i. THE COURT INTERLUDERS

The doyen of the Court companies, when Elizabeth came to the throne, was the royal company of Players of Interludes. This had already half a century of history behind it. Its beginnings are probably traceable in the reign of Henry VII. Richard III had entertained a company, as Duke of Gloucester, in 1482; but nothing is known of it during his short reign from 1583 to 1585.[222] Nor is a royal company discoverable amongst the earlier records of Henry VII himself.[223] But from 1493 onwards Exchequer documents testify to the continuous existence of a body of men under the style of Lusores Regis, or in the vulgar tongue, Players of the King’s Interludes. In 1494 there were four of them, John English, Edward May, Richard Gibson, and John Hammond, and each had an annual fee, payable out of the Exchequer, of £3 6s. 8d. In 1503 there were five, William Rutter and John Scott taking the place of Hammond, but the total Exchequer payment to the company of £13 6s. 8d. a year, seems to have remained unaltered to the end of the reign.[224] They received, however, additional sums from time to time, as ‘rewards’ for performances, which were charged to the separate account of the Chamber.[225] In 1503, under the leadership of John English, they attended the Princess Margaret to Edinburgh, for her wedding with James IV of Scotland. Here they ‘did their devoir’, both on the day of the wedding, 8 August, and on the following days. On 11 August they played after supper, and on 13 August they played ‘a Moralite’ after dinner.[226]

The royal company continued under Henry VIII, who appears to have increased its numbers, and doubled the charge upon the Exchequer.[227] The financial records are, however, a little complicated. The Exchequer officials presumably continued to regard the establishment as consisting of four members drawing fees of ten instead of five marks each.[228] But the individual members were in fact paid on different scales. John English, the leader, got £6 13s. 4d. Others got £3 6s. 8d. as before, and others again only two-thirds of this amount, £2 4s. 5d. By this arrangement, it was possible to maintain an actual establishment of from eight to ten within the limits of the Exchequer allowance. It seems also to have been found convenient to transfer the responsibility for some at least of the payments from the Exchequer to the Treasurer of the Chamber.[229] The same distinction between players of different grades is also reflected in the annual rewards paid by the Treasurer of the Chamber for Christmas performances. These were increased in amount, and for a time the general reward to the players as a whole was supplemented by an additional sum to the ‘old’ players. Ultimately an amalgamated sum of £6 13s. 4d. became the customary reward for the company.[230] Details of a performance of Henry Medwall’s Finding of Truth on 6 January 1514 are related by Collier from a document which cannot be regarded as free from suspicion.[231] The name of Richard Gibson now disappears from the notices of the company. He may, likely enough, have given up playing on his appointment to be Porter and Yeoman Tailor of the Great Wardrobe.[232] But in his capacity of officer in charge of the Revels he must have maintained close relations with his former fellows, and his Account for 1510 records the delivery to John English of a ‘red satin ladies garment, powdered, with tassels of silver of Kolen’.[233] English remained at the head of the company, and is traceable in the Chamber Accounts up to 1531. John Scott died in 1528–9, in singular circumstances which are detailed by a contemporary chronicler.[234] Other names which come in succession before us are those of Richard Hole, George Maylor, George Birch, John Roll or Roo (d. 1539), Thomas Sudbury or Sudborough (d. 1546), Robert Hinstock, Richard Parrowe, John Slye, and John Young.[235] Some interesting information is disclosed by two lawsuits, in both of which George Maylor figured. The first of these was a dispute between John Rastell and Henry Walton as to the dilapidations of certain playing garments, during which George Mayler, merchant tailor, aged 40, and George Birch, coriar, aged 32, were called to give evidence as to the value of the garments and their use for a royal banquet at Greenwich in 1527.[236] In the second Mayler was himself a party. He is here described as a glazier, and an agreement of November 1528 is recited between him and one Thomas Arthur, tailor, whom he took as an apprentice for a year, promising to teach him to play and to obtain him admission into the King’s company and the right to the privileges (libertatem) thereof and ‘the Kinges bage’. According to Mayler, he found Arthur meat and drink and 4d. a day, but after seven weeks Arthur left him, beguiling away three of his covenant servants upon a playing tour in the provinces, out of which they made a profit of £30. He was, adds Mayler, ‘right harde and dull too taike any lernynge, whereby he was nothinge meate or apte too bee in service with the Kinges grace too maike any plaiez or interludes before his highnes’. Arthur, on the other hand, alleged that it was Mayler who had broken the indentures, and sued him before the sheriffs of London for £26 damages. Owing to the accident of Mayler’s being in Ludgate prison and unable to defend himself, the jury found against him for £4, and he appealed to Chancery to remove the action to that court.[237] The King’s men, even apart from their other occupations as Household servants or tradesmen, were not wholly dependent on the royal bounty. The reward at Christmas was supplemented by minor gifts from the Princess Mary, or from lords and ladies of the Court, such as the Duke of Rutland and the Countess of Devon;[238] and the glamour of the King’s badge doubtless added to the liberality of the company’s reception in many a monastery, country mansion, and town hall. They are found during the reign at the priories of Thetford, Dunmow (1531–2), and Durham (1532–3), at the house of the Lestranges at Hunstanton (23 October 1530), at New Romney (1526–7), Shrewsbury (1527, 1533, 1540), Leicester (1531), Norwich (1533), Bristol (1535, 1536, 1537, 1541), Cambridge (1537–8), Beverley (1540–1), and Maldon (1546–7).[239] A private performance by the King’s men forms an episode in the Elizabethan play of Sir Thomas More, although the Mason there named cannot be traced amongst their number.

No important change in the status of the company is to be observed under Edward VI. Some of the existing members seem to have retired, and four new ones, Richard Coke, John Birch, Henry Heryot, and John Smyth, were appointed.[240] The first three of these, together with two others, Richard Skinner and Thomas Southey, received a warrant to the Master of the Great Wardrobe on 15 February 1548, for the usual livery assigned to yeomen officers of the household, which consisted of three yards of red cloth, with an allowance of 3s. 4d. for the embroidering thereon of the royal initials.[241] The fees of these five, and of George Birch and Robert Hinstock, who were survivors from Henry VIII’s time, are traceable, as well as the annual reward of £6 13s. 4d., in the Chamber Accounts.[242] Each now got £3 6s. 8d. a year, under a warrant of 24 December 1548. The same names appear in a list of 30 September 1552, with the exception of Robert Hinstock, whose place had probably been taken by John Browne, appointed as from the previous Christmas by a warrant of 9 June 1552, which introduced the innovation of granting him a livery allowance of £1 3s. 4d. a year instead of the actual livery.[243] If we suppose that John Smith and John Young continued to be borne on the Exchequer pay-roll, the total number of eight interlude-players provided for in fee-lists of Edward’s reign is made up.[244] John Smith is probably to be identified with the ‘disard’ or jester of that name who took part in George Ferrers’s Christmas gambols of 1552–3.[245] John Young may be the ‘right worshipful esquire John Yung’ to whom William Baldwin dedicated his Beware the Cat in 1553. He certainly survived into Elizabeth’s reign and was still drawing an annuity of £3 6s. 8d. as ‘agitator comediarum’ in 1569–70.[246] I have not noticed any provincial performances by the company during 1547–53, except at Maldon in 1549–50, but they are referred to more than once in the archives of the Revels. The Revels Office made them an oven and weapons of wood at Shrovetide 1548 and a seven-headed dragon at Shrovetide 1549. At Christmas 1551–2 the Privy Council gave them a warrant to borrow ‘apparell and other fornyture’ from the Master, and Lord Darcy gave John Birch and John Browne another for garments to serve in an interlude before the King on 6 January 1552.[247] William Baldwin, in his Beware the Cat, relates that during the Christmas of 1552–3, they were learning ‘a play of Esop’s Crowe, wherin the moste part of the actors were birds’.[248] Their only other play of which the name is known is that of Self Love, for which Sir Thomas Chaloner gave them 20s. on a Shrove Monday in 1551–3.[249]

The company no doubt took their share in Court revels during the earlier part of Mary’s reign. But when the eclipse of gaiety came upon her later years they travelled. They are noted as the King and Queen’s men in 1555–6 at Ipswich and Gloucester, in 1557 at Bristol, and in 1558 at Barnstaple, and as the Queen’s men in 1555 at Leicester, in 1555–6 at Beverley, in 1556–7 at Beverley, Oxford, Norwich and Exeter, and in 1557–8 at Beverley, Leicester, Maldon, Dover, Lyme Regis, and Barnstaple. The nominal establishment continued to be eight.[250] But Heriot disappears after 1552 and John Birch, Coke, and Southey after 1556, and their vacancies do not seem to have been filled.[251]

Under Elizabeth the interlude players were certainly a moribund folk. They were reappointed ‘during pleasure’ under a warrant of 25 December 1559, and apparently Edmund Strowdewike and William Reading took the place of George Birch and Skinner.[252] They drew their fees of £3 6s. 8d. and livery allowances of £1 3s. 4d. from the Treasurer of the Chamber. The eight posts figure on the fee-lists long after there were no holders left.[253] The last ‘reward’ to the company, not improbably for the anti-papal farce of 6 January 1559, is to be found in the Chamber Account for 1558–60. It may be inferred that they never again played at Court. They were allowed to dwindle away. Browne and Reading died in 1563, Strowdewike on 3 June 1568, and Smith survived in solitary dignity until 1580.[254] Up to about 1573 he kept up some sort of provincial organization, doubtless with the aid of unofficial associates, and the Queen’s players are therefore traceable in many municipal Account-books. In October 1559 they were at Bristol and before Christmas at Leicester, in 1559–60 at Gloucester, in 1560–1 at Barnstaple, in 1561 at Faversham,[255] in October–December 1561 at Leicester, in 1561–2 at Gloucester, Maldon, and Beverley, in July 1562 at Grimsthorpe, and on 4 October at Ipswich, in August 1563 at Bristol, in 1563–4 at Maldon, on 12 and 20 March 1564 at Ipswich again, and on 2 August at Leicester, in 1564–5 at Abingdon, Maldon, and Gloucester, in 1565–6 at Maldon, Oxford, and Shrewsbury, in July 1566 at Bristol, before 29 September at Leicester, and on 9 October at Ipswich, in July 1567 at Bristol, in 1567–8 at Oxford and Gloucester, in 1568–9 at Abingdon, Ipswich, and Stratford-upon-Avon, in August 1569 at Bristol, and on 7 December at Oxford, in 1569–70 at Gloucester and Maldon, before 29 September 1570 at Leicester, in 1570–1 at Winchester, and during October-December 1571 at Leicester, in 1571–2 at Oxford, on 23 May 1572 at Nottingham, and on 20 November at Maldon, in 1572–3 at Ipswich, on 7 January 1573 at Beverley, and in 1573 at Winchester. This list is not exhaustive.[256] A reward to ‘the Queens Majesty’s men’ in the Doncaster accounts for 1575 can hardly be assumed to refer to actors.

ii. THE EARL OF LEICESTER’S MEN

The earliest mention of Lord Robert Dudley’s players is in a letter which he wrote in June 1559 to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord President of the North, as Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire, asking licence for them to perform in that county, in accordance with the proclamation of 16 May 1559.[257] The terms of the letter suggest that the company may already have played in London, but it is probable, as nothing is said of a hearing by the Queen, that they had not been at Court. They were there at each Christmas from 1560–1 to 1562–3, and then not for a decade. They were in 1558–9 at Norwich, in 1559–60 at Oxford, Saffron Walden, and Plymouth, in July 1560 at Bristol, in October 1561 at Grimsthorpe, in 1561–2 at Oxford, Maldon, and Ipswich, in September 1562 at Bristol, where they are called ‘Lord Dudley’s’ players, on 12 November 1563 at Leicester, and on 17 November at Ipswich, in 1563–4 at Maldon, on 2 January 1564 at Ipswich, and on 1 July at Leicester. They are also found, as the Earl of Leicester’s, in 1564–5 at Maldon, on 6 April 1565 at York, on 11 August 1569 at Nottingham, in January 1570 at Bristol, on 4 May 1570 at Oxford, and in October-December at Leicester, in 1570–1 at Abingdon, Barnstaple, and Gloucester, on 9 August 1571 at Saffron Walden,[258] in October–December at Leicester, in the same year at Beverley, on 15 July 1572 at Ipswich, and on 20 August at Nottingham. The gap in my records between 1565 and 1569 is bridged in the fuller list covering other towns given by Mr. Murray.[259] Information as to the company in 1572 is derived from the signatures to a letter asking for appointment by Leicester, not merely as liveried retainers but as household servants, in order to meet the terms of the proclamation of 3 January in that year.[260]

Several of these men were to achieve distinction in their ‘quality’; of none of them is there any earlier record, unless John Perkin is to be identified with the Parkins who had been in 1552–3 one of the train of the Lord of Misrule.[261] By 6 December 1571 the company were in London.[262] Three years later they obtained a very singular favour in the patent of 10 May 1574, the general bearings of which have already been discussed.[263]

The names in this patent only differ from those in the letter of 1572 by the omission of Thomas Clarke. By the time of its issue Leicester’s men were again a Court company. They had made their reappearance at the Christmas of 1572–3 with three plays, all given before the end of December. They continued to appear in every subsequent year until the formation of the Queen’s men in 1583. The building of the Theatre by James Burbadge in 1576 gave them a valuable head-quarters in London[264]; but they are still found from time to time about the provinces. Their detailed adventures are as follows. In 1572–3 they were at Stratford-on-Avon, on 8 August 1573 at Beverley, on 1 September at Nottingham, and in October at Bristol. On 26 December they played Predor and Lucia at Court, on 28 December Mamillia, and on 21 February 1574 Philemon and Philecia. In 1573–4 they were at Oxford and Leicester, on 13 June 1574 at Maldon, on 3 December at Canterbury. In 1574 they were also at Doncaster, where they played in the church. For the Court they rehearsed Panecia, and this was probably either their play of 26 December in which ‘my Lord of Lesters boyes’ appeared, or that of 1 January 1575, in which there were chimney-sweepers. From 9 to 27 July 1575 Elizabeth paid her historic visit to Kenilworth, and there is no proof, but much probability, that the company were called upon to take their part in her entertainment. Its chronicler, Robert Laneham, may well have been a kinsman of the player. I have not come across them elsewhere this year, except at Southampton. They played at Court on 28 December 1575 and 4 March 1576, and are described in the account for their payment as ‘Burbag and his company’. A record of them at Ipswich in 1575–6 as ‘my Lorde Robertes’ men is probably misdated. On 30 December 1576 they acted The Collier at Court. In 1576–7 they were at Stratford-on-Avon, in September 1577 at Newcastle, and between 13 and 19 October at Bristol, where they gave Myngo.[265] In 1577–8 they were also at Bath. They were at Court on 26 December 1577 and were to have performed again on 11 February 1578, but were displaced for Lady Essex’s men. They may have been at Wanstead in May 1578 when Leicester entertained Elizabeth with Sidney’s The May Lady. On 1 September they were at Maldon, on 9 September at Ipswich, and on 3 November at Lord North’s at Kirtling. They played A Greek Maid at Court on 4 January 1579.[266] Their play on 28 December 1579 fell through because Elizabeth could not be present, but they played on 6 January 1580. In 1579–80 they were at Ipswich and Durham, and from 15 to 17 May 1580 at Kirtling. Vice-Chancellor Hatcher’s letter of 21 January 1580 to Burghley about Oxford’s men (vide infra) shows that Leicester’s had then recently been refused leave to play at Cambridge. They played Delight at Court on 26 December and appeared again on 7 February 1581. That Wilson was still a member of the company in 1581 is shown by the reference to him in the curious Latin letter written by one of Lord Shrewsbury’s players on 25 April of that year.[267] In the following winter they did not come to Court, but on 10 February 1583 they returned with Telomo.[268]

The best of Leicester’s men, including Laneham, Wilson, and Johnson, appear to have joined the Queen’s company on its formation in March 1583. Probably the Queen’s also took over the Theatre. James Burbadge himself may have given up acting. Nothing more is heard of Leicester’s men until 1584–5, when players under his name visited Coventry, Leicester, Gloucester, and Norwich. They were at Dover in June 1585, and at Bath as late as August. These may have been either the relics of the old company, or a new one formed to attend the Earl in his expedition to aid the States-General in the Low Countries. He was appointed to the command of the English forces on 28 August, and reached Flushing on 10 December. The pageants in his honour at Utrecht, Leyden, and the Hague were remarkable. Stowe records festivities at Utrecht on St. George’s Day, 23 April 1586. These included an after-dinner show of ‘dauncing, vauting, and tumbling, with the forces of Hercules, which gave great delight to the strangers, for they had not seene it before’.[269] It is a reasonable inference that the performers in The Forces of Hercules were English.[270] And on 24 March 1586 Sir Philip Sidney, writing to Walsingham from Utrecht, says:

That the ‘jesting plaier’ was William Shakespeare is on the whole less likely than that he was the famous comic actor, William Kempe; and this theory is confirmed by a mention in an earlier letter of 12 November 1585 from Thomas Doyley at Calais to Leicester himself of ‘Mr. Kemp, called Don Gulihelmo’, as amongst those remaining at Dunkirk.[272] Leicester returned to England in November 1586. ‘Wilhelm Kempe, instrumentist’ and his lad ‘Daniell Jonns’ were at the Danish Court at Helsingör in August and September of the same year; and so, from 17 July to 18 September, were five ‘instrumentister och springere’ whose names may evidently be anglicized as Thomas Stevens, George Bryan, Thomas King, Thomas Pope, and Robert Percy (cf. ch. xiv). Some or all of these men are evidently the company of English comedians referred to by Thomas Heywood as commended by the Earl of Leicester to Frederick II of Denmark. Stevens and his fellows, but not apparently Kempe, went on to Dresden. Some of them ultimately became Lord Strange’s men. But it seems to me very doubtful whether, as is usually suggested, they passed direct into his service from that of Leicester.[273] They did not leave Dresden until 17 July 1587. But Leicester’s were at Exeter on 23 March 1586. They played at Court on 27 December 1586, and were in London about 25 January 1587. They were at Abingdon, Bath, Lathom, Coventry, Leicester, Oxford, Stratford-on-Avon, Dover, Canterbury, Marlborough, Southampton, Exeter, Gloucester, and Norwich during 1586–7. Kempe may, of course, have been with them on these occasions; but if Stevens and the rest passed as Leicester’s in the Low Countries, it is likely that they ceased to do so when they went to Denmark.

Finally, Leicester’s men were at Coventry, Reading, Bath, Maidstone, Dover, Plymouth, Gloucester, York, Saffron Walden, and probably Exeter in 1587–8.[274] On 4 September they were at Norwich, and here William Stonage, a cobbler, was committed to prison at their suit, ‘for lewd words uttered against the ragged staff’.[275] As late as 14 September they did not yet know that the lord in whose name they wore this badge was dead, for on that day, unless the records are again in error, they were still playing at Ipswich.[276]

iii. LORD RICH’S MEN

The company was at Ipswich on 3 May 1564, Saffron Walden in 1563–4, Maldon in 1564–5, York on 6 April 1565, and Ipswich on 31 July 1567. Then it secured a footing in London, and appeared at Court during the Christmas of 1567–8, on 26 December 1568, and on 5 February 1570. On 2 February 1570 it played at the Lincoln’s Inn Candlemas ‘Post Revels’.[277] It was also at Canterbury in 1569, Saffron Walden in 1569–70, and Maldon in 1570. Presumably it was a later company to which Gabriel Harvey referred in 1579 (cf. p. 4), and the death of Lord Rich in 1581 might naturally have led to its disbandment or change of service.

iv. LORD ABERGAVENNY’S MEN

The only London record of this company is a civic licence for it of 29 January 1572 (App. D, No. xxi), but it is found in provincial records at Dover, Canterbury, Leicester, Bristol, and Faversham in 1571 and 1572, and at Ludlow in 1575–6.

v. THE EARL OF SUSSEX’S MEN

The third Earl of Sussex had a company, which proved one of the most long-lived of the theatrical organizations of Elizabeth’s time and held together, now in London and now in the provinces, under no less than three earls. It first makes its appearance at Nottingham on 16 March 1569, at Maldon in 1570, on 28 January 1571, and on 20 August 1572, at Ipswich in 1571–2, at Canterbury and Dover in 1569 and 1570, and in 1569–70 at Bristol, Gloucester, and Ludlow, where it was of six men. Sussex became Chamberlain in July 1572 and in the following winter his company came to the Court, whose Christmases it helped to enliven pretty regularly until the death of its first patron in 1583. As I have shown elsewhere (ch. vi), Sussex seems to have had occasional deputies in Lord Howard of Effingham and Lord Hunsdon during his term of office, but it is probably justifiable to assume that, when the Chamberlain’s men are referred to at any time during 1572–83, Sussex’s men are meant, and in 1577 and 1581 there is clear evidence that the names are used synonymously. Oddly enough, Howard’s men are also referred to in one record of 1577 (cf. p. 134) as the Chamberlain’s, but that is probably a slip. The detailed history of the company during this period is as follows. In 1572–3 they were at Bath, in July 1573 at Leicester, on 14 September at Nottingham, in 1573–4 at Coventry, in 1574, on some date before 29 September, at Leicester again, on 13 July at Maldon, and in September at Wollaton (Francis Willoughby’s). They rehearsed two Court plays for Christmas on 14 December, Phedrastus and Phigon and Lucia, but in the end did not give a performance. In 1574–5 they were at Gloucester, in 1575 at Maldon, and before 29 September at Leicester. They played at Court on 2 February 1576. Their payee was John Adams, the only actor whose name is recorded in connexion with the company. In 1575–6 they were at Ipswich, on 27 July 1576 at Cambridge, and between 29 July and 5 August at Bristol, where they played The Red Knight. On 2 February 1577 they played The Cynocephali at Court. In 1576–7 they were at Coventry and Bath, on 30 May 1577 at Ipswich, and on 31 August at Nottingham. On 2 February 1578 they played at Court. In 1577–8 they were at Bath, on 15 July 1578 at Maldon, in the same year at Bristol, and in 1578–9 at Bath. Thereafter their activities seem to have been mainly confined to London. They were named by the Privy Council to the Lord Mayor among the Court companies for the Christmas of 1578–9 (App. D, No. xl), and played The Cruelty of a Stepmother on 28 December 1578, The Rape of the Second Helen on 6 January, and Murderous Michael on 3 March 1579. In the following winter their pieces were The Duke of Milan and the Marquess of Mantua on 26 December, Portio and Demorantes on 2 February, and Sarpedon on 16 February 1580.[278] The names of their Court plays on 27 December 1580 and 2 February 1581 are unfortunately not recorded. On 14 September they recur in the provinces, at Nottingham.[279] They missed the next winter at Court, and made their last appearance there for a decade in Ferrar on 6 January 1583.

Either the death of their patron in June 1583, or possibly the formation of the Queen’s men in the previous March, eclipsed them, but in 1585 they reappear as a provincial company, visiting Dover on 15 May, Bath on 22 July and in May 1586, Coventry twice in 1585–6, Ipswich in 1586–7, York in 1587, Leicester before Michaelmas of the same year, and Coventry in September. Here they were playing under the name of the Countess of Sussex. In 1587–8 they were at Coventry and Bath, on 18 April 1588 at Ipswich, on 17 February 1589 at Leicester, on 1 March at Ipswich, on 19 November at Leicester again, in the course of 1589 at Faversham, and in 1588–9 at Aldeburgh. On 17 February 1590 they were at Ipswich. In the spring of 1591 they appear to have made a temporary amalgamation with a group of the Queen’s men (q.v.) and appeared with them on 14 February at Southampton, on 24 March at Coventry, and during 1590–1 at Gloucester. This arrangement probably terminated in May, and on 11 August Sussex’s were alone at Leicester.[280]

They enter the charmed London circle again with a Court performance on 2 January 1592.[281] It is possible that they had attracted the services of Marlowe, for Kyd in a letter, probably to be dated in 1593, speaks of himself as having been in the service of a lord for whose players Marlowe was writing, and there are some traces of connexion between Kyd and the house of Radcliffe. During the plague of 1593 the company were obliged to travel again, and on 29 April the Privy Council Register records the issue of

The company were at Ipswich, Newcastle, and York in 1592–3. They were at Winchester on 7 December 1593; then came to London under the patronage of the fifth Earl, and, although not at Court, had a season of about six weeks, beginning on 26 December and ending on 6 February, with Henslowe, probably at the Rose. The names and dates of their plays and sums received at each, probably by himself as owner of the theatre, are noted by Henslowe in his diary. The company performed on thirty nights, in twelve plays. Henslowe’s receipts averaged £1 13s., amounting to £3 1s. on the first night and £3 10s. on each of the next two, and thereafter fluctuating greatly, from a minimum of 5s. to a maximum of £3 8s. This last was at the production of the one ‘new’ play of the season, Titus Andronicus, on 24 January. The enterprise was brought to an abrupt termination by a renewed alarm of plague, and a consequent inhibition of plays by the Privy Council on 3 February. Titus Andronicus was played for the third and last time on 6 February, and on the same day the book was entered for copyright purposes in the Stationers’ Register. The edition published in the same year professes to give the play as it was played by ‘the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke, and Earle of Sussex their Servants’. I suppose it to have passed, probably in a pre-Shakespearian version, from Pembroke’s to Sussex’s, when the former were bankrupt in the summer of 1593 (cf. infra), and to have been revised for Sussex’s by the hand of Shakespeare. If so, it is a plausible conjecture that certain other plays, which were once Pembroke’s and ultimately came to the Chamberlain’s men, also passed through the hands of Sussex’s. Such were The Taming of A Shrew, The Contention of York and Lancaster, and perhaps the Ur-Hamlet, 1 Henry VI, and Richard III. There is no basis for determining whether any of Shakespeare’s work on the York tetralogy was done for Sussex’s; but it is worth noting that one of their productions was Buckingham, a title which might fit either Richard III or that early version of Henry VIII, the existence of which, on internal grounds, I suspect. Of Sussex’s other plays in this season, one, George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, was published as theirs in 1599; another, Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, probably belonged to Henslowe, as it was acted in turn by nearly every company which he financed; and of the rest, God Speed the Plough, Huon of Bordeaux, Richard the Confessor, William the Conqueror, Friar Francis, Abraham and Lot, The Fair Maid of Italy, and King Lud, nothing is known, except for the entry of God Speed the Plough in 1601 and an edifying tale related about 1608 by Thomas Heywood in connexion with an undated performance of Friar Francis by the company at King’s Lynn.[283]

At Easter 1594 Henslowe records another very brief season of eight nights between 1 and 9 April, during which the Queen’s and Sussex’s men played ‘together’. This suggests to Dr. Greg that the companies appeared on different nights, but to me rather that they combined their forces, as they seem to have already done at Coventry in 1591. Henslowe’s receipts averaged £1 17s. The repertory included, besides The Fair Maid of Italy and The Jew of Malta, King Leare, doubtless to be identified with King Leire and his Three Daughters (1605), The Ranger’s Comedy, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. The latter was published in 1594 as a Queen’s play. Both it and The Ranger’s Comedy were played at a later date by the Admiral’s, and may have belonged to Henslowe. Strange’s had played Friar Bacon in 1592–3.

Thereafter Sussex’s men vanish from the annals; they may have been absorbed in the Queen’s men for travelling purposes. Later players under the same name are recorded at Coventry in 1602–3, Dover in 1606–7, Canterbury in 1607–8, Bristol, Norwich, and Dunwich in 1608–9, Leicester on 31 August 1615, and Leominster in 1618, and it may be these to whom Heywood alludes as visiting King’s Lynn. If so, their possession of Friar Francis suggests some affiliation to the earlier company.

vi. SIR ROBERT LANE’S MEN