And secondly, they had to exercise a constant watchfulness against the

danger of allowing their play-houses to become the centres of riot and

sedition, and the cognate danger of allowing matter to creep into their

plays which was contrary to public morals as conceived by those who were

not Puritans, or displeasing to persons of importance, or inconsistent

with the views of Tudor and Stuart governments upon religious and

political questions. The disturbances which form a count in the

sixteenth-century indictments of theatres are not particularly

conspicuous in the seventeenth. There were bad characters enough, both

male and female, amongst the audience. Pockets might be picked and even

modesty endangered; and occasionally brawls and bloodshed were the

result.[898] But in the more important theatres, such as the Globe and

the Fortune, which made their appeal to the well-to-do and the

fashionable, no less than to the groundlings, the maintenance of order

was at least as much in the interests of the players themselves as in

that of any other section of the community. In avoiding subject-matter

of offence, so far as the texts of their plays were concerned, the

companies had of course the assistance of the Master of the Revels, upon

whom, in view of the unwillingness of the City either to appoint

licensing officers themselves or to accept a nominee of the Privy

Council, the functions of a stage censor had, as an alternative policy,

been conferred.[899] The employment of a royal official for this purpose

was in effect a resumption by the central government of a responsibility

which it had already attempted to discharge during the earlier Tudor

reigns, and had then delegated to the local justices by the proclamation

of 1559. The selection of the Master of the Revels explains itself

naturally enough as an extension of the duties which already fell to him

of scrutinizing and, if need be, 'reforming' the plays proposed for

presentation at Court.[900] The actual establishment of his authority

appears to have been a gradual process. It is tentative and limited to

the plays of one company in the patent for Leicester's men of 1574. It

is as wide as possible in the commission issued to the Master in 1581,

overriding the proclamation of 1559, and giving him a complete control,

not only over individual plays, but over players, playmakers, and

playing-places generally. Shortly afterwards, in 1584, the Leicester

archives record that the credentials of Worcester's men at that date

included, in addition to the warrant from their lord, a licence from the

Master of the Revels, from the terms of which it appears that the

company were 'bound to the orders prescribed' by him, and in particular

that all their plays were to be 'allowed' by him, and to have 'his hand

at the latter end of the said booke they doe play'.[901] In London, on

the other hand, the correspondence of 1582-4 between the Privy Council

and the City makes no mention of the Master, and the Council are still

pressing for the appointment of fit persons to consider and allow of

plays by the City itself. In 1589, however, the Lord Mayor cited the

Master's 'mislike' of the Martin Marprelate plays as a reason for

suppressing them, and a step forward was probably taken by the

appointment in the same year of a commission to 'allow' plays,

consisting of the Master himself and of two assessors nominated by the

Lord Mayor and the Archbishop of Canterbury. I find no later reference

to these assessors and it may be that before long the Master succeeded

in divesting himself of their assistance.[902] In any case, their

functions did not go beyond the 'allowing' of the actual plays. The

general licensing of companies and of play-houses remained with the

Master, and by 1592 we find the City acknowledging their powerlessness

to redress the 'inconvenience' of the stage without him and debating the

advisability of approaching him with a bribe. Henslowe's _Diary_

discloses the Master between 1592 and 1597 as regularly licensing both

theatres and plays, and taking fees, which appear to have amounted to

7_s._ for each new play produced, and 5_s._, 6_s._ 8_d._, and ultimately

10_s._ for each week during which a theatre was open.[903] To some

extent the assumption of a more direct control by the Privy Council in

1597 must have limited his responsibility. But he continued to act as

the agent of the Privy Council or the Lord Chamberlain in transmitting

inhibitions and other orders to the companies.[904] Bonds had still to

be given to him for the due observance of the regulations.[905] And he

still drew fees from the theatres which were in fact again advanced in

1599 from 10_s._ to 15_s._ a week. Due reservation is regularly made for

his 'aucthoritie power priuiledges and profittes' in the majority of the

Jacobean patents issued to the London companies.[906] He continued to

license those travelling companies which held no direct royal authority;

and in the course of the seventeenth century he succeeded in

establishing his jurisdiction over many travelling entertainers who were

not strictly players.[907] Above all, it still rested with him to

'allow' the production, even by the patented companies, of individual

plays, and about 1607 he undertook also the allowance of plays for the

press, which had previously been in the hands of licensers appointed

under the High Commission for London.[908] A few manuscripts of plays

are extant which have been submitted to the Master of the Revels for

purposes of censorship, notably those of _Sir Thomas More_ (_c._ 1600)

and _The Second Maiden's Tragedy_ (1611), and give interesting

indications of the manner in which he apprehended his duties.[909]

Tilney, in dealing with _Sir Thomas More_, was perturbed by two

features. The play, as submitted to him, began with a dispute between

Londoners and certain Lombard aliens, leading up to the riots of 'ill

May day' and the reputation won by Sir Thomas More as the restorer of

peace. This was still a ticklish subject at the end of the sixteenth

century, for there had been comparatively recent disturbances on the

alien question, directed against Frenchmen rather than Lombards, and

Tilney therefore went carefully through the earlier pages, altering here

and there 'Frenchman' or 'straunger' into 'Lombard', and marking for

omission or alteration certain passages which might be read as

suggestions to the citizens to take matters into their own hands. In the

margin of one passage he wrote 'Mend this'. Presumably the effect of

these 'reformations' did not satisfy him, for at the beginning of the

first scene he has inserted what Dr. Greg calls 'a very conditional

licence', but what is in fact a direction for the complete recast of the

first part of the play by the omission of the dangerous episodes.[910]

Similarly he was pulled up by a later scene in which More's refusal to

sign articles sent him by the King seemed to be of bad precedent for

subjects, and here he drew a line through a substantial section of the

dialogue, and added a note that all must be altered. _The Second

Maiden's Tragedy_ is a Jacobean, not an Elizabethan, play, and the

censor was Sir George Buck. He, too, is on the look-out for political

criticism, and political criticism in 1611 was likely to be criticism of

King and Court. The passages, therefore, amended by Buck or at his

instigation are a few which speak lightly of courtiers and knights and

ladies of high position, and one in particular which seemed to him to

dwell with too much point and detail upon the delicate theme of

tyrannicide. But this was merely verbal caution. He did not attempt to

eliminate tyrannicide from the plot, in which it formed an essential

element, and returned the copy duly endorsed with a licence over his

signature that it 'may with the reformations bee acted publikely'. One

more point shows some development of censorial practice as between

Tilney and Buck. The latter, presumably with the _Act to Restrain Abuses

of Players_ in his mind, concerns himself not only with politics but

with propriety. It is a perfunctory business enough. In half a dozen

places such expletives as 'life' and 'heart' are excised; in many more

these and others, such as 'mass' and 'faith', which one would have

supposed to be as much or as little objectionable, remain

unquestioned.[911]

It has been the experience of many governments that the most rigid

censorship of the 'books' of plays does not afford a complete guarantee

of the inoffensiveness of the performances actually given upon the

stage. A few lines of 'gag' are easily inserted; an emphasis, a gesture,

a 'make-up' may fill with malicious intention a scene which read

harmlessly enough in the privacy of the censor's study. And as nothing

draws like topical allusions, it sometimes happened that the activities

of the Master of the Revels did not prevent the players from

overstepping the boundaries of what the somewhat arbitrary

susceptibilities of the government would tolerate. It must not be

supposed that the Elizabethan injunction against any intermeddling with

politics or religion on the stage was to be taken with absolute

literalness. Up to a point the players had a fairly free hand even with

contemporary events. They might represent, if they would, such feats of

English arms as the siege of Turnhout with all realism.[912] They might

mock at foreign potentates, if they did not, as was sometimes the case,

embarrass Elizabeth's diplomacy in so doing.[913] It has already been

made clear that at the beginning of the reign Cecil made use of

interludes, after the manner of his master Cromwell, as a political

weapon against Philip of Spain and the Catholics; and many years after

both Philip and James of Scotland had their grievances against the

freedom with which their names were bandied by the London

comedians.[914] Similarly, when it was desired that Puritanism should be

unpopular, the players were not debarred from satirizing Puritans.[915]

But if the public discussion of religious controversies became a

scandal, as in the case of the Marprelate plays, and still more if

freedom of speech turned to criticism of the government itself, as

probably happened in _The Isle of Dogs_, it very soon became apparent

that the time for toleration was over, and the punishment which fell

upon the companies was swift and sharp and undiscriminating. Sometimes

it even happened, in spite of the special pains of the Master of Revels,

that a play was brought to Court which gave offence. Such a play had to

be stopped incontinently during the Christmas of 1559, and another is

recorded at a much later date, which drew some displeasing political

morals from the suits of a pack of cards, and would have brought the

performers into serious disgrace but for the friendly intervention of a

councillor with a sense of humour.[916] In addition to the

susceptibilities of the government itself, there were also those of

powerful individuals to be considered. Cecilia of Sweden, who had

outstayed her welcome, complained that her husband was mocked by the

players in her presence.[917] Tarlton, although a _persona grata_ at

Court, got into trouble for his hits at Leicester and Raleigh, possibly

in the very play on the pack of cards already mentioned.[918] A protest

from a descendant of Sir John Oldcastle obliged Shakespeare to change

the original name of his Falstaff. And on 10 May 1601 the Privy Council

sent an order to the Middlesex justices to examine and, if need be,

suppress a play at the Curtain, in which were presented 'the persons of

some gentlemen of good desert and quality that are yet alive, under

obscure manner, but yet in such sort as all the hearers may take notice

both of the matter and of the persons that are meant thereby'. A rather

inexplicable part was taken by players in the wild scenes that closed

the career of Robert Earl of Essex in 1601. Essex was a popular hero,

and as the prologue to _Henry V_ shows, a name to conjure with in the

theatre. Bacon records how in August 1599, after his return from

Ireland, 'did fly about in London streets and theatres seditious

libels'.[919] That he should become an object of ridicule rather than of

honour on the boards was one of the bitterest stings in his disgrace.

'Shortly', he wailed to Elizabeth on 12 May 1600, 'they will play me in

what forms they list upon the stage.'[920] And when the last mad step of

rebellion was taken in February 1601 it was a play, none other than

Shakespeare's _Richard II_, to which the plotters looked to stir the

temper of London in their favour.[921] The curious thing is that in this

case, although Essex and more than one of his followers lost life or

liberty, no very serious results seem to have followed to the company

involved. The incident has been thought to have inspired the references

to an 'innovation' and the consequent travelling of the players in

_Hamlet_. But in fact the Chamberlain's men cannot be traced in the

provinces during 1601, and they were admitted to give their full share

of Court performances during the following Christmas.[922]

For some years after the coming of James, the freedom of speech adopted

by the stage, in a London much inclined to be critical of the alien King

and his retinue of hungry Scots, was far beyond anything which could

have been tolerated by Elizabeth. The uncouth speech of the Sovereign,

his intemperance, his gusts of passion, his inordinate devotion to the

chase, were caricatured with what appears incredible audacity, before

audiences of his new subjects. 'Consider for pity's sake,' writes

Beaumont, the French ambassador, on 14 June 1604, 'what must be the

state and condition of a prince, whom the preachers publicly from the

pulpit assail, whom the comedians of the metropolis bring upon the

stage, whose wife attends these representations in order to enjoy the

laugh against her husband.'[923] Beaumont's evidence is confirmed by a

letter of 28 March 1605 from Samuel Calvert to Ralph Winwood, in which

he writes that 'the play[er]s do not forbear to represent upon their

stage the whole course of this present time, not sparing either King,

state, or religion, in so great absurdity, and with such liberty, that

any would be afraid to hear them'.[924] That in spite of all the

companies continued to enjoy a substantial measure of royal favour,

while speaking well for the good sense of the government, may perhaps

also justify the inference that by the seventeenth century the theatre

had so far established itself as an integral part of London life that a

vindictive measure of suppression had become impracticable. From time to

time, however, the blow fell upon some unusually indiscreet company, or

playwright, and at one moment, owing to diplomatic complications, the

prospect of suppression became, as will be seen, an imminent danger.

Possibly the countenance given by Queen Anne to the comedians may have

been in part responsible for the long-suffering with which their

insolence was met. It could have been no object for James to underline

by any public action the strained relations between King and Consort

which already embarrassed the conduct of Court life. One of the

companies, indeed, which was most frequently in trouble, was that which

had been taken in 1604 under the direct protection of the Queen, with

the title of 'Children of the Queen's Revels'. This was a company of

boys, in a sense attached to the Court itself and formerly known as the

Children of the Chapel, which played at the 'private' house of the

Blackfriars under conditions not quite the same as those of the public

theatres. The patent under which this company was reconstructed in 1604

had exempted its plays from the jurisdiction of the Master of the

Revels, possibly because the Master was an officer of the King's

Household from which that of the Queen was distinct, and had committed

the licensing of them to the poet Samuel Daniel, who had been nominated

by Anne for the purpose. Daniel was extremely unfortunate in the

exercise of his functions. Before a year was out, offence had already

been given by the play of _Philotas_, of which he was himself the

author. In 1605 followed _Eastward Ho!_ with some audacious satire upon

the Scottish nation, which brought Jonson and Chapman into prison,

although they maintained that the offending 'clawses' were due not to

their pens, but to those of their collaborator Marston, who had

apparently made his escape. As a result of the misdemeanour of _Eastward

Ho!_ Anne appears to have been induced to withdraw her direct patronage

of the company, which for a time was known, not as the Children of the

Queen's Revels, but as the Children of the Revels pure and simple. But

it was allowed to go on playing at the Blackfriars, and here in February

1606 was produced Day's _Isle of Gulls_, another satire on the relations

of English and Scots, which landed some of those responsible in

Bridewell. Further irregularities took place in 1608, of which a lively

account is given in a dispatch of the French ambassador, M. de la

Boderie. The company produced two offending plays in rapid succession.

Of one, now lost, which satirized James in person, the author was

probably John Marston. The other, which provoked the ambassador to

protest by its allusions to the domestic arrangements of the French

king, was Chapman's _Byron_.[925] A general inhibition of plays was now

ordered, but De La Boderie correctly anticipated that James's anger

would soon be mollified, especially as the four other London companies

had offered an indemnity which he estimates at what seems the incredibly

high figure of 100,000 francs. He thought that similar episodes would be

prevented in future by refusing allowance to plays whose subjects were

taken from contemporary history. This may, in fact, have been the

solution adopted, as a standing order against the representation of any

'modern Christian King' on the stage is quoted in 1624.[926] Clearly,

however, it left the even more dangerous resources of allegory and of

historical parallel still open to the 'seditious' playwright.[927] The

Revels boys seem again to have been in trouble in 1610 owing to an

offence taken by Lady Arabella Stuart at a passage of Ben Jonson's

_Epicoene_, which she seems to have misunderstood.

The Paul's boys vaunt their abstention from libels in the prologue to

their _Woman Hater_ of 1606. But it must not be supposed that the

dramatic indiscretions were limited to a single company. Even the King's

men themselves, though probably without any intention to offend,

sometimes misjudged the limits of what was permissible. The Earl of

Northampton haled Ben Jonson before the Privy Council for his _Sejanus_

of 1603. On 18 December 1604 a Court gossip writes of a play of

_Gowry_, no longer extant, that 'whether the matter or the manner be not

well handled, or that it be thought unfit that Princes should be played

on the stage in their lifetime, I hear that some great councellors are

much displeased with it, and so 'tis thought shall be forbidden'.[928] A

somewhat vague allusion to an 'unwilling error' of players and a

consequent restraint, contained in the epilogue for a revival of

_Mucedorus_, first published in 1610, may possibly relate to some later

episode not otherwise recorded, but possibly only to the _Byron_

episode, with which the King's men had nothing directly to do. Nor do we

know who were the 'much-suffering actors' of Daborne's 'oppressed and

much-martird Tragedy', _A Christian Turned Turk_, of about the same

date. Conceivably this is itself the play for which _Mucedorus_

apologizes. Even provincial plays sometimes brought their promoters

before the Star Chamber. Sir Edward Dymock was imprisoned and fined

£1,000 in May 1610 for a scurrilous play against the Earl of Lincoln on

a Maypole green.[929] And what seems a curiously belated incident is

recorded in 1614, when Sir John Yorke suffered a similar fate for

encouraging some vagrant players to perform an interlude in favour of

the Popish religion.[930]

And when players had got their warrants and their licences, and signed

their recognizances to the Master of the Revels, and paid their tithes,

and made up their minds to observe the taboos of Sunday and of Lent, and

to purge their plays of all perilous stuff, they had still to encounter

the ordinary changes and chances incident to all mortality. The profits

swelled in term time and dwindled in vacation.[931] Easter, Whitsuntide,

Bartholomew Fair, were recurring seasons of prosperity.[932] Were the

streets full for such an occasion as the entry of an ambassador, the

theatres reaped their harvest.[933] A period of public mourning, on the

other hand, as at the deaths of Elizabeth and of Prince Henry, meant the

cessation of business.[934] Political changes--although, like the other

elements of Stuart society, the players probably paid little attention

to the forces that were gathering for their ultimate overthrow--might

prove more disastrous still. But the dreaded enemy, in whose mysterious

workings the Puritans recognized a direct expression of the wrath of

God, was undeniably the plague. The menace, and too often the actual

reality, of plague, in a city whose growth had far outstripped the

advance of sanitary knowledge, was one of the principal domestic

preoccupations of Elizabethan administrators. And the precaution, which

was always resorted to, of forbidding public assemblies as probable

centres of infection, reacted terribly upon theatrical enterprise. A

study of the plague calendar which forms an appendix to the present

volumes will show that there were three grave visitations of plague

during the years which it covers, in 1563, in 1592-4, and in 1603; that

in the long period 1564 to 1587 following the first visitation, and in

the shorter period 1604 to 1609 following the third visitation, plague

had become endemic, generally showing itself from July to November and

reaching its maximum in September or October; that during these periods

certain years, such as 1579 and 1580 in the one and 1604 in the other

were comparatively free; and that probably during 1588-91, and certainly

during 1595-1602 and 1610-16, plague was so far absent as to be

practically negligible. In fact, after 1609 plague did not again become

a serious factor in London life until 1625. The greatest developments

of the Elizabethan drama thus coincide with the longest periods of

exemption, and perhaps this simple physical fact has something to do

with the break-down of the Puritan opposition and the settlement of

theatrical conditions in 1597. Certainly the plaguesome years 1564-87

are marked by a series of inhibitions of plays on account of plague,

some of which seem to be hardly justified by the actual state of things

prevailing, and suggest that the Privy Council occasionally found it

convenient to avoid controversy with the City by acquiescing in an

inhibition for which the dread of infection was little more than the

ostensible reason. This tendency seems to have come very near to

bringing about a regular autumnal close season for plays. Ultimately,

however, a different principle of regulation was adopted. This was based

upon the showings of the plague-bill, a weekly summary of deaths from

plague and from other causes respectively, prepared from returns

rendered on behalf of each of the 109 parishes within the City area and

a few of those in the suburbs.[935] The first indication of an appeal to

this criterion is to be found in the documents belonging to the inquiry

of 1584, to which the players appear to have contributed the proposal

that their activities should continue to be tolerated so long as the

deaths from plague in any one week did not exceed fifty. The City

questioned the security afforded by this figure, and as an alternative

offered toleration whenever the deaths from all causes should have

remained below fifty for three weeks together. It is difficult to say

whether this reply was intended to be taken seriously. Probably not, in

view of the general attitude adopted in the argument of which it forms

part. If it had been applied to the years 1578-82, for which

plague-bills are extant, there would have been only fifteen weeks of

playing during the five years, six weeks in 1580, and nine weeks in

1581.[936] The precise issue of the discussion of 1584 is unknown; but

the principle then mooted is found in effective operation during the

seventeenth century. Most of the patents do not make any specific

reservation for times of plague, but that for the King's men, issued

during the plague of 1603, and the unexecuted draft for the Queen's men

are expressed as coming into operation 'when the infection of the plague

shall decrease', and more precisely in the case of the Queen's men 'when

the infeccion of the plague shall decrease to the nomber of thirtie

weekly within our Citie of London and the liberties therof'. Similarly

the Privy Council letter of 9 April 1604 in allowance of the resumption

of plays is guarded by the proviso 'except there shall happen weeklie to

die of the plague aboue the number of thirtie within the Cittie of

London and the liberties therof; att which time we think it fitt they

shall cease and forbeare any further publicklie to playe untill the

sicknes be again decreaced to the saide number'. This criterion of

thirty deaths was much less favourable to the players than that of fifty

which they had themselves suggested in 1584. It appears to have ruled

until about 1607 and then to have been replaced by the more liberal

allowance of forty, which is the number specified in the later patents

of 1619 and 1625 to the King's men.[937]

It is clear that a plague, if at all prolonged, hit the players very

hard, partly because it was customary to divide up the profits weekly or

even daily, and the companies, as distinct from prudent individuals,

seem to have kept no reserve funds. In particular the plague of 1592-4

forms a regular watershed in the history of the companies. Some went

under altogether; others, such as the famous Queen's men, failed for

ever after to recover a foothold in the metropolis. The reconstructed

organizations of 1594 have practically no continuity with those in

existence up to 1592. The obvious resource in a time of inhibition was

to travel, since a London plague did not necessarily extend far into the

provinces.[938] It was a regrettable necessity. In favourable economic

conditions, the London companies tended to grow, to effect

amalgamations, to occupy more than one theatre.[939] Travelling, for

more than a few summer weeks, meant the reduction of establishments to

the level of provincial profits, the breaking up of partnerships, the

division of books and apparel, the dismissal of hired men.[940] But

plague was inexorable. Reluctantly the drums and trumpets were bought,

the last stoup was quaffed at the Cardinal's Hat, and the rufflers of

London streets resigned themselves to the hard life of country

'strowlers'.[941] On the road, with his wagon, the actor necessarily

laid aside the conditions of a householder, and reverted to those of his

grandfather, the minstrel.[942] And it is fair to say that, as a rule,

although there were Puritans in the provinces as well as in London, he

received a minstrel's welcome. His advent, about 1574, to a western

borough is thus described by one R. Willis, in a half-autobiographical,

half-religious, treatise entitled _Mount Tabor_, published in 1639:[943]

'In the City of _Gloucester_, the manner is (as I think it is

in other like corporations) that when Players of Enterludes

come to towne, they first attend the Mayor, to enforme him what

noble-mans servants they are, and so to get licence for their

publike playing; and if the Mayor like the Actors, or would

shew respect to their Lord and Master, he appoints them to play

their first play before himselfe, and the Aldermen and common

Counsell of the City; and that is called the Mayors play, where

every one that will comes in without money, the Mayor giving

the players a reward as hee thinks fit, to shew respect unto

them. At such a play my father tooke me with him, and made me

stand betweene his leggs, as he sate upon one of the benches,

where wee saw and heard very well.'

The account given by Willis receives general confirmation from the

numerous entries with regard to players exhumed from the municipal

archives not only of Gloucester itself, but of many other towns, and

notably Canterbury, Dover, Southampton, Winchester, Exeter, Plymouth,

Barnstaple, Oxford, Abingdon, Marlborough, Bath, Bristol, Shrewsbury,

Chester, York, Newcastle, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry,

Stratford-on-Avon, Maldon, Ipswich, Cambridge, and Norwich.[944] As a

rule the information consists of a record in the annual accounts

rendered by the Chamberlains or other borough treasurers of the

'rewards' paid to the companies for performing the 'Mayor's play'. These

are often stated to have been paid at the 'appointment' of the Mayor, or

of the Mayor and the Aldermen or other body who were his 'brethren'. The

name of the company is generally given; sometimes the date of the

performances, and more rarely the name of the play or some other detail

which struck the fancy of the Chamberlains, is added. Sometimes,

moreover, there is subsidiary expenditure to record; a stage has to be

put up and lit;[945] damage done has to be repaired;[946] the players

are entertained with the municipal courtesy of 'wine and sugar', or

with a 'drinkinge', 'banket', or 'breakfast' at their inn.[947] At

Gloucester the entertainment, of 'wine and chirries', took place in the

house of 'Mr. Swordbearer', an official of the corporation. In the main

the customs of the different towns seem to have been singularly uniform,

but here and there variations of detail present themselves. Thus the

mayor's play was not everywhere, as at Gloucester, open to all comers. A

'free' play is noted at Newcastle; at Bath and Canterbury on the other

hand there was a 'gathering', supplemented by the town's reward.[948] At

Leicester the same arrangement prevailed up to the end of the sixteenth

century. The 'gathering' was levied upon the members of the two councils

known as the 'Twenty-four' and the 'Forty-eight'; and orders are upon

record limiting this liability to performances by the royal companies or

the servants of privy councillors.[949] In 1590-1 collections were also

taken 'at the hall dore'.

A Bridgnorth order of 1570 that no charge should be put upon the town

fund appears to be exceptional at this date, and did not prove

permanent.[950] The 'rewards' entered in the accounts are generally

round sums; where they are broken, they probably went to make up the

results of the 'gatherings' to round sums. At the beginning of

Elizabeth's reign the amounts often do not exceed a few shillings, but a

general tendency to increase is apparent throughout the next

half-century, and by 1616 rewards of £2 and even £3 are not uncommon.

The establishment of the Queen's men in 1583 led to a rise in the rate

of reward for that company, which in course of time brought about

increased generosity to others.[951] The highest sums I have noted were

£4 to the Queen's men at Ipswich in 1599, and to various companies at

Coventry from 1612 onwards. Nottingham distinguished itself by economy,

and did not go beyond 20_s._ at the best. In most places the rates

fluctuate considerably to the end; being determined partly by the

importance of the 'lord' and his relations to the town, partly in all

probability by the opinion of the stage held by the mayor or the town,

partly, one may hope, by the merits of individual plays and their

interpreters. Commonly enough, the mayor's play took place in the

guild-hall, in spite of the criticisms of those who, whatever their real

motives, alleged the damage done and the interruption to municipal

business.[952] For subsequent performances other quarters had often to

be found. These were ordinarily in an inn;[953] occasionally in the

church itself or the churchyard.[954] Great Yarmouth had its specially

provided 'game house'; a theatre contemplated at York in 1608-9 was to

have its own company, as 'a means to restrayne the frequent comminge of

other stage players', but the scheme was never actually carried

out.[955]

To some extent the evidence of the accounts can be eked out by that of

other records throwing a more direct light upon the responsibilities

assumed by the civic authorities in regard to plays. Singularly

interesting is the register of the Mayor's Court at Norwich, in which

are recorded the attendances of players on their arrival in the town to

submit their credentials and obtain leave for their performances.[956]

The patent companies produced their letters patent in original or in

exemplification, in addition to which the Court seems to have expected

some instrument of deputation, if none of the men actually named in the

document were present.[957] The nature of the evidence forthcoming from

other companies is not so clearly specified, but no doubt it consisted

of the warrant of appointment by their lord, and after 1581 of the

confirmatory licence from the Master of the Revels. Worcester's men were

in a difficulty at Leicester in 1583 because, although they could

produce the warrant from their lord, their licence from the Master had

been purloined by another company.[958] It was probably as a quite

special privilege that, when Strange's and Sussex's men travelled in

1593, they carried with them letters of assistance from the Privy

Council itself. It may be gathered from the terms of the Norwich entries

that the Court regarded its own permission or 'licence' as essential

before players were entitled to set up their 'bills' or give their

performances within its jurisdiction. The lord's warrant might protect

his servants from the penalties of vagabondage; but it was not

necessarily accepted, in the provinces any more than in London, as

overriding the traditional right of the municipal governments to control

the entertainments which might have serious results both upon the

morality and the order of their areas. On the other hand, even if the

plays had been less popular than they were, the livery of the Queen or

of a powerful noble was not a thing to be lightly flouted. Perhaps the

difficulty was solved by taking the warrant at its face value as a

courteous letter of recommendation, and letting the licence to play and

the 'reward' stand as return courtesies from the corporation to their

very good lord. This fiction, however, can hardly have been applicable

to the terms in which the Master of the Revels may be supposed to have

worded his licence, and still less to those of the royal patents, which

claimed to give direct authority to play 'within anie town halls or

moute halls or other conveniente places within the liberties and

freedoms of any cittie, vniversitie, towne or boroughe whatsoever within

our realmes and domynions'. The corporations were not very likely to act

upon the advice attributed to the Lord Coke in 1606 that such licences

from the Crown were _ultra vires_.[959] No doubt they remained the

arbiters as to what places were 'conveniente'. They also prescribed

times and seasons, forbidding plays at their discretion on Sunday[960]

or at night,[961] or in Lent,[962] or during divine service,[963] and

laying down for each company the number of days during which it was at

liberty to perform, or the interval which must elapse between one visit

and the next. At Norwich the number of days ranged from one to eight,

sometimes one performance and sometimes two being allowed on each day.

The royal signet warrants which came into use about 1616 authorized the

companies holding them to stay fourteen days in any one town. Sometimes

Dogberry and Verges found good reason for refusing leave to play. It was

a season of plague or of social disturbance in the town.[964] In 1603

when the Admiral's men visited Canterbury, 'it was thought fit they

should not play at all in regard that our late Queen was then ether very

sick or dead as they supposed'. Or even if the public playing was

allowed, the corporation might be too busy for a Mayor's play to be

appropriate. In either event the players generally got their fee all the

same, and the Chamberlain, if punctilious, entered it not as a 'reward'

but as a 'gratuity', and noted in his book that the company 'did not

playe'.[965] Certain indications show themselves here and there that the

Puritan controversy had spread to the provinces, and even that the

desire to have done with plays altogether was not wholly confined to

London. As early as 1590 there was a dispute in the corporation of

Maldon between an ex-bailiff of the town and certain colleagues whom he

abused as 'a sort of precisians and Brownists' because they forbade a

performance on a Sunday evening.[966] In 1596 the Chester corporation

made an order for the suppression of plays, and fixed a 'gratuity' of

20_s._ for the Queen's men, and 6_s._ 8_d._ for those of any noble. But

it does not seem that the resolution was persisted in, and in 1615 the

city was still suffering from 'the common brute and scandal' of 'obscene

and unlawfull plaies or tragedies', and did no more than bar them out

from the Common Hall and confine them to the day-time.[967] At Hull too

fines were enacted against citizens resorting to plays and landlords

harbouring them in 1598.[968] The players did not always prove

conformable to municipal discipline. Several cases are recorded at

Norwich, in which companies played contrary to orders, and were punished

by committal to prison, or by threats that their lord should be

certified of their contempt, and that they should never more have

reward of the city.[969] One of the mutinous companies in 1583 was

Worcester's, who in the following year repeated their offence at

Leicester, going 'with their drum and trumppytts thorowe the towne in

contempt of Mr. Mayor' and using 'evyll and contemptyous words' of that

dignitary, who had given them an angel (3_s._ 4_d._) towards their

dinner. The threat of reporting them to their lord reduced them to

submission, and after all they were allowed to play, and made a public

apology to Mr. Mayor as a prologue.

The worst of travelling was that, after all the tramping of bad roads,

and all the wrangling with jacks-in-office, there was but a scanty

living to be made out of it, even with the aid of the few shillings to

be picked up in the larger villages, from such a windfall as is

described in _Ratseis Ghost_,[970] or from the generous hospitality of a

friendly manor.[971] The competition was considerable, for in the

provinces the London companies found rivals in the shape of other

companies which rarely or never came to London at all, but were none the

less substantial and permanent organizations. Thus Queen Elizabeth's men

travelled for years between their last London appearance in 1594 and the

end of the reign, and continued all the time to secure the exceptionally

high rates of 'reward' which were due to the royal name. Other famous

provincial companies, each of which can be traced through a period of

years, were those of the Duchess of Suffolk (1548-63), and the Lords

Mountjoy (1564-78), Stafford (1574-1604), Sheffield (1577-86), Berkeley

(1578-1610), Chandos (1578-1610), Morley (1581-1602), Darcy (1591-1603),

Mounteagle (1593-1616), Huntingdon (1597-1606), Evers (1600-13), and

Dudley (1600-36). Some of these had a comparatively limited range;

others covered the whole country. Their presence in the field, and that

of many minor companies, must have made it difficult for the

Londoners.[972] The charge of travelling, again, as Strange's men

complained to the Privy Council about 1592, was intolerable, and the

necessity for dividing the larger companies, so as to cover more ground,

led to disorganization. Pembroke's men, when they travelled in 1593,

could not save their charges, and had to pawn their apparel and return

home. The years of plague and travellings were the lean years which sent

the books of plays into the hands of the publishers.[973] And for a

company to part with the books and garments that formed its stock in

trade was a confession of failure.

The wanderings of English actors were by no means confined to England

itself. They crossed the border to Scotland, where towards the end of

the sixteenth century they incurred the hostility of the Kirk Sessions,

which did not prevent James I from appointing one or more of them as

Court comedians, and bringing them back with him in 1603 to figure in

the lists of the patented royal companies.[974] Somewhat later they

braved the Irish Channel, and are found at Youghal.[975] And on the

Continent they ranged far and wide.[976] Notices of them in France,

indeed, are rarer than might be expected, perhaps because of the barrier

of religion, perhaps because the Italians had already occupied the

ground, perhaps only because the archives have not been thoroughly

searched. To Italy and to Spain they just penetrated. In northern

Europe, on the other hand, in the Netherlands, in Germany, even in

Denmark, Sweden, and Poland, they found a constant welcome, until their

movements were checked by the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in 1620.

A pioneer company, which made its way from Leicester's head-quarters at

Utrecht to the Courts of Copenhagen and Dresden in 1586, included

members who afterwards became fellows of Shakespeare as Lord

Chamberlain's men. The shifting relations of the numerous bands which

followed them are beyond research, but the initiative in organizing the

raids seems to have been largely taken by two men. One of these was

Robert Browne, who paid not less than five visits abroad between 1590

and 1620, and appears to have had many associates, of whom the most

important was John Green. The other was John Spencer, who first appears

in 1604, and whose operations were probably quite independent of

Browne's. The industry of German scholars has made it possible to trace

in outline the stories of Spencer and of a group of companies owing

their origin more or less directly to Browne. Their adventures were

clearly much facilitated by the existence of numerous petty German

courts, under cultivated rulers who were glad to take a troop of actors

into their service for a year or two at a time, and then let them go for

a while on their travels from one to another of the great towns.

Conspicuous amongst such patrons were the Electors Joachim Frederick

(1598-1608) and John Sigismund (1608-91) of Brandenburg, the Electors

Christian I (1586-91), Christian II (1591-1611), and John George (1611-56)

of Saxony, Henry Julius (1589-1613) Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and

Maurice (1592-1627) Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel. Naturally, also, the actors

made their way to Heidelberg, whither the Elector Palatine Frederick V

brought his English bride in 1613. These were Protestant princes, but

Catholic Germany, although less often visited, was not closed to the

English, who found particular favour with the house of the Archduke

Ferdinand of Styria, afterwards the Emperor Ferdinand II. Of the great

cities of Germany the most hospitable to actors, so far as our knowledge

goes, were Cologne, Strassburg, Ulm, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and above all

Frankfort, where the two great marts or fairs held annually at Easter and

in the autumn served as a rallying-point for travellers and entertainers

of every species. The early successes of the English in Germany are

reported by Fynes Moryson, who was at Frankfort for the autumn fair of

1592:

'Germany hath some fewe wandring Comeydians, more deseruing

pitty then prayse, for the serious parts are dully penned, and

worse acted, and the mirth they make is ridiculous, and nothing

lesse then witty (as I formerly haue shewed). So as I remember

that when some of our cast dispised stage players came out of

England into Germany, and played at Franckford in the tyme of

the Mart, hauing nether a complete number of Actours, nor any

good Appareil, nor any ornament of the Stage, yet the Germans,

not vnderstanding a worde they sayde, both men and women,

flocked wonderfully to see theire gesture and Action, rather

then heare them, speaking English which they vnderstoode not,

and pronowncing peeces and patches of English playes, which my

selfe and some English men there present could not heare

without great wearysomenes. Yea my selfe comming from

Franckford in the company of some cheefe marchants Dutch and

Flemish, heard them often bragg of the good markett they had

made, only condoling that they had not the leasure to heare the

English players.'

In the Netherlands the English players, according to Moryson, brought

themselves into a singular difficulty. Here, too, was no native stage:

'For Commedians, they litle practise that Arte, and are the

poorest Actours that can be imagined, as my selfe did see when

the Citty of Getrudenberg being taken by them from the

Spanyards, they made bonsfyers and publikely at Leyden

represented that action in a play, so rudely as the poore

Artizans of England would haue both penned and acted it much

better. So as at the same tyme when some cast players of

England came into those partes, the people not vnderstanding

what they sayd, only for theere action followed them with

wonderfull concourse, yea many young virgines fell in loue with

some of the players, and followed them from citty to citty,

till the magistrates were forced to forbid them to play any

more.'[977]

Moryson's account finds confirmation in the praise lavished upon English

acting by German writers, such as Erhard Cellius in 1605, Joannes

Rhenanus about 1610, and Daniel von Wensin in 1613.[978] Undoubtedly the

German stage, which had been slow to develop on professional lines,

owed a great impetus to the invasions. Germans attached themselves to

the English companies, and in course of time imitated the English

methods in companies of their own. The English plays served as models

for German dramatists, of whom Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick and Jacob

Ayrer of Nuremberg were the best known.[979] On the other hand, the

invaders themselves became denizened, at any rate to the extent of

learning to give their performances in the German tongue. Moryson found

Browne's company handicapped by their use of English at Frankfort in

1592. A Münster chronicler tells us that an anonymous company which

visited his town in 1601 still played 'in ihrer engelschen Sprache', but

that between the acts the clown amused the audience with 'bôtze und

geckerie' in German.[980] In 1605 actors who petition for leave to

appear at the Frankfort fair advertise their intention to give their

comedies and tragedies 'in hochteutscher sprache', and there can be

little doubt that, whatever may have been the case in Anglomaniac

courts, theirs was the practice which ultimately prevailed in the

cities.[981] Such portions of the repertories of the English actors as

have been preserved are without exception in German. They are of

singularly little literary value, fully bearing out Moryson's

description of them as no more than 'peeces and patches' of English

plays. But occasionally one of them possesses a critical interest as

representing a play now lost or some earlier version of its model than

that extant in an English text. In addition to actual plays, enough

lists of performances are upon record to give a fair notion of the range

of the travelling repertories. Both recent productions of the London

stage and more old-fashioned pieces were drawn upon for adaptation. The

choice was doubtless determined by the availability of prompter's copies

or printed texts, as the case might be, when a company was collecting a

stock-in-trade for its adventure. Sometimes variety was obtained by

using the experiments of a German dramatist, or one of those scriptural

comedies, _Susanna and the Elders_, _The Prodigal Son_, _Dives and

Lazarus_, which had been the delight of the German, even more than the

English, Renaissance.

The most obvious thing about the life of the English actor on the road

in Germany is that it was uncommonly like his life on the road in

England. Perhaps this is hardly surprising when it is borne in mind

that, as already pointed out, the player away from his permanent theatre

reverted to the status of the minstrel, and that throughout the ages the

minstrel had been cosmopolitan. That in a land of alien speech, even

more than at home, the strict arts of comedy and tragedy had to be eked

out with music and buffoonery and acrobatics goes without saying. Even

as late as 1614 and at the court of Berlin the terms on which actors

were engaged bound them to render service 'mit Springen, Spielen und

anderer Kurzweil', as their lord might require.[982] Away from court, in

Germany as in England, they were mainly dependent upon the goodwill of

the civic magistrates, to whom on approaching each town they addressed

elaborate petitions, of which many are preserved, in which they recited

their own merits, and made play with the names of any princes whose

servants they were entitled to call themselves, or whose recommendation

some successful display had enabled them to gain. There was always the

chance that, on the strength of plague or some other pretext, they might

be refused admission altogether. At the best, they must expect to have

the length of their stay, the days and hours of their performances, the

sums they might charge for standing-room and seats, most thoughtfully

and minutely regulated for them. And when all the preliminaries were

gone through, and the Rathaus or an inn-yard put at their disposal, and

the creaking boards set up, and the tattered frippery extracted from the

hamper, it might perhaps after all, as at Brunswick in 1614, be a case

of 'kein Volk' and the Council might give them a thaler out of charity

and send them on their way.[983] In Germany too, as in England, they had

to make their account with the wise, to whom their performances were

folly, and the 'unco' guid', to whom they were an offence.[984]

Evidently they were not always discreet in their choice of themes. At

Elbing in 1605 a company received a gratification of twenty thalers for

a performance before the Council; and the record continues, '... daneben

aber auch ihnen zu untersagen, dass sie nunmehr zu agiren aufhören

sollen in Anmerkung, dass sie gestern in der Comödie schandbare Sachen

fürgebracht'.[985] Even princes sometimes got into trouble by

encouraging these foreigners of doubtful respectability. There was glee

in Cassel when Landgrave Maurice decided to disband the 'verfluchten'

English in 1602. Possibly in this case it was the taxpayer rather than

the Puritan who felt relief; but when the Duke of Pommern-Wolgast and

his mother allowed the Schlosskirche at Lötz to be used for a

performance in 1606 they brought upon themselves a shower of letters

from Hofprediger Gregorius Hagius, which precisely re-echo the familiar

English diatribes of Stephen Gosson and John Rainolds.[986] Presumably

the whole business paid its way, or Browne would not have gone over four

or five times or Spencer spent fifteen years in the country. A recent

investigator, who has made a far more elaborate analysis of all the

financial material than I have room for, calculates that, what with

court salaries, and what with admission fees to public performances at

the rate of about three kreuzers or less than a penny a head, an actor

might hope to make on the average about £60 a year.[987] This was enough

to live upon, even if, as was sometimes the case, wife and children

accompanied the expedition. It seemed attractive enough to poor Richard

Jones, who was making at home 'some tymes a shillinge a day and some

tymes nothinge'. But it hardly bears out the statement of Erhard Cellius

that the English returned home 'auro et argento onusti'. And in fact

those who essayed a career in Germany were the failures of London. 'Some

of our cast dispised stage players', Moryson calls them, and many years

later, in 1625, the same tale is told by the words put into the mouths

of actors in _The Run-away's Answer_: 'We can be bankrupts on this side

and gentlemen of a company beyond the sea: we burst at London, and are

pieced up at Rotterdam.'[988] There were, indeed, those who made their

fortunes abroad, but they were those who, like Thomas Sackville, forsook

the stage and devoted their energies to an honest trade.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 879: Murray, ii. 77, gives records of seventy-nine 'Lesser

Men's Companies', many of which appear at one town only, while all have

a narrow range. Naturally the names of the great nobles carried weight

over a wider area. The players in _Ratseis Ghost_ (Halliwell-Phillipps,

i. 326) 'denied their owne Lord and Maister, and used another Noblemans

name'.]

[Footnote 880: The showman of the royal ape in Taylor's _Wit and Mirth_

(cf. p. 267) wears 'a brooch in his hat, like a tooth drawer, with a

Rose and Crowne, and two letters'.]

[Footnote 881: Harington, _Metamorphosis of Ajax_ (1596), 135, 'I will

neither end with sermon nor with prayer, lest some wags liken me to my

L. (____) players, who when they have ended a bawdy comedy, as though

that were a preparative to devotion, kneel down solemnly, and pray all

the company to pray with them for their good Lord and master'; _A Mad

World, my Masters_, v. ii. 200, 'This shows like kneeling after the

play; I praying for my good lord Owemuch and his good countess, our

honourable lady and mistress'. This prayer might be combined with one

for the Sovereign and estates; cf. chh. xviii, xxii.]

[Footnote 882: Cf. ch. xiii (Interluders).]

[Footnote 883: _R. O. Lord Chamberlain's Records_, ii. 4 (4).]

[Footnote 884: _N. S. S. Trans._ (1877-9), 15*, from _Lord Chamberlain's

Records_, vol. 58_a_, now ii. 4 (5).]

[Footnote 885: Sullivan, 250; C. C. Stopes in _Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xlvi. 92;

from _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, ii. 48; v. 92, 93. I am not sure

whether the velvet was for a 'cap' or a 'cape'.]

[Footnote 886: Sullivan, 253; cf. vol. i, p. 52.]

[Footnote 887: Stopes (_supra_). I find a confirmatory note to a

Household list of 1641 in _Lord Chamberlain's Records_, iii. 1, 'Note

that _th_e Companyes of Players under the Titles of the Kings, Queenes,

Qu_eene_ of Bohemia, Prince & Duke of Yorke are all of them sworne

Groomes of the Chamber in ord_inary_ w_i_thout fee'. I cannot accept

Miss Sullivan's theory that 'without fee' means that the players did not

have to buy their places.]

[Footnote 888: Cf. App. C, Nos. xvii, xxxi.]

[Footnote 889: Platter in 1599 (cf. ch. xvi, introd.) says that plays

were given 'alle tag vmb 2 vhren nach mittag'. T. S. Graves, in _E. S._

xlvii. 66, argues in favour of occasional night performances, and is

answered by W. J. Lawrence in _E. S._ xlviii. 213. Whatever may have

been done before 1574 or thereabouts, I find no later evidence which is

not to be explained either by private performances or by a loose use of

'night' for the evening hour at which plays terminated in winter. Nor

can I go with Lawrence in supposing an exception for Sunday. The

Southwark play at 8 p.m. on Sunday, 12 June 1592, cannot have been at a

regular theatre, for there was none within the Lord Mayor's

jurisdiction. The allusion in Crosse's _Vertue's Commonwealth_ (1603)

can quite well be to private plays (cf. App. C), and Henslowe's entry

(i. 83) of a loan of 30_s._ 'when they fyrst played Dido at nyght', on

Sunday, 8 Jan. 1598, only suggests to me the payment by Henslowe of the

shot for a supper after the first performance. Or it may have been a

private performance, for Henslowe does not appear (_vide infra_) to have

opened the Rose on Sundays.]

[Footnote 890: Cf. App. D, No. xv (1564), 'now daylye, but speciallye on

holydayes'; No. xvi (1569), 'on the Saboth dayes and other solempne

feastes commaunded by the church to be kept holy'; No. xvii (1571),

'vpon sondaies, holly daies, or other daie of the weke, or ells at

night'; No. xxxii (1574), 'on sonndaies and holly dayes, at which tymes

such playes weare chefelye vsed'; App. C, No. xxii (1579), 'These

because they are allowed to play euery Sunday, make iiii or v Sundayes

at least euery weeke'.]

[Footnote 891: There was a disorder at the Theatre on Sunday, 10 April

1580, but by July 1581 the Lord Mayor had made an order against Sunday

plays, which Berkeley's men disregarded. The Privy Council letter of 3

Dec. 1581 to the City accepts the exclusion of Sunday. Gosson, _Playes

Confuted_ (1582), 167, and Field (Jan. 1583), C. iii, acknowledge the

change of day. When therefore Stubbes (1 March 1583), 137, criticizes

Sunday plays, he must have the suburbs in mind. Paris Garden fell on

Sunday, 13 Jan. 1583. On 3 July 1583 the Lord Mayor told the Privy

Council that Sunday baitings were resumed. The documents of the 1584

controversy, however, state that as a result of the accident, letters

were obtained to banish plays (and doubtless also baiting) 'in the

places nere London' on the Sabbath days. Whetstone (1584) also alludes

to a 'reforme' by the 'magistrate' in this matter.]

[Footnote 892: Henslowe, ii. 324.]

[Footnote 893: Cf. Middleton, _A Mad World, my Masters_ (1608), I. i.

38, 'Tis Lent in your cheeks; the flag's down'; T. Earle,

_Microcosmography_, char. 64, of a player, 'Shrove-tuesday hee feares as

much as the bawdes, and Lent is more damage to him then the butcher'.]

[Footnote 894: _Variorum_, iii. 65, from Sir Henry Herbert's papers,

which also record a similar payment in 1618 'for toleration in the

holydays'. Herbert himself sold similar indulgences and in a list of

customary Revels fees drawn up in 1662 includes £3 'for Lent fee',

together with £3 'for Christmasse fee' (_Variorum_, iii. 266). Prynne,

_Histriomastix_ (1633), 784, notes the custom of suppressing plays 'in

Lent, till now of late'.]

[Footnote 895: Cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth's). About 1617 Prince

Charles's men were complaining to Alleyn that 'intemperate Mr. Meade'

had taken 'the day from vs which by course was ours'.]

[Footnote 896: By 1574 the City had offers to farm their licensing

rights 'to the relefe of the poore in the hospitalles'; but their

regulations of Dec. 1574 provide for direct contributions to the poor

and sick by holders of licences for playing-places. A weekly subsidy to

the poor from every stage is suggested by Walsingham's correspondent of

1587. Hunsdon, in asking for the use of the Cross Keys in 1594, promised

that his men would 'be contributories to the poore of the parishe where

they plaie accordinge to their habilities'. In 1600 the Southwark Vestry

were negotiating with the players for tithes and contributions for the

poor on the basis of an 'order taken before my lords of Canterbury and

London and the Master of the Revels'. In the same year the inhabitants

of Finsbury recite the 'very liberall porcion' of money promised weekly

for the relief of the poor as one of their grounds for assenting to the

building of the Fortune. The accounts of the overseers of Paris Garden

between 1611 and 1621 show varying sums, amounting to about £4 or £5 a

year, as received during several years from the players at the Swan.]

[Footnote 897: The Middlesex records for 1616 show the Queen's men at

the Red Bull as in arrear for their contribution, 'being taxed by the

bench 40_s._ the yeare by theire own consentes'.]

[Footnote 898: Cf. ch. viii.]

[Footnote 899: As far back as 1549 the City had appointed two

Secondaries of the Compters to license plays; but this arrangement

doubtless terminated when the King and Council assumed the function; cf.

ch. ix. In 1572 the Council were pressing the City to appoint 'discreet

persons' for the purpose, and in 1574 suggested the suitability of one

Mr. Holmes. But the City, who claimed to have had profitable offers to

farm the licensing, repeated a former refusal to commit it to any

private person. The regulations of 1574 provide for the appointment by

the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of persons to peruse and allow plays. But

the Council are still urging, and the City promising, the appointment of

licensers in 1582.]

[Footnote 900: Cf. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 901: The unauthorized company which stole this licence (cf.

ch. xiii, s.v. Worcester's) is probably that which appeared as the

Master of the Revels' players at Ludlow on 7 Dec. 1583 and at Bath and

Gloucester in 1583-4 (Murray, ii. 201, 282, 325). I do not think that

Tilney himself had a company. His predecessor had. Plomer (_3 Library_,

ix. 252) notes a Canterbury payment, omitted by Murray, in 1569-70, to

'Syr Thomas Bernars [? Benger's] players, Master of the Quenes Majesties

Revells'. But this was before the Act of 1572.]

[Footnote 902: Possibly the Southwark order for tithes from players,

taken before 'my lords of Canterbury and London and the Master of the

Revels' about 1600, implies some continuance of the commission. The

issue of licences, both for the performance and after 1607 for the

printing of plays, 'under the hand of' the Master (cf. ch. xxii), does

not exclude the possibility of his acting on the report of an expert

assessor, and one is tempted to conjecture that this may have been the

position of Segar, who sometimes licensed for the press as deputy to

Buck. But it is clear from passages in Sir Henry Herbert's office-book

(_Variorum_, iii. 229-42) that he at least personally read the 'books'

of plays.]

[Footnote 903: Henslowe, ii. 113, where Dr. Greg _inter alia_ disposes

of Mr. Fleay's theory that some of the fees entered in the _Diary_ are

for licences authorizing the publication, not the performance, of

plays.]

[Footnote 904: Cf. App. D, No. cliv.]

[Footnote 905: The intruding company of 1598 had not been 'bound' to the

Master. The Master's licence to Worcester's men in 1583 is described as

an 'indenture of lycense', and the players were 'bound to the orders

prescribed by the said Edmund Tyllneye'. On 2 Jan. 1595 Henslowe paid

the Master £10 'in full payment of a bonde of one hundreth powndes'

(Henslowe, i. 39). This looks as if he had forfeited a recognizance.]

[Footnote 906: The licence to the Queen's Revels (1604) is an exception.

Here there is no reference to the Master and the allowance of plays is

committed to Samuel Daniel 'whome her pleasure is to appoynt for that

purpose'. Nor is the Master mentioned in the unexecuted draft (_c._

1604) for the Queen's men. Probably the reason is to be found in the

existence of a separate Chamberlain for the Queen's Household. The

Master of the Revels was of course an officer of the King's Lord

Chamberlain. The Master's rights are reserved in the patent actually

issued to the Queen's men in 1609. Daniel's licensing had been far from

a success; cf. p. 326. Oddly enough, whatever Daniel's legal rights, it

appears from his exculpation of his _Philotas_ (q.v.) that the Master

did in fact 'peruse' that play.]

[Footnote 907: A Chamberlain's warrant of 20 Nov. 1622 requires a

licence from the Master for any travellers who 'shall shewe or present

any play shew motion feats of actiuity and sights whatsoeuer' (Murray,

ii. 352). This was motived by certain irregular licences procured 'both

from the Kings Maiestie and also from diuerse noblemen'. The commission

of 1581 is wide enough to cover all 'shewes'; possibly the actual

practice was extended when the Act of 1604 restricted the protection of

noblemen to players of interludes proper--a restriction evidently still

imperfectly observed in 1622. The earliest licence for a non-dramatic

show on record is one of date earlier than 5 Oct. 1605 to John Watson,

ironmonger, 'to shewe two beasts called Babonnes' (Murray, ii. 338; cf.

ch. xxiv, s.v. _Sir G. Goosecap_), and this was a royal warrant, perhaps

under the signet. But on 6 Sept. 1610 Buck issued a licence to 'shew a

strange lion, brought to do strange things, as turning an ox to be

roasted, &c.' (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, lvii. 45), and the keeper of a

'motion' in _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), V. 5, 18, says, 'I have the

Master of the _Reuell's_ hand for it'. Later examples of signet warrants

for shows are in Murray, ii. 342, and of licences from the Master in

Murray, ii. 351 sqq., and Herbert, 46; cf. Gildersleeve, 64, 72.]

[Footnote 908: Cf. ch. xxii. Herbert noted at the Restoration (_Dramatic

Records_, 96), 'Severall playes allowed by Mister Tilney in 1598. As Sir

William Longsword allowed to be acted in 1598, The Fair Maid of London.

Richard Cor de Lyon. See the Bookes.']

[Footnote 909: The manuscript of _The Honest Man's Fortune_ (1613) has

some censorial notes and an allowance at the end of the book by Herbert

on the occasion of a revival in 1625. Of later manuscripts, that of _Sir

John Van Olden Barnevelt_ (Bullen, _O. E. P._ ii. 101) has corrections

by Herbert, but no allowance, and that of Massinger's _Believe As You

List_ (facs. in _T. F. T._) is a second draft, prepared to meet

criticisms by Herbert, and allowed by him; cf. Gildersleeve, 114, 123.]

[Footnote 910: The extent to which Tilney's handiwork is apparent in the

text is a matter of great palaeographical difficulty fully studied by

Dr. Greg, who takes the view that the insertions and many of the

corrections in the manuscript were made before it was submitted to

Tilney, and are not an attempt to carry out the revision directed by

him. If so, he was very easy-going as regards willingness to peruse a

most disorderly text.]

[Footnote 911: Herbert (_Variorum_, iii. 235) records a conversation

between Charles I and himself about the language of Davenant's _Wits_,

at the end of which he noted in his office-book, 'The Kinge is pleased

to take faith, death, slight, for asseverations and no oaths, to which I

doe humbly submit as my masters judgment; but under favour conceive them

to be oaths, and enter them here, to declare my opinion and submission'.

I also find Herbert occasionally expurgating 'obsceanes' and 'ribaldry'

from plays (_Variorum_, iii. 208, 232, 241). But it is obvious from

extant texts that neither he nor his predecessors made any attempt to

enforce a high standard of decency.]

[Footnote 912: R. Whyte to Sir R. Sidney on 26 Oct. 1599 (_Sydney

Papers_, ii. 136), 'Two daies agoe, the ouerthrow of _Turnholt_, was

acted vpon a Stage, and all your Names vsed that were at yt; especially

_Sir Fra. Veres_, and he that plaid that Part gott a Beard resembling

his, and a Watchet Sattin Doublett, with Hose trimd with Siluer Lace.

You was also introduced, Killing, Slaying, and Overthrowing the

_Spaniards_, and honorable Mention made of your Service, in seconding

_Sir Francis Vere_, being engaged'. Turnhout was taken from the Spanish

by Count Maurice of Nassau, with the help of an English contingent, on

24 Jan. 1598.]

[Footnote 913: Winwood to Cecil from Paris on 7 July 1602 (Winwood, i.

425), 'Upon Thursday last, certain Italian comedians did set up upon the

corners of the passages in this towne that that afternoone they would

play _l'Histoire Angloise contre la Roine d'Angleterre_'. Winwood

protested and secured an inhibition, but 'It was objected to me before

the Counsaile by some Standers by, that the Death of the Duke of Guise

hath ben plaied at London; which I answered was never done in the life

of the last King; and sence, by some others, that the Massacre of St.

Bartholomews hath ben publickly acted, and this King represented upon

the stage'. The play introducing Henri IV was probably a revival by the

Admiral's men of Marlowe's _Massacre at Paris_, for which Henslowe was

making advances in Nov. 1601 and Jan. 1602; cf. Bk. III. Evidently

Elizabeth got as good as she gave on the stage. On 2 June 1598 Dr.

Fletcher describes to Sir R. Cecil (_Hatfield MSS._ viii. 190) a recent

dumb show at Brussels in which she was mocked at. On 7 June 1598 one Mr.

Hungerford describes to Essex (_Hatfield MSS._ viii. 197) another, or

perhaps the same, show at Antwerp, in which also she appeared. In Oct.

1607 Walter Yonge records in his _Diary_ (Camden Soc.), 15, a play at

the Jesuit College of Lyons. It lasted two days, and employed 100

actors. An abbess played the Virgin. Calvin, Luther, and others 'with

our late good Queen Elizabeth, condemned', were represented. The

episodes included 'the meritorious deed intended of gunpowder; the

conspiracy of Babington, and others, against Queen Elizabeth; all which

were rewarded with the joys of Paradise'. Yonge adds that a storm broke,

and 'the three resembling the Trinity, and the abbess were stricken with

the hand of the Lord, and it was never known what became of them'. He

says that books were printed about the incident; there are in fact no

less than five recorded in Arber, iii. 361-4 (cf. App. M).]

[Footnote 914: Cf. ch. viii. On 20 July 1586 the Venetian ambassador in

Spain reported (_V. P._ viii. 182) Philip's resentment at 'the

masquerades and comedies which the Queen of England orders to be acted

at his expense. His Majesty has received a summary of one of these which

was lately represented, in which all sorts of evil is spoken of the

Pope, the Catholic religion, and the King, who is accused of spending

all his time in the Escurial with the monks of St. Jerome, attending

only to his buildings, and a hundred other insolences which I refrain

from sending to your Serenity'. This is confirmed by Collier, i. 279,

from a manuscript _Declaration of the True Causes of the Great Troubles

supposed to be Intended against the Realm of England_ (1592). On 15

April 1598 George Nicolson wrote from Edinburgh to Burghley (_Sc. P._

ii. 749), 'It is regretted that the comedians of London should scorn the

king and the people of this land in their play; and it is wished that

the matter should be speedily amended lest the king and the country be

stirred to anger'.]

[Footnote 915: Cf. ch. viii.]

[Footnote 916: Cf. App. C, No. xlv.]

[Footnote 917: _S. P. F._ xi. 567. Cecilia complained to her brother,

King John of Sweden, 'Another time she being bidden to see a comedy

played, there was a black man brought in, and as he was of an evil

favoured countenance, so was he in like manner full of lewd, spiteful

and scornful words, which she said represented the marquis, her

husband'.]

[Footnote 918: Burn, 153, notes from _Lansd. MS._ 232, that the Star

Chamber inflicted a severe punishment for the impersonation of Leicester

in a play.]

[Footnote 919: Bacon (Spedding, ix. 177), _The Proceedings of the Earl

of Essex_.]

[Footnote 920: _S. P. D. Eliz._ cclxxiv. 138.]

[Footnote 921: Cf. ch. xiii (Chamberlain's).]

[Footnote 922: It is probably unnecessary to take literally Arabella

Stuart's letter of 16 Feb. 1603 to Edward Talbot (Bradley, _Arabella

Stuart_, i. 128; ii. 119), 'I am as unjustly accused of contriving a

comedy, as you (on my conscience) a tragedy'.]

[Footnote 923: Von Raumer, ii. 206.]

[Footnote 924: Winwood, ii. 54. Furnivall, _Stubbes_, 79*, tried in vain

to identify a manuscript tract on the abusive attacks of players stated

by Haslewood in _Gentleman's Magazine_ (1816), lxxxvi. 1. 205, to be in

the British Museum. Possibly it was _Sloane MS._ 3543, ff. 19ᵛ, 49, a

_Treatise Apologeticall for Huntinge_, which refers to the 'taxation' of

James on the stage for his love of sport; cf. R. Simpson in _N. S. S.

Trans._ (1874), 375, and E. J. L. Scott in _Athenaeum_ (1896), i. 756.]

[Footnote 925: Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).]

[Footnote 926: Sir Edward Conway to the Privy Council, 12 Aug. 1624

(Chalmers, _Apology_, 500, from _S. P. D. Charles I_, clxxi. 39), 'His

Majesty remembers well there was a commandment and restraint given

against the representing of any modern Christian Kings in those

stage-plays'. This was written about the performance of Middleton's _A

Game of Chess_, reflecting on the Spanish policy of James I, by the

King's men; cf. _M. S. C._ i. 379. Other post-Shakespearian

indiscretions were a performance of a play on the Marquis D'Ancre by an

unnamed company in 1617 (_M. S. C._ i. 376), and one of _Sir John Van

Olden Barnavelt_ by the King's men in 1619 (Bullen, _O. E. P._ iv. 381,

from _S. P. D. James_ cx. 37); cf. Gildersleeve, 113.]

[Footnote 927: This work is not directly concerned with the literary

content of stage-plays. But I may be allowed to express the opinion that

the search for the 'topical' in Elizabethan drama has been pushed beyond

the limits of good sense. Thus I agree with P. W. Long, _The Purport of

Lyly's Endimion_ (_M. L. A._ xxiv. 164), that there is little ground for

the elaborate theories of a dramatization of Elizabeth's personal amours

propounded successively by N. J. Halpin, _Oberon's Vision_ (_Sh. Soc._

1843), G. P. Baker, _Lyly's Endymion_ (1894), xli, and R. W. Bond,

_Works of Lyly_ (1902), iii. 81. Similarly the conjectures of R. Simpson

in his _School of Shakespeare_ (1878) and elsewhere, and of Fleay, and

of most of the writers, other than Small, on the 'war of the theatres'

require handling with the utmost caution.]

[Footnote 928: Winwood, ii. 41.]

[Footnote 929: Gildersleeve, 108, from _Hist. MSS._ iii. 57.]

[Footnote 930: _7 N. Q._ iii. 126; _Hist. MSS._ iii. 62; _S. P. D. Jac.

I_, lxxvii. 58 (John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton); Burn, 78, from

_Harl. MS._ 1227. Yorke was fined and imprisoned with his wife and

brothers, 'pur admittinge de certeigne comon players (vizᵗ) les Simpsons

de player en son meason un enterlude in q. la fuit disputation perenter

Popish preist et English minister et le preist est de convince le

minister in argument et le weapon de le minister esteant le bible et le

preist le crosse et le Diabole fuit counterfeit la de prender le English

minister et son Angle prist le preist per q. enterlude le religion ore

profeste fuit grandment scandall et pluss del audience fueront

recusants.... Le cheife Justice [Coke?] dit q. players de enterludes

sont Rogues per le statute ... et le very bringing de religion sur le

stage est libell.' On the career of the Simpsons, cf. ch. ix. The actual

offence may have been some years earlier than the Star Chamber sitting

of 1614, for Devon, 261, records a payment to the Keeper of the

Gatehouse at Westminster for the diet of Lady Julian, wife of Sir John

Yorke, as a prisoner from 5 Nov. 1611 to 13 Oct. 1613. The Yorkes were

not of those who learn by experience, for in 1628 the Star Chamber

sentenced Christopher Malloy for playing the devil in a performance at

Sir John Yorke's house in Yorkshire, in which part he carried King James

on his back to hell, and alleged that all Protestants were damned (Burn,

119).]

[Footnote 931: Dekker, _Work for Armourers_ (1609, _Works_, iv. 96),

'Tearme times, when the Twopeny Clients and Peny Stinkards swarme

together to heere the Stagerites'.]

[Footnote 932: Dekker, _The Dead Tearme_ (1608, _Works_, iv. 22), of

Bartholomewtide, 'when thou (O thou beautifull, but bewitching Citty)

... allurest people from all the corners of the land, to throng in

heapes, at thy Fayres and thy Theators'.]

[Footnote 933: Dekker, _Seven Deadly Sins of London_ (1606, _Works_, ii.

52), 'The players prayd for his [Sloth's] comming: they lost nothing by

it, the comming in of tenne Embassadors was never so sweete to them, as

this our sinne was: their houses smoakt every after noone with Stinkards

who were so glewed together in crowdes with the steames of strong

breath, that when they came foorth, their faces lookt as if they had

beene per-boyld'.]

[Footnote 934: Cf. App. D, Nos. cxxxi, cli.]

[Footnote 935: Cf. App. E.]

[Footnote 936: The full tables are in Murray, ii. 181.]

[Footnote 937: _Your Five Gallants_ (1607), iv. 2. 30, 'If the bill down

rise to above thirty, here's no place for players' (cf. App. E, s. a.

1605); _Ram Alley_ (1607-8), iv. 1, 'I dwindle as a new player does at a

plague bill certefied forty'. Thorndike, _Influence of Beaumont and

Fletcher upon Shakespeare_, 16, doubts whether the theatres can in fact

have been wholly closed from Aug. 1608 to Dec. 1609, when the bill was

almost continuously over 40. I think that Murray, ii. 175, sufficiently

answers some of his points, but in _Shakespeare's Theater_, 241, he

cites _Keysar v. Burbage_ (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Chapel) as evidence that

the King's played at Blackfriars during the plague season of 1609. Both

disputants seem to have overlooked the special payments to the King's

men (App. B) for private practice before the Christmases of 1608-9 and

1609-10. It is possible that they were allowed, in spite of a general

restraint, to use the Blackfriars for this purpose, and even admit a

select audience. If a similar relaxation was given to the Revels at

Whitefriars, the dating of _Epicoene_ in' 1609' would be explained. I do

not agree with Murray that it is likely to have been produced in the

provinces. After all, the plague bill was well under 40 by 7 Dec. 1609,

although it went up to 39 again on 28 Dec.]

[Footnote 938: In 1574, a restraint covers 10 miles from the city; in

1581 (a civic precept), 2 miles; in 1593, 7 miles; in 1594, 5 miles; in

1597, 3 miles.]

[Footnote 939: Cf. App. D, Nos. lxxii, lxxv, and the use of the Curtain

as an 'easer' to the Theatre (ch. xvi); also the relations of the

Admiral's and Strange's during 1589-94.]

[Footnote 940: Strange's men petitioned _c._ 1592 (App. D, No. xcii),

'oure Companie is greate, and thearbie our chardge intollerable, in

travellinge the Countrie, and the contynuance thereof wilbe a meane to

bringe vs to division and seperacion'. My impression is that, when they

did have to travel in 1592 or 1593, Pembroke's (cf. ch. xiii) budded off

from them. Their own travelling warrant was for 6 men, but this does not

exclude hirelings. The provincial records do not give much evidence as

to the actual size of travelling companies. The strength of seven

companies which visited Southampton in 1576-7 (Murray, ii. 396) ranged

from 6 to 12. I incline to agree with Murray and W. J. Lawrence (_T. L.

S._, 21 Aug. 1919) that the average may be put at about 10 for the

latter part of the sixteenth century and that it grew in the

seventeenth. A Lord Chamberlain's licence of 1621 (Murray, ii. 192) sets

a limit of 18. Probably 10 men, duplicating parts, could play many of

the London plays without alteration, but obviously not the more

spectacular ones.]

[Footnote 941: Dekker, _The Wonderfull Yeare_ (1603, _Works_, i. 100),

'The worst players Boy stood vpon his good parts, swearing tragicall and

busking oathes, that how vilainously soeuer he randed, or what bad and

vnlawfull action soeuer he entred into, he would in despite of his

honest audience be halfe a sharer (at leaste) at home, or else strowle

(thats to say trauell) with some notorious wicked floundring company

abroad'; _News from Hell_ (1606, _Works_, ii. 146), 'a companie of

country players, ... that with strowling were brought to deaths door';

_Belman of London_ (1608, _Works_, iii. 81), 'Nor Players they bee, who

out of an ambition to weare the best Ierkin (in a Strowling company) or

to Act great Parts, forsake the stately and our more than Romaine Cittie

Stages, to trauel vpon the hard hoofe from village to village for chees

& butter-milke'; _Lanthorne and Candlelight_ (1608, _Works_, iii. 255),

'Strowlers; a proper name given to country players that (without socks)

trotte from towne to towne vpon the hard hoofe'; _The Raven's Almanac_

(1609, _Works_, iv. 196), 'Players, by reason they shal have a hard

winter, and must travell on the hoofe, will lye sucking there for pence

and twopences, like young pigges at a sow newly farrowed'.]

[Footnote 942: 'Paid to the plaiers with the waggon' (Exeter, 1576-7);

'Misdemeanoure done in the towne vppon misusage of a wagon or coache of

the Lo. Bartlettes [Berkeley's] players' (Faversham, 1596-7); Dekker,

_Satiromastix_, 1522, of Horace-Jonson, 'Thou hast forgot how thou

amblest (in leather pilch) by a play-wagon, in the high way'; cf. ch.

xi.]

[Footnote 943: R. W., _Mount Tabor_, 110 (repr. Harrison, iv. 355),

_Upon a Stage-play which I saw when I was a child_. The play was the

morality of _The Castle of Security_; cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 189.]

[Footnote 944: Cf. _Bibl. Note_ to ch. xii.]

[Footnote 945: 'For lynks to give light in the euenyng' (Bristol, 1577);

'for candells and torches then spent' (Canterbury, 1574); 'for the

skafowld' (Exeter, 1604-5); 'to make a scaffolde in the Bothall'

(Gloucester, 1559-60, with similar entries in other years up to 1568);

'a pounde of candelles' (Gloucester, 1561-2); 'for nayles ... for

layeing the tymber off ye stage together' (Maidstone, 1568-9); 'bordes

that was borowed for to make a skaffold to the Halle' (Nottingham,

1572); 'for bearinge of bordes and other furniture' (Plymouth, 1580-1);

'for setting up stoopes for players' (Stafford, _c._ 1616).]

[Footnote 946: 'For amendynge the seelynge in the Guildhall that the

Enterlude players had broken downe there this yeare' (Barnstaple,

1593-4); 'for mending the bord in the Yeld hall and the doers there,

after my L. of Leycesters players who had leave to play there' (Bristol,

1577-8); 'for mending of ii forormes which were taken out of Sᵗ George

Chapple and set in the Yeld hall at the play, and by the disordre of the

people were broken' (Bristol, 1581); 'for mendinge the cheyre in the

parlor at the Hall ... which was broken by the playars' (Leicester,

1605); 'for mendinge the glasse wyndowes att the towne hall more then

was given by the playors whoe broake the same' (Leicester, 1608); &c.]

[Footnote 947: Murray, ii. 205, 229, 247, 261-3, 277-81, 284-5, 377-8,

&c.]

[Footnote 948: Ibid. 202, 224, 'Given to the Queens plaiers xixˢ iiijᵈ,

and was to make it up xxvjˢ viijᵈ that was gathered at the benche' (Bath,

1587); 'xvˢ beside the gatheringe' (Bath, 1588); 'xvˢ vjᵈ besides that

which was given by the companie' (Bath, 1592); 'iijˢ viijᵈ on and besyde

the benevolens of the people' (Canterbury, 1549); G. B. Richardson,

_Extracts from the Municipal Accounts of Newcastle_, 'the Erle of Sussessx

plaiers in full payment of £3 for playing a free play, commanded by Mʳ

Maiore' (1594).]

[Footnote 949: Kelly, 197, 209, 247. On 22 Nov. 1566 a Corporation 'Act

agaynst Waystynge of the Towne Stock' laid down that at plays there

should be no 'greate alowance' out of the stock for rewards to players,

but that 'euery one of the Maiores Brethren & of the xlviij beinge

requyred, or havinge sommons by the comaundement of Mʳ. Maior for the

tyme beinge to be there shall beare euery one of theym his & theire

porcion'. This was confirmed on 4 Jan. 1570. On 16 Nov. 1582, 'It is

agreed that frome henceforthe there shall not bee anye ffees or rewards

gevon by the Chamber of this Towne, nor anye of the xxiiijᵗᶦ or

xlviijᵗᶦ to be charged with anye payments ffor or towards anye Bearewards,

Beearbaytings, Players, Playes, Enterludes or Games, or anye of theym

except the Quenes Maiesties or the Lords of the Privye Counsall, nor

that anye Players bee suffred to playe att the Towne Hall (except before

except) & then butt onlye before the Mayor & his bretherne, vppon peyne

of xlˢ to be lost by the Mayor that shall suffer or doe to the contrarye,

to be levyed by his successour, vpon peyne of vˡᶦ if he make default

therein'. On 30 Jan. 1607, 'It is agreed that non of either of the Twoe

Companies shalbee compelled at anie tyme hereafter to paye towards anie

playes, but such of them as shalbee then present at the said playes: the

Kings Maiesties playors, the Queenes Maiesties playors, and the young

Prince his playors excepted; and alsoe all such playors as doe belonge to

anie of the Lords of his Maiesties most honorable Privie Counsell alsoe

excepted; to theise they are to paye accordinge to the auncyent custome,

havinge warnynge by the Mace bearer to bee att euerye such play'.]

[Footnote 950: Murray, ii. 206, 'Order by the bailiffes and 24 aldermen,

as also by the comburgesses, that no playars or berwardes shalbe receved

upon the Townes chardges, but if any will see the same plaies or bere

baytinges, the same must be upon there owne costes and chardges'.]

[Footnote 951: When performances were prohibited at Chester in 1596 the

city fixed the scale of 'gratuity' at 20_s._ for the Queen's players and

6_s._ 8_d._ for noblemen's players (Morris, 333). The Queen's men were

'much discontented' with 6_s._ at Dunwich in 1596-7 (_Hist. MSS._,

_Various Collections_, vii. 82).]

[Footnote 952: 'Forasmuch as the grauntinge of leave to stage players or

players of interludes and the like, to act and represent theire

interludes playes and shewes in the towne-hall is very hurtfull

troublesome and inconvenyent for that the table, benches and fourmes

theire sett and placed for holdinge the Kinges Courtes are by those

meanes broken and spoyled, or at least wise soe disordered that the

Mayor and bayliffes and other officers of the saide courts comminge

thither for the administracion of justice, especially in the Pipowder

Courts of the said Towne, which are there to bee holden twice a day yf

occasion soe require, cannot sit there in such decent and convenient

order as becometh, and dyvers other inconvenyences do thereupon ensue,

It is therefore ordered by generall consent that from henceforth no

leaue shall bee graunted to any Stage players or interlude players or to

any other person or persons resortinge to this towne to act shewe or

represent any manner of interludes or playes or any other sportes or

pastymes whatsoeuer in the said hall' (Southampton, 1623); 'Forasmuch as

we finde the glass windows in the Council Chamber to be much broken, and

the city thereby suffereth much damage, ordered that no plaies nor

players be suffered to have any use thereof' (Worcester, 1627). An

earlier Worcester order had limited players to 'the lower end onlie' of

the guildhall. At Chester in 1615 the exclusion of players from the hall

was openly based on 'the common brute & scandall' due to 'convertinge

the same beinge appointed & ordained for the judicial hearinge &

determininge of criminall offences, & for the solempne meetinge &

concourse of this howse into a stage for plaiers & a receptacle for idle

persons'.]

[Footnote 953: 'At the New Ynn' (Abingdon, 1559); 'Certen playars,

playinge uppon ropes at the Crosse Keys' (Leicester, 1590). Worcester's

men played at Norwich in 1583 'in their hoste his hows', and the Queen's

men in the same year at the Red Lion. A Norwich order of 1601 forbade

plays at the White Horse in Tombland. A Salisbury order of 1624 laid

down that all plays should in future be at the George in High Street.

Where the house of a named citizen is given as the play-place, one may

perhaps generally infer an inn; but in 1573 Leicester's men seem to have

played at Bristol 'in the Mayors house', and at Plymouth in 1559-60

'players of London' performed 'in the vycarage'.]

[Footnote 954: 'In the churche' (Doncaster, 1574); 'in the colledge

churche yarde' (Gloucester, 1589-90); 'in the churche lofte' (Marlow,

1608-9); 'in the churche' (Plymouth, 1559-60, 1565-6, 1573-4); 'in XXe

churche' (Norwich, 1589-90); 'the Chappell nere the Newhall' (Norwich,

1616); 'because they should not play in the church' (Syston, 1602). On

the religious opposition to this practice, cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii.

191.]

[Footnote 955: M. Sellers, in _E. H. R._ xii. 446, from _Corporation

Minute Book_, xxxiii, f. 187.]

[Footnote 956: Murray, ii. 335.]

[Footnote 957: Cf. ch. xii (Chapel).]

[Footnote 958: So, too, the Norwich accounts record in 1590 a reward to

'the lorde Shandos players' and 'Item more in rewarde to another company

of his men that cam with lycens presently after saying that thos that

cam before were counterfete and not the L. Shandos men'.]

[Footnote 959: Cf. ch. ix.]

[Footnote 960: 'There shall not any playes ... be played ... on any

Sabaothe dayes nor aboue twoe daies together at any tyme. And no players

... to be suffered to playe againe ... within twentie and eighte daies

nexte after such tyme as they shall haue laste played.... And they shall

not exceede the hower of nyne of the clocke in the nighte' (Canterbury,

_Burghmote Book_, 1595); 'This day lycens ys graunted to the L. of

Huntington his players to playe one daye & not vppon the Saboath daye'

(Norwich, 1597); 'The Quenes players had leave guiven them to play for

one weeke so that they play neither on the Saboth day nor in the night

nor more then one play a day' (Norwich, 1611).]

[Footnote 961: 'Not ... after nyne of the clocke' (Norwich, 1599); cf.

Canterbury, above. A Chester order of 1615 fixed 6 p.m. and a Salisbury

order of 1623 7 p.m. as the limit; an Exeter order of 1609 (_H. M. C.

Exeter MSS._ 321) allowed 6 p.m. between Annunciation and Michaelmas and

5 p.m. between Michaelmas and Annunciation.]

[Footnote 962: Lord Coke, as Recorder of Coventry, wrote to the

Corporation on 28 March 1615 (Murray, ii. 254): 'Forasmuch as this time

is by his Maiesties lawes and iniunctions consecrated to the service of

Almighty God, and publique notice was given on the last Sabaoth for

preparacion to the receyving of the holy communion. Theis are to will

and require you to suffer no common players whatsoever to play within

your Citie for that it would tend to the hinderance of devotion, and

drawing of the artificers and common people from their labour. And this

being signified vnto any such they will rest therewith (as becometh

them) satisfied, otherwise suffer you them not and this shall be your

sufficient warrant.' The letter is endorsed 'The Lord Coke his lettre

concerning the La: Eliza: Players'. The Earl of Cumberland would not let

Lord Vaux's men play in 1609 'because it was Lent & therefor not

fitting' (Murray, ii. 255).]

[Footnote 963: Murray, ii. 234 (Chester, 1595). The Privy Council

warrant for the provincial tour of Strange's men in 1593 expressly

excludes plays in service time.]

[Footnote 964: 'The tyme was busy, they dyd not play' (Bristol, 1541);

'for that they should not playe here by reason that the sicknes was then

in this Cytye' (Canterbury, 1608); 'for that the tyme was not

conveynyent' (Leicester, 1584); 'to avoyd the meetynge of people this

whote whether for fear of any infeccon as also for that they came fro an

infected place' (Norwich, 1583). On 6 May 1597 the Privy Council wrote

to the Suffolk justices to prohibit stage plays during the Whitsun

holidays at Hadleigh (App. D, No. cviii), 'doubting what inconveniences

may follow thereon, especially at this tyme of scarcety, when disordred

people of the comon sort wilbe apt to misdemeane themselves'. There had

been tumults in Norfolk during April, owing to the scarcity of grain

(Dasent, xxvii. 88). The Privy Council did not, however, often interfere

directly with provincial plays; another example is the letter of 23 June

1592 to the Earl of Derby (cf. App. D, No. xci), forbidding plays on

Sundays and holidays in his lieutenancy.]

[Footnote 965: I think there is a clear distinction in municipal

accounts between a 'reward' for playing and a 'gratuity' for not

playing; cf. the Norwich orders in Murray, ii. 339, 341, 'beinge

demaunded wherefore their comeing was, sayd they came not to ask leaue

to play but to aske the gratuetie of the Cytty' (1614), 'he was desired

to desist from playing & offered a benevolence in money which he refused

to accept' (1616), 'this house offered him a gratuitie to desist'

(1616).]

[Footnote 966: A. Clark, _Shirburn Ballads_, 48. He complained that

'Before tyme noble-mens menn hadd such entertaynement when they came to

the towne that the towne hadd the favour of noble-men, but now

noble-mens menn hadd such entertaynement that the towne was brought into

contempt with noble-menn'. The players were probably Essex's men, as

their performance on Sunday was contrary to his 'lettre'. He was,

however, also High Steward of Maldon.]

[Footnote 967: Cf. p. 336.]

[Footnote 968: T. Gent, _Hist. of Hull_, 128.]

[Footnote 969: Murray, ii. 337, 'This day John Mufford one of the Lᵈ

Beauchamps players being forbidden by Mʳ Maiour to playe within the

liberties of this Citie and in respect thereof gave them among them xxˢ

and yett notwithstanding they did sett up bills to provoke men to come

to their playe and did playe in XXe churche. Therefore the seid John

Mufford is comytted to prison' (1590); cf. ch. xiii (Worcester's, 1583;

Essex's, 1585; Derby's, 1602). So, too, at Coventry in 1600 'the lo:

Shandoes [Chandos's] players were comitted to prison for their contempt

agaynst Mʳ Maior & ther remayned untill they made their submisshon under

their hands as appeareth in the fyle of Record and their hands to be

seene'. At Nottingham in 1603 a penalty on the host is recorded in the

entry 'Richard Jackson commytted for sufferinge players to sound thyere

trumpetts and playinge in his howse without lycence, and for suffering

his guests to be out all night'.]

[Footnote 970: Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 326, reprints from this tract (S.

R. 31 May 1605) the chapter 'a pretty Prancke passed by Ratsey upon

certain Players that he met by chance in an Inne, who denied their Lord

and Maister, and used another Noblemans name'. Gamaliel Ratsey,

highwayman, harangued the players, like Hamlet, on 'striving to

over-doe, and go beyond yourselves ... yet your poets take great paines

to make your parts fit for your mouthes, though you gape never so wide',

and on the ups and downs of the profession, for some 'goe home at night

with fifteene pence share apeece', while others become wealthy. Later he

met them again passing 'like camelions' under the name of another lord.

They gave a 'private play' before Ratsey, who rewarded them with 40_s._,

'with which they held themselves very richly satisfied, for they scarce

had twentie shillings audience at any time for a play in the countrey'.

Next day he met them with their wagon in the highway, robbed them, bade

them pawn their apparel, 'for as good actors and stalkers as you are

have done it, though now they scorne it', gave them leave to play under

his protection and share with him, and advised their leader to get to

London.]

[Footnote 971: Payments to travelling companies appear in the household

accounts of the Earl of Rutland at Belvoir (_Rutland MSS._ iv. 260), the

Earl of Cumberland at Skipton Castle (Murray, ii. 255), the Duchess of

Suffolk at Grimsthorpe (_Ancaster MSS._ 459), Sir George Vernon at

Haddon Hall (G. Le B. Smith, _Haddon_, 121), Lord North at Kirtling

(Murray, ii. 295), the Earl of Derby at Lathom House, New Park, and

Knowsley Hall (Murray, ii. 296), the Shuttleworths at Smithills and

Gawthorpe Hall (Murray, ii. 393), and Francis Willoughby at Wollaton

(_Middleton MSS._ 421). In _A Mad World, my Masters_, v. 1, 2,

characters shamming to be Lord Owemuch's players come to Sir Bounteous

Progress's, and perform _The Slip_, until they are interrupted by a

constable.]

[Footnote 972: Murray, ii. 19-98, records, in addition to the above, the

names of from fifty to sixty patrons between 1559 and 1616, under whose

names companies are not traceable in London.]

[Footnote 973: Cf. ch. xxii.]

[Footnote 974: Cf. ch. xiii (King's, Anne's).]

[Footnote 975: Grosart, _Lismore Papers_, 1. xix; W. J. Lawrence, _Was

Shakespeare ever in Ireland?_ (_Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xlii. 65). The earliest

notice is of Prince Charles's men in Feb. 1616.]

[Footnote 976: Cf. ch. xiv.]

[Footnote 977: C. Hughes, _Shakespeare's Europe_, 304, 373. Moryson

again refers to the vogue abroad of 'stragling broken companyes' from

England in his account of the London theatre; cf. ch. xvi,

introduction.]

[Footnote 978: E. Cellius, _Eques Auratus Anglo-Wirtembergicus_ (1605),

229 'Profert enim multos et praestantes Anglia musicos, comoedos,

tragoedos, histrionicae peritissimos, e quibus interdum aliquot

consociati sedibus suis ad tempus relictis ad exteras nationes

excurrere, artemque suam illis praesertim Principum aulis demonstrare

ostentareque consueverunt. Paucis ab hinc annis in Germaniam nostram

Anglicani musici dictum ob finem expaciati, et in magnorum Principum

aulis aliquandiu versati, tantum ex arte musica, histrionicaque sibi

favorem conciliarunt, ut largiter remunerati domum inde auro et argento

onusti sunt reversi'; Johannes Rhenanus, in dedication of _Streit der

Sinne_ (a translation of the English play of _Lingua_) to Maurice of

Hesse-Cassel, '... die Engländischen Comoedianten (ich rede von geübten)

anderen vorgehn und den Vorzug haben'; Daniel von Wensin, _Oratio contra

Britanniam_, in Fr. Achillis Ducis Würtemberg, _Consultatio de

principatu inter provincias Europae habita Tubingae in illustri

collegio_ (1613), 'Nec diu est cum plerique artifices in Anglia

peregrini et exteri et aurifabri Londini pene omnes fuerunt Germani:

Anglis interea gulae voluptatibus ... et rebus nihili, atque adeo

histrioniae iugiter operam dantibus; in qua sic profecerunt, ut iam apud

nos Angli histriones omnium maxime delectent'.]

[Footnote 979: Another example is Ioannes Valentinus Andreae, who writes

in his _Vita_ (ed. 1849), 10 'Iam a secundo et tertio post millesimum

sexcentesimum coeperam aliquid exercendi ingenii ergo pangere, cuius

facile prima fuere Esther et Hyacinthus comoediae ad aemulationem

Anglicorum histrionum iuvenili ausu factae'.]

[Footnote 980: M. Röchell, _Chronik_, in _Die Geschichtsquellen des

Bisthums Münster_, iii. 174.]

[Footnote 981: E. Mentzel, _Geschichte der Schauspielkunst in

Frankfurt_, 52.]

[Footnote 982: Cohn, lxxxviii.]

[Footnote 983: A. Glaser, _Geschichte des Theaters in Braunschweig_,

13.]

[Footnote 984: _Archiv für Litteratur-Geschichte_, xv. 212, from diary

of Martin Crusius at Tübingen in 1597: 'Es sind wol x Comoedianten hie

gewesen: qui 5 aut 6 dies comoedias egerunt in domo frumentaria.

Dicuntur Angli esse et miri artifices. Sunt illi quibus Dux noster 300

fl. donasse dicitur. Ego non spectaui. Quid ad hominem ista

septuagenario maiorem? fuerunt illa dramata amatoria. Hodie Susannam

egerunt. Ego sum scriptoribus Homericis occupatus.']

[Footnote 985: Cohn, lxxx.]

[Footnote 986: C. F. Meyer in _Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. 200.]

[Footnote 987: C. Harris in _M. L. A._ xxii. 446.]

[Footnote 988: Cohn, xcvi.]

XI

THE ACTOR'S ECONOMICS

[_Bibliographical Note._--The material for this chapter is

mainly to be found in Book III (Companies) and Book IV

(Theatres) and the works there cited. My account of Henslowe is

practically all based on W. W. Greg, _Henslowe's Diary_

(1904-8) and _Henslowe Papers_ (1907). W. Rendle made a useful

contribution in _Philip Henslowe_ (_Genealogist_, n. s. iv).

Since I completed this chapter, useful studies in theatrical

finance have been contributed by A. Thaler, _Shakespeare's

Income_ (1918, _S. P._ xv. 82), _Playwright's Benefits and

Interior Gathering in the Elizabethan Theatre_ (1919, _S. P._

xvi. 187), _The Elizabethan Dramatic Companies_ (1920, _M. L.

R._ xxxv. 123).]

Withal the actors, or the more discreet of them, prospered. This fact

peeps out from the diatribes of their critics, and is indeed part of the

case against them. The theatres are thronged, while the churches are

empty. The drones suck the honey stored up by London's laborious

citizens. Already, in 1578, John Stockwood estimates the aggregate gain

of eight play-houses, open but once in the week, at £2,000 by the year.

The players began to ruffle it, in garments fit only for their betters.

'The very hyrelings', says Gosson in 1579, 'which stand at reuersion of

viˢ by the weeke, iet under gentlemen's noses in sutes of silke,

exercising themselues too prating on the stage, and common scoffing when

they come abrode, where they looke askance ouer the shoulder at euery

man, of whom the Sunday before they begged an almes'; and in like vein

Walsingham's correspondent of 1587 bewails to him the 'wofull sight to

see two hundred proude players jett in their silkes, wheare five hundred

pore people sterve in the streets'. It is, however, possible to lay

undue stress upon the public finery as an evidence of prosperity, for

this was apt to be borrowed from the tiring-house wardrobe, and in time

it was found that the advertisement earned hardly justified the

detriment to the common stock of apparel. The articles signed by those

joining the Lady Elizabeth's men about 1614 bound them amongst other

things not to go out of the theatre with any of the apparel on their

bodies. The surest economic sign of a growing industry is the capacity

to spend money on building, and it was a true instinct that led

Stockwood to discommend the gorgeous playing-places erected at 'great

charges' in the fields, and William Harrison to note it as 'an evident

token of a wicked time when plaiers wexe so riche that they can build

suche houses'. And when Robert Greene wanted to paint a picture of a

typical successful actor in 1592, he made him describe himself as one

who had once travelled on foot and carried his properties on his back,

but now his very share in playing apparel would not be sold for £200,

and he was reputed by his neighbours able 'at his proper cost to build a

windmill'.[989] James Burbadge was 'the first builder of playhowses',

and thereby laid the foundations of the prosperity of his family. He had

been a joiner, before he became a player, and perhaps this suggested the

enterprise of the Theatre, which he put up in 1576 upon borrowed

capital. When his son Richard died in 1619 he was reckoned worth £300 a

year in land. Even more fortunate was Edward Alleyn, who was in a

position to retire from the stage before he was forty, to purchase the

manor of Dulwich for £10,000, to build the College of God's Gift, and

thereafter to spend upon the maintenance of his household and his

foundation at the rate of some £1,700 a year. Other actors, mainly of

the King's company, can be shown to have made their more modest piles.

Thomas Pope, Augustine Phillips, Henry Condell, all appear from their

wills to have been substantial men when they died. John Heminge is

described in 1614 as 'of greate lyveinge wealth and power'. The

Restoration story that Shakespeare spent £1,000 a year at Stratford is

probably apocryphal, in view of the fact that his known investments only

amount to a little over £1,000; but at least he returned as a moneyed

man to the scene of his father's bankruptcy, and enjoyed consideration

as the owner of the best house in his native town. Aubrey's statement

that he left property worth about £200 or £300 a year, which gives him a

fortune about equal to Richard Burbadge's, seems not unreasonable.[990]

Like true Englishmen, the successful players sought after less material

proof of their worth than was afforded by their lands and houses.

Alleyn, having long been lord of a manor, and having connected himself

by marriage with the Dean of St. Paul's, was desirous in 1624 of 'sum

further dignetie', probably a knighthood. Others were content with

acquiring or assuming a claim to armorial bearings, which would entitle

them to rank as 'gentlemen'. Shakespeare in 1596 obtained a confirmation

of a grant of arms made to his father as bailiff of Stratford nearly

thirty years before; and in 1599 sought additional authority to impale

the coat of his mother's family, the Ardens.[991] Heminges obtained a

confirmation of arms in 1629. Such grants did not go altogether

unstrictured by heraldic purists, and the cases of Shakespeare and of

his fellow Richard Cowley formed part of the material for a charge of

making grants to 'base and ignoble persons' brought by a rival against

the responsible king-of-arms. Augustine Phillips and Thomas Pope did not

trouble the heralds, but went to an heraldic painter, and bought, the

one the arms of Sir William Phillips, Lord Bardolph, and the other those

of Sir Thomas Pope, Chancellor of the Augmentations.[992] These

ambitions of the players, no less than their investments, yielded stuff

both for moralizing and for satire. Henry Crosse, in his _Vertues

Common-wealth_ (1603), rebukes the pride of the 'copper-lace gentlemen'

who 'purchase lands by adulterous playes'.[993] And in the tract of

_Ratseis Ghost_ (1605), already cited, Gamaliel Ratsey speaks of those

'whom Fortune hath so well favored that, what by penny-sparing and long

practise of playing, are growne so wealthy that they have expected to be

knighted, or at least to be conjunct in authority and to sit with men of

great worship on the bench of justice'; and he advises the country

player, with whom he has fallen in, to get him to London, 'and when thou

feelest thy purse well lined, buy thee some place or lordship in the

country, that, growing weary of playing, thy mony may there bring thee

to dignitie and reputation'. The player too heard 'of some that have

gone to London very meanly, and have come in time to be exceeding

wealthy'. Ratsey then knights him 'Sir Simon Two Shares and a Halfe',

and tells him he is 'the first knight that ever was player in

England'.[994]