to record payments to the amount of at least £5 for a new play, there
is _prima facie_ evidence that that play never got itself finished.
Occasionally, of course, apparently incomplete payments may be
explained by the fact that the same play is entered under more than
one name. Occasionally, also, a particular play may have been tacitly
debited with payments not specifically expressed in the diary to have
been made in respect of that play. Thus a sum of £2 paid on 4 February
1598 ‘to dise charge Mr. Dicker owt of the cownter in the Powltrey’
was probably treated as an instalment of the price of _Phaethon_ on
which Dekker was then working, and for which otherwise only £4 is
entered. Another sum of £3 10_s._ paid on 30 January 1599 ‘to descarge
Thomas Dickers frome the a reaste of my lord Chamberlens men’ seems
similarly to have gone towards _The First Introduction of the Civil
Wars of France_. And Haughton probably got 10_s._ less than he would
otherwise have done for _Ferrex and Porrex_, because he had required
a loan of that amount on 10 March 1600, ‘to releace him owt of the
Clyncke’.[438] The record, again, for a few plays is most likely
rendered imperfect by the loss of a leaf or two from the manuscript,
which once contained entries for the end of April and beginning of May
1599.[439] When these factors have been taken into consideration, the
resultant total of possibly unfinished plays is not a very large one,
amounting for 1597–1600 on my calculation to not more than twenty as
against fifty-six new plays duly completed and paid for in full. Of
these twenty it is very likely that some were in fact finished, either
for other companies, or for the Admiral’s men themselves, later than
the period covered by the diary. It is, however, consonant with the
literary temperament to suppose that some at least remained within the
category of unrealized projects. The most puzzling problem is that of
Haughton’s _A Woman will have her Will_. For this it is impossible to
trace payments beyond £2 10_s._, and these are not stated to be in
full. Yet the play is not only now extant but was certainly extant in
1598. In this case I see no alternative to Dr. Greg’s theory of direct
payments by the company.
Henslowe’s notes of advances to authors are not the sole material
which is available for drawing up an account of the repertory of the
Admiral’s men. There are also entries of the purchase of costumes
and properties for certain plays, and of fees for the licensing of
plays by the Master of the Revels. And there is a valuable series of
inventories, formerly preserved at Dulwich, and dating from 1598, which
record respectively the stock of apparel and properties in the hands of
the Admiral’s men during the second week of March, their play-books at
the same date, and the additions made out of Henslowe’s purchases up
to about the following August.[440] The theory that some of the plays
recorded in the diary were never finished receives confirmation from
the absence of any corroborative proof of their existence in these
subsidiary entries and documents, whereas such evidence exists in
the case of a very large proportion of the plays for which the diary
records payment in full. It must not, however, be assumed, either that
every play completed necessarily got produced, although it is not
likely that many were withheld, or that a play was necessarily not
produced, because no special apparel or properties were bought for it,
since it may have been quite possible to mount some plays out of the
company’s existing stock. The number of fees paid for licensing is so
small in proportion to the number of plays certainly produced, that
these fees cannot all be supposed to have passed through Henslowe’s
hands.
Subject to the difficulties discussed in the foregoing paragraphs, I
think that the following is a fairly accurate account of the repertory
of the company for the three years now in question.[441] During 1597–8
they purchased seventeen new plays. These, with the names of their
authors, were:
_Mother Redcap_ (Drayton and Munday).
_Phaethon_ (Dekker).
_1 Robin Hood_ (Munday).
_2 Robin Hood_ (Chettle and Munday).
_The Triangle of Cuckolds_ (Dekker).[442]
_The Welshman’s Prize_, or, _The Famous Wars of Henry I and the
Prince of Wales_ (Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton).[443]
_1 Earl Godwin and his Three Sons_ (Chettle, Dekker, Drayton,
and Wilson).
_2 Earl Godwin and his Three Sons_ (Chettle, Dekker, Drayton,
and Wilson).
_King Arthur_ (Hathway).
_Love Prevented_ (Porter).[444]
_A Woman will have her Will_ (Haughton).
_1 Black Bateman of the North_ (Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and
Wilson).
_2 Black Bateman of the North_ (Chettle and Wilson).
_The Madman’s Morris_ (Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
_The Funeral of Richard Cœur de Lion_ (Chettle, Drayton, Munday,
and Wilson).
_Hannibal and Hermes_ (Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).[445]
_Valentine and Orson_ (Hathway and Munday).
There is evidence of the actual performance of _Mother Redcap_,
_Phaethon_ (January), _1 and 2 Robin Hood_ (March), _1 Earl Godwin_
(April), _King Arthur_ (May), _2 Earl Godwin_ (June), _1 Black Bateman_
(June). Properties were bought for _The Madman’s Morris_ in July, and
the next season probably opened with it. To the new plays must be added
_Friar Spendleton_, produced as ‘ne’ on 31 October, and _Dido and
Aeneas_. A loan of 30_s._ on 8 January ‘when they fyrst played Dido at
nyght’ suggests a supper, not a night performance. Either play may have
been purchased at the end of 1596–7, or may have come from Pembroke’s
stock. The same applies to _Branholt_ and _Alice Pierce_, which were
probably new when properties were purchased for them in November and
December. The company also bought on 12 December two jigs from two
young men, for which they paid 6_s._ 8_d._ Hardly any of the 1597–8
new plays are extant. The two parts of _Robin Hood_ are _The Downfall
of Robert Earl of Huntingdon_, and _The Death of Robert Earl of
Huntingdon_, printed without Munday’s name as Admiral’s plays in 1601.
Haughton’s _A Woman will have her Will_ was entered on the Stationers’
Register on 3 August 1601, and printed with the alternative title of
_Englishmen for my Money_ in 1616. _Phaethon_ probably underlies Dekker
and Ford’s _The Sun’s Darling_, and it is a plausible conjecture of
Mr. Fleay’s that _Love Prevented_ may be _1 The Two Angry Women of
Abingdon_, printed as an Admiral’s play in 1599, and not to be traced
elsewhere in the diary. The payments for four plays during the year,
besides the puzzling _A Woman will have her Will_, were incomplete. I
take it that the £2 paid to Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson for
_Pierce of Exton_ was transferred to the account for _2 Earl Godwin_,
which otherwise lacks just that amount of the full £6; that Chettle
failed to deliver _A Woman’s Tragedy_; that Chapman’s _Isle of a
Woman_ was held over until 1598–9; and that a projected tragedy of Ben
Jonson’s was similarly held over, and then indefinitely postponed owing
to the tragedy in real life of Spencer’s death. There are two entries
with regard to this. On 3 December 1597, Henslowe lent Jonson 20_s._
‘vpon a boocke which he showed the plotte vnto the company which he
promysed to deliver vnto the company at Cryssmas next’. On 23 October
1598, a month after the duel, not Jonson, but Chapman, received £3
‘one his playe boocke & ij ectes of a tragedie of Bengemenes plotte’.
I think that Chapman’s own play was _The Four Kings_ and that he
finished it in 1599; but I see no sign that he ever did anything with
‘Bengemenes plotte’.
Of older plays the Admiral’s revived at the beginning of the year
Chapman’s success of the previous spring, _The Comedy of Humours_; also
the perennial _Dr. Faustus_, and two pieces which, as they formed no
part of the 1594–7 repertory, may have been brought in by Pembroke’s
men, _Hardicanute_ and _Bourbon_. They bought for £8 from Martin
Slater _1 and 2 Hercules_, _Phocas_, _Pythagoras_, and _Alexander and
Lodowick_, all of which had been produced between May 1595 and January
1597, and had evidently been retained by Slater when he left the
company. These books presumably do not include that which became the
subject of the lawsuit between Slater and the Admiral’s men, and as
they had afterwards to buy back some of their old books in a precisely
similar way from Alleyn, it is probable that a retiring member of
the company had a right to claim a partition of the repertory. They
also bought _The Cobler of Queenhithe_,[446] and from Robert Lee,
formerly of the Admiral’s men and afterwards of Queen Anne’s, _The
Miller_. But of these seven purchased plays, the only one that they
can be proved to have revived is one of the _Hercules_ plays, for
which they bought properties in July. The book-inventory shows that
they had plays called _Black Joan_ and _Sturgflattery_,[447] also
possibly from Pembroke’s stock; and the property-inventories that
they had properties and clothes, if not in all cases books,[448] for
_The Battle of Alcazar_[449] and for a number of pieces staged during
1594–7, including _Mahomet_,[450] _Tamburlaine_,[451] _The Jew of
Malta_,[452] _1 Fortunatus_,[453] _The Siege of London_,[454] _Belin
Dun_,[455] _Tasso’s Melancholy_,[456] _1 Caesar and Pompey_,[457] _The
Wise Man of West Chester_,[458] _The Set at Maw_,[459] _Olympo_,[460]
_Henry V_,[461] _Longshanks_,[462] _Troy_,[463] _Vortigern_,[464]
_Guido_,[465] _Uther Pendragon_.[466] To these must be added _Pontius
Pilate_,[467] revived in 1601 and perhaps from the Pembroke’s stock,
and others now unidentifiable.[468] As the company revived _The Blind
Beggar of Alexandria_ in 1601 they probably had this also.[469]
The new plays purchased in 1598–9 were twenty-one in number:
_Pierce of Winchester_ (Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson).
_Hot Anger Soon Cold_ (Chettle, Jonson, and Porter).
_Chance Medley_ (Chettle or Dekker, Drayton, Munday, and
Wilson).[470]
_Worse Afeared than Hurt_ (Dekker and Drayton).[471]
_1 Civil Wars of France_ (Dekker and Drayton).
_The Fount of New Fashions_ (Chapman).[472]
_2 The Conquest of Brute_, or, _Brute Greenshield_
(Chettle).[473]
_Connan, Prince of Cornwall_ (Dekker and Drayton).
_2 Civil Wars of France_ (Dekker and Drayton).
_3 Civil Wars of France_ (Dekker and Drayton).
_The Four Kings_ (Chapman).[474]
_War without Blows and Love without Suit_ (Heywood).[475]
_First Introduction of the Civil Wars of France_ (Dekker).
_2 Two Angry Women of Abingdon_ (Porter).
_Joan as Good as my Lady_ (Heywood)
_Friar Fox and Gillian of Brentford_ (Anon.).
_The Spencers_ (Chettle and Porter).
_Troy’s Revenge and the Tragedy of Polyphemus_ (Chettle).
_Troilus and Cressida_ (Chettle and Dekker).
_Agamemnon_, or, _Orestes Furious_ (Chettle and Dekker).[476]
_The World Runs on Wheels_, or, _All Fools but the Fool_
(Chapman).[477]
The property and licence entries only make it possible to trace
the actual performance during the year of _Pierce of Winchester_
(October), _1 and 2 Civil Wars of France_ (October and November),
_The Fount of New Fashions_ (November), _2 Angry Women of Abingdon_
(February), _2 Conquest of Brute_ (March), _The Four Kings_ (March),
_The Spencers_ (April), and _Agamemnon_ (June). Probably, in view of
the extant fragment of a ‘plot’ _Troilus and Cressida_ should be added.
The production of _Troy’s Revenge_ was deferred until the following
October. No one of this year’s new plays is extant, unless, as is
possible, _All Fools but the Fool_ was an early form of Chapman’s _All
Fools_.[478] Earnests were paid in the course of 1598–9 for _Catiline’s
Conspiracy_ (Chettle), _Tis no Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver_
(Chettle), _William Longsword_[479] (Drayton), _Two Merry Women of
Abingdon_ (Porter), and an unnamed pastoral tragedy by Chapman, but
there is no reason to suppose that any one of these was ever finished.
On 9 August 1598 Munday had 10s. in earnest of an unnamed comedy ‘for
the corte’ and Drayton gave his word for the book to be done in a
fortnight, but the project must have been dropped, as the entry was
cancelled. Of old plays the company revived in August _Vayvode_, in
November _The Massacre at Paris_, in which Bird played the Guise,[480]
in December _1 The Conquest of Brute_, bought from John Day, and in
March _Alexander and Lodowick_, bought from Martin Slater in the
preceding year. As to _Vayvode_, the entries are rather puzzling. In
August Chettle received £1 ‘for his playe of Vayvode’, and the purchase
of properties show that the production took place. But in the following
January there was a payment of £2 to Alleyn ‘for the playe of Vayvod
for the company’. Possibly Alleyn had some rights in the manuscript,
which were at first overlooked. On 25 November Chettle had 10_s._
‘for mendinge of Roben Hood for the corte’. Either _1_ or _2_ _Robin
Hood_ was therefore probably the play given on 6 January 1599. At the
beginning of the year the company bought _Mulmutius Dunwallow_ from
William Rankins and another old play called _Tristram of Lyons_, but it
must be uncertain whether they played them. A reference in Guilpin’s
_Skialetheia_ suggests that _The Spanish Tragedy_ may have been on the
boards of the Rose not long before September 1598.[481]
The new plays completed during 1599–1600, twenty in all, were:
_The Gentle Craft_ (Dekker).[482]
_Bear a Brain_ (Dekker).[483]
_Page of Plymouth_ (Dekker and Jonson).
_Robert II_, or, _The Scot’s Tragedy_ (Chettle, Dekker, Jonson,
and Marston).[484]
_The Stepmother’s Tragedy_ (Chettle and Dekker).
_1 Sir John Oldcastle_ (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson).
_Cox of Collumpton_ (Day and Haughton).
_2 Henry Richmond_ (Wilson).
_2 Sir John Oldcastle_ (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson).
_Patient Grissell_ (Chettle, Dekker, and Haughton).
_The Whole History of Fortunatus_ (Dekker).
_Thomas Merry_, or, _Beech’s Tragedy_ (Day and Haughton).
_Jugurtha_ (Boyle).[485]
_The Seven Wise Masters_ (Chettle, Day, Dekker, and Haughton).
_Ferrex and Porrex_ (Haughton).
_Cupid and Psyche_, or, _The Golden Ass_ (Chettle, Day, and
Dekker).
_Damon and Pythias_ (Chettle).
_Strange News out of Poland_ (Haughton and Pett).
_1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_ (Chettle and Day).
_1 Fair Constance of Rome_ (Dekker, Drayton, Hathway, Munday,
and Wilson).
It is possible to verify the actual performance of _Page of Plymouth_
(September), _1 Sir John Oldcastle_ (November),[486] Fortunatus
(December), _The Gentle Craft_ (January), _Thomas Merry_ (January),
_Patient Grissell_ (January), _2 Sir John Oldcastle_ (March), _The
Seven Wise Masters_ (March), _Ferrex and Porrex_ (May), _Damon and
Pythias_ (May), _Strange News out of Poland_ (May), _Cupid and
Psyche_ (June). _Sir John Oldcastle_ must of course be regarded as
a counterblast to the _Henry IV_ plays of the Chamberlain’s men,
in which the character of Falstaff originally bore the name of the
Lollard hero. One infers that it had a considerable success, for the
company gave 10s. for ‘Mr. Mundaye and the reste of the poets at the
playnge of Sr John Oldcastell the ferste tyme’, and Henslowe notes
in the margin that this was ‘as a gefte’. It is with some hesitation
that I have included _Fortunatus_ in the list of new plays, because
it is impossible to suppose that it was not based upon the earlier
_Fortunatus_, already an old play in 1596, of the properties of which
the Admiral’s men certainly retained possession. But Dekker was paid on
the scale of a new play, for he got a full £6 in the course of November
for the book, together with an additional £1 ‘for the altrenge of the
boocke’ and £2 a fortnight later ‘for the eande of Fortewnatus for the
corte’. I take it that this was the Court play of 27 December. That of
1 January was another of Dekker’s, _The Gentle Craft_, also called _The
Shoemaker’s Holiday_, which was published in the year ‘1600’ as played
before the Queen ‘on New Year’s Day at night last’ by the Admiral’s
men. _Fortunatus_, _1 Sir John Oldcastle_,[486] _Patient Grissell_,
and _1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_ have also been preserved, while
the publication, also in the course of the twelve months ending on 24
March 1601, of _Look About You_ as an Admiral’s play must surely render
plausible the hypothesis, rejected by Dr. Greg, of its identity with
_Bear a Brain_. It would seem that _Thomas Merry_ furnishes one of the
two parallel plots of Robert Yarington’s _Two Lamentable Tragedies_,
and a notice by Simon Forman suggests that _Cox of Collumpton_ was
ultimately finished.[487] An outline of the opening scenes of _2 Henry
Richmond_ is among the Dulwich papers.[488] Publication was a form of
popularity which the actors were apt to resent. The Admiral’s men spent
£2 on 18 March 1600 ‘to geue vnto the printer to staye the printing
of Patient Gresell’. This did not prevent the play being entered on
the Stationers’ Register on 28 March, but does perhaps explain why the
earliest known edition is dated 1603. The unfinished plays of 1599–1600
were _The Poor Man’s Paradise_ (Haughton), _The Orphans’ Tragedy_
(Chettle),[489] an unnamed Italian tragedy by Day, _The Arcadian
Virgin_ (Chettle and Haughton), _Owen Tudor_ (Drayton, Hathway, Munday,
and Wilson), _Truth’s Supplication to Candlelight_ (Dekker),[490] _The
Spanish Moor’s Tragedy_ (Day, Dekker, and Haughton),[491] _The English
Fugitives_ (Haughton), _The Devil and his Dame_ (Haughton),[492] _The
Wooing of Death_ (Chettle), _Judas_ (Haughton),[493] _2 Fair Constance
of Rome_ (Hathway), and an unnamed play by Chettle and Day.[494] Except
in so far as _Fortunatus_ was an old play, I find no trace of a revival
during 1599–1600, but it may be assumed that some of the productions of
the last two years still held the boards.
The year 1600 was another turning-point in the history of the company.
Probably at some date between 14 August, when the first entry in a
fresh account was made, and 28 October, when Pembroke’s men were in
occupation of the Rose, they crossed the river, and took up their
quarters at Alleyn’s recently built Fortune, on the north-west boundary
of the City. A more important event still was the return of Alleyn
himself to the stage, from which he had been absent for three years.
It is suggested in the Privy Council letter of 8 April 1600 to the
Middlesex justices in favour of the Fortune project, that this step
was determined by the personal wish of the Queen to see the great
actor at Court with his fellows again.[495] It is not quite clear on
what terms he rejoined the company. There was a ‘composicion’ or
agreement, in connexion with which a payment of £4 was made to him
on 11 November. The next entry, which is undated, runs, ‘P^d vnto my
sonne Alleyn for the firste weckes playe the xj parte of xvij^{ll} ix^s
which came to therti & ij shellinges’. There are no further entries
of the same kind until the date of a reckoning in February 1602, when
Henslowe paid Alleyn 27_s._ 6_d._ ‘dew to my sone out of the gallery
money’. Probably this was a share of some small residue, the origin of
which cannot now be traced. The earlier payment suggests that Alleyn
received one full share of the actors’ takings, for, if I am right in
supposing that the brothers Jeffes only held half a share each, there
would have been just ten sharers besides himself. Or possibly his share
may have been limited to the actors’ moiety of the gallery takings,
and the outgoings may all have been charged to the receipts from the
yard. Certainly Alleyn does not seem to have had any responsibility for
these outgoings. His name is never put with those of other sharers to
Henslowe’s periodical reckonings, and if his play-books were used, they
were bought from him. On the other hand, he sometimes, although not so
often as some of his fellows, ‘appointed’ payments, and he received the
Court money for the company, alike in 1601, 1602, and 1603. That his
share did not pass through Henslowe’s hands after the date of the first
instalment is perhaps explained by the assumption that, as the owner
and joint occupier with Henslowe of the Fortune, the appointment of a
‘gatherer’ for the gallery money may naturally have fallen to him.
Some such change in the financial arrangements may also account for the
fact that, while Henslowe’s record of advances continues on the same
lines as that for 1597–1600, the notes of weekly repayments are now
discontinued. As a result it is no longer possible to determine with
any exactness the length of the theatrical seasons, since, naturally
enough, the outgoings did not altogether stop while the house was
closed. Their course, however, suggests intervals in February and March
1601, February to April 1602, August 1602 and January and February
1603. It is possible, although not very likely, that there was no
cessation of playing during the summer of 1601. I find no evidence of
further provincial travels before the end of the reign. These were, I
think, years of prosperity. The players still required small personal
advances from time to time, and Thomas Towne was reduced to pawning
a pair of stockings on 13 March 1602.[496] But it is noticeable that
about the previous June Henslowe opened an account under the heading,
‘Begininge to receue of thes meane ther privet deates which they owe
vnto me’, and was able to enter in it a series of repayments by Jones,
Downton, Bird, and Shaw.[497] Bird, however, still owed £10 10_s._
on 12 March 1602, and Henslowe noted, ‘He is cleere of all debtes &
demaundes except theis debtes and such stocke & covenentes as I maie
clayme & challendge of him by reason of his coniunction with the
companie’.[498] Whether the playwrights reaped any benefit may be
doubted. The tendency to a rise of prices which showed itself in 1599
was hardly maintained. Some of them were still impecunious enough.
The company had, on more than one occasion to redeem a play which the
unfortunate Chettle had pawned with one Bromfield, a mercer; and in
March 1602 he seems to have followed Porter’s example and put his hand,
for a consideration of £3, to an instrument binding him to write for
them alone.[499] There were some legal troubles in the course of 1601.
A sum of £21 10_s._ had to be paid on a bond to a Mr. Treheren during
March, and in August there were fees to a jury and a clerk of assizes.
The company had also to find 10_s._ in May ‘to geatte the boye into
the ospetalle which was hurt at the Fortewne’.[500] Information as to
the composition of the company at some time between Alleyn’s return
and February 1602 is given by the ‘plot’ of _The Battle of Alcazar_,
although, as this is mutilated, it must not be treated as negative
evidence, and in particular the names of W. Borne and John Singer are
missing.[501] All the other sharers, however, are found in it--‘Mr. Ed.
Allen, Mr. Doughton, Mr. Juby, Mr. Shaa, Mr. Jones, Mr. Towne, Antony
Jeffes, H. Jeffes, Mr. Charles [Massey], and Mr. Sam [Rowley]’. There
are also Mr. Rich. Allen and Mr. Hunt, who were not sharers, but whose
long service had apparently earned them the dignity of the ‘Mr.’, W.
Kendall, Jeames, who was possibly Henslowe’s apprentice James Bristow
and possibly Jones’s boy of the same name, and Dob, who was probably
the Dobe of the 1598 inventory. The remaining names, all of which
are new, are those of W. Cartwright, who, however, had witnessed a
loan for Henslowe as far back as 21 April 1598,[502] Dick Jubie, Ro.
Tailor, George Somerset, Tho. Drum, [Thomas] Parsons, Harry, and the
‘boys’ of Mr. Allen and Mr. Towne. The only important woman’s part,
that of Callipolis, is assigned by the ‘plot’ to Pisano, which does
not look like an actor’s name and may be a mistake. The services of
Bristow were evidently leased out by Henslowe to the company or some
one of its members, at a rate of 3_s._ a week. Antony Jeffes paid two
weeks’ arrears ‘for my boyes Jeames wages’ in August 1600, and Henslowe
charged the company £6 10_s._ on the same account in the following
February.[503] Another boy attached to the company about the same time
must have been ‘Nick’, for whom hose ‘to tumbell in be fore the quen’
were bought on 25 December 1601. Hugh Davis, for the mending of whose
tawny coat ‘which was eatten with the rattes’ 6_s._ 7_d._ was paid
in November 1601, was perhaps a hired man. A list of the responsible
members of the company is attached by Henslowe to a reckoning cast
between 7 and 23 February 1602. They were then ‘John Singer, Thomas
Downton, William Byrd, Edward Juby, Thomas Towne, Humphrey Jeffs,
Anthony Jeffs, Samuel Rowley, and Charles Massy’.[504] A note is added
that £50 had been advanced ‘to geve vnto Mr. Jonnes & Mr. Shaw at
ther goinge a waye’. This departure must have been quite recent. Shaw
had been agent for the company on the previous 21 January, and the
list of continuing members is in fact in his handwriting. The last
instalment of Jones’s private debt had been paid off on 1 November.
His three years’ agreement with Henslowe had expired at Michaelmas
1600. Richard Alleyn must have died in September 1602, for on the
19th of that month his widow borrowed £5 10_s._ to take her mantle
and sheet and face-cloth out of pawn.[505] Neither Shaw nor Jones nor
Richard Alleyn is in the plot of _1 Tamar Cham_, which may reasonably
be assigned to a date in the vicinity of the purchase of the book from
Alleyn on 2 October 1602. This is of interest, partly because it is
complete, and partly because there was a procession in the play, and
the number of supernumeraries required must have tried the resources
of the establishment to their utmost. All the principal members of the
company appeared--‘Mr. Allen, Mr. Denygten, Mr. Boorne, Mr. Towne, Mr.
Singer, Mr. Jubie, H. Jeffs, A. Jeffs, Mr. Charles [Massey], and Mr.
Sam [Rowley]’; and in addition Dick Jubie, W. Cart[wright], George
[Somerset], Tho. Parsons, and Jeames [Bristow], who were in _The Battle
of Alcazar_, and W. Parr, Tho. Marbeck, Jack Grigorie, Gedion, Gibbs,
Tho. Rowley, Rester, ‘old Browne’, Ned Browne, ‘the red fast fellow’
and several boys, described, perhaps in some cases twice over, as
Jack Jones, ‘little Will’, ‘little Will Barne’, who do not seem to be
identical, ‘Gils his boy’, ‘Mr. Denyghtens little boy’, perhaps the
same already recorded in 1600, and ‘the other little boy’. ‘Old Browne’
can hardly be Robert Browne, who seems to have been in Germany; but
Ned Browne may be the Edward Browne who, like Robert, was a member of
Worcester’s company in 1583. Little is added by the only other extant
‘plot’, the fragmentary one of _2 Fortune’s Tennis_. This is difficult
to date, but it must be later than Dekker’s _1 Fortune’s Tennis_ of
September 1600, and may not improbably be Munday’s _Set at Tennis_
of December 1602. The few names which it contains--Mr. Singer, Sam,
Charles, Geo[rge Somerset], R. Tailor, W. Cartwright, Pavy--suggest
proximity to _The Battle of Alcazar_ and _1 Tamar Cham_. The only
fresh one is that of Pavy, who may or may not be connected with the
Salathiel Pavy of Ben Jonson’s epitaph. Both _1 Tamar Cham_ and _2
Fortune’s Tennis_ must be earlier than January 1603, a month which
saw the retirement of the old Queen’s man, John Singer. So at least
may be inferred from the fact that he makes no further appearance in
the diary after 13 January, when he received £5 ‘for his play called
Syngers Vallentarey’. I take ‘vallentarey’ to mean ‘valediction’. His
name is absent from the next list of the company, which belongs to
1604. He probably left to become an ordinary Groom of the Chamber in
the royal household, a post which he is found occupying at the time of
Elizabeth’s funeral.[506]
The succession of new plays was not quite so rapid during 1600–3 as
in previous periods. I can only trace thirty-one in all, as against
fifty-five in 1594–7 and sixty-two in 1599–1600. It may well have
been the case that Alleyn, who had ‘created’ parts in the ’eighties
and early ’nineties, had a tendency towards revivals. For 1600–1 the
company bought only seven new books. These were:
_1 Fortune’s Tennis_ (Dekker).
_Hannibal and Scipio_ (Hathway and Rankins).
_Scogan and Skelton_ (Hathway and Rankins).
_All is not Gold that Glisters_ (Chettle).
_2 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_ (Day and Haughton).
_The Six Yeomen of the West_ (Day and Haughton).
_King Sebastian of Portugal_ (Chettle and Dekker).
None of these plays is extant, but the purchase of properties testifies
to the performance of _2 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_ in April
and _The Six Yeomen of the West_ in July. Moreover, Day received a
bonus of 10_s._ between 27 April and 2 May ‘after the playinge of’
the former piece. Only £1 was paid for _1 Fortune’s Tennis_, but the
existence of a ‘plot’ for _2 Fortune’s Tennis_ suggests that it must
have been completed. Probably it was a short topical overture designed
to celebrate the opening of the Fortune.[507] Unfinished plays were
_Robin Hood’s Pennyworths_ (Haughton)[508] and _The Conquest of
Spain by John of Gaunt_ (Hathway and Rankins). The revivals included
_Phaethon_ (January), _The Blind Beggar of Alexandria_ (May), and _The
Jew of Malta_ (May). Dekker had £2 for ‘alterynge of’ _Phaethon_ for
the Court, and this was therefore the Admiral’s play of 6 January 1601.
They also appeared on 28 December and 2 February. _Dr. Faustus_ was
entered on 7 January; the earliest print (1604) bears their name. The
new books of 1601–2 were fourteen in number, as follows:[509]
_The Conquest of the West Indies_ (Day, Haughton, and Smith).
_3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_ (Day and Haughton).
_The Life of Cardinal Wolsey_ (Chettle).[510]
_1 The Six Clothiers_ (Hathway, Haughton, and Smith).
_The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey_ (Chettle, Drayton, Munday, and
Smith).
_Friar Rush and the Proud Woman of Antwerp_ (Chettle, Day, and
Haughton).
_Judas_ (Bird and Rowley).[511]
_Too Good to be True_ (Chettle, Hathway, and Smith).
_Malcolm King of Scots_ (Massey).
_Love Parts Friendship_ (Chettle and Smith).
_Jephthah_ (Dekker and Munday).
_Tobias_ (Chettle).
_The Bristol Tragedy_ (Day).
_Caesar’s Fall_, or, _The Two Shapes_ (Dekker, Drayton,
Middleton, Munday, and Webster).
At least ten of these appear to have been played: _2 Cardinal Wolsey_
(August), _3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_ (September), _Judas_
(January), _The Conquest of the West Indies_ (January), _Malcolm
King of Scots_ (April), _Love Parts Friendship_ (May), _1 Cardinal
Wolsey_ (June), _Jephthah_ (July), and at uncertain dates, _Tobias_
and probably _The Bristol Tragedy_.[512] None is now extant. The
unfinished plays were _The Humorous Earl of Gloucester with his
Conquest of Portugal_ (Wadeson), _2 Tom Dough_[513] (Day and Haughton),
_The Orphan’s Tragedy_ (Chettle),[514] _2 The Six Clothiers_ (Hathway,
Haughton, and Smith),[515] _The Spanish Fig_ (Anon.),[516] _Richard
Crookback_ (Jonson),[517] _A Danish Tragedy_ (Chettle),[518] and _A
Medicine for a Curst Wife_ (Dekker).[519] There was considerable
activity of revival during the year. Six old plays belonging to the
1594–7 repertory, for some of which the company already held the
properties,[520] were bought from Alleyn at £2 each, _Mahomet_ in
August, _The Wise Man of West Chester_ in September, _Vortigern_
in November, and _The French Doctor_, _The Massacre at Paris_, and
_Crack Me this Nut_ in January. The first and the last three of these
certainly were played, and the revival of _The Massacre at Paris_
appears to have caused annoyance to Henri IV.[521] In addition,
properties were bought for one of the _Hercules_ plays in December,
Dekker got 10_s._ for a prologue and epilogue to _Pontius Pilate_[522]
in January, and Jonson wrote additions to _The Spanish Tragedy_,
possibly those now extant, in September, although it may be doubted
whether the further additions contemplated in the following June were
ever made. There is nothing to show what was selected, other than
Nick’s tumbling, for the Admiral’s only Court play of 1601–2, which
took place on 27 December.
The season of 1602–3 was, of course, shortened by the death of
Elizabeth and the outbreak of plague. The new plays numbered nine. They
were:
_Samson_ (Anon.).
_Felmelanco_ (Chettle and Robinson).
_Joshua_ (Rowley).
_Randal Earl of Chester_ (Middleton).
_Merry as May Be_ (Day, Hathway, and Smith).
_The Set at Tennis_ (Munday).
_1 The London Florentine_ (Chettle and Heywood).
_Singer’s Voluntary_ (Singer).
_The Boss of Billingsgate_ (Day, Hathway, and another).[523]
It must be added that in September properties were bought for a ‘new
playe’ called _The Earl of Hertford_, which it seems impossible to
identify with any of the pieces bought. This looks like one of the rare
cases in which payment did not pass through Henslowe’s hands. This and
_Samson_ are the only new plays of the year, the actual performance
of which can be verified; and none of these plays is extant.[524] I
suspect, however, that Munday’s _Set at Tennis_ is the _2 Fortune’s
Tennis_ of which a ‘plot’ survives. The payment, of only £3, was ‘in
full’, and it may, like _1 Fortune’s Tennis_, have been a short piece
of some exceptional character, motived by the name of the theatre in
which it was presented. Unfinished plays at the end of the season were
_The Widow’s Charm_ (Munday or Wadeson),[525] _William Cartwright_
(Haughton), _Hoffman_ (Chettle),[526] _2 London Florentine_ (Chettle
and Heywood), _The Siege of Dunkirk and Alleyn the Pirate_ (Massey).
The revival of old plays continued. Costumes for _Vortigern_, one of
those bought from Alleyn in the previous year, were in preparation
during September, and Alleyn’s stock yielded three more, _Philip of
Spain_ and _Longshanks_ in August and _Tamar Cham_, probably the second
part, as the extant ‘plot’ testifies, in October. The last two of
these belonged to the Admiral’s repertory of 1594–7, but the origin of
_Philip of Spain_ is unknown. A book of _The Four Sons of Aymon_, for
which £2 was paid to Robert Shaw, was probably also old, and was bought
on condition that Shaw should repay the £2, unless the play was used by
the Admiral’s or some other company with his consent by Christmas 1604.
Bird and Rowley had £4 in September for additions to _Dr. Faustus_.
Dekker completed some alterations of _Tasso’s Melancholy_, another
1594–7 play, in December, and in the same month Middleton wrote ‘for
the corte’ a prologue and epilogue to Greene’s _Friar Bacon and Friar
Bungay_, which I should suppose to have been Henslowe’s property, as
it was played by Strange’s men in 1592–3 and the Queen’s and Sussex’s
in 1594. This probably served for the first of the three appearances
made by the Admiral’s at Court, on 27 December. The other two were on
6 March and on a date unspecified. For one of these occasions Chettle
was writing a prologue and epilogue at the end of December, but the
play is not named.[527] One of the new plays, _Merry as May Be_, was
intended for Court, when the first payment on account of it was made on
9 November.
On 12 March 1603 Henslowe practically closes the detailed record
which he had kept continuously in his diary since October 1597 of
his financial transactions, otherwise than by way of rent, with the
Admiral’s men. A brief review of these is not without interest.[528]
His advances from 21 October 1597 to 8 March 1598 amounted to £46
7_s._ 3_d._, and to this he took the signatures of the company, with
the note, ‘Thes men dothe aknowlege this deat to be dewe by them by
seatynge of ther handes to yette’. By 28 July a further amount of £120
15_s._ 4_d._ had been incurred, making a total of £166 17_s._ 7_d._ for
1597–8.[529] During the same period he entered weekly receipts from the
company to a total of £125. These must have gone to an old debt, for
he did not balance them with the payments for the year, but carried on
the whole debit of £166 17_s._ 7_d._ to 1598–9. Apparently, however, he
was not satisfied with the way in which expenditure was outstripping
income, for he headed a new receipts account, ‘Here I begyne to receue
the wholle gallereys frome this daye beinge the 29 of July 1598’, and
the weekly entries become about double what they were during 1597–8.
On the other hand, there is also a considerable increase in the rate
of expenditure. It is an ingenious and, I think, sound conjecture of
Dr. Greg’s, that throughout 1594–1603 Henslowe was taking half the
gallery money for rent, and that, at different times, he also took
either the other half, or another quarter only, to recoup himself for
his advances.[530] The outgoings entered during 1598–9 reach £435 7_s._
4_d._, but some items for March and April 1599 are probably missing,
owing to a mutilation of the manuscript.[531] The receipts for the same
period were £358 3_s._ On 13 October 1599, about a fortnight after
the beginning of the 1599–1600 season, a balance was struck. Henslowe
credited the company with the £358 received from the gallery money, and
debited them with £632 advanced by him. This includes £166 17_s._ 7_d._
for 1597–8, £435 7_s._ 4_d._ for 1598–9, and £29 15_s._ 1_d._, which
may reasonably be taken as the sum of the missing entries for March and
April 1599. The balance of £274 remained as a debt from the company.
They did not, however, set their hands to a reckoning until the end of
the next year, on 10 July 1600. During 1599–1600 a fresh account had
been running, on which Henslowe’s receipts were £202 10_s._ and his
payments £222 5_s._ 6_d._ At the reckoning the company’s indebtedness
is calculated at £300, and is admitted by the formula, ‘which some
of three hundred powndes we whose names are here vnder written doe
acknowledge our dewe debt & doe promyse payment’. To this their
signatures are appended. There is, however, an unexplained discrepancy
of £6 4_s._ 6_d._, as the old debt of £274 and the 1599–1600 debit
balance of £19 15_s._ 6_d._ only make up £293 15_s._ 6_d._
From 1600 onwards there are no records of receipts. A continuous
account of payments is kept up to 7 February 1602. The total amounts to
£304 10_s._ 4_d._, but Henslowe sums it in error as £308 6_s._ 4_d._,
and notes, ‘Frome ther handes to this place is 308^{ll}-06^s-04^d dewe
vnto me & with the three hundred of owld is £608-06-04^d’. He then
adds the £50 paid to Jones and Shaw on retirement, ‘which is not in
this recknynge’. Above this summary comes a list of names, said by Dr.
Greg to be in Shaw’s hand, of those sharers who were continuing in the
company, headed by the figures ‘211. 9. 0.’ I think the interpretation
is that £386 17_s._ 4_d._ of the £608 6_s._ 4_d._ was paid out of
gallery money or other sources, leaving £211 9_s._, together with the
£50 for Jones and Shaw, chargeable on the company. This is borne out
by the remnant of the accounts, which is headed, ‘Begininge with a new
recknyng with my lord of Notingames men the 23 daye of Febreary 1601
as foloweth’. The expenditure on this new reckoning up to 12 March
1603 was, as calculated by Henslowe, £188 11_s._ 6_d._, and he adds
to this total a sum of £211 9_s._ ‘vpon band’, being evidently the
residue of the debt as it stood at the close of the old reckoning, and
makes a total of £400 0_s._ 6_d._ This, with the £50 for Jones and
Shaw, was no doubt what the company owed when the detailed account in
the diary closed. There was, however, an unstated amount of gallery
receipts during 1602–3 to set against it; and in fact a retrospect
of the whole series of figures shows that there would have been a
pretty fair equivalence of gallery money and advances throughout, but
for the exceptionally heavy expenditure of 1598–9, £465 2_s._ 5_d._
in all, which left the company saddled with an obligation which they
never quite overtook. This expenditure was more than half the total
expenditure of £854 5_s._ 6_d._ for the _triennium_ 1597–1600, and
nearly as much as the whole expenditure of £493 1_s._ 10_d._ for the
_triennium_ 1600–3, during which it may be suspected that the business
capacities of Alleyn brought about considerable economies.
The accounts may be looked at from another point of view. If the
unanalysable sum of £29 15_s._ 1_d._ for the missing items of March
and April 1599 be neglected, there was a total expenditure for the six
years of £1,317 11_s._ 3_d._ Of this £652 13_s._ 8_d._, being about
half, went in payments in respect of play-books; £561 1_s._ 1_d._
for properties and apparel; and £103 16_s._ 6_d._ in miscellaneous
outgoings, such as licensing fees, legal charges, musical instruments,
travelling expenses, merry-makings and the like. Thus, if the company
supped together at Mr. Mason’s of the Queen’s Head, or met to read a
‘book’ at the Sun in New Fish Street, Henslowe would put his hand into
his pocket to pay the score, and would not forget afterwards to debit
the company with the amount in his diary.[532] It must, of course, be
borne in mind that only part of this miscellaneous expenditure was
incurred through Henslowe. He certainly did not, for example, pay all
the fees for the licensing of new plays by the Master of the Revels.
And of course there were many matters, in particular the wages of hired
actors and servitors, for which the company had regularly to find funds
in other ways. It is probable that only play-books, properties, and
apparel were normally charged to his account, although the convenience
of an occasional extension of his functions can readily be understood.
Dr. Greg may be right in thinking that his position as agent for the
company in its purchases was a natural development of his pawnbroking
business.[533] But during the period under review he did not, as a
rule, supply them with goods himself. A sale of ‘A shorte velluett
clocke wraght with bugell & a gearcken of velluet layd with brade coper
sylver lace’ for £4 on 28 November 1598 was exceptional. Usually the
payments are to tradesmen, to the mercers Stone, Richard Heath, and
Robert Bromfield, to ‘him at the Eagell and Chylld’ for armour, to
Mrs. Gosson for head-tires, and for wigs to one Father Ogle, who is
mentioned also in the Revels Accounts and in the play of _Sir Thomas
More_. Sometimes ready-made garments, new or second-hand, were bought.
A doublet and hose of sea-water green satin cost £3 and a doublet and
‘venesyons’ of cloth of silver wrought with red silk £4 10_s._ But
often stuffs were obtained in piece and made up by tailors, of whom the
company employed two, Dover and Radford, the latter known, for the sake
of distinction, as ‘the little tailor’. These and William White, who
made the crowns, probably worked at the theatre, in the tiring-house.
The company gave 6_s._ a yard for russet broadcloth and the same for
murrey satin, 12_s._ for other satins, 12_s._ 6_d._ for taffeties,
and no less than £1 for ‘ij pylle velluet of carnardyn’. Laces cost
1_d._ each; copper lace anything from 4_s._ a pound to 1_s._ 2_d._ an
ounce. Of this they used quantities, and in the summer of 1601 they
had run up a considerable ‘old debt’ to the copper lace-man, as well
as another to Heath the mercer, which had to be paid off by degrees.
The more expensive garments, such as a rich cloak bought of Langley
for £19, were, of course, an investment on the part of the company,
and were worn in their time by many sharers and hired men in different
parts. But the principal actors had also, as Alleyn’s inventory shows,
their private wardrobes. Henslowe was prepared to furnish these on the
instalment system. Thus Richard Jones bought in 1594 ‘a manes gowne
of pechecoler in grayne’ for £3 payable in weekly sums of 5_s._, and
Thomas Towne in 1598 ‘a blacke clothe clocke layd with sylke lace’ for
26_s._ 8_d._ at 1_s._ weekly. It was as hard to keep these glories
as to procure them. On one occasion the company came to the rescue
and lent Thomas Downton £12 10_s._, to fetch out of pawn two cloaks,
‘which they exsepted into the stock’. The one was ‘ashecolerd velluet
embradered with gowld’, the other ‘a longe black velluet clocke layd
with sylke lace’.[534]
The termination of the record of advances after 12 March 1603 indicates
an interruption of performances, probably due to the increasing illness
of Elizabeth, who died on the following 24 March. Thereafter there
are only a few winding-up entries in the diary. The company must have
immediately begun to travel under the leadership of Thomas Downton, who
in the course of 1602–3 received a gift for them from the Corporation
of Canterbury, ‘because it was thought fitt they should not play at
all, in regard that our late Queene was then very sicke or dead as
they supposed’. London playing, if resumed at all, must have very
soon been stopped again by the plague. There was some further small
expenditure, of which the details are not given, before Henslowe noted
that, in addition to the bond for £211 9_s._, ‘Ther reasteth dew vnto
me to this daye beinge the v daye of Maye 1603 when we leafte of playe
now at the Kynges cominge all recknynges abated the some of a hundred
fowerscore & sevntenepowndes & thirteneshellynges & fowerpence I saye
dew--£197 13_s._ 4_d._ the fyftye powndes which Jonnes & Shawe had at
ther goinge a way not reconed’. The company travelled again during the
plague, being traceable as the Admiral’s men in 1602–3 at Bath and York
and on 18 August 1603 at Leicester, and as the Earl of Nottingham’s in
1602–3 at Coventry. The tour was over by 21 October, on which date Joan
Alleyn wrote to her husband at the house of Mr. Chaloner in Sussex,
telling him amongst other things that ‘all of your owne company ar
well at theyr owne houses’, that all the other companies had returned,
that ‘Nicke and Jeames be well’, and that ‘Browne of the Boares head’
had not gone into the country at all, and was now dead, ‘& dyed very
pore’. This might be either Edward Browne, or the ‘old Browne’ who
appeared with him in _1 Tamar Cham_ in the previous autumn. In any
case, it is clear from the reference to him that he was not a regular
member of Alleyn’s company. ‘Jeames’ is no doubt James Bristow, who, as
Henslowe’s apprentice, would be likely to form part of his household;
and ‘Nicke’, who seems to have been in the same position, may be
supposed to be the Nick who tumbled before the Queen at Christmas 1601.
The Jacobean records of the company seem meagre in the absence of
Henslowe’s detailed register of proceedings. About Christmas 1603 they
were taken into the service of Prince Henry, and are hereafter known
as the Prince’s players.[535] They are entered amongst other ‘Officers
to the Prince’ as receiving four and a half yards of red cloth apiece
as liveries for the coronation procession on 15 March 1604, and
their names are given as ‘Edward Allen, William Bird, Thomas Towne,
Thomas Dowton, Samuell Rowley, Edward Jubie, Humfry Jeffes, Charles
Massey, and Anthony Jeffes’.[536] Alleyn, even if not a ‘sharer’,
was therefore a member of the company in its official capacity. He
is also named as the Prince’s servant, both in the printed account
of the entertainment at which, dressed as a Genius, he delivered a
speech, and in Stowe’s description of a bear-baiting which formed part
of the festivities.[537] It may, however, be inferred that he took an
early opportunity of leaving a profession to which he had only been
recalled by the personal whim of the late Queen.[538] He was joint
payee with Juby in the warrant of 19 February, but Juby’s name stands
alone in another of 17 April and in those of all subsequent years up
to 1615. And when the company received a formal licence by patent on
30 April 1606, Alleyn’s name was omitted, and does not appear in any
further list of its members. It is true that as late as 11 May 1611 he
is still described in a formal document as the Prince’s servant, but
he may have held some other appointment, actual or honorific, in the
household.[539] A note of his resources about 1605, however, includes
‘my share of aparell, £100’.[540] And he certainly remained interested
in the company. They were his tenants at the Fortune, although an
unexecuted draft of a lease to Thomas Downton dated in 1608 suggests
that he may have taken steps to transfer the whole or a share of his
direct interest to them. Under this lease Downton was to receive during
thirteen years a thirty-second part of the daily profits accruing to
Henslowe and Alleyn, and in return to pay £27 10_s._, a rent of 10_s._
annually and his proportionate share of repairs, and to bind himself
to play in the house and not elsewhere without consent.[541] On 11
April 1612 Robert Browne is found writing to Alleyn on behalf of one
Mr. Rose, lately ‘entertayned amongst the princes men’, to request
his interest as one ‘who he knowes can strike a greter stroke amongst
them then this’ to procure him a ‘gathering place’ for his wife.[542]
Another letter from Bird to Alleyn, also about a gatherer, is amusing
enough to quote in full. It is undated.
‘Sir there is one Jhon Russell, that by yowr apoyntment was made
a gatherer w^{th} vs, but my fellowes finding often falce to vs,
haue many tymes warnd him ffrom taking the box. And he as often,
with moste damnable othes, hath vowde neuer to touch, yet not
with standing his execrable othes, he hath taken the box, & many
tymes moste vnconsionablye gathered, for which we haue resolued
he shall neuer more come to the doore; yet for your sake, he
shall haue his wages, to be a nessessary atendaunt on the stage,
and if he will pleasure himself and vs, to mend our garmentes,
when he hath leysure, weele pay him for that to. I pray send vs
word if this motion will satisfie you; for him his dishonestye
is such we knowe it will not, Thus yealding our selues in that
& a farr greater matter to be comaunded by you I committ you to
god. Your loving ffrend to comaunde. W Birde.’[543]
With the exception of Alleyn, all the players of the 1604 list and no
others appear in the patent of 1606, the text of which follows:[544]
[Sidenote: De concessione licenciae pro Thoma Downton et aliis.]
Iames by the grace of God &c. To all Iustices, Maiors,
Sheriffes, bailiffes, Constables, headboroughes and other our
officers and loving subiectes greeting. Knowe ye that wee of
our especiall grace, certaine knowledge, and meere mocion haue
licenced and auctorized, and by theis presentes doe licence
and auctorize Thomas Downton, Thomas Towne, William Byrde,
Edwarde Iuby, Samuell Rowle, Humfrey Ieffes, Charles Massey, and
Anthonie Ieffes, Servauntes to our dearest sonne the Prince, and
the rest of theire Associates to vse and exercise the arte and
facultie of playing Commedies, Tragedies, Histories, Enterludes,
Moralls, Pastoralls, Stageplayes, and such other like as they
haue alreadie studied or hereafter shall vse or studie, aswell
for the recreacion of our loving subiectes, as for our solace
and pleasure when wee shall thincke good to see them, during
our pleasure, And the said Commedies, Tragedies, histories,
Enterludes, Moralls, pastoralls, stageplaies, and suche like
to shewe and exercise publiquelie to their best Commoditie,
aswell within theire nowe vsuall house called the Fortune within
our Countie of Middlesex, as alsoe within anie Towne halls or
Moutehalls or other convenient places within the libertie and
ffredome of anie other Cittie, vniversitie, Towne, or Boroughe
whatsoever, within our Realmes and Domynions, willing and
Commaunding you and everie of you, as you tender our pleasure,
not onelie to permitt and suffer them herein without anie your
lettes, hindraunces, or molestacions during our saide pleasure,
but alsoe to be aiding and assisting vnto them yf anie wrong be
to them offered, And to allowe them such former curtesies as
hath been given to men of theire place and quallitie, And alsoe
what further favour you shall shewe vnto them for our sake wee
shall take kindelie at your handes. Prouided alwaies, and our
will and pleasure ys, that all auctoritie, power, priuiledges,
and profittes whatsoever belonging and properlie appertaining
to the Maister of our Revells in respecte of his office, and
everie Clause, article, or graunte conteined within the letteres
patentes or Commission, which haue heretofore been graunted
or directed by the late Queene Elizabeth our deere Sister, or
by our selves, to our welbeloued servantes Edmonde Tilney,
Maister of the office of our said Revells, or to Sir George
Bucke knighte, or to either of them in possession or reversion,
shall be remayne and abide entire, and in full force estate and
vertue, and in as ample sorte as yf this our Commission had
never been made. In witnesse whereof etc. Witnesse our selfe at
Westminster the Thirtith daie of Aprill.
per breve de priuato sigillo.
Between 1606 and 1610 it seems to have been thought desirable to
strengthen the composition of the company by the introduction of
new blood. A list of ‘Comedyanes and Playores’, included in the
establishment book drawn up when Henry formed his own Household as
Prince of Wales in 1610, contains six names in addition to the eight of
the patent.[545] They are ‘Edward Colbrande, Wm. Parre, Rychard Pryore,
William Stratford, Frauncys Grace, and John Shanke’. Of these William
Parr, who is in the plot of _1 Tamar Cham_ in 1602, is alone traceable
in the earlier records of the company. Shank had been of Pembroke’s and
Queen Elizabeth’s men.
Henslowe entered two more advances in his diary, one for ‘facynge
of a blacke grogren clocke with taffytye’, the other to Dekker and
Middleton in earnest of _The Patient Man and the Honest Whore_. This
was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 9 November 1604, and printed
as _The Honest Whore_ during the year. The name of Towne is in a
stage-direction. On 14 March ‘1604’, which may have been either 1604
or 1605, Henslowe had a final reckoning with the company and noted
‘Caste vp all the acowntes frome the begininge of the world vntell this
daye beinge the 14 daye of Marche 1604 by Thomas Dowghton & Edward
Jube for the company of the prynces men & I Phillipe Henslow so ther
reasteth dew vnto me P Henslow the some of xxiiij^{li} all reconynges
consernynge the company in stocke generall descarged & my sealfe
descarged to them of al deates’.[546] With this, so far as the extant
book goes, the record of his transactions with the company practically
ceases. The only exception is a note of receipts at the Fortune during
the three days next after Christmas in 1608, which amounted to 25_s._,
45_s._, and 44_s._ 9_d._ respectively.[547] Something of the career
of the Prince’s men may be gleaned from other sources. They played at
Court before James on 21 January and 20 February 1604, and before Henry
on 4, 15, and 22 January; and during the following Christmas before
Anne on 23 November 1604 and before Henry on 24 November, 14 and 19
December, and on 15 and 22 January and 5 and 19 February 1605. On 8
February 1605 their play of _Richard Whittington_, of which nothing
further is known, was entered on the Stationers’ Register.[548] In the
same year Samuel Rowley’s _When You See Me, You Know Me_, was printed
as played by them. During the Christmas of 1605–6 they gave three
plays before James and three before Henry.[549] In 1604–5 they were at
Maidstone and Winchester, in 1605–6 at Bath, on 17 July 1606 at Oxford,
and on 17 October at Ipswich. During the Christmas of 1606–7 they
gave six plays before James. Dekker’s _Whore of Babylon_ was entered
on the Stationers’ Register on 20 April 1607 and printed as theirs in
the same year. In 1606–7 they were at Bath. During the Christmas of
1607–8 they gave four plays before James and Henry. In 1607–8 they
were at Maidstone and Saffron Walden, and on 1 October 1608 they were
at Leicester; but a visit of the same year from ‘the Princes players
of the White Chapple, London’ is rather to be assigned to the Duke of
York’s men (q.v.). They gave three plays before James and Henry during
the Christmas of 1608–9, four before James during that of 1609–10,
and four before James during that of 1610–11. Middleton and Dekker’s
_The Roaring Girl_ was printed in 1611 as lately played by them at the
Fortune, and Field’s _Amends for Ladies_ (_c._ 1610–11) names ‘Long
Meg and the Ship’ as in their repertory. Presumably their _Long Meg of
Westminster_ of 1595 still held the boards.[550] In 1608–9 they were at
Shrewsbury and Saffron Walden, in 1609–10 at Shrewsbury and Hereford,
in 1610–11 at Shrewsbury and Winchester.
They played at Court before James on 28 and 29 December 1611, giving
on the second night _The Almanac_, and before Henry in February and
Elizabeth in April 1612. On 1 October 1612 the lewd jigs, songs, and
dances at the Fortune are recited in an order of the Middlesex justices
as tending to promote breaches of the peace. One of these may have
been the occasion on which an obscure actor, Garlick by name, made
himself offensive to the more refined part of his audience.[551] On the
following 7 November Henry died and on 7 December his players figured
in his funeral procession.[552]
They found a new patron in the Elector Palatine, then in England,
and on entering his service got a new patent, which bears date 11
January 1613 and closely follows in its terms that of 1606.[553] The
house specified for them was again the Fortune, which they had no
doubt continuously occupied since its opening in 1600. The players
named were ‘Thomas Downton, William Bird, Edward Juby, Samuell Rowle,
Charles Massey, Humfrey Jeffs, Frank Grace, William Cartwright, Edward
Colbrand, William Parr, William Stratford, Richard Gunnell, John
Shanck, and Richard Price’. Possibly Price may be the Pryor of the 1610
list. Cartwright and Gunnell are new since that list, but Cartwright
had been in _The Battle of Alcazar_ and _1 Tamar Cham_ plots of 1601
and 1602. These two must be supposed to have taken the places of Thomas
Towne and Antony Jeffes. Thomas Towne had enjoyed an annuity of £12 out
of Alleyn’s manor of Dulwich from 28 October 1608 to 15 January 1612,
but on 5 November 1612 ‘widow Towne’ is mentioned,[554] and further
evidence of his death is supplied by a letter from Charles Massey to
Alleyn, not dated, but from internal evidence written not very long
after the prince’s death, to which reference is made. Massey is in debt
and wants £50. He offers two things as security. One is ‘that lyttell
moete I have in the play hovsses’; from which it may be inferred that,
like Downton, he had obtained an interest in the Fortune, although what
the second house may have been can hardly be conjectured. The other
is his interest under ‘the composisions betwene ovre compenye that if
any one give over with consent of his fellowes, he is to receve three
score and ten poundes (Antony Jefes hath had so much) if any on dye his
widow or frendes whome he appoyntes it tow reseve fyfte poundes (M^res
Pavie and M^res Tovne hath had the lyke)’. In order to be in a position
to repay the loan at the end of the year he undertakes to get Mr. Jube
to reserve ‘my gallery mony and my quarter of the hovse mony’ for the
purpose, and should it prove at the end of six months that this will be
insufficient, he will be prepared to surrender his whole share, with
the exception of 13_s._ 4_d._ a week for household expenses.[555] From
this letter it may also be gathered that Antony Jeffes had retired, and
apparently that Pavy, whose name is found in the plot of _2 Fortune’s
Tennis_, which I assign to 1602–3, had at some time become a sharer
in the company. One other player, originally in 1597 a hired man, had
evidently reached some prominence between that date and 1614. William
Fennor, in the course of a rhyming controversy with John Taylor, makes
the following boast of his histrionic talent:
And let me tell thee this to calme thy rage,
I chaleng’d Kendall on the Fortune stage;
And he did promise ‘fore an audience,
For to oppose me. Note the accidence:
I set up bills, the people throngd apace,
With full intention to disgrace, or grace;
The house was full, the trumpets twice had sounded,
And though he came not, I was not confounded,
But stept upon the stage, and told them this,
My aduerse would not come: not one did hisse,
But flung me theames: I then _extempore_
Did blot his name from out their memorie,
And pleasd them all, in spight of one to braue me,
Witnesse the ringing plaudits that they gaue me.[556]
As the Elector Palatine’s men the company played at Court during the
winter of 1613–14, twice before James and once before Charles. They
were amongst the companies which performed irregularly in the Lent
of 1615, and Humphrey Jeffes and Thomas Downton were summoned before
the Privy Council to account for their misdoing. One of the irregular
licences condemned by the Lord Chamberlain on 16 July 1616 was an
exemplification of the patent of 1613, taken out by Charles Marshall,
Humphrey Jeffes, and William Parr for provincial purposes.
xx. THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S (LORD HUNSDON’S) AND KING’S MEN
Henry Carey, s. of William Carey and Mary, sister of Anne
Boleyn; _nat. c._ 1524; cr. 1st Lord Hunsdon, 13 Jan. 1559;
m. Anne, d. of Sir Thomas Morgan; Warden of East Marches and
Governor of Berwick, Aug. 1568; Lord Chamberlain, 4 July 1585;
lived at Hunsdon House, Herts., and Somerset House, London;
_ob._ 22 July 1596.
George Carey, s. of Henry, 1st Lord Hunsdon; _nat._ 1547;
Kt. 18 May 1570; m. Elizabeth, d. of Sir John Spencer of
Althorp; Captain-General of Isle of Wight, 1582; succ. as 2nd
Baron, 22 July 1596; Lord Chamberlain, 17 Mar. 1597; lived at
Carisbrooke Castle, Hunsdon House, Drayton, and Blackfriars;
_ob._ 9 Sept. 1603.
A company of Lord Hunsdon’s men was at Leicester in the last three
months of 1564, at Norwich and Maldon in 1564–5, at Plymouth before
Michaelmas in 1565, at Canterbury in the autumn of 1565, at Gloucester
and Maldon in 1565–6, at Bristol in July 1566, and at Canterbury in the
spring of 1567. Another makes its appearance at Ludlow on 13 July 1581,
and at Doncaster in 1582. In the winter Lord Hunsdon was apparently
deputy for the Earl of Sussex as Lord Chamberlain, and took occasion
to bring his men to Court, where they acted _Beauty and Housewifery_
on 27 December 1582. They did not again appear at Court, but when
plays were temporarily suppressed on 14 June 1584 the owner of the
Theatre, presumably James Burbadge, made a claim to be Lord Hunsdon’s
man. Meanwhile ‘my L. Hunsdouns and my Lords Morleis players being
bothe of one companye’ are recorded at Bristol in March 1583, and Lord
Hunsdon’s alone at Norwich in 1582–3, Bath in June 1583, and Exeter
in July 1583. Hunsdon became Lord Chamberlain on 4 July 1585. Between
October and December of that year, a visit was paid to Leicester by
‘the Lord Chamberlens and the Lord Admiralls players’, and on 6 January
1586 ‘the servants of the lo: Admirall and the lo: Chamberlaine’ gave
a play at Court. These entries suggest an amalgamation of Hunsdon’s
men with those of Lord Admiral Howard, both of whom had perhaps been
weakened by the formation of the Queen’s men in 1583. But if so, it
was only a partial or temporary one, for while the Admiral’s men
established themselves in London, the Chamberlain’s are traceable in
the provinces, at Coventry in 1585–6, at Saffron Walden in 1587–8, and
at Maidstone in 1589–90.
An interval of four or five years renders improbable any continuity
between this company and the famous Lord Chamberlain’s company, which
first emerged on the resorting of the plague-stricken mimes in 1594,
passed under royal patronage in 1603, and prolonged an existence
illumined by the genius of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Massinger and Shirley, until the closing of the theatres in
1642. The first notice of the new organization is in June 1594, when
‘my Lord Admeralle men and my Lorde Chamberlen men’ played from the
3rd to the 13th of the month, either in combination or separately on
allotted days, for Henslowe at Newington Butts.[557] Some of the plays
given during this period can be traced to the subsequent repertory
of the Admiral’s men; others, which cannot, may be assigned to the
Chamberlain’s. They are _Hester and Ahasuerus_, _Titus Andronicus_,
_Hamlet_, and _Taming of A Shrew_, which, although so described, may
of course have been really the _Taming of The Shrew_, Shakespeare’s
adaptation of the older play entered in the Stationers’ Register on the
previous 2 May. It is ingeniously, and I think rightly, inferred from
a line drawn in Henslowe’s account after 13 June, that from that date
all the performances recorded are by the Admiral’s men, probably at the
Rose, and that his relations with the Chamberlain’s men had ceased.
The company is found at Marlborough about September, and on 8 October
Lord Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor, asking permission for ‘my nowe
companie’ to continue an occupation of the Cross Keys,[558] on which it
seems to have already entered. Henceforward the company was regularly
established in London, took the lead annually at Court, and except for
brief periods of inhibition in 1596, 1597, and possibly 1601, does not
appear to have travelled during the remainder of Elizabeth’s reign.
Whether Hunsdon’s men got the Cross Keys for the winter or not, they
probably had from the beginning the use of the Theatre for the summer
seasons, for Richard Burbage, the son of the owner, was one of their
leading members, and on 15 March 1595 appears as joint payee with
William Kempe and William Shakespeare for two plays given at Court
on 26 and 28 December 1594. These plays cannot be identified, but
Shakespeare’s _Love’s Labour’s Lost_ and _Romeo and Juliet_ may well
have been produced this winter.[559] Most likely the date 28 December
was entered in the payment warrant by mistake for 27 December, for the
Admiral’s men are also recorded as playing at Court on 28 December, and
on the same night ‘a company of base and common fellows’, with whom
one is bound to identify the Chamberlain’s men, played ‘a Comedy of
Errors’ as part of the Christmas revels of the Prince of Purpoole at
Gray’s Inn.[560] There seems to be some echo of _Romeo and Juliet_ in
the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude of _A Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, which
may very well have been given at Greenwich or Burghley House for the
wedding of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, and Elizabeth Vere, daughter
of the Earl of Oxford, on 26 January 1595. Another possible occasion
for the production, however, is the wedding of Elizabeth, daughter
of Sir George Carey and grand-daughter of Lord Hunsdon, to Thomas,
son of Henry Lord Berkeley on 19 February 1596. This took place at
Blackfriars, presumably in Sir George Carey’s house there.[561]
To 1595 or thereabouts I also assign Shakespeare’s _Two Gentlemen of
Verona_ and _King John_ and _Richard II_.[562] The company played at
Court on 26, 27, and 28 December 1595 and 6 January and 22 February
1596. In the warrant for their fees, dated on 21 December 1596, and
made payable to John Heminges and George Bryan, they are described as
‘servauntes to the late Lord Chamberlayne and now servauntes to the
Lorde Hunsdon’. It is clear that, when the first Lord Hunsdon died on
22 July 1596, the players had been retained by his son and heir, Sir
George Carey. The Lord Chamberlainship passed to Lord Cobham; but he
died on 5 March 1597, and on 17 March the post was given to the second
Lord Hunsdon. The company, then, was properly known as Lord Hunsdon’s
men from 22 July 1596 to 17 March 1597; before and after that period it
was the Lord Chamberlain’s men.
To 1596 I assign Shakespeare’s _Merchant of Venice_. Evidence of the
occupation of the Theatre about this time by the company is to be
found in Lodge’s allusion to a revival of _Hamlet_ there, for this
play is not likely to have been in other hands.[563] It is not an
unreasonable conjecture that James Burbadge destined to their use the
play-house in the Blackfriars, which he purchased in February, and had
converted for ‘publique’ use by November of this year. If so, he and
they were disappointed, for a petition of the inhabitants, amongst
the signatories to an alleged copy of which Lord Hunsdon himself is
somewhat oddly found, led to an intervention of the Privy Council,
who forbade plays to be given within the liberty.[564] At this time
also the Corporation seem to have succeeded in finally and permanently
expelling the players from the City inns which had long been their
head-quarters, and Nashe connects this persecution with the loss of
‘their old Lord’, by whom he doubtless means Henry Lord Hunsdon. It
is possible that plays were inhibited altogether during the summer
of 1596, although no formal order to that effect is preserved, for
Hunsdon’s went to Faversham, and Nashe himself was disappointed of
‘an after harvest I expected by writing for the stage and for the
presse’.[565]
In the following winter the company played at Court on 26 and 27
December 1596 and on 1 and 6 January and 6 and 8 February 1597.
Their payees, for this and for the next two years, were Thomas Pope
and John Heminge. In 1597 began the printing of plays written by
Shakespeare for this company, with a ‘bad’ quarto of _Romeo and
Juliet_, bearing on its title-page the name of Lord Hunsdon’s men and
‘good’ quartos of _Richard II_ and _Richard III_, bearing that of the
Lord Chamberlain’s.[566] From the text of _Richard II_ was omitted
the deposition scene, which did not appear in print until after the
death of Elizabeth. The only Shakespearian productions that can be
plausibly ascribed to this year are those of the two parts of _Henry
IV_. The presentation of Sir John Oldcastle in the original versions
of these seems to have led to a protest, and the character was renamed
Sir John Falstaff. It is not improbable that the offence taken was by
Lord Chamberlain Cobham, whose ancestress, Joan Lady Cobham, Oldcastle
had married.[567] It is impossible to say whether either this scandal
or any possible interpretation of disloyalty put upon _Richard II_
contributed to the inhibition of plays on 28 July, of which the main
exciting cause was certainly the performance of _The Isle of Dogs_
at the Swan on the Bankside.[568] For the second time since their
formation in 1594 the company had to travel. They are traceable at
Rye in August, at Dover between 3 and 20 September, at Marlborough,
Faversham, and Bath during 1596–7, and at Bristol about 29 September.
This inhibition was removed early in October. There is some reason to
believe that, when the Chamberlain’s men resumed playing, it was not
at the Theatre, as to the renewal of the lease of which the Burbadges
were disputing with their ground landlord, but at the Curtain. Marston,
in one and the same passage of his _Scourge of Villainy_, entered in
the Stationers’ Register on 8 September 1598, alludes to the acting
of _Romeo and Juliet_ and to ‘Curtaine plaudeties’, while almost
simultaneously Edward Guilpin in his _Skialetheia_, entered on 15
September, speaks of ‘the unfrequented Theater’. The transfer may,
however, not have taken place until 1598.[569]
The company played at Court on 26 December 1597 and on 1 and 6 January
and 26 February 1598. It is conceivable that one of these plays may
have been a revised version of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, which was
printed as ‘newly corrected and augmented’ and ‘as it was presented
before her Highnes this last Christmas’ in 1598. On the other hand,
it is also possible that this print may have been intended to replace
an earlier ‘bad’ quarto, not now preserved, and if so, the reference
to the representation may have been carried on from the earlier
title-page. In 1598 were also printed _1 Henry IV_, and the anonymous
_Mucedorus_, which may have already belonged to the Chamberlain’s
repertory, as it was certainly revised for them about 1610. _The
Merchant of Venice_ was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 22 July,
but with a proviso that it must not be printed ‘without lycence first
had from the Right honorable the lord chamberlen’. On 7 September 1598
was entered in the Stationers’ Register the _Palladis Tamia_ of Francis
Meres, with its list of Shakespeare’s plays up to date, including the
mysterious _Love’s Labours Won_, which I incline to identify with the
_Taming of the Shrew_.[570] The earliest play not mentioned by Meres
is probably _Much Ado about Nothing_, which may belong to 1598 itself.
Another production of this year was Jonson’s _Every Man In his Humour_,
which was still a new play about 20 September, when an Almain in the
audience lost 300 crowns. Possibly John Aubrey has this period in mind
when he says that Jonson ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green
Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the
suburbes, I thinke towardes Shoreditch or Clarkenwell’.[571] Jonson,
however, was in prison soon after the production of the play for the
manslaughter of Gabriel Spencer on 22 September in Hoxton Fields, and
there is no other evidence that he ever acted with the Chamberlain’s
men. His own name is not in the list of the original ‘principall
Comoedians’ affixed to the text of _Every Man In his Humour_ in the
folio of 1616. This is of great value, as being the earliest extant
list of the company. The ten names given are:
Will. Shakespeare.
Aug. Philips.
Hen. Condel.
Will. Slye.
Will. Kempe.
Ric. Burbage.
Joh. Flemings.
Tho. Pope.
Chr. Beeston.
Joh. Duke.
It must not, of course, be assumed, either that the list is in
itself quite complete, or that there had been no changes amongst the
Chamberlain’s men between 1594 and 1598; but as those named include
five out of the six payees for that period, they may perhaps be taken,
with the sixth payee, George Bryan, who does not reappear after
1596, and was by 1603 an ordinary groom of the Chamber of the royal
Household, as fairly representing the original constitution of the
company.[572] And an inference to its origin at once becomes possible,
for of these eleven men five (Kempe, Pope, Heminges, Phillips, and
Bryan) formed, with Edward Alleyn, the company of Lord Strange’s men to
whom Privy Council letters of assistance were granted in 1593, and at
least six (Pope, Phillips, Bryan, Burbadge, Duke, and Sly) are to be
found in the cast of _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ as performed by Strange’s or
the Admiral’s or the two together about 1590–1. It will be remembered
that the Strange’s company of 1593, known as the Earl of Derby’s after
25 September 1593, was apparently formed by a combination of the
earlier Strange’s and Admiral’s men somewhere near the time of this
performance, if not earlier, and that its composite character never
wholly disappeared, Alleyn in particular, who was its leading member,
retaining his personal status as an Admiral’s man. It seems clear that
in 1594 the combination broke up, that Alleyn became the nucleus of
a new Admiral’s company at the Rose, and that the group with whom he
had been travelling took fresh service with the Lord Chamberlain. It
is not, I think, quite accurate to treat this transaction as a mere
continuance of Lord Derby’s men under the style of Lord Chamberlain’s,
entailing no reconstruction other than a change of patron following
upon Lord Derby’s death on 16 April 1594. On the one hand a Derby’s
company continued in existence, and is traceable under the sixth
earl from 1594 to 1617. On the other hand, while we do not know what
business reconstruction there may have been, a very fundamental change
is involved in the replacement of Alleyn as principal actor by Richard
Burbadge, who is not at all likely to have played with Strange’s men
after the break between the Admiral’s and his father at the Theatre in
1591. Except for Alleyn, all the more important members of the company,
as it existed in 1593, seem to have been included in the transfer to
Lord Hunsdon. It is, however, little more than conjecture that finds
Henry Condell and Christopher Beeston in the ‘Harry’ and ‘Kitt’, or
Alexander Cooke, Nicholas Tooley, and Robert Gough, who were numbered
amongst the King’s men at a later date, in the ‘Saunder’, ‘Nick’, and
‘R. Go.’ of the _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ plot. Alleyn’s correspondence of
1593 adds Richard Cowley to the list of Lord Strange’s men, and, as we
shall find him acting as a payee for the Chamberlain’s men in 1601, he
may have been one of them from the beginning. In any case he had joined
them by 1598, as the stage-directions of _Much Ado about Nothing_ show
that he played Verges to Kempe’s Dogberry.[573]
There is, of course, one conspicuous Chamberlain’s man who is not
discoverable either in the Privy Council letter of 1593 or in the _2
Seven Deadly Sins_ of 1590–1. Even the audacity of Mr. Fleay has not
attempted to identify the ‘Will’ of the plot with Will Shakespeare.
Some relations, if only as author, Shakespeare must have had with
Lord Strange’s men, when they produced _1 Henry VI_ on 3 March 1592,
and Greene’s satire of him as a ‘Shake-scene’ in the same year must
indicate that he was an actor as well as an author.[574] He may have
stood aside altogether during the period of the provincial tours,
and devoted himself to poetry, and perhaps, although this is very
conjectural, to travel abroad. Or he may, as I have already suggested,
have joined Lord Pembroke’s men (q.v.), whom I suspect to have been
an offshoot for provincial purposes of the Strange’s combination, and
have passed from them to Lord Sussex’s, ultimately rejoining his old
fellows in 1594. The possibility of identifying certain minor members
of the Chamberlain’s company is also affected by this somewhat obscure
problem of Pembroke’s men. The most obvious of these is John Sincler or
Sincklo, who was in the cast of _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ as played by the
Admiral’s or Strange’s about 1590–1, and must have ultimately joined
the Chamberlain’s, as his name occurs in a stage-direction to Q_{1} of
_2 Henry IV_ (1600), and in the induction to _The Malcontent_ (1604).
It also occurs in stage-directions to _3 Henry VI_ and the _Taming of
The Shrew_ in the Folio of 1623.[575] These both happen to be plays
which passed through the hands of Pembroke’s, and the inference may be
that Sincler had also passed through this company. But this is far
from being conclusive. It is the revised and not the unrevised texts
that yield the name, and although I think it likely, on stylistic
grounds, that the revision of _3 Henry VI_ was done for Pembroke’s
(q.v.), it is probable from the reference in _Henry V_, epil. 12,
to the loss of France and the civil wars, ‘which oft our stage hath
shown’, that the play was revived by the Chamberlain’s, and it may have
been in such a revival that Sincler took part. As to the _Shrew_, it
is impossible to say whether Shakespeare’s work upon it was before or
after its transfer to the Chamberlain’s. In any case the Chamberlain’s
were playing it in some form on 13 June 1594, so that here again the
appearance of Sincler’s name cannot ear-mark him as Pembroke’s. We can
now go a step farther. The stage-directions to _3 Henry VI_ contain not
only Sincler’s name, but those of a certain ‘Gabriel’ and a certain
‘Humfrey’, not common Elizabethan names even separately, and certainly
suggesting, when found in combination, the Gabriel Spencer and Humphrey
Jeffes, who were fellows of the Admiral’s in 1597. Now Spencer, and
very likely also Jeffes, had come from Pembroke’s, the short-lived
Pembroke’s of 1597 at the Swan. Had they been Pembroke’s men ever since
1593? If so, it would be difficult to resist the conclusion that the
performance which brought their names into the text of _3 Henry VI_,
and with theirs John Sincler’s, was one by Pembroke’s about that date.
The obstacle is that there is no known evidence, in provincial records
or elsewhere, for any continuous existence of Pembroke’s between 1593
and 1597. Pending the discovery of any such evidence, it seems better
to assume that Sincler, Spencer, and Jeffes were all Chamberlain’s
men before 1597, and that it was from a combination of discontented
elements in that company and in the Admiral’s that the Pembroke’s of
the Swan arose. If so, the rest of the Pembroke’s men not traceable as
coming from the Admiral’s, namely Robert Shaw, William Bird _alias_
Borne, and probably Anthony Jeffes, may also have come from the
Chamberlain’s; and such an origin might explain the suit with Thomas
Pope in which Bird was entangled in 1598.[576] Two other minor actors
in the company about 1597 were probably Harvey and Rossill, whose names
appear to have got into the text of _1 Henry IV_ in place of those of
Bardolph and Peto, whom they represented.[577] The list of actors in
Shakespeare’s plays given by the editors of the First Folio includes
Samuel Crosse, of whom nothing more is known except that he was of
an early generation. As the list in the Folio appears to be limited
to Chamberlain’s and King’s men, excluding for example Alleyn, who
certainly acted in Shakespearian plays, e.g. _1 Henry VI_, it may be
that Crosse was for a short time a member of the company soon after
1594.
It is hardly possible to carry the analysis of origins any further with
profit, or to assume that the groups which segregated themselves from
the Strange-Admiral’s combination in 1594 bore any close correspondence
to the respective contributions of Strange’s and the Admiral’s to that
combination in 1589 or 1590. The only name that can be connected with
Strange’s men before 1588 is John Symons and neither he nor George
Attewell, their payee in 1591, became a Chamberlain’s man. Hypotheses
have been framed, mainly in the hope of affiliating Shakespeare to
Lord Leicester’s men, who are supposed to have carried him away from
Stratford-on-Avon when they visited it in 1586–7, and ultimately
to have become Lord Strange’s men.[578] So far as Shakespeare is
concerned, the first record of him on the boards is in 1592, and
the interval since his hegira from Stratford may have been quite
otherwise spent. The proof of continuity between Leicester’s men and
Strange’s altogether fails, since the latter made their appearance a
decade before the former came to an end. The only member of the Lord
Chamberlain’s company of 1594 who can be traced to Leicester’s service
was Kempe, and he had left Leicester’s men by the summer of 1586 and
was in Denmark. With him were Bryan and Pope, who afterwards spent a
year in Germany, and may have joined either Strange’s or the Admiral’s
on their return. The only other Chamberlain’s man, who can be assigned
to an earlier company than Strange’s, is Heminges, who was probably at
some time a Queen’s man.
The Chamberlain’s men evidently started business in 1594 with something
of a repertory derived by inheritance or purchase from antecedent
companies. Our knowledge of this is mainly confined to plays with which
Shakespeare was concerned as author or reviser. They certainly did not
get all the plays produced by Strange’s men at the Rose during 1592
and 1593. Some of these were Henslowe’s property; others passed with
Alleyn to the Admiral’s men. But they got _The Jealous Comedy_, if I am
right in identifying this with _The Comedy of Errors_. They probably
got _1 Henry VI_, for although the appearance of a Shakespearian play
in the 1623 Folio is not perhaps, in view of the composition of the
1647 ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’ Folio, absolute proof that the King’s
men possessed the copy, their stage had often shown both the loss
of France and the bleeding of England before _Henry V_ was produced
in 1599.[579] And they got _Titus and Vespasian_, as revised, after
passing through the hands of Pembroke’s men, for production by Sussex’s
under the title of _Titus Andronicus_. Three other of Pembroke’s men’s
plays came to them, _The Taming of A Shrew_ and _2 and 3 Henry VI_,
and probably _Hamlet_ belongs to the same group. It is of course only
a guess of mine that these also went with Shakespeare to Sussex’s men
and came thence with him. _Titus Andronicus_ and _A Shrew_, indeed,
became available in print during 1594, but not _Hamlet_, and not _Henry
VI_, except in the obsolete version called _The Contention of York and
Lancaster_. I think Shakespeare must also have brought _Richard III_
and possibly an early version of _Henry VIII_, and that one or other
of these had already been played by Sussex’s as _Buckingham_. Of the
_provenance_ of _Hester and Ahasuerus_ nothing can be said. It is not
necessary to suppose that the Chamberlain’s acquired any plays from the
stock of the Queen’s men. It is true that Shakespeare subsequently made
some use of _The Troublesome Reign of King John_, _The Famous Victories
of Henry V_, and _King Leire_, but these were all in print before he
needed them.[580] _Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany_, published in 1654 as
a play the King’s men at the Blackfriars is believed by some to be an
early play, possibly by Peele, and if so, may belong to the repertory
of 1594.
I now return to the chronicle of the Chamberlain’s men from 1598
onwards. The restriction of the London companies by the action of
the Privy Council to two had left them in direct rivalry with the
Admiral’s at the Rose. Disputes broke out. Henslowe made a loan to
William Bird of the Admiral’s on 30 August 1598 to follow a ‘sewt
agenste Thomas Poope’, and another to Thomas Downton on 30 January
1599, ‘to descarge Thomas Dickers [Dekker] from the areaste of my lord
chamberlens men’.[581] The company played at Court on 26 December 1598
and 1 January and 20 February 1599. During this winter they undertook
the enterprise of finding a new head-quarters on the Bankside. The
disputes between landlord and tenants as to the lease of the Theatre
had reached a crisis, and in December or January the Burbadges removed
the timber of the house across the Thames, to serve as material for
the construction of the Globe. The lease of the new site was signed
on 21 February 1599. Under it one moiety of the interest was retained
by Richard Burbadge and his brother Cuthbert, who was not himself an
actor; the other was assigned to Shakespeare, Pope, Phillips, Heminges,
and Kempe.[582] Shortly afterwards Kempe made over his share to the
other four. Presumably he now quitted the company, having first, as a
stage-direction shows, played Peter in the revised version of _Romeo
and Juliet_ printed in 1599. His place was probably taken by Robert
Armin, formerly of Lord Chandos’s men, who describes himself in two
successive issues of his _Fool upon Fool_ (1600 and 1605), first as
‘clonnico del Curtanio’, and then as ‘clonnico del Mondo’, and who
had therefore probably joined the Chamberlain’s men before their
actual transfer to the Globe. As the Theatre had to be built, this is
not likely to have taken place until the autumn of 1599, and it must
therefore remain doubtful which house was the ‘wooden O’ of _Henry V_,
produced during the absence of Essex in Ireland between 27 March and
28 September 1599. It was, however, certainly at the Globe that Thomas
Platter saw _Julius Caesar_ on 21 September.[583] ‘This fair-filled
Globe’, too, is named in the epilogue to Jonson’s _Every Man Out of his
Humour_, which is ascribed in the Folio of 1606 to 1599, although if
this be correct, an apparent allusion to Kempe’s journey to Norwich in
the spring of 1600 must, on the assumption that it is a real allusion,
be an interpolation. The ‘principall Comoedians’ in this play were
Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Condell, Sly, and Pope. Four of the 1598
names are missing. Shakespeare evidently stood aside. Kempe had gone.
Beeston and Duke may have gone also, although it is only a conjecture
of Mr. Fleay’s that they and Kempe now seceded to Pembroke’s men at the
Rose, and they are not definitely heard of again until they are found
with Worcester’s men in August 1602.[584] Mr. Fleay thinks that another
Worcester’s man, Robert Pallant, had accompanied them; but, although
Pallant was with Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590, there is no
evidence that he was ever a Chamberlain’s man. Conceivably he may have
joined the King’s men about 1619, but that is another matter.[585]
About November 1599 was published _A Warning for Fair Women_, which
belonged to the company.
The Court plays called for from the Chamberlain’s men during the
following winter were on 26 December 1599 and on 6 January and 3
February 1600. Heminges was sole payee, and occupied the same position
in every subsequent year, up to and beyond 1616, except in 1600–1, when
Richard Cowley was associated with him, and for a special payment made
to Burbadge in 1604. On 6 March 1600 the company had an opportunity
of rendering direct service to their patron Lord Hunsdon, by playing
_Henry IV_, still oddly called _Sir John Oldcastle_, after a dinner
which he gave to the Flemish ambassador, Ludovic Verreyken, presumably
at his house in the Blackfriars.[586] To 1600 I assign Shakespeare’s
_Merry Wives of Windsor_, not improbably prepared for performance, with
the aid of the boys of Windsor Chapel, at the Garter Feast on 23 April,
and also _As You Like It_. This was a year of some activity among the
publishers and, as in 1598, the company had to take steps to protect
their interests. In May John Roberts was prevented from printing their
moral of _Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose_, until he could bring proper
authority, and in August a note was made in the Stationers’ Register to
stay the printing of _As You Like It_, _Henry V_, and _Much Ado about
Nothing_.[587] The last two of these, but not the first, were in fact
printed during the year, and so were _A Midsummer-Night’s Dream_, _The
Merchant of Venice_, _2 Henry IV_, _Every Man Out of his Humour_, and
_An Alarum for London_, all plays belonging to the company.
The Chamberlain’s men played at Court on 26 December 1600 and on 6
January and 24 February 1601. Shortly before this last performance,
they had been involved in one of the tragedies of history. This was the
abortive _coup d’état_ of 8 February 1601 in which the Earl of Essex,
smarting under the disgrace which his failure in Ireland had brought
upon him, attempted to secure his position and get rid of Sir Walter
Raleigh and other enemies by taking forcible possession of the person
of Elizabeth and the palace of Whitehall. Some of his followers seem
to have conceived the idea of predisposing the mind of the populace
to their cause by a dramatic representation of the dangers of evil
counsellors and the possible remedy of a deposition, as illustrated
in the case of Elizabeth’s predecessor Richard II, in whom for some
obscure reason the political thought of the time was fond of finding
an analogue to the Queen. Saturday, 7 February, the day before the
outbreak, was chosen for the performance, and the players applied to
were the Chamberlain’s. A deposition by Augustine Phillips, taken
before Chief Justice Popham and Justice Fenner during the subsequent
inquiries, records the transaction.[588]
‘The Examination of Augustine Phillips, servant unto the L.
Chamberlain and one of his players, taken the xviij^{th} of
February, 1600, upon his oath.
‘He saith that on Friday last was sennight or Thursday Sir
Charles Percy Sir Josceline Percy and the Lord Mounteagle with
some three more spoke to some of the players in the presence
of this Examinate to have the play of the deposing and killing
of King Richard the Second to be played the Saturday next,
promising to get them xl_s._ more than their ordinary to play
it. Where this Examinate and his fellows were determined to
have played some other play, holding that play of King Richard
to be so old and so long out of use that they should have small
or no company at it. But at their request this Examinate and
his fellows were content to play it the Saturday and had their
xl^{_s._} more than their ordinary for it, and so played it
accordingly.’
The fact that Phillips speaks of the play as old and long out of
use, which becomes in the narrative of Camden ‘exoleta tragoedia’,
hardly justifies the suggestion that it was something earlier than
Shakespeare’s _Richard II_. This, if produced in 1596, may well
have been off the boards by 1601.
A good deal of misunderstanding has gathered round the connexion of
the Chamberlain’s men with this affair. Mr. Fleay is responsible for
the theory that they fell into disgrace, had to travel, and were
excluded from the Court festivities of the following Christmas.[589] As
a matter of fact they played four times during that winter. This Mr.
Fleay did not know, as he only had before him Cunningham’s incomplete
extracts from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber. But he
ought to have noticed that their last performance for 1600–1 was
itself some days later than the examination of Augustine Phillips.
Nor is any evidence that the company travelled in 1601 forthcoming
from the provincial archives. Mr. Fleay’s identification of them with
Laurence Fletcher’s Scottish company of that year merely rests upon
the presence of Fletcher’s name in the patent of 1603, and this will
not bear the strain of the argument.[590] Thus remains, however, the
possibly autobiographical passage in _Hamlet_, ii. 2. 346, which
assigns an ‘inhibition by the means of the late innovation’ as a
cause of the travelling of players to Elsinore. The date of _Hamlet_
may well be 1601, since the same passage refers to the theatrical
competition set up by the establishment of boy companies at St. Paul’s
in 1599 and at the Chapel Royal in 1600. But it must be borne in mind
that this competition is the only reason given for the travelling in
the 1603 edition of the play. In the 1604 edition the only reason
is the inhibition, while in the text of the 1623 Folio both reasons
stand somewhat inconsistently side by side.[591] No doubt the text
of 1603 is an imperfect piratical reprint. On the other hand that of
1604 almost certainly represents a revised version of the play, and
the ‘inhibition’ cited, if it had an historical existence at all,
may be that of 1603, during which certainly the company travelled. I
suppose that ‘innovation’ might mean the accession of a new sovereign,
although it does not seem a very obvious term. But then it does not
seem a very obvious term for a seditious rising either.[592] On the
whole, there is no reason to suppose that any serious blame was
attached to the Chamberlain’s men for lending themselves to Sir Gilly
Meyrick’s intrigue. It is certainly absurd to suggest, as has been
suggested, that the ‘adorned creature’, whose ingratitude instigated
the comparison between Elizabeth and Richard, was not Essex but
Shakespeare.[593] At the same time the company may, of course, have
been told to leave London for a few weeks. At some time, as the
1603 title-page tells us, they took _Hamlet_ both to Oxford and to
Cambridge, and it is at least tempting to find a reminiscence of the
Cambridge visit in the scene from _2 Return from Parnassus_ cited
below. It is possible that Phillips and his fellows, and even their
relation to the Essex crisis itself, may be glanced at in the satirical
picture of the Roman actors in Jonson’s _Poetaster_, produced by the
Chapel boys in the course of 1601.[594] Certainly the play betrays its
author’s knowledge of a counter-attack which the Chamberlain’s men
were already preparing for him in Dekker’s _Satiromastix_. This play,
in which Dekker may have had some help from Marston, was entered in
the Stationers’ Register on 11 November 1601, and had probably been on
the stage not long before. It is noteworthy that it was produced by
the Paul’s boys, as well as by the Chamberlain’s men. It was actually
published in 1602. Another play which may reasonably be assigned to
1601 is _Twelfth Night_.
In the following winter the company played at Court on 26 and 27
December 1601 and on 1 January and 14 February 1602. They also gave
_Twelfth Night_ at the Middle Temple feast on 2 February;[595] and I
have very little doubt that it was they who furnished the play at which
Elizabeth and her maids of honour were present in the Blackfriars after
dining with Lord Hunsdon on 31 December.[596] The alleged production
of _Othello_ before the Queen when Sir Thomas Egerton entertained
her at Harefield from 31 July to 2 August 1602 rests on a forgery by
Collier.[597] It is possible that, as Professor Wallace conjectures,
the play was on the capture of Stuhl-Weissenburg, seen by the Duke of
Stettin on 13 September 1602, may have been a Globe production.[598]
_Sir Thomas Cromwell_, a play of unknown authorship belonging to the
company, was published in the course of 1602, with an ascription on the
title-page to W. S., and to this year I assign Shakespeare’s _All’s
Well that Ends Well_ and _Troilus and Cressida_. If so, the portrait
of Ajax in the latter play cannot very well have been the ‘purge’
administered by Shakespeare to Jonson, to which reference is made in _2
Return from Parnassus_. This is a Cambridge Christmas piece, probably
of 1601–2, and in it Burbadge and Kempe are introduced as in search of
scholars to write for them. Perhaps the Cambridge author did not know
that Kempe had ceased to be the ‘fellow’ of Burbadge and Shakespeare in
1599, and was at the time playing with Worcester’s men at the Rose. It
is, however, just possible that after returning from his continental
tour and before throwing in his lot with Worcester’s, he may have
rejoined the Chamberlain’s for a while, and may have accompanied them
to Cambridge, if they did travel in 1601.[599]
The last performances of the company before Elizabeth took place on 26
December 1602 and 2 February 1603, and on the following 24 March the
Queen died. Playing immediately ceased in London. Strictly speaking,
the Chamberlain’s men must have again become Lord Hunsdon’s men for
a month or so, for the Household appointments naturally lapsed with
the death of the sovereign, and Hunsdon, being in failing health, was
relieved of his duties on 6 April. On 9 September he died.[600] The
company, however, had already passed under royal patronage.
A contemporary panegyrist records the graciousness of James in
‘taking to him the late Lord Chamberlaines servants, now the Kings
acters’.[601] The appointment was by letters patent dated 19 May 1603,
of which the text follows.[602]
[Sidenote: Commissio specialis pro Laurencio Fletcher & Willelmo
Shackespeare et aliis]
Iames by the grace of god &c. To all Iustices, Maiors,
Sheriffes, Constables, hedborowes, and other our Officers and
louinge Subiectes greetinge. Knowe yee that Wee of our speciall
grace, certeine knowledge, & mere motion haue licenced and
aucthorized and by theise presentes doe licence and aucthorize
theise our Servauntes Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare,
Richard Burbage, Augustyne Phillippes, Iohn Heninges, Henrie
Condell, William Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowly, and the rest
of theire Assosiates freely to vse and exercise the Arte and
faculty of playinge Comedies, Tragedies, histories, Enterludes,
moralls, pastoralls, Stage-plaies, and Suche others like as
theie haue alreadie studied or hereafter shall vse or studie,
aswell for the recreation of our lovinge Subjectes, as for
our Solace and pleasure when wee shall thincke good to see
them, duringe our pleasure. And the said Commedies, tragedies,
histories, Enterludes, Morralles, Pastoralls, Stageplayes, and
suche like to shewe and exercise publiquely to theire best
Commoditie, when the infection of the plague shall decrease,
aswell within theire nowe vsual howse called the Globe within
our County of Surrey, as alsoe within anie towne halls or Moute
halls or other conveniente places within the liberties and
freedome of anie other Cittie, vniversitie, towne, or Boroughe
whatsoever within our said Realmes and domynions. Willinge and
Commaundinge you and everie of you, as you tender our pleasure,
not onelie to permitt and suffer them herein without anie your
lettes hindrances or molestacions during our said pleasure, but
alsoe to be aidinge and assistinge to them, yf anie wronge be to
them offered, And to allowe them such former Curtesies as hath
bene given to men of theire place and quallitie, and alsoe what
further favour you shall shewe to theise our Servauntes for our
sake wee shall take kindlie at your handes. In wytnesse whereof
&c. witnesse our selfe at Westminster the nyntenth day of May
per breve de priuato sigillo &c.
Of the nine players named, eight are recognizable as the principal
members of the Lord Chamberlain’s company as it stood at the end of
Elizabeth’s reign. Only Thomas Pope is not included. He was near his
end. He made his will on 22 July 1603, and it was proved on 13 February
1604. In it he names none of his fellows, unless Robert Gough, who has
a legacy, was already of the company; his interest in the house of
the Globe passed to legatees and was thus alienated from the company.
Laurence Fletcher, on the other hand, whose name heads the list in
the patent, is not discernible as a Chamberlain’s man. His inclusion
becomes readily intelligible, when it is recalled that he had headed
English actors on tour in Scotland, and had already been marked by the
personal favour of James.[603] Whether he ever joined the company in
the full sense, that is to say, the association of actors as distinct
from the body of royal servants, seems to me very doubtful. His name
is not in the _Sejanus_ list, or in the Folio list of Shakespearian
players, and that he was described as a ‘fellow’ by Phillips in 1605
hardly takes the matter further. He may have held a relation to the
King’s men analogous to that of Martin Slater to Queen Anne’s men.
After 1605 nothing is heard of him.[604]
The terms of the patent imply that it was issued during a suspension
of playing through plague. Probably this had followed hard upon the
suspension at Elizabeth’s death. The company travelled, being found at
Bath, Coventry, and Shrewsbury in the course of 1602–3. A misplaced
Ipswich entry of 30 May 1602 may belong to 1603. The visits to Oxford
and Cambridge referred to on the title-page of the 1603 edition of
_Hamlet_ must also have taken place in this year, if they did not
take place in 1601. On 2 December 1603 the company were summoned
from Mortlake to perform before the King at Lord Pembroke’s house of
Wilton.[605]
During the winter of 1603–4 the company gave eight more plays at
Court, a larger number than Elizabeth had ever called for. They took
place on 26, 27, 28, and 30 December 1603 and on 1 January and 2 and
19 February 1604. On New Year’s Day there were two performances, one
before James, the other before Prince Henry. The plague had not yet
subsided by 8 February, and James gave his men £30 as a ‘free gifte’
for their ‘mayntenaunce and releife’ till it should ‘please God to
settle the cittie in a more perfecte health’. One of the plays of
this winter was _The Fair Maid of Bristow_. Another, produced before
the end of 1603, was probably Ben Jonson’s _Sejanus_. For alleged
popery and treason in this play Jonson was haled before the Privy
Council by the Earl of Northampton, but there is nothing to show that
the players were implicated. The principal actors in _Sejanus_ were
Burbadge, Shakespeare, Phillips, Heminges, Sly, Condell, John Lowin,
and Alexander Cooke. This is Shakespeare’s last appearance in the
cast of any play. He may have ceased to act, while remaining a member
of the company and its poet. The names of Lowin and Cooke are new.
Lowin had been with Worcester’s men in 1602–3. Cooke had probably
begun his connexion with the company as an apprentice to Heminges. The
identification of him with the ‘Sander’ of Strange’s men in 1590 is
more than hazardous. The Induction to Marston’s _Malcontent_, published
in 1604, records the names of Burbadge, who played Malevole, Condell,
Sly, Lowin, Sincler, and a Tire-man. Sincler was probably still only
a hired man. Nothing further is heard of him. This Induction seems to
have been written by John Webster to introduce the presentation by the
King’s men of _The Malcontent_, which was really a Chapel play. The
transaction is thus explained:[606]
_Sly._ I wonder you would play it, another company having
interest in it?
_Condell._ Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo
in decimo-sexto with them? They taught us a name for our play;
we call it _One for Another_.
The play of _Jeronimo_, which the Chapel are here accused of taking,
cannot be _The Spanish Tragedy_, which was an Admiral’s play, and is
not very likely to have been the ‘comedy of Jeronimo’ which Strange’s
men had in 1592, and which was evidently related to _The Spanish
Tragedy_ and may be expected to have remained with it. It might be the
extant _First Part of Jeronimo_, written perhaps for the Chamberlain’s
men about 1601–2, when Jonson was revising _The Spanish Tragedy_ for
the Admiral’s. A reference in T. M.’s _Black Book_ shows that _The
Merry Devil of Edmonton_, which belonged to the company, was already on
the stage by 1604.[607]
The coronation procession of James, deferred on account of the plague,
went through London on 15 March 1604, and the Great Wardrobe furnished
each of the King’s players with four and a half yards of red cloth. The
same nine men are specified in the warrant as in the patent of 1603,
and their names stand next those of various officers of the Chamber.
They did not, however, actually walk in the procession.[608] From 9 to
27 August 1604, they were called upon in their official capacity as
Grooms of the Chamber to form part of the retinue assigned to attend
at Somerset House upon Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Duke of Frias and
Constable of Castile, who was in England as Ambassador Extraordinary
for the negotiation of a peace with Spain. The descriptions of his
visit, which have been preserved, do not show that any plays were given
before him.[609]
The company were at Oxford between 7 May and 16 June 1604. About 18
December they had got into trouble through the production of a tragedy
on _Gowry_, always a delicate subject with James.[610] But this did
not interfere with a long series of no less than eleven performances
which they gave at Court between 1 November 1604 and 12 February 1605,
and of which the Revels Accounts fortunately preserve the names.[611]
The series included one play, _The Spanish Maze_, of which nothing is
known; two by Ben Jonson, _Every Man In his Humour_ and _Every Man Out
of his Humour_; and seven by Shakespeare, _Othello_, _The Merry Wives
of Windsor_, _Measure for Measure_, _The Comedy of Errors_, _Henry V_,
_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, and _The Merchant of Venice_, which was given
twice. _Othello_ and _Measure for Measure_ had probably been produced
for the first time during 1604, but the rest of the list suggests
that opportunity was being taken to revive a number of Elizabethan
plays unknown to the new sovereigns. This is borne out by the terms of
a letter from Sir Walter Cope to Lord Southampton with regard to the
performance of _Love’s Labour ’s Lost_.[612]
Between 4 May 1605, when he made his will, and 13 May, when it was
proved, died Augustine Phillips. Unlike Pope, he was full of kindly
remembrances towards the King’s men. He appointed Heminges, Burbadge,
and Sly overseers of the will. He left legacies to his ‘fellows’
Shakespeare, Condell, Fletcher, Armin, Cowley, Cooke, and Nicholas
Tooley; to the hired men of the company; to his ‘servant’ Christopher
Beeston; to his apprentice James Sands, and to his late apprentice
Samuel Gilburne. We have here practically a full list of the company.
The name of Nicholas Tooley is new, unless indeed he was the ‘Nick’ of
Strange’s men in 1592. He speaks of Richard Burbadge in his will as his
‘master’ and may have been his apprentice. The use of the term ‘fellow’
suggests that Tooley and Cooke were now sharers in the company. On
the other hand Lowin, who is not named among the ‘fellows’, may still
have been only a hired man. Beeston’s legacy is doubtless in memory
of former service as hired man or apprentice; he was in 1605 and for
long after with the Queen’s men. Samuel Gilburne is recorded as a
Shakespearian actor in the 1623 Folio, but practically nothing is known
of him or of James Sands. The exact legal disposal of the interest held
by Phillips in the Globe subsequently became matter of controversy, but
in effect it remained from 1605 to 1613 with his widow and her second
husband, and was thus alienated from the company.
On some date before Michaelmas in 1605 the King’s men visited
Barnstaple, and on 9 October they were at Oxford. This year saw the
publication of _The Fair Maid of Bristow_ and of _The London Prodigal_,
which was assigned on its title-page to Shakespeare. To it I also
assign Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_ and _King Lear_.
Ten Court plays were given in the winter of 1605–6, but the dates are
not recorded. Three more were given in the summer of 1606 during the
visit of the King of Denmark to James, which lasted from 7 July to 11
August, and then the company seem to have gone on tour. They were at
Oxford between 28 and 31 July, at Leicester in August, at Dover between
6 and 24 September, at Saffron Walden and Maidstone during 1605–6, and
at Marlborough in 1606. To this year I assign Shakespeare’s _Antony
and Cleopatra_ and _Coriolanus_, and to the earlier part of it Ben
Jonson’s _Volpone_, in which the principal actors were Burbadge,
Condell, Sly, Heminges, Lowin, and Cooke.
Nine Court plays were given during the winter of 1606–7, on 26 and 29
December 1606, and on 4, 6, and 8 January and 2, 5, 15, and 27 February
1607. The entry in the Stationers’ Register for _King Lear_ and the
title-page of Barnes’ _The Devil’s Charter_, both dated in 1607, show
these to have been the plays selected for 26 December and 2 February
respectively. In the same year were also published Tourneur’s _The
Revenger’s Tragedy_ and Wilkins’ _The Miseries of Enforced Marriage_,
and to it I assign the production of _Timon of Athens_. On 16 July 1607
Heminges lent his boy John Rice to appear as an angel of gladness with
a taper of frankincense, and deliver an eighteen-verse speech by Ben
Jonson as part of the entertainment of James by the Merchant Taylors at
their hall.[613] During the summer the company travelled to Barnstaple,
to Dunwich, to Oxford, where they were on 7 September, and possibly
to Cambridge. _Volpone_ had probably been given in both Universities
before its publication about February 1607 or 1608.
During the winter of 1607–8 the company gave thirteen Court plays, on
26, 27, and 28 December 1606, and on 2, 6, 7, 9, 17, and 26 January,
and 2 and 7 February 1607. On each of the nights of 6 and 17 January
there were two plays. In 1608 was published _A Yorkshire Tragedy_,
with Shakespeare’s name on the title-page, and to it I assign the
production of _Pericles_, in which Shakespeare probably had Wilkins for
a collaborator. About May the company had to find their share of the
heavy fine necessary to buy off the inhibition due to the performance
of Chapman’s _Duke of Byron_ by the Queen’s Revels.[614] The year was
in many ways an eventful one for the King’s men. They had, I suspect,
to face a growing detachment of Shakespeare from London and the
theatre; and the loss was perhaps partly supplied by the establishment
of relations with Beaumont and Fletcher, whose earliest play for the
company, _Philaster_, may be of any date from 1608 to 1610. About 16
August died William Sly, leaving his interest in the Globe to his
son Robert and legacies to Cuthbert Burbadge and James Sands. Both
he and Henry Condell had been admitted to an interest at some date
subsequent to November 1606, the moiety of the lease not retained by
the Burbadges having been redistributed into sixths to allow of this.
The deserts of Pope, Phillips, and Sly are all commemorated in the
_Apology_ of Thomas Heywood, which, though not published until 1612,
was probably written in 1608.[615] Sly’s death complicated an important
transaction in which the King’s men were engaged. This was the
acquisition of the Blackfriars, of which the freehold already belonged
to the Burbadges, but which had been leased since 1600 to Henry Evans
and occupied by the Children of the Revels. About July 1608 Evans was
prepared to surrender his lease, and the Burbadges decided to take the
opportunity of providing the King’s men with a second house on the
north side of the Thames, suitable for a winter head-quarters. As in
the case of the Globe, they shared their interest as housekeepers with
some of the leading members of the company. New leases were executed
on 9 August 1608, by which the house was divided between a syndicate
of seven, of whom five were Richard Burbadge, Shakespeare, Heminges,
Condell, and Sly, while the other two, Cuthbert Burbadge and Thomas
Evans, were not King’s men. When Sly’s death intervened, his executrix
surrendered his interest and the number of the syndicate was reduced
to six. Probably, however, the King’s men did not enter upon the
actual occupation of the Blackfriars until the autumn of the following
year.[616] In fact the plague kept the London theatres closed from July
1608 to December 1609. The King’s men were at Coventry on 29 October
1608 and at Marlborough in the course of 1607–8. The plague did not
prevent them from appearing at Court during the winter of 1608–9, and
they gave twelve plays on unspecified dates. But their difficulties are
testified to by a special reward ‘for their private practise in the
time of infeccion’, which had rendered their Christmas service possible.
The plague led to an early provincial tour. The company were at Ipswich
on 9 May, at Hythe on 16 May, and at New Romney on 17 May 1609. Their
winter season was again interfered with, and a further grant was made
in respect of six weeks of private practice. Amongst the plays so
practised may, I think, have been _Cymbeline_. They gave thirteen plays
at Court on unspecified dates during the holidays of 1609–10.[617]
One of these may have been _Mucedorus_, the edition of which with
the imprint 1610 represents a revised version performed at Court on
the previous Shrove Sunday. This might be either 18 February 1610 or
3 February 1611. The epilogue contains an apology for some recent
indiscretion of the company in a play of which no more is known, but
which might conceivably be Daborne’s _A Christian Turned Turk_, since
this certainly brought its players into some disgrace. By April the
company were at the Globe, playing _Macbeth_ on 20 April, _Cymbeline_
probably shortly before, and _Othello_ on 30 April.[618] To this year
I assign _The Winter’s Tale_ and Beaumont and Fletcher’s _The Maid’s
Tragedy_. It also saw the production of Jonson’s _Alchemist_, with
a cast including Burbadge, Lowin, Condell, Cooke, Armin, Heminges,
William Ostler, John Underwood, Tooley, and William Ecclestone. This is
the last mention of Armin in connexion with the King’s men, but it is
sufficient to show that the production of his _Two Maids of Moreclack_
by the King’s Revels about 1608 did not involve any breach with his
old company. Of Ecclestone’s origin nothing is known.[619] Ostler and
Underwood came from the Queen’s Revels, probably when the Blackfriars
was taken over in 1609. In fact an account of the transaction given by
the Burbadges in 1635 suggests that the desire to acquire these boys
was its fundamental motive. They say:
‘In processe of time, the boyes growing up to bee men, which
were Underwood, Field, Ostler, and were taken to strengthen the
King’s service; and the more to strengthen the service, the
boyes dayly wearing out, it was considered that house would bee
as fitt for ourselves, and soe purchased the lease remaining
from Evans with our money, and placed men players, which were
Heminges, Condall, Shakspeare, &c.’
This narrative seems, however, to have antedated matters as regards
Field. Or, if he did come to the King’s men in 1609, he almost
immediately returned to the Queen’s Revels at Whitefriars, joining the
King’s again about 1616.[620]
About 8 May 1610 some superfluous apparel of the company was sold
by Heminges on their behalf to the Duke of York’s men (q.v.). On
31 May Burbadge and Rice were employed by the City to make speeches
on fish-back at the civic pageant of welcome to Prince Henry.[621]
The autumn travelling took the company to Dover between 6 July and 4
August 1610, to Oxford in August, and to Shrewsbury and Stafford in
1609–10. During the following winter they gave fifteen Court plays on
unspecified days. They were playing a piece on the story of Richard II,
not now extant, at the Globe on 30 April 1611, and _A Winter’s Tale_ on
15 May.[622] During 1611 Jonson’s _Catiline_ was produced, with a cast
similar to that of _The Alchemist_, except that Armin was replaced by
Richard Robinson, whose earlier history is unknown. Robinson, playing
a female part, and Robert Gough also appear in the stage directions of
_The Second Maiden’s Tragedy_, licensed for the stage by Sir George
Buck on 31 October 1611. Gough was probably one of Strange’s men in
1592. He appears in the wills of Pope in 1603 and of Phillips, who was
his brother-in-law, in 1605, but with no indication that he belonged
to the King’s men. Beaumont and Fletcher’s _A King and No King_ was
also licensed by Buck in 1611, and to this year I assign Shakespeare’s
_Tempest_. On 25 August 1611 the interest in the Blackfriars originally
intended for Sly was assigned to Ostler. Ecclestone, on the other hand,
later in the year than the production of _Catiline_, but before 29
August, left the company for the Lady Elizabeth’s men.
The only provincial visit by the King’s men recorded in 1610–11 was
to Shrewsbury. They gave twenty-two plays at Court during a rather
prolonged winter season extending from 31 October 1611 to 26 April
1612. Two of these, on 12 and 13 January, were joint performances with
the Queen’s men, and the plays used, Heywood’s _Silver Age_ and _Rape
of Lucrece_, were from the repertory of the latter.[623] The King’s men
also gave _The Tempest_ and _A Winter’s Tale_, _A King and No King_,
Tourneur’s _The Nobleman_, and _The Twins’ Tragedy_. On 20 February
1612 the actors’ moiety of the Globe was again redistributed, into
sevenths, so as to allow of the admission as a housekeeper of Ostler,
who had married a daughter of Heminges. From the statement of the
interests held by the parties to this transaction, it is to be inferred
that Heminges and Condell had between them bought out since 1608 the
representatives of Sly. On 21 April 1612 the company was at New Romney
and at some date during 1611–12 at Winchester. Heminges received a
payment for services to the Lord Mayor’s pageant of this year, which
was Dekker’s _Troja Nova Triumphans_.[624]
The actor-list attached to _The Captain_ in the Beaumont and Fletcher
Folio of 1679 probably belongs to the original production of the
play between 1609 and 1612. It names Burbadge, Condell, Cooke, and
Ostler. It was one of the plays selected for the Court season of
1612–13, during which, on 14 February, took place the wedding of the
Elector Palatine Frederick and the Princess Elizabeth, and which was
therefore singularly rich in plays, notwithstanding the interruption
of the festivities due to the death of Prince Henry on 7 November
1612. Heminges lent a boy for Chapman’s mask on 15 February. The
twenty plays given this winter by the King’s men, the exact dates of
which are not upon record, were Shakespeare’s _Much Ado about Nothing_
(performed twice), _The Tempest_, _A Winter’s Tale_, _Julius Caesar_,
_Othello_, and _1 and 2 Henry IV_, Jonson’s _Alchemist_, Beaumont and
Fletcher’s _Philaster_ (also performed twice), _The Maid’s Tragedy_,
_A King and No King_, _The Captain_ and the lost play of _Cardenio_,
Tourneur’s _Nobleman_, and four plays of unknown authorship, _The Merry
Devil of Edmonton_, _The Knot of Fools_, _The Twins’ Tragedy_, and
_A Bad Beginning Makes a Good Ending_. On 8 June there was a special
performance of _Cardenio_ for the Savoyan ambassador. Some unknown
cause seems to have brought Shakespeare back in 1613 to the assistance
of his fellows, and he collaborated with Fletcher in _The Two Noble
Kinsmen_ and in _Henry VIII_ or _All is True_, possibly a revision of
the _Buckingham_ which formed part of the repertory of Sussex’s men in
1594. During a performance of _Henry VIII_, on 29 June 1613, the Globe
was burnt to the ground. Some contemporary verses mention Burbadge,
Heminges, and Condell as present on this occasion. A levy was called
for from the housekeepers to meet the cost of rebuilding, and owing to
the inability of the representatives of Augustine Phillips to meet the
call upon them, Heminges was enabled to recover one of the alienated
interests, which he divided with Condell.
The company was at Oxford before November in 1613, and also visited
Shrewsbury, Stafford, and Folkestone during 1612–13. They played
sixteen times at Court in the winter of 1613–14, on 1, 4, 5, 15, and
16 November and 27 December 1613, and on 1, 4, and 10 January, 2, 4,
8, 10, and 18 February and 6 and 8 March 1614. The rebuilding of the
Globe was complete by 30 June 1614, and in the course of 1613–14 the
company visited Coventry. Cooke died in February 1614, being then a
sharer. Ostler died on 16 December, and his interests in the Globe
and Blackfriars became matter of dispute between his widow and her
father, John Heminges. The ascertained dates of Ostler’s career render
it possible to assign to 1609–14, the period of his connexion with the
King’s men, three plays in which he took part. These are Webster’s
_Duchess of Malfi_, at the first production of which, if the actor-list
of the 1623 edition is rightly interpreted, the parts of Ferdinand, the
Cardinal, and Antonio were played respectively by Burbadge, Condell,
and Ostler, Fletcher’s _Valentinian_, played by Burbadge, Condell,
Lowin, Ostler, and Underwood, and his _Bonduca_, played by Burbadge,
Condell, Lowin, Ostler, Underwood, Tooley, Ecclestone, and Robinson.
_Bonduca_ must be either earlier than Ecclestone’s departure for the
Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1611, or after he quitted that company and
presumably rejoined the King’s in 1613.
The King’s men gave eight plays at Court on unspecified days during the
winter of 1614–15. On 29 March 1615 they were in trouble with other
companies for playing in Lent, and Heminges and Burbadge appeared on
their behalf before the Privy Council. In April 1615 they were at
Nottingham. They gave fourteen plays at Court between 1 November 1615
and 1 April 1616, and again the precise dates are not specified. They
also appeared before Anne at Somerset House on 21 December 1615.