Certainly all players did not grow rich, even in London. Some of them

to the end, perhaps the majority, remained threadbare companions enough;

in and out of debt, spongers upon their fellows, frequenters of

pawnshops, acquainted with prison. Partly it was a matter of character.

Those who had to do with the stage were not all such riff-raff as a

hasty reading of the Puritan literature might suggest. Gosson, indeed,

admits as much, allowing that some among those professing 'the qualitie'

are 'sober, discreete, properly learned honest housholders and citizens

well thought on amonge their neighbours at home'; while on his side

Thomas Heywood is quick to maintain the harm wrought by the licentious

to a calling in which many are 'of substance, of government, of sober

lives and temperate carriages, house-keepers and contributory to all

duties enjoyned them', and to plead that if there be a few of degenerate

demeanour, his readers will not 'censure hardly of all for the misdeeds

of some'.[995] Doubtless there is a certain instability of temperament,

which the life of the theatre, with its ups and downs of fortune, its

unreal sentiments and its artificially stimulated emotions, is well

calculated to encourage; and we may perhaps find the victims of such a

temperament in certain actors who, although clearly of standing in their

profession, seem to have been constantly shifting from company to

company, without attaining any secure position or, as one may

conjecture, reaping any substantial harvest from their labour and their

skill. One of these was Richard Jones, originally a fellow of Alleyn

with Lord Worcester's men, presently selling to Alleyn his share of

clothes and books, at one time reduced to 1_s._ a day or nothing, at

another setting out to tour the Continent with Robert Browne, then back

again with Alleyn amongst the Admiral's men, then transferring himself

to the Swan and returning a few months later to the Rose, and finally

allowing himself to be bought out for £50 and passing into obscurity.

Another was Martin Slater, also at one time one of the Admiral's men,

whom he left and went to law with, then a wanderer with Laurence

Fletcher in Scotland, and afterwards successively traceable with Lord

Hertford's men, with Queen Anne's, as a member of the King's Revels

syndicate, and with Queen Anne's again as manager of one of the

provincial companies travelling under the Queen's warrant. Perhaps it is

merely another way of stating the same issue to say that the financial

success of a player depended on his obtaining an interest, not merely in

the day-to-day profits of a company, but also in the permanent

investment represented by a theatre. This becomes readily apparent upon

an analysis of the business methods employed in the organization of the

dramatic industry. The basis of this organization was the banding

together of players into associations or partnerships, the members of

which acted together, held a common stock of garments and play-books,

incurred joint expenditure, and daily or at other convenient periods

divided up the profits of their enterprise. In a legal document an

associate of such a company is described as 'a full adventurer, storer

and sharer among them';[996] the term in ordinary use was 'sharer'. No

doubt the sharing arrangement was in origin traditional; it is described

in 1614 as 'accordinge to the custome of players'.[997] But it became

convenient to formulate it in a legal agreement or 'composition', which

provided for the co-operation of the sharers and defined their relations

to each other. Thus the composition of the Duke of York's men in 1610

bound them to play together for three years, and deprived a member who

left without the consent of his fellows of any interest in the common

stock. Under that of Queen Anne's men about 1612 a retiring sharer was

entitled to a payment at the rate of £80 for a full share. Such

provisions, which were intended to obviate the breaking up of a stock,

and of themselves indicate a substantial investment of capital, seem to

have been usual. Alleyn had £50 on leaving the Admiral's men in 1597,

Jones and Shaw £50 in 1602; under the composition of the same company,

then the Prince's men, in 1613, a sharer retiring with consent was

entitled to £70. Both the Queen's and the Prince's men made a similar

allowance to the widow of a sharer. Each of the sharers signed a bond

for the observance of the composition, which also covered certain

disciplinary regulations imposed by the company on its members. Thus the

articles signed by Robert Dawes, on joining the Lady Elizabeth's men in

1614, not only made him a partaker in the contractual and financial

liabilities of the company, but also exposed him to penalties if he

missed plays or rehearsals, or came late or in a state of intoxication,

or took apparel or other common property away from the theatre. As the

compositions grew more detailed and the enterprises more important, it

proved convenient that one of the sharers should be appointed, formally

or informally, to act as trustee and manager for the rest, to receive

and make payments, to hold the composition, bonds, licences, and other

legal papers, and generally to look after the business interests of his

fellows. Thus it is pleaded in a lawsuit concerning Queen Anne's men

that Thomas Greene was 'one of the principall and cheif persons of the

said companie', and did 'laie out or disburse' moneys on their behalf;

and that, after his death in 1612, the company 'did put the managing of

thier whole businesses and affaires belonging vnto them ioyntly as they

were players in trust' unto Christopher Beeston, by whom they were

'altogether ruled'. John Heminge seems to have acted in a similar

capacity for the King's men, and to have had the custody of their deeds.

He regularly appears as their payee at Court, and it is probable that he

gave up acting in order to devote himself to business management. The

members of a company did not invariably share and share alike. It is

possible that in some cases the manager or a leading actor had a

preponderant interest.[998] Tucca, in _The Poetaster_, at the end of his

interview with Histrio, bids him commend him to 'Seven Shares and a

Half'. So, too, Gamaliel Ratsey knights his player as 'Sir Simon Two

Shares and a Halfe'. Perhaps this is only the chaff of the satirists. In

any case one hopes that there is no foundation for the further

suggestion of Tucca, when he offers to take the players into his

service, and 'ha' two shares for my countenance'.[999] We know what

Ratsey's corresponding threat to 'share with thee againe for playing

under my warrant' means, for Ratsey was a highwayman, and levied his

share not by 'composition', but at the end of a pistol. An actual

example of a privileged share is that held by Alleyn in the Admiral's

company about 1600, which seems to have been free of any liability to

contribute towards the upkeep of the stock or other current

expenses.[1000] The shares were often subdivided, so that some members

of the company were full sharers, others half sharers or three-quarter

sharers.[1001] The number of shares varied; an ordinary London company

may be taken to have consisted of about ten or twelve sharers.[1002] For

travelling purposes it is probable that separate compositions were

entered into, except perhaps for short summer tours, and that the

numbers were smaller.[1003] It should be made clear that the companies

of players, although based upon the bodies of royal or noble servants

constituted under patents or other warrants of appointment, were not

precisely identical with these. Each company had to get the authority of

such a warrant, before it was licensed to act at all, but the legal bond

of association between its members was not the warrant, but the

composition. As a rule the terms of the patents give or imply a power to

those named in them to associate themselves with others. New members

could doubtless be sworn into the service of the lord without any need

for a fresh patent. But it cannot be held that every fellow sharer was

necessarily a servant of the same lord, and still less that every

servant named in a warrant was necessarily a sharer of any particular

company acting under that warrant. Thus there is no proof that Laurence

Fletcher, who is named first amongst the King's servants of 1603, ever

acted with the King's men. Similarly Martin Slater and certain other

Queen's servants and Gilbert Reason, a Prince's servant, did not, during

long periods, act with the corresponding London companies, but toured

the provinces with companies of their own, taking out for this purpose

duplicates or exemplifications of the patents, a practice which came to

be regarded by the authorities as an abuse.[1004] On the other hand, the

servants of two lords sometimes played as a single company.[1005] Thus

Lord Oxford's men and Lord Worcester's were 'ioyned by agrement

togeather in on companie' at the Boar's Head during 1602. Similarly Lord

Hunsdon's men and Lord Howard's came as a single company to Court in

1586; the Queen's men and Lord Sussex's were 'togeather' at the Rose in

1594, while Rosseter's patent for the Porter's Hall theatre in 1615

contemplates its use by no less than three companies, the Lady

Elizabeth's, the Prince's, and the Queen's Revels, probably as a united

body. Or the servant of one lord might attach himself as an individual

to the company passing under the name of another. Thus Alleyn was still

an Admiral's man when he toured with Lord Strange's men in 1593,

possibly as the last representative of a more complete combination

between two companies. Similarly Robert Pallant remained a Queen's man

while playing successively with the Lady Elizabeth's and the Duke of

York's in 1614-16, and William Rowley appeared in the Prince's livery at

King James's funeral in 1625, although he had probably joined the King's

men some two years before.[1006]

The sharers did not, however, take the whole risk of a theatrical

enterprise; the owner or owners of the play-house stood in with them.

This arrangement certainly goes back to the days of the elder Burbadge,

'the first builder of play-houses'. I do not know whether it had also

prevailed in the London inn-yards. Instead of paying a fixed rent for

the building placed at their disposal, the sharers assigned to the owner

a fixed part of the takings at each performance. Originally Burbadge had

the whole of the payments made at the entrances to the galleries; his

successors contented themselves with half these payments, together with,

at the Globe, half those made at the tiring-house door. The other half,

and the full payments at all other outer doors went to the sharers. The

owner was apparently allowed to safeguard his interests by appointing

the 'gatherers' or money-takers for the galleries.[1007] When the Globe

was opened in 1599 the Burbadges of the second generation hit upon the

device of binding the interests of some of the leading actors more

closely to their own by giving them a share in these profits of the

'house'. To this end the site was conveyed by lease in two distinct

moieties. One the Burbadges held; the other was divided amongst five of

the actors. Subsequently it was several times redivided into a varying

number of fractions, according as one man dropped out, or it was desired

to admit another to participate in the benefits. The tenures of the

fractions, while such as to secure joint control, did not prevent the

alienation of the profits attached to them. This gave rise to some

trouble, owing to the remarriage of widows with persons who were not

members of the company at all. Incidentally it enabled John Heminge and

Henry Condell, who had business capacity, to buy up by degrees the whole

moiety. There was a rent payable to the ground landlord, and to this

each holder of a fraction made a proportionate contribution. A levy was

also called when the Globe had to be rebuilt after a fire in 1613. The

Burbadges claimed to have been at the cost of the original building and

to have raised a loan for the purpose. We know that they pulled down the

Theatre and carried the materials across the water. The lease of the

Globe formed a precedent for a somewhat similar transaction when the

King's men took over responsibility for the Blackfriars in 1608. In this

case the freehold belonged to Richard Burbadge, who leased out the

play-house in sevenths, keeping one fraction himself, and allotting the

rest to his brother, to the representative of a former tenant, and to

four of the players. At some later date the interest was divided into

eighths instead of sevenths. It is to be noted that it was only certain

selected men who thus acquired rights in the profits of the houses, and

one of the effects of the policy adopted was to set up a distinction

amongst the members of the association itself, of whom some were both

'housekeepers', as they came to be called, and ordinary sharers, while

others were ordinary sharers alone. At the Blackfriars from the

beginning, and at the Globe as rights under the leases were alienated,

there were also housekeepers who were not sharers at all, and might even

be members of rival companies. A dispute arising from these anomalies

throws light upon the responsibilities undertaken and the advantages

enjoyed by housekeepers and sharers respectively. It is of late date,

but there is no reason to think that the conditions revealed were

substantially different from those of earlier years. About 1630 all the

rights in both houses were held, mainly through deaths and alienations,

by persons who were not actors. Shortly afterwards two or three of the

leading members of the company were allowed to acquire interests, and in

1635 three other sharers brought the state of things before the notice

of the Lord Chamberlain, who exercised some equitable control over the

affairs of the company as a part of the royal Household, and petitioned

that they too might be admitted to the same privilege of purchasing

fractions of the leases 'at the usuall and accustomed rates'. The

pleadings and the orders of the Lord Chamberlain form the record known

as the _Sharers Papers_.[1008] From them it emerges that the

housekeepers were entitled to receive a full moiety, 'without any

defalcation or abatement at all' of all takings from the galleries and

boxes in both houses and from the tiring-house door of the Globe. The

sharers had the other moiety, together with the takings at the outer

doors. If a man was a sharer as well as a housekeeper, he claimed under

both heads. The outgoings were also apportioned, and in the view of the

sharers, most unfairly. The housekeepers only had to pay the rent and

the cost of repairs. The sharers had to find hired men and boys, and to

meet all charges for apparel, poets, music, lights, and so forth. The

Lord Chamberlain was apparently impressed by the justice of the

representation, and made an order for a transfer of interests in both

houses.

The method of organization adopted by the Burbadges was subject to

abuses, both from alienation and from the agglutinative tendencies of

Heminge and Condell. But, at any rate during the earlier years of its

working, it seems to have served its purpose of attaching the individual

King's men, by means of a capital investment, to the welfare and

stability of their company. It was adopted by their principal rivals, by

the Queen's men at the Red Bull from the beginning of the reign, by

Alleyn and the Prince's men at the Fortune from a somewhat later date.

Certainly these companies rested upon a firmer foundation than those

which had to look for their theatre to an outside capitalist, especially

when that outside capitalist was Philip Henslowe. I have more than once

had occasion to mention Henslowe, whose personality stands out, more

clearly perhaps than any other, from the stage history of our whole

period. It is to the labours of my friend Dr. Greg that we owe an

adequate presentment of that personality. He appears to have been a

younger son of a good family, originally of Devonshire, but settled in

Sussex, where his father was Master of the Game in Ashdown Forest and

Brill Park. He had evidently had little formal education, and was a poor

man when, probably at some date in the 'seventies, he married Agnes

Woodward, a wealthy widow, to whose former husband he had been

'servant'. Agnes had a daughter Joan, who in 1592 married Edward Alleyn,

between whom and Henslowe, ever after if not before this event, the

closest business and personal relations existed. The occupation which

Henslowe thus, in the traditional manner of apprentices, acquired may

have been that of a dyer; he is described in documents of about 1584-7

as 'citizen and dyer of London'. But he had a shrewd business capacity,

which he turned to many other ways of making money. He was at one time

engaged in the manufacture of starch. From at least 1587 onwards he was

interested in theatrical property. Between 1593 and 1596 he was carrying

on, through agents, a pawnbroking establishment. By 1592 at latest he

had obtained an appointment as Groom of the Chamber at Court.[1009] In

1603 he was promoted to be Gentleman Sewer of the Chamber to King

James. About 1594 he began to finance the Southwark bear-baiting, under

a licence from the Master of the Royal Game of Paris Garden, and by

arrangement with Alleyn who held the Bear Garden, and Jacob Meade who

was Keeper of the Bears. After more than one unsuccessful attempt,

Henslowe and Alleyn secured a transfer to themselves of the joint

Mastership of Paris Garden in 1604. Meanwhile Henslowe was steadily

amassing house property, most of it in Southwark, and some of it, at

least by origin, of a rather questionable character.[1010] His own

residence is given in 1577 as in the Liberty of the Clink, more

precisely in 1593 as 'on the bank sid right over against the clink',

whereby is doubtless meant the prison which gave its name to the

Liberty; and in the Clink he continued to dwell to the end. For

subsidies he was regularly assessed at £10. He filled parochial offices,

becoming vestryman of St. Saviour's, Southwark, in 1607, churchwarden

in 1608, and governor of the free grammar school in 1612. His death on 6

January 1616 was followed almost immediately by that of his widow in

April 1617, and most of his property passed into the hands of the

Alleyns, together with a mass of papers, which are now amalgamated with

Alleyn's own at Dulwich. The collection is of the first importance both

for dramatic and for social history. It contains title-deeds of

theatres, agreements, and bonds entered into by companies of players,

private correspondence between the members of Henslowe's family and with

the poets and actors dependent upon him, inventories of stage costumes,

book-holder's 'plots' or outlines of plays, and many other documents

touching in innumerable ways upon the finance and control of the stage.

It also contains Henslowe's famous 'Diary'. This is not in fact a diary

at all, but a folio memorandum book, which Henslowe used principally

during 1592-1603, and in which he entered in picturesque confusion

particulars of accounts between himself and the companies occupying his

theatres, together with jottings on many personal and business matters,

and records of loans, which are often written, signed, or witnessed in

the autographs of players and poets.

From the diary and the related documents it is possible to reconstruct

in its main outlines the history of Henslowe's theatrical enterprises,

and to contrast his policy as a capitalist with that of his rivals, the

Burbadges. During the earlier years covered by our information, the

theatre with which he was mainly concerned was the Rose, which he had

himself built on the Bankside, although he appears also to have had an

interest in the distant and practically disused house at Newington

Butts. At one or other of these he entertained a succession of companies

for the short periods during which playing was possible in the

plague-stricken period of 1592-4. In the autumn of 1594 he settled down

with Alleyn and the Admiral's men at the Rose, and this combination

lasted, with some reorganization of the company in 1597, until 1600,

when the Admiral's men moved to the newly built Fortune, and were

succeeded a couple of years later at the Rose by Lord Worcester's men.

It seems clear from an analysis of the accounts which he kept during

1592-7, that Henslowe, like the housekeepers at the Globe, was in the

practice of taking his profits as landlord in the form, not of a fixed

rent, but of a share of the daily takings at the theatre, and in his

case also the sum allotted seems to have been half the proceeds of the

galleries as distinct from the outer doors of the play-house. He was

responsible for keeping the building in repair, and for the fees to the

Master of the Revels for licensing its use; all other outgoings had

presumably to be met by the company. If, as sometimes happened, the

theatre was put at the disposal of some fencer or other performer not

belonging to the company, the profits of the subletting were apportioned

between Henslowe and the actors.[1011] It should be added that, under an

agreement entered into when the building of the Rose was being planned

in 1587, Henslowe had assigned half his profits for a term of eight

years and a quarter to one John Cholmley in return for fixed quarterly

payments. The covenants of the agreement entitled the parties jointly to

appoint actors to perform in the play-house, and gatherers to collect

the entrance fees, and reserved to each of them the right 'to suffer

theire frendes to go in for nothinge'. They were to share the cost of

repairs and Cholmley, who was a grocer, was to have the monopoly of

selling drink on the premises. The agreement was probably terminated by

Cholmley's death; if not, it would have served Henslowe for an insurance

over the lean years of the long plague.[1012]

The character of Henslowe's entries in the diary changes towards the end

of 1597, but the indications do not suggest any alteration in the

conditions upon which the Admiral's men remained his tenants. On the

other hand, the new series of accounts reveals certain relations between

himself and the company for which there is no known analogy in the

organization of the King's men. Quite apart from payments for the use of

the theatres, the players had to meet divers costs of maintenance,

including the purchase of play-books from dramatists and the provision

of properties and garments for new productions. These charges were heavy

and fluctuating, and proved a difficulty for men who lived from hand to

mouth, and had acquired the thriftless habit of sharing their takings

weekly or even daily, and keeping no reserve fund. Henslowe, as a

capitalist, came to the rescue. Perhaps tentatively at first, but

certainly from 1597 as a regular system, he met the claims of poets and

tradesmen as they fell due, and debited the sums advanced to a running

account with the company, which forms the main subject-matter of the

diary. Of course he had to recoup himself from time to time; and Dr.

Greg has made it pretty clear that, when the system was in full working,

he did this by claiming a lien upon the residue of the gallery takings

which, although collected by his own 'gatherers', would otherwise, under

the tenancy agreement, have been handed over to the sharers. For a time

he seems to have satisfied himself with reserving half of this residue

towards his account. In July 1598, however, he notes in the diary 'Here

I begyne to receue the wholle gallereys'. Even so the repayments did not

keep pace with the expenditure, and from time to time he struck a

balance and took an acknowledgement from the company of the amount of

their outstanding debt. Most of Henslowe's advances were either for

properties and apparel or for the writing of plays, and I see no reason

to doubt that substantially the whole expenditure of the company under

these two heads passed through his hands. Sometimes, but not always, he

paid the fee demanded by the Master of the Revels for the licensing of a

new play; and occasionally he put his hand in his pocket for travelling

or legal expenses, or for the shot of a corporate jollification at a

tavern. On the other hand, there were certain regular outgoings with

which he had nothing to do, and for which the company must have had to

make provision in other ways; for lighting and cleaning and the rushes

which obviated the need for cleaning, for music, for the wages of stage

attendants and those actors who were not sharers, the 'hirelings', as

they were called from an early date.[1013] Probably the boys who took

the female parts were apprenticed to individual sharers; in one case a

boy was apprenticed to Henslowe, who charged the company or one of its

members a weekly sum for his services.[1014] It is, however,

interesting to observe that in the case of the Admiral's men, the legal

instruments which secured the continuity of the services of individual

actors sometimes at least took the form, for sharers no less than for

hirelings, not of bonds given to their fellows, but of contracts of

service entered into, under penalties for breach, with Henslowe himself.

As it was open to Henslowe to terminate these contracts, the

constitution of the company was to a certain extent dependent upon his

good will, and in fact he more than once refers to them as 'my

company'.[1015] He was not, however, in any strict sense the 'director'

or even the 'manager' of the company. Dr. Greg more aptly describes him

as their 'banker'.[1016] The entries of his advances on their behalf are

so worded as to imply that they were made on specific authorities given

by one or more leading members of the company; and some of these

authorities in fact exist in the shape of letters asking Henslowe to

make payments to poets in respect of plays which the company have heard

and approved. That in practice the banker had a considerable say in

influencing the policy of the company is probable enough; and also that

to the poor devils of poets he, rather than the actors, must have often

appeared in the welcome guise of paymaster. Both poets and actors were

under frequent personal obligations to him for small loans;[1017] and he

sometimes found the capital sum necessary to enable an actor to become a

sharer, and took it back by instalments.[1018]

Henslowe's method of financing the Admiral's men endured for some time

after their transference to the Fortune. Here, however, they prospered,

and he notes himself in the diary as 'begininge to receue of thes meane

ther privet deates which they owe vnto me'. The diary is practically

closed in 1603. An exceptional entry in 1604 records that he 'caste vp

all the acowntes from the begininge of the world vntell this daye' with

the Prince's men, as they had then become, and found 'all reconynges

consernynge the company in stocke generall descarged & my sealfe

descarged to them of al deates'. It is possible that henceforward the

relations of the company were less with Henslowe than with Alleyn, with

whom they had entered into some kind of 'composicion' in 1600. Certainly

the few remaining documents with regard to the Prince's men now at

Dulwich seem to be of Alleyn rather than Henslowe _provenance_. Henslowe

had, however, by agreement with Alleyn, a half interest in the 'house'

of the Fortune, an arrangement which may have been modified if, as seems

probable, some of the sharers were taken into partnership as

housekeepers in 1608. Henslowe had a running account with the Earl of

Worcester's men at the Rose from 1602; and these relations had probably

also terminated when, as the Queen's men, they set up on an independent

basis at the Red Bull in 1604. About 1611-15, however, we again become

able to study Henslowe's finances, shortly before his death, in a group

of related documents which illustrate and are illustrated by the diary

in an extremely interesting way.[1019], The first of these is a bond in

£500 given to Henslowe by the Lady Elizabeth's men in 1611 for the

observance of certain articles. Unfortunately the articles are not

annexed, but it may perhaps be taken for granted that they constituted

an agreement under which the company were to play at a house provided by

Henslowe. This may in the first instance have been the Swan, but in the

spring of 1613 Henslowe probably acquired an interest in the

Whitefriars, and in the following autumn he and his partner Jacob Meade

entered into a contract with a builder to convert the old Bear Garden

into a house capable of being used for plays, as well as for baiting. At

this, which was renamed the Hope, the Lady Elizabeth's men certainly

performed. The second document, in fact, consists of articles between

Henslowe and Meade on the one side and Nathan Field on behalf of the

company on the other, whereby the former undertake during a term of

three years to house the company, to give them the use of an existing

stock of apparel, including a suitable supply for travelling purposes if

necessary, and to disburse such sums upon the furnishing of new plays

with apparel as four or five sharers, whom Henslowe and Meade are to

name for the purpose, may require. They also undertake to make similar

disbursements for plays, receiving repayment after the second or third

day's performance, to remove non-conforming players at the request of a

majority of the company, and to hand over all forfeits for failures to

attend rehearsal and the like. The close of the document is mutilated,

but it is pretty clear that it provided for a nightly account of gallery

takings, out of which Henslowe and Meade were to retain half for rent,

and the other half towards the repayment of disbursements on apparel and

of an outstanding debt of £124 until this should be extinguished. It is

to be noted that, since the days of the Admiral's men, Henslowe had

differentiated between the procedure for recovering his advances on

account of apparel and of play-books respectively. The articles

contemplate that individual players will be under contracts with

Henslowe and Meade, and the third document is such a contract, dated 7

April 1614, with one Robert Dawes, who then joined the company. Certain

covenants therein with regard to the personal conduct of the actor have

already been described. In addition he bound himself to play for three

years as a sharer in such company as Henslowe and Meade might appoint,

and to consent to the retention by them of a moiety of the gallery and

tiring-house takings for the use of the house, and of the other moiety

towards the cost of apparel and the debt of £124. Henslowe and Meade

also reserve the right to use the house for baiting on one day in each

fortnight. The fourth document is the most illuminating of all. It is

divided into two sections, one headed _Articles of Grieuance against Mr.

Hinchlowe_, the other _Articles of Oppression against Mr. Hinchlowe_;

and although unsigned was evidently drawn up by the company in the

spring of 1615, for reference to some arbitrator, or perhaps to the Lord

Chamberlain. The charges against Henslowe are partly of definite acts of

dishonesty in the manipulation of his accounts with the company, partly

of an oppressive use of his legal position to his own advantage and

their detriment. If the allegations are well founded, he had cheated

them by failing to bring to account sums due to them and to make a

heavy payment with which they were debited, by charging the common stock

with loans made to individuals, by putting an inflated value upon

apparel taken over from himself, by saddling them with the cost of an

excessive number of gatherers and with bonuses which he had promised out

of his own pocket, in order to induce particular actors to join the

company. Under these heads they claim a heavy rebate against the debt of

£600 which he was maintaining to be due from them. They assert that, to

gain his ends, he had bribed their own representative Field; that while

bonds had been taken from them to an amount far in excess of their real

obligations, the articles binding Henslowe and Meade had never been

signed; that Henslowe had taken advantage of this to repudiate his

liability to hand over the apparel and play-books, for the greater part

of which the company had already paid; and that he had similarly taken

advantage of the fact that the agreements with the hired men were in his

name to withdraw these men, and thus force a reconstruction of the

company, whenever it suited his convenience. Thus, they say, 'within

three yeares hee hath broken and dissmembred five companies'. It is a

little difficult to make up the number of five companies, even if the

Children of the Revels, who during the years covered by the statement

were absorbed for a time in the Lady Elizabeth's men, are included. But

the transactions described serve well to illustrate the distinction

between the status of a company as a body of household servants and its

status as a legal association, since there is no reason to doubt that,

throughout all the shifting phases of its relations to Henslowe, a

continuous body of players performed in public and at Court under the

title of the Lady Elizabeth's men, and by authority of the patent issued

to these men in 1611. One other point, in which Henslowe's earlier

practice appears to have undergone modification by the period of his

connexion with the Lady Elizabeth's men, emerges from his correspondence

with the playwright Robert Daborne. Instead of merely paying for

Daborne's plays as agent for the company, as had been his practice for

the Admiral's and Lord Worcester's men, he appears to have bought the

plays himself, and resold them, probably at a profit, to the

company.[1020]

The protesting players represent Henslowe's dealings with them as

governed by a desire to be what the modern capitalist calls 'master in

his own house'. They declare that he gave the reason of his often

breaking with them in his own words, 'Should these fellowes come out of

my debt, I should have noe rule with them'. The principle is plausible

enough, and is familiar to tradesmen in all poor neighbourhoods. The man

burdened with debt must lose the fruits of his labour, because he is not

free to revise his contracts on terms more beneficial to himself. Once

the players got out of debt and accumulated a reserve fund, they would

acquire their own theatre, and Henslowe's might stand empty. If the

charges were justified--and as Dr. Greg points out, we have not

Henslowe's answer--he certainly resorted to oppressive devices to

prevent the Lady Elizabeth's men from achieving independence. It must

not be too hastily assumed that he followed a similar policy in his

earlier dealings with the Admiral's men. So far as we know, they brought

no accusation against him, and the connexion seems to have been

advantageous to both parties. The Admiral's men held together, and

maintained a standing hardly inferior to that of their principal rivals,

the Chamberlain's men. They had Alleyn for a fellow; and it may be that

Alleyn, whose 'industrie and care', according to the deposition of a

common acquaintance, 'were a great meanes of the bettering of the estate

of the said Philip Henslowe', was able to give his partner advice, more

equitable and perhaps in the long run not less profitable, even from the

capitalist point of view, than was afterwards forthcoming from

'intemperate Mʳ. Meade'.[1021] At any rate there is an agreement which

shows that a compromise was arrived at after Henslowe's death with

Alleyn and Meade upon the question of the disputed debt.[1022] I am not

Henslowe's biographer, and am therefore not concerned either to

whitewash or to vilify his character. But it is fair to say that,

outside the _Articles of Grievance and Oppression_, there is not much,

in the mass of papers which have descended to us, that necessarily bears

an unfavourable interpretation. Henslowe's private loans to players and

poets were innumerable. They were generally, but not always, repaid, and

it would be difficult to prove that he even exacted interest in such

cases, although it is possible that the full sums entered in his

accounts did not really change hands. On the other hand, too much stress

must not be laid on the expressions of esteem with which his debtors

approached him. Thus Daborne dwells on 'your tried curtesy' and 'the

great love I have felt from you', and Field, addresses him as 'Father

Hinchlow' and signs himself 'your loving son', as if he were Ben

Jonson.[1023] An application for money is, however, not even an

affidavit. In his will he appears to have stated that he had not used

his wife very well and would make amends;[1024] but his private

correspondence reveals family affection and a turn for pious sentiment,

probably sincere. Neither quality is necessarily inconsistent with

unscrupulous methods of business. Whether Henslowe was a good or a bad

man seems to me a matter of indifference. He was a capitalist. And my

object is to indicate the disadvantages under which a company in the

hands of a capitalist lay, in respect of independence and economic

stability, as compared with one conducted upon the lines originally laid

down by the Burbages for the tenants of the Globe. Not being owners of

their own theatre, such a company were liable to eviction, and were

drained to a large extent of the profits of their prosperous years.

Relying upon their financier to meet in the first instance all

extraordinary expenditure, they had no occasion to build up a reserve

fund, and constantly tended to drift into debt. Organized upon a legal

basis which made an act of association between the members of less

importance than individual contracts entered into by sharers and

hirelings alike with the capitalist, they were at his mercy if, for

purposes of his own, he chose to use his powers under those contracts to

bring about their dissolution.[1025]

A few figures bearing on the actual profits of playing can be brought

together. And first for the 'house'. Henslowe's takings at the Rose, as

disclosed by the diary, seem to have averaged about 30_s._ a day during

1592-7. A short season at Newington Butts brought him in no more than

9_s._ a day. As the Rose was normally open for about 240 days in the

year, his total annual receipts may be estimated at £360. No doubt the

cost of upkeep was substantial. The landlord had to find a site, build a

house, maintain it in repair, and take out a licence. The ground-rent of

the Rose was £7, of the Globe £14 10_s._, of the Fortune £16. The total

rent of the site and building of the Blackfriars was £40. The building

of the Fortune in 1600 cost £520, and its rebuilding in 1622 £1,000; the

rebuilding of the Globe in 1613 about £1,400; the conversion of the

Bear Garden into the Hope in 1613, £360. There was probably some set-off

in all these cases for the profits from taphouses and other tenements

attached to the theatres; this was estimated at from £20 to £30 for the

Globe and Blackfriars together in 1635. There were also occasional

lettings to outsiders.[1026] The housekeepers in 1635 complained of the

'chargeable reparacions'; in earlier years, when theatres were built

largely of wood, they must have been more chargeable still. The Rose was

not built earlier than 1587, but Henslowe had to spend £108 on it in

1592. The fee charged by the Master of the Revels for licensing a

theatre rose during 1592-9 from £1 to £3 a month. The only estimates of

net profits are for the King's men and of rather late date. The

pleadings in _Ostler v. Heminges_ (1615) give a single housekeeper's

profits as £20 from one-fourteenth of the Globe and £20 from one-seventh

of the Blackfriars, thus indicating £280 and £140 as the total annual

value of the 'houses' at the Globe and Blackfriars respectively; those

in _Witter v. Heminges and Condell_ (1619), coming from a less

trustworthy witness, allege that the Globe was worth £420 to £560 before

the fire and more after the rebuilding.[1027] The bearing of the figures

is complicated by our ignorance of the proportions in which the King's

men made use of their two theatres. By 1635 the importance of the

Blackfriars had outstripped that of the Globe. Its 'house' then yielded

£700-£800 a year; that of the Globe about 54_s._ a day, nearly twice as

much as the Rose half a century earlier.

As to the earnings of a sharer we have even less information. One of the

disputants in 1635 put them at no more than 3_s._ a day at the Globe;

another at £180 a year from all sources. If both were accurate, the

Blackfriars must by that date have been doing far better business than

the Globe, even after allowing for the inclusion in the £180 of a share

of the fees for private performances at Court and elsewhere. The

customary Court fee was £10, or £6 13_s._ 4_d._ if the King was not

present. Private performances were ordinarily at night, and did not

interfere with public performances in the afternoon. If the Court was

out of London, however, the theatre had to be closed. No special

allowance seems to have been made for this until about 1631, when the

fee was doubled for a performance in the daytime or away from

London.[1028] The King's men got the principal share of the Court work,

being called on in 1611-12 for as many as twenty-two plays. Their Court

fees during 1603-16 amounted on an average to £125 a year.[1029] The

exact number of sharers is not known; it was probably not more than

twelve. All things considered, it is not unreasonable to put the

earnings of a sharer in the King's men during the first decade of the

seventeenth century at about £100 to £150 a year, to which, if he were a

'housekeeper' with an interest in both houses, he might be able to add

another £40 or £50. This estimate agrees with Sir Henry Herbert's

valuation of the shares which he held before the war in the companies

other than the King's at £100 each on an average.[1030] Sir Sidney Lee's

figure of £700 for Shakespeare's total professional income, which

includes £40 for the books of his plays, seems to me vastly

overestimated.[1031] Even the more modest £200 or so was a handsome

income for the time, since the purchasing power of money in the

seventeenth century is variously reckoned at from five to eight times as

much as at present. Of course, in times of inhibition from plague or

other cause the income vanished altogether, and was very inadequately

replaced by the meagre gains of travelling, together with the allowance

made by King James to his men for private practice during the infection.

The gross takings of the sharers were naturally much greater. But they

were subject to heavy outgoings. The King's men reckoned these in 1635

at £3 a day or from £900 to £1,000 a year for hired 'journeymen' and

boys, music, lights, and so forth, in addition to 'extraordinary'

charges for apparel and poets.[1032] The wages of a hireling are given

by Gosson in 1579 as 6_s._ a week; some of Henslowe's agreements of

1597 provide for wages of 5_s._, 6_s._ 8_d._, and 8_s._[1033] There was

some economy to be secured by doubling small parts.[1034] How far this

was facilitated by any use of masks is open to doubt.[1035] Boys were

regularly employed to take female parts, and although it would be going

rather too far to say that a woman never appeared upon an Elizabethan

stage, women were not included in the ordinary companies.[1036] The boys

were apprenticed to individuals, and their masters had to pay rather

than receive premiums. In return they charged wages to the company.

Henslowe gave £8 for a boy in 1597 and got 3_s._ a week from the

Admiral's for his wages. John Shank in 1635 claimed that he had had to

give £40 for a single boy, and £200 in all.[1037] Contributions to local

rates came to about £5 a year.[1038] The cost of apparel and properties

is difficult to estimate. A company bought or accumulated a stock, and

might also have at its disposal a stock belonging to the owner of its

theatre. Individual actors may have had their private wardrobes.[1039]

Fresh purchases were only necessitated by new productions, but these

were frequent. The special mounting of Court performances was helped out

by the Revels Office.[1040] The actor in Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_

(1592) boasted that his share of apparel would not be sold for £200,

but he was fictitious. Richard Jones, in fact, sold his share in a stock

of apparel, play-books, instruments, and other commodities for £37

10_s._ in 1589. The cost of such things has a tendency to grow. If the

sums of from £50 to £80 received by retiring sharers early in the

seventeenth century may be taken as representing their interests in the

stocks, the total value of the contents of a tiring-house might be

anything from £500 to £1,000. Henslowe sold the stock of the Lady

Elizabeth's men for £400 in 1615; apparently this did not include their

play-books, which they valued at £200. I reckon that in 1597-1603

Henslowe spent in all £1,317 for the Admiral's men, or about £1 for each

day of playing; of this play-books accounted for £652, apparel and

properties for £561, and miscellaneous expenses for £103. The garments,

by Henslowe's time at least, had become costly enough, as much as £19

being given for a single cloak, while a tailor was employed to make up

satin at 12_s._ 6_d._ and velvet at £1 a yard.[1041] Second-hand finery

was sometimes to be obtained from a serving-man or a needy

courtier.[1042] It was probably the lavish use of apparel, more than

anything else, which led both friends and foes to dwell upon the stately

furnishing of the English theatres.[1043] Strictly scenic effects were

limited by the structural conditions of the stage, and Henslowe's

inventories do not suggest that any vast stock of movable properties was

kept.[1044] Animals and monsters were freely introduced.[1045] Living

dogs and even horses may have been trained; but your lion or bear or

dragon was a creature of skin and brown paper.[1046]

An old 'book' could be bought for £2, but the value to the company might

be much more. A good stock piece was a perpetual 'get-penny' and could,

of course, be furbished up from time to time.[1047] In _Downton v.

Slater_ (1598) the Admiral's men valued a misappropriated book at £13

6_s._ 8_d._ and claimed £30 damages for withholding it. The court

awarded £10 10_s._ New plays cost more, and entailed fees of 7_s._ each

to the Master of the Revels for licensing.[1048] A play by Greene would

fetch £6 13_s._ 4_d._ about 1592. The prices paid by the Admiral's and

Lord Worcester's men between 1597 and 1603 ranged from £4 to £10 10_s._;

a fee of £6 may be taken as about normal. 'An they'll give me twenty

pounds a play, I'll not raise my vein', says Antonio Balladino, who is

Anthony Munday, in _The Case is Altered_, a play of about 1598.[1049] In

1613 Robert Daborne was bargaining for plays with Henslowe at rates of

from £10 to £20, and boasting that he could get £25 elsewhere. It seems

likely that Henslowe charged a commission on these prices to the

company. There are some traces of the system, used at a later date, by

which the author was entitled to a 'benefit' night shortly after the

production of a new play.[1050] He was also entitled to free admission

to the house.[1051] The poets received their fees from Henslowe in

instalments, drawing £1 or so in 'earnest' when the commission was

given, and as each batch of sheets was handed in, and the balance when

the play was finished. This plan proved disastrous to them. The

instalments often found them in a debtor's prison, and some of them

became mere bond-slaves.[1052] Thus both Henry Porter and Henry Chettle

were reduced to making agreements which pledged them to write for no

other company than the Admiral's. The device is familiar to the modern

publisher. Robert Daborne's correspondence with Henslowe is eloquent of

the straits to which a hack playwright might be brought. Daborne was a

man of good family, and had lawsuits about his 'estate', which added to

his embarrassments. He had been interested in the management of the

Queen's Revels, and it may have been the absorption of this company by

the Lady Elizabeth's men that brought him into contact with Henslowe.

His letters preserved at Dulwich run from April 1613 to July 1614.[1053]

During this period he was engaged upon at least four plays. The history

of one of them, the tragedy of _Machiavel and the Devil_, may be taken

as typical. On 17 April 1613 he signed an agreement to complete it by

the end of May for an 'earnest' of £6 down, £4 on completion of three

acts, and £10 'vpon delivery in of yᵉ last scean perfited'; and for the

observance of the agreement he gave a bond of £20. On 25 April he wrote

to borrow £1 from Henslowe, explaining that he was 'vpon yᵉ sodeyn put

to a great extremity in bayling my man committed to Newgate vpon taking

a possession for me', and had unfortunately taken 'less money of my

kinsman a lawier that was with me then servd my turn'. On 3 May he got

another £1, although the three acts were not yet finished; another on 8

May; and another on 16 May, making £11 in all. 'Sir,' he wrote, 'my

occations of expenc have bin soe great & soe many I am ashamed to think

how much I am forct to press you.' On 19 May he had probably handed in

his three acts, as he then signed an acquittance for £16 received up to

date, noting at the foot 'This play to be delivered in to Mr. Hinchlaw

with all speed'. It was not, however, ready by 31 May, and on 5 June

came a piteous appeal for an advance of £2 'which stands me vpon to send

over to my counsell in a matter concerns my whole estate'. Henslowe

shall not be the loser by his kindness: 'wher I deale otherways then to

your content may I & myne want ffryndship in distress'. By 10 June, 'yᵉ

necessity of term busines exacts me beyond my custom to be trublesome

vnto you', to the tune of yet another £1. By this time Henslowe was

evidently calling out for the play; and Daborne protests, 'I perceav you

misdoubt my readynes. Sir, I would not be hyred to break my ffayth with

you; before God they shall not stay one hour for me.' He was still

protesting on 25 June; but soon after must have brought _Machiavel and

the Devil_ to an end and drawn the £1 still due to him on balance, since

on 18 June he was already beginning to negotiate for his next play, _The

Arraignment of London_. And so the correspondence goes on; the

instalments always anticipated, the applications always larded with

declarations of his own honesty and with mingled flattery and complaint

of a patron who, generous as he was, showed an inexplicable tendency to

'meat' Daborne 'by yᵉ common measuer of poets'. The result was

inevitable. Daborne's terms came down from £20 to £12 and even £10 a

play; and in addition to reselling to the company at a profit, Henslowe

seems on one occasion at least to have squeezed out of Daborne 'half my

earnings in the play', by which, I take it, the proceeds of his benefit

are meant. By the end of 1613 Daborne was in considerable distress; 'if

you doe not help me to tenn shillings by this bearer, by the living God

I am vtterly disgract'. There is not much more of the correspondence. It

is clear from another source that Daborne did not for some time get

free, for when Henslowe lay on his death-bed, Mrs. Daborne called for

some papers belonging to her husband, and Henslowe gave her a bond for

£20 of which she was ignorant, possibly the very bond signed for

_Machiavel and the Devil_, saying, 'I knowe you and with all my hart doe

freely forgive you all that you owe me'.[1054] By 1618 Daborne had taken

orders. He became Chancellor of Waterford and Prebendary and Dean of

Lismore, and thus, as a contemporary poem has it, 'died amphibious by

the ministry'.

The wrongs of authors are not inarticulate, and they have an appeal to

posterity from the injustice of their age. The exploitation of poets by

the playing companies brought about some cross-currents in the tone of

the allusions to the theatre, which are so frequent in occasional

literature. On the one hand, the pamphleteers, and in a less degree the

satirists, are with the players as against their enemies the Puritans;

on the other hand, they have their own grievances to publish and avenge.

A note of hostility makes its appearance not long after the first

invasion of the province of stage-writing by the university wits; and by

the embittered close of Robert Greene's reckless life the relations were

acute. Thomas Lodge in 1589 swore to abandon dramas and 'pennie-knaves

delight.'[1055] Thomas Nashe canvassed the players in his prefatory

epistle to Greene's _Menaphon_ (1589), and Greene himself, with humour

in his _Quip for an Upstart Courtier_ (1592), and in his

autobiographical romances of _Never Too Late_ (1590) and _Greene's

Groatsworth of Wit_ (1592), and with unsparing invective in the warning

_To those Gentlemen his Quondam Acquaintance, that spend their Wits in

making Plaies_, which he appended to the latter. In these pamphlets the

'vaine glorious tragedians' are twitted with their mouthings on the

stage, with their chameleon-like shifting from the service of one lord

to that of another,[1056] with the contrast between their rapid rise to

wealth and their obscurity when they carried their fardles afootback

upon the roads, with the romances and morals--_Delphrigus_ and _The King

of the Fairies_, _Man's Wit_, and the _Dialogue of Dives_--that formed

their stock-in-trade before the masters of arts came to their rescue.

But the real gravamen is that they live on the wits of scholars. They

are 'apes', 'buckram gentlemen', 'a company of taffaty fooles' tricked

up with poets' feathers, 'puppits that speake from our mouths', 'anticks

garnisht in our colours'. They cleave like burrs to their victims. An

alleged comparison by Cicero of the Roman actor Roscius to the crow in

Aesop is called in aid, and the taunt of 'vpstart crow, beautified with

our feathers' is not spared to an actor before whose dramatic genius

that of Greene and his fellows was to fade as a rush-light before the

sun.[1057] The actors had something on their side to complain of, with

Greene no less than with Daborne. In a remorseful moment he tells us of

the 'arch-plaimaking poet' Roberto, how 'what euer he fingered aforehand

was the certaine meanes to vnbinde a bargaine'; and a detractor accuses

him of selling the same play to two companies, and defending himself by

maintaining that no faith was to be kept with players.[1058] During the

seventeenth century, it is mainly Dekker, as critic of the players, no

less than in other ways, who carries on the tradition of Greene and

Nashe.[1059] Himself an active playwright, it is with black looks that

he stands by, in thronged term-time or at the coming of ambassadors, and

watches the companies battening upon the fruits of divine poetry, like

swine on acorns; and when plague arrives, although his own occupation be

gone, it is with savage glee that he sees the flag hauled down and the

doors closed, and his gloomy paymasters setting out once more on the

hard life of 'strowlers'.

One interesting result of the feud between poets and players was that

some of the former were led to encourage and even acquire financial

interests in a rival type of theatrical organization which for a time at

least entered into successful competition with the professional

companies. This organization rested upon the use of boy actors. I have

elsewhere expounded the important share taken by school plays in the

earlier development of the Renaissance drama.[1060] The grammar schools

of Eton, Westminster, and Merchant Taylors and the song schools of the

Chapel Royal, Windsor, St. Paul's and the private chapel of the Earl of

Oxford continued, far into Elizabeth's reign, to give their performances

at Court side by side with the growing companies of noble and royal

servants. It was not until the professionals called upon the university

wits and began to mingle literary with popular elements in their

productions that the destinies of the drama passed definitely into their

hands. The earlier boy companies died out soon after 1590. A decade

later the Paul's and Chapel companies were revived, the latter at least

under somewhat new economic conditions. Formerly the plays had been

managed by schoolmasters and song-masters, as by-activities of

institutions primarily established for other objects. For the revived

Paul's plays, so far as we know, Edward Pearce, the choirmaster, was

similarly responsible. The Chapel children, on the other hand, were

placed upon a more regular business footing. The official Master of the

Children, Nathaniel Giles, took part in the undertaking; and the royal

commission to impress singing boys, which he held, was unscrupulously

used to compel the services of boys who could not sing, and were only

needed as recruits for the stage. But long before James had come to the

decision that on religious grounds the connexion between the Chapel and

the plays must be broken, the actual control of the organization had

passed from the Master to a financial syndicate, associated much on the

principle adopted by the ordinary playing companies, whose members hired

a theatre, charged themselves with the maintenance of the boys and of

the performances, and divided up the profits as their reward. During the

history of the Chapel boys and of the group of Revels companies which

succeeded them, several of these syndicates came into existence, and

shares in one or other of them were held by Marston, Drayton, Barry,

Mason, Daborne, and very possibly also by other dramatists. The articles

of association of the King's Revels company in 1608 may perhaps be taken

as typical. One of the sharers, Martin Slater the actor, who was

evidently a kind of manager, is to have lodgings in the theatre, which

was the Whitefriars, and the right to sell refreshments, and is to

travel with the children if necessary, in which event he is to enjoy a

share and a half in the profits. The children are to be apprenticed to

him for three years each, and he is to bind himself in £40 not to

transfer the indentures. The 'whole chardges of the howse, the

gatherers, the wages, the childrens bourd, musique, booke keeper,

tyreman, tyrewoman, lights, the Maister of the revells duties, and all

other things needefull and necessary' are to be deducted in due

proportions from each day's takings, so that the company may not run

into debt. No sharer is to take away any apparel or other common

property, or print any play-book, on pain of losing his interest.

The boys played in what were called 'private' houses, and it is not

quite clear how far they were amenable to the usual principles of stage

regulation; an order by the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor to suppress

plays during the Lent of 1601 was obviously intended to be enforced

against them. Their performances, especially while they were novel,

proved a serious menace to the prosperity of the adult companies. The

classical allusions on the subject are that of Jonson in _The Poetaster_

to the winter of 1600-1, which made the players poorer than so many

starved snakes,[1061] and the elaborate apology for the travelling of

the company in _Hamlet_, which is so germane to the matter now under

discussion that it must, however familiar, be given in full:[1062]

_Hamlet._ ... What players are they?

_Rosin._ Euen those you were wont to take delight in the

Tragedians of the City.

_Ham._ How chances it they trauaile? their residence both in

reputation and profit was better both wayes.

_Rosin._ I thinke their Inhibition comes by the meanes of the

late Innouation?

_Ham._ Doe they hold the same estimation they did when I was in

the City? Are they so follow'd?

_Rosin._ No indeed, they are not.

_Ham._ How comes it? doe they grow rusty?

_Rosin._ Nay, their indeauour keepes in the wonted pace; But

there is Sir an ayrie of Children, little Yases, that crye out

on the top of question; and are most tyrannically clap't for't:

these are now the fashion, and so be-ratled the common Stages

(so they call them) that many wearing Rapiers, are affraide of

Goose-quils, and dare scarse come thither.

_Ham._ What are they Children? Who maintains 'em? How are they

escoted? Will they pursue the Quality no longer then they can

sing? Will they not say afterwards if they should grow

themselues to common Players (as it is like most if their

meanes are no better) their Writers do them wrong, to make them

exclaim against their owne Succession.

_Rosin._ Faith there ha's bene much to do on both sides: and

the Nation holds it no sinne, to tarre them to Controuersie.

There was for a while, no mony bid for argument, vnlesse the

Poet and the Player went to Cuffes in the Question.

_Ham._ Is't possible?

_Guild._ Oh there ha's beene much throwing about of Braines.

_Ham._ Do the Boyes carry it away?

_Rosin._ I that they do my Lord, _Hercules_ & his load too.

The be-rattling of the common stages and their spirited replies, thought

by some to include a 'purge' in _Troilus and Cressida_, with which

Shakespeare 'put down' Ben Jonson, form an element in the literary

conflict known as 'the war of the theatres', in which, however, this

issue is much complicated with others arising from the personalities

of the dramatists engaged, and notably from that of Ben Jonson

himself.[1063] Thus is explained the apparent paradox by which plays

as well as pamphlets become the vehicle of attacks upon players. Three

such plays, _Histriomastix_, _The Poetaster_, and the second part of _The

Return from Parnassus_, call for special attention. The player-scenes

in _Histriomastix_ seem to belong mainly, though not wholly, to the

original form of the play, which I regard as an outcome of the campaign

of Robert Greene and his fellows about 1590, although the extant text,

not printed until 1610, represents a later recension, probably undertaken

by Marston, as one of the 'musty fopperies of antiquity' produced by the

Paul's boys about 1600.[1064] The piece is of the nature of a political

morality, and the scenes in question serve as one illustration of its

general theme, which is that of the cyclical rotation of society through

the successive stages of Peace, Plenty, Pride, Envy, War, Poverty, and so

to Peace again. Many side-lights are thrown upon the methods of company

organization which have already been described in these pages. In Act I

some idle and drunken artisans, Gulch, Clout, Belch the beard-maker, Gut

the fiddle-string-maker, Incle the pedlar, combine to form a company.

Their poet is Master Posthaste, whom they call a gentleman scholar, but

who is evidently a caricature of Anthony Munday, dramatist and Messenger

of the Chamber. A scrivener is called in to 'tye a knott of knaves

togither', and Bougie the mercer will furnish them with 'rich stuff' at

a price. They call themselves Sir Oliver Owlet's men, and take his badge

of an owl in an ivy-bush. In Act II they appear on the steps of a market

cross and 'cry' a play to be given in the town-house at three o'clock.

Their repertory includes _The Lascivious Knight_, _Lady Nature_, _Mother

Gurton's Needle_ (a tragedy), _The Devil and Dives_ (a comedy), _A Russet

Coat and a Knight's Cap_ (an infernal), _A Proud Heart and a Beggar's

Purse_ (a pastoral), _The Widow's Apron Strings_ (a nocturnal).[1065]

Posthaste is also working on 'the new plot of the _Prodigall Childe_',

with a prologue 'for lords' and an epilogue. They are invited to play

before Lord Mavortius, and thereupon throw over 'the town play', and

attend him, singing:

Some up and some down, there's players in the town:

You wot well who they bee.

The sum doth arise to three companies:

One, two, three, foure, make we.

Besides we that travel, with pumps full of gravell,

Made all of such running leather,

That once in a week, new masters we seeke,

And never can hold together.

The actual performance, perhaps owing to a Marstonian interpolation,

consists of a fragment of _The Prodigal Child_, together with a fragment

of a piece on _Troilus and Cressida_. At the end Posthaste extemporizes

on a 'theame' and the company are rewarded with 3_s._ 4_d._ In Act III a

Marstonian passage introduces them to a new poet Chrisoganus, who asks

ten pounds a play. But 'our companie's hard of hearing of that side',

and they will be content with their goose-quillian Posthast'.

Chrisoganus rates their pride and the 'windy froth of bottle-ale' which

passes muster for poetry on the stage. The 'proud statute rogues' also

refuse an offer from Mavortius of 13_s_. 4_d._ or even £1 6_s._ 8_d._

for another performance, and in view of their 'expense in sumptuous

clothes' they must have 'ten pound a play, or no point comedy'. Their

insolence is condemned:

How soone can they remember to forget

Their undeserved fortunes and esteeme.

Blush not the peasants at their pedigree,

Suckt pale with lust? What bladders swolne with pride,

To strout in shreds of nitty brogetie!

In Act IV they are rehearsing, and fine Posthaste 1_s._ for coming late.

And they quarrel amongst themselves. Clout is discontented with his

half-share, and will have 'a whole share, or turn camelion'. Acts V and

VI bring Nemesis. As they set up their bills, they are pressed for the

wars. There is no remedy. They have alienated the town officers by

refusing the town's reward. The 'master-sharers' must even provide their

equipment out of their own purses. The soldiers loot their apparel. They

will be the sharers now, and the players the hired men. They bid one who

'would rend and tear a cat upon a stage' not to 'march like a drowned

rat', but 'look up and play the Tamburlaine'. The hostess claims her

shot, 'The sharers dinners sixpence a piece. The hirelings ---- pence';

and the hamper has to be searched for a cloak to pawn. The constable

demands his dues for tax-money to relieve the poor, and the excuse that

but fifteen pence was shared last week is not accepted in face of the

idle and immoral lives that the rascals have led. In the end they are

shipped off remorselessly to serve beyond the seas. It will be obvious

that, while most of the points of criticism taken by the dramatist are

those familiar to the literary pamphleteers, he is also not

unsympathetic to the Puritan view of players as a canker in the state.

Jonson wrote his _Poetaster_ in the spring of 1601. He had already heard

of the intention of the Chamberlain's men against him, which afterwards

took shape in Dekker and Marston's _Satiromastix_, and got in the first

blows by depicting his assailants as 'a sort of copper-lac't scoundrels'

in ancient Rome and their poets as Demetrius 'a dresser of plaies about

the town here' and Crispinus 'poetaster and plagiary'. Some of his

matter has its reminiscences of _Histriomastix_; some probably rests on

details with regard to individual Chamberlain's men which are now

irrecoverable.[1066] His allusions to their poor winter season of 1600-1

and to the accumulation of shares by leading actors have already been

quoted. The chief scene devoted to the players is that in which Histrio

is bullied by Tucca, the huffing captain, who calls him 'stalker',

'gulch', 'stiffe toe', 'twopenny teare-mouth', and 'penny-biter', bids

him turn fiddler again, get a bass violin at his back and march in a

tawny coat with one sleeve to Goose Fair, and accuses his company of

being usurers and brokers, who prey upon younger sons and citizens, and

furnish facilities at their house for immoral practices. Tucca would

bring his 'cockatrice' to see a bawdy play, but the players have nothing

but humours, revels, and satires; to which Histrio replies that he is

confusing them with 'the other side of Tyber', for 'we haue as much

ribaldries in our plaies, as can bee, as you would wish, Captaine: all

the sinners, i' the suburbs, come, and applaud our action, daily'.

Crispinus is introduced as one who will teach the actors to tear and

rant. Tucca bids Histrio give him forty shillings in earnest, since 'if

hee pen for thee once, thou shalt not need to trauell, with thy pumps

full of grauell, any more, after a blinde iade and a hamper: and stalke

vpon boords, and barrell heads, to an old crackt trumpet'. Yet inasmuch

as some of the players are 'honest gent'men-like scoundrels, and

suspected to ha' some wit', Histrio may make Tucca a supper, and bring

Frisker 'my zany' and Mango 'your fat fool', so long as he does not

laugh too much or beg rapiers or scarfs; but by no means 'your eating

plaier' Polyphagus, nor 'the villanous-out-of-tune fiddler' Aenobarbus,

nor Aesop, 'your politician'. Later in the play Histrio and Aesop inform

against Ovid and Horace, who is Jonson, to the government, and although

Tucca promises Aesop 'a monopoly of playing, confirm'd to thee and thy

couey, vnder the Empirours broad Seale, for this seruice', his actual

reward is to be whipped.[1067] In the _Apologetical Dialogue_ printed

with the play Jonson admits his hostility to the players:

Now for the Players, it is true, I tax'd 'hem,

And yet, but some; and those so sparingly,

As all the rest might haue sate still, vnquestion'd,

Had they but had the wit, or conscience,

To thinke well of themselues. But, impotent they

Thought each man's vice belong'd to their whole tribe:

And much good doo't 'hem. What th' haue done 'gainst me,

I am not mou'd with. If it gaue 'hem meat,

Or got 'hem clothes, 'tis well. That was their end.

Onely amongst them, I am sorry for

Some better natures, by the rest so drawne,

To run in that vile line.

_The Return from Parnassus_ is of less significance, as being a

Cambridge, not a London, play, and merely an echo of the main

controversy. It was acted during the Christmas of 1601-2, and is a

satire of things in general from the university point of view. Amongst

other topics the relations of scholarship to the stage are touched upon.

Burbadge and Kempe come in, boasting of their victory over Ben Jonson,

and trying to recruit poets into their service.[1068] The scholars

resent such thraldom:

And must the basest trade yeeld vs reliefe?

Must we be practis'd to those leaden spouts,

That nought doe vent but what they do receiue.

And in the end they decide rather to take the road as fiddlers:

Better it is mongst fidlers to be chiefe,

Then at a plaiers trencher beg reliefe.

But ist not strange these mimick apes should prize

Vnhappy schollers at a hireling rate.

Vile world, that lifts them vp to hye degree,

And treades vs downe in groueling misery.

England affordes those glorious vagabonds,

That carried earst their fardels on their backes,

Coursers to ride on through the gazing streetes,

Sooping it in their glaring satten sutes,

And pages to attend their maisterships:

With mouthing words that better wits haue framed,

They purchase lands, and now esquiers are namde.

It is the old burden of Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe once more.[1069]

The disturbance of theatrical conditions due to the revival of the boy

companies became in time less acute. No doubt, the novelty of their

performances wore off. Moreover, the companies were not very successful

in holding together, partly because of the indiscretions of their

managers and the inadequacy of their finance to stand the strain of

plague years, but more because the boys, as might perhaps have been

expected, grew up and ceased to be boys. Already about 1608 the

Blackfriars boys 'were masters themselves' of their own company, and

when this arrangement broke down, they began to be drafted into the

adult associations. Other boy companies followed, but these were subject

to the same difficulties, and the vogue of the original 'little eyases'

was never quite recaptured.[1070] But, after all, the competition had

not disappeared, but had merely taken another form. The younger

generation was knocking at the gates; Field and Taylor waiting in eager

rivalry for Burbadge's shoes, and meanwhile forming new combinations of

their own which, however unstable, at least cut at the profits of their

more firmly established rivals. The 'monopoly' offered by Jonson in jest

would no doubt have been welcomed by the principal companies in earnest.

The policy of the Privy Council from 1597 to 1600 pointed in this

direction, but for whatever reason was not brought into effective

operation. There are several indications of the pressure of competition

during the earlier part of the seventeenth century. In 1609 it was worth

the while of the Queen's Revels and the King's men to unite in buying

off the Paul's boys at the cost of £20 a year. Dekker in the same year

prophesies that the contention of the two houses of York and Lancaster

will be as nothing to that of the three houses, by which he means the

Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull.[1071] Finally, in 1610, the

preacher William Crashaw, commenting upon the hostility shown by the

players to the plantation of Virginia, declares explicitly that it was

motived by the fact that they were so multiplied in England that one

could not live by another, and by the refusal of the promoters of the

colony to give any of them a chance of trying their fortunes in the new

world.[1072]

The palmy days of playing lasted beyond the formal limits set to this

investigation. But they did not last for ever. The coming of the end can

here only be adumbrated. It perhaps shows itself first in an increasing

unwillingness amongst the provincial corporations to hear the players.

It was in 1623, the year of the publication of the First Folio, that the

City of Norwich took the step of making a representation to the Privy

Council and obtaining leave not to suffer any players within their

liberties. It is true that the inhibition was not strictly carried out

and that the authority was renewed in 1640. Nevertheless it is a sign of

the times. Other cities, Chester in 1615, Southampton in 1623, Worcester

in 1627, closed their public buildings to performances.[1073] From this

time onwards the entries of payments to players in municipal accounts

tend more and more to take the form of 'gratuities' given them 'because

they should not play' or 'to dismiss them', or 'to put them off', or in

more emphatic terms still 'to rid the town of them'.[1074] Meanwhile the

Puritan controversy breaks out again, winding up to that alarming

compilation of learning and argument in Prynne's _Histriomastix_ of

1633, which indeed cost its author his ears, but must none the less have

hung like a shadow of fate upon the doomed stage for ever after. And in

1642 the shadow moved, and on the outbreak of war came that dignified

ordinance of 2 September, which waved frivolity aside, what time the

nation girded itself for matters of moment:[1075]

_An Order of the Lords and Commons concerning Stage-playes._

Whereas the distressed Estate of Ireland, steeped in her own

Blood, and the distracted Estate of England, threatned with a

Cloud of Blood, by a Civill Warre, call for all possible meanes

to appease and avert the Wrath of God appearing in these

Judgements; amongst which, Fasting and Prayer having bin often

tryed to be very effectuall; have bin lately, and are still

enjoyned; and whereas publike Sports doe not well agree with

publike Calamities, nor publike Stage-playes with the Seasons

of Humiliation, this being an Exercise of sad and pious

solemnity, and the other being Spectacles of pleasure, too

commonly expressing laciuious Mirth and Levitie: It is

therefore thought fit, and Ordeined by the Lords and Commons in

this Parliament Assembled, that while these sad Causes and set

times of Humiliation doe continue, publike Stage-Playes shall

cease, and bee forborne. Instead of which, are recommended to

the people of this Land, the profitable and seasonable

Considerations of Repentance, Reconciliation, and peace with

God, which probably may produce outward peace and prosperity,

and bring againe Times of Joy and Gladnesse to these Nations.

Die Veneris Septemb. 2. 1642.

I need not here attempt to trace the faint flutterings of the mimetic

instinct which survived this ordinance and even that, final and more

detailed, of 9 February 1648, 'for the utter suppression and abolishing

of all stage-playes and interludes', whereby players were made amenable

to the statutes against vagabonds 'notwithstanding any license

whatsoever from the King or any person or persons to that purpose', and

the justices were ordered to demolish the houses, and to subject the

players, if found, to a whipping.[1076] It is sufficient that from 1642

to 1660 there was substantially no public stage in London. Some of the

King's men, we are told, went into the army, 'and, like good men and

true, served the King their master, though in a different, yet more

honourable capacity'. Under the Commonwealth they were 'reduced to a

necessitous condition', and we have one glimpse of the last of

Shakespeare's fellows, John Lowin, keeping an inn, the Three Pigeons, at

Brentford, where he died very old, 'and his poverty was as great as his

age'.[1077]

Printed in England at the Oxford University Press

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 989: App. C, No. xlviii.]

[Footnote 990: C. Severn, _Diary of John Ward_ (_c._ 1661-3), 183, 'I

have heard that Mʳ. Shakespeare ... in his elder days lived at

Stratford: and supplied the stage with 2 plays every year, and for itt

had an allowance so large, that hee spent att the rate of a 1,000_l_ a

year, as I have heard'; Aubrey, ii. 226, 'I thinke I have been told that

he left 2 or 300 _li_ per annum there and thereabout [i.e. at Stratford]

to a sister'.]

[Footnote 991: Lee, 281; G. R. French, _Shakespeareana Genealogica_,

514; _Herald and Genealogist_, i. 492.]

[Footnote 992: Lee, 285, citing (_a_) manuscript notes by Ralph Brooke

on William Dethick's grants of arms, in which both Shakespeare and

Cowley appear in a list of persons given arms on false pretences, and

(_b_) a manuscript _Discourse of the Causes of Discord amongst the

Officers of Arms_ by William Smith, Rougedragon, 'Phillipps the player

had graven in a gold ring the armes of Sʳ Wᵐ Phillipp, Lord Bardolph,

with the said L. Bardolphs cote quartred, which I shewed to Mʳ York

[Brooke, York Herald] at a small gravers shopp in Foster Lane.... Pope

the player would have no other armes but the armes of Sʳ Tho. Pope,

Chancelor of yᵉ Augmentations'.]

[Footnote 993: App. C, No. liv.]

[Footnote 994: Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 325; cf. ch. x.]

[Footnote 995: App. C, Nos. xxii, lvii; cf. Wright (App. I, ii) on the

'grave and sober behaviour' of the later King's men.]

[Footnote 996: Cf. ch. xiii (Anne's).]

[Footnote 997: Cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth's).]

[Footnote 998: Dekker and Webster, _Northward Ho!_ IV. i. 1:

'_Bellamont._ Sirrah, I'll speak with none.

_Servant._ What? Not a player?

_Bellamont._ No; though a sharer bawl.

I'll speak with none, although it be the mouth

Of the big company.'

Cf. Dekker, _News from Hell_ (1606, _Works_, ii. 99), 'Marrie players

swarme there as they do here, whose occupation being smelt out, by the

Caco-daemon, or head officer of the Countrie, to bee lucrative, he

purposes to make vp a company, and to be chiefe sharer himselfe'; also

_A Mad World, my Masters_, V. i. 42, where one of the sham Lord

Owemuch's players is a 'politician', who 'works out restraints, makes

best legs at court, and has a suit made of purpose for the company's

business' and 'has greatest share and may live of himselfe'.]

[Footnote 999: Jonson, _Poetaster_, III. iv. 373, 'Commend me to

seuen-shares and a halfe, and remember to morrow--if you lacke a

seruice, you shall play in my name, rascalls, but you shall buy your

owne cloth, and I'le ha' two shares for my countenance'. It appears from

a list of Sir Henry Herbert's profits as Master of the Revels, drawn up

in 1662, that he had secured a share, which he valued at £100 a year,

from each of the London companies, other than the King's men

(_Variorum_, iii. 266).]

[Footnote 1000: It is impossible to say what arrangement underlies the

statement in an undated letter from Richard Jones to Alleyn about a

German tour (_Henslowe Papers_, 33) that Robert Browne was 'put to half

a shaer, and to stay hear, for they ar all against his goinge'.]

[Footnote 1001: _Hamlet_, III. ii. 286:

'_Hamlet._ Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers--if

the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me--with two Provincial

roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of

players.

_Horatio._ Half a share.

_Hamlet._ A whole one, I.'

For half-sharers, cf. ch. xiii (Queen's, Admiral's). Three-quarter

sharers existed in the Lady Elizabeth's men about 1614; cf. T. M.,

_Father Hubburd's Tales_ (Bullen, _Middleton_, viii. 64), 'The ant began

to stalk like a three-quarter sharer'.]

[Footnote 1002: The number of players named in the Jacobean patents

varies from 7 to 14, but this gives little direct guidance as to the

number of sharers. It is, however, consistent with my estimate, which is

based mainly upon the number of Admiral's men shown at various times in

contractual relations with Henslowe. There were 12 sharers in the Lady

Elizabeth's company in 1611 and 12 in Queen Anne's company in 1617.

Probably the Elizabethan companies ran rather smaller.]

[Footnote 1003: Dekker, _News from Hell_ (1606), 'a companie of country

players, being nine in number, one sharer and the rest jornymen'; cf. p.

362.]

[Footnote 1004: Cf. ch. ix.]

[Footnote 1005: Amalgamated companies also toured the provinces, and

even entered into partnership with companies, such as Lord Morley's,

which were purely provincial. Thus we find Hunsdon's and Morley's at

Bristol in 1583, and Hunsdon's and Howard's at Leicester in 1585; the

Queen's and Sussex's at Southampton, Gloucester, and Coventry in 1590-1;

the Queen's and Morley's at Aldeburgh on 11 Oct. 1592 (Stopes, _Hunnis_,

314); the Admiral's, Strange's (or Derby's), and Morley's variously

combined at Ipswich, Southampton, Bath, Shrewsbury, York, and Newcastle

in 1592-4. Sometimes players worked with musicians, tumblers or

rope-dancers; of course this was so in London itself, but naturally the

old methods of the mimes tended to reassert themselves more markedly in

the provinces.]

[Footnote 1006: Murray, i. 172 (table), 237.]

[Footnote 1007: Henslowe's agreement with John Cholmley, probably for

the Rose, in 1587, provides for joint appointment by the parties as

landlords. The same arrangement is implied, so far as the galleries are

concerned, by the Lady Elizabeth's agreement of 1614. In 1612 Robert

Browne wrote to Alleyn to procure 'a gathering place' for the wife of

one Rose, a hireling of Prince Henry's men. Apparently the sharers had

to pay the gatherers' wages. An undated letter from William Bird, also

of Prince Henry's men, to Alleyn tells him of the dishonesty of John

Russell, 'that by yowr apoyntment was made a gatherer with us'. The

company will not let him 'take the box', but will pay his wages as 'a

nessessary atendaunt on the stage', and if he likes, employ him also as

a tailor. Henslowe made the Lady Elizabeth's pay for nine gatherers more

than he was entitled to. In _Frederick and Basilea_, the gatherers came

on as supers (_Henslowe Papers_, 3, 24, 63, 85, 89, 137). The 'place or

priviledge' in the Globe and Blackfriars left by Henry Condell to

Elizabeth Wheaton in 1627 was presumably that of a gatherer. A satirist

wrote in _The Actors Remonstrance_ of 1643 (Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 263),

'Our very doore-keepers men and women most grievously complaine that by

this cessation they are robbed of the privilege of stealing from us with

licence: they cannot now, as in King Agamemnon's dayes, seeme to scratch

their heads where they itch not, and drop shillings and half

croune-pieces in at their collars'. The money taken at the door or in

the gallery was traditionally put in a box and kept for division; cf.

Rankins, _Mirrour of Monsters_ (1587), f. 6, 'door-keepers and

box-holders at plays'.]

[Footnote 1008: Cf. ch. xvi (Globe) and ch. xvii (Blackfriars); the

document is printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312.]

[Footnote 1009: This is the only point on which I have anything to add

to Dr. Greg's personal information as to Henslowe; it is important as

bearing on the history of Lord Strange's men (q.v.). He is described as

Groom of the Chamber in an undated document (_Henslowe Papers_, 42)

belonging to a series dealing with the opening of the Rose for Strange's

men in a long vacation. This cannot be put later than 1592, as there was

plague throughout the long vacation of 1593 and Lord Strange became Earl

of Derby in Sept. 1593. On the other hand, Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 9;

_Henslowe Papers_, 36), following Warner, 8, argues that Henslowe must

have become Groom of the Chamber later than 7 April 1592, since he is

not named in a list of Grooms appended to a warrant of that date and is

named in a similar list of 26 Jan. 1599. These warrants are in _Addl.

MS._ 5750, ff. 114, 116. They are original warrants for the 'watching

liveries' which were issued annually, but on irregular dates, to the

Yeomen of the Guard and to the Groom Porter and fourteen Grooms of the

Chamber. A complete series of copies of these warrants is preserved in

_Lord Chamberlain's Records_, v. 90, 91, and shows that Henslowe only

received a watching livery during three consecutive years, on 14 Nov.

1597, 26 Jan. 1599, and 27 Oct. 1599. Yet we know that he was a Groom in

Aug. 1593 from the address on one of Alleyn's letters (_Henslowe

Papers_, 36), and about 1595-6 from a petition to the first Lord

Hunsdon, who died in June 1596 (_Henslowe Papers_, 44). Therefore the

absence of his name from the livery list of 7 April 1592 is no proof

that he was not then already a Groom. Probably Henslowe was only an

Extraordinary Groom, and only some of the Extraordinary Grooms were

needed to supplement the twelve Ordinary ones for watching purposes.]

[Footnote 1010: Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 22, 25) shows that Henslowe

almost certainly held a lease of the Barge, the Bell, and the Cock

'vppon the banke called Stewes', describes these houses as 'licensed

brothels', and infers that Henslowe was 'the intermediate landlord

between the stew-keepers and the Reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop

of Winchester'. It is possible that the tradition, as well as the name,

of the district endured into Elizabeth's reign, but Dr. Greg forgets, in

his Voltairean mood, that the system of episcopal licences terminated in

the reign of Henry VIII (Rendle, _Bankside_, xi). Ultimately Alleyn

secured on the property the settlement of his wife Constance, daughter

of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, which must surely have established

its respectability.]

[Footnote 1011: Henslowe, i. 98, 'Jemes Cranwigge the 4 of November 1598

playd his callenge in my howsse & I sholde haue hade for my parte xxxxˢ

which the company hath receuyd & oweth yᵗ to me'.]

[Footnote 1012: Cf. vol. ii, p. 408.]

[Footnote 1013: Cf. Gosson, _S.A._ 39 (App. C, No. xxii), 'the very

hyrelings of some of our players, which stand at reuersion of vi s by

the weeke'; Dekker, _News from Hell_ (_Works_, ii. 146), 'a companie of

country players, being nine in number, one sharer, & the rest iornymen';

_The Raven's Almanac_ (iv. 193), 'a number of you (especially the

hirelings) shall be with emptie purses at least twice a week'; _Jests to

Make you Merrie_ (ii. 353), 'Nay, you mercenary soldiers, or you that

are as the Switzers to players (I meane the hired men) by all the

prognostications that I haue seene this yeare, you make but a hard and a

hungry liuing of it by strowting [? 'strowling'] up and downe after the

waggon. Leaue therefore, O leaue the company of such as lick the fat

from your beards (if you haue any) and come hether, for here I know you

shall be sharers'.]

[Footnote 1014: Cf. Chapman, _May Day_, III. iii. 228, 'Afore heaven,

'tis a sweet fac'd child: methinks he would show well in woman's

attire.... I'll help thee to three crownes a week for him, and she can

act well'. The will of Augustine Phillips in 1605 mentions his

apprentice James Sands, and his late apprentice, Samuel Gilburne. The

'boys' of various Admiral's men appear in Henslowe's diary and in the

Dulwich 'plots' of plays; cf. Henslowe, i. 71, 73, 'Thomas Dowtones

biger boy'; _Henslowe Papers_, 137, 138, 142, 147, 'E. Dutton his boye',

'Mʳ. Allens boy', 'Mʳ. Townes boy', 'Mʳ. Jones his boy', 'Mʳ. Denygtens

little boy'.]

[Footnote 1015: Henslowe, i. 201; _Henslowe Papers_, 48. There is also a

contract by which Thomas Downton of the Admiral's men hires an unnamed

player (Henslowe, i. 40). Augustine Phillips (1605) calls Christopher

Beeston his 'servant', and Nicholas Tooley (1623) calls Richard

Burbadge, then deceased, his 'late master'. But Beeston and Tooley were

King's men by patent before the dates in question, and it is a little

difficult, though not impossible, to suppose that a hireling would

appear in a patent. Probably the terms only retain the memory of former

apprenticeships.]

[Footnote 1016: Henslowe, ii. 120.]

[Footnote 1017: The diary records loans to Jonson, Chapman, Porter,

Chettle, Day, Haughton, Munday, Dekker, Anthony Wadeson, and Robert

Wilson, and to the actors Martin Slater, John Singer, Thomas Towne,

Edward Dutton, Robert Shaw, Thomas Downton, William Borne, John Helle,

Gabriel Spencer, Richard Alleyn, John Tomson, Humphrey Jeffes, Anthony

Jeffes, Richard Jones, Charles Massey, John Duke, Richard Bradshaw,

Thomas Heywood, William Kempe, Thomas Blackwood, John Lowin, Abraham

Savery, Richard Perkins; as well as to Henslowe's nephew, Francis

Henslowe. Except Francis Henslowe and Abraham Savery, of the Queen's

men, and John Tomson, of whom nothing is known, all these men are

traceable in connexion with either the Admiral's or Worcester's men. A

few of the loans to poets, e.g. to Chettle, seem to have been on behalf

of the Admiral's men, rather than of Henslowe himself.]

[Footnote 1018: Henslowe, i. 47, 63, 67, 'Rᵈ. of Bengemenes Johnsones

share as ffoloweth'; 'Rᵈ. of Gabrell Spencer at severall tymes of his

share in the gallereyes as foloweth'; 'A juste acownte of the money

which I haue receued of Humfreye Jeaffes hallffe sheare ... as

foloweth.... This some was payd backe agayne vnto the companey of my

lord admeralles players ... & they shared yt amonste them'. In such

cases Henslowe may merely have acted as agent of the company in securing

the payment out of gallery money of sums due from incoming sharers.]

[Footnote 1019: _Henslowe Papers_, 18, 23, 86, 111, 123; cf. ch. xiii

(Lady Elizabeth's).]

[Footnote 1020: Cf. p. 375.]

[Footnote 1021: Henslowe, ii. 19.]

[Footnote 1022: _Henslowe Papers_, 90, 93; cf. ch. xiii (Prince

Charles's).]

[Footnote 1023: _Henslowe Papers_, 67, 70.]

[Footnote 1024: Henslowe, ii. 19.]

[Footnote 1025: Similar methods were employed by Henslowe's rival,

Francis Langley, at the Swan (q.v.) in 1597. He provided apparel for a

company, and was allowed for it out of their 'moytie of the gains for

the seuerall standinges in the galleries of the said howse which

belonged to them'. Having quarrelled with the company before he was

completely reimbursed, he kept the apparel. He took individual bonds to

play with him for three years, released some of the company from their

bonds, and sued the rest, who could not play without their fellows, for

breach of contract.]

[Footnote 1026: J. Hall, _Virgedemiarum_ (1597), i. 3, appears to

satirize performances by amateurs 'upon a hired stage'; cf. p. 361.]

[Footnote 1027: Similarly in _Keysar v. Burbadge_ (1610) the pleadings

of Robert Keysar grossly exaggerated the profits of the Blackfriars.]

[Footnote 1028: Cf. ch. vii.]

[Footnote 1029: Cf. App. B.]

[Footnote 1030: _Variorum_, iii. 266.]

[Footnote 1031: Lee, 315; cf. A. Thaler, _Shakespeare's Income_ (_S. P._

xv. 82), who halves Lee's estimate.]

[Footnote 1032: In 1628 Sir Henry Herbert notes in his office-book

(_Variorum_, iii. 176), 'The Kinges company with a general consent and

alacritye [poor devils! E. K. C.] have given mee the benefitt of too

dayes in the yeare, the one in summer, thother in winter, to bee taken

out of the second daye of a revived playe, att my owne choyse. The

housekeepers have likewyse given their shares, their dayly charge only

deducted, which comes to some 2ˡ 5ˢ. this 25 May, 1628.' Herbert words

it oddly, but the 'dayly charge' must be that of the sharers, not the

housekeepers, who had none, and the estimate agrees fairly with that of

1635. Herbert took during 1628-33 sums of from £1 5_s._ to £6 7_s._,

averaging £4 8_s._ 6_d._, out of five performances at the Globe, and £9

16_s._ to £17 10_s._, averaging £13 10_s._, from five performances at

the Blackfriars. The gross takings averaged therefore £6 13_s._ 6_d._ at

the Globe and £15 15_s._ at the Blackfriars. In 1633 Herbert compounded

for a payment of £10 at Christmas and £10 at Midsummer. But in 1662

(_Variorum_, iii. 266) he included amongst the incomings of his office

the profits of a summer's day and a winter's day at the Blackfriars,

which he valued at £50 each.]

[Footnote 1033: Cf. p. 363 and ch. xiii (Admiral's).]

[Footnote 1034: Cf. W. W. Greg in _T. L. S._ (12 Feb. 1920) and his

analysis of the Dulwich 'plots' (_H. P._ 152). Here also we find the

tireman, gatherers, and attendants used as 'supers'.]

[Footnote 1035: Puttenham, i. 14, says that Roscius 'brought vp these

vizards, which we see at this day vsed'. In _The Longer Thou Livest_,

1748, 1796, God's Judgement has 'a terrible visure' and Confusion 'an

ill fauowred visure', and in _All For Money_, 389, 1440, 1462,

Damnation, Judas, and Dives have vizards. But this is early evidence,

and perhaps drawn from the private stage. Harington, _Metamorphosis of

Ajax_ (1596, _An Anatomy_, 5), speaks of 'an ill-favoured vizor, such as

I have seen in stage plays, when they dance Machachinas', but this

rather tells against the use by ordinary actors at that date.]

[Footnote 1036: Women only began to act regularly at the Restoration;

cf. Ward, iii. 253. There had been occasional earlier examples; even in

1611 Coryat, _Crudities_, i. 386, says that at Venice 'I saw women acte,

a thing that I never saw before, though I have heard that it hathe beene

sometimes used in London'. The exceptions are, I think, such as prove

the rule; private plays such as _Hymen's Triumph_, Venner's gulling show

of _England's Joy_, the Italian tumblers of 1574, the virago Moll Frith

at the Fortune (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Dekker, _Roaring Girl_). On 22 Feb.

1583 Richard Madox 'went to the theater to see a scurvie play set out al

by one virgin, which there proved a fyemarten without voice, so that we

stayed not the matter' (_Cotton MSS. App._ xlvii, f. 6ᵛ; cf. _S. P.

Colonial, E. Indies_, 221). As to the skill of the boys, cf. Ben Jonson

on Richard Robinson in _The Devil is an Ass_, II. viii. 64.]

[Footnote 1037: Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 316.]

[Footnote 1038: Cf. ch. xvi (Swan).]

[Footnote 1039: Cf. ch. xiii (Admiral's).]

[Footnote 1040: Cf. ch. vii.]

[Footnote 1041: Cf. ch. xiii (Admiral's).]

[Footnote 1042: Cf. the account of Platter in 1599 (ch. xvi,

introduction); also Donne, _Satire_, iv. 180 (ed. _Muses' Library_, ii.

196):

As fresh and sweet their apparels be, as be

The fields they sold to buy them. 'For a king

Those hose are,' cry the flatterers; and bring

Them next week to the theatre to sell;

and Jonson, _Underwoods_, xxxii:

Is it for these that Fine-man meets the street

Coached, or on foot-cloth, thrice changed every day,

To teach each suit he has the ready way

From Hyde Park to the stage, where at the last

His dear and borrowed bravery he must cast.

]

[Footnote 1043: Cf. App. C, Nos. xxx, xlvi; _Case Is Altered_, ii. 4,

'Theatres! ay, and plays too, both tragedy and comedy, and set forth

with as much state as can be imagined'; cf. Graves, 68.]

[Footnote 1044: Cf. chh. xx, xxi _passim_, and _Henslowe Papers_, 113.]

[Footnote 1045: Wegener, 135.]

[Footnote 1046: _Henslowe Papers_, 117, 'j lyone skin; j beares skyne

... j dragon in fostes [_Faustus_] j lyone; ij lyone heades; j great

horse with his leages; j black dogge'. For brown paper monsters, cf.

App. C, Nos. xxii, xxx, and for a controversy as to the use of live

animals, ch. xx.]

[Footnote 1047: _E. Hoe_, IV. ii. 92, 'thy name shall be written upon

conduits, and thy deeds plaid i' thy lifetime by the best companies of

actors, and be call'd their get-peny'; _Barth. Fair_, V. i. 13 (of a

'motion'), 'the _Gunpowder-plot_, there was a get-peny! I haue presented

that to an eighteene, or twenty pence audience, nine times in an

afternoone'. Dekker, _News from Hell_ (1606, _Works_, ii. 146), speaks

of 'a Cobler of Poetrie called a play-patcher'.]

[Footnote 1048: Henslowe, ii. 115; cf. ch. x. By the end of Sir Henry

Herbert's time the fee had been raised to £2; even for an old play he

exacted £1 (_Variorum_, iii. 266).]

[Footnote 1049: C. IS A. I. i.]

[Footnote 1050: _Henslowe_, i. 113, 136 (Admiral's, 1599, 1601), 181

(Worcester's, 1602), 'for Mʳ. Mundaye & the reste of the poets at the

playnge of Sʳ John Oldcastell the ferste tyme' [_in margin_, 'as a

gefte']; 'John Daye ... after the playinge of the 2 part of Strowde';

'Thomas Deckers ... over & above his price of his boocke called A

Medysen for a Cvrste Wiffe'. These are exceptional disbursements. The

Daborne-Henslowe correspondence of 1613-14 (_Henslowe Papers_, 71, 75,

76, 82) suggests a more regular practice: 'I pay you half my earnings in

the play'; 'We will hav but twelv pownds and the overplus of the second

day'; 'You shall hav the whole companies bonds to pay you the first day

of my play being playd'; 'I desyr you should disburse but 12ˡ a play

till they be playd'. Probably the actual day selected for the poet's

benefit varied; thus the third day is suggested by Dekker's prologue to

_If It be not Good, the Devil is in It_ (1612), a Red Bull play:

not caring, so he gains

A cram'd third day, what filth drops from his brains.

Malone (_Variorum_, iii. 157) quotes later evidence for a variation of

days, together with Davenant, _The Play-house to be Let_:

There is an old tradition,

That in the times of mighty Tamberlane,

Of conjuring Faustus and the Beauchamps bold,

You poets used to have the second day.

This shall be ours, sir, and tomorrow yours.

The actual term 'benefit' appears first in connexion with the interest

of the Master of the Revels (cf. p. 370), not that of the poet. Nor do

we know what exactly the 'overplus' assigned to the poet was calculated

upon.]

[Footnote 1051: _B. Fair_, V. iii. 30, 'What, doe you not know the

_Author_, fellow _Filcher_? you must take no money of him; he must come

in _gratis_: Mʳ. _Littlewit_ is a voluntary; he is the _Author_'.]

[Footnote 1052: Henslowe, i. 83, 100, 101, 107, 119 (Admiral's,

1598-1600), 'to disecharge Mʳ. Dicker owt of the cownter in the

Powltrey'; 'Harey Chettell to paye his charges in the Marshallsey'; 'to

descarge Thomas Dickers frome the areaste of my lord chamberlens men';

'to descarge Harey Chettell of his areste from Ingrome'; 'Wᵐ Harton to

releace hime owt of the Clyncke'; also Henslowe, i. 103, 165 (Admiral's,

1599, 1602), 'Harey Porter ... gaue me his faythfulle promysse that I

shold haue alle the boockes which he writte ether him sellfe or with any

other'; 'at the sealleynge of H. Chettells band to writte for them'.]

[Footnote 1053: _Henslowe Papers_, 67; cf. ch. xiii (Lady Elizabeth's).]

[Footnote 1054: Henslowe, ii. 20.]

[Footnote 1055: Lodge, _Scillaes Metamorphosis_ (1589):

by oath he bound me

To write no more of that whence shame doth grow,

Or tie my pen to Pennie-knaves delight.

]

[Footnote 1056: The pun on 'comoedians' and 'camoelions' had been made

by 'certayne gentlemen' against the Duttons as early as 1580; cf. ch.

xiii (Warwick's). It is still in use in _Ratseis Ghost_ (1605); cf. p.

340, n. 2.]

[Footnote 1057: The Aesopic allusion is complicated by another to the

story in Macrobius, _Saturnalia_, ii. 4, 30, perhaps based on Martial,

xiv. 73, of the cobbler who tried to teach a crow to say 'Ave Caesar' in

flattery of Augustus after the battle of Actium; cf. Mr. McKerrow's note

to Nashe's _Pierce Penilesse_ (_Works_, iv. 105). Both ideas are

suggested in Nashe's _Menaphon_ preface, and Greene, in _Francescos

Fortunes_ (App. C, No. xliii), combines them with a third story, also

due, perhaps through Cornelius Agrippa (App. C, No. xii), to Macrobius

(_Sat._ III. xiv. 12), of a debate on the respective powers of orator

and actor between Cicero and Roscius, into an obviously apocryphal jest:

'_Cicero._ Why _Roscius_, art thou proud with _Esops_ Crow, being pranct

with the glory of others feathers? Of thy selfe thou canst say nothing,

and if the Cobler hath taught thee to say _Aue Caesar_, disdain not thy

tutor, because thou pratest in a kings chamber.' Fleay, i. 258, chooses

to identify the cobbler with Marlowe and Roscius with Robert Wilson, and

(being ignorant of Macrobius) cites the use of the phrase 'Ave Caesar'

in _Edward III_, I. i. 164, which he ascribes to Marlowe, as evidence.

Such equations are always hazardous. The point of the passage is in the

indebtedness of the players as a body to the poets as a body. If any

individual actor were designated as Roscius about 1590, it would be more

likely to be Alleyn than another; the compliment to him is not unusual

later (cf. ch. xv). But he had hardly a monopoly of the name; and in the

present case there is really no reason to suppose that Greene had any

individual in mind, other than the historical Roscius. The name is given

to Ostler (q.v.) in 1611, and was in common generic use for a player;

cf. e.g. Marston, _Satires_ (1598), ii. 42:

That fair-framed piece of sweetest poesy,

Which Muto put between his mistress' paps ...

Was penned by Roscio the tragedian;

and _Scourge of Villainy_ (1598), xi. 40:

Say who acts best? Drusus or Roscio?

Similarly Fleay, ii. 279, has no real ground for supposing that the

player in the _Groatsworth of Wit_ is Wilson in particular. If, again,

any individual is meant, it might just as well be James Burbage.

Throughout Fleay is inclined to exaggerate the extent of the theatrical

references in the pamphlets of Greene and Nashe. But R. Simpson is much

worse in his hopelessly uncritical Introduction to _Faire Em_ in _The

School of Shakspere_, ii. 339, which is an attempt to trace a _vendetta_

against the actors and especially Shakespeare as a main motive in

Greene's writing from 1584 onwards. As far as I can see, Greene's

attacks on the stage are limited to the three pamphlets named in the

text, and Nashe's to the _Menaphon_ preface. It is doubtful whether

Greene was writing for the stage at all before about 1590; in any case

it may be assumed that neither writer was normally engaged in tilting

against his paymasters.]

[Footnote 1058: Cuthbert Conny-Catcher, _The Defence of Conny-Catching_

(1592, Greene, _Works_, xi. 75), 'What if I should prove you a

Conny-Catcher, Maister _R. G._ would it not make you blush at the

matter?... Aske the Queens Players, if you sold them not _Orlando

Furioso_ for twenty Nobles, and when they were in the country sold the

same Play to the Lord Admirals men for as much more. Was not this plaine

_Conny-Catching_, Maister _R. G._?... But I hear, when this was

objected, you made this excuse; that there was no more faith to be held

with players than with them that valued faith at the price of a feather;

for as they were comedians to act, so the actions of their lives were

Camelion-like; that they were uncertain, variable, time-pleasers, men

that measured honesty by profit, and that regarded their authors not by

desert, but by necessity of time.']

[Footnote 1059: Dekker, _Jests to Make you Merrie_ (1607, _Works_, ii.

303, 352), 'As proud as a player that feedes on the fruité of diuine

poetry (as swine on acorns).... O you that are the Poets of these

sinfull times, ouer whome the Players haue now got the vpper hand, by

making fooles of the poore country people, in driuing them like flockes

of geese to sit cackling in an old barne: and to swallow downe those

playes for new which here euery punck and her squire (like the

interpreter and his poppet) can rand out by heart they are so stale, and

therefore so stincking; I know the Lady Pecunia and you come very hardly

together, & therefore trouble not you'; cf. his references to

'strowlers' in note to p. 332. Another seventeenth-century critic is

H[enry] P[arrot], _Laquei Ridiculosi or Springes for Woodcocks_ (1613),

_Epig._ 131, _Theatrum Licentia_:

Cotta's become a player most men know,

And will no longer take such toyling paines;

For here's the spring (saith he) whence pleasures flow

And brings them damnable excessive gaines:

That now are cedars growne from shrubs and sprigs,

Since Greene's _Tu Quoque_ and those Garlicke Jigs.

]

[Footnote 1060: _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 194, 214. For Elizabethan

school-plays at Shrewsbury, cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Ashton. Murray, ii. 204,

216, 243, 324, 364, 382, records plays by schoolboys or other children

at Bath (1602), Bristol (1594), Coventry (1601-2), Ludlow (1562,

1575-6), Norwich (1564-5), Plymouth (Totnes boys, 1564-74).]

[Footnote 1061: _Poetaster_, III. iv. 344, 'O, it will get vs a huge

deale of money, Captaine, and wee haue need on't; for this winter ha's

made vs all poorer, then so many staru'd snakes: No bodie comes at vs;

not a gentleman, nor a ----.']

[Footnote 1062: _Hamlet_, II. ii. 339. This is the Folio text. The

Second Quarto omits all but the first ten lines, but that there was some

reference to the children in the original version of the play, the date

of which may be 1601, is shown by the First Quarto text:

_Hamlet._ How comes it that they trauell? Do they grow restie?

_Gilderstone._ No my lord, their reputation holds as it was

wont.

_Hamlet._ How then?

_Gilderstone._ Yfaith my Lord, noueltie carries it away,

For the principali publike audience that

Came to them, are turned to private playes,

And to the humour of children.

]

[Footnote 1063: The main interest of the 'war of the theatres', or

'Poetomachia' as Dekker, _Satiromastix_, Epist. 10, calls it, is for

literature and biography, rather than for stage-history. I refer to it

under the plays concerned in chh. xxiii, xxiv, and can only add a brief

summary here. The treatment of R. A. Small, _The Stage Quarrel_ (1899),

is excellent, and may be supplemented by H. C. Hart's papers, _Gabriel

Harvey_, _Marston and Ben Jonson_ (_9 N. Q._ xi. 201, 281, 343, 501;

xii. 161, 263, 342, 403, 482) and _On Carlo Buffone_ (_10 N. Q._ i.

381), while the less critical view, partly derived from Fleay, of J. H.

Penniman, _The War of the Theatres_ (1897), is revised in his edition of

_Poetaster_ and _Satiromastix_. The protagonists are Jonson and Marston,

with whom became allied Dekker. Daniel and many others, whose names have

been brought under discussion, do not seem to have been really

concerned. Jonson himself tells us, in the _Apologetical Dialogue_,

probably written late in 1601, to _Poetaster_ that 'three yeeres, They

did provoke me with their petulant stiles On every stage'. This takes us

to 1599, up to which year there is no just ground for suggesting any

conflict between Jonson and Marston. Jonson may then have taken offence

at Marston's portrait of him, intended to be complimentary, as

Chrisoganus in _Histriomastix_. In the same year he criticized Marston's

style in _E. M. O._ In 1600 Marston satirized Jonson as Brabant Senior

in _Jack Drum's Entertainment_, and in 1601 as Lampatho Doria in _What

You Will_. Jonson in turn brought Marston into _Poetaster_ (1601) as

Crispinus, and added Dekker as Demetrius. Dekker retorted a month or two

later with his caricature of Jonson as Horace in _Satiromastix_. Some

unascertained part in the 'purge' given to Jonson is ascribed in _3

Parnassus_ (1601) to Shakespeare. Jonson and Marston seem to have been

reconciled by 1603; but the dispute had not been merely a paper one, for

Jonson, _Conversations_, 11, 20, claims that he 'beat Marston, and took

his pistol from him'.]

[Footnote 1064: Small, 67, has an excellent analysis of _Histriomastix_.

He dates it in 1596, but not convincingly. It might just as well be

1588-90. The text is in R. Simpson, _The School of Shakespeare_, ii. 1,

and needs re-editing. Moreover, Simpson thought that Posthaste was

Shakespeare. The actor-scenes are i. 112-62; ii. 70-147, 188-344; iii.

179-243, 265-78; iv. 159-201; v. 61-102, 238-43; vi. 187-240. Of these I

think that ii. 247-80; iii. 179-217, 265-78 may belong to the Marstonian

revision.]

[Footnote 1065: Cf. _Hamlet_, II. ii. 415, 'The best actors

in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral,

pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,

tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem

unlimited'.]

[Footnote 1066: _Poetaster_, III. iv; IV. iv; V. iii. 108-38.]

[Footnote 1067: Can the Aesop episode be a reminiscence of the part

played by Augustine Phillips in the Essex innovation? Cf. vol. ii, p.

205.]

[Footnote 1068: _2 Return from Parnassus_, iv. 3; v. 1.]

[Footnote 1069: In certain other plays which have actors amongst their

dramatis personae (e.g. _Midsummer-Night's Dream_ and Middleton's _Mayor

of Queenborough_) the point is reversed, and it is the regular companies

who satirize provincial companies or amateurs.]

[Footnote 1070: Thus in 1618 the Mayor of Exeter complained of a company

travelling under Daniel's patent for the Children of Bristol (q.v.)

that, though the patent was for children, the company consisted of men,

with only five youths amongst them.]

[Footnote 1071: Cf. ch. xii, introduction.]

[Footnote 1072: Cf. App. C, No. lviii.]

[Footnote 1073: Murray, ii. 235, 400, 410.]

[Footnote 1074: Ibid. 199, 231, 264, 312, 341, 384, &c.]

[Footnote 1075: The Order was appended to _A Declaration of the Lords

and Commons Assembled in Parliament, For the appeasing and quietting of

all unlawfull Tumults and Insurrections in the severall Counties of

England, and Dominion of Wales_ (1642). The whole pamphlet is facsimiled

in J. Knight's edition of J. Downes, _Roscius Anglicanus_ (1886).]

[Footnote 1076: Hazlitt, _E. D. S._ 65.]

[Footnote 1077: Wright, _Historia Histrionica_, 409, 411.]

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| TRANSCRIBER NOTES. |

| |

| P. xvii 'Litteratur' changed to 'Literatur'. |

| P. xxxiii 'Antient' changed to 'Ancient'. |

| P. xxxiv 'O. S.' changed to 'C. S.'. |

| P. xxxviii. 'Smith' changed to 'Strype'; moved alphabetically.|

| P. xxxix 'Stow' changed to 'Stowe'. |

| Footnote numbers that were left off are added on pages 95-97. |

| P. 315. Added missing footnote number. |

| P. 330. Added missing footnote number. |

| P. 363. Added missing footnote number. |

| Corrected various punctuation. |

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