The fact that Phillips speaks of the play as old and long out of use, which becomes in the narrative of Camden ‘exoleta tragoedia’, hardly justifies the suggestion that it was something earlier than Shakespeare’s Richard II. This, if produced in 1596, may well have been off the boards by 1601.

A good deal of misunderstanding has gathered round the connexion of the Chamberlain’s men with this affair. Mr. Fleay is responsible for the theory that they fell into disgrace, had to travel, and were excluded from the Court festivities of the following Christmas.[589] As a matter of fact they played four times during that winter. This Mr. Fleay did not know, as he only had before him Cunningham’s incomplete extracts from the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber. But he ought to have noticed that their last performance for 1600–1 was itself some days later than the examination of Augustine Phillips. Nor is any evidence that the company travelled in 1601 forthcoming from the provincial archives. Mr. Fleay’s identification of them with Laurence Fletcher’s Scottish company of that year merely rests upon the presence of Fletcher’s name in the patent of 1603, and this will not bear the strain of the argument.[590] Thus remains, however, the possibly autobiographical passage in Hamlet, ii. 2. 346, which assigns an ‘inhibition by the means of the late innovation’ as a cause of the travelling of players to Elsinore. The date of Hamlet may well be 1601, since the same passage refers to the theatrical competition set up by the establishment of boy companies at St. Paul’s in 1599 and at the Chapel Royal in 1600. But it must be borne in mind that this competition is the only reason given for the travelling in the 1603 edition of the play. In the 1604 edition the only reason is the inhibition, while in the text of the 1623 Folio both reasons stand somewhat inconsistently side by side.[591] No doubt the text of 1603 is an imperfect piratical reprint. On the other hand that of 1604 almost certainly represents a revised version of the play, and the ‘inhibition’ cited, if it had an historical existence at all, may be that of 1603, during which certainly the company travelled. I suppose that ‘innovation’ might mean the accession of a new sovereign, although it does not seem a very obvious term. But then it does not seem a very obvious term for a seditious rising either.[592] On the whole, there is no reason to suppose that any serious blame was attached to the Chamberlain’s men for lending themselves to Sir Gilly Meyrick’s intrigue. It is certainly absurd to suggest, as has been suggested, that the ‘adorned creature’, whose ingratitude instigated the comparison between Elizabeth and Richard, was not Essex but Shakespeare.[593] At the same time the company may, of course, have been told to leave London for a few weeks. At some time, as the 1603 title-page tells us, they took Hamlet both to Oxford and to Cambridge, and it is at least tempting to find a reminiscence of the Cambridge visit in the scene from 2 Return from Parnassus cited below. It is possible that Phillips and his fellows, and even their relation to the Essex crisis itself, may be glanced at in the satirical picture of the Roman actors in Jonson’s Poetaster, produced by the Chapel boys in the course of 1601.[594] Certainly the play betrays its author’s knowledge of a counter-attack which the Chamberlain’s men were already preparing for him in Dekker’s Satiromastix. This play, in which Dekker may have had some help from Marston, was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 11 November 1601, and had probably been on the stage not long before. It is noteworthy that it was produced by the Paul’s boys, as well as by the Chamberlain’s men. It was actually published in 1602. Another play which may reasonably be assigned to 1601 is Twelfth Night.

In the following winter the company played at Court on 26 and 27 December 1601 and on 1 January and 14 February 1602. They also gave Twelfth Night at the Middle Temple feast on 2 February;[595] and I have very little doubt that it was they who furnished the play at which Elizabeth and her maids of honour were present in the Blackfriars after dining with Lord Hunsdon on 31 December.[596] The alleged production of Othello before the Queen when Sir Thomas Egerton entertained her at Harefield from 31 July to 2 August 1602 rests on a forgery by Collier.[597] It is possible that, as Professor Wallace conjectures, the play was on the capture of Stuhl-Weissenburg, seen by the Duke of Stettin on 13 September 1602, may have been a Globe production.[598] Sir Thomas Cromwell, a play of unknown authorship belonging to the company, was published in the course of 1602, with an ascription on the title-page to W. S., and to this year I assign Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well and Troilus and Cressida. If so, the portrait of Ajax in the latter play cannot very well have been the ‘purge’ administered by Shakespeare to Jonson, to which reference is made in 2 Return from Parnassus. This is a Cambridge Christmas piece, probably of 1601–2, and in it Burbadge and Kempe are introduced as in search of scholars to write for them. Perhaps the Cambridge author did not know that Kempe had ceased to be the ‘fellow’ of Burbadge and Shakespeare in 1599, and was at the time playing with Worcester’s men at the Rose. It is, however, just possible that after returning from his continental tour and before throwing in his lot with Worcester’s, he may have rejoined the Chamberlain’s for a while, and may have accompanied them to Cambridge, if they did travel in 1601.[599]

The last performances of the company before Elizabeth took place on 26 December 1602 and 2 February 1603, and on the following 24 March the Queen died. Playing immediately ceased in London. Strictly speaking, the Chamberlain’s men must have again become Lord Hunsdon’s men for a month or so, for the Household appointments naturally lapsed with the death of the sovereign, and Hunsdon, being in failing health, was relieved of his duties on 6 April. On 9 September he died.[600] The company, however, had already passed under royal patronage.

A contemporary panegyrist records the graciousness of James in ‘taking to him the late Lord Chamberlaines servants, now the Kings acters’.[601] The appointment was by letters patent dated 19 May 1603, of which the text follows.[602]

Of the nine players named, eight are recognizable as the principal members of the Lord Chamberlain’s company as it stood at the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Only Thomas Pope is not included. He was near his end. He made his will on 22 July 1603, and it was proved on 13 February 1604. In it he names none of his fellows, unless Robert Gough, who has a legacy, was already of the company; his interest in the house of the Globe passed to legatees and was thus alienated from the company. Laurence Fletcher, on the other hand, whose name heads the list in the patent, is not discernible as a Chamberlain’s man. His inclusion becomes readily intelligible, when it is recalled that he had headed English actors on tour in Scotland, and had already been marked by the personal favour of James.[603] Whether he ever joined the company in the full sense, that is to say, the association of actors as distinct from the body of royal servants, seems to me very doubtful. His name is not in the Sejanus list, or in the Folio list of Shakespearian players, and that he was described as a ‘fellow’ by Phillips in 1605 hardly takes the matter further. He may have held a relation to the King’s men analogous to that of Martin Slater to Queen Anne’s men. After 1605 nothing is heard of him.[604]

The terms of the patent imply that it was issued during a suspension of playing through plague. Probably this had followed hard upon the suspension at Elizabeth’s death. The company travelled, being found at Bath, Coventry, and Shrewsbury in the course of 1602–3. A misplaced Ipswich entry of 30 May 1602 may belong to 1603. The visits to Oxford and Cambridge referred to on the title-page of the 1603 edition of Hamlet must also have taken place in this year, if they did not take place in 1601. On 2 December 1603 the company were summoned from Mortlake to perform before the King at Lord Pembroke’s house of Wilton.[605]

During the winter of 1603–4 the company gave eight more plays at Court, a larger number than Elizabeth had ever called for. They took place on 26, 27, 28, and 30 December 1603 and on 1 January and 2 and 19 February 1604. On New Year’s Day there were two performances, one before James, the other before Prince Henry. The plague had not yet subsided by 8 February, and James gave his men £30 as a ‘free gifte’ for their ‘mayntenaunce and releife’ till it should ‘please God to settle the cittie in a more perfecte health’. One of the plays of this winter was The Fair Maid of Bristow. Another, produced before the end of 1603, was probably Ben Jonson’s Sejanus. For alleged popery and treason in this play Jonson was haled before the Privy Council by the Earl of Northampton, but there is nothing to show that the players were implicated. The principal actors in Sejanus were Burbadge, Shakespeare, Phillips, Heminges, Sly, Condell, John Lowin, and Alexander Cooke. This is Shakespeare’s last appearance in the cast of any play. He may have ceased to act, while remaining a member of the company and its poet. The names of Lowin and Cooke are new. Lowin had been with Worcester’s men in 1602–3. Cooke had probably begun his connexion with the company as an apprentice to Heminges. The identification of him with the ‘Sander’ of Strange’s men in 1590 is more than hazardous. The Induction to Marston’s Malcontent, published in 1604, records the names of Burbadge, who played Malevole, Condell, Sly, Lowin, Sincler, and a Tire-man. Sincler was probably still only a hired man. Nothing further is heard of him. This Induction seems to have been written by John Webster to introduce the presentation by the King’s men of The Malcontent, which was really a Chapel play. The transaction is thus explained:[606]

The play of Jeronimo, which the Chapel are here accused of taking, cannot be The Spanish Tragedy, which was an Admiral’s play, and is not very likely to have been the ‘comedy of Jeronimo’ which Strange’s men had in 1592, and which was evidently related to The Spanish Tragedy and may be expected to have remained with it. It might be the extant First Part of Jeronimo, written perhaps for the Chamberlain’s men about 1601–2, when Jonson was revising The Spanish Tragedy for the Admiral’s. A reference in T. M.’s Black Book shows that The Merry Devil of Edmonton, which belonged to the company, was already on the stage by 1604.[607]

The coronation procession of James, deferred on account of the plague, went through London on 15 March 1604, and the Great Wardrobe furnished each of the King’s players with four and a half yards of red cloth. The same nine men are specified in the warrant as in the patent of 1603, and their names stand next those of various officers of the Chamber. They did not, however, actually walk in the procession.[608] From 9 to 27 August 1604, they were called upon in their official capacity as Grooms of the Chamber to form part of the retinue assigned to attend at Somerset House upon Juan Fernandez de Velasco, Duke of Frias and Constable of Castile, who was in England as Ambassador Extraordinary for the negotiation of a peace with Spain. The descriptions of his visit, which have been preserved, do not show that any plays were given before him.[609]

The company were at Oxford between 7 May and 16 June 1604. About 18 December they had got into trouble through the production of a tragedy on Gowry, always a delicate subject with James.[610] But this did not interfere with a long series of no less than eleven performances which they gave at Court between 1 November 1604 and 12 February 1605, and of which the Revels Accounts fortunately preserve the names.[611] The series included one play, The Spanish Maze, of which nothing is known; two by Ben Jonson, Every Man In his Humour and Every Man Out of his Humour; and seven by Shakespeare, Othello, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, Henry V, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Merchant of Venice, which was given twice. Othello and Measure for Measure had probably been produced for the first time during 1604, but the rest of the list suggests that opportunity was being taken to revive a number of Elizabethan plays unknown to the new sovereigns. This is borne out by the terms of a letter from Sir Walter Cope to Lord Southampton with regard to the performance of Love’s Labour ’s Lost.[612]

Between 4 May 1605, when he made his will, and 13 May, when it was proved, died Augustine Phillips. Unlike Pope, he was full of kindly remembrances towards the King’s men. He appointed Heminges, Burbadge, and Sly overseers of the will. He left legacies to his ‘fellows’ Shakespeare, Condell, Fletcher, Armin, Cowley, Cooke, and Nicholas Tooley; to the hired men of the company; to his ‘servant’ Christopher Beeston; to his apprentice James Sands, and to his late apprentice Samuel Gilburne. We have here practically a full list of the company. The name of Nicholas Tooley is new, unless indeed he was the ‘Nick’ of Strange’s men in 1592. He speaks of Richard Burbadge in his will as his ‘master’ and may have been his apprentice. The use of the term ‘fellow’ suggests that Tooley and Cooke were now sharers in the company. On the other hand Lowin, who is not named among the ‘fellows’, may still have been only a hired man. Beeston’s legacy is doubtless in memory of former service as hired man or apprentice; he was in 1605 and for long after with the Queen’s men. Samuel Gilburne is recorded as a Shakespearian actor in the 1623 Folio, but practically nothing is known of him or of James Sands. The exact legal disposal of the interest held by Phillips in the Globe subsequently became matter of controversy, but in effect it remained from 1605 to 1613 with his widow and her second husband, and was thus alienated from the company.

On some date before Michaelmas in 1605 the King’s men visited Barnstaple, and on 9 October they were at Oxford. This year saw the publication of The Fair Maid of Bristow and of The London Prodigal, which was assigned on its title-page to Shakespeare. To it I also assign Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear.

Ten Court plays were given in the winter of 1605–6, but the dates are not recorded. Three more were given in the summer of 1606 during the visit of the King of Denmark to James, which lasted from 7 July to 11 August, and then the company seem to have gone on tour. They were at Oxford between 28 and 31 July, at Leicester in August, at Dover between 6 and 24 September, at Saffron Walden and Maidstone during 1605–6, and at Marlborough in 1606. To this year I assign Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, and to the earlier part of it Ben Jonson’s Volpone, in which the principal actors were Burbadge, Condell, Sly, Heminges, Lowin, and Cooke.

Nine Court plays were given during the winter of 1606–7, on 26 and 29 December 1606, and on 4, 6, and 8 January and 2, 5, 15, and 27 February 1607. The entry in the Stationers’ Register for King Lear and the title-page of Barnes’ The Devil’s Charter, both dated in 1607, show these to have been the plays selected for 26 December and 2 February respectively. In the same year were also published Tourneur’s The Revenger’s Tragedy and Wilkins’ The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, and to it I assign the production of Timon of Athens. On 16 July 1607 Heminges lent his boy John Rice to appear as an angel of gladness with a taper of frankincense, and deliver an eighteen-verse speech by Ben Jonson as part of the entertainment of James by the Merchant Taylors at their hall.[613] During the summer the company travelled to Barnstaple, to Dunwich, to Oxford, where they were on 7 September, and possibly to Cambridge. Volpone had probably been given in both Universities before its publication about February 1607 or 1608.

During the winter of 1607–8 the company gave thirteen Court plays, on 26, 27, and 28 December 1606, and on 2, 6, 7, 9, 17, and 26 January, and 2 and 7 February 1607. On each of the nights of 6 and 17 January there were two plays. In 1608 was published A Yorkshire Tragedy, with Shakespeare’s name on the title-page, and to it I assign the production of Pericles, in which Shakespeare probably had Wilkins for a collaborator. About May the company had to find their share of the heavy fine necessary to buy off the inhibition due to the performance of Chapman’s Duke of Byron by the Queen’s Revels.[614] The year was in many ways an eventful one for the King’s men. They had, I suspect, to face a growing detachment of Shakespeare from London and the theatre; and the loss was perhaps partly supplied by the establishment of relations with Beaumont and Fletcher, whose earliest play for the company, Philaster, may be of any date from 1608 to 1610. About 16 August died William Sly, leaving his interest in the Globe to his son Robert and legacies to Cuthbert Burbadge and James Sands. Both he and Henry Condell had been admitted to an interest at some date subsequent to November 1606, the moiety of the lease not retained by the Burbadges having been redistributed into sixths to allow of this. The deserts of Pope, Phillips, and Sly are all commemorated in the Apology of Thomas Heywood, which, though not published until 1612, was probably written in 1608.[615] Sly’s death complicated an important transaction in which the King’s men were engaged. This was the acquisition of the Blackfriars, of which the freehold already belonged to the Burbadges, but which had been leased since 1600 to Henry Evans and occupied by the Children of the Revels. About July 1608 Evans was prepared to surrender his lease, and the Burbadges decided to take the opportunity of providing the King’s men with a second house on the north side of the Thames, suitable for a winter head-quarters. As in the case of the Globe, they shared their interest as housekeepers with some of the leading members of the company. New leases were executed on 9 August 1608, by which the house was divided between a syndicate of seven, of whom five were Richard Burbadge, Shakespeare, Heminges, Condell, and Sly, while the other two, Cuthbert Burbadge and Thomas Evans, were not King’s men. When Sly’s death intervened, his executrix surrendered his interest and the number of the syndicate was reduced to six. Probably, however, the King’s men did not enter upon the actual occupation of the Blackfriars until the autumn of the following year.[616] In fact the plague kept the London theatres closed from July 1608 to December 1609. The King’s men were at Coventry on 29 October 1608 and at Marlborough in the course of 1607–8. The plague did not prevent them from appearing at Court during the winter of 1608–9, and they gave twelve plays on unspecified dates. But their difficulties are testified to by a special reward ‘for their private practise in the time of infeccion’, which had rendered their Christmas service possible.

The plague led to an early provincial tour. The company were at Ipswich on 9 May, at Hythe on 16 May, and at New Romney on 17 May 1609. Their winter season was again interfered with, and a further grant was made in respect of six weeks of private practice. Amongst the plays so practised may, I think, have been Cymbeline. They gave thirteen plays at Court on unspecified dates during the holidays of 1609–10.[617] One of these may have been Mucedorus, the edition of which with the imprint 1610 represents a revised version performed at Court on the previous Shrove Sunday. This might be either 18 February 1610 or 3 February 1611. The epilogue contains an apology for some recent indiscretion of the company in a play of which no more is known, but which might conceivably be Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, since this certainly brought its players into some disgrace. By April the company were at the Globe, playing Macbeth on 20 April, Cymbeline probably shortly before, and Othello on 30 April.[618] To this year I assign The Winter’s Tale and Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy. It also saw the production of Jonson’s Alchemist, with a cast including Burbadge, Lowin, Condell, Cooke, Armin, Heminges, William Ostler, John Underwood, Tooley, and William Ecclestone. This is the last mention of Armin in connexion with the King’s men, but it is sufficient to show that the production of his Two Maids of Moreclack by the King’s Revels about 1608 did not involve any breach with his old company. Of Ecclestone’s origin nothing is known.[619] Ostler and Underwood came from the Queen’s Revels, probably when the Blackfriars was taken over in 1609. In fact an account of the transaction given by the Burbadges in 1635 suggests that the desire to acquire these boys was its fundamental motive. They say:

This narrative seems, however, to have antedated matters as regards Field. Or, if he did come to the King’s men in 1609, he almost immediately returned to the Queen’s Revels at Whitefriars, joining the King’s again about 1616.[620]

About 8 May 1610 some superfluous apparel of the company was sold by Heminges on their behalf to the Duke of York’s men (q.v.). On 31 May Burbadge and Rice were employed by the City to make speeches on fish-back at the civic pageant of welcome to Prince Henry.[621] The autumn travelling took the company to Dover between 6 July and 4 August 1610, to Oxford in August, and to Shrewsbury and Stafford in 1609–10. During the following winter they gave fifteen Court plays on unspecified days. They were playing a piece on the story of Richard II, not now extant, at the Globe on 30 April 1611, and A Winter’s Tale on 15 May.[622] During 1611 Jonson’s Catiline was produced, with a cast similar to that of The Alchemist, except that Armin was replaced by Richard Robinson, whose earlier history is unknown. Robinson, playing a female part, and Robert Gough also appear in the stage directions of The Second Maiden’s Tragedy, licensed for the stage by Sir George Buck on 31 October 1611. Gough was probably one of Strange’s men in 1592. He appears in the wills of Pope in 1603 and of Phillips, who was his brother-in-law, in 1605, but with no indication that he belonged to the King’s men. Beaumont and Fletcher’s A King and No King was also licensed by Buck in 1611, and to this year I assign Shakespeare’s Tempest. On 25 August 1611 the interest in the Blackfriars originally intended for Sly was assigned to Ostler. Ecclestone, on the other hand, later in the year than the production of Catiline, but before 29 August, left the company for the Lady Elizabeth’s men.

The only provincial visit by the King’s men recorded in 1610–11 was to Shrewsbury. They gave twenty-two plays at Court during a rather prolonged winter season extending from 31 October 1611 to 26 April 1612. Two of these, on 12 and 13 January, were joint performances with the Queen’s men, and the plays used, Heywood’s Silver Age and Rape of Lucrece, were from the repertory of the latter.[623] The King’s men also gave The Tempest and A Winter’s Tale, A King and No King, Tourneur’s The Nobleman, and The Twins’ Tragedy. On 20 February 1612 the actors’ moiety of the Globe was again redistributed, into sevenths, so as to allow of the admission as a housekeeper of Ostler, who had married a daughter of Heminges. From the statement of the interests held by the parties to this transaction, it is to be inferred that Heminges and Condell had between them bought out since 1608 the representatives of Sly. On 21 April 1612 the company was at New Romney and at some date during 1611–12 at Winchester. Heminges received a payment for services to the Lord Mayor’s pageant of this year, which was Dekker’s Troja Nova Triumphans.[624]

The actor-list attached to The Captain in the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1679 probably belongs to the original production of the play between 1609 and 1612. It names Burbadge, Condell, Cooke, and Ostler. It was one of the plays selected for the Court season of 1612–13, during which, on 14 February, took place the wedding of the Elector Palatine Frederick and the Princess Elizabeth, and which was therefore singularly rich in plays, notwithstanding the interruption of the festivities due to the death of Prince Henry on 7 November 1612. Heminges lent a boy for Chapman’s mask on 15 February. The twenty plays given this winter by the King’s men, the exact dates of which are not upon record, were Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing (performed twice), The Tempest, A Winter’s Tale, Julius Caesar, Othello, and 1 and 2 Henry IV, Jonson’s Alchemist, Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster (also performed twice), The Maid’s Tragedy, A King and No King, The Captain and the lost play of Cardenio, Tourneur’s Nobleman, and four plays of unknown authorship, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Knot of Fools, The Twins’ Tragedy, and A Bad Beginning Makes a Good Ending. On 8 June there was a special performance of Cardenio for the Savoyan ambassador. Some unknown cause seems to have brought Shakespeare back in 1613 to the assistance of his fellows, and he collaborated with Fletcher in The Two Noble Kinsmen and in Henry VIII or All is True, possibly a revision of the Buckingham which formed part of the repertory of Sussex’s men in 1594. During a performance of Henry VIII, on 29 June 1613, the Globe was burnt to the ground. Some contemporary verses mention Burbadge, Heminges, and Condell as present on this occasion. A levy was called for from the housekeepers to meet the cost of rebuilding, and owing to the inability of the representatives of Augustine Phillips to meet the call upon them, Heminges was enabled to recover one of the alienated interests, which he divided with Condell.

The company was at Oxford before November in 1613, and also visited Shrewsbury, Stafford, and Folkestone during 1612–13. They played sixteen times at Court in the winter of 1613–14, on 1, 4, 5, 15, and 16 November and 27 December 1613, and on 1, 4, and 10 January, 2, 4, 8, 10, and 18 February and 6 and 8 March 1614. The rebuilding of the Globe was complete by 30 June 1614, and in the course of 1613–14 the company visited Coventry. Cooke died in February 1614, being then a sharer. Ostler died on 16 December, and his interests in the Globe and Blackfriars became matter of dispute between his widow and her father, John Heminges. The ascertained dates of Ostler’s career render it possible to assign to 1609–14, the period of his connexion with the King’s men, three plays in which he took part. These are Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, at the first production of which, if the actor-list of the 1623 edition is rightly interpreted, the parts of Ferdinand, the Cardinal, and Antonio were played respectively by Burbadge, Condell, and Ostler, Fletcher’s Valentinian, played by Burbadge, Condell, Lowin, Ostler, and Underwood, and his Bonduca, played by Burbadge, Condell, Lowin, Ostler, Underwood, Tooley, Ecclestone, and Robinson. Bonduca must be either earlier than Ecclestone’s departure for the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1611, or after he quitted that company and presumably rejoined the King’s in 1613.

The King’s men gave eight plays at Court on unspecified days during the winter of 1614–15. On 29 March 1615 they were in trouble with other companies for playing in Lent, and Heminges and Burbadge appeared on their behalf before the Privy Council. In April 1615 they were at Nottingham. They gave fourteen plays at Court between 1 November 1615 and 1 April 1616, and again the precise dates are not specified. They also appeared before Anne at Somerset House on 21 December 1615.

Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, and with this event I must close my detailed chronicle of the fortunes of the company. A new patent was issued to them on 27 March 1619, probably to secure their right to perform in the Blackfriars, which was being challenged by the action of the City.[625] Since 1603 Shakespeare, Phillips, Sly, Cowley, Armin, and Fletcher have dropped out of the list, and are replaced by Lowin, Underwood, Tooley, Ecclestone, Gough, and Robinson, together with Nathan Field, Robert Benfield, and John Shank, who now appear for the first time as members of the company.[626] Benfield and Field are last traceable with the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1613 and 1615 respectively, Shank with the Palsgrave’s men in 1613. The only names common to both patents are those of Burbadge, Heminges, and Condell. But in fact Burbadge died on 13 March 1619, while the patent was going through its stages, and his place was almost immediately taken by Joseph Taylor, from Prince Charles’s men. About the same time Field left the company.[627] Heminges, described as ‘stuttering’ in 1613, cannot be shown to have acted since the Catiline of 1611. He had probably devoted himself to the business management of the company, in which he always appears prominent. Condell also seems to have given up acting about 1619, and during the rest of the history of the company up to its extinction in 1642, its mainstays were Lowin and Taylor, who became depositaries of the tradition of the great Shakespearian parts. John Downes, who was prompter to the Duke of York’s men after the Restoration, relates how, when Betterton played Hamlet, ‘Sir William [Davenant] (having seen Mr. Taylor of the Black-Fryers Company Act it, who being instructed by the Author Mr. Shakespear) taught Mr. Betterton in every Particle of it’; and how Davenant was similarly able to act as Betterton’s tutor for Henry the Eighth, for he ‘had it from Old Mr. Lowen, that had his Instructions from Mr. Shakespear himself’.[628] When Heminges and Condell came to print Shakespeare’s plays in 1623, they prefixed ‘the names of the principall Actors in all these playes’ as follows: ‘William Shakespeare, Richard Burbadge, John Hemmings, Augustine Phillips, William Kempt, Thomas Poope, George Bryan, Henry Condell, William Slye, Richard Cowly, John Lowine, Samuell Crosse, Alexander Cooke, Samuel Gilburne, Robert Armin, William Ostler, Nathan Field, John Underwood, Nicholas Tooley, William Ecclestone, Joseph Taylor, Robert Benfield, Robert Goughe, Richard Robinson, John Shancke, John Rice.’ The order is a little puzzling. The first ten entries may be those of the original members of the Chamberlain’s company in 1594; and if so, their order does not matter. But it is difficult to believe that the other sixteen can represent either the order in which the men began to play for the company, or the order in which they became sharers. Of course, there may have been comings and goings known to Heminges and Condell, but not now traceable. Thus Field and even Taylor may have come for a short while and gone again before 1611. But it seems impossible that Tooley, who was ‘fellow’ to Phillips in 1605, could really have been junior to the recruits from the Queen’s Revels in 1609. On the whole, one must suppose that, if Heminges and Condell aimed at an exact chronology, their memory occasionally failed them. The omission from the Folio of Duke, Beeston, Sincler, and Sands may indicate that the list is confined to sharers. It is probable that Fletcher, who is also omitted, was not a sharer and did not act in any Shakespearian play.

xxi. THE EARL OF WORCESTER’S AND QUEEN ANNE’S MEN

The first company under the patronage of this house had a long and wholly provincial career.[629] The earliest record of it is at Barnstaple in 1555. On 10 October 1563 it was at Leicester. On 13 and 14 January 1565 it was at Sir George Vernon’s, Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, under the leadership of one Hamond.[630] It is further traceable in December 1565 at Newcastle, before Michaelmas 1566 at Leicester, in 1567–8 at Gloucester, in 1568–9 at Ipswich, Stratford-on-Avon, and Bath, on 11 August 1569 at Nottingham, in 1569–70 and 1570–1 at Gloucester and Barnstaple, in 1571 at Leicester and Beverley, on 9 January 1572 at Nottingham, before Michaelmas at Leicester, on 31 December 1572 at Wollaton, Notts. (Francis Willoughby’s), on 6 January 1573 at Nottingham, in 1572–3 at Bath, in 1573–4 at Abingdon, and in January 1574 at Wollaton again. As the Earl of Worcester’s eldest son bore the courtesy title of Lord Herbert, it is probably the same company which appeared at Leicester, after Michaelmas in 1574, as ‘Lorde Harbards’. But it is named as Worcester’s again in 1574–5 at Stratford-on-Avon, on 28 April 1575 at Nottingham, and after Michaelmas in the same year at Leicester, in 1575–6 at Coventry, in 1576–7 at Stratford-on-Avon and Bath, and on 14 June 1577 at Southampton, where it consisted of ten men. On 19 January 1578 it was at Nottingham, in 1577–8 at Coventry, in 1580–1 and 1581–2 at Stratford-on-Avon, in 1581–2 at Abingdon, on 15 June 1582 at Ipswich, in the same year at Doncaster.

Two incidents in successive years suggest that Worcester’s men were not always quite so amenable, as vagrants should have been, to municipal discipline. The first was at Norwich on 7 June 1583. Here there was a fear of plague, and the company were given 26s. 8d., on a promise not to play. In spite of this they played in their host’s house. The Corporation ordered ‘that their lord shall be certified of their contempt’, and that they should never again receive reward in Norwich, and should presently depart the town on pain of imprisonment. It was afterwards agreed, however, on submission and earnest entreaty, not to report the misdemeanour to the Earl of Worcester. The second occasion was in the following March in Leicester, and the entries in the Corporation archives are so interesting as to deserve reproduction in full.[631]

The latter part of this record is intelligible enough; evidently there was a repetition of the misrule at Norwich. But the earlier part, which refers to a different matter altogether, is distinctly puzzling. The ‘theys’ in the first sentence of the Corporation minute of 6 March are complicated, and it has sometimes been supposed that there was really a company of Master of the Revels’ men, and that it was Worcester’s men who questioned the licence of these.[632] On the whole, I think that a different interpretation of the documents is the more natural one. No doubt Worcester’s men had found it necessary, as a result of the powers granted to Tilney as Master of the Revels by the patent of 24 December 1581, to renew the authority under which they travelled. In addition to a fresh warrant from their lord licensing them to travel as his household servants, and dated 14 January 1583, they obtained on the following 6 February a further licence from Tilney, issued under the clause of his commission which appointed him to ‘order and reforme, auctorise and put downe’ all players in any part of England, whether they were ‘belonginge to any noble man’ or otherwise.[633] This licence, but not the other, they left at their inn in Leicester, while passing through on some previous occasion; and here it was found by some unlicensed players, who appropriated it, and either through misunderstanding or through fraud, imposed it upon the Corporation as an instrument constituting a Master of the Revels’ company. There are two difficulties in this theory. One is that George Haysell, to whom Tilney’s licence was issued, is not one of the actors named in the Earl of Worcester’s warrant. But there are other cases in which the constitution of a company in the eyes of its lord was not quite the same as its constitution from the point of view of business relations, and I should suppose that Haysell, who was evidently not himself acting at the time, was the financier of the enterprise, and gave the bonds which Tilney would probably require for the satisfaction of the covenants of his indenture of licence. The other difficulty is that Leicester is not the only place in which the presence of a Master of the Revels’ company is recorded. Such a company was at Ludlow on 7 December 1583 and at Bath in 1583–4.[634] But, after all, this need mean no more than that the bogus company kept up their fraud for two or three months before they were exposed. If Tilney had really started a company of his own, it might have been expected to have a longer life. The establishment in 1583 of the Queen’s men makes it the less probable that he did so.

The list of this provincial company, as it stood in January 1583, is interesting, because at least four of its members, Robert Browne, Richard Jones, James Tunstall, and above all Edward Alleyn, then only a lad of sixteen, were destined to take a considerable share in the stage history of the future. Edward Browne, too, was afterwards one of the Admiral’s men. Of the rest, William Harrison, Thomas Cooke, Richard Andrewes, as well as of George Haysell (cf. ch. xv) and of the two players who were not named in the warrant, Thomas Powlton and William Pateson, Lord Herbert’s man, nothing or practically nothing further is known.[635] It is possible that the escapades of the company at Norwich and Leicester came, after all, to Worcester’s ears and aroused his displeasure. Visits are recorded to Coventry and Stratford in 1583–4, to Maidstone in 1584–5, to York in March 1585, and thereafter no more. It is also possible that the company passed from Worcester’s service into that of Lord Howard, when the latter became Lord Admiral in 1585. If so, a conveyance by Richard Jones to Edward Alleyn on 3 January 1589 of his share in a stock of apparel, play-books, and so forth, held jointly with Edward and John Alleyn and Robert Browne, must relate, not to a break up of Worcester’s men shortly before the death of the third earl, but to some internal change in the organization of the Admiral’s men.[636] In any case Mr. Fleay’s theory that Worcester’s men, other than Alleyn, became Pembroke’s in 1589 and only joined the Admiral’s in 1594 is quite gratuitous, as there is no evidence of the existence of Pembroke’s men before 1592.[637] Whether there was a Worcester’s company or not from 1585 to 1589, there was certainly one after the accession of the fourth earl. It is traceable at Coventry in 1589–90, at Newcastle in October 1590, at Leicester during the last three months of the same year, at Coventry and Faversham in 1590–1, at Leicester on 26 June 1591 and again in the last three months of the year, at Coventry and Shrewsbury in 1591–2, at Ipswich in 1592–3, twice at Leicester in 1593, both before and after Michaelmas, twice at Bath in 1593–4, at Leicester before Michaelmas in 1595, at Ludlow on 3 December 1595, at Bath in 1595–6, at Leicester on 1 August 1596, at Bristol in August 1598, at York in April 1599, and at Coventry on 3 January 1600 and in 1600–1 and 1601–2.[638]

By the end of 1601 the Earl of Worcester was holding the Mastership of the Horse and other important offices at Court, and may have thought it consonant with his dignity to have London players under his patronage. On 3 January 1602 his company was at Court. On 31 March the Privy Council, after attempting for some years to limit the number of London companies to two, made an order that Oxford’s and Worcester’s men, ‘beinge ioyned by agrement togeather in on companie’, should be allowed to play at the Boar’s Head and nowhere else.[639] In the course of 1602 How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad was published as played by Worcester’s men. By 17 August the company were in relations, under the style of ‘my lorde of Worsters players’, with Henslowe, who opened an account of advances made for their play-books and apparel, on the same lines as that which he kept during 1597–1603 with the Admiral’s men.[640] An early entry is of 9s. for a supper ‘at the Mermayd when we weare at owre a grement’. The account was continued until the spring of 1603, when Henslowe’s famous diary was disused. No theatre is named, but it is probable that, with or without leave from the Privy Council, the company moved to the Rose, which had been vacated by the Admiral’s men on the opening of the Fortune in 1600. Certainly this was so by May 1603, when an acquittance for an advance entered in the account refers to a play to be written for ‘the Earle of Worcesters players at the Rose’.[641] There is no complete list of the company in the diary. The names of those members incidentally mentioned, as authorizing payments or otherwise, are John Duke, Thomas Blackwood, William Kempe, John Thare, John Lowin, Thomas Heywood, Christopher Beeston, Robert Pallant, and a Cattanes whose first name is not preserved. The payees for the performance of 1601–2 were Kempe and Heywood. One Underell was in receipt of wages from the company, together with a tireman, who made purchases of stuffs for them. It is impossible to say which of these men had been with Worcester’s and which with Oxford’s before the amalgamation. Heywood, who was playwright as well as actor, had written for the Admiral’s from 1596 to 1599, and had bound himself to play in Henslowe’s house for two years from 25 March 1598. Pallant had been with Strange’s or the Admiral’s in 1590–1, and Duke, Kempe, and Beeston with the Chamberlain’s in 1598. Since then Kempe had travelled abroad, returning in September 1601. It is little more than a guess that some of these men may have played with Henslowe as Pembroke’s.[642] Several members of the company borrowed money from Henslowe, in some cases before their connexion with the Rose began. Duke had a loan as early as 21 September 1600, and Kempe on 10 March 1602.[643] Blackwood and Lowin borrowed on 12 March 1603 to go into the country with the company.[644] This was, no doubt, when playing in London was suspended owing to the illness of Elizabeth. A loan for a similar purpose was made on the same day to Richard Perkins, and suggests that he too was already one of Worcester’s men. There is, indeed, an earlier note of 4 September 1602 connecting him with one Dick Syferweste, whose fellows were then in the country, while Worcester’s were, of course, at the Rose. But this itself makes it clear that he was interested in a play of Heywood’s, which can hardly be other than that then in preparation at the Rose, and perhaps Syferwest was an unfortunate comrade in Oxford’s or Worcester’s, who had been left out at the reconstruction.[645]

During the seven months of the account Worcester’s men bought twelve new plays. These were:

• A Medicine for a Curst Wife (Dekker).
• Albere Galles (Heywood and Smith).
• Marshal Osric (Heywood and Smith).
• The Three Brothers (Smith).[646]
• 1 Lady Jane, or, The Overthrow of Rebels[647] (Chettle, Dekker, Heywood, Smith, and Webster).
• Christmas Comes but Once a Year (Chettle, Dekker, Heywood, and Webster).
• 1 The Black Dog of Newgate (Day, Hathaway, Smith, and another).
• The Blind Eats Many a Fly (Heywood).
• The Unfortunate General (Day, Hathaway, and Smith).
• 2 The Black Dog of Newgate (Day, Hathaway, Smith, and another).
• A Woman Killed with Kindness (Heywood).
• The Italian Tragedy (Smith).

As a rule the price was £6 a play; occasionally £1 or £2 more. Dekker had 10s. ‘over & above his price of’ A Medicine for a Curst Wife. This had originally been begun for the Admiral’s and was evidently transferred to Worcester’s by arrangement. After buying 2 Black Dog of Newgate for £7, the company apparently did not like it, and paid £2 more for ‘adycyones’. It is possible to verify from the purchase of properties the performance of nine of the twelve plays. These are Albere Galles (September), The Three Brothers (October), Marshal Osric (November), 1 Lady Jane (November), Christmas Comes but Once a Year (December), 1 Black Dog of Newgate (January), The Unfortunate General (January), 2 Black Dog of Newgate (February), and A Woman Killed with Kindness (March). The production of this last may, however, have been interfered with by Elizabeth’s death. Two plays of the series are extant, A Woman Killed with Kindness, printed in 1607 and described in 1617 as a Queen’s play, and 1 Lady Jane, which may be reasonably identified with Sir Thomas Wyatt, also printed in 1607 as a Queen’s play, and by Dekker and Webster. Dr. Greg regards Mr. Fleay’s identification of Albere Galles with Nobody and Somebody as ‘reasonable’; but it appears to rest on little, except the fact that the latter was also printed as a Queen’s play (S. R. 12 March 1606) and the conjecture that the title of the former might be a corruption of Archigallo. Payments were made in respect of a few contemplated plays, which apparently remained incomplete at the end of the season. These were 2 Lady Jane (Dekker), an unnamed tragedy by Chettle, an unnamed play by Middleton, and another unnamed play by Chettle and Heywood. The company also produced some plays of earlier date. Sir John Oldcastle was presumably transferred to them from the Admiral’s men, for Dekker had £2 10s. in respect of new additions to it in August and September. Heywood also had £1 in September for additions to a play called Cutting Dick, as to the origin of which nothing is known; and properties were bought in October for Byron[648] and for Absalom. Possibly the latter is identical with The Three Brothers. Worcester’s men did not perform at Court in 1602–3, but they must have expected a summons, as on 1 January they bought head-tires of one Mrs. Calle ‘for the corte’. Amongst their tradesmen were also Goodman Freshwater, who supplied ‘a canvas sewt and skenes’, apparently for a stage dog, and John Willett, mercer, on whose arrest John Duke found himself in the Clink at the end of the season. Their expenditure was at a fairly high rate, amounting to a total of £234 11s. 6d. for the seven months. Unlike the Admiral’s men, they spent more on apparel and properties than on play-books. Some of their purchases were costly enough, ‘a grogren clocke, ij veluet gerkens, ij dubletes and ij hed tyres’ from Edward Alleyn for £20, ‘a manes gowne of branshed velluet & a dublett’ from Christopher Beeston for £6, and ‘iiij clothe clockes layd with coper lace’ from Robert Shaw, formerly of the Admiral’s, for £16. On this last transaction they had to allow Henslowe £1 as interest on his money. A ‘flage of sylke’, no doubt for the theatre roof, cost them £1 6s. 8d.[649] In summing his account, Henslowe made various errors, whereby he robbed himself of £1 1s. 3d., and presented a claim to the company for £140 1s. It may be inferred that they had already repaid him £93 12s. 3d., but of this there is no record in the diary. He prepared an acknowledgement to be signed by all the members of the company, but the only signature actually attached is Blackwode’s.

On 9 May 1603 Henslowe notes ‘Begininge to playe agayne by the Kynges licence & layd out sense for my lord of Worsters men as folowethe’; but the only entry is one of £2 paid in earnest to Chettle and Day for a play of Shore’s Wife. If playing was actually resumed, it was not long before the plague drove the companies out of London again, and there is nothing more of Worcester’s men in the diary. Two visits from them are recorded at Leicester in the course of 1603, and two at Coventry and one at Barnstaple, whence they departed without playing, during 1602–3. Early in the new reign the company was taken into the patronage of Queen Anne.[650] This change was probably effected by Christmas, and certainly by 19 February 1604, when John Duke obtained a warrant on account of plays performed before Prince Henry by ‘the Queenes Majesties players’ on the previous 2 and 13 January. The Queen’s men are named in the Privy Council letter permitting the resumption of playing on 9 April 1604, which indicates their house as the Curtain. A list of players is found amongst other ‘officers to the Queene’ receiving four and a half yards of red cloth apiece for the coronation procession of 15 March 1604.[651] The names given are ‘Christopher Beeston, Robert Lee, John Duke, Robert Palante, Richard Purkins, Thomas Haward, James Houlte, Thomas Swetherton, Thomas Grene, and Robert Beeston’. Evidently several leading members had left the company. Kempe was probably dead.[652] Thare and Blackwood were on tour in Germany; Lowin seems to have joined the King’s men. Of Cattanes and Underell no more is known. The same ten names are found in a draft patent for a royal licence to the Queen’s men, of which the text follows:[653]