None of these plays is extant, but the purchase of properties testifies to the performance of 2 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green in April and The Six Yeomen of the West in July. Moreover, Day received a bonus of 10s. between 27 April and 2 May ‘after the playinge of’ the former piece. Only £1 was paid for 1 Fortune’s Tennis, but the existence of a ‘plot’ for 2 Fortune’s Tennis suggests that it must have been completed. Probably it was a short topical overture designed to celebrate the opening of the Fortune.[507] Unfinished plays were Robin Hood’s Pennyworths (Haughton)[508] and The Conquest of Spain by John of Gaunt (Hathway and Rankins). The revivals included Phaethon (January), The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (May), and The Jew of Malta (May). Dekker had £2 for ‘alterynge of’ Phaethon for the Court, and this was therefore the Admiral’s play of 6 January 1601. They also appeared on 28 December and 2 February. Dr. Faustus was entered on 7 January; the earliest print (1604) bears their name. The new books of 1601–2 were fourteen in number, as follows:[509]

• The Conquest of the West Indies (Day, Haughton, and Smith).
• 3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (Day and Haughton).
• The Life of Cardinal Wolsey (Chettle).[510]
• 1 The Six Clothiers (Hathway, Haughton, and Smith).
• The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey (Chettle, Drayton, Munday, and Smith).
• Friar Rush and the Proud Woman of Antwerp (Chettle, Day, and Haughton).
• Judas (Bird and Rowley).[511]
• Too Good to be True (Chettle, Hathway, and Smith).
• Malcolm King of Scots (Massey).
• Love Parts Friendship (Chettle and Smith).
• Jephthah (Dekker and Munday).
• Tobias (Chettle).
• The Bristol Tragedy (Day).
• Caesar’s Fall, or, The Two Shapes (Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, Munday, and Webster).

At least ten of these appear to have been played: 2 Cardinal Wolsey (August), 3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (September), Judas (January), The Conquest of the West Indies (January), Malcolm King of Scots (April), Love Parts Friendship (May), 1 Cardinal Wolsey (June), Jephthah (July), and at uncertain dates, Tobias and probably The Bristol Tragedy.[512] None is now extant. The unfinished plays were The Humorous Earl of Gloucester with his Conquest of Portugal (Wadeson), 2 Tom Dough[513] (Day and Haughton), The Orphan’s Tragedy (Chettle),[514] 2 The Six Clothiers (Hathway, Haughton, and Smith),[515] The Spanish Fig (Anon.),[516] Richard Crookback (Jonson),[517] A Danish Tragedy (Chettle),[518] and A Medicine for a Curst Wife (Dekker).[519] There was considerable activity of revival during the year. Six old plays belonging to the 1594–7 repertory, for some of which the company already held the properties,[520] were bought from Alleyn at £2 each, Mahomet in August, The Wise Man of West Chester in September, Vortigern in November, and The French Doctor, The Massacre at Paris, and Crack Me this Nut in January. The first and the last three of these certainly were played, and the revival of The Massacre at Paris appears to have caused annoyance to Henri IV.[521] In addition, properties were bought for one of the Hercules plays in December, Dekker got 10s. for a prologue and epilogue to Pontius Pilate[522] in January, and Jonson wrote additions to The Spanish Tragedy, possibly those now extant, in September, although it may be doubted whether the further additions contemplated in the following June were ever made. There is nothing to show what was selected, other than Nick’s tumbling, for the Admiral’s only Court play of 1601–2, which took place on 27 December.

The season of 1602–3 was, of course, shortened by the death of Elizabeth and the outbreak of plague. The new plays numbered nine. They were:

• Samson (Anon.).
• Felmelanco (Chettle and Robinson).
• Joshua (Rowley).
• Randal Earl of Chester (Middleton).
• Merry as May Be (Day, Hathway, and Smith).
• The Set at Tennis (Munday).
• 1 The London Florentine (Chettle and Heywood).
• Singer’s Voluntary (Singer).
• The Boss of Billingsgate (Day, Hathway, and another).[523]

It must be added that in September properties were bought for a ‘new playe’ called The Earl of Hertford, which it seems impossible to identify with any of the pieces bought. This looks like one of the rare cases in which payment did not pass through Henslowe’s hands. This and Samson are the only new plays of the year, the actual performance of which can be verified; and none of these plays is extant.[524] I suspect, however, that Munday’s Set at Tennis is the 2 Fortune’s Tennis of which a ‘plot’ survives. The payment, of only £3, was ‘in full’, and it may, like 1 Fortune’s Tennis, have been a short piece of some exceptional character, motived by the name of the theatre in which it was presented. Unfinished plays at the end of the season were The Widow’s Charm (Munday or Wadeson),[525] William Cartwright (Haughton), Hoffman (Chettle),[526] 2 London Florentine (Chettle and Heywood), The Siege of Dunkirk and Alleyn the Pirate (Massey). The revival of old plays continued. Costumes for Vortigern, one of those bought from Alleyn in the previous year, were in preparation during September, and Alleyn’s stock yielded three more, Philip of Spain and Longshanks in August and Tamar Cham, probably the second part, as the extant ‘plot’ testifies, in October. The last two of these belonged to the Admiral’s repertory of 1594–7, but the origin of Philip of Spain is unknown. A book of The Four Sons of Aymon, for which £2 was paid to Robert Shaw, was probably also old, and was bought on condition that Shaw should repay the £2, unless the play was used by the Admiral’s or some other company with his consent by Christmas 1604. Bird and Rowley had £4 in September for additions to Dr. Faustus. Dekker completed some alterations of Tasso’s Melancholy, another 1594–7 play, in December, and in the same month Middleton wrote ‘for the corte’ a prologue and epilogue to Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which I should suppose to have been Henslowe’s property, as it was played by Strange’s men in 1592–3 and the Queen’s and Sussex’s in 1594. This probably served for the first of the three appearances made by the Admiral’s at Court, on 27 December. The other two were on 6 March and on a date unspecified. For one of these occasions Chettle was writing a prologue and epilogue at the end of December, but the play is not named.[527] One of the new plays, Merry as May Be, was intended for Court, when the first payment on account of it was made on 9 November.

On 12 March 1603 Henslowe practically closes the detailed record which he had kept continuously in his diary since October 1597 of his financial transactions, otherwise than by way of rent, with the Admiral’s men. A brief review of these is not without interest.[528] His advances from 21 October 1597 to 8 March 1598 amounted to £46 7s. 3d., and to this he took the signatures of the company, with the note, ‘Thes men dothe aknowlege this deat to be dewe by them by seatynge of ther handes to yette’. By 28 July a further amount of £120 15s. 4d. had been incurred, making a total of £166 17s. 7d. for 1597–8.[529] During the same period he entered weekly receipts from the company to a total of £125. These must have gone to an old debt, for he did not balance them with the payments for the year, but carried on the whole debit of £166 17s. 7d. to 1598–9. Apparently, however, he was not satisfied with the way in which expenditure was outstripping income, for he headed a new receipts account, ‘Here I begyne to receue the wholle gallereys frome this daye beinge the 29 of July 1598’, and the weekly entries become about double what they were during 1597–8. On the other hand, there is also a considerable increase in the rate of expenditure. It is an ingenious and, I think, sound conjecture of Dr. Greg’s, that throughout 1594–1603 Henslowe was taking half the gallery money for rent, and that, at different times, he also took either the other half, or another quarter only, to recoup himself for his advances.[530] The outgoings entered during 1598–9 reach £435 7s. 4d., but some items for March and April 1599 are probably missing, owing to a mutilation of the manuscript.[531] The receipts for the same period were £358 3s. On 13 October 1599, about a fortnight after the beginning of the 1599–1600 season, a balance was struck. Henslowe credited the company with the £358 received from the gallery money, and debited them with £632 advanced by him. This includes £166 17s. 7d. for 1597–8, £435 7s. 4d. for 1598–9, and £29 15s. 1d., which may reasonably be taken as the sum of the missing entries for March and April 1599. The balance of £274 remained as a debt from the company. They did not, however, set their hands to a reckoning until the end of the next year, on 10 July 1600. During 1599–1600 a fresh account had been running, on which Henslowe’s receipts were £202 10s. and his payments £222 5s. 6d. At the reckoning the company’s indebtedness is calculated at £300, and is admitted by the formula, ‘which some of three hundred powndes we whose names are here vnder written doe acknowledge our dewe debt & doe promyse payment’. To this their signatures are appended. There is, however, an unexplained discrepancy of £6 4s. 6d., as the old debt of £274 and the 1599–1600 debit balance of £19 15s. 6d. only make up £293 15s. 6d.

From 1600 onwards there are no records of receipts. A continuous account of payments is kept up to 7 February 1602. The total amounts to £304 10s. 4d., but Henslowe sums it in error as £308 6s. 4d., and notes, ‘Frome ther handes to this place is 308^ll-06^s-04^d dewe vnto me & with the three hundred of owld is £608-06-04^d’. He then adds the £50 paid to Jones and Shaw on retirement, ‘which is not in this recknynge’. Above this summary comes a list of names, said by Dr. Greg to be in Shaw’s hand, of those sharers who were continuing in the company, headed by the figures ‘211. 9. 0.’ I think the interpretation is that £386 17s. 4d. of the £608 6s. 4d. was paid out of gallery money or other sources, leaving £211 9s., together with the £50 for Jones and Shaw, chargeable on the company. This is borne out by the remnant of the accounts, which is headed, ‘Begininge with a new recknyng with my lord of Notingames men the 23 daye of Febreary 1601 as foloweth’. The expenditure on this new reckoning up to 12 March 1603 was, as calculated by Henslowe, £188 11s. 6d., and he adds to this total a sum of £211 9s. ‘vpon band’, being evidently the residue of the debt as it stood at the close of the old reckoning, and makes a total of £400 0s. 6d. This, with the £50 for Jones and Shaw, was no doubt what the company owed when the detailed account in the diary closed. There was, however, an unstated amount of gallery receipts during 1602–3 to set against it; and in fact a retrospect of the whole series of figures shows that there would have been a pretty fair equivalence of gallery money and advances throughout, but for the exceptionally heavy expenditure of 1598–9, £465 2s. 5d. in all, which left the company saddled with an obligation which they never quite overtook. This expenditure was more than half the total expenditure of £854 5s. 6d. for the triennium 1597–1600, and nearly as much as the whole expenditure of £493 1s. 10d. for the triennium 1600–3, during which it may be suspected that the business capacities of Alleyn brought about considerable economies.

The accounts may be looked at from another point of view. If the unanalysable sum of £29 15s. 1d. for the missing items of March and April 1599 be neglected, there was a total expenditure for the six years of £1,317 11s. 3d. Of this £652 13s. 8d., being about half, went in payments in respect of play-books; £561 1s. 1d. for properties and apparel; and £103 16s. 6d. in miscellaneous outgoings, such as licensing fees, legal charges, musical instruments, travelling expenses, merry-makings and the like. Thus, if the company supped together at Mr. Mason’s of the Queen’s Head, or met to read a ‘book’ at the Sun in New Fish Street, Henslowe would put his hand into his pocket to pay the score, and would not forget afterwards to debit the company with the amount in his diary.[532] It must, of course, be borne in mind that only part of this miscellaneous expenditure was incurred through Henslowe. He certainly did not, for example, pay all the fees for the licensing of new plays by the Master of the Revels. And of course there were many matters, in particular the wages of hired actors and servitors, for which the company had regularly to find funds in other ways. It is probable that only play-books, properties, and apparel were normally charged to his account, although the convenience of an occasional extension of his functions can readily be understood. Dr. Greg may be right in thinking that his position as agent for the company in its purchases was a natural development of his pawnbroking business.[533] But during the period under review he did not, as a rule, supply them with goods himself. A sale of ‘A shorte velluett clocke wraght with bugell & a gearcken of velluet layd with brade coper sylver lace’ for £4 on 28 November 1598 was exceptional. Usually the payments are to tradesmen, to the mercers Stone, Richard Heath, and Robert Bromfield, to ‘him at the Eagell and Chylld’ for armour, to Mrs. Gosson for head-tires, and for wigs to one Father Ogle, who is mentioned also in the Revels Accounts and in the play of Sir Thomas More. Sometimes ready-made garments, new or second-hand, were bought. A doublet and hose of sea-water green satin cost £3 and a doublet and ‘venesyons’ of cloth of silver wrought with red silk £4 10s. But often stuffs were obtained in piece and made up by tailors, of whom the company employed two, Dover and Radford, the latter known, for the sake of distinction, as ‘the little tailor’. These and William White, who made the crowns, probably worked at the theatre, in the tiring-house. The company gave 6s. a yard for russet broadcloth and the same for murrey satin, 12s. for other satins, 12s. 6d. for taffeties, and no less than £1 for ‘ij pylle velluet of carnardyn’. Laces cost 1d. each; copper lace anything from 4s. a pound to 1s. 2d. an ounce. Of this they used quantities, and in the summer of 1601 they had run up a considerable ‘old debt’ to the copper lace-man, as well as another to Heath the mercer, which had to be paid off by degrees. The more expensive garments, such as a rich cloak bought of Langley for £19, were, of course, an investment on the part of the company, and were worn in their time by many sharers and hired men in different parts. But the principal actors had also, as Alleyn’s inventory shows, their private wardrobes. Henslowe was prepared to furnish these on the instalment system. Thus Richard Jones bought in 1594 ‘a manes gowne of pechecoler in grayne’ for £3 payable in weekly sums of 5s., and Thomas Towne in 1598 ‘a blacke clothe clocke layd with sylke lace’ for 26s. 8d. at 1s. weekly. It was as hard to keep these glories as to procure them. On one occasion the company came to the rescue and lent Thomas Downton £12 10s., to fetch out of pawn two cloaks, ‘which they exsepted into the stock’. The one was ‘ashecolerd velluet embradered with gowld’, the other ‘a longe black velluet clocke layd with sylke lace’.[534]

The termination of the record of advances after 12 March 1603 indicates an interruption of performances, probably due to the increasing illness of Elizabeth, who died on the following 24 March. Thereafter there are only a few winding-up entries in the diary. The company must have immediately begun to travel under the leadership of Thomas Downton, who in the course of 1602–3 received a gift for them from the Corporation of Canterbury, ‘because it was thought fitt they should not play at all, in regard that our late Queene was then very sicke or dead as they supposed’. London playing, if resumed at all, must have very soon been stopped again by the plague. There was some further small expenditure, of which the details are not given, before Henslowe noted that, in addition to the bond for £211 9s., ‘Ther reasteth dew vnto me to this daye beinge the v daye of Maye 1603 when we leafte of playe now at the Kynges cominge all recknynges abated the some of a hundred fowerscore & sevntenepowndes & thirteneshellynges & fowerpence I saye dew—£197 13s. 4d. the fyftye powndes which Jonnes & Shawe had at ther goinge a way not reconed’. The company travelled again during the plague, being traceable as the Admiral’s men in 1602–3 at Bath and York and on 18 August 1603 at Leicester, and as the Earl of Nottingham’s in 1602–3 at Coventry. The tour was over by 21 October, on which date Joan Alleyn wrote to her husband at the house of Mr. Chaloner in Sussex, telling him amongst other things that ‘all of your owne company ar well at theyr owne houses’, that all the other companies had returned, that ‘Nicke and Jeames be well’, and that ‘Browne of the Boares head’ had not gone into the country at all, and was now dead, ‘& dyed very pore’. This might be either Edward Browne, or the ‘old Browne’ who appeared with him in 1 Tamar Cham in the previous autumn. In any case, it is clear from the reference to him that he was not a regular member of Alleyn’s company. ‘Jeames’ is no doubt James Bristow, who, as Henslowe’s apprentice, would be likely to form part of his household; and ‘Nicke’, who seems to have been in the same position, may be supposed to be the Nick who tumbled before the Queen at Christmas 1601.

The Jacobean records of the company seem meagre in the absence of Henslowe’s detailed register of proceedings. About Christmas 1603 they were taken into the service of Prince Henry, and are hereafter known as the Prince’s players.[535] They are entered amongst other ‘Officers to the Prince’ as receiving four and a half yards of red cloth apiece as liveries for the coronation procession on 15 March 1604, and their names are given as ‘Edward Allen, William Bird, Thomas Towne, Thomas Dowton, Samuell Rowley, Edward Jubie, Humfry Jeffes, Charles Massey, and Anthony Jeffes’.[536] Alleyn, even if not a ‘sharer’, was therefore a member of the company in its official capacity. He is also named as the Prince’s servant, both in the printed account of the entertainment at which, dressed as a Genius, he delivered a speech, and in Stowe’s description of a bear-baiting which formed part of the festivities.[537] It may, however, be inferred that he took an early opportunity of leaving a profession to which he had only been recalled by the personal whim of the late Queen.[538] He was joint payee with Juby in the warrant of 19 February, but Juby’s name stands alone in another of 17 April and in those of all subsequent years up to 1615. And when the company received a formal licence by patent on 30 April 1606, Alleyn’s name was omitted, and does not appear in any further list of its members. It is true that as late as 11 May 1611 he is still described in a formal document as the Prince’s servant, but he may have held some other appointment, actual or honorific, in the household.[539] A note of his resources about 1605, however, includes ‘my share of aparell, £100’.[540] And he certainly remained interested in the company. They were his tenants at the Fortune, although an unexecuted draft of a lease to Thomas Downton dated in 1608 suggests that he may have taken steps to transfer the whole or a share of his direct interest to them. Under this lease Downton was to receive during thirteen years a thirty-second part of the daily profits accruing to Henslowe and Alleyn, and in return to pay £27 10s., a rent of 10s. annually and his proportionate share of repairs, and to bind himself to play in the house and not elsewhere without consent.[541] On 11 April 1612 Robert Browne is found writing to Alleyn on behalf of one Mr. Rose, lately ‘entertayned amongst the princes men’, to request his interest as one ‘who he knowes can strike a greter stroke amongst them then this’ to procure him a ‘gathering place’ for his wife.[542] Another letter from Bird to Alleyn, also about a gatherer, is amusing enough to quote in full. It is undated.

With the exception of Alleyn, all the players of the 1604 list and no others appear in the patent of 1606, the text of which follows:[544]

Between 1606 and 1610 it seems to have been thought desirable to strengthen the composition of the company by the introduction of new blood. A list of ‘Comedyanes and Playores’, included in the establishment book drawn up when Henry formed his own Household as Prince of Wales in 1610, contains six names in addition to the eight of the patent.[545] They are ‘Edward Colbrande, Wm. Parre, Rychard Pryore, William Stratford, Frauncys Grace, and John Shanke’. Of these William Parr, who is in the plot of 1 Tamar Cham in 1602, is alone traceable in the earlier records of the company. Shank had been of Pembroke’s and Queen Elizabeth’s men.

Henslowe entered two more advances in his diary, one for ‘facynge of a blacke grogren clocke with taffytye’, the other to Dekker and Middleton in earnest of The Patient Man and the Honest Whore. This was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 9 November 1604, and printed as The Honest Whore during the year. The name of Towne is in a stage-direction. On 14 March ‘1604’, which may have been either 1604 or 1605, Henslowe had a final reckoning with the company and noted ‘Caste vp all the acowntes frome the begininge of the world vntell this daye beinge the 14 daye of Marche 1604 by Thomas Dowghton & Edward Jube for the company of the prynces men & I Phillipe Henslow so ther reasteth dew vnto me P Henslow the some of xxiiij^li all reconynges consernynge the company in stocke generall descarged & my sealfe descarged to them of al deates’.[546] With this, so far as the extant book goes, the record of his transactions with the company practically ceases. The only exception is a note of receipts at the Fortune during the three days next after Christmas in 1608, which amounted to 25s., 45s., and 44s. 9d. respectively.[547] Something of the career of the Prince’s men may be gleaned from other sources. They played at Court before James on 21 January and 20 February 1604, and before Henry on 4, 15, and 22 January; and during the following Christmas before Anne on 23 November 1604 and before Henry on 24 November, 14 and 19 December, and on 15 and 22 January and 5 and 19 February 1605. On 8 February 1605 their play of Richard Whittington, of which nothing further is known, was entered on the Stationers’ Register.[548] In the same year Samuel Rowley’s When You See Me, You Know Me, was printed as played by them. During the Christmas of 1605–6 they gave three plays before James and three before Henry.[549] In 1604–5 they were at Maidstone and Winchester, in 1605–6 at Bath, on 17 July 1606 at Oxford, and on 17 October at Ipswich. During the Christmas of 1606–7 they gave six plays before James. Dekker’s Whore of Babylon was entered on the Stationers’ Register on 20 April 1607 and printed as theirs in the same year. In 1606–7 they were at Bath. During the Christmas of 1607–8 they gave four plays before James and Henry. In 1607–8 they were at Maidstone and Saffron Walden, and on 1 October 1608 they were at Leicester; but a visit of the same year from ‘the Princes players of the White Chapple, London’ is rather to be assigned to the Duke of York’s men (q.v.). They gave three plays before James and Henry during the Christmas of 1608–9, four before James during that of 1609–10, and four before James during that of 1610–11. Middleton and Dekker’s The Roaring Girl was printed in 1611 as lately played by them at the Fortune, and Field’s Amends for Ladies (c. 1610–11) names ‘Long Meg and the Ship’ as in their repertory. Presumably their Long Meg of Westminster of 1595 still held the boards.[550] In 1608–9 they were at Shrewsbury and Saffron Walden, in 1609–10 at Shrewsbury and Hereford, in 1610–11 at Shrewsbury and Winchester.

They played at Court before James on 28 and 29 December 1611, giving on the second night The Almanac, and before Henry in February and Elizabeth in April 1612. On 1 October 1612 the lewd jigs, songs, and dances at the Fortune are recited in an order of the Middlesex justices as tending to promote breaches of the peace. One of these may have been the occasion on which an obscure actor, Garlick by name, made himself offensive to the more refined part of his audience.[551] On the following 7 November Henry died and on 7 December his players figured in his funeral procession.[552]

They found a new patron in the Elector Palatine, then in England, and on entering his service got a new patent, which bears date 11 January 1613 and closely follows in its terms that of 1606.[553] The house specified for them was again the Fortune, which they had no doubt continuously occupied since its opening in 1600. The players named were ‘Thomas Downton, William Bird, Edward Juby, Samuell Rowle, Charles Massey, Humfrey Jeffs, Frank Grace, William Cartwright, Edward Colbrand, William Parr, William Stratford, Richard Gunnell, John Shanck, and Richard Price’. Possibly Price may be the Pryor of the 1610 list. Cartwright and Gunnell are new since that list, but Cartwright had been in The Battle of Alcazar and 1 Tamar Cham plots of 1601 and 1602. These two must be supposed to have taken the places of Thomas Towne and Antony Jeffes. Thomas Towne had enjoyed an annuity of £12 out of Alleyn’s manor of Dulwich from 28 October 1608 to 15 January 1612, but on 5 November 1612 ‘widow Towne’ is mentioned,[554] and further evidence of his death is supplied by a letter from Charles Massey to Alleyn, not dated, but from internal evidence written not very long after the prince’s death, to which reference is made. Massey is in debt and wants £50. He offers two things as security. One is ‘that lyttell moete I have in the play hovsses’; from which it may be inferred that, like Downton, he had obtained an interest in the Fortune, although what the second house may have been can hardly be conjectured. The other is his interest under ‘the composisions betwene ovre compenye that if any one give over with consent of his fellowes, he is to receve three score and ten poundes (Antony Jefes hath had so much) if any on dye his widow or frendes whome he appoyntes it tow reseve fyfte poundes (M^res Pavie and M^res Tovne hath had the lyke)’. In order to be in a position to repay the loan at the end of the year he undertakes to get Mr. Jube to reserve ‘my gallery mony and my quarter of the hovse mony’ for the purpose, and should it prove at the end of six months that this will be insufficient, he will be prepared to surrender his whole share, with the exception of 13s. 4d. a week for household expenses.[555] From this letter it may also be gathered that Antony Jeffes had retired, and apparently that Pavy, whose name is found in the plot of 2 Fortune’s Tennis, which I assign to 1602–3, had at some time become a sharer in the company. One other player, originally in 1597 a hired man, had evidently reached some prominence between that date and 1614. William Fennor, in the course of a rhyming controversy with John Taylor, makes the following boast of his histrionic talent:

As the Elector Palatine’s men the company played at Court during the winter of 1613–14, twice before James and once before Charles. They were amongst the companies which performed irregularly in the Lent of 1615, and Humphrey Jeffes and Thomas Downton were summoned before the Privy Council to account for their misdoing. One of the irregular licences condemned by the Lord Chamberlain on 16 July 1616 was an exemplification of the patent of 1613, taken out by Charles Marshall, Humphrey Jeffes, and William Parr for provincial purposes.

xx. THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S (LORD HUNSDON’S) AND KING’S MEN

A company of Lord Hunsdon’s men was at Leicester in the last three months of 1564, at Norwich and Maldon in 1564–5, at Plymouth before Michaelmas in 1565, at Canterbury in the autumn of 1565, at Gloucester and Maldon in 1565–6, at Bristol in July 1566, and at Canterbury in the spring of 1567. Another makes its appearance at Ludlow on 13 July 1581, and at Doncaster in 1582. In the winter Lord Hunsdon was apparently deputy for the Earl of Sussex as Lord Chamberlain, and took occasion to bring his men to Court, where they acted Beauty and Housewifery on 27 December 1582. They did not again appear at Court, but when plays were temporarily suppressed on 14 June 1584 the owner of the Theatre, presumably James Burbadge, made a claim to be Lord Hunsdon’s man. Meanwhile ‘my L. Hunsdouns and my Lords Morleis players being bothe of one companye’ are recorded at Bristol in March 1583, and Lord Hunsdon’s alone at Norwich in 1582–3, Bath in June 1583, and Exeter in July 1583. Hunsdon became Lord Chamberlain on 4 July 1585. Between October and December of that year, a visit was paid to Leicester by ‘the Lord Chamberlens and the Lord Admiralls players’, and on 6 January 1586 ‘the servants of the lo: Admirall and the lo: Chamberlaine’ gave a play at Court. These entries suggest an amalgamation of Hunsdon’s men with those of Lord Admiral Howard, both of whom had perhaps been weakened by the formation of the Queen’s men in 1583. But if so, it was only a partial or temporary one, for while the Admiral’s men established themselves in London, the Chamberlain’s are traceable in the provinces, at Coventry in 1585–6, at Saffron Walden in 1587–8, and at Maidstone in 1589–90.

An interval of four or five years renders improbable any continuity between this company and the famous Lord Chamberlain’s company, which first emerged on the resorting of the plague-stricken mimes in 1594, passed under royal patronage in 1603, and prolonged an existence illumined by the genius of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and Shirley, until the closing of the theatres in 1642. The first notice of the new organization is in June 1594, when ‘my Lord Admeralle men and my Lorde Chamberlen men’ played from the 3rd to the 13th of the month, either in combination or separately on allotted days, for Henslowe at Newington Butts.[557] Some of the plays given during this period can be traced to the subsequent repertory of the Admiral’s men; others, which cannot, may be assigned to the Chamberlain’s. They are Hester and Ahasuerus, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, and Taming of A Shrew, which, although so described, may of course have been really the Taming of The Shrew, Shakespeare’s adaptation of the older play entered in the Stationers’ Register on the previous 2 May. It is ingeniously, and I think rightly, inferred from a line drawn in Henslowe’s account after 13 June, that from that date all the performances recorded are by the Admiral’s men, probably at the Rose, and that his relations with the Chamberlain’s men had ceased. The company is found at Marlborough about September, and on 8 October Lord Hunsdon wrote to the Lord Mayor, asking permission for ‘my nowe companie’ to continue an occupation of the Cross Keys,[558] on which it seems to have already entered. Henceforward the company was regularly established in London, took the lead annually at Court, and except for brief periods of inhibition in 1596, 1597, and possibly 1601, does not appear to have travelled during the remainder of Elizabeth’s reign. Whether Hunsdon’s men got the Cross Keys for the winter or not, they probably had from the beginning the use of the Theatre for the summer seasons, for Richard Burbage, the son of the owner, was one of their leading members, and on 15 March 1595 appears as joint payee with William Kempe and William Shakespeare for two plays given at Court on 26 and 28 December 1594. These plays cannot be identified, but Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost and Romeo and Juliet may well have been produced this winter.[559] Most likely the date 28 December was entered in the payment warrant by mistake for 27 December, for the Admiral’s men are also recorded as playing at Court on 28 December, and on the same night ‘a company of base and common fellows’, with whom one is bound to identify the Chamberlain’s men, played ‘a Comedy of Errors’ as part of the Christmas revels of the Prince of Purpoole at Gray’s Inn.[560] There seems to be some echo of Romeo and Juliet in the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, which may very well have been given at Greenwich or Burghley House for the wedding of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, and Elizabeth Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford, on 26 January 1595. Another possible occasion for the production, however, is the wedding of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George Carey and grand-daughter of Lord Hunsdon, to Thomas, son of Henry Lord Berkeley on 19 February 1596. This took place at Blackfriars, presumably in Sir George Carey’s house there.[561]

To 1595 or thereabouts I also assign Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona and King John and Richard II.[562] The company played at Court on 26, 27, and 28 December 1595 and 6 January and 22 February 1596. In the warrant for their fees, dated on 21 December 1596, and made payable to John Heminges and George Bryan, they are described as ‘servauntes to the late Lord Chamberlayne and now servauntes to the Lorde Hunsdon’. It is clear that, when the first Lord Hunsdon died on 22 July 1596, the players had been retained by his son and heir, Sir George Carey. The Lord Chamberlainship passed to Lord Cobham; but he died on 5 March 1597, and on 17 March the post was given to the second Lord Hunsdon. The company, then, was properly known as Lord Hunsdon’s men from 22 July 1596 to 17 March 1597; before and after that period it was the Lord Chamberlain’s men.

To 1596 I assign Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Evidence of the occupation of the Theatre about this time by the company is to be found in Lodge’s allusion to a revival of Hamlet there, for this play is not likely to have been in other hands.[563] It is not an unreasonable conjecture that James Burbadge destined to their use the play-house in the Blackfriars, which he purchased in February, and had converted for ‘publique’ use by November of this year. If so, he and they were disappointed, for a petition of the inhabitants, amongst the signatories to an alleged copy of which Lord Hunsdon himself is somewhat oddly found, led to an intervention of the Privy Council, who forbade plays to be given within the liberty.[564] At this time also the Corporation seem to have succeeded in finally and permanently expelling the players from the City inns which had long been their head-quarters, and Nashe connects this persecution with the loss of ‘their old Lord’, by whom he doubtless means Henry Lord Hunsdon. It is possible that plays were inhibited altogether during the summer of 1596, although no formal order to that effect is preserved, for Hunsdon’s went to Faversham, and Nashe himself was disappointed of ‘an after harvest I expected by writing for the stage and for the presse’.[565]

In the following winter the company played at Court on 26 and 27 December 1596 and on 1 and 6 January and 6 and 8 February 1597. Their payees, for this and for the next two years, were Thomas Pope and John Heminge. In 1597 began the printing of plays written by Shakespeare for this company, with a ‘bad’ quarto of Romeo and Juliet, bearing on its title-page the name of Lord Hunsdon’s men and ‘good’ quartos of Richard II and Richard III, bearing that of the Lord Chamberlain’s.[566] From the text of Richard II was omitted the deposition scene, which did not appear in print until after the death of Elizabeth. The only Shakespearian productions that can be plausibly ascribed to this year are those of the two parts of Henry IV. The presentation of Sir John Oldcastle in the original versions of these seems to have led to a protest, and the character was renamed Sir John Falstaff. It is not improbable that the offence taken was by Lord Chamberlain Cobham, whose ancestress, Joan Lady Cobham, Oldcastle had married.[567] It is impossible to say whether either this scandal or any possible interpretation of disloyalty put upon Richard II contributed to the inhibition of plays on 28 July, of which the main exciting cause was certainly the performance of The Isle of Dogs at the Swan on the Bankside.[568] For the second time since their formation in 1594 the company had to travel. They are traceable at Rye in August, at Dover between 3 and 20 September, at Marlborough, Faversham, and Bath during 1596–7, and at Bristol about 29 September. This inhibition was removed early in October. There is some reason to believe that, when the Chamberlain’s men resumed playing, it was not at the Theatre, as to the renewal of the lease of which the Burbadges were disputing with their ground landlord, but at the Curtain. Marston, in one and the same passage of his Scourge of Villainy, entered in the Stationers’ Register on 8 September 1598, alludes to the acting of Romeo and Juliet and to ‘Curtaine plaudeties’, while almost simultaneously Edward Guilpin in his Skialetheia, entered on 15 September, speaks of ‘the unfrequented Theater’. The transfer may, however, not have taken place until 1598.[569]

The company played at Court on 26 December 1597 and on 1 and 6 January and 26 February 1598. It is conceivable that one of these plays may have been a revised version of Love’s Labour’s Lost, which was printed as ‘newly corrected and augmented’ and ‘as it was presented before her Highnes this last Christmas’ in 1598. On the other hand, it is also possible that this print may have been intended to replace an earlier ‘bad’ quarto, not now preserved, and if so, the reference to the representation may have been carried on from the earlier title-page. In 1598 were also printed 1 Henry IV, and the anonymous Mucedorus, which may have already belonged to the Chamberlain’s repertory, as it was certainly revised for them about 1610. The Merchant of Venice was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 22 July, but with a proviso that it must not be printed ‘without lycence first had from the Right honorable the lord chamberlen’. On 7 September 1598 was entered in the Stationers’ Register the Palladis Tamia of Francis Meres, with its list of Shakespeare’s plays up to date, including the mysterious Love’s Labours Won, which I incline to identify with the Taming of the Shrew.[570] The earliest play not mentioned by Meres is probably Much Ado about Nothing, which may belong to 1598 itself. Another production of this year was Jonson’s Every Man In his Humour, which was still a new play about 20 September, when an Almain in the audience lost 300 crowns. Possibly John Aubrey has this period in mind when he says that Jonson ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the suburbes, I thinke towardes Shoreditch or Clarkenwell’.[571] Jonson, however, was in prison soon after the production of the play for the manslaughter of Gabriel Spencer on 22 September in Hoxton Fields, and there is no other evidence that he ever acted with the Chamberlain’s men. His own name is not in the list of the original ‘principall Comoedians’ affixed to the text of Every Man In his Humour in the folio of 1616. This is of great value, as being the earliest extant list of the company. The ten names given are:

• Will. Shakespeare.
• Aug. Philips.
• Hen. Condel.
• Will. Slye.
• Will. Kempe.
• Ric. Burbage.
• Joh. Flemings.
• Tho. Pope.
• Chr. Beeston.
• Joh. Duke.

It must not, of course, be assumed, either that the list is in itself quite complete, or that there had been no changes amongst the Chamberlain’s men between 1594 and 1598; but as those named include five out of the six payees for that period, they may perhaps be taken, with the sixth payee, George Bryan, who does not reappear after 1596, and was by 1603 an ordinary groom of the Chamber of the royal Household, as fairly representing the original constitution of the company.[572] And an inference to its origin at once becomes possible, for of these eleven men five (Kempe, Pope, Heminges, Phillips, and Bryan) formed, with Edward Alleyn, the company of Lord Strange’s men to whom Privy Council letters of assistance were granted in 1593, and at least six (Pope, Phillips, Bryan, Burbadge, Duke, and Sly) are to be found in the cast of 2 Seven Deadly Sins as performed by Strange’s or the Admiral’s or the two together about 1590–1. It will be remembered that the Strange’s company of 1593, known as the Earl of Derby’s after 25 September 1593, was apparently formed by a combination of the earlier Strange’s and Admiral’s men somewhere near the time of this performance, if not earlier, and that its composite character never wholly disappeared, Alleyn in particular, who was its leading member, retaining his personal status as an Admiral’s man. It seems clear that in 1594 the combination broke up, that Alleyn became the nucleus of a new Admiral’s company at the Rose, and that the group with whom he had been travelling took fresh service with the Lord Chamberlain. It is not, I think, quite accurate to treat this transaction as a mere continuance of Lord Derby’s men under the style of Lord Chamberlain’s, entailing no reconstruction other than a change of patron following upon Lord Derby’s death on 16 April 1594. On the one hand a Derby’s company continued in existence, and is traceable under the sixth earl from 1594 to 1617. On the other hand, while we do not know what business reconstruction there may have been, a very fundamental change is involved in the replacement of Alleyn as principal actor by Richard Burbadge, who is not at all likely to have played with Strange’s men after the break between the Admiral’s and his father at the Theatre in 1591. Except for Alleyn, all the more important members of the company, as it existed in 1593, seem to have been included in the transfer to Lord Hunsdon. It is, however, little more than conjecture that finds Henry Condell and Christopher Beeston in the ‘Harry’ and ‘Kitt’, or Alexander Cooke, Nicholas Tooley, and Robert Gough, who were numbered amongst the King’s men at a later date, in the ‘Saunder’, ‘Nick’, and ‘R. Go.’ of the 2 Seven Deadly Sins plot. Alleyn’s correspondence of 1593 adds Richard Cowley to the list of Lord Strange’s men, and, as we shall find him acting as a payee for the Chamberlain’s men in 1601, he may have been one of them from the beginning. In any case he had joined them by 1598, as the stage-directions of Much Ado about Nothing show that he played Verges to Kempe’s Dogberry.[573]

There is, of course, one conspicuous Chamberlain’s man who is not discoverable either in the Privy Council letter of 1593 or in the 2 Seven Deadly Sins of 1590–1. Even the audacity of Mr. Fleay has not attempted to identify the ‘Will’ of the plot with Will Shakespeare. Some relations, if only as author, Shakespeare must have had with Lord Strange’s men, when they produced 1 Henry VI on 3 March 1592, and Greene’s satire of him as a ‘Shake-scene’ in the same year must indicate that he was an actor as well as an author.[574] He may have stood aside altogether during the period of the provincial tours, and devoted himself to poetry, and perhaps, although this is very conjectural, to travel abroad. Or he may, as I have already suggested, have joined Lord Pembroke’s men (q.v.), whom I suspect to have been an offshoot for provincial purposes of the Strange’s combination, and have passed from them to Lord Sussex’s, ultimately rejoining his old fellows in 1594. The possibility of identifying certain minor members of the Chamberlain’s company is also affected by this somewhat obscure problem of Pembroke’s men. The most obvious of these is John Sincler or Sincklo, who was in the cast of 2 Seven Deadly Sins as played by the Admiral’s or Strange’s about 1590–1, and must have ultimately joined the Chamberlain’s, as his name occurs in a stage-direction to Q₁ of 2 Henry IV (1600), and in the induction to The Malcontent (1604). It also occurs in stage-directions to 3 Henry VI and the Taming of The Shrew in the Folio of 1623.[575] These both happen to be plays which passed through the hands of Pembroke’s, and the inference may be that Sincler had also passed through this company. But this is far from being conclusive. It is the revised and not the unrevised texts that yield the name, and although I think it likely, on stylistic grounds, that the revision of 3 Henry VI was done for Pembroke’s (q.v.), it is probable from the reference in Henry V, epil. 12, to the loss of France and the civil wars, ‘which oft our stage hath shown’, that the play was revived by the Chamberlain’s, and it may have been in such a revival that Sincler took part. As to the Shrew, it is impossible to say whether Shakespeare’s work upon it was before or after its transfer to the Chamberlain’s. In any case the Chamberlain’s were playing it in some form on 13 June 1594, so that here again the appearance of Sincler’s name cannot ear-mark him as Pembroke’s. We can now go a step farther. The stage-directions to 3 Henry VI contain not only Sincler’s name, but those of a certain ‘Gabriel’ and a certain ‘Humfrey’, not common Elizabethan names even separately, and certainly suggesting, when found in combination, the Gabriel Spencer and Humphrey Jeffes, who were fellows of the Admiral’s in 1597. Now Spencer, and very likely also Jeffes, had come from Pembroke’s, the short-lived Pembroke’s of 1597 at the Swan. Had they been Pembroke’s men ever since 1593? If so, it would be difficult to resist the conclusion that the performance which brought their names into the text of 3 Henry VI, and with theirs John Sincler’s, was one by Pembroke’s about that date. The obstacle is that there is no known evidence, in provincial records or elsewhere, for any continuous existence of Pembroke’s between 1593 and 1597. Pending the discovery of any such evidence, it seems better to assume that Sincler, Spencer, and Jeffes were all Chamberlain’s men before 1597, and that it was from a combination of discontented elements in that company and in the Admiral’s that the Pembroke’s of the Swan arose. If so, the rest of the Pembroke’s men not traceable as coming from the Admiral’s, namely Robert Shaw, William Bird alias Borne, and probably Anthony Jeffes, may also have come from the Chamberlain’s; and such an origin might explain the suit with Thomas Pope in which Bird was entangled in 1598.[576] Two other minor actors in the company about 1597 were probably Harvey and Rossill, whose names appear to have got into the text of 1 Henry IV in place of those of Bardolph and Peto, whom they represented.[577] The list of actors in Shakespeare’s plays given by the editors of the First Folio includes Samuel Crosse, of whom nothing more is known except that he was of an early generation. As the list in the Folio appears to be limited to Chamberlain’s and King’s men, excluding for example Alleyn, who certainly acted in Shakespearian plays, e.g. 1 Henry VI, it may be that Crosse was for a short time a member of the company soon after 1594.

It is hardly possible to carry the analysis of origins any further with profit, or to assume that the groups which segregated themselves from the Strange-Admiral’s combination in 1594 bore any close correspondence to the respective contributions of Strange’s and the Admiral’s to that combination in 1589 or 1590. The only name that can be connected with Strange’s men before 1588 is John Symons and neither he nor George Attewell, their payee in 1591, became a Chamberlain’s man. Hypotheses have been framed, mainly in the hope of affiliating Shakespeare to Lord Leicester’s men, who are supposed to have carried him away from Stratford-on-Avon when they visited it in 1586–7, and ultimately to have become Lord Strange’s men.[578] So far as Shakespeare is concerned, the first record of him on the boards is in 1592, and the interval since his hegira from Stratford may have been quite otherwise spent. The proof of continuity between Leicester’s men and Strange’s altogether fails, since the latter made their appearance a decade before the former came to an end. The only member of the Lord Chamberlain’s company of 1594 who can be traced to Leicester’s service was Kempe, and he had left Leicester’s men by the summer of 1586 and was in Denmark. With him were Bryan and Pope, who afterwards spent a year in Germany, and may have joined either Strange’s or the Admiral’s on their return. The only other Chamberlain’s man, who can be assigned to an earlier company than Strange’s, is Heminges, who was probably at some time a Queen’s man.

The Chamberlain’s men evidently started business in 1594 with something of a repertory derived by inheritance or purchase from antecedent companies. Our knowledge of this is mainly confined to plays with which Shakespeare was concerned as author or reviser. They certainly did not get all the plays produced by Strange’s men at the Rose during 1592 and 1593. Some of these were Henslowe’s property; others passed with Alleyn to the Admiral’s men. But they got The Jealous Comedy, if I am right in identifying this with The Comedy of Errors. They probably got 1 Henry VI, for although the appearance of a Shakespearian play in the 1623 Folio is not perhaps, in view of the composition of the 1647 ‘Beaumont and Fletcher’ Folio, absolute proof that the King’s men possessed the copy, their stage had often shown both the loss of France and the bleeding of England before Henry V was produced in 1599.[579] And they got Titus and Vespasian, as revised, after passing through the hands of Pembroke’s men, for production by Sussex’s under the title of Titus Andronicus. Three other of Pembroke’s men’s plays came to them, The Taming of A Shrew and 2 and 3 Henry VI, and probably Hamlet belongs to the same group. It is of course only a guess of mine that these also went with Shakespeare to Sussex’s men and came thence with him. Titus Andronicus and A Shrew, indeed, became available in print during 1594, but not Hamlet, and not Henry VI, except in the obsolete version called The Contention of York and Lancaster. I think Shakespeare must also have brought Richard III and possibly an early version of Henry VIII, and that one or other of these had already been played by Sussex’s as Buckingham. Of the provenance of Hester and Ahasuerus nothing can be said. It is not necessary to suppose that the Chamberlain’s acquired any plays from the stock of the Queen’s men. It is true that Shakespeare subsequently made some use of The Troublesome Reign of King John, The Famous Victories of Henry V, and King Leire, but these were all in print before he needed them.[580] Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany, published in 1654 as a play the King’s men at the Blackfriars is believed by some to be an early play, possibly by Peele, and if so, may belong to the repertory of 1594.

I now return to the chronicle of the Chamberlain’s men from 1598 onwards. The restriction of the London companies by the action of the Privy Council to two had left them in direct rivalry with the Admiral’s at the Rose. Disputes broke out. Henslowe made a loan to William Bird of the Admiral’s on 30 August 1598 to follow a ‘sewt agenste Thomas Poope’, and another to Thomas Downton on 30 January 1599, ‘to descarge Thomas Dickers [Dekker] from the areaste of my lord chamberlens men’.[581] The company played at Court on 26 December 1598 and 1 January and 20 February 1599. During this winter they undertook the enterprise of finding a new head-quarters on the Bankside. The disputes between landlord and tenants as to the lease of the Theatre had reached a crisis, and in December or January the Burbadges removed the timber of the house across the Thames, to serve as material for the construction of the Globe. The lease of the new site was signed on 21 February 1599. Under it one moiety of the interest was retained by Richard Burbadge and his brother Cuthbert, who was not himself an actor; the other was assigned to Shakespeare, Pope, Phillips, Heminges, and Kempe.[582] Shortly afterwards Kempe made over his share to the other four. Presumably he now quitted the company, having first, as a stage-direction shows, played Peter in the revised version of Romeo and Juliet printed in 1599. His place was probably taken by Robert Armin, formerly of Lord Chandos’s men, who describes himself in two successive issues of his Fool upon Fool (1600 and 1605), first as ‘clonnico del Curtanio’, and then as ‘clonnico del Mondo’, and who had therefore probably joined the Chamberlain’s men before their actual transfer to the Globe. As the Theatre had to be built, this is not likely to have taken place until the autumn of 1599, and it must therefore remain doubtful which house was the ‘wooden O’ of Henry V, produced during the absence of Essex in Ireland between 27 March and 28 September 1599. It was, however, certainly at the Globe that Thomas Platter saw Julius Caesar on 21 September.[583] ‘This fair-filled Globe’, too, is named in the epilogue to Jonson’s Every Man Out of his Humour, which is ascribed in the Folio of 1606 to 1599, although if this be correct, an apparent allusion to Kempe’s journey to Norwich in the spring of 1600 must, on the assumption that it is a real allusion, be an interpolation. The ‘principall Comoedians’ in this play were Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Condell, Sly, and Pope. Four of the 1598 names are missing. Shakespeare evidently stood aside. Kempe had gone. Beeston and Duke may have gone also, although it is only a conjecture of Mr. Fleay’s that they and Kempe now seceded to Pembroke’s men at the Rose, and they are not definitely heard of again until they are found with Worcester’s men in August 1602.[584] Mr. Fleay thinks that another Worcester’s man, Robert Pallant, had accompanied them; but, although Pallant was with Strange’s or the Admiral’s about 1590, there is no evidence that he was ever a Chamberlain’s man. Conceivably he may have joined the King’s men about 1619, but that is another matter.[585] About November 1599 was published A Warning for Fair Women, which belonged to the company.

The Court plays called for from the Chamberlain’s men during the following winter were on 26 December 1599 and on 6 January and 3 February 1600. Heminges was sole payee, and occupied the same position in every subsequent year, up to and beyond 1616, except in 1600–1, when Richard Cowley was associated with him, and for a special payment made to Burbadge in 1604. On 6 March 1600 the company had an opportunity of rendering direct service to their patron Lord Hunsdon, by playing Henry IV, still oddly called Sir John Oldcastle, after a dinner which he gave to the Flemish ambassador, Ludovic Verreyken, presumably at his house in the Blackfriars.[586] To 1600 I assign Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, not improbably prepared for performance, with the aid of the boys of Windsor Chapel, at the Garter Feast on 23 April, and also As You Like It. This was a year of some activity among the publishers and, as in 1598, the company had to take steps to protect their interests. In May John Roberts was prevented from printing their moral of Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose, until he could bring proper authority, and in August a note was made in the Stationers’ Register to stay the printing of As You Like It, Henry V, and Much Ado about Nothing.[587] The last two of these, but not the first, were in fact printed during the year, and so were A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, 2 Henry IV, Every Man Out of his Humour, and An Alarum for London, all plays belonging to the company.

The Chamberlain’s men played at Court on 26 December 1600 and on 6 January and 24 February 1601. Shortly before this last performance, they had been involved in one of the tragedies of history. This was the abortive coup d’état of 8 February 1601 in which the Earl of Essex, smarting under the disgrace which his failure in Ireland had brought upon him, attempted to secure his position and get rid of Sir Walter Raleigh and other enemies by taking forcible possession of the person of Elizabeth and the palace of Whitehall. Some of his followers seem to have conceived the idea of predisposing the mind of the populace to their cause by a dramatic representation of the dangers of evil counsellors and the possible remedy of a deposition, as illustrated in the case of Elizabeth’s predecessor Richard II, in whom for some obscure reason the political thought of the time was fond of finding an analogue to the Queen. Saturday, 7 February, the day before the outbreak, was chosen for the performance, and the players applied to were the Chamberlain’s. A deposition by Augustine Phillips, taken before Chief Justice Popham and Justice Fenner during the subsequent inquiries, records the transaction.[588]