The Earls of Arundel had players as far back as the fifteenth century.[331] The 12th Earl entertained Elizabeth with a mask at Nonsuch on 5 August 1559. He had players, who were rewarded by the Duchess of Suffolk, apparently during a London visit, in December 1561. The 13th Earl had a company in 1584. It was in London when plays were suppressed in June, and obediently submitted. It seems to have been located at the Curtain. It can be traced at Ipswich on 1 July, at Leicester before 29 September, at Aldeburgh in 1583–4, at Norwich in 1585–6, and thereafter no more.

xv. THE EARL OF HERTFORD’S MEN

These are among the most obscure of the companies. They appeared at Canterbury in 1582, Faversham in 1586, Newcastle in October 1590, Leicester on 22 November 1590, and Bath, Marlborough, and Southampton in 1591–2. During the progress of 1591 Elizabeth was entertained from 20 to 24 September by the Earl at Elvetham in Hampshire ‘beeing none of the Earles chiefe mansion houses’ (cf. ch. xxiv). This was really a visit of reconciliation, for much of Hertford’s life had been spent in disgrace, owing to his first marriage with the heiress, under Henry VIII’s will, to Elizabeth’s throne. The entertainment was very elaborate, and at its close Elizabeth protested to the Earl that it was so honourable ‘as hereafter he should find the rewarde thereof in her especiall favour’. No doubt Hertford’s players took a part, and shared the ‘largesse’ which she bestowed upon the ‘actors’ of the pastimes before she departed. I think it must have also been their success on this occasion which earned them their only appearance at Court, on the following 6 January 1592. I have elsewhere tried to show that there is a special connexion between this Elvetham entertainment and A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,[332] and if any special company is satirized in Bottom and his fellows, I feel sure that it must have been the Earl of Hertford’s and not, as Mr. Fleay thinks, the Earl of Sussex’s.[333]

Probably the company went under in the plague of 1592–4, and in 1595 Hertford was again in disgrace for presuming so far upon his favour as to claim a declaration of the validity of his first marriage. But there were players under his name at Coventry in 1596–7, at Ipswich in 1600–1, and on 8 May 1602, at Norwich in 1601, and at Bath in 1601–2, and this company appeared at Court on 6 January 1603. Their payee was Martin Slater, formerly of the Admiral’s, and since then, possibly, an associate of Laurence Fletcher in his Scottish tours. In 1604–5 they were at Norwich. In 1606 they visited Leicester, on 9 July Oxford, and on 2 December the Earl of Derby wrote to the Mayor of Chester to bespeak for them the use of the town-hall. In 1606–7 they were at Coventry.

xvi. MR. EVELYN’S MEN (1588)

Collier gives no authority for the following rather puzzling statement:[334]

The date intended must be 1588, as in 1587 Shrovetide fell in March. But there is probably some misunderstanding, as no such payment occurs in the Treasurer of the Chamber’s accounts, and the sum named is too small for a reward. Moreover, private gentlemen do not seem to have entertained Court companies at so late a date. The Revels Account for 1587–8 only records seven plays. Of these the Treasurer of the Chamber paid for six, and the seventh was presented by Gray’s Inn.

xvii. THE EARL OF DERBY’S (LORD STRANGE’S) MEN

The companies connected with the great northern house of Stanley present a history perhaps more complicated than that of any other group, partly because it seems to have been not unusual for the heir of the house to entertain players during his father’s lifetime. The 3rd Earl had a company in Henry the Eighth’s reign. His successor had one as Lord Strange, which is only recorded in the provinces, in 1563–70.[335] Four years later he had again a company as Earl of Derby. The earliest mention of it is at Coventry in 1573–4. It was at Dover and Coventry in 1577–8, at Ipswich on 28 May 1578, at Nottingham on 31 August 1578, at Bristol in the same year, and at Bath in 1578–9. In the last three months of 1579 it was at Leicester; and during the following Christmas it made its first appearance at Court with a performance of The Soldan and the Duke of —— on 14 February 1580. In 1579–80 it was at Stratford-on-Avon, Exeter, and Coventry, on 1 January 1581 at Court, in 1580–1 at Bath, Leicester, Nottingham, Exeter, and Winchester, in 1581–2 at Nottingham, Winchester, and Abingdon, in October to December 1582 at Leicester, and in 1582–3 at Bath, Norwich, and Southampton. Its last appearance at Court was in Love and Fortune on 30 December 1582.

I think that the Earl of Derby’s players must be taken to be distinct from another company, which was performing during much the same period of years under the name of Lord Strange. These men are found in 1576–7 at Exeter, in 1578–9 at Bath, Ipswich, Rochester, Nottingham, Coventry, and Stratford-on-Avon. They also made their first appearance at Court in the winter of 1579–80. Their performance was on 15 January 1580, and they are spoken of, not as players, but as tumblers. On the other hand they appear as players at Bath, side by side with Derby’s men, in 1580–1 and 1582–3, and as players also at Bristol, Canterbury, and Gloucester in 1580–1, Plymouth in 1581–2, and Barnstaple in 1582–3 and 1583–4. With the tumbling at Court in 1580 begins a rather puzzling series of records. There are further Court entries of feats of activity by Lord Strange’s men on 28 December 1581, and of feats of activity and tumbling on 1 January 1583. For this last occasion the payee of the company was John Symons. Two years later Symons and his ‘fellows’ were again at Court with feats of activity and vaulting, but they were then under the patronage, not of Lord Strange, but of the Earl of Oxford. There would be nothing extraordinary about such a transference of service, were it not that during the following Christmas, on 9 January 1586, tumbling and feats of activity are ascribed to John Symons and ‘Mr. Standleyes boyes’, and that by ‘Mr. Standley’ one can hardly help assuming either Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, or some other member of his family to be intended. This inference is confirmed by a mention of Lord Strange’s men at Faversham in 1585–6, and it becomes necessary to assume that, after attaching himself for a year to the Earl of Oxford, Symons thought better of it, and returned to his original master. Symons and his company again showed feats of activity on 28 December 1587. No patron is named on this occasion, but as Strange’s men are traceable at Coventry during 1587–8, it is natural to assume that they were still holding together. Now a new complication comes in. There were activities again at Court in the winter of 1588–9, and Symons certainly took part in them.[336] But the only men companies to whom payments were made were the Queen’s and the Admiral’s, who now reappear at Court after absence during two winters, and it is only in the case of the Admiral’s that the payment is specified to be for activities. If the restless Symons had joined the Admiral’s men, it cannot have been for long, since in the course of 1588–9 he was leading one section of the Queen’s men to Nottingham. Nor had Strange’s yet entirely broken up, for on 5 November 1589, both they and the Admiral’s, evidently playing as distinct companies, were suppressed by the Lord Mayor in the City.[337] Strange’s, who were then at the Cross Keys, played contemptuously, and some of them were imprisoned. A year later, the Admiral’s were with Burbadge at the Theatre, and there I conceive that the residue of Strange’s, deserted by Symons, had joined them. If they were too many for the house, we know that the Curtain was available as an ‘easer’. After the quarrel with Burbadge in May 1591, the two companies probably went together to the Rose. The main evidence for such a theory is that, while the Privy Council record of play-warrants include two for the Admiral’s men in respect of plays and feats of activity on 27 December 1590 and 16 February 1591, the corresponding Chamber payments are to George Ottewell on behalf of Strange’s men.

This amalgamation of Strange’s and the Admiral’s, tentative perhaps in 1588–9, and conclusive, if not in 1589–90, at any rate in 1590–1, lasted until 1594. So far as Court records are concerned, the company seems to have been regarded as Strange’s. But the leading actor, Edward Alleyn, kept his personal status as the Lord Admiral’s servant, and it is to be observed that, for whatever reason, both the Admiral’s and Strange’s continue to appear, not only in combination, but also separately in provincial documents.[338] Of this various explanations are conceivable. One is that the municipal officials were not very precise in their methods, and when an amalgamated company came before them, sometimes entered the name of one lord, sometimes of the other, sometimes of both. Another is that a few of the Admiral’s men may have been left out of the amalgamation and have travelled separately under that name. We know, of course, that Richard Jones and others went abroad in 1592, but they may have spent some time in the provinces first. And thirdly, it is possible that, while the combined company performed as a whole in London, they found it more economical to take their authorities from both lords with them, when they went to the country in the summer, and to unite or divide their forces as convenience prompted. I am the more inclined to this third conjecture, in that the ‘intollerable’ charge of travelling with a great company and the danger of ‘division and separacion’ involved were explicitly put forward by Lord Strange’s men in a petition to the Privy Council for leave to quit Newington Butts, where they had been commanded to play during a long vacation, and return to their normal quarters, doubtless at the Rose, on the Bankside. They particularly wanted to avoid going to the country, but Newington Butts did not pay, and they were backed by the Thames watermen, who lost custom when the Rose was not open. It is not clear whether this petition belongs to 1591 or 1592.[339] The provincial records show that the company probably travelled during 1592, but not 1591. If the petition belongs to 1592, it is obvious that the plague intervened, and I strongly suspect that the company’s fears proved justified, and that the reorganization for provincial work did in fact lead to a ‘division and separacion’, by the splitting off of some members of the combine as Pembroke’s men (q.v.).

This, however, anticipates a little. To Alleyn’s talent must be attributed the remarkable success of the company in the winter of 1591–2, during which they were called upon to give six performances at Court, on 27 and 28 December, 1 and 9 January, and 6 and 8 February, as against one each allotted to the Queen’s, Sussex’s, and Hertford’s men. On 19 February 1592 the company began a season with Philip Henslowe, probably at the Rose, and played six days a week for a period of eighteen weeks, during which they only missed Good Friday and two other days. Henslowe records in his diary the name of the play staged at each of the hundred and five performances, together with a sum of money which probably represents his share of the takings.[340] If so, his average receipts were £1 14s. 0d.; but the daily amounts fluctuated considerably, sometimes falling to a few shillings and again rising to twice the average on the production of a new or popular play or during the Easter or Whitsun holiday. Twenty-three plays in all were given, for any number of days from one to fifteen; the same play was rarely repeated in any one week. Five of the plays are marked in the diary with the letters ne, which are reasonably taken to indicate the production of a new piece. These were ‘Harey the vj’, probably Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI, Titus and Vespasian, probably the play on which was based Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, the Second Part of Tamar Cham, The Tanner of Denmark, and A Knack to Know a Knave. The eighteen old plays included Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, Greene’s Orlando Furioso and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Greene and Lodge’s A Looking Glass for London; also Muly Mollocco which might be Peele’s Battle of Alcazar, Four Plays in One, which is conjectured to be a part of Tarlton’s Seven Deadly Sins, and Jeronimo, which is almost certainly Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. There was also a play, sometimes given on the day before this last, under the varying titles of Don Horatio, the Comedy of Jeronimo, or The Spanish Comedy, which does not appear to have been preserved.[341] The same fate has befallen the other ten plays, of which the names were Sir John Mandeville, Henry of Cornwall, Clorys and Orgasto, Pope Joan, Machiavel, Bindo and Richardo, Zenobia, Constantine, Jerusalem, and Brandimer. From the financial point of view, the greatest successes were Titus and Vespasian, The Jew of Malta, 2 Tamar Cham, 1 Henry VI, and The Spanish Tragedy. These averaged respectively for Henslowe £2 8s. 6d. for seven days, £2 3s. 6d. for ten days, £2 1s. 6d. for five days, £2 0s. 6d. for fifteen days, and £1 17s. 0d. for thirteen days. The Seven Deadly Sins and perhaps also the Looking Glass must have passed in some way into the hands of Strange’s or the Admiral’s, or into Henslowe’s, from the Queen’s.

The performances came to an end on 23 June, for on that day the Privy Council inhibited all plays until Michaelmas. Whether the Newington Butts episode and the watermen’s petition followed or not, at any rate plague intervened in the course of the summer, and the company had to face the disadvantages of travelling. They were afoot by 13 July and still on 19 December. Ten days later, Henslowe resumed his account, and the resemblance of the list of plays to that of the previous spring renders it reasonable to suppose that the actors were the same.[342] The season lasted to the end of January 1593, and a play was given on each of the twenty-six week-days of this period. Muly Mollocco, The Spanish Tragedy, A Knack to Know a Knave, The Jew of Malta, Sir John Mandeville, Titus and Vespasian, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 1 Henry VI, and 2 Tamar Cham all made their appearance again. In addition, there were a comedy called Cosmo, and two new plays, The Jealous Comedy, which may, I think, be The Comedy of Errors, and The Tragedy of the Guise, which is usually accepted as Marlowe’s Massacre of Paris. The first representation of the former yielded Henslowe £2 4s. 0d., that of the latter £3 14s. 0d.; as in the spring, his daily takings averaged £1 14s. 0d. Besides their public performances, Strange’s men were called upon for three plays at Court, on the evenings of 27 and 31 December 1592 and 1 January 1593.

The plague made a new inhibition of plays necessary on 28 January, but it does not seem to have been for some months that Strange’s men made up their minds to travel. A special licence issued in their favour by the Privy Council on 6 May is registered in the following terms:

The importance of this document is in the information which it gives as to the composition of the company. Presumably only the leaders are named, and of these Alleyn alone is specially designated as an Admiral’s man. Kempe, at any rate, and probably also Pope and Bryan, were in Leicester’s service in the Low Countries during 1586, and all three were together during the same year in Denmark. Whether they had belonged, as has sometimes been supposed, to Leicester’s long-enduring company of Court players is less certain. Pope and Bryan passed from Denmark to Germany, and may have joined the Admiral’s or Strange’s on their return. They also were acrobats as well as players.[344] Kempe, however, seems to have parted company from the others in Denmark, and may have joined Strange’s independently, presumably before 10 June 1592, when A Knack to Know a Knave, in which he played ‘merrimentes’, was produced. Heminges may possibly have been a Queen’s man.

Some details of the 1593 tour and the names of two or three more members of the company are found in the familiar correspondence of Alleyn with his wife, whom he had married on 22 October 1592, and with Philip Henslowe, who was her step-father.[345] On 2 May he writes from Chelmsford, and on 1 August from Bristol. Here he had received a letter by Richard Cowley and he sends his reply by a kinsman of Thomas Pope. At the moment of writing he is ready to play Harry of Cornwall. He asks that further letters may be sent to him by the carriers to Shrewsbury, West Chester, or York, ‘to be keptt till my Lord Stranges players com’. He does not expect to be home until All Saints’ Day. A reply from Henslowe and Mrs. Alleyn on 14 August is in fact addressed to ‘Mr. Edwarde Allen on of my lorde Stranges players’. This mentions an illness of Alleyn at Bath during which one of his fellows had had to play his part. With these letters is one written to Mrs. Allen on behalf of a ‘servant’ of Alleyn’s, whose name was Pige or Pyk, by the hand of Mr. Doutone, possibly Edward Dutton, but perhaps more probably Thomas Dowten or Downton, who was later a sharer among the Admiral’s men. The provincial records, subject to the confusion of company nomenclature already noted, appear to confirm the visits to Bath, Shrewsbury, and York, to indicate others to Southampton, Leicester, Coventry, Ipswich, and Newcastle, and to show that some temporary alliance had been entered into with the purely provincial company of Lord Morley.[346] After 25 September 1593 Strange’s men of course became Derby’s men.

I now come to a difficult point. There exists amongst the Dulwich papers a ‘plott’ or prompter’s abstract of a play called The Second Part of the Seven Deadly Sins, which an ingenious conjecture of Mr. Fleay has identified on internal evidence with the Four Plays in One included in the Strange’s repertory of 1592.[347] In this leading parts were taken, not only by ‘Mr. Pope’, ‘Mr. Phillipps’, and ‘Mr. Brian’, but also by ‘Richard Burbadge’; lesser ones by Richard Cowley, John Duke, Robert Pallant, John Sincler, Thomas Goodale, William Sly, J. Holland, and three others described only as Harry, Kitt, and Vincent; and female parts by Saunder, Nick, Robert, Ned, Will, and T. Belt, who may be presumed to have been boys.[348] Alleyn, Kempe, and Heminges are not named, but there are several parts to which no actors are assigned. What, however, is the date of the ‘plott’? Not necessarily 1592, for the performance of Four Plays in One in that year was only a revival. The authorship of the Seven Deadly Sins is ascribed to Tarlton, and therefore the original owners were probably the Queen’s men. They are not very likely to have parted with it before Tarlton’s death in 1588 brought the first shock to their fortunes, but clearly it may have come into the possession of Strange’s or the Admiral’s or the combined company before ever they reached the Rose. And surely the appearance of Richard Burbadge suggests that the ‘plott’ was brought from the Theatre, and represents a performance there. He is very unlikely to have joined at the Rose the company which had just been driven there by a quarrel with his father. It is true that in the ‘plott’ of Dead Man’s Fortune, which also probably dates from the sojourn of the Admiral’s (q.v.) at the Theatre, he was apparently not playing leading parts but only a messenger. But the wording is obscure, and after all the absence of the prefix ‘Mr.’ from his name in the ‘plott’ of the Sins may indicate, in accordance with the ordinary usage of the Dulwich documents, that he was not yet a sharer when it was drawn up. Apparently, then, at least four of Strange’s men, as we find them in 1593, besides Alleyn, had been playing at the Theatre about 1590–1. These were Pope, Phillips, Bryan, and Cowley. Obviously we cannot say whether it was to the original Admiral’s or the original Strange’s that they belonged. One other point of personnel must not be overlooked. Shakespeare contributed to the repertory of Strange’s in 1592 and perhaps also in 1593. Greene calls him a Shake-scene, but neither the ‘plott’ of 1590, nor the licence of 1593, nor the Alleyn correspondence of the same year, yields his name.[349]

Derby’s men did not appear at Court during the winter of 1593–4. On 16 April 1594 Lord Derby died. On 16 May the company used the Countess’s name at Winchester. It seems clear that during the summer there was some reshuffling of the companies, that Alleyn took the leadership of a new body of Admiral’s men, that several other members of the old combination, including Pope, Heminges, Kempe, and Phillips, joined with Burbadge, Shakespeare, and Sly, under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Lord Hunsdon, and that, after a short period of co-operation with each other and Henslowe, the two companies definitely parted. In the course of 1594 the name of Derby’s men appeared upon the title-page of Titus Andronicus, probably because they had played it in its earlier form of Titus and Vespasian in 1592–3, before it passed to Pembroke’s and from them to Sussex’s. In the same year was published A Knack to Know a Knave (S. R. 7 January 1594) as played ‘by Ed. Allen and his companie’ and with ‘merrimentes’ by Kemp. This also belongs to the 1592–3 repertory, of the other plays in which 1 Henry VI, like Titus Andronicus, passed ultimately to the Chamberlain’s men, and a considerable number, either as their own property or that of Henslowe, to the Admiral’s. These included Tamar Cham, The Battle of Alcazar, The Spanish Tragedy, The Jew of Malta, The Massacre of Paris, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and probably Orlando Furioso, of Orlando’s part in which a transcript, with alterations in Alleyn’s hand, is preserved at Dulwich.[350] The only play not named in Henslowe’s diary which can be traced to the company is Fair Em, which bears the name of Lord Strange’s men on its title-page, but of which the first edition is undated.

It is possible that those of the fifth Earl of Derby’s men who did not take service with the Lord Chamberlain, passed into a provincial period of existence under his successor, the sixth Earl. A company bearing his name was at Norwich on 15 September 1594, at Dunwich in 1594–5 and 1595–6, at Coventry, Bath, and Stratford in 1595–6, at Leicester between October and December 1596, at Bath in 1596–7, at Maldon in 1597, at Coventry twice in 1597–8, at Leicester in 1597–8, and between October and December 1598, at Wollaton (Percival Willoughby’s) on 7 October 1599, and at Leicester again on 16 October 1599. Letters of 30 June 1599 relate that the Earl of Derby was then ‘busy penning comedies for the common players’, and it is perhaps natural to suppose that his own company were chosen as the exponents of his art.[351] This perhaps explains its appearance at Court during the winters of 1599–1600 and 1600–1. Four performances were given, on 3 and 5 February 1600 and 1 and 6 January 1601, and for these Robert Browne, who had been both with Worcester’s men and the Admiral’s, but much of whose dramatic career had been spent in Germany, was the payee. In an undated letter to Sir Robert Cecil, Lady Derby writes, ‘Being importuned by my Lord to intreat your favor that his man Browne, with his companye, may not be bared from ther accoustomed plaing, in maintenance wherof they have consumde the better part of ther substance, if so vaine a matter shall not seame troublesum to you, I could desier that your furderance might be a meane to uphold them, for that my Lord taking delite in them, it will kepe him from moer prodigall courses’.[352] To this company are doubtless to be assigned Edward IV, perhaps by Heywood (1600, S. R. 28 August 1599), and the anonymous Trial of Chivalry (1605, S. R. 4 December 1604), both of which are credited to Derby’s men on their title-pages. It again becomes provincial and is traceable at Norwich on 27 February and 9 June 1602, at Ipswich on 4 June 1602, and thereafter up to 1618, chiefly at Coventry and at Gawthorpe Hall, the house of Derby’s neighbours, the Shuttleworths.[353]

John Taylor, the water-poet, returned from his journey to Scotland in 1618 at the Maidenhead Inn, Islington, and here after supper on 14 October ‘we had a play of the Life and Death of Guy of Warwick, played by the Right Honourable the Earl of Derby his men’. Presumably this was Day and Dekker’s play entered on the Stationers’ Register in 1619, which Mr. Bullen declines to identify with the Guy of Warwick published as ‘by B. J.’ in 1661.[354]

xviii. THE EARL OF PEMBROKE’S MEN

There is an isolated record of a Pembroke’s company at Canterbury in 1575–6, hardly to be regarded as continuous with that which makes its appearance in the last decade of the century. Fleay, 87, puts the origin of the latter in 1589, and supposes it to be a continuation of Worcester’s men after the death of their original patron in 1589, and to be the company ridiculed by Nashe (iii. 324) for playing Delphrigus and The King of the Fairies, in his preface to Greene’s Menaphon (1589). But this Worcester’s company is not in fact traceable during 1585–9, and Fleay’s theory is only based on the allusion to Hamlet in the same preface (iii. 315), and the assumption that the Ur-Hamlet, like some other plays, passed to the Chamberlain’s from Pembroke’s, whereas it may just as well have passed to them from Strange’s. As a matter of fact, there is no mention of Pembroke’s before 1592 and no reason to suppose that it had an earlier existence. It will be well to detail the few facts of its history before attempting anything in the nature of conjecture. It was at Leicester in the last three months of 1592 and made its only appearances at Court on 26 December 1592 and 6 January 1593. In the following summer it travelled, and is found at York in June, at Rye in July, and in 1592–3 at Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Coventry, Bath, and Ipswich. But it had little success. Henslowe wrote to Alleyn on 28 September, ‘As for my lorde a Penbrockes w^ch you desier to knowe wheare they be they ar all at home and hausse ben this v or sixe weackes for they cane not saue ther carges w^th trauell as I heare & weare fayne to pane ther parell for ther carge’.[355] About the same time three of their plays came to the booksellers’ hands. These were Marlowe’s Edward the Second (1594, S. R. 6 July 1593), The Taming of A Shrew (1594, S. R. 2 May 1594), and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (1595). Probably the play to which this last is a sequel, 1 Contention of York and Lancaster (1594, S. R. 12 March 1594) was also theirs, although the name of the company is not on the title-page. It is on the title-page of Titus Andronicus (1594), and its position suggests that the play passed to them from Strange’s and from them before publication to Sussex’s. All these plays, with the exception of Edward II, seem to have been worked upon by Shakespeare, and probably they ultimately became part of the stock of the Chamberlain’s men. These men were playing Titus Andronicus and The Taming of The Shrew in June 1594, and that they also owned The Contention in its revised form of 2, 3 Henry VI is suggested both by its inclusion in the First Folio and by the reference in the Epilogue to Henry V not only to the loss of France but also to the bleeding of England ‘which oft our stage hath shown’.

I now enter a region of conjecture. It seems to me, on the whole, likely that the origin of Pembroke’s men is to be explained by the special conditions of the plague-years 1592–3, and was due to a division for travelling purposes of the large London company formed by the amalgamation of Strange’s and the Admiral’s. Such a division had been foreshadowed as likely to be necessary in the petition sent by Strange’s men to the Privy Council during the summer of 1592 or earlier, and may actually have become necessary when, after all, the plague rendered travelling imperative. If this suggestion is well founded, it becomes not difficult to explain some of the transferences of acting rights in certain plays which seem to have taken place. Thus Strange’s may have handed over Titus Andronicus in its earlier form of Titus and Vespasian to Pembroke’s for the travels of 1593, and may also have handed over The Contention of York and Lancaster, if that was originally theirs, as is suggested by their production of 1 Henry VI, which belongs to the same closely related series. This opens up a more important line of speculation. It is usual to assume that one of the members of Strange’s from 1592 or earlier until its reconstitution as the Chamberlain’s in 1594 was William Shakespeare, and there is no reason to doubt his authorship at any rate of the Talbot scenes, which we know from Nashe to have been staged as part of 1 Henry VI in 1592. At the same time, the names of at least seventeen of Strange’s and the Admiral’s men in 1590–3 are otherwise known, and his is not one of them, and in particular his prominence amongst the Chamberlain’s men from the very beginning renders it extremely unlikely that, if he had been a member of the company in 1593, he would not have been mentioned in the Privy Council warrant of 6 May. Further, it seems to me impossible to resist the inference that the attribution to him of Titus Andronicus both by Francis Meres in 1598 and in the First Folio of 1623 can only be explained by his revision under that name of Titus and Vespasian, and that this was for the second production of the play as ‘ne’ for Henslowe by Sussex’s men on 24 January 1594. There is, therefore, really some basis for the suggestion made long ago by Halliwell-Phillipps that he is to be looked for during these years in Pembroke’s company until its collapse and then in Sussex’s, and that it was from this rather than directly from Strange’s that he went to the Chamberlain’s.[356] On the other hand, it may be that for a time he was not attached as an actor to any company at all. It is possible that he took advantage of the plague-interval to travel in Italy and only resumed the regular exercise of his profession when the Chamberlain’s company was formed. In any event, it must have been he who revised The Contention as 2, 3 Henry VI, and the close stylistic relation of these plays to 1 Henry VI makes it probable that the work on all three belongs to about the same date. The limitations of conjecture on so intricate a question are obvious, but I can conceive the order of events as being somewhat as follows. Shakespeare’s first dramatic job, which earned him the ill will of Greene, was the writing or re-writing of 1 Henry VI for Strange’s, in the early spring of 1592. During the winter of 1592–3 he revised The Contention for Pembroke’s and completed the series of his early histories with Richard III, and, as I am inclined to suspect, also an Ur-Henry VIII. He also wrote The Jealous Comedy or Comedy of Errors for Strange’s. In the summer of 1593 Sussex’s took over the plays of the bankrupt Pembroke’s, including the Shakespearian histories Titus and Vespasian and The Taming of A Shrew. Some at least of these Pembroke’s had themselves derived in 1592 or 1593 from Strange’s. During the winter of 1593–4 Sussex’s played either Richard III or Henry VIII as Buckingham, and also Titus and Vespasian revised for them by Shakespeare as Titus Andronicus. Alarmed at the further inhibition of plays in February, they allowed the revised Titus and unrevised texts of The Taming of A Shrew and The Contention to get into the hands of the booksellers. Whether Shakespeare had already revised A Shrew or did so later for the Chamberlain’s (q.v.) I am uncertain. Finally, by the transfer of their plays to the Chamberlain’s men, who at once revived A Shrew and Titus Andronicus, and by the incorporation of Strange’s men in the same company, the original stock of Strange’s plays, as distinct from the Admiral’s, came together in the same hands once more. On the assumption that Shakespeare never left Strange’s, it is difficult to explain either the fortunes of Titus Andronicus, or the absence from the lists of Strange’s plays in Henslowe’s diary of Richard III, which must have been written about 1592–4. The silence as regards Strange’s both of the Court records and of Henslowe’s diary during the winter of 1593–4 makes it unlikely that they were in London, and they would surely not produce a new play in the country.

Nothing further is heard of a Pembroke’s company for three or four years.[357] But in 1597 one appeared in London about which we have rather full information, recently increased by Mr. Wallace’s discovery of a Court of Requests suit in which they were concerned. Towards the end of February in that year Robert Shaw, Richard Jones, Gabriel Spencer, William Bird alias Borne, and Thomas Downton, who describe themselves in a suit of the following November as Pembroke’s servants, together with others their ‘accomplices and associates’, entered into an agreement with Francis Langley to play for twelve months ending on 20 February 1598 at the Swan. Each man gave a bond of £100, which was apparently to safeguard Langley against any failure by the company as a whole or of Robert Shaw or a sufficient substitute in particular to perform during this period, or against any performance elsewhere, otherwise than ‘in private places’, within five miles of London. Langley found £300 for apparel and, as he claimed, making ready of the play-house, and was to receive a moiety of the takings of the galleries and to be repaid for the apparel out of the other moiety. Of the men concerned, Jones and Downton had been Admiral’s men during 1594–7, and their transference coincides with a three weeks’ break in the performances of the Admiral’s at the Rose from 12 February onwards. Mr. Wallace (E. S. xliii. 357) says that Shaw, Spencer, and Bird were also of the Admiral’s, but of this there is no evidence. If Pembroke’s had any continued life during 1594–7, they may have shared it. But this seems improbable, and on the whole I am inclined to think that they came from the Chamberlain’s (q.v.). Plays were given at the Swan for some months, and Langley took £100 from the galleries, and £100 more for apparel. Then came an inhibition of plays near London on 28 July 1597, caused by the production of The Isle of Dogs, as a result of which one of the authors, Nashe, fled, and the other, Jonson, together with Shaw and Spencer, was committed to the Marshalsea. The definite evidence that Shaw and Spencer were Pembroke’s men at the Swan, now produced by Mr. Wallace, confirms my conjecture (M. L. R. iv. 411, 511) that The Isle of Dogs was an adventure of that house and not, as has sometimes been thought, of the Rose. Either in anticipation of a prolonged closing of the house or for some other reason, the company now desired to shake off their relations with Langley. Early in August Jones returned to Henslowe and made a new covenant with him. His example was followed by Shaw, Spencer, and Bird, and early in October by Downton. Their prescience was justified, for when in the course of October the chief offenders were released, and the inhibition, which was nominally terminable on 1 November, was in practice relaxed, it proved that, while Henslowe was able to get a new licence for the Rose, Langley could get none for the Swan. He urged them to try their fortunes without a licence, as others of their company were willing to do, but they not unnaturally refused, and Henslowe (i. 54) records, ‘The xj of October begane my lord Admerals and my lord of Penbrockes men to playe at my howsse 1597’. He describes the company under the double name again on 21 and 23 October and 5 November, but on 1 December and thereafter as the Lord Admiral’s (i. 68–70). A study of the Admiral’s repertory for 1597–8 suggests that some or all of the plays Black Joan, Hardicanute, Bourbon, Sturgflattery, Branholt, Friar Spendleton, Alice Pierce, and Dido and Aeneas may have been brought in by Pembroke’s men.

The five seceders had not heard the last of Langley. He sued them at common law on the bonds given not to play in a rival house. They successfully applied to have the case transferred to the Court of Requests, and in the course of the pleadings maintained, firstly, that they were prevented from playing at the Swan by the restraint and Langley’s failure to get a licence; secondly, that Langley had orally assented to their transfer to Henslowe; thirdly, that they could not appear at the Swan as a company, since Langley had ‘procured from them’ two (or, as they afterwards said, three) of their associates, to whom he had returned their obligations; and fourthly, that Langley had suffered no damage, since other men were occupying his house. They also complained that Langley had never handed over the apparel for which they had recouped him out of their gallery takings. The negotiations with Langley which they describe seem to have taken place during October. About the covenants entered into with Henslowe as far back as the beginning of August they said nothing, and whether either Langley or the court ever found out about these, and what the ultimate decision of the court on the main issue was, must remain uncertain. But certain loans entered in Henslowe’s diary suggest that in March 1598 Langley was in a position to arrest Bird, and that in September of the same year some kind of agreement was arrived at, under which Langley received £35, as well as £19 or more for a rich cloak (i. 63, 72, 73, 95, 96). It is possible that a ‘sewt agenste Thomas Poope’ of the Chamberlain’s, for which Henslowe (i. 72) made a personal advance of 10s. to William Bird on 30 August 1598, may also have been connected with the shiftings of companies in 1597.

The names of the two or three members of the company to whom Langley gave back their bonds are not stated in the pleadings. Perhaps one was Jonson, and the other two might conceivably have been Humphrey and Anthony Jeffes, since the name of ‘Humfrey’ stands with that of ‘Gabriel’ in stage-directions to 3 Henry VI, and Henslowe’s list of the reconstituted Admiral’s company as it stood in October 1597–January 1598 contains ‘the ij Geffes’, who are not traceable in the 1594–7 company and may well have come in with the five Pembroke’s men. Langley tells us that certain ‘fellows’ of his opponents had taken a more reasonable line than theirs and returned to the Swan. How long these men remained there we do not know, but probably they secured Pembroke’s patronage after the five had been definitely merged in the Admiral’s, for by the end of 1597 there was clearly a distinct Pembroke’s company again. Provincial records yield the name, not only at Bath in 1596–7 and at Bristol in September 1597, which may point to a tour of the undivided Swan company during the period of restraint, but also at Bath in 1598–9, at Bristol in July 1598, at Leicester between October and December, at Dover on 7 October, at Coventry on 12 December, and at Bewdley on 22 December. They were at Norwich in April 1599, at Coventry on 4 July, and at Bristol in July. They were at York on 21 January 1600, Bristol in April, Marlborough in May, and Leicester before Michaelmas. In October they were in relationship with Henslowe, who notes ‘my Lordes of Penbrockes men begane to playe at the Rosse’, and records performances of Like Unto Like and Roderick on 28 and 29 October respectively.[358] The former brought him 11s. 6d. and the latter 5s., and there apparently the experiment ended, and with it, so far as is known, the career of Pembroke’s men. It is just possible that they were merged in Worcester’s company, which arose shortly afterwards. Mr. Fleay expands this possibility into a definite theory that Kempe, Beeston, Duke, and Pallant left the Chamberlain’s men for Pembroke’s in 1599, and ultimately passed from these to Worcester’s. This is improbable as regards Kempe, and unproved as regards the rest.[359]

xix. THE LORD ADMIRAL’S (LORD HOWARD’S, EARL OF NOTTINGHAM’S), PRINCE HENRY’S, AND ELECTOR PALATINE’S MEN