593, for in his Palladis Tamia of 1598, after lauding Tarlton as famous for ‘extemporall verse’, Meres continues, ‘And so is now our wittie Wilson, who for learning and extemporall witte in this facultie is without compare or compeere, as to his great and eternall commendations he manifested in his chalenge at the Swanne on the Banke side.’ The common use by Meres and Howes of the phrase ‘extemporall witte’ renders it almost impossible to suppose that they are not speaking of the same man. It is true that, in the Apology for Actors, Heywood, whose knowledge of the stage must have gone back at least to 1594, classes Wilson with the older generation of actors, whom he never saw, as being before his time, and I take it the explanation is that, at or before the virtual break-up of the Queen’s men in the plague of 1592–3, Wilson gave up acting, and devoted himself to writing, and occasional extemporizing on themes. He is generally supposed to be the R. W. of The Three Ladies of London (1584) and The Three Lords of London[350] (1590), and the ‘Robert Wilson, Gent.’ of The Cobbler’s Prophecy (1594). The ‘Gent.’ is hardly an insuperable obstacle to identifying him with the ‘Robert Wilson, yoman (a player)’, who was buried at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, on 20 November 1600 (Collier, Actors, xviii). A Wilson is in the suspected Admiral’s cast of c. January 1600. But now comes the real difficulty. Meres, also in the Palladis Tamia and without any indication that he has another man in mind, includes ‘Wilson’ in a group of ‘the best for comedy amongst vs’, which is composed of the principal writers for the Admiral’s in 1598, and amongst these writers, as shown by Henslowe’s papers, was a Robert Wilson, who collaborated in eleven plays during 1598, and in three more during 1599 and 1600. He is last mentioned in a letter of 14 June 1600. This is generally taken to be a younger man than the Queen’s player, possibly a Robert Wilson who was baptized at St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, on 22 September 1579, and married Mary Eaton there on 24 June 1606, possibly the Robert Wilson (not described as ‘a player and the younger’ as Collier suggests in Bodl.) whose son Robert was baptized at St. Leonard’s on 15 January 1601 (Stopes, Burbage, 141), possibly the Robert Wilson whose burial is recorded at St. Bartholomew’s the Less on 21 October 1610. On the whole, I am inclined to think that, in view of the character of Meres’ references, of the use of Catiline as a play-theme both about 1580 and in 1598 (cf. ch. xxiii), and of the sudden disappearance of Wilson from Henslowe’s diary in the year of the ‘player’s’ death, the balance of evidence is in favour of one playwright rather than two. The undefined share of the Admiral’s man in the extant 1 Sir John Oldcastle does not really afford a basis for stylistic comparison with the more old-fashioned manners of the 1584–94 plays. There is nothing to show that the Bishopsgate man had any connexion with the stage, still less that he was a son of the Queen’s player, as has been suggested.

WINTER, RICHARD. Possibly an actor at Canterbury, c. 1571 (3 Library, ix. 253).

WODERAM, RICHARD. Oxford’s, 1586–7 (?).

WOODFORD, THOMAS. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, 1621.

WOODS, JOHN. Holland, 1604.

WORTH, ELLIS. Anne’s, 1615–19; for his later career, cf. Murray, i. 198, 218. He is described as ‘gentleman’ in the register of St. Giles’s at the baptism of his daughter Jane on 19 July 1613, and as ‘player’ at that of his son Elizeus on 12 March 1629 (Bodl.).

WYLKYNSON, JOHN. A London ‘coriour’, who maintained players in his house in 1549 (cf. App. D, No. ii).

YOUNG, JOHN. Queen Jane’s, >1537; Interluders, 1539–53 (?). He seems to have been still alive in 1569–70.

A. INTRODUCTION

The detailed notices, which will form the greater part of this chapter, may with advantage be prefaced with some general observations upon the historical sequence of the theatres and their distribution at different periods over the London area. The earlier Tudor London knew no theatre, in the sense of a building specially planned and maintained for public dramatic performances, although Yarmouth had its ‘game-house’ by 1538, and a theatrum at Exeter was the scene of satirical farces far back in the fourteenth century. The miracle plays, not in London processional, were given in the open air, and probably on temporary scaffolds. Similar stages may sometimes have been used for the interludes, but these were ordinarily represented in the winter-time, and sought the kindly shelter of a hall.[1019] In the provision of specialized buildings, the drama appears to have been anticipated by the ruder sport of baiting. Höfnagel’s pre-Elizabethan map already shows on the Southwark side of the river the two rings, with open centres and roofed seats for spectators, which are repeated later on by Agas and by Smith. They stand in yards or gardens lined with dog-kennels. One is lettered ‘The Bowll bayting’, the other ‘The beare bayting’. When the first Elizabethan theatres were built in 1576, it was the hall on the one hand, and the ring on the other, which determined the general structure of the two types of auditorium that came simultaneously into being.[1020] The ‘private’ house, roofed and lit, and with its seats arranged in tiers along three sides of a long room, and the ‘public’ house, generally circular, with covered stage and galleries, and a central yard or ‘pit’ open to the day, co-existed for more than half a century, and finally merged in the post-Restoration type[356] of theatre which has come down to our own day. The distinction between ‘private’ and ‘public’ is an unessential one, depending probably upon some difference in the methods of paying for admission necessitated by the regulations of the City or the Privy Council.[1021] The performances in all the houses were public in the ordinary sense. There was, however, another important factor, besides the baiting ring, which greatly affected the structure of the open-air theatre. This was the inn-yard. Long before 1576, interludes had been given in public, as well as in the private halls of the great, and even the need for some kind of permanent, or quasi-permanent, installation had been felt. No doubt there were halls in London which could be hired. The keeper of the Carpenters’ Hall in Shoreditch was prosecuted towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign for procuring a Protestant interlude ‘to be openly played’.[1022] Fees for the letting of Trinity Hall for plays occur among the ‘casuall recepts’ of the churchwardens of St. Botolph without Aldersgate in 1566–7.[1023] A jest-book of 1567 records a play at Northumberland Place.[1024] But an even more convenient hospitality was afforded by the great court-yards of the City inns, where there was sack and bottle-ale to hand, and, as the Puritans averred, chambers ready for deeds of darkness to be done, when the play was over.[1025] In these yards, approached by archways under the inn buildings from one or more streets, and surrounded by galleries with external staircases giving access to the upper floors, an audience could quickly gather, behold at their ease, and escape payment with difficulty. The actors could be accommodated with a tiring-room on the ground floor, and perform as on a natural stage between the pillars supporting the galleries. An upper gallery could be used to vary the scene. The first performances in London inns upon record were at the Saracen’s Head, Islington, and the Boar’s Head, Aldgate, both in 1557.[1026] By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the use of them was normal. Plays ‘in hostels and taverns’ were[357] specified for prohibition by the proclamation of April 1559, and the City regulations of 1574 are clearly aimed at the control of the ‘greate innes, havinge chambers and secrete places adjoyninge to their open stagies and gallyries’, and impose obligations for the sake of good order upon innkeepers and tavern-keepers in the forefront of those regarded as likely to harbour plays.[1027] It is not reading too much between the lines to suggest that the owners of particular houses specially laid themselves out to secure the attraction of public entertainments, entered into regular contracts with players, and probably even undertook structural alterations which in fact converted their yards into little less than permanent theatres.[1028] We have, indeed, the record of a trade dispute about the workmanship of play-scaffolds at the Red Lion in Stepney as far back as 1567. The Red Lion stood outside the jurisdiction of the City. Within it, and so far as we can judge, much more important in the history of the stage were the Bell and the Cross Keys, both in Gracechurch Street, the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and the Bel Savage on Ludgate Hill. No one of these four is in fact mentioned by name as a play-house earlier than 1575, and although they must have been hard hit by the regulations of 1574, it is clear that they did not go altogether out of use, especially during the winter, when climatic conditions rendered the suburbs unattractive, for another twenty years. Stockwood, in 1578, speaks of six or eight ‘ordinarie places’ where plays were then performed.[1029] Nevertheless the action of the City, and the enterprise of James Burbadge, whose descendants claimed for him the honour of being ‘the first builder of playhowses’, led to a shifting of the dramatic focus. The Theatre and the Curtain, both built in or about 1576, stood in ‘the fields’ to the north of London proper, and were perhaps soon followed by Newington Butts on the south side of the river, beyond St. George’s Fields; while the Blackfriars, adapted in the same year (1576) by Richard Farrant to house the performances of children, occupied an old monastic building in the precinct of a ‘liberty’ which, although within the walls, was largely exempt from the jurisdiction of the Corporation. This became the home of the Children of the Chapel, while the Paul’s boys played in their own ‘song-school’, either[358] the church of St. Gregory or some other building in the neighbourhood of St. Paul’s. How long this arrangement had existed, or whether any company of children had played in public at all before the date of Farrant’s experiment, we do not know. From 1576 onwards, it is the Theatre and the Curtain which have to bear the brunt of the Puritan attack, and the luxury of these, as compared with the primitive accommodation of the inn-yards, arouses a special indignation. ‘The sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of Londons prodigalitie and folly’, wails Thomas White in 1577. Stockwood in 1578 discommends ‘the gorgeous playing place erected in the fieldes’; and William Harrison, perhaps about the same time, finds it ‘an evident token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build such houses’.[1030] Presently the theatres became notable amongst the sights which foreign travellers must see in London. Lupold von Wedel in 1584 says nothing of them, although he records the baiting and its rings.[1031] But they are noticed in the following year by Samuel Kiechel, a merchant of Ulm, who writes:[1032]

The Theatre and the London inns were still the chief playing-places, when at some date between 1576 and 1596 William Lambarde illustrated his account of the pilgrimages[359] to Boxley, by explaining that those who visited the shrine did not get off scot-free—

Paris Garden was the generic name given to the successive places for bear-baiting which lay on the Surrey side of the river, not in Southwark proper, which was in the jurisdiction of the City, but in the Liberty of the Clink, which stretched in a westerly direction along the Bankside, or still farther to the west, in the Manor of Paris Garden itself. In Surrey, no less than in London, plays had established themselves at an early date. A performance was going on in Southwark, while the priests of St. Saviour’s sang Dirige for Henry VIII’s soul in 1547.[1034] The Privy Council ordered the Surrey justices to suppress plays in the Borough and the adjoining places during 1578; and it seems probable that a regular play-house had been built south of the river at a date not much later than that of the Theatre itself. It stood far back behind Southwark, in the village of Newington, divided from the river by St. George’s Fields. The distance and the bad roads were against it; and it was not until the Rose was built in the Clink about 1587, that the Bankside became a serious rival to the ‘fields’ in the north as the home of theatres. The Swan, in Paris Garden, was built in 1595. Newington is too far to the south to appear in the maps, but Norden’s map of 1593 shows two round buildings, standing between Bankside and an unnamed road, which may safely be identified with that called Maiden Lane. One is lettered ‘The Beare howse’, the other, more to the east and the south, ‘The play howse’; and this must clearly be the Rose.

In 1596 the City appear to have at last obtained the assent of the Privy Council to the complete exclusion of plays from the area of their jurisdiction. This is probably the proceeding described, with no precise indication of date, in the following passage from Richard Rawlidge’s A Monster Lately Found out and Discovered, or the Scourging of Tipplers (1628):[1035]

The play-houses in Gracious or Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate Street, and Ludgate Hill were presumably the Bell and the Cross Keys, the Bull, and the Bel Savage. By the house ‘nigh Paul’s’ Rawlidge possibly meant the choir song-school; but in fact there had been no plays by the Paul’s boys since 1590. If there was really a Whitefriars house at so early a date, this is the only notice preserved of it. It may be suspected that Rawlidge confused it with the Blackfriars, which James Burbadge was apparently prevented, upon representations by the City, from reopening in 1596. The claim of the City to exercise any control over the old religious precincts of the Blackfriars and the Whitefriars was a doubtful one; and although they ultimately secured jurisdiction, they were not able to prevent the so-called ‘private’ theatres from establishing themselves in these ‘liberties’.[1036] With these exceptions, however, and possibly that of the Boar’s Head, which seems to have been used for a few years after 1602, but was more likely just outside the bars, 1596 probably saw the last of playing within the actual gates of the City.

Londoners had now to look wholly to the suburbs for their dramatic entertainment. Prince Lewis of Anhalt-Cöthen found four theatres in 1596.[1037] These were doubtless the Theatre and the Curtain on the north and the Rose and the Swan on the south of the river. The Newington house was still used in 1594, but even before that had long been out of fashion. It was probably also about 1596 that John[361] de Witt wrote his Observations Londinenses. He too mentioned the four theatres, together with the baiting house, and was particularly struck by the newest, and as he avers, the largest and fairest of them, the Swan, of the interior of which he attached a rough sketch to his manuscript. This manuscript is lost, but fortunately an extract survives, copied into a commonplace book by Arend van Buchell of Utrecht. The following is the complete text:[1038]

The account of Paul Hentzner, who was in London from 31 August to 8 September 1598, lays less stress upon the theatres than upon the baiting, and is not altogether consistent with that of de Witt as to the structure of the Swan, which was the nearest house to the moorings of the royal barge at the west end of Paris Garden.[1040] Hentzner writes:

Hentzner then describes the baiting.[1041] He concludes:

It is perhaps natural that foreign visitors should be more struck by the English theatres at a time when the English stage was serving as a model to northern Europe, than was the case with a native chronicler of grave and slightly Puritanic tendencies. John Stowe, when he published his Survey of London in 1598, had nothing to say of the Bankside houses, and but little of those in Middlesex. After writing of the miracle plays, he says:

In another place, at the end of a description of Holywell, he adds:

Even these scanty references were pruned in the second edition of 1603, after the Theatre had disappeared at the end of 1598 and the Chamberlain’s men had left the Curtain.[364] And of the Globe, built during the earlier half of 1599, to which they migrated, Stowe takes no notice. The Globe, however, appears, although unnamed, together with two other theatres, of which one must be the Curtain, in the next foreign account, a very full one by Thomas Platter of Basle, who was in England from 18 September to 20 October 1599.[1045] I translate the passage, of which sufficient use has not been made by historians of the stage:

[365]

Platter then describes the Cockpit and the baiting. He concludes:

A year later than Platter, another traveller thus describes a visit to the Bankside:[1046]

When Lewis of Anhalt and de Witt wrote, there were four theatres, exclusive of the City inn-yards, which were probably already closed. Platter found two, and sometimes three, performances being given daily. This agrees with the evidence available from other sources. After the scandal of The Isle of Dogs in 1597, the Privy Council decreed a limitation of the London companies to two, the Chamberlain’s men and the Admiral’s. The former played at the Curtain until 1599, when they destroyed the Theatre and built the Globe. The latter played at the Rose until 1600, when they migrated to the newly built Fortune. But it is clear that the ordinance of the Privy Council was not strictly observed. An intruding company was playing in February 1598, either at the Theatre or the Swan. Platter’s three houses in 1599 included the Curtain, together presumably with the Globe and the Rose. When the Council sanctioned the opening of the Fortune in 1600, they understood that the Curtain was to be ‘either ruinated or applied to some other good use’, but it was still the scene of plays in 1601. Finally, in the spring of 1602 Elizabeth ordered the Council to tolerate a third company, that of the Earl of Worcester, Master of the Horse. This was then playing at the Boar’s Head, a short-lived house of which practically nothing is known; in the autumn it moved to the Rose. The Swan possibly went out of use, except for the occasional performances of acrobats and fencers, or of amateurs. On the other hand, Lord Hertford’s men were in London during the winter of 1602–3, in addition to the three privileged companies, and they must have practised somewhere.

To the above must be added, for the closing years of Elizabeth’s[367] reign, the ‘private’ houses; Paul’s reopened in the winter of 1599, the Blackfriars in that of 1600. Of these Platter knows nothing, but Duke Philip Julius of Stettin-Pomerania, in the autumn of 1602, in addition to performances at the Fortune and another theatre, saw also, doubtless at the Blackfriars, the Kinder-comoedia. The following is an extract from the diary of the visit kept by the duke’s secretary, Frederic Gerschow:[1047]

On 16 September the duke and his retinue saw the baiting. On 18 September they visited the Blackfriars, and Gerschow wrote an account of the organization of the Children of the Chapel and of the nature of their performances.[1049]

The Globe and the Fortune continued in regular use, as the houses of the King’s men, and the Prince’s men respectively, during the new reign, and endured to the closing of the theatres in 1642. Each was destroyed by fire and rebuilt; the former in 1613, the latter in 1621. Queen Anne’s men at first used the Boar’s Head and the Curtain, but migrated from the Boar’s Head to the Red Bull, which had been built by 1606. This became their principal house, and they cannot be shown to have used the Curtain after 1609. These were the only companies of men players in London during 1603–8, and the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull are obviously the ‘three houses’ whose rivalry is referred to by Dekker in the following passage from his Raven’s Almanack of 1608:[1050]

There were, however, more than three London companies about 1608. M. de la Boderie tells us how one fell into disgrace during that year, and how four others subscribed to buy off the consequent inhibition of plays.[1051] The reconciliation is simple. Dekker has in mind only the ‘public’ and not the ‘private’ houses. Of these Paul’s was closed in 1606; it was made worth its Master’s while not to reopen it. The Blackfriars was used by the successive boy companies, known generically as the Queen’s Revels, until 1608 or 1609, when it passed to the King’s men, who thereafter maintained it as a winter house, to supplement the Globe. The Queen’s Revels then moved to the Whitefriars, a private house built at some time before 1608, and occupied in that year by the ephemeral company of the King’s Revels.

An increase in the number of adult companies now made fresh demands upon theatrical house-room. It is presumably the Duke of York’s men who were described at Leicester in 1608 as ‘the Princes players of the White Chapple, London’. The description suggests that they used the Boar’s Head, but if so, nothing more is heard of it, and it is conceivable that they soon succeeded to the Curtain. The Lady Elizabeth’s, who came into existence in 1611, are traceable at the Swan, which Henslowe may have taken over to succeed the Rose, disused, if not pulled down, by 1606. The following lines are in John Heath’s Two Centuries of Epigrammes (1610), but may of course, especially as the Red Bull is not named,[369] date back to the period when the Curtain was still in the hands of the Queen’s men:

A foreign traveller again gives us help. The relation of the visit of Prince Lewis Frederick of Württemberg in 1610 merely records that he went to the Globe, and Justus Zingerling, who was in London at about the same date, has the briefest note of the existence of ‘theatra comoedorum et in quibus ursi et tauri cum canibus committuntur’.[1053] But the itinerary of Prince Otto of Hesse-Cassel in the following year is more expansive. The compiler writes:

[370]

In addition to the Globe and the Whitefriars, the tale of seven theatres is probably made up by the Blackfriars, the Fortune, the Red Bull, the Curtain, and the Swan.

Henslowe’s correspondence with Daborne shows that he still had a ‘publique howse’, probably the Swan, in December 1613, and also that in June of that year his company was only just thinking of ‘comming over’ for a summer season, presumably from the Whitefriars, as he had recently carried out an amalgamation between the Lady Elizabeth’s men and the Queen’s Revels.[1055] In the following year occurred an episode which curiously emphasizes the constant shifting of the focus of theatrical interest during the whole of the period with which we are concerned. Originally stageland was in the heart of the City itself. With the building of the first theatres, it was transferred to the Fields of the northern suburbs. During the last decade of the sixteenth century the Fields in their turn gave way to the Bankside. The Rose, the Swan, and the Globe successively made their appearance, and the vestry of Southwark began to echo the earlier outcry of the City against the iniquities of players, until their mouths were stopped with tithes. But the transpontine period proved a brief one. Hardly was the Globe up, before Alleyn’s choice of a site for the Fortune set the fashion veering again, and opened up a new theatrical region in the western suburbs. This was convenient for the Court and the great houses along the Strand and for the lawyers in the Temple and at Westminster, as well as for the City proper, and its tradition has endured until quite recent years. The Red Bull and the Whitefriars followed in the same area. On the other hand, the Rose had vanished, and the King’s men, although they did not desert the Globe, acknowledged the change of venue by taking up their winter quarters in the Blackfriars hard by. One result was that men who had ridden to the Fields and been ferried to the Bankside, now walked or drove in their coaches to the theatre door. During the spring of 1614 things were probably at their worst. Both the Globe, after its fire, and the Hope were still in the builder’s hands, and if the Lady Elizabeth’s lingered again at the Whitefriars, there can have been no plays across the water at all. The watermen, who twenty years before had exercised the influence of their patron, the Lord Admiral, to induce the Privy Council to revoke an inhibition on the Bankside houses, sent up a bitter cry of protest. John Taylor, the ‘water-poet’, whom they chose as their spokesman, tells the story.[1056][371] A petition to the King was prepared, to the effect that no play-house might be permitted ‘in London or in Middlesex, within four miles of the City on that side of the Thames’, and with this Taylor pursued James to Theobalds, Newmarket, and Royston. It recited the service done by watermen in the navy during the Armada invasion of 1588 and in such expeditions as those of Essex in 1596 and 1597. And it proceeded:

It was calculated that the number of watermen and their dependants between Windsor and Gravesend had now by 1614 reached 40,000:

Foreign employment had now come to an end:

Such, Taylor assures us, was the effect of the petition. It was referred by James to ‘his commissioners for suits’, that is to say, the Court of Requests, composed of Sir Julius Caesar, Sir Thomas Parry, Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Henry Montagu, Sir Walter Cope, George Calvert, and Baron Sotherton. The King’s men exhibited a counter-petition, and the case came on for hearing.

The players appealed to the Earl of Somerset, who became Lord Chamberlain and in that capacity their official protector on 10 July 1614, but he proved well affected towards the watermen. The hearing was adjourned and never resumed, owing to the death of Cope on 31 July, the promotion of Caesar to the Mastership of the Rolls on 1 October, and the consequent dissolution of the commission. Ill feeling broke out between Taylor and his fellows the watermen, who declared that he met the players at supper at the Cardinal’s Hat on Bankside, and took bribes of them to let the suit fall. Taylor, therefore, wrote his pamphlet to vindicate his position.[1057] The completion of the new Globe and the Hope during the progress of the dispute had probably eased matters temporarily for the watermen, but the growing tendency of things theatrical towards Middlesex was not permanently checked. Some of the minor companies used the Hope until 1617, and then left it to the bears again. The Globe survived, but will be found to have occupied during the Caroline period a distinctly secondary position to the Blackfriars in the economy of the King’s men. For this there was another reason besides the geographical superiority of Middlesex over Surrey. The acquisition of the Blackfriars, even though only for winter purposes, in 1608 was an acknowledgement of the advantages for adult companies of the ‘private’ or roofed type of theatre, hitherto used only by boys. Once these advantages were realized, the doom of the old ‘ring’ type, with its central opening, was written. Probably the Hope was the only new house constructed on these lines after 1608, and obviously the Hope required free ventilation to get rid of the stink of bears and dogs. In 1615 Philip Rosseter and others obtained sanction for the conversion of Porter’s Hall in the Blackfriars into a theatre. This was to be used by children as well as adults, and was probably roofed. It was pulled down again by what seems a somewhat arbitrary decision in 1617. About the same time, the roofed Cockpit in Drury Lane was converted into a theatre, under the name of the Phoenix, for the occupation of the Queen’s men, who migrated to it from the Red Bull. Whether or not the[373] Fortune was given a roof at the rebuilding of 1623, or the Red Bull at somewhat the same time, is uncertain; but at any rate the Salisbury Court theatre, built near the Whitefriars in 1629, perhaps to replace the old Whitefriars theatre, was a roofed house.[1058] This was the last new theatre built before the civil wars. The Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and Salisbury Court were the most important of the Caroline stages, and in the post-Restoration houses, although these were on a larger scale than the ‘private’ houses of the past, the roofed model was invariably adopted.

Soon after the completion of Salisbury Court, Edmund Howes, who had already edited the fourth edition of John Stowe’s Annales in 1615, was again revising the text for the fifth edition of 1631, and took occasion to append to his account of the burnings of the Globe and the Fortune the following summary of theatrical enterprise since 1569:[1059]

This passage serves as a fair summary of the detailed investigations set out in this chapter. Howes only allows one house to the Blackfriars and one to the Whitefriars, and must therefore be leaving out of account the abortive Porter’s Hall house,[374] and treating Salisbury Court as a continuation of the earlier Whitefriars. The Hope and Newington Butts are afterthoughts, and make his seventeen into nineteen. We can identify his five inns as the Bull, the Bell, the Cross Keys, the Bel Savage, and probably the Red Lion, although this just antedates his period of sixty years; while his balance of eight unnamed common play-houses must be the Theatre, the Curtain, the Rose, the Swan, the Globe, the Fortune, the Boar’s Head, and the Red Bull.

Prynne, in his Histriomastix (1633), records six ‘divels chappels’ as then in use, and these are doubtless the six houses, the Blackfriars, Globe, Cockpit, Salisbury Court, Fortune, and Red Bull, which are also noted by the Restoration writers on the stage, John Downes and James Wright, as surviving up to the cataclysm of the civil wars.[1060]

Somewhat more confused and vague in their datings are the reminiscences about 1660 of the Marquis of Newcastle in his letter of advice to Prince Charles, under the head of ‘Devertismentes for your Ma^tie People’:[1061]

The marquis is the only one of the chroniclers who definitely records the Boar’s Head.

A manuscript continuation of Stowe’s Annales, found in a copy of the 1631 edition, narrates the havoc wrought by Puritans and ground-landlords:[1062]

Downes and Wright do not mention the Hope, as they were not discussing baiting. On the other hand, the annalist says nothing of the fate of the Red Bull, which in fact appears to have escaped destruction, to have been occasionally used for ‘drolls’ during the Commonwealth, and to have served once more, with the Cockpit and Salisbury Court, the demolition of which was probably limited to the interior fittings, for the first entertainments of the Restoration. The building of Vere Street in 1660, Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1661, and Drury Lane in 1663 made them obsolete.[1063]

These records leave ambiguous the fate of the Curtain and the Swan. The Curtain is traceable in occasional use up to about 1627, and is figured as a roundish building in the ‘Ryther’ maps, which are probably of a decade later.[1064] It cannot, therefore, have vanished long before the civil wars, and was the most long-lived of all the theatres. It may, of course, have been rebuilt, later than its original foundation in 1576, but as to this there is no evidence. The ‘Ryther’ maps also show the Fortune. No other maps give any of the theatres on the north of the river. Of the Bankside houses, the Swan is shown by a decagonal ground-plan, with the inscription ‘Old Play house’, in the Paris Garden Manor survey of 1627.[1065] And it is described as still existing side by side with[376] the Globe and the Hope, but clearly also as derelict, in the following passage from Holland’s Leaguer (1632):

I turn now to the maps of the Bankside, which, had they been datable, and drawn with cartographical precision, ought not only to have furnished valuable evidence as to the duration of the theatres, but also to have indicated accurately the position of each amongst the streets and lanes of the district. Neither condition is, however, fulfilled. Even where the date of an engraving is known, the date of the survey on which it was based can, as a rule, be only approximately determined. And the constant intrusion of pictorial elements, which gives the maps the character of perspective views rather than of plans, is naturally emphasized on the Bankside, which has to serve as a foreground to the design. The main topographical features which have to be borne in mind are simple, and can easily be related to those in John Rocque’s map of 1746, as interpreted by Strype’s Survey of 1720, or in a modern Ordnance map. The whole region concerned lies roughly between the southern approaches to London and Blackfriars Bridges. It underwent a good deal of development during one period, especially in the area of the Clink, a liberty lying between Southwark on the east and another liberty of Paris Garden on the west, and affording a convenient suburban resort outside the jurisdiction of the City. Stowe’s account of the neighbourhood in 1598 is perhaps a little misleading. He describes no more than the Bankside proper, ‘a continuall building of tenements’ on the riverside, extending about half a mile west of London Bridge. Here he places, from west to east, the bear gardens, the former stews, the prison of the Clink, Winchester House, and the church of St. Mary Overie in Southwark.[1067] This agrees pretty well with[377] the maps of Agas (c. 1561) and Norden (1593), except that there was already a group of houses falling outside Stowe’s purview, which stood on the river near Paris Garden Stairs and practically continued the Bankside westwards. But there was also, which Stowe does not mention, a marshy hinterland to the Bankside, of ponds and gardens, among which Agas, and still more Norden, show a good many scattered houses. By the end of the century there was a fairly definite north to south street known as Deadman’s Place, which debouched from the east end of the Bankside, and from which in its turn struck out one called Maid or Maiden Lane, which went in an irregular line westwards over the marshes, and was finally joined by two divergent ways, Love Lane and Gravel (afterwards Holland) Lane, to the Paris Garden group of houses. Thus was formed a rough parallelogram, half a mile long, and from 200 to 350 feet deep, within or near which all the theatrical sites are placed by the maps. In Norden’s map of 1593, both the Bear House and the Play House, which must be the Rose, stand considerably to the west of Deadman’s Place. The Bear House is the most westerly of the two, and is about halfway between the Bankside houses on the north and Maid Lane on the south. The Rose is a good deal nearer Maid Lane. In the Delaram views (1603–20) there are three flagged, but unnamed, structures. One which stands well back from the river and, after allowing for the view-point, appears slightly the most easterly of the three, is cylindrical; the upper half is alone windowed, and has a smaller diameter than the lower half. It is placed amongst trees and meadows. There is nothing which obviously indicates Maid Lane.[1068] The two other buildings stand much nearer the river’s edge, amongst houses; they are angled, probably octagonal, and not cylindrical. The ‘Hondius’ views repeat the cylindrical building and the most westerly of the two angled buildings much in the same relative position; the intermediate one has disappeared. It seems obvious that the cylindrical building must be the Globe, and the other two the Bear Garden, afterwards the Hope, to the west, and the Rose, left out of the ‘Hondius’ group, because it disappeared in 1605, in the centre. The Delaram and ‘Hondius’ views do not extend far enough west to include the Swan. It is shown by Visscher in 1616, and named. So are the Bear Garden and the Globe, both of which appear as angled buildings, octagonal[378] or hexagonal, about equidistant from the Bankside houses, and north of Maid Lane, the angle of which next Deadman’s Place is shown.[1069] As the change from a cylindrical to an angled representation of the Globe coincides with the rebuilding of the house in 1614, we may perhaps infer that the structural form is not a mere cartographic convention.[1070] It is rather singular that in the Merian maps (circa 1638) there are four houses again, including the Swan, well to the west. This, with two of the three houses in the eastern group, is named by the engraver. A third unnamed house stands between the Globe on the east and the Bear Garden on the west, which is approximately where the Rose used to stand. It is distinctly nearer the river than the other two, but all three are north of Maid Lane, from which the Bear Garden is slightly more remote than the Globe.[1071] If the Rose had actually a second term of existence, it was probably only a brief one.[1072] The fullest of the Ryther maps (c. 1636–45) has two angled buildings, one to the west, rather nearer to Bankside than to Maid Lane; the other to the east, and south of Maid Lane, standing in an angle between that and a track running from north-west to south-east. There are no names, but obviously the eastern house is the Globe, and the western the Hope, and indeed the dogs can be made out. The track joining Maid Lane may be Globe Alley. The Hollar view of 1647 shows two cylindrical, not angled, buildings. One lettered ‘The Globe’ is on the extreme brink of the river; the other, to the east and south of it, is lettered ‘Beere bayting’. Faithorne and Newcourt, in 1658, give no theatres proper, but only a ring marked ‘Beare garden’. Finally, Leeke and Hollar about 1666 give a single unnamed roundish theatre, south of Maid Lane. Presumably it is the Globe, but copied from a survey of earlier date, as the Globe had been pulled down for tenements in 1644.

On the whole, the maps are disappointing guides. It seems[379] more probable than has quite been recognized, that the singular two-storied structure shown by Hondius and Delaram really represents the earlier, the Shakespearian, Globe. And the representation of a fourth house by Merian, even if he did not know its name, gives support to the view that the Rose may have had some kind of existence at a later date than the Sewers records indicate. But as regards the alinement, the distance from the river, and the relation to Maid Lane, of the three houses in the Clink, it is clear that no consistent story is told. The general impression one gets is that the Hope stood farthest to the west, then the Rose, and then the Globe; and that the Rose stood nearest to the river, then the Hope, and then the Globe. Nor is this inconsistent with documentary evidence, which in particular indicates that the parcel of land, on which the latest of the Bear Gardens was built, was contiguous on the west to that known as ‘the little Rose’.[1073] Bear Garden and Rose Alley, running side by side from the Bankside into Maid Lane or Park Street, are traceable in eighteenth-century maps and in the modern Ordnance map.[1074] Did one judge by the maps alone, one would probably, in spite of the dissenting testimony of ‘Ryther’ and of Leeke and Hollar, come to the conclusion that the Globe stood to the north of Maid Lane. The balance of other evidence points unmistakably in the other direction.[1075]

B. THE PUBLIC THEATRES

i. THE RED LION INN

The following record appears in the court books of the Carpenters’ Company:[1076]

This is the only notice of the Red Lion playing-inn which has been preserved, but John Brayne, grocer, is doubtless the same who financed his brother-in-law, James Burbadge, in the far more important enterprise of the Theatre in 1576. Stebunheth or Stepney was a parish in Middlesex, lying to the east of the City, beyond Whitechapel, and, although near enough to be in a sense a suburb, was outside the civic jurisdiction.

ii. THE BULL INN

The first notice of the Bull is on 7 June 1575 when the playing of a ‘prize’ there is recorded in the register of the School of Defence. It appears to have been the most popular of all localities for this purpose and there are fourteen similar notices of its use in the register, ending with one on 3 July 1590.[1077] Florio refers to it as a place for plays in 1578.[1078] Stephen Gosson in his Schoole of Abuse (1579) exempts from his ordinary condemnation of plays The Jew and Ptolemy ‘shown at the Bull’.[1079] On 1 July 1582 the Earl of Warwick asked permission from the Lord Mayor for his servant John David to play his provost prizes at ‘the Bull in Bishopsgatestrete or some other conuenient place to be assigned within the liberties of[381] London’. This was refused, much to Warwick’s annoyance, on the ground that an inn was a place ‘somewhat to close for infection’, and David appointed to play ‘in an open place of the Leaden hall’.[1080] The Bull, with the Bell, was assigned by a civic order of 28 November 1583 to the Queen’s men for their first winter season. Tarlton and the Queen’s men are said in the Jests to have played ‘oftentimes’ at ‘the Bull in Bishops-gate-street’, and here their play of The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, with Tarlton in the parts of the judge and the clown and Knell in that of Henry, was given.[1081] This must, of course, have been between 1583 and Tarlton’s death in 1588. In 1592 the translator of The Spaniard’s Monarchie disclaims any ‘title fetched from the Bull within Bishopsgate, as a figge for a Spaniard’. I do not know whether any old play underlying the Admiral’s (q.v.) Spanish Fig of 1601–2 can be referred to. The house was still in use during 1594, for in April or May of that year Anthony Bacon settled in Bishopsgate, to the vexation of his mother, ‘on account of its neighbourhood to the Bull Inn, where plays and interludes were continually acted, and would, she imagined, corrupt his servants’.[1082] Richard Flecknoe mentions the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, with the Cross-Keys, as one of the inns turned into theatres at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, as was ‘at this day to be seen’ in 1664.[1083] The site was at No. 91 on the west of Bishopsgate Street, and is shown in Hatton’s map of 1708, and the Ordnance Survey maps of 1848–51 and 1875.

iii. THE BELL INN

This inn existed in 1560, for on 12 June of that year ‘the wyff of the Bell in Gracyous-strett’ was carted as a bawd and whore.[1084] Plays must have been used there in 1576–7, in the Revels Account for which year an item of 10d. is included ‘ffor the cariadge of the partes of y^e well counterfeit from the Bell in Gracious strete to St. Iohns to be performed for the play of Cutwell’.[1085] With the Bull, it was assigned to the[382] Queen’s men by a civic order of 28 November 1583 for their first winter season. Tarlton’s Jests also mention Tarlton and ‘his fellowes’, probably the Queen’s men, as performing at the Bell ‘by’ the Cross Keys which was also in Gracious Street, and this must have been before Tarlton’s death in 1588.[1086] Both houses may be included in Rawlidge’s reference to play-houses in Gracious street and elsewhere ‘put down’ by the City in Elizabeth’s time. I suppose that the site is that of Bell Yard at No. 12 on the west of Gracechurch Street.[1087]

iv. THE BEL SAVAGE INN

The Bel Savage is named as an early London play-house in the 1596 edition of Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent. This inn, of which the name is still preserved on Ludgate Hill, where it stood until 1873 (Harben, 63), must be distinguished from another in Gracechurch Street once kept by Tarlton, which in his time was known as the Saba.[1088] The origin of the name is obscure; a deed of 1452 refers to an ‘inn ... called Savages Inn, otherwise called the Bell on the Hoop, in the parishe of St. Bride in Fleet Street’ (L. T. R. ii. 71). Probably therefore the notion of the Belle Sauvage is a later perversion. Gascoigne, in the prologue to his Glass of Government (1575), repudiates the ‘worthie jests’ and ‘vain delights’ of ‘Bellsavage fair’.[1089] Gosson, in 1579, excepts from his general condemnation of plays ‘the two prose books, played at the Belsavage, where you shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain’.[1090] A play-house ‘on Ludgate Hill’ is included by Rawlidge in his list of those ‘put down’ in Elizabeth’s time. Probably the Queen’s men were acting at the Bel Savage in 1588, for after the death of Tarlton in that year was published ‘a sorowfull newe sonnette, intituled Tarltons Recantacion uppon this theame gyven him by a gentleman at the Belsavage without Ludgate (nowe or els never) beinge the laste theame he songe’.[1091] Prynne’s reference to Dr. Faustus (q.v.) at the Bel Savage suggests that at some time the Admiral’s also played there. It was also occasionally used for the playing of ‘prizes’; the earliest recorded date in[383] the Register of the School of Defence being in 1575–7 and the latest on 31 January 1589.[1092]

v. THE CROSS KEYS INN

This inn may have been the play-house, or one of the play-houses, ‘in Gracious Street’ said by Rawlidge to have been ‘put down’ under Elizabeth. The first notice of it dates from 23 June 1579, on which day James Burbadge was arrested at the suit of John Hynde for £5 1s. 1d., ‘as he came down Gracious Street towards the Cross Keys there to a play’. The house is described as the dwelling-house of Richard Ibotson, citizen and brewer of London.[1093] It was in use as a place of popular amusement during the life of Tarlton, who died in 1588, for one of the Jests relates how he came from the Bell, where he was playing to ‘the Crosse-Keyes in Gracious streete’ to see Banks’s performing horse there.[1094] A company can first be definitely located at it in 1589, on 5 November of which year Lord Strange’s men, as reported by Lord Mayor Hart to Burghley, disobeyed an admonition to forbear playing, and ‘went to the Crosse Keys and played that afternoon’. In 1594 Strange’s men were absorbed in Lord Hunsdon’s, and on 8 October 1594 Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor to obtain toleration for ‘my nowe companie of players’ who had been accustomed ‘to plaie this winter time within the citye at the Crosse Kayes in Gracious street’.[1095] How long Shakespeare’s fellows continued to use the Cross Keys as a winter house is unknown; presumably it ceased to be available in 1596. The adaptation of the inn as a theatre was still visible at the Restoration, and is assigned by Richard Flecknoe to ‘about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth’s reign’. The site is shown in Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1677 and the Ordnance Survey map of 1848–51: it is on the west of Gracechurch Street.

vi. THE THEATRE

The following statement as to the beginnings of theatrical enterprise in London is made by Cuthbert Burbadge and his family in the so-called Sharers Papers of 1635:[1096]

The accuracy of this is fully borne out by the records of the various legal proceedings in connexion with the Theatre, which a painful investigation has exhumed, and the topographical indications furnished by the evidence in some of these have made it possible to locate with some precision the site of London’s first regular play-house.

The Theatre stood in the Liberty of Halliwell or Holywell, part of the Middlesex parish of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, immediately outside the Bishopsgate entrance to the City.[1097][385] The name of the Liberty was derived from an ancient holy well, which has now disappeared, and its status from the fact that it had been the property of a priory of Benedictine nuns. The buildings of the priory lay between Shoreditch High Street, leading north from Bishopsgate, on the east and the open Finsbury fields on the west. Its southern gate was in a lane leading from the High Street to the Fields, then and still known as Holywell Lane or Street, on the south of which lay the Prioress’s pasture called the Curtain. Part of this south end of the liberty, lying on both sides of Holywell Lane, had been leased in 1537 and 1538 to the Earls of Rutland, who continued to hold it from the Crown after the dissolution in 1539, and obtained a renewed lease in 1584.[1098] The rest of the property, including the main conventual buildings, was sold in 1544 to one Henry Webb, whose daughter Susan and her husband Sir George Peckham sold it in 1555 to Christopher Bumsted, and he in the same year to Christopher Allen and his son Giles. The alienation of 1555 was challenged as illegal by Susan Peckham’s heirs in 1582, and ultimately, but not until about thirty years later, they appear to have made good their claim.[1099] In the meantime Giles Allen had leased a part of the property, which became the site of the Theatre, to James Burbadge on 13 April 1576.[1100] This was bounded to the north by the wall of Allen’s own garden, probably corresponding to the main cloister of the convent, on the east or south-east by the Earl of Rutland’s holding, and on the west by a ditch dividing it from the open Finsbury fields. Within the ditch and divided from it by a strip of void ground, was the old brick wall of the precinct. On the extreme south was a bit of void ground lying between an Oat Barn occupied by Rutland and another Great Barn included in the lease. The Oat Barn and the void ground were in fact debatable property claimed both by Allen and Rutland. North of the Great Barn, and immediately to the[386] east of the precinct wall was more void and garden ground; farther to the east the ‘inner court yarde’ of the convent. This held tenements backing upon Allen’s garden to the north, and others, including a mill-house, backing on the garden ground to the west. In this yard was a well, probably the eponymous ‘Holywell’, which fed a horsepond by Rutland’s stable on the south-east, and then drained away through the debatable ground to the Finsbury ditch.[1101] Since Burbadge’s barn is known to have been shored up to the Theatre, it is evident that this must have been constructed in the void and garden ground between the tenements and the precinct wall, and as there was no right of way through Rutland’s holding from Holywell Lane, an entrance was made through the wall direct from Finsbury fields. The Theatre itself, indeed, was sometimes loosely spoken of as ‘in the fields’.[1102] Working from later title-deeds of the locality, Mr. Braines has successfully located the precise site of the building in the angle now formed by Curtain Road, which occupies the strip of void ground between the precinct wall and Finsbury ditch, and New Inn Yard, which occupies a strip of the ‘debateable ground’ and a strip also of the site of the Great Barn. The site is now part of the premises of the Curtain Road Elementary School.[1103]

[387]

Burbadge’s lease was for a term of twenty-one years from Lady Day 1576. He was to pay a fine of £20 and an annual rent of £14. He covenanted to spend £200 within the first ten years in improving the existing buildings, and in return Allen covenanted to make a new lease for twenty-one years at any time within the first ten years, and also to allow the tenant at any time within the term of either lease ‘to take down such building as should within the sayd tenne yeeres be erected on the sayd voyde growndes for a theater or playinge place’. It was also agreed that Allen and his wife and family ‘vpon lawfull request therfore made’ should be entitled ‘to enter or come into the premisses and their in some one of the vpper romes to have such convenient place to sett or stande to se such playes as shalbe ther played freely without any thinge therefore payeinge soe that the sayd Gyles hys wyfe and familie doe com and take ther places before they shalbe taken vpp by any others’. Burbadge, a joiner as well as a player, had probably the technical qualifications for his enterprise. But he was a man of small means, not worth above 100 marks, and had no credit.[1104] He found a partner in his brother-in-law, John Brayne, a well-to-do grocer of Bucklersbury, who had already been connected with a play-house speculation at the Red Lion inn. The association proved a calamitous one, and its history can only be traced through the dubious ex parte statements of later litigation. Burbadge, in an unfortunately mutilated document, appears to have alleged that Brayne acquired an interest by means of a promise, which he afterwards evaded, to leave it to his sister’s children.[1105] Robert Miles, of the George Inn, Whitechapel, a friend of Brayne, who supported and ultimately inherited the case of his widow, told a different story.[1106] He had heard Burbadge ‘earnestlie insynuate’ Brayne to join in the transaction, as one which ‘wold grow to ther contynual great profitt and commodytie’. Brayne was ‘verye loth to deale in the matter’, and complained later to Miles that it was ‘his vtter vndoing’, and that he would never have touched it, but for the ‘swete and contynuall’ persuasions of Burbadge. His brother-in-law had assured him that the cost of erecting the play-house would not exceed £200, and after it had already cost £500, urged that ‘it was no matter’, and that the profits ‘wold shortlie quyte the cost vnto them bothe’. Obviously Brayne was out for profits, and had to take his risks. But if the account of Miles is to be trusted, he had also definite grievances against his partner. Burbadge’s small contribution to the outlay was partly made[388] in material, for which he overcharged at the rate of sixpence for a groat’s worth. When funds ran short, Brayne and his wife worked as labourers on the structure, while Burbadge, if he set his hand to a job, took the regular rate of wages for it. And there is some corroboration of a more serious charge of ‘indyrect dealing’, after the house was opened, about the ‘collecting of the money for the gallories’.[1107] Miles alleged that during a space of two years Burbadge used a secret key made by one Braye, a smith in Shoreditch, to filch from ‘the commen box where the money gathered at the said playes was putt in’, thus cheating ‘his fellowes the players’ as well as Brayne. He would also ‘thrust some of the money devident betwene him and his said ffellowes in his bosome or other where about his bodye’. The Theatre was in use by 1 August 1577, as it is mentioned by name in the Privy Council inhibition of that date.[1108] But it was opened before the work was completed, and the last stages were paid for out of the profits.[1109] Moreover, in addition to what Brayne and Burbadge could find, money had to be raised on mortgage, with the result that Brayne never got full security for his interest in the undertaking. He was not a party to the original lease, thinking that if a joint lease were entered into, the survivor would take all.[1110] When a draft assurance of a moiety of the profits to him was prepared on 9 August 1577, it could not be executed because the lease was at pawn, and ultimately, on 22 May 1578, Burbadge gave him a bond of £400 to assure in due course.[1111] An assurance was, however, never made. The friction between the partners led to violent disputes. On one occasion, after high words in a scrivener’s shop, ‘Burbage did there strike him with his fist and so they went together by the eares in somuch that this deponent could herdly part them’.[1112] On 12 July 1578 they submitted their differences to arbitrators, who decided that, with the exception of 10s. weekly for Brayne’s housekeeping and 8s. for Burbadge’s out of the profits of ‘such playes as should be playd there vpon Sundaies’, the first charge upon the rents and profits of the property should be the repayment of debts due upon the theatre. Thereafter Brayne should take them ‘till he shuld be answered suche somes of money which he had lade out for and vpon the same Theatre more then the said Burbage had done’. And when this claim too was discharged, the rents and profits should ‘go in devydent equallye betwene them’. Should it be necessary to raise[389] money on mortgage, it should be a joint mortgage, and its redemption would then come in as the first claim on the rents and profits. Burbadge gave Brayne a further bond of £200 for the keeping of this award.[1113] On 26 September 1579 a mortgage was in fact entered into for a loan of £125 from John Hyde, grocer, to be repaid in a year. The amount, however, was not forthcoming, and although Hyde made an arrangement to take £5 a week out of the profits, he only got it for four or five weeks. In June 1582 he arrested Burbadge and got £20 out of him. Shortly afterwards he claimed forfeiture of the lease, and as Burbadge warned him that Brayne ‘wold catch what he cold’, appointed one of his own servants with Burbadge ‘to gather vp v^li wekely during the tyme of playes’. In this way he got back another £20 or £30. There was, however, still at least £30 outstanding when Brayne died in August 1586.[1114] His widow Margaret claimed a moiety of the interest under the lease as his heir. At first, we hear, Burbadge allowed her ‘half of the profittes of the gallaries’, but only so long as she could lay out money ‘to the necessary vse of the said playe howsse’, and when she had so spent £30, he said that he must take all the profits until the debts were paid, made her gather as a servant, and finally thrust her out altogether.[1115] Meanwhile Hyde was getting impatient for his money. He had promised Mrs. Brayne that, if he were satisfied, he would reassure the lease to her and Burbadge jointly, but not to either party separately. But now he said that he must convey it to whichever would pay him first, and being approached through Walter Cope, the master of Burbadge’s son Cuthbert, he did in fact, on some promise that Mrs. Brayne should not be wronged, take his £30 and make over the lease to Cuthbert Burbadge on 7 June 1589.[1116] Henceforward Cuthbert, and not his father, was the ostensible tenant of the property. This transaction stimulated Mrs. Brayne to assert her claims. About a year before the Burbadges had brought an action against her in Chancery, apparently in the hope of enforcing the alleged promise of Brayne to leave his interest to his sister’s children; and she now retorted with a counteraction against James and Cuthbert, in which she claimed to have an assignment of a moiety of the lease.[1117] Her chief[390] witness was the Robert Miles on whose statements this narrative has already drawn. He was not of unimpeachable reputation. His long association with Brayne had ended in a quarrel. Brayne had ‘charged Miles with his deathe, by certaine stripes geven him by Miles’. The widow had accused him before the coroner and procured his indictment as ‘a comon barreter’. Afterwards they had become friends, and he was now maintaining Mrs. Brayne in her suit.[1118] Much of his evidence, however, received corroboration from his son Ralph, from William Nicoll, a notary who had prepared the deeds connected with the partnership, and from Edward Collins, who had acquired Brayne’s grocery business in Bucklersbury. Burbadge, on the other hand, relied largely on one Henry Bett, who had had an opportunity of perusing Mrs. Brayne’s papers, and had then transferred his services to the other side. We cannot perhaps assume that all the evidence in the cross-suits is preserved. So far as what we have goes, there seems to have been no attempt on Burbadge’s part to defend himself against the charge of indirect dealing during the early years of partnership. Nor were the main facts as to the history of the lease much in dispute. The chief issue was as to Mrs. Brayne’s equitable claim to an interest in it, and this of course turned largely on the state of the account between Brayne and Burbadge at the death of the former. Miles asserted that the expenditure on the building of the Theatre in cash and credit had been practically all Brayne’s, that he had started as a rich man, but had had to sell his lease and stock in Bucklersbury and pawn his own wardrobe and his wife’s to get the work finished, that he was ruined, and that Mrs. Brayne was now ‘vtterlye vndone’ by the suit, and owed 500 marks to her friends.[1119] On the other side it was claimed that Brayne’s wealth, variously reputed at from £500 to £1,000, had been exaggerated, that he was already involved when he took the Theatre in hand, and that his downfall was largely due to unfortunate investments outside the partnership, especially in a soap-making business carried on with Miles at the George, where in fact Burbadge had incurred losses in helping him.[1120] Bett, moreover, said that, while Brayne ‘would never plainlie declare’ what his profits on the Theatre had been, ‘yt seemed by his taulke, that he had gayned and receyved a grete deale of monye, more than he had disbursed’.[1121] The actual figures produced in the course[391] of the case, which are sufficient to enable us to arrive at a fair estimate of the main position, do not quite bear out this suggestion. Towards the original outlay Burbadge seems to have found about £50; Brayne as much and £239 more, which he claimed as due to him from the partnership. In addition there were outside debts outstanding at the time of his death to the amount of at least £220. Something, moreover, had already been spent out of takings before 1586 in payments on Hyde’s mortgage. So that we may perhaps reasonably accept the total cost of the building as being somewhere about the 1,000 marks (£666) at which common repute estimated it.[1122] A certain amount of building material, worth perhaps 100 marks, was still in hand. All that Brayne could be shown to have received as against his considerable outlay was a sum of £135 1s., for which his receipt was produced. What Burbadge had received it is difficult to say. A comparison of various estimates suggests that after Brayne’s death it may have been between £100 and £200 a year.[1123] On the other hand, he had paid off the debt of £220 which Brayne had left outstanding. And throughout he had been responsible, without aid from Brayne, for certain outgoings independent of the structure of the Theatre, for which he was entitled to claim credit. He had paid £230 in rent and laid out at least £220 in putting the tenements in order, as well as at least £30 early in 1592 on the repair of the Theatre itself.[1124]

The fortunes of the case in Chancery were various. In 1590 the Court seemed inclined to grant a sequestration of half the profits; but instead made an order that the arbitrament of 1578 should be observed.[1125] On the strength of this Mrs. Brayne and Miles came to the Theatre on more than one occasion, and claimed to appoint collectors, including one[392] Nicholas Bishop, who was asked to stand ‘at the door that goeth vppe to the gallaries of the said Theater to take and receyve for the vse of the said Margarett half the money that shuld be gyven to come vppe into the said gallaries at that door’. They were, however, refused access, and on 16 November 1590 there was a row royal, of which independent witness was borne by John Alleyn, of the Admiral’s men, who were then playing at the Theatre. James Burbadge, ‘looking out at a wyndoe vpon them’, joined his wife in reviling them as a murdering knave and whore, and expressed his contempt for the order of Chancery; Cuthbert, who came home in the middle of the fray, backed him up; while Richard Burbadge, the youngest son, snatched up a broom-staff, and as he afterwards boasted, paid Robert Miles his moiety with a beating. He also threatened Nicholas Bishop, ‘scornfully and disdainfullye playing with this deponentes nose’. James said that at their next coming his sons should provide pistols charged with powder and hempseed to shoot them in the legs.[1126] Both Cuthbert and James were summoned on 28 November for contempt before the court, which instead of dealing with this charge proceeded to take the whole case into further consideration.[1127] This was something of a triumph for Burbadge, who continued to resist the order, and repeated with oaths that twenty contempts and as many injunctions would not force him to give up his property. This was heard by John Alleyn in the Theatre yard about May 1591, and about eight days later ‘in the Attyring housse or place where the players make them ready’, on the occasion of a dispute with the Admiral’s men about some of ‘the dyvydent money between him and them’ which he had detained, Burbadge was equally irreverent before Alleyn and James Tunstall about the Lord Admiral himself, saying ‘by a great othe, that he cared not for iij of the best lordes of them all’.[1128] Margaret Brayne died in 1593, leaving her estate to Miles, who thus became a principal in the suit.[1129] And on 28 May 1595 the court[393] came to the decision that it could not entertain the case, until Miles had endeavoured to obtain relief at common law, by suing on the two bonds which Burbadge had given to Brayne in 1578.[1130] He does not seem to have thought it worth while to do this, probably because he saw very little chance of recovering money from James Burbadge, while Cuthbert, who now held the lease, was not a party to the bonds.[1131]

It is the personality of Burbadge rather than the conduct of the Theatre that these details illumine. But we may gather that the building was constructed mainly of timber with some ironwork, that it had a tiring-house and galleries, one at least of which was divided into upper rooms, where spectators could sit as well as stand, and that money was taken by appointed gatherers, placed in locked boxes, and subsequently shared out amongst those entitled to it.[1132] From other sources it appears that 1d. was charged for admission to the building and 1d. or 2d. more for a place in the galleries.[1133] Apparently the players took the entrance fee and the owners of the house the whole or an agreed proportion of the gallery money. In the winter of 1585 an interesting arrangement was entered into between Burbadge and Brayne on the one hand and Henry Lanman, owner of the neighbouring Curtain, on the other, by which during a period of seven years the Curtain was taken ‘as an Esore’ to the Theatre, and the profits of both houses pooled and equally divided between the two parties. This arrangement was still operative in 1592.[1134] Kiechel tells us that the number of galleries was three, and De Witt that the shape was that of an ‘amphitheatrum’.[1135] It is impossible to trace with any certainty the successive occupation of the Theatre by various companies of players or to reconstruct the list of plays produced upon the boards. Its occupants were Burbadge’s ‘fellows’ at the time of his frauds of 1576–8, and may reasonably be identified with Leicester’s, of whom he was certainly one in 1574.[1136] Stephen Gosson tells us in 1579 that amongst plays then ‘vsually[394] brought in to the Theater’, were The Blacksmith’s Daughter and his own Catiline’s Conspiracies, and in 1582 assigns to the same house Lodge’s, if it was Lodge’s, Play of Plays and Pastimes given on the last 23 February, the play of The Fabii and possibly the history of Caesar and Pompey.[1137] Presumably The Fabii is The Four Sons of Fabius, presented by Warwick’s men at Court on 1 January 1580. Warwick’s men had therefore probably replaced Leicester’s at the Theatre, and it was the same men, then in the service of the Earl of Oxford, who were concerned in a riot at the Theatre on 10 April 1580.[1138] In 1582 came the controversy between Edmund Peckham and Giles Allen about the freehold of the Theatre site, as a result of which Burbadge was ‘disturbed and trobled in his possession’, and ‘the players for sooke the said Theater to his great losse’.[1139] So there was probably another change at this time. And in 1583 there was a complete reshuffling of all the London companies on the formation of the Queen’s men. Professor Wallace, who is primarily considering that part of the evidence which he has himself discovered, says that the Queen’s did not act at the Theatre.[1140] But most certainly they did. It is true that, when an inhibition against the Theatre and Curtain was obtained on 14 June 1584, the owner of the Theatre, ‘a stubburne fellow’, described himself as Lord Hunsdon’s man. Nevertheless the only companies named as concerned are the Queen’s and Arundel’s, and Burbadge may not himself have been then acting.[1141] And as to the presence of the Queen’s in the Theatre at some date there is no doubt. Tarlton is not traceable in any other company than the Queen’s, and it was at the Theatre that Tarlton made jests of Richard Harvey’s Astrological Discourse upon the Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, published in 1583.[1142] The Queen’s certainly did not confine themselves to[395] the Theatre; but that they were there again in 1589 may be inferred from a mock testament of Martin Marprelate in Martins Month’s Mind, in which he is made to admit that he learned his twittle tattles ... at the Theater of Lanam and his fellows’. A marginal note in the same pamphlet indicates that it was at the Theatre that the ‘Maygame’ representing the ‘launcing and worming’ of Martin was staged, and there is other evidence that Laneham, then one of the Queen’s men, was one of the players who took a part in the ribald controversy.[1143] Gabriel Harvey’s scoff at Lyly as ‘the Foolemaster of the Theatre’ may perhaps indicate his authorship of plays for the house. In 1590–1 it is clear that the Admiral’s men, probably already associated with Strange’s, were at the Theatre, and their quarrel with Burbadge doubtless led them to cross the river and join Henslowe at the Rose. After the reconstitution of the companies in 1594, James Burbadge’s son Richard became a leading member of the Chamberlain’s men, and it is probable that, when this company left the Rose about the middle of June, it was to the Theatre that they went. Here Hamlet, which certainly belonged to them, was being acted in 1596.[1144] It must be added that the Theatre was not strictly reserved for the purposes of the legitimate drama. It was built for ‘activities’, amongst other things, according to Stowe, and prizes of the School of Defence were played at it between 1578 and 1585.[1145] On 22 February 1582, there took place at the Theatre ‘a scurvie play set oot al by one virgin, which there proved a fyemarten without voice, so that we stayed not the matter’.[1146]

It was a natural consequence of the success of Burbadge’s new departure that the Theatre and its immediate successor, the Curtain, had to bear the brunt of the Puritan denunciations of the stage. These incidentally bore witness to the costly elaborateness of the new accommodation provided for the players.[1147] Apart from the moral corruption[396] upon which the Puritans laid most stress, there is some evidence that the position of the Theatre, with a great space of open ground before it, made it a natural focus for the disorderly elements of society. As early as 5 October 1577, just after the resumption of plays for the autumn, the Mayor and Recorder Fleetwood were listening to ‘a brabell betwene John Wotton and the Leuetenuntes sonne of the one parte, and certain ffreholders of Shordyche, for a matter at the Theater’. There was serious trouble in the course of 1584. Fleetwood wrote to Burghley how on 8 June, ‘very nere the Theatre or Curten, at the tyme of the playes, there laye a prentice sleping upon the grasse and one Challes alias Grostock dyd turne upon the too upon the belly of the same prentice; whereupon the apprentice start up, and after wordes they fell to playne bloues’; and how on 10 June, ‘one Browne, a serving man in a blew coat, a shifting fellowe, having a perrelous witt of his owne, entending a spoile if he cold have browght it to passe, did at Theatre doore querell with certen poore boyes, handicraft prentises, and strooke some of theym; and lastlie he with his sword wondend and maymed one of the boyes upon the left hand; whereupon there assembled nere a ml. people’.[1148] Unscrupulous characters might find congenial companions in the throng. Somewhere in 1594 a diamond, which had gone astray from the loot of a Spanish vessel, was shown in Finsbury Fields by a mariner[397] to certain goldsmiths, who said that they had met him by chance at a play in the Theatre at Shoreditch.[1149] But James Burbadge had obtained for himself a tactical advantage by building outside the jurisdiction of the City and within that, less organized or more easy-going, of the Middlesex magistrates. The Corporation were powerless, except in so far as, directly by persuasion, or indirectly by invoking the Privy Council, they could stir the county bench to action. They lost no opportunity, which brawls or plague afforded, of attempting this.[1150] An exceptionally troublous year was 1580. It began with an indictment of John Brayne and James Burbadge ‘yeomen’ of Shoreditch, at the Middlesex sessions, for bringing unlawful assemblies together on 21 February and other days ‘ad audienda et spectanda quaedam colloquia sive interluda vocata playes or interludes’ by them and others ‘exercitata et practicata’ at the Theatre in Holywell, with the result of affrays and tumults leading to a breach of the peace.[1151] On 6 April was the great earthquake, which threw down chimneys in Shoreditch, and according to one account ‘shaked not only the scenical Theatre, but the great stage and theatre of the whole land’.[1152] Four days later was the riot between Lord Oxford’s men and the Inns of Court, and the two events gave the Lord Mayor an excellent opportunity of pointing out to the Council that the players of plays which were used at the Theatre were ‘a very superfluous sort of men’ and of securing a suspension of performances until after Michaelmas. The riot of 8 June 1584 similarly led to the inhibition by the Council and Fleetwood already noticed, although it is clear that this was not so permanent as the City probably hoped, when the authority for ‘the suppressing and pulling downe of the Theatre and Curten’ reached them. Matters came to a crisis again in 1597 with the production of The Isle of Dogs on the Bankside, and an appeal of the City on 28 July was answered on the same day by mandates of the Council, of which one was addressed to the Middlesex justices, and[398] directed them to send for the owners of the Theatre and Curtain, and enjoin them to ‘plucke downe quite the stages, gallories and roomes that are made for people to stand in, and so to deface the same as they maie not be ymploied agayne to suche use’.[1153]

It is unlikely that the Theatre was ever opened again. It is certain that the Chamberlain’s men had moved to the Curtain before the end of 1597, and the abandonment of the old house is referred to unmistakably enough in a satire published in 1598.[1154] The explanation is to be found in the relations of the Burbadges to their ground landlord, Giles Allen. The following account is taken in the main from Cuthbert Burbadge’s allegations in litigation of 1600. On 1 November 1585, shortly before the termination of the first ten years of the lease, James Burbadge, as he was entitled to do, presented Allen with a draft of a new twenty-one years’ lease. This Allen evaded signing, apparently alleging that it was not in verbatim agreement with the old lease, and probably also that some of Burbadge’s covenants under the old lease had remained unfulfilled.[1155] By way of precaution, Burbadge thought it desirable to put on record in his account-book some evidence that he had spent the £200 in improving the tenements, upon which his right to remove the structure of the Theatre depended. He called in expert craftsmen, and took two ‘views’, one on 20 November 1585, another, after some further work had been done, on 18 July 1586. The first estimate was £220, the second £240. This last was later confirmed by a third view taken in connexion with the Brayne litigation in July 1591.[1156] The money had been spent, partly on ordinary repairs, partly on converting the old barn into tenements, partly on putting up two new houses, one of which was for Burbadge’s own occupation.[1157] The matter of the new lease now slumbered until the expiration of the old one on 13 April 1597 drew near. In 1596 negotiations took place between landlord and tenant, and a compromise was mooted, by which the new lease was to be granted, but for an increased rent of £24 instead of £14. Allen afterwards asserted and Cuthbert Burbadge denied that there was a proviso that after five years the building should be converted to some other use[399] than that of a play-house.[1158] Cuthbert continued the negotiations after James Burbadge’s death in February 1597, but they finally broke down, and for a year or so the tenancy was only on sufferance.[1159] Finally, in the autumn of 1598, when Cuthbert had agreed to demands which he thought extortionate, Allen refused to accept his brother Richard as security, and all hope of a settlement disappeared.[1160] Cuthbert now resolved to avail himself of the covenant of the expired lease, under which the tenant was entitled to pull down and remove the Theatre. This he began to do, in spite of a protest from Allen’s representative, on 28 December 1598, with the concurrence of his mother and brother, and the financial aid of one William Smith of Waltham Cross.[1161] The work was still in progress on 20 January 1599, when Burbadge’s agent, Peter Street, carpenter, entered the close with ten or twelve men, and carried the timber to the other side of the river for use in the erection of the Globe. For this act Allen brought an action of trespass against Street in the Queen’s Bench, alleging that he had trampled down grass in the close to the value of 40s., and claiming damages for £800 in all, of which £700 represented his estimate of the value of the Theatre.[1162] Burbadge applied to the Court of Requests to stop the common law suit, alleging in effect that he was equitably entitled to act upon the covenant, even though the lease had expired, on account of the unreasonable refusal of Allen to grant the new lease when applied for, under the terms of the old one, in 1585.[1163] The issue really turned upon whether this refusal was reasonable. Allen said that James Burbadge had been a troublesome tenant, that he had converted the barn into eleven tenements, whose inhabitants became a nuisance to the parish by begging for their 20s. rents, that he had not repaired the building but only shored it up, that he had not spent the stipulated £200, and that £30 rent was in[400] arrear at the time of the application of 1585 and was still unpaid.[1164] Probably these last two were the only allegations to which the court attached importance. Allen claimed that he had no remedy against James Burbadge’s estate, for he had made deeds of gift to his sons of his property, and his widow and administratrix was without funds. Burbadge, however, produced evidence of the estimates of 1585 and 1586, and suggested that his father had a counter-claim against the rent in the expense to which he had been put in maintaining his possession at the time of Peckham’s claim to the freehold. On 18 October 1600 the Court decided in his favour.[1165] Allen brought a Queen’s Bench action against him in 1601 for breach of agreement, and in 1601 complained to the Star Chamber of perjury on the part of the expert witnesses and other wrongs done him in the course of the earlier proceedings; but, although the conclusions of these suits are not on record, it is not likely that he succeeded in obtaining a favourable decision.[1166]

vii. THE CURTAIN

The Curtain is included with the Theatre in Stowe’s general description of Holywell as ‘standing on the South-west side towards the field’. That it was somewhat south of the Theatre is indicated by a reference to it in 1601 as in Moorfields, a name given to the open fields lying south of and adjacent to Finsbury Fields. But, although it stood in the parish of Shoreditch and the liberty of Holywell, it was not, like the Theatre, actually within the precinct of the dissolved priory. Curtina is glossed by Ducange as ‘minor curtis, seu rustica area, quae muris cingitur’, and the description is sufficiently met by the piece of land lying outside the southern gate of the priory, and on the other side of Holywell Lane into which that gate opened.[1167] A priory lease to the Earl[401] of Rutland of his town house in 1538 described it as ‘infra muros et portas eiusdem monasterii’, and part of the holding consisted of stables and a hay-loft ‘scituata et existentia extra portas eiusdem monasterii prope pasturam dictae Priorissae vocatam the Curtene’. Post-dissolution conveyances refer to a ‘house, tenement or lodge’ called the Curtain, and to a parcel of ground, enclosed with a wall on the west and north, called the Curtain close, which lay south of the Earl of Rutland’s house, and on which by 1581 stood various tenements, which were described as ‘sett, lyeng and being in Halliwell Lane’. The property in question formed part of the possessions of Sir Thomas Leigh of Hoxton at his death in 1543 and had formerly been conveyed to him by Lord Wriothesley. Through Leigh’s daughter Katharine it passed to her husband Lord Mountjoy. On 20 February 1567 it was sold for £40 to Maurice Long and his son William, being then in the occupation of one Wilkingeson and Robert Manne. On 23 August 1571 Maurice Long conveyed it for £200 to Sir William Allen, then Lord Mayor, possibly by way of mortgage in connexion with building speculations, since on 18 March 1581 it was in the hands of William Long, who then sold it to Thomas Herbert. There had evidently been an increase in the number of tenements on the site, and Thomas Wilkinson, Thomas Wilkins, Robert Medley, Richard Hicks, Henry Lanman, and Robert Manne are named as tenants.[1168] As Henry Lanman or Laneman had the profits of the theatre in 1585, there can be little doubt that it stood on part of the land dealt with in the conveyances. Halliwell-Phillipps thinks that it must have been situated ‘in or near the place which is marked as Curtain Court in Chassereau’s plan of Shoreditch, 1745’,[1169] and is now known as Gloucester Street. If so, it was very near the boundary between Holywell and Moorfields, much along the line of which now runs Curtain Road. But it must be remembered that Curtain Court may also have taken its name from the ‘house, tenement or lodge’ which already existed in 1567 and is mentioned as the Curtain House in the Shoreditch registers as late as 1639; and certainly in Ryther’s map (c. 1636–45) the theatre, though still bordering on Moorfields, is shown a good deal farther,[402] both to the east and the south, than the point indicated by Halliwell-Phillipps.[1170]

The Burbadges claimed that James was the first builder of play-houses, but the Curtain must have followed very soon after the Theatre. It is not mentioned by name with its predecessor in the Privy Council order of 1 August 1577, but is in Northbrooke’s treatise of the following December. Up to 1597 its history is little more than a pendant to that of the Theatre, with which it is generally coupled in the Puritan attacks and in the occasional interferences of authority. From 1585 to 1592, indeed, it was used as an ‘easer’ to the Theatre, and the profits of the two houses were pooled under an arrangement between Henry Lanman and the Burbadges.[1171] The companies who occupied the Curtain can for the most part only be guessed at.[1172] At the time of the inhibition of 14 June 1584 it was probably occupied by Lord Arundel’s men. Tarlton appeared at it, but not necessarily after the formation of the Queen’s company.[1173] Prizes of the School of Defence were occasionally played at it from 1579 to 1583.[1174] Unlike the Theatre, the Curtain was certainly reopened after the inhibition of 1597. It is likely that the Chamberlain’s men repaired to it in October of that year, and remained at it until the Globe was ready in 1599. The same satirist, who tells us that the Theatre was closed in 1598, tells us that the Rose, which was continuously occupied by the Admiral’s men, and the Curtain were open;[1175] and[403] a clue to the actors at it is given by Marston’s reference to ‘Curtain plaudities’ in the closest connexion with Romeo and Juliet.[1176] In 1600 Robert Armin, of the Chamberlain’s men, published his Fool upon Fool, in which he called himself ‘Clonnico de Curtanio Snuffe’. In the 1605 edition he changed the name to ‘Clonnico del Mondo Snuffe’. The direct connexion of the Chamberlain’s men with the Curtain probably ended on the opening of the Globe. But a share in it belonged to Thomas Pope, when he made his will on 22 July 1603, and another to John Underwood, when he made his on 4 October 1624. Both were of the Chamberlain’s men, although Underwood cannot have joined them until about 1608.

The Curtain did not go entirely out of use when the Chamberlain’s left it. It must have been the theatre near Bishopsgate at which Thomas Platter saw a play in September or October 1599.[1177] It is possible that Kempe (q.v.) was then playing there. In March 1600 one William Hawkins, barber, of St. Giles’s without Cripplegate was charged at the Middlesex Sessions with taking a purse and £1 6s. 6d. at the Curtain, and Richard Fletcher, pewterer, of Norwich, was bound over to give evidence.[1178]

On 22 June 1600, when the Privy Council gave authority for the opening of the Fortune, they were given to understand by the Master of the Revels that it would replace the Curtain, which was therefore to be ‘ruinated or applied to some other good use’. This arrangement seems to suggest that the Curtain was in some way under the control of Alleyn or Henslowe. It was, however, departed from, and apparently with the tacit consent of the Council, as although they had occasion on 10 May 1601 to instruct the Middlesex justices to suppress a libellous play produced at ‘the Curtaine in Moorefeilds’, they did not take, as they might have done, the point that no play ought to have been produced there at all. On 31 December they were again insisting on the limitation of the theatres in use to two; and on 31 March 1602 they again[404] departed from their own principles by licensing Oxford’s and Worcester’s men to play at the Boar’s Head. Henceforward three companies of men players were regularly tolerated, and when a draft licence was prepared for Worcester’s, or as they had then become Queen Anne’s, men early in the following year the Curtain and the Boar’s Head were named as ‘there now usuall howsen’. The Curtain is also specified for them in the Council’s warrant for the resumption of plays on 9 April 1604. About 1606 they also took into use the Red Bull, and thereafter but little is heard of the Curtain. The Queen’s men, however, played Day, Wilkins, and Rowley’s The Travels of Three English Brothers there at some time before its entry on 29 June 1607. It was still theirs in April 1609, but may perhaps soon have passed to the Duke of York’s men. It is mentioned, with the Globe and Fortune, in Heath’s Epigrams of 1610, and plays heard ‘at Curtaine, or at Bull’ and ‘a Curtaine Iigge’ are objects of ridicule in Wither’s Abuses Stript and Whipt of 1613.[1179] It was used by an amateur company for a performance of Wentworth Smith’s Hector of Germany in 1615, and it is obscurely referred to in I. H.’s This World’s Folly of the same year.[1180] Malone gathered from Sir Henry Herbert’s office-book that it was used by Prince Charles’s men in 1622, and soon thereafter only by prize-fighters. It was still in use in 1624, and still standing in 1627.[1181]

viii. NEWINGTON BUTTS

A theatre, of which the history is very obscure, but which may have been built soon after the Theatre and Curtain, stood at Newington, a village one mile from London Bridge, divided from the Bankside by St. George’s Fields, and reachable by the road which continued Southwark High Street.[1182] Here there were butts for the practice of archery. Plays at Newington Butts, outside the City jurisdiction, are first mentioned in a Privy Council letter of 13 May 1580 to the Surrey justices. A similar letter of 11 May 1586 speaks more precisely of ‘the theater or anie other places about Newington’. A third letter, undated, but probably belonging to 1591 or 1592, recites an order of the Council restraining[405] Strange’s men from playing at the Rose, and enjoining them to play three days a week at Newington Butts, and rescinds it, ‘by reason of the tediousness of the way, and that of long time plays have not there been used on working days’.[1183] Possibly the theatre had come into Henslowe’s hands, for his diary records that it was at Newington that the combined companies of the Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s men began their first season after the plague of 1592–4, apparently playing there from 5 to 15 June 1594, and then going their separate ways to the Rose and the Theatre respectively. The theatre is mentioned in the list given by Howes in 1631.[1184] It is said to have been ‘only a memory’ by 1599.[1185] A bad pun is called a ‘Newington conceit’ in 1612.[1186]

ix. THE ROSE

The Rose owed its name to the fact that it stood in what had been, as recently as 1547–8, a rose garden.[1187] On 3 December 1552 Thomasyn, widow of Ralph Symonds, fishmonger, granted to trustees, for her own use during life and thereafter to the charitable uses of the parish of St. Mildred, Bread Street, her ‘messuage or tennement then called the little rose with twoe gardens’ formerly in St. Margaret’s and then in St. Saviour’s, Southwark. St. Mildred’s still has a plan of the estate, which extended to about three roods.[1188] A ‘tenement called the Rose’ is referred to in a recital of a lease of Henry VIII’s reign as the eastern boundary of other tenements, by name the Barge, the Bell, and the Cock, which lay ‘vppon the banke called Stewes’ in St. Margaret’s, afterwards St. Saviour’s, parish, between the highway next the Thames on the north and Maiden Lane on the south.[1189] It is located by Mr. Rendle just to the east of the still existing[406] Rose Alley. The site therefore lay in the Liberty of the Clink midway between those afterwards occupied by the Globe on the east and the Hope on the west. On 20 November 1574 the parish let the property for thirty-one years at £7 annually to William Griffin, vintner. Griffin assigned it on 11 December 1579 to Robert Withens, vintner, and Withens on 24 March 1585 to Henslowe.[1190] There was as yet no theatre. The first mention of one as in contemplation is in an agreement of 10 January 1587 between Henslowe and one John Cholmley, citizen and grocer of London, for partnership during the next eight years and three months, should both parties live so long, in a garden plot ninety-four feet square on the Bankside in the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, and ‘a playe howse now in framinge and shortly to be ereckted and sett vppe vpone the same’. Under this Henslowe undertook to have ‘the saide play house with all furniture thervnto belonginge’ set up ‘with as muche expedicion as maye be’ by John Grigges, carpenter, to pay all rents due on the premisses, and to repair the bridges and wharves belonging to them before the following Michaelmas. Cholmley undertook to bear his share of any further cost of maintaining the premises, and also to pay Henslowe the sum of £816 in quarterly instalments. In consideration of this, he was to take half of all such profits as ‘shall arysse grow be colectted gathered or become due for the saide parcell of grounde and playe howse when and after yt shalbe ereckted and sett vpe by reason of any playe or playes, that shalbe showen or played there or otherwysse howsoever’. The partners are jointly to appoint ‘players to vse exersyse & playe in the saide playe howse’, and collect sums themselves or by deputy of all persons coming to the performances ‘excepte yt please any of the saide partyes to suffer theire frendes to go in for nothinge’. Cholmley is also to have the sole right of selling food or drink on the premises and a small house already in his tenure on the south of the plot close to Maiden Lane, ‘to keepe victualinge in’ or for any other purpose, and with a right of ingress from Thames side by Rose Alley.[1191] The deed does not name the property, but it cannot be doubted that it refers to a part of the Little Rose. Presumably the theatre was to be built on a garden at the back of the holding, and the existing tenement on Bankside was not to be interfered with. Henslowe had ‘Rosse rentes’ of a residential character in 1602 or 1603.[1192] Norden’s map (1593) puts the Rose farther from the river than the Bear Garden. The Delaram and Merian drawings,[407] on the other hand, put it very near the river, and these, although of less authority than Norden, are followed in Mr. Rendle’s plan. Probably Norden’s Bear Garden was an older one than that which afterwards became the Hope.[1193] The provision as to the wharfs and bridges seems to indicate an intention to open the Rose at Michaelmas 1587, and I see no reason to doubt that it was in fact ready for occupation by about that date. On 29 October the Privy Council called the attention of the Surrey justices to complaints from Southwark of breaches of the rule against plays on Sunday, ‘especiallie within the Libertie of the Clincke and in the parish of St. Saviour’s in Southwarke’. There may, of course, have been plays at inns in the Clink, but it is more natural to take the protest as one against the newly opened Rose. No other regular theatre existed in the Clink at this time. That the Rose was built by 1588 appears from a record of the Sewer Commission for Surrey.[1194] It is not in Smith’s plan of 1588, but this may easily not have been quite up to date.

The next that is heard of the Rose is probably in 1592.[1195] In March and April of that year Henslowe, who had recently taken his famous ‘diary’ into use as a financial memorandum book, noted in it some building expenditure, and a little later set out ‘a note of suche carges as I haue layd owt a bowte my playe howsse in the yeare of our lord 1592’.[1196] Henslowe is not known to have owned Newington Butts, or any other theatre except the Rose, and it is reasonable to assume that this is what he meant by ‘my playe howsse’. The work probably began in or before January, as an entry halfway through the list is dated on 6 February. It entailed the purchase of a barge and a certain amount of breaking up and paling and wharfing. Henslowe appears to have done the[408] work himself and not by contract. He bought a mast, turned balusters, boards and laths, in part from the carpenter Grigges who is named in the agreement with Cholmley, and in part from a ‘timber man’ called Lee. He bought bolts, hinges, and nails from the ironmonger at the Fryingpan in Southwark and from one Brader. He bought lime, sand, chalk, and bricks. He paid wages to carpenters, workmen, and labourers, and employed painters and a thatcher. The exact nature and extent of the work are not specified, but it included the painting of the stage, the ceiling of ‘my lords rome’, and ‘the rome ouer the tyerhowsse’, and the ‘makeinge the penthowsse shed at the tyeringe howsse doore’. It has sometimes been supposed that the Rose never got built in 1587, and that these are the accounts, or part of them, for the original construction. This seems to me most unlikely. The total expense, with the exception of a small number of items lost by the mutilation of a page, only amounted to about £108. This could not cover more than repairs. On the other hand, these were clearly substantial repairs, and the fact that they were needed suggests that the building cannot have been a very new one. The lapse of five years since 1587 would, however, be consistent with the necessity for them. Almost simultaneously with the earliest dated entries in the building account, begins on 19 February 1592 the record of performances by Lord Strange’s men, which continues to the following 22 June. If these were at the Rose, the paint on the stage can hardly have been dry in time for them, unless, as Dr. Greg suggests, the payments made in March and April were for work done a little earlier. That it was at the Rose that Strange’s men played seems indicated by the Privy Council order, reciting the restraint of this company ‘from playinge at the Rose on the Banckside’, which it is difficult to assign to any year but 1591 or 1592.[1197] It is a little curious that nothing more is heard of John Cholmley, and I think the natural inference is that he was dead and that the partnership had thereby, in accordance with the terms of the agreement, been automatically dissolved.[1198]

The assumption, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that until he acquired a share in the Fortune Henslowe had no proprietary interest in any other theatre must explain the assignment to the Rose of all the playing recorded in the diary between 1592 and the autumn of 1600, with the exception of the few performances definitely stated to have been at[409] Newington Butts. The further conjecture must, I think, be accepted that the season begun by the Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s men at Newington Butts in the summer of 1594 was transferred, so far as the Admiral’s men were concerned, to the Rose after 15 June. If so, the Rose housed Strange’s men again from 29 December 1592 to 1 February 1593, Sussex’s from 26 December 1593 to 6 February 1594, the Queen’s and Sussex’s together from 1 to 9 April 1594, and the Admiral’s from 14 to 16 May 1594, and then regularly from the following June until their transference to the Fortune in 1600. The only actual mentions of the theatre by name in the diary during this period are in the agreements of 1597 between Henslowe and the players Jones and Borne, in which Henslowe specifies ‘the Rosse’ as ‘my howsse’ in which they are to play. It was no doubt in use when Guilpin’s Skialetheia (S. R. 8 September 1598) was written.[1199] In the Lenten interval of 1595 Henslowe made ‘A nott of what I haue layd owt abowt my playhowsse ffor payntynge & doinge it abowt with ealme bordes & other repracyones’. The expenditure reached a total of £108 19s., which was much about the same as that of 1592, and was supplemented in the following June by a further £7 2s. for carpenters’ work, including ‘mackinge the throne in the heuenes’.[1200] The accounts of 1592 and 1595 suggest that the building was of wood and plaster on a brick foundation, and this is consistent with Hentzner’s statement of 1598. Part of it, at least, was thatched. If the maps can be trusted, it was octagonal. In 1600 Henslowe had to find new occupants for the Rose. He records that Pembroke’s men began to play there on 28 October, but only enters two unprofitable performances. Possibly the Privy Council, who had decreed in the previous July a limitation of houses to one on each side of the river, interfered. But this limitation was certainly not permanent. There is a receipt for a play bought for Worcester’s men ‘at the Rose’, and they probably used the house during the term of their account with Henslowe between August 1602 and May 1603. Subsequently they moved to the Curtain and Boar’s Head. Henslowe’s lease of the site was due to expire at the end of 1605, and this explains to some extent the following entry in the diary:

It is impossible to say whether ‘Mr. Pope’ was Thomas Pope of the King’s men at the neighbouring Globe, or Morgan Pope, who was formerly interested in the Bear House, or some other Pope; nor is it clear how he was in a position to authorize Henslowe to pull down the theatre. Dr. Greg draws the natural inference from the wording that he may have given his consent as a prospective lessee of the property.[1202] In any case the Rose was not pulled down until two or three years later. The Sewers records show that in January 1604 not Philip but Francis Henslowe was amerced 6s. 8d. for it, which may mean that Lennox’s men were playing there; that on 4 October 1605 Philip Henslowe was amerced, but return was made that it was ‘out of his hands’; that on 14 February 1606 Edward Box, of Bread Street, London, was amerced for it; and that on 25 April 1606 Box was amerced for the site of ‘the late play-house in Maid lane’.[1203]

There is no record of plays at the Rose after 1603.[1204] It is in the Delaram engravings, but not in any later views except those of the Merian group, where it appears, flagged but unnamed, on the river edge.[1205] Nor is it mentioned with the Hope, Globe, and Swan in Holland’s Leaguer (1632). The explanation may perhaps be that the Merian engraver followed some out-of-date authority, such as Delaram, which had got the house farther north than Norden puts it, and as it had long ceased to exist, did not know its name. On the other hand, it is also just conceivable that for a short period the Rose, or some other building at the north end of the Rose site, had a renewed life as a place of public entertainment. Alleyn was paying ‘tithe dwe for the Rose’ in 1622.[1206] And Malone cites Herbert’s ‘office-book’ for a statement that after 1620 the Swan and the Rose were ‘used occasionally for the exhibition of prize-fighters’.[1207]

[411]

x. THE SWAN

The Swan stood in the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden, at the western end of the Bankside. This manor, from which the royal ‘game’ of bear-baiting took its traditional appellation, had come into the hands of the Crown as part of the possessions of the dissolved monastery of Bermondsey. It was granted in 1578 to nominees of Henry, Lord Hunsdon, conveyed by them to the Cure family, and sold for £850 on 24 May 1589 by Thomas Cure the younger to Francis Langley, a citizen and goldsmith of London. Langley, who was brother-in-law to Sir Anthony Ashley, one of the clerks to the Privy Council, held the office of Alnager and Searcher of Cloth, to which he had been appointed by the Corporation on the recommendation of the Privy Council and Sir Francis Walsingham in December 1582.[1208] The site of the theatre can be precisely identified from a plan of the manor dated in 1627, but based on a survey of 1 November 1624.[1209] It was in the north-east corner of the demesne, east of the manor-house, twenty-six poles due south of Paris Garden stairs, and immediately west of a lane leading to a house called Copt Hall. The outline shown is that of a double circle, or perhaps dodecahedron, divided into twelve compartments, with a small porch or tiring-house towards the road. The exact date of building is unknown. On 3 November 1594 the Lord Mayor wrote to[412] Burghley that Langley ‘intendeth to erect a niew stage or Theater (as they call it) for the exercising of playes vpon the Banck side’, and detailed the usual civic objections to the stage as arguments in favour of the suppression of the project.[1210] It is probable that Burghley refused to intervene and that Langley proceeded at once with the erection of the Swan, which may then have been ready for use in 1595. It is impossible, without the Swan, to make up the tale of four ‘spielhäuser’ seen by the Prince of Anhalt in 1596 (360). To 1596 again is assigned, although with probability rather than certainty, the visit of John de Witt, who not only names but also describes and delineates the Swan.[1211] In any case the Swan had already been in use by players before February 1597, when Langley entered into an arrangement for its occupation by Lord Pembroke’s men.[1212] The terms of the lease provided that he should make the house ready and furnish apparel, which he alleged cost him £300, and should get his return for this expenditure out of the company’s moiety of the gallery takings, in addition of course to the other moiety which in accordance with theatrical custom went to him as rent.[1213] The enterprise was rudely interrupted by the production of The Isle of Dogs at the Swan itself, and the restraint of 28 July 1597 which was the result. The leading members of Pembroke’s company joined or rejoined the Admiral’s at the Rose, and became involved in litigation with Langley on account of their breach of covenant.[1214] For a time Langley succeeded in keeping a company together, and the Swan remained open.[1215] It was perhaps the intention of the Privy Council order of 19 February 1598, against an intrusive ‘third company’ which was competing with the Chamberlain’s and the Admiral’s, to close it.[1216] If so, Langley may still for a time have found means of evasion, since on the[413] following 1 May the vestry of St. Saviour’s were viewing new buildings of his, and at the same time negotiating with Henslowe and Meade for money for the poor ‘in regarde of theire playe-houses’.[1217] During the next few years, however, such notices as we get of the Swan, while showing that it was still in existence and available for occasional entertainments, carry no evidence of any use by a regular company. Francis Meres, in his Palladis Tamia of 1598, tells us that it was the scene of a challenge in ‘extemporall’ versifying by Robert Wilson.[1218] It was one of the wooden theatres which were seen by Hentzner in the same year, and no doubt the one near which he describes the royal barge as lying.[1219] On 15 May 1600 the Council sanctioned its use for feats of activity by Peter Bromvill.[1220] On 7 February 1602 it was occupied by fencers, and while two of these, by names Turner and Dun, were playing their prizes upon its stage, Dun was unfortunate enough to receive a mortal wound in the eye.[1221] On 6 November 1602 it was chosen by Richard Vennar for his impudent mystification of England’s Joy. The accounts of this transaction show that it was fitted with ‘hangings, curtains, chairs, and stools’, and capable of scenic effects, such as the appearance of a throne of blessed souls in heaven and of black and damned souls with fireworks from beneath the stage.[1222] Meanwhile Langley had died in 1601 and in January 1602 the Paris Garden estate was sold to Hugh Browker, a protonotary of the Court of Common Pleas, in whose family it remained to 1655.[1223] About 1611 it was once more taken into use for plays. The Roaring Girl (1611), itself a Fortune play, has an allusion to a knight who ‘lost his purse at the last new play i’ the Swan’,[1224] and the accounts of the overseers of Paris Garden contain entries of receipts from ‘the play house’ or ‘the Swan’ in each April from 1611 to 1615.[1225] The last entry is of so small an amount that it probably only covered a fraction of a year, and I think the inference is that the Swan was disused on the opening of the Hope in 1614.[1226] If so, it had probably been taken over by Henslowe for the use of the Lady Elizabeth’s men, who came into existence in[414] 1611, and whose Chaste Maid in Cheapside was published in 1630 as ‘often acted at the Swan on the Bankeside’. The Hope itself was modelled structurally upon the Swan. Its measurements were the same, and it had similar partitions between the rooms and external staircases. Its heavens, however, were to be supported without the help of posts from the stage, since this had to be removable on days of bear-baiting. It is obviously illegitimate to infer from this specification that the stage of the Swan, which was not used for bear-baiting, was also removable. The accounts of the overseers show one more payment from the ‘players’ in 1621, which perhaps supports the statement contained in one of Malone’s notes from Sir Henry Herbert’s office-book, that after 1620 the Swan was ‘used occasionally for the exhibition of prize-fighters’.[1227] The theatre is marked ‘Old Play-house’ in the manor map of 1627. The last notice of it is in Holland’s Leaguer (1632) as a famous amphitheatre, which was ‘now fallen to decay, and like a dying swanne hanging downe her head seemed to sing her own dierge’.[1228]

Many of the maps of the Bankside do not extend far enough west to take in the Swan. It is named and shown as an octagonal or decagonal building by Visscher (1616) and in maps of the Merian group (1638), but not by Hollar (1647).

xi. THE GLOBE

In the building of the Globe use was made of the materials of the old Theatre (q.v.) which, according to Allen v. Burbadge (1602), the Burbadges, with Peter Street and others, pulled down on 28 December 1598, carried ‘all the wood and timber therof unto the Banckside in the parishe of St. Marye Overyes, and there erected a newe playehowse with the sayd timber and woode’.[1229] An earlier account gives the date of the audacious proceeding as 20 January 1599. The formal lease of the new site from the freeholder, Nicholas Brend of West Molesey, was executed on 21 February 1599. No doubt Street, who had assisted in the transfer, was the builder and had finished his job when on 8 January 1600 he contracted with Henslowe and Alleyn to put up the Fortune (q.v.) on the model, with certain modifications, of ‘the late erected plaiehowse on the Banck in the saide parishe of St. Saviours called the Globe’. This contract allowed twenty-eight weeks for the work. Probably the Globe took about the same time, for it is described as ‘de novo edificata’ in the inquisition on the property left by the lessor’s father, Thomas Brend, which is dated on 16 May 1599.[1230] It may not then have been quite finished, but it was doubtless ready for the occupation of the Chamberlain’s men by the beginning of the autumn season of 1599. One of the earliest plays there produced by them was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar which on 21 September Thomas Platter crossed the water to see ‘in dem streüwinen Dachhaus’.[1231] Whether the Globe or its predecessor the Curtain was the ‘wooden O’ of Henry V, 1, prol. 13, must be more doubtful, as the prologue to Act V of the same play contemplates the triumphant return of Essex from Ireland, and in fact Essex left England on 27 March and returned, not triumphant, on 28 September 1599.[1232] Jonson refers to ‘this faire-fild Globe’ as the scene of[416] his Every Man Out of his Humour, produced in the autumn of 1600.[1233] The Privy Council order of the previous 22 June, which enacts that there shall be one allowed house only ‘in Surrey in that place which is commonlie called the Banckside or there aboutes’, goes on to recite that the Chamberlain’s men had chosen the Globe to be that one. The allowance of the house ‘in Surrey called the Globe’ is confirmed by the Privy Council letter of 27 December 1601. The order of 9 April 1604 authorizes the opening after the plague of ‘the Globe scituate in Maiden Lane on the Banckside in the Countie of Surrey’. This order evidently contemplates that the King’s men will use the house, which was assigned to them by name as ‘theire nowe vsual howse called the Globe within our County of Surrey’ by the terms of the patent of 19 May 1603. The precedent is followed in the later patents of 1619 and 1625, and there is nothing to indicate that any other company than the Chamberlain’s or King’s men ever performed, even temporarily, at the theatre.

The Globe was held by a syndicate, composed mainly of members of the company, on a leasehold tenure. The site, which had been garden ground, was described in the original lease with some minuteness as follows:[1234]

The lease was granted for a term of thirty-one years from Christmas 1598 to Christmas 1629, and conveyed the property in two equal moieties, the one to Cuthbert and Richard Burbadge and the other to William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, and William Kempe.[1235] With the exception of Cuthbert Burbadge these were all members of the Chamberlain’s company. Each moiety was charged with a ground-rent of £7 5s. There is nothing to show how the funds for building were found. ‘Wee’, said the Burbadges in 1635, ‘at like expence built the Globe, with more summes of money taken up at interest, which lay heavy on us many yeeres; and to ourselves wee joyned those deserveing men, Shakspere, Hemings, Condall, Philips, and others, partners in the profittes of that they call the House, but makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres hath beene the destruction of ourselves and others, for they dyeing at the expiration of three or four yeeres of their lease, the subsequent yeeres became dissolved to strangers, as by marrying with their widdowes and the like by their children.’[1236] This is, however, not a strictly accurate account of what took place in 1599, for Condell was not one of the original ‘housekeepers’, and the original lease was for thirty-one, not twenty-one, years. In any case, the Burbadges contributed the woodwork of the Theatre.

Between the execution of the lease and the completion of the play-house, Shakespeare and his four fellows assigned their moiety to William Levison and Thomas Savage, who ‘reassigned to euerye of them seuerally a fift parte of the said moitie’, so that after the building each of the five had a ‘ioynt tenancie’ with the other four in a moiety of the ground and galleries, and was also ‘tenant in common’ during the term of the lease.[1237] Professor Wallace explains that ‘the purpose of a joint-tenancy was to prevent the breaking up and scattering of an estate into fractions by keeping[418] the property always in the hands of the members, or the longest survivors, or survivor, of them all, thus not allowing it to descend to heirs’. The legal distinction is no doubt sound, but we shall find that, whatever the intention of the assignment and reassignment may have been, the Globe shares did in fact descend to heirs, and that a good deal of trouble and litigation was thereby caused.[1238]

Shortly after the house was built Kempe, no doubt on his withdrawal from the company, assigned his interest to Shakespeare, Heminges, and Phillips, who by further assignments to and from one Thomas Cressey brought in Pope, with the result that each of the four now held a fourth part of the moiety.[1239] Pope died before 13 February 1604 and left his interest to Mary Clark, alias Wood, and Thomas Bromley. Mary Clark must have married John Edmonds, another legatee under the will, for in 1612 an interest corresponding to Pope’s was held by John and Mary Edmonds and Basil Nicoll.[1240] Nicoll, who was Pope’s executor, was presumably acting as trustee for Thomas Bromley. Edmonds, though an actor, belonged not to the King’s men, but was a Queen’s man by 1618. One-eighth of the house, therefore, was alienated from the company in 1604. A further alienation, which proved particularly troublesome in its results, took place on the death of Phillips in May 1605. The exact facts became a matter of legal dispute. But it appears that Phillips’ interest passed first to his widow Anne as executrix, and, when her marriage in the course of 1606 to the spendthrift John Witter became known, to Heminges, who succeeded her as executor under the terms of the will. In this capacity Heminges leased an interest to the Witters on 14 February 1611 for a term of eighteen years from Christmas 1610.[1241] This interest was not a fourth, but only a sixth of the moiety, since at some date between the death of Phillips and that of Sly on 16 August 1608 the moiety had been redivided to allow of the introduction of Henry Condell and William Sly into the syndicate of housekeepers.[1242] A similar transaction took place on 20 February 1612, when Basil Nicoll and John and Mary Edmonds, then holding one-sixth of the moiety, Shakespeare and Witter, each also holding one-sixth, and Heminges and Condell, holding three-sixths, joined to convey one-seventh of the moiety to William Ostler.[1243] It must,[419] I think, be assumed that Heminges and Condell had together purchased the share left by Sly to his son Robert.

The acquisition of the Blackfriars by the King’s men in 1608 did not, at first at least, detract from the importance of the Globe as the leading London theatre. It is so accepted by foreign visitors in 1610 and again in 1611.[1244]

On 29 June 1613 the house was ‘casually burnt downe and consumed with fier’.[1245] The event was important enough to find a record in Howes’ continuation of Stowe’s Annales:[1246]

Many other contemporary accounts exist. Thus Thomas Lorkin wrote to Sir Thomas Puckering on 30 June:[1247]

On 2 July Sir Henry Wotton wrote to his nephew Sir Edmund Bacon:[1248]

On 8 July John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood:[1249]

Nor was poetic chronicles of the disaster lacking. On the day after the fire took place, two ballads about it were entered in the Stationers’ Register.[1250] Neither is known in print, but the use of the word ‘doleful’ suggests that one of them, of which the author was William Parrat, is probably identical with the following set of verses, preserved in manuscript:[1251]

John Taylor, the water-poet, has his epigram on the theme:[1252]

Ben Jonson, in his Execration upon Vulcan, writes as if he had been an eye-witness:[1253]

The Puritans did in fact draw such morals as Jonson satirized. Prynne, for example, finds the hand of God in ‘the sudden feareful burning, even to the ground, both of the Globe and Fortune play-houses, no man perceiving how these fires came’.[1254]

The Globe was at once rebuilt. It was open again by 30 June 1614, when John Chamberlain wrote to Alice Carleton that he had called upon her sister Williams, and found her ‘gone to the new Globe, to a play. Indeed’, he says, ‘I hear much speech of this new play-house, which is said to be the fairest that ever was in England, so that if I live but seven years longer, I may chance to take a journey to see it’.[1255] The manuscript continuator of Stowe, describing the end of the theatre, says that the rebuilding was ‘at the great charge of King Iames, and many Noble men and others’.[1256] The lawsuit documents contain no indication that any part of the burden fell upon any one but the ‘housekeepers’, who being bound under their lease to ‘mainteyne and repaire’ the house, resolved to ‘reedifie the same’. The first estimate of cost seems to have been about £700 to £800, for a levy of ‘50^li or 60^li’ was called upon each seventh share of the moiety.[1257] Witter was unable to meet this demand, and as he was also behindhand with his share of the ground-rent and other payments, Heminges resumed possession of the seventh and gave half of it ‘gratis’ to Henry Condell. By this time it had been ascertained that the re-edifying would be ‘a verie greate charge’, and Heminges claims that the re-edifying of Witter’s ‘parte’ had in fact cost himself and Condell ‘about the somme of cxx^li’.[1258] This would mean a total cost of about £1,680.[1259] Heminges appears to have taken a sub-lease[424] at 20s. a year from his partners of two small parcels of the land in 1615, and to have built on them a house, probably a taphouse, as a private enterprise.[1260]

Ostler died in December 1614, and Heminges took possession of his interest and drew the profits until October 1615, when his daughter Thomasina, Ostler’s widow, brought an action against him for them, the result of which is unknown.[1261] Shakespeare died in April 1616, and his interest, if not previously alienated, would have passed under his will, with other ‘leases’ to John and Susanna Hall.[1262] At some time earlier than April 1619, probably when he joined the company about 1616, Field was admitted to be a housekeeper, and the moiety was then divided into eighths instead of sevenths.[1263] In April 1619 Witter brought an action against Heminges and Condell in the Court of Requests, to recover the interest which he had forfeited at the time of the rebuilding. He estimated the present annual value of the seventh, which he had held, at £30 to £40, and in the course of the proceedings expressed his willingness either to pay a rent of £13 6s. 8d. for the half of that seventh which Heminges had not passed over to Condell, or, alternatively, to take the profits of the houses on the site, other than the theatre, and in return for those to become responsible for the whole of the ground-rents due under the principal leases. The defence consisted in a denial of Witter’s claim to benefit under the will of Augustine Phillips, and an assertion that, after Heminges had allowed him to draw considerable sums in respect of the share, he had deserted his wife, at whose death Heminges ‘out of charitie was at the charges of the buryeing of her’. The depositions of the witnesses, who included Thomas Woodford and one James Knasborough, are unfortunately missing. Ultimately Witter failed to proceed with his case, and on 29 November 1620 the Court gave judgement for the defendants.

In October 1624 died John Underwood and left a share in the Globe in trust for his children to Condell and others as his executors. It must be supposed that he had succeeded to Field’s eighth, when the latter left the King’s men in 1619. Condell himself died in December 1627 and left his interest to his son William until he should have made £300 out of it, and thereafter to his widow. Heminges died in October 1630, and his interest passed to his son William as his executor.[425] During the last years of their lives Heminges and Condell, following out the policy of absorption which has already been illustrated, appear to have acquired in one way or another the whole of the shares formerly held by Shakespeare, by Basil Nicoll and John Edmonds as successors of Sly, and by Underwood. This fact emerges from the records known as the Sharers Papers, which start with a petition from Robert Benfield, Eliard Swanston, and Thomas Pollard, then important members of the King’s company, to the Lord Chamberlain in 1635, to be admitted to shares as ‘housekeepers’ in the profits of the Globe and the Blackfriars.[1264] The allegations show that the Globe had been ‘formerly’ divided into sixteen shares, of which eight were held by Cuthbert Burbadge and Richard Burbadge’s widow Winifred, now Mrs. Robinson, in her own right and that of her son William, four by Mrs. Condell, and four by William Heminges. Afterwards Joseph Taylor and John Lowin were allowed to acquire shares, and later still the remaining Heminges interest was ‘surreptitiously’ purchased by John Shank. At the date of the petition, therefore, the Burbadges held seven shares, Mrs. Condell two, Shank three, and Taylor and Lowin two each. The case furnishes valuable information as to the organization of the theatre, and as to the division of outgoing and profits between the housekeepers and the actors as such. It is pretty evident that by 1635 the Globe took a secondary place to the Blackfriars in the economy of the King’s men.[1265] Shank admitted that he had bought a two years’ term of one Globe share in 1633 and a one year’s term of two more in 1634, together with interests in the Blackfriars, and seems to have thought that the £506 which he gave was full value for the purchases.[1266] The Burbadges protested against being called upon to part with any part of their property to ‘men soe soone shott up’ and not having the ‘antiquity and desert’, which had customarily been looked for in housekeepers. In support of their plea they recalled the early services of their father in the building of theatres and the claims of their family to profit by ‘the great desert of Richard Burbadge for his quality of playing’. They suggested that ‘makeing the leases for twenty-one yeeres’ to their fellows, whose widows[426] or children subsequently alienated the profits from the company, had been their ‘destruction’. The Lord Chamberlain, however, directed that the Burbadges should transfer two shares and Shank one to the three petitioners, ‘at the usual and accustomed rates, and according to the proportion of the time and benefit they are to injoy’. This the order states, in the case of the Globe, as five years. Probably there is an error here. The terms bought by Shank were to expire in 1635, but at the time of the petition a suit was pending in the Court of Requests for the confirmation of a ‘lease paroll’ from Sir Matthew Brend for a further nine years from 25 March 1635. The original lease of 1599 from Nicholas Brend was for thirty-one years and would have expired in 1629. But on 26 October 1613, when the rebuilding of the theatre was in hand, a fresh lease extending the term to 1635 had been granted by Sir John Bodley as trustee for Nicholas’s son Matthew, who was then a minor. Not content with this, the syndicate had procured a promise of a further extension to 1644 from young Matthew himself, which he now repudiated.[1267] I think that Bodley must have taken the opportunity in 1613 to raise the ground-rent from £14 10s. to £20. A draft for a return of new and divided houses, made for the Earl Marshal in 1634, has the following entry:

A corrected return of 1637 runs:

The petitioners in the Sharers Papers declare that up to Lady Day 1635 the rent for the Globe and Blackfriars together was not above £65. The original rent of the Blackfriars was £40, but this also may have been put up on the expiration of the first lease in 1629. The Court of Requests finally confirmed the extension of the lease to 1644, apparently at a still further[427] increased rent of £55, as Shank states the combined rent of the two houses as £100. The Globe was ‘pulled downe to the ground, by Sir Matthew Brand, on Munday the 15 of April 1644, to make tenements in the room of it’; that is to say, immediately upon the expiration of the nine years’ term from Lady Day 1635 contemplated in the Sharers Papers.[1269]

The precise locality of the Globe has been matter of controversy. The various contemporary documents already quoted place it beyond doubt in Surrey, and ‘on the Bankside’, a term which must certainly be taken to cover, not merely the row of houses looking directly upon the river, but also the whole of the western part of Southwark lying behind and south of these. With somewhat greater minuteness, the parish of St. Mary Overies is specified in the lawsuit of Allen v. Burbadge, and the parish of St. Saviour’s in the Fortune contract. There is no inconsistency here. The two ancient parishes of St. Mary Magdalen and St. Margaret on the Hill were amalgamated under the name of St. Saviour’s at the Reformation.[1270] I do not know that the ancient boundaries are upon record. The Rose stood in what had been St. Margaret’s, and one would therefore expect to find the Globe nearer than the Rose to the old priory church of St. Mary’s. In the Privy Council order of 1604 the situation is described as ‘in Maiden lane’, and in the return to the Earl Marshal of 1637 as ‘nere Maide lane’. But, apart from the difference between ‘in’ and ‘nere’, Maiden Lane is a fairly long thoroughfare, and so far as these indications are concerned, the Globe may have been either to the north or the south of it. Local tradition, as elaborated by Southwark antiquaries, has been inclined to put it to the south, within the area occupied by what was formerly Thrale’s and is now Barclay and Perkins’s Anchor Brewery, of which Maiden Lane, now Park Street, forms the northern boundary. The main reason for this is the inclusion within the brewery of the course of a passage known as Globe Alley, which ran west from Deadman’s Place in a parallel line to Maiden Lane for about 360 feet and then turned northwards for another 100 feet until it debouched into the Lane. So far as measurements go, Globe Alley might be the venella of the 1599 lease. The name first appears in the St. Saviour’s token book for 1614, where it is applied to houses formerly described as Brand’s Rents, and from 1613 onwards as Sir John Bodley’s[428] Rents.[1271] Land south of Maiden Lane certainly formed part of the Brend estate, and a plot of it conveyed by Sir Matthew Brend to one Hilary Memprise in 1626 was bounded on the south by a sewer dividing it from the Bishop of Winchester’s park, and on the north by ‘the alley or way leading to the Gloabe Play-house commonly called Gloabe Alley’.[1272] A century later, property acquired for the brewery in 1732 is similarly described as ‘fronting a certain alley or passage called Globe Alley, in antient times leading from Deadman’s Place to the Globe Play-house’.[1273]

It was certainly a belief in the Thrale family that the site of the theatre itself had passed into their hands. Mrs. Piozzi, Johnson’s friend, who married Henry Thrale in 1763, left the following autobiographical note of her residence in Southwark between that date and her husband’s death in 1781:

Dr. Martin seems to think that the lady’s recollection was confused and that the garden called Palmyra stood on the east of Deadman’s Place opposite to Globe Alley. But, according to Concanen and Morgan it was ‘on the opposite side of the street’ to the brewery.[1275] However this may be, there are other notices which show that, however complete the demolition of 1644, the theatre or part of it was still regarded by tradition as standing a hundred years later amongst the tenements by which it was replaced.[1276] In 1787 the brewery was purchased by Barclay and Perkins, and the[429] conveyance recites amongst other property a plot of ground between Globe Alley and a common sewer, from which had been cleared in 1767 some ‘ruinous and decayed’ tenements formerly occupied in 1715 by John Knowles and others.[1277] This is probably the clearance referred to by Mrs. Piozzi. Under Acts of 1786 and 1812 Globe Alley was closed, and it is now covered over within the brewery precinct. Horwood’s map of 1799 shows the eastern end already obliterated. The western end is called Globe Walk, and to the north of it is Globe Court, perhaps representing the space cleared in 1767.

On the assumption that the theatre stood in Globe Alley, there has been divergence of opinion as to the precise part of the Alley in which it stood. Mr. Rendle fixed on a spot on the north side, about 80 or 100 feet from the Deadman’s Place end.[1278] To this he was guided, partly by a further local tradition, according to which the site was occupied successively by a meeting-house and a windmill, and partly by an argument derived from the entries in the St. Saviour’s token-book for 1621.[1279] Here, under the heading ‘Sir John Bodley’s Rentes’ are recorded in succession about ten names. Then[430] comes a new heading, differently written, ‘Gloab Alley’, then two more names, then in the margin of the page the word ‘Gloabe’. This Mr. Rendle took to mean that the Globe was about twelve houses from the east end of the alley. If this is an indication of the site of the Globe at all, which is a mere conjecture, I should myself draw the inference that it stood, not twelve, but two houses from the end of the alley, and that a part, if not the whole, of Bodley’s Rents was outside the alley. And why should the enumerator be supposed to have worked from the east, rather than from the north end of the alley? Dr. Martin, in fact, turns Mr. Rendle’s argument round in this way, and uses the token-book to support a theory which places the theatre south of Globe Alley, just at the angle where it turns to the north, and 360 feet, instead of Mr. Rendle’s 80 or 100 feet, west of Deadman’s Place.[1280] Here it appears to be located in a borough history of 1795;[1281] and is certainly located in more than one early nineteenth-century plan.[1282] Dr. Martin has attempted to obtain confirmation of this siting from an investigation of the brewery title-deeds. From 1727 onwards the history of the angle site is clear. In that year it was transferred, subject to a mortgage, by Timothy Cason and his wife Elizabeth, heiress of the Brend estate, to certain parishioners of St. Saviour’s. Upon it was built the parish workhouse referred to by Concanen and Morgan. This stood just at the outer south-west angle of Globe Alley, which Dr. Martin conceives to have been occupied by the theatre. In 1774 a new workhouse was built, and the site of the old one bought by the Thrales. It was conveyed with the rest of the brewery to Barclay and Perkins in 1787, and was then described as the ground ‘on which lately stood all that great shop or workhouse formerly used for a meeting-house’. Dr. Martin thinks that this forgotten meeting-house may have been confused in local tradition with that further to the east along[431] Globe Alley.[1283] Dr. Martin suggests that the property transferred by the Casons in 1727 is to be identified with that described in a deed executed by the same persons in 1706, of which a copy is also to be found amongst the brewery title-deeds, as consisting of tenements built ‘where the late play-house called the Globe stood and upon the ground thereunto belonging’. If this were so, he would of course have proved his point. The deed of 1706 seems to have been a family settlement covering various fragments of Brend property in Southwark, which had only just been brought together in the hands of Elizabeth Cason. The Globe site had been settled by Sir Matthew Brend in 1624 upon his wife Frances as a jointure. She died in 1673, and it then passed as a jointure to Judith, wife of Sir Matthew’s son Thomas and mother of Elizabeth, under a deed of 1655 in which the reference to ‘the late play-house called the Globe’, repeated in that of 1706, first occurs. Judith Brend had died in 1706.

As a matter of fact, it is almost impossible to reconcile the Southwark tradition that the Globe stood on the south of Maiden Lane, either in Mr. Rendle’s or in Dr. Martin’s interpretation of it, with more than one bit of evidence which we owe to the research of Professor Wallace. The first of these is the lease of 1599 itself, as recited in the pleadings of Ostler v. Heminges. This states quite clearly that the leased plot abutted on a piece of land called the Park ‘super boream’ and on Maiden Lane ‘versus austrum’, and it is difficult to take very seriously either the Latinity which makes ‘versus austrum’ mean that the leased plot was on the south, or the suggestion that the draughtsman was working carelessly from a plan which had the south instead of the north of the plot at the top of the sheet, and got the points of his compass wrong.[1284] I daresay that such things do sometimes happen in conveyancer’s offices, but it is hardly legitimate to call them in aid as a canon of interpretation. No doubt it is tempting to identify the piece of land called the Park with the Bishop of Winchester’s park, which lay at a reasonable distance to the south and not to the north of Maiden Lane, but after all this must once have extended nearly up to the Bankside, since Maiden Lane itself is known to have been cut out of it, and it is not at all improbable that some little[432] strip of land retained the name.[1285] It can only have been a very little one. The lease describes the Globe site as consisting of two plots lying apparently on opposite sides of a way or alley (venella) by which access was obtainable to them. One of these, that next the Park, had been the gardens of Thomas Burt, Isbrand Morris, and Lactantius Roper. It was 220 feet in length and lay between the garden of John Knowles on the east and John Cornish on the west. The southern plot, bounded by Maiden Lane on the south, had similarly been the gardens of John Roberts and Thomas Ditcher. This was only 156 feet long and 100 feet deep, and lay between the gardens of William Sellers to the east and John Burgram to the west. Now the whole space between Maiden Lane and the Thames is only from 200 to 350 feet at various points, so that there could not have been room for much of a ‘park’ between the Globe site and the Bankside houses.

The evidence of the lease is confirmed in various ways by the records of presentments made by the Commissioners of Sewers for Kent and Surrey against negligent occupiers in this marshy neighbourhood. The most important entry is one of 14 February 1606:

This is endorsed ‘done’, but another order of the same day requiring the same men to ‘well and sufficientlye pyle boorde and fill vp viij poles more or lesse of theire wharfe against theire said Play-house’ needed a repetition on 25 April before it received attention.[1286] Earlier records, before the Globe came into existence, relate to some of the garden-holders named in the lease. A plot of John Bingham or Burgram abutted on a Maiden Lane sewer in 1596, and this is probably identical with the ‘common sewer leading from Sellors gardin to the beare garden’, which William Sellers and others were ordered to cleanse on 5 December 1595. Certainly the bear garden was to the north and not the south of Maiden[433] Lane. There was also a sewer bordering upon the park, and on this Jasper Morris and Thomas Burt had encroached in 1593.[1287]

The old maps, as usual, do not give much help when it comes to a pinch, although the balance of their authority, for what it is worth, seems to me to be in favour of a northern site.[1288] Mr. Hubbard, calculating from Visscher’s map, would put the Globe on the site of the present Central Wharf, 15 feet south of the Bankside houses and 136 feet west of Bank End, and therefore not very near Maiden Lane at all.[1289] I do not think that he sufficiently recognizes the imperfections of the maps from a surveyor’s point of view. I doubt whether more is to be got out of them than that the Globe stood more to the east and probably more to the south than either the Hope or the Rose.[1290]

The foregoing paragraphs show the state of the controversy when the body of this chapter was written. Since then Mr. Braines has taken up the investigation where it was left by Dr. Martin, with the help of the brewery title-deeds and many other documents bearing on the distribution of tenements in Maiden Lane and Globe Alley over more than a century. It now seems clear that, in view of the known history of properties north of Maiden Lane, there is no room for the Globe plot there, that this plot did pass from the Casons to the workhouse and ultimately the brewery, and that it did lie at Dr. Martin’s angle site, being indeed precisely located on the map by Concanen and Morgan’s description of 1795. We must therefore assume that the points of the compass were, as Dr. Martin conjectured, inverted in the lease of 1599, east with west and north with south, and that the Globe company maintained a bridge over the sewer on the opposite side of Maiden Lane to the theatre, for the convenience of visitors coming down Horseshoe Alley from the river. The venella of 1599 must have been a westward extension of Globe Alley, afterwards disused.

Some notion of the structural character of the Globe may be gleaned from the builder’s contract for the Fortune in[434] 1600.[1291] The Globe was then the last new thing in theatres, and in entering into his agreement for the Fortune with Peter Street, the builder of both houses, Henslowe was careful to specify that the Globe should be taken as the model, alike as regards the arrangement of the galleries and staircases, the contrivances and fashioning of the stage, and all other minor points not particularly indicated. The only alterations of design set out in the agreement were that the scantlings or standard measurements of the timber should be rather stouter than those of the Globe, and that the main posts of the stage and auditorium should be shaped square and carved with figures of satyrs. It is probable, however, that a more important difference is passed without notice. The Fortune was rectangular; the Globe was almost certainly round. The reference to a circular house in Henry V and A Warning for Fair Women, both plays of about 1599, may indeed belong to the Curtain rather than the Globe, but there are similar references in E. M. O. (1599) and in The Merry Devil of Edmonton (1608), which are certainly Globe plays, and there seems no reason to doubt that the Globe is represented by the cylindrical buildings, windowless below, windowed and of narrower diameter above, which are shown in the maps of the Hondius group and in the background of Delaram’s portrait of James I.[1292] A few details are furnished by the various narratives of the fire of 1613. The roof was thatched, whence arose the accident. The walls were of timber, for nothing was burnt but wood and straw. The building was ‘flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish’. It had a stage-house ‘round as taylors clewe’, and carried a silken flag. There were two narrow doors, and hard by stood an alehouse. The new Globe built after the fire was tiled for greater safety. In other respects there was probably no great change. The building is described in 1634 as of timber, upon an old foundation. The maps, if they can be trusted, figure it as polygonal, rather than strictly round. No doubt it was round inside; an ‘amphytheator’, it is called in Holland’s Leaguer. The Sharers Papers of 1635 mention the tiring-house door, at which money was taken. James Wright tells us that it was a summer house, large and partly open to the weather, and that the acting was always by daylight. Malone conjectured that the name ‘Globe’ was taken from the sign, ‘which was a figure of Hercules supporting the Globe, under which was written Totus mundus agit histrionem’.[1293] I do not know where he got this information.

[435]

xii. THE FORTUNE

The settlement of the Chamberlain’s men in 1599 at the Globe, hard by the Rose, on Bankside, probably led Henslowe and Alleyn to plan during the same year a countermove, by the transference of the Admiral’s men to a new theatrical locality in the rapidly growing districts on the north-west boundary of the City. The Rose, although not built fifteen years, was in decay, and the swamps of the Bankside had not, especially in bad weather, proved attractive to visitors. The new centre might be expected to serve in summer and winter alike, and, while in a place ‘remote and exempt’ from the City jurisdiction, would be convenient for the well-to-do population, which was establishing itself in the western suburbs, along the main roads of Holborn and the Strand. The Fortune on the north, and the Blackfriars, opened about the same time on the south, delimited a region which has remained almost to our own day the head-quarters of the stage. The actual site selected lay just outside Cripplegate between Golding or Golden Lane and Whitecross Street, in the county of Middlesex, the lordship or liberty of Finsbury, and the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate. The title-deeds at Dulwich make it possible to trace the history of the property or part of it back to the reign of Henry VIII, but for the present purpose it is sufficient to begin with 11 July 1584, the date of a lease by Daniel Gill, son of William Gill, gardener, to Patrick Brewe, goldsmith, of five tenements on the east side of Golding Lane and one on the west side of Whitecross Street at a rent of £12 a year. This lease Brewe assigned to Alleyn on 22 December 1599, for a sum of £240. Subsequently, in 1610, Alleyn bought up a reversionary lease for £100, and also, after troublesome negotiations with the numerous descendants of Daniel Gill, the freehold of the property for £340.[1294] This purchase, however, and probably also the original lease, included a good deal more than the actual plot on which the theatre was built. The deed of sale recites six tenements on the east of Golden Lane and six on the west of Whitecross Street. It is pretty clear,[436] from the boundaries described, as compared with those in a temporary assignment by Alleyn of the lease, that the property dealt with in 1584 and in 1610 was the same, and it is natural to conclude that Alleyn had himself added to the number of tenements.[1295] This is confirmed by a note of Alleyn’s that, in addition to building the play-house, he spent £120 ‘for other priuat buildings of myn owne’. One such building adjoined the south side of the play-house in 1601.[1296] Alleyn’s note gives the cost of the play-house itself as £520, making up with the private buildings and the purchase of leasehold, reversion, and freehold, a total expenditure of £1,320.[1297] The contract for building the framework was taken by Peter Street, carpenter, at £440, which presumably left Alleyn £80 for the painting and other decorative work excluded from the contract. The following is the text of the contract, which is preserved at Dulwich:[1298]

The constant references in the terms of the contract to the model of the Globe, while bearing testimony to the stimulus which the building of the Globe had given to theatrical competition, leaves some uncertainty as to many details of planning, and it is matter for regret that the ‘plot’ of the stage and staircases furnished to the builder has not itself been preserved. We learn, however, that the house was a square one, 80 feet each way by outside and 55 feet by inside measurement; that the stage was 43 feet wide and projected into the middle of the yard; that the framework was of wood, on a foundation of brick and piles, and with an outer coating of plaster; that the framework and stage were boarded within and strengthened with iron pikes; that there were three galleries rising to a total height of 32 feet, and that sections of these were partitioned off and ceiled as ‘gentlemens rooms’, of which there were four, and ‘two-penny rooms’; that the tiring-house had glazed windows; that there was a ‘shadowe or cover’ over the stage, and that this, with the galleries and staircases, were tiled and supplied with lead gutters to carry off the rain-water. Two divergences from the Globe model are specified: the timber work is to be stouter, and the principal posts of the frame work and stage are to be square and carved with satyrs. An ingenious attempt has been made by Mr. William Archer and Mr. W. H. Godfrey to reconstruct the plan of the theatre from these and other indications, with a liberal allowance of conjecture.[1299][440] It will be observed that Henslowe, as well as Alleyn, was a party to the contract; but it is pretty clear from Alleyn’s note already referred to that he found the money, and although Henslowe did in fact become his partner in the enterprise, this was under a lease of 4 April 1601, whereby he took over a moiety of the play-house and its profits for a term of twenty-four years from the previous 25 March at an annual rent of £8.[1300] This lease did not include Alleyn’s private tenements, but it did include some enclosed ‘growndes’ on the north and west of the house, and a passage 30 feet long by 14 feet wide running east from the south-west angle of the building ‘from one doore of the said house to an other’. It is, I think, to be inferred from this that the main approach to the earlier Fortune theatre was from the Golden Lane side. The contract with Street is dated on 8 January 1600 and provides for the completion of the work by the following 25 July, and for the payment of the price in two instalments, one when the framework was up and the other upon completion. In fact, however, the acquittances by Street and others, endorsed upon the Dulwich indenture, show that Henslowe acted as a kind of banker for the transaction, and made advances from time to time to Street, or to pay workmen or purchase materials, all of which were debited against the amounts payable under the contract. Work seems to have begun before 17 January. By 20 March Henslowe had paid £180 and by 4 May £240. It is therefore a little puzzling to find a payment ‘at the eand of the fowndations’ on 8 May. About £53 more was paid before 10 June, making nearly £300 in all by that date. The last entry is one of 4s. to Street ‘to pasify him’, which suggests that some dispute had taken place. Here the acquittances stop, but Henslowe’s Diary indicates that he was frequently dining in company with Street from 13 June to August 8, and probably the work was completed about the latter date.[1301] Alleyn had had to face some opposition in carrying out his project. He began by arming himself with the authority of his ‘lord’, the Earl of Nottingham, who wrote in his favour to the Middlesex justices on 12 January 1600, explaining the reasons for leaving the Bankside and the general convenience of the new locality, and citing the Queen’s ‘special regarde of fauor’ towards the company as a reason why the justices should allow his servant to build ‘w^thout anie yo^r lett or molestation’. This action did not prove sufficient to avert a local protest. Lord Willoughby and others complained[441] to the Council, who on 9 March wrote to the Middlesex justices informing them that the erection of a new play-house, ‘wherof ther are to manie allreadie not farr from that place’, would greatly displease the Queen, and commanding the project to be ‘staied’. Alleyn, however, was secure in the royal favour. He also, by offering a weekly contribution to the relief of the poor, succeeded in obtaining a certificate from the petty officials and other inhabitants of Finsbury of their consent to the toleration of the house; and on 8 April the Council wrote again to the justices, withdrawing their previous inhibition and laying special stress on Elizabeth’s desire that Alleyn personally should revive his services as a player, ‘wheareof, of late he hath made discontynuance’. The letter also referred to the fact that another house was pulled down instead of the Fortune, and a formal Privy Council order of 22 June, laying down that there shall in future be one house in Middlesex for the Admiral’s men, and one on the Bankside for the Chamberlain’s, makes it clear that the condemned theatre was the Curtain.[1302] Nevertheless, it is certain that neither the Curtain nor the Rose was in fact plucked down at this date.

The Fortune was opened in the autumn of 1600 by the Admiral’s men, probably with Dekker’s 1 Fortune’s Tennis, and its theatrical history is closely bound up with that of the same company, who occupied it continuously, as the Admiral’s to 1603, then as Prince Henry’s men to his death in 1612, and finally as the Palsgrave’s men. It is only necessary to deal here with matters that directly concern the building. That it became something of a centre of disturbance in the peaceful suburbs of the north-west is shown by various entries in the records of the Middlesex Bench. On 26 February 1611, two butchers, Ralph Brewyn and John Lynsey, were charged with abusing gentlemen there. On 1 October 1612, the justices regarded it as the resort of cutpurses, and were thereby led to suppress the jigs at the end of plays, which especially attracted such persons. In 1613 a true bill was found against Richard Bradley for stabbing Nicholas Bedney there on 5 June.[1303] The upkeep of the structure was expensive. A note in Alleyn’s hand of sums laid out upon the play-house during the seven years 1602–8 shows an average amount of about £120. Only £4 2s. was spent during 1603, for the greater part of which year the theatres were closed, but £232 1s. 8d. in 1604.[1304] No doubt[442] wooden buildings, open to the weather, perished rapidly. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the relations between the company and their landlords were much what they had been at the Rose; that is to say that the latter took half the gallery receipts and bore repairs, while the former took the rest of the receipts and met all other outgoings. An unexecuted draft lease to Thomas Downton of 1608 indicates that Alleyn and Henslowe then had it in mind to bind the company more closely to the theatre, by dividing a quarter of their interest amongst the eight members of the company.[1305] Possibly the plan was carried out. In asking a loan from Alleyn on a date apparently earlier than August 1613, Charles Massye, who was one of the eight, not only offers repayment out of his ‘gallery mony’ and ‘house mony’, but also the assignment of ‘that lyttell moete I have in the play housses’ as a security.[1306] Certainly the company took over the house after Henslowe’s death on 6 January 1616. His share in the building passed to his widow, who contemplated a sale of it to Gregory Franklyn, Drew Stapley, and John Hamond.[1307] But the deed remained unexecuted at her death in 1617, and the whole property was now once more in Alleyn’s hands. On 31 October 1618 he leased it to the company for £200 a year, to be reduced to £120 at his death. With it went a taphouse occupied by Mark Brigham, the rent of a two-room tenement held by John Russell, and a strip of impaled ground 123 feet by 17 feet, lying next the passage on the south.[1308] This is perhaps the garden in which, according to John Chamberlain, the players, ‘not to be overcome with courtesy’, banqueted the Spanish ambassador when he visited the theatre on 16 July 1621.[1309] John Russell is presumably the same whose appointment by Alleyn as a ‘gatherer’ lead to a protest from William Bird on behalf of the company.[1310] A few months after the ambassador’s visit, John Chamberlain records the destruction of the Fortune on 9 December 1621:[1311]

Alleyn also notes the event in his diary.[1312] On 20 May 1622 he formed a syndicate, and leased to it the site at a rent of[443] £128 6s., under an obligation to build a new theatre at a cost of £1,000.[1313] This, ‘a large round brick building’, was erected in the following year.[1314] The site conveyed covered a space of almost exactly 130 feet square, and on it had stood, besides the buildings named in the lease of 1618, other tenements, in one of which William Bird himself lived. Mr. Lawrence has suggested that the new Fortune may have been a roofed-in house, but his evidence is hardly sufficient to outweigh the explicit statement of Wright that it ‘lay partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight’.[1315] This can hardly refer only to the earlier building. The Fortune was dismantled in 1649 and ‘totally demolished’ by 1662, and the façade still extant in 1819 cannot therefore have belonged to it, although it may have belonged to a Restoration ‘nursery’ for young actors, possibly upon the same site.[1316] No acting seems to have taken place at the Fortune after 1649.[1317]

xiii. THE BOAR’S HEAD

There appear to have been at least six city inns under this sign.[1318] The most famous was that on the south side of Great Eastcheap, in St. Michael’s, which seems to have been regarded in the middle of the sixteenth century as the traditional locality of the tavern scenes in Henry IV.[1319] This inn was in the occupation of Joan Broke, widow, in 1537, and in that of Thomas Wright, vintner, about 1588.[1320] Another Boar’s Head stood ‘without’ Aldgate, in the extra-mural Portsoken ward, which lay between that gate and the bars with which the liberties of the City terminated at Hog Lane.[444] Here, according to Stowe, there were ‘certaine faire Innes for receipt of trauellers repayring to the Citie’.[1321] At the Aldgate inn had been produced in 1557 a ‘lewd’ play called The Sackful of Newes, which provoked the interference of Mary’s Privy Council.[1322] But it seems to me exceedingly improbable that either this or the Eastcheap inn was converted into the play-house, of which we have brief and tantalizing records in the seventeenth century. Both were within the City jurisdiction, where the licensing of play-houses seems to have definitely terminated in 1596. It is true that a Privy Council letter of 31 March 1602, which directs that the combined company of Oxford’s and Worcester’s men shall be allowed to play at the Boar’s Head, is addressed to the Lord Mayor.[1323] But so are other letters of the same type, the object of which is to limit plays to a small number of houses outside the liberties, and to restrain them elsewhere over the whole area of the City and the suburbs.[1324] And when, a year or two later, Worcester’s men became Queen Anne’s, and a draft patent was drawn up to confirm their right to play in the Curtain and the Boar’s Head, both houses are described, not as in the City, but as ‘within our County of Middlesex’.[1325] Presumably Anne’s men left the Boar’s Head when the Red Bull became available for their use in 1606, and Mr. Adams has explained a mention, which had long puzzled me, of the Duke of York’s men as ‘the Prince’s Players of Whitechapel’ in 1608 by the suggestion that they succeeded to the vacant theatre.[1326] If this is so, I think it affords further evidence for the theory that the Boar’s Head, although it may have taken its name from the Aldgate inn, was not itself that inn, and probably not a converted inn at all, but lay just outside and not just inside the City bars. For, although part of the street between Aldgate and Whitechapel is sometimes called, as in Ogilby’s map of 1677 and Rocque’s of 1746, ‘Whitechapel Street’, yet Whitechapel proper lay outside the liberties, farther to the east[445] along the Mile End Road.[1327] The only other contemporary record of the Boar’s Head is a letter to Edward Alleyn from his wife Joan on 21 October 1603, in which she says, ‘All the companyes be come hoame & well for ought we knowe, but that Browne of the Boares head is dead & dyed very pore, he went not into the countrye at all’.[1328] This Browne cannot be identified, and it is perhaps idle to conjecture that he may have been related to Robert Browne, and that it may have been at the Boar’s Head that the latter played with Derby’s men in 1599–1601. The Boar’s Head seems to have been generally forgotten by the Restoration, but is recalled by the Marquis of Newcastle c. 1660.[1329]

xiv. THE RED BULL

Our chief knowledge of the early history of the Red Bull is derived from disputes before the Court of Requests in 1613 and 1619 between Thomas Woodford and Aaron Holland. It appears that Holland held a lease of the site, which was at the upper end of St. John Street in the parish of St. James, Clerkenwell, from Anne, widow and executrix of Christopher Bedingfield, and had there built a play-house. The indication of a Red Bull Yard in Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1677 to the west of St. John Street, and just north of the angle which it forms with Clerkenwell Green, no doubt defines the locality with some precision.[1330] In 3 Jac. I, that is, at some date between 24 March 1605 and 23 March 1606, he assigned one-seventh of the house to Thomas Swynnerton, ‘with a gatherers place thereto belonging’. This Swynnerton transferred for £50 to Philip Stone.[1331] It was subject to a rent of £2 10s., and Holland gave[446] Stone an indenture in February 1609, which was alleged not to constitute a proper lease. In 1612–13 Stone sold his seventh for £50 to Woodford, who took profits for a quarter, and then entrusted his interest to Holland, instructing his servant Anthony Payne to pay the rent. He alleged that Holland persuaded Payne to be behindhand with the rent, and withheld the profits, estimated at £30 a year. He therefore brought his action a little before May 1613. The Court called upon Holland to show cause why he should not account for the arrears of profits, and for 1s. 6d. a week due to the gatherer’s place.[1332] Holland replied, and the issues were referred to the arbitration of counsel, including Woodford’s ‘demaund of the eighteenth penny and the eighteenth part of such moneys & other comodities as should be collected or receaued ... for the profittes of the galleries or other places in or belonging to the play howse’.[1333] Counsel made an arrangement, but did not agree in their reports of its terms, and the Court ordered Holland to give Woodford an indenture similar to that given to Stone.[1334] Holland got a writ of prohibition from the King’s Bench, always jealous of the jurisdiction of the Court of Requests, on 6 November 1613, and Woodford began a suit against Holland in Stone’s name for not making a proper indenture in 1609. This, he says, Stone conspired with Holland to withdraw. In 1619 he brought another action for his profits before the Court of Requests, in which Holland describes him as ‘Woodford, alias Simball’, but the result is unknown.

The Red Bull, then, was built not later and probably not much earlier than 1606, a little before the first recorded mention of it in the following passage from The Knight of the Burning Pestle, which was almost certainly produced in the winter of 1607:

The allusion is to an incident in the last scene of Day, Rowley, and Wilkins’ Travels of the Three Brothers.[1336] This, according[447] to the entry in the Stationers’ Register on 29 June 1607, was played at the Curtain, and according to its title-page of 1607 by the Queen’s men. But there is no reason why it should not also have been played at the Red Bull, since both houses are specified as occupied by the Queen’s men in their patent of 15 April 1609. In their earlier draft patent of about 1603–4, the Boar’s Head and Curtain are named, and in a Privy Council letter of 9 April 1604 the Curtain only. Presumably, therefore, the Red Bull was taken into use by the Queen’s men, of whom Swynnerton was one, as soon as it was built at some date between 1604 and 1606. The Red Bull is one of the three houses whose contention is predicted in Dekker’s Raven’s Almanack of 1608, and Dekker refers to it again in his Work for Armourers, written during the plague of 1609, when the bear garden was open and the theatres closed. He says, ‘The pide Bul heere keepes a tossing and a roaring, when the Red Bull dares not stir’.[1337] Its existence caused trouble from time to time to the Middlesex justices. At the end of May 1610, William Tedcastle, yeoman, and John Fryne, Edward Brian, Edward Purfett, and Thomas Williams, felt-makers, were called upon to give recognisances to answer for a ‘notable outrage at the play-house called the Red Bull’; and on 3 March 1614 Alexander Fulsis was bailed out on a charge of picking Robert Sweet’s pocket of a purse and £3 at this theatre.[1338] Further references to it are to be found in Wither’s Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613), in Tomkis’s Albumazar (1615), and in Gayton’s Pleasant Notes on Don Quixot (1654).[1339]

An entry in Alleyn’s Diary for 1617 has been supposed to indicate that he had an interest in the Red Bull. To me it only suggests that he sold the actors there a play.[1340]

[448]

The Queen’s men most likely occupied the Red Bull at least until 1617 when, as shown by the lawsuit of 1623, they were on the point of moving to the Cockpit in Drury Lane. Plays of theirs were printed as acted there in 1608, 1611, 1612, and 1615. Swetnam the Woman Hater Arraigned by Women, printed in 1620, was also played there, before Anne’s death in 1619. In 1637 Thomas Heywood, formerly one of the Queen’s men, included in his Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas, a Prologue and Epilogue, to which he prefixed the note ‘A young witty lad playing the part of Richard the third: at the Red Bull: the Author because hee was interessed in the play to incourage him, wrot him this Prologue and Epilogue’.[1341] This was probably, and certainly if the play was Shakespeare’s, some quite exceptional performance. Similarly the ‘companie of young men of this citie’, who are stated on the title-page of Wentworth Smith’s Hector of Germany (1615) to have acted it at the Red Bull and Curtain, must be supposed to have used these theatres by some arrangement with the Queen’s men.

The Red Bull afterwards passed to other companies, continued in use up to, and even occasionally during, the Commonwealth, and had a revived life after the Restoration to 1663.[1342] Before 1633, and probably before 1625, it had been re-edified and enlarged.[1343] Mr. Lawrence suggests that at this time it became a roofed house, which it seems certainly to have been after the Restoration.[1344] But it is difficult to get away from Wright’s explicit statement that it ‘lay partly open to the weather, and there they always acted by daylight’.[1345] Nor need the quite modern identification of it with the roofed interior depicted in The Wits rest upon anything but an incidental reference to the house in the text of the pamphlet.[1346] Nothing is known as to the shape or galleries of the Red Bull.

xv. THE HOPE

It is convenient, in connexion with the Hope, to deal with the whole rather troublesome question of the Bankside Bear Gardens. The ursarius or bearward was a recognized type of mediaeval mimus, and the rewards in which his welcome found expression are a recurring item in many a series of municipal or domestic accounts. Thus, to take one example only, the corporation of Shrewsbury entertained between 1483 and 1542 the ursinarii, ursuarii, or ursiatores of the King, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquises of Dorset and Exeter, the Earl of Derby, and the town of Norwich.[1347] On more than one occasion the payment is said to be pro agitacione bestiarum suarum. The phrase is perhaps not free from ambiguity. The dancing bear was, until quite recently, a familiar sight in provincial England, and I have seen one even on the sophisticated slopes of Notting Hill. And illuminations dating back as far as the tenth century bear evidence to the antiquity of his somewhat grotesque tripudium.[1348] But in the robust days of our forefathers there was an even more attractive way of agitating bears. The traditional victim of an English baiting was no doubt the bull. A Southwark map of 1542 shows a ‘Bolrynge’ in the middle of the High Street and a neighbouring alley still bore the name in 1561.[1349] The maps of Höfnagel (c. 1560) and Agas (c. 1570) show another ring, marked ‘The bolle bayting’ and with a very palpable bull inside it, upon the Bankside, not far from where the Hope must afterwards have stood.[1350] But the bear was also baited in London, at least from the twelfth century.[1351] Erasmus is often cited as declaring that[450] in the reign of Henry VIII ‘herds’ of the animal were kept for the purpose. This is an error. Erasmus wrote of dancing bears; but I am afraid it must be assumed that the chief function of the bearward attached to the Tudor Royal Household was to provide exhibitions of the more brutal, noisy, and occasionally dangerous sport.[1352] A regular office is traceable back to 1484, when Richard III in the first year of his reign appointed his bearward John Browne to be ‘Maister, Guyder and Ruler of all our Beres and Apes’.[1353] It was still a part of the establishment of the Royal Household under Elizabeth. A patent of 2 June 1573 to Ralph Bowes describes it as ‘the room or office of Cheif Master Overseer and Ruler of all and singular our game pastymes and sportes, that is to saie of all and everie our beares bulles and mastyve dogges’, and names as Bowes’s predecessors Cuthbert Vaughan and Sir Richard Long.[1354] The grant was of the nature of a commission, authorizing the holder, personally or by deputy, to ‘take up’ or press animals for the royal service, and giving him the sole right of baiting the Queen’s bears, to the exclusion of any other officer or under officer appertaining to the bears, not specially licensed or appointed by him. The Master was presumably expected to make his profit out of the privileges granted, for the patent did not assign him any fee, such as the under officers, known as the Keepers of Bears and Mastiffs, enjoyed at the hands of the Treasurer of the Chamber.[1355] But he received a reward, similar to those given to players, of £5 through the Treasurer on the Council’s warrant, when the baiting was shown before the Queen. These rewards are generally expressed as ‘for the Game of Paris Garden’ or ‘to the Master of her Majesty’s Game at Paris Garden’; and Bowes must have joined sons or other[451] relatives with him as deputies, since Edward Bowes and Thomas Bowes were often payees instead of Ralph Bowes during his term of office.[1356] Towards the end of Bowes’s life it would seem that Henslowe and Alleyn, who had been baiting bears on the Bankside as licensees since 1594, were in negotiation to obtain the Mastership.[1357] Probably the first idea was to buy a surrender of the office from Bowes, since the Dulwich manuscripts contain an unexecuted draft of a patent to Henslowe, following the terms of that to Bowes himself and reciting such a surrender.[1358] I should suppose this negotiation to be that in connexion with which Henslowe spent £2 15s. 6d. during 1597 upon visits to Sir Julius Caesar, Master of Requests, and other Court officials, and in a fee to the Clerk of the Signet. The expenditure is entered in the diary as incurred ‘a bowt the changinge of ower comysion’.[1359] But before a surrender was effected it would seem that Henslowe had had to turn his thoughts to a succession. In this he was disappointed. On 4 June 1598 he wrote to Alleyn that Bowes was very sick and expected to die, and that he much feared he should lose all. Neither Caesar nor the Lord Admiral had done anything for him, and although he had received help from Lady Edmondes and Mr. Langworth, he now learnt that the reversion of the Mastership was already promised by the Queen to one Mr. Dorrington, a pensioner.[1360] Bowes did in effect die very shortly after, and on 11 August 1598 John Dorrington received his patent for the Mastership.[1361] To this was joined the office of Keeper of the Bandogs and Mastiffs, with a fee of 10d. a day for exercising this office and keeping twenty mastiff bitches, and a further fee of 4d. for a deputy.[1362] It is not unlikely that John Dorrington[452] was related to the Richard Darrington who had held this keepership with the same fees, amounting to £21 5s. 10d. a year, in 1571. Another keepership, that of the Bears, was held in 1599 by Jacob Meade, who was closely associated with Henslowe and Alleyn in the management of the Bear garden.[1363] Dorrington’s grant was confirmed by James I on 14 July 1603, and on 23 July he was knighted.[1364] About this time Henslowe and Alleyn, who were paying Dorrington £40 a year for licence to bait,[1365] must have contemplated fresh negotiations for a transfer of the patent, for the draft in the Dulwich manuscripts, originally drawn up about 1597, has been altered by Henslowe so as to adapt it to the new reign and to a surrender by Dorrington.[1366] But once again they were unsuccessful, for Dorrington died, and on 20 July 1604 the Mastership was granted to one of the invading Scots, Sir William Stuart.[1367] From him, however, Henslowe and Alleyn did succeed in obtaining an assignment, and a draft patent as joint Masters and Keepers, with the fees of 10d. and 4d., is dated 24 November 1604. They had, indeed, been rather in Stuart’s hands, for he had refused either to give them a licence or to take over their house and bears, and they had to pay for the surrender at what they considered the high rate of £450.[1368] This we learn from a petition of about 1607, in which they appealed to the King for an increase in the daily fee by 2s. 8d., in view of their losses through restraints and the deaths of bears, and of their heavy expenses, amounting to £200 a month, whereby their privilege, which[453] was once worth £100 a year, could now not be let at all.[1369] It is doubtful whether they got any relief. They had a new patent on 24 November 1608;[1370] but about 1612 they sent up another petition in very similar terms. A grant of £42 10s. and 12d. a day had, indeed, been made them in March 1611 for keeping a lion and two white bears. But this was probably menagerie work and quite apart from the baiting. They continued as joint Masters until Henslowe’s death in 1616, when the whole office passed to Alleyn in survivorship.[1371]

When baiting seemed desirable to the soul of the sovereign, the ‘game’ was generally brought to the Court, wherever the Court might happen to be.[1372] The rewards of the Treasurer of the Chamber were most often for attendances in the Christmas holidays or at Whitsuntide. But the game might be called for at any time to add lustre to the entertainment of an ambassador or other distinguished visitor to Court. Thus on 25 May 1559 French ambassadors dined with Elizabeth, ‘and after dener to bear and bull baytyng, and the Quens grace and the embassadurs stod in the galere lokyng of the pastym tyll vj at nyght’.[1373] Later French embassies of 1561, 1572, 1581, and 1599, and a Danish embassy of 1586 were similarly honoured.[1374] The custom continued during the next reign. On 19 August 1604 there was a grand banquet at Whitehall for Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Constable of Castile, on the completion of peace between England and Spain, and thereafter a ball, and after the ball ‘all then took[454] their places at the windows of the room which looked out upon a square, where a platform was raised, and a vast crowd had assembled to see the King’s bears fight with greyhounds. This afforded great amusement. Presently a bull, tied to the end of a rope, was fiercely baited by dogs.’[1375] James had introduced a new and dangerous element into the sport by using the lions which were kept in the Tower, and this also became the scene of baitings. On 5 March 1607 the Treasurer of the Chamber paid Henslowe and Alleyn no less than £30, partly for attendances with the game at Greenwich during the visit of the King of Denmark and at Whitehall during that of the Prince de Joinville, and partly for baiting of the lions in the Tower on three several occasions.[1376] Stowe gives detailed descriptions of lion-baitings in 1604, 1605, 1609, and 1610, of which the first is interesting, because it was under the personal superintendence of Edward Alleyn, ‘now sworne the Princes man and Maister of the Beare Garden’.[1377]

But the profit of the thing, from the point of view of the Master of the Game, was not so much in the attendances at Court, as in the public baitings, which he and those holding licences from him were privileged to give with the bears and dogs, ‘taken up’ by virtue of the commission or bought at their own expense, during such times as these were not required for the royal service. These public spectacles were held at what was known as the Bear Garden, under conditions much resembling those of a theatre. They played a considerable part in the life of London; literature is full of allusions to them; and they are described with more or less detail in the narratives of many travellers from abroad. An early account is that from the Spanish of a secretary to the Duke of Najera, who visited Henry VIII in 1544.[1378] He describes the bears as baited daily, with three or four dogs to each bear, in an enclosure where they were tied with ropes, and adds:

In 1559 the same French ambassadors, who saw the baiting at Whitehall, were taken on the following day to Paris Garden, and ‘ther was boyth bare and bull baytyng, and the capten with a c. of the gard to kepe rowme for them to see the baytyng’.[1379] The next notice of any value is that of[455] Lupold von Wedel, who was at Southwark on 23 August 1584.[1380]

It is interesting to observe that the baiting proper was supplemented with fireworks and an entertainment, which must have been of the nature of a jig.[1381] The visit of Frederick, Duke of Württemberg, on 1 September 1592, is also recorded by his secretary, who says:[1382]

[456]

De Witt briefly notices the ‘amphitheatrum’ of the Bear Garden in 1596. He says:[1383]

Hentzner, who visited London in the autumn of 1598, says:[1384]

To 1599 belongs the account of Thomas Platter of Basle:[1385]

Platter also describes the actual baiting of the bull and bear and of the blind bear, much as did his predecessors. On 7 September 1601 the Duc de Biron was taken to the Bear Garden, as one of the sights of London, by no less a cicerone than Sir Walter Raleigh.[1386] A visit of 16 September 1602 is described in the diary of Philip Julius, Duke of Stettin in Pomerania.[1387] The vogue of the Bear Garden amongst foreigners[457] evidently lasted into James’s reign, but the notices are briefer. Lewis Frederick of Württemberg, saw on 26 April 1610 the baiting both of bears and bulls ‘and monkeys that ride on horseback’;[1388] and Justus Zingerling of Thuringia, who was in London about the same year, mentions the ‘theatra comoedorum, in which bears and bulls fight with dogs’.[1389] Even more summary is the reference in an itinerary of Prince Otto von Hesse-Cassel in 1611.[1390] But the extracts given sufficiently describe the nature of the sport, and show that bulls continued to be baited up to a late date, as well as bears, and that the serious business of the spectacle was diversified by regular humorous episodes, such as the monkey on horseback and the whipping of the blind bear. He, by the way, was called Harry Hunks, and is named by Sir John Davies in his Epigrams[1391] of c. 1594, in company with the Sackerson who gave rise to a boast on the part of Master Slender,[1392] and at a later date by Dekker[1393] and Henry Peacham.[1394] Two other famous bears were Ned Whiting and George Stone. Both are alluded to in Ben Jonson’s Epicoene (1609),[1395] and the latter also in The Puritan (1607).[1396] The death of the ‘goodlye[458] beare’ George Stone at a baiting before the King of Denmark in 1606 is lamented in the petition of Henslowe and Alleyn to the King for increased fees already described. One other interesting notice of the sport may be added from the Dulwich collection, and that is an advertisement or ‘bill’ of the entertainment, which runs as follows:

Where then was the Bear Garden? This is a point upon which the foreign visitors are not very explicit. From them we could infer little more than that it was transpontine. It has already been pointed out that in official documents, at any rate those of a less formal character than a patent under the great seal, the Mastership is described as the Mastership of the Game of, or at, Paris Garden. With this common parlance agrees.[1398] In the allusions of the pamphleteers and poets, from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century, Paris or Parish Garden is regularly the place of baiting.[1399] ‘The Beare-garden, commonly called Paris Garden’, says Stowe, speaking of 1583.[1400] At Paris Garden, or as it is sometimes corruptly spelt, ‘Pallas Garden’, Henslowe and Alleyn have their office as Masters[1401] in 1607, and near it Alleyn[459] is living in 1609. Now the Liberty and Manor of Paris Garden is a quite well defined part of the Bankside. It lay at the extreme west end, bordering upon Lambeth Marsh, with the Clink upon its east. In it stood from about 1595 the most westerly of the theatres, the Swan.[1402] Historians of Southwark are fond of suggesting that it had been the abode of the bears from an almost immemorial antiquity, and follow a late edition of Blount’s seventeenth-century Glossographia in connecting it with the domus of a certain Robert de Parys, near which the butchers of London were ordered to throw their garbage in 1393.[1403] I think the idea is that the garbage was found useful for feeding the bears. This theory I believe to be as much a myth as Taylor the water-poet’s derivation of the name from Paris, son of Priam. Parish, rather than Paris Garden, seems, in fact, to be the earlier form, although there is nothing in the history of the place that very particularly explains it.[1404] Many residents in London were of course ‘de Parys’ in the fourteenth century, and the domus of the Robert in question, who lived some time after the first mention of ‘Parish’ Garden, was pretty clearly on the City and not the Surrey side of the river.[1405] It is, however, the case that before the Civil War the Butchers’ Company had been[460] accustomed to send their offal by a beadle to ‘two barrow houses, conveniently placed on the river side, for the provision and feeding of the King’s Game of Bears’, and were directed to resume the practice after the Restoration; and possibly this is what misled Blount.[1406] Obviously, however, what the butchers did in the seventeenth century is no proof of what they did in the fourteenth. And, in fact, the ordinance of 1393 is explicit in its direction that the offal is ultimately to be, not devoured by bears, but cast into mid-stream.

There is in fact nothing, so far as I know, to locate the royal Game on the Bankside at all until the middle of the sixteenth century, when it was already hard by the stews in the Liberty of the Clink, and still less, except the persistence of the name, to locate it definitely in the Liberty of Paris Garden.[1407] The notice which brings Paris Garden nearest is in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which contains an account of an adventure of one Ralph Morice, secretary to Cranmer, who was foolish enough to take a book of his master’s, containing criticisms of the Six Articles, in a wherry from Westminster Bridge to Paul’s Wharf. It chanced that Henry VIII ‘was then in his barge with a great number of barges and boats about him, then baiting of bears in the water, over against the Bank’. The waterman stopped to see the fun, and the bear broke loose, and climbed into the wherry, which upset. The dangerous book fell into the Thames and was picked up by the bearward, who was the Lady Elizabeth’s bearward and ‘an arrant Papist’. It was only through the good offices of Cromwell that Morice escaped serious trouble. This was about July 1539.[1408] Certainly it was the custom from an early date to moor the King’s barge off Paris Garden.[1409][461] The spot was marked later by the Old Barge Stairs, which stood at the west end of that part of the Bank lying in front of the Garden, just as Paris Garden Stairs stood at its east end. But the barge was not necessarily at its moorings when Henry was baiting from it. Mr. Ordish suggests that it was the common use of Paris Garden Stairs by visitors to the baiting, which led to the name being transferred to the Bear Garden itself, without any one troubling to inquire very minutely whether it stood a little to the east or a little to the west of the landing.[1410] On the whole, however, I regard it as reasonably probable that there was at one time a Bear Garden in the Liberty, which fixed the traditional name for the sport, even after it had been transferred farther along the Bank.[1411] It may, perhaps, be a slight confirmation of this view that the 1627 survey of Paris Garden shows a space, apparently laid out as a garden and arranged as a circle within a square, which may represent the site. It stands nearly opposite Paris Garden Stairs in a triangular bit of ground between Holland Street and the lane leading to Copt Hall. This seems to have been rather a desolate region in Elizabeth’s reign, at any rate when you got beyond the row of houses which lined the bank.[1412] If there was a Bear Garden there, it had clearly been abandoned some little time before 1546, as the Stews were then ‘the accustomed place’. Somewhat later, the maps of Höfnagel (c. 1560) and Agas (c. 1570) show, in addition to the Bull ring already mentioned, another ring marked ‘The Beare bayting’, standing immediately west of it, and like it in the Clink.[1413] The animals at the stake are discernible in the rings, and to the south of each stretches a yard with a pond in the middle and kennelled dogs along the sides. It is in the Clink, too, that Norden in 1593 shows[462] ‘The Beare howse’, a little west and north of ‘The play howse’, which is the Rose. This evidence is consistent with what little is upon written record about the locality of the Bear Gardens. The most important document is a deposition of John Taylor, not the water-poet, in a suit of 1620:[1414]

Taylor was then an old man of seventy-seven and his memory would easily go back to the time of the early maps. To his testimony may be added that of Stowe, who says in his Survey of London (1598):[1415]

In his Annales Stowe records the fall of ‘the old and under propped scaffolds round about the Beare-garden, commonly called Paris garden’, and the consequent death of eight persons, at 4 p.m. on Sunday, 13 January 1583. It was, he says, ‘a friendly warning to such as more delight themselves in the cruelty of beasts, than in the works of mercy, the fruits of a true professed faith, which ought to be the Sabbath day’s exercise’.[1416] Dr. Dee also noted the accident in his diary, and it was reported to Burghley on the next day by the Lord Mayor and on 19 January by Recorder Fleetwood.[1417] Both of these adopt the view expressed by Stowe that it must be regarded as divine punishment for the violation of the Sabbath, and Fleetwood refers to ‘a booke sett downe vpon the same matter’, which may be John Field’s Godly Exhortation by Occasion of the late Judgment of God showed at Paris Garden. The shrewd irony of Sir Thomas More, upon a similar event,[463] when it was the church that fell, many years before at Beverley, found little echo in the mind of the Elizabethan Puritan.[1418] A further letter from the Lord Mayor to the Privy Council on 3 July 1583 states that by then the Paris Garden scaffolds were ‘new builded’.[1419]

I find it very difficult to say which of the numerous bear gardens mentioned by Taylor and Stowe was in use at any given time. Mr. Rendle thought that Taylor’s first two, that at Mason Stairs and that at the corner of the Pike Garden, were the two shown as ‘The bolle bayting’ and ‘The Bearebayting’ by Agas.[1420] If so, they are quite out of scale. This is likely, since they are drawn large enough to show the animals. They are shown east and west of each other. Rendle puts the Pike Garden due south of Mason Stairs, but it clearly extended more to the east in 1587. In any case both these earlier sites were farther to the west of the Clink than the Hope. Where then was the place on William Payne’s ground? Mr. Rendle, after a careful comparison of Rocque’s map of 1746 and other later maps, puts it at ‘the north courtelage in the lane known as the Bear Garden’ and the Hope at the south courtelage in the same lane.[1421] I take him to mean that the Bear Garden on Payne’s ground was that in use until 1613, and that the Hope was built a little to the south of it. The terms of the contract with Katherens, however, suggest that the same or practically the same site was used. Mr. Rendle adds that ‘William Payne’s place next the Thames can be traced back into the possession of John Allen, until it came down to Edward Alleyn, and was sold by him at a large profit to Henslowe; the same for which Morgan Pope in 1586 paid to the Vestry of St. Saviour’s “6s. 8d. by the year for tithes”.’[1422] This I cannot quite follow. There seem to have been two properties standing respectively next and next but one on the west to the ‘little Rose’. Next the Rose stood messuages called The Barge, Bell and Cock.[464] They were leased by the Bishop of Winchester to William Payne in 1540. His widow Joan Payne assigned them to John White and John Malthouse on 1 August 1582, and White’s moiety was assigned to Malthouse on 5 February 1589.[1423] From him Henslowe bought the lease in 1593–4.[1424] The tenements upon it were in his hands as ‘Mr. Malthowes rentes’ in 1603 and Alleyn was living in one of them.[1425] And the lease of the Barge, Bell and Cock passed to Alleyn and was assigned by his will towards the settlement of his second or third wife, Constance, daughter of Dean Donne.’[1426] To the west of this property in 1540 was a tenement once held by the prioress of Stratford. This passed to the Crown, and then to Thomas and Isabella Keyes under a Crown lease which was in Henslowe’s hands by 1597. Some notes of deeds—leases, deputations, bonds—concerning the Bear Garden were left by Alleyn. Four of the deeds have since been found by Mr. Kingsford in the Record Office. It appears that, before Henslowe, both Pope and Burnaby had some of the Keyes land on a sub-lease, and that Burnaby probably had the Keyes lease itself. Payne carried on baiting in a ring just south of the Barge. The site was called Orchard Court in 1620, and stood north of the Hope. This agrees with the relation suggested by Mr. Rendle between the two courtelages’. The object of the suit of 1620 was to determine whether the Hope also stood upon episcopal, or upon Crown land. Taylor’s testimony was ambiguous. But it follows that the transfer southwards must have been due to a tenant who held under both leases. It was suggested in 1620 that Pope rebuilt the scaffold standings round the ring as galleries with a larger circuit. This was doubtless after the ruin of 1583. Nothing is said of a change of site at this time. Moreover, both Pope and Burnaby seem to have used the site of the Hope and its bull-house as a dog-yard. Probably, therefore, the change was made by Henslowe and Alleyn.[465] Alleyn left a record of ‘what the Bear garden cost me for my owne part in December 1594’. He paid £200 to Burnaby, perhaps only for a joint interest with Henslowe or Jacob Meade, and £250 for the ‘patten’, that is, I suppose, the Mastership bought from Sir William Stuart in 1604. He held his interest for sixteen years and received £60 a year, and then sold it to ‘my father Hinchloe’ for £580 in February 1611.[1427] There must have been considerable outgoings on the structure during this period. Another memorandum in Alleyn’s hand shows an expenditure of £486 4s. 10d. during 1602–5, and a further expenditure during 1606–8 of £360 ‘p^d. for ye building of the howses’.[1428] This last doubtless refers in part, not to the baiting ring itself, but to a tavern and office built on ‘the foreside of the messuage or tenemente called the Beare garden, next the river of Thames in the parish of St. Saviors’, for which there exists a contract of 2 June 1606 between Henslowe and Alleyn and Peter Street the carpenter.[1429] But this only cost £65, and it seems to me most likely that the Bear Garden was rebuilt on the southern site at the same time. Further light is thrown on the profits of the Bear Garden by a note in Henslowe’s diary that the receipts at it for the three days next after Christmas 1608 were £4, £6, and £3 14s., which may be compared with the average of £1 18s. 3d. received from the Fortune during the same three days.[1430] It may be added that Crowley notes the ‘bearwardes vaile’ somewhat ambiguously as ½d., 1d., or 2d.,[1431] and that Lambarde in 1596 includes Paris Garden with the Theatre and Bel Savage as a place where you must pay ‘one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffolde, and the thirde for a quiet standinge’.[1432]

Yet another building enterprise was undertaken in 1613, by which time an interest in the property had certainly been leased to Jacob Meade. On 29 August a contract was entered into between Henslowe and Meade and Gilbert Katherens, carpenter, for the pulling down of the Bear Garden and the erection before the following 30 November[466] on or near the same site of a play-house on the model of the Swan, but with a movable stage, so as to enable the building to be used also for baitings. I reproduce the document here from Dr. Greg’s text:[1433]

The execution of the contract must have been delayed, for the rebuilt Bear Garden is fairly to be identified with the Hope, of which no mention is made in the petition of the spring of 1614 described by Taylor in The True Cause of the Watermen’s Suit, although it had certainly come into use by the following autumn.[1434] Here was arranged for 7 October a trial of wit between this same Taylor and the shifty rhymer William[469] Fennor.[1435] The latter failed to turn up, and Taylor, who, according to his own account, had advertised ‘this Bear Garden banquet of dainty conceits’ and collected a great audience, was left ‘in a greater puzzell then the blinde beare in the midst of all her whip-broth’. After acting part of what he had intended, he resigned the stage to the regular company:

This company was no doubt the Lady Elizabeth’s, as reconstituted in the previous March under an agreement with Nathaniel Field on their behalf, of which a mutilated copy exists. To it Meade was a party, and there is nothing to establish a connexion between Meade and any other theatre than the Hope.[1436] Jonson names the Lady Elizabeth’s men as the actors of Bartholomew Fair, and in the Induction thereto, after a dialogue between the Stage-keeper, who is taunted with ‘gathering up the broken apples for the beares within’, and the Book-holder, a Scrivener reads ‘Articles of Agreement, indented, between the Spectators or Hearers, at the Hope on the Bankeside, in the County of Surrey on the one party; and the Author of Bartholmew Fayre in the said place, and County on the other party: the one and thirtieth day of Octob. 1614’. According to Jonson the locality was suitable for a play on Bartholomew Fair, for it was ‘as durty as Smithfield, and as stinking euery whit’.[1437] There were disputes between Henslowe and the company, partly arising out of an arrangement that they should ‘lie still’ one day a fortnight for the baiting, and the combination broke up. Some of its members, apparently then Prince Charles’s men, are found after Henslowe’s death signing an agreement with Alleyn and Meade to play at the Hope, and to set aside a fourth of the gallery takings towards a sum of £200 to be accepted in discharge of their debt to Henslowe.[470] Alleyn had of course resumed his part proprietorship of the house as executor and ultimate heir to Henslowe. Meade probably took actual charge of the theatre, and there is an undated letter from Prince Charles’s men to Alleyn, written possibly in 1617, in which they explain their removal from the Bankside as due to the intemperate action of his partner in taking from them the day which by course was theirs. I suppose that this dispute also was due to the competition of baiting with the plays. In 1619 some disputes between Alleyn and Meade had to be settled by arbitration, and from Alleyn’s memoranda in connexion with these it appears that Meade was his deputy under his patent as Master of the Game, and had also a lease from him of the house at £100 a year.[1438] The Hope is mentioned from time to time, chiefly as a place of baiting, up to the civil wars.[1439] It is one of the three Bankside theatres alluded to in Holland’s Leaguer (1632), where it is described as ‘a building of excellent hope’ for players, wild beasts, and gladiators. Bear-baiting was suppressed by the House of Commons in 1642,[1440] and the house was dismantled in 1656. The manuscript continuation of Stowe’s Annales describes its end and the slaughter of the bears, but gives the date of its erection erroneously as 1610 instead of 1613.[1441]

After the Restoration the Bear Garden was restored, and a lane called Bear Gardens, running from Bankside to New Park Street, and a sign therein of The White Bear still mark its name.[1442] Its site is pretty well defined in the seventeenth-century maps as to the west of the Globe and, where that is shown, the Rose, and generally as a little nearer Maid Lane than the latter. This is consistent with a notice in the Sewers records for 5 December 1595 of a sewer which ran to the Bear Garden from a garden known to have lain a little farther east along Maid Lane than the Globe.[1443]

[471]

The traditional day for baiting was Sunday. Crowley in 1550 describes it as taking place on ‘euerye Sondaye’.[1444] Naturally this did not pass without Puritan comment, to which point was given by the fall of Paris Garden on a Sunday in 1583.[1445] A general prohibition of shows on Sunday seems to have followed, from which it is not likely that bear-baiting was excepted. It may be inferred that Thursday was substituted, for a Privy Council order of 25 July 1591 called attention, not only to a neglect of the rule as to Sunday, but also to the fact that every day ‘the players do use to recite their plays to the great hurt and destruction of the game of bear-baiting and like pastimes, which are maintained for Her Majesty’s pleasure if occasion require’, and forbade plays both on Sunday and on Thursday, on which day ‘those other games usually have been always accustomed and practised’.[1446] Henslowe’s diary seems to show that up to 1597 he kept the Sunday prohibition and disregarded the Thursday one, which is a little odd, as he was interested in the Bear Garden. But a proclamation of 7 May 1603 on the accession of James repeats the warning that there was neglect of the Sabbath, and renews the prohibition both for baiting and for plays.[1447] Henslowe and Alleyn in their petition of about 1607 for increased fees lay stress on this restraint as a main factor in their alleged loss.[1448] It seems from the notes of Stowe’s manuscript continuator that during the first half of the seventeenth century Tuesday and Thursday became the regular baiting days.[1449] But the agreements made by Henslowe and Meade with the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1614 profess only to reserve one day in fourteen for this purpose, of which apparently notice was to be given on the previous Monday.[1450]