BOOK III

THE COMPANIES

‘Has led the drum before the English tragedians.’

_All’s Well that Ends Well._

XII

INTRODUCTION. THE BOY COMPANIES

[_Bibliographical Note._--The first systematic investigation

into the history of the companies was that of F. G. Fleay,

which, after tentative sketches in his _Shakespeare Manual_

(1876) and _Life and Work of Shakespeare_ (1886), took shape in

his _Chronicle History of the Stage_ (1890). Little is added by

the compilations of A. Albrecht, _Das Englische Kindertheater_

(1883), H. Maas, _Die Kindertruppen_ (1901) and _Äussere

Geschichte der Englischen Theatertruppen_ (1907), and J. A.

Nairn, _Boy-Actors under the Tudors and Stewarts_ (_Trans. of

Royal Soc. of Lit._ xxxii). W. W. Greg, _Henslowe’s Diary_

(1904–8), made a careful study of all the companies which had

relations with Philip Henslowe, and modified or corrected many

of Fleay’s results. An account of the chief London companies

is in A. H. Thorndike, _Shakespeare’s Theater_ (1916), and

utilizes some new material collected in recent years. W.

Creizenach, _Schauspiele der Englischen Komödianten_ (1889),

and E. Herz, _Englische Schauspieler und Englisches Schauspiel_

(1903), have summarized the records of the travels of English

actors in Germany. C. W. Wallace, besides his special work on

the Chapel, has published the records of several theatrical

lawsuits in _Advance Sheets from Shakespeare, the Globe, and

Blackfriars_ (1909), in _Nebraska University Studies_, ix

(1909), 287; x (1910), 261; xiii (1913), 1, and in _The Swan

Theatre and the Earl of Pembroke’s Servants_ (1911, _Englische

Studien_, xliii. 340); the present writer has completed the

information drawn from the _Chamber Accounts_ in P. Cunningham’s

_Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court_ (1842) by

articles in _M. L. R._ ii (1906), 1; iv (1909), 153 (cf. App.

B); and a number of documents, new and old, including the texts

of all the patents issued to companies, have been carefully

edited in vol. i of the _Collections of the Malone Society_

(1907–11). Finally, J. T. Murray, _English Dramatic Companies_

(1910), has collected the published notices of performances

in the provinces, added others from the municipal archives

of Barnstaple, Bristol, Coventry, Dover, Exeter, Gloucester,

Marlborough, Norwich, Plymouth, Shrewsbury, Southampton,

Winchester, and York, and on the basis of these constructed

valuable accounts of all the London and provincial companies

between 1558 and 1642. Most of the present chapter was written

before Murray’s book appeared, but it has been carefully

revised with the aid of his new material. I have not thought

it necessary to refer to my original provincial sources, where

they are included in his convenient Appendix G, but in using

his book it should be borne in mind that he has made a good

many omissions in carrying data from this Appendix to the

tables of provincial visits, which he gives for each company.

For a few places I have had the advantage of sources not drawn

upon by Murray, and these should be treated as the references

for any facts as regards such places not discoverable in

Murray’s Appendix. They are:--for Belvoir and other houses

of the Earls of Rutland, _Rutland MSS._ (_Hist. MSS._), iv.

260; for the house of Richard Bertie and his wife the Duchess

of Suffolk at Grimsthorpe, _Ancaster MSS._ (_Hist. MSS._),

459; for Wollaton, the house of Francis Willoughby, _Middleton

MSS._ (_Hist. MSS._), 446; for Maldon and Saffron Walden in

Essex, A. Clark’s extracts in _10 Notes and Queries_, vii.

181, 342, 422; viii. 43; xii. 41; for Newcastle-on-Tyne, G. B.

Richardson, _Reprints of Rare Tracts_, vol. iii, and _10 N.

Q._ xii. 222; for Reading, _Hist. MSS._ xi. 177; for Oxford,

F. S. Boas in _Fortnightly Review_ (Aug. 1913; Aug. 1918; May

1920); for Stratford, J. O. Halliwell, _Stratford-upon-Avon in

the Time of the Shakespeares, illustrated by Extracts from the

Council-Books_ (1864); for Weymouth, H. J. Moule, _Weymouth and

Melcombe Regis Documents_ (1883), 136; for Dunwich, _Various

Collections_ (_Hist. MSS._), vii. 82; for Aldeburgh, Suffolk,

C. C. Stopes, _William Hunnis_, 314. References for a few other

scattered items are in the foot-notes. The warning should

be given that the dates assigned to some of the provincial

performances are approximate, and may be in error within a

year or so either way. For this there are more reasons than

one. The zealous antiquaries who have made extracts from local

records have not realized that precise dates might be of

value, and have often named a year without indicating whether

it represents the calendar year (Circumcision style) or the

calendar year (Annunciation style) in which a performance fell,

or the calendar year in which a regnal, mayoral, or accounting

year, in which the performance fell, began or ended. When they

are clearly dealing with accounting years, they do not always

indicate whether these ended at Michaelmas or at some other

date. They sometimes give only the year of a performance, when

they might have given, precisely or approximately, the month

and day of the month as well. But it is fair to add that the

accounts of City Chamberlains and similar officers, from which

the notices of plays are generally derived, are not always so

kept as to render precise dating feasible. Some accountants

specify the days, others the weeks to which their entries

relate; others put their entries in chronological order and

date some of them, so that it is possible to fix the dates of

the rest within limits; others again render accounts analysed

under heads, grouping all payments to players perhaps under a

head of ‘Gifts and Rewards’, and in such cases you cannot be

sure that the companies are even entered in the order of their

visits, and if months and days are not specified, cannot learn

more than the year to which a visit belongs. Where, for whatever

reason, I can only assign a performance to its accounting year,

I generally give it under the calendar year in which the account

ends. This, in the case of a London company and of a Michaelmas

year (much the commonest year for municipal accounts), is pretty

safe, as the touring season was roughly July to September. Some

accounting years (Coventry, Marlborough, Stratford-on-Avon) end

later still, but if, as at Bath, the year ends about Midsummer,

it is often quite a toss-up to which of two years an entry

belongs. In the case of Leicester performances before 1603, I

have combined the indications of Michaelmas years in M. Bateson,

_Leicester Records_, vol. iii, with those of calendar years in

W. Kelly, _Notices Illustrative of the Drama_ (1865), 185, and

distinguished between performances before and after Michaelmas.

I hope Kelly has not misled me, and that he found evidence in

the entries for his dating. After 1603 he is the only source. I

do not think that the amount of error which has crept into the

following chapter from the various causes described is likely to

be at all considerable. I have been as careful as possible and

most of Murray’s own extracting is excellently done. I should,

however, add that the Ipswich dates, as given both here and by

Murray, ii. 287. from _Hist. MSS._ ix. i, 248, are unreliable,

because some of the rolls from which they are taken contain

membranes properly belonging to those for other years; cf. my

notes on Leicester’s (pp. 89, 91), Queen’s (p. 106), Warwick’s

(p. 99), Derby’s (p. 120), King’s (p. 209).]

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.

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:

‘Ye have preiudished my good name for ever in thrustinge me

thus on the stage to make tryall of my extemporall faculty,

and to play Wylsons or Tarletons parte. I suppose thou wilt

go nighe hande shortelye to sende my lorde of Lycesters or my

lorde of Warwickes, Vawsis, or my lord Ritches players, or sum

other freshe starteupp comedanties unto me for sum newe devised

interlude, or sum maltconceivid comedye fitt for the Theater, or

sum other paintid stage whereat thou and thy lively copesmates

in London maye lawghe ther mouthes and bellyes full for pence or

twoepence apeece.’[1]

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, 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 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 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. Children of Paul’s.

ii. Children of the Chapel and Queen’s Revels.

iii. Children of Windsor.

iv. Children of the King’s Revels.

v. Children of Bristol.

vi. Westminster School.

vii. Eton College.

viii. Merchant Taylors School.

ix. Earl of Leicester’s Boys.

x. Earl of Oxford’s Boys.

xi. Mr. Stanley’s Boys.

i. THE CHILDREN OF PAUL’S

_High Masters of Grammar School_:--William Lily (1509–22); John Ritwise

(1522–32); Richard Jones (1532–49); Thomas Freeman (1549–59); John Cook

(1559–73); William Malim (1573–81); John Harrison (1581–96); Richard

Mulcaster (1596–1608).

_Masters of Choir School_:--? Thomas Hikeman (_c._ 1521); John Redford

(_c._ 1540);? Thomas Mulliner (?); Sebastian Westcott (> 1557–1582);

Thomas Giles (1584–1590 <); Edward Pearce (> 1600–1606 <).

[_Bibliographical Note._--The documents bearing upon the early

history of the two cathedral schools, often confused, are

printed and discussed by A. F. Leach in _St. Paul’s School

before Colet_ (_Archaeologia_, lxii. 1. 191) and in _Journal of

Education_ (1909), 503. M. F. J. McDonnell, _A History of St.

Paul’s School_ (1909), carries on the narrative of the grammar

school. The official chroniclers of the cathedral, perhaps

owing to the loss of archives in the Great Fire, have given

no connected account of the choir school; with the material

available on the dramatic side they appear to be unfamiliar.

Valuable contributions are W. H. G. Flood, _Master Sebastian_,

in _Musical Antiquary_, iii. 149; iv. 187; and H. N. Hillebrand,

_Sebastian Westcote, Dramatist and Master of the Children of

Paul’s_ (1915, _J. G. P._ xiv. 568). Little is added to the

papers on _Plays Acted by the Children of Paul’s and Music in

St. Paul’s Cathedral_ in W. S. Simpson, _Gleanings from Old St.

Paul’s_ (1889), 101, 155, by J. S. Bumpus, _The Organists and

Composers of St. Paul’s Cathedral_ (1891), and W. M. Sinclair,

_Memorials of St. Paul’s Cathedral_ (1909).]

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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

‘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]

_Sir Edward Fortune._ I saw the Children of _Powles_ last night,

And troth they pleas’d me prettie, prettie well:

The Apes in time will doe it handsomely.

_Planet._ I faith, I like the audience that frequenteth there

With much applause: A man shall not be chokte

With the stench of Garlick; nor be pasted

To the barmie Iacket of a Beer-brewer.

_Brabant Junior._ ’Tis a good, gentle audience, and I hope the boies

Will come one day into the Court of requests.

_Brabant Senior._ I, and they had good Plaies. But they produce

Such mustie fopperies of antiquitie,

And do not sute the humorous ages backs,

With clothes in fashion.

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 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:

A note to the Master of Children of Powles.

Memorandum, that if any of the fine and formost of these

Pastorals and Comoedyes conteyned in this volume shall but

overeach in length (the children not to begin before foure,

after prayers, and the gates of Powles shutting at six) the

tyme of supper, that then in tyme and place convenient, you do

let passe some of the songs, and make the consort the shorter;

for I suppose these plaies be somewhat too long for that place.

Howsoever, on your own experience, and at your best direction,

be it. Farewell to you all.[49]

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 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 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

The Children of the Chapel (1501–1603).

_Masters of the Children_: William Newark (1493–1509),

William Cornish (1509–23), William Crane (1523–45), Richard

Bower (1545–61), Richard Edwardes (1561–6), William Hunnis

(1566–97), Richard Farrant (acting, 1577–80), Nathaniel Giles

(1597–1634).

The Children of the Queen’s Revels (1603–5).

The Children of the Revels (1605–6).

_Masters_: Henry Evans, Edward Kirkham, and others.

The Children of the Blackfriars (1606–9).

The Children of the Whitefriars (1609–10).

_Masters_: Robert Keysar and others.

The Children of the Queen’s Revels (1610–16).

_Masters_: Philip Rosseter and others.

[_Bibliographical Note._--Official records of the Chapel are

to be found in E. F. Rimbault, _The Old Cheque Book of the

Chapel Royal_ (1872, _Camden Soc._). Most of the material for

the sixteenth-century part of the present section was collected

before the publication of C. W. Wallace, _The Evolution of the

English Drama up to Shakespeare_ (1912, cited as Wallace, i),

which has, however, been valuable for purposes of revision.

J. M. Manly, _The Children of the Chapel Royal and their

Masters_ (1910, _C. H._ vi. 279), W. H. Flood, _Queen Mary’s

Chapel Royal_ (_E. H. R._ xxxiii. 83), H. M. Hildebrand, _The

Early History of the Chapel Royal_ (1920, _M. P._ xviii. 233),

are useful contributions. The chief published sources for

the seventeenth century are three lawsuits discovered by J.

Greenstreet and printed in full by F. G. Fleay, _A Chronicle

History of the London Stage_ (1890), 127, 210, 223. These are

(a) _Clifton v. Robinson and Others_ (Star Chamber, 1601), (b)

_Evans v. Kirkham_ (Chancery, May–June 1612), cited as _E. v.

K._, with Fleay’s pages, and (c) _Kirkham v. Painton and Others_

(Chancery, July–Nov. 1612), cited as _K. v. P._ Not much beyond

dubious hypothesis is added by C. W. Wallace, _The Children of

the Chapel at Blackfriars_ (1908, cited as Wallace, ii). But

Professor Wallace published an additional suit of importance,

(d) _Keysar v. Burbadge and Others_ (Court of Requests,

Feb.–June 1610), in _Nebraska University Studies_ (1910), x.

336, cited as _K. v. B._ This is apparently one of twelve suits

other than Greenstreet’s, which he claims (ii. 36) to have

found, with other material, which may alter the story. In the

meantime, I see no reason to depart from the main outlines

sketched in my article on _Court Performances under James the

First_ (1909, _M. L. R._ iv. 153).]

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

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 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 7½_d._ a day or £91 8_s._ 1½_d._

a year as Gentleman and his share in the general ‘rewards’ of the

Chapel, to a special Exchequer annuity of 40 marks (£26 13_s._ 4_d._),

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 1_s._ a day for

each Gentleman and 2_s._ a week for each Child.[66] The allowance for

the Children was afterwards raised to 6_d._ a day.[67] Long before

this, however, the Masters had succeeded in obtaining an exceptional

allowance of 8_d._ a week for the breakfast of each Child, which was

reckoned as making £16 a year and paid them in monthly instalments of

26_s._ 8_d._ 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 20_s._ when _Audivi vocem_ was sung on All Saints’ Day, £6

13_s._ 4_d._ for the Children’s feast of St. Nicholas on 6 December,

and 40_s._ 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 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 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 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 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] 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 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 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]

Memorandum quod x^o die Januarii anno infra scripto istud

breve deliberatum fuit domino custodi magni Sigilli apud

Westmonasterium exequendum.

Elizabeth by the grace of God Quene of England Fraunce & Ireland

defender of the faythe &c. To our right welbeloved & faythfull

counsaylour Sir Nicholas Bacon knight Keper of our great Seale of

Englande, commaundinge you that vnder our great Seale aforsayd

ye cause to be made our lettres patentes in forme followinge. To

all mayours sherifs bayliefes constables & all other our officers

gretinge. For that it is mete that our chappell royall should be

furnysshed with well singing children from tyme to tyme we have & by

these presentes do authorise our welbeloved servaunt Richard Edwardes

master of our children of our sayd chappell or his deputie beinge

by his bill subscribed & sealed so authorised, & havinge this our

presente comyssion with hym, to take as manye well singinge children

as he or his sufficient deputie shall thinke mete in all chathedrall

& collegiate churches as well within libertie[s] as without within

this our realme of England whatsoever they be, And also at tymes

necessarie, horses, boates, barges, cartes, & carres, as he for the

conveyaunce of the sayd children from any place to our sayd chappell

royall [shall thinke mete] with all maner of necessaries apperteynyng

to the sayd children as well by lande as water at our prices ordynarye

to be redely payed when they for our service shall remove to any place

or places, Provided also that if our sayd servaunt or his deputie or

deputies bearers hereof in his name cannot forthwith remove the chyld

or children when he by vertue of this our commyssyon hathe taken hym or

them that then the sayd child or children shall remayne there vntill

suche tyme as our sayd servaunt Rychard Edwardes shall send for him

or them. Wherfore we will & commaunde you & everie of you to whom

this our comyssion shall come to be helpinge aydinge & assistinge to

the vttermost of your powers as ye will answer at your vttermoste

perylles. In wytnes wherof &c. Geven vnder our privie seale at our

Manor of St James the fourth daye of Decembre in the fourth yere of our

Raigne.

R. Jones.

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 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 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 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]

‘Maye it please your honores, William Hunnys, M^r of the

Children of hir highnes Chappell, most humble beseecheth to

consider of these fewe lynes. First, hir Maiestie alloweth for

the dyett of xij children of hir sayd Chappell daylie vi^d a

peece by the daye, and xl^{li} by the yeare for theyre aparrell

and all other furneture.

‘Agayne there is no ffee allowed neyther for the m^r of the

sayd children nor for his ussher, and yet neuertheless is he

constrayned, over and besydes the ussher still to kepe bothe a

man servant to attend upon them and lykewyse a woman seruant to

wash and kepe them cleane.

‘Also there is no allowance for the lodginge of the sayd

chilldren, such tyme as they attend vppon the Courte, but the

m^r to his greate charge is dryuen to hyer chambers both for

himself, his usher chilldren and servantes.

‘Also theare is no allowaunce for ryding jornies when occasion

serueth the m^r to trauell or send into sundrie partes within

this realme, to take vpp and bring such children as be thought

meete to be trayned for the service of hir Maiestie.

‘Also there is no allowance ne other consideracion for those

children whose voyces be chaunged, whoe onelye do depend vpon

the charge of the sayd m^r vntill such tyme as he may preferr

the same with cloathing and other furniture, vnto his no smalle

charge.

‘And although it may be obiected that hir Maiesties allowaunce

is no whitt less then hir Maiesties ffather of famous memorie

therefore allowed: yet considering the pryces of thinges present

to the tyme past and what annuities the m^r then hadd out of

sundrie abbies within this realme, besydes sondrie giftes from

the Kinge, and dyuers perticuler ffees besydes, for the better

mayntenaunce of the sayd children and office: and besides also

there hath ben withdrawne from the sayd chilldren synce hir

Maiesties comming to the crowne xij^d by the daye which was

allowed for theyr breakefastes as may apeare by the Treasorer

of the Chamber his acompt for the tyme beinge, with other

allowaunces incident to the office as appeareth by the auntyent

acomptes in the sayd office which I heere omytt.

‘The burden heerof hath from tyme to tyme so hindred the M^{rs}

of the Children viz. M^r Bower, M^r Edwardes, my sellf and M^r

Farrant: that notwithstanding some good helpes otherwyse some of

them dyed in so poore case, and so deepelie indebted that they

haue not left scarcelye wherewith to burye them.

‘In tender consideracion whereof, might it please your honores

that the sayde allowaunce of vj^d a daye apeece for the

childrens dyet might be reserued in hir Maiesties coffers during

the tyme of theyre attendaunce. And in liew thereof they to be

allowed meate and drinke within this honorable householde for

that I am not able vppon so small allowaunce eny longer to beare

so heauie a burden. Or otherwyse to be consydred as shall seeme

best vnto your honorable wysdomes.

‘[_Endorsed_] 1583 November. The humble peticion of the M^r of

the Children of hir highnes Chappell [_and in another hand_]

To have further allowances for the finding of the children for

causes within mentioned.’

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 6_d._ a day. Doubtless he knew their appetites. I do not think

that the Green Cloth met his views, for in the next reign the 6_d._

was still being paid and was raised to 10_d._ 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 1_s._ a day,

although that in fact works out to £18 5_s._ a year, and the £9 13_s._

4_d._ 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 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 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 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 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_, 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 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 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 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]

‘Von dannen sind wir auf die Kinder-comoediam gangen, welche

im Argument iudiciret eine castam viduam, war eine historia

einer königlichen Wittwe aus Engellandt. Es hat aber mit dieser

Kinder-comoedia die Gelegenheit: die Königin hält viel junger

Knaben, die sich der Singekunst mit Ernst befleissigen müssen

und auf allen Instrumenten lernen, auch dabenebenst studieren.

Diese Knaben haben ihre besondere praeceptores in allen

Künsten, insonderheit sehr gute musicos.’

‘Damit sie nun höfliche Sitten anwenden, ist ihnen aufgelegt,

wöchentlich eine comoedia zu agiren, wozu ihnen denn die Königin

ein sonderlich theatrum erbauet und mit köstlichen Kleidern zum

Ueberfluss versorget hat. Wer solcher Action zusehen will, muss

so gut als unserer Münze acht sundische Schillinge geben, und

findet sich doch stets viel Volks auch viele ehrbare Frauens,

weil nutze argumenta und viele schöne Lehren, als von andern

berichtet, sollen tractiret werden; alle bey Lichte agiret,

welches ein gross Ansehen macht. Eine ganze Stunde vorher höret

man eine köstliche musicam instrumentalem von Orgeln, Lauten,

Pandoren, Mandoren, Geigen und Pfeiffen, wie denn damahlen ein

Knabe cum voce tremula in einer Basgeigen so lieblich gesungen,

dass wo es die Nonnen zu Mailand ihnen nicht vorgethan, wir

seines Gleichen auf der Reise nicht gehöret hatten.’

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 6_d._ a day for each of twelve children,

possibly the breakfast allowance of £16 a year and the largess of £9

13_s._ 4_d._ 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 1_s._ 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 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]

[Sidenote: De licencia speciali pro Eduardo Kirkham et aliis pro le

Revell domine Regine.]

Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Mayors Shiriffes Justices

of Peace Baliffes Constables and to all other our officers

mynisters and lovinge Subiectes to whome theis presentes shall

come, greeting. Whereas the Queene our deerest wief hath for her

pleasure and recrea[~c]on when she shall thinke it fit to have

any playes or shewes appoynted her servauntes Edward Kirkham

Alexander Hawkyns Thomas Kendall and Robert Payne to provyde and

bring vppe a convenient nomber of Children, whoe shalbe called

children of her Revelles, knowe ye that we have appointed and

authorized and by theis presentes doe authorize and appoynte

the said Edward Kirkham Alexander Hawkins Thomas Kendall and

Robert Payne from tyme to tyme to provide keepe and bring vppe a

convenient nomber of Children, and them to practize and exercise

in the quality of playinge by the name of Children of the

Revells to the Queene within the Black-fryers in our Cytie of

London, or in any other convenient place where they shall thinke

fit for that purpose. Wherefore we will and commaunde [you] and

everie of you to whome it shall appertayne to permytt her said

Servauntes to keepe a convenient nomber of Children by the name

of Children of her Revells and them to exercise in the quality

of playing according to her pleasure. Provided allwaies that noe

such Playes or Shewes shalbee presented before the said Queene

our wief by the said Children or by them any where publiquelie

acted but by the approbacion and allowaunce of Samuell Danyell,

whome her pleasure is to appoynt for that purpose. And theis

our lettres Patentes shalbe your sufficient warraunte in this

behalfe. In witnes whereof &c., witnes our self at Westminster

the fourth day of February.

per breve de priuato sigillo &c.

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 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 6_d._ to 10_d._ 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 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 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:

‘Prouided alwayes and wee doe straightlie charge and commaunde

that none of the saide Choristers or Children of the Chappell

so to be taken by force of this commission shalbe vsed or

imployed as Comedians or Stage players, or to exercise or acte

any Stage playes Interludes Comedies or tragedies, for that it

is not fitt or decent that such as shoulde singe the praises

of God Allmightie shoulde be trayned vpp or imployed in suche

lascivious and prophane exercises.’[163]

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 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]

‘His ma^{tie} was well pleased with that which your lo.

advertiseth concerning the committing of the players y^{t}

have offended in y^{e} matters of France, and commanded me to

signifye to your lo. that for y^{e} others who have offended in

y^{e} matter of y^{e} Mynes and other lewd words, which is y^{e}

children of y^{e} blackfriars, That though he had signified

his mynde to your lo. by my lo. of Mountgommery yet I should

repeate it again, That his G. had vowed they should never play

more, but should first begg their bred and he wold have his vow

performed, And therefore my lo. chamberlain by himselfe or your

ll. at the table should take order to dissolve them, and to

punish the maker besides.’

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 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 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:

[Sidenote: De concessione Roberto Daborne & aliis.]

Iames by the grace of God &c., To all Maiors Sheriffes Iustices

of peace Bayliffes Constables and to all other our Officers

Ministers and loving Subiects to whome theis presentes shall

come Greeting. Whereas the Quene our deerest wyfe hathe for

hir pleasure, and recreacion, when shee shall thinke it fitt

to have any Playes or Shewes, appoynted hir servantes Robert

Daborne, Phillippe Rosseter, Iohn Tarbock, Richard Iones, and

Robert Browne to prouide and bring vpp a convenient nomber of

Children whoe shalbe called Children of hir Revelles, knowe ye

that wee haue appoynted and authorised, and by theis presentes

do authorize and appoynte the said Robert Daborne, Phillipp

Rosseter, Iohn Tarbock, Richard Iones, and Robert Browne from

tyme to tyme to provide keepe and bring vpp a convenient nomber

of children, and them to practice and exercise in the quality of

playing, by the name of Children of the Revells to the Queene,

within the white ffryers in the Suburbs of our Citty of London,

or in any other convenyent place where they shall thinke fitt

for that purpose. Wherfore wee will and commaund you and euery

of you to whome it shall appertayne to permitt her said seruants

to keepe a conuenient nomber of Children by the name of the

Children of hir Revells, and them to exercise in the qualitye

of playing according to hir pleasure, And theis our lettres

patentes shalbe your sufficient warrant in this behaulfe.

Wittnes our self at Westminster, the ffourth daye of Ianuary.

per breve de priuato sigillo.

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, 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 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 Q_{1} of Middleton’s _A Trick to Catch

the Old One_ (1608) assigns it to Paul’s; the Q_{2} 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 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.