following, at the publict Croce, about ten houres, to conveene
themselves, and rescind the acts, or ellis to passe to the horne
immediatly after. The foure sessiouns conveene in the East Kirk.
They asked the ministers’ advice. The ministers willed them
to advise with some advocats, seing the mater tuiched their
estate so neere. M^r. William Oliphant and M^r. Johne Schairp,
advocats, came to the foure sessiouns. The charge was read. The
advocats gave their counsell to rescind the act, by reasoun the
King’s charge did not allow slanderous and undecent comedeis;
and farther, shewed unto them, that the sessiouns could doe
nothing without their ministers, seing they were charged as
weill as the sessiouns, and the mater could not passe in voting,
but the moderator and they being present. They were called in,
and after reasouning they came to voting. M^r. Robert Bruce
being first asked, answered ‘His Majestie is not minded to allow
anie slanderous or offensive comedeis; but so it is that their
comedeis are slanderous and offensive; therefore, the king,
in effect, ratifieth our act. The rest of the ministers voted
after the same maner. The elders, partlie for feare of their
estats, partlie upon informatioun of the advocats, voted to the
rescinding of the act. It was voted nixt, whether the ministers
sould intimat the rescinding of the act? The most part voted
they sould. The ministers assured them they would not. Henrie
Nisbit, Archibald Johnstoun, Alexander Lindsey, and some others,
tooke upon them to purchasse an exemptioun to the ministers.
They returned with this answere, that his Majestie was content
the mater sould be passed over lightlie, but he would have some
mentioun made of the annulling of the act. They refuse. Their
commissioners went the second tyme to the king, and returned
with this answere, ‘Lett them nather speeke good nor evill in
that mater, but leave it as dead.’ The ministers conveened apart
to consult. M^r. Robert Bruce said it behoved them ather to
justifie the thing they had done, or ellis they could not goe to
a pulpit. Some others said the like. Others said, Leave it to
God, to doe as God would direct their hearts. So they dissolved.
M^r. Robert, and others that were of his minde, justified it
the day following, in some small measure, and yitt were not
querrelled.
Several other documents confirm this narrative. The Privy Council
register contains an order of 8 November for an officer at arms to call
upon the sessions by proclamation to rescind their resolution and a
further proclamation of 10 November reciting the submission made by the
sessions.[744] The Lord High Treasurer’s accounts contain payments to
Walter Forsyth, the officer employed, as well as gifts to ‘ye Inglis
comedianis’ of £43 6_s._ 8_d._ in October, of £40 in November ‘to by
tymber for ye preparatioun of ane house to thair pastyme’, and of a
further £333 6_s._ 8_d._ in December.[745] It is George Nicolson, in
a letter of 12 November forwarding the proclamation of 8 November to
Sir Robert Cecil, who identifies the players for us as ‘Fletcher and
Mertyn with their company’.[746] The bounty of James, although it must
be borne in mind that the sums were reckoned in pounds Scots, probably
left them disinclined to quit Edinburgh in a hurry. Another gift of
£400 reached them through Roger Ashton in 1601;[747] and on 9 October
in the same year they visited Aberdeen with a letter of recommendation
from the King, and with the style of his majesty’s servants, and the
town council gave them £22 and spent £3 on their supper ‘that nicht
thaye plaid to the towne’. Nay, more, another entry in the burgh
register tells us that the players came in the train of ‘Sir Francis
Hospital of Haulszie, Knycht, Frenschman’, and one of those ‘admittit
burgesses’ with the foreign visitor was ‘Laurence Fletcher, comediane
to his Majesty’.[748]
Laurence Fletcher’s name stands first in the English patent of 1603 to
the King’s men, and the inferences have been drawn that the company
at Aberdeen was the Chamberlain’s men, that their visit was due to a
proscription from London on account of their participation in the Essex
‘innovation’, that Shakespeare was with them, and that he picked up
local colour, to the extent of ‘a blasted heath’ for _Macbeth_.[749]
To this it may be briefly replied that, as the Chamberlain’s men were
at Court as usual in the winter of 1602, any absence from London,
which their unlucky performance of _Richard II_ may have rendered
discreet, can only have been of short duration; that the most plausible
reading of the Scottish evidence is that Fletcher’s company were in
the service of James as Court comedians from 1599 to 1601; and that
there is nothing whatever to indicate that Fletcher ever belonged to
the Chamberlain’s company at all. In fact, very little is known of
him outside Scotland, although it is just possible that he may have
been the object of two advances made by Henslowe to the Admiral’s men
about October 1596, and described respectively as ‘lent vnto Martyne
to feache Fleatcher’ and ‘lent the company to geue Fleatcher’.[750] If
Fletcher was the King’s man in Scotland, it was not unnatural that he
should retain that status when James came to England; and it is very
doubtful whether the insertion of his name in the patent in any way
entailed his being taken into business relations with his ‘fellows’.
I strongly suspect that his companion at Edinburgh, Martin, was put
into a precisely similar position amongst Queen Anne’s men, for who can
Martin be but Martin Slater, who is often, as in the passage quoted
above, called Martin _tout court_ in Henslowe’s _Diary_, and who
certainly left the Admiral’s men in 1597?
iii. ENGLISH PLAYERS ON THE CONTINENT
[_Bibliographical Note._--The earliest comprehensive study
of the foreign travels of English actors is that of A. Cohn,
_Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries_ (1865). Much material has been collected, mostly
since Cohn wrote, in a number of local histories and special
studies, of which the most important are: C. M. Plümicke,
_Entwurf einer Theatergeschichte von Berlin_ (1781); D. C. von
Rommel, _Geschichte von Hessen_ (1820–38); J. E. Schlager,
_Über das alte Wiener Hoftheater_ in _Sitzungsberichte der
phil.-hist. Classe der Kaiserlichen Akad. der Wissenschaften_,
vi (1851), 147; M. Fürstenau, _Zur Geschichte der Musik und des
Theaters am Hofe der Kurfürsten von Sachsen_ (1861); E. Mentzel,
_Geschichte der Schauspielkunst in Frankfurt am Main_ (1882); O.
Teuber, _Geschichte des Prager Theaters_ (1883); J. Meissner, in
_Shakespeare-Jahrbuch_, xix. 113 (Austria), and _Die englischen
Comoedianten zur Zeit Shakespeares in Oesterreich_ (1884);
K. Trautmann in _Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte_, xii. 319
(Munich, Augsburg); xiii. 34 (Suabia), 315 (Ulm); xiv. 113
(Nuremberg), 225 (Suabia); xv. 209 (Ulm, Stuttgart, Tübingen);
in _Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte_, vii
(Rothenburg); and in _Jahrbuch für Münchener Geschichte_, iii.
259; J. Crüger in _Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte_, xv. 113
(Strassburg); Duncker, _Landgraf Moritz von Hessen und die
englischen Komödianten in Deutsche Rundschau_, xlviii (1886),
260; A. Cohn in _Shakespeare-Jahrbuch_, xxi. 245 (Cologne); J.
Bolte in _Shakespeare-Jahrbuch_, xxiii. 99 (Denmark and Sweden),
and _Das Danziger Theater im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert_ (1893);
J. Wolter in _Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsvereins_,
xxxii. 90 (Cologne); A. Wormstall in _Zeitschrift für
vaterländische Geschichte und Altertumskunde Westfalens_, lvi
(1898), 75 (Münster); G. Witkowzski in _Euphorion_, xv. 441
(Leipzig). A collection of records from the earlier of these
and from more scattered sources is in K. Goedeke, _Grundriss
der deutschen Dichtung aus den Quellen_^2 (1886), ii. 524, and
valuable summaries are given in W. Creizenach, _Schauspiele
der englischen Komödianten_ (1889), and E. Herz, _Englische
Schauspieler und englisches Schauspiel zur Zeit Shakespeares
in Deutschland_ (1903). The excursus of F. G. Fleay in _Life
and Work of Shakespeare_ (1886), 307, is misleading. Additional
material, which has become available since Herz wrote, is
recorded by C. F. Meyer in _Shakespeare-Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. 196
(Wolgast), and C. Grabau in _Shakespeare-Jahrbuch_, xlv. 311
(Leipzig). Useful special studies are by C. Harris, _The English
Comedians in Germany before the Thirty Years’ War: the Financial
Side_ (_Publ. of Modern Language Association_, xxii. 446), A.
Dessoff, _Über englische, italienische und spanische Dramen
in den Spielverzeichnissen deutscher Wandertruppen_ (1901,
_Studien für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte_, i), and on
the problem of staging (cf. ch. xx) C. H. Kaulfuss-Diesch, _Die
Inszenierung des deutschen Dramas an der Wende des sechzehnten
und siebzehnten Jahrhunderts_ (1905). A collection of plays and
jigs, in German, but belonging to the repertory of an English
company, appeared as _Engelische Comedien und Tragedien_
(1620); some of the plays have been edited by J. Tittmann,
_Die Schauspiele der englischen Komödianten in Deutschland_
(1880), and the jigs by J. Bolte, _Die Singspiele der englischen
Komödianten und ihrer Nachfolger in Deutschland, Holland und
Scandinavien_ (1893). German plays written under English
influences are to be found in J. Tittmann, _Die Schauspiele
des Herzogs Heinrich Julius von Braunschweig_ (1880), and
A. von Keller, _Jacob Ayrers Dramen_ (1865). Cohn prints,
with translations, Ayrer’s _Sidea_ and _Phaenicia, Julio and
Hyppolita_ and _Titus Andronicus_ from the 1620 volume, and
early German versions of _Hamlet_ (_Der bestrafte Brudermord_)
and _Romeo and Juliet_ from manuscripts. The literary records
and remains of the English players are fully discussed by
Creizenach and Herz, and their relation to Ayrer by W. Wodick,
_J. Ayrers Dramen in ihrem Verhältniss zur einheimischen
Literatur und zum Schauspiel der englischen Komödianten_ (1912).
The material for the Netherlands, some of which was gathered by
Cohn, may be studied in J. A. Worp, _Geschiedenis van het Drama
en van het Tooneel in Nederland_ (1904–8), who also deals with
the Dutch versions of English dramas. The contemporary stage
conditions in France are best treated by E. Rigal, _Le Théâtre
français avant la période classique_ (1901), and those in Spain
by H. A. Rennert, _The Spanish Stage in the Time of Lope de
Vega_ (1909), who uses the results of recent researches by C.
Pérez Pastor, which have added much to the information furnished
by C. Pellicer, _Tratado histórico sobre el origen y progresos
de la Comedia y del Histrionismo en España_ (1804).]
Thomas Heywood records, about 1608, that ‘the King of Denmarke, father
to him that now reigneth, entertained into his service a company of
English comedians, commended unto him by the honourable the Earl of
Leicester’.[751] This King of Denmark was Frederick II (1559–88),
father of Christian IV (1588–1648), and of Queen Anne of England.
English ‘instrumentister’, Johann Krafftt, Johann Personn, Johann
Kirck or Kirckmann, and Thomas Bull, were at the Danish Court as early
as 1579–80, and in 1585 certain unnamed English played (_lechte_) in
the courtyard of the town-hall at Elsinore, when the press of folk
was such that the wall broke down. These may be the same men who
played and vaulted at Leipzig on 19 July 1585, and are the earliest
English players yet traced in Germany.[752] But the particular
comedians referred to by Heywood were probably another company who
had accompanied Leicester to Holland, when he took the command of the
English forces in 1585, and had given a show, half dramatic, half
acrobatic, of _The Forces of Hercules_ at Utrecht on 23 April 1586.
Certainly Leicester had in his train one Will, a ‘jesting plaier’,
who is now usually identified with William Kempe, and in August and
September 1586 the Household Accounts of the Danish Court record the
presence of ‘Wilhelm Kempe instrumentist’, and of his boy Daniell
Jonns. It is not clear what were the precise relations between Kempe
and five other ‘instrumentister och springere’, Thomas Stiwens,
Jurgenn Brienn, Thomas Koning, Thomas Pape, and Robert Persj, who
were at Court from 17 June to 18 September 1586, and for whom the
same accounts record a payment to Thomas Stiuens of six thalers a
month apiece, at the end of that period. If he had, as is probable,
been their fellow up to that point, he did not accompany them in
their further peregrinations.[753] These took them to the Court of
Frederick’s nephew, Christian I, Elector of Saxony (1586–91), as a
result of correspondence, still extant, between the sovereigns, in
which the offer of salaries at the annual rate of 100 thalers overcame
the reluctance of the Englishmen to face the perils of an unknown
tongue. They started with an interpreter on 25 September, and shortly
after their arrival at Waidenhain on 16 October received instructions
from Christian to follow him with mourning clothes to Berlin, where
he was then sojourning. Christian’s own capital was Dresden, and
here they held a formal appointment in his service, under which they
were bound to follow him in his travels, and to entertain him with
performances after his banquets, and with music and ‘Springkunst’, and
were entitled, beyond their pay, to board, livery, and travelling
expenses, and a lodging allowance of forty thalers each. The Dresden
archives give their names as Tomas Konigk, Tomas Stephan or Stephans,
George Beyzandt, Tomas Papst, and Rupert Persten. Their departure from
Court is recorded on 17 July 1587.[754] In all these notices music and
acrobatic feats are to the fore, but that the men were actors there can
be no doubt, for two of them, Thomas Pope and George Bryan, reappear
amongst Strange’s men, and thereafter as fellows of Shakespeare in the
Chamberlain’s company. Of Stevens, King, and Percy no more is known.
Kempe was abroad again, in Italy and Germany, during 1601, and returned
to England on 2 September. It is not certain whether he took a company
with him, or went as a solitary morris dancer. But it is noteworthy
that on the following 26 November an English company, under one Johann
Kemp, reached Münster, after a tour which had taken them to Amsterdam,
Cologne, Redberg, and Steinfurt. They played in English, and had a
clown who pattered in German between the acts.[755]
The man, however, who did most to acclimatize the English actors in
Germany was Robert Browne, who paid several visits to the country,
and spent considerable periods there between 1590 and 1620. With him
he took relays of actors, some of whom split off into independent
associations, and account for most, although not all, of the groups of
‘Engländer’ who became familiar figures at the Frankfort spring and
autumn fairs and even in out-of-the-way corners of northern Europe. Of
some of these groups the wanderings can be traced in outline, although
the frequent failure of the archives to record individual names is
responsible for many _lacunae_, which the conjectural ingenuity of
literary historians has done its best to fill. Many of these anonymous
performances I must pass over in silence.
Robert Browne first appears as one of Worcester’s men, with Edward
Alleyn, in 1583, and in 1589 these two, probably as Admiral’s men,
still held a common stock of apparel with John Alleyn and Richard
Jones.[756] His career abroad begins with a visit to Leyden in October
1590.[757] This was perhaps only tentative, for in February 1592 he
was preparing to cross the seas again, and to this end obtained for
himself, John Bradstreet, Thomas Sackville, and Richard Jones, the
following passport to the States-General of the Netherlands from the
Lord Admiral:
Messieurs, comme les présents porteurs, Robert Browne, Jehan
Bradstriet, Thomas Saxfield, Richard Jones, ont deliberé de
faire ung voyage en Allemagne, avec intention de passer par le
païs de Zelande, Hollande et Frise, et allantz en leur dict
voyage d’exercer leurs qualitez en faict de musique, agilitez et
joeux de commedies, tragedies et histoires, pour s’entretenir
et fournir à leurs despenses en leur dict voyage. Cestes
sont partant vous requerir monstrer et prester toute faveur
en voz païs et jurisdictions, et leur octroyer en ma faveur
vostre ample passeport soubz le seel des Estatz, afin que les
Bourgmestres des villes estantz soubs voz jurisdictions ne
les empeschent en passant d’exercer leurs dictes qualitez par
tout. Enquoy faisant, je vous demeureray à tous obligé, et me
treuverez très appareillé à me revencher de vostre courtoisie en
plus grand cas. De ma chambre à la court d’Angleterre ce x^{me}
jour de Febvrier 1591.
Vostre tres affecsionné à vous fayre plaisir et sarvis,
C. Howard.[758]
Presumably the Lord Admiral gave this passport in his official
capacity, as responsible for the high seas, and it is not necessary to
infer that the travellers were in 1592 his servants.[759]
There are not many clear notices of Browne and his company during
this tour. They were at Arnhem, with a licence from Prince Maurice
of Orange-Nassau, in 1592.[760] Thereafter they may have gone into
residence at some Court, Wolfenbüttel or another. They can hardly have
been the English ‘comoedianten und springer’ who came to Nyköping in
Sweden for the wedding of Duke Karl of Sweden and Princess Christina
of Holstein on 28 August 1592[761]; for it was only two days later
that Browne approached the Frankfort magistrates for leave to play at
the autumn fair, where they gave _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_ and some of
Marlowe’s plays.[762] It was on this occasion that Fynes Moryson, the
traveller, visited the fair and noted the great vogue of the English
actors amongst the merchants.[763] Englishmen played at Cologne in
October and November 1592,[764] and at Nuremberg in August 1593;[765]
but in view of the Nyköping company it can hardly be assumed that these
were Browne and his fellows, and indeed the leader at Nuremberg is
called ‘Ruberto Gruen’, which may, but on the other hand may not, be a
blunder for Browne’s name. The Cologne players are anonymous. At any
rate ‘Robert Braun, Thomas Sachsweil, Johan Bradenstreit und consorten’
were all at Frankfort in August 1593,[766] where they played scriptural
dramas, including _Abraham and Lot_ and _The Destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrha_. Thereafter the company seems to have broken up. Richard
Jones certainly went home before 2 September 1594, when he bought a
gown ‘of pechecoler in grayne’ from Henslowe.[767] He had doubtless
already joined the Admiral’s men.
Thomas Sackville and John Bradstreet probably went to Wolfenbüttel.
This was the capital of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
(1589–1613), himself the author of plays, mostly printed during 1593
and 1594, in which an English influence is perceptible. The Duke
married Elisabeth, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark, and his wedding
at Copenhagen in February 1590 was attended by his brother-in-law,
afterwards James I of England. It is possible that his earliest play,
_Susanna_, was written either for this occasion or for the repetition
of his wedding ceremony at Wolfenbüttel. In this piece the jester, a
conventional personage, bears the name ‘Johan Clant’, in the later
plays ‘Johan Bouset’; and in the _Ehebrecherin_ (1594) Bouset says,
quite irrelevantly to his dramatic character, ‘Ich bin ein Englisch
Mann’. Both names are in fact of English origin, from the words ‘clown’
and ‘posset’ respectively. Evidently the Duke must in some way have
been in touch with the English stage at a date even earlier than
Browne’s second German visit in 1592. It is not, therefore, necessary
to conjecture, as has been conjectured, that Wolfenbüttel was the first
objective of this visit.[768] Unfortunately the Brunswick household
accounts for 1590–1601 are missing, and with them all direct evidence
of the first formation of his English company by the Duke has probably
gone. The company existed by 1596, when the ‘furstelige comoedianten
och springers’ of the Duke paid a month’s visit to Copenhagen for
the coronation of his brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, on
29 August.[769] In the following year we find ‘Jan Bosett und seine
Gesellen’ at Nuremberg, ‘Thomas Sackfeil und Consorten’ at Augsburg in
June, ‘Johann Busset’ and Jakob Behel at Strassburg in July and August,
and ‘Thomas Sackville, John Bouset genannt’, Johann Breitenstrasse
and Jacob Biel at the Frankfort autumn fair.[770] The identity of
this company with the Wolfenbüttel court comedians may perhaps be
inferred from Sackville’s use of John Bouset as a stage name, and from
a reference, in this same year 1597, to ‘Thomas Sackefiel, princely
servant at Wolfenbüttel’. Another member of the company may have been
Edward Wakefiel, with whom Sackville, also in 1597, had a brawl in
a Brunswick tavern.[771] No more is heard of them until 1601, when
John Bouset was expected to join his old friend Robert Browne for
the Frankfort Easter fair.[772] The Brunswick household accounts are
extant for 1602 and 1608, and from 1614 onwards. Thomas Sackville
appears frequently. On 30 August 1602 he took a payment for the English
comedians. Later references to him from 1 October 1602 to 1617 are
mainly in connexion with purchases for the ducal wardrobe. It seems
clear that, while remaining a ducal servant, and possibly even an
actor, he went into business and prospered therein.[773] He is said to
have been selling silk at Frankfort in 1604, and in 1608 Thomas Coryat,
the Odcombian traveller and oddity, records:
‘The wealth that I sawe here was incredible. The goodliest
shew of ware that I sawe in all Franckford, saving that of the
Goldsmithes, was made by an Englishman one Thomas Sackfield a
Dorsetshire man, once a servant of my father, who went out of
England but in a meane estate, but after he had spent a few
yeares at the Duke of Brunswicks Court, hee so inriched himselfe
of late that his glittering shewe of ware in Franckford dit
farre excell all the Dutchmen, French, Italians, or whomsoever
else.’[774]
John Bradstreet’s name appears in 1604 with that of Sackville in the
album of Johannes Cellarius of Nuremberg. He died in 1618 and Sackville
in 1628, leaving a library of theology and English literature.
Edward Wakefield reappears in the Brunswick accounts for 1602, not
specifically as a player. But certainly the playing company continued
to exist. The accounts mention it in 1608, and Thomas Heywood notes
its existence about the same date. There were English players at
Wolfenbüttel in May 1615 and at Brunswick in 1611 and 1617, but no
names are recorded, and it can hardly be assumed that these were the
original ducal company. Henry Julius himself died in 1613.[775]
Robert Browne’s own movements are uncertain after the break-up of his
company in 1593. He is not traceable for a year or so either in Germany
or in England, where his wife and all her children and household died
of plague in Shoreditch about August 1593.[776] But sooner or later he
found his way to Cassel. This was another of the literary courts of
Germany, the capital of Maurice the Learned, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel
(1592–1627). Maurice himself wrote an ‘_Anglia_ Comoedia’ and other
plays in Terentian Latin, which were performed by the pupils of the
_Collegium Mauritianum_, but are unfortunately not preserved. He also
composed music and, like the Duke of Brunswick, gave a welcome to John
Dowland on one of his several foreign tours.[777] Possibly Dowland was
one of the two lutenists who are recorded to have spent fifteen weeks
at Cassel in 1594.[778] In the following year there were performances
by players and acrobats at Maurice’s castle of Wilhelmsburg at
Schmalkalden, and in the same year Maurice wrote to his agent at Prague
to give assistance to his comedians in the event of their visiting
that city.[779] To 1594 or 1595 may, therefore, be plausibly ascribed
undated warrants by which Robert Browne and Philip Kiningsmann receive
appointments from the Landgrave, undertaking to do him service with
their company in vocal and instrumental music and in plays to be
supplied either by Maurice or by themselves, and not to leave Cassel
without his permission.[780] Certainly Browne was the Landgrave’s man
by 16 April 1595, when a warrant was issued allowing the export of a
consignment of bows and arrows which he had been sent over to bring
from England to Cassel.[781] The ‘fürstlich hessische Diener und
Comoetianten’ were at Nuremberg on 5 July 1596, and a company under
Philip Konigsman were at Strassburg in the following August.[782]
Festivities were now in preparation at Cassel for the christening of
Maurice’s daughter, one of whose godmothers was Queen Elizabeth, on 24
August 1596. Brown and one John Webster were on duty at Cassel during
the visit of the Earl of Lincoln, who came from England to stand proxy
for Elizabeth.[783] Payments to the English comedians and performances
by them at Melsungen, Weissenstein, and Rothenburg, in the Landgrave’s
territory, are recorded in the Cassel archives during 1597 and 1598.
A proposed loan of them in 1597 to Landgrave Louis of Marburg seems
to have fallen through, but in 1598 they left Cassel for the Court of
the Palsgrave Frederic IV at Heidelberg, with a liberal _Abfertigung_
or vail of 300 thalers and a travelling allowance of 20 thalers, which
was entrusted to George Webster.[784] From Heidelberg they went to
Frankfort towards the end of 1599, but were refused leave to play,
owing to the prevalence of plague.[785] Robert Browne, Robert Kingman,
and Robert Ledbetter were then of the company. Ledbetter must have
recently joined them, as he is in the cast of _Frederick and Basilea_
as played by the Admiral’s men in 1597. Frankfort having failed them,
they fell back upon Strassburg, and here they seem to have remained
until the spring of 1601.[786] Browne was their leader at their
arrival, but he then seems to have left them and returned to England,
where he came to Court as manager of the Earl of Derby’s men during
the winters of 1599–1600 and 1600–1.[787] By Easter 1601, however, he
had started on his fourth tour, and appeared once more at Frankfort,
possibly in Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_. With him were Robert Kingmann and
Robert Ledbetter, and they were expecting to be joined by ‘Johannen
Buscheten und noch andere in unsere Companie gehörige Comödianten’. The
old association of 1592 between Robert Browne and Thomas Sackville was,
therefore, still in some sense alive.[788]
Meanwhile, Maurice of Hesse had not been wholly without English
actors, since Browne and his fellows left Cassel in 1598. It would
seem that George Webster returned from Heidelberg, or perhaps from
Strassburg, to his service. The ‘fürstlich-hessischen Komödianten und
Musikanten’ were at Frankfort in March, at Nuremberg in April 1600,
and at Frankfort again at Easter 1601. The names recorded are those of
George Webster, John Hill or Hüll, Richard Machin, and at Nuremberg
Bernhardt Sandt.[789] Upon his second visit to Frankfort Webster would
have met his old leader, now become his rival, Robert Browne. The
Hessian company were for a third time at Frankfort in the autumn of
1601.[790] In the following year they left the Landgrave’s service,
not altogether to the regret of some of his subjects, who resented a
patronage of foreign arts at the cost of their pockets.[791] Webster
and Machin, with whom was then one Ralph Reeve, were still using their
former master’s name when they visited Frankfort at Easter 1603.[792]
Thereafter they dropped it. Of Webster no more is heard. Machin is
conjectured to have joined for a short time an English company in the
service of Margrave Christian William, a younger son of the Elector
Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg, which came to Frankfort for the
Easter and autumn fairs of 1604.[793] The Margrave was administrator of
the diocese of Magdeburg, and kept his Court at Halle. His company is
traceable from 1604 to 1605, but I do not find any evidence of Machin’s
connexion with it. In May 1605 he appeared at Strassburg, and there
claimed as his credentials only his four years’ service with Maurice of
Hesse.[794] Shortly before, he had been at the Frankfort Easter fair
with Reeve, and the two returned to Frankfort in the autumn, and again
at Easter 1606.[795]
Robert Browne, for some years after the opening of his fourth tour at
Frankfort in the spring of 1601, does not appear to have attached
himself to any particular Court. He is found at Frankfort, with Robert
Jones, in September 1602, at Augsburg in the following November and
December, at Nuremberg in February 1603, and at Frankfort for the
Easter fair of the same year.[796] With him were then, but it would
seem only temporarily, Thomas Blackwood and John Thare, late of
Worcester’s men, who had doubtless just come out from England, when
Elizabeth’s illness and death closed the London theatres.[797] He is
probably the ‘alte Komödiant’, whose identity seems to have been
thought sufficiently described by that term at Frankfort in the autumn
of 1604.[798] He returned to Frankfort on 26 May 1606, and was at
Strassburg in the following June and July.[799] Here he was accompanied
by John Green. On this or some other visit to Strassburg, the company
probably lost Robert Kingman, who, like Thomas Sackville, found
business more profitable than strolling. He became a freeman of
Strassburg in 1618, and in that year was able to befriend his old
‘fellow’ Browne, and in 1626 other actors on their visits to the
city.[800] In the course of 1606 Browne seems to have entered the
service of Maurice of Hesse, who in the previous year had built a
permanent theatre, the _Ottonium_, at Cassel, and had now again an
English company for the first time since 1602. This is to be inferred
from an application for leave to play submitted to the Frankfort town
council on 26 August 1606, and signed by ‘Robert Braun’, ‘Johann Grün’,
and ‘Robert Ledbetter’ as ‘Fürstlich Hessische Comödianten’. Earlier
in August the same men had been at Ulm.[801] They visited Nuremberg
with a letter of recommendation from their lord in November, and then
settled down at Cassel for the winter.[802] But their service did not
last long. On 1 March 1607 a household officer wrote to the Landgrave
that the English found their salaries inadequate, and after performing
the comedy of _The King of England and Scotland_ had declared, either
in jest or earnest, that it was their last play in Cassel.[803]
Probably they were in earnest. Browne and Green went to Frankfort, for
the last time as the Hessian comedians, on 17 March.[804] Browne’s
name now disappears from German records for a decade. In 1610 he was a
member of the Queen’s Revels syndicate in London, and on 11 April 1612
he wrote a letter to Edward Alleyn from Clerkenwell.[805] But whether
Browne left them or not, the company held together for a while longer.
Green was at Danzig and Elbing in the course of 1607.[806] Thereafter
it seems probable that he tried a bold flight, and penetrated to the
heart of Catholic Germany in Austria. In November 1607 an English
company was with the archducal court of Ferdinand and Maria Anna at
Gräz in Styria. A performance by them of _The King of England and the
Goldsmith’s Wife_ is recorded.[807] They followed Ferdinand to Passau,
where they gave _The Prodigal Son_ and _The Jew_, and possibly also to
the Reichstag held in January 1608 at Regensburg. By 6 February they
were back at Gräz, and a letter from Ferdinand’s sister, the
Archduchess Maria Magdalena, then just betrothed to the Grand Duke
Cosimo II of Florence, gives a lively account of their performances and
of the assistance which they rendered in the revels danced at
Court.[808] Their repertory included _The Prodigal Son_, _A Proud Woman
of Antwerp_, _Dr. Faustus_, _A Duke of Florence and a Nobleman’s
Daughter_, _Nobody and Somebody_, _Fortunatus_, _The Jew_, _King Louis
and King Frederick of Hungary_, _A King of Cyprus and a Duke of
Venice_, _Dives and Lazarus_.[809] It is not absolutely certain that
the company referred to in these notices was Green’s. No name is in
fact mentioned. But the probability suggested by the resemblance of the
above play-list to those of 1620 and 1626, with which Green was
certainly connected, is confirmed by the existence of a German
manuscript of _Nobody and Somebody_ with a dedication by Green to
Ferdinand’s brother the Archduke Maximilian, who was certainly present
at the Gräz performances, and by a letter which tells us that a company
visiting Austria in 1617 was the same as that which had played at Gräz
in the lifetime of the Archduchess Maria, who died in 1608.
Unfortunately the identification of this company of 1617 with Green’s
is itself a matter of high probability, rather than of absolute
certainty.[810] The end of the visit to Gräz was marked by a duel in
which one of the English actors, ‘the man with long red hair, who
always played a little fiddle’, killed a Frenchman.[811] Green now,
like Browne, drops for some years out of the German records.
The Court functions at Cassel surrendered by Browne in 1607 were
resumed by his predecessors, in whose leadership Reeve had now
succeeded Machin; and the appearance of the Hessian company is recorded
at Frankfort during both the fairs of 1608 and 1609, the Easter fair of
1610, the autumn fair of 1612, and the Easter fair of 1613. A proposed
appearance for the coronation of the Emperor Mathias in June 1612
was prohibited, because the mourning for his predecessor Rudolph II
was not yet over.[812] It is perhaps something of an assumption that
the company was the same one throughout all these years. Reeve was
in charge up to the autumn of 1609; after that no individual name is
mentioned. The intervals between the fairs were presumably spent in the
main at Cassel. In the summer of 1609 the company visited Stuttgart and
Nuremberg and possibly other places, with a letter of recommendation
from their lord.[813] In the autumn of the same year John Sigismund,
Elector of Brandenburg (1608–19), who often entertained a company of
his own, but appears to have been temporarily without one, wrote to
Maurice to borrow them for the wedding of his brother at Berlin.[814]
In April 1610 they may not improbably, though there is no evidence of
the fact, have followed Maurice to the Diet at Prague.[815] In 1611
they are said to have been at Darmstadt.[816] They certainly played at
the wedding of the Margrave Joachim Ernest, uncle of the Elector of
Brandenburg, at Anspach in October 1612, and later in the same month
paid a visit to Nuremberg.[817] No more is heard of them, or of any
other English actors in the service of Maurice of Hesse-Cassel, after
1613.[818] Reeve was a member of Rosseter’s syndicate for the building
of the Porter’s Hall theatre at Blackfriars in 1615, and with him were
associated Philip Kingman and Robert Jones, the last notices of whom in
Germany are as ‘fellows’ of Robert Browne in 1596 and 1602 respectively.
The appearance of Blackwood and Thare, late of Worcester’s men, in
company with Browne at the Frankfort Easter fair of 1603, has already
been noted. The only further record of either of them is of Thare
at Ulm and Augsburg in the following December.[819] But by a series
of conjectures, to which I hesitate to subscribe, they have been
identified with a company which came to Stuttgart in September 1603
in the train of Lord Spencer and Sir William Dethick, ambassadors
from England carrying the insignia of the Garter to Frederick Duke of
Württemberg, and there gave a play of _Susanna_[820]; with a company
which visited Nördlingen and other places in January 1604 under the
leadership of one Eichelin, apparently a German, but with a repertory
which included a _Romeo and Juliet_ and a _Pyramus and Thisbe_[821];
with a company which held letters of recommendation from the Duke of
Würtemberg at Nuremberg in February 1604;[822] and with a company which
took a repertory closely resembling the Nördlingen one to Rothenburg in
1604 and 1606.[823] This is all very ingenious guesswork.[824]
All trace of John Green is lost for several years after 1608. An
isolated notice at Utrecht in November 1613 suggests that he may
have spent part of this interval in the Netherlands.[825] A year or
two later he returned to Germany. He was at Danzig in July 1615 and
again, with Robert Reinolds, late of Queen Anne’s men, in July 1616,
having paid an intermediate visit to Copenhagen.[826] In 1617 he was
at Prague for the coronation of the Archduke Ferdinand as King of
Bohemia, and in July of the same year at Vienna.[827] The comparative
infrequency with which English actors visited Austrian territory
perhaps justifies the assumption that his is the company mentioned in
a letter of recommendation sent by Ferdinand’s brother, the Archduke
Charles, at Neiss to the Bishop of Olmütz on 18 March 1617, as having
played at Gräz before his mother the Archduchess Maria, who died in
1608, and having recently spent some months at the Court of Poland in
Warsaw.[828] In 1618 Green’s old leader, the indefatigable veteran
Robert Browne, came out with a new company on his fifth and last visit
to the Continent. He is first noted at Nuremberg on 28 May.[829] My
impression is that the two men joined forces. Green’s name does not
appear in the records for a couple of years. But Reinolds, who had
been with him at Danzig in 1616, was with Browne at Strassburg in
June and July 1618.[830] Later in the year Browne was at the autumn
fair at Frankfort.[831] There is no definite mention of him during
the next twelve months, but it is not improbable that the combined
company was that which visited Rostock in May and Danzig in July
1619.[832] At any rate Browne appeared at Cologne in October;[833] and
then went for the winter to Prague, where the Elector Palatine and the
Lady Elizabeth of England, now King and Queen of Bohemia, had set up
their Court.[834] They were but a winter King and Queen. In 1620 the
Thirty Years’ War broke out, and Germany had other things to think
of than English mumming. Browne was at Nuremberg in February and at
Frankfort for the Easter fair.[835] That is the last we hear of him.
But Green reached Cologne and Utrecht later in April, and was probably
discreetly taking the company home.[836] In 1626 he came out again
with Robert Reinolds, who made a reputation as a clown under the name
of Pickleherring.[837] The details of this later tour lie beyond the
scope of the present inquiry. Pickleherring is the clown-name also in a
volume of _Engelische Comedien und Tragedien_, printed in 1620, which
probably represents an attempt of Browne and Green to turn to profit
with the printers their repertory of 1618–20, now rendered useless by
their return to England.[838] The plays contained in this volume, in
addition to two farces and five jigs, in most of which Pickleherring
appears, are _Esther and Haman_, _The Prodigal Son_, _Fortunatus_,
_A King’s Son of England and a King’s Daughter of Scotland_, _Nobody
and Somebody_, _Sidonia and Theagenes_, _Julio and Hyppolita_, and
_Titus Andronicus_.[839] The first five of these reappear in a list
of plays forming the repertory of Green at Dresden during the visit
of 1626 referred to above. If the titles can be trusted, two of the
plays in this list had already been played by Browne at Frankfort and
Cassel in 1601 and 1607, three by an unknown company, possibly that
of Blackwood and Thare, at Nördlingen and Rothenburg in 1604 and
1606, and eight by Green himself at Passau and Gräz in the winter of
1607–8.[840] They number thirty in all, as follows: _Christabella_,
_Romeo and Juliet_,[841] _Amphitryo_,[842] _The Duke of Florence_,[843]
_The King of Spain and the Portuguese Viceroy_,[844] _Julius
Caesar_, _Crysella_,[845] _The Duke of Ferrara_,[846] _Nobody and
Somebody_,[847] _The Kings of Denmark and Sweden_,[848] _Hamlet_,[849]
_Orlando Furioso_,[850] _The Kings of England and Scotland_,[851]
_Hieronymo the Spanish Marshal_,[852] _Haman and Esther_,[853]
_The Martyr Dorothea_,[854] _Doctor Faustus_,[855] _The King of
Arragon_,[856] _Fortunatus_,[857] _Joseph the Jew of Venice_,[858]
_The Clever Thief_,[859] _The Duke of Venice_,[860] _Barabbas Jew of
Malta_, _The Dukes of Mantua and Verona_, _Old Proculus_, _Lear King
of England_, _The Godfather_, _The Prodigal Son_,[861] _The Count of
Angiers_, _The Rich Man_.[862]
The lists of 1620 and 1626 do not bear out Fleay’s assumption that the
repertories they represent were wholly made up of plays taken out by
Browne in 1592.[863]
Another member of Browne’s last expedition can perhaps be identified.
With him in 1592 had been Richard Jones, who afterwards became one
of the Admiral’s men in 1594 and left that company in 1602. He was
again associated with Browne in Rosseter’s Queen’s Revels syndicate of
1610. The following undated letter to Edward Alleyn is preserved at
Dulwich:[864]
M^r Allen, I commend my love and humble duty to you, geving you
thankes for your great bounty bestoed vpon me in my sicknes,
when I was in great want, God blese you for it, Sir, this it
is, I am to go over beyond the seeas with M^r Browne and the
company, but not by his meanes, for he is put to half a shaer,
and to stay hear, for they ar all against his goinge. Now good
Sir, as you have ever byne my worthie frend, so healp me nowe.
I have a sut of clothes and a cloke at pane for three pound,
and if it shall pleas you to lend me so much to release them I
shalbe bound to pray for you so longe as I leve, for if I go
over and have no clothes, I shall not be esteemed of, and by
godes help the first mony that I gett I will send it over vnto
you, for hear I get nothinge, some tymes I have a shillinge a
day, and some tymes nothinge, so that I leve in great poverty
hear, and so I humbly take my leave, prainge to god I and my
wiffe for your health and mistris Allenes, which god continew,
Your poor frend to command
Richard Jones.
[_Endorsed_] Receved of master Allen the [ extra spaces ] of
February the somme of [ extra spaces ] [_and by Alleyn_] M^r
Jones his letter wher on I lent hym 3^l.
This has generally been dated 1592. But Alleyn’s first recorded
marriage was in October of that year, and the reference to Browne as
not going with the company has always been a puzzle. I suspect that
it was written in or near 1615, and that Jones was one of the actors
who started in advance of Browne under John Green. That he did travel
about this time is shown by two other letters to Alleyn about a lease
of the Leopard’s Head in Shoreditch held by his wife.[865] The first,
from Jones himself, is not dated, but a mention of Henslowe shows that
it was written before the latter’s death on 6 January 1616, or at
least before Jones had heard of that event. The writer and his wife
were then out of England. The second, from Harris Jones, was written
from Danzig on 1 April 1620. Mrs. Jones was then expecting to join her
husband, who was with ‘the prince’, whoever this may have been. If
Jones had travelled with Browne’s men, he cut himself adrift from them
on their return, for in 1622 he entered as a musician the service of
Philip Julius, Duke of Wolgast in Pomerania (1592–1625), who had twice
visited England, and whose presence at more than one London theatre
is recorded in 1602.[866] Two petitions from Jones are in the Stettin
archives.[867] On 30 August 1623 he asked permission, with his fellows
Johan Kostrassen and Robert Dulandt (Dowland?), to return from Wolgast
to England. Behind them they appear to have left Richard Farnaby, son
of the better-known composer Giles Farnaby.[868] On 10 July 1624 Jones
wrote to the Duke that his hopes of profitable employment under the
Prince in England had been disappointed, and asked to be taken back
into his service.
All the groups of actors hitherto dealt with seem to have had their
origin, more or less directly, in the untiring initiative of Robert
Browne. There is, however, another tradition, almost as closely
associated with the houses of Brandenburg and Saxony, as the former
with those of Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick. Some give and take between
Cassel and the Courts of some of the Brandenburg princes has from time
to time been noted.[869] But Berlin, where the successive Electors of
Brandenburg, Joachim Frederick (1598–1608) and John Sigismund (1608–9),
had their capital, was during a long period of years the head-quarters
from which an Englishman, John Spencer, undertook extensive travels,
both in Protestant and in Catholic Germany. Of Spencer’s stage-career
in London, if he ever had one, nothing is known. Possibly he betook
himself to the Brandenburg Court during the English plague-year
of 1603. At any rate, comedians holding a recommendation given by
the Elector on 10 August 1604 and confirmed by the Stadtholder of
the Netherlands, Maurice Prince of Orange Nassau, in the following
December, were at Leyden in January and The Hague in May 1605.[870] It
is reasonable to identify them with the company under John Spencer, who
received a recommendation from the Electress Eleonora of Brandenburg to
the Elector Christian II of Saxony (1591–1611) in the same year.[871]
At Dresden they possibly remained for some time, for although there are
several anonymous appearances, including the famous ones at Gräz in the
winter of 1607–8, which can be conjecturally assigned to them,[872]
they do not clearly emerge until April 1608, when a visit of the
Electoral players of Saxony is recorded at Cologne.[873] Subsequently
they waited upon Francis, Duke of Stettin and by him were recommended
to the new Elector of Brandenburg, John Sigismund, who passed them on
once more to the Elector of Saxony on 14 July 1609.[874] Being in need
of comedians for his brother’s wedding in the same year, he applied,
as has been noted, for a loan of those of Maurice of Hesse.[875]
Dresden remained the head-quarters of Spencer’s men again during
the next two years, but in 1611 they were back in John Sigismund’s
service. Christian II of Saxony died in this year. In July and August
they visited Danzig and Königsberg, and in October and November they
attended the Elector to Ortelsburg and Königsberg for the ceremonies in
connexion with the acknowledgement of him as heir to his father-in-law,
Duke Albert Frederick of Prussia. On this occasion Spencer was at
the head of not less than nineteen actors and sixteen musicians, and
produced an elaborate Turkish ‘Triumph-comedy’.[876] In April 1613
Spencer left Berlin on a tour which was to take him to Dresden once
more.[877] The company were at Nuremberg in June, still using the
name of the Elector of Brandenburg and playing _Philole and Mariana_,
_Celinde and Sedea_, _The Fall of Troy_, _The Fall of Constantinople_,
and _The Turk_.[878] In July and August they were at Augsburg, and in
September they returned to Nuremberg, now describing themselves as
the Elector of Saxony’s company.[879] This Elector was John George I
(1611–56), the third of his house to entertain an English company. In
October they played The _Fall of Constantinople_ at the Reichstag held
by the Emperor Mathias at Regensburg. Spencer was their leader, but
they no longer claimed any courtly status.[880] After an unsuccessful
attempt to pay a third visit for the year to Nuremberg, they went
to Rothenburg, and so to Heidelberg, whither the Elector Palatine
Frederick V had just brought his English bride. Here they spent the
winter, and left to attend the Frankfort fair of Easter 1614.[881] In
May their service with the Elector of Brandenburg, although now none
of the most recent, helped them to get a footing in Strassburg, where
they stayed until July and again played _The Fall of Constantinople_,
as well as a play of _Government_.[882] In August they were at
Augsburg and possibly Ulm.[883] In October they projected a return
visit to Strassburg, but were rejected, ‘so dies Jar hie lang genug
super multorum opinionem gewessen’.[884] Possibly they fell back upon
Stuttgart.[885] In February 1615 they were in Cologne, and here a queer
thing happened. The whole company, with Spencer’s wife and children,
was converted to Catholicism by the eloquence of a Franciscan friar.
The event is recorded in the town archives and also in a manuscript
Franciscan chronicle preserved in the British Museum:[886]
‘Twentie fowre stage players arrive out of Ingland at Collen:
all Inglish except one Germanian and one Dutchman. All
Protestants. Betwixt those and father Francis Nugent disputation
was begunne and protracted for the space of 7 or eight dayes
consecutively; all of them meeting at one place together. The
chiefe among them was one N. Spencer, a proper sufficient
man. In fine, all and each of them beeing clearlie convinced,
they yielded to the truth; but felt themselves so drie and
roughharted that they knew not how to pass from the bewitching
Babylonian harlot to their true mother the Catholic church, that
always pure and virginal spouse of the lamb.’
It need hardly be said that in so Catholic a city as Cologne this
singular act of grace gave the performances of the English comedians an
extraordinary vogue. In June and July 1615 Spencer was at Strassburg,
in company with one Christopher Apileutter, who may have been the
Germanian or the Dutchman of the Cologne notice.[887] He attended the
autumn fair at Frankfort, using an imperial patent, perhaps given him
at Regensburg in 1613.[888] During the winter of 1615–16 he was again
in Cologne, still profiting by his conversion.[889] This, however, had
not made of him such a bigot, as to be unable to render acceptable
duty in the Protestant courts where his earliest successes had been
won. For a year his movements became obscure. But in August 1617 he
was playing before the Elector of Saxony and the Emperor Matthias
at Dresden.[890] And in the following year he once more entered the
Brandenburg service. During the interval which had elapsed since
1613, John Sigismund had entertained another company. Early in 1614 he
engaged William, Abraham, and Jacob Pedel, Robert Arzschar, Behrendt
Holzhew, and August Pflugbeil.[891] The names hardly sound English; but
Jacob Pedel is probably the Jacob Behel or Biel who was travelling with
Sackville in 1597, William Pedel appeared as an English pantomimist at
Leyden in November 1608, and Arzschar, whose correct name was doubtless
Archer, is also described as an Englishman at Frankfort in the autumn
of 1608.[892] He was then in company with Heinrich Greum and Rudolph
Beart. A Burchart Bierdt appeared as ‘Englischer Musicant’ at Cologne
in December 1612.[893] Archer perhaps came from Nuremberg. He was at
Frankfort again in the autumn of 1610, and at the Reichstag held by
the Emperor Matthias at Regensburg in September 1613.[894] It must
have been this new company under Archer which visited Wolfenbüttel in
September 1614 and Danzig in 1615, styling themselves the Brandenburg
comedians.[895] The only names given at Danzig are Johann Friedrich
Virnius and Bartholomeus Freyerbott, and in fact the Pedels, Holzhew,
and Pflugbeil left Berlin at Easter 1615. Archer himself remained
with the Elector until May 1616. The field, then, was clear at Berlin
for the enterprise of Spencer. On 17 March 1618 John Sigismund made
a payment ‘to one Stockfisch’ for bringing the English comedians
from Elbing. Further payments to the English are recorded in the
following November, and in June 1619 for plays at Königsberg and
Balge in Prussia, of which the Elector had become Duke on the death
of his father-in-law Albert Frederick in the preceding August.[896]
In July 1619 the Elector of Brandenburg’s comedians are heard of at
Danzig.[897] On 23 December 1619 John Sigismund himself died, and
in 1620 Hans Stockfisch addressed an appeal for certain arrears of
salary to Count Adam von Schwartzenberg, an officer at the court of
the new Elector George William (1619–40), in which he claimed to have
enjoyed the Count’s protection for more than fifteen years. In reply
George William describes the petitioner as ‘den Englischen Junkher
Hans Stockfisch, wie er sich nennet’.[898] There can be little doubt
that Hans Stockfisch was none other than John Spencer, for the period
of fifteen years precisely takes us back to his first appearance as a
Brandenburg comedian in 1605. His fish name corresponds to, and was
perhaps motived by, that of Pickleherring adopted by Robert Reinolds
of the chief rival English company about the same date. Both had their
prototype in Sackville’s John Bouset.[899] The Elector George William
was no friend to actors, and to Spencer, as to others, the Thirty
Years’ War closed many doors. In February 1623 he came to Nuremberg
with Sebastian Schadleutner, but was not allowed to play.[900] And that
is the last that is heard of him.
A few isolated records indicate the presence from time to time in
northern Europe of players not yet mentioned, and not obviously
connected either with the Browne or with the Spencer tradition. An
English company under Peter de Prun of Brussels visited Nuremberg in
April 1594. The name of the leader does not sound very English, and a
company, not improbably the same, is described as ‘niederländische’ at
Ulm in the following August. Heywood, however, speaks of an English
company as in the pay of the Cardinal and Archduke Albert, Governor of
the Spanish Netherlands, about 1608.[901] Maurice of Orange-Nassau,
Stadtholder of the Dutch Netherlands (1584–1625), who gave a
recommendation to Spencer in 1605, had also an English company of his
own, which visited Frankfort at Easter 1611, and then claimed to be
strange in Germany.[902] To Augsburg in June 1602 came Fabian Penton
and his company;[903] to Leyden in September 1604 John Woods and his
company,[904] and to Leipzig in April 1613 Hans Leberwurst with his
boys.[905] Of none of these is anything further known, nor of William
Alexander Blank, a Scottish dancer, who performed at Cologne in April
1605.[906]
Traces of English players in southern Europe are few and far between.
That Kempe’s travels of 1601 took him to Italy has already been
noted.[907] There were some English acrobats at Madrid in January
1583.[908] On 25 May 1598 the Confrères de la Passion leased their
theatre in Paris, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, to ‘Jehan Sehais comédien
Anglois’, and on 4 June obtained judgement in the court of the
Châtelet, ‘tant pour raison du susdit bail que pour le droit d’un écu
par jour, jouant lesdits Anglais ailleurs qu’audit Hôtel’.[909] I do
not know whether I am justified in finding under the French disguise of
‘Jehan Sehais’ the name of one John Shaa or Shaw, conceivably related
to Robert Shaw of the Admiral’s men, who witnessed an advance by
Henslowe to Dekker on 24 November 1599.[910] In 1604 another English
company was in France, and gave a performance on 18 September in the
great hall at Fontainebleau, the effect of which upon the imagination
of the future Louis XIV, then a child of four, is minutely described in
the singular diary of his tutor and physician, Jean Héroard.[911]
‘Mené en la grande salle neuve ouïr une tragédie représentée par
des Anglois; il les écoute avec froideur, gravité et patience
jusques à ce qu’il fallut couper la tête à un des personnages.’
On 28 September, Louis was playing at being an actor, and on 29
September, says Héroard:
‘Il dit qu’il veut jouer la comédie; “Monsieur,” dis-je,
“comment direz-vous?” Il repond, “Tiph, toph,” en grossissant sa
voix. À six heures et demie, soupé; il va en sa chambre, se fait
habiller pour masquer, et dit: “Allons voir maman, nous sommes
des comédiens.”’
Finally, on 3 October:
‘Il dit, “Habillons-nous en comédiens,” on lui met son tablier
coiffé sur la tête; il se prend à parler, disant: “Tiph, toph,
milord” et marchant à grands pas.’
It has been suggested on rather inadequate grounds that the play seen
by Louis may have been _2 Henry IV_. Possibly the princely imagination
had merely been smitten by some comic rough and tumble.[912] But it is
also conceivable that the theme may have been the execution of John
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, at the restoration of Henry VI in 1470.[913]
It would be rash to assume that these records of 1598 and 1604
represent all the visits of English actors to France during the
Elizabethan period; and it is not improbable that a search in the
municipal archives of Picardy and Normandy, as thorough as that which
has been carried out for Germany, might yield notable results. Some
general evidence that tours in France did take place can be cited. John
Green, dedicating his version of _Nobody and Somebody_ to the Archduke
Maximilian about 1608, says that he had been in that country.[914] His,
indeed, so far as dates go, might have been the company of 1604. And
France, no less than Germany, is referred to as scoured by the English
comedians about 1613.[915]
XV
ACTORS
[_Bibliographical Note._--I include a few managers who were not
necessarily themselves actors. The earlier studies of stage
biography were mainly concerned with the Chamberlain’s and
King’s men in the list of ‘The Names of the Principall Actors
in all these Playes’, prefixed to the Shakespearian F_{1} of
1623. The statements about them in [J. Roberts] _Answer to Mr.
Pope’s Preface to Shakespeare_ (1729) are conjectural and not,
as sometimes supposed, traditional. A good deal was collected
from wills and registers by E. Malone (_Variorum_, iii. 182), G.
Chalmers (ibid. iii. 464), and J. P. Collier, _Memoirs of the
Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare_ (1846, _Sh. Soc._
revised edition in _H. E. D. P._ iii. 255), and is summarized
by K. Elze, _William Shakespeare_ (tr. 1888), 246. New ground
was broken by F. G. Fleay, _On the Actor Lists, 1578–1642_
(_R. Hist. Soc. Trans._ ix. 44), and in the list in _Chronicle
History of the London Stage_ (1890), 370. Here he criticizes
Collier’s claim to have a list of 500 actors, as he cannot find
‘that any list at all was found among his papers’, and suggests
that a forgery was planned. I am glad to have an opportunity for
once of defending Collier, even if it is only against Fleay. The
fifth report (1846) of the _Sh. Soc._ shows that ‘a volume of
the original actors in plays by writers other than Shakespeare
was in preparation, and _Bodl. MS._ 29445 contains a number of
rough extracts made by Collier and P. Cunningham from London
parochial registers, with a digest of these and other material,
entitled ‘Old Actors. Collections for the Biography of, derived
from Old Books & MSS. Alphabetically arranged’. I have used
this manuscript and cite it as ‘Bodl.’ or ‘B.’. The information
is mainly from the registers of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, St.
Andrew’s Wardrobe, St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, St. Leonard’s,
Shoreditch, St. Giles’, Cripplegate, and other churches. It
appears to be reliable, except perhaps in one or two points.
One would, of course, prefer to have the registers themselves
in print, but with the exception of those of St. James’s,
Clerkenwell (_Harl. Soc._), and A. W. C. Hallen’s _Registers of
St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate_, the published London Registers,
as shown by A. M. Burke, _Key to the Ancient Parish Registers
of England and Wales_ (1908), are precisely those of least
theatrical interest. The Southwark registers in particular, and
the other records of that parish, including the ‘token-books’
or annual lists, street by street, of communicants, ought to
be made available. Some notes from them are in W. Rendle,
_Bankside_ (1877, Harrison, Part ii). Southwark marriages
(1605–25) are in _Genealogist_ (n. s. vi-ix). In these records
‘man’ clearly means ‘player’. Extracts from other registers
may be found in parochial histories and elsewhere. Some from
St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, are in J. P. Malcolm, _Londinium
Redivivum_ (1802–7), iii. 303, J. J. Baddeley, _St. Giles,
Cripplegate_ (1888), and W. Hunter’s _Addl. MS._ 24589. C.
C. Stopes, _Burbage_, 139, gives a full collection from St.
Leonard’s, Shoreditch. An interesting list of actors and their
addresses _c._ 1623 is in C. W. Wallace, _Gervase Markham,
Dramatist_ (1910, _Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xlvi. 345), cited as ‘J’. The
citations ‘H’ and ‘H. P’ are from Greg’s editions of Henslowe’s
_Diary_ and _Henslowe Papers_.]
ABYNGDON, HENRY. Master of Chapel, 1455–78.
ADAMS, JOHN. Sussex’s, 1576; Queen’s, 1583, 1588. He possibly played
the clown Adam in _A Looking Glass_ and Oberon in _James IV._. It would
hardly be justifiable to conjecture that he lived to join Hunsdon’s and
play Adam in _A. Y. L._
ALDERSON, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1509–13.
ALLEYN, EDWARD, was born on 1 September 1566 in the parish of St.
Botolph, Bishopsgate.[916] His father was Edward Alleyn of Willen,
Bucks, Innholder and porter to the Queen, who died in 1570; his mother,
Margaret Townley, for whom he claimed a descent from the Townleys of
Lancashire which modern genealogists hesitate to credit, re-married
with one John Browne, a haberdasher, between whom and other Brownes who
appear in theatrical annals no connexion can be proved. Edward Alleyn
is said by Fuller in his _Worthies_ to have been ‘bred a stage player’.
In formal deeds he is generally described as ‘yeoman’ or ‘gentleman’,
and once, in 1595, as ‘musician’.[917] In January 1583 he was one of
Worcester’s players; at some later date he joined the Admiral’s men,
and had as ‘fellow’ his brother John, with whom during 1589–91 he was
associated in purchases of apparel. On 22 October 1592 he married Joan
Woodward, step-daughter of Philip Henslowe, with whom he appears ever
after in the closest business relations. A Dulwich tradition that he
was already a widower probably rests on a mention of ‘Mistris Allene’
in an undated letter about a German tour by Richard Jones, which is
commonly assigned to February 1592, but is more probably of later
date.[918] Alleyn is specifically described as the Admiral’s servant
in the Privy Council letter of assistance to Strange’s men (q.v.),
with whom he travelled during the plague of 1593. Some of the letters
passing between him and his wife and father-in-law during this tour
are preserved at Dulwich, and are full of interesting domestic details
about his white waistcoat and his orange tawny woollen stockings, the
pasturing of his horse, his spinach bed, and the furnishing of his
house.[919] His ‘tenants’ are mentioned and his ‘sister Phillipes
& her husband’. He had by this time a high reputation as an actor,
as witnessed by Nashe in his _Pierce Penilesse_ of 1592, where he
classes him with Tarlton, Knell, and Bentley, and says, ‘Not Roscius
nor Aesope, those admyred tragedians that haue liued euer since before
Christ was borne, could euer performe more in action than famous Ned
Allen’; and in his _Strange Newes_ of the same year, where he says of
Edmund Spenser that ‘his very name (as that of Ned Allen on the common
stage) was able to make an ill matter good’.[920] An undated letter at
Dulwich, written to him by an admirer who signs himself W. P., offers
a wager in which ‘Peele’s credit’ was also in some way concerned, and
in which Alleyn was to have the choice of any one of Bentley’s or
Knell’s plays, and promises that, even if he loses, ‘we must and will
saie Ned Allen still’.[921] In 1594 _The Knack to know a Knave_ is
ascribed, quite exceptionally, on its title-page, not to the servants
of a particular lord, but to ‘Ed. Allen and his Companie’. From 1594 to
1597 Alleyn was one of the Admiral’s men (q.v.) at the Rose. He then
‘leafte playnge’, but resumed at the request of the Queen, although
apparently without becoming a full sharer of the company, when the
Fortune (q.v.), which he had built for them, was opened in the autumn
of 1600. He became a servant of Prince Henry with the rest of his
fellows in 1604, and at the coronation procession on 15 March appeared
as the Genius of the City and delivered a ‘gratulatory speech’ to
James ‘with excellent action and a well-tun’de, audible voyce’.[922]
Further testimonies to his talent are rendered by John Weever;[923]
by Ben Jonson, _Epigram_ lxxxix (1616), who equals him to Aesop and
Roscius, and himself to Cicero, who praised them; by Heywood, who
says, ‘Among so many dead let me not forget one yet alive, in his time
the most worthy, famous Maister Edward Allen’;[924] and by Fuller,
who says, ‘He was the Roscius of our age, so acting to the life that
he made any part (especially a majestic one) to become him.’[925] Of
his parts are recorded Faustus,[926] Tamburlaine, Barabas in _The
Jew of Malta_,[927] and Cutlack in a play of that name revived by
the Admiral’s men in 1594 and now lost,[928] while that of Orlando
in Greene’s _Orlando Furioso_ is amongst the papers at Dulwich.[929]
Heywood, writing about 1608, speaks of Alleyn’s playing in the past.
He probably retired finally soon after the beginning of the new reign.
In 1605 he valued his ‘share of aparell’ at £100; but his name is not
in the patent to the Prince’s men of 30 April 1606, although as late
as 1611 he still retained his personal rank as servant to the prince.
It is difficult to give much credit to the legend that his withdrawal
was due to remorse, or, as one version has it, to an apparition of
the devil when he was playing Faustus.[930] Certainly he continued
to hold an interest in the Fortune, and conceivably in the Red Bull
(q.v.) also. And certainly remorse did not prevent him from continuing
to exercise the functions of Master of the Game of Paris Garden, a
post which he acquired jointly with Henslowe in 1604, having already
been interested in the Bear-garden itself since 1594. At this after it
became the Hope (q.v.) he was still about 1617 entertaining players.
But the time of his retirement synchronizes with the first beginnings
of his foundation of a school and hospital by the name of the College
of God’s Gift at Dulwich. By 1605 he was a wealthy man, with income
from substantial investments in leasehold property as well as the
profits from his enterprises, and on 25 October he took the first step
in the purchase of the manor of Dulwich, which was completed by 1614 at
a total cost of nearly £10,000. Here about 1613 he made his residence,
moving from Southwark, where he had been churchwarden of St. Saviour’s
in 1610. In 1613 also he began the building of the college, which was
opened in 1617. Alleyn himself acted as manager and was in a position
to spend upon the college and his own household some £1,700 a year. The
endowment of the college included, besides house property in London,
the freehold of the Fortune. Henslowe had died in January 1616 and
his widow in the following year, and his papers passed to Alleyn and
remain at Dulwich. Here, too, is Alleyn’s own diary for 1617–22, and
this and his correspondence show him as a friend of persons of honour,
and the patron of writers and the members of his own former profession.
Alleyn’s wife Joan died on 28 June 1623 and on the following 3 December
he married Constance, daughter of John Donne, dean of St. Paul’s,
settling on her £1,500. A letter of 23 July 1624 indicates that he
was then desirous of obtaining ‘sum further dignetie’. He died on 25
November 1626.
ALLEYN, JOHN. Admiral’s, 1589–91. Edward Alleyn had an elder brother
John, who was born in 1556–7, and is described as servant to Lord
Sheffield and an Innholder in 1580, and as servant to the Lord
Admiral in 1589. He died about May 1596, being then of St. Andrew’s,
Holborn, and left a widow Margaret and son John. Presumably he was the
Admiral’s player. But there was also an Allen family of St. Botolph’s,
Bishopsgate, one of whom, John, was a player. Here a John was baptized
on 17 October 1570, a Lowin, son of John, baptized on 15 December 1588,
a Joan buried on 13 May 1593, and a John on 18 May 1593. On 26 July
1596 is this curious baptismal entry: ‘Bennett, reputed daughter of
J^{no} Allen, which J^{no} went with S^r Fr. Drake to the Indians in
which time the child was got by a stage-player.’ Finally, on 18 October
1597, ‘Jone uxor Joh^{is} Allen player was buried with a still born
child’ (H. ii. 239; Bodl.)
ALLEYN, RICHARD. Queen’s, (?) 1594; Admiral’s, 1597–1600. His daughters
Anna and Elizabeth were baptized at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 13
May 1599 and 17 May 1601 respectively. Here he is traceable in the
token-books during 1583–1601, and was buried on 18 November 1601,
leaving a widow (Rendle, _Bankside_, xxvi; H. ii. 239; Bodl.).
ALLEYN (ALLEN), RICHARD. Revels, 1609; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1613.
ANDREWE, HENRY. Chapel, 1509.
ANDREWES, RICHARD. Worcester’s, 1583.
ANDROWES, GEORGE. Whitefriars lessee, 1608.
APILEUTTER, CHRISTOPHER. Germany, 1615.
ARCHER, RICHARD. _Vide_ ARKINSTALL.
ARCHER? (ARZSCHAR, ERTZER), ROBERT. Germany, 1608–16.
ARKINSTALL, JOHN. A common player of interludes under licence, with
Richard Archer, Barker, and Anthony Ward as his fellows. He was at
Hastings on 25 March 1603, and on 30 March laid an information of the
proclamation of Lord Beauchamp as king by Lord Southampton (_Hist.
MSS._ xii. 4. 126).
ARMIN, ROBERT, is said to have been apprentice to a goldsmith in
Lombard Street, and to have been encouraged as a ‘wag’ by Tarlton
(_ob._ 1588), who prophesied that he should ‘enjoy my clownes sute
after me’. He ‘used to’ Tarlton’s plays, and in time became himself a
player ‘and at this houre performes the same, where, at the Globe on
the Banks side men may see him’.[931] But his earliest reputation was
as a writer. He wrote a preface to _A Brief Resolution of the Right
Religion_ (1590) and probably other things now unknown, for he is
referred to as a son of Elderton in Nashe’s _Foure Letters Confuted_
of 1592 (_Works_, i. 280). R. A. wrote verses to Robert Tofte’s _Alba_
(1598), and R. A. compiled _England’s Parnassus_ (1600); the latter
is generally taken to be Robert Allot. The first dramatic company
in which Armin can be traced is Lord Chandos’s men. In an epistle
to Mary, widow of William Lord Chandos (1594–1602) prefixed to his
kinsman Gilbert Dugdale’s _True Discourse of the Practises of Elizabeth
Caldwell_, &c. (1604), he says, ‘Your good honor knowes Pinck’s poor
heart, who in all my services to your late deceased kind lord, never
savoured of flatterie or fixion.’ In his _Foole upon Foole, or Six
Sortes of Sottes_ (1600) he tells an incident which took place at
Pershore in Worcestershire, during a tour of ‘the Lord Shandoyes
players’, at which he was himself present, not improbably playing the
clown ‘Grumball’.[932] By 1599, however, he had probably joined the
Chamberlain’s men, for in the first edition of _Foole upon Foole_ he
describes himself as ‘Clonnico de Curtanio Snuffe’. In a later edition
of 1605 this becomes ‘Clonnico del Mondo Snuffe’. Both issues are
anonymous, but Armin put his name to an enlargement entitled _A Nest
of Ninnies_ (1608).[933] ‘Clunnyco de Curtanio Snuffe’ is also on the
title-page of _Quips upon Questions_ (1600), which must therefore be by
Armin and not by J. Singer, whose autograph Collier (_Bibl. Cat._ ii.
203) said that he found on a copy. This is a book of quatrains on stage
‘themes’ (cf. ch. xviii). It was written, as a reference to 28 December
as on a Friday shows, in 1599. The author serves a master at Hackney
(A ij). Later editions of 1601 and 1602 are said to have been in the
Harley collection, and there is a reprint by F. Ouvry (1875). His name
is in the 1603 licence for the King’s men and in the Coronation list
of 1604. In 1605 Augustine Phillips left him 20_s._ as his ‘fellow’.
Collier’s statement that in the same year he and Kempe (q.v.) were in
trouble for libelling aldermen cannot be verified. He is a King’s man
on the title-page of his _Two Maids of Moreclacke_ (1609), produced
by the King’s Revels, and on the title-page and in the S. R. entry on
6 February 1609 of his _Phantasma, the Italian Tailor and his Boy_.
This is a translation from Straparola and is dedicated to Lord and
Lady Haddington. In it he claims to have been ‘writ down an ass in his
time’ and refers to ‘his constableship’, from which it is inferred
that he played Dogberry in _Much Ado about Nothing_. Fleay, _L. of S._
300, finds a pun on ‘armine’ (= wretch) in _London Prodigal_ (_c._
1603), v. i. 179, and suggests that Armin played Matthew Flowerdale.
There is a clown Robin in _Miseries of Enforced Marriage_ (1607), and
a clown Grumball in _If it be not Good_ (1610–12), but this was a
play of Anne’s men. He is in the actor-list of Jonson’s _Alchemist_
(1610). An epigram on ‘honest gamesome Robert Armin’ is in John Davies
of Hereford’s _Scourge of Folly_ (S.R. 8 October 1610). He is not in
the actor-list of Jonson’s _Catiline_ (1611), nor has any later notice
of him been found. That Armin is the R. A. whose play _The Valiant
Welshman_ was published in 1615 is only a conjecture. He is in the
Folio list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays. It is possible that a
woodcut on the title-page of the _Two Maids_ (q.v.) gives his portrait.
ARTHUR, THOMAS. Interluders, 1528.
ATTEWELL (OTTEWELL, OTWELL), GEORGE. Strange’s, 1591; Queen’s, (?)
1595. ‘M^r Otwell’ lived in St. Saviour’s Close in 1599. He is perhaps
more likely than the following to be the author or singer of ‘M^r
Attowel’s Jigge: betweene Francis, a Gentleman; Richard, a farmer; and
their wives’, printed in A. Clark, _Shirburn Ballads_, lxi (H. ii. 240;
B. 147).
ATTWELL (OTTEWELL), HUGH. Revels, 1609; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1613;
Charles’s, 1616–21; _ob._ 25 September 1621.
AUGUSTEN (AGUSTEN), WILLIAM. A ‘player’, from whom Henslowe bought his
‘boy’ Bristow in 1597 (H. ii. 240).
AYNSWORTH, JOHN. A ‘player’ buried at St. Leonard’s 28 September 1581
(B. 153).
BAKER, HARRY. Performer of Vertumnus in _Summer’s Last Will and
Testament_, 1567.
BANASTER, GILBERT. Master of Chapel, 1478–83 (?).
BARFIELD, ROGER. Anne’s, 1606. His d. Isabell was baptized at St.
Giles’s on 2 January 1611, and his d. Susan buried there on 3 July 1614
(B. 157).
BARKER. _Vide_ ARKINSTALL.
BARKSTED (BACKSTEAD), WILLIAM. King’s Revels (?), 1607; Revels, 1609;
Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1613; Charles’s, 1616; also a dramatist (cf.
ch. xxiii) and a poet. His _Poems_, edited by A. B. Grosart as Part II
of _Choice Rarities of Ancient English Poetry_ (1876), were _Myrrha_
(1607), which has commendatory verses by his kinsman Robert Glover
and I. W., Lewes Machin, and William Bagnall, and _Hiren_ (1611),
which has sonnets to Henry Earl of Oxford, and Elizabeth Countess of
Derby. On the title-page he describes himself as ‘one of the servants
of his Maiesties Revels’. The surmise of Fleay, i. 29, that this was
repeated from an earlier edition of _c._ 1607 now lost may receive some
confirmation from the connexion of Machin with the King’s Revels; but
it must also be remembered that the Whitefriars Revels’ company appears
to be occasionally described as the King’s Revels in provincial records
of _c._ 1611. A trivial anecdote of him is in J. Taylor, _Wit and
Mirth_ (1629).
BARNE, WILLIAM. Admiral’s, 1602.
BARRY, DAVID (LORD). Whitefriars lessee, 1608, and dramatist.
BARTLE (?). Alexander Bartle, son of ‘---- a player’, was baptized at
St. Saviour’s on 27 February 1603 (B. 165).
BARTON, ONESIPHORUS. A ‘player’, buried at St. Giles’s on 9 March 1608
(B. 167).
BASSE, THOMAS. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1613; Anne’s, 1617–19.
BAXTER, ROBERT. Chapel, 1601; Lady Elizabeth’s (?), 1613. Greg, _H. P._
58, 87, however, thinks that the ‘Baxter’ of 1613, whose Christian name
is not given, may be Barksted. Neither man is likely to have written
the ‘Baxsters tragedy’ of 1602 (_H. P._ 58).
BAYLYE, THOMAS. Shrewsbury’s (provincial), 1581. J. Hunter,
_Hallamshire_ 80, and Murray, ii. 388, print from _College of Arms,
Talbot MS._ G. f. 74, a Latin letter written by him to Thomas Bawdewin
from Sheffield on 25 April 1581, in which he mentions a brother
William, thanks him for a tragedy played by the company on St. George’s
day, and begs him to procure ‘librum aliquem brevem, novum, iucundum,
venustum, lepidum, hilarem, scurrosum, nebulosum, rabulosum, et
omnimodis camificiis, latrociniis et lenociniis refertum ... qua in re
dicunt quod Wilsonus quidam Leycestrii comitis servus (fidibus pollens)
multum vult et potest facere’.
BAYLYE. Paul’s chorister, >1582.
BEART, RUDOLF. Germany, 1608.
BEESTON, CHRISTOPHER, has been conjectured to be the ‘Kit’ who played
a Lord and a Captain in _2 Seven Deadly Sins_ for Strange’s or the
Admiral’s about 1590–1. The actor-list of _Every Man in his Humour_
shows that he belonged to the Chamberlain’s men in 1598. He is not,
however, named as a performer of Shakespeare’s plays in the Folio of
1623. Probably he was at one time the hired man of Augustine Phillips
who left him 30_s._ as his ‘servant’ in 1605. By 1602 he had passed
to Worcester’s men, and with this company, afterwards Queen Anne’s,
he remained until it was reconstituted on the Queen’s death in 1619,
taking a prominent part in the management of the company, after the
death of Thomas Greene in 1612. He seems to have built or acquired the
Cockpit theatre, and to have successively housed there Queen Anne’s
men (1617–19), Prince Charles’s men (1619–22), Lady Elizabeth’s men
(1622–5), Queen Henrietta’s men (1625–37), and ‘the King’s and Queen’s
young company’, also known as ‘Beeston’s boys’ (1637). By 1639 he
had been succeeded as ‘Governor’ of this company by his son William
Beeston, and was doubtless dead. The Cockpit had passed by June 1639
to ‘Mrs. Elizabeth Beeston, alias Hutcheson’.[934] It appears from
the lawsuit of 1623, in which Queen Anne’s men were concerned, that
Christopher Beeston also bore the _alias_ of Hutcheson or Hutchinson.
But if Elizabeth was his widow, she must have been a second wife, for
the records of the Middlesex justices for 1615–17 record several true
bills for recusancy as brought against a wife Jane. In these records
Beeston, whose _alias_ is also given, is described as a gentleman or
yeoman, and as ‘late of St. James-at-Clerkenwell’, or in one case ‘of
Turmil streete’. In 1617 his house was burgled by Henry Baldwin and
others.[935] The registers of St. James’s, Clerkenwell, record the
baptism of a daughter Anne on 15 September 1611, and the burial of a
servant on 1 July 1615.[936] But at an earlier date Beeston lived in
St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, where his sons Augustine, Christopher, and
Robert were baptized, and the first two buried between 16 November 1604
and 15 July 1610. Robert also was buried there on 26 December 1615,
but Christopher was then described in the register as of Clerkenwell.
Possibly he afterwards returned to Shoreditch, as Collier states that
his name is traceable in the register up to 1637.[937] His son William,
also a suspected recusant, was living in Bishopsgate Without just
before his death in 1682.[938] An earlier William Beeston, with whom
Christopher may have had some connexion, is the ‘Maister Apis Lapis’
and ‘Gentle M. William’, to whom Nashe addressed his _Strange Newes_
(1592).[939]
BEESTON, ROBERT. Anne’s, 1604, 1609.
BEESTON. A player at Barnstaple in 1560–1 (Murray, ii. 198).
BELT, T. Strange’s (?), 1590–1.
BENFIELD, ROBERT, is first named in the actor-lists of Beaumont and
Fletcher’s _The Coxcomb_ and _The Honest Man’s Fortune_, both of which
probably represent performances by the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1613.
Subsequently he joined the King’s men, but at what date is uncertain.
It may have been upon the death on 16 December 1614 of William Ostler,
whom he succeeded in the part of Antonio in Webster’s _Duchess of
Malfi_. He is in the actor-list of _The Knight of Malta_ (1616–19) and
in the patent of 1619. He seems to have been a member of the company to
the end, as he signed the dedication of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio
in 1647. He is in the Folio list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays.
Collier found some late records of his family (B. 181).
BENTLEY, JOHN. Queen’s, 1583. He is named by Heywood as before his
time, lauded by Nashe, _Pierce Penilesse_ (1592) (_Works_, i. 215) with
Tarlton, Alleyn, and Knell, coupled with Knell in the undated challenge
to Alleyn (q.v.) to play one of their parts, and placed by Dekker in _A
Knight’s Conjuring_ (1607) in the company of the poets, Watson, Kyd,
and Achelow, ‘tho he had ben a player molded out of their pennes, yet
because he had been their louer and register to the muse, inimitable
Bentley’. He may be the John Bentley whose poems are mentioned by
Ritson, _Bibliographia Poetica_ (1802), 129.
BIERDT, BURCHARD. Germany, 1612.
BILLINGESLY, JOHN. Payee for Westminster boys, 1572.
BIRCH, GEORGE. Interluders, 1538–59.
BIRCH, JOHN. Interluders, 1547–56.
BIRD, _alias_ BORNE, WILLIAM. Chamberlain’s (?), 1597; Pembroke’s,
1597; Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1597–1622. Many personalia of
his family and debts are recorded in Dulwich manuscripts and church
registers (H. ii. 241; B. 204).
‘BLACK DICK.’ Admiral’s, 1597.
BLACKWOOD, THOMAS. Worcester’s, 1602–3; Germany, 1603–6(?). The
conjecture of Fleay, i. 290, that an earlier German tour is referred to
in _How to Choose a Good Wife from a Bad_ (1602) is baseless (H. ii.
244).
BLANEY, JOHN. Revels, 1609; Anne’s, 1616–19. He lived near the Red Bull
in St. John’s Street in 1623 (J. 347).
BLANK, WILLIAM ALEXANDER. A Scottish dancer in Germany, 1605.
BOONE, WILLIAM. A ‘player’ mentioned in books of St. Saviour’s, _c._
1600 (Rendle, _Bankside_, xxvi). Possibly an error for Borne.
BORNE, WILLIAM. _Vide_ Birde.
BOWER, RICHARD. Master of Chapel, 1545–61, and possibly author of
_Apius and Virginia_ (1575); cf. ch. xxiv.
BOWRINGE, GREGORY. Paul’s chorister, >1582.
BRADSHAW, RICHARD. Edward, Lord Dudley’s (provincial), 1595. He
was Gabriel Spencer’s ‘man’ in 1598, and concerned in financial
transactions with Henslowe during 1598–1601. He may be the same Richard
Bradshaw who had a provincial company, with a licence to which his
title was dubious, in 1630–33 (H. ii. 245; Murray, ii. 42, 106, 163).
BRADSTREET, JOHN. Germany, 1592–7, 1604. He _ob._ in 1618.
BRETTEN, WILLIAM. Chapel, >1546.
BRISTOW, JAMES. Augusten’s boy, 1597; Admiral’s, 1597–1602 (H. ii. 245).
BROMEHAM. Paul’s, >1582.
BROWNE, EDWARD. Worcester’s, 1583; Admiral’s, 1602. He was a witness
for Henslowe in 1599 (H. ii. 246).
BROWNE, JOHN. Interluders, 1551–63.
BROWNE, JOHN. Revels (?), 1608.
BROWNE, ROBERT. Worcester’s, 1583; Holland, 1590; Germany, 1592–3, 1594
(?)-9; Derby’s, 1599–1601; Germany, 1601–7; Revels patentee, 1610;
Germany, 1618–20. His wife and family died at Shoreditch in the plague
of 1593, but a son Robert and daughter Elizabeth were baptized at St.
Saviour’s on 19 October 1595 and 2 December 1599. On 11 April 1612 he
wrote to Alleyn from Clerkenwell (_H. P._, 37, 63; B. 229; Rendle,
_Bankside_, xxvi).
BROWNE, WILLIAM. Anne’s, _c._ 1616.
BROWNE. It is not safe to identify the Browne whom Henslowe paid to
‘feach’ for the Admiral’s in 1596 (H. i. 45), or the ‘old Browne’
who, as well as Edward, played in _1 Tamar Cham_ for the Admiral’s in
1602 (_H. P._ 148), or ‘Browne of the Boares head’ who, according to
Alleyn’s wife on 21 Oct. 1603, ‘is dead & dyed very pore, he went not
into the countrye at all’ (_H. P._ 59). The last may be the man whose
widow married Thomas Greene (q.v.).
BRYAN, GEORGE, was one of the English company which visited Helsingör
in Denmark and Dresden in Germany during 1586–7. He is one of the three
actors distinguished as ‘Mr.’ in the plot of Tarlton’s _The Seven
Deadly Sins_ as played by Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1, and
is named in the Privy Council warrant for the travelling of Strange’s
in 1593. He was payee for the Chamberlain’s men on 21 December 1596,
but is not in the _Every Man in his Humour_ actor-list of 1598 or
traceable at any later date amongst the Chamberlain’s or King’s men.
Probably he left to take up duty as an ordinary Groom of the Chamber,
as he is found holding this post at Elizabeth’s funeral in 1603 and
still held it (_Chamber Accounts_) in 1611–13. His son George was
baptized at St. Andrew’s Wardrobe on 17 February 1600.[940] He is in
the Folio list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays.
BUCKE, PAUL. A ‘player’ whose d. Sara was buried on 23 July 1580 and
his bastard son Paul buried on 23 July 1599 at St. Anne’s (B. 237). It
is apparently his name which, for whatever reason, appears at the end
of Wilson’s _Three Ladies of London_ (1584). ‘Paule Bucke’s praier for
Sir Humfrey Gilberte’ was entered in S. R. on 17 July 1578.
BUGBY, JOHN. Grammar Master of Chapel, 1401.
BULL, JOHN. Chapel, 1572 (?)->1586.
BULL, THOMAS. Denmark, 1579–80.
BURBADGE, JAMES. The Shakespearo-centric tendencies of literary
historians have led them to suggest a regional connexion between the
dramatist and the family of his most famous interpreter.[941] There
was a Warwickshire family of Burbadge, of whom John was bailiff of
Stratford-on-Avon in 1555, and Malone was thus led (_Var._ iii. 187)
to ‘suspect’ that James Burbadge was Shakespeare’s countryman. Collier
(iii. 258) having learnt that the arms claimed by Cuthbert Burbadge at
the London visitation of 1634, ‘crest, a boar’s head; and three boars’
heads on a shield’ (_Harleian Soc._ xv), were those of a Hertfordshire
family, attempted the explanation that the two families ‘were in some
way related’. He committed himself deeply by publishing in 1835 (_New
Facts_, 32; cf. Ingleby, 256) a forged letter from H. S. to Sir Thomas
Egerton, containing the statement that Shakespeare and Richard Burbadge
are ‘both of one countie, and indeede almost of one towne’. Burbadges
are traceable in various parts of England, including Somerset,
Oxfordshire, and Durham (Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 344; Stopes, 134,
243), and the conjecture has about as much value as Malone’s derivation
of the name (_Var._ iii. 182) from ‘Borough-bridge’, or Chalmers’s
from ‘Boar’s badge’. Nor is any connexion known between James Burbadge
and various other Burbadges--Robert, John, and Edward--who appear in
contemporary documents (Collier, iii. 282; Stopes, 152), although A.
Wood (_Fasti Oxon._ i. 303) makes himself responsible for the statement
that one John Burbadge, of Lincoln College, was nearly related to the
actor. The name is indifferently spelt Burbadge, Burbage, or Burbege by
contemporaries, but usually Burbadge in family signatures (Wallace, 61,
63 ‘James Burbage’, 252; Collier, iii. 294; _Malone Soc. Coll._ ii. 69,
76). James sealed the Blackfriars indentures of 1596 with a griffin.
James was about sixty on 16 February 1591 (Wallace, 61) and was
therefore born in 1530–1. He was ‘by occupacion a joyner and reaping
but a small lyving by the same, gave it over and became a commen
player in playes’ (Wallace, 141). He was one of Leicester’s men in
1572, 1574, and 1576, and apparently continued a ‘fellow’ of this or
some other company for a year or two after he established the Theatre
in 1576 (Wallace, 142). In this year he was a poor man, and of small
credit, not worth above 100 marks (Wallace, 134, 141, 153), but he had
enlisted the capital of John Brayne, whose sister Ellen he had married
(Wallace, 40, 139). His business history thereafter is bound up with
that of the Theatre (q.v.) and of the Blackfriars, which he planned,
but probably never used, during the last years of his life. Cuthbert
Burbadge says of him (_Blackfriars Sharers Papers_, 1635) that he ‘was
the first builder of playhowses, and was himselfe in his younger yeeres
a player’. He was described as ‘joyner’ in the lease of the Theatre
site in 1576, but in later years usually as ‘yeoman’ or ‘gentleman’.
Presumably he went to live in Shoreditch in 1576, as entries for his
family then begin in the registers of St. Leonard’s (Stopes, 139). They
testify to the baptism (17 March 1576) of a daughter Alice, mentioned
as Alice Walker in the will of Nicholas Tooley (q.v.) in 1623, and the
burial (18 August 1582) of a daughter Joan. Another daughter, Helen,
was buried at St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, on 15 December 1595 (_Bodl._).
Besides Alice and Helen he had in 1588 (Wallace, 39) two sons, Cuthbert
and Richard, who would both have been born before 1576. James himself
was buried at Shoreditch on 2 February 1597 and his widow on 8 May
1613. The registers generally give the family residence as ‘Halliwell
Street’, and the ‘Halliwell’ which appears in 1597 and 1601 is perhaps
an accidental variant. But the lawsuits suggest that James had built
himself a house in the old inner cloister yard of the priory, which lay
a little north of Halliwell Street, if that is the same as Holywell
Lane (Wallace, 232, 236). They also represent him as a man of violent
temper and not over-honest, while an independent record (App. D, No.
lxxiv) refers to him as ‘a stubburne fellow’. Before his death he seems
to have made over his interest in the Blackfriars to his son Richard,
while that in the Theatre had passed by redemption of a mortgage to
Cuthbert (Wallace, 55, 73, 108, 145, 278).
Cuthbert Burbadge, the elder son of James, was not an actor, although
as holder of the leases of the Theatre and afterwards of the Globe
(q.v.) he was concerned during the greater part of his life with
theatrical management. On 16 February 1591 he was servant to Walter
Cope, gentleman usher to Lord Burghley. He was then twenty-four, and
must have been born in 1566–7. He was then probably living in the
Strand (Stopes, 152), but the subsidy rolls for 1597 (Stopes, 195)
show him as assessed at 10_s._ 8_d._ in Holywell Street, and the
registers of St. Leonard’s have the records of his children, Walter
(bapt. 22 June 1595), James (bur. 15 July 1597), and Elizabeth (bapt.
30 December 1601). Of these only Elizabeth, the wife first of Amias
Maxey and secondly of George Bingley, was alive in 1634 and her son
Amias had been adopted by his grandfather. Cuthbert himself was buried
at Shoreditch on 17 September 1636, and his widow Elizabeth, daughter
of John Cox, on 1 October 1636 (Stopes, 134, 140). His friendship with
members of the King’s company is commemorated by notices in the wills
of William Sly (1608), Richard Cowley (1618), and Nicholas Tooley,
who died in his house in 1623. Collier (iii. 285) identified him with
Cuthbert Burby the stationer, but Burby was in fact the son of Edmund
Burby of Beds., husbandman (Arber, ii. 127). Possibly, however, the
families were related, since Burby’s name is given at least once in the
Stationers’ Register (Arber, ii. 612) as ‘Burbidge’.
BURBADGE, RICHARD, makes his first appearance, picturesquely enough,
in the brawl at the Theatre which followed upon the Chancery Order
of 13 November 1590, restoring a moiety of the profits of the house
to the widow Brayne (cf. p. 392). John Alleyn deposed (Wallace, 101)
that he ‘found the foresaid Ry. Burbage the yongest sone of the said
James Burbage there, w^t a broome staff in his hand, of whom when
this deponente asked what sturre was there, he answered in laughing
phrase hew they come for a moytie. But quod he (holding vppe the said
broomes staff) I haue, I think, deliuered him a moytie with this &
sent them packing.’ Nicholas Bishop (Wallace, 98, 115), one of Mrs.
Brayne’s agents, adds the confirmatory detail that ‘the said Ry.
Burbage scornfully & disdainfullye playing with this deponentes nose,
sayd, that yf he delt in the matter, he wold beate him also, and did
chalendge the field of him at that tyme’. Very possibly Richard was
then playing with the Admiral’s men at the Theatre. His exact age
is unknown, but he was younger than Cuthbert, born in 1566–7, and
as Cuthbert, long after, spoke of the ‘35 yeeres paines, cost, and
labour’ out of which his brother ‘made meanes to leave his wife and
children some estate’ in 1619 (_Sharers Papers_), it may perhaps be
inferred that his histrionic career began as early as 1584. The ‘plot’
of _The Dead Man’s Fortune_, wherein the doubtful direction (cf. p.
125) ‘Burbage a messenger’ suggests that he played a minor part, may
belong to a performance by the Admiral’s _c._ 1590. It is a little
more difficult to suppose that at a date when the Queen’s men were
still active the Admiral’s or Strange’s had already acquired Tarlton’s
_Seven Deadly Sins_, in the ‘plot’ of which ‘R. Burbadg’ is cast for
the important characters of Gorboduc and Terens. But perhaps it is even
less probable that, after the breach of the Admiral’s with his father
in 1591, he took part in the performances of the same play by the
amalgamated Admiral’s and Strange’s men at the Rose in 1592. His name
does not appear amongst those of the Strange’s men who were travelling
in 1593. But when the amalgamation broke up, and the Chamberlain’s
company was formed, with some of its elements as a nucleus, in 1594,
he joined that company, and became a prominent member, often acting as
its representative or payee, both before and after its metamorphosis
into the King’s men, and to the end of his own life. His name is
constant in its lists (cf. ch. xiii), and his personal relations with
his fellows are reflected in the wills of Augustine Phillips in 1605,
Shakespeare in 1616, and Nicholas Tooley, whose ‘master’ he had been,
in 1623. It would appear that in the somewhat irregular disposition of
James Burbadge’s theatrical interests the Blackfriars freehold fell
primarily to Richard. The leases of 1608 were made by him as lessor
to his brother and other members of the King’s men’s syndicate as
lessees. This, however, was doubtless a mere family arrangement, for
Cuthbert spoke of the Blackfriars in 1635 as ‘our inheritance’, and the
two brothers shared in the supplementary transactions which rounded
off the original purchase (cf. ch. xvii). At the Globe, on the other
hand, Cuthbert and Richard held in common a moiety of the housekeepers’
interest under the lease from Nicholas Brend (cf. ch. xvi). They
continued to live as close neighbours in Halliwell Street, Shoreditch,
where they shared the misfortune of having their houses burgled in
1615 (Jeaffreson, ii. 108) and where the registers of St. Leonard’s
(Stopes, 139) record Richard’s children: Richard (bur. 16 August
1607), Julia or Juliet (bapt. 2 January 1603, bur. 12 September 1608),
Frances (bapt. 16 September and bur. 19 September 1604), Anne (bapt. 8
August 1607), Winifred (bapt. 10 October 1613, bur. 14 October 1616),
a second Julia (bapt. 26 December 1614, bur. 15 August 1615), William
(bapt. 6 November 1616), and a posthumous Sara (bapt. 5 August 1619,
bur. 29 April 1625). ‘Richard Burbadge, player’ was himself buried on
16 March 1619. He had died, not as Camden records in his _Annals_ on 9
March, but on 13 March, after making the day before a nuncupative will
(Collier, iii. 293), witnessed by his brother and by Nicholas Tooley
and Richard Robinson of the King’s men, in which he left his wife
Winifred sole executrix. She subsequently married Richard Robinson,
and was still alive, as was Burbadge’s son William, in 1635 (_Sharers
Papers_). According to the gossip of the day he left ‘better than £300
land to his heirs’ (Collier, iii. 297).
Burbadge had a high reputation as a player, both in life and after
death. A note of 13 March 1602 by John Manningham (_Diary_, 39)
records how his impersonation of Richard III touched the heart of
a citizen’s wife, and how Shakespeare prevented him at a resultant
assignation. John Davies of Hereford coupled him with Shakespeare
in 1603 (_Microcosmos_) among players whom he loved ‘for painting,
poesie’, and in 1609 (_Civile Warres of Death and Fortune_) amongst
those whom Fortune ‘guerdond not, to their desarts’. He is introduced
_in propria persona_ into _2 Return from Parnassus_ (1602) and into
Marston’s induction to _The Malcontent_ (1604). Probably he is the
‘one man’ of the London stage with whom the player in _Ratseis Ghost_
(1605; cf. ch. xviii) is advised ‘to play Hamlet for a wager’. Jonson,
in _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), v. iii, makes Cokes ask the master of
the puppets, ‘which is your _Burbage_ now?... your best _Actor_. Your
_Field_?’ He was apparently the model for the _Character of an Actor_
in the _Characters_ of 1615 (App. C, No. lxi). And other evidences of
his fame can be traced down to Restoration days in Richard Corbet’s
_Iter Boreale_, in Sir Richard Baker’s _Chronicle_ and _Theatrum
Redivivum_, and in Richard Flecknoe’s _Short Discourse of the English
Stage_ and his _Euterpe Restored_ (cf. Collier, iii. 279; Stopes, 121;
_Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse_, N.S.S., 128, 250).
Shortly after Burbadge’s death, on 20 May 1619, the Earl of Pembroke
wrote to Lord Doncaster in Germany of a great supper given the same
night by the Duke of Lennox to the French ambassador, and adds that the
company were now at the play, ‘which I being tender-harted could not
endure to see so soone after the loss of my old acquaintance Burbadg’
(E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ (1882), i. 103). Several epitaphs and
elegies upon Burbadge are preserved. The shortest--‘Exit Burbadge’--was
printed in Camden’s _Remaines_ (1674), 541. Another is by Middleton
(Collier, iii. 280, 296). A third, which begins
Some skillfull limner helpe mee, yf not soe,
Some sad tragedian, to expresse my woe,
has been the subject of much controversy (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, ii.
88; C. M. Ingleby, _The Elegy on Burbadge_, in _Shakespeare, the Man
and the Book_, ii. 169). It exists in two versions, one of 86 lines,
the other of 124 lines. Of the shorter version several undoubtedly
genuine manuscripts are known, and it is probably only by accident that
one of these omits ll. 2–5 of the following passage, which is given
completely by all the rest:
Hee’s gone & with him what a world are dead,
Which he reuiud, to be reuiued soe.
No more young Hamlett, ould Heironymoe.
Kind Leer, the greued Moore, and more beside,
That liued in him, haue now for ever dy’de.
Oft haue I seene him leap into the graue,
Suiting the person which he seem’d to haue
Of a sadd louer with soe true an eye,
That theer I would haue sworne, he meant to dye.
Oft haue I seene him play this part in ieast,
Soe liuely, that spectators, and the rest
Of his sad crew, whilst he but seem’d to bleed,
Amazed, thought euen then hee dyed in deed.
In the longer version ll. 2–5 are not only omitted, but are replaced by
an interpolation of many lines, detailing a number of parts, some of
which belonged to other companies than the King’s, and are not likely
to have been played by Burbadge. No manuscript of this version is
forthcoming, and there can be little doubt that the interpolation is
due to Collier, who referred to the version in his _New Particulars_
(1836), 27, and published it in his _Memoirs of the Actors_ (1846),
52, professedly from a manuscript in the possession of Richard Heber.
Of the shorter version I can add to what has been recorded by others
that in _Stowe MS._ 962, f. 62^v, I have found a copy of it, with the
title ‘An Elegie on the death of the famous actor Rich: Burbage, who
died 13 Martij A^o. 1618’, and an ascription to ‘Jo ffletcher’. Other
copies also give the date of Burbadge’s death, or refer, as do the
opening lines themselves, to the fact that he was skilled not only as
an actor but as a limner. John Davies testifies to this in the verses
of 1603 already cited. The accounts of the Earl of Rutland for the
birthday tilt of 1613 contain the entry, ‘31 Martij, To M^r. Shakspeare
in gold, about my Lordes impreso, 44^s. To Richard Burbage for paynting
and makyng yt, in gold, 44^s’; and those for the tilt of 1616, ‘25
Martij, 1616, paid given Richard Burbidg for my Lordes shelde and for
the embleance, 4^{li} 18^s’ (_H. M. C. Rutland MSS._ iv. 494, 508). The
gallery at Dulwich contains a picture presented by William Cartwright,
which is described in his catalogue as ‘a womans head on a boord done
by M^r. Burbige y^e actor’. The inveterate tendency of mankind to
guess has led to suggestions that he may have painted the portrait of
himself in the same gallery, the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare, or
the original of the Droeshout print.
One other record of Burbadge, apart from his company, may be noted. On
31 May 1610 he was employed by the City, with his fellow James Rice,
to deliver a speech to Prince Henry at a water-pageant on the Thames
(cf. ch. iv). Presumably he represented Amphion, ‘a grave and judicious
Prophet-like personage’, and Rice Corinea.
BURGES, ROBERT. A ‘player’ buried at St. Bennet’s, Gracechurch, 14
April 1559 (B. 251).
CANDLER, JAMES. Leader of a company at Ipswich, 1569–70 (_Hist. MSS._
ix. 1. 248).
CARIE (GARY), GILES. Revels, 1609; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611, 1613.
CARLETON, NICHOLAS. Paul’s, >1582.
CARPENTER, WILLIAM. Lady Elizabeth’s, 1611; Charles’s, 1619, 1625. He
was apparently porter at the Marshalsea in 1623 (J. 347).
CARTWRIGHT, WILLIAM. Admiral’s-Henry’s, 1598–1622 (H. ii. 247). He
lived at the upper end of White Cross Street in 1623 (J. 347).
CASTLE, THOMAS. A ‘player’, whose son Nicholas and daughter Hester were
baptized at St. Giles’s on 9 October 1608 and 15 April 1610 (B. 262).
CATTANES. Worcester’s, 1602 (H. ii. 248).
CAVALLERIZZO, CLAUDIO. Italians, 1576 (?).
CHAPPELL, JOHN. Chapel, 1600–1.
CHESSON, THOMAS. Oxford’s (?), 1580.
CLARK, SILL. Prince’s, 1603< >1641.
CLARKE, ROBERT. A ‘player’ whose son Ezekiel was buried at St. Giles’s,
7 November 1617 (B. 268).
CLARKE, THOMAS. Leicester’s, 1572.
CLAY, NATHANIEL. Anne’s, 1618; Chamber of Bristol, 1618.
CLEMENT, WILLIAM. London player, 1550 (App. D, No. v).
CLIFTON, THOMAS. Kidnapped for Chapel, 1600.
COBORNE, EDWARD. A ‘player’ whose son John was baptized at St. Giles’s
on 23 Nov. 1616. Of other family entries, 1613–25, some are for Edward
Coborne ‘gentleman’ (_Bodl._). He may be identical with COLBRAND.
COKE, RICHARD. Interluders, 1547–56.
COLBRAND, EDWARD. Palsgrave’s, 1610–13.
COLE. Paul’s, 1599.
COLMAN, WILLIAM. Chapel, 1509.
CONDELL, HENRY, has been conjectured to be the ‘Harry’ cast for Ferrex
and a Lord in the ‘plot’ of _The Seven Deadly Sins_, as played by
Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590–1. The first definite notice of
him is in the cast of Jonson’s _Every Man in his Humour_, as played
by the Chamberlain’s men in 1598. Thereafter he appears in all formal
lists of the Chamberlain’s and King’s men, up to the Caroline patent
of 1625, including the list in the First Folio of 1623, of which,
with Heminges, he acted as editor. He is also in all the casts up to
_The Humourous Lieutenant_ (_c._ 1619). About this date he presumably
ceased to play; his part of the Cardinal in _The Duchess of Malfi_ had
passed to Richard Robinson by 1623. The fact that he took this part
somewhat discredits the conjecture of John Roberts (_Answer to Pope_,
1729) that he was a comedian; nor can the statement of the same writer
that he was a printer be verified. He is staged with other members of
the company in Marston’s _Malcontent_ (1604), and appears as ‘Henry
Condye’ in the verses on the burning of the Globe in 1613. He is
assigned 26_s._ 8_d._ to buy a ring as Shakespeare’s ‘fellowe’ in his
will of 1616, and appears also as a legatee in the will of Augustine
Phillips in 1605, as trustee in that of Alexander Cooke in 1614, as
executor and joint residuary legatee in that of Nicholas Tooley in
1623, under which also his wife and his daughter Elizabeth receive
legacies, and as executor in that of John Underwood in 1625. By 1599 he
was married and apparently settled in St. Mary Aldermanbury, where he
held various parochial offices during 1606–21, and the register records
his children: Elizabeth (bapt. 27 February 1599, bur. 11 April 1599),
Anne (bapt. 4 April 1601, bur. 16 July 1610), Richard (bapt. 18 April
1602), Elizabeth (bapt. 14 April 1603, bur. 22 April 1603), Elizabeth
(bapt. 26 October 1606), Mary (bapt. 30 January 1608, bur. from Hoxton
at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, 24 March 1608), Henry (bapt. 6 May 1610,
bur. 4 March 1630), William (bapt. 26 May 1611), Edward (bapt. 22
August 1614, bur. 23 August 1614).[942] Subsequently he had a ‘country
house’ at Fulham, at which on 10 September 1625 a pamphlet written
by certain players on their travels during the plague, as a reply to
Dekker’s _A Rod for Run-awayes_, under the title of _The Run-awayes
Answer_, was addressed to him, with an expression of gratitude for a
‘free and noble farewell’ which he had given the writers. At Fulham,
too, on 13 December 1627, he made his will, leaving to his widow
Elizabeth, his sons Henry and William, and his daughter Elizabeth,
wife of Herbert Finch, much household property at Aldermanbury and
elsewhere in London, including ‘rents and profits’ by ‘leases and
terms of years’ of ‘messuages houses and places’ in Blackfriars and on
the Bankside, which were to pass for a time to William and ultimately
to the widow.[943] Condell had not been an original sharer in the
house of the Globe, but by 1612 had acquired an interest jointly with
Heminges; of the Blackfriars house he was an original sharer in 1608.
_The Sharers Papers_ of 1635 indicate that Mrs. Condell had held
four-sixteenths of the Globe and one-eighth of the Blackfriars, but
had transferred two-sixteenths of the Globe when Taylor and Lowin were
admitted as sharers. A minor legacy in Condell’s will is to his old
servant, Elizabeth Wheaton, of her ‘place or priviledge’ in the Globe
and Blackfriars. Heminges and Cuthbert Burbadge are named as overseers.
Condell was buried on 29 December 1627, and his widow on 3 October
1635, both at St. Mary Aldermanbury.[944]
COOKE, ALEXANDER, has been conjectured to be the ‘Sander’ who is cast
in the ‘plot’ of _The Seven Deadly Sins_ as played by Strange’s or the
Admiral’s about 1590–1, for the parts of Videna in _Envy_ and Progne
in _Lechery_. But, as far as this goes, he might just as well be the
‘San.’ who took the part of a player in _Taming of a Shrew_ (1594),
ind. 1, which was a Pembroke’s play. Malone ‘presumes’, with some
rashness, that he performed ‘all the principal female characters’ in
Shakespeare’s plays.[945] It must be doubtful whether he was on the
stage as early as 1592. He is traceable as a member of the King’s
men in the casts of _Sejanus_ (1603), _Volpone_ (1605), _Alchemist_
(1610), _Catiline_ (1611), and _The Captain_ (1612–13). The fact that
in the first two of these his name occurs at the end of the lists has
been somewhat hazardously accepted as an indication that he played
women’s parts. He is also in the First Folio list of performers in
Shakespeare’s plays. Augustine Phillips left him a legacy as his
‘fellow’ in 1605.
‘Mr. Cooke and his wife’ commend themselves to Alleyn in his wife’s
letter of 21 October 1603.[946] The token-books of St. Saviour’s,
Southwark, show an Alexander Cooke in Hill’s Rents during 1604, 1607,
1609, and 1610; and the parish register, recording the baptism of
Francis Cooke, son of Alexander, ‘a player’, on 27 October 1605, makes
an identification possible. There were three more children, Rebecca
(bapt. 11 October 1607), Alice (bapt. 3 November 1611), Alexander
(bapt. 20 March 1614). This last was posthumous; the register records
Alexander Cooke’s burial on 25 February 1614.[947] His will, dated
3 January 1614, leaves £50 each to Francis, Rebecca, and the unborn
child, and the residue to his wife.[948] He owned £50 ‘which is in the
hand of my fellowes, as my share of the stock’. He appoints ‘my master
Hemings’, to whom he had presumably been apprenticed, and Condell
trustees for his children, and mentions brothers Ellis and John, of
whom the latter is conjectured by Collier to be the author of Greene’s
_Tu Quoque_.
COOKE, EDWARD. Chapel, 1509.
COOKE, LIONEL. Queen’s, 1583, 1588.
COOKE, THOMAS. Worcester’s, 1583.
COOKE, WILLIAM. Whitefriars lessee, 1608.
CORNISH, JOHN. Gentleman of Chapel, and pageant-master at wedding of
Arthur in 1501.
CORNISH, KIT. A ‘ghost-name’ in Chapel records.
CORNISH, WILLIAM. Master of Song School, Westminster, 1479–80.
CORNISH, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1509–23. Conceivably identical with
the last, and in any case probably of the same family.
COWLEY, RICHARD, was of Strange’s men in 1593. He had played minor
parts with that company or the Admiral’s in _The Seven Deadly Sins_
of 1590–1, and is mentioned in Alleyn’s correspondence as travelling
with the company. He joined the Chamberlain’s men, probably on
their formation in 1594, and was payee for the company in 1601. The
stage-directions to the Quarto (1600) and Folio texts of _Much Ado
about Nothing_, IV. ii, show that he played Verges. He is in the
1603 and 1604 lists of the King’s men, and received a legacy from
Augustine Phillips as his ‘fellow’ in 1605, but does not appear to
have been a sharer in the houses of the Globe or Blackfriars. He is
in the Folio list of performers in Shakespeare’s plays. He dwelt in
Holywell, or for a short period in Alleyn’s Rents, both in the parish
of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, whose register records his children,
Robert (bapt. 8 March 1596, bur. (?) 20 March 1597), Cuthbert (bapt.
8 May 1597), Richard (bapt. 29 April 1598, bur. 26 February 1603),
Elizabeth (bapt. 2 February 1602), as well as the funeral of his wife
Elizabeth on 28 September 1616, and his own on 12 March 1619.[949] His
will, dated on 13 January 1618, appoints his daughter Elizabeth Birch
executrix and is witnessed by Heminges, Cuthbert Burbadge, Shank, and
Thomas Ravenscroft, perhaps the madrigalist.[950]
CRANE, JOHN. A London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v).
CRANE, WILLIAM. Master of Chapel, 1523–45.
CROSSE, SAMUEL, is named amongst the performers of Shakespeare’s plays
in the First Folio, but in no list of the Chamberlain’s or King’s men.
Probably, therefore, he belongs to the very beginning of Shakespeare’s
career, and is to be identified with the Crosse named by Heywood
amongst famous actors of a generation before his time.[951]
CUMBER, JOHN. Anne’s, 1616–19. He lived in Aldermanbury in 1623, and
died in that year (J. 347; Fleay, 279).
CURTEYS, JAMES. Chapel, 1509.
CUTLER, JAMES. Chapel, > 1605.
DABORNE, ROBERT. Revels patentee, 1610, and dramatist.
DANIEL, JOHN. Chamber of Bristol patentee, 1615–17.
DANIEL, SAMUEL. Allower of Revels’ plays, 1604, and dramatist.
DARLOWE. Admiral’s, >1590.
DAVIES, HUGH. Admiral’s (?), 1601 (H. ii. 255).
DAWES, ROBERT. Duke of York’s, 1610; Lady Elizabeth’s, 1614.
DAY, JOHN. Admiral’s (?), _c._ 1600. John, son of John Day, ‘player’,
was baptized at St. Saviour’s, 3 June 1604 (B. 308; cf. ch. xxiii).
DAY, THOMAS. Chapel, 1601, 1602.
DOB. Admiral’s, 1598–1601.
DOWNTON (DOWTON, DOUTON (?), DOWTEN, DOWGHTON, DENYGTEN, DOUBTON),
THOMAS. Strange’s, 1593; Admiral’s-Henry’s-Palsgrave’s, 1594–_c._
1618. The St. Saviour’s registers record various family events,
including the baptism of Christopher, son of Thomas Dowton ‘musycyon’
on 27 December 1592 and that of Thomas Dowton ‘baseborne, the supposed
son of Thomas Dowton, a player’, 25 May 1600. He apparently married a
vintner’s widow on 15 February 1618, became a vintner, and was still
alive on 18 August 1622 (B. 316; H. ii. 262, 265). Dr. Greg regards him
as one of the Dutton family.
DRAKE, ROBERT. A London player in 1550 (cf. App. D, No. v).
DRAYTON, MICHAEL. Whitefriars lessee, 1608, and dramatist.
DREWE, BARTHOLOMEW. A ‘player’, whose son George was baptized at St.
Saviour’s on 12 November 1614 (B. 314).
DREWE, THOMAS. Anne’s, 1616–19.
DROM, THOMAS. Admiral’s, 1601.
DRUSIANO. _Vide_ MARTINELLI.
DUKE, JOHN. Strange’s (?), 1590–1; Chamberlain’s, 1598;
Worcester’s-Anne’s, 1602–9. Four children were baptized at St.
Leonard’s, where he lived in Holywell Street, from July 1604 to January
1609 (H. ii. 265; Collier, _Actors_, xxxi).
DULANDT (DOWLAND?), ROBERT. Musician in Germany, 1623.
DUTTON, EDWARD. Admiral’s, 1597, with a boy ‘Dick’. Children of his
were baptized at St. Saviour’s during 1600–2 (B. 326).
DUTTON, JOHN. Warwick’s, 1575–6; Oxford’s, 1580; Queen’s, 1583,
1588–91. Lincoln’s Inn paid him for musicians in 1567–8 (Walker, i.
362). There are family records of a John Dutton at St. Botolph’s, who
is called ‘player’ in the entry of a daughter Elizabeth’s baptism of 3
July 1586 (B. 328).
DUTTON, LAURENCE. Lane’s, 1571–2; Clinton’s, 1572–5; Warwick’s, 1575–6;
Oxford’s, 1580; Queen’s, 1589–91. It is curious that a John and a
Laurence Dutton also appear as Court Messengers. I find a payment on
23 May 1578 to John for carrying letters to Antwerp (_Pipe Office,
Chamber Declared Account_ 541, m. 211^v), and Laurence was paid for
‘sondry jorneys’ in 1561–2 (ibid. m. 39) and was during 1576–82 one
of the regular Messengers of the Chamber in attendance on the Privy
Council (Dasent, ix. 223, x. 223, 228, xi. 437, xii. 23, xiii. 135,
392, etc.). The ‘Edward’ Dutton of the last entry may be an error. In
1592 the Council (xxii. 493) recommended John the son of Laurence who
had ‘of long tyme served her Majestie’ as Messenger, for admission as
a Queen’s Scholar at Westminster. But this Laurence can hardly have
been the actor, for he was acting as Messenger on 20 May 1580, while
the affray for which Laurence the actor had been committed to the
Marshalsea on 13 April was still uninquired into. Somewhat earlier a
Thomas Dutton was employed as a post between Edward VI’s Council and
Thomas Gresham in Antwerp, and was Gresham’s agent in Hamburg, c. 1571
(Burgon, _Gresham_, i. 109; ii. 421). It is easier again to conjecture
than to prove a connexion between the actors and the house of Dutton,
which had a hereditary jurisdiction over minstrelsy in Cheshire (cf.
ch. ix), although in this the names John and Laurence both appear. It
is perhaps an accident that two of the recorded visits of the Queen’s
men to Lord Derby’s northern seats in 1588–90 synchronize with visits
by a Mr. Dutton (Murray, ii. 296).
ECCLESTONE, WILLIAM, appears as a King’s man in the casts of _The
Alchemist_ (1610) and _Catiline_ (1611). Mr. Fleay’s statement that
he joined the company from the Queen’s Revels in 1609 rests upon a
confusion with Field.[952] In 1611 he became a member of the Lady
Elizabeth’s men, but left them in 1613 after playing in _The Honest
Man’s Fortune_ during that year. He returned to the King’s, and his
name is found in the official lists of the company for 1619 and 1621
and in most of the casts of their plays, from _Bonduca_ in 1613–14 to
_The Spanish Curate_ in 1622, as well as in the First Folio list of
performers in Shakespeare’s plays. Nicholas Tooley forgave him a debt
in his will of 3 June 1623. As he is not in the Caroline patent of
1625, he had probably died or retired by that date. He may be the W.
E. who writes commendatory verses to _The Wild-goose Chase_ in 1652.
If he is also the ‘William Eglestone’ whose marriage to Anne Jacob is
recorded in the register of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, on 20 February
1603, he lived to be an old man.[953]
EDMONDS, JOHN. Globe lessee, 1612; Chamber of Bristol, 1618–19. The
St. Saviour’s registers record the marriage of a John Edmonds to
Margaret Goodyere on 22 February 1600 and the baptism of children of
John Edmonds, ‘player’, from 6 January 1605 to 17 July 1615 (B. 334).
Probably the two are not identical and the player is the John Edmans
who seems to have married his fellow-legatee, Mary Clarke, of the will
of Thomas Pope (q.v.) in 1604.
EDWARDES, RICHARD. Master of Chapel, 1561–6, and dramatist.
EICHELIN. Germany, 1604.