Well into the yard, leaving space for the groundlings on three sides of

it, projects a quadrangular stage, which is marked ‘proscaenium’.[1666]

The breadth is perhaps rather greater than the depth.[1667] This was

certainly the case at the Fortune, where the stage was 43 ft. wide,

and extended ‘to the middle of the yarde’, a distance of 27½ ft. The

level of the stage may be some 3 or 4 ft. above the ground. Two solid

trestles forming part of its supports are visible, but at the Fortune

it was paled in with oak, and in view of the common use of the space

below the stage to facilitate apparitions and other episodes requiring

traps, this was probably the normal arrangement.[1668] It has been

thought that the stage of the Swan, like that of the Hope, which was

in many respects modelled upon it, may have been removable. But this

is hardly consistent with the heavy pillars which, in this respect

certainly unlike the Hope, it carries. Moreover, the Hope had to be

available for bear-baiting, which entailed an open arena, and there

is no evidence, and very little likelihood, that baiting ever took

place at the Swan. Like other theatres, it sometimes accommodated

gymnasts and fencers, but these would use the stage.[1669] There are

no rails round the stage, such as we may infer the existence of at

the Globe.[1670] The only scenic apparatus visible is a large bench,

on which a lady sits, while another stands behind her in an attitude

of surprise, at the rapid approach from an outer corner of the stage

of a man in an affected attitude, with a hat on his head and a long

staff in his hand. You might take him for Malvolio cross-gartered, were

there any chance that _Twelfth Night_ could have been written when

the drawing was made, or produced at the Swan.[1671] Probably he is

a returning traveller or a messenger bringing news. The floor of the

stage is apparently bare. Sometimes rushes were laid down, at any rate

for interior scenes.[1672] The Globe produced _Henry VIII_ in 1613

‘with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and majesty, even to the

matting of the stage’.

Circling the yard and raised above it are three tiers of galleries,

each containing three rows of seats. Beneath the first gallery De Witt

wrote ‘orchestra’, above its seats ‘sedilia’, and between the middle

and upper galleries ‘porticus’. In the classical theatre ‘porticus’ was

the name for a covered gallery, and the classical analogy also makes

it clear that by ‘orchestra’ De Witt meant to indicate the position

occupied by the spectators of highest rank, corresponding to the seats

of Roman senators, to which the name of the obsolete dancing place

immediately in front of them had been transferred. It was not until the

Restoration that the orchestra was allocated to the music.[1673] The

fronts of the galleries are supported by a number of turned posts. In

the Fortune all the chief supports, presumably both in the auditorium

and on the stage, were to be square and made ‘palasterwise, with carved

proporcions called Satiers’. Internal painting was contemplated, but

was not covered by the contract. Other references to painted theatres

suggest that the Elizabethan builders were not content with bare

scaffolds, but aimed at a decorative effect.[1674] Three seems to have

been the regular number of galleries. Kiechel bears witness to it for

the Theatre and Curtain in 1585; and there were three at the Fortune

and at the Hope. The lowest gallery at the Fortune was 12 ft. high,

the next 11 ft., and the uppermost 9 ft., and each of the two latter

jutted out 10 in. beyond that below. This gives a total height of 32

ft., about three-fifths of the interior width of the house. The maps,

therefore, make the buildings rather disproportionately high. The

uppermost gallery has a roof, marked ‘tectum’. This in the earlier

Globe was of thatch, which caused the fire of 1613, and left the

unlucky King’s men with little but ‘wit to cover it with tiles’. I

think the Rose was also thatched; but the Fortune and Hope were tiled.

In view of the jetties, such a roof would give some protection to those

in the galleries, but the groundlings had none. Both the drawing and

the maps confirm the statement of Wright that the Globe, Fortune, and

Red Bull were ‘partly open to the weather’, and this was doubtless also

the case with their predecessors.[1675]

De Witt does not indicate any internal gallery partitions, but the

Swan had these by 1614, for they were to be the model for ‘two boxes

in the lowermost storie fitt and decent for gentlemen to sitt in’,

which were to be constructed at the Hope. Similarly the Fortune was

to have ‘ffower convenient divisions for gentlemens roomes, and other

sufficient and convenient divisions for twoe pennie roomes, with

necessarie seates’. These were to be ceiled with lath and plaster. An

earlier example of the technical use of the term ‘room’ for a division

of the auditorium occurs in the draft Theatre lease of 1585, which

gave the landlord a right to sit or stand in ‘some one of the upper

romes’, if the places were not already taken up. If the clause, like

the rest of the draft, merely reproduced the covenants of the 1576

lease, the term was of long standing. Probably the divisions were of

varying sizes. There would not have been much point in cutting up the

space available for ‘two-pennie roomes’ into very small sections, but

there were also ‘priuate roomes’, which are perhaps the same as the

‘gentlemens roomes’ of the contracts.[1676] If so, these were probably

to the right and left of the stage in the lowest gallery. But the whole

question of seating and prices is rather difficult, and it is further

complicated by obscurely discerned changes of fashion, which involved

the adoption of the very inconvenient custom of sitting on the stage,

and the consequent abandonment by the gentry of what was called the

lord’s room. Prices also, no doubt, tended to grow, at any rate for

the better seats; the ‘popular’ prices always remained low.[1677] I do

not know whether the professional actors ever contented themselves,

after their establishment in London, with merely sending round the

hat, or, in mediaeval phrase, making a ‘gatheryng’.[1678] Fixed prices

must certainly have been the rule by the time of Kiechel’s visit in

1585, for he tells us that, on the occasion of a new play, double

prices were charged. This practice helps to explain the fluctuating

receipts in Henslowe’s diary, and was still in force in the seventeenth

century.[1679] Spenser and his friends could have their laugh at a

play for 1_d._ or 2_d._ in 1579, and ten years later Martin Marprelate

could be seen for 2_d._ at the Theatre and 4_d._ at Paul’s.[1680]

Higher prices are already characteristic of the private houses. In

1596 Lambarde informs us of a regular scale, apparently applicable to

all public entertainments. None, he says, who ‘goe to Paris Gardein,

the Bell Savage or Theatre, to beholde beare baiting, enterludes or

fence play, can account of any pleasant spectacle unlesse they first

pay one pennie at the gate, another at the entrie of the scaffolde

and the thirde for a quiet standing’. Platter, in 1599, reports the

same scale and adds a distinction, not made by Lambarde, between

standings and seats. You paid 1_d._ to stand on the level, 1_d._ at

an inner door to sit, and 1_d._ at a third door for one of the best

places with a cushion.[1681] The two-penny galleries or rooms long

continued to be the resort of the ordinary playgoer, if he was not

satisfied to stand in the yard for a penny.[1682] He sat close, and

the insolent poets and pamphleteers classed him with the groundlings

as a ‘stinkard’.[1683] His domain certainly included the top gallery,

but about the other galleries I am not sure. There are some puzzling

allusions to penny galleries and rooms, but probably, these are not

distinct from the ‘two-penny’ ones, and the explanation is to be found

in the practice of paying the twopence in two instalments, one on

entrance, the other at the gallery door.[1684] It did not long remain

possible to get one of the best seats for the 3_d._ quoted by Platter,

even if there was not already in his time a higher charge for ‘the

priuate roomes of greater price’.[1685] There were both sixpenny

and twelve-penny rooms by 1604.[1686] These may have been the same

private rooms at varying prices, according as the play was old or

new. I take it that you only got a single seat, even in a ‘private’

room, for your 6_d._ or 12_d._, and not the whole room. Overbury or

another gives 12_d._ as the price of the ‘best room’ as late as about

1614, but in the same year the ordinary scale of charges was greatly

exceeded throughout the house on the production of _Bartholomew Fair_

at the Hope, where a speaker in the induction says, ‘it shall be

lawful to judge his six-penny-worth, his twelve-penny-worth, so to his

eighteen-pence, two shillings, half a crown, to the value of his place,

provided always his place get not above his wit’. This must have been

a quite exceptional occasion, not merely a new play, but a new play at

a new house. Similarly, when Richard Vennar brought the gulls to his

swindle of _England’s Joy_ in 1602, ‘the price at cumming in was two

shillings or eighteen-pence at least’.

A special compartment in one of the galleries was not the only

privilege offered to the more fashionable playgoer. He might, at one

time or another, sit ‘over the stage’ and on the stage. De Witt’s

drawing shows, at the back of the stage, a raised gallery divided into

six small boxes, in each of which one or two spectators appear to be

placed.[1687] It is reasonable to suppose that these are sitting ‘over

the stage’.[1688] And some or all of those ‘over the stage’ again,

appear to have sat in ‘the lords room’ or ‘rooms’.[1689] Of such a

room we first hear in 1592, when Henslowe, repairing the Rose, paid

10_s._ ‘for sellynge of the Rome ouer the tyerhowsse’ and 13_s._ ‘for

sellinges my lords Rome’. The entry rather suggests that this was

not so much a room for ‘lords’, as a room primarily reserved for the

particular ‘lord’, under whose patronage the actors played; but however

this may be, it was probably available by courtesy for other persons of

distinction. The practice of sitting on the stage itself first emerges

about 1596.[1690] It was general by the seventeenth century, and was

apparently most encouraged at the Blackfriars, where it perhaps lent

itself best to the structural character of the building.[1691] It was

known at Paul’s, but was inconvenient on so small a stage.[1692] And,

as it certainly originated at the public houses, so it maintained

itself there, in spite of the grumbles of the ordinary spectators,

with whose view of the action the throng of feathered and restless

gallants necessarily interfered.[1693] It may have been profitable to

the actors as sharers, but as actors they resented the restriction

of the space available for their movements which it entailed.[1694]

The prologue to Jonson’s _The Devil is an Ass_ of 1616 contains a

vigorous protest.[1695] But the gallant liked to be seen as well as to

see, and liked to slip in and out of the tiring-house and hob-nob with

the players. It was not until Caroline times that the custom became

intolerable.[1696] On the stage stools were provided for those who

did not care to sit on the rushes, and for these they paid at least

sixpence and sometimes a shilling.[1697] One result of the introduction

of sitting on the stage appears to have been that the lord’s room

lost its attractiveness and consequently its status. It fell into the

background, and became the haunt of a rather disreputable class of

playgoer. The lords were now to be found either on the stage itself,

or in the private rooms of the lower gallery. Presumably the ‘grate’

to which the courtier of Sir John Davies’ epigram relegated himself,

was in the lord’s room, perhaps fitted with a casement for scenic

purposes.[1698] The change is chronicled by Dekker in the passage of

_The Gull’s Horn Book_, in which the gull is instructed how to behave

himself in a play-house. He must by all means advance himself up to the

throne of the stage.

‘I meane not into the Lords roome (which is now but the

Stages Suburbs): no, those boxes, by the iniquity of custome,

conspiracy of waiting-women and Gentlemen-Ushers, that there

sweat together, and the couetousnes of Sharers, are contemptibly

thrust into the reare, and much new Satten is there dambd, by

being smothred to death in darknesse.’

I return to the guidance of De Witt. The boarding between the yard

and the lower gallery, which in the Fortune was overlaid with iron

pikes, presumably to prevent the groundlings from climbing over, shows

two apertures, to right and left of the stage, one of which is marked

‘ingressus’. From these steps lead to the lower gallery itself, and

we may infer the presence of a passage to staircases behind, by which

the upper galleries were reached. The contracts show that the Fortune,

like the Globe, and the Hope, like the Swan, were to have external

staircases.[1699] Perhaps this accounts for the greater diameter of the

lower part of the Globe in the London maps. Of external doors there

were only two at the Globe, which caused trouble at the time of the

fire, and two also at the Fortune, when Alleyn leased a share of it

to Henslowe in 1601. One of these would in each case have been a door

to the tiring-house, giving access to the stage and the lord’s room,

while the other served the body of the theatre.[1700] Those bound for

the galleries paid their pennies at the theatre door, passed through

the yard to the ‘ingressus’, and made additional payments there and

in the ‘rooms’, according to the places selected.[1701] The custom

explains itself by the arrangement between the sharers of companies

and the housekeepers of theatres, which gave the latter a proportion

of gallery takings in lieu of rent. ‘Gatherers’, appointed by the

persons interested, collected the money, and although this was put

into a locked box, whence the modern term ‘box-office’, there were

abundant opportunities for fraud. At need, the gatherers could serve as

supernumeraries on the stage.[1702]

At the back of the stage, and forming a chord to an arc of the circular

structure of the play-house, runs a straight wall, pierced by two

pairs of folding doors, on which De Witt has written ‘mimorum aedes’.

Above it is the gallery or lord’s room already described. This wall

is the ‘scene’, in the primary sense; it is also the front of the

‘tire-house’, or in modern phrase ‘green-room’, a necessary adjunct

of every theatre. The Theatre depositions of 1592 speak of this as

‘the attyring housse or place where the players make them readye’.

The drawing indicates nothing in the way of hangings over either wall

or doors, but in some theatres these certainly existed. Thus Peacham,

in his _Thalia’s Banquet_ (1620) referring to much earlier days,

tells us that

Tarlton when his head was onely seene,

The Tire-house doore and Tapistrie betweene,

Set all the multitude in such a laughter,

They could not hold for scarce an hour after.[1703]

The front of the tiring-house is the ‘scene’ in the Renaissance

sense, and its characteristics will be of great concern in later

chapters.[1704] The Fortune tire-house was to be within the frame of

the theatre, and would not, therefore, unless it projected on to the

stage, have more depth than about 12 ft. Mr. Brereton, in a careful

analysis of the drawing, suggests that the Swan tire-house may not have

extended the full width of the stage, but may have left room to come

and go on either side of its front.[1705] If so, some projection is not

improbable, but one cannot rely much upon the hazardous interpretation

of bad draughtsmanship. The ground-plan of the Swan seems to show an

annexe at one point, and of course additional depth could easily be

obtained in this way. Moreover, there were at least three stories

available. The spectators in the lord’s room would not take up the

whole depth on the level of the middle gallery, and there must have

been a corresponding space on that of the top gallery. Henslowe ceiled

‘the rome ouer the tyerhowsse’ in 1592, and an inventory of the

Admiral’s men in 1598 includes effects ‘leaft above in the tier-house

in the cheast’. No doubt a fair amount of accommodation was needed. The

tire-house was not merely a dressing-room and a store-house. Here came

the author, to rail at the murdering of his lines, and the gallants

to gossip and patronize the players.[1706] Here were the book-holder,

who prompted the speeches, surveyed the entrances and exits, and saw

to the readiness of the properties;[1707] the tireman, who fitted the

dresses and the beards, furnished stools, and in the private theatres

took charge of the lights;[1708] the stage-keeper;[1709] the grooms

and ‘necessary attendants’, waiting to draw curtains, to thrust out

beds, and to carry benches and banquets on and off.[1710] Here, too,

was the head-quarters of the music, although in the public theatres the

music was largely incidental, and was often played on, or above, or

even below the stage, as might seem most appropriate to any particular

action.[1711] Music between the acts was not unknown, but we learn

from the induction to the _Malcontent_ that it was ‘not received’ by

the audience at the Globe in 1604.[1712] There was also, of course, the

final ‘jig’.[1713] For an overture, the public theatres seem to have

employed nothing beyond three soundings of a trumpet, the last of which

was the signal for the prologue to begin.[1714] Probably the musical

element tended to increase. A special music-room perhaps existed

already at the Swan in 1611, and, if so, may have been, as it was in

the later theatres, in the upper part of the tire-house.[1715]

The Fortune tire-house was to have ‘convenient windowes and lightes

glazed’. Some of these may have looked into the auditorium, and have

been used for scenic purposes. But the maps show external windows here

and there in the walls, and these would be necessary to light both the

tire-house and the galleries. We have a picture of Burbadge leaning

out of an upper window to greet with abuse the disturbers of his peace

at the Theatre in 1590. The yard and the stage itself were, of course,

lit, in the absence of a roof, from above. Performances were ordinarily

by daylight; before the end of the sixteenth century the time for

beginning had been fixed at 2 o’clock.[1716] The stage-directions point

to a frequent enough use of lamps and tapers, but always to give the

illusion of scenic darkness. Plays, however, lasted at least two hours,

sometimes half an hour or even an hour longer, and there was the jig to

follow.[1717] It must therefore be doubtful whether, in the depth of

winter, daylight could have served quite to the end. Webster complains

that the ill-success of _The White Devil_ was due to its being

given ‘in so dull a time of winter, and presented in so open and black

a theatre’. Perhaps the shorter plays were chosen for the shorter days,

or the jig was omitted. But it is also possible that some primitive

illumination, in the form of cressets, or baskets of tarred and flaring

rope, was introduced.[1718]

The actors themselves were not wholly without protection from the

elements. De Witt depicts two heavy classical columns, which stand

on square bases rather farther back than the middle of the stage and

a little way from each side of it. These support a pent-house roof,

which starts from the level of the eaves of the ‘tectum’ over the

top gallery, and descends in a steep slope to a level opposite to

the middle of the second gallery, where it slightly projects beyond

the supporting columns. Behind and above it rises a kind of hut,

conspicuous above the ‘tectum’ and forming a superstructure to the

tire-house. Its front has less width than that of the tire-house, and

its side is shown in clumsy perspective, which is apparently followed

round by the pent-house below it. The pent-house is the only thing

in the drawing, that can represent the ‘shadow’ or ‘heavens’, which

several allusions point to as a regular feature in the public theatres,

and which certainly existed at the Rose, the Fortune--and therefore

presumably the Globe--and the Hope.[1719] But it must be admitted that

this sharply sloping roof, coming down low and considerably impeding

the vision of the spectators at any rate in the top gallery, does not

agree very well with the notion of a heavens dominating the stage,

elaborately decorated, and serving for the display of spectacular

effects, which were surely meant to be visible to all. It is possible

that De Witt’s halting draughtsmanship has failed him in the attempt

to tackle the architectural perspective from a difficult angle in an

upper gallery. My impression is that, by giving too much height to the

bottom gallery, he has got the two other galleries out of line with

the stories of the tire-house to which they correspond, and that the

lower gallery should really be on the level of the stage, the middle

gallery on that of the gallery ‘over the stage’, and the top gallery

on that of the rather obscure story above. If so, the front of this

story would have been visible, and may have contained some aperture

of which account has not yet been taken in formulating theories of

staging.[1720] And I think that the columns were really higher and the

roof flatter than De Witt has drawn them. It is perhaps less easy to

suggest that the columns stood farther forward than De Witt has placed

them, but the roof may well have projected farther over them. They are

solid enough to bear a much greater weight than the drawing indicates.

However these things may have been at the Swan--I am not blind to

the dangers of attempting to convert what De Witt has shown into

something which he has not shown--one may, perhaps, infer that more

extensive roofing than the pent-house of the drawing would afford was

contemplated by the Fortune contract, which provides for ‘a shadowe or

cover over the saide stadge’, and the Hope contract, which is even more

precise in its specification of ‘the Heavens all over the saide stage’.

In both cases there were to be gutters to carry away rain-water. The

heavens at the Hope were ‘to be borne or carryed without any postes

or supporters to be fixed or sett uppon the saide stage’, and it has

been thought that other theatres of later date than the Swan may also

have dispensed with posts. But there is little ground for this theory,

other than the obvious obstruction which the posts would offer to

vision.[1721] Howes seems to refer to the arrangement at the Hope as

an innovation, and it can hardly be unrelated to the special need for

a removable stage at that house. On the other hand the posts may very

likely have been slighter than De Witt has shown them. At the Fortune

they were, like other ‘princypall and maine postes’, square and carved

‘palasterwise’ with satyrs. The posts are worked into the action of

several plays, and Kempe tells us that pickpockets were pilloried by

being tied to them.[1722]

The hut has two windows in front, and a door in the visible side. It

has been suggested that it may really have stood rather more forward

than De Witt indicates, jutting out from the tire-house so as to be

directly over a part of the heavens.[1723] An analogous superstructure

is observable in most of the map-representations of theatres. That

of the later Globe in Visscher’s map of 1616 seems to have two bays,

one behind another, instead of the one bay of the Swan drawing, and

would have required more space. The ‘Theatrum’ of Jonson’s 1616 Folio

has an =L=-shaped superstructure. The object of a jut forward would

be to facilitate the descents and ascents from and to the heavens,

which formed popular features in many plays, and which must have been

contrived by some kind of machinery from above.[1724] From the roof of

this hut floats a flag, with the figure of a swan upon it, and at the

door stands a man, apparently blowing a trumpet, from which depends a

smaller flag also bearing a swan. There is abundant evidence that the

play-houses flew flags when they were open for performances, and took

them down when Lent or a plague rendered playing impossible.[1725]

The trumpeter is no doubt giving one of the three ‘soundings’ which

preluded the appearance of the prologue in his traditional long black

velvet cloak.[1726] Nor did the flag and the trumpet exhaust the

resources of the Elizabethan art of advertisement. The _vexillatores_

of the miracle-play would perhaps have been out of keeping with

London conditions.[1727] But it was customary to announce after the

epilogue of each performance what the next was to be.[1728] And public

notification was given by means of play-bills, of which we hear from

as early a date as 1564, and which were set up on posts in conspicuous

places up and down the city and probably also at the play-house

doors.[1729] Copies seem also to have been available for circulation

from hand to hand.[1730] On 30 October 1587 John Charlwood entered in

the Stationers’ Register a licence for ‘the onely ympryntinge of all

manner of billes for players’. This passed from him to James Roberts,

and was transferred by Roberts to William Jaggard on 29 October

1615.[1731] No theatrical bill of the Elizabethan or Jacobean period is

preserved, although a manuscript bill for the Bear Garden is amongst

Alleyn’s papers at Dulwich.[1732] Four late seventeenth-century bills

are at Claydon; they are brief announcements, which give the names of

the plays, but not those of the authors or actors.[1733] There is no

evidence of anything corresponding to the modern programme, with its

cast and synopsis of scenes.[1734] The audience gathered early, as

there were few, if any, reserved seats.[1735] The period of waiting

was spent in consuming fruit or sweatmeats and liquid refreshment, and

in expressing impatience if the actors failed to make an appearance in

good time.[1736] Tobacco was freely used, especially by the gallants

on the stage.[1737] Books were also hawked up and down, and a game

of cards might beguile the tedium of waiting.[1738] The galleries

were full of light women, who found them a profitable haunt, but

whose presence did not altogether prevent that of ladies of position,

probably in the private rooms, and possibly masked.[1739]

If the audience liked a play, the actors expected a _Plaudite_ of

hand-clapping; if otherwise, they took their chance of hissing

and ‘mewing’, or of a pointed withdrawal of spectators from the

stage.[1740] The device of a _claque_ was not unknown.[1741] The

applause was often invited in the closing speech or in a formal

epilogue, on the same lines as the prologue, which it seems to have

replaced in favour about the end of the sixteenth century.[1742]

This might also lead up to or perhaps represent the prayer for the

sovereign, of which there are traces up to a late date, and which

was analogous to the modern use of ‘God Save the King’.[1743] The

accompanying prayer for the ‘lord’ of the players, on the other hand,

cannot be shown to have been adopted into the public theatres.[1744]

Finally, the epilogue might indicate a coming dance.[1745] Of this a

little more needs to be said. The players have amongst other elements

in their ancestry the mediaeval mimes, and they inherit the familiar

mimic tradition of multifarious entertainment. The ‘legitimate’ drama

was not as yet on its pedestal. The companies of the ’eighties and even

the early ’nineties were composed of men ready at need to eke out their

plays by musical performances and even the ‘activities’ of acrobats.

This is perhaps most obvious in the continental companies, which had

to face the obstacles to a complete intelligence between stage and

audience introduced at the tower of Babel. Such a cosmopolitan mingling

of drama and ‘activities’ as we may suppose _The Labours of Hercules_

to have been was a valuable resource.[1746] But at home also we find

Strange’s and the Admiral’s men showing their ‘activities’ at court,

and Symons the acrobat becoming a leader amongst the Queen’s, and

even so late as 1601 Henslowe fitting out the Admiral’s boy Nick to

tumble in the presence of royalty. The country tours of the Queen’s

were for some time accompanied by a Turkish rope dancer.[1747] In

the theatres themselves Italian players made their success and their

scandal, with the help of tumbling women.[1748] Whether English players

did the same we do not know. But we do know that the dance by way of

afterpiece was a regular and enduring custom.[1749] It was known as

the jig.[1750] At first, perhaps, nothing more than such dancing, with

the help of a variety of foreign costumes, as was also an element in

the early masks, it developed into a farcical dialogue, with a musical

and Terpsichorean accompaniment, for which popular tunes, such as

_Fading_, were utilized.[1751] This transformation was perhaps due to

the initiative of Tarlton, to whom several jigs are attributed.[1752]

But he was followed by Kempe and others, and in the last decade of

the sixteenth century the jig may be inferred from the Stationers’

Register to have become almost a literary type.[1753] Nashe in 1596

threatens Gabriel Harvey with an interlude, and ‘a Jigge at the latter

end in English Hexameters of _O neighbour Gabriell, and his wooing of

Kate Cotton_’.[1754] In 1597 Henslowe bought two jigs from two young

men for the Admiral’s at a cost of 6_s._ 8_d._[1755] In 1598 ‘Kemps

Jigge’ was being sung in the streets.[1756] The Middlesex justices

made a special order against the lewd jigs, songs, and dances at the

Fortune in 1612.[1757] Unfortunately few jigs have survived except from

a late date or in German adaptations.[1758] Two or three, however,

appear amongst collections of ballads to which they are cognate in

metrical form, notably one ascribed to ‘M^r Attowel’, whom we should,

I think, identify with the sixteenth-century George, rather than the

seventeenth-century Hugh, of that name.[1759] Another, _Rowland’s

Godson_, seems to be the surviving member of a well-known cycle.[1760]

Nor was the jig the only form of afterpiece which had its savour in

an Elizabethan play-house. Tarlton again, and after Tarlton Wilson,

won reputation in the handling of ‘themes’, which appear to have been

improvisations in verse, strung together on some motive supplied by

a member of the audience.[1761] It has been suggested that complete

plays were also sometimes given by the method of improvised dialogue

on a concerted plot which was followed in the Italian _commedie

dell’ arte_.[1762] This must remain very doubtful. The Italian

practice and the stock characters, pantaloon, zany, and harlequin, of

the _commedie dell’ arte_ were certainly known in England; but we

have the clear evidence of _The Case is Altered_ that by 1597 at

any rate they had not been naturalized.[1763] If improvisation went

beyond the gagging of a clown, it was probably only in some exceptional

experiment or _tour de force_.[1764] As exceptional also we may

regard Vennar’s spectacular _Englands Joy_ of 1602 and the wager

plays, in which actors or even amateurs challenged each other to

compete in rendering some ‘part’ of traditional repute.[1765] One would

like to know more about the play, apparently a monologue, ‘set out al

by one virgin’, at the Theatre in 1583.[1766]

Many of the characteristics of the public theatres naturally repeated

themselves at the Blackfriars, the Whitefriars, and Paul’s. The

distinctive features of these, as already indicated, arose from the

structure of the buildings, from the higher prices charged, and in the

beginning at least from the employment of singing boys as actors. Some

assimilation of ‘public’ and ‘private’ methods was bound to follow

upon the acquisition of the Blackfriars by men actors in 1609, but the

period during which this was the principal house of the King’s company

lies outside the scope of this survey.

The exact location of Paul’s is obscure, but we know that its

auditorium was round and its stage small.[1767] Whitefriars and both

the earlier and the later Blackfriars were in rooms which had formed

part of mediaeval conventual buildings, rectangular, roofed, and more

analogous to courtly halls than to popular rings. No room at Farrant’s

disposal would have given him a stage of a greater width than 27 ft.

Burbadge’s theatre was 66 ft. from north to south, and 46 ft. from

east to west. It was on the second story of his purchase that he could

have best constructed it. The stage, which stood on a paved floor, was

probably towards the south end, and as the whole space available was

something like 100 ft. long by 52 wide, we may guess that partitions

had been put up to screen off a tiring-house behind it and a passage

by which the tiring-house could be reached.[1768] The entrance would

be at the north end, where a great flight of stairs led up from a

yard large enough for coaches to turn in. There were galleries, but

not necessarily three distinct tiers of galleries, as in the public

theatres, for which, indeed, there would hardly have been height

enough.[1769] And there was a ‘middle region’ in which the spectators

sat, instead of standing as they did in the public ‘yards’.[1770] This,

which was a feature also of the later private houses, came to be known

as the ‘pit’, but as the derivation of this term is from ‘cockpit’,

it may not be of earlier origin than the building of the Cockpit or

Phoenix theatre in Drury Lane about 1617.[1771] A roofed theatre would

not require a specially constructed ‘heavens’, as descents could

be worked through the ceiling from a room above. There is no clear

evidence for a lord’s room at any of the private houses.[1772] But

there were ‘boxes’, at any rate at the Whitefriars.[1773] Evidence

for seats on the stage has already been furnished. There is much to

suggest that the audience was a more select one than that of the public

theatres.[1774] Elizabeth cannot be shown to have ever attended the

Blackfriars, but Anne certainly did.[1775] And the price of the seats,

which ranged from 6_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._, was of itself sufficient

to keep out persons of the ‘groundling’ or ‘stinkard’ type.[1776]

Performances did not necessarily take place every day, and they could

begin rather later and go on rather longer than those out of doors,

since they were not dependent on daylight.[1777] Windows were certainly

used, for we hear of them being clapped down to give the illusion of

night scenes.[1778] But candles and torches supplied an artificial

lighting.[1779] As both the Paul’s boys and those of the Chapel

were primarily choristers, it is not surprising that music played a

considerable part in the entertainment provided. Musical interludes

were given between the acts, and Gerschow records a preliminary concert

of an hour in length before the play began at the Blackfriars in

1602.[1780] Sometimes also a boy came forward and danced between the

acts.[1781] At Paul’s there was at the back of the stage a ‘musick

tree’, which apparently rose out of a ‘canopie’ and bore a ‘musick

house’ on either side of it.[1782]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] E. J. L. Scott, _Letter Book of Gabriel Harvey_ (Camden Soc.), 67.

[2] Cf. App. D, No. lxxviii.

[3] Cf. ch. xi.

[4] G. Dugdale, _Time Triumphant_ (1604), sig. B, ‘Nay, see the beauty

of our all kinde soveraigne! not onely to the indifferent of worth,

and the worthy of honor, did he freely deale about thiese causes, but

to the meane gave grace, as taking to him the late Lord Chamberlaines

servants, now the Kings acters; the Queene taking to her the Earle

of Worsters servants, that are now her acters; and the Prince, their

sonne, Henry, Prince of Wales full of hope, tooke to him the Earle of

Nottingham his servants, who are now his acters.’

[5] Cf. ch. xvi, introd., and App. C, No. lviii.

[6] Flecknoe (App. I) perhaps exaggerates the share of moral sentiment

in bringing to an end the formal connexion of the choirs with plays

(cf. p. 52).

[7] De la Boderie, in 1608 (cf. vol. i, p. 327), speaks of five

companies in London. These would be the King’s, Queen’s, Prince’s,

Revels, and King’s Revels.

[8] _Archaeologia_, lxii. 1. 216, from statutes collected in the

decanate of Ralph of Baldock (1294–1304), ‘Cantoris officium est ...

pueros introducendos in chorum et ad cantum intitulatos examinare ...

Magistrum Scolae Cantus in ecclesia Sancti Gregorii, salva Decano et

Capitulo ipsius collacione, preficere’; Dugdale, _St. Paul’s_ (1818),

347, from fifteenth-or early sixteenth-century manuscript of statutes,

‘Magistrum Scholae Cantus constituit Cantor. Ad eum pertinet eos qui

canere nequeunt instruere, pueros diligenter docere, eis non solum

magistrum Cantus, sed etiam bonorum morum esse.’

[9] _Archaeologia_, lxii. 1. 215, from statutes collected in decanate

of Ralph de Diceto (1181–99), ‘Cotidie pascat ... duos pueros

elemosinarios ... et secum ad Ecclesiam media nocte panem et cervisiam

pro iunioribus chorum frequentantibus defer[r]i faciat, et quolibet

quarterio semel vel bis post matutinas iunioribus gentaculum unum in

domo sua faciat’. A thirteenth-century statute required the _pueri

de elemosinaria_ to sit humbly upon the ground when feeding in the

house of a canon. Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 355, for Diceto’s statute

about the Boy Bishop, with its mention of the return of the boys ‘ad

Elemosinariam’, and the reforming statute of 1263.

[10] _Archaeologia_, lxii. 1. 220.

[11] Ibid. 217, 220 (_c._ 1263; _c._ 1310) ‘Elemosinarius ...

habeat insuper continuo secum octo pueros ad Ecclesiae ministerium

ydoneos, quos per seipsum vel alium magistrum in spectantibus ad

ministerium ecclesiae et litteratura ac bonis moribus diligenter faciat

informari.... Quociens vero dicti pueri ad scolas vel spaciatum ire

debent....’; Dugdale, 349 [Elemosinarius] ‘octo pueros bonae indolis et

honestae parentelae habeat; quos alat et educat in morum disciplina;

videat etiam instruantur in cantu et literatura, ut in omnibus apti ad

ministerium Dei in Choro esse possent’.

[12] There was a bequest to the almoner to maintain boys, apparently at

the University, after they had changed their voices, as early as 1315

(_Archaeologia_, lxii. 1. 219–22).

[13] Hennessy, 61; W. S. Simpson, _Charter and Statutes of the College

of Minor Canons in St. Paul’s Cathedral_ (_Archaeologia_, xliii. 165;

cf. _Trans. of London and Midd. Arch. Soc._ (1st series), iv. 231).

The statutes of _c._ 1521 note a dispensation of that year for Thomas

Hikeman ‘peticanon and amner’ and for ‘all and euery peticanon which

shalbe Amneur hear-after’ to bring a stranger to meals.

[14] Stowe, _Survey_, ii. 19; cf. the Hollar engraving in Baker, 95.

[15] Stowe, i. 327; _Archaeologia_, xliii. 171. By c. 14 of the

statutes the college gates were shut at meals.

[16] Leach, _Journal of Education_ (1909), 506, cites the _Registrum

Elemosinariae_ (ed. M. Hacket from _Harl. MS._ 1080), ‘If the almoner

does not keep a clerk to teach the choristers grammar, the schoolmaster

of St. Paul’s claims 5_s._ a year for teaching them, though he ought

to demand nothing for them, because he keeps the school for them, as

the Treasurer of St. Paul’s once alleged before the Dean and Chapter

is to be found in ancient deeds’. Mr. Leach adds, ‘It is to be feared

the Treasurer invented or misrepresented the ancient deed’. William de

Tolleshunt, almoner, appears from his will of 1329 in the same register

to have taught his boys himself (_Archaeologia_, lxii. 1. 220), ‘Item

lego pueris ecclesiae quos ego educavi senioribus in Elemosinaria

existentibus cuilibet xij^d et iunioribus cuilibet vj^d’. He also left

his grammar books ‘et omnes quaternos sermonum de Festo Sanctorum

Innocencium, quos tempore meo solebant Episcopi Puerorum pronuntiare,

ad remanendum in Elemosinaria praedicta imperpetuum, ad usum fructum

puerorum in eadem degencium’. His logic and physic books are to be lent

out ‘pueris aptis ad scolatizandum, cum ab elemosinaria recesserint’.

[17] _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 356. The sermon written by Erasmus is

headed _Concio ... pronunciata ... in nova schola Iohannis Coleti_,

but Erasmus may not have known the exact procedure at St. Paul’s. The

earlier sermon printed by Wynkyn de Worde has ‘whyche often times I

radde whan I was Querester, in the Marteloge of Poulis’.

[18] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 380.

[19] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 196, 215, 219. Wallace, i. 88, points out

that the performers of the _Menaechmi_ before Wolsey in 1527 were not

the Paul’s boys, but the Cardinal’s gentlemen.

[20] _Chamber Accounts_ (1545).

[21] Nichols, _Eliz._ i. xxxv, ‘By Sebastian, scolemaister of Powles, a

boke of ditties, written’.

[22] _Household Accounts of Princess Elizabeth, 1551–2_ (_Camden Misc._

ii), 37, ‘Paid in rewarde to the Kinges Maiesties drommer and phipher,

the xiij^{th} of Februarye, xx^s; M^r. Heywoodde, xxx^s; and to

Sebastian, towardes the charge of the children with the carriage of the

plaiers garmentes iiij^{li}, xix^s. In thole as by warraunte appereth,

vij^{li}, ix^s’.

[23] F. Madden, _Expenses of Lady Mary_, 62 (March 1538), ‘Item geuen

to Heywood playeng an enterlude with his children bifore my lades

grace, xl^s’.

[24] Wallace, i. 77, goes against the evidence when he asserts that

Heywood wrote for the Chapel. Why he asserts that Heywood ‘had grown

up in the Chapel under Cornish’, to whom, by the way, he wantonly

transfers the authorship of _The Four P. P._, _The Pardoner and the

Frere_, and _Johan Johan_, I do not know. There is nothing to show that

Heywood was a Chapel boy, and the absence of his name from the Chapel

list of 1509 (cf. p. 27), when he would have been about twelve, may be

taken as disposing of the notion. He is first discoverable at Court in

December 1514, for which month he received wages at the rate of viij^d

a day in some undefined capacity (_Chamber Account_ in _Addl. MS._

21481, f. 178), which was shared by one John Mason, who was a Yeoman

of the Crown by March 1516 (Brewer, ii. 475). By 1520 Heywood himself

was a Yeoman of the Crown (Brewer, iii. 1. 499), and during 1519–21 the

_Chamber Accounts_ show him as also a ‘singer’ at £5 a quarter. Later

he became player of the virginals, and has 50_s._ a quarter as such

in the _Accounts_ for 1529–31, 1538–41, and 1547–9. He was Sewer of

the Chamber at the funeral of Edward in 1553. It occurs to me as just

possible that Heywood’s ‘children’ may have been neither the Chapel nor

the Paul’s boys, but the boys taken up by Philip Van Wilder for the

musical establishment of the Household; cf. p. 31. But I think it is

more likely that Heywood wrote for the Paul’s boys throughout, as he

almost certainly did in 1559. There is another hint of his connexion

with them in the fact that at the coronation of Mary in 1553 he sat

under a vine against the grammar school and made speeches (Holinshed

(1808), iv. 6). A. W. Reed (1917, _3 Library_, viii. 247) adds facts,

and thinks the Yeoman was distinct.

[25] _Addl. MS._ 15233; cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 454. Thomas Tusser,

in the _Autobiography_ printed with the 1573 edition of his _Points of

Good Husbandry_, is the authority for placing Redford at Paul’s:

But mark the chance, myself to ’vance,

By friendship’s lot, to Paul’s I got.

So found I grace a certain space

Still to remain

With Redford there, the like nowhere

For cunning such and virtue much

By whom some part of musicke art

So did I gain.

From Paul’s Tusser passed to Eton, before he matriculated at Cambridge

in 1543. In other manuscripts compositions by Redford and Thomas

Mulliner are associated, and one of these, _Addl. MS._ 30513, is

inscribed ‘Sum liber Thomae Mullineri, Johanne Heywoode teste’.

Stafford Smith, on what authority is unknown, stated (cf. _D. N. B._)

that Mulliner was Master of St. Paul’s School. If so, he may have

come between Redford and Westcott. On 3 March 1564 he was admitted as

organist in Corpus Christi College, Oxford (Fowler, _Hist. of C.C.C._

426).

[26] Feuillerat, _E. and M._ 145; Wallace, i. 84. The mention of ‘xij

cottes for the boyes in Heywoodes play’ does not justify the assumption

that the players were the Chapel. The ten established boys of the St.

Paul’s choir could be supplemented by probationers or the grammar

school.

[27] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 196.

[28] Machyn, 206. ‘M^r Philip’ was organist of Paul’s in 1557 (Nichols,

_Illustrations_, iii). Fleay, 57, guesses that the play was _Nice

Wanton_, which is not likely, if Heywood had a hand in it.

[29] Hennessy, 61.

[30] Flood cites a Vatican record of 1561 from _Catholic Record Soc._

i. 21, ‘Sebastianus, qui organa pulsabat apud D. Paulum Londini,

cum vellet eiici, tamen tum ita charus Elizabethae fuit, ut nihil

schismatice agens locum suum in ea ecclesia retineat’; also Grindal’s

letter of 1563 to Dudley in Strype, _Grindal_ (ed. 1821), 113.

Hillebrand adds from _Libri Vicarii Generalis_ (_Huick 1561–74_),

iii, f. 77, that in July 1563 Westcott failed to appear before the

Consistory Court and was excommunicated as ‘contumacem’, and from St.

Paul’s records (_A. Box 77_, 2059) that on 8 Nov. 1564 he gave a bond

to conform or resign by the following Easter. Gee, 230, gives a list

of deprived clergy from N. Sanders, _De Visibili Monarchia_ (1571),

688, which includes among _Magistri Musices_ ‘Sebastianus in Cathedrali

ecclesia Londinensi’.

[31] Fleay, 15, 60, has some inaccuracies in these dates, and

conjectures that among the early Paul’s plays were a revival of Udall’s

_Ralph Roister Doister_ and Ulpian Fulwell’s _Like Will to Like_, and

that these contained satire of Richard Edwards and the Chapel.

[32] Dasent, ix. 56.

[33] Hillebrand from _Repertory_, xix, f. 18, ‘For asmoche as this

Court ys enformed that one Sebastian that wyll not communicate with the

Church of England kepe the playes and resorte of the people to great

gaine and peryll of the coruptinge of the Chyldren wyth papistrie And

therefore master Morten ys appoynted to goe to the Deane of Powles and

to gyve him notyce of that dysorder, and to praye him to gyve suche

remeadye therein, within his iurysdyccion, as he shall see meete, for

Christian Relygion and good order’.

[34] Dasent, x. 127. _Cath. Record Soc._ i. 70 gives the date of

Westcott’s committal ‘for papistry’ from _S. P. D. Eliz._ cxl. 40, as

21 Dec. 1577, and that of release as 19 March 1578. According to _S. P.

D. Eliz._ cxviii. 73, Westcott was Master of the Children in 1577 and

valued at £100 in goods.

[35] Gosson, _P. C._ 188.

[36] Flood (_Mus. Ant._ iv. 187) gives an abstract of his will, dated

on 3 April and proved on 14 April 1582. He describes himself as

almoner of St. Paul’s, dwelling in the almonry and born at Chimley in

Devonshire; appoints Henry Evans overseer and Justinian Kyd executor,

and leaves legacies to relatives (apparently he had no children or

wife), to members of the Redford family, to ‘Gyles Clothier’, to

the ten choristers, to ‘sometimes children of the said almenerey’,

by name Bromeham, Richard Huse, Robert Knight, Nicholas Carleton,

Baylye, Nasion, and Gregory Bowringe, to ‘Shepard that keepeth the

door at playes’, and to Pole ‘the keper of the gate’. Wallace, i. 171,

cites the will from _P. C. C._ 14 and 31, Tirwhite, giving the date

of confirmation as 3 July 1582. One name may be added to Westcott’s

list of boys from a Court Minute of Christ’s Hospital on 5 March

1580 (_Musical Times_, 1 Jan. 1907), ‘M^r. Sebastian, of Paulls, is

appointed to have Hallawaie the younger out of this House to be one of

the singing children of the Cathedral Church of Paulls in this Citie’.

[37] Gosson (1582) speaks of the plays as ‘at Paules’; and Rawlidge

(1628) mentions a house ‘nigh Pauls’ as one of those pulled down by

the City, apparently in 1596 (cf. ch. xvi). The Paul’s boys, however,

can hardly have been playing for some years before that date. Howes

(1629) definitely specifies the singing school (cf. ch. xvi). On

the other hand, Flecknoe, a late authority and in a passage dealing

(inaccurately) with Jacobean rather than Elizabethan conditions,

assigns the plays to ‘behinde the Convocation-house in Paul’s’ (App.

I). This is expanded by Malone (_Variorum_, iii. 46) into ‘in S^t.

Paul’s school-room, behind the Convocation-house’, and Baker, 45,

suggests that they used a small yard or cloister before the doors

of the Convocation House and shut off by a high wall from the main

churchyard (cf. Hollar’s prints in Baker, 95, 115). But I doubt if

Flecknoe had anything in mind except St. Gregory’s, which stood just

west of the Convocation House. The hall of the College of Minor Canons

is perhaps also a possibility; but neither this nor the church is

likely to have afforded a circular auditorium (cf. ch. xviii). Can they

have used the Convocation House itself?

[38] McDonnell, 27, argues for the participation of the grammar school

in the plays. Obviously the phrase ‘children of Paul’s’, ordinarily

used of the playing-boys, proves nothing one way or the other. That the

plays were mainly an affair of the choir is a fair inference from the

fact that they were presented at Court by the song-school masters. But

there is no reason to doubt that the mediaeval give and take between

the two schools continued through the sixteenth century. Hunter,

_Chorus Vatum_, v. 542, quotes a manuscript life of Sir Thomas Offley,

‘This Thomas Offley became a good grammarian under Mr. [William]

Lillie and understood the Latin tongue perfectly; and because he had

a sweet voice he was put to learn prick-song among the choristers of

St. Paul’s, for that learned Mr. Lillie knew full well that knowledge

in music was a help and a furtherance to all arts’. On the other hand,

Dean Nowell (Churton, _Life of A. Nowell_, 190) instructed Thomas Giles

in 1584 to teach the choristers catechism, writing, and music, and then

to ‘suffer them to resort to Paul’s School that they may learn the

principles of Grammar’. Some seventeenth-century performances by the

grammar school, after the regular Paul’s plays ceased, are upon record.

[39] Cf. _infra_ (Chapel, Oxford’s); ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[40] R. Churton, _Life of Alexander Nowell_, 190, from _Reg. Nowell_,

ii, f. 189; Nichols, _Eliz._ ii. 432; Collier, i. 258; Hazlitt, 33;

Wallace, ii. 67, from original warrant under the Signet in _Sloane MS._

2035^b, f. 73:

‘By the Queene,

Elizabeth.

‘Whereas we haue authorysed our servaunte Thomas Gyles M^r. of the

children of the Cathedrall Churche of S^t. Pauls within our Cittie of

London to take vpp suche apte and meete Children as are most fitt to be

instructed and framed in the arte and science of musicke and singinge

as may be had and founde out within anie place of this our Realme of

England or Wales, to be by his education and bringinge vp made meete

and hable to serve vs in that behalf when our pleasure is to call for

them. Wee therefore by the tenour of these presentes will and require

you that ye permitt and suffer from henceforthe our saide servaunte

Thomas Gyles and his deputie or deputies and every of them to take vp

in anye Cathedral or Collegiate Churche or Churches and in everye other

place or places of this our Realme of England and Wales, suche Childe

and Children as he or they or anye of them shall finde and like of and

the same Childe and Children by vertue hereof for the vse and service

afouresaide, with them or anye of them to bringe awaye, withoute anye

your lettes contradiccions staye or interruptions to the contrarie

Charginge and commaundinge you and everie of you to be aydinge helpinge

and assisting vnto the aboue named Thomas Gyles and his deputie and

deputies in and aboute the due execucion of the premisses for the more

spedie effectuall & bettar accomplisshing thereof from tyme to tyme

as you and everie of you doe tendar our will and pleasure and will

aunswere for doinge the contrarye at your perilles. Youen vnder our

Signet at our Manour of Grenewich the 26^{th} Day of Aprill in the

27^{th} yere of our reign.

To all and singuler Deanes, Provostes, Maisters and Wardens of

Collegies and all Ecclesiasticall persons and mynisters and to all

other our officers mynisters and subiectes to whome in this case it

shall apperteyne and to everye of them greetinge.’

No other commission for the Paul’s choir is extant, but their rights

are reserved in the commission for Windsor (q.v.) of 8 March 1560.

[41] Harvey, _Advertisement for Pap-Hatchet_ (_Works_, ii. 212). Lyly

was still Oxford’s man but writing for Paul’s, _c._ Aug. 1585 (_M. L.

R._ xv. 82.).

[42] Cf. ch. ix and App. C, No. xl, especially _Pappe with an Hatchet_

(Oct. 1589).

[43] _Have With You to Saffron Walden_ (_Works_, iii. 46). I do not

think the reference to a twelvemonth’s silence, due to envy, in the

prologue to Nashe’s _Summer’s Last Will and Testament_ (_c._ Oct. 1592)

affords any justification for ascribing that play to the Paul’s boys.

Murray, i. 330; ii. 284, records a payment at Gloucester in 1590–1

‘to the children of powles’. I am sceptical about this, especially as

I observe in the next year a payment for a breakfast to the Queen’s

men ‘at M^r. Powelles’. Murray’s only other municipal record for the

company, at Hedon, Yorkshire, on some quite unknown date, ‘Item, payd

to the ---- pawll plaiers’ (ii. 286), is even less satisfactory. But if

the boys did travel on their suppression, they may well have gone to

Croydon.

[44] Rimbault, 4. Giles must have resigned, if he was the Thomas Giles

who, on 18 April 1606, was paid 100 marks a year as instructor to Henry

in music (Devon, 35). He was instructor to Charles in 1613 (Reyher, 78)

and figures in masks (cf. ch. vi). Fellowes, 184, 190, has two songs

set by Pearce, one from _Blurt Master Constable_.

[45] _1 A. and M._ IV. i. 30, ‘Enter Andrugio, Lucio, Cole, and

Norwood’. Bullen thinks that the two boys played the parts named, but

the action requires at least one page, who sings.

[46] Wallace, ii. 153, says he has evidence of playing at Paul’s in

1598, but he does not give it. It is perhaps rash to assume that Pearce

originated the revival, as there is no proof that he came to Paul’s

before 1600.

[47] Cf. ch. xi.

[48] V. i. 102.

[49] Collier, iii. 181. On the light thrown on the Paul’s stage by

these plays, cf. ch. xxi. It is conceivable that some of them may have

been originally written before 1590 (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Percy).

[50] Cf. ch. xxiv.

[51] Cf. _infra_ (Queen’s Revels).

[52] Nichols, _James_, iv. 1073, from _The King of Denmark’s Welcome_

(1606), ‘the Youthes of Paules, commonlye cald the Children of Paules,

plaide before the two Kings, a playe called _Abuses_: containing both a

Comedie and a Tragedie, at which the Kinges seemed to take delight and

be much pleased’. The play is lost. Fleay, ii. 80, has no justification

for identifying it with _The Insatiate Countess_. _Wily Beguiled_ (ch.

xxiv) might be a Paul’s play.

[53] C. W. Wallace, _Nebraska University Studies_ (1910), x. 355; cf.

_infra_ (Queen’s Revels), ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[54] _Constitutio Domus Regis_ (_c._ 1135) in Hearne, _Liber Niger

Scaccarii_, i. 342, ‘Capellani, custos capellae et reliquiarum.

Corridium duorum hominum, et quatuor servientes capellae unusquisque

duplicem cibum, et duo summarii capellae unusquisque 1^d in die et

1^d ad ferrandum in mense’; cf. _R. O. Ld. Steward’s Misc._ 298

(1279); Tout, 278, 311 (1318); _H. O._ 3, 10 (1344–8); _Life Records

of Chaucer_ (Chaucer Soc.), iv. 171 (1369); Nicolas, _P. C._ vi. 223

(1454).

[55] _H. O._ 10. In 1318 he was ‘chief chapellain’.

[56] J. H. Wylie, _Henry IV_, iv. 208, from _Household Accounts_, ‘John

Bugby our chaplain retained 3 years ago pur apprendre et enformer

les enfants de notre chapelle en la science de gramaire at 100/-p.

a. nothing yet paid, £15 due’. A grant to John Tilbery, a boy of the

King’s chapel, was made on 12 Nov. 1405 (_C. P. R._, _Hen. IV_, iii.

96).

[57] Wallace, i. 12, 21, from _P. R._ The commission of 1420 was to

John Pyamour ‘uni clericorum Capellae hospicii nostri’; another of 1440

was to John Croucher, Dean. When regular Masters were instituted, the

commissions seem to have been made direct to them.

[58] Wallace, i. 14, quotes laudatory accounts of the singing of the

chapel by two members of the suite of Leo von Ro[vz]mital, a Bohemian

who visited the English Court in 1466.

[59] _H. O._ 49. There is nothing about plays, but ‘Memorandum,

that the King hathe a songe before hym in his hall or chambre uppon

All-hallowen day at the latter graces, by some of these clerkes and

children of chappel in remembrance of Christmasse; and soe of men and

children in Christmasse thorowoute. But after the songe on All-hallowen

day is done, the Steward and Thesaurere of houshold shall be warned

where it liketh the King to kepe his Christmasse’.

[60] At the coronation of James in 1603 (Rimbault, 127) there were

a Sub-dean, 7 Ministers, the Master of the Children, an Organist,

22 ordinary Gentlemen, and a Clerk of the Check; also a Sergeant, 2

Yeomen, and a Groom of the Vestry. This agrees with the Elizabethan fee

lists, which give the total number of Gentlemen as 32. The coronation

list does not name Epistolers; but it is clear from the notices of

appointments in Rimbault, 1, that a Gospeller and Epistoler were

appointed, as next in succession to the Gentlemen’s places, although it

does not appear that they were necessarily ex-Children. There were also

Extraordinary Gentlemen (Rimbault, 31).

[61] Cf. ch. ii.

[62] _H. O._ 160. The hall and chapel are to be kept ‘at all times

when his Highnesse shall lye in his castle of Windsor, his mannors of

Bewlye, Richmond, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Eltham, or Woodstock’; but

‘in rideing journeys and progresses’, only the Master of the Children,

six men, six children, and some officers of the vestry are to attend.

In the seventeenth century ‘all removinge weekes’ were amongst the

‘auntient tymes of lyberty and playinge weekes’ (Rimbault, 73). But the

practice may have varied. Stopes, 252, gives a Stable warrant of 1554

for a wagon ‘for the necessarie conveying and cariage of the Children

of our Chapel and their man from place to place, at such seasons, as

they by our commandment shall remove to serve where wee shall appointe

them’.

[63] A chapel of St. Stephen existed in 1205. It was rebuilt and made

a free collegiate chapel in 1348, and dissolved in 1547, and the

building assigned as a chamber for the House of Commons (J. T. Smith,

_Antiquities of Westminster_, 72; _V. H. London_, i. 566). It may have

originated as a domestic chapel, but seems to be quite distinct from

the Household Chapel by the sixteenth century. Thus its St. Nicholas

Bishop had an old annual reward of £1 from the Exchequer (Devon,

_Issues of Exchequer_, 222; R. Henry, _Hist. of Great Britain_^3, xii.

459; Brewer, iv. 869), while the Household boys got their reward of

£6 12_s._ 4_d._ from the Treasurer of the Chamber. Wallace, i. 22,

notes that the Masters of the Children ‘all lived’ at Greenwich, which

suggests that this was the Tudor head-quarters of the Chapel.

[64] Wallace, i. 22, 23, 26, 61, from patents of Masters; _Fee List_

(_passim_).

[65] R. Henry, _Hist. of Great Britain_^3, xii. 457; Brewer, ii. 873;

iii. 364; iv. 868; _Fee Lists_ (_passim_); Wallace, i. 21, 23, 24, 26,

33, 61, from patents and _Exchequer of Receipt, Auditor’s Privy Seal

Books_. The Elizabethan fee for a Gentleman was only £30 (cf. p. 41, n.

3), but it was increased again to £40 by James in 1604 (Rimbault, 61).

[66] _H. O._ 169, 212. The _Chamber Accounts_ for Aug. 1520 include

a special payment to the Master for the diets of the boys when they

accompanied the King to Calais, at 2_d._ a day each.

[67] The allowance was 6_d._ in 1575 (Collier, i. 175; Nagel, 29; from

_Harl. MS._ 589, f. 220), but Hunnis’s petition of 1583 (cf. p. 37)

implies that this rate was customary before Elizabeth’s reign.

[68] _Chamber Accounts_ (_passim_); cf. p. 24, n. 6. For the feast of

the Boy Bishop on St. Nicholas Day, cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 336, 359,

369.

[69] Stopes, 15, ‘40 surplices for the gentlemen and 16 for the

children of the Chapel’ (Wardrobe warrant of 7 Oct. 1533); ‘for 10

children of the Kings Chapell, for gownes of Tawney Chamblett lined

with black satin of Bruges, and Milan bonnettes for the said children,

as in the same boke of apparel is declared xliii^{li}. iii^s. iiii^d.

For two children of the Kings Chapell, for 2 gownes of Black Chamblett,

lined with black satin of Bruges 2 cotes of yellow saten of Bruges

lined with Coton, and 2 Millan bonnettes, and for making and lining

of said gownes and cotes as in the said boke at large it duly apperes

x^{li} xviii^s ... Item for twenty gentlemen of the King’s chapel, for

20 gownes of Black Damask for the said gentlemen, cxxvii^{li}. x^s.’

(_Queen’s Remembrancia, Wardrobe Expenses_, _Hen. VIII_, 52/10 A).

[70] _Chamber Accounts_ (_passim_). From 1510 to 1513 Robert Fairfax

had 2s. a week for the diet of William Alderson and Arthur Lovekyn,

the King’s scholars, and £2 13_s._ 4_d._ for their teaching. In 1513

William Max, late a Child of the Chapel, had 40_s._ In 1514 Cornish was

finding and apparelling Robert Philip and another Child of the Chapel,

for £1 13_s._ 4_d._ a quarter, and in 1517 finding and teaching William

Saunders, late Child of the Chapel, for the same sum, with 2_d._ a week

for board ‘when the king keepeth no household’. In 1529–30 Crane had

3_d._ a day wages and 20_d._ a week board wages for Robert Pery, and

in 1530 also for William Pery. In 1531 Robert Pery was paid direct.

Cunningham, xx, gives a late seventeenth-century example of a similar

arrangement. In 1546 a royal letter was written for the appointment

of William Bretten, late a Chapel boy, to be singing-man at Lichfield

(Brewer, xxi. 1. 142). Some of the above names appear in a list of

Chapel Children, William Colman, William Maxe, William Alderson, Henry

Meryell, John Williams, John Graunger, Arthur Lovekyn, Henry Andrewe,

Nicholas Ivy, Edward Cooke, and James Curteys, receiving liveries

at the funeral of Henry VII in 1509 (Lafontaine, 3, from _Ld. Ch.

Records_, 550, f. 131). Some amusing correspondence of 1518 relates to

a boy Robin, whom Henry VIII wished to transfer from Wolsey’s chapel

to his own. It was stipulated that Cornish should treat him honestly,

‘otherwise than he doth his own’, and later Cornish wrote praising the

clean singing and descant of the recruit (Brewer, ii. 1246–50).

[71] J. M. Manly in _C. H._ vi. 279; C. Johnson, _John Plummer_ (1921,

_Antiquaries Journal_, i. 52); Wallace, i. 21, from patents and

Exchequer payments. Wallace does not include Melyonek although (ii. 62)

he gives the following commission, already printed by Collier, i. 41,

and Rimbault, vii, from _Harl. MS._ 433, f. 189:

‘Mellenek, Ric. etc. To all and every our subgiettes aswele spirituell

as temporell thise our lettres hering or seeing greeting, We let you

wite that for the confidence & trust that we haue in our trusty and

welbeloued seruant John Melyonek oon of ye gentilmen of our Chapell and

knowing also his expert habilitie and connyng in ye science of Musique

haue licenced him and by thise presentes licence and geue him auctorite

that within all places in this our realme aswele Cathedral churges

coliges chappells houses of relegion and al oyer franchised & exempt

places as elliswhere our colege roial at Wyndesor reserued & except may

take and sease for vs and in our name al suche singing men & childre

being expart in the said science of Musique as he can finde and think

sufficient and able to do vs seruice. Wherfor &c. Yeuen &c. at Nottingham

the xvj^{th} day of September A^o secundo [1484].’

Banaster did not die until 1487, but I think Melyonek must have

replaced him, perhaps without a patent, under Richard III.]

[72] Cf. _D. N. B._ Songs by Banaster and Newark are in _Addl. MS._

5465 (Chambers and Sidgwick, _Early English Lyrics_, 299).

[73] Collier, i. 46; cf. Wallace, i. 12. I am not sure that Collier

meant 1485.

[74] Reyher, 504, from _Harl. MS._ 69, f. 34^v. Wallace, i. 13; ii. 69,

citing the same MS., misdates ‘1490’, and says that eight children took

part. Four singing children who had appeared in another disguising a

day or two before were probably also from the Chapel.

[75] _Chamber Accounts_ in Wallace, i. 28, 38; Bernard Andrew, _Annales

Hen. VII_ (Gairdner, _Memorials of Hen. VII_), 104; Halle, i. 25;

Professor Wallace seems to think that the annual Christmas rewards

paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber to the Gentlemen, which went on

to the end of the reign, were for plays. But these were of £13 6_s._

8_d._, whereas the reward for a play was £6 13_s._ 4_d._ They were

paid on Twelfth Night, and are sometimes said to be for ‘payne taking’

during Christmas. In 1510 they had an extra £6 13_s._ 4_d._ for praying

for the Queen’s good deliverance. The ‘payne taking’ was no doubt as

singers. An order of Henry VII’s time (_H. O._ 121) for the wassail

on Twelfth Night has, ‘Item, the chappell to stand on the one side

of the hall, and when the steward cometh in at the hall doore with

the wassell, he must crie three tymes, Wassell, wassell, wassell; and

then the chappell to answere with a good songe’. The Gentlemen also

had 40_s._ annually from the Treasurer of the Chamber ‘to drink with

their bucks’ given them for a summer feast, which was still held in the

seventeenth century (Rimbault, 122).

[76] Stopes, _Shakespeare’s Environment_, 238; Feuillerat, _Ed. and

Mary_, 149, 289. Professor Feuillerat says that one of the documents

relating to the play refers to the ‘Children of the Chapel’, and doubts

whether there is a real distinction between the ‘Gentlemen’ and the

‘Children’ as actors.

[77] Feuillerat, _Ed. and Mary_, 3, 255. The conjecture is supported by

the fact that garments belonging to the Revels were in possession of

two Gentlemen of the Chapel in April 1547 (ibid., 12, 13).

[78] _Chamber Accounts_ in Wallace, i. 38, 65, 70; Brewer, xiv. 2.

284; Kempe, 69; Collier, i. 78; Feuillerat, _Ed. and Mary_, 266, 288.

The ‘iiij Children y^t played afore y^e king’ on 14 Jan. 1508 were not

necessarily of the Chapel.

[79] Cf. ch. viii and _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 192, 215.

[80] Wallace, i. 33. No patent is cited, but the privy seal for the

payment to Cornish of the Exchequer annuity was dated 1 April 1510, and

he was shortly afterwards paid for the Christmas and Easter quarters.

Newark had died in Nov. 1509. It is therefore a little puzzling to find

in a list of Exchequer fees payable during the year ended Michaelmas

1508 (R. Henry, _Hist. of Great Britain_^3, xii. 457) the item

‘Willelmo Cornysshe magistro puerorum capellae regis pro excubitione

eorundem puerorum 26^{li}. 13^s. 4^d.’ Probably the list was prepared

retrospectively in Henry VIII’s reign (cf. the analogous list in

Brewer, ii. 873), and the name rather than the date is an error.

[81] The data are: (a) _Exchequer Payments_ (Wallace, i. 34), Mich.

1493, ‘Willelmo Cornysshe de Rege’, 100_s._; (b) _T. C. Accounts_,

‘to one Cornysshe for a prophecy in rewarde’, 13_s._ 4_d._ (12 Nov.

1493); ‘to Cornishe of the Kings Chapell’, 26_s._ 8_d._ (1 Sept. 1496);

‘to Cornysshe for 3 pagents’ (26 Oct. 1501); ‘m^r kyte Cornisshe and

other of the Chapell y^t played affore ye king at Richemounte’, £6

13_s._ 4_d._ (25 Dec. 1508); (c) _Household Book of Q. Elizabeth_,

25 Dec. 1502, ‘to Cornisshe for setting of a Carrall vpon Cristmas

Day in reward’, 13_s._ 4_d._; (d) John Cornysh in list of Gent. of

Chapel 23 Feb. 1504, and William Cornysh in similar lists _c._ 1509

and 22 Feb. 1511 (Lafontaine, 2, from _Ld. Ch. Records_); (e) Songs

by ‘W. Cornishe, jun.’ in _Addl. MS._ 5465, by ‘John Cornish’ in

_Addl. MS._ 5665, by ‘W. Cornish’ in _Addl. MS._ 31922 (_Early English

Lyrics_, 299); (f) _A Treatise betweene Trouthe and Enformacon_, by

‘William Cornysshe otherwise called Nyssewhete Chapelman with ...

Henry the VII^{th} his raigne the xix^{th} yere the moneth of July’

[1504], doubtless the satirical ballad on Empson referred to by Stowe,

_Annales_, 816 (_B. M. Royal MS._ 18, D. 11). I think they yield an

older William and a John Cornish, of whom one, probably John, arranged

the three pageants at Arthur’s wedding, and a William ‘jun.’ who

must have joined the Chapel in 1503 or 1504 and became Master of the

Children. The older William may be identical with the Westminster

(q.v.) choir-master of 1479–80. A Christopher or ‘Kit’ Cornish,

referred to by Stopes, 17, and elsewhere, had no existence. This is a

ghost-name, due to the juxtaposition of ‘kyte’, i.e. Sir John Kite,

afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, and ‘Cornisshe’ in the 1508 record

above.

[82] Cf. ch. v and _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 400.

[83] The _T. C. Accounts_ show a reward of £200 to Cornish on 30 Nov.

1516, of which the occasion is not specified, and a payment of £18

2_s._ 11½_d._ for ‘ij pagentes’ on 6 July 1517. With these possible

exceptions, no expenditure on the disguisings or the interludes which

formed part of them as distinct from the independent interludes by

the Children, for which Cornish received £6 13_s._ 4_d._ each, seems

to have passed through these accounts. Any remuneration received by

Cornish or his fellows or children for their personal services probably

passed through the _Revels Accounts_.

[84] Wallace, i. 16, 50. He light-heartedly accuses my friend Mr.

Pollard, me, and others of perpetuating an old mis-ascription on the

strength of Bale, ‘generally without consulting the _Scriptores_’, in

the first edition of which (1548) Bale says that Rastell ‘reliquit’,

and in the second that he ‘edidit’ _The Four Elements_. This Professor

Wallace regards as revision by Bale of an incorrect assertion that

Rastell was the author into an assertion that he was the publisher.

But Bale elsewhere uses ‘edidit’ to indicate authorship, as Professor

Wallace might have learnt from the notice of Heywood which he quotes on

p. 80. As to _The Four P. P._ there are three early editions by three

different publishers, and they all assign it to Heywood.

[85] Wallace, i. 61, 69; ii. 63, from patents and Exchequer payments.

The Elizabethan patent is in Rymer, xv. 517.

[86] Rimbault, viii, quoting only the words ‘in anie churches or

chappells within England to take to the King’s use, such and so many

singing children and choristers, as he or his deputy should think

good’. Stopes, 12, gives _Lansd. MS._ 171, and _Stowe MS._ 371, f.

31^v, as references, but the commission is not in either of them.

[87] Matthew Welder appears as a lute and viol at Court in 1516 and

1517. Peter Welder was appointed in 1519 and is traceable to 1559, as

a lute, viol, or flute. Henry van Wilder was a ‘musician’, 1553–8.

Philip Welder or van Wilder himself is first noted as a ‘minstrel’ in

1526. Later he was a lute up to 1554. In 1547 he was also ‘of the Privy

Chamber’ and keeper of the King’s musical instruments (Nagel, 6, 13,

15, 16, 18, 22, 24, 27; Lafontaine, 8, 9, 12; Brewer, i, cxi). He died

24 Jan. 1554, leaving a son, Henry, probably the one noted above (Fry,

_London Inquisitions_, i. 117). The _Chamber Accounts_ for 1538–41 show

an allowance to him of £70 ‘for six singing children’ (Stopes, 12).

Several references to ‘Philippe and his fellows yong mynstrels’ and

to ‘the children that be in the keeping of Philip and Edmund Harmon’

appear in Green Cloth documents from 30 June 1538 to 1544 (_H. O._ 166,

172, 191, 208; _Genealogist_, xxx. 23). Edmund Harmon was one of the

royal Barbers. Finally, livery lists of 1547 show nine singing men and

children under ‘M^r. Phelips’ (Lafontaine, 7). An earlier company of

‘the King’s young minstrels’ than this of 1538–50 seems to have been

lodged at court _c._ 1526 (Brewer, iv. 1. 865), and there were ‘troyes

autres nos ioesnes ministralx’ as far back as 1369 (_Life Records of

Chaucer_, iv. 174). Elizabethan fee lists continue to make provision

for ‘six children for singing’, but there is no indication that the

posts were filled up.

[88] Wallace, ii. 63, from docquet in _B. M. Royal MS._ 18, C. xxiv, f.

232. By an obvious error, the name is written by the clerk as ‘Gowre’.

[89] Wallace, i. 77.

[90] Cf. p. 12.

[91] It is possible that the Treasurer of the Chamber did not pay all

the rewards for plays during the earlier years of the reign; but the

suggestion of Wallace, i. 108, that, if we had the _Books of Queen’s

Payments_, more information might be available, seems to show a failure

to realize the identity of the Tudor _Books of King’s Payments_ with

the _T. of C. Accounts_. There might, however, be rewards in a book

subsidiary to the _Privy Purse Accounts_. I do not think that much can

be made of the recital of ‘playes’ as well as ‘maskes’ in the preamble

of the _Revels Accounts_ for 1558–9, during which the T. of C. paid no

rewards, since this may be merely ‘common form’.

[92] Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 34; cf. Appendix A. Naturally no ‘reward’

would be paid in such circumstances. Fleay, 16, 32, 60, conjectures

that the play was _Misogonus_.

[93] Strype, _Survey of London_ (App. i. 92), gives the date from

Bower’s tombstone at Greenwich, and as his death is recited in

Edwardes’ patent (Stopes, _Hunnis_, 146) and his will of 18 June 1561

was proved on 25 Aug. 1561 (Wallace, i. 106), it is clear that the

entry of Rimbault, 1, ‘1563. Rich. Bower died, M^r of the children, A^o

5^{to}’, must be an error.

[94] Wallace, _Blackfriars_, 65, from Privy Seal in P. R. O. The patent

dated 10 Jan. 1562 is on _Patent Rolls, 4 Eliz._ p. 6, m. 14 _dorso_.

[95] This is recorded in a Revels document, and seems a clear case of a

play given by the Chapel and not paid for by the T. of C.

[96] Cf. ch. vii, p. 223.

[97] Rimbault, 2. On Hunnis, cf. ch. xxiii.

[98] Stopes, 295, translates the patent of appointment from _Auditors

Patent Books_, ix, f. 144^v; the Privy Seal is in _Privy Seals_,

Series iii, 1175. Stopes also prints the patent and Wallace, ii. 66,

the Signet Bill (misdescribing it as a Privy Seal) for the commission;

it is enrolled on _Patent Rolls, 9 Eliz._ p. 10, m. 16 _dorso_. It is

varied from the model of 1562 by the inclusion of power to the Master

to take up lodging for the children in transit, and to fix ‘reasonable

prises’ for carriage and necessaries at his discretion.

[99] Hazlitt-Warton, iv. 217, citing f. xii of the pamphlet. I know

of no copy. One is catalogued among Bishop Tanner’s books in the

Bodleian, but Stopes, 226, ‘went to Oxford on purpose to see it, but

found that it had utterly vanished’. Macray, _Annals of the Bodleian_,

211, thinks that it may have been destroyed when Tanner’s books fell

into a river during their transit from Norwich to Oxford in Dec. 1731.

The pamphlet is also cited for an example of the use of the term ‘spur

money’ (Bumpus, 29, with date ‘1598’). F. T. Hibgame (_10 N. Q._ i.

458) describes a collection of pamphlets seen by him in New York under

the general title of _The Sad Decay of Discipline in our Schools_

(1830), which included _Some Account of the Stripping and Whipping of

the Children of the Chapel_, containing a ‘realistic account of the

treatment of the boys at one of the royal chapels’, of which he thought

the author might be George Colman.

[100] Cf. ch. vii.

[101] Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 244, ‘Holly, Ivye, firr poles & Mosse for the

Rock ... Hornes iij, Collers iij, Leashes iij & dogghookes iij with

Bawdrickes for the hornes in Hvnnyes playe’.

[102] _Variorum_, iii. 439.

[103] Cf. ch. xxiii (Gascoigne).

[104] W. Creizenach (_Sh.-Jahrbuch_, liv. 73) points out that the

source must have been Livy, xxvi. 50.

[105] Cf. _infra_ (Windsor).

[106] Rimbault, 2.

[107] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars). The bare fact of this early use of

the Blackfriars has, of course, long been known from the reference to

comedies at the Blackfriars in Gosson, _P. C._ 188 (App. C, No. xxx),

and the prologues to Lyly’s _Campaspe_ and _Sapho and Phao_. Fleay,

36, 39, 40, guessed that the early Blackfriars performances were at an

inn, and by the Paul’s boys, and that the euphuistic prose plays at the

Bel Savage mentioned by Gosson, _S. A._ 39 (App. C, No. xxii), in 1579

were early Chapel versions of Lyly’s above-named plays. But there is no

evidence that either of the boy companies ever used an inn.

[108] Cf. p. 38.

[109] Cf. ch. vii, p. 223.

[110] Rimbault, 3. The Blackfriars correspondence shows that the date

1581 given in Rimbault, 56, is wrong. A warrant of 1582 for a lease in

reversion to his widow Anne is in _Hatfield MSS._ ii. 539.

[111] App. C, No. xlv.

[112] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[113] Wallace, i. 156; Stopes, _Hunnis_, 252; from _S. P. D. Eliz._

clxiii. 88.

[114] Cf. p. 50, which suggests that the boys occasionally ate in hall

at festival times.

[115] The _Chamber Accounts_ show no renewal of the payments.

[116] Cf. ch. xxiii (Hunnis).

[117] Cf. ch. xiii (Oxford’s), ch. xxiii (Lyly).

[118] Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 470. _Sapho and Phao_ might, however, have

been the unnamed Chapel play of Shrove Tuesday (27 Feb.) 1582.

[119] Perhaps Lyly was still associated with him. F. S. Boas (_M. L.

R._ vi. 92) records payments in connexion with a visit by Leicester to

Christ Church, Oxford, to Mr. Lyly and his man for the loan of apparel,

as well as one of £5 to one Tipslowe ‘for the Revels’ (January 1585).

[120] Cf. _supra_ (Paul’s).

[121] I have no means of dating ‘The order of the show to be done at

the Turret, entring into the parke at Grenewich, the musick being

within the turrett’, which is preserved in _Egerton MS._ 2877, f. 182,

as ‘acted before Q. Elizabeth’. A speech of forty lines beginning ‘He

Jove himselfe, that guides the golden spheare’, was delivered by ‘one

of the biggest children of her Ma^{tes} Chappell’ as Goodwill, and was

followed by a song beginning ‘Ye Helicon muses’.

[122] Rimbault, 4. A note of Anthony Wood’s (cf. _D. N. B._) suggests

that Bull joined the Chapel about 1572.

[123] Ashmole, _Antiquities of Berks_ (ed. 1723), iii. 172, from

tombstone at St. George’s, Windsor. The inscription gives him 49 years

as Master at Windsor, in error for 39. A second stone described as also

his by Ashmole is clearly his wife’s.

[124] Wallace, ii. 59, prints both from the Privy Seals of 2 and 3 July

in the R. O. The appointment is enrolled in _Patent Rolls, 39 Eliz._ p.

12, and the commission in _Patent Rolls, 39 Eliz._ p. 9, m. 7 _dorso_.

The appointment is for life, the commission not so specified, and

therefore during pleasure only.

[125] The operative words of the appointment are ‘pro nobis heredibus

et successoribus nostris damus et concedimus dilecto seruienti nostro

Nathanieli Giles officium Magistri puerorum Capellae nostrae Regiae

... habendum ... durante vita sua naturali Damus etiam ... praefato

Nathanieli Giles vada siue feoda quadraginta librarum sterling

percipienda annuatim ... pro eruditione duodecem puerorum eiusdem

Capellae nostrae ac pro eorum conveniente exhibitione vestiturae et

lectuarii ... vnacum omnibus et omnimodis aliis vadis feodis proficubus

iurisdiccionibus aucthoritate priuilegiis commoditatibus regardis et

aduantagiis quibuscunque eodem officio quoquo modo debitis ... ac ...

praedicto Nathanieli Giles locum siue officium illud vnius generosorum

nostrorum dictae Capellae nostrae Regiae ... vnacum feodo seu annuali

redditu triginta librarum ...’

[126] _E. v. K._ 211; _K. v. P._ 224, 230, 233 (misdated 44 Eliz.

for 42 Eliz.), 239. These are only short recitals in the lawsuits.

Apparently the fragmentary descriptions of the theatre in Wallace, ii.

39, 40, 41, 43, 49, are from a fuller Latin text of the terms of the

lease, possibly recited in a common-law suit, which he has not printed

in full.

[127] _K. v. P._ 230, 234.

[128] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317.

[129] Fleay, 124, 153; Wallace, ii. 56; cf. _M. L. R._ iv. 156. An

initial date for the enterprise in 1600 fits in exactly with the seven

years during which there had been plays at the house where _K. B. P._

was produced and the ten years’ training of Keysar’s company up to 1610

(cf. p. 57).

[130] Cf. ch. xi.

[131] Fleay, 127. Burn, 152, notes from _Bodl. Tanner MS._ 300 that

among the misdemeanours punished in the Star Chamber was ‘Taking up a

gentleman’s son to be a stage player’.

[132] Wallace, ii. 84, gives the endorsed date omitted by Greenstreet

and Fleay, as ‘Marti decimo quinto Decembris Anno xliiij Elizabeth

Regine’; the date set down for trial is indicated as ‘p Octab Hillar’.

This agrees with the time indication of the offence in the complaint

itself as ‘about one yere last past, and since your maiesties last free

and generall pardon’. The pardon referred to must be that of 1597–8

(_39 Eliz._ c. 28; cf. _R. O. Statutes_, iv. 952). There was another

passed by the Parliament of 1601 (_43 Eliz._ c. 19; cf. _Statutes_,

iv. 1010) for all offences prior to 7 Aug. 1601, but presumably this

was not yet law when the complaint was drawn. The Parliament sat to 19

December. Clifton, however, was only just in time.

[133] _K. v. P._ 248. The date is recited as ‘in or about the three

and ffortieth yeare’ of Elizabeth, i.e. 1600–1, which is not exact.

The reference can hardly be to any other than the Clifton affair. No

Chancery documents in the case, other than the complaint, are known.

It may be presumed that censure fell on Giles and Robinson, as well

as Evans, but they were not concerned in _K. v. P._ Evans, of course,

was technically acting as deputy to Giles under his commission, and

Wallace, ii. 71, is not justified in citing the case as evidence that

‘These powers to Giles were supplemented by official concessions to

Henry Evans that enabled him to rent the Blackfriars theatre and train

the Queen’s Children of the Chapel there, with remunerative privileges’.

[134] _K. v. P._ 224, 230, 236, 242, 244, 248, 250.

[135] _E. v. K._ 211, 216; _K. v. P._ 237, 240, 245. These are

recitals. Wallace, ii. 91, says that he has found two copies of the

original bond, but the text he prints adds nothing to _K. v. P._ 240.

Clearly he is wrong in describing it as ‘containing the Articles

of Agreement’. That was a much more detailed document, which Evans

unfortunately thought so ‘long and tedious’ that he did not insert

it at large in his Answer in _K. v. P._ It was doubtless analogous

to the King’s Revels Articles of 1608 (cf. _infra_). It provided for

the rights of the partners to the use of rooms (_E. v. K._ 211) and

presumably for the division of profits (_K. v. P._ 237).

[136] _K. v. P._ 244. Wallace, ii. 102, adds the actual terms of the

bond. He takes Evans’s explanation to mean that hitherto Evans had

maintained the boys and the plays out of official funds supplied

through Kirkham as Yeoman of the Revels, but that now Evans’s name was

to be kept out of the business, and disbursements made by his partners,

who were to pay him 8_s._ a week as a kind of steward. I cannot

suppose that Kirkham had been the channel of any official subvention,

and, on the whole, think it probable that the second ‘compl^t’ in the

extract from the pleading is an error for ‘def^t’. This leaves it not

wholly clear why Evans should allege his relief from great weekly

disbursements as a reason for receiving 8_s._ a week; but if we had

the Articles of Agreement, the point would probably be clear. Possibly

Evans had in the past made the equivalent of a weekly sum of 8_s._ out

of board-wages passed on to him by Giles.

[137] Wallace, ii. 88.

[138] _E. v. K._ 213, 217, 220.

[139] G. von Bülow and W. Powell in _R. H. S. Trans._ vi. 26; Wallace,

ii. 105; with translations.

[140] Wallace, ii. 126, summarizes his theory; cf. my review in _M. L.

R._ v. 224.

[141] Wallace, ii. 99.

[142] _E. v. K._ 217; _K. v. P._ 224, 227, 229, 231, 236, 248.

[143] Wallace, ii. 73.

[144] Wallace, ii. 75, shows that the Blackfriars repertory would

require twenty or twenty-five actors.

[145] Gawdy, 117.

[146] Wallace, ii. 95. Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain on

29 Dec. 1601 (_S. P. D. Eliz._ cclxxxii. 48), ‘The Q: dined this day

priuatly at my L^d Chamberlains; I came euen now from the blackfriers

where I saw her at the play with all her candidae auditrices’; cf. _M.

L. R._ ii. 12.

[147] _K. v. P._ 235.

[148] Wallace, ii. 89, says that Evans paid £11 0_s._ 2_d._ for repairs

on 8 Dec. 1603.

[149] _M. S. C._ i. 267, from _Patent Roll, 1 Jac. I_, pt. 8. Collier,

i. 340, and Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 40, print the signet bill, the former

dating it 30 Jan. and the latter 31 Jan., and misdescribe it as a privy

seal. Collier, _N. F._ 48, printed a forged letter from Daniel to Sir

T. Egerton (cf. Ingleby, 244, 247) intended to suggest that Drayton,

and perhaps also Shakespeare, had coveted his post.

[150] Wallace, ii. 80, mentions a case of the employment of a boy at

the Blackfriars during James’s reign under a contract with his mother.

[151] _M. S. C._ i. 359. On 7 Oct. 1605 the Wardrobe provided holland

for shirts for the 12 children and ‘for James Cutler, a Chappell boy

gone off’ (Lafontaine, 46, from _L. C._ 804).

[152] Rimbault, 60; Stowe, _Annales_ (ed. Howes), 1037. An order of

17 July 1604 (_H. O._ 301) continued the allowance of an increase of

meat at festival times which the children had presumably enjoyed under

Elizabeth.

[153] Middleton, _Father Hubbard’s Tales_ (_Works_, viii. 64, 77). A

reference in the same book to an ant as ‘this small actor in less than

decimo sexto’ recalls the jest in the Induction to the _Malcontent_ at

the boys who played _Jeronimo_ ‘in decimo sexto’.

[154] Cf. ch. xi.

[155] _K. v. B._ 340.

[156] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. plays named.

[157] Kirkham and Kendall were still associated in Aug. 1605, when

apparel and properties were obtained from them for the plays at

James’s visit to Oxford (_M. S. C._ i. 247). There was a performance

at the Blackfriars as late as 16 June 1605 (Wallace, ii. 125), a date

connected with a dispute in settlement of which Kirkham’s bond of £50

to Evans was exchanged for a new one to Hawkins (_K. v. P._ 244).

[158] Cf. _M. L. R._ iv. 159. The t.p. of _Sophonisba_ only specifies

performance ‘at the Blackfriars’; those of _The Fleir_ and _The Isle of

Gulls_ ‘by the Children of the Revels at the Blackfriars’. Probably the

‘Children of the Revels’ of the t.p. of Day’s _Law Tricks_ (1608) is

also the Blackfriars company. No theatre is named, but the play is too

early for the King’s Revels, who, moreover, do not seem to be described

on other t.ps. as ‘Children of the Revels’ pure and simple. I take it

that these t.p. descriptions follow the designations of the companies

in use when the plays were last on the stage before publication, rather

than those in use at the times of first production.

[159] Cf. ch. x.

[160] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Day.

[161] Keysar was certainly associated with Kendall by the Christmas of

1606–7, when they supplied apparel and properties for the Westminster

plays; cf. Murray, ii. 169.

[162] _K. v. P._ 249.

[163] _M. S. C._ i. 362, from _P. R. O., Patent Roll, 4 James I_, p.

18, _dorso_. Collier, i. 446, long ago noted the existence of a similar

clause in a Caroline commission to Giles of 1626. It was probably the

choristers who assisted in a quasi-dramatic performance on 16 July

1607, when James dined with the Merchant Taylors, and Giles received

the freedom of the company in reward; cf. ch. iv.

[164] Cf. App. I.

[165] _E. v. K._ 221; _K. v. P._ 246. ‘The Children of the Revells’

who appeared at Leicester on 21 Aug. 1608 (Kelly, 248) might have been

these boys, but might also have been the King’s Revels, if the King’s

Revels were still in existence under that name, which is very doubtful.

[166] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Chapman.

[167] _S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxi. 73. The mine was no doubt the silver

mine discovered at Hilderston near Linlithgow in 1607, and worked as a

royal enterprise with little success; cf. R. W. Cochran-Patrick, _Early

Records relating to Mining in Scotland_ (1878), xxxvii. 116.

[168] Cf. ch. xxiii.

[169] _K. v. B._ 342.

[170] _E. v. K._ 222; _K. v. P._ 225, 231, 235, 246.

[171] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[172] _K. v. P._ 225, 249.

[173] _E. v. K._ 221; _K. v. P._ 245. In the earlier suit Evans says

that the royal prohibition was ‘vpon some misdemeanors committed in or

about the plaies there, and specially vpon the defendants [Kirkham’s]

acts and doings thereabout’. Unless Kirkham was more directly concerned

in the management during 1608 than appears probable, Evans must be

reflecting upon the whole series of misdemeanours since 1604.

[174] On 9 May John Browne, ‘one of the playe boyes’, was buried at St.

Anne’s.

[175] _K. v. B._ 347, gives the date of surrender in 1610 as ‘about the

tenth of August last past’. Probably a year’s sub-tenancy under the

King’s men explains the discrepancy with the ‘about August in the sixt

year of his Majesties raigne’ of _K. v. P._ 235, and the confirmatory

date of the King’s men’s leases.

[176] Cf. ch. _supra_ (Paul’s). _K. v. B._ 355 tells us that Rosseter

was in partnership with Keysar.

[177] _M. S. C._ i. 271, from _P. R., 7 Jac. I_, p. 13. Ingleby, 254,

gave the material part in discussing a forged draft by Collier (_N. F._

41), in which the names of the patentees are given as ‘Robert Daiborne,

William Shakespeare, Nathaniel Field and Edward Kirkham’. A genuine

note of the patent is in Sir Thomas Egerton’s note-book (_N. F._ 40).

Ingleby adds that the signet office records (cf. Phillimore, 103) show

that the warrant was obtained in Dec. 1609 by the influence of Monson.

He was Anne’s household Chancellor and to him Rosseter and Campion

dedicated their _Book of Airs_ (1601) and Campion his _Third Book of

Airs_ (1617).

[178] _K. v. B._ 343.

[179] _K. v. B._ 343, 350.

[180] Evans, Mrs. Evans, Field, Underwood, Ostler, Baxstead, Rosseter,

Marston, and Mrs. Hawkins were to be examined for the King’s men.

[181] _E. v. K._ 213. I presume that some of these are amongst the

‘twelve additional suits’ which Wallace, ii. 36, claims to have found.

[182] _E. v. K._ 218. In _K. v. P._ 225, he put the total annual

profits during 1608–12 at £160.

[183] Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 317; cf. _Hist. Hist._ 416 (App. I),

‘Some of the chapel boys, when they grew men, became actors at the

Blackfriars; such were Nathan Field and John Underwood’.

[184] The _Chamber Accounts_ record no payment to the company (cf. App.

B, introd.).

[185] Cf. ch. xvi.

[186] Murray, i. 361.

[187] E. Ashmole, _Institution of the Garter_ (1672), 127; R. R.

Tighe and J. E. Davis, _Annals of Windsor_, i. 426, 477; _Report of

Cathedrals Commission_ (1854), App. 467; _V. H. Berks_, ii. 106; _H. M.

C. Various MSS._ vii. 10.

[188] Tighe-Davis, ii. 45, from Stowe’s account ‘of the Castell of

Wyndsore’ (_Harl. MS._ 367, f. 13).

[189] Nichols, i. 81, and Collier, i. 170, print a copy in _Ashm. MS._

1113, f. 252, from the Elizabethan commission preserved at Windsor, as

follows:

‘Elizabeth R.

Whereas our castle of Windsor hath of old been well furnished with

singing men and children, We, willing it should not be of less

reputation in our days, but rather augmented and increased, declare,

that no singing men or boys be taken out of the said chapel by virtue

of any commission, not even for our household chapel: and we give power

to the bearer of this to take any singing men and boys from any chapel,

our own household and St. Paul’s only excepted. Given at Westminster,

this 8^{th} of March in the second year of our reign.’

A further copy from _Ashm. MS._ 1113 is in _Addl. MS._ 4847, f. 117.

Copies or notes of the three earlier commissions are in this MS. and in

_Ashm. MS._ 1124. In _Ashm. MS._ 1132, f. 169, is a letter of 18 April

1599 from the Chapter to Sir R. Cecil defending their conduct in taking

a singing man from Westminster.

[190] Gee, 230, in a list of deprived clergy from N. Sanders, _De

Visibili Monarchia_ (1571), 688, ‘_Magistri Musices_ ... Prestonus in

oppido Vindelisoriensi’. Can this Preston be the playwright (cf. ch.

xxiii)?

[191] Rimbault, 1; Stopes, _Shakespeare’s Environment_, 243.

[192] _Ashm. MS._ 1132, f. 165^a.

[193] Rimbault, 2.

[194] _M. L. R._ (1906), ii. 6.

[195] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars).

[196] Cf. App. B.

[197] Rimbault, 3; _H. M. C., Hatfield MSS._ ii. 539.

[198] Rimbault, 182; _Musical Antiquary_, i. 30; _10 N. Q._ v. 341.

A Christ Church, Oxford, MS., dated 1581, assigns to Farrant (cf.

ch. xxiii) a possibly dramatic lament of Panthea for the death of

Abradates, beginning ‘Ah, ah, alas ye salt sea Gods’. This is assigned

to Robert Parsons by _Addl. MSS._ 17786–91, which assign to Farrant a

song which may come from a play in which Altages is a character. The

writer in the _Musical Antiquary_ thinks that a lament for Guichardo

(not from either of the known Gismund texts) in the _Ch. Ch. MS._ is

much in Farrant’s style.

[199] Ashmole, _Antiquities of Berks_ (ed. 1723), iii. 172; cf. p. 41.

[200] _Ashm. MS._ 1125, f. 41^v.

[201] Cf. ch. xiii (Chamberlain’s).

[202] Presumably, however, the ‘Gerry’ buried out of the Whitefriars

play-house (q.v.) on 29 Sept. 1607 was of the company.

[203] Phillimore, 140; cf. App. A.

[204] _S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxxxi. 12.

[205] _M. S. C._ i. 279, from _P. R. 13 Jac. I_, pt. 20.

[206] _Variorum_, iii. 426; Collier, i. 394; Hazlitt,_ E. D. S._ 49;

from _S. P. D. Jac. I_, xcvii. 140.

[207] Collier, i. 396, not, as he says, from the _P. C. Register_, but

from _S. P. D. Jac. I_, xcvii. 140.

[208] Clode, ii. 269; Nicholl, _Ironmongers_, 84; cf. ch. iv.

[209] Warton, iii. 313; Stowe, _Survey_, ed. Strype, v. 231.

[210] E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ (1903), i. 220, from _S. P. D.

Eliz._ xxxvi. 22; Murray, ii. 168.

[211] _Observer._ Other payments in this or another year were for ‘a

haddocke occupied in the plaie’, ‘a thondre barrell’, ‘drawing the

tytle of the comedee’.

[212] E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ (1896), i. 95; (1903) ii. 220;

Murray, ii. 168; _Observer_.

[213] Heywood-Wright, 632; Hazlitt-Warton, iii. 308.

[214] Collins, 215 (1566), ‘M^r Scholemaster towards his charges about

the playes laste Christmas, 20/-’; Maxwell-Lyte,^4 154 (1566–7) ‘To

M^r Scholemaster for his charge setting furthe ij playes 19^o Martii,

iii^l, xiij^s, viij^d’, (1568–9) ‘For ij dossen of links at iij^d the

linke for the childrens showes at Christmass, vj^s’, (1572–3) ‘For vj

poundes of candles at the playes in the Halle, ix^d’.

[215] J. W. Hales in _Englische Studien_, xviii. 408 (cf. _Mediaeval

Stage_, ii. 452), made the date of 1553–4 seem plausible, but his

conjecture that the play was written for the Westminster boys

is disposed of by A. F. Leach, who gives Udall’s appointment to

Westminster from the Chapter Act Book as 16 Dec. 1555 (_Encycl. Brit._

s.v. Udall). It might be a Court play of 1553–4, but the parody of the

_Requiem_ would have been an indiscretion on Udall’s part at that date.

[216] G. C. Moore Smith (_M. L. R._ viii. 368) has an ingenious

identification of him with the Wrenock of Spenser’s _Shepheards

Kalendar_, xii. 41.

[217] Clode, _Hist. of Merchant Taylors Company_, i. 235, from Master’s

_Accounts_. Before they opened their own school the Company had plays

by the Westminster boys (q.v.).

[218] Clode, i. 234.

[219] The subject may have been Perseus and Andromeda, as the Revels

prepared a picture of Andromeda this year. If so, it was probably the

same play as that of 23 Feb. 1574.

[220] Whitelocke, _Liber Famelicus_ (Camden Soc.), 12.

[221] Clode, i. 264, 280, 390.

[222] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 186, 256.

[223] The documents in W. Campbell, _Materials for a History of the

Reign of Henry VII_, are full for the period 1485–90. There is nothing

of King’s players, but certain ‘stuffures’ paid for by a warrant of 25

Nov. 1485 (Campbell, i. 178) included goods delivered to John English,

apparently a royal tailor or valet, ‘servant unto my said sovereign’.

[224] Collier, i. 44, from a book of Exchequer payments, beginning

Michaelmas 1493, in the Chapter-house (probably _Misc. Books of the

Treasury of the Receipt of the Exchequer_, 131), ‘xvij Die Maij

[1494] John Englissh, Edwardo Maye, Rico Gibbeson, & John Hammond,

Lusoribus Regis, alias, in lingua Anglicana, _les_ pleyars of the

kyngs enterluds, de feodis suis V mrc. ꝓ Ann: le home, per lre Regis

de privato Sigillo dormant de termino Michaelis alt: pte rec: denar:

separatim ꝓ manus proprias, x mrc.’. The payment was continued

half-yearly. Collier adds that Mr. Ouvry owned an original receipt

signed by May and English for the salaries of the same four men. It is

now _Egerton MS._ 2623 (3), f. 1, and appears to be a slip cut from

some Exchequer record. F. Devon, _Issues of the Exchequer_, 516, gives

similar payments for Michaelmas 1494 and Michaelmas 1503; it is in

the latter that the names of William Rutter and John Scott appear. An

Exchequer declaration of 1505–6 in _Lansd. MS._ 156, f. 135, has ‘To

Richard Gibson, and other the kings plaiers, for their annuity for one

yere, £13 6_s._ 8_d._’. Henry, _History of Britain_, xii. 456, gives

from an Exchequer annuity list of 1507–8, ‘Ricardo Gybson et aliis

lusoribus dom. reg. £13 6_s._ 8_d._’.

[225] Collier, i. 49, quotes: (a) _Account_ of Robert Fowler (1501–2),

‘Oct. 26 [1501], Itm to John Englishe for his pagent, £6 13_s._ 4_d._

... Jan. 1 [1502] Itm, to the Kinges players, over 40^s paid by Thomas

Trollop, 20^s’; (b) _Household Book of Henry VII_ (1492–1505, more

correctly from _Addl. MS._ 7099 in Bentley, _Excerpta Historica_, 85),

‘Jan. 6 [1494] To the Kings Pleyers for a rewarde, £2 13_s._ 4_d._ ...

Jan. 7 [1502] To John Englishe the Pleyer, 10_s._’; (c) _The Kings Boke

of Payments_ (1506–9, apparently _Misc. Books of the Treasury of the

Receipt of the Exchequer_, 214), ‘Jan. 7 [1509] To the kings players in

rewarde, £2’. Both (b) and (c) are _Chamber Accounts_.

[226] Leland, _Collectanea_ (ed. Hearne), iv. 265.

[227] _Lansd. MS._ 171, cited by Collier, i. 72, is in fact an

Elizabethan document, but a list of fees and annuities (1516) in

Brewer, ii. 874 has, amongst those granted by Henry VII, ‘John

Englisshe and other players £13 6_s._ 8_d._’, and amongst those

recently granted, ‘John Englisshe and other players, in addition to the

old annuity, £13 6_s._ 8_d._’.

[228] Collier, i. 97, 115, gives an Exchequer payment of 1525–6, ‘Rico

Hole et Georgio Mayler, et aliis lusoribus Dom. Regis, de foedis suis

inter se ad x marcos per ann. sibi debit: pro festo Michaelis, anno

xvij Regis nunc Henrici VIII recept. denar. per manus proprias, per

litt. curr. 66_s._ 8_d._’, and was informed by Mr. Devon of a similar

payment of £3 6_s._ 8_d._ in 1530, in which John Roll, Richard Hole,

and Thomas Sudbury are named. A household list of _c._ 1526 (Brewer,

iv. 869) gives as on yearly wages ‘Ric. Hole and other players, £6

13_s._ 4_d._’. One later than March 1544 (Collier, i. 133) gives 8

players at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ each.

[229] _Chamber Accounts_ (Brewer, v. 303; xiii. 2. 524; xiv. 2. 303;

xvi. 178, 698; xvii. 474; xx. 2. 515; Nicolas, xxviii; Collier, i. 79,

96, 113, 116, 117; _Trevelyan Papers_, i. 149, 157, 170, 177, 195, 203)

give John English (1521–31) at half-yearly ‘fee’ or ‘wages’ of £3 6_s._

8_d._, John Slye or Slee (1539–40) at £1 13_s._ 4_d._ half-yearly,

and Richard Parrowe or Parlowe (1540–5, appointed Christmas 1538),

George Birch (1538–45), Robert Hinstock (1538–45), and George Maylour

(1538–40), at 16_s._ 8_d._ or 11_s._ 1_d._ quarterly.

[230] _Chamber Accounts_ (Brewer, ii. 1441; iii. 1533, &c.; Nicolas,

xxviii; Collier, i. 76, 116). The reward for 1509–10 was £2 13_s._

4_d._; during 1510–13, £3 6_s._ 8_d._; during 1513–21, £3 6_s._ 8_d._

to the ‘players’ and ‘£4’ to the ‘olde players’; and during 1529–41, £6

13_s._ 4_d._

[231] Collier, i. 69, from a ‘paper, folded up in the roll [of the

_Revels Account_ for 1513–14] and in a different handwriting’,

‘Inglyshe, and the oothers of the Kynges pleyers, after pleyed an

Interluyt, whiche was wryten by Mayster Midwell, but yt was so long yt

was not lykyd: yt was of the fyndyng of Troth, who was caryed away by

ygnoraunce and ypocresy. The foolys part was the best, but the kyng

departyd before the end to hys chambre.’ According to Collier, the

paper is signed by William Cornish and also contains a description of a

Chapel interlude. But Brewer, who calendars the _Revels Account_ fully,

does not notice it, and according to A. W. Reed in T. L. S. (3 April

1919) it cannot be traced at the R. O.

[232] Cf. ch. iii; _Tudor Revels_, 6.

[233] Brewer, ii. 1493. In 1546–7 they had 5_s._ for the loan of

garments to the Revels (Kempe, 71).

[234] _Grey Friars Chronicle_ (C. S.), 34, ‘Also this same yere John

Scotte, that was one of the kynges playeres, was put in Newgate for

rebukynge of the shreffes, and was there a sennet, and at the last was

ledde betwene two of the offecers from Newgate thorrow London and soe

to Newgat agayne, and then was delyveryd home to hys howse; but he toke

such a thowte that he dyde, for he went in hys shurte’.

[235] John Slye and John Yonge, mercer, had been players to Queen Jane

before her death in 1537, and were concerned about 1538 in a Chancery

suit about a horse hired ‘to beare there playing garmentes’ (Stopes,

_Shakespeare’s Environment_, 235). Perhaps this explains the annuity of

£1 10_s._ 5_d._ (1_d._ a day) which Young drew from the Chamber during

1540–2. But he obtained a patent as King’s player, with an annual fee

of £3 6_s._ 8_d._, on the death of Roo in 1539 (Brewer, xiv. 1. 423),

and an ‘annuity’ of £3 6_s._ 8_d._ on the death of Sudbury in 1546

(Brewer, xxi. 2. 156). Collier, i. 134, cites a description of him in a

fee list amongst the _Fairfax MSS._ as ‘Maker of Interludes, Comedies,

and Playes’.

[236] Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 183.

[237] G. H. Overend in _N. S. S. Trans._ (1877–9), 425.

[238] Collier, i. 93; Madden, _Privy Purse Expenses of the Princess

Mary_, 104, 140; _Rutland MSS._ iv. 270; Brewer, iv. 340.

[239] Cf. Murray, _passim_, and _Mediaeval Stage_, App. E.

[240] _Royal MS._ 7, C. xvi, f. 97 (cited Collier, i. 137). The names

are in a list of servants ‘nuely in ordinary of the Chamber’, and some

illegible names of players are in an accompanying list of ‘Offycers in

ordynary of the Chamber of the late Kynges Majestie now discharged’.

[241] _Lord Chamberlain’s Records_, _Misc._ v. 127, f. 23 (also with

the error ‘E. and P.’ in Sullivan, 249), ‘three broade yerdes of redd

wollen clothe for a liuery coate of suche prices as the yeomen officers

of oure howseholde are accustomed to haue and iij^s and iiij^d vnto

euery of them for the Enbrauderinge of theire saide coates withe the

lettres E and R on the backe and on the breste’.

[242] _Chamber Accounts_ in _Trevelyan Papers_, i. 195–205; ii. 17–31,

and Collier, i. 136, 138, 148.

[243] _S. P. D. Edw. VI_, xiv.

[244] _Stowe MS._ 571, f. 27^v; _Harl. MS._ 240, f. 13.

[245] Feuillerat, _Edw. and Mary_, 89, 90, 97, 98, 119; cf. _Mediaeval

Stage_, i. 406, where I think I was in error in taking John Smith as a

name assumed by Will Somers.

[246] _Hist. MSS._ iii. 230, from book of annuities at Penshurst.

[247] Feuillerat, _Edw. and Mary_, 31, 39, 57, 86.

[248] Collier, i. 149. The reference to Ferrers’ ‘divine’ and

‘astronomer’ (cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 407) fixes the date.

[249] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 201, from _Lansd. MS._ 824, f. 24.

[250] Fee-list in collection of Soc. of Antiquaries, cited by Collier,

i. 161.

[251] _Chamber Accounts_ in Collier, i. 161; _Declared Accounts (Pipe

Office)_, 541, m. 2^v.

[252] Reading was a London player in 1550 (App. D, No. v). The Chamber

Accounts for the first few years of Elizabeth show an annuity to a

George Birch under a warrant of 7 Jan. 1560.

[253] Eight players of interludes at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ each are in the

fee-lists (cf. vol. i, p. 29), _Stowe MS._ 571, f. 148 (_c._ 1575–80),

_Sloane MS._ 3194, f. 38 (1585), _Stowe MS._ 571, f. 168 (_c._

1587–90), _Lansd. MS._ 171, f. 250 (_c._ 1587–91), _S. P. D. Eliz._

ccxxi, f. 16 (_c._ 1588–93), _H. O._ 256 (_c._ 1598), and with the

error of £3 6_s._ in _Hargreave MS._ 215, f. 21^v (_c._ 1592–5), _Lord

Chamberlain’s Records_, v. 33, f. 19^v (1593), _Stowe MS._ 572, f. 35^v

(_c._ 1592–6), _Harl. MS._ 2078, f. 18^v (_c._ 1592–6). The inaccurate

_Cott. MS. Titus_, B. iii, f. 176 (_c._ 1585–93) gives two ‘Plaiers

on Interludes’ at £3 6_s._ The normal entry recurs in the Jacobean

_Lansd. MS._ 272, f. 27 (1614) and _Stowe MS._ 575, f. 24 (1616), but

a group of the early part of the reign (_Addl. MS._ 35848, f. 19;

_Addl. MS._ 38008, f. 58^v; _Soc. Antiq. MSS._ 74, 75) have ‘Plaiers

on the In lute’ or ‘on in Lutes’, at £3 6_s._ 8_d._ or £3 6_s._, which

looks like an attempt to rationalize the _Cotton MS._ entry. And

_Stowe MS._ 574, f. 16^v, has ‘Players on Lute’ at £3 6_s._ 8_d._,

which some one has corrected by inserting the normal entry. All this

suggests that many copyists of fee-lists in the seventeenth century

confused the post of interlude player with that of a lute player, and

the former was therefore probably obsolete, and its fee no longer paid

to the royal players of the day (cf. ch. x). I cannot agree with E.

Law, _Shakespeare a Groom, of the Chamber_, 26, 64, that the interlude

players survived under James as ‘mummers, who, perhaps, sang in a sort

of recitative at masques and anti-masques’.

[254] _Chamber Declared Accounts_ (_Pipe Office_), 541, _passim_, 542,

m. 3; Collier, i. 236; Cunningham, xxvii. I do not know how long John

Young continued to draw his Exchequer ‘annuity’, but presumably he had

retired on it.

[255] Fleay, 43, says, ‘There was no specific company called the

Queen’s players till 1583; it was a generic title applied to any

company who prepared plays for the Queen’s amusement. In 1561 the

players probably were the Earl of Leicester’s servants.’ I need

hardly say that I do not accept this, which would not explain the

disappearance of the ‘Queen’s’ from provincial records between 1573 and

1583. For another use of the same improvised theory by Mr. Fleay, cf.

App. D, No. lxxv.

[256] Murray, i. 19, adds records from other towns, and A. Clark (10

_N. Q._ xi. 41) for Saffron Walden.

[257] App. D, No. xi.

[258] Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 280, ‘To my L. of Leyester’s men for a

reward, 2_s._ 6_d._’. Fleay, 18, says that the amount is too small to

favour the supposition that these were players. But Elizabeth was at

Saffron Walden at the time, and a present was made to the Master of the

Revels of a podd of oysters costing no more than 3_s._ 6_d._ Probably

Saffron Walden was an economical place, or the payment was only for

some speech.

[259] Murray, i. 41.

[260] Printed in _M. S. C._ i. 348, from _MS._ F. 10 (213) in the

Marquis of Bath’s collection at Longleat; also in _3 N. Q._ xi. 350.

The letter is undated but followed _Procl._ 663, on which cf. ch. viii

and App. D, No. xix.

[261] _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 406; Kempe, 47. The garments provided for

Ferrers by the Revels included fools’ coats for ‘Children, John Smyth,

Ayer apparent ... Seame 2, Parkins 3, Elderton 4’.

[262] App. D, No. xviii.

[263] Cf. ch. ix. The patent is printed from the Patent Roll in _M. S.

C._ i. 262; also from a copy of the entry on the Patent Roll preserved

amongst Rymer’s papers in _Sloane MS._ 4625 by Steevens, _Shakespeare_

(1773), ii. 156, and therefrom in _Variorum_, iii. 47. This text omits

the words ‘oure Citie of London and liberties of the same as also

within’. Collier, i. 203, and Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 25, printed the

Signet Bill, erroneously describing it as the Privy Seal, from the

State Paper Office. This has the omitted words, and Collier correctly

explains the omission in Steevens’s text as due to an inaccurate

copyist, pointing in proof to the words ‘in oure _said_ Citye of

London’. This did not, however, prevent Fleay, 45, from asserting

that in the Patent ‘an alteration had been made from the Privy Seal’,

on the ground that its terms ‘infringed on the powers of the City

authorities’. Such an alteration not merely did not take place, but

would have been a diplomatic impossibility, as the Patent Roll was made

up, not from the Letters Patent, but from the Privy Seals on which

these were based.

[264] Probably they occupied the Theatre, at any rate in summer, until

1583. A letter of Gabriel Harvey’s in the summer of 1579 mentions

‘Lycesters’, the ‘Theater’, and ‘Wylson’, but in no very definite

connexion with each other (cf. p. 4). The Privy Council letter of 23

Dec. 1579, for their toleration at the Blackfriars, printed by Collier,

_New Facts_, 9, is a forgery (cf. ch. xvii).

[265] I should think the ‘Myngs’ of Murray, ii. 214, and Collier,

_Northbrooke_, viii, more likely to be palaeographically accurate than

the ‘Myngo’ of J. Latimer in _9 N. Q._ xi. 444 and his _Sixteenth

Century Bristol_. But a song of ‘Monsieur Mingo’ exists in a setting by

Orlando de Lassus (cf. _E. H. R._ xxxiii. 83), and is quoted in _2 Hen.

IV_, v. iii. 78, and _Summer’s Last Will and Testament_, 968.

[266] Cf. App. D, No. xl.

[267] Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Baylye.

[268] Murray, i. 41, gives additional provincial records for 1576–82.

[269] Stowe, _Annales_, 717, from a description by William Segar.

[270] The show itself was perhaps of Italian origin, for on 17 June

1572 the Earl of Lincoln was entertained at Paris by the Duke of Anjou

(2 Ellis, iii. 12, from _Cott. MS. Vesp._ F. vi, f. 93) with ‘an

Italian comedie, which eandid, vaulting with notable supersaltes and

through hoopes, and last of all the Antiques, of carying of men one

uppon an other which som men call _labores Herculis_’.

[271] J. Bruce from _Harl. MS._ 287, f. 1, in _Who was Will, my Lord of

Leicester’s jesting player?_ (_Sh. Soc. Papers_, i. 88). Bruce thinks

that ‘Will’ might be Johnson, Kempe, or Sly, but not Shakespeare,

whose ‘earliest works bear upon them the stamp of a mind far too

contemplative and refined’ for Sidney to call him ‘knave’ and ‘jesting

player’. I do not subscribe to the reasoning. W. J. Thoms, _Three

Notelets on Shakespeare_, 120, upholds the Shakespeare theory, and

attempts to support it by evidence of military knowledge in the plays.

[272] Wright, _Eliz._ ii. 268, from _Cott. MS. Galba_ C. viii; cf. _M.

L. R._ iv. 88.

[273] Fleay, 82; but cf. Lee, 36, and pp. 124, 272. The thing is

complicated by the influence of Malone’s suggestion (_Variorum_, ii.

166) that Shakespeare might have left Stratford with Leicester’s men

on a visit to the town. This assumes its most fantastic form in the

suggestion of Lee^1, 33, that Shakespeare was already in London, but

‘Shakespeare’s friends may have called the attention of the strolling

players to the homeless youth, rumours of whose search for employment

about the London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford’.

[274] At Exeter they are called the Lord Steward’s, certainly not the

Marquis of Winchester’s, as Murray, ii. 95, suggests, for he was never

Steward of Elizabeth’s household.

[275] _Norfolk Archaeology_, xiii. 11.

[276] J. M. Cowper, in _1 R. Hist. Soc. Trans._ i. 218, records a

performance by ‘my Lord of Leicester’s men’ at Faversham in 1589–90;

but I think this must be an error.

[277] J. D. Walker, _The Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn_, i. 374, gives

the name as ‘Lord Roche’, but this is probably a mistake. Viscount

Roche of Fermoy in Ireland is not likely to have had players in London.

[278] J. de Perott (_Rev. Germ._ Feb. 1914) suggests that _Portio and

Demorantes_ may be the Lamorat and Porcia of the French version (1548)

of _Amadis de Grecia_ (1542), viii. 56.

[279] Murray, i. 307, and A. Clark (_10 N. Q._ xii. 41) add records for

1573–83.

[280] Murray, i. 307, has additional provincial records for 1585–91.

[281] I do not agree with Fleay, _Sh._ 18, 184, that Sussex’s were

satirized in _A Midsummer-Night’s Dream_; cf. _infra_, s.v. Hertford’s.

[282] Dasent, xxiv. 209.

[283] Cf. App. C, No. lvii.

[284] Dasent, viii. 71, dating the warrant on 29 Feb.

[285] _Ancaster MSS._ (_Hist. MSS._) 466.

[286] _Hist. MSS._ ix. 1. 156. The payment is given as to the Earl of

‘Waffyts’ men.

[287] Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 531.

[288] Wright and Halliwell, _Reliquiae Antiquae_, ii. 122, from _Harl.

MS._ 7392, f. 97; cf. _M. L. R._ ii. 5.

[289] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 222.

[290] Cf. ch. viii.

[291] Ellis, i. 3, 32; Cooper, ii. 379; from _S. P. D. Eliz._ cxxxix.

26. The Privy Council letter of 30 Oct. 1575 (_M. S. C._ i. 195)

forbids ‘open shewes’ and ‘assemblies in open places of multitudes of

people’ within five miles of Cambridge.

[292] Murray, i. 348. I add Maldon (1581).

[293] Murray, i. 348. I add Stratford (1583–4). Dr. Boas kindly informs

me that the Oxford City Accounts for 1584–5 have a payment to Oxford’s

‘musytions’.

[294] Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).

[295] The payment was made to Richard Woderam, but he is more likely to

have been an agent of the Corporation than a member of the company.

[296] _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 186, 256. The 1469 entry has been since

published by A. Clark in _10 N. Q._ vii. 181, ‘Et solut. lusoribus

domini comitis Essex ludentibus coram burgensibus infra burgum hoc

anno, v_s_.’